I don't think anything that I've had can properly be called a mystical experience, but I've always wanted one. And yet you won't take like mushrooms or even like edibles. Although similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depth of truth, unplumbed by the discursive intellect. All articulate, all inarticulate as they remain and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after time.
David and Tamler talk about William James’ chapter on mysticism from his book "Varieties of Religious Experience." What defines a mystical experience? Why do they defy expression and yet feel like a state of knowledge, a glimpse into the window of some undiscovered aspect of reality? Is Tamler right that David has a little mystic inside of him just waiting to burst forth from his breast?
Plus – another edition of VBW does conceptual analysis and we’re sticking with ‘c’ words – this time the definitive theory of ‘creepy.’
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