Two approaches to transcendent states

David Fontana

Two Approaches to Transcendent States

There are two broad scientific approaches to transcendent states, namely the material and the experiential, and the Drynachan Symposium recognised the importance of both. The former seeks the physical concomitants of transcendent states, while the latter is more concerned with the reports people give of them. Though sharp distinctions are inappropriate, the former is predominantly the domain of physicists, physiologists and biologists, and the latter of psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists. As a psychologist, my interests are therefore primarily experiential.

In many ways this is the harder approach to adopt, in that the knowledge it seeks is less public, less susceptible to the experimental method, more subject to the vagaries of language, and more likely to be dismissed as unreliable by scientific colleagues. Nevertheless, its relevance to anyone seriously interested in the transcendent cannot be denied. At all levels, from the most mundane to the most transpersonal, we do not experience consciousness as bundles of sub-atomic particles or as neurones and synapses or even as electro-chemical energy. We experience it as a sequence of mental and emotional events, and it is these events that enable us to feel human and to pose questions of meaning and of purpose.

Science and Values

Of the 12 seed Statements with which we concluded the Drynachan Symposium I have reservations only about the assertion in Statement 4 that 'scientific values such as honesty and accuracy underpin science ... (and in) this context, knowledge itself is a value'. In addition to the philosophical problems associated with the term 'scientific values' (it can be argued that values are things we apply to science, rather than qualities we find integral to it), I am not sure that honesty and accuracy are all we require in order to ensure that 'knowledge itself is a value'. A scientist may be both honest in his or her reporting of data, and accurate in the handling of it, but the objectives behind the work concerned and the knowledge accruing from it may have appalling consequences (such as weapons of mass destruction, agents of pollution, genetic engineering, and methods for depleting or exterminating natural resources). Scientists surely cannot be left to look for their values within science itself.

In the light of the disastrous consequences arising from certain Western scientific discoveries, a concern of some Symposium members was that although the scientific method is in itself a valid way of gaining knowledge, a balance is needed between the manipulation of the material world arising from science, and the wu wei (or non-interference) doctrine of the East, best exemplified in the teachings of Taoism. Either extreme carries dangers - on the one hand of upsetting the natural order and balance of things, and on the other of ignoring opportunities to intervene in order to alleviate sickness and poverty. Transcendent experiences, which give insight into the unity and inter-dependence of all things, and which point towards the importance of conservation and respect for the environment one the one hand, and of compassion for all sentient beings on the other, seem vital if we are to strike the essential balance between science and wu wei.

Four Key Statements

I am in wholehearted agreement with the other 11 Drynachan Statements, and particularly with four of them which in my view represent keys to the experiential approach to transcendent states. These four are that consciousness is correlated with brain processes but cannot necessarily be reduced to them (Statement 8); that knowledge obtained from transcendent experience informs our understanding of the different levels of reality (Statement 9); that as a consequence scientific empiricism needs to be broadened and deepened to include data from transcendent experience (Statement 3); and that such a science of consciousness (should) include a process of self-development and ... address the nature and relationship between primary and secondary qualities (Statement 12).

Consciousness and Brain Processes

Let me comment briefly upon each of these Statements in turn. The first of them, which stresses that consciousness cannot necessarily be reduced to brain processes, may suggest a dualistic approach, but it seems to me that the Symposium inclined more to the idea of a continuum from matter to consciousness, and from mundane consciousness to transcendent states. Such an idea is consistent both with certain contemporary thought in quantum physics on the one hand, and with the insights of Eastern psycho-spiritual traditions on the other. The value of this idea lies not only in its possible scientific accuracy, but in its ability to counter the perceived opposition between matter and spirit - and between the physical and the transcendent - long evident in some areas of religious thought. In touching upon this, the Symposium seemed particularly taken with the Buddhist insight that Zen is our 'ordinary, everyday mind'. Ultimate reality presents itself to us, moment by moment, if we are only able to see it. The transcendent and the imminent are therefore always present in each other, and must be recognised as such if we are to experience a fully rounded picture of reality.

Transcendent Experience and Reality

The second of the four key Statements, that transcendent experience informs our understanding of the different levels of reality, follows naturally and closely from the first. Again Zen provides us with an illustration. After enlightenment, the Zen master does not remain in some elevated and isolated state, but returns to the mundane world, in and through which he or she is now able to lead others to truer understanding. Refusing to dismiss the world, the enlightened sage experiences it for what it is, appreciating its beauty, feeling its sadness, yet knowing that far from being separate and different from us, it plays out each moment within the encompassing brightness of our own minds.

In this context, the Symposium returned several times to the idea of a unifying presence which underlies reality, a unifying presence which - in various conceptions - is recognised by certain modern physicists, and by many Eastern and Western psycho-spiritual traditions. Such a unifying presence is seen as the infinite potential from which the world of appearances arises, and which together with the action of individual consciousness gives birth to all that is seen and known. The Symposium seemed agreed that without a glimpse of transcendent states, our understanding of all such conceptions is unlikely to advance much beyond the theoretical level.

Scientific Empiricism and Transcendent States

The third Statement, that scientific empiricism needs to be broadened and deepened to include transcendent states, arises naturally from this agreement, and raises the question as to how transcendence can be explored by the scientific method. The answer is firstly through observation and recording of the kind carried out since 1969 by the Religious Experience Unit, now based at Westminster College, Oxford (see e.g. Hardy 1979, Donovan 1998). This observation and recording allows us to seek the circumstances and the practices that appear to bring these states into being, and the psycho-social characteristics of those who have them. It also allows us to identify the patterns and levels within the states themselves, and to use the information to help clarify how transcendent experience can best be sought by those who value it, and within the restrictions of for example professional and domestic commitments. Next we can look at the influence that transcendent states have upon behaviour. Is such behaviour changed in observable ways after experience of these states, and if so what might these ways be? The work of Ken Ring into the influence of Near Death Experiences (NDEs) upon those who have them is an excellent example of how such work can go forward (e.g. Ring 1985).

A Science of Consciousness and Self-Understanding

Finally, we come to the fourth of the key Statements, the first part of which is essentially that those involved in a science of consciousness should direct their attention not just upon the mind and behaviour of others, but upon the mind and behaviour of themselves. It is rightly said that the purpose of Buddhist psychology is to help us understand what is going on in our own minds, and the same purpose should inform at least parts of Western psychology. The notion that one can be a good psychologist merely by studying others is recognised as very strange, not only by the Eastern traditions but in fact by Western transpersonal and humanistic psychology and by Western psychotherapy.

This recognition leads to the question of methodologies for self-exploration and development, and here the Symposium made reference to meditation, to mindfulness practices, and to personal-spiritual group work. Attention was also drawn to the creative arts as a medium for both the exploration and development of consciousness, and to the role of the arts in psychotherapy (as exemplified by dramatherapy, music therapy, art therapy and psychodrama) - though it is possible that only those scientists who also have a training in the creative arts or in the social sciences are likely to concede the point. Nevertheless, the value of poetic metaphor, of symbol and of myth to any exploration and discussion of consciousness and transcendent states has been fully and fruitfully expounded by authorities such as Jung (e.g. 1968) and Campbell (e.g. 1998), and must certainly figure at some point in our thinking.

The second part of Statement 12, that a science of consciousness should 'address the nature and relationship between primary and secondary qualities' harks back in many ways to the concept of a unifying underlying consciousness discussed in connection with Statement 9 above. The view that consciousness is primary and matter secondary in the process of creation, rather than the other way around, is currently argued by modern physicists such as Goswami (1993), and has long been held by all the great spiritual traditions (see also Radin 1998 for a contemporary view from parapsychology). Mystics have variously referred to this primary consciousness as the Godhead (Christianity), as Ain Soph (Judaism), as Brahman (Hinduism), as Allah (Islam), and as Sunyata/Nirvana (Buddhism). But in each case the fundamental argument is the same, an argument based initially upon direct experience, namely that the visible world arises out of an infinite consciousness, an infinite consciousness that forms the ground of our being, which reflects itself in individual consciousness, and to which, in the fullness of time, we each one day return.

References

Campbell, J. (1988) The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday (with Bill Moyers).
Donovan, P. (1998) Interpreting Religious Experience. Oxford: Religious Experience Research Centre (2nd edn.).
Goswami, A. (1993) The Self Aware Universe. London and New York: Simon & Schuster.
Hardy, A. (1979) The Spiritual Nature of Man: A Study of Contemporary Religious Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press (re-printed 1997 by the Religious Experience Research Centre)
Jung, C. G. (1968) Psychology and Alchemy. London: Routledge (2nd. edn.).
Radin, D. (1998) The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. New York: HarperCollins.
Ring, K. (1985) Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Near-Death Experience. New York: Quill/William Morrow.