Comparison and Mysticism Are Historical, Psychologically, and Philosophically Related

Gordon Brown: I'm writing for people in the study of religion who all know that comparison is supposed to be something bad and apparently went out of fashion about 30 years ago. And so I'm trying to rehabilitate comparison as a good thing now, not a bad thing. Some of the greatest historical mystics understood or sought out confirmation of their experiences in other cultures and in other religious systems. It's not that every mystic is interested in comparing. That's not what I'm saying. But when you have a mystical experience of consciousness or of God or of something transcendent, by definition, if it's transcendent, it must be able to be found in other cultural and contexts and other