Three literary accounts of mystical union, part 1
Lanza & Kress's "Observer," Maugham's "The Razor's Edge," and Yogananda's "Autobiography of a Yogi"
(If you like this post, bless the Algorithm Angels and select the “heart” icon ❤️ even if you’re not a subscriber. It helps!)
I recently read the novel Observer, by Dr. Robert Lanza and writer Nancy Kress, which initially drew my attention because it ostensibly explores certain matters of consciousness and metaphysics. (Plus, the Kindle version was on sale for $1.99 through BookBub, so it was low risk.) In reading it, I was particularly interested in a scene where one character has a “Oneness” or “mystical union” experience that, on the surface, brought a bit of mystical realism into the story.1
I was, however, disappointed in the depiction of that experience and its effect on the character because it’s actually not mystical at all. It’s rather another example of the “denatured” spirituality discussed in Genuine spirituality part 2. It also represents a lost opportunity for the authors, in writing that scene, to feel or at least imagine such an experience for themselves (as discussed in “The privilege of writing inner experience” part 1 and part 2), keeping it instead on only an intellectual or conceptual level. That’s another reason why it falls flat for me.
To illustrate why, part 2 of this post compares this scene from Observer, along with a similarly brief account from W. Somerset Maugham’s 1944 novel, The Razor’s Edge, to another that is clearly and genuinely mystical, namely “An Experience in Cosmic Consciousness” in Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi.
Here in part 1, we’ll concentrate on the scene in Observer and what it can tell us about depicting a more authentic spiritual experience.
The model of reality presented in Observer
The story of Observer revolves around a team of scientists and medical doctors who, in a search for bodily immortality, have developed a system that connects brain implants to an external computer array that together allow the implanted individual to create a reality of their own in the supposed “multiverse.” This plotline is a not-so-subtle pitch for one of the main tenets of Dr. Lanza’s theories of Biocentrism, specifically that the universe comes into objective existence only when there's consciousness to observe it.
Offhand, this premise suggests a degree of spirituality—God, after all, is consciousness, infinite and eternal. Biocentrism, however, at least as reflected in Observer,2 is an atheistic philosophy that has no place for any kind of greater or transcendent reality. Reality, in this model, again comes into existence only when there’s an observer. The problem is that the novel presumes that human beings are the only observers in the universe that matter, which is to say that humans are the only life forms that manifest any meaningful consciousness. Animals, insects, and other sentient life forms apparently don’t count as observers, even though as sentient (that is, sensing) beings they clearly have organs of observation. The novel, in fact, also fixates almost exclusively on visual observation. Perhaps this is a practical matter for writing fiction because the sense of sight is the easiest to describe in words. But the nearly wholesale omission of the other senses really stands out: by such a philosophy there’s no objective reality whatsoever for a person who is blind.
And, if you bring God back into the picture, the model breaks down even further because God is always consciously observing every infinitesimal particle of our universe and every other universe he saw fit to create. That divine observation thereby gives all such creations a rather permanent, objective existence so far as human perception is concerned, which means that existence actually has nothing to do with human observation.
But setting that matter aside, an even more troubling aspect of Observer is that it essentially equates consciousness with the human ego, meaning, as the novel depicts, that a single ego consciousness can create realities for other, very real people. That's what happens in the story: when a patient goes into the multiverse for the first time, his or her self-created universe takes on a life of its own, independent from that patient. Every person, plant, animal, and mineral appearing in that world is somehow given “life” and continues to exist even when the patient returns to our world. In one scene, for example, one of the physicists involved in the project recreates his deceased wife, convinced that:
“Now she’s still alive somewhere. Still alive. In that reality. The reality I created for her.” (255 in the Kindle edition)
This becomes a serious problem late in the story when the team learns from a couple of investigators that their work has gotten into the hands of the Dark Web, which is now offering people the ability to exact their vengeance and wrath on anyone the want within. To quote:
…a genuine alternate universe with real people in it who will continue on after you’ve had a satisfying day of revenge and go back to your usual life. (289)
The investigators show the demo from the Dark Web advertisement in which the implanted patient is going on a shooting spree in a shopping mall. But it’s not a video game—the whole point is that it’s real-real:
“So you’re telling me,” Agent Kaplow said, “that this ‘implant’ enables a person to enter an alternate universe and commit the consequence-free murder of actual human beings?” (292)
Setting aside all of the potential ethical and karmic questions,3 what I find most ridiculous about this model of reality is that a single human ego—that of the implanted patient—is somehow able, through nothing more than a bit of technology, to force real souls to instantly incarnate into real, already-grown bodies in this alternate universe, and that this universe is self-sustaining without any effect or consequence on the creator ego.
In short, the novel endows the human ego with the creative power of God without giving that ego any actual awareness of its creation except through the ego-bound senses.4
Which brings us to Observer’s “Oneness” experience.
Observer’s “Oneness” experience
About a third into the book, the second patient to undergo the whole procedure, the very outgoing character Lorraine, has entered into her alternate reality. The rest of the team is observing her on the system’s monitors. They’re anxious to see what Lorraine’s wild personality will “create” with its total freedom: perhaps the palace at Versailles, the Alhambra, Ali Baba’s cave, or something else extravagant to fit Lorraine’s ostentatious personality. But, as the story tells:
She created nothing.
Instead, she knelt by the one flower bed and touched a small yellow blossom with one finger, her hair falling forward to hide her face. After a moment her shoulders began to shake, and then her entire body. Was she laughing? No. When she finally stood, holding the plucked flower, tears streamed off her cheeks and spotted her silk shirt. She raised her face to the sky and sobbed—no sound, but Caro could almost hear the sobs—and remained that way for the entire fifteen minutes until the screen blanked and the session ended.
Weigert said softly, “What the bloody …”
Lorraine sat upright on the bed and began to cry. Julian sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulders, despite the wires still strung between her head and the computer. “What is it, Lo? Are you all right?”
Crying. “Lorraine, you have to talk to me! Are you in pain? What is it?”
Her sobs slowed. “Pain? No … no … Julian … it was … was …”
“What? It was what?”
“Everything.”
It took her another five minutes to recover. Except, Caro thought, she didn’t recover the former Lorraine. Not really. Her gestures were not theatrical, her smile softer, her expression suffused with … what?
Wonder. It was in her voice, her eyes, her words.
“I came into the courtyard,” Lorraine said as, on the screen, the recording played, “and all at once I knew. I felt it. That flower”—she pointed to her image kneeling by the flower bed—“that flower was me. I wasn’t separate from it, or from the ground under my feet, or the walls of the compound, or any of you. We were all melted together, all … one. I can’t explain. But I knew. I still know! All of it was me and I was all of it, and I still am. Julian, I still am!” (146-147)
Adding to this is that the protagonist, Caro, hearing Lorraine’s account, recalls a bit of mystical experience she had as a child when watching clouds, which is repeated five times in the book.
Then, all at once, the clouds were no longer there, and neither was Caro. She was nowhere and everywhere, woven into what she later thought of as “the fabric of the universe.” She was the clouds, the grass, the breeze, the ant crawling across her arm. Everything was her, and she was everything. (147)
Now, it was initially refreshing to see a semblance of mystical experience like this in the pages of a modern novel. As I’ve said elsewhere, such passages are few and far between.
Yet there are a few key characteristics of this excerpt and the context in which it occurs that indicate that the experience is not mystical at all.
Is this experience really mystical?
First, again setting aside all philosophical problems with Observer's model of reality, Lorraine’s experience is induced by a fictional implant that’s dependent on a wide array of outrageously expensive equipment. Genuine mystical experience requires no such props, nor does it require hallucinogenic drugs as some believe (which create only, well, hallucinations). For this reason, too, I don’t consider this experience as an instance of mystical realism because “realism” means that its available to everyone in ordinary, everyday circumstances, rather than being available to only an elite few with special access to people or equipment, if such a system even existed in the real world.
Second, the description of the experience is vague, reflecting the kind of “I am one with everything” sentiments that people easily learn from a book or a YouTube video and repeat for effect. It’s one thing to affirm the concept; it’s another thing altogether to truly feel it, even a little bit. The account here—which is all we get of it, by the way, in the entire novel—lacks authentic feeling. Lorraine says that she just “can’t explain.” Why not? If Lorraine really felt oneness with a flower, why can’t she say something about the life energy flowing through it, about its subtle delight in the beauty manifesting in its form, or about the joy of absorbing the radiance of the sun? Such details are easy enough for an author to visualize and put into words—it might take a bit of poetic sense, but it’s certainly possible.
Any why only the flower? If she’s one with everything, then she’s also one with the wall and the ground, yes? Why, then, can’t she express even a little sense of their steadfastness, solidity, or strength? And what about the insects and microbes living on that flower?
I think the simple answer is that the authors merely intellectualized the experience rather than trying to visualize and feel it for themselves. Reinforcing this point is the fact that the book later refers to Lorraine’s experience as “her vaguely mythic ‘Oneness’” (177)—yes, her mythic, not mystic oneness, a confusion that I wrote about in the post, Mythical, Magical, and Mystical.
Third, both Lorraine’s experience and Caro’s memory are wholly bound to their egos. The “everything” in their experiences is inanimate, unconscious, and lifeless. In these apparently expanded states of cosmic consciousness, the only awareness to be had is their own. Where are all the other conscious and sentient beings? Do they have no existence worth mentioning? Lorraine says that she felt at one with her teammates. Why, then, does she not say anything about their thoughts, their feelings, their hopes and dreams and fears and desires? If she was truly one with them, would she not become utterly compassionate to each of them and be able to help them through their deepest, darkest difficulties, such as the physicist who is still mourning his wife? But Lorraine does nothing of the sort; she merely babbles on the verge of incoherence.
And where is any kind of greater reality beyond their own selves, anything they might call “God,” even just “Life” or “Love” as a principle? It’s nowhere to be found, because again, the only reality is the ego.
Finally, the only lasting effects that Lorraine seems to carry away from this experience are a more subdued and “otherworldly” personality and that she decides to apologize to a few people for her past inconsiderateness. That’s it. In reality, according to the testimony of truth-seekers over the millennia, the merest touch of superconsciousness, if you want to call it that, changes one’s fundamental outlook to such a degree that every other part of your life is transformed. I offer a personal account in this regard in my memoir, Mystic Microsoft, where even small experiences—none of which were anywhere close to an experience of mystical oneness—had dramatic effects that still reverberate more than 30 years later.
Characteristics of authentic mystical experience
Taking the preceding analysis and restating the shortcomings of Lorrain’s experience in the positive, we can identify a few characteristics that should be present in a more authentic experience of mystical union:
The ability for anyone to have the experience, provided that they have sufficient inner preparation, without dependence on technology.
Descriptions of the experience should be specific and detailed, because a heightened awareness should lead to a much greater sensitivity on all levels.
The experience should transcend the individual ego.
The experience should leave a person permanently changed in some way. As Nobel laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore wrote in “Light the Lamp of Thy Love,” “Touch me but once and I will change/All my clay into Thy gold.”
In part 2 we’ll apply these characteristics first to Maugham’s account in The Razor’s Edge, which still falls short. We’ll then compare that to Yogananda’s account in Autobiography of a Yogi which does fulfill these criteria, making it perhaps the best literary reference for such an experience.
(If you like this post, bless the Algorithm Angels and select the “heart” icon ❤️ even if you’re not a subscriber. It helps!)
From enclyclopedia.com: “Mystical union may be described as the relationship between a person and God in the highest degrees of the mystical life. Ordinarily, mystical union is said to have three stages: prayer of union, prayer of ecstatic union, and prayer of transforming union (mystical marriage).” It cites as sources The Interior Castle by St. Theresa of Avila, The Living Flame of Love by St. John of the Cross, and The Theology of Christian Perfection by A. Royo. The mystical traditions of Islam and Hinduism, among various faiths, have similar concepts.
I have not studied Biocentrism in detail, so I’m admittedly going on a few summaries of its main ideas.
Karmic in that there is no such thing as consequence-free action until the ego itself is transcended.
This idea of a self-perpetuating reality works into the overall plot for the protagonist of the story, a medical doctor named Caro, who for a long time maintains that all this is merely a hallucination. She begins to relent, however, when her sister falls into a deep depression after her daughter dies. Caro implants the sister so she can resurrect the daughter in her alternate reality and therefore find comfort. And Caro fully relents at the end of the story when, in her own dying moments after a violent attack on the compound that claims the life of her lover, Caro gets plugged in (just in time, of course) and “creates” a universe in which she and her lover are alive and well and able to enjoy the happily ever after.