134. Zen Physics - XII. Transcendence

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Zen Physics

Chapter 13 - Transcendence

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

-William James

p163 Throughout history, and in many different situations, people of all backgrounds and beliefs have enjoyed spontaneous mystical experiences. suddenly the individual feels, beyond any shadow of doubt, that she is fundamentally one with the universe. Her sense of identity expands to embrace the cosmos as a whole.
...

[Account of one woman’s experience. Which starts with a long flight home to the UK after a holiday in the U.S.]
p164 ...At this time, I had been awake for over thirty hours. About half way through the book [M. Scott Peck’s Further Along the Road Less Traveled] Mr. Peck relates an anecdote... [he is unable to explain his latest book in a sentence] but then he went on to relate how Jesus encapsulated the Christian message: “Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy might and love thy neighbor as thyself.” Although these words were familiar; the depth of their meaning hit me then for the first time.

It was as though something clicked in my brain . . . I felt unbounded love for everyone and every living thing -- just an immensity of love, so that it was almost unbearable -- I totally abandoned myself to that feeling. What happened next is difficult to describe because words become inadequate. . . .

I felt overwhelmed by something, some pure clear clean cool essence . . . pouring into me . . then somewhere around this point the experience occurred. All I can do is list impressions, thoughts and feelings... The real thing is way beyond description or even logical recall. . . .

p165 Joy, ecstasy, love, I was immersed in it and saturated with it. Understanding of what was going on came intuitively . . . we are all in but not aware of this dimension all the time. We are all one light but separate also...

Material things and our desire for them seemed idiotic and unimportant. . . . All human defenses and facades we create to hide from each other are nonsense because we are all one. All the things we do to sustain our self-image are redundant here.

Death is release. Our body is anchoring us in space and time. . . . Life as we know it is only the tiniest bit of what comes after. . . .

I consciously decided to leave that mode (I thought I could get back again). . . . Afterwards, I cried a little, a combination of joy and shock, I think...

The pivotal moment in Tina’s adventure was when “something clicked in my brain,” because this was clearly the point of switchover from the normal dualistic mode of thinking to the selfless experience of transcendence. To a Zen practitioner it would be satori, the flash of lightning. A Muslim might have recognized in as “the Supreme Identity.” And there are other names: nirvana, Tao, enlightenment, zoning, bliss. So widespread is this fundamental mystical feeling that it has, along with the doctrines that purport to explain it, been called “The Perennial Philosophy.” For some, it comes only after years of asceticism, study, and devotion to some particular religious or meditation system. But for ordinary folk, like Tina, it arrives out of the blue, unbidden and unsought. In fact, the very act of seeking may block or hinder the experience of enlightenment. As Tina mentions later in her letter, “I haven’t yet been able to get into that mode again.” The problem is that she is now trying to rekindle the feeling through an effort of intellect and self-will, whereas the original experience arose spontaneously as a result of a freak series of events... which caught her reasoning off guard.

p166 ... The whole point about transcendence is that it is the experience of reality, pure and simple, without any of the symbolic interpretation normally placed on it by the rationalizing human mind. It is not something amenable to linguistic or logical analysis... It is also why so much superfluous dogma had become attached to what is basically a very straightforward message: stop thinking and start experiencing.
...
Every principle religion and moral code from around the world has this notion at its core: that we should aspire to be selfless. The admonition to “do as you would be done by” or “love thy neighbor as thyself” or “be as little children” is universal. To achieve the best, most natural, most worthwhile, state of existence we are urged to lose ourselves and merge with the whole...

p168 The true and sole aim of all deep religion and of all deep science is the same -- to point past the personal, survival-oriented self to the boundless reality that has always been there. Jesus said, “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” Buddha said, “Look within, thou are the Buddha.” And what they meant was the same.

When the brain is relaxed enough to take time out from projecting the self, we become, in those brief mystical interludes, aware suddenly of a greater world stretching away on all sides beyond our small, personal, finite lives. The writer Aldous Huxley frequently expressed his view that the function of the human nervous system is to filter and limit the amount and intensity of the experience that our minds have to deal with. To him the brain was actually an impediment, a “reducing valve,” that restricted what we would otherwise be able to see....”

Psychedelic drugs, most notably LSD, have been regarded by some as shortcuts to higher states of consciousness, as have the extreme states of exhaustion induced, for instance, by repetitive, anaerobic forms of dance. Nor is this a recent trend... people have been seeking artificially induced transcendent experiences for thousands of years. [Greek tragic chorus. Desert fathers & Sara Maitland. Sufi dancers? Raves, possibly Lizaveta in The Brothers K., “I love you man” followed by hurling. There is also a related desire for oblivion, as seen in drunks I see passed out on the sidewalk everyday. But then, again again, what is oblivion or “unconsciousness?” If they are seeking a particularly deep state of dream, then I can relate. Some of my best “moments” have taken “place” in dreams. And then there’s la petite mort. (Which brings up the topic of tantric sex and the symbolism of Kali and Shiva.)] For others, music, poetry, prayer, quiet contemplation, or a walk in the woods or the hills can trigger the same effect. In a remarkable variety of ways, it seems that we all at times try to break free from our normal mode of self-centered awareness.

One of the most interestingly consistent times at which a very profound transcendent experience is reported to occur is when people come near to death. Studies and surveys reveal that the so-called near death experience (NDE) is surprisingly common and, in its essential elements, is remarkably consistent...

p169 Among the most common elements of NDEs are the sensation of leaving and floating away from the body, traveling down a tunnel toward an intensely bright light, an all-pervasive feeling of rapture and love, and seeing one’s life recapitulated in vivid detail. Most significantly, NDEers often relate having had a most extraordinary feeling of unity, an acute awareness of everything being there all at once, with a concomitant loss of self-boundaries. Subjects sometimes recall having felt as if they were really alive for the first time. And this, remember, during a period when, objectively, their bodies and brains were totally inert. Indeed, in some cases, profound transcendent experiences apparently took place after the person had been pronounced clinically dead.

It is possible to explain some aspects of the NDE... in terms of hallucinatory-type events taking place in the distressed brain.... But conventional neurological wisdom is at a loss to account for the astonishing broadening and deepening of consciousness reported by people who have, albeit temporarily, crossed over the threshold from life to death... They entered briefly into that uncharted region where all of us are destined eventually to go -- but then, thanks in the main to modern resuscitation procedures, came back to tell their tale. Except that there should not have been any tale to tell. How can a brain in which virtually all neurological activity has ground to a halt be capable of giving rise to an awareness of unprecedented depth and acuity?

I like this account of NDEs but I have to point out a problem with it. And this goes back to that "apparently" I put in bold above. The NDE is not reported by the brain while it is clinically dead but after it is revived. Subjectively, the NDE took place during that span of linear time when the brain was dead but, given the minds ability to fill in gaps and to play outside time in dreams, how confident can we be that this was actually the case? I've already said that I'm not sure we are ever not conscious, even when asleep or when knocked out. But let's say I'm wrong. Let's say that in the case of a NDE a person is completely unconscious for a span of time -- say three minutes -- before being revived. Once revived, the subject would then have no awareness of those three minutes but his mind, in a semi-dream state, would construct, in a flash, a story to fill in that gap. It would be this, post hoc (to borrow Haidt's term) dream that he would relate to anyone who would listen. Because I often fall back to sleep to radio news, I know how quickly the dreaming mind can back-fill a story to explain random noises or even dimly heard statements. 

The more reasonable explanation is that the unity feeling which is the central mystery of the NDE is not a product of brain activity at all. It results instead from the removal of the brain’s restricting influence. For the first time in a person’s life, at the moment of death the selecting and limiting effect of the brain is eliminated, the psychological walls of the self are broken down, and the individual is set free to meld again with the whole unbroken field of reality.

p170 ...The simple materialistic notion that consciousness can continue only as long as there is a brain to support it is becoming increasingly untenable. Quantum mechanics and our modern conception of space-time has made nonsense of the Newtonian mechanistic cosmos in which man was effectively divorced from the processes going on around him. We now know... that we are deeply, intrinsically bound up with reality as a whole. Subject and object are one. The only reason we see it differently is that the self puts up artificial barriers, and creates the feeling of difference and distance between itself and the rest of nature.

 ...At any moment, for one reason or another, a person can suddenly come into direct, unmediated contact with the cosmos -- can, to all intents, become the cosmos.

I think this is as close as he ever gets to the Devi's Dream cosmogony. 

Since publishing this, I ran into something interesting about the use of drugs in therapy. Here's a quote, 

"As a party drug, MDMA is well-known for making people confess their love to their friends while gently demanding a head rub. Which led Danforth to hypothesize that MDMA might help autistic people deal with their social anxiety... Now she’s piloting a new line of treatment known as MDMA-assisted therapy by examining how MDMA compares to a placebo when given to autistic adults with social anxiety in two therapeutic sessions.

"Danforth’s study is benefitting from the current renaissance in research exploring new, medical uses for drugs beloved for their recreational high: ketamine for the severely depressed; psilocybin (the active ingredient in magic mushrooms) and LSD for the terminally ill; and marijuana for children with extreme forms of epilepsy. To that end, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, the organization funding Danforth’s work, wants to turn MDMA into an FDA-approved prescription medicine within the next six years."

And here's the source. I think giving people facing death drugs that can promote transcendence is an interesting idea.

Jump to Next: The Righteous Mind - VIII. "organized in advance of experience"

96. TBK. Bk X. 5-6. & "This Dog's Life"

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Jump back to Previous: The Brothers K. Bk IX. 8. & "The Last Waltz"

The Brothers Karamazov

Part Four. Book X. 5.

Maybe this reading I can learn the point of young Kolya. 

p637 [Kolya to the room but mainly to Alyosha] “The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police measure, that’s why it has been introduced into our schools... Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect...”

“And yet he is first in Latin himself,” cried one of the boys.
...

Kolya apparently has picked all this up from the always annoying Rakitin, but he reminds me more of Pavel. I think he must represent the younger, nihilist influenced generation for Dostoyevsky. That last bit about him excelling at Latin yet attacking the teaching of the Classical languages, reminds me of Michel Foucault. Foucault was very much the man of the future Dostoyevsky was afraid of. (Yet he could have gone mano a mano with Father Ferapont when it comes to self-mortification. That actually sounds like a fun idea.)

The way my books, or in this case stories, keep relating to each other -- something like snakes biting each other’s tails -- is becoming exhausting. (He states, not really complaining.) “Teddy” by J.D. Salinger turns out to be a wonderfully brief exposition of The Perennial Philosophy. But this is (as it often is) a male version of that philosophy where the goal is to transcend and get off the damn wheel. But if everything, including us, is God. And if We’ve gone to such trouble to dream/Create this reality, why are we so keen to leave the audience? 

There are times when I like to step back from an artistic experience and view it from the perspective of the creators (author or actors -- TV shows, especially after a couple or more seasons, like to re-juggle the parts so that the actors have something new to do. These re-jugglings are not always popular with the fans, but I try to view them from the perspective of the actors going stale (insane) from playing the same part for so long. Some examples: the Buffybot; Dark Willow; Dark Piper; about every other season of Eureka.) And yet any theatrical experience (defined as generously as possible) is best experienced from the seats. Transcending “reality” or “Maya” means leaving the seats behind for something more “profound.” Transcendence is fundamentally leaving the theater. How does this make sense when we’re the ones (One?) who created the theater and the play? You could even argue that it is counterproductive making people aware that they are only “actors” in a play. 

How does this relate to The Brothers K.? The Perennial Philosophy and Dostoyevsky’s crisis of Christianity -- that everything is permitted -- are connected by a particularly loathsome (from the perspective of the naive Christian -- dovetail joint. If everything is God then where is the evil? But if there is no evil, what is all this phenomena that we apprehend as evil? It’s all enough to make you want to wear weighted chains and a hair shirt.

Part Four. Book X. 6.

p640 [Kolya, talking with Alyosha, claims he is “an incurable Socialist”]

“A Socialist?” laughed Alyosha. “When have you had time to become one? Why, I thought you were only thirteen?”

Kolya winced.

“In the first place I am not thirteen, but fourteen, fourteen in two weeks.” He flushed angrily. “And in the second place I don’t understand what my age has to do with it. The question is what are my convictions not what is my age, isn’t it?”

I’m wondering if I was as much of an ass at this age. This is when I went through my Marxist phase while reading The Communist Manifesto and when I refused to be confirmed in the Lutheran faith, after my parents hauled me around to anyone in the San Fernando Valley religious community who was supposed to be “good with youth.” By the time I finished high school I’d switched to utopian socialism (which is the closely related secular cousin of Dostoyevsky’s utopian Christianity. In fact they even overlap in places.)

Dostoyevsky makes Kolya seem a bit of a fool, manipulated by the even worse Rakitin, but Zossima was urging his flock of Fathers and monks to appeal to this very tendency of young people to be drawn to naive  utopian  dreams.  Dostoyevsky seems to see Christian utopianism as more anchored in tradition and God, but from the perspective of the 21st century the two traditions seem equally bankrupt... though just as tempting as ever. 

...
p642 [Alyosha] “...Not long ago I read a criticism, made by a German who had lived in Russia, of our students and school boys. ‘Show a Russian schoolboy,’ he writes, ‘a map of the stars, which he knows nothing about, and he will return the map next day with corrections on it.’ No knowledge and unbounded conceit -- that’s what the German meant to say about the Russian schoolboy.”

“Yes, that’s perfectly right.” Kolya laughed suddenly. “Exactly right! But this German did not see the good side, what do you think? Conceit maybe, that comes from youth and will be corrected if need be. But, on the other hand, there is an independent spirit almost from childhood, boldness of thought and conviction, and not the spirit of those sausage makers, groveling before authority. . . . But this German was right all the same. Hurray the German! But Germans need strangling all the same. Even though they are so good at science and learning they must be strangled.”
...
Well that’s interesting. Of course I note that he’s seconding my views of mid to late 19th century Germans as expressed in the section of this blog about Doctor Faustus. And there’s nothing really surprising about animosity between Germans and Russians. The 20th century would give them both ample opportunities for strangling each other.

This bit with Kolya is even more Russian than the rest. 

After doing a little reading about Dosoyevsky's life, I now see in Kolya a good deal of the young Fyodor Dostoyevsky. And, there is a good deal of the somewhat older, but still very young Fyodor in Rakitin as well... I didn't see that coming.

Small Victories 

"This Dog's Life"
It just occurred to me that religious people trying to make sense of life -- as part of God’s plan -- reads about the same as pre-Copernican astronomers trying to make sense of the movement of planets, you end up with really convoluted thinking. It’s like the flip side of the Argument From Design -- trying to find a purpose and intention in everything. We are good at seeing faces in things and in finding causes for the most perplexing effects.  A child sleeping in her bed is hit by a stray bullet fired by someone who has no idea she even exists, but people still ask, “Why her?” God is sending us just as much cancer, or whatever, as we can stand to make us stronger and so that we will seize the day. 

I tend to think of the Mount St. Helens eruption as a counter to this kind of thinking. If you were on the wrong side of that peak that day in 1980 you were simply dead, and for 57 people this was certainly true, but there are always the random exceptions. Here are some interesting stories I ran into. I especially like the first story, the one where people were saved by a combination of geography and a guy’s fondness for breakfast. At least no one is claiming that Jesus made them especially hungry that morning... while enthusiastically annihilating virtually every speck of life within miles of them.

p130 Having a good dog is the closest some of us are ever going to come to knowing the direct love of a mother or God, so it’s no wonder it knocked the stuffing out of me and Sam when Sadie died. I promised Sam we’d get another puppy someday, but secretly decided not to ever get another dog. I didn’t want to hurt that much again, if I could possibly avoid it. And I didn’t want my child’s heart and life to break like that again. But you don’t always get what you want; you get what you get. This is a real problem for me. You want to protect your child from pain, and what you get instead is life, and grace. And while theologians insist that grace is freely given, the truth is that sometimes you pay through the nose. And you can’t pay your child’s way.
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p132 She [Sadie] lived with us for more than a decade, saw us through great joy and great loss. She consoled us through friends’ illnesses, the death of Sam’s grandparents. She and I walked Sam to school every day. She was mother, dad, psych nurse. She helped me survive my boyfriends and the tinny, hollow loneliness in between. She helped Sam survive his first mean girlfriend. She let my mother stroke her head forever. She taught comfort. 
...
Just the other day a friend posted a photo of her dog (a chihuahua, no less) sitting in the passenger seat of her car. The text was “Dog is my copilot.” I am so much more comfortable with “Dog” instead of “God” in this role. If people wanted to attribute all the spiritual qualities they force on God to “Dog” instead, I would go along happily. If they tried it with cats I might balk, but there are even a few cats (Maru) who may have near divine qualities. 

“God,” on the other hand, seems to me to be an ephemeral extrapolation and magnification of a dog’s good qualities into thin air. Into the cosmic ether. As a pantheist, I can’t totally reject this notion. But why can’t you imagine these qualities inside yourself instead? 


In one of the stories I’ve skipped, Lamott made it very clear how she was personally devastated by the death of friends and of relationships to an extent that I can hardly imagine. In the past I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn that I am not completely unfeeling, but losses just don’t affect me the way they do her. As a result, I really can’t judge what she finds necessary, given her heightened sensitivity to loss. Of course dogmatic religions don’t tend to give individuals freedom to believe or not based on their personalities. And I suppose I should make clear that I'm not using "dogmatic" in any special way here.


Jump to Next: TBK. Bk XI. 3.