Knowledge, Mysticism and Modern Theory

(I aplogize for all you academics, who might be passing through, that this is not in proper MLA format. It seems this site won't allow such editing...)




Knowledge, Mysticism and Modern Theory



Introduction


         “One time Arthur was scared out of his wits when Merlin ran around brandishing a huge butcher’s knife like a madman. ‘What are you doing?’ the boy asked in terror.
         ‘Thinking,’ Merlin replied. ‘Don’t you think this way?’
         ‘No,’ Arthur said.
         Merlin suddenly stopped. ‘Ah, then I must be mistaken. My impression was that all mortals used their minds like knives, cutting and dissecting. I wanted to see what that was like. If I may say so, there is a good deal of violence hidden in what you mortals call rationality.’” (Chopra, 1996, p. 31)

         That said, I must now proceed to show in approximately 6000 words why I tend to cozy up to the author of the proverb, a fool is known by a multitude of words.
         There is a seemingly pathological compulsion for people to rationalize, philosophize and debate which has split the scientific and the spiritual realms into two completely separate domains. Discourse is redundant. Everything has been said in one form or another. The language just becomes more obscure and complicated due to the creation of an assortment of paradigms, theories and ideologies. What I want to explore in this paper is the gathering of knowledge through intuition - or wisdom derived from a so-called “mystical” or inner experience as opposed to external and often lengthy study.

Science or Spirit

         John Ralston Saul (1995) believes that we are “a society addicted to ideologies” (p. 2). Further, he feels that the social sciences and its particular dialect are at the core of the disease.

         “Economics, political scientists and sociologists, in particular, have attempted to imitate scientific analysis through the accumulation of circumstantial evidence, but, above all, through their parodies of the worst of the scientific dialects. As in business and governmental corporations, the purpose of such obscure language could be reduced to the following formula; obscurity suggests complexity which suggests importance. The dialects are thus more or less conscious weapons of self-protection and unconscious tools of self-deception". (pp. 49, 50).

         Indeed, if no one voiced opinions or ideas, there would not have been enough cave space to accommodate us all. But is all this bantering back and forth in barely intelligible, restrictive jargon really necessary for progression? Just because we have managed to create hosts of theoretical constructs in order to attempt to study and name everything from insect behavior to black holes, does this mean we’re closer to solutions and answers, or merely creating more mazes for wander? In ancient societies, people created gods to explain the unexplainable. Are our constructed paradigms merely a renaming of those gods?
         I find myself constantly shifting between the desire for knowledge and thus, discourse, and the desire for innocence, silence. Will knowledge cloud my vision? Or will innocence forever limit my vision? Knowledge increases sorrow goes the age-old proverb. And a donkey laden with books is still a donkey. Or, he who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know. Perhaps the answer lies in the remarriage of the scientific and the spiritual.
         Personally, I can no longer see a distinction between the two. Positivist scientific reason holds that man stands outside observable phenomena, a completely objective non-participant in relation to the world. This is impossible. We are made of the same stuff that composes a spider and interstellar dust. We are not only in the universe, we are the universe. Every thought we have produces a physical response in the material world.
         The collective human consciousness is evolving, and with it, scientific progression. Through each century – from the dark barbarous middle ages into the age of enlightenment in which it became popular to express individual opinions; onward into the age of modernity and scientific discovery; and into the postmodern age in which the human consciousness seems to be loosening itself from the entrenchment of rigid analytic-empirical structure and into a more eclectic, intuitive approach of inquiry and discovery - perhaps science itself is finding its way back to the ancient source where the spiritual is scientific and vice versa.
         Bertrand Russell (1921) writes in a famous essay that “the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism” (p. 1). Einstein’s discoveries of mathematical formulas were the results of his deep desire to know the thoughts of God. Newton is said to have spent more time studying alchemy than calculus and theories of gravitation. “In millenia past, “writes Pandit Rajmani Tigunait (1993), “ scientists (now known as the sages) focused the power and creativity of their minds on the inner space of their own beings, seeking to discover the full potential and nature of the human being. Using their finely trained, disciplined, and concentrated minds as their tool of exploration, they made discoveries in the laboratories of their own bodies and minds” (p. 6).

         I feel that the tendency towards inner knowledge is innate in every one of us, although perhaps we are at different stages of awareness both as individuals and as a society.
To begin this exploration, I want to return to earlier civilizations and the philosophies that have affected our western world. In particular, I will be discussing the phenomenon known as “mysticism”, which as a singular term, can be misleading. The dictionary provides three definitions, the third of which, I find paradoxical and rather amusing in relation to the first two:
         “1. The doctrines or beliefs of a mystic, specifically the doctrine that it is possible to achieve communion with God through contemplation and love without the medium of human reason. 2. Any doctrine that asserts the possibility of attaining knowledge of spiritual truths through intuition acquired by fixed meditation, 3. Vague, obscure, or confused thinking or belief” (Webster’s’ New World Dictionary, 1976)

         In other words, our language is so ambiguous that it appears that the possibility of attaining knowledge through intuition is vague, obscure and confused thinking, a direct contradiction to the experience of the Absolute through mystical clarity or vision.
         Moreover, I do not view mysticism as a religious phenomenon, but rather, as an intellectual one. And yet, mystics have said that the mystical experience transcends both logic and intellect. However, language is limiting too. Logic refers to those thought processes that make sense to our limited intellectual capacity. The so-called mystical experience makes perfect sense to me; therefore it is also logical. Other terms I will be using, such as, “God” and “Divine” which are generally used to signify a quality or attribute in religious disciplines, are to me, merely terms used by thinkers to describe something which is not clearly understood in our limited thinking. “God”, “Divine” “the One”, and other such terms, for the purposes of this paper, connote an Absolute Truth which is beyond the physical realm. Philosophers called it the “Absolute”; Christian mystics, “God”; Sufis, the “Beloved”; Taoists, the “Tao”; Buddhists, “Nirvana” and so on. The term “mystical” can be understood only within the cultural context in which it abides. For instance, the ancient Greek cults, “muein” meant “to remain silent”. Later, in Neoplatonic theories, “mystical” meant “wordless contemplation”. In early Christianity, the “mystical” referred to all things considered spiritual at the time, including the sacraments. In the fifteenth century, Christian mysticism came to mean an experiential knowledge of God through unitive love. My personal understanding of the term is that of an ordinary phenomenon, which is comprehended only by a select few who seek to truly understand and experience it, and termed “mystical” by those who don’t.
         My exploration of the mystical has little, if anything, to do with religion, which, in my opinion, is a set a man-made myths formulated to provide man with an external sense of meaning. Mysticism is found in both the secular and religious sectors of every society. Within religious sectors, mystics often have become dissatisfied with the doctrines and methods set forth in their particular creed and have oftentimes been ostracized by their religious peers. Particularly, mystics within the three God religions – Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, have been suppressed in their expression of mystical experience, although Buddhists, Taoists and Hindus have long known the value of intuition.
         The musings set forth in this paper are certain to be one of deep self-exploration rather than a rational and academic discourse. As I begin to read works of some of the better known mystics of the ages, I feel as though I am treading on holy ground, abashed somewhat that I am delving into very personal territory. The mystical experience itself is so completely subjective that it cannot even be delineated in tangible rhetoric. “Explanations inevitably do violence to the beauty and perfection of what Is, dragging the Nameless down to the level of philosophy and metaphysics” (Blofeld, 1974, p. 25). Yet philosophers and others interested in the “paranormal” persist in their attempts to peer into, and explicate, the phenomenal world of mysticism, and even some of the mystics themselves have attempted to share their insight. I feel that the pursuit of the mystical experience is born of the collective unconscious – the past of the soul as it were, the innate desire to return to the Source. For instance, if you have never had the experience of tasting the succulent sweetness of a ripe mango, you would probably not crave mangoes. Yet if you have tasted, and found them delectable, you would probably want to experience that taste again and again. But then how would you describe the taste to someone who has never tasted? Similarly, the individual who craves that Oneness with God, or the Ultimate Source, must have, at some point in his eternal consciousness, experienced that unalloyed bliss of pure knowledge. Yet, it would be nearly impossible to describe the vision to one who is ignorant of that knowledge.
         Philosophers, social scientists, and other thinkers galore expose such diverse opinions regarding the nature of reality that it seems almost unfeasible for civilizations to progress as they do. But when we take a look at the testimonies of past and present mystics, the unanimity of agreement must reflect some basic primordial truth. The methods may vary, but the experience is the same – the intellectual attainment of a universal knowledge. The experience itself does not appear to be emotional in nature, but the resulting transformation does seem to reflect through human emotion.
         Many mystics had access to past writings and/or oral teachings of their predecessors, but many did not. The experience seems to have been born of individual desire, independent of external influence. In fact, it would seem more likely that these mystical occurrences would occur in less advanced civilizations where the likelihood of external distraction is less. From preliterate societies we find symbols of the mystical experience handed to us as artifacts and artistic renderings of mythologies. In almost every case, we find the concept of a Father-God who is the self-existent universal consciousness and the Mother–Goddess who is the creative manifestation of that single consciousness. It is apparent, through archeological excavations, that most of these ancient peoples recognized the dual aspects of the one Absolute as consciousness and Its manifestations as the cosmos.
         S. Abhayananda (1996) attempts to explain the duality in unity as follows:

         "In the One, there is no form, no experience at all. There is no vision, and
no knowledge. For, in order for there to be experience, there has to be two; the experiencer and the experienced. For vision, there has to be a seer and a seen; for knowledge, there must be a knower and a known, a subject and an object. For any of these things to be, the One must pretend to be two, must create within Itself the semblance of duality. If there is only a seer and no seen, there can be no vision. And if there is only a seen and no seer, again, vision cannot be” (p. 10).

         The Rig Vedas are a compilation of hymns recorded from the oral tradition of the Aryans dating back to 2000 – 1500 B. C. E. These ancient authors also recognized the dual principles in the unity of the Ultimate Reality.
         “In truth Prajapati [Lord of all creatures] is the Father of the world;
With Him was Vac [Speech or Word], the other aspect of Himself. With Her, He begat life.
She conceived; and going forth from Him, She formed all Creatures. And then, once again, She is re-absorbed in Prajapati.” (Abhayandnanda, 1996, p. 23)

         The Upanishads, a collection of philosophical and esoteric prose and poetry within the Hindu tradition written some three thousand years ago, contain some of the first written accounts we have of the mystical vision. The basic tenet of these writings is the same. “There a man possesses everything; for he is one with the ONE”.
         Various scholars throughout the ages have attempted to attach cultural significance to the philosophies of primitive cultures and their striking similarities in content. Carl Jung (1978), for instance, has theorized that we have common experiences brought down through a collective archetypal unconscious. While some adherents to spiritual theories might dismiss such ideas as ignorant or unenlightened, I feel that although the mystical experience is real, some basic inherent desire must spring from the deepest part of the psyche to bring an individual into his most heightened state of awareness. I also feel that this is a scientific phenomenon, indeed inspired by the unified Cosmic Consciousness, which is science personified.

Mystics

         Around the 6th century B.C.E., a young prince named Siddhartha, became restless and dissatisfied with the vanity of aristocratic life and joined the many wandering monks and ascetics who frequented the countryside at that time, believing the path to freedom lay in austerity and poverty. Yet within a few short years, he also became dissatisfied with the stringent life they led and began to seek freedom within his own being. Of his vision the Buddha wrote, “I am a single, undifferentiated Mind, yet I shine forth, like the radiant beams of the Sun, as a universe of countless living beings, all made of my light. All beings are united in me, for I am their consciousness, their form, their very being. Never are there any separate selves; that is only an illusion produced by the limiting of consciousness. All are but players in the outflowing radiance of the one Being.” Abhayananda p.74).

         Although little is known of Pythagorus (570 – 490 B.C.E.), from the writings and commentaries of his critics and contemporaries, it would be reasonable to assume that he had attained the mystical vision. His mystical philosophy regarding a single consciousness from which flowed the material world, agreed with the seers of the Upanishads. In an engaging imaginary interview with Pythagorus, Christian Wertenbaker (1999) discusses the dichotomy between science and mysticism, suggesting that the gap is closing and that the two are even destined to join together. Modern science utilizes external methods of inquiry while mysticism “regards true knowledge as graspable from within, by a specially trained, more inclusive, higher consciousness. This presupposes that we humans can be in tune with the essence of the cosmos”(p 71).
         Around the same time in Ephesus, a man named Heraclitus was also contemplating Ultimate Reality. Like the Buddha, he too had renounced his aristocratic heritage to become a recluse, living in the mountains, sustained by wild edibles. It does not appear that Heraclitus would have had access to Eastern thought and that his own philosophy was derived from his own personal contemplation and experience. Heraclitus, as did the ancient Indians, proclaimed that the universe was a manifestation of the One Mind. This manifestation was made possible by the “Logos” or “thought” of God. The Logos was the creative energy of the universe, similar to the “svada” of the ancient vedic hymnists, and the “word” described in the book of John of the Christian Bible.
         In those days of mythology with its pantheon of gods who reeked havoc or distributed mercy upon the mortals without reason, it was considered heresy to speak out against the gods or proclaim beliefs other than what the state supported. Socrates (470 – 399?) emerged in just such an environment. Although Socrates did not write anything that has survived, his student, Plato and some of his other contemporaries relived and wrote some of his teachings as they understood and interpreted them. Socrates was aware of the eastern philosophies and was familiar with the writings of the Upanishads. But it does not appear that his wisdom flowed from study, but rather through his habit of self-examination and contemplation. Socrates knew that the only way to reach the perception of the Absolute was through desire and intellect. Socrates loved to engage in conversation. But he was cautious, not only for fear of being accused of heresy, but as a means of his own search for truth, and as an encouragement for his followers to question their values as well. In public he was careful to maintain a safe range of discussion, but when in the company of his more intimate friends, he dared to speak of the mystical union with the Source of all. Once enlightened and unable to explicate the experience, others would deem him insane which would subject him to ridicule and disdain. Indeed this seems to be the case with all mystics.
         Socrates’ student, Plato, attempted to scribe the teachings of his master, but as so often is the case when one who has not experienced the vision, regardless of his intellectual capacity and knowledge, he can never quite capture the true essence of the original teachings. Perceptions, speculations and interpretations are often added, and a great deal of information may be lost. Thus, although Plato has been termed one of the Philosopher Kings of our Western society, his vision was purely intellectual, not experiential. The same may be said for Aristotle, Plato's successor, who, although opposed to many of Plato’s concepts, also contributed immense intellectual possibilities to our western metaphysical thinking.
         Some centuries later, a young Jew by the name of Joshua ben Joseph, better known by his Greek name, Jesus, powerfully influenced the Mediterranean world by proclaiming that he was One with the Father-God, the Supreme Source, and that all of humankind could also experience that unity, rather than remain in the obscurity of ignorance. Jesus, like Socrates, was accused of heresy and was executed for his proclamations of Absolute Truth. The life of Jesus truly represented a mirror of the Divine Knowledge and perhaps because of this, he became deified by his followers. Myriad religious sects sprang up in the centuries that followed the death of Jesus but few retained the invaluable message he had proclaimed.
         In about the 6th century C.E., a collection of writings was brought to the forefront of mystical study. This unknown author also claimed pure knowledge of God and presented again the principle of duality in the One; God as the transcendent, unmanifest Absolute, and the phenomenal world as the manifestation, or appearance, of God. He also spoke of the non-existence of ignorance, or that the appearance of ignorance is merely the absence of knowledge. Writes S. Abhayananda,

         “The ignorance of a child is vanished in the man; and where can we say that it went? It went nowhere; for it never was as a real entity, but was a mere absence or deprivation of knowledge, as darkness is but the absence of light. Indeed, the process of evolving toward light or knowledge diminishes and eventually dispels darkness or ignorance, thereby revealing its non-existence. Likewise… the procession toward the Good reveals the non-existence of evil; it has but an ephemeral and illusory appearance of reality. And when the perfect Light, the absolute Good, the supreme Knowledge, is attained, all darkness, all evil, all ignorance, is seen to be truly non-existent” (p. 160)

         Buddhism entered China in the first few centuries of the Common Era and mingled with the already present Taoism. Again, although the language differed between the two traditions, the mystical experience was identical. Even the means to realization was the same – through deep meditative silence and constant reflection in which the individual turns her mind inward towards the One Source.
         During the medieval ages, Sufis, Jewish and Christian mystics arose within their various religious traditions. However, as stated earlier, these religious “rebels” were most often renounced by their religious counterparts as they delved into regions unknown and repudiated by pious leaders. Here again, although the language and symbolism may differ from earlier traditions, the experience was the same.

Modern Philosophy


         Civilizations of the 17th and 18th centuries were so focused on the emancipation of humanity through empirical scientific investigation, that the metaphysical and abstract took a back seat to the physical and concrete. Faith in religious doctrine turned to a new god - Reason. Yet in spite of the rationalist thinking, philosophers still attempted to expound on the wisdom of the ancient sages.
         In his Ethics Demonstrated with Geometrical Order, 1674, Spinoza (1632 – 1677) postulated that the universe is God, who (or which) is the primal source of all material substance. In a theory known as parallelism, every thought (or idea) has a physical counterpart (physical manifestation), and, similarly, every physical object has a counterpart in thought. In other words, all thought creates.
         G.W.F Hegel (1770 - 1831), one of the most influential of the German philosophers felt that the mind does not simply absorb information passively, but is an active organizer of the external world. Again, all thought creates. For Hegel, the individual mind is part of the One or Absolute Mind, and, for this reason, we should not be so concerned about individual freedom, as unity will be attained when the collective consciousness realizes this truth. The means to knowledge is through an inquiry process Hegel termed, “dialectical”. In a dialectical process, the initial thesis proves to be inadequate and thus, its opposite, or antithesis, is brought up. Progress occurs when this pair of opposites is synthesized in a superior understanding of both. Nothing new here. The foundations of most ancient eastern philosophies are based upon this same concept - the balance of opposites. In fact, it appears that the mystical experience itself begins with the rational intellect, pulls in its opposite, the irrational, and reaches a balance in the transcendence of both.
         I feel that perhaps Nietzshe’s (1844 – 1900) proclamation on the death of God ushered in some of the first waves of post-modern thought. Although he seemed to have suffered from delusions of grandeur, his extreme criticism of all existing paradigms of thought is an example of the dialectic reasoning necessary for progression. He believed that the truth was concealed in centuries of societal lies that needed be destroyed in order that the good might be returned. And indeed, critical reflection is absolutely necessary for learning and progression. But it is an individual inner reflection at the micro level that is responsible for change at the macro level. Most postmodern critics emphasize phenomenological experience. New Criticism, a mode of postmodern literary thought generated through the early decades of the 20th century, slates its focus on “paradox, conflict and tensions between opposing elements, and how these can be resolved harmoniously”. Such thought individualizes experience and places it in the present.
         Ernest Holmes (1938), a “new thought” advocate, puts forth the idea of the One Mind in his influential book, The Science of Mind. Although it does not appear that Holmes had had any mystical experiences, his intellectual understanding of the concept of the Universal Mind is profound. “Science knows nothing of opinion,” he writes, “ but recognizes a government of law whose principles are universal” (p. 25). Holmes believed in a Universal Law, which is God, the One Mind. Our individual minds are merely elements of the Universal Mind. In short, we are thoughts of God. And created in the “image” of God, every thought we have also creates. Therefore, “to learn how to think is to learn how to live” (p. 29). Further, Holmes states that “there is but one Subjective Mind, and what we call our subjective mind is really the use we are making of the One Law. Each individual maintains his identity in Law, through his personal use of It. And each is drawing from Life what he thinks into It!” (p. 29).

         I too, feel that God is Science. We trust the laws of physical science even though the principles behind the laws are invisible. “Metaphysical” is another term which masters of our language have coined to represent what is “beyond” the physical or observable – something not yet understood. But what is tangible other than results? When I look around my present experience, everything I have and everything I am in my physical form, is the direct result of my own thoughts. For instance, I had been ill for many years without serious attempts at medical intervention. In 1998, I was referred to a doctor who dealt primarily with chronic fatigue and pain disorders. Although she is the only physician I have ever seen who truly empathized with my condition, I found myself growing much worse over the next few years as a result of her constant affirmation that I was extremely ill, one of the worst cases she had ever encountered. Finally, by her sympathetic suggestion, I was totally bedridden! It was not until I disposed of the “handicap” parking tag and the hired housemaid, and hauled myself out of bed that I began to improve.
         Bernie Siegal, M.D. (1989) has done paramount research into the relationship between consciousness, psychosocial factors, the immune system and attitude. His research and writings are assisting the medical profession in its return to a more holistic approach to medicine. Centuries ago, before the modern age of chemical therapies and impersonal care doctors treated patients according to their life histories and circumstances. Doctors needed to know their patients personally because it was understood that individual emotions affected one’s state of health. In his book, Peace, Love and Healing, Siegal documents many cases in which individuals have healed their bodies from disease through positive thinking and an understanding that all thought does indeed create. “Nothing happens onto us; we are the happeners. The mind and body work together, with the body being the screen where the movie is shown” (Siegal, p. 83). We tell our cells how to think and how to act. The principle of vaccination is based on the body’s ability to learn and remember. Siegal also believes there is a Superintelligence at work, one of which we are all a part. This “intelligence resides within each of us [and] is the message carried by psyche and soma… It makes us who we are and, if we listen to it, will keep us on our path” (p. 38). Furthermore, comments Siegal, “the more I see of the workings of our universe, the more mystical I become. I’m not mystical in spite of being a surgeon; I’m mystical because I’m a surgeon” (p. 38).
         The Depression of the 1930s and the wars of this century turned people’s focus towards political and economic affairs rather than the philosophical or spiritual. Yet in the later part of the 20th century and now into the 21st century, there has been a mass search for that elusive “truth”. Seeking does lead to solution. Yet does not continued questioning also bring greater unrest? Lewis Carroll’s (1962) Alice eventually arrives at her desired destination by going backwards down the path, rather than through persistent, but vain effort in the usual way. The satisfaction and relief she discovers when she ceases to strive in the more rational fashion is comparable to the enlightenment one encounters when one ceases to seek for meaning. The release found upon giving in to “nonsense” rather than reason, is a total encompassing of such wisdom, compassion and power such as can hardly be intellectualized within the boundaries of ordinary and rational language. Filling the intellect only leads to striving, which in turn leads to discontentment and further striving. The intellect merely “upsets the blissful peace of ignorance, and yet it does not restore the former state of things by offering something else… it waits for something higher than itself for the solution of all the questions it will raise regardless of consequences” (Humphreys, 1961 p. 15). The Taoist notion of “non-action” most closely exemplifies my need for quiet contemplation as a means of becoming more aware of my own innate wisdom.
         Humanity has been seeking consonance, place, belonging, thinking it is there to be found, as though meaning has been something misplaced a long time ago, in some other era before language had begun to erode it into an invaluable commodity, like gold, or the idea of gold. I find all these attempts at forming theories, paradigms, ideologies, far too private a matter for public consumption. It is nauseatingly difficult, for instance, when you consider that the sun takes approximately two-hundred-and-forty-million years to complete one orbital cycle in its path around this particular galaxy, to impose anything of significance onto this dust particle we call the earth.
         As a lover of poetry and having read many commentaries, hymns and stories by proclaimed mystics, I realize that they all, regardless of the cultural-religious context in which they lived and wrote, describe the same sort of experience - the Oneness with the true source, that Ultimate Reality, the Pure Consciousness. They speak of the duality in unity, the subject/object as One. There is one Supreme Consciousness or Mind. The manifest universe and all that exists in form are Its thoughts. The mystics have their own personal schema, remaining unperturbed by societal or scientific progression or change, “independent of the whims of society and its transient fashions” (Tigunait, 1993 p. 5).
         Whereas science was once a discipline of empirical study, science now tells us that nothing in truly provable. All “laws”, physical or metaphysical, are really just theories. Atoms, for example, are packets of vibrating energy that have no solidity. My hands, working at the keyboard of this computer, are nothing but invisible vibrations, as is the computer and the floor I am laying on. “At the atomic level all objects are revealed as 99.9999 percent empty space. On its own scale, the distance between a whirling electron and the nucleus it revolves around is wider than the distance between the earth and the sun” (Chopra, 2000 p. 29). By this reasoning, this entire universe is simply a mirage, vibrating millions of times per second, just as the still pictures of a movie are flashed so quickly that we cannot perceive the individual frames. Some subatomic particles do not follow the rules of physics as we know them and can be in more than one place at a time. Time is relative and can speed up or slow down, a convenience to keep everything from happening all at once. What we perceive as reality is a projection of vibrating energy, flashing so quickly we are unable to perceive the spaces. So while I say that we are a society addicted to theories, it appears that theory is the only ground we have to stand upon, even though that grounding is only a mirage. And what creates theories but our minds, our consciousness.

Conclusion


         Paul Pearsall, Ph.D. (1999), a psychoneuroimmunologist, studies the relationship between the human brain, the immune system and external experience. In conclusion to this paper I would like to recount one of his stories regarding a heart transplant recipient which prompts pause for ponder to those of us who often prefer to rely on scientific inquiry for validity.
         “I recently spoke to an international group of psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers meeting in Houston, Texas. I spoke to them about my ideas about the central role of the heart in our psychological and spiritual life, and following my presentation, a psychiatrist came to the microphone during the question and answer session to ask me about one of her patients whose experience seemed to substantiate my ideas about cellular memories and a thinking heart. The case disturbed her so much that she struggled to speak through her tears.
Sobbing to the point that the audience and I had difficulty understanding her, she said, ‘I have a patient, an eight-year-old little girl who received the heart of a murdered ten-year-old. Her mother brought her to me when she started screaming at night about her dreams of the man who had murdered her donor. She said her daughter knew who it was. After several sessions, I just could not deny the reality of what this child was telling me. Her mother and I finally decided to call the police and, using the descriptions from the little girl, they found the murderer. He was easily convicted with evidence my patient provided. The time, the weapon, the place, the clothes he wore, what the little girl he killed had said to him … everything the little heart transplant recipient reported was completely accurate.
As the therapist returned to her seat, the audience of scientifically trained and clinically experienced professionals sat in silence…’” (Pearsall, 1999, p. 7)

         The sum of this paper could probably be stated, thesis, exposition and conclusion, in this simple poem by Robert Frost (1874 – 1963);

"We all dance ‘round in a ring and suppose
But the secret sits in the middle and knows".

References


Abhayananda, S. History of Mysticism. Olympia. Atman Books, 1996

Blofeld, John. Beyond the Gods. London. George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1974

Briton, Derek. The Modern Practice of Adult Education. New York. State University of New York Press, 1996

Bonnycastle, Stephen. In Search of Authority. Peterborough. Broadview Press, 1996

Chopra, Deepak. How To Know God. New York. Harmony Books, 2000

Holmes, Ernest. The Science of Mind. New York. Penguin Putnam Inc., 1938

Lewis, Carroll. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. London. Penguin Group, 1962

Pearsall, Paul. The Heart’s Code. New York. Broadway Books, 1998

Russell, Bertrand. Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays. London. Longmans, Green & Co. Inc, 1921

Saul, John Ralston. The Unconscious Civilization. Concord. House of Anansi Press
Limited, 1995

Siegel, Bernie S. Peace, Love & Healing. New York. Harper & Row, 1989

Stace, W. T. Mysticism and Philosophy. Los Angeles. Jeremy P. Archer Inc., 1960

Tigunait, Pandit Rajmani. The Tradition of the Himalayan Masters. Honesdale. Himalayan International Institute. 1993

Wertenbaker, Christian. “A New Science of Mysticism: Pythagoras in 1999.” Parabola. Fall, 1999: 69 – 77)