Skip to main content
Log in

Is mystical experience everywhere the same?

  • Published:
Sophia Aims and scope Submit manuscript

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

References

  1. Steven T. Katz, ‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism’ inMysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. by S. Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22–74.

    Google Scholar 

  2. Walter T. Stace,Mysticism and Philosophy (Philadelphia: J. B. Lipincott, 1960), p.31.

    Google Scholar 

  3. R.C. Zaehner,Mysticism: Sacred and Profane (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), P.28, 168, 151.

    Google Scholar 

  4. Ninian Smart, ‘Interpretation and Mystical Experience’,Religious Studies’ October, 1965), 81.

  5. William J. Wainwright, ‘Interpretation, Description, and Mystical Consciousness’,Journal of the American Academy of Religion XLV (September, 177), 1004.

  6. Katz, ‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism’,, pp.30.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bruce Garside, ‘Language and the Interpretation of Mystical Experiences’,International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 111 (Summer, 1972), 99.

    Google Scholar 

  8. For those who eschew negative definitions, it need only be pointed out that some terms are simply, negative in meaning, ‘reality’ and its variants following exactly the same pattern as ‘consciousness’ and its variants. As J. L. Austin has shown in ‘Other Minds’ (see pp. 54–57 of Austin’sPhilosophical Papers), to say of any x that x is real is to deny, depending on the situation, that it is stuffed, a dummy, an hallucination, and so forth.

  9. A. J. Ayer makes this claim inLanguage, Truth and Logic see pp.90–94), though he later repudiates it (in, for example,The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge.)

  10. This claim is to be found, in a somewhat implicit form, in J. L. Austin’s ‘Other Minds’ (see pp. 58–65 ofPhilosophical Papers).

  11. From Sermon 22. See Walter T. Stace,The Teachings of the Mystics (New York: New American Library, 1960), p.157.

    Google Scholar 

  12. Agehananda Bharati,The Light at the Center: Context and Pretext of Modern Mysticism’ (Santa Barbara: Ross Erikson, 1976), p.48.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Kessler, G.E., Prigge, N. Is mystical experience everywhere the same?. SOPH 21, 39–55 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02782685

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02782685

Keywords

Navigation