Mystical Experience of God

A Philosophical Inquiry

Jerome Gellman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351786638
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This title was first published in 2001: Engaging contemporary discussion concerning the validity of mystical experiences of God, Jerome Gellman presents the best evidential case in favor of validity and its implications for belief in God. Gellman vigorously defends the coherence of the concept of a mystical experience of God against philosophical objections, and evaluates attempts to provide alternative explanations from sociology and neuropsychology. He then carefully examines feminist objections to male philosophers' treatments of mystical experience of God and to the traditional hierarchal concept of God. Gellman finds none of the objections decisive, and concludes that while the initial evidential case is not rationally compelling for some, it can be rationally compelling for others. Offering important new perspectives on the evidential value of experiences of God, and the concept of God more broadly, this book will appeal to a wide range of readers including those with an interest in philosophy of religion, religious studies, mysticism and epistemology.

Chapter 1
Introduction

I began to think of the soul as if it were a castle made of a single diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in Heaven there are many mansions ... Let us now imagine that this castle, as I have said, contains many mansions, some above, others below, others at each side; and in the centre and midst of them all is the chiefest mansion where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.

Teresa of Avila (1961), 'First Mansion', Chapter One

This book is about mystical experiences of God. Specifically it is an epistemological inquiry into whether people have had valid, reliable experiential contact with God. Various philosophers have been sympathetic to the idea that people do genuinely know God through mystical experience.¹

Richard Swinburne writes, ' suggest that the overwhelming testimony of so many millions of people to occasional experiences of God must, in the absence of counter-evidence of the kind analyzed, be taken as tipping the balance of evidence decisively in favour of the existence of God' (Swinburne, 1996, p. 138). Swinburne believes that mystical experiences of God give evidence that God is in real contact with human beings. He also believes that when this evidence is added to other evidence we can obtain a cumulative evidential case for God's existence.

Keith Yandell endorses what he calls an 'evidential argument' that begins with the premise that 'experiences occur which are a matter of their subjects at least seeming to experience God' and concludes from this, together with auxiliary premises, that 'These experiences give them evidence that God exists.' He then concludes further that people who have not had such experiences can rely on the evidence to conclude that God exists (Yandell, 1999, pp. 231 and 234–5).

More cautiously, William Wainwright characterizes his study ol mystical experiences, including mystical experiences of God, as showing that 'there are good, if not conclusive reasons, for believing that some mystical experiences are veridical, and that the claims which are built into them are true' (Wainwright, 1981, pp. xiv-xv).

In a previous work I have defended the rationality of recognizing the validity of at least some mystical experiences of God (Gellman, 1997). I defended a line of reasoning starting from mystical experiences of God as a widely occurring phenomenon to the conclusion that some people through experience really knew God. While this line of reasoning is not universally rationally compelling, in that not everyone would be required to agree with its conclusion, I argued that many would be justified in finding it rationally compelling for them.²

Other philosophers have disagreed.³ After finding what he considers serious difficulties with the evidential merit of mystical theistic experiences, Evan Fales concludes that: 'Until these defects are remedied, mystical experience cannot hope to provide significant evidential support for theism' (Fales, 2001).

Richard Gale argues vigorously against mystical experiences of God having any evidential value whatsoever, declaring that '...a religious experience ... could not qualify as a veridical perception of an objective reality, even if its apparent object were to exist and be the cause of the experience' (Gale, 1995, p. 287). And Michael Martin concludes a lengthy critical examination of claimed experiences of God with the blunt, 'Religious experiences provide no evidence for the existence of God' (Martin, 1990, p. 186).

William Rowe has considered what he takes to be the main way of arguing from mystical experiences of God to God's existence and concludes that the argument is defective and, therefore, fails to show that it is probable that God exists (Rowe, 1982).

In this book I hope to contribute beyond my earlier work toward the clarification and resolution of some of the fundamental issues in this philosophical debate. Since my earlier treatment of the topic, firstly I have had to rethink the case in favor of the validity of mystical experiences of God. Secondly, I have come upon new, challenging objections to the validity of experiences of God, which demand careful consideration. Thirdly, I have come to better appreciate the serious potential of alternative, naturalistic explanations of mystical experiences of God. Fourthly, I recognize the importance of a variety of feminist critiques of the enterprise in which I am engaged.

Accordingly, the game plan of the present inquiry is to begin by presenting what I take now to be the best case for the validity of (at least some) mystical experiences of God. I then will follow with an examination of important challenges to that initial case, including a cluster of proposals of naturalistic explanations of such experiences. My purpose will be to assess the strength of the challenges against the initial rationale in favor of the validity of mystical experiences of God.

I caution against thinking of this work as simply equivalent to an attempt to prove God's existence. To be sure, that people have genuine, valid experiences of God entails that God exists. As we have seen, some philosophers have wanted to infer God's existence from an argument for the authenticity of God-perceptions. Yet the question whether people ever genuinely experience God is not necessarily equivalent to the question whether God exists, any more than my asking whether you have ever visited Jerusalem need imply my wondering whether Jerusalem exists. On the one hand, my topic will interest those who wish to know whether the phenomenon of mystical experiences of God confirms or supports the existence of God. On the other hand, the topic need not be approached in that spirit. A theist may ask the question this book addresses without God's existence being at stake. The evidential value of God-experiences might be an open question for that theist. So asking whether there are genuine experiences of God need not imply wondering whether God exists.

It would be a mistake to think that a discussion of the epistemic value of mystical experiences of God must start by pretending we have no other reason for thinking God exists. That we have other reasons is a respectable, widely-held philosophical position, so a discussion of whether God is genuinely experienced can be fruitfully conducted along those lines just as well as on the other lines.

Furthermore, the epistemic situation, for the justified theist is not the same as for the non-theist. If one is rationally warranted in believing that God exists before an examination of mystical experiences of God, it will be epistemically easier to justify believing that people genuinely experience God than it would be otherwise. If God exists, it is quite plausible to think God would become experientially available in some way or other to human beings. This consideration provides support for the genuineness of experience of God. In what follows, therefore, we should keep in mind the epistemic disparity that could arise for justified theists and others, respectively, when weighing the evidential force of mystical experiences of God.

Mystical Experiences of God

Mystical experiences of God come in varied forms. Some occur suddenly and pass quickly, while others involve an ongoing sense of God's presence in one's life. Some experiences arise in prayer and contemplation, as for Teresa of Avila, while others come at unexpected times or circumstances. Some are quite dramatic and emotionally arousing, while others are quieting and peaceful. Some experiences are rich in content, while others are said to be mysteriously devoid of positive content. With all their differences, these experiences have in common the inclination of subjects to think that they had come into genuine experiential contact with God.

The terms 'mysticism' and 'mystical experience' enjoy a notoriously wide range of meanings, or lack of clear meaning. These terms can denote, depending on the speaker, anything from a philosophical system positing unseen, mysterious objects, to an ideology thought (by those who do not give it credence) to be baseless for lacking grounding in empirical facts and scientific investigation. In 1899, W.R. Inge listed 26 different definitions of 'mysticism' (Inge, 1899). The famous scholar of mysticism, Evelyn Underhill (1945, p. 72), wrote that 'mysticism' which

is applied to the performance of mediums and the ecstasies of saints, to 'menticulture' and sorcery, dreamy poetry and mediaeval art, to prayer and palmistry, the doctrinal excesses of Gnosticism, and the tepid speculations of Cambridge Platonists – even, according to William James, to the higher branches of intoxication – soon ceases to have any useful meaning.

When scholars turn to defining 'mysticism' and 'mystical experience', the results differ greatly. William James defined a mystical experience as one marked by 'ineffability' (not given to linguistic expression), a 'noetic quality' (thought to convey knowledge), transience and passivity (James, 1958, pp. 370–72). In contrast, Underhill defined 'mysticism' as an active life-process of the 'whole self', aimed at the 'changeless One', which is a loving and personal object of love, culminating in union with the One in a 'unitive state' (Underhill, 1945, p. 81). The Catholic Encyclopedia states that mysticism is 'either a religious tendency and desire of the human soul towards an intimate union with the Divinity, or a system growing out of such a tendency and desire'. Further, mysticism involves 'the direct union of the human soul with the Divinity through contemplation and love. This contemplation ... is not based on a merely analogical knowledge of the Infinite, but [is] a direct and immediate intuition of the Infinite'.

Recently, Robert El wood (1999, p. 39) defined 'mystical experience' as

Experience in a religious context that is immediately or subsequently interpreted by the experiencer as a direct, unmediated encounter with ultimate divine reality. This experience engenders a deep sense of unity and suggests that during the experience the experiencer was living on a level of being other than the ordinary.

In light of this variety, rather than fuss over what 'mysticism' and 'mystical experience' 'really' mean or 'should' mean, I prefer simply to stipulate what these terms shall mean for the purposes of the present study.

Accordingly, by a 'mystical experience' I shall mean an experience in which a person allegedly has a nonsensory perception apparently of a reality (or state of affairs) of a sort that can neither be perceived by sense perception nor known by ordinary introspective self-awareness. Typically, I imagine, when having mystical experiences subjects not only are in such perceptual states but also take themselves to be in perceptual contact with a supersensory reality.⁴

Explaining further the components of this characterization, a mystical experience is a 'perception' in the sense of including a phenomenal content present to the subject as an alleged appearance of a reality or state of affairs. The phenomenal content possesses a subject-object structure. That is, the experience includes the sense of something being present to the subject. Mystical experiences sometimes involve heightened affective states and sometimes entail unusual behavior or speech. However, I do not identify the mystical experience with these. In mystical experience, the ground of the emotional state of the subject and of the accompanying behavior is a perception by the subject. When children see their toys, they may become quite excited and run toward the toys. A good description of what had taken place would not be one that refers only to the heightened emotional state of the child and to the running. Rather, children had perceived what they took to be their toys, and so were excited and ran to them. In the same way, we are to regard mystical experiences as perceptions with a phenomenal content of an alleged reality or state of affairs, accompanied by various affective states and behaviors.

To say that mystical experience is an allegedly 'nonsensory' perception means that the perception is supposed to be neither via the five senses nor by way of one's inner sense of what is happening with or in one's body. This is what Hildegarde of Bingen (1098–1179) called 'the eyes of the spirit and the inner ear' (see Borchert 1994, p. 56). The idea is that there is an additional nonsensory, 'mystical sense' by which people can perceive phenomenal content of a different sort than that available by the ordinary sensory means. Because nonsensory, we are to think of the mystical component of mystical experience per se as excluding sensory content, such as visual or auditory images.

This is not to assert that sense perceptions cannot accompany mystical experiences. In this connection we should distinguish between those mystical experiences in which the subject loses all sense awareness, including awareness of the body and even of the 'self, and those in which the subject is aware of self and has sense experiences. The latter can be subdivided into at least three categories: the first is when the sense perception is merely the occasion for a mystical episode. This can happen, for example, when a person gazes at a sunset and suddenly becomes aware of a mystical reality 'behind' the sun, as it were. The second occurs when the mystical reality is perceived somehow 'inside' the occurring sense content. A poet, for example, might 'hold infinity' in the palm of his hand (Blake, 'Auguries of Innocence').

The third kind of sense experience accompanying mystical experience is when extraordinary sensory input occurs along with the mystical perception. Sometimes, people having mystical experiences report seeing light or hearing sounds, for example. We might want to interpret some light-and-sound mysticism as a nonsensory analogue to physical light and sound, as probably in the following description: 'With that I was immersed in a sweetness words cannot express. I could hear the singing of the planets, and wave after wave of light washed over me. But this is wrong, because I was the light as well, without distinction of self or being washed' (Burnham, 1997, pp. 78–9, as quoted in Wulff, 2000, p. 398). At other times, though, people seem to sense unusual light that appears to them as a physical reality. The latter cases would be examples of out of the ordinary sensory input accompanying mystical experiences. In such cases what makes the episode 'mystical', in my sense, is not the mysterious sensory apparition, but the nonsensory perception occurring at the same time.⁵

I say a person in a mystical experience has an experience 'apparently' of a reality or state of affairs. 'Apparently' because, in order to agree that mystical experiences occur, we need not agree there actually exists a reality or state of affairs known by the perceiving subject. In addition, when we do agree the reality exists, we need not admit the subject genuinely knows it in experience. A subject may be mistaken in thinking the perception is veridical. We want to recognize the existence of mystical experiences and leave open whether what seems to be perceived really exists. Therefore, in my characterization, I allow no more than that there seems to be an object of the perceptual experience.

A subject, I say, seems to perceive a 'reality or state of affairs'. The reality might be, for example, God, Brahman, or the ultimate ground of all being. The 'state of affairs' might be the 'unity of all beings' or 'nothingness', for example. Experiences of 'nothingness' are recounted in mystical literature, though it is not (always) clear whether nothingness is a kind of reality or the absence of all reality, or yet something else.⁶ I call nothingness and other hard-to-classify 'objects' of mystical experiences 'states of affairs' as a catch-all term to include whatever is thought to be revealed to the subject that we may not want to call a 'reality'.

Next, I said that the alleged reality or state of affairs could neither be perceived by sense perception nor known by ordinary introspective selfawareness. This points to the nature of the entities thought to be mystically accessible. This clause excludes a range of anomalous experiences I do not wish to include in the term 'mystical experience'. The anomalous experiences I wish to exclude take in 'synesthesia' where sense modalities are crossed (as when a taste seems yellow), out of body experiences, so-called 'psi-related experiences', including telepathy (mind to mind communication), precognition ('seeing' the future), clairvoyance ('seeing' distant events), and psychokinesis (thoughts causing physical events directly), and past-life and near-death experiences.⁷ These anomalous experiences get left out because either they do not involve nonsensory perceptual content (as in psychokinesis, for instance) or they involve the perception solely of objects or qualities perceivable by the senses (as in clairvoyance, for example) or by introspection (as in telepathy). Although one person cannot know the thoughts of another, nonetheless telepathy involves the perception of thoughts, a category available to introspection. I am assuming that God, Brahman, and the Oneness of all reality cannot be accessed (literally) by sense perception or by ordinary introspection. On the other hand, if a subject looking deeply inward in contemplation accesses a mystical object, this does not involve 'ordinary' introspection.

If a person perceives in a nonsensory way either God or the unity of all reality or the void at the heart of all being we have a mystical experience. If a person were to come to perceive the All by a deep meditative introspection, that too would count as a mystical experience in my terminology. On the other hand, if a person we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The Argument from Perception
• Chapter 3 God's Non-dimensionality and Mystical Experience of God
• Chapter 4 Alternative Explanations I: The Alternative Explanation Response
• Chapter 5 Alternative Explanations II: Sociological and Neuropsychological Proposals
• Chapter 6 Gender and Mystical Experience of God
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index