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Heading Subhead Book Reviews HEADINGBOOK REVIEWS SUBHEAD connection of experience to the phys- DEBUNKING ENLIGHTENMENT ical brain, and indeed a good part of his book is spent describing “mystical technologies” that seek to alter expe- Thomas W. Clark rience by modifying the neural states responsible for consciousness, either by traditional noninvasive routes such Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and as meditation and chant, or by drugs Spirituality, by John Horgan. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, and newfangled electronic devices. His ISBN 0-618--06027-8) 292 pp. Cloth $25.00. staunch commitment to physicalism (or his bias, if you aren’t a materialist) is epitomized by the title of his chapter on Zen adept James Austin: “Zen and he spiritual quest, as much as it seen God or his secular equivalent. He James Austin’s Brain.” seeks to achieve unity with an sometimes seems the personification of T ultimate reality that transcends Daniel Dennett’s “universal acid,” let the person, is still a personal endeavor, loose on the often dodgy constructions colored by the psychology of the seek- of those who hope to find salvation in er. The longing to discover the key to altered states of consciousness.1 “...Horgan tests existence and to reside in God, or some What makes Horgan’s “inquest” (as the skeptical null- atheistic version of the Absolute, is driv- he puts it) into mysticism so compel- en by the problem of life: our capacity for ling is that, despite his skepticism, he hypothesis, which suffering and the desire for its cessation, nevertheless finds himself driven by the our insatiable drive for knowledge and same powerful desire for transcendence states that claims to meaning, and our awareness of mortali- that animates his targets. The book is enlightenment are, ty. To achieve mystical communion—the partially an intensely personal memoir direct understanding of the Real—is to of the struggle between rationality and at bottom, empty of solve this problem, at least temporarily; science on the one hand, and the thirst empirical content, it’s to quiet the restless striving of the for spiritual salvation on the other, limited, egotistic self by experiencing its played out in his modern, articulate even though they connection to the infinite. Historically, sensibility. Those who share Horgan’s speak to fundamental Buddhists have been the most candid in skepticism will enjoy his skewering of recognizing the practical motivational dubious knowledge claims, but some human needs for basis for the spiritual quest, which is will find themselves moved by his own, meaning and simply to end the human suffering root- sometimes anguished, search for mean- ed in fear and craving. ing and consolation. Since the mystical consolation.” The difficulty for hard-boiled rational quest is inevitably personal, Horgan empiricists, such as science writer John does justice to his topic by forthrightly Horgan, who are unimpressed by tradi- conceding his own stake in this project, tional religious solutions to the problem and by his example we learn a great In researching the neural correlates of life, is that mystical experience might deal about the rewards and perils of of mystical experience, Horgan pays simply reflect human wish-fulfillment, seeking enlightenment. an extended visit to Canadian scien- not the true outlines of Existence. In At the heart of Horgan’s skepticism tist Michael Persinger, who studies the Rational Mysticism, Horgan tests the (which almost, but not quite, wins out effects of trans-cranial electromagnet- skeptical null-hypothesis, which states in the end) is a simple but devastating ic stimulation on consciousness, and that claims to enlightenment are, at epistemological question: how do mys- Horgan interviews several proponents bottom, empty of empirical content, tics know they’re right? How can we be of “entheogenic” drugs, including even though they speak to fundamental sure that the deep, revelatory, some- Swiss psychiatrist Franz Vollenwieder, human needs for meaning and consola- times shattering experience of mystical de scribed as “arguably the world’s tion. In this wonderfully engaging narra- union refers (and refers accurately) to leader in psychedelic research involv- tive of encounters with modern mystics anything in the world outside the person ing humans.” He subjects himself to and seekers of all stripes, Horgan is undergoing it? Part of the pull of mys- Persinger’s “God-machine,” but with the scientific knight errant who stands ticism is the noetic intuition that during such anticlimactic results that he ready, indeed, eager, to deflate the such experiences we are in touch with wonders, as magnetic pulses play futile- claims of those who have supposedly some deep truth about the universe, but ly on his cortex, “How will I turn this Thomas W. Clark is a freelance phi- how are we to validate this intuition? into a scene for my book?” In contrast, losopher and director of the Center Hallucinations, after all, are routinely as vividly described in his penultimate for Naturalism. mistaken for reality. chapter, he samples a South American Horgan is well aware of the intimate hallucinogenic mixture known as aya- 53 http://www.secularhumanism.org Feb. / March 2004 REVIEWS huasca and is pretty much flattened by by an inquisitor both smart and vulner- need not fear the prospect of inhabiting the experience. But powerful though it able? Horgan discovers that for himself eternal darkness.3 is, Horgan’s interpretation is deflation- the only reliable consolation to be had A rational mysticism consistent with ary: “In retrospect, all my ayahuasca in the face of the Infinite is in human science wouldn’t demand, impossibly, visions seemed more like products of companionship. Unity with the One, that the organism relinquish its self, nor my own brain than transpersonal rev- it turns out, is too impersonal and too would it suppose that consciousness is elations.” This same interpretation, of lonely, ultimately, to be psychologically pitted against the void. It would seek out course, can be applied to any variety sustaining, even if we judge it authentic. mystical experience—the temporary of mystical consciousness, however it’s The One, Horgan half-seriously surmis- suspension of adaptive selfhood—while produced, that purports to represent es, must have split into the Many just to acknowledging that such experience reality the way it “really” is. All such keep Itself company. isn’t a direct cognitive apprehension states are, materialists believe, a func- Such speculations about the “mo- of reality. Rather, the mystical state tion of the brain, so why should we tives” of ultimate reality reinforce the is understood to be a function of an suppose that it’s just these states, as poignant fact that, in confronting the intentionally altered brain, and as such opposed to more mundane brain pro- immensity of extrahuman creation, we can be welcomed as a reinvigorating, cesses subserving ordinary cognition necessarily read into that encounter noncognitive experiential affirmation and perception, that get reality right? our deepest personal fears and hopes. of what scientific theories show to be They might be earth-shattering, ego-dis- Mystical experience, Horgan says, pres- unquestionably the case: our essential solving, and imbued with deep certitude, ents two existentially opposite possibili- and complete naturalistic connection but in retrospect, why should we sup- ties, one in which the self is transcended to the universe. The organism, its self, pose they are veridical? in blissful unification, the other in which its consciousness—the works—all arise Horgan not only engages his subject we are threatened with dissolution by out of the physical world, so the mysti- at the direct experiential level, but does the uncaring, impersonal abyss that sur- cal intuition of unity, albeit noncogni- an excellent job of surveying the intel- rounds our fragile human consciousness. tive, reflects this empirical truth about lectual, cultural landscape of contempo- The first possibility promises to solve ourselves. rary mysticism and its rationales. The the problem of life: to end (literally) Such an approach to spirituality book is laid out as a first-person tour self-induced suffering by losing the self would also drop the disdainful dismiss- of the experts in the field, and it’s great and putting its problems permanently in al of the physical as “mere” matter fun to sit on his shoulder as he does abeyance. The second, of course, is the typical of many of those Horgan inter- battle, courteously for the most part, prospect of death as it’s often conceived: views, who think the categorically spir- with the system-builders and philoso- the end of the self and its world followed itual exists on a higher, more exalted phers of spirituality such as Ken Wilber by the onset of nothingness. The first is plane. Such dualism, after all, creates and Huston Smith. Horgan is self-ad- what we most want, the second what we the problem of traditional spirituality mittedly cantankerous, predisposed to most fear—the complementary halves of in the first place: since what’s most see the guru as manipulator and char- the human condition. real and good is nonmaterial Mind, we latan, always looking for weaknesses in But neither is a real possibility. must somehow (but how?) transcend arguments and assumptions and always Current theories in the philosophy of the corruptible flesh and join the other- ready to second-guess the experts and mind suggest that, although the phe- worldly Spirit. Once it is seen that con- even himself as he digs into the philo- nomenal sense of self is a construct of a sciousness, selfhood, and our aesthetic, sophical complexities and the psycho- complex, neurally instantiated repre- moral, and cognitive capacities are all logical pitfalls of the mystical quest. sentational architecture, it’s functionally potentially explicable within a physical- But despite his indefatigable fault-find- essential for the organism.
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