MisiuOni
2006-08-12, 18:13
I had to write this for a class - thought I'd post it here:
When looking at the mystical experiences of organized religions, there always is some hint of madness. Many bouts of madness can be seen to have qualities that similar to a mystic experience. But to what extent is the mystical experience comparable to an experience of madness, and to what extent are they different? The term madness, can be taken in different ways depending on the context it is used; specifically in the works of Rumi, Zaehner, De Certeau, and Staal.
Rumi takes us through the following path: the speaker searches for the truth, grows through love to abandon the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the end of his mystic experience. Within his first few lines, Rumi explains to us what he is searching: "Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?" Here we see what many of us would call the beginnings of madness – Rumi is questions his existence. When he asks where he comes from, he realizes where he is now, who he is now, but he realizes that he has a past and a purpose. Through this past, he will be able to discern his purpose. This is his searching of the truth. He cannot trust himself as he is now, because he is "drunk" with his proverbial wine. His current view of the world is skewed by his wine, and does not reveal reality to him.
In the next section, he tells us "Quit acting like a wolf, and feel/the shepherd's love filling you./At night, your beloved wanders./Don't accept consolations./Close your mouth against food./ Taste the lover's mouth in yours." Here, he encourages the reader to enjoy the totality of love, through having a lover, arguing with a lover, and having the senses filled with the lover.
After the denial of love ("You moan, 'She left me,' 'He left me."/Twenty more will come."), he tells us to simply let go ("Be empty of worrying,/…Why do you stay in prison/when the door is so wide open?/Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.") and be. No longer should the reader worry; no longer should the reader adhere to the social customs which might make him an outcast were the rest of his society to find out.
Suddenly he realizes the truth: "Don't wait till you die to see this,/Recognize that your imagination and your thinking/and your sense perception are reed canes/that children cut and pretend are horses." Here he realizes that his words will be interpreted by the people who don't understand what he means to being with. To realize the truth, he admits madness because any who attempt to learn what he taught will ultimately take what they want and play with it. And with this revelation, his mystic experience ends and begins anew. His true madness comes from the frenzy that erupts through his cyclical experiences in which his revelations continue to tell him what his words will become.
Sometimes, it’s not a question of madness, but irrationality. Staal replaces madness with irrationality, which he defines as “faith to the exclusion of reason,” giving us the example of “the same person who during weekdays cultivates, at least in principle, a certain critical, skeptical, and rational outlook, accepts on Sundays the most awesome irrationalities with blind faith.” According to him, early in Christianity, a priest attempted to rationalize this irrationalism saying the “articles of faith must be right, since no one could have thought up anything so absurd.” As support, the same father presents doctrines such as: credo quia absurdum (“I believe because it is absurd”) and certum est quia impossible est (“It is certain because it is impossible”). This goes to show that, even according to the Church, you must have a bit of blind faith to believe in the Christian God.
Zaehner attempts to define madness through the symptoms of manic-depression documented by Qushayri, or, more specifically the irrationality of depression and the irrationality of mania. Now, Zaehner tells us that Qushayri defines mania and depression as expansion and contraction, respectively.
Qushayri tells us that “the expanded man experiences an expansion great enough to contain (all) creation.” This is clearly irrational, as how can such a tiny vessel contain something greater than itself in size? This is also a mystic experience, because it is the only possible way that such an experience could be had.
Interestingly, Qushayri attributes not just expansion, but also contraction to Allah (God). In Islam, Allah is known as the trickster, and is known to send such things to “sift the wheat from the chaff.” However, both expansion and contraction are both seen as traps sent by Allah to the faithful to keep them on the path.
De Certeau uses his example of the virgin in the monastery, to signify madness. She receives abuse from her sisters, yet says nothing and continues to clean the kitchen and serve her sisters. One day, a holy hermit decides to expose the piety of this woman to her sisters, and ruins the very situation that creates her piety. She ends up leaving the monastery because her sisters will no longer treat her the same.
We see that the very thing which brought about her piety (the abuse she took without any resistance and continued service despite it) was damaged once it was revealed. Until that moment, the virgin had lived through God; she took only what God gave her and lived her life in service to others as Jesus is said to have done. Her supposed madness is that she gave her blind faith to God, and at no time actually responded to the people around her (not even to the hermit who exposed her) but only to God himself. As De Certeau says, when she says “Lord, it may be that she is designating the God from which ‘she has never turned her heart aside.’ In that case, she answers Piteroum [the hermit] even less. She is not addressing him, but the Other. It is probably impossible to speak to a man as to her father . . . With words not her own . . . she addresses God.”
Rumi feels that madness in the form of loss of self-control is essential to the mystic experience. This loss of self-control can be done in different ways, by giving yourself to a lover, or giving yourself to your environment. Zaehner tells us that in manic-depression, the irrationalities that consist of these states make up the madness which we attribute to the mystic experience. Staal posits that it is the absurdity of religion that creates its mysticism. And finally, De Certeau believes it is the situation that causes madness and the revelation of the mystic. The examples of these writers (as well as the examples of they use) seem to lend to a difference in actual madness and simple irrationality. The experiences that have been discussed don’t point to madness, but to irrationality. Madness is not a loss of self-control (as seen in Rumi), or blind obedience (as told by De Certeau), but the inability to the “understand the consequences of one's own actions.” Irrationality, as previously stated by Staal, is “faith to the exclusion of reason” and can be used to define each situation or temperament we have discussed.
When looking at the mystical experiences of organized religions, there always is some hint of madness. Many bouts of madness can be seen to have qualities that similar to a mystic experience. But to what extent is the mystical experience comparable to an experience of madness, and to what extent are they different? The term madness, can be taken in different ways depending on the context it is used; specifically in the works of Rumi, Zaehner, De Certeau, and Staal.
Rumi takes us through the following path: the speaker searches for the truth, grows through love to abandon the ego, finds the truth, and arrives at the end of his mystic experience. Within his first few lines, Rumi explains to us what he is searching: "Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?" Here we see what many of us would call the beginnings of madness – Rumi is questions his existence. When he asks where he comes from, he realizes where he is now, who he is now, but he realizes that he has a past and a purpose. Through this past, he will be able to discern his purpose. This is his searching of the truth. He cannot trust himself as he is now, because he is "drunk" with his proverbial wine. His current view of the world is skewed by his wine, and does not reveal reality to him.
In the next section, he tells us "Quit acting like a wolf, and feel/the shepherd's love filling you./At night, your beloved wanders./Don't accept consolations./Close your mouth against food./ Taste the lover's mouth in yours." Here, he encourages the reader to enjoy the totality of love, through having a lover, arguing with a lover, and having the senses filled with the lover.
After the denial of love ("You moan, 'She left me,' 'He left me."/Twenty more will come."), he tells us to simply let go ("Be empty of worrying,/…Why do you stay in prison/when the door is so wide open?/Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.") and be. No longer should the reader worry; no longer should the reader adhere to the social customs which might make him an outcast were the rest of his society to find out.
Suddenly he realizes the truth: "Don't wait till you die to see this,/Recognize that your imagination and your thinking/and your sense perception are reed canes/that children cut and pretend are horses." Here he realizes that his words will be interpreted by the people who don't understand what he means to being with. To realize the truth, he admits madness because any who attempt to learn what he taught will ultimately take what they want and play with it. And with this revelation, his mystic experience ends and begins anew. His true madness comes from the frenzy that erupts through his cyclical experiences in which his revelations continue to tell him what his words will become.
Sometimes, it’s not a question of madness, but irrationality. Staal replaces madness with irrationality, which he defines as “faith to the exclusion of reason,” giving us the example of “the same person who during weekdays cultivates, at least in principle, a certain critical, skeptical, and rational outlook, accepts on Sundays the most awesome irrationalities with blind faith.” According to him, early in Christianity, a priest attempted to rationalize this irrationalism saying the “articles of faith must be right, since no one could have thought up anything so absurd.” As support, the same father presents doctrines such as: credo quia absurdum (“I believe because it is absurd”) and certum est quia impossible est (“It is certain because it is impossible”). This goes to show that, even according to the Church, you must have a bit of blind faith to believe in the Christian God.
Zaehner attempts to define madness through the symptoms of manic-depression documented by Qushayri, or, more specifically the irrationality of depression and the irrationality of mania. Now, Zaehner tells us that Qushayri defines mania and depression as expansion and contraction, respectively.
Qushayri tells us that “the expanded man experiences an expansion great enough to contain (all) creation.” This is clearly irrational, as how can such a tiny vessel contain something greater than itself in size? This is also a mystic experience, because it is the only possible way that such an experience could be had.
Interestingly, Qushayri attributes not just expansion, but also contraction to Allah (God). In Islam, Allah is known as the trickster, and is known to send such things to “sift the wheat from the chaff.” However, both expansion and contraction are both seen as traps sent by Allah to the faithful to keep them on the path.
De Certeau uses his example of the virgin in the monastery, to signify madness. She receives abuse from her sisters, yet says nothing and continues to clean the kitchen and serve her sisters. One day, a holy hermit decides to expose the piety of this woman to her sisters, and ruins the very situation that creates her piety. She ends up leaving the monastery because her sisters will no longer treat her the same.
We see that the very thing which brought about her piety (the abuse she took without any resistance and continued service despite it) was damaged once it was revealed. Until that moment, the virgin had lived through God; she took only what God gave her and lived her life in service to others as Jesus is said to have done. Her supposed madness is that she gave her blind faith to God, and at no time actually responded to the people around her (not even to the hermit who exposed her) but only to God himself. As De Certeau says, when she says “Lord, it may be that she is designating the God from which ‘she has never turned her heart aside.’ In that case, she answers Piteroum [the hermit] even less. She is not addressing him, but the Other. It is probably impossible to speak to a man as to her father . . . With words not her own . . . she addresses God.”
Rumi feels that madness in the form of loss of self-control is essential to the mystic experience. This loss of self-control can be done in different ways, by giving yourself to a lover, or giving yourself to your environment. Zaehner tells us that in manic-depression, the irrationalities that consist of these states make up the madness which we attribute to the mystic experience. Staal posits that it is the absurdity of religion that creates its mysticism. And finally, De Certeau believes it is the situation that causes madness and the revelation of the mystic. The examples of these writers (as well as the examples of they use) seem to lend to a difference in actual madness and simple irrationality. The experiences that have been discussed don’t point to madness, but to irrationality. Madness is not a loss of self-control (as seen in Rumi), or blind obedience (as told by De Certeau), but the inability to the “understand the consequences of one's own actions.” Irrationality, as previously stated by Staal, is “faith to the exclusion of reason” and can be used to define each situation or temperament we have discussed.