LANGUAGE AND THE INTERPRETATION
OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE
Students of mystical experience need to have only a cursory acquaintance with the literature surrounding the subject in order to realize the prevalence of the view that through all times and all cultures mystical experiences have somehow been the same. Despite the evident differences in descriptions of mystical experiences, it is maintained that the experience itself is the same and the differences are produced by divergent interpretations of the experience. The view is congenial both to those who wish to maintain the objective validity of a particular description of mystical experience as well as to those who offer a naturalistic explanation of such experiences. 1 Irt this essay I wish to argue against this prevalent opinion and in so doing to lend support to those few scholars, such as R. C. Zaehner and Rudolph Otto, who have resisted the assertion that all mystical experiences are essentially the same. ~ At the outset it is necessary to have some general model of experience in order to discuss mystical experience in particular; however, it is not possible in the present context to develop such a model fully. An attempt will be made to sketch a model which seems likely to be somewhat widely accepted by philosophers and psychologists.
The main premiss of the model is that experience is a product of 1 With necessary qualifications the former includes such authors as W. T. Stace, Ninian Smart and Evelyn Underhill; the latter such authors as Prince and Savage, Caldwell and William James.
2 I should add that I do not agree with Zaehner's contention in Mysticism : Sacred and Profane (Oxford, 1957) that a theistic experience could not be drug induced; however, empirical research as reported by such people as Masters and Houston in Varieties of Psychedelic Experience (New York, i966 ) has shown that the drug itself serves primarily as a trigger and without the proper set or conceptual framework on the part of the subject such an experience would not occur. It is somewhat misleading to refer to the Marsh Chapel experiment as evidence that drugs can produce mystical experiences as all the subjects in that experiment were theology students. Zaehner's thesis was an overreaction to exaggerated claims that psychedelics in themselves could produce mystical experiences.