FLOURISH - Mysticism: The mystery that there is something rather than nothing.

Mystical experiences have a core set of characteristics that seem to promote mental wellbeing and flourishing. People who have mystical experiences, including psychedelic trips, report feeling a profound unity with something vast and deeply meaningful. This unity with “the divine,” (or whatever you want to call it) is accompanied by a diminished focus on ego-centric concerns.  

The minds of people who have had a mystical experience seems to be altered for the better. What can mysticism teach us about flourishing and mind management? Can we train our minds to be more open to mystical revelations? 

Transcript

MYSTICISM: THE MYSTERY THAT SOMETHING (RATHER THAN NOTHING) EXISTS?

Michael C. Patterson

Hi there. Welcome to the MINDRAMP Podcast where we explore how to flourish as we age. In this episode I want to start a discussion about mysticism and why I think mysticism can play a practical role in cultivating wellbeing as we age.

I’m not a religious person. Nor am I a deist. I don’t believe in the existence of an omnipotent God who serves as a kind of autocrat of the Universe. But I am drawn to mysticism and I do believe that people have mystical experiences that have a profoundly positive impact on their lives.  

I do believe that there are mysteries that are beyond comprehension by the rational mind. There is wisdom that can only be intuited or felt through direct experience. 

As the scholar and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist says, “the deepest question in all philosophy - both the most important, and the hardest to answer - is why there should be something rather than nothing.” 

Indeed. Why do things exist? Why has this something come into existence and just what is it?  This is a question that seems beyond the reach of science. 

McGilchrist goes further and asks, “why that ‘something’ turns out to be complex and orderly, beautiful and creative, capable of life, feeling and consciousness, rather than merely chaotic, sterile, and dead.”  Yeah! Why does existence seem to be organized and follow certain basic laws? 

Your reaction may be “who cares?” We care because the way we answer these questions shapes our thinking about the cosmos, about our role and purpose in life, about morality and ethics and the meaning of life and death. The way we think about the nature of the “something-rather-than-nothing” that exists has a profound affect on our mental and emotional wellbeing.  

For centuries the best thinkers in the world have tied themselves into conceptual knots trying to answer these questions. The rational mind is befuddled by the mystery of existence. An opening up to a mystical kind of awareness might prove more fruitful and satisfying. So, I’d like to explore mysticism. 

 What is mysticism? 

Alan Watts offers this definition:  Mystical experiences, he says, “are those peculiar states of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and eternal reality.” 

The definition offered by Watts highlights two important points about the mystical experience. First, the mystical experience almost always involves a sense of unity with that something-rather-than-nothing - whatever it is.  It offers a relief from loneliness and alienation and instills the comfort of belonging to something meaningful and purposeful. 

The second point is that we tend to describe the something-rather-than-nothing in terms of our cultural conditioning and in accordance with the belief systems that we have embraced. 

Mystics visualize that grander-than-themselves entity in different ways.  For many, God is the most convenient word to use. But, Buddhists might prefer to express the idea as the void, or Buddha. Taoism might prefer to say the Tao, or the Way. The point is that whatever people call the experience, it is a real experience that has a profound and often lasting effect on them. It changes the way their minds work. 

Here’s a quote from great philosopher and psychologist William James in his book Varieties of Religious Experience, written in 1901-1902, that - in his own uniquely poetic way  - makes this same points about mystical experiences 

James says,
“The overcoming of all the usual barriers between the individual and the Absolute is the great mystic achievement. In mystic states we both become one with the Absolute and we become aware of our oneness. This is the everlasting and triumphant mystical tradition, hardly altered by differences in clime or creed. In Hinduism, in Neoplatonism, in Sufism, in Christian mysticism, in Whitmanism [as in the poet Walt Whitman] we find the same recurring note, so that there is about mystical utterances an eternal unanimity, which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have, as has been said, neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old.” Varieties, pg.379 

In the 1960’s the Princeton philosopher, Walter Stace wrote what some feel is the most definitive philosophical treatise on mystical experiences.  Stace argued, like William James had before him, that mystical experiences have a “common core” of phenomenological features. 

In addition to the sense of unity, both James and Stace note that the mystical experience has a “noetic” quality. [Spell noetic]. The mystical experience is deeply profound and moving. However bizarre or other-worldly the experience may seem it also feels truer and more real than anything that has previously been experienced. 

Ineffability is another characteristic identified by both James and Stace. The mystical experience, in large part because of this noetic quality, cannot be adequately explained using language. It is beyond words. Words are limited. Language can only describe a small subset of the entire vastness of experience. How can one adequately describe the feeling of unity with God or with the flow of consciousness? It’s impossible. How can one describe the feeling of love to someone who has never fallen in love? How does on describe puberty and the rise of sexual feelings to someone who has yet to reach the age of maturity? Impossible; it must be felt, it must be experienced first hand. 

Stace also noted that mystical experiences are often paradoxical. In opening our selves to unity with that something greater than ourselves, we open our minds to conditions that go beyond logic and reason. We accept ambiguity, contradictions, and the co-existence of polar opposites.  

Anyone who has been following our discussion of the difference between left and right hemisphere ways of attending to reality will recognize that the mystical experience involves a release of left hemisphere constrictions (an adherence to logic, rationality and literalism) and an acceptance of the right hemisphere’s comfort with the way thing are in all their glorious diversity and paradoxically. 

Part of the paradoxical nature of the mystical experience results from another of Stace’s characteristics, the suspension of the normal rules of time and space. When in the mystical experience the passage of time has little meaning. Nor do the usual bounds of location and space. What are the boundaries of eternity and infinity? For that matter what are the boundaries between self and other? 

Finally, Stace notes that, in spite of all this paradox and suspension of normal reality, the mystical experiences is almost always positive. The unity with the vital life force feels awesome. It might be a bit frightening or disorienting at first, but ultimately the mystical experience brings one a deep feeling of peace, comfort and equanimity. The sense of positivity comes about, I believe, when the proper relationship of the two hemispheres of our brain is restored. The right hemisphere is put back in charge and the left hemisphere resumes its proper role as a useful, but limited servant. 

This analogy comes from Iain McGilchrist who introduces his hemisphere hypothesis in his book, The Master and His Emissary. In short, the right hemisphere is the benevolent master of the mind. The left hemisphere is the useful servant, who, unfortunately has decided to usurp the role of the RH and put himself in charge. The usurping LH silences the input of the true master and, in the process, causes the rise of all kinds of confusion, conflict and suffering. This is our normal state. 

Our rational, logical, language-oriented left hemisphere has taken charge of our minds and has suppressed the more holistic, intuitive, and mystical modes of perception used by the right hemisphere. The mystical experience reverses this relationship and puts the right hemisphere back in charge, where it belongs. This un-muddles our mind: which feels great. 

To summarize:

Mystical experiencers give us access to a certain kind of wisdom that is beyond the comprehension of our conceptual mind. The mystical experience is more of a feeling experience than a thinking experience. As such, it provides a route towards flourishing that is unavailable to our rational minds. We have to let go of rationality and and open ourselves to  ambiguity, paradox and mystery. 

Following William James and James Stace, we can identify certain characteristics that are common to most, if not all, mystical experiences. 

• There is a sense of unity with the grand - something - of existence. 
• This unity brings with it a sense of meaning and purpose, a sense of profound belonging. 
• Mystical experiences have a NOETIC quality. They feel deeply profound and meaningful. They give us intuitive access to a truth beyond any truth we have previously known. 
• Mystical experiences are INEFFABLE. They operate outside the realm of the rational mind. The feeling of profound insight that comes with a mystical experience is beyond words. They can’t be described. 
• The mystical experience is ineffable because it is PARDOXICAL. The wisdom it imparts is ambiguous, fluid, seemingly contradictory, at times “this” and at times “that,” a unity of polar opposites.
• Mystical experiences share certain characteristics with the state of flow that I discussed in earlier podcasts, including the suspension of TIME AND SPACE. When in a state of flow, or mystical experience, time and space have no meaning. We have no sense of the passage of time, nor do we care about being anywhere other than where we are in the moment.  

So, how can we get some of this mysticism?  One way that has ancient antecedents and has become newly popular is through the use of psychedelics. I’ll explore psychedelics and the mystical experience in a subsequent podcast. 

If you are interested in examples of mystical experiences, listen to my podcast called “Contours of Mystical Experience.” 

Thanks for joining me. Until next time. Live long and live well.