The 10% Myth

This is perhaps the most persistent and widespread belief about the brain. Like a Dawkinian meme it has infiltrated deep into the collective psyche, permeating society and influencing popular cultural. Entire novels, plays and movies are built on this motif and, being so pervasive, some movies don’t even need to explain the idea. For instance in the movie “Defending your Life” Albert Miller dies in a car accident and upon reaching the afterlife finds he has to justify his fear-based life or be “sent back”.  It is explained to Miller that, due to fear, humans use so little of their brain potential with his defence attorney asserting, "When you use more than 5% of your brain, you don't want to be on Earth, believe me." Similarly, in the movie “Wedding Crashers” an oblique reference is made to the 10% belief when one of the characters asserts that men only use 10% of their hearts. But the latest (and in my opinion the best) movie portrayal of this belief is to be found in the 2011 film “Limitless” in which Eddie, a struggling writer, is persuaded by his ex- wife’s brother, Vernon, to try a new drug, NZT-48, that will allow him to access 100% of his brain:

Eddie: “What’s in it?”

Vernon:  “They’ve identified these receptors in the brain that activate specific circuits. And you know how they say we can only access 20% of our brain…Well what this does…it let’s you access ALL of it.”

This belief is commonly used as a motivator for unleashing untapped potential; for instance, it has been claimed that Einstein used 15% of his brain and that if only we could employ an equal percentage of our brain capacity we too could be “Einsteins”.  It is also used by some (Uri Geller) as an explanation for paranormal phenomena; the idea being that during our prehistoric past, as we hunted and foraged amidst the vast and hostile environment of the African savannah, ESP abilities served a survival utility; but that due to the “civilising” effect of modern society, with the associated reliance on technology, these once adaptive ESP abilities have atrophied among the general populace.

But just where did this idea come from? And more importantly, is it true? If we look back through the history of neuroscience and psychology one place where we find a hint of this idea is in the writings of William James (1842-1910). In popular public lectures William James often claimed that we only reach a small fraction of our brain’s full potential.  More specifically, James came up with the idea of reserve energy which supposes that within the individual there are both physical and mental reserves of energy which can be tapped into and utilised. This idea is presented in his 1907 article “The Energies of Men”.  American psychologist and James’s protégé, Boris Sidis, used this idea as the basis of an educational experiment with his son William Sidis.  Boris commented on his application of reserve energy in the raising of his son in a circa 1910 issue of New York American:

“I do not believe in the prevailing system of education for children. I have raised my son upon a system of my own, based to some extent upon the principles laid down by professor William James.”

Judging form the results of this experiment (it is claimed William Sidi had an IQ of 250 – 300!) there would appear to be some truth to James’ reserve energy theory. Such results highlight that the critical period of neuro-genesis, synapto-genesis and pruning that takes place during early childhood is very much shaped by expectations and experience. If the case of William Sidi is to be taken at face value it strongly suggests that he was utilising the potential of the human brain in a manner not typical of conventional childhood development. 

But, the origins of the 10% idea originate with James only indirectly. It is through the writings of self-help guru Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955), and specifically his “How to Win Friends and Influence People” that this idea gained traction.  The idea that we only use 10% of our brain was first mentioned by Robert Lovell in the introduction to the 1936 edition of the book quoting William James as saying:

“Compared to what we ought to be we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small part of our physical and mental resources. Stating the thing broadly, the human individual thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

Of course, James’s argument that we are not making full use of our potential is inarguable;  just as we don’t make full use of the potential of our bodies physical capacities we similarly don’t make full use of the brains full potential. But the 10% myth isn’t usually framed in such terms; rather, it asserts that the fully developed adult brain is underutilised in so far as only a small percentage of the brain’s function is being utilised.  This conjures up the image of only a small region of the brain being active while the remaining 90% lays dormant. The myth couched in these terms is easy to dismiss.  Lesion evidence (seeing what goes wrong when certain parts of the brain are damaged) and modern imaging techniques (fMRI, PET) thoroughly demonstrate that every part of the brain is necessary for normal function. However, if the question is framed in terms of how much of that normal brain function is under conscious control, a less clear cut and more interesting avenue of thought opens up.

In his book “Brain Wars” neuroscientist Mario Beauregard relates the well documented case of a man named John who suffered from a debilitating disease known as ichthyosiform erythrodermia or “fish skin” in which his whole body was covered in a thick black substance bearing no resemblance to healthy, normal skin. After trying numerous unsuccessful skin grafts, and out of sheer desperation, it was suggested by anaesthiologist Albert Mason, who’d had some reasonable success with warts, to try hypnotherapy. Mason treated John’s right arm, moving onto the trunk and the legs, giving him basic hypnotic suggestions such as “Your right arm will clear”.  This initial hypnotherapy resulted in 50% of his legs and 95% of his right arm clearing; within a year of completing treatment John had become a “normal, happy young man”.

Such cases as John’s above, as well as such inexplicable phenomena as the placebo effect, strongly suggest that, at the very least, there are potentials for self-healing that ordinarily we are unaware of. These potentials for healing are usually not amenable to conscious manipulation but somehow, in a way not fully understood, certain mind states increase one’s ability to utilise potentials for healing not typically under our control. Hypnosis is just one way of accessing this generally unconscious potential. Similarly, there are documented accounts of advanced yoga practitioners controlling physiological responses not usually open to to conscious control.

So, while the 10% myth, as popularly thought of, is easily debunked in light of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, I think it would be arrogant to suppose that out knowledge of the brain and its potential is complete. Neuroscience is a relatively young science and I believe many surprises still await us.

The Warfare Thesis – The Phoney War between Science & Religion

The idea that throughout history science and religion have been in interminable conflict is called the ‘warfare thesis’ and is unanimously dismissed by serious modern historians as baseless.  Notwithstanding, certain atheists (of the Dawkinian variety), along with the media, love to perpetuate the idea that throughout history scientific progress has been hampered by the dogmatism and superstitious thinking of religion; but the truth, as Oscar Wilde once quipped, is ‘rarely pure and never simple’.  It is crucial to disentangle historical fact from propagandist fiction. The origins of the warfare thesis lie in the 19^th C, specifically with the work of two men – John William Draper and Andrew Dickinson White. It is now recognised that these two men had political agendas in mind when arguing their case, and the historical foundations of their work are deemed unreliable.  

John William Draper (1811 – 1882) was the son of an English Methodist minister, a chemist, a physician, and first president of the American Chemical Society. He wrote A History of the Conflict betweenReligion and Science in 1874. This book is actually one long, venomous anti-Catholic diatribe in which historical “facts” are confected and causes and chronologies are twisted to the author’s purpose. Whatever evil has been perpetrated in Western history Draper places firmly at door of the Catholic Church (compare Dawkins’ Root of all Evil thesis) including preventing the “proper” expansion of the human population. Much of Draper’s book typifies the widespread Anglo-American, anti-Catholicism and racism of the period - particularly opposition to new (Catholic) immigrants in America. While easy to dismiss as inaccurate, cranky and a-historical, Draper’s work, and many of his questionable anecdotes, has entered the common consciousness, proving hard to displace.

At first glance Andrew Dickinson White’s 1896 two volume work, A History of Science with Theology inChristendom, seems more historically accurate, peppered as it is with apparent historical documentation. Indeed, White was a historian at the University of Michigan and later president of Cornell University. Despite appearances, however, White’s arguments are scarcely better than Draper’s. White employs an embarrassing array of fallacious arguments and a wealth of suspect or bogus sources in support of his thesis. Amongst his more shameful methodological errors are collectivism (the unwarrantable extension of an individual’s views to represent that of some larger group of which he is a part), a lack of critical judgement concerning sources, arguments based on ridicule and assertion, failure to check primary sources, and quoting selectively and out of context. It is to White that we owe the baseless notion that before Columbus and Magellan the world was thought to be flat and that the Earth’s sphericity was officially opposed by the Church. Similarly, his assertion that the Church opposed human dissection is equally baseless; as is the belief – eternally popularised by Hollywood – that the medieval Church condemned all science as devilry.

Their dubious scholarship aside, these books rely on a central and fallacious assumption: that throughout history scientists and theologians formed two separate camps, forever in conflict, with superstitious, ignorant and authoritarian theologians imposing their will on enlightened, free-thinking and truth-seeking scientists.  Such a distorted view of the history of science and religion has influenced some of the more sophisticated thinkers of our own time. For example, in his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell relates how John Calvin’s critique of Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe was an obstacle to scientific progress. “Calvin,” wrote Russell, “demolished Copernicus with the text:’The world also is stabilised, that it cannot be moved’ (Psalm xciii.I), and exclaimed: ‘Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?’“ Thus Calvin is portrayed as an ignorant, arrogant fool, placing the authority of the Bible above scientific evidence, just the sort of backward thinking religious zealot who obstructs scientific progress. The unfortunate truth, for those who delight in seeing religious figures portrayed in such a simplistic manner, is that Calvin made no such statement. Unfortunately, Russell didn’t provide a source for his citation, but Thomas Kuhn attempted to track it down when researching early responses to the Copernican theory. Yet neither Kuhn nor anyone else could find anything like the quotation in any of Calvin’s writings. However, the one place where it was featured most prominently was in Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science and Theology and Christendom. White cites a specific work by Calvin but at no point in that work does Calvin state anything like what White attributes to him. Historians now dismiss White’s citation as pure invention - an invention that, nonetheless, found its way into the work of Bertrand Russell, one of the most respected and influential thinkers of the 20^th C. 

Another myth that has permeated the popular consciousness, and one that even today is cited by some leading thinkers and polemicists, is that of the confrontation between the bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce and Darwin’s ally Thomas H. Huxley at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford on June 30, 1860, at which the theory of evolution was being discussed. Delivering what he arrogantly thought would be knock-out blow to Huxley, Wilberforce demanded of Huxley whether it was “through his grandfather or grandmother that he claimed his descent from a monkey?” With consummate dignity, Huxley calmly replied that if he had a choice between having “a miserable ape for a grandfather” or a talented man who uses his gifts for “the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into grave scientific discussion,” he would choose the ape any day.  This tale has been related ad-nauseam by those wishing to highlight the uninformed, backward thinking that religion is believed to foster. Again, unfortunately for such people, this event never occurred. Contemporary accounts of the meeting make no mention of this exchange. It is now believed to be a journalistic invention originating thirty years later. As such, it tells us very little about what actually happened at the British Association meeting, but it does tell us an awful lot about the way the Darwin debate was perceived in the latter part of the 19thC. It portrays Wilberforce as the ignorant, backward thinking, and uninformed mouth-piece of religion. The truth was that Wilberforce was thoroughly familiar with Darwin’s theory having written an extended review of Origin of Species five weeks prior to the 1860 meeting; a review that Darwin himself granted was “uncommonly clever” and that it pointed out “with skill all the most conjectural parts” of the book, identifying some serious weaknesses that Darwin needed to address in any future work.

The Galileo Affair

Undoubtedly, the most often-cited incident in the history of science-religion interaction is the “Galileo affair”. Often presented as a simple clash between the dogmatic and authoritarian Church and a humble, truth-seeking scientist, the reality is actually very complex, involving intellectual, philosophical, political, social, and personal clashes that go well beyond any naive (and propagandist) science-versus-religion readings. In his Dialogue Concerning the Two Great World Systems Galileo champions Copernicus’s heliocentric theory of the universe over the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system. Set at a time when the Church was waging a brutal war challenging its authority as the source of truth (The Thirty Years’ War) Galileo’s challenge to the accepted orthodoxy couldn’t have come at a worse time. But central to the discussion are the questions “What did Galileo actually know about nature? Did he know the Earth moved on its axis and around the Sun? Did his telescope give him that knowledge? Did he prove that Copernicus was right?” The Church typically has been cast as the villain in the condemnation of Galileo, but a great deal hinges on whether Galileo possessed knowledge and was defending truth or was promoting personal opinion based on his beliefs. It was Galileo’s insistence that Copernicus’s theory was physically true, and that any reasonable person would conclude it to be true, that Galileo was called to account. Had Galileo claimed that Copernicus’s theory was the most effective means of making astronomical calculations, ignoring questions of physical reality, there would have been no conflict at all.

While it is true that certain Church affiliates, most notably Dominican friar Tommaso Caccini, condemned as heretical Galileo’s views, it would be crass collectivism to extend the actions of specific churchmen into a generalised statement about Galileo versus “the Church”. There were clergy, theologians, and officials on both sides of the issue. Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, one of the most powerful churchmen of the day in Rome and a highly important theologian, claimed that if there were an undeniable demonstration of the Earth’s motion, then Scripture would have to be reinterpreted. The problem was, Galileo had no such proof. Due to a debate at the time within the scientific community regarding the reliability of instruments such as the telescope, Galileo’s telescopic “proofs” were inconclusive. Galileo’s favourite knock down “proof”, that the tides were caused by the Earth’s motion, is completely wrong. The most widely supported astronomical theory in the early 17th C was that of Tycho Brahe, who posited that the inner planets (Mercury and Venus) orbited the Sun, which in turn orbited the Earth along with the remaining planets. In his Dialogue, Galileo disingenuously fails to mention the Tycho Brahe model. One possible reason for this is that the Brahe model accommodates all the predictions and evidence that Galileo considered “proof” of the Copernican theory.

Galileo emerges as a polemicist, an apologist for the Copernican theory. Galileo’s arguments in the Dialogue are rhetorical rather than conclusive. Although Galileo was ultimately correct about heliocentrism, he was wrong to claim he had proof of it. From the Churches point of view, confusion would result if the Scriptures had to be reinterpreted for every possible, yet unproven, scientific system. (As an aside, it is interesting to note that many of the accusations labelled against Galileo’s theory i.e. that it violated commonsense experience, that it would subvert fundamental principles of physics, and that no evidence supported it, are very much akin to the accusations psi research is constantly subjected to)

These examples suffice to show how the science-religion interplay has been distorted for propagandist ends. The propagandist view is that science is on an inexorable march, casting its inimitable light on enlightenment Europe, dispelling the shadows of ignorance, tyranny and superstition, with religion forever in retreat until one day religion is forever vanquished from the minds of men, seen for what it is, the primitive and backward delusions of the ignorant and stupid. In reality this representation is a modern one, a product of political, social and cultural influences prevalent 19^th C Europe; and which, to this day, is unfortunately perpetuated by a vitriolic cohort of atheists for whom the Enlightenment ‘project’ just hasn’t ‘panned out’ the way they would have liked.

Review of: "War of the Worldviews: Science vs Spirituality" (Hardcover) by Deepak Chopra & Leonard Mlodinow

In Plato's Allegory of the cave human beings live confined and restricted in a subterranean cave which has a mouth open at one end to the light outside. The human occupants of this cave have been there since childhood and are shackled in such a way that there heads are immobile, with there gaze constantly fixed on the back of the cave, opposite the opening, upon which are projected shadows. Knowing no different, the constrained humans take the shadows on the cave wall to be reality. Some of the cave dwellers, being of a scientific disposition, spend their whole lives studying the movement of the shadows, recognising regularities and patterns, speculating as to their origins. Some shadows exhibit such regularity that laws of shadow behaviour are developed. So hypnotised by the shadow play are these cave dwellers that they little suspect the reason for there being any shadows at all is due to the light - that non of them have ever directly seen - coming from the mouth of the cave.

This scenario pretty much sums up the theme of this book. Deepak Chopra considers materialistic science to be engaged in the study of shadows. At the same time he feels science is ignoring, and indeed hostile to, the very thing that gives the shadows any reality at all, the light i.e. consciousness or spirit (both words are used interchangeably by Deepak as pointers to THAT which is itself formless and empty but which gives rise to all forms and potential).

Leonard Mlidinow argues that, without good reason to think otherwise, we must confine our interests, our studies, our investigations and inquiries to the shadows (the material world), limiting our hopes, dreams and desires to the shadow world. It is a naïve and vain hope to think there is anything else. Besides, the shadows are infinitely fascinating, varied and awe inspiring and offer the prospect of beguiling us for many years to come. By contrast, Deepak argues, to limit our gaze to the shadows is to limit the potential for greater discovery.

The book is essentially about knowledge, the different ways of knowing, and how we can be certain that our claims to knowledge are true. Leonard comes from the perspective of radical empiricism in which only that which is amenable to the senses (and their extensions), and that which can be measured, quantified, predicted and verified through third person confirmation, can be considered a legitimate truth claim. Deepak considers that science, technology and the media have conspired to produce a view of the world that is profoundly materialistic and competitive and which claims exclusive rights to being "right". Deepak argues that the scientific worldview is missing an essential ingredient i.e. spirit. However, Deepak is at pains to distance his version of spirituality from religion. He writes: "Organised religion may have discredited itself, but spirituality has suffered no such defeat." He then contrasts organised religions with the "profound views of life" propounded by spiritual teachers such as the Buddha, Jesus and Lao-tzu who pointed to a "transcendent domain", beyond the reach of the five senses, "mysterious, unseen" but which could be known by diving deep into one's own awareness, to the source of both the inner and outer reality.

Thus, in essence, Deepak's spiritual perspective is one in which he equates spirituality with consciousness. Deepak believes that "consciousness" is the ordering, creative and intelligent principle at the heart of reality, without which there would be no reality at all (the light at the mouth of the cave). "We need to go back to the source of religion. That source isn't God. It's consciousness". Deepak breaks down his spiritual perspective into three parts:

1. There is an unseen reality that is the source of all visible things.
2. This unseen reality is knowable through our own awareness.
3. Intelligence, creativity, and organising power are embedded in the cosmos.

Deepak argues for a worldview in which consciousness and the material universe are seen as two aspects of an indivisible whole. He writes: "Reality is reality. There is only one and it is permanent. This means that at some point the inner and outer must meet; we won't have to choose between them". This desire to unite science and spirituality through a grand synthesis is at the heart of Deepak's philosophy. The main obstacles to this synthesis, in Deepak's view, are religion and materialism. Most religions (mainly the monotheistic western religions of Judaism, Islam and Christianity) posit an extra-cosmic God who "tinkers" with reality as and when it suits Him, judges, condemns or loves you (depending on what mood He's in) and is completely "other" and unknowable, revealed to us solely through "sacred" texts which must be believed unquestioningly if one is to achieve salvation. Such a view of the world, Deepak argues, is rightly shunned by all reasonable and thinking individuals. Similarly, he argues, the "superstition of materialism", the belief that only the world revealed to us via our five senses is real, is hostile to the "inner journey". Deepak perceives science as aiding and abetting this materialistic worldview as it reduces the universe to a closed physical system of purely physical cause and effect, ungoverned by anything other than blind purposeless laws of nature. The question for Deepak is fundamentally: "What is reality? Is it the result of natural laws rigorously operating through cause and effect, or is it something else?"

Leonard writes: "We would all like to be immortal. We'd like to believe that good triumphs over evil, that a greater power watches over us, that we are part of something bigger, that we have been put here for a reason. We'd like to believe that our lives have an intrinsic meaning." Leonard recognises these as legitimate human concerns. He views the answers that religion provides as mankind's earliest attempt to address these concerns within the limits of incomplete knowledge. "Today science can answer many of the most fundamental questions of existence. Science's answers spring from observation and experiment rather than from human bias or desire. Science offers answers in harmony with nature as it is, rather than nature as we'd like it to be." In terms of inspiring awe and wonderment as well as addressing questions of ultimate concern Leonard believes science, despite its limitations, to be the "triumph of humanity" and of our "capacity to understand". He resents Deepak's implication that scientific explanations are "sterile and reductive". He goes on: "Scientists are often guided by their intuition and subjective feelings but they recognise the need for another step: verification." He then loosely outlines the "scientific method" with its emphasis on observation and experimentation; and, while acknowledging the part spirituality has to play "regarding human aspirations and the meaning of our lives", he highlights the lack of verifiable evidence as being the main reason religion and spirituality are excluded from scientific consideration; or, more to the point, religious and spiritual doctrine make "pronouncements about the physical universe that contradict what we actually observe to be true." So Leonard's view is that the knowledge claims of science are open to verification, refutation and testing and as such we have every right to place our confidence in science as opposed to religion/spirituality when it comes to our understanding of the world and our place in it.

As much as I enjoyed the exchanges between Leonard and Deepak, and as much as I commend Leonard for engaging in communication with someone I'm sure many of his colleagues would run a mile from, I found the book on the whole disappointing. Essential to a debate such as this is the necessity of defining terms explicitly and to the satisfaction of both parties. The problem with this book is that terms are so sloppily defined (if at all) and so ambiguously employed, that both Deepak and Leonard spend a great deal of their time talking passed each other. Deepak uses terms such as "spirit", "consciousness", "mind" etc so loosely and vaguely as to render them meaningless at times, while Leonard, though more diligent in his effort to define terms, is similarly guilty of obfuscation (this is to be expected from someone who co-authored "The Grand Design" with Stephen Hawkin in which it is claimed, Nietzschian like, "philosophy is dead". It was premature of Leonard to bury philosophy because philosophy, at the very least, is the art of conceptual clarification). In fairness to Deepak, terms such as spirit, consciousness and mind are notoriously slippery and science has yet to agree on a working definition of consciousness. Notwithstanding, I feel Deepak could have made a greater effort to be more precise in his definition of these terms, if for no other reason than, by not doing so, Leonard had all the ammunition he needed to dismiss many of Deepak's arguments on the grounds of ill-defined terminology. Leonard, too, would have aided the reader had he more specifically defined what he meant by "science". To make claims about a "scientific worldview" already obfuscates because science is not philosophy, it is a method of inquiring into the physical world (methodological naturalism). Science should be philosophically neutral. To talk of a "scientific worldview" in the manner in which Leonard does is to conflate science (the study of the physical world) with the philosophy of physical naturalism (which states that the physical world is all there is). If, however, Leonard means something more by the term "science", then he should have made it clear in what sense he was using the term.

The level of argument was also unsatisfactory. One example will suffice. Deepak writes: "Creation without consciousness is like the fabled roomful of monkeys randomly striking the keys on a typewriter...No matter how small the scale or how large, the cosmos is seamlessly exact in a way that randomness cannot account for. Something must have caused this, and it must exist beyond the physical universe." Simply insisting that something "must" be the case does not make it so and Deepak is intelligent enough to realise that to employ such language is to weaken his case. To address this "random-typing" argument of Deepak's, Leonard invokes the computer "selection" programme from Richard Dawkins' book The Blind Watchmaker in which "a mechanism analogous to natural selection" is used to arrive at Shakespeare's phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel". Through the random typing of letters that is believed to imitate the evolutionary process, this programme supposedly demonstrates how the process of natural selection mitigates randomness. But this does no such thing! The very fact that the programme "chooses" letters in keeping with the "target" phrase shows the programme to be governed by a purpose i.e. achieving the target phrase. Thus "design" is written into the programme in a way that is supposedly absent in nature. So this is a rather weak argument and shows Leonard to be unaware of the more sophisticated challenges to Dawkins's "Darwinian gradualism". As Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "Natural selection might explain the survival of the fittest, but not the arrival of the fittest".

Throughout the ages there have been individuals who have broken free of their cave bound condition and "seen the light" and who have used that insight to inform the rest of us of our cave dwelling, shadow beguiled existence. Such individuals are the great sages, rishis and mystics of history. There insight is as uncompromising as it is consistent: We are not who we think we are and the world is not as it seems. Unfortunately, the word "Mysticism", through loose popular usage, has become synonymous with magic, mystification and even self-delusion and it is this debased usage of the term that falls so readily from the lips of both Deepak and Leonard (Deepak preferring the word "spiritual" to "mystical" and Leonard not showing any evidence that he's given the true meaning of mysticism any serious consideration whatsoever). The rationalistic bias of contemporary science, which equates the verifiable with the true, links the "mystical" with superstition, self-delusion and the avoidance of life. But Mystics ask you to take nothing on faith. Even Sam Harris acknowledges this. In The End Of Faith he writes:

"Mysticism is a rational enterprise. Religion is not. The mystic has recognised something about the nature of consciousness prior to thought, and this recognition is susceptible to rational discussion. The mystic has reasons for what he believes, and these reasons are empirical. The roiling mystery of the world can be analyzed with concepts (this is science), or it can be experienced free of concepts (this is mysticism). Religion is nothing more than bad concepts held in place of good ones for all time" The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason

Science is the study of the world employing the formidable resources of the mind and human ingenuity. There is nothing wrong with this knowledge and it has indeed rewarded us in the West with unparalleled and privileged lives. However, it is in the nature of the mind to categorise, differentiate, bifurcate, dissect, intellectualise, separate, limit, demarcate etc. Thus, approaching the world with the mind condemns us to viewing the world through an opaque screen of concepts, dualistically splitting the world into that which is seen and that which is doing the seeing. Similar to Plato's cave, we become hypnotised by the shadow play of our abstract knowledge, mistaking our conceptual knowledge for the way things really are. But mysticism offers us an alternative and complementary way of knowing the world, directly, unmediated by any conceptual abstractions, intimate and non-dual. Reality is what is revealed from this non-dual level of knowing. Concepts can no more encapsulate Reality than notes on manuscript paper can encapsulate what it is to listen to a symphony. We can study the shadows on the cave wall all we like but until we break the hypnotic trance, turn around and look, we'll never "see the light"

Faith & Reason

The pre-modern thinkers, retroactively called scientists, themselves believed that theology and religious texts were relevant to their own work and vice versa. As an example of this interplay are the four points argued for by Augustine, that not only became fundamental to theology but are key to the science – religion interaction.

First, there is the doctrine of the unity of truth which states that there cannot be a truth for theology and another truth for science – there can only be one truth. Consequently, seeming contradictions have to be acknowledged and confronted, and not simply swept under the rug; they must be resolved intellectually by the use of reason.

Second, there is the doctrine of the Two Books – the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. These were seen as two complementary ways in which God reveals himself to man; and since they had the same author they could not fundamentally contradict each other.

Third is the doctrine of accommodation, the idea that Biblical expressions were accommodated to the understanding of their original audience. Both books required careful interpretation, with Biblical passages being multi-layered in meaning possessing literal, allegorical, analogical and moral meaning (Literal interpretation did not mean what it does today; for example, St Augustine’s Literal Interpretation of Genesis denies a six-day, and even a six-period, creation). Realising the difficulty of Biblical interpretation, Augustine believed some explanations of Biblical passages should be held provisionally, with the assiduous use of reason to be employed in there interpretation. Augustine believed that Biblical interpretation should be informed by current scientific understanding; failure to do so opens the interpreter, and Christianity as a whole, to the ridicule of being unlearned and uninformed.

Fourth and finally, St Augustine asserted that, in terms of the pursuit of religious as opposed to philosophical and scientific knowledge, religion has primacy, with scientific knowledge being a key ancilla (handmaiden) that assists true religion. This subordinate status is a reflection of the relative values given by society at the time to the two realms of inquiry. Augustine believed knowledge of the natural world to both reveal the majesty of God’s creation and be indispensable for correct Biblical exegesis.

In 1998, Pope John Paul II issued an important encyclical entitled Fides et ratio (Faith and Reason). The document sketches a useful history of the relationship of faith and reason; its teachings reaffirm St Augustine’s formulations. It emphasizes the indispensability of both faith and reason, which it calls the “two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” Faith held simply and without the exercise of reason is condemned and “runs the grave risk of withering into myth and superstition.” Fideism (blind faith over reason) and biblicism (reliance on biblical texts alone) are explicitly rejected. Conversely, unaided human reason is unable to attain or prove the ultimate truths of existence. The faith statements that run most strongly throughout the document are not specific dogmas of Christianity but, rather, that human life has “meaning” and that “there exists an eternal and transcendent truth.” These two faith statements are designed as guides to the exercise of reason. As a result, certain recent philosophical currents are criticised, including radical relativism, nihilism, and scientism. As regards science, warning is given that scientific studies uninspired by a higher meaning risk devolving into trivial means of material production or of other abuses. Science thus becomes ancilla to minor needs, questionable desires and insatiable wants. 

Authentic Tidings of Invisisble Things

For thousands of years mystics of every tradition and culture have asserted, with impressive unanimity and consensus, fundamental insights regarding the nature and existence of the universe and ourselves.  Very simply, what these mystics say is:

1)    We are not who/what we think we are and
2)    Reality is not what it appears to be.

So common and widespread have the insights of the mystics become that they now go by the name of the Perennial Philosophy (PP).  So what does the Perennial Philosophy state?  Simply put, the PP can be thought of as having three strands, namely:

1. The world, the universe and everything in existence is the manifestation/expression of an underlying Reality/Energy.  This Reality/Energy is the source, substance and real nature of everything in existence and IT alone IS.
2. Because we are not separate from the world, the universe and everything in existence, this Reality lies at the heart of every individual and is accessible to us as our own deepest Self (“Self” with a capital “S” denotes the presence of this Reality within ourselves as opposed to the “self” – lower case “s” – which denotes our limited and impermanent “ego”). We are all manifestations and expressions of this Reality.
3. Life finds its ultimate value, meaning and purpose in the conscious and permanent Realisation of our unity and identity with this underlying Reality.  This Realisation goes by many names such as Self-Realisation, God-Realisation, Enlightenment, Liberation, Satori, Gnosis. This Realisation is really the recognition of what we have always been, are and will be.

What the mystics reveal is that the universe is the play, the dance, the vibration of this fundamental Reality/Energy.  What seems to us a multiplicity of different and separate “things” is in reality the manifestation of one underlying “Reality” which, itself formless, gives rise to a multitude of forms.

Although the insights of mystics can be realised through certain practices that serve to change one’s level of consciousness (and hence perception and identity), it is also the case that these states of high-level mystical experience can occur spontaneously.  Such is the case with the short collection of mystical experiences that follow.  Although brief, hopefully these short but impressive examples will give an idea of what Reality, devoid of the distorting lens of our conditioning, actually “tastes” like.

The first example is that of Richard Maurice Bucke. Richard Maurice Bucke was born on March 18, 1837 at Methwold, Norfolk, England. He was the son of Rev. Horatio Walpole Bucke (Church of England) and his wife Clarissa Andrews.  He was a direct descendent of Sir Robert Walpole. At the age of 35 ("at the beginning of his 36th year" - spring of 1872) he had an illuminating, mystical experience.  He described the experience himself in the third person:

“It was in the early spring at the beginning of his thirty-sixth year. He and two friends had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman. They parted at midnight, and he had a long drive in a hansom. ...His mind, deeply under the influence of the ideas, images, and emotions called up by reading and talk of the evening, was calm and peaceful. He was in a state of quiet, almost passive enjoyment. All at once, without warning of any kind, he found himself wrapped around as it were by a flame-coloured cloud...he knew that the light was within himself. Directly afterwards came upon him a sense of exaltation, of immense joyousness accompanied or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination quite impossible to describe... he saw and knew that the cosmos is not dead matter but a living Presence, that the soul of man is immortal, that the universe is so ordered that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all, that the foundation principle of the world is what we call love and that the happiness of every one in the long run is absolutely certain.” (Emphasis added)

Such was Buck’s sense of identity with the universe that he labelled his experience ‘Cosmic Consciousness’. Experiences such as this are more common than you would think. These experiences can happen anywhere and at anytime. Bucke’s experience was unsought and completely spontaneous.  The next example is that of a woman named Rose-Neil as recounted in a book by novelist and biographer Nona Coxhead called The Relevance of Bliss:

“… I had always found gardening a relaxing activity and on this particular day I felt in a very contemplative frame of mind.  I remember that I gradually became intensely aware of my surroundings – the sound of the birds singing, the rustling of leaves, the breeze on my skin and the scent of the grass and flowers.

"I had a sudden impulse to lie face down on the grass and as I did so, an energy seemed to flow through me as if I had become part of the earth underneath me.  The boundary between my physical self and my surroundings seemed to dissolve and my feeling of separation vanished.  In a strange way I felt blended into a total unity with the earth between my fingers and touching my face, and I was overwhelmed by a force which seemed to penetrate every fibre of my being.

"I felt as if I had suddenly come alive for the first time – as if awakening from a long deep sleep into a real world.  I remember feeling that a veil had been lifted from my eyes and everything came into focus, although my head was still on the grass.  Whatever else I believed, I realised that I was surrounded by an incredible loving energy, and that everything both living and non-living, is bound inextricably with a kind of consciousness which I cannot describe in words.” (Emphasis added)

Also from Nona Coxhead’s book is the experience of Muz Murray, who had been an agnostic but who, as a result of his experience, made a pilgrimage to India to study with Sufi masters.

“One evening in Cyprus, in 1964, I was sitting looking at the sea, in an afterglow of sunset, having just finished a meal in an old Greek eatery on the shore.  I was feeling very tranquil and relaxed when I began to feel a strange pressure in my brain.  It was as if some deliciously loving hand had crept numbingly under my skull and was pressing another brain softly into mine.  I felt a thrilling liquidity of being and an indescribable sensation as if the whole universe were being poured into me, or rather, more as if the whole universe welling out of me from some deep centre.  My “soul” thrilled and swelled and kept expanding until I found myself among and within the stars and planets.  I understood that I was the whole universe!…

"The vision vanished as wave upon wave of extraordinary revelation swept through me, too fast for my conscious mind to record other than the joy and wonder of it.  In those moments of eternity I lived and understood the esoteric saying “as above-so below.”  Every single cell in my “expanded body” – wherever the body was during that bodiless experience – seemed to record and intuit everything which occurred, retaining it like the negative film emulsion in a camera.  I was shown that every cell had its own consciousness which was mine.  And it seemed that the whole of humanity was in the same condition: each “individual” believing in his or her separate mind, but in reality still subject to a single controlling consciousness – that of Absolute Consciousness Itself.” (Emphasis added)


And one final example from Miss Coxhead’s book:

Clair Myers Owens, who described herself as ‘a privileged American housewife’…refers to a ‘golden light’ in the experience quoted next, which took place while she was sitting at her desk … she did have forewarnings, in the form of ‘small ecstasies,’ before she encountered what she calls ‘the most frightening, beautiful, important experience of my life’…

“One morning I was writing at my desk in the quiet writing room of our quiet house in Connecticut.  Suddenly everything within my sight vanished right away.  No longer did I see my body, the furniture in the room, the white rain slating across the windows.  No longer was I aware of where I was, the day or the hour.  Time and space ceased to exist.
Suddenly the entire room was filled with a great golden light, the whole world was filled with nothing but light.  There was nothing anywhere except this effulgent light and my own small kernel of self.  The ordinary “I” ceased to exist.  Nothing of me remained but a mere nugget of consciousness.  It felt as if some force was invading me without my volition, as if all immanent good latent within me began to pour forth in a stream, to form a moving circle with the universal principle.  Myself began to dissolve into the light that was like a great all pervasive fog.  It was a mystical moment of union with the mysterious infinite, with all things, all people.
It was a grand purgation, I was washed clean and pure like a sea shell by might tides of the sea.  All my personal problems fell away out of sight.  My ego had drowned in boundless being.  Irrefutable intimations of immortality came welling up.  I felt myself becoming an indestructible part of indestructible eternity.  All fear vanished – especially fear of death.  I felt death would be the beginning of a new more beautiful life…”

The last example I want to look at is that of Allen Smith, a scientific researcher trained in medicine and anesthesiology, in which he earned an M.D. degree. He had received a national award for his research just before the experience and was one of the most promising young researchers in his field. His experience occurred in Oakland, California when Dr. Smith was 38 years old and sitting quietly at home.

“My Cosmic Consciousness event occurred unexpectedly while I was alone one evening and was watching a particularly beautiful sunset. I was sitting in an easy chair placed next to floor-to-ceiling windows that faced northwest. The sun was above the horizon and was partially veiled by scattered clouds, so that it was not uncomfortably bright… The Cosmic Consciousness experience began with some mild tingling in the perineal area, the region between the genitals and anus. The feeling was unusual, but was neither particularly pleasant nor unpleasant. After the initial few minutes, I either ceased to notice the tingling or did not remember it. I then noticed that the level of light in the room as well as that of the sky outside seemed to be increasing slowly. The light seemed to be coming from everywhere, not only from the waning sun. In fact, the sun itself did not give off a strong glare. The light gave the air a bright thickened quality that slightly obscured perception rather than sharpened it. It soon became extremely bright, but the light was not in the least unpleasant.

"Along with the light came an alteration in mood. I began to feel very good, then still better, then elated. While this was happening, the passage of time seemed to become slower and slower. The brightness, mood-elevation, and time-slowing all progressed together. It is difficult to estimate the time period over which these changes occurred, since the sense of time was itself affected. However, there was a feeling of continuous change, rather than a discrete jump or jumps to a new state. Eventually, the sense of time passing stopped entirely. It is difficult to describe this feeling, but perhaps it would be better to say that there was no time, or no sense of time. Only the present moment existed. My elation proceeded to an ecstatic state, the intensity of which I had never even imagined could be possible. The white light around me merged with the reddish light of the sunset to become one all enveloping, intense undifferentiated light field. Perception of other things faded. Again, the changes seemed to be continuous.

"At this point, I merged with the light and everything, including myself, became one unified whole. There was no separation between myself and the rest of the universe. In fact, to say that there was a universe, a self, or any ‘thing’ would be misleading — it would be an equally correct description to say that there was ‘nothing’ as to say that there was ‘everything’. To say that subject merged with object might be almost adequate as a description of the entrance into Cosmic Consciousness, but during Cosmic Consciousness there was neither ‘subject’ nor ‘object’. All words or discursive thinking had stopped and there was no sense of an ‘observer’ to comment or to categorize what was ‘happening’. In fact, there were no discrete events to ‘happen’ — just a timeless, unitary state of being.

"Cosmic Consciousness is impossible to describe, partly because describing involves words and the state is one in which there were no words. My attempts at description here originated from reflecting on Cosmic Consciousness soon after it had passed and while there was still some ‘taste’ of the event remaining.

"Perhaps the most significant element of Cosmic Consciousness was the absolute knowingness that it involves. This knowingness is a deep understanding that occurs without words. I was certain that the universe was one whole and that it was benign and loving at its ground… The benign nature and ground of being, with which I was united, was God. However, there is little relation between my experience of God as ground of being and the anthropomorphic God of the Bible. That God is separate from the world and has many human characteristics. ‘He’ demonstrates love, anger and vengeance, makes demands, gives rewards, punishes, forgives, etc. God as experienced in Cosmic Consciousness is the very ground or ‘beingness’ of the universe and has no human characteristics in the usual sense of the word. The universe could no more be separate from God than my body could be separate from its cells. Moreover, the only emotion that I would associate with God is love, but it would be more accurate to say that God is love than God is loving. Again, even characterizing God as love and the ground of being is only a metaphor, but it is the best that I can do to describe an indescribable experience.

"The knowingness of Cosmic Consciousness permanently convinced me about the true nature of the universe. However, it did not answer many of the questions that (quite rightly) seem so important to us in our usual state of consciousness. From the perspective of Cosmic Consciousness, questions like, ‘What is the purpose of life?’ or ‘Is there an afterlife?’ are not answered because they are not relevant. That is, during Cosmic Consciousness ontologic questions are fully answered by one’s state of being and verbal questions are not to the point.

"Eventually, the Cosmic Consciousness faded. The time-changes, light, and mood-elevation passed off. When I was able to think again, the sun had set and I estimate that the event must have lasted about twenty minutes. Immediately following return to usual consciousness, I cried uncontrollably for about a half hour. I cried both for joy and for sadness, because I knew that my life would never be the same.”

These experiences can be likened to a wave that briefly submerges beneath the surface of the sea and momentarily realises its unity with the ocean. Common to all these experiences is a dissolving of the boundary between the sense of self and the sense of other. The identification with the self is subsumed within a greater identification with the ALL. These experiences are profound and life changing.  It would be a great blunder to dismiss them as nothing more than delusions or hallucinations.  It would be an affront to the people quoted here and the thousands of others who have had similar ‘authentic tidings of invisible things’.