Nevertheless, most people, including most Christians, Jews, and Muslims, do not deliberately and self-consciously undertake the mystic way.
However, even though profound mystical experiences, by definition, involve God's immanence, God's immanence extends far beyond having profound mystical experiences. God's immanence is co-extensive with having human life on this planet. In this view, human death on this planet represents the cessation of God's immanence in each person's life-form on this planet. (For those people who hold the doctrine of an afterlife, death of the human life-form on this planet marks the transition to the afterlife and whatever it may entail.)
As most American adults know, there is a spirited debate in the United States about legalized abortion in the first trimester or possibly later. The debate about legalized abortion in the first trimester explicitly involves raising the question of when distinctively human life begin.
But when we are speaking about distinctively human life beginning, we are, in effect, speaking about the beginning of God's immanence in the life-form.
After God's immanence begins in the life-form, distinctively human life emerges.
God's immanence in the human life-form sustains the remainder of the human life-forms existence on this planet until death.
I find these distinctions fascinating to discuss. But I want to return to the mystic way and discuss profound mystical experiences.
In the book MEETING JESUS AGAIN FOR THE FIRST TIME (1994) and elsewhere, the biblical scholar Marcus J. Borg contends that the historical Jesus had profound mystical experiences that prompted him to undertake his public ministry.
But Borg does not try to explain exactly how the historical Jesus had happened to have profound mystical experiences.
Like Borg, Anthony de Mello, S.J. (1931-1987), sees Jesus as a mystic in his posthumously published book THE WAY TO LOVE (2012; orig. American ed., 1992). But also like Borg, de Mello does not try to explain how Jesus happened to become a mystic.
Nevertheless, it is clear from the information that we do have about the historical Jesus that he set out in his public ministry to announce that God's kingdom is here.
In other words, he interpreted his profound mystical experiences as involving God's immanence.
In theory, because of God's immanence in all human persons (from whatever point God's immanence may begin in the life-form to make it have distinctively human life), all human persons may have profound mystical experiences.
Because the mystic way is part of the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic traditions, I want to turn now to consider people in non-theistic, atheistic, and polytheistic cultural traditions.
In theory, I do not think that people in non-theistic, atheistic, and polytheistic cultural traditions are excluded from having profound mystical experiences of God's immanence.
But what I am here referring to as God's immanence is based on the Christian tradition of thought. However, for understandable reasons, non-theistic, atheistic, and polytheistic cultural traditions may not refer to profound mystical experiences as involving God's immanence.
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