Mysticism and Mormonism: an Lds Perspective on Transcendence and Higher Consciousness

SIINSTONE MYSTICISMAND MORMONISM: AN LDS PERSPECTIVEON TRANSCENDENCE AND HIGHERCONSCIOUSNESS By Mark Edward Koltko What of the mind? We are great proponents of education- NM=Y an& talentsn ha the smrns of an Eleventh Command- but are there levels of mental development which one cannot ment. We talk a lot about developing strong spirits and bodies. reach through schooling and study alone? According to some ancient traditions, the most highly devel- oped minds are not those of the poets, the artists, the scien- MARK ED WARD KOLTKO is the father of four children, and tists or the philosophers, nor even the prophets. Rather, they a doctoral student in he counseling psychology program at are those of the mystics, the people who have experienced New York Univem'q.This essay is a version ofpapers presented "higher" states of consciousness.' Although difficult to af the 1987 W~sbingtanSunstone Symposium and the 1987 describe or comprehend through everyday language, these Su~istuneSymposium IX in Salt Lake City. experiences can transform the lives of the people who have ILLUSTRATION BY BRETT MUELLER PAGE 13 SUNSTONE them; they are also remarkably consistent across cultures and city; the next, I knew that the fire was within myself. history. On the whole, people who integrate mystical Directly afterward there came upon me a sense of exul- experiences into their lives seem to be happier, healthier in tation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immedi- mind and body, and more creative. It may be that such people ately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible also develop important abilities and come to know the mind to describe. Among other things, I did not merely come of God in a special way. to believe, but I saw that the universe is not composed In this essay, I hope to acquaint you with some basic charac- of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; teristics of the mystical experience. I will consider mysticism I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not in light of the Latter-day Saint gospel, and I will conclude with a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a cons- some things that mysticism can offer the Mormons. ciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that CHAEUCTERISTICS OF THE MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and Several psychologists and philosophers have arrived at a that the happiness of each and all is in the long run loose consensus concerning the essential qualities of the mys- absolutely certain. The vision lasted a few seconds and tical or transcendent e~perience.~A gven experience may not was gone; but the memory of it and the sense of the have all of these qualities, but it will have some of them. Different reality of what it taught has remained during the quarter experiences may also have these qualities to djfferent degrees. of a century which has since elapsed. I knew that what The eight central characteristics are: the vision showed was true. I had attained to a point The "ego quality." During the experience, the person may lose of view from which I saw that it must be true. That view, the sense of self, and feel absorbed into something greater. that conviction, I may say that consciousness, has never, The "unibng quality." During the experience, the person may even during periods of the deepest depression, been feel that "everything is one." The "inner subjective quality." The person may feel that some This powerful experience illustrates most of the classic things possess consciousness which we don't usually regard characteristics of the mystical experience which I mentioned as being conscious, like trees, or the Earth itself. above. Another example comes from a woman who, in her six- The "temporal/spatial quality." The person may experience ties, wrote of an experience which she had had as a schoolgirl: time and space differently, and may even feel that the experience I was a girl of 15 or 16, I was in the kitchen toasting occurs outside the normal boundaries of space and time. bread for tea and suddenly on a dark November after- The 'hoetic quality." The person may feel that the experience noon the whole place was flooded with light, and for is a source of true knowledge. a minute by clock time I was immersed in this, and I The "ineJable quality." The experience may be impossible to had a sense that in some unutterable way the universe express in normal language. was all right. This has affected me for the rest of my a The "positive emotion quality." The experience may have life, I have lost all fear of death, I have a passion for joyous aspect. light, but I am in no way afraid of death, because this The "sacred quality." The experience may seem to be intrin- light experience has been a kind of conviction to me sically sacred. that everything is all right in some way.4 As an example, here is the experience of Rchard Bucke, a nineteenth century Canadian psychiamst who was President Both of these were spontaneous experiences. That is, the of the Psychological Section of the British Medical Association people involved did not do anything out of the ordinary in and President of the American Medico-Psychological order to achieve these experiences. Let us turn to experiences Association: associated with some activity or intent. I will focus on I had spent the evening in a great city, with two experiences which involve a change in a pmon's sense of self friends, reading and discussing poetry and philosophy. (cf. the "ego quality," above15 We parted at midnight. 1 had a long drive in a hansom We each draw a boundary line which defines a "self." One to my lodging. My mind, deeply under the influence person may draw a very small circle, encompassing only the of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by the read- qualities which this person presents to other people. It is as ing and talk, was calm and peaceful. I was in a state if the person says, "I am my public persona, and no more," of quiet, almost passive enjoyment, not actually think- while repressing private thoughts and feelings as if these were ing, but letting ideas, images, and emotions flow of them- not also parts of the self. selves, as it were, through my mind. All at once, without Most of us draw a larger boundary. Perhaps we are willing warning of any land, I found myself wrapped in a flame- to include within the circle of the self our thoughts, feelings, colored cloud. For an instant I thought of fire, an and biological impulses. Our surrounding environment, other immense conflagration somewhere close by in that great people, and the universe at large remain outside that circle of PAGE 14 APRIL 1989 1 SUNSTONE the self. This is what everyday reality looks like- the bound- lives, but in the wimess state, we watch the play and all its work- ary of the self stops at the skin-and in the everyday world ings. It is a special form of detachment. this perspective has its uses. Ken Wilber's teacher, however, "was thoroughly unimpressed In the mystical experience, however, the boundary of the with all this. 'The wimess [said the teacher] is the last stand self expands further. A person may feel at one with other peo- of the ego.' "lo But then an interesting thing happened. As ple, with the natural environment of the earth, or with the Wilber wrote: universe as a whole. This is not merely an intellectual At that point, the whole stance of the witness abso- experience. In transcendence, people are one with their world lutely disappeared. There was no subject anywhere in or their universe. The person's circle is drawn with a larger the universe; there was no object anywhere in the boundary. Ultimately, the boundary disappears altogether. Sit- universe; there was only the universe. Everything was uations like this, where one's sense of identity enlarges beyond arising moment to moment, and it was arising in me the boundaries of the personality, are also called "transpersonal" and as me; yet there was no me. It is very important experiences. This whole realm of human experience is the sub- to realize that this state was not a loss of faculties but ject of a branch of science known as "transpersonal a peak-enhancement of them; it was no blank trance psychology."6 but perfect clarity; not depersonalized but transpersonal- Alfred Lord Tennyson gave this description of what we would ized. No personal faculties- [like] language, log~c,con- call today a transpersonal experience: cepts, motor skills-were lost or impaired. Rather, they A kind of waking trance-this for lack of a better all functioned, for the first time it seemed to me, in radical word-I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, openness, free of the defenses thrown up by a separate when I have been all alone. This has come upon me self sense. This radically open, undefended . state was through repeating my own name to myself silently, till both incredible and profoundly ordinary, so extraor- all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the con- dinarily ordinary that it did not even repter. There was sciousness of individuality, individuality itself seemed nobody there to comprehend it, until I fell out of it.

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