Scientific Mysticism
‘Scientific Mysticism’ is a term coined past Michael Whiteman, a British-born South African mathematician together with mystic. (This article may live read together alongside the article on Whiteman’sec life in addition to idea.)
Introduction
The term ‘scientific mysticism’ appeared every bit a championship inwards the trilogy, Old too New Evidence on the Meaning of Life,ane 2 3 past Michael Whiteman. Volume One was entitled An Introduction to Scientific Mysticism.one Whiteman aimed to bring mysticism into the field of scientific discipline every bit an entity that is ‘open-minded, rigorously tested, rationally coherent, and illuminating.’one ‘Mysticism’ hither is defined as:
the written report of everything not-physical, including the other worlds in addition to their archetypal governance, besides equally our spiritual bodies, the facts too their relationship being known by the self-prove of direct observation too non by reasoning or speculation.four
This indicates empirical science, sharing territory with psychical research. Yet Whiteman drew a distinction between ‘psychical’ as well as ‘mystical’ feel. The quondam includes the study of purportedly non-physical events, the latter extends to states that take a feel of higher significance together with ultimates, openness to guidance, transformed existence, together with orientation to the perceived origin of the Right together with Good.
Whiteman was familiar amongst Vedic, Sanskrit, Pali, Greek too Biblical Hebrew, together with quoted extensively from ancient texts. He regarded nigh current translations equally inadequate because the authors lacked psychical too mystical experience. His revolutionary commentary, also his translation of ‘The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’v combined amongst canonical Buddhist texts, one ii iii five demo hitting parallels with refinements of mod thought.
Whiteman’second occupation as a professor of applied mathematics provided a base in physics for his scientific mysticism. Another base of operations was extensive personal experience inwards psychical together with mystical states. His methods rested on observation, conceptual analysis and insight, in melody with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology.6 This aims at gaining face-to-confront self-bear witness and detailed precision, shedding the common ‘cloak of ideas’. Science inward Whiteman’s utilisation is not an exercise inwards theorizing.
Potentiality too Actualization
H5N1 cardinal to Whiteman’s scientific mysticism is the idea of potentiality and actualization. This had been developed by the physicist Werner Heisenberg,7 who saw that a physical ‘happening’ comes near through an occasion of observation, in addition to that this ‘happening’ is open to physical description. But what governs the happening is not open up to physical observation; at best it tin be given mathematical look. So behind a physical effect 1 has to recognize what Heisenberg called ‘an objective trend or possibility, a “potentia” in the feel of Aristotelian philosophy’. And the governing potentia, the ‘reason’ for something to occur, is abstract in a physical feel; you tin’t lay it inward a examination underground.
Whiteman concurred that exclusively transcending logical substructures, potentialities, merit the term ‘reality’, every bit opposed to appearances. Appearances come up into existence alone on an occasion of observation, in addition to will be actualized differently for unlike people.
Whiteman wrote, ‘zip specific can be actualized without the integration of “subjective” too “objective” factors, non in succession, only on the instant of actualization.’ane An observer who is freed inwards more or less mode from the physical land volition actualize for himself things that are beyond the achieve of ordinary physical sensing. This is the showtime of psychical in addition to mystical perception.
Whiteman wrote, ‘The difference betwixt ane “world” in addition to some other so depends upon the land of life in which the observer happens to be settled.’three An individual’s perceiving results from integration of objective potentialities together with his ain subjective potentialities, including subconscious elements. Whiteman believed the potentiality-actualization principle operates inwards the mental sphere of every individual: idea in addition to images are actualizations inwards consciousness of an private’s ‘thought-icon sphere’, every bit he called it, which includes retentiveness in addition to imagination.1
Actualization of Psi Phenomena
Whiteman saw telepathy resulting from the interaction or resonance between the thought-image spheres of individuals. The interaction is not actualized at the physical degree, in addition to and then transfer of data occurs independently of physical space as well as fourth dimension. Clairvoyance is resonance between the potentiality-sphere of a physical object or upshot in addition to the thought-icon sphere of an individual, resulting in the actualization of impressions inwards the individual’s idea-ikon sphere. Once over again, resonance or interaction happens independently of physical space too fourth dimension, non being physically actualized. Psychokinesis may live regarded every bit a reverse clairvoyant interaction; potentialities ordinarily linked inwards roughly way to an private outcome inward physical actualizations.
Potentiality-actualization relationships should not live seen equally static; potentiality-fields continually change or train, together with take feedback loops, although non in physical fourth dimension. This will bear upon the issue of time to come physical events, which helps to explain how precognition happens. Whiteman saw precognition as actualization in an private’sec thought-image sphere of developing potentiality-fields that may bear upon time to come physical events. The private may fifty-fifty intervene inwards the physical actualization of these events by altering the potentiality-fields, then allowing prevention of a precognized outcome from happening.ane Even if potentiality-fields are fourth dimension-ordered, resulting in a succession of events actualized inward the physical earth, the ordering is not fixed inwards the fashion a road map is fixed. They are accessible inward states of physical detachment, and and then let limited modification in addition to the exercise of gratuitous volition.
Out-of-body Experience
Whiteman defined mysticism equally ‘the report of everything not-physical, including the other worlds ...’ As simply discussed, potentiality-fields have the capacity to deliver dissimilar spaces or worlds of physical too non-physical actuality, depending on the country of the observer. Without this understanding, mysticism cannot start out to brand feel. Direct feel of ‘the other worlds’ occurs mainly in out-of-torso experience, which Whiteman preferred to term ‘separative’ feel, since at that place is commonly awareness of a body of some kind.
The commonest type he termed ‘principal separation’, in which in that location is no awareness in the physical trunk, even though what appears to be the physical body tin can be viewed. In ‘secondary separation’ the physical trunk is nether roughly degree of witting control, but primary awareness lies inwards some other organism seemingly non located inwards the infinite of the physical trunk, too the ii bodies are quite independent. In ‘3rd separation’ the physical body is normally under consummate command, only there is full awareness of existence in a dissimilar bodily form despite the locations of the 2 bodies seeming to live the same. Difference betwixt the ii bodies may be radical, such every bit one existence male too the other female. For Whiteman, the highest mystical experiences were generally of this type.
Whiteman noted that such not-physical feel, inwards terms of reality-impression as well as intensity, may reach from appearing weak to seeming even more existent together with meaningful than inwards physical life. At its nigh powerful, termed by him mystical, ‘Everything inwards such states, spatial characteristics included, is known as if inwards archetypal unchanging form, together with is so startlingly more existent (rationally-objective, always-introduce) than the derivative and shifting forms of the physical globe.’ane He saw a need ‘to distinguish betwixt what is deceptive or illusory together with what has the lineament of face up-to-face objectivity too truth which nosotros describe past proverb that a thing is existent.’1 This requires setting upwardly a numerical scale, which he called a General Index of Reality.
Index of Reality
This index covers a range from ordinary dreaming (goose egg rating) to what is experienced every bit spiritually releasing alongside a high level of reality, namely mystical experience (high rating). The Index properly relates to separative experience. Features scoring inwards the Index include continuity of retentiveness between physical as well as not-physical feel, gratis observation, ability to compare accurately alongside physical in addition to non-physical states, awareness of gist as well as tangibility, communication of idea amongst others, too a feeling of transcendence of physical life.
The General Index does not include reports of observing physical things during a separative experience. Regarded past well-nigh people equally veridical (corresponding to reality), these observations could have been made by clairvoyance or remote viewing, together with do not necessarily hateful that something somehow separated from the physical trunk to brand the observation. As Whiteman stated, any claimed physical supporting show merely has ‘chiefly propaganda value for the uninformed or sceptical, who make non realize that separation is not established by them, only who may thereby live induced to have the “interior” testimony every bit having some bearing on “scientific fact”.’one
Whiteman’s Index mightiness look of limited value to standard parapsychology, where a useful scoring organisation should place experiences that charge per unit amend than dream, hallucination or roughly class of pathology. In Whiteman’sec Index the management of ranking is towards mystical experience, which is hardly looked for inwards parapsychology, fifty-fifty shied away from. The gild of ranking is: undeveloped, borderline, psychical, pre-mystical, mystical. Out of a possible xvi points, experiences reaching six to eight points grade every bit ‘psychical separations’, scoring on criteria listed 2 paragraphs higher up. Further requirements of ‘mystical’ rate were noted inwards the Introduction, and demarcate ‘mystical’ from ‘psychical’. Yet in the eyes of a physically-fixated investigator, the mystical requirements would bespeak reduced reality rating, since ‘reality’ agency ‘similar physical feel’. For Whiteman this was a fundamental mistake; higher reality tin can alone hateful ‘unlike physical feel’.
Other Spaces
All separative experience, physical-similar or transformative, was considered past Whiteman to pass in spaces other than physical, although ofttimes and so like to what is presented physically every bit to live false for it. He called it ‘duplicate physical’ space. He wrote:
If one is taken into a ‘psychic’ infinite when not familiar amongst such states, or with fixed ideas about them, together with if the phenomena resemble physical ones closely... at that place may live a strong persuasion to think that the objects are being observed physically; too this applies even to possible duplicate presentations of the observer’second physical trunk inward its actual state of affairs.one
‘Fixed ideas’ assume at that place is solely 1 ‘existent’ space that can be manifested, namely the physical earth. Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 fixed idea volition contribute to the potentialities governing a separative feel, and atomic number 82 to the actualization of a physical-similar ‘duplicate’ scene. Yet equally individual gratis of the constraints of one-grade thinking, Whiteman wrote of an ‘inexhaustible variety’ of appearance inward other spaces. Naturalistic conditioning may yet effect in ‘fantasy influences’ inward undeveloped states, still highest development leads to ‘perfectly acceptable forms of transcendent unified beauty’, where ‘the surround, correspondingly, are distinguished past the lineament of the calorie-free, and gain in intelligible grapheme, perfection of beauty, depth of glowing centre character, unitive freedom together with sense of blending alongside other minds, equally the highest condition, which is that of Mystical Form Liberation, is approached.’ In these descriptions, Whiteman states,
‘I’ too ‘me’ make non represent the familiar consciousness of self inwards the physical personality, or, inward fact, for anything that tin can live known inwards an ordinary physical country of mind. To empathize what is meant, the characteristics of the merged ordinary self must be ruled out.four
One mightiness inquiry how ‘other spaces’ are related to the physical too, if at all, to each other. In states classified past Whiteman as tertiary separation, the not-physical trunk holds much of the focus of attention merely does non seem to be spatially apart from the physical body; ‘the locations of the 2 bodies appear the same, inward spite of differences inwards their grade and/or size and possibly too in their surround.’one This seems to agree alongside a sentiment widespread in spiritist circles that dissimilar ‘levels’ of feel together with existence all coincide spatially simply accept different ‘vibration frequencies’, and then at that place is no contact or communication between the various states except through particular mediating atmospheric condition. Whiteman did include ‘interpenetrating spaces’ inwards a particular set up of ‘facts of experience’,one simply he did not introduce the thought of interpenetrating spaces every bit around kind of cosmological organization; he was disposed to keep to systems of facts, non constructs of theory.
Skills, Cycles
Whiteman was confident well-nigh discovering the underlying logic inwards phenomena, existence convinced that behind any detail observation there is an intelligible structure ‘operative inwards as well as analysable out of the full experience’.eight He did non accept Kant’s idea of the unknowability of things-inwards-themselves.8 Instead, there is ‘intellectual or perceptual knowledge which transcends inward a certain clear as well as unmistakable fashion the onward urge of time, the rigid apartness of spatial objects, too the apparent isolation of the private listen inward its land of fixation on bodily impressions. It is a land of free. Fixation being overcome, the listen opens out into universality’.eight We cannot attain this state, he believed ‘without psychological as well as spiritual faculties of attending, judgement, purposiveness too self-subject’, based on iii ‘foundational skills’ named Active Recollection, Continuous Recollection, in addition to Faith + Obedience.ane (The rootage of these skills in his ain life is reported inwards Michael Whiteman.)
Active Recollection aims to call back or recover the heart and soul inward what is perceived, ‘as well as so the attainment of objective insight in addition to liberate’.ane Husserl termed it the phenomenological epoché or stoppage, ‘the necessary operation which renders pure consciousness accessible to us’.one It is termed samādhi or sati in Indian literature.5 Continuous Recollection is ‘the freely stabilized ground of release at which Active Recollection has been aiming.’1 Obedience is non a country of subservience just orientation to ‘the transcendent Source of Right and Good.’ane It operates inward conjunction with Faith in this transcendence.
The 3 foundational skills were structured into a 4-role organization known since ancient times in addition to appearing inwards mod contexts inwards learning theory, Freud together with Jung. Described every bit the four creative functions, these are ‘purposive cause, deciding on means, putting into do, together with a about hugger-mugger maturing of ane’sec skills inwards outcome’.3 In ancient texts they are represented as four stages inward the passage of the sun, ascension inward the east, zenith inward the south, downward to globe in the due west, too cloak-and-dagger in the northward.13 This corresponds alongside aspiration (eastward), assessment (southward), activeness or manifestation (due west), fulfilment or not-attachment (N); it also corresponds respectively amongst Faith, Obedience, Active Recollection, Continuous Recollection.1
Whiteman placed slap-up importance on this cycle having its opposites or ‘counterfeits’ of self-volition, self-satisfaction, automaticity, complacency, which may Pb to a corresponding cycle of ‘stresses’ of death-feeling, shame, hurting, fearfulness. This inwards plow may Pb to ‘inner contests’,1 2 iii which hopefully overcome these spiritual deficiencies.
Physics together with Psychology
In his search for underlying logic, together with for universality, Whiteman converted his ‘psychological’ wheel into a xvi-flexure number system, alongside the aim of integrating it alongside a ‘physical’ sixteen-fold number system derived from iii infinite in addition to 3 fourth dimension dimensions. He noted that three of the creative functions – drive, means, and maturing – are composite, containing two ‘get-go principles’ of gist and being, equivalent to potentiality together with actualization. In plough, heart and soul as well as existence each accept iii constituents, termed past him ‘hypostases’, significant underlying, irreducible causes. The 3 hypostases of kernel were seen every bit use, agency, terminate. The hypostases of existence were actuation, becoming, manifestation, the three-phase structure of creation called in Upanishadic philosophy the Great Stride of Vishnu.one So, for example, ‘deciding on means’ combines ‘way’ (sum) first with ‘actuation’ (existence), and so amongst ‘becoming’ (being), in addition to lastly amongst manifestation (being). The 3rd quarter, West, brings prior causes into manifestation purely every bit ‘existence’ and and so lacks an ‘center’ hypostasis.
This analysis allows the evolution of a number system inwards psychology, in addition to so the prospect of comparing amongst a issue arrangement in physics.1 ii three From these number systems Whiteman intended to render ‘a clear-cutting explanatory organization... every bit, for case, the basic laws of mechanics are exhibited earlier whatever problems are tackled’.two The hypostases of heart were numbered 1 = role, two = agency, three = end. The hypostases of beingness were numbered six = actuation, 5 = becoming, four = manifestation/grounding. So, for case ‘East’ tin can be expressed equally the combination 16 (enthusiasm), xv (inspiration), xiv (intention). Combining the numbers 1 to 6 results inwards xvi subfunctions, in agreement amongst ‘15 + ane kalās, stages inward whatever creative deed, as recognized in the Upanishads’.3
The physical number organization was derived from the three space and 3 fourth dimension dimensions. One fourth dimension dimension lies inwards potentiality-fields alongside a time-ordered, infinite-similar face noted in a higher place inwards connectedness with precognition. Another fourth dimension dimension or part involves the processes leading to physical actualization from fourth dimension-structured potentiality. Finally in that location is physical clock-fourth dimension; it is the entirely fourth dimension-dimension that is measurable. Combining the vi dimensions yields a xvi-flexure issue arrangement similar the psychological subfunctions, ‘inward such shut correspondence with the formulations of quantum theory that there is an obvious invitation to present the two as aspects of an integrated understanding of the earth’.nine
Space does not permit a tabulation of the physics/psychology correspondences, or how they were derived. The correspondences, notwithstanding, satisfied Whiteman’sec persuasion that to explicate what we feel is to
admit a subjective bike, such as mystics, many theologians, and some psychologists take admitted. This wheel, inward its virtually consummate grade is sixteenfold, together with parallels exactly what may be called the ‘world bike’ (every bit it appears in Quantum Field Theory) inward every way, patch manifesting itself in every form of homo experience. This is a form of potentiality which is discernible, and indeed can live lived past the individual inward an enormous diverseness of ‘altered states of consciousness’...three
Whiteman’s Scientific Mysticism was a revolutionary endeavor to discern too characterize this potentiality.
John Poynton
Literature
ane. Whiteman, J.H.M. (1986). Old as well as New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical world-view in addition to inner contest. Volume 1, An Introduction to Scientific Mysticism. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
2. Whiteman, J.H.thou. (2000). Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical Earth-persuasion in addition to inner contest. Volume ii, Dynamics of Spiritual Development. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
three. Whiteman, J.H.K. (2006). Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical globe-persuasion and inner contest. Volume 3, Universal Theology in addition to Life inwards other Worlds. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
four. Whiteman, J.H.K. (1961). The Mystical Life. London: Faber together with Faber.
5. Whiteman, J.H.1000. (1993). Aphorisms on Spiritual Method: the ‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ in the light of mystical experience. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
six. Husserl, eastward. (1931). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (trans. westward.R. Boyce Gibson). London: Allen & Unwin.
seven. Heisenberg, west. (1959). Physics together with Philosophy: the revolution in modernistic science. London: Allen in addition to Unwin.
viii. Whiteman, J.H.thousand. (1967). Philosophy of Space and Time in addition to the Inner Constitution of Nature: a phenomenological report. London: Allen too Unwin.
nine. Whiteman, J.H.thou. (1977). Parapsychology together with physics. In Wolman, B.B. (ed.) Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
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