Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border between Science and Spirituality
by John Horgan
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New York, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company 2003. 292pp Notes, references 34pp $25.00
This is a masterful discussion of scientific perspectives on spirituality, supplemented with a series of interviews with many of today's prominent (mostly US) proponents of various views on mysticism and spirituality. Horgan is a skeptical mystic whose personal struggles with a wish to find a graspable truth is tempered by his theodicy -- a difficulty in accepting that there could be a God who would allow the degrees of evil, suffering and pain that have been experienced in the world.
Horgan considers the perennial philosophy through an interview with Houston Smith, supplemented by Smith's writings and those of William James. Smith glories in the wisdom teachings of diverse traditions. Horgan finds Smith
...too forgiving of religions' faults and contradictions. His affection for religions is of course one of his most appealing traits. He does not merely tolerate the diverse faiths of the world; he embraces them in all their multifarious glory... (p. 22)
All these contradictions and distinctions, Smith asserts, dissolve within the supreme mystical vision, which reveals a reality that transcends all worldly categories of experience and description. This vision is ineffable, or apophatic, a theological term that means devoid of any specifiable content. The apophatic experience "goes deeper noetically and philosophically into the human apprehension of the deepest reality," Smith told me. (p. 22-23)
While Smith is wonderful at summarizing the views of diverse mystics and spiritual traditions, his greatest personal connection with the mystical came through entheogenic (mind altering drug) experiences. This is a spiritual path that Horgan is comfortable with, and explores through several other explorers in psychedelics.
The postmodernists explore spiritual awarenesses and explanations as expressions of their cultural contexts.
... More radical theorists assert that all texts, even scientific ones, are not really about the world but only other texts. Language is ultimately a self-referential, hermetically sealed system, which reality always eludes. (p. 37)
Horgan's interview with Steven Katz a champion of postmodernism, is instructive in understanding the elusiveness of spiritual truths. Katz dismisses personal experiences as evidence for a mystical reality because all he can relate to are the descriptions of others about their mystical experiences -- words that are derived from their expectations and cultural contexts. Katz comes up short in responding to Horgan's inquiry about his personal mystical experiences -- minimizing this as of any real value.
Space does not permit detailed analyses of Horgan's enlightening interviews with Ken Wilber, one of the internationally acknowledged experts on Buddhist meditation and mysticism, Susan Blackmore, a skeptical UK parapsychologist; nor of many others interviewed; James Austin, a Zen Buddhist neurologist; Stanislav Grof (researcher), Terence McKenna (psychedelic author) and other explorers of entheogenic effects; and neurotheologist Andrew Newberg, who has mapped areas of the brain that become active during deep meditation.
Horgan's own spiritual search is a linking thread in his presentation, adding a pleasant tension to his thesis.
I do not believe in miracles, at least not defined in the conventional religious manner as divine disruptions of the natural order. But if a miracle is defines as an infinitely improbable phenomenon, then our existence is a miracle, which no theory natural or supernatural will ever explain. (p.220)
The problem is that any truth or anti-truth, no matter how initially revelatory and awe-inspiring, sooner or later turned into garbage that occludes our vision of the living world. Ludwig Wittgenstein had this problem in mind when he described his philosophy as a ladder that we should 'throw away' after we have climbed it. At its best, art -- by which I mean poetry, literature, music, movies, painting, sculpture -- works in this manner. Art, the lie that tells the truth, is intrinsically ironic. Like Wittgenstein's ladder, it helps us get to another level and then falls away. What better way to approach the mystical, the truth that cannot be told?' (p. 189)
Joseph Campbell made this point in the Masks of God (p. 3): 'Prayers and chants, images, temples, gods, sages, definitions, and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival.' Campbell suggested that poetry is the best medium for spiritual expression. When poets take their own imagery too literally, Campbell warned, they degenerate into prophets -- or, worst of all, priests, tenders of dogma (Campbell, p. 518-519; Horgan p. 224)
...any spiritual practice or path -- and particularly those emphasizing altered states -- can become an end in itself, which leads us away from reality rather than toward it. (p. 226) h
I won't give away the ending to Horgan's search for the ultimate truth.
This is an excellent consideration of an edifying spectrum of views, supported by well-researched notes and references, very worth a thoughtful and deliberate read.
Reference: Campbell Joseph. The Masks of God, New York: Penguin 1978, p. 3.
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