I wrote this as part of my Heart Sutra history and commentary
There is a curious feature of mysticism. According to most understandings of the world, including that of early Buddhists, from the point of view of the individual the world has two poles: 1) the mind; and 2) the objects and processes that make up the world, including other subjects. In Western jargon, these are the subjective and objective poles of the world. Experience is what happens when the mind and objects (including other subjects perceived as objects) come into contact, via the senses. We may say that a subject swims through a world of objects and other subjects, like a fish in water.
Of course, in the bigger picture, mind is also a process within the world, but this is not how we experience it. This may sound like a tautology, but our sense of self is, in fact, a kind of experience in which we ourselves are the object of perception. We must also be careful not to reify the subject. The subject is a mind capable of representing sense data to itself as an experience. That mind is generated by a brain. The first person perspective is a quality of how the mind represents experience to itself and we know that it is not essential to experience, whereas a brain-generated mind is.
Typically, then, experience has this polarised quality. In meditation, we withdraw from sense experience and in the depths of it, we withdraw from experience entirely. The acme of mediation is to experience cessation. Not simply the suppression of thoughts, which results in alienation, but the cessation of experience – including, and especially, the sense of self. With the cessation of the experience of self, mystical experiences become available: for example, as one’s self falls away, one may identify with the whole world as self. This may be accompanied by a sense that space is infinite. This is simply the first of four spheres or rarefied experience called āyatanas. Beyond the āyatanas is the sphere of emptiness in which nothing arises or passes away. There is no experience per se, just awareness and being.
To achieve emptiness one withdraws attention from experience. In other words, one retreats from the objective pole of experience. Ideally, one completely withdraws any and all attention from objects of any kind. To my mind, this would be characterised as a purely subjective state – just the mind, ticking over but not doing anything. And many Buddhist narratives do talk about this state in terms of pure mind and so on. But it is far more common, in English to refer to such states in terms of reality, the nature of reality, or even the nature of ultimate reality. Suzuki and Conze, drawing on the rhetoric of Theosophy, referred to it as “the Absolute” or “the Transcendental”. Other commentators took the idea of an unconditioned dharma; i.e., the state of extinction of experience (nirvāṇa) and reified it into “the Unconditioned”.
In each case, the reified concept becomes an object to be apprehended. But the Prajñāpāramitā texts, speaking from the point of view of cessation attained by practising the yoga of non-apprehension (anupalambhayogena), argue against this way of thinking. Aṣṭasāhasrikā explicitly says that if you are still thinking in terms of “form is emptiness” (rūpam śūnyatā) then that is a thought being apprehended and it is not cessation, not Prajñāpāramitā. In the state of emptiness, there is no sense experience but also no cognitive experience. If one has visions, for example, then these are not emptiness, they are hallucinations being apprehended.
To repeat, mystical states are states of pure subjectivity with no objective component, but they are typically interpreted and presented as the opposite; i.e., states of pure objectivity with no subjective component. This contradiction leads to confusion, which is exploited by mystics as being productive. For most people, the confusion is the end of their religious career because it creates huge barriers to progress.
If we want people from outside religion to take mysticism seriously, we have to stop presenting it in terms that they know to be false. If we simply admit that a state of emptiness is purely subjective and tells us something about subjectivity, then we might find that scientists and philosophers start to take the experiences seriously.
In addition, we might free ourselves from the moronic influence of the so-called "philosophy" of Madhyamaka. When one cannot even adequately distinguish reality and experience, or subjectivity and objectivity, then one is never going to say anything sensible about either. And Nāgārjuna does not.
There is a curious feature of mysticism. According to most understandings of the world, including that of early Buddhists, from the point of view of the individual the world has two poles: 1) the mind; and 2) the objects and processes that make up the world, including other subjects. In Western jargon, these are the subjective and objective poles of the world. Experience is what happens when the mind and objects (including other subjects perceived as objects) come into contact, via the senses. We may say that a subject swims through a world of objects and other subjects, like a fish in water.
Of course, in the bigger picture, mind is also a process within the world, but this is not how we experience it. This may sound like a tautology, but our sense of self is, in fact, a kind of experience in which we ourselves are the object of perception. We must also be careful not to reify the subject. The subject is a mind capable of representing sense data to itself as an experience. That mind is generated by a brain. The first person perspective is a quality of how the mind represents experience to itself and we know that it is not essential to experience, whereas a brain-generated mind is.
Typically, then, experience has this polarised quality. In meditation, we withdraw from sense experience and in the depths of it, we withdraw from experience entirely. The acme of mediation is to experience cessation. Not simply the suppression of thoughts, which results in alienation, but the cessation of experience – including, and especially, the sense of self. With the cessation of the experience of self, mystical experiences become available: for example, as one’s self falls away, one may identify with the whole world as self. This may be accompanied by a sense that space is infinite. This is simply the first of four spheres or rarefied experience called āyatanas. Beyond the āyatanas is the sphere of emptiness in which nothing arises or passes away. There is no experience per se, just awareness and being.
To achieve emptiness one withdraws attention from experience. In other words, one retreats from the objective pole of experience. Ideally, one completely withdraws any and all attention from objects of any kind. To my mind, this would be characterised as a purely subjective state – just the mind, ticking over but not doing anything. And many Buddhist narratives do talk about this state in terms of pure mind and so on. But it is far more common, in English to refer to such states in terms of reality, the nature of reality, or even the nature of ultimate reality. Suzuki and Conze, drawing on the rhetoric of Theosophy, referred to it as “the Absolute” or “the Transcendental”. Other commentators took the idea of an unconditioned dharma; i.e., the state of extinction of experience (nirvāṇa) and reified it into “the Unconditioned”.
In each case, the reified concept becomes an object to be apprehended. But the Prajñāpāramitā texts, speaking from the point of view of cessation attained by practising the yoga of non-apprehension (anupalambhayogena), argue against this way of thinking. Aṣṭasāhasrikā explicitly says that if you are still thinking in terms of “form is emptiness” (rūpam śūnyatā) then that is a thought being apprehended and it is not cessation, not Prajñāpāramitā. In the state of emptiness, there is no sense experience but also no cognitive experience. If one has visions, for example, then these are not emptiness, they are hallucinations being apprehended.
To repeat, mystical states are states of pure subjectivity with no objective component, but they are typically interpreted and presented as the opposite; i.e., states of pure objectivity with no subjective component. This contradiction leads to confusion, which is exploited by mystics as being productive. For most people, the confusion is the end of their religious career because it creates huge barriers to progress.
If we want people from outside religion to take mysticism seriously, we have to stop presenting it in terms that they know to be false. If we simply admit that a state of emptiness is purely subjective and tells us something about subjectivity, then we might find that scientists and philosophers start to take the experiences seriously.
In addition, we might free ourselves from the moronic influence of the so-called "philosophy" of Madhyamaka. When one cannot even adequately distinguish reality and experience, or subjectivity and objectivity, then one is never going to say anything sensible about either. And Nāgārjuna does not.
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