Episode 258: Mystic Peeza

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro, having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics. Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say, and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes. Immigrants!

[00:00:18] That's how they do you know, just drive around listening to raps and shooting all the jobs. The Greatest Boss has spoken! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain! Who are you? A very bad man. I'm a very good man. Good.

[00:00:47] They think deep thoughts, and with no more brains than you have. Pay no attention! Anybody can have a brain. You're a very bad man. I'm a very good man. Just a very bad wizard. Welcome to Very Bad Wizards, I'm Tamler Sommers from the University of Houston.

[00:01:15] Dave, for the first time that I can remember anyway, people paid as much attention to the women's final four as they did to the men's. Is patriarchy over? So, I didn't see the game, but my understanding is that all the attention was just because of the racial tension.

[00:01:39] Well, so the racial tension stems I think from the fact that Caitlin Clark from Iowa, so my brother texted me like, you gotta watch this. This was in the final four, the semifinal game.

[00:01:52] Like you gotta watch Caitlin Clark and I couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. He was just fucking with you? And my brother will do that sometimes where like I'm not sure what's a joke and what's

[00:02:02] not, and so for the first like half, couldn't tell if he was kidding and then finally I realized he was and then I went on to it and watched her and she was kind of amazing. He wasn't kidding?

[00:02:11] He wasn't kidding, he was like watch this, she's like remarkable, you know, she's like Steph Curry. So then they get to the finals and now all the, every bit of attention is on Caitlin

[00:02:21] Clark and then meanwhile LSU just like kills them in the game and then that Angel Reese at the end is taunting Caitlin Clark which I loved and it was just a lot of drama, you know, like it's great, you know?

[00:02:35] I think it's probably one of the best things to happen to women's sports just in general like that it got that many people talking and like I love that Caitlin Clark was like, shut up, like that was fine, right? And I love that Angel Reese didn't apologize.

[00:02:50] Like she never said like I was the heat of the moment. She was like fuck that, fuck that white girl, you know? Yeah, they're just competitors, right? Like extreme level competitors. So like that's, if that's all that happens, you know, Jesus, like that's just great.

[00:03:10] That's getting people who probably swore their whole lives they wouldn't care about women's basketball to actually care about it. But did you hear that Jill Biden? Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, good for them for turning that shit down. Like that just seemed weird.

[00:03:27] We'd also like to have the white team. Come to the white, even though they lost. We'll have the white team, you know? It's so racially charged. There's just no denying it. Like it's so obvious, you know, because Caitlin Clark was doing that shit.

[00:03:43] Apparently like she was doing exactly the same like stuff. You can't see me. You know, like that was the, no, she was. And so for all the anti-woke who think that race isn't a thing. Like, come on, tell me that that wasn't a thing.

[00:03:57] Tell me that Caitlin Clark isn't the face of white supremacy. Does Boston have a WNBA team? Because I'm sure she's headed there. I actually don't know. We may or we may not. All right, so we are today going to be talking about William James is chapter on mysticism

[00:04:19] from his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience in the second segment. A chapter that I loved and that was recommended to us originally by Fareed Anwari. Good guy. Good guy, yeah. But first we put out a call on Twitter. We wanted to do another conceptual analysis.

[00:04:42] By the way, that call on Twitter yielded so many responses that I feel like we have. We just have like a whole bunch of ideas for future episodes. Although they have to start with the letters. Yeah, so I don't know what the finalists were.

[00:04:57] I thought based would be good for our legion of conservative listeners. I thought basic might be good, but that didn't. I think somebody put out a poll and I don't think it did very well. What did win was something I didn't care to discuss. Did woke win?

[00:05:15] Yeah, woke won. Like overwhelmingly. A lot of people. And like, you know what that is. And it's whatever you want it to be. Yeah, I mean like I don't even that's at this point.

[00:05:25] It's like I don't think even like highly technical sharp analytic philosophers like us could really be able to carve out. I had the necessary, but I couldn't get to the sufficient. I know it makes you go broke, but that's all I know.

[00:05:44] So anyway, we settled on something that you wanted and initially I resisted creepy. And now I'm converted. I think it's a good idea. The reason the thing that convinced me was that the other two concepts that we've done corny and cringe also start with C.

[00:06:00] Yeah, and so we're working through the C's. I think we're just working our way towards cunt. That's why we've been watching David for so long. Right. Creepiness. All right. So so you told me that you were going to work out a theory of creepiness.

[00:06:20] This was all this afternoon when we decided. Yeah. Do you have you come to present your overarching theory? Exhaustive authoritative theory of what is creepy. Well, like Socrates, I think these things have to be worked out in dialogue and I can't just give you the theory.

[00:06:42] We have to engage in the link. Lankus, I don't know how to pronounce any of those words, but I have some questions. So I do have some thoughts, but I have some questions to chart out the territory at least.

[00:06:57] Do you think creepy is like primary or secondary quality? What's the distinction? Secondary quality is like colors where it also depends on the observer and the subject. Perception of the observer and primary quality is something that doesn't depend on the observer.

[00:07:19] So I'm going to say that it's a secondary quality. That. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like it has to be. Aside from maybe a jokey response, though, like. Second question is creepy a thick concept? Oh, I think it kind of is.

[00:07:37] And so say what it is, say what a thick concept is. Oh, God. Like in my head, I envision like a thick concept is one that branches that has like a lot of branches to other things.

[00:07:51] Like it's a deeper concept. It's one that like is less surface. Yeah. Oh, that's not my understanding. My understanding is a thick concept has their evaluative. But there are some facts about them like courage definitely depends on our evaluations of somebody.

[00:08:14] But there are also certain facts that you have to have. OK, I feel like we actually even discussed this in one of the papers.

[00:08:20] Yeah. In other words, when you call it something, you're also in part making evaluative statements and you're in part making a factual statement as well. Yeah. Then definitely thick. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now. The word creepy is used to describe many things.

[00:08:44] Do you think that there is even if it's just a fuzzy concept, do you think that there is a unifying there is a commonality to the ways when we like in modern parlance? OK, here's my shot at talking about the commonality.

[00:09:02] I think creepiness is the sense that something is either dangerous, like threatening or off putting in some way or just off. But without knowing exactly what the source of that is, right, like what the source of the threat or danger or just off offness is.

[00:09:25] You know, I think once you have a definite sense of the source of the thing, then it's not creepy anymore. It's something else like a tiger isn't creepy. We know why a tiger is.

[00:09:37] But like these cars that drive around my neighborhood at night that are creepy because like I know there's something fucked up about this or it feels like that. But I can't put my finger on it. What are the cars that you're referring to?

[00:09:51] You're not talking about like Google Maps cars. You're talking about like little remote control cars. Well, no, they're like cars, but they're and sometimes they even have people in them, but they're just driving around making these like noises.

[00:10:03] And like I just took my dog last night for a walk and they were all over the place. But the thing that's creepy about it also, just why are there these cars?

[00:10:12] They just go around the blocks, you know, like they just do figure eights around the around the block. The thing that's creepy about it is that nobody talks about it. Only my daughter and I talk about it. Only Eliza and I talk about it.

[00:10:26] Every time I bring it up to somebody else, like the subject gets changed right away somehow. And even like I thought so I was thinking this. I rarely talk about it. This is the first time I've brought it up.

[00:10:37] But like a lot of times I've wanted to talk about it. And I say it's just feels like I say something else like in Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell, which I'm reading right now.

[00:10:46] Whenever like the people under the spell would try to tell someone else, they would find themselves saying something completely different. You know, like a long description of some war from the 1700s or something. Maybe you and Liza are the only ones who actually see them.

[00:11:02] And this is just like people being like quick change the subject. Yeah, I was talking to Eliza yesterday and she kind of suggested that this is. And now it's like they made it too obvious to. So it's just like somebody is going to lose their job.

[00:11:17] Whoever is creating this. If you videotape them with your phone, videotape listen to me. If you record them with your phone and then you look back at the footage, are they there? That's a good question. Probably if I had to guess, probably not.

[00:11:31] Anyway, but like if I found out that they, you know, some just depressing like. Yes, Google Maps, like some sort of depressing capitalist explanation for like why they're doing this.

[00:11:43] I would. They wouldn't be creepy to me anymore, but they would still, I feel like, have this kind of property of creepiness just because of the fact that they're driving around seemingly aimlessly and they admit this noise of like. Yeah, yeah. The aimlessness is like distressing. Yeah.

[00:12:02] Did you when you were growing up, remember when we had to get our conspiracy theories just from like the older kid in the neighborhood? Yeah. Did you ever get like have somebody tell you about black helicopters, you know, like flying around? No.

[00:12:19] So I remember getting told that there were black helicopters. They were unmarked and they were like FEMA. But this is before Katrina. This is before we knew that FEMA was just like a joke.

[00:12:31] Like people used to say that these black helicopters were like secret government, like FEMA choppers that were either surveilling or like on some covert shit against the citizenry. And so if you ever like saw a black helicopter, then you just get this like creepy feeling.

[00:12:47] You know, you'd be like, oh, it's true. There are no markings on that. So there's something about just there is the ambiguity, the just unknowable what's going on. Yeah. Or unknown at least. It might be knowable, but you don't know.

[00:13:02] Right. Yeah. You're right. But if you know it, then it takes a lot of weight. Yeah. I agree. So I like in giving this some thought, I think that there is a component of. So there is the unknown and there's the vague threat because you're right.

[00:13:22] Like it's not a threat that you know exactly what it's about is something that you'd be afraid of, not creeped out by.

[00:13:28] I also think that there happens to be this is not neither necessary nor sufficient, but it seems like a theme in a lot of the things that we describe as creepy is something about being watched.

[00:13:44] There is like a sort of like agent detection thing going on where and I'll give you an example.

[00:13:49] So when we say the first few times you ever got like a personalized ad on your Gmail where it said something that was really relevant to what you had just written. That's creepy because you're like, wait, someone was somebody watching this? Like is somebody actually like paying attention?

[00:14:09] And so they're them kind of revealing their hand that something is being recorded. All of a sudden makes you think like, am I just scratching the surface of do they know everything that I'm saying or doing? Yeah. And there's there's a creepy analogy that I have to like.

[00:14:25] So whenever tech companies are said to be creepy, I think it often involves that they are surficiously recording stuff. Surveilling us. Yeah. But there is also this this the analog in just regular old human.

[00:14:39] Well, not regular, but human interactions is the thought to me that you might be like I'm sitting here in my office.

[00:14:46] It's kind of dusk. Right. If I'd been sitting here, I can see outside my window and all of a sudden I turned and there was just a face pressed up against my window that had been watching me like this whole time.

[00:14:57] That would creep me the hell out, because for that split moment, you're like, what who is watching me? Like, what is going on? Yeah. And so I have this feeling that there is something about you don't know why they're watching.

[00:15:11] You don't you don't even know that they're watching, but you get a whiff that maybe they're watching and maybe that watching has something to do with some ill intentions that they might have.

[00:15:19] That's the cars like that's exactly the cars is like it feels like they're watching the neighborhood and that they have some kind of plan. Like we're in phase one of the plan, you know, but it doesn't have to be that elaborate.

[00:15:33] It can like or the helicopters because you're right that somebody on the pressing the face against the window or even if like you learned that somehow like you thought the camera was off for your thing.

[00:15:48] But it isn't. And then you just learned that I was just like watching you in that room. That would be really good. And there there is that's that reminds me of this other thing that there is something about the asymmetry of it that's especially distressing.

[00:16:03] And so another example that I thought of is suppose that somebody were to come up to you like at a conference and they just started telling you things about yourself that were like pretty private.

[00:16:17] You'd be freaked out right if they just started telling you like pretty intimate details and maybe at some point you would realize, oh no all of this stuff is stuff that I've said on the podcast over the years.

[00:16:28] So that's where they got it. Then maybe you'd be like, okay, but then not knowing where all that came from would just freak you out. Yeah, probably you more than me when it comes to that. But still, yes. But I but I get what you're saying.

[00:16:42] So the other time that creepy comes up a lot is with old people. And I'm trying to think of like your idea can works into that.

[00:16:53] But there is something creepy about well just old people in general, but especially if old people seem to have something either sexual or possibly violent on their mind.

[00:17:07] But certainly but again if you know exactly like if there's a creepy guy and you just learn that they're kind of a serial sexual harasser that always hit on people, you know, like always hit on my 19 year olds.

[00:17:17] Well then you're like, okay, he's not creepy anymore. He's just kind of a scumbag. But like if you just get the like you said, the whiff, the whiff that there and maybe part of that the reason they give off the whiff is because they look at people.

[00:17:32] Yeah, exactly. In weird ways where it's like, why are you watching staring at me like that? Yeah, getting stared at. I was going to say like to me it seems less old people and more like a particular kind of guy thing.

[00:17:46] Like there is a kind of guy that seems creepy no matter the age. And they're like they're often like trying to present as nice. But there is something a little bit off with their presentation.

[00:17:59] And you can't you don't know what it is, but it gives you the like makes your skin crawl a little bit. Yeah. But if they're just like a loud mouth sexual harasser who just said like is then it's just a different thing. It's just.

[00:18:13] You've got to cut that. No, so yeah, but I think you're right that it's men, but I don't think it's I think it's men because men are more likely to be kind of sexual.

[00:18:32] But if you do have this older woman who's acting like that, it can also be creepy. And even if they're doing it with each other. And I know I'm headed in this direction, too. But there is like in the movie X. Did you see the movie X?

[00:18:46] Kind of a horror movie. Texas Chainsaw Massacre that Mia Goth is in it. You told me about it. You know, one of the scenes is just these two old people having sex.

[00:18:57] Just that. I mean, there's other stuff that makes it but just that is it gives off this kind of creepy vibe.

[00:19:06] So it has it's you know, like I'm surprised you haven't brought in the quality of disgust because it does seem like creepiness has some overlap with like the creepiness judgment and the disgust judgment. There's a little bit of the Venn diagram has some overlap.

[00:19:23] Yeah. Yeah. I think it's probably because when I think about prototypical disgusting things, it's there's too much kind of certainty involved. Like it's just like a like a putrid meat or something.

[00:19:34] I think this is independent from the thing that I was saying about about being watched to examples like remember those toys in Toy Story like the mean kid has like toys that are like fucked up like a doll's head on like a spider like body. Those are creepy.

[00:19:54] And I think it's there is something about the offness that these are normal things that have been changed in some way. And I think maybe that disgust for some things is like something looks like a normal human but something is off.

[00:20:10] Yeah, like that might be creepy, creepy inducing creepy, creepy feeling and do you sing or something? That's so that's such a good example because they seem like terrifying and weird and creepy.

[00:20:24] And if you watch it with your kid, you know, your kid's going to be scared of them.

[00:20:28] But then when you learn exactly why they're you know why they are the way they are because of the kid doing that to them and they lose it and they become kind of heroes. Right. You know, yeah.

[00:20:39] They're just like a bunch of misfit toys that are like on an adventure.

[00:20:43] Yeah, there is some overlap with the uncanny valley stuff to where when said the theory goes as as a representation of a human gets closer and closer in approximation to a real human all of a sudden right before you get a dip because you can tell that something's off.

[00:20:59] I guess this has to do with the uncertainty. You can tell that there's something off about this representation, but you can't really say what it is. And and so like particular kinds of animation or those like real life robots that are modeled after another human being.

[00:21:15] Yeah, like side by side. Like what their eyes are dead, you know? And that's something that movies can get right but often don't. How to strike that balance like you can use uncanny valley to your advantage if you're trying to give off that vibe.

[00:21:33] But because it's very close to accurate but not accurate, it's like sometimes they're just trying to to make it seem like it's the real thing. Right. And they end up producing the exact opposite effect which is you find it repellent in some way.

[00:21:49] It's like the well-known example of the creep, the uncanny valley is the polar express movie where they were really trying to like capture do motion capture and make their animation really human. But it just was just off by something where you're like weird.

[00:22:03] Now even that is like I would take over just the CGI stuff because the CGI isn't creepy and isn't real. It's just like... Chincy. Janky. Yeah, that was a good suggestion that somebody gave.

[00:22:20] Janky but I don't totally know what it means but I feel like I intuit what it means. It means like fucked up in some way. It's just like yeah it's off. It's like jerry-rigged like it's a little off. But not creepy.

[00:22:34] It's not off in the way that creepy is off. No. You know this is a complete aside but I was watching a video on why those effects in all those like Marvel movies seem off. And it really is that the lighting can never be quite right.

[00:22:51] Like some of those scenes with green screens that are supposed to be outdoors, the light source can never... It's just never right. It's like lit too evenly and it just there's something about it that our eyes know is wrong. But most of us can't tell that it is.

[00:23:11] The example that they were showing of when it's done right is Denis Villeneuve's... I was just gonna say. Yeah. Yeah. He actually uses... He knows how to do it.

[00:23:20] Yeah, he actually will try to get real light in there like from outdoors and combine that with the CG so that you get all these real effects. I was thinking Dune, Blade Runner 2049. I just watched that again. It's so good. It's so good. It's really underrated.

[00:23:35] I was about to say like people don't talk about it enough.

[00:23:38] And I think when I first watched it I think that there was just something about it that I was like well I'm just constantly thinking about the original Blade Runner and not able to appreciate it for its own thing.

[00:23:47] And now that I watched it again I was like this is better. Honestly like that's blasphemy and I'll get kicked off Letterboxd probably for even like suggesting. But I think it's a conversation because it's such...

[00:24:00] Unlike Dune which I liked but I didn't really care about like I feel like there's a good kind of self-contained story. But man seeing that in IMAX he has such a good way of conveying space. Like the helicopters coming in in arrival to first look at the ship.

[00:24:18] Like he gives a sense of like these big spaces and you know these distances and he shows that vastness of it. He's really nobody can do that like he can.

[00:24:29] Yeah in 2049 there you know in the abandoned city there are these huge statues like of people like just crouched over. It really reminded me of Piranesi by the way. I didn't read it. I got to go back and look at that. That's good. All right.

[00:24:44] Anything else to say about creepy? Don't be creepy. Just don't be creepy. Don't be creepy. It's very easy. Don't press your nose against my window at night. Well another C down. I don't know. I think we... That's CR. There's no you know CS, CT.

[00:25:04] The next thing is CU. Czechoslovakia. Sayon. We'll be right back to talk about mysticism. This episode of Very Bad Wizards is brought to you once again by Better Help Online Therapy. You know it's my firm belief that therapy is a method to achieve self-discovery.

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[00:32:11] Yes, thank you very much. All right, let's talk about William James and his chapter on mysticism from Varieties of Religious Experience. His collection of lectures that he published in 1901 and 1902, correct? Yeah. Man, I loved it.

[00:32:32] This is one of my favorites that we've just read in a long time. It's a very Tamler nut-busting kind of chapter. I also think it was the easiest read of any James thing that we've done.

[00:32:48] I feel like it clarified certain things for me in terms of my own experience. And I love the epistemological position that it kind of charts out at the end of the chapter. I like that, too. That describes my position better than I can describe it.

[00:33:05] I also just think, like we've talked about this before, but William James is like this living rebuke to us all. You know? I mean, I guess he's not living. But he's a dead rebuke to all of us. Wait, in what sense? To psychologists and philosophers, I mean.

[00:33:24] Like, how is it possible that he can pack so much insight into these essays and books and chapters that are just – it's just him reflecting and quoting people and organizing his thoughts and his attention and focus on a particular topic.

[00:33:48] And, you know, he does it without a specific methodology. This is one of the last people who does philosophy and maybe psychology the way it ought to be done. And he does it so well. It's impressive.

[00:34:05] And the temptation I always have out of defensiveness is to say, well, there was just less to know, right? Now we have like hyper-expertise where we can't be as broad.

[00:34:16] But I don't actually think that's true because when you look at how much he clearly has read, like in the principles, just across those two volumes, the amount of scholarship that he does.

[00:34:26] I mean, sure, obviously there was a lot less, but it's not as if he didn't delve deep into a whole bunch of different areas in a way that even if I were living back then, there's just no way.

[00:34:36] There also was not this culture of hyper-specialization that there is now. And so he could do this. You know, we talked about this with Nagel to some degree, like somehow he gets to just float above all the, you know, cite this person, cite that person.

[00:34:54] Can he just somehow gets to just write about the absurd and mention Camus and that's it? You know, it's probably to the chagrin of everybody who has written in that field, but still whatever, like too bad, you know? Yeah, I feel the same way.

[00:35:11] And yeah, I mean, James, this is the thing is James is not a, he's not really doing a floodlight kind of thing. Like he's citing a whole bunch of people. He's like somehow doing both at the same time, which is, I think, the very impressive thing.

[00:35:26] He does the thing I always tell my students not to do, which is to just quote like two and a half pages of straight text from somebody. That is true. It's a different time.

[00:35:39] But it's like good that he does it well, you know, especially maybe in this chapter. I really loved some of the long quotations from people that probably I would only ever come across in a William James piece. So shall we dive into what he actually says?

[00:35:59] So he gives, I think, a pretty good description of the properties of mystical experience. You know, he's not giving necessary and sufficient conditions, although the closest to necessary conditions are these first two properties. The first being ineffability.

[00:36:16] So he says, I'm just quoting here, the handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its content can be given in words.

[00:36:32] It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced. It cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity, mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.

[00:36:45] I think maybe we should say from the get go that James really is interested in the state of mind of the mystical experience. Lest it seem like what he's talking about is some sort of like actual treaties on religious doctrine or truth or anything like that.

[00:37:01] Like he's very much approaching this as a psychologist. So he cares about like what's going on when these people are actually experiencing this. Yeah, yeah. No, right.

[00:37:09] I think he does think that there is something we can take from the fact that people have these experiences and the commonalities in the experience. But yeah, he is just describing the experience of these people in a purely descriptive way.

[00:37:25] It is at the beginning not in any way trying to judge whether these are true, you know, like insights into a deeper reality or just, you know, mass hallucinations. So the first is ineffability. You have to experience it to know it, you know?

[00:37:45] Yeah. And, you know, as someone who has never really had a mystical experience, I get the kind of feeling maybe that is being described here as like when you wake up from a dream that you have in memory and you quickly start losing what the dream was about.

[00:38:01] You have some vague sense of what you were feeling in the dream or like what your experience was like, but it's too hard to actually say it.

[00:38:08] So I don't know exactly interpret it that way because I think that he makes a distinction at some point or he quotes someone who makes a distinction between dreams and mystical experience.

[00:38:23] Dreams feel less substantial, less like you even know what it felt like. Whereas mystical experiences like, no, I have a sense of what it felt like.

[00:38:36] I just can't share or give you a sense of what that experience was like. But I still have echoes at least of what that experience was like. You know what I mean?

[00:38:48] Yeah. In my example, I was conflating the fleeting memory of the dream from the feeling that you might not be able to describe without the content of the dream. But I think you're right.

[00:38:58] Like I think that a mystical experience is on more certain grounds. Like when you escape it, it's not like you don't remember having it. You just can't communicate it.

[00:39:08] And even if you're in the middle of it, presumably it would be something that would be very hard to articulate because concepts are not up to the tasks. Or languages. Yeah, right. Yeah. So then the second property is this noetic quality.

[00:39:28] Although similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depth of truth, unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations full of significance and importance, all articulate, all inarticulate as they remain.

[00:39:50] And as a rule, they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after time. I love that curious sense of authority for after time where it's like has some force on you. But because you can't communicate it, it makes it hard.

[00:40:06] I was going to ask you if you'd ever had a mystical experience before. I was going to ask you the same. I don't think anything that I've had can properly be called a mystical experience, but I've always wanted one.

[00:40:20] And yet you won't take like mushrooms or even like edibles. We'll get to that when James talks about the inducing it through drugs, through the anesthetic method or something. I don't want that kind. I want the divinity to touch me without me having it.

[00:40:44] I definitely feel like there are times through meditation and even sometimes outside of taking a walk where I have something that reflects some of what he's talking about here, especially that idea that this is the real thing.

[00:41:00] And the thing that I think is real is like actually just in the way it's obstructing this real perception, like piercing the veil for just a glimpse of it.

[00:41:13] And I have a way of trying to understand that through meditative practice, which is like all about preparing yourself to maybe experience this, but also just trying to make some sense of what you're experiencing.

[00:41:29] But prior to that or separate from that, I feel like there have been a couple times, two or three times in my life where it's crept up on me in a way that is completely divorced from any kind of practice or even any kind of drug.

[00:41:44] Because I was not, I hadn't taken any drug for these periods. So there was one time when I was like taking a hike in Yellowstone and it was by a lake.

[00:41:56] And all of a sudden I just got this flooded feeling of like a kind of transcendence and a kind of, yeah, that kind of obliteration of self and this insight into something.

[00:42:08] It's not different from what actually is, but it's like a more accurate perception of what it all is. And then there were, it's really just three times in my whole life.

[00:42:19] There was this time in a Romanian church, just this church off the road that my brother and I stopped in and went in. And like, I remember like I can picture myself in the church and all of a sudden being like, wow, what's this?

[00:42:32] You know, like there's the silence and yeah, I don't know. Was it like a cathedral? But it was very small. It was like probably like the size of, you know, like a three bedroom, two bathroom bungalow or something like that.

[00:42:48] Maybe a little bigger than that, but not much. And it was, yeah, that whole trip had a mystical quality actually to it.

[00:42:57] But yeah, like it's amazing that I can count on one hand, you know, again, separate and independent of like meditation stuff where it was just like something completely different from how I normally experience the world. Yeah.

[00:43:09] So I guess I've had feelings of awe and even bliss and euphoria out in nature and like are on a run, which is probably mixed in with whatever chemically is happening when I'm running.

[00:43:26] And I remember being at a funeral once and having, this is like I must have been in high school or early college, and feeling as if everybody, I can't describe it well. It was this feeling of love in the room for the person who had died.

[00:43:43] Like I swore I felt it. And I thought, I remember because this time I still believed in God. I remember thinking, oh, is this like a God? Like is this God?

[00:43:52] But it was a pretty strong feeling of there just being a room full of love that felt like a thing, right? Rather than just an intellectual acknowledgement that people loved her. Right. It was like he says, it was a state of feeling more than a state of intellect.

[00:44:11] You know, like you're sensing things in a different way than you normally do.

[00:44:16] Yeah. And so that I think there's a good segue into the third, which he says are, he says for the first two, he says these two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical in the sense in which I use the word.

[00:44:26] Two other qualities are less sharply marked but are usually found. These are number three, transiency.

[00:44:31] Mystical states cannot be sustained for long, except in rare instances half an hour or at most an hour or two seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Which seems right.

[00:44:43] And it also seems like if it did last long, then it would cease to be mystic. It would just be your normal experience. Yeah. It also seems like, so this is something I can say from like meditative experiences.

[00:44:58] It feels like you get like ejected from it. And then it also feels like your thoughts are trying to pull you back out of it.

[00:45:08] And thoughts, especially because they're trying to judge the experience or trying to interpret it, are like pulling you back down into your normal way of seeing the world.

[00:45:20] Yeah. Here, I think his example from later on in the chapter of the guy who was apparently in surgery because he was like on chloroform and just was having like one of these experiences where he felt like this union with God or something.

[00:45:35] And as he was coming out of the anesthetic, the chloroform, he starts, he doesn't want to leave. He thought he might have died. And he doesn't want to leave. And so as he realizes he's getting pulled back into like normal reality, he says,

[00:45:52] I suddenly leapt to my feet on the chair where I was sitting and shrieked out, it is too horrible. It is too horrible. It is too horrible.

[00:45:58] Meaning that I could not bear this disillusionment. Then I flung myself on the ground and at last awoke covered with blood calling to the two surgeons who were frightened. Why did you not kill me? Why would you not let me die? Poor surgeons.

[00:46:11] I know. You came in here. You asked us to do this. Yeah. So the last one. Yeah. Passivity. This is an interesting one because I admit I hadn't really thought about it.

[00:46:29] So passivity, although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations like doing shrooms as by fixing the attention or going through certain bodily performances or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe.

[00:46:42] Yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. Did you feel that?

[00:46:54] Well, like in those two instances that I described, I felt it. It just came upon me. It wasn't I was just taking a hike or I was just going into this church to check it out.

[00:47:04] And then all of a sudden it was like Scooby Doo or something like that. I don't know if that's the best analogy. It's ineffable. No, no. Yeah, exactly. But I will say that it's just inevitable that I'm going to talk about meditation stuff a little bit through this.

[00:47:26] But one of the sure ways to bring on these kinds of experiences is to stop trying because it's not something that you can do. It's not something that effort can bring you. And in fact, effort is in the way.

[00:47:40] And so when you now there is a little effort in making your body and your mind relax a little bit. But there does seem to be something about the you're not reaching for this.

[00:47:54] You it's not something that you can bring about to yourself directly, even if you are prepping yourself for it to be brought about. It's going to come when it's going to come in and you trying to hurry that up is just going to delay it.

[00:48:11] Right. It does remind me a little bit of Parnassi when they're trying to get to the other world. Yeah, like they have different ways of doing it. Like one guy can just do it by remembering what it was to be a child.

[00:48:22] But the other guy has to go through this elaborate ritual. Yeah, right. Yeah. And the idea is that the other guy is a little bit more advanced at this.

[00:48:31] Lawrence Arnsell's and knows how to just kind of let it more wash over him than start chanting a bunch of things. Yeah.

[00:48:42] You know what? One of the things that I like about this chapter is that that kind of it isn't tied that much to any religion or like it really is.

[00:48:50] This is what kind of what I meant that he's tackling it as a psychologist because he goes through a bunch of different examples and none of them are really tied to any religious tradition. And some of them aren't at all tied to any religious tradition.

[00:49:02] And so he says the structure of my examples are kind of going to move from like not religious at all, all the way to like deeply religious. Because the commonalities of a lot of those experiences are interesting.

[00:49:15] Interesting to science. The fact that you have all these people across thousands of years from very different traditions. That there's some common aspects to this kind of experience is of scientific interest.

[00:49:29] You can just look at it that way, but you don't have to only look at it that way. But you can. Yeah. I don't know. Should we dive into what? Because one of the big commonalities that at least is unifying this chapter is that these experiences.

[00:49:49] And I guess here's where I will even say it's surprising to me that the mystical experience is described by so many different people.

[00:49:58] Whether it's just like the romantic poets or like Sufi mystics or whatever, that they involve something like the breakdown of the self or like some insight that everything is one.

[00:50:13] Yeah. And I think the breakdown of self, obliteration of self is in common across all these different traditions and experiences. Whether they have to be one, that might depend more.

[00:50:29] But even in like kind of more dualistic Christian traditions and stuff like that, you do still get, you're right, this kind of it's all God's love. Like in the end, and we're all just reflections of that in some different ways.

[00:50:45] You know, there is a, if you'll permit me a bit of delving into the theology that I was raised in and just Christian theology in general, there is something that is very threatening to a lot of Christianity about these kinds of experiences.

[00:51:00] And I think that in the religion that I was raised in, we would have been taught to be very suspicious of experiences like this.

[00:51:09] For a couple of reasons. One is that if you can't, if the experience is so subjective and ineffable that you can't share it with other people, then it's just suspicious. Like you just don't know whether to believe it or not. Right?

[00:51:22] So there's this kind of just built in suspicion. Like if you can't evaluate the truth of whatever it is that you're saying. Suspicious in the way that it might be just you're crazy or that it's the devil.

[00:51:34] It's the devil at worst. At best, it is not truly getting you to God. Because if the only authority that tells me that you had an insight and the only authority is your particular experience,

[00:51:48] then like, you know, what am I to make of that? Like, how do I know that it's not actually leading me astray, leading me away from God? But two, there is, I don't know to what extent this is true maybe in the other monotheistic religions,

[00:52:01] but there is almost a deep heresy at the bottom of it all, which is that either this is all an illusion and I don't really exist as an individual self.

[00:52:14] But even more dangerous, what some mystics go like where it takes them is that when I say we're all one, when I say like some version of monism that everything is one, I mean that the divinity exists in me.

[00:52:30] And that is like real bad. So much so that a lot of mystics, I think, have had to hide that this is where their thoughts took them or risk getting like put to death.

[00:52:44] But isn't like, this is what I don't fully get about Christianity, don't you have built in some idea that we are Christ? You know, you eat the wafer. Is that just Catholicism? You eat the wafer to take part in this, like to remember the death of Christ.

[00:53:02] But any hint that you might have godness in you is so contrary to the shitty way that you're supposed to feel, like where God is the perfect one and you are separated from God and God is the authority and he's the one who's going to bring you to his grace.

[00:53:21] We are a little piece of shit. And to even think, I'm sorry, I'm sure there are a lot of Christian people who don't believe this. Sorry Christians.

[00:53:29] Yeah, but you know, the Catholic notion of original sin is one of, your separateness from God is a huge part of the theology. So to even hint that you might be one with God is, you're essentially claiming divinity in a way that only Jesus ought to be allowed.

[00:53:49] Yeah, yeah. It could be viewed in a way that undermines the authority, certainly of any clergy. Yes, exactly. And then maybe even God. Maybe God, right. But because, yeah, but because those two are hard to distinguish in real life.

[00:54:07] Yeah, in fact, I feel like we when we talked about Tolstoy and the last part of that Tolstoy memoir confession, it's we got that his dissatisfaction with more organized forms of Christianity was that it denied the divinity, the potential divinity of every person.

[00:54:28] Yeah, yeah, which is in some ways just the Protestant Reformation, the thought that you could get to God, just you, like through prayer and worship and reading scripture on your own was already a heresy.

[00:54:43] So the thought that you might be able to achieve insight or oneness with God independent of any of this stuff is even more dangerous, let alone that you might be saying that you're one with God.

[00:54:56] So some of the people that he talks about here, like Meister Eckhart, a German mystic. Yeah, they were arrested, like he was arrested and was going to be put to death for this kind of heresy.

[00:55:05] But he just died of old age before they were able to do that. Do you think Jeffrey Epstein is still alive? I don't. But, you know, somebody's got to be driving those black cars in your neighborhood. And they're white. That's even creepier.

[00:55:21] Should we talk about some of the quotes like this J.A. Simmons quote? Yeah. It's a big description that I thought it relates to what you were saying before about the obliteration of self. It's a really good description.

[00:55:34] So he says, one reason why I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render it intelligible.

[00:55:42] It consisted in it. I like that he says that and then goes on to give a pretty good description. There is a paradoxical nature. In a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space-time sensation and the multitudinous of factors of experience,

[00:55:57] which we seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our self. In proportion as these conditions of ordinary consciousness were subtracted, the sense of an underlying or essential consciousness acquired intensity. That I feel like is so meaningful, that part.

[00:56:18] You lose the ordinary conscious and in proportion that you do that, that sense of something like a ground, something beneath it all becomes more vivid. And it's in exact proportion to you dropping the other ways that you normally interpret the world.

[00:56:40] That's like a beautiful articulation of at least how I understand these things. Okay, say more because when it says that there is a sense of an underlying or essential consciousness, that to me sounds creepy. Like there was something there all along that you've become part of?

[00:57:01] What is that like? Well, so actually the part of it that I'm fixated on is in proportion as the conditions of ordinary consciousness are subtracted. So the simplest way of trying to describe it is to say that normally it seems like you're viewing things with your eyes

[00:57:21] and you're this little thing behind your head, behind the eyes. And as that starts to drop away and I don't think we have that as much with hearing actually. So now seeing becomes more like hearing where it's just kind of all around you.

[00:57:37] And it's like, okay, now there's something, there's this underlying, I don't know, people sometimes call it the ground of being but I think people also describe it as emptiness, context of experience. There's something that makes possible all this other stuff that we're not in touch with.

[00:58:01] We're in touch with the content of it and we often think that that's all there is. But as that stuff drops away, you start to sense this other thing that makes all that possible. That's the best I can do, I think.

[00:58:15] But as it says, it just immediately comes back. The self will drag you back into it. And it's like he says, it breaks the bubble. I have a genuine question. It's going to seem like some sort of objection maybe, but it's not really.

[00:58:29] Why does it seem like you've pierced the veil to the real reality? And why is it more real than the self? I feel like the fact that the self is always with us and pops back so easily might just be like, well, yeah, that's the actual thing.

[00:58:45] You were in another state of illusion. Sure. Yeah, yeah. It's just purely what James says. It's a feeling.

[00:58:56] When you go back into your normal thought patterns and habits and stuff like that and the way and perceptions, it doesn't feel as real or it doesn't feel as foundational as the other thing does.

[00:59:15] And so it is just a feeling that's, as James says, like I don't even know if I believe it, but like I certainly wouldn't expect anybody else to believe it who wasn't experiencing it in the way that I'm experiencing it.

[00:59:30] But I do think it is a kind of feeling. Yeah, but yeah, like it's not that you feel like you are understanding what is actually real, at least not for me even close. It's that you at least see that there's something there.

[00:59:45] It's like you get a glimpse out into something briefly and you don't know what it is and certainly not how you could describe it. But it feels like it's there. What if when you achieved those states what you actually saw was like a monster?

[01:00:03] People say that like you get further along and you get like really like terrified. It's an abyss. I don't know. You know, yeah, I'm ready for that monster. I'll fuck that monster up. I'll throw it a cookie. Don't they all like cookies?

[01:00:19] What you should really do is the you can't see me gesture to its face. I also like that it's like did you interpret it that William James did do nitrous oxide? Oh yeah, he did. I think we've even talked about it.

[01:00:33] He wrote an essay on the effects of nitrous oxide where he actually says he summarizes it here, but he basically had heard that people have like these insights when under the influence of nitrous. So he does it and he really just does.

[01:00:47] He's trying his best to explain it. And what he comes up with is like, no, there's something deeply right about the Hagel's like synthesis antithesis. Oh yeah, I have this. Actually, this is a much better answer to your question than what I just tried to stumble through.

[01:01:02] One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, the thing that gets you all hard, is but one special type of consciousness.

[01:01:21] While all of it parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. No account of the universe in its totality can be final, which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question.

[01:01:38] Again, I think he's still being descriptive here. It's that, okay, there's my normal consciousness, but then there's this other kind of consciousness. And you can't deny that there is something significant about that.

[01:01:52] And then he says, as you alluded to, I feel as if it must mean something, something like what the Hegelian philosophy means. If one could only lay hold of it more clearly, those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

[01:02:04] To me, the living sense of its reality only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind. The Hegelian. Yeah, and he's quoting Jesus there too with those who have ears, let them hear. I think it's hilarious.

[01:02:21] Which I couldn't tell whether he thinks that the chemical ways of achieving this state are as legitimate. It seems like he really, he did have what he thinks of his insight in his anesthetic revelation. Yeah, but why wouldn't they really?

[01:02:40] There's no reason to think that meditation or various Christian or Jewish mystic rituals or whatever are the legitimate path. And this just might be something. Let's just say that there is these other states of consciousness that are inaccessible to us normally. Why couldn't it be drugs?

[01:03:07] This is the whole psilocybin kind of theory, which is annoying normally just because of the people that I think are all excited about it. But actually it seems like it might be right.

[01:03:22] I have a vague recollection that we talked about something like this, but it does seem like there's the natty route. Like you gotta be a natural. There is some value placed on achieving this through the old-fashioned way. You can't just take steroids. You can't take Viagra.

[01:03:44] It's not the authentic you. You're an authentic spiritual boner. Exactly. If you run out of Viagra, you can't fuck anymore. But if you, through meditation, can maintain it. There is something. Maybe it was when Sam was on, we were talking about this.

[01:04:05] If you have to work years and years to get to this spot in your meditation, I can see why you might think that just popping some LSD and feeling the same thing isn't the same thing. Because there's something that you worked on about yourself that got you there.

[01:04:28] I just think that reflects a kind of Protestant, like you have to work for it to be valuable. Yeah, but I mean it more like an authentic experience. Where there's an external way and an internal way. But why is it more authentic if it's external rather than internal?

[01:04:46] I don't think that there's any real argument to be made there. It's like maybe somebody would say, Sure, you can get pleasure from cocaine, but is it the same as the pleasure you get from a human relationship? Like one of them might reflect something deeper.

[01:05:00] Yeah, and I actually think that's probably true. I've only done, tragically, since starting serious meditative practice, I've only done hallucinogenics when I haven't had enough of them. Last night being one example, actually.

[01:05:18] I told you that for the podcast, I was going to take this leftover bit of mushroom that I had. And it didn't unfortunately really do anything. But other times that I've done it, it was like it brought you to a place for free

[01:05:34] that you would normally have to spend a bit of time getting there. But I think you only understand it. I had done a good amount of mushrooms and LSD before any of this and never had those kinds of experiences.

[01:05:49] So I think the practice maybe alerts you to what it is that you're experiencing and how to understand it. And then the LSD just gets you there. You don't have to sit for 25 minutes to feel it. You just get it for free in that way.

[01:06:06] And that's fine, I think. Yeah, but there is something there about the... It's alerting you to what to look for or how to even... How to, I don't know, make sense of the experience. And I think, suppose that there is just the various true, true mystics

[01:06:28] that have lived throughout time who have visions regularly or whatever. I told you I was reading this book about William Blake and just since he was a kid, he was seeing shit. So maybe there's something wrong with all of their brains or different.

[01:06:45] But there is something about the traditions, whatever it is, whether you're a Sufi and it's from Islam or Christian tradition or Buddhist or like the Native Americans who do ayahuasca or peyote or whatever, where the use of the drug is made valuable

[01:07:10] because of the knowledge and wisdom that you gain from the tradition or in your case, the practice. Where like maybe brains are kind of broken, but there is a way in which they've been broken similarly in other people that have given this sort of...

[01:07:24] Now it could all be bullshit, but I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like it's more valuable to have had some structure to make sense of the experience and not just be... I suspect that some people who are devoid of any of the structure

[01:07:41] of religion or whatever meditation would just be put in like the loony bin. Or kind of just perplexed by it. Like I felt, you know, in Yellowstone, it's like, oh, this is new and weird. And then like, but it has no way of really trying to...

[01:08:00] But what's interesting about what you're saying, I think you're totally right. It gives you a framework. What did you say? You said it gives you a structure. Yeah. Like it gives you a structure that will help make these experiences more vivid. And I think that's totally right.

[01:08:16] At the same time, and I think this is true, not just for Buddhist practice, but for a lot of these things, concepts and structures are in some ways kind of the enemy. Like they're the things that are blocking obstacles to the experience.

[01:08:37] And so it seems contradictory that you need a structure, which I agree with, but also that conceptual thought and certainly any kind of interpretive framework that you could describe is not helpful. Maybe one of the advantages is just in being able to try

[01:08:55] to communicate what happened to you. Because if you can say like, oh, you know how like we believe in the Trinity and like there's this Holy Ghost thing or something. It's kind of like you're, you know, you're enveloped in the Holy Ghost, I don't know, whatever it is.

[01:09:07] Like maybe it's not so much that it is the source of insight or that it's changing the insight, but it's just giving people a way to, at a meta level, either think about what they've been experiencing or maybe just a better way to hide.

[01:09:27] Like if you're in some gnarly like Christian community and you're not allowed to be having these experiences of like disillusion of self, you can kind of couch it in the terms of your religion and maybe get away with communicating some of these truths

[01:09:43] without getting into too much trouble. But even as a personal thing, like I do think it helps you identify what it is that you're feeling and how to connect it with maybe other kinds of states. So yeah.

[01:09:59] We should read the LF or discuss the LF, the Borges story. I don't know what you remember of it, but there, it was very much like I could relate to it. So much so he finds this LF, which is a little small dot in somebody's house

[01:10:17] that allows you to see all of reality, literally all of reality without any confusion, but in this dot and out of spite, he tells the guy who's like really, he found it in his house and who's like really into like experiencing this

[01:10:31] and writing this long poem about it. Out of spite, he just, he tells them like, no, it's nothing. I didn't see anything. And like, has the house torn down? That is that there is something about the, the pull of reason that rejects, even after experiencing it, rejected it.

[01:10:52] And that's just how I feel. I think that I am that. The dogmatic rationalist at that point. It was just the drug buddy. You're rejecting the most real thing that's ever happened to you. Maybe, maybe. Actually, speaking of this.

[01:11:08] So one thing that he says, quoting R.M. Buck, I love these guys names. There's such fake names. Yeah, it's like porn names. To this is added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation and joyousness, a quickening of the moral sense,

[01:11:28] which is fully as striking and more important than is the enhanced intellectual power. And then he says, with these comes what may be called a sense of immortality. That should perk your interest. A consciousness of eternal life, not a conviction that he shall have this,

[01:11:44] but the consciousness that he has it already. I like that. And I do think, like, I don't feel, I don't know about exaltation or elevation or elation, but there is a kind of lightness and joyousness that you get in, especially maybe lightness

[01:12:01] that comes with this in contrast to the feelings of being like smacked down with this, overwhelmed by it. I think this gets at another aspect of at least how I understand some of these experiences that it's a very light and yeah, you feel airy, free, liberating.

[01:12:22] Yeah, that'd be nice to feel. I do feel in some of these descriptions, I feel like anxiety and dread are the opposite of the emotions that are being reported. Anything else you want to talk about about the states themselves before we maybe conclude

[01:12:37] with a discussion of the epistemology? I don't think so. Actually, there's this one thing before we get to that, this thing about the negation, you know how he says, so he says there's these two properties. One is monism and the other is a kind of optimism.

[01:12:59] And it's a feeling that you're embracing things, you're saying yes to things. But then he quotes, I think, Upanishads. He the self, the Atman is to be described by no, no only say the Upanishads, although it seems on the surface to be a no function

[01:13:19] is a denial made on behalf of a deeper yes. I love that, it's very well described. And I think it's like, it gets at something too. The negation is a big part of what it is that you're trying to do,

[01:13:35] but it is on behalf of a deeper yes. Yeah, it's super cool. I do remember, I don't know where I studied it, but about this view of what's called negative theology, that God is so great that you can only say things that he's not.

[01:13:54] And so you should never say anything other than what he's not. And it's like a deep tradition of that. But at some point, it might not make sense because you still seem to be saying something, but that's just the way, that's the paradoxical nature of it.

[01:14:10] It's the yin yang, like the negation has to make the thing positive. And that's also in common to a lot of religions. You need to know suffering in order to know joy. Right, that's what James says. That seems like a novel connection to me,

[01:14:28] that there is something about this feeling of negating, saying the truth by negating, that he equated to the negation of your will, like the ascetic lifestyle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he quotes Hegel in German. Like Hegel and his logic,

[01:14:47] mystics journey towards the positive pole of truth only by the... Der absoluten Negativität. I got to say it angrily. Juden. Negativität Juden. Gott ist ein lauter Nichts. And this, like, you know, we've talked about this before when talking about meditation,

[01:15:11] but there is something about just the pounding on your rational faculties that paradoxes provide, which seems to be important. Yes, exactly. And that's like Zen koans sometimes. Which is cool because James obviously would have no idea about Zen at this point, right? I don't think...

[01:15:30] He certainly seems to know about Buddhist philosophy, but yeah, maybe Zen hasn't made its way specifically. And he doesn't talk about the sort of role of those things. But yeah, like Zen is all about that. Emptiness is form. Form is emptiness is a big Zen idea

[01:15:48] and very much in line with this kind of thing. And then the Plotinus, he says, in the vision of God, says Plotinus, he's the Neoplatonist, one of the big Neoplatonists, what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our reason. That must have given you...

[01:16:08] Did you just like immediately just slam your computer? Down and like pour a bunch of gasoline on it and light it on fire? Yeah, well, I just skipped over it. Prior and superior to reason. That's not possible. Is it like a better kind of reason?

[01:16:28] It's like a really good reason? It's like calculus? But this is, I think, what I've been saying. It's this idea that reason necessarily employs concepts. And this is something prior to concepts, that you have a brief window to... Or you're crazy. One of the two.

[01:17:00] How should I put it? The universe wasn't designed with concepts in mind. So I'm okay with the thought that what concepts are doing for us is allowing our minds to wrap around reality in a way that's kind of useful. But there is nothing in the universe

[01:17:21] that's like fundamental reality will organize itself around the concepts that your brain evolved on and then your language evolved into. Like, no. So I get that if you were to come in contact with whatever underlying reality is that concepts wouldn't work. Like, why would they?

[01:17:40] I would fall back on the negation parts where you're like, it's not this, it's not this, it's not this. Yeah, and then the only further step on your path towards mysticism, which I do think there's a little Christian mystic just waiting to break out in your breast.

[01:18:00] It's that the concepts are useful, but then they also might close us off at times to a more holistic understanding that would actually also perhaps be more accurate. Yeah, and that last part is what I'm also going to say, which is like, I have zero reason to believe

[01:18:20] that any of this stuff would be accurate. Like, why would our brains be able to even get there? You know? Yeah, that's a fair question for someone in the thrall of conceptual thought. So let's talk about, let's conclude, because we got to wrap up,

[01:18:36] but with his epistemological takeaway, which is actually fairly short. Yeah, I really liked it. I mean, okay, it's a little wishy-washy because he says the opposite thing. Negation, what is it? Method der Absoluten. Nein, nein, nein! He says, my next task is to inquire

[01:19:01] whether we can invoke it as authoritative. I'm talking about mystical experience. Does it furnish any warrant for the truth of the twice-bornness and supernaturality and pantheism which it favors? I must give my answer to this question as concisely as I can. In brief, my answer is this,

[01:19:15] and I will divide it into three parts. Talk about who can't let go. This is a three-part answer. Okay, one, mystical states, when well-developed, usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come. Do you agree with that?

[01:19:34] It depends what he means, but I think that there's a way in which it just has to be true. If you had a feeling, like who's to argue against that? Because it's more real than any other way. It feels to you more real than anything else,

[01:19:53] like from your science textbooks or from just your normal way of experiencing the world. Two, no authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically. I would even just say, remove the uncritically.

[01:20:12] Like there's nothing in somebody else's experience that should have authority over mine. In isolation, no, but maybe in conjunction with a lot of other ones. And similarly, you could be a little more skeptical about number one if you thought, like if you had a way

[01:20:28] to even kind of explain away your own experience, then maybe even if it felt more real, you would feel like you had some reason to doubt it. Here I think maybe, like if you're just talking about one person's experience, there's no reason if you say you have it

[01:20:45] for me to think that, oh, there's something there that's worth looking into. But if a lot of people are doing it and it's part of this big tradition or there's overlapping traditions. Which he'll get to, we read his conclusions probably emphasizing the different things that he said,

[01:21:02] which is why I think it's a little wishy-washy because he gets to that. But I even think, the number, the first one, even if say you like got knocked in the head and had an experience that felt so real to you

[01:21:16] that it was just because you got like a, you know, a railroad tamping iron through your frontal lobe or whatever. I still think there is nothing wrong with you saying, oh, it could have happened because of like brain damage, but I still felt

[01:21:30] like the most real thing I've ever felt. Like I'd be, yeah. And so I, like that brain damage for whatever reason gave me insight into Yeah, like unlocked. Yeah. Okay. Then finally, number three, they break down the authority of the non-mystical or rationalistic consciousness

[01:21:46] based upon the understanding and the senses alone. They show it to be only one kind of consciousness. They open out the possibility of other orders of truth in which so far as anything in us is aware, they freely continue to have faith. Do you resist that?

[01:22:02] That they break down the authority? Well, this is where I want to read what he writes about number two because I find this pretty convincing. So he says, but now I proceed to add that mystics have no right to claim that we ought to

[01:22:17] accept the deliverance of their peculiar experiences if we are ourselves outsiders and feel no private call thereto. And then he says, but the only way in this life is to admit that they establish a presumption. They form a consensus and have an unequivocal outcome.

[01:22:30] And it would be odd, mystics might say, if such a unanimous type of experience should prove to be altogether wrong, which is just Tamra. This is just your argument. Yes, this is my argument for ghosts. At bottom, however, this would only be an appeal to numbers

[01:22:46] like the appeal of rationalism the other way and the appeal to numbers has no logical force. If we acknowledge it, it is for suggestive not for logical reasons. And so he goes on to say, but look, I've even oversold that these are all similar experiences

[01:23:00] because I've been trying to abstract into this similar thing. And then he goes to show how like what he calls mystical experiences come in so many different forms that it might not make sense to say that there are real commonalities. As he says, it's been both ascetic

[01:23:16] and antinomially self-indulgent within the Christian church. It's dualistic in Sankhya and monistic in Vedanta philosophy. So these are metaphysical minds for whom the category of personality is absolute. Yeah, so I take it that this is a argument against, well, you could interpret it both ways.

[01:23:36] An argument against more doctrinaire takeaways from the existence of these experiences. But he does say, I repeat once more, the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be these sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe. And that idea of them establishing,

[01:24:00] they establish a presumption. Yeah. It's a hypothesis that maybe there's more to heaven and earth than your philosophy will allow. And I think like that's where he lands, which is where I feel like I am too, is there might be this other dimension of reality

[01:24:19] and our current methods might not be able to discern it. You know what I mean? And maybe like it's more through these kinds of experiences that we can get a glimpse at it, but not through running a bunch of experiments or whatever. You know what I mean?

[01:24:39] Yeah, but I think he's also struggling with himself here because he is saying, like I have the same problem of skepticism with all of these separate experiences as well. Where, because he goes into the fact that he says,

[01:24:53] open any one of these and you will find abundant cases in which mystical ideas are cited as characteristic symptoms of enfeebled or deluded state of minds. The same sense of ineffable importance in the smallest events, the same texts and words coming with new meanings,

[01:25:05] the same voices and visions and meetings and missions, the same controlling by extraneous powers. Only this time the emotion is pessimistic instead of consolations we have desolations. The meanings are dreadful and the powers are enemies to life. It is evident that there is a lack

[01:25:17] of understanding of the existence of the world. And yet from the point of view of their psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit the existence,

[01:25:31] but of which so little is really known. So I think I just turned the skepticism on this as well. And I'm just like, well, I don't know. That's why I think that the main point is that if you've experienced it, it has authority over you.

[01:25:43] But in reading the record of other people's mystical experiences, I'm kind of left at the same. Like, well, what's, like, I don't see any overwhelming body of evidence that would lead me to trust these as a general category of insight. Sure. And James would be,

[01:26:01] would believe that you have a reasonable position, I think, as someone who has not experienced these states and who is being maybe sufficiently open-minded, maybe not, about the existence of them, but wants a little more than just J.K., not J.K. Simmons,

[01:26:19] J.A. Simmons or R.M. Buck, like, describing the trances they would have. I'll have you know that actually in grad school I read James's thing on nitrous oxide and I did nitrous oxide plenty of times and I never had a Hegelian thought. Oh, man. I was disappointed.

[01:26:38] But I think, you know, where James is and where I am, maybe as someone who feels like I've experienced more of, you know, in common with some of these reports than you feel like you have, it puts you in the epistemic position of,

[01:26:56] OK, there might be something here. I'm not saying there is, but there might be. And if there is, it's not going to be something that we get in the, like, Hedron Collider or something that tells us about it. It's not that kind of thing.

[01:27:14] It is a different kind of conscious. How do you know, Tim? Maybe. Maybe you'll see the God particles floating around. I think, like, this is where he says they offer us hypotheses, hypotheses which we may voluntarily ignore, which you voluntarily ignore. But which as thinkers,

[01:27:35] we cannot possibly upset. The supernaturalism and optimism to which they would persuade us may interpret it in one way or another be after all the truest insights into the meaning of this life. Maybe, you know? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. Part of me wants to just accept

[01:27:56] that this is a category of experience that might give some meaning and insight into life and existence. But I don't think it overturns the value of rationality at all. Like, I think it's just a... And this is... Like, it just... I don't think it's supposed to overturn

[01:28:13] the value of rationality. It's just supposed to point out maybe certain limits to rationality. Yeah. Which have been pointed out by, you know, by reasoners. Like... OK, you win. Reason wins. I mean, I just... I am... I think just going to be always deeply suspicious about insight

[01:28:37] that comes from somebody's idiosyncratic experience. My experience of letting reason guide my life is just as valuable. How's that? My lived experience is that reason... Reason is... It's so funny that, like, it really is temperamental at this point between the two of us. Because it often happens.

[01:29:03] I don't like... As you say, like, I'm fascinated by this stuff. And like, I'm not... I'm really not opposed to it. I just... This is an internal... You have conflicting forces doing like a kind of mythical battle within you. Yeah. And I sometimes just want you

[01:29:23] to admit that yours is a battle too, since you obviously worship the one who's the king. Yeah, I do. And I'm not opposed to it. I just have... I have this kind of conversation. We wouldn't be able to. We would just be stuck meditating

[01:29:41] and being like, did you see that? No, I think I saw it. I think I... Did you pierce? I think I pierced the veil. What color was your veil? One thing, like, just the very last thing that we haven't mentioned is that you're a tiebreaker.

[01:29:59] And at a certain point, he's kind of like, if you're at the point that maybe you're at or maybe even that I'm at where you're like, I don't know, but this is suggestive. This is something we can't fully deny, like has to be explained somehow. Right?

[01:30:17] At that point, maybe the tiebreaker is just what work is it doing for you? Yeah. He says like the fruits. What are the fruits of this? Yeah. And fair. It's always easy to know what the fruits of it are. For some people, it is.

[01:30:33] They are just like, I couldn't go on. Like if I didn't have faith or something, like I couldn't go on living and relating to other people in the way that I do. But, you know, atheist diagnostics like you and me, it's not totally clear what it's doing

[01:30:51] or what it would do to believe in this kind of illusion of reality, you know, this fairy world or whatever. But James might say like, has it made you happier? Has it made you less negative or less douchey or less angry? All of which it probably has.

[01:31:12] You know, it's so funny that Jen is more, my wife is more like you. She's pretty committed atheist and doesn't feel the need to entertain or talk about her or talk about her or say anything that's not true. And so I'm more like you. I'm more like you.

[01:31:36] And so, so I think it's a good thing that we have to be open and open to the fact that we're all different. I'm going to find you a good home. Here you go." And I said to her just a couple of nights ago, like,

[01:31:57] because she brought it up again, I said, you know, sometimes you talk about that, like you actually believe it. She's like, I kind of like I do, I think like I actually do. But you don't believe anything else about the world that's consistent with that.

[01:32:12] And she's like, yeah, I know. But I kind of believe it, you know, and maybe that's that kind of practice. The fruits of that are like that are there are other dog just gave us a new one. Is like it's funny the way that you don't

[01:32:28] it can be more localized in terms of how mystical you want to be. I look forward to Jen founding her religion where there's just one story. It's just dogs getting other dogs, dead dogs, getting live dogs. I think that's a great story to end on.

[01:32:51] Join us next time on Very Bad Wizard.