One of the hottest topics in the neuro-sciences, according to
Canadian anthropologist Charles Laughlin, author of Brain, Symbol, and
Experience, is interconnectivity: the intricate relationship between
consciousness and the life world, the mind of the scientist and what he
studies, and the inextricable web of relations between objective
information and subjective experience.
Indeed, one of the great pioneers in the neuroscience revolution,
Francis O. Schmitt, has recently published his memoirs, The Never Ceasing
Search, in which he describes the blueprint he used for launching the
interdisciplinary Neurosciences Research Program over 30 years ago, a
project that contributed to the development of science's hottest
organization, the Society for Neuroscience, now numbering 18,000 members.
The new revolution in consciousness, he claims, the one reuniting brain
and mind and making consciousness itself a fit object of study, is even
bigger than the Copernican revolution that began 300 years ago and led to
modern science as we know it. Considering the philosophical implications
of the neurosciences, Schmitt, in a surprising final chapter that has won
him the prestigious Templeton Award, calls for the adoption of his
blueprint to foster a similar revolution in thought between science and
religion.
The new awakening is having an impact on psychiatry as well. In the
most recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth
edition, the listing standard that mental health professionals and
insurance companies use to diagnose and calculate the cost of treating
mental disorders, there is a new entity: spiritual emergencies. Until
now, all experiences that deviated from everyday functioning were
considered abnormal and treated accordingly, with various regimens of
drugs and psychotherapy. But the new category alerts psychiatrists to
patients who might be going through a crisis of the spirit that is
nonpathological. Such patients, instead of being misdiagnosed, medicated,
and hospitalized, need only to be assisted with philosophical problems of
meaning and identity. When this happens, they achieve a full and rapid
recovery of the presenting symptoms.
In short, no one seems to remember the guiding pronouncements of
the past 100 years, beginning with Nietzsche, who proclaimed that God is
dead. Marx followed by announcing that religion was the opiate of the
masses, and Freud finished by establishing in the name of science that
religion was nothing more than the redirection of repressed sexual
impulses toward more socially acceptable ends. A recent spate of highbrow
tee shirts and bumper stickers summarily dismisses the entire century of
philosophic controversy on the subject by proclaiming instead, "Nietszche
is dead."
This widespread flourishing of spirituality appears to have a
number of defining characteristics, the primary one being that its motive
power is not coming from mainstream institutionalized science, religion,
or education. Rather, it is a popular phenomenon of epic proportions that
is at once profoundly personal, experiential, and transcendent. The new
awakening is directed toward an opening of the inward doors of perception
and it is perceptually grounded in what the experiencer believes is a
deeper level of the immediate reality than we normally have access
to.
ENGLIGHTENED CHANGE
Take the case of Mary Fisk. Near death, she felt herself going down
a long tunnel and entering a domain of extraordinarily bright light. On
the way she met those whom she had known but were now long dead, and she
encountered numerous beings whom she could only describe as angels, who
helped wrap her in an ever-increasing loving presence. She later reported
hearing a voice say that she should go back, that it was not her time
yet, that there was still work for her to do in the world. Then she
awakened from her coma in a hospital room. After her recovery, she became
a social worker in a hospice, helping others in their transition between
life and death.
Jack Huber, a clinical psychologist, became interested in Zen and
went to Japan to attend a one-week intensive training session for
beginners. Guided by a Zen Roshi through the initial stages of practice,
near the end he experienced kensho, or satori; he glimpsed what the
teacher called "one's own true nature." He reported that afterward his
personality changed completely. Whatever happened to him he met with an
even-mindedness that he found surprising. He also felt more free from the
constraints of time, not harried or pressed. And he felt that he now
chose what was going to effect him and what was not. In a book about his
experience, Through an Eastern Window, he reported that he was able to
keep in touch with his original experience through dally Zen sitting once
he returned home.
The American philosopher-psychologist William James called these
mystical experiences, and he believed that, while they were transient and
could not always be brought on at will, they carried a sense of knowledge
deeper and more significant than that of the rational intellect. American
psychologist Abraham Maslow dubbed them peak experiences and linked them
to emergence of the self-actualizing aspect of personality. The Swiss
psychiatrist Carl Jung described them as an integral part of the process
of individuation, which he said was a movement away from egotism toward
autonomous selfhood.
Today, more and more individuals report having such experiences. As
a result, there's been a veritable explosion of interest in esoteric and
mystical traditions.
