Decoding Mystical Rhetoric:Scholars, Mystics And SilenceJennifer G. Woodhull WDHJEN002Course code: REL4011HSupervisor: Dr. Andrea Brigaglia

A minor dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Honours in Religious StudiesFaculty of the HumanitiesUniversity of Cape Town2012

I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use anothers work and pretend that it is ones own. I have used the Harvard-UCT 2012 convention for citation and referencing. Each contribution to and quotation in this dissertation from the works of others has been attributed, cited and referenced. Therefore, this project is my own work. I have not allowed, and will not allow, anyone to use my work with the intention of passing it off as their own.

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Table of ContentsAbstract1Chapter 1: The Mystical Message2The Mystics2Marguerite Porete4The Mirror of Simple Souls4The Documents of Condemnation5Rbia of Basra8Chapter 2: What Do Mystics Experience?12The Constructivist Position12The Essentialist Position15An Irresolvable Debate18Chapter 3: Intentionality21The Paradox of Yearning23The Intentional Constructivist26Chapter 4: The Language of Mysticism30Assumptions and Possibilities32Apophasis35Paradox36Chapter 5: Silence40Chapter 6: Conclusion45References47

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DECODING MYSTICAL RHETORIC:SCHOLARS, MYSTICS AND SILENCEJennifer Woodhull WDHJEN002AbstractThe scholarship on mysticism falls largely into two camps: the essentialist position, which postulates a pure consciousness in which mystics of all traditions and eras find a universal experience; and the constructivist argument, according to which individual mystical experience[footnoteRef:1] is necessarily mediated by unique cultural, historical, traditional and personal conditions. I will argue that scholars of both camps are misled by the parameters and expectations implicit in academic methodologies. Comparing reports from Marguerite Porete and Rbia of Basra, two mystics of different traditions and eras, I explore the rhetorical devices of apophasis, paradox and silence as clues to an investigative approach that may more closely match the ostensive nature of mystical experience. I propose that mystical realisation be viewed as dynamic, rather than as structure or content; that silence represents a positive strategy for accurate observation of its nature; and finally, that any real understanding of the mystics message can be attained only by abandoning what Sfs call mind-knowledge in favour of Heart-knowledge (Lings, 1983: 52).[footnoteRef:2] [1: It has been argued that mystical experience is an oxymoron, since this phenomenon is thought to transcend the subject-object dichotomy of experience and experiencer. Here, I gratefully invoke a pithy footnote from Anthony N. Perovich Jr. (1998: 226, n2): Linguistic convenience favors the use of the intentional idiomfor example, the mystical object, objects of awarenesseven where it may not be strictly appropriate, but it is perhaps sufficient to acknowledge this fact without undertaking the exertions required to avoid in every case possibly misleading locutions.] [2: This distinction, as we shall see, roughly approximates William Jamess experiential and conceptual forms of knowledge (Forman, 1998b: 21).]

Chapter 1: The Mystical MessageMarguerite Porete was a Christian mystic who was burned at the stake in Paris on June 1, 1310. Her only surviving work, The Mirror of Simple Souls,[footnoteRef:3] was written during the last decade of the thirteenth century (McGinn, 1998: 245). The book was publicly burned in the village square at Valenciennes by Bishop of Cambrai Guy de Colmieu, probably around 1296 (Lichtman, 1994: 65). The bishop commanded Marguerite to withdraw the book from circulation and to desist from disseminating her theology. Her disobedience earned her 18 months in prison, and eventually led to her execution. [3: Le Mirouer des simples ames anienties et qui seulement demourent en vouloir et desir damour, or The Mirror of Simple Souls Who Are Annihilated and Who Only Remain in the Will and Desire for Love (Chance, 2004: 551).]

Rbia of Basras[footnoteRef:4] mystical style was quite different. Revered by her contemporaries, Rbia continues to be a mainstay of Sf hagiography (Jackson, 2006: 39). She left no written records of her realisation; we are dependent on chroniclers who recorded her legend centuries later (Jackson, 2006: 35). Rbia is known for her emphasis on the relationship of love between the worshipper and the Divine (Derin, 1999: 111), and for her extreme asceticism (Dakake, 1992: 148). [4: Rabi`a Bint Ismil al-`Adawiyyah al-Basriyyah (Derin, 1999: 112).]

Using the reported experiences of these two mystics, I will argue that scholars of mysticism have largely missed the thrust of their message. I will submit that the academic emphasis on content, structure and outcome, as exemplified in the constructivist-essentialist debate, is incompatible with what mystics themselves communicate. Finally, I will explore an alternative means of illuminating the substance of the mystical message through an investigation of silence as palimpsest.The Mystics On the face of it, Marguerite and Rbia would seem to have little in common, other than their gender. Marguerite, a French Christian, lived during the late Middle Ages; the Sf Rbia lived in 8th-century Mesopotamia (now Iraq). Marguerite outlined a seven-stage path to realisation of the Divine. For her, asceticism was a necessary but transient phase consigned to the preliminary stages of the journey (Porete, 1993: 190). Rbia, by contrast, embraced asceticism as central to her lifelong spiritual practice (Attr, 1996: 167). For both women, ego-driven desires were inimical to divine grace; but their strategies for dealing with these compulsions were very different. Marguerite mistrusted asceticism as too easily lending itself to pious display, and advocated abandoning it once it had served its purposenamely, attaining mastery over selfish desires (Bussey, 2007: 1856). She held a similar view regarding the traditional virtues (which Huston Smith [1994: 246] lists as humility, charity and veracity). Virtues, I take my leave of you forever, she sings (Porete, 1993: 84), so distressing her inquisitor that this notion is singled out for mention in the documents attending her condemnation (Barton, 2000). Rbia, in obedience to Sf discipline (Derin, 1999: 76), exercised the strictest imaginable vigilance over her conduct. Attr (1996: 162) recounts her telling a friend of her victory today: namely, that she kept two pieces of silver she had earned in separate hands, lest if I took both in one hand, they would join forces and lead me from the path. Amongst Rbias primary concerns was the question of whether, after death, will they put the book of my deeds in my right hand or not?Yet despite the differences in their religious observances and spiritual styles, both women dedicated themselves to the annihilation of personal will so that Gods will could manifest unobstructed in their lives. Both left the indelible mark of the religion of love on their respective traditions (Derin, 1999: 11112; Chance, 2004: 552). And both insisted on an unmediated relationship with the Divine (Porete, 1993: 83; Attr, 1996: 166). For the purposes of this paper, I will assume that Marguerite Porete and Rbia of Basra were, in fact, accomplished mystics. The question of whether this was the case may never be settled; certainly, such exploration lies beyond the scope of this research. By all accounts, however, these two women fulfil as many criteria as do any of the more acknowledged mystical adepts, such as Meister Eckhart and Ibn Arabi. As such, they will serve to illustrate my argument.Marguerite PoreteMarguerites theological treatise, The Mirror of Simple Souls, has undergone a remarkable journey since its inception. After her death it was variously attributed to the 14th-century Flemish mystic Jan Van Ruusbroec; the Dominican nun Queen Margaret of Hungary; and an anonymous male author (Bussey, 2007: 87). Not until 1946 did Italian scholar Romana Guarnieri authoritatively attribute the work to Marguerite Porete (Sells, 1994b: 115; cf. Ruether, 2005: 342 n90, etc.). Few non-monastic women in Marguerites day had the means or social support to practise a religious vocation. Hence, scholars speculate that she was a scion of the upper classes, perhaps an affluent widow (Bussey, 2007: 20910; cf. McGinn, 1998: 244). The chronicler William of Nangis (Barton, 2000) refers to Marguerite as a beguinea member of a movement of devout women who took no vows, but who maintained celibacy and practised works of charity (Stoner, 1995: 1). Most of these women lived communally, but some were known as wandering beguines; it is widely assumed that Marguerite fell into this latter category (pace Bussey, 2007: 257).Though unimpeachably pious, virtuous and humble, the beguines vexed the patriarchal establishment of the day. As Abby Stoner (1995: 35) reports, [t]he idea of women without a place-without a family or convent to anchor them in societywas extremely disturbing".[footnoteRef:5] The Council of Vienna banned the movement in 1312, not long after Marguerites death. [5: Quoting David Herlihy, Opera Muliebria: Women and Work in Medieval Europe (New York: McGraw Hill, 1990), p.67.]

The Mirror of Simple SoulsMarguerites bookour only textual record of her mystical understandingis divided into two distinct sections. The first is a dialogue, primarily between the characters Dame Amour (also called Lady Love, or simply Love), Soul and Reason. Dame Amour is God (Porete, 1993: 104); Reason represents the Roman Catholic Church (Ruether, 2005: 185); and Soul, the spiritual aspirant (Porete, 1993: 198). All three are female. The only important male character is FarNear, proxy for the Trinitiarian God in relation to the human soul (Robinson, 2001: 53).The main exchange takes place between Love and Reason, who doggedly tries to frame the formers paradoxes and oxymorons in the context of her own linear worldview. But from Loves perspective, Reason is one-eyed For to be sure, one has faulty vision who sees things before his eyes and does not understand them at all (Porete, 1993: 122). Her failure to grasp Loves paradoxes eventually puts paid to Reason, who expires from a surfeit of exasperation (Porete, 1993: 1623).Marguerites abandonment of works (a synonym for virtues) was unprecedented in Christian texts. No other writer before Porete had so boldly dismissed these elements as mere steps on the path to God, reports Joanne Robinson (2001: 105). No writer had dared to assert that an embodied, fallen human being could exist within the world without sin, without cares, without attachment to works, and without a why.Some scholars believe the second section of the Mirror to be autobiographical (Dickens, 2009: 122). In the last nineteen chapters of her 140-chapter treatise, the author turns to a first-person delivery that identifies her as the Soul (Porete, 1993: 198) of the preceding dialogue. This transformation strongly suggests that Marguerite herself underwent the six stages detailed in the first section of the book.[footnoteRef:6] [6: The seventh stage of the journey is accomplished only in the afterlife (Porete, 1993: 194).]

The Documents of CondemnationThe only other textual record pertaining to Marguerite Porete consists in the inquisitorial documents detailing her trial, condemnation and execution. The primary sources here are: The University of Paris Provides Consultation in the Case of Marguerite The Inquisitor Consults Canon Lawyers on the Case of Marguerite la Porete, May 30 1310 The Sentencing of Marguerite la Porete The chronicler William of Nangis describes the trial and execution of Marguerite Porete, 1310 (Barton, 2000).

Marguerites execution was officially attributed to heresies in the Mirror (Robinson, 2001: 27), but William of Paris, the chief inquisitor, was probably more irked by other factors. For one thing, Marguerite wrote her treatise in vernacular French, rather than in Latin, an implicit statement of freedom from the language established by a centralized hierarchical authority (Lichtman, 1994: 67). Unlike most religious female authors of her day, she wrote her book without the mediation of a male amanuensis (Bussey, 2007: 9). Marguerite never apologizes for being a woman, reports Bernard McGinn (1998: 247). Robinson (2001: 105) notes that Marguerites assertive writing brings out a tension that is rarely seen in work by other women, who traditionally relied on humble claims to divine inspiration, whether through visions or spoken messages, to legitimate their authority. Perhaps most galling to the ecclesiastical authorities, then, was Marguerites conduct (Stoner, 1995: 10; cf. Bussey, 2007: 1201). Indeed, she was silent and outspoken in all the wrong places and at all the wrong times (Bussey, 2007: 1545). Marguerite flouted the Bishop of Cambrais command to muzzle her theology, and steadfastly refused to either answer the charges against her or swear the inquisitorial oath. Throughout her persecution and execution, she declined all inducements to recant (Barton, 2000). The frequency of terms such as rebellious, obstinate, hardened and (my personal favourite) contumacious in the documents of condemnation and executionwhich never mention the Mirror by name (Barton, 2000)raise the strong possibility that Marguerites most unforgivable sin was refusing to adhere to the forms of religious expression permitted to the women of her time and place.Accusations of heresy against Marguerite persist into the late 20th century. Edmund Colledge and Romana Guarnieri have called the Mirror a work of heresy, written by a teacher of false doctrine skilled in concealing her unorthodoxy behind ambiguity and imprecision (Cottrell, 1991: 16).[footnoteRef:7] Eerily echoing the documents of condemnation,[footnoteRef:8] Colledge elsewhere proclaims that [t]he entire book is characterized by a stubborn, willful determination to persist in its opinions, by a spiritual arrogance (Robinson, 2001: 99).[footnoteRef:9] [7: Quoting from The Glosses by M.N. and Richard Methley to The Mirror of Simple Souls in Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pieta, 5, (1968), pp. 38182.] [8: The inquisitorial records include, for example, such terminology as obvious and notorious contumacy and rebellion; remained disobedient and rebellious; and held out in her hardened malice with an obstinate soul (Barton, 2000).] [9: Quoting from Liberty of Spirit: The Mirror of Simple Souls, in Theology of Renewal, L. K. Shook, Ed., Vol. 2 (Dorval, Quebec: Palm, 1968), p.114.]

Significantly, Colledge was an ordained monastic in the Augustinian order. In allowing her authorship to be associated with terms such as heresy and false doctrine, Guarneiri must also be considered a professing Roman Catholic. As we will see, a scholars personal commitment cannot be excluded from an analysis of his[footnoteRef:10] arguments. [10: I have dealt with the vexing problem of gendered pronouns by ascribing the feminine to mystics and the masculine to scholars. While more or less reflecting a loose survey of the sources cited in this paper, this distinction is intended only to maintain some degree of crispness in referencing. It does not in any way suggest a monopoly of either gender in either field of endeavour.]

In contrast to the Colledge/Guarnieri approach, most Porete scholars interpret the contrasting records of Marguerites life and work as reflecting a genuinely inspired mystic (Cottrell, 1991: 17) who manifested the integrity of her vision to the very end of her life (Bussey, 2007; cf. Robinson, 2001 and Dickens, 2009). But these observations, again, are filtered through particular lenses. I have argued elsewhere (Woodhull, 2012) that Marguerite Poretes true spiritual status or attainment can never be establishednot for lack of data (although that, too, obtains), but because of the nature of her realisation. Very little in Marguerites writing offers us the comfort of certainty.Rbia of BasraUnlike Marguerite Porete, Rbia left no textual record. Julian Baldick (1990: 237) dates the first recorded mention of her to 847 CE, nearly fifty years after Rbias death (Sells, 1996: 151). Various Sf authors, including the revered al-Ghazl, mention Rbia over the succeeding centuries; but the first and most substantial putative biography, by Farid al-Din Attar, appeared more than three centuries later (Smith, 2001: 36). Attr is considered a thorough researcher and reliable historian (Smith, 2001: 6); nonetheless, it remains unclear whether his work was inspired by existing legends, or is itself responsible for the now widespread anecdotal evidence of Rbias life (Jackson, 2006: 35). Attrs reports of purported direct exchanges with God when Rbia was otherwise alone in the desert suggest a significant element of inference and inventionparticularly since Rbia, with her outspoken loathing of egoism (Attr, 1996: 168), was unlikely to have relayed any such exchanges herself.Nonetheless, it is fairly certain that Rbia of Basra did, in fact, exist (Baldick, 1990: 237). Living barely more than a hundred years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, when Sfism was a relatively new phenomenon, Rbia is believed to have exerted substantial influence on early Sf notions of mystical union with the Divine (Derin, 1999: 113) and on the subsequent evolution of Sf doctrine (Jackson, 2006: 378). Indeed, Annemarie Schimmel (1997: 34) submits that Rbias name heralds the beginning of the actual mystical movement in Islm. It remains a name so ubiquitous throughout Sf literature that to this day, an especially pious or virtuous Muslim woman may be called a second Rbia (Schimmel, 1995: 426). Sadiyya Shaikh (2012: 56; cf. Knysh, 2000: 30) suggests that Rbia may have been a pioneer in the establishment of Sf love mysticism, or the doctrine of pure, disinterested love of God for Gods own sake, unattached and disinterested in its outcome. Derin (1999: 122) agrees, noting that although the search for God through love was not unknown among Sfs of her day, what distinguished Rbia from the others was that she presented a well organised theory of love. Alexander Knysh (2000: 31; cf. Smith, 2001: 121) submits that Rbia is considered the first to combine the preaching of divine love with the doctrine of unveiling (jajall; kashf) of God before his lover, that is, of the beatific vision in this world.The accounts of extreme self-denial pervading Attars biography notwithstanding, Shaikh (2012: 56) reports that Rbia mistrusted the practice of asceticism for its own sake. For her, it is only a means to an end. Indeed, Rbia rebukes a fellow ascetic who yearns for freedom from this world (earthly things) by proposing that [y]ou must be very fond of this world, if you were not fond of it, you would not speak of it, either good or ill, remember the saying whoso loves a thing speaks much of it (Derin, 1999: 121). John Renard (2005: 195) actually attributes Rbias reputation amongst some scholars as the first genuine Muslim mystic to the belief that it was she who first presumed to move beyond simple asceticism. Maria Dakake (1992: 150) remarks that female Sufi asceticism is more often than not an asceticism of love; that for such women, it is not a question of denying themselves certain worldly pleasures, but of their complete disinterest in any pleasure other than Him. Yet it is difficult to detect complete disinterest in Rbias report that for twelve years she had craved fresh dates, which were plentiful in Basra, but that she had refrained from eating them (Attr, 1996: 167). Such self-denial suggests a strategy calculated to produce the desired lack of interest, rather than representing, as Dakake proposes, an expression of its accomplishment.Rbia fastidiously rejected offers of material support to ameliorate her impoverished lifestyle, and was known to weep copiously for sins of both commission and omission (Jackson, 2006: 38). Suffering should not be opposed, according to Rbias theology, since it reflects Gods will. In fact, she actually welcomed sickness and pain as signs of Gods attention, and lamented their absence as evidence that he was ignoring her (Schimmel, 1997:37).Rbia has been credited with a number of miracles. Attr (1996: 161) relates that she blew on her fingertips, making them glow to compensate for lack of a lantern with which to illuminate a discussion with visiting friends. In another story, the KabaMeccas great stone monolith, object of the hajj pilgrimagetravelled to welcome the approaching Rbia. Knysh (2000: 27), however, points out that al-Jhiz, the earliest writer to mention Rbia, makes no reference to any miracles. Rbia herself appeared to think little of such displays. It is said that when the revered Hasan al-Basri tossed his prayer mat on water and invited her to join him there in ritual observation, Rbia threw her own prayer mat up to hover in the air and challenged him to pray with her there. Her reproach reveals her impatience with magical tricks: O Hasan, she says, that which you did, a fish can do just the same, and that which I did, a fly can do. The real work lies beyond both of these and it is necessary to occupy ourselves with real work (Smith, 2001: 57). Many of Attrs anecdotes emphasise Rbias blunt and fearless honesty. This talk stinks of egoism, she tells a group of religious dignitaries trying to impress her with their piety (Attr, 1996: 168). To a group of men who suggest that women are spiritually inferior, she responds, [E]goism, egotism, self-worship, and I am your highest lord have not welled up in any woman. One might imagine a twinkle in her eye as she adds, And no woman has ever been a pederast (Attar, 1996: 166).Another prominent theme in the Rbia stories is her dogged insistence that God alone should meet her needs. Several anecdotes relate offers of material support from wealthy admirers, but Rbia rejected them all. She even forbade a servant to borrow onions from a neighbour, for I made a covenant with the Lord mighty and glorious not to ask for anything from any other than him (Attar, 1996: 160). Not surprisingly, then, Rbia rejected all offers of marriage (Smith, 2001: 29). To one of her suitors she responded, It does not please me that you should distract me from God for a single moment. She tells another that since she belongs altogether to God, [t]he marriage contract must be asked for from Him, not from me (Smith, 2001: 32). Ultimately, it appears that Rbia so transcended gendered conventions that her male contemporaries were unable to maintain any ordinary sense of her as a potential mate. Hasan, returning from twenty-four hours in her company, reports that the thought I am a man never crossed my mind, nor did I am a woman ever cross hers (Attr, 1996: 161).This may be, in part, because of Rbias purported masculine detachment from the sorrows of the world. In one story, she tells a hanged corpse, With that tongue, you used to say There is no god but God! Dakake (1992: 142) observes that here Rbia feels no human or sentimental sympathy but only regret at the loss of a tongue that once proclaimed the oneness of God. In another anecdote, Rbia scolds a fellow mystic for lovingly embracing a child, since a true spiritual aspirant should love only God (Dakake, 1992: 147).Reliant as we are on anecdotal evidence of Rbias disposition and conduct, we are obliged to seek her message in her purported behaviour. Attar (1996: 169) does offer some brief prayers, The Devotions of Rbia Adawiya, but these, again, were recorded too long after her death to be considered reliable. We must group them with Attars anecdotes as reflections of early Sf understanding of mystical realisation.

Chapter 2: What Do Mystics Experience?The scholarship on mysticism largely falls into two opposing camps. The assertion of an innate pure consciousness attainable through the diligent practice of any authentic spiritual discipline is known as the essentialist position. Constructivists (or contextualists)[footnoteRef:11] contend that mystical experience, like any other, is necessarily conditioned by myriad internal and external conditionsspecifically, in the case of mystics, by expectations embedded in their religious training. [11: Peter Moore (2005: 6357) distinguishes contextualism from constructivism, glossing it as a sort of middle ground between the latter and essentialism. However, Steven T. Katz (1978: 567), in a seminal paper arguing for the constructivist position, asserts as his basic claim that mystical experience is contextual.]

Bringing the debate home to our two exemplary mystics, we might ask: Did Marguerite and Rbia have the same experience? Or were their respective mystical experiences conditioned by the very different cultures, traditions and eras that produced them? Cogent arguments can be produced for both positions.The Constructivist PositionSteven T. Katz is arguably the most prominent apologist for the constructivist position. Invoking Kant, Katz (1978: 59) insists that a given argument must reveal both conditions of knowing in general as well as the grounds of its own operation (emphasis original). On his view, the epistemological grounds on which mystical experience is assessed must necessarily include the cultural, religious, historical and personal contexts that have produced the mystic. This much is certain, Katz proclaims: the mystical experience must be mediated by the kind of beings we are (ibid.).Carl A. Keller (1978: 73) goes so far as to question whether mysticism itself exists as a distinct epistemological, ontological or phenomenological category, dismissing the essentialist argument for a common mystical experience as a rather bold assumption. Robert Sharf (1998: 98) rejects the entire notion of religious experience as a relatively recent, and distinctively Western concept.Wayne Proudfoot (1977: 343) invokes both Kant and the later Wittgenstein in contending that [t]here can be no access to any realm of experience that is not shaped by the forms and categories of the mind. Peter Moore (1978: 116) suggests that an experience not conditioned by some or other set of cultural factors, rather than being pure, would be shapeless and undeveloped and hence incomprehensible to even the experiencing subject. Thus, for Katz and his academic comrades, Marguerite and Rbia will have experienced mystical attainment quite differently. Marguerite encounters God in the form of the Holy Trinityindeed, Dame Amour describes the Divine as three persons and one God (Porete, 1993: 84). This kind and merciful deity stands ever ready to uplift even the chronic sinner, for the just man falls seven times each day [and therefore] it is necessary that he be lifted seven times, else he could not fall seven times. For this reason, [t]hat one is blessed who often falls (Porete, 1993: 1778). Rbias God is decidedly unitarythere is no room for even the Prophet Muhammad in her devotions (Attr, 1996: 163). This deity is also vastly more severe and demanding than is Marguerites. Rbia lives in fear that despite her extraordinary efforts, he might well consign her to hell for the most negligible disciplinary laxity or oversight (Silvers, 2010: 51). Thus, when friends enquire after the cause of Rbias illness, she responds that God is punishing her for momentarily longing for the joys of paradise (Smith, 2001: 43).There is also a substantial historical contrast between the religious traditions of our two mystics respective eras. Marguerites theology rests on thirteen centuries of doctrinal tradition, while Rbias Islm is barely more than a hundred years old. The Sf tradition may itself be even younger (Smith, 1994: 170; cf. Schimmel, 1997: 34; pace New World Encyclopedia, 2008). The attitudes of Marguerites and Rbias contemporaries to the fact of their gender differ radicallyalthough, interestingly, their explanation for the phenomenon of a religiously accomplished woman is identical: such a person cannot really be a woman. In Marguerites case, this conclusion leads to her being maligned as other than a true woman, and thus a pseudo-woman (Barton, 2000). Rbia, on the other hand, is celebrated as transcending mere womanhood, essentially elevating her to the status of an honorary man (Sells, 1996: 152). Their religious colleagues also responded quite differently to the two mystics insistence on an unmediated relationship with the Divine. Marguerites proposed abandonment of mediation by the Church inspired horror in her inquisitor (Ruether, 2005: 186); Rbias proclamation of a direct relationship with God, by contrast, was respectfully cited as evidence of her saintliness (Sells, 1996: 134).Assuming the stories about her are based in fact, Rbia could be glossed as exemplary of the constructivist argument. But her legacy comes to us only through layers of interpretation, and as such may well have been shaped to serve subsequent Sf orthodoxy. As Dakake (2008: 73) cautions, we must consider the particular doctrinal or theological agendas of the individual hagiographical compilers, and the ways in which the recording of saints lives are used to advance those agendas. Katz (1978: 59) would contend that Marguerite and Rbia would necessarily have met quite different experiences at the presumed summits of their respective mystical quests. For him, the experience of the ultimate is conditioned both linguistically and cognitively by a variety of factors including the expectation of what will be experienced There is obviously a self-fulfilling prophetic aspect to this sort of activity. The early Sf conception of paradise seems, in general, to reflect an infinite magnification of Earths most exquisite delights. All of what the garden contains, of bliss, gratification, and pleasures, according to Jafar As-Sadiq, the Sixth Imam, is like a finger plunged into the sea (Sells, 1996: 87). Hence, on Katzs view, Rbias fresh dates might be among the least of the delights she experiences on entering her projected heaven. For Marguerite, paradise is nothing other than to see God (Porete, 1993: 171). Katz would predict that, whatever such an experience might be like, it will reflect nothing more than Marguerites projection of her anticipated seventh stage of spiritual attainment. The Essentialist PositionWhere constructivists unequivocally assert that [t]here are NO pure (i.e. unmediated) experiences (Katz, 1978: 26), essentialists[footnoteRef:12] posit an ontological reality beyond all mediation: a transcendental ground innate in us all, identification with which is the ultimate purpose of human existence (Shear, 1994: 31920). [12: Essentialists are also variously referred to as purists or decontextualists. Some essentialists are also known as perennialists, although the latter term refers specifically to the assertion of an originally revealed absolute truth (Dible, 2010: 174) at the core of all religions, as opposed to a common experience in pure consciousness (Forman 1998a: viii).]

Robert K.C. Forman (1998a: viii) calls this transcendental ground pure consciousness: an ultimate, universally attainable state of perceptual and experiential being. All mystics, on this view, realise this same level of consciousness, and thus have essentially the same experience. Marguerite seems to concur, at least in the innate universality of an inborn nobility that enables a recognition of the souls true nature (Robinson, 2001: 105). In search of this pure consciousness, Forman (1998b: 7) cites the so-called forgetting model: the notion that mystics deconstruct their conditioning, rather than using it to construct experience. "Until you forget everything, you will never find yourself ", counsels the Hindu Ashtavakra Gita (Forman, 1993: 37). When concepts and beliefs are genuinely forgotten for a time, Forman argues, they cannot play a formative role in creating the mystical experience(s). Thus, the pure consciousness event should be viewed as decontextualized (ibid.; emphasis original).Both Marguerite and Rbia would agree with this reductive approach to religious attainment. Knysh (1997: 910) explains that for early Sfs, human beings enter the world already bound by a covenant with God, undertaken in pre-eternity. The spiritual aspirant longs to return to the state of primordial purity and faithfulness that characterized the soul-specs[footnoteRef:13] before their actual creation. Rbias forgetting thus takes the form of doing away with the self and all the impulses emanating from it (ibid.). [13: Knysh (1997: 9) tells us that early Sf theorists cited the Qurn in characterising human souls as specs [sic] of light.]

Similarly, Marguerites soul returns from being to Being, regaining the passivity and nothingness it possessed prior to creation (Robinson, 2001: 51). This Soul is forgotten through the annihilation of the understanding which this annihilation gives her (Porete, 1993: 136). Essentialist Huston Smith (1987: 561) accepts that myriad conditions affect the mystics apprehension, but compares these to red and green traffic lights. Red is not green, he concedes, but the difference pales before the fact that both are light. To extend Smiths metaphor, the luminosity of the mystical experience trumps all other mediating conditions. By implication, that luminosity underlies all phenomenaor constitutes at least a deeper reality than that reflected in cultural or religious influences.John Robertson Price III (1998: 118) offers a neat summary of the essentialist argument. Citing Jan Van Ruusbroec, Price submits that the doctrinal and symbolic language of the various mystical traditions can be compared on the basis of the dynamics of consciousness that ground them. From this perspective, Rbia and Marguerite will have recognised each others annihilation in God (Derin, 1999: 119; Robinson, 2001: 63) as reflecting the nature of her own essential realisation. Sallie King (1988: 264) compares the mystics experience to that of the coffee drinker. While acknowledging the influential coffee traditionadvertising, health claims and warnings, social connotations and so onKing concludes that the ineffable experience of actually drinking coffee eclipses all such conditions. The power of the coffee tradition to convey information about the taste of coffee is limited to the point of insignificance compared to the power of the sensation of tasting coffee in experience, she argues. Although the mystic is of course influenced by religious tradition, personal experience, cultural milieu and so forth, these things do not exhaust the content of experiences which occur within such contexts (King, 1988: 266). John Dourley (1998: 125) proposes that mystical experience conjures primordial archetypes common to the collective unconscious. He reports that C.G. Jung showed that Catholic rites and symbols express unconscious archetypes, whose legitimate and significant function is to lead the believer or participant into an immediate experience of the unconscious from which these symbols are themselves born into consciousness. Following this argument, Marguerites Holy Trinity and Rbias Kaba are secondary symbols, arising out of a deeper, collective realisation that becomes available to them on transcending their attachment to such superficial manifestations of holiness. While constructivists contend that these symbols inevitably shape mystical realisation, essentialists argue that mystical experience forgets all such conditioning. On Dourleys view, Marguerite and Rbia might have offered far-reaching benefits to their respective religious traditions. On returning to the relative world, he suggests, the mystic contributes to her religion the primal stuff of human realisation, providing it with the missing wholeness it may itself need for its own healing. Presumably, this same healing would extend to other arenas of the mystics life. This model essentially reverses the constructivist argument: instead of shaping mystical experience, religious tradition is itself shaped by it. Mystical attainment is no longer a private affair. Not only is it shared across cultures, eras and traditions; it actually informs and enriches all of those supposed mediating elements. Thus, Dourleys vision of wholeness and healing presents the intriguing possibility that the illuminating potential of pure consciousness innate in all of us can supply a missing wholeness to the full range of human experience. If this is the case, mystical realisation may hold a key to world peace and human survival.An Irresolvable DebateWhile its potential for social transformation may lend the essentialist position greater appeal, it does not necessarily make it more veridical. A fundamental weakness of the essentialist argument is that it turns on the assumption of an ontological state whose existence cannot, by definition, be satisfactorily established. Such tautological epistemology is easily refuted by constructivist scholars. The constructivists, however, meet the same limitation: the fact that no one outside the mystics realm of experience can definitively pronounce on the nature of that realm. However impeccably Katz grounds his argument in logical analysis, he has as little access to the object of enquiry as do his polemical opponents. Constructivists and essentialists alike can do little more than speculate, and argue for the superiority of their respective syllogisms and methodologies. The clash of opinions is not based on conflicting data so much as on conflicting worldviews (Forman, 1993: 36). As Bruce Janz (1995: 91) has noted, [a] contextualist will always be able to see mediation and context; an essentialist will always be able to see the primitive experience. Simply asserting one or the other will not solve the issue. Jonathan Shear (1994: 334) laments that three centuries of work have failed to generate anything even resembling agreement among highly trained, intelligent specialists that any convincing proofs exist here at all. Indeed, if anything, the consensus is that they do not.It is not my intention to add my two cents to the debatethe debate is already quite rich enough. Rather, I question the benefits, academic or otherwise, of continuing the argument as currently configured. While mystics look on (probably somewhat bemused), we scholars have convincingly demonstrated that neither side has sufficient data to settle the case. Katz (1978: 54), in particular, bemoans the lack of available data. His exasperation fairly leaps off the page as he complains of the obstacles to resolution inherent in the study of mystical experience. He seems to find particularly discomfiting terms such as paradox and ineffable, which are frequently invoked by essentialists to explain the impossibility of articulating the nature of mystical realisation. These terms do not provide data for the comparability, rather they eliminate the logical possibility of the comparability of experience altogether (emphasis original). Katz (1978: 55) goes on to propose a mathematical model to support his view: Every mystical experience x is P and I, where P = paradoxical and I = ineffable. Using this construction, Katz demonstrates that no evaluation of mystical reports using such terms can proceed to any valid proof. Once one has introduced per definitionem the features of paradox and ineffability, he concludes, no other result can follow. This approach, I contend, exposes the fundamental limitation of academic investigation of mystical experience altogether (although most especially of the constructivist position): it is itself conditioned and contextual. Scholars of mysticism wish to apply linear rationality to a field of experience that, by all accounts, specifically abjures such conceptual frameworks. This might not be problematic, except that it calls into question the scholarly stance of disinterested observation. Katz (1978: 39) dismisses as bizarre the notion that a Buddhists experience of nirvana would not be conditioned by the doctrine in which she has been trained. I submit that subjecting mystical experience to mathematical formulas is at least as bizarre, and that it is precisely our reliance on data that precludes any advance in understanding with respect to this field of study. I will not argue that mystical experience is too ineffable, noetic, etc. to bear scholarly scrutiny. Katz (1978: 478) has handily shot this argument down, pointing out that such terms are freely employed by different religious traditions to describe their own versions of the ultimate, proving nothing about the nature of the ultimate. Nor do I suggest that linear logic is inapplicable to the mystery of mystical experience. This is, after all, an academic inquiry, and the vehicle employed must necessarily be appropriate to the territory. What I am arguing, rather, is that we may be chasing the wrong quarryfor as F. Samuel Brainard (1996: 383) observes, the stubbornness of the debate strongly suggests that the question of whether or not there is a real mystical core is not the one to ask.As quarry, Marguerite Porete exemplifies the characteristic slipperiness of the mystical subject. Whether she was a heretic, an accomplished mystic, or merely insane will probably never be established (Woodhull, 2012). Im tempted to speculate that Marguerite would have wanted it that way. She gleefully skewers her character Reason, who repeatedly demands meaning and proofs. For Gods sake! says Reason, what can that mean? (Porete, 1993: 89); Prove it, says Reason (Porete, 1993: 113). But Loves language dances merry rings around her earnest and logical querent. Not to put too fine a point on it, Marguerites dialogue joined battle with the prevailing patriarchal rationality of the hierarchical church, and at every opportunity showed it up as inadequate and stupid (Lichtman, 1994: 69). Rbias rejection of linear logic is more nuanced, though no less definitive. Attr (1996: 1645) relates that she once gave someone some money to buy her a blanket. When the person asked whether the blanket should be black or white, Rbia snatched back the money and threw it in the Tigris. Because of an unpurchased blanket, division has come into view, she said. Must it be black or white?

Chapter 3: IntentionalityRbias rejection of division points to a crucial characteristic of mystical realisation. [D]ivision come[s] into view only when the mind enters the realm of dualismthe epistemological foundation of the split between subject and object. For most of us, a dualistic view of the world is inescapable. We know white only because we have encountered black. We would have no name or context for light were it not that we have experienced darkness. Similarly, we cannot speak intelligibly of good, or health, or reason, except in contrast to their opposites. As Marguerite writes, Lord, how much do I comprehend of your power, your wisdom, or your goodness? Only as much as I comprehend of my weakness, my ignorance, and my wretchedness And as little, Lord, as I understand of my wretchedness, it gives me what understanding I have of your goodness (Porete, 1993: 211).Furthermore, we need contrast in order to establish quantity, as well as quality. Logic demands the presence of opposites in order to measure the degree of good versus bad, reason versus unreason. A piece of string is long relative only to the shortness of the piece against which it is measured. Hence, it is virtually impossible to convey meaning in any conventional sense outside of a dualistic framework.Interestingly, James P. Carse (2012) notes that religious belief is subject to the same dualistic criterion. One doesnt even say, I believe unless theres already an assumption that theres something other people dont believe, he arguesand so much so that they actually have to encourage opposition to keep their own beliefs alive.Thus, the dualistic framework is central to our thinking at every level of experience, including the spiritual. Yet at least since Plotinus, mystical realisation has been broadly assumed to transcend dualistic thinking (Sells, 1994a: 22). In the theologies of Marguerite and Rbia, the subject-object distinction dissolves in the unmediated union or identification[footnoteRef:14] with God (Porete, 1993: 158; Smith, 2001: 133). [14: McGinn (2005: 6335) suggests that the distinction between mystical union and identification with the Divine is largely semantic. Rather, he proposes, most mystical texts feature an oscillation and interaction between two poles that need not be seen as expressing opposition. That said, McGinn acknowledges a distinct shift in 13th-century Christianity toward identification, versus union, with God, and singles out Marguerite as exemplary of this trend.]

The concept of intentionality is helpful in understanding the mind of dualism. Popularised by the German philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano (18381917), it refers to the relationship between subject and object in the mental phenomenon of apprehension (Baumgartner, 1995: 103). Intentional consciousness, by definition, is directed toward an object, and must therefore originate in a subject. Uwe Meixner (2006: 27) borrows a concise definition of intentionality from George Bealer:A phenomenon (state, event) is intentional if and only if it is about something. Thus, intentionality is the property of aboutness possessed by certain phenomena.[footnoteRef:15] [15: George Bealer , Materialism and the Logical Structure of Intentionality in Robinson, H. (ed.), Objections to Physicalism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993), p.104.]

For such aboutness to obtain, there must be an object of perceptionsomething for perception to be about. And consciousness of that object must originate in a thinking subject. Intentionality, therefore, is that property of mind that assumes the stance of subject relative to a perceived object. Whatever the nature of the perceived phenomenon, the perceiver is separate from it. Intentionality is one way of framing this separation.As noted, mystical realisation is thought to illuminate a realm beyond the subject-object duality. Hence, Forman (1998b: 341) routinely distinguishes intentional from non-intentional consciousnessthe latter a synonym for the innate pure consciousness he asserts.[footnoteRef:16] Bealers definition, above, would mandate that a non-intentional consciousness would lack any object to be about. Indeed, Forman (1998b:7) describes his pure consciousness event as a wakeful but objectless consciousness. [16: By the same token, constructivism has sometimes been conflated with intentionalism (Dible, 2010: 173).]

A contemporary mystical aspirant, Sophy Burnham (1997: 1112), describes her own brief experience of non-intentional consciousness:I was working at my desk. I sat at my rickety manual typewriter, utterly absorbed in the article I was writing. At a certain moment I lifted my eyes from the page, glanced out the window at a maple treeand for an instant, I became the tree. No separation. I was the bark, the wood, the fleshy summer leaves. Time stopped.In such a moment, aboutness vanishes. The barrier between subject and object having dissolved, there is no one to think about the tree, nor any tree to be thought about. Consciousness has lost both subjectivity and objectivity. This is what I understand Forman to mean by non-intentionality.Significantly, Burnhams experience came to an abrupt end with the unbidden, habitual compulsion to understand it. Satori, came the ponderous thought, and with that the word, arriving like an endless, slow, wavelike movement of my mind, with the naming of the moment, everything fragmented back again into its different partsmyself, the typewriter, the tree now safely separated from me by the windowpane.With the compulsive urge to categorise her experience, Burnham became a subject contemplating an object, perforce separating the two. The Paradox of YearningBoth Rbia and Marguerite, it seems, yearn toward an experience something akin to Burnhamsexcept that the merging they seek is not with a tree, but with the Divine. This yearning, directed as it is toward an object, implies both the aboutness of intentional consciousness and the involvement of personal will. At this point, we may find Allessandro Durantis (1993: 220) definition of intentionality illuminating: There is no question that human activities are characterized by being goal oriented, and as such, they require the actors ability to focus upon real or imaginary objects as they plan or try to act upon such objects.The mystics yearning or seeking appears to be orientated toward a goalnamely, union or identification with the Divine, which supposedly transcends the subject-object split. We might ask, then, whether it is possible for a mystical subject to yearn for an object whose nature is bound by neither subject nor object. Such apparent contradiction would seem to expose a disagreement between means and ends on the mystical path. Rbias rejection of a goal orientation is reflected in what is probably the best known of the stories told about her. It is said that she was seen running with a flaming torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other. Asked what in the world she was up to, Rbia responded, I want to pour water into hell and set paradise on fire, so that these two veils disappear and nobody shall any longer worship God out of a fear of hell or a hope of heaven, but solely for the sake of His eternal beauty (Schimmel, 1997: 35). Marguerite, too, rejects any investment in a mystical goal. Whoever would ask such free Souls, sure and peaceful, if they would want to be in purgatory, Love tells Reason, they would say no; or if they would want to be certain of their salvation in this life, they would say no; or if they would want to be in paradise, they would say no. Such free Souls are able to transcend any attachment to outcome because [t]hey no longer possess any willfor, crucially, if they would desire anything, they would separate themselves from Love (Porete, 1993: 867; emphasis added).Thus, it is in the very abandonment of goal orientation that the mystic realises non-separation from what might conventionally be viewed as the object of her quest. The aboutness of consciousness dissolves, eliminating the distinctions between the three defining elements of intentional knowledge: the knower, the object of knowing, and the epistemological process(es) involved in that knowing (Forman, 1998b: 201). Absent intentional consciousness, then, Marguerite and Rbia experience themselves as inseparable from both their yearning and the Divine object of that yearning. Or, put another way, they are both the yearning and the Divine.William James (1902: 4789) divided knowledge into two essential types: conceptual and experiential. Explaining the distinction, James cites al-Ghazl as noting that the most intimate and accurate medical understanding of intoxication is not the same as the experience of being drunk. Knowledge about life is one thing, he concludes; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another. Neither knowledge about life nor effective occupation of a place in life can logically be other than intentional. The aboutness of the former is evident in its locution; the latter requires a subject to occupy and experience the object James calls a place in life. Thus, James (1902: 420) perceives mystical states as intentional. Mystical truth resembles the knowledge given to us in sensations more than that given by conceptual thought (James, 1902: 396), but it remains an object of consciousness. For James, then, the possibility of non-intentional consciousness does not occur. Indeed, for him it strengthen[s] monistic and optimistic hypothesesthat is, it participates in the intentional project of supporting Jamess view.Yet, as noted, mystical reports persistently describe the dissolution of the subject-object separation. Forman (1998b: 21) rescues James from this conundrum by proposing a third epistemological category. To Jamess experiential knowledge-by-acquaintance and conceptual knowledge-about, Forman adds knowledge-by-identity, in which the subject knows something by virtue of being it. Formans knowledge-by-identity is explicitly non-intentional. I can not know my own awareness as an object, he explains. It is, first and last, subjectivity (Forman, 1998b: 22). On this view, subjectivity transcends dualism by shedding its dualistic obverse. It neither rejects the phenomenal world as non-existent nor projects it as object. Lloyd W. Pflueger (1998: 53), citing Smkya-Yoga doctrine, asserts pure nonobjectivity, or the pure core of subjectivity subjectivity in the most radical sense: the essence, the quintessential nature of the subjective act of thinking, feeling, intending, willing, and selfhood.But for James (1902: 410), that which is one with the Absolute cannot logically be an objectless subject, for we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness (emphasis added). There seem to be two epistemological processes taking place simultaneously: even as the subject-object distinction is obliterated in the subject becoming one with the Absolute, the subject continues to be aware of its own experienceand any experience requires an experiencer (see n1, above).The Intentional ConstructivistFor those of us still constrained by ordinary, subject-object consciousness, a non-dualistic worldview is literally impossible to grasp. Katz claims to understand this point; but his continued use of dualistic concepts to refute non-dualism raises doubts regarding the extent of his understanding. Discussing Buddhist mysticism, Katz (1978: 39) invokes Wittgenstein to describe nirvana as not being a something nor a nothing either.[footnoteRef:17] But he neglects the opportunity to probe this apparent paradox further. Instead, he seizes on it as a building block for his argument that this Wittgensteinian nirvana is shaped by a constructed belief system. Like Jewish devekuth, Christian unio mystica or Sf fana, Katz argues, nirvana is merely a perceptual phenomenon conditioned by long years of training in the tradition whose doctrine proclaims it. Further, the mystic perceives nirvanaas opposed to devekuth, unio mystica or fanabecause she expects it. Her expectation has preconceived, and therefore essentially created, the very ontological reality her tradition has described. Her affirmation of its validity, from this perspective, begs the question. [17: Quoting L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (Oxford, 1958), section 304. According to Batchelor (2000: 77), the Buddhist mystic Nagarjuna concurs in proposing that nirvana is neither something nor nothing.]

Katz (1978: 59) argues that the given is appropriated through acts which shape it into forms which we can make intelligible to ourselves given our conceptual constitution, and which structure it in order to respond to the specific contextual needs and mechanisms of consciousness of the receiver. In offering this analysis, Katz presents his own view as disinterested, congratulating himself on the fact that our position is able to accommodate all the evidence which is accounted for by non-pluralistic accounts without being reductionistic (Katz, 1978: 66; emphasis original). He may be right, but to exclude his own givenhis argumentfrom the same reasoning is, at best, disingenuous.In his 37-page curriculum vitae, Professor Katz, Ph.D. (Cantab.), D.H.L. (Hon. C.), B.D. (Cantab.) lists authorship or editorship of no fewer than 24 books and 116 academic articles (Katz, 2012). He has held posts at Dartmouth College and at Cambridge, Cornell and Boston Universities, as well as visiting professorships at academies all over the world. In short, he has spent a lifetime immersed in an academic worldview and methodology requiring certain forms of data and certain analytical procedures to process them. His is a thoroughly intentional projectit is about something, and it has a goal: to reach what scholars like to call an end of history system, where reality finally catches up with itself; where intellectual inquiry finally arrives at reality (Carse, 2012). But mystical consciousness, as has been argued, is non-intentional, and Durantis definition clarifies that non-intentionality precludes the assertion of a goal. Speculating whether non-intentional consciousness can be an object of intentional enquiry quickly leads us into a hall of mirrors. While rejecting paradox as academically unworkable, it seems that Katz has unwittingly generated a paradox of his own. By demanding that any exploration of mystical reality has to be demonstrated by recourse to, and accurate handling of, the evidence, convincing logical argument, and coherent epistemological procedures, Katz (1978: 65) mandates conventional parameters for the study of a realm whose very nature entails the absence of precisely such parameters.Scholars have become acutely aware of the methodological problems entailed in using our conceptual categories and theoretical constructs to comprehend the world of others, reports Robert Sharf (1998: 11112). He further suggests that it is appropriate to be wary of the intellectual hubris and cultural chauvinism that often attend scholars as they claim insight into the self-representations of others. Although Katz, in particular, sets himself up for scrutiny relative to such statements, essentialist scholars can hardly claim any privileged insight or innovative methodology for the investigation of mystical realisation. Both sides of the debate appear to fulfil Carses (2012) observation, noted earlier, that the believer requires opposition in order to maintain his position. I do not maintain that academic scholarship is a religionalthough, like science, it does offer some seductive advantages over the latter (Bellah, 2008: 54). As a cognitive system, however, scholarship requires the observance of certain protocols, QED. My argument is that these protocols directly oppose those we can discern in mystical reports and that, in this context, they obstruct their own analytical ends. The irresolvable nature of the constructivist-essentialist debate demonstrates, if nothing else, that the essence of the mystical experience is not penetrable by means of scholarship. With Donald Evans (1989: 56), I think that mystics may be able to settle among themselves what academics cannot Katz, as an academic, is not in a position to dictate what mystics can or cannot do. Yet it continues to be the case that the mystics report, I had a conversation with God, is dismissed as anecdotal, at best; whereas the scholars assertion that such a conversation is improbable is taken very seriously indeed, vide prominent references to Katzs arguments throughout the academic literature on mysticism (Hay, 2005: 426; McLaughlin, 1996: 177; Fenton, 1981: 69; Cottrell, 1991: 17, etc.). It is surely worth noting that this disparity persists despite patently asymmetrical access to the substance of the claim.As Francesca Bussey (2007: 1945) trenchantly observes, [t]he text as an historical document (as truth) is subject to the multiple intrusions of an (always) artificial language, made more complex still by the ontology and motivations of both scribe and historian. Consequently, competing theoretical viewpoints challenge interpretation at every turn. This is arguably never more true than in the case of mystical rhetoric, where scholarly protocols limit the permitted source materials to data that are at best one step removed from the phenomenological object of study.[footnoteRef:18] [18: Forman (1998b: 14) is among those scholars who claim personal familiarity with mystical experience. Nonetheless he, like others, relies on standard academic protocols to advance his arguments.]

The constructivist argument is not alone in imposing conditions on mystical experience. In attempting to ascribe qualities to mystical phenomena and in arguing for teleological pure consciousness, the essentialist position itself represents a mediation. It reflects the imposition of an academic end of history (Carse, 2012) goal orientation. Thus, essentialists and constructivists alike intentionally (in the technical sense of the word) invent modes of being that are incompatible with what little we know of a non-intentional worldview. Even a relatively superficial analysis makes it obvious that these postulated modes are specifically conditioned by the expectations and parameters of an academic methodology, whether constructivist or essentialist in inclination.

Chapter 4: The Language of MysticismScholars of mysticism have focused their arguments on the content of mystical experience. In pursuing questions of mediated versus pure consciousness, we have combed through mystics first-person reports, adding such speculation as seems relevant on the basis of our own personal, non-mystical experience. Inevitably, these efforts have brought us into collision with apophasis, paradox and silence.A structuralist might argue that, the content of mystical realisation being inaccessible to us, we should turn our attention to its structure. The South African Concise Oxford Dictionary (2002: 1164) defines structure as the arrangement and relations between the parts of something complex and the quality of being well organized. Transposed into a conceptual context, these definitions suggest a logical, relatively static and universal frame of reference. But the ubiquitous mystical devices of apophasis and paradox routinely make nonsense of our stable syllogisms and evade our attempts to contextualise them. Like quantum particles, their assertions and negations bi-locate, shape-shift and entangle. As for silencewhat is the structure of silence?In his provocative work The Politics of Experience, psychiatrist R.D. Laing (1967: 65) suggests that phenomenological reality is structured:The history of heresies of all kinds testifies to more than the tendency to break off communication (excommunication) with those who hold different dogmas or opinions; it bears witness to our intolerance of different fundamental structures of experience. We seem to need to share a communal meaning to human existence, to give with others a common sense to the world, to maintain a consensus (emphases original).Laing goes on to cite Durkheim as observing that the elements of such reified consensus come to be viewed as independent, external forces. Laing submits, however, that they are pseudo-things (ibid.).It is no coincidence that we find in Laings construction echoes of Marguerite Porete, the excommunicated heretic and pseudo-woman. Following his paradigm, Marguerite would have been reviled and executed precisely because her experience was structured differently from that consistent with the reified consensus of her day. This does not, of course, automatically mean that Marguerites view was right and that of her inquisitors wrongalthough a good case could be made for this conclusion on the basis of other criteria. Most contemporary observers would be hard put to justify the Inquisition and its brutal excesses. However, from a Laingian perspective, this opinion and its validations are themselves the products of a reified consensus. Dig underneath them for righteous bedrock, and we merely find more of the same. To paraphrase Bertrand Russells famous heckler, its reified consensus all the way down.[footnoteRef:19] [19: A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) gave a public lecture on astronomy. An elderly woman challenged his description of the cosmos, insisting that the world is flat, and rests on the back of a tortoise. When the scientist asked what supported the tortoise, the woman retorted, Youre very clever, young man But its turtles [sic] all the way down! Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (London: Transworld, 1988), p.1. ]

The difference between Laings experiential structures and the static, logical, universal frameworks we attempt to impose on the unexplainable is precisely the element of reification. To reify something is to solidify it: to make it hold still so that it can be examined in the light of reason, that it may yield the inductions that will satisfactorily explain our world to us. The reification of Laings structures of experience occurs only as an adjunct to the consensus imperative. Inherently, these structures are dynamic. Experience, argues Sharf (1998: 104) in his authoritative chapter on the subject, is simply given to us in the immediacy of each moment of perceptionthat is, experience can be known only in the fleeting instant of its singular existence. Indeed, Sharf (1998: 113) continues, the term experience cannot make ostensible a something that exists in the world (emphasis original). On my reading of Laing, slippery experience is not corralled within a constraining structure; rather, structure is animated by the dynamism of experience. Applying this gloss to the specifics of mystical experience, I propose that the latter is most productively viewed as a dynamic, rather than as a structure or a body of content. Hints of this view appear throughout the literature on mysticism, as in Prices suggestion, above, that mystical language is grounded in a dynamics of consciousness; and Jamess contrast between conceptual knowledge and dynamic currents passing through your being. George Kalamaras (1997: 8) suggests that movement is the very essence of mystical accomplishment, for the supreme realization of 'divine consciousness' is known by the practitioner to be a condition of Becoming (emphasis original). This construction describes an energetic force, rather than a state. Indeed, Kalamaras clarifies that [s]upreme consciousness is a condition in which the consciousness of Being is not static or stable but rather ever-changing and dynamic.Assumptions and PossibilitiesFocusing on the structure or content of mystics utterances rests on unexamined assumptions, which the possibility of non-intentional consciousness puts into question. As I have argued, our academic frames of reference dont fit the structures of mystical experience. The more we try to force the object of our study to comply with our assumptions, the further we wander from its true nature. While scholarly methodologies and aspirations throughout the historical and global academy obviously vary a great deal, ultimately the aim of scholarship is to arrive at conclusions. Standard academic devices, such as syllogism and quantitative and qualitative analysis, are employed specifically in search of an end point. We see this orientation strongly reflected in the constructivist-essentialist debate. Essentialists conclude that all mystics attain a common, core experience. Constructivists conclude that there is no such pure core, and offer other explanations for the mystical phenomenon. As has been shown, both arguments have ironically reached their own respective end points. Academic methodologies focus, consistently enough, on those aspects of the mystical experience that are amenable to their fundamental assumptions: primarily, the centrality of content and structure, both of which can be measured, analysed, compared and entered into larger calculations. Both obligingly hold still while we conduct these investigations. And both offer the possibility of a conclusion that, la Popper, lends itself to falsification. Scholars such as Bruce Janz (1995) have attempted to break the constructivist-essentialist impasse by offering alternative analyses, but these, too, are grounded in similar assumptions. The failure to achieve definitive conclusions continues to generate lively polemics, but dooms scholars to perpetual uncertaintyat least, with respect to this particular field of enquiry. Perhaps it is in this very uncertainty that we unwittingly find a more promising clue. Marguerite tells us that she has fallen into certainty of knowing nothing (Porete, 1993: 156)a fall that begins with confusion. Freedom is attained only through the rejection of both internal and external works, explains Hollywood (1994: 98)that is, through radical simplicity. It is perhaps not too much of a stretch to equate vigorous scholarly analyses and polemics with internal and external works. Consider, then, the scholars dismay on learning that [t]he first step toward simplicity is to become bewildered. Bewilderment is academic anathema. It is part of our job description to hack a path through the jungle of confusion in order to find a defensible conclusion at its heart. In this scenario, to stagger on in bewilderment is to be lost. But, as Hollywood continues, bewildered souls are no longer lost Their confusion leads them to follow the path of willing nothing (ibid.). This is the logic that Marguerites Lady Love uses to defeat Reason. How might a scholar follow the path of willing nothing? What intrigues me about this suggestion is the surrender it encodes. Picture, if you will, the noble scholar, analytical machete in hand, doggedly hacking a path through the jungle of confusionwhen it suddenly occurs to him to relax his methodology and become interested in the jungle itself. In order to do so, he would have to let go of a great deal. Even temporary abandonment of his methodologyhis roadmap, his blueprint, his plan of actionwill require great courage, for now he has no argument. Without an argument, can he even call himself a scholar? This brings us to another central aspect of the mystics message, which revolves around the question of identity. Personal identity can be said to constitute our most fundamental possession. Perhaps more to the point, as the early Sfs understood, the existence of personal identity constitutes the greatest obstacle to the embrace of the Beloved (Derin, 1999: 155). Thus, both Rbia and Marguerite aspire to a complete loss of personal identity. Marguerites mystic is like iron invested with fire which has lost its own semblance because the fire is stronger and thus transforms the iron into itself (Porete, 1993: 130). Rbia, for her part, tells Hasan of Basra, I have ceased to exist and have passed out of self. I am become one with Him and am altogether His (Smith, 2001: 133). These are not merely statements of surrender to a higher power, but proclamations of the absence of the intentional subject-object split. We might speculate on what kind of fire might melt the separation between the scholar and his subject matter. I am not arguing that scholars are especially attached to their personal identities. Rather, my point is that we, like all non-mystics, are identified with the very entity cited by mystics as the main obstacle to realisation: i.e., a distinct self or personality. In the case of scholars, we are subjects eternally in search of objectivitya decidedly intentional quest. My question, then, is whether it is possible for us to have anything approaching an unobstructed view of the mystical processes leading to abandonment of that obstacle.Marguerites and Rbias accounts, as well as those of many other mystics across eras and religious traditions, affirm similar tropes: open-endedness and its corollary, abandonment of investment in an outcome; and the surrender of personal identity. None of these qualities lends itself to quantitative measurementindeed, they are barely accessible to qualitative analysis. Without these two critical tools (and I use the word critical in both its possible senses here), the scholar is left naked. Yet nakedness is precisely the quality our two mystics assure us is indispensable to any apprehension of mystical realisation. Marguerite proclaims that when the Soul is melted in the simple Deity [n]o one can ascend any higher nor descend more deeply, nor can anyone be more naked (Porete, 1993: 220). Rbia instructs her friend Hasan to be naked and work continuously (Attar, 1996: 161).Perhaps the notion of a dynamic is nearly as ineffable as is that of mystical experience itself. Yet unlike the latter, it can be conceptually grasped. As an energetic, rather than a substantive, phenomenon, a dynamic may be measured both qualitatively and quantitivelybut as Sharf (1998: 104) has observed of all experience, only in a given moment. Its measurements will not hold still long enough for any stable measurement. To invoke Heisenbergs famous uncertainty principle, perhaps a dynamic can never be simultaneously committed to all the elements of its manifestation. The only way to thoroughly observe it in action, then, would be to join it. I will argue that this is precisely what mystics such as Marguerite and Rbia intend for us to do. Apophasis Sells (1994a: 5) locates Marguerite Poretes The Mirror of Simple Souls at the summit of 150 years of Western apophatic mysticism. Thus, although Marguerite may serve as an exemplar of the device, she is far from alone in employing it. According to Renard (2005: 35), Sfs have been among the many mystics who have resorted to apophasis. The ubiquitous use of apophatic language in mystical reports suggests that what is being pointed tothe nature of mystical experiencecannot be named. Hence, were told what it is not. Yet apophasis is not is a reductive mechanism. No amount of negation can make even a dent in the realm of possibility. I might, for example, affirm that the object I am thinking of is not a kettle, Anna Karenina, a rifle, Gary Player, a raindrop, a tube of lipstick, a stairwell, Betelgeuse, DNA or the movie Persona; yet however long my list of all the things that it is not, the number of things it could be will remain vastly more plentiful. I see this fact as pointing to an important quality of mystical experience: it is open to infinite possibilities. Any assertion would limit its potential scope, hence all assertions must immediately be negated. Since the negation is itself limited to the assertion it negates, it must transcend this limit and itself be negated again. Thus, we find ourselves in what Sells (1994a: 2) calls a linguistic regress. That is, the apophatic language that seeks to convey the non-thingness of the transcendent must continually and endlessly assert and negate. The result, Sells (1994a: 7) concludes, is an open-ended dynamic that strains against its own reifications and ontologiesa language of disontology (emphasis original). Such a language accords with a view of mystical reality that cannot be measured by conventional means.Sells (1994a: 4) suggests that the power of apophasis lies in its challenge to logic (or what Marguerite calls Reason), which reliesas does all intentionally understood realityon object entities. Sells argues that [w]hen the subject of discourse is a non-object and a no-thing, it is not irrational that such a logic be superseded. This dissolving of both subject and object takes us, again, into the realm of non-intentional consciousness, releasing Sellss open-ended dynamic to range freely through an infinity of possible realities.Paradox Paradox, as Steven Katz has complained, is another ubiquitous device of mystical rhetoric. Here, the object is simultaneously affirmed and negated. Marguerites Reasonthat earnest, rational and increasingly worried character whose questions serve to extract from God, or Lady Love, the theology of The Mirror of Simple Soulscannot withstand the language of paradox. These are two contradictory statements, Reason complains at one point, and I do not know how to grasp them (Porete, 1993: 103). She expires shortly after hearing the character Pure Courtesy offer this paean to the Unencumbered Soul:Such a Soul often hears what she hears not,and often sees what she sees not,and so often she is there where she is not,and so often she feels what she feels not (Porete, 1993: 162).

Rbia takes us into similar territory when she tells a man who claims to have been sinless for twenty years, Alas, my son, thine existence is a sin wherewith no other sin may be compared. In this demonstration of the rights of the Absolute, argues Martin Lings (1983: 978), [l]aw and practical theology are thrown to the winds. Certainly, Rbias approach is incommensurate with the linearity and non-contradiction that marks conventional logic.For the scholar, as for Marguerites character Reason, paradox poses a frustrating and apparently intractable obstacle. But Kalamaras (1977: 8) offers a different lens through which to view it. [P]aradox, he submits, is a means of investigating itself and of engaging in a more complex and intimate way with a condition of apparent opposition that is nonconflictive and reciprocal.[footnoteRef:20] Significantly, Kalamaras (1997: 5) conflates paradox with sacred experience itself. This argument poses the intriguing possibility that while the scholar so diligently strives to discover what lies beyond paradox, a greater treasure may actually lie within it. [20: The non-conflictive nature of paradox suggested here introduces an interesting counterpoint to Carses observation, earlier, that the stability of a conceptual belief requires opposition.]

April Anson (2011: 12) argues that Marguerites spiritual quest actually necessitated an internalization of paradox. Religious women of her era and culture were obliged to accommodate, not only an acceptance of paradoxes, but an ownership over them, inverting established notions of spiritual conventions. This reading adds an intriguing dimension to Colledge and Guarnieris charge of ambiguity and imprecision (Cottrell, 1991: 16). Perhaps, after all, these are precisely the qualities we might celebrate as signposts to a richer, more nuanced understanding of Marguerites paradoxes. Indeed, Batchelor (2000: 67) reads Nagarjuna as implying that pairs of apparent opposites, such as real and unreal, may not be irresolvable contradictions, but rather terms within a strategic discourse of freedom, which are employed therapeutically to address the needs of specific situations.Brainard (1996: 385) suggests that hermeneutical investigations of mysticism are themselves infused with inherent paradox. On the one hand, since we have no access to the object of scholarship, the latter must necessarily be considered interpretation. Yet on the other hand, the sign necessarily refers to the signified. What is being interpreted, if not something real, substantial, interpretable? Brainard does not take what might seem an obvious next step: to speculate that scholars have been chasing their own tails all alongthat is, that the imperative to interpret has driven us to invent an object of interpretation. It could be argued that this notion parallels the constructivist description of the mystical path, which envisions the mystic proceeding toward a pre-established worldview based on expectation honed by training. Thus, no actual mystical reality ever existed, in any objective sense; only the mystics prefabricated, imagined meeting with the Ultimate, which she has projected ahead of her like a custom-made carpet unrolling to receive her next step. In the study of mysticism, paradox and apophasis cannot be separated. Sells (1994a: 2) identifies their juncture: In order to claim that the transcendent is beyond names he points out, I must give it a name. Attaching qualities to the transcendentincluding the quality of ineffabilitymakes of the transcendent a non-transcendent object. Sells proposes acceptance of this dilemma as irresolvable, and suggests that instead of leading to silence, [it] leads to a new mode of discourse. Perhaps this new mode of discourse is what Brainard (1996: 362) has in mind when he remarks that my approach here is more to understand the nature of the paradox than to try to solve it. By abandoning our engagement with the meaning of paradoxi.e., its contentin favour of working to understand its nature or dynamic, it may be that (paradoxically, of course) we come closer to the heart of mystical experience. As Brainard notes, many mystical texts, especially those that profess ontological revelation, would appear, themselves, to provide a curious, paradox-filled, textual process for leading a reader toward insight into such issues.Anson (2011: 12) proposes that one function of paradox is to invert the exclusivity implicit in dualistic constructs. As paradox pairs two opposites together to render a greater truth, she argues, it is inclusive by nature, bringing two supposed inconsistencies into unity. When paradoxes are viewed as poetry, the text becomes metaphor and readers are no longer excluded by doctrine, dogma, or dictate (Anson 2011: 2). Perhaps it is the scholars doctrine, dogma, [and] dictate that exclude him from the mystery the mystic seeks to reveal.

Chapter 5: SilenceBoth apophasis and paradox finally reduce the scholar to silence. Bussey (2007: 1945) argues that the historian prefers a story to silence despite the fact that most of life is lived not told. This preference is hardly confined to historians; it has demonstrably influenced the scholarship on mysticism. Even Sells, in proposing that apophasis promotes discourse instead of leading to silence implies that the latter is nothing but a barren landscape.[footnoteRef:21] [21: Perhaps not incidentally, mystics famously seek out desert landscapes.]

It can hardly be coincidental that the mystics attempts to communicate her realisation typically also end in silence. It is necessary to be silent about [God], says this Soul [Marguerite], for one cannot say anything about it. She speaks only for those who are not yet unencumbered until they arrive at this stage (Porete, 1993: 1556).[footnoteRef:22] Rbia, meanwhile, notes that [f]rom the tongue, there is no path to him (Attr, 1996: 163). [22: Batchelor (2000: epigraph) quotes Nagarjuna as expressing similar logic: Without relying on conventions,/You cannot disclose the sublime.]

As we have seen, it is to speechlessness that Marguerite in the end passes (Dickens, 2009: 122). The legend of Rbia emphasises her words, rather than her silences; but this is perhaps understandable. Short of realisation comparable to her own, her chroniclers are obliged to seek illumination in what Rbia does say, rather than in what she doesnt. Nonetheless, it is recorded that she spent substantial time in solitary devotions, a good proportion of which can reasonably be assumed to have been silent. That early Sfs prized silence is reflected in an anecdote concerning one Fima ad-Dimashqiyya. On hearing a religious lecturer in a Damascus mosque, Fima challenges him: You spoke very well, and you have perfected the art of rhetoric, have you perfected the art of silence? The lecturer, it is said, never spoke again (Dakake, 1992: 146).Mystics, as we have seen, caution that to speak of their realisation is to obscure the real. Bussey (2007: 195) casts similar doubt on current scholarship. It is, after all, ephemeral and open to multiple interpretations, subject to an imagined division between the real and the constituted, giving rise to much imaginative conjecture. Perhaps, then, the scholar might fruitfully seek to emulate the mystic in developing an appreciation of silencenot in the sense of suspending study or speculation, but in considering the positive value of silence as a compass indicating a more spacious exploration of that which we have struggled so long to contain within definitions and opinions. An investigator in search of content or structure, finding neither, perceives silence as an absence: the ultimate negation. Marguerites inquisitor clearly considers her silence a direct insult (Barton, 2000)which it is, to the extent that he is identified with his demand for communication on his own terms. Katz (1978: 59) expresses similar frustration: [T]here is no evidence, he argues, that there is any given which can be disclosed without the imposition of the mediating conditions of the knower (emphasis added). Katzs own mediating conditions are nowhere more obvious: he is asserting as self-evident that any given must be disclosed, and in language that he understands. In this, he is doomed to suffer the same insult that so vexed William of Paris. But what if, as the poet Octavio Paz has suggested, [s]ilence is not a failure, but the end result, the culmination of language (Kalamaras, 1997: 10)? As Catherine Bothe (1994: 110) has observed, [a]s perfect silence, [Marguerite] is a sign of the divine voice, a virgin space where a song can be born. Viewed as a positive representation of non-intentionalityas itself neither subject nor objectsilence opens intriguing investigative possibilities. In a space unconditioned by language and its limitations, anything is possible. It follows that silence is all-accommodating. As Kalamaras (1997: 9) observes, one locates in silence an emptiness that is 'full'. I do not necessarily dispute his contention that [i]t is full in large part due to its expanded perception of the interanimation of all things; yet this is only one of infinite possible contents. My point is precisely that there is room, in silence, for all possibilities.Full though it may be, however, silence emerges from a reductive, rather than an additive, process. And a process it is, for as Batchelor (2000: 21) observes, [e]mptiness is not a state but a way (emphases original).[footnoteRef:23] In this, I believe that silence has an important message for scholars. It might well be that a stripping away of arguments, methodologies and opinions may serve the study of mysticism more effectively than has the traditional generation and accretion of same. Proposing a conventional opposition between emptiness and fixation, Batchelor (2000: 68) rejects any notion of these as discrete states of mind. Rather, he submits, they suggest strategies for living, and as such they are irreducible to simple definitions (emphasis original). [23: For the purposes of this argument I deliberately conflate the generic emptiness with its aural expression in silence.]

Marguerite meets her inquisitors questions and demands with silence, which endures through her torturous death. Bussey (2007: 1314) finds a profound message here, for in a formulaic process that demanded dialogue, there is none. Or, rather, there is a dialogue with silencewhich, for Bussey, is central to our understanding of the inquisitorial documents. [T]he dialogue between accusation and silence, she argues, can be found in Marguerites silent deposition and the contours of her text. Here, we can begin to draw out the patterns of power that speech and silence in the documents provide and thus, ultimately, we may begin to see the shadow of our subject outside the constraints of inquisitorial constructions (ibid.).Silence, in this construction, is far from an absence or negation. On the contrary, it is that which, more than anything else, must be heard in order to make sense of the otherwise senseless. The open-endedness of silence further deprives us of any goal toward which to orientate ourselves. Thus, silence is in its very nature free of the goal orientation that Duranti has asserted as central to the subject-object dualities of intentional consciousness.Confronted with silence, we are thrown back on our own intuition and understanding. It is conceivable that this reflects a mystical methodology, in that realisation cannot be conferred, only earned. As Dickens (2009: 1223) observes of The Mirror of Simple Souls, it is in the fact that Marguerite cannot fully describe what is occurring that the reader is encouraged to discover it for herself. For these reasons, at least, silence makes us uncomfortable.[footnoteRef:24] Its language does not conform to our assumptions. It doesnt give us what we want. The elements of communication that we conventionally consider indispensableand self-evidently soare not present here. Language being our only sanctioned access to the truth of experience, we are again left naked, for as Kalamaras (1997: 3) notes, silence hinders symbolic access to experience. [24: Beyond the scope of this paper, but perhaps worth further investigation, is the positive role of discomfort in the lives of mystics. Many, like Rbia, deliberately seek it out; while Marguerite subjects Reason to discomfort as a necessary stage on the path to realisation (Porete, 1993: 163).]

Silence is itself a nakedness: unadorned, undefended, unashamed. Such vulnerability is not easy to maintain, and therefore typically rare in our workaday world. We marvel at the steadfastness of those monastics and mystics who practise it. Most of us find it difficult to keep silence when crossed in even relatively trivial matters; we are quick to assert our opinions and defend our identities. It is difficult to imagine the discipline, courage, trust and humility necessary to abandon all such reactions in prison, much less at the stake. But as Marguerite tells us, [t]his Humility we are silent about for speaking ruins [it] (Porete, 1993: 164). In that difficultyindeed, perhaps because of itwe find ourselves in intimate relationship with our own experience. When we want to touch in with what were feeling, we instinctively fall silent. It could be said, then, that silence is itself the ground of phenomenological observation. Meister Eckhart went so far as to call it the immovable ground of all Beingand by this immovability all things are moved, all life is received (Murrin, 2001: 46). Eckharts description of silence as the nec