Mystical Experience as a Bridge for Cross-Cultural Philosophy of Religion: A Critique

Abstract

he belief that mystical experience is both ineffable and essentially the same in all religious traditions has become fairly common in the twentieth century. The use made, by different authors, of these two alleged facts about mystical experience varies but, in general, putative ineffability has been used to discount all language and all differences in language about mystical experience as merely accidental and to characterize mystical experience as either transor subconceptual. Putative unanimity in the descriptions mystics have given of their experiences follows easily from the ineffability of the experiences. Since ineffability supposedly makes it impossible to make any distinctions between one ineffable experience and another, and since theological interpretations have nothing to do with mystical experience, all mystical experiences are therefore essentially the same./1/ In the more extended forms of the claim that mystical experience is ineffable, the experience becomes so different from other kinds of experience that ineffability becomes unique to mystical experience and even a part of its definition. A barrier is made to appear between mystical experience and its interpretation, so that nronmystics cannot really know anything about mystical experience. Mystical experience is sometimes characterized as subconceptual-as primarily emotive, aesthetic, or consisting in a certain sort of attitude or special awareness./2/ Other authors understand mystical intuition to be transconceptual-a special kind of truth or wisdom that far transcends ordinary conceptual knowledge. It is only a small additional step to argue that mystical