This Essay Falls Into Three Parts

From Mysticism to a Modern Spiritual Cognition

Robert A. McDermott

This essay falls into three parts. First, it reviews the disagreement between Huston Smith,[1] who contends that there are pure, unmediated experiences, and Steven Katz,[2] who argues that all experience is mediated (fashioned, informed) by a variety of linguistic, epistemic, and cultural determinants. Second, it reworks this disagreement in the context of the evolution of consciousness, as detailed by Rudolf Steiner and Owen Barfield.[3] Third, drawing on the first two sections, it recommends a theory and practice of spiritual cognition that claims to be appropriate to modern Western spiritual capacities and needs and, in so doing, would seem to combine the speculative richness of Smith’s case for the mystical and primordial with the critical caution of Katz’s cultural relativism.

CLAIMS FOR AND AGAINST UNMEDIATED EXPERIENCES

In a widely discussed book, Forgotten Truth—The Primordial Tradition,[4] and in a series of essays, Huston Smith has proven to be an effective proponent and defender of a position variously referred to as perennialism or the primordial tradition. In one of these essays, Smith summarizes the primordialist position with a double claim:

Primordial means “no matter where or when,” and the primordial claim is that there is, first, a Reality that is everywhere and always the same; and second, that human beings always and everywhere have access to it.[5]

In summarizing his research on the epistemology of mysticism, on the other hand, Katz insists that every conception of reality is limited by the cultural and linguistic context of the experiences. Whereas for Smith, mysticism and primordial experience affirms “a Reality which is everywhere and always the same,” Katz insists that “there are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences.”

Smith’s article argues on behalf of the primordial, and Katz’s article explicitly concerns the mystical, but the logic of the claims on both sides clearly indicates that in this debate these terms are interchangeable. The difference between Smith and Katz with respect to the mystical, perennial, primordial, and the esoteric hinges entirely on whether there are any unmediated experiences. In rejecting the possibility of unmediated experience, Katz, in effect, rejects the universal or absolute cognitive results of all four of Smith’s terms.

Before placing this debate in an evolutionary context—which will attempt to alter both positions and, thereby, the entire dispute—we should consider the positions of
Smith and Katz in their own words. Smith concludes “Philosophy, Theology, and the Primordial Claim” as follows:

The charge that the primordialist must face is elitism. Is there a reading of sacred texts which, without bypassing their literal meanings, presses beyond those meanings to deeper ones that inform their exoteric expressions without depending on them? Obviously it is a rhetorical question; the traditionalist believes that there is such a reading and that he is trying to exercise it. Blues is not red, but it is not light in its purest form, unless it is of a given hue. Meanwhile academicians have become so fearful that a hue will be overlooked or that some that are known will be victimized—marginalized is the going word—that they deny the existence of light itself. There is nothing that hues instance and embody; nothing, in deconstructionist language, that texts signify. All that exists is an endless stream of signifiers.

The primordialist believes there is such a thing as light in itself—pure white light that summarizes all the wave-lengths—and that is the Light of the World.[6]

In affirming the Light that is the Source of All, Smith is making a claim that has the same logical and epistemological presupposition as a claim for the mystical or the esoteric.

In the second of his two significant articles on the epistemology of mysticism (1983), Katz summarizes the findings of his research. As the following passage clearly indicates, Katz offers an unambiguous rejection of unmediated experience:

I began with a question and an epistemological generalization based on the study of the data and reflection thereon. The question I tried to answer was: “Why are mystical experiences the experiences they are?” And in order to begin to answer this query, I adopted as a working hypothesis the epistemic thesis that there are no pure (i.e., unmediated) experiences. Neither mystical experience nor more ordinary forms of experience give any indication, or any grounds for believing, that, they are unmediated. That is to say, all experience is processed through, organized by, and makes itself available to us in extremely complex epistemological ways. The notion of unmediated experience seems, if not self-contradictory, empty at best. This seems to me to be true even with regard to the experiences of those ultimate objects of concern with which mystics have intercourse, e.g., God, Being, nirvana, etc., and this “mediated” aspect of all our experience seems an inescapable feature of any epistemological inquiry, including the inquiry into mysticism. Thus, contrary to the prevailing scholarly view—that of James, Stace, Underhill, Otto, and even Zaehner and Smart—we must recognize that a right understanding of mysticism is not just a question of studying the reports of the mystic after the experiential event but also of acknowledging that the experience itself, as well as the form in which it is reported, is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape, his experience. Straightforwardly, what is argued is that, for example, the Hindu mystic does not have an experience of x which he describes in the, to him, familiar language and symbols of Hinduism, but rather he has a Hindu experience; his experience is not an unmediated experience of x but is itself the at least partially preformed anticipated Hindu experience of Brahman. Again, the Christian mystic does not experience some unidentified reality which he then conveniently labels “God,” but rather has the at least partially, prefigured Christian experiences of God, or Jesus, and so forth. Moreover, as one might anticipate, it is my contention, based on what evidence there is, that the Hindu experience of Brahman and the Christian experience of God are not the same.[7]

In sum, for Katz and the anti-primordial position, all experience, irrespective of whether it is mystical, perennial, or esoteric, is rendered necessarily relative and less than certain by various mediators, including personality, language, and culture.

With these two contending positions in sharp focus, it might prove interesting to consider the extent to which they, and the conflict between them, are altered, by placing them in the context of the evolution of consciousness.

EVOLUTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

The term evolution of consciousness as used here is intended to be more inclusive than either the history of nature or the history of thought. It refers to the expression of consciousness through both nature and mind of a prior, originating reality ordinarily understood by a variety of terms such as Mind, Spirit, and Cosmic Intelligence. The evolutionist rightly understands that mind evolved from nature, but according to the theory of the evolution of consciousness here espoused, nature previously evolved from the primal source of all. Consciousness, then, includes the fullest possible scope of entities and events, all to be understood as manifestations of an original guiding reality. At full value, evolution refers to the changing mode of expression of this underlying reality, first through eons of natural evolution and then through epochs given to the development of human awareness.

This account is deliberately quite general because it is only the background to our primary concern, the possibility that mysticism properly belongs more to some than to other historical periods. More specifically, and controversially, I am proposing that mysticism belongs most properly to a mode of consciousness prior to the development of the human ego and the conscious will, such as the modern individual, and particularly modern Western individual, is capable of realizing. If we take seriously the changing mode of consciousness from one epoch to the next, and the radical changes over many epochs—for example, from the time of the Ancient Egyptians and Hebrews, to the time of the Greeks and early Christians, to the Renaissance and to contemporary thought and culture—the mystic can be seen as a norm in the earlier cultures and as a rarity (indeed, as passé) in the present.

Consequently, the value of a mystical experience depends at least in part on the particular historical period in which the experience is attained. If the Hebrews and Greeks could see spiritual beings, then within the interpretive frame provided by the evolution of consciousness, the importance of Abraham and Moses, Homer and Pythagoras, has more to do with the ways in which they advanced this evolution than with their having contacted the timeless source of all. The Greek mystics had as their spiritual-esoteric task the contacting of the gods who were presumably guiding that amazing culture and, through that culture, the entire evolution of Western civilization.

The achievements not only of the Greeks but of all mystics and esoteric teachers are quite specific, and all the more compelling and significant in their specificity. Although the mystical experiences enjoyed by Abraham and Moses, for example, were quite different from each other, they had in common a special and, in global terms, a highly specific relationship to YHWH, the God of the Hebrew people. By virtue of their source, these experiences were in a distinct spiritual stream, with a historically specific task. Both from our own historically specific perspective, as well as from the perspective of the individual and his community, these experiences are at least as valuable for their specificity as for their status as mystical-esoteric experiences. In traditional cultures, after all, experience of the divine was not so rare as to need defense or acclaim: it was not the fact of a mystical experience that was significant, but rather its content.

Content is not only historically grounded and limited but also historically significant and, through the historical, revelatory. But because the primordialist does not attend to the historical in defending the mystical and esoteric, there is a tendency to miss the specific and, therefore, the revelatory character of each mystical experience. The following passage from the article by Huston Smith, quoted above, may serve as an example:

Eliade tells us that for archaic societies “the world exists because it was created by the gods, and that the existence of the world ‘means’ something, ‘wants to say’ something, that the world is neither mute nor opaque, that it is not an inert thing without purpose or significance.” One can quibble about the plurality in the word “gods” in that statement,—it would be a quibble, for the alternative to monotheism is not polytheism but dualism—but is there anything in the entire history of theology that supercedes, let alone retires, that initial, may we say primordial, discernment?[8]

Since, in the archaic world as described by Eliade, mankind really did know the gods, it is significant to point out to such experiences as evidence of the divine in our time. Rather, by a review within the context of the evolution of consciousness, the divine was obvious to the ancients, somewhat questionable and hidden by the time of the Greeks, believed rather than known by the medievals, and generally regarded as dead in our own time. If, as this essay is attempting to demonstrate, the evolution of consciousness is more than a history of ideas or a climate of opinion, but indeed is a purposive change in the mode of awareness or of the possibilities and limitations of awareness from which ideas and opinion issue, then the archaic experience of the divine may well have been literally of the gods, whereas in our time both God and the gods, and all other forms of the divine, are withdrawn—and purposively so.

To be a mystic in our time—when the gods of the archaic world and God of the historical religions have “died the death of a thousand qualifications”—constitutes a far more significant achievement than in any previous age. In the case of the contemporary mystics, what is so important about their spirituality is not their mysticism as ordinarily understood, but their distinctively modern, ego-, and will-based consciousness. To think abstractly about human nature or the meaning of life is for us an ordinary experience but was inconceivable (quite literally) for archaic humanity. The age and culture of each mystic is telling in both senses—it reveals an achievement as well as a limitation. As we know not to look to the Hebrews or the Chinese for metaphysics, or to the Indians for humanistic ethics, or to the Greeks for a sense of historical providence, we ought to observe and draw the implications from a similar set of strengths and limitations concerning mystics and their evolutionary context.

Gautama and Jesus, Sankara and Eckhart, Suzuki and Merton—all are mystics and all are to be prized as such. But when the experiences and reports of these figures are studied from the perspective of evolution of consciousness, there comes into view quite different mysticisms, and the differences between them is dependent upon (and in turn reveals the characteristic quality of) the consciousness of their epoch.

With the help of feminist insights, Matthew Fox rightly discerns that Jesus and other mystics exhibit feminine virtues such as gentleness, passivity, and tolerance. Evolution of consciousness might prove similarly effective when used as an instrument of interpretation. Jesus, for example, exhibits the kind of thinking—not merely the thoughts, but the mode or quality of thinking itself—that is characteristic of first-century Hebraic-Hellenistic consciousness. The experience of the Father to which Jesus frequently referred is not only of a different culture from the mystical experiences recorded in the Upanishads or Buddhist texts, but it is a different kind of consciousness, of a different spiritual and mental time and purpose. The experience of Jesus is also radically different from the experiences of contemporary mystics such as Sri Aurobindo, Thomas Merton, or the Dalai Lama.

While primordialists do not need to be told of these differences—Huston Smith’s Religions of Man, written thirty years ago, is full of carefully nuanced accounts of the qualitative differences of seven major historical religions—they do need to draw out the implications of these differences with respect to the debate for and against the possibility of unmediated mystical experience.

Although not in a way that would make it welcome to a contextualist such as Katz, the present account of the evolution of consciousness does nevertheless serve the cause of those who insist that all experience is mediated. But the evolutionist position here espoused is also at odds with the contextualist in that it regards the mediated expression as having its source and guidance in the divine. Whereas its impatience with anti-spiritual thinking leads the perennialist to claim too much, the anti-perennialist allows too little and misses the deep sources and powerful revelations of mystical experiences. Both positions might be modified and strengthened by the evolutionist view, which sees all esoteric and mystical insight as streaming from the spiritual world on behalf of the struggle of humanity to found a divine life on earth.

Thus, an affirmation of the evolution of consciousness counts against the claim for unmediated mystical knowledge, but not for the same reason: the evolution of consciousness shifts the focus from the arguments for and against unmediated mystical experience to the claim for spiritually significant revelation according to the spiritually guided change of consciousness from one epoch to the next. We would do well, then, to acknowledge the weaknesses of both the primordialist and the contextualist positions. With the primordialist, we should argue on behalf of the mystical and esoteric as the source of true spiritual knowledge; with the contextualist, we should acknowledge that when the mystical is translated into the conceptual, exoteric mode it loses the privileged status of the esoteric. The evolutionist view is both contextual—every mystical experience and religious claim is limited by the language, personality, and culture of the mystic—and absolute—the experience itself does contact or draw from an ineffable spiritual source.

If there was a time when mysticism was automatic and unopposed, it is also true that in the present age mysticism is so difficult and rare that the majority of the population doubts its significance, and segments of the thinking population doubt it is a possibility. The term modern is more obviously associated with the skepticism of Katz than with the esotericism of Smith (whose book on the primordial tradition is rightly entitled Forgotten Truth and for whom Katz and his critical perspective is a typical example of the anti-metaphysical, anti-ontological character of modern philosophical and religious thinking).

In the concluding section of this paper, I will switch to a more personal tone and recommend a modern spiritual cognition that I believe both blunts the debate between the mystical-esoteric position and the reigning cultural relativism and affirms what seems to me most valuable in both of these positions.