Defenders of cross-cultural mystical experience are right to note that in many widely varying cultures, respected sages have referred to the experience of an ultimate nonduality: a perception that everything, including oneself, is ultimately one. But one might also then rightly ask: which ultimate nonduality?
Nondualism may be the worldโs most widespread philosophy, but it can mean different things โ not merely different things in different places, but different things in the same place. Members of the Indian Vedฤnta tradition frequently proclaimed that everything is โone, without a secondโ, in the words of the Upaniแนฃads they followed. But they disagreed as to what that meant. ลaแน kara founded the Advaita Vedฤnta tradition โ a-dvaita literally meaning non-dual โ which argued that only the one, ultimate truth (sat, braแธฅman) was real, and all multiplicity and plurality was an illusion. His opponent Rฤmฤnuja agreed that everything is โone, without a secondโ โ but in his Viลiแนฃแนญฤdvaita (qualified nondual) school, that meant something quite different. All the many things and people we see around us โ what Chinese metaphysicians called the โten thousand thingsโ โ are parts of that ultimate one, and they are real, not illusory.
I was reminded of this point in the great comments on my previous post about cross-cultural mysticism. I had cited W.T. Stace as an influential advocate of the view that mysticism is cross-cultural, and noted how Robert Formanโs book defended Stace by pointing to contentless experiences of void, from the Yoga Sลซtras to Hasidism, that โblot outโ sense perception. Seth Segall made the important point that in Staceโs own work not all mystical experiences are contentless in this way. Leaving aside the โhotโ or โvisionaryโ experiences (like St. Teresa and the angel) which Stace does not count as mystical experiences โ even among what Stace counts as genuine mystical experiences, he makes a key distinction between introvertive and extrovertive mystical experiences. This isnโt just a distinction between the interpretations applied to the experiences, but between the experiences themselves. The contentless โPure Consciousness Eventsโ described in Formanโs book, where distinctions fade into void, are introvertive; experiences of merging with a unified natural world, like Teresa saying โit was granted to me in one instant how all things are seen and contained in Godโ, are extrovertive.
And hereโs where I find this all really interesting: that introvertive/extrovertive distinction, between different types of experiences, corresponds to the metaphysical difference between ลaแน kara and Rฤmฤnuja! Neither ลaแน kara nor Rฤmฤnuja cites experience, mystical or otherwise, as the source of their philosophy. Both claim to be deriving it from the Upaniแนฃads (and other texts like the Bhagavad Gฤซtฤ), and they each defend their view (of the scriptures and of reality) with logical arguments. Yet even so, the distinction Stace observed in descriptions of mystical experiences turns out to correspond pretty closely to the distinction between their philosophies.
In ลaแน karaโs philosophy, as in an introvertive experience, the many things of the world, including oneself, all fall away; what remains is the one reality alone. In Rฤmฤnujaโs philosophy, as in an extrovertive experience, the things of the world, including oneself, remain, but they are all unified together: they continue to have a real existence, but as connected members of a larger unity.
All this is a major caveat for perennialist-leaning ideas: even if you were to argue that mystical experience pointed to a cross-culturally recognized nondualism, you would still have to specify which nondualism. The smartass response is to say โall the nondualisms are oneโ, but thatโs not really satisfactory, not even to the nondualists themselves. Rฤmฤnuja attacked ลaแน karaโs view, and while ลaแน kara lived centuries before Rฤmฤnuja, he attacked other thinkers who had views like Rฤmฤnujaโs.
Some mystically inclined thinkers take a moderate or intermediate position that compromises between an absolute nondual view and the view of common sense or received tradition. Such was the approach of Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindฤซ, the Indian Sufi who reconciled Sufi experiences of mystical oneness with Qurโanic orthodoxy by proclaiming โnot โAll is Himโ but โAll is from Him'โ. Itโs tempting to view Rฤmฤnujaโs approach to ลaแน kara as similar, tempering an absolute mysticism with a common-sense view of the world as real: ลaแน karaโs mystical excesses take him way out there and Rฤmฤnuja pulls him back. But such an approach doesnโt really work. Itโs flummoxed not only by the fact that ลaแน kara claimed no mystical grounding for his philosophy, but also by the existence of extrovertive mysticism: the many who have felt an experience of oneness with the grass and trees would not have been drawn by that experience to ลaแน karaโs view, but directly to Rฤmฤnujaโs. (I have previously suggested that Rฤmฤnuja is indeed moderating ลaแน karaโs overall approach โ but with respect to ลaแน karaโs possible autism rather than to mysticism.)
None of this is intended as a refutation of mystical views of reality, or even necessarily of perennialism. It seems to me that both introvertive and extrovertive experiences are found across a wide range of cultures, often accompanied by a sense of certainty, and are worth taking seriously for that reason. But we then need to take both seriously: if the world is one, then are our many differing perceptions illusory or real? Here, I think, it helps that both illusionist and realist forms of nondual philosophy โ experientially based or otherwise โย also occur in multiple places. The debates between them might help us sort out what reality โ if any โ the experiences are pointing to.
Pawel Odyniec, who is among the foremost experts on Vedฤnta and on K.C. Bhattacharya, organised a conference that looks extremely thought-provoking on May 22ndโ24th. Please read more about the participants (among which Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, James Madaio, Jessica Frazier, Karl-Stephan Bouthiletteโฆ) and the program, and how to register at the link below:
https://konferens.ht.lu.se/spiritual-exercises