I saw the review you wrote of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges in 2014. If you enjoyed the intellectual maze of Borges’ writing, I think you’d like my interactive novel The Friar’s Lantern.
In The Friar’s Lantern, you are the protagonist in a mind-bending choosable-path adventure. You may win $1,000,000. And you will judge a man of murder.
If you’re interested, I’d love to send you a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review. Just email me at greg@greghickeywrites.com and let me know what ebook format works best for you.
I really appreciate your articles — just read 3: your reviews of Watson’s “death of God” book; Griffith’s “indigenous Australians” book; and Horgan’s “mystical experiences” book — and seeing that religion so interests you, and you write about it with such intelligence and persistence, I thought you might be interested in an alternate perspective. I quite agree that halucinogenic “mystical” experience is not the real thing, and Horgan’s “present moment” perspective of Earth’s moon was closer to authentic spiritual experience. William James study of the subject is useful for understanding how spiritual experience in its transformative mode happens. A person’s mental state sets the stage – typically a state of broken dreams or despair – but the transformative power arrives unbidden, and unexpectedly. This in nothing like any meditative state that Buddhist practice achieves. Rather is a sudden transformation of perspective that is irreversible, and life changing. These experiences are the reason religion is present in every traditional culture, has not died out in spite of Nietzsche and modern philosophy, and will keep coming back when talented, charismatic, new prophets arise. Sadly, institutional religion typically gets started when more practical men latch onto the legacy of one of these prophetic individuals, and morph that legacy to suit organizational and recruitment realities (which depend on getting essentially non-spiritual people participating and contributing funds). Thus the New Testament, for example, is a mix of authentic sayings, propaganda to attract converts, stern promises of punishment for those who respond better to the stick than the carrot, and clever redaction and invention to serve doctrinal articles of faith that may not be authentic either. You can verify that “mix” list yourself by comparing passages in the synoptic gospels with their similar counterparts in the heretical, suppressed and lost for 1600 years, Gospel of Thomas. Saying #78 in Thomas, with counterparts in both Matthew and Luke, is a particularly good example. If you’re interested in how I came up with these opinions, please contact me any time. Sincerely Jack
Your perspective on the relationship between mystical experience and religion is one that I’ve shared to some degree, but which I’ve moved away from somewhat now. I’ll explain why shortly.
The question of whether gradual perceptual change (via meditation) or sudden change (via ‘mystical experience’) is an interesting one. I personally conceive of these experiences as being on a continuum, with the result varying by the individual, circumstance and the technique or approach used.
I absolutely hold that meditation can be deeply transformative. This has been the subject of a lot of my reading and practise over the last five years, and I’m convinced that a dedicated practise regime under a tradition like Burmese Vipassana will radically change your perception of reality, and your relationship to the world and the people around you.
For instance, if you look back to the Desert Fathers – the desert mystics that helped lay the foundation of Christianity in the years after Christ – you will find them immersed in exactly the same kinds of practises that you dismiss in Buddhism (broadly speaking). It would be interesting to hear if you still feel this way after listening to religious teachers who have engaged in deep meditative practise, such as long periods of isolation and meditation. Daniel Ingram, for instance, is interesting for the fact he can very articulately explain how perception changes with high doses of Vipassana meditation.
I actually wonder whether my own humble experience in meditation has changed me more deeply than my unprompted mystical experience. This has given me a newfound respect for practises that are designed to transform the self and reality (mantras, chanting, prayer, yoga, etc etc). I take cues here from Peter Sloterdijk’s Anthropo-technology, and Evan Thompson’s Embodied Cognition.
I don’t discount the transformative power of hallucinogenics either (see: research on psilocybin + terminally ill patients), but they have to be used respectfully/ritualistically. Drastic perceptual shifts are certainly possible, and again, I have seen them in myself.
It would be interesting to hear why you reject both practise-based paths to self-transformation and mystical experience, and hallucinogens more generally. It’s been a while since I’ve read William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, but I believe I recall he gives examples of transformative mystic experiences that are not preceded by profound despair.
Then we come to the question of mystical experience, nature and religion. Religion has an odd place in modern society. Sloterdijk (and Peter Watson) demonstrate(s) how the religious impulse has been channelled into other facets of life and culture. Certainly, I’m open to the argument that some kind of religious impulse drove the great utopian political projects of the last century.
Conceptions of religion are very difficult in a post-modern age. I do think that the fundamental aspects of religion – ritual and practise, ethics and morality, metaphysics – take new forms in this context. If you’ve read much about modernist (let alone post-modernist) religious reformation, you can certainly see a change in people’s conception-of and relationship-with religion – for instance, the notion of Secular Buddhism, which I believe would not easily fit into your conception of religion.
While I would have agreed that the foundation of religion is mystical experience at one point, these days I am far less sure, primarily because to hold this view you need to dismiss or denigrate the religion of huge swathes of humanity, which these days I am not willing to do. I do not think all religion can be reduced to mystical teachings. Usually this view is related to those expressed in Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, which I have come to critique and reject.
In ‘You Must Change Your Life’, Sloterdijk talks about religion as helping develop “symbolic immune systems and ritual shells” – as a psychic defence, but also as a constant act of self-creation / being-in-the-world. This conception seems richer to me.
3 responses to “Contact”
Hi Lachlan,
I saw the review you wrote of Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges in 2014. If you enjoyed the intellectual maze of Borges’ writing, I think you’d like my interactive novel The Friar’s Lantern.
In The Friar’s Lantern, you are the protagonist in a mind-bending choosable-path adventure. You may win $1,000,000. And you will judge a man of murder.
If you’re interested, I’d love to send you a free ebook copy in exchange for an honest review. Just email me at greg@greghickeywrites.com and let me know what ebook format works best for you.
Thanks,
Greg Hickey
I really appreciate your articles — just read 3: your reviews of Watson’s “death of God” book; Griffith’s “indigenous Australians” book; and Horgan’s “mystical experiences” book — and seeing that religion so interests you, and you write about it with such intelligence and persistence, I thought you might be interested in an alternate perspective. I quite agree that halucinogenic “mystical” experience is not the real thing, and Horgan’s “present moment” perspective of Earth’s moon was closer to authentic spiritual experience. William James study of the subject is useful for understanding how spiritual experience in its transformative mode happens. A person’s mental state sets the stage – typically a state of broken dreams or despair – but the transformative power arrives unbidden, and unexpectedly. This in nothing like any meditative state that Buddhist practice achieves. Rather is a sudden transformation of perspective that is irreversible, and life changing. These experiences are the reason religion is present in every traditional culture, has not died out in spite of Nietzsche and modern philosophy, and will keep coming back when talented, charismatic, new prophets arise. Sadly, institutional religion typically gets started when more practical men latch onto the legacy of one of these prophetic individuals, and morph that legacy to suit organizational and recruitment realities (which depend on getting essentially non-spiritual people participating and contributing funds). Thus the New Testament, for example, is a mix of authentic sayings, propaganda to attract converts, stern promises of punishment for those who respond better to the stick than the carrot, and clever redaction and invention to serve doctrinal articles of faith that may not be authentic either. You can verify that “mix” list yourself by comparing passages in the synoptic gospels with their similar counterparts in the heretical, suppressed and lost for 1600 years, Gospel of Thomas. Saying #78 in Thomas, with counterparts in both Matthew and Luke, is a particularly good example. If you’re interested in how I came up with these opinions, please contact me any time. Sincerely Jack
Hey Jack, thanks for taking the time mate.
Your perspective on the relationship between mystical experience and religion is one that I’ve shared to some degree, but which I’ve moved away from somewhat now. I’ll explain why shortly.
The question of whether gradual perceptual change (via meditation) or sudden change (via ‘mystical experience’) is an interesting one. I personally conceive of these experiences as being on a continuum, with the result varying by the individual, circumstance and the technique or approach used.
I absolutely hold that meditation can be deeply transformative. This has been the subject of a lot of my reading and practise over the last five years, and I’m convinced that a dedicated practise regime under a tradition like Burmese Vipassana will radically change your perception of reality, and your relationship to the world and the people around you.
For instance, if you look back to the Desert Fathers – the desert mystics that helped lay the foundation of Christianity in the years after Christ – you will find them immersed in exactly the same kinds of practises that you dismiss in Buddhism (broadly speaking). It would be interesting to hear if you still feel this way after listening to religious teachers who have engaged in deep meditative practise, such as long periods of isolation and meditation. Daniel Ingram, for instance, is interesting for the fact he can very articulately explain how perception changes with high doses of Vipassana meditation.
I actually wonder whether my own humble experience in meditation has changed me more deeply than my unprompted mystical experience. This has given me a newfound respect for practises that are designed to transform the self and reality (mantras, chanting, prayer, yoga, etc etc). I take cues here from Peter Sloterdijk’s Anthropo-technology, and Evan Thompson’s Embodied Cognition.
I don’t discount the transformative power of hallucinogenics either (see: research on psilocybin + terminally ill patients), but they have to be used respectfully/ritualistically. Drastic perceptual shifts are certainly possible, and again, I have seen them in myself.
It would be interesting to hear why you reject both practise-based paths to self-transformation and mystical experience, and hallucinogens more generally. It’s been a while since I’ve read William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience, but I believe I recall he gives examples of transformative mystic experiences that are not preceded by profound despair.
Then we come to the question of mystical experience, nature and religion. Religion has an odd place in modern society. Sloterdijk (and Peter Watson) demonstrate(s) how the religious impulse has been channelled into other facets of life and culture. Certainly, I’m open to the argument that some kind of religious impulse drove the great utopian political projects of the last century.
Conceptions of religion are very difficult in a post-modern age. I do think that the fundamental aspects of religion – ritual and practise, ethics and morality, metaphysics – take new forms in this context. If you’ve read much about modernist (let alone post-modernist) religious reformation, you can certainly see a change in people’s conception-of and relationship-with religion – for instance, the notion of Secular Buddhism, which I believe would not easily fit into your conception of religion.
While I would have agreed that the foundation of religion is mystical experience at one point, these days I am far less sure, primarily because to hold this view you need to dismiss or denigrate the religion of huge swathes of humanity, which these days I am not willing to do. I do not think all religion can be reduced to mystical teachings. Usually this view is related to those expressed in Aldous Huxley’s The Perennial Philosophy, which I have come to critique and reject.
In ‘You Must Change Your Life’, Sloterdijk talks about religion as helping develop “symbolic immune systems and ritual shells” – as a psychic defence, but also as a constant act of self-creation / being-in-the-world. This conception seems richer to me.