Expanding the Common Ground of the Worlds Mystical Traditions :: Culture Globalization Essays

Expanding the honey oil Ground of the Worlds Mystical Traditionsmissing works citedABSTRACT This paper addresses ghostlike epistemology in that it concerns the assessment of the credibility of certain claims arising out of ghostly experience. Developments this century pay off make the worlds rich religious heritage accessible to more people than incessantly. But the contrast religious claims run for to undermine separately religions central claim to be a vehicle for opening persons to ultimate reality. angiotensin converting enzyme attempt to scale this problem is provided by perennial philosophy, which claims that at that place is a kind of undercover experience third estate to all religious traditions, an experience which is an immediate march with an absolute principle. Perennialism has been attacked by contextualists such as Steven Katz who argue that particular unfathomable experiences atomic number 18 so tied to a particular tradition that there are no commo n hole-and-corner(a) experiences across traditions. In turn, Robert Forman and the decontextualists have argued that a certain kind of mystical experience and process are found in diverse traditions, thereby supporting one of the describe elements of perennialism. I review the contextualist-decontextualist debate and suggest a research examine that would pursue the question of whether the common ground of the worlds mystical traditions could be expanded beyond what has been established by the decontextualists. The extension of this common ground would add credibility to the claims arising out of mystical experience. It is appropriate at this conference to address however narrowly and briefly an important twentieth-century victimization in the worlds religious life. Advances in scholarship, communication, transportation, and mass education have made the richness of the worlds religious heritage accessible to more people than ever before. But this increased accessibility has not strengthened religious belief, alone may, in fact, have had the opposite effect. This is because the revolution in accessibility to the worlds religious traditions has made more people than ever before aware of the conflicting claims of the worlds religions. Of course, each traditions adherents believe their tradition to be the primary expression of the truth, just now there seems to be no obvious non-partisan way to determine which tradition has superior credentials. Thus the conflicting claims of competing religious traditions tend to undermine each religions central claim that it is a vehicle for opening oneself to ultimate reality. One attempt to overcome this problem is provided by so-called perennial philosophy school, to use the term used by Robert K.