Irreducible Mind
I've finally finished reading Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century.
It's a hefty tome, just published this year, tracing the outlines of mainstream cognitive psychology/neuroscience versus the evidence for various forms of anomalous cognition, altered states of consciousness and extreme psychophysical interaction, with a view to proving that mind is demonstrably not a function of the brain but is something entirely elsewhere. The authors (apparently mostly involved with the Esalen Center as well as University of Virginia) recap over a century of data from hypnosis, meditation, trance mediumship, dissociation/multiple personality, psi and near-death experience studies, and seem particularly taken with the turn-of-the-century ideas of William James and Frederic Myers, both of whom were involved with the Society for Psychical Research in the 1880s to early 1900s.
The idea that the soul/spirit/mind/psyche has a separate existence from the body is not news to many religious believers, anyone who's had any kind of anomalous experience, or even anyone who's read any pop-science New Age book about the philosophical implications of quantum physics in the last twenty years, but coming even from the fringes of the scientific world it's a bit startling to see stories of the kind that have long circulated in the underground laid out all in one place with real footnotes.
There seems to be a a bit of a 21st century psi / anomalous cognition publishing renaissance happening right now, what with Dean Radin's Entangled Minds, and Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer's Extraordinary Knowing (next in my read pile). Irreducible Mind, though, has the weight and feel of a textbook. It's not a book you'll necessarily lend to a friend over coffee. It took me a solid two weeks to plough through it.
Myers' theory, published in his book 'Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death' in 1903, centers around the idea of a 'Subliminal Self', which is different from the Freudian or Jungian unconscious in that it is conscious (but of which we are not normally aware in our usual cognitive stream). More of a 'superconsciousness', perhaps. The theory appears to have emerged in response specifically to 19th century multiple personality studies, which apparently showed a cluster of hypnosis / enhanced psi / MPD connections, to the point where it seems Myers believed that the most progress in uncovering the true nature of human psychology and the keys to enhanced human mental/psychic abilities would be found by studying MPD patients - and possibly even, though I'm not sure he went so far as to say this out loud, deliberately inducing alter personalities through hypnosis in a lab setting. (This will be ringing familiar loud bells to anyone who's read Rigorous Intuition and delved a bit into the underground MKULTRA mythos out there on the net. Not something I personally want to turn out to be true, but it resonates strongly here. Perhaps the creators of the 'Bluebird' story are themselves big fans of Myers and the SPR, and that's how the same material has seeped into the underground? It seems a very steampunkish sort of retro-obsession to share, though.)
Leaving aside the MPD/DID weirdness - and there's plenty of weirdness left to go around - the other main feature of the Subliminal Self theory is that it seems to cover a continuum of multiple 'selves', whether manifesting in one person (trance/possession/alter) or potentially across multiple people (telepathy/clairvoyance/synchronicity). By the way, Myers was the person who first coined the word 'telepathy', so perhaps he knew a thing or two about the subject?
An analogy of Myers of a possible cognitive spectrum, akin to the electromagnetic spectrum - ranging from 'infrared' autonomic processes through 'visible' conscious state to 'ultraviolet' higher-level super-consciousness of whatever sort, made me sit up and take notice, because again it's spookily similar to P J Gaenir's Rainbow of Soul. Perhaps she's also a Myers fan?
What intrigued me most, though, were the absences. Despite lots of mention of faith healing, hypnosis/mesmerism and placebo effect in the late 1800s/early 1900s, there was not a peep about Christian Science (who surely were some of the first to document case studies of this sort of thing?) The authors sketch out the vague outlines of two possible lines of cognitive synthesis in the final chapter, a dualist and a monist approach, and mention that they find the monist one more challenging but ultimately more attractive. But no mention of the monism of A Course In Miracles - itself an artifact of high cognitive strangeness - which seems to me to slide neatly into a few holes in the cognitive psychology field at right about this point. Extend the idea of the Subliminal Self to its logical extent and you seem to get something very similar to a One Self. But the authors stop short of this, presumably figuring they've burned enough karma as it is and don't want to get into religion and philosophy as well. But I do, because otherwise what's the point? Still, I'm not really even pretending to be scientific about my approach.
No mention of Walter Russell's ideas about genius and divine inspiration either, though they parallel Myers' and the author's stance (and though his self-reported 'illumination' experience includes levitation, which they admit as a known side-effect). Bertrand Russell, yes, gets plenty of footnotes. But not the other one.
I have a few new leads to follow up having read this. The philosophy of David Bohm, for one, feels familiar and worth exploring. Human Personality itself, I guess, though I'm really less impressed by sheer bulk of data at this point than by philosophies that somehow seem to internally resonate. What exactly I'm looking for I'm still unclear about; this kind of research seems to skim to one side, being almost but not entirely irrelevant, though still useful as a sort of brute-force tool. I'm almost afraid of coming too close to material of too high strangeness in case it leaves me psychically burned; I'm certainly very wary of attempting to process it using strict waking-mind logic like a dutiful little scientist. That seems like a good way to give oneself a headache and get lost in strange loops.
But, on the other hand, it is very nice to see that there are people willing to think seriously about approaching weird psychological states with an open mind and risk exposing both it and themselves to reproducible experimental protocols. I don't think psi will yield to scientific examination of the old 'we're humans dammit and we'll smash God Himself to find out what's inside' kind, because we're dealing with systems that are observer-dependent, sentient and smarter than us -- but there are, I think, perhaps ways of approaching this stuff humbly and wisely with the intent to catalogue and learn and not getting burned.
At least, I hope so.
August 3rd, 2007 - 18:16
“I’m almost afraid of coming too close to material of too high strangeness in case it leaves me psychically burned”
A psychical conditioning system that cultivates a dynamic relation to reality will lessen the burn effects of the current control paradigm. Success is not measured by our ability to control.
Thank-you for your voice and keep it up.
August 4th, 2007 - 00:55
Dear Nathanael, don’t you think you are veering from the cultlane into the occultlane? Psalm 131!!! How about the callane: Psalm 55:16 and James 1:5
August 4th, 2007 - 08:11
Cautious: In short, no, I don’t. But thanks for asking, because it’s a question that needs to be asked and I understand where you’re coming from. There’s a reason why I named my blog what I did, other than it being an anagram.
‘The occult’ means simply ‘things that are hidden’. The sense of ‘hiddenness’ is very real and very strong when it comes to spiritual and paranormal phenomena, and there are two types of of this hiddenness. One is good, one not so good. I’m interested in the first kind.
Some things are hidden not because anyone goes out of their way to hide them, but simply because by their very nature they tend to be sneered at, despised, and ignored, because they don’t fit into the existing mental pattern of the world. In our current scientific age, the paranormal tends to fall into this category, because it’s not strictly reproducible under controlled laboratory conditions. However, it’s also confusing because this deep shunning by Western ‘official’ science of the paranormal is *also* hidden, in many ways, due to Western pop culture’s enthusiastic *embracing* of the same ’spooky’ stuff in the 20th century. We’re a sort of split personality culture over this stuff. We deny a wider spiritual world exists while in our every fantasy desperately wishing that it’s there. This state of affairs can’t continue forever. We need to sort out once and for all whether spirituality is real, or not. If it’s real, let’s quite pretending and start investigating.
So there is a large category of things which some people may consider ‘hidden’ which I think are actually open secrets – widely available, but often ignored or difficult to parse the true meaning of because until you’ve encountered some kind of spiritual reality, the words the mystics and contemplatives use seem to be deliberately obscure and contradictory. They’re not, but they’re trying to write coherently about things that we don’t yet have words for.
The Gospel is one of these, I think. The field of Christian mysticism particularly interests me because there has been so much written about it over two millennia, from the Church Fathers on, and it’s all now widely available on the Internet – and yet, so far, we in the early 21st century West know very little about this heritage. There are also resonances between the core elements of Jesus’ life and message and the teachings of many other religious and spiritual groups. We need to be honest and open about how and where these connect. We don’t need to be afraid of this. If what Jesus taught was true, then truth is confirmed as truth wherever it appears.
Other things, however, are hidden because by their intrinsic nature they are violent, exploitative, and debasing. Those who seek these kinds of secrets tend to hide them because they want to achieve power for themselves and deny that power to others, and because they themselves are not fundamentally comfortable with the nature of what they’re dealing with. That kind of power is dangerous and corrosive and should be avoided.
One of the surprising things I learned early in life, from my involvement in a Christian cult, is that both these kinds of spiritual power, the light and the darkness, can be present in the same group and sometimes even in the same person.
Pentecostal churches particularly suffer from this, but you see it in many organisations. It can cause immense emotional distress to people who don’t understand that genuine miracles and spiritual experiences and deeply abusive, wounding, manipulative behaviour can coexist and one does not invalidate the other. Eventually the true miracles will go away if the abuse is not fixed. But in the meantime, the situation can be complicated, and neither the Bible, the name of Jesus nor rituals and hierarchy can shield people from the dark side if they don’t have some basic personal spiritual survival skills. I’m not saying the Bible can’t help – but you can draw a number of contradictory lessons from it, and ultimately you have to make a choice as to whether you believe in a God of love or a God of punishment, and that choice does not come from a text but from within one’s heart. And it can be a deeply wrenching decision to make.
The other surprising discovery I made was that many of the key Western ‘occult’ traditions seem to have originated from Judaism and contemplative and mystical Christianity. Jakob Boehme and Emmanuel Swedenborg, for instance, have been hugely influential in shaping the so-called ‘occult’ but were deeply devoted Christians. More recently, discovering A Course In Miracles was life-changing for me, as I recognised a voice in it that I have long associated with that of Jesus, and to me it resonates with the teaching of the Gospels and suddenly makes Paul intelligible.
On the other side of the equation, there are closer links than many Christians would find comfortable: Alisteir Crowley (of whom I’m not a fan) had an Exclusive Brethren upbringing, while Tim LaHaye of Left Behind has financial links to Reverend Moon. It’s a strange old world, and the ordinary categories of ’safe religion vs dangerous occultism’ don’t always apply.
To me, the key factor in deciding whether a spiritual teaching is worth investigating is: does it teach love? Does it teach forgiveness? Does it teach freedom? Does it allow you to use your mind? Does it teach compassion for the poor and for nature? If it hits those points, then to me it seems like it’s approaching the right track, because there is One God, and therefore Truth is not contradictory, no matter where we might find it.
August 4th, 2007 - 22:00
Did you look up my scriptures?
August 5th, 2007 - 12:46
Cautious: Yes, and thank you for them, as they’re beautiful illustrations of the mystical/contemplative tradition I was referring to:
131:2 Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me.
5:16 As for me, I will call on God. Yahweh will save me.
55:17 Evening, morning, and at noon, I will cry out in distress. He will hear my voice.
55:18 He has redeemed my soul in peace from the battle that was against me, although there are many who oppose me.
1:5 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach; and it will be given to him.
The search for the voice of God in quietness within, and the promise that all wisdom is available for those who honestly search for it within themselves. (Because where else would a loving God put it? Somewhere difficult, out of the way, outside ourselves that only an elite few can access?)
August 5th, 2007 - 15:34
Why did you skip 131:1?
August 5th, 2007 - 23:17
P.S. Regarding “The Course in Miracles” John 10:1-5 If I be a sheep, I don’t recognize that voice. It sounds very strange to me, in fact like total gobbledygook and fit to turn a halfway sane person into a totally insane one.
August 6th, 2007 - 00:07
cautious: A lot of people seem to have the same reaction to ACIM, and I don’t understand why. Have you read the ‘official’ version or the Thetford 1972 typescript? There were many changes made to the ‘official’ one that destroyed the sense and feeling of the text, especially in the first few chapters. The Thetford version seems to fairly glow to me – saying it makes sense would be an understatement. But if your experience is that it leaves you feeling strange, then I accept that, and I wouldn’t encourage you to read any spiritual document further if you don’t get a good feeling. It’s a rule of thumb for me (that unscientific approach again!) which seems to work well: I give myself permission to stop reading anything that doesn’t sit with me or leaves me distressed. There are the spiritual equivalent of spam and viruses out there, I think, which are best avoided. But I don’t stop using the Internet just because there’s a lot of spam, nor will I deny the existence of the extraordinary gifts of God just because there exist counterfeits. I trust God to keep me safe.
Re Psalm 131:1:
Yahweh, my heart isn’t haughty, nor my eyes lofty; nor do I concern myself with great matters, or things too wonderful for me.
Also a beautiful affirmation, which I claim. But there’s a reason why I tried to redirect your attention to 131:2, and the sense of the passage, rather than this. Because :1 has been used by a lot of Pentecostal churches, including the cult in which I was born, as an general-purpose anti-intellectual club with which to stamp out innocent exploration of spiritual reality and questioning of leadership, as well as a scientific approach to the universe.
I believe with Paul that it’s a matter of conscience for the individual believer as to where to say ‘no, I do not feel I can handle this material right now (or perhaps ever, because I believe it to be false)’. And that I think is a God-given safety instinct. It’s important to not let oneself be overwhelmed or distracted even by things that are true but not immediately relevant. But for me, I have had to admit – with some fear and distress – that the Holy Spirit for the last couple of years has gently trying to draw my attention to phenomena I had filed under the ‘don’t want to go there’ box. Eventually I gave in. He can be quite persuasive.
And the point of Psalm 131 to me is that it is the attitude of heart that matters. One dare not approach spirituality with the intent to use it as a source of power or separation from others. But I believe we live in a time of wonders and miracles, and that there are very important and specific answers to questions the human race has been asking with great intensity and distress in the last century, which have already been provided – and we would be ungrateful to God if we were to ignore the extraordinary messages He has already sent.
I think God does repeat Himself if we miss a few messages, but not always, and that He takes delight in spreading His answers across multiple sources. So that we learn to trust one another. Which is a skill that must be learned and can be deeply painful. And sometimes we make mistakes and trust sources that are not from God. But wanting a good thing too hard is not a sin, any more than a parent would punish a child for trying to grow up too fast. Sometimes, yes, we must slow down for our own safety. But there does come a time when we have to step out of old safety zones and risk a few skinned knees. And trust that if we look for bread, we won’t find stones or snakes.
August 6th, 2007 - 15:46
You want a good thing? Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? He did. In the beginning was the Word…… the Word was made flesh and came out of Nazareth. Jesus = Word of God= the best thing! (even Ps.131:1) Bread of life, pure bread. Have you taken in the essentials yet or are you looking for contaminated desserts before the main meal? Psalm 131:1 might seem a little bitter to you. I reckon it is one of the most important.
September 28th, 2007 - 12:26
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article Irreducible Mind, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
September 29th, 2007 - 19:44
Daniel: Irreducible Mind is a pretty hefty book (800 pages, 112 of them bibliography!) and it’s aimed at college-student level, so it might not be for everyone, but it’s a useful resource if you’re interested in cognitive science, psychology and the paranormal.