WHAT DOES MYSTICISM HAVE TO TEACH US ABOUT CONSCIOUSNESS?

[DiscoStu]

In this article I would like to bring the findings of my somewhat unusual but increasingly accepted field — mysticism— to the discussion, for I think they may offer some helpful insights about consciousness. Why? When a biologist seeks to understand a complex phenomenon, one key strategy is to look to at it in its simplest form. Probably the most famous is the humble bacterium E. coli. Its simple gene structure has allowed us to understand much of the gene functioning of complex species. Similarly many biologists have turned to the ‘memory’ of the simple sea slug to understand our own more kaleidoscopic memory. Freud and Durkheim both used totemism, which they construed as the simplest form of religion, to understand the complexities of religious life.1 The methodological principle is: to understand something complex turn to its simple forms.

Mystical experiences may represent just such a simple form of human consciousness. Usually our minds are an enormously complex stew of thoughts, feelings, sensations, wants, snatches of song, pains, drives, daydreams and, of course, consciousness itself more or less aware of it all. To understand consciousness in itself, the obvious thing would be to clear away as much of this internal detritus and noise as possible. It turns out that mystics seem to be doing precisely that. The technique that most mystics use is some form of meditation or contemplation. These are procedures that, often by recycling a mental subroutine,2 systematically reduce mental activity. During meditation, one begins to slow down the thinking process, and have fewer or less intense thoughts. One’s thoughts become as if more distant, vague, or less preoccupying; one stops paying as much attention to bodily sensations; one has fewer or less intense fantasies and daydreams. Thus by reducing the intensity or compelling quality of outward perception and inward thoughts, one may come to a time of greater stillness. Ultimately one may become utterly silent inside, as though in a gap between thoughts, where one becomes completely perception­ and thought­free. One neither thinks nor perceives any mental or sensory content. Yet, despite this suspension of content, one emerges from such events confident that one had remained awake inside, fully conscious. This experience, which has been called the pure consciousness event, or PCE, has been identified in virtually every tradition. Though PCEs typically happen to any single individual only occasionally, they are quite regular for some practitioners.3 The pure consciousness event may be defined as a wakeful but contentless (non­intentional) consciousness.

These PCEs, encounters with consciousness devoid of intentional content, may be just the least complex encounter with awareness per se that we students of consciousness seek. The PCE may serve, in short, as the E coli of consciousness studies.4

http://212.48.84.29/~imprint/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Forman2.pdf

Edited July 15, 2015 by DiscoStu

[Strontium Dawg]

Thanks stu, I'm looking forward to reading this.

[Visceral420]

Saved for later reading. Thankyou

[pinegapcontrol]

the main thing i took from this is what does 'mysticism' actually mean?

[DiscoStu]

The second matter is definitional: What do we mean by mysticism? What is generally known as mysticism is often said to have two strands, which are traditionally distinguished as apophatic and kataphatic mysticism, oriented respectively towards emptying or the imagistically filling. These two are generally described in terms that are without or with sensory language. The psychologist Roland Fischer has distinguished a similar pairing as trophotropic and ergotropic, experiences that phenomenologically involve inactivity or activity. Kataphatic or imagistic mysticism involves hallucinations, visions, auditions or even a sensory­like smell or taste; it thus involves activity and is ergotropic. Apophatic mystical experiences are devoid of such sensory­like content, and are thus trophotropic. When they use non­sensory, non imagistic language,8 authors like Eckhart, Dogen, al­ Hallaj, Bernadette Roberts and Shankara are all thus apophatic mystics. Because visions and other ergotropic experiences are not the simple experiences of consciousness that we require, I will focus my attentions exclusively on the quieter apophatic forms.

well they defined what they meant, more of a meditative state rather than a visionary state.

[pinegapcontrol]

too many big words

[pinegapcontrol]

not meaning to have a dig in my first reply, it just got me thinking about it. from the brief research i did the other day it seems the definition and use of the term mysticism or mystical has changed through the ages.

the article is working from their definition of mysticism. which is open to interpretation. which is what got me thinking.

[ThunderIdeal]

Id just read the conclusion, or all of page 12, or read it quickly, rather than leaving it in your bookmarks for the next five years.

[Meditator]

Good post

[M S Smith]

I spent a couple years when younger in a very intensive and personal study of mysticism and was surprised by this articles lack of citation of Evelyn Underhill's Mysticism: The Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness. This work is a classic and if you have a chance to read it then don't pass it up. While James Frazier in his own classic, The Golden Bough, shows the commonality of myths and rituals throughout the outer world Ms. Underhill does the same, but for the religious life of the inner world.

~Michael~

[plantlight]

Id just read the conclusion, or all of page 12, or read it quickly, rather than leaving it in your bookmarks for the next five years.

Invaluable advice!