[Buddha-l] RE: Article of possible interest--correction

[curt]

Joy Vriens wrote:

> In Les grands mystiques chrétiens, Delacroix studies "primary sources", i.e. autobiographic material written by the great Christian mystics themselves. Generally speaking, his explanation for the mystical experiences is that the mystics in questions work in a general framework, which is the belief system of their religion. Their mind, subconscious, is continuously impregnated through meditation, prayer, ascetism and other imagery. At one point, when their mind is passive, not active, it all bubbles (back) up spontaneously mixed in with other subconscious material. I am not saying that there is no kamma, and past lives etc. (but don't tempt me ;-)), but have you considered the possibility of something along the lines of Delacroix's theory? 
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The essential element here is the "other subconscious material" that 
"bubbles up". While it is true that some sort of "framework" does seem 
to always be involved in mystical experiences, there are two crucial 
reasons for believing that there is also something else at work - in 
addition to simply "validating" (psychologically/emotionally) a 
pre-existing spiritual framework:
(1) The already mentioned fact that "other subconscious material" gets 
mixed with the pre-existing framework. In this way the mystical 
experience becomes a method for bringing subconscious material into the 
conscious mind - which, if you go for that sort of thing, is much more 
significant than simply reinforcing ones pre-existing "beliefs".
(2) Mystical experiences not only reinforce already existing spiritual 
frameworks - they also provide raw material for new frameworks. 
Sometimes these new frameworks are simply incremental modifications of 
what was already there - but they might also lead to significantly new 
"frameworks" (although, at least in my opinion, that often turns out, in 
actual practice, to be a bad idea).

Delacroix's explanation of mystical experiences, in my opinion, is quite 
useful as long as one avoids using the words "just" and "only". Jung was 
insistent that psychological explanations of spiritual phenomena were 
grossly misrepresented whenever the words "just" or "only" were placed 
in front of the word "psychological".

- Curt