"Your Dogma is Linguistic Micro-Agression!"

There is a religious elitism masquerading as pure experiential religion. Most of these people abjure inclusion (imprisonment) within any identifiable religion; they are far too complex for that. Instead, they are the ambiguously "spiritual" people all about us. They run in marathons, eat organic and meditate. They don't go to church or temple, or if they do they go to all of them.

The thesis is as follows: Dogma (interpreted as exclusivist doctrinal claims) is a form of rhetorical violence that leads to actual violence. If we can look beyond the marginalizing doctrinal claims of the various world religions, we could see the glorious mysticism at the beating heart of each. God is to be found there and not in the aggressions of argument fueled by intolerant dogma.

And so what are the problems with a "mysticism over doctrine" view?

Problem 1: Do mystical encounters lead to propositions that can be transmitted to others non-mystically?

In Islam, various mystical encounters with Gabriel led to the rather non-mystical Qur'an. In other words, the point of mysticism in Islam is not for each individual to have an isolated encounter, but to translate encounters into propositions about God that can be shared with others--in other words, into doctrine. Now these propositions can lead to experiences, but surely it is obvious that mystical experience and doctrine are inextricably intertwined.

In Christianity, various encounters informed men about the nature and character of God that they set forth in language and passed on to future generations. If people have an encounter with God, then it will be something like these other experiences that come freighted with a certain content that can be affirmed or denied. In short, God is saying something concrete about himself through these experiences.

The same kind of process happens in most religions. Mystical encounters are not an end in themselves. They all inform people, and that information then becomes a basis for community doctrine, identity, purpose and even informed experience, or better, rational experience. Most religions recognize the inherent problems with a compartmentalized view of reason and experience.

Problem 2: Are we looking for individual mystical experiences or a community experience?

If we look to community experience, then we must check our experience against others and what they have experienced. It could be that our experience is illegitimate. If a Christian experiences God as a giant pink bunny who tells him that he is a latter day prophet, then I'm sorry, but that experience is illegitimate. It is possible, from a religious perspective, to encounter devils that masquerade as God!

Problem 3: How does one understand the difference between an encounter with the divine and emotional rapture?

Is just any experience to be considered divine? On what set of guiding principles can one distinguish mere emotional rapture from true divine influence? One can't say that the sheer force of the encounter is sufficient to distinguish it because forceful experiences can be found in any number of religions or even through drugs.

Typically the "exclusivist" religions have argued that the way to measure these experiences is to check them against doctrine, which is only another way of saying that we should check our experiences against "other people's experiences."

Problem 4: What about logic?

If one says, "All dogmas do violence to the freedoms of others to pursue mystical union with God," is that not also dogmatic? The dogmatists are saying, "Our religion is, on balance, true, and others are false." The non-dogmatists are saying, "All those claiming exclusive doctrines are wrong." (After all, what can a religion that is responsible for aggression be but wrong?) But of course the claim of the non-dogmatist is every bit as dogmatic as the claim of the dogmatist. To say that the worlds many dogmatists are wrong, even violent, is to utter something that is enormously exclusivist.

Now of course the way most mysticists address this is to pretend that their mysticism escapes any logical accountability. They say things like the following:

"The universal (or God) is greater than human logical categories."

"Do not impose logic on ideas greater than logic."

"One must transcend tired binary categories of truth and falsity."

"People don't have to agree with your truth to find their truth."

"Stop harshing on me with your better-than system... God is bigger than systems!"

Or something of the sort. But of course that leads me to the point of rational exhaustion and desperate impasse. How on earth can I relate to someone who will not acknowledge the role of logic in human communication, even on the subject of God? If people are allowed to contradict themselves, then how can there be any progress in dialogue? It is one thing to say that God is beyond logic; it is quite another to suggest that He (or It) is below it.