While researching St. John of the Cross’s, “The Dark Night of the Soul,” I came across an interesting passage, especially in light of my most recent Ken Wilber debate post.

The speculative aspects of mysticism — while of the greatest interest to the epistemologist — are entirely aside from the point. They are, in a very real sense, superfluous to the mystic who has not merely speculated upon, but experienced the Absolute and who, in light of this experience, has consequently been completely reoriented to the priorities articulating his existence. Speculation is well and fine inasmuch as reason is held — among the tenets of Christian doctrine — to pervade the universe. This type of speculative enterprise may indeed result in a legitimate, if limited and remote, understanding of the correspondence between constituent aspects of the Absolute — but this type of speculation is essentially pointless, in a larger sense even meaningless, before the actual experience itself. A simple analogy may suffice. To wit: it may be of the greatest interest to me to endeavor to explore and synthesize physics, chromatics, and ophthalmology in order to arrive at an understanding of the experience of the color purple which — being color-deficient — I have never seen, and am unable to see. But were I suddenly to acquire adequate color perception, I would, I think, dispense with this exercise altogether in favor of the experience itself beside which the analysis is only, merely, academic to my purpose, and in any event would yield nothing of that unique chromatic perception to me. Nothing, in other words, short of the experience itself, would suffice.

Of course, right after saying that, the other then proceeds to engage in an enormous epistemological bout of speculation. Which is all well and good, I suppose. But anyway, it also leads me back to the wonderful quote I found on Metahistory about belief and experience:

Considered in this light, beliefs in and about God (or anything else) may be derived from the incapacity to experience what God actually is. Someone who can experience God in a direct and evidential way no longer needs to hold beliefs in or about God.