All Comments (41)

I like your little beard.
You should wear tighter trousers/

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

I'm back, but i'll never forget. We shared a special night. Thankyou. You appeared to me as a ghost on the waves of love. I like your face more than anyone elses facial features.
never forget me, i'll never forget you!
"A zig a zig aaaaahhh"
I love sporty spice, you?
Love from your lover (sort of we will be)
Benny Spice¬!

Paul describes how to arrive at the peace that passes all understanding. When he says think on theses things, I believe he means to feel these things, because they are all things defining emotions. I believe that emotions are a path to the final and complete experience of what religious people would call God and others might refer to as enlightment. Any response would be appreciated.

what about hugo? please say it ended with smiles

"Mr. Borg's mystical experiences should be viewed in terms of his physical brain. Nothing he experienced should be surprising. Mr. Borg is attributing to a mystical God of the universe what is really the mystical workings of his own brain. But that is too boring for most people to accept."

Sully's familial experiences should be viewed in terms of his physical brain. Nothing he experienced should be surprising. Sully is attributing to a "family," a "son" or "daughter" or "wife" the personhood that is really the chemical workings of his own brain. But that is too boring for most people to accept.

In your own way, Sully, you have demonstrated Borg's point that having a neurological correlate does not demonstrate that the experience itself is somehow inauthentic. Using similar "reasoning," we could reduce any experience to chemical terms and deny its ontological reality. Want to rely on external testimony for confirmation of your son/daughter's existence? That too is a delusion resulting from neurobiological experiences.

The argument itself is only a dressed-up version of the hallucination accusation, which dismisses any distasteful perspective or experience as pathological or somehow "unreal."

It seems that Marcus Borg stopped somewhere short of a full mystical experience. What he describes as his experiences appear to be what I choose to call 'experiences of beauty' and are only a prelude to the complete immersion into a real "mystical experience". Compare to instructions from St. Paul on how to find the way to arrive at the "peace that passes all understanding". When Paul says 'think on', it can only mean 'feel', as the things to think on are all emotions which cannot be thought,only felt.
I look forward to discussing this further with anyone that may be interested.

An apology is a good way to have the last word.

Do you still remember how we used to be?
Feeling together, believing whatever
My love has said to me
Both of us were dreamers
Young love in the sun
Felt like my Saviour, my spirit I gave you
We'd only just begun

Hasta mañana, always be mine

Viva forever, I'll be waiting
Everlasting like the sun
Live forever for the moment
Ever searching for the one

Yes, I still remember every whispered word
The touch of your skin giving life from within
Like a love song never heard
Slipping through our fingers like the sands of time
Promises made, every memory saved
As reflections in my mind

Hasta mañana, always be mine

Back where I belong now, was it just a dream?
Feelings unfold, they will never be sold,
And the secret's safe with me

Hasta mañana, always be mine

Mr Borg how could you do that to ben? he loves you, please make it work. you mean so much to him, and i hate to see him so sad, you were the light in his life. in the word of the spice girls, 'if you want to be my lover? you gotta get with my friends' and guess what borg, i'm his friend, 'make it last forever friendship never ends.' i could go on all day, but lets leave it like that. he loves you, and you love him to.
hugo panto-smith x x x x x

i like the photo. it would be really cool if you could sent me some, maybe showing a little more body? a bit more skin. it has taken me a long time to get to this point in my life and i would like to say, i want you. you mean so much to me. please lets make it work this time. do it form the children. our children.
lots of love.
Ben. x x x x x

SULLY tells us: The brain is an amazing organ, the more you learn about it the more you discount things peolpe "see" and interpret to be religious experiences. Its funny that all the "mystical" experiences are interpreted by the human mind but cannot be measured by machine. It all being "in our minds" is something that should very much be considered because its well known that some of what we "see" is interpreted incorrectly by our brains. So, to take something that is known to occur and say it is a religious experience a vision from God or of God is a real leap, like saying faint lights in the sky are alien ships from outer space. Quite an interpretation made from little information that is otherwise easily explanable if you're willing to listen to the explanation.

ANN O. replies:

Thanks very much, Sully, for your very wise words about a terribly difficult subject.

It seems to me that it is a big mistake to assume that every experience that we call "mystical experience" is in reality the same sort of intuition Yes, they *do* seem to have aspects which are very much alike, but close examination of what the mystics tell us seems to show that they come in a great variety. See, for instance, William James _The Variety of Religious Experiences_. (Note that he assumed that they were all religious. Other very learned scholars say that some are, some aren't.) But, to defend us poor language-using primates, our symbol-system doesn't have different words for the different kinds. Language "bewitches" us as the philosopher said.

Another big problem when talking about mystical experiences is that it seems necessary to talk about the "self" which has the experiences. But the word "self" has even more meanings than "mystical experience". For some people "self" refers just to our human bodies, for others it means just our minds, for most of us it means a combination of mind and body -- and not everyone agrees what the word "mind" means! Oy veh, oy veh, oy veh.

And when we get to the variety of the sorts of experience we call "mystical", we seem to be in a very fuzzy thicket in which it is extremely hard to distinguish actions and data, etc., etc., etc. The very complexity of being human is a problem.

Open-minded and careful analyses like yours of what might be happening is very valuable, especially since you have yourself had more than one kind of experience. I've read about other mystics who have had different sorts of "mystical experinece" including some who say that *some* but only some of their extraordinary experiences are indeed meetings with God, and they too tell us not to mistake one kind of intuition for another. Still it's very difficult to differentiate them.

Thanks again.

Ann O.

ED
History books reek with sons of God. The last one was Hirohito with a few holdouts that Akihito is divine.

Jesus has a divine radiance as stated has roots. She was the daughter of God, Ammun Re, the sun god. The sun has a certain raidiance that she probably inherritted. Don't you think? Someoe thought so.

http://www.hoax-buster.org page 2 has the life of the person Jesus is based upon in outline.

---Fourth, I grant the possibility that mystical experiences are “illusory” or “hallucinations.” But they did not seem that way to me.---

But do you know what a hallucination is like? They are not like dreams or seeing-double when drunk. They are not necessarily even "seen" but an interpretation of the brain to interpret what it cannot see or understand. This happens all the time on a very small and unnoticed scale and a few times on a more noticable scale. For example, lets say you "see" two "eyes" in a dark room and your brain tries its best to identify what it is with the little information it has. Eventually your brain comes up with a monster, person, dog or anything it knows has eyes and could possible be in the room, then you turn on the lights to see its a pair of earings on a table reflecting what little light was in the room. Was that a mystical experience? I don't think anyone would say it was. Your brain did its best and got it wrong. You may not have even tried to determine what the eyes were but your brain will do it automatically and other parts of your brain will determine if there is a potential threat based on the information your brain put together unconsciously.

The brain is an amazing organ, the more you learn about it the more you discount things peolpe "see" and interpret to be religious experiences. Its funny that all the "mystical" experiences are interpreted by the human mind but cannot be measured by machine. It all being "in our minds" is something that should very much be considered because its well known that some of what we "see" is interpreted incorrectly by our brains. So, to take something that is known to occur and say it is a religious experience a vision from God or of God is a real leap, like saying faint lights in the sky are alien ships from outer space. Quite an interpretation made from little information that is otherwise easily explanable if you're willing to listen to the explanation.

Dr. Borg, you wrote: "Well, I don’t think Jesus is 'the Son of God' is a literal statement implying biological conception by God.. Rather, I understand 'Son of God' as applied to Jesus to mean:
(1) For Christians, Jesus is the decisive revelation of God, of what God is like, of the character and passion of God.
(2) And to affirm that Jesus is “the Son of God” is about loyalty and allegiance;
Jesus, not Caesar, whom Roman imperial theology proclaimed to be 'the Son of God,' is the true 'Son of God.'"

Do you think that, subconsciously, "Son of God" might also be a projection of what the Self (the organizing principle of the psyche as well as its totality, in Jungian psychology, that which we experience as God) is trying to bring about in us, i.e., a state of consciousness or mode or self or manner of being that's a "hypostatic union," a union of egoic/nonegoic functioning, a "unitive consciousness" that our Maker, that which is driving evolution, is moving us toward. In other words, that we (our present manner of functioning) are not the end of the line, that we are here to incarnate, make conscious in a human sense, our Maker, the Self -- that each of us is here to be a "Son (Daughter) of God," so to speak? Or is this sort of understanding of the term unappealing, for whatever reason, to you? (It appeals to be, for one reason, because it's consistent with the understanding that Christianity is about individual transformation.)

Dr. Borg wrote, ". . . what happens to the notion of Jesus as 'the Son of God' if the word "God" refers to a radiant presence. . . ."

My two cents re "Son of God": "Son of God" refers to "Christ consciousness" to my way of thinking. "Christ consciousness" (unitive consciousness, egoic/nonegoic mirroring, human/divine oneness, hypostatic union, etc.) is what comes into being when the ego (our human, self-reflective consciousness, that with which we tend to identify) opens itself up without reservation to being penetrated by the Self (the organizing principle of the psyche as well as its totality, that which we experience as our Maker, God) and is so penetrated. Jesus carries the (subconscious) projection of this "Christ consciousness" or mode of self or manner of being. In worshipping Jesus, Christians are actually honoring that which the Self is trying to bring into being in themselves. I'm not criticizing, just trying to understand and explain what's actually happening and why it's not critically important that the stories about Jesus in the New Testament be historically factual. That's not what it's all about. What it's all about is what our Maker (of which/who we are "parts," the "ego" being one of the "Self's" parts, so to speak) wants from us. The Self uses projection (always subconscious) when that's the only way S/He can get through to us. Or so it seems to me. (My apologies for using off-putting psychological terminology. I use such because it makes more sense to me than any other terminology.)

I have also had "mystical" experiences but I never attributed them to a God but rather to a normal state of brain. One experience was while studying calculus in college. I finally "got it" one night while studying. I could now solve problems that were perplexing to me just a few days earlier. I also understood the next lessons instantly. What had been a very difficult subject became easy, so easy I was lecturing the teacher at times. I'm now 52, I never use calculus but I still remember it all. Why calculus and not, say, history or other subjects I do not know. But I do not consider it mystical, just something my brain did right for a change.

Other mystical experiences include hightened states of awareness, sometimes so aware that I could see what was happening next. As these hightened states were happeneing I noticed none occurred during drinking or during times of sleep or tiredness. It was when my brain was most active, during work, etc... Sometimes I could create the state on demand. The brain is capable of many states and many things. To be exposed to a new state should not lead one to praise God for what is likely a normal (or abnormal) state of awareness. I've always chuckled at the fact that all religious experiences happen in the minds of men and not in natural phenomenon, such as bushes bursting into flame and talking, which seem to be vary rare and in some cases only seen by one person, like UFO sitings.

Another experience happened a few days after some surgery I had. I was on a low level of morphine but noticed nothing I would call wierd. But one night I heard what I was sure was a party going on at the nurse's station. I heard the talking of many voices in the distance, rap music, drinks being poured, glasses clinking, and I wondered why they would be having a party. It was memorial day weekend ... of course, they must be having a little celebration though I thought it was rude to be having it late at night. Well, it turned out I heard all of that because of the air vent in the room. The white noise is generated, in my brain, became the white noise of a party down the hall. Was it all in my lightly morphined brain, certainly, no one would call it mystical, yet a year later it happened again, no morphine, just the rumbling of the airvent in a motel room I was staying in. It seems my mind now was turning any unknown white noise into a party. I guess that's better than monsters, but still it illustrates the ability of the brain to work hard to determine what is going on around you and does not always represent any reality.

My favorite example of how the brain works is the study of epeliptic patients whose seisures are so debilitating doctors decide to cut the corpus callosum, a bundle of nerves that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. It was known that cutting it did not cause any real brain damage but it would stop the spread of the epeliptic storm to the other side of the brain. The surgery works but small problems were noticed. For example, if a patient after surgery held a ball in the left hand he would "know" it was a ball but could not say it was a ball because the speach center is on the righthand side of the brain. Once he put the object in his right hand he could say what it was. Here's a web site explaining the phenomenon:
http://www.disenchanted.com/dis/lookup.html?node=1852
Now this happened due to surgery and is not a natural experience, however it shows that the "mind" is an illusion. Its not a single thing but a result of the structure of the brain. Your personality, memories, awareness and ability to understand all depend on how the physical brain is functioning. Surgery can alter this, drugs can alter this and we take advantage of alcohol's ability to alter it at parties. Few people can enter a new state of mind without physical or chemically intervention. Mr. Borg's mystical experiences should be viewed in terms of his physical brain. Nothing he experienced should be surprising. Mr. Borg is attributing to a mystical God of the universe what is really the mystical workings of his own brain. But that is too boring for most people to accept.

Thanks, Dr. Borg, for making this a dialogue. I must admit, though, I'm still perplexed about some of your analysis and may have more to say about it if I can sort out my thoughts.

However, I do think I get the concept of being "unsane." Having experienced moments of it, I know it doesn't lead to insanity, and that the blissful memory of being unsane actually enhances my usual mundane but utilitarian sane state.

Dr. Borg --

Your book "Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time" helped me become a Christian about eight years ago. I have always found your theological thinking to be substantively similar to my own. I'm all for religious symbolism over literalism and for seeing science vs. faith as a false dichotomy.

Still, I've never had a mystical experience like the one you describe. I also continue to have a hard time praying to a God that I don't think is really there in the traditional, personal sense. How do you try to be faithful and have Christ govern your very life without having the benefit of the literal belief that our evangelical brothers and sisters have?

Thank-you Dr. Borg.

The mystical experience is not something which is reducible. That is one of its distinctive characteristics. It is wholey inclusive, and brings with it a sense of presence and pervuasive unity between all things.

What is God? I cannot answer this with a frame of words. In poetry God can be alluded to, but without an experience that erupts out of the reader in response to the poetic form, it is only a poem.

Amidst the Chaos:
Reason is delusionary madness.

Within the Void: Eternal, Still and Whole.
On the Event Horizon:
Becoming and returning,
exhaling and inhaling the One breath.
Life: Death's affirmation.
Death: Life's fulfilment.
As two lover's intimately intertwined:
Life and Death,
on the Event Horizon,
whirl around the Void.

And me:
A shard of melting ice,
scintillating the gaze of the Beloved.

Professor Borg

Thank you for your responses to the questions. I wish the other panelists would respond -- except that since many of them are writing complete nonsense, so it probably doesn't matter that they don't. What you just wrote has given me something to think about. You are right that anything that gives a percept is potentially a way of knowing. I am now going to go and find more of your books and read them. I have read books by several of your colleagues.

Responses to some of your comments/questions.

First, I do think the wiring of the brain is involved. I think we are “hard wired” for mystical experiences, just as we are hard wired for visual, aural, olfactory, and so forth experiences. I accept that there is a neuro-chemical process going on in our brains when we have mystical experiences, just as there is when we see/hear/smell something. But the fact that there is does not lead us to dismiss visual/aural/olfactory experiences – few (any?) of us would say, “I thought I was seeing a flower, but now I understand that it was ‘just’ a neuro-chemical happening caused by neuro-chemical processes in my brain.” The possibility remains that mystical experience is a way of knowing, just as sense experience is a way of knowing.

Second, what happens to the notion of Jesus as “the Son of God” if the word “God” refers to a radiant presence shining through “what is” and known in all of the enduring religions of the world? Well, I don’t think Jesus is “the Son of God” is a literal statement implying biological conception by God.. Rather, I understand “Son of God” as applied to Jesus to mean:
(1) For Christians, Jesus is the decisive revelation of God, of what God is like, of the character and passion of God.
(2) And to affirm that Jesus is “the Son of God” is about loyalty and allegiance;
Jesus, not Caesar, whom Roman imperial theology proclaimed to be “the Son of God,” is the true “Son of God.”

Third, why do I not see a psychiatrist? Basically because my life has been going well. My mystical experiences have not been dysfunctional, but functional. About thirty years ago, a book by a psychiatrist named Sidney Cohen suggested that we need a third category beyond “sane” and “insane,” which he called “unsane.” Mystical experiences are not within the realm of “sanity,” meaning what most people think of as real. But neither, Cohen argued, are they “insanity,” which implies psychosis and dysfunction. Rather such experiences suggest we need a third category: “unsane.”

Fourth, I grant the possibility that mystical experiences are “illusory” or “hallucinations.” But they did not seem that way to me. Instead, I had a compelling sense of seeing more clearly and truly than I ever had in my ordinary everyday state-of-consciousness. Do my experiences, and the mystical experiences of many, have authority for those who do not have them? No. But they do have authority for me.

Finally, concerning the request for the titles of books that exposit Christian mysticism. There likely are many that I don’t know about, since reading broadly in this area is not one of my major commitments. The modern books on mysticism with which I am most familiar with are “the classics”: Evelyn Underhill’s several books; William James “The Varieties of Religious Experience,” especially the chapter on mysticism; the writings of Thomas Merton; books by W. T. Stace, a philosopher; and the voluminous (and multi-volume) history of Christian mysticism by Bernard McGinn.

Momma,

I'm hip. I hear ya. All is well.

"Bob:

Oh boy . . . what is this all about? . . . Suggest you contact Peter Kramer (at Brown) and see if he'll deal with your problems, by appointment, out of the kindness of his heart. . .

"But if the word “God” points to a radiance that pervades “what is,” as I now think – then, of course, God is real. Not just the God of Christianity, but the God of all the enduring religions."

That's a mouthfull. . . radiance that pervades what's happenin' proves. . . God is real?

Oy vey, I need a bagel and some coffee."

Haven't ya heard?
god is "the word"

thought to concept thru the movement of air thru the earth(body)releasing it to be echoed back.

Marconi channeled it and the rest...welllll

oy vey, indeed.

Ed, Thanks for sharing this -- How did your "unitive consciousness" experience affect your religious attitudes or beliefs?

e.g., Did you feel closer to God/Jesus?

If you are Christian, did you accept the teachings of Jesus and the Christian narrative in the Bible?

I would love to hear more about this.

Dear Dr. Borg,

Many thanks for your post. I get it. My most formative religious experience occurred when I was 42 and realized I had run out of BS, put myself into an extremely deep state of relaxation (using an exercise I had learned in an adult ed. class) and asked my Maker, whoever/whatever s/he (he,she,it) was, to send me whatever imagery or whatever s/he might feel like sending, if anything at all, to help me understand who/what I was, why I existed, etc. No one ever had suggested to me doing anything like this. Something not-understood was urging me on. The result was a state of consciousness I had no idea existed, sometimes referred to as "unitive consciousness" and a series of truly remarkable images. Anyhow, the world looked different after that. I know where Jesus, and others, got their wisdom. So do you. Keep on writing!

Dear Dr Marcus,
Very interesting description. I have had a dozen "enlightening" experiences similar to yours, called in Bhuddism "awakening". Islamic Sufism has a similar deep vein of experience. In Judaism, the "work of the chariot" describes the Qaballah side. Do you read Eckhart Tolle, "The Power of Now", which sounds like this.

Maybe one of these days we will begin to see that we can all lighten up, "on demand", if we want to. It's worth discussing how quickly the light fades and we fall back into "the soup", which is the "power of the egoic entities", both individual and cultural.

My experience is that this "Divine Presence" does not so much pervade our experience of life, as it is the ground of stuff, the essence, the holder of it all. When we see that we have actually two sides - the substance we usually identify with (body, thoughts, emotions, and matter) and, on the other hand, the "cosmos of All". When we see the "stuff", we become "the cosmos".

Can you create links that we can reference?
http://www.workofthechariot.com/

May we all be blessed and transformed.

I have very much appreciated the work you and your colleagues have done in the Jesus seminar.

Thank you for sharing your personal mystical experiences(although the whole point of mystical experiences seems to be that there is no one to have them).

how old are you? are your in a good helth?

the true word for "spiritual experience" and "mistical experience" are "hallucination," one of the abnormal product of our brain in its chamber of fantasy and dream. if i were you, mr. marcus borg, i'll get a help from a psychiatrist immediatly. true!

Hi, Prof. Borg,

One of the commentors refers to you as a "pantheist", but I did not notice you identifying yourself with this presence.

Neither does your description seen to be of the typical "cosmic consciousness" experience as presented by Underhill and others, in which the mystic experiences himself as *part* of the cosmos, but also as the *whole* cosmos at the same time. This identification of part and whole is totally illogical, of course.

Could you tell us whether your experince was pantheistic in any sense? Was it specifically of the the cosmic consciousness sort? It seems to me that some other Protestant mystics whom I have read reject both sorts of pantheism, and from what you say here, it would seem that you would agree with them.

Ann O.

If the word “God” points to a radiance that pervades “what is,” as I now think – then, of course, God is real.

Prof. Borg,

This kind of vague pantheism is most certainly going to raise the hackles of the True Believers. I will be interested to see if it produces howls of dismay (although they may be so disgusted that the moderators allow non-believers and heathens to comment that they have fled).

I still suspect this kind of experience is a completely non-supernatural neurological phenomenon. Whatever it is, it is very very old in our species. This is interesting evidence for this from 35,000 year old cave paintings that some interpret as a part of a shamanistic ritual.

Oh boy . . . what is this all about? . . . Suggest you contact Peter Kramer (at Brown) and see if he'll deal with your problems, by appointment, out of the kindness of his heart. . .

"But if the word “God” points to a radiance that pervades “what is,” as I now think – then, of course, God is real. Not just the God of Christianity, but the God of all the enduring religions."

That's a mouthfull. . . radiance that pervades what's happenin' proves. . . God is real?

Oy vey, I need a bagel and some coffee.

Dr. Borg - You say:

"If “God” means a person-like being “out there,” completely separate from the universe, then I am an atheist. I do not believe there is such a being. But if the word “God” points to a radiance that pervades “what is,” as I now think – then, of course, God is real. Not just the God of Christianity, but the God of all the enduring religions."

It sounds like you don't believe exclusively in the "God" who is the father of Jesus, so I wonder how this fits with your belief (mentioned in another discussion) that you consider Jesus to be the son of God because his early followers perceived him that way.

Jesus is a "person-like being" - right? The kind you don't believe in? But I guess he's not "out there" in the universe, because he was human (if he indeed existed).

I don't know and I'm not trying to be impertinent. I'm trying to understand your thinking.

Also, I wonder, does God, as you describe it, have to be associated with a religion at all?

I've had a couple of mystical experiences too - not as spectacular as yours - and did not associate them with God or religion, but rather with being in touch with humanity or awareness of my place in the universe.

I'm eager to hear from you and others about this.

Dear Mr. Borg....
Real paradigm switch, isn't it? :)

Mr. Borg,

How do you know that mystical experiences cannot be explained entirely by he physical wiring of our brains.

Mystics appear in all religions and in all cultures. But they usually say different things.

Would not a fair test of whether there is something external/divine going on be we would see mystics across different cultures and timeperiods and geography tell us great truths that AGREE in substance and details?

Everything I have seen -- there is no unity in what the mystics say. Some could argue not harming others (found in virtiually all cultures applies). But this could be socially derived. And when you drill down into the details, major differences appear.

I also presume you are familiar with the research of the neurophysicist Michael Persinger who can induce mystical states in his test subjects by subjecting their brains to electro-magnetic fields.

This would give some evidence to natural explorations for our mystical feelings. Does it explain all -- I certainly do not presume to have the answer to that.

My question to you is whether we should try to eliminate any natural phenomenon -- before pronouncing it divine?

Borg is a fine biblical scholar.
As such he should not pretend to mystical experiences which are not rational.

Prof. Borg, After having read your several of your books, which are very analytical in nature, I am surprised but highly intrigued by your mystical connection to God. Many of us (be it athiests OR Christians), I suspect, have not had such a mystical experience -- I certaintly have not -- though not for lack of desire.

I would be interested in knowing if there are any especially good resources discussing Christian mysticism, particularly as related to us 'moderns'.