Scientific Mysticism
‘Scientific Mysticism’ is a term coined by Michael Whiteman, a British-born South African mathematician and mystic. (This article may live read together with the article on Whiteman’second life and idea.)
Introduction
The term ‘scientific mysticism’ appeared as a title inwards the trilogy, Old in addition to New Evidence on the Meaning of Life,one two 3 past Michael Whiteman. Volume One was entitled An Introduction to Scientific Mysticism.1 Whiteman aimed to take mysticism into the plain of scientific discipline as an entity that is ‘open-minded, rigorously tested, rationally coherent, too illuminating.’one ‘Mysticism’ hither is defined equally:
the study of everything not-physical, including the other worlds as well as their archetypal governance, also as our spiritual bodies, the facts in addition to their relationship being known by the self-prove of direct observation as well as non by reasoning or speculation.iv
This indicates empirical scientific discipline, sharing territory amongst psychical enquiry. Yet Whiteman drew a distinction between ‘psychical’ as well as ‘mystical’ feel. The onetime includes the report of purportedly non-physical events, the latter extends to states that accept a sense of higher significance as well as ultimates, openness to guidance, transformed being, in addition to orientation to the perceived rootage of the Right as well as Good.
Whiteman was familiar with Vedic, Sanskrit, Pali, Greek in addition to Biblical Hebrew, together with quoted extensively from ancient texts. He regarded near electric current translations equally inadequate because the authors lacked psychical and mystical feel. His revolutionary commentary, as well his translation of ‘The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’five combined alongside canonical Buddhist texts, ane two iii five show striking parallels with refinements of modernistic thought.
Whiteman’sec line equally a professor of applied mathematics provided a base of operations in physics for his scientific mysticism. Another base was extensive personal experience inwards psychical together with mystical states. His methods rested on observation, conceptual analysis as well as insight, in tune with Edmund Husserl’second phenomenology.half-dozen This aims at gaining face-to-confront self-evidence too detailed precision, shedding the common ‘cloak of ideas’. Science inwards Whiteman’sec usage is not an practice inwards theorizing.
Potentiality too Actualization
A primal to Whiteman’sec scientific mysticism is the idea of potentiality as well as actualization. This had been developed past the physicist Werner Heisenberg,vii who saw that a physical ‘happening’ comes about through an occasion of observation, too that this ‘happening’ is open to physical description. But what governs the happening is non open to physical observation; at best it tin can live given mathematical aspect. So behind a physical result i has to recognize what Heisenberg called ‘an objective tendency or possibility, a “potentia” inwards the feel of Aristotelian philosophy’. And the governing potentia, the ‘argue’ for something to take place, is abstract in a physical feel; y'all tin can’t pose it inwards a test subway system.
Whiteman concurred that entirely transcending logical substructures, potentialities, merit the term ‘reality’, every bit opposed to appearances. Appearances come into being only on an occasion of observation, in addition to volition live actualized differently for different people.
Whiteman wrote, ‘nil specific tin can be actualized without the integration of “subjective” too “objective” factors, non in succession, simply on the moment of actualization.’ane An observer who is freed inward or so way from the physical country volition actualize for himself things that are beyond the attain of ordinary physical sensing. This is the showtime of psychical together with mystical perception.
Whiteman wrote, ‘The difference between 1 “earth” and another then depends upon the country of life in which the observer happens to live settled.’iii An private’sec perceiving results from integration of objective potentialities together alongside his own subjective potentialities, including subconscious elements. Whiteman believed the potentiality-actualization rule operates in the mental sphere of every individual: idea and images are actualizations inward consciousness of an individual’s ‘thought-ikon sphere’, every bit he called it, which includes retention and imagination.ane
Actualization of Psi Phenomena
Whiteman saw telepathy resulting from the interaction or resonance between the idea-ikon 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 and fourth dimension. Clairvoyance is resonance between the potentiality-sphere of a physical object or issue too the idea-image sphere of an individual, resulting in the actualization of impressions inward the private’s thought-picture sphere. Once once again, resonance or interaction happens independently of physical infinite together with time, not beingness physically actualized. Psychokinesis may be regarded equally a reverse clairvoyant interaction; potentialities ordinarily linked in or so style to an private outcome inwards physical actualizations.
Potentiality-actualization relationships should not be seen as static; potentiality-fields continually modify or develop, together with have feedback loops, although not inwards physical time. This volition bear on the event of hereafter physical events, which helps to explain how precognition happens. Whiteman saw precognition equally actualization in an individual’sec idea-image sphere of developing potentiality-fields that may touch futurity physical events. The private may fifty-fifty intervene inward the physical actualization of these events by altering the potentiality-fields, then allowing prevention of a precognized result from happening.ane Even if potentiality-fields are time-ordered, resulting inwards a succession of events actualized in the physical world, the ordering is not fixed inwards the mode a route map is fixed. They are accessible inward states of physical detachment, in addition to and then allow express modification and the do of free will.
Out-of-trunk Experience
Whiteman defined mysticism equally ‘the written report of everything not-physical, including the other worlds ...’ As simply discussed, potentiality-fields have the capacity to deliver different spaces or worlds of physical in addition to non-physical actuality, depending on the land of the observer. Without this agreement, mysticism cannot start to brand sense. Direct experience of ‘the other worlds’ occurs mainly inwards out-of-body feel, which Whiteman preferred to term ‘separative’ feel, since in that location is ordinarily awareness of a body of or so sort.
The commonest type he termed ‘principal separation’, in which at that place is no awareness inward the physical body, fifty-fifty though what appears to live the physical body can live viewed. In ‘secondary separation’ the physical trunk is nether approximately grade of conscious control, only master awareness lies inwards some other organism seemingly non located in the space of the physical body, together with the 2 bodies are quite independent. In ‘tertiary separation’ the physical torso is unremarkably under consummate command, merely at that place is total awareness of being inwards a different bodily grade despite the locations of the two bodies seeming to be the same. Difference between the two bodies may live radical, such as 1 beingness male and the other female. For Whiteman, the highest mystical experiences were by and large of this type.
Whiteman noted that such not-physical feel, in terms of reality-impression in addition to intensity, may range from appearing weak to seeming fifty-fifty more real too meaningful than inwards physical life. At its near powerful, termed past him mystical, ‘Everything in such states, spatial characteristics included, is known every bit if in archetypal unchanging grade, too is thus startlingly more than existent (rationally-objective, always-present) than the derivative in addition to shifting forms of the physical world.’ane He saw a need ‘to distinguish between what is deceptive or illusory as well as what has the lineament of face up-to-face objectivity and truth which nosotros depict by maxim that a thing is real.’one This requires setting upward a numerical scale, which he called a General Index of Reality.
Index of Reality
This index covers a reach from ordinary dreaming (cipher rating) to what is experienced equally spiritually releasing amongst a high grade of reality, namely mystical experience (high rating). The Index properly relates to separative experience. Features scoring inward the Index include continuity of memory between physical as well as not-physical experience, free observation, power to compare accurately with physical too non-physical states, awareness of heart together with tangibility, communication of idea with others, in addition to a feeling of transcendence of physical life.
The General Index does not include reports of observing physical things during a separative experience. Regarded by almost people as veridical (corresponding to reality), these observations could take been made by clairvoyance or remote viewing, in addition to do non necessarily hateful that something somehow separated from the physical torso to make the observation. As Whiteman stated, whatever 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 be induced to take the “interior” testimony as having or so bearing on “scientific fact”.’ane
Whiteman’sec Index power look of limited value to measure parapsychology, where a useful scoring organization should place experiences that rate ameliorate than dream, hallucination or approximately class of pathology. In Whiteman’sec Index the management of ranking is towards mystical experience, which is hardly looked for inward 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 vi to 8 points rate equally ‘psychical separations’, scoring on criteria listed two paragraphs in a higher place. Further requirements of ‘mystical’ rate were noted in the Introduction, too demarcate ‘mystical’ from ‘psychical’. Yet inward the eyes of a physically-fixated investigator, the mystical requirements would point reduced reality rating, since ‘reality’ means ‘similar physical experience’. For Whiteman this was a central error; higher reality tin can exclusively hateful ‘unlike physical feel’.
Other Spaces
All separative experience, physical-like or transformative, was considered past Whiteman to come about inward spaces other than physical, although ofttimes and then like to what is presented physically every bit to be false for it. He called it ‘duplicate physical’ infinite. He wrote:
If ane is taken into a ‘psychic’ infinite when non familiar with such states, or amongst fixed ideas well-nigh them, in addition to if the phenomena resemble physical ones closely... at that place may live a strong opinion to intend that the objects are beingness observed physically; and this applies even to possible duplicate presentations of the observer’second physical body inward its actual state of affairs.1
‘Fixed ideas’ assume at that place is alone ane ‘real’ space that tin be manifested, namely the physical world. H5N1 fixed thought volition contribute to the potentialities governing a separative experience, together with Pb to the actualization of a physical-similar ‘duplicate’ scene. Yet equally mortal gratis of the constraints of 1-grade thinking, Whiteman wrote of an ‘inexhaustible multifariousness’ of appearance inwards other spaces. Naturalistic conditioning may yet outcome in ‘fantasy influences’ inwards undeveloped states, nevertheless highest evolution leads to ‘perfectly acceptable forms of transcendent unified beauty’, where ‘the surroundings, correspondingly, are distinguished past the character of the light, together with arrive at inward intelligible character, perfection of beauty, depth of glowing center character, unitive liberty too sense of blending with other minds, equally the highest status, which is that of Mystical Form Liberation, is approached.’ In these descriptions, Whiteman states,
‘I’ as well as ‘me’ do non correspond the familiar consciousness of self in the physical personality, or, in fact, for anything that can be known inwards an ordinary physical country of mind. To sympathize what is meant, the characteristics of the merged ordinary self must be ruled out.4
One power query how ‘other spaces’ are related to the physical as well as, if at all, to each other. In states classified past Whiteman every bit 3rd separation, the not-physical body holds much of the focus of attending but does non appear to live spatially apart from the physical trunk; ‘the locations of the two bodies appear the same, inward spite of differences inward their class together with/or size and mayhap as well in their environs.’i This seems to jibe amongst a view widespread inward spiritist circles that unlike ‘levels’ of experience as well as beingness all coincide spatially just have different ‘vibration frequencies’, and then in that location is no contact or communication betwixt the various states except through especial mediating atmospheric condition. Whiteman did include ‘interpenetrating spaces’ inward a detail ready of ‘facts of feel’,ane but he did not introduce the thought of interpenetrating spaces every bit just about sort of cosmological arrangement; he was disposed to keep to systems of facts, non constructs of theory.
Skills, Cycles
Whiteman was confident most discovering the underlying logic inwards phenomena, existence convinced that behind whatsoever detail observation there is an intelligible construction ‘operative inward in addition to analysable out of the full experience’.8 He did non have Kant’s idea of the unknowability of things-in-themselves.viii Instead, in that location is ‘intellectual or perceptual cognition which transcends inward a sure clear as well as unmistakable style the onward urge of time, the stiff apartness of spatial objects, in addition to the apparent isolation of the individual heed inward its country of fixation on bodily impressions. It is a state of loose. Fixation existence overcome, the listen opens out into universality’.8 We cannot achieve this land, he believed ‘without psychological too spiritual faculties of attending, judgement, purposiveness together with self-subject’, based on iii ‘foundational skills’ named Active Recollection, Continuous Recollection, and Faith + Obedience.i (The root of these skills in his ain life is reported inwards Michael Whiteman.)
Active Recollection aims to recall or recover the heart in what is perceived, ‘together with so the attainment of objective insight in addition to free’.one Husserl termed it the phenomenological epoché or stoppage, ‘the necessary operation which renders pure consciousness accessible to us’.i It is termed samādhi or sati inwards Indian literature.five Continuous Recollection is ‘the freely stabilized ground of unloose at which Active Recollection has been aiming.’one Obedience is not a state of subservience only orientation to ‘the transcendent Source of Right as well as Good.’1 It operates in conjunction alongside Faith inward this transcendence.
The three foundational skills were structured into a four-office organisation known since ancient times in addition to appearing inwards mod contexts in learning theory, Freud as well as Jung. Described as the 4 creative functions, these are ‘purposive crusade, deciding on way, putting into practice, as well as a well-nigh cloak-and-dagger maturing of 1’s skills inward effect’.three In ancient texts they are represented every bit four stages inwards the passage of the Sun, ascent in the E, zenith inward the due south, downwards to earth inwards the W, together with secret inward the northward.xiii This corresponds alongside aspiration (eastward), assessment (south), activeness or manifestation (W), fulfilment or not-attachment (due north); it too corresponds respectively alongside Faith, Obedience, Active Recollection, Continuous Recollection.ane
Whiteman placed bully importance on this bicycle having its opposites or ‘counterfeits’ of self-volition, self-satisfaction, automaticity, complacency, which may lead to a corresponding wheel of ‘stresses’ of death-feeling, shame, pain, fear. This in turn may atomic number 82 to ‘inner contests’,ane two 3 which hopefully overcome these spiritual deficiencies.
Physics and Psychology
In his search for underlying logic, as well as for universality, Whiteman converted his ‘psychological’ bicycle into a sixteen-crease number organization, amongst the aim of integrating it with a ‘physical’ sixteen-bend number system derived from iii space in addition to three fourth dimension dimensions. He noted that iii of the creative functions – campaign, way, in addition to maturing – are composite, containing two ‘first principles’ of meat too being, equivalent to potentiality as well as actualization. In turn, inwardness and being each accept iii constituents, termed past him ‘hypostases’, pregnant underlying, irreducible causes. The three hypostases of substance were seen equally role, agency, terminate. The hypostases of being were actuation, becoming, manifestation, the three-phase structure of creation called in Upanishadic philosophy the Great Stride of Vishnu.1 So, for case, ‘deciding on agency’ combines ‘way’ (gist) first alongside ‘actuation’ (beingness), and so alongside ‘becoming’ (existence), in addition to lastly amongst manifestation (being). The 3rd quarter, West, brings prior causes into manifestation purely equally ‘being’ together with so lacks an ‘center’ hypostasis.
This analysis allows the development of a number organization in psychology, as well as so the prospect of comparing alongside a issue system inward physics.i ii iii From these issue systems Whiteman intended to supply ‘a clear-cutting explanatory organisation... equally, for case, the basic laws of mechanics are exhibited earlier whatsoever problems are tackled’.2 The hypostases of centre were numbered i = role, two = agency, three = cease. The hypostases of being were numbered vi = actuation, v = becoming, iv = manifestation/grounding. So, for case ‘East’ tin be expressed every bit the combination sixteen (enthusiasm), xv (inspiration), 14 (intention). Combining the numbers 1 to vi results inwards xvi subfunctions, inward understanding amongst ‘xv + 1 kalās, stages inwards whatever creative human action, equally recognized in the Upanishads’.three
The physical issue system was derived from the 3 infinite too three fourth dimension dimensions. One fourth dimension dimension lies inward potentiality-fields amongst a time-ordered, infinite-similar facial expression noted to a higher place in connexion alongside precognition. Another fourth dimension dimension or role involves the processes leading to physical actualization from fourth dimension-structured potentiality. Finally in that location is physical clock-fourth dimension; it is the alone time-dimension that is measurable. Combining the half dozen dimensions yields a 16-flexure number organisation similar the psychological subfunctions, ‘inwards such shut correspondence with the formulations of quantum theory that at that place is an obvious invitation to demo the two equally 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, yet, satisfied Whiteman’second thought that to explicate what nosotros experience is to
admit a subjective cycle, such as mystics, many theologians, too close to psychologists have admitted. This bicycle, inwards its virtually consummate form is sixteenfold, too parallels exactly what may live called the ‘globe bike’ (as it appears in Quantum Field Theory) inward every mode, piece manifesting itself inward every sort of man experience. This is a grade of potentiality which is discernible, as well as indeed can live lived past the private inwards an enormous diverseness of ‘altered states of consciousness’...three
Whiteman’sec Scientific Mysticism was a revolutionary try to discern as well as characterize this potentiality.
John Poynton
Literature
i. Whiteman, J.H.chiliad. (1986). Old too New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical Earth-view in addition to inner contest. Volume 1, An Introduction to Scientific Mysticism. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
2. Whiteman, J.H.thou. (2000). Old together with New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical globe-opinion together with inner competition. Volume two, Dynamics of Spiritual Development. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
iii. Whiteman, J.H.one thousand. (2006). Old as well as New Evidence on the Meaning of Life: the mystical world-opinion too inner competition. Volume 3, Universal Theology too Life inward other Worlds. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
four. Whiteman, J.H.thou. (1961). The Mystical Life. London: Faber together with Faber.
5. Whiteman, J.H.K. (1993). Aphorisms on Spiritual Method: the ‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ in the light of mystical feel. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
half dozen. Husserl, due east. (1931). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology (trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson). London: Allen & Unwin.
seven. Heisenberg, westward. (1959). Physics in addition to Philosophy: the revolution inward modernistic science. London: Allen together with Unwin.
8. Whiteman, J.H.K. (1967). Philosophy of Space too Time too the Inner Constitution of Nature: a phenomenological report. London: Allen in addition to Unwin.
nine. Whiteman, J.H.yard. (1977). Parapsychology and physics. In Wolman, B.B. (ed.) Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.
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