people gravitate only towards the more spectacular and intense visionary accounts.^27
He downplays this, stressing that some of the better-known mystics such as Origen,
Meister Eckhart, and John of the Cross minimized the importance of experience
especially of the more rapturous nature.^28 More recently McGinn asserts that neither
mystics nor scholars before the nineteenth-century employed the term “mystical
experience”.^29 In place of the language of experience, McGinn proposes the term
”consciousness” which contains both the felt nature of the experience as well as the
more reflective interpretation of this experience.^30 Sheldrake has also articulated the
problematic nature of defining mysticism based on experience. He cites three
reasons: it frequently separates mysticism from theology, it privatizes mysticism, and
it elevates certain heightened experiences that create an exclusive elitism.^31 These are
critical warnings and must guide the reader of mystical texts.^ However, while
recognizing the importance of McGinn’s and Sheldrake’s concerns regarding the
usage of “experience” McGinn’s alternative of consciousness seems equally
problematic conveying a strong psychological theme that may also complicate the
reading of these texts. Further, the Puritans were known for their experiential or as
they preferred to call it, experimental focus on faith, consequently, experience is more
reflective of their language. J. I. Packer maintains, “Puritanism was essentially an
experimental faith, a religion of ‘heart-work’, a sustained practice of seeking the face
of God.” He continues, “[o]ur interest focuses on religious experience, as such, and
on man’s quest for God, whereas the Puritans were concerned with the God of whom
men have experience, and in the manner of his dealings with those whom he draws to
(^27) McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism (^) , xiv, cf. xvii.
(^28) McGinn, Foundations of Mysticism, xviii. cf. Flowering of Mysticism, 18, 24 and
Dupré and Wiseman, 29 Light from Light, 4.
30 McGinn, “Mystical Consciousness,” 45.^
31 McGinn, “Mystical Consciousness,” esp. 59. cf. Sheldrake, Spaces for the Sacred, 119-20. Foundations of Mysticism, xiv.^