                           19981010.00
,PP Permit me to elaborate and expand my comments on mysticism.

     In the first place, if, as I assert, mysticism is a quality
of spiritual (emotional, intellectual) life itself, and therefore
reflects the uniqueness (Einzigartigkeit) of the individual human
being, then it is self-contradictory to define mystics as members
of a religious movement or sect or as adherents of a particular
dogma.  It is my contention that the mystical experience is by no
means an isolated or rare phenomenon, but that it is universally
human.  It is part of the experience of all of us, just as we all
know happiness and grief, pleasure and pain.  But the mystical
experience remains unarticulated, buried as it is under mountains
(Truemmerberge) of logical debris produced by the excessively
efficient and effective pseudo-rational social machine in which
we are trapped.

     Each of us construes for himself a functional model of
reality.  The circumstance that this model determines our actions
and makes them effective does not alter its quality of being a
concept, in the strict sense unique to him who entertains it.
The cosmos, the world as I construe and imagine it, die Welt als
Vorstellung, is apprehended by me as an individual, It is
uniquely mine, and is accessible only to me.  Any reality of the
cosmos (irgend ein Ding an Sich) which transcends my apprehension
(grasp) is ipso facto inaccessible to me.

     That cosmos which is constructed by the spirit of each
individual appears in the first place to be objective, i.e. the
individual assumes that it is the same cosmos which his fellow
human beings recognize.  But such objectivity is an hypothesis,
an intention, the actuality is not susceptible to proof.

     Onto this cosmos in all its pseudo-objectivity, there is
projected (mapped) an affect of inwardness (subjectivity) such as
the individual experiences in association with his own physical
existence.  This mapped (projected) subjectivity is denominated
as (the) divine.

     Although I have described the encounter with (experience of)
deity as a mapping, a projection of my subjective experience onto
the cosmos, the hypostasized priority of the self is arbitrary.
It is equally compelling to postulate the priority of the
subjective cosmos, i.e. of God, as the origin of all things, and
to interpret the human spirit (soul) as the reflection or
expression of the divine in human experience, as indeed in
Genesis God is described as making man in God's own image.  The
experience of the divine is inseparable and to some extent
indistinguishable from the experience of self.  The Bible is an
account of the manner in which the experience of the divine, of
an imputed cosmic subjectivity, determined the history of the
Hebrews and their Christian descendants.

     Thus mysticism becomes the foundation for an empirical
theology.  What the mystic knows about God is derived from his
own experience.  The circumstance that this experience is
"inward" does not make it any less real or compelling; and does
not detract from its emprirical character.  By providing theology
with an empirical foundation, mysticism builds a bridge between
the inner and the outer world and provides for theology its
proper place in the realm of science.

     At the same time, the integration of theology into the
complex of other sciences sheds on these a new and penetrating
light.  Theology becomes rational as soon as the truth of
subjectivity is acknowledged. But if the truth of subjectivity is
acknowledged in theology, then it is acknowledged also in the
other sciences, which are henceforth subject to a different, and
I think more persuasive and consistent interpretation.

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