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Credibility and Comparison of Transcendent Revelations
What can an open-minded skeptic find plausible in the religious and metaphysical landscapes of heavens and hells, UFO abductions, NDE visions, chi energy and the infinities of numinous anatomies?
This page will focus on the most intriguing aspect of noetics- touching on the spectrum of psychic episodes involving OOBs and NDEs but focusing on the more transcendent forms of consciousness identified in metaphysical tradition as samadhi, satori, moksha, or nirvana. Transcendent insight has given birth not only to recognized religions as in the revelations pronounced by Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Mohammad and the Vedanta but is an ongoing "free-for-all" adaptive process whereby "experiencers" extrapolate and integrate their "revelations" with selected aspects of metaphysics and/or science to invent new spiritual paradigms.
It would help to identify what criteria there are to establish credibility regarding the "reality" of such episodes.
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The most famous Revelations in the West were written by John the Baptist, 60 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. They provide the last book of the New Testament in the Bible but their apocalyptic scenario is so utterly unique that it is impossible to subject it to any epistemological process to judge its credibility any more than any of the other unassailable doctrines in the other major prophetic religions- Judaism and Islam. |
Fanciful myths from many cultures have persisted over millennium so the fact that a noetic feature has an enduring legacy is not a valid factor in determining believability. However in the East, the nondual traditions of Daoism in China and in India where Vedanta and Buddhism has created what E. R. Wilson calls "a museum of the human mind" whose evolutionary core is derived from innumerable transcendent insights which were reinterpreted by a succession of "knowers" has created what is our best example of a "intuitive scientific paradigm" of human consciousness and for a collective profile of the samadhic aspect of the numinous realm that has been evolving for thousands of years.
New science is evolving an enlightened approach to a strictly materialist reality paradigm and suggests that the theoretics explaining quantum particle physics and cosmology are applicable not only to the mysteries of consciousness but to the realm of noetics. In addition- there are some scientific studies of numinous properties such as ESP and veridical information contained in NDEs and other paranormal events that strongly suggest a reality to some aspects of such accounts.
For a topic with such rarified numinous qualities as nirvikalpa samadhi, beyond monitoring alpha waves during a transcendent episode during meditation, etc. the empirical data is virtually useless for comparative analysis and forget any chance of applying the scientific principle of "falsifiability". In our post-modern era there is an ongoing effort to conduct 'controlled studies' of pure consciousness experience using empirical methods but have so far not advanced our understanding beyond its enigmatic state when it was first recognized over three millennium ago. This leaves the archive of samadhi accounts in Vedic and Buddhist literature as our best chance to subject accounts of transcendent insight to some criteria for credibility. After thousands of years the experience of true samadhi has been defined by the transformation of consciousness into a state of non-duality in a medium of light, bliss and love. There is a substantial number of contemporary religious and secular experiencers whose accounts are expressed in characteristicly numinous terms absent any artifacts or entities.
In contrast is the poor evidence for the specific scenarios proscribed in bardo in Vedic and Buddhist doctrines such as the Bardo Thodol. The bardo state of conscious duality bears a strong resemblence to the utterly novel accounts of transcendent NDE episodes claimed by Eckankar's Paul Twitchell, Edgar Cayce, Ron Howard's Scientology, Theosophy's Madame Blavatsky. Many of these "seers" such as Mellen-Thomas Benedict and a host of contemporary experiencers authoring books promoting their revelations find acceptance not only by New Age devotees but by many "experts" in the fields of transpersonal psychology, and noetic science. Perhaps the most blatant example of recent claims of transcendent revelation is in the "documentary" film What the Bleep- widely endorsed by the noetic science community- "in which they [state] as a fact, that one of the people you have been listening to for the previous 90 minutes, a main authority for the information being presented, is a 35,000 year old warrior spirit from Atlantis, being channeled by this Tacoma housewife turned cult leader. The woman pictured is JZ Knight, but you are not listening to JZ Knight. You are literally listening to Ramtha. There were people who saw this film and didn’t say, "That’s just a woman putting on a funny accent" - quoted source
The revelation of Mellen-Thomas Benedict has been endorsed by a number of high-profile personalities including Lee Pulos, Ph.D., Dr. Kenneth Ring, P.M.H. Atwater and others in the field of noetic science and enthusiastically embraced by the entire New Age community. Although it appears to involve a genuinely dramatic near-death episode and spontaneous remission of what had been diagnosed as a case of terminal cancer and appears to be presented with authentic sincerity, I know of no attempts to documents any of the physical details or testimony of other persons involved in the account or question the extravagant inconsistencies of all the unique qualities and features Benedict reports compared to any nirvikalpa samadhi transcendence described in the metaphyscial literature over the past thousand years. In fact all the realms and entities Benedict encounters are described from the vantage of a dual state of consciousness which is ipso facto evidence that he had not entered a state of true nirvikalpa samadhi where non-duality is a classical attribute and consistently described as ineffable.
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I realize that I was aware of details of specific features in my own journey that go beyond those described in historical accounts of real samadhi but my episode certainly follows a classical outline with virtually all the features in the transcendent tradition easily recognized. It is evident that my consciousness manifested two distinct states during the journey. While traveling to and from the light I was distinctly in a state of Dvaita Atman duality- able to recognize numinous features, directly experience an infinite body of knowledge and correspond with an omniscient God consciousness. But once merged with light, bliss and love- that Advaita Atman state could only be described as the supreme reality of non-duality.
In his book Autobiography of a Yogi, Paramahansa Yogananda, a reputed modern-day spiritual saint of India and teacher of Kriya Yoga, offers a version of a nirvikalpa samadhi that upon first reading appears to depart from the classical anatomy of real samadhi although not close to the extreme as the one described by Mellen-Thomas Benedict. Wikipedia characterizes this atypical account as
"this stirring description of Samadhi consciousness" and includes the passage: "A swelling glory within me began to envelop towns, continents, the earth, solar and stellar systems, tenuous nebulae, and floating universes. The entire cosmos, gently luminous, like a city seen afar at night, glimmered within the infinitude of my being. The sharply etched global outlines faded somewhat at the farthest edges; there I could see a mellow radiance, ever undiminished. It was indescribably subtle; the planetary pictures were formed of a grosser light."
With all due respect to Paramahansa Yogananda it would not be the first time a venerable sage may have used dramatic, tangible metaphors in describing a surreal spiritual vision. Actually what at first may suggest a literal landscape of artifacts of towns and solar systems may be nothing more than metaphors for a shifting quality and configuration of experienced light as consciousness is transformed from duality to the non duality of nirvana Samaria. This illustrates the tendency for the media (Pediatric) to stereotype noetic topics with features that appeal to the popular imagination rather than deal with the ephemeral, Zen-like realities of more representative accounts. As in my experience- that part of an extended journey to and from the light of a genuine nirvikalpa samadhi which begins in a state of astral duality by which we may experience the perennial scenario of transport in a tunnel with light at the end. It is here where the ghosts of loved ones or entities may be encountered or all the supra realms created by our psychic projections may manifest. It is in this state of dual consciousness that all the diverse features, effects, entities, heavens and hells described in the compendium of accounts of NDEs including Benedict's dramatic landscape may appear. In contrast to the NDE- once entered into the light, bliss and love of non-duality- there is no equivocation in declaring that this alone is the defining, supreme and ineffable: "That Thou Art" of nirvikalpa samadhi. |
Apparently it is sufficient for the noetic science community- that the purported transcendent insight display a sufficient degree of intelligence and wisdom or be exceptionally inspirational to be deemed credible regardless of how bizarre, convoluted and unverifiable the architecture of the spiritual journey. There appears to be no plausible reason for most of these "revelations" to receive anything close to the credibility that is granted to the stream of highly inventive, quantum particle and cosmological theories-of-everything that appear at regular intervals in the scientific journals- hypotheses that at least emerge from a logical continuum and are subject to peer review. It would seem that "spiritual" revelations that radically depart from the classical metaphysical continuum would be subjected to some degree of skepticism but so far the noetic science consortia seems unwilling to even consider raising the issue of credibility regarding the spectrum of scenarios, from heavens to hells, purportedly manifested in the spiritual landscape of NDEs.
Update 10 12 08: Another first-person, transcendental account that contains qualities of both M.T. Benedict's and Yogananda's- Emailed to me by Shambo.
At New Age Credibility I examine the pros and cons of the open-ended, open-minded credulity that characterizes mainstream New Age mentality.
Samadhi Anecdotal Accounts presents speculations of why contemporary anecdotes of samadhi contain such a wide variety of scenarios leading up to the alleged non dual transformations.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead or "Bardo Thodol", is a Buddhist guide for the dead during the state that intervenes death and the next rebirth- believed to be the work of the legendary Padma Sambhava in the 8th century A.D. It starts out correctly teaching that once awareness is freed from the body, it creates its own reality as one would experience in a dream- but then prescribes specifically how this dream occurs in various phases (bardos) in ways both wonderful and terrifying. Although it vaguely follows an outline in the Vedic scenario for the passage of the soul from death to reincarnation it is filled with proprietary demands for working out karma with judgments and interactions with entities that it confronts- details that can reasonably be attributed to the derivative imagination of a long line of sages interpreting revelations from archaic NDE accounts. The book's event-filled scenario resembles that of the busy landscape purported in the growing archive of contemporary accounts of NDEs where dreamlike events unfold within a vague format commonly manifesting synchronous features such as a tunnel of light and encounters with entities- all experienced in a state of duality. Perhaps the most rational appraisal of our conscious duality in NDEs is that virtually unlimited dreamlike scenarios may transpire in accordance with our expectations, dispositions (or karma).
I suspect that the constructivist arguments promulgated by Steven T. Katz that ALL mystical experiences are expressions of religious preconceptions are largely drawn on accounts of experiences of conscious duality that I would classify as a psychic rather than a transcendent state in the Immanent Tier of a 200 Percent Model of Reality.
For a refutation of Katz's constructivism see:
The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy Edited by Robert K. C. Forman Reviewed by Puligandla Ramakrishna The driving force behind this book is the desire on the part of the contributors to examine carefully and refute Steven Katz' Constructivism, which has gained considerable support among Western philosophers. For this reason, it is essential that the reader clearly bear in mind Katz' own characterization of Constructivism: Simply put, Katz' Constructivism is the claim that there can be no experience, whether ordinary or mystical, untouched by the culture and belief -- formative and shaping concepts, percepts, and expectations -- of the subject. Hence there cannot, in principle, be any non-intentional (mystical) experience transcending language, culture, belief, and expectations. It is to be emphasized that the claims of mystics contradict Constructivism. The Constructivist does not deny mystical experience and is eager to affirm the Pluralism Thesis, which, according to the Constructivist, does full justice to the variety and diversity of mystical traditions: Thus, for example, the nature of the Christian mystic's pre-mystical consciousness informs the mystical consciousness such that he experiences the mystic reality in those terms.
Feminism, Constructivism and Numinous Experience, 1994 by Melissa Raphael- adding a feminist perspective to the contrasting views between Rudolph Otto's perennialism and Steven Katz's constructivism as to the cause and nature of numinous experience.
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism - Bald Ambtion, Chapter 7 by Jeff Meyerhoff In Integral World - In his Critique of Ken Wilber's Theory of Everything, Meyerhoff presents an integral examination of the constructivism issue.
Dr. J. Glenn Friesen examines Katz's constructivism within a Kantian framework refering to K.C. Forman, Anthony N. Perovich, Jr., Ken Wilber, Dooyeweerd and Baader - essentially rejecting a constructivist view.
Constructivist Epistemologies of Mysticism: A Critique and a Revision. by Michael Stoeber (1992). Religious Studies, pp 107-116 Department of Religious Studies, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Some philosophers of mysticism stress the dependence of mystical experience upon the conceptual categories of the mystic. This has been referred to as an intentionalist or constructivist view, where the mystic ‘constructs’ the framework of mystical encounter, or experiences that which was ‘intended’ at the outset of the mystical path. Steven Katz, for example, insists that the beliefs, values and concepts of mystics directly affect the nature of their mystical experiences. He says, ‘the ontological structure(s) of each major mystical tradition is different and this pre-experiential, inherited structure directly enters into the mystical occasion itself’. In contrast to essentialist theories which hold all mystical experience to be phenomenologically the same though subject to varying interpretations, this constructivist view interprets the tremendous differences in mystical descriptions to be evidence of differences in experience type.
Mysticism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: An extended overview of issues of perennialism and constructivism.
Nirvikalpa Samadhi, the numinous event with the greatest credibility, is a much rarer, peak experience. It seldom is attained in NDE accounts involving physiological trauma and more often arises spontaneously as a continuum of supra-emotional, ecstatic states or less commonly attained through advanced meditative practice. Tradition recognizes it as the highest of various levels of Samadhi according to the extent the duality of consciousness is annihilated and other criteria. It can be realized as a sudden event where a radiant consciousness is swept directly into union with cosmic consciousness. More rarely it is recalled as an ultimate transcendent non-dual state in a journey with perennial features of dual consciousness such as a supra-rapid- perhaps superluminal- transport via a tunnel or stream of energy, momentary accessing collective knowledge, and the manifestation of a "gatekeeper" God consciousness conditionally offering grace for passage.
In nirvikalpa samadhi there is absolute non-duality where the soul is witness to annihilation of the ego Advaita Atman and emmersed into the cosmic ocean of light, bliss and love. The range of time the emmersion lasts varies from minutes- to (sic) opinions in the archives of religious literature of weeks- ending with a reconstitution of ego and consciousness back to the phenomenal self.
Even in the model of transcendent consciousness that has been subjected to the most intense ontological, epistemological and phenomenological review- the Advaita- there is acute ambiguity in the distinctions ascribed to the hierarchy of Samadhi and in criteria for establishing its credibility. The Advaitic Experience A doctorate thesis by John Glenn Friesen, provides an intimate view into the reality that- despite the twelve revisions of Upanishad doctrine, the evolution of Vedanta and Buddhism and the full realizations of countless rishis and yogis- the subject of the advaita experience- Samadhi- remains a divine enigma.
Cosmic and Mystical Consciousness essay by Erik van Ruysbeek. Ruysbeek studied German philology and has for years been deeply involved in Oriental and Western traditions of wisdom. "Just as the present-day physicists are confronted with the puzzle of what there could have been before the Big Bang, so the intellect of the mystic is confronted with the puzzle of the origin, of the nature of reality which is no longer reducible to anything else."
Cosmic and Mystical Consciousness Essay- m-g review Ruysbeek offers insightful, intuitive perspectives on many spiritual issues from his genuine mystical realization such as on reincarnation: "Every ego has come to being out of the same universal essence and goes back to that, where it could indeed come to experience again some of the elements from the egos which have previously existed, but not, or at least very seldom, the total, individual egos from a previous time. I am in this respect rather a Buddhist".
He might however, consider Occam's Razor in his model of reality where he proposes a distinction between cosmic and mystical consciousness. The challenge of modeling reality is to bring the intellectual instinct of conceptualizing which prompts us to separate objects and discover particulars in perfect balance with our intuitive impulse towards connectedness to evolve the most concise holistic paradigm.
There is also a minor contradiction in writing extensive essays about advaita yet embracing axioms such as: "Thereafter one really experiences it; the complete advaita, which cannot be brought under words. For every word would remove the experience from the advaita. Every word would be an interpretation from the non-advaita and destroy the advaita and 'Those who know do not speak, those who speak do not know' said Lao-Tse five centuries before Christ, and to the present day this is still the case."
My take on a subtle motivation for such pronouncements is to perpetuate proprietary rights to esoteric wisdom by priests, tathagata and jivanmukta and believe Nirvikalpa Samadhi insight is graced to reveal immanent/transcendent Brahman freely to advance our collective realization. Also there is a historical consensus in the nondual traditions which tends to set the limit for the range beyond which mystical conundrums are explained as paradox or consistently pronounced ineffable. This has the effect of imposing a political correctness in disparaging insights from contemporary realizers whose revelations suggest particulars that reach beyond those in established doctrines.
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In his Varieties of Nondual Realization: Divine Play as One/Many (2006) Timothy Conway cuts through a number of these kinds of taboos and assumptions that have become stuck in the body of the non-dual traditions through an integral examination of its own scripture and texts.
"Certain teachers express almost shame over having to use words to teach, and express futility in trying to "eff the ineffable", as Alan Watts joked. A longstanding bias- coming from certain teachers and texts themselves- idealizes a phenomenal state of "no talking"/"no concepts" and makes this somehow equivalent with the ultimate "silence of the Self".
[But]...Listen to Krishna’s nondual teachings in the Bhagavad Gita and later Bhagavatam Purana; the Buddha’s wisdom words in the Pali Canon and, along with Nagarjuna, Vimalakirti, et al., in the Mahayana canonical texts; later Indian sages like Gaudapada, Shankara, Saraha, Utpaladeva, Jnaneshvar, Kabir, and, in the West, Sufis like Bistami, al-Hallaj, Sana’i, Rumi, and Christian and Jewish mystics like Erigena, Meister Eckhart, and Moses Cordovero.
This is why Nisargadatta insisted that there be ample clarifying discussion before settling in for any kind of silent meditation: "First words, then ‘silence’- one must be ripe for silence." So a bias against speech, per se, need not characterize nondual spirituality. No need for embarrassment over words and concepts.
Even the Ch’an/Zen/Son Buddhist tradition, which of all our sacred traditions most "vociferously" (?!) puts down "attachment to words and concepts", itself generated countless words and concepts to express itself, didactically and poetically." |
Probably a major reason the numinous experience has remained ineffable over the past millennia is the acute problem of putting the 'feelings' that are its essence into a coherent language. Leon Schlamm addresses the issue in his essay
Numinous Experience and Religious Language An examination of Rudolph Otto's The Idea of the Holy regarding intelligibly communicating transcendent experience- with comparison to other philosophers and
phenomenologists (William James, Steven Katz, Henri Bergson, Martin Buber, etc.) who have agonized over, or asserted, the inexpressible tremendum, fascinans and ineffable mysterium moments of numinous experience.
No question that as a whole, the traditions of perennial wisdom provide a critical foundation by which to judge the credibility of the outpouring of new-age metaphysical conceptualizing/invention that grows exponentially on the internet.
Lastly I must acknowledge that while the classical Samadhi journey contains the most consistency by which the authenticity of a numinous event can be judged relatively- it may be possible that all the happenings reported in NDEs as well as our dreams and the whole kit and caboodle of supernatural and paranormal events may yet prove to have forms of reality in some parallel dimension.
Can an Atheist Have a Religious Experience? Ian Robinson - Editor of the Australian Rationalist. 2000
...many studies have shown that subjective feelings of happiness and satisfaction in life are highly correlated with religious belief. The facts are pretty unequivocal - religious people are on the whole happier than non-religious people. For the atheist apparently, life's a bitch and then you die! So why are we all here? Why aren't we all at the Synagogue today or getting ready to go to Church tomorrow?
Further reading:
Susan Blackmore. Dying to Live: Science and the Near-Death Experience.
Susan Blackmore [with an Introduction by Richard Dawkins]. The Meme Machine.
Fraser Boa. The Way of Myth: Talking with Joseph Campbell.
Joseph Campbell. The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and
Religion.
R. L. Gregory. Eye and Brain.
F. C. Happold. Mysticism: A Study and an Anthology.
Elizabeth Loftus. Memory.
Andrew Neher. The Psychology of Transcendence.
Graham Reed. The Psychology of Anomalous Experience.
Alan W. Watts. This is IT and Other Essays on Zen and Spiritual Experience.
John White [ed]. The Highest State of Consciousness.
Ken Wilber: The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion.
Is Religion 'Built Upon Lies'? Best-selling atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger Andrew Sullivan debate God, faith, and fundamentalism. 2007
See my review of
The God Experiments by John Horgan - DISCOVER December 2006; Horgan presents an unbiased description of the theories and research of five scientists taking different approaches to explain mystical religious experiences in reductionist terms.
One of the most prolific and constructive curmudgeons of science and religion, Horgan brings all the passion of a reformed sinner into his insightful critiques of hypotheses as they arise in the fields of science, formal religion, metaphysics both classical and New Age, philosophy and related intellectual disciplines. |
Links to Credibility of Transcendence Resources touching on the spectrum of psychic episodes involving OOBs and NDEs but focusing on the most intriguing aspect of noetics- the transcendent forms of consciousness identified in metaphysical tradition as true samadhi, satori, moksha, or nirvana and perspectives regarding the issue of credibility.
Outline for the Concurrent, Two-Tier, Dual-Nondual, 200 Percent Model of Reality Through the past couple of years of fairly intense effort to integrate my Nirvikalpa Samadhi experience with a variety of ontologies and epistemologies in religion, science, philosophy and metaphysics I feel comfortable in proposing a tenative model wherein occult and psychic states are distinguished from the spiritual and transcendent.
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