ABSTRACT
Mystical experiences do not necessarily involve God. A phenomenology of mystical life recognizes mysticism as being both sacred and profane, natural and supernatural (Zaehner 1957; James 1985), where nature (e.g., a forest), science (e.g., an insight), art (e.g., a Mozart string quartet), sickness (e.g., a lesion on the brain), or drugs can give substance to the mystical experience. However, religions – and God – have often played an important role, and will provide the context for discussing mysticism and religious experience in what follows. Religious institutions have tended to give form and shape to mystical experiences, making of extraordinary events and interventions something more structured. Figuring the sacred through the institution helps the religious subject make sense of what might otherwise be compelling but overwhelming. The more structured paths of mysticism within different religions suggest a linear progression, reflected in traditional images of ascent, such as the ascent of Moses up Mount Sinai and the ascent in Plato’s cave (Turner 1996, 11-19). These potent images become problematically articulated within Western and Eastern traditions as the denial of the body, the flesh and the world, with priority given to the mind, the spirit and the logos. These dualisms seem to arise when doctrines become reified. One way to avoid reification is to see the ‘truth’ of mysticism not as some profound insight that the mind can scarcely contain (but with considerable effort might just do so), but as a practice that can always and everywhere be undertaken. This unconventional idea of the immanence of mystical union is paralleled with an understanding of education in which knowledge is immanent to the student who can progress independently, not dependent upon a teacher. In this chapter I want to explore how, as a structural aspect of both religion and education, the concept of progression can stultify and create dependency.
