So.. until you have had direct experience of something, you are totally ignorant of it... having said that, of what use is the bible - or more to the point, of what use would the bible serve to the unqualified?
As far as I'm converned the Bible is of no use. The Bible is of absolutely no use and very dangerous in the hands of the unqualified. They use it as an excuse to be irrational, they almost deifnitely (don't understand it as evidenced by their inability to even follow the basics such as don't kill, they are even capable of killing in the name of God. If however, the Bible helps someone live a peaceful, moral, life in accordenace with Christ's tachings it may laed them to someday have direct expeience of the transcendent.)
I keep asking you to explain to me what that 'objective observation' is - beyond the basics, (i.e hearing voices/a mystical experience).
No voices, quit bringing voices up.
I'll post some descriptions below.
There isn't? Unicorns were written about by many cultures, (and even feature in the bible). Giants are written about by many cultures and also feature in the bible. Will you now 'believe' that unicorns and giants exist? (If so is that accepted belief simply because "the bible says so" and not because the claim is cross cultural)?
Well, I don't know what to make of that if its true. Are you saying it's impossible that a horse with a horn existed. Are you saying it's impossible that in the past the were some tribes that had larger individulas than other tribes? Isn't there even any anthropological theory that humans actually committed genocide against other humanoid species? And where have I once said that someone should accept something because the Bible says so? Seriously, where are you gettting that from?
So... I can't argue against the existence of zeus.. because you could never get evidence for or against his existence?
Of course you can argue against the existence of Zeus. How does bringing up Zeus refute my claim that it is legitmate to demand physical evidence for the non-physical.
That's all you have done. Why the hypocrisy? But no, the evidence shows that LG and your statements are indeed bollocks..
No, I have had a consistent argument that I've been trying to demonstrate using reason and where appropriate quotes from philosophers or religion. I haven't merely just said that everything you say is "bollocks." You stated your opinion as fact and I called you on it, period, no hypocrisy.
Description of mysticism from eastern perspective:
D. T. Suzuki is credited with bringing Zen to America. Through books, articles, and teaching, Suzuki helped make Zen instruction widely accessible in North America. Zen, known for its distrust of symbols, rituals, and study of holy texts, Zen practice is mainly built around focusing the mind on the breath, a movement, or on an unchanging landscape such as a blank, white wall.
The mystical experience in Zen is called Satori (wu in Chinese). Satori is that which lies beyond most forms of insights such as those arising from contemplation or via imagery and is a intuitive grasp of the reality "beyond forms." Suzuki says Satori has these characteristics:
1. Irrationality. "By this I mean that satori is not a conclusion to be reached by reasoning, and defies all intellectual determination. Those who have experienced it are always at a loss to explain it coherently or logically."
2. Intuitive Insight. "That there is noetic quality in mystic experiences has been pointed out by (William) James...Another name for satori is "kensho" (chien-hsing in Chinese) meaning "to see essence or nature," which apparently proves that there is "seeing" or "perceiving" in satori...Without this noetic quality satori will lose all its pungency, for it is really the reason of satori itself. "
3. Authoritativeness. "By this I mean that the knowledge realized by satori is final, that no amount of logical argument can refute it. Being direct and personal it is sufficient unto itself. All that logic can do here is to explain it, to interpret it in connection to other kinds of knowledge with which our minds are filled. Satori is thus a form of perception, an inner perception, which takes place in the most interior part of consciousness.
4. Affirmation. "What is authoritative and final can never be negative. Though the satori experience is sometimes expressed in negative terms, it is essentially an affirmative attidude towards all things that exist; it accepts them as they come along regardless of their moral values."
5. Sense of the Beyond. "...in satori there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience indeed is my own but I feel it to be rooted elsewhere. The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of satori. Not, necessarily, that I get unified with a being greater than myself or absorbed in it, but that my individuality, which I found rigidly held together and definitely kept separate from other individual existences, becomes lossened somehow from its tightening grip and melts away into something indescribable, something which is of quite a different order from what I am accustomed to. The feeling that follows is htat of complete release or a complete rest---the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination...As far as the psychology of satori is considered, a sense of the Beyond is all we can say about it; to call this the Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself and to plunge into a theology or metaphysics."
6. Impersonal Tone. "Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Zen experience is that it has no personal note in it as is observable in Christian mystic experiences."
7. Feeling of exaltation. "That this feeling inevitably accompanies satori is due to the fact that it is the breaking-up of the restrction imposed on one as an individual being, and this breaking up is not a mere negative incident but quite a positive one fraught with signification because it means an infinite expansion of the individual."
8. Momentariness. "Satori comes upon one abruptly and is a momentary experience. In fact, if it is not abrupt and momentary, it is not satori.
Source: Suzuki, D.T. Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings of D.T, Suzuki, (New York: Anchor Books, 1956), pp. 103-108.
Mystical experience efined by William James:
America's great psychologist, William James provided a description of the mystical experience in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. In Lectures 16 and 17 he stated:
"...propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical...:
1. Ineffability - The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words.
2. Noetic Quality - Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discurssive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime.
3. Transiency - Mystical states cannot be sustained for long.
4. Passivity - Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power.
Mystical experience according to W.T. Stace (british philosopher):
Walter Terence Stace is the most frequently quoted expert when defining mysticism. An English-born philosopher, teaching at Princeton (1932–55) Stace wrote on mysticism after his retirement in 1955. His most famous work on this subject, Mysticism and Philosophy (1960), was book of schloarship with less emphasis on the mystical experience than one might assume from the title. Fortunately, in the same year, Stace published a book for general audiences, The Teachings of the Mystics. This publication included Stace's thoughts on mystical experience, a few examples of that experience, and a wide ranging collection of writings on mystical philosophy gathered from the world's literature.
Below are highlights from his introductory chapter in The Teachings of the Mystics. This introduction clearly shows that Stace was a "purist" in that he did not honor beginning or intermediate states people experience along the path to full mystical experience. Visions, voices, insights, or powerful dreams are not mystical experience as he defines it. Only a "nonsensuous and nonintellectual" union fits his definition.
A Mystic is a Mystic
"By the word "mystic" I shall always mean a person who himself has had mystical experience. Often the word is used in a much wider and looser way. Anyone who is sympathetic to mysticism is apt to be labeled a mystic. But I shall use the word always in a stricter sense. However sympathetic toward mysticism a man may be, however deeply interested, involved, enthusiastic, or learned in the subject, he will not be called a mystic unless he has, or has had, mystical experience. (p.9)"
Some things which mysticism is not
"The word mysticism" is popularly used in a variety of loose and inaccurate ways. Sometimes anything is called "mystical" which is misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy. It is absurd that "mysticism" should be associated with what is "misty" because of the similar sound of the words. And there is nothing misty, foggy, vague, or sloppy about mysticism.
A second absurd association is to suppose that mysticism is sort of mystery-mongering. There is, of course, an etymological connection between "mysticism" and "mystery." But mysticism is not any sort of hocus-pocus such as we commonly associate with claims to be the elucidation of sensational mysteries. Mysticism is not the same as what is commonly called the "occult"...Nor doe it include what are commonly called parapsychological phenomena such as telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyance, precognition. These are not mystical phenomena. It is perhaps true that mystics may sometimes claim to possess such special powers, but even when they do so they are well aware that such powers are not part of, and are to be clearly distinguished from, their mystical experience. (pp.10-11)
Finally, it is most important to realize that visions and voices are not mystical phenomena, though here again it seems to be the case that the sort of persons who are mystics may often be the sort of persons who see visions and hear voices...And there are, one must add, good reasons for this. What mystics say is that a genuine mystical experience is nonsensuous. It is formless, shapeless, colorless, odorless, soundless. But a vision is a piece of visual imagery having color and shape. A voice is an auditory image. Visions and voices are sensuous experiences. (pp. 10-12)"
The Central Characteristic
"The most important, the central characteristic in which all fully developed mystical experiences agree, and which in the last analysis is definitive of them and serves to mark them off from other kinds of experiences, is that they involve the apprehension of an ultimate nonsensuous unity in all things, a oneness or a One to which neither the senses nor the reason can penetrate. In other words, it entirely transcends our sensory-intellectual consciousness.
It should be carefully noted that only fully developed mystical experiences are necessarily apprehensive of the One. Many experiences have been recorded which lack this central feature but yet possess other mystical characteristics. These are borderline cases, which may be said to shade off from the central core of cases. They have to the central core the relation which some philosophers like to call "family resemblance. (pp.14-15)"
Two Types of Mystical Experience
"One may be called extrovertive mystical experience, the other introvertive mystical experience. Both are apprehensions of the One, but they reach it in different ways. The extrovertive way looks outward and through the physical senses into the external world and finds the One there. The introvertive way turns inward, introspectively, and finds the One at the bottoom of the self, at the bottom of human personality. The latter far outweighs the former in importance both in the history of mysticism and in the history of human thought generally. The introvertive way is the major strand in the history of mysticism, the extrovertive way a minor strand.
The extrovertive mystic with his physical senses continues to perceive the same world of trees and hills and tables and chairs as the rest of us. But he sees these objects transfigured in such manner that the Unity shines through them. Because it includes ordinary sense perceptions, it only partially realizes the description...(that is, an experience of complete unity)...It is suggested that the extrovertive type of experience is a kind of halfway house to the introvertive. For the introvertive experience is wholly nonsensuous and nonintellectual. But the extrovertive experience is sensory-intellectual in so far as it still perceives physical objects but is nonsensuous and nonintellectual in so far as it perceives them as "all one."
Introvertive mysticism..."Now it happens to be the case that this total suppression of the whole empirical content of consciousness is precisely what the introvertive mystic claims to achieve. And he claims that what happens is not that all consciousness disappears but that only the ordinary sensory-intellectual consciousnessness disappears and is replaced by an entirely new kind of consciousness, the mystical consciousness." (pp. 15-18)
"Of the introvertive mystical consciousness the Mandukya (Upanishad) says that it is "beyond the senses, beyond the understanding, beyond all expression...It is the pure unitary consciousness, wherein awareness of the world and of multiplicity is completely obliterated. It is ineffable peace. It is the Supreme Good. It is One without a second. It is the Self.""..."Not only in Christianity and Hinduism but everywhere else we find that the essence of this experience is that it is an undifferentiated unity, though each culture and each religion interprets this undifferentiated unity in terms of its own creeds and dogmas." (p.20-21)
Stace, Walter T. The Teachings of the Mystics, (New York:The New American Library, 1960).
