An exploding mystical experience

[Robyn Banks]

"One way to deprive yourself of an experience is indeed to expect it. Another is to have a name for it before you have the experience. Carl Jung said that one of the functions of religion is to protect us against the religious experience. That is because in formal religion, it is all concretized and formulated. But, and by its nature, such an experience is one that only you can have. As soon as you classify it with anybody else's, it loses its character. A preconceived set of concepts catches the experience, cutting it short so that it does not come directly to us. Ornate and detailed religions protect us against an exploding mystical experience that would be too much for us."
- Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That - transforming religious metaphor (California: New World Library, 2001), 13-14

[darcutm]

It's a shame Jesus didn't read this quote before He spoke at the end of Mark 16...

[Solly]

It's a shame it doesn't say much anyway. How many "mystics" had exploding experiences after they were part of a formal religious setup? How does Campbell know that it is persoanl to yu and can't be compared - by comparing it? He has ruled his argument out of court by that fact; since noone worked harder to concretize and formalise mystical and religious experiences that Campbell did in his books.
Seems to me that a fine wine is better drunk from a cup that from off the floor, and to some that cup enhances the experience, rather than letting it run away with itself to no end.
Lastly, "religious experience" explains nothing unless there is a definition of it.