Philosophy of Mysticism by Richard H.; Jones

Author:Richard H.; Jones [Jones, Richard H.;]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2016-06-03T07:00:00+00:00

Ineffability

Mystical literature is quite varied (see Keller 1978), and not all mystical uses of language are declarative—prayers, parables, poetry, instructions, and other aids for transforming others or evoking experiences fall into other categories. But what is of interest here are the mystics’ cognitive claims, i.e., the assertions about the nature of the experiences and of what is experienced.1 But the “wholly other” nature of both mystical states of consciousness and what is experienced there leads mystics to believe language cannot apply. Mystics are caught in the dilemma of needing conceptualizations but realizing that any conceptualizations introduce a foreign state of consciousness. There are two problems. First, using language requires a dualistic state of mind, and thus introducing language drops mystics out of introvertive states of consciousness. This does not occur with ordinary utterances, since experiences of objects and declarative utterances about them both occur in the same state of consciousness. Even mindful states involve awareness of distinctions and thus permit the use of language. But any image of a transcendent reality is foreign to the reality itself in a way that images of phenomenal objects in the natural universe are not—transcendent realities are simply beyond our dualistic mind, and any attempt to conceptualize them introduces mental objects. Second, any concepts or statements about something transcendent will be misinterpreted by the unenlightened as referring to an object among objects in the phenomenal universe—an unusual object, granted, but simply like something in an unchartered part of the phenomenal realm. All that the unenlightened have are the mental objects produced by the analytical mind. Thus, in an important sense the unenlightened do not know what they are talking about when they use mystical concepts. The problem is not with one particular language, but with any language: no language can be devised that circumvents the problem, since all languages must have terms that make distinctions, and any terms make what is experienced into an object of consciousness, while what is experienced is free of distinctions and is not an object of consciousness.2

This causes mystics across the world to claim ineffability, i.e., what is experienced is inexpressible in any words.3 In the words of Taittiriya Upanishad 2.4: “Words and the mind turn back without reaching it.” In many everyday contexts we often find that language is inadequate. The strong emotions one feels cannot be adequately stated. Indeed, all experiences are ineffable in one sense: we cannot adequately communicate the subjective feel of any experience even if we know the appropriate labels of our culture. Describing the taste of a banana to someone who has never tasted one is impossible: we know the taste through experience, but how do we describe it? Only once one has had the experience will any description be understood. Similarly, stopping and trying to communicate what is happening at the moment often drops us out of even ordinary experiences. So too, any object of experience is ineffable in one way: any attempt to describe what is utterly unique about anything—what differentiates

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