What is mysticism?

You ask, how can we know the Infinite? I answer, not by reason. It is the office of reason to distinguish and define. The Infinite, therefore, cannot be ranked among its objects. You can only apprehend the Infinite by a faculty superior to reason, by entering into a state in which you are your finite self no longer—in which the divine essence is communicated to you. . . . It is the liberation of your mind from its finite consciousness. Like only can apprehend like; when you thus cease to be finite, you become one with the Infinite. In the reduction of your soul to its simplest self, its divine essence, you realize this union—this identity. – Plotinus

To find a buddha, all you have to do is see your nature. Your nature is the buddha. And the buddha is the person who’s free, free of plans, free of cares. If you don’t see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you’ll never find a buddha. The truth is, there’s nothing to find. – Bodhidharma

Another blogger recently recommended an interesting book to me, ‘Rational Mysticism‘ by John Horgan. I’m still only half way through it so it’s probably a little early to do a definitive review, but it has already given me enough food for thought to do at least a blog post about it. So here goes.

Horgan is a very good writer and pretty good journalist – at least when it comes to the usual topics journalists take on. He has a bit of a history writing about philosophy and esoterica but his main area of expertise is science journalism and it shows. What Horgan is definitely not is an epistemologist. He has a pretty shaky grounding in the nature of knowledge, what can be known and how we can know it, and that’s something that repeatedly lets him down in ‘Rational Mysticism‘. He is smart and good at setting aside his own prejudice and giving his interviewees a fair go. When analysing instead of interviewing he makes a much greater effort than most to clarify his own position in a way which doesn’t obscure his subject in judgmentalism but still allows the reader to see how his values might be slanting his writing and try to adjust for it. He is rational, objective, skeptical, reductionist and a thorough researcher – all excellent qualities in a science journalist but not necessarily ideal for the material he takes on in ‘Rational Mysticism‘. The main problem is he doesn’t know when it’s time to set those tools aside.

Perhaps the prime example of this shortcoming in ‘Rational Mysticism‘ is the frequently recurring theme of Horgan’s bum trip, an initially exhilarating but ultimately nightmarish experience with a mystery drug that may have been ‘BZ’ (3-quinuclidinyl benzilate) – a powerful hallucinogen originally developed by the US Army as a chemical weapon. He initially describes the feeling of being many different kinds of beings – animals, an apeman, Adam and Eve – then of being a kind of master of the universe searching for pure pleasure. Finally he goes in search of ultimate knowledge – everything there is to learn about the universe past, present and future – and that’s when things come unstuck. His final question about life the universe and everything is ‘Why?’, but as he is life, the universe and everything there is no-one to answer. He is filled with a sudden existential dread – there is no-one who can tell him why he exists. He could just as easily be nothing. At any instant he could be swallowed by infinite darkness. He fled in horror from his own sense of oneness back into self/otherness, duality.

Apart from temporarily driving Horgan towards a simplistic, negativistic version of Gnosticism it left him with the conviction there are at least two kinds of mystical experiences, Heaven and Hell. Later, after studying various interpretations of the perennial philosophy, he added Illusion to his list of mystical classifications.

To me his experience was the inevitable result of believing he could acquire something from his mystical experience. Seeking the simple experience of bliss isn’t necessarily problematic, bliss is something you can become completely absorbed in, become one with. But by seeking knowledge, especially via the usual perspective of a science journalist, Horgan was dividing the universe into subject and object, observer and observed, acquirer and acquisition. He was reconstructing his ‘self’ from the void.

But under the influence of psychosis or powerful psychedelics the ‘self’ cannot hold. It is under constant threat of ‘dissolving’ into the whole. To enjoy a trip you must jump off the ‘self’ into the void, otherwise you will be enveloped in existential fear of your own annihilation.

Another of Horgan’s follies is his search for an ‘authoritative’ definition of mysticism, which he does by searching for an ultimate authority who can tell him. So far, halfway through the book, none of his interviewees have met his stringent criteria for being an ‘enlightened master’ who can give him the definitive answer in interview format. He has armed himself with several signs of what an enlightened master looks like apparently without questioning whether the sources for his criteria are ‘enlightened’ enough give such answers or whether he would be ‘enlightened’ enough to understand them if they did. Perhaps he needs Ralph Nader to road test his gurus and tell him which ones might be safe at any speed.

It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Horgan that the English language itself may not be rigorous or flexible enough to definitively pin down something as subjective and inexpressible as the mystical experience. That everyone may be defining it from their own perspective of mutual incomprehension. That there is no definition of mysticism.

But of course I have the correct definition of mysticism. The absolutely authoritative one. The only definition of mysticism there could possibly be.

Perennialism is the belief all religions are expressions of the same ultimate truth. Most contemporary perrenialists believe the mystical experience of unity is the root of this truth and the differences between all the religions of history is simply the different cultural interpretations of that essentially inexpressible Truth.

I am not a perennialist.

To me religions are made up of varying proportions of three main strands. One is Law, the customs and ethics binding the people of a faith into a coherent unit which enables them to live semi-harmoniously and resist assimilation or destruction by neighbouring faiths. The second is Myth, the stories the faithful tell themselves and each other to explain the universe and their place in it and to justify Law. Mysticism is a product of looking inwards for the truth and though it produces insights and inspirations which have found their way into the traditions of all major religions it is usually in creative tension with their other aspects – especially Law. Religious mystics are just as likely to be burned at the stake as heretics as elevated onto a pedestal as saints. Sometimes they are both.

To try to reduce religions to a fundamental core of mysticism is do violence to the depth, complexity and subtlety of their traditions and to insult those who follow them. Except Hindus of course. You can’t insult Hindus about their religion. They think everything is Hinduism. Even insults.

While I’m not a perennialist, I do think all mystical experiences are the same thing, though they are expressed through many different metaphors. I think the mystical experience is Horgan’s ‘Heaven’. The Oneness beyond unity and separation. The Truth beyond truth or falsehood. The thing more Real than reality. The unmediated. The attributeless. That which is. Bliss.

Is it God?
Beats me, I’m agnostic.

But it must be the same for everyone who experiences it because it is without form or attributes. It is independent of the individual who experiences it because the individual cannot experience it. It is the negation of individuality.

Horgan’s Hell is the self when it tries to be a tourist in Heaven. It is the embodiment of ego, separateness and isolation. It is not the mystical experience, it is the failure of the mystical experience.

Horgan’s Illusion is probably not one thing and I am not dogmatic about what it may be. Often the means by which the mystical experience is attained – drugs, psychosis, fever, meditation, epilepsy – have side effects on the mind which may result in hallucinations. They are simply subsidiary noise. They are no more the mystical experience than the rattle of the projector is the soundtrack of the movie. The attempts made by the self to interpret mystical experiences often cause illusions too and I think this is at the root of the different metaphors those from different cultures reach for to describe the experience. They are the interpretation of the movie, not the movie itself.

I believe my experience of Mahakali the Dancer is an illusory manifestation of my separateness from the rest of the universe. She is only as real as I am, not as real as Heaven. We are separate individuals contingent on the illusion that separate individuals are possible. We are each other’s illusion.

But I hope one day to learn the steps Mahakali seems to be trying to teach me. When I do we will dance. When we dance we will both cease to exist. We will be One. We will be Heaven.