The Pentecostal movement has a prominent place for
mystical experiences in the life of the Church.
This time, the cycle was broken by an event that Johnson describes as
a mystical experience in which God broke through and asked, «Why are you fighting me?»
He includes his own
mystical experience in his analysis.
Aldous Huxley once observed that there ought to be a way to talk about
mystical experience in terms of biochemistry, psychology and theology.
Casa Selva is a state - of - the - art, sustainable eco-luxury home that offers
a mystical experience in the heart of the Mexican jungle.
The centrepiece of the exhibition invites the visitor into
a mystical experience in which the word itself is the work of art that transforms understanding through an initiatory process.
Not exact matches
As with the
mystical tradition
in general, the danger is that the Pentecostal
mystical experience becomes a mere escape from the world rather than a preparation for a purposeful reinsertion into the world.
My friend wasn't there, and I shared my testimony (which includes the dream the Lord gave me) with another man, who unknown to me, whispered
in the ear of the new pastor that I was talking about a «
mystical experience.»
The modern shift of the discussion of God from cosmology to metaphysics,
mystical experience, morality, and supra - rational grounds itself reflects developments
in scientific cosmology.
Among Christians this may occur
in discussion between mystics and those who have had no
mystical experience.
Such names as these bring us to the
mystical «union of the soul with God,» as this supreme
experience in prayer has been described.
On the face of it the passage is a
mystical experience; but the way Alyosha got to it was by way of Father Zossima's putrefying body: he had to go through that
experience of radical dissociation, accept it and take it with him, an
experience fully described
in the earlier part of Book VII,
in order to come to the insight that «the silence of earth seemed to melt into the silence of the heavens.»
What I
experience as I stand
in face of — and
in the very depths of — this world which your flesh has assimilated, this world which has become your flesh, my God, is not the absorption of the monist who yearns to be dissolved into the unity of things, nor the emotion felt by the pagan as he lies prostrate before a tangible divinity, nor yet the passive self - abandonment of the quietist tossed hither and thither at the mercy of
mystical impulsions.
The stress on action over against teaching (the kerygmatic tradition) and religious
experience (the
mystical tradition) is significant, for it ties
in directly with the way of the parables.
The New Testament never speaks of the training of the soul
in mystical experience or of ecstasy as the culmination of the Christian life.
On the way he uncovers some treasures which have been underused
in criticism, such as Tolkien's description of a
mystical experience he had while attending a Forty Hours devotion, an
experience that fed into his vision of angels and subsequent characterisation of the Elvish
in LOTR.
That original Islam is only hinted at
in the Qur» an and the Hadith, which were written years after the prophet Mohammed had his
mystical experience — just as the original precepts of Christianity are minimized and only obliquely presented
in the New Testament and its «authorized» translations, interpretations and commentaries, which were written over many years, well after Jesus» ministry and Paul's
mystical experience.
They had inculcated a deep sense of sin and a conscious need of personal salvation; they had overpassed national and racial lines and had made religious faith a matter of individual conviction; they had emphasized faith
in immortality and the need of assurance concerning it; they had bound their devotees together
in mystical societies of brethren fired with propagandist zeal; and they had accentuated the interior nature of religious
experience in terms of an, indwelling Presence, through whom human life could be «deicized.»
Rather they emphasize the
experience of
mystical illumination and seek
in their religious action to overcome all dualisms and find unity with nature and the universe.
This is not to say we are made to have some
mystical experience of certainty, but that through the ministry of the Holy Spirit we are made to taste the reality
in our own life and times - of God's goodness and love manifest
in Jesus Christ.
The longing to belong
in some ultimate sense, to feel an at - homeness
in the universe is satisfied for many
in worship which reawakens the awareness of «the
mystical unity which underlies all human life» (Cyril Richardson) This
experience is energizing, feeding, and healing; it overcomes the sense of cosmic loneliness, the feeling expressed by a mental hospital patient: «I'm an orphan
in the universe.»
More precisely, from a Whiteheadian standpoint, we should say that, if God is loving, then we all feel this, at some level, all the time, so that the only extraordinary feature of
mystical experiences is that
in them this feeling of the holy rises to the level of conscious awareness.
, That Rylaarsdam's criticism is
in part, at least, based on a misunderstanding of Buber's position and a difference
in Rylaarsdam's own a priori assumptions is shown by his further statements that «Because of his individual and personal emphasis the notion of an objective revelation of God
in nature and history involving the whole community of Israel
in the real event of the Exodus does not fit well for him,» that Buber's view of revelation is «essentially
mystical and nonhistorical,» and that «the realistic disclosure of Yahweh as the Lord of nature and of history recedes into the background because of an overconcern with the
experience of personal relation» — criticisms which are all far wide of the mark, as is shown by the present chapter.)
Or you have heard it presented like this: To be a Christian you must have
mystical experiences — and then a picture has been drawn of inward tumults miraculously stilled, of upheavals like a storm
in summer coming to a sunset all peace and glory, so that, not having attained to such
experiences or having found them elusive and fleeting, you have cried once more, I can not.
Many converts are attracted by Orthodoxy's emphasis on
mystical experience as opposed to the perceived preoccupation
in Protestantism on the rational aspect of the Christian faith.
The
mystical tradition, with which I have great sympathy and about which I have written
in the companion volume What can we Learn from Hinduism, unites believers beyond the differences of doctrines and ritual and stresses the longing to
experience the presence of God.
It seems the world is made up of: — persons who enter a
mystical state and
experience oneness and tranquility — persons who have adverse reactions as their minds dissociate resulting
in their
experiencing psychotic symptoms and psychic phenomena
May I emphasize the fact that the elements and functions coming from the superconscious, such as aesthetic, ethical, religious
experiences, intuition, inspiration, states of
mystical conscious - ness, are factual, are real
in the pragmatic sense... producing changes both
in the inner and the outer world.
Ninian Smart has shown that although Western religious traditions have been predominantly numinous and Eastern traditions predominantly
mystical, all the major world religions have
in fact included both types of
experience.18 Early Israel gave priority to the numinous; biblical literature portrays the overwhelming sense of encounter, the prophetic
experience of the holy as personal, the acknowledgment of the gulf between the worshipper and the object of worship.
The second type of
experience,
mystical union, also seems to have common characteristics, or at least «family resemblances»,
in cultures which had almost no historical interaction.
With that said, I think they do want the general belief
in God, a general sense that goodness orders the universe, that love and peace and joy are all good things, that human rights actually matter, and that we can
experience some sort of
mystical communion with God / the universe / whatever through spirituality.
But this fusion of horizons can take place not by a poetic divination into the language of the text, nor by a
mystical identification with the preconceptual
experience of the author of the text, but by the breaking
in of the Word of God from the Beyond into our limited horizons and the remolding of them,
in some cases even the overthrowing of them.
During my 30 years as a Mormon, I sincerely believed that
mystical «spiritual
experiences» aligned me with my heavenly Father, Jesus and the Holy Ghost (I believed
in three separate gods, but no Trinity)
in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter - day Saints (LDS).
But
in the great age of prophecy, the eighth to sixth centuries, physical rneans seem to have been abandoned, and the whole ecstatic phenomenon was sublimated toward quieter
mystical experiences induced by deep meditation.
The essence of the New Testament lay
in the religious life it portrayed; its high - watermark was the
experience of
mystical union with Christ,
in whom God took symbolic form.
Personal religious
experience has its root and centre
in mystical states of consciousness.
Explores playfully the
mystical ecstasies that can be
experienced in nature, the arts, friendship, sexuality, sports, and thinking.
I doubt that Orthodox faith communities are any easier to abide
in than Catholic or Protestant communities when it comes to the mundane
experiences of life; but at least those of us with
mystical tendencies would not be attacked for being «pietistic» as we so often are
in most Protestant, even many Catholic, excesssively rationalistic and legalistic Latin / Western Churches.
This level of hermeneutics is open to
mystical experiences and intuitions, as Raimon Panikkar has brought to the fore again and again, while it can also be found
in Boff.
The
experience of the first rite of passage for the women clergy I have talked with varies from the male
experience in the following ways: The young woman is likely to have a similar inner
experience of a
mystical «call,» or
in some other way feel led to make a conscious decision to train for the ministry.
Panikkar's lifelong effort is to call people, with human words that will always remain frail, to the encounter of religions
in that depth, grounded
in mystical experience; to invite them to a conversion towards the Cosmotheandric Reality.
It does not only imply discourse but rather is a sharing and communicating of
mystical experience.41 Applying a metaphor of space, this sharing and communication happens
in the deep.
It helps to satisfy his need for
experiences in which he transcends his finitude and receives
mystical life.
That's not surprising, because as William James pointed out
in «The Varieties of Religious
Experience», two of the defining qualities of mystical experience are noetic quality and ine
Experience», two of the defining qualities of
mystical experience are noetic quality and ine
experience are noetic quality and ineffability.
That poem also describes a 1980
mystical experience: «I saw / that I was a speck of light
in the great / river of light that undulates through time.»
My faith was rooted
in spiritual or
mystical experience.
As
in the narratives of Jesus» baptism (Mk 1:10 - 11 and parallels), his words here may refer to a
mystical experience, or they may express symbolically his certainty of Satan's downfall.
Meanwhile here is the abridged record of another
mystical or semi-
mystical experience,
in a mind evidently framed by nature for ardent piety.
The
mystical and the charismatic, although very different
in their outer manifestations, have a similar emphasis on
experience of the Spirit of God.
It is here,
in other words, that one becomes aware of the
mystical in its most unencumbered form — not as something uncannily «other» to ordinary
experience, but rather as something interwoven into all
experiencing.