In The Varieties of Religious Experience William James designates the experiential features of mystical experience, i.e. what makes an experience “mystical, but also the reasons why the mystic’s claims are authoritative claims deserving a truth value.
As James says, he wants to know if the mystical experience “furnish[es] any warrant for the truth of the…supernaturality which it favors?”
Authority Over The Mystic
James contends that “mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individual to whom they occur.” As the experience is generally ineffable and noetic, and dissolves the self into a state of passivity, it cannot be that a non-mystic, or outsider to the experience, is able to discount the experiential features of a mystical state.
In short, someone who does not have the same or similar type of experience cannot negate the experiential features undergone by the mystic.
Emphasizing his empirical nature James also contends that it is important to not lose sight of the mystic’s awareness that when the experience is undergone, then passes away and returns, it is known to be of the same type of experience or feeling. For it is both the immediate experiential features and the recurrence of such features which give the intensity a right to be authoritative. “The mystic is, in short, invulnerable, and must be left…in undisturbed enjoyment of her creed.”
Authority Extends Only to the Mystic
Although a mystical experience is authoritative over the individual who undergoes it, James makes it explicit that “mystics have no right to claim that we ought to accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences…[And] no authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.”
In short, all outsiders to the experiences of the mystic are in no way obliged or necessitated to accept or believe what the mystic says. Moreover, the outsider has a right to criticize.
There is also another issue that forces the authoritative claim to extend only to the mystic: the lack of unanimity of so-called mystical experiences. It might be true that certain experiences among different religions and sects are called mystical, but it also true that descriptions of such experiences vary greatly among each religion and sect.
As James claims, “…religious mysticism itself, that kind that accumulates traditions and makes schools, is much less unanimous than” we usually think. For example, in the Christian church mysticism is usually ascetic and self-indulgent in nature; in the Sankhya school it is dualistic; in the Vedanta school it is monistic. Since experiences called “mystical” vary to such a degree James concludes, “the mystical feeling of enlargement, union, and emancipation has no specific intellectual content whatever on its own.” Thus, the non-mystic is never obliged to confer a superior authority to the mystic or to the experience.
The Breakdown of Rationalistic Consciousness
The focus of this is claim is to make plain that mystical experiences may open up a wholly different state of consciousness from which to derive truth. The experiences, James argues, “breakdown the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness, based upon the understanding and senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth…”
Thus, rather than relying on our normative notion of consciousness as the only valid means to procure truth, mystical consciousness breaks down the way in which truth is generally procured. More importantly, “the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretention of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe.” Neither means of procuring truth is more valid than the other, for each leads to truth in different ways. And even if the “rationalistic critic” continuously and consistently derides the claims of the mystic, it still holds that “new meaning may be…truthfully added, provided the mind ascend to a more enveloping point of view.”
Coherent Framework for Mystical Authority
Although James’ account of the authority of the mystic and her experiences is subject to criticism from multiple angles and perspectives, it provides an important framework from which to evaluate the validity of mystical claims.
It may be that a Western, rationalistic mind is unable to reconcile the claims of a mystic with its own claims. But all that means is two different ways of thinking are diametrically opposed or in conflict with one another. It still remains, though, that the mystic undergoes experiences that cannot be co-opted or absolutely negated, thus conferring authority.
Sources:
William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, (New York: Simon and Schuster: 1997) 281-318.
Nathaniel Moya - Nathaniel Moya can be contacted at: abecedarianly@gmail.com. I look forward to any comments, suggestions, and/or opinions you may have ...
