history of the evolution of our perceptions of God, perceptions founded not so much on observations of the god in action as on what we need from God at that moment in our history. The god who stands behind all that is really not very visible at all in those writings. And what we do get is very much an acculturalized version of the God; for Christians a Trinity, for Jews a YHWH, for Muslims an ’Allah, versions that evolve as the cultures evolve.
A new book came on the scene, Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God and I picked it up. Wright is a journalist, a writer, a cultural evolutionist and a devotee of games theory who is widely read with a prodigious grasp. Wright3 begins by looking at god as witnessed in the most primitive societies we can reconstruct, the hunter-gatherer groups of early humans. And he traces the concept of god through the evolution of societies, and finally to monotheism. He then takes on the Hebrew Scriptures through the eyes of historical criticism which begins to date the several threads of those Scriptures (J, E D and P, et al.) glancing at how the political situation at those dates shapes the separate stories which are then woven together into one as though it were a single text, creating a near-chaotic jumble (e.g., Does Noah invite two of each species into the ark, or seven? Both lines are in the final copy of his story). He looks at the several threads in the early Christian writings and their several emphases. And then he looks at Islam in its two phases of Mohammad’s life. Much of his understanding about how religion evolves is built around his understanding of game theory, of zero-sum games vs. non-zero sum games. And the way he puts it together makes sense to me. In the end Wright allows that his own conclusion is to be, not atheistic, but agnostic. Does he believe in God? Probably not in the traditional sense, he allows; but as one who sees culture as evolving, he thinks he detects in that evolution a moral axis built into the created universe. And if we want to call that “God,” that is as close as he can come to believing.
I came away from Wright’s book with an appreciation of his shredding of the Holy Scriptures, a high respect for his notions, and a skepticism about his conclusions. But also to discover with a wide open field who might be the God behind all this.
If the God behind all this can not really be discerned by looking through the several so-very-culturally-defined windows in the several collections of holy writings, then how can the god be discerned, I pondered? Can one find that god for himself? Each of the great religions of the world has had its mystics. Is mysticism the better, the more direct way to god than the holy writings? I have always looked askance at the mystics. Now I opined that with a better look at mysticism perhaps I can learn my way into my own contemplative, mystical experiences, and thereby know god for myself. A copy of Evelyn Underhill’s 1911 book Mysticism: a study in the nature and development of man’s spiritual consciousness had lain on my bookshelf virtually untouched for over two decades. I had several times tried to read from the writings of Julian of Norwich and a very few other Christian mystics, but those attempts had fairly baffled me, and I had always come away with a sticky-sweet (or better, a “sickeningly-sweet”) slightly nauseated feeling, very unenlightened, always disappointed. Those writings are simply incomprehensible to me. So on leaving for a three-week cruise on the coast of Norway, I packed Underhill’s book along with two other unfinished volumes to fill in my idle travel time. After finishing the other two volumes, I began to force my way through Underhill’s book; tough reading. Very understandable, but very difficult reading.
Underhill was of the same era as William James. And her task was similar to his. Underhill would appear to have been a mystic herself, but the task of this book was to codify the mystical experience. Ranging through the history of (primarily) the Christian church, Underhill fretted out the pattern of a mystic’s development. She discerned very specific steps and stages in the evolution of the mystic’s experiences of the divine and laid them out in fair detail with examples of each step from different mystics across the ages. She was very clear from the outset of her book (whether accurately or not) that one does not choose to be or to not be a mystic. You either are, or you are not. That much is immutable, a given, she claims. Some, perhaps only a few, are fated to have deeply mystical experiences, but most of us are not, and cannot. (That revelation belayed my desire to experience the mystical for myself; I have never been a mystic, and therefore, in Underhill’s world and word, I can never become one. No good to pine for it.) Then as I forced my way through her description of the nine successive stages in the development of the mystic’s life I realized that I would not have wanted that life anyhow. It is painful, disorienting, solitary, and indescriptable. I would not have been healthy as a mystic. While a deep introvert who enjoys and very much needs his time alone, I also need some intellectual interaction with others (which is why I seek your company) to keep me on even keel; as a solitary mystic I would easily be tipped toward insanity (i.e., living in my world of pure fantasy). So I am thankful in one sense that the mystical experience is not available to me.
Several conclusions I drew from Underhill’s work are unsettling for me. It seems abundantly clear from her point of view that many, if not most, of the great innovators and motivators of the church have been mystics. The church owes much to them out of their experiences. It seems equally clear that the experiences of the mystics are outside of the rational realm, and are beyond any comprehendible description. The writings and art produced by mystics simply do not make sense to those of us who have not had such experiences ourselves; their verbal or artistic representations are bizarre, and defy any rationality or understanding. So why should we credit them at all? Why not discard them as uninformative and useless? Because those mystics have themselves proved to be very valuable in the life of the church, as inspirers, as motivators and innovators. Through their mystical experiences they become highly energized persons with direction and purpose which spills over onto others around them. Underhill is also clear that mystics’s attempts to communicate the content of their experiences are always shaped by their own (religious) culture; so Christians tend to have experiences around the Trinity and around the life (past and present) of Jesus. Jewish and Islamic mystics likewise tend to have experiences consistent with their religious worlds. So while the content of their experiences might appear to be different, the pattern of their experiences and evolution are surprisingly similar. And in addition Underhill is clear that while the mystical experiences themselves are supra-rational and almost entirely incommunicable, they are very self-authenticating. They cannot be authenticated by rational processes or by any form of outside observation; but they are so very powerful, and so impactful on the life of the mystic her/himself as to be self-authenticating (this is very problematic for me: a schizophrenic’s auditory hallucinations are likewise completely authentic and impactful for that schizophrenic). Lastly, Underhill seems clear that the mystics appear to have two different kinds of experiences of the divine which sound very similar to James’s two kinds of basic religious orientation, the “healthy-mindedness” and the “sick-soul.” While all mystics experience some of both types, some of them are more oriented toward experiences of overwhelming love and inclusion (union), and others sound more oriented toward experiences of emptiness, lostness, and unworthiness (transcendence).
Underhill’s analysis of the mystic’s experience and evolution is a hundred years old now. Nor am I aware of any other analyses that would come to different conclusions about mysticism (though I have not yet actively tried to search those out). But I am still curious. I have asked around, but not yet pursued, whether there are any contemporary, unbiased (not written out of a pro- or anti-religious bias) psychological or psychiatric appraisals of the mystical experience. Are we dealing with a psychiatric abnormality? Or are mystics normal (i.e., psychologically, mentally, spiritually healthy) persons with very abnormal experiences? I have pondered so deeply as to wonder whether the person who has mystical experiences is simply someone blessed (or cursed) with a capacity of memory so powerful that s/he can recall (in contemplation) memories of in utero experiences, memories from before there were sufficient stimuli to create describable memories. That might explain the shape the mystic’s experiences seem invariably to take.
In my frustration with the limits and frailties of Christian thinking, I have taken a couple of very cursory glances at Buddhist writings. Most of those come out to me as a sort of gibberish, utilizing English language to try (but fail) to express ideas very foreign to Western thought
