. . . the Lord appears in the centre of the soul . . . He has been pleased to unite Himself with His creature in such a way that they have become like two who cannot be separated from one another: even so He will not separate Himself from her. [In other words, this sense of union is permanent.] The soul remains all the time in [its] centre with its God. . . . When we empty ourselves of all that is creature and rid ourselves of it for the love of God, that same Lord will fill our souls with Himself (Peers, 1961, pp. 213?16).
To be permanently filled within the soul with the Lord may be phenomenologically described as experiencing a sense of some silent but omnipresent, i.e. expansive, ?something? at one?s core. If so, this becomes remarkably like the other experiences of expansiveness at one?s core that we have seen before. (Once again, the expanse is not described as permeating the world, as it might in the next ?state?.)
This sense of an interiority that is also an expanse is reconfirmed by her disciple St. John of the Cross, who says, ?the soul then feels as if placed in a vast and profound solitude, to which no created thing has access, in an immense and boundless desert?.
In sum, the interior silence at one?s core sometimes comes to be experienced as expanded, as if being quasi-physically larger or more spacious than one?s body. Now, what might this DMS suggest? It offers several tantalizing hints about consciousness.
1. Human capacity includes more epistemological modalities than is generally imagined. It is clear from these reports that one can be self-reflexively cognizant of one?s own awareness more immediately than usual. The contemplative life can lead one to the ability to be aware of one?s own awareness per se on a permanent or semi-permanent basis. This is not like taking on a new awareness. None of our sources describe this as a sense of becoming a different person, or as a discontinuity with what they had been. Rather the descriptions are that of becoming more immediately cognizant of the awareness they had always enjoyed.
2. We suggested above that consciousness should not be defined in terms of perceptions, content, or its other functions, for in the DMS awareness continues even when perceptions do not. Here awareness is not only not implicated with thoughts and perceptions, but is experienced as entirely different in quality or character ? unchanging, without intrinsic form ? than its content. It is also experienced as unconnected with its intentional content. Even thoughts do ?not quite contact it?. Awareness itself is experienced as still or silent, perceptions as active and changing. Therefore instead of defining awareness in terms of its content, we should think about awareness and its mental and sensory functions as two independent phenomena or processes that somehow interact.
3. The sense of being expanded beyond the borders of one?s own body, what Freud called the ?peculiar oceanic feeling?, is a very peculiar sense indeed. Yet if we take these wide-spread reports seriously, as I think every open-minded thinker should, what do they suggest?
The phenomenology, simply put, makes room for the suggestion that consciousness is not limited to the body. Consciousness is encountered as something more like a field than a localized point, a field that transcends the body and yet somehow interacts with it.29
This mystical phenomenon tends to confirm William James? hypothesis in his monumental Principles of Psychology that awareness is field-like. This thought was picked up by Peter Fenwick and Chris Clarke in the Mind and Brain Symposium in 1994, that the mind may be non-localized, like a field, and that experience arises from some sort of interplay between non-localized awareness and the localized brain.30 It is as if these mystical reporters had an experience of just the sort of field-like non-locality of awareness these theories hypothesize.
The heretical suggestion here is not that there is a ghost in the machine, but rather that there is a ghost in and beyond the machine! And it is not a ghost that thinks, but a ghost for which there is thinking and perception.
4. The experience of awareness as some sort of field allows for the theory that consciousness is more than the product of the materialistic interactions of brain cells, since it can be understood in two ways. First it may mean that like a magnet, the brain ?produces? a field which extends well beyond its own physical borders. The slow growth of the sense of an experience suggests this.
Or, conversely, the field-like experience may suggest that awareness somehow transcends individual brain cells and perhaps the entire brain. This suggests a new way to think about the role of the physical body. Brain cells may receive, guide, arbitrate, or canalize an awareness which is somehow transcendental to them. The brain may be more like a receiver or transformer for the field of awareness than its generator: less like a magnet than like a TV receiver.
The unitive mystical state
Our last commonly reported mystical experience is a sense of becoming unified with external objects. It is nicely described by the German idealist Malwida von Meysenburg:
I was alone upon the seashore . . . I felt that I . . . return[ed] from the solitude of individuation into the consciousness of unity with all that is, [that I knelt] down as one that passes away, and [rose] up as one imperishable. Earth, heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world encircling harmony. . . . I felt myself one with them . . . (von Meysenburg, 1900; emphasis mine).
The keynote of Malwida?s experience is that in some sort of immediate or intuitive manner she sensed that she was connected with the things of the world, as if she was a part of them and they part of her. It is as if the membranes of her experienced self became semi-permeable, and she flowed in, with or perhaps through her environment.
A similar experience is described in Starbuck?s 19th century collection of experience reports. Here again we see a sense of unity with the things of the world.
. . . something in myself made me feel myself a part of something bigger than I . . . I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in nature. I exulted in the mere fact of existence, of being apart of it all, the drizzling rain, the shadows of the clouds, the tree-trunks and so on. (Ref??)
The author goes on to say that after this experience he constantly sought these experiences of the unity between self and object again, but they only came period-ically. This implies that for him they were temporary phenomena, lasting only a few minutes or hours.
This sense of the unity between self and object, the absence of the usual lines between things, is clearly reminiscent of Plotinus?s First Ennead (8:1).
He who has allowed the beauty of that world to penetrate his soul goes away no longer a mere observer. For the object perceived and the perceiving soul are no longer two things separated from one another, but the perceiving soul has [now] within itself the perceived object (quoted in Otto, 1930, p. 67).
Again we have a lack of boundaries between consciousness and object. It is not clear from this passage if Plotinus is describing a transient or a permanent experience. Yet some reporters clearly tell us that such an experience can be constant. Though it is often hard to distinguish biography from mythology, Buddhist descriptions of Sakyamuni Buddha?s life clearly imply that his Nirvana was a permanent change in epistemological structure. Similarly the Hindu term for an enlightened one, jivanmukti (enlightened in active life), clearly suggests that this experience can be permanent.
Notice how different these reports are from our DMS descriptions of an inner expanse. There we saw no change in the relationship between the subject and the perceived world. Here ?the object perceived and the perceiving soul? are now united. ?I felt myself one with the grass, the trees, birds, insects, everything in nature.?
One of the clearer descriptions of this state comes from Krishnamurti, who wrote of his his first experience of this sort, in August, 1922:
On the first day while I was in that state and more conscious of the things around me, I had the first most extraordinary experience. There was a man mending the road; that man was myself; the pickax he held was myself; the very stone which he was breaking up was a part of me; the tender blade of grass was my very being, and the tree beside the man was myself. I also could feel and think like the roadmender and I could feel the wind passing through the tree, and the little ant on the blade of grass I could feel. The birds, the dust and the very noise were a part of me. Just then there was a car passing by at some distance; I was the driver, the engine, and the tires; as the car went further away from me, I was going away from myself. I was in everything, or rather everything was in me, inanimate and animate, the mountain, the worm and all breathing things. All day long I remained in this happy condition. (Ref??)
Perhaps the most unmistakable assertion that these shifts can be permanent comes from Bernadette Roberts. Sometime after her initial transformation, she had what is clearly a development on her earlier dualistic sense of an expanded consciousness. She writes:
I was standing on [a] windy hillside looking down over the ocean when a seagull came into view, gliding, dipping, playing with the wind. I watched it as I?d never watched anything before in my life. I almost seemed to be mesmerized; it was as if I was watching myself flying, for there was not the usual division between us. Yet, something more was there than just a lack of separateness, ?something? truly beautiful and unknowable. Finally I turned my eyes to the pine-covered hills behind the monastery and still, there was no division, only something ?there? that was flowing with and through every vista and particular object of vision. . . . What I had [originally] taken as a trick of the mind was to become a permanent way of seeing and knowing (Roberts, 1984, p. 30; italics mine).
She describes this ?something there? that flowed with and through everything, including her own self, as ?that into which all separateness dissolves.? She concludes with an emphatic assertion: ?I was never to revert back to the usual relative way of seeing separateness or individuality.? Again we have a state, not a transient episode.
We could multiply these examples endlessly. This unitive mystical state (UMS), either temporary or permanent, is a very common mystical phenomenon. It is clearly an evolution of the previous sense. First one continues to sense that one?s awareness is expansive, field-like, and that the self is experienced as larger, expanded beyond the usual boundaries. One feels oneself to be ?a part of something bigger?, which is to say, senses a lack of borders or a commonality between oneself and this expanse. Indeed, in Bernadette Roberts? case, her sense of ?something there? followed and was an evolution of her initial dualistic mystical state. But now this perceived expansion of the self is experienced as none other than, permeating with and through, the things of the world. One?s boundaries become as if permeable, connected with the objects of the world. The expanded self seems to be experienced as of the same metaphysical level, or of the same ?stuff?, as the world. Despite the grammatical peculiarities, ?what I am is the seagull, and what the seagull is, I am?.
From this fascinating phenomenon we may note several implications for our understanding of consciousness.
1. The perceived ?spaciousness? of awareness suggests, I said above, that consciousness is like a field. These unitive experiences reaffirm this implication and suggest that such a field may not only transcend our own bodily limits, but somehow may interpenetrate or connect both self and external objects. This is of course strikingly parallel to the physical energy fields and/or the quantum vacuum field said to reside at the basis of matter, for these too are both immanent within and also transcendent to any particular expression, a parallel that Fritjof Capra, Lawrence Domash and others have been quick to point out.
2. The perception of unity holds out the possibility that the field of awareness may be common to all objects, and however implausibly, among all human beings as well. It indicates that my own consciousness may be somehow connected to a tree, the stars, a drizzle or a blade of grass and, paradoxically, to yours. Thus these unitive experiences point towards something like a primitive animism, Leibnitz?s panspsychism and Griffin?s suggestion of a pan-experientialism, that experience or some sort of consciousness may be ?an ingredient throughout the universe, permeating all levels of being?. All this, however, opens up another Pandora?s box of peculiar questions: most obviously what might the consciousness be of a dog, flower, or even a stone? Does the claim of a perceived unity merely point to some ground of being, and not a consciousness that is in any sense self-reflective like our own consciousness? Or if you and I share consciousness, can I experience what you do? If not, why not?
3. Not everyone who meditates encounters these sorts of unitive experiences. This suggests that some may be genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability; borrowing from Weber, the ?mystically musical?.
One might suggest that the mystic?s awareness is categorically different than other peoples?, i.e. that it is connected to the world in an ontologically deep way that the rest of ours is not. I find this unconvincing, since every mystic I have read says he or she began as an ?ordinary?, i.e. non-mystical, person and only came to realize something of what he or she ?had always been?. Whichever explanation we opt for, however, it is clear that there is some ability the mystics have been able to develop ? through meditation or whatever ? that most of us have not.
Conclusions
Our three modalities of mystical experiences point clearly towards a distinction between awareness per se and the ordinary functional processes of sensation, perception and thought. They suggest that awareness is not constructed out of the material processes of perception or perhaps the brain, but rather they suggest a distinction and / or interaction between consciousness and the brain. Furthermore, they suggest that awareness may have a non-localized, quasi-spatial character, much like a field. Finally they tend to suggest that this field may be transcendental to any one person or entity.
I want to end by restating my earlier caveat. Phenomenology is not science. There can be many ways to explain any experience, mystical or otherwise, and we should explore all of them. But in the absence of compelling reasons to deny the suggestions of their reports, we would be wise to seriously examine the direction towards which the finger of mysticism points. If the validity of knowledge in the universities is indeed governed, as we like to claim, by the tests of evidence, openness and clarity, then we should not be too quick to throw out the baby swimming in the bathwater of mysticism.
Footnotes
1 I am indebted to the psychologist of religion William Parsons, in a private communication, for this observation.
2 See here Ornstein (1976).
3 See the articles in Forman (1990) and Section I of Forman (1998).
4 Bruce Mangan (1994) suggests this when he says that ?mystic[al] encounters . . . would seem to manifest an extreme state of consciousness? (p. 251).
5 James? famous characterization of mysticism in The Varieties of Religious Experience states that a defining feature of mysticism is ?transiency? (James, 1902/1983, p. 381). My evidence says this is simply wrong.
6 I say typically because sometimes one may skip or not attain a particular stage. Ken Wilber (1980) claims sequence. William Barnard (1995), however, disputes this claim of sequence.
7 One key element of the UMS is that it is a permanent shift in the structure of awareness. ?Extrovertive? mysticism, a term coined by W.P. Stace, implies that one has mystical experiences out in the world, while we are ?extrovertively? aware. Zaehner coined the term ?nature mysticism? to describe such paths as Zen or Taoism, which describe mystical experiences in nature. This he distinguishes from the theistic traditions, among others. But in the UMS, as I understand this form of life, the sense of being in contact with the expansive emptiness that extends beyond the self, never fades away, whether one is in nature or in the city, whether the eyes are open or closed, and whether one is a Zen Buddhist, a Jew or a Christian. Thus each of these accepted terms define this experience too narrowly, and thus I coin my own broader term.
8 Cf. Smart (1982).
* These may not be mutually exclusive. See, for example, neurologist Oliver Sacks’ comments on migraines and mysticism in the case of Hildegard of Bingen (Sacks, 1994, pp. 238-9.)
9 I am grateful for Joseph Goguen, private communication, for articulating this question so clearly.
10 Forman (1990) offers a rich compendium of reports of the PCE. I have intentionally offered here several reports of this experience that are not included there.
11 James is quoting from St. Teresa of Avila, Interior Castle, in Oeuvres, trans. Bouix, vol. 3, pp. 421?4.