Mauss proposes mystical states rest on learnable body techniques

Evidence

Beginning with a reference to Granet’s remarkable studies of Taoist body techniques, he goes on: “I believe precisely that at the bottom of all our mystical states there are body techniques which we have not studied, but which were studied fully in China and India, even in very remote periods. This socio-psycho-biological study should be made. I think that there are necessarily biological means of entering into ‘communion with God’.” Thus the possibility is opened up of inquiring into the ways in which embodied practices (including language-in-use) form a precondition for varieties of religious (and secular) experience. The inability to “enter into communion with God” not only becomes a function of untaught bodies but it shifts the direction in which the authority for conduct can be sought. And authority itself comes to be understood not as an ideologically justified coercion but as a predisposition of the embodied self. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1214 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Veiling and ritual bodily acts train the self into piety; Mystical experience presupposes learned bodily techniques, not just belief. — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 1214; Spiritual experience is learned through attending to the mind in specific trained ways — Annual Review of Anthropology contributors (⚠ verify author line), The Political Economy of Attention, 55 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Mystical experience presupposes learned bodily techniques, not just belief. #corroborates (0.95) — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular, 1214