Scholarly approaches to mysticism
William James popularized the use of the term "religious experience" in his
The Varieties of Religious Experience.
James wrote:
In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences of clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism, we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which bring it about that
the mystical classics have,
as has been said,
neither birthday nor native land.
"I'm much more at home in the spiritual than I am the physical. The spiritual is to me what the physical is to you."
"Aint nothing but a stranger in this land..."
"Other critics point out that the stress on "experience" is accompanied with favoring the atomic individual, instead of the shared life of the community. It also fails to distinguish between episodic experience, and mysticism as a process, that is embedded in a total religious matrix of liturgy, scripture, worship, virtues, theology, rituals and practices.
Being that this particular atomic individual is:
"...embedded in a total religious matrix of liturgy, scripture, worship, virtues, theology, rituals and practices."?
He understands that his experiences are to be shared for the life of the community.
See:
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