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Afterlife and Spirituality:
Some Points of Mutual Support |
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Michael Grosso |
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MISGIVINGS ABOUT PSI |
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The foregoing describes some experiential ideas to supplement
the inferential approach to survival research. Let us now
consider the other side of the coin: How can parapsychology
support the transpersonal vision? First, however, we need to
address the malaise people might feel about mixing
parapsychology with the transpersonal, which is perhaps the same
malaise felt about mixing science and religion.
Talking with a well-known Christian theologian, for example, I
once stated my opinion that life after death was a question we
could approach scientifically. I was solemnly warned that to
think like this was “self-serving” and would encroach upon
faith. I replied that scientific knowledge could be thought of
as complementing faith. Then there are the religious
fundamentalists who equate studying the paranormal with courting
the diabolic, a stance I discount as absurd. A Buddhist friend
of mine dismissed afterlife research on the grounds that no self
exists that could survive; but Buddhists believe in
reincarnation, and nirvana is not annihilation (Johansson,
1970). A deep ecologist once told me how “selfish” it was to
fuss over the puny idea of my afterlife when the environment was
going to pieces.
More serious objections have been raised against being too
interested in siddhis, charisms, or paranormal powers, which
could distract us from spiritual practice and the goal of
enlightenment. Miracles can be destabilizing. Catholic officials
attacked Padre Pio during his lifetime because (they believed)
his fame as a healer, bilocator, and stigmatic was creating a
cult of personality (Boniface, 1971). And we will remember the
tale of the Buddha rebuking a disciple for learning how to
levitate when the ferry was available for a quarter. There is
also the danger of psychic inflation that may result from
contact with psychic powers. These dangers are present, but
anybody at any level of self-development is subject to dangerous
distortions. Surprisingly, many people sworn to a spiritual
outlook are as turned off by the paranormal as hard-core
materialists. Still, I do not believe their misgivings
invalidate the constructive theoretical implications of psi. So
let’s turn to the question of how parapsychology supports the
transpersonal vision. |
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PSI AND THE TRANSPERSONAL VISION |
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The Meaning of the Transpersonal
We need a working definition of the word transpersonal.
"Transpersonal experiences may be defined as experiences in
which the sense of identity or self extends beyond (trans) the
individual or personal to encompass wider aspects of humankind,
life, psyche, and cosmos" (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993, p. 3). This is
a useful definition that stresses the subjective sense of
transcending ordinary ego-bound existence. The use of this term
and the domain of experiences it is meant to encompass are not
entirely clear, but we can agree on the basic idea that there
are experiences in which the boundaries of the normal sense of
self and world dissolve and open up to larger realities.
Let us assume that psi is a fact of nature, a reasonable
assumption in light of the vast amount of spontaneous case
histories, critical and anecdotal, and the mass of accumulated
experimental studies. How does psi support the idea of
transpersonal experience? We can ask this question in three
ways: (a) Are some paranormal experiences in fact also
transpersonal? (b) Might some paranormal encounters stimulate
one to explore transpersonal experience? (c) Finally, is there a
sense in which the existence of psi as such theoretically
grounds, ratifies, or supports the transpersonal vision?
1. To begin with, many experiences do qualify as paranormal
and
transpersonal. Two notable examples: the ecstasies of Saint
Teresa of Avila, which involved out-of-body experiences and
levitation, and the conversion of Saint Paul, who had a
paranormal light encounter and an out-of-body experience. If it
were certain that the psi components of these experiences were
false or delusory, it would weaken the authenticity of the
mystical part. If the psi part can be so delusive, why not the
mystical part, too? One could argue that the mystical dimension
of the experience is somehow self-certifying. But that might
sound arbitrary and question begging. On the other hand, it
would bolster the credibility of mysticism if the psi part of
these experiences were shown to be true and real.
Grof (1988) mentions experiences he regards as paranormal and
transpersonal, for example, channeling and mediumistic
experiences, reincarnation memories, prophecy and precognition,
spiritual healing, out-of-body trips, alien contact, ceremonial
magic, supernormal physical feats, and many others. All these
experiences in one way or another involve enlargements of
personal identity and function. Reasonable differences of
opinion may exist in ranking their value and status. I might
choose to elevate the ecstasies of Saint Teresa above cases of
tribal hexing, but it would be unscientific to exclude data on
the basis of one’s spiritual likes and dislikes. All the data
may widen our understanding of human potential. In the spirit of
James’s radical empiricism, we need to embrace all the data. Psi
seems to be embedded in the transpersonal the way our nervous
systems are embedded in the material world; both serve to open
us up to more world, more experience to negotiate.
2. A paranormal experience may stimulate transpersonal
development. One way is by pointing to a world beyond the
everyday functioning personality. People who have near-death,
out-of-body, or UFO encounters wake up to the deeper
possibilities of transpersonal experience. A glimpse of
preternatural light, a taste of ecstasy, a presentiment of
something unknown may, like the sting of Socratic
cross-examination, launch one on profound journeys of
self-exploration and (with a little bit of luck)
self-transcendence.
I know this to be true from my own experience, and I have
recounted some examples elsewhere (Grosso, 1997). Above all,
what I value about these experiences is the goad to exploration
that they furnished, a series of ignitings of my curiosity to
find out what lies behind it all. My paranormal encounters set
in motion something I describe as a kind of soulmaking, a term I
borrowed from the poet Keats—as it suggests a process of
becoming a more complete human being. Of course, like any form
of creativity, many supportive variables must be in place before
anything significant can happen.
3. The third question about the supportive role of
parapsychology is more fundamental. Now the question is not
about the content of any paranormal experience or its motivating
effects but about the implications of the reality of the
paranormal as such. These implications expose the inadequacy of
the dominant physicalist paradigm. Like quantum mechanics and
other effects of the new physics, they are conceptually
challenging (Koestler, 1972). They can also be quite irritating,
as Socrates the gadfly was irritating (and comical) to some of
his contemporaries. The fact is that dogmatic materialists are
likely to attack parapsychology more than transpersonal
psychology. They can see the threat to their cherished monistic
metaphysics. Broadly, then, parapsychology supports the
transpersonal vision by providing data that grounds the ontology
of transpersonal consciousness in itself.
We can begin by considering the implications of telepathy. On
the one hand, telepathy appears to free our mental life from the
constraints of the physical substrate of our personality. In
effect, this points to the nonlocality of psi function. On the
other hand, telepathy frees us for subtler types of relationship
and forms of connectedness. Telepathy undermines the ego’s
illusion of separateness and autonomy, especially in light of
the possibility that telepathic interactions may be occurring
continuously, albeit inconspicuously (Schechter, 1977).
Telepathy, in a fine Hegelian vein, is inclusively transcendent.
This is also true of the effects of clairvoyance and
psychokinesis. Clairvoyance appears to free us from being
isolated by our senses; psychokinesis, on the other hand, frees
us for experiencing a wider world of embodied influence, a world
whose parts are more intimate, interwoven, and interpenetrated
(see, for example, Reed, 1994; Schlitz & Braud, 1997). We
psychically affect, and are affected by, others; psi implies
that our personal identity is greater than common sense
suggests. In other words, what might emotionally,
intellectually, or spiritually count as constituting “my”
personality is considerably enlarged. Ordinary uses of the
possessive “my” and “mine” becomes philosophically problematic.
Mark Twain (Munson, 1967) seems to have understood this when he
said that all his ideas came to him from strangers by “mental
telegraphy.”
Finally, there is a temporal dimension to this transpersonal
dialectic. In principle, at any rate, precognition and
retrocognition free us from bondage to the specious present. But
that is not all, they also free us for a wider identity of
ourselves in time, an identity that ideally tends toward the
simultaneity, duration, or nunc stans often described by the
mystics as being a total plenitude of life, or as an experience
of eternity (see Bergson, 1946; Boethius, 1962).
To summarize, the family of effects subsumed under psi implies
that the human personality is subliminally nested in a rich
transpersonal matrix which White (1997) calls the Experiential
Paradigm because it is a new worldview that has to be
experienced subjectively before it can be analyzed objectively.
(Obviously, this matrix operates below the limen of
consciousness most of the time.) In interesting ways, it is free
from the common constraints of time, space, and physical
existence. Its explanatory value, though useful in relation to
current physicalism, is limited. It tells us, for example, that
Saint Paul’s illuminations and Saint Teresa’s history of
ecstasies, even her levitations, were probably real and
objective experiences of the natural world, not just byproducts
of myth, malobservation, or self-delusion. The notion of a
psi-mediated transpersonal matrix, however, does not
automatically furnish us with the values, meanings, or
interpretations of such experiences. All that depends on the
creative capacities of spirit, imagination, and consciousness.
The function of psi serves a different task: It legitimizes
wider ranges of the possible than most mainstream views concede;
psi simply marks a vast clearing in the forest of being.
To put it another way, if materialism were the last word, a
depressing air of humbug would hang over the transpersonal
vision. A deflationary materialist might say: “Enjoy your sense
of expanded self-identity, but in the end it's an illusion,
perhaps useful, perhaps edifying, but at bottom a beguiling
brain state devoid of any real transcendent import.” What is to
prevent the skeptic from viewing transpersonal experiences as no
more than edifying illusions?
I might begin by protesting that this argument is quite beside
the point. Sola fidei, "by faith alone," is the old Protestant
formula for salvation. Undeniably, one can always justify or
validate the transpersonal on the basis of the authority of some
guru, prophet, or sacred text. It has worked for millions of
people for generations, and it is still employed by most
ordinary people everywhere. The problem with this old way,
especially in its rigidly conservative and fundamentalist forms,
is that it courts the dangers of authoritarianism and sometimes
the risk of fanaticism. A more wholesome approach to such basic
human concerns would be to draw on all our human skills. The
fundamentalist route violates the ideal of living by faith and
reason, intuition and the checks and balances of logic and
sensory observation.
We may, of course, also draw upon the great American spirit of
transcendental pragmatism. Writers from Emerson to William James
have justified their lofty aspirations on solid pragmatic
grounds. Experiences that inspire, elevate, and transform us are
"true" and "real" and “good” because in the long run they
benefit the human race; they raise us to new heights of moral,
intellectual, and esthetic perception. They give us maps to find
things out for ourselves in the green fields of experience and
experiment. One can quibble with the pragmatic criteria of
truth, and a poisonous skepticism might stubbornly say that
transpersonal experiences might be universal, transformative,
and beneficial, but still be mere epiphenomena of the brain. In
these matters, however, experience tends to trump ratiocination.
Still, one would like to ground the transpersonal more firmly in
reality.
This leads to what seems yet a stronger argument for the
objectivity of the highest states of consciousness. Broad (1953,
p. 242) summarizes his version: |
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To me the occurrence of mystical experience at all times and
places, and the similarities between the statements of so many
mystics all the world over, seems to be a significant fact.
Prima facie it suggests that there is an aspect of reality with
which these persons come in contact in their mystical
experiences, and which they afterwards strive and largely fail
to describe in the language of daily life. I should say that
this prima facie appearance of objectivity ought to be accepted
at its face value until some reasonably satisfactory alternative
explanation of the agreement can be given.
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Broad’s modest yet momentous claim has direct bearing on the
grounds for accepting the transpersonal enterprise, suggesting,
as it does, that there is something in nature, or reality, that
the mystics are in fact responding to (Broad, 1953, pp.
194-201). What it is may always be subject to the vagaries of
interpretation; but that there is something in the first place
is what Broad argues.
Wilber (1983, pp. 39-82) develops Broad’s type of argument in
his own way. He emphasizes the highly experimental nature of the
enterprise and invokes Bonaventure’s “eye of contemplation” as
the means of apprehending the mystical aspect of reality, and he
stresses the need for structured traditions to confirm authentic
mystical experience, comparing this (gliding perhaps too lightly
over difficulties) with methods of confirmation in Western
“empirical” science.
One feature of empirical science Broad holds in common with
contemplative science is its fallibilism. Just as science
continually refines its picture of sensory reality on the basis
of fresh experience and new theories, so we should expect the
contemplative quest to keep revising its picture as experience
and reflection accumulate. This stance of fallibilism, this
alertness to the need to revise, renew, and re-transcend, if
necessary, is less evident in Wilber. But, as Zaehner (1978)
argues, there are varieties of mystical experience, ranging from
naturalistic to nirvanic and theistic, and it seems premature to
imagine that all the heights have been scaled, all the
possibilities exhausted, everything mapped and inexorably in
place. Such conceit goes against the spirit of creative
evolution where novelty may always be plausibly expected.
On the other hand, Wilber complements Broad by taking up the
experimental gauntlet—the challenge of the theorist to test by
experiment (Wilber, 1999). Broad admits he’s innocent of
experience along these lines, and confines his contemplative
life to precision-controlled flights of metaphysical
imagination. It is also worth noting that Broad, unlike Wilber,
was not only a student of mysticism but also of psychical
research. This brings us back to the question of how psi fits
into all of this.
It seems, in fact, that there are many ways in which psi might
ground or potentiate different kinds of spiritual or
transpersonal experience. Consider, for example, the belief in
the efficacy of petitionary prayer, an idea that significantly
enlarges our transpersonal identity. Through prayer our
influence on other persons is in principle vastly extended. We
already cited a comprehensive review (Schlitz & Braud, 1997),
and there is in fact a growing interest in scientific research
on prayer (Dossey, 1993, 1997a, 1997b). Prayer, we could say, is
the cosmic language of communication, a means of interacting
nonlocally with perhaps presently inconceivable aspects of
intelligent reality. Effective prayer, contemplative and
petitionary, expands the reach of our personal identity.
We have discussed the question of postmortem consciousness. I
mention it again now as another point supportive of the
transpersonal vision. Surely any empirical evidence that
promises to open the boundaries of human experience beyond the
frame of one biological lifespan is a friend to the
transpersonal vision. The form in which our familiar personal
consciousness may persist after death will probably be very
different from its present form. To give some idea of what we
might expect, anthropologist Mills (1999) has gathered evidence
that in some contemporary native societies one person’s stream
of memories and dispositions may be reborn in several distinct
individuals. In this case, the evidence suggests a form of
survival that is transpersonal in the sense that one person
becomes many.
Still more fundamental is the idea of a psi matrix. When we look
at descriptions of expansive types of mystical experience, we
are reminded that, as Jung once said: "Parapsychology plays a
subtle part in psychology because it lurks everywhere behind the
surface of things" (quoted in Main, 1997, p. 104). Throughout
his career Jung was keen on parapsychology, and welcomed the
research of J. B. Rhine as supportive of his archetypal ideas of
how the mind works, and he often spoke of the “objective
psyche.”
The hypothesis of a psi matrix helps ground the transpersonal
vision, providing it with a basis in objective reality. Mack
(1993, p. xi) writes: |
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We are witnessing a battle for the human soul between two
opposing ontologies. In one view, the physical or material world
is the ultimate, if not the only, reality. . . . In the
transpersonal view, the physical world and all its laws
represent only one of an indeterminable number of possible
realities whose qualities we can only begin to apprehend through
the evolution of our consciousness.
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To see how psi is an ally in this battle, take, finally, a few
examples from the classic literature of mysticism. From the
Katha Upanishad: “The knowing Self is not born; it does not die.
It is not sprung from anything. Birthless, eternal, everlasting,
and ancient, it is not killed when the body is killed” (Nikhilananda,
1963, p. 73). This Upanishadic account of the Self would make no
sense at all in a universe with a strictly materialist ontology.
A psi-based ontology clearly provides some objective reference
and makes the idea of such a Self more intelligible to a culture
mired in myopic materialism. More specifically, good survival
evidence would bolster the classic Hindu claim that the Self is
not destroyed by death. The value of psi is best seen in its
cultural context. What most traditional societies have always
taken for granted most modern Westerners find very doubtful. In
today’s multicultural world and stiffly competitive market of
ideas, the need for empirical grounding is felt more widely, and
its absence seems more inhibitive.
One more example is from a Sutra of 7th-century Zen Patriarch
Hui Neng on the theme of prajna or transcendent wisdom.
Enlightenment, we are told, consists of knowing “one’s Essence
of Mind, which is neither created nor can it be annihilated.”
Or, “the capacity of mind is as great as that of space”
(Humphreys, 1966, p. 31). Statements like these are bound to be
very puzzling to materialists, who are disposed to banish all
mental and transcendent concepts from noetic discourse.
Assertions about the timeless, spatially vast extent of our
minds seem overblown, incredible. In light of the hypothesis of
a psi matrix, however, claims about prajna or the “Buddha Mind”
acquire, at least in principle, some basis in "objective"
reality. Psi research supports the belief in precognition and
retrocognition, suggesting the temporal nonlocality of mind. The
statement that the “capacity of the mind is as great as that of
space” nicely evokes the parapsychological notion of
clairvoyance. Statements like these from the primordial
tradition are logically disjunctive: either they are just
rhetorical flourishes, metaphysical hype, or somehow objectively
true. I believe that parapsychology supports their objectivity.
Most spiritual traditions are explicit about the role of psi.
The Catholic Church has traditionally deposed evidence for the
charisms, or psi behaviors, of its saints (Thurston, 1952;
White, 1981), although it is reluctant to do so today for fear
of appearing medieval and credulous. A significant part of the
Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describes the siddhis or paranormal
attainments (Taimni, 1961). This codification of Hindu wisdom
shows no animus toward the paranormal; rather, the siddhis,
which are causally dependent on samyama, intense and prolonged
mental concentration, are treated as developmental markers.
There are links to parapsychology. In an analysis of 80
experiments that looked at the relationship between psi and
altered states, Honorton (1977, pp. 435-472) found a huge
effect, thus confirming Patanjali’s claims that internal
attention states create paranormal prowess.
In his classic work on the perennial philosophy, Huxley repeats
the old warnings against getting hung up on with bizarre mental
powers. At the same time, he boldly speculates on how
psychokinesis may figure in the cosmic scheme of things. Huxley
(1970, pp. 25) writes that “we can understand something of what
lies beyond our experience by considering analogous cases lying
within our experience.” ESP and psychokinesis are part of our
experience, he points out, and they imply an ability to
communicate with transcendent agencies. Prayer, meditation,
inspiration, prophecy, and visionary experience are our
cognitive and motor means for communing with transcendent
worlds. According to Huxley, ESP and psychokinesis are the basis
of these communings. The rigorous scientist J. B. Rhine was keen
on what he called "the parapsychology of religion" and said
"religious communication is basically psi communication" (Rhine,
1975). More recently, a new anthology of Tart’s (1997) canvasses
ways of integrating psi and spirituality. So the creative
interplay between the two domains of research has been in the
air for a long time. In this paper, I have called for more
direct cooperation between the two fields of study. |
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CONCLUSION |
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Since the 19th century, scholars and thinkers have sketched
models of a new science of spiritual consciousness. One English
pioneer, F. W. H. Myers (1893), wrote a prescient essay called
“The Disenchantment of France.” Modern science accelerated the
cultural evolution of France, driving it into nihilism and
disenchantment, wrote Myers. Science has created a mental
climate in which all the old spiritual ideals of Catholicism
have been reduced to “illusions.” Barring some great renaissance
of spirit, Myers predicted, the whole world will follow France,
and we will all sink deeper and deeper into disenchantment.
Rhetoric and faith will not energize the cultures of the future
because we will all have learned to speak, and be dominated by,
the language of science. Long before the existentialists, Myers
was feeling 20th-century forlornness and tasting the “death of
God.”
Unlike the existentialists, however, he believed that a science
of the soul was possible that might restore the spiritual
energies of a disenchanted world. Myers’ life was dedicated to
creating this new science—to resuscitating the soul from
disillusionment and metaphysical depression. Is a renaissance
really possible? “It will hardly be permanently altered by
emotion, by rhetoric,” said Myers, “if modified at all, it must
be modified by scientific discovery. And if by scientific
discovery, then why not by discovery in that which, if a science
at all, is the highest of sciences?” (Myers, 1893, p. 111).
Invoking the oracle of Delphi, gnothi seauton, Myers’ science
was none other than the science of self-knowledge, which often
entails the most extraordinary types of human experience,
encompassing parapsychology and transpersonal psychology. There
is no name yet for this new science, only two masses of data
that resonate and play off each other. Perhaps the new name will
be discovered as the two fields learn to coalesce. |
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