A scientist searches for mysticism

The mystical experience has been pursued by countless millions over the millenniums, all hoping to tap into ultimate truth, to access an understanding of life beyond what we are able to see and feel, to encounter, as John Horgan puts it, “an escape hatch in reality, through which we can wriggle out of our existential plight.” Horgan, a science journalist, explores the convergence between this sought-after mystical experience and scientific thought in “Rational Mysticism” (the follow-up to his acclaimed “The End of Science,” in which he discussed the limitations of scientific inquiry).

Horgan has had an uneasy relationship with the metaphysical, and this tension fuels the narrative. In his earlier years, he tells us, he’d been a seeker of sorts, puzzling over esoteric books, dabbling in yoga, meditation and psychedelic drugs in hopes of locating some kind of nirvana. Though he experienced a number of mystic encounters, the occurrences offered no lasting comfort or resolution. “[T]he insights I gleaned from my own experiences were too confusing, and sometimes frightening, for me to make good use of them.”

Horgan then turned to science for the answers mysticism failed to provide, but that path, too, failed to solve the existential dilemma. “Gradually, I came to the conclusion that science can take us only so far in our quest for understanding.”

In this eminently readable book, Horgan re-approaches the query that propelled his earlier dabbling: How are we to find comfort in this world with no assurance of an afterlife and no definitive understanding of what mystical experiences mean? But this time, he pairs the skepticism of the scientist with the heart of one who wants to believe. However, unless science can quantify what he seeks, he can’t make the leap into faith.

Interweaving interviews with personal stories and research, Horgan pursues two lines of inquiry: Can mystical spirituality ever be reconciled with the precepts of science and reason and, “[I]f so, what sort of truth would this rational mysticism give us? What sort of consolation?”

He considers how neuroscience and psychiatry look at mystical states, investigates the risks in following mystical paths (whether by drugs or, to a lesser extent, meditation) and ponders the nature of enlightenment. “Will science ever produce a mystical technology powerful enough to deliver enlightenment on demand?”

Launched on a kind of scientific pilgrimage, Horgan tracks down gurus, academics, chemists, neurologists and psychologists. Though he’s ready (and often able) to debunk whatever these experts have to say, he approaches each encounter hoping to be convinced. He interviews Andrew Newberg, a radiologist who used brain scan technology to photograph what he says were transcendent experiences; Michael Persinger, a Canadian psychologist who invented the “God machine” said to induce religious experiences by electromagnetically stimulating the brain; and legendary psychedelic drug chemist Alexander Shulgin. Horgan writes of experiencing the “God machine” firsthand (not much of a mystic thrill, it turns out) and attends a Science and Consciousness conference with Berkeley theologian Huston Smith. Having gathered all this information, though, Horgan is as much at a loss to explain mysticism as when he began.

Much of his inquiry focuses on the use of “entheogens” as a path to higher consciousness. (The word “entheogen” literally means “God-containing” and is used to describe plants or chemicals that induce spiritual experiences.) Horgan writes in great detail of experimenting with these psychedelics himself, including ayahuasca, a powerful natural Amazonian hallucinogen, as well as describing the experiences of those he interviews.

By focusing his attention so heavily on chemically induced mystical states, it seems that Horgan overlooks many of the nonchemical paths, like those associated with prayer and religious ritual. It’s as if, by limiting the discussion to what can be manipulated at will or shown on a brain scan, he’s looking to render the mysteries of spirituality as something sanitized and intellectually easy to classify, which, of course, is the way of science.

In doing so, though, he omits the one thing that sages over the centuries have seen as a key ingredient to mystical understanding: faith. In his vigorous chase after chemically induced and scientifically verifiable enlightenment, he reveals fascinating worlds but ultimately turns up no comfort from his wanderings. “I was looking for consolation in the stars, in visions, in mystical gnosis, but the only consolation I found ... was human companionship.”