Rational Mysticism: Dispatches from the Border Between Science and Spirituality

Rating:
Summary: Cherish your memories and be there now
Review: Unfortunately, Horgan excluded a piece that perfectly states my dislike of Buddhism. Fortunately, this outtake is available on his website.

From WHY I GAVE UP ZEN by John Horgan: "Every time I order myself to be here now I'm not being here now. I'm thinking about being here now. It's self-defeating from the start, like trying to remember to forget. In heeding the command, I violate it. My rebellion spread to other spiritual truisms, to Sumi's injunction to be child-like. Childrens' spontaneity and joy spring from their self-absorption and ignorance. What do they know of death, suffering, the woes of the world? A spirituality that denies these realities is shallow, escapist. And what's so great about being in the moment, anyway? We should revel in our minds' ability to range freely through space and time rather than being trapped like animals in the here and now."

Rating:
Summary: Horgan wrestles Proteus, extracts rational answers
Review: What object of rational inquiry could be more slippery and mercuroid for a science writer to tackle than mystic states of mind, which are properly apprehended only by their subjects, who can report them only in terms that are unverifiable, incommensurate, and accidental? To bring his protean subject/object to accounts, Horgan proves himself in "Rational Mysticism" capable of shifting through as many shapes and guises as his manifold quarry can assume: particle physicist, neurophysiologist, biochemist, cognitive scientist, shamanistic anthropologist, religious philosopher, meditation adept, transpersonal psychiatrist, psychedelic performance artist. Only a superbly honed intellectual agonist whose strength of erudition is animated by the quick instinct of a journalist could keep such a dendritic Laocoon of mystical exponents and investigators on the same mat. Only a writer whose technical composure is animated by spiritual ardor would even try. Horgan's experimental protocol in his newest -- and to date most provocative and engaging -- book is (1) to yield plastically to the unmediated force of expression of his eminent and often charismatic interviewees (a galaxy of mystagogues and researchers as diverse in temperament and method as James Austin, Susan Blackmore, Stanislav Grof, Albert Hofmann, Terence McKenna, Andrew Newberg, Christian Ratsch, Alexander Shulgin, Huston Smith, Steven Weinberg, and Ken Wilber), recording as sympathetically and uncritically as he is able the programmatic arguments and personalities of each; (2) to put the arguments of each interviewee to incremental strain test as Horgan-the-writer gradually resumes his own "remembered" shape as a radical skeptic; (3) to compare and contrast the expressions and doctrines of each interviewee with those of the rest of the book's roster, broadly grouped into Arminian lumpers and postmodern splitters; and finally (4) to try the variety of mystical elixirs so distilled against the touchstone of his own entheogenic experiences, which dispose him to a theodicy of theo-idiocy that is offset by resurgent awe at the brute strangeness of existence and by spasmodic joy in the sad miracle of life. Only a mind of exceptional candor, wit, and decency could dare experiment so freely in its sympathies.

Rating:
Summary: A good primer in empirical consciousness exploration
Review: _Rational Mysticism_ should be one of the first books that consciousness exploration neophytes read. It was one of the first books I read upon embarking on this path.

If you are interested in an experiential, empirical approach to your own spirituality, and skeptical of the sea of New Age gurus and dogma we are currently awash in, this book will help you break free and find your own way. As other reviewers note, it also does a fine job of helping us break through one of the most troublesome dualisms of our age, resolving the supposed divide between Science and Religion. And in doing so it infers a path which also collapses the divide between laity and the priesthood. The stories in this book point the way toward a 21st century mysticism, an experiential path toward God.

Written in a journalistic style, it covers many of the leading thinkers and approaches to consciousness exploration. It deals fairly and in detail with the area of psychedelics. It is balanced, and a quick read. I usually recommend this book to entheogenic beginners, along with Daniel Pinchbeck's _Breaking Open the Head_.