THE SOUL OF REASON

The material presented here is taken from a working paper titled The Soul of Reason:  An Argument for a New Post-Modern Realism in Social Theory and Philosophy.  (D. H. Bowles 2020)

XI.  The Soul of Reason:  Love vs. Fear

The 2006 Hopkins psilocybin study led by Roland Griffiths and reported by Pollan demonstrates that the essence of what we mean with reference to the term altered states can be characterized as the qualitative experience of temporary ego dissolution or, alternatively, as the subjective experience of ‘spirituality.’  It is the experience of this that I invoke rhetorically as the soul of reason.

Two primal insights, both of them ineffable and noetic in character, emerge consistently from the common mystical experience:

1.   The most fundamental ontological fact with regard to the human capacity for altered states is the ubiquitous existence of the consciousness of unconditional, universal, infinite love
2.   The opposite of the consciousness of love is not hate, but fear, which is rooted in the vulnerability of the ego and the fear of death.

This claim is supported by the entire record of human experience with mystical states of consciousness which is open and readily available to investigation.  Note that, according to this claim, these are ontological facts, grounded in our observed human capacity for the experience of altered states, not philosophical commitments to any ultimately materialist or immaterialist position.

Perhaps some testimony to these facts is in order here, by way of illustration.  Just for example, Pollan cites the testimony of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World (1932) and The Doors of Perception (1954):

“What came through the closed door was the realization . . . the direct, total awareness, from the inside, so to say, of Love as the primary and fundamental cosmic fact.”  The force of the insight seemed almost to embarrass Huxley in its baldness:  “The words, of course, have a kind of indecency and must necessarily ring false, seem like twaddle.  But the fact remains.” (Pollan, 173)

Or, take the testimony of Pollan himself, whose experience of research into this area led him to seek out the opportunity to encounter his own experience of altered states:

          It embarrasses me to write these words; they sound so thin, so banal. . . . Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. . . . Platitudes that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Hallmark card glow with the [noetic] force of revealed truth . . .

          Love is everything.

          Okay, but what else did you learn?

          No, you must not have heard me:  it’s everything!  (251)

So, we now have a justifiable claim that the moral intuition of expansive (vs. parochial) community identity, grounded in the mystical experience of altered states, is recognizably grounded in the consciousness of unconditional, universal, infinite love, which just happens to be the antithesis of fear.  And, as we will see, it is primal fear (related to ego vulnerability) that fuels the most extreme manifestations in human society of both 1) parochial conflict, and 2) social stratification.

The work of Robert Altemeyer (2006, 1996, 1988, 1981) a psychologist whose entire career has been devoted to the study of authoritarian personality (for which he was awarded the 1986 Prize for Behavioral Science Research from the American Association for the Advancement of Science)  has in recent years received increasing attention:

          Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves.  It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want–which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical, and brutal.

          We know an awful lot about authoritarian followers.  In one way or another, hundreds of social scientists have studied them since World War II.  We have a pretty good idea of who they are, where they come from, and what makes them tick.  By comparison, we know little about authoritarian leaders because we only recently started studying them.  That may seem strange, but how hard is it to figure out why someone would like to have massive amounts of power?  The psychological mystery has always been why would someone prefer a dictatorship to freedom.  So social scientists have focused on the followers, who are seen as the main, underlying problem.

Right-wing authoritarian (RWA) followers don’t necessarily have conservative political views.  Instead, they exhibit personality characteristics that include principally:  1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in their society; 2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and 3) the view that everybody should have to follow the norms and customs decreed by their authorities.  In contemporary North American politics, however, right-wing authoritarian personality and conservative political affiliation or preferences are highly correlated (2006, Chapter 1); high scores on RWA personality measures are also highly correlated with reliable measures of religious fundamentalism (Chapter 4).

In looking for the roots of authoritarian aggression, Altemeyer finds . . . fear:

Authoritarian followers score highly on the dangerous world scale, and it’s not just because some of the items have a religious context.  High RWAs are, in general, more afraid than most people are.  Somehow, they got a “two-for-one special” on fear.  Maybe they’ve inherited genes that incline them to be fearful.  Maybe not.  But we do know that they were raised by their parents to be afraid of others, because both the parents and their children tell us so.  It turns out in experiments that a person’s fear of a dangerous world predicts various kinds of authoritarian aggression better than anything else. (Chapter 2)

Now, Pollan’s story about the 21st century renaissance in psychedelic research features a couple of contemporary figures whose unflagging advocacy for the social and clinical value of psychedelic substances and altered states of consciousness has proven instrumental in making progress possible.  One of those figures is Rick Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), an erstwhile psychedelic therapist crying for decades in the wilderness:

Doblin believes fervently in the power of psychedelics to improve humankind by disclosing a spiritual dimension of consciousness we all share, regardless of our religious beliefs or lack thereof.  “Mysticism,” he likes to say, “is the antidote to fundamentalism.” (37)

Much later in his book, in the chapter on neuroscience, Pollan cites a study–almost in passing; literally, as a footnote–that nevertheless warrants our special notice here:  Nour et al. (2017), in the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, titled “Psychedelics, Personality, and Political Perspectives”:

Ego dissolution experienced during a participant’s ‘most intense’ psychedelic experience positively predicted liberal political views, openness, and nature-relatedness, and negatively predicted authoritarian political views. (Pollan 316)

Doblin, it appears, may have it right:  mysticism is the antidote to fundamentalism; love is the antidote to fear.

XII.  A New Horizon

Table of Contents

Conceptual Schematic of the Argument

Abstract

Download Working Paper (PDF)