Experience and Interpretation in Mysticism

The author describes three successive scholarly views of mystical experience. An earlier generation saw mysticism as a single, pure, contentless awareness of ultimate reality, forming the basis for a perennial philosophy. Later scholars distinguished several recurring types of mystical experience across traditions. Most recently, the "diversity view" emphasizes differences so strongly that it denies any common experience or perennial philosophy, stemming from a growing awareness that experience is deeply mediated and organized by one's belief system.

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Abstract

Abstract Many among an earlier generation of scholars saw in mysticism a distinctive type of experience-a pure or contentless awareness of ultimate reality-which was often made the basis for a “perennial philosophy.’’1 More recently many have distinguished several different types of mystical experience, each tending to recur across different traditions. More recently still has arisen a tendency, which I will call the “diversity view,” so to emphasize the differences as to deny any common experience and hence any perennial philosophy. The diversity view stems from an awareness, growing in many fields of thought, of how deeply our experience is mediated (i.e., organized and influenced) by our whole belief system.