Thomas A. Williams and Mallarmé

I chance across books in what sometimes seems a random manner. Here for instance I have in hand Mallarmé and the Language of Mysticism by Thomas A. Williams. The circumstances, thus the other two books I chanced across in the same isolated spot, suggest that this book was my Mother’s acquisition, but already used—indeed already heavily marked up but not in her hand. Yes. She would have found Mallarmé fascinating. Thomas Williams was a Duluth-born but resettled New Hampshire novelist and professor. The book is still accessible on Amazon.

This work is bi-lingual, you might say. About a third is in French because all of Williams’ quotes of Mallarmé and of French authors about him are rendered in the original. Thus unless you’re really fluent in French, this is a bit of a labor. But what I find fascinating here is mostly in English. It contains a quite extensive collection of quotes from people who have themselves had mystical experiences—including names travelers in this zone know well (Eckhart, John of the Cross) and others quite unknown. Next, Williams thinks that the artistic and the mystical experience have the same rooting—if they are inward enough. Thus he ranks Mallarmé among the mystics although the poet was an atheist.

The book has value because it shows something I’ve long thought true, namely that such “penetrations” into the foundations of consciousness don’t produce any meaning beyond a meaningless ecstasy.  They sometimes happen accidentally; very often they are the consequences of very willful determination to get to the root of things—present in Buddhism and elsewhere. But what they are not is Revelation. They also produce, when deep enough, the powerful conviction of the emptiness of ordinary experience, thus reality-is-illusion—which it certainly is not. Therefore my conviction that this method of understanding reality is backwards. To go that way is possible but not intended. It’s either that or all these travails down here and all those galaxies up there are absolutely empty of meaning.

“Illusion” as Interpretation

A recent earlier post here (“Whose Illusion?”) touches on this subject, and more is provided here. To put it as succinctly as possible, it is unreasonable to speak of the world as illusion once you understand the world in some in detail. The assertion that it is, which we encounter in Brahmanism and in Buddhism, arises not from reasoning but from an overwhelming feeling. The root of that feeling is the unitive experience—as we call it in the West. We call it that because it is taken to be unity with God (or the Cosmos) reached in ecstatic states. That sense of unity is also present in the Vedantic saying Thou Art That, meaning that Atman is Brahman (soul is God). Different Vedantic schools give this doctrine different interpretations, thus ranging from “soul is a part of” to “soul is.” The sense of unity is also present in the Buddhist Enlightenment but without being called that; but all multiplicity is conquered; absolute liberation characterizes the enlightened state.

The experience certainly produces both a radical devaluation of the world and sometimes an equally radical indifference to it. The world is suddenly seen in a very new perspective. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), who spent his life writing the most profound works of theology, had a mystical experience while saying mass late in 1273. He stopped writing. Asked to resume his work, he said: “Everything I have written seems like straw by comparison with what I have seen and what has been revealed to me” (source). He did not resume his work.

D.T. Suzuki, in Essays on Zen Buddhism, First Series, quotes the Buddha saying, p. 137: “These questions are not calculated to profit, they are not concerned with Dharma, they do not redound to the elements of right conduct, nor to detachment, nor to purification from lusts, nor to quietude, nor to tranquillization of heart, nor to real knowledge, nor to Nirvana. Therefore is it that I express no opinion on them.” The questions referred to were: Is the world eternal? Is the world not eternal? Is the world finite? The source given is the Pottapada Sutta (in which a beggar, Pottapada, asks the Buddha questions). That word Dharma is a killer, by the way. It means all sorts of things, including “doctrine.” In this context it is best understood as “the path.”

One of the striking features of the unitive experience is that those who’ve undergone it never say anything concrete, never mind new, about the world. They have a feeling of overwhelming knowledge, but it produces nothing they’re able to articulate. What we get from them is a valuation. That’s plain enough in Aquinas’ statement—as in the Buddha’s. Aquinas now dismisses his own works as more or less worthless—more or less because straw isn’t entirely worthless. The Buddha asserts that answering questions about the nature of the world is irrelevant to the achievement of the experience of nirvana. Valuations.

The most accessible written source about a full-fledged modern unitive experience is Pathways Through To Space (1973) by Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1887-1985). The book is readily available still and makes fascinating reading. Merrell-Wolff then tried to give some explanations in his The Philosophy of Consciousness Without an Object. That second book, in my opinion, has virtually no content—nor does a later one in which he includes commentary on his second book.

Having looked at such matters for many years now, I’ve gradually come to see the unitive experience minimally as a non-starter for cosmological thought. Those who’ve had it are overwhelmed by knowledge, but its content is inaccessible, not least to themselves. Now let’s suppose that it is—and I don’t by any means think that it is—an experience of the Ultimate. But if that is the case, it gives us two polarities and absolutely nothing in between. At one pole is Everything at the other Illusion—or something valued not at all. But how one relates to the other—and why it is that life-forms are so very, very intricately engineered, and ditto the elemental world beneath that engineering—that is never even remotely illuminated by this very energetic experience of enlightenment.

Whose Illusion?

More in touch with the natural world, as on a brief but real Great Lakes vacation, or carefully observing living creatures, as we have been doing here with butterflies—in my own awkward case such experiences invariably produce cosmological notes. And one of these is that the Eastern notion, namely that this world is Maya or illusion, cannot be correct.

I am looking at a wondrous book on Papillons† (in three languages). Here’s a fascinating picture of a certain Grass Moth. And then I’m told that “The Grass Moths, all of which are small, form a large family with a great variety of forms and about 15,000 species worldwide. Many of them can wrap their front wings around their bodies when at rest, so that they are then difficult to make out.” 15,000 species! Of one kind of moth. That’s an illusion? Whose illusion is that? We’re not born knowing such things. Somebody had to count all those varieties of Grass Moths. Well, if Wikipedia has got it right, the Order Lepidoptera, where the Grass Moth belongs, has, all told, an estimated 174,250 species.

On the way home from the pool last night, Brigitte stopped and pointed at a tree. “Look at the bark of that tree,” she said. “Have you ever seen something like that?” We both stared at the trunk of a tree, fascinated now—having passed it at least fifty, sixty times in the past several years.

The notion that the world is an illusion is the interpretation that Eastern traditions give to what is known as the unitive vision. In the West it is interpreted as union with God. Multiple posts on this blog touch on the subject—this experience—which I take to be content-free and energetic in nature. Being that, its interpretation is shaped by the traditions, knowledge, and philosophies of those who have them—therefore by culture.

Western religions are monotheistic; they conceive of the world as created by God. Therefore it can’t be an illusion. An awareness of an enormous contrast, between ordinary experience and this ecstasy, is also voiced in the West, but not quite in the same negative terms as the East has produced. But the Western version, boiled down to its essence, is to say that the world is less than God. The Eastern version drives this to its extreme. The big contrast is that in the West we conceive of God as the absolutely Other—whereas, in the East, the person who has the experience—now of the world, now of Samadhi—is the same person. Therefore it is the experiencer who has the illusion and, for all practical purposes, is also its cause. Logically speaking, he or she is God. But to escape this problem, the East, when pressed to put it into concepts, imagines us as tiny particles of the Ultimate—but still able to create 174,000 species of Lepidoptera? Or is that a collective effort?

The secular version of the experience is Cosmic Consciousness. If the secular has a religious mode at all—and it will have it once it experiences ecstasy—it is pantheistic. Therefore Cosmic Consciousness is a fitting sort of explanation. Oddly enough, the secular version may be the most concise and perhaps accurate; it simply projects energy. In a pantheistic conception, no one is really present, and the Lepidoptera are simply produced by chance variations. That, of course, I find impossible to believe. But that we’re experiencing the cosmos, rather than God, that I think might be right on. Thus I resist assigning the “unitive experience” any transcendental rank. It is content-free but very energetic. The creation, meanwhile, in its extraordinary diversity and intelligent arrangement, tells me that there is more to the world than merely an overwhelming feeling. Ponder the following quote from the same book, this time illustrating two butterflies mating, rear touching rear:

With flying insects which comprise many species, such as dragonflies and butterflies, nature has to make sure that mating cannot take place between representatives of different species. This is achieved by extreme differentiation of the exterior genitalia, so that male and female organs fit together like key and lock. These distinctive features provide the lepidopterist with accurate classifying aids and help him to distinguish between otherwise very similar species. [Papillons, p. 40]

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†Zauberwelt der Schmetterlinge, The Magic of Butterflies, Papillons, by Gunter Steinbach and Werner Zepf, Sigloch, 1998. The image shown (own photography) is of the Common Buckeye, Junonea coenia, not of the Grass Moth. The Buckeye is a butterfly that looks a little like a moth because of its brown coloration.

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.

A Closer Look at Ecstasy

I’ve touched on this subject in the last post and in an earlier one, under the heading of Mystical Experiences, here. My view of the so-called unitive experience is unorthodox, hence additional development of my take on ecstasy may be justified.

The term arises because in the Christian tradition it is usually described as union with God, hence ecstasies experienced on earth are seen as a preview of the ultimate experience after we depart. In the eastern traditions—and in the west also in pre-Christian Neoplatoism (i.e., in Plotinus)—the term does not carry the connotation of union with a person. In all other respects, however, the experience is described in the same way. The names—Satori, Samadhi, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Cosmic Consciousness—all clearly describe the identical experience. The reason why the feeling is associated with God is because the experience produces exaltation, a sense of total understanding of everything, a feeling of cosmic expansion, indeed of infinite power. But those returning from such experiences cannot describe what it is that they understand; they don’t gain specific knowledge. True, after such experiences some among them manifest psychic gifts in one or several categories.

As reported by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor in her book My Stroke of Insight (on which I expect to comment more in the future), this unitive state may manifest in some survivors of strokes—as it did in hers. This suggests that abrupt physical changes can bring it about; but, however caused, the effect on the individual of such an event is the same and leads to a much more intense spiritual life whether or not the experiencer is a deist.

A very complete modern account of this experience is recorded by Franklin Merrell-Wolff, a mathematician. The account dates to the 1930s and is told in Pathways Through to Space. Merrell-Wolff’s story is of great value because we learn in an unambiguous way that an energetic flow is involved—a spiritual sort of energy, not anything measurable like electromagnetism. Merrell-Wolff describes it as a current. This same energy may also be the agency that produces miraculous cures. I’ve had a mild experience of this sort myself, described in the post already quoted above. It took place in my late teens, before I’d ever heard of Merrell-Wolff’s book, yet I also experienced and clearly remember the energetic, vibratory aspects of it. And, yes! It was exalting, all-powerful, but carried no content beyond the ecstatic feeling. I’d never had any experience so powerful before—and haven’t had one since.

I am personally fairly sure that the belief in an ultimate union with God in heaven developed from such experiences by saints and seers of the Christian era. They reported their experience and made them credible because some of them gained miraculous powers in the wake of these internal events. But the experience may be interpreted in another way as well, and for several reasons, I think that the alternative interpretation is more plausible; hence my unorthodox stance.

I think that the ecstatic or unitive experience is an intense exposure to the life energy, the very flow that keeps us alive, day in, day out. Under normal circumstances we perceive it mildly, thus simply as life; but it is obviously possible to experience this flow at its strongest, thus before it is diffused by the body or veiled and muted by the brain; and the brain may be designed to do just that. An interesting observation Merrell-Wolff made was that at the time this flow was most intense, his bodily functions visibly weakened.

Now I believe in God and hence believe that all of reality ultimately comes from the Ultimate—the life force no less than anything else. But I think that the unitive state is caused by a powerful primitive form of the spiritual energy—whereas in the mystical traditions, the experience is viewed as the very peak of being. The very fact that damages to the brain—or willfully produced practices of fasting, intense meditation combined with fierce concentration, and other similar unusual methods—can bring about such states suggests to me that we are either passively subject to this experience or can sometimes willfully bring it about. But neither of these possibilities appears to me to be part of a grand design.

That this experience should powerfully stimulate our spiritual life does not surprise me. The life force itself, it seems to me, is a transcendental phenomenon, above the inorganic energetics. Modern thought assigns life to chemical energy, but one can legitimately wonder about that. I have another, broader reason for maintaining my alternative view of this experience. I don’t think that we are here on earth, undergoing all manner of experiences that increase our understanding and hone our will merely to experience, at life’s conclusion, a kind of spiritual electrocution which leaves us blissful but without any choice or knowledge of anything beyond a sense of vastness, an illusion of omniscience, and a sense of infinite power. No. Life, I think, is preparing us for an order of much greater complexity.

Eternity May Come in Chunks

And they lived happily every after…

All good stories are a segment of reality. There is what in movie land they call the “backstory,” thus events that happened before the action starts, but you won’t see them on the screen. This same material is what the playwright calls “exposition.” Next comes the tale itself. And then the story ends with a happy wave of the hand. And they lived happily ever after.

Cosmologies mirror this state of affairs precisely. There is the backstory of Adam and Eve, the fall, the expulsion from Paradise, the Redemption. Then there comes the story—our life, the search for salvation. It is terminated at its conclusion with the promise of eternal bliss or eternal suffering in hell. Reincarnation models are a variant; their hell (chuckle) is return to this world; but their positive outcome, nirvana, is still a happy but entirely undefined ever after.

I have a trait that must genuinely irritate the cosmic story teller. Endings of this type (magical hand wave, etc.) bother me. I go on walks and speculate. I think about the meaning of “eternal bliss”; indeed I often wonder if it has any conceivable meaning at all. The cosmic whole, what little of it I can perceive, strikes me as a vast and extremely complicated, call it expensive, undertaking—just so that, at the conclusion of a life (or thousands of lives for that matter) the winners, as it were, can sink into a kind of dreamy baby bliss forever and forever more?

The sophisticated response to this is to use the word mystery. Well, that’s a mystery. The phrase tells the irritating nerd to get with the program and simply accept our human limitations, stop rattling the bars of the cage, and wait to discover the bliss. The bliss will answer all your questions. Here the interesting thing is that, some individuals actually do have exalted experiences like nirvana or union with God. The experience is overwhelming, and none of these individuals ever suggests that anything at all was lacking. Why then do I keep on scratching at my itch? Because these individuals return among us, do not embrace nirvana and simply swoon away. They keep on living and, to some extent certainly, suffering. That feeling—and it is never more than that; those who have it never offer any expressible content—may not be the same thing that occurs after we’ve shuffled off the mortal coil.

My working hypothesis is that in the grand design eternity may well be diced apart into livable chunks—or to give it a more sophisticated framing, that it occurs in quanta, like energy, distinguishable in actuality. That as one life ends—and the intermediate transition may indeed be a kind of baby bliss, even if the next life is not in the flesh—another begins. The creative work of the cosmos may never end, true. And we may be participants in it. But we’re blessed by participating in it, well, one job at a time.