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Alasdair MacIntyre, Dustin DiPerna, Ken Wilber, Mark Schmanko, modernism, modernity, mystical experience, Robert Sharf, Romanticism, Wilhelm Halbfass
I have not yet had a chance to hear a response from Dustin DiPerna on my post replying to his. However, his friend Mark Schmanko emailed me a response which I found utterly fascinating – one which takes up the arguments of my article as well. (I am posting these remarks with Mark’s permission.)
I had argued, following current work in religious studies like that of Robert Sharf and Wilhelm Halbfass, that replicable mystical experience is more of a modern construction than we make it out to be, certainly not something at the core of premodern traditions. The conclusion in my article argued that, if my claims were true, a Wilberian could take two legitimate options: either rethink Wilber’s model heavily so as to incorporate the non-mystical elements of traditions, or “bite the bullet” and admit that it is accepting only the mystical elements and not other elements that would be closer to the tradition’s cores.
The latter strategy would continue in the increasingly modernist direction that Wilber’s thought has taken in recent years. Whereas the first stage of Wilber’s thought (“Wilber-1”) had been Romantic and anti-modernist, the middle stages of his thought had tried to harmonize mysticism and modernism, through a developmental scale where a human’s full development replicated social development from prehistory to modernity – and then went up past modernity to mystical levels of achievement. In the most recent stage (“Wilber-5”), spiritual development becomes only one line of human development, separate from all the others (and relegated, as far as I can tell, to one half of one of the four quadrants of human consciousness). So the “bullet biting” would keep up this direction – continue to take a more modern direction that makes room for mystical experience, but admitting that the essentials of many premodern traditions have been jettisoned.
Mark Schmanko’s reply takes up something like this approach, but with an ingenious additional move. Schmanko takes full account of the critiques of Sharf and Halbfass, and incorporates them into a revised Wilberian worldview:
The way I am approaching the topic of state-stages and structure-stages is to posit states of consciousness as primarily a modern construction and powerful kind of experience that we need to objectify self-consciously in light of transparent considerations of our own ontological status and ways of being religious and human. One way of framing this approach is with the category of mysticism, which serves as a hermeneutic and experiential register that, as it were, allows us to objectify reflexively a range of (profound) mystical-type experiences, many of which expand our sense of identity or self-understanding…
As I understand it, Mark fully agrees that the category of mystical experience and the idea of its primacy are modern – and then urges us to embrace them as modern concepts, as part of the very progress that is modernity. I think this revision is much more logically viable, given the historical evidence, than Wilber’s work to date; it would make for a worthy Wilber-6 stage.
It does come with its own problems, however. Most notably, a great part of the rhetorical appeal of Wilber’s work was the ability to include everything: the claim that, in some respect, “Everybody is right.” Once we accept mystical experience as central to our modern traditions but not necessarily to the premodern traditions themselves, we no longer can claim that we have incorporated all the traditions into our synthesis – just those parts, often small parts, which can now be described as mystical experience.
The thing is, there still remains significant reason to learn from more of the traditions than just mystical experience. Especially, while much has been gained with modernity, much has also been lost. Wilber, in Integral Spirituality and elsewhere, seems to think that mystical experience was the only important thing lost. But that just isn’t the case. Wilber misses the truth in modern Romanticism and its nostalgia for what is lost from modernity. It is that Romantic movement and its heirs, I think, that basically create the idea of mystical experience in the first place – but that is not all that they create, nor is it at their core.
I’ve explored this point already with reference to the ideas of the Romantic Alasdair MacIntyre, who, I think more than anyone, sees the truths that Wilber misses. MacIntyre’s ideas are interesting in that they are post/modern, and self-consciously so in at least some respects: he says the truth about ethics must be found within a tradition, whereas the premodern traditions he looks back to would always have said it must be found within this tradition (Christianity, Buddhism, etc.). In that respect I think what MacIntyre does with ethics is comparable to what Schmanko talks about doing with mystical experience. The thing is that, as far as I can tell, Wilber has absolutely zero awareness of the things premodern traditions bring to the table in ethics (unlike in the realm of mystical experience). The same could be said about Wilber’s favourite dirty word, “metaphysics”.
I want to thank Mark for giving me a chance to explore these points in more detail, which I didn’t have a chance to do in my article. I noted in the article that, based on my historical critique, a Wilberian could take two ways forward: one a modernist “bullet biting” of the sort that I think Mark does and does well, and the other a more thorough revision that disposes of much of Wilber’s recent “models” in favour of a more dialectical approach. In the article I noted I preferred the second of these approaches. Here, I’ve got more of a chance to explain why.
1. It’s high time that “constructionist” talk is unmasked.
What does it mean to say that mysticism and its primacy is a “modern construction”?
It seems to mean that “talking heads” started talking about it only in the modern period and that neither mysticism nor its primacy was recognized prior to the modern period.
Is this true?
Well, before we can address that, we need to rewind a bit and consider what is meant by “mysticism” and what it means to accord it “primacy”.
It is incontrovertible that “mysticism”, at the very least, pertains to (alleged) experiences or perceptions of the supernatural, inclusive of (alleged) perceptions of supernatural transfiguration of the constituents of the natural order and/or perceptions of supernatural interventions in that order.
As I pointed out on a previous occasion, nothing of substance is added to this characterization of mysticism by invoking the bogus notion of “states of consciousness”. It adds nothing to what is signified by “perception” and “experience” in this context.
Now, given the preceding characterization of mysticism, what does it mean to accord it “primacy”?
Surely, it would be blatantly false to suggest that mysticism is the only important thing in religious traditions.
Mystical experiences have behavioral results. They alter how a person behaves. So, behaviors or actions, including ritualistic behavior or action, enters the picture. Of course, ethical behavior, behavioral expressions of “universal love”, “unity consciousness” and so on, also enter the picture as the likely results of mystical experiences.
Mystical experiences are often expressed in terms of art, notably in terms of song or poetry, and, in some traditions, in the form of calligraphic representations, and so forth. So, some forms of art, in the respective religious traditions, also enter the picture.
Thus, even if we accord “primacy” to mystical experience, then, in the very nature of that experience, we are also bringing other important elements of the religious tradition into the picture.
Therefore, it is a non sequitur to conclude from the fact that mysticism has been accorded primacy that the proponent neglected to consider other elements in the religious tradition.
2. Let’s go back to our central issue: is it plausible to claim that mysticism and its primacy is a “modern construct”?
Consider, in this context, the “primacy” of soteriology.
Could we plausibly deny that soteriology has primacy in all religious traditions?
I don’t think so. Ethics and rituals cannot be understood independently of the soteriology in a religious tradition. In fact, ethics and rituals are regarded as a means to soteriology.
Now, what does the soteriology of a religious tradition depend on?
Certainly, it is supernaturalism, e.g., beliefs concerning God, Yahweh, Allah, Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, Nirvana, Brahman, Atman, Afterlife, Heaven and Hell, Reincarnation, etc!
Now, is there even one example of a religious tradition in which, historically, the link between its soteriology and supernaturalism was not forged in terms of the appeal to mystical experiences of the founder and/or key figures in that religious tradition?
It follows from the fact that (the appeal to)mystical experience is the link between the soteriology of a religious tradition and its supernaturalist core that it is patently false that mysticism and its primacy is a “modern construction”.
Even a cursory look at the “primacy” accorded to mystics and mystical literature (literature pertaining to the supernatural and the soteriology based on it) in the history of the major religious traditions should suffice to dismiss the notion that mysticism and its importance was a “modern construction”.
It would be unreasonable to deny that the Gita is manual of soteriology in which mysticism plays a central role.
Now, consider the importance of the Bhagavad Gita in the Hindu tradition. This is also evident from the fact that Sankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva offered their commentaries on it.
This fact is evidence against the claim that prior to the modern period, mysticism and its primacy was not recognized.
Consider Buddhism.
Could any of its traditions exist without the recognition of the goal of Nirvana or enlightenment?
And is there any Buddhist tradition which has not recognized and appealed, directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly, to the Buddha’s mystical experience of enlightenment?
In light of this, ought we not to consider the claim that mystical experience and its primacy is a “modern construction” wildly implausible?