Consciousness of God as God is: The phenomenology of Christian centering prayer

<p>In this study I aim to give an alternative approach to the way we theorise in the philosophy and comparative study of mysticism. Specifically, I aim to shift debate on the phenomenal nature of contemplative states of consciousness away from textual sources and towards reliable and descriptively rich first-person data originating in contemporary practices of lived traditions. The heart of this dissertation lies in rich qualitative interview data obtained through recently developed second-person approaches in the science of consciousness. I conducted in-depth phenomenological interviews with 20 Centering Prayer teachers and practitioners. The interviews covered the larger trajectory of their contemplative paths and granular detail of the dynamics of recent seated prayer sessions. I aided my second-person method with a “radical participation” approach to fieldwork at St Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass. In this study I present nuanced phenomenological analyses of the first-person data regarding the beginning to intermediate stages of the Christian contemplative path, as outlined by the Centering Prayer tradition and described by Centering Prayer contemplatives. My presentation of the phenomenology of Centering Prayer is guided by a synthetic map of Centering Prayer’s (Keating School) contemplative path and model of human consciousness, which is grounded in the first-person data obtained in this study and takes into account the tradition’s primary sources. This includes: (1) an outline of the stages of the contemplative path; (2) the levels of consciousness (ordinary, spiritual and divine) and the type of experiential content (coarse, subtle and very subtle/divine presence) proper to each stage of the path; and (3) corresponding types of self (false, true and separate-self sense). My study addresses three meta-issues in the field pertaining to method, description and theory. First, I offer a new framework for the comparative study of contemplative practices and experiences, alongside a sound second-person method for collecting first-person data from contemplative practitioners. Second, I provide an effective framework for developing phenomenological accounts that are descriptively faithful, analytically transparent and theoretically useful. Third, I draw on the phenomenological accounts developed in this study to reconsider important theses advanced in the contemporary philosophy and comparative study of mysticism. On this basis, I argue that practitioners phenomenally apprehend union states, specifically prayer of full union, through experiential primitives, such as a “sense of presence”, and without a “God-identification element”. Consequently, union states are phenomenologically of an unidentified reality and therefore not theistic, in Katz’s and Pike’s senses. However, there might be some sense in which they are phenomenologically of God, because they could be practitioners’ consciousness of God as God is; but this would empirically disconfirm received views of how God should be experienced. This finding challenges arguments for a unique theistic experience, designed to uphold a fundamental distinction between theistic and nontheistic experiences. Since Christian practitioners do not necessarily have unique theistic experiences in union, in the way that Katz and Pike require, there is at least some sense in which contemplatives from different traditions and cultures could have experiences similar in content and structure.</p>

Consciousness of God as God is: The phenomenology of Christian centering prayer

<p>In this study I aim to give an alternative approach to the way we theorise in the philosophy and comparative study of mysticism. Specifically, I aim to shift debate on the phenomenal nature of contemplative states of consciousness away from textual sources and towards reliable and descriptively rich first-person data originating in contemporary practices of lived traditions. The heart of this dissertation lies in rich qualitative interview data obtained through recently developed second-person approaches in the science of consciousness. I conducted in-depth phenomenological interviews with 20 Centering Prayer teachers and practitioners. The interviews covered the larger trajectory of their contemplative paths and granular detail of the dynamics of recent seated prayer sessions. I aided my second-person method with a “radical participation” approach to fieldwork at St Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass. In this study I present nuanced phenomenological analyses of the first-person data regarding the beginning to intermediate stages of the Christian contemplative path, as outlined by the Centering Prayer tradition and described by Centering Prayer contemplatives. My presentation of the phenomenology of Centering Prayer is guided by a synthetic map of Centering Prayer’s (Keating School) contemplative path and model of human consciousness, which is grounded in the first-person data obtained in this study and takes into account the tradition’s primary sources. This includes: (1) an outline of the stages of the contemplative path; (2) the levels of consciousness (ordinary, spiritual and divine) and the type of experiential content (coarse, subtle and very subtle/divine presence) proper to each stage of the path; and (3) corresponding types of self (false, true and separate-self sense). My study addresses three meta-issues in the field pertaining to method, description and theory. First, I offer a new framework for the comparative study of contemplative practices and experiences, alongside a sound second-person method for collecting first-person data from contemplative practitioners. Second, I provide an effective framework for developing phenomenological accounts that are descriptively faithful, analytically transparent and theoretically useful. Third, I draw on the phenomenological accounts developed in this study to reconsider important theses advanced in the contemporary philosophy and comparative study of mysticism. On this basis, I argue that practitioners phenomenally apprehend union states, specifically prayer of full union, through experiential primitives, such as a “sense of presence”, and without a “God-identification element”. Consequently, union states are phenomenologically of an unidentified reality and therefore not theistic, in Katz’s and Pike’s senses. However, there might be some sense in which they are phenomenologically of God, because they could be practitioners’ consciousness of God as God is; but this would empirically disconfirm received views of how God should be experienced. This finding challenges arguments for a unique theistic experience, designed to uphold a fundamental distinction between theistic and nontheistic experiences. Since Christian practitioners do not necessarily have unique theistic experiences in union, in the way that Katz and Pike require, there is at least some sense in which contemplatives from different traditions and cultures could have experiences similar in content and structure.</p>

The Possibility of Theistic Experience

In a recent issue of Religious Studies Kevin Corcoran has criticized my arguments for the impossibility of theistic experience (i.e. an experience which is phenomenologically of God). Building on, and amending, criticisms already levelled against my views by Nelson Pike (in the latter's Mystic Union), Corcoran argues that my views are based on an account of what it is for an experience to be ‘phenomenologically of’ an individual (or kind of thing) which leads to ‘wildly implausible’ results. I here try to show that Corcoran's criticisms are based on a misunderstanding of my views.

Is Theistic Experience Phenomenologically Possible?

William Forgie's negative conclusion concerning the possibility of theistic experience in particular turns on a sophisticated, if idiosyncratic, phenomenology of experience in general. Forgie introduces us to his position by having us imagine two people, Tim and Tom Tibbetts. He then asks us to suppose that Tim and Tom are identical twins who live next door. Imagine that looking over the fence one fine sunny day you have what you take to be a veridical visual experience of someone who looks like one of the Tibbetts. If you were required to rely solely on the content of your experience, says Forgie, and not on any extra-experiential information to which you may be privy (e.g. you know Tom is away at aunt Millie's), there would be no way to identify the object of your experience as Tim, rather than Tom, Tibbetts. An experience of one would be phenomenologically indistinguishable from an experience of the other and there would be, therefore, nothing in the experience itself which guarantees that it's Tim, rather than Tom.

Pike's Mystic Union and the Possibility of Theistic Experience

In his long-awaited Mystic Union, Nelson Pike offers a phenomenology of mysticism. His account is based on the reports and descriptions of third parties, not on his own, first-person experience. So he calls his enterprise ‘phenomenography’, an attempt to describe the experiential content of conscious states by way of reports of them. Pike finds in the Christian mystical tradition three different kinds of experiences of mystic union, the ‘prayer of quiet’, the ‘prayer of union’ and ‘rapture’. These experiences differ phenomenologically, i.e. in experiential content. But they are all ‘theistic’ experiences; that is, they are all phenomenologically of God. By this Pike means: (a) whether these experiences are veridical or not, their object – what they are veridical or hallucinatory experiences of – is God; and (b) that they are of God is part of, or given in, the phenomenological content of the experiences themselves.