Selected Essay
From
Mysticism to a Modern Spiritual Cognition
Robert
A. McDermott
This essay falls into three parts. First, it reviews the
disagreement between Huston Smith, who contends that there
are pure, unmediated experiences, and Steven Katz, who argues
that all experience is mediated (fashioned, informed) by
a variety of linguistic, epistemic, and cultural determinants.
Second, it reworks this disagreement in the context of the
evolution of consciousness, as detailed by Rudolf Steiner
and Owen Barfield. Third, drawing on the first two sections,
it recommends a theory and practice of spiritual cognition
that claims to be appropriate to modern Western spiritual
capacities and needs and, in so doing, would seem to combine
the speculative richness of Smith's case for the mystical
and primordial with the critical caution of Katz's cultural
relativism.
CLAIMS
FOR AND AGAINST UNMEDIATED EXPERIENCES
In
a widely discussed book, Forgotten Truth-The Primordial
Tradition, and in a series of essays, Huston Smith has proven
to be an effective proponent and defender of a position
variously referred to as perennialism or the primordial
tradition. In one of these essays, Smith summarizes the
primordialist position with a double claim:
I began with a question and an epistemological generalization
based on the study of the data and reflection thereon. The
question I tried to answer was: "Why are mystical experiences
the experiences they are?" And in order to begin to
answer this query, I adopted as a working hypothesis the
epistemic thesis that there are no pure (i.e., unmediated)
experiences. Neither mystical experience nor more ordinary
forms of experience give any indication, or any grounds
for believing, that, they are unmediated. That is to say,
all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes
itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological
ways. The notion of unmediated experience seems, if not
self-contradictory, empty at best. This seems to me to be
true even with regard to the experiences of those ultimate
objects of concern with which mystics have intercourse,
e.g., God, Being, nirvana, etc., and this "mediated"
aspect of all our experience seems an inescapable feature
of any epistemological inquiry, including the inquiry into
mysticism. Thus, contrary to the prevailing scholarly view-that
of James, Stace, Underhill, Otto, and even Zaehner and Smart-we
must recognize that a right understanding of mysticism is
not just a question of studying the reports of the mystic
after the experiential event but also of acknowledging that
the experience itself, as well as the form in which it is
reported, is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings
to, and which shape, his experience. Straightforwardly,
what is argued is that, for example, the Hindu mystic does
not have an experience of x which he describes in the, to
him, familiar language and symbols of Hinduism, but rather
he has a Hindu experience; his experience is not an unmediated
experience of x but is itself the at least partially preformed
anticipated Hindu experience of Brahman. Again, the Christian
mystic does not experience some unidentified reality which
he then conveniently labels "God," but rather
has the at least partially, prefigured Christian experiences
of God, or Jesus, and so forth. Moreover, as one might anticipate,
it is my contention, based on what evidence there is, that
the Hindu experience of Brahman and the Christian experience
of God are not the same.
In
sum, for Katz and the anti-primordial position, all experience,
irrespective of whether it is mystical, perennial, or esoteric,
is rendered necessarily relative and less than certain by
various mediators, including personality, language, and
culture.
With these two contending positions in sharp focus, it might
prove interesting to consider the extent to which they,
and the conflict between them, are altered, by placing them
in the context of the evolution of consciousness.
EVOLUTION
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The term evolution of consciousness as used here is intended
to be more inclusive than either the history of nature or
the history of thought. It refers to the expression of consciousness
through both nature and mind of a prior, originating reality
ordinarily understood by a variety of terms such as Mind,
Spirit, and Cosmic Intelligence. The evolutionist rightly
understands that mind evolved from nature, but according
to the theory of the evolution of consciousness here espoused,
nature previously evolved from the primal source of all.
Consciousness, then, includes the fullest possible scope
of entities and events, all to be understood as manifestations
of an original guiding reality. At full value, evolution
refers to the changing mode of expression of this underlying
reality, first through eons of natural evolution and then
through epochs given to the development of human awareness.
This account is deliberately quite general because it is
only the background to our primary concern, the possibility
that mysticism properly belongs more to some than to other
historical periods. More specifically, and controversially,
I am proposing that mysticism belongs most properly to a
mode of consciousness prior to the development of the human
ego and the conscious will, such as the modern individual,
and particularly modern Western individual, is capable of
realizing. If we take seriously the changing mode of consciousness
from one epoch to the next, and the radical changes over
many epochs-for example, from the time of the Ancient Egyptians
and Hebrews, to the time of the Greeks and early Christians,
to the Renaissance and to contemporary thought and culture-the
mystic can be seen as a norm in the earlier cultures and
as a rarity (indeed, as passé) in the present.
Consequently, the value of a mystical experience depends
at least in part on the particular historical period in
which the experience is attained. If the Hebrews and Greeks
could see spiritual beings, then within the interpretive
frame provided by the evolution of consciousness, the importance
of Abraham and Moses, Homer and Pythagoras, has more to
do with the ways in which they advanced this evolution than
with their having contacted the timeless source of all.
The Greek mystics had as their spiritual-esoteric task the
contacting of the gods who were presumably guiding that
amazing culture and, through that culture, the entire evolution
of Western civilization.
The achievements not only of the Greeks but of all mystics
and esoteric teachers are quite specific, and all the more
compelling and significant in their specificity. Although
the mystical experiences enjoyed by Abraham and Moses, for
example, were quite different from each other, they had
in common a special and, in global terms, a highly specific
relationship to YHWH, the God of the Hebrew people. By virtue
of their source, these experiences were in a distinct spiritual
stream, with a historically specific task. Both from our
own historically specific perspective, as well as from the
perspective of the individual and his community, these experiences
are at least as valuable for their specificity as for their
status as mystical-esoteric experiences. In traditional
cultures, after all, experience of the divine was not so
rare as to need defense or acclaim: it was not the fact
of a mystical experience that was significant, but rather
its content.
Content is not only historically grounded and limited but
also historically significant and, through the historical,
revelatory. But because the primordialist does not attend
to the historical in defending the mystical and esoteric,
there is a tendency to miss the specific and, therefore,
the revelatory character of each mystical experience. The
following passage from the article by Huston Smith, quoted
above, may serve as an example:
Eliade
tells us that for archaic societies "the world exists
because it was created by the gods, and that the existence
of the world 'means' something, 'wants to say' something,
that the world is neither mute nor opaque, that it is not
an inert thing without purpose or significance." One
can quibble about the plurality in the word "gods"
in that statement,-it would be a quibble, for the alternative
to monotheism is not polytheism but dualism-but is there
anything in the entire history of theology that supercedes,
let alone retires, that initial, may we say primordial,
discernment?
Since, in the archaic world as described by Eliade, mankind
really did know the gods, it is significant to point out
to such experiences as evidence of the divine in our time.
Rather, by a review within the context of the evolution
of consciousness, the divine was obvious to the ancients,
somewhat questionable and hidden by the time of the Greeks,
believed rather than known by the medievals, and generally
regarded as dead in our own time. If, as this essay is attempting
to demonstrate, the evolution of consciousness is more than
a history of ideas or a climate of opinion, but indeed is
a purposive change in the mode of awareness or of the possibilities
and limitations of awareness from which ideas and opinion
issue, then the archaic experience of the divine may well
have been literally of the gods, whereas in our time both
God and the gods, and all other forms of the divine, are
withdrawn-and purposively so.
To be a mystic in our time-when the gods of the archaic
world and God of the historical religions have "died
the death of a thousand qualifications"-constitutes
a far more significant achievement than in any previous
age. In the case of the contemporary mystics, what is so
important about their spirituality is not their mysticism
as ordinarily understood, but their distinctively modern,
ego-, and will-based consciousness. To think abstractly
about human nature or the meaning of life is for us an ordinary
experience but was inconceivable (quite literally) for archaic
humanity. The age and culture of each mystic is telling
in both senses-it reveals an achievement as well as a limitation.
As we know not to look to the Hebrews or the Chinese for
metaphysics, or to the Indians for humanistic ethics, or
to the Greeks for a sense of historical providence, we ought
to observe and draw the implications from a similar set
of strengths and limitations concerning mystics and their
evolutionary context.
Gautama and Jesus, Sankara and Eckhart, Suzuki and Merton-all
are mystics and all are to be prized as such. But when the
experiences and reports of these figures are studied from
the perspective of evolution of consciousness, there comes
into view quite different mysticisms, and the differences
between them is dependent upon (and in turn reveals the
characteristic quality of) the consciousness of their epoch.
With the help of feminist insights, Matthew Fox rightly
discerns that Jesus and other mystics exhibit feminine virtues
such as gentleness, passivity, and tolerance. Evolution
of consciousness might prove similarly effective when used
as an instrument of interpretation. Jesus, for example,
exhibits the kind of thinking-not merely the thoughts, but
the mode or quality of thinking itself-that is characteristic
of first-century Hebraic-Hellenistic consciousness. The
experience of the Father to which Jesus frequently referred
is not only of a different culture from the mystical experiences
recorded in the Upanishads or Buddhist texts, but it is
a different kind of consciousness, of a different spiritual
and mental time and purpose. The experience of Jesus is
also radically different from the experiences of contemporary
mystics such as Sri Aurobindo, Thomas Merton, or the Dalai
Lama.
While primordialists do not need to be told of these differences-Huston
Smith's Religions of Man, written thirty years ago, is full
of carefully nuanced accounts of the qualitative differences
of seven major historical religions-they do need to draw
out the implications of these differences with respect to
the debate for and against the possibility of unmediated
mystical experience.
Although not in a way that would make it welcome to a contextualist
such as Katz, the present account of the evolution of consciousness
does nevertheless serve the cause of those who insist that
all experience is mediated. But the evolutionist position
here espoused is also at odds with the contextualist in
that it regards the mediated expression as having its source
and guidance in the divine. Whereas its impatience with
anti-spiritual thinking leads the perennialist to claim
too much, the anti-perennialist allows too little and misses
the deep sources and powerful revelations of mystical experiences.
Both positions might be modified and strengthened by the
evolutionist view, which sees all esoteric and mystical
insight as streaming from the spiritual world on behalf
of the struggle of humanity to found a divine life on earth.
Thus, an affirmation of the evolution of consciousness counts
against the claim for unmediated mystical knowledge, but
not for the same reason: the evolution of consciousness
shifts the focus from the arguments for and against unmediated
mystical experience to the claim for spiritually significant
revelation according to the spiritually guided change of
consciousness from one epoch to the next. We would do well,
then, to acknowledge the weaknesses of both the primordialist
and the contextualist positions. With the primordialist,
we should argue on behalf of the mystical and esoteric as
the source of true spiritual knowledge; with the contextualist,
we should acknowledge that when the mystical is translated
into the conceptual, exoteric mode it loses the privileged
status of the esoteric. The evolutionist view is both contextual-every
mystical experience and religious claim is limited by the
language, personality, and culture of the mystic-and absolute-the
experience itself does contact or draw from an ineffable
spiritual source.
If there was a time when mysticism was automatic and unopposed,
it is also true that in the present age mysticism is so
difficult and rare that the majority of the population doubts
its significance, and segments of the thinking population
doubt it is a possibility. The term modern is more obviously
associated with the skepticism of Katz than with the esotericism
of Smith (whose book on the primordial tradition is rightly
entitled Forgotten Truth and for whom Katz and his critical
perspective is a typical example of the anti-metaphysical,
anti-ontological character of modern philosophical and religious
thinking).
In the concluding section of this paper, I will switch to
a more personal tone and recommend a modern spiritual cognition
that I believe both blunts the debate between the mystical-esoteric
position and the reigning cultural relativism and affirms
what seems to me most valuable in both of these positions.
TOWARD
A MODERN SPIRITUAL COGNITION
The
method of spiritual cognition that I would recommend is
the spiritual science taught by Rudolf Steiner and developed
by, among others, Owen Barfield and Georg Kuhlewind. On
the basis of the theory and practice of this method, it
seems to me possible to bridge, or to hold in creative polar
tension, the exoteric and esoteric, the cultural and mystical,
the perennial and the temporally particular. Further, this
spiritual-scientific method claims to be modern-that is,
appropriate for the distinctive mode of consciousness that
has developed during the last several centuries of the scientific
West. Since our modern consciousness (understood as characterized
by a scientific method and criteria for knowledge and value)
has put the spiritual at least on the defensive (if it has
not entirely removed it from serious consideration), a mysticism
that could develop according to its presuppositions will
have to be historical and scientific, conscious and willful.
Advocates of mysticism, however, do not seem to think in
terms of spiritual or esoteric experiences attained by a
method or affirmed by criteria characteristic of modern
Western consciousness. A personal experience and observation
might be helpful in this regard. During the seminar on mysticism
that generated this essay (and many other positive results),
a colleague and friend presented his book to me with this
inscription: "For the mystic in you which I do recognize
even though, as yet, you do not." This affirmation
of the mystic in me (by one who, it seems to me, is experienced
and discerning in such matters) followed by several days
my reacting uncomfortably to seminar participants who politely
insisted that I was as much a mystic as they and that I
should admit as much. My resistance to the designation "mystic"
issues not from an anti-religious or anti-spiritual perspective,
but rather from a specific commitment to an evolutionary
view according to which I regard mysticism as a dated ideal.
According to my theoretical understanding of mysticism and
the evolution of consciousness, mysticism is no longer the
ideal attainment; indeed, it is a bit of an anachronism.
On the experiential side, however, I not only am not past
mysticism to the next ideal-I am not even to mysticism.
So, my objection to being classified as a mystic is two-fold:
I have not attained a mystical consciousness, nor am I striving
to. Rather, I am striving to attain a level of consciousness
that should properly be called higher cognition or imaginal
thinking. Hence the point of this essay-that in the evolution
of consciousness, mysticism should be seen as the penultimate
rather than ultimate spiritual attainment, and that even
those of us who are not yet mystics should strive for the
ultimate-higher cognition or imaginal thinking-rather than
for mystical union.
NOTES
1.
Huston Smith, "Philosophy, Theology, and the Primordial
Claim," Cross Currents (Fall 1988): 276-88.
2. Stephen T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) and Mysticism
and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press,
1983).
3. See especially Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science (London:
Rudolf Steiner Press, 1969), chapter 5; Stewart C. Easton,
Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy (New York: Anthroposophic
Press, 1975), chapter 2; and Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1987), and
History, Guilt and Habit (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 1979).
4. Published by Harper & Row in 1977.
5. Smith, "Philosophy, Theology, and the Primordial
Claim," 276.
6. Ibid., 288.
7. "The 'Conservative' Character of Mystical Experience,"
in Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 26.
8. Smith, "Philosophy, Theology, and the Primordial
Claim," 276.
9. Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (New York:
Harper & Row, 1988).
10. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of Higher Worlds and Its Attainment
(New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1947); Owen Barfield, Rediscovery
of Meaning (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press,
1977); Georg Kuhlewind, Stages of Consciousness (West Stockbridge,
Mass.: Lindisfarne Press, 1984).
