From: coonstot@quads.uchicago.edu (charles orville onstott)
Subject: Re: Mystical Cannons
Keywords: Mystical Cannons
Reply-To: coonstot@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 23:52:34 GMT

In article <Jan.21.12.57.54.1993.18173@ruhets.rutgers.edu> farris@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Lorenzo Farris) writes:
>The point I was making was: there are those that have the idea that
>once could somehow scientifically prove that the mystical experience
>is something other than neurochemicals run amok.
> My premise is that
>while it is indeed possible for any individual who wants it to
>replicate the experience, it is not amenable to scientific study right
>now. 

>
>However, imho, such a person does not *understand* what is going on
>unless they have it. There is a big difference between accepting an
>idea intellectually, and having your actions and attitude be affected
>by that knowledge. There is a big difference between talking the talk
>and walking the walk.

This is meerly the standard disctinction to be made within
most humanistic sciences.  We may know a lot about what
a person with Boarderline Personality Disorder does, how 
she is affected, what the outcomes of the disorder will be,
the difficult road of recovery involved.
Yet, we do not know the experience *per se*.  We do not
really *understand* what it means to have the mind of
a person with BPD, unless we suffer or have suffered from it.  However,
this does not reduce the _scientific_ understanding of the
disorder.  What you are effectively doing is denying 
the possibility of scientific enquiry by means of a 
materialistic understanding of science.(Ie, physics, chemistry,
etc).  Your refutation says nothing about other "soft"-sciences.
In addition, as you may recall, I have already stated that
this sort of scientific evidence would leave the possiblity
of practicing the meditation open whereas otherwise it is
closed to reasonable minds. In other words, by denying the particular
scientific approach that I maintain you undercut the entire project of
discussing it: for, in final analysis, we have no reason to believe that
anything you report, or the canon reports, is but products of a fanciful
imagination that is, although interteresting, a member of the
genre of fiction.  Be careful from trying to free meditation
or other mystical experiences purely from the realm of science;
in so doing you close the possibility of it to reasonable minds.


>
>To paraphrase an idea from zen, all these wonderful statements which
>are based on mystical experiences are the finger pointing at the moon.
>The scholarly investigator tends to stare at the finger.

This is inaccurate: what happens is that the scholarly investigator
stares at the moon without visiting it.

>There is more proof in one
>experience of samadhi than in all the books ever written about it
>stacked up.

  But it is precisely those books, and your reports, that must
be accepted as reasonable evidence, by many, before practicing it.
By maintaining this cut from science, you still undo the canon
and undermine your own reporting of it.  This places
mysticism in a dangerous position as we are now unable,
under your defintion, to say _anything_ at all about it.
So why should we bother? (Any attempt to answer this question,
by your definition, is meaningless.)

>I never thought I'd find myself quibbling with the pro-mystical types
>on this newsgroup.	;-)

Niether did I.

>				Lorenzo

BCnya,
  Charles O. Onstott, III
-- 
Charles O. Onstott, III                         (coonstot@midway.uchicago.edu)
Graduate Student in Religion and the Human Sciences
The University of Chicago Divinity School
        "[T]he problem of history cannot be solved by avoiding it." (B. McGinn)