COMMENTS ON PROFESSOR CLARK'S 1965 PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS "THE MYSTICAL CONSCIOUSNESS"

	There has long been the tendency to confuse what the phrase "mystical experience" stands for, and that (complex psycho-physical phenomena) which causes the so-designated behavior pat terns (including the imaged, attitudinal, and feeling reactions). I suspect Prof. Clark unintentionally does this in his Presidential Address to the Society using as he does in places a common and ordinary sense of speaking about the subject. The following are examples (the under lining is my own):(See Note 1)

	"“Mystical experience develops compassion and sympathy partly because it breaks through the superficial levels of seeming and
	appearance to that level of personality where all people are one.... (p. 157). It is the testimony of many mystics that mystical
	experience increases sympathy, the sense of oneness with others, and compassion.... (p. 160).

	Pascal was so shaken and changed by his experience that this master of clear French prose was reduced to a few broken phrases in
	his attempt to describe what happened to him. (p. 155) Aldous Huxley has stated that mysticism is the one effective method yet
	discovered for "the radical and permanent transformation of personality." (p. 154) (See Note 2)

	Huxley's statement may be extreme, but there is no doubt that there have been notable cases of sudden and dramatic changes in
	personality through religious experience that surpass in effectiveness anything mediated by psychological medicine or social
	science (p. 154)."

Simply put, my point is that it is not the mystical experience that 'develops,' 'breaks through,' 'increases sympathy,' 'changes,' changes 'through' (by means of). The mystical experience means that development, that breakthrough, that increase in sympathy, that sense of oneness, compassion, that shook-up feeling, and revolutionary change. The major task is to physiologically and psychologically trace the causes operative in producing these changes, feelings, etc. I assume that in the above context, for example in the last quotation and in other places I have not quoted, Prof. Clark regards the religious experience and the mystical experience as synonymous terms. If Prof. Clark means by "religious experience" something else which at other places he so implies such as religious observances, obligations, activities, etc., then there is no serious doubt some of these things, at certain times, for certain people, do produce these changes in personality (like the drugs, but perhaps not as intensely and/or quickly). I would suggest that these religious observances and activities will be interpreted and explained in the future physiologically and chemically as are (will be) the psychedelics in their effect upon human behavior. Certainly words, symbols, sound, intentions, comprehension, etc., if not physical themselves in the act of being comprehended or "had" as energy systems, have at least physically correlated and scientifically investigable counterparts. Prof. Clark writes as if he would have to agree with this statement of methodology, when he admits: (a) that the same mystical experience can be produced by a drug (p. 155), and (b) that (in the future?) pills will (might) replace the other means of producing the mystical experience (p. 160). Prof. Clark writes:

	Investigators have reported that results are much better when the experience (of alcoholics as described in medical sources Prof.
	Clark refers to) stimulated by the chemicals is interpreted by the subject as a transcendental one (p. 155).

Two points here: (1) I would not hold that the experience has "much better" results when "interpreted" transcendentally (one can "interpret" alcoholism to oneself-if he is an alcoholic or to others, in a "transcendental" way, yet this of itself does not issue in "much better" results), but that the "transcendental" interpretation is possibly: (a) a sign of the patient's beginning to "see" himself objectively (which is sometimes a precursor to better management of oneself), and/or what is more likely (b) the feeling of "detachment," of "being outside yourself," or "of not being in control, but of being controlled." Now this latter is a psychological (and primarily linguistic) transcendence and not an ontological one-this mental state of being "apart" from the source of activity may be interpreted transcendentally, but it is not transcendental (nor is that activity transcendentally produced).(See Note 3)

Something of this sort is common to the "mystical" experience: "I couldn't have caused the experience. It was so overwhelming, so overpowering, as if something had complete control over me and what was happening to me. I was possessed by some (strange and/or supematural) other power." But exactly this kind of feeling of "something else" being in control (e.g., in violent anger, in saying something silly, in picking up that drink that "we" know we shouldn't, etc.) is also common enough in ordinary experience:-"I couldn't keep myself from doing it. It was as if something other than my self was acting."-yet we do not usually refer this to any "transcendental" agency, but to a different function or facet of our self. I would thus suggest as a possibility that the success of the results, or of the experience, is not a function of interpreting the experience transcendentally, but of the personality depth (and related intensity and duration) that the experience has-which depth "transcends" the immediately present personality drive (more drink, or what have you). The (whole) weight of the person's acquired ethical (and/or religious) convictions, conditionings, and predispositions (this "depth"), may be brought to bear upon those responses to a given intensely emotionally charged experience-whether "mystical" or "ordinary," they are not basically different in kind.(See Note 4) There is no "transcendence" in any supernatural sense, but a "transcendence" in the sense of prior and/or of "alter" levels of functions. (2) Where the success does seem to be related to one's belief in the transcendent aspect of the experience, I wonder if this success might not be explained in terms of an authoritarian personality whose principle source of moral correction and initiative has been an external source (here exemplified in the "transcendental") rather than an inner compulsion. Thus, would a non-authoritarian type have less inclination to interpret the experience "transcendentally"? And would a "transcendental" interpretation by a nonauthoritarian type have "much better" results? I do not believe, as Prof. Clark does, that mysticism is inimical to communism.

	Indeed, it may be an important weapon in the struggle against Communism, in that Communism represents an over-emphasis and
	perversion of that materialism and rationalism of which the West already has too much (pp. 160-161).

At least two comments: (1) The mystical experience is not (intrinsically and necessarily) anti-communistic, anti-materialistic, anti-rationalistic (e.g., Spinoza). There is a mystical strain in the very roots of dialectical materialism (and I would venture to say a materialistic strain in mysticism itself, both metaphysically and politically) from Heraclitus' Logos on through Hegel's Absolute, to present-day analyses by Soviet philosophers. Mysticism with certain social (and political) trappings can be used as a weapon against communism (this should not be a ground for having mysticism recommended to us), and with other trappings can be used as a weapon by the communists. I see no absurdity in the possibility of using the mystical experience as a weapon against the religious as such, against religions, or against any of the religions, provided dogmatic and loyal adherence is developed to the specific interpretations and images which are formulated (which interpretations and images need not be "religious"). In point of fact, communism may be better equipped to go all-out in the social, moral, and technological use of drug-induced (mystical-type) experiences, since at least in theory they should have no problems of (a) who shall control the use and distribution of these drugs, and (b) to what end they are to be directed, and by whom and when. True, submission to mysticism may be submission to the development of man, but it certainly will mean a different man and society. I do not sense (on the contrary) an "overemphasis and perversion" of Western materialism and rationalism in communism. Many would assert that the communists are better using and expressing the realm of spirit (no "moral" or "religious" connotations necessarily implied) and that the West is lagging behind in this respect. Communism's spirituality and faith, its ideals and idealism (historically communism owes its being to several forms of idealism, notwithstanding its stress upon "dialectical materialism") may not be (ritualistically, politically) the same in all respects as ours, but this is not sufficient to deduce that they are not adequately emphasized and are perverted.

(2) Prof. Clark and generally most of us tend to incorrectly equate mysticism with religion and its forms and observances-in a logic something like this: the mystical experience and the religious experience are (essentially) the same. Religion is opposed to communism. Therefore, mysticism must be opposed to communism. Perhaps two short remarks here: (a) According to some definitions of religion (for example Eric Fromm's in his Psychoanalysis and Religion, New Haven, Yale University Press, p. 21, and John Dewey's in his A Common Faith, New Haven, Yale University Press, pp. 9-10) it is not unlikely that communism is a religion (at least it possesses all the necessary characteristics to be called a religion according to their definition). After all, what is that which makes a thing a "religious" thing but the attitudes we take towards it. In major respects thus, anything can be "religious" to us (anything in a sense can involve us in a "religion")-Existence, a symbol, a can, and even communism; (b) I would suspect that the mystical experience is itself neutral as far as the production of (specific) religious behavior (ritual, forms, observances, etc.) are concerned. It would seem empirically possible for there to be cases-both drug-induced and "natural"-where all the symptoms of the mystical experience are present, yet where no "religious behavior" is a consequence. Hence, I cannot see why the mystical experience (in either of its two primary, and more often than not in distinguishable, forms: aesthetic [joy, peace, freedom] and moral [sympathy, compassion, love, feeling of brotherhood]) cannot (be made to) issue in "religious" behavior, or "communist behavior", or whatever behavior depending on how these forms are given concrete organization and means for expression.

Notes

1 Walter Houston Clark, "The Mystical Consciousness and World Understanding," Presidential Address to the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religon, IV, No. 2, pp. 152-161. There are of course several passages where Prof. Clark does indeed convey the synonymity of the phrase "mystical experience" and the qualities associated with it (rather than with any causal components in the phenomenon).

2 Here Huxley also seems to be committing the same mistake. If Huxley means by mysticism, the mystical experience itself, then it is wrong to assert that the mystical experience is "the one effective method yet discovered . . ." since the mystical experience is not a method of procuring or inducing the experience, but is a name for the experience had-a designation for the happening itself. On the other hand, if Huxley means by "method" the exercise-induced and/or drug-induced means of producing a mystical experience (described by both Clark and Huxley as having such qualities as compassion, sympathy, oneness, liberation, knowledge, joy, peace, etc.), then it doesn't appear empirically plausible to claim-at least not at the present time since very little control of the mystical happenings is possible-that this method is "effective," since there is no medically and psychologically and ethically documented evidence that such positive and desirable changes in behavior are unequivocally produced. (Let alone that there is a "permanent" transformation of personality.) At least in some cases, not all, and sometimes very few, of these qualities listed to describe the mystical experience are actually found in the experience itself. This is to a large extent true because of the present plethora of subjective specific descriptions of the experience which are available.

3 And why is the experience interpreted transcendentally when in essence it is not transcendental? The more theologically and religiously (and possibly metaphysically) complex and inclined one is-the more belief proposition and pictures about the "transcendental" one has seriously acquired and is emotionally committed to-then the greater the likelihood it would seem to me, that there will be an interpretation of this kind (which will again then in a vicious way have a chance of affecting the already constructed postview of the experience and its consequent behavior). The greater the intensity of the "mystical" experience perhaps the greater this inclination, and also the greater might be the unconscious and/or conscious desire to be so affected.

4 An interesting aside: The more you explain and interpret the emotions of the mystical experience (its novelty, surprise, its startling and frighteningly revealing aspect, its strength and terror, etc.) the more it becomes more like the ordinary and normal. (This appears to be the case except where one insists on using the experience as a mark of distinction and superiority.) The uniqueness of the mystical experience cannot be denied, but this does not give it a distinguishing characteristic over ordinary experience-which itself has "uniqueness." Almost all who have had a mystical experience call it "ineffable," "beyond comprehension," yet more has been written about it than any other experience, including the aesthetic and moral. This is no doubt in large measure due to its fascination and compelling mystery.