Thomas McFarlane:
Well, Im afraid it seems fairly clear to me that most of this is simply illusory, and is remarkably similar to experiences obtainable by taking suitable drugs. Items 1,2,4,5,7 and 12 in particular are obviously false, and if I had this experience then I would not trust 6, 9, 10 or 11 very much. (4 and 5 taken together are probably rather dangerous.) I have no idea what 3 is supposed to mean. So this is not a very encouraging conceptual 'fallout' from something which is itself inexpressible in language.
The interesting point for the current discussion is the fact that the 'blank' experience itself is, apparently, undescribable.
I think these comments reflect a much too simple set of concepts and criteria. These statements could be either true or false; they are self-reports, and like any other set of self-reports they are subject to a certain kind of verification. Like most statements in this area, the language is difficult or impenetrable, but that simply means the first step is a matter of first clarifying the meaning, so that one has statements whose meanings are mutually agreed on, and then finding out if the people reporting these things about themselves do the things one does when those attitudes, traits, points of view, understandings, etc., are the case. When someone says, "I had an experience of transcending personal boundaries, and now see all people as my family," and then you see them acting that way, you're inclined to say, "Well, it looks like they did, and do."
The experience *itself* is not verifiable in this way, but so what? That's true of any experience, whether it's an experience that everything is God or my experience when I run a thorn into my hand. All you can *ever* do is see what the person does, after the reported experience. If they don't seem to have changed at all, other than talking about their experience, well then they may not have had it at all, or it may not have carried over to ordinary life (at least, not yet), or they may have lost the recognition they had, or etc. etc. etc.
But I do not think the situation is different in principle from other things that happen in more mundane altered state of consciousness. Suppose, for example, I tell you a dream I had (or, for that matter, an insight I had the last time I drank several beers quickly). What possible evidence could there be, other than what I tell you, that I "really" did or did not have the dream? I suggest, none, other than observing whether I seem to act that way.
Pat's comments on items 4 and 5 seem to me to reflect a rash assumption about what transcendance and causality mean. No one I've ever heard of who I would accept as a spiritual teacher teaches that transcendance means overcoming. Altered states of consciousness, and spiritual training, are not about avoiding physical reality. My favorite reference is Hyakujo's fox:
A monk asked Hyakujo, "Is the enlightened man subject to causality?" Hyakujo answered, "The enlightened man is not subject." For this Hyakujo was reborn as a fox for 500 lifetimes.
I don't know why one would not trust increased feelings (which I take to mean increased attitudes or traits) or felicity or benevolence. When I am fortunate enough to encounter myself in that state, I relish it and nurture it for as long as I possibly can.
Insofar as Merrell-Wolff was simply reporting the experiential content of consciousness that precipitated after the Recognition, there was nothing true or false, real or imaginary about it, since any experience per se is just what it is. It can only be false or illusory if we make some kind of interpretation of the experience and then mistakenly believe that interpretation to be real. Merrell-Wolff, however, went out of his way to emphasize that he did not regard these expressions of his experiences to be representative of reality. Therefore, they were not false or illusory for him. Nor were they true or real. They were symbolic or metaphorical expressions.
How about just a partial description of the Recognition? Its pretty hard to give a *complete* description of the experience of seeing and smelling a rose, so I'd be happy to see just a fragment of a description of the Recognition. For example, to return to the original question, does a period of Recognition last a certain phenomenal time, and can two such times be compared? (So that, for example, does it make sense to say something like: "that was just a short period of Recognition, I had a much longer one last week")
The Recognition itself can not, even in principle, be described. It is not a state of consciousness that is distinct from other states of consciousness. It is not a phenomenon distinct from other phenomena. It is not an experience that starts and stops. All the mystics are unanimous on this point: it is beyond all words and concepts and distinctions. This includes the distinctions between past, present and future that are the basis for the experience of time. It is logically prior to the category of time.
The experiential precipitates from Recognition, however, do come and go; so there is a way to measure temporal duration for them since experience takes place within the context of time. So, within the context of this temporal world, there is a time before the experience of Recognition and a time after the Recognition. But the Recognition itself transcends these distinctions. That is why it appears false or contradictory from within the context of the distinctions which form the basis for this world.
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