The mystical and the ethical

The purpose of this study is to determine the meaning and relationship of mystical and ethical experiences of the Divine. To accomplish this purpose, the work first investigates the different ways that certain previous philosophers have viewed these experiences and points out the contributions that they have made toward understanding these concepts. Then these contributions, as well as various ideas from other writers, are used to formulate an answer to the question of the nature and relationship of the mystical and the ethical. This position claims that the mystical and the ethical are two kinds of experiences through which man acquires divine love. In a mystical experience God is known through a direct communication with him in which there is an immediate awareness of self-giving love by the individual. On the other hand, a person's ethical experiences represent his encounter with God through his relationships in the universe, and these relationships include both those in which he receives love and those in which he extends it. I Furthermore, two ways of viewing the relationship between the mystical and the ethical are in terms of the possibility of each of these experiences serving as a basis for the other and also in terms of the similarity between extrovertive mysticism and the ethical.