Universal Self Consciousness
If you’ve been reading my blog for a few years, then you may have noticed a gradual shift from the topic of religious pluralism (either in metaphysical or epistemological terms) to the topic of consciousness/mind. That’s because I think, rather than starting with a highly convoluted set of truth claims, experiences and practices embedded in historically situated religions, it’s more useful to start with the human mind. How we perceive “the religious” and how our minds have developed to think “religiously” are at the core of the tangled web of religious beliefs/practices that pluralism seeks to address.
That said, I think one of the most pressing problems is that of reductionism. It’s important in thinking about what the human self is, what the human mind is, and thus religious experience, which is mediated through the mind.
So it was with great interest that I came across Leonard Angel’s “Universal Self Consciousness mysticism and the physical completeness principle”, written after his had published Enlightenment East and West, which is now on my (always-growing) list of books to read. He takes on a whole host of interpreters of mystical experience–in particular the experience of union with the divine/universe, dissolution of the self, etc. Those folks include some you’ve seen discussed here: David Ray Griffin and John Hick, as well as other major figures: William Alston, William Wainwright, Ken Wilber, and Peter Kokol. Along the way he engages philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers and Tim Crane. Thus, right up my alley.
Here’s his basic argument:
1. These modern philosophers of religion interpret USC mysticsm in various ways, but all of which they believe are in line with a modern scientific approach.
2. Modern science assumes that humans constitute a causally closed, physically complete system.
3. However, the interpretations in (1) all violate the PPC (principle of physical completeness).
That means another explanation is in order, which either 1) takes on the claim of PPC explicitly or 2) actually is in line with it.
Skipping ahead to Angel’s positive contribution (although much could be said on the specific arguments of each philosopher), he argues that USC mystics are incorporating a different form of self-identification, which involves: the causal body, the perspectival body, and the volitional body. Typically the first two are re-identified; other times the mystic is said to have amazing powers of will extending beyond their immediate surroundings.
Angel is an ontological reductionist about persons–he thinks that we are just our arrangement of atoms and psycho-physical states (which in turn reduce to the atoms). Thus, mystics are basically just training themselves to recognize that fact about reality. The ego, conventionally understood, is a useful evolutionary adaptation, but it’s possible to re-identify beyond these bodily limits, without requiring a non-physical entity. Angel describes the perspectival shift thus: “a Universal Self Consciousness mystic takes it that the entire universe constitutes her body, and that her body is perspectivally centered…” and the causal shift “the mystic may take it that all things in the knowable universe have been…causally related to the factors producing her current consciousness.”
The article explicitly cuts out anatman forms of Buddhist mysticism for analysis, perhaps because they are already reductionist. Another conclusion that some might have problems with is that we must cut away the embedded metaphysical claims of mystics to get at the phenomenological core.
I am still circling around the thesis for my paper, but I keep going back to how Kierkegaard assumes the irreducibility of the self as a starting point. Human need for god is experienced by virtue of an inner struggle and the insufficiency of the external world. What implications would reductionism about the self have for religion–not only the USC experience, which is not going to be a commonly aimed-for or experienced phenomenon? If we are physicalists about consciousness, does it matter? Must we have solidly egoistic boundaries in order to embark on a religious quest, even if that quest ultimately changes them to some degree? (Christians don’t deny personhood, but they would incorporate persons into the body of Christ–the church, as well as some form of union with Christ himself)
Leonard Angel, “Universal Self Consciousness mysticism and the physical completeness principle”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 55: 1-29, 2004.
** By the way, in the footnotes I’ve looked through in Andrew Newberg’s peer-reviewed neuroscience paper, the only philosopher of religion I’ve come across is William Stace, who comes under fire in Angel’s paper. For a while, I’ve wondered what assumptions about “mysticism” and “religion” some of these scientists begin their research with.