It is appropriate at this conference to address — however narrowly and briefly
— an important twentieth-century development in the world's religious life. Advances
in scholarship, communication, transportation, and mass education have made the richness
of the world's religious heritage accessible to more people than ever before. But this
increased accessibility has not strengthened religious belief, but may, in fact, have had
the opposite effect. This is because the revolution in accessibility to the world's
religious traditions has made more people than ever before aware of the conflicting claims
of the world's religions. Of course, each tradition's adherents believe their tradition to
be the primary expression of the truth, but there seems to be no obvious
"non-partisan" way to determine which tradition has superior credentials. Thus
the conflicting claims of competing religious traditions tend to undermine each religion's
central claim that it is a vehicle for opening oneself to ultimate reality. One attempt to
overcome this problem is provided by "so-called perennial philosophy school," to
use the term used by Robert K. C. Forman and others. According to Forman (The Problem of
Pure Consciousness, 3), perennialists include William James, Evelyn Underhill, Joseph
MarŽchal, William Johnston, James Pratt, Mircea Eliade, and W.T. Stace. This school
claims that there is a kind of mystical experience common to all religious traditions, an
experience which is "immediate direct contact with...a[n] absolute principle"
(Ibid.). Such an experience would provide an essential common core which transcends any
differences — especially doctrinal differences — among traditions and it would
also be evidence for religion's credentials to be a vehicle to the ultimate reality. But
this "perennialist" claim has been strongly challenged by many scholars who are
characterized as "contextualists" by the one of most prominent of these, Steven
T. Katz ("Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning" in Mysticism and Language, 1992,
5). In turn, Katz's position has been challenged by another group of scholars
characterized as "decontextualists" by their most prominent member, Robert
Forman. Forman claims that his position "swings the pendulum back toward the
perennialist philosophy camp" (The Problem of Pure Consciousness, 39). But I will
argue that the kind of experience central to Forman's model — what Forman calls a
"Pure Consciousness Event" — provides support for perennialism only insofar
as it removes a compelling objection to the perennialist position. And I see no easy way
to supplement the decontextualist in order to present a full-blown argument for
perennialism. In this paper I undertake the much more modest task of suggesting a few
steps which might be taken in the direction of perennialism by expanding the common ground
which decontextualism has established. These steps are by no means assured: my suggestions
represent a research project to determine whether or not there is agreement across
religious traditions on the questions which I pose concerning pure consciousness events.
The idea behind these questions is that the more agreement among the world's mystics on
the issues raised by the questions, the better the case for perennialism.
I proceed as follows. First, I very briefly summarize the contextualist position using
Katz as the paradigm. Next, I review general criticisms of the contextualist approach,
define "pure consciousness events," show how Forman uses these events to
criticize contextualism, and describe the key elements of Forman's decontextualist model
of mystical experience. Finally, I assess what kind of support Forman's decontextualism
gives the perennialist position, and consider three questions the answers to which may or
may not augment the common ground carved out by contextualism.
Stephen T. Katz recognizes the promise that mysticism could overcome religious
boundaries (Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 1). Nonetheless, he vigorously opposes
the claim that there is a commonality of mystical experience between any traditions. I
take the position of Katz in particular and contextualism in general to be this. First,
there is the premise "that there are no pure (i.e., unmediated) experiences"
("Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism" In Mysticism and Philosophical
Analysis, 1978, 26, and "The 'Conservative' Character of Mysticism" in Mysticism
and Religious Traditions, 1983, 4). This implies that "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" ('Conservative,' 4). After a careful review of specific
mystical texts, Katz concludes that "the experiences of mystics comes into being as
the kind of experience it is as a necessary consequence of the linguistic-theological and
social-historic circumstances which govern the mystical ascent. And these circumstances
are grounded in specific ontological schemata which shape the configuration of the quest
and its goal ('Conservative,' 43). Future research in this area should pay much closer
attention to the context of particular mystical texts than has been the norm in the past
('Conservative,' 5 ff.). In sum, Katz concludes that the important differences among major
religious traditions are not somehow reconciled in mystical experience; rather these also
show up as differences in mystical experience itself because they necessarily shape
mystical experience. Thus Katz's view implies that mystical experience is the wrong place
to look for something which will reconcile the profound differences among religions,
thereby helping to restore the credibility of religious claims to be vehicles to the
ultimate.
Forman's criticisms of Katz in particular and contextualism in general — which
Forman calls "constructivism" — are contained in The Problem of Pure
Consciousness (1990, 15-21). First, Katz never defends his crucial assumption that all
experience is mediated by language. Second, Katz implicitly makes the implausible
assumption that any difference in religious concepts leads to a difference in mystical
experience. Closely related to this is the criticism that Katz implicitly assumes a
one-to-one relation between concept and experience, but such an assumption ignores the key
distinction between sense and reference. In addition, the claim that the religious context
causes the content of mystical experience is an instance of the post hoc, ergo propter hoc
fallacy. Finally, there are recorded cases of persons whose mystical experiences are so
unexpected to themselves that these experiences are not reasonably explained by Katz's
contextualist paradigm. Katz himself believes the critique in this book does not undermine
his position (Mysticism and Language, 5). I do not wish to pass judgment on these
criticisms, although they seem to me to have prima facie force. This part of Forman's
position is destructive, and I am interested primarily in the constructive model of
mystical experience which Forman provides.
Forman's model seems to arise from his reflections on what he calls the "pure
consciousness event" which is found in many traditions. A "pure consciousness
event" is defined as "a wakeful though contentless (nonintentional)
consciousness" (8). Forman recognizes that many will claim that the very idea of such
a state of consciousness is absurd, but a defense of the possibility of such a state is
provided, and evidence from several traditions is offered to show that this possibility
has been actualized. Forman argues that such events cannot be explained by Katz because
there is no form, content, or shaping process that is associated with them (21-25). To
account for these phenomena Forman produces his own model of mystical experience (30-43).
Forman draws a parallel between the culmination of what he takes to be "mystical
forgetting" and the sensory experience of an observer placed in a Ganzfeld, that is,
a completely patternless visual field:
This is the model that I propose for the epistemological structure of the spiritual
transformative process which culminates in the PCE ["pure consciousness event"]
and which is, I believe, more adequate than is the constructivist's model of 'remembering
and superimposing.' Meditators and mystics practice a technique in which they recycle a
constant mental subroutine. This technique serves as the catalyst to enable the mind to
come to 'forget' all thought and sensation. Gradually or suddenly, just as one comes to
forget the sense of vision during the Ganzfeld experience, the mind comes to forget all of
its visual processes during the PCE ["pure consciousness event"]. (38)
Forman in a later essay in the initial volume of The Journal of Consciousness Studies
(38-49), "'Of Capsules and Carts': Mysticism, Language and the Via Negativa,"
argues that Katz may be right in thinking that language does have a role to play in
mystical experience, although it is not the role which Katz thought. Forman thinks
language has two roles. First, language may be used to prod one to drop one's
preconceptions and enter onto the path of forgetting (46). Second, language may be used
after-the-fact to describe mystical experiences, but this language does not shape the
experience as Katz avers.
This is a very brief sketch of the model of mystical experience Forman provides and the
dialectical milieu in which it was produced. I should note here that Forman does not claim
that pure consciousness events and the 'forgetting' technique described in his model are
universal. Rather he leaves this for other investigators to determine on a case by case
basis (39-40). But his discussion of the model includes examples from Christianity —
Pseudo-Dionysius (32) and Meister Eckhart (30-31) — and Buddhism — Buddhaghosa
(32-33) — and he earlier cites contributors who describe pure consciousness events in
the Hindu (26) and Jewish traditions (26-27). So Forman quite clearly thinks such events
occur within the context of these major religious traditions, theistic and non-theistic.
As I noted at the beginning of this paper Forman himself claims that his model
"swings the pendulum back toward the perennialist philosophy camp." As far as I
can see it does so solely by providing a counter-argument to the contextualist claim that
mystical experiences are not the same between religious traditions. If this claim were
true, then perennialism's claim "that mysticism is alike from one culture to
another" (The Problem of Pure Consciousness, 39) obviously would be false. This is
clearly an important initial step in defending perennialism. But the decontextualist
position articulated by Forman does not seem to provide any direct support for the crucial
perennialist claim that there is a type of mystical experience found across cultures which
represents, as Forman puts it, "an immediate, direct contact with a[n]...absolute
principle" which is variously defined by each tradition (Problem of Pure
Consciousness, 3). For neither pure consciousness events themselves nor Forman's model
explicitly present any element which corresponds to "immediate, direct contact with
a[n] absolute principle." And Forman never states that his model describes an ascent
to an immediate experience of the absolute. All Forman's model explicitly affirms is that
there is a certain psychological state and a certain method of inducing this state.
Furthermore, the examples he cites imply that such a state and method is common to the
adherents of different religious traditions. It seems to me that there is no easy way to
go from this relatively modest common ground carved out by Forman to a full-blown defense
of perennialism. But I think the common ground might be expanded if we can find agreement
among traditions on the answers to three questions concerning the pure consciousness
events Forman and his colleagues have described.
The first of these questions concerns the nature of the pure consciousness events. I
take it that Forman and his colleagues have established that in diverse traditions some
such events are taken to be direct contact with the absolute. This does not mean that this
evaluation is universal among traditions or even among all the mystics within a particular
religious tradition. It simply means that there are some mystics found among diverse
traditions which affirm that at least some pure consciousness events are direct contact
with the absolute. The first question is this:
1) Do all the mystics who discuss psychological states that can be reasonably
identified as pure consciousness events agree that at least some of them are direct
contact with the absolute?
It may be that there is debate within a tradition over this question. Some mystics may
claim that such events occur, but they are always nothing more than consciousness empty of
content, period, and that they should not in any sense be construed as immediate contact
with the absolute. Of course the degree of consensus might vary from tradition to
tradition, and it would be interesting to explore reasons for the disagreements both
within a single tradition, and among diverse traditions. But in general it seems that the
more consensus there is among the mystics themselves about the nature of this state of
consciousness, the more seriously we should take their claims.
The second question is reserved for those mystics who agree that at least some pure
consciousness events are immediate contacts with the absolute. Questions two is this:
2) Are all pure consciousness events immediate contact with the absolute or only some
of them?
It may well be that there are conflicting answers to this question. This might seem
strange since there can be no phenomenological difference between pure consciousness
events, whether or not they are direct contact with the absolute; by their very nature
they all lack any phenomenological content. But this is parallel to sense perception where
the phenomenological content may be identical in the case of veridical sense perception
and in the case of a hallucination. So phenomenological content does not in itself
determine the nature of a psychological state. As with the first question, the more
consensus, the better.
The third question is reserved for those mystics who claim that only some pure
consciousness events are direct contact with the absolute. The third question is this:
3) How can those pure consciousness events which are direct contacts with the absolute
be distinguished from those pure consciousness events which are not direct contacts with
the absolute?
In other words what "methods" — to use the term in the very broadest
sense — can be employed to discern whether or not some such particular event is a
direct contact with the absolute? It may turn out that the evaluations of an individual
pure consciousness event conflict, with some mystics claiming it is direct contact with
the absolute, and others claiming it is not. If the methods employed lead to widespread
disagreements on the classification of individual pure consciousness events, this would
decrease the credibility of mystical claims. Or it might be that mystics agree on the
classification of individual pure consciousness events, but they use diverse methods to
reach their conclusions. In this case, consensus would be increased further if some
underlying unity could be educed from the seeming diversity of methods. The strongest
consensus would result from the discovery that mystics use the very same methods of
discernment both within and among traditions.
Even if the answers to these three questions yielded the highest degree of consensus
among the world's mystics, a consensus that agreed on which experiences are direct contact
with the absolute and the methods for discerning which experiences these are, this would
still not prove that the mystics are right. But it would expand the common ground far
beyond that established by Forman and decontextualism.
The three questions represent a research project to determine just how far the world's
mystics agree on the nature of the pure consciousness events which Forman's
decontextualism has highlighted. But the carrying out of this research project would
involve the kind of careful attention to detail and the context of individual mystical
texts which Katz and his school demand. I urge that such a project be undertaken, and that
we keep an open mind until the results are in.
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