In Bart’s chapter, “How we got our bible:” He claims that we have no original manuscripts of the books of the bible, and therefore there is incongruence between the pages of the Bible that we have now, and the original texts. He is using a comparative analysis, with logic and reason on one side, and intuition on the other, and subsequently eliminating one of the views by way of ordered thought. I say in response, “How did you reach this conclusion.” If the mystic eliminated logic and reason because he thought that they were not usable in the search for God, he has in fact used them to come to that end. To restate this another way - If someone highly submersed in eastern mysticism says to you, “I simply will not use logic and reason to find God, because He and his realm is outside of the constructs of human intellect, and cannot be therefore actually known or understood by those means. If things in life do make sense, you are using logic and reason to come to that conclusion. But, again if you throw out logic and reason, nothing in life will make sense. I quite simply think this is a way for the mystic to avoid real truth, because his ignorance is more desirable or intriguing to him. The usual tendency of a mystic is to avoid the use of knowledge or evidence in his search for God, because you must use logic and reason to sift the information. Illogical thought cannot solely or simultaneously guide the mind of a Mystic, even if he wants it to. Your mind cannot come to a singular conclusion without first weighing others against it. If I were to pose the question this way to a Buddhist: “Are you telling me that I can only look at reality using either the ‘ both/and’ system or ‘nothing else’? Using this simple question, which could be stated in a myriad of ways, it is obvious that either/or will emerge whether you want it to or not. You simply cannot use both/and as a way of viewing reality. If you ponder these viewpoints long enough, you will eventually come to the same conclusion as I have. The both/and way of viewing reality can be characterized by accepting all things as potential, or probable good.
The either/or way of viewing reality can be characterized by including right and wrong, and true and false.
I have heard it explained by Buddhists that instead of using the either/or, (Western way of viewing reality) your thinking should be both/and (Eastern way of viewing reality).
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