Religion and Mysticism
- For many people, the fact of evil, of so much suffering in the world, causes them not to believe in a “loving Creator.” True
- The argument against the existence of the Judeo-Christian God (the conception of God in the Jewish and Christian traditions) is that God cannot be all-loving and all-powerful, because if he was he would abolish evil. True
- Once we establish God’s ultimate responsibility for evil, the problem then becomes reconciling evil with his Justice and his benevolence. False
- Christians started the “Death of God” movement in the 1960’s True
- The Death of God movement emerged as a response to God’s seeming indifference to suffering. False
- Rubenstein argues that what has died is not God himself, but our ideas about him. True
- Rubenstein believes that after Auschwitz, we can no longer speak of a compassionate, caring God. True
- Rubenstein suggests that we return to the God of the mystics, which he understands to be the embodiment of the implacable rhythms of nature, a view very close to that of the pagan religions that Judaism has resisted for 4 thousand years. True
- According to William James, mystical experiences have been methodically cultivated by Christians, Buddhists, and philosophers. False
- Bertrand Russell argues that mysticism should be commended as an attitude towards life but is a mistaken outcome of the emotions and errs in its one-sided reliance on intuition. True
- Alan Watts claims that the philosopher who has been united with the divine “wants to tell others of the point of view from which the world is unimaginably good, as it is, with people just as they are.” True
- Both Watts and James had “cosmic” or “mystical” experiences on LSD. True
- Watts suggests that “some uses of such chemicals as LSD may remove certain habitual and normal inhibitions of the mind and senses enabling us to see things as they would appear to us if we were not so chronically repressed.” True
- Watts writes that “I felt that I now understand what Christianity might mean by the love of God-namely, that despite the commonsense imperfection of things, they were nonetheless loved by God just as they are…” False
- According to James, Yoga means the experimental union of the individual with the divine. True
- Watts argues that “the central core of the (mystical) experience seems to be the conviction, or insight, that the immediate now, whatever its nature is the goal and fulfillment of all living.” True
- Watts explains that people interpret their mystical experiences according to the religious and philosophical ideas of their culture. True
- For example, says Watts “A theist would believe that they had glimpsed the presence of God.” True
- A Buddhist would interpret it as an experience of the ungraspable, indefinable void. True
- In Watt’s view, “these differences often conceal its’ basic identity.” True
- Watt’s first true mystical experience came when he was trying to figure out something, got frustrated and decided to reject all of his thinking at once. True
- For about 18 hours Watts felt like “…the wind blowing leaves across a field on an autumn day.” True
- Watt’s second mystical experience came after he had been trying to live in the present and someone asked him why he was doing that since we all lived in the present anyway. True
- The Upanishads, a Hindu holy book, states “Thou art that!” True
- Watts realized that “Each thing, each event, each experience in its inescapable nowness and in all its own particular individuality was precisely what it should be, and so much so that it acquired a divine authority and originality.” True