Defenders of cross-cultural mystical experience are proper to notice that in lots of extensively various cultures, revered sages have referred to the expertise of an final nonduality: a notion that every thing, together with oneself, is in the end one. However one may additionally then rightly ask: which final nonduality?
Nondualism stands out as the world’s most widespread philosophy, however it might probably imply various things – not merely various things elsewhere, however various things within the identical place. Members of the Indian Vedānta custom regularly proclaimed that every thing is “one, and not using a second”, within the phrases of the Upaniṣads they adopted. However they disagreed as to what that meant. Śaṅkara based the Advaita Vedānta custom – a-dvaita actually which means non-dual – which argued that solely the one, final fact (sat, braḥman) was actual, and all multiplicity and plurality was an phantasm. His opponent Rāmānuja agreed that every thing is “one, and not using a second” – however in his Viśiṣṭādvaita (certified nondual) faculty, that meant one thing fairly completely different. All the numerous issues and folks we see round us – what Chinese language metaphysicians referred to as the “ten thousand issues” – are elements of that final one, and they’re actual, not illusory.
I used to be reminded of this level within the nice feedback on my previous post about cross-cultural mysticism. I had cited W.T. Stace as an influential advocate of the view that mysticism is cross-cultural, and famous how Robert Forman’s book defended Stace by pointing to contentless experiences of void, from the Yoga Sūtras to Hasidism, that “blot out” sense perception. Seth Segall made the important point that in Stace’s personal work not all mystical experiences are contentless on this method. Leaving apart the “scorching” or “visionary” experiences (like St. Teresa and the angel) which Stace doesn’t rely as mystical experiences – even amongst what Stace counts as real mystical experiences, he makes a key distinction between introvertive and extrovertive mystical experiences. This isn’t only a distinction between the interpretations utilized to the experiences, however between the experiences themselves. The contentless “Pure Consciousness Occasions” described in Forman’s e book, the place distinctions fade into void, are introvertive; experiences of merging with a unified pure world, like Teresa saying “it was granted to me in a single immediate how all issues are seen and contained in God”, are extrovertive.
And right here’s the place I discover this all actually attention-grabbing: that introvertive/extrovertive distinction, between several types of experiences, corresponds to the metaphysical distinction between Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja! Neither Śaṅkara nor Rāmānuja cites expertise, mystical or in any other case, because the supply of their philosophy. Each declare to be deriving it from the Upaniṣads (and different texts just like the Bhagavad Gītā), and so they every defend their view (of the scriptures and of actuality) with logical arguments. But even so, the excellence Stace noticed in descriptions of mystical experiences seems to correspond fairly intently to the excellence between their philosophies.
In Śaṅkara’s philosophy, as in an introvertive expertise, the numerous issues of the world, together with oneself, all fall away; what stays is the one actuality alone. In Rāmānuja’s philosophy, as in an extrovertive expertise, the issues of the world, together with oneself, stay, however they’re all unified collectively: they proceed to have an actual existence, however as linked members of a bigger unity.
All it is a main caveat for perennialist-leaning concepts: even when you have been to argue that mystical expertise pointed to a cross-culturally acknowledged nondualism, you’d nonetheless should specify which nondualism. The smartass response is to say “all of the nondualisms are one”, however that’s probably not passable, not even to the nondualists themselves. Rāmānuja attacked Śaṅkara’s view, and whereas Śaṅkara lived centuries earlier than Rāmānuja, he attacked different thinkers who had views like Rāmānuja’s.
Some mystically inclined thinkers take a average or intermediate place that compromises between an absolute nondual view and the view of widespread sense or acquired custom. Such was the strategy of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindī, the Indian Sufi who reconciled Sufi experiences of mystical oneness with Qur’anic orthodoxy by proclaiming “not ‘All is Him’ however ‘All is from Him’”. It’s tempting to view Rāmānuja’s strategy to Śaṅkara as comparable, tempering an absolute mysticism with a common sense view of the world as actual: Śaṅkara’s mystical excesses take him method on the market and Rāmānuja pulls him again. However such an strategy doesn’t actually work. It’s flummoxed not solely by the truth that Śaṅkara claimed no mystical grounding for his philosophy, but in addition by the existence of extrovertive mysticism: the numerous who’ve felt an expertise of oneness with the grass and timber wouldn’t have been drawn by that have to Śaṅkara’s view, however on to Rāmānuja’s. (I’ve beforehand prompt that Rāmānuja is certainly moderating Śaṅkara’s general strategy – however with respect to Śaṅkara’s possible autism slightly than to mysticism.)
None of that is meant as a refutation of mystical views of actuality, and even essentially of perennialism. It appears to me that each introvertive and extrovertive experiences are discovered throughout a variety of cultures, typically accompanied by a way of certainty, and are value taking significantly for that cause. However we then have to take each significantly: if the world is one, then are our many differing perceptions illusory or actual? Right here, I feel, it helps that each illusionist and realist types of nondual philosophy – experientially primarily based or in any other case – additionally happen in a number of locations. The debates between them would possibly assist us kind out what actuality – if any – the experiences are pointing to.
