Mysticism, Science

Mysticism and science are more closely related to each other than either is to philosophy. Here I take philosophy in its modern sense—largely engaged in dealing with pure concepts or even simply with grammar and semantics. Both mysticism and science are grounded in experience, the one in the exploration and understanding of transcending realities, the other in examining the physical. Both, of course, have marginal or pseudo forms. In mysticism that manifests as speculation about experience not personally lived; in the other as mathematical science in which any relationship to reality is, at best, produced by instrument readings. Mysticism is rare, science common; the reason for this is that those who have actually experienced the transcending are very few in number; those who have access to matter are many. Herewith two quotes from Shihabuddin Yahya Suhrawardi concerning the mystics:

We deny the right to the Peripatetics [Aristotelians] to speak about the forms and realities which become visible to the visionary contemplatives, for what is in question is a path which scarcely any of them has followed and even in those very few cases the mystical experience remained weak and precarious. The follower of the mystical path who has received his initiation from a master with theosophical experience, or thanks to the special divine assistance which guides the solitary exile—the latter case being very rare—will fully understand that the Peripatetics have entirely overlooked two sublime universes which never figure in their discussions, and there are a number of other things that remain beyond the scope of their philosophy.

…In short, the theosophist who has truly attained to mystical experience is one whose material body becomes like a tunic which he sometimes casts off and at other times puts on. No man can be numbered among the mystical theosophists so long as he has no knowledge of the most holy leaven of mystical wisdom, and so long as he has not experienced this casting off and this putting on.*

A parallel critique of mathematical science is provided by the physicist David Bohm. I’ve quoted this segment before elsewhere. It bears repeating in this context:

All that is clear about the quantum theory is that it contains an algorithm for computing the probabilities of experimental results. But it gives no physical account of individual quantum processes. Indeed, without the measuring instruments in which the predicted results appear, the equations of the quantum theory would be just pure mathematics that would have no physical meaning at all. And thus quantum theory merely gives us (generally statistical) knowledge of how our instruments will function. And from this we can make inferences that contribute to our knowledge, for example, of how to carry out various technical processes….

It follows from this that quantum mechanics can say little or nothing about reality itself. In philosophical terminology, it does not give what can be called an ontology for a quantum system. Ontology is concerned primarily with that which is and only secondarily with how we obtain our knowledge about this.†

The reason why science rules and mysticism is relegated to the category of the airy-fairy is not because one produces truth and the other fantasy. They both produce genuine observations of reality. The decisive reason is that in a collective, social setting, common knowledge must be accessible to the commonality of the population. But transcending experience is only available to the few; the rest must believe. The truth of the mystical, however, is at least indirectly substantiated by the majority of humans who do believe and adhere to one or another of the world’s religions. They have an intuition that the mystics “have something.” And that intuition, of course, comes from the same river the few have actually followed closer to its source.

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*Suhrawardi in Book of Conversations, quoted in Henry Corbin’s Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, Bollingen, 1977, p. 124.

†Bohm, David and B.J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe, Routlege, 1993, p. 1-2.

The Mood of No Mood

In the writings of the Persian mystic, Suhrawardi (ca. 1153-1191), we encounter the “Eighth Climate”; he also calls it Na-koja-Abad, translated as “land of No-where” (link). The word utopia is equivalent, taken from the Greek for “no place,” but Suhrawardi refers to the regions on the other side of the border, thus what we often refer to as the Beyond. Antiquity counted seven climates on the earth; hence, similarly, Suhrawardi’s Eighth Climate refers to one beyond those found in this dimension.

Got to thinking this morning that the first step in reaching that Land of No-Where while still in the prison of this dimension is by cultivating the mood of no mood. It comes when we make an effort to achieve a contemplative state. That state, simply put, is one in which we stop identifying with all that we hear and see and become clearly self-aware. It differs from the ordinary state in which we live, call it our habit mood. That last is not a bad state, by and large. We’re there, we’re aware, we’re acting—but the object of our awareness is out there, in the world. The best way to experience the mood of no mood is when we happen to be in a dark or somber state. Then the effort, in practice reachable by meditation, say, or writing a diary entry in which the focus is our own state of mind, produces an interesting result. In a short while the dark mood recedes, indeed it disappears. We find ourselves in a state often labeled as detached. The world out there remains the same. The problems or conditions that plagued us are still there. But the self seems as if it now floats above the fray. We are temporarily out of this world—and the winds of the Na-koja-Abad can touch our face. We’ve just made an elementary move towards another climate. Frequently repeated, it becomes a journey.

Of interest here is that the practice of recollection, concentration, meditation has palpable results. And the Eighth Climate is not empty either. It is very real—more real than this dimension. Our deepest longings are to return there. Curiously, when in a state of contemplation, that longing is also absent. Is that because, although we are still blind to it, we are already there?

Experienced Continuities Between Dimensions

I have now been almost three years, or thirty-three months, in that state in which—my mind being withdrawn from corporeal things—I could be in the societies of the spiritual and the celestial and yet be like another man in the society of men without any difference; at which spirits also wondered;—when, however, I intensely adhered to worldly things in thought; as when I had care concerning necessary expenses, about which I this day wrote a letter so that my mind was for some time detained therewith , I fell, as it were, into a corporeal state, so that the spirits could not converse with me, as they also said, because they were as though absent from me. A case rather similar occurred before; whence I am enabled to know, that spirits cannot speak with a man who is much devoted to worldly and corporeal cares;— for bodily concerns, as it were, draw down the ideas of the mind and immerse them in corporeal things. [Emanuel Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, March 4, 1748]

This quote, taken from the second volume of Swedenborg’s Spiritual Diary, suggest that under certain conditions—not understood as to causation—some people are able to perceive another reality which appears to be continuous with ours. Information about such experience is rarely recorded and, when it is, is brushed aside. So also are Swedenborg’s own experiences. The fact that he was a notable scientist, writer, and a high-ranking civil servant before his experiences began (at around age 57), and that he continued to maintain his high social standing until his death at age 84—traveling the world and in social contact with Swedish society, not least the royal family at its peak—is brushed aside by those who, for dogmatic reasons, simply cannot accept Swedenborg's testimony. But the experience, while rare, is not isolated. Quite ordinary people have such experiences too. Not surprisingly, they do not make a great fuss over them. And sensibly so. Society must have a certain adequacy even to consider such possibilities. And (as I keep pointing out) in periods when organized religion has the hammer hand, people who have such experiences are frequently treated with much greater severity than in our own. In our own they may be marginalized, ignored, and prevented from publishing. In others they are sometimes executed. One such case is that of the Persian mystic and writer Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1155-1191). Another mystic I recently mentioned, Mohiuddin ibn el-Arabi, escaped that fate because he had better high-level connections.

I’ve had occasion to look at this subject before in an earlier post, where I first introduced the writings of Henry Corbin—himself a writer who examined the lives of all three of the mystics I mention above. He originated the phrase mundus imaginalis in an attempt to give a name to the dimension to which these individuals all had access. I’ll say more as occasions present themselves.