All experiences belong to the past. A new experience is a contradiction in terms, for experience involves recognition, recognition entails memory, and memory is of the past. The so-called ‘ever present’, or living in the present, is but a fiction. You can never know or experience the present, says UG; it is always in terms of the past.
However, for a long time now, believers and theologians, as well as philosophers and scholars of mysticism, have interpreted mystical experience as something beyond memory, beyond the mundane, even beyond the ‘natural’. In particular, classical scholars (such as Underhill, Otto, and Zaehner) have interpreted mystical experience as ‘pure’, ‘unmediated’, ‘numinous’ union with God, with the Absolute, bearing no relation whatsoever to the culture and social conditions in which a mystic lives; in short, no connection with the past. There is a strong belief that a mystic with God-experience, comes into possession of truth and wisdom and becomes an embodiment of compassion. Further, writers on religion and mysticism are of the opinion that despite different backgrounds, there is something common among the mystics, in the sense that they all experience a higher truth that is not accessible to non-mystics, that they all seek and experience God or Truth but express the experience differently because of the difference in their social background and language.
These assumptions need to be examined. Is a mystic’s experience truly ‘unmediated’, ‘pure’? What does experience of God, or communion or union with God mean? And which God, one may ask? Is any experience possible at all wherein recognition, memory and knowledge are not involved?
Atheists and sceptics in all ages have, from certain rational perspectives, questioned religious teachings. But in modern times, from within the religious framework, it was JK who was probably the first to question most vehemently yet creatively all religious or spiritual authorities, the authority of the scriptures, as also the tremendous value and significance attached to mystical experiences. He said:
‘All experiences must be questioned, whether your own or of another. Experience is the continuation of a bundle of memories, which translates the response to a challenge according to its conditioning. That is, experience is, is it not, to respond to a challenge, and that experience can only respond according to its background. If you are a Hindu, or a Muslim, or a Christian, you are conditioned by your culture, by your religion, and that background projects every form of experience. So we must question, doubt . . . especially the so-called religious, spiritual experiences . . .’58
A critical consideration of reports of mystical experiences (often given by mystics themselves) should, in the light of what JK and UG have said, reveal that these experiences are basically projections of one’s own mind, that they are all invariably culturally conditioned or ‘thought induced’. Such experiences are not necessarily ‘liberating’, as is generally made out; on the contrary, they could be imprisoning in the sense that the interpretations of these experiences often reinforce religious authority and thereby block a genuine search for truth and freedom. Interestingly, recent studies on mysticism 59 show in clear and unambiguous terms that all mystical experiences are conditioned responses, although these studies, unlike JK or UG, do not reject the spiritual value attached to such experiences.
Generally, mystics are seen as great religious rebels on the one hand, and on the other as embodiments of true and genuine spiritual search and experience as prescribed by the scriptures. They are seen as rebels when they appear to undermine the spiritual authority of orthodoxy and place their own experience above the doctrines of religious institutions. Over the centuries, particularly in Christianity and Islam, when the experiences and teachings of mystics were seen as too radical a challenge to the established spiritual authority, they were excommunicated or even put to death. However, a critical examination of the lives of mystics reveals that they were most often rather conservative than radical.
All experiences, whether ordinary and mundane or artistic and mystical, are dependent upon or informed by the history, culture and tradition in which a person functions. In other words, it is romanticism to think that a mystic is independent of the culture and religious traditions within which he lives. His or her experiences are no more unmediated than the experiences of a person who goes to a temple or watches a game of soccer. This might seem like an extreme position, a trivialization of mystical experience; it is not.
In deconstructing the character of mysticism, Steven T. Katz writes: ‘. . . there are no pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences. Neither mystical experience nor a more ordinary form of experience gives 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. Yet this constitutive epistemic element has been overlooked or underplayed by every investigator of our subject. 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 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.’60
To be more specific, orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims do not seek union with God, because losing one’s identity and becoming one with the ‘cosmic ground’ is a deadly heresy in these teachings.61 Hence, a Christian mystic does not experience neutral something or nothingness, or Brahman; he or she experiences Jesus, the Trinity, Christ, or the Godhead. Similarly, a Hindu experiences the Higher Self, atman, Brahman, unlike a Buddhist who experiences sunyata. Since in Islam it is blasphemous to visualize God in human form, a Sufi would experience God as Light, as the Mystery of mysteries, as the Spirit of spirits, in contradistinction to, say, a Christian mystic who would see Jesus as the Christ. A Muslim would respect Jesus as a prophet, but never see Jesus as the Christ.
It is not as if mystical experiences are predetermined, but they are conditioned by one’s past. For that is the character of religious experience, it is Koranized, Christianized or Hinduized, depending upon one’s allegiance and training. A person exposed to, say, both Christianity and Hinduism might see or experience Christ in Krishna and Krishna in Christ, but that would only indicate another kind of affiliation. The same may be said about Zen, considered so mind-boggling, and subversive. For Zen too is a tradition, dependent and constructed upon the paradox of the koan. The paradox of the ‘sound of one hand clapping’ is seen as essential to satori, illumination. It is a sophisticated method which uses a different language and technique compared to other conventional discourses, in order to shape and produce ‘the ultimately translinguistic character of Zen mystical experience’.62
The stories of mystics, their mystical experiences and their languages, therefore, only express different mystical worlds, different cosmologies, which are influenced and shaped by the scriptures and the experiences of the ‘founders’ of religions, which are internalized, taken as ultimate models to be followed and imitated. To put it differently, all religious experiences are only recreations and reenactments of experiences that are already there, which is the past. And these mystical experiences, which are shaped by the past, in turn, further strengthen that very past.
Steven T. Katz expresses this fact cogently: ‘Though Christian mystics will adopt St Paul’s language and speak of being “born again in Christ”, of “suffering with Christ”, of “dying with Christ”, of “rising with Christ”, transforming these incidents into existential experiences, this interiorizing, this contemporizing, this mystical mimetic re-enactment is possible only because of the dominant belief that there was a historic Jesus who was born of a Virgin by God, that this Jesus did suffer the torments of Good Friday described by the synoptic authors, that Jesus did die only to be resurrected in the body on Easter Sunday, and that this Jesus ascended to Heaven to co-rule the world with the other Persons of the Trinity.’
There should be no doubt whatsoever of the significant role these great religious models play in all religious as well as mystical experiences. Just as Christ becomes a supreme model for Christian mystics, so do the religious-mystical models of the Buddha, Krishna and Mohammad for other mystics. Therefore, ‘in sum,’ Katz argues, ‘our deconstruction and re-conceptualization suggests that models play an important role in providing our map of reality and of what is real and, thus, contribute heavily to the creation of experience—I repeat, to the creation of experience. This is a fact to be pondered, and pondered again.’63
Indeed, when we ponder deeply, we realize that there is something truly extraordinary about thought, and the power of thought is such that it can create almost anything, even solid objects, and touch it, feel it, experience it as something very real. To use UG’s words, these experiences are all ‘thought-induced’, God, bliss, and beatitude being the most profound of its inventions. And these experiences, created by thought, further strengthen thought, which is knowledge. It is a vicious circle, like a dog chasing its own tail, going round and round and round! ‘Whatever you experience,’ asserts UG, ‘peace, bliss, silence, beatitude, ecstasy, joy, God knows what—will be old, second-hand. You already have knowledge about all of these things. The fact that you are in a blissful state or in a state of tremendous silence means that you know about it. You must know a thing in order to experience it. That knowledge is nothing marvellous or metaphysical; ‘bench’, ‘bag’, ‘red bag’, is the knowledge. Knowledge is something which is put into you by somebody else, and he got that from somebody else; it is not yours. Can you experience a simple thing like that bench that is sitting across from you? No, you only experience the knowledge you have about it. And the knowledge has come from some outside agency, always. You think the thoughts of your society, feel the feelings of your society and experience the experiences of your society; there is no new experience.’
Surely it would be difficult for religious scholars or mystics, to accept what Katz says and UG asserts. Still, one might ask: Is there really nothing to mystical experiences? How does one then understand the lives of mystics whose lives have been transformed after whatever they have experienced? And how do we account for the tremendous influence mystics have had on the religious consciousness of people?
These are tricky questions. Nevertheless, to say that mystical experiences are culturally conditioned or thought-induced does not necessarily mean there is no significance whatsoever to these experiences. However, we need to point out that these experiences are still in the field of duality. A mystic might experience something beyond his or her ordinary sense of time and space, and bring home a sense of wonder and mystery, but it is actually not outside of time and space, or his or her cultural background.
While mystical experiences can be liberating to the extent that they help one to break out of the tyranny of religious or scriptural authority, most often this is not the case. More often than not, a mystic falls under the illusion that he or she has come upon the ultimate truth and becomes yet another authority, another ‘model’ to be imposed on others.
UG responds to this tricky issue thus: ‘The saint or mystic is a second-hand man who experiences what the sages have talked about, so he is still in the field of duality, whereas the sages or seers are functioning in the undivided state of consciousness. The mystic experience is an extraordinary one because it is not an intellectual experience; it helps them to look at things differently, to feel differently, to experience things differently and to interpret the statements of the sages and seers for others.
‘The world should be grateful to the saints rather than to the sages. Had it not been for the saints, the sages would have been clean forgotten long ago. The sages don’t depend upon any authority; what they say is the authority. This the sages talked about, and the saints—some of them—had experiences, and this became a part of their experience. They tried to share that (experience) through music and all kinds of things. But this is not an experience which can be shared with somebody else; this is not an experience at all.’
We are grateful to the saints and mystics who share their experiences and kick us into questioning all our assumptions and keep alive that great yearning for freedom. But, like UG, we cannot also help but be critical of those saints, mystics, and religious leaders who exercise great spiritual authority, who not only interpret the sages and the scriptures in exclusive and dogmatic ways, but also give people the impression that they have arrived at a final understanding of everything and become autocratic gurus. A wise saint or mystic, however, would see through this mischief of the mind, this power politics of the mind, and would move on. For he or she would know that mystical experience, contrary to the popular understanding that it is something transcendental, holy and liberating, could well-nigh be imprisoning. And so, he or she would refuse to privilege his or her experience, and refuse to convert that into a teaching.