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The Unity of Mystical Traditions: The Transformation of Consciousness in Tibetan and German Mysticism by Randall Studstill (Studies in the History of Religions, Vol. 107: Brill Academic) argues that mystical doctrines and practices initiate parallel transformative processes in the consciousness of mystics. This thesis is supported through a comparative analysis of Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen (rdzogs-chen) and the medieval German mysticism of Eckhart, Suso, and Tauler. These traditions are interpreted using a system/cybernetic model of consciousness. This model provides a theoretical framework for assessing the cognitive effects of mystical doctrines and practices and showing how different doctrines and practices may nevertheless initiate common transformative processes. This systems approach contributes to current philosophical discourse on mysticism by (1) making possible a precise analysis of the cognitive effects of mystical doctrines and practices, and (2) reconciling mystical heterogeneity with the essential unity of mystical traditions.

Randall Studstill, Ph.D. (2002) in Religious Studies, The Graduate Theological Union, is an Adjunct Instructor of Religious Studies at San Jose State University. He has published on the phenomenological method of Mircea Eliade and the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.

The purpose of this study is to present and support a mystical pluralist interpretation of mysticism. Through the application of a systems-based understanding of mind to Dzogchen and German mysticism, Studstill shows that the doctrines and practices of these two mystical traditions and by implication, mystical traditions in general, bring about common transformative processes in the consciousness of the mystic, experientially realized as a deepening attunement to the Real. The mystical pluralist thesis has close affinities to a number of other essentialist and transper­sonal approaches to mysticism. Mystical pluralism, Forman's perennial psychology, Combs' systems approach, shares the same core thesis: mystical paths function in similar ways to decondition structures of ordinary consciousness. Studstill goes beyond this basic idea by addressing in more precise terms how mystical doctrines and prac­tices cause transformation and what this transformation involves. It also addresses areas of the mystical data often ignored or left unex­plained by essentialist, constructivist, and transpersonal theories: the nature of visionary mystical experiences and their relation to contentless, unmediated mystical states. The role of doctrine and ethics in generating mystical transformation, and the intrinsic epistemic value of mystical experiences is also delineated. As comprehensive as this account is in its reach and clarity, this reviewer finds a greater insistence on a divorce with “ordinary consciousness” that this study most seriously breaches aspects of the traditions taken to support  and account for mystical pluralism. There is too much insistence upon transformation rather than upon the recovery of the Real in the real of ordinary experience.

 For Studstill mystical pluralism is justified on two levels. First, it is justified by the fundamental inadequacy of constructivism alone. Specifically, Studstill argues that constructivism is inadequate in its description of the mystical data, and both philosophically and psychologically problematic. The problems with constructivism provide the grist for an alternative view of mystical that Studstill calls mystical pluralism, based on its own philosophical, epistemological, and psychological merits, as well as its ability to account for the data. Studstill explains what a systems approach to consciousness and mysticism involves, reviewing some of the general principles of systems theory and discussing how such principles may be applied to consciousness or mind. Next the study presents doctrinally nuanced mystical data through overviews of two mystical traditions: Dzogchen and German mysticism respectively. Using the systems-based model of consciousness, Studstill’s interpretation of these traditions focuses on the issue of therapeutic efficacy: how they might transform the consciousness of the practitioner who internalizes them and lives them. Studstill concludes the study by comparing the traditions from a systems per­spective. This systems approach shows how both Dzogchen and German mysticism function to elicit common transformative processes and thereby supports a mystical pluralist interpretation of mystical traditions.

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