The Crack in the Cosmic Egg (5 page)

This autistic experience, a kind of esthetic illumination, gives the
pattern of all creative formations. Even my own small "illumination"
which triggered the search leading to this book, happened in this
way. I had spent more than two years reading, corresponding, thinking,
struggling with the relation of thought and reality in general, and
with the mechanics of metanoia in particular, for a form of this had
dramatically altered my own life.
One day, following an exciting connection of ideas that had unfolded
over several weeks and seemed tantalizingly close to "jelling," I grew
stale and unable to go further. I went out to relax with my children
and dutifully climbed an apple tree at their insistence that it gave a
lovely view. And there, in my own little suspended moment out of mind,
I "saw." The connecting link between the fragmented parts of my search
fused. There was a great wash of understanding, powerful, total. I had my
answer. Nothing was specific or articulate. It just
was
, in a perfectly
clear kind of ultimate certainty. The answer seemed, utterly remote from
my thinking, however, far larger than the sum total of my insignificant
bits of material gathered over the years, and far exceeding the scope
of my own ideas or capacity of thought. I knew the "translating" of that
experience, making it articulate, structuring the answer into a logical,
communicable shape, would involve me for a long time.
Let me add now that in my experience what was understood to be the
"answer" was the very function by which I had achieved my "seeing." My
answer was a turning in on the process of questioning. That is, the answer
to my passionate pursuit was insight into how the answers to passionate
questions are formed in the mind. I saw that this was but an extension
of the very ontological function by which "things were." I saw that this
was the way the "empty category" of science was shaped and filled. For
me no "universal out-there truth" was given. Rather, I saw that the,
only "truth" for us is the process of questioning what truth might be,
and receiving answers in keeping with the nature of our questions.
I will return to this question-answer procedure in some detail. For now
I want to explore the state of mind involved in the moment of answer
itself. The state is brought on by a
chance suspension
of ordinary
thinking, following a rigorous exercise of normal logic. Both the Sonata
and apple tree experiences show how the autistic mode breaks into mind
with "universals," but universals in keeping with the mundane nature
of the suggestions triggering the experience, suggestions drawing on
ordinary life and its materials.
An unconscious synthesis is involved in the formation of this
answering experience.
Unconscious
, though, carries too many limiting
connotations. For instance, imagination (creating images not present to
the senses) is surely one of the active ingredients of creative thinking,
and the prime ingredient of the "empty category." But imagination is our
conscious play with potential, just not hampered with modifications or
adjustments to other things or other thinkers. A sonata-type experience,
or apple tree illumination, the finally-arriving scientific
Eureka!
or for that matter: Higamous, Hogamous, Women are Monogamous, etc.,
happens to a person. The synthesis is other to him, even as it is
wholly within him, and he is within it.
Yet it should not be overlooked that the great postulate-illumination-
answer happens only to a mind that has been deeply immersed in the proper
materials for its genesis, and has passionately asked the question for
a prolonged period. The
Eureka!
arrives out of the blue, but from a
well-prepared and primed one. The spirit bloweth where it listeth, but
inevitably the direction it finally takes is determined by hard work
and true commitment.
Autistic thinking, then, refers to an autonomous, self-contained
kind of thinking that makes no adjustment to the world of other
things or other thinkers, but it must have its materials from this
other source. A-thinking includes conscious imagination and apparently
unconscious processes and so offers a label for a wide range of similar
phenomena.
The 'hypnagogic state,' a jargon term you do not have to know to
experience, is a common form of autistic thinking that "happens" to
a person. Have you ever spent a day in some rare, new venture, such
as picking wild strawberries, and that night, just as you start to
drift off to sleep, found yourself suddenly "looking" at the most real
strawberries of your life? In fact, they are more than real; they are the
most fragrant, beautiful, green-leafed, red-fruited berries conceivable
to mind, occurring in a vital and sensual immediacy more real than any
actual occurrence of your life.
Consider the similarity between this "strawberry hypnagogery," my friend's
Mozart Sonata, and my apple tree experience, and you will see the basic
outline by which life moves randomly from possibility to possibility.
This kind of thinking acts on some exceptional, dramatic, emotional,
ultimately serious, or even just repetitive, involvement from actual
experience. It synthesizes this into something larger and more perfect
than the original. Then the autistic synthesis breaks into the mind,
at some odd off-guard moment, when the logical processes have been
suspended. The autistic mode then presents this streamlined, utterly
superior version, as something unique, larger than life, and unavailable
to previously accepted logical manipulations.
Hans Selye wrote that every really important scientific idea he knew
of had occurred in the twilight moments between sleep and waking, that
state called hypnagogic, a point to which I will return.
The hypnagogic's strawberry vision is free of half-ripe, bird-pecked,
imperfect berries; free of gnats, dirt, sore knees, or aching back. The
sonata-illumination was beyond all mechanical frailties; beyond the
limitations of instrument, muscle and bone, the small errors, the
(adventurous) possibility of serious failure of productions that makes
precarious and tenuous a living music, or living things. My apple tree
experience showed a living unity of all things, in a tranquil simplicity
free of all the logical problems its translation would involve, and that
the "translated world" surely entails. The autistic version is free of
the excluded possibilities that stand as possible static in the standard
broadcast. This is the key issue. Autistic thinking is unambignous --
a point to which I will return time and again. To the mind in this state
all things are possible, all postulates are true. To the mind seized by
this mode, fire need not burn, affliction cripple, or disease kill.
There is, then, this freely-synthesizing aspect of mind, self-contained,
untrammeled by harsh realities, abstracting and idealizing certain
isolated phenomena from the world of realized events, and breaking into
the conscious mind with this idealization. Such breakthroughs may be
numinous, awesome, universal, with a feeling of sureness that gives the
person involved the confidence to push his translation of the experience
in spite of all outward evidence to the contrary. Polanyi believes an
esthetic appreciation of the beauty of a discovery gives its bearer
his sense of rightness and conviction. This is surely an element, for
the autistic non-ambiguity is highly colored with esthetic sanction
and absoluteness.
Bearing this in mind, consider again William Blake's claim that: "Eternity
is in love with the productions of time." And add to this Jesus' postulate
that: "What you loose on earth is loosed in Heaven."
The hypnagogic form of the autistic state, though happening as a rare
and fleeting otherness to most of us, can be developed by care and
discipIine. The price is suspension of the ordinary world view. If the
ordinary categories which hold our world together can be bypassed,
anything capable of being thought of can be "true." Sometimes the
hypnagogic state happens to a person as a kind of "empty category." There
are rare half-sleep moments when we suddenly realize that we are in this
pseudo-dream state. At those times the first flicker of thought can
be instantly "made real" in the dream state and directed by conscious
desire and volition. The erotic dream is occasionally a form of this.
The "little lizard" divination rite of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer, don
Juan (of whom more later), created a form of this "empty category." And
the divination would answer the first question asked. It would succeed,
however, only if the question were presented without confusion or
ambiguity. Paul Tillich wrote that the "hidden content" of prayer was
always the decisive factor, which is another expression of the same
function, and a point to which I will return. The real assumption of
our underlying beliefs is the determinant in our lives. Surface verbal
plays of mind are often only forms of wishful thinking posited against
the deep strata of a belief to the contrary. But the deep strata are the
determinant in the reality event because of the nonambiguous nature of
this level of thought. Jesus' "prayer in the secret place" refers to this
level of certainty that underlies all the contingencies of any reality.
Ambiguous confusion, lack of an "ultimate desire" or basic motivation,
fragments and dissolves the autistic-hypnagogic possibilities, should they
occur to a person's mind. Seven centuries ago, Roger Bacon recognized
that mathematics would be the gateway to the sciences. This is because
of the nonambiguous nature of mathematics. An idea that can be expressed
mathematically is one that can be represented unambiguously, and anything
which can be represented and believed in non-ambiguously tends to be
expressed in reality. Mathematics serves as a projection device giving
objective certainly, just as the god Kataragama does for the Hindu,
for instance.
The Tibetan Yoga spends years developing a state of mind that bears,
from written reports, direct relation to the hypnagogic. The Yoga
cultivated, practiced, and finally "entered into" the potential of his
autistic mode of thinking. The state he brought about was a subset of
his ordinary reality, organized along specific and controlled lines, as
found in hypnotism. By a subset I mean that he drew on his background
experience in selective ways, setting up a world within a world, the
equivalent of a concretized dream state under direct conscious control.
(Later, the similarities between this Hindu activity and the Path of
Knowledge outlined by the sorcerer, don Juan, will become apparent.)
One Yogic activity was the production of a 'tulpa,' a phantasm, or
imaginary person. The production was a slow development which could
itself only be undertaken in a mature stage of training. Eventually the
'tulpa' creation would begin to form and take on aspects of reality for
the subject-creator. Fleeting glimpses, peripheral and insubstantial,
would become more stable, until a full and permanent image could be
brought to focus. A 'tulpa' became responsive to speech and the whole
sensory range of the subject. 'Tulpas' developed definite personality
traits and full capacities for ordinary human response. Occasionally a
'tulpa' would take on strong enough reality aspects to be glimpsed by
other people, people who had no knowledge of the production-project
itself. 'Tulpas' were known to display the same passionate adherences
to their developed personalities as would a real person (bringing to
mind the strange tenacity of the personality, Eve Black, in Thigpen's
case of the
Three Faces of Eve
).
The Tibetan monk used this technique to create a form of the local
goddess, voluptuous creature, as a consort with whom connubial bliss could
be indulged at whim. This might seem only a cultic freak of subjectivity,
but several aspects of it are indicative of both metanoia, that creates
physicists from students, and the
Eureka!
postulate that brings about
reality-changing concepts and "discoveries."
First, the process of mind takes its idea and its material from the
real world. The goddess is a well-established and familiar part of the
culture. Further, experience with a real woman must be undergone by the
novice, followed by a complete mastery of all sexual desire. That is,
the novice not only experiences a real woman, he then must gain complete
mental control over his actual glandular reactions (and it is a medical
fact that the Yoga can control all "old-brain" autonomous activities,
such as heart beat, body heat, glandular output, and so on), as well
as psychological reactions, until he can turn desire on or off at will,
without ambiguous double-thinking.
These are the "given materials," then, that are acted upon by the
catalyzing synthesis within the autistic mode of thinking. The materials
are synthesized and "given back" to ordinary thinking in a unified image,
larger and greater than life. True to all autistic creations, the goddess
achieved proves superior to frail woman, though some plain Tibetan girl
was part of the raw material for the "divine synthesis." To achieve a
state of non-ambiguity is the final goal of Yogic training. Then when
a specific desire is singled out, as for instance 'tulpa' creation, the
attention of mind, the passionate pursuit, brings about a slow metanoia
of the necessary concepts, tranforming them to direct the percepts in the
needed ways. Finally the Yoga's senses respond according to the dictates
of his "editorial hierarchy" of mind, and the goddess materializes and
becomes real for him.
The superiority of autistic creations suggest an additive unavailable
from the ordinary ambiguous processes of mind. Autistic thinking can
apparently synthesize out of the sum total of the context of the ultimate
desire triggering the process. But it also adds that maddening quality
of perfection, larger and more real than any of the elements in the
triggering background. The autistic experience is felt as a wholeness
that lies beyond all mundane reality, a numinous quality that makes us
feel we have received lightning from the hand of God.