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"Anyone who has ever gone to the zoo and-tried to communicate with a hippopotamus knows the problem. It is simply impossible to get a word of sense out of the hippopotamus. The hippopotamus undoubtedly feels the same way about the human being. The consequence is that relations between human beings and hippopotamuses tend to be meaningless."

Russell Baker, "Try Saying Hello to a Helk, " The New York Times
(Sunday) Magazine, Aug. 15, 1965, p. 8.

The Mystic and the Theologian
By Mary McDermott Shideler

THEOLOGIANS examine the concept of God; mystics claim to have seen God. Certainly there are theologians who are also mystics, and mystics who are theologically-minded, but also, a great many mystics strenuously resist theological formulation of what they know and are doing, and relatively few theologians reveal in their technical writings their roots in the life of the spirit. That mysticism and theology can be united is attested by those persons who are competent in both practices. That such a union is difficult is evidenced by the frequency with which theologians and mystics find themselves at odds, even when (like Thomas Aquinas) they are the same person.

How the mystic and the theologian can meet each other straightforwardly and effectively is my immediate concern. I come to this undertaking with two commitments: first, that the mystical event is a veritable revelation of God; and second, that the theologian's investigation of that event is legitimate and important. I do not mean that all events labeled "mystical" are in fact divine revelations. One of my purposes will be to suggest how we can differentiate authentic mysticism from other phenomena with which it might be confused. Neither are all questions appropriate, as for example it is not appropriate to ask what is the temperature of an idea, or trumps in chess. That also is a problem which I hope will be clarified here, albeit indirectly-not "Which questions are appropriate?" but "What kinds of questions are inappropriate?"

Mary McDermott Shideler is the author of several books and articles, among the most recent being Consciousness of Battle (1970) and "Philosophies and Fairy-Tales" in the April, 1973, issue of THEOLOGY TODAY. She has suggested as a subtitle for this present article, "How to Talk with a Hippopotamus," but she doesn't indicate whether she means the mystic or the theologian.

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In what follows, I shall take for my protagonists that extreme form of spirituality, the mystic, and a systematic theologian who has never undergone a mystical experience. And I shall present their confrontation in logical rather than procedural order. A series of discussions between an actual mystic and an actual theologian may start almost anywhere, and move erratically among description, explanation, exhortation, negotiation, and argument, while logically prior matters may not be introduced until very late in the game.

I

Logically, the first move in the interchange consists of an at least provisional agreement on whether the participants are competent in their respective fields. On the one hand is a person whose ultimate appeal is to an event which is ineffable, peerless, and supremely significant. How does the theologian know that this person is not deliberately faking, or deluding him- or herself, or the victim of some psychological or physiological disorder, or reporting a drug-induced state of consciousness? Conversely, how does the mystic know that the theologian is competent not to misapprehend or misinterpret the material which the mystic gives him? Some theologians, and many psychologists and others, have approached the mystics with the attitude of the pathologist, and with similar tools: scalpels, microscopes, stains. Inevitably, the mystic feels that the authenticity of his vision and his own veracity are being attacked before any real effort has been made to investigate them, and against this he (or, of course, she or they: this to be understood throughout with respect to both mystic and theologian) may have no recourse except flight-often, unfortunately, into obscurantism, emotionalism, or esotericism.

As only a person who already knows something about chess can, by following the moves in a chess game, distinguish a good chess-player from a poor one, so the theologian needs to know enough about mysticism to judge whether this person is competent to describe the mystical event from within. A prior condition for developing that ability is an acceptance, at least as a theoretical possibility, of the notion that there is such a thing as mysticism. If initially he says, in effect, "Our joint effort is to determine whether mystical events are really something else," the affair will be vitiated from the start. His approach instead must be along the line that whatever has happened is deserving of serious and sustained investigation as mystical, and not merely psychological, physiological, or whatever.

Moreover, each participant must recognize, accept, and, if necessary, insist upon, his own competence. The theologian will probably have no difficulty in doing so: his degrees, his official position, his relation to his colleagues, establish his status. Few mystics will have equivalent credentials, or a comparable community to support them. The mystic, therefore, must take heart in the face of his doubts whether he is in fact competent, and his fears of being treated as a psychological "case," so that when he speaks, it will not

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be with undue emphasis or fervor, or as looking for provocation in every question.

II

Assuming that our mystic and theologian have reached an agreement on their competence, logically their next move is to settle on what they are going to do. Commonly, where mysticism is under discussion, a searching question may be interpreted as an attack, or a mere description as a defensive maneuver: they are playing a war game in which both players inevitably will lose. In contrast, such questions as "What precisely are we talking about? What is going on here?" set the board for the game of joint investigation, in which two of the most important tasks are description and negotiation. But in order even to engage in the elementary task of description, a fortiori the more advanced task of negotiation, they must discover or invent terms which will be adequate for the material and the occasion.

The mystic is making distinctions and using concepts which are at best unfamiliar to the theologian, and in the effort to communicate what has happened, the mystic almost certainly will resort to analogies and images, elaborate rhetoric and stammered phrases, none of which is likely to impart to the theologian much more than a blur. In fact, it is not likely to communicate anything substantial to anybody, although another mystic may be able to discern through this confusion of language and signs that here is somebody else who knows.

Words like "spirit," "transcendence," and "holiness" appear satisfactory until one begins to examine precisely what they mean. For example, what characterizes "spirit" as such? What does it contrast with? By what procedures do we learn to recognize it? Is its relation to whatever is not spirit that of part to whole, or substance to accident, or are they mutually exclusive categories? What has to be presupposed in order to talk this way? What metaphysical commitments are we making when we use these words?

The metaphysical questions must wait. We cannot make reality commitments until we know what we are committing ourselves to, and in any case, the portrayal of the mystical event will be the same whether eventually it is accorded the status of fact or fancy, dream or revelation, a psychological, psychic, or spiritual phenomenon. Thus it would be entirely possible to describe with meticulous accuracy the realm of faërie as presented in the works of Lord Dunsany, even though one did not believe for a moment that faërie has ever coexisted with what we usually mean by "nature" or "history." At this stage, reality questions must be bracketed out lest we answer them prematurely.

Of immediate importance is another kind of question. Are eastern and western mysticism essentially the same? How do we know if they are, or if they differ, what are the areas of difference? On what grounds can we say that, for example, Evelyn Underhill, Thomas

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Merton, and Rufus Jones are talking about the same event or experience? For that matter, is it an event, something which happens to a person, or an experience, something which happens merely within him? Because "if we know so little about the phenomenon that we can only give it a vague name, how would we know whether a given finding was a finding about that phenomenon?" ¹

The most tempting answer, "What we need to do is to define our terms," will not serve. Defining, we arbitrarily limit the range of phenomena we shall be concerned with, when we ought to be determining what that range is, that is, what qualifies as "spiritual" or "mystical." When we decide in advance, with a definition, what we shall exclude, we have no way of discovering what the full range of possibilities is within the domain of spirituality.

A second approach is almost equally tempting: "Let us collate instances, to learn what they have in common." To do that, however, we must first specify the criteria we shall use in selecting the instances, and then specify which of their characteristics are relevant to the inquiry-and this is to beg the question.

A more hopeful alternative is to handle the problem in a quite different way, by asking who is to do the describing of the experience or event, and what kind of description will he give? Actually, what we have to begin with are different descriptions given by two people standing at different vantage points: an Insider who describes what he sees and does, and an Outsider who is looking at the Insider and hearing what he has to say. By the very nature of things, each description is incomplete. The Insider does not see himself in the act of seeing. He cannot take into account his own idiosyncrasies (unless he assumes the role of the Outsider-which he may). The Outsider must reckon with the individual characteristics of the Insider, but he can check his understanding of the event only against the Insider's description of it.

"Inner" and "outer" descriptions are not to be equated with "subjective" and "objective." Ideas do not exist apart from the persons who entertain them, nor descriptions apart from describers. The ideal of scientific objectivity can be defended as proscribing considerations of the relative status of participants in a discussion in order to ensure that they focus upon "What is true or correct?" rather than "Who will win?" In the more extended meaning of objectivity, as "independent of what is personal and private in our apprehension and feelings," ² it is eminently defeasible because it implies that ideas can exist apart from persons, and irresponsible because it turns the discussion into a detached, impersonal, dispassionate affair in which nothing is presumed to be at stake for anyone. As Stanley Cavell says, "[Our] problem … is not to discount our subjectivity, but to include

¹ Peter G. Ossorio, Meaning and Symbolism (Whittier, California: Linguistic Research Institute, 1969), p. 13.
² "Objectivity," Webster's New International Dictionary of the English Language, Second Edition, Unabridged, 1934.

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it; not to overcome it in agreement, but to master it in exemplary ways." ³

But what kind of description is called for? Shall it be the descriptive series in which a gesture, for example, is decomposed into its constituent elements-muscles, nerves, and bones, these into cells, chemicals, and so on? Or shall it be a compositional series such as that of significance-the gesture having an immediate meaning perhaps in the telling of a story, the story being important for an occasion, the occasion for a life?

It is essential to note that it is only when the gesture is embedded in a social practice that the significance series begins. The gesture does not then acquire significance as an additional characteristic, however; its being a gesture is identical with its being significant, so that the farther the reductionistic process is carried, the more defective those descriptions are of the gesture as a gesture. A movement as such is not a gesture, nor is a bevy of chemicals a gesture, or any field of force.

The reductionist approaches to spirituality separate it farther and farther from the context of personal and social life in which and for which it is significant. The grammar of the significance series is, " The significance of A is B, of B is C, of C is … N," each step in the series comprehending more and more of the world until finally all things and relationships are included. We do not know what the ultimate significance of that simple gesture is until we know its place within the totality of all things. And we cannot give an adequate description of it without reference to the concept of totality. All descriptions are necessarily incomplete, and we know them to be so because we have the concept of totality. By the same token, an adequate description of a person or social practice must include its significance, and that implies that we must use the concept of significance. In brief, conceptualization is logically prior to description.

III

Because the work of the mystic and the theologian has no point unless it ties into human lives to clarify and guide them, our mystic and theologian must start their conceptual formulation with the concepts of persons and behavior, and the language of living, behaving human beings, not with conjectural physiological or psychological mechanisms. Our situation is like that which Cavell writes of in a discussion of atonal music: "We do not know which lines are significant … and which intervals are organizing." ⁴ What we need, therefore, is a conceptual framework which will identify those lines and intervals, and so provide access to the domain of the spirit and distinguish it from other domains.

³ Stanley Cavell, "Aesthetic Problems in Modern Philosophy," in Philosophy in America, ed. by Max Black (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1965), p. 95.
⁴ Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1969), p. 94.

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For a good many months, I have been working with Dr. Peter G. Ossorio, of the University of Colorado, on the question: "What concepts are appropriate and adequate for dealing with the domain of the spirit-including, but not limited to, mysticism?" We have been facing two distinct but related problems: first, how to identify the spiritual domain from the outside, so to speak; and second, how to map the interior of the domain and organize its possibilities. What we have been using is the method of parametric analysis. These two problems are analogous to those one confronts in discussing color as such. It is necessary to differentiate colors from other properties of colored objects, such as shape and texture; and necessary also to have a way for exhibiting how a given color is the same as, or different from, other colors. One way both of these can be done is by specifying the parametric values of hue, saturation, and brilliance, which are peculiar to the domain of color.

In summary, there appear to be two concepts which are the ground for all thinking: person and reality; three "transcendental" concepts (that is, concepts which designate a theory or domain which is not empirically testable): ultimacy, totality, and boundary condition; and two concepts which are specific for the domain of the spirit: significance and judgment. These are not descriptive terms, but co-ordinates by means of which we locate the domain of the spirit and map its structure, as we use the co-ordinates of latitude, longitude, and altitude to locate-but not describe-a city.

That the use of such austere locutions as "ultimacy" and "totality" need not be trivial or dull can be illustrated by showing some of them in use. The example is based on the fact that only persons can recognize significance in, or assign significance to, anything at all, together with the fact that the significance concept generates a series. When, in generating such a series, we have exhausted all the possibilities and so come to an end, which is a boundary condition, there remains the question: "What is the significance of all this-the ultimate significance beyond what we can assign to it?" That is a question we cannot answer, because on the hypothesis we have already gone as far as we can. And we cannot simply say that there is a super Person who assigns ultimate significance when we have run out of significances to assign. Something of the sort can indeed be said, and logically justified, but not simply.

We can do so by pointing out that when we reach the boundary condition of our significance series-not stopping at some arbitrarily chosen place dictated by our circumstances or a priori commitments-what we have is our ultimate. Yet we want, and logically need, not so to be left dangling. For out significance series to make sense, we must have the notion of an ultimate significance, and this must be assigned by a person although it cannot be assigned by any limited person such as ourselves, or by all of us together.

At a boundary such as this, we must make not simply a new move, but a new kind of move, from assigning significance to confessing our

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limitations. It is then a legitimate methodological move to introduce the concept of a Person who has enough of the characteristics of a human person to serve as an assigner of ultimate significance, but is not subject to our limitations, and who therefore can make significance assignments which are not arbitrary, and are ultimately valid. Thus we achieve the conceptual and systematic closure we need. And it is fitting that we should name the Person who assigns ultimate significance to the ultimate totality, "God," describing this Person as "Judge."

This formulation of how it makes sense to talk about God is not a description of or limitation upon divinity. It represents the Outsider's indirect approach to something which the Insider has (or claims to have) direct access to. The use of the concepts of ultimacy, totality, boundary condition, and significance in their analytic relationships provides for the mystic and theologian a pre-empirical and logically coherent ground on which they can meet. Moreover, this is only one of the ways in which the conceptual structure can be used to show how the mystic's experience can be logically justified from the outside, as Ultimate Status-Assigner, or Judge, is only one of the functions of God which can be justified by the use of these concepts.

Given this conceptual formulation, we can say that the spiritual domain is what pertains to ultimate significance, and to all that goes with ultimacy and significance; and that a spiritual person is one who characteristically acts in the light of what is ultimately significant. It may be that for adequate and complete discussion of spiritual life in general, and mysticism in particular, we need additional concepts or, conceivably, different ones. Of this, however, we are certain that, only an analytic conceptual formulation will do the job.

IV

Throughout the analytic phase of the discussion, the mystic will be constantly tempted to move back into evocation of the event itself: the vision of the glory, the overwhelming sense of its importance, the revelation of meaning, the rapture. That tendency is not altogether to be deplored, because the event functions as a reality constraint upon the conceptual formulation, as the formulation provides (or is intended to provide) a clarification of the event. But it is all too easy, in the passion for clarity, to lose hold on what is being clarified, and finally to impose an extrinsic pattern upon the domain, rather than to delineate the intrinsic pattern within it.

To say that the problem lies in the difference between evocative and descriptive language is likely to obscure the more crucial fact that the mystic and theologian are using language to achieve quite different ends. The intention of the former is "getting someone to see," of the latter, to establish grounds for discriminating between one thing and another. "To imagine a language," writes Wittgenstein, "is to imagine

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a form of life." ⁵ But what if a form of life is not adequately identified, or is not known at all? Cavell writes:

When a form of life can no longer be imagined, its language can no longer be understood. "Speaking metaphorically" is a matter of speaking in certain ways using a definite form of language for some purpose; "speaking religiously" is not accomplished by using a given form, or set of forms, of words, and is not done for any further purpose; it is to speak from a particular perspective, as it were to mean anything you say in a special way. To understand a metaphor you must be able to interpret it; to understand an utterance religiously, you have to be able to share its perspective ⁶

We do not ask concerning any form or way of life, "Is it true? Is it real?" But rather, "What is it like? What does it involve? What difference does it make in what one does and sees and knows? What behavior does it require, permit, forbid?" Such questions cannot be asked, and the answers cannot be appraised, except from another perspective which is equally open to identification, appraisal, and challenge. And because what is at stake here is a form of life rather than a truth-claim or proposition or hypothesis, what the mystic is doing is to exhibit that life. As Cavell says, he is confessing, and:

In confessing you do not explain or justify, but describe bow it is with you, And confession, unlike dogma, is not to be believed but tested, and accepted or rejected…. Belief is not enough, Either the suggestion penetrates past assessment and becomes part of the sensibility from which assessment proceeds, or it is philosophically useless ⁷

The theologian's primary question to the mystic, therefore, is "What do you take to be the case?" Thereby he is not asking the mystic to propound a cosmology, but to explain the grounds for what he knows and does. And a major part of the theologian's critique will consist of a demonstration that the relationship between the purported grounds and the behavior is or is not coherent, and is or is not coherent with other forms of life-including the theologian's own.

As an example of such a critique: we cannot consistently and intelligibly behave as if we inhabit an illusory world, or are unfree. Solipsism and mechanistic determinism are verbal options, but neither provides a basis upon which we can act intentionally or deliberately. We do not, however, know that there is a real world or that we are free, nor do we believe any such things. They are instead the very ground for all our doing and knowing and believing, primary organizing concepts by means of which we know particular things, establish particular beliefs, and ascertain what behavior is and is not possible. Without these concepts, we could not act intentionally at all, and that we do engage in intentional action is ultimate knowledge: we cannot go beyond it.

⁵ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, tr. by G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963), para. 19.
⁶ Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say?, p. 172.
⁷ Ibid p. 71.

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What it amounts to when we say that something is "real" is that we will treat it as being the case-which sounds like a roundabout way of approaching (or evading) the classic metaphysical problem of reality, and by extension, the classic epistemological problem of truth. On the contrary, it advances directly to the purpose which underlies the inquiry into what is real, which is simply that we treat something real differently from the way we treat the unreal or illusory or imaginary or merely possible or conjectural. Therefore, once we know how to behave toward that thing, there is no longer any point in asking reality or truth questions per se. It is when we frame the problem in terms of "truth" and "reality" that we are evading the central point of the metaphysical enterprise, which is that whatever we decide to do and however we act, it will not be in misapprehension and misconception and confusion and ignorance.

That the question "What is real?" in fact dodges the fundamental issues of judgment and action is most apparent in the frequency with which we fail to act on our conclusion that something is real, or act contrarily to that conclusion, either of which makes the conclusion inoperative and therefore nonsense-without intelligible meaning. In some instances, of course, analysis of the conclusion discloses that it is logically impossible to live as if such-and-such were the case-for example, solipsism and determinism. In others, we learn empirically that there are some things we cannot do-for example, we lack a capacity or the appropriate training. We recognize both logical and empirical reality constraints on our behaviors, and that the empirical reality constraints vary from person to person, and for a given person from time to time.

Are there, then, logical reality constraints which would make the mystical event impossible-which is to say, unreal? Apparently not, Indeed, as we saw earlier, the concept of a God appears to be logically necessary. Neither do there seem to be any empirical reality constraints upon the use of the concept of God. It does not lead to behavioral incoherence or blind alleys, nor-as a concept-does it present any more difficulties in use than does the concept of significance itself. However, even though the mystical event is possible, it may not be within the capacities of a given person. So the theologian must ask, with respect to anyone who claims to have had a mystical experience, whether anything in that person's individual characteristics or history would preclude his participation in such an event, and as well, how these are likely to affect his description of it.

Finally, the mystical event may be within the individual's capacity, without ever actually happening. How do we know whether this instance did in fact occur? That question generates another: "How do we know that anything does in fact occur?" And this, in turn, generates still another: "What is the point of asking whether this mystical event, or any other event, has occurred?" We ask because we want to know how to act in relation to it, and in the end what we must

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do is to make a judgment-singly or in concert-on what we will treat as being the case, and take the responsibility for our judgment.

That such a judgment need not and ought not to be made blindly is obvious. We do have ways of determining the competence of persons, and criteria for evaluating not only statements, but ways of life. A simple analogy can be given. Competence in playing chess can only be evaluated by someone who knows the game, and only in terms of that game, not by replacing chess-concepts with concepts from some other domain such as tennis or biology. In demonstrating how and why one chess player is superior to another, the kind of demonstration employed will vary depending on whether it is directed toward someone who is, or is not, already familiar with the game. But no proof or demonstration or evaluation of any kind will make any sense whatsoever to someone who does not know-or who denies-that there is such a game as chess.

Assuming our mystic to be neither stupid nor merely stubborn- and not frightened out of his wits-be will be as rigorous as the theologian in their joint examination of the spiritual domain. In one way, his position is the more precarious. Unless he is trained in philosophy and theology, he may easily be shot down by the first volley of questions, even though they be specious or frivolous, and it will be a searching test of the theologian's good faith whether he avoids trapping the mystic with jargon and intricate arguments, or smothering him in pedantry and cynicism.

In another way, the mystic's position is the stronger. He does not need to have the authenticity or meaning of his vision certified by anyone else. He can five unreflectively. The theologian, however, must have something to reflect upon, and the mystic provides him with an incomparable and irreplaceable body of material. Without the testimony of the mystics and others of the devout, the theologian is in a position very much like that of Tennyson, who is reported to have said, "There can have been since Shakespeare no such master of the English language as I. To be sure," he added, "I have nothing to say."

V

There may already be theological studies which are adequate for the strictest intellectual demands of the theologian, as well as for the supreme richness, complexity, and meaning of the mystical experience. I have not made a systematic study of the literature that would be a life work, and I have come late to the task-but I do not know of any that does.

I do know the need. Most of my work has been among laymen, many of them intensely devout, and I have seen how often their spiritual development has been blocked or warped by inadequate theologies. We see all around us persons who, in authentic spiritual striving unsupported by appropriate theologies, have resorted to drugs, witchcraft, exotic cults, and excesses of other kinds. As theolo-

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gians we can talk about these people among ourselves. Talking with them is another matter. But theologies are not simply, or even primarily, for theologians. A doctrine of God which has nothing to say to the worshippers of God is a trifling contribution. A theology of spiritual life which cannot be illuminating for people who are living it, and cannot illuminate that life for those outside it, is frivolous. In the theological circles with which I am acquainted, little attention is being paid to mystical and ascetic theologies. It is time for a renascence of these and related disciplines, and what I have presented here is one place and one way it might begin.

In any given interchange, either the mystic or the theologian may be in the position of the hippopotamus vis-à-vis the human being. In every case, therefore, it is not only fair but necessary to ask which is which.