Scholarly approaches to mysticism
A popular variant of perennialism sees various mystical traditions as pointing to one universal transcendental reality, for which those experiences offer the proof.
Lay scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries began their studies on the historical and psychological descriptive analysis of the mystical experience, by investigating examples and categorizing it into types.
Early notable examples include William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902); the study of the term "cosmic consciousness" by Edward Carpenter (1892)[6] and psychiatrist Richard Bucke (in his book Cosmic Consciousness, 1901); the definition of "oceanic feeling" by Romain Rolland (1927) and its study by Freud; Rudolf Otto's description of the "numinous" (1917) and its studies by Jung; Friedrich von Hügel in The Mystical Element of Religion (1908); Evelyn Underhill in her work Mysticism (1911); Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy (1945).
[7] The theistic category includes most forms of Jewish, Christian and Islamic mysticism and occasional Hindu examples such as Ramanuja and the Bhagavad Gita.
[7] The monistic type, which according to Zaehner is based upon the experience of the unity of one's soul in isolation from the material and psychic world,[7][note 1] includes early Buddhism and Hindu schools such as Samkhya and Advaita vedanta.
Within the second 'monistic' camp, Zaehner draws a clear distinction between the dualist 'isolationist' ideal of Samkhya, the historical Buddha, and various gnostic sects, and the non-dualist position of Advaita vedanta.
Zaehner considers theistic mysticism to be superior to the other two categories, because of its appreciation of God, but also because of its strong moral imperative.
from many of Zaehner's other writings (e.g., Our Savage God, Zen, Drugs and Mysticism, At Sundry Times, Hinduism) that such a criticism is rather unfair.
[7] Stace argues that doctrinal differences between religious traditions are inappropriate criteria when making cross-cultural comparisons of mystical experiences.
[18] According to Hood, "the perennialist view has strong empirical support," since his scale yielded positive results across various cultures,[19][note 3] stating that mystical experience as operationalized from Stace's criteria is identical across various samples.
[21][note 4] Although Stace's work on mysticism received a positive response, it has also been strongly criticised in the 1970s and 1980s, for its lack of methodological rigueur and its perennialist pre-assumptions.
[22][23][24][25][web 1] Major criticisms came from Steven T. Katz in his influential series of publications on mysticism and philosophy,[note 5] and from Wayne Proudfoot in his Religious experience (1985).
[31] Wayne Proudfoot traces the roots of the notion of "religious experience" to the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), who argued that religion is based on a feeling of the infinite.
[32] A pure consciousness without concepts, reached by "cleaning the doors of perception",[note 11] would be an overwhelming chaos of sensory input without coherence.
[54] Other critics point out that the stress on "experience" is accompanied with favoring the atomic individual, instead of the shared life of the community.
It also fails to distinguish between episodic experience, and mysticism as a process, that is embedded in a total religious matrix of liturgy, scripture, worship, virtues, theology, rituals and practices.
Mysticism thus becomes seen as a personal matter of cultivating inner states of tranquility and equanimity, which, rather than seeking to transform the world, serve to accommodate the individual to the status quo through the alleviation of anxiety and stress.
[note 14] But in the 1970s the issue of a universal "perennialism" versus each mystical experience being was reignited by Steven Katz.
[70][note 15]According to Katz (1978), Stace typology is "too reductive and inflexible," reducing the complexities and varieties of mystical experience into "improper categories.
[44] The contextual approach, which also includes constructionism and attribution theory, takes into account the historical and cultural context.
Critics note that these characteristics can be the result of any illness, and are not sufficiently descriptive for patients with temporal lobe epilepsy.
[102][note 16] In The Emotion Machine, Marvin Minsky argues that mystical experiences only seem profound and persuasive because the mind's critical faculties are relatively inactive during them.
[103][note 18] Geschwind and Picard propose a neurological explanation for this subjective certainty, based on clinical research of epilepsy.
[109] Their scans showed unusual activity in the top rear section of the brain, the "posterior superior parietal lobe", or the "orientation association area (OAA)" in their own words.
[111] This OAA shows a sharply reduced activity during meditative states, reflecting a block in the incoming flow of sensory information, resulting in a perceived lack of physical boundaries.
[112]Newberg and d'Aquili conclude that mystical experience correlates to observable neurological events, which are not outside the range of normal brain function.
[note 24] Matthew Day also writes that the discovery of a neurological substrate of a "religious experience" is an isolated finding which "doesn't even come close to a robust theory of religion".
Its functions are related, among others, to self-reference and self-awareness, and new imaging experiments during meditation and the use of hallucinogens indicate a decrease in the activity of this network mediated by them, leading some studies to base on it a probable neurocognitive mechanism of the dissolution of the self, which occurs in some mystical phenomena.
[121] For example, the Zen Buddhist training does not end with kenshō, but practice is to be continued to deepen the insight and to express it in daily life.
This trajectory of initial insight followed by a gradual deepening and ripening is expressed by Linji Yixuan in his Three mysterious Gates, the Five Ranks, the Four Ways of Knowing of Hakuin,[128] and the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures[129] which detail the steps on the Path.
