KARL JASPERS FORUM

TA32 (Muller)

Commentary 21 (to C16 by Mancuso to Muller)

RAPTURE
by Adrian van der Meijden
31 January 2001, posted 6 March 2001

<1>
This one I can hardly resist. To "disappear" into rapture shows a naïve grasp of the situation. John Gowan worked out a tripart model he called trance, art and psychedelia which contains a discovery to acquisition to mastery gradient as a Sigma curve of what is learnt. The tyro, assumed originally in a "fallen" state of social mis-beliefs, gets a mystical experience for which the two are dissociated, which, so to speak, blows his "old" or previous mind state and which by reference to ordinary sensations is called bliss, exstacy, enstacy and rapture. This soon "normalises" {it gets as boring as yesterday's breakfast in assimilation to it} as like art where one interacts with this by way of, say. Charles Tart's alterable states of consciousness one elects to use. Finally it becomes mastery or psychedelic where all this "unifies" in what I call a para-subjective condition where, one may say, the body becomes an "illusion" one operates much like one would any tool, except it is a very complex tool. One should note this is not a psychopathological "illusion". So to speak, one's "reality" referent has shifted. The M.E. is a mere portal, gateway or glimpse of what can be, to be entered, as Peter Mutnick rightly points out, by way of the Freudian ID or instinct. And, as MH rightly points out, if one arrives in that condition and never loses touch one does not need an M.E. Therefore, one may surmise it is a kind of "corrective procedure" some do need.

<2>
In all those cases one has freedoms to choose, negative and positive, can opt for whichever way one chooses to apply it, as discussed by the likes of John Monroe and Merrel Wolff for instance, can "represent" it in various synaesthetic modes, something William James. Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley tackled and can apply it any way we like. The idea that one can disappear into rapture simply makes me giggle as: "where" does one go? Basically it will initially disturb some but one gets used to it and it no way stops or prevents any kind of doings, apart from a perhaps higher dosage of "enthusiasm" and charisma, again optional. One ceases to take oneself "seriously". In a way this is not unlike how Dante's plot structure in the "Divine Comedy" models the event series to have it dissociated [Hell], associated [purgatory] and integrated as "heaven", in union with Beatrice, the soul. Finally, one can, of course, when "depleted" go and tank up or have a bath in bliss or indulge, but one will choose the time and occasion thereof. Freedom of choice applies in all cases. Most beginners wish to permanentise this "meta-condition" but as Rudi Rucker points out, once one realises that the soul is immortal, what's the hurry? In "1001 Nights" talk it lets the genie out of the bottle or alchemical athanor by a unio mystica. If the genie does not know he never was IN the bottle in a first place it will be a "new" experience. All this is mere metaphor to enable communication.

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Adrian van der Meijden