Thank you for this series which resonates a lot with some of my own experiences. I'm curious whether you had any familiarity with mystical writing like Weil before you had the "extended spiritual experience", or whether, like Weil, you only later found writing that resonated with your own inner experience? I hesitate about your point about showing the proper reverence to sacred texts. I agree that things like blasphemy should not be committed lightly, even if one is an atheist, out of respect for people who consider it to be sacrilegious, but I feel this consideration needs to be balanced with the recognition that sometimes an attachment to certain sacred texts (or certain interpretations of certain sacred texts) comes in the way of spiritual progress by becoming its own form of idolatry.
Hm, that's a complex question. The only Weil I might have read before this experience is her essay On the Abolition of All Political Parties, so, not her mystical writing. I do think there was some influence from the Tao Te Ching (as I've noted).
I had not made any particular study of mystics, and I find myself wondering if you might in fact know some resonances that I don't! But I've read widely enough that it would be surprising if I did not at least have indirect influence from other instances of these things, so it's not what you'd call an independent experiment.
(Edit: In the case of Weil specifically, I know I was indirectly familiar with some of her ideas via Alan Jacobs' blog.)
I'm not sure I made this clear enough, but I was mostly aiming those remarks about sacred texts to people who do, themselves, consider the text sacred. If you're using the text for spiritual purposes, then you should be thinking of it less as something to mine for axioms and more as something that might be trying to convey something complex. Obviously this can vary depending on the text in question, to be fair, but--I really would not want to be read in the way that some religions seem to read their own texts, sometimes.
Thanks for clarifying. I took "fodder for an argument, a cudgel to beat people with" to refer to people like me who try to be openminded but tend to be sceptical of specific religious and spiritual claims. I think it is unrealistic to pretend that the numinous is not an important part of the human experience for many people, but I have my guard up against people who claim spiritual authority based on such experiences (and I appreciate your self-awareness on this point).
In terms of the proper engagement with sacred texts, I'm reminded of my paternal grandmother who took both Bible study and letter writing very seriously. Part of my suspicion of intellectuals comes from the fact that the Protestantism I grew up with put a big emphasis on scriptural interpretation: seminarians were taught both Hebrew and Greek so that they could read the scriptures in the original languages. But then I read scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman who convinced me that if you study these texts the way an academic would study any text, any claim of divine inspiration quickly falls apart, or at least gets diluted into metaphor. I've since come to view such an approach as too cynical: I believe there are many exquisite truths articulated in both the Hebrew and Greek parts of the Bible and the apocryphal texts from the same period, irrespective of whether one believes that in a sense it is all true.
Mm, I think I personally wouldn't conflate "divine inspiration" with "it's all true." Something could be inspired by a (potentially genuine) perception of the divine (speaking as an agnostic) and yet contain substantive factual or moral errors.
I would also expect that even genuine prophecy needn't usually be timeless as opposed to contextual. If my perception is right, then morality is pretty complicated and anything that gets overly specific is liable to have exceptions, and could become false if used in the wrong place.
I agree with you, but there are still many people who take a fundamentalist interpretation on issues such as homosexuality, something that has caused great rifts in Anglican and Catholic Churches in places like Africa vs the more socially liberal parts of the world.
Thank you for this series which resonates a lot with some of my own experiences. I'm curious whether you had any familiarity with mystical writing like Weil before you had the "extended spiritual experience", or whether, like Weil, you only later found writing that resonated with your own inner experience? I hesitate about your point about showing the proper reverence to sacred texts. I agree that things like blasphemy should not be committed lightly, even if one is an atheist, out of respect for people who consider it to be sacrilegious, but I feel this consideration needs to be balanced with the recognition that sometimes an attachment to certain sacred texts (or certain interpretations of certain sacred texts) comes in the way of spiritual progress by becoming its own form of idolatry.
Hm, that's a complex question. The only Weil I might have read before this experience is her essay On the Abolition of All Political Parties, so, not her mystical writing. I do think there was some influence from the Tao Te Ching (as I've noted).
I had not made any particular study of mystics, and I find myself wondering if you might in fact know some resonances that I don't! But I've read widely enough that it would be surprising if I did not at least have indirect influence from other instances of these things, so it's not what you'd call an independent experiment.
(Edit: In the case of Weil specifically, I know I was indirectly familiar with some of her ideas via Alan Jacobs' blog.)
I'm not sure I made this clear enough, but I was mostly aiming those remarks about sacred texts to people who do, themselves, consider the text sacred. If you're using the text for spiritual purposes, then you should be thinking of it less as something to mine for axioms and more as something that might be trying to convey something complex. Obviously this can vary depending on the text in question, to be fair, but--I really would not want to be read in the way that some religions seem to read their own texts, sometimes.
Thanks for clarifying. I took "fodder for an argument, a cudgel to beat people with" to refer to people like me who try to be openminded but tend to be sceptical of specific religious and spiritual claims. I think it is unrealistic to pretend that the numinous is not an important part of the human experience for many people, but I have my guard up against people who claim spiritual authority based on such experiences (and I appreciate your self-awareness on this point).
In terms of the proper engagement with sacred texts, I'm reminded of my paternal grandmother who took both Bible study and letter writing very seriously. Part of my suspicion of intellectuals comes from the fact that the Protestantism I grew up with put a big emphasis on scriptural interpretation: seminarians were taught both Hebrew and Greek so that they could read the scriptures in the original languages. But then I read scholars such as Bart D. Ehrman who convinced me that if you study these texts the way an academic would study any text, any claim of divine inspiration quickly falls apart, or at least gets diluted into metaphor. I've since come to view such an approach as too cynical: I believe there are many exquisite truths articulated in both the Hebrew and Greek parts of the Bible and the apocryphal texts from the same period, irrespective of whether one believes that in a sense it is all true.
Mm, I think I personally wouldn't conflate "divine inspiration" with "it's all true." Something could be inspired by a (potentially genuine) perception of the divine (speaking as an agnostic) and yet contain substantive factual or moral errors.
I would also expect that even genuine prophecy needn't usually be timeless as opposed to contextual. If my perception is right, then morality is pretty complicated and anything that gets overly specific is liable to have exceptions, and could become false if used in the wrong place.
I agree with you, but there are still many people who take a fundamentalist interpretation on issues such as homosexuality, something that has caused great rifts in Anglican and Catholic Churches in places like Africa vs the more socially liberal parts of the world.