The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Robert K C Forman
57 citations
Abstract From where-or Whom-does mysticism come? What causes it? What gives mysticism its peculiar but fascinating shape? Is mystical experience a source of reliable knowledge? Is mysticism the same around the world, or nearly so? Or does mysticism differ among various traditions, cultures, and ages? The twelve authors of this book are responding to the recent “received view” on such questions,...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Daniel C Matt
48 citations
Abstract There is allure and terror in mystical portrayals of nothingness: Eckhart’s Nichts, John of the Cross’s nada, the Taoist wu, the Buddhist sunyata. Despite appearances, these terms do not express an identical meaning since each mystic names the nameless from within a realm of discourse shaped by his own training, outlook, and language. My aim here is to trace the development of the...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Anthony N Perovich
24 citations
Abstract Although Immanuel Kant was unremittingly hostile in his attitude toward the claims of mystics to have experience of the divine already in this life, a great many philosphers of mysticism have subsequently been attracted to the epistemological scheme of the Critical Philosophy, at least in its general outlines. Kant denied the possibility of genuine mystical experience (as opposed to...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Donald Rothberg
17 citations
Abstract What epistemologies and methodologies help us to understand the phenomena of mysticism? How do these epistemologies and methodologies clarify some aspects of these phenomena while obscuring or occluding other aspects? When we investigate mystical traditions, how and where do we look? Do we look only where we think there is more light to see? In this essay I would like to help open up...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Paul J Griffiths
16 citations
Abstract There has been a good deal of discussion in the philosophical journals recently about the possibility of a special type of consciousness.1 This special kind of consciousness is called, variously, pure consciousness, unmediated consciousness, contentless consciousness, and so forth. Much of the debate has taken place in response to Steven Katz’s attempt to show that such...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Philip C. Almond
9 citations
Abstract In 1983 Steven Katz thusly characterized the methodological dilemma which has come to dominate discussion of mysticism and mystical experience since the publication of his edited collection entitled Mystical Experience and Philosophical Analysis in 1978. My overall aim in this essay is to demonstrate that the philosophical analysis of mysticism is not compelled to adopt either of these...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Stephen Bernhardt
8 citations
Abstract During the summer of 1986 Steven Bernhardt was killed in an automobile accident. The present paper was submitted and accepted at that time, although it was overlong and in a fairly rough form. In order to include it in the present collection, and to ensure that Bernhardt’s contribution did not go unacknowledged, I have substantially revised his paper. While clarifying and condensing, I...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
R L Franklin
6 citations
Abstract Many among an earlier generation of scholars saw in mysticism a distinctive type of experience-a pure or contentless awareness of ultimate reality-which was often made the basis for a “perennial philosophy.’’1 More recently many have distinguished several different types of mystical experience, each tending to recur across different traditions. More recently still has arisen a...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Mark B Woodhouse
6 citations
Abstract Throughout recorded history and across major cultural and religious barriers many persons have claimed to have, had experiences of “pure” consciousness, that is, of a consciousness free of content and intention. Major spiritual traditions are built in significant ways around the existence of these experiences and the desirability of achieving them. Yet many philosophical and scientific...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Christopher Chapple
Abstract From the earliest text of Indian philosophy, the g Veda, comes an image that has profoundly influenced the Upanisads, the formal schools of Saryikhya and Yoga as well as epic and purānic literature. This image is a simple one: two birds in the same tree, one active, the other looking on. The identical passage quoted in the epigraph is repeated in the Mu0cjaka Upani ad (Ill:1: 1) and...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Norman Prigge, Gary E Kessler
Abstract The belief that mystical experience or that some especially important variety thereof is everywhere the same, regardless of the idiosyncracies of the individual mystic or of his or her cultural tradition, has been tacitly presupposed, dogmatically asserted, or explicitly argued for in much scholarly and popular literature on mysticism. All of this notwithstanding, Steven T. Katz, in a...
The Problem of Pure Consciousness
March 29, 1990
Robert K C Forman
Abstract In his presentation of the thesis that all experience is, in part, constructed or mediated by the subject’s conceptual system, Jerry Gill points to the purported intentionality of all experience as a fundamental truth. According to him, all human experience is vectorial in nature. That is to say, “[o)ur consciousness is always consciousness of some concrete aspect of the world, of some...