Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-2pzkn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-02T12:08:54.870Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

An essay in speculative mysticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Herman F. Šuligoj
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Humber College, Toronto

Extract

I entitled the paper ‘An Essay in Speculative Mysticism’ because it undertakes, in the tradition of such ancient and mediaeval mystics as Plotinus, Pseudo-Dionysius, Hugh and Richard of St Victor, Nicholas of Cusa, Ruysbroeck, and Meister Eckhart, to mate psychological introspection with ontological speculation, focusing on the rather fundamental themes of Identity, Alterity, Transcendant Identity, and Illusion. I acknowledge my more recent, general indebtment to the rich reservoir of contemporary research in the area of Transpersonal Psychology, a research amply documented in the journal of Transpersonal Psychology, as well as in the bibliographies, most notably provided among others, in the respective works of Charles Tart, John White, and Ken Wilber. Since Transpersonal Psychology embraces within its attempts at controlled studies such sundries as altered states of consciousness, parapsychological phenomena, yoga, as well as doctrines which skirt the very frontiers of psychology's experimental ingenuity, namely the tenets of G. I. Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, H. P. Blavatsky, Oscar Icazo, John Lilly, Roberto Assagioli, and many others, the rapport between a speculative study in mysticism and the background data supplied by Transpersonal Psychology becomes readily apparent. Furthermore, I accede to any reader's deft detection in my essay of a rather uncommon medley of remnants from Thomism, German Romanticism, British Neo-Hegelianism, Vitalism, and Structuralism. If, at last, I were to be questioned on the methodology of my paper, I would have to respond that it probably resembles most closely the methodology of two French Reflective thinkers, viz., Jean Nabert and Henry Duméry, and the French existential metaphysician, Jean Wahl. Since I owe so much to so many, I simply acknowledge my general indebtedness at the beginning and allow the essay to emerge with its own internal cogency. The paper's rationale should, therefore, emanate from a clear inner coherence of its ideas as these reflect communicable psychological experience and unfold some of the latter's ontological implications.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 469 note 1 Tart, C., Altered States of Consciousness (N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969);Google ScholarTranspersonal Psychologies (N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1975);Google ScholarStates of Consciousness (N.Y.: Dutton, 1975).Google ScholarWhite, J., The Highest State of Consciousness (N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972);Google ScholarFrontiers of Consciousness (N.Y.: Julian Press, 1974);Google ScholarRelax (N.Y.: Confucian Press, 1976).Google ScholarWilber, K., The Spectrum of Consciousness (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical Publishing House, 1977).Google Scholar

page 474 note 1 Assagioli, R., Psychosinthesis (N.Y.: Viking, 1972).Google ScholarDeikman, A. J., ‘Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience’, Psychiatry, xxix (1966), 324–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarGill, M. and Brennan, M., Hypnosis and Related States: Psychoanalytic Studies in Regression (N.Y.: International University Press, 1959).Google Scholar

page 476 note 1 Deikman, A. J.Implications of Experimentally Induced Contemplative Meditation’, J. Nerv. Ment. Dis. cxlii (1966), 101.CrossRefGoogle ScholarLudwig, A. M., ‘Altered States of Consciousness’, Archives of General Psychiatry, vx (1966), 255–235.Google ScholarNaranjo, C. and Ornstein, R., On the Psychology of Meditation (N.Y.: Penguin, 1976 edn).Google Scholar

page 477 note 1 Tart, , States of Consciousness, ch. 7;Google Scholar for further bibliography, especially on Green's, E. research of the hypnagogic state and its relation to biofeedback's theta waves and creativity, see Tart, Altered States of Consciousness, 2nd edn, p. 76.Google Scholar

page 481 note 1 Laing, R. D., ‘Transcendental Experience in Relation to Religion and Psychosis’, Psychedelic Review, vi (1965), 715.Google Scholar