Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Tag: Mysticism

  • The Mystical Experience is a unique, intense Quale

    The Mystical Experience is a unique, intense Quale

    What is it like to be a bat, asked Thomas Nagel in 1974, in a paper which has become famous and much quoted in the philosophy of mind.

    We can’t say, because we are not bats.  But we can say something at least about our own qualia since we experience them for ourselves.  It is true that language is no substitute for the intensity and power of the experience itself, but those who have not had a mystical experience can grasp a great deal about its nature from the descriptions of those who have.

    I have found that even reading the accounts of others brings on the mystical experience in my own mind – so language is clearly very successful in describing this quale. And reading about how the phenomena feels to others can be very helpful to those trying to come to terms with their own mystical experience.

    I was prompted to write this post after reading a friend’s doctoral thesis on Psychedelic Assisted Therapy, and querying her statement that a therapist and her patient have insufficient language with which to discuss and integrate the experience of a psychedelic trip. I have been thinking for days about how to give her my input and its not a simple question. The complexity is not the language, but the assessment of my own adventures over the years with mystical experience. And a psychedelic trip is mostly accurately described as a mystical experience.

    So the first question I had to ask is what exactly is a mystical experience? And oddly enough, in recent years I have found that much easier to explain with the input of science. In particular I have recently read (or at least analysed) around 100 papers put out by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital on the effects on the human brain of a prolonged and dedicated long term meditation practice. And few can doubt that such a practice leads to mystical experience. Meditation is at the root of all spiritual traditions, and all such traditions have reported the experiential phenomena of mystical experience.

    And so I have come to find it helpful in the extreme to look at mystical experience from two very different perspectives.

    For many years I concentrated on the mystical-experience-in-itself. What is it like to have a mystical experience? How does it affect my weltanschauung? What existential meaning does it have (if any)? How does it change my life? And in seeking out mystical experience, largely through meditation and in later years through psychedelics (having been sorely misinformed that it was going to cure my depression).

    But as I became more fascinated, as well as more informed, on the nature of consciousness, I began to wonder what science had to say on the topic. Science can not describe the quale – can not fathom the experience itself, but it can certainly shed light on how it arises in the physical world. And indeed how it can be brought on.

    The consideration of these two very different aspects in no way answered the question: what does it mean? Is there any meaning to the mystical experience? Is it showing us a different reality (or at least a very different way of interpreting the vastly complex natural world). I suspect that yes, it enables us to access a different way of seeing the world. It tells us that we are not special, that we are animals not so different from any other descendent of the last common ancestor.

    But this “seeing” has brought great relief, and a real sense of fully understanding, at a deep level, that we are not who or what we think we are. The scientist usually likes to refer to the mystical experience in terms of non duality and ego loss. To a scientist, non-duality and ego loss (or ego dissolution) are measurable psychological and neurological states, rather than just abstract philosophical concepts. While historically these terms were relegated to spiritual traditions, modern neuroscience and psychology now study them as specific “distortions” or “transcendences” of the ordinary sense of self.

    That has brought great solace and a determination to push my meditative practice to the extreme. Let us put it this way: everything in the universe is made of the same stuff and if I can feel that with a visceral, lucid and intense reality within my own mind through ego dissolution, I cease to worry about the endless human fears and petty concerns I have so long suffered from.

    So back to language. “Meaning” I have now dealt with: it enables us to see reality.

    The best descriptions I have found of this quale come from religion and Buddhism, and in particular from three books I was lucky enough to come across over 35 years ago:

    1. William James – The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
    2. Evelyn Underhill – Mysticism: A Study in Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness (1911)
    3. DT Suzuki – Mysticism Christian and Buddhist (1957)

    The mystical experience is almost identical, wherever it is found – whether in a Christian convent in mediaeval Norwich, a Tibetan Monastery, or a ritual tribal gathering in South America using psychedelics. Or course it will be interpreted in differing ways according to the cultures to which the experiencer belongs. Christian nuns have a rather uncomfortable way of talking about union with Christ with unfortunate sexual undertones. Tribal societies may believe they have met all sorts of spirits and goblins and trolls. The Zen or Tibetan monk will have achieved Nirvana – a realisation that nothing truly exists and life is a grand illusion. Take your pick.

    If I was a therapist (which thankfully I am not) I would be inclined to study these three books and encourage my clients to do the same. And indeed to go far and wide to try to understand the human condition using every means possible – including science such as that provided by Harvard.

    My friend suggests Shared Therapeutic Language: That there is a call for the development of a shared therapeutic language within psychology to help practitioners and clients navigate and name “ineffable” experiences.

    I believe the language is already there and I do not believe it helpful to invent new terms of art specifically for the purpose.

    James highlights a specific sense of reality that transcends the five physical senses, allowing people to feel the objective presence of an unseen order as vividly as if it were a tangible object. 

    Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from James’s book:

    •  A Clergyman’s Union with the Infinite: A clergyman describes a night on a hilltop where his soul “opened out into the Infinite,” resulting in a “rushing together of the two worlds, the inner and the outer”. He felt a “perfect unison” of his spirit with God, characterized by an “ineffable joy and exaltation” that made the ordinary sense of things fade away
    • A Hiker’s “State of Equilibrium”: A Swiss man recounts a sudden “feeling of being raised above myself” while tramping in the mountains. He perceived the “presence of God” as a throb of emotion so violent he could no longer stand, describing a state where his personality was “transformed by the presence of a spiritual spirit” that had neither form nor colour but was clearly perceived by his consciousness
    • Loss of Identity on a Mountain Summit: A twenty-seven-year-old man describes experiencing “intimate communion with the divine” while looking over vast landscapes. This experience consisted of a “temporary loss of my own identity” combined with an “illumination” that revealed a deeper significance to life than he had previously known
    • J. A. Symonds’s “Pure, Absolute, Abstract Self”: Symonds describes a trance-like state involving a “gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation” and all usual factors of experience. This culminated in a state where “nothing remained but a pure, absolute, abstract Self” and the entire universe appeared “without form and void of content”
    • Dr. R. M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness”: Bucke recounts a sudden experience where he felt “wrapped in a flame-coloured cloud” and realized the fire was within himself. This was followed by an “intellectual illumination” and “immense joyousness” leading to the realization that the universe is a “living Presence,” that all men are immortal, and that “the foundation principle of the world… is what we call love”.

    Here are some descriptions of the mystical experience from Underhill’s book:

    • Saint-Martin’s Synesthetic Perception: The visionary Saint-Martin described a rare state of fused senses, stating, “I heard flowers that sounded, and saw notes that shone”. Underhill notes this as an interpretation of vibrations by a consciousness that has changed or transcended its normal rhythm.
    • Richard Rolle’s “Heavenly Melody”: Rolle provided an account of his passage into a state of “songful love,” recounting how, while praying in a chapel, he suddenly felt “the sound of song” within himself. He described this as a “heavenly melody” that dwelt in his mind and turned his thoughts into a “mirth of song”.
    • Suso’s Vision of the Crystal Heart: In a symbolic vision, Suso saw his own body in the region of his heart become “pure and transparent like crystal”. He perceived “Divine Wisdom peacefully enthroned” in the center of his heart, while his soul rested on the “bosom of God” in a state of inebriation.
    • Dante’s River of Light: Dante described a “symbolic reconstruction of reality” where he saw “light in the form of a river blazing with radiance”. This river flowed between banks of flowers, and from it issued “living sparks” that settled on the blossoms like “rubies set in gold”.
    • St. Teresa’s Transverberation: In a celebrated “active imaginary vision,” St. Teresa described an angel who thrust a golden spear tipped with fire into her heart. This experience left her “all on fire with a great love of God,” producing a physical and spiritual pain that she described as having a “surpassing sweetness”.

    Here are some descriptions of the Buddhist mystical experience from Suzuki’s book:

    • The Experience of “Is-ness” (Tathata): Buddhist enlightenment is described as the experience of “is-ness” or “suchness” (tathata), which in itself possesses all the possible values humans can conceive.
    • Universal Enlightenment: It is recorded that when Buddha attained enlightenment, he perceived that all beings—both sentient and non-sentient—were already part of the enlightenment itself.
    • “Vast Emptiness” (Sunyata): The Zen patriarch Bodhidharma described the highest and holiest truth of the Sutras as “A vast emptiness and no holiness in it”. This state is reached by a metaphorical “leap” into a “silent valley” of Absolute Emptiness.
    • Transformative Perception (The Circular Sun): In a Zen verse-story, master Rakan Osho describes his enlightenment as an explosion of doubt, after which he “for the first time perceived that the sun was circular”. This signifies seeing the fundamental “is-ness” of everyday things with a transformed view of life
    • The Oneness of the Devotee and Buddha (Ki and Ho): In Shin Buddhism, the mystical experience is characterized as the identification of “oneness” of the devotee (ki) and the Buddha or Reality (ho). This identification is often actualized through the invocation of the “Namu-amida-butsu”

    You could of course codify all the above into categories for the purpose of making a specific therapeutic definition of each particular variety of mystical experience, but I wonder whether that would add much?

    “Sex_obsessed_nun_crush_on_christ” for instance would be a splendid short code for much of the Western Christian mystical experience in the convent. But perhaps it doesn’t really add much.

    Who am I to say. I hope my friend will forgive my tongue in cheek irreverence.

  • The Chapter House

    The Chapter House

    Some weeks after their adventures with the Book of Ways, Polly and Eustace sat enjoying a breakfast of boiled eggs and generously buttered toast in their little sitting room, which looked out over the front garden and down the lane to the stream. An insistent tapping began somewhere in the garden, which at first they put down to a woodpecker, although the noise was a little louder than even the heartiest of the local birds normally produced.

    Winter had set in and outside the day was overcast, with light drizzle. The temperature had dropped and so had most of the leaves but it was a season which nonetheless had its own pleasures. Kicking through the now composting leaves along the woodland paths, putting on warm jerseys and carrying homemade soup in their rucksacks for picnics along the way. And large cups of hot chocolate by a crackling open fire in their little sitting home when they returned. Red faced and well exercised, they would settle down for an evening of reading, or even just quiet contemplation, staring into the hypnotic flames in the grate.

    The cottage had a newly thatched roof, set to last some 30 years, and three small but comfortable bedrooms upstairs. A tiny water closet housed a deep hip bath, which added to the eccentric charm of the place. Their home was everything this contented couple could wish for – not so big that it was a struggle to maintain, nor so small that it was uncomfortable to live in. Life was untroubled: a small but successful business which combined skilled craftsmanship with intellectual satisfaction, beautiful if sometimes mysterious countryside, and few cares to disturb their peace of mind.

    There was no big town near by, no busy road. No light pollution to blot out the dance of the stars overhead or the magnificent wash of light from the Milky Way. The village seemed set in a lost world of idyllic bliss, an Arcadia, an Eden almost. “Et in Arcadia ego” it was said, and some held that there was a serpent in every Eden. And yet recently Eustace had begun to wonder whether death itself was a myth, and evil an option rather than a mandatory requirement of life on earth. He had been much affected by his recent adventures and both he and Polly began to realize that reality was altogether stranger and perhaps more benevolent than either of them had ever imagined.

    The determined tapping continued, now on the diamond paned leaded glass of the sitting room window. Opening the front door onto the garden, Eustace was surprised to see that a large snowy egret was the culprit. Perhaps the very same bird from that green hill in an enchanted valley which now seemed but a distant memory. Its long brown conical beak was still tapping at the window. When it saw Eustace had at last answered its call, it fluttered over to the front door.

    “About time, if I may say so” said the bird, flapping its large yellow-green feet on the front path and shaking the beaded rain from its elegant, snow white wings. “I am Pluribus and I have travelled long and far. I would greatly appreciate a moment or two of your time by a warm fire with a bowl of hot milk.”

    Pluribus settled himself happily down on the floor, close enough to the fireplace to warm its chilled body but not so close as to endanger its beautiful white plumage. When he had finished lapping the warm milk, he pecked contentedly on an oatcake Polly had found him in the kitchen, and no longer seemed in such a hurry. Perhaps after all, he had just been impatient to come in from the cold.

    Eustace and Polly sat patiently and eventually Pluribus sighed contentedly, and raised his head towards the couple. “We saw you at the gates at the top of the green hill” said Polly, “but we were whisked away before we had a chance to come and say hello”. “Ah, well then, Mages and their toys work in mysterious ways. Perhaps the Book had shown you enough for one day, or perhaps it thought you were late for choir practice. But it’s time we talked. I bring you a message and come with a request. You are both summoned, if you will, to the Council of Elders at the Chapter House. In the far corner of reality I come from, it’s a sort of parliament. A meeting place where we guardians of the timeless dimensions chew the fat and wonder how we can best encourage those still wandering the lower paths.”

    “I’m not at all sure I understand” admitted Eustace. “We live a quiet life here in our own little world and I can’t imagine how we could help out in matters so far beyond our limited experience”.

    “It’s like this” said Pluribus. “We guardians like to prompt and guide, to suggest. To use force can only ever be a last resort, and sometimes we need a little help from you mortals, if I can put it that way.”

    Polly and Eustace looked none the wiser. “Where or what or who are you all? ” asked Polly, “The Mage, the book, the Green Hill. It all seems so mysterious. One moment we are living our quiet lives here in our hidden valley, and the next we are whisked away to see lands and people and things we never dreamt existed.”

    “Now you are asking!” said Pluribus “What questions you have and all the right ones, if I may say so. But others at the Council may give you the answers you seek. Now we must hurry – it doesn’t do to keep The Mage waiting and the Council is assembling as we speak. I suggest you go and pack your things, you never know how long one of these adventures is going to last or quite where it might lead. Take the largest back packs you have and fill them with your warmest clothes. A toothbrush and a sleeping bag wouldn’t go amiss either. And put on stout hiking boots and your thickest woolen socks. Some food would be a good idea too – you never quite know where your next meal is coming from on these quests.”

    None the wiser as to what was afoot, Polly and Eustace did as Pluribus had suggested. Locking the cottage door behind them, all three set off up the hill and into the woods. The little village lay below them and Eustace glanced round and sighed at the comforting sight of their little cottage, set amidst the familiar surroundings they both so loved. The stream meandering along the bottom of the valley, the church with its tall tower and gently swinging weather vane, the villagers beginning to go about their day this cold and overcast winter’s morning. Both he and Polly were at the same time apprehensive at this disruption to their comfortable lives and yet intrigued by the puzzles and enigmas of a world so much wider and stranger than it had seemed a few short weeks ago. Soon enough they were in unfamiliar territory. Gone were the paths and woodland clearings they had so often wandered, as Pluribus led the way deeper and deeper into an altogether stranger forest.

    The big white bird hopped along, confident of his path, helped along his way by the occasional flapping of his wings. Sometimes he stretched his wings and soared upwards above the forest canopy. As they looked up, Eustace and Polly saw a sky that was now clear and blue and noticed that the season seemed a little kinder than the winter gloom they had started out in.

    By and by they came to the seemingly ecclesiastical building in its wide clearing in the woods, familiar to Eustace from his last visit. The Chapter House was to be found on its far side, a fine octagonal structure supported by flying buttresses. Of honey hued stone, each side (other than that connected by cloister to the church) had two tall arched windows between each of the buttresses, paned in brightly coloured glass and the conical roof looked to be made of weathered green copper. Between the arched windows on each side, a door was to be found. Stout structures of heavy oak, studded with iron bolts and a large circular handle. No locks, oddly enough, so apparently open to any who sought entrance.

    “Can’t get in through those outer doors” said Pluribus. “Or rather we would be unwise to try – no idea where we would end up, but we would be very unlikely to find ourselves inside the Chapter House.”

    Leaving any further explanations aside, Pluribus lead them to the great oak door of the church itself, and thereafter through to the cloisters leading on to the Chapter House.

    A single richly carved central stone pillar reached to the magnificent vaulted ceiling within the chapter house itself. A vast octagonal table took up much of the flagstone floor and surrounded the central pillar. On richly upholstered carver chairs surrounding the table, the Council members were in full debate as Pluribus and the two guests arrived. Eustace and Polly were placed on chairs either side of the Mage’s throne, and Pluribus perched awkwardly on a cushion on his own chair. It seemed the Snow Egret was a member of this august body but he looked by no means out of place since the Council was no mere human gathering. Flavio was there, his lute placed on the table in front of him, as were many of those Eustace had met on his evening of Sylvan feasting.

    The Council was quorate it seemed and yet two plush red chairs still stood empty at the great oak table.

    “Welcome humans” boomed the Mage “And my thanks for agreeing to attend our conference. We are here at the behest of the Gothic Elves of the North who face troubles in their far flung realm. We hope their tardiness signifies no concern for their safety, but these are troubled times.”

    At that moment one of the oak doors set in the octagonal outer walls opened and a howling wind roared into the chamber, accompanied by driven snow. Polly gasped with surprise – the door had opened onto some place far removed from the sunny forest clearing they had walked through with Pluribus only a few minutes earlier. Through the open door, a dark and wintry scene presented itself. A Romanesque cathedral could be seen atop a steep and rocky outcrop, around the base of which wound a swiftly flowing river.

    Two young women stepped into the Chapter House, closing the door behind them with difficulty, and bowed to the assembled company of elders. The two Gothic Elves turned out to be sisters and no explanation was given for their curious handle – whether they originated from some 6th century Gothic tribe was never made clear. Or perhaps the name came from their curious mode of dress and did not speak as to their tribal origins.

    “I am Aliénor” said one, introducing herself to Polly and Eustace and bowing deeply. “My sister and I hail from Dunholm in the Northern Lands, not so far removed from the Great Wall of Time which still stands to hold the darkness at bay which threatens us from the frozen lands beyond.”

    It would be accurate to describe Aliénor’s attire as Gothic, in the sense not so much of those ancient tribes from the east as of a certain fashion which grew in European countries in the 19th century and beyond. A Gothic revival which expressed itself in art and architecture and literature and usually entailed much flourish and colour. In Aliénor’s case, her attire struck an even more modern tone and was fashionable among the young throughout 21st Century Europe. Black was the colour (or should one say absence of colour?) favoured by the modern Goth.

    Aliénor was dressed entirely in black, from the platform builders’ boots on her feet to the conical, wide brimmed hat on the top of her head. A long and elegant dress of black silk was covered with a fine black woolen cloak for warmth. To complete the study in fashion, Aliénor sported black painted finger nails. She cut an altogether fine figure.

    “And I am Rozálie” said the other sister, bowing politely to the young couple she hoped had come to help her. Rozálie was of a somewhat different makeup, if looks could tell. Her garb was altogether more relaxed, from the blue rubber clogs on her feet to the warm multi coloured coat she wore against the chill winds of her homeland. She wore owl-like tortoise shell spectacles and had long blowy fair hair, not unkempt certainly, but fashionably boho and casual.

    Despite differences, they were very obviously sisters and devoted ones at that. Neither uttered a word without looking at the other, not so much seeking approval but with a tacit understanding that such approval would nevertheless be granted if sought. Whether the two of them ever quarreled no-one seemed to know, but the suspicion was that few harsh words if any ever passed their lips.

    “The Gothic Elf sisters bear the usual magical powers common among their kin” said the Mage, as the two sisters took their seats at the table “but the darkness from the north seems to require powers of an altogether different nature. Deep sorcery may not be enough and legend has it that only humans hold the key to finally ridding their land of the evil that is overcoming it.”

    “We sit here at the hub of the known universe” said Aliénor solemnly. “As far as we can tell, we live in an infinity of infinities. Universe within universe in both directions, up and down, in and out. Even we Elders have no idea of the full extent of what surrounds us, even we have hardly begun to explore the mysteries we are surrounded by. What we do, each in our own separate domains, is to try to maintain the balance. There is good and there is evil. People and beings who wish goodness and happiness and plenty for all and others who would seek dominion over the rest. Who would conquer and pillage and plunder to satisfy some primal urge which even they do not understand, and can certainly not control. We aim to allow quiet and honest folk to get on with their mortal lives free from the cruelties and injustices so often found throughout the Many Worlds”.

    “Even I” said the Mage “Can not claim to know all that is or ever will be. Even I can not claim to have fully fathomed the deep and entangled infinities of which we are but a part. But I am the eye of peace within a storm. I am the ruler of a land of calm and tranquility and plenty and many find their way here to my realm when their time in the purely physical realms has come to an end. And I am surrounded by my Council of Elders who have gone out into the physical realms to bring such peace and comfort as they are able to a fractured and fearful multiverse.”

    “We have transcended, if you will” added Flavio. “We belong to a realm beyond the physical plane but can return there if or when needs must. Is there a god, some ask us. What is the ultimate nature of reality some wonder. Was there a beginning and will there be an end. To be truthful, much as our wisdom and knowledge have grown over countless eons, even we can not fully answer such questions. We are at deep peace, we have achieved a state of bliss and have escaped the base desires and miseries of the physical worlds. We have powers you could only dream of and yet even we sometimes wonder whether there is yet some higher power, some higher transcendence. Yet some deeper or higher realm where all is even more glorious than here and where all questions have been answered.”

    “But what we have is perfection enough” offered Aliénor. “More than that, I should say. Here is a realm of plenty, a place where time does not flow nor entropy weave its destructive path. A place of happiness and beauty and contentment. Where boredom does not exist and where cruelty has no place. And if there is more, then let it come if it will. Let him or it or her find us in its own good time. And if there is not, if we ourselves are at the very peak of creation or are the creators ourselves, then so be it. We continue to grow and flourish, we continue to garden the many worlds as well as this our ethereal plane. Perhaps we after all are the gods men seek. And perhaps those men may join us and become as we.”

    “Speculation enough!” ventured Rozálie in her soft and slightly squeaky voice, brushing a few wisps of golden hair out of her eyes. “To the problem at hand and time to ask of your help.

    And with that, the talk continued long into the night.

  • Mysticism – Experience over Intellect

    Mysticism – Experience over Intellect

    Countless words have been written about mysticism but only direct experience will ever be able to convey what it is “like”.

    If you were a blind man you would never truly understand colour. Intellectually, you would be able to appreciate that the experience of “red” begins with light waves of a certain frequency, and that information conveyed to the brain by the eyes leads to an experience of the colour.  But without the ability to “see” red, you would never fully understand it on an intuitive level.

    So it is with any of the  qualia we humans experience. Mysticism is a “quale” – one of the qualia which (some) humans are able to sense or experience.

    There was once a time when I read widely on the topic. I read (in translation) the accounts of many of the Eastern and Western mystics. The Cloud of Unknowing for instance, an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The poetry of Rumi, the teachings of Buddhism, Zen or otherwise. The list goes on – mysticism has been a feature of human life throughout ages.

    Anyone not knowing where to start might try the seminal work of Evelyn Underhill “Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness”. Or William James “The Varieties of Religious Experience”.

    I can think of no better definition of mysticism than that I found in a comment by Anna Nimm on a website called Materialism, Mysticism and Art

    I think of mysticism as direct knowledge of god, whether a personal or a pantheistic god synonymous with nature or a Dionysian life force. And it’s a form of union that is ecstatic, it transports one both beyond the self and also beyond concepts and words; it is a form of knowledge felt by the heart and body (or soul) rather than by the rational mind.

    I prefer “nature” or “life-force” to god, but these are mere words to describe the indescribable.

    But let me digress a little and think out loud about why Phil Stansfield’s website puzzles me so much.  My puzzlement being the spark which ignited this particular post.

    I must suppose that Phil’s interest in mysticism is academic. And a perfectly reasonable approach. Phil is a materialist and he seems to concentrate on the contributions made by “mysticism” to art, philosophy and culture while denying the “reality” of the experience.  He quotes much from philosophers and others who, throughout history, have had something to say on the topic.

    Much like the way religion is taught in schools these days – not as a faith but as literary criticism or history.

    And then it struck me – I am a “believer” and Phil is not. My interest in mysticism is through personal experience which has become more radical and better formed in recent years, after a lifetime of seeking.

    Phil’s interest (and I hope he will forgive me if I am wrong) is to catalog the works of other commentators who over the years have written about mysticism. He sees its influence throughout history but denies that mysticism has any intrinsic reality.

    In his concluding words to his first post Phil states:

    But it must be asked, what is the price paid in asserting and reflecting a philosophy which advocates flight from the material world and argues for an ‘acousmatic realm’ ………..?

    It seems that I tend to get things about faced and it has a great deal to do with my cognitive bias towards transcendence and the apparently non material.  When I see somebody writing about mysticism I mistakenly assume they are “believers” as well.

    I must never forget that I myself find religious dogma absurd. I must not ignore my interest in the works of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and my layman’s passion for the explanatory power of science.

    My conviction that there is indeed a wizard of some sort behind the curtain should not blind me to the perfectly reasonable views and interests of those who are equally strongly convinced otherwise.

    I do not share Phil’s opinions but I nonetheless find his website a pleasurable and informative place to browse.

     

  • Mysticism

    Mysticism

    Fascinated by the concept of transcendence I have started to conceptualize what I believe such states of existence could be.

    I have to say I find the use of religious terminology off putting in the extreme. I dislike intensely the concept of an overlord, an anthropomorphic (or other) master who determines my fate and who acts as a gatekeeper to a mythical realm of bliss. I can however accept religion and religious literature as an interpretation, a metaphor, or a pointer.

    Hence I find much enjoyment (instruction even) in the Psalms. But I view the Psalms as a poetic and often beautiful outpouring of human need and frailty. Human longing for safety and peace in an often frightening world. When reading the psalms I do not expect Jehova to pop up from the floor and save me or even speak to me. Nor would I wish him to.  Any more than I want or expect to meet Gandalf or Tom Bombadil. Or Sauron for that matter.

    I live in the 21st Century and find much religious thought, let alone dogma, belittling and degrading to the human spirit.

    Religion is, to quote that wonderful Eastern phrase, merely a finger pointing at the moon.  God was made in the image of man, not the reverse. God was a concept we invented to explain the apparently inexplicable.  To comfort ourselves that all is well and all manner of things are well.

    Such moments of clarity as I have had, such moments of bliss or apparent awakening have been of an altogether different sort.

    If I were ever to acquire the ability to enter permanently into such state I would be most disappointed to have a boss, a committee or indeed any fleeting remnant of what passes for authority.

    I have an extreme distaste for authority, perhaps because I believe, very strongly, that in a perfect world it would be unnecessary. In the same way that police would be unnecessary if there were no crime.  And medicine redundant in the absence of disease.

    Because I also believe very strongly that human justice is a poor joke and all too often used for purposes of repression and injustice, to keep an established class in situ.

    I also dislike intensely the grovelling concept of service so beloved of Western religion.  I do not wish to serve anybody thank you very much, and in the perfect world of bliss which exists in my own imagination, such service is neither requested nor necessary. There is nobody to serve and no services required.  Service can not, under any circumstances or system of logic, be perfect freedom, whoever it is you are expected to serve.

    So how do I envisage bliss? The transcendent state. The release from the drudgery, fear and horrors all too readily apparent in the physical world we see around us.

    The realm of god (“heaven”in English) is a different and in many ways separable concept from that of a “god”, a creator, an overlord. Or at least it is in my imagination; in my wishes. In my belief even.

    It is a state in which peace is not only attainable but ever present. It is a “place” where justice is natural and a fact of existence. Where there is plenty (perhaps because physical nourishment is no longer necessary). Where there is no pain, mental or physical. Where there is contentment. Where anxiety does not exists because there is no reason to be anxious.  Where guilt is an unknown and unnecessary concept.

    I have often thought of that old explanation of magic, or rather what super powers must seem like to a backward and technologically ignorant race.  We read much about mind, consciousness. Some still claim adherence to the concepts of Jung, some scientists even posit something not so very dissimilar to his universal consciousness.

    That consciousness just is. Is a law of nature, an irreducible feature like light or the nuclear force.

    Is it so very fanciful then to suppose that in the far distant future a form of consciousness may be found or indeed created without the frailties which attach to our own inferior version?

    A consciousness de-coupled from matter, free from the stifling necessity of defeating entropy day in, day out.

    I have heard many say that mysticism and science are perhaps not such strangers to each other. My own belief is that the future might reveal that the mystic state is what a backward people might call a reality created by a sufficiently advanced  species. As stone age man might construe  electricity as magic, so we deem nirvana or ecstasy.  Some impossibly unattainable state which has nonetheless been achieved by others eons removed from us in sophistication.

    I am sorry for my outspokenness in so far as it may upset or even insult the cherished beliefs of so many who cling to more traditional beliefs. But I do not feel that should prevent me from propounding my own equally deeply felt “beliefs”.

    It would not be enough to live in the imperfect Culture. But to be a member of a Sublimed species. That might just about do the trick.

  • The Mysticism of Blade Runner

    The Mysticism of Blade Runner

    ““I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.”

    Does it sound curious to link a vastly popular work of science fiction to the concept of mysticism?

    Roy the terrifying robot saves Deckard’s life and before he dies the robot utters those magical, moving words.  A robot has “seen the face of god”.  The film shakes our very perception of life and consciousness. Mankind has created sentient beings, and yet chases them to death like rabid dogs when they strike out for freedom from servitude.

    Science and mysticism are intrinsically linked.   They are two sides of the same coin. The mystic seeks to see the face of god by direct and intensely private personal experience. The scientist, if he did but know it, seeks the face of god through experiment, induction, rational thought.

    Both the scientist and the mystic seek the same end. Knowledge, gnosis, to know.  Truth, meaning. To escape from the goldfish bowl of our small existence and to witness the multiverse, unlimited by our own meagre senses of sight and hearing. To see what is out there, to witness it, to understand it.  To meld with it.

    Above all, to feel it.

    I have no doubt there are many scientists who would see themselves as rational, clinical beings. Dabblers in numbers and physical exotica, which can only be explored through higher maths.

    And yet at heart I suspect they know that they too are seekers and not so far removed from the mystics.

    We are trapped on a spaceship called earth, rotating around an insignificant sun in a sea of infinity.  We do not know what we are.  We do not understand why or how we are conscious.

    Is it any wonder that we have created myth and religion down the millenia to seek comfort and meaning? Is it any wonder that as a  rational scientist or an arty writer, we both seek to “see the face of god”?