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Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality Hardcover – January 1, 2003
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Print length292 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherHoughton Mifflin
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Publication dateJanuary 1, 2003
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Dimensions6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
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ISBN-100618060278
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ISBN-13978-0618060276
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Product details
- Publisher : Houghton Mifflin (January 1, 2003)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 292 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0618060278
- ISBN-13 : 978-0618060276
- Item Weight : 1.25 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.25 x 1 x 9.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,281,153 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #129 in Scientology
- #2,866 in Science & Religion (Books)
- #4,147 in New Age Mysticism (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
John Horgan is an award-winning science journalist and Director of the Center for Science Writings at Stevens Institute of Technology. His books include The End of Science, a U.S. bestseller translated into 13 languages; The Undiscovered Mind; Rational Mysticism; The End of War; Mind-Body Problems; Pay Attention, a lightly fictionalized memoir; and My Quantum Experiment. A former senior writer for Scientific American. Horgan has also written for The New York Times and many other publications. He writes a column called "Cross-check" for his website, johnhorgan.org.
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I still find myself going back to this book to see where I need to follow up with more readings on the subjects and authors that are covered here.
I recommend it to anyone at any level.
There has always been an idea that some sort of mystical experience, a direct connection to an ultimate truth, would get us wonderful benefits. Horgan himself has had trouble with metaphysical ideas for decades, and the discomfort helps him ask the right questions and present the reader with plenty of puzzles. He visits Michael Persinger, the Canadian psychologist who experiments with blasting people's brains with electromagnetic pulses. He tries on the "God Machine" and gets only vague geometric shapes. Persinger says that the machine doesn't work well on skeptics. Horgan interviewed Albert Hofmann, the discoverer the effects of LSD in 1943. An expert in psychedelic shamanism, Christian Ratsch, told Horgan that it is a bad, exploitive lie that decades of meditation or spiritual practice are needed for enlightenment; it only requires "the right molecule to hit your brain." Susan Blackmore, formerly a believer in parapsychological affairs and now a professional skeptic, continues to practice Zen Buddhism. She thinks religions are something like very successful chain letters, but credits her meditations with helping her abandon ideas like God, an afterlife, and free will. Buddhism teaches the illusory nature of the self, and so do certain cognitive scientists. The climax of the book is Horgan's trip to California (surprise) to participate in an ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahuasca is a psychedelic used for religious services in Brazil. There were plenty of pretty patterns, vertigo, worry about incipient madness, affection for the strangers he was with, and eventually existential dread: "The flame of consciousness had flickered out in the eternally expanding cosmos, and it had reverted to dumb, blind, painless, meaningless matter, as it must." Not very comforting, but the best parts were his interactions with others.
"So what is the final lesson?" he wonders afterward. "What is the point of all our mystical searching? Where does it get us? What truth does it give us? What consolation?" Those looking for particular answers ought to have known beforehand that, given the subject matter of the book, particular answers for all the big questions will not be found here. In a section mockingly titled "Science and Mysticism Reconciled!" Horgan finds some comfort in a point of convergence between the two. Science is never going to answer finally the question, "How did something come from nothing?" any more than mysticism will, but people will continue to pursue both and those who are wise will continue to admit that there is a paucity of answers from all sources. He quotes Voltaire: "Doubt is not a very agreeable state, but certainty is a ridiculous one." The reader may not have doubts extinguished by this exhilarating look at complicated matters, but the trip is one to enjoy.
engaged in present-day mysticism. All have tried in some way to reconcile their mystical experiences with science and/or rationalism. The author does a good job of presenting the various subjects in a sympathetic manner, even though he does not avoid raising issues with any dubious or contradictory claims.
Some of the thinkers use the word "enlightenment" to describe the
highest state of their particular discipline. And, of course, they disagree on how to reach enlightenment. But enlightenment is a troublesome word. Even if we take a particular school's definition of enlightment and assume that such states can be reached, on what basis should we assign that state a priviliged position over our normal states of awareness?
In fact, the danger of mysticism is that we might privilege those
altered states over our everyday reality and devalue our normal waking lives. One of Hogan's messages seems to be to embrace life. Nirvana, permanent bliss, would be a monotonous state. Long live the unfolding chaotic mysterious drama of life! I agree with him on that. This point is also made in that wonderful movie by Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire", and I could not help but think of that film as I read the last chapter of the book.
However, in his epilogue I think Hogan goes too far with this.
He writes: <<Not until I met and fell in love with Suzie [the author's wife] almost a year after the trip did my estrangement from life and from my own self finally subside. Mysiticism did not save me; it was from that which I needed to be saved.>>
Certainly, there are dangers posed by those who choose some form of "mystical" practice. One, as mentioned above, is flight from life; one can delude oneself into believing s/he has found THE TRUTH, which of course is to stop seeking truth, snuff out mystery; one can become alienated from oneself and passively submit oneself to another person, group or ideology. Indeed, many things can go wrong.
However, Hogan's statement would have us "throw the baby out with the bathwater". If we accept a given altered state as just one of many mental states and do not make fetishises of these states, ie. fabricate ideologies and religions from them, then we can indeed benefit from exploration of those mental states. Many people have gained insights and flashes of creativity from ayahuasca, LSD, and other entheogens. Likewise, in a world where the flickering images of television screens have created a population whose attention span has been greatly reduced, "mindfullness" techniques would be beneficial to those who want to fully appreciate the richness of their lives. These mystical "technologies" have their place, they just need to be brought "down to earth".