8/3/2019 Experience: Religious, Mystical, Human?

1/3

NOTESONSPIRITUALITYFOROURTIMES

CCCCONVIVIUMPRESSCCCCCCCC

Experience:Religious,Mystical,Human?

The eminent theologian Karl Rahner has said that the Christian of the future will be either a mystic (which me

someone who has experienced something),or he/she wontbe a Christian at all.Rahners prophecyis accurate,

only concerning Christiansbutalso foranyonewho experiences transcendencein these times.In thesame way

modernity does notacceptanything thatis unverified byrationality, thepost-modernityin which we live consi

experience a privileged way of knowledge. Despite the risk of disillusionment that is inherent in experiencesmaining superficial orinduced byartificial means,it seems perfectly clear todaythatpeople areno longer accep

ideologies,theories ordoctrines thatare notrooted inexperience.

In the new religious consciousness present in our post-modern age,experience is at the center, and this is a pri

pal, perhaps even a fundamental, issue for todays theology to address.The sensibility of men and women of

times searches for a contact with mystery through direct experience; it is thirsting to touch Ultimate Reality an

be in contact with it, even if not through themosttraditionaland institutionalized means. In theact of seeking

finding, our contemporaries show a tendency to turn inward, toward the inner self.What we call God or Ultim

Reality is not felt as something external and objective, but, on the contrary, as something that can only be foun

inner experience.When this happens,the externalelements thatsurround the experience arenecessarily putsecondary and relativeposition.

Institutions,dogmatic formulas,ritual systems wont comprehend their significance at its profoundestdepth un

they are experienced in the inwardnessof the self. This new consciousness is more than just one perspective am

others; instead,it isactually revealing itself as a newparadigm.Furthermore,it demandsfrom Western Christian

wider vision thantheecclesiastical vision,specifically,a vision of thede-institutionalizationof Christianity.

The traditional ecclesiastical structure is currently undergoing a serious crisis.Evenso, the thirst for God, for tr

scendence, for the supernatural, for spirituality is very much alive, expressing itself in varied and concrete w

This search for God and spiritual experience canlead some of our contemporaries to reconnect with true life, afullof joy andmeaning,evenif this must happenthrough alternativemeans.

Still, it is important to make some distinctions between terms when we speak of experience,and specificallyof r

gious experience.We live in a culture of sensations, which affects our inner space. The sensations offered to us

usually so intense, refined and persistent that they cannot enter us without being consciously apprehended

flected upon, digested and assumed. This implies a risk: the risk of living permanently subject to the flux of sen

tionsthatreachour more superficialsenses,skinandsensitivity.

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR7REGISTERTODAY

ATWWW.CONVIVIUMPRESS.COMANDRECEIVEOURLATESTPRESSRELEASES,VIDEOSANDLETTERS

FROMTHEEDITOR

B

8/3/2019 Experience: Religious, Mystical, Human?

2/3

CCCCONVIVIUMPRESSCCCCCCCC

This type of sensate experience bringswith it the extreme difficulty of looking realitystraightin the eye and tak

on the challenges that it poses, which are tough and very often frustrating.It also can generate within us a vici

and compulsive behavior, stimulatingreactions and manipulatingour capacityfor attention.Continualsuperfi

andimmediatelygratifyingsensationslead ustoloselimits andengendera dangerousvolatility inrelationships

decision making.

As it has been said many times by Zygmunt Bauman,who is justly called the prophet of post-modernity, our l

are becoming liquid, flowing non-stop in the cascade of sensations that invade it and stun it. This is true e

about the very experiences of transcendence that are often called mystical. It isnt true, however, that all exp

ence identified as religious can be called a mystic experience. The supernatural elements existing in all men

women render them capable of an experience of the sacred, understood in the termsof Rudolf Ottos famous t

TheIdeaoftheHoly,asterrifying (tremendum) and fascinating(fascinans),a sourceof both wondermentandfea

isanexperience inwhich thehumanbeing feelstakenover bya mysterythatis not reducible,a categorythatis or

nalinallitsmanifestations.

A mysticalexperience,or anexperience of God,isnotonlyanexistential experience of thesacred,butalso anexp

ence of meaning. It is through such experience that we understand the radical meaning that gives structure

humanlife. If we accept that definition, and if we also accept thedefinition of thehuman being as a relationalbe

who canonly be understood from the perspective of the relationalopeness,the meaning of human life canonl

given andexperienced through connectionwith others.In otherwords,humanbeingscanonly feel as such hum

throughthe revelationof anOther that invites ustotheadventure of mutualknowing andof love.In termsof the

ligious experience, this can be an experience of fusion, or feeling dissolved in the Absolute. The mystical exp

ence, according to whatwe have here described,is always an experience of relation, of an exchange withOthern

withthe difference of theOther.

Thisrelationalstatus,whichis valid fortruly human experience, is especiallyso when we speak of mysticism. In

mystical event, which happens between a human and the divine, it is not just the ego that is in action, but also

Other, who according to his own Otherness, moves the ego to an unprecedented journey, with no previou

plannedor thought-out ways.Without a pre-planned route,the journeybeginsandcontinueswithout any secu

other thanthe progressivediscovery of someone thatis notI,but thatis Other, a subject whose difference o

whelmsmeasanepiphany.

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR7

BUYITAT:

WWW.CONVIVIUMPRESS.COM

B

NOTESONSPIRITUALITYFOROURTIMES

8/3/2019 Experience: Religious, Mystical, Human?

3/3

CCCCONVIVIUMPRESSCCCCCCCC

When wespeak of mysticism,thisrelationwiththe Others difference takes on variousperspectives.We areinse

into the process and the movement of a companion of absolute dimensions, with whom the human being can

even dream of establishinga symmetricalrelationship,or be moved byimmediateneeds.Godisnotan objectof

cessity, but of desire. God is the totallyOther whose mysterious profile is found more deeply etched in the extr

situations of human existenceand whoradicallytransformsthelife of theone involved inthatexperience.

MCB

DepartmentofTheo

PontificalCatholicUniversityofRiode Ja

DownloadallourLettersfromtheEditoratwww.conviviumpress.com

ConviviumPress,Inc.

LETTERFROMTHEEDITOR7

BUYITAT:

WWW.CONVIVIUMPRESS.COM

B

NOTESONSPIRITUALITYFOROURTIMES