Can Mystical Experience be a Source of Knowledge - AtheismUK
Experience: Religious, Mystical, Human?
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Transcript of Experience: Religious, Mystical, Human?
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Experience:Religious,Mystical,Human?
The eminent theologian Karl Rahner has said that the Christian of the future will be either a mystic (which me
someone who has experienced something),or he/she wontbe a Christian at all.Rahners prophecyis accurate,
only concerning Christiansbutalso foranyonewho experiences transcendencein these times.In thesame way
modernity does notacceptanything thatis unverified byrationality, thepost-modernityin which we live consi
experience a privileged way of knowledge. Despite the risk of disillusionment that is inherent in experiencesmaining superficial orinduced byartificial means,it seems perfectly clear todaythatpeople areno longer accep
ideologies,theories ordoctrines thatare notrooted inexperience.
In the new religious consciousness present in our post-modern age,experience is at the center, and this is a pri
pal, perhaps even a fundamental, issue for todays theology to address.The sensibility of men and women of
times searches for a contact with mystery through direct experience; it is thirsting to touch Ultimate Reality an
be in contact with it, even if not through themosttraditionaland institutionalized means. In theact of seeking
finding, our contemporaries show a tendency to turn inward, toward the inner self.What we call God or Ultim
Reality is not felt as something external and objective, but, on the contrary, as something that can only be foun
inner experience.When this happens,the externalelements thatsurround the experience arenecessarily putsecondary and relativeposition.
Institutions,dogmatic formulas,ritual systems wont comprehend their significance at its profoundestdepth un
they are experienced in the inwardnessof the self. This new consciousness is more than just one perspective am
others; instead,it isactually revealing itself as a newparadigm.Furthermore,it demandsfrom Western Christian
wider vision thantheecclesiastical vision,specifically,a vision of thede-institutionalizationof Christianity.
The traditional ecclesiastical structure is currently undergoing a serious crisis.Evenso, the thirst for God, for tr
scendence, for the supernatural, for spirituality is very much alive, expressing itself in varied and concrete w
This search for God and spiritual experience canlead some of our contemporaries to reconnect with true life, afullof joy andmeaning,evenif this must happenthrough alternativemeans.
Still, it is important to make some distinctions between terms when we speak of experience,and specificallyof r
gious experience.We live in a culture of sensations, which affects our inner space. The sensations offered to us
usually so intense, refined and persistent that they cannot enter us without being consciously apprehended
flected upon, digested and assumed. This implies a risk: the risk of living permanently subject to the flux of sen
tionsthatreachour more superficialsenses,skinandsensitivity.
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This type of sensate experience bringswith it the extreme difficulty of looking realitystraightin the eye and tak
on the challenges that it poses, which are tough and very often frustrating.It also can generate within us a vici
and compulsive behavior, stimulatingreactions and manipulatingour capacityfor attention.Continualsuperfi
andimmediatelygratifyingsensationslead ustoloselimits andengendera dangerousvolatility inrelationships
decision making.
As it has been said many times by Zygmunt Bauman,who is justly called the prophet of post-modernity, our l
are becoming liquid, flowing non-stop in the cascade of sensations that invade it and stun it. This is true e
about the very experiences of transcendence that are often called mystical. It isnt true, however, that all exp
ence identified as religious can be called a mystic experience. The supernatural elements existing in all men
women render them capable of an experience of the sacred, understood in the termsof Rudolf Ottos famous t
TheIdeaoftheHoly,asterrifying (tremendum) and fascinating(fascinans),a sourceof both wondermentandfea
isanexperience inwhich thehumanbeing feelstakenover bya mysterythatis not reducible,a categorythatis or
nalinallitsmanifestations.
A mysticalexperience,or anexperience of God,isnotonlyanexistential experience of thesacred,butalso anexp
ence of meaning. It is through such experience that we understand the radical meaning that gives structure
humanlife. If we accept that definition, and if we also accept thedefinition of thehuman being as a relationalbe
who canonly be understood from the perspective of the relationalopeness,the meaning of human life canonl
given andexperienced through connectionwith others.In otherwords,humanbeingscanonly feel as such hum
throughthe revelationof anOther that invites ustotheadventure of mutualknowing andof love.In termsof the
ligious experience, this can be an experience of fusion, or feeling dissolved in the Absolute. The mystical exp
ence, according to whatwe have here described,is always an experience of relation, of an exchange withOthern
withthe difference of theOther.
Thisrelationalstatus,whichis valid fortruly human experience, is especiallyso when we speak of mysticism. In
mystical event, which happens between a human and the divine, it is not just the ego that is in action, but also
Other, who according to his own Otherness, moves the ego to an unprecedented journey, with no previou
plannedor thought-out ways.Without a pre-planned route,the journeybeginsandcontinueswithout any secu
other thanthe progressivediscovery of someone thatis notI,but thatis Other, a subject whose difference o
whelmsmeasanepiphany.
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When wespeak of mysticism,thisrelationwiththe Others difference takes on variousperspectives.We areinse
into the process and the movement of a companion of absolute dimensions, with whom the human being can
even dream of establishinga symmetricalrelationship,or be moved byimmediateneeds.Godisnotan objectof
cessity, but of desire. God is the totallyOther whose mysterious profile is found more deeply etched in the extr
situations of human existenceand whoradicallytransformsthelife of theone involved inthatexperience.
MCB
DepartmentofTheo
PontificalCatholicUniversityofRiode Ja
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