Because we have trusted our future to reason, we have been reluctant to open ourselves to mystery.

Reason

      Over the course of the past 2,000 years the West has been in the process of progressively enthroning reason as the supreme value.

Benefits

      We have benefited from reason.

      Reason has challenged magical thinking, the notion that we can manipulate the world by ritual actions, verbal commands or by cajoling or coercing the deity into taking our side. Reason has rid us of a crass cargo-cult mentality, even if this mindset persists in attenuated, sophisticated, and far less easily identifiable forms. Reason has also supplanted myth as the principal means of ordering the world. It has demanded of statements that they expose their presuppositions to scrutiny. The development of reason has threatened ignorance, superstition, and prejudice.

      Reason has demystified nature. By opening up the possibility of a sharper exploration of reality, it prepared the way for the development of science. By privileging an inductive methodology, reason encouraged the development and testing of hypotheses. It also stimulated system building. At the same time, it suggested that this exercise can only ever be tentative. Our theories are rough sketches that selectively focus on particular elements.

      Reason gave rise to industrialisation and technological development. At the same time, it highlighted the downside of these developments. Reason also challenged inequality and injustice. [163]

A feminist critique

      Some feminists argue that reason, for which men hold the patent, is responsible for devaluing women and dismissing their opinions. However, as Wilber contended, it was reason, wielded by women, that prepared the way for their emancipation.

      Wilber contended that reason, as a predominant mode of consciousness, reached its climax in the rise of the modern state, in Europe, roughly around the 16 Century. He argued that it is no surprise that Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women was written in 1792. It would, in evolutionary terms, be a brief two hundred years before women gained the right to vote and to own possessions. What effected the change was not that women suddenly became intelligent and responsible, but rather that the centre of gravity shifted from the biological sphere to the sphere of the mind. This provided the structural conditions for women's emancipation.¹

      The biosphere is the sphere of the body, of biological existence. The noosphere is the sphere of the mind. Wilber's point was that, once women were freed from a sheerly biological role, and could engage men in the public sphere--challenging, even excelling them--they were in a position to rationally demolish the foundations of male privilege. According to Wilber, the demands that began to be made with the emergence of the suffragette movement were made possible by the differentiation of noosphere from the biosphere and the development of a global rationality.²

Enantiodromia

      The enthronement of reason as the supreme value evoked considerable opposition.

      This should hardly come as a surprise.

      Jung frequently spoke about a process that he called enantiodromia. He found the term in the writings of Heraclitus. It refers to the fact that when a development is taken to an extreme it will cause its opposite to manifest. This is a characteristic of homeostatic systems.

      We can see this in the unconscious reactions of children to their parents. Anthony Stevens illustrated the phenomenon by [164] comparing Jung with his father. His father was intellectually hesitant. Carl was bold. The older man was imprisoned in a dogmatic faith. The son questioned and resisted dogma.³

      This process of enantiodromia was evident in a range of reactions to the over-evaluation of reason as a means of discerning and understanding reality. Each of these responses pointed up the unreason of employing reason alone as an exploratory and evaluating tool.

Reactions

      The reaction to reason expressed itself in the Romantic Movement, with its emphasis on feeling, sentiment and nature. A similar reaction was evident in the development of intuitionism, feminism and environmentalism.

      What could be loosely termed Post-Modernism⁴ has also reacted to the hubris of reason, evident in philosophies that claim to be able to explain, comprehensively, the structure of reality. Some have even gone so far as to challenge the notion that reality is a given. They argue that we create "reality" by our use of language.⁵ However, in spite of the anti-rational rhetoric of some "Post-Modernists", the process of "deconstructing" texts, a favoured methodology, represents, not a denial of rationality, but its extension. This extension stretches reason to the point of absurdity.

      Those individuals, and movements, reacting to the high-handed way in which reason claims a monopolistic position, want to point out that reason has a shadow side and that it represents only one way of knowing. There are other ways of knowing and evaluating. These include feeling, intuition, imagination and "gut" knowing.

Intolerance of mystery

      One of the effects of our hyper-rationality is that we have developed a dismissive intolerance of mystery. [165]

Verification

      We argue that whatever we claim is real should be tested by methods appropriate to the physical sciences. The verification of truth-claims is critical in a world in which people can be so easily damaged by false claims and deliberate deception. However, we need to ensure that our methods of verification are appropriate to the material being investigated.

      Wilber has argued that there are three basic phenomenological categories--objects apprehended by the senses, intellectual products and transcendent experiences.⁶ Each requires a different method of verification.

      Wilber . . . contends that we must develop a . . . comprehensive model of verification that allows for different, though not utterly dissimilar, methods of verification, appropriate to the three classes of experience--sensibilia, inteligibilia and transcendalia. The model he proposes involves three elements. First, one needs to define what is to be verified (Instrumental Injunction). Second, one needs to work out methods of verification appropriate to the level and the phenomena under investigation (Intuitive apprehension). Third, one then needs to identity the community of discourse qualified to confirm or deny the reality of what is being claimed (Communal Confirmation).⁷

Openness

      What I want to suggest, in this chapter, is that you allow yourself to be surprised by the mysterious. I am not advocating a temporarily suspension of judgement. Instead, I encourage you recognise that there is much about life that we don't understand. I am not advocating that we surrender to superstition or credulity. Nor am I suggesting that the initial interpretation of an incident is necessarily accurate.

Special moments

      If we are open to mystery we will attend to special moments, when the familiar takes on a new, transformed significance. Vaclav Havel described such a moment in a letter he wrote to Olga, his wife, in June 1982. He was sitting on a pile of rusty iron and gazing [166] up into the crown of an enormous tree. Suddenly, he found himself in a world beyond time where all the beautiful things he had ever experienced were present to him. He felt that he existed in a state of yieldedness to the inevitable course of events. He felt a sense of overwhelming joy at being alive, at having the chance to live through all he had lived through. Situated at the edge of the finite, he experienced a sense of ultimate happiness and marvelled at the meaningfulness of life. The atmosphere was heavy with a sense of indefinable love.⁸

Parapsychology

      This commitment to openness will also involve us exploring fascinating connections between our minds and the physical world, represented by a range of parapsychological phenomena.⁹

Health

      It will also lead to a consideration of the connection between thinking, emotion and health.¹⁰

      Sometimes what we find will challenge current orthodoxy. Two incidents from the medical practice of Larry Dossey, a physician, illustrate the types of situations we may find ourselves confronting.

      The first concerns an operation for the removal of a gall bladder that did not go according to plan.

      In the later phase of Sarah's surgery her heart suddenly stopped. She was revived, and, on awakening, had a most extraordinary tale to tell. She described, clearly, and in detail, the consternation among the surgeons and nurses, the OR layout and the configuration of the scribbles on the surgeon's schedule board in the hall outside. She knew the colour of the sheet covering the operating table and talked about the hairstyle of the head scrub nurse. She gave the names of the doctors waiting in the doctors' lounge and mentioned that the anesthesiologist was wearing unmatched sox. During the whole time she had been fully anaesthetised. What was even more remarkable was that she had been blind from birth!¹¹ [167]

      The second incident involved a woman who was worried about an abdominal pain.

      The pain had persisted for several months. The woman sensed that she should travel into her body to identify the difficulty. She was given to introspection and decided to follow up on this intuition, particularly as she had become used to listening to her body.

      She sat in her favourite chair and began relaxing herself. She was used to putting herself into this state. She didn't use any particular mental strategy, but allowed her consciousness to remain blank. She waited for the awareness to surface. Eventually she became aware of an image of three circular, ovoid, soft, white things inside a larger, spherical object. She sensed that these were what were causing the pain. She was convinced that they were not life-threatening. The image remained for half an hour.

      Several days later she visited Dossey for a regular appointment. She explained that she knew she didn't have cancer, in spite of her gynaecologist's concern over an enlarged ovary. The gynaecologist had wanted to do more tests.

      Dossey asked her why she was convinced that she didn't have cancer. She explained that she had seen both her ovaries, and they were OK. She commented that, while the right one was clear, there were three white spots on the left ovary. She was testing Dossey to see whether he would dismiss her as the gynaecologist had. A sonagram, and later an operation, confirmed that Elizabeth's self diagnosis had been accurate. The doctors involved were flabbergasted.¹²

      Medical miracles, which are not due to the insights or skill of physicians or surgeons, are sometimes spontaneous, serendipitous.

      A friend of mine, Dr James Thomas Jr., who has worked as a therapist for twenty years, has written of just such an experience. It occurred when he was serving in the US army.

      While a captain in the Vietnam War, Jim was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease--cancer of the lymph nodes. He felt he had been given a death sentence. In a veteran's hospital back in the States, the diagnosis was confirmed and a medical discharge [168] arranged. Before the discharge, Thomas, feeling a little better, boarded a plane for Korea, where the Pueblo crisis had left the army shorthanded. He felt he could help out. The change would also keep his mind off his situation.

      On Easter Sunday morning on the outskirts of Seoul he found himself falling into a trance. He felt a surge of power course through him. His body was alive with energy. It was as if the Spirit of God was coursing through every fibre of his being. He knew he was cured. At the same time he heard a voice, that sounded like his own, telling him to become a psychologist and to help people. Up until this point he had not considered such a career.

      Returning to the US he discovered that he was free of Hodgkin's disease. There has been no recurrence of the disease.¹³

Eastern cameos

      Eastern religions and cultures, with their meditative practices and transpersonal experiences, occasionally give rise to phenomena that are difficult for Westerners to accept at face value. We are inclined to dismiss them as pious invention. However, without overlooking the possibility that accounts have been worked up, we should give those narrating them the benefit of the doubt.

      Two experiences come immediately to mind. The first is an account given by Paramahansa Yogananda of an incident concerning his guru, Sri Yukteswar Giri.

      Paramahansa and his young friend, Dijen were attending A.B. classes at Serampore College. It was their custom, on returning from classes in the afternoons, to walk by the building occupied by Sri Yukteswar.

      One afternoon, anticipating the friendly wave of Sri Yukteswar, they were surprised to be greeted by a resident of the hermitage, who informed them that their master had had to go to Calcutta urgently.

      They received a postcard from Sri Yukteswar the next day, informing them that he would be returning by train from Calcutta on Wednesday. The two young men were advised to meet him at [169] Serampore station at 9 am.

      Around 8:30 that morning, Paramahansa picked up a telepathic message from Sri Yukteswar, in which the guru indicated that they should not bother meeting the train at 9am. He had been delayed.

      Paramahansa mentioned the experience to Dijen, who was unbelieving. Dijen left for the railway station, slamming the door. He indicated that he preferred to trust what had been written on the postcard.

      Paramahansa was left alone in a darkened room. Suddenly the figure of Sri Yukteswar materialised before him. The lad was bewildered. He rose from the chair in which he was sitting and knelt before his master. He proceeded with the customary respectful greeting, touching Sri Yukteswar's shoes, which were familiar to him. They were orange dyed canvas with rope soles. The ochre swami cloth of Sri Yukteswar's robe brushed against him.

      Paramahansa was so overawed by the experience that he stood mutely before his master, gazing questioningly at him.

      Sri Yukteswar indicated to his young disciple that he was pleased that he had picked up his telepathic message. He went on to explain that he had now concluded his business in Calcutta and would arrive in Serampore on the 10 o'clock train. He further explained that what the young man was witnessing was not an apparition, but his flesh and blood presence. He had been told to give Paramahansa this experience. He went on to comment that the two young students would recognise him at the station as he would be wearing the clothes in which he was presently attired and would be proceeded by a fellow passenger, a young boy carrying a silver jug.

      Sri Yukteswar began dematerialising, from the feet and legs upwards, as if he was being rolled up like a scroll. As the figure was disappearing, Paramahansa felt his guru's fingers resting lightly on his hair.

      The young man was lost in silent incredulity when Dijen burst into the room. Crestfallen, Dijen informed his friend that [170] their master had not been on the 9 o'clock train. Paramahansa consoled Dijen, assuring him that Sri Yukteswar would be on the 10 o'clock train.

      They arrived at the station as the train was coming to a halt. Dijen remained unconvinced and scoffed at his friend. However, within a brief time they caught sight of Sri Yukteswar, dressed in the clothes with which Paramahansa had seen him attired. Walking in front of him was a young lad carrying a silver jug.¹⁴

      The second incident involved Andrew Harvey, a poet and novelist.

      Born in India, Harvey, at the age of nine, left for England to be educated. He had a brilliant mind, gained a first class degree at Oxford and was elected a fellow of All Souls. In spite of his success, however, he carried a wound, the result of his mother having deposited him in a boarding school in India, a thousand miles from the family home in Delhi. He tried to assuage the pain by writing poetry, drinking and engaging in a series of sexual relationships.

      At the age of twenty-five he returned to India, prompted, in part, by recurrent thoughts of suicide. A chance meeting with a French Canadian, Jean-Marc Frechette, who was visiting an ashram in Pondicherry, developed into a friendship. The ashram was connected with Sri Aurobindo.

      Aurobindo, an Indian, had distinguished himself at Cambridge, gaining a senior scholarship in classics and winning many prizes. Returning to India, he was appointed professor of English at Baroda College. He was later involved in India's struggle for independence, during the course of which he was arrested. He eventually abandoned politics and devoted his life to enlightenment.

      Harvey began meditating. He also started working his way through Aurobindo's writings. He was particularly taken by the book The Mother, a vision of the Divine Mother, of God as mother. The vision was so radical that it transformed everything he had understood about God.¹⁵

      Jean-Marc mentioned to Harvey that he believed that the [171] return of the Divine Mother, the re-emergence of the feminine principle in God, would find embodiment in a human being. Harvey replied that he did not believe in reincarnation. He returned to England to resume his academic career.

      In November 1978, he was recalled to India by Jean-Marc, who indicated that he had met a young woman whom he described as a Master. On Christmas day, 1978 Harvey was taken to Pondicherry, where Meera was living.

      He spent the hour in prayer before seeing her, recalling Thuksey Rinpoche's comment that spiritual progress is dependent on being willing to acknowledge one's ignorance.

      Harvey waited in the drawing room with Mr. Reddy and Adilakshmi.

      Meera entered silently. She was wearing a white sari and did not smile. She sat in a chair opposite the young man. He found her calmness, beauty and majesty overwhelming.

      He addressed her and she responded with his name. As she spoke his name, his body shook with a profound sobbing. Grief over his life's loneliness, grief and sexual pain seeped from the pores of his soul. The weeping continued for some time before calmness returned, calmness evoked by Meera's presence.

      Harvey began to speak to the young woman, his words being translated by Reddy. He explained that he had come with questions, but confessed that all he felt like doing now was spending time in her presence.

      As he spoke, the room appeared to be filled with a golden presence. He gazed at the ring on her right hand and tears began again, only this time they were tears of relief and joy. A calm bliss filled his body.

      Harvey again addressed the young woman, indicating that he was aware that she had always been guiding him. She concurred. He concluded by suggesting that she had been preparing him for their meeting. He went on to indicate that he felt she had been revealing to him her divine Self--the Self her being radiated.

      Harvey next asked if there was anything he could do to help [172] further her work. She was quick to reply, "Realise yourself".

      Harvey was reduced to silence. There was nothing else to say. He gazed at Mother Meera in astonishment. She gazed calmly back. After a period of silence, she smiled and rose. He walked over a knelt at her feet.¹⁶

      Harvey was aware that others would interpret his experience, in this and on succeeding occasions, as the projection of a desperate need to fill the void created by the mother he had lost as a child. He rejected this interpretation as a total explanation,¹⁷ though he has since re-interpreted the incident.¹⁸ The experience certainly had profound consequences for his life.

Connectedness

      Openness to mystery also leads us to discover the psychic connectedness between humans, between humans and animals, between humans and the plant world, and between humans and what we so often describe, somewhat patronisingly, as inanimate matter.¹⁹

The New Physics

      The insights of the New Physics, concerned with a quantum world of indeterminateness, of wave functions that underlies the phenomenological universe, will help broaden our understanding and chasten our arrogance. The quantum dimension is non-spatial and non-local and does not allow for the possibility of an observer separate from that which is being observed.²⁰ Eastern and Western mystical traditions have spoken of just such a world, though the universe of their intuitions was concerned with the transcendent dimension. They have also argued, not only that everything is connected to everything else, as quantum mechanics contends, but also that God is in everything.²¹

Synchronicity

      If we are open to mystery we will need to account for what Jung described as synchronicity, a meaningful coincidence of events that cannot be attributed to direct causation. Jung argued [173] that this phenomenon probably resulted from activation of elements in the human psyche. His view was that, when powerful archetypal forces were stimulated in the unconscious, they would shape external events.

      Jung drew attention to examples of synchronicity in his own life. One incident featured Philemon, an archetype of the wise old man.

      Philemon, who made his appearance in a dream, had the wings of a kingfisher and their characteristic colouring. Jung decided to paint the image so that it would not escape him. He was involved in this process when he discovered a dead kingfisher in his garden by Lake Zürich. The coincidence was extraordinary because kingfishers were so rare in the area. Jung never again sighted a kingfisher in the Zürich area.²²

      Such experiences of synchronicity can give one a sense of destiny. This was certainly the case with Hitler, who, in a perverse sort of way, felt himself guided. Anthony Stevens, reflecting on Hitler's sense of destiny, enumerated a sequence of incidents that convinced the Führer that he was divinely guided.

      The first was a dream he had while serving as a corporal in the Bavarian infantry in 1917.

      He was with others in a trench in the area of the Somme. The dream was a nightmare, in which he was buried alive under earth and molten iron. On waking from the dream, he felt the need for fresh air. He crawled out of the dugout and began walking into open country. Hearing the enemy's guns, he dropped to the ground. Hurrying back to his comrades, he was greeted by an indescribable sight. The trench was unrecognisable. This experience, particularly his avoidance of the fate of his fellow soldiers, convinced him that he had a divine mission.

      The second incident was a vision that came to him on the 13th March 1938, the day following his occupation of Austria. Standing on a balcony, he had a vision of Odin, the old Germanic war god, pointing to the East. Hitler interpreted this as an indication that he should proceed with plans to invade Russia.

      Had Hitler had the inclination to study his dreams more [174] closely, rather than allowing them to confirm his megalomania, he may have been warned by the nightmare on the Somme of the way he would meet his death in the bunker in Berlin. In the second instance, he would have been well advised to be chary of Odin, who had a habit of leading his victims on to destruction by teasing them with initial success.

      Convinced of his divine mission, Hitler interpreted a series of subsequent escapes from certain death as further indication of his invulnerability. These included a bomb in a beer cellar in Munich which he avoided by leaving early, a bomb in a plane in which he was flying from the Eastern Front to Berlin, which failed to detonate, a bomb he avoided by leaving early a second time, another bomb, left by Count von Stauffenberg in a briefcase in Hitler's conference room, because the briefcase had been moved by one of his generals to a position behind a heavy wooden plinth, and poison gas directed through a ventilator which he had had protected immediately before the attempt was made to gas him.

      These instances illustrated what Jung spoke of as synchronicity, in which a powerful, almost archetypal force is constellated in an individual, and in which external events appear to alter themselves to conform to it.

      Stevens went on to argue that Hitler was able to place himself in a liminal state when addressing an audience, when he appeared to have an almost hypnotic power over those present.

      It is little wonder that the Nazi movement took on a pseudo-religious aura and that Hitler was saluted as a messiah.²³

      Connections that are impossible to explain on the basis of sheer coincidence, or of obvious archetypal energies, are evidence of a different type of synchronicity. Such incidents suggest that there is a grace at work in human affairs. James Thomas Jr. narrates such an event.

      Thomas was driving home from a speaking engagement in Colorado when he sighted a rock shop. Being interested in rocks, he stopped, in spite of the fact that he was anxious to get home.

      He was particularly fascinated by two selenite crystals, which he eventually purchased. He had a feeling that they [175] belonged to him. Back in Oklahoma, he set one up in his office and the other in his bedroom.

      Around a year later, on three successive nights, he woke at three in the morning to discover a little girl standing by his bed. The experience was more like a manifestation than a dream. He felt she was actually there with him. The little girl had blue eyes, white skin and black, curly hair. Thomas felt drawn to her, sensing in her a deep need.

      Several days later he received a call from a woman in a nearby community. She indicated that she had just been awarded custody of a granddaughter, whose name was Nikki. The young child had been living in seclusion with her parents in mountainous country in northern California. She had been kept out of school and had lived a secluded, deprived life.

      The child had fallen and cut her foot. She was taken to the emergency room of a hospital, where she came to the attention of the Department of Human Services. After being taken into custody, she was sent to her grandmother, who rang to make an appointment to have her evaluated. The grandmother wanted to know whether Nikki was retarded or whether she was merely suffering from mental and emotional deprivation.

      When Dr. Thomas walked into his waiting room to greet his three o'clock patient the following week, he discovered a little girl with enormous blue eyes, pale skin and black curly hair--the child who had visited him on three successive mornings at 3am!

      When Jim ushered the young girl into his room, she walked directly to the selenite crystal and put her hand on it. "This is how I came to you in the dream", she explained.

      Commenting later on this experience, Thomas confessed that the incident had further confirmed his belief that something greater than ourselves and our abilities, a loving, caring, higher power had brought together the therapist and the young child.

      It was discovered that Nikki was bright and intelligent. As a result of special tutoring, she caught up to others in the fourth grade.²⁴ [176]

A final word

      When we are open to the mysterious, we do not travel with the same degree of certainty as we do when we restrict ourselves to an acceptance of the provable. The demarcation between reality and fantasy, and between reality and fraud, is not clearly marked. It is important that our openness does not degenerate into credulity.

      The exploration of the mysterious demands considerable humility. It involves reaching beyond treasured concepts and resistance fuelled by scientific fundamentalism. It also requires courage. As Keen argues, an awareness of the mysterious causes us to conclude, somewhat reluctantly, that life is ultimately beyond our understanding or control.²⁵ Openness to mystery also stimulates the process of self-exploration. This process is scary, because, in the final analysis, as Campbell contended, we are the mystery we are seeking to know.²⁶

      If we are tempted to pull back from an exploration of the mysterious, we should keep in mind the comment of Einstein, that the deepest and most beautiful experiences anyone can have are associated with the sense of the mysterious.²⁷ [178]

[LS 163-178]