Can mystics intuit something of what modern physicists calculate? And if so, how? The question of the relation between the classical mysticisms and modern science is approached in Part I in terms of the multiple forms and definitions of 'truth value'. Intuition/epiphany, pragmatism, coherence, and correspondence are considered as forms of truth that have also been proposed for unitive mystical experience. Since 'correspondence' or 'representation' has been the definition at the core of modern science, it in particular is approached by (...) combining Lakoff and Johnson on the roots of all abstract knowledge in physical metaphor and Gibson on the ecological array of perception as the template from which such metaphors must be drawn. A series of similarities between the maximally inclusive metaphors underlying unitive mystical experience and cosmological physics, as abstracted from an ecological array already resonant with multiple levels of physical reality, suggests a basis for the correspondence between these otherwise distinct cognitive domains. Part II extends this approach to widely posited cross cultural values of spiritual or mystical realization, in terms of gratitude, compassion, faith, and inner freedom. When fully embodied as forms of personal conduct, these are also ultimately derivable from the openness and flow patternings of the ecological array itself. The possibility that the more abstract spiritual values of the major world mysticisms exemplify not only revelatory and pragmatic forms of truth, but are also broadly correspondent with both the principles of immediate concrete perception and modern physics, may eventually allow a contemporary re- formulation of the microcosm-macrocosm unities basic to traditional cultures. (shrink)

The existential–phenomenological approach of the early Heidegger and Max Scheler to religion as an amplified empirical phenomenology of the human condition, combined with Heidegger’s specific derivation of his Daseins-analysis from the Christianity of Eckart, Paul, and Kierkegaard, is shown to be broadly congruent with the contemporary transpersonal psychology of higher states of consciousness, largely based on Eastern meditative traditions. This descriptive transpersonal psychology of a mystical core to all religions based on the direct experience of presence or Being, as developed (...) by Rudolf Otto and elaborated by Laski, Almaas, and others, is then applied to selected gospel narratives as a further step, past its beginnings in the early Heidegger and Rudolf Bultmann, toward a re-construction of specific numinous states in early Christianity. This derivation of facets of the numinous from their presumed doctrinal schematizations and/or amplifications places Christianity closer to the goals of the meditative traditions, and allows a more directly experiential understanding of doctrines of Christian redemption, loving compassion, and eternal life as amplifications of the phenomenology of the inner forms of ordinary here and now consciousness, within which they are already foreshadowed. (shrink)

Kant's account of the experience of the sublime in nature and the incommensurability of its bases in the two European traditions of philosophy that feed into modern cognitive psychology, the holism of Leibniz and the analytic reductionism of Locke, are used to develop a new theory of human nature in terms of developmental interactions between initially separate cognitive domains. More recent illustrations of this separation/interaction are found in debates over 'emergence' in modern science and theories of consciousness. Shifting from competitive (...) epistemologies to a resulting ontology of human nature, the cognitive development of mind through childhood can itself be understood as multiple but necessarily incomplete fusions between person knowing and a thing/tool knowing , based here on a Vygotskian model of their reciprocal internalizations, and leading into our ostensibly differentiated and humanly unique multiple adult intelligences. A consequence is that human consciousness, while based on these selective and necessarily partial domain integrations, as in the separate directionalities of spirituality and science/technology, is fundamentally and permanently unbalanced. Kant's sublime and Rudolf Otto's related analysis of numinous-uncanny feeling exemplify the inner dynamism of this intrinsic unbalance, constituting the species specific form of the perpetual orientation to novelty that drives us forward toward the very best and very worst of the human condition. (shrink)

Comtrary to general assumption, subjective reports of immediate ordinary consciousness and non-ordinary alterations of consciousness can provide unique evidence concerning the bases of the human symbolic capacity. Evidence from classical introspectionism, the meditative traditions, and descriptions of synaesthesias suggests that thought, rests on a cross-modal synthesis or fusion of the patterns from vision, audition, and touch-kinesthesis. This would provide a holistic, non-reductionist explanation of our capacity for reflective self awareness and recombinatory creativity. The approach is consistent with Geschwind's and Luria's (...) models of neocortical operation and Jackendoff's and Yates' recent emphasis on symbolic thought as a "neutral" or "amodal" synthesis. (shrink)

The five authors vary in the degree to which the recent neuroscience of the REM state leads them towards multiple dimensions and forms of dreaming consciousness (Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Solms) or toward all-explanatory single factor models (Vertes & Eastman, Revonsuo). The view of the REM state as a prolongation of the orientation response to novelty fits best with the former pluralisms but not the latter monisms. [Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Revonsuo; Solms; Vertes & Eastman].

Developmental understanding of transpersonal experience and its diverse impact on human life has been bedeviled by the opposed, monolithic extremes of Freud's regression to infant "narcissism," on the one hand, and more recent views of the transpersonal as the sole endpoint for any "higher" or "postformal operations" development of human intelligence, on the other. Here it is shown that "higher states of consciousness" can be more specifically understood as developments of a "presentational" intelli-gence, thereby constituting one line of adult development (...) among the several open to our symbolic capacity. The demonstrated but relatively infrequent occurrence of transpersonal states in early childhood then becomes understandable as a developmental precocity akin to that shown in mathematical and musical prodigies. The overlap of this developmental line with some of the thematics and regressive states of psychoanalytic object relations theories of infancy follows from the experiential nature of pre-sentational intelligence. Early emotional traumata and deficits must reappear in transpersonal experience to the extent that they were internalized as part of the mother-infant dyad whose structure underlies our symbolic, dialogic consciousness. (shrink)

If consciousness emerges into ontological reality at some point in nature, as system complexity increases, then it also ‘submerges’ at some adjoining point, as structures simplify. This has led some to posit a ‘latent-consciousness’ in what Bohr saw as the consciousness-like spontaneity of quantum phenomena. Yet to move on this basis to Whitehead's ontological pan-experientialism or to direct quantum explanations of consciousness faces serious epistemological limitations -- perhaps being more unwittingly projective than genuinely explanatory. More reasonable would be an epistemological (...) pan- experientialism in the sense of the later James. Consciousness, as the ultimate lens and medium of all knowledge, is inseparable from the physical reality it would know, especially at the very limits of empirical observation in microphysics. ‘Submerged’ consciousness is better understood in Jamesian pragmatic terms than via assumed but unprovable ontologies. (shrink)

A cognitive-developmental theory of synaesthesias - those subjective states fusing separate perceptual modalities - is supported by research indicating their neocortical basis and first appearance as part of the semantic learning of words, letters, numbers, and time in the early grade school years. It contrasts with models of a primitive, anomalous holdover from an earlier neural hyperconnectivity, widely assumed in recent neuroscience approaches. Classical synaesthesias, occurring most vividly in high 'fantasy proneness' children, as well as the more normative and less (...) stereotyped 'synaesthetic meanings' of mid childhood, would later be internalized as the imagistic side of Vygotsky's 'inner speech' - then introspectable as the typically diffuse felt sense of semantic significance. A synaesthetically structured felt meaning becomes the matrix for the development of metaphoric understanding in later childhood. The further exteriorized development of the full range of synaesthesias in adults high in imaginative absorption and creativity becomes central to the arts, culture, and meditative states of consciousness. This approach overlaps with that of Ramachandran on synaesthesia as a window to the evolution of language and metaphor, but separates the human capacity for cross- modal translation, as the root of all symbol formation, from the full range of synaesthesias that would be its later mid childhood differentiation and adds in the wider adult potential for higher developments of this normally implicit synaesthetic consciousness. (shrink)

Participants recruited for high levels of imaginative absorption were administered a questionnaire based on Calkins' original study that first established a wide continuum of childhood synaesthesias and synaesthetic associations, along with separate questionnaires assessing childhood imaginary companions, positive altered states of consciousness and negative states of nightmares and night terrors. Their inter-relation and relation to measures of adult imaginative absorption helps to establish these states as aspects of an underlying imagistic dimension, while their relative differentiation is explored through different forms (...) of adult absorption, early stressors from childhood, and degree of parental support for creative activities. The connection of this wider continuum of adult recalled childhood synasesthesias, imaginary companions, and altered states of consciousness to adult imaginative absorption is consistent with recent neuro-imaging synaesthetic research supporting its relation to symbolic cognition, metaphor, and creativity. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1920 Edition.

The relations between language and imagery are addressed by cross referencing Lacan and James Hillman, along with Mead, Geschwind, and Gibson. Not only is neither symbolic frame reducible to the other, but neither can be rooted in perceptual capacities that would be distinct from or more "primitive" than the other. Outside of specific theoretical agendas that would analyze one by simplifying the other, word and image are co-emergent and co-dependent expressions of the inherent openness of the human mind.

Weberís sociology of inner-worldly mysticism, Almaasí recent synthesis of transpersonal and psychoanalytic object relations theory, and Jungís related metaphorical psychology of alchemy, are brought to bear on the development of Heideggerís evocations of the felt sense of Being between 1927 and 1946, understood as the noetic core of spirituality. In particular, Heideggerís assumption of the Nazi rectorship at Freiburg in 1933ñ34 is seen as a specifically spiritual crisis based on the "metapathological" grandiosity that can result from the miscarriage of self (...) realization in inner-worldly mysticism. In Heideggerís case, as in much contemporary spirituality, this crisis was intensified by pre-existent narcissistic vulnerabilities of character. Heideggerís later writings are considered as expressions of a more genuine spiritual or essential realization, which, while invaluable as a conceptual framework for transpersonal psychology, nonetheless stops short of a balanced personal integration. This analysis constitutes a specific example of how the combination of transpersonal psychology and psychodynamics can be used to understand the emotional conflicts stirred up by transpersonal realization and the resultant potential for distortion in modern spiritual development, as presented by Hunt. (shrink)

After an overview of the phenomenology of numinous experience in mysticism, conversion, and related states in psychosis, the intersection and distinction between contemporary transpersonal psychologies of spiritual development and psychodynamic/clinical perspectives on pathological states is addressed from cognitive&endash;developmental, psycho-physiological, personality, and socio-cultural perspectives. Debates about the nature of mystical and conversion experiences have a long history in the psychology of religious experience and raise fundamental methodological issues concerning the potential inclusiveness or narrowness of the human sciences. A genuine psychology of (...) numinous experience and its impact on life histories must find its way between the twin dangers of "over-belief" and false reductionism. (shrink)