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Interpretation and Mystical Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Ninian Smart
Ninian Smart
Affiliation:
H. G. Wood Professor of Theology, University of Birmingham
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Summary

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Professor R. C. Zaehner's distinction between panenhenic, monistic and theistic mysticism will be examined. It will be argued that there is no necessary reason to suppose that the latter two types involve different sorts of experience: the difference lies rather in the way the experience is interpreted. Likewise it will be argued that the Theravādin experience of nirvana, which is interpreted neither in a monistic nor in a theistic sense, may well be identical substantially with the foregoing two types. All this raises important methodological problems, in relation to the contrast between experience and interpretation. The fact that mysticism is substantially the same in different cultures and religions does not, however, entail that there is a ‘perennial philosophy’ common to mystics. Their doctrines are determined partly by factors other than mystical experience itself.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , October 1965 , pp. 75 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1965

References

Page 76 note 1 At Sundry Times, p. 132.

Page 77 note 1 Mysticism Sacred and Profane, pp. 191–2.

Page 79 note 1 See my ‘Mystical Experience’, in Sophia, vol. i, no. i (April, 1962), pp. 19 ff., discussing the distinction between experience and interpretation as propounded by Stace, W. T. in Mysticism and Philosophy, p. 37.Google Scholar

Page 80 note 1 See my Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy, ch. xii.

Page 80 note 2 Op. cit. p. 37.

Page 82 note 1 A fuller criticism is to be found in my Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy, pp. 211 ff. Zaehner's account of Buddhism is discoverable in his At Sundry Times (see, e.g., his argument on p. 98).

Page 82 note 2 Sutta-nipata 788: see At Sundry Times, pp. 98–101.

Page 82 note 3 At Sundry Times, p. 101.

Page 82 note 4 Samyutta-nikāya, ii, 95.

Page 84 note 1 See Doctrine and Argument in Indian Philosophy, ch. x, where an analysis along these lines is worked out in some detail.

Page 84 note 2 Mysticism Sacred and Profane, p. 170.

Page 84 note 3 Ibid. p. 171.

Page 85 note 1 Mysticism Sacred and Profane, pp. 157–8.

Page 86 note 1 See, e.g., W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, who comes to this conclusion.

Page 86 note 2 Ibid. p. 193.