Theos-Talk Archives (November 2002 Message tt00713)

--- In theos-talk@y..., "Daniel H. Caldwell" <comments@b...> wrote:

>>> But have you ever considered that these testimonies might include 
an element of "hallucination" or "delusion"?

That possibility must always be considered, or else any number of 
acid-heads would have to be canonized. ;-)

This is where the issue of credibility comes in. And maybe I should 
have elaborated before, but by credibility I don't mean merely 
confidence that a person is not lying, but that he or she is not 
hallucinating or psychotic either, nor describing phenomena such as 
those described in the excerpts you provided (with which, and with 
Theosophy as a whole, I have no quarrel except insofar as it presumes 
to be all-embracing and ultimate). But by delving deeply into the 
biographies, and particularly the autobiographies, of both Eastern 
and Western mystics, both theistic and atheistic, and bringing to 
that study a familiarity with both conventional and esoteric 
psychology and metaphysics, one can distinguish with a high degree of 
confidence between hallucinations and genuine experiences of 
transcendence. 

Robert