Consciousness
and Super-Consciousness
In the preceding chapters I have tried to show, firstly, that
the number of the mystics that had the genuine experience, throughout the
course of history, has been extremely small, and that all those who claim
knowledge of the spirit are not really enlightened. Secondly, that the present
world is woefully deficient in the knowledge of the brain and that the learned,
in dealing with mind or the origin and nature of the universe, usually leave
the encephalon out of count, as if human intelligence exists incorporeally and
independently, and does not depend for its manifestation, quality and
performance on the activity of an organic instrument, beyond our scrutiny at
present. The result is that much of our knowledge, at the moment, is unilateral
and speculative, nescient of the nature of the 'Knower' itself. An intelligent
species with a brain that shows an altered perception of time, an easy
possibility, would frame an entirely different picture of the universe.
The aim of this writing is to draw attention to this serious
lacunae which keeps us in ignorance about our own selves. The position that I
am taking up is that the human mind, as we know it at present, is not a
constant, unalterable entity. It can change and with it the whole picture of
the universe, which we perceive with our senses. This is a bold statement to
make, and is not likely to be accepted for the simple reason that it undermines
the very foundation on which science is built, namely, the reality of the objective
world and the validity of the empirical observation conducted by the mind.
The issue boils down to this: if it is admitted that the human
mind is variable and that this variation can affect the very image of the
universe, and all the phenomena observed, it would clearly imply that the
cosmos is not, in reality, as we perceive, assess and measure it with our
intelligence, but only a creation of our mind liable to change in other
dimensions of the perceptive faculty. From this it would follow that the temporal
knowledge gathered by us is relative also and that what is accumulated in one
dimension of consciousness can prove incomplete, deceptive or erroneous in the
other.
"Our conception of the structure of the universe,"
says William de Sitter, "bears all the marks of a transitory structure.
Our theories are decidedly in a state of continuous, and just now very rapid
evolution. It is not possible to predict how long our present views and
interpretations will remain unaltered and how soon they will have to be
replaced by perhaps very different ones, based on new observational data and
new critical insight in their connection with other data."1
Where from is this new critical insight to come except from a more evolved mind
and brain?
An affirmation of the same position comes from no less than an
authority than Max Planck. He says: "How do we discover the individual
laws of Physics, and what is their nature? It should be remarked, to begin
with, that we have no right to assume that any physical laws exist, or if they
have existed up to now, that they will continue to exist in a similar manner in
the future. It is perfectly conceivable that one fine day Nature should cause
an unexpected event to occur which would baffle us all; and if this were to
happen we would be powerless to make any objection, even if the result would be
that, in spite of our endeavors, we should fail to introduce order into the
resulting confusion. In such an event, the only course open to science would be
to declare itself bankrupt. For this reason, science is compelled to begin by
the general assumption that a general rule of law dominates throughout
Nature." 2
Once the position is accepted, the conclusion becomes
unavoidable that all the contexts of our day-to-day experience of the world--the
events which befall and the sights we see, the good and evil, noble and base,
beautiful and ugly we meet, or the ideas of God, Soul and the Hereafter we
entertain, all emerge from the unfathomable depths of our consciousness. This
means that all we come across during the pilgrimage of life is not an objective
reality, but a stupendous, realistic drama, presented by our own mind, and
another enigmatic stuff, we call material energy. The latter is becoming more
and more of a paradox and the more we try to reach its bottom the more
paradoxical and unpredictable it becomes. For all we know, it might be a twin
brother of our mind, both off-shoots of the same tree or a projected image of
mind itself. The corollary that follows this view of creation, forced on us by
the latest concepts in physics, is that since our brain is the junction-point,
where this incredible exchange between the mind and his brother takes place, it
is to the brain that we must look for a solution of the mystery.
The matter does not end there. What should now become obvious,
beyond doubt, is the fact that when contemplating a grand spectacle of nature,
during the day, or the shimmering firmament at night, the sense of admiration,
awe or wonder felt does not come from the magnificence, loveliness or the vast
extent of these external objects, inherent or dwelling in them, but from the
grandeur, beauty and the immensity residing in our own consciousness. In other
words, it is we who lend grandiosity, charm and vastness to an object, also horror,
cheerfulness, humor or sadness to what appears to us as a dreadful, merry,
ludicrous or tragic scene. What the world will look like to a mind, dead to
emotions and bereft of the sense of beauty and color, I leave it to the reader
to imagine.
This still does not complete the picture. The other conclusion
that follows is that all the over four billion human creatures on the earth,
the multi-millionaire and the pauper, the king and the beggar, the strongman
and the cripple, the philanthropist and the thief, the beauty-queen and the
leper, as long as they live, share the same incredible wonder in their
interior, as they share the sun, the moon, the stars, the air and water, the
precious bounties of nature that make life possible on earth.
It is a staggering position. But there is nothing incongruous in
what I say. The scriptures of all the current faiths point to the same
conclusion. Since the Soul is held to be immortal, incorporeal and divine, it
must always stay immaculate, above the corporeality and the blemishes of the
mortal frame. It would be blasphemous to say that there could be a sightless,
lecherous, leprous or penniless Soul. It is because of an impure frame of mind
that attaches more importance to the externals of religion than to its beatific
interior that we are denied access to the Glory that dwells in all of us,
irrespective of our station in life.
The main task of religion is to bring awareness of the divinity
within to every human being. In this unique treasure of heaven no one is
richer, stronger, superior or better than the other. This divine Splendor all
share alike, irrespective of their position, wealth, learning intelligence,
strength or looks. Like the brilliant orb of the day, it shines alike on the
rich and the poor, the wise and the fool. The glaring differences and
discrepancies, elegance and squalor, virtue and vice or excess and want we see
around, belong to the stage and the dress of clay and not to the divine actor,
ever undefiled, like a dancing beam of light. The aim of human life is to
explore this 'wonder' in every one of us whose pleasure-ground is the universe.
This is the Message which for the last over three thousand years
the exalted class of true mystics has brought to the world. This is the Message
which juvenile science, at first, cared not to heed like an impetuous youngster
refusing to listen to his more seasoned elders, ultimately in his declining age
to regret the rebellious thoughts of his early years. There are myriads who, in
their closing days, review with sorrow their reckless youth. Were there no
surprises and no innovations in the province of thought in store for the human
wit in the ages to come, she would die of boredom in a few centuries. It is
change that keeps her alive. The pendulum is now swinging in the other
direction to usher in a new era of thought in which the spirit and not matter,
the mystic and not the skeptic will dominate.
An indication of this change is provided by the thoughts
expressed by many eminent scientists of recent times. This is a sample of one
of them: "Yet I repeat once more," declares William James, "the
existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of
non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may
believe. As a rule, mystical states merely add a super-sensuous meaning to the
ordinary outward data of consciousness. They are excitements, like the emotions
of love or ambition, gifts to our spirit by means of which facts, already
objectively before us fall into a new expressiveness and make a new connection
with our active life. They do not contradict these facts as such, or deny
anything that our senses have immediately seized. It is the rationalistic
critic rather who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials
have no strength, for there can never be a state of facts to which new meaning
may not truthfully be added, provided the mind ascends to a more enveloping
point of view. It must always remain an open question whether mystical states
may not possibly be such superior points of view, windows through which the
mind looks out upon a more extensive and inclusive world." 3
The present-day concepts of physics no longer contradict the
experience of the mystic but, on the other hand, find it more consistent with
the new insights into the nature of the physical world. This view has been
expressed by many of the leading physicists of our time. "A rainbow
described in the symbolism of physics," writes Eddington, "is a band
of ethereal vibrations arranged in systemic order to wave-lengths from about
.00004 centimeters to .000072 centimeters. From one point of view, we are
paltering with the truth whenever we admire the gorgeous bow of color, and
should strive to reduce our minds to such a state that we receive the same
impression from the rainbow as from a table of wave-lengths. But although that
is how the rainbow impresses itself on an impersonal spectroscope, we are not
giving the whole truth and significance of experience--if we suppress the
factors wherein we ourselves differ from the spectroscope. We cannot say that
the rainbow, as part of the world, was meant to convey the vivid effects of
color; but we can perhaps say that the human mind, as part of the world, was
meant to perceive it that way." 4
Another eminent physicist, James Jeans write, "In more
recent times, Bertrand Russell has expressed what is essentially the same
argument in the words: 'So long as we adhere to the conventional notions of
mind and matter, we are condemned to a view of perception which is miraculous.
We suppose that a physical process starts from a visible object, travels to the
eye, there changes into another physical process, causes yet another physical
process in the optic nerve, and finally produces some effect in the brain,
simultaneously with which we see the object from which the process started, the
seeing being something "mental," totally different in character from
the physical processes which precede and accompany it.' This view is so queer
that metaphysicians have invented all sorts of theories designed to substitute
something less incredible...
"Everything that we can directly observe from the physical
world happens inside our heads, and consists of mental events which form part
of the physical world. The development of this point of view will lead us to
the conclusion that the distinction between mind and matter is illusory. The
stuff of the world may be called physical or mental or both or neither as we
please; in fact the words serve no purpose." 5
"Even if the two entities which we have hitherto
described," continues Jeans, "as mind and matter are of the same
general nature, there remains the question as to which is the more fundamental
of the two. Is mind only a by-product of matter, as the materialists claimed?
Or is it, as Berkeley claimed, the creator and controller of matter?
"Before the latter alternative can be seriously considered,
some answer must be found to the problem of how objects can continue to exist
when they are not being perceived in any human mind. There must, as Berkeley
says, be 'some other mind in which they exist.' Some still wish to describe
this, with Berkeley, as the mind of God; others with Hegel as a universal or
Absolute mind in which all our individual minds are comprised. The new quantum
mechanics may perhaps give a hint, although nothing more than a hint, as to how
this can be." 6
"It seems, at least, conceivable," Jeans adds,
"That what is true of perceived objects may also be true of perceiving
minds; just as there are wave-pictures for light and electricity, so there may
be a corresponding picture for consciousness. When we view ourselves in space
and time, our consciousness is obviously the separate individuals of a
particle-picture, but when we pass beyond space and time, they may perhaps form
ingredients of a single continuous stream of life. As it is with light and
electricity, so it may be with life; the phenomena may be individuals carrying
on separate existences in space and time, while in the deeper reality beyond
space and time we may all be members of one body. In brief, modern physics is
not altogether antagonistic to an objective idealism like that of Hegel."
7
I know it will be hard for me to make myself understood, as I
tread on unmapped territory in the effort to bring into focus in the province of
religion and science both, a vital element that has been ignored so far,
namely, the center of life in the body, that is the brain. Since the organ is
indispensable for all our activity and even existence in the human form, it is
inconceivable that our consciousness can take a leap beyond its normal
periphery without affecting its substance in any way. There is no historical
precedent of a higher animal, say a horse, ever attaining the mental stature of
a human being, and co-mingling with other humans on a basis of equality. How
can it then be possible for a human being to consort with gods without some
kind of change in the brain? Those who long for self-awareness, clairvoyant
gifts, miraculous powers, communication with the spirit world, encounters with
masters, or adventures in the occult realm would do well to give second
thoughts to their cherished dream. The world did not produce another Christ or
Buddha, Vyasa or Socrates, Plato or Mohammed, Rumi or Shankaracharya, Francis
of Assisi or any other great mystic or master of the occult, because the
mystery of the part played by the brain in these accomplishments remains
unsolved so far. The aim of this writing is to make this hidden knowledge
accessible to humanity.
I am confident of my stand, as a psychological cathartic is
necessary to crown the revolution caused by science, and its off-spring,
technology, in human life and thought. Without this psychological climax,
mankind will continue to move in the accustomed groove and utilize the
resources of the earth and also of her fertile intellect only to enhance and
satisfy her physical needs as she is virtually doing now. Her most pressing
need at the moment is to become aware of the spiritual goal planned for her by
nature and the methods to attain it. Once this knowledge is gained and the
unmatched splendor of the crown destined for her realized, no efforts of
pharisees or saddusees, who thrive on the credulity and nativity of human
beings, can make the race deviate from the course.
A tidal wave of skepticism, doubt and disbelief, symbolized by
the materialist ideology, is sweeping over the earth, not because Satan and the
Anti-Christ have become dominant nor because it is Kali-Yuga of the Indian
mythology, but because the time for a further elaboration and enrichment of the
religious creeds and spiritual ideals of mankind has come. Like a cocoon, man
weaves a tough sheet of dogma around himself to lie inert and passive until
nature tears it open with a revolution to allow him freedom. But he soon starts
to weave it afresh in the newly introduced pattern of life or thought to entomb
himself once again. This is true not only of religion but also of political
orders, social customs, educational systems, even scientific institutions and
other long-standing ideas and beliefs. It is easier, sometimes, to bore a
tunnel through a mountain than to break open the shell which the conservative
element in human nature builds around itself.
To believe that the universe consists of only those elements and
forces that are perceptible to our senses or detected by our instruments is to
belie the latest assessments of science. The very size and the extent of the
Universe, the new formations discovered in the sky and the problems created by
them, the marvels of the ultra-microscopic world and the possibility of even
superior types of life in other parts of the Cosmos provide more than
sufficient material to make it clear that the creation round us is too complex,
too vast and too full of unsolved riddles to make us complacent about the fact
that what our senses perceive or minds apprehend is all that exists in it. Such
an attitude of mind at this stage of our knowledge can only emanate from one
not in touch with the progress of today.
The first impact of genuine mystical experience on the mind of
the experiencer is something like this that the world he was perceiving and his
own individuality, as he was conscious of it so far, were not true realities
but only the figures of, say, a relatively speaking, dream state from which he
has just awakened to the full bloom of another sun shining on a splendrous
world, entirely unlike the one which his senses were revealing to him before.
It should be remembered that for this state of cognition, it is not necessary
that the percipient should be insensible to the sensory world. Not at all. What
makes mystical ecstasy an increasing wonder is the incredible fact that both
the sensory and supersensory worlds can be perceived simultaneously. But how?
Like the radiant sky showing a mirage on it, both visible side by side.
The real status of the 'mystic' has not been correctly adjudged.
He is not a dreamy idealist prone to visions, conjured up by his subconscious
or to epileptic seizures or to hysterical swoons or to ecstatic trances,
brought about by a suppressed libido, or his own obsessive occupation with the
supernatural or by a pathological condition of the brain. In those cases, where
these symptoms have been exhibited by true mystics, the abnormalities were the
concomitant features of the extrasensory mental state, as in the case of
genius, and not the causative factors responsible for it. These are mere
conjectures of the learned made in absence of an accurate knowledge of the
phenomenon. Nor is he a special protege of the Almighty, sent to the earth to
preach His glory among mortals and to exhort them to surrender their all for
His sake and, himself intoxicated with His love, to infuse this intoxication in
others also. The human intellect has since outgrown the anthropomorphic picture
of the Creator and it is time she outgrows the current picture of the mystic
too.
Every mystic born has been a specimen of the man to come. His
self-imposed penances and his religious beliefs were the creation of his
culture, faith and the environment around him. But his vivid descriptions of
the new visions gained, the new worlds unfolded and the basic teachings about
the way to be followed to reach the same state of perception were the outcome
of knowledge gained in the new dimension of consciousness to which he had attained.
The descriptions are diversely colored and at times contradictory and
conflicting because they are, as it were, the first reports of a few space
travelers, separated by long stretches of time and distance, viewing the
gigantic planet, Jupiter, at a distance of hundreds of thousands of miles from
different angles through glasses of varied magnifying power.
Nature repeatedly produced the prototype of the future man to
awaken humanity to her destiny. But the multitudes, including the scholars and
the divines, misinterpreting the hint, erected for themselves the four walls of
ritualistic religions to confine themselves within, with a fanatical zeal which
led to some of the greatest horrors in history, still repeated at times in some
parts of the earth. That the followers of every faith arrogate to their own
creed the highest station among all the religions, to their founder or founders
the highest stature among all the prophets and to themselves the most favored
position with the Almighty, makes it obvious that the human ego has been as
strongly at work in this holy territory, where humility is the law, as in the
other spheres of life. This shows that self-worshiping man does not even spare
his Maker in the fulfillment of his selfish ends and makes of Him, too, a tool
to bolster his own vanity.
I have purposely introduced the prosaic figure of the human
brain in this discourse to serve as an anchor to the otherwise highly mobile
vessel of thought, prone to be carried away here and there by the wind of prejudice,
dogma, idiosyncrasy, stubbornness and the rest, especially when sailing on the
waters of religion, philosophy or metaphysics. It is only experiments on the
brain that can call a dead halt to these arbitrary flights of human thought
when dealing with the phenomena of mind. In order to explain why this need has
arisen, I can do no better than refer the reader to the views expressed by some
of the writers on mysticism in recent times. For instance, Evelyn Underhill, in
answering for her self-formulated question, "What then is the nature of
this special sense--this transcendental consciousness--and how does
contemplation liberate it," proceeds to explain:
"Any attempt to answer this question brings upon the scene
another aspect of man's psychic life: an aspect of paramount importance to the
student of the mystic type. We have reviewed the ways in which our surface
consciousness reacts upon experience: a surface consciousness which has been
trained through long ages to deal with the universe of sense. We know, however,
that the personality of man is a far deeper and more mysterious thing than the
sum of his conscious feeling, thought and will: that this superficial
self--this Ego of which each of us is aware--hardly counts in comparison with
the deeps of being which it hides. 'There is a root or depth in Thee,' says
Law, from whence all these faculties come forth as lines from a center, or
branches from the body of a tree. This depth is called the center, the fund, or
bottom of the soul. This depth is the unity, the Eternity, I had almost said
the infinity of the soul, for it is so infinite that nothing can satisfy it or
give it any rest, but the infinity of God." 8
"Since normal man is utterly unable to set up relations
with spiritual reality by means of his feeling, thought and will, continues
Underhill, "it is clearly in this depth of being--in these unplumbed
levels of personality--that we must search if we would find the organ, the
power, by which he is to achieve the mystic quest. The alteration of consciousness
which takes place in contemplation can only mean the emergence from this 'fund
or bottom of the soul' of some faculty which diurnal life keeps hidden 'in the
deeps.'"9
To draw a parallel for her own conclusion, Underhill turns to
the widely used concept of the 'unconscious mind,' a handy device of modern
psychology to explain whatever is unexplainable or unintelligible in the area
of mind. "Modern psychology," she continues, "in its doctrine of
the unconscious or subliminal personality, has acknowledged this fact of a
range of psychic life, lying below and beyond the conscious field. Indeed, it
has so dwelt upon and defined this shadowy region--which is really less a
'region' than a useful name--that it sometimes seems to know more about the
unconscious than about the conscious life of man. There it finds, side by side,
the sources of his most animal instincts, his least explicable powers, his most
spiritual intuitions: the 'ape and tiger.' and the 'soul.' Genius and prophecy,
insomnia and infatuation, clairvoyance, hypnotism, hysteria and 'Christian'
science--all are explained by the 'unconscious mind.' In his destructive moods,
the psychologist has little apparent difficulty in reducing the chief phenomena
of religious and mystical experience to activities of the 'unconscious,'
seeking an oblique satisfaction of repressed desires. Where he undertakes the
more dangerous duties of apologetic, he explains the same phenomena by saying
that 'God speaks to man in the subconscious,' by which he can only mean that
our apprehension of the eternal has the character of intuition rather than of
thought. Yet the 'unconscious' after all is merely a convenient name for the
aggregate of those powers, parts or qualities of the whole self which at any
given moment are not conscious or that the Ego is not conscious of."
10
I have reproduced these passages at some length for two reasons.
Firstly, to show the similarity between my ideas and the view expressed that
mystical vision is the herald of a 'new birth,' the symbol of a profound
transformation in the personality of an individual which reaches down to the
roots of his being, making him perceptive of spiritual realities denied to the
average human folk. Secondly, to bring into focus the usual tendency among
modern writers on religion, metaphysics or psychology to keep out the brain in
their discussion as if it does not come into the picture at all. This habit
allows too loose a rein to fancy. We know very well that even a slight
alteration in the chemistry of the brain, brought about by a drug, a shock, or
loss of sleep can cause an explosive change in consciousness or the personality
of the subject for the time being. Hence to suppose that such a signal event as
the experience of God or the entry into supersensory planes of creation can be
possible without involving the cranial matter in any way is but to confess the
fault, now common among scholars, of dissociating thought from the brain, both
inseparable chums from birth to death.
The answer to Underhill comes very near to the commonly accepted
explanations for the extraordinary experience of mystics and saints. The notion
is that there are submerged capacities and potentialities in the human soul
which can make these enrapturing flights to the holy precincts of divine consciousness
possible for those who apply themselves heart and soul to the task. Linked
inextricably to the idea that mystical ecstasy represents a union with or, at
least, a vision of God, and that the human soul is a particle of the divine
essence, an explanation of this kind has every semblance of plausibility and
usually puts the doubts of the inquirer to rest.
Every human being is aware of himself as a self-contained
independent unit of consciousness. The brain does not protrude into the
personality at all. For this reason, we do not think of it any more than of
other parts of the body and at times, even less. On account of the fact that a
serious injury to the head can easily prove fatal, all that the people exposed
to accident risk do is to take greater precautions to protect it. But even so,
it does not figure more in their thought, and the idea is usually absent that
the brain is our workshop and all that we observe, think or imagine happens
inside its bony frame.
There are glaring discrepancies in the conventional argument
adduced by Underhill. The lyrical mystical ecstasy which attracts and inspires
us is comparatively of recent origin, dating at the earliest from a period of
not more than three thousand years before the birth of Christ. Before that the
picture of religion and the ecstatic trance is more ugly than beautiful. We
should not forget the trance of the Shaman, the medicine-man, the witch-doctor
and the magi which, too, among their contemporaries betokened ascent to the
spirit-world or intercourse with supernatural beings. But often there was
hardly any element of the divine or the sublime as we understand it today, in
those states of entrancement. The rapture, the clearly marked expansion of self
and the sense of identity with all creation, which marked the later expressions
of the ecstatic state, are not noticeable in the earlier types, or at least in
the remnants of them which survived during historical times. It is a moot issue
whether the subjects of those ecstasies were mentally advanced enough even to
entertain those feelings as the later mystics did.
There were many gods and goddesses, human, divine or demonic
even in the form of animals, birds, reptiles and fish, that demanded bizarre
types of worship and ritual, including human sacrifice, cannibalism,
self-mutilation, infanticide, obnoxious ceremonies, revolting sexual orgies and
the like. It is not wise to overlook, in our zeal to find a supernatural
explanation for mystical ecstasy, the dark side of religion or religious
experience in the primitive phases of human culture nor the barbarous features
that attended the birth and growth of current faiths--forced conversion,
ruthless persecution, bloody wars and massacres, pillage and rape, the curse of
untouchability, the revolting custom of sati, self emasculation, the horrors of
the Inquisition and the rest.
The mystics, whose writings or recorded histories are before us,
do not even form one billionth of the population that lived on earth and passed
away during this period. Why they alone were gifted that way we do not know.
Why even now hardly one out of myriads reports success in the same endeavor is
still an enigma. Millions of aspirants to Samadhi in India abandon their homes,
dwell in solitude, practise every form of austerity, penance and
self-discipline, meditate and pray day and night without coming anywhere near
this state of indescribable beatitude. Were the 'sense' of Timeless Being an
integral part of man's spiritual consciousness, as argued by Underhill, then
the Vision of Reality would be equally accessible to all, of course, with
variations in the degree of success gained, as happens when a class of students
attends a university course to widen their knowledge or a group of athletes
works in a gymnasium to streamline their bodies. If this view were correct, the
'Vision' would have been the same for the cave dwellers of the neolithic age as
it is for the cultured products of this day. But we know this is not the case
and the two are poles apart. Why in our religious beliefs do we overlook the
past?
The extreme rarity of success in this enterprise has been
clearly recognized in India. "Among thousands of men," says the
Bhagavad-Gita, "scarce one striveth for perfection, and of the successful
strivers, scarce one knoweth me in essence." But even this rare one who
achieves the blessed union has, according to the Indian tradition, behind him
an accumulated store of meritorious actions done in previous lives, which form
the seeds of success in his present one. Explaining this, the Gita says:
"But a Yogi, laboring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected
through manifold births, he reacheth the supreme goal." This is emphasized
again at another place: "At the close of many births, the man full of
wisdom cometh unto Me; 'Vasudeva is all; saith he, the Mahatma very difficult
to find." 11
It is obvious that the glorious consummation of human life, of
which the Gita sings, and of which a glowing picture is presented in the
writings of all great mystics of the past, cannot be the work of a day or even
of a lifetime, unless there are constitutional factors favorable to the climax,
of which we have no knowledge yet. In this respect, the great mystics can be
classed with the great secular geniuses of the earth. The mystical consciousness
of an Eckhart, or Al-Ghazali or a Chaitanya, is not possible for even one out
of hundreds of thousands of earnest practicers of yoga or other spiritual
disciplines, in the same way as the intellectual achievement of a Shankara, or
Einstein is not possible for every scholar or university professor. What these
constitutional factors are, it will be my endeavor to explain.
I have briefly touched on the views expressed by Evelyn
Underhill, as representative of a religious bent of mind, which believes in God
and the divine nature of the Soul. For the views representative of modern
psychology, I shall turn to William James and quote him at some length to show
the wide divergence in the two points of view. The trouble starts when the
Freudian psychologists on the one side, behaviorists on the other,
transpersonal on the third, anthropologists on the fourth, physicists on the
fifth, philosophers on the sixth, theologians on the seventh, the laity on the
eighth, the Vedantists on the ninth, the occultists on the tenth and, to crown
it all, the mystics themselves on the eleventh, express highly divergent views
on the same phenomenon, using all the embellishments of language and the
resources of intellect to make their point, without even one calling in for
evidence the one single witness of all the happenings in this historically
ageless scene. Not one of them even mentions the brain.
"The last aspect of religious life which remains for me to
touch upon," writes James, "is the fact that its manifestations so
frequently connect themselves with the subconscious part of our existence. You
may remember what I said in my opening lecture about the presence of the
psychopathic temperament in religious biography. You will in point of fact
hardly find a religious leader of any kind in whose life there is no record of
automatisms. I speak not merely of savage priests and prophets, whose followers
regard automatic utterance and action as by itself tantamount to inspiration, I
speak of leaders of thought and subjects of intellectualized experience. Saint
Paul had his visions, his ecstasies, his gift of tongues, small as was the
importance he attached to the latter. The whole array of Christian saints and
heresiarchs, including the greatest, the Bernards, the Loyolas, the Luthers, the
Foxes, the Wesleys, had their visions, voices, rapt conditions, guiding
impressions and 'openings.' They had these things because they had exalted
sensibility, and to such things persons of exalted sensibility are liable. In
such liability there lie, however, consequences for theology. Beliefs are
strengthened wherever automatisms corroborate them. Incursions from beyond the
transmarginal region have a peculiar power to increase conviction. The inchoate
sense of presence is infinitely stronger than conception, but strong as it may
be, it is seldom equal to the evidence of hallucination. Saints who actually
see or hear their Savior reach the acme of assurance. Motor automatism though
rarer is, if possible, even more convincing than sensations. The subjects here
actually feel themselves played upon by powers beyond their will. The evidence
is dynamic; the God or spirit moves the very organs of their body."
12
"When, in addition to these phenomena of inspiration,"
adds William James, we take religious mysticism into account, when we recall
the striking and sudden unification of a discordant self which we saw in
conversion, and when we review the extravagant obsessions of tenderness, purity
and self-severity met with in saintliness, we cannot, I think, avoid the
conclusion that in religion we have a department of human nature with unusually
close relations to the transmarginal or subliminal region. If the word
'subliminal' is offensive to any of you, as smelling too much of psychical
research or other aberrations, call it by any other name, to distinguish it
from the level of full sunlit consciousness. Call this latter the A-region of
personality, if you care to, and call the other the B-region. The B-region,
then, is obviously the larger part of each of us, for it is the abode of
everything that is latent and the reservoir of everything that passes
unrecorded or unobserved. It contains, for example, such things as all our
momentarily inactive memories, and it harbors the springs of all our obscurely
motive passions, impulses, likes, dislikes and prejudices. Our intuitions,
hypotheses, fancies, superstitions, persuasions, convictions, and in general,
all our non-rational operations, come from it. It is the source of our dreams,
and apparently they may return to it. In it arise whatever mystical experiences
we may have, and our automatisms, sensory or motor; our life in hypnotic and
'hypnoid' conditions, if we are subjects of such conditions; our delusions,
fixed ideas, and hysterical accidents, if we are hysteric subjects; our
supra-normal cognitions, if such there be, and if we are telepathic subjects.
It is also the fountainhead of such that feeds our religion. In persons deep in
the religious life, as we have now abundantly seen--and this is my
conclusion--the door into this region seems unusually wide open; at any rate,
experiences making their entrance through that door have had emphatic influence
in shaping religious history." 13
This is where we land at the end--the bottomless hollow of the
unconscious, the sub-conscious, below-the-surface, transmarginal and subliminal
mind. This is the hidden region of our personality which, they say, stalks on
the stage in dreams, hypnotic and somnambulistic conditions, in hysteria and
insanity, in genius and inspiration, in mediumistic displays and extrasensory
perception, in possession, obsession and fixations, in cracks, twists and kinks
in the brain; in fact, in all the abnormal, paranormal, extraordinary or
inexplicable conditions of the mind.
But has anyone explained why in some it leads to nightmares, in
some to happy dreams, in some to a mixture of the two and in some to dreamless
sleep? Why some are somnambulists, others not; why some are suggestible and
more intractable; why, in some, it leads to the highest purity and nobility of
character, as in mystics and, in some, to revolting compulsions or horrible
perversions; which make them act more like brutes than human beings; why in
some it leads to the horrors of insanity and in some to the joy of creation?
What rational solution is this that leaves everything unexplained? To say
religion and religious experience come from the unconscious is to shift the
venue to another compartment of the same mind. But, whether from this
compartment or that, mind is the bastion from which these incursions and
invasions, insidious or sudden, come. This we know, but how?
Were we to believe implicitly the saga of the 'unconscious,' the
suggestion would be irresistible that we harbor in our interior the arch-fiend
himself, and fall victim to his machinations every moment of our lives. He
turns into psychopaths the rare few who have the Vision of God, into lunatics
the handful who create or discover new treasures for the race, shocks the pure
and innocent in dreams or maddens the good and gentle with appalling fear in
wakefulness! Where is the man who can truthfully declare that he has subdued
this invincible giant? Who has taken a census yet or alleviated the anguish of
myriads who watch daily with horror, grief or shock the unpredictable obliquities
of their own mind? Does all this cart-load of fears, sorrows and sins rumble
out of the cavernous 'unconscious' or does it symbolize a slice of the torment
reserved for rebellious man for partaking of the forbidden fruit?
1 William de Sitter, Relativity and Modern Theories of the
Universe
2 Max Planck, Universe in the Light of Modern Physics
3 William James, Varieties of Religious Experience
4 A. S. Eddington, Science and Mysticism
5 James Jeans, Some Problems of Philosophy
6 Ibid
7 Ibid
8 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism
9 Ibid
10 Ibid
11 Bhagavad-Gita, 7:19
12William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
13 Ibid