12 The mystic apparently remains conscious throughout. Although Teresa does not explicitly say the mystic is not asleep, I cannot imagine anyone spilling so much ink on merely sleeping or blacking out, or on something like a coma. See below for more explicit statements to this effect.
13 These two are not quite equivalent. Atman, when seen in its fullest, according to the Upanishads and to Advaita Vedanta, merges with Brahman, and thus is experienced as including the object or content of perception. Purusha, according to Samkhya, is more an independent monad. It thus remains forever separate from its content. But the two both represent the human awareness, however differently understood.
14 This account is taken from Forman (1998).
15 Vasubandu commentary on Vs. 1.1 of the Madhyanta Vibhaga, quoted in Nagao (1978). Vasubandu is here wrestling with just the focus that made Yogacara so distinctive and clear. In its focus on the alayavijnana, it deals directly with the question of what remains in ?cessation meditation?. Steven Collins (1982) believes this is a mistaken view of the nature of samadhi, though unfortunately he never directly confronts such Yogacara texts. For comparable analyses from a Zen perspective, with explicit comparisons with Yogacara, see e.g. Chang Chen Chi (1970), pp. 167?71.
16 See especially Forman (1990), Part I.
17 This debate goes back at least to Kant’s criticism of Hume’s ‘associationism’ in the eighteenth century. For a discussion of contemporary parallels, see Hardcastle (1994).
18 If we think in a socio-cultural way here, we might note that our long western worldview, with its roots in the Judaeo-Christian past, in the protestant capitalistic history, and in the history of science, would tend to favour a definition of consciousness in active, masculine, intentional, and ?doing? terminology. Thus consciousness is, in this view, always vectorial, intentionally pointing towards this or that. Such a definition fits how people are expected to act in such a culture. Contemplative traditions and the east, on the other hand, tend to be more open to defining consciousness as awareness per se, or just being. In the west we may take these to be too passive, feminine, but they ?fit? the more station-oriented caste and natal-status behavioural patterns. My thanks to Bill Parsons for this observation.
19 Logically: awareness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for binding; binding is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for awareness.
20 This usage preserves Deikman?s (1996) separation of awareness from the other senses of ?I?, and Chalmers? (1995) similar distinction. My thanks to Jonathan Shear for pointing out that I have reversed Chalmers? terms (he calls awareness in itself ?consciousness? and connects its various functional phenomena with the term ?awareness?). I believe that my usage is in better accord both with ordinary speech and the traditional scholarly use of ?pure consciousness? and ?pure consciousness event?.
21 See the extended discussion of this possibility in Forman (1998).
22 Here language fails us. The awareness is not in any sense conscious of the passage of time; rather I am suggesting that awareness ties itself together through what an external observer would note as the passage of time.
23 William James? thought that mysticism is ?transient?, i.e. short lived, clearly does not capture Bernadette Roberts? experience, nor many of the experiences documented in this section.
24 Here I am struck by the parallel with the rapid shifting of a physical system as it becomes coherent. Disorganized light just ?shifts? or ?zips? into laser light nearly instantaneously.
25 Writing this, I think of the parallel between this sense and Bernadette Robert?s sense of having lost the usual ?unlocalized sense of herself?.
26 It is my impression that the awareness of the specific locations within the body is not essential to this transformation.
27 Freud was employing a phrase from his correspondence with Ramakrishna?s disciple Romain Rolland. See Parsons (forthcoming).
28 Walt Whitman, quoted in James (1902/1983) p. 396, no reference.
29 Of course, that implies that one has some sort of non-sensory sense, the ability to sense one?s own expansive presence even though there are no visible mechanisms of sensation. But is that so strange after all? If we can sense our own awareness directly in the pure consciousness event, why shouldn?t we be able to sense something of its non-limited character on a more permanent basis?
30 See Freeman (1994) for a brief report and Clarke (1995) for the full text of Chris Clarke?s talk.
References
Barnard, William (1995), ?Response to Wilber?, unpublished paper delivered to the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion.
Chalmers, David J. (1995), ?Facing up to the problem of consciousness?, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2 (3), 1995, pp. 200?19.
Chang Chen Chi (1970), The Practice of Zen (New York: Perennial Library / Harper Row).
Clark, Thomas W. (1995), ?Function and phenomenology: closing the explanatory gap,? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2 (3), pp. 241?54.
Clark and Skinner (1958), Meister Eckhart: Selected Treatises and Sermons (London: Faber and Faber).
Clarke, C.J.S. (1995), ?The non-locality of mind?, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2 (3), pp. 231?40.
Collins, Steven (1982), Selfless Persons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
Deikman, Arthur (1996), ? ??I?? = Awareness?, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3 (4), 350?6.
Forman, Robert K.C. (ed. 1990), The Problem of Pure Consciousness (New York: Oxford University Press).
Forman, Robert K.C. (1998) Mysticism, Mind, Consciousness (Albany, NY: SUNY Press).
Freeman, Anthony (1994), ?The science of consciousness: non-locality of mind? [Conference Report], The Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (2), pp. 283?4.
Griffiths, Paul (1990), ?Pure Consciousness and Indian Buddhism,? in The Problem of Pure Consciousness.
Hardcastle, Valerie (1994), ‘Psychology’s “binding problem” and possible neurological solutions’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (1), pp. 66-90.
Hume, Robert (trans. 1931), The Thirteen Principle Upanishads (London: Oxford University Press).
James, William (1902/1983), The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green and Co.; reprinted in Penguin Edition).
Larson, J.G. (1979), Classical Samkhya: An Interpretation of its History and Meaning (Santa Barbara: Ross/Erikson).
Libet, Benjamin (1994), ?A testable field theory of mind?brain interaction?, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (1), pp. 119?26.
Lonergan, B. (1967), Collection, ed. Frederick Crowe (New York: Herder and Herder).
McCarthy, Michael H. (1990), The Crisis in Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press).
Mangan, Bruce (1994), ?Language and experience in the cognitive study of mysticism ? commentary on Forman?, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (2), pp. 250?2.
von Meyensberg, Malwida (1900), Memoiren einer Idealistin, 5th Auflage, iii. 166. Quoted in James (1902/1983), p. 395.
Nagao, Gadjin M. (trans. 1978), ?The Culasunnata-Sutta (Lesser discourse on Emptiness)? translated as, ???What Remains?? in Sunyata: A Yogacara Interpretation of Emptiness?, in Mahayana Buddhist Meditation, ed. Minoru Kiyota (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii).
Ornstein, Robert (1976), ?The techniques of meditation and their implications for modern psychology?, in On The Psychology of Meditation, Claudio Naranjo and Robert Ornstein (New York: Penguin).
Otto, Rudolf (1930), Mysticism East and West, trans. Bertha Bracey and Richard Payne (New York: Macamillan).
Parsons, William (forthcoming), The Enigma of the Oceanic Feeling (Oxford University Press).
Peers, E. Allison (trans. 1961), The Interior Castle [Teresa of Avila] (New York: Doubleday).
Roberts, Bernadette (1984), The Experience of No-Self (Boulder: Shambala).
Sacks, Oliver (1994), ‘An anthropologist on Mars’ [interview with Anthony Freeman], Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1 (2), pp. 234-40.
Smart, Ninian (date??), ?Interpretation and mystical experience?, Sophia, 1 (1), p. 75.
Stace, W.T. (1960), Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan Press).
Walshe, M.O?C. (1982), Meister Eckhart, Sermons and Tractates, Vol. 1 (London: Watkins).
Wilber, Ken (1980), The Atman Project (Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House).