States of Knowledge

A sophisticated psychology would have a “science of states,” thus of states of mind or of consciousness. Some traditions have developed to include this science; an example is Sufism (where I first encountered that phrase). We don’t find it in the West. An obscure nineteenth century American lawyer and philosopher, Daniel Greenleaf Thompson (1850-1897) called for such a science (“Science of States of Consciousness”) in his A System of Psychology (1884, link), but, as I say, he was obscure. How do I define that? Well, there is no Wikipedia article on him. Nobody took up his challenge. But what are they, those states? And where am I going with this?

We use the word to describe states of awakeness, sleep, alertness, concentration, daydreaming, emotional, dreaming, hypnagogic, ecstatic, delusional, and so on. In the Sufi view, these are all aspects of the first, and lowest, state of humanity. Above it rise six others, each a higher state than the ordinary one of being human (link). We think that we are finished when we haven’t even started growing yet. Where am I going? I want to point to the difficulties in looking at various visionary reports, dreaming included but beyond that, without the help of a much more sophisticated understanding of how the human mind behaves above (or below) the level of ordinary consciousness.

The big chasm that appears in such reports is one between cognitive states and the emotional. The first is centered, the other is in motion. People report ecstatic feeling, not least the feeling of understanding everything, but they emerge from these states knowing absolutely nothing new;  they retain a memory of the ecstatic feeling, however, and it signals that all is well in the universe. But is that enough?  Negative experiences are occasionally reported; in these, also, there is little or no content. I recall reading, with sharp interest, a Sufi tale some years ago in which a master chides a disciple when hearing an ecstatic report. Ecstasy? No. It’s a sign of insufficient development. Back to the workbench with you. The knowledge that informed the master here came from understanding the various “states” from his own experience. The developed state, in Sufism, is “to have the option.” The person must be centered and “all there.” Being carried in a maelstrom of emotion is to be passive. Understanding must be present—and free choice. If the cognitive is overwhelmed, the seeker isn’t there yet.

I also note that the Catholic Church echoes the Sufi master’s attitude by displaying wariness concerning ecstasies and caution about mysticism as a general approach. Pop culture, a culture of emotion and of going with the flow, doesn’t like this stance. It sounds authoritarian—whereas it may simply be knowing.

The sharp if simplifying distinction I am making here, between cognitive development and emotional highs and lows, helps in sorting what is today a popular but fringe literature on “spiritual” or “cosmic” states, the paranormal, near-death experience reports, etc. The cognitive, of course, is not merely the intellectual, but the intellectual must be present at its base; and there are also modes of perception that are labeled “emotional” when they hold a higher form of experience, joy. Not that geography really applies here, but in the regions beyond the borderzone, there are most likely qualitatively different regions, from low to increasingly higher coherence. And to travel through them successfully, a good inner map is helpful, a grasp of the different states, principally studied by self-observation in the here and now.

Related Posts:

Mystical Experiences

A Closer Look at Ecstasy

Happy Hunting Grounds

When something cannot be described using words or graspable analogies, how can that something motivate people to seek it? Yet such is the case with ecstatic experiences. Those who report them use words like these: “It cannot be described!” “It transcends all that we know!” “Ineffable!” This can—and is—rendered into dreary technical jargon: The very means we try to use to describe or understand it are also the very veils that hide this unutterable Wonder. More amusing, sometimes, are imaginative aggrandizements like this: Compared to it the greatest Joy that you could possibly experience is like a tiniest black ant hiding at the bottom of the deepest canyon in the deepest ocean in the darkest hour of the longest night. Etc.

I much prefer descriptions of the world we get from some of the Native American tribes. They spoke of the Happy Hunting Grounds. Not sophisticated? Catering to the already excessively sensuous nature of humanity? — Or could the Happy Hunting Grounds be much closer to the truth than the Unimaginably Ineffable reached by extreme and towering mortifications after uncounted lives of failure? The Happy Hunting Grounds can at least be described in some ways. The greatest of humanity’s ecstatics utterly fail to communicate. What they say reminds me of a perfectly-wiped blackboard: we’re staring at nothing at all.

So who is closer to the truth? Could the ecstatics have it right? Or dare we trust the Iroquois? Well, here I would begin by pointing out that the Iroquois were an exceedingly sophisticated people; the Iroquois League had features of government that, if we could reproduce them, would please us indeed—but would also impose disciplines incompatible with a consumption culture. Let’s not dismiss the Iroquois, the Cherokee, or the Algonquians just because we’re ignorant of them and managed to erase them (for a time) from the cultural landscape.

Meanwhile there are some genuine problems with the ecstatic view. If the ecstatics are right, radical discontinuities are present in the cosmos. This comes into view when we compare the life we know in this dimension, the efforts we’re supposed to make to reach salvations, and the rewards we are supposed to gain. Effort and reward are incommensurably disproportional. It does not matter which cultural tradition we consult. Eternal damnation or eternal (but indescribable) bliss? Eternal suffering in rebirth after bloody rebirth, old age, etc., over and over again? Unless in this life we make so heroic an effort of the will to extinguish ourselves that we suddenly become divine? When incommensurability is present, it becomes problematical to speak of meaning. The Arbitrary raises its head—however benevolent its visage.

Over against that Ungraspable, the Happy Hunting Grounds make a lot of sense. The way I see it, life here and life beyond must have some differences, to be sure—but also some continuities. Without both, meaning disappears. In the Happy Hunting Grounds, hunting is still necessary—but it is easier, happiness is greater, the game is ample, and easier to catch. The myth projects a transition to a higher sphere in which the features of the mental landscape retain some element of recognition—not this life here and then an indescribable flash of light. I’m inclined to trust humanity’s traditional views against the extreme experiences of those who assault heaven with boundless fury determined to rob it of its secret. I find it interesting that ordinary people, reporting on near-death experiences, also suggest the kind of continuity the Amerindians did by speaking of hunting grounds. People who’ve undergone an NDE are themselves transformed by the experience, predominantly for the better. And they do have something to say—although, to be sure, they also have difficulties putting that world into the language we use to describe this one.

My own views of the ecstatic are fleshed out here. To give it a brief summary, it appears to be contact with something analogous to energy, experienced as extraordinarily powerful and positive. It appears to heighten benevolence and intellect—but fails to bestow knowledge. It is interpreted as contact with a person—but only by some. Among the traditions, the Sufis are cautious about it, their teachers frown. And official Catholicism (although derided for this) does not rush to embrace the experience either—and quite rightly so.