Mystical Experiences The purpose of this resear

The purpose of this research is to examine interpretations of mystical oneness and the resultant relationship to the world given by Alan Watts, Vivekananda, and Shyam, with reference to W.T. Stace's explanation of introvertive and extrovertive mystical experience. The plan of the research will be to set forth Stace's definitions of oneness in this regard, and then to discuss how Watts, Vivekananda, and Shyam interpret the concept.

Stace's principal characterization of extrovertive mystical states is that they involve a vision or objective sense experience that "all is one" and One is the "inner subjectivity" or consciousness in all phenomenal things, from the person having the experience to the environment to accidentals thereof (Stace 79 et passim). The conception of Oneness in the introvertive mystical state is not grounded so much in phenomena as in the mental conception itself. As he notes, "Unitary Consciousness, from which all the multiplicity of sensuous or conceptual or other empirical content has been excluded, so that there remains only a void and empty unity" (Stace 110). The extrovertive mystical state sees oneness in the plenitude of the universe, while the introvertive mystical state sees oneness in the void.

Vivekananda interprets oneness in a way consistent with Stace's description of the extrovertive mystical state. His discussion of the attributes of samadhi or perfect concentration shows that for him Oneness is a conception of the fullness of the

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the individual ego can merge with whatever is other, and that experience of unity is both beyond reason and a product of mental processes. It is a statement of unconditional positive regard for the universe of experience, and it can be compared to Stace's description of mystical experience as a perception at once of the "multiplicity of the universe" and the oneness of all things (Stace 68). Elsewhere Stace refers to "transcendence of the distinction between subject and object, that union with the life of all things, or with God . . . neither simple identity nor simple difference but identity in difference" (Stace 72). Shyam finds oneness in emptiness more than in substance, and his focus is more on pure consciousness than on the phenomenal world. And whereas Vivekananda sees the oneness of matter as ever changing, Shyam sees oneness, in its character as Ultimate Reality, as unchanging. This is consistent with Stace's description of introvertive mystical experience as "emptied of all empirical content, 'unitary' because there is no multiplicity. It is therefore 'the One,' and the One has no other" (Stace 89). For Shyam, whatever is unchanging represents the real, and whatever is material and changes is unreal. However, when the m

Category: Philosophy - M