The Phenomenological Verification of Mystical Claims (Abstract)

Abstract

It is held here that among the varieties of mystical experience a certain essential core can be isolated which is of direct philosophical interest. One way of expressing that core is the assurance by the mystic himself that his self has an immediate, experiential identity with God. It is this claim which the paper examines from a phenomenological, that is, reflexive point of view. The sense of the claim involved in the experience is examined first of all without presuppositions as to what must be the case on other grounds. The paper then argues that within a purely phenomenological perspective the claim's validity can be established. The self is indeed transcendental to any of its objects, and eternally actual; moreover its own actuality is guaranteed by the argument of Descartes, cogito ergo sum. As for God, the meaning or essence of what the term designates is indeed sufficient to guarantee its eternal actuality precisely as told by the ontological argument. The remainder of the argument is intended to show that the transcendental self is nothing but God thinking himself. The essence of the mystic experience then, far from being hostile to reason, is but another expression of the immediate, intuitive identity of an actual self and an actual absolute reality, and that the entire objective validity of the argument is itself certifiable by a phenomenological reflection upon it. Or put otherwise, reason is not merely a discursive function but also intuitive, and what it intuits does indeed exist precisely as reason intuits it. Further evidence is neither necessary nor possible.