Mysticism and Experience: Twenty-First-Century Approaches 9781498599375, 9781498599382, 1498599370

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The Exposure
1 Manifestations of Shamanic Spirituality
2 Theoneurology
Part II: The Symbolic
3 Materializing the Symbolic in Paranormal Experience
4 Words and Images of a Transcendent Inner Mysterion
Part III: The Cognitive
5 The Dao Flickering through Words
6 Why Are Religious Experiences Ineffable? The Question of Mystical-Noetic Knowledge
7 Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Mystical Experiences
Part IV: The Scientific
8 Explanatory Mechanisms of Altered States of Consciousness
9 Mathematical Modeling of Cognitive Mechanisms of Meaning and the Spiritually Sublime
10 Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and the Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences
Index
Contributors

Citation preview

Mysticism and Experience

Mysticism and Experience Twenty-First-Century Approaches Edited by Alex S. Kohav

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kohav, Alex S., 1948- editor. Title: Mysticism and experience : twenty-first-century approaches / edited by Alex S. Kohav. Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book embarks on scholarly investigations of mystical phenomena, including shamanism, near-death experiences, and the paranormal. Contributors address queries such as why religious experiences are ineffable, what the explanatory mechanisms of altered states of consciousness are, and how literature and art express the mystical”-- Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020027336 (print) | LCCN 2020027337 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498599375 (cloth) | ISBN 9781498599382 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Mysticism--Comparative studies. | Experience (Religion)--Comparative studies. Classification: LCC BL625 .M883 2020 (print) | LCC BL625 (ebook) | DDC 204/.22--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027336 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027337 TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For Julia

Contents

Preface Alex S. Kohav

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Introduction: Unutterable Experiences of Consciousness Alteration Alex S. Kohav Part I: The Exposure 1 Manifestations of Shamanic Spirituality: Mongolia 1999, 2002 Eva Jane Neumann Fridman 2 Theoneurology: Bridging Hebrew Bible Prophecy and Clinical Psychedelic Drug Research Rick Strassman, MD Part II: The Symbolic 3 Materializing the Symbolic in Paranormal Experience Jess Hollenback 4 Words and Images of a Transcendent Inner Mysterion: Mysticism in Contemporary Western Literature and Art Ori Z. Soltes Part III: The Cognitive 5 The Dao Flickering through Words: A Cognitive-Poetic Analysis of the Dao-de Jing Sivan Wagshal Te’eni and Reuven Tsur

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6 Why Are Religious Experiences Ineffable? The Question of Mystical-Noetic Knowledge Laura E. Weed 7 Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Mystical Experiences Harry T. Hunt Part IV: The Scientific 8 Explanatory Mechanisms of Altered States of Consciousness: A Brief Overview Alex S. Kohav 9 Mathematical Modeling of Cognitive Mechanisms of Meaning and the Spiritually Sublime Leonid I. Perlovsky 10 Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and the Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences Richard H. Jones

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Contributors

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Preface Alex S. Kohav

It is hardly an exaggeration to state that mysticism is one of the most misunderstood, or least understood, phenomena within the vast panoply of human experience. It has suffered a disproportionate share of cyclical approbation and disapproval, including condemnation and even contempt. Yet from the establishment of religions to the highest forms of social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic creations, mysticism seems to be implicated as a key, and often the key, impetus and trigger, source and foundation. In the post-twentieth-century era, new perspectives and insights afforded by specialized disciplines—many with expertise not normally associated with the mystical realm—offer modern approaches to a more-complex, expanded meaning of mysticism. This book examines mysticism from the standpoint of several academic fields and the most recent, advanced opportunities they offer. What qualifies the use of the term “mystical”? The question is important because of the wide-ranging claims to mystical status, which are often applied to non-mystical experiences that can range from common meditations that never rise to the level of altered states of consciousness—which, as this volume emphasizes, is the sine qua non of all genuinely mystical experiences—to merely being engaged in reading Scripture. 1 To consider another pervasive but likewise misplaced claim, can contemplation or even mere discussion of such speculative notions as, for example, the so-called Sefirot of the kabbalah, be seen as mystical activity? Moshe Idel, speaking of the kabbalistic classic, is emphatic: “While [the Zohar’s] symbolism may invite contemplation, the awareness of certain theosophical and anthropological ideas does not change the nature of man.” 2 For another type of example, just because someone may interpret a text in a manner that supplies answers that ix

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are meaningful in a spiritual sense, it does not necessarily follow that the explanation supplied is “mystical” (as is sometimes claimed). When in Christian theological hermeneutics the Song of Songs, for instance, is construed allegorically as the story of love between Christ and his church, such interpretations are symbolic rather than “mystical.” Likewise, when in a rabbinic Midrash “Adam is . . . identified with Israel,” there is nothing mystical per se conveyed by such information. 3 The significance of such distinctions should be apparent. The ability to “change the nature of man” is, or should be, a key issue for the subject of mysticism, one that far exceeds merely becoming aware of “certain theosophical and anthropological ideas,” even of the exalted Sefirot. This becomes clear when one considers an aspect invariably associated with mysticism, namely, the experiencing of the so-called mystical states of mind. Mysticism and “mystical experiences” are experienced by mystics, so called precisely because they undergo or have undergone some unusual consciousness-related—that is, consciousness-altering—phenomena. An ability to achieve such mental states is a fundamental issue, even if we also need to differentiate between specific kinds of mysticisms within the enormous range of “altered states of consciousness” that are, in fact, achievable by human beings. The book’s introductory essay, “Unutterable Experiences of Consciousness Alteration,” endeavors to offer an overarching, unifying perspective through its focus on the question of experience. Too often, when considering mystical experience, the emphasis has been on the former, with “experience” per se being neglected or even seen as irrelevant. Yet, as a prominent philosopher of mind David Chalmers, who is cited in the introduction, puts it, “The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience.” The subject of mysticism, for its part, is as complex and difficult—if not impenetrable—as that of consciousness itself. What is experience? One is experiencing life, living; this, among other things, entails possessing—or being in—a “mode of getting into contact with reality” (as Christoph Siebert, an author also cited in the introduction, frames it). It is experience that, in spite of the sheer profusion of non-ordinary phenomena possible within the realm of human practices, in the end offers the ultimate unifying conception—as well as a key marker—that coalesces, not to say reduces, all such manifestations to one unquestionable and requisite feature: alteration of consciousness. It is alteration of consciousness and the related notion of altered states of consciousness that accounts for what may seem to be a bewildering variety of things mystical; they represent different kinds as well as levels of intensities of consciousness alteration.

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The present volume is exploiting the sometimes vastly different approaches and perspectives of different academic disciplines that it has brought together under its covers. Their differing disciplinary tactics apropos things mystical do not aim to present a unified perspective on, or even the same perception of mysticism. Thus it may seem that we have perhaps drifted further away from a consensus and further complicated the already-overburdened, confusing picture of mystical and related phenomena. Yet arguably the contrary is the case. On the one hand, the volume presents substantive indications that an apt and highly relevant way of looking at mystical phenomena is by viewing their fundamental underlying mechanism as alteration of consciousness. Looking at it from another angle, what the book does is the following: it takes us away from the traditional milieu of mysticism-related studies that is often confined to and circumscribed by individual religious traditions and practices. Notwithstanding occasional forays, it is still rare for the latter to engage directly such diverse contemporary approaches as cognitive science, consciousness studies, neurobiology, or psychology, which help pull us away from the discourse centered on what the traditions themselves are able or willing to disclose, often and necessarily only via the language of myths, secrets, and mysteriousness. And yet, because of the enormity of the challenge involved, and because we are still at the unenviable stage of being in a proverbial dark room with an indistinct elephant—attempting to ascertain from every conceivable side what exactly it is yet being distressingly unaware of the elephant’s true identity—we should accept our still-enduring limitations and be content, for the time being, with amassing as much data and insight as we can muster. The book is divided into four parts: “The Exposure,” “The Symbolic,” “The Cognitive,” and “The Scientific”—thus covering several key aspects of and perspectives on the phenomenon known as mysticism and some additional forms of alteration of consciousness. The contributors examine these issues in the following broad areas: remarkable forms of religiosity, such as shamanic spirituality in contemporary Mongolia (chapter 1); the question of “religious experience” both generally and, more specifically, regarding the experiential, experimental, and medical/clinical aspects of alteration of consciousness (chapter 2) and the question of their purported ineffability (chapter 6); paranormal states of consciousness (chapter 3); mysticism as portrayed in contemporary Western literature and art (chapter 4); the ancient Chinese mystical-philosophical classic, Tao Te Ching, illuminated by cognitive poetic analysis (chapter 5); the question of mystical-noetic knowledge from the perspectives of philosophy of language and cognitive science (chapter 6); the continuum of synesthetic states involved in mystical experiences, investigated via cognitive psychology (chapter 7); recent theoretical explanatory models of altered states of consciousness (chapter 8); and “mysterious

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emotions that are among the central enigmas of human existence,” elucidated by mathematical modeling (chapter 9). The volume concludes with an assessment of scientific claims by practitioners of meditation and other forms of mystical experiences (chapter 10). Beginning part 1: “The Exposure,” chapter 1, “Manifestations of Shamanic Spirituality: Mongolia 1999, 2002” by the anthropologist Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, describes her several encounters with well-known contemporary Mongolian shamans. The depicted events took place in September 1999 in Hövsgöl Province and in August 2002 in Bayan-uul Province, both in Mongolia. The anthropological approach generally considers cultural and historical contexts critical to understanding the reasons and meaning underlying behavior. Fridman tests this method against a more mystical point of view: Is what is required for understanding the dramatic events she has witnessed a Western-driven “scientific” methodology and attitude, or do these “shamanistic manifestations,” as she calls them, taking place in the Mongolian context present a more perplexing case? Chapter 2, “Theoneurology: Bridging Hebrew Bible Prophecy and Clinical Psychedelic Drug Research,” reflects the research of Rick Strassman, MD, a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. Based on his rare authorized medical research with participants taking psychedelic drugs in the early 1980s, Strassman presents an outline for understanding a particular type of spiritual experience, namely, the Hebrew biblical prophecy. He conceives this understanding as a new theoretical model of religious-mystical experience that is an alternative to the current model known as “neurotheology.” The chapter details how current biological models for spiritual experience are based on the belief that the brain generates such states. Strassman’s approach reverses the reigning paradigm of neurotheology, proposing instead his theory of theoneurology: as a top-down alternative to neurotheology, theoneurology proposes that God communicates with humans via the agency of the brain rather than the brain generating the impression of such communication. Strassman takes advantage of medieval Jewish philosophers who articulated a sophisticated metaphysical structure to account for the prophetic state. Interweaving such medievalism with contemporary biological sensibilities enables Strassman to revivify their approach, with strikingly original results. Part 2, “The Symbolic,” opens with chapter 3, “Materializing the Symbolic in Paranormal Experience.” Its author, historian of religion Jess Hollenback, explores the significance and potential of some mystical experiences for deepening our understanding of symbolization processes. In particular, the chapter focuses on how the “materialization” of thoughts and desires has often played a role in shaping a variety of luminous phenomena that occur during paranormal states of consciousness. A key question in the chapter “pertains to the way that symbolization seems to focus and direct psychical

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energy.” This process, which Hollenback calls the “materialization of the symbolic,” is the polar opposite of creating abstractions. Materialization of the symbolic is manifested in psychosomatic lesions or stigmata induced by the suggestions of the hypnotist and in placebo and nocebo effects. Hollenback’s attempted “defamiliarization of the familiar” allows the reader to conceive phenomena and occurrences that he or she has likely never imagined or considered real or even possible. Chapter 4, “Words and Images of a Transcendent Inner Mysterion: Mysticism in Contemporary Western Literature and Art,” is the work of Ori Z. Soltes, a Georgetown University–based author, whose wide-ranging interests extend from religion and art, to philosophy and poetry. The chapter looks at ways the arts have attempted to contend with the mystical and, especially, with “the innermost, hiddenmost recess of God—the mysterion.” Soltes’s essay presents two interrelated subjects united by one issue: contemporary literature and contemporary visual art, both taking up the subject of mysticism. As Soltes frames the essay’s context, given the view of God as visible for Christians and invisible for Jews and Muslims, the question of mysticism offers not only broad concerns but a range of embedded definitional issues pertaining to figuration and abstraction, words, letters, numbers, and vegetal and geometric forms and their symbolic uses. As a result, Soltes engages questions that are highly germane to the investigations of many writer- or artist-mystics today: If the goal of mystics is a transcendent mysterion that is both beyond reach and buried within our innermost being, are they using their art as an instrument of searching or of a would-be description? And what, in the end, are the purposes of art, both visual and verbal, vis-à-vis the reader/viewer, and how do those purposes naturally intersect—or oppose— the mystical enterprise? Literary works discussed in the chapter include Jorge Luis Borges’s “Death and the Compass” and “The Aleph,” Andre SchwarzBart’s The Last of the Just, Cynthia Ozick’s “The Pagan Rabbi,” and Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season. The many contemporary visual artists considered who address the realm of mysticism include Barnett Newman, Hossein Zenderoudi, Yona Verwer, Mark Rothko, Parviz Tanavoli, Anselm Kiefer, and Makoto Fujimura. In summary, Soltes concludes that “only the mystic who has succeeded in having (as opposed to merely aspiring to have) a mystical experience can say that she or he has had one. We cannot know whether any of the writers whose work I have discussed has had the experience of feeling emptied of self and filled with God; all we can say is that, in one way or another, overtly or more subtly, each of them has found the idea of mysticism to be an effective—compelling—vehicle for the tales she or he tells and the ideas that she or he wants the reader to consider.” Chapter 5, “The Dao Flickering through Words: A Cognitive-Poetic Analysis of Dao-de Jing,” opens part 3: “The Cognitive.” In their chapter Sivan Wagshal Te’eni and Reuven Tsur examine the ancient Chinese classic

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Dao-de Jing (Tao Te Ching) from a cognitive-poetics perspective, exploring the verbal strategies by which this text suggests the ineffable. Reuven Tsur, emeritus professor at Tel Aviv University and a recipient of the prestigious Israel Prize, is one of the principal founders of the new discipline of cognitive poetics. As the essay states, “ordinary consciousness attempts to cope with . . . [the] excess of information” flooding the cognitive system “by organizing it into stable objects and categories, excluding much valuable information that may be captured, at best, by intuition. Some altered states of consciousness, such as varieties of mystic experience, are attempts to capture some of this excluded, precategorial information.” This process is often “interpreted as catching a glimpse of some inaccessible reality, beyond the ultimate boundary.” The illuminating discussion considers instances of three kinds of mystical insight in the Dao-de Jing, including (1) insight into “some inaccessible reality,” (2) insight into the “intrinsic nature of things,” and (3) “insight resulting from disorientation.” Given the more than 150 different English translations of this Chinese classic, all presumably with differing grasps of what may be involved, the authors effectively demonstrate the value of cognitive poetics in extracting meaning from this text. Next, chapter 6—“Why Are Religious Experiences Ineffable? The Question of Mystical-Noetic Knowledge”—is by Albany, New York–based philosopher Laura E. Weed. Her essay considers one of the most puzzling paradoxes of mysticism. Mystical experience is often characterized as ineffable, yet it is also purported to offer great knowledge. Weed explores such apparently contradictory claims from the perspective of philosophy of language and of cognitive science research about nonlinguistic functions performed by the brain. The chapter encompasses research in cognitive science indicating that language capacity is only one of many forms of mental capacity, some of which are not accessible to the language centers of the brain; research in embodied and environmentally situated knowledge indicating that not all forms of knowledge are “in the head,” cognitive, and propositional; and research in information theory indicating that information is a ubiquitous feature of the universe and is not as reducible to computational processes. In chapter 7, “Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Mystical Experiences,” psychologist Harry T. Hunt, a prominent researcher of mysticism, introduces an alternative to that offered by neurobiology for understanding the mechanism of mystical experiences. He discusses a cognitive psychology of the continuum of synesthetic states involved in mystical experience, characterizing the more sensate forms of mystical states of consciousness as being intrinsically symbolic, offering support for understanding spirituality as a form of abstract emotional intelligence, akin to other specifically human symbolic forms, rather than as something more primitive or archaic.” While part 3 of the book, “The Cognitive,” seeks to highlight the enormous strides that the new cognitive science has made in recent decades, its

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chapters overlap with the theme of the next section, “The Scientific.” In chapter 8, “Explanatory Mechanisms of Altered States of Consciousness: An Overview of Several Approaches,” I examine several recent advanced attempts at formulating coherent explanatory mechanisms for alteration of consciousness, among them mystical phenomena. Psychological approaches discussed first include those of psychoanalysis (regression to infantile ego state hypothesis; object relations theory) and transpersonal psychology (cross-modal translations and synesthesias; Harry Hunt’s Imaginal Body Experience). “Descending,” next, to human homeostatic and neurophysiological level, the chapter examines investigations of physiological hyper- and hypo-arousals by Ernst Gellhorn and William F. Kiely, Roland Fischer, and others, along the ergotropic-trophotropic continuum. Finally, a recent cognitive-neuroscientific theory of alteration of consciousness is considered: Arne Dietrich’s Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis. These approaches, however, seem to claim explanatory powers exclusively for their respective methods and perspectives, excluding consideration of anything else that might be a contributing factor. With that, the chapter does illustrate a sense of the enormous potential that the sciences hold for our aspiration to understand the human mind and consciousness. Chapter 9, “Mathematical Modeling of Cognitive Mechanisms of Meaning and the Spiritually Sublime” by Leonid I. Perlovsky, a noted mathematician and cognitive scientist, investigates the dichotomy between cognition and language. According to Perlovsky, this dichotomy creates a special kind of mysticism that originates due to a discrepancy between the two domains. He proposes a mechanism of the mind based on what he calls the “knowledge instinct,” which “drives conceptual-emotional understanding of the world.” Further, Perlovsky describes a “dynamic logic”—of which he is one of the founding theorists—as “the mathematical model of the knowledge instinct.” Specifically, “whereas usual classical logic can be used to describe static states (e.g., ‘this is a chair’), dynamic logic describes processes ‘from vague to crisp,’ from vague and unconscious mental representations (images, memories, thoughts, decisions, plans) to crisp and conscious ones.” According to the author, the mind is only partially conscious and mostly irrational, whereas language can be rational and conscious. Finally, in chapter 10, “Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and the Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences,” the New York–based philosopher of mysticism Richard H. Jones tackles the following question: What bearing does the scientific study of meditators or people undergoing mystical experiences have on the truth of mystical knowledge-claims? Do scientific findings support or refute the claim that mystical experiences provide access to transcendent realities? The range of issues covered in the chapter includes whether mystical experiences are open to scientific study; problems with seeing philosophical conclusions in scientific findings; whether there are

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natural triggers of genuine mystical experiences; whether mystical knowledge-claims and scientific explanations are compatible; and whether the dispute between advocates of mystical claims of transcendent experiences and materialists can be resolved on scientific grounds. Jones’s key sobering takeaway from his incisive scrutiny of the chapter’s theme is that “the science of meditators and experiencers cannot answer the question of whether mystical experiences are purely natural phenomena or in fact involve a transcendent reality.” NOTES 1. For example, as Moshe Idel avers apropos a certain Jewish-rabbinical stance: “The study of the Torah is envisioned as a theurgical activity—that is, as a way of maintaining the world and of affecting the divinity.” Idel, “Zohar as Exegesis,” 89, emphasis added; see also 98. 2. Ibid., 95, emphasis added. 3. See Morris, “Exiled from Eden,” 124–25.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Idel, Moshe. “The Zohar as Exegesis.” In Mysticism and Sacred Scripture, edited by S. T. Katz, 87–100. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Morris, Paul. “Exiled from Eden: Jewish Interpretations of Genesis.” In A Walk in the Garden: Biblical, Iconographical and Literary Images of Eden, edited by Paul Morris and Deborah Sawyer, 117–66. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1992.

Acknowledgments

The book’s contributors are based in Canada, Israel, and the United States. I want to thank them, first of all, for their support of the aims of this project and for their patience while waiting for the book to take its final shape and, last but not least, find a suitable publisher. Apropos the latter, Jana HodgesKluck, senior acquisitions editor at Lexington Books, should be thanked for her discerning eye for worthy books! Her patience, promptness, and overall professionalism made this book possible. My family deserves thanks for their patience, too; I am very pleased to be able to make a tiny recompense by dedicating the book to my wife. I also want to thank Barb Wojhoski, who so very ably copyedited most of the chapters, with their enormously varied disciplinary jargons and the personal idiosyncrasies of the authors. Last but not least: thanks to the great many mystics, shamans, prophets, and other explorers of the final frontier of the human mind—throughout the millennia and around the globe—the frontier where alteration of consciousness meets intense spirituality, frequently quenching our thirst for knowledge, placating insatiable curiosity, and rewarding our highest aspirations.

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Introduction Unutterable Experiences of Consciousness Alteration Alex S. Kohav

APPROACHING THE QUESTION OF MYSTICISM The literature on mysticism, mystical phenomena, attempts at their classification, and theorizing apropos of mystical phenomena’s explanatory causes, nature, meaning, and import is enormous. And yet, confusions and contradictions persist on multiple levels, from basic definitions and classifications to methodological and experiential approaches, to generated insights and conclusions that are themselves frequently examples of misapprehension and incoherence. Part of the difficulty is in how the question of mysticism is approached, namely, whether it is viewed as a “problem,” an “aporia,” or perhaps as something even more mystifying than that—something that would necessitate a fundamentally different or radically divergent attitude. I have proposed to call this more germane status of things mystical mysterium. 1 Approaches will also understandably depend on, and be subject to, preconceived ideas and tailored definitions of key terms; the latter can significantly, and sometimes fatally, undermine any ostensibly objective investigation. 2 Yet another self-imposed and decisive handicap is the very methodology known as the “scientific method.” As good as any is the following gloss: “A ‘science’ is to be understood in the usual sense of a conceptual picture and accompanying mathematical formalism within which hypotheses can be expressed precisely and tested out empirically under clear rules of evidence.” 3 Rules of evidence for modern sciences are indeed quite clear, with the key requirement being that an experience or experiment must be reproducible by others. It would therefore seem that mystical phenomena, or a significant proportion of them, cannot possibly be considered for scientific investiga1

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tion, since “[w]e can see other people’s behavior, but not their experience.” 4 Regarding so-called evidence, “one further epistemological worry accompanies religious experience. [William] James claimed that, while mystical experiences proved authoritative grounds for belief in the person experiencing them, they cannot give grounds for a person to whom the experience is reported. In other words, my experience is evidence for me, but not for you.” 5 In short, then, there may seem to be no realistic possibility of scientific explanations for what are arguably some of the most consequential as well as value-laden experiences human beings can have. Sciences—faithfully following a strict methodological regimen elaborated to avoid the capriciousness and unpredictability of individual experiences and to favor instead a thoroughly tested amassing of data and marshaling of the data’s import toward a consensus of understanding—are satisfied that theirs is a foolproof approach to appropriately and accurately investigating, and thus correctly perceiving, the “objective reality.” Does it make sense, however, to mechanically insist on the reproducibility of something that typically can be only a one-time or a one-of-a-kind experience by an individual, an experience that remains closed to observation by others and for which investigators must rely largely on verbal reports? Since reproducibility is normally out of the question, should we abandon any hope of ever having serious, reliable investigations of things mystical? Here it is pertinent to consider the philosopher Henri Bergson’s paradoxical maxim: “The rule of science is the one posited by Bacon: obey in order to command. The philosopher neither obeys nor commands.” 6 Bergson explains this as follows: “The attitude of commonsense, as it results from the structure of the senses, of intelligence and of language, is nearer to the attitude of science than to that of philosophy.” 7 It is surely counterintuitive to be urged to recognize in the scientific approach the rule of the commonsensical. Yet, Bergson’s key insight—that “the philosopher did not arrive at unity, he started from it. . . . The process [of] philosophy . . . is not a synthesis but an analysis”—illuminates this. 8 And the mystic? “Insofar as both philosophy and mysticism claim to have something that cannot be put in words, they are never far from each other,” states Zhang Longxi, the author of The Tao and the Logos. 9 Still, the paths of true philosopher and a genuine mystic rarely fully converge, because the mystic usually endeavors to go further, whether voluntarily or not, not being bound by the academic imperative to “publish or perish.” The mystic is also exempted from the philosopher’s often desperate predicament of trying to force logic to speak the language of ineffability. The case of Wittgenstein is exemplary in this regard. Bertrand Russell references Wittgenstein’s celebrated claim in the Tractatus regarding the limits of what can be expressed in language: “There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.” 10 “What causes hesitation,” Russell

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notes, “is the fact that, after all, Mr. Wittgenstein manages to say a good deal about what cannot be said.” 11 Statements such as this one in Russell’s Introduction to the Tractatus, however, in turn caused Wittgenstein to grumble that, as he put it in a letter to Russell, “All the refinement of your English style was, obviously, lost in the translation [into German], and what remained was superficiality and misunderstanding.” 12 WHAT IS EXPERIENCE? Notions such as unity are the stuff of the mystic’s world. Thus, we are helped here by Bergson, a champion of intuition in philosophy. 13 His claim of unity as being the impetus and the drive behind philosophical inquiries seems to encroach on the mystic’s turf: we are summoned to a realization that things mystical likewise are likely to originate outside the commonsensical and away from the experimental/inductive sphere of science. Instead, what needs to be realized is that mystical phenomena ought to be approached, if one’s aim is comprehension, with a mind-set that is congruent with the realm of experience. What is experience? One is experiencing life, living; this, among other things, entails possessing—or being in—a “mode of getting into contact with reality.” 14 The contact with reality here presumes conscious contact, for while a chair might be pressing into the floor and thus “in contact with reality” too, its contact isn’t conscious. As a consequence, the chair lacks experience; the link between experience and consciousness becomes both apparent and on the face of it, expected: The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. The subjective aspect is experience. . . . If any problem qualifies as the problem of consciousness, it is this one. In this central sense of “consciousness,” an organism is conscious if there is something it is like to be that organism. . . . Sometimes terms such as “phenomenal consciousness” and “qualia” are also used here, but I find it more natural to speak of “conscious experience” or simply “experience.” Another useful way to avoid confusion . . . is to reserve the term “consciousness” for the phenomena of experience, using the less loaded term “awareness” for the more straightforward phenomena described earlier. . . . As things stand, those who talk about “consciousness” are frequently talking past each other. 15

Are we toying with circularity here, however, given that “consciousness” is just as enigmatic as “experience” (even if the latter seems to be less perplexing)? It does appear to be the case, nevertheless, that these two puzzling, complex conceptions might be helpful in shedding some light on each other’s

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mystification. For example, when reading Max Scheler’s warning about “a too narrow, restrictive concept of ‘experience’” below, one should be led to the equivalent realization that the concept of consciousness, too, can be either too restrictive or not, allowing a wider range consciousness changes, alterations, and transformations: There is nothing more disastrous for all of epistemology than to establish at the beginning of one’s methodological procedure a too narrow, restrictive concept of “experience,” to equate the whole experience with one particular kind of experience and with that mental attitude that is conducive [only] to it, and then to refuse to recognize as “primordially given” anything that cannot be reduced to this one kind of experience. 16

Is epistemology—the age-old branch of philosophy focused on knowledge, its sources, and human abilities to navigate its reliability, and so forth—to be seen as being in the business of “establishing” the concept of experience appropriate for derivation of knowledge? Indeed, the link between knowledge and experience goes back at least to Aristotle; it then went through elaborations by way of, among others, Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and Hume, as well as Kant, who “considerably redefines” it. 17 With Kant, the very possibility of experience is at issue: experience is not to be identified merely with sensory data but with a “synthesis,” a “product of the senses and understanding.” 18 As a result, “all synthesis, ‘even that which renders perception possible, is subject to the categories; and since experience is cognition by means of connected perceptions, the categories are the conditions of the possibility of experience.’” 19 We won’t be examining the question of categories here, and we will address neither the critique nor the approbation that Kant’s groundbreaking concept of experience has elicited. Rather, our interest is in noting the very changeability and unsettledness of what may constitute one’s experience, including its very possibility; these are dependent on and constrained by one’s understanding. Subsequent thinkers, including Charles Peirce, who was a founding figure in semiotics, and, closer to our times, Gilles Deleuze, France’s maverick philosopher, reinforce the Kantian connection between experience and one’s mental status. 20 Along with the question of possibility of experience, we now see, squarely within the emerging model of our cognizing, that the limits and range of consciousness as well as of knowledge are movable, changeable, expandable. Knowledge, as mystics and other firsthand explorers of limits of consciousness always insist, is pliant, stretchy, variable; it’s far from being a commodity that is predictable and assured by being stored in some secure, fixed, objectively existing warehouse. Any experience, mystical or not, if it is a learning occasion, entails epistemic transformation: “When a person has a new and different kind of experience, a kind of experience that teaches her something she could not have learned

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without having that kind of experience, she has an epistemic transformation.” 21 Anthony Steinbock, in keeping with Scheler’s thrust, endeavors to expand the range of the experiential beyond the perceptual and epistemic: “By experience, in general I mean the givenness of something . . . as ‘it’ is lived. . . . [I]t is arbitrary to restrict what we count as experience only to the way objects are presented perceptually and epistemically.” 22 In particular, “mystical experiences are not within anyone’s reach because they are not correlative to our efforts in the first place, as would be the case in the field of presentation; they are experienced as ‘gifts.’” 23 Such “gifts” aren’t unrelated, among other things, to Bergsonian intuitions. Yet, Steinbock is wrong to assert that the “gifts,” as such, are not correlative to our efforts. As the religious-mystical or shamanic initiatory traditions the world over and throughout history bear witness, individual efforts, when properly channeled via respective traditions, yield their respective mystical—or some other extra- (supra-, super-, or hyper-) sensory, preternatural, “paranormal”—results. 24 The expansion, or the possibility of broadening the range as well as depth of one’s experience, is the issue I turn to in the next three sections. DOES REALITY HAVE “THE CHARACTER OF OUR EXPERIENCE”? Does reality have “the character of our experience”? 25 Certain key philosophers disagreed with each other regarding this pivotal question, often for different reasons. As I think will become increasingly apparent in the discussion below, “our experience” is a highly variable affair as well as a varying conception. As we saw with Kant and Peirce, experience hinges on the person’s understanding (Kant), and even one’s very mind is “a sign resulting from inference” (Peirce). 26 Both understanding and inferences are subject to substantial variations, relativity, and, not infrequently, extreme polarizations and radical divergences, to say nothing of latent, obviously not-out-of-thequestion unsuitability and outright erroneousness. 27 This then leads to the question of “objective” reality; Galen Strawson, for example, draws attention to “what Kant calls ‘experience,’ by which he means what some now call ‘objective experience,’ i.e. experience that has, for the experiencer, the character of being experience of a world of objects existing independently of the experiencer.” 28 Yet, for Kant the matter doesn’t end there: he points to “the distinction between phenomena and noumena as one of the oldest and noblest achievements of ancient philosophy. In [Prolegomena] it is clear that he is referring to Plato’s distinction between the apparent world of sensible phenomena and the ‘real’ intelligible world of ideas.” 29 Kant

6

Introduction re-states the distinction; but his re-statement is very far from the classical distinction between the real world of ideas and the phenomenal world of sensibility. The most salient feature of noumena is that they are not objects of intuition but problems “unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility,” namely “whether there may not be objects” for a “quite different intuition and a quite different understanding from ours” ([Critique of Pure Reason], A 287/ B 344). 30

Kantian intuition refers to “sensible intuitions,” namely, those that enter into “synthetic a priori judgments.” 31 What is important and relevant for our focus here is that, while Kant has scorned and poured sarcasm on what he called the transcendent (as opposed to the transcendental of the synthetic a priori), at the same time he allows, as in the above quote, for the possibility of “quite different intuition and a quite different understanding from ours.” Kant was “the first to give a name to human reason’s remarkable power to overstep all sensible experience. He called it the transcendent use of reason and denounced it as the permanent source of our metaphysical illusions.” 32 According to Kant, if one oversteps the sensible experience leading to transcendence, the resultant intuition will differ from sensible intuitions; this amounts to encountering illusions. Étienne Gilson, for his part, refuses to accept such a quandary; in his “third law,” he reaffirms, seemingly without first properly disqualifying Kant’s position, that “metaphysics is the knowledge gathered by naturally transcendent reason in its search for the first principles, or first causes, of what is given in sensible experience.” 33 A different tack, to reach out beyond the “limitation of our sensibility” (as Kant worded it), is offered by Jean-Luc Marion: a phenomenon as normally conceived—in both Kant’s and Husserl’s phenomenology—is conditioned and reducible, in the former by “its horizon,” while in Husserl, “to an I.” 34 “Why wouldn’t there correspond,” asks Marion, “the possibility of a phenomenon where intuition would give more, indeed immeasurably more, than the intention would ever have aimed at or foreseen?” 35 What Marion has in mind here, it would seem, is that phenomena that are both unconditioned and unreduced—he calls them “saturated”—would entail a major broadening of one’s experience: “To let phenomena appear demands not imposing a horizon on them, whatever the horizon might be, since it would exclude some of them.” 36 Likewise, it means not reducing them to an “I.” Otherwise, we are in danger of encountering a truncated “phenomenon whose mode of Being is reduced by the reduction to what the primacy of consciousness imposes upon it.” 37

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INEFFABLE EXPERIENCES The point of the foregoing discussion was to arrive at this crucial juncture. To begin grasping mystical experiences requires a straightforward awareness of a simple fact: such experiences alter or entail alteration of the experiencer’s consciousness, to varying degrees and in varied, distinctive, often idiosyncratic ways. Among other things, such alterations may cause dramatic changes in one’s experiences of oneself, the world or reality, and one’s mental awareness and cognizing—I say may, because each type of mystical experience may involve or emphasize differing but often overlapping sets of changing parameters, factors, strictures, or transformational values. The latter can present a range of alterations, from (1) ego/I/self fluctuations (diminution or dissolving, or, on the contrary, enlargement, in some cases even enormous broadening or expansion); to (2) spreading out and concurrent alteration of “horizons” (invoked in the Marion quote above), that is, the world’s accessibility as reported and reflected by one’s sensory data collecting, resulting in sensory experiences becoming not merely extrasensory but supersensory, in the sense of being able to deliver heretofore unheard of “intuitions” (going beyond both the Kantian sensible intuitions and Husserl’s categorical intuitions, representing, in Kant’s words, “quite different intuition and a quite different understanding from ours”); (3) ability to focus becoming sharpened a hundredfold, with attention to some detail or specific factor increased to extraordinary levels; or (4) to the contrary, one’s powers of noticing things or aspects heretofore overlooked, unseen, or ignored are now felt and exercised; (5) uncanny premonition and foreknowledge powers, often present as part of these experiences; and so on. Putting this differently, if one of the implications of the position that “creature consciousness requires not merely the capacity to sense or perceive, but the current active use of those capacities”—Robert Van Gulick calls it “wakefulness and arousal”—then envision a hyperwakefulness and a super-arousal. 38 The latter are metaphors that have sometimes been invoked to give some idea of mystical experiences’ dramatically heightened, altered, and transformative import. More about these experiences later. What about the veracity of such experiences? Further, are they not to be seen, moreover, as mental aberrations, even mental pathologies rather than the more innocuous sounding “alterations of consciousness”? Finally, would they not at least be answerable to Kant’s charge that they would be, inevitably, mere illusions? To begin addressing these and other seemingly reasonable concerns, we might be helped by the following remarkable assertion, made apropos of one of Jacques Derrida’s searching exertions vis-à-vis Judaism: “The way of God must pass through the desert, where truth is not assured—there is always the

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risk of following a mirage.” 39 However, isn’t our own judgment, even under normal circumstances, suspect too? Husserl, who founded the branch of philosophy that derives its name from the phenomenal, reminds us that “judgments present themselves as alleged cognitions and . . . many which pass themselves off as yielding knowledge later prove to be illusory.” 40 We are now very far indeed from the reassurances of scientific expectations of reproducibility and verifiability. But there is more. There is, on the one hand, the overwhelming issue of solitude, the extreme solitude of a human psyche wandering the desert. “Solitude is a project.” 41 On the other hand, there is at the same time one’s necessarily inept struggle with this unanticipated, startling, disorienting ineffability, an altercation and discomfort with a disconcerting unspeakableness of one’s inner experience. 42 It is a struggle with one’s inability to communicate this most intimate of all experiences, verging on utmost discomfiture, yet, simultaneously, also awe and sublimity. Uriah Kriegel brings recognition of the validity, if not the necessity, of ineffable experiences into today’s philosophy of mind: “[I]t is plausible to hold that at least some types of phenomenology are ineffable, and that this renders impossible, perhaps unintelligible, inquiry into their ontological status. However, even types of phenomenology that are indescribable, and hence ineffable, are namable, and one could always use such names in the relevant inquiry.” 43 With regard to the question of mental aberrations or pathologies of mind, the following distinction should suffice for our purposes: “The capability to rebound is . . . an indication of health. Patients are those individuals who get stuck on the left or the right side of our continuum and are incapable to rebound or otherwise return to levels of arousal which correspond to the normal state of daily routine.” 44 Roland Fischer describes an entire “perception-hallucination continuum” of ergotropic, or hyperaroused mystical states involving hallucinations, while at the same time arriving at a sophisticated critical distinction between pathology and health in such experiences. Otherwise healthy individuals undergoing mystical and other kinds of alterations of consciousness, unlike mental patients, are capable of rebound back to baseline consciousness. 45 But while persons are in such states of consciousness, undergoing massively transformational, ecstatic, or some other kind of mystical or similarly consciousness-altering experience, their world may expand to multiple worlds; reality may exhibit its heretofore unimaginable features (such as, for example, pliable time or bendable space) and their understanding and level of insight may escalate to undreamed of degrees. A person’s memory of such experiences will never fade. 46

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ALTERATION OF EXPERIENCER’S CONSCIOUSNESS In this final expository section, let us train our lenses more specifically on the question of alteration of consciousness. We’ll get both a bit clinical and somewhat scientific here, aiming to lift, even if only slightly, the notorious veil presumably spread over things mystical since time immemorial. The clinical will pertain mostly to psychoanalysis and its recent postpost-Freudian developments. The scientific, in this context, refers essentially to cognitive neurosciences. We’ll revisit first the question of what consciousness is, or what it entails: “One common philosophical definition is ‘Consciousness is what it is like to be something,’ . . . to experience something.” 47 The fundamental discernment apropos of identity between experience and consciousness has already been noted. 48 Michael Gazzaniga urges a further key consideration, namely, a distinction between “levels” of consciousness and “layers” of consciousness: levels seem to be synonymous with “states” of consciousness, whereas layers refer to the brain’s layered architecture, different parts of which function in parallel. 49 For us, it is the levels, or the states, of consciousness that are most relevant. As Christof Koch explains, To be conscious of anything, the brain must be in a relatively high state of arousal (sometimes also referred to as vigilance). . . . The level of brain arousal, measured by electrical or metabolic brain activity, fluctuates in a circadian manner, and is influenced by lack of sleep, drugs and alcohol, physical exertion, and so on in a predictable manner. High arousal states are always associated with some conscious state—a percept, thought, or memory—that has a specific content. 50

Koch stipulates that “[d]ifferent levels or states of consciousness are associated with different kinds of conscious experiences.” 51 Furthermore, [t]he awake state in a normal functioning individual is quite different from the dreaming state . . . or from the state of deep sleep. In all three cases, the basic physiology of the brain is changed, affecting the space of possible conscious experiences. Physiology is also different in altered states of consciousness, for instance, after taking psychedelic drugs when events often have a stronger emotional connotation than in normal life. Yet another state of consciousness can occur during certain meditative practices, when interoceptive perception and insight may be enhanced compared to the normal waking state. 52

But it is the following acknowledgment that is most important, as well as highly pertinent for this essay’s principal focus: “In some obvious but difficult to rigorously define manner, the richness of conscious experience increases as an individual transitions from deep sleep to drowsiness to full wakefulness.” 53 While Koch ends this passage with “full wakefulness,” he

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obviously intends by that designation the baseline “normal waking state” (as he calls it in the preceding quotation). Beyond the “full wakefulness” of the “normal waking state,” however, there are additional stages of wakefulness, including those that entail such extraordinary arousals as to be to the “normal waking state” as the latter is to the state of deep sleep. The richness of conscious experience in such altered states of consciousness is beyond almost anything we experience while in our habitual conscious states; it is this dramatic and unusual richness that often necessitates descriptions such as “ineffable,” “unspeakable,” or “inexpressible.” 54 That we are dealing here with empirically experienced phenomena is beyond doubt; these aren’t invented fantasies of Hollywood-style, nervepinching fables (that nonetheless leave us cold). These are, rather, our enduring human capabilities known since time immemorial—capabilities entailing enormous possibilities for the expansion of our range of cognition and thinking, feeling and empathy, willpower and fearlessness—in short, broadening the scope and breadth of experience. I’d like to close this brief exploration of the problematics of experience with a glance at a recent psychoanalytic window on the huge—“perhaps infinite”—“unstructured or unformulated unconscious.” 55 The unconscious is, as should by now be understood even by lay people, crucial as the key source and stimulus of our psychic life; for us here it also occupies a prime position in our interest as the domain not deferential to our ordinary senses. All the expansion that is possible—conceivable or achievable—either for our consciousness or for our cognitive and other powers and capabilities, would have to be at the expense of the vast unconscious resources. As Howard Levine states, I use the term, Experience, with a capital E, to indicate raw, existential Experience in contrast to the more ordinary “experience” with a small e, which refers to that which is potentially knowable and amenable to self-perception and selfreflection. While aspects of “small-e experience” are sometimes unconscious, they are organized psychic elements that are potentially knowable, articulable, and contained within the psyche. In contrast, Experience with a capital E . . . can never in its unmodified form be known or contained within the mind as thought or perception and is most usefully thought of as pre-psychic or protopsychic. I will further assume, following Bion, that “Experience” is inherently traumatic unless and until it can be transformed into something containable within the mind—that is, into “experience.” 56

This passage—whether its author intended as much or not, and even if using a different set of disciplinary jargon—captures most helpfully as well as succinctly the distinctive concerns, inimitable struggles, and exceptional challenges of the extraordinary and remarkable process, one that is among

Introduction

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the highest of human attainments, that we identify by the name of mystical experience. NOTES 1. See Kohav, “Introductory Essay: The Problem, Aporia, and Mysterium of Mysticism.” 2. A recent example could be that offered by Jerome Gellman in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: “In the narrow sense, more common among the philosophers, ‘mystical experience’ refers to a sub-class of mystical experience in the wide sense. Specifically, it refers to a (purportedly) super sense-perceptual or sub sense-perceptual unitive experience granting acquaintance of realities or states of affairs that are of a kind not accessible by way of senseperception, somatosensory modalities, or standard introspection.” Gellman, “Mysticism,” 6, emphasis added. Gellman’s essay proceeds to exclusively adopt this “narrow sense” of mystical experience, even though such a choice has long been discredited as arbitrary, as well as significantly obscuring the question of mysticism, by projecting a particular characteristic of some types of mystical experiences onto mysticism as a generic term. See, e.g., Merkur, Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, and chapter 8 in this volume. 3. Cooper, Foundations of Logico-Linguistics, 1. 4. Laing, Politics of Experience, 17. 5. Webb, “Religious Experience,” 12. Webb specifies (as does Gellman’s essay) that “religious experience is . . . to be distinguished from mystical experience. Although there is obviously a close connection between the two, and mystical experiences are religious experiences, not all religious experiences qualify as mystical” (2). 6. Bergson, “Philosophical Intuition,” 104. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., 103. 9. Zhang, Tao and the Logos, 45. 10. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.522, 107. 11. Russell, Introduction to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Wittgenstein, 22. 12. Wittgenstein, quoted in Monk, Wittgenstein, 183, emphasis added. 13. Intuition is a multidenotational, multifarious, and multifaceted complex notion that, like “instinct,” “intelligence,” or “knowledge,” has taken sometimes very different meanings in philosophies of thinkers who employ it. For example, Charles Peirce’s usage of it pertains to perception, whereas Bergson is identifying what he calls philosophical intuition. The latter correlates with “immediate knowledge. Often used as a synonym for intuitive knowledge; knowledge unmediated by any factors (for example, signs).” Colapietro, Glossary of Semiotics, 117. 14. Siebert, “Pragmatic Methodology in the Philosophy of Religion,” 20. 15. Chalmers, “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness,” 10–11, original emphasis. Galen Strawson puts it as follows: “Suppose we replace ‘consciousness’ by ‘conscious experience,’ and then shorten ‘conscious experience’ to ‘experience’—taking it to be true by definition, as before, that all experience is conscious experience.” Strawson, Subject of Experience, 143. 16. Scheler, quoted in Steinbock, Phenomenology of Mysticism, 6. 17. See the entry “Experience,” in Caygill, Kant Dictionary, 186. 18. Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, §20, quoted in Caygill, Kant Dictionary, 186. 19. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., 1787, B 161, quoted in Caygill, Kant Dictionary, 187, emphasis added. 20. Peirce states, “[T]he content of consciousness, the entire phenomenal manifestation of mind, is a sign resulting from inference.” From The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931–58), 5.313–314, cited in Jiang, “Peirce’s Semeiotic Naturalism,” 252, emphasis added. Deleuze, in turn, speaks of signals and signs, this time apropos of the phenom-

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Introduction

ena: “There are locks everywhere. Every phenomenon flashes in a signal-sign system.” Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, 222. 21. Paul, Transformative Experience, 10, original emphasis. 22. Steinbock, Phenomenology of Mysticism, 25. 23. Ibid., 26, original emphasis. 24. For instance, “the realization of momentariness” is “only available to practitioners after long meditative training.” On the other hand, “Buddhist philosophers have also come up with arguments to convince those without access to such direct experience. . . . These arguments . . . do not generate an insight into [the theory of momentariness] at the experiential level.” Westerhoff, Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, 79. 25. Magee, Ultimate Questions, 65. 26. See note 23. 27. Compare the view of Anil Gupta, who speaks of “the principle of induction” as “murky and dubious.” Gupta, Conscious Experience, xii. In accordance with Peircean semiotics, “in our inquiries, the three forms of inference—induction, deduction, and abduction—work together.” Colapietro, Glossary of Semiotics, 120. Thus, Gupta could have spoken of the “principle of inference” instead. 28. Strawson, Subject of Experience, 180. Compare the view of Patrick de Gramont: “If . . . you assume that reality is something we construct, then the standard of an external world cannot be used to determine its meaningfulness. Reality would be something that results from the interaction of what we bring, and the world we bring it to.” De Gramont, Language and the Distortion of Meaning, 1. 29. Caygill, Kant Dictionary, 301–2. 30. Ibid., 302, emphasis added. 31. Ibid., 264. 32. Gilson, Unity of Philosophical Experience, 308. 33. Ibid. 34. Marion, Being Given, 189. 35. Ibid., 197, original emphasis. 36. Ibid., 320. 37. Marion, Reduction and Givenness, 54. 38. Van Gulick, “Consciousness and Cognition,” 21. 39. Quoted in Shakespeare, “Thinking about Fire,” 246. 40. Husserl, Experience and Judgment, 17. 41. Laing and Cooper, Reason and Violence, 122. 42. I borrow here Bataille’s term for mystical experience: “By ‘inner experience’ I understand what one usually designates under the name ‘mystical experience,’ the experience of living states of ecstasy, of rapture, at least of meditated emotion.” Bataille, Inner Experience, 215n1. 43. Kriegel, Varieties of Consciousness, 246n10. 44. Fischer, “Transformations of Consciousness,” 6. 45. Dietrich similarly confirms that, “unlike most cases of mental illness and brain damage, altered states of consciousness can be characterized as transient in nature.” Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy of Altered States of Consciousness,” 238. 46. Another, rather startling but telling, distinction between (some) pathological states of consciousness and the otherwise healthy altered states of consciousness is the “desymbolized thinking/experience” of the former—a “breakdown in metaphorical thinking [that] is one form of what we call ‘concrete.’” Frosch, introduction to Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain, ed. Frosch, xix. Frosch adds that “abstract or conceptual thought is so much a part of our daily lives that, more often than not, we become acutely aware of it in its absence” (ibid.). In contrast, mystical alteration of consciousness, if anything, typically leads to greatly enhanced cognitive abilities, albeit entailing expansion beyond the conceptual. Compare Kohav, “Megaphoric Theater of Eden’s Garden of Semiosis.” 47. Koch, “Neurobiology of Consciousness,” 1137. 48. Additionally, consider Louis Sass et al.’s pithy observation of the Kantian and Husserlian sense of experience, which “implies recognizing consciousness as a constituting medium of

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experience rather than conceiving it as a process somehow existing on the same plane with other natural objects.” Sass, Pienkos, and Fuchs, “Other Worlds,” 6, original emphasis. 49. Gazzaniga, Consciousness Instinct, 112–13. 50. Koch, “Neurobiology of Consciousness,” 1139, original emphasis. 51. Ibid., emphasis added. 52. Ibid., original emphasis. 53. Ibid., original emphasis. 54. The pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus observed that “[t]he waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own.” Plutarch, On Superstition 166C, Fr. 15 (= Fr. 89 in Diels-Kranz), in Wheelwright, Heraclitus, 13. Yet Heraclitus also reportedly said that “[human beings] should not act and speak as though asleep.” Quoted in Jaspers, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Lao-Tzu, Nagarjuna, 16. This is precisely the contention of G. I. Gurdjieff’s well-known system of esotericism, namely, that “man is a machine” who needs to wake up; see, e.g., Ouspensky, Fourth Way. 55. Levine, “Colorless Canvas,” 43. 56. Ibid., n.3. The reference within the quote is to W. R. Bion, Attention and Interpretation (London: Tavistock, 1970).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bataille, Georges. Inner Experience. Translated by Stuart Kendall. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2014. Bergson, Henri. “Philosophical Intuition.” In The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, 87–106. 1946. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007. Caygill, Howard. A Kant Dictionary. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1995. Chalmers, David. “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” In Explaining Consciousness: The “Hard Problem,” edited by Jonathan Shear. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999. Originally published in Journal of Consciousness Studies 2, no. 3 (1995): 200–19. Colapietro, Vincent M. Glossary of Semiotics. New York: Paragon House, 1993. Cooper, William S. Foundations of Logico-Linguistics: A Unified Theory of Information, Language, and Logic. Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1978. De Gramont, Patrick. Language and the Distortion of Meaning. New York: New York University Press, 1990. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Dietrich, Arne. “Functional Neuroanatomy of Altered States of Consciousness: The Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis.” Consciousness and Cognition 12, no. 2 (2003): 231–56. Fischer, Roland. “Transformations of Consciousness: A Cartography, II; The Perception-Meditation Continuum.” Confinia Psychiatrica 19, no. 1 (1976): 1–23. Frosch, Allan. Introduction to Absolute Truth and Unbearable Psychic Pain: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Concrete Experience, edited by Allan Frosch, xix–xxxi. London: Karnac Books, 2012. Gazzaniga, Michael S. The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. Gellman, Jerome. “Mysticism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Summer 2019 ed. (first published 2004), 1–58. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2019/entries/mysticism/. Gilson, Étienne. The Unity of Philosophical Experience. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937. Gupta, Anil. Conscious Experience: A Logical Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Husserl, Edmund. Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of Logic. Revised and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe. Translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973.

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Jaspers, Karl. Anaximander, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plotinus, Lao-Tzu, Nagarjuna. Edited by Hannah Arendt. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1966. Jiang, Tianji. “Peirce’s Semeiotic Naturalism.” In Living Doubt: Essays Concerning the Epistemology of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Guy Debrock and Menno Hulswit, 249–55. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 1994. Koch, Christof. “The Neurobiology of Consciousness.” In The Cognitive Neurosciences, edited by Michael S. Gazzaniga, 1137–49. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. Kohav, Alex S. “Introductory Essay: The Problem, Aporia, and Mysterium of Mysticism.” In Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Alex S. Kohav, 1–25. St. Petersburg, FL: Three Pines Press, 2019. ———. “Megaphoric Theater of Eden’s Garden of Semiosis: The Conundrum of Ruptured Doxa and Divine Epistêmê.” In A Paradise of Paradoxes: Resolute Perplexities of Israel’s Inscrutable Edenic Trees and Ineffable God, edited by Alex S. Kohav and Ori Z. Soltes (in preparation). Kriegel, Uriah. The Varieties of Consciousness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. Laing, R. D. The Politics of Experience. New York: Pantheon Books, 1967. Laing, R. D., and D. G. Cooper. Reason and Violence: A Decade of Sartre’s Philosophy, 1950–1960. 1964. New York: Pantheon Books, 1971. Levine, Howard B. “The Colorless Canvas: Representation, Therapeutic Action, and the Creation of Mind.” In Unrepresented States and the Construction of Meaning: Clinical and Theoretical Contributions, edited by Howard B. Levine, Gail S. Reed, and Dominique Scarfone, 42–71. London: Karnac Books, 2013. Magee, Bryan. Ultimate Questions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016. Marion, Jean-Luc. Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Translated by Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. ———. Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998. Merkur, Dan. Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Monk, Ray. Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius. New York: Penguin Books, 1990. Ouspensky, P. D. The Fourth Way. New York: Vintage Books/Random House, 1957. Paul, L. A. Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Russell, Bertrand. Introduction to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, by Ludwig Wittgenstein, 7–23. 1922. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999. Sass, Louis, Elizabeth Pienkos, and Thomas Fuchs. “Other Worlds: Introduction to the Special Issue on the EAWE: Examination of Anomalous World Experience.” Psychopathology 50, no. 1 (2017): 5–9. Shakespeare, Steven. “Thinking about Fire: Derrida and Judaism.” Literature and Theology 12, no. 3 (1998): 242–55. Siebert, Christoph. “Pragmatic Methodology in the Philosophy of Religion: Perspectives of Classical American Pragmatism.” In The Varieties of Transcendence: Pragmatism and the Theory of Religion, edited by Hermann Deuser, Hans Joas, Mathias Jung, and Magnus Schlette, 15–31. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Steinbock, Anthony J. Phenomenology of Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Strawson, Galen. The Subject of Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Van Gulick, Robert. “Consciousness and Cognition.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, edited by Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels, and Stephen P. Stich, 19–40. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Webb, Mark. “Religious Experience.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Winter 2017 ed. (first published in 2011), 1–21. https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/religious-experience/. Westerhoff, Jan. The Golden Age of Indian Buddhist Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Wheelwright, Philip. Heraclitus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959.

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Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Translated by C. K. Ogden. 1922. Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999. Zhang Longxi. The Tao and the Logos: Literary Hermeneutics, East and West. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992.

Part I

The Exposure

Chapter One

Manifestations of Shamanic Spirituality Mongolia 1999, 2002 Eva Jane Neumann Fridman

BAYAR On August 8, 1999, I was sitting with Bayar and a small group of people in her house in one of the outer districts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. 1 The house was located on a dusty street bounded by a stockade fence, composed of upright staves, behind which flowed a sea of wooden houses topped with metal roofs. From the enclosed yards, sticking up into the bright blue sky, one could see the stovepipes from the gers (a ger is a round Mongolian tent, made of a wooden latticework of narrow staves overlaid with felt and a white canvas cover; called a yurt in Central Asia and Russia). Almost impossible to find, Bayar’s place resembled many other dwelling areas in Ulaanbaatar with an enclosed yard that encompassed a house and a ger next to it. Bayar didn’t want to use the ger for this occasion, probably because it was too hot or too small for the anticipated gathering of people. Outside Ulaanbaatar, however, I saw shamanizing done only in the ger—a location much closer to the spiritual world. Such are the compromises made by urban shamans, not all of whom actually had the extra ger sitting in their yard anyway. The ritual of shamanizing and calling upon the spirits begins with a libation made to the spirits of the hearth, the center of the family, and hence symbolic of the continuation of life, together with the positive intentions and aid of kinship-related spiritual forces. Bayar and her daughter made offerings of milk (white food) on the cooking surface of her stove, a large white stone stove fed by wood, as can be found in many houses in Siberia or Mongolia. 19

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They poured the milk directly onto the hot plate, after first offering prayers to the spirits of the hearth. While her daughter was preparing herself to shamanize—being helped into her heavy shaman robe and headdress by three assistants—Bayar gave a libation of milk with a spoon to her ongons, strips of fabric hanging from a band, on the wall. She told me that she has two altars (groups of ongons)—the higher and smaller one represents her grandfather, and the larger one hanging lower represents her mother and herself. A further explanation of ongons may clarify this concept. Defining an ongon is difficult because it refers to a spirit as well as to objects sacralized by the shaman that may be representations of the spirit in some tangible form or else a dwelling place for the spirit in the visible (Sunny) world. There is absolutely no doubt about the meaning of the ongon when it is seen or spoken of in the context of the shaman’s world. Otgony Purev writes: Ongon or spirit is most important to a shaman, who communicates with it during shamanist rituals. In this way, the shaman becomes the attendant, guide, and messenger of the Ongons of Darkness for the people of Sunny World. The communication between shaman and Ongon takes place when one or more Ongons enter the mind of the shaman when he or she is in a trance and through his/her voice give all manner of advice to the people who are present at the ritual. 2

Bayar said that we were in the protection of the spirit of her mother, the udgan (female shaman), who had passed away and whose grave we visited a month later with Bayar’s half sister, Bodka, in Hövsgöl. We were also under the protection of her maternal grandfather, who had been known as a famous zaarin (male shaman). By offering a white milk libation to these ongons, she was giving us protection. Bayar is the tenth shaman of her lineage, and her daughter is the eleventh. Her two older brothers are zaarin. There was no interruption of the line, even during Communist times, she said. She has been shamanizing for eleven years but only began openly in 1991, eight years before our meeting. When her mother, the udgan, died she left to her all her shaman things: drum, mirror, small wooden horse statue, and other items. The young male helpers (always one or two men who assist the shaman when in a trance, warming her boots and drum initially, then hovering close to her as she begins to shamanize) were not members of her family, but one of them was from her neighborhood in Hövsgöl. It became clear that although Bayar and several other shamans we visited in Ulaanbaatar had settled themselves in the city, ties and connections to Hövsgöl remained very strong; indeed, the shamans got their spiritual strength from that direct connection to those spirits of locale, as well as to ancestral shamans whom they honored and communicated with on their spiritual journeys while shamanizing.

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With respect to the spirits on whom the shaman would be calling while in a trance, it is important to understand the appearance and meaning of the shaman’s outfit, necessary to protect the shaman from the powerful forces of the spirits. Most impressive was the fully garbed shaman herself, Bayar’s daughter, robed in her ceremonial headdress and ritualized garment. On the back of her robe was a large leather piece to which Honhinnuurs (shaman bells) were attached. According to Purev, a well-known authority on Mongolian shamanism specializing in shamanism as practiced in Hövsgöl, home of the Darhad people, the shaman bells are one of the most important aspects of the shaman costume, demonstrating that clothing acts as armor for the protection of the shaman when undergoing trance. He notes that “they consist of three types, the plate (Yaltas), shooting bell or shooter (Harval), and bell (Honhinuur). The three types act as armor, weapon and musical instrument respectively. They are arranged on a shaman gown in three types: the tether (Zel), personal (Omch) and auxiliary (Dagaldah or Busad) bells.” 3 Bayar was a white Huular shaman, and although, as Purev has noted, it is more common for Darhad and Huular shamans to have three tethers from which the bells hang, both Bayar and Nadmid (another well-known shaman whom we met in Hövsgöl a few weeks later, who is also of white Huular origin), had only two tether rows on their garment. A shaman’s clothing is spiritual armor for the shaman: the metal piece shaped like a shooter is a weapon for defeating rival shamans—and on occasion, as I learned with respect to these two udgans, such issues of rivalry and warfare between two shamans have to be taken seriously. Moreover, the purpose of this arrangement of closely hanging metal bells is to attract ongons, who can hear the shaman when he leaps or runs around the ger or jumps into the sky and all the metal objects clang together. Among the many colored strips of fabric hanging from the back of the garment, one was noticeable for its depiction in embroidery of the five kinds of domestic livestock: horse, camel, cattle, sheep, and goat. Purev has observed that the number of ties and different images on the back tail show the tribal origins of the owner of the garment. Bayar had her garment made in 1991, when she began shamanizing again, more openly, I would assume. Another udgan explained to Purev that “the animals were the property and game spoils of the Ongon, and that an Ongon might sometimes appear to people of the Sunny World as one of those animals.” 4 This connection between the shaman and the domesticated animals was already apparent in Early Bronze Age rock petroglyphs seen in the Altai Mountains; an ancient protective bond exists: the shaman calls forth the animals, placates the Master of the animals, and will make a sacrifice of a domestic animal (horse or usually sheep) so that the human beings of his kinship group can flourish instead. The placement of these images on the back of the shaman’s garment

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hence reaffirms the ancient tie between the well-being of domestic animals, the human community, and the spiritual world. After both Bayar’s daughter and Bayar had shamanized for about an hour each, drumming and chanting, Bayar began healing various people who came to her with their requests. She told me not to forget her: to come and see her again. I did do so two days later. I visited her with a small group of scholars, which was an opportunity for each of us to consult with Bayar and receive not only her blessings but also information about ourselves that she would be able to access through her spirits. She told us that she is able to go up to the sky and down to the Underworld. In a shamanic trance (altered state of consciousness), she goes up to the sky and calls her ongons by name. Uncalled spirits may also come when she is climbing to the Upper World. Bayar said to me, affectionately, that she hoped that I would come to see her again, perhaps the following year. Although she remained in her ordinary del and head scarf, she put on a blue hadak—a scarf often given as a gift to shamans, its sacredness embodied in the color blue, with its evocation of the Eternal Blue Sky or Father Heaven. She prayed to her spirits, holding an ongon consisting of many colored bands. She offered her spirits Arkhi (an alcoholic drink distilled from milk, weaker and less concentrated than Russian vodka), along with candy and watermelon. She took out her mouth harp, shaman whip, and mirror and began to go into a shamanic trance, using the mouth harp rather than her drum to achieve this. Her eyes were shut, and she cried out, “Icra, icra.” Her helper lit a cigarette for her and gave it to her. She cried, “Icra, icray, icray,” meaning, “Give cigarette.” (It is important to understand that, although she smoked the cigarette, it was one or more of her spirits who was requesting this item, and the spirit was speaking through her while she was in a trance. She had called upon these spirits to assist her; however, they had demands of their own.) Her two helpers were kneeling behind her while she was in a trance, in order to support her. She continued to ask for more cigarettes and Arkhi, chanting “icray” and asking for the watermelon. Her pattern, as with all the shamans I visited, was to go into a trance, first offering some alcoholic drink and small white foods to her spirits. In the trance, achieved through drumming or playing the mouth harp (in this case, the mouth harp), the shaman would undertake a journey during which she would meet with and get information from her spirits. Then, after somewhat emerging from the trance state, the shaman would be able to give specific information to the person sitting before her about his or her future plans or situation. Not all shamans asked for questions from their audience before they went into a trance, but some did. In this instance, I don’t remember Bayar asking for any questions or problems to solve in advance of going into a trance.

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When it was my turn to sit in front of Bayar and have her tell me my future, I had not asked her any specific questions, but she told me nevertheless that I would go to the place I most desired to visit—Hövsgöl—and that I would write a book, at least one. At that time, having just started my contacts in Mongolia, I had not anticipated exactly what fieldwork I would be able to do. Going to Hövsgöl seemed like a dream, reaching too far, beyond what I could reasonably expect to encounter or accomplish. But upon Bayar making this pronouncement, my Mongolian colleague and friend Tsetsen immediately started making lists of shamans to be seen and how we would effect this plan. On September 11 we would fly together to Moron, the main town in Hövsgöl province. Bayar, sitting cross-legged on her floor, below the ongons of her maternal grandfather, her mother, and herself, under all these protections, correctly and kindly foresaw and predicted what would happen for me. Indeed, Bayar’s information from her spirits set me on course for the remainder of my years of contacts in Mongolia. THE SACRED JOURNEY We were airborne on a bright September day. Tsetge, a healer and one of our group, was sitting across the aisle, absorbed in reading something. We were in a small MIAT (Mongolian Airlines) aircraft; our luggage had been stuffed into the tail end of the plane. We were flying from Ulaanbaatar to Moron in Hövsgöl province, a flight of about an hour. The seats were small; nobody inquired about seat belts. I chatted with my colleague, oblivious to whatever aura was penetrating the airplane. In the meantime, I began to realize, glancing over at Tsetge, that she was reading Buddhist sutras to herself, very focused, for the entire passage of the trip. Many days later the meaning of her action was made clear to me, that this trip had a shadow of danger on it, that it was perilous and not as easy as it seemed. When we arrived in Moron at the tiny airport building, which seemed like the end of the earth to me, a whole other-worldly location, we were surrounded, incredibly, by a group of big, loud, noisy Texans, all set to go fishing at Lake Hövsgöl. I had no idea that this remote, extremely distant location was even known to anyone other than Mongolians and the occasional scholar interested in shamanism. That these overgrown Americans were traipsing around in what I saw as unique, practically sacred territory was an unpleasant surprise, as if a shaman in a trance, moving around in the Underworld, suddenly discovered ordinary people having a picnic in those dark quarters. As for us, we immediately hunted for a jeep, preferably Russian, and a driver familiar with the almost trackless terrain, to drive us into the flatter steppe areas and then to Tsaagan Nuur (White Lake) in the Darhad valley, a

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small town known to harbor many important shamans where we would settle in for a time. Tsaagan Nuur is located in the northern part of Hövsgöl province, to the west of the sparkling waters of Hövsgöl Lake surrounded by grazing yaks. The town can be reached by jeep over trackless roads in the steppe, where in four hours of travel not one other vehicle, person, or inhabited dwelling was encountered. Eventually a herd of grazing animals indicated that somewhere there was a ger with a family. The other point of entry into the Darhad valley, more directly from the south and two hours distant from Tsaagan Nuur, was marked by the thirteen obos of the spirits of the thirteen mountains surrounding and protecting the area. Twelve smaller obos, each representing a year in the twelve-year cycle of the Mongolian calendar, were placed six on each side of the road. At the edge of the road was obo number 13, huge, forbidding, looming over all comers. We had been instructed by one of the shamans we visited to make an offering to this obo and to our own birth-year obo on our way home. She had given us a special artish (herbal preparation) consisting of nine components: milk of a red cow, milk of a white horse, milk of a white goat, and six kinds of herbs, with which to make an offering for our protection. Tsaagan Nuur, the lake, rich in its stock of tasty white fish, and the town, are nestled in a land of wild taiga and rocky mountains, snowcapped all summer, close on the border to Tuva in Russia. Tsetsen and I went to find a guide with sufficient Mongolian horses who could lead us to Suen, a ninetyfour-year-old Tsaatan reindeer herder, a shaman, who lived in the taiga beyond ranges of mountains, moving her tent and one-hundred-strong reindeer herd from lichen grazing area to lichen grazing area, often twice monthly. Our chosen guide was a relative of Suen’s, her son-in-law, married to her youngest daughter. Although she was older than he, they still had very young children tumbling about in their house, the littlest of whom was carried around under his armpits by the next oldest, a girl of about four years. It seemed almost magical that we had come upon exactly the right person who had the knowledge to lead us to Suen’s present encampment. He rounded up five horses, one each for Tsetsen and me, for himself and his helper, a young lad from the neighborhood, and one for supplies for Suen (barley and other foodstuffs). We rode from Tsaagan Nuur west sixty kilometers over rocky mountain ranges, going up and down three mountains and slogging through soggy permafrost. I could sense each footstep my horse made as he stepped into the cloying footing and then, with a sucking noise, pulled his foot out. Unfortunately, like shamans going on their initial journey into the Underworld in order to gain understanding and knowledge, whereby they also experience meetings with illnesses and diseases, I felt each footstep taken by my horse with his right front foot in my right hip. We both struggled in this environment of mud and unstable, uneven footing. I was afraid to dismount for fear

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that I would never get up again. It was September, and it had started to snow, leaving several inches on the ground. On the way, we camped in an extremely small pup tent erected on a barren hilltop; snow had collected on the roof by morning. The taiga was sparse and scraggly, mostly stunted pines, windblown and damaged by the harsh winters. Alpine vegetation and lichen flourished on the pathway. Down a perilously steep incline, foot by painful foot, we arrived at Suen’s encampment, consisting of a group of three tents, two of which belonged to her family, at the edge of a sparkling riverbed. When we arrived, the reindeer were grazing elsewhere; they returned later in the day, headed by Suen’s granddaughter riding on the saddled lead reindeer. They were then moved into their enclosure, where they rested and were milked. SUENN Suen belongs to one of the ten Tsaatan (also called Dhukha) clans, 260 people in total, who live in the taiga near Tsaagan Nuur. A larger group of Tsaatan people lives in Tuva, but at the time I was there, in 1999, all contact between them and their Mongolian kin had been lost since the Russian Revolution, although the border was only eighty kilometers distant. The ten clans in the Tsaagan Nuur area were divided into fifteen families on the right side of the taiga and fourteen families on the left side; marriage takes place between the clans. The Tsaatan language is not Mongolian but a Turkic language, somewhat like Uiygur; there is no written language. The people have developed a lifeway that is a very specialized adaptation to a marginal environment, based on a nomadic cycle of frequent biweekly or monthly changes of locale to provide the reindeer herds with sufficient foraging materials. This adaptation is reflected in the type of dwelling, a tent put together with poles, canvas, and reindeer-skin coverings, easy to deconstruct. There is a paucity of furniture in the tent, with skins and rolled-up bags used for floor coverings and beds. In Suen’s tent, a stove and a wooden chest (for storing shaman clothes) were the only items of furniture. Above the chest was a curtain behind which she had a row of ongon (dwellings for her spirits) bands hanging. Suen comes from a strong shaman inheritance. She is the seventh generation of zaarins and udgans in her family. When she was young, she was sick with epilepsy for seven years, a typical shaman illness. Her sickness disappeared when she began shamanizing at age twenty-five. Her aunt was an udgan and her teacher. Her mother, whose father was a zaarin, had prepared her clothes. Her robe was made of reindeer skin, fur side inside, and covered with metal bells, snakes, and embroidered cloth bands, signifying parts of the body, the spine and its muscles, leg muscles and ribs. Eagle feathers were on the shoulders, and metal protective plaques, as well as protective metal ar-

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rows and knife blades on the robe. Her mother had also made her drum, which was two and a half feet in diameter, decorated with ribbons and covered with the skin of wild white antelope. She said that during the times of repression, shamans’ clothes and drums were burned and a few shamans were repressed, but she put her clothes and drum in a safe place and saved them. She also stated that, since they were living in the taiga so far removed from state power, there was not as much repression there as elsewhere. Hidden in the taiga and isolated from state power, Suen’s shamanic practice is unaltered from pre-Soviet times. The experience of being in the presence of Suen shamanizing in the dark of the night was mesmerizing. The whole experience of meeting Bayar, of journeying to this other world of taiga and reindeer, the complete silence of the environment, were all brought to this moment. It was the journey to this mystical encounter, this spiritual realm, that enhanced and enclosed the shamanic journey that Suen undertook that night. In preparation for shamanizing, her boots made of white antelope skin were warmed by the fire in her stove, as was her drum made alive by the heat. She shamanized for three hours, from 9:00 p.m. to midnight, drumming herself into an altered state of consciousness, singing and chanting, going on a shamanic journey. Once she fell down in a trance. At times she varied the beat of her drum, slowing down when she met spirits in the other world. She has five or six spirits who help her. They are an animal or a local river or mountain. Her ancestral spirits have turned into a bear, a snake, or a bird and appear to her in these forms. She meets her spirits, one by one “in the middle,” meaning that they meet somewhere between her world and their Upper World. Her spirits give her information, but only in her tent at night when she shamanizes. She does not do treatments or change people’s lives. Prior to shamanizing, people ask her their questions, and while shamanizing she receives the answers, information provided by her spirits. She will also warn people to avoid car crashes, bad things, or other negative influences. After shamanizing she gives artish smoke to her spirits to thank them for their help. However, she told us that for many years, she essentially has been shamanizing for herself at night when the moon is in the right phase. She shamanizes and meets her spirits and connects to the Upper World. After Suen finished shamanizing, as we were eating the cookies offered to her spirits, the two dogs tied up outside started to bark. The men, guns in hand, rushed out into the wilderness. Limited by the weak beams of their old Russian flashlights, they shot into the night. “A wolf,” they said, using my American flashlight in sweeping arcs of light. Cold stars twinkled overhead. The wolf was gone.

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SHAMANISM AND MYSTICISM The experience of mysticism is difficult, if not impossible, to put into words. For shamans, it involves all the details of protective clothing, specially prepared garments and paraphernalia, rituals age-old in tradition, shamanic heritage grounded in generations of ancestors. And it is also the environment, the surrounding nature, the relationship to the landscape with all its sacred connotations, and the embeddedness of the shaman in his or her clan, society, or social group. The shaman, acting alone, is yet interdependent with all these other connections. But it is the journey that the shaman undertakes, while in a trance, in an altered state of consciousness, to meet his or her spirits, that is the essence of the shaman’s connection to the spiritual world. This mystical kernel at the center, which all the preparations lead up to, is the creation of the shaman’s inner force and brings him or her into sacred realms, inaccessible in any other way. Without this element of mysticism, the gift that the shaman has received from the spirits enabling him or her to fall into a trance and hence move into other worlds, there is no power, no strength, no spiritual connection. Shamanism, an ancient belief system in the Inner Asian world, developed within the context of a hunting and gathering society living in a somewhat marginal environment, in which the taking of game and the sufficiency of wild food supplies were crucial. Shamans were those people who had special abilities to speak to the world of the spirits and hence to be the intercessors for other members of their clan or group who needed good fortune for hunting and protection from the elements of nature. Moreover, the shaman had knowledge of how to approach these deities in the spirit world, whether they were Masters of the mountain or of the river or lake, or Masters of the animal to be hunted—the Master being that chief mythical head of all the animals of that species, who could make the decisions for all. Hence, rituals, formulas, and taboos arose with respect to the treatment of the animal when caught and killed, so that its spirit would not be offended. If we consider shamanic practices in even more northern environments, such as extreme northeastern Siberia (the Chuckchee, the Koryak, the Inuit and Yupik, and the Ainu groups on Hokkaido Island in Japan), we note that these ritualistic formulas and taboos respecting animal capture, treatment of the dead animal, and related activities become even more stringent due, no doubt, to the extreme constraints on hunting dictated by the very marginality of the environment. The need to appease and propitiate the spiritual world so that there would be an eternal return of animals was the initial impetus to the development of shamanism with its cosmology and its clan shaman, a person who could make that connection to the spirit world. The welfare of his community depended on his skill and powers. The world of the shaman is therefore bounded by these factors: his inner ability to reach another world by entering

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an altered state of consciousness, his clan or community for which he is making the appeal and the connection, and the natural world of spirits, deities, Masters of the mountains, and the waters. Loss of territory, place, clan structure, and family members can be almost totally devastating for the continuance of shamanism in Inner Asia because this belief system is so interdependent with its specific locale and community. WESTERN RATIONALITY VERSUS MONGOLIAN MYSTICISM The anthropological approach considers cultural and environmental context key to understanding the reason and meaning underlying behavior. In the event discussed below, the Western “scientific” approach is tested against a more mystical, culturally driven point of view that may provide a far better understanding of the phenomenon itself. The following event, occurring on our return trip from Suen, illuminates the strength of the shamanic approach, imbued with mysticism. Our return trip over the same mountain ranges, now covered with a dusting of snow, was equally slow. We stopped briefly to share some tsampa, a barley preparation carried in a leather pouch, with two young boys who were herding horses on the highlands. As we were returning from the highlands onto the steppe approaching the town of Tsaagan Nuur, a wooden house appeared on the steppe, and I gratefully and stiffly slid off my horse to the ground. Our support team, the women who had flown with us from Ulaanbaatar (and cooked Mongolian meat and potato stews or produced fried fish), came out in our jeep to meet us. I hobbled into the house together with the rest of my group. By chance, this was the home of Bodka, a shaman who was the half sister (through her mother) of Bayar, the shaman I had seen in Ulaanbaatar. Bodka came from a distinguished line of shamans. There were boo (shamans) on both sides of the family, and one was a very famous zaarin. Bodka’s mother, as mentioned earlier, was a very well-known shaman, and everyone had told Bodka that she herself had shamanic gifts and should become a shaman. Up to this time, she had refused. Her mother had died in 1990, and, as customary, the shelter to house her sacral objects was built in 1992, a couple of years later. The year before our arrival, Bodka had gone to a shaman, who told her to visit her mother’s sacral site, but only on the very day before we came did she finally go there with her five-year-old grandson. When a shaman dies in Mongolia, the shaman is returned to nature. She (or he) is laid on the ground with a hadak (a sanctified scarf) underneath her spine and a hadak and the wide sash from her del (robe) on her face. Otherwise the shaman is naked. Another location is selected by the shaman herself

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before death as a special sacral place for keeping her shaman’s artifacts, such as her embellished shaman robe, drum, headgear, and other items associated with her shaman ongons and rituals. It was to this sacral place that Bodka went that afternoon just before our arrival, gave offerings to her mother’s spirit, and then met our young guide on the road, demonstrating that she knew we were coming. The magic of this encounter with our guide opened up the situation for her at that very moment and brought in its wake several transformations. For when we came and she received us together with her family in her house with tea and refreshments, she told us about her youngest son, a young man of about twenty years who had had a strange experience two years previously. He had been out in the field on his horse, doing his usual chores of riding around and herding the animals, when he saw a round white object with legs, like a little white cloud. It was unclear, but he heard a sound of metal ringing from his stirrups as he was pasturing the horse, and the object said, “I am. I am.” (Be beinav, in Darhad, literally, “It’s me.”). The spirit also said, “Take, take,” but her son refused, saying, “No, no.” He stopped going out to the fields, and the first year after this encounter he avoided contact with people. When we saw him, he kept rubbing his face, said, “No, no,” and smiled inappropriately; his family said that he usually could not sleep, and if he did, he began to talk in his sleep. Bodka claimed that he otherwise could not talk, but when we spoke to him, he answered us and seemed eager to make contact. Bodka said that her mother and another old woman had remarked that this boy is the reincarnation of her father, a famous shaman. Saying, “No, no” meant that he was refusing to become a shaman. Last winter four of their animals had died, a sign that something was wrong, so his refusal was affecting the whole family. Three of Bodka’s children, her sons, have some defect or health issues. Bodka said that it was because her younger son had refused to be a shaman that the boys in the family are sick. One of the women in our group, Tsetge, a healer (not a shaman since she does not go into trance), stayed behind while we continued on to Tsaagan Nuur that evening. Tsetsen explained to me that Tsetge was going to do a healing of the young man, and it would take all night. The next morning when Tsetge returned to the small wooden house where we were staying on the shore of the lake, she told us that she had read Buddhist mantras to him and talked with him. She said that she had called his soul back. In Mongolia, she said lamas do this very well. When people are in periods of high emotion or deep depression, they lose their ties to their soul, and the soul flies away. People lose their energy. When the spirit said, “Take me,” meaning take on shamanhood, he was so afraid that he refused, but after Tsetge had talked with him, he decided to become a shaman and accept the gift he could not refuse. After that night, the family said they would look for a teacher for him and someone who would make his shaman clothes, needed for protection

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from the powers of the spirits. Tsetge would advise them on the proper astrological date for an initiation ritual, after which he could begin to shamanize. When Bodka went to her mother’s sacred place the day before we arrived, she had asked her for help with this son, and help had appeared. In this shamanistically oriented society and given the context of a family rich in the inheritance of shamanism, there was only one logical explanation for the phenomena described. The vision of a white object, complete with its auditory aspects, was a clear indication, even to the frightened young man, that he had been chosen to become a shaman. His refusal and his consequent inability to maintain a normal lifestyle are not unusual for people who have been designated as shamans but are unwilling to take on that mantle. The cure for the problem then follows the diagnosis: the person, aided with healing mantras and other forms of persuasion, needs to accept the gift with which he has been burdened, and the symptoms will then disappear as he begins to shamanize and heal other people. I will admit that this was not my initial impression when I saw him. As someone trained as a psychotherapist with a Western psychodynamic understanding of illnesses and treatment, I immediately began to formulate my thinking along those lines of thought. He seemed very much like a patient with a dissociative schizophrenic type of disorder evidenced by his auditory and visual hallucinations, fear of contact with people, lack of speech, and inappropriate expressions. Descriptions of various dissociative phenomena reported by patients in the United States, often as a result of severe stress and trauma experienced at a young age, are, in the Western psychiatric canon, considered to be signs or symptoms of severe mental illness. In Mongolia, in a culture oriented to shamanism, the very same symptoms are interpreted in a diametrically opposed way as signs of special (and positive) gifts, a mark of special spiritual selection. The five-year-old grandson whom Bodka had taken to her mother’s grave site the day before our arrival was also a child marked by the spirits. He doesn’t speak and only sings a sort of throat singing; in a Western society, this behavior could be labeled as autistic, but in this Mongolian society and in this particular family with its long and intensive history of shamans, the boy may well be an incipient shaman, and when he takes on the gift, he will be healthy. In the accounts of older shamans, they often noted that their shamanic gift was evidenced at a young age. In the shamanic complex of Inner Asia, initiation rites are understood as revealing a defining moment in the making of a shaman. As such, they are bound together with sickness and healing, the two oppositional poles of shamanic practice: the existence of sicknesses are essentially calling for the presence of a qualified shaman to practice healing. In his discussion of initiatory sicknesses and dreams, Mircea Eliade gives an example from the account of A. A. Popov of the dream of the Avam Samoyed shaman who,

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guided through the Underworld, visited the seven tents of sickness and thus learned all the diseases. He then was shown the medicinal virtues of seven plants for healing. 5 Another vital aspect of this initiatory dream is the dismemberment of the future shaman’s body and its reconstruction with more perfect elements of vision, hearing, understanding, and energy so that he may be able to “sing and shamanize indefinitely, without ever growing tired.” 6 Hence, the initiation ritual, especially on the first level, was a means of healing the shaman—and preparing him to heal others. As a footnote to this encounter and healing, when we returned to Tsaagan Nuur the following year, we saw Bodka again. She told us that her oldest son had a mouth harp made and had become a zaarin. However, this younger son had had no success so far. He could not find someone to make a mouth harp for him; it had to be a shaman from the clan of blacksmith shamans. Once he had this made, he would be able to have an initiation. On this, our first trip to Hövsgöl, Bodka invited Tsetsen and me to go with her to her mother’s grave site. This was a great honor. In gratitude for bringing Tsetge, who had spent the night healing and praying with her son and guiding him in the right direction of becoming a shaman, Bodka brought us to visit her mother’s place of spirits. We met Bodka at her home and walked with her across a broad meadow, a gently rolling hillside with sheep and yaks grazing far in the distance. We could see mountains and pine trees embracing the perimeters of the grassy hillside. Our path to the shelter led upward; a solitary pine tree stood bravely in the wide-open windswept meadow. Clouds were interspersed across the blue sky. As we approached, we could see the shelter nestled within a few sparsely scattered larches. This placement was very typical of Hövsgöl shamans. As Purev has noted: “The Ongons are generally placed to the north of a river, in a clearing or on high ground. This means that the spirit of the shaman should use natural water, rest and play in mountain and forest areas. . . . This expresses the belief that the Ongon is a large and intangible presence with a powerful influence over its surroundings.” 7 There are a number of different types of shelters that various groups in this region have built. Primarily three types are prevalent: those with open placement of ongons and other objects on a shelf between two or four larches, tethered in an open space; those placed in a half-enclosed area with a partial roof, flat or slanted, and an open fenced-in area; or those in a totally enclosed area like a small house. Purev notes that most of the black shaman ongon sites in the Hövsgöl area are of the half-closed type with an open fenced area, made from larches. 8 Bodka’s mother’s place was constructed in this second manner: it was a partially enclosed shelter with a flat roof made of larch logs. Sheltered under the roof, parts of her mother’s shamanizing garment and headdress hanging were visible. The headdress appeared to be dark red with feathers of different birds attached to it. From my angle looking

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from the back into the enclosed area, it was hard to tell if there was a shelf for her objects. In a completely open shrine, a shelf would be prepared between two larches; the shaman’s old and new ongons would be placed on a tethering line. 9 In this case, blue strips of silk cloth were hung on such a tethering line in front of the roofed area, within the fenced-in enclosure. Bodka had set up a small white offering table balanced on two logs in front of this line of fabric. There were several cups on the table, one of them larger, a regular Mongolian all-purpose milk tea/cereal/food bowl. Bodka waved a large pine branch, white bands of cloth hanging between the needles, as an offering to her mother and sang. She made libations of milk to the spirit of her mother. She told us that she preferred Arkhi as a libation. Tsetsen heard a scratching sound that gave the sense of a sacred presence. When we arrived at the site, the cups had been on the ground. Bodka said that if her mother’s spirit would accept gifts, then the cups would move. Since she had gone the day before and offered gifts, this was a sign to her that the gifts were accepted. We offered two hadaks, a pack of cigarettes, some candies, and an artish (juniper branch). There had been no wind, but when Bodka spoke to her mother, the trees moved. Bodka led us to the hill opposite her mother’s sacred site, to a grove of trees where the sacred objects of Bayar’s father hang. Bayar doesn’t honor their mother’s sacred place; however, she has their mother’s drum and mirror. Bodka was also supposed to become a shaman like Bayar, but she was reluctant to take on the gift, not wanting to become a shaman and preferring to lead a more normal life. Her mother gave her permission not to become a shaman; instead, she used her talents to become a singer, going to Ulaanbaatar and singing in groups there. Nevertheless, there were signs that she had innate shamanic ability; for example, one time when she got drunk and fell unconscious, she began to shamanize. The following year, when we went with her to her mother’s grave site again, she fell almost immediately into a shamanic state, an altered state of consciousness, in which she communicated with her mother, praying and speaking to her. She heard her mother’s responses, spoken aloud while in a trance in the voice of her mother. The communication went back and forth; she sang, prayed, and then suddenly fell backward while intensely engaging with her mother. In the course of this time, we had witnessed the birth of two shamans, son and mother. RETURN JOURNEY When a shaman returns from a journey to his or her spirits and to the Otherworld, the reentry is somewhat difficult, with stops and starts, a falling back into a trancelike state, and a gradual reawakening, aided by cigarettes and vodka, to the surrounding realities. In a similar way, returning from Hövsgöl

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was a wrench from a world of magic to the world outside. On our return trip by jeep we were invited to spend the night in the ger of a family member of our driver. The ger, extremely large and capable of sleeping many people, was located in the middle of the empty steppe, at some indeterminate distance from Moron. It was Saturday, a day when the plane flew to Ulaanbaatar. We had reservations on one of the small MIAT planes, which was supposed to leave at 1:00 p.m. I awoke at daybreak, around seven, and heard noises on the fabric roof of the ger. It was snowing. I thought, why is no one getting up to make breakfast and hasten us to a quick departure? One should allow more time for travel in these conditions. Instead, it seemed, less time was being allowed. At a leisurely pace, our driver and a member of his family began to make porridge; no explanation was forthcoming, although probably the matter had been well discussed because I was the only person who seemed concerned (but I also was the only person who didn’t speak Mongolian). I was left in the dark, and eventually we drove off in the jeep. Every few miles we had to stop because the carburetor was cranky and got stuck. At one of these stops, I photographed a herd of horses, running up and down snow-covered slopes, free and on their own, no restraints—as if we had entered, or were still in, paradise. They neighed and ran off. Snow blanketed the ground. Our progress was extremely slow; I could only hope the airport was near. About fifteen minutes before one o’clock, the jeep got stuck for the final time only a few miles from the airport. It was totally out of gas. Everyone got out and hung around. I finally asked Tsetsen if she thought there was any way we would be able to get to the plane. She explained to me, with an exclamation, “Oh no, there is no plane today.” She went on to say that was why the driver didn’t hurry in the morning. I suddenly understood, finally, that, hearing the snow overnight he knew there would be no plane coming from Ulaanbaatar. The previous year, a plane flying in from Ulaanbaatar, moving in for a landing in a snowstorm (and lacking proper guidance from whoever was in the control tower), smashed into the range of nearby mountains and crashed. Everybody died. Since then, planes simply don’t fly from Ulaanbaatar to these more remote regions when the weather is bad. And then I knew why Tsetge was reading sutras on our flight from Ulaanbaatar. The next flight would have been Tuesday. We found another jeep and driver later that Saturday who drove us all the way to Ulaanbaatar, in twenty hours, without a pause, except one stop for supper, over completely invisible and trackless roads, lit by moonlight.

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HISTORICAL CONSIDERATIONS: MONGOLIAN SPIRITUALITY AS A TOOL IN NATION BUILDING For Mongolians, the true heartland of the nation is in the countryside: the Orhon Valley, the site of Karakorum, Chinggis Khaan’s choice as the capital of the Mongol Empire. It had been the center of preceding nomadic empires and, as such, was imbued with great symbolic significance. I was anxious to see the famous homeland of Chinggis Khaan, since for me here was a direct association between the development and strength of shamanism in Mongolia and the rise of Chinggis Khaan through his conquest of disparate tribes, which were welded into a powerful empire in one generation. As has been noted by scholars of Mongolian history, basing their insights on the historically attested source The Secret History of the Mongols, Chinggis Khaan had a powerful connection with the land and waters of his native region, and this gave him the spiritual strength to move politically and to unite his people. In The Secret History he attributes his political strength to these spiritual forces: When we were fighting the Kereyid at Qaraqaljid sands [which was] a worrying time for us, you rendered your most important service to me. . . . As a result, the doors of favour of Eternal Heaven had been opened before me. . . . When we rode out from Baljuna Lake, Jürchedei was sent in vanguard against the Kereyid. Our strength boosted by the Heaven and Earth, we finished them off and subjugated them. 10

The spiritual connection was extremely important to Chinggis Khaan; as he states in the preceding text, without it he would not have been able to accomplish his mission. Moreover, his spirituality had two very strong aspects: initially the worship of the mountain Burqan-qaldun, which brought him close to the heavenly spirits, and Mother Earth, consisting also of the waters that nourished the dry earth. When a Mongolian shaman speaks of his guiding spirits, he acknowledges as chief spiritual forces Father Sky and Mother Earth; Chinggis Khaan’s own words carried that same concept underlying all success in the Mongolian environment. The support of Father Sky and Mother Earth, land and waters, underlaid all his endeavors and all fortune. As a young man, still called Temüjin, he went out of his ger to the mountain Burqan-qaldun to escape pursuit by his enemies. Upon his safe descent from the mountain, after three days and after his enemies, the Mergid, were unable to catch him, he spoke as follows: I was in disguise ... And lurked myself in the thick willows And ascended the Burqan-qaldun. 11

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Here we can see the formative origins of Chinggis Khaan’s thinking and how landscape, the flora and fauna, were his guideposts on the earth and how the mountain, Burqan-qaldun, and its obligatory sanctification through sacrifices and prayer provided the necessary spiritual connection for earthly successes. The Mongolians’ lifeway and indeed their life force were imbued with the shamanistic viewpoint that in order to sustain life and enjoy good fortune it was obligatory to have a connection to the spirits and to sanctify them. This tight-knit connection between the Mongolian lifeway and shamanism was present right at the beginning of the Mongolian nation. Chinggis Khaan allied himself with one of the sons of the Qongqutan tribe named Tebtenggeri, over the objections of his wife, Börte, who saw him as a threat to his power. Tebtenggeri, who had shamanic powers, prophesied, “According to the decree of Eternal Heaven conveyed through the great shamans: Once Temüjin will rule the nation, once Qasar will. If you don’t take Qasar by surprise, there is no knowing what will happen.” 12 Chinggis Khaan then captured Qasar, much to the displeasure of his mother, Hoelun. Chinggis Khaan felt his mother’s anger and was ashamed; he let Qasar go but took away many of his subjects, thus limiting his power. Tebtenggeri flourished as a shaman and power broker, with people flocking to the door of his ger, as evidenced by the large number of horses attached to his hitching post. When Odchigin, the younger brother of Chinggis Khaan, came to him while he was still in bed and complained of Tebtenggeri’s highhanded behavior, Börte demanded that he do something about this maltreatment of his brother, for she understood the consequences this would have for the continuation of power. Odchigin seized Tebtenggeri, wrestled with him, and dragged him out of the tent, whereupon he was attacked by three wrestlers whom Odchigin had placed there beforehand. Tebtenggeri’s spine was broken and his body placed in a small tent. Although the smoke hole was covered, the tent door was closed, and men were placed to watch the tent, on the third night “at the crack of dawn, opening the cover of the smoke-hole a figure rose out and left. An inspection established that Tebtenggeri had, indeed, vanished from there” (like a true shaman). Chinggis Khaan explained, “Because Tebtenggeri laid hands on my younger brothers and spread baseless slanders among them, the Heaven was displeased with him. His life and body have been spirited away.” 13 This account in The Sacred History shows the involvement and power of shamans in every aspect of Mongolian life, especially as it concerned the seizure and maintenance of political power. Without the blessing and protection of Heaven and the spirits of the great shamans, power could not be achieved. It was all up to the Heavens. It has been noted that the connection to shamanism continued throughout the entire history of the Mongolian nation, that at the time of Khubilai Khan, the grandson of Chinggis Khaan, his hunting processions included astrolo-

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gers, shamans, and Tibetan monks. Similar to the manner in which they were used by Chinggis Khaan, they cleared the environment of negative forces, of weather injurious to the prospects of the hunt, thus continuing the connection between shamanism and success in daily endeavors as the key to power. 14 The mysticism underlying shamanism thus can be seen as a force that is manifested not only in the microcosm of the individual shaman but also as an invisible yet vital element in the empowerment and fashioning of an empire. For Chinggis Khaan it was, indeed, a determining factor in his ability to appeal to the heavens and the spirits above, and in thus doing, to unify the disparate tribes of the Mongols and create a significant and enduring nationstate. INITIATION OF A SHAMAN In the end, it is the ecstatic connection to the spiritual world that the individual undergoes—and can, with practice, call forth at will—that is the true experience of mysticism, felt within the individual after a long, hard journey to this destination. In August 2002, I arrived at the homestead of a famous Buryat-Mongolian shaman, Tseren Zaarin. He was located in Bayan-uul province in eastern Mongolia, four hours’ jeep ride from Choibalsan, the capital city of the province. It was evident that a great deal of activity was taking place in and around his ger and his Buddhist temple. Lined up on the far side of the field was a row of tents and vehicles. The activity was reminiscent of a revival meeting, with people busily cooking, preparing foods, running around in shaman costumes, and beating drums; in the distance, Tseren Zaarin’s sheep and horses were being led back into their enclosures. An initiation was slated for that evening. In addition to the permanent buildings, a small tent with multicolored flaps and little flags, a small blue tent, a rod for hanging shaman clothes and accouterments, three mounds of hay with a blue flag, and a large grove of birch trees waving in the breeze greeted us. My first encounter with Tseren Zaarin was in the summer of 1996, when he, together with several other shamans came to Lake Baikal in Buryatia, Russia, to participate in a conference on shamanism. This was the first time that the Buryat shamans from Mongolia came together with the Buryat shamans in Russia since the political line dividing them had become rigidified seventy years before at the time of the establishment of the Soviet Union. Hence, this meeting at Lake Baikal was a moment in history that had significance because it not only embraced the wider world of Inner Asian shamanism, but also because it reconnected the Buryat peoples to a historical consciousness of their identity and strengthened the emerging Buryat shamanic

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movement. Tseren Zaarin’s journey from Mongolia and presence served as a beacon for the reemergence and development of shamanism in Buryatia. 15 In 2002 between June and the nineteenth of August, Tseren Zaarin conducted sixty initiations. This is a huge number when we consider that a shaman initiation has traditionally been undertaken only when the call of the spirits became so unbearable that the shaman had no other alternative. Tseren Zaarin said that as a shaman, he heals people with illnesses, family problems, and financial problems. He told me that many people come who are crazy and that he cures most of them by initiation into a shaman. Because he is aging, he is concerned about the well-being of the people, and both through Buddhism (he is also a lama and has a small Buddhist temple he constructed on his property) and shamanism he offers solace and help. He says the spirits decide who becomes a shaman, how many days the ritual will last, how many sheep will be sacrificed, what kind of costumes will be used, and what will happen during the calling of the spirits. An agreement is made with the spirits and a sheep prepared; people are told when and how they will do it. 16 On this afternoon in 2002, some young women were beating a drum, one wearing a new shaman outfit. At that particular moment there were two Khalka initiates, one Buryat, and one from the Uriankhar tribal group. Birch trees were being set up, and others were being hauled away. The initiation ritual is called sanar (Buryat term) or canar (Khalka-Mongolian) and means “quality” or the ability of the shaman to improve himself or herself; hence each level of initiation indicates that a shaman has received more spiritual power and has more skills. The place where the ritual occurs is called derbelge, and the aspects seen during the ritual are constructed to symbolize a rebirth of the shaman at each of his or her initiations. The eighty-one or twenty-seven or sixty-three birch trees (xuhu) are erected for each initiation and provide the frame or locale for that initiation; they are removed after the initiation is completed the following morning. Two larger trees called the Father tree (esege modon) and the Mother tree (exe modon) are in front of this grove (they have roots in the ground; the others are just cut and placed temporarily in the ground). The Father tree can have a small table attached with a sacrifice on it, or there may be specially erected table trees. The Mother tree will have three nests with three wool eggs in each (three times three = nine, a sacred number). Sometimes separate trees called üür trees will carry the nests. Clearly, all these arrangements symbolize fertility and rebirth. 17 In addition to the birch grove, there are nine birch trees near the ritual tent for the spirits who have descended. These nine birch trees are associated with the nine sky children who participate in the ritual from beginning to end: for an udgan there are five girls and four boys, for a zaarin there are five boys and four girls. After the egg nests are placed in the trees and candle lamps put underneath by the udgan, she sprinkles a libation of milk and herbs onto the tree.

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The grove of trees is tied together with two golden and silver threads (the colors of the sun and the moon). It can be argued that all these aspects are a manifestation of the dualism in Buryat mythology regarding the cosmos and the origin of life. After the spirits of the sky children are cleared, and they are now psychologically in a sacred space, the Mother and Father tree and the üür tree (with nests) are decorated, and butter is given to the Mother tree at its base. Close to nightfall, drums are warmed by a fire outdoors. The shaman puts on his or her garments and starts to shamanize using a drum; the nine sky children, dressed in their special clothes, run around the fire in the ger. The children and the shaman make offerings to the spirits. In one instance, at another Buryat shaman initiation I witnessed in Dornod province—here the initiation of an older shaman—after shamanizing had occurred in the ger, the shaman went outside, followed by the nine sky children, and made offerings to four table trees located in the four directions. Each table tree had a dish filled with an offering of cookies and small candies as well as three glasses with milk and vodka. The shaman drummed, and the children chanted. After a pause for eating inside the ger, the children began to shake their wands, and the old shaman then took the wands and, using them like small canes, ran in a clearly trance state around the ger. He stopped on the northern side and introduced his (spiritual) father and mother and the children, then ran outside followed by the children, around the birch trees, asking, “Is it complete?” He turned to the women’s side and said, “How are you? How are you?”; the women said they were okay. The spirit told him he needed a song, so the women in the audience sang one. In the middle of the night, a white horse was sacralized: a cup of milk tea was placed on his back, and the horse had to be led running around the grove of birch trees without the milk spilling. On the third attempt success was achieved. This ritual with successive shamans falling into a trance, drumming, shaking wands, and circumambulating the birches continued until early morning. The elements noted in this description were certainly typical in an initiation ritual for a more experienced shaman who was moving to a higher level of shamanhood. By contrast, the initiations of Tseren Zaarin were for young, mostly unproven shamans. The process of preparing the trees, shamanizing at night after the drums had been warmed, and the sky children running around the birch trees, clothes flying behind them, all led up to the climax of the ritual. The young udgan in full regalia ran, flushed, beating the drum, followed by the sky children, around and around the grove until she was moved by the spirit to climb one of the trees. It was a dark night, and the excitement was intense, with people beating drums and shouting words of encouragement. The young udgan was climbing a tree; with the crowd pushing and jostling, it was difficult to see her until she fell from the tree, hot, sweating, still in a trance. She was an udgan of the second level; she climbed the tree

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because her spirit had told her to do it. The ascent of the tree is the high point of the initiation ritual: it is the shaman answering the call of the spirit to move upward; the tree symbolizes the axis mundi, the connection between the Middle World of humans and the Upper World of the spirits. In conclusion, starting with the early recorded history of the Mongol peoples, we can see that Chinggis Khaan made powerful entreaties to the spirits of his land and waters and from these mystical connections received the spiritual strength to move forward decisively and to unite his people into a politically cohesive nation. The mystical connection, the need to connect spiritually in an ecstatic way, has been a primary force in nation building for the Mongolians and has continued to be significant in their present daily life. The individual shaman, starting with his or her process of initiation, arrives through trance at that moment of ecstasy that is the true experience of mysticism and that defines his or her ability to make the spiritual connection. The shaman practicing alone in the wilds of the taiga, recognizing and continuing the ancestral traditions of shamanism, is imbued with a landscape of culture and environment that has historical roots. In this context, the mystical spiritual connection, as experienced by the young initiate climbing the tree, is what begins to define the shaman and is the crucial hallmark of the shamanic experience. NOTES 1. See additional background information on the shamans discussed in the present essay in the following publications: •

•

•

On Tseren-Zaarin: Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, Sacred Geography: Shamanism among the Buddhist Peoples Of Russia (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004), 90–98; Idem, “81 Birches and a Nest of Eggs: Rebirth of Shaman Initiations in Mongolia,” in Christine E. GottschalkBatschkus and Joy C. Green, eds. Der grosse Lebenskreis/The Great Circle of Life [German and English text] (München: Ethnomed, 2005), 340–343, 354–357; Idem, “Mongolian Shamanism Envisaged, Embodied,” in Elvira Eevr Djalchinova-Malec, ed. Art and Shamanhood (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2014), 123–144. On Suen: Fridman, “Mongolian Shamanism,” 134–137; Idem, “Amidst Steppe and Taiga: Women Shamans in Hövsgöl Province, Mongolia,” in Art Leete and R. Paul Firnhaber, eds. Shamanism in the Interdisciplinary Context (Boca Raton, FL: BrownWalker Press, 2004), 226–236. On Bodka and Bayar: Fridman, “Amidst Steppe and Taiga,” 234–236. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Purev and Gurbadaryn, Mongolian Shamanism, 128. Ibid., 187. Ibid., 195. Eliade, Shamanism, 38–40. Ibid., 42. Purev and Gurbadaryn, Mongolian Shamanism, 265–66. Ibid., 268. Ibid. Dorjgotov and Erendo, Secret History of the Mongols, 162.

40 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

Eva Jane Neumann Fridman Ibid., 51, 52. Ibid., 193. Ibid., 193–98. Weatherford, Genghis Khan, 215. Fridman, Sacred Geography, 92. Fridman, “81 Birken und ein Eiernest,” 364. Birtalan, “Buryat Shamanism (Mongolia).”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Birtalan, Agnes. “Buryat Shamanism (Mongolia).” In Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture, edited by Mariko Namba Walter and Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, 539–45. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2004. Dorjgotov, N., and Z. Erendo, trans. The Secret History of the Mongols. Ulaanbaatar: National University of Mongolia, 2006, 2007. Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Fridman, Eva Jane Neumann. “81 Birken und ein Eiernest: Die Wiedergeburt der schamanischen Initiation in der Mongolei” [81 Birches and a Nest of Eggs: Rebirth of Shaman Initiations in Mongolia]. In Der grosse Lebenskreis: Ethnotherapien im Kreislauf von Vergehen, Sein und Werden [The Great Circle of Life: Ethnotherapies in the Cycle of Life], edited by Christine E. Gottschalk-Batschkus and Joy C. Green, 339–66. Munich: Ethnomed, 2005. ———. Sacred Geography: Shamanism among the Buddhist Peoples of Russia. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 2004. Purev, Otgony, and Purvee Gurbadaryn. Mongolian Shamanism. Ulaanbaatar: Admon, 2004. Weatherford, Jack. Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004.

Chapter Two

Theoneurology Bridging Hebrew Bible Prophecy and Clinical Psychedelic Drug Research Rick Strassman, MD

PSYCHEDELIC DRUGS, MEDITATION, THE PINEAL GLAND, AND ENDOGENOUS DMT In the 1960s and early 1970s, two powerful, reliable, and easily accessible technologies for altering consciousness arrived in the West. These were Eastern religious meditation practices and psychedelic drugs. Their simultaneous appearance raised profound questions concerning consciousness. In particular, religious experience—which seemed to spring from these two seemingly disparate technologies—suddenly became accessible to scientific inquiry. Several parallel, but surprisingly noninteracting, streams of research emerged within this new field of “altered states of consciousness.” 1 One approach was to measure changes in physiological variables resulting from meditation, for example, changes in EEG (brain wave) activity. Researchers attempted to establish the relationship between those effects and subjective experience. Another approach grew out of the discovery of DMT in humans in the 1960s. 2 While the psychedelic properties of DMT had been known since the mid-1950s, 3 it achieved little notoriety compared to LSD. This changed, however, when DMT and related compounds were discovered in brain, lung, blood, and spinal fluid of rodents, and then in human body fluids. 4 Psychiatric research into the role of endogenous psychedelics focused on psychosis, especially schizophrenia, not religious or spiritual experience. Studies compared levels of DMT in schizophrenic patients relative to those 41

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in normal volunteers. If schizophrenics made too much DMT, for example, drugs that blocked its effects or synthesis might have potential antipsychotic properties. Other studies with psychedelics, especially LSD, examined their therapeutic properties in a wide variety of conditions, as well as their utility in causing a “temporary psychosis” in psychiatric residents in order to enhance empathy with psychotic patients. Psychedelic drugs’ placement into the most highly restricted category of the 1970 Controlled Substances Act effectively ended human research, just as it was attaining scientific maturity. Data remained inconclusive regarding the link between psychosis and endogenous DMT. However, DMT’s safety in human administration studies had been established. In that political-scientific climate, it was impractical to embark directly on a psychedelic drug study. However, interest in the pineal gland and its primary hormone, melatonin, was accelerating in the early 1980s, and this provided an opportunity to begin studying the biology of spiritual experience. Awareness of the role of this tiny organ in the center of the brain in religious states was not new. Both Eastern and Western esoteric physiologies had for centuries pointed to this “third eye” as the location and/or source of sublime religious experience. Early reports of melatonin’s psychoactivity were encouraging. Our own melatonin research, however, yielded rather disappointing findings regarding melatonin’s psychedelic properties. 5 Therefore, I redirected my attention to DMT, an endogenous compound with wellknown psychedelic effects. DMT is the simplest “classical” psychedelic drug. This family includes LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin—none of which is endogenous. DMT is synthesized from dietary tryptophan, which is converted to tryptamine, to which the body adds two methyl groups, resulting in “di-methyl tryptamine.” Hundreds if not thousands of plants contain DMT, as does every mammal so far examined. The human gene responsible for the enzyme that finalizes DMT synthesis has been identified, characterized, and cloned. If that gene is inserted into a virus that then infects a test tube full of mammalian cells, those cells begin to produce the DMT synthesizing enzyme. 6 We know very little about what controls this gene’s activity in the intact organism. Recent data indicate high activity of the DMT system in the retina and the pineal gland. 7 Even more recently, DMT has been found in the living rodent pineal, 8 strengthening the venerable pineal-spirituality connection. THE DMT STUDY—CAPTURING SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS The impetus for the project that I performed in the 1990s at the University of New Mexico was the search for a suitable framework to understand the effect of a psychedelic drug. 9 The project, the first new American clinical research

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with this family of drugs in a generation, examined psychological and biological effects of N,N-dimethyltryptamine—or DMT—in a group of normal human volunteers. This study culminated a long-standing interest in the biology of spiritual experience. The DMT study was designed to exhaustively characterize its psychological and biological effects. Animal research—unabated after 1970—demonstrated the importance of serotonin receptors in mediating DMT’s effects, and we measured several serotonin-related factors in our volunteers: blood hormone levels, cardiovascular function, body temperature, and pupil diameter. 10 I assessed the subjective effects of DMT in two ways. One was the psychiatric clinical interview. Because DMT’s effects are so short, thirty to forty-five minutes, I could note every verbal and nonverbal element of volunteers’ experiences. The other method was a new paper-and-pencil rating scale we developed. Volunteers scored items from “Not at all” to “Extremely.” This scale—the Hallucinogen Rating Scale, or HRS—was first drafted from interviews with seasoned recreational DMT users and modified as the study progressed. 11 MODELS AND PRAXIS Buddhism was a major influence in designing, performing, and interpreting the results of the DMT project. A summer spent with a Tibetan lama introduced me to the abhidharma, what is commonly called the “Buddhist psychological canon.” This provided me a useful framework for analyzing the new rating scale, as well as handling particular experiences of volunteers. In addition, I had studied and practiced for many years with an extended Zen community, something that shaped my understanding of the DMT experience and our overall approach to supervising drug sessions. The abhidharma teaches that there exist in the mind five skandhas. These are mental processes that work together, usually unconsciously, to create the experience of subjective reality. They include bodily sensation, emotion, cognitive function, perception, and volitional tendencies. Clustering items of the HRS rating scale into these categories—in addition to a sixth, measuring overall intensity of the effect—proved highly effective in differentiating among various doses and other experimental interventions in our research. 12 Zen also influenced how we supervised volunteers’ sessions. The nurse and I sat quietly, along the lines of zazen, or “just sitting.” Being in a light meditation—attentive but relatively detached—while subjects were under the influence allowed volunteers to focus on their inner experience with no intrusions. It also reassured them that we would detect and respond to any needs that arose.

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Zen also provided a theoretical model for the research, by setting the Zen enlightenment experience as the goal of the high-dose sessions: a unitive, absorptive, nonverbal, non-perceptual, ideation-free state. Any discrete contents of the DMT experience were therefore understood as way stations en route to a formless experience. According to this model, visions, voices, and other identifiable phenomena are symptoms—albeit potentially informative ones—of the mind casting off psychic detritus rather than the heart of the matter. Psychoanalytic psychology, another theoretical backdrop of my study, like Buddhism understands the DMT state to be something other than fundamental. In this case, the contents of the experience represented previously unconscious drives, wishes, and conflicts—similar to dreams. The third conceptual model was the psychopharmacologic. As with the other two, it deconstructs the DMT’s data, here as the result of drug-induced perturbations of brain physiology. THE DMT EFFECT We administered DMT intravenously in the University of New Mexico Hospital’s General Clinical Research Center, a federally funded unit, after receiving the requisite local, state, and federal permits. Local, private, and federal funding supported our studies. Effects of DMT began within a few heartbeats, and when fully psychedelic doses were administered, they completely replaced the previous ongoing contents of subjective experience. A powerful and overwhelming “rush” preceded a sense of the mind separating from the body and entering into a world of light. Most volunteers described intense euphoria, while a very small number panicked. Some also described an unemotional quality of the state. Most subjects maintained clearheaded and sober, carefully observing thought processes and noting and remembering an extraordinary amount of detail regarding the contents of the experience. While the DMT effect was overwhelming, volunteers usually were able to exert some volitional effects within the state, deciding what to attend to or ignore and how to respond to particular exigencies. Two unexpected findings challenged my paradigms as the study progressed. One was the highly interactive and relational nature of the experience. Rather than entering into a formless empty void—which occurred in only one of our nearly sixty volunteers—subjects instead found themselves interacting with a plethora of objects in the DMT “world.” In over half the volunteers, these objects took the form of “beings” with sentiency, intelligence, will, feelings, and power. The beings appeared as plants, reptiles, birds, machine-human hybrids, insects, statuary, and intelligent machinery. Communication was more or less efficient, suffering because of anxiety and/

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or lack of familiarity with the media of exchange. The information the beings imparted was nearly always verbal, although sometimes it was transmitted visually by symbols or gestures. Thus the subjective data from the volunteers were not at all what I had expected using the Zen enlightenment model. Interestingly, the majority of volunteers also expected an empty formless state, since many practiced Eastern meditation. The other unexpected finding was the sense of reality of the DMT effect. Nearly every subject described the DMT world to be as real as that which she or he perceived during normal waking consciousness. A small number described it as “more real than real.” The volunteers were nearly unanimous in differentiating between the DMT experience and other altered states such as dreams and even other psychedelic drugs. There was solidity, temporal continuity, a story line, and absolute certainty regarding the existential reality of what they had apprehended. It was as if the drug were a technology allowing access to a parallel level of reality—only a heartbeat or two away—rather than generating the visions and voices that they perceived. Volunteers were as surprised by this feature as I was. This second finding—the reality sense of the DMT effect—raised a procedural problem. Because it clashed with my three cognitive models, it was difficult not to treat their reports as “something else.” No matter how neutral I tried to be, my belief in the essential unreality of their experiences began interfering with volunteers providing uncensored reports of their sessions. Therefore, I performed a thought experiment and took at face value their assertion that they had entered into an alternative reality. Later, I could search for models that might help me understand how this might be. ALTERNATIVE MODELS Were there scientific models that adequately explained how DMT could provide access to an objective parallel level of reality? I first looked to modern physics—in particular notions of dark matter and parallel universes—as potential candidates. Perhaps DMT modified the receiving characteristics of consciousness—as mediated by the brain—so as to enable consciousness to apprehend previously invisible worlds. This would be akin to DMT extending the function of our external senses in much the same way as do the microscope and the telescope. This model had a certain appeal, in particular its scientific testability. For example, if it were possible to “photograph” the worlds of dark matter or parallel universes, we could compare those images with those that the DMT volunteers described. Ultimately, however, I did not find this framework more attractive than the three other ones that posited the unreal nature of the volunteers’ experiences: Buddhist, psychoanalytic, and psychopharmacolog-

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ic. The primary stumbling block was the absence of meaning inherent in the model. In other words, why should we care if DMT allows us to apprehend the contents of invisible worlds? How are we any better off for knowing that, either individually or as a civilization? At a more abstract level, where do those parallel worlds come from in the first place, and how are they sustained? Simply positing and explaining their existence seemed less important than defining their value. For this reason, I turned to religious models. These traditions have occupied themselves with invisible worlds for millennia, posit mechanisms, and extract meaning and information from the states, both practical and theoretical. However, Buddhism was not ideal because it interprets the DMT experience as essentially unreal. Also, the DMT effect did not comport with the goal of Buddhism—the formless, empty void of enlightenment. In addition, too, Buddhism’s ostensible atheism would clash with the dominant Western religious paradigms. Another relevant religious system is Latin American shamanism. In particular, shamanic use of ayahuasca is interesting because its visionary ingredient is DMT. 13 However, there are obstacles to the widespread acceptance of this religious tradition by the West. While shamanism posits the reality of an external spiritual universe consisting of usually invisible forces and objects, it, too, is atheistic. The syncretic ayahuasca-using churches that have made headway into the West do incorporate elements of Christianity, but these are relatively recent accretions. 14 Additionally, the moral and ethical deficiencies in the shamanic culture are significant. Many ayahuasca shamans prey on naive Westerners with respect to money, sex, and power. In addition, shamanism understands disease to be the result of evil intent on the part of other shamans. As a result, the healing process is a never-ending cycle of attack, counterattack, and so on. 15 While it is certainly the case that Western religious organizations have promulgated their share of moral and ethical abominations over the millennia, one would hope that any new model would be an improvement rather than an even worse breeding ground for such abuses. Any religious system that would provide an adequate Western model for the DMT effect must therefore possess certain criteria: (1) It would include the belief that the invisible worlds one apprehends in the altered state are at least as real as the world of normal waking consciousness. (2) It would be theistic. (3) The goal of the experience would be interactive and relational rather than unitive. (4) Finally, it would attach a strong ethical-moral quality to the informational content extracted from the experiences and behavioral guidelines devolving from them.

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HEBREW BIBLE PROPHECY Several converging circumstances led me to begin studying the Hebrew Bible soon after completing the DMT project. After accommodating the various intellectual and emotional challenges that studying this text presented, the concept of a “prophetic state of consciousness” emerged as a potentially useful model for this project. Prophecy, for the purposes of this discussion, is any spiritual experience that one encounters in the Hebrew Bible. It is an altered state of consciousness in which one apprehends previously invisible sights and sounds, extraordinary emotions and/or bodily sensations, novel insights, and a sense of profound reality. While prediction or foretelling may occur using this expanded definition, it is not necessary. Many prophetic predictions have never come to pass, and one may predict accurately without recourse to prophecy, for example, meteorological forecasts. Socially, the Hebrew Bible model of prophecy is Western, articulated in the paradigmatic spiritual text for one-half of the world’s population. Theologically, it is theistic. Phenomenologically, prophecy is interactive and relational. Practically, it is replete with time-tested ethical and moral guidelines. Thus, it meets all the above criteria for a suitable religious model for the DMT experience. How well do these two states correspond? With respect to the phenomenology of the two states, I had already developed a method for the DMT work using Buddhist psychological and clinical psychiatric principles. Now I binned reports of prophetic experiences from the Hebrew Bible into the categories we had previously developed: somatic, perceptual, emotional, cognitive, and volitional. In order to compare the informational content of the two states, my default position turned out to be the prophetic. This was because the prophetic message was significantly more highly articulated and fulsome than the DMT one. I consequently developed a finite number of categories concerning the informational content of the prophetic state, and when DMT reports addressed the same issue, I binned those excerpts into that particular biblical category. Having almost no background or training in Hebrew Bible studies, I began studying the traditional translations and commentaries of the ArtScroll/Mesorah and Judaica Press. This led me to the original writings of the major medieval Jewish Bible commentators, including Rashi, Nachmanides, and Ibn Ezra. From there, I examined the writings of Maimonides, Gersonides, Albo, Spinoza, Heschel, Strauss, and Buber. Finally, I obtained consultative support from several authorities within the Orthodox Jewish religious and medieval Jewish philosophic academic streams.

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BIBLICAL NOTIONS OF PROPHECY The three pillars of Hebrew Bible prophecy are the person of the prophet, God and the spiritual world, and the relationship between the two. The text is explicit in its descriptions of the characteristics of one who receives prophecy. It also is profuse in describing God using relatable anthropomorphic and anthropopathic expressions. The text is less explicit about how prophecy works, except to say that God and/or his angels spoke and/or did various things with those apprehending them. 16 While the text emphasizes that God is the final arbiter of who attains prophecy, there are circumstances and/or techniques that make prophecy more likely. The fervor of large gatherings is one situation (2 Chr. 20:14), and group prophecy has a contagious effect on Saul (1 Sam. 10:5–6, 10). Isaac experiences prophecy after a delicious meal (Gen. 27:4); Elisha requires music before experiencing prophecy (2 Kings 3:15); proximity to death is noted in the cases of Jacob (Gen. 49:33) and Joseph (Gen. 50:24). Sensory deprivation, including fasting (Exod. 24:18), mourning (Dan. 10:2), and celibacy (Exod. 19:15), may also conduce to prophecy. Certain physical postures, such as “falling upon one’s face” (Num. 20:6), placing one’s head between the knees while sitting on the ground (1 Kings 18:42), and raising one’s eyes heavenward (Dan. 10:5–6), may also make prophecy more likely. Rituals may catalyze the prophetic state. These include sacrifices (Gen. 15:9–21), study (Dan. 9:2, 21), and prayer (Jer. 32:17–25). Special places may make prophecy more likely, as Jacob notes after awakening from his prophetic dream (Gen. 28:17), and the text makes clear the special theophany-inducing properties of Mount Sinai. Proximity to running water is also associated with prophecy, as in the cases of Ezekiel (Ezek. 1:1) and Daniel (Dan. 10:4). The Urim and Thummim were prophetic “tools” inserted within the folds of the breastplate of the high priest that royalty consulted in times of national crises. 17 Some have suggested that prophetic experience in the Hebrew Bible resulted from consuming psychoactive plants or plant products, for example, DMT vapors being released by a burning acacia bush in the case of Moses’s initial theophany, 18 or an LSD-like compound in the manna. 19 However, the presence of endogenous compounds like DMT renders moot any search for exogenous substances. While we do not yet know that spiritual experiences with DMT-like characteristics are associated with high levels of endogenous DMT, it is more likely that this is the case, and not exogenous substances.

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MEDIEVAL NOTIONS OF PROPHECY Many medieval Jewish philosophers aligned themselves with the Aristotelian science of their day, in particular the Neoplatonized version, so as to demonstrate the compatibility of the Hebrew Bible with a scientific/philosophic/ rational worldview. The representative work is Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, which appeared in the thirteenth century. 20 In the Guide, Maimonides lays out a metaphysics that explains how an immaterial God interacts with a material world. He also invokes the notion of intermediaries, what Aristotle called Separate Intelligences, mediating between an incorporeal God and a physical world. Maimonides taught that “overflow,” “emanation,” or “efflux” (the terms are interchangeable translations of the Hebrew shefa) begins with God and becomes increasingly coarse as it reaches the final intermediary, the Active Intellect, which then emanates onto the earth and all that it contains—including humans. 21 Prophecy, according to this system, resulted when godly emanation overflowed onto a human with highly and equally developed rational and imaginative faculties. The imaginative faculty contains sense impressions, emotions, and other physical experiences. It also retains memories of the same, which it can manipulate creatively. The rational faculty cognizes—determining if something is true or false and dealing with formless abstract notions, which it can also manipulate creatively. When God decides to bestow prophecy, he either chooses someone with preexisting, equally highly developed imaginative and rational faculties or temporarily perfects them as the situation may require. Only in cases where both faculties are highly developed does godly emanation result in prophecy. When the rational faculty alone is highly developed, one may become a philosopher, whereas when the imagination is primarily active, one may become a statesman or a diviner. According to the system, godly efflux may first affect the rational faculty and from there then take apprehensible form in the imagination. The rational faculty then extracts the information presented to it in the imaginative faculty, and this results in the prophetic message. A variant of this scheme is that godly efflux affects the imagination first, and then the rational faculty performs the same interpretive and communicative functions. The location of the message of prophecy is of interest. Some of the medievalists believed that godly emanation itself contained the information, whereas others believed that godly emanation only allowed what previously existed in the mind of the prophet to manifest itself. I will raise this issue again.

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COMPARISON OF THE PROPHETIC AND THE DMT STATES—PHENOMENOLOGY The categories of the DMT experience I developed during my drug studies are the following: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Somatic—such as temperature, energy, and visceral sensations; Affective—such as fear or ecstasy; Perceptual—visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory; Cognitive—alterations in thinking processes and level of awareness; Volitional—the ability to interact with one’s self and the outside world. 22

A new category that emerged in my analysis of the prophetic literature was Relatedness, which captured certain features of the two states that did not fit into any of the other preexisting ones. Relatedness served as a larger-order organizing principle under which I could combine several seemingly disparate categories into one that describes the essence of the interaction. For example, the notions of healing, protecting, harming, or threatening were better understood using a relatedness category. Also, the interactive nature of the healing process—a relational exchange—might affect someone somatically or emotionally. Relatedness also helped me understand particular types of communication, such as passive reception of information or the questionand-answer phenomenon. In the material that follows, I include references only for examples from the Hebrew Bible rather than also from my DMT bedside notes. This is in the interest of brevity as well as to buttress my case for the psychedelic properties of the prophetic state. For those interested in excerpts from my DMT reports in a side-by-side comparison, DMT and the Soul of Prophecy 23 provides those data. Somatic Effects In both the prophetic and the DMT states, one encounters a multitude of somatic effects. For example, the “rush” of the DMT effect refers to the tumultuous transition between the normal and DMT consciousness. We find similar descriptions in the case of Saul (1 Sam. 10:10), Elijah’s whirlwind (2 Kings 2:1), and Job’s theophany (Job 38:1). Once consciousness seemed to have separated from the body, DMT volunteers reported a feeling of flying or otherwise moving through space. Compare Ezekiel’s account of a wind lifting him (Ezek. 3:14). DMT volunteers described being taken or grasped by beings, similar to Ezekiel’s reports (Ezek. 8:3). Research subjects experienced shakiness or tremor, as do Daniel

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(Dan. 10:16) and Habakkuk (Hab. 3:16). Some volunteers felt heat, as does Isaiah when an angel touches his mouth with a burning coal (Isa. 6:6–7). Volunteers commonly reported pounding pulse and palpitations, as does Jeremiah (Jer. 4:19), and breathlessness, as does Daniel (Dan. 10:17). Physical weakness was common in the DMT state, similar to that experienced by Saul (1 Sam. 28:20) and Daniel (Dan. 10:8). A sense of physical struggle was reported by one of our volunteers and figures prominently in one of Jacob’s visions (Gen. 32:25). The transition back into the body was noted by the DMT volunteers as a descent, whereas as prophecy ends, the vision and/or God ascend from Abraham (Gen. 17:22) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 11:24). Emotional Effects DMT volunteers felt awe, fear, and reverence. One of Job’s friends reports fear at the onset of his prophetic vision (Job 4:13–14), Jacob describes fear and awe (Gen. 28:17), and Ezekiel describes some of the beings in his vision as awesome (Ezek. 1:18). On the other hand, volunteers recounted feelings of peace, safety, and reassurance. In the prophetic literature, we read about an angel telling Daniel not to fear and to feel peace (Dan. 10:19), another reassures Gideon (Judg. 6:23), and before God reveals his glory to Moses, he tells him that he will provide him rest (Exod. 33:14). While DMT volunteers often felt euphoria, happiness, and joy, this is rarely the case in the Hebrew Bible’s accounts. The Psalms contain the most frequent descriptions of joy. In this respect, it is of interest to note that in Maimonides’s ranking of prophetic excellence, teaching such things as the Psalms rests at the lowest rung. 24 Thus one might conclude that only lowlevel prophetic phenomena are accompanied by extraordinarily positive emotions. The only explicit reference to happiness among the canonical prophets is, ironically, from the usually dour Jeremiah (Jer. 15:16). Similarly, while feelings of love suffused the DMT state and sometimes were expressed between volunteers and the beings, feelings of being loved among prophetic figures—especially of higher rank—are rare (Dan. 10:19). Grief, despair, and sorrow are unusual in the DMT state, but they are rather common in the prophetic one—in particular among the canonical prophets. This may have more to do with the catastrophic messages that they usually had to relate rather than with their being intrinsic to the state itself. DMT volunteers occasionally described a feeling of isolation or abandonment, as did some prophets (Amos 7:1; Jer. 15:17). Research subjects sometimes noted a general intensification of emotions or a curious emotional detachment. Jeremiah describes the former (Jer. 14:17), whereas God charges Ezekiel to remain emotion free (Ezek. 24:16).

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Perceptual Effects Tactile sensations are rare in both the DMT volunteers and prophetic figures. For example, one of Job’s friends describes a spirit touching his face (Job 4:15), and God touches Jeremiah’s mouth (Jer. 1:9). Olfactory and gustatory phenomena are quite rare or nonexistent in both states. Auditory effects are frequent in the DMT and prophetic experiences. A nonverbal sound is common in both, often of great intensity, frequently building to a crescendo. Ezekiel describes a sound like great waters or a camp (Ezek. 1:24), and the bones he sees in his vision make a rattling sound (Ezek. 37:7). God’s glory also possesses a sound like a multitude of waters (Ezek. 43:2), and as God’s glory is about to descend on Mount Sinai at the Revelation, the sound of the ram’s horn continually grows stronger (Exod. 19:19). The buildup of the sound’s intensity in the DMT volunteers climaxed in their consciousness leaving their bodies, whereas a comparable auditory crescendo results in the multitudes at Sinai fearing for their lives (Deut. 5:22). Verbal communication is common to both sets of experiences. Research subjects occasionally heard a spoken voice outside their head, but more often they noted the telepathic nature of the voice. This issue is not explicit in the prophetic literature despite the innumerable examples of the “spoken voice.” Perhaps the only reference to telepathy is when one of Job’s friends describes hearing “silence and a voice” (Job 4:16). In the case of the DMT subjects, they either saw who was speaking with them or simply overheard the voice. Sometimes an individual experiencing prophecy cannot see who is speaking, as when Daniel notes a voice originating in the middle of a river (Dan. 8:16), and Moses hears God speaking from between the angelic figures on the cover of the Ark (Num. 7:89). Usually, however, the speaking figures are seen. Visual phenomena are common in prophecy and the DMT state. These range from darkness, for example, Abraham’s vision that begins with dense darkness (Gen. 15:17); vast visual perspectives, as in Ezekiel being suspended between heaven and earth (Ezek. 8:3); clouds, often of a fiery and/or smoky nature (Ezek. 1:4; Gen. 15:17). Both sets of altered states also demonstrate formed figures emerging out of amorphous backgrounds, as when Daniel sees a man emerging from the clouds of heaven (Dan. 7:13). Fire and fiery images are frequent in the prophetic literature—David sees brilliant, fiery coals before God (2 Sam. 22:13), and Moses’s initial theophany is that of a burning object (Exod. 3:2). Flowing, melting, whirling movement of colors occurs in both states as in Daniel’s stream of flowing fire before God’s throne (Dan. 7:10). While fire as such was rarely described by the DMT volunteers, they frequently described Day-Glo and neon colors of red, yellow, and orange, that is, fiery colors. This last finding suggested to me the notion of “equivalence of imagery” whereby prophetic figures use terms

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appropriate to their culture and psychology to describe things that may be identical to those apprehended by the DMT volunteers. Nomadic tribal Hebrews saw much more fire in their daily lives than did the DMT volunteers, whereas the research subjects were more familiar with objects such as DayGlo paint and neon signs. In both the DMT and the prophetic states, we find examples of recursiveness, a phenomenon wherein patterns or images repeat themselves endlessly out to the visual horizon. Daniel reports thousands of thousands and myriads of myriads serving God (Dan. 7:10). Other characteristics of the visual phenomena include images of holes, tunnels, tubes, spirals, and balls in both altered states. Ezekiel’s angel transports him to a hole in a door (Ezek. 8:7), and Zechariah apprehends a gold candelabrum with multiple bowls and tubes (Zech. 4:2). DMT volunteers and those experiencing prophecy see trees (Dan 4:7–9; Zech. 4:3), furniture (Isa. 6:1), weapons (1 Chr. 21:16; Num. 22:31), and architecture (Ezek. 40–48; Exod. 25:8–9). In prophetic and DMT-induced visions, experients see parts of beings in addition to whole objects, as for example Daniel’s fourth beast in his vision possessing eyes in its horn (Dan. 7:8) or Ezekiel’s round creatures having eyes on their back, hands, and wings (Ezek. 10:12). The beings may appear as animals in both states: insects (Amos 7:1), birds (Ezek. 10:14), and a bear (Dan. 7:5). Humanoid figures were more common in the DMT state than clearly human ones, while the opposite holds true in the prophetic state. In both cases, however, these human or humanoid forms predominate. Bizarre figures are also seen in both altered states—the DMT volunteers described characters from television shows, gremlins, or machine-human hybrids. Compare these images to Ezekiel’s “round things,” “spherical things,” and “living things” in his vision of the chariot (Ezek. 1). Synesthesia—”hearing” visual imagery or “seeing sounds”—occurred in the DMT state and may explain the Hebrew camp “seeing the sound” emanating from the top of Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:15). Cognitive Effects DMT volunteers were oblivious to the outside world during the peak drug effect but extraordinarily alert within the DMT world itself, witnessing, observing, and remembering what they were beholding. Some volunteers also described confusion. In prophecy, the term tardeimah denotes a cognitive state also marked by obliviousness to the outside world at the onset of a prophetic vision, for example, an early vision of Abraham’s (Gen. 15:12). As an angel begins speaking to Daniel, he enters a “deep sleep” (Dan. 8:18). The king of Babylonia is confused within his vision (Dan. 4:1), and Daniel is frequently bewildered (Dan. 8:27).

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The DMT beings appeared to possess cognitive characteristics: intelligence, awareness, and sentiency. In prophecy, it is implicit that the beings were intelligent, aware, and sentient; otherwise, how could a conversation be taking place between them? A particular aspect of cognition is the assessment of the reality nature of the world that either the DMT volunteer or the prophetic figure was apprehending. The research subjects were overwhelmingly convinced of the existential equivalence of the DMT world with, or superiority to, this one. This is similarly implicit in the text’s description of prophecy. However, in both states, there were moments of confusion regarding the reality of the experience. When it occurs in prophecy, it is usually associated with one’s initial theophany—Moses’s disorientation at the burning bush (Exod. 3:2–3) and Samuel’s uncertainty regarding the nature of the voice he hears at night (1 Sam. 3:4–5). Both research volunteers and prophetic figures used various tools to determine the reality nature of what they were perceiving, for example, recognizing a feature in the vision that corresponded to a similar figure in an earlier vision, as with Ezekiel and his “living creatures” (Ezek. 10:20). Volition and Will These effects are more difficult to differentiate in “pure culture” because of the indirect effects of other categories’ perturbations on them. For example, someone may have the will to move but be physically incapable of doing so. Or one may be too confused to exert mental or physical effort in a desired direction. In the first case, somatic effects are affecting volition, whereas in the second case cognitive ones are. The examples that follow, however, are primarily volitional and affect movement, speaking, and general self-efficacy. DMT volunteers sometimes said that their incorporeal self was unable to move through the world they had entered because of various obstacles. Ezekiel also remarks about a stream that he cannot cross during a vision (Ezek. 47:5). Also, some research subjects described being pulled or forced to move within the DMT state, comparable to Moses’s being passively drawn into a thick cloud on Mount Sinai (Exod. 20:18). Volunteers rarely described being unable to speak, whereas we occasionally find this in prophecy vis-à-vis Ezekiel (Ezek. 3:26) and David (Ps. 77:5). Subjects sometimes felt pressure to speak as they emerged from the DMT state. In the prophetic literature, we regularly read about God “putting words into the mouth” of the prophet, who is unable to refrain from speaking them (Jer. 20:9; Num. 22:38). DMT volunteers nearly unanimously felt overwhelmed by the force of the drug effect as it began. A corollary of this appeared to be the sense of a mission being imposed on them within the state and/or a reworking of their physical makeup by the beings or other aspects of the drug session. In the prophetic litera-

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ture, Jeremiah repeatedly describes his inability to resist God’s charge to minister (Jer. 20:7); God forces Ezekiel to eat an object that appears in his vision (Ezek. 2:8; 3:1–2), and he receives a new heart (Ezek. 36:26); and Saul is changed into another man (1 Sam. 10:6). At the same time, both research subjects and prophetic figures maintain some ability to direct their will and make decisions; for example, Isaiah volunteers for his mission to the heavenly council (Isa. 6:8). Relatedness Communication between the beings and those perceiving them is usually verbal in the Hebrew Bible, although other modalities occur; for example, an angel removes Isaiah’s guilt by touching him with a glowing coal (Isa. 6:7). Nonverbal sound may be the medium of information exchange, as with Elijah on Mount Sinai (1 Kings 19:12), or visual imagery per se assumes this function, as when God shows Moses how to build particular implements for the traveling sanctuary (Exod. 25:40). God also shows Jeremiah several visions that contain predictions (Jer. 24:1). The predominant means of communication is verbal, and it is usually much clearer in the prophetic state than in the DMT one. There are stereotypic patterns of communication common to both sets of experiences. Someone in either state may overhear beings talking to one another, as with Isaiah (Isa. 6:3) and Ezekiel (Ezek. 10:13). One-way communication might occur in both states when a being charges someone with a task; for example, an angel tells Ezekiel to dig a hole in a wall (Ezek. 8:8), and God relates innumerable commandments to Moses. Most common are relatively normal dialogues between prophetic figures or volunteers and the beings they apprehend. The question-and-answer format is a paradigm common to both states, as when Hagar encounters angels in the wilderness (Gen. 16:7–8), Elijah and God begin a conversation (1 Kings 19:9), and God repeatedly asks Ezekiel what he sees (Ezek. 8:6, 12, 15, 17). Rare in the DMT state but not uncommon in the prophetic one are examples of contention, arguing, bargaining, and other edgy exchanges, for example, Abraham attempting to coerce God into sparing the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:23–26), and Moses trying to avoid taking a leadership role in freeing the Hebrews from Egypt (Exod. 3:11–14; 4:1–14). In both the DMT and the prophetic experiences, the beings assume certain functions relative to those perceiving them—there is a purpose to the relationship. These include protecting or guarding, as when God tells Abraham that he is his shield (Gen. 15:1). An angel wakes Elijah from what he hopes is his sleep of death and feeds him (1 Kings 19:5–8). Blessing occurs by the beings in both states, as we see with Jacob (Gen. 32:30). While the majority of interactions with the beings in both states are beneficent, they may harm or

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threaten to harm; for example, Balaam’s sword-wielding angel (Num. 22:33). An interesting variation is how someone in a prophetic or DMT state provides something to the beings rather than the other way around; for example, Ezekiel revivifies the bones of the dead (Ezek. 37:10). The most common function of the beings, however, is to instruct and educate in both the DMT and the prophetic experiences. While the entire prophetic text may be seen as educational, more specific examples are numerous, such as Zechariah requesting information from a being who then explicates a vision for him (Zech. 1:8–9). COMPARISON OF THE PROPHETIC AND THE DMT STATES—INFORMATION CONTENT Here we see a major divergence between the two sets of altered states. While the prophetic message has inspired thousands of years of civilization by influencing all its significant pillars—theology, philosophy, economics, government, ethics, wisdom, and law—it is difficult to ascertain so far a similar influence of the psychedelic drug experience other than its aesthetics. In other words, we have yet to see the emergence of a psychedelic theology, philosophy, economics, and so on. This message-poor and aesthetics-rich dichotomy also held with the DMT research subjects. The primary message that the volunteers returned with was the existence and nature of the seemingly freestanding, external parallel level of reality to which DMT led. They subjectively apprehended it and described in great detail its general nature and particular features. However, when they were pressed on the meaning and message contained in that world, any novel insights usually revolved around personal psychological issues rather than more-sweeping social or spiritual ones. Jay, a student in his early twenties, made this point particularly clearly: “I was trying to capture the meaning, the knowledge, not knowing what to do; to put it in some kind of context, some kind of anchoring. How do you manifest it? Where’s the blueprint, the longevity? I don’t want it to just steal away.” 25 In contrast to the organizational scheme that I used to characterize and compare the phenomenology of the DMT and prophetic states, the prophetic rather than the DMT state is the benchmark experience for informational content. This is because the message of the prophetic state was so much more fulsome than that of the DMT one. When they do address similar issues, the notions that the two states convey are usually but not always similar.

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God While the Hebrew Bible is suffused with references to God’s nature and activities, his presence in the DMT state is rare. Volunteers did mention God several times. They also referred to some “thing” that, if experienced within a biblical context, would most likely have been considered God. The basic notions about God that the Hebrew Bible promulgates is that he exists; lives; is one; is eternal; and possesses will, unlimited power, knowledge, and presence. In the DMT state, volunteers referred to God’s power and will within the context of witnessing the creation of the universe. Others described God’s omnipresence, in particular within their own bodies. While the God of the Hebrew Bible is described as either corporeal or incorporeal depending on the context, no DMT volunteer saw God’s form. The Hebrew Bible teaches that God is holy, something that one of the research volunteers described as a property of the state, rather than of any discrete element in it. Generally, the text teaches that direct perception of God and/or his glory is incompatible with life, something that one volunteer alluded to, but again within the context of the experience itself, rather than its being associated with any particular element. The text describes God’s role in creating and sustaining the natural world. One of our volunteers, “speaking for God,” described how “he” created chaos first and then gave birth to form. While the Hebrew Bible portrays God as exercising justice and righteousness, one of our volunteers experienced God as neither seeking nor imposing anything. However, another noted a relationship between an especially difficult drug session and the notion of punishment. God comforts, loves, and heals in the text, but we never read about God as love. On the other hand, one subject experienced love as an attribute of God. Other examples of God’s attributes include his teaching—which a volunteer noted in her experience—and testing. God responds to entreaties, including prayer, ritual, and repentance in the Hebrew Bible. One research subject prayed during her drug session but noted no effect of her entreaty. Guidelines for Living In addition to inculcating proper beliefs about God’s nature and activities, the Hebrew Bible recommends guidelines for proper relationships with the natural, social, and spiritual worlds deriving from those beliefs. The exemplary teaching in this regard is the Golden Rule, which eschews revenge and promotes loving your fellow as yourself (Lev. 19:18). While the Hebrew Bible is filled with countless specific laws that represent the Golden Rule in action, only one volunteer attained deeper insight into this rule by sensing greater empathy for erstwhile antagonists.

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The Hebrew Bible teaches obedience to God, which sometimes takes the form of accepting a mission. Several of our volunteers felt charged with a mission by the beings. Another heard the beings tell her to embrace peace, and one was told to go to a local site of prehistoric Native American ruins, presumably to receive further directions. Prediction, the World to Come, Rebirth, Resurrection, and Messiah While predictions play a prominent role in Hebrew Bible prophecy, they were rarely part of the DMT experience. Predictions in the Hebrew Bible refer to several categories of the future: nearly immediate, near term, long term, and very long term. One of our DMT volunteers heard a voice that “something might come to pass,” but communication difficulties precluded attaining specific details. Very long-term predictions lead into eschatology, which treats of death, resurrection, immortality, the end of the world, and final judgment. Several elements of this biblical “world to come” comport with the DMT experience. There is a rapid transition into it (Mal. 3:1); a loud noise may announce its onset (Zech. 10:8). It will be absolutely disjointed from the present world (Isa. 65:17; Ps. 126:1) and apparently incorporeal—as when Isaiah describes the heavens vanishing and the earth rotting away (Isa. 51:6). Its light is preternaturally intense (Isa. 30:26). The “body” suffers no maladies (Isa. 35:5–6). No barriers exist between the human heart and God (Deut. 30:6), leading to widespread prophecy (Joel 3:1–2). One DMT volunteer described a similar future state where God and we would talk with each other as we now talk among ourselves. Other subjects saw a future world that was either qualitatively or quantitatively more benign than this, and it was most likely incorporeal. The notion of resurrection and/or eternal life is ambiguously portrayed in the text. A careful reading suggests that in this world these phenomena do not occur. However, in a future world with different laws of nature, they will. Several DMT volunteers also addressed these issues—including the immortality of the soul and rebirth. While the text makes many oblique references to a messianic figure, this notion never surfaced during volunteers’ drug experiences. False Prophecy The Hebrew Bible directly addresses false prophecy and prophets—issues relevant to the psychedelic drug state. Is the information one obtains during a spiritual experience of any sort—drug induced or otherwise—beneficial, accurate, and true, rather than simply a product of one’s own wishful thinking or ulterior motives?

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Several criteria distinguish between true and false prophets. These turn on the character and behavior of the prophet, the source of his or her prophetic message, the content of that message, and the nature or absence of confirmatory predictions. Also, the societal response to the true prophetic message is usually hostile. This issue may have come up once in our studies when a volunteer felt unworthy—that is, wondering if she were qualified—regarding her new role that she had now assumed by virtue of her experience. Wisdom and Poetry The wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible—primarily Ecclesiastes and Proverbs—relates observations and advice regarding the nature of existence and how to live in it. DMT reports in this regard were meager—one volunteer reported that the beings told him that life was good, and another felt deeply the negative consequences of not working on improving herself. One subject observed the organizing and creative principle underlying existence—what he referred to as the Logos. The Hebrew Bible also describes the qualitative difference between God’s wisdom and ours. This is an insight that one or two DMT volunteers also returned with. The Psalms and Song of Songs are the two best-known examples of poetry emerging from prophetic inspiration. One volunteer composed a poem after his sessions, and one chanted a song he previously knew as he transitioned out of the DMT state. BRIDGING PROPHETIC AND DMT STATES USING MEDIEVAL JEWISH METAPHYSICS: THE THEONEUROLOGICAL PARADIGM The prevailing neurotheological model rests on a “bottom-up” perspective when explicating the mechanisms for spiritual experience. While it posits the subjective “reality” of the experiences themselves, it considers their existential status as derivatives of underlying brain activity. The “spiritual” in “spiritual experience” is epiphenomenological, a cultural and social overlay onto adaptive brain states that have evolved over time, surviving because of their selective advantage. In many ways, this is another iteration of the split that occurred during the Enlightenment, when the Hebrew Bible became a book like any other, and prophecy became an “experience” like any other. Spinoza took the early lead in delegitimizing the Bible’s teachings about prophecy, particularly in his Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. He begins his critique of the divine nature of Hebrew biblical prophecy by defining prophecy as anyone’s clear apprehension of the truth and posits: “Ordinary knowledge is no whit inferior to prophetic, unless indeed we believe, or rather dream, that the prophets had human bodies but superhuman minds, and therefore that their sensations and consciousness were entirely different than

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our own.” 26 He does acknowledge that revelation exists but asserts that its mechanisms are unknowable. Spinoza considers Hebrew biblical prophecy the product of virtuous individuals with highly developed imaginations but normal or even inferior intellects. Their words were morally useful but could not enlighten regarding theological and natural laws. Freud later developed a precursor for a bottom-up model by proposing that religious experience was “something other” than what it seemed to be, in this case, a conscious manifestation of unconscious conflict between one’s impulses and societal demands. 27 Thus, it was a useful and expedient psychic compromise. Neurotheology likewise suggests that religious experience is good for our health and good for our society. It is an adaptive brain state producing greater empathy, creativity, and the like. Theoneurology, on the other hand, posits that the brain is the conduit for communication between us and God. And God is the source of the information we are now privy to. It is a top-down model proposing that changes in brain chemistry are necessary but not sufficient in allowing us access to objective but normally invisible spiritual worlds. It is neither antiscientific nor antimaterialistic but simply changes the reference point, the nature of the organizing principles, by means of which the experience occurs. It also provides a higher level of abstraction in addressing questions regarding the meaning and message of the states. Rather than religious experience being good for us, prophecy is how God communicates with us. The theoneurological paradigm for the prophetic state also addresses the trend by clinical psychedelic drug researchers to conflate all manner of religious experience into the mystical-unitive type: 28 content-free, a-relational experience. To the extent that this position reflects anti-God and anti-Bible sentiments, it excludes the scientific study of the paradigmatic spiritual experience of Hebrew Bible—a text that underpins the religious sensibilities of one-half of the world’s population. In addition, an exclusive emphasis on mystical-unitive rather than interactive-relational states allows researchers to sidestep the “embarrassing stigmata” 29 of the prophetic experience and the DMT state. In the DMT state, the embarrassing stigma is the presence of the beings. In the prophetic state, it is the God of the Hebrew Bible—one who possesses certain attributes and offers recommendations for living properly, metes out reward and punishment according to one’s compliance with those recommendations, has promised Abraham’s descendants of the ancient land of Canaan, and so on. Putative Metaphysical Mechanisms The phenomenological elements of the prophetic and DMT states are highly congruent. This suggests that those shared features also share underlying biological mechanisms. A parsimonious explanation is that DMT activates

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the imaginative faculty—in both states—with minimal effects on the rational one. There are three ways in which brain levels of DMT may rise. Two are “from below” and one is “from above.” The most straightforward of the two from below is direct injection of DMT, as occurred in my volunteers. Endogenous DMT levels also appear to rise with stress, and this may explain the psychedelic phenomenology associated with fasting, sensory deprivation, meditation, and near-death exigencies. In addition, particular locations may conduce to non-drug-related spiritual experiences via activation of DMT synthesis. Many of these conditions appear in the setting of Hebrew biblical prophecy. DMT elevation “from above” may be due to divine emanation overflowing onto the imaginative faculty, directly or via overflow from the firststimulated rational one. This stimulation, as it were, is from God, and how this may translate into elevated endogenous DMT is mysterious. Nevertheless, once the process is under way, we can study and understand it. In the case of a prophet, one chosen by God to receive divine communication, this “more perfected” imagination produces rich and godly phenomenological content that the highly developed rational faculty interprets and communicates. We now may return to the question of the location of the prophetic message. DMT does not contain information; however, God may use it in the service of conveying information—that is, via particular imaginative contents. The compound itself is simply the medium of the message, not its source. On the other hand, divine efflux may not contain information but only allows the mind to access what it already possesses. In this case, too, endogenous DMT may give apprehensible form to what was previously invisible or latent. When DMT is administered exogenously and the rational faculty is not well developed, the experience is primarily aesthetic. In the case of a welldeveloped intellect, one may extract information from the imaginative contents and communicate it. And if endogenous DMT rises “from below” via the various techniques previously mentioned, but the rational faculty is not well developed, formerly unavailable information may be grasped. In neither case, however, is this prophecy because no divine emanation is operative. The Beings The beings one perceives in either the DMT or the prophetic state can be understood at several levels. They may be symbols of more or less unconscious mental processes, like a dream. For example, a healing angel may represent a health-care professional for whom the observer has conflicted feelings that she or he cannot consciously acknowledge. Or as I have sug-

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gested in DMT: The Spirit Molecule, DMT may modify the receiving characteristics of the brain-mind complex, enabling it to perceive inhabitants of usually invisible external worlds such as dark matter or parallel universes. That is, they exist as discrete objects outside our mind but are only perceptible through it. The theoneurological model may also be adduced. Here it expands the meaning of “psychedelic” from “mind-manifesting” to “mind-apprehending,” allowing us to perceive “things” that are externally, not internally, existent. That is, psychedelics may affect how we perceive those external objects or forces rather than stimulating the mind to generate them de novo. The beings may be discrete objects residing in previously invisible layers of reality. On the other hand, they may be forces like healing, illness, good, evil, and so on, that is, God’s intermediaries—omnipresent forces whose local action we perceive in the prophetic and DMT states. The World to Come To the extent that descriptions of the world to come in the Hebrew Bible resemble those of the DMT state, one may consider a role for endogenous DMT in this transition. The presence of a gene that codes for the enzyme responsible for synthesizing DMT raises the possibility that its widespread activation would herald entrance into a noncorporeal DMT state by all organisms containing it. Several possible catalysts for this event are conceivable: geo-celestial events like magnetic shifts or massive gamma ray bursts, as well as an intrinsic genetic clock. THE END OF PROPHECY? Traditional Judaism teaches that prophecy ended several hundred years before the Common Era. However, technically speaking, there are no natural explanations for this assertion. The same metaphysical and biological processes are operating now as during the time of the prophets. Maimonides was vexed by this rabbinic tradition because it went against the grain of his scientific sensibilities and his belief that “God does not withhold from the deserving.” His solution was to propose a “miracle of withholding” in which God prevented otherwise qualified individuals from attaining prophecy. Other explanations that are not as bound to normative Judaism suggest more political reasons for the rabbis’ declaration, primarily to delegitimize the nascent competing religion of Christianity. Jesus’s claim to prophetic stature could be negated by claiming that prophecy had ended before his time. The closing off of the Hebrew biblical canon due to the end of prophecy also prevented any Christian books from being appended onto it. Additionally, the politically disruptive nature of the classical type of prophecy—

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distinctly antimonarchical and preaching deliverance from foreign nations’ domination—threatened the precarious state of the Jewish people in Romancontrolled Judea, something the rabbis wish to avoid. 30 It is likely that the Hebrew sages ostensibly were referring to the classical type of prophecy exemplified by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah, since they regularly referred to their own and their colleagues’ prophetic inspiration occurring during legal and exegetical argumentation. Also, many post–Second Temple figures were either referred to as prophets or described their own prophetic states, such as Maimonides and Rashi. 31 And the kabbalistic schools that arose in Iberia and Palestine clearly were seeking and believed they had attained prophetic consciousness. Whether prophecy has continued—albeit at the periphery of normative Judaism—or has ceased altogether, there is nothing preventing our working to become qualified for it. According to the medieval Jewish philosophers, this involves developing our rational and imaginative faculties. Developing these faculties within a modern context provides an opportunity to resurrect the prophetic stream. These suggestions should have relevance both to those who seek to understand the Hebrew Bible at a deeper level and to those who use psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes. DEVELOPING OUR IMAGINATIVE AND RATIONAL FACULTIES First, there is the “body” of prophecy: the visions, voices, and emotional and somatic effects that reside in the imaginative faculty. And there is its soul, its message, which is contained in the Hebrew Bible and apprehensible by the rational faculty. These are our two access points. The judicious use of psychedelic drugs like DMT may enhance the function of the imaginative faculty, increasing its phenomenological repertoire, qualitatively and quantitatively. Therefore, those who wish to increase their comprehension of the prophetic message might utilize psychedelic drugs to approximate the imaginative faculty from which the prophetic text—the Hebrew Bible—emerged. According to the medievalists, the rational faculty is the less “physical” of the two and thus would be less amenable to pharmacological enhancement. Nevertheless, there are endogenous and exogenous stimulant-like amphetamine compounds that enhance cognitive processing. 32 Whether they truly enhance the apprehension of new ideas is less clear. However, it is clear that the rational faculty may be developed by education. The Hebrew Bible was written by prophets and articulates the prophetic message conveyed via prophetic experience. Studying the Hebrew Bible thus conduces development of the rational faculty in a manner necessary (but not

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sufficient) to attaining prophecy. In addition, the Hebrew Bible may maximize the spiritual impact of one’s psychedelic drug experience, for example, by providing a relevant vocabulary, conceptual framework, and methods of interacting with the contents of the drug state. CAVEATS TO A PRIMARY ROLE OF DMT DMT replicates many of but not all the phenomenological features of prophecy. One area concerns the spoken voice, which is rare in the DMT state. We must therefore look for other endogenously produced compounds that may generate the spoken voice, for example, the anti-cholinergic agents such as atropine, belladonna, and scopolamine. 33 God’s glory, or kavod, is a transitional phenomenon between God and his angels. It possesses features not quite typical of prophecy in that it is visible and audible to the masses, in particular the Hebrew camp as it wandered through the wilderness. Its visual form is less highly articulated than much of prophetic imagery—looking like fire, cloud, or smoke. It also seems to be the only manifestation of God with which one may merge, as in the case of Moses on Mount Sinai (Exod. 24:18). These features also suggest the agency of non-DMT endogenous compounds, a good candidate for a kavod-mediating agent being 5-methoxy-DMT. This substance more usually produces a “white light” ego-dissolving experience with minimal verbal information. 34 FUTURE PROSPECTS Characterizing the biological underpinnings of the rational and imaginative faculties is of great interest, as will assessing the effects of endogenous and exogenous mind-altering agents on them. We should investigate the activity of endogenous psychoactive compounds in prophecy-like states resulting from any method in order to determine their role in nondrug altered states. Subjecting the prophetic literature to statistical analyses using well-validated rating scales for the psychedelic drug effect—like the HRS—will refine how similar the two states are. In this context it is important not to equate the phenomenological characteristics of prophecy with prophecy itself, because of the preeminent role of the prophetic message. Most scales for psychedelic and even prophetic experience—such as Maimonides’s hierarchy—do not address the content issue. Historical precedent exists within the research community for using psychedelic drugs for spiritual purposes. The Good Friday experiment at Harvard in the 1960s demonstrated how psilocybin produced “spiritual experiences” in divinity students. 35 Recent studies have replicated this finding. 36 However, both studies used as a benchmark the mystical-unitive rather than

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the interactive-relational state. This is a deficiency that future projects must address. Within the religious world, a natural extension of these ideas is to employ psychedelic drugs judiciously in the house of worship. The Native American Church already does this with mescaline-containing peyote cactus, and two federally protected Brazilian churches use ayahuasca in North America similarly. None of these churches is much older than two hundred years, and while they incorporate elements of Christianity into their liturgy, they have built the religion around the substance. The next stage is the incorporation of such agents into a traditional Western religion. In the context of this project, integrating DMT use into the Jewish tradition could build on and benefit from the textual, ethical, and peer-review guidelines and safeguards already in place. NOTES 1. Tart, Altered States of Consciousness. 2. DMT is an endogenous human psychedelic—a psychoactive compound that our bodies synthesize. Previous research regarding its effects led me to propose a role for it in nondrug spiritual experience. To the extent that administering DMT replicated features of naturally occurring spiritual states, one could argue that elevated levels of endogenous DMT mediate those features in the nondrug condition. The theoneurological model complements this hypothesis by suggesting analogous metaphysical processes. For example, the effects of DMT on the imaginative faculty mimic those occurring during prophecy. 3. Szára, “Social Chemistry of Discovery.” 4. Barker, McIlhenny, and Strassman, “Critical Review of Reports.” 5. Strassman et al., “Model for the Study.” 6. Thompson et al., “Human Indolethylamine N-Methyltransferase.” 7. Cozzi et al., “Indolethylamine N-Methyltransferase.” 8. Barker et al., “LC/MS/MS Analysis.” 9. Strassman, DMT. 10. Strassman and Qualls, “Dose-Response Study.” 11. Strassman et al., “Dose-Response Study.” 12. As of this writing, over forty papers have been published by various research groups around the world using the HRS to quantify effects of a wide variety of psychoactive drugs in humans. A list is available upon request. 13. McIlhenny et al., “Methodology.” 14. Labate, Rose, and Santos, Ayahuasca Religions. 15. Beyer, Singing to the Plants. 16. It is useful to keep in mind the distinction between canonical and noncanonical prophetic figures in the following discussion. While the vast majority of the prophetic message is related by Moses and the canonical prophets—Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the “twelve minor prophets”—the actual level of prophetic experience attained by these figures is not necessarily superior to that of those who did not leave behind a corpus of legal, ethical-moral, poetic, or historical material. For example, Hagar is a foreign female slave of Sara whom her mistress despises and exiles into the desert, hoping for her to die. Nevertheless, Hagar sees and speaks with angels and receives a prediction regarding her son’s future that accurately comes to pass (Gen. 21:17–20). 17. Van Dam, Urim and Thummim. 18. Shanon, “Biblical Entheogens.” 19. Merkur, Mystery of Manna.

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20. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed. 21. Kreisel, Prophecy. 22. The sixth category of the HRS, Intensity, measured an integrated sense of the strength of the drug effect. This category did not seem relevant for the purposes of this project. 23. In press. 24. Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, 2:45–46. 25. Unpublished data in possession of author. 26. Spinoza, Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Tractatus Politicus, 13–14. 27. Freud, Moses and Monotheism. 28. MacLean et al., “Factor Analysis.” 29. Heschel, Prophets. 30. Greenspahn, “Why Prophecy Ceased.” 31. Heschel, Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets. 32. Sotnikova, Caron, and Gainetdinov, “Trace Amine-Associated Receptors.” 33. Flacker and Wei, “Endogenous Anticholinergic Substances.” 34. Oroc, Tryptamine Palaces. 35. Pahnke and Richards, “Implications of LSD.” 36. Griffiths et al., “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Barker, Steven A., Jimo Borjigin, I. Lomnicka, and Rick J. Strassman. “LC/MS/MS Analysis of the Endogenous Dimethyltryptamine Hallucinogens, Their Precursors, and Major Metabolites in Rat Pineal Gland Microdialysate.” Biomedical Chromatography (2013), doi: 10.1002/bmc.2981. Barker, Steven A., Ethan H. McIlhenny, and Rick Strassman. “A Critical Review of Reports of Endogenous Psychedelic N,N-Dimethyltryptamines in Humans: 1955–2010.” Drug Testing and Analysis 4 (2012): 617–35. Beyer, Stephan. Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2010. Cozzi, Nicholas V., Timur A. Mavlyutov, Michael A. Thompson, and Arnold E. Ruoho. “Indolethylamine N-Methyltransferase Expression in Primate Nervous Tissue.” Society for Neuroscience Abstracts 37 (2011): 840.19. Flacker, Jonathan M., and Jeanne Y. Wei. “Endogenous Anticholinergic Substances May Exist during Acute Illness in Elderly Medical Patients.” Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences 56A (2001): M353–M355. Freud, Sigmund. Moses and Monotheism. Translated by Katherine Jones. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1939. Greenspahn, Frederick E. “Why Prophecy Ceased.” Journal of Biblical Literature 108 (1989): 37–49. Griffiths, R. R., W. A. Richards, U. McCann, and R. Jesse. “Psilocybin Can Occasion Mystical-Type Experiences Having Substantial and Sustained Personal Meaning and Spiritual Significance.” Psychopharmacology 187 (2006): 268–83. Heschel, Abraham J. Prophetic Inspiration after the Prophets: Maimonides and Other Medieval Authorities. Hoboken, NJ: Ktav, 1996. ———. The Prophets. New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962. Kreisel, Howard. Prophecy: The History of an Idea in Medieval Jewish Philosophy. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic, 2001. Labate, Beatriz C., Isabel S. de Rose, and Rafael G. dos Santos. Ayahuasca Religions: A Comprehensive Bibliography and Critical Essays. Santa Cruz, CA: Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 2009. MacLean, Katherine A., Jeannie-Marie S. Leoutsakos, Matthew W. Johnson, and Roland R. Griffiths. “Factor Analysis of the Mystical Experience Questionnaire: A Study of Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51 (2012): 721–37.

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Maimonides, Moses. The Guide of the Perplexed. Translated by M. Friedländer. New York: Hebrew Publishing, 1881. McIlhenny, Ethan H., Jordi Riba, Manel J. Barbonoj, Rick Strassman, and Steven A. Barker. “Methodology for and Determination of the Major Constituents and Metabolites of the Amazonian Botanical Medicine Ayahuasca in Human Urine.” Biomedical Chromatography 26 (2010): 301–13. Merkur, Dan. The Mystery of Manna: The Psychedelic Sacrament of the Bible. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2000. Oroc, James. Tryptamine Palaces. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2009. Pahnke, Walter N., and William A. Richards. “Implications of LSD and Experimental Mysticism.” Journal of Religion and Health 5 (1966): 175–208. Shanon, Benny. “Biblical Entheogens: A Speculative Hypothesis.” Time and Mind 1 (2008): 51–74. Sotnikova, Tatyana D., Marc G. Caron, and Raul R. Gainetdinov. “Trace Amine-Associated Receptors as Emerging Therapeutic Targets.” Molecular Pharmacology 72 (2009): 229–35. Spinoza, Benedict de. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Tractatus Politicus. Translated by R. H. M. Elwes. London: George Routledge & Sons, 1895. Strassman, Rick. DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press, 2001. Strassman, Rick J., Glenn T. Peake, Clifford R. Qualls, and E. Jonathan Lisansky. “A Model for the Study of the Acute Effects of Melatonin in Man.” Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 65 (1987): 847–52. Strassman, Rick J., and Clifford R. Qualls. “Dose-Response Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans, I: Neuroendocrine, Autonomic, and Cardiovascular Effects.” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 85–97. Strassman, Rick J., Clifford R. Qualls, Eberhard H. Uhlenhuth, and Robert Kellner. “DoseResponse Study of N,N-Dimethyltryptamine in Humans. II: Subjective Effects and Preliminary Results of a New Rating Scale.” Archives of General Psychiatry 51 (1994): 98–108. Szára, Stephen. “The Social Chemistry of Discovery: The DMT Story.” Social Pharmacology 3, no. 3 (1989): 237–48. Tart, Charles T. Altered States of Consciousness. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1969. Thompson, Michael A., Eunpyo Moon, Ung-Jin Kim, Jingping Xu, Michael J. Siciliano, and Richard M. Weinshilboum. “Human Indolethylamine N-Methyltransferase: cDNA Cloning and Expression, Gene Cloning, and Chromosomal Localization.” Genomics 61 (1999): 285–97. Van Dam, Cornelis. The Urim and Thummim. Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1997.

Part II

The Symbolic

Chapter Three

Materializing the Symbolic in Paranormal Experience Jess Hollenback

SYMBOLIZATION AND THE EMERGENCE OF INNER INFINITIES The great German philosopher Ernst Cassirer once observed in An Essay on Man that “compared with the other animals man lives not merely in a broader reality; he lives, so to speak, in a new dimension of reality.” 1 Cassirer went on to argue that what gave humans this unique extra dimension to their existence was their capacity to symbolize. 2 Cassirer’s suggestion that the emergence of our capacity for symbolization is analogous to adding an extra mathematical dimension to our experience is apt in many different ways. These dimensions opened up by the emergence of symbolization are not just the physical or mathematical dimensions mentioned above, but they also include a whole novel host of imaginational “dimensions” or virtual realities that are similarly infinite in “depth” and “extent” as well as limitlessly open with respect to what can be created and placed within them. Examples of these novel imaginational spaces or “inner infinities” that we can now open up and explore include the endlessly open worlds of possible artistic and musical compositions as well as the limitless worlds of possible meaningful sentences and written compositions that can be constructed in any particular language. Through us, the universe has become aware of its origin and its probable ultimate destiny. Thanks to symbolic thought and communication, we live in a world of collectively shared “inner infinities” and have escaped the cognitive solipsism that prevents other species from communicating with one another about past and future events or merely possible events. Unlike all other animals, we can do such silly things as imitate Lewis Carroll’s Red 71

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Queen, who told Alice that she made it a habit to think of at least six impossible things before breakfast. This additional “dimension” or shared virtual universe that Cassirer alludes to is nicely described by Terrence Deacon in his book The Symbolic Species in the following words: We . . . live in a world no other species has access to. We inhabit a world full of abstractions, impossibilities, and paradoxes. We alone brood about what didn’t happen, and spend a large part of each day musing about the way things could have been. . . . And we alone ponder what it will be like not to be. . . . We tell stories about our real experiences and invent stories about imagined ones, and we even make use of these stories to organize our lives. We live our lives in this shared virtual world. . . . We have come to realize that no other species on earth seems able to follow us into this miraculous place. 3

We take for granted the almost “miraculous” character of the transformations that symbolization creates in the human imagination. And just as remarkable is our capacity to share so much of these seemingly infinite imaginational worlds with one another. Our capacity to symbolize not only opens up virtual or imaginational worlds of seemingly limitless extent and depth for us to explore, but it also enables us to access and direct a peculiar kind of psychical power or energy. As Joseph Campbell has observed, “a symbol . . . is an energy-evoking and [energy]-directing agent.” 4 This observation brings me to the second major focus of this chapter: What is the relationship between symbolization, our capacity for abstraction, and the materialization of psychical energy? I will argue that certain types of phenomena associated with mystical experiences and certain kinds of psychosomatic phenomena such as religious stigmatization as well as the nocebo and placebo effects described by physicians display this capacity for our symbolic processes to direct and concentrate psychic energy in some rather remarkable ways. DECOUPLED REPRESENTATION: THE KEY STEP TOWARD HUMANKIND’S CAPACITY FOR SYMBOLIZATION Before we can talk about symbolization and the concentration of psychic energy that it sometimes enables, it is essential to discuss the foundational perceptual process that seems to underlie both (1) the human animal’s unique capacity to think and communicate symbolically and (2) its ability to create, explore, and manipulate new imaginational “dimensions” that are open and limitless in “extent” and “depth.” Susanne Langer, in her famous study of symbolization, Philosophy in a New Key, stresses that “the power of understanding symbols . . . is the most characteristic mental trait of mankind.” 5 She then goes on to emphasize that one of the characteristic features of

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symbols is that they are not “proxy for their objects but are vehicles for the conception of objects.” 6 Unlike signs that announce the presence of their objects so that we can react to them—for example, avoiding a predator— symbols allow us to talk about or think about their objects without the object being present and/or “without reacting to it overtly at all.” 7 Creating conceptions involves our species in the creation of a certain degree of abstraction or existential distance between the object conceptualized and the person conceptualizing. Langer stresses that “it [the power of understanding symbols] issues in an unconscious, spontaneous process of abstraction, which goes on all the time in the human mind; a process of recognizing the concept in any configuration given to experience, and forming a conception accordingly.” 8 Langer is not the only writer to emphasize the importance of this process of abstraction that is involved in symbolization. More recent researchers who study symbolization and also those who focus on the differences between animal communication systems and human language lay even greater stress on the foundational importance of this abstractive process in symbolization. The Australian philosopher of biology Kim Sterelny has called this foundational process “decoupled representation,” which he has defined as the ability “to track features of the environment where that tracking ability does not drive a specific behavioral response.” 9 What is “decoupled” from the image or perception is an immediate, almost reflexive motor response to it. Unlike vervet monkeys, for example, human beings can calmly and dispassionately “think about,” “form an idea about,” or “talk about” predators such as leopards. A vervet monkey cannot do this. As soon as a vervet monkey hears one of its brethren utter a leopard alarm call, the perception of the alarm call simultaneously generates a visceral motor response—the creature immediately initiates the evasive action of scurrying up a tree to escape the leopard. In a similar fashion if a vervet monkey perceives an eagle, it immediately utters a distinctive eagle alarm call. When any other vervet monkey perceives this call, its perception of the alarm call immediately initiates the appropriate evasive action of scurrying down the tree to avoid the eagle. As one can see, the vervet monkey is unable to decouple its perception of a predator from an immediate affective and motor response to it. Human beings, on the other hand, have somehow learned to emancipate themselves from this motor response by “decoupling” their images and perceptions from the intense affective, physiological, and motor responses they would normally evoke in their mammalian ancestors. As James Hurford has remarked, “Humans . . . can discuss the difference between a leopard’s spots and a tiger’s stripes without being scared up the nearest tree.” 10 Decoupled representation both is and enables a profound degree of abstraction from the here and now. The implications and consequences of this seemingly simple evolutionary innovation are truly enormous.

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Stanley Greenspan in his book The First Idea observes something that is very similar, if not identical, to what Sterelny calls “decoupled representation” when he notes that “symbols come about by separating a perception, which is the ability to form an image, from its action.” 11 Once again, we see that symbolization presupposes a less visceral involvement in the here and now, a kind of “abstraction” from one’s environment, an abstractive process that enables not only human language in the form of symbolic communication and thought to emerge and flourish but also unleashes our capacity for idle imagination and fantasy because we can imagine or think about leopards without simultaneously being scared up a tree by so doing. Linguist Derek Bickerton refers to something quite similar to decoupled representation, which he and other linguistics experts call “displacement.” Like Greenspan and Sterelny, he also notes that both our capacity to symbolize and our capacity to develop language require an ability to distance ourselves from the here and now. “The most salient characteristic of symbols is that they can refer to things outside of the here-and-now. This capacity is something that linguists generally refer to as ‘displacement.’” 12 Bickerton contends that all prehuman animal communication systems prohibit their users doing things we symbolizing creatures take for granted such as talking about the weather, the scenery, or their neighbors’ latest activities. Why is this so? He contends that the ultimate reason why all other animals do not seem to be able to do these things is because their units of communication are meaningful only if they are directly tied to an immediate situation in the here and now. All the calls, flashes, and gestures that constitute [animal communication systems]—are all anchored in particular situations: aggressive confrontation, search for a sex partner, appearance of a predator. . . . They would be meaningless used outside of those situations. Language units—words [in spoken language], manual signs [in sign language]—are not. They are meaningful in any situation. 13

It is also important to realize that it is only because language units are meaningful in any situation, real or imaginary, past or future—not just in specific immediately present situations such as the actual presence of a leopard predator or the actual presence of an eagle predator—that linguistic units (words) can be meaningfully combined and that one word can modify another. Animal alarm calls are not combinable, nor can one alarm call modify another. Unlike words, they cannot be strung into sentences or clauses. This is a matter of pivotal importance. Bickerton emphasizes that the combinability of words is inseparable from the fact that words can modify each other. The basic units in an animal communication system such as alarm calls are not modifiable, and neither are they combinable. As he argues,

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Signals in ACSs [animal communication systems] are never combined. It would make no sense to combine them. They are not words that have to be combined to form a particular meaning. They are specific responses to particular situations complete in themselves, and more than that, they are responses that have had . . . a demonstrated capacity to improve the fitness of those that used them. 14

It would make absolutely no sense at all for an eagle alarm call to modify a leopard alarm call. Each alarm call is a self-sufficient unit that enhances an animal’s fitness. The meaning of the word-symbol “eagle” in any human language, on the other hand, is enormously enriched when it is combined with other word-symbols that can modify it. Is it the eagle you are seeing right now? Is it the one you saw yesterday? Is it a bald eagle? a golden eagle? or a dead eagle? And so on. As one can see, the combinability and simultaneous modifiability or predicability of word-symbols in languages opens up enormous semantic dimensions inaccessible to any animal communication system devoid of this ability. Elsewhere Bickerton reiterates that in order to create true displacement, true escape from the here-and-now in which all species had hitherto been trapped . . . you first had to make concepts, mental symbols of reference no longer bound by particular instantiations of the things referred to. Only with such abstract symbols could you roam mentally, freely through space and time as we do today, in both language and thought. 15

This is a statement with very deep ramifications that need to be unpacked. First, it is important to note that Langer also saw the connection between the combinability of words in a language and the lack of existential, affective, or motor impact that the particular word-symbols had. In other words, the abstractness of words in a language—their ability to refer to their object even when it is absent—was and is the key to their incredible usefulness. “Abstractive seeing is the foundation of our rationality,” Langer observes, 16 and this implies that the particular word-symbol should not have much visceral or motor impact. The noises we utter to produce words are a lot easier to produce than gestures and require a lot less muscular effort. Moreover, it also very important that word-symbols be uninteresting in themselves for them to have maximum usefulness. Thus Langer goes on to state that a symbol which interests us also as an object is distracting. It does not convey its meaning without obstruction. For example, if the word “plenty” were replaced by a succulent, ripe, real peach, few people could attend entirely to the mere concept of quite enough when confronted with such a symbol. The more barren and indifferent the symbol, the greater is its semantic power. 17

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This abstractness and existential barrenness of word-symbols is the key that enables human beings to enter the infinite imaginational dimensions that symbolizations open up for us to explore. Second, it is important to note that the vast majority of human language units, what we call words or word-symbols, are symbolic. As Bickerton so perceptively notes, animal communication signals are designed to manipulate the hearer—get up that tree fast! Stay out of my territory! Their focus is the here and now, and they make no sense if they refer to events in the past or the future. Whatever information they convey is incidental. Manipulation of the other is central. Language units, on the other hand, “are symbolic because they are designed to convey information. Information can be past, present, and future, here, there, or anywhere.” 18 For this reason, they must be emancipated from the here and now and be able to represent things that are absent such as things in the past or things in the future. Third, both Bickerton’s and Langer’s observations about the abstractness of word-symbols and their existential emancipation from the here and now relate to another very important thing about them—it is the key to their combinability and the ability of one word-symbol to modify another. A vervet monkey that tried to invent rudimentary monkey “language” by combining an eagle alarm call with a leopard alarm would simply be causing his hearers to run down the tree and then immediately reverse themselves and run up the tree again. Let us imagine that a vervet monkey Einstein decided to invent language and create a “sentence” by combining five consecutive eagle alarm calls (run down the tree) with three consecutive leopard alarm calls (run up the tree). This would be both totally nonsensical and, from an evolutionary standpoint, downright maladaptive. There is also absolutely no way that any of the three leopard alarm calls could be said to predicate or modify the five eagle alarm calls in our imaginary example. To speak of such a thing would be utterly senseless and meaningless in the context of the vervet monkey animal communication system. It is an interesting paradox that our capacity for abstraction and existential distance from visceral involvement in the here and now not only enables us to symbolize, to combine words into meaningful sentences and for words to modify each other, to create and share with one another narratives such as myths and novels, and to create and share with one another scientific theories, but it also enables us to do something very visceral—to materialize the symbolic and write on human flesh in the form of religiously or hypnotically induced stigmata or psychosomatic lesions. This very visceral activity of materializing the symbolic presupposes not only decoupled representation and abstraction from the here and now, but it also presupposes word combinability. Without word-symbol combinability, how could a devout Catholic learn the sacred narratives of Christ’s life and crucifixion and develop the stigmata in imitation of his suffering on the cross? Such things presuppose a

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shared religious narrative based on meaningful combinations of words that all the listeners can understand and share. The precious and remarkable combinability of word-symbols that we so take for granted is therefore not only the key to both the materialization of the symbolic, which we will talk about later, but also the key to the capacity of symbols to direct psychical energy in specific ways. In short, it is one of the keys to the remarkable kinds of power that symbols and symbolization make manifest in a variety of psychosomatic and mystical experiences. This abstractness and affective barrenness of word-symbols plus their combinability and capacity to modify one another are also the twin foundations for all scientific theoretical activity and discoveries. Mystical and psychosomatic “power” and scientific theories are really not as far apart as one might think, for they both presuppose the combinability of word-symbols, their capacity for predication, and the abstraction from the here and now that makes these word-symbols combinable and able to modify one another. FOCUSING AND SHARING ATTENTION THROUGH HUMAN LANGUAGE We have repeatedly observed that the one thing that is absolutely essential if symbolic communication and symbolic thinking are to become manifest is that there be a largely unconscious process of abstraction from visceral involvement in the here and now. 19 We have called this largely unconscious process of abstraction from the here and now “decoupled representation.” Once this capacity for decoupled representation evolved so that it had become largely unconscious and habitual, language became possible, and with it came a significantly enhanced ability for our ancestors to both focus and share attention through speech (or sign language). Merlin Donald points to this attentional function of language when he asserts that “words and sentences . . . define reality. They focus our attention. They elevate our awareness of what they specify.” 20 Not only do words and sentences focus our attention, but they also allow us to share attention and to share our imaginational creations, our names for things, our innermost thoughts, dreams, feelings, and narratives with one another. 21 The result of this collective focusing and sharing of attention through language is the stupendous cultural edifice that we call civilization. This advancement of shared knowledge and technical skills mediated by language comes at a cost insofar as there are now many serious and tempting sources of noisy distractions that can hinder the focusing of attention—omnipresent music at the supermarket, restaurant, or gas station; the mindless rubbish of advertising jingles and images; propaganda; television and radio entertainments; video game distractions; worries about the future; regrets about the

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past; electronic billboards; and the omnipresent internal dialogue that most of us carry on within ourselves almost all the time. What happens if one tries to consciously produce a state of more deeply focused attention where these noisy or worrisome distractions are deliberately suppressed? What I am suggesting here is that decoupled representation is a comparatively “weak” mode of abstraction from the environment and is also, as Langer and others point out, largely unconscious. Even so, this seemingly “superficial” form of abstraction from the here and now has had tremendous evolutionary consequences and has opened up all kinds of new imaginational dimensions as well as cultural worlds and artifacts to share and explore. What would happen if someone were to deliberately cultivate stronger and deeper kinds of abstraction from the here and now than those produced by decoupled representation, ones that involved one-pointedly focusing attention and a suppression of sensory inputs and/or a cessation of the internal dialogue? This “deeper” kind of abstraction from the here and now has been an important part of human cultural and religious life for many centuries, if not millennia, and is called trance induction. As one might expect, trance induction, like its weaker predecessor, decoupled representation, has similar transformative effects. Like decoupled representation, it too opens up new imaginational worlds and “dimensions” of experience for humankind to explore, but many of these are hidden from those who never go beyond what is accessible to decoupled representation. These new experiences, sensitivities, and abilities opened up through trance induction are normally inaccessible to the five senses in our ordinary waking state, and they are also normally inaccessible to those who do not cultivate trance. These new phenomena opened up by the cultivation of trance include the visionary realms explored by mystics, shamans, and yogis; sensitivity to various paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, and a sensitivity to auras or colored lights around people and other living things; an ability to “materialize” or empower thoughts and desires in various unusual ways; and the strange experiences that sometimes supervene when suggestions are made to subjects who have been put under conditions of hypnotically induced trance. The important point that I wish to make here is very simple: I am suggesting that the seemingly strange phenomena of the mystical and paranormal experiences and psychosomatic phenomena that I am about to describe are, for the most part, the result of consciously controlling, focusing, and manipulating the same (often unconscious and relatively attenuated) abstractive and attentional processes that make possible decoupled representation and all the symbolic activities that operate in our ordinary waking experience and social intercourse.

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FOCUSING ATTENTION AND THE INDUCTION OF MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE As scholars of religion know, mystics are people who claim that they can cultivate a close connection to spiritual worlds and spiritual beings that exist in realms beyond what is accessible to the five physical senses. They repeatedly stress that direct contact with these spiritual realities requires an exceptional capacity for tightly focusing one’s attention. This involves a rigorous abstraction from mental and sensory distractions. Let us look at a few examples. In the first of his Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, the seventeenthcentury German Protestant mystic Jacob Boehme emphasizes that before anyone can hope to experience the wonders of the heavenly world in this life, it is essential that one “standest still from the thinking of Self and the willing of Self.” He then goes on to elaborate as follows: “When the outward senses and the imagination [are] locked up by holy abstraction, then the Eternal Hearing, Seeing, and Speaking will be revealed in thee, and so God heareth and speaketh through thee.” 22 Hindu practitioners of yoga would agree with Boehme in stressing the central importance of tightly focused attention as the sine qua non for awakening a sensitivity to spiritual things and spiritual powers. For example, the method of yoga that Patanjali describes in his famous Yoga Sutra defines yoga as “the cessations of the turnings of thought,” 23 and he emphasizes that one-pointed mental concentration is the prerequisite for both spiritual liberation and the activation of siddhis, or paranormal powers. Success in this deepening of one’s capacity for “holy abstraction” opens up whole new mystical worlds and experiences to explore. Just as decoupled representation required a kind of abstraction from the here and now that opened up new imaginary and virtual worlds for our first symbolizing ancestors to explore and share, a further deepening of the capacity for abstraction from the environment opens up still other novel dimensions and worlds for mystics and psychics to explore, novel dimensions and worlds that are hidden from most people, who communicate and think symbolically but whose capacity for intense concentration is either undeveloped or underdeveloped. In this context it is worth noting that a capacity for various paranormal perceptions or abilities also seems very closely tied to meditational practices that shut off sensory and imaginational inputs and distractions. Thus Ray Stanford, a psychic who claims that he has been able to see auras “easily and continuously” since he was twenty-one years old, reflects that as he looked back on the gradual maturation of this unusual ability, “the fuller development of seeing auras must have been associated with [his] experience at the time, of developing the ability to go into a meditation-induced unconscious state. From that state clairvoyant information was received.” 24 Upton Sinclair’s wife, Craig, displayed what appears to have been an exceptional ca-

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pacity for telepathic receptivity. In fact, Upton Sinclair’s book Mental Radio was an account of the numerous experiences and experiments that involved Craig as the recipient of images transmitted telepathically either from a distance or by examining pictures in opaque envelopes placed on her solar plexus. 25 At the end of Mental Radio, Craig Sinclair describes her techniques for inducing telepathic receptivity. As one would expect, trance induction was, indeed, a crucial part of her technique. She asserts that to successfully establish telepathic receptivity the most important thing was “to learn the trick of undivided attention, or concentration. . . . The kind of concentration I mean is putting the attention on one object, or one uncomplicated thought, such as joy, or peace, and holding it there steadily. It isn’t thinking; it is inhibiting thought, except for one thought, or one object in thought.” 26 However, she also insists that telepathic receptivity not only requires attention focused on one point, but that it also is extremely important to relax “for strangely enough, a part of concentration is complete relaxation.” 27 This relaxation, she elaborates further, involves “making the body insensitive to all bodily sensation” (as happens in deep sleep) and “the mind a blank.” 28 This last remark strongly suggests that shutting off the internal dialogue we normally conduct silently within our minds was a crucial component of her technique for inducing receptivity. TRANCE INDUCTION AND “MATERIALIZING” WORD-SYMBOL COMBINATIONS One of the common manifestations of successfully focusing attention onepointedly is an experience called bilocation, or out-of-body travel. In this condition of dissociation from one’s physical body, one often finds that one’s thoughts and desires have become peculiarly empowered so that they create the landscape and scenery of the visionary or spiritual worlds that one experiences, and they also serve as the energy source within those worlds. One of the best-known of these out-of-body travelers, the American businessman Robert Monroe, describes this peculiarity in these words: Superseding all appears to be one prime law. [The spiritual world] is a state of being where that which we label thought is the well-spring of existence. It is the vital creative force that produces energy, assembles “matter” into form, and provides channels of perception and communication. . . . As you think so you are. . . . You think movement, and it is fact. 29

Notice carefully Monroe’s contention that not only does “thought” construct the “scenery” of the spiritual worlds he visits, but it also serves as the “force” or “energy” source that assembles spiritual “matter” into the particular shapes and forms it exhibits to the visionary traveler. “Thought” (coupled

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with desire or volition) also serves as (1) the means of locomotion in those worlds as well as (2) a kind of nervous system in the spirit worlds insofar as it provides the channels of perception and communication in those realms. The following striking example illustrates how “thought” coupled with desire apparently served simultaneously as a channel of perception and as a means of locomotion. Monroe informs us that one evening as he began to exteriorize and started to float upward away from his physical body, he thought that he would try to visit his friend Dr. Bradshaw and his wife. Based on the last information he had about Dr. Bradshaw, Monroe assumed that he was bedridden with a bad cold. Since he had never been in the Bradshaw’s bedroom, he decided he would visit his friend in that room, see if he could accurately describe the room, and thereby prove that he was able to acquire accurate knowledge of events at a distant location by extraphysical means while out of his body. 30 After having a sensation of diving into a tunnel, laboriously climbing uphill, and seeing the apparition of a Buddha-like figure sitting cross-legged, he then felt a sudden surge of energy and then saw Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw outside the house. Dr. Bradshaw was wearing a light overcoat and hat, and his wife was wearing a dark coat and dark clothes. They were walking toward a smaller building that was like a garage. What was strange about this out-of-body visit was that Dr. Bradshaw was supposed to be ill and in bed and yet here he was outdoors. After this, Monroe returned to his body, took note of the time when he had been exteriorized, and then a few hours later he and his wife called the Bradshaws, and in a casual offhand way Monroe asked Mrs. Bradshaw what she and her husband had been doing between four and five o’clock that afternoon. 31 Monroe was especially surprised to learn that the Bradshaws had, indeed, both been outside, that Mrs. Bradshaw had decided to go to the post office, and that Mr. Bradshaw thought that it would do him good to get out of the house, accompany her to the post office, and get some fresh air. They really did walk from the house to the garage. When Monroe asked them what they had each been wearing, Mrs. Bradshaw told him she had been wearing black slacks with a red sweater, which she had worn under her black car coat. Dr. Bradshaw was wearing a light hat and a light-colored topcoat. 32 Monroe concluded that he had obtained veridical information by extrasensory means. First, contrary to expectation, he had found Dr. Bradshaw outside rather than in bed. Second, the Bradshaws had indeed been walking to a garage-like building, and, third, the clothes they wore closely matched what Monroe had seen each of them wearing while he was exteriorized. Furthermore, in his vision Monroe had noticed that Dr. Bradshaw had been following his wife, which is indeed what happened in actuality at the time—she had decided to go to the post office before it closed, and Dr. Bradshaw decide to follow her and come along for the ride. 33

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If we assume that Monroe accurately described and interpreted what he saw during this particular out-of-body experience, we have a fascinating example of how, while exteriorized, a grammatically sound combination of unvocalized English word-symbols served not only as a means of locomotion but also as a channel of perception. The thought, a combination of English word-symbols having a form somewhat like this: “I want to visit Dr. Bradshaw”—coupled with the desire to complete the action expressed in the grammatically correct sentence—seems to have been sufficient to focus a peculiar kind of psychic energy in such a specific way as to direct Monroe to where Dr. Bradshaw actually was and also to provide him with veridical information about what the doctor and his wife were actually doing and wearing. Here we see that the combinability of word-symbols, combined in grammatically correct ways into a thought, and then psychically “charged” with affect or desire can serve as a source of energy, locomotion, and, apparently, veridical perception. Under conditions of exteriorization and the focused attention necessary to bring this exteriorization about, this thought (coupled with the desire to complete the action suggested by the thought) was able to “materialize” itself into a veridical perception of its object. These reflections suggest that naming things and combining them into grammatically coherent sentences is a far more powerful and subtle phenomenon than we think. Under special circumstances, especially those involving the mind in tightly focusing attention, the symbolic processes going on in language are capable of directing a peculiar kind of psychical energy or force. Word-symbols and the grammatical rules for combining them not only allow us to name things, to create meaningful sentences that allow the speakers of a language to communicate with one another and share their thoughts and dreams with one another in speech, in sign language, and in print, but these word-symbols and the grammatical rules that allow them to combine in meaningful ways are also sources of a peculiar kind of energy that sometimes manifests itself in certain types of mystical experiences and paranormal phenomena. The way that the unvocalized words in the thought are combined and modified by one another plays a crucial role in the way psychic energy is directed and focused. In the particular circumstances we have just described, unvocalized word-symbols and the ways that they are combined and modify one another do significantly more than just convey information or express a desire. One will recall that Susanne Langer contended that symbols were vehicles for conceptions. 34 I am suggesting that, in addition, word-symbols can, under special conditions such as out-of-body travel and/or deep trance, also serve as vehicles for directing and focusing energy.

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PHOTISMS AND THE “MATERIALIZATION” OF WORD-SYMBOL COMBINATIONS Another common phenomenon that accompanies both mystical experiences and a proclivity to manifest various paranormal sensitivities and abilities is photism, the vivid presence of a wide variety of peculiar kinds of interior illumination that often marks the transition to a state of consciousness where spiritual realities normally hidden from ordinary waking consciousness suddenly become manifest. 35 Though there have been some important recent studies on mystical illumination, 36 scholars of comparative mysticism have shown little interest in a more detailed look at either the human aura or the diaphanous and often luminous “spiritual body” that so often accompanies a heightened sensitivity to worlds beyond the domain of ordinary waking consciousness. What is most striking about both the human aura and the socalled spiritual body is that both are very sensitive to their owner’s thoughts, desires, and emotions. In other words, just as the spiritual landscapes perceived during out-of-body experiences seem to be materializations of the thoughts and desires of the travelers who journey there or the beings that inhabit those extrasensory worlds, one could say much the same thing about some of the luminous phenomena encountered during such experiences. For example, the Texas psychic Ray Stanford, who claims that he has seen auras around people easily and almost continuously since the age of twenty-one, tells us that we should “visualize the human body as a transparent mannequin that has the capacity to transmit any color(s) from within itself, dependent on how the ‘occupant’ is thinking or feeling throughout the body.” 37 Stanford also mentions that in adults, but rarely in children, various “thought-forms” condense like pictures in the aura and indicate the dominant attachments, memories, fears, and hang-ups that a person has. 38 Although Stanford mentions that the human aura is much more sensitive to our thoughts than the physical body is, he cautions that “aura viewing is not like reading one’s conscious thoughts; it is more like reading ones feelings, desires, past experiences, and physical conditions.” 39 Although he can occasionally look at a person’s aura and pick up “direct thoughts, words, and even numbers,” 40 it is conditions and thoughts with the greatest emotional impact that have the greatest transformative impact on the appearance of the aura and the spirit body. As Stanford makes clear, the affective rather than the intellectual or conceptual elements in thinking and imagining have the greatest impact on shaping the aura and spiritual body. Stanford is by no means the only person who perceives auras and insists that they are constructed out of their owners’ thoughts and desires. An anonymous Victorian clairvoyant who not only saw auras or lights around people but also frequently saw spirits of the dead allowed his 1880s childhood diary to be posthumously published under the title The Boy Who Saw True. In this

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childhood diary he mentions that many times during his childhood, the spirit of his deceased grandfather would appear to him, converse with him, and often give him sage advice. One time he decided to ask his grandfather’s spirit a question that one of his friends had posed to him: If ghosts are supposed to be the spirits of dead people, why do they have clothes on? So I thought I’d ask Grandpa why he wasn’t naked, or why all spirits aren’t naked. And this seemed to tickle him a lot. But I couldn’t catch him out, he is too sharp. He said, “Do you think of yourself as going about naked?” So I said, “No, I don’t.” Then he said, “Well, neither do we. I have just told you my lad, that we look (appear) as we think of ourselves.” 41

So much for nudity in the spirit world! Like Robert Monroe, the great twelfth-century Muslim mystic and martyr Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi (1151–91) made a connection between the empowerment and materialization of the imagination and (1) out-of-body experiences and (2) photism. In this case the photism referred to the luminous nature of the mystic’s subtle body when it succeeds in escaping the confines of the physical body. He observed that when a mystic learns how to cast off the tunic of his physical body, He ascends towards the Light at will, and, if it pleases him, he can manifest himself in whatever form he chooses. This power is produced in him by the auroral Light (nur shariq) that irradiates his person. . . . When [the soul] has undergone the action of light and put on the robe of auroral Light, it too is able to influence and act; it makes a sign and the sign is obeyed; it imagines and what it imagines comes to pass accordingly. 42

As was the case with Ray Stanford and the anonymous author of The Boy Who Saw True, Suhrawardi saw the close connection between the luminous aura that surrounds the mystic’s exteriorized subtle body and its ability to “materialize” or empower that person’s thoughts and wishes. We can see once again the vital importance that the combinability of word-symbols and their capacity to modify one another plays in materializing thoughts and desires in mystical and paranormal experiences. As was the case with out-of-body experiences, certain luminous phenomena like auras and the luminosity surrounding subtle bodies are extremely sensitive to an individual’s thoughts, desires, and imaginings. Needless to say, such thoughts, longings, and imaginings are ultimately constructed out of unvocalized combinations of word-symbols that have simultaneously been psychically “charged” or “cathected” with emotion or desire. Thinking, desiring, and imagining are all activities that silently make use of word combinations

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to formulate a thought or a desire or to construct a creation of the imagination. FOCUSING ATTENTION AND THE HYPNOTIC CREATION OF STIGMATA Psychoanalytic literature presents us with some interesting examples of physical lesions or stigmata that have developed in response to hypnotic trance and the implantation of a suggestion while in that state of trance. For example, in 1932 the German psychiatrist Albert Lechler found that, using hypnotic suggestion, he could induce the stigmata of Christ’s wounds on both the feet and the hands of one of his more suggestible patients, Elizabeth K. Over several hours of observation, he actually watched these stigmata on her hands and feet develop and ooze blood. He also noticed that these hypnotically induced wounds faded when her concentration began to relax. Thus he noted that if she fell asleep, the wounds began to go away, but they would intensify again once he woke her up, hypnotized her again, and implanted fresh suggestions that she develop the wounds. 43 An American psychiatrist, William Needles, also reported an example from nineteenth-century medical literature of a skin lesion that was induced by hypnotic suggestion in a very suggestible young man. The young man was told after being hypnotized that a glowing hot coin was being laid on the back of his hand and that a blister would appear on the site of the coin. When the coin was removed, a red area the size of the coin actually appeared. The experimenters bandaged the lesion and then observed it a few hours later. When the bandage was removed, they noted that there was a blister where the coin had been placed. 44 From these examples, it is clear that three things are necessary for the hypnotist’s suggestion to write itself on the hypnotized patient’s flesh: (1) the condition of focused attention or trance induced by hypnosis, (2) a deeply suggestible patient, and (3) a suggestion from the hypnotist that is intelligible to the patient (e.g., a suggestion in Chinese or Arabic to a patient who speaks only German will not be effective). What is of particular interest here is that it is absolutely essential that the hypnotist’s suggestion be intelligible to the patient. This means that both the patient and the hypnotist must share the same language in order for the hypnotist’s suggestions to write themselves on the patient’s flesh in the form of stigmata. Here we see how important the combinability of words and their capacity to modify one another really are in generating psychosomatic symptoms. We have seen that words are combinable thanks to decoupled representation and the abstraction from the here and now that makes it and all symbolization possible. If this combinability of words did not exist—and if this combinability of words were not made mutually meaningful and understand-

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able to both participants by the grammar and syntax rules of the language that they share—this somatic exteriorization of the hypnotist’s suggestion would not be possible. Exactly how the words exert their “magic” on the body’s physiological and chemical processes to bring about the lesions in the particular manner specified in the hypnotist’s suggestion is no doubt an extremely complicated process well beyond our present understanding of how chemistry, physiology, and the mind interface in the generation of psychosomatic symptoms and lesions. Nevertheless, as our examples show, such interfacing does occur, and it is clearly and necessarily connected to (1) those mental processes involved in symbolization and to (2) the grammar and syntax rules of the language that allow the combinability of word-symbols to become mutually comprehensible to those who speak it. UNCRITICAL ACCEPTANCE OF AUTHORITY AND THE “MATERIALIZATION” OF THE SYMBOLIC: THE PLACEBO AND NOCEBO EFFECTS It is interesting to note that the uncritical acceptance of what an authority figure claims to be true can sometimes duplicate many of the same psychosomatic effects that hypnotic trance is capable of producing even though there is no evidence of trance induction. This suggests that both hypnotic trance and uncritical acceptance of authority seem capable of shaping the symbolic processes of the human mind in similar ways. An examination of the wellknown placebo effect and its less known opposite, the nocebo effect, will serve as an illustration of this parallelism. In both the placebo effect and the nocebo effect, the power of suggestion from a medical authority figure whom the patient accepts as such creates real physical effects. In the placebo effect, the patient’s belief that he or she has been given a particular drug often produces many of the drug’s beneficial physical effects even though in actual fact the patient may only have received a sugar pill or some other chemically inert substitute for the drug. In the lessknown nocebo effect, a person can be harmed by the mistaken belief that he or she has taken the drug when, in reality, the patient was not given the drug at all. In one particularly striking example of the nocebo effect, a suicidal young man took twenty-nine inert capsules during a clinical trial, thinking that the twenty-nine pills he swallowed were the active antidepressant drug. The results of the patient’s mistaken belief that he had taken a fatal overdose were dramatic: his blood pressure shot down to 80/40, and his heart rate went up to 110 beats per minute with rapid respirations. When, a few hours later, the patient learned from the doctor that he had taken the placebo rather than the active drug, he became tearfully relieved, and within a few minutes he was fully alert with normal blood pressure and normal heart rate. 45 What is

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significant for our purposes in both the placebo effect and the nocebo effect is that the patient’s symbolically mediated thoughts and beliefs are able to hijack the body’s chemical and physiological processes in order to create a medical condition that corresponds rather closely to what the patient believes should have happened. Belief shapes physiology and chemistry in each instance. Once again it is important to note that what lies at the basis of these two psychosomatic effects is the combinability of words-symbols made meaningful and intelligible through a shared language between patient and the medical personnel whose authority he or she accepts uncritically. In both hypnotically induced trance and in the placebo and nocebo effects that are produced in the absence of trance, the respective psychosomatic manifestations depend on some form of linguistic communication between the patient and either the hypnotist or the medical authority figure. The particular symptoms in our nocebo-effect patient depended on the fact that somehow the patient internalized the information contained in the following combination of words: “Twenty-nine pills of antidepressant X will probably cause death.” This may have come about from reading the warning label on the medicine bottle or from warnings conveyed to him by medical personnel. Regardless of exactly how he picked up this information, the important thing to note is that without the combinability of words and their capacity for predication, the nocebo effect (and the placebo effect) would not be possible. It is a beautiful example of how combinations of word-symbols can not only convey information but also focus and direct energy in the very specific ways that are shaped by the patient’s particular expectations. Cultural and institutional environments can take the place of a hypnotist and do essentially the same thing that the hypnotist can do, that is, they also can serve as a source of suggestions, thoughts, desires, and ideas that can “materialize” and write themselves on human flesh. For example, there is a long tradition in the Catholic Church since the time of Saint Francis of Assisi of devout men and women developing the holy stigmata, or wounds of Christ’s crucifixion, on their hands and feet (and sometimes on their sides). In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Mediterranean Catholic monastic world was especially susceptible to the idea that an individual’s voluntary suffering on behalf of others through rigorous bodily mortification could be a way of cleansing the world and purifying it of sin. This religious ideal seems to have been especially influential in the spirituality of such pious latenineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century Catholics as Saint Therese of Lisieux and the famous Italian stigmatics Saint Gemma Galgani and Padre Pio. The more famous of the latter two stigmatics, the Capuchin friar Padre Pio, was especially influenced by this religious ideal of intense self-mortification in imitation of Christ’s redemptive death and sufferings. Writing to one of his spiritual daughters, he stressed to her that “anyone who wants to be

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a true Christian” must rigorously mortify the flesh. After all, Christians must never forget that, for the love of humanity, Jesus mortified his entire body on the cross. This is the noble example we must follow. Moreover, “this mortification must be constant and steady.” 46 Associated with this ideal of severe voluntary suffering in imitation of Christ’s model of Christian perfection was the idea in the air at the time that devout Catholics ought to offer themselves as “victims of divine love.” This intense devotion to Jesus Christ and an eager willingness to offer themselves as victims to make amends for sinners characterized the piety of Padre Pio, and it was eventually followed first by visionary appearances of Jesus and then by the appearance of the physical stigmata of Christ’s fleshly wounds. 47 From 1918 until his death in 1968, Padre Pio “had persistent bleeding wounds in his hands.” 48 With Padre Pio four things appear to have converged to produce the physical stigmata of Christ’s bleeding wounds on his flesh: (1) an intense devotion to Christ, (2) a deep and passionate commitment to imitate Christ’s physical sufferings, (3) a complete acceptance of the authority of both the Bible and the church and their respective teachings, 49 and (4) an exceptional sensitivity to visionary experiences. I suggest that the first three of these items functioned in much the same way as deliberate trance induction since they operated as a powerful means of focusing Padre Pio’s attention on the sufferings of Christ. Once again, it is important to mention that the combinability of word-symbols plays an essential role in making the physical stigmata possible. Without the narratives of Christ’s passion in the Bible and without the narratives of earlier saints like Saint Francis of Assisi, who also served as models for imitation, it is probably safe to say that this stigmatization could never have taken place. CONCLUDING REMARKS This chapter has attempted to defamiliarize the familiar, to make strange what seems so ordinary to us. We take for granted human language and the words (or more properly, the word-symbols) with which it names things, that it combines in spoken sentences or unvocalized thoughts, and that it uses to modify other word-symbols. But further reflection shows that words and the things constructed with them—sentences, thoughts, daydreams, theories, ideas—are really much stranger than they seem. Words do more than allow us to name things, allow us to talk about things, form conceptions about things, or convey information. Under the special conditions that I have described here, words also display a limited but significant ability to direct and focus psychic energy, to materialize thoughts and desires. These materializations significantly depend on the way that the word-symbols in thoughts and desires (or a

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hypnotist’s suggestions or a doctor’s warnings) combine with one another and modify one another. This chapter has also suggested that the primordial phenomenon that gave rise to language—and all other forms of symbolization, since language appears to be the primordial form of symbolization on which all other forms of symbolization build—was decoupled representation with its capacity to abstract the human animal from an excessive immersion in the here and now. This abstraction from the here and now threw us into a plenitude of new worlds, new imaginational worlds for humans to create, enlarge, and explore, new cultural worlds, and new religious worlds to satisfy our nascent hunger for meaning and purpose. I have suggested that what mystics and “psychics” do is to intensify the symbolic processes that were first activated by decoupled representation. However, they take the abstractive process much further than ordinary people do by tightly focusing attention through meditational practices, trance induction, or by vigorous participation in collective ritual action. In so doing, they open still more “inner infinities” and imaginational and spiritual worlds for humans to explore, worlds that are normally inaccessible to those who cannot focus attention one-pointedly. Decoupled representation began the process of symbolization and the revelation of new imaginational worlds and inner infinities for the human species to explore. Mystics and psychics simply deepen and extend what decoupled representation first began. In the process of doing this, some of them begin to realize, as did Eileen Garrett, that the thoughts of people are forms of light and that “thoughts are dimensional things which become clothed with form and life as they are born.” 50 NOTES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

Cassirer, Essay on Man, 24, italics in original. Ibid., 26. Deacon, Symbolic Species, 21–22. Campbell, “Symbol without Meaning,” 178. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 72. Ibid., 60–61, italics in original. Ibid., 64. Ibid., 72. Sterelny, Thought in a Hostile World, 4. Hurford, Origins of Meaning, 240. Greenspan, First Idea, 37, my emphasis. Bickerton, Adam’s Tongue, 50. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 217, my emphasis. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 72. Ibid., 75, emphasis in the original. Bickerton, Adam’s Tongue, 49. See the quote from Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 72, at note 9.

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20. Donald, Mind So Rare, 294, emphasis in the original. 21. Ibid., 296. 22. Boehme, Dialogues on the Supersensual Life, 13–14. 23. Patanjali, Yoga, the Discipline of Freedom, 1:2. 24. Stanford, What Your Aura Tells Me, 37. 25. Paranormal perception through the solar plexus or from some other location like the space between the eyes, the top of the head, or the back of the head is a common and fascinating theme in the literature on paranormal perception and deserves a separate article to do it justice. For examples of paranormal perception through the solar plexus, see Sinclair, Mental Radio, 5; Kerner, Seeress of Prevorst, 76, 97, 108 (on p. 108, Kerner states that “when she was perfectly clairvoyante [sic], she said her thoughts proceeded wholly from the epigastric region”); Worrall and Worrall, Gift of Healing, 6. Olga Worrall states, “You might like to know I hear clairaudiently through the top of my head and I see clairvoyantly through my forehead.” She then goes on to say, “When I’m in a state of strong clairvoyance I feel dull at the base of my head—I feel as if everything has been blocked off in that area but everything is stimulated at the top of my head” (both quotations from Worrall and Worrall, Explore Your Psychic World, 27). 26. Sinclair, Mental Radio, 124. 27. Ibid., 125. 28. Ibid., 126. 29. Monroe, Journeys out of the Body, 74, my emphasis; see also Muldoon and Carrington, Projection of the Astral Body, 286–87, for very similar observations of how thoughts and desires construct the scenery of the “astral” plane—as well as one’s clothing! 30. Monroe, Journeys out of the Body, 46–47. 31. Ibid., 47. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 47–48. 34. See the discussion in the section “Decoupled Representation: The Key Step toward Humankind’s Capacity for Symbolization”; and Langer, Philosophy in a New Key, 60–61. 35. Eliade, “Spirit, Light, and Seed,” 94. Eliade summarizes his findings by observing that despite the many culturally conditioned forms it takes, “the experience of Light radically changes the ontological condition of the subject by opening him to the world of the Spirit” (ibid.). 36. For instance, see the collection of essays in Kapstein, Presence of Light. 37. Stanford, What Your Aura Tells Me, 21, my emphasis. 38. Ibid., 23. 39. Ibid., my emphasis. 40. Ibid., 90. 41. Boy Who Saw True, 98, my emphasis. 42. Quoted in Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, 124–25. 43. Wilson, Stigmata, 95–96. 44. Described in Needles, “Stigmata,” 38. 45. Reeves et al., “Nocebo Effects,” 275–76. 46. Ruffin, Padre Pio, 52, my emphasis. 47. For Padre Pio, see Ruffin, Padre Pio, 78–79, where in a vision both Jesus and Mary appeared to him and gave him wounds. Toward the end of the war, he developed a more intense form of the stigmata after he offered himself as a victim for ending the war and the influenza pandemic. Again the stigmata were preceded by a vision of Christ (ibid., 151–55). 48. Ibid., 160. 49. The issue of authority is often an important factor promoting the materialization of thoughts and desires. It is important not to forget that both the nocebo effect and the placebo effect assume the full acceptance of the medical authority of the physician. The physician must be believed for the effects to become manifest. In a similar fashion, hypnotism is most effective when the subject is maximally suggestible, i.e., willing to accept the suggestions of the hypnotist. There must be no skepticism about the hypnotist’s authority. 50. Garrett, Adventures in the Supernormal, 86–87.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Anonymous. The Boy Who Saw True. London: Neville Spearman, 1953. Bickerton, Derek. Adam’s Tongue. New York: Hill & Wang, 2009. Boehme, Jacob. Dialogues on the Supersensual Life. London: Methuen, 1901. Campbell, Joseph. “The Symbol without Meaning.” Chapter 5 in The Flight of the Wild Gander. New York: Viking Press, 1969. Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1944. Corbin, Henri. Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977. Deacon, Terrence. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of Language and the Brain. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997. Donald, Merlin. A Mind So Rare: The Evolution of Human Consciousness. New York: W. W. Norton, 2001. Eliade, Mircea. “Spirit, Light, and Seed.” Chapter 6 in Occultism, Witchcraft, and Cultural Fashions: Essays in Comparative Religions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976. Garrett, Eileen. Adventures in the Supernormal: A Personal Memoir. New York: Creative Age Press, 1949. Greenspan, Stanley I. The First Idea. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2004. Hurford, James R. The Origins of Meaning. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Kapstein, Matthew T., ed. The Presence of Light: Divine Radiance and Religious Experience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Kerner, Justinius C. The Seeress of Prevorst. Translated by Mrs. [Catherine] Crowe. London: J. C. Moore, 1845. Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. Monroe, Robert. Journeys out of the Body. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. Muldoon, Sylvan, and Hereward Carrington. The Projection of the Astral Body. New York: Samuel Weiser, 1974. Needles, William. “Stigmata Occurring in the Course of Psychoanalysis.” Psychoanalytic Quarterly 12, no. 1 (1943): 23–39. Patanjali. Yoga, the Discipline of Freedom: The Yoga Sutra Attributed to Patanjali. Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. Reeves, Roy R., Mark E. Ladner, Roy H. Hart, and Randy S. Burke. “Nocebo Effects with Antidepressant Clinical Drug Trial Placebos.” General Hospital Psychiatry 29, no. 3 (May–June 2007): 275–77. Ruffin, C. Bernard. Padre Pio: The True Story. Rev. and expanded ed. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1991. Sinclair, Upton. Mental Radio. Preface by Albert Einstein. New York: Collier Books, 1971. Stanford, Ray. What Your Aura Tells Me. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977. Sterelny, Kim. Thought in a Hostile World: The Evolution of Human Cognition. Malden, MA; Blackwell, 2003. Wilson, Ian. Stigmata: An Investigation into the Mysterious Appearance of Christ’s Wounds in Hundreds of People from Medieval Italy to Modern America. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989. Worrall, Ambrose, and Olga Worrall. Explore Your Psychic World. With Will Oursler. New York: Harper & Row, 1970. ———. The Gift of Healing. New York: Harper & Row, 1965.

Chapter Four

Words and Images of a Transcendent Inner Mysterion Mysticism in Contemporary Western Literature and Art Ori Z. Soltes

THE CHALLENGES AND PARADOXES OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE The goal of the Abrahamic mystic is to achieve a kind of union with the innermost, hiddenmost recess of God—the mysterion—that she or he believes (a) exists; (b) is not accessible to garden-variety practitioners of religion and their leaders; and (c) must be accessed by some esoteric method known only to mystics. 1 This triple notion is fraught with paradoxes and complications. Paradox begins with the implied subdivisibility of God between an “inner” and an “outer” aspect, which for Judaism and Islam seems inherently heretical, albeit for Christianity this resonates within its mainstream understanding of God as triune. The second paradox is that one may be seeking not outside but within oneself for the mysterion, since each of us is believed to have a bit of God embedded within us, as descendants of the Adam into whom God breathed God’s n’shama/psyche/anima (Gen. 2:7), turning a clod of anthropomorphic earth (adamah) into a breathing, be-souled, free-willpossessing being. Thus ek-stasis—being outside one’s ordinary state of being—may in fact be en-stasis (being deep within one’s own being, even deeper than the self); ecstasy may be enstasy. This begets a series of complications, particularly as one recognizes that another way of articulating the mystic’s goal of becoming one with the One is that she or he wishes to be filled with God. In that case—in order to make 93

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“space” for God—one must empty oneself of self. Moreover, the ultimate goal is not actually to achieve that union and be filled with God, but to do so in order to benefit and improve the community around one (be that community a dozen followers or all humanity). So if one approaches the mystical process simply to gain enlightenment, one remains too filled with self—too selfish—to succeed. This in turn leads to a triple challenge and a triple danger. The triple challenge is to find the means of gaining access to the mysterion—different traditions prescribe different methods; to find the means, having emptied oneself of self, of regaining that self so that one can return from this condition of ekstasis/enstasis; and to find the means of expressing what that experience has been in order to share its benefits. The triple danger is that in not being able to “come back”—because one has become so separated from the self that one cannot regain it, or because the experience of mergence with God is so pleasurable that one doesn’t wish to “return”—and in remaining disconnected from the community and the world of the here and now, one apostasizes or goes mad or dies. Not surprisingly, then, mainstream leaders in all three traditions—Jewish, Christian, and Muslim—tend to push their constituents away from the pursuit of mystical practice. That practice represents a danger to every individual who engages in it (although the one who engages would assert that the rewards are more than worth the risks); and it represents a danger to the community, since if everyone were traveling his or her own spiritual route rather than functioning as a congregation led by a trained leader, spiritual chaos could ensue and behavior that offends God could result. As a practical matter, if everyone became a mystic, the mainstream leadership would be out of work. LITERARY EXPLORATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS: ARRIVING AT JORGE LUIS BORGES These issues are explored in mystical literature throughout the centuries. In the contemporary world of the twentieth through early twenty-first centuries—particularly in the aftermath of the two world wars, the Holocaust, and the double atomic blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki—an ever-increasing number of writers and visual artists have explored mysticism, both its potential rewards and its dangers, in diverse forms of expression. Some works are overt retellings of particular tales within the Abrahamic mystical canon. An example is S. Ansky’s play The Dybbuk (1914), the narrative of which is constructed around the Lurianic notion of how the immortal human soul functions—in this case, with unfinished spiritual business in our world, not only can it not finalize its journey into the next world,

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but it inhabits someone else’s body until that business is complete. 2 More recent examples include Peter Brook’s rendering of ‘Attar’s Conference of the Birds as a performance work (1973) and Howard Schwartz’s The Four Who Entered Paradise (1995), a novella that offers a mind-stretching and poetic meditation—a modern midrash—on the journey into the Pardes 3 undertaken by Rabbis Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuyah, and Akiva, from which only Rabbi Akiva returned intact. Others have used ideas from the mystical tradition to spin a tale in its own direction. For instance, Gustav Meyrink’s The Golem (1914) uses the story of Judah Loew (1520/25–1609), the Prague mystic and creator of the Golem, as a point of departure for a darkly picaresque novel whose main character seems swallowed by increasingly hallucinatory experiences. More recently, the renowned Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) has made use of kabbalistic motifs in any number of his “entertainments,” as he called his short stories. In “Death and the Compass” (1942), his main character, a renowned detective named Lönnrot who works in a city that resembles Buenos Aires, is assigned to the case of a rabbi murdered in a hotel room on December 3. A cryptic note sits in the rabbi’s typewriter: “The first letter of the Name has been uttered,” which Lönnrot recognizes as an allusion to the Tetragrammaton, the ineffable four-letter name of God (in Hebrew; these are transliterated to Latin letters as YHVH)—the proper pronunciation of which was known only to the high priest in the temple in Jerusalem when it still stood and came thereafter to be associated with the messiah in the Jewish tradition. It is the sort of esoteric knowledge that a successful mystic would possess. Precisely one month later, on the third of January, a second murder takes place, and a message is left stating that “the second letter of the Name has been uttered.” A third murder—on the third of February—is accompanied by the message “the last letter of the Name has been uttered.” 4 Lönnrot, who at the first crime scene had connected the murder with his criminal nemesis, Red Scharlach, is alone in recognizing at the third site that the murders are probably not finished, since he knows that there are four letters in the Divine Name, albeit the second and the fourth are the same letter. Moreover, he reasons that the murders have actually taken place on the fourth, not the third of each of the succeeding months, since on the Jewish calendar the day begins at sunset and all three murders have taken place after sunset. So he expects one more killing the following month. He receives an anonymous tip suggesting that he look at the map, where he will see that the three murders describe an equilateral triangle. This enables him to shape a rhombus with the presumed fourth murder to take place in the south of the city—at the castle of Triste-le-Roi. Lönnrot arrives a day early at that location with the intention of surprising the murderer but is instead surprised in the dark by two henchmen as Schar-

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lach emerges from the shadows. It turns out that Lönnrot had arrested Scharlach’s brother, who was subsequently executed for his crimes, and that Scharlach had sworn revenge. While the initial murder had been unintended, Scharlach knows Lönnrot’s intellective proclivities; having read the published police reports and thus knowing that Lönnrot has been following a kabbalistic pattern to track the murderer(s), he has continued to elaborate the pattern—and supplied the anonymous tip—in order to entice his real intended victim to his death. Lönnrot calmly points out that Scharlach has erred in shaping such an elaborate pattern: instead of kabbalah, he should simply have followed philosophy and, following a straight line instead of a rhombus, should have simply committed each murder so that the space between the first two would be twice that of the second and the third, which would be twice that of the third and the fourth. This would have articulated a Zeno’s Paradox pattern of murder, whereby as the distance between two point continues to be halved, one never arrives at one’s destination (there is always half of the previous section of the journey remaining to be traversed, however infinitesimal). That paradox offers a kind of echo of the kabbalistic paradox that, however intimately close one comes to the mysterion, there is always a veil—called a pargod—however infinitesimally thin, separating one from it. Scharlach promises that he will trap Lönnrot in such a labyrinth in their next incarnation. He then shoots him, completing the spate of murders. It may not be mere coincidence that this last murder takes place in the south, in the castle called “sadness of the king,” since for Borges that direction frequently is used to indicate the Argentine frontier and thus the realm of the unknown and unpredictable. There LönnRed is murdered by Red Scarlet (“rot” meaning “red” and “Scharlach” meaning “scarlet” in German)—their names are reflections of each other, reminiscent of how, in Attar’s Conference of the Birds, when the thirty surviving birds arrive over seven mountains and valleys to the palace of the simurgh, what they find is the image of themselves. 5 The solution to the ineffable Tetragrammaton leads to oblivion. In a different fashion, “The Aleph” (1945) centers its concentric circles of narrative around the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which, the protagonist informs the narrator (who is Borges himself, playing on the Dantean idea of interweaving the persona of the hero/heroic narrator with that of the writer), “is one of the points in space that contains all other points . . . the only place on earth where all places are—seen from every angle, each standing clear, without any confusion or bending. . . . All places in the universe are in the Aleph, . . . all lamps, all sources of light are in it, too.” 6 That is, it is the center of spaceless space, “the pure and boundless godhead,” the mysterion— hidden in the basement of the protagonist, Daneri (his name a tribute to Dante Alighieri, as a combination of both of Dante’s names), who shares this secret with the narrator—the source of all light (with which the universe was

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initiated according to Gen. 1:2): the “not” (eyn) beyond the “limitless” (eyn soph) beyond the “limitless light” (eyn soph or) that is beyond the highest of the kabbalistic sephirot (hidden below the lowest floor of the protagonist’s house) that connect heaven and earth and lead toward the mysterion. Daneri is the cousin of the dead Beatriz Viterbo (another reference to Dante, both by her name—for Beatrice was the beloved of both Dante the poet and Dante the hero in Dante’s Divine Comedy—and in her being both dead and the object of unrequited love for the author/hero). He is outraged because his landlords are proposing to tear down his ancestral house (which is located in the southern part of the city) in order to expand their bar salon. He needs the house with its basement and its Aleph in order to finish the epic poem that he is writing in which every single place on the planet is described in minute detail. After receiving this news by phone, the narrator (Borges) decides to come by to see the Aleph, although he believes that Daneri, whom he despises, is insane. The Aleph is a version of the ineffable mysterion, which Borges, lying on the floor of the basement, is amazed to actually see, on the nineteenth step leading down into it. One might recognize the importance of that number in Muslim mysticism. The so-called miracle of nineteen is manifest in obscure words referring to the number in Qur’an 74:30; in the first five verses of the first revelation in the Qur’an, sura (chapter) 96, which offer a total of nineteen words; in the phrase “in the name of God the beneficent and merciful,” which has (in Arabic) nineteen letters; and in astronomy (a science of great importance to medieval Islam), in which the rotations of the earth and moon coincide every nineteen years. It is the pursuit of the mysterion that drives the narrator “to the ineffable core of [his] story,” in which not only all of space but all of time and his own innermost being (“I saw the circulation of my own dark blood. . . . I saw my own face and my own bowels”) seem to be contained. 7 Nor does Borges forget that the struggle to articulate what the Aleph is, in referring to it as an “Aleph,” is itself a circumlocutionary convenience used by kabbalah, which may be referred to in other mystical traditions by other terms: One Persian speaks of a bird that somehow is all birds [alluding to the simurgh in ‘Attar’s narrative]; Alanus de Insulis [referencing a thirteenth-century French Christian poet and mystic], of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference is nowhere; Ezekiel, of a four-faced angel who at one and the same time moves east and west, north and south [recalling the the lower part of the merkavah in pre-Jewish/Christian/Muslim sacred textuality, found in the first chapter of the book of Ezekiel]. 8

Thus Borges’s “Aleph” is also a centerpiece of crisscrossing elements from diverse mystical traditions. In the end he chooses to torment his nemesis by denying that he has seen the Aleph, implying that Daneri is in fact mad—

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having seen the mysterion he does not or cannot describe it. And in his “postscript” he explains that for the Kabbalah, the letter stands for the Eyn Soph, the pure and boundless godhead; it is also said that it takes the shape of a man pointing to both heaven and earth, in order to show that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher; for Cantor’s Mengenlehre, it is the symbol of transfinite numbers, of which any part is as great as the whole. I would like to know whether Carlos Argentino [Daneri] chose that name or whether he read it—applied to another point where all points converge—in one of the numberless texts that the Aleph in his cellar revealed to him. Incredible as it may seem, I believe that the Aleph of Garay Street was a false Aleph. 9

He notes, among other things, that he suspects that there is more than one Aleph, and he explains why, ending by doubting whether he even saw what he thought he saw. Like a dream barely remembered as we are awakening and more forgotten as we assume full consciousness and finally perhaps entirely forgotten—except the sense of it—by the end of the day, the recollection of the mysterion is nearly impossible. “Does this Aleph exist in the heart of a stone? Did I see it there in the cellar when I saw all things, and have I now forgotten it? Our minds are porous and forgetfulness seeps in; I myself am distorting and losing, under the wearing away of the years, the face of Beatriz.” 10 LITERARY EXPLORATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS: FROM ANDRE SCHWARZ-BART AND CYNTHIA OZICK The Polish-born French novelist Andre Schwarz-Bart (1928–2006) builds his moving Holocaust-centered novel, The Last of the Just (1959), around a different, later Jewish mystical tradition, one that specifically emerges to clarity within the Lurianic school (in Safed, ca. 1570–72) and its successors. 11 That tradition—a subset of the more mainstream tradition regarding the tzaddik (just one), who is recognized as the sacerdotal center of his community—has it that there are, within every generation, thirty-six tzaddikim who are unrecognized not only by those around them but often even by themselves, but due to whose righteousness the world continues to survive humanity’s horrific behavior. Recalling the fact that every Hebrew letter has a numerical value, and that the two letters lamed (= 30) and vav (= 6) together equal thirty-six, the thirtysix righteous ones are called the Lamed-Vav. The number, of course, is precisely double the numerical value of eighteen, the ultimate Hebrew/Jewish symbol of life. For the letter het = eight and the letter yud = ten; together these add up to eighteen, and because together they spell the Hebrew word

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hai (which means “life”), that number is the ultimate Jewish “good-luck” number. “But if just one of them [the Lamed-Vav] were lacking, the suffering of mankind would poison even the souls of the newborn, and humanity would suffocate with a single cry. For the Lamed-Vav are the hearts of the world multiplied, and into them, as into one receptacle, pour all our griefs.” 12 From this beginning Schwarz-Bart traces a thousand years of the history of one tzaddik’s line—which includes one member who, “after fifteen years of that mad solitude, . . . became so popular that a number of stories identify him with the Ba’al Shem Tov himself, of whom he was said to have become the wandering incarnation”—down to the protagonist’s friend Ernie (the last of the just ones). 13 In the end, Ernie suffocates in a Nazi gas chamber. And in the flash that preceded his own annihilation he remembered, happily, the legend of Rabbi Chanina ben Teradion, as Mordecai [Ernie’s grandfather] has recited it: “When the gentle rabbi, wrapped in the scrolls of the Torah, was flung upon the pyre by the Romans for having taught the Law, and when they lit the fagots, the branches still green to make his torture last, his pupils said: ‘Master, what do you see? And Rabbi Chanina answered, ‘I see the parchment burning, but the letters are taking wing.’.” . . “Ah, yes, surely, the letters are taking wing,” Ernie repeated as the flame blazing in his chest suddenly rose to his head. 14

Ultimately, then, this is a Holocaust narrative for which the legend found within late kabbalah is a stepping-off point. Placed against the background not only of centuries of martyrdoms but of the ultimate martyrdom, the Nazi horror, the novel is moving and majestic, an interweave of despair and hope, for “at times one’s heart could break in sorrow. But often, too, preferably in the evening, I can’t help thinking that Ernie Levy, dead six million times, is still alive somewhere, I don’t know where.” 15 One might say that the Holocaust offers the other side of the mystical question regarding the whereabouts of the mysterion. For it asks what role a God considered both all-powerful and all-just in the Abrahamic traditions could have played in the annihilation of over a million and a half children (among others). 16 The theodicy question interweaves the question of what and where humans are when such a catastrophe—devised by humans— emerges. Ernie is a symbol both of humankind and of God—the bridge between the two: a true hidden tzaddik. Death, as noted, can come from the very study of mysticism, through the twists and turns it imposes on and inserts into the mind, with the potential to tear it apart. The American writer Cynthia Ozick (b. 1928) builds her short story “The Pagan Rabbi” (1971) around that fundamental notion: that to study kabbalah or Jewish mysticism in general—to seek an entryway into the hiddenmost, innermost recesses of God—can lead to death or madness or

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apostasy, which are variations of the same fate. And ultimately the rabbi who is the subject of her tale does all three. Isaac Kornfeld, who was “a man of piety and brains, . . . hanged himself in the public park” several weeks short of his thirty-sixth birthday. 17 We recall that thirty-six (the symbolic significance of which we noted earlier) is the age when one ought only to begin studying kabbalah, according to part of the Jewish mystical tradition (the other part asserts that one ought not do so until age forty), lest one’s presumed mental fragility permit the imbalance that would lead inevitably to disaster. Kornfeld, the scholarly father of seven little girls, had, it seems, not only been immersing himself ever more deeply into kabbalah and Hassidut but also allowed that study, with its panhenotheistic possibilities, to lead him with increasing fervor out into nature and English and American Romantic poetry—farther and farther from both the sacred books for which he had developed renown as an interpreter and from his sane, stable center—and beyond panhenotheism to pantheism. 18 His notebook and a letter, given to the narrator by the rabbi’s young widow to read, express his growing struggle to relocate himself within the world—of both matter and spirit. That struggle leads him to apostasy, at least in his widow’s eyes: He was a pagan . . . [and she goes on to read from Rabbi Kornfeld’s words in that letter:] “[at] a watering place, . . . some quick spry boy would happen to glimpse the soul of the spring (which the wild Greeks afterward called naiad), but not knowing of the existence of the free souls he would suppose only that the moon had cast a momentary beam across the water. Loveliness, with the same innocence of accident I discovered thee. Loveliness, Loveliness.” 19

In the increasing pace of this posthumous revelation, the rabbi writes of the need for his “soul [to be] released at once or be lost to sweet air forever.” 20 In his growing madness—or visionary insightfulness—he recounts his embrace (literally) of a tree, seeking its inner spirit and seeking to merge with that spirit: “‘Come, come,’ I called aloud to Nature . . so now let a daughter of Shekhina the Emanation reveal herself to me. Nymph, come now, come now.” 21 His universalistic embrace conflates the pagan terminology and concepts that he has discovered with the terminology of kabbalah in which God itself is manifest as a presence (shekhinah) within our world—the world that God created. This term is of profound importance to the mystic. Its trilateral Hebrew root (SH-KH-N) is identical to that which refers to the Tabernacle (miSHKaN) in which the Tablets of the Law were placed and which, for forty years, guided the children of Israel through the wilderness. Over it hovered the semiabstract, visible/intangible reminders of the abstract, invisible, intangible God’s presence: a pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night. The

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mishkan eventuated as the heart of Solomon’s temple, embedded, as it were, within the Holy of Holies. The word shekhinah is grammatically feminine, moreover, like the grammatical form of “Torah” and “Shabbat.” So for kabbalists of the Lurianic and post-Lurianic schools, the presence of the genderless God within our world came to be thought of as paradoxically female. It is that aspect of God that went into exile with Adam and Eve when the “male” aspect (conveyed by the grammatically male standard biblical and postbiblical names for God, such as El and Elohim and the Tetragrammaton: YHVH) expelled them from the garden of Eden. It was that aspect of God that accompanied the children of Israel in their forty-year journey through the wilderness. It is inherent in all women, and with it the mystic (who in the Jewish tradition throughout history is almost invariably male) seeks a union of spiritual ecstasy. Rabbi Kornfeld experiences a response to this call and access to another reality in the form of a creature that he can hardly describe, whose Other language he can hardly express in ours: “Her sentences came to me not as a series of differentiated frequencies but (impossible to develop this idea in language) as a diffused cloud of field fragrances; yet to say that I assimilated her thought through the olfactory nerve would be a pedestrian distortion.” 22 Through her he sees the world differently, including his own soul, outside his body, along the road (of life), “a dusty old man trudging up there,” burdened with volumes of Talmud, who tells him that “the dryad, who does not exist, lies. It is not I who clung to her but you, my body,” and his old-man-soul levels an accusation at him: “[You have] expelled me, your ribs exile me from their fate, and I [i.e., your soul] will walk here alone always, in my garden.” 23 That garden is the garden of the Torah, and a pun, perhaps, on the garden of mystical speculation—the Pardes—into which Rabbi Kornfeld had entered at too early an age to withstand its impact, however brilliant and pious he was, who now stands, light and empty and devoid of his soul. He unravels the prayer shawl from the old man and, in a paroxysm of fervor, calls out to the spirit: “Loveliness, come.” He winds the shawl around his neck and around the branch of the tree from which she had originally appeared (or so he had imagined, at least) and so hangs himself at the end of this cautionary tale. Too young and therefore too unstable for union with the mysterion with which he has experienced union—too focused on his own need of enlightenment, rather than on the community and the family of which he is a part—he is destroyed by it, leaving behind a wife and seven little girls, whose world he hardly considered, much less considered improving, as he had begun his self-focused journey. Having entered the garden of mystical speculation, he apostasizes, goes mad, and dies.

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LITERARY EXPLORATIONS AND ADAPTATIONS IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM: MYLA GOLDBERG Among the interesting recent literary works that take up the theme of mysticism with a cautionary tone is American Myla Goldberg’s novel Bee Season (2000). It is the story of a nine-year-old girl, Eliza, who—in contrast to her brilliant, self-obsessed lawyer mother, scholarly cantor father, and smart, rabbinically inclined older brother—seems to have nothing but mediocrity to offer to the world until she stumbles upon her unique genius for spelling, a genius that carries her from the classroom for “slower” students all the way to the national spelling bee finals. Embedded within the poignant larger story line—of her relationship with her parents and brother and her struggle to put the world into focus and hold her own world together—a distinct mystical theme emerges as the centerpiece of her rise to prominence and self-decreed “fall.” The core of that centerpiece is the obsession with letters—Hebrew letters and their relationship to matters physical, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual—that is associated in particular with the thirteenth-century Jewish mystic Abraham Abulafia (1240–91). Abulafia, in fact, has been the obsession of Eliza’s father virtually since he moved beyond the hallucinogenic drugs of his college years. Alas, he has long since realized that he lacks whatever spiritual and intellectual acuity it takes to rise/plunge to the inner heights/depths that Abulafia offers, no matter how much he studies. But Eliza’s sudden exhibition of her singular genius— which he recognizes to be precisely the singular genius that accords with Abulafia’s—offers him the apparent chance to shape his daughter to experience the prophetic ecstasy that he cannot. It turns out that he is probably right, but the problem that he has ignored is that the practitioner must be a certain minimum age, among other things, in order not to be torn apart by the experience. He ignores that other unstated but important prescription within the Abrahamic mystical traditions: that one’s ultimate goal must be improving the world and not a selfish search for enlightenment. 24 He fails to see these things as he fails in the more general manner in which obsessive parents, unable to separate their children’s needs and ambitions from their own, too often fail to separate their desires from their children’s welfare. The irony is that, although she is nearly blown apart by her Abulafian experience, Eliza survives. She returns from her mystical experience much wiser than her years or than those around her, with enough perspective to recognize that she is better off losing a spelling bee at the local level than winning at the national level. The story interweaves various mystical cautionary notions, the most famous perhaps being the previously mentioned tale of the four rabbis—Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Elisha ben Abuyah, and Akiva—who enter the Pardes from which only Akiva survives intact. Of the other three, the first dies, the

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second goes mad, and the third apostasizes. In Bee Season, Eliza’s mother eventually goes mad, her brother gradually apostasizes, and although Eliza herself nearly dies, we realize that, in the end, when she does not perish, it is her father’s dream that she has allowed to die. The author pursues the intricate details of Abulafian and general Jewish mystical thought and carries them into the contemporary world. MYSTICISM AND CHROMATIC ABSTRACTION: BARNETT NEWMAN, MARK ROTHKO, MORRIS LOUIS, AD REINHARDT Words are an important instrument for the Abrahamic traditions in their engagement of divinity, but words, although they extend us beyond other species, are also limiting and limited. (Even within the everyday world, can we ever adequately describe a magisterial sunset or the feeling of parental love?) In the mystical tradition the limits of words is felt even more acutely. In seeking union with the mysterion, the mystic is seeking contact with something altogether ineffable, so it should not be surprising that someone expressing that engagement and trying to meet the third challenge of the mystical experience—expressing it in the here and now—might pursue nonverbal instrumentation to effect a result. Visual art has served religion in general across history. Like music and dance, visual art can transcend words, carrying both artist and viewer toward that very ineffable realm of the Other addressed by religion—and more intensely by mysticism. The artist, in the course of religious history, has occupied a position analogous to that of the priest and the prophet. From Neolithic fertility idols and Sumerian priest figures to medieval sculptures and Baroque paintings, art has addressed divinity. 25 Even the modern secular artist remains sacerdotal in the sense that she or he may be viewed as inspired—in-spirited—from that Other realm. In our own time, in fact—perhaps, in part, in response to the spiritual emptiness that some at least find in secularization—artists have emerged who choose as their explicit subject matter the Other and its concomitants. Such artists have returned to that centuries-long tradition of art as a handmaiden of religion—albeit often by way of radically untraditional visual routes. The role of the artist as mediator becomes yet more intense when his or her subject is the mysterion. For a Jewish or Muslim artist, the attempt to address that hiddenmost center of the invisible Other in visual terms is an oxymoron. It challenges the capacity to visualize the invisible, as it focuses toward the center of a centerless Other. The degree to which all of this is obvious varies. Thus only recently have more than one or two art historians discussed the interest in Lurianic kabbalah in the work of Jewish chromaticist abstract expressionist painters like

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Marc Rothko and Barnett Newman. These artists’ inevitable interest in the Holocaust—how, they ask, do we as Jewish artists respond (how can we not respond?) to that trauma?—has intersected the engagement of the Lurianic concept of tikkun olam (fixing the world). 26 Barnett Newman’s (1905–70) canonical paintings are frameless and often very large, their pigment extending to the canvas edge, with a central line, a “zip,” to which the eye is inevitably drawn, particularly those with names like “Covenant” or “Onement.” They overtly suggest an abstract aesthetic expression of reordering the universe: the central “zip” holds together the unity of the opposing sides of the composition. One can, moreover, recognize in that central “zip” an abstract reality simultaneously withdrawing from the universe of the color field that it holds together (as in Lurianic tzimtzum) and emerging, expanding, emanating (as in non-Lurianic kabbalistic atzilut) out into the color field that it pushes to the edge of the unframed canvas. 27 In Newman’s The Name II (1950), the eye is drawn to the center of an image that is completely white except for two thin golden lines that divide the visual plane into three equal components. Those familiar with the Jewish tradition would know that, since even the usual circumlocution of God’s ineffable Name (YHVH is pronounced “Adonai”) is uttered by traditional Jews only in prayer, 28 verbal references to God outside prayer are made through what amounts to a double circumlocution that (in Hebrew) is HaShem—meaning “The Name.” Thus Newman’s painting is titled to inform the knowledgeable viewer of its subject: God, which cannot be depicted since God’s very name is ineffable. What in centuries of Christian art would be the figurative representation of God, as the Christ, in the center of a threefold canvas—a triptych—the very configuration of which is intended to symbolize the triune God, is here blank canvas, devoid even of color. But white is that pigment closest to light, the totality of color. Thus like color, the image of God is simultaneously present (in the totality of invisible color contained within the spectrum), and absent (in the absence of color that symbolizes God’s absence from, withdrawal from, the universe into absolute no-thing-ness, as expressed in the Lurianic concept of tzimtzum). This addresses the Holocaust question as well: where was God when so many were being tortured and massacred? God was both absent (for those whose suffering became proof of God’s absence) and present (for those who asserted that they survived their suffering due to their sense of God’s presence). Newman has depicted—without depicting—the mysterion of endless light and the endlessness beyond light that cannot be depicted or even spoken. The canvasses of Mark Rothko (1903–70) scintillate with light. By soaking them in watered-down pigments, Rothko was able to inundate his images with broad bands of color that seem to approach and recede—typically three bands, like the number of the Trinity—toward and from a central, emanating,

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and withdrawing light source. That central element draws the eye, presenting itself as a symbol of oneness, wholeness, and transcendent unity. Unlike Newman, Rothko offers no names for his paintings to hint at his spiritual intentions, but it is perhaps no accident that his works hang not only in museums but also on the walls of meditative and prayer spaces, which they suffuse with an atmosphere of sacred mystery. 29 The younger Washington-based contemporary of the New York School chromaticists, Morris Louis (1913–62), offered even less explanation for his work than did Rothko. Only two of his canvasses were stretched during his lifetime, in fact, and he left no journals, nor, according to his widow, did he ever discuss his work, even with her. 30 Yet it is difficult to imagine, with the repercussions of the Holocaust rippling through so much of the Jewish side of the New York art world that Louis kept visiting, that he as a Jew would have been immune to thoughts like those of Rothko, Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and others in whose studios he spent time and whose conversations he heard. His first great, canonical series, created in the mid- and late-1950s, is referred to as the Veils series, in which lyrical, undulating curtains of color vie for a foreground presence on heroic-sized canvasses awash with pigment that soaks—melts, one might say—directly into the unprimed canvas. His visual relationship to the work of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman is clear: “Louis translates the chromatic calculations of Rothko into something that might be called chromatic mysticism,” Stuart Preston wrote in 1959, while Martica Sawin observed that the Veils belong “to a particular realm of experience to which the works of Rothko and Newman, in their different ways, also pertain.” 31 Oddly, neither of these critics (nor others) seemed to wonder what mystical source (if any) might have inspired Louis, and what (for all three, Newman, Rothko, and Louis) the “experience” mentioned by Sawin might be. Given the discussions of Jewishness, Jewish art, the Holocaust, and Lurianic kabbalah that preoccupied these artists and those around them, Jewish experience and Jewish mysticism—with its specific references to veils (exempla of the pargod that, however minutely thin, separates even the most successful mystic from God’s mysterion)—may be consciously (or unconsciously) Louis’s reference points. 32 On the other hand, Ad Reinhardt (1913–67), a Christian painter and contemporary of Morris Louis, may be seen as pursuing a path in his later works that also merges painting with the question of the mysterion. His Black Paintings of the mid-1960s obliquely echo an aspect of Barnett Newman’s The Name II. Reinhardt deliberately sought to present a kind of “anti-painting” by covering his canvases with such a strong non-color—or anti-color. But like white, black can be understood as both the totality and the absence of color—and in fact, a close look, for example, at Black Painting No. 34 (1964) makes it clear that slightly different shades of black have been imposed on the canvas, and that those slight differences of shade yield the

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subtle form of a cross across the image. Thus they have a deliberately spiritual aspect; they offer an intense focal point defined by the ultimate symbol of the ultimate image that connects a Christian to the mysterion. It is easy to understand why Ellen Johnson could write that the Black Paintings “are as mystic, malgre lui, as anything of Rothko or Newman.” 33 VISUAL MYSTICISM, ESOTERIC AND POPULAR: BRURIA FINKEL AND YONA VERWER The last decade of the twentieth century and its aftermath have offered a dramatic expansion of the directions in which visual artists have moved with respect to religion and spirituality in general and mysticism in particular. California artist Bruria Finkel’s (b. 1938) engagement of Abraham Abulafia’s thought began thirty years ago, when she slowly co-translated a prophetic work of his called Sepher Ha-Ot—Book of the [Alphabetic] Letter. This encounter with Abulafian thought led directly to Finkel’s bronze sculptures, which she called The Divine Chariot. The text in Ezekiel 1 speaks of wheels of eyes whirling in all directions simultaneously; they defy the norms of time, space, and direction. Finkel’s four bronze wheels reach, by way of the number ten—each of her wheels has ten spokes—into the kabbalistic emphasis on ten by way of the sephirot, and in turn the Merkavah focus on ten by way of the ten heikhalot (the ascending/descending “chambers” of heaven), and in turn the Book of Formation’s (Sepher Yetzirah) focus on ten by way of the ten numbers that join with the twenty-two Hebrew letters as conduits of creation, emanating from the single God out to the multifarious universe. Four wheels, of course, suggest both the four directions of the creation and the four-lettered name of the Creator—YHVH—and the four worlds (Emanation, Creation, Formation, Making) of pre-Zohar kabbalistic thinking that emanate toward our world from God. Each of the four wheels offers a different emphasis: one offers “The One”; one, “The Influx,” which is the divine act of creation; one, the four-directioned “Power” associated with the names of the four archangels; one, the efflorescence that becomes “The Many.” These are all emanations from the central idea, like the four rivers of paradise, referred to in Genesis 2, which emanate from the source and are the beginning of the fertilization of the created world. Abulafia-like, the imaged wheels are nuanced with letters—ten each, organized according to their numerical values (focused meditation on these numbers yields mystical rapture)—and across one wheel, the names of four archangels are inscribed, hovering around the centerlessly centered One. Each wheel may be viewed from any of the four directions; the front of each presents the theme encompassed by its circle, and the back—through the

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motif of carefully modeled human hands—suggests the human role in the world, as creator and manipulator. On the other side of the continent, the work of Dutch-born New York artist Yona Verwer (b. 1954) exults in tongue-in-cheek engagements of the sort of “kabbalah” emanating from places such as the Kabbalah Center in Los Angeles, which has attracted Hollywood stars like Madonna and Britney Spears and has produced an industry of kabbalah-based candles and incense. Her Kabbalah of Bling oil paintings (2005–10) focus on the commercialization of kabbalah. She shapes some of her canvasses as large-scale modern “amulets”—hung on chains and “ready to wear” like rappers’ bling jewelry, but much larger (2–3 ft. x 1–2 ft.)—that explore the faux spirituality (like faux bling jewelry) of worshipping objects for themselves. Her “amulets” are often inscribed with texts on or within them, offering prayers and invocations of divine help and protection and presenting a connection to the mysterion whereby its power is magically extended to the individual wearing it. In the contemporary world, Verwer observes, “individuals . . . rely on different types of talismans: worshipping guns, drugs, money for their personal and social well-being, denying the need for divine guidance. In this ‘spiritual materialism,’ spirituality is used for material gain or raising status. The use of spirituality [is intended] to increase the power of the ego and identity.” 34 In the Jewish mystical tradition, amulets and talismans are part of “practical kabbalah” made possible, however, through its practitioners’ intimate knowledge of the innermost recesses of “esoteric kabbalah” such as that associated with Rabbi Isaac Luria of Tsfat. Among the artist’s varied images are those of different types of guns in “profile” against a dramatic and stormy golden background that “protect” the “wearer” from gunshot injury. One image presents a Star of David, for which the Hebrew equivalent is Magen David, meaning “Shield of David”; thus a “Jewish” visual symbol is treated as an amuletic protector of its “wearer.” One of Verwer’s Guns “doubles” its protective potential by being “mounted” within a hexagonal frame, the hexagon being the interior of the six-pointed star, which is the Magen David. With this work the purchaser can be protected by both the image and its frame! So kabbalah, pop culture, and economics have become interwoven in this merging of the deeply spiritual and the banal—the embedding of faux spirituality in the worship of objects for their material value. VISUAL ART, MYSTICISM, AND POLITICS: HOSSEIN ZENDEROUDI AND JANE LOGEMANN Many artists have responded to the mystical imperative to be an instrument for improving the world by synthesizing mystical thought with overt political

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thought. Iranian Muslim artist Hossein Zenderoudi’s painting The Hand (1960–61), for example, functions like a political mandala for those who understand its symbolism. The image is dominated by a hamsa, the upraised hand that, with its five fingers, represents the Five Pillars of Islam; the separation between the one thumb and the four other fingers symbolizes the relationship between God (the One) and ourselves (the four-directioned world). The hamsa is attached to and rising from a six-pointed star (another symbol of the meeting of realms: a triangle up, symbolizing earth and maleness, interweaving a triangle down, symbolizing heaven and femaleness) that in turn is attached to and rises out of a bowl (suggesting water and therefore purity, as well as life). This silvery white configuration stands out against a gold background overrun with Persian (Farsi) writing and numbers ensconced within squared and circular forms. The painting includes its own triple “frame”: two thin gold lines flanking a thick black one inscribed with gold writing. “The Hand” encourages the viewer to stare and stare and focus and focus, the visual equivalent of the verbal repetitions that form the heart of a Sufi dhikr. 35 In the context of Iranian national political sentiment, the hand also represents the truncated hand of the Shia Muslim martyr Hazrat Abbas, who died in the year 680 in the Battle of Karbala. Hazrat Abbas became a source of inspiration for the 1979 revolution that overthrew the shah. Thus the political intention of Zenderoudi’s work evokes a concentrated mystical sensibility implying that the revolutionary movement (which would succeed eighteen years later) is a divinely sanctioned part of the process of focusing on the mysterion to effect a positive transformation within the here and now. Differently, Jane Logemann (b. 1942) in one body of work uses pale hues as washes over repeated words or letters from various writing systems. The repetitions and, in particular, Logemann’s practice of simply breaking a word where the writing reaches the edge of the canvas and completing its broken form on the next line recall the Abulafian mystical technique of repeating sounds and words to the point where the words are reduced to “mind-less” sounds and the sounds transcend any sense at all. But the often graduated, nuanced changes of pattern in color and form also recall purely formal exercises in modern conceptual music and art. One result of Logemann’s work is to make the viewer aware of the process of creating it—one can’t look at these works and not be conscious of the painstaking concentration, the kavanah (to use the late kabbalistic-Hassidic term referring to one’s concentrated attention) involved. In this sense the works that identify her as a secular, meditative devotee of visual Hassidut, also offer two particular directions of secularized visual thinking, one ancient, the other contemporary. The calligraphic component associates these multilingual expressions with cultures in which writing is an old, respected art form (she chooses languages whose writing systems relate to that sen-

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sibility). So, too, the subtle modulations of color ground connect them to Paul Klee as well as to Ad Reinhardt, and the minimalist gestural quality of the marks that make up the letters and words, as well as the conceptual underpinnings, connect them to Sol Lewitt. In its repetition and form the calligraphy is essentially “mind-less”: the words and letters are in Hebrew, Arabic, Russian, Korean, or Japanese; most viewers won’t be able to read the words but will perceive them simply as visual patterns, thus reinforcing the relationship to mystical method. On the other hand, the choice of the term that is endlessly repeated may be politically charged. Thus, for example, “Co-existence” written repeatedly on one side of the image in Hebrew and on the other in Arabic, combines the mystical meditative aspect of kavanah and sense-less repetition with an unanswerable political question. FROM VISUAL WORDS TO LETTERS: PARVIZ TANAVOLI The use of letters as an art form has a particularly long history in Islam; over the course of time, half a dozen major calligraphic types and many more variations on these have evolved for the Arabic writing system. The Arabic letters, often slightly altered to account for variant sound patterns, became the vehicle for other languages in many places encompassed by Islam, including Persian (Islam arrived in what is now Iran in 643). Parviz Tanavoli (b. 1937) is considered the father of modern Iranian sculpture. His studio in Tehran, established soon after he completed his studies both there and in Brera, is considered the birthplace of one of the most significant movements in Iranian modern art, the saqqakhaneh movement. Some refer to this movement as “spiritual Pop Art.” There, in the late 1950s, Tanavoli conceived of his first heech sculpture— the Farsi (Modern Persian) word for “nothingness”—and since then he has continued to develop the series through experiments with different materials, size, position, and context. Composed of three Arabo-Persian letters, the word heech can refer to the sort of feelings of unworthiness, frustration, and ineffectiveness that may be said to haunt modern humans, associated in particular with existentialist thought. Tanavoli’s use of heech, however, functions in the opposite direction; it underscores the positive transforming power of art. Rather than conceiving of “nothingness” as a synonym for despair, heech in Tanavoli’s work alludes to the relationship between the artist and prophets/priests/mystics: all are in touch with the ultimate source of creation. As such his heech, in its myriad transmuted visual modes, alludes as well to the relationship between the artist and God reflected in the fact that both are creators. More than that, it is a symbol of and synonymous with creativity

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itself. Nothingness is the void into which the artist’s imagination enters and which the artist fills with the created image—emulating on a microcosmic scale the filling of absolute, macrocosmic emptiness by God at the dawn of our reality. Heech is the “nothing”—the “no-thing-ness” that, through the artist’s shaping hand, becomes “something.” As the mystic contemplates that transformation—for which the ineffable explanatory information is available only in the impossibly inaccessible mysterion—the artist (this artist, Tanavoli) enacts a small-scale version of it, explores and expresses it nonverbally through the paradoxical medium of the word itself become a sculpture. Moreover, its calligraphic shape can resemble the human body. One might say that his visual articulations of this conceptual bridge between the invisible realm of God and our visible realm echoes the ideal role of humans in general (as vice-regents of God in the world; see Qur’an 2:30 and also Gen. 1:28) and of the mystic in particular as a conduit between the mysterion and the community. If the word itself suggests melancholy in ordinary parlance, in Tanavoli’s sculptures it is a symbol of joy. CHRISTIAN ARTISTS AND JEWISH MYSTICISM: ANSELM KIEFER Anselm Kiefer’s (b. 1945) is a non-Jewish German born in the year when World War II ended who intermingles the issue of artistic creativity with the trauma (for him, as a Christian German) of the Holocaust. He grew up in a country in which, for his entire youth, the subject of the Holocaust was never discussed, as if it hadn’t happened. An artist choosing to engage that subject would find himself confronted with one of the banal sides of the question dogging the spiritual steps of Jewish artists for two millennia: how to represent that which is not representable. The question of visually expressing what faith insists is there in spite of its invisibility is transmuted by Kiefer into a visual expression of what history insists is there—despite the assertion of everybody with whom he grew up: “I saw nothing; I heard nothing; I smelled nothing. It must not be as they claim it was.” Representing the unrepresentable is reflected in several levels of Kiefer’s work. One level involves the question of how one can possibly convey in words or images the full power of Holocaust horror. A second connects Kiefer to theologians and questioners regarding God: the post-Holocaust question of whether there is a God, or what kind of God there is who failed to intervene to save (among others) the million and a half children who were incinerated by the Nazis. Among Kiefer’s large-scale works—installations and canvasses overrun not only with oil paint but with emulsion, shellac, sand, and woodcut—are several from the 1990s that turn to these questions by way of specific refer-

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ences to Jewish mysticism. Among these is Kiefer’s Zimzum (1990). 36 That word means “contraction” or “withdrawal” in Hebrew and is used in Lurianic kabbalah to refer to the process according to which God made room for the universe—for how, the Lurianic kabbalists asked, if God is the absolute Absolute, could there be room for the universe unless God ceded space by shrinking God into a corner of reality? By an analogous process God ceded omnipotence by granting humans free will and thus the power to be and to choose—to obey or disobey, to create or destroy. Kiefer’s enormous canvas, inscribed with the word Zimzum, is dark and tumultuously textural. A series of orthogonals leads from below, where the observer stands, into the recesses of the upper part of the canvas. The lines converge at a horizon line where Albertian thought would have located the “vanishing point.” But at that point in Kiefer’s painting we can discern a series of verticals that one might interpret as a tower—such as the tower that marks the terminus of the train tracks at Auschwitz, to be precise, which by the 1980s had become one of the preeminent visual symbols of the Holocaust. In that case the orthogonals become the multiplying lines of railroad tracks, the vanishing point not merely Albertian, and not merely a reference to the Lurianic concept of God’s contraction, but a reference to the vanishing of six million Jews toward that tower (and the vanishing, specifically, of the Jews of Kiefer’s Germany: hundreds of thousands there before the Holocaust but how many left in the Germany in which he was growing up?) and to the question of God’s presence or absence/disappearance while that process was being furthered. Moreover, rather than simply driving toward their vanishing point, the orthogonal lines leave open a vast, dark chasm just before they arrive at the horizon line where they disappear, like a black hole—and literally a black hole on the image—in the otherwise untrammeled pattern of diagonal lines. In modern physics, “black holes” have been understood as massive presences throughout the universe so powerful that they suck the very light from beyond them into their depths. Like the Nazis, they are virtuosi with regard to causing everything around them—even light itself (which is why they are black)—to disappear. The question of the invisible God is subsumed into the question of the nonexistent or impotent or uncaring God. It is subsumed into the question of the absent Jews in postwar Germany. It is subsumed into the question of the absent Holocaust in postwar German discourse. It is subsumed into the impossibility of words to convey God (just as mysticism seeks to transcend words, turning sense into non-sense, as the Jewish or Muslim mystic seeking God must transcend the realm of the sensible if she or he would accede to the God beyond sense) 37 and the impossibility of words to convey the Holocaust. It is subsumed into the impossibility for visual art to effectively convey God or the Holocaust. And all of this is conveyed through overt references to

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kabbalistic discourse. Kiefer is thus a Christian artist making explicit and, in a distinct sense, politicized use of Jewish mystical ideas. EAST-WEST INTERWEAVES: MAKOTO FUJIMURA AND AMY BETH SWARTZ Still differently, Makoto Fujimura (b. 1960) offers a doorway into the issue of accessing the mysterion through visual art as a Christian artist whose cultural (as opposed to religious) background is double-sourced. He is a Japanese American painter (born in Boston) who lives and works in New York City, heartland of abstract expressionism, but who went to Japan to study nihonga, an old Japanese painting technique, in part as a search for his own roots. 38 His textless, abstract chromaticist cycle of paintings that focus on the months of the year is inspired both by European figurative cycles on that subject (for instance, those done by the Limbourg brothers for the Duc de Berry in early fifteenth-century Burgundy) and by Japanese screens. That is, he is thinking across visual cultures, and to this he has added an intensely meditative quality that recalls Newman and Rothko: his panels are intended to become abstract, purely colored windows into the mysterion for the meditative, tightly focused viewer. This is particularly true for his large (162 in. wide x 70 in. high) triptych The Trinity in which gold leaf and red and blue pigments reflect traditional Western coloristic symbolism in painting—gold as all-valuable truth, blue as true faith, red as sacrifice and love—while the shoji screen on which he has painted also reflects the Sino-Japanese tradition. Each panel is indeed a double panel, suggesting Japanese screens. They also suggest doors that lead to the realm of the Other and, in the meditative depths engendered by the manner in which the inner colors seep through the outer colors, draw the eye into them, as doorways into the mysterion within Divinity, as do Rothko’s canonical paintings. New York–born Amy Beth Swartz (b. 1936) offers yet another angle of cross-cultural mystical visual thought. She combines her profound interest in kabbalah with focus on the chakra system of yoga, as well as on Taoism, qigong, Buddhism, and Native American spirituality. Literature that explores the kabbalistic notions of the ten sephirot and the Four Worlds and also the concept of the shekhinah has consistently influenced her work since the mid1970s, and by the early 1980s this influence crisscrossed her study of healing processes derived from Native American traditions and her focus on the chakras. One obvious example of this influence is her States of Change series, done between 1999 and 2001. In Sephirot #1 (1999), for instance, executed on a circular canvas (its shape a symbol of perfection, completion, of the God who is without beginning and end), she superimposes the absolute

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order of a grid system over the shadowy image of a figure seated in a basic cross-legged yoga position, emphasizing the lowest chakra (which may be seen to correspond to malkhut, the lowest sephirah), with the entirety overrun with a delicate and chaotic gold leaf pattern: order and chaos meet in this image that offers a doorway into connecting the immanent here and now to the transcendent beyond by means of a yogic meditation that is labeled in kabbalistic terms. Swartz uses the combination of ordered grid and gold-leafed chaos in her Shen Qi series, named for a Chinese meditation practice that is ultimately based on musical tones and the controlling of breath in a manner analogous to the tonal control exerted to create different pitches in music (and discussed, among other places, in Abulafian kabbalah). Kabbalah’s emphasis on the Hebrew letters is central to her Visible Reminders series, painted in 2001 and 2002. Within twenty-two paintings (corresponding to the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet), she “hides” letters, words, and phrases to push the viewer to see what is beyond the visible in order to uncover the invisible. For example, in the seventh painting, There Is a Time (2002), she focuses on the seventh letter, zayin (which is the first letter in the Hebrew word for “time,” zman), and offers the passage from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is a time and a season under heaven.” She obscures the phrase, written and rewritten across the canvas in a meditative repetition (whereby ultimately the mind conscious of the everyday sense of the words will be emptied of that sense to allow space for God) by overlaying the words with horizontal bands of dripping black, gray, and white paint. CONCLUSION: THE ENDLESS EXPLORATION OF THE ENDLESS SEARCH FOR ONENESS WITH THE ONE There is a human urge to find that presence that is universal. The desire to locate a hidden reality beyond our own, by exploring both beyond and within the outermost and hiddenmost reaches of what we can and cannot imagine, has followed our species from early antiquity to the contemporary world. Gifted individuals have fulfilled that urge not only directly—as mystics—but obliquely, in a range of works of verbal and visual art. Only the mystic who has succeeded in having (as opposed to merely aspiring to have) a mystical experience can say that she or he has had one. We cannot know whether any of the writers whose work I have discussed has had the experience of feeling emptied of self and filled with God; all we can say is that, in one way or another, overtly or more subtly, each of them has found the idea of mysticism to be an effective—compelling—vehicle for the tales she or he tells and the ideas that she or he wants the reader to consider.

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It is not possible to deduce whether visual artists drawn to mysticism are fascinated by the idea of the mystical experience, interested in mysticism’s symbolic value for considering issues within our world as much for trying to grasp divinity, or subject to a personal experience that, being ineffable, finds itself best expressed in visual terms. The relationship and the border between outer sight and inner sight are rarely clear. Each of these artists does at least one of three things: references a specific “school” of mystical thought; overtly connects aspects of mystical experience to aspects of the human realm of political and social experience; or creates a visual field in which, by intention or not, the viewer may experience a sense of the mysterion through a process of focused calm and concentration. Like the mystic—and like the writer or the artist—only the reader or the viewer can know whether the narrative or the image provoked that sort of experience in and for him or her, or whether it was merely a fascinating or edifying or emotionally moving or intellectually satisfying and thought-provoking read or visual experience. NOTES 1. For simplicity’s sake I limit my focus to the Abrahamic traditions, but much of what I discuss has more far-reaching exponents. 2. “Dybbuk” comes from the Hebrew root meaning to stick to something (as glue, devek in modern Hebrew, does); a dybbuk is stuck between realms until it can finish whatever it is that it needs to finish. 3. The Pardes (Hebrew for garden/orchard) is understood to be the realm of mystical exploration. 4. Borges, Aleph and Other Stories, 43, 45, 46. 5. Simurgh is also a pun in Persian, for it means “thirty.” 6. Borges, Aleph and Other Stories, 10–11. 7. Ibid., 13–14. 8. Ibid., 13. 9. Ibid., xx. 10. Ibid. 11. Isaac Luria (1534–72) died of fever after only a few years of being the center of a community that had been led by another before he arrived there around 1570. He wrote nothing, so our knowledge of his ideas comes from students, who wrote them down. 12. Schwarz-Bart, Last of the Just, 5. 13. Ibid., 22. 14. Ibid., 421–22. 15. Ibid., 422. 16. Ibid., 422. The last line of Schwarz-Bart’s novel puns on the ultimate theological question raised by an event such as the Holocaust: is there in fact—and if so, where?—an allpowerful and all-good God in a world in which 1.5 million children are incinerated? For many, the answer is both yes and no: “somewhere, I don’t know where . . . “ 17. Ozick, Pagan Rabbi, 3. 18. “Pantheism” refers to a belief that gods are all around us, in the streams and in the trees, each of which is in effect, a daimon, while “panhenotheism” refers to a belief that the one (heno) God (theos) is in all (pan) of what is around us, in the trees, the streams, and all of nature. 19. Ozick, Pagan Rabbi, 22–23.

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20. Ibid., 28. 21. Ibid., 29. 22. Ibid., 31. 23. Ibid., 36. 24. This concept of tikkun olam—repairing/fixing the world—is particularly emphatic in Lurianic kabbalah. 25. For a fuller discussion of this and of the ways in which visual art functions on a symbolic as well as a straightforward level, see Soltes, Our Sacred Signs. 26. They were discussing this in one another’s studios in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I first commented on their interest in the question of Jewish art and in Jewish mystical thought, especially that of Isaac Luria, in classes and lectures in the early 1980s and then in my 1984–90 video course, Tradition and Transformation. In the late 1990s the subject began to emerge for other art historians, notably Donald Kuspit. 27. Tzimtzum refers to the Lurianic concept that God shrinks back into a corner of prereality in order to make room for the universe. Earlier kabbalistic thought suggested that the universe is created through a process of emanation in various “stages” from God. See also the discussion of Anselm Kiefer later in the chapter. 28. And even that “Name” is a circumlocution for the ineffable Name of God known only to the high priest in the ancient temple in Jerusalem. 29. I am thinking most obviously of the so-called Rothko Chapel next to the Menil Museum in Houston, Texas, its white walls adorned only with large Rothko paintings. 30. I had several discussions with Louis’s widow, Marcella Benner, when she served on the board of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, of which I was director in 1991–98. 31. Preston, “Sculpture and Paint”; Sawin, “In the Galleries: Morris Louis.” 32. For more-detailed discussions of this issue, see Soltes, Tradition and Transformation, segment 9B; Soltes, “Jewish Art? Judaic Content?”; and Soltes, Fixing the World, part 2. 33. Johnson, American Artists on Art, 31 34. Quotation from the artist’s comments on her website (http://www.yonaverwer.com). 35. From the Arabic root dh-k-r, meaning “remember,” this is the (usually verbal) process of beginning an ecstatic meditation by becoming fully cognizant—”remembering”—God’s omnipresence. In the Mehlevi Order, the dhikr is a physical process of spinning. 36. Kiefer’s spelling is consistent with the German pronunciation of “z” as what in English would be “Ts” or “Tz.” 37. This is not true in Christian mysticism: God assumes human form and suffers physically; mystics like Saint Francis seek to experience that (and he succeeded, receiving as a consequence the stigmata). Physicality is essential to Christian mysticism in various ways. 38. Nihonga—ni-hon is Japanese for “Japan[ese]” and ga means “painting”—uses finely ground vegetable and mineral pigments suspended in washes, glazes, and emulsions. This yields a delicate, clear quality more reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts than of large paintings (at least until the advent of the chromaticists) in the Western tradition.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Borges, Jorge Luis. The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933–1969. Edited and translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in collaboration with the author. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1970. Johnson, Ellen H., ed. American Artists on Art from 1940 to 1980. New York: Harper & Row, 1982. Ozick, Cynthia. The Pagan Rabbi, and Other Stories. New York: Knopf, 1971. Preston, Stuart. “Sculpture and Paint.” New York Times, April 26, 1959, X17. Sawin, Martica. “In the Galleries: Morris Louis.” Arts 33 (May 1959): 59. Schwarz-Bart, Andre. The Last of the Just. Translated by Stephen Becker. New York: Atheneum, 1960. Soltes, Ori Z. Fixing the World: American Jewish Painters in the Twentieth Century. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2002.

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———. “Jewish Art? Judaic Content? Representational? Abstract?” In catalog of the exhibition of the same name at the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum. Washington, DC: The Museum, 1996. ———. Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source. Cambridge, MA: Westview Press, 2005. ———. Tradition and Transformation: A History of Jewish Art. Cleveland: Electric Shadows Productions, 1984–90. Verwer, Yona. http://www.yonaverwer.com.

Part III

The Cognitive

Chapter Five

The Dao Flickering through Words A Cognitive-Poetic Analysis of the Dao-de Jing Sivan Wagshal Te’eni and Reuven Tsur

GENERAL INTRODUCTION We examine a well-known classical Chinese text, the Dao-de Jing, from a novel perspective. 1 Are we presented here with a “fish trap” that, in the words of Zhuang Zi, can be cast aside after the fish has been caught, or are the text’s words and unique structures of no less importance than the message they convey, whatever it may be? In this chapter we apply the principles of cognitive poetics to this Chinese text. We shall demonstrate how the text uses literary strategies and structures to convey to the reader a hidden philosophical message; how opaque words and fuzzy sentences make it possible to understand the ineffable; how words in conceptual language, such as “dim” and “hazy” and expressions such as “continuing without end” and “returns to nothing” enable the Dao to flicker through the words: The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal name The nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth Tao Te Ching, chapter 1

We discuss, then, the Wu chien wen, or “the five-thousand characters,” a relatively brief work better known as the Tao-Te Ching or Dao-de Jing. The entire composition contains eighty-one chapters arranged in two more-or-less equal parts. The first part, consisting of chapters 1–37, is called Dao, after the first character of chapter 1, whereas the second part, chapters 38–81, is called De after the first character in chapter 38. This division does not fully represent the contents of either one of the two parts. In fact, many of the 119

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chapters consist of descriptions by means of negation, with mention of neither Dao nor De. The chapters are all short, and the lines of some rhyme. Due to the brevity of the chapters, the economy of expression, and the occasional rhymes, the work is viewed by some as poetry, although Chinese tradition has never viewed this text as such, but rather has considered it a philosophical work. Its supposed author is a man called Laozi. Since nothing is known of this man’s history, it is reasonable to question if such a person did in fact ever exist. Modern scholars note that the book gives the impression of being the product of a less-than-professional compilation of various sources that were brought together within a relatively short period of time. 2 Whether it was composed by the legendary author or compiled, it is generally agreed that the text was written during the “Period of Warring States,” around the year 400 BCE. The Dao-de Jing is quite well known and familiar to readers in the West in a number of versions and degrees of comprehension. The earliest translation into a Western language was produced by Jesuits and presented to the British Royal Society in 1788. The composition is one of the most frequently translated and interpreted works of classical Chinese philosophy, yet it is also one of the most obscure. In the introduction to his essay “The Thought of the Tao-te-ching,” Benjamin Schwartz writes that it has been described as many things: a handbook of prudent mundane life philosophy, a treatise on political strategy, an esoteric treatise on military strategy, a utopian tract, or a text that advocates “a scientific naturalistic” attitude toward the cosmos. Many elements suggestive of these various interpretations are indeed present in the work. However, to the extent that they are, they have their locus within a vision that I would maintain is as mystical as any orientation to which that term has been applied in any other culture. The thought of the Tao-te-ching emerges as multifaceted and endlessly adaptable to many-layered interpretations. Yet its mystical dimension remains essential. 3

Schwartz continues: The most comprehensive vision makes it appear as a mystical text centered on an otherworldly reality, and yet—unlike other mysticisms, it is world-affirming, and the ultimate otherworldly reality is nothing other than the natural and organic order of the world itself. . . . The very uniqueness of the Tao-te-ching consists in the way it has of challenging the conventional categorizations that produce its apparent contradictions, and bringing together into a unified whole tendencies that otherwise might seem to be in conflict. 4

The composition in question is thus a relatively short text, structured in a way that is reminiscent of poetry, and saturated in a mystical atmosphere. In his essay “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” Steven T. Katz mentions the well-known insight that language frequently fails to describe mystical

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experiences. As he points out, “The mystic knows that all language, including the sacred, dogmatic, ritual language of his or her religious community, is too impoverished to perform the descriptive role assigned it and that, in any case, the true unity of being transcends both linguistic expression and the very particularity that language necessarily entails.” 5 We shall argue that it is a matter not of impoverishment but of well-conceived cognitive structures. The great Hebrew poet H. N. Bialik notes in his essay on the aesthetics of symbolism, “Revealing and Concealing in Language,” how poets manage to overcome all obstacles and use language for their purposes. He explains that with the help of unique keys, poets are able to introduce constant movement into language. In his special poetic style he describes how words quiver and constantly change so that they may express all the things that usually cannot be put into words. To use his words, “It is as if words, usually quite static, escape for a moment from their fixed locations and exchange places . . . and meanwhile, between one concealment and another, the abyss flickers.” 6 NOTE ON THE TEXT USED The Dao-de Jing has an enormous number of incompatible interpretations that, in translation, yield texts that barely resemble one another. In search for a translation to work with, we have compared seven translations, six English and one Hebrew, with the Chinese original. There are considerable differences among them, some due to the nature of the text. As Yoav Ariel and Dan Daor note in the introduction to their Hebrew translation, “It would be unreasonable to speak of a translation that is faithful to the source text— substantial parts of which (certainly not all) are so obscure, contentious, ambiguous.” 7 Some differences are due to interpretation, some, presumably, to the translators’ translation norms. On the other hand, we have found remarkable similarity (with minor but significant differences) between Derek Lin’s English and Daor and Ariel’s Hebrew translation. 8 Comparison of these two translations highlighted subtleties of the text that otherwise might have eluded us. We don’t presume to establish the correct interpretation nor, in fact, any interpretation. We follow the third-century Chinese scholar Wang Bi’s interpretation as reflected in Derek Lin’s English translation, and Daor and Ariel’s Hebrew translation, and accept it as given. We explore the effects of this “given” text. In different texts we point out different perceived effects. But even between these two translations there are substantial differences. In chapter 21, for instance, where Lin’s English translation has “Within it there is substance,” the Hebrew translation has “Within it there is some thing.” Chinese wù means “thing, object, matter.” So both translations appear to be correct. We treat “thing” in this context as an object or entity not precisely designated or capable of being designated, with unspecified boundaries.

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“Substance” would suggest, in this context, a thing-free and gestalt-free (that is, an even vaguer) entity that has no boundaries at all. The two construals yield different paradoxical visions of the “innermost essence.” As will be seen, the “thing” construal suggests the superimposition of a psychological atmosphere of lack of patent purpose and definite direction on a pattern of inward movement, whereas the “substance” construal suggests the perception of boundless expansion within a limited area. In another instance in the same chapter, we find the same kind of lexical fuzziness complicated by different underlying conceptions of the translators. In the second verse of chapter 21, Lin has “Follows only the Tao”; Daor and Ariel, by contrast, have “road” instead of “Tao.” Chinese dào means “direction; way; road; path; principle; truth; morality; reason; skill; method; Dao (of Daoism); to say; to speak; to talk; measure-word for long thin stretches, rivers, roads etc.” Thus both translations seem to be right, but they reflect two different underlying conceptions: Daor and Ariel choose a metaphorically laden visual image, whereas Lin chooses a philosophically laden abstract notion. While Daor and Ariel induce the reader to get the text’s meaning by processing its figurative language, Lin imposes on him or her a ready-made philosophical term. COGNITIVE INTRODUCTION We are flooded, day by day, moment by moment, by a pandemonium of sense impressions that threatens to flood the whole cognitive system. Ordinary consciousness attempts to cope with such an excess of information by organizing it into stable objects and categories, excluding much valuable information that may be captured, at best, by intuition. Some altered states of consciousness, such as varieties of mystic experience, are attempts to capture some of this excluded, precategorial information. Such precategorial information underlies certain depth psychological processes too. Psychoanalytic theory conceives of it as part of “a creative ego rhythm that swings between focussed Gestalt and an oceanic undifferentiation.” 9 In this context, Maud Bodkin discusses at length the Jungian death-and-rebirth archetype: “As conceived by Jung, the process is not mere backward and forward swing of the libido.” 10 From her penetrating discussion we wish to emphasize only one point. Those states of oceanic undifferentiation coincide with “periods of inertia and brooding, normally occurring while latent energies gather strength for activity on a fresh plain.” 11 “If the contents which during the introverted state arise are examined for the hints, ‘germs,’ they contain of ‘new possibilities of life,’ a new attitude may be attained, by which the former attitude, and the frustrate condition which its inadequacy brought about, are ‘transcended.’” 12 Such a smooth psychological process, in which

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each state contains the germs of its opposite, is frequently sharpened in mysticism into a straightforward oxymoron, as in chapter 2 of the Dao-de Jing, for instance, in the verse “Thus being and non-being produce each other,” shaking one’s sense of coherence and cognitive stability. This description may serve as an epitome of two types of mystic experience. Within ordinary consciousness, one of the most prominent adaptation devices that still keeps information in a fluid state is orientation—available only through an intuitive process. It would appear that some mystic processes are smooth, relying on fluid information, whereas some other mystic insights are achieved by dealing the cognitive system a shock, making one doubt one’s comfortable relationship to language, even to one’s own cognitive system. Thus, we may speak of two opposing types of mystic experience, achieved by orientation and disorientation, respectively. In his earlier work, Reuven Tsur has hypothesized that the former type is somehow related to the orientation mechanism of the brain. Later, at the time of writing his book on religious and mystic poetry, he encountered brain research that may support or refute this conception. Andrew Newberg and his colleagues conducted a SPECT camera brain-imaging study (the acronym stands for Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography) of Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns at prayer. 13 These researchers claim that what they call the “orientation association area” (OAA) is “extremely important in the brain’s sense of mystical and religious experiences, which often involve altered perceptions of space and time, self and ego.” 14 This would massively support Tsur’s speculations based on the structure of literary texts, introspection, and earlier brain research. The brain scans taken at the peak of their subjects’ meditative state, however, show a sharp reduction in the activity levels of the orientation area. These results prove that the orientation mechanism is involved; however, the changes are the opposite of the predicted direction. But the authors, after gathering all the available information, reach a conclusion that lends, in fact, massive support to his hypothesis. In a later chapter, these researchers point out that there are two orientation areas, situated at the posterior section of the parietal lobe, one in each hemisphere of the brain: The left orientation area is responsible for creating the mental sensation of a limited, physically defined body, while the right orientation area is associated with generating the sense of spatial coordinates that provides the matrix in which the body can be oriented. In simpler terms, the left orientation area creates the brain’s spatial sense of self, while the right side creates the physical space in which that self can exist. 15

To be more precise, then, it was the left orientation association area where a sharp reduction in activity levels was found, while in the right area it seems to increase.

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We consider these findings extremely valuable for interpreting the meditative experience. Mystics and meditators of many religions as well as romantic poets aspire to achieve a mental state that they describe as the suspension of the boundaries between self and not self, or the dissolution of the self in infinite space, or God, what Anton Ehrenzweig, following Freud, calls “oceanic dedifferentiation.” William James quotes an illuminating description of such a state from a letter by Tennyson: “All at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being . . . where death was an almost laughable impossibility—the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.” 16 The information conveyed in Newberg and his colleagues’ discussion accounts most conspicuously for what Tennyson described as “all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being.” 17 In this case, the boundaries of the self must be de-emphasized, and the perception of the surrounding space overemphasized. The process must begin, therefore, with activities having opposing effects in the two orientation areas: in the right area “the sense of spatial coordinates that provides the matrix in which the body can be oriented” must be reinforced; in the left area “the mental sensation of a limited, physically defined body” must be reduced. What is more, the diffuse information-processing mode originating in the right hemisphere may help to blur, as an initial step, the mental sensation of a well-defined physical boundary of the body. In imaginative processes, objects that have stable characteristic visual shapes enhance the feeling of their separateness and our separateness from them; abstractions as well as gestalt-free and thing-free qualities enhance a feeling of the suspended boundaries. In some chapters of the Dao-de Jing, we will explore how the text suggests the suspension of boundaries. Regarding the disorienting aspect of mystic insights, Katz speaks of the shock caused by the mystics’ paradoxes. 18 We have distinguished in mystic experiences between the smooth but heightened functioning of the orientation mechanism and the drastic interference with its smooth functioning. Orientation is the ability to locate oneself in one’s environment with reference to time, place, and people. In this respect, Katz speaks of shocking, even shattering, the standard epistemic security of disciples and then seeking to locate (reorient) themselves vis-à-vis normal versus transcendental reality. 19 Returning now to the orientation type of mystic insights, we note that people may perceive rich precategorial information that escapes the tyranny of categories. In many instances this experience is interpreted as catching a glimpse of some inaccessible reality, beyond the ultimate boundary. But there may be other interpretations too. Thus, for instance, words label categories but cannot render their rich structure, and they certainly cannot convey

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the intrinsic nature of things. In some instances, the perception of rich precategorial information is interpreted as insight into the intrinsic nature of things. In what follows, we will consider instances of all three kinds of mystic insight in the Dao-de Jing: in chapter 14, insight into some inaccessible reality; in chapter 21, insight into the intrinsic nature of things; and in chapter 2, insight resulting from disorientation. Finally, a word on ineffability. We quoted above Katz, who in his essay “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning” mentions that language frequently fails to describe mystic experiences: “The mystic knows that all language, including the sacred, dogmatic, ritual language of his or her religious community, is too impoverished to perform the descriptive role assigned it.” We argue that it is not the information that cannot be rendered by words but the feel of it. Language is a left-hemisphere activity of the brain, where information processing is sequential, compact, and analytic; mystic experiences, on the other hand, are right-hemisphere activities, where information processing is holistic, diffuse, and fluid. Language consists of bundles of semantic and phonological features (= words). Right-hemisphere processes are not ineffable because they are inaccessible to linguistic features. A conception of feature-free right-hemisphere mentation would be unacceptable to some of the leading brain scientists. At least one of them explicitly states that “a holistic approach leaving features and their relations unspecified is as alien to right-hemisphere function as it is inimical to rationality in general.” 20 The output of the right hemisphere is “ineffable” not because it is detached from all paraphrasable features but because the features are diffuse, kept in a fluid state. It is not the information that is unparaphrasable but its diffuseness and fluidity. Diffuseness is not semantic information added but the structure of information as it appears in consciousness. We are confronting the paradox of conveying with words the ineffability of mystic experiences. So how does mystic poetry handle the ineffability of a mystic experience? An analogy with emotional qualities in music may illuminate the issue. When we say, “This piece of music is sad,” we don’t imply that the music made us sad. One can be perfectly consistent when saying, “This sad piece of music inspired me with happiness.” In fact, we report that we have detected some structural resemblance between the music and some emotion. Similarly, we may detect some structural resemblance between a text and some mystic experience. We note the verbal strategies by which the text blurs or eliminates boundaries or visual outlines, rendering the information diffuse, fluid. CHAPTER 14 Look at it, it cannot be seen It is called colorless Listen to it, it cannot be heard

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Sivan Wagshal Te’eni and Reuven Tsur It is called noiseless Reach for it, it cannot be held It is called formless These three cannot be completely unraveled So they are combined into one Above it, not bright Below it, not dark Continuing endlessly, cannot be named It returns back into nothingness Thus it is called the form of the formless The image of the imageless This is called enigmatic Confront it, its front cannot be seen Follow it, its back cannot be seen Wield the Tao of the ancients To manage the existence of today One can know the ancient beginning It is called the Tao Axiom

As we mentioned above, numerous translations of, and commentaries on, the Dao-de Jing exist. Here we shall focus on the Chinese original and several English and Hebrew translations of it. We will adopt, then, the third-century Chinese scholar Wang Bi’s mystical interpretation. We will present some cognitive insights into this interpretation but have no pretensions about making more-comprehensive statements that go beyond that particular domain of analysis. This chapter is particularly compelling because it lends itself in its entirety to an analysis according to the principles of cognitive poetics. What we shall attempt to do is to apply the principles of cognitive poetics to the Chinese text. The main part of this section will therefore consist of a close reading of the text. The theory on which the following analysis is based seeks to investigate the complex interactions between the human cognitive system, “the world,” and the cultural forms that have developed out of such interactions. Our point of departure is the text’s microstructure, that is, words and sentences, as well as the reader’s intuitive reactions to the text. The theory assumes a complex relationship between the whole and its parts. One major claim of this theory is that a poem is not just an accumulation of verbal structures and meanings; poems have perceived effect too. In other words, the effect on the reader of being exposed to a poem is a function of both the poem’s content and its structure. Cognitive poetics as we understand it investigates the relationship between textual structure and words: how a piece of poetry or prose may convey the ineffable as well as certain emotional qualities in words, and how cognitive principles may account for such an effect. One of the most important functions of ordinary consciousness is to create a stable, consistent, and differentiated world. As suggested above in

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the “Cognitive Introduction,” in creating such a world part of the incoming information escapes categorization. Our “ordinary consciousness” tries to organize as much information as possible into categories; in other words, our cognitive system tries to work as efficiently and economically as possible. One way to increase efficiency is the use of concepts and categories, which make it possible to organize a large quantity of information quickly and efficiently. This efficiency, however, comes at a heavy price: much precategorial information is lost. Humans are exposed to an unending stream of stimuli, but a great deal of information that is received by the senses never passes the threshold of cognition and is never translated into clear and distinct concepts. This is the kind of information that may be called “feeling,” “emotion,” and so on. Intuition can also be explained in this way, since intuition is built up by integrating information that has managed to evade categorization. The chapter we are discussing presents our cognitive system with quite a few difficulties and creates considerable obstacles to the normal operation of our senses as they attempt to create a stable world. We shall now see how this chapter presents an immediate situation that the senses cannot perceive and how it activates the orientation mechanism in different ways. Line 1, “Look at it and it cannot be seen,” presents us with something that is present but not perceived by the sense of sight. The verb “look at,” in the imperative mood, emphasizes the immediacy of the situation and stresses the presence of both the looker and the unperceivable essence. Line 2, “It is called colorless” (Daor and Ariel translate: “Its name is ‘the unseen’”), tells us that although the latter cannot be perceived, it does have a name. Because of the sentence structure and especially due to the lack of a conjunction, we cannot know whether the statement that “its name is ‘the unseen’” complements or contradicts what was stated earlier. In other words, we do not know whether “Its name” is in contrast to “Look,” or “the unseen” complements “will not be seen.” Thus already in the chapter’s very first image, we are faced with a rather absurd situation in which two entities play a role, one unseen, unperceivable, but possessing a name, and the other trying but failing to perceive the unperceivable. This initial absurdity provides us with a clue as to the nature of the rest of the chapter and tells us that the text basically consists of an interaction between the written words and the reader. Line 3, “Listen to it and it cannot be heard,” informs us that the sense of hearing will also not enable us to perceive this mysterious essence. Again we are told that although it cannot be heard, it does possess a name, since line 4 states that “it is called noiseless” (Daor and Ariel translate: “Its name is ‘the silent’”). We are thus faced with the same pattern as previously, this time with respect to the sense of hearing. The first six lines suggest an abbreviated hierarchy of the senses, according to which sight is the most differentiated, followed by hearing. The least differentiated is the sense of touch. It is this

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sense that first fails to attain the essence the perceiver is trying to perceive. The sense of hearing, slightly less differentiated than the sense of sight, also fails, and soon we will also learn of the failure of the sense of touch. Line 5, “Reach for it, it cannot be held” (Daor and Ariel translate: “Try to touch it, and it cannot be reached”), demonstrates a stratagem that Cleanth Brooks and Robert B. Heilman call “significant variation,” defined as “a type of structure in which the effect is secured by an alteration in a pattern of action which has become familiar by repetition.” 21 It is familiar to anyone dealing with ballads, proverbs, and other types of folk literature. In the case at hand, we see a minimal repetition, needed to establish the pattern, immediately followed by the alteration. Notice that the verbs at the beginning of lines 1 and 3 are both simple imperatives—“Look,” “Listen”—whereas the opening verb phrase of line 5 (in Daor and Ariel’s translation) contains a modal, “Try to touch,” that for the first time hints at the possibility that the reader may fail to perceive the essence he or she is meant to perceive. But again, despite the failure of perception through the sense of touch, line 6 tells us that the entity has a name: “It is called formless” (Daor and Ariel: “Its name is ‘the tiny’”). Lin, Daor and Ariel, and Stephen Mitchell use the imperative. Other English translators (James Legge, D. T. Suzuki, and Dwight Goddard) use the first-person plural (we). 22 In Lin’s and Mitchell’s translations, line 5 too contains an unqualified imperative (there is no modal). But Legge and Goddard too have recourse to a modal, “try to grasp” and “seeking to grasp” respectively. It would appear that confronted with complex deviation from an established pattern, Lin normalizes the third member in all respects. The Chinese word wēi means “micro, tiny, miniature,” which is not a straightforward negation of “Reach for it, it cannot be held.” So he normalizes it to “It is called formless.” Daor and Ariel translate, literally, “Its name is ‘the tiny.’” Perhaps Legge’s “subtle” would be the solution, that is, too subtle to grasp. The foregoing translations relied on verbal forms prevalent in Western languages. But everything we have said so far with respect to the situation described here is valid also for the original text in classical Chinese. Although the verbs there are not in the imperative mood, the source text also presents an immediate situation whose participants are an unperceivable essence and a perceiver whose senses fail to capture this essence. In line 5 the exact same pattern is repeated, but precisely where the translation has “Try to touch” the source text has a changeable character, one of whose roots can appear in more than one form, and scholars cannot decide definitively which root is more “correct.” Here the Western “modal” form is somewhat problematic. Several of the translations use “try, seek,” but Lin chooses “reach for.” The Chinese verb bó means “to fight; to combat; to seize,” perhaps “strive to seize.” In fact, “reach for” too contains a semantic feature to the same effect,

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defined as “extend one’s hand or arm in an attempt to touch or grasp (something).” There is an interesting difference between Lin’s, Daor and Ariel’s, and Mitchell’s translations, on the one hand, and Legge’s and Suzuki and Goddard’s translations, on the other. The latter three use the indicative to describe a general situation, whereas the former three use the imperative to create an immediate situation here and now, that is, they evoke an essence that is immediately present. But this essence cannot be perceived by any of the senses: not by the most differentiated of senses, that of sight, and not by the lesser ones, of hearing and touch. (Peter A. Merel has recourse to the past participles “looked at . . . listened to . . . held” serving as adverbials of state and suggests no modal either.) 23 Line 7, “These three cannot be completely unraveled” (Daor and Ariel: “These three you cannot fathom”) makes the claim that the three cannot be studied; in other words, the essence we are dealing with is inaccessible to both the senses and to understanding. This chapter presents attempts at approaching an essence that is present, has names, but cannot be attained. There is here a fascinating interplay of language and its connection to the essence that it represents. Words and names only enable us to label entities, or rather the concepts of entities. Nonetheless, there are even those who claim that words are what enable us to perceive reality. But in this chapter the essence in question remains unperceivable in spite of possessing names. The greatest achievement of mature consciousness is cognitive differentiation, including dissociation of the senses. The above-mentioned three senses have been introduced to emphasize that the essence is unperceivable to any of them—that is, absolutely unperceivable, even though it has a name, in fact three names, one for each sense. In other words, they serve here a joint purpose: to demonstrate the impossibility of perceiving the essence in question. The line “So they are combined into one” (Daor and Ariel: “They mixed together and became one”) shifts the perspective: they are examples of the dissociation of the senses, which mysticism aspires to overcome. As we said in the “Cognitive Introduction,” in imaginative processes objects that have stable characteristic visual shapes enhance the feeling of their separateness and our separateness from them; abstractions as well as gestalt-free and thing-free qualities may enhance a feeling of suspended boundaries—facilitating fusion. Here we face a paradoxical twist. In principle, at least, one may fuse information perceived by the three senses, but here information that cannot be perceived by the three senses is fused. By the same token, since we have no sensory information whatever about the unperceivable essence in question, there are also no boundaries to obstruct fusion. The different but unperceivable occurrences of the essence, occurrences identified only by their names, have fused and become one. The word “therefore” emphasizes a

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causal relationship between the senses’ inability to perceive the essence and the fusion into unity of its various occurrences. Let us consider, by contrast, a case of different occurrences of the same event as perceived by different senses: lightning and thunder. These are phenomena of the same electric process, perceived as different entities occurring within a time interval and at slightly different places. We can easily imagine them occurring simultaneously and at exactly the same place, but not fused into a single audiovisual entity. In verbal structures at least, we may fuse the two senses if they don’t involve stable visual shapes as, for example, in Verlaine’s “Et leur chanson se mêle au clair de lune” (And their song mingles in the moonlight). In line 8, according to the version found in a tomb during the excavations at Ma Huang-Dui there is a repetition of the expression “The one.” Although in other versions this expression is not repeated, Daor and Ariel chose to repeat it. Such repetition is in fact consistent with our previously stated position, since it stresses mysticism’s aspiration to overcome the dissociation of the senses, enhancing a feeling of suspended boundaries—facilitating fusion into one. In an earlier version of this chapter, we seemed to have a problem with the next two lines, “Not bright above” and “Not dark below.” Although there was no evidence in the text itself that this refers to yin and yang, and despite the fact that Daoist philosophy at the time this text was supposedly written did not concern itself with the existential dualism represented by these two terms, we thought we could not dismiss the possibility that an educated reader would associate the lines just quoted with this dualism. But eventually we decided to dismiss it as groundless speculation. However, in the 1993 archaeological excavations at an ancient burial barrow probably sealed around 300 BCE, near the village Goudian, some philosophical writings were found and subsequently identified as the accepted version of the Dao-de Jing. In one of the manuscripts there was an additional text called “The Great One Gives Birth to the Water.” Although this is the only place where this text has been found to date, most scholars agree that it must be considered an integral part of this particular version of the Dao-de Jing. 24 In this short text there is a lengthy discussion of “The One” as the source of everything and extensive allusion to yin and yang as the source of the four seasons. Therefore, these verses may hint at a negation of yin and yang, at the abolition of the natural order as it should be. Now consider the following two lines: Continuing endlessly, cannot be named It returns back into nothingness

The Chinese word shéng, which was translated here as “continuing,” refers to an endless rope, or one rope connected to another indefinitely, a rope without

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beginning or end. Endless ropes and nothingness suggest infinity in different ways. The former are long thin stretches and have directionality. Linearity is typically associated with the left hemisphere of the brain. Nothingness, by contrast, is perceived as an entity lacking boundaries and free of directions and would typically be associated with the right hemisphere of the brain. It has no attributes whatever, certainly no boundaries, no direction. Imagination has nothing to seize upon. However, its position in the sentence is such that it can be taken to refer to the place to which one can return. Thus, “nothingness” is absence but nevertheless activates the space-perception mechanism and is perceived as something that has physical existence. It is absence experienced as intensely present. When perceived as a spatial entity, it expands in all directions beyond the horizon and is perceived as infinite. In the temporal dimension, “rope” would be perceived more as “endless duration” (according to George Lakoff, duration is length), whereas “nothingness” would be perceived more as “eternity.” Thus “continuity” displays here a psychological atmosphere of patent purpose and definite direction, reinforced by the verb “returns back into.” When returning into nothingness, it loses its identity and directionality. It becomes nonlinear, nonsequential, directionless, diffuse, leading nowhere. It contains a sudden shift from a focused visual gestalt to what Freud called “oceanic dedifferentiation.” Thus, one may perceive in it a structural resemblance to mystic experience (cf. above our discussion of Newberg and his colleagues’ SPECT camera findings). “Cannot be named” (Daor and Ariel: “It has no name”) provides an interesting piece of additional information. It tells us that the one formed out of the integration of occurrences has no name. This is surprising indeed, in light of the fact that at the beginning of the chapter we were informed that the unperceivable essence does have a name, in fact three different names! Why then is it now claimed that it does not have one? Why after so carefully listing its names in the preceding lines is it now stated that it “cannot be named” at all? One possible explanation is that when all the occurrences coalesce into one and thus disappear, their names disappear as well. The essence now becomes more complex and ever less differentiated. The reader is gradually drawn into mystery. At first we meet with an essence that is present and has a name, although it cannot be perceived by the senses. But now this same essence draws away from our understanding so that it lacks even a name. The paradox formed by the juxtaposition of “look at it” and “it cannot be seen” and of “listen to it” and “it cannot be heard” creates a sense of disorientation, since the situation is immediate but unperceivable. The presence exists here and now but cannot be sensed. Katz speaks of language as an instrument for bringing about change. In his essay “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” mentioned earlier, he states, “It is the ability of language to induce ‘breakthroughs’ of consciousness by being employed

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‘nonsensically’ that is fundamental to the traversal of the mystical path, to the movement from consciousness A to consciousness B.” 25 Such a state of loss of orientation makes reorganization necessary. It is this process of reorganization that makes possible the flickering mentioned by Bialik that exposes the abyss. In our case it makes possible the flickering of the Dao through the words. Line 13 consists of the expression “Thus it is called,” which may be understood as connecting the previous sentence to the following one but can also be regarded as stressing the difference between the thing itself and its label. In other words, it stresses that what is said is only words, not the thing itself. This is a declaration that promises a definition. This is the expectation aroused in the reader, but the definition that follows again deprives the name of all content. Bialik in his aforementioned essay emphasizes this point even more strongly. He states that “all the combinations of language are completely powerless to bring us into the absolute internal essence of things. In fact the opposite is true: it is itself a barrier to them.” 26 A name is nothing but a label, not the essence itself (cf. our discussion of chapter 21 below). The lines “The form of the formless,” “The image of the imageless,” contain expressions of negation, creating a paradox that contributes to the reader’s confusion and cognitive destabilization. The use of negative attributes draws attention away from stable, differentiated objects to gestalt-free qualities. The text still attempts to give names, but these possess an everdecreasing measure of real content. In line 15, the Chinese word hū means “indistinct”; huǎng means “disappointed; flurried; indistinct.” Daor and Ariel translate them as “dim, hazy.” Lin translates them as “enigma.” The term “enigma” applies to utterance or behavior that is very difficult to interpret, and thus it is more abstract than “dim,” “hazy,” which apply to immediate sense perception, that is, suggest attributes that blur gestalts and suggest a low degree of differentiation. They refer to immediately experienced qualities rather than to only the main features of some general utterance or behavior, as “enigma.” As we have insisted, in verbal expressions intuitive fusion is facilitated when the words do not refer to objects that have stable, characteristic visual shape. The words “dim” and “hazy” are typically used to blur stable visual shapes; here they appear after the expression “This is called” and can be understood as constituting additional definitions of that same thing that was previously described as a “form without form” or a “figure of no-thing.” In short, from line 15 on the reader’s attention is drawn to gestalt-free and thing-free qualities. The last four lines of the chapter are problematic on various grounds. As for the idea contents, they display a certain inconsistency. Daor and Ariel’s translation reads:

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Grasp the path of the present, So that you master the being of the present And know the beginning of the past. That is called “The Law of the Way”

In Lin’s translation, the first line of this quote reads, “Wield the Tao of the ancients.” In a footnote to their Hebrew translation, Daor and Ariel point out that according to the version found in the Mawangdui excavations the text reads, “Grasp the path of the past in order to master the being of the present,” and that it is impossible to decide whether “the past (ancients),” as in Lin’s translation, is a later correction in the spirit of Confucianism or whether “the present,” as in Daor and Ariel’s translation, is an earlier correction in the spirit of legalism. In either case, someone seems to have tampered with the original text; perhaps it is a later addition all in all. From the point of view of the tone, there is a notable shift here. The reader is enjoined to “follow” that imperceptible something, in the ethical sense. He is told to follow this invisible thing despite the fact that it can be neither seen nor really understood (you must persevere in your present path even if the road as a whole is still not clear to you). Thus the last four lines assume a sermonizing or moralizing tone, reinforced by what in some translations into Western languages becomes an imperative verb (“Grasp the path of the present” or “Wield the Tao of the ancients”). So whether they are a later addition or written by the original author, the sermonizing tone of the last four lines is incongruous with the contemplative tone of the entire foregoing discourse—either through carelessness or for some well-conceived artistic or educational purpose. In either case, they bestow a special status on the preceding two lines: they become the closing lines of the contemplative discourse proper: Confront it, its front cannot be seen Follow it, its back cannot be seen

These lines sum up, in an important sense, the message of this chapter. In fact, they repeat what is said in the first line, “Look at it, it cannot be seen,” but with a twist. The difference in expression may also reflect a difference of cognitive principles, already noted by Aristotle. The concluding lines indicate physical events, presenting us with mobility, a movement lacking in the description at the beginning of the chapter. Our senses tend to adapt to static stimuli. For example, when we put on our socks in the morning, we immediately feel them on our feet; however, after a few minutes we forget them and no longer feel their touch. This is true of the mental senses as well. In the concluding lines, then, the situation becomes part of a physical event, resorting to the physical-action predicate “follow” and the mentalaction predicate “confront” (that may suggest physical elements too). “See” is a mental-process predicate, that is, it denotes a sensation that happens to the subject; “look” is a mental-action predicate, that is, it denotes a sensation

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that is initiated and directed by the subject. The same mental-process ~ mental-action opposition is suggested by “hear” and “listen” in line 3. The first line has recourse to the pure mental-action predicate “look,” the third line to “listen,” which suggest no physical movement. Thus at both the beginning and the end of the chapter, there is a conscious, voluntary, directional attempt at perceiving that cannot result even in a vague, involuntary sense perception. But the final attempt is amplified by physical action. There is a progression during the reading of the chapter, in which the reader is exposed to a process that keeps the senses awake. In his discussion of energeia (sometimes translated as “vividness”), Aristotle provides the following explanation: “By ‘making them see things’ I mean using expressions that represent things as in a state of activity. . . . Vividness is specially conveyed by metaphor, and by the further power of surprising the hearer; because the hearer expected something different, his acquisition of the new idea impresses him all the more.” 27 Line 1 and the last two lines definitely represent the subjects as in a state of activity; the last two lines in a state of physical activity. The nineteenth-century English aestheticist thinker Walter Pater justifies the existence of art as follows: “Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. . . . For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake.” 28 This idea is better known through the more recent “Art as Technique” by the Russian formalist Viktor Shklovsky, who writes that “art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known . . . to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.” 29 This description of the function of art is important to our discussion because it raises issues that cognitive poetics typically explains. It assumes that for art to achieve its purpose of providing a novel way of looking at things, the normal processes of perception must be disturbed, slowed down, and modified. In other words, it is necessary that processes of categorization be disturbed and one’s cognition exposed to rich precategorial sense stimuli (the Dao flickering through the words and categories, if you like). This opposition between things “as they are known” and “things as they are perceived” is illustrated in an interesting way in certain translation solutions by Lin and Daor and Ariel. Where the former translates “Tao,” the latter translate “road” or “way”; where the former translates “enigma,” the latter translate “dim,” “hazy” (see above). The second of each pair of solutions increases “the difficulty and length of perception,” imparting “the sensation of things as they are perceived.” The sensation one gets from putting together

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the overall visual information provided throughout the entire chapter is one of an attempt to negate all spatial directions. Barbara Herrnstein-Smith’s admirable precursor of cognitive poetics, Poetic Closure, applies the gestaltist notion “closure” to poetry. It is a study of how poems end. Closure is not mere cessation of a poem but appropriate cessation: a point from which one expects no continuation. It “gives ultimate unity and coherence to the reader’s experience of the poem by providing a point from which all the preceding elements may be viewed comprehensively and their relations grasped as part of a significant design.” 30 But note that poets and composers sometimes “sabotage” effective closure, for aesthetic purposes (see below). To remind ourselves, in chapter 14 we are speaking of closure in the section preceding the last four lines. Here closure is suggested by four means at least. First, repetition at the end, with slight changes, of what has already been said at the beginning of a poem is a widespread closural device, in folk songs for instance. It enhances the validity of the concluding part by reminding the reader: “Yes, I have already been told something like that.” According to one of the gestalt rules of perception, such similarity groups together the beginning and the end in the reader’s perception, serving as a frame that effectively separates the poem from its surroundings. Second, the said device of energeia enhances the activity of that message in the reader’s perception. Third, parallelism is a strong, stable gestalt, providing a stable closure to a fluid text. Finally, the verbatim repetition of “cannot be seen” at the end of the last two verses in Lin’s translation indicates lack of progression (in Daor and Ariel’s translation, by contrast, “You cannot see its head” and “You cannot see its back” generate unity in variety, enhancing the strong, stable gestalt mentioned previously). CHAPTER 21 As we indicated in the “Cognitive Introduction” and in the foregoing section on chapter 14, language can label things but not reveal their intrinsic nature, their “innermost essence.” Chapter 21 suggests an altered state of consciousness that affords insight into such intrinsic nature, elusive essence. It does this by the combination of three kinds of linguistic devices. First, it realizes the spatial aspect of the etymology of “intrinsic,” derived from a word meaning “inwardly, inward.” Second, it has recourse to nouns of which a meaning component is “indistinct, unspecified.” Third, it qualifies its nouns by such adjectives as “obscure,” “indistinct,” “blurred,” “fuzzy.” Consider: The appearance of great virtue Follows only the Tao The Tao, as a thing

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Sivan Wagshal Te’eni and Reuven Tsur Seems indistinct, seems unclear So unclear, so indistinct Within it there is image So indistinct, so unclear Within it there is substance So deep, so profound Within it there is essence Its essence is supremely real Within it there is faith From ancient times to the present Its name never departs To observe the source of all things How do I know the nature of the source? With this

Central to this chapter is the generation of uncertainty by blurring boundaries and categories. The relevant dictionary meaning of “thing” (which occurs twice in the Hebrew translation) is “an object or entity not precisely designated or capable of being designated.” The relevant dictionary meaning of “figure” (used in the Hebrew translation) 31 is “a person seen indistinctly or from a distance, as in a dark figure emerged from the shadows”—that is, two indistinctly perceived entities. Now these vague, obscure entities are arranged one inside the other, as in a Chinese box: the “figure” within “the road as a thing,” 32 the “thing” within the “figure,” and the “essence” within “the thing.” Thus we reach the innermost, dimly perceptible but very real essence of things. The Chinese box arrangement suggests that the essence is accessible with difficulty, through layer after layer; the nouns “thing” and “figure” suggest indistinctness, dim percepts that can only be intuited, so to speak. Now the indistinctness of such perception is substantially amplified by the adjectives “seems indistinct, seems unclear,” “so unclear, so indistinct,” “so indistinct, so unclear,” “so deep, so profound [dark],” enhancing the sense of undifferentiation and blurred boundaries. “Thing” is a concrete noun but suggests indefiniteness, lack of specification. In the Hebrew translation, its first token serves to blur the image “road,” to deconcretize it, as it were. 33 Its second token designates what is at the core of those indistinct, gestalt-free entities. This leads us to another prominent stylistic device in this chapter: the repetition of words with changing functions or positions. The same word (“thing”) serves as a starting point from an external description and the innermost essence, the end point of an inward movement. In this sense, the process displays some patent purpose and definite direction. But it does this in a way that displays no psychological atmosphere of patent purpose and

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definite direction: through a procedure that can repeat itself indefinitely; as such, it is perceived as reiteration rather than forward movement. Within it there is image . . . Within it there is substance . . . Within it there is essence . . . Within it there is faith . . .

Such a psychological atmosphere of lack of patent purpose and definite direction can be characterized, in A. Tellegen’s words, as an experiential set, that is, a mental “state of receptivity or openness to undergo whatever experiential events, sensory or imaginal, that may occur, with tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves and the objects they represent. In this set, experiences have a quality of effortlessness, as if they happened by themselves, and in that sense, of involuntariness.” 34 Experiential set is positively correlated with hypnotic susceptibility; in poetry it is associated, among other stylistic devices, with nonfunctional reiteration of phrases involving minimal changes. On the one hand, such reiteration enhances the text’s rhythmic quality and, by the same token, the reader’s emotive responsiveness. On the other hand, it suggests dwelling on, rather than going beyond, the experiences themselves. Such a tendency is enhanced here by the reiteration of the adjectives “seems indistinct, seems unclear,” “so unclear, so indistinct,” “so indistinct, so unclear.” This pair of adjectives is not merely reiterated, but with each recurrence its members exchange positions. Thus the text suggests dwelling on an experience; at the same time, it is exceptionally active. As to their meaning, these adjectives suggest the blurring of clear-cut, stable shapes, thus increasing the need for receptivity or openness to undergo experiential events, sensory or imaginal. This blurring effect is further reinforced by the adjectives “so deep, so profound.” The reiteration of “so” amplifies the blurring effect and bestows on the utterance a tone of deliberate, purposeful attitude. Likewise, the repetition of the modal “seems” indicates a perceiving consciousness. In the Hebrew translation, by contrast, the adjectives are not interspersed with tokens of the modal “seem” and the adverb “so”: “is indistinct, unclear,” “unclear, indistinct . . . ,” “indistinct, unclear . . . ,” and “deep, dark”—suggesting an incantatory rather than intensifying effect. Briefly, the reiteration of “seems” and “so” generates a relatively deliberate, intentional tone; the reiteration of the adjectives only is perceived as more casual, as if things happened of themselves. Thus the innermost “essence is supremely real,” but at the same time, its obscureness is emphasized by all possible stylistic means. In Derek Lin’s English translation it is associated with “substance,” a thing-free and gestaltfree, that is, an even vaguer entity than “thing,” suggesting some vague, elusive, dissolving presence that has no boundaries at all. This results in a

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paradoxical perception. As part of a Chinese-box arrangement, it is perceived as limited by the outer boxes; at the same time, the adjectives “so deep, so profound” turn “substance” into boundless expansion within the limited area, suggesting what Ehrenzweig calls, following Freud, “oceanic dedifferentiation.” (Chinese ming means “deep, dark”; indeed, the Hebrew translation has “dark, deep” instead of the near-synonyms “so deep, so profound.”) In Daor and Ariel’s Hebrew translation, the innermost essence is associated with “thing,” suggesting some vague object not precisely designated or capable of being designated but still having some dim shape. According to the present reading, at this stage the word is not merely an external label but inseparably attaches to the essence: “From ancient times to the present / Its name never departs.” The last two lines contain a metastatement about all that has preceded: How do I know the nature of the source? With this

It explicitly suggests that we are dealing here with knowing the hidden nature of (things [?]). The way to know it is “this.” We assume that “this” refers to the entire foregoing process. Some of the translations (Legge, Goddard) explicitly suggest “by the Dao,” in terms of our conception, not by the Dao as an abstract entity but “by the Dao flickering through the words.” In this way, this chapter suggests, by showing, not merely by telling, some state of consciousness characterized by receptivity, an openness to dim, elusive sense perceptions interpreted as the innermost essence of things. Relatively late versions of the text added titles to the chapters. The title of the present chapter may, indeed, suggest such a receptive attitude. It consists of two words, xū, meaning “emptiness; void; abstract theory or guiding principles,” the other xīn, meaning “heart, mind, intention, centre, core.” If you construe the first word as “abstract theory or guiding principles,” it is reasonable to translate it as “Dao.” But if you construe it as “emptiness; void,” the title will suggest something like Keats’s “negative capability”: the capability of “being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts,” an “ability to make up one’s mind about nothing—to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts.” 35 CHAPTER 2 When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises When it knows good as good, evil arises Thus being and nonbeing produce each other Difficult and easy bring about each other Long and short reveal each other High and low support each other Music and voice harmonize each other Front and back follow each other

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Therefore the sages: Manage the work of detached actions Conduct the teaching of no words They work with myriad things but do not control They create but do not possess They act but do not presume They succeed but do not dwell on success It is because they do not dwell on success That it never goes away

As we have suggested in the “Cognitive Introduction,” this chapter—like many others in the Dao-de Jing—may be regarded as a piece of “poetry of disorientation.” This style consists in a large concentration of stylistic devices that are prone to induce a sense of confusion and emotional disorientation. In what follows we shall note some of the devices used by the text to induce such a feeling. We conceive of stylistic devices as adaptation devices turned to an aesthetic end. The orientation mechanism integrates some fluid percepts and generates cognitive stability. The “disorienting” locutions shake one’s sense of coherence and cognitive stability. The greater the disintegration of the perceived world, the more pronounced the effect of the integration and orientation mechanisms—up to a certain point, when the disintegrating environment escapes from the control of those mechanisms. At this point, one must have recourse to radically different adaptation mechanisms. One may gather information about oneself and one’s environment by appropriately tuned schemata. When suddenly something seems to go wrong, one must check one’s own schemata to determine whether they are appropriately tuned. When those baffling linguistic devices shock us out of tune with our environment, our own adaptation mechanisms and linguistic mechanisms are revealed to our awareness. This can be called “meta-awareness.” One of the main functions of art is that it brings about heightened awareness. It may bring about heightened awareness of reality as Pater and Shklovsky have suggested or, as in this case, of our own adaptation mechanisms. The resulting shock makes us discard the old schemata and search for new, more appropriate ones, leading to reorientation. The first two lines of this chapter present two paradoxes by two logical fallacies: tautology and straightforward self-contradiction. In this way they undermine certain predominant truths. But there are subtle stylistic differences between Lin’s English translation and Daor and Ariel’s Hebrew translation. When the world knows beauty as beauty, ugliness arises When it knows good as good, evil arises (Lin)

as opposed to

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The Hebrew translation has recourse to unqualified, straightforward tautologies and categorical contradictions, detached from any context that might suggest some interpretation. As such, it is exceptionally baffling. The compound sentences and the “beauty as beauty” and “good as good” constructions as well as the predicate “arises” in the English translation suggest some particular circumstances and leave room for a meaningful interpretation; for instance, “When the world knows beauty as beauty, people are not entitled to exercise their own free judgment,” or “political correctness sets in.” Likewise, in the “beauty as beauty” and “good as good” constructions, the tautology may be construed as meaningful, namely, “beauty as beauty, and not as something else.” One might even suggest that the two tokens of “beauty” have different senses here: the first token may have some experiential meaning as “the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit,” whereas the second token can be understood as a cliché, that is, “when beauty stops being beauty and becomes a cliché.” These may be mere stylistic differences, but the Hebrew translation is more baffling. Another way to put it would be this. When you use a predicate, you present to the imagination some state of affairs to contemplate. You also imply: “It exists” or “it occurred.” The phrase “as good” or “as beauty” merely offers a state of affairs for contemplation; it does not imply that this is actually the case anywhere in the world. “Is good” or “is beauty” also says “it occurred,” generating straightforward tautological statements. Likewise, the predicate “arises” suggests change from one state to its opposite (viz., from nonexistence to existence), but not some existential incompatibility. “And this is the ugly” and “and this is the evil,” by contrast, suggest straightforward incompatibility with the preceding statements: “that the beautiful is beautiful” and “that the good is good,” respectively. Such paradoxes blur the boundaries of concepts and categories and may deprive the reader of his or her sense of cognitive stability. Moreover, the verbatim repetition of such phrases as “all the world knows that” is usually considered bad style. Indeed, Lin indicates here coreference, as one should, by substituting the pronoun “it” for the second token of the phrase. However, what is bad prose may make excellent poetry. In this case, the reiteration of “all the world knows that” suggests a “tendency to dwell on, rather than go beyond, the experiences themselves and the objects they represent.” In the ensuing four lines, there are no significant differences between the two translations: Thus being and nonbeing produce each other Difficult and easy bring about each other

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Long and short reveal each other High and low support each other

The quasi reconciliation of opposites in these lines deal blow after blow to the sense of cognitive stability achieved by ordinary consciousness, but—as we shall see—with a twist. In the “Cognitive Introduction,” we have suggested, following Jung, a psychological mechanism in which each state contains germs of its opposite, as in the death-and-rebirth archetype, where the opposites produce each other in a smooth process. In some mystic texts, however, as here, these opposite states are sharpened into a straightforward paradox, intended to baffle the reader. In the next line, the two translations differ again: “Music and voice harmonize each other” (Lin), as opposed to “Voice and meaning harmonize each other” (Daor and Ariel). The latter may easily be construed as meaningful as, for instance, Alexander Pope’s “’Tis not enough no Harshness gives Offence, / The Sound must seem an Eccho to the Sense.” All the English translations we have checked opt for “music and voice.” The manuscript discovered at the Mawangdui excavations has “sound and voice.” Something like this is encouraged by the Chinese text: Chinese yīn means, among other things, “sound; noise; note (of musical scale); tone.” Again, shēng means “sound; voice; tone; noise; measure word for sounds.” This verse line occurs after the following sequence of verses: Thus being and nonbeing produce each other Difficult and easy bring about each other Long and short reveal each other High and low support each other

Each of these presents a pair of opposite terms that necessarily entail each other, as it were. This is bluntly illogical and baffling. After establishing this pattern of contradictions, the verse “Sound and voice harmonize each other” occurs, suggesting, as it were, that it too implies some contradiction. The terms “sound” and “voice,” however, are synonymous, and there is no contradiction between them. Establishing some pattern and then deviating from it is a well-known rhetorical device for conveying significant meaning in popular ballads, proverbs, and other genres of folk literature. Here we face a most sophisticated instance of it. Each paradoxical statement baffles our sense of certainty and security. Repetition of the paradoxical pattern mitigates this bafflement and by the very repetition generates a sense of stability and security. The deviation undermines this sense of stability. Thus the individual paradoxes are meant to baffle the reader; the sequence generates a sense of comfortable continuity and, at the same time, of confusion and emotional disorientation. Alternatively, we may contrast the voice and the music (or, even more subtly, the voice and the sound) as, for example, the medium and the mes-

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sage (something like Yeats’s “How can we know the dancer from the dance?”). Thus, emphatic contrasting of “sound” to “voice” may indicate some fine distinction between them after all, sharpened into outright contradiction. Such subtle distinctions may result in chaotic overdifferentiation undermining, again, the stability of ordinary consciousness. The next line in the Hebrew translation is “These are the constant.” Daor and Ariel chose to include this verse in their translation, even though it appears only in the version discovered in the Mawangdui excavations. This verse effects a semantic change because it claims that all the foregoing verbs of process, such as “produce each other,” “bring about each other,” “reveal each other,” and so on, designate some constant of causation. A slightly different reading would suggest that it is the preceding absurd statements that are the constant. In addition to subverting predominant truths, that is, generating conceptual paradoxes, in this chapter there is a paradox of a different order, in the structure of the whole chapter. This paradox is generated by “therefore” in the next verse. This word arouses expectations for a causal explanation. One may expect that the ensuing verses would illuminate to some extent, or at least refer to, the preceding verses. But that is not what happens. The relationship between the first and the second part of the chapter is rather loose. The chapter presents two levels of thinking or rather two levels of discourse. On one level of discourse, in the first part, the chapter presents a collection of paradoxes, a series of unrelated paradoxical statements on a highly general, universal level. At another level of discourse, in the second part, the chapter presents some logical conclusions as it were, a recommendation to implement in practice those general statements. However, these conclusions too are paradoxical and loosely related. In the first part (lines 1–7), a series of general paradoxical statements is presented, detached from any specific condition or situation. In the second part (from “therefore” on), the paradoxes are predicated of specific subjects or contexts—that is, the argument is concretized. The reader is induced to link somehow the general statements of the first part to the more concrete situation in the second part. As we said, however, this link is rather loose, so that a paradoxical vision of a higher order is generated. The second part is devoted to a paradoxical characterization of the sage that by no means illuminates the paradoxical statements of the first part. Lin translates the next three lines as follows: Therefore the sages: Manage the work of detached actions Conduct the teaching of no words

In Daor and Ariel’s translation, the analogy between the second and the third of these verses is more perfect, rhythmically reiterating the same paradoxical

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structure, dwelling on, rather than going beyond, the experience (to use Tellegen’s words). Therefore the sage— His place is action of no acting His conduct is teaching of no words

These paradoxical statements characterize the sage as a person whose capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of others resides in his very personality, not in his words or actions. In the next two verses there is an interesting difference between the two translations. Lin has They work with myriad things but do not control They create but do not possess,

whereas Daor and Ariel have Myriad things are created but he does not give rise to them They come into existence but he does not take possession of them

In these verses, Lin adopts from the preceding two the paradoxical statements, the attribution of incompatible actions to the same agent, the sages. Daor and Ariel, by contrast, turn the incompatibility into mere opposition and adopt from the preceding verses the basic conception of the sage: Myriad things happen in the world, but he does not cause them and does not take possession of them—he is an uninvolved observer, not a self-interested actor. In the last three verses the two translations say again the same things, with minor differences. Lin translates: They succeed but do not dwell on success It is because they do not dwell on success That it never goes away

When one makes an effort and accomplishes his aim, one expects to come to a rest, equilibrium—all tension spent. Not so the sage: he “does not dwell on success.” The equilibrium achieved after an effort arouses the illusion of permanence. Paradoxically, however, the opposite is the case. As long as you don’t dwell on your accomplishment, it does not go away. These concluding verse lines have a rather unexpected effect. The chapter as a whole consists of pairs or sequences of parallel, succinct, unqualified paradoxical statements. These three lines deviate to some extent from this pattern. We quoted earlier Herrnstein-Smith’s admirable book Poetic Closure. As she observes there, among other things, deviation from an established pattern at the end of a work generates powerful closure. It indicates, as it were, that an endlessly repeatable pattern has come to an end. The first one of the above three lines apparently continues this series of abrupt paradoxical statements. But the next two lines sabotage this abrupt effect. They explicate, so to speak, the foregoing aphorism. And by doing so, they reopen the closed

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utterance and disrupt its succinct character. This disruption is reinforced, on the syntactic level, by a longish complex sentence. This ending displays what Herrnstein-Smith calls “anti-closure,” that is, sabotaging the closure. One way to effect powerful closure is to round off some meandering description or argument with a succinct formulation. This effect may be reinforced by parallelism, imparting stability to the end of the utterance. In this chapter it goes the other way around: it ends a series of parallel terse, paradoxical statements with a relatively elaborate argument expressed in a complex sentence. As we have pointed out, Herrnstein-Smith argues that closure “gives ultimate unity and coherence to the reader’s experience of the poem by providing a point from which all the preceding elements may be viewed comprehensively and their relations grasped as part of a significant design.” Anticlosure leaves us with a sense of thwarted significance, a sense of “no goal toward which to move.” Modern music and literature frequently have recourse to such an effect. “Underlying this new aesthetic,” says Leonard B. Meyer, “is a conception of man and the universe”: “The denial of the reality of relationships and the relevance of purpose . . . rest[s] upon a less explicit but even more fundamental denial: a denial of the reality of cause and effect.” 36 Thus the last two verse lines make a (paradoxical) statement about cause and effect, but the anti-closure imparts to it a psychological atmosphere of the unreality of cause and effect, of “no goal toward which to move.” The whole chapter is organized violence against logical thinking. The reader is induced to abandon his or her old, familiar logic and exchange it for a new one that is, in fact, no logic at all. At the beginning of this section, we argued that when the baffling linguistic devices shock us out of tune with our environment, our own adaptation mechanisms and linguistic mechanisms are revealed to our awareness. The resulting shock makes us discard the old schemata and search for new, more appropriate ones, leading to reorientation. In the “Cognitive Introduction,” we quote Steven T. Katz, who explores such paradoxes in the context of mysticism: he speaks of shocking, even shattering the standard epistemic security of disciples and then seeking to locate (reorient) themselves vis-à-vis normal versus transcendental reality. TO CONCLUDE This chapter has offered a cognitive poetic reading of three chapters from the Dao-de Jing. We had no intention of arbitrating the enormous variety of interpretations of this work ever offered or of assuming an attitude toward the meaning of the text. Our aim has been to initiate a dialogue between the

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text and cognitive poetics, noting the different perceived effects of the different formulations. As the “Laozi” entry in the bibliography indicates, over 150 English translations of the Dao-de Jing are available on the Internet. In searching for a translation to work with, we have compared seven translations, six English and one Hebrew, with the Chinese original. But this is not a study of translations either. We have quoted Daor and Ariel, who had noted in the introduction to their Hebrew translation, “It would be unreasonable to speak of a translation that is faithful to the source text—substantial parts of which (certainly not all) are so obscure, contentious, ambiguous.” 37 We did not intend to establish the or a correct translation. Since one cannot secure a single authoritative text or translation, our aim has merely been to make sure that we do not base our discussion on one casual construal of the text. In philosophical texts language is transparent: we tend to attend to the idea content rather than to the language that conveys it. When the same text is viewed as a work of art, we attend back to the language: the focus is on the sensual experience or the elusive qualities evoked by the text. The elusive qualities can be associated with a mystic approach, but our goal here is not how it is understood but how it feels. It is the experience, not the concept, that stands at the center. As an informative text, the chapters repeat the same idea again and again, but as a medium for conveying an experience this is justifiable. If we now return for a moment to the questions we asked at the beginning, then we may well answer that the nature of the text in question is that of mystic poetry. It is mystic because, when read in a certain way, these chapters activate cognitive mechanisms that disturb the processes of categorization and blur the boundaries of concepts, creating a feeling of confusion and coalescence, suggesting some vague, ineffable experience. And the text is poetry because it, unlike what we expect in a philosophical essay, uses literary structures whose forms play a very important part in activating the mechanisms we mentioned throughout this chapter. But despite this we do not claim that the text is in fact mystic poetry. What we do claim is that this text possesses mechanisms that parallel those found in mystic poetry and are here mobilized for a philosophical end. Although Daoist philosophy claims that words are superfluous, when we approach a text as a work of literature words are superfluous no longer. Here we would invoke Zhuang Zi again. As we quote in the introduction, he says that “a fish trap is used to catch fish, but once the fish have been taken, the trap is forgotten. The rabbit trap is used to snare rabbits, but once the rabbit is captured, the trap is ignored. Words are used to express concepts, but once you have grasped the concepts, the words are forgotten.” 38 Since according to the reading we have proposed here the text consists not

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only of meaning but also of experience, the fish trap is also of considerable importance. NOTES 1. The first author wishes to thank Professor Yoav Ariel for his invaluable contribution as a supervisor of the author’s master’s thesis (Te’eni, “Dao Flickering through Words”), on which this chapter is based. Reuven Tsur’s theoretical framework of cognitive poetics is derived mainly from Tsur, On Metaphoring; On The Shore of Nothingness; “Kubla Khan”; and Toward a Theory. 2. Ivanhoe, Dao De Jing of Laozi, xvi–xvii. 3. Schwartz, “Thought of the Tao-te-ching,” 189. 4. Ibid., 208–9. 5. Katz, “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” 3. 6. Bialik, “Revealing and Concealing in Language,” 30. 7. Daor and Ariel, Book of Dao, 17. 8. For Derek Lin’s English translation, see Tao Te Ching, available at http:// www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm. Where not otherwise stated, we are referring to Daor and Ariel’s 1981 Hebrew translation: Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching. 9. Ehrenzweig, Hidden Order of Art, 135. 10. Bodkin, Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, 72. 11. Ibid., 73. 12. Ibid., 72. 13. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away. 14. Ibid., 29. 15. Ibid., 28. 16. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 384n. 17. Tennyson quoted in James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 384n. 18. Katz, “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” 7–8. 19. Ibid. 20. Kinsbourne, “Hemispheric Specialization, 417. 21. Brooks and Heilman, Understanding Drama, 51. 22. See Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu, from a translation by S. Mitchell; Tao Teh King or Tao and Its Characteristics, trans. J. Legge; Canon of Reason and Virtue; Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei, trans. D. Goddard and H. Borel; see also Yellow Bridge. 23. TaoDeChing of Lao Tze, trans. Peter A. Merel. 24. According to Daor and Ariel, Book of Dao, 145; and Ames and Hall, Daodejing, 225. 25. Katz, “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” 7. 26. Bialik, “Revealing and Concealing in Language,” 24. 27. Aristotle, Rhetoric. Daor and Ariel translate the concluding lines as “Lift your eyes to it: You cannot see its head! / Follow it: You cannot see its back!” “Lift your eyes to it” forms a clearer parallelism with “Look at it” of line 1 and suggests a more unambiguous physical action imposed on the meaning of “Look at.” Chinese shǒ means “head, chief, first,” so it could be either “head” or “front.” Chinese yíng means “to welcome; to meet; to face; to forge ahead.” This would perhaps justify “confront” more than “lift your eyes,” but both are plausible here. At any rate, Lin’s solution generates a pun (front~confront) and a more perfect antithesis between “front” and “back” than between “head” and “back.” 28. Pater, “Conclusion,” 894–97. 29. Shklovsky, “Art as Technique,” 12. 30. Herrnstein-Smith, Poetic Closure, 36. 31. Translators frequently use here “form” or “shape,” suggesting some vague, unspecified form. 32. Chinese 道 dào has many meanings, no fewer than “direction; way; road; path; principle; truth; morality; reason; skill; method; Tao (of Taoism); to say; to speak; to talk; measure

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word for long thin stretches, rivers, roads etc.” (http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing21.php). While Lin uses “Tao” in his translation, suggesting “the absolute principle underlying the universe,” Daor and Ariel prefer the concrete image “road,” which, nevertheless, may have metaphoric implications too. 33. If we read, with Lin’s English translation, “The Tao, as a thing,” it will have an opposite effect: it turns an abstraction into a vague but “thingy,” perceptible entity. 34. Tellegen, “Practicing the Two Disciplines, 222. 35. Legge, Suzuki, and Goddard translate the title as “The Empty Heart, or the Dao in Its Operation,” “Emptying the Heart,” and “The Heart of Emptiness,” respectively. The latter two are congruous with a conception of “negative capability”; see Yellow Bridge. The complete Chinese text of the Dao De Jing is presented there side-by-side with three translations (Suzuki and Carus; Goddard and Borel; and Legge). 36. Quoted in Herrnstein-Smith, Poetic Closure, 178. 37. Daor and Ariel, Book of Dao, 17. 38. Chuang Tzu, Miscellaneous Chapters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ames, Roger T., and David L. Hall. Daodejing: “Making This Life Significant”; A Philosophical Translation. New York: Ballantine Books, 2003. Aristotle. Rhetoric. Translated by W. Rhys Roberts. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.3.iii.html. Bialik, H. N. “Revealing and Concealing in Language” [in Hebrew]. In Essays in Literature. Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1957. Bodkin, Maud. Archetypal Patterns in Poetry. 1934. Reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert B. Heilman. Understanding Drama. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966. Chuang Tzu. “The Miscellaneous Chapters, Chapter 26: Affected from Outside.” Translated by Martin Palmer. http://www.panlatrevo.com/texts/chuangtzu/index.php?chapter=26. Daor, Dan, and Yoav Ariel, trans. The Book of Dao: Dao De Jing and Other Daoist Texts [in Hebrew]. Tel Aviv: Am Oved Press, 2007. ———, trans. Tao Te Ching, by Lao Tzu [in Hebrew]. Commentary, appendices, and introduction by Dan Daor and Yoav Ariel. Tel Aviv: University Publishing Projects, 1981. Ehrenzweig, Anton. The Hidden Order of Art. London: Paladin, 1970. Herrnstein-Smith, Barbara. Poetic Closure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968. Ivanhoe, Philip J. The Dao De Jing of Laozi. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2002. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Longmans, Green, 1902. Katz, Steven T. “Mystical Speech and Mystical Meaning,” In Mysticism and Language, edited by Steven T. Katz, 3–41. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Kinsbourne, Marcel. “Hemispheric Specialization and the Growth of Human Understanding.” American Psychologist 37 (1982): 411–20. Lao Tzu. The Canon of Reason and Virtue. Translated by D. T. Suzuki and Paul Carus. 1913. Available from Internet Sacred Text Archive. ———. Laotzu’s Tao and Wu Wei. Translated by Dwight Goddard and Henri Borel. 1919. Available from Internet Sacred Text Archive. ———. TaoDeChing of Lao Tze. Translated by Peter A. Merel. http://www.chinapage.com/ laotze2n.html#14. ———. Tao Te Ching. Translated by Derek Lin. http://www.taoism.net/ttc/complete.htm; http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html. ———. Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu. Translated by S. Mitchell. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html. ———. The Tao Teh King or The Tao and Its Characteristics. Translated by James Legge. 1891. Available from Project Gutenberg.

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Laozi. Daode jing. http://terebess.hu/english/tao/_index.html. Includes online links to over 150 English translations and to some translations of “The Great One Gives Birth to Water.” Newberg, Andrew, Eugene D’Aquili, and Vince Rause. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York: Ballantine Books, 2001. Pater, Walter. “Conclusion,” from The Renaissance (1873). In The Great Critics, edited by James Harry Smith and Edd Winfield Parks, 894–97. New York: Norton, 1951. Schwartz, Benjamin. “The Thought of the Tao-te-ching.” In Lao-tzu and the Tao-te-ching, edited by Livia Kohn and Michael LaFargue, 189–210. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Shklovsky, Victor. “Art as Technique.” In Russian Formalist Criticism, edited by L. T. Lemon and M. J. Reis, 3–24. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965. Also available at http:// www.vahidnab.com/defam.htm and at http://img1.tapuz.co.il/CommunaFiles/1728259.htm. Te’eni, Sivan. “The Dao Flickering through Words: A Cognitive Approach to Laozi.” MA thesis, Tel Aviv University, 2005. Tellegen, A. “Practicing the Two Disciplines for Relaxation and Enlightenment: Comment on ‘Role of the Feedback Signal in Electromyograph Biofeedback: The Relevance of Attention’ by Qualls and Sheehan.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 110 (2): 217–26. Tsur, Reuven. “Kubla Khan”—Poetic Structure, Hypnotic Quality and Cognitive Style: A Study in Mental, Vocal, and Critical Performance. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. ———. On Metaphoring. Jerusalem: Israel Science Publishers, 1987. ———. On the Shore of Nothingness: Space, Rhythm, and Semantic Structure in Religious Poetry and Its Mystic-Secular Counterpart—A Study in Cognitive Poetics. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic, 2003. ———. Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics. 2nd, expanded and updated ed. Brighton, UK: Sussex Academic Press, 2008. Yellow Bridge. http://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/daodejing.php. The complete Chinese text of the Dao De Jing is presented here side-by-side with three translations (Suzuki and Carus, Goddard and Borel, and Legge). You may double-click on each character and receive the transliteration of the word, as well as semantic, grammatical, and other information about it.

Chapter Six

Why Are Religious Experiences Ineffable? The Question of Mystical-Noetic Knowledge Laura E. Weed

INTRODUCTION William James characterized mystical experiences as exhibiting four “marks”: 1. Ineffability: Mystics claim to be unable to articulate their experiences in natural language. 2. A noetic quality: Mystics claim to gain great knowledge from their religious experiences, despite the asserted ineffability of such experiences. The experiences impress their recipients as authoritative, often more so than articulable knowledge gained from reason, cognition, or sensations. 3. Transiency: While these experiences tend to be overwhelmingly intense and sometimes even trancelike, they tend not to last very long. For most, moments or hours are the maximum duration of the experiences. 4. Passivity: Mystical experiences are not subject to the wills of the people experiencing them in the ways that ordinary sensory or cognitive experiences are. The experiences are reported as “suddenly arriving” or “overcoming” the person’s awareness and “suddenly departing” or “fading” independently of the attention, decisions, or wishes of the recipient of the experiences. No amount of preparation or yearning for such experiences seems to guarantee that they will occur (lifelong religious devotees sometimes fail to attain them), and no absence of 149

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interest, desire, or preparedness seems to prevent them from occurring (they sometimes intrude into the lives of lifelong atheists). 1 These characterizations of religious experiences, however, are incompatible with much of what contemporary philosophy of language and epistemology have to say about what language and knowledge are and how the two interact. The typical reaction of philosophers to this incompatibility is to dismiss religious experiences as delusions because they do not fit in the philosophical categories that are believed to work well for characterizing our sensory and cognitive knowledge. In contrast, the argument presented in this chapter posits that perhaps our notions of language and knowledge should be expanded and clarified to make room for these unusual but profound and impressive sorts of experiences. The discussion will point out that there is a continuum between religious experiences and ordinary experiences in which the boundary conditions established by contemporary philosophical analyses of language and knowledge impose arbitrary cutoff points. I begin with an extremely brief overview of a few of the dominant conceptions of language and knowledge in the philosophical literature, to note some of the limitations of the approaches from the perspective of contemporary neuroscience. The second part of the chapter raises more considerations from contemporary science and neuroscience, which indicate that the conceptions of language and knowledge cited in the first part of the chapter are too limited. The third part of the chapter articulates conceptions of language and knowledge that are open to including noetic experiences characterized by James’s four marks. PART 1: CONTEMPORARY ORTHODOXY ON LANGUAGE AND KNOWLEDGE Orthodoxy in Philosophy of Language versus Neuroscience Any attempt at characterizing broad swaths of philosophical opinion on any topic must necessarily paint in very broad and very shallow strokes, overlooking most subtleties; I thus apologize at the outset for my “bullet list” approach to characterizing contemporary epistemology and philosophy of language. That said, there are certain broad schools of thought in these areas that can be said to constitute a contemporary canon of orthodoxy about what language is and what knowledge is and how the two relate to each other. Several of the theses that might serve as bullet points for this broad overview concerning language in the analytical philosophical tradition are the following:

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• Logical atomism: Language consists of propositions, composed of predicate functions and referring terms that may be either constants or variables. 2 • All meaningful language translates into the canonical notation of a symbolic logic system. 3 • Excluded or non-truth-functional uses of language, such as metaphors, emotive terms, uses of poetic license or tropes, are nonreferring and hence meaningless. 4 • Science establishes the domain of objects to which constants or variables in propositions may refer. Things composed of Newtonian atoms are the most basic forms of objects. Some abstract objects may be tolerated, provided they have clear, specifiable ties to the Newtonian atomic base. 5 These general theses about language were articulated initially by philosophers of the Vienna Circle and the early analytical tradition, such as Bertrand Russell, the early Ludwig Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus, A. J. Ayer, Moritz Schlick, and Gottlob Frege, and were continued to the present by many analytical philosophers, such as W. V. O. Quine and Daniel Dennett. One of the goals of this program, as articulated by Russell and Frege, is to eradicate psychologism, that is, the notion that linguistic meaning has anything to do with human intentions or with anything psychological that occurs in people’s thinking processes or states of consciousness. 6 Another goal of the program is to provide a “conceptual notation” that will be unambiguous and precise and appropriate for mathematical and scientific reasoning. 7 While Frege’s goals are worthy, in the development of analytical philosophy the existence of the propositional conceptual notation has become a justification for linguistic reductionism. In Daniel Dennett, for example, human consciousness reduces to linguistic tales, 8 and for Robert Stalnaker, even a dog must think in propositions if it thinks at all. 9 In the Continental European tradition of philosophy, meanwhile, equally drastic but differently motivated conceptual limitations on the notion of what language is or can do have been developing. There, through the work of philosophers such as Michel Foucault, Hans-Georg Gadamer, the later Wittgenstein of The Philosophical Investigations, Jean Baudrillard, and Jacques Derrida, language has been reduced to expressions written in texts and social power relations, while notions such as truth and reference have been banished from the discussion of language. Some additional bullet-point theses about language that we might add to the above list for the Continental tradition are the following (although these theses will be incompatible with the first list, as well as with the account of language that I subsequently present in this chapter):

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• Language is a human tool. Words or sentences have no meanings in the abstract, and what meanings they do have change with context and use. 10 • Language is a social and political tool: powerful people determine the nature of the world by the language they use to describe it, and they force their interpretations of reality on the less powerful. 11 • Texts store language and morph or evolve it over varying contexts and times. Culture is a meme scheme of simulacra through which texts interpret texts, which interpret icons. There is no underlying truth, distinct from language and described by any of it. 12 • A dictionary, grammar, or logic text is a foolish attempt to contain a linguistic hurricane in a rigid, miniscule teacup, or else it is a power play aimed at enforcing an ideology. 13 Although the Continental view of language might appear less restrictive than the analytical one in some respects, such as the fact that it allows metaphors, emotional expressions, and tropes into the discussion of language, it is also reductionistic in other unhelpful ways. For example, the distinction between truth and falsehood has been compromised, language is no longer understood as a description of an objectively existent world, and there is no room to articulate a standard for determining competent versus incompetent language use, say to diagnose aphasia, word salad, or prosody failures in brain-damage patients. 14 The Continental philosophers share with the analytical ones a rejection of the notion, now emerging in neuroscience, that language is a production of human consciousness that plays both communicative and affective roles, but that neither communicative nor affective abilities are exclusively linguistic. 15 Cognition and imagination are often channeled through linguistic modules of the human brain, but not always, for the linguistic modules are on the dominant left side of the brain, which is fairly poor at perception, while the right cerebral hemisphere is more imagistic, and more open to flights of fancy, but not normally literate or logical. 16 Affective and social propensities are spread widely throughout the animal kingdom in creatures with limbic systems but often with no linguistic ability. 17 Human brains have evolved to include most of the functions identified as significant by both analytical and Continental philosophers, but the linguistic and cognitive modules of the brain, Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas and the connective neurons between them, and the prefrontal cerebral cortex, respectively, form a recently evolved overlay on older brain structures and sets of functions, which remain as basic biological architecture in humans as well as in other animals. 18 Our logical and scientific capacities and inclinations to produce cultural morphing may be specifically human and linguistic talents, but our basic senses of self, of locatedness in a space, of motion or rest, of identity with nature, of need for survival, sustenance, and protection are not specifically linguistic and not unique to

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humans among animals. These capacities developed in biological species with no linguistic abilities. Language is an ill-suited tool for understanding these features of human experience. Even affective connections and emotional feelings spread more broadly throughout the animal kingdom than language usage does. 19 These considerations from contemporary neuroscience all indicate that the linguistic reductionism of contemporary philosophy of language, whether it is in the direction of logical and propositional reductionism or in that of social or textual reductionism, puts a linguistic cart before an organic horse. Language is, of course, very important to us humans, but it is not the only possible channel for a human organism’s states of consciousness or awareness. Epistemological Orthodoxy versus Neuroscience Again, in broad bullet points, Western philosophy has considered knowledge to be limited to a few types. The dominant historical division of preferred types has been either rationalist, roughly the Platonic/Cartesian tradition in which cognitive reasoning is valorized at the expense of perceptual knowledge, or empiricist, roughly the Lockean/Humean tradition in which perceptual knowledge has been valorized at the expense of cognitive knowledge. Some contemporary attempts to combine the rationalist and the empiricist insights have developed in causal theories of knowledge and reliability theories of knowledge, but even in these theories, only cognition and perception are considered possible sources of knowledge. Only the analytical philosophical tradition is relevant on this issue, because knowledge, for Continental philosophers, has been reduced to personal conviction or the results of persuasion through power. Here are some bullet-point theses for Western philosophical epistemology: • Rationalism: All valuable knowledge occurs as ideas within an axiom system of interrelated ideas accessible to pure thought. These ideas may be innate, 20 or may exist in a Platonic heaven 21 or a Fregian third realm, 22 which can be accessed by shutting down the senses and concentrating exclusively on pure abstract objects, such as Platonic forms, mathematical structures, or logical relationships. 23 • Empiricism: All valuable knowledge occurs as perceptual atomistic bits of sensory data, which are combined in various ways to form a picture of reality. Abstractions are not superior ideas but merely generalizations over many perceptual experiences. 24 If we have no direct perceptual access to something through one of the five senses, namely, sight, hearing, touch, taste, or smell, we can have no knowledge of it. 25

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• Causal Theory: Perceptual objects have a causal impact on our senses, which is then processed into content for propositions, which are Fregian entities and can be cognitively and logically processed, as in rationalism. 26 • Reliabilism: Rationalism and empiricism are connected by pragmatic success in communication and human activities. Their relationship is not opposed, but more like a right and a left hand working in concert. When a mathematical idea is confirmed by scientific discovery, it proves reliable. When a perception is confirmed by fitting into a rationalistic view of reality, it is confirmed as a reliable perception. The processes of reasoning through which these judgments were made may generally be considered reliable when they are confirmed to have succeeded with sufficient frequency. 27 It is clear that each of these theses captures a key component of knowledge, and causal theory and reliabilism do good jobs of combining the empiricist and rationalist intuitions. As for understanding what knowledge might be gained from religious experiences, however, the categorization of knowledge as limited to perception, cognition, or some combination of the two is overly restrictive. For while some religious experiences may be perceptual in some nonstandard sense, such as visions, or cognitive in some sense, such as ontological or cosmological arguments for the existence of God, most are neither. Neuroscience will again enable us to say that although perception and cognition are very important processes occurring in human brains, they are not the only ones, and they do not operate independently of other organic processes, such as emotions, 28 visceral feelings, 29 awareness of spatial orientation, 30 environmental connectedness, 31 social connectedness, 32 overall psychological orientation, 33 and many others. On the topic of epistemology, I have stressed that my bullet points are drawn from the Western epistemological tradition for a reason. Many aspects of consciousness identified by neuroscience and mentioned in the last paragraph are actually conceptualized into the epistemology of some Asian philosophical traditions, especially Hindu and Buddhist ones. 34 For now, however, I will conclude only that neuroscience is offering a broader range of potential sources for obtaining knowledge than traditional Western philosophical epistemology has typically considered available. Although cognition and perception are the dominant ways in which humans interact with the world to gain knowledge, they are not the only ones. In what follows I will appeal to some of the new research to build a notion of knowledge that may be neither cognitive nor perceptual, and which is not specifically reducible to linguistic formulations.

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PART 2: NEUROSCIENCE AND ECOLOGICAL SCIENCE ON HUMAN AND NONHUMAN ANIMAL INTERCONNECTIVE AWARENESS In this section I cite resources from neuroscience and ecological science indicating that linguistically articulable cognition and perception are not the only ways in which humans function, either as selves or as organisms within an ecosystem. These resources provide evidence that humans have noetic capacities that may be nonlinguistic, nonperceptual, and noncognitive. A Concept of a Self Is Subconceptual and Not Linguistic Jaak Panksepp argues that the neurochemistry of the brain stem in humans is not substantively different from that in lizards or frogs, animals that have no cognitive or linguistic capacity and have less limbic capacity for emotion than mice or rabbits. Yet the neurochemistry of the brain stem’s function enables reptiles to engage in activities that promote productive interaction with the environment of types that Panksepp characterizes as intentional interaction, such as seeking, fear, and rage. In mammals, including humans, these basic activities involve the limbic system and so become emotional, but even in nonlimbic reptiles they constitute the precursors of what he calls a “SELF: a Simple Ego-type Life Form.” 35 Panksepp disagrees with authors who dismiss reptilian behavior as mere reflex activity, noting that the orienting activities and survival choices made by reptiles are sometimes sophisticated and flexible. Although the limbic system is responsible for the greater refinements in emotions that develop in mammals, Panksepp argues that the midbrain, which does not differ much in humans from the reptilian version, is responsible for the basic sense of a self. 36 Panksepp’s primordial sense of a self is not cognitive or perceptual in any direct sense but is rather a subcognitive and subperceptual feeling of bodily integrity, self-presence, and differentiation from and interaction with a surrounding environment. In favor of Panksepp’s view, one of the key medical elements used in determining if someone is conscious is whether the person has the motor tone and orienting responses he cites in the passage quoted above. He explains his conception of self-consciousness as follows. Primary-process consciousness will not be conceptualized simply as the “awareness of external events in the world,” but rather as that ineffable feeling of experiencing oneself as an active agent in the perceived events of the world. Such a primitive SELF-representation presumably consists of an intrinsically reverberating neural network linked to basic body tone and gross axial movement generators. It may provide a coherent matrix in which a variety of sensory stimuli become hedonically valenced. 37

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When the conception of a SELF is rooted in NCCs (neural correlates of consciousness) as basic as midbrain and reticular systems, it is apparent that sophisticated levels of cognition and perception can play very little role in the basic notion of consciousness. Consciousness will also, on this account, spread very far down the animal chain, to at least reptiles and sea snails. 38 If consciousness and knowing are as basic to life forms as Panksepp argues that they are, a linguistically, socially, or cognitively based account of epistemology will be far too sophisticated. Neurophenomenology Operates at Several Temporal Scales, Only Some of Which Are Linguistically Accessible Francisco Varela has argued that sensorimotor enaction provides a form of neurophenomenology, which ties cognition and other mental events to human-environmental interaction. Afferent and efferent neurological streams of information ensure that human experience is dynamic, involves the role of a self as an agent, and includes the environment with which an experiencing agent interacts. Since environmental interaction of this type is driven more by reflexes, motor activities, and reactions to stimuli than by thoughts or words, it is often, once again, subcognitive, and what perception is involved is more likely to be kinesthetic and related to basic muscular tone and environmental orientation than to the empiricist’s five senses. Varela’s research points out that general human organic functioning as an enactive creature operates at different time scales than linguistic and cognitive functioning. He distinguishes three levels of time scale that have been discovered in neurological investigations, to clarify three distinct senses in which phenomenal experience is temporal. The “specious present,” to use William James’s term, operates more quickly than the time scale at which linguistic formulations take place but more slowly than the automatic firing of neurons. Varela claimed that the three time scales correspond to levels of integration of experience, which constitute a horizon of the present: “It is important to introduce three scales of duration to understand the temporal horizon just introduced: 1. Basic or elementary events (the 1/10 scale), 2. relaxation time for large scale integration (the 1 scale), and 3. descriptive/ narrative assessments (the 10 scale).” 39 The first and quickest, the 1/10 scale represents micro-cognitive phenomena, such as perceptual reactions and oculomotor behavior that takes place in as few as 10–100 milliseconds. These neuronal activities establish basic rhythms that may or may not be picked up by cell assemblies and incorporated into synchronous collections of integrated cell assemblies. The second, slightly slower, and more integrative rhythm operating at the 1 scale of time (fractions of a second) results in dynamical networks, creating a specious “now” that engages in reciprocal determination and relaxation with its neural subassemblies. 40 Varela describes this rhyth-

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mic activity as generating “transient aggregates of phase-locked signals coming from multiple regions” 41 of the brain and also generating a form of neuronal synchrony that establishes a specious present as an experience of unity of consciousness. 42 The third and slowest temporal scale of neuronal collaboration lasts for seconds, rather than milliseconds, and constitutes the perception-action time scale. Language and cognitive competence emerge at this time scale. 43 Varela summarizes the significance of the neurological time-scale distinctions, relevant to the thesis of this chapter, as follows: “Nowness [which emerges at the second time scale], in this perspective, is therefore, pre-semantic in that it does not require a rememoration . . . in order to emerge.” 44 However, the narrative sense of self emerges at the third time scale, which integrates streams of moments of nowness into “broader temporal horizons in remembrance and imagination.” 45 Varela argues that the temporal dimensions of the self that he has just identified do not, however, constitute a linear temporal sequence. Rather, he concurs with Merleau-Ponty that they constitute a “network of intentionalities.” 46 For the neurons firing at the 1/10 scale constitute the component level of analysis, and it is their oscillations that become synchronous at the 1 scale. Further, at the 10 scale, the global behavior is “not an abstract computation, but an embodied behavior subject to initial conditions,” 47 which are provided, ultimately, by the neuronal rhythms. Biological systems, unlike mechanical ones, are unstable as part of their normal functioning and so are capable of forming trajectories that generate new percepts out of the chaotic behavior of the neuronal phase-spaces of cell assemblies. Varela argues that gestalt phenomena such as the Necker cube illustrate the capacity of mental organization across the various temporal scales of mental functioning to generate multi-stability of a type that operates in complex nonlinear and chaotic systems. 48 Varela attributes a Husserlian form of double intentionality to the nonlinear relationship among the scales of temporal awareness that he has identified. He identifies the two forms of intentionality as (1) retentional or transverse intentionality, which is static, and (2) longitudinal or integrative intentionality, which he cites Husserl as calling “the unchanging substrate from which the flow emerges.” 49 He agrees with Husserl that the retentional level of intentionality is primarily linguistic or imagistic and claims that this level of intentionality corresponds to his level-three time scale. Husserl’s longitudinal level of intentionality is more basic and will correspond to Varela’s level-two time scale, the “nowness” of existence. While Varela believes that the two forms of intentionality interact in ways that intertwine them, he also thinks that the affectively informed, longitudinal sense of nowness should be identified as “the self, pure ego or basic consciousness,” 50 rather than the retentional, cognitive, and linguistic level of intentionality, which is considered the most important by linguistically inclined philosophers. Varela

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thus agrees with Panksepp that the linguistic level of brain functioning is not the one at which the most basic awareness of self and environment takes place. Further, both the specious present and the linguistic and cognitive level of awareness are built on a neurological base of more-autonomic organic functioning that interacts with them in nonlinear ways. While people do not normally have access to the specious present or the more basic (and faster) level of cells firing, it is likely that occasional spontaneous moments of insight into these functions do occur, and that trained people, such as meditators, practitioners of centering prayer, and yogis, may be capable of achieving such access occasionally, for short periods of time. J. J. Gibson, Susan Hurley, and Holmes Ralston III on the Human/ Environment Interface In contrast with the Enlightenment and Newtonian conceptions of a self, which form the presuppositions of analytical and Continental analyses of language and knowledge, the neuroscientists whom I am discussing consider a self deeply embedded in an environment. The Enlightenment conceived of a self as a completely autonomous entity that is somehow superior to the domain “He” sees and commands: an “S” who knows that “P.” One consequence of this radical divorce between self and environment, the subjective and the objective worlds, was the problem of other minds. Descartes, Spinoza, and Locke, to name just a few examples, thought that the only way that one human could know that another was not an automaton was to be reassured of that fact by God. 51 In contrast, contemporary analyses of the human place in nature position us within our environments, dependent on them and interacting with them in dynamic ways. In addition to disagreeing with the conception of a person as an “S” who knows that “P,” James Jerome Gibson disagreed with behaviorists and cognitive psychologists who held, respectively, that human mental activity could be reduced to either individual or group behavior or brainbased activities. To understand human perception required, on Gibson’s view, interaction with an ecology: a social and physiological environment that encompassed all the potential opportunities for action that a person could exploit. Gibson claims that “egoreception” and “exteroception” are intimately intertwined. He explains: The supposedly separate realms of the subjective and the objective are actually only poles of attention. . . . The information for the perception of “here” is of the same kind as the information for the perception of “there,” and a continuous layout of surfaces extends from one to the other. . . . What I called gradients in 1950, the gradients of increasing density of texture, of increasing binocular disparity, and of decreasing motility that specify increasing distance all the way from the observer’s nose out to the horizon, are actually variables

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between two limits, implying just this complementarity of proprioception and exteroception in perception. 52

Gibson’s Gestalt-influenced study of issues such as texture gradients, perceived motion, cultural influences on perception, and the influence of attention on perception led him to argue that the contents of an environment and the ways in which the environment can influence a person are far more varied and opportunistically available than brain-bound or behavioristic accounts of psychology will allow. For example, the physics and mathematics of pursuit or of finding a niche are not the static, objective analyses that one would find in a Newtonian account of the same events. The perspectives of both prospective predator and prospective prey must be included in an account of pursuit or of finding a niche. These perspectives, unlike the Newtonian and objective ones, are dynamic, have horizons, include a conception of a self and its locatedness, and are neither objective nor subjective in the senses of those words specified by Enlightenment philosophers. Gibson refers to the dynamic interaction of a human or a nonhuman animal (or even plant!) self and a world as the exploitation of affordances by the self. An affordance is an environmental opportunity for action and incorporation into experience and, ultimately, into thought, understanding, and social interaction. Affordances are not propositionally structured and are not two-dimensional sense data or appearances. Nor are they necessarily structured as objects or in terms of any of the other categories identified by Michael Gazzaniga as innate modules of brains, 53 although they might be, and often are, so structured. The opportunities for dynamic interaction with aspects of an environment could be understood as modally constrained by both the limitations of the environment for creative restructuring and gestalt reformulation, and the limitations of the perceiver for dynamic engagement with the environment. There are multiple layers of interrelationship possible between agents and their environment, varying across all the layers of biological, social, and cognitive systematic phase spaces. But even those processes are expandable, and the category-limited list of internal modules characterized by Gazzaniga, while useful, very much underestimates the variety of ways in which perception can exploit the surrounding world of experience. Susan Hurley represents something like Gibson’s notion of the dynamics of interaction with environmental affordances as linkages among a shared information space for self and other, while at the same time illustrating how the distinctions between self and other and between the possible and the actual can be overlaid on these shared information spaces. . . . [The shared circuits model] . . . views perception and action as dynamically co-enabled and shows how cognitively significant resources, such as distinctions between self and other and between possible and actual actions and information for action

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Echoing Varela, Hurley describes a linked hierarchical relation among a complex array of affordance spaces that blends from clearly subconscious neuronal activity spaces through the dynamics of interpersonal communication, to explicitly conscious activities such as planning and understanding, cultural memes, and creative interactions between an individual or a cultural group of people and the environment. She describes the architectural construction and dynamics of this array of dynamically interactive spaces as operating through mechanisms such as imprinting, mirroring activities, imitation, cooperation, language, and mind reading. Further, she argues that a “ratcheting effect” can dynamically increase the significance and capacity for innovation of all these activities with one another. 55 Hurley describes her model of interaction among information spaces in cybernetic terms. But she expects that it would also be possible to explain it in complex-systems-theory terms as a series of interrelated and evolving phase spaces. 56 The cybernetic interpretation of Hurley’s theory will be especially helpful to my argument when combined with observations from Paul Davies and Terence Deacon, in the next section of this chapter. Expanding on the observations of Gibson and Hurley, Holmes Ralston III argues that the basic biological unit of reality is an ecosystem, not an individual animal or even a species. Anthropomorphically, we prefer to focus on individual animals because they are most likely to dynamically interact with our lives individually, and of course, we normally experience our own lives individually. However, individual lives, whether human or animal, last maximally for decades, while the average time frame for a species is about five million years. Even species come and go and can be replaced by others within ecosystems, but ecosystems are the enabling support systems for all species. 57 Species and individuals need ecosystems, while ecosystems do not need them. Thus Ralston argues that the ecosystem is the most basic biological and ontological system. The current collapse of ecosystems under the pressures of global climate change and pollution is a disaster of a scale that the earth’s biota have not previously experienced, according to Ralston. 58 So if the ecosystems in which we are imbedded are biologically more basic than we are, as Ralston argues, they cannot be contrasted against us as radically “external” and “objective” in ways that we fail to be “external.” Our selfhood is essentially dependent on them in ways that they are not essentially dependent on us, so it might be more appropriate to characterize us as internal to them. What we have gleaned from Gibson, Hurley, and Ralston for the thesis of this chapter is thus a “deep ecology” view of the place of a human being in nature. Far from being the crowning achievement of reality that philosophers

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commonly interpret human minds to be, we are a species in an ecosystem that finds its niche within nature best by dynamically interacting with it, understanding and respecting its place within it. Knowledge for a living creature must be far more a matter of immersion within an ecology than it is a matter of Platonic abstract withdrawal from all reality. Knowing such matters as the life and fertility of soil, the dangers of floods and tides, and the migratory ways of fellow animals was inarticulate folk wisdom for our nonhuman animal and our human ancestors long before it became linguistic and mathematical data for contemporary science. Likewise, basic drives to exist, survive, thrive, breathe, move, and seek sustenance and comfort are the basic life goals that are served by cognition and perception. While science clearly improves our cognitive grasp of the operation of nature, it may obscure some contact knowledge and wisdom, as our apparent modern cultural alienation from our ecological roots may attest. Scientists now have to argue with us that we should be paying attention to the ecological destruction that we are doing to ourselves, while our aboriginal ancestors knew in a more visceral and immediate way that a destroyed earth would destroy them as well. 59 Reflection on these observations from neuroscience and studies of ecology puts us in a position to begin to see how a human being could have experiences that are ineffable, because they are not perceptual or cognitive in the ordinary senses, and yet profoundly noetic, because they have an impact on our basic sense of self, of safety, of integration, or of other basic goalrelated understandings. One more section on contemporary science, about information theory, will complete the resources needed to describe how ineffable knowledge is possible. Information in Physics: It’s Everywhere. So far my argument in part 2 of this chapter has concentrated on the idea that humans are the type of creatures that may have some nonlinguistic way of being in the world, from which they may gain some noetic insights. This section will argue that the world is the type of place that contains and may convey some nonlinguistic types of information to its neurologically endowed denizens. The discussion follows a contemporary line of argument in information theory in which scientists and philosophers like Paul Davies, Terence Deacon, and others contend that information should replace materialism as a notion of the most basic ontological component of reality. These authors argue that information is the stuff of which matter is made, not the other way around, and laws of nature, too, are secondary to the functioning of information in the world. 60 A long reductionistic tradition in information theory, which John Searle called “strong AI,” 61 has argued for the materialist reductionist account of information. This tradition considers information reducible to computer

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code, agreeing with Alan Turing that all real processes are computational, and that all computational processes can be processed on a universal Turing machine. 62 Daniel Dennett has argued that only an intentional stance allows us to delude ourselves that any other form of communication is possible, 63 and Fred Dretske agrees with both Turing and Dennett and further argues that all such events must also be mechanical and material. 64 Recent investigations of properties of quantum physics and discussions of work on quantum computing, however, are leading other scientists and philosophers to question the reductionistic assumptions of Turing, Dennett, Dretske, and others with respect to the nature and functions of information. Paul Davies has argued that the universe is not basically material. He posits rather that it is composed of q-bits, bits of information that may flip at quantum levels of analysis, causing changes in the nature and function of material events. He notes that scientists have discovered an “information bound” 65 that limits the size of the universe to a smaller size than previously expected, when the presumptions that matter or laws of nature were more basic than information prevailed. Hence, he argues that the order of ontological dependence in nature should be thought of as Information → Laws of Nature → Matter rather than as: Laws of Nature → Matter → Information 66

Because information is inherently logical, mathematical, and meaningful, if we reverse the ontological emphasis and place the stress on information rather than on matter or laws of nature, it is no longer necessary to deem nature inherently meaningless. Unlike the “dead” or “mechanical” matter and laws of nature, postulated by the Enlightenment, information is inherently meaning laden. Terence Deacon has recently argued for the inherent meaningfulness of information by arguing that the mechanical view of information introduced by Claude Shannon and adopted by Turing, Dennett, and other advocates of AI was designed by Shannon to be a “bracketing” of the inherent intentionality of information for purposes of mechanical evaluation. Deacon argues that the intentionality in the information is not expunged by the bracketing process but merely exiled to the context or environment. 67 Reductionism in AI is, therefore, the wrong way to think of Claude Shannon’s achievement. Information remains an entropy relationship between the context and the informational signal that must include the context to recover the meaning and intentionality in the signal. 68 An information-based universe in which everything from q-bits to chemical elements to DNA to human minds contains at least bracketed meaning and intentionality would thus not be the dead mechanical space of Newtonian physics. Although it remains important to iden-

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tify the route through which information in nature or in matter could break through the normal channels of consciousness to give insights to a resonant neural network, such as a human being, it is certainly understandable that it could do so if the neural network and the greater universe both feature contextually entropic information structures. Indeed, as Roger Trigg argues, only such an inherent resonance between mind and world could explain why we are justified in expecting our mathematics and our minds to be capable of rationally understanding the world. 69 Let me summarize some bullet point theses from this section of the chapter so far to lead into the view of language and its relationship to knowledge that I present in the last section. • Language is a limited function of the Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas on the left hemisphere of a human brain. It is, of course, very important to humans. But a basic human self is a biological organism, rooted in a neurological web of relations that humans share with many other animals. We share emotional capabilities and environmental connections with other organisms with limbic systems. • A self is a resonant sense of the operation of the neurological web, oriented in a space and time, valenced toward survival, and motivated for seeking behavior. • A human complex neurological web of organic relations operates at several time scales, only one of which is normally accessible to linguistic cognition. A faster scale of operation provides the specious nowness of a lived life, and a still faster one accounts for basic neurological cellular function, reflex actions, and perceptual triggers. • That complex human neurological web of relations is essentially tied to an environment and an ecosystem, from which the human organism cognitively differentiates itself, but on which it is ultimately dependent, and with which it is multiply interactive. Modern humans have cognitively isolated themselves from this environment, but the Enlightenment sense of autonomy and isolation is a misunderstanding of both our located nature and our place in a larger nature. • While cognitive knowledge may be viewed as exclusively linguistic or abstract, perceptual knowledge is unavoidably plugged into the biological and emotional connections cited in the above points. A sense of situated, prelinguistic presence in an environment is also heavily valenced; there is no value-free organic wisdom. • The universe itself consists of information, from the subatomic level through the cosmological level. A human body is also a system of information relations. These are entropic relations among signaling systems and intentional contexts. These entropic relationships may operate across many levels of cybernetic space and complex-systems phase spaces.

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While normal human information processing may be limited to cognitive and perceptual channels, there is no theoretical reason why these dominant channels might not go silent at times, allowing for broader intentional contexts and signaling systems to intrude on a human’s consciousness. Thus, in part 2 of this chapter I have argued that the traditional linguistic and epistemological constraints that are normally imposed on analyses of human potentials for noetic experiences and communication are excessive. In part 3, I will introduce concepts of communication and noetic experience that might broaden current thinking to bring it in line with the points I have highlighted from contemporary neuroscience. PART 3: PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE AND INEFFABILITY; EPISTEMOLOGY AND NOETIC RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES: WHY TRY TO ACCOMMODATE RELIGIOUS SEEKERS? What Religions and Religious Seekers Say about Religious Experiences Traditional theology and religious studies, at least in the West, have often used linguistic metaphors for religious experience that presumed the truth of Platonic or Cartesian dualism. These experiences are often described as involving things that are “up,” “above,” “outside,” or “beyond” the natural world, or as “supernatural,” “hyper-real,” or “sublime.” As an attentive reader might guess at this point, I am proposing a shift in direction for the metaphors. I am suggesting that these extraordinary and intense experiences should be thought of instead as “down,” “within,” “subpersonal,” “intranatural,” “biological,” “ecological,” “most grounded,” “most alive,” and “most organically and physically basic.” Asian philosophers, especially Buddhist and Hindu ones, have long recognized the need for this second set of metaphors to describe these unusual experiences. For example, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan speaks of intuitive wisdom as that which comes from within, echoing the long yogic tradition of seeking control over one’s most basic biological functions to gain access to the divine. 70 Dogen, the founder of Zen, described the path to wisdom as “dropping off body (perception) and mind (cognition).” 71 Most mystical traditions, both Eastern and Western, have pointed out the need for getting past the ego-centered, normal state of consciousness to enjoy the deeper insight into the nature of the real that personality-transforming religious experiences afford. Even in Western contemplative traditions, for example, practices such as fasting and asceticism are common, and humility and ego suppression are considered virtues. Practitioners are encouraged to withdraw from the stimulations of the senses and the intellect (Varela’s retentional and narrative level of consciousness) and to

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use centering prayer, rituals, or meditation to adjust one’s attention into the specious present of “now.” The religious traditions, in short, are advocating the production of experiential states that temporarily shut down or eclipse some of the most obvious human functions of the person such as storytelling, perception, and cognition, in favor of a glimpse of the person’s larger and deeper connections to both herself and her environment. The Critic’s Reaction to the Religious Seekers In criticizing the above recommendations as advocacy of religious escapism, philosophers of language often emphasize the centrality of language, as it operates on the retentional and narrative levels of consciousness. Daniel Dennett, for example, points out that narrative capacity is the normal or default operation of thought and is also a human being’s “good trick.” 72 Cognitively, logic and good causal reasoning or pragmatically reliable thinking processes are important survival skills. Likewise, a strongly egotistical sense of my comforts, my wants, and my needs must be the default survival guide for a human animal in a frequently hostile environment. Language used as a form of social accommodation or political jujitsu is also an essential survival skill. Thus, as the default state of thinking, linguistic thinking must be what most people are doing most of the time. The brevity and rarity of nonlinguistic experience result from the fact that humans can’t survive for long unless they are in the default linguistic thinking mode. Hence, departures from this default mode of experience must be both brief and rare. Why, Then, Does Religious Experience Matter? The world circumscribed by ego, logic chopping, and verbal power plays, however, is, as Thomas Hobbes succinctly put it, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” 73 Those who have glimpsed past the curtain of linguistic life, briefly visiting other temporal scales of biological operation, other senses of identification of self, other ways of relating to self, other ways of interpreting the neurological web of relations, relating to other people, or relating to the rest of nature report experiences of great integration, interrelationship, redemption, blessedness, and grace. The emotions connected to the linguistic and cognitive levels of operation are largely selfish and negative. The concentration on “me” and “mine” embedded in the Enlightenment conception of a self produces a conception of an embattled ego that will ultimately lose to a hostile world. Letting go of this in alternate states of relation to the world is freeing, and the meaning and valence of everything, which is denied by reductionists, becomes clear in the nonegotistical, noncognitive, nonlinguistic, and apolitical mode of relation.

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The noetic and life-transforming value of slipping away from the default mode of operation is to enable one to apprehend, not cognitively or linguistically, but at a visceral and highly valenced level, the integration of one’s own neurological and biological system, the radical dependence of that system on a larger supportive ecological system, the integration of all the ecology, and the mutual resonance of all the relations in reality. One can feel Rudolf Otto’s mysterium tremens at one’s utter dependency and vulnerability, 74 and simultaneously Saint Paul’s “love which is beyond knowledge,” 75 in one’s deep connection to others and to nature. One can feel the unity in love of all humans, indeed a unity of all nature. Awareness of the resonance of self with other selves, of one’s neurally networked biology with that of other living things, and of one’s physical being with all physical being can still the raging demands of the ego. One gets a sense of the pettiness of one’s own grasping and ego demands and experiences a healing of the divisions of self that are produced by the grinding daily demands of making a living and coping with the politics of linguistic jujitsu in daily life. Even an extremely brief vacation from the default mode of cognitive and perceptual judgment can be permanently life transforming. The receiver of the respite may no longer view the mundane survival mode of existence as the final word on the nature of reality or humanity. Reversing Dennett’s claim that materialism is real and all else is illusion, the respite fills the recipient with the conviction that cosmic oneness is the real, and materialist division is the anthropomorphic illusion. As Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili argue, those who have experienced states of radical integration in which the primary circuits of the brain have achieved states of absolute unitary being 76 consider the world beyond (or below) the curtain of language and cognition as the real world, which casts the materialist’s and the survivalist’s world as the poor delusion. 77 An egotistical self that was sick may heal, one that was greedy and selfish may become generous, one that was arrogant and violent may soften, and a weak or fearful person may find strength and a voice. Thus, I conclude, there is a need to make room in epistemology for these noetic states. For these potential effects of religious experience to be acknowledged for their noetic value, philosophy of language and epistemology would have to be moderated in some specific ways, which I describe in the following section. Philosophy of Language and Ineffability I suggest that philosophy of language should be understood as a subfield of information theory and communication theory, concentrating on human linguistic communication. It should not be presumed that all information or all communication is linguistic or that information and communication are the exclusive reserve of human beings. While it is true that philosophers of language have often tried to incorporate information theory and pragmatic

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communication issues into their theories, they have often done so in ways that presume that the human linguistic model is primary, and that the human model is restricted to the cognitive reasoning and perceptual descriptions that humans produce. For example, Plato considered the problem of predication the most central of all philosophical problems: How did the properties become instantiated in the things? I am suggesting that Plato’s entire approach was anthropomorphic in a vicious way. Sentence structure, featuring relations between subjects and predicates, may have nothing to do with communication between an ash borer and the infected ash tree, the q-bits of the cosmos and their expression as subatomic particles, or DNA and its proteins. Comparative Venn diagrams portray the change in emphasis that I have in mind. In my suggested revision of philosophy of language, Davies’s agreement with Seth Lloyd that the universe is a quantum computer that computes itself 78 will provide the largest circle. Within that one will reside communication functions of gravity to planets, winds to hurricanes, DNA proteins to cells, neurons to bodies, neural networks to one another, and ecosystems to all their species. Ultimately all things may communicate with all others, at least potentially. Human language will be a restricted subsystem of both the informational and communicational domains, operating in the left side of human brains. Thus nature, including much of human life, is information based, highly ordered, and meaningful, but only the range of human language is articulable. I believe this reordering of philosophical priorities better reflects contemporary science on the role of human language in nature. The qbits of the self-computing universe may or may not function as a symbol

Figure 6.1.

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system of a type that is translatable into human language or symbolic logic. At the outset of studying this type of system, there is no obvious reason to suppose that reduction to human-type language is possible. This way of conceiving of the relationship of language and the universe allows for both information and communication that is ineffable, in the sense that there is no equivalent in human natural languages or perceptual or cognitive symbol systems. Epistemology and Noetic Information Traditional epistemology, in concentrating on perceptual and cognitive knowledge, has underestimated the potential of a complex biological organism in a complex informational universe. In addition to the big two, there is a need to recognize more intuitive forms of knowledge. Mathematicians and scientists claim to have intuitions and eureka insights into the relations of numbers and the structures of things. Roger Penrose argued at the Toward a Science of Consciousness 2014 conference that there are ranges of mathematical proofs that cannot be mechanically computed without an intuitive feel for the direction the proof must take. 79 Broad concepts about the desiderata of science, such as simplicity and elegance, are not contained in the data of either calculations or observations. We grant status as geniuses of insight to musicians and artists, who cannot articulate the sources of their inspiration in language, although sometimes they can in sound, paint, or dance. People who have illnesses sometimes have insights into the conditions of their bodies for which their doctors have no diagnostic tools. Lovers and family members get hunches about what is happening with their beloved counterparts that objective observers would not see. Religious communities have long encouraged the seeking of insights through nontraditional means. These multiple “ways of knowing” are less mysterious if the world is an information space, and our bodies are information spaces as well. My hunch is that our neurological networks will be revealed to have multiple sources of attunement with resonant forms of information within ourselves, within our fellow humans, and within our ecosystem and cosmos. I am suggesting that changing the basic assumptions about how knowledge occurs from an input, output model to a model that seeks resonances and synchronies across architectures might lead to new areas of exploration and more productive understandings. Looking for a mechanism to explain these processes, as Dretske or Dennett would insist, may be the wrong way to go about it. Information systems operate by rules, so explanation in some form should be possible, but perhaps the Newtonian cranes and mechanical mechanisms that Dretske and Dennett have insisted on are artificial restrictions that impede access to the rules that are needed.

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The material reductionists of the world dismiss all intuitive insights as delusional nonsense, but perhaps these philosophers are too wedded to a reductionist linguistic ideology coupled with a materialistic ideology, neither of which is supported by the facts. A broader view of what knowledge is will include the functions of basic information structures, both within and without human persons. Perhaps most importantly, a reductionist cannot explain why reason or perception is explanatory. If the universe is a random mixture of things, there is no reason why it should make sense, even to science, or observation. The very presupposition that it does supposes a deep level of rationality in the universe that resonates with the reason in human brains. Aspects of the universe may resonate as well with other aspects of the organization of human bodies and brains, ones that are less articulate but equally well attuned to those aspects of reality. NOTES 1. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 19–20. 2. Russell, Problems of Philosophy. 3. Ayer, Language, Truth, and Logic. 4. Ibid. 5. Russell, Problems of Philosophy; Quine, Ways of Paradox. 6. Resnick, Frege, 25–53. 7. Frege, “Thought.” 8. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 253–54, 418. 9. Stalnaker, Inquiry, 64. 10. Michel Foucault, in Foucault Reader, 55–57. 11. Marx, “Materialist Conception of History,” 192. 12. Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation. 13. This bullet point is my summary of the “gist” of several analyses of language presented in Continental European philosophy over the last half-century. 14. Edelman, Second Nature, 109–10. 15. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience, appendix B, “Brain Language and Affective Neuroscience,” 331–35. 16. Gazzaniga, Human, 32. 17. Lewis, Amini, and Lannon, General Theory of Love. 18. Damasio, Descartes’ Error. 19. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience. 20. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy. 21. Plato, Republic, 720–72; Phaedo, 47–60. 22. Frege, “Thought.” 23. Plato, Phaedo. 24. Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding. 25. Hume, Treatise of Human Nature. 26. Dretske, Knowledge. 27. Goldman, “Immediate Justification and Process Reliabilism.” 28. Damasio, Descartes’ Error. 29. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience. 30. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 28–32. 31. Gibson, Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. 32. Cozolino, Neuroscience of Human Relationships. 33. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, lectures 8 and 9.

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34. There are Western exceptions to this generalization such as the kabbalistic tradition, Meister Eckhart, and Theresa of Avila, but typically these figures have played no role in the formulation of Western epistemology. 35. Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience, 308. 36. Ibid., 309. 37. Ibid., 310, italics in original. 38. Ibid., 36. 39. Varela, “Specious Present,” 273, italics in original. 40. Ibid., 274. 41. Ibid., 275. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 277. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 281. 47. Ibid., 283. 48. Ibid., 286–89. 49. Ibid., 294. 50. Ibid., 295. 51. For example, Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 208–23. 52. Gibson, Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, 116. 53. Gazzaniga, Human, 282–85. 54. Hurley, “Active Perception and Perceiving Action,” 205–6. 55. Ibid., 221. 56. Ibid., 246. 57. Ralston, New Environmental Ethics, 153. 58. Ibid., 218–22. 59. Chief Seattle of the Squamish Tribe is said to have claimed, “Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and daughters of the earth. We did not weave the web of life, we are merely strands in it. Whatever we do to the web we do to ourselves.” http://www.goodreads.com/ author/quotes/331799.Chief_Seattle. 60. See Davies and Gregersen, Information. 61. Searle, Intentionality. 62. Turing, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” 63. Dennett, Brainstorms, 272–75. 64. Dretske, “If You Can’t Make One.” 65. Paul Davies, in Davies and Gregersen, Information and the Nature of Reality, 83. 66. Ibid., 75. 67. Terence Deacon, in Davies and Gregersen, Information and the Nature of Reality, 159–60. 68. Ibid. 69. Trigg, Philosophy Matters, last chapter. 70. Radhakrishnan and Moore, Source Book in Indian Philosophy, xxv, xxvi. 71. Addiss, Lombardo, and Roitman, Zen Sourcebook, 152. 72. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 185–86. 73. Hobbes, Leviathan, 543. 74. Otto, Idea of the Holy. 75. Ephesians 3:19 (New Jerusalem Bible). 76. D’Aquili and Newberg, Mystical Mind, 152. 77. Ibid., 189–90. 78. Davies and Gregersen, Information, 89. 79. Penrose, “Consciousness.”

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Addiss, Stephen, Stanley Lombardo, and Judith Roitman, eds. Zen Sourcebook. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008. D’Aquili, Eugene, and Andrew Newberg. The Mystical Mind. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. Ayer, A. J. Language, Truth, and Logic. 1936. 2nd ed. London: Gollancz, 1946. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994. Cozolino, Louis. The Neuroscience of Human Relationships. New York: W. W. Norton, 2006. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1994. Davies, Paul, and Niels Hendrik Gregersen, eds. Information and the Nature of Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Dennett, Daniel. Brainstorms. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1978. ———. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little Brown, 1981. Descartes, Rene. Meditations on First Philosophy. In The Essential Descartes, edited by Margaret D. Wilson. New York: Mentor Books, 1969. Dretske, Fred. “If You Can’t Make One You Don’t Know How It Works.” In Philosophical Naturalism, edited by Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 19, 466–82. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994. ———. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981. Edelman, Gerald M. Second Nature, Brain Science and Human Knowledge. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Edited by Paul Rabinow. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984. Frege, Gottlob. “The Thought: A Logical Inquiry.” Mind 65, no. 259 (July 1956): 301–2, 307–8. Gazzaniga, Michael. Human: The Science behind What Makes Your Brain Unique. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008. Gibson, J. J. The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979. Goldman, Alvin I. “Immediate Justification and Process Reliabilism.” In Epistemology: New Essays, edited by Q. Smith, 63–82. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. 1651. In Classics of Philosophy, edited by Louis Pojman, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hume, David. A Treatise of Human Nature. Edited by P. H. Nidditch. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978. Hurley, Susan. “Active Perception and Perceiving Action: The Shared Circuits Model.” In Perceptual Experience, edited by Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne, 205–59. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. The Gifford Lectures, 1901–2. New York: Penguin Books, 1958. Lewis, Thomas, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon. A General Theory of Love. New York: Random House, 2000. Locke, John. An Essay concerning Human Understanding. 1689. Edited by Peter H. Nidditch. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975. Marx, Karl. “The Materialist Conception of History.” Part 2 of Karl Marx, Selected Writings, edited by David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Newberg, Andrew, Eugene d’Aquili, and Vince Rause. Why God Won’t Go Away. New York: Ballantine Books, 2001. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy. Translated by John W. Harvey. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950. Panksepp, Jack. Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Penrose, Roger. “Consciousness and the Laws of Physics.” Paper presented at Toward a Science of Consciousness 2014, Tucson, Arizona, April 23, 2014.

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Plato. Phaedo. In Plato: The Collected Dialogues, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series 71. New York: Pantheon Books, 1961. ———. The Republic. In Plato: The Collected Dialogues, Republic: Books VI and VII, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, Bollingen Series 71. New York: Pantheon Books, 1961. Quine, W. V. O. The Ways of Paradox and Other Essays. Enlarged ed. New York: Random House, 1976. Ralston, Holmes, III. A New Environmental Ethics. New York: Routledge Press, 2011. Resnick, Michael D. Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. Russell, Bertrand. The Problems of Philosophy. London: Williams & Norgate Press, 1912. Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, and Charles A. Moore, eds. A Source Book in Indian Philosophy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. Searle, John. Intentionality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Stalnaker, Robert. Inquiry. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books, MIT Press, 1984. Trigg, Roger. Philosophy Matters. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001. Turing, Alan. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” Mind 59, no. 236 (October 1950): 433–60. Varela, Francisco J. “The Specious Present.” In Naturalizing Phenomenology, edited by Jean Petitot, Francisco J. Varela, Bernard Pachoud, and Jean-Michel Roy, 266–306. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

Chapter Seven

Toward a Cognitive Psychology of Mystical Experiences Harry T. Hunt

INTRODUCTION The approach to a cognitive psychological understanding of mystical states in the present chapter is based on the descriptive method, perhaps ultimately dating from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s naturalism; 1 William James termed it “placing things in their series” and Ludwig Wittgenstein called “perspicuous presentation.” 2 Here the thing to be studied, mystical experience, is placed within a broader continuum of overlapping variations or “family resemblances” in order to afford a fuller explanatory context than might otherwise be possible. In what follows it will be the shading by demonstrable, intermediate links from prototypical mystical states into ostensibly differing phenomena with better known underlying processes that might cast light back onto the cognitive psychology of mysticism. What we are in search of are the cognitive processes directly embedded within the very fabric of mystical states, ranging across their multiple stages of development, types, and intensifications. The primary focus then is phenomenological, since while the neuroscience of mysticism and related states will certainly be relevant and supportive, nonetheless, and to the extent that consciousness is an emergent totality synthesizing and subordinating its multiple neural mediations, it will be in the processes most directly reflected within mystical experience and its related series that we might hope to find its fuller psychological origins and intent.

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A GENERIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF MYSTICAL STATES It was the philosopher Friedrich Schleiermacher who first suggested a crosscultural felt core to all religious experiences based on a feeling of radical dependency in response to a direct intuition of an all-encompassing, sacred totality. 3 Especially significant for what follows, this sensed totality, close to what would later be termed “cosmic consciousness,” 4 was understood as always latent within the preliminary subject-object unity of each dawning moment of immediate consciousness, prior to its more specific differentiation into consciously represented experiences of self and world. William James, in a way highly reminiscent of the very early Martin Heidegger, would later see such “pure experience” as an intuition of being or existence as such. 5 James, in his seminal chapter on mysticism in the Varieties of Religious Experience, first developed a phenomenology of a cross-cultural mystical experience. Suggesting a natural adaptive function in terms of its common aftereffects of an increased sense of purpose, meaning, and compassion, often as part of the felt resolution of existential life crises, he located its felt qualities of passivity (it has you phenomenally rather than you having it), relative transiency, timelessness, bliss, and a sense of all-embracing unity or oneness. He stresses the sense of verbal ineffability in such states, which nonetheless accompanies a strong feeling of noetic or cognitive significance. When pressed into further, often paradoxical expression, this noetic sense turns into highly abstract versions of metaphysics and theology. In addition to and inseparable from their affective impact, these states are like highly abstract sensations, which he sees as an intensification and extension of the “sense of deeper significance” in aesthetic experience. 6 In more contemporary terminology, they are highly abstract “felt meanings” that go beyond the relative specificities of aesthetics and so somehow become about “everything.” It will also be relevant that James identified a negative or “inverted” mysticism characteristic of “delusional insanity,” with its opposite, more socially disintegrative aftermath. 7 Rudolf Otto, in his The Idea of the Holy, expanded Schleiermacher’s felt core into a primary sense of the numinous, with in the present context its more secondary schematization as the differing doctrines of the world religions. While the immediate response to this felt sense of the sacred is a feeling of total dependency, finiteness, or “creature feeling,” the dimension of numinosity itself is subdivided between a more affective component, he terms the tremendum, variously schematized as an absolute, potentially overwhelming moral energy, and a more noetic component, the mysterium, schematized in terms of deity, cosmic origin, or a formless absolute. The tremendum is further subdivided in terms of feelings of awe, often with an uncanniness that can move into primal dread; a sense of overpowering force or power; and

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ecstatic rapture. The phenomenology of the mysterium he subdivides between experiences of fascination or wonder, often schematized in terms of the absolute perfection or love underlying all Being; and a sense of felt contact with something ineffable or “wholly other,” whose communicative expression must be partial, paradoxical, and metaphoric—ultimately approaching the formless all-originating void of Buddhism or the empty Godhead of Meister Eckhart. In his later work, Mysticism East and West, Otto will distinguish two interrelated dimensions within the overlapping world mysticisms, considered as the most direct expressions of the numinous. He contrasts an inward way, ranging between the experience of a personalized inner soul to the pure consciousness of some meditative traditions, and an outward way, ranging from the direct intuition of theistic deity to a more impersonal unitive monism and pantheism. It is worth noting that the numinous, as this continuous dimension of overlapping experiences, is also far broader than what we usually mean by “religion,” such that differing facets of numinous feeling can arise in response to wonder at the universe of modern science, powerful aesthetic and nature experiences, or horrific disasters and mutilations. Meanwhile, the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, familiar with Otto’s phenomenology, has suggested that its more primitive and negative component, in the sense of the uncanny, eerie, and strange, was in intensified form the characteristic emotion of psychotic onset. 8 In her book Ecstasy, Marghanita Laski adds that the experience of the numinous, with its felt sense of resolution and redemption of existential suffering, is commonly mediated by spatial patterns or metaphors that she terms “quasi-physical sensations”—ranging from directly hallucinatory imagery (levitation) to more figurative felt meanings (“raised,” “uplifted”). Thus in accounts of mystical states we find the metaphoric use of “up” words (describing feelings of floating, lightness, buoyancy); “inside” words or phrases (“an enormous bubble swelling within one’s chest”); luminosity, fire, and heat words (brilliant or soft white light, fiery intensity, burning up); “darkness” words (an infinite dark emptiness, a shining velvet blackness); “enlargement” words (sense of expansion, fullness, or bursting); and the use of “liquidity” or “flow” words (bubbling, streaming, dissolving, melting). We will see below how these evocative metaphors overlap with some of the spatial “image schemas” that George Lakoff and Mark Johnson understand as the basic patterns of all symbolic thought. 9 We are left at this point with two questions to be further addressed as we proceed: First, are the noetic, mythological, and metaphysical meanings of numinous experiences—as their schematizations—superimposed on a more primitive, noncognitive core of affective release or discharge, as more reductionist accounts would have it, or are they intrinsic to the numinous as its own form of symbolic intelligence—expressing/resolving existential dilem-

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mas of being human? The latter view would perhaps be reflected in the centrality of Laski’s abstract mediating metaphors, as well as in research findings of individual proclivity to spontaneous mystical experience as statistically associated with measures of both spatial/metaphoric and emotional intelligence. 10 And second, how is it that the numinous, with its quality of awe, fascination, urgency, and sense of something wholly other, in short a kind of abstract version of the organismic “orientation response” to pure novelty, would be so basic to human culture? How is it that at the heart of the human religious orientation we find this “category,” ineffable to any complete discursive representation, of a transcendent ultimately unknown/unknowable “beyond,” and why would that as a direct experience be helpful to ordinary living in the world? COGNITIVE PROCESSES OF MYSTICISM AS ABSTRACT SYNESTHESIAS When we look to more detailed descriptions of the penultimate “white light” experiences of Christian, Sufi, Buddhist, and Vedantist mysticisms, we find highly abstract forms of the cross-modality translation states termed “synesthesias,” intertwined with Laski’s expressive spatial metaphors. These are the “sensate” states just short of the more formless, ineffable experiences of void, absolute, or Godhead, and so might best provide clues to their more fully intuitive and interiorized cognitive processes. Here is an account of the experience of satori from Zen Buddhism: I felt as if a heavy cloak had suddenly dropped from my shoulders, and found myself floating—I do not know where, in the void without any support. Moreover, I felt myself like a bright white light similar to white snow, without knowing whether it was within or without, and all this enchantment of a crystallic white vibrated in absolute silence, the sole sound of which was joy; this silent sound was only felt but could not be heard, because it was like the silence of snow. . . . In short, an intense visual feeling, the sound of which was absolute silence. I think I had an experience of the living formless light which is the root of all forms. . . . I cannot say how long this wonderful experience lasted. . . . I then experienced a flash of the same light (which was ultra rapid this second time) followed by the same profound and sweet serenity. . . . Moreover I have gained the impression that it was the recreative condition of Death itself, so I no more fear death. 11

This is a similar recent account of “inner light” from the practice of vihangam yoga: It is as if more than your eyes are perceiving the light. It’s like you can feel the light as a soft touch, you can hear the light as a soft music. . . . I mean you

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cannot hear light but it’s as if your ears are receiving a soft sound, which is again not like the sound from outside. . . . As I keep staring at the light slowly I start losing my identity and merging with the light itself. There ultimately remains no body, no thoughts or sense of “I.” Everything merges with the light and becomes a part of the divine light itself. . . . Further in that peaceful state, you are given the joy of god in the form of light . . . just pure joy. 12

What we would want to understand in cognitive terms is first the significance of these cross-modality imageries and metaphors. Also, why the centrality of light? And what would be the basis for this cessation or dissolving disappearance of the bodily sense of self, so palpable that in many accounts from mystical experience 13 or psychedelic drug states 14 it will meet with fierce resistance as a feared death or actual physical annihilation? And finally, how would all this follow as the fullest realization of an abstract symbolic intelligence? Initially, however, it is important to see that many less inclusive experiences of mystical ecstasy, in the meditative traditions comprising the yogic chakras or Sufi lataif, which lead up to and approach the totality of white or clear light, show these same processes of cross-modal or synesthetic translation. Thus the Indian chakra and kundalini traditions describe the simultaneous cross-linkage of kinesthetic bodily energies with characteristic colors, geometric mandala designs, vocal mantras, gestural mudras, and emotions of negative conflict or positive release specific to each chakra. 15 The related lataif system of Sufi meditation similarly describes ecstatic physiognomies based on felt fusions of colors, texture, densities, temperatures, and geometric shapes, linked to specific emotional issues and regions of the kinesthetic body image—with both traditions describing visualizations of the felt body image as hollow and full of flowing kinesthetic energies. 16 Indeed Laski’s quasi-physical metaphors of spontaneous ecstatic states would be regarded from the Eastern meditative perspective as spontaneous chakra activations potentially preliminary to the all-dissolving light of the highest head chakra in yoga or the felt “body of light” in Sufism and Taoism. 17 Spontaneous mystical states are typically described in terms of synesthetic fusions of such multisensory expressive qualities. Thus in James’s Varieties: I found myself wrapped in a flame-colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire . . . the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exultation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to describe. . . . I saw that the universe is . . . a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. 18

Such examples are easily multiplied and with wide varieties of colors, geometric imagery, mantra-like sounds, luminosities, and kinesthetic em-

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bodiments. So the question becomes, how might the recent more widely researched cognitive psychology of synesthesias cast a light back into these inner processes of mystical experience? SYNESTHESIAS AS COGNITIVE SEMANTIC STATES Nonmystical synesthesias range between single dimensional or “simple” synesthesias—most commonly as the experience of specific colors fused with vowels, letters, and numbers, 19 to what Heinrich Klüver termed “complex” synesthesias—as seen in Francis Galton’s spontaneous number forms as aids to arithmetic calculations, geometric patternings as immediately expressive of instrumental music, and so-called mandala geometries with psychedelic drugs. 20 They can be imagistically vivid or more inwardly felt and conceptual. It is important to emphasize that these states are not felt to be mere associations to their initiating stimuli or simple sensory curiosities, but are sensed by those who have them most frequently as having a felt meaning or symbolic significance, often difficult to express verbally. Indeed some “synesthetes” consider them as the form in which they think, like an imagistic form of “inner speech,” and must then often struggle to articulate their verbal significance. 21 Some synesthetes find their experiences full of richly aesthetic qualities, conveying a sense of awe, wonder, and excitement, for instance, when entire words are heard as a “kaleidoscopic montage of shifting forms, colors, and textures.” 22 Lawrence Marks points out that synesthetic metaphors run all through poetry—as in the phrase “silver toned chimes.” 23 Still more basically, Eugene Gendlin and Claire Petitmengin see states of “transmodal” fusions or incipient synesthesias as part of the background “felt meaning” or felt sense of significance that underlies and guides all forms of symbolic intelligence—often as ultrarapid inner or imagistic micro-gestures. 24 For Gendlin our felt sense of meaning is a definite, if largely impalpable “something”—a shifting state preliminary enough to be open to multiple lines of articulation, definite enough to often need no further articulation and/or to allow us to sense where we have departed from our original felt direction, and causal in the sense of guiding that articulation while also blocking competing felt meanings. 25 Felt meanings are generally “preliminary” but hardly “primitive,” since they are required for the sense of understanding of even the most conceptually abstract or mathematically complex thinking. Earlier views of synesthesias as holdovers from an undifferentiated state of early infancy seem unlikely now on two fronts: The triggers for the simple stereotyped synesthesias that last into adulthood for the most easily researched classical “synesthetes” are semantic—letters, vowels and consonants, numbers, and time: apparently appearing as spontaneous aids to these

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early school learnings between the ages of five and seven or eight, and so hardly of relevance to infants. In addition, recent neuroscience research with such synesthetes locates the capacities necessary for these experiences in the right parietal areas of the tertiary neocortical zones, basic to human intelligence and also linked to right hemisphere areas important for spatial metaphor. 26 These are among the neural areas whose maturation is not complete until early adolescence. The typical decline in the more stereotyped synesthesias of childhood by around age eleven 27 is associated with the slowly developed capacity to understand and explain metaphors, such as a person being “sharp” or “cold” or “soft”—which younger children take quite literally. 28 This suggests a kind of Vygotsky-like internalization of these mid-childhood synesthetic sensitivities that both supports a fuller metaphoric understanding and fits well with Gendlin’s model of an incipiently synesthetic felt meaning open to some degree of metacognitive or self-aware access. 29 Meanwhile, and consistent with the abstract synesthetic states of mysticism, it would appear that synesthesias can undergo their own further development. The more spontaneous synesthetic states emerging in adulthood are statistically associated with measures of creativity, the personality trait of imaginative absorption/openness to experience, and mystical and other altered states of consciousness experiences. 30 There is evidence that long-term meditative practice increases spontaneous synesthesias, 31 while Todd Bresnik and Ross Levin found that the occurrence of synesthesias in response to the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca was statistically linked to feelings of metaphysical and spiritual insight. 32 THE CROSS-MODAL BASES OF HUMAN SYMBOLIC INTELLIGENCE AND ITS MAXIMUM PRESENTATIONAL EXPRESSION AS MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE The importance of synesthesias for a general theory of human intelligence follows from the work of the neurologist Norman Geschwind, who suggested that the tertiary zones of the neocortex, associated with specifically human symbolic capacities of language, the arts, and mathematics, and based on the interconnection of the visual, auditory, and tactile-kinesthetic association areas we share with lower mammals, should not be understood in the usual terms of being “amodal,” “transmodal,” or abstractly “nonsensory.” 33 Instead these zones would involve an intrinsically dynamic cross-modal “matching” or translation of the very different patternings of the separate senses that would literally be the processes of a self-aware, creatively recombinatory intelligence, at least somewhat independent of the more direct connections of the separate perceptual association areas to motivational-emotional limbic areas characteristic of nonsymbolic mammals. Geschwind suggested, as pri-

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mate research has since generally supported, 34 that only the higher apes would demonstrate a capacity for the cross-modal matching of visual and kinesthetic shapes, but be unable to include therein the auditory patterns that would allow the cross-modal visual, kinesthetic, and vocal/auditory matrix that constitutes human language. The conceptual power of what amounts to a cross-modal metaphor theory of human consciousness is considerable. 35 Not only does it provide an evolutionary basis for the emergence of language, with experimental demonstration that the proto signing abilities of chimpanzees seem to depend on their cross matching visual-kinesthetic abilities, 36 but it helps to account for the existence of the multiple forms or frames of intelligence. Thus beyond language, the arts and music, spatial and kinesthetic intelligences, and emotional intelligence can be understood as not only based on emergent cross-modal translations, but as reflecting different balancings and priorities of guidance across the cross-translating sensory modalities. In addition, cross-modal translation can also help to explain the novelty or creativity aspect of human intelligence, since it would be the collision of the distinct and disparate patternings of vision, kinesthesis, and audition (not to mention the patternings of taste and smell central to cooking and food preparation) 37 that would necessarily generate emergently novel patterns—as the dynamic “engine” of the “schematic rearrangement” or “turning around on the perceptual schemata” 38 that seems to define our endlessly recombinatory intelligence. Also we would have the basis, long ago foreshadowed in Aristotle’s cross-modal “sensus communis,” for human self-awareness or self-consciousness, which seems to develop out of the cross-modal “mirroring” of facial expression, intonation, and gesture present from early infancy and ultimately internalized as our inwardly “dialogic” self-awareness and capacity for empathy. 39 Finally, we could suggest that the addition of auditory vocalization to vision and kinesthesis not only makes possible language, but once rendered symbolic by cross-modality, the unique temporal open-endedness of audition—as more intrinsically sequential than the relative simultaneity of vision and touch—creates the human experience of time-ahead as an open-ended unfolding/anticipation into an unknown future. This becomes the very source of Heidegger’s notion of an existential anxiety of temporality and the ultimate unknown of death as intrinsic to the human condition—and beyond our capacity for any full linguistic representation/containment. 40 It cannot be accidental that Geschwind located the key area for this threeway cross-modal translation in the angular gyrus region of the posterior parietal lobes, with research on synesthesia locating their right hemisphere area as especially central to both synesthesias and spatial metaphor more generally. Synesthesias, rather than being just a curious anomaly of individual difference, now become a unique window into the core of human intelligence—with its presentational or outward expression thus available as part of

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our metacognitive self-awareness and “appearing” most typically as the incipient synesthesias of Gendlin’s imagistic-gestural “felt meaning.” 41 Geschwind’s cross-modality model is highly congruent with the subsequent independent approach of Lakoff and Johnson to the spatial metaphoric basis of all symbolic cognition—verbal and nonverbal. 42 Again we have the view of abstract cognition as the reuse and recombination of the basic structures of perception, understood as the “image schemas” of container, path, link, force, balance, merging/splitting, up/down, center/periphery, front/back, and part/whole. No symbolic thought is possible without these imagistic spatial relations—which Lakoff and Johnson alternately label as kinesthetic, embodied, or trans-modal. These same patterns also both represent and actively inform the inner phenomenology of the experience of emotion and personhood. This is reflected not only in the widely attested etymological origins of words for emotion in original physical metaphors in all languages, but also in the slow development in childhood understanding of what Solomon Asch termed sensory “double function” terms—like “warm,” “sharp,” “heavy”—needed for any differentiated description of feeling. 43 Ordinary language usage goes further into still more complex sensory and spatial forms. Thus when speaking of specific experiences of “desire,” “joy,” or “anger” in ordinary usage, we often describe them, with differing emphasis for each, as variously “heated,” “a pressure from within,” “filling” and “expanding” within one’s body, or barely “contained” therein, like a “fluid” reaching its “explosive” or “boiling point,” and so “welling up inside,” and “rising within” us until it finally either “pours out,” or else “dissolves,” “dissipates,” and “falls back.” 44 Without such metaphoric usage our capacity to both describe and fully feel emotion and interpersonal relations would be impoverished. If we remove from the above list all reference to specific emotions and have these patterns fully felt “as such”—as directly “imagistic” states of consciousness—we have Laski’s categories of “quasi-physical” metaphors of ecstasy—and most vividly so in classical accounts of chakra/lataif activation. This returns us to a fundamental point: It can be tempting to assume that the cognitive processes underlying mystical and related altered states of consciousness must somehow be as “anomalous” or “exotic” as the phenomenologies of such experience will seem from the perspective of everyday experience. Instead, in terms of the ubiquity of these cross-modal synesthetic patterns and kinesthetic image schemas within all forms of symbolic intelligence, it would be these same processes that differently organized and directed will lead alternatively to the ordinary language bases of the everyday “life world” or to “other worldly” mystical experiences. Interestingly, this is also the view of the Tibetan Buddhist meditative tradition, which sees an underlying unity between the “representational” or “applied” mind of social

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life and the “mind as such” of deep meditative realization, allowing each to be latent within the other. 45 There is also an important similarity here to Susanne Langer’s distinction between the representational/discursive symbolisms, which depend on a learned code of explicit intentional signs, with the felt experience of expressive medium largely subordinated and unconscious, and the presentational symbolisms, predominant in the arts, where meaning depends on felt immersion within the mediums of expressions and their fully sentient properties. 46 We could suggest that the maximum abstract development of representation appears as mathematics, in which all steps in reasoning are to be made explicit, while the maximally abstract form of presentational thinking would be mysticism itself, with its deeply implicit felt sense of a unitive, all inclusive totality—the synesthetically mediated felt meaning of “everything.” Here we may begin to gain some insight into the question of why the penultimate mystical consciousness so often emphasizes “white light,” “luminosity,” or the felt quality of open space itself. Light, in its impalpable extension, preliminary and basic to all more specific visual qualities of motion, form, and color, is the most congruent sensory metaphor for a similarly impalpable noetic “totality.” And as will be further developed below, light is especially resonant with the open extension ahead of our human experience of time—which as its symbolically “contained” felt meaning can reconcile, accept, and so transcend our existential anxiety and its perpetual unfoldment into an unknown “beyond.” 47 We can also begin to see why the full synesthetic experience of luminosity as the felt meaning of the openness of time could entail the sense of an imminent annihilation, which fully undergone is experienced as a cessation of self or dissolution of bodily presence—which may ultimately be felt as a liberation and release. That this dissolution of ordinary sense of self is often felt as an incipient dying helps us to understand why individuals on the verge of classical experiences of enlightenment may pull back and hold off a more complete realization, 48 the terror of some high dosage LSD-25 experience that one is actually dying, with a fuller acceptance culminating in mystical states, 49 and accounts from acute schizophrenia of the delusional conviction of a cosmic annihilation that the patient must somehow prevent. 50 This experience of impending or actual cessation follows precisely from the cognitive synesthetic basis of enlightenment experience. For “white light” imagery to become the felt meaning of an all-encompassing and infinitely open totality will require its cross-modal translation—in short, its kinesthetic embodiment. However, a synesthetic translation between the impalpable openness of light/empty space and the tactile-kinesthetic body image will entail the latter’s felt “dissolving,” “melting,” or “disappearance”— which is exactly what many mystics describe. Since our sense of embodiment is part of our core sense of self, its dissolving into or mergence with

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light will result in a profound expansion/liberation from our ordinary egocentric sense of self. The individual can feel he or she has dissolved into or becomes this open light 51 or that he or she is somehow paradoxically embodied as light—as in Sufi and Taoist accounts of becoming the “body of light.” 52 What might seem from the outside as a primitive seizure-like concomitant of deep trance is rather the consequence of its abstract cognitivepresentational nature. 53 MYSTICISM AS METACOGNITION: INTROSPECTIVE SENSITIZATION TO THE MICROGENESIS OF IMMEDIATE CONSCIOUSNESS We can also understand mysticism and related states as reflections of a slowly developing capacity for metacognition—the consciousness of consciousness—here in its immediately felt or presentational aspect, in contrast to the representational meta-cognition subordinated within more calculative cognitive functions. Presentational metacognition would be uniquely human, central to the arts, and in the form of hunter-gatherer shamanistic trance, at the original core of culture. 54 It is most developed in the Eastern meditative traditions, in which the sustained observation of ongoing consciousness, without judgment or evaluation “de-embeds” it from the cognitive operations that it ordinarily serves as implicit background, and transforms and exteriorizes it as spontaneous altered states of consciousness. 55 That this requires a developmentally advanced metacognitive capacity is reflected in the barrier to teaching the techniques of mindfulness meditation to children younger than eleven or twelve, 56 and the difficulty of using standard methods of hypnotic induction, as a more socially supported and guided introspective sensitization, much before the age of seven or eight. Maximum hypnotizability falls within the years of early adolescence, while children younger than five or six have no directly sensed “within” to which they can be directed. 57 The major place within Western psychology where the latency of mystical and related states within ordinary awareness has been directly, if unintentionally, demonstrated turns out to be the classical introspectionism of early experimental psychology up to about 1920. In hindsight and based on a contemporary cognitive reinterpretation of introspectionist protocols from these early studies, we can see that their focus on the “isness” of immediate consciousness, which constitutes Edward Titchener’s “avoiding the stimulus error,” in contrast to its more normative and functional “is for,” actually released brief versions, lasting at most two to three seconds, of effects more typical of intense altered states and mystical-like consciousness. 58 Indeed, quite apart from the meditative traditions themselves, these early studies, not intending such effects as such, show that the basic features of mystical states

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can appear in focal awareness through prolonged introspective sensitization alone. A spontaneous inclination to introspective sensitization is also reflected in both individual difference measures of the trait of “imaginative absorption,” predictive of creativity and spontaneous alterations of consciousness, 59 and, in its more pathological form, in the “hyperreflexivity” of schizophrenia—a kind of involuntary introspection attendant on a diminished sense of selfpresence in the context of defensive social withdrawal. 60 Here an involuntary, socially withdrawn self-observation creates an inner dialogue or role relationship with one’s own consciousness, now experienced as “other” in the form of Kurt Schneider’s “first rank” symptoms in which one’s own thought and feeling processes are experienced as the alien, disintegrative, intrusions of “made thoughts,” “made-feelings,” and “made volitions.” 61 The schizophrenic’s “these are not my thoughts, so they must be an intrusive attack by someone else” can be contrasted with the more integrative contexts of imaginative absorption in creativity and deep meditation, where spontaneous expressions of consciousness as “other”—Friedrich Nietzsche’s “a thought comes when it wishes, not when I wish”—are felt as the liberating gift of a deeper or sacred reality that frees or releases one from a more constrained everyday functioning. 62 The larger point is that sustained introspective absorption in ongoing consciousness necessarily changes that consciousness. For the German and British introspectionist traditions of the early Heinz Werner, Paul Schilder, and Raymond Cattell, 63 this transformation involved the release and prolongation into focal awareness of what would otherwise be the ultra-rapid unconscious or “microgenetic” phases of immediate consciousness, which if not derailed by introspective methods would culminate moment to moment in what we ordinarily recognize as semantically meaningful experience. 64 These are the same implicit phases of experience formation that Gendlin approaches as the synesthetic roots of “felt meaning.” The idea of altered and higher states of consciousness as the prolongation and exteriorization of phases of experience construction normally too rapid for full awareness was already foreshadowed in Schleiermacher’s understanding of mystical experience as the felt unity of subject and object within each dawning moment. 65 It is also reflected in the Buddhist understanding of the “mind moments” of deep meditation, as well as in ultra-rapid “image scintillations” with psychedelic drugs and near-death experiences. 66 Paul Schilder, Silvano Arieti, and Jason Brown have all put forward theories of schizophrenic hallucinations and delusions as elaborations of a normally subliminal microgenesis. 67 While microgenetic subphases would exist within all dimensions of experience, they are most easily researched with vision, using ultra-rapid tachistoscopic exposures, which limit the time available for full recognition, leaving vision at earlier states of perceptual construction. Laboratory research with both

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highly creative subjects and practiced meditators has demonstrated a heightened awareness and spontaneous, often synesthetic elaboration of tachistoscopic exposures too rapid for average participants to perceive. 68 One of the most striking phenomenological demonstrations that systematic laboratory introspection by itself could induce ultra-rapid alterations of consciousness that, prolonged and intensified, would be the stuff of mystical states comes from a study by Cattell in 1930. His observers were asked to immerse themselves in their immediate or “primary” sentience in response to the sudden presentation of novel stimuli in multiple modalities and with a wide range of semantic meanings. It is important to emphasize that such studies had no interest in what would now be identifiable as “altered state” effects, and indeed the observers in many such studies from this introspectionist era expressed surprise at what they were experiencing, stressing the “paradoxical” nature of their descriptions in the face of these curiously “ineffable” states. Cattell found that the most successful instances of introspective immersion came with a passive receptive attitude that some observers likened to “trance” and were accompanied by significant delays in the onset of galvanic skin response to the occasioning stimuli, which seemed to create the brief plateau needed for these experiences. Similar inhibitions of physiological response have also been found in some recent studies of concentrative meditation. 69 Cattell’s detailed protocols include accounts of what we can identify as spontaneous derealization and depersonalization, feelings of strangeness and ineffability, synesthesias, physiognomic fusions of subject and object that Werner has termed “volumic sensation,” 70 entranced absorption, loss of spatial and self-localization, and felt timelessness: Introspective stimulus: uniform red sheet: “I noticed it lost its accurate localization . . . then I was floating in it; my body had vanished but a thin trickle of consecutive thought still went on . . . in childlike repetition ‘I’m still here.’” Stimulus: continuous auditory tone: “I was feeling a kind of helplessness and also my sense of time seemed abnormal, for the subjective state seemed to last ages and yet at other moments I wasn’t sure that I hadn’t been in it more than a few seconds.” Stimulus: a gustatory sulphuric acid solution: “There was some visual synesthesia—a black and yellow mass round which circled a number of clearer shapes.” Stimulus: odor of pyradine: “The whole outside world seemed to have disappeared and it was a state. I can scarcely say ‘I’ was a state for I seemed to lose my personality.” 71

Note that there is no reason to think that such experiences are somehow continuously present “unconsciously” during everyday semantic experience. Rather it would be the sustained introspective observation that transforms

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ordinary consciousness and creates states in which we become aware of otherwise background processes and phases, the sensitivity to which would be part of the aesthetic-presentational aspects of symbolic thought. Still more striking parallels between early laboratory introspection and sensate mystical experience emerge from John Paul Nafe’s study of what he termed the “bright-pressure sensations” underlying emotional pleasure. 72 Asked to focus introspectively on the emotive or affective aspect of a range of unexpected stimuli, Nafe’s observers found themselves describing affective pleasure as a sense of expansion and rising, with a quasi or “as if” volume whose localization in terms of body image seemed paradoxical: Jasmine: “The pleasure is like an expansiveness somehow. It’s linked up with a bodily state of a pressure sort. . . . The experience swells and that swelling is attended by, or is, the pleasure.” Rose Geranium: “Massive is a good word in the sense of spread out indefinitely. It seems bigger than my body and my body is in it.” 73

To the extent there was a sense of bodily boundaries at all during these introspected “bright pressure” volumes, they were felt to originate in the chest cavity and to expand outward, rising up within a sensed bodily hollowness and sometimes to pass outside, so that the phenomenal body was sensed as within a larger pattern “out in the air.” In its most developed form there was no concomitant body awareness at all, just this briefly expanding, mildly blissful “something.” However, this was most fully developed over the months of the study only for some observers, such as Elizabeth Möller, 74 who in terms of this and other studies we would now regard as likely to be unusually high in the questionnaire trait of imaginative absorption, predictive of spontaneous mystical, synesthetic, and altered-state experiences: Möller, responding to Bergamot: “The pleasure is all around, but I don’t know where; and I can’t say where it ends. . . . It occupied a lot of space but I don’t know what space. . . . It’s as senseless to talk about presences you don’t feel anywhere as about a color volume you don’t see. If you could have a pressure out in the air, that would be it, not localized and with no reference to me.” 75

These accounts seem comparable, allowing for their brevity, subtlety, and lack of intensity, to accounts of Laski’s quasi-physical categories of ecstatic states. Again there is no reason to think such experience is somehow “going on all the time,” other than as potential hints or flashes within an otherwise impalpable “fringe” of overt conscious awareness. 76 Rather, these expansive “bright pressures” would be the metacognitive prolongation and externalization of preliminary or microgenetic processes, normally fully subordinated within functional emotional response—and so not normally products of focal

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awareness. Indeed subsequent laboratory studies by Paul Young and W. A. Hunt found that depending on how introspective observers were “set” in advance, they could either observe an ordinary sense of muscular relaxation, as the incipient “approach” response to pleasant stimuli, or immerse themselves in these metacognitive feeling states, never both. 77 While “bright pressures” foreshadow many features Laski and others ascribe to numinous ecstasy, it would require a more sustained meditative-like sensitization, and crossmodal synesthetic translation, for Nafe’s bright pressures to develop into the “felt meanings” of classical mystical experience. But we see herein some of the metacognitive capacity that would make that possible. One of the most convincing demonstrations that mystical states exteriorize microgenetically preliminary phases of experience comes from both experimental and introspective studies of the experience of light—the central animating metaphor for sensate mysticism. Using tachistoscopic measures with a small number of master-level Tibetan Buddhist and Burmese mindfulness meditators, tested immediately following intensive meditative retreats, Dan Brown and his colleagues found such an enhancement of discriminative sensitivity to the awareness of light flashes that no level of two-flash fusion effects could be obtained, while there was no such lowered threshold for the recognition of ultra-rapid presentations of letters or numbers. 78 Supportive evidence for this hypersensitivity to light in deep meditation also comes from early introspectionist studies with the tachistoscope, where normal observers presented with a complex visual scene at the most rapid subliminal exposures could experience at first only light, then, with longer exposure, expressive geometric forms and colors, often shifting kaleidoscopically from exposure to exposure, with these effects only “becoming” the actual representational scene at the longest exposures. 79 Studies that asked introspectors to sensitize themselves to light-only presentations, then pushing back their awareness to earlier and earlier phases, reported first experiencing what they termed an intense “riding out” or “kick” of light, beneath which they could eventually detect more and more subtle luminosities, which were described as pre-dimensional, or not localizable as two or three dimensional, with a soft glow reminiscent of the first predawn lighting of the night-sky horizon. 80 Titchener came to term this the ur-sense of “prespatial spread” underlying all spatial qualities. 81 It seems especially relevant that accounts of “clear light” in Tibetan Buddhism similarly distinguish luminosities of expansive intensity from softer qualities of moonlight, smoke, and ultimately a subtle light like the pre-dimensional luminosity of first dawn, 82 itself also a source of fascination for G. W. F. Hegel in the Phenomenology of Mind as the most natural symbol of an all-originating spiritual Absolute. 83 Since all more-specific visual qualities of color and form are the microgenetic differentiations of an initial background luminosity, these ur-qualities of light, once cross-modally embodied as felt meaning, also become the

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perfect metaphors for the moment by moment “gift” or “giving forth” of all Being in Eckhart’s Godhead, the Sufi One, or the later more mystical Heidegger. 84 Schleiermacher turns out to have been astonishingly prescient in locating the cognitive bases of mystical experience as latent within each “dawning moment.” If we now ask what could possibly be the adaptive function of a heightened self-awareness that can prolong normally unconscious micro-phases of perception, affect, and motivation into focal states of ongoing consciousness, the answer emerges from the above model of all symbolic thought as resting on cross-modal translation as the inner engine of a creative “schematic rearrangement” defining the human mind. The range of qualia and forms needed as symbolic vehicles for the spatial metaphors of Lakoff and Johnson is so diverse that their cross-modal translation would also entail a preliminary “dis-assembling” or “deconstruction” of the separate perceptual modalities, preparatory to their subsequent cross-modal “reciprocal rotation” and creative semantic resonance. This cognitively driven deconstruction of the perceptual senses in search of expressive metaphoric properties would follow most naturally along the lines of their own microgenetic subphases. In the more applied representational symbolisms, typified by language and mathematics, this “turning around on the schemata” would itself be largely unconscious and automatized, alternating back and forth with the periodic guidings of Gendlin’s “states” of felt meaning. With the more presentational symbolisms of the arts, culminating in the overlapping world mysticisms, where meaning depends on conscious absorption in the qualities of the expressive medium, these same inner processes of meaning become more directly conscious and felt as such. Here it is the phenomenology of mystical and related states that offers its own evidence for a more general theory of mind. 85 MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE AS FORMAL COGNITIVE OPERATIONS IN AFFECT, EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE, AND SELF-OTHER RELATIONS Mystical experience then is the fullest presentational manifestation of a kind of symbolic intelligence. If we regard this as a “spiritual intelligence,” we can then ask about its relation to other symbolic forms—as a further development of Howard Gardner’s suggestion of separate linguistic, musical/aesthetic, logical/mathematical, spatial, bodily kinesthetic, and intra/inter-personal intelligences. 86 H. T. Hunt and Robert Emmons have argued that a spiritual intelligence would be the abstract development of what can be variously termed intrapersonal, personal-social, or emotional intelligence, or what Jean Piaget might have termed “formal operations in affect.” 87 Emmons suggests that the relatively rare full development of spiritual intelligence would in-

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volve some capacity for direct transcendental experiences, the higher development of the virtues of compassion, empathy, and gratitude, and the use of these values and understandings in addressing the social problems of everyday life—in short something close to Abraham Maslow’s concept of a natural maturation in midlife or older age of “self-actualization.” With Robert Bellah, we could say that religion in general is the development of what Martin Buber termed I-Thou relations, here extended not only to others but to the inner animation of nature, in contrast to the I-it relations of the more applied intelligence of physical reality. 88 James Mark Baldwin was perhaps the first to suggest that mystical experience showed the appearance of abstract or formal operations in the sphere of affect or emotion, accelerating what Edwin Starbuck had earlier called a process of “unselfing”—the decentering from childhood egocentricity leading to an objective empathy and compassion. 89 It is worth noting that the psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan held that the full development of human “intimacy”—as the capacity to empathically understand the actual experience of others from their point of view and to make that more important than one’s own—is relatively rare, and certainly delayed well into midlife. 90 It must overcome the developmental delay imposed by the early self-images of childhood and adolescence that have been fixated by anxiety and shame. This in turn helps to explain why spiritual practices, as an ostensibly “higher” or abstract development, can entail so much emotional struggle and conflict, and why the profound “social defeat” and “depletion of self” in schizophrenia could appear to James and others as the negative inversion of mysticism. This typical delay in the formal development of personal-emotional intelligence, so that it appears at best as a separate later-life “spirituality” or “self actualization,” helps us understand why it was that Piaget himself thought that formal operations in affect were impossible, while also in hindsight implying what it would be that might potentially drive them forward. For Piaget the abstract development of a necessarily pre-formal affective intelligence, based on concrete operations, was blocked, unlike physical and mathematical intelligence, because (1) the affective schemata have no fixed point that would enforce a progressive accommodation over an egocentric assimilation, and (2) self-awareness requires imagery and metaphor, and that must necessarily be concrete, pictorial, and specifically representational. 91 What Piaget missed was (1) the existential crises of living that are ultimately inescapable and/or the genuine difficulty of sustained meditative practices—both of which will enforce their own accommodation on our emotional being, and (2) as with Lakoff and Johnson, Rudolf Arnheim on abstract art, and the geometric mandala patterns of chakras and lataif imagery, emotional being can most definitely be abstract, and is strikingly so in the luminosity and open spaciousness states of classical mysticism. 92

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It is the early adolescent development of a meta-cognitive capacity for the awareness of awareness, necessary for the reversibility and decentering of representational cognition, that would both delay and finally energize an abstract development of personal-emotional intelligence. For Sullivan it was what is now termed by cognitivists the meta-cognition of consciousness itself—surprisingly and often charmingly absent in younger children—that creates a new existential level of “inner loneliness” in early adolescence. 93 This emerging cognitive capacity creates/intensifies feelings of isolation and separateness, and so begins to push one outward toward a redemptive contact and intimacy with real others. We could say that in discovering an “inner” stream of ongoing consciousness, without which meditation will have nothing on which to focus, one also discovers a kind of “privateness” and separation from others that can become, especially to those high in a tendency to imaginative absorption, increasingly unbearable. That this “inner” consciousness is ultimately based on our socially mirrored self-awareness, or what George Herbert Mead termed “taking the role of the other towards oneself,” and that it can be collectively shared as a “unitive” consciousness in ritual, religion, and direct mystical experience, must generally remain a later discovery. 94 This “inner flow” of a stream of consciousness was for James and Edmund Husserl also inseparable from our internal sense of temporal flow or “time consciousness,” which on individual reflection must eventually give rise, with Heidegger, to the intrinsic existential anxiety given by time—its “carry forward” to an inevitable personal termination or death. 95 This must further intensify the aloneness of an “inner” consciousness, so that its intrinsic and “higher” existential pain is either buffered by outward social preoccupations or perhaps finally resolved by the fruitions following classical mystical realizations, midlife peak experiences of self-actualization, and/or spontaneous ecstatic experiences in near-death, psychedelic, or other “extreme” settings. The felt meanings of mystical experiences, expressed through the increasingly subtle lights of visual microgenesis, show the latter as a potential metaphoric vehicle that when kinesthetically embodied allows a decentering and equilibration of affective intelligence—and so an “unselfing” of our otherwise egocentric emotionality. This sense of liberation from emotional fixedness into a semantic space common to all persons and views, yet allowing each its own singularity, is conveyed in the following accounts from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition: With the realization of the realm of free space in which all things are identified, anything which enters experience is known to be unborn in its origin. This is the attainment of ultimate refuge. . . . Detached, without any tendency to slow the natural progression from unitary totality to the intimately related

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flash of the following moment, no . . . fear arises . . . to begin the process of action-reaction producing attraction and aversion. . . . Rather there is a continuous sense of amazement at the ineffable beauty and sublimity of the being in life. 96 Great space supports infinitely many choices of perspective. 97

This felt sense of a universally compassionate all-originating openness is the Eastern equivalent of the more theistic sense of all persons and events being reconciled and accepted as ultimate expressions of God’s will. It is the achievement of a perfect faith. Only the kinesthetically embodied metaphor of light or open spaciousness can “spatialize” time-ahead as its felt understanding and anticipation, with a symbolic vehicle so open that all more-specific events can be sensed as preunderstood and accepted, without narrowing or curtailing their actual specificities. 98 Thus all events, including the deaths of self and others, at their deepest level come to express a compassion and releasement underlying Being as such. What is so striking about these experiences is that their felt significance is directly expressed within their immediate fabric. The state of an all-inclusive reconciling unity is presented—which makes it, as James originally suggested, the maximally abstract form of our aesthetic or presentational intelligence. The reason that such realizations are so infrequent in their more complete forms is that they require fully feeling and accepting our deepest existential anxieties of aloneness and dread at the open uncertainty of time, the very sources of existential suffering that these states seem “designed” to understand and so transcend. CONCLUSIONS The identification of noetic cognitive processes—synesthetic, metacognitive, and microgenetic—underlying the numinous feeling of mystical states does offer some support to the perennialist view of a cross-cultural core for the ostensibly overlapping mysticisms of the world religions. Certainly these processes interact with differentiating cultural schematizations or constructions, with widespread variations in the relative priority and direction between these component phases. The key point, however, is that these cultural schematizations are not simply superimposed on some noncognitive primitive or archaic capacity for “trance.” Rather trance, as the behavioral expression of the numinous, seems best understood as an abstractly or symbolically driven orientation response to novelty, based on our capacity for developing metacognitive absorption in an ongoing inner consciousness. 99

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It seems important that in contrast to the “wholly other” numinosity of mystical states, their underlying cognitive symbolic processes are shared in varying degrees by all forms or lines of human intelligence. Differently weighed and directed, we find within all symbolic forms abstract spatial patterns, their cross-modal incipiently synesthetic translation and rearrangement, driven by a representational and presentational metacognitive capacity that can penetrate into and reuse as symbolic vehicles all phases of the microgenetic development of the multisensory perceptual array. These processes are latent or unconscious within the representational use of ordinary language, while incipiently manifested in the phases of felt meaning and gesture with which it dialogues. Thus we could say that a representational ordinary language use and a maximally presentational mystical experience are like reversible gestalt figures of each other—very much in the sense of the “mind as such” in Tibetan Buddhist meditation contrasted with the “mind applied” of everyday life. Mysticism is a particular development and direction of human intelligence—and there seems no intrinsic reason to conclude that while some of these forms, such as mathematics, are objectively valid and real, others are somehow illusory, unreal, or without a similarly adaptive capacity. There will always be the very human gap between an intellectual-symbolic capacity and its actual achievements. Why would we think a spiritual intelligence would be any different? Even from the perspective of a literal faith in the transcendent reality of a theistic deity or monistic One, there must still be developed that form of intelligence that in the words of the Sufi mystic Ibn Arabi allows us to be “capable of God”—capable of that reciprocal interior mirroring by which we would cocreate each other. 100 We would still require a cognitive psychology that explains both that capability and its limitations. Either way—whether as purely human construction or actual reception of transcendental truth—we would have an intelligence with these same inner processes and characteristic vulnerabilities. NOTES 1. Amrine, “Metamorphosis of the Scientist.” 2. James, Varieties of Religious Experience; Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. 3. Schleiermacher, On Religion; Marina, “Schleiermacher on the Outpourings.” 4. Bucke, Cosmic Consciousness. 5. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism; Heidegger, Towards the Definition of Philosophy. 6. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 345. 7. While the broader organismic contexts and integrative versus disintegrative directions of development between mysticism and schizophrenia differ crucially, nonetheless, some of their underlying cognitive processes overlap strikingly and so can cast a mutual light on each other (H. T. Hunt, “Dark Nights of the Soul”). This also follows from some instances where intensive meditation can elicit destabilizing psychotic-like states (Krishna, Kundalini; Kapleau, Three

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Pillars of Zen) and the small but convincing literature on spontaneous remission in schizophrenia as directly mediated by spontaneous mystical-religious experiences (Boisen, Exploration of the Inner World; Van Dusen, Natural Depth in Man; Bowers, Retreat from Sanity). 8. Sullivan, Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. 9. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. 10. See H. T. Hunt, “Experiences of Radical Personal Transformation”; Ayers, Beaton, and Hunt, “Significance of Transpersonal Experiences”; Michalica and Hunt, “Creativity, Schizotypicality, and Mystical Experience”; Huber and MacDonald, “Investigation of the Relations.” 11. Luk, Practical Buddhism, 20–21. 12. Prakash et al., “Inner Light Perception,” 130–32. 13. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 347. 14. Grof, LSD Psychotherapy. 15. Bernard, Hatha Yoga; Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism. 16. Almaas, Essence; Chang, Teachings of Tibetan Yoga. 17. Corbin, Man of Light; Izutsu, Sufism and Taoism. 18. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 360. 19. Dann, Bright Colors Falsely Seen; Marks, Unity of the Senses. 20. Galton, Inquiries into Human Faculty; Klüver, Mescal and Mechanisms of Hallucination; Fischer, “Cartography of Inner Space.” 21. Cutsforth, “Synaesthesia.” 22. Marks and Odgaard, “Developmental Constraints,” 217; Nikolinakos, “Aesthetic and Synaesthetic Experience.” 23. Marks, Unity of the Senses. 24. Gendlin, Focusing; Petitmengin, “Towards the Source of Thoughts.” 25. Gendlin, Experiencing. 26. Muggleton et al., “Disruption of Synaesthesia”; Faust and Mashal, “Role of the Right Cerebral Hemisphere”; Lakoff and Núñez, Where Mathematics Comes From. 27. Werner, Comparative Psychology of Mental Development. 28. Asch and Nerlove, “Development of Double-Function Terms.” 29. H. T. Hunt, “Synesthesias, Synesthetic Imagination, and Metaphor.” 30. Domino, “Synaesthesia and Creativity”; Tellegen and Atkinson, “Openness”; Novoa and Hunt, “Synaesthesias in Context.” 31. Walsh, “Can Synaesthesia Be Cultivated?” 32. Bresnik and Levin, “Phenomenal Qualities.” 33. Geschwind, “Disconnection Syndromes.” 34. See H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, 85–86. 35. See H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 36. Savage-Rumbaugh, Sevcik, and Hopkins, “Symbolic Cross-Modal Transfer.” 37. Levi-Strauss, Raw and the Cooked. 38. Neisser, Cognition and Reality; Bartlett, Remembering. 39. Winnicott, Playing and Reality; Meltzoff, “Elements of a Developmental Theory”; Rochat, “Five Levels of Self-Awareness,” 2003. 40. Heidegger, Being and Time. 41. See also H. T. Hunt, “Relations between the Phenomena”; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, H. T. Hunt, “Synesthesias, Synesthetic Imagination.” The neurologist Ramachandran has more recently presented his own ostensibly independent version of this linkage of higher cortical cross-modality and synesthesias, in a similar model of the metaphoric basis of language and thought (Ramachandran and Hubbard, “Synaesthesia”). 42. Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh. 43. Asch, “Metaphor”; Asch and Nerlove, “Development of Double-Function Terms”; Silberstein, Gardner, and Phelps, “Autumn Leaves and Old Photographs.” 44. Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, 381–97. 45. Guenther, Matrix of Mystery. 46. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key. 47. H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 48. James, Varieties of Religious Experience; Kapleau, Three Pillars of Zen.

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49. Grof, LSD Psychotherapy. 50. Boisen, Exploration of the Inner World; Schreber, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. 51. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Book. 52. Corbin, Man of Light; Izutzu, Sufism and Taoism. 53. See also H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 54. Eliade, Shamanism. 55. H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 56. Alexander et al., “Higher Stages of Consciousness.” 57. Morgan and Hilgard, “Stanford Hypnotic Clinical Scale”; Flavell, Green, and Flavell, “Children’s Understanding.” 58. H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”; H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Reinterpretation of Classical Introspectionism.” 59. Tellegen and Atkinson, “Openness to Absorbing.” 60. Sass, “Schizophrenia.” 61. Sass, “Schizophrenia”; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 62. Quote from Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 398; H. T. Hunt, “Dark Nights of the Soul.” The wider differences in social and organismic context between mysticism and schizophrenia are attested not only phenomenologically but also in research on the gamma rhythms across multiple neural regions that seem to be associated with integrative consciousness. These are intensified and extended beyond normal during meditation (Lutz et al., “Long-Term Meditators”), while appearing more fragmented and inconstant in the disintegrative hyper-reflexivity of schizophrenia (Lee et al., “Synchronous Gamma Activity”). The pathology of hyper-reflexivity lies not necessarily with intensified introspective awareness per se but with the judgment’s interpreting them as attacks on one’s mind, gradually developing them into assaults by bizarre inner beings (Angyal, “Phenomena resembling Lilliputian Hallucinations”). This is consistent with Chadwick, Taylor, and Abba (“Mindfulness Groups”), who found some amelioration of symptoms in a small group of psychotic patients taught mindfulness meditation, in which distressing experiences were to be simply observed and allowed, without judgment or struggle. 63. Werner, Comparative Psychology of Mental Development; Schilder, Mind; Cattell, “Subjective Character of Cognition.” 64. H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Reinterpretation of Classical Introspectionism.” 65. Marina, “Schleiermacher on the Outpourings.” 66. Walsh, “Initial Meditative Experiences”; Horowitz, Image Formation and Cognition; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness. 67. Schilder, Mind; Arieti, Interpretation of Schizophrenia; Brown, Mind and Nature. See also Thomas and Germine, “Microgenesis of Schizophrenia.” 68. Smith and Carlsson, Creative Process; Brown, Forte, and Dysart, “Visual Sensitivity and Mindfulness Meditation.” 69. Rao, “Applied Yoga Psychology.” 70. Werner, Comparative Psychology of Mental Development. 71. Cattell, “Subjective Character of Cognition,” 69–77. 72. Nafe, “Experimental Study.” 73. Ibid., 518–27. 74. Möller, “Glassy Sensation.” 75. Nafe, “Experimental Study,” 537–38. 76. See also Bresnik and Levin, “Phenomenal Qualities”; Mangan, “Fringe.” 77. Young, “Studies in Affective Psychology”; W. A. Hunt, “Meaning of Pleasantness and Unpleasantness.” 78. Brown, Forte, and Dysart, “Visual Sensitivity and Mindfulness Meditation.” 79. Flavell and Draguns, “Microgenetic Approach.” 80. Dickenson, “Course of Experience”; Bichowski, “Mechanism of Consciousness.” 81. Titchener, Systematic Psychology. 82. Evans-Wentz, Tibetan Book. 83. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, 700–701. These phenomenologies of luminosity shared between introspectionist research and the meditative traditions also help to solidify the conclu-

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sion that their symbolic meanings are based on qualities specific to vision, which are to be cross-translated with the forms of other modalities for semantic significance, rather than as in some earlier theories of synesthesia, reducible to a primitive quality of brightness/darkness which would be the undifferentiated evolutionary core for the separate senses, conferring on them an underlying “unity of the senses” that in us would be localized in the reticular formation of the primitive brain stem (see Marks, Unity of the Senses). Quite apart from studies cited above of neocortical localization, the phenomenology of synesthesias shows them to be emergent integrations across the already differentiated separate perceptual modalities, clearly superimposed over and far more complex than the more primary sensory qualities of brightnessdarkness and varying intensity that may also be selectively reused in single-dimension semantic synesthesias (Marks, Unity of the Senses; H. T. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness). 84. Heidegger, On Time and Being; H. T. Hunt, “Truth Value of Mystical Experience.” 85. The theorist of introspectionism Carl Rahn appears to have put forward a very similar model of the relation between systematic laboratory introspectionism, recombinatory symbolic thought, and deep meditative experience in an especially intricate 1913 monograph (“Relation of Sensation”), apparently widely misread at the time (see H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Reinterpretation of Classical Introspectionism”). It does not seem to have been understood in this way at the time or by later historians of psychology, but was taken only in terms of its “critique” of Titchener, the major Anglo-American introspectionist of the era, and its supposed dismissal of him as unintended “mystic,” which of course fit well with the newly arriving era of behaviorism. I came upon his densely formulated monograph only after developing the present approach (H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”; H. T. Hunt, “Relations between the Phenomena”). 86. Gardner, Frames of Mind. 87. See H. T. Hunt, “Some Developmental Issues”; H. T. Hunt, “Collective Unconscious Reconsidered” for a detailed discussion of how a spiritual intelligence would meet Gardner’s precise criteria for a separate intelligence, with, for instance, the rare childhood experiences of classical mystical states understood as early developmental precocities of adult maturations, as also seen in music, mathematics, and art. See also Emmons, “Is Spirituality an Intelligence?” 88. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution; Buber, I and Thou. 89. Baldwin, Thought and Things; Starbuck, Psychology of Religion. 90. Sullivan, Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. 91. Piaget, Play, Dreams and Imitation. 92. Arnheim, Visual Thinking; for geometric mandala patterns, see Govinda, Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism. It may be a step too far to understand mystical enlightenment states as what Wilber (Integral Psychology) and Alexander and his colleagues (“Higher Stages of Consciousness”) have termed “post-formal” cognitive-affective operations, and Baldwin (Thought and Things) considered as “hyper-logical,” when a clearer separation of representational and presentational intelligences as separate lines of development, instead of picturing a single line of development for all intelligence, and an anxiety mediated delay in the full maturation of personal-emotional intelligence, would make a more general formal operations in affect the more parsimonious account. 93. Sullivan, Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry; for the absence of metacognition of consciousness, see Flavell, Green, and Flavell, “Children’s Understanding.” 94. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society. 95. James, Principles of Psychology; Husserl, Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. 96. Tulku, Calm and Clear, 106. 97. Tulku, Time, Space, and Knowledge, 84. 98. In an important extension of James on schizophrenia as an inverted mysticism, Minkowski’s (Lived Time) psychiatric phenomenology of schizophrenia links its loss of felt presence and vital contact with others to a related intolerance of the sensed openness of “lived time.” The hypersensitivity to this quality of temporal openness ahead is manifested in chronic schizophrenia as an experiential freezing or stoppage of felt temporal flow, and in paranoid delusions as a radical “spatialization” of time-ahead in which all events are pre-understood in terms of a hyper-detailed delusional system, which compared to the openness of an all-originating lumi-

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nosity can only simplify and fixate the actual complexity of everyday life. Compared to the equanimity and openness of pre-understanding in mystical realization, paranoid delusions can be seen as more extreme versions of the inevitable narrowness of any theoretical system that purports to give a complete account for our human experience, which by definition has no “outside” from which it can be encompassed on any detailed level. This intrinsic limitation in system inclusiveness covers not only the pretensions of classical psychoanalysis or neo-Marxism but also the more recent ad hoc extrapolations of evolutionary psychology. 99. It has been tempting to some who prefer a “regression” model of mystical experience to “primitivize” trance as a form of the “freezing response” of tonic immobility, itself a defensive exaggeration of the orientation response to extreme novelty, and found in typically preyed upon animals (see H. T. Hunt, “Cognitive Psychology”). However, the specifically human level of numinous trance found in yoga, spontaneous imaginative absorption, pathologically in catatonia, and philosophically in the behaviorally frozen absorptions ascribed to Socrates, are higher symbolic forms of this capacity, whose occasioning “predator” would then be the openness of time and the mystery of Being. This higher cognitive level is further attested by the existence in us of the more animal form of tonic immobility as well, in response to overwhelming physical threat and leading to inner stupor and loss of feeling, rather than to any sensed transcendence. 100. Corbin, Alone with the Alone, 124.

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Rochat, Philippe. “Five Levels of Self-Awareness As They Unfold Early in Life.” Consciousness and Cognition 12, no. 4 (2003): 717–31. Sass, Louis. “Schizophrenia, Self-Consciousness, and the Modern Mind.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 5 (1998): 543–65. Savage-Rumbaugh, S., R. Sevcik, and W. Hopkins. “Symbolic Cross-Modal Transfer in Two Species of Chimpanzees.” Child Development 59 (1988): 617–25. Schilder, Paul. Mind: Perception and Thought in Their Constructive Aspects. New York: Columbia University Press, 1942. Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers. 1799. Translated by Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Schreber, Daniel Paul. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. 1903. Translated by Ida Macalpine and Richard Hunter. London: Dawson, 1955. Silberstein, L., H. Gardner, and E. Phelps. 1982. “Autumn Leaves and Old Photographs: The Development of Metaphor Preferences.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 34 (1982): 135–50. Smith, G., and I. Carlsson. The Creative Process. Madison, CT: International Universities Press, 1990. Starbuck, Edwin. The Psychology of Religion. London: Walter Scott, 1899. Sullivan, Harry Stack. The Interpersonal Theory of Psychiatry. New York: W. W. Norton, 1953. Tellegen, A., and G. Atkinson. “Openness to Absorbing and Self Altering Experiences (‘Absorption’): A Trait Related to Hypnotic Susceptibility.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 83 (1974): 268–77. Thomas, Clifford, and Mark Germine. “The Microgenesis of Schizophrenia.” Acta Neuropsychologica 8, no. 4 (2010): 365–92. Titchener, Edward. Systematic Psychology: Prolegomena. New York: Macmillan, 1929. Tulku, Tarthang. Calm and Clear. Berkeley, CA: Dharma, 1973. ———. Time, Space, and Knowledge. Emeryville, CA: Dharma, 1977. Van Dusen, Wilson. 1972. The Natural Depth in Man. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Walsh, Roger. “Can Synaesthesia Be Cultivated? Possible Indications from Surveys on Meditators.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 12, no. 4–5 (2005): 5–17. ———. “Initial Meditative Experiences.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 9 (1977): 151–92. Werner, Heinz. Comparative Psychology of Mental Development. New York: Science Editions, 1961. Wilber, Ken. Integral Psychology. Boston: Shambhala, 2000. Winnicott, D. W. Playing and Reality. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough. Translated by A. C. Miles. Atlantic Highlands, NY: Humanities Press, 1979. Young, Paul. “Studies in Affective Psychology.” American Journal of Psychology 38 (1927): 157–93.

Part IV

The Scientific

Chapter Eight

Explanatory Mechanisms of Altered States of Consciousness A Brief Overview Alex S. Kohav

INTRODUCTION Human consciousness is perhaps the greatest mystery of all; after all, it is none other than consciousness that contains, and must deal with, any and all other mysteries the world and life may have on offer. 1 Curiously, however, regarding the role of a different but related mystery, that of the mystical and other so-called altered states of consciousness (hereafter ASCs), there is much less, if any at all, consensus. Yet it should not require a great leap of insight to recognize the two phenomena’s significant overlap; indeed, as this chapter illustrates, they occupy the same biological domain. In addition to their arcane and often baffling nature, or perhaps because of them, mystical phenomena have suffered from an extraordinary amount of investigative confusion. The latter includes definitional inadequacies and arbitrary classificatory taxonomies; artificial conceptual barriers such as introduction of the derogatory labels “psychologism” and “biologism”; and favoring analyses that are more akin to descriptions or idiosyncratic interpretations than explanatory mechanisms supported by empirical research and a theory. Notwithstanding the above, a full-fledged exploration of mystical phenomena has in fact already been proceeding apace in recent decades. Investigation and a concurrent debate are now progressing in broadly divergent directions, impacted by major advances in many of the relevant fields including, in particular, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and a new field or domain of research that coalesced in the 1990s, consciousness studies; 203

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psychology in its several branches; and neurobiology. While considering several such recent attempts at formulating coherent explanatory mechanisms for alteration of consciousness and associated experiences normally designated as mysticism, the present chapter will press forward in a “descending” way, namely, starting from the topmost psychological and mental levels—in their manifestations affecting both conscious and unconscious awareness, sense of agency, and cognizing. 2 This discussion is followed by an examination of homeostatic and neurophysiological factors involved and corresponding explanatory mechanisms that have been advanced. Finally, at the “lowest”—or most basic, fundamental—level implicating neuronal cells, the chapter considers a cognitive neuroscientific theory that engages the neuronal infrastructure and associated operations in the human organism. Can such theories really account for the abiding mystery of mystical phenomena? Are they not liable to elicit inevitable protestations that they are merely reductionist endeavors, all but failing to fundamentally represent, much less reflect and portray the awesomeness, and the awesome inexplicability, of mysticism? And how can one claim a grasp of mechanisms of such phenomena on one level, say the psychosomatic one, only to search and find very different mechanisms for the same phenomena on a different level, say, the neuronal one? Which mechanism is accounting for the phenomena in question that are taking place in and driving such experiences? Such questions reveal significant gaps that remain in our urge to understand the mental world and psyche of the human being. A desirable unified theory of consciousness, however, is still elusive, even if much clarity in these domains is now attainable. PSYCHOLOGY AND PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY AS PRIMARY FACTORS: PSYCHOANALYSIS, CROSS-MODAL TRANSLATIONS, AND BIOENERGETIC THERAPY Is Mysticism a Regression to Infantile Ego State? Unitive Experiences and “Common Core” Hypothesis It is persistently deemed, by an almost universal explicit agreement, that a key component of mystical experience, its concomitant feature is—presumably—what is described as unio mystica, or unitive experience. 3 The assumption of the omnipresence of unio mystica, a single kind of mystical experience projected on all mystical phenomena, is unwarranted, since there are many other types of mysticism that are not associated with it. Nor, as we shall see, is it “the summit of the mystical path.” 4 Unio mystica has been characterized as “the loss of consciousness of all things except God” 5 and is “the most pervasive theme of mystical insight . . .

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a profound experience of unity or oneness, where the self melts into unity with all of nature, or with God.” 6 To explain how “melting into unity” is psychologically possible, the following ideas were advanced: Most explanations [of mystical phenomena] in the psychological and psychoanalytic literature have been general statements emphasizing a regression to the early infant-mother symbiotic relationship. These statements range from an extreme position, such as Alexander’s, where Buddhist training is described as a withdrawal of libido from the world to be reinvested in the ego until an intrauterine narcissism is achieved—”the pure narcissism of the sperm”—to the basic statement of Freud’s that “oceanic feeling” is a memory of a relatively undifferentiated infantile ego state. 7

However, such “regression models” actually do not fit mystical experiences: There are cogent grounds . . . for rejecting all theories that mystical moments are regressive fantasies. It does not matter whether the theories pertain to intrauterine or neonatal periods. It does not matter whether the theories concern pathological regressions or potentially wholesome “regressions in the service of the ego” [Geleerd]. Regression is the wrong theoretical concept to account for what occurs. Neither in realistic cognition nor in fantasy has an infant the intellectual capacity to conceptualize a unitive experience. 8

Contrary to what many traditional mystics and, indeed, many traditions have claimed, “unitive” experiences are “not the summit of the mystical path”: The reduction of thought to the simplicity of union with God is not the summit of the mystical path. It is the moment of a breakthrough to a new line of unitive thinking. Not yet elaborated, the new developmental line is as yet simple and rudimentary. It is nevertheless the condition for further progress along the same metaphysical line. The puzzle of psychotic mysticism is not solved, but is advanced by interpolating the theory that a spiritual awakening progresses, more or less sequentially, from cognitively simpler to cognitively more complex spiritual insights. 9

According to Fischer, patients are those who “are incapable to rebound or otherwise return to levels of arousal which correspond to the normal state of daily routine.” 10 Psychotic mysticism, then, would seem to involve the schizophrenics’ prolonged fixation on unity and/or identity with God and entailing the inability either to rebound or to progress beyond this “simplicity of union.” Object Relations Theory and Unitive Experiences “Why are limit situations numinous?” The notion that “a numinous quality arises when and because consciousness of a limit situation includes the idea

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of its transcendence” 11 resembles Veikko Anttonen’s “theory of the sacred as a cognitive boundary.” 12 Dan Merkur frames the psychoanalytic mechanism’s sense of unitive experiences as the mother-writ-large: “Just as the idea of the self undergoes sublimation into the idea of all-being, the idea of the mother undergoes sublimation into the concept of a loved object who transcends the limitations of all-being—the everywhere present, all-encompassing, ever-providing womb and source of All, greater than whom cannot exist.” 13 The modus operandi is sublimation, and if it is not a projected “father” onto God (as in Judaism and Christianity), then, in psychoanalysis, it is the ever-loving mother of all, the “womb and source of All, greater than whom cannot exist.” Psychoanalysis, fascinating as ever, in the end is bound to disappoint as an explanatory mechanisms builder. 14 If God as “father” in some religions is, clearly enough, only a simile, a nonconceptual metaphor, the psychoanalytic mother, as the “ever-providing womb and source of All” is not only a metaphor but also a metonym, 15 and a reductive one at that (since the mother is being reduced to a “womb” here). Neither metaphors nor metonyms can claim real explanatory power, much less carry the required heavy load as explanatory mechanisms. 16 Cross-Modal Translations and Synesthesias Neurally Instantiated Consciousness and the Notion of Limbic and Neocortical Cross-Modal Integration The question of consciousness is the key to the nature of ASCs—and vice versa (that is why an ASC means an altered state of consciousness). And the issue of “neural localization” of consciousness—that is, where exactly might “consciousness” be located within the human organism—is of interest. A number of “predominating zones of convergence” exist, each primarily though not exclusively involved with a particular affect or aspect of consciousness, in its sensory, affective, cognitive, and so on facets. These “faculties” (as the older philosophical terminology brands them), as well as their corresponding zones of convergence, offer their differing possibilities for serving as entry activation foci for potential launching of ASC experiences, the so-called arousal or induction procedures. 17 Harry T. Hunt employs Norman Geschwind’s “theory of symbolic cognition,” which articulates the notion of cross-modal “translations” among the different perceptual stimuli, often resulting in so-called synesthesias: 18 Synesthesias, so ubiquitous in all altered states of consciousness, appear as the “inner” side of cross-modal processes. . . . Symbolic cognition, as a higher rearrangement of perception, rests on a capacity for the cross-modal translation between the patterns of the separate perceptual modalities. The tertiary zones of the neocortex, which are the areas of localization for the specifically

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human symbolic forms, are found at the junctures between the secondary association areas of the occipital, parietal, and temporal areas devoted to the analysis of sight, touch, and hearing. This very anatomical structure already implies that symbolism may be based on a cross-modal mediation and mutual translation among patterns specific to each of the perceptual modalities. 19

As Hunt construes, “there are two levels of cross-modal integration in primates, higher primates, and humans, one limbic and the other neocortical— the latter as postulated by Geschwind.” 20 Geschwind offers a number of startlingly illuminating formulations pointing to a close bond between the human ability to form nonlimbic cross-modal associations and the emergence of language: The ability to name depends on the ability to form non-limbic cross-modal associations, particularly visual-auditory and tactile-auditory. One may go further: The ability to develop language in man probably depends on his ability to form cross-modal associations between two non-limbic modalities. . . . We have asserted then the thesis that man develops language because he can form associations between two non-limbic stimuli. Couldn’t limbic stimuli be useful as language? The answer is of course no: a monkey would have a great deal of difficulty arousing in another animal a smell or taste, or a feeling of hunger or thirst. We communicate by producing non-limbic stimuli—auditory, visual, or tactile. 21

Ultimately, and crucially for the present chapter, “cross-modal synesthetic translations” are linked with the ASCs: It . . . seems entirely plausible from a contemporary cognitive perspective to understand the range of experiences emerging with deep meditation and psychedelic drugs as cross-modal synesthetic translations across the more abstract or formal stages of perceptual microgenesis. In other words, these states manifest exactly the same cross-modal metaphoric processes as in all symbolic cognition. The difference is that transpersonal [here, mystical] states show the structures of symbolic cognition unfolding presentationally, for their own sake. Accordingly, these states will show most directly the cross-modal, hierarchic syntheses normally hidden within the pragmatics of representational symbolism. 22

The “presentational” is a mystic’s or a deep meditator’s experience of crossmodal synesthetic translations among different perceptions; by the time these experiences acquire “representational symbolism,” they become “normally hidden within the pragmatics” of the latter.

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Imaginal Body Experience: Somatic Hallucinations and Kundalini Activation? Hunt ultimately arrives at a juncture that marks him as a pioneering investigator, and a courageous one, too, since his next move exposes him to potential marginalization by the interpretive communities in such fields as consciousness studies and psychology (both areas of his research), with the likely exception of transpersonal psychology. Above we have followed Hunt when he singled out Geschwind’s crossmodal synesthetic translation notions as being at the heart of especially higher, or symbolic, human perceptions. Such cross-modal synesthetic transformations, according to Hunt, in particular come to the fore during ASCs as their “presentational” mode and account for the ubiquity of synesthesias in ASCs. It is at this point that Hunt attempts to account for the many, at first glance dubious or at least puzzling procedures and descriptions of several major mystical traditions. Their key contentious as well as ambiguous notion is that of a “subtle body” or, as Hunt would call it, the “imaginal body experience.” 23 What exactly is it? Hunt cites the work of Andras Angyal with schizophrenic patients, 24 underscoring the thin line or even a “phenomenal overlap” between mystical and pathological phenomena. Hunt details the “somatic hallucinations” of Angyal’s patients: 25 “Angyal’s patients described hallucinations of internal forces and fluidic substances moving inside the body. At times these are astonishingly like accounts of the somatic sensations accompanying out-of-body experience (Green 1968; Fox 1962) and descriptions of Kundalini activation in Hatha Yoga (Krishna 1967).” 26 Hunt proceeds to locate explanations for these hallucinations in “Angyal’s suggestion that unwitting tensions and relaxations of major muscle groups can be directly experienced as the movement of inner forces and fluids.” 27 The following example illustrates this assertion: “Angyal asked normal introspectors to observe their somatic awareness while a bucket of water held on their heads was surreptitiously drained of its contents. The chronically held tensions created by supporting the water transformed into the sense of an impersonal force flowing upward.” 28 HOMEOSTATIC AND NEUROPHYSIOLOGICAL BIOLOGY AS THE UNDERLYING MECHANISM Autonomic Somatic-Neuronal Arousal Factor “Descending” now to the human homeostatic and neurophysiological level, we consider investigations of physiological hyper- and hypo-arousals by Ernst Gellhorn and William F. Kiely, Roland Fischer, and others, along the so-called ergotropic-trophotropic continuum, respectively. The question of

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“arousals” as we shall see is a paramount one in this section, since it is the very term, as well as its denotation, which signals to investigators that perceptible and sometimes dramatic changes have occurred within individuals undergoing alteration of consciousness from their habitual, or baseline, state. The import of such “changes in physiology” tied to arousals is threefold. First, arousals and the alterations of consciousness that they signify are not of one or a single kind but rather represent a range of different “induction procedures” (e.g., specific to particular religious or cultural traditions), with concomitant distinctive, measurable changes within the practitioner’s homeostatic and neurophysiological systems. Second, some inductive procedures consist precisely in manipulations of these systems, in order to effect ASCs. Third, as a consequence, a range of different results are attainable, namely, diverse and dissimilar rather than uniform mystical and other ASC phenomena and experiences. Gellhorn and Kiely, and concurrently Fischer, have offered a theoretical approach to mystical phenomena that employs a fundamental distinction between two kinds of arousal, ergotropic and trophotropic: 29 Dependent on the site and parameters, stimulation of the hypothalamus and the brain stem leads either to the ergotropic or trophotropic syndrome. The ergotropic syndrome consists of an increase in sympathetic discharges and in skeletal muscle tone and also of a diffuse cortical excitation (desynchronization of EEG potentials as in awakening). The trophotropic syndrome is associated with increased parasympathetic discharges, relaxation of skeletal muscles and lessened cortical excitation (increased synchrony as in sleep). 30

The surprising “desynchronization of EEG potentials as in awakening” during ergotropic arousal offers a key clue. Conscious perception is operational only when one is awake. Baseline awakened consciousness is generally desynchronized, whereas “whenever distant areas are mobilized into the conscious workspace” we see an increase in coherence and phase synchrony. 31 Gellhorn and Kiely note that “the marked increase in trophotropic discharges during the meditation state does not lead to sleep, suggesting that some degree of ergotropic excitation exists and counteracts the increased trophotropic discharges.” 32 Ecstasy, Trance, and Psychophysiology In considering different possibilities along the trophotropic-ergotropic continuum, Gellhorn and Kiely proceed to describe a yoga-derived ecstatic state that they deem to be under ergotropic dominance: The meditation state is not the only variety of altered consciousness which may be achieved during Yoga trance. Among Indians who have practiced

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“Meditation” and “ecstasy” are “variet[ies] of altered consciousness which may be achieved during Yoga trance,” the former under trophotropic dominance, the latter, ergotropic. As the authors emphasize, the two phenomena are at the respective opposite sides of the trophotropic-ergotropic divide; Fischer likewise separates them as different ASCs (as we shall see below). Gellhorn and Kiely refer to two aspects of the phenomena under discussion that will become prominent in several theories, to which we will add a third feature. First, the EEG is critically important as a kind of tool that is even hypothesized to conform to the “principle of functional isomorphism, that the metastable (large-scale) spatial EEG/MEG mosaics or operational modules . . . may underlie mental states and conscious states in particular.” 34 The second aspect singled out in Gellhorn and Kiely’s quote above—the “unusual degrees of mental concentration and corresponding levels of cortical excitation” in their respective area of dominance, either ergotropic or trophotropic—become even more prominent in interpretations of the ASC phenomena in accordance with Fischer’s “cartography of ecstatic and meditative states.” 35 Fischer concludes his classical article in Science with the following remarkable statement: It follows from the state-bound nature of experience, and from the fact that amnesia exists between the state of normal daily experience and all other states of hyper- and hypoarousal, that what is called the “subconscious” is but another name for this amnesia. Therefore, instead of postulating one subconscious, I recognize as many layers of self-awareness as there are levels of arousal and corresponding symbolic interpretations in the individual’s interpretive repertoire. 36

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Such levels of self-awareness come with their respective cognitive capabilities including, at the arousal limits, the ability to operate via so-called megaphors. 37 ASCs, Sleep, and the “Emptiness of Consciousness” As Gellhorn and Kiely start to discuss potential clinical implications of their findings, they note the significant similarities between yogic ecstasy and REM sleep. Regarding “meditation” (presumably of the Zen kind), Gellhorn and Kiely indicate “a shift in T-E balance to the trophotropic side.” 38 Finally, Gellhorn and Kiely insist on the notion of ergotropic ecstasy following trophotropic meditation: To maintain this [trophotropic] state requires a conscious effort, which may be reflected in a mild stimulation of the ergotropic system indicated by the loss of habituation of the arousal reaction. Intensification of this effort, and, thereby, an increase in excitation of the ergotropic system, without increase in muscle tone, is achieved by the trained Yogi and results in the experience of ecstasy. 39

A NEUROSCIENTIFIC THEORY: TRANSIENT HYPOFRONTALITY HYPOTHESIS Several theories of alteration of consciousness have been proposed in recent years based on the neuronal infrastructure. Among these one finds such influential theories as Walter Freeman’s Nonlinear Neurodynamics theory of consciousness and causality and the Operational Architectonics theory by the Fingelkurts brothers. 40 The present survey covers only Arne Dietrich’s Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis—not because it is the most comprehensive, conclusive, or consensual one within the relevant scientific communities. There is, as of now, no consensus as to what exactly consciousness is, much less a consensus about alteration of consciousness. Moreover, Dietrich even fails to include among his “considered putative altered states (dreaming, the runner’s high, meditation, hypnosis, daydreaming, and various drug-induced states)” mystical phenomena per se, rather cautiously approaching the latter via such hardly adequate surrogates as “meditation” and “drug-induced states”—which, as we shall see, ultimately encounters serious problems resulting from too-narrow data sampling. His theory nonetheless has the benefit of clarity regarding the dense terminology and functions of the domain he examines, as well as brevity apropos the intricate neuronal structure and its various capabilities. As a result, it affords the reader an accessible introduction to the discussion of potential explanatory mechanisms of ASCs, from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.

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The Prefrontal Cortex and Cognitive Hierarchy If most approaches to ASCs assume the decisive role of the brainstem and its nuclei, Dietrich, by contrast, locates the center of activities that alter consciousness in the prefrontal cortex. “The hallmark of altered states of consciousness is the subtle modification of behavioral and cognitive functions that are typically ascribed to the prefrontal cortex”: 41 Modern brain research conceptualizes cognitive function as hierarchically ordered. . . . Historically, consciousness was approached in a similar manner (for a review, see Markowitsch 1995). Consciousness was defined by selecting various attributes, such as self-reflective consciousness, attention, memory, perception, and arousal, which were ordered in a functional hierarchy with the frontal lobe necessary for the “top” attributes. 42

The frontal lobe’s input is to be distinguished from “the three posterior cortices, the temporal, the occipital, and the parietal”: Perhaps the single most important functional division in the neocortex is the central sulcus. It demarcates the frontal lobe from the three posterior cortices, the temporal, the occipital, and the parietal, which will be collectively referred to as TOP. Functions of TOP are very different from those of the frontal lobe. TOP neurons are devoted primarily to perception, learning, and memory. . . . It is generally agreed that TOP is the site of long-term memory storage (e.g., Gilbert 2001). The frontal lobe, located rostal to the central sulcus, neither receives direct sensory input nor stores long-term memory. The prefrontal cortex, which comprises approximately half of the frontal lobe in humans, is involved in executive functions. It integrates perceptual information, formulates plans and strategies for appropriate behavior in a given situation, and instructs the adjacent motor cortices to execute its computational product. 43

Some of the prefrontal cortex’s “executive functions” entail the following: 1. Initial and much ensuing information processing on perception, attention, or memory occurs in other brain areas before further integration in the frontal lobes. 2. The frontal cortex utilizes this highly processed information to enable still higher cognitive functions such as (a) self-reflective consciousness, (b) complex social function, (c) abstract thinking, (d) cognitive flexibility, (e) planning, (f) willed action, (g) theory of mind, (h) working memory, (i) temporal integration, (j) and sustained and directed attention. 3. This provides the infrastructure to compute these complex cognitive functions by providing a buffer to hold information in mind and order it in space-time.

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4. It is this superimposing of already highly complex mental constructs that dramatically increases cognitive flexibility and permits a unified phenomenological experience. 44 Surprisingly enough, while our culture highly values traits such as perseverance, in a cognitive sense it is, on the contrary, a telltale sign of a problem: Perseverance, or the inability to shift between modes of thinking, is the most reliable deficit associated with damage to the DL [dorsolateral] prefrontal cortex (Brauer Boone 1999). Perseverance is perhaps most indicative of a lack of cognitive flexibility and ability to think abstractly. . . . It appears that the prefrontal cortex exerts inhibitory control over inappropriate or maladaptive emotional and cognitive behaviors. Lhermitte (1983) and Lhermitte et al. (1986) documented this tendency by showing that frontal lobe patients are overly dependent on immediate cues. They tend to act on what they see without taking into account the “bigger picture.” 45

“Damage to any layer will result in an alteration of consciousness, but the lower the level of malfunctioning the more fundamental the alteration.” 46 Dietrich conceptualizes a “hierarchy of consciousness” as “an inverted pyramid,” 47 in which a “hierarchically ordered cognitive function” supplies the “full-fledged consciousness.” Alteration of Consciousness Is the function of the dorsolateral level to control the cognitive input from below? Not according to Dietrich: With the loss of top layers of consciousness, patients show little evidence for higher cognitive functions such as abstract thinking, regardless of the information that is brought “online” by other structures. In such a view, the prefrontal cortex does not represent a supervisory or control system. Rather, it actively implements higher cognitive functions. . . . The prefrontal cortex restrains output from older structures not by suppressing their computational product directly but by elaborating on it to produce more sophisticated output. 48

At this point, Dietrich formulates his view of ASCs as “transient prefrontal deregulation,” subject to “the differential viability of various DL circuits”: Altered states of consciousness are due to transient prefrontal deregulation. Six altered states that are considered putative altered states (dreaming, the runner’s high, meditation, hypnosis, daydreaming, and various drug-induced states) are briefly examined. These altered states share characteristics whose proper function are regulated by the prefrontal cortex such as time distortions, disinhibition from social constraints, or a change in focused attention. 49

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“Altered states of consciousness are due to transient prefrontal deregulation.” But what causes the deregulation? Dietrich suggests that because humans have a limited information-processing capacity, certain activities that draw much attention from various brain structures leave diminished resources for the prefrontal cortex—which then causes the symptoms of an ASC (or at least of those specific kinds of ASCs that Dietrich examines). He summarizes his “transient hypofrontality hypothesis of altered states of consciousness” as follows: Although different behavioral methods are used to achieve different states, it is proposed that all altered states share a common neural mechanism; that is a transient decrease in prefrontal cortex activity. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that different induction methods target specific prefrontal circuits, removing their computation from the conscious experience. This distinct phenomenological subtraction accounts for the uniqueness of each altered state. 50

It is here, in the theory’s takeaway section, that one can see the built-in problem that the Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis not only fails to solve or prevent but, on the contrary, seems to exacerbate. By proclaiming that “all altered states share a common neural mechanism”—specifically, the one claimed by the Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis—its author renders himself vulnerable to indefensible criticisms. The most obvious one would be an allegation of the fallacy of a hasty generalization. To assert that because the considered altered states—dreaming, the runner’s high, meditation, hypnosis, daydreaming, and various drug-induced states—may arise due to “neutralization of specific prefrontal contributions to consciousness” cannot indicate and does not entitle one to argue that all ASCs are caused by means of some “neutralization” scheme, similar to what the theory claims for the sampled range. Indeed, had the sampled range extended to more representative ASCs than runner’s high and daydreaming, namely, to certain types of mysticism that entail reaching extremes of ergotropic arousal, the Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis would be helpless to account for them—most especially in cases of ASCs that exhibit the phenomenon of hyper-cognition. 51 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS The chapter embarked on a review of some of the proposed recent theories offering explanatory mechanisms for the phenomenon of alteration of consciousness. While the psychoanalytic discussion of the topic at times seemed fanciful or immaterial, transpersonal psychology’s cross-modal translations, synesthesias, and Harry Hunt’s Imaginal Body Experience appeared to be both relevant and effective, as well as valuable additions to one’s attempts to find meaningful approaches to the mystery of ASCs. Similarly positive, the

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sections considering homeostatic and neurophysiological levels presented scientifically sound investigations of physiological hyper- and hypo-arousals; the material presented is nearly revelational in terms of its dramatic recording and detailing of the impact of arousals along the ergotropic-trophotropic continuum and their direct interconnectedness with a variety of ASCs. Finally, a recent cognitive-neuroscientific theory of alteration of consciousness was reported, namely, Arne Dietrich’s Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis. This theory—entailing the finding that “altered states of consciousness are due to transient prefrontal deregulation,” specifically “a transient decrease in prefrontal cortex activity”—while a helpful guide to cognitive neuroscientific systems, is ultimately disappointing. It suffers from a narrow as well as hardly representative choice of a range of ASCs it considers in formulating the theory; as a result, its findings, or its account of the explanatory mechanism involved, are at best, only partial and inconclusive. This nonetheless does not mean that the neuroscientific approach as a whole is fruitless. All the approaches discussed, however, seem to suffer from a telling selflimitation, one that ultimately might have to be dispensed with if a comprehensive and satisfying explanatory mechanism is to be ascertained. These approaches seem to be claiming all potential explanatory powers exclusively for their respective methods and perspectives while not considering anything else that might be at the very least a contributing factor. It is, alas, still the case of that giant elephant in a completely dark room, with different investigators located at different parts of the colossal creature venturing educated guesses as to what, or who, they might be dealing with—but lacking a sense of the whole and thus failing in their task. It is thus to be hoped that perhaps in a not-too-distant future these “trials in the dark” will finally be overcome. NOTES 1. The chapter is an abridged excerpt from a book manuscript by Alex S. Kohav, “Theoretical Perspectives and Explanatory Mechanisms of Mystical Phenomena: Overview of Recent Approaches.” 2. A definition of psyche pertinent here is as “the vital mental or spiritual entity of the individual as opposed to the body or soma.” Mosby’s Medical Dictionary, 9th. ed., s.v. “psyche (disambiguation),” https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. 3. Merkur, Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking 4. Ibid. 5. Zaehner, Mysticism Sacred and Profane, 22. 6. Farthing, Psychology of Consciousness, 442. 7. Deikman, “De-automization and the Mystic Experience,” 328. Citation refers to F. Alexander, “Buddhistic Training.” 8. Merkur, Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, 56–57. Geleerd reference in Solnit, “Vicissitudes of Ego Development.” 9. Ibid., 67–68. 10. Fischer, “Transformations of Consciousness, II,” 6.

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11. Merkur, Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, 75–76. 12. Anttonen, “Rethinking the Sacred,” 42. 13. Merkur, Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking, 76. 14. With the emergence of Wilfred Bion and his theories of “O,” however, it would be a mistake to dismiss psychoanalysis from the range of approaches and perspectives apropos our subject. See, e.g., Bion, Attention and Interpretation; Ferro, Contemporary Bionian Theory. 15. That is, “a word used in a metonymy. For example the bottle is a metonym for alcoholic drink.” Collins English Dictionary, 12th ed., s.v. “metonym,” https:// www.thefreedictionary.com. 16. I am distinguishing here between (1) “simple,” or nonconceptual metaphors that are close to similes (which are a form of metaphor); (2) cognitive metaphors discussed in the next section in terms of cross-modal translations and synesthesias; (3) unconscious conceptual metaphors discussed in cognitive science, see, e.g., Lakoff and Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh; and (4) consciously created conceptual metaphors, or megaphors (see n. 37 below). 17. Cf. Dittrich, “Standardized Psychometric Assessment.” 18. “Synesthesia” can be defined as “a condition in which one type of stimulation evokes the sensation of another, as when the hearing of a sound produces the visualization of a color” (Medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com). 19. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, xii, 83. 20. Ibid., 86. 21. Geschwind, “Development of the Brain,” 97. 22. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, 199. 23. Ibid., 200ff. 24. For example, Angyal, “Experience of the Body-Self”; Angyal, “Disturbances of Activity.” 25. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, 200. 26. Ibid., 201. Citations in quote refer to Green, Out-of-the-Body Experiences; Fox, Astral Projection; Krishna, Kundalini. 27. Hunt, On the Nature of Consciousness, 202. 28. Ibid. 29. “The term [ergotropic was] introduced by W. R. Hess [in Psychic and Vegetative Functions] to denote those mechanisms and the functional status of the nervous system that favor the organism’s capacity to expend energy, as distinguished from the trophotropic mechanisms promoting rest and reconstitution of energy stores. In general, the balance between ergotropic and trophotropic nervous mechanisms corresponds in large part to that between the sympathetic and parasympathetic subdivisions of the autonomic nervous system. [ergo- + G. tropos, a turning].” Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary, s.v. “ergotropic,” https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. 30. Gellhorn and Kiely, “Mystical States of Consciousness,” 399–400. EEG refers to electroencephalography, “a neurological test that uses an electronic monitoring device to measure and record electrical activity in the brain.” Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, s.v. “electroencephalography,” https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com. 31. Dehaene and Naccache, “Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience,” 26. 32. Gellhorn and Kiely, “Mystical States of Consciousness,” 401, emphasis added. 33. Ibid., 402, emphasis added. 34. Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, “Making Complexity Simpler,” 853–54. 35. Fischer, “Cartography of Ecstatic and Meditative States” (1971); Fischer, “Transformations of Consciousness, I”; Fischer, “Transformations of Consciousness, II.” 36. Fischer, “Cartography of Ecstatic and Meditative States” (1971), 903. 37. Megaphors were first proposed by the present writer in an earlier study involving hypercognition (Kohav, Sôd Hypothesis); they designate a type of cognizing that is several removes away from sensory cognition and constituting a domain that is, additionally, beyond areas of concept formation and even meta-reasoning. 38. Gellhorn and Kiely, “Mystical States of Consciousness,” 403. 39. Gellhorn and Kiely, “Mystical States of Consciousness,” 404.

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40. Freeman, “Consciousness, Intentionality and Causality”; Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, “Operational Architectonics of the Human Brain.” 41. Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 231. 42. Ibid., 232. Citation in quote refers to Markowitsch, “Cerebral Basis of Consciousness.” 43. Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 232. Citation in quote refers to Gilbert, “Outline of Brain Function.” 44. In paraphrase, see Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 232–33. 45. Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 234. Citations in quote refer to Brauer Boone, “Neurophysiological Assessment of Executive Functions”; Dietrich, Taylor, and Passmore, “AVP (4-8)”; Lhermitte, “‘Utilization’ Behaviour”; Lhermitte, Pillon, and Serdaru, “Human Autonomy.” 46. Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 234. 47. Ibid., 235, fig. 1. 48. Ibid., 237, emphasis added. 49. Ibid., 237–38. 50. Dietrich, “Functional Neuroanatomy,” 249. 51. On hyper-cognition, see n. 37 above.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alexander, Franz. “Buddhistic Training as an Artificial Catatonia (the Biological Meaning of Psychic Occurrence).” Psychoanalytic Review 18 (1931): 129–45. Angyal, Andras. “Disturbances of Activity in a Case of Schizophrenia.” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 38 (1937): 1047–54. ———. “The Experience of the Body-Self in Schizophrenia.” Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry 35 (1936): 1029–53. Anttonen, Veikko. “Rethinking the Sacred: The Notions of ‘Human Body’ and ‘Territory’ in Conceptualizing Religion.” In The Sacred and Its Scholars: Comparative Methodologies for the Study of Primary Religious Data, edited by T. A. Idinopulos and E. A. Yonan, 36–64. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Bion, Wilfred. Attention and Interpretation. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2018. First published 1970 by Tavistock. Brauer Boone, K. “Neurophysiological Assessment of Executive Functions.” In The Human Frontal Lobes: Functions and Disorders, edited by B. L. Miller and J. L. Cummings, 247–60. New York: Guilford Press, 1999. Courtney, S. M., L. Petit, J. M. Maisog, L. G. Ungerleider, and J. V. Haxby. “An Area Specialized for Spatial Working Memory in Human Frontal Cortex.” Science 279 (1998): 1347–51. Crick, Francis, and Christof Koch. “Consciousness and Neuroscience.” Cerebral Cortex 8 (1998): 97–107. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. Dehaene, Stanislas, and Lionel Naccache. “Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness: Basic Evidence and a Workspace Framework.” In The Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness, edited by S. Dehaene, 1–37. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. First published in Cognition 79, nos. 1–2 (April 2001). Deikman, Arthur J. “De-automization and the Mystic Experience.” Psychiatry 29 (1966): 324–38. Dietrich, Arne. “Functional Neuroanatomy of Altered States of Consciousness: The Transient Hypofrontality Hypothesis.” Consciousness and Cognition 12, no. 2 (2003): 231–56. Dietrich, Arne, J. T. Taylor, and C. E. Passmore. “AVP (4-8) Improves Concept Learning in PFC-Damaged but Not Hippocampal-Damaged Rats.” Brain Research 919 (2001): 41–47. Dittrich, A. “The Standardized Psychometric Assessment of Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs) in Humans.” Pharmacopsychiatry 31 (1998): 80–84.

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Duncan, J., and A. M. Owen. “Common Regions of the Human Frontal Lobe Recruited by Diverse Cognitive Demands.” Trends in Neuroscience 23 (2000): 475–83. Farthing, G. William. The Psychology of Consciousness. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992. Ferro, Antonino, ed. Contemporary Bionian Theory and Technique in Psychoanalysis. Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2018. Fingelkurts, Andrew A., and Alexander A. Fingelkurts. “Making Complexity Simpler: Multivariability and Metastability in the Brain.” International Journal of Neuroscience 114 (2004): 843–62. ———. “Operational Architectonics of the Human Brain Biopotential Field: Towards Solving the Mind-Brain Problem.” Brain and Mind 2 (2001): 261–96. Fischer, Roland. “A Cartography of Ecstatic and Meditative States.” Science 174 (1971): 897–904. ———. “Transformations of Consciousness: A Cartography; I. The Perception-Hallucination Continuum.” Confinia Psychiatrica 18 (1975): 221–44. ———. “Transformations of Consciousness: A Cartography; II. The Perception-Meditation Continuum.” Confinia Psychiatrica 19 (1976): 1–23. Fox, Oliver. Astral Projection: A Record of out of the Body Experiences. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel, 1962. Freeman, Walter J. “Consciousness, Intentionality and Causality.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 6, no. 11–12 (1999): 143–72. Gellhorn, Ernst, and William F. Kiely. “Mystical States of Consciousness: Neurophysiological and Clinical Aspects.” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 154, no. 6 (1972): 399–405. Geschwind, Norman. “The Development of the Brain and the Evolution of Language.” In his Selected Papers on Language and the Brain, edited by R. S. Cohen and M. W. Wartofsky, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 16, 89–104. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1974. First published in Monograph Series on Languages and Linguistics 17 (1964): 155–69. Gilbert, P. F. C. “An Outline of Brain Function.” Cognitive Brain Research 12 (2001): 61–74. Green, Celia. Out-of-the-Body Experiences. New York: Ballantine, 1968. Hess, W. R. On the Relations between Psychic and Vegetative Functions. Zurich: Schwabe, 1925. Hunt, Harry T. On the Nature of Consciousness: Cognitive, Phenomenological, and Transpersonal Perspectives. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Kohav, Alex S. The Sôd Hypothesis: Phenomenological, Cognitive, Semiotic, and NoeticLiterary Recovery of the Pentateuch’s Embedded Inner-Core Mystical Initiation Tradition of Ancient Israelite Cultic Religion. Boulder, CO: MaKoM Publications, 2013. Krishna, Gopi. Kundalini. New Delhi: Ramadhar & Hopman, 1967. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Lhermitte, F. “‘Utilization Behaviour’ and Its Relation to Lesions of the Frontal Lobes.” Brain 106 (1983): 237–55. Lhermitte, F., B. Pillon, and M. Serdaru. “Human Autonomy and the Frontal Lobes, Part I: Imitation and Utilization Behavior: A Neuropsychological Study of 75 Patients.” Annals of Neurology 19 (1986): 326–34. Markowitsch, H. J. “Cerebral Basis of Consciousness: A Historical View.” Neuropsychologia 33 (1995): 1181–92. Merkur, Dan. Mystical Moments and Unitive Thinking. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999. Solnit, Albert J. “The Vicissitudes of Ego Development in Adolescence.” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 7 (1959): 523–36. Zaehner, Robert Charles. Mysticism Sacred and Profane: An Inquiry into Some Varieties of Praeternatural Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961. First published 1957 by Clarendon Press.

Chapter Nine

Mathematical Modeling of Cognitive Mechanisms of Meaning and the Spiritually Sublime Leonid I. Perlovsky

THE MEANINGFUL, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE SUBLIME The conclusions this chapter arrives at are based on cognitive mathematical models of the mechanisms of the mind. 1 These models describe a wide area of the psychological realm and explain many psychological facts that have not been previously understood and have resulted in specific predictions that can be experimentally tested. 2 Some of these predictions have been tested and confirmed; none has been disproven. Such experimentally tested predictions are the basis of the scientific method. Whereas rational arguments are important for elucidating truths, they can be right or wrong. Many arguments in the past, especially those addressing unconscious mechanisms of the mind, have seemed correct but turned out to be incorrect. In contrast, mathematical predictions that have been confirmed experimentally have become the highways of science. An important mechanism of the mind is the knowledge instinct, which drives conceptual-emotional understanding of the world, a mechanism proposed by this author. 3 Like most mechanisms in the human body and mind, it is the result of a long evolution. Conceptual mechanisms have evolved for a specific purpose. We are purposeful beings. The purpose of ‘basic instincts’ is direct survival; the purpose of the knowledge instinct is improving conceptual understanding of the world; it is removed a bit from direct survival. At the level of object perception, our knowledge instinct is not much different from similar mechanisms in higher animals. But higher in the mental hierarchy, at the levels of abstract ideas, the human mind is different from the 219

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animal mind. Animals do not have such a complex mind hierarchy (which likely evolved along with language). 4 At higher levels the purpose of the knowledge instinct and conceptual-emotional understanding are far removed from the aims of direct survival. At every level in the mental hierarchy, each concept unifies some significant part of lower-level experiences. This is the purpose of each concept model: to unify a part of lower-level knowledge. Higher up in the hierarchy are more-general concepts, which unify a larger part of the knowledge and experience. Concepts and the top of the hierarchy unify our entire life experience and are perceived as the meaning of life. This synthesis at higher levels is possible only if lower-level details are omitted. Vagueness and reduced consciousness of higher-level concept models are the “price” our mind pays for generality and unification. This unification or synthesis is an important gain. This synthesis or unity of self is necessary for survival and for concentrating the will on the most important goal. Concept models at the top (or near the top) of the hierarchy are vague and unconscious. We cannot consciously perceive their contents. Nevertheless, we know that synthesis, the unity of “the model at the top,” is tremendously important; we know this, for example, from clinical cases where the unity of this model is severely disrupted, such as in cases of multiple personalities. When psychologists, philosophers, or any one of us discusses the self, 5 we talk about some aspects of this concept model at the top of the mind hierarchy. Is it possible to state definitively what it is? How we feel it? No, because it is not within our consciousness; it is outside what we mean by the conscious “I.” Understanding the content of this concept model, to a significant extent, is a cultural construction, an achievement of the culture. From the scientific analysis mentioned earlier, we know that this topmost concept model has an evolutionary purpose: to unify our entire experience. The meaning of life is so important that great thinkers and philosophers have discussed it for millennia; these ideas have accumulated in cultures, and everyone can argue about their meaning. Today ideas that are not supported by science are often disregarded, especially ideas about the meaning of life that cannot be directly experienced. Only rarely and vaguely do we feel the highest concept model as a meaning and purpose of our life. Is it really possible that our lives have meaning and purpose? I put this question to several friends who are scientists and do not consider themselves religious. Most often the answer is something like: “Of course not. How can one scientifically discuss such nebulous and vague ideas?” Then I rephrase my question: “So your life has no more meaning than a rock on the side of the road?” This recast question changes the conversation. No one would agree with what it proposes. Most would agree that there is something like a meaning or purpose, but it is so vague, so far away from the possibility of scientific investigation, that it is not even clear how to discuss it. I wish to

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emphasize that this notion exactly corresponds to the scientific conclusion I later present: the concept model at the top of the hierarchy is vague and mostly unconscious. Nothing in the surrounding world can directly convince us that life is meaningful. Just the opposite: random deaths and destruction abound, and we know that our material existence is finite. Nevertheless, the feeling of the meaning and purpose in life is so important that philosophy, art, and religion since time immemorial have been constructing and fortifying this topmost concept model in our minds. And sometimes we have a feeling that indeed something like this meaning indeed might be there. Those reading religious and certain philosophical literature can perhaps talk at length about the meaning and purpose of life, but as discussed later, language arguments are only preparations for cognitive models that our mind uses for understanding the world; rationality and consciousness of language may hide from our mind the vagueness and uncertainty of cognitive contents. Still, sometimes we indeed have an experience that improves our conscious understanding of the contents of the topmost cognitive model, or at least suggests that the purpose and meaning of life exist. There is much literature about ecstatic religious experiences and the possible neural mechanisms involved. 6 These studies address related problems and can be helpful. However, I would like to exclude “miraculous” experiences from arguments in this chapter and keep the discussion within the bounds of science. The meaning and purpose of one’s life cannot be understood as clearly and consciously as everyday objects. Yet occasionally we can experience these uppermost cognitive contents clearer, more convincingly. They are mostly unconscious, their conceptual and emotional parts are not well separated, and these experiences are more like feelings than conceptual understandings. These feelings are related to satisfaction of the knowledge instinct at the highest level. Satisfaction of the knowledge instinct is experienced as aesthetic emotions. 7 Aesthetic emotions are related to a harmony between our knowledge and the world. At low levels of object recognition, they are usually below the level of conscious registration. We do not become elated with harmony because we have correctly perceived, say, a refrigerator or a cup. We notice these emotions at higher levels, such as when we solve a problem that has preoccupied our mind for a while. The more important and difficult the problem, the more effort it has taken to solve, the stronger are the aesthetic emotions related to the achieved understanding. Conscious efforts to understand what is most important in life can help achieve this understanding, but it is not a finite effort; it may go on indefinitely, and a feeling of some partial understanding from our unconscious may surface unexpectedly. It can occur when thinking about a new theory, when going for a walk, when looking through an art catalog or visiting a museum or a church. When the meaning

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and purpose of one’s life are tentatively confirmed, the knowledge instinct is satisfied at the highest level, and we feel it emotionally as the presence of the beautiful. 8 This conclusion is not altogether new. Aristotle has said that the beautiful is unity in manifold, which is an amazingly precise description of the presented theory of the nature of the highest model: unified experience of the entire life. 9 The most detailed relations between the beautiful and knowledge possibly have been given by Immanuel Kant. 10 He called the beautiful “purposiveness without purpose.” Kant perceived this definition as inadequate and tried to improve it in many places in his writings; he explained that purposiveness in the beautiful is very much purposive, but it is not related to any concrete and finite aim. Yet without the notion of the knowledge instinct, without understanding the dynamical nature of the highest concept-model, 11 whose content is culturally constructed and is in the continuous process of refinement and improvement, Kant could not give a positive definition of the beautiful. Understanding the knowledge instinct and that concept-models are continuously refined leads one to conclude that the beautiful is an aesthetic emotion felt when the knowledge instinct is satisfied at the highest level. Kantian “purposiveness without purpose” is refined today using dynamic logic, the mathematical model of the knowledge instinct discussed later; 12 it can be understood without mathematics as a purpose related not to bodily needs but to satisfying the instinct for knowledge at the top of the mental hierarchy. Emotions of beauty are experienced when the meaning of life becomes clearer. The emotion of sublimity, a feeling of spirituality beyond our finite material existence, is the foundation of all religions. It is similar to yet different from the beautiful. The emotion of the beautiful is related to an improved understanding of the cognitive part of the highest model of life’s meaning and purpose. But this understanding is insufficient for the mind. The knowledge instinct drives the mind to make this meaning and purpose a part of one’s life. In other words, driven by the knowledge instinct, the mind wants to know which behavior would realize this meaning in one’s life. Behavior at high levels in the hierarchy, like understanding, is also governed by conceptmodels. Similar to cognitive concept-models, behavior concept-models are improved and adapted to the concrete circumstances of one’s life by the knowledge instinct. When a person moves closer to understanding what kind of behavior would realize this highest meaning and purpose in his or her life, the emotion of satisfying the knowledge instinct is experienced as spiritually sublime.

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CONTENTS OF THE HIGHEST MODELS Among the fundamental mechanisms of every person’s mind are differentiation and synthesis. Differentiation refers to developing detailed models (down the mental hierarchy) for understanding life in its diverse aspects; this is the area of science. Synthesis refers to developing unified models for understanding abstract concepts (up the hierarchy); near the top of the hierarchy is the area of art and religion. Life demands use of these mechanisms throughout the lower and middle parts of the hierarchy every day on multiple occasions. Near the top of the hierarchy, differentiation concerns finding new, more detailed, and more adequate contents of the highest models, and synthesis concerns finding still-higher unifying models; this process is infinite, for the meaning of life is not finite. To find the meaning of life everyone must develop cognitive models in correspondence with cultural models received in language; it is not easy to understand and absorb accumulated cultural wisdom and to develop cognitive models unifying millennial wisdom with today’s life arrangements and scientific practices. Even rarer are processes developing new models that did not yet exist in language and culture. These processes change the directions of cultures, and they do not occur on a regular basis in individual minds. The Bible has preserved for us many descriptions of these processes; one of the earliest preserved descriptions of a new model of synthesis occurred about four thousand years ago. At that time writing proliferated, languages were evolving, and consciousness was changing fast. Differentiation overtook synthesis, and the stability of cognition and cultures was threatened. Old mechanisms of synthesis did not work, the meaning and purpose of life were disappearing, peoples around the Middle East were losing their bearings, the number of polytheistic gods proliferated, and the region was enmeshed in wars and destruction. God demanded from Abraham that he should leave behind the customs of his people and go out of his land in search of him. In the scientific terms of this chapter, Abraham had to find a new synthesis that would be adequate for the increased differentiation of consciousness; he had to find a new model of the highest purpose. According to tradition, Abraham found this new synthesis. And today a majority of peoples of the world follow in his tradition of a monotheistic religion. Needless to say, for most people feelings of the beautiful and the sublime at these highest levels are rare and fleeting but nevertheless so precious that we usually cherish their memories throughout our lives. It is worth noting that a previous analysis of the cultural evolution of consciousness and cultures by Julian Jaynes 13 took into account only one of the two fundamental mechanisms of the mind, differentiation, but ignored a need for synthesis. Therefore, his fascinating analysis explains how differentiation was propelled by languages and writings and how it led to loss of

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assured connection to divinity (ancient synthesis of undifferentiated consciousness), to proliferation of polytheism, and to loss of the sense of meaning up to the second millennia BCE, but it came to an impasse incapable of explaining the rise of monotheistic religion. A unified structure of the mind is necessary for survival. For example, consider a monkey that sees an approaching tiger; the monkey understands the situation conceptually (tiger is coming), feels an emotion of fear, cries “tiger” in a monkey language, and jumps on a tree. This concept-emotionvocalization-action is a unified state of the monkey mind. The monkey does not “think” what to say, what to feel, what to do. In fact the monkey cannot differentiate these states; the entire complex mental-bodily state is unified. This unity is necessary for survival. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability for mental differentiation. With the evolution of language, the acceleration of differentiation, and the development of complex mental hierarchy, our ancestors had to evolve an instinctual ability for synthesizing differentiated consciousness. Otherwise language and the concomitant acceleration of differentiation would not be advantageous and thus would not have evolved. These arguments refer to our ancestors living hundreds of thousands or even millions of year ago. 14 When contemporary language abilities evolved around seventy thousand years ago, instinctual mechanisms for synthesis had certainly long been in place. They continued evolving through genetic and cultural selection, and this evolutionary process led to mechanisms for synthesizing and unifying abilities of the highest concepts. We have significant power over the conscious language contents of our highest model, but most of the cognitive contents are developed from our experience guided by language and still remain unconscious. Unconscious contents are outside the conscious “I.” Even as the neural brain substrates of this concepts-model are within one’s brain, a conscious self does not command it, does not “own” it; rather, the opposite relations take place: this model owns and commands one’s self at its highest levels. This explains a seeming paradox that a nonreligious person, a scientist with materialistic views, would not agree with the suggestion that principally he is no different from a rock. The unconscious cognitive model at the top of the hierarchy is significantly independent from consciousness and guides consciousness in many ways, in particularly toward feeling its highest purposiveness. This model therefore has the property of an agent, independent from one’s consciousness but in control of it. In traditional societies as well as among religious peoples everywhere, this agent is called God. In our culture, since the ascendance of science, many people consider themselves nonreligious. But it is not in one’s power to change the unconscious structure of the mind. The mental representation of our highest purposiveness is outside our conscious control. The scientific analysis in this chapter leads to a conclusion that it is not in our power to be “religious” or

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“irreligious.” One can participate in organized religion or refuse to do so. One can consider oneself a nonreligious person. Or one can choose to study what is known about the contents of the highest models from the accumulated wisdom of theologians and philosophers or by combining this wisdom with scientific methods, as the science-and-religion community does. One can choose to refer to the agency property of the unconscious model at the top of the mind hierarchy and yet refuse to use or accept the word “God.” For a scientist and a religious person to understand each other, it is necessary to have a common language, which I hope to advance in this chapter. These seemingly mysterious feelings, which everyone feels, even if rarely, even if without noticing them consciously, even if without being able to name them properly, today can be explained scientifically. And we may soon be able to measure them in a psychological laboratory. The following discussion briefly reviews new developments in brain imaging that have made new data available and considers developments and mathematical modeling in cognitive theory explaining these previously mysterious feelings as well as the uncertain idea of the meaning of life. This new scientific analysis has overcome a long-standing challenge: reductionism. Although the meaning of life and religious feelings can be scientifically discussed in terms of concrete neural mechanisms and mathematical models, they cannot be reduced to mechanistic explanations. New understanding of relations between language and cognition explains why the idea of meaning and spiritually sublime feelings have often been perceived as mystical. Science strives for a detailed understanding of reality even if this differentiation threatens individual synthesis or the wholeness of the psyche. Religion strives to maintain the wholeness of the psyche, even at the expense of a detailed understanding of the world and the self. Let us now analyze the cognitive forces driving us to achieve both. SCIENTIFIC DIFFERENTIATION AND RELIGIOUS SYNTHESIS Science strives for an increasingly more detailed explanation of the world. Traditional physics explains complex phenomena by “taking them apart” and reducing them to constituent phenomena. This method of analysis has been so successful that it has become identified with the science itself. Complex molecular mechanisms cannot always practically be reduced to atomic interactions. But scientists do not doubt that, given enough effort and computational power, the dynamics of complex molecules can be reduced to the interactions among the atoms that make them up. This method of analysis and the concomitant way of thinking have been fundamental to scientific and

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engineering successes ranging from positing theories of elementary particles and quantum superstrings to making car engines, airplanes, nuclear bombs, and kitchen appliances and developing medical devices and pharmaceuticals. Although there is nothing new in the preceding paragraph, the consequences are so deep that I am inclined to repeat it in other words. An engineering design of a kitchen appliance in reality is not always based on explicit, detailed reduction to interactions among molecules and elementary particles, but this reduction is still used when needed in, say, engineering some new materials for a frying pan. More importantly, what is taken for granted here is that whenever engineering “from experience” fails, the analysis can be taken a step deeper, with a complex process taken apart, reduced to a more detailed level of reality, and the problem resolved. This is why most large engineering corporations have research divisions, where this reduction to deeper levels of scientific analysis is performed. This process, which is sometimes called differentiation, has become identified with science and with rational thinking. But when applied to the highest values, to art and religion, beautiful and sublime differentiation may lead to unsettling conclusions. Religious rituals, when taken apart and logically analyzed, may seem illogical and useless. When differentiation is applied to higher religious experiences and to the highest religious ideas, the results of analyses may seem even more bizarre. Some scientists are looking for similarities between such experiences and the experiences of epileptics and schizophrenics or those produced by narcotics. These methods of analysis might serve as steps toward understanding neural substrates involved in religious feelings. But some also consider them indications that religion is “nothing but” a cognitive aberration and so on. For thousands of years phenomena that could not be attributed to material causes have been explained as the product of spiritual causes. Often such phenomena have been called mystical. Of course, the goal of science is to explain spiritual phenomena with material causes. Advancements of science have increased the polarization between “materialism” and “mysticism.” For a while mysticism was identified with lack of education, and many scientists believed that all phenomena would eventually be explained scientifically. But today most scientists and educated people are taking an extreme view: events and phenomena that seem to resist contemporary scientific understanding, such as the meaning of life, free will, the religiously sublime, and God, are denied real existence. Scientists and commentators looking for arguments that religion and other phenomena called mysteries are “nothing but” are driven by the human tendency for differentiation, for reducing complex phenomena to simpler ones, an approach that has been quite successful for centuries. These scientists, and to a significant extent the whole of science, have ignored the opposite tendency of the human mind, a tendency for synthesis, for wholeness.

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Our task involves distinguishing the mental mechanisms for the two fundamental trends, differentiation and synthesis, that we identify in our minds and brains and their cultural effects. In the process, we will see that habits and scientific intuition toward differentiation based on hundreds of years of scientific successes are not applicable to higher levels of the human mind. Differentiation of higher human experiences has fundamental limits and might be scientifically fundamentally flawed when these limits are ignored. Our undertaking also involves analyzing the deep cognitive reasons why insisting on a simplified understanding while ignoring synthesis and meanings is so pervasive. We must also undertake a new understanding of the nature of scientific explanation. Mysteries are pervasive in science, much more pervasive than those attracting attention in public discussions. In the following discussion, I address some mysteries and demonstrate that a new, rigorous understanding of scientific explanation denies the reasons for calling them mysteries. They become “illegitimate” mysteries as new understanding of cognitive science offers scientific explanations for them. As we shall see, however, human beings are not fully analyzable automata; there are real limits to human understanding and real “legitimate” mysteries that can be identified according to certain criteria. NEURAL MECHANISMS OF OBJECT PERCEPTION Let us begin our analysis of the highest human abilities with a seemingly simple experiment that everyone can perform in three seconds, and which concerns our ability for perception of simple objects, an ability in which we are similar to nonhuman animals. Just close your eyes and imagine an object in front of you. Your imagination is vague, not as crisp and clear as when your eyes are open. Then open your eyes; the object becomes crisp and clear. It seems to occur momentarily, but actually it takes one-sixth of a second. This is a very long time for neural brain mechanisms—hundreds of thousands of neural interactions. Also note that with opened eyes we are not subjectively conscious of initially vague imaginings; we are not conscious of the entire one-sixth of a second. Rather we are conscious only of the end of this process: the crisp, clear object in front of our eyes. The following explanation of this experiment is simple because through many years of research we have learned what occurs in the brain during this one-sixth of a second. Since the 1950s, tens of thousands of scientific publications have been devoted to understanding cognitive mechanisms of the mind and to modeling them mathematically. Most have not attempted to explain this simple experiment (exceptions are noted below), and if they had tried, they would have

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failed. Elsewhere I have analyzed the main mathematical ideas for modeling the mind suggested since the 1950s. 15 These ideas include artificial intelligence relying on logical rules; pattern recognition relying on statistical laws; artificial neural networks imitating parallel structures of the brain’s neural networks; model systems relying on modifiable adaptive models; and fuzzy logic attempting to model vagueness in the mind. My analysis has demonstrated the mathematical limitations of these algorithms proposed for modeling the mind. After more than sixty years of research and development, computers still cannot do what is easy for young children or even for animals. I have previously discussed the difficulties faced by each approach and why they would be unable to explain this simple close-open-eyes experiment or more complex cognitive processes. 16 (Perception and cognition are not fundamentally different abilities but rather levels of mental hierarchy; this is discussed in more detail in the section “Hierarchy of the Mind.”) Difficulties of modeling the mind were manifest as computational complexity: 17 algorithms that upon logical analysis seemed capable of solving problems of perception and cognition practically, even for relatively simple problems, required more computational operations than the number of all elementary particle interactions in the entire life of the universe (this practically infinite number I call simply infinite). This astronomical computational complexity is related to logic: all these algorithms relied on logic at some point in their functioning. Even algorithms specifically designed to overcome the limitations of logic, such as neural networks and fuzzy logic, use logic at some point. All learning algorithms use logic in their learning processes. A learning step requires showing an object example to a neural network or an algorithm as follows: “this is a chair”; and this is a logical statement. This relation of the insurmountable difficulty of computational complexity to logic corresponds to the fact that logic is not a fundamental mechanism of cognition. In our close-open-eyes experiment, we literally “saw” that crisp (logic-like) perception of an object appears only at the end of the perception process. Let us digress from the main line of argument and explain very briefly my use of the word “logic.” In mathematics today there are many types of logic; in this chapter I specifically discuss fuzzy logic, dynamic logic, and classical logic (the latter usually referred to simply as “logic”). Logic strives to operate with exactly defined quantities; for example, in mathematics X = Y can be defined exactly, or as mathematicians sometimes say, “crisply.” In real life logic is approximated by language, for example, the statement “this is a chair”; it turns out, however, that defining “chair” exactly mathematically is not easy and indeed might be impossible, but in everyday life “this is a chair” is good enough. For example, perception of simple objects is “crisp,” logiclike, yet is an approximation. There is a degree of fuzziness or vagueness in

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perception, cognition, and everyday language. Language is often used in a similar way in cognitive science, psychology, and philosophy. This is “good enough” for everyday sentences, but when a scientist attempts to understand the workings of the mind, especially its spiritual aspects, language may not be “good enough.” Often this deficiency leads to fundamental difficulties, which are sometimes called “mysteries.” I would add that the term “logic” sometimes is used to mean reasoning, discourse, speech, rationality, and so on. Again, if “logic” is used for scientific analysis of mental mechanisms, fundamental misunderstandings may result. This essay never uses “logic” in this way. In the 1930s mathematical logician Kurt Gödel proved logically that logic contains irresolvable internal contradictions. 18 The mind resolves its contradictions one way or another; therefore, logic cannot have been the foundation of cognition. In 2000, the New York Times named the five most influential scientists of the past century; along with Albert Einstein, it included Gödel. The results of Gödel’s work were recognized as fundamental soon after their publication in the 1930s. Why then have generations of mathematicians, cognitive scientists, and philosophers tried to understand cognition as a logical operation? The answer is contained in our simple experiment: the mind is not conscious of vague dynamic processes. When we open our eyes, we “immediately” consciously perceive the object in front of our eyes, whereas we know that with closed eyes there has been vague, partly conscious imagination. I discuss later a brain-imaging experiment demonstrating that conscious perception does not occur immediately but takes 0.6 second. But we are not conscious of this 0.6 second. Subjective consciousness is only aware of logic-like, crisp states of mind. Consciousness perceives cognition as a smoothly flowing succession of conscious states. The fact that logical states are separated by hundreds of thousands of neuronal operations related to vague states and processes is inaccessible to subjective consciousness. These intertwined dynamics of vague states comprising more than 99 percent of the mind’s operations are almost never accessible to consciousness. Thus even after Gödel’s theory received worldwide acclaim as one of the most important findings in mathematics, mathematicians, psychologists, and philosophers continued thinking about the mind as a logical system, and deviations from logic seemed mysterious. Even a great scientist’s intuitive thinking is often built around subjective consciousness and therefore logic. We have seen that with closed eyes vague states may reach consciousness, and although they are not as clear-conscious as with opened eyes, we still can be conscious (even if only a little bit) of these imagined objects. Our experiment involved a simple, everyday object at a “low” level of cognitionperception, where a real object was moments away. High-level cognitive vague states about abstract ideas usually are below the level of consciousness. Sometimes high-level cognitive vague states about abstract, significant

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ideas reach consciousness, and these experiences might be perceived as mysterious. I discuss these mechanisms later, but let us now return to “simple” perception. Culminating several years of preliminary research, Moshe Bar and his colleagues conducted experiments similar to the close-open-eyes experiment but with many more details. 19 They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to obtain three-dimensional images of processes in the brain with millimeter-size resolution. But fMRI is a “slow” technique; it cannot resolve processes in time with the required time resolution (milliseconds). Therefore, fMRI was combined with magneto-encephalography (MEG), measurements of the magnetic field around the head, which cannot produce high-resolution imagery but provides necessary high-temporal resolution of brain activity. Combining these two techniques, the experimenters were able to receive high resolution images of cognitive processes in space and time. To explain the novel findings by Bar and his colleagues and our previous close-open-eyes experiment, let me first give a simplified description of the visual perception established through a long line of research. An object image is first projected as in a photo camera onto the eye retina; from there, through visual nerves the object image is projected onto the visual cortex (in the back of the brain). For a long time it was thought that after processing in the visual cortex an object is recognized in the recognition area (on the side of the brain); this is followed by storage of object information in long-term memory (in the front of the brain). In recent decades, however, it has become clear that this understanding misses a fundamental aspect of perception: processing of information in the visual cortex involves neural signals from memories about possible objects; signals from memory projected “down” to the cortex are called top-down signals. These images have to be matched to bottom-up images projected from the retina. Interaction of top-down and bottom-up signals is the fundamental law of perception and cognition. When they match, the mind recognizes the object. This matching process explains the close-open-eyes experiment: the vague imaginings are produced by topdown signals. But details of this process were not known. Bar and his colleagues concentrated on three brain areas: the visual cortex, the object recognition area, and the long-term object-information storage area (memory). 20 They demonstrated that memory is activated 130 milliseconds after the visual cortex but 50 milliseconds before the object recognition area. This confirmed that memory of an object is activated before the object is recognized, and memory activation produces top-down signals and imagined images. From the previous logical and conscious point of view of mental mechanisms, this was a mystery. It seemed a mystery because all these mechanisms are unconscious. Bar and his colleagues also demonstrated that the imagined image generated by top-down signals from memory to cortex is vague, similar to our close-open-eyes experiment. Conscious perception of an object occurs

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when vague memories responsible for representations in top-down signals become crisp and match a crisp and clear image from the retina; then the object recognition area is activated. These complex experimental results have a simple interpretation: perception-recognition occurs when the memory of an object matches a concrete object in front of the eyes. A remembered object, even if similar, is never exactly the same as the one immediately observed: angles, distance, lighting, surrounding objects are always different. Therefore, memories must be vague to have a chance to match anything. Perception requires “improving” knowledge stored in memories; memories have to be fit to concrete conditions in the dynamic process of perception. Conscious logic-like perceptions occur at the end of a dynamic process “from vague to crisp,” from illogical to logical (recall here that “logical” is equivalent to “crisp,” “illogical” to “vague”). As discussed, all algorithms considered for modeling of cognition since the 1950s have used logic in one way or another for their operations. They cannot explain why initial “imaginings” of top-down signals have to be vague, and they do not model mechanisms that drive vague images to become crisp, as occurs when we open our eyes. As a result, they cannot explain cognition even at its simplest “lower” level: perception of everyday objects. One consequence is that computers are not capable of perception and cognition, and another is that cognitive science and the philosophy of mind cannot explain cognition. Everyday perception and cognition have been a mystery from the scientific point of view, although this fact has not been clearly understood, and has not been acknowledged by many scientists. Only when mathematical models were attempted for existing explanations was it gradually discovered that they have encountered impasses since the 1950s; as previously discussed these impasses were related to logic (logical decisions within algorithms). The first algorithm modeling perception, capable of describing the closeopen-eyes experiment as well as the experiment of Bar and his colleagues was published in the 1990s. 21 This algorithm is based on a new type of logic, dynamic logic. 22 Whereas usual classical logic can be used to describe static states (e.g., “this is a chair”), dynamic logic describes processes “from vague to crisp,” from vague and unconscious mental representations (images, memories, thoughts, decisions, plans) to crisp and conscious ones. Dynamic logic overcomes the difficulties of artificial intelligence related to computational complexity; because initial representations are vague, they do not have to be logically matched to an infinite number of combinations of objects. Let us clarify once more how mathematical terminology is connected to the brain/mind cognitive processes. Dynamic logic, on the one hand, is a mathematical term describing processes from vague images to crisp images. On the other hand, dynamic-logic processes describe cognitive processes in the brain/mind, processes in which vague neural representations become

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crisp neural representations; in the case of perception, vague representations in the memory are matched to crisp representations on the visual cortex and the retina. The term “dynamic logic” refers to the fact that it describes dynamic processes. In these processes the degree of vagueness or fuzziness of neural representations-concepts changes dynamically (in time), from more vague/fuzzy to less vague/fuzzy. It might be interesting to note that scientific ideas quickly become popular among scientists if they correspond to a sequence of logical steps; this correspondence reminds scientists of the conscious operations of the mind, the only operations we subjectively know. But when a scientific theory describes what is unconscious in our minds and contradicts conscious logic ideas of how the mind “ought to work” (e.g., Aristotle’s theory of mind, Sigmund Freud, Lotfi Zadeh, Stephen Grossberg), these theories are ignored by the artificial intelligence and cognitive science communities for the same reason that the Gödelian theory was ignored. CONCEPTS, INSTINCTS, EMOTIONS Mathematical models of dynamic-logic mechanisms of the mind corresponding to the preceding discussion have been formulated in several works. 23 Among the main mechanisms are concepts, instincts, and emotions. The mind understands the world in terms of “ideas” similar to the views of Plato and Aristotle. As discussed, these ideas, or concepts, or in contemporary scientific terminology, mental representations or models, are stored in memory (as customary in cognitive science, I use the term “model” for two different meanings: [1] cognitive science mathematically models the mind and its mental processes, and [2] a neural mechanism of concepts models the world, and concepts-representations are also called models). During perception or cognition, top-down neural signals project images from models-conceptsmemories to the visual cortex. Perception or cognition entails matching these top-down neural signals to bottom-up projections from the eye retina. Since memories never exactly match actual objects, models must always be modified for perception to occur. This process of modification matching of models must occur so that we can see the surrounding world. This is a condition for survival, a process necessary to satisfy any other instinctual need. Therefore, we have an inborn instinct to fit our memories-models to the world. Following the publication of my work on this topic, it has been called the instinct for knowledge. 24 Biologists have been aware of this mechanism since the 1950s. 25 Only with the help of mathematical modeling, however, has its fundamental instinctive role become clear. 26

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The mechanism of the knowledge instinct is similar to other instincts. According to Stephen Grossberg and Daniel Levine’s theory of instincts and emotions, instincts work like internal sensors in the body. 27 These are inborn mechanisms that measure vital body parameters, such as blood pressure, sugar level in the blood, temperature, and dozens of other parameters; instincts also indicate to our brain if these parameters are within safe bounds. If they are, we usually do not notice them consciously. But if sugar in the blood goes below a certain level, we feel the emotion of hunger. Several different mechanisms are called emotions; 28 here I refer to the mechanism identified by Grossberg and Levine. Emotions are neural signals that originate in instinctual areas and convey satisfaction or dissatisfaction of instinctual needs to cognitive and decision-making areas of the brain. For example, if sugar level in the blood is low, emotional neural signals of hunger drive cognitive and decision-making mechanisms to allocate more attention and processing power to finding food, and objects that can potentially satisfy the instinct for food are recognized faster. These instinctual effects on cognition occur during the dynamic-logic process, before recognition occurs, so we are smart not because we understand everything equally well but because we preferentially understand what we need at every moment. THE KNOWLEDGE INSTINCT AND AESTHETIC EMOTIONS I have extended the Grossberg-Levine theory of drives (instincts) and emotions to the knowledge instinct. 29 The knowledge instinct is similar to other instincts in that our brain has a “sensor” that measures a correspondence or similarity between models in the mind and objects, events, or situations in the world, and the knowledge instinct drives the mind to maximize this similarity (knowledge). It is different from other “basic” instincts; it is “spiritual” in a very specific sense in that it pertains to processes in the brain, not in the “lower” body. Knowledge and cognition are commonly considered “higher,” more “spiritual” functions than eating or sex. In this regard I refer to the knowledge instinct as a “higher,” more spiritual need than a need for food. Later I argue that the knowledge instinct is responsible for all our higher mental abilities. How do we feel satisfaction or dissatisfaction of the knowledge instinct emotionally? Consider a situation when the surrounding world does not correspond to our knowledge, and surrounding objects behave unexpectedly: doors do not open; teeth cannot bite; a knife spontaneously jumps at you. This is the stuff of thrillers; it is scary or, in a mild dose, disharmonious between knowledge expectations and reality. Conversely, when objects behave as expected, it is harmonious. Since Kant, emotions related to knowl-

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edge have been called aesthetic emotions. 30 I would like to emphasize that these emotions, which we feel as harmony-disharmony between our knowledge and the world, are not specific to perception of art but are inseparable from every act of perception-cognition. Later I demonstrate that aesthetic emotions are related to the beautiful and spiritually sublime, but here I call them aesthetic or spiritual only because they are related to knowledge. When one examines higher cognitive functions, considering emotions to be defined by visceral mechanisms seems erroneous in that it mistakes secondary effects for the primary mechanisms. 31 My 2008 study with Daniel Levine discusses brain regions that are likely involved in the knowledge instinct. 32 It also posits that the knowledge instinct is not the only way people make decisions. Whereas at lower levels of object perception, the knowledge instinct acts automatically (otherwise we would not be able to see anything around us), at higher levels of complex and abstract thoughts it is not automatic. Often people don’t maximize knowledge; instead they prefer to spare mental effort and make decisions by relying on ready-made heuristics or rules. People also tend to reject new knowledge, and special emotional mechanisms have evolved to overcome this tendency. 33 Later I discuss how these mechanisms interact. HIERARCHY OF THE MIND The mind is organized into an approximate hierarchy from sensor signals at the bottom, to neural representations of objects, scenes, and abstract ideas higher up. 34 This hierarchy is not strict; it is known that interactions across multiple levels routinely occur during perception and cognition. And although I have discussed perception as if concept representations of objects are at the next level to the visual cortex, this is a great simplification. The visual cortex itself is comprised of multiple layers/levels; multiple levels interact across the hierarchy. 35 Complex abstract concepts involve the same mechanism as object perception: a process of dynamic logic, which matches a vague complex abstract concept model, a neural representation, to specific situations or experiences corresponding to this model. These processes of differentiation (of a vague model suitable for many situations into a concrete one for a specific situation) are driven by the knowledge instinct at every level. 36 For example, when one enters a professor’s office, general vague models for a book, shelf, desk, computer, chair, and so on are differentiated into models of concrete objects observed. But this kind of understanding will not take us very far. The knowledge instinct also drives the mind to understand every situation in its unity, in this case the “professor’s office.” For this purpose the mind has a corresponding model at a higher level; this higher-level model is remem-

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bered from previous encounters with similar situations, and the knowledge instinct drives it to match the current office. 37 This is the process of synthesis (of many lower-level models into a higher-level model). Both differentiation and synthesis occur at every level of the hierarchy. I see dozens of different books on my bookshelves, and I clearly perceive many of their different features: sizes, colors, titles, and so on. The knowledge instinct differentiates my vague “book” model into dozens of crisp and clear models of concrete books. At the same time, my knowledge instinct drives me to understand the unity of the “office.” This is the process of synthesis: disjointed perceptions of multiple objects are unified in the concept of “office.” From the top-down view, the mind differentiates vague models into crisp and concrete ones. From the bottom-up view, the mind unifies (synthesizes) diverse perceptions into unified models at a higher level. Differentiation and synthesis are two sides of the knowledge instinct mechanism. Scientific analysis as well as everyday life demand both understanding of experiences in their details, which is differentiation, and understanding of experiences in their unity, which is synthesis. Let us return to the simple close-open-eyes experiment. With closed eyes an imagined object is vague compared to the same object perceived with opened eyes. But the higher-level abstract concepts cannot be perceived with “opened eyes.” At higher levels abstract concept models cannot be perceived directly by the eyes. This is the reason they are called abstract: concepts like “law,” “rationality,” or “state” cannot be directly perceived by any senses. Therefore, the entire higher-level cognition must proceed “with closed eyes” and must understand abstract concepts with vague models. It follows from the previous analysis that higher-level abstract models have to be less accessible to consciousness than objects in front of our eyes. COGNITION AND LANGUAGE This may sound incredible, or at least puzzling: don’t we clearly understand concepts like “law,” or “state,” or “symphony hall”? To resolve this puzzle we need to understand how cognition interacts with language. 38 Every concept model has two parts, linguistic and cognitive, neurally connected to each other. For example, the word “chair” is neurally connected to a cognitive model-image chair. The linguistic part models not events in the world but only linguistic facts (words, phrases). On the other hand, the cognitive part models not words or phrases but rather events in the world. Whereas cognitive models are vague, corresponding linguistic models are crisp and conscious in the mind. This is possible because linguistic models in the mind are grounded in the surrounding language. 39 The higher in the mind hierarchy, the vaguer and less conscious are cognitive models. But linguistic models

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remain crisp and conscious. At higher levels, linguistic models are like internal “eyes” of the mind. On the one hand, they provide the ground for learning and understanding cognitive models. On the other hand, they hide from the mind the vague contents of cognitive models (just as opened eyes “hide” vague imaginings. This interaction of language and cognition is confirmed by brain-imaging experiments. Language and cognition are two closely related yet different systems in the mind/brain. Brain-imaging experiments demonstrate that words for concrete objects excite not only linguistic areas of the brain but also cognitive areas in the left and the right hemispheres. But abstract words excite only linguistic areas in the left hemisphere. 40 In other words, abstract ideas often are understood through language alone; they are not necessarily understood as events in the world. Vagueness of cognition and crispness of language are responsible for many “mysteries” such as free will and the meaning of life; 41 crisp understanding of these concepts in language creates an illusion of understanding, whereas cognitive representations of these concepts are vague and unconscious. I will return to this discussion. At the level of object perception, we can close our eyes and directly experience vague imaginings, perception models. But at the level of high cognition, we cannot easily close the “eyes” of language. In the creative process, when inventing new cognitive contents, which have not yet been adequately expressed in language, we may experience vague cognitive models at higher hierarchical levels. Also, concepts and events that are subjects of much experience and thinking may be imagined and remembered consciously in great detail. Most of the time, we think and perceive complex cognitive contents through existing linguistic models; in other words, we can talk without much understanding. Thinking creatively is possible due to the knowledge instinct, which modifies existing vague cognitive models for cognition of new cognitive contents. But this requires a lot of cognitive effort, and the results are vague for a long time until new understanding becomes crisp and is adequately expressed in language. Usually we spare the effort and think in terms of ready-made crisp and conscious linguistic models. Linguistic models may not exactly fit our specific experience, but they are crisp, conscious, and carry the “stamp of approval” of centuries-old cultural wisdom. Using existing heuristics or rules of thinking and behavior is safe, but it does not advance cultural knowledge. Using the knowledge instinct for creating new cognitive models is risky and uncertain, but this is the process of advancing cultural knowledge. 42

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NONREDUCIBILITY OF SCIENCE In the past when discussing possible scientific explanations of spiritual and religious experiences and phenomena of consciousness in general, scientists, philosophers, theologians, and religious people faced the fundamental obstacle of “reductionism.” If a religious experience could be explained scientifically, it seemed the next step would be to reduce this explanation to biology, chemistry, and physics. The human being would be no different in principle than a rock, and the meaning of life and God would face the same fate. Of course, most people would not accept this conclusion. But from a logical viewpoint there was no escape from this conundrum. Some philosophers therefore resorted to dualism, refusing to acknowledge that spirit and matter are of the same substance. 43 Most scientists and theologians cannot accept this solution either, for it contradicts the fundamental goal of science—to explain spiritual processes from laws of matter —and it contradicts the highest spiritual achievement of humankind, monotheism (the idea of one God implies that matter and spirit must be of one substance, this is the reason for the fundamental difficulty of unifying science and religion). This conundrum seemed irresolvable. Unifying science with the existence of free will, the meaning of life, and God was perceived as impossible. This impossibility is a source of many “illegitimate” mysteries, which are consequences of misunderstanding the interplay among logic and conscious and unconscious mental mechanisms. The reductionism argument was a direct consequence of logic, and logic was the foundation of science. There was, however, a huge hole in this line of reasoning: in the 1930s Gödel proved that logic is inconsistent, incomplete, and not as logical as expected. 44 But scientists did not know how to use Gödel’s results for resolving the problem of reductionism. Roger Penrose devoted two books to trying to connect the two and to escape the reductionism of consciousness based on Gödel’s arguments. 45 Penrose has connected the conundrum of reductionism with another long-standing unresolved problem in basic physics: quantum theory cannot be reconciled with the general theory of relativity. 46 His conclusion is that we will be able to understand consciousness only after new, unknown, yet basic physical laws of quantum gravity are discovered. These laws will not be computational. Many scientists cannot accept this as a solution because it entails parting with science as we know it. The cognitive-mathematical theory of dynamic logic described in this chapter resolves this conundrum, not by parting with science, but by parting with the idea that classical logic is a fundamental mechanism of the mind. Instead of classical logic, the fundamental mechanism of the mind is dynamic logic. Dynamic logic, to reiterate, describes processes from vague to crisplogical. Most mind operations are vague, not logical; logical (or almost logi-

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cal) thoughts, decisions, and plans appear at the end of dynamic-logic processes. This fact is hidden from our consciousness. Consciousness operates in such a way that we subjectively perceive our mind operations as purely conscious and logical. Our subjective intuition about the mind is based therefore on consciousness and logic. Few scientists have been able to overcome this consciousness-logic bias. Possibly all great discoveries such as the theory of relativity or quantum physics have required overcoming this bias because logic can derive logical consequences only from what is already known. Returning specifically to understanding the mind, I would mention Freud and Zadeh. The theories of unconscious and fuzzy logic that they created are respected, yet too difficult to follow for many, as they require a new type of intuition. The same is true of dynamic logic. Yet, along with the unconscious, the dynamic-logic mechanism of the mind is confirmed in neuro-imaging experiments, and scientists will have to accept it. Accounting for vague and unconscious mechanisms has eliminated the conundrum of reductionism. High-level concepts involving the meaning of life are vague and unconscious. We can analyze them and study involved neural mechanisms scientifically. But high-level concepts cannot be reduced to finite logical combinations of constituent simpler concepts. Hence a need for dynamic logic, which solves the problem of computational complexity and overcomes the Gödelian difficulties of logic, which has been considered the most fundamental result in mathematics. Computational complexity derives from the fact that high-level decisions involve a choice from a “practically infinite” number of combinations of lower-level concepts. Therefore, these decisions involve “practically infinite” information. The fact that our minds are capable of making these decisions is the real “legitimate” mystery. Even so we are limited in the material world; we cannot be reduced to a finite number of simple elements. Dynamic logic suggests that this is mathematically impossible; therefore we are not finite beings. The seemingly unsolvable conundrum of reductionism—which has led many people to doubt that life has meaning, the existence of free will and God, and the possibility of combining material and spiritual, science and religion, and led others to dualism, or to postulating future noncomputable science—is now resolved. It has become clear that these doubts were based on faulty intuition, on assuming that the mind’s main mechanism is logic, that the mind moves in time from one conscious logical state to another. We know now that conscious logical states of mind are tiny islands among nonlogical and unconscious operations, processes of dynamic logic. The ultimate “illegitimate” mystery is thus solved. It is solved not by denying mystery but by clarifying the nature of scientific understanding. Human life cannot be reduced to finite combinations of finite, simple elements. Mystery is a part of human life, and it must be a part of science as long as science seeks to study life.

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FUTURE RESEARCH DIRECTIONS This chapter is one step among many in the effort to mend the schism between science and religion and unify these two most important endeavors of the human spirit. While one fundamental conceptual foundation for the schism seems to have been eliminated by a combination of the new mathematical theory and brain neuro-imaging experimental data, much remains for scientists and religious thinkers to do. Dynamic logic operates over the entire hierarchy of the mind. 47 There are no competing theories aimed at explaining the entire hierarchy. Yet existing neuro-imaging experiments confirm dynamic-logic operations only at lower levels of perception. 48 Experimental confirmation of dynamic-logic operations at higher levels is the next direction of scientific research. The hierarchy of the human mind is possible due to interaction between cognition and language, the neural mechanism of the dual cognitive-linguistic model based on dynamic logic. 49 This theory also explains how millennial wisdom accumulated in language is transformed into individual cognition, how collective consciousness is transformed into individual consciousness. The emotionality of languages carried in the prosody (melody) of speech is essential for integrating language and cognition. 50 This is the foundation for the cognitive functions of music and its evolution. 51 Initial experimental evidence confirms these predictions of dynamic-logic models. 52 Yet these are just the first steps in experimental studies of the knowledge instinct operating in the dual hierarchy and the role of aesthetic emotions in cognition. Future research should provide more-detailed experimental evidence. I have referred to the psyche of animals as unified (what I call synthesis of undifferentiated psyche). Is it possible to confirm this experimentally? Are there analogs of multiple personalities among animals? Answers to these questions are not fundamental to the main argument of this chapter but could help to uncover related mechanisms in the human mind. Neural mechanisms and psychological evidence for spiritually sublime emotions, for religious experiences, and for contents of the highest cognitive models are areas of extensive experimental research. 53 Initial experimental connections with the theory in this chapter have already been obtained. 54 The next challenge is to determine the contents of unconscious cognitive models near the top of the hierarchy and the correlations of these contents with the collective conscious linguistic parts of the models. Patrick McNamara in particular discusses relations between religious experiences and the self; 55 establishing the role of the self in the highest cognitive models is a next step. A related research area involves establishing interaction between the knowledge instinct and heuristics near the top of the hierarchy. 56 Whereas the era of science began when René Descartes expelled spirit from matter, today science matures in its quest for understanding the nature

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of the human spirit. The fundamental center of religious mystery moves toward the junction of the material and the spiritual, what I describe as the legitimate mystery belonging equally to religion and science. The border that has seemed impenetrable for centuries begins to yield, and the two most important endeavors of humankind, science and religion, both face the mystery of irreducible eternal spirit. NOTES 1. It is a pleasure to thank my colleagues who discussed with me the ideas in this study: Maxim Frank-Kamenetskii, Mark Karpovsky, Daniel Levine, Lev Levitin, Patrick McNamara, Eugene Shakhnovich, Diana Vinkovetsky, and Yakov Vinkovetsky. 2. Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms. 3. See Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, “Neural Dynamic Logic of Consciousness”; Perlovsky, “Sapience, Consciousness.” 4. Perlovsky, “Integrating Language and Cognition”; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, “Symbols”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition Interaction”; Perlovsky, “Mirror Neurons”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013). 5. McNamara, Neuroscience of Religious Experience. 6. Ibid. 7. Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 8. Perlovsky, “Beauty and Mathematical Intellect”; Perlovsky, “Aesthetics and Mathematical Theories”; Perlovsky, “Intersections”; Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 9. Aristotle, Complete Works of Aristotle. 10. Kant, Critique of Judgment. 11. “Concept model” could be misunderstood as a model of the concept, but this would be wrong; this is an entity called “concept” in everyday language or “model” in cognitive science, thus the term “concept-model” seems appropriate. 12. Perlovsky, “Intersections”; Perlovsky, “Mind Is Not a Kludge”; Perlovsky, “Free Will and Advances”; Perlovsky, “Cognitive Function of Emotions”; Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 13. Jaynes, Origin of Consciousness. 14. Ruhlen, Origin of Language. 15. Perlovsky, “Conundrum of Combinatorial Complexity”; Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind.” 16. Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind.” 17. Perlovsky, “Conundrum of Combinatorial Complexity.” 18. Gödel, Collected Works. 19. M. Bar et al., “Top-Down Facilitation of Visual Recognition.” 20. Ibid. 21. Perlovsky, “Multiple Sensor Fusion”; Perlovsky, ‘Vague-to-Crisp’; Perlovsky and McManus, “Maximum Likelihood.” Its more contemporary formulation can be found in Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms. 22. Perlovsky, “Symbols”; Perlovsky, “Mind vs. Logic”; Kovalerchuk, Perlovsky, and Wheeler, “Modeling of Phenomena”; Vityaev et al., “Probabilistic Dynamic Logic.” 23. Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Physical Theory of Information Processing”; Perlovsky, “Fundamental Principles of Neural Organization”; Perlovsky, “Brain”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013); Perlovsky et al., “Einsteinian Neural Network”; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms.

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24. Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, “Neural Dynamic Logic”; Perlovsky, “Sapience, Consciousness.” 25. Harlow, “Mice, Monkeys, Men, and Motives”; Berlyne, Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity; Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Cacioppo et al., “Dispositional Differences in Cognitive Motivation.” 26. Levine and Perlovsky, “Neuroscientific Insights on Biblical Myths”; Perlovsky and Levine, “Drive for Creativity.” 27. Grossberg and Levine, “Neural Dynamics.” 28. Juslin, “From Everyday Emotions.” 29. Perlovsky, Neural Networks and Intellect; Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, “Neural Dynamic Logic of Consciousness”; Perlovsky, “Sapience, Consciousness.” 30. Kant, Critique of Judgment; Perlovsky, “Emotions of ‘Higher’ Cognition”; Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 31. Damasio, Descartes’ Error. We may “feel” emotions in the body, but the neural mechanisms of emotional feelings are in the brain. 32. Levine and Perlovsky, “Neuroscientific Insights on Biblical Myths.” 33. Festinger, Theory of Cognitive Dissonance; Perlovsky, “Challenge to Human Evolution”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013). 34. Grossberg, “Neural Theory.” 35. Ibid. 36. Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind.” 37. Ibid.; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms. 38. Perlovsky, “Integrating Language and Cognition”; Perlovsky, “Cognitive High Level Information Fusion”; Perlovsky, “Evolution of Languages”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2009); Perlovsky, “Language and Emotions”; Perlovsky, “Mind Is Not a Kludge”; Perlovsky, “Brain”; Perlovsky, “Mirror Neurons”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013); Perlovsky and Ilin, “Neurally and Mathematically Motivated Architecture”; Perlovsky and Ilin, “CWW, Language, and Thinking.” 39. Tikhanoff et al., Language and Cognition Integration; Perlovsky and Ilin, “Mathematical Model of Grounded Symbols.” 40. Binder et al., “Distinct Brain Systems”; Perlovsky, “Integrating Language and Cognition”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013). 41. Perlovsky, “Intersections.” 42. Levine and Perlovsky, “Neuroscientific Insights on Biblical Myths.” 43. Chalmers, Conscious Mind. 44. Gödel, Collected Works. 45. Penrose, Emperor’s New Mind; Penrose, Shadows of the Mind. 46. Hameroff and Penrose, “Consciousness in the Universe.” 47. Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms. 48. Bar et al., “Top-Down Facilitation of Visual Recognition.” 49. Perlovsky, “Toward Physics of the Mind”; Perlovsky, “Cognitive High Level Information Fusion”; Perlovsky, “Evolution of Languages”; Perlovsky, “Music and Consciousness”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013); Perlovsky, “Learning in Brain and Machine”; Perlovsky, Deming, and Ilin, Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms. 50. Perlovsky, “Mirror Neurons.” 51. Perlovsky, “Music—The First Principle”; Perlovsky, “Musical Emotions”; Perlovsky, “Cognitive Function, Origin, and Evolution”; Perlovsky, “Challenge to Human Evolution”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013); Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 52. Franklin et al., “Categorical Perception of Color”; Masataka and Perlovsky, “Efficacy of Musical Emotions”; Masataka and Perlovsky, “Cognitive Interference”; Perlovsky et al., “Mozart Effect.” 53. McNamara, Neuroscience of Religious Experience; Newberg and Waldman, Why We Believe. 54. Perlovsky, Bonniot-Cabanac, and Cabanac, “Curiosity and Pleasure”; Perlovsky, “Music”; Perlovsky, “Musical Emotions”; Perlovsky, “Cognitive Function of Emotions”; Perlov-

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sky, “Challenge to Human Evolution”; Perlovsky, “Mirror Neurons”; Perlovsky, “Language and Cognition” (2013); Perlovsky, “Aesthetic Emotions.” 55. McNamara, Neuroscience of Religious Experience. 56. Levine and Perlovsky, “Neuroscientific Insights on Biblical Myths.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Complete Works of Aristotle. Edited by J. Barnes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995. Bar, M., K. S. Kassam, A. S. Ghuman, J. Boshyan, A. M. Schmid, A. M. Dale, M. S. Hämäläinen, K. Marinkovic, D. L. Schacter, B. R. Rosen, and E. Halgren. “Top-Down Facilitation of Visual Recognition.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 103 (2006): 449–54. Berlyne, Daniel. Conflict, Arousal, and Curiosity. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960. Binder, J. R., C. F. Westbury, K. A. McKiernan, E. T. Possing, and D. A. Medler. “Distinct Brain Systems for Processing Concrete and Abstract Concepts.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 17, no. 6 (2005): 1–13. Cacioppo, John, Richard Petty, J. A. Feinstein, and W. B. G. Jarvis. “Dispositional Differences in Cognitive Motivation: The Life and Times of Individuals Varying in the Need for Cognition.” Psychological Bulletin 119 (1996): 197–253. Chalmers, David. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. Damasio, Antonio. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994. Festinger, Leon. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson, 1957. Franklin, A., G. V. Drivonikou, L. Bevis, I. R. L. Davies, P. Kay, and T. Regier. “Categorical Perception of Color Is Lateralized to the Right Hemisphere in Infants, but to the Left Hemisphere in Adults.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 10, no. 9 (2008): 3221–25. Gödel, Kurt. Collected Works. Edited by S. Feferman, J. W. Dawson Jr., W. Goldfarb, C. Parsons, and W. Sieg. 1931. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. Grossberg, Stephen. “A Neural Theory of Punishment and Avoidance, I: Qualitative Theory.” Mathematical Biosciences 15 (1972): 39–67. Grossberg, Stephen, and Daniel Levine. “Neural Dynamics of Attentionally Modulated Pavlovian Conditioning: Blocking, Interstimulus Interval, and Secondary Reinforcement.” Applied Optics 26 (1987): 5015–30. Hameroff, S., and R. Penrose. “Consciousness in the Universe: A Review of the ‘Orch OR’ Theory.” Physics of Life Reviews 11, no. 1 (2014). https://www.elsevier.com/locate/plrev. Harlow, Harry. “Mice, Monkeys, Men, and Motives.” Psychological Review 60 (1953): 23–32. Jaynes, Julian. The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976. Juslin, P. “From Everyday Emotions to Aesthetic Emotions: Toward a Unified Theory of Musical Emotions.” Physics of Life Reviews 2, no. 3 (2013): 235–66. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgment. Translated by J. H. Bernard. 1790. London: Macmillan, 1914. Kovalerchuk, B., L. Perlovsky, and G. Wheeler. “Modeling of Phenomena and Dynamic Logic of Phenomena.” Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics 22, no. 1 (2012): 51–82. http:// arxiv.org/abs/1012.5415. Levine, D. S., and L. I. Perlovsky. “Neuroscientific Insights on Biblical Myths: Simplifying Heuristics versus Careful Thinking; Scientific Analysis of Millennial Spiritual Issues.” Zygon, Journal of Science and Religion 43, no. 4 (2008): 797–821. Masataka, N., and L. I. Perlovsky. “Cognitive Interference Can Be Mitigated by Consonant Music and Facilitated by Dissonant Music.” Scientific Reports 3 (2013), article no. 2028. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep02028.

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———. “The Efficacy of Musical Emotions Provoked by Mozart’s Music for the Reconciliation of Cognitive Dissonance.” Scientific Reports 2 (2012), article no. 694. https://doi.org/ 10.1038/srep00694 and http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/130619/srep02028/full/ srep02028.html. McNamara, Patrick. The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Newberg, Andrew, and Mark Waldman. Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth. Boston: Free Press, 2006. Penrose, R. The Emperor’s New Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. ———. Shadows of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Perlovsky, L. I. “Aesthetic Emotions: What Are Their Cognitive Functions?” Frontiers in Psychology 5, no. 98. http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00098/full. ———. “Aesthetics and Mathematical Theories of Intellect” [in Russian]. Iskusstvoznanie 2 (2002): 558–94. ———. “Beauty and Mathematical Intellect” [in Russian]. Zvezda 9 (2000): 190–201. ———. “Brain: Conscious and Unconscious Mechanisms of Cognition, Emotions, and Language.” Special issue: “The Brain Knows More Than It Admits,” Brain Sciences, 2, no. 4 (2012): 790–834. http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3425/2/4/790. ———. “A Challenge to Human Evolution—Cognitive Dissonance.” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (2013): 179. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179 and http://www.frontiersin.org/ cognitive_science/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00179/full. ———. “The Cognitive Function of Emotions of Spiritually Sublime.” Review of Psychology Frontier 1, no. 1 (2012): 1–10. http://ia601507.us.archive.org/33/items/TheCognitiveFunctionOfEmotionsOfSpirituallySublime/1-10Rpf10003.pdf. ———. “Cognitive Function, Origin, and Evolution of Musical Emotions.” Musicae Scientiae 16, no. 2 (2012): 185–99. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864912448327. ———. “Cognitive High Level Information Fusion.” Information Sciences 177 (2007): 2099–118. ———. “Conundrum of Combinatorial Complexity.” IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence 20, no. 6 (1998): 666–70. ———. “Emotions of ‘Higher’ Cognition.” Brain and Behavior Sciences 35, no. 3 (2012): 157–58. ———. “Evolution of Languages, Consciousness, and Cultures.” IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine 2, no. 3 (2007): 25–39. ———. “Free Will and Advances in Cognitive Science.” Open Journal of Philosophy 2, no. 1 (2012): 32–37. http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?paperID=17451. ———. “Fundamental Principles of Neural Organization of Cognition.” Nature Precedings (2012). hdl:10101/npre.2012.7098.1. http://precedings.nature.com/documents/7098/version/ 1. ———. “Integrating Language and Cognition.” IEEE Connections (feature article) 2, no. 2 (2002): 8–12. ———. “Intersections of Mathematical, Cognitive, and Aesthetic Theories of Mind.” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 4, no. 1 (2010): 11–17. https://doi.org/10.1037/ a0018147. ———. “Language and Cognition.” Neural Networks 22, no. 3 (2009): 247–57. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.neunet.2009.03.007. ———. “Language and Cognition Interaction Neural Mechanisms.” Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience, article 454587 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/454587 and http://www.hindawi.com.journals/cin/contents/. ———. “Language and Cognition: Joint Acquisition, Dual Hierarchy, and Emotional Prosody.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 7 (2013): 123. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fnbeh.2013.00123. http://www.frontiersin.org/Behavioral_Neuroscience/10.3389/ fnbeh.2013.00123/full. ———. “Language and Emotions: Emotional Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis.” Neural Networks 22, no. 5–6 (2009): 518–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.06.034.

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———. “Learning in Brain and Machine: Complexity, Gödel, Aristotle.” Frontiers in Neurorobotics (2013). https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbot.2013.00023 and http://www.frontiersin.org/ Neurorobotics/10.3389/fnbot.2013.00023/full. ———. “The Mind Is Not a Kludge.” Skeptic 15, no. 3 (2010): 51–55. ———. “The Mind vs. Logic: Aristotle and Zadeh.” Society for Mathematics of Uncertainty, Critical Review 1, no. 1 (2007): 30–33. ———. “Mirror Neurons, Language, and Embodied Cognition.” Neural Networks 41 (2013): 15–22. ———. “Multiple Sensor Fusion and Neural Networks.” In DARPA Neural Network Study. Lexington, MA: MIT/Lincoln Laboratory, 1987. ———. “Musical Emotions: Functions, Origin, Evolution.” Physics of Life Reviews 7, no. 1 (2010): 2–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plrev.2009.11.001. ———. “Music and Consciousness.” Leonardo, Journal of Arts, Sciences and Technology 41, no. 4 (2008): 420–21. ———. “Music—The First Principle.” Musical Theatre (2006). http://www.ceo.spb.ru/libretto/ kon_lan/ogl.shtml. ———. “Neural Dynamic Logic of Consciousness: The Knowledge Instinct.” In Neurodynamics of Higher-Level Cognition and Consciousness, edited by L. I. Perlovsky and R. Kozma, 73–108. Heidelberg: Springer, 2007. ———. Neural Networks and Intellect: Using Model Based Concepts. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. ———. “Physical Theory of Information Processing in the Mind: Concepts and Emotions.” SEED 2, no. 2 (2002): 36–54, ———. “Sapience, Consciousness, and the Knowledge Instinct: Prolegomena to a Physical Theory.” In Sapient Systems, edited by R. Mayorga and L. I. Perlovsky, 33–60. London: Springer, 2008. ———. “Symbols: Integrated Cognition and Language.” In Semiotics and Intelligent Systems Development, edited by R. Gudwin and J. Queiroz, 121–51. Hershey, PA: Idea Group, 2006. ———. “Toward Physics of the Mind: Concepts, Emotions, Consciousness, and Symbols.” Physics of Life Reviews 3 (2006): 23–55. ———. “‘Vague-to-Crisp’ Neural Mechanism of Perception.” IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks 20, no. 8 (2009): 1363–67. Perlovsky, L. I., M.-C. Bonniot-Cabanac, and M. Cabanac. “Curiosity and Pleasure.” WebmedCentral Psychology 1, no. 12 (2010). WMC001275. http://www.webmedcentral.com/article_view/1275 and http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1010/1010.3009.pdf. Perlovsky, L. I., Arnaud Cabanac, Marie-Claude Bonniot-Cabanac, and Michel Cabanac. “Mozart Effect, Cognitive Dissonance, and the Pleasure of Music.” Behavioural Brain Research 244:9–14. ArXiv 1209.4017. Perlovsky, L. I., R. W. Deming, and R. Ilin. Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms with Engineering Applications: Dynamic Logic; From Vague to Crisp. Heidelberg: Springer, 2011. Perlovsky, L. I., and R. Ilin. “CWW, Language, and Thinking.” New Mathematics and Natural Computations 9, no. 2 (2013): 183–205. https://doi.org/10.1142/S1793005713400036 and http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S1793005713400036. ———. “Mathematical Model of Grounded Symbols: Perceptual Symbol System.” Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science 2 (2012): 195–220. https://doi.org/10.4236/jbbs.2012.22024 and http://www.scirp.org/journal/jbbs/. ———. “Neurally and Mathematically Motivated Architecture for Language and Thought.” Special issue: “Brain and Language Architectures: Where We Are Now?,” Open Neuroimaging Journal 4 (2010): 70–80. http://www.bentham.org/open/tonij/openaccess2.htm. Perlovsky, L. I., and D. Levine. “The Drive for Creativity and the Escape from Creativity: Neurocognitive Mechanisms.” Cognitive Computation (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12559-012-9154-3, . http://www.springerlink.com/content/517un26h46803055/, and http:// arxiv.org/abs/1103.2373. Perlovsky, L. I., and M. M. McManus. “Maximum Likelihood Neural Networks for Sensor Fusion and Adaptive Classification.” Neural Networks 4 (1991): 89–102.

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Perlovsky, L. I., C. P. Plum, P. R. Franchi, E. J. Tichovolsky, D. S. Choi, and B. Weijers. “Einsteinian Neural Network for Spectrum Estimation.” Neural Networks 10, no. 9 (1997): 1541–46. Ruhlen, M. The Origin of Language. New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1994. Tikhanoff, V., J. F. Fontanari, A. Cangelosi, and L. I. Perlovsky. Language and Cognition Integration through Modeling Field Theory: Category Formation for Symbol Grounding. Book Series in Computer Science 4131. Heidelberg: Springer, 2006. Vityaev, E. E., L. I. Perlovsky, B. Y. Kovalerchuk, and S. O. Speransky. “Probabilistic Dynamic Logic of the Mind and Cognition.” Neuroinformatics 5, no. 1 (2011): 1–20.

Chapter Ten

Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and the Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences Richard H. Jones

A central issue in any philosophical analysis of mysticism is whether the scientific study of meditators or people undergoing mystical experiences has any bearing on the possible truth of mystical knowledge claims. Can science provide support for the claim that mystical experiences lead to valid knowledge about reality, or does science prove that these experiences are nothing but the electrochemical activity in the brain, with no cognitive significance? Can scientific explanations of mystical experiences, in short, support or defeat mystical claims to knowledge? In particular, can they support introvertive mystics’ claims to have a cognitive experience of a “transcendent reality,” or are the claims connected to introvertive theistic or depth-mystical experiences explained away by scientific explanations as nothing more than brain events? While the scientific study of meditators has been growing in the past two decades, the philosophical issues are often overlooked or ignored. Advocates and critics typically simply assume without discussion that the studies obviously validate or invalidate religious beliefs, depending on their prior convictions. First, some preliminary matters: On the mystical side, a narrow sense of “mysticism” is employed here: mystical experiences are not all numinous experiences but only those experiences relating to emptying the mind of differentiated content. The type of mystical experiences of interest here are “introvertive” ones,” that is, those without any sense experience, whether the experience is theistic in nature or nonpersonal and whether the experience has some differentiated content or is empty of all such content (the “depthmystical” experience). 1 In addition, a “transcendent reality” here will mean a 247

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reality that is not in the natural realm (e.g., a self existing independent of the body or a creator god) or, if the reality is immanent in the natural realm, a reality that cannot be experienced as an object (and hence not a “phenomenon”) and therefore is not open to scientific scrutiny. But either way the reality allegedly can be experienced in mystical experiences. On the scientific side, two assumptions must be made. First, we cannot seriously doubt that there must be a physiological basis enabling these experiences to occur. Mystical experiences, like all our other experiences, are firmly embodied. Even if mystics are in contact with a transcendent reality, they would still need some basis in the body for this to occur. That is, there must be bases in the brain for these experiences since mystical states of consciousness must somehow be mediated by neurological processes in the body. In particular, all experiences apparently have neural substrates and a biochemical basis in our brain. The Dalai Lama suggests that there may be no neural correlates for “pure consciousness,” 2 but even if such a “pure consciousness” exists independently from the brain, there still must be some basis in human beings permitting the appearance of it in us. So too with meditation: because of the interaction or identity of the mind and the body, any calming of the mind during meditation will probably have effects on the body—at a minimum, calming and stabilizing some physiological functions. Such effects may be measurable in different ways. Mystical and meditative experiences do not differ from any other experience in this regard. Second, whether mystical experiences are delusional or involve a genuine insight into the nature of reality, today it is increasingly becoming accepted that they are genuine neurological events distinct from other types of mental events and are not merely products of imagination. 3 Nor is there any reason to doubt that neuroscientists may eventually identify the exact parts of the brain that are active or inactive in different types of mystical experiences. Nevertheless, scientists should be cautious in jumping quickly to a conclusion about the material basis of mystical experiences. To begin with, there are two different classes of mystical experiences and different types within each class: among extrovertive experiences, there are mindfulness states and “cosmic consciousness” experiences; among introvertive experiences, there are theistic and nontheistic experiences with differentiated content and the “depth” mystical experience free of all differentiated content. How the brain functions during these different experiences may well differ. 4 If, for example, a drug can stimulate part of the brain and enable depthmystical experiences to occur, this does not mean that it can enable extrovertive experiences or that the same areas of the brain are active during, say, mindfulness. Also there are two basic meditative tracks reflecting the focusing of attention (shamatha) and mindfulness (vipashyana) of the two different types of Buddhist cultivation (bhavana), each with a plethora of techniques and meditative sequences; 5 these may well involve different neuro-

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logical and physiological states. Thus scans of concentrative meditators such as yogins may well differ from those of mindfulness meditators such as Zen Buddhists, and different neurological explanations may be needed for each case. So too, there may be different neural states for those introvertive mystical experiences with differentiated content and those without differentiated content. SCIENTIFIC STUDY VERSUS MYSTICAL PRACTICES Scientists studying meditators are doing science, not engaging in mystical practice. This may seem obvious, but the point is often overlooked. Getting readings on monks during meditation does not make this science “mystical.” Conversely, mystics do not observe their consciousness for scientific purposes: they are trying to calm their minds to attain a religious end and are not making a catalog of different states of consciousness out of a scientific interest in how the brain/mind works. As the Dalai Lama says, the purpose of Buddhist psychology is not to catalog the mind’s makeup or to describe mental functioning, but to overcome suffering (duhkha) and clear away mental afflictions. 6 Thus one popular claim is wrong: Buddhists have not been studying the problem of the relation of mind to matter for ages and have not been developing new hypotheses on that issue; 7 they have been focusing on attaining insights to end their suffering and are not studying the relation of the mind to the brain at all. 8 Nor have Buddhists been pursuing the “scientific study of consciousness” for two and a half millennia. 9 Buddhist meditators may have discovered states of mind or mental functions that are not known to modern neuroscientists, but this was not their objective. Letting scientists scan them while they meditate does not alter this: they are still trying to “calm the mind and discern the real,” to quote the title of a Buddhist work, in order to end suffering. Of course, mystics may report what they observe for the benefit of scientists, but this would not be why they are engaged in meditation. It should also be noted that in the case of the Buddhists’ “mindfulness” type of enlightenment, the enlightening insight occurs outside the “lucid trances” (dhyanas) related to concentrative meditation, although the mind is prepared by such concentrative exercises. Similarly, the enlightened state of the Advaita Vedantins is not a continuous depth-mystical experience but a state of consciousness outside that experience. Shankara claimed that knowledge of Brahman is distinct from any yogic experience. The mystics’ interest is not in any unusual experiences but in the insight into the nature of reality so that they can align their lives with reality as it truly is (as defined by their tradition), and whether these insights can be tied to specific states of mind or body is irrelevant to their religious ultimate concerns. Studies of what to the

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religious are the physiological side effects of the mystical exercises relevant to these claims of insight become one step removed from the mystical insights arising outside such experiences. José Cabezón reports that there is “widespread skepticism” among meditating Buddhist monks regarding the value of neuroscientific studies of meditative states and the long-term effects of meditative practice. 10 From the viewpoint of mystical practice, such skepticism is justified. Meditation is part of an encompassing mystical way of life leading toward enlightenment, and any physiological mechanisms enabling mystical experiences to occur are simply irrelevant to those participating in such ways of life. To mystics themselves, it is as irrelevant as the mechanisms enabling scientific observations are to physicists. Rather, it is the permanent transformation of a person to a state aligned with reality that is central to mysticism, not any changes in brain events that may or may not accompany such a transformation. But whether the scientific study is irrelevant to the cognitive status of mystics’ knowledge claims is in fact a legitimate question. In studying mysticism, Western scientists are looking at aspects of how the brain functions in certain unusual experiences, but it is not at all obvious that they must revise any accepted theory of how the brain works in light of these studies. 11 They may be able to explain the workings quite conventionally. However, mystical experiences may reveal aspects of consciousness or types of mental functioning that cannot be explained by existing theories. Perhaps, as many classical mystics have claimed, there is a unique mental functioning in mystical experiences distinct from reasoning and other experiences (e.g., the “intellect” of medieval Christian mysticism or the “buddhi” of some Indian traditions). Or it is possible that the depth-mystical experience is a matter of consciousness occurring without an object of attention—a “pure” lucid state free of any differentiated and objectifiable content or any functional purpose. 12 Some neurological evidence exists for such a state of awareness free of sensory and conceptual content. 13 The depth-mystical experience may be presenting consciousness in its simplest form. Such a state would make it harder to see consciousness as merely a product of sensory or other bodily activity. It would also eliminate any functional theory of consciousness. Meditation thus may be extending the faculty of mental perception through techniques for cultivating extraordinary states of concentration. 14 And just as high-energy physics caused physicists to rethink aspects of Newtonian theory, so too developing “high-energy states of consciousness” may open neuroscientists to the need for new explanations. 15 Or maybe not: the scientific study of meditators and experiencers at present is not causing a revision in basic theories but only providing new data.

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DO SCIENTISTS STUDY MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES? Current neuroscience is a matter of studying the neural “hardware” of the brain through PET scans and so forth. But there is a very real issue regarding whether the subjectivity inherent in any experience can be studied scientifically at all. It is one thing to identify the neurophysiological correlates of an experience and another thing to study the “lived” experience itself. In consciousness studies in general, there is the problem of the “felt” aspects of such states as sense experience and pains—”qualia”—versus the physical activity in the brain occurring during those experiences and also any causal role the mind may have. 16 When scientists speak of a “science of consciousness” today, they are still referring to identifying neural correlates of conscious events or other physiological bases that they believe consciousness is dependent on, not to studying the subjective side of these events. It is not a science of consciousness itself. Merely identifying the material correlates of particular conscious events or even explaining how the events arose is not getting into the conscious events themselves and thus tells us nothing about what consciousness is. Nor does correlation explain how or why the brain produces consciousness (if that is in fact what occurs) or why conscious events are correlated with material events at all—indeed, correlation is not an explanation of anything but rather something new in need of explanation itself. Most basically, there does not appear to be any way to study the subjectivity of a person’s experience itself by objective, third-person means. There simply is no way to present subjectivity itself for inspection or testing by others. Thus the material bases of someone undergoing an experience are open to study, but not any subjective experience itself. As things stand, neuroscientists study only something closely associated with the appearance of consciousness in us—its physical underpinnings—and not consciousness itself. Only something that can be measured can be studied scientifically, and it is only the neural correlates of conscious events in the brain that can be measured. Even if the mind and the brain are ontologically identical, there is still an “inside” to experiences that cannot be studied from the “outside” by examining the brain. In sum, any third-person experience of brains does not give us knowledge of anything but an object, and subjectivity cannot be made into an object. Even the emerging technology that “reads minds” actually only reads brain states, not subjective experience. Functional MRIs and other neurological scanning can reveal only the correlates of experience—the observable bodily responses, not the consciousness itself. They can show what the brain is doing or not doing during an experience, but not the experience itself. This general inability to study experiences applies equally to mystical and meditative experiences. Even if a previous experience can be reproduced by

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the meditators themselves during scientific experiments, the inability of others to see what is going on will always limit a “science of meditation.” Identifying what is going on in the brain when a mystical experience occurs is one thing; what meditators actually experience—the felt sense of selflessness, unity, timelessness, or whatever—is another. A science of meditation is not achieved by a science of a meditator’s brain. Only those reductive materialists who deny any inner life whatsoever would disagree: for them there is nothing more to study but the brain. And it must be admitted that to date the physiological studies of meditation have not produced anything dramatic about meditation. Indeed, scientific studies to date, as professor of behavioral medicine Richard Sloan says, reveal the “entirely unremarkable findings” that during meditation the areas of the brain associated with concentration and attention show increased activity compared to other regions. 17 MYSTICAL TRANSCENDENT REALISTS AND NATURALIST DENIERS Scientists attempt to identify a set of biological or chemical conditions such that anyone under those conditions would likely have a certain type of mystical experience. The one-to-one correlation of conscious states with neurological or physiological states of the body would permit the stimulation of the bodily mechanisms at work in the mystical experiences. Different bodily bases and explanations have been proposed. 18 For a true correlation, there must be a one-to-one relation of changes in states of consciousness with changes in bodily states. All the phenomenological content of a given type of experience also must be accounted for. Advocates of mysticism as cognitive believe introvertive mystical experiences “feel so real” when mystics return to our baseline state of consciousness—indeed, even more in touch with what is fundamentally real than experiences in ordinary consciousness—that they must be rooted in direct contact with a transcendent reality and thus are not merely the subjective products of our brains. 19 Such experiences do not have the feel of a dream or a hallucination, which is considered delusional after the experiencer returns to a normal state of consciousness; rather, the memory of mystical experiences has at least the same sense of reality as memories of ordinary “real” events. 20 To advocates of mysticism, that scientists can in principle identify the neural correlates no more explains away the insights than a neurological explanation of perception explains away claims based on scientific observations. In fact, neurophysiology arguably actually helps the mystics’ case by showing that the experiences are grounded in the normal mechanisms of a healthy brain 21 and are the product not of speculation or a faulty brain but of unique configurations of the neural bases—why would our brain have evolved to have the

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capacity to achieve these experiences unless they were cognitive? Meditative techniques simply rewire the brain to permit certain insights that are unrelated to the survival functions of the brain to occur more easily. And there are many today who see the scientific study of meditators and mystics as verifying not only that there are neurologically unique mystical experiences but also mystics’ knowledge claims. For example, New Age advocates enthusiastically conclude that scientists studying the physiology of meditators have validated age-old mystical claims. The general shift of mental functioning in meditation from the left to the right brain hemisphere (in right-handed males)—a shift from the site of linguistic and analytic activity to that of nonverbal and synthetic activity—has been popular since the 1970s as establishing a physiological basis proving the truth of mystical claims about the existence of transcendent realities. But naturalists, as their name indicates, deny that there are any realities transcending the natural order and thus maintain that there are no transcendent realities in the causal roots of any mystical experiences. They assert instead that anything real is open to scientific scrutiny. They argue that scientists can in fact duplicate every experiential feature of the various mystical experiences and can also offer explanations for the strong emotional effects these experiences have on the participants. Naturalists then draw the conclusion that any mystical experience is nothing but brain activity: the only realities involved in either introvertive or extrovertive experiences are the experiencer and other elements of the natural world, not anything transcendent. Mystical experiences are thereby reduced to nothing but electrochemical activity in the brain or some other natural phenomenon. This means that, even if a transcendent reality does exist, an introvertive mystical experience is still an experience of nothing but natural phenomena. Thus the alleged cognitive content of these mystical experiences—that is, any beliefs based on these experiences asserting the existence or nature of transcendent realities—is radically discredited. Also, even if no reduction is yet successful, a plausible natural explanation of mystical experiences nevertheless offers an alternative to the mystical transcendent realist explanations of mystical experiences and thus neutralizes these experiences as indisputable evidence of a transcendent reality or as justification of the truth or rationality of particular religious beliefs. One popular reduction of the phenomenology of depth-mystical experiences is as merely a feedback effect: our brain has evolved to produce an intentional type of consciousness to deal with problems of survival, so when the mind is “on” but has no content with which to work, it malfunctions badly, producing the illusory sense of mystical oneness, timelessness, and so forth. Thus, even if no mental disorder is involved, the depth-mystical experience at most is simply the brain spinning its wheels when it has no mental content to work with. At best, it is simply awareness of our naturally evolved

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consciousness and nothing more. Alternatively, naturalists may see the experiences as self-induced delusions that seem so powerful to the experiencers that they cannot help but consider them insights: if we stare and concentrate hard enough and long enough on nothing but the mental image of a purple gorilla dancing in the corner of the room where there is none, our mind will eventually become sufficiently stressed for us to see a purple gorilla dancing in the corner—and, according to naturalists, the same may be happening when mystics meditate for years with some mystical goal in mind. Other reductions are based on empirical research. For example, during mystical experiences, the area of the brain connected to our sense of a distinction between oneself and the rest of the world (the junction of the temporal and the parietal lobes) receives less input and thus is less active; this also affects our temporal and spatial orientation. Additionally, the area of the brain connected to tagging events as significant (the limbic system in the temporal lobes) is more active. Thus, during certain types of experiences, it is only natural that there is no sense of a boundary between the self and the world and also a sense of great importance to the experience. The sense of ineffability results simply from the temporary dominance of the brain’s nonlinguistic right hemisphere over the left when the two hemispheres are not operating properly in tandem. The joy occurring in a mystical experience is only the result of being “blissed out” when the brain is empty of content to work with and is malfunctioning. The experience may well have a powerful positive (or negative) impact on experiencers, even transforming their personalities, but this is no reason to believe that any transcendent realities are involved. Mystical selflessness could end a sense of self-centeredness and self-importance and lead to a sense of a selfless connection to the rest of the universe, but there is no need to invoke any transcendent reality to explain this. Mundane brain activity explains it all. Thus, according to naturalists, all the phenomenology of mystical experiences is explained away one way or another. They need not dismiss mysticism with a wave of the hand as obviously the product of damaged brains. Rather, they can base their reductions on science: the experiences are the products of healthy brains that unfortunately produce delusions under certain unusual but perfectly normal neurological conditions that are now becoming understood. Mystical experiences thus present no reason to accept any reality apart from the physical base that produces the experience. Nor do they present any reason to deny the existence of a real and distinct self—experiencers are simply unaware of it during the experience, just as they are unaware of the passage of time and think the experiences are timeless. Mystical experiences may reveal an innate human mental capacity and may be the same across cultures and eras, but this is only because our brains are basically all the same, at least with regard to these experiences. And the fact that the experiences are open to such diverse doctrinal interpretations by the mystics

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themselves from the different religious traditions of the world shows that no alleged transcendent reality is involved that could actually shape the content of the experience or constrain belief claims—mystics simply are unaware that they are making up the cognitive claims out of a mixture of cultural beliefs and unusual but purely natural brain events. In sum, to naturalists these experiences and the claims based on them are not merely explained but explained away. Naturalists may even consider meditation to be valuable but only for its purported psychological or physiological benefits; any alleged insights into the nature of reality resulting from meditation are dismissed as misguided. But naturalists need not doubt the sincerity of the experiencers or deny that people in fact have such purported experiences; they merely argue that experiencers are honestly (and perhaps understandably) mistaken about the real causes. Just as seeing a rope as a snake is a genuine experience and can produce a real emotional kick that in turn produces real physiological effects even though there is no snake, so too the religious may have genuine mystical experiences even though only natural phenomena are involved. The mistake that advocates of a transcendent realism make, however, can be explained, and thereby the experience can be explained away. If successful, scientists will be able to duplicate introvertive mystical experiences of God or Brahman without any transcendent reality actually being involved. And if the experiences can be completely explained in terms of natural causes and conditions, then there are no experiential grounds to believe that mystics have experiences of any transcendent realities. That is, naturalists ask that if scientists can replicate something by natural means that is presented as being caused by a transcendent reality, why would we think it has a “supernatural” origin? The natural explanation of sensing a tree does not undercut the possible validity of the experience as evidence that the tree exists, but naturalists distinguish this from natural explanations of mystical experiences: in the case of sense experience, there is no alternative explanation to a sense object existing externally to our mind as part of the causal chain leading to the perception (short of endorsing idealism or solipsism), while in the case of mystical experiences a successful natural explanation provides an alternative to a transcendent realism, and a transcendent reality would thus not be necessary for these experiences to occur. The naturalists’ position also avoids one difficult problem: how could “subjective” meditative or mystical experiences cause changes in the physical brain? Drugs and electrical stimulation are physical and thus are in the same ontic category as the brain. Indeed, naturalists argue that a transcendent reality is not a possible cause in principle at all: the experiences’ complete explanation in terms of necessary and sufficient natural causes means that there is no place for a transcendent cause to act, so it renders any causal role for the transcendent reality impossible even if a transcendent reality exists.

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For naturalists, other experiences and nonexperiential factors prevail over mystical ones on the cognitive issue. Thus, even if naturalists had mystical experiences themselves, they would understandably dismiss their own mystical experiences as merely hallucinations of a transcendent reality—no matter how vivid, strong, or “real” the experiences felt afterward. Or the experience may cause them to rethink their position but not change their minds, as A. J. Ayer’s near-death experience toward the end of his life did not cause him to change his belief in the lack of a life after death but did weaken his “inflexible attitude” toward that belief a little. 22 His experience contained two beings and a bright but painful red light that he took at the time as governing the universe, but his later assessment was that it was all epiphenomena of a dying brain. PROBLEMS WITH PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPLANATIONS In this way, naturalists deny the possibility of mystical experiences making an independent contribution to religious beliefs or being a potential source of knowledge of any reality. If naturalists are correct, then even if transcendent realities exist, mystical experiences are still nothing but natural phenomena. But before one adopts this conclusion, certain problems with the naturalists’ reductions of mystical experiences should be addressed. For example, talk of any genetic basis to mystical experiences, a “God gene,” 23 as an explanation may be risky. Apparently even simple human traits involve hundreds of different genes, 24 and experiences may involve more than one area of the brain. V. S. Ramachandran’s identification of epileptic microseizures in the left temporal lobe as the neurological basis of mystical experiences reveals another problem: not everyone who has this type of epileptic seizures has religious experiences; 25 most have only epileptic seizures. Apparently few temporal-lobe epileptics even have visions. 26 Any explanation in terms of epileptic activity in the temporal lobe would have to explain why some people have mystical experiences and others do not, and why the mystical experiences are positive in tone while the seizure state is not. Seizures may be only another way that the mind becomes open to mystical experiences. Something in an individual’s personality may be a factor in whether he or she has such an experience. Moreover, this type of epilepsy involves areas of the brain associated with speech; at most, it is associated with triggering visions and voices, not the silent, inner experiences of emptying the mind of differentiated content. For example, the meditating Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns studied by Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg exhibited no signs of this or any other pathology, 27 and one cannot merely assume that they must have had this epilepsy because it causes these experiences without arguing in a very tight circle. The same

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issue applies to all identifications of brain mechanisms of mystical experiences. So too, spiritual experiences may not be associated with only one spot in the brain. 28 Ramachandran realizes that scientists are still a long way from showing that there is a “God module” in the brain that might be genetically specified; scientists are currently in a “twilight zone” of neurology. 29 Thus, any simple explanations in terms of, for example, temporal-lobe activity may not give the neurological base of all types of mystical experiences. Arguably, it should be easier to find bodily bases for the emptiness of the introvertive depth-mystical experience than for numinous experiences such as revelations since the latter experiences seem to be more complex events: they involve sensory-like activity (visions, voices, tactile sensations, or a combination of these), memory, emotions, and motor activity. Depth-mystical experiences seem simpler in this regard, but even they may be complex. The extrovertive state of mindfulness combines mental calming with sense experience and internal mental operations. Introvertive mystical experiences may involve different parts of the brain. If so, they too would have no simple neurological explanation of any mystical experience. Indeed, some critics today dismiss the entire enterprise of trying to identify a locus in the brain of any behavior or complex mental event as “the new phrenology.” This indicates the difficulties in actually producing a complete natural explanation of a mystical experience. Of course, someday a complete and detailed natural explanation in natural terms may be worked out and agreed upon by most scientists. But at present naturalists must realize that their reductions are based on no more than an assumption. Their position is the same as that of reductive naturalists on the mind: the explanations are complete only in the sense that their metaphysics dictates the possibility of such an explanation—any actual complete and detailed accounts of the reductions do not exist at present and may never be forthcoming. We are left at present with only an “in principle” reductionism, and this is simply a restatement of the reductionists’ metaphysical beliefs. Also note again the general gap between brain conditions, on the one hand, and consciousness and the subjective “feel” of experiences, on the other. Mystical experiences no doubt share this gap. Consider Herbert Benson’s finding that there is a great variety of “subjective” (experiential) responses—including no change of consciousness at all—accompanying the same physiological changes produced by his simple relaxation technique. 30 In short, different states of the mind apparently share the same biochemical bases. The placebo effect also holds for some psychotropic drugs: once we learn a response, we can be given what we think is the drug (when in fact we are not) and the response will occur; conversely, we can unknowingly ingest the active ingredient and no change in consciousness occurs. In short, the same state of consciousness may occur with different biochemical bases and

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vice versa. Thus the “multiple realization” problem from the mind-body field 31 and its inverse are both possibilities in the case of mystical experiences. This does not rule out finding the neurological bases of these experiences, but without a one-to-one explanation, a natural reduction is not possible: all mystical experiences, of course, will be grounded in some bodily state, but simply identifying those states will not explain why they can be multiply realized in different biochemical states or vice versa—thus the explanation of the experiential level would still be missing. Another fundamental problem touched on above applies here: merely establishing correlations of a mystical experience and neural events does not prove that the neural events cause the experience or vice versa. So too, changes in a state of consciousness may correlate one-to-one with changes in brain states, but this does not mean that the latter cause the former. Correlating does not explain anything—only metaphysics leads naturalists to conclude that physiological changes must be the cause of the experience. Based on correlations alone, whether bodily events cause experiences (or vice versa) and whether experiences are reducible to only bodily events remain open issues. Thus reductions cannot proceed from merely establishing correlations. DO NATURAL TRIGGERS PRODUCE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES? Additionally, some investigators express skepticism concerning whether technology is able to activate all the subjective aspects of such experiences. For example, Michael Persinger’s “God helmet” generates a weak magnetic field that triggers a small burst of electrical activity in the temporal lobes; this causes about 40 percent of his subjects to experience a sensed presence of a vague separate spectral entity; this entity is interpreted by the religious as a religious figure. 32 The neuroscientist Mario Beauregard dismisses such experiences as merely the products of suggestibility and not genuine “religious experiences” at all. 33 And apparently no one stimulated by the God helmet has publically reported anything resembling the phenomenology of a mystical experience—bliss, sense of unity, and ineffability. 34 At a minimum, more is involved in a mystical experience than merely the mind being altered by this artificial means. Or consider the inverse multiple realization problem: as indicated in d’Aquili and Newberg’s study, 35 Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns exhibited similar neurological changes, but the Buddhist monks described their experiences in terms of selflessness, while the Christian nuns described theirs as “a tangible sense of the closeness of God and a mingling with Him”; this suggests that the introvertive experiences were different (one an “empty” depth-mystical experience and one a differentiated theistic one)

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but had the same neurological base and effects; thus no duplication of these bases would guarantee duplicating one subjective experience. Or consider drugs: drugs may produce some of the necessary conditions for a mystical experience to occur by altering the brain’s chemistry but not all the necessary conditions and sufficient ones. If so, as the psychologist Ralph Hood notes, it would be naive to claim that mystical experiences are drug-specific effects. 36 He concludes that the weight of evidence indicates that drugs elicit states of awareness permitting religious awareness but do not necessitate it. 37 At most, ingesting the drugs sets up the conditions permitting the experience to occur, but the ingestion of a drug cannot guarantee a mystical experience, even if administered in a conducive setting to a person with a religious background. Neither drugs nor any other alleged trigger can produce the experience on demand. If a drug or electrical stimulation could produce a given mystical experience 100 percent of the time, naturalists might feel confident in a natural reduction, but that is not the case: only lower percentages are ever attained, and the exact experience apparently depends on the “set and setting”—the experiencer’s beliefs and psychological disposition and the physical setting. Since a conducive setting matters, there is also the very real issue of whether a laboratory setting affects the subjective side of the experience; scientists may in fact not be duplicating the full phenomenology of any mystical experience. Thus a drug or electrical stimulation of part of the brain is not a deterministic trigger of such experiences. Moreover, even if scientists do discover conditions that will trigger a mystical experience 100 percent of the time, a basic philosophical issue still remains: is the mystical experience a purely natural phenomenon, or have the scientists merely identified the natural conditions making a person receptive to the infusion of a transcendent reality? Even mental stress or a severe psychological crisis may be a way of breaking the hold our everyday life has on our mind, thereby setting up the physiological conditions necessary for a mystical experience. Unusual psychological states may be sufficient to set up the base conditions, but it does not follow that the experiences do not permit veridical mystical insights. Indeed, perhaps chemical imbalances or other abnormal bodily states brought on by drugs, breathing exercises or other meditative techniques, fasting or other ascetic practices are needed to permit mystical states to occur. It is question-begging to assert, without further argument, that only experiences occurring in the states of consciousness that have evolved to deal with survival give knowledge of reality. Drugs impair our ordinary cognitive and perceptual apparatus, but does this rule out the possibility that they must do so in order to open the door to other levels of our consciousness? As William James noted, for all we know, a temperature of 103 or 104 degrees Fahrenheit might be much more favorable for truths to germinate and sprout in than our ordinary body temperature. 38 Whether this is so or not, the point of

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interest here is that the scientific findings locating what part of the brain can be triggered for any particular mystical experience will not answer the philosophical question of whether the experience is cognitive. A similar question can be asked of extrovertive experiences: does a natural explanation undercut their cognitive claims? Arthur Deikman explains mindfulness in terms of the “deautomatization” of the habitual mental structures that organize, select, and interpret perceptual stimuli. 39 This may well explain how a mindful state occurs. In the mindfulness mode (unlike in the normal “manipulative” mode), one is more receptive to sensory input and responds more immediately. Deikman uses this mechanism to explain features associated with mystical experiences: the sense of ultimate realness, unity, ineffability, the heightened sensitivity of sense-experience, and so forth. All are simply the result of being unconstrained by the usual structuring. If so, the sense of selflessness in the state of mindfulness is no more grounds to reject belief in a self than the fact that a mystical experience seems timeless means that time is not real and that the experience did not last a certain amount of time. Deikman thinks the available scientific evidence tends to support the view that all mystical experiences are only an “internal perception.” 40 But does this explanation by itself eliminate the very possibility of cognitive experiences into the unreality of a phenomenal self and into our connection to everything else in the universe? Perhaps deautomatization merely permits an extrovertive mystical insight to occur. Based on science alone, can we conclude that mindfulness awareness cannot be cognitive? Without further evidence, can we definitely rule out that mindfulness mystics are seeing something of the nature of reality that nonmystics do not? It is not clear how science itself could possibly answer this question since, whether the experiences are cognitive or not, the scientific findings would be the same. Thus it appears that this question remains a matter of philosophy, not science. THE COMPATIBILITY PROBLEM The last point is the most significant problem for natural reductions and should be elaborated: whether scientific and religious explanations of mystical experiences are in fact compatible. Naturalists stress that if scientists can identify a set of conditions causing a mystical experience to arise, then the experience is totally natural, and a transcendent reality cannot be a causal factor in the chain of events producing the experience. One strategy in response is simply to deny that any complete scientific explanation is possible in practice; 41 the complexity of any human phenomenon renders it impossible for scientists to be certain that they have identified all the necessary conditions for an experience. 42 While this strategy raises a very real problem,

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the approach here will be simply to assume that some complete and detailed scientific explanation of mystical experiences will someday occur: it may be that different types of mystical experiences have different natural mechanisms at work and so will require different explanations, but someday each type of mystical experience will have one scientific explanation. The issue then is this: what do scientific explanations actually accomplish? If we assume that scientists can duplicate every feature of a mystical experience by natural causes so that the generated experience is phenomenologically indistinguishable from “real” mystical experiences, does the naturalists’ conclusion follow? No. Advocates of a transcendent realism can still respond that at best all scientists have done is locate the neurophysiological bases that, when stimulated, permit a genuine infusion of a transcendent reality. That is, if genuine experiences of a transcendent reality do occur, then obviously some mechanism in us permits them to occur. All that scientists have done is demonstrate how to stimulate the natural mechanisms at work in those experiences by means other than the involvement of a transcendent reality, thereby permitting a transcendent reality to appear. This cannot in itself rule out the possibility that other causes—transcendent ones—may also produce the same physiological effects, nor can it otherwise invalidate a mystical claim of a genuine insight into reality. This issue involves two points. First, if during some mystical experiences our brain produces a certain chemical, scientists may well be able to identify this chemical and manufacture a drug that will substitute for its natural production in the brain by means of a mystical experience; this drug can then produce the same neural effects when it is artificially introduced into the brain. But scientists cannot conclude that during mystical experiences occurring outside the laboratory a transcendent reality does not also cause the brain to produce this same chemical naturally. For example, in a theistic introvertive experience, God may somehow use the normal neurochemical channels of our physiology to produce the mystical experience. The artificially administered drug can then produce the same effects in the brain, permitting the possibility of genuine mystical experiences. All that the scientists will have done is locate those parts of our physiological makeup where the experiences are based and identify the chemical conditions necessary to set up a genuine experience of a transcendent reality. In short, how do we know that the chemical reaction of the drugs in the brain does not simply reproduce the same chemical reactions that mystics have when they are aware of a transcendent reality? Naturalists cannot conclude from science alone that science demonstrates that there are no other ways to activate the same exact conditions. Ingesting the drugs may be a sufficient cause when all the necessary conditions for the experience are in place, but how could science itself show that another sufficient cause is not possible? Only if the scientific explanations by themselves could in principle

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rule out the possibility of a transcendent reality being a factor in a mystical experience could such explanations definitely be grounds for the naturalists’ reduction of these experiences, and there does not appear to be any way that any scientific explanation can accomplish this. Thus scientists will at best only reveal the necessary natural conditions and one set of sufficient causes for the mystical experience to occur; they cannot eliminate the possibility of other sets of sufficient causes. It still is simply the naturalists’ assumption that these conditions are the only possible sufficient causes. All that the scientists have demonstrated at best is something comparable to an electrical stimulation of the arm causing it to jerk: scientists have located the mechanisms at work in the event and have stimulated them; they have not proven that it is only a material event and no other cause of the event is possible (the mind moving the arm). Naturalists can push the button stimulating the arm movement all they want, but they cannot eliminate the possibility that there may be other ways nature causes that same movement. In short, scientists can never demonstrate scientifically that they have located the only sufficient causes. So too with mystical experiences. Only the naturalists’ metaphysics requires them to conclude that a transcendent reality cannot be a cause, but nothing in the actual science requires this philosophical judgment. Second, stimulating certain parts of the brain may be necessary, but this does not mean that natural events are all that is involved: perhaps by their effects on the brain, the drugs merely permit something transcendent to enter the subject’s consciousness, or perhaps no mystical experience may occur despite the stimulation of the neural bases—mystical experiences do not occur every time a natural trigger is applied. That is, a stimulation prepares the brain, but something more is still needed for a genuine mystical experience to occur whether the involvement of a transcendent reality occurs or something is simply supplied by the experiencer’s own psyche. If so, the event generated by the drug, whether administered artificially or generated by the brain, may permit veridical insights into a transcendent reality, or the experience with or without artificial stimulation may in fact only be the source of a delusion—science can never prove that these experiences are purely natural phenomena. Thus, on the philosophical matters of the experience’s cognitive import, science itself will remain neutral. Science is also neutral on the cognitive status of mystical experiences even if no nonnatural elements are involved: some extrovertive nature-mystical experiences, mindfulness, and even introvertive mystical experiences may not involve the intervention of a transcendent reality into the natural order and yet may be cognitive. Extrovertive mystical experiences involve a new sense of the nature of the phenomenal world. If a transcendent reality grounds all reality including the self, an experience involving it is not a matter of any sort of signal or energy being sent from a transcendent realm

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into the natural realm or any sort of interaction with an outside source as with sense experience. Instead, the experiencer can become aware of the reality immanent to the relevant parts of the brain in another manner. The same would hold for a theistic god that is the sustainer of the universe. The depthmystical experience involves emptying the mind of all differentiated content, thereby letting a transcendent reality implode in it (whether it is the ground of the self or of all phenomenal reality). No contact with a separate reality is involved or any action by the transcendent reality; the experience leads simply to realizing what has always been the case. If so, any identification of the natural correlates that form the base for these experiences would not eliminate the possibility of insight. Thus any scientific findings on what is occurring in the brain during the experience will not necessitate the naturalists’ conclusion that no insight into the nature of reality is involved. Whether mystical experiences involve insights into the nature of reality will still have to be decided on philosophical grounds. In sum, scientific explanations per se are compatible with religious explanations. Thus defenders of transcendent mystical claims can argue that, even if scientists can duplicate every feature of a mystical experience by some natural triggers so that the generated experience is phenomenologically indistinguishable from an allegedly “genuine” mystical experience, the naturalists’ reduction does not follow. Perhaps all that scientists can do is identify the locus where a transcendent reality becomes involved with the brain and then stimulate the neurological mechanisms artificially, permitting a mystical experience to occur on some occasions. This identification cannot by itself rule out the possibility that transcendent causes also produce the same physiological effects or that more is involved in artificially stimulated experiences resulting in cognitive insights. Thus the religious can endorse scientific explanations as providing an understanding of the occurrence of mystical experiences but not as a complete explanation of them. Identifying the bases of mystical experiences does not by itself explain away alleged mystical insights any more than identifying the physiological bases enabling someone to have the capacity to undertake scientific research explains away scientific insights. OUR EPISTEMIC SITUATION The compatibility of neurological explanations and the possibility of mystical insights means that there is no forced either/or choice between accepting mystical experiences as either neurological events or authentic cognitive encounters with reality; the experiences may in fact be both. The religious can provide an understanding of scientific explanations consistent with a transcendent realism, and naturalists can provide a naturalistic account. Natu-

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ralists will have to accept that any scientific analysis is not inherently reductionist: scientists can provide analyses of the makeup and causes of phenomena without making the additional claim that only the causes are real or that the phenomena are in any way not real. 43 And the advocates of a transcendent realism will have to accept that science per se does not verify their position either. The dispute between naturalists and proponents of a transcendent realism becomes a meta-scientific and hence metaphysical dispute that will turn to philosophical grounds. But that dispute goes beyond the scope of this study. And whether that dispute is itself resolvable is an open question. 44 All that needs to be noted here is that the scientific accounts of people undergoing mystical and meditative experiences will in themselves be neutral on that issue. Thus the upshot of this discussion is that scientific explanations do not bear on the issue of the possible truth of any religious or naturalist explanations of mystical experiences even in principle. Some mystical experiences may be veridical experiences of a transcendent reality, but how can we know this if scientists can duplicate all the features of the experience? If mystical experiences can occur whether or not a transcendent reality is present, then these experiences lose any epistemic presumption that they might have enjoyed in the absence of a natural explanation. Therefore, these experiences are not unambiguous evidence for transcendent realities. We are left, not with proof that the religious explanations are wrong or proof that some reductive explanation must be right, but in a more uncertain situation. Thus the damage of a natural explanation is not to the possibility of a genuine mystical experience but to the experience’s philosophical value as evidence in an argument in favor of transcendent realities. Thus we are left with a metaphysical dilemma: we cannot take mystical experiences as indisputable evidence for mystical claims, nor can we take scientific explanations as evidence against such claims. Even if neuroscience can be taken as verifying that distinct mystical experiences occur, it neither validates nor invalidates any mystical knowledge claims related to selflessness and so forth. Nor does the mere existence of mystical experiences favor one position: does our brain naturally cause us to create these experiences (e.g., somehow to aid in our survival or because the brain is malfunctioning), or did a transcendent reality create our brain to permit genuine experiences of a transcendent reality? To oversimplify: if the brain is not malfunctioning, we may be hardwired for experiences of self-transcendence, 45 but did God wire us to experience a transcendent reality, or did evolution wire us just to think so because it somehow aids in our survival? So too, mystical experiences may be quite common, 46 but this does not mean that a transcendent reality is involved. A demonstrated commonality may bear on the question of whether mystical consciousness is a more normal mental state of a healthy person than naturalists typically accept, but it does not bear on the question

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of its proper explanation—after all, even if mystical experiences are the result of a malfunctioning brain, they still may be quite common. The frequency of such experiences is simply irrelevant to the philosophical question of what scientific explanations accomplish. Some scientists who study meditators agree that their research cannot answer such questions and thus cannot prove or disprove the existence of a transcendent reality. 47 It is not that they consider the broad issue of whether a transcendent reality exists to be a philosophical one that cannot be settled by science. Rather, it is a more specific issue: the neuroscientific study of experiencers cannot settle the question of whether these experiences are veridical, let alone determine the validity of any specific religious interpretation. Even colleagues working together may draw diametrically opposed conclusions on the epistemic and metaphysical implications of the data. Such conclusions are simply not part of the science of the mechanisms, nor are they determined by the scientific results. So too, arguing that demonstrating that specific brain states are associated with mystical experience would indicate it is reasonable to believe that mystics are aware of a transcendent power does not help: naturalists could just as easily argue that the demonstration shows that it is reasonable to conclude precisely the opposite—that mystical experiences are nothing but purely natural brain states. Neither side is being “more reasonable” than the other based on science alone. The religious may reply that merely because mystical experiences are not unambiguous evidence, it does not follow that they may not be genuine. And they can point to the problems noted above concerning natural explanations as an alternative, thus raising the issue of whether today there is an “equally plausible” naturalist alternative. At most, natural explanations, if ever fully demonstrated, mean that mystical experiences cannot be used decisively in a deductive proof, not that mystical experiences might not be used by the religious as part of an argument about the best explanation of religious phenomena. Mystical experiences or natural explanations are not evidence except in the context of a total explanation, and therefore we must look at other elements of the arguments to see which side’s case is more plausible. In short, only if one side can show the other’s overall argument to be implausible or at least less plausible will it win. But this again leads to issues of metaphysics well beyond the scope of this study. The scientific study of the correlates of people undergoing mystical and meditative experiences itself does not provide a stronger empirical case for either side of this philosophical dispute. Granted, if it turns out that people who have mystical experiences all have brain lesions or otherwise have defective or damaged brains or suffer from other pathologies, then the naturalists’ approach becomes a compelling argument that no transcendent reality is involved, even if no particular scientific explanation has yet gained a consensus. It is hard to argue that a physically damaged brain can gain a

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new insight into reality that a healthy brain misses—that God, as it were, only discloses himself to people with defective brains. Despite William James’s argument concerning fever, 48 it would be hard to imagine a severely damaged brain as a vehicle for insights into a reality. Rather, if only something obviously malfunctioning badly in the brain produces these experiences, we should conclude that they are in all likelihood delusional. If, however, these experiences are common among people who are free of pathological conditions and have perfectly healthy brains, this argument fails. And there is no evidence that mystical experiences occur only in people with physiological damage. Instead, we have solid empirical evidence that mystical experiences are widespread among normal persons. 49 Moreover, even if it turns out that mystical experiences are associated with parts of the brain that more commonly produce only hallucinations, advocates of mysticism can turn this situation around and argue that the hallucinations are the product of the malfunctioning of brain mechanisms that, when functioning properly, enable veridical mystical experiences to occur. For example, some psychologists argue that dissociative states of schizophrenia and some psychoses result from the same implosions of a transcendent reality that occur in mystical experiences, but that the patients are not equipped to handle them; mystics, on the other hand, have a belief framework and the training or psychological preparation needed to handle them—for example, mystical selflessness apparently is a more coherent mental state, and mystics do not conclude that the experiencer alone is God. 50 This would also explain the difference between the mystic’s feeling of calm and joy versus the psychotic’s feeling of fear and confusion with the same loss of a sense of self, and why the former can think rationally and live productively. But naturalists may take the connection of mystical states and psychosis and conclude the opposite: a mystical experience is only a perfectly natural, if abnormal, state of mind resulting from a problem with the brain: psychotic breakdowns and mystical states result from the same material processes and cannot be differentiated in content (e.g., the loss of subject/object boundaries); simply because mystics have the mental training and framework of beliefs to handle the disintegration of the mundane worldview and so can successfully reintegrate into the normal world after the episode does not mean that any insights are involved. Mystics’ frameworks merely act like circuit breakers that keep the purely natural disruptions under control. However, once again the science in itself does not determine which of these two positions—the religious or the naturalist—one should accept. 51

Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences 267

CONCLUSION: THE NEUTRALITY OF SCIENCE Thus this study concludes that the science of meditators and experiencers cannot answer the question of whether mystical experiences are purely natural phenomena or in fact involve a transcendent reality. As discussed, merely establishing the nexus in the brain of the event and the neural circuits involved or finding some trigger that causes mystical experiences in a certain percentage of subjects is irrelevant to the issue of whether the stimulated area of the brain permits a mystical experience of a transcendent reality to occur or whether the experience is no more than an internal function of that mundane brain activity. EEG examinations of scientists doing research are irrelevant to whether their observations are veridical, let alone whether their theories are a step forward in understanding nature, and the same holds for meditators and their knowledge claims. Thus, unless there is a finding of pervasive pathology in mystics, science cannot help resolve the philosophical issues surrounding mystical experiences but will remain neutral. In sum, identifying the mechanisms of how an experience occurs is one thing, and the judgment of whether an alleged insight is veridical is another. It is not merely a matter of our current incomplete knowledge of the brain: even a complete mapping of the brain’s mechanisms will not enable us to address the philosophical issue. The situation here becomes a case of conflicting interpretations of the significance of the empirical findings. The scientific findings and explanations per se will not determine our choice regarding what they accomplish—science itself is compatible with different religious and naturalist beliefs and hence does not favor any such interpretation. Thus advocates of a transcendent realism need not fear that science here will disprove their knowledge claims, and naturalists cannot simply state that science refutes such claims. We will have to decide the epistemic value of mystical experiences on other grounds. NOTES 1. The distinction between “extrovertive” and “introvertive” mystical experiences—namely, those with sensory content and those without—goes back to Rudolf Otto and was set in mystical studies by Walter Stace (Mysticism and Philosophy). 2. Tenzin Gyatso and Goleman, “On the Luminosity of Being,” 42. 3. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 7. 4. See Hood, “Empirical Study of Mysticism”; Dunn, Hartigan, and Mikulas, “Concentration and Mindfulness.” 5. See Andresen, “Meditation Meets Behavioural Medicine.” 6. Tenzin Gyatso, Universe in a Single Atom, 165–66. 7. Contra Wallace and Hodel, Embracing Mind, xviii. 8. It is not at all clear how meditation can shed light on the relationship of “mind” to “matter” since whether mystical and meditative experiences are products of the brain alone as naturalists claim or involve something more, they would still have the same phenomenal character.

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9. Contra Beauregard and O’Leary, Spiritual Brain, 256. 10. Cabezón, “Buddhism and Science,” 42. 11. See Harrington and Zajonc, Dalai Lama at MIT. 12. Forman, Problem of Pure Consciousness. 13. See Sullivan, “Contentless Consciousness”; Peters, “Lucid Consciousness.” 14. Wallace, Buddhism and Science, 23. 15. Wallace, Contemplative Science, 167. 16. See Jones, Analysis, 106–9, 122–24. 17. Sloan, Blind Faith, 247–49. 18. For overviews, see Wulff, “Mystical Experience”; Lutz, Dunne, and Davidson, “Meditation.” For a popular account, see Horgan, Rational Mysticism. For a discussion of methodological issues in the neuroscientific study of religious experiences, see Newberg and Lee, “Neuroscientific Study.” 19. Newberg and Lee, “Neuroscientific Study,” 485. 20. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 112. Visual delusions can be ruled out as veridical by third-person checking. Introvertive mystical experiences have no such checking procedure since the alleged realities experienced transcend the natural realm. 21. Hood, Dimensions of Mystical Experiences. 22. Ayer, “Undiscovered Country” and “Postscript to a Postmortem.” 23. Hamer, God Gene. 24. Beauregard and O’Leary, Spiritual Brain, 47–55. 25. Ramachandran and Blakeslee, Phantoms of the Brain, 186. 26. Horgan, Rational Mysticism, 99. 27. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 7. 28. Beauregard and O’Leary, Spiritual Brain, 255–88. 29. Ramachandran and Blakeslee, Phantoms of the Brain, 188. 30. Benson, Relaxation Response, 115. 31. See Jones, Analysis, 38–39, 76–78. 32. Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. 33. Beauregard and O’Leary, Spiritual Brain, 96–99. 34. Horgan, Rational Mysticism, 98–99. 35. Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 7. 36. Hood, “Mystical, Spiritual, and Religious Experiences,” 354. 37. Hood, “Facilitation of Religious Experience,” 584. 38. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 30. 39. Deikman, “Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience”; see also Austin, Zen and the Brain. 40. Deikman, “Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience,” 259. 41. For example, Alston, Perceiving God, 230. 42. For example, Wainwright, Mysticism, 73–76. 43. See Jones, Analysis, chap. 3. 44. See Jones, Curing the Philosopher’s Disease, chaps. 6 and 7. 45. Hamer, God Gene. 46. See Hood, Dimensions of Mystical Experiences. 47. For example, Ramachandran and Blakeslee, Phantoms of the Brain, 185; Newberg, D’Aquili, and Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away, 143, 149–51, 178–79; Beauregard and O’Leary, Spiritual Brain, ix, 38, 276. 48. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 30. 49. Hood, Dimensions of Mystical Experiences. 50. See Brett, “Psychotic and Mystical States.” 51. It should also be noted again that these studies comparing mystical experiences and psychotic states involve states of mind with visions and voices, not the contentless depthmystical state. Additionally, the mindful perception of the world can be explained without appealing to psychoses (Deikman, “Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience”; Austin, Zen and the Brain). There may also be physiological similarities between meditative states and sleep states (see Cahn and Polich, “Meditation States and Traits”), but meditators remain

Transcendent Knowledge-Claims and Scientific Study of Mystical Experiences 269 aware. So too, concentrative meditation and mindfulness meditation differ from ordinary states of relaxation (Dunn, Hartigan, and Mikulas, “Concentration and Mindfulness”).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Alston, William P. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Andresen, Jensine. “Meditation Meets Behavioural Medicine: The Story of Experimental Research on Meditation.” Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, no. 11 (2000): 17–73. Austin, James H. Zen and the Brain: Toward an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998. Ayer, Alfred J. “The Undiscovered Country” and “Postscript to a Postmortem.” In The Meaning of Life, 197–208. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1990. Beauregard, Mario, and Denyse O’Leary. The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul. New York: HarperCollins, 2007. Benson, Herbert. The Relaxation Response. New York: William Morrow, 1975. Brett, Carolina. “Psychotic and Mystical States of Being: Connections and Disconnections.” Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 9 (December 2002): 321–41. Cabezón, José Ignacio. “Buddhism and Science: On the Nature of the Dialogue.” In Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground, edited by B. Alan Wallace, 35–68. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. Cahn, B. Rael, and John Polich. “Meditation States and Traits: EEG, ERP, and Neuroimaging Studies.” Psychological Bulletin 132, no. 2 (1999): 180–211. Deikman, Arthur J. “Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience” (1966). In Understanding Mysticism, edited by Richard Woods, 240–69. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980. Dunn, Bruce R., Judith A. Hartigan, and William L. Mikulas. “Concentration and Mindfulness: Unique Forms of Consciousness.” Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback 24, no. 3 (1999): 147–65. Forman, Robert K. C., ed. The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Hamer, Dean H. The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes. New York: Doubleday, 2005. Harrington, Anne, and Arthur Zajonc, eds. The Dalai Lama at MIT. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Hood, Ralph W., Dimensions of Mystical Experiences: Empirical Studies and Psychological Links. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. ———. “The Empirical Study of Mysticism.” In The Psychology of Religion: Theoretical Approaches, edited by Bernard Spilka and Daniel N. McIntosh, 222–32. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. ———. “The Facilitation of Religious Experience.” In The Handbook of Religious Experience, edited by Ralph W. Hood Jr., 568–97. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1995. ———. “Mystical, Spiritual, and Religious Experiences.” In Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, edited by Raymond F. Paloutzian and Crystal L. Park, 348–64. New York: Guilford Press, 2005. Horgan, John. Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border between Science and Spirituality. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature. 1902. New York: New American Library, 1958. Jones, Richard H. Analysis and the Fullness of Reality: An Introduction to Reductionism and Emergence. New York: Jackson Square Books/Createspace, 2013. ———. Curing the Philosopher’s Disease: Reinstating Mystery in the Heart of Philosophy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2009. Lutz, Antoine, John D. Dunne, and Richard J. Davidson. “Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness: An Introduction.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, edited by

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Philip David Zelazo, Morris Moscovitch, and Evan Thompson, 499–552. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Newberg, Andrew, Eugene d’Aquili, and Vince Rause. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York: Ballantine Books, 2002. Newberg, Andrew B., and Bruce Y. Lee. “The Neuroscientific Study of Religious and Spiritual Phenomena: Or, Why God Doesn’t Use Biostatistics.” Zygon 40 (June 2005): 469–89. Persinger, Michael A. Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York: Praeger, 1987. Peters, Frederic H. “Lucid Consciousness in Traditional Indian Psychology and Contemporary Neuro-Psychology.” Journal of Indian Psychology 16 (January 1998): 1–25. Ramachandran, V. S., and Sandra Blakeslee. Phantoms of the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Mind. New York: William Morrow, 1998. Sloan, Richard P. Blind Faith: The Unholy Alliance of Religion and Medicine. New York: St. Martin’s, 2006. Stace, Walter. Mysticism and Philosophy. New York: Macmillan, 1960. Sullivan, Philip R. “Contentless Consciousness and Information-Processing Theories of the Mind.” Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology 2 (March 1995): 51–59. Tenzin Gyatso (His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama). The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality. New York: Morgan Road Books, 2005. Tenzin Gyatso (His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama) and Daniel Goleman. “On the Luminosity of Being.” New Scientist 178, no. 2396 (May 24, 2003): 42–43. Wainwright, William J. Mysticism: A Study of Its Nature, Cognitive Value, and Moral Implications. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981. Wallace, B. Alan. Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. ———. Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Converge. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Wallace, Alan B., and Brian Hodel. Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality. Boston: Shambhala, 2008. Wulff, David M. “Mystical Experience.” In Varieties of Anomalous Experiences: Examining the Scientific Evidence, edited by Etzel Cardeña, Steven J. Lynn, and Stanley C. Krippner, 397–440. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2000.

Index

Abraham, 51, 55 Absolute, 110, 111, 166, 174, 176, 187 abstractive seeing, 75 Adam, x, 93, 101 alarm calls, 74, 76 altered state(s) of consciousness, 22, 26, 27, 28, 32, 46, 47, 135, 185, 186, 198, 206, 214 alternative reality, 45 Anttonen, Veikko, 216n12, 217 Aristotle, 4, 49, 133, 134, 146n27, 147, 222, 232, 240n9, 242, 244 Arnheim, Rudolf, 189, 195n92, 196 arousal, xv, 7, 8, 9, 10, 205, 206, 208–209, 209, 210–211, 211, 212, 214, 215, 241n25, 242 asceticism, 164 Asian philosophers, 164 auras, 78, 79, 83, 84 ayahuasca, 46, 65, 65n14, 66, 67, 179, 196 Ayer, A. J., 151, 169n3, 171, 256, 268n22, 269 Bar, Moshe, 230, 231, 240n19 Bataille, Georges, 12n42, 13 Baudrillard, Jean, 151, 169n12, 171 Bellah, Robert, 189, 195n88, 196 Bergson, Henri, 2, 3, 5, 11n6, 11n13, 13 Beauregard, Mario, 258, 268n9, 268n24, 268n47 Bickerton, Derek, 74, 75, 76, 89n12, 91

Bion, Wilfred R., 10, 13n56, 216n14, 217, 218 Boehme, Jacob, 79, 90n22, 91 Borges, Jorge Luis, xiii, 94, 95, 96–97, 97, 114n4, 114n6, 115 The Boy Who Saw True, 83, 84, 91 Buber, Martin, 47, 189, 195n88, 197 Cabezón, José, 250, 268n10, 269 Campbell, Joseph, 72, 89n4, 91 Cassirer, Ernst, 71–72, 89n1, 91 Cattell, Raymond, 184–185, 194n63, 194n71, 197 Chalmers, David, x, 11n15, 13, 241n43, 242 Chinese box arrangement, 136, 138 Chinggis Khaan, 34, 35–36, 39 Christianity, 46, 62, 65, 93, 206, 278 classical logic, xv, 228, 231, 237 cognitive differentiation, 129 cognitive effects, 53 cognitive models, 45, 221, 223, 224, 235–236, 239, 278 combinability of words, 74, 75, 85, 87 Confucianism, 133 consciousness: alteration of, x, 1, 213; high-energy states of, 250; mature, 129; ordinary, xiv, 122–123, 126–127, 141, 186, 252; paranormal states of, xi, xii Continental philosophers, 152, 153 continuum of synesthetic states, xi, xiv 271

272

Index

cross-modal translations, xiv, 180, 204, 206, 214, 216n16 Dalai Lama, 248, 249, 268n11 Daniel, 48, 50–51, 52–53, 53 Dao-de Jing (Tao Te Ching), xi, xiii–xiv, xiv, 119, 119–120, 120, 121, 122, 124, 125, 126, 130, 139, 144–145, 146n3, 146n8, 146n22, 147, 148, 279 Daoism, 122. See also Taoism Daoist philosophy, 130, 145 d’Aquili, Eugene, 148, 166, 169n30, 170n76, 171, 256, 258, 267n3, 268n20 Deikman, Arthur, 215n7, 217, 260, 268n39–268n40, 268n51, 269 Davies, Paul, 160, 161, 162, 170n65, 171 Deacon, Terrence, 72, 89n3, 91, 160, 161, 162, 170n67 decoupled representation, 72, 73–74, 76, 77, 78, 79, 85, 89, 90n34 Deleuze, Gilles, 4, 11n20, 13 Dennett, Daniel, 151, 162, 165, 168, 169n8, 170n63, 171 Derrida, Jacques, 7, 14, 151 Descartes, René, 4, 158, 169n20, 170n51, 171, 239 differentiation (vs. synthesis), 223–224, 225, 226, 226–227, 234–235 displacement, 74, 75 DMT experience, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 58 DNA, 162, 167 Dogen, 164 Donald, Merlin, 77, 91 Dretske, Fred, 162, 168, 169n26, 170n64, 171 dynamic logic, 222, 228, 231–232, 232, 233, 234, 237–238, 239, 240n3 Ecclesiastes, 59, 113 ecosystem(s), 155, 160–161, 163, 167, 168 ecstasy, 12n42, 39, 50, 93, 101, 102, 177, 181, 187, 209, 210, 211 egocentricity, 189 Ehrenzweig, Anton, 124, 138, 146n9, 147 Einstein, Albert, 76, 91, 229 Eliade, Mircea, 30, 39n5, 90n35, 91, 194n54, 197 Elijah, 50, 55 empiricism, 153, 154, 198

entropic relations, 163 ergotropic dominance, 209–210 experience. See DMT experience; imaginal body experience; meditative experience; mystical experience; numinous experience; religious experience; spiritual experience experiential states, 165 Ezekiel, 48, 50, 51, 52, 52–53, 54, 54–55, 55–56, 63, 65n16, 97, 106 false prophecy, 58 felt meaning, 174, 175, 178–179, 181, 182, 184, 187, 188, 190, 192, 198 Fischer, Roland, xv, 8, 12n44, 13, 197, 205, 208–209, 210, 211, 215n10, 216n35–216n36, 218 formal operations in affect, 188, 189, 195n92 Foucault, Michel, 151, 169n10, 171 Freeman, Walter, 211, 217n40, 218 Frege, Gottlob, 151, 169n6–169n7, 169n22, 171, 172 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 60, 66, 66n27, 124, 131, 138, 205, 232, 238 fuzzy logic, 228, 238 Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 151 Garrett, Eileen, 89, 90n50, 91 Gazzaniga, Michael, 9, 13, 13n49, 14, 159, 169n16, 170n53, 171 Gellhorn, Ernst, xv, 208–209, 209, 210, 211, 216n30, 216n32, 216n38–216n39, 218 Gellman, Jerome, 11n2, 11n5, 13 Gendlin, Eugene, 178, 179, 180, 181, 184, 193n24–193n25, 193n33, 197, 207 Gersonides, 47 Geschwind, Norman, 179, 181, 206, 208, 216n21, 218 Gibson, J. J., 158, 159, 160, 169n31, 170n52, 171 Gilson, Étienne, 6, 12n32, 13 Gödel, Kurt, 229, 232, 237, 238, 240n18, 241n44, 242, 244 Godhead, 96, 98, 175, 176, 188 godly efflux, 49 Greenspan, Stanley, 74, 89n11, 91

Index Grossberg, Stephen, 232, 233, 241n27, 241n34, 242 Hamer, Dean, 268n23, 268n45, 269 Hood, Jr., Ralph W., 259, 267n4, 268n21, 268n36–268n37, 268n46, 268n49, 269 Hebrew Bible prophecy xii, 41, 47, 48, 58 Herrnstein-Smith, Barbara, 135, 143–144, 146n30, 147n36 Hobbes, Thomas, 165, 170n73, 171 holy abstraction, 79 humanoid figures, 53 Hume, David, 4, 153, 169n25, 171 Hurford, James, 73, 89n10, 91 Hurley, Susan, 158, 159, 160, 170n54, 171 Husserl, Edmund, 6, 7, 8, 12n40, 12n48, 13, 157, 190, 195n95, 198 hyper-cognition, 214, 216n37, 217n51 hyper-real, 164 hyperreflexivity, 184 hypnosis, 85, 199, 211, 213, 214 Ibn Arabi, 192, 197 Ibn Ezra, 47 Idel, Moshe, ix, xvi, xvin1–xvin2 image schemas, 175, 181 imaginal body experience, xv, 208, 215 inner infinities, 71, 89 internal dialogue, 78, 80 invisible worlds, 45, 46 Isaiah, 51, 55, 58, 63, 65n16 Islam, 93, 97, 108, 109, 278 Jacob, 48, 51, 55 James, William, 2, 124, 146n16–146n17, 147, 149, 173, 174, 190, 191, 192n5, 195n95, 195n98, 198, 259 Jaspers, Karl, 13n54, 14 Jeremiah, 51, 52, 55, 63, 65n16 Judaism, 7, 14, 62, 63, 93, 206 Kant, Immanuel, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11n17–11n19, 12n29, 12n48, 13, 222, 234, 240n10, 241n30, 242 Katz, Steven T., xvi, 120, 124, 125, 131, 144, 147 Kiely, William F., xv, 208–209, 209, 210, 211, 216n30, 218

273

kinesthetically embodied metaphor of light, 191 knowledge instinct, xv, 219–220, 221–222, 233, 233–234, 234–235, 236, 239, 244 Koch, Christof, 9, 12n47, 14, 217 Kriegel, Uriah, 8, 12n43, 14 Krishna, Gopi, 192n7, 198, 208, 218 Laing, R. D., 11n4, 12n41, 14 Lakoff, George, 131, 175, 181, 188, 189, 193n9, 193n26, 198, 216n16, 218 Langer, Suzanne, 72–73, 75, 76, 78, 82, 89n5, 89n19, 90n34, 91, 182, 193n46, 198 Laozi (Lao Tzu), 13n54, 14, 120, 145, 146n2, 146n8, 147, 148 Laski, Marghanita, 175, 176, 177, 181, 186, 187, 198 Lechler, Albert, 85 Leibniz, G. W., 4 Levine, Daniel, 233, 234, 240n1, 241n26–241n27, 241n32, 242, 244 Levine, Howard, 10, 13n55, 14 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 193n37, 198 libido, 122, 205 Lloyd, Seth, 167 Locke, John, 4, 158, 169n24, 171 Lockean/Humean tradition, 153 logic. See classical logic; dynamic logic; fuzzy logic Longxi, Zhang, 2, 15 Marion, Jean-Luc, 6, 7, 14 Maimonides, 47, 49, 62, 63, 66, 66n24, 67 Mead, George Herbert, 190, 195n94, 199 meditative experience, 124, 195n85, 200, 248, 251, 264, 265, 267n8 mental hierarchy, 219, 219–220, 222, 223, 224, 228 Merkur, Dan, 11n2, 14, 65n19, 67, 206, 215n3, 215n8, 216n11, 216n13, 218 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 157 megaphor(s), 12n46, 14, 211, 216n16, 216n37 metaphor(s), 7, 12n46, 122, 134, 147n33, 151, 152, 164, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 180, 180–181, 182, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193n29, 193n41, 193n43, 196, 197, 198, 200, 206, 207, 216n16, 277,

274

Index

279 microgenesis, 183, 184, 190, 194n67, 200, 207 Monroe, Robert, 80, 80–82, 84, 91 Moses, 48, 51, 52, 54, 55, 64, 65n16, 66, 66n27 mystical knowledge claims, xv–xvi, 247, 264 mystical experience: passim: ineffability of, xi, 2, 8, 125, 149, 164, 174, 185, 254, 258, 260 mystical illumination, 83 multiple worlds, 8

Persinger, Michael, 258, 270 photism 83, 84 Piaget, Jean, 188, 189, 199 Pio, Padre, 87–88, 90n46–90n47, 91 placebo effect, 72, 86–87, 90n49, 257 Plato, 5, 153, 161, 164, 167, 172, 232 Platonic forms, 153 Platonic/Cartesian tradition, 153 proprioception, 159 psychedelic drugs, xii, 9, 41, 42, 45, 56, 58, 60, 63, 64, 64–65, 177, 178, 184, 207, 279 psychoactive plants, 48

Nachmanides, 47 Nafe, John Paul, 186, 187, 199 Needles, William, 85, 91 Newberg, Andrew, 123, 124, 131, 148, 166, 171, 243, 256, 258, 268n18, 268n47, 270 neuronal synchrony 157 neurophenomenology, 156 neurotheological model, 59 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 184, 194n62, 199 nocebo effect, xiii, 86–87, 90n45, 90n49, 91 noetic quality, 149 nomadic tribal Hebrews, 53 nothingness, 109–110, 126, 130, 131, 146n1, 148, 279 numinous, 174–176, 187, 191, 196n99, 198, 205, 247, 257 numinous experience, 175, 247, 257

quantum computer, 167 quantum levels of analysis, 162 Quine, W. V. O., 151, 169n5, 172

oceanic dedifferentiation, 124, 131, 138 Otto, Rudolf, 166, 171, 174–175, 199, 267n1 out-of-body experience, 82, 83, 84, 208 Ozick, Cynthia, xiii, 98, 99, 115 Panksepp, Jaak, 155, 156, 158, 171 parallel level of reality, 45, 56 paranormal perception, 79, 90n25 Patanjali, 79, 91 Peirce, Charles, 4, 5, 11n13, 11n20, 12n27, 14 Penrose, Roger, 168, 171, 237, 241n45–241n46, 242, 243 perseverance, 213

Radhakrishnan, Sarvepalli, 164, 170n70, 172 Ralston, Holmes, III, 158, 160, 170n57, 172 Ramachandran, V. S., 193n41, 199, 256–257, 268n47, 270 Rashi, 47, 63 rationalism, 153–154 religious experience: passim right-hemisphere processes, 125 Rothko, Mark, xiii, 103, 104, 104–106, 112, 115n29 Russell, Bertrand, 2–3, 14, 151, 172 sacred journey, 23 Sass, Louis, 12n48–13n49, 14, 200 Saul, 48, 50, 51, 55 Scheler, Max, 4, 5, 11n16 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 174, 184, 188, 199, 200 Schlick, Moritz, 151 Searle, John, 161, 172 sefirot [sing. sefirah], ix–x shamanic spirituality, xi–xii, 19 shamanizing, 19, 20, 21, 25–26, 31, 38 Shankara, 249 Shannon, Claude, 162 Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi, 84 Sinai, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 64 Sinclair, Craig, 79–80 Sinclair, Upton, 79–80, 90n25–90n26, 91

Index Sloan, Richard, 252, 270 Sodom and Gomorrah, 55 solar plexus, 80, 90n25 somatic exteriorization, 86 Song of Songs, x, 59 Spinoza, Baruch, 47, 59–60, 66n26, 67, 158 spiritual experience, xii, 41, 42, 43, 47, 48, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65n2, 257 spiritual intelligence, 188–189, 192, 195n87 spiritually sublime, xv, 219, 222, 225, 234, 239, 243 Stalnaker, Robert, 151, 172 Stanford, Ray, 79, 83, 84, 91 Steinbock, Anthony, 5, 14 Sterelny, Kim, 73–74, 91 stigmata, xiii, 60, 76, 85, 87–88, 90n47, 91, 115n37 Strawson, Galen, 5, 11n15, 12n28, 14 symbolic cognition, 181, 206, 207 symbolization, xii, 71, 72, 74, 76, 77, 85–86, 89, 90n34 synesthesia, xv, 53, 176, 178, 178–179, 179, 180, 180–181, 185, 193n41, 194n83, 195n84, 198, 199, 206, 208, 215, 216n16, 216n18 Taoism, 112, 146n8, 146n32, 147, 177, 193n17, 194n52, 198. See also Daoism telepathy, 52, 78 Tetragrammaton, 95, 96, 101 theoneurological paradigm, 59, 60 theoneurology, xii, 41, 60, 279 thought-forms, 83 Titchener, Edward, 183, 187, 195n85, 200 trancelike state, 32, 149 transcendent knowledge-claims, xv, 247

275

transcendental reality, 124, 144 transcendent reality(ies), xv–xvi, 192, 247–248, 252–253, 254, 255–256, 256, 259, 260–261, 263, 264–265, 265–266, 267 transient hypofrontality hypothesis xv, 13, 211, 214, 215, 217 Trigg, Roger, 163, 172 trophotropic dominance, 210 Turing, Alan, 162, 172 uncalled spirits, 22 underworld, 22, 23, 24, 31 unified structure of the mind, 224 unio mystica, 204 Urim and Thummim, 48, 67 Van Gulick, Robert, 7, 14 Varela, Francisco, 156–157, 160, 172 Verlaine, Paul, 130 vervet monkeys, 73, 76 volition and will, 54 Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas, 163 Western rationality versus Mongolian mysticism, 28 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 2–3, 11n10–11n12, 14, 15, 151, 173, 192n2, 200 Yeats, William Butler, 141 Zadeh, Lotfi, 232, 238, 244 Zaehner, Robert Charles, 215n5, 218 Zechariah, 53, 56 Zhuang Zi (Chuang Tzu), 119, 145, 147, 147n38 the Zohar, xvi, xvin1, 106

Contributors

Eva Jane Neumann Fridman is coeditor of Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and Culture (ABC-CLIO, 2004). A former senior fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School, Fridman has been a research fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Brown University and has taught courses in shamanism and anthropology at Brown University and Bryant University. Jess Hollenback’s specialization is in the history of religions. He is the author of Mysticism: Experience, Response, and Empowerment (Penn State Press, 1996). Hollenback currently serves as an associate professor in the history department of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, where he teaches world history and a variety of courses in the history of the major world religions. Harry T. Hunt, one of the most important contemporary theorists of meditative and transpersonal states of consciousness, is professor emeritus of psychology at Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario. Hunt is the author of The Multiplicity of Dreams (1989) and On the Nature of Consciousness (1995)—both published by Yale University Press—and Lives in Spirit (State University of New York Press, 2003). He has published empirical studies of lucid dreaming, dream bizarreness, meditative states, creativity, metaphor, and transpersonal-mystical experiences in childhood, along with theoretical papers on the cognitive psychology of mystical states, the nature of immediate consciousness, and the conceptual foundations of psychology. Richard H. Jones is the author of Science and Mysticism: A Comparative Study of Western Natural Science, Theravada Buddhism, and Advaita Vedan277

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ta (Bucknell University Press/Booksurge, 2008); Mysticism Examined: Philosophical Inquiries into Mysticism (State University of New York Press, 1993); Reductionism: Analysis and the Fullness of Reality (Bucknell University Press, 2000); Mysticism and Morality: A New Look at Old Questions (Lexington Books, 2004); and Curing the Philosopher’s Disease (University Press of America, 2009). Jones’s most recent publication is his groundbreaking Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable (State University of New York Press, 2016), focusing on the basic issues in the philosophy of mysticism. Alex S. Kohav teaches in the Department of Philosophy, Metropolitan State University of Denver. His 2011 dissertation, The Sôd Hypothesis: Phenomenological, Cognitive, Semiotic, and Noetic-Literary Recovery of the Pentateuch’s Embedded Inner-Core Mystical Initiation Tradition of Ancient Israelite Cultic Religion, establishes a heretofore-nonexistent research area: ancient Israelite mysticism of the First Temple era. Kohav is currently coediting a multidisciplinary volume, A Paradise of Paradoxes: Resolute Perplexities of Israel’s Inscrutable Edenic Trees and Ineffable God. He blogs at MosaicKabbalah.org. Leonid I. Perlovsky leads research projects on models of the mind; cognitive functions of the sublime, the beautiful, and music; and cognitive models of language and cultural evolution. He has published more than 450 articles and four books, including Neural Networks and Intellect: Using ModelBased Concepts (Oxford University Press, 2000); he is also a coeditor of Toward Artificial Sapience: Principles and Methods for Wise Systems (Springer, 2008). Perlovsky chairs the IEEE Boston Computational Intelligence Chapter and serves as editor in chief for Physics of Life Reviews. He has received national and international awards, including the Gabor Award 2007, the top engineering award from the INNS; and the John McLucas Award 2007, the highest US Air Force Award for basic research. Ori Z. Soltes teaches at Georgetown University and has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Cleveland State University, Siegel College, and Case Western Reserve University. Soltes has lectured at dozens of museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is the former director and curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, Washington, DC, where he curated over eighty exhibitions. Soltes has authored over 275 articles, exhibition catalogs, essays, and books. Recent books include Our Sacred Signs: How Jewish, Christian and Muslim Art Draw from the Same Source (Basic Books, 2005); Searching for Oneness: Mysticism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam

Contributors

279

(Rowman & Littlefield, 2009); Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art and Architecture (Canal Street Studios, 2016); and Magic and Religion in the Greco-Roman World: The Beginnings of Judaism and Christianity (Academia-West Press, 2017, 2nd ed. 2020). Rick Strassman, MD, is the author of DMT: The Spirit Molecule (Park Street Press, 2001) and coauthor of Inner Paths to Outer Space (Park Street Press, 2008) and is clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. His clinical research career began with his discovery of the first known role of melatonin in humans. In 1990, he began the first new U.S. government–approved and –funded human research with psychedelic drugs in over twenty years. Between 1995 and 2008, he worked in the clinical sector and cofounded the Cottonwood Research Foundation in 2007, for which he serves as president. In DMT and The Soul of Prophecy (Park Street Press, 2014) Strassman has developed a new, topdown model of religious/prophetic experience, “theoneurology.” Reuven Tsur is professor emeritus of Tel Aviv University. As noted in Literary Theory: An Oxford Guide, he is one of the founding fathers of the cognitive approach to literature. He has applied his theory of cognitive poetics to rhyme, sound symbolism, poetic rhythm, metaphor, poetry and altered states of consciousness, period style, genre, archetypal patterns, translation theory, the implied critic’s decision style, and critical competence, engaging English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, and Hebrew poetry. He is the author of eighteen scholarly books in English and Hebrew (one translated into Japanese), among them: On the Shore of Nothingness: A Study in Cognitive Poetics (Imprint Academic, 2008); Toward a Theory of Cognitive Poetics (Sussex Academic Press, 2nd ed. 2008); and Poetic Conventions as Cognitive Fossils (Oxford University Press, 2017). In 2009, Tsur was awarded the prestigious Israel Prize, and in 2013 he received a doctor honoris causa from Osnabrück University. Sivan Wagshal Te’eni is an independent scholar based in Hila, Israel. She studied Chinese medicine in 1992–95 and in July 1998 pursued advanced studies in Xinjiang, Urumqi, China, while working at a traditional Chinesemedicine hospital at the Xinjiang Institute of TCM, Urumqi, China. Te’eni subsequently taught in the Chinese program at Tel Aviv University from 1998 through 2000. Her master’s thesis, a cognitive-poetic reading of the Dao-de Jing, was presented at the Fourth Annual Conference of East Asian Studies in Jerusalem in 2005 and at “Text and Cognition,” an international workshop held in May 2005 at Tel Aviv University.

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Contributors

Laura E. Weed, a philosopher, has been a member of the Mysticism Group Committee of the American Academy of Religion since 2003 and cochaired the committee from 2006 to 2012. Weed is also director of the International Institute for Field Being in the United States. Her book, The Structure of Thinking (Imprint Academic UK, 2003), argues for an embodied and environmentally situated understanding of the philosophy of language and of mind. She is currently writing a book on panpsychism, arguing that an accurate understanding of current physics, information theory, and philosophy of mind would lead to a panpsychic understanding of reality, not a reductionistic, materialistic one.