Hi,

I think Jim Stone's idea that religion is a practice that places one in relation to a SR is useful but I also empathise with what Derek Allan wrote:

"This is why I see all attempts to develop a kind of general template for religions as leading at best to a kind of thin, dessicated theosophy.  And vague notions of "supramundane realities" or "love" are good examples of that.  They simply scratch around on the surface ..".

So what would it take to penetrate the surface, to really get to grips with what it means to transcend from the mundane to SR? To survive Derek Allan's critique the solution should model the phenomenon of transcendence from multi-disciplinary vantage points with laser-like precision such that it cannot wriggle free. It should also do so in such a way that explains existing data but moreover generates novel insights/predictions in unanticipated directions.

One way to model transcendence is to focus not on what transcendent states of mind are but on what they are not: all spiritual practices worth their salt agree that for transcendence to occur, there must be self-sacrifice, self-negation, via negativa, kenosis etc. (see Karen Armstrong’s book, The Great Transformation, but also Wm. James, Jorge Ferrer, George Ellis). If we define the self as the subject position within the mind, the evolved entity that experiences, inter alia, desire towards what is good and aversion to what is bad, in the Darwinian sense of good/bad for reproductive survival, it follows that self-negation means transcending evolved adaptive ‘Darwinian mind’. Desire/aversion and the self are two sides of the same coin.

Transcend Darwinian mind to what or where…? A parsimonious option is towards the raw materials Darwinian mind is made from. The term for the raw materials of evolution coined by Stephen Jay Gould and Elizabeth Vrba is ‘nonaptation’ – nothing in evolution is de novo. So transcendent mind could be nonaptive mind, selfless ‘non-Darwinian mind’.  Now non-Darwinian mind has no reproductive survival issues, like nonaptive oxygen or carbon or water, dead or alive, it doesn’t care. But Darwinian mind certainly cares and won’t stand idly by while spiritual practice riddles away at the self. Darwinian mind/self resists, big time, and it does so by increasing desire/aversion which is why the spiritual path is so hard (I can resist…. except temptation :)).

So far the model triangulates transcendence from psychological and evolutionary perspectives and Darwinian mind/self’s resistance to self-sacrifice provides an opportunity to add an affective neuroscience perspective. Most simply, humans as an ultra-social species walk a delicate line between competition and cooperation with one another. At a mechanistic level the evolved neural substrates of selfish/competitive motivations inhibit the evolved neural substrates of “unselfish”/cooperative/”altruistic” motivations unless the individual benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs (hence the quotes around “unselfish”, “altruistic” etc.). When Darwinian mind/self resists self-negation, it is the selfish neural substrates that are immediately activated and the “unselfish” ones become more inhibited. But if the person practices very hard, remaining resolutely indifferent to the efforts of Darwinian mind/self to divert them from the path of self-negation through potent motivations of desire/aversion, the neural substrates of selfish motivations will eventually suddenly, albeit partially,  give way and a transient partial transcendent experience will occur. Such a revelation/satori/awakening etc. may have all sorts of subjective features but two properties are commonly reported: (1) A transformation of the sense of self (sometimes described as an expansion, sometimes as a diminution, but invariably there is less ego, less self-concern, and more “oneness” with others/nature; (2) The mind is flooded with goodwill to others, with righteousness, guilt, compassion etc. –  with prosocial thoughts and feelings.  

Now organised religion and even purer spiritual practices make much of morality but according to this model, the flood of prosocial “moral” emotions that accompany transcendence are nothing other than the disinhibited expression of the neural substrates of Darwinian/evolved/adaptive etc. “unselfish”/cooperative/”altruistic” motivations. As evolved self-serving entities, the latter are equally bound up with self-interest/ego/reproductive survival etc. But in the first instance, i.e. relative to evolved selfish motivations, they are largely compatible with self-negation, superficially they pull in the same direction. For this reason, these “moral” prosocial motivations do not impede early inroads into transcendent territory. But unselfish is ~= to selfless (‘no self’) and advanced transcendent states are beyond morality - to reach them even the “moral” prosocial aspects of the self must be left behind. In this model morality is therefore somewhat incidental to religion, an unavoidable by-product on the road to full enlightenment.

This model does not only cast existing data in a new light, it also makes testable predictions, eg. Darwinian mind and non-Darwinian mind should have different neuroimaging profiles (measureable as entropy differences because adaptations are more complex and information rich than raw materials). It also speaks to free will – an agent enslaved by desire/aversion is not very free. Non-Darwinian mind provides a new reference point for what it means to be free.

These are the broad strokes of a scientist's attempt to get beneath the surface of transcendence. As mentioned a few posts above, a draft of a longer treatment forthcoming in J. Consciousness Studies is available on philpapers. Any comments?

Barak