The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (18 page)

A high point was reached when one of the fakirs noticed a professor
of psychology avidly intrigued and dumbfounded. The fakir, sensing the
longing, told the good professor he, too, could walk the fire if he so
desired -- by
holding the fakir's hand
. The good man was seized with
faith that he could, shed his shoes, and hand-in-hand they walked the
fire ecstatic and unharmed.
These phenomena question our assumptions concerning biological
necessities. They are the margins of error¤ in our tightknit world
view. In the scientific picture these margins of error prove to be
passports to new areas of thought, as Max Planck said. But this never
invalidates the functional reality of current postulates and systems.
That the quasars may lead to concepts of speed and energy beyond those
given by the Einsteinian universe does not lessen in any way the truth
of Einstein's system or denigrate one of history's proudest times. New
contracts are no more true than false, but matters of choice. The new,
in fact, needs the old against which to move to gain meaning or value. The
riddle of the quasars, and the inherent promise of them, is comprehensible
only against the backdrop of our current viewpoints. The quasars will not
fit
into
these current viewpoints -- and only by the
misfitting
itself
are the quasars in fact
noticeable
-- or
nameable
as quasars
.
---
* borderline conditions
And so -- fire burns. The cause-effect of fire burn underlies the
physical world. There could be no such phenomenon as fire did fire not
burn. But fire does not have to burn a person in this particular case
at this particular time. Neither does cancer have to kill this particular
person at this particular time; nor do any of the other grim dragons
of necessity
have
to apply to
this
person or
that
person -- nor to
any person who can believe in another way, or another construct.
Is there a pattern? Yes. There is the conscious
desire
for the
experience, the asking of the question. There is the
detachment
from
the commonplace; the
commitment
to replace the conventional with a
new construct; the
passion and decorum
-- the intensive preparation,
the gathering of materials for the answer; the
freedom to be dominated
by the subject of desire -- the sudden seizure, the breakthrough of mind
that gives the inexplicable conviction that it can, after all, be done;
and then the
serving
of the new construct, the instant application.
If a few lone people can reverse causality in isolated cases, what could
truly-agreeing people in a mass do with broad statistics? (And in this
new worldwide monoculture our technological push is so bent on achieving,
what kind of agreement concerning reality is going to be the dominant
shaping force?)
Erich Neumann, in an unrelated context, contended that the actual process
of fire is experienced "with the aid of images" which derive from the
interior of one's psychic world, and are "projected upon the external
world." The subjective reaction, he claims, always takes precedence
historically. Fire-walking seems to confirm this. Fire-walking is made
possible by replacing "historical precedents" with non-ordinary images.
The non-ordinary event takes place in the external world through the
same reality function by which all events take place.
Fire-walking is found in "simpler" societies probably because these
people have fewer investments in strict causal modes. We are so heavily
committed to our constructs that any suggestion of their relativeness
fills us with anxiety. It is for reward that the Hindu undergoes the
discipline and risk. The followers of Jesus were those who "hated the
world." One does not abandon an eminently satisfactory system. New life
can only be created by metaphoric mutation -- synthetic re-creation of
the old, and the old must be surrendered for this synthesis to take place.
To give up one's belief concerning some structure of reality, there
must be an image that stands for the new goal or framework, even if
the specifics of that goal are unclear. The new goal must be ultimately
desirable or ambiguity results, an ambiguity which prevents the new from
forming and only fragments and weakens the old. It is an all-or-nothing
process.
Voodoo, for instance, is a potent and real power in the Caribbean and
other areas. If a man learns that he is destined to die, he tends
to oblige. The same force is operative in our culture, but under
sophisticated metaphors and more subtle sureties. If we are told that
one of every four of us is destined to die of a certain disease, we fill
the social requirements. The one on whom the lot randomly falls feels
fated to oblige as surely as the black victim of voodoo.
If an arbitrary and premature death is announced as your statistical
imperative, why not give up allegiance to that system and devote yourself
to something less statistical? With death the alternative, surely you
could generate the same intensity the Hindu does with Kataragama, and
find a new structure of concept-percept. Granted, the statistical world
is a broad and pawerful way. You would need a strong image for the new
goal to break completely with the bad-news system and risk your life in
a new one. It is the equivalent of asking a passionate question. If you
hold and serve the question, until all ambiguity is erased and you really
believe in your question, it will be answered; the break-point will arrive
when you will suddenly be "ready." Then you must put your hand to the
plow and not look back; walk out onto the water unmindful of the waves.
Jung speaks of life's potential as governed by law and yet not governed
by law, rational and irrational. Bruner refers to 'fate' as that which
is beyond one's control, a residuum left after one has run through the
census of our possibilities.
"Running through the census" is an act of reason. Fire-walking shows
that possibility opens to extremities beyond our census. I cannot reason
out fire-walking. There are things to which our intellect gives assent,
and vague things to which only our soul can give assent. I know that two
plus two must make four or our house of cards comes tumbling down. I also
know that three loaves and two fishes can equal five thousand hungry
mouths fed.
Tillich speaks of God as the
ground
of our being. Our ultimate concerns
are what this ground is for us. They shape God as He is for us. A faith
in God as an ultimate beyond the perimeters of our reason and experience
can give an ontological "warp." We may assume and by the assumption be
open to new ground, Our images of belief are clothed in the flesh and
blood of reality by action. The broad stream of semi-conscious belief
cannot see any possibility but imitation of those actions already given
form. This limits possibility to a priori modes of social acceptance,
harmful or not. This is the broad road of automata leading to its own
destruction. Blake wrote that the man who did not believe in miracles
surely made it certain that he would never take part in one.
The Hindu's belief restructures the way in which he shapes his data.
Something unusual happens to his "editorial hierarchy" and something
unusual happens in the world in which he moves. It is the function of
structuring that counts. No claim is made for mind over matter. The
successful fire-walker or hook-swinger simply alters and reshapes an
event by an ultimate allegiance or commitment. He is then in the world,
but not quite of its ordinary makeup.
If for any reason, under any circumstances, hypnagogic, anagogic,
hypnotic, spiritual, metaphysical, or what have you, fire does not burn
a man, the cause-effect framework, considered a final arbiter all to
itself and the means by which our current priesthood holds us in bondage,
cannot be held as unalterable by the mind of even a single person. The
hard-line realist, the biogenetic and determinist psychologist and
their like are simply inadequate to cover life in its fullest, actual
terms. We are sold short by our tough-minded dogmatists. The state of
mind referred to as 'faith,' bandied about though it is, is profound
beyond all "objective truth and logical thinking."
7
behold and become
The word hypnotism alienates some people, creating a semantic barrier
to hearing, even when the point to be made lies considerably beyond
the ordinary impressions of what the word implies. Ernest Hilgard, of
Stanford University, spent ten years in research on one question: why
can only about twenty percent of the population undergo a deep trance
experience? In his exploration, Dr. Hilgard threw light on the whole
problem of mind, differences of world view and personality, as well as on
the characteristics of the trance state. Hilgard's text makes for rather
specialized reading, however, and the occultic, popular approach too often
is accepted as the norm for hypnotism. Legitimate studies offer a far more
sensational, radical, and novel picture, in their cautious and subdued
tones, than those writers whose intent is generally toward sensationalism
and whose uncritical extravagances prejudice many in the scientific
field from "hearing" the significance of legitimate trance studies.
The trance state is another manifestation of the
autistic
mode of mind.
Bloodless wounds can be inflicted on a hypnotized person, or undergone by
a conscious person in a voluntary, self-induced trance. Enormous strength
and ridiculous weakness can be induced. Earlier notions of the powers of
suggestion, as a kind of super-adrenalin enhancing native capabilities,
no longer will cover all cases of trance phenomena, though it surely
enters as an element.
Carl Jung told of a young lady patient, disabled by anemia, whose body
weight had dropped to seventy pounds. Hypnotized, she was told of her
enormous strength. Her head was then placed on one chair, her heels on
another, her body easily spanning the gap in a straight line -- a feat
the best of athletes have difficulty doing. Jung must have been fond
of this trick, for he recounted a similar case in which he and several
other doctors then
sat
on the patient -- and Jung was himself a very
large man -- without any detectable strain, discomfort, or after-effects
on the patient.
In 1966 interesting experiments were performed on student volunteers who
fasted for three days until blood samples showed their blood sugar to
be extremely low. Hypnotized, they were given imaginary bowls of sugar
to eat. Then samples were again taken, which showed a several hundred
percent increase in blood sugar. Others fasted for three days; samples
showed the basic food nutrients of the blood to be very low. Hypnotized,
the students were given imaginary meals which they "ate" with gusto. Blood
samples taken afterward showed a several hundred percent increase in
the basic food nutrients.
This cannot imply pulling a rabbit out of the hat when there is no rabbit
in the hat, neither does it suggest a quick, magical way out of the food
problem. Perhaps the body reverses the blood-ingestion process, drawing
on tissue
for
the nutrients. Even this would be no small thing. The
body manages, somehow and at all costs, to respond to the
conceptual
framework
induced by the hypnotist. Somehow the materials are found
to make real, to realize, the mind's notion. A conceptual demand brings
about a change in the ordinary mechanisms of life. The same process can
be seen in the fire-walker, who reverses or nullifies or bypasses the
most extreme cause-effect to be found in life.
The term 'a-causal' used to appeal to me, tinged with a bit of magic
perhaps, but something causes non-ordinary events even though the
causality falls outside the criteria of the times. Perhaps the focus
of attention has been misdirected heretofore. Perhaps the "cause" of
non-ordinary effects and the "cause" of ordinary effects are simply
different points of emphasis of a single causal function. Are we not
dealing with the Price-Carington notion that any idea will realize itself
in any way it can -- unless inlaibited by conflicting notions? In the
trance state, the world of conflicting notions is temporarily set aside.
Carington would claim that there are phenomena that achieve only some
aspects of a reality event, but not a sufficient number. Mirages,
apparitions, many occultic experiences, hallucinations, and so on
could be explored from this standpoint. Suppose a group of people were
to experience a non-ordinary event that would not fit their conceptual
frame of possibility -- that agreement on which their normal world hangs
together. They would call the event an hallucination, or
folie à
deux
, and so keep their categories for the norm intact, lest their
ideation collapse and they fall into chaos.
The situation is complicated by the fact that not every personality type
will experience a non-ordinary event. Hilgard searched for the properties
of mind that made one student capable of entering deep trance, another
not. The backgrounds proved varied and general, but one feature came to
light and proved to be the decisive element.
As children, all those capable of deep trance as adults had shared
in fantasy play and imaginative ventures of some sort with their
parents. Their parents had read to them a great deal, entering with
them into the "inner space travel" that reading brings about. Or their
parents told them tales, ghostly stories, saw giant-castles in the clouds
with them, played "let's-pretend" with them, listened to the children's
fantasies with respect. And, not incidentally at all, always brought
them back to reality of the norm with "Enough of that now, back we come,"
back to the world of real people.
This background gives the temperament capable of deep religious experiences,
empathy, compassion; ability to see from a different world view, willingness
to agree quickly with the adversary, and other marks of a flexible tolerance
that does not feel threatened by strangeness. Surely the problem of the
"hawk" and "dove" sets of mind can be understood within this line of study,
and some grasp gained of the fundamental gap between the two that logic
alone cannot bridge.