You know nicer atheists than I do! :smile: — J

I don’t spend much time with atheists these days, but I used to. Many are, frankly, dull zealots. That said, the more thoughtful ones today typically don’t outright deny the existence of God, after all, that would be a positive claim, and one that can’t be demonstrated.

I don't think this is the heart of the problem. We routinely accept subjective testimony about all sorts of things, if by "testimony" you mean merely "Here is what I saw/heard/tasted/thought." Rather, the problem is the explanatory value, as you say here: — J

I suppose so. For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. And so do the priests and sisters I know. I'm pretty certain many theists would also be sceptical when someone says that have had a religious experince.

And this leads to the other point that the atheist wants to insist on -- your use of the phrase "naturalistic explanations." I think that, for most atheists, non-naturalistic explanations are ruled out a priori — J

I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worth of robust skepticism certainly. Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify?

You write this:

I think this is what most of the atheists I know would say: You can't have evidence for unicorns because there aren't any. Those who believe in them nonetheless are, charitably, misguided. — J

I'd say there are many theists for whom you could use the same argument in reverse. They already believe in God, therefore spiritual experiences are real.

.. at least the "God explanation" can join the other contenders and be weighed for its plausibility just like any other. — J

Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? I would say no. That judgment ultimately comes down to a choice we make based on how we interpret and structure the world.

And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add.

Well, atheists I know would not say, as you write, “there isn’t any personal god.” They would say instead that there are no compelling grounds for belief in a personal god, though they remain open in principle to revising that view should persuasive evidence arise. — Tom Storm

Regarding the meaning of the word 'atheism', see <this post>.

Firstly there is the evidence of the lives lived of earlier people of self reflection.
Secondly, implicit in living a life of faith one has faith in the guidance of whom one has faith in. — Punshhh

Neither of those count as empirical evidence. I'm not being pedantic, or trying to dismiss religion as an evil or even a problem on account of its lacking empirical evidence to support it. I just think it's important to maintain consistent and coherent epistemological distinctions between different spheres of knowledge and belief.

Would it follow, then, that if most people had mystical experiences, we'd consider them also to be "quasi-empirical" and possible evidence for general conclusions? How many would we need? What would be the threshold beyond which the experiences gained evidentiary status? — J

As I understand it phenomenology aims to reflect on and characterize the general nature of human experience. I have always been skeptical about attempts to make inferences from human experience to metaphysical claims.

There are poetic commonalities between the writings of mystics from all cultures, which should not be surprising given the cross-cultural everyday commonalities of human experience. In patriarchal cultures―which have predominated at least in historical times―it is not surprising to find that the figures of worship―the gods, buddhas, gurus, saints and deities ―have been predominately male.

What exactly are mystical experiences? It seems they mostly consist in feelings of being a part of something much greater than oneself, of something that one might naturally think of as infinite and eternal, in that it feels radically different than our finite, temporal experience. One might feel "saved" in that visionary moment, and feel a personal presence, as of a loving parent. Or not...

I think the salient question is as to just what is the content of a mystical experience, and just what comes after in the attempt to articulate, interpret, understand the meaning inherent in that experience and what its implications are.

The interpretation of mystical experiences seems to me to be a very personal matter. For me interpretation is more of a feeling, a sense of something, more like poetry than anything which can be couched in definite terms. The descriptions by others of their mystical experiences can only resonate with me insofar as they embody a poetic feeling which seems to me akin to my own sense of the experience.

So, the shared intersubjective descriptions, definitions and explanations here seem to be stretched very thin. It seems that there is a cross-cultural commonality of mystical human experience―but what does that point to? Who can say? Does it even matter?

- I think J asked a good question. Here it is again:

Would it follow, then, that if most people had mystical experiences, we'd consider them also to be "quasi-empirical" and possible evidence for general conclusions? How many would we need? What would be the threshold beyond which the experiences gained evidentiary status? — J

If phenomenology is "quasi-empirical" and the study of mystical experiences is not, would this change if most people had mystical experiences?

For an extraordinary claim like, “I had direct communication with God” an atheist is going to need more than someone's personal testimony. — Tom Storm

I would divide this into "the subjective experience," described as neutrally as possible, and "the explanation," in this case a purported direct communication with God. I'm suggesting that the atheist can accept that an extraordinary subjective experience took place while denying the explanation. But this isn't about rejecting personal testimony -- unless, that is, the claimant wants to maintain that the experience was what I'm calling "self-credentialed."

I wouldn't say 'ruled out' but worthy of robust skepticism certainly. — Tom Storm

Me too. Again, a "nicer atheist" may take this position, but I've just as often heard it described as "impossible" or "incoherent."

Is there a non-naturalistic explanation for anything we can definitely identify? — Tom Storm

I think all explanations that involve reasons, as opposed to causes, are non-naturalistic -- but that's a whole huge other topic.

Yes, this is the nub of the issue: is the God explanation really of equal weight to alternative explanations - such as psychological phenomena, mental illness, or substance use? — Tom Storm

It may not be, in a given case, but I wasn't saying all the possible explanations had to be weighted equally. Indeed, it would be odd if they were; that isn't how it works with "ordinary" explanations for things like sensual perceptions. I was saying that we ought to allow the "God explanation" to be weighed along with any others. Equal weight? That will be influenced by many factors, including substance ingestion!

And perhaps it's not worth debating, these discussions rarely shift anyone’s position and too often descend into unproductive or abusive exchanges. Not from you, I hasten to add. — Tom Storm

Nor you, thanks.

If the purpose of the discussion is really to shift someone's position on religion or mystical experiences, I completely agree -- ain't gonna happen. But I do think it's worthwhile to get some analytical clarity on what's involved in talking about, and evaluating, this kind of report. Especially, we want to understand better how beliefs are formed, and what counts as adequate justification and refutation.

Just to note a basic division in testimony, non-theistic religions tend to report experiences of emptiness and such, while theistic religions tend to report experiences like the unification with God or whatever. Perhaps a general conclusion is not possible.

Just to note a basic division in testimony, theistic religions tend to report experiences of emptiness and such, while no-theistic religions tend to report experiences like the unification with God or whatever. Perhaps a general conclusion is not possible. — praxis

Did you mean to reverse the two?

You’re fast, I corrected that within a minute.

- I think I opened the page in a new tab early, before looking at it.

You will certainly find a lot of "emptiness" in theistic traditions, and also some (but less) "unification/fulfillment" in non-theistic traditions.

In any case my view is that experience and interpretation/framework are mutually influencing, such that anyone who draws a one-way arrow is mistaken.

So do you think a general conclusion is possible for religionists?

I'd say the study of mystical experience as one aspect of human experience is as much a part of phenomenology as the study of any other aspect of human experience.

Neither of those count as empirical evidence. I'm not being pedantic, or trying to dismiss religion as an evil or even a problem on account of its lacking empirical evidence to support it. I just think it's important to maintain consistent and coherent epistemological distinctions between different spheres of knowledge and belief.

That’s odd, you seem to be asking for empirical evidence in guiding one in how to live one’s life (governed by self reflection) While excluding evidence of how people lived their life (that was governed by self reflection).

I was responding to this comment;

It seems to me that the "ultimate concern" of any life governed by self-reflection is the basic ethical question "how should I Iive?" Could there be strictly empirical evidence available to guide me in answering that question?

Surely what you are asking for here is evidence which can be used as a guide, while excluding all evidence of evidence being used as a guide in all previous lives.

Not to mention that how one might live a life would also include an enquiry of the results of a previous life lived to glean an idea of where such a life course might lead.

There is clearly empirical evidence of the results of lives lead guided by self reflection. Just take a previous life lead this way and see where it lead.

Now I feel pendantic.

On the other hand, I agree that there can be no empirical evidence of a divine realm.

As I understand it phenomenology aims to reflect on and characterize the general nature of human experience. I have always been skeptical about attempts to make inferences from human experience to metaphysical claims. — Janus

And phenomenology was initially meant as a corrective to this tendency. But as many philosophers have argued since, this is very hard to do. In the act of reporting an observation, say a simple perception of a tree, we must include metaphysical assumptions if we are to speak at all. (Granted, this depends on a fairly broad interpretation of "metaphysical.").

What we're talking about here, I think, is the difference between the inference that there are really trees out there, and the inference that there is really a god out there. The evidentiary bases are wholly different, and would need to be weighed differently as well, but I want to claim that the basic process is the same -- we try to describe and understand our experiences, and then see if we can infer anything from them about the world, even if it's only an inference to the best explanation.

I think the salient question is as to just what is the content of a mystical experience — Janus

I agree. And to be unbiased, we should really put "mystical" in quotes, since several possible descriptions of their content would reveal "mystical" as an error.

The interpretation of mystical experiences seems to me to be a very personal matter. For me interpretation is more of a feeling, a sense of something, more like poetry than anything which can be couched in definite terms. — Janus

I think we were talking about interpretation earlier in this thread, weren't we? (Or was it somewhere else? Sorry!) I'll just say here that I think interpretation is much more than just a feeling or a sense. There are good and bad interpretations, in terms of their fidelity to the facts. Hermeneutics tries to lay this out in a systematic way.

It seems that there is a cross-cultural commonality of mystical human experience―but what does that point to? Who can say? — Janus

Good questions. And that, I believe, is the important thing -- that they are good questions, not ones we can dismiss because the answers are somehow obvious.

I haven’t spoken about other realities, only realities outside our field of view, which I qualified here;

when I say beyond us this can be because;
It is a reality which is inconceivable to a being using the human brain to exercise thought.
It may be hidden from us, for some reason, or purpose.
It might require the person to be hosted by the deity, thus enabling them to witness things that we cannot witness unaided. Or to reach some state unaided.

These are the questions that phenomenology must account for when the phenomenologist claims to have an alternative route to the mystical path. It is the realisation of our limited abilities, our human frailty which underpins the religious, or mystical life. That in order to see beyond these limitations a belief, or faith in some form of guidance, or hosting is required. Otherwise we are blind to that which is beyond our scope. And by blind, I don’t mean, haven’t worked it out yet. But rather we are entirely unable to see, we don’t have the eye to see it.

But to see such a bridge, one has to step into it.

The bridge is quite easy to conceive of, but to surmise what is at the other side of it requires a telescope. To step onto the bridge without knowing which direction to walk, or how to put one step in front of the other, leaves one wandering around in circles. The idea is that a guide is required. A guide who can provide you with a telescope and steer you in the right direction.

Again if the phenomenology is the be an alternative to the mystical path, then it must account for these questions.


I agree with what you say about unraveling our entanglements freeing ourselves from conditioning, reaching stillness etc. Although as I said before, I take issue with the idea that faith must become ecstatic. That one must prostrate one’s self, basically to break yourself. Although young aspirants will want to do this in the beginning, I did myself. As one becomes older and the new you evolves, there is the opportunity to calm down and root one’s self in a normal life and play a role in society and family. While retaining one’s insight achieved in one’s youth, coming to realise that the fiery stage is not a requirement, but rather an initiation, the cracking of a shell. A seed to germinate and once the tree is growing it lives and grows and integrates in and with the human world.

As he is thus absorbed in meditation, a day comes when, to his surprise, he witnesses an aura emanating from his body (Obhàsa). He experiences an unprecedented pleasure, happiness, and quietude. He becomes even-minded and strenuous. His religious fervour increases, and mindfulness becomes perfect, and Insight extraordinarily keen

Again we have immersion, “absorbed”, this is not necessary and could be quite harmful in the modern world. I suppose if one resides in a monastery where your needs are met, it is a suitable course of action. I have known many people who meditate over the years and beyond a certain point, I don’t think it does them much good.

- I think religious claims are truth apt. That may be the elephant in the room here.

I'd say the study of mystical experience as one aspect of human experience is as much a part of phenomenology as the study of any other aspect of human experience. — Janus

Okay, but doesn't that mean that the study of mystical experience broadly possesses the same sort of "quasi-empirical" nature that you ascribe to phenomenology? To deny this would seem to require that some parts of phenomenology are not quasi-empirical.

Here is a good, concise account of faith:

Acceptance of truth on authority is something we do all the time, as in medicine, where we trust the authority of doctors, or in schools, where we trust the authority of teachers. In these cases the truth that we do not know ourselves but accept from others is a truth we could come to know ourselves if we went through the right training. In the case of divinely revealed truth, we can, ex hypothesi, never know it directly for ourselves (at least not in this life), but only on authority. The name we give to acceptance of truth on authority is “faith.” Faith is of truth; it is knowledge; it is knowledge derived from authority; it is rational. These features are present in the case of putting faith in what a doctor tells us about our health. What we know in this way is truth (it is truth about our health); it is knowledge (it is a coming to have what the doctor has, though not as the doctor has it); it is based on authority (it is based on the authority of the doctor); it is rational (it is rational to accept the authority of one’s doctor, ceteris paribus). Such knowledge is indirect. It goes to the truth through another. But it is knowledge. The difference is between knowing, say, that water is H₂O because a chemist has told us and knowing that water is H₂O because we have ourselves performed the experiments that prove it. The first is knowledge by faith, and the second is knowledge direct.

Knowledge by faith, while it exists in the mind, is attained by an act of will. We must choose to trust our doctor or the chemist, and only because we do so do we have knowledge about our health or about the chemical composition of water. The choice must be rational, in that it must be based on adequate evidence. The evidence will not be about the fact known (we would not then need to trust anyone to know it); it will be about the trustworthiness of the authority. We are rational in trusting our doctor, because we have evidence that, say, he went through the right training, that he is licensed by a known medical authority, that he is acknowledged as an expert by other doctors who went through the right training and are licensed by the same authority, that what he told us about our health before turned out correct (we or people we know were cured of this or that ailment by following his instructions), that he is not a liar or corrupted by bribery, that he has an upstanding character, and the like.

Such faith is rational, but it is also an act of choice. The evidence, because it is about the trustworthiness of the authority and not about the things the authority says, does not convince the mind of the truth of these things, but only of their trustworthiness. To believe their truth, the mind must be moved to do so by an act of trust. But an act of trust is an act of will. We can, if we like, refuse to believe the doctor or the chemist, however convincing the evidence of their trustworthiness may be. We cannot, by contrast, refuse to believe that the angles of a triangle equal two right angles once we have seen the proof, though we can contradict it in words if we like, for speech is an act of will. Where acts of belief dependent on acts of will are involved, coercion can be legitimate—not to force the act of will (an act of will cannot be forced), but instead to facilitate it by the suppression of opposed irrational desires and opposed irrational contradiction. The force is used to facilitate the act of trust, not to prove its rationality (which is done instead by the evidence). That there is such force with respect to belief, and that it is legitimate, is ignored by liberalist doctrines of tolerance (even though, if truth be told, they have to rely on something like it to justify their own coercive acts of rule and self-protection). — Peter L. P. Simpson, Political Illiberalism, 108-9

But can religious authority be trusted?

That’s odd, you seem to be asking for empirical evidence in guiding one in how to live one’s life (governed by self reflection) While excluding evidence of how people lived their life (that was governed by self reflection). — Punshhh

That's not really what I've been saying. Firstly I was saying that phenomenological investigation is carried out via reflection on human experience. Great novels, biographies and autobiographies are examples of phenomenological inquiries into what it is to be human. I haven't touched on the question as to whether human lives are lived self-reflectively. It seems most likely that some are and some are not.

So we have some textual evidence of how people lived their lives or at least how their lives seemed to them on reflection, that we can probably safely assume to be trustworthy. But assuming it is trustworthy it is not evidence for anything other than that the described events happened, and that the persons or people described reacted to the events in the ways described.

Surely what you are asking for here is evidence which can be used as a guide, while excluding all evidence of evidence being used as a guide in all previous lives.

Not to mention that how one might live a life would also include an enquiry of the results of a previous life lived to glean an idea of where such a life course might lead. — Punshhh

So, I'm not excluding evidence that others lived their lives according to what they considered to be, for themselves, the evidence that they took to support whatever worldview they lived their lives in accordance with. I agree that we all do that. I'm questioning the idea that such "evidence", which although not being strictly empirical, it is nonetheless reasonable to think of it as evidence for anyone other than the person for whom it "feels right". I'm saying it is only strictly empirical evidence that should be expected to unfailingly convince the unbiased of whatever it is evidence for.

So this:

There is clearly empirical evidence of the results of lives lead guided by self reflection. Just take a previous life lead this way and see where it lead.

Now I feel pendantic.

No need to feel pedantic (or did you mean you were wearing a pendant? :wink: ) When we examine lives, whether those of others or our own I think we do accept the reports as true and accurate (so "quasi-empirical"). When it comes to evaluating them we do so in terms of value judgements, and those are not empirical judgements.

On the other hand, I agree that there can be no empirical evidence of a divine realm.

I agree with you and think this is amply obvious but many will disagree while apparently being unable to explain their disagreement.

I'm out of time so I'll have to come back to respond to your posts. Hopefully what I've written above may clarify some of my ideas on these questions.

Q: What is faith?
A: Baby, don't hurt me.

In all seriousness though, I think this is a difficult thing to pin down. I think faith can mean different things to different people, but I think of it as a strong belief in the way things work through mostly anecdotal evidence. The world is more complicated than our minds can truly wrap themselves around, so we create mental constructions of the world based on experience that can through time or external reinforcement become beliefs and faith. When someone's faith is shaken, I'd argue it's often when they're confronted with something that causes mental dissonance in their faith ie how they believe the world works. Which does not mean that all faith is misplaced, just that it's not always easy to tell where to place it, as none of us can claim to know everything. So in the end, maybe faith is the belief that things will work out in the end ie, won't hurt me.

Yes, I know what you were getting at with empirical evidence. I reacted because I felt you were cracking a nut with a sledge hammer. There are many things about human life and experience which can’t easily be accounted for in this way.

I do think it is important for philosophers to examine things in this way, even if it is a slow process and may take a long time to come to explain things like religious, or mystical experience. I do think there will one day be a science of these things along the lines of psychology.

The stumbling block I see repeatedly is that we are blind to the reality, rather like I was saying to Astrophel, we are blind to the reality we are attempting to pass judgement on, we don’t have the eyes to see it. All we have is the testimony of people who have had religious, or mystical experiences. Some who may have seen beyond the veil, but who’s testimony we must set aside, until we have some metric with which to measure it.

when I say beyond us this can be because;
It is a reality which is inconceivable to a being using the human brain to exercise thought.
It may be hidden from us, for some reason, or purpose.
It might require the person to be hosted by the deity, thus enabling them to witness things that we cannot witness unaided. Or to reach some state unaided.

These are the questions that phenomenology must account for when the phenomenologist claims to have an alternative route to the mystical path. It is the realisation of our limited abilities, our human frailty which underpins the religious, or mystical life. That in order to see beyond these limitations a belief, or faith in some form of guidance, or hosting is required. Otherwise we are blind to that which is beyond our scope. And by blind, I don’t mean, haven’t worked it out yet. But rather we are entirely unable to see, we don’t have the eye to see it. — Punshhh

But this sense of "beyond" is speculative, and while I have no doubt that the more one moves into this strange terrain, the more is disclosed, it is not a move into a confirmation of a speculation. It is an openness that is its own disclosure that leaves speculative anticipation altogether, because it is openness itself. But whatis openness? It is found in mundane affairs in the question itself. So how is it that something as familiar and plain as a question be of the same essence as "spiritual enlightenment"?

Phenomenology discovers the supramundane IN the mundane, and reveals that all along in the daily course of things we stood before a world that had extraordinary dimensions of possible insight. Two worlds: my cat as the usual adorable annoying pet, and my cat that is not a cat at all, but something else not bound by "totality" of meanings that circulate through culture, something "Other". This issues goes on and on, and there are tensions here as to the nature of this Other vis a vis the conscious act in which it is encountered, and the term 'intuition' comes into play, and this is a controversial matter, but in the end, it really depends on if one is the kind of person who is capable of "pure eidetic" apprehension, and this refers to pure presence, pure givenness of ordinary things. This is where the epoche takes one, to this unconditioned givenness of the world: one does not go anywhere but realizes that what and where one already is is somewhere else entirely. The only (ontological) divide there ever was lies within the understanding--- the absolute hegemony the habits of familiarity that are always already there, ready to hand at a moment's notice to acknowledge something "as" such and such (a book, a table, a democracy, a right, and on and on), on the one hand, and the freedom (openness,the Greek's "alethea") from all of this on the other.

So getting back your thoughts above, this kind of thing is offered instead of "belief, or faith in some form of guidance, or hosting." Would you want science to take the same approach? Does science rest with these, or is it more rigorous and bound to evidential grounding? Phenomenology is called, and I agree in a qualified way, the science of pure phenomena. It is about a method that takes as its object the realization of he world at the most basic level of apprehension. Analytic schools call this qualia, but have no sense at all of the method that drives inquiry deeper, the phenomenological method that unpopulates, if you will, the horizon of awareness itself, such that the "seeing" is unburdened by the presumptions familiarity, which is no less than the operations of language itself taken as foundational truth, as if what a scientist, the most analytic expression of plain talk, has to say has authority that cannot be gainsaid. Phenomenology says, not only can it be gainsaid, but it can be utterly undone in the face of phenomenological ontology. The slate can be wiped clean! This is the essence of religion, the wiping clean of all the clutter in simple perceptual awareness such that the world finally shows itself, and God is discovered with the consciuosness that beholds.

So "guidance and hosting" does make sense, to correct myself on this, because of this important distinction: science works dogmatically at first, meaning one has to memorize and master complex paradigms before one can move into matters less categorical, and the same holds for phenomenology, for thematically, the world does not hold written on its sleeve the understanding only philosophical inquiry can bring out (the world at the most basic level of analysis is both the most idstant in that no one even begins to suspect such a level even exists, yet the most proximal, for the pure phenomenon is the absolute clarity of the pure presence of all things and there is no "distance" at all between consciousness and presence), but phenomenology is so alien to common sense it is not, not will it ever be, available to most. So the matte of divinity has to be treated symbolically, or "analogically" as Karl Rahner puts it (he thinks the church itself is a sacrament, an analog to heaven). BUT THEN: why not just leave it to the church, a priest or minster and let the Bible (or whatever) do the talking? I think this lead to irrationality and it creates problems out of problems, that is, entirely contrived conceptions about the way the world is, and solutions that are built on this that, as we see in the church today, are bound up with a great deal of bad thinking.

The bridge is quite easy to conceive of, but to surmise what is at the other side of it requires a telescope. To step onto the bridge without knowing which direction to walk, or how to put one step in front of the other, leaves one wandering around in circles. The idea is that a guide is required. A guide who can provide you with a telescope and steer you in the right direction.

Again if the phenomenology is the be an alternative to the mystical path, then it must account for these questions. — Punshhh

It does. Phenomenology IS the mystical path, if one is so inclined. Others see it less so, but admit the idea is sound. Others don't read it. Husserl's students once found themselves turning to spirituality because the disciplined and sincere turn toward the phenomenality of the world is a shock to ordinary experience, and one needs to be shocked if one is going to try to understand the world at the basic level. The thing is, faith stops inquiry where inquiry should be just beginning, and one never gets to the real matters at all, but gets comfortable in faith, like Buddhist doing hatha yoga, which is nice, but complacent and spiritually inert.

I agree with what you say about unraveling our entanglements freeing ourselves from conditioning, reaching stillness etc. Although as I said before, I take issue with the idea that faith must become ecstatic. That one must prostrate one’s self, basically to break yourself. Although young aspirants will want to do this in the beginning, I did myself. As one becomes older and the new you evolves, there is the opportunity to calm down and root one’s self in a normal life and play a role in society and family. While retaining one’s insight achieved in one’s youth, coming to realise that the fiery stage is not a requirement, but rather an initiation, the cracking of a shell. A seed to germinate and once the tree is growing it lives and grows and integrates in and with the human world. — Punshhh

This is so much like a standard prescription for orthodoxy, which is looking to the historical affirmation, the spreading in time to a new foundation accepted as a socio-religious institution. This already exists. Calming down and rooting oneself in a normal life is, alas, the very opposite of where thought takes one if one follows through. Religion always seeks to get beyond itself to affirmation that is evidentially based, but this has been impossible because of the universally held notion that our finitude was prohibitive of exceeding its own delimitations, but this has always been just a dogma emphatically laid out by those who didn't understand the world because it takes work and sacrifice, the kind of thing you find only with monks, ascetics, those who climb mountains and stay there until they are brought to witness something, driven people who not only seek this novel "ecstasy", but insist on it---ecstatic from the original greek ékstasis, to stand outside of one's existence, apart from the social conditioning that binds one to culture and its language habits, what Kierkegaard called inherited sin in his Concept of Anxiety which takes up the old Genesis story of original sin and turns it into an analysis of metaphysical separation from God (taking a derisive attitude toward Luther and other dogmatic interpretations in the process). This ecstatic reorientation is the very essence of the "movement" toward divinity, for, as Meister Eckhart says again and again, the more we are here in this world of constructed values (one may care very much about General Motors, say, invests, works for, manages affairs for, and so on: but does GM really "exist"? Not really. It was conceived in a pragmatic desire, entirely abstract in the Real events of people's affairs. The world of familiarity is just this. Does biology exist?...), the farther out we are from divinity. For divinity is absolute Being that is constantly being denied in the participation of this world. Ask the question Wittgenstein refused to philosophize about because he feared inquiry would distort is nature, What is value, ethics? For ethics and value and aesthetics are, in the ecstatic perspective, meta value, meta ethics and meta aesthetics. All things that appear are always already metaphysics.

Put simply, our ethics IS God's ethics. For this world really is not finite at all, every chair, cloud and vacuum cleaner, every breath belongs to eternity.

Again we have immersion, “absorbed”, this is not necessary and could be quite harmful in the modern world. I suppose if one resides in a monastery where your needs are met, it is a suitable course of action. I have known many people who meditate over the years and beyond a certain point, I don’t think it does them much good. — Punshhh

Meditation is a struggle for depth by the radical

But note how boring this is. Not to offend, but really? What is the world? What is this tonnage of suffering and blisses that lays at our feet for the understanding to take up? What does it mean to exist as a person, to be thrown into the intensity of all this, to be a child screaming in a burning car? Is questioning and moving closer to a divine apprehension of the depth of what we are just about this absurd "closure" one gets in prayer. Meditation is hard because liberation is hard--a radical removal of the soul from the world INTO divinity (a term I prefer because it carries the gravitas of eternity).

But this sense of "beyond" is speculative, and while I have no doubt that the more one moves into this strange terrain, the more is disclosed, it is not a move into a confirmation of a speculation. It is an openness that is its own disclosure that leaves speculative anticipation altogether, because it is openness itself. But whatis openness? It is found in mundane affairs in the question itself. So how is it that something as familiar and plain as a question be of the same essence as "spiritual enlightenment"?

Yes I see this explanation and I see how such an openness is a receptiveness to what is there to be disclosed, whatever it is.

Phenomenology discovers the supramundane IN the mundane, and reveals that all along in the daily course of things we stood before a world that had extraordinary dimensions of possible insight.

I see this and am aware of it in my own way.

This issues goes on and on, and there are tensions here as to the nature of this Other vis a vis the conscious act in which it is encountered, and the term 'intuition' comes into play, and this is a controversial matter, but in the end, it really depends on if one is the kind of person who is capable of "pure eidetic" apprehension, and this refers to pure presence, pure givenness of ordinary things. This is where the epoche takes one, to this unconditioned givenness of the world: one does not go anywhere but realizes that what and where one already is is somewhere else entirely.

I think I know what you are saying here and I have worked on this for some time.

the phenomenological method that unpopulates, if you will, the horizon of awareness itself, such that the "seeing" is unburdened by the presumptions familiarity, which is no less than the operations of language itself taken as foundational truth, as if what a scientist, the most analytic expression of plain talk, has to say has authority that cannot be gainsaid. Phenomenology says, not only can it be gainsaid, but it can be utterly undone in the face of phenomenological ontology. The slate can be wiped clean! This is the essence of religion, the wiping clean of all the clutter in simple perceptual awareness such that the world finally shows itself, and God is discovered with the consciuosness that beholds.

Yes, this is also something I work on. But I would say that God is something that is beyond our capacity to either see, or comprehend, while it plays the role of guide, in that we revere it. Commune with it.

out (the world at the most basic level of analysis is both the most idstant in that no one even begins to suspect such a level even exists, yet the most proximal, for the pure phenomenon is the absolute clarity of the pure presence of all things and there is no "distance" at all between consciousness and presence),

Yes, been there many times.

BUT THEN: why not just leave it to the church, a priest or minster and let the Bible (or whatever) do the talking? I think this lead to irrationality and it creates problems out of problems, that is, entirely contrived conceptions about the way the world is, and solutions that are built on this that, as we see in the church today, are bound up with a great deal of bad thinking.

Agreed, but the phenomenological approach is so discreet as to be available to a very few who have the capacity.

Phenomenology IS the mystical path

So here we have the implicit claim.

disciplined and sincere turn toward the phenomenality of the world is a shock to ordinary experience, and one needs to be shocked if one is going to try to understand the world at the basic level. The thing is, faith stops inquiry where inquiry should be just beginning, and one never gets to the real matters at all, but gets comfortable in faith, like Buddhist doing hatha yoga, which is nice, but complacent and spiritually inert.

And here we have an attack on spiritual practice, which you seem to conflating with mysticism. But mysticism as opposed to general spiritual practice in these schools, does begin the enquiry where you say it settles into a complacency. Nothing you have described goes beyond what I consider as the basics tools of mysticism.

Religion always seeks to get beyond itself to affirmation that is evidentially based, but this has been impossible because of the universally held notion that our finitude was prohibitive of exceeding its own delimitations,

This was because the vast majority of followers of those religions didn’t have the capacity, or disposition to practice at the priest level, or above.

the kind of thing you find only with monks, ascetics, those who climb mountains and stay there until they are brought to witness something, driven people who not only seek this novel "ecstasy", but insist on it

Yes and when they have witnessed it, the ecstasy recedes and they return to their day to day way of life. Like I said, an initiation, or right of passage. This ecstatic state can only be maintained for short periods by the human body. The mystical life has a series of these rights and the skilled practitioner is able to cross them without going to those ecstatic extremes.

This ecstatic reorientation is the very essence of the "movement" toward divinity,

We are back to the science of orientation.

as Meister Eckhart says again and again, the more we are here in this world of constructed values (), the farther out we are from divinity. For divinity is absolute Being that is constantly being denied in the participation of this world.

So this is why as I said, the kind of meditative practice you are describing is not advisable in our modern world. It was developed for monastic life in cultures far more simple and down to earth than ours.

I don’t want to argue with you, but you keep making claims which are difficult not to challenge. I have no argument with phenomenology and am not critical of philosophical approaches to these issues. I have a genuine interest.

Going back to what you are describing, I have covered all these things, albeit from a different route. I’ve been there, done it, got the T shirt, so to speak. Over 30yrs ago. If `I were still seeking that ecstasy you describe every day for the last 30years, I expect, I would be a bit frazzled by now.

es, I know what you were getting at with empirical evidence. I reacted because I felt you were cracking a nut with a sledge hammer. There are many things about human life and experience which can’t easily be accounted for in this way. — Punshhh

I don't know what you are referring to in saying "cracking a nut with a sledgehammer". Perhaps you could clarify. Also it's not clear just what are the many things which can't be accounted for or in what way they can't be accounted for. All in all, if you want me to respond I need more clarity and detail.

The stumbling block I see repeatedly is that we are blind to the reality, rather like I was saying to Astrophel, we are blind to the reality we are attempting to pass judgement on, we don’t have the eyes to see it. All we have is the testimony of people who have had religious, or mystical experiences. Some who may have seen beyond the veil, but who’s testimony we must set aside, until we have some metric with which to measure it. — Punshhh

Unless we have had experiences of the type usually referred to as mystical then of course we are blind to that kind of experience. How would we know we have had so-called mystical experiences? Because of their extraordinary, uncanny nature I'd say. How do we know others have had such experiences? Because of the extraordinary, uncanny descriptions of their experiences, which we can relate to sympathetically. That's about all we have to go on.

What do we know of the implications for metaphysics of such experiences? Absolutely nothing I would say—although the extraordinary, uncanny nature of such experiences naturally seems to lead people to extraordinary, uncanny speculations. However such speculations have nothing cogent to support them—people simply believe whatever it is they feel moved to believe. And that's all fine—we all believe whatever it is we feel moved to believe, if we are one of those given to believing—or else we suspend judgement, remain skeptical if that is our bent.

Does it matter? I would say no—all that really matters is how we live our lives—how we live this life, the only life we know or can be confident we can really know, the only one we can be confident that we actually have or will have. And even knowing this life is not the easiest or most common achievement.

This ecstatic reorientation is the very essence of the "movement" toward divinity, for, as Meister Eckhart says again and again, the more we are here in this world of constructed values (one may care very much about General Motors, say, invests, works for, manages affairs for, and so on: but does GM really "exist"? Not really. It was conceived in a pragmatic desire, entirely abstract in the Real events of people's affairs. — Astrophel

On the contrary, Eckhart would say that God is in General Motors, and that the one who says otherwise does not understand God. The one who cannot find God where they are has mistaken God for something else:

God is in all things. The more He is in things, the more He is out of things: the more in, the more out, and the more out, the more in. I have often said, God is creating the whole world now this instant. — The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 18

:100:

Yes, this is also something I work on. But I would say that God is something that is beyond our capacity to either see, or comprehend, while it plays the role of guide, in that we revere it. Commune with it. — Punshhh

The question then is, when it is affirmed that God is something beyond our capacity, from whence comes the ground for this claim? Language opens experience to interpretation. It carries the "non formal" affectivity (intimations of immortality?) into a region of analytic work that puts, explicitly, the mundane into brackets, and this allows the understanding to take hold and do important work. In other words, when we philosophize, we gain access into what is being examined. Language opens what is simple allows elucidation which brings whatis hidden into view, not unlike what a scientist does with her observations, that are at first quit easy and accessible, gravity or acceleration or centrifugal force. A scientist does not know what a force is, but can work up a vocabulary of analytical detail that brings this term into various contexts. making simplicity into complexity, and for a naturalist, a scientist, this opens wide the possiblities. With phenomenology, something rarely even acknowledged is brought out in the same kind of examination, very rigorously, and here is discovered the ground for religion, and God, and divinity, redemption, consummation of "meaning" and importance (see Von Hildebrandt on this. What does it mean for something to be important, not for something, but important as such?)

Now there is discovery where before there was only faith and indeterminacy. This is a very important idea, for now one can research metaphysics by "observing" what has been silent through the centuries; observing "apriori" that is, things unseen, if you will.

Agreed, but the phenomenological approach is so discreet as to be available to a very few who have the capacity. — Punshhh

Yes, right. But if the matter is going to be just left to what those who don't think and study, then the understanding is left with a lot of medieval drivel. This here I am talking about is a plea for taking religion and God seriously enough to put time and work into it in order for DISCOVERY to take place.

On the contrary, Eckhart would say that God is in General Motors, and the one who says otherwise does not understand God. The one who cannot find God where he is is not looking for God:

God is in all things. The more He is in things, the more He is out of things: the more in, the more out, and the more out, the more in. I have often said, God is creating the whole world now this instant. — Leontiskos

Well, with Eckhart, one has to be very careful with context. I mean, what he says belongs to a discussion, and shouldn't be isolated from this for its meaning. Eckhart was not talking about, heh, heh, GM being divine in its nature, GM as a manufacturing institution hiring thousands of people functioning in a thousand ways. He was not saying, say, that the advertising department at GM was doing God's will (though, there are those who hold that America and its businesses are privileged in mind of God. Keeping in mind that Genghis Khan was doing God's work, as well). Read his broader discussion, as well as other sermons and works; see, e.g., On Detachment: "man who stands thus in utter detachment is rapt into eternity in such away that nothing transient can move him, and that he is aware of nothing corporeal and is said to be dead to the world, for he has no taste for anything earthly." This is rather typical of the way he speaks of our relation to God vis a vis the world. But GM?? Surely as transient as it gets, no? I only bring it up to raise the point that language has brought into "existence" a great deal of useful fiction, but it goes deeper than something so obvious, for the question is begged: Why stop with an obvious institution? Is there really a world that language is "about"? Or are all of these just useful fictions as well? I mentioned biology, which carries the same ground for same question: Once there was no biology, so where does its "existence" come from? Surely, 'biology' is just a systemic imposition on what was there prior to the categorical rigor placed upon things. Rorty puts it, " Truth is propositional, and there are no propositions "out there." So what ontological standing does language have? Depends on who you read.

Anyway, regarding that the enigmatic quote you cite above, the question: what the fuck is he talking about? More in, more out..... Eckhart begins by talking about what is within and without at once, citing Paul, and making public the word of God. So looking at this little phrase again:

God is in all things. The more He is in things, the more
He is out of things: the more in, the more out, and the more out,
the more in

So, does this mean God is "in" GM? Yes, but one has to look at "being in" more closely. He says God is divine and intelligible and is in all things, so in all things insofar as all things are divine and intelligible, and the intelligibility of GM and its many facets is of course, qua intelligibility, of God, God being the source, the ground of reason itself. Not qua its being a social construct with a finite purpose, for such being the case would giving the divine endorsement to anything intelligible, like Nazism or well planned child molestations. Divine? The same: the divine as such, not as an institution of corporate interests. Where is the divine "as such" evidenced in GM? This is a longer answer.

Another:

God is equally near in all creatures. The wise man says in (?) Sir­ach: God has set his nets and lines out over all creatures, so that we may find Him in any of them: if this net [full of creatures] were to be cast over a man, he could find God there and recognize Him. A master says he knows God aright, who is equally aware of Him in all things. I once said, to serve God in fear is good; to serve Him in love is better; but to be able to grasp the love in fear, that is best. For a man to have a peaceful life is good, but for a man to have a life of pain in patience is better; but that a man should have peace in a life of pain is best. A man may go out into the fields and say his prayers and know God, or he may go to church and know God: but if he is more aware of God because he is in a quiet place, as is usual, that comes from his imperfection and not from God: for God is equally in all things and all places, and is equally ready to give Himself as far as in Him lies: and he knows God rightly who knows God equally [in all things]. — The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart, Sermon 69

In fear? Yep. In pain? Yep. In Genghis Khan? Yep. In Nazism? Yep.

The question then is, when it is affirmed that God is something beyond our capacity, from whence comes the ground for this claim?

By definition.

God is something which may have created us and the world, may be with each of us and every animal and plant, every planet. May be performing a task via these things. May have a purpose in mind. All of these actions are beyond our capacity to understand (unaided).

With phenomenology, something rarely even acknowledged is brought out in the same kind of examination, very rigorously, and here is discovered the ground for religion, and God, and divinity, redemption, consummation of "meaning" and importance

The mystic does all this internally, rather than inter subjectively. Infact it may not be possible to cover the same ground inter subjectively. Because doing it internally is a much more integrated process of knowing the self, working with the self, developing personal dialogue, narrative and walking the walk. The fact that in the spiritual schools there is direct interaction and communication between teacher and student at a profound level, would indicate that there is a process of guiding and communion going on, which goes well beyond the intellectual and intellectual analysis.