More Than Allegory

by Bernardo Kastrup

  An individual mind is formed when a segment of mind-at-large collapses into itself, creating a point of dense, highly localized cognitive activity. This singularity subsequently gives rise to the cognitive ‘big bang’ discussed earlier. Each living being thus corresponds to one among countless such singularities in mind-at-large. A metabolizing body is simply what the singularity looks like from the outside. As we’ve also seen earlier, traditional religious myths have symbolically described the cognitive collapse of a divinity as the formation of a ‘cosmic egg.’ Clearly, the cosmic egg and the local collapse of mind-at-large I’ve just described point to the same transcendent truth, so it’s fair to borrow the mythical symbolism from now on. See Figure 9.

  The formation of a cosmic egg creates a cognitive boundary between the inside of the egg—that is, the ‘inner realm’ of thoughts and emotions discussed in the very beginning of this book—and the mental activity in the regions of mind-at-large immediately surrounding the egg. It is this boundary that gives rise to sense perceptions: from the perspective of an egg, the activity in the surrounding cognitive neighborhood is experienced in the form of images of an ‘outer realm,’ such as mountains, other people, trees, etc. Therefore, the empirical world you see around you right now is simply your egg’s view of mental processes unfolding in neighboring regions of mind-at-large. See Figure 9 again. We all share the same world because, like islands in an ocean, our personal minds are surrounded by one and the same mind-at-large.

  Figure 9. The cognitive collapse of mind-at-large and the rise of sense perception.

  Unlike islands in an ocean, however, cosmic eggs aren’t different or separate from mind-at-large. They are simply localized cognitive configurations of it. Therefore, beyond sense perceptions, we remain cognitively connected to all of mind-at-large at a foundational level. This is represented by the four grey arrows directly penetrating—in fact, forming—the cosmic egg in Figure 9. In Part I of this book, I’ve referred to this foundational connection as our obfuscated mind. And because the obfuscated mind can tap into non-local cognitive resources, its reach is much broader than that of the localized intellect.

  Notice that Figure 9, despite being useful to illustrate the cognitive collapse discussed above, is rather incomplete. After all, there is more to our personal mentation than just perceptions: we also experience thoughts, intuitions and fantasies. Moreover, the history of mystical experiences shows that the boundary between the inside and outside of the cosmic egg isn’t exactly sharp and definite: it consists rather of progressive levels of obfuscation. To address these points, consider Figure 10. Its shades of grey represent different degrees of obfuscation. Its four quadrants represent the different modalities of our personal mentation.

  Figure 10 consists essentially of a revision of Figure 2 based on our latest insights. Let’s cover it more systematically starting from the left-upper quadrant: when you look out to the world, what you see is the visible ‘surface’ of mind-at-large. Its mental activity is presented symbolically to you in the form of the images of consensus reality: mountains, trees, other people, etc. Your intellect then translates these intangible images into the myth of an objective and concrete world.

  But the consensus images available to your five senses are not the only aspect of mind-at-large that you can ‘perceive.’ As discussed extensively in Part I, through the obfuscated mind we can gain intuitive insight into a transcendent reality. This means that we can have direct apprehension of deeper aspects of mind-at-large—aspects hidden under the visible surface of consensus images—without the intermediation of the five senses. As mythically described by Rudolph Steiner, ‘Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him.’136 This form of ‘spiritual perception’ leads to, in the words of William James, ‘states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance.’137 The right-upper quadrant of Figure 10 represents this. Notice that the transcendent insights so achieved, when translated into narratives with the help of the intellect, form the basis of true religious myths.

  Figure 10. Mind and world, revisited.

  Transcendent insights feel like perceptions, in that the personal mind often has the impression that they come from outside. This is true in that the insights originate outside the personal mind, in the obfuscated cognitive regions of mind-at-large. However, you also have the ability to deliberately produce insights within your own personal mind: we call it thinking. As discussed in Part I, thoughts are circular patterns of association shaped according to a grammatical template. They arise and unfold entirely within the intellect, even when their original trigger is a perception or a transcendent insight. This is illustrated in the lower-left quadrant of Figure 10. It is in the form of thoughts that you create the myths of explanations and predictions.

  As thoughts are the personal mind’s analogues of transcendent insights, fantasies are the personal mind’s analogues of consensus perceptions. You can confabulate images, events and scenarios in your mind that have no correspondence to consensus facts. These confabulations may even use certain building blocks co-opted from consensus perception—images like people or trees—but the way they are woven together is idiosyncratic. The lower-right quadrant of Figure 10 represents this. It is in the form of fantasies that you experience not only your daydreams, but also the images you attribute to past and future. And before you ask the question, allow me to anticipate it: memories are indeed fantasies. What else could they be? They certainly aren’t present perceptions, are they?

  The diagram in Figure 10 can be divided vertically into two hemispheres. The top hemisphere corresponds to ‘perception’ in a broad sense: the symbolic apprehension of mental activity unfolding outside the personal mind. The bottom hemisphere corresponds to cognitive activity arising within the personal mind itself. Similarly, we can also divide the diagram horizontally. In this case, the left hemisphere corresponds to the analytical interpretation of sensory data, or the ‘left-hemisphere mode of thought’ described by Iain McGilchrist.138 The right hemisphere, on the other hand, corresponds to the noetic imagination, ‘an extra-ocular organ of perception and knowledge.’139 The noetic imagination can both symbolically ‘perceive’ a transcendent order and create idiosyncratic experiences in the form of fantasies, it often being hard to differentiate between the two. It is this difficulty in telling personal fantasy from transcendent insight that lies at the heart of much of the metaphysical hysteria at the fringes of contemporary culture.

  Implicit everywhere in the diagram of Figure 10 are our emotions: all four modes of cognition illustrated—perceptions, transcendent insights, thoughts and fantasies—evoke emotions in the personal mind, each in its own way. We are all familiar with the fact that our thoughts and perceptions can trigger strong emotional responses. For instance, negative thinking can trigger gloomy moods, while contemplating the beauty of nature can reverse them. But the same applies to the right hemisphere as well: transcendent insights can fundamentally alter our emotional state, with fantasies having a smaller but nonetheless significant effect.

  Not only do the four modes of cognition illustrated in Figure 10 automatically trigger emotions, they also automatically trigger our myth-making capacities: the myth of an objective reality is triggered by consensus perceptions; true religious myths are triggered by transcendent insights; more ordinary explanatory and predictive myths are triggered by thoughts; and the myths of past and future are lived out in the form of fantasies. As a result, our entire cognitive ‘space’ becomes populated with myths, which gives substance to human life. These myths hint at the essential truths of mind: they reflect, in symbolic form, the underlying reality of whatever it is that we are. Our seemingly objective perceptions of the world reveal something true about the surface of mind-at-large
, while true religious myths hint at its deeper, underlying layers. Perhaps most significantly, for embodying small-scale ‘samples’ of mind-at-large that we can demarcate and slide under the microscope of self-reflection, our personal thoughts and fantasies are uniquely conducive to lucid inquiry. As such, the myths of explanations, predictions, past and future, when properly contemplated as symbols, provide a unique window into something ineffable and otherwise impervious to self-reflection. This may be an important clue to the very meaning of human life.

  Instead of a shared world outside mind, what we have is a collective region of mind that we don’t identify with and cannot control. Our perceptions and transcendent insights originate from this collective region, while our thoughts and fantasies arise in our personal mind.

  PART III: Belief

  Some things have to be believed to be seen.

  Ralph Hodgson

  Before we begin Part III proper, a little introduction is in order. We’ve just seen that reality is a ‘dream’ of a disembodied universal consciousness, which we called mind-at-large. We, as individuals, are collapsed segments of mind-at-large that ‘wake up’—become lucid—inside the dream. As illustrated in Part I, this is precisely what many of the world’s religious myths have been saying for thousands of years. So what better way to elaborate further on these ideas than through a myth adapted to our contemporary language, sensitivities and cultural references? The final part of this book hence consists entirely of a modern religious myth, each chapter relating a part of its story. And, as is the case with any such myth, what follows is much more than mere allegory.

  Unlike what people today normally associate with a religious myth, the one here is fairly down-to-earth and contemporary. Its cultural references are plausible and familiar to many. It entails no supernatural occurrences, no prophets and no saints. Anyone could be its protagonist. It is a myth of the recent past, not of distant events shrouded in vagueness and ambiguity. The story it tells is very close to us in both time and space. Indeed, even only a few pages into it, you may already question whether it is religious at all. Nonetheless, it perfectly fits the definition of religious myth given in Part I: a trans-allegorical story that helps bring transcendence into everyday life.

  When today’s best-known religious myths were still recent—that is, thousands of years ago in most cases—they, too, sounded plausible to the people of the time. The romantic anachronisms we associate with these myths today are a later acquisition, which came—as discussed in Part I—at the cost of plausibility. My attempt in the remainder of this book is to recover some of that original sense of plausibility, intimacy and contemporaneity radiated by religious myths around the time of their inception.

  The meaning and role of belief in our lives is explored in this trans-allegorical narrative in both explicit and implicit ways. Besides addressing belief directly, whatever significance the myth will have in your life will itself depend on your belief in it. This way, the story intentionally flows back and forth between two different but intertwined levels of meaning. Will you believe this myth as if it were literally true? And if so, how will the myth’s assertions about belief affect your relationship with it?

  The story is narrated in the first-person because direct insight into the subjective perspective of its protagonist is essential to the myth’s message.

  Chapter 8

  Ticket off-world

  And there I finally was, comfortably but firmly strapped to a customized recliner made to perfectly accommodate my body shape. My head was tightly fastened to a rig that prevented it from moving. An eye mask and earplugs isolated my senses completely from whatever was going on around me. But I knew that the complex and rather large rig around my head was about to kick into operation, so it was comforting to know that I wouldn’t be able to hear its rather disturbing hum. The nurse was probably already starting the carefully orchestrated series of intravenous infusions that would, together with the electromagnetic fields beamed directly into my head, completely change my sense of self and reality. From that moment on, and despite all the training I had undergone, I really had no idea what was going to happen. I felt that my whole life had somehow been about that very moment, everything preceding it mere preparation. With these thoughts rushing through my mind, I took a deep breath to try to relax and—as instructed—began counting down from ten. At around seven, I already knew that nothing would ever be the same again…

  Joining the club

  Some years earlier, I was just an ordinary, particularly young and naïve computer engineer working at an international research facility. Although I was rather good at what I did, I expected nothing of my future but a perfectly ordinary life. I was convinced that my story would unfold along all the predictable milestones: I already had a degree, a good job and was about to marry. The obvious next steps would be to buy a house, some dogs—err, cats—have children and finally retire in peace. I even thought myself lucky for being able to realistically look forward to all this, which, in hindsight, was pitiful. Little did I know what I was in for.

  I was a specialist in Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) systems for data acquisition. My job consisted in designing and programming computers capable of processing information and adapting to changing circumstances in ways similar to how the human brain does. These computers would recognize changing patterns in hugely complex streams of data and then learn how to adapt to these patterns in order to achieve preset goals. This was pretty leading-edge work at the time, with very few commercial applications. My employer was an international, government-funded organization with enough resources and a sufficiently cocky attitude to try unlikely but promising new technologies. I was by far the youngest member of my team, enthusiastic and starry-eyed. I loved what I did, greatly enjoyed the company of my colleagues and was generally having a fantastic time. I think I radiated a kind of unthreatening, optimistic vibe that subtly made people want me around. I didn’t know this back then; only in hindsight do I believe to discern this as a possible explanation for what followed.

  It’s not my intention here to recount details of my personal life, which are irrelevant in view of what I actually have to say. I am merely providing the minimum necessary background for you to understand how I came to be in the rather unique position to learn—or rather, remember—certain things about the nature of life and reality, despite being a very ordinary person myself. It is these things that I actually want to share with you. But before I can get to them, I need to relate just a bit more of my story.

  One day—I still recall: it was an overcast early-spring morning—I received a phone call at home while brushing my teeth. This was highly unusual given the early time, since most of my friends and colleagues started their days even later than I did. I rinsed my mouth quickly, suspecting that it was something important, and picked up the phone. The female voice on the other side was polite but all business. She identified herself as a headhunter who had an interesting job opportunity to offer me. I told her I had no intention to leave my employer but she insisted, pointing out that I probably wouldn’t need to give anything up and asking me to at least hear her out. That sounded reasonable and, partly persuaded by her charming voice, I figured I had nothing to lose. Over the next few weeks, I would have several meetings with her and several of her associates.

  The alleged headhunter’s name was Sophie. Disarmingly attractive and only a couple of years older than me, she was quite young for her role and responsibilities. Indeed, she was the key recruiter of a large, massively well-funded, yet completely stealthy project initiated by an unacknowledged club of (former) corporate leaders and high-net-worth individuals. Some would call this club a secret society, but the conspiracy connotations are totally inapplicable. I will refer to it simply as ‘the Club.’

  The Club had originally been formed in the late sixties by a group of successful bankers who were undergoing a kind of late mid-life crisis. These people—all males—had achieved everything they’d ever wanted in life. T
hey had their mansions, yachts, supercars and whatnot. They had power, influence, trophy wives, but lacked one important element: their lives no longer had any meaning. Having realized all their material dreams, they no longer knew what they were alive for. Moreover, middle age and its usual ailments had begun to force them to acknowledge their own mortality. The message from their bodies was loud and clear: ‘you aren’t superman and you, too, are going to die.’ Unable to believe the naïve religious myths they had grown up with, they wanted to find out whether there was indeed something after death; and if so, what. Their motivation to explore these questions was total—there was nothing else of interest in their lives—and their pockets very deep indeed. The Club was the way they found to pull their efforts and resources together to achieve critical mass.

  Although most of the original founders had already died, the Club itself was now more active and better funded than ever, run by a new generation of leaders with the same profile and motivations of the founders. Some of the current leaders were actually sons and daughters of former leaders. They had re-organized the Club as a kind of meta-investment fund and management bureau interested in projects that would, from the point of view of the mainstream, probably be considered fringe and ridiculed. This, in fact, was the main motivation for the secrecy surrounding the whole enterprise. Open-minded as they were, these people still held highly visible positions in the corporate and political worlds. They had images to protect.

  The Club’s assets thwarted the budget of some small nations. Through third-party investment funds they controlled, the Club financed several external projects both at universities and private companies. Nothing could be easily traced back to them because of a network of intermediaries and foundations, even though everything was perfectly legal. Their key project, however, wasn’t external: it was supervised directly by the Club’s leaders and carried out mainly in Club-owned premises. Its codename—for reasons I never really understood—was ‘Trilobite.’