General Theory of Religion (GTR):

Volume I: Fundamentals.

Arlen Wolpert

System Dynamicist and Independent Scholar

(Book manuscript draft of June 27,2009)

(The work presented here supersedes all my previous scientific publications in the fields of religion, philosophy, phenomenology, psychiatry, and system dynamics.)

Table of Contents

Introduction.
Chapter 1: An Engineer's Story, a narrative of my five year religious crisis and its culmination in mystical union in 1962.
Chapter 2: Purgation.
Chapter 3: Mystical Union.
Chapter 4: My religious development during the years that followed mystical union.
Chapter 5: Chapter 5 will eventually be an advanced and thorough presentation of the three step, presuppositionless, system dynamics(SD)-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology for scientifically describing or simulating core consciousness during a deep subjective experience - such as a religious experience - and for performing a scientifically-based eidetic reduction of that experience. However, Chapter 5 is not finished yet. Therefore, at present, this book manuscript will be using Key #5 of the Introduction, which is also a scientific method that can be used in place of Chapter 5. Therefore, at the present time please use Key #5 of the Introduction to make a scientific TFP analysis in place of Chapter 5. Then, wait for Chapter 5 to be completed in order to refine the TFP analysis of Key #5. Please note that the TFP methodology presented at Key #5 in this book manuscript now makes my old TFP methodology - published in 2002 - obsolete.
Chapter 6: An application of TFP (using Key #5 of the Introduction) to both scientifically describe my core consciousness during my religious experience of purgation and then perform a scientifically-based eidetic reduction of purgation. The eidetic reduction enables me - the analyst - to scientifically identify the dynamic physical object or dynamic noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving core consciousness in my LTM during my deep subjective religious experience of purgation (This analysis also will give the solution to Chalmers' hard problem for the case of my religious experience of purgation).
Chapter 7: Key insights arising from my search for the Truth about religion.
Chapter 8: A Practical Application for the General Theory of Religion (GTR).
Summary.
Bibliography.

NOTES ON THE PRESENT STATE OF THIS BOOK MANUSCRIPT:

INTRODUCTION

The Beginning of the GTR Project

I was trained as a theoretical mechanical engineer at the University of Minnesota. I graduated in 1956 with an MSME degree and a minor in a practical kind of theoretical physics. There was nothing fancy about this theoretical physics, but for me it was deep. Later, when I was employed as a high tech engineer in the metropolitan area of Boston, my favorite assignments were to analyze machines in order to deeply understand the subtlety of their operation. I would then hone in on the vulnerable aspects of the design and then try to redesign those aspects. The aim was to surpass the designs of the rival companies. My specialty was heat transfer, so I was usually assigned to analyze machines in which temperature was critical.

However, in early April 1962 when I was 30 years old, I had a profound sixteen hour religious experience (see Chapter 1). That sixteen hour experience has remained the most sacred hours of my life. I still remember and value and cherish the depth and greatness of that religious experience. The experience occurred naturally or spontaneously, without the use of drugs or herbs or meditation techniques (see Chapters 1, 2, and 3). The experience is usually called in Western culture: purgation culminating in mystical union. However, a few days after my religious experience my mind began to lose some of its stability and deep concentration. It was clear to me I needed advice or direction and a quiet, meditative religious environment, So, about a month later I entered a monastery up in the foothills of the Santa Ana mountains. I had first visited that monastery in early November 1961 (see Chapter 1). I was very impresssed with the monastery's holy atmosphere. In May 1962 - when I settled down at the monastery - I was given the role of a preprobationary monk. The exact nature of that role was not specified, but I do recall I needed to be in a holy atmosphere, to settle down, and to learn how to proceed in my religious life. During the first two months at the monastery, May and June 1962, my mind and heart were experiencing both a very peaceful spiritual state and a state that Csikszentmihalyi (1975) calls a flow state. Around June I requested the charismatic head of the monastery system to kindly give me some instructions. His brief, but very profound, instructions will be presented and discussed in Chapter 4. Then, in July the depth of my spiritual state and my flow state slowly began to lose its sacred quality. I tried, but I couldn't stop my spiritual state and my flow state from slowly returning to a normal state. Then, slowly, I began to find the monastery life incompatible and only stayed until November: Thus, I stayed at the monastery for a total of seven months. Nevertheless, I am very grateful to the Ramakrishna/Vivekananda Order for enabling me to stay at the monastery during those critical seven months.

Then, for the next 15 years I tried to lead a religious life. During those 15 years I was guided mainly by the promptings coming from my blessed heart (see section 2 of Chapter 4). My aim during those 15 years was to rise to the greatness of a religious life. I was very much absorbed in this activity. It was a very interesting, but very difficult, 15 years for me. Some of my experiences during that adventure led me to some maturation: maturation of my mind, my heart, and my developing religious life. My experiences during those 15 years and beyond also revealed some of my character flaws. Then, toward the end of those 15 years, from 1973 to 1977, I took on a memorable, indeed fascinating, - but very stressful - four year experience as a night-shift cab driver in Cambridge and Boston. Eventually, in 1977 it became clear to me that in taking on night-shift cab driving I had taken on more than I could handle. At that time I was 45 years old: I decided it was time to begin my climb, back up to engineering. That slow, but adventurous, climb back up to high tech engineering took about 7 years (see Chapter 4).

As my return to engineering advanced, my engineering skills began to sharpen up again. Later in 1984, when my analytical climb into high tech engineering began to level off, I began to reflect on the 22 years since my religious experience: I recalled that ten years back, in 1974 - during the first or second year that I was driving the cab - I ran across Forrester's powerful system dynamics (SD) methodology while browsing at the MIT bookstore. To my surprise, Forrester's advanced and very subtle SD methodology looked relatively easy to me. However, after I had become more familiar with Forrester's analytical ways, I understood why his SD methodology seemed relatively easy: He seemed to be constantly using the first principle of engineering: Keep It Simple. Also, I noticed that Forrester and his associates - and even some of the MIT undergraduate students working with them - were able to apply SD to deeply comprehend the dynamics of a great variety of very complex systems. In short, it looked to me like I might be able to use the SD methodology to analyze the dynamics of my consciousness system underlying my religious experience of purgation.

So, after having gone through a stressful cab driving adventure as far as he could go, the abstract and theoretical engineer began to understand people and society a little better. Then, slowly, his understanding got better and better as the years passed. Also - he started to sharpen up his engineering skills again. He also began to realize that he didn't have much time. He was 52 years old! He had to make his move: So, in 1984 the General Theory of Religion Project began. It was not the beginning, though. He had sensed for a number of years that his heart, his soul, and his mind were slowly putting together the structure of a new and important phase of his analytical life: Using System Dynamics (SD) to penetrate to the very core of religion.

Dive deep, Oh my mind, Dive deep.

The Engineer Becomes a System Dynamicist and Independent Scholar

Most religions were generated by a single individual who had a peak experience. However, most of those religions were gradually conditioned and tamed by social forces, were compromised, and then degenerated into their present form. My solution to this degeneration problem has been to develop a general theory of religion (GTR). The focus of the GTR has been to scientifically examine the permanent data of my phenomenological or core consciousness system residing in my long term memory (LTM). That data had been permanently stored in my LTM during my peak experience. As we shall see, it was in this way that the GTR has established a permanent, scientific base for the core of all religions.

However, many religious people will make the following point: We should examine the peak experience of either Moses, the sages of the Upanishads, Parmenides, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Ramakrishna, or other revered avatars and saints! My response is there is not enough data in the sacred texts associated with the Avatars. My position is that many people have had a peak experience. However, only a few of those people have been known and have had followers: After the peak experience some have become arhats or avatars; others - those who have attained steady wisdom - have become bodhisattvas [Buddhist], sthitaprajnas (The Bhagavadgita II:54-72), saints [Christian], etc. Others have anonymously devoted themselves to family and community and, if they are recognized, are sometimes called a mensch [yiddish], a standup guy [US slang], etc. Still, other mystics are problematic and difficult to categorize. In my opinion it would be best to have an avatar or a saint or a mensch make a scientific analysis of his or her peak experience so we could base the general theory of religion on that analysis. However, no avatar or saint or mensch has stepped forward. As a result - for the time being - the scientific analysis must be based on an analysis of my own experience. I give the following credentials for such an undertaking:

  1. I experienced purgation, culminating in mystical union, in 1962.
  2. I have been immersed in religious thinking since then.
  3. I have never joined any religion.
In 1984, I began a lone, relentless study of SD, particularly focused on how SD should be applied to analyze my religious experience. In doing so, I gradually found that the politics associated with the subject of my analysis was such that, if I wanted to get at the Truth, it was absolutely necessary that I take on the role of an independent scholar.


The painting shown above is by the American painter, Winslow Homer, and is entitled 'Fog Warning.' It is displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: It represents, for me, the mystic struggling to return home - against long odds - after having gained the Great Catch: The knowledge of God during mystical union.

The General Theory of Religion Project

In early 2008 - after a relentless 24 year effort, focused on the GTR Project - I attained my scientific goal: I established a three step, presuppositionless, system dynamics(SD)-based, phenomenological methodology for analyzing the data in my long term memory (LTM). My LTM permanently contained what is called either my dynamic core consciousness or my dynamic inner phenomena. This data was permanently recorded in my LTM during my 1962, ten-hour, subjective, religious experience of purgation. I call the three step methodology, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP). My strategy had been to establish TFP, while at the same time apply it to analyze the data in my LTM during my ten-hour religious experience of purgation. As a result, Steps I and II of the TFP methodology are able to describe my 1962, ten-hour experience of purgation by modeling and simulating the contents or data of my LTM. The flow diagram or feedback system for purgation, shown at Figure 2 on the next page - and its mathematical model that follows it - is the base for my consciousness simulations associated with the dynamics of my religious experience of purgation. The simulations of my consciousness associated with my religious experience are shown at Figures 1 and 3.

Then, in the final step - Step III - of the TFP methodology I made a scientifically-based eidetic reduction of my experience of purgation. That is, the analysis associated with Step III reveals the dynamics of the physical objects - or the dynamic noumena - released in my neurophysiological system during my religious experience. Those dynamic physical objects or dynamic noumena being released were driving my 38 core consciousness variables in Figure 2 associated with my experience of purgation. That is, the 38 variables associated with my inner phenomena or my core consciousness are presented in the feedback system or flow diagram at Figure 2, just below. Those 38 dynamic inner phenomena variables or dynamic core consciousness variables were permanently located in my LTM, ever since the time (1962) when I experienced purgation. I found that the dynamic noumena - functioning during my dynamic purgation experience - probably had the following material form: About a dozen sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles were being released, one by one, in my neurophysiological system. These dynamic sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles were the noumena. The dynamics of these noumena were driving the dynamics of my inner phenomena or the dynamics of my core consciousness. The eidetic reduction revealed the dynamic physical objects or the noumena and allowed me to comprehend the physical reality of my religious experience of purgation.

Once I was able to use Step III to determine or identify the probable dynamic physical objects in my neurophysiological system that were probably associated with the noumena, I then slowly began to recall my early life when I was 9 or 10 years old. That was when I was traumatized. Then, I began to conjecture that the dozen sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles had probably become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma (see Section B of Key #1 of this Introduction shown about six or seven pages below). Eventually, I began to conjecture that over a period of 20 or 21 years those cramped heart muscles slowly became ripe and then were spontaneously being released in 1962 during my experiencing of purgation when I was 30 years old. In this way I began to understand the dynamics of my religious experience. But, in order to gain those insights I had to use the three steps of the TFP methodology and I had to be willing to make the above 24 year effort. Most importantly, though, I was relentlessly driven by my need to know about the origin of my profound religious experience.

Keep in mind that my ten-hour experience of purgation just preceded the estimated four-to-seven second experience of mystical union. During mystical union the analyst experiences what I believe is the very ground or core of his or her being. From my experience, I think mystical union lies at the very ground or heart of both philosophy and religion. However, also keep in mind that the profound experience of mystical union is not dynamic. It is a timeless and changeless experience. As a result, it is an experience that cannot be analyzed using SD. However, I think mystical union eventually can be analyzed - but not completely - beginning with the first law of thermodynamics. The analysis of my experience of mystical union will be attempted in Volume II of the General Theory of Religion or GTR Project. However, my ten hour, dynamic experience of purgation is my focus now in this Volume I of the GTR Project.

Let us now take the above four paragraphs and clarify them a bit in the following six or seven pages of the rest of this Section. These six or seven pages reveal the substance of the General Theory of Religion Project:

My scientific analysis of the dynamic core consciousness data or phenomena data associated with purgation indicates that the data of core consciousness during purgation was immediately or spontaneously being permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM), while I was having my religious experience. Then, 22 years later (in 1984) my exploration of that permanent - but dynamic moment by moment - LTM data for purgation began. It began with Step I of the TFP methodology. Step I allows the analyst to explore and to roughly structure the permanent LTM data for purgation. It uses the SD-based, causal loop diagram technique, but the reader should note that the causal loop diagram technique is not mathematically based. Because of this the Step I exploration is helpful, but is not scientific. Nevertheless, that Step I technique enabled me to begin the TFP-based model, shown in Figure 2, of my inner phenomena system or my inner core consciousness system going on during purgation. Step I was just the beginning of my exploration of purgation. In Step II I began using Forrester's powerful SD methodology to scientifically describe the dynamics of my consciousness during my experience of purgation. That is, in Step II I mathematically modeled and simulated core consciousness, also called the inner phenomena, associated with purgation. The SD-based, phenomenological structure or noema for purgation is shown in Figure 2 and its associated mathematical model is shown just below Figure 2.

I spent ten years - from 1984 to 1994 - using Steps I and II. I spent about two years using Step I. Then, I spent about eight years using Step II. In doing so, I scientifically structured a 38 variable, SD-based, phenomenological model of purgation and its associated mathematical model. During the first years of using Step II I had obtained a fairly good mathematically-based, preliminary model of purgation's core consciousness. Then, during the last years of that 10 year period I began using an iterative technique to refine Step II's preliminary model, so that the model slowly became a much more refined and accurate model. The iterative technique of Step II consisted of constantly repeating the following iterative cycle:

  1. Compare the model's various core consciousness simulations with the corresponding LTM data for purgation.
  2. Revise either purgation's preliminary mathematical model or restructure the Figure 2 purgation feedback structure or both, using the insights gained from item #1 of this 3 item iterative cycle.
  3. Having made the revisions at item #2, simulate all the important variables of the model again.
After deepening Step II by performing the iterative cycles, which were carried on over the rest of those ten years, I found that I became able to accurately model and simulate - moment by moment - the 38 variables associated with my particular core consciousness system for purgation. That model is shown at Figure 2. In this way both the description of core consciousness during purgation and the structure of the model of purgation became more refined and more accurate. In addition my simulations of purgation allowed me to reexperience purgation and to think long and hard about it. This reexperiencing of purgation was occurring 32 years after I had first experienced it in 1962! It was a labor of love.

By using Steps I and II of the TFP methodology, the system dynamics model of my experience of purgation - shown at Figure 2 below - together with its associated mathematical model, enabled me to simulate my experience of purgation. The simulation of my entire religious experience is shown in Figure 1, which is located just after the mathematical model. Also very important is Figure 3, which is located just below Figure 1. It shows the simulation of the release of three knots in the heart during purgation.

Figure 2: The system dynamics model or flow diagram or noema or feedback system for core consciousness during purgation:


Mathematical model for purgation, emerging from my work on Steps I and II of the TFP methodology and on my work using the iterative technique associated with Step II:

Use a dt of .005 minutes.

Figure 1: Simulation of my entire 16 hour religious experience.

Figure 1 simulates only four variables of my 38 variable model of my 16-hour (or 960 minute) religious experience, but those four variables give a keen description of the dynamics of my religious experience. The 16-hour simulations describe stages 11, 12, 13, and 14 of my 16 hour religious experience. The 14 stages of my religious crisis are listed at Table I at Key #2. Key #2 follows Key #1 at the Section of the Introduction called The Keys to the GTR Project.


The eight items in the list below give a more detailed description of the stages of my 1962 religious experience, simulated in Figure 1 above.
(The timetable for my entire 16 hour religious experience is given in the eight stages given just below. Further detail is given in the narration at The Heart Begins to Open section of Chapter 1. Please note that the simulations of the #3 and #4 PsychicStress variables are not accurate between the 555 minute mark and the 617 minute mark. That is because the release of the knots in my heart were happening too fast to be simulated accurately when the simulation covers a 960 minute period: For example, at times knots were being released every 30 or 60 seconds during that period. Figure 3 below corrects that problem: It presents more detailed and more accurate two minute simulations of the key variables functioning during that relatively fast moving period. Figure 3 also gives the reader a better understanding of how a knot was released.)

  1. 0 minute mark to the 60 minute mark: The simulation begins at noon Pacific Standard Time (PST). It starts with the 15 minute walk from the monastery to the cab stand, during which my heart began to open. This opening of my heart continued on until about the 180 minute mark and then was stable for about 6 hours. However, at the time of the arrival of the cab at the Los Angeles airport, my PsychicStress had not begun to rise yet.
  2. 60 minute mark to the 120 minute mark: The one-hour wait at the airport. The intensity of PsychicStress began to rise during this period.
  3. 120 minute mark to the 450 minute mark: The flight from LA to Boston, leaving LA at about 2:00pm PST and arriving at Logan airport in Boston around 10:30pm EST. (Notice the preliminary peak in PsychicStress around the 180 minute mark. That peak served as a kind of warning to me to get ready for what was coming: The walking of the plank!)
  4. 450 minute mark to about 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark. This period began when I arrived at Logan airport and includes the discussion with the state police officer at the airport plus the cab ride from the airport to my apartment plus about one-hour of preliminaries - thinking, pacing the floor of my apartment, etc. - before lying down on my bed at about 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark. The 555 minute mark is when the crucial first knot in my heart was going to be released.
  5. About 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark to the 617 minute mark: This is the one-hour unstable or oscillating period of purgation during which the 12 KnotsInHeart are purged (Figure 3, just below, shows - by way of simulation - how the experiencer of purgation walks the plank during the release of 3 of the 12 KnotsInHeart.). The 10 minutes before the 555 minute mark were the most critical minutes of my life. That was when the first knot in my heart was going through the deep religious and neurophysiological process of being released. Those were the desperate 10 minutes when I really had to walk the plank. I have never been the same since those desperate ten minutes, particularly the final 3 or 4 minutes of those 10 minutes.
  6. The great experience of mystical union, lasting anywhere between 4 to 7 seconds, occurred around the 617 minute mark. (After the releasing of the dozen or so knots in my heart during purgation, the religious experience culminated in mystical union.)
  7. 617 minute mark to the 960 minute mark: Deep sleep.
  8. Awaken at sunrise to the Divine State at the 960 minute mark.
Thus, my religious experience included purgation (from 0 to around the 617 minute mark), mystical union (with a duration of around 4 to 7 seconds during the 617th minute), and deep sleep (with a duration of around 6 hours). The total experience was thus around 16 hours or 960 minutes. In summary: purgation lasted roughly 10 hours; deep sleep lasted roughly 6 hours (see Table I, below, at Key #2).

Figure 3: Two minute simulations during the walking of the plank.

Here are some two minute simulations during the release of three of the twelve knots in my heart during purgation. The gathering of these four critical simulations attempts to simply describe - via simulation - how the potential mystic 'walks the plank' for three of the twelve knots released during purgation. The release of the crucial first knot is not shown simulated in Figure 3: The release of knots is shown only for the following knots: The 5th from last, the 4th from last, and the 3rd from last knots. Two of the simulations track the oscillation of the intensity of two critical variables, FearDeathDueToKnot and PrayerQuality. During the same two minute time period the other two simulations track (1) the decrease of the variable, KnotsInHeart, and (2) the rise of the variable, TruenessOfMind. As TruenessOfMind rises, it is eventually going to lead to mystical union when all 12 KnotsInHeart have been released. Notice in Figure 3 that a knot is released only when the variable, PrayerQuality, reaches 100%. Here is the mathematical model for the variable, PrayerQuality:

PrayerQuality = (0.5)*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).......eq.1

Once I had obtained a certain degree of accuracy and mastery of both my model of core consciousness during purgation and the dynamic description of purgation culminating in mystical union, using Step II of the TFP methodology, I was ready to begin the final step: Step III of the TFP methodology. Step III is concerned with transcendentally grounding Figure 2, the Step II model of my core consciousness or my inner phenomena going on during my experience of purgation. Essentially, transcendentally grounding Figure 2 means identifying the dynamic noumena or the dynamic material objects in my neurophysiological system that were driving the 38 core consciousness variables or phenomena variables associated with my Figure 2 phenomenological model of my experience of purgation. The leading phenomenologist, Edmund Husserl, called this Step III the eidetic reduction. However, I don't think Husserl's method for Step III is scientific. An indication of this is that Husserl called his method for performing the eidetic reduction, eidetic variation or imaginative variation or free phantasy (Drummond 2008). On the other hand, I believe Step III of my TFP methodology - used in this book manuscript for performing the eidetic reduction - is scientific. Here's why:

Though Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to perform the eidetic reduction in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. Transcendentally grounding or performing the eidetic reduction of purgation or performing Step III could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, needed to perform the eidetic reduction, occurred. Those two breakthroughs were:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

My preparation for developing a scientific method for performing Step III extended from 1994 to the early part of 2008. Much of the time that I used up during that 14 year process found me trying to understand the subtle and cunning fight going on between scientific scholars and religious scholars over the eidetic reduction. It seemed to me that the protagonists located in the middle of that fight were Husserl (science) and Heidegger (religion). The confusion over Truth in the very subtle field of Phenomenology was driven - in part- by a variety of religious scholars, like Heidegger, who - very naturally - didn't want to see their religion undermined, but they were also religious professors who were hired to see that their religion was not undermined. That was their job. During that period, I spent a lot of time wrestling with the ideas thrown around by the religious scholars in phenomenology. Those ideas lacked a scientific or mathematical or engineering base for dealing with the eidetic reduction. In my case - due to the fact that I had carefully studied mechanical engineering and physics at the university - I had been trained to never compromise when trying to get at the Truth about machines. Now, with my mind and heart and soul focused on my analysis of my sacred religious experience, I could never back away from the Truth.

Also, I had a very difficult time understanding the published books of leading phenomenological thinkers and philosophers in the field of phenomenology. Here is an example: The first summary of the field of Phenomenology in the English language was written in German by Husserl. The plan was to translate Husserl's German summary into English and then publish it in the Encyclopaedia Britanica of 1929. For the first time the field of Phenomenology was going to be introduced to the English speaking world. Eventually, it was published on time, but it is now well known that the translation from German into English had been strangely and misleadingly translated.

In addition, an important problem for me during my 14 years of introduction to Phenomenology was I had no deep training in philosophy. I was a rather naive engineer, a lone independent scholar, who had followed his nose and wandered into Phenomenology. I was not aware that the essence of the work I had cut out for myself was located right in the middle of an intellectual war between science and religion. Nevertheless, my long, floundering, 14 year study of the very difficult field of Phenomenology eventually resulted in my scientifically-based eidetic reduction of my experience of purgation. The method used in that eidetic reduction is Step III of the TFP methodology. Step III: Oh you are so precious! You have enabled me to find the path leading to the climbing of the north face of the TFP methodology. Step III: You have enabled me to understand the origin of my experience of purgation.

Here is how I, eventually, made the Step III scientific breakthrough to the eidetic reduction or transcendental grounding of purgation: First off, transcendentally grounding my Step II phenomenological model of purgation, shown at Figure 2, required me to identify the dynamic release of material objects or the dynamic release of the noumena - inside my neurophysiological system - that were driving the dynamics of my core consciousness system or my phenomena system during purgation. How this was accomplished is shown in Key #5 in the Introduction. Keep in mind that the dynamic noumena system was driving my dynamic core consciousness system or my phenomena system. My model of the phenomena or my core consciousness during purgation, shown in Figure 2, turned out to be structured - (see Forrester 1968b) - as a second order negative feedback system (SONFS). With this information, I began to realize that the dynamics of the noumena - or the dynamics of the material objects being released in my neurophysiological system - that were driving the dynamics of the phenomena must have had the dynamic characteristics of a SONFS.

Now, it is known that the dynamics of the release of pairs of antagonistic muscles has the dynamic characteristics of a SONFS, However, in order to really identify the kind of dynamic noumena or the release of material objects, capable of driving the phenomena we must go deep: We must carefully study the biology of the dynamic noumena: Here are two examples of dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS. When these noumena are finally released, they are capable of driving the dynamic phenomena - shown in Figure 2 - as a SONFS:

  1. Here is some fundamental biology associated with the release of dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS:
    "The amount of blood pumped by the heart per unit time (cardiac output) depends on the heart rate and the contractile force of the heart. Sympathetic activity increases the cardiac output; parasympathetic activity reduces it. The two parts of the autonomic nervous system thus have antagonistic effects on the spontaneous active heart. Of course, regulation of the cardiac output by the autonomous nervous system never occurs in the organism in just that way, because the sympathetic and the parasympathetic system influence the heart simultaneously. The heart is subjected continuously to inhibitory parasympathetic and excitatory sympathetic influences. Each change in activity in one or the other of the two autonomic systems results in changes in the heart rate and/or the contractile force. Thus, the cardiac output (amount of blood pumped by the heart per unit time) increases when there is a rise in sympathetic activity and/or a drop in parasympathetic activity. Conversely, the cardiac output declines when there is a drop in sympathetic activity and/or a rise in parasympathetic activity. Since the CNS [central nervous system] has these means at its disposal to regulate the cardiac output through the autonomic nervous system, the body can adapt the operation of the cardiovascular system to the requirements of the moment."
    (From Schmidt, RF. 1978. Fundamentals of neurophysiology. Springer-Verlag: New York. p 237)
  2. Here is an earlier explanation of the biology of the release of the dynamic noumena that are structured as a SONFS:
    "...the contractions of particular sets of muscles in the heart must entail the suppression of activity of other muscles for coordinated movements of the heart to emerge."
    (From Sherrington, CS. 1906 or 1948. Integrative Action of the Nervous System. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.)
The contents of this paragraph, together with items 1 and 2 just above, will eventually initiate the beginning of a long scientific study that will eventually establish the biology of the noumena driving the phenomena, for the case of the release of a trauma. The phenomena are shown in Figure 2. As you will recall, the entire phenomena system or core consciousness system in Figure 2 is structured as a SONFS.

Now, if one reads the narrative of my religious experience, shown at Key #4 of the Introduction, one can see that almost all the dynamic action occurring within me during purgation was occurring in my heart. Therefore, within my neurophysiological system it is probable that a dynamic noumena system, structured as a SONFS in the form of the dynamic release of sets of antagonistic heart muscles, was driving the Figure 2 phenomena system or core consciousness system, which is also structured as a SONFS. Slowly, I began to realize that the transcendental grounding analysis given just above is the scientific Step III, or scientific-based eidetic reduction: I had been looking for it for 14 years, as I strived to establish Step III of the scientific Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. A relatively brief, but very clear, summary of the entire TFP analysis of the phenomena - for my 10-hour experience of purgation - is given at Key #5 of the Introduction. However, a draft of the more extended and detailed analysis associated with the eidetic reduction has not been put together yet. Eventually, that extended and more detailed analysis will be included in my presentation of Chapter 6.

After I had gone through the three steps of the scientifically-based TFP methodology, presented in the above five or six pages, a number of other insights began occurring to me about my religious experience of purgation: The dynamic material objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were probably driving the core consciousness or the dynamic phenomena associated with purgation were, roughly, a dozen spontaneously releasing pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles. Once I had identified the noumena, I began to realize those muscles had probably become cramped or paralyzed during the time when my childhood trauma occurred, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old (see Section B of Key #1). Therefore, having linked the dynamic noumena with the abreaction or release of my trauma, I began to realize that back in 1962 at the age of 30 - when I was experiencing purgation - I was really experiencing the release or abreaction of my cramped heart muscles, heart muscles that were functioning deep in the ground of my being.

The release or abreaction was a two step process: First, the cramped heart muscles had to become ripe during the 20 or 21 year period, from the time when my trauma had occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old to the time when the cramped heart muscles were released when I was 30 years old in April 1962. Putting it simply, in 1962 my childhood trauma was finally ripe and was spontaneously being released or abreacted.

Further, it is well known that childhood traumas are constantly occurring throughout the world. Then, by studying religious experiences associated with the major religions I began to realize that my peak religious experience - purgation culminating in mystical union - had the same type of origin and the same type of noumena as the peak experiences found in all other religions (see Key #2 in the Introduction): The release or abreaction of a trauma underlies my peak experience and indicates that my religious experience is a universal experience. It is similar to religious experiences occurring throughout the world. As a result, I began to see that I was not only dealing with the core of religion, I was dealing with a general theory of religion: e pluribus unum. I also began to see I was dealing with the long-sought-for integration of science and religion. I also began to see that, as a byproduct, the analysis had solved the central problem in the emerging field of consciousness studies: Chalmers' hard problem (CHP). A brief summary of the solution to CHP is also shown at Key #5 in the Introduction.

The fullest presentation of all of the above ideas and related insights - with roughly 600 accompaning links - is the subject of this book. Its URL is at http://world.std.com/~awolpert

Key Breakthroughs: The key breakthroughs made during my 24 year effort between 1984 and the early part of 2008 are listed below. Those breakthroughs are establishing the foundations for the General Theory of Religion and the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. These foundations will ultimately bring about a series of scientific revolutions. Some of the scientific fields that will experience these revolutions are as follows: consciousness studies, psychiatry, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, system dynamics, scientific aspects of religion, and science itself.

  1. A general theory of religion (GTR): This is a scientific theory that indicates that at the very core of all major religions in the world is a peak experience which originates during the 'sacred release' of the experiencer's cramped or paralyzed heart muscles. These heart muscles had become cramped during a traumatic childhood experience. The nature of a 'sacred release' is presented at Section D of Key #1.
  2. The primary purpose of all major religions. It is very important for religious people and their leaders to focus on the central or primary purpose of religion. My particular insights associated with the primary purpose of religion are dealt with at Keys #1, #2, #3, and #6 of The Keys to the GTR Project section of this Introduction. I believe that at the present time only a small percentage of religious leaders are aware of the central or primary purpose of religion. The fact that many cultures have forgotten the primary purpose of religion is the reason why formerly great religions are presently in danger of degenerating: My position is that the primary purpose of religion is to enable religious devotees to deal with the release of a trauma: To be able to walk the plank. If a religion and its culture has lost its ability to teach its devotees how to deal with the release of a trauma, that religion and the culture that depends on that religion are headed for obsolescence or superficiality or degeneration.
  3. The presuppositionless, scientific analysis of the religious experience of purgation, explained in the GTR Project presentation above, has never been done before. In addition, the phenomena associated with my ten-hour religious experience of purgation (see the SD-based, flow diagram at Figure 2) has a first person perspective. As a result, that first person perspective for my scientific analysis of purgation will be the start of the second stage of the scientific revolution. Up until now the first stage of the scientific revolution - from the 17th Century to the present - has been limited to a third person perspective.
  4. My system dynamics(SD)-based, presuppositionless, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology is establishing the long-sought-for scientific approach to a phenomenological analysis (or core consciousness analysis) of a deep subjective experience, such as purgation. I believe that during the early part of the 20th Century Edmund Husserl could already envision the coming of the TFP methodology, this great scientific breakthrough in phenomenology. At that time Husserl gave a name to this relentlessly approaching methodology: Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (Husserl 1911).
  5. The scientific solution to Chalmers hard problem for the case of my deep subjective religious experience of purgation is being presented for the first time in this book at Key #5 of the Introduction and also at my draft of Chapter 6. Key #5 will illustrate how the powerful Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology is going to be used to make a presuppositionless analysis of my subjective experience of purgation. (For a brief summary of Chapter 6, please see Key #5 of the Introduction, just below). This solution is leading to key breakthroughs in the science of consciousness. For example, the eidetic reduction of the purgation experience is performed in a scientific way. It will be scientifically identifying the noumena or eidos in the experiencer's neurophysiological system that is driving the phenomena (or core consciousness) during purgation.
  6. The potential scientific and religious revolution that is going to blossom in the field of psychiatry and the field of religion: At the present time psychiatry does not seem to me to be a real science. Politics and money, rather than Truth, appear to be dominating psychiatry at the present time. The psychiatrist, J.M. Masson (2003b), has been trying to clean out and revolutionize the field of psychiatry since 1970. However, he was harassed so intensely that he decided to leave the US and is now in exile in New Zealand. I believe my contribution to Masson's continuing revolution will reopen his case against the present state of psychiatry. I believe it will begin with my SD-based, scientific analysis, associated with the release of my trauma.
Underlying these six breakthroughs is Forrester's system dynamics (SD), the scientific foundation of all my work. My conjecture is SD may be the logos.

The Keys to the GTR Project

The Six Keys that Open Up the Heart of this Book:

Key #1: The Primary Purpose of Religion.

Here is the essence of Key #1: When a trauma is being released, the experiencer usually panics during the release of the first knot or the first set of cramped heart muscles. After that the experiencer has a nervous breakdown and then develops some form of psychosis. The primary purpose of religion is to enable the experiencer to avoid the panic, nervous breakdown, and psychosis that usually occur during the beginning minutes of the release of the first knot associated with the trauma. I call those beginning critical minutes: walking the plank.

The Primary Purpose of Religion is to enable one to walk the plank: This phrase applies to the release of the first knot during the crucial ten minutes of my deep 16 hour religious experience. In the West my 16 hour religious experience is usually called purgation culminating in mystical union. During the crucial ten minutes I used my religious preparedness (see Key #1, section C), taught to me when I was a child and a youth. That religious preparedness saved me when I had to walk the plank. This means that my religious preparedness saved me from panic, from a nervous breakdown, and from the eventual development of some form of mental illness: Religious preparedness is the The Primary Purpose of Religion:

Yea,
Though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;

from Psalm 23 of the Bible or the Old Testament

To get deeper into this Primary Purpose of Religion, I would now like to tell you a little more about walking the plank: The desperate minutes during purgation, when I was in danger of panic, a nervous breakdown, etc. Those were the most crucial ten minutes of my life. With the profound help of the Divine I made it through those crucial ten minutes when the first knot in my heart was being released. The knots in my heart were caused by my childhood trauma. Walking the plank takes place when the first knot of the trauma is being released. All traumas eventually begin to release themselves, but usually the release is not completed because the experiencer panics during the release of those cramped or paralyzed heart muscles. In my case, once my religious preparedness enabled me to deal with the first knot, my heart and my imagination were then more able to deal with the entire one hour release of the dozen or so knots in my heart associated with the release of my trauma. Below, in section D, you will see that it was because of the profound help of the Lord that I was able to make it through the release in one piece.

Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee: How great thou art, how great thou art.
(from a favorite Gospel song of the Christians)

A. In order to go deeper into the Primary Purpose of Religion, first let me introduce you to the following phrases: "Walking the razor's edge" or "walking the plank" or walking the way that is said to be "straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life...."

  1. From the Hindus: To walk the razor's edge...
    "Like the sharp edge of a razor is that path,
    difficult to tread and hard to cross."
    Katha Upanishad: 3:14.
  2. From the Christians: Straight is the gate and narrow is the way..
    "Enter ye in at the straight gate: for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat:
    Because straight is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
    Matthew 7:13-14.
  3. From that Saturday matinee movie, when I was somewhere between 6 and 13 years old. As I recall, the movie was about the life of a young seaman on a 19th century sailing ship, whose ship encounters the dreaded pirates. The movie was being shown over at that 52nd and Lyndale theatre in Minneapolis, sometime between 1938-1945: To walk the plank.

B. Now, I need to tell you about my childhood trauma. It occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old. Traumas eventually begin to release themselves, spontaneously. My particular trauma was released when I was 30 years old, 20 or 21 years after the trauma occurred. The spontaneous releasing process of my trauma was the driving force of my consciousness during my religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.

At some time in 2005 - after 21 years of working on the formalized, scientific, system dynamics-based, phenomenological analysis of my religious experience - the following insight occurred to me: At the same time as my 1962 religious experience of purgation was occurring, the abreaction or complete release of the cramped heart muscles associated with my childhood trauma was occurring. That is, the insight that occurred to me in 2005 was as follows: The physical effects on my body, resulting from my childhood trauma, were the quick development of about a dozen or so sets or pairs of cramped or paralyzed antagonistic muscles in my heart. Those dozen or so cramped or paralyzed pairs of muscles were then released from my heart 20 or 21 years later during the abreaction of my trauma. This 2005 conclusion is based on the following three sets of interlocking data:
  1. Certain key memories from my childhood that I can still remember fairly well. Those memories occurred when I was 9 or 10 years old, when I was 11 years old, and when I was 30 years old..
  2. The studies and insights of Charcot, Breuer, Janet, Freud, and the bold J.M. Masson on hysteria. {See publications by Charcot, (Freud 1966), Masson, etc.}
  3. The results that have been emerging from the many years I have spent scientifically analyzing my consciousness during my experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.
As I have stated, my childhood trauma occurred around 1941 or 1942 when I was about 9 or 10 years old. The assailant was about 14 or 15 years old and was unknown to me. I saw him running toward me in the distance as I was taking a short cut across the snow-filled school grounds in late afternoon. The snow was about a foot deep - maybe more - and I could not outrun him. When he caught up with me, I immediately blacked out and am unable to remember the nature of the assault. I don't remember having any post-assault pain in the private areas of my body or anywhere else. Also, I don't remember any semen on my clothes or body. I know I would have remembered if those two actions had actually occurred.

After many years of thought I have come to the conclusion that I reacted against the 14 or 15 year old attacker by taking the position of a completely silent 9 or 10 year old boy, lying in the snow. I did not take that position because I was clever: I took that position because it was in my genes to do that. I believe that by doing that the 14 or 15 year old attacker got scared and ran away. He got scared because he thought I was dead.

However, as a result of this scary experience, I was traumatized: I believe this traumatization resulted in the cramping or paralyzation of about 12 pairs of my heart muscles, because there seemed to me that there were about a dozen knots released during the abreaction of my trauma. This cramping or paralyzation of my heart muscles had lasted for a period of 20 or 21 years, from when I was 9 or 10 years old to the time when I was 30 years old and the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles associated with my trauma were completely released.

Here are some other memories from my youth and my college years: I believe these memories are related to the childhood trauma:

  1. An experience of hysteria: When I was 11 years old and making the stressful transition in the Fall of 1943 from grade school to the 7th grade in junior high school, my legs became paralyzed for a few hours. Earlier, on my way to school that day, I stopped by at a friend's house and then we walked to school together. He told me his older brother had rheumatic fever. I thought about this during the morning until I began to think I was 'catching' rheumatic fever. Eventually, in early afternoon my legs became paralyzed and I couldn't walk. My father came from work to pick me up at the school nurse's office about 3 or 4pm. When we got home my father carried me in and laid me down on my bed. He talked to me for about a half hour and eventually convinced me my legs could not have become paralyzed by rheumatic fever. Then, he told me in a loving way, but with manliness and conviction, that I could get up and walk. I did so and ran out to play with much joy.
  2. I was a fairly good tennis player in high school and college. Some top players in Minneapolis had remarked from time to time that I had one of the best backhands around. My second serve was arching, spinning, curving, wildly bouncing, and hard to handle (I am exaggerating a bit here). However, when I would get toward the end of any close tournament singles match, I always lost - much to my frustration and disappointment. This was particularly true in my college years. The most contemptuous words in all of athletics are reserved for such a person: 'He choked!' Freud has clarified this experience, somewhat. He has called it 'strangulated emotions.'
    (This paragraph has to be examined carefully for bias. I may be making a last ditch effort in my old age to free myself from the label given to me in my youth.)

C. Now, let me describe my particular religious preparedness. (This religious preparedness was very important in saving me during the experience of purgation, when my childhood trauma was being released. My religious preparedness enabled me to successfully walk the plank without panicking and having a nervous breakdown.) So, here are four important factors that made up my religious preparedness:

  1. My precious mother: My Jewish mother's sincere and simple mentioning of God during my early childhood, which led to my simple childhood prayers to God.
  2. Sunday school: My simple Reform Jewish religious training in Sunday school from the age of 5 to about 15 years old.
  3. Community and history: The time I went with my parents and close relatives to the Synagogue during the High Holy Days of 1945 when I was 13 years old. It was about a month after the end of World War II and the news was just coming in about the Holocaust. Many of the leaders of the Jewish community of Minneapolis were there. Everyone seemed serious. My uncle pointed out the owner of the great Minneapolis Lakers basketball team. The dynamic, manly-looking owner seemed serious, too.
  4. The critical religious link to my Jewish ancestors: When I was somewhere between 7 and 15 years old, my father took me up a flight of stairs to an area above the auditorium at the Synagogue and showed me the sacred Everlasting Light. Just below the Light was a plaque with the name of my revered grandfather, who died when I was about three or four years old. My grandfather had escaped from being forced into the Cossack army by fleeing Lithuania at 16 years of age. He then got on a ship and came to the US seeking freedom. Trained as a tailor, he began his life in the US by picking up rags off the streets of New York and then washing, sewing, ironing, and selling them.
The primary purpose of religion is to enable one to successfully negotiate the release of a trauma without panicking and having a nervous breakdown. Here is how it works: When I was 30 years old and the first knot or lead heart muscle of my trauma began the crucial 10 minute process of releasing itself and my stress, fear, and anxiety began to build up, I got scared. I thought: Am I gonna die? What's happening to me? I did not know what to do! but I was deeply prepared: With no options left to me during those crucial 10 minutes leading up to the release of the first knot, I instinctively began to use my simple prayers, my simple Jewish Sunday School teachings, and my imagination, in a very spontaneous and natural way. Although it wasn't easy for me to deal with purgation, I believe this religious preparedness was the decisive factor enabling me to 'walk the plank.'

D. At the present time my model, shown at Figure 2 of the Introduction, is not quite able to vividly simulate what it's like to walk the plank. Instead, let me try to give you a detailed narration: In this narration of what it's like to walk the plank, I am trying to narrate as accurately as I can how my religious preparedness dealt with that crucial first knot:

After the first 9 hours of purgation, particularly after experiencing the preliminary peak in PsychicStress at the 180 minute mark, shown in Figure 1 above, I knew I was dealing with an opening heart that was stymied by a knot. However, as the first knot began its 10 minute releasing process, particularly during the last 3 or 4 minutes before the 555 minute mark in Figure 1, my stress, my fear, and my anxiety started to mount. It was clear that the situation was getting dangerous.
(This is where I believe panic and a nervous breakdown would have occurred. However, I had already begun to use my religious preparedness and my prayers. So, I hadn't panicked yet.)

My first step, using my religious preparedness, was to pray: "Oh Lord, save me." Then, slowly and prayerfully, I began to use my imagination and my religious belief to associate the knot with a particular sin in my life and I asked the blessed Lord - now taking on the role of a Judge in the scenario - for forgiveness of that sin. My religious teachings or belief told me that, if the Judge were to accept my plea, the sin would be forgiven and the knot would then be released. But, there was no release! I didn't panic, though. At that point, using my imagination, I felt the wise and manly Judge was not releasing the knot yet, because He wanted to make sure I was really serious about asking for forgiveness of that sin. But during this delay I noticed my stress, fear, and anxiety were increasing rapidly. My situation was getting desperate. Time was running out, but God was with me:

Then, out of nowhere, my imagination stepped forward and countered my rising fears and anxiety: My imagination said: "The Judge is not playing around. He is deadly serious. He will not put up with any second-rate prayers."

I liked that kind of a guy! No nonsense. Finally, I had found a guy who was serious. He had a much greater standard for integrity and trueness than I had ever had. Now, as my state of mind rose to extreme desperation, I began to pray in earnest. I prayed with an intensity and integrity that was far more profound and intense than the way I had prayed before. Now, I prayed with all my heart and soul. Then, the Judge, calmly standing back and carefully assessing the situation, decided that forgiveness of my sin was justified and, in a very detached way, He allowed the knot to be released at the 555 minute mark.

Because of the integrity and thoroughness by which the Judge conducted this examination during the release of the first knot, I knew He had things under control: I was in good hands. More importantly, I now knew that despite His aloofness and detachment He wanted me on his side. I began to recognize He was a very rare kind of guy: A serious, no nonsense, straight shooting, type of Judge. He was able to penetrate straight into my very heart and soul. (That was where my manhood was bravely waiting for its liberation.)

Then my heart began to open further and I encountered the next knot. "During the tenth hour the above scenario - with many variations - went on relentlessly for about a dozen knots. Yes, the tenth hour was about fear, anxiety, release, and the liberation of my manhood that occurred during this abreaction or release of my childhood trauma. However, the tenth hour was also about a series of intense, serious, earnest, and sacred pledges or promises, made knot by knot in the presence of God. (God always watches over or supervises the activities of the Judge and the person who is being judged.)

In this way - by using my imagination, my prayers, and my religious belief - I was able to walk the plank. This very dangerous process had the potential to either result in panic, a nervous breakdown, and some form of psychosis or result in the release of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles and convert that release into the intense, profound, and sacred religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.

If I had not called upon the Divine and had not used my imagination, my prayers, and my religious belief, I would have panicked and had a nervous breakdown. Instead, with the Lord at my side I had walked the plank!

Yea,
Though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;

from Psalm 23 of the Bible or the Old Testament

E. Now, let me tell you how the process, leading eventually to 'walking the plank,' began for me:

Key #2: A Brief Introduction to the General Theory of Religion.

"... if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development..." (Vivekananda 1893)

Table I, below, gives the 14 stages of my 53 month religious crisis. The details of Table I give the reader a brief and concise base for understanding the similarities of religions and for understanding the deep concept of a general theory of religion.

Please notice that Purgation is listed at Stage 11 and Mystical Union is listed at Stage 12 of the Judeo-Christian terminology. The Hindu terminology uses the term Overcoming Samskaras for the experience of Purgation and uses the term Samadhi for the experience of Mystical Union, etc.

Key #3: Why a Culture Cannot Survive without Religion.

(Why has religious belief survived throughout the whole history of mankind?)

Here are some of the most important religious insights of the book: They are based on my very detailed System Dynamics(SD)-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) analysis of my religious experience, particularly the finer and finer simulations of my core consciousness during purgation. This analysis is being carried out in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. The finer and finer simulations have slowly uncovered the practical reason why prayer, imagination, and religious belief have survived from the time of migrating primitive tribes to the present:

Key #4: A Narrative of my Experience of Purgation Culminating in Mystical Union.

The following excerpt introduces the reader to the religious aspects of this book. It is a two page narrative of my 1962 religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union. Purgation and mystical union are stages 11 and 12 of Table I, shown at Key #2. The excerpt is taken from An Engineer's Story, presented in Chapter 1.

The Heart Begins to Open

The purification resulting from renunciation came about by a supreme effort of the will and by Grace, but the second stage of the purification that followed proceeded passively. A force began to manifest itself in me and I could do nothing but pray. My will was powerless to effect this Force. It began in the following way:

I returned to Southern California at the end of March 1962 for another ten day vacation after successfully completing the project. I was still running true. I was charged and in a state of openness. On this visit I went to another monastery run by the same Order of monks. Again I found myself in a holy atmosphere (11). I had a deeply restful, enchanting, profoundly moving week, many times bubbling over with mirth and on one occasion, hearing a beautiful piece of religious music, I was unable to contain a weeping which became a prolonged sobbing from the bottom of my heart.

Around noon on Sunday I left the monastery to return to Boston for work the next day. I was to take a cab to the Los Angeles airport and then a non-stop flight to Boston. I had plenty of time. The cab stand was about a half-mile away. I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. In this mood I arrived at the cab stand. I told the driver my destination. He was a rather cool and playful young man in his early twenties. I noticed that I was very friendly and mirthful - quite unusual for me since I usually never spoke to cab drivers. During the ride I was joking and at times giggling and had a great time for the half hour drive to the airport. At one point the driver asked me if I had had a 'joint' before getting into the cab. Of course, I had not.

At the airport, however, the warmth or power in my heart began to deepen. I was sitting in the waiting area for the flight but found I could not stay seated. I got up and began to pace the floor of the waiting room. I was well dressed and groomed in a fine conservative suit. Perhaps it was a rather strange sight. The thought occurred to me I was on the verge of a heart attack, but I was only thirty and in good health so dismissed the idea.

The plane was quite full. I took my assigned seat by the window. After the plane circled LA and turned East, the Force in my heart began to get intense. My heart was opening!! There was a struggle going on in my heart. The Force was opening my heart and, because of my fear, my will was waging a losing battle to close it. The opening of my heart brought about a fear - indeed - a terror. At the same time I felt a degree of love for all, forgiveness, brotherhood and sisterhood for all.

I called for the stewardess. I told her something was wrong with my heart. She got me out to the first aid area and gave me oxygen, but it had no effect. She took me to the first class area where there were fewer passengers and I could be alone. The Force continued to try to open my heart and I was in a state of terror, for fear I would die shortly. I kept getting up and walking to the drinking fountain to quench the fire in my breast. I must have drank at least two gallons of water during the five and one-half hour flight.

A few times the stewardess came by to see how I was. Once she sat down next to me. She seemed quite curious about me. She was about 24 or 26. Under the ceiling spotlight I could see her features were delicate but her beauty had now passed its peak. There were the first signs of tension wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Close up I could sense something about her that had gone cold and there was a sadness underneath her makeup. She was neglecting what I could see was a precious soul. In the course of our quiet conversation I told her, in a somewhat oracular way, 'Please leave this terrible job.' She asked me why I thought it was so terrible. I said, in effect, she was being paid to be pleasant and gay to the passengers even though her heart and soul didn't feel it any more. She needed an honest job. With my heart so open, I knew my intuition was sure and I could see these things clearly, quite in the same way that the lay of the land can be seen and understood better when standing at an elevated place. Under ordinary circumstances such a conversation would have set the stewardess' teeth on edge, but with my heart so open she seemed to sense my good will and took what I said to heart.

Nevertheless, when I arrived in Boston about 10:30pm, I was met by a powerfully built and rather serious airport state police officer. He was about 35 or 40 years old. He escorted me from the plane ahead of the others and led me to the airport shelter. Normally I was rather aloof from police officers, indeed I didn't like authority of any kind, but when the officer met me my heart was so open I felt all men were my brothers. As I walked aside of him to the shelter, I found myself putting my right arm around his broad shoulders. I became aware of the gun at his holster but it made no difference to me. In the state of mind I was in, I felt toward him like toward an elder, beloved brother meeting me at the plane. I chatted with him and thanked him for his trouble and great courtesy and assistance. I told him I had just left a monastery and was overwhelmed by being in a crowd of people and that I would be alright once I got home. Besides being an optimistic prognosis to calm myself, it also seemed to be an appropriate way of explaining my openness and feelings of brotherhood and also of avoiding being detained. Ordinarily this tough, no-nonsense police officer would have given me a difficult time but instead, like the stewardess, he seemed to sense the integrity of my feelings.

The Dark Night of the Soul: The Heart is Purified and Prepared for the Culminating Experience

I took a cab and arrived about 11pm at my South End lodgings. They consisted of two rooms on the second floor of an almost-deserted rooming house overlooking - to the right - the extensive federal housing project near the Cathedral. The dull red brick buildings and barren clothes-lines at the edge of the project could be seen from my front window by the light of the street lamps. The window faced a large tree-lined, but neglected, park called Blackstone Square. Next door - to the left - was a Syrian Church with a domed roof overhung by a huge tree, now bare of leaves in early April. A light, quietly emanating from the ornate glass window in the dome, soothed my soul as I paced the rooms.

Finally I was alone. I laid down on my bed. I knew very little about the writings of the mystics at the time. I did not know that I was now entering purgation or the Refiner's Fire or the Dark Night of the Soul (18) that would purify my heart and make me fit for Union with God:

"But who may abide the day of His coming,
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a Refiner's Fire." Malachi 3.2
The events in the cab and on the plane were the beginning but the Dark Night of the Soul began in earnest when I laid down on my bed. As I have said, the fire in the heart led to the opening of the heart. The heart continued to open slowly and inexorably, step by step, like a flower. As it did, it produced forgiveness - forgiveness of those I felt had wronged me, who had teased and mocked me. These vexations departed from my heart one by one as they came to my mind - like water drops from a lotus leaf. At the same time there came to my mind, one by one, things I had done which lay buried in my conscience undermining my life. I prayed for the Lord to forgive me and He did so, one by one (19).

Simultaneous with this forgiveness was terror and joy. I was in terror of losing my life. The Fire or Force was opening my heart and I was naturally terrified since my heart had never been open that wide. Fear keeps the heart closed so if the heart is opened beyond its normal position it produces terror. To alleviate this terror I had to forgive. It allowed the heart to tolerate being opened at that degree of opening. As this proceeded, hatred slowly left my heart and it slowly became more purified.

Then the heart opened more. More terror. More sin and error came to my mind one by one and I asked the Lord to forgive me and He did so one by one. The terror lessened. The heart opened wider. More joy. More terror. More prayers. And as the heart opened ever wider my joy increased to ecstasy or rapture (20).

At the same time I was dealing with another aspect of the terror of losing my life: the dread or remorse that I would lose my worldly ties. I would die in this lonely place never to see my dear ones again. My worldly hopes and dreams would end here never to be fulfilled. Clinging to life, I begged the Lord, Oh save me. Let me live.

This Prayer of Salvation during such an emotional crisis deepened my attachment to God with Form. To confirm and permanently establish this attachment I made a Covenant with God with Form. Once this firm attachment was made I could remove myself from worldly attachments and all its associated complexities and my fears could more easily be borne (21). Only the most simple and fundamental structures of the mind-heart system were now being employed. This stabilized my mind and enabled my heart to continue the process of opening. It opened amidst joy, ecstasy, terror and anxiety while at the same time there was a fierce attention of my mind and being on that which was within.

The Great Silence

Gradually, then, over a period of about an hour this Refiner's Fire succeeded in bringing about an opening and purifying of my heart and bringing along with it peace to my conscience. As a result, my thinking process was able to rest. As this occurred, all of my mind - all of my being - was freed to focus on the present moment within where there existed the blessed open heart. In this undistracted, dramatic state my mind became one pointed. That was its natural, purified state. Then, suddenly, all action within me ceased (22). The pumping of my blood, the beating of my heart, the quivering or hum of my nerves (or perhaps the latter was my body shaking) ceased quite abruptly and I was left in a state of profound silence (23). I had crossed over to the Great Silence (24).

In that state I no longer felt the previous terror, joy, or anxiety. Instead I felt I had come into my True Home, where I was Free(21, 25). I had left the World and was in a state of Pure Being. In that state my mind could not think; it could only observe inwardly and record (26). I had no power to recall or analyze. All of my mind and being continued to focus on the present moment within during the transition into the Silence and at the Silence. In that state of mind and being, my system was satisfied that it had penetrated to the core. Its energy then ran out. It let go and I fell into a swoon: a deep and abiding sleep (27).

It was the silent night, the holy night.

Presently I awoke. It was daybreak. All was peace, bliss. Within me lapped the Living Waters: a serene, wave-like energy of such a subtle frequency that it was capable of flowing evenly throughout my head and body as if they were both made of one substance(4, 28). I was in such a state of peace and bliss, pervaded by a feeling of inner goodness, that the experience has led me to believe this is what is known as Heaven (29). My sincere and earnest search for the Truth during the previous 53 months had finally been satisfied (30). I no longer felt that I must seek the ground of my life, the base upon which to build a sound life. I felt I had found the Ground of My Being: the philosopher's stone, the Formless, the Timeless, the Unconditioned, Knowledge, Bliss (31).

This I now feel is God: no more, no less. Reflection on those blessed hours since early April 1962 has led me to that conclusion (32).

Key #5: Here is the summary of my scientific analysis of the religious experience of purgation, which includes the solution to Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation.

SUMMARY

A subjective or deep inner experience began to present itself to me at about noon on April 8,1962, nineteen days after my 30th birthday: I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. This was the very beginning of my ten hour religious experience of purgation, which culminated in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. During those beginning moments I was baffled: I thought, "Where is this experience within me coming from?" Right there was the key problem: Where does this experience originate? In science this problem - associated with the onset and the continuation to the end of subjective or deep inner experiences - is an example of what is now being called Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP). The four paragraphs below answer the first of the following three questions:

Here are the three questions:

Solving Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation aims at identifying the origins or material forces within me, driving purgation's core consciousness phenomena during that experience. My system dynamics analysis of my core consciousness phenomena during purgation found that the dynamic material forces driving my dynamic core consciousness during purgation were the spontaneous releasing - one by one - of about 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, muscles in my heart. Those pairs of heart muscles had become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then, 20 or 21 years later - at the age of 30 - my trauma and its associated cramped or paralyzed heart muscles had become ripe for release. Finally, the abreaction or spontaneous release of those heart muscles began.

However, it is very important to be aware that during the releasing process of a trauma the trauma's associated psychic stress, fear, and anxiety are usually too much to bear for the experiencer. He or she usually panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then develops some sort of mental illness. Therefore, in order for the experiencer to be able to deal with that psychic stress, fear, and anxiety associated with the release of a trauma, the experiencer must use prayer, religious preparedness, etc. Such activity is the Primary Purpose of Religion. That is, my blessed prayers and religious preparedness enabled me to bear the anxiety, fear, and psychic stress without panicking, having a nervous breakdown, etc. This allowed me to go through the emotional crisis and arrive at a complete abreaction or release of my trauma. Because I used prayers, etc, throughout the ten-hour release of my trauma and because the experience was rooted deeply in my heart, my spontaneous religious response has dominated my memory of the abreaction or release of my trauma.

In my particular case, my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles spontaneously went through the process of releasing themselves. The dynamics of my releasing heart muscles drove the dynamic data of my core consciousness phenomena. That dynamic data of core consciousness was then immediately and permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM) at the time of that abreaction or release. The data of core consciousness being stored in my LTM was about the dynamics of my core consciousness during the entire ten hour purgation experience, including the core consciousness data about the state of openness of my heart. (Please note: Because my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles were spontaneously releasing themselves one by one, it naturally caused the state of my cramped up heart to begin to return to its full or open or natural position: Therefore, my heart was opening.)

Twenty two years later, in 1984 when I was 52 years old, I began the system dynamics-based analysis. The first thing I delved into was the dynamic core consciousness data for my ten hour experience of purgation. Immanuel Kant would have called that dynamic core consciousness data, associated with purgation and stored in my LTM, the dynamic phenomena of purgation. Also, he would have called the estimated 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic muscles in my heart, that were - one by one - being spontaneously abreacted or released, the dynamic noumena.

I will now present how I was able to get the answer to question #1:

Getting the answer to Question #1: Identifying the noumena or the origin of the purgation experience.
(This is the scientific solution to Chalmers' hard problem [CHP] for the case of my deep ten-hour religious experience of purgation.)

My analysis leading up to identifying the noumena has been focused on analyzing the core consciousness data of the phenomena stored in my LTM, because I am proceeding according to Newton's Rules of Philosophizing rather than Descartes' Discourse on Method. Proceeding according to Newton's method, which is now called the scientific method, eventually resulted in the transcendental grounding (Natorp/Kim 2003) of core consciousness during the deep inner experience of purgation. The aim of the task of transcendentally grounding purgation is to identify the dynamic physical objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving the phenomena: These phenomena were associated with my core consciousness during my entire experience of purgation.

Though Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to transcendentally ground phenomena in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. The solving of CHP could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, required for solving CHP, occurred:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

SD is the underlying analytical tool of the three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (For a short introduction to these three steps see the next paragraph. Later, you can also study Chapter 5 or Section I in Chapter 6.) Using the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology, I am able to mathematically analyze my first person core consciousness data residing in my LTM. In that analysis, shown in Section II in Chapter 6, the SD-based TFP methodology scientifically structures the data for purgation in a very compatible way: As a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). The reason the TFP methodology is compatible with biological phenomena is because the MNFS structure is the same structure as the entire neurophysiological system. The neurophysiological system underlies and drives core consciousness.

Here is a short introduction to the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology. The methodology is illustrated by showing how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

My analysis of core consciousness during purgation began in 1984 and has continued steadily right up to the present time. The key breakthrough was Step III, above. It occurred sometime between late 2007 and early 2008. The list of nine items below gives the sequence of scientific tasks I have been performing since 1984, together with the collection of observations and insights that I became aware of during that analytical period. Basically, I used Steps I, II, and III of the SD-based, TFP methodology to analyze the core consciousness data in my LTM. Please note that all the core consciousness data for purgation, residing in my LTM, is associated with or driven by the dynamic noumena. That core consciousness data was dynamic. It varied - moment by moment - during my ten hour experience of purgation.

In summary, here is how this SD-based TFP methodology was used to solve CHP for the case of core consciousness during purgation: I first focused on my core consciousness data, associated with my deep ten hour religious experience of purgation. It resided in my LTM. I then use Steps I and II of the TFP methodology to analyze that data. (For details of this formalized analysis and construction of the purgation feedback system, see Section I and Section II of Chapter 6. The results of this scientific task are summarized in item 1 of the nine item list below. Then, by focusing on Step III, I obtained the results summarized in items 2 thru 9 of the list below. In those items my SD-based, TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation identifies the probable dynamic physical objects or transcendental objects or noumena that are the origins or driving forces of my core consciousness during purgation. This comprehensive analysis of purgation illustrates how the SD-based, TFP methodology was able to solve CHP for my deep inner experience of purgation.

  1. In Steps I and II the SD-based, TFP methodology was used to construct the 38 variable SD flow diagram and its associated mathematical model. This construction used the core consciousness data collected in my LTM during my experience of purgation (see Figure 2 and its derivation in Sections I and II of Chapter 6). The flow diagram in Figure 2 was completed in 1994.
  2. Then, in 2007 I began to use perhaps the most critical and most important step, Step III. First the Step III technique found that the flow diagram for core consciousness during purgation, developed in item 1 above and shown in Figure 2, is a second-order negative feedback system (SONFS). Once the order of the flow diagram or feedback system is identified, the dynamic characteristic of the noumena is also identified.
  3. Then, to determine the noumena driving the phenomena, I needed to search through all the dynamic physical objects within my neurophysiological system and find those dynamic objects that operate as a SONFS. At this particular early period in my search I have found only one promising candidate: Any set of dynamic antagonistic muscles operates as a SONFS.
  4. During my 10 hour experience of purgation I sensed or observed that the dynamics of purgation was being experienced mainly in my heart. Therefore, if the promising candidate is antagonistic muscles, they must be heart muscles.
  5. The great stress, fear, and anxiety - accompanying the releasing process of each set of antagonistic heart muscles - indicated that those muscles had been cramped or paralyzed prior to the estimated 72 minute period when the spontaneous releasing of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles occurred. That estimated 72 minute period occurred between the estimated 545 minute mark and the estimated 617 minute mark (see Figure 1 in Section II.B of Chapter 6).
  6. During the Step II analysis (which is located just after the Introduction in Section II of Chapter 6), I sensed or estimated that there were about a dozen or so pairs of cramped antagonistic heart muscles released during purgation.
  7. Therefore, the dynamic noumena - that drove my dynamic core consciousness phenomena during purgation as a SONFS - was probably releasing a dozen or so pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles over an estimated 72 minute period.
  8. I then asked myself what had caused the cramping or paralyzation in my heart muscles. I then remembered I had a childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old: The trauma had probably caused the cramping or paralyzation.
  9. Therefore, the origin or driving force of the purgation experience was probably the abreaction or release of the effects of my childhood trauma.
I believe this is the probable solution to Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of my deep religious experience of purgation. It tells of the origin of my ten hour experience of purgation. It answers the first of the three questions.
(See the summary at the beginning of Chapter 6. It gives the answers to the second and third questions.)

Additional information associated with the above summary of my solution to CHP for the case of purgation:

The above brief summary illustrates how Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) is solved for deep inner experiences, like purgation. It also illustrates how the mind/body problem is solved. Even though these solutions are very insightful - particularly for scientifically oriented philosophers, psychiatrists, and religious people - high level scientists will probably not be satisfied with this kind of solution. For example, for such scientists the solution to CHP is only the first breakthrough. Granted, this first breakthrough - the solution to CHP - is the key to any thorough extended analysis. Nevertheless, neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts - working together - will wish to perform three additional analytical steps to finalize the analysis for the case of purgation. I cannot perform those three analytical steps, because I am not skilled enough in neuroscience and cardiovascular science. (I am a theoretical mechanical engineer and system dynamicist.) The three additional analyses required are:
  1. Determining the precise location in my heart of the cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. This is a very difficult "easy problem" (see Chalmers' statement about the easy problems of consciousness at the end of the summary in Chapter 6).
  2. Determining the neurobiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) during purgation. This is also a very difficult "easy problem." (see the statements on CHP by Crick, Koch, and Searle at the end of this summary). These difficult "easy problems" are available for analysis only after the CHP breakthrough for purgation has been precisely solved (see item 1 just above). Once item 1 has been solved, the neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts need to neurophysiologically link the dynamic sets of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles with the dynamic core consciousness going on during the experience of purgation. (My early conjecture is that the key to this linkage is understanding the operation of the experiencer's somatosensory system. It looks to me like that system extends all the way from (1)the cramped heart muscles that are being released to (2)the postcentral gyrus in the experiencer's cerebral cortex. The location of the latter part of the somatosensory system is probably where the dynamic core consciousness associated with purgation had been generated during the release of my trauma.)
  3. The method for testing the scientific validity of my SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation is shown in Chapter 6, Section II.B, item 11.

Key #6: Introduction to my Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model and its simulations of the phenomenological variables associated with my religious experience of purgation (first draft).

Please be patient. Key #6 is going to take a lot of time to develop and present. I will start by introducing the reader to my Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model of my 16-hour experience of purgation, shown in Figure 2 (see Section A and B). I will then present the mathematical model associated with my TFP model of purgation (see Section C). Then (in Section D), I will explain or clarify how two, very important, feedback loops from the TFP model of purgation in Figure 2, below, worked together to enable me to successfully walk the plank (see Key #1).

A. Figure 2: Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) model for my deep, subjective, ten-hour religious experience of purgation.

Figure 2, below, shows that my TFP model of purgation is a phenomenological system. A phenomenological system is what Damasio (1999) is calling a core consciousness system. However, I will use the term, phenomenological system throughout this discussion.

The TFP model, shown in Figure 2, is composed of a set of 38 dynamic variables, most of which are "dynamic phenomenological variables. These dynamic phenomenological variables are based on the experiencer's inner perception. Inner perception is the immediate awareness of the experiencer's own psychological phenomena: of his joys or desires, his sadness or rage, etc. To this awareness, restricted to the immediate present, Brentano ascribed infallible self-evidence." (Spiegelberg 1994)

Please note: For the deep experience of purgation, all awareness or phenomenological or core consciousness data is always available from the experiencer's long term memory (LTM). Also, please note the "most basic" or most important psychological phenomenon is an intentional phenomenon. There are two examples of such "most basic" or most important psychological phenomenon in the lower sector of the purgation model: KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness. The experiencer is constantly aware of those two "most basic" or most important phenomenon throughout the experience of purgation. Nevertheless, KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness do not exist, because they are not material objects. Heart muscles do not have knots in them and they don't open. That is why in the field of phenomenology KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness are described as having intentional inexistence.


B. Additional introductory explanations of the TFP-based model of purgation in Figure 2. (first draft):

Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) is a marriage between Forrester's System Dynamics (SD) and the emerging field of phenomenology, developed by Brentano, Husserl, and their associates.
  1. The architecture of the TFP model of purgation in Figure 2 (first draft):
    First, I would like to discuss the architecture of the model of the 38 phenomena, shown in Figure 2 above. That architecture is associated with my deep, subjective experience of purgation. That architecture of the model, shown above, has a quickly operating (milleseconds to seconds) cognitive mechanism in the upper sector that interacts with a relatively slow system (seconds to hours) in the lower sector. Jackendoff (1987) has called the former the computational mind and the latter the phenomenological mind. Communication between these two sectors of the model are implemented by about six transducers or transition variables. Regarding these two sectors, the former originates in the thalamocortical system and is nonconscious; the latter originates in the limbic-brain stem and neurocirculatory system and is mostly conscious (Guha 1991).

    There are 27 dynamic phenomenological variables (or dynamic core consciousness variables) associated with the phenomenological mind. These variables are located in the lower sector of the model. They are named, using what Husserl called the 'natural attitude.' For example, KnotsInHeart is not a thing. It is a phenomenon. It has no reality as such, because there are no knots in the heart. However, in actuality it is now known that during purgation there are cramped or paralyzed muscles in the heart. Thus, naming the phenomena variables in the 'natural attitude' means the name it feels like to the experiencer (myself) as he recalls the details of the dynamic psychological phenomena going on during his 10 hour experience of purgation. Whereas, the naming of dynamic material objects that underlie the dynamic phenomena operating in the experiencer's mind is the naming of the dynamic noumena operating during purgation. Thus, simulating the 27 phenomena variables of purgation and naming them in the 'natural attitude' is a way for the analyst (myself) to present a moment by moment narrative to the reader who, informally, wants to know what was going on during my experience of purgation.

    The model's representation for my dynamic phenomena going on in my phenomenological mind during purgation is shown as a feedback system in the lower sector of the model. There are 27 phenomenological variables in that lower sector. The intentionality of the phenomena during purgation is about a somatosensory mental image. The mental image does not exist. It is only a psychological phenomena in the experiencer's mind. However, that mental image phenomena is about the heart opening against a resistance in the form of knots in the heart. Using the insights of Meinong (1904), Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology has labeled such intentionality, 'intentional inexistence,' because KnotsInHeart is not a material object. Further, hearts are not opened and they don't have knots.

    However, eventually, in Step III of the TFP analysis, the TFP analysis finds that the material objects that actually exist in the experiencer's neurophysiological system are about 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles. When those 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles are released during the time when a trauma is released, those heart muscles become dynamic and drive the dynamics of all the phenomena in the phenomenological mind. Therefore, even though the mental image does not exist, it can be modeled and simulated because there is a one to one relationship between the dynamics of the heart muscles and the dynamics of the mental image and other dynamic phenomena associated with the phenomenological mind. In short, the dynamic heart muscles are the dynamic noumena that drive the dynamic psychological phenomena that are experienced in the form of the dynamic mental image. The noumena are the 12 sets or pairs of antagonistic heart muscles. They are driving the phenomena. The mind uses its imagination to convert the dynamics of the heart muscles to the dynamics of the mental image. That is why it is called a somatosensory mental image.

    There is a saying that a picture is worth 1000 words. For a person experiencing the fast moving, incredibly stressful, and fearful dark night of the soul or purgation, a mental image is worth 1000 neurophysiological facts. Hence, during the crisis of purgation the mind uses a somatosensory mental image. An image makes it easier and quicker for the mind to comprehend and to act or respond quickly to the essentials of what is sensed within. Phenomenological variables of the model associated directly with the somatosensory mental images include HeartOpenness, KnotsInHeart, FearDeathDueToKnot, and the set of feedback loops associated with them. ForgivenessResponse, PsychicStress, and OpeningPressure are also associated with this mental image. A simulation of these conscious variables allows us to get a good description - in the 'natural attitude' - of the phenomena (or core consciousness) and how it is driven, moment by moment, during the stressful and fearful experience of purgation.

    As for the computational mind (or the cognitive mechanism) in the upper sector, the 11 variables representing the nonconscious cognitive mechanism are located in the upper part of the model, above a semicircle that goes just above KnotOriginInsight, AttentionalFocus, and PsychicEnergyFactor. I conceived or invented this cognitive mechanism sector and use it, because it is able to include PrayerTrueness into the lower sector of the model. Eventually, this cognitive mechanism sector will be replaced by a model developed by a combination of scientists in the field of cognitive science and system dynamicists. At present we must use my invented model. It incorporates the concept of redundancy from engineering; Miller's (1956) concepts from information theory concerning channel capacity and recoding; Miller's 'magical number seven' used in cognitive science; and the retrieval accuracy of short term memory concept developed by Schouten and Bekker (1967), Wickelgren (1979), and Luce (1986). The concept of redundancy comes into play during mystical union when the primary information processor shuts down and the background information processor takes over in its place. How the model of consciousness operates when time stops during mystical union will be discussed more fully in items 4 and 5 in Section II.B of Chapter 6.

    Preliminary mathematical definitions of each of these variables are given in the 38 variable (11 in the upper sector, 27 in the lower sector) mathematical model, shown in Sector C, below. The constants in the equations and the table functions have been tuned to give an accurate simulation of the 10-hour Dark Night or purgative stage right up to the moment just preceding mystical union. Of the 38 variables, 23 are aspects of the phenomenological system (or core consciousness system). All 23 are located in the lower sector. The simulations of these 23 aspects of the dynamic phenomena are all operating simultaneous. For example, simultaneously, the experiencer (myself) was conscious of the dynamics or change of the following aspects of the dynamic phenomena during purgation: The rise in OpeningPressure and HeartOpenness, the removal of a knot (KnotsInHeart), the rise and fall of the intensity of FearDeathDueToKnots and PsychicStress, the rising and falling intensity of PrayerIntensity of my prayer, the rise and fall of the intensity of AttentionalFocus of my mind, etc.

  2. Dynamics of the phenomena during purgation (first draft):
    In my normal life HeartOpenness was stable at 5% of maximum possible openness and there were a stable set of twelve KnotsInHeart. This is shown at Time=0 in the simulations at Figure 1. (Keep in mind that these numbers are only my best estimates: the initial value of HeartOpenness could have been anywhere from 2% to 10% or 15%; the initial value of KnotsInHeart could have been anywhere between 8 and 15 knots.) However, just after the beginning of the Dark Night or purgation (Time>0), the phenomenological mind undergoes a change in such a way that OpeningPressure jumps from its NormalOpening Pressure of 5% all the way up to 80%. This is reflected by the fact that I have programmed AdditionalOpeningPressure to go from 0 to 75% at Time = 0. To understand the initial dynamics of the model at this point, keep in mind that the flow diagram for the 10-hour experience of purgation shown in Figure 2 has, at present, only two sectors. Eventually, the flow diagram or noema of core consciousness for the entire religious crisis may have 3 or more sectors. Therefore, the step input from AdditionalOpeningPressure is assumed to come from or originate in either a shift in loop dominance (Forrester 1985) or a bifurcation (Strogatz 1994) associated with a projected, but not yet modeled, adjacent sector or sectors. This step input causes limbic-brain stem variables in Figure 2, such as HeartOpenness, PsychicStress, FearDeathDueToKnot, KnotsInHeart and the like, to change or become dynamic, all coordinated by way of the feedback loops in the structure.

    KnotsInHeart, HeartOpenness, and the three memories in the cognitive mechanism are called state variables by mathematicians. In system dynamics terminology they are called stocks or levels or accumulations. Each stock or state variable has the characteristic of accumulation, analogous to a bathtub accumulating water. Using this bathtub analogy, 'How open is the heart at this moment?' is analogous to 'How full of water is the bathtub, now?' ForgivenessResponse, HeartUnfoldmentRate, PrimaryInformationProcessingRate, BackgroundInformationProcessingRate, and InnerSensingRate are examples of rates. They act like either the bathtub's inlet faucets or outlet drains. Whether the faucet is an inlet faucet or outlet drain is indicated by the large arrowhead. (Eliminate the darkened arrowhead and use the open arrowhead to indicate the direction of flow of the thing or entity that is passing through the 'faucet'.) The much smaller arrowheads indicate the direction of causation. For example, the arrows coming from PrayerTrueness and PrayerIntensity and pointing at PrayerQuality indicate that the first two variables determine the value of PrayerQuality at any time. Specifically, the mathematical model gives the following definition of PrayerQuality:

    PrayerQuality = 0.5*(PrayerTrueness + PrayerIntensity) ............equation 1

    When PrayerQuality reaches 100%, which is the 'forgiveness threshold', the ForgivenessResponse is triggered and one KnotInHeart is removed in a ratchet-like fashion. (The knot is removed, rather than added, because the undarkened arrowhead points away from the KnotsInHeart stock.) Action then shifts to a negative feedback loop associated with HeartOpenness and PsychicStress: The removal of this one knot begins to unseal the restricted and rigid or tight heart, causing PsychicStress to decrease rapidly, which then causes the HeartUnfoldmentRate 'faucet' to open. This causes HeartOpenness to open further, causing PsychicStress to rise again as the heart begins to encounter the next knot. As a result FearDeathDueToKnot, and then PrayerIntensity, and WillfulAttention, begin to rise again. The rise in fear and attention leads to a shift in loop dominance: Action shifts to the cognitive mechanism, which is essentially a negative feedback loop concerned with solving the problem of the origin of the knot. The fear and attention driven PrimaryInformationProcessingRate in the cognitive mechanism speeds up, leading to an increase in KnotOriginInsight. This increasing insight is concerned with the solution to the following problem: What is the particular sin, guilt, or hatred that is at the origin of this next knot? The gradual solution to this problem and my gradual acceptance of this solution leads to greater PrayerTrueness and then greater PrayerQuality until the latter reaches the 'forgiveness threshold,' triggering the ForgivenessResponse again. Then, the next knot cycle begins.

C. Now, I will focus on the two most important feedback loops of the model in Figure 2. A study of those two feedback loops will begin to clarify how the experiencer of purgation was able to walk the plank. This study is going to take a lot of time. (first draft):

  1. Phenomenological Mind Detail (first draft):
    My TFP model in Figure 2 is about the 27 phenomenological variables present in my phenomenological mind (Jackendoff 1987) during my religious experience of purgation. These 27 phenomenological variables are shown in the lower sector of Figure 2. The names of these phenomenological variables are given in what the phenomenologist, Husserl, called the 'natural attitude' or the 'Lebenswelt' or the 'life world'. They were modeled using the phenomenological data associated with my entire experience of purgation. That data was stored in my long term memory (LTM), as the data was being experienced. When the data of the LTM is accessed, it is naturally found to be given in what Husserl called the 'language of the life-world' or the 'Lebenswelt' or the 'natural attitude.' I tend to call that language the language of the common man. I imagine the following situation: The common man is honestly trying to narrate to close friends what happened to him during the time when he had a crucial, deep, subjective, religious experience. He does not know what was actually occurring in his neurophysiological system. He only knows the 27 phenomenological variables and their dynamics. So, he begins the narrative with "For some reason my heart began to open ......etc."

    Now, here is a simple definition of the various kinds of phenomena shown in the phenomenological mind modeled in the lower sector of Figure 2: "Phenomena are objects or aspects known by the experiencer only through his or her senses:" I found this simple definition in Webster's dictionary. However, in the case of a subjective experience like purgation, the somatosensory system is, perhaps, the only sensing system involved, although feeling was involved, also. Certainly, the sense of smell, seeing, and hearing were not involved. Examples of noemata or variables that are 'objects' in Figure 2 are KnotsInHeart and HeartOpenness. However, these 'objects' or noemata were not real objects. They were perceived by the experiencer in what Husserl called the 'natural attitude' or the 'life-world'. Examples of noemata or variables that are aspects are SealmentOfSoul, MaximumBearableUnboundedness, Ratio, PsychicStress, FearDeathDueToKnots, PrayerIntensity, ForgivenessResponse, etc. The model shown in Figure 2 must be studied by the reader to allow him or her to grasp Husserl's concept of the 'natural attitude' or the Lebenswelt or what I am calling the language of the common man. In order to do this he uses the following terminology: his names for his phenomenological variables.

    (In Key #5, above, I presented how I was able to identify the noumena. The noumena can only be known through the thought or reasoning methodology given in Step III of the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) methodology. The application of Step III to the purgation experience illustrates how the analyst identifies the noumena that are driving the phenomena during purgation. This very important part of the TFP analysis is clarified in Key #5.)

  2. Identifying and explaining how the two feedback loops work together to enable the experiencer to walk the plank (first draft):
    Perhaps, the two most important feedback loops in the lower sector (the phenomenological mind sector) are the two feedback loops driving PsychicStress. Then, the rise in PsychicStress causes FearDeathDueToKnot to rise. This causes PrayerIntensity to rise (If, and only if, the experiencer begins to pray). If he begins to pray, he will probably succeed, if PrayerQuality and the ForgivenessResponse are able to cause a KnotInHeart to be released. If he does not begin to pray, FearDeathDueToKnot will rise too high, causing the experiencer of the first knot to panic and have a nervous breakdown.

    Here are those two most important feedback loops:

    In Section D we will be focusing on the lower sector. Recall that Jackendoff (1987) calls that sector the phenomenological mind. It contains the two feedback loops associated with walking the plank: The KnotsInHeart feedback loop and the HeartOpenness feedback loop.

    Notice that those two feedback loops use soft variables. Soft variables are used throughout the lower sector. Some of these soft variables in the model have dimensional requirements: All three prayer variables, PrayerTrueness and PrayerIntensity and PrayerQuality, must have the same dimension (prayer magnitude units) and both UnboundednessOfSoul variables must have the same dimension (unboundedness of soul units). The latter requirement causes Ratio to be dimensionless.

    Some of the rest of the variables associated with the phenomenological mind sector are what I am calling transitive variables. The equations established for the transitive variables were determined by iteratively comparing the sets of simulated values of the various transitive variables with the data in my long term memory (LTM) (see the iterative technique presented in The GTR Project of the Introduction).

When the experiencer's PsychicStress starts to build up, his FearDeathDueToKnot starts to rise. Now, if the experiencer has begun to pray, PrayerIntensity will begin to rise. If all goes well, PrayerQuality reaches 100%, the ForgivenessResponse is triggered, and one KnotInHeart is removed in a ratchet-like fashion. However, if the experiencer is nor religious, he or she may rebel in some way against the use of prayer. If the rebelious attitude dominates the mind of the experiencer too long (we are dealing with seconds here), the experiencer will - in short order - panic and have a nervous breakdown.

PART I

The Religious Experience and Its Aftermath

Chapter 1: An Engineer's Story (1):

(A narrative of the last 22 months of my 53 month religious crisis. This narrative covers the period between the latter part of stage 2 to the beginning moments of stage 14 of Table I. The narrative includes purgation and its culmination in mystical union.)

Worldly Life Spiraling into a Crisis

In July 1960 I was hired as an engineer by a dynamic MIT spinoff company engaged in intense research and development activity. This company was packed into a small building whose lights burned night and day on an otherwise dismal, treeless, industrial back street in Cambridge. It had only about ten engineers at the time but would grow over the next twenty years to be listed on the NY Stock Exchange. This band of men, poorly financed, was competing with the, then famous, General Electric Research Laboratory in a race to develop a promising new technology. There was a fire of creativity running through that small company at the time. It emanating mainly from our demonic chief engineer who was spearheading the development and, to a lesser extent, from the haughty, brilliant, young MIT professor who had originated the new technology and was the company founder and president. There were other firebrands there also.

I had been traveling in Europe and India during the previous two years and thought of myself as a big-time adventurer, but in reality I had been floundering since 1957 when a tragic event had occurred to someone very dear to me. Though I was a 28-year-old engineer with a specialization in great demand and had been a student of one of the founders of that specialization, emotionally I had become, in those three short years, like a teenage runaway. In this structurally weakened state I had become entangled with, and addicted to a wanton, dominant, experienced, mediterranean woman of 35. Back in college in the midwest I had been an hermetic, crew cut, student-athlete and had never come across a woman like her. Though she was street-smart there was a sensitivity and vulnerablity to her that I was only dimly aware of at the time. In addition to being addicted to her I had also become psychologically addicted to cigarette smoking. I was developing other degenerative character traits as well which, though minor at the time, held within them the seeds of destruction.

My desk was crowded into a small room with those of four other engineers. I was chain-smoking three packs per day of strong, unfiltered cigarettes, filling the room with smoke and, at times, a prolonged, fitful cough. I was trying to make an intense effort to concentrate in order to raise the level of my status but was hindered by dissipating habits that I could see were destroying me. My colleagues were young, bright, and versatile engineers. They wondered why management let this strange, ill-mannered, and arrogant person in the door. I felt out of place, put upon, and rejected. A promising career and vital health had sunk to this level. Perhaps I could have settled for mediocrity - slavery in one form or another - but to my mind I was in a battle for my life. (2)

The Crisis and a Supreme Effort to Save My Life

Sometimes, if one will only persist, certain defeat can be turned into victory. Locked in this battle for my life, as it seemed to me, I began to mount a supreme effort to straighten out my life. I was desperate. The state of mind I was in can be illustrated by Churchill's words and actions during the Spring of 1940. In his radio broadcast of May 19 during the invasion of France by Germany, he said:
"This is the most awe striking period in the long history of France and Britain. It is also beyond doubt the most sublime. Side by side, unaided except by their kith and kin in the great dominions and by the wide Empires which rest beneath their shield - side by side, the British and French peoples have advanced to rescue not only Europe but mankind from the foulest and most soul-destroying tyranny which has ever darkened and stained the pages of history. Behind them - behind us - behind the Armies and Fleets of Britain and France - gather a group of shattered States and bludgeoned races; the Czechs, the Poles, the Norwegians, the Danes, the Dutch, the Belgians - upon all of whom the long night of barbarism will descend, unbroken even by a star of hope, unless we conquer, as conquer we must, as conquer we shall.

"Today is Trinity Sunday. Centuries ago words were written to be a call and a spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice: Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be."

Such was my state of mind. Come what may, it was better to go down fighting than to accept the ultimate consequences of the present course of my life (3). I attempted and failed many times to stop smoking from March through August 1961. I was irritable and rather wild during withdrawal periods - often insulting people. At the same time my concentration was getting better and I was beginning to do some rather good work. The latter offset my wild behavior and kept me from being fired. I began to devote more of my free time to my work. In addition I found nutritional supplements helpful during withdrawal: wheat germ, brewer's yeast, and a nutritional product called Tiger's Milk. Exercises in hatha yoga, particularly sirsasana and sarvangasana were also helpful. I carried an inspirational book in my back pocket that I had taken out for a month from the MIT Library. At critical moments I prayed for help.

I tried with all my will to break off with the woman through the Spring and Summer of 1961 but my blessed heart would not be dominated by my will. I kept returning to her like a drug addict week after week. In the end my heart found the way to leave her:

One steamy Friday night in August my thoughts of her became particularly intense. The conflict between my desire for her and my integrity had become critical. I was in my apartment in the negro Blackstone Square area of the South End. Instead of driving over to her apartment, I decided to walk. She lived about two miles away near Egleston Square which at that time was on the border between the white and negro neighborhoods.

In walking along old Columbus Avenue, I found my heart and soul open to the sights and smells and sounds of the night: small-time gamblers milling around outside a barber shop; the man and the woman strolling down the broad sidewalk, he with his flashy suit and greased down hair, she with her dynamite smile and curvaceous body. The gospel song coming from somewhere:

"Deep in my heart I do believe that
We will overcome some day." Carolina Hymn
Further up the avenue, I noticed a drug addict lying on the ground amid the litter of tin cans and broken glass; then there was the strong smell of stale liquor and cigarette smoke wafting from an open door of a bar. Further still, I noticed a round woman coming out of the laundromat with her bundle of clothes and her soulful eyes - those soulful eyes, so deep - so different from the cold, hard eyes of technology.

Through all these scenes I past until I finally arrived at the door of the mediterranean woman's apartment near Egleston Square and knocked at her door. She was dressed in a short pink nightgown that fell only to the top of her thigh. A wave of lust ran through my whole body. I laid down on the living room carpet on my back overwhelmed by the walk, the sights of the steamy hot night, and the passion that flowed through my body. My heart and my soul and my pores and my veins were open. My blood was pulsing in every part of my body. She mounted me with her pink nightgown as I lay there and writhed on me. This did not effect the subtler level of my mind and heart where my concentration had been focused during the walk. My openness and depth of feeling gave me a detachment where mind and soul lay passively, watchfully beneath the passions that she was stirring up. As she writhed on me, a power developed in this passivity and transformed my lust. Presently I got up, tried to excuse myself, and left. I never saw her again: my addiction to her had somehow vanished.

"He unto whom all desires enter
As waters into the sea,
Which, though ever being filled, is ever motionless,
Attains to peace,
But not he who hugs his desire."
Bhagavad Gita II:70
A month later in September I succeeded in stopping smoking permanently. Around October I came up with a novel design for my project. My spirit was on fire(4).

Arete: Competitive Pressure Forces Excellence Out into the Open

The level of competence of my competitors or peers was very high - in a few it had reached the level of Fire as has been mentioned. Though I was doing good work, my status was still low relative to my peers. Now with my novel design in the conceptual stage, I accepted the call to challenge these competitors in order to raise my status and prove my worth (5). The resulting intense effort carried on over a period of time eventually focused my concentration and brought a depth of analysis. This produced the innovations required to make the conceptual design workable. I believe, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that the strain of the effort would have led to a breakdown if I had not had at this stage, latent within me, a transcendent purpose (6) and a trust in God that it would be fulfilled. This transcendent purpose together with prayful concentration brought about a centering (7).

The intellectual strain was not the only strain involved. I was experiencing another strain that I sensed would be difficult to manage later when I would have to do the detailed designing and building of the device. This second kind of strain involved interaction with my co-workers. I would be required to interface with and coordinate the activities of a number of people - draftsmen, machinists, technicians, foremen - within a tight schedule. At the same time I would have to work out more of the theoretical underpinnings of the design. Underlying these activities was the baffling politics and power structure of my peers. Usually work like this should be done only by those who are well integrated into the organizational structure and have good informal communication and support systems. For a lone wolf with obviously few social and communication skills, in particular the lack of a subtle understanding of political games, it is utter folly. I was setting myself up to be crucified. By any rational standards I should have remained at my desk with my theoretical work. In my ignorance I was completely unaware of the difficult situation I was getting into, but I did sense a supreme struggle ahead.

To my mind this was the critical moment of my life. I felt in my bones that I had to do or die; that the issues in my life had finally been joined; that this struggle was the meaning of my life. The reason for this rare conviction was that I had, temporarily at least, achieved an alignment of a number of elements of my mind, as when a rackety complex machine is carefully adjusted by a skilled mechanic and begins to hum. At long last I was running true. At that point I trusted in God that He would not abandon me if only I be true (8).

Around that time I sensed a barrenness caused by the renunciation I had recently undergone. I needed a rootedness not only in the mind and spirit but in the heart and soul. I sensed that I had to dig deeper in my quest (9). At that time, early November 1961, I felt I should take a ten day vacation before embarking on my task.

"Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt
Fightings without, and fears within
O Lamb of God, I come! I come!"

Transcendence and Grace

During this vacation I went to San Diego to see old acquaintances, arriving on Friday night. I took the inspirational book with me.

Around Wednesday I left San Diego by bus and hitchiking seeking a place associated with the book. I found it very much by chance. It was a monastery far up in the foothills of the Santa Ana mountains (10). I approached the simple Spanish style retreat in a state of adventure, openness, and hope. As I entered the gate and before meeting anyone, I felt a sort of peace come over me as if I had entered an enchanted land. I found that the monastery was maintained by a monk and about five brothers. They allowed me to stay with them for a visit.

My system went into a different mode during the course of that first day. The peace that my heart and mind had felt earlier continued on and deepened during the three or four days of my visit. I sensed a subtler level of thought and feeling. A subtler vibration within my heart was being energized. I was in a holy atmosphere (11).

I was tempted to remain - as the sun was setting on Sunday night - but realized I must finish my project first.

I returned to Boston on the night flight out of San Diego and came to work late Monday morning with renewed energy and resolve: I would prove that I was a good engineer and then return.

I did not know it at the time, but I was now beginning the process that would prepare me to eventually walk the razor's edge!

Concentrating again upon my work, there began - and developed over the next few months - a slow awakening of a subtler level of my heart from its lifelong slumber. This brought me slowly into an entirely new state: one which transcended the previous more primitive state. I found myself dealing with stress through prayer and tears. The tears, finally unlocked, soothed the deep sadness of my soul. They alleviated my withdrawal symptoms (12).

Also my ability to cope increased. This can be illustrated by Churchill again as taken from the notes of Major General E. L. Spears on May 31,1940 (13):

"At the meeting of the Supreme War Council in Paris during the evacuation of Dunkirk, Churchill reported to the French that 165,000 men had been evacuated including 10,000 wounded and 15,000 French. Reynaud, the French President of the Council, at once drew attention to the small number of French withdrawn. Weygand, the Chief of the French General Staff, chimed in 'But how many French? The French are being left behind!' His voice was high, querulous and aggressive.

"Churchill looked at him for a moment. The light had died out of his face, his fingers were playing a tune on the edge of the table; out came his lower lip as if he were going to retort, and I expected one of those sentences that hit like a blow, but his expression changed again. It was evident that he felt every indulgence must be shown to people so highly tried, undergoing so fearful an ordeal. He looked very sad, and as he spoke a wave of deep emotion swept from his heart to his eyes, where tears appeared not for the only time that afternoon. 'We are companions in misfortune', he said, 'there is nothing to be gained from recrimination over our common miseries.'

"The note he had struck was so true, went so deep, that a stillness fell over the room, something different from silence, it was like the hush that falls on men at the opening of a great national pageant. I imagine all thoughts were turned inwards, questioning whether each one was observing that precept. It was important in its results, for the note it struck was maintained throughout the meeting; goodwill, courtesy, and mutual generosity prevailed."

Only at this transcendent level, where coping skills of the heart were activated, could the quality of response of the lone wolf, without allies, be adequate to overcome the competitive pressure of his brilliant peers to hold him back and to overcome his own social awkwardness.

At this stage and during the ensuing months my heart and my brain were working in tandem. Coming out of work one evening, briefcase in hand, I began to weep as I caught sight of the late November sunset. The old heartless life was in abeyance. Thinking went on constantly day and night until the project was completed. When the design seemed to be unworkable, all I had to do was walk the streets at night and the solution would come (14). At times I walked the Boston streets that winter without a coat, warmed only by the inner fire coursing my brain and body (4). Such was my state (15). Competition with my peers became a minor factor; dissipating habits were tossed off with ease one by one. I was now dealing with an awakening heart, tears, a transcendent purpose, prayer and openness, and concentration at a fiery level (12).

I felt this was my life at stake, the end of the line of my genes. I had to pull out all the stops. Centering myself in the openness of prayer at the eye of the storm, I seemed to gain control of the very pulse of life. The powerful winds of my spirit had been caught now by my sails; the rod of iron of my will was in my right hand ruddering me; and the waves of my emotions were dangerously whipping across my bow. As the great adventure proceeded I sensed an immense ocean within me, its deep, slow, surging waves powering my heart and soul (4) (16).

"Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!"
In these unfamiliar elements, with only God as my companion, the strings binding my heart began to come unloosened (17).

The Seeker of God then went to his salvation by way of the Refiner's Fire, the second stage of his purification.

The Heart Begins to Open

The purification resulting from renunciation came about by a supreme effort of the will and by Grace, but the second stage of the purification that followed proceeded passively. A force began to manifest itself in me and I could do nothing but pray. My will was powerless to effect this Force. It began in the following way:

I returned to Southern California at the end of March 1962 for another ten day vacation after successfully completing the project. I was still running true. I was charged and in a state of openness. On this visit I went to another monastery run by the same Order of monks. Again I found myself in a holy atmosphere (11). I had a deeply restful, enchanting, profoundly moving week, many times bubbling over with mirth and on one occasion, hearing a beautiful piece of religious music, I was unable to contain a weeping which became a prolonged sobbing from the bottom of my heart.

Around noon on Sunday I left the monastery to return to Boston for work the next day. I was to take a cab to the Los Angeles airport and then a non-stop flight to Boston. I had plenty of time. The cab stand was about a half-mile away. I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. In this mood I arrived at the cab stand. I told the driver my destination. He was a rather cool and playful young man in his early twenties. I noticed that I was very friendly and mirthful - quite unusual for me since I usually never spoke to cab drivers. During the ride I was joking and at times giggling and had a great time for the half hour drive to the airport. At one point the driver asked me if I had had a 'joint' before getting into the cab. Of course I did not.

At the airport, however,the warmth or power in my heart began to deepen. I was sitting in the waiting area for the flight but found I could not stay seated. I got up and began to pace the floor of the waiting room. I was well dressed and groomed in a fine conservative suit. Perhaps it was a rather strange sight. The thought occurred to me I was on the verge of a heart attack, but I was only thirty and in good health so dismissed the idea.

The plane was quite full. I took my assigned seat by the window. After the plane circled LA and turned East, the Force in my heart began to get intense. My heart was opening!! There was a struggle going on in my heart. The Force was opening my heart and, because of my fear, my will was waging a losing battle to close it. The opening of my heart brought about a fear - indeed - a terror. At the same time I felt a degree of love for all, forgiveness, brotherhood and sisterhood for all.

I called for the stewardess. I told her something was wrong with my heart. She got me out to the first aid area and gave me oxygen, but it had no effect. She took me to the first class area where there were fewer passengers and I could be alone. The Force continued to try to open my heart and I was in a state of terror for fear I would die shortly. I kept getting up and walking to the drinking fountain to quench the fire in my breast. I must have drank at least two gallons of water during the five and one-half hour flight.

A few times the stewardess came by to see how I was. Once she sat down next to me. She seemed quite curious about me. She was about 24 or 26. Under the ceiling spotlight I could see her features were delicate but her beauty had now passed its peak. There were the first signs of tension wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. Close up I could sense something about her that had gone cold and there was a sadness underneath her makeup. She was neglecting what I could see was a precious soul. In the course of our quiet conversation I told her, in a somewhat oracular way, 'Please leave this terrible job.' She asked me why I thought it was so terrible. I said, in effect, she was being paid to be pleasant and gay to the passengers even though her heart and soul didn't feel it any more. She needed an honest job. With my heart so open, I knew my intuition was sure and I could see these things clearly, quite in the same way that the lay of the land can be seen and understood better when standing at an elevated place. Under ordinary circumstances such a conversation would have set the stewardess' teeth on edge, but with my heart so open she seemed to sense my good will and took what I said to heart.

Nevertheless, when I arrived in Boston about 10:30pm, I was met by a powerfully built and rather serious airport state police officer. He was about 35 or 40 years old. He escorted me from the plane ahead of the others and led me to the airport shelter. Normally I was rather aloof from police officers, indeed I didn't like authority of any kind, but when the officer met me my heart was so open I felt all men were my brothers. As I walked aside of him to the shelter, I found myself putting my arm around his broad shoulders. I became aware of the gun at his holster but it made no difference to me. In the state of mind I was in, I felt toward him like toward an elder, beloved brother meeting me at the plane. I chatted with him and thanked him for his trouble and great courtesy and assistance. I told him I had just left a monastery and was overwhelmed by being in a crowd of people and that I would be alright once I got home. Besides being an optimistic prognosis to calm myself it also seemed to be an appropriate way of explaining my openness and feelings of brotherhood and also of avoiding being detained. Ordinarily this tough, no-nonsense police officer would have given me a difficult time but instead, like the stewardess, he seemed to sense the integrity of my feelings.

The Dark Night of the Soul: The Heart is Purified and Prepared for the Culminating Experience

I took a cab and arrived about 11pm at my South End lodgings. They consisted of two rooms on the second floor of an almost- deserted rooming house overlooking the extensive federal housing project near the Cathedral. The dull red brick buildings and barren clothes-lines at the edge of the project could be seen from my front window by the light of the street lamps. The window faced a large tree-lined, but neglected, park called Blackstone Square. Next door was a Syrian Church with a domed roof overhung by a huge tree now bare of leaves. A light quietly emanating from the ornate glass window in the dome soothed my soul as I paced the rooms.

Finally I was alone. I lay down on my bed. I knew very little about the writings of the mystics at the time. I did not know that I was now entering the Refiner's Fire or the Dark Night of the Soul (18) that would purify my heart and make me fit for Union with God.

"But who may abide the day of His coming,
And who shall stand when He appeareth?
For He is like a Refiner's Fire." Malachi 3.2
The events in the cab and on the plane were the beginning but the Dark Night of the Soul began in earnest when I laid down on my bed. As I have said, the fire in the heart led to the opening of the heart. The heart continued to open slowly and inexorably, step by step, like a flower. As it did, it produced forgiveness - forgiveness of those I felt had wronged me, who had teased and mocked me. These vexations departed from my heart one by one as they came to my mind - like water drops from a lotus leaf. At the same time there came to my mind, one by one, things I had done which lay buried in my consciousness undermining my life. I prayed for the Lord to forgive me and He did so, one by one (19).

Simultaneous with this forgiveness was terror and joy. I was in terror of losing my life. The Fire or Force was opening my heart and I was naturally terrified since my heart had never been open that wide. Fear keeps the heart closed so if the heart is opened beyond its normal position it produces terror. To alleviate this terror I had to forgive. It allowed the heart to tolerate being opened at that degree of opening. As this proceeded, hatred slowly left my heart and it slowly became more purified.

Then the heart opened more. More terror. More sin and error came to my mind one by one and I asked the Lord to forgive me and He did so one by one. The terror lessened. The heart opened wider. More joy. More terror. More prayers. And as the heart opened ever wider my joy increased to ecstasy or rapture (20).

At the same time I was dealing with another aspect of the terror of losing my life: the dread or remorse that I would lose my worldly ties. I would die in this lonely place never to see my dear ones again. My worldly hopes and dreams would end here never to be fulfilled. Clinging to life, I begged the Lord, Oh save me. Let me live.

This Prayer of Salvation during such an emotional crisis deepened my attachment to God with Form. To confirm and permanently establish this attachment I made a Covenant with God with Form. Once this firm attachment was made I could remove myself from worldly attachments and all its associated complexities and my fears could more easily be borne (21). Only the most simple and fundamental structures of the mind-heart system were now being employed. This stabilized my mind and enabled my heart to continue the process of opening. It opened amidst joy, ecstasy, terror and anxiety while at the same time there was a fierce attention of my mind and being on that which was within.

The Great Silence

Gradually, then, over a period of about an hour this Refiner's Fire succeeded in bringing about an opening and purifying of my heart and bringing along with it peace to my conscience. As a result, my thinking process was able to rest. As this occurred, all of my mind - all of my being - was freed to focus on the present moment within where there existed the blessed open heart. In this undistracted, dramatic state my mind became one pointed. That was its natural, purified state. Then, suddenly, all action within me ceased (22). The pumping of my blood, the beating of my heart, the quivering or hum of my nerves (or perhaps the latter was my body shaking) ceased quite abruptly and I was left in a state of profound silence (23). I had crossed over to the Great Silence (24).

In that state I no longer felt the previous terror, joy, or anxiety. Instead I felt I had come into my True Home, where I was Free(21, 25). I had left the World and was in a state of Pure Being. In that state my mind could not think; it could only observe inwardly and record (26). I had no power to recall or analyze. All of my mind and being continued to focus on the present moment within during the transition into the Silence and at the Silence. In that state of mind and being, my system was satisfied that it had penetrated to the core. Its energy then ran out. It let go and I fell into a swoon: a deep and abiding sleep (27).

It was the silent night, the holy night.

Presently I awoke. It was daybreak. All was peace, bliss. Within me lapped the Living Waters: a serene, wave-like energy of such a subtle frequency that it was capable of flowing evenly throughout my head and body as if they were both made of one substance(4, 28). I was in such a state of peace and bliss, pervaded by a feeling of inner goodness, that the experience has led me to believe this is what is known as Heaven (29). My sincere and earnest search for the Truth during the previous 53 months had finally been satisfied (30). I no longer felt that I must seek the ground of my life, the base upon which to build a sound life. I felt I had found the Ground of My Being: the philosopher's stone, the Formless, the Timeless, the Unconditioned, Knowledge, Bliss (31).

This I now feel is God: no more, no less. Reflection on those blessed hours since April 1962 has led me to that conclusion (32).

References and Notes:

  1. An Engineer's Story is similar in form to Parmenides' allegorical proem (Burnet 1948) given below. It introduces his Fragments.
    "The car that bears me carried me as far as ever my heart desired, when it had brought me and set me on the renowned way of the goddess, which leads the man who knows through all the towns. On that way was I borne along; for on it did the wise steeds carry me, drawing my car, and maidens showed the way. And the axle, glowing in the socket - for it was urged round by the whirling wheels at each end - gave forth a sound as of a pipe, when the daughters of the Sun, hasting to convey me into the light, threw back their veils from off their faces and left the abode of Night.

    "There are the gates of the ways of Night and Day, fitted above with lintel and below with a threshold of stone. They themselves, high in the air, are closed by mighty doors, and Avenging Justice keeps the keys that fit them. Her did the maidens entreat with gentle words and cunningly persuade to unfasten without demur the bolted bars from the gates. Then, when the doors were thrown back, they disclosed a wide opening, when their brazen posts fitted with rivets and nails swung back one after the other. Straight through them, on the broad way, did the maidens guide the horse and the car, and the goddess greeted me kindly, and took my right hand in hers, and spake to me these words:

    "Welcome, O youth, that comest to my abode on the car that bears thee, tended by immortal charioteers! It is no ill chance, but right and justice that has sent thee forth to travel on this way. Far, indeed, does it lie from the beaten track of men! Meet it is that thou shouldest learn all things, as well the unshaken heart of well-rounded truth, as opinion of mortals in which is no true belief at all. Yet none the less shalt thou learn these things also, - how passing right through all things one should judge the things that seem to be."

    (The text of the translation is from: John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy , 4th edition(Adam & Charles Black, London,1948) 172.)
  2. The disintegration of moral character - loss of integrity and the descent into dissipation and obsession - often leads to desperation and sets the stage for a religious conversion. Many of the teachings of religion focus on this crisis. (See for example, 'The Sermon' from Moby Dick by Herman Melville.)
  3. The successful attitude of the seeker of God, the warrior, and creative men and women appear to be identical. It is the attitude of detachment. The essence of detachment is to let go of the clinging to life. Some aspects of this idea are illustrated below:

  4. What is occurring here is similar to what occurs in social and biological systems which have been driven to stable states far from thermodynamic equilibrium. As they are driven further from equilibrium, such systems experience a series of bifurcations leading to structural changes and increases in energy exchange with the environment.
  5. On arete:
  6. Elie Wiesel, Nobel peace laureate, Boston Globe, October 21, 1986:
    "If you want to break out of your despair simply for your own sake, I don't think it will work. You will continue to suffer in your solitude and loneliness. But if you do it for someone else, a child even, one other person, then somehow you can find your way out."
  7. On mystical union and psychosis:
  8. On the concept of Truth:
  9. Quotation of Kant in K. Jaspers, Kant(Harcourt, San Diego,1962), p90:
    "Any fragmentary attempt to become a better man is futile. The foundation of a character lies in the absolute unity of the inner principle of a man's whole life conduct. No doubt . . . there are few men who have attempted this revolution before the thirtieth year, and still fewer who have firmly established it before their fortieth."
  10. I.K.Tamini, Glimpses into the Psychology of Yoga (Theosophical Pub. House, Wheaton, IL, 1976), pVII:
    "As our minds get purified and harmonized and the intuitive faculty begins to function, knowledge which we need wells up from within us, and the help and guidance which we deserve comes to us from somewhere, somehow, unasked. This is the law of spiritual life which those who tread the path of yoga should always keep in mind."

  11. Prigogine and Stengers, Order Out of Chaos, 163-165. (for example, the formation of Benard cells is very much sensitive to, and dependent on, the existence of a gravitational field.):
    " . . . . matter acquires [fundamental new properties] in far-from-equilibrium conditions: external fields, such as the gravitational field, can be 'perceived' by the system . . . The important point is that . . . . this mechanism expresses an extraordinary sensitivity. The sensitivity of far-from-equilibrium states to external fluctuations is . . . . [an] example of a system's spontaneous adaptive organization to its environment."

  12. From J. W. Forrester, 'Nonlinearity in High-Order Models of Social Systems', paper number D-3691-1, March 1985, System Dynamics Group, MIT, Cambridge, MA 02139:
    "By shifting loop dominance we mean the process by which control of a system moves from one set of feedback loops to another set, often with dramatic changes in behavior. The several control loops will all have been present in the system from the beginning but some lie inactive until conditions trigger them into operation.

    "The processes behind the typical S-shaped growth curve serve as a simple example of shifting loop dominance. Consider a population expanding toward an upper limit to the carrying capacity of its environment. When the population is well below the limit, population expands exponentially, driven by a linear positive feedback loop in which additions to population increase in proportion to population itself. The positive feedback loop produces the initial upward-sweeping section of S-shaped growth. But as the limit to population is approached, a previously dormant linear negative feedback loop becomes active, interacts nonlinearly with the positive loop, reduces the growth rate of the positive feedback loop toward zero, and eventually takes full control to adjust population toward the limit whenever population deviates in either direction from the limit. The two loops come into operation at different times. First, the positive feedback loop of growth is in control during the early exponential growth phase. Later, the negative feedback loop exerts increasing control to neutralize the positive loop and convert the system to a goal-seeking search for an equilibrium at the population limit. Biological and social systems contain numerous structures that move in and out of dominance as forces shift."

  13. Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, Finest Hour, 1939- 1941, Volume VI (Houghton Mifflin Co, Boston, 1983), 438-439.

  14. On the relationship of the mind to the object:

  15. The holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total involvement has been called the flow state. Csikszentmihalyi describes it as follows:
    "In the flow state, action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by the actor. He experiences it as a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which he is in control of his actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present, and future. . . . . one may experience flow on the battlefront, on a factory assembly line, or in a concentration camp. The experience is one of complete involvement of the actor with his activity. The activity presents constant challenges. There is no time to get bored or to worry about what may or may not happen. A person in such a situation can make full use of whatever skills are required and receives clear feedback to his actions; hence he belongs to rational cause and effect system in which what he does has realistic and predictable consequences."
    M. Csikszentmihalyi, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (Jossey-Bass Pub., San Francisco, 1975), 36.

  16. Vivekananda, Complete Works, Vol. 5 (1979 edition): pp447-453:
    ".... thousands of us are, for our whole life, meditating on Om, are getting ecstatic in devotion in the name of the Lord, and are crying, 'Thy will be done, I am fully resigned to Thee!' - and what are they getting in return? Absolutely nothing! How do you account for this? The reason lies here, and it must be fully understood. Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really resign himself to the Will of God? Who can utter with power irresistible, like that of a thunderbolt, the name of the Lord? It is he who has earned Chitta-shuddhi, that is, whose mind has been purified by work, or in other words, he who is the Dharmika.

    "Each individual is a centre for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at his back. So long as this force has not worked itself out, who can possibly remain quiet and give up work?"

  17. As I designed and built the device, the mantra I was using was, 'I will not be a nothing'. No guru or priest or rabbi had given me this mantra. It was something I would say to myself from time to time with feeling.

    Let's examine this. The behavior of a stable system may be described as goal-seeking. Conversely, an unstable system is one dominated by a positive feedback loop and has no goal. As I said to myself with all my heart and soul, 'I will not be a nothing', I had no goal on the plane of action but I was striving for transcendence to a higher plane. I cared not whether I was moving up or down the ladder of worldly success. To me higher or lower on that plane of action was nothing. Consciously or unconsciously, deep down, I knew that I had somehow become a slave, a nothing, to a social system, in particular this company's social system.

    What was left to me it seems was to BURN - the soul afire. The engineering device that I was designing and building at that time was in keeping with such a state of mind. Unconsciously I was worshipping God in the form of Fire, or perhaps something more. The device was a cylindrical metal- ceramic electron tube the size of a 5 inch long crucifix, structured with a copper rod running down its spine. A high electric current (about 200 amps) flowing in the rod generated a magnetic field. The electron tube was mounted or jury-rigged on a frame. At the heart of the assembly was a half inch diameter by one inch long cylindrical tantalum cathode heated to 3100 deg F. The cathode's intense white light emanated from the openings between the plates of the electron tube and I was aware of its rays as I waited for it to heat up or as I worked around it, studying for countless hours how the electron tube operated. This could be done since in its vacuum phase it was enclosed by a highly evacuated glass bell jar and in its cesium phase by a metal bell jar with a quartz window. I was not aware at the time that the electron tube was in the form of a crucifix, but what joy I felt to see it work.

    "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,
    And with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." Jesus (Matthew 22:37)

    "If.....thou shalt seek the Lord thy God,
    Thou shalt find him, if thou seek him
    With all thy heart and with all thy soul." Moses (Deut 4:29)

    "Whoever has God in mind - simply and solely God - in all things, such a man carries God with him into all his works and into all places and God alone does all his works." Meister Eckhart

    The mechanical drawings for this particular design are not available to me. However, a later design of an entirely different electron tube also shows crucifix-like qualities. The mechanical drawing for the latter is shown below.

  18. Saint John of the Cross, Dark Night of the Soul, translated and edited by E. Allison Peers, mainly from the 16th century manuscript #3446 (Image Books, Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 93:
    "These proficients [those who are on the road to Divine Union] have two kinds of imperfections: the one kind is habitual; the other actual. The habitual imperfections are the imperfect habits and affections which have remained all the time in the spirit, and are like roots, to which the purgation of sense has been unable to penetrate. The difference between the purgation of these and that of the other kind is the difference between the root and the branch, or between the removing of a stain which is fresh and one which is old and of long standing. For, as we said, the purgation of sense is only the entrance and beginning of contemplation leading to the purgation of the spirit, which, as we have likewise said, serves rather to accommodate sense to spirit than to unite spirit with God. But there still remain in the spirit the stains of the old man, although the spirit thinks not that this is so, neither can it perceive them; if these stains be not removed with the soap and strong lye of the purgation of this night, the spirit will be unable to come to the purity of Divine Union."

  19. M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, I (Halle a.d.S.: Max Niemeyer, 1927), 385. Quoted in Marjorie Grene, Heidegger (Hillary House, Inc., New York, 1957), 38:
    " . . in the Being of a being death, guilt, conscience, freedom and finitude dwell together at its very source."

  20. Matthew 6:14:
    "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."

  21. Saint John of the Cross:
    "The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for, until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly. So the soul, held by the bonds of human affections, however slight they may be, cannot, while they last, make its way to God."
  22. On the mental imagery of the release of knots in the heart:
  23. On the timelessness, motionlessness, and oneness of the state of mystical union:
  24. On what is required of the seeker in order to attain mystical union:
  25. Ruysbroeck:
    "[Union with God] is an unwalled world."
  26. During the Great Silence or samadhi or mystical union the following state of mind and body existed: The following philosophers - one from the West; the other from the East - have spoken about this state. Here is what they have to say:
  27. From: The Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross:
    "Forgetful of myself,
    My head reclined on my Beloved,
    The world was gone
    And all my cares at rest,
    Forgotten all my grief among the lilies."
  28. On the state of mystical union or samadhi:
  29. On the state of mystical union:
  30. On the attainment of mystical union:
  31. The central tenet of the Jewish religious teachings of my boyhood had been realized:
  32. On mystical union:

Chapter 2: The Dark Night of the Soul or Purgation. A more detailed account:

A. Let us start with the total picture of my religious experience:

Figure 1, just below, shows simulations of four aspects of my consciousness during my 16 hour or 960 minute religious experience. I was experiencing these four aspects simultaneously. These four simulations are based on the system dynamics flow diagram of Figure 2 and its associated mathematical model.

Figure 1: Sixteen hour simulation of purgation, mystical union, and deep sleep, ( stages 11, 12, and 13 respectively).


Here is the estimated timetable for the 960 minute religious experience simulated in Figure 1, above.

Thus, my religious experience included purgation (from 0 to around the 617 minute mark), mystical union (with a duration of around 4 to 7 seconds of the 617th minute), and deep sleep (with a duration of around 6 hours). The total experience was thus around 16 hours or 960 minutes; purgation lasted roughly 10 hours; deep sleep lasted roughly 6 hours.

B. Here are simulations of the release of three of the twelve knots in my heart during purgation.

Figure 3: Two minute simulations during the walking of the plank.

The gathering of these four critical simulations attempts to simply describe - via simulation - how the potential mystic 'walks the plank' for three of the twelve knots released during purgation. The release of the crucial first knot is not shown simulated in Figure 3. The release of knots is shown only for the following knots: The 5th from last, the 4th from last, and the 3rd from last knots. Two of the simulations track the oscillation of the intensity of two critical variables, FearDeathDueToKnot and PrayerQuality. During the same two minute time period the other two simulations track (1) the decrease of the variable, KnotsInHeart, and (2) the rise of the variable, TruenessOfMind. As TruenessOfMind rises, it is eventually going to lead to mystical union when all 12 KnotsInHeart have been released. Notice in Figure 3 that a knot is released only when the variable, PrayerQuality, reaches 100%. Here is the mathematical model for the variable, PrayerQuality:

PrayerQuality = (0.5)*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).......eq.1

C. The 8-step iterative sequence, below, attempts to give the reader an idea of what was going on within me each time a knot was released from my heart during purgation (Stage 11):

Stage 11 of Table I is known variously as the Dark Night of the Soul (John of the Cross) or Purgation (Malachi 3:3) or Refiner's Fire (Malachi 3:2), or overcoming either seals or knots or original sin or nafs or samskaras or samsara (Suzuki 1959) etc. The opening or unfoldment of my heart during Stage 11 prepared me for mystical union. The various aspects of my consciousness associated with the opening and purification of my heart during stage 11 had a cyclical characteristic. This is described by means of the following 8-step iterative sequence. Each iterative sequence removes one knot. It took roughly 12 of these 8-step iterative sequences to remove the 12 knots in my heart:

  1. An unfoldment force within the deepest part of my heart led to an opening of my heart.
  2. This initial opening produced a certain degree of rapture, but gradually it also brought a psychic stress and fear of death as the opening heart began to encounter a resistance, perceived as a knot in the heart.
  3. The terror or psychic stress caused my mind to either conjure up or discover the following interpretation or explanation for the presence of the knot: Each knot in my heart had a one-to-one representation in my mind of a particular guilt, sin, error, or hatred.
  4. As the fear of death and stress mounted due to the opening heart working against that particular knot, my mind's analytical faculties quickly found and became aware of a particular attachment or impurity in the mind associated with that particular knot in the heart, be it a remembered sin, guilt, error, or a hatred.
  5. Because of the extreme stress I began to pray to a God whom I called the Lord.
  6. As the stress began to mount even further almost to the point of death in this Dark Night of the Soul, either of the following occurred:
  7. This success of prayer, in which a hate turned to love and in which I felt the presence of a forgiving God, encouraged dialogue to develop with this concept of God with Form: The Lord. This assisted my mind in letting go of the whole neurotic complex in my brain that connected to or centered around that particular knot in my heart. I attached myself instead to this concept of God, my Blessed Friend, the source of comfort. (Deuteronomy 4:29 and Matthew 22:37)
  8. Thus, my heart felt less stress and terror with that knot now untied and my mind became less complex. The mind was therefore a further step more stable and ran more true. I could rest in grateful companionship with The Lord. Moreover, with the knot now removed rapture deepened a further step toward ecstasy or bliss and the focus of my mind on the present moment within became more pervading.

D. Summary:

It took about nine hours (0 to 555 minute mark) to go through steps 1 through 6 of the iterative sequence for Purgation in Section C, above. During step 6 the first knot was removed. Thereafter, the eight step iteration or recursion looped relentlessly during a period of about an hour. Thus, at the 617 minute mark all twelve knots in the heart had been purged. The sin, guilt, hatred, and error in my mind and heart associated with each knot had become uprooted; a Covenant had been made. Now, only the most simple and fundamental structures within my mind-heart system were being employed, and there was a fierce and deepened attention of my mind and being on the God-infused present moment within. The iterative structure or algorithm in Section C describes a phenomenon that is like labor before birth. That is, the Refiner's Fire or Purgation is the labor before the birth of God realization during mystical union. The purpose of this labor is to produce a purification and opening of the heart. The opening force comes from deep within.

E. Some Notes:

  1. The 12 knots were removed from my heart during the one-hour unstable region of the simulation of purgation in Figure 1 when time was between the 555 minute mark and the 617 minute mark.)
  2. For more detail please see Figure 3. It shows a two minute simulation of that unstable region, from the 607 to the 609 minute mark, during which three knots were purged
  3. I am using an initial value of twelve knots in the heart, because it coincides with the 12 petals of the Hindu concept of the heart chakras. However, from my rememberance of the experience of purgation I am estimating that the initial value could have been anywhere between seven to fifteen knots in the heart.

F. The various kinds of consciousness that existed during purgation, mystical union, and the two month Divine State that followed PMU:

In this section I will be using the concepts of extended and core consciousness. They were named and defined by Damasio (1999).
  1. When my heart began to open in the 'warm and brilliant Southern California sun,' as described in The Engineer's Story of Chapter 1, core consciousness began to emerge (see Figure 1 at time = 0). During the next nine hours core consciousness slowly began to become more and more dominant and to overshadow extended consciousness. When (as described in Chapter 1) I returned to my apartment in Boston's South End and 'lay down on my bed,' core consciousness began to dominate the final hour of purgation (the period of time from the 550 minute mark to the 617 minute mark). Figure 1 only simulates core consciousness. Extended consciousness was also present, particularly during the first nine of the ten hours, but (using Husserlian terminology) it was 'bracketed-out' in the TFP phenomenological analysis (see Chapter 6).
  2. When I went into the state of mystical union, core consciousness also ceased or at least OpeningPressure, Fear, and Stress ceased. It seems to me that a different kind of consciousness existed during the 4 to 7 seconds of mystical union. There is no scientific name yet for that state of consciousness. For the time being let us call it Allah consciousness or Brahman consciousness or God consciousness, etc: a divine kind of consciousness. In this state one experiences an unsurpassable and unforgetable greatness. This greatness is experienced while one is in a timeless state. There is no change in the state of this consciousness. This is unique. Usually, consciousness is constantly changing and time seems to change from past to future. My present conjecture of what is going on here is given at this link.
  3. For the remaining 6 hours of the simulation in Figure 1 above, I was in deep sleep and not conscious. Thus, the phenomenological analysis terminates at the moment of transition from purgation to mystical union.
  4. When I awoke at the 960 minute mark I was in a very balanced and serene state of consciousness, a state quite different from the states mentioned above. This serene state lasted for two months. Csikszentmihalyi's (1975) description of the flow state is akin to that two month state, but he does not emphasize the balance and serenity inherent in that heavenly state. Further information on these forms of consciousness are given at this link.

Chapter 3. Mystical Union: A more detailed account of stage 12:

Toward the end of the Dark Night (see Stage 11), during the two minute period (615 to 617) extending from the removal of the last knot from my heart to the experience of mystical union, my mind rapidly became completely absorbed with the God-infused present moment within and my heart continued to open. Psychic stress, fear of death, and prayer due to fear were rapidly disappearing and the intense energies associated with them were becoming transformed into a force powering a supreme inner attention and absorption. Then, quite abruptly, a cessation of all inner sense or movement occurred for a period estimated to be between four to seven seconds, during which I was in the state of mystical union.

In mystical union the following occurred:

To understand how I arrived at the above state of mystical union, please study Chapter 1, the dramatic narrative of the 22 month period leading up to that state. During that time I was working as a project engineer. I call the narrative, An Engineer's Story.

Chapter 4. My Life after Mystical Union:

In this chapter I will attempt to explain how my life has benefited from my experience of purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). At the same time I will try to explain how I am attempting to work out my salvation with diligence.

1. The Early Period Leading Up to PMU.

After graduating high school in June 1949 I eventually found a job in July at a bank in downtown Minneapolis. My job was to add up checks and sort them. However, my real aim was to bring my tennis game up to a championship level. So, everyday I brought my athletic bag to work and stored it under my machine. Then, after work I would play tennis until dark.

However, after working for 6 months the Korean war broke out. I was going to be 18 in March. So, I ducked into the university. Meanwhile, Bougetz and other dynamite guys from my class volunteered. Some came home killed or maimed. (It is good for me to keep in mind those precious classmates.)

I studied engineering at the University of Minnesota [MS (Mechanical Engineering) 1956] and have worked on and off as a high tech research and development engineer, mostly in Boston. My engineering career extended from 1957 to 1989, but I only spent a total of 15 of those 32 years working as an engineer.

The direction of my life, my thought, and my high tech analytical research changed in a very profound way in April 1962 when I was 30 years old. I had a 16 hour religious experience, centered at the very deepest level of my heart. The experience occurred after visiting a monastic retreat in Southern California during a 10 day vacation. The vacation was taken after completing an intense and stressful engineering project (see Chapter 1). In the West this religious experience is often called purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). My heart had opened up and the sacred spirituality at the very core of my being was revealed to me, indeed, was revealed to every cell in my mind and body. This religious experience occurred naturally, without the use of drugs or herbs or meditation techniques. A religious conversion like this transcends everything else in one's life. For example, for 15 years after the religious experience in 1962, my use of high tech engineering analysis had essentially shut down. Such analyses no longer seemed so very important or meaningful to me.

2. Sacred Psychotherapy.

A month after I experienced PMU I went back to the monastic retreat in Southern California in the role of a preprobationary monk. I went to the retreat, mainly, because I needed to get some direction for my budding religious life. However, once I was in the monastery I settled into a flow state (Csikszentmihalyi 1975) that lasted two months, a kind of divine flow state. In this state of balance, harmony, and groundedness at the monastery, I pondered on some questions: How does one go about building a sound life? What do I do now in this state of mind? I searched for an understanding of my religious experience. I tried to comprehend the incredible greatness I had experienced. However, even though I was in a high spiritual state, my mind was just baffled by the question of how I should proceed from here and what direction to take in my life.

At this critical stage of my budding religious life, the key direction was given to me by Swami Prabhavananda of the Ramakrishna Order of India. He was the charismatic head of the Southern California wing of the Order, which included this monastery. After I had stayed about 4 or 5 weeks at the monastery I requested the swami to tell me how I should proceed in my religious life. He told me to think of the Lord as residing at the deepest part of my heart and to meditate on that. I did not know what he meant by meditation and I shied away from asking him, because I didn't want the swami or anyone else to become my master. I wanted to remain free. Nevertheless, after PMU I realized that my heart was my treasure: The swami was on the right track. So, I have stayed with the essence of the advice he gave me, although I have adjusted certain aspects over the years. The swami, wisely, didn't tell me what to use as the image of the Lord. He didn't suggest Ramakrishna or Jesus or Buddha, etc. The blessed swami left that critical decision to me.

My immediate ancestors were all culturally Jewish, but not particularly religious. However, because all four of my grandparents were Jewish, the essence of Judaism was somewhat ingrained in me. This essence is contained in the Shema. I had always interpreted the Shema - with the loving help of my father and mother, together with the teachings of Rabbi Minda - as follows: The Lord is One; The Lord is formless.

Thus, after the many years since the brief advice given to me by the swami in 1962, I have now settled down with the following kind of religious psychotherapy, as I 'work out my salvation with diligence.' I call this psychotherapy, sacred psychotherapy (SP). My psychiatrist is the Lord:

  1. The Lord, residing at the deepest part of my heart, is formless. Stated another way, the very core of my heart is sacred.
  2. My sacred heart knows, step by step, what it will need during the process of healing, growth, rebuilding, and reintegration after PMU.
  3. My understanding of meditation is that it is an informal process. It is a process by which I learn to master the art of listening to the moment by moment promptings of my blessed and sacred heart.
  4. My task is to learn to follow my sacred heart, moment by moment, using the above kind of informal meditation. My sacred heart will lead me during the overcoming of my heart's arrested development. That development had been arrested between the ages of 9 or 10 to the age of 30.
  5. My two prayers are:
    1. Lord, teach me how to pray.
    2. Lord, guide me.
  6. Overcoming my arrested development occurs by a natural healing process. It is a process that will lead me to manhood (to be a mensch) and to the realization of my full potential. (I know about my full potential: It was experienced during mystical union.)
  7. The deepest part of my heart is the Lord of my life. My direction comes from there. The sacred, at the deepest part of my heart, is the center of my life. My brain, however powerful it is, is not the Lord of my life. The will or ego associated with my brain and senses need to be firmly brought into harmony with the promptings of my sacred heart. That is the road!
  8. Ideally, SP is a moment by moment adventure with the promptings of one's sacred heart.
After many years this is the way SP has evolved. Certainly, I am not at the end of the road. I am not a mensch. I have not attained my full potential, but this is the way I am now traveling on the road. I believe this approach is a good operational meditation and religious philosophy for a person like me. I am dealing with the blessed release of the effects of a childhood trauma. Specifically, I believe this means the release or abreaction of heart muscles that had been cramped/paralyzed from the age of 9 or 10 to the age of 30. After mystical union in 1962 I needed to attend to my blessed heart in a sacred way. The development of my blessed heart had been arrested for 20 or 21 years! So, my blessed heart began the process of healing itself and growing toward manhood. Despite my powerful will and ego, I have had to learn - from the age of 30 to the present - that my first priority is to serve the promptings of my sacred heart. I have had to become the servant of my sacred heart. I have failed so many times in this process, but I get right back up and try again. The blessed Lord forgives.

3. Right Livelihood.

In 1962, a few months after Swami Prabhavananda had given me the advice on how to proceed, I slowly began to find the monastery was not a compatible environment for my particular religious life. After seven months in the monastery I left, eventually returning to Boston. However, I kept in touch with the Ramakrishna Order until about 1995. I found the insights of certain monks and devotees of the Ramakrishna Order to be helpful as the years went by. I admired the way one of the monks conducted himself. The Order kindly allowed me to roam somewhat freely throughout their system without requiring me to join or commit myself to the Order. This roaming within the Order included various locations in the US - particularly Boston - a retreat near Paris, and a few locations in India.

The structure underlying the roaming, searching, and floundering in the Boston area between 1964 and 1984 circled around the practical question: What is my 'right livelihood?' I needed to make a living. But, what job should I look for? My heart sensed that engineering was not the right job for me during this stage of my religious life. Instead, I felt, deep in my heart, that I had to allow my heart to heal, to rebuild itself, to grow, and to reintegrate itself with my entire neurophysiological system and with the whole of society. This work has continued from 1962 all the way to the present moment. In chronological order, starting in 1964, this exploration in Boston into my 'right livelihood' included working with my father in his garden (six months); working as a carpenter's helper partitioning apartment houses in Dorchester (nine months); an inner city teacher at a vocational-technical institute (four years); an observer at an experimental 'open school' in Framingham (three years); and then a volunteer hospital orderly in Cambridge (one year). At the time, I considered these activities as earnest searches for my right livelihood.

As I stated previously, after PMU in 1962 my blessed heart was now growing and developing again after the release of the trauma. My child-like heart had always dreamed of adventure, but in the years from 9 or 10 years old to my college years I was always afraid to go too far from 'home', afraid to go too far from my family's hopes and dreams for me. Also, my choices during college (during the Korean War) had tended to slowly narrow my natural abilities and to make me into a specialist. After PMU it was clear to me I needed to broaden my experience if I were to rise to the greatness of a religious life, to an adventure with my growing and developing heart, as it healed, rebuilt, and reintegrated itself.

{Let me interrupt my narrative of my earnest search for my right livelihood, here, and use this paragraph to reflect on the vocational-technical institute: It was drawing in street smart young men (about 18 or 19 years old) for a two year education. They came from all corners of the inner city of Boston. The expanding Vietnamese War was a factor here. There was something about the vocational-technical institute that had a deep affect on me: Those street smart young men from all the corners of the inner city of Boston were teaching me, although they didn't know it. All I could teach them were academic things. Later, I heard about some of their experiences after they graduated from the vocational-technical institute and went to war: I learned a little - but not much - about how some of them found themselves: During the pressure of war and after the war, there were some guys that couldn't be stopped.}

Now, to continue my narrative of my search for my right livelihood: Eventually, my savings ran out in March 1973. Again, seen from the present perspective, that was what my blessed heart was waiting for. It forced my heart to go to a deeper level of rebuilding and reintegrating. Thus, I left my volunteer hospital orderly job and found what I considered a good job for a philosopher or mystic: night-shift cab driver (Cambridge, four years). I stress the night-shift, because on that shift (for yellow cabs in Cambridge during the 1970s) the cab driver was usually free to 'play the streets,' rather than be the slave of the radio dispatcher. The drawback is playing the streets is more dangerous, but my blessed heart preferred danger to slavery. Back when I was a boy, maybe 13 or 14, some of the older boys used to hang out on the streets of our neighborhood in Minneapolis until about 10pm or so during the warmer months of spring, summer and fall. What kind of adventures were they having in the night? I wanted to roam with them, but instead I stayed home and listened to the play by play radio broadcast of the Minneapolis Millers baseball team. Now at last, as a cab driver, I could roam the streets of the city - Boston and Cambridge this time - and observe, as a detached outsider, what was going on out there at night. Oh, what an adventure it was for the first 6 months. Then, as the economy disintegrated after the oil embargo of 1973, cab driving reverted to its difficult and more fundamental mode: a waiting game. This mode required skills and elements of character that, unfortunately, I found I did not possess. However, I struggled on.

Toward the end of those four years of cab driving I gradually had to face the reality of my situation: the stress was starting to become too much for me. Indeed, it was slowly killing me. But I delayed changing jobs. This brought me to a crisis from which I barely emerged. Eventually, I was willing to admit that the attempt at working as a cab driver was - at least for the time being - beyond my ability. To help me give it up, I rationalized that more time, experience, and character were needed. I rationalized that once I learned these very subtle skills, I would return to cab driving. I only knew that now I had to move on. So, I was able to pack up in my memory insights I had gained about myself, about the people I had met, and about the US social system. However, as seen from my present perspective, I believe learning cab driving skills must start way back on the streets and alleyways of the city, perhaps at 13 or 14 or 15, for one to have a chance at eventually doing the job like a mensch. All my cab driving was not wasted, however. After all the years of reflection since then on my four years of cab driving I have concluded that the fundamental ground of social life is Respect.

Then, in July 1977 when I was 45 I managed to find my way back into engineering. Even in engineering my blessed heart needed time to broaden its experience. I went through a two and one half year engineering adventure before I was able to get back into my specialty as a heat transfer engineer. This adventure occurred naturally, because I had been out of engineering for 15 years. Having no money, I had to take what I could get. I started out with a contract or temporary job examining tooling - jigs and fixtures - in the tool crib of a company that was machining out parts and assembling them into precision instruments (six months). Then, slowly building up my resume, I worked as either a temporary engineer or consultant in energy auditing of complex buildings (on and off for 11 years), MHD engine testing on a contract (3 months), etc. Moving around like this, I got a broader perspective on the field of engineering and the all around variety of the working environment in Boston. Eventually, in December 1979 I arrived back into high tech with a temporary job as a heat transfer engineer, rearing to go! As I picked up my golden sword again, I began to relax. Instead of working in a frenzy, as I had done at the MIT spinoff company, I was working more calmly and with my heart. Also, my engineering report writing was more skilled now, more balanced, sharper. I worked as either a temporary heat transfer engineer or consultant or senior research engineer until 1987.

As I look back now on those very interesting 25 years from 1962 to 1987, it is becoming clear that this period was an adventure with my heart. My blessed childlike-heart - with its arrested development caused by the childhood trauma at the age of 9 or 10 - slowly and naturally and prayerfully rebuilt and reintegrated itself as I grew toward manhood. Nevertheless, in 1984 when I was 52, my maturity was probably only that of a 15 or 20 or 30 year old. My blessed heart was still growing, but I was more balanced and more at peace with myself.

Here are a number of insights that emerged from this 25 year search:

4. The Early Analytical Period.

In 1984 when I was 52 years old and had reestablished myself in high tech engineering and had been working in that capacity, on and off, for a period of five years, I began to realize that I was getting old and time was running out for me in my quest to deepen my religious life. This nudged me toward a different approach to religion. I did not abandon my religious quest, but I approached it in a different, perhaps more intelligent, way: I began to realize that the only thing I really knew about religion was my experience of PMU. I firmly believed that - with my experience of PMU - I held the key to religion, but here again I didn't know how to proceed.

In this new, more focused, and more rational approach to my religious life, I realized that in order to proceed I needed to find and then apply the appropriate formalized analytical method. I believe this is the way most theoretical mechanical engineers would like to proceed in this situation. I recall that in my religious wanderings I had come across an analytical technique in 1974 that looked promising. It was Jay W. Forrester's System Dynamics (SD). (The book I had skimmed at that time was Forrester's great book, World Dynamics.) So, in 1984 - between jobs - I began to read, to study, and to use the SD method. I sat in on an SD seminar at MIT for the Fall semester of 1984. Jim Hines, with his causal loop diagram technique, and Ulrich Goluke, with his SD model of the alcoholism addiction, were very helpful in getting me started. Then, in December I began to use SD's causal loop diagram technique to first recall and then organize the details of my entire 14 stage religious crisis and my religious experience of PMU. Eventually, I began to focus in on PMU and make rough causal loop models of my religious experience. As I did this recall and organization of the details of PMU, I noticed powerful emotions were being released within me. I had caught fire again, like in the days at the MIT spinoff company (see Chapter 1).

It wasn't long before my preliminary work indicated that SD and the causal loop diagram technique had the potential to get me going toward analyzing core consciousness during the purgation phase of PMU. It was clear that SD was the analytical tool I needed in my spiritual life: It could bring about an integration of my analytical mind and my sacred heart. It could integrate my talent for making an engineering analysis with my love of God and religion. Here was a way for me to meditate on God and the religious life. Here was my 'right livelihood.' Thus, I began to settle down into the meditative religious life in the role of a system dynamicist, developing such a magnificent religious and scientific breakthrough. SD and its various techniques would become my new 'golden sword.' This development, this scientific project, this deep spiritual meditation has been going on since 1984. If it is the Lord's will, I will continue this blessed, ever-deepening meditation for the rest of my life.

5. Reflections on Later Stages of the Analytical Period.

Underlying my activities since 1984 is prayer. My prayers are directed toward the Lord. In my prayers the Lord resides within my blessed heart. My first allegiance is to the Lord. The society in which I live must be secondary. As I have said above, in my work I have usually operated as a maverick or temporary worker ever since 1962. That independent habit or orientation toward work tends to free my mind and soul. It is probably the main reason why - in my scientifically-based, religious work - I have emerged from nowhere as an independent scholar (1984 to present).

I am now one of the many independent scholars who think and live in Cambridge, close to the libraries at MIT and Harvard. I feel comfortable in the role of an independent scholar, because if I am to get to the Truth I need to avoid the subtle cultural conditioning and political correctness that sometimes captures and enslaves the mind of the professional scholar, particularly those professional scholars who have chosen to work in the highly politicized areas of the social sciences, the humanities, and religion. Because of my independent orientation, I find there is no conditioning or political correctness that bars my way as I penetrate toward the truths existing at the deepest level of the inner life. As a result, I am opening up those truths and am continuing to open them up after a long scientific analysis of PMU that began in 1984. This book is centered on those truths.

However, despite the fact that considerable progress toward the truth has been uncovered and understood by my scientific analyses of PMU in this book, I am finding that this progress is not yet acceptable to cultural and scientific authorities, academic leaders, and protectors of religion. Those leaders have the skills - and the power given to them by their culture - to either compel or influence the minds of other academic scholars and thinkers. The problem of publishing or communicating my work is only partially overcome by publishing on the web. At present all of the professional scholars and leaders, reading both my scientific publications and this web site, are silent.

This project or book manuscript goes very deep. Ultimately, I believe it has the capability of producing a great awakening of mankind's understanding of the subtlety and depth of religion. It is fitting and proper that academic scholars and their leaders take their time to try to comprehend and integrate their minds with such subtlety and depth and to evaluate the possible impact these ideas could have on a society and culture.

I tend to believe that, in the long run, truth is always the best course to take. My position is similar to that of Revel (1991): If scientists and other scholars do not pursue and then establish truth, 'insincerity, the ideological manipulation of facts and the tendentiousness of clan rivalries' will move into the vacuum and mislead the precious scholars throughout the world who are fervently seeking the truth.

As I wait and try to bear my isolation, I just try to write better and to sharpen my analysis. I am comforted by the fact that I am growing in my religious life, my mind is deepening, and I am working on something that is great: Clarifying the subtlety and depth of religion, and its effect on the subtlety and depth of the inner life and its effect on integrating the mind and heart.

The search for truth is not new to me. I got into the habit when I was an engineer. I have found that truth is respected in engineering more than in any other field. The reason is quite simple. If engineers do not abide by truth, the machine being designed and built will not perform properly. Closely related to truth is the character of the engineers and the managers. For example, sometimes management needs to cut costs. Under certain conditions, this could undermine the performance and reliability of the machine. In that situation truth becomes a battleground between management and engineering. What occurs on that battleground determines not only the performance and reliability of the machine but the spirit and enthusiasm of the engineers, technicians, and managers and, ultimately, the success or failure of the company.

High tech mechanical engineering is scientifically based, mainly in differential equations and physics. Experience, imagination, and creativity are also important. I was mainly an analytical mechanical engineer. I have some insight into the remarkable ability of a high tech engineering analysis to comprehend the very subtlest aspects of the operation of a machine. The problem is this subtle kind of thought and analysis, found in high tech engineering, is usually focused on the operation of machines of one sort or another. However, intellectuals and scientists should be aware that the techniques of high tech engineering are capable of much greater kinds of applications. Concern for the operation of a machine is a very limited sphere of interest compared to the vast interests of the human mind, as it strives toward Truth or Veritas.

In this book I have broken out of that narrow engineering sphere of interest. My high tech engineering analysis is focused on, perhaps, one of the most important or most central question facing mankind: Understanding of the operation of the mind and the body and their relationship to the heart and to core consciousness during both the release of a childhood trauma and its association with a religious experience. My high tech analysis of my religious experience uses the formalized system dynamics (SD) methodology as a base and then goes on to use it as the powerful SD-based Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology. These methodologies are applied to analyze my core consciousness during my deep religious experience. This formalized phenomenological analysis is the key methodology underlying the general theory of religion (GTR). More importantly, it is the key to breaking the deadlock that is now holding back the development of both science and religion.

Now, I need to take a little time to clarify this paragraph and the various paragraphs above it, because these paragraphs are among the most crucial paragraphs of this book.

It is necessary to list key changes that began to occur in me after PMU from 1962 to the present. These key changes came to me, at least in part, from my high tech analyses of purgation made between 1984 and the present and now are beginning to be presented in Chapter 6 of this book. This key information will be important for our understanding as we proceed:

  1. After getting the very beginning phase of Chapter 6 solidly underway, between 1984 and 2007, I began to suspect that certain cramped or paralyzed muscles deep in my heart had been spontaneously released during the 10 hour purgation phase of PMU.
    (At the time of my religious experience I did not understand that the release of cramped muscles in my heart had occurred. Nor did I understand that the origin of the cramping or paralyzation of these heart muscles could have been due to a childhood trauma that I had experienced way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. The connection between the cramping or paralyzation of my heart muscles, the trauma, and PMU only emerged later, after I had started to make both the system dynamics(SD) based and TFP based formalized, phenomenological analysis of my core consciousness during PMU in 2008. Step III of the TFP methodology is very important. It is the eidetic reduction phase or transcendental grounding phase of the TFP methodology. Those Step III insights have unlocked my understanding of the origin of PMU.)
  2. After experiencing PMU I had the feeling I had found the rock on which to build a sound life.
    (I believe this feeling came about because underlying PMU was the fact that certain muscles had been released from my heart after having been cramped or paralyzed there for a period of 20 or 21 years - from the age of 9 or 10 to the age of 30. [During these 20 or 21 years my development had been arrested.] Thus, at the age of 30 - just after PMU - my heart, though still undeveloped at 30 years of age, was relatively sound and free and running true again. With this change in state of my heart, I sensed a firm, grounded quality in my mind and heart. In this state I felt I could finally begin to build a sound life. [Please note that just after PMU - at 30 years of age - I was not really aware of the fact that my development had been arrested.])

6. Preliminary Summary.

Please keep in mind that this chapter is really only a draft: Nevertheless, here is a summary of some of the key elements I am now wrestling with, as I try to deal with the core of my understanding of PMU:
  1. The 21 months leading up to PMU, which is narrated in Chapter 1, is important. It is important that I focus in on my life at that critical time. It consisted of my versatile work at the MIT spinoff company, my independent and original heat transfer work in plant physiology, my all out effort to straighten out my personal life (see Chapter 1), and my interaction with the Ramakrishna Order. Also, hidden deep within me was my simple Jewish religious preparedness, taught to me between the time of my early childhood through to the time of my early teens, etc. These are some of the key factors that had awakened me to the deepest technical and spiritual level I was capable of at that time. I am asking myself: What was the relationship of those key factors with my life at that time and with PMU and with the release of my trauma?
  2. Just before PMU, during my 10 day visit at the LA Monastery (see Chapter 1), I suspect that Swami Prabhavananda, alertly, saw that my trauma was ripe for release. Though I am not sure, there is a good chance that he may have given the trauma its final push, but not with his will. I suspect he had the spiritual power within him to spontaneously accomplish this final push. Also, just before I left the LA Monastery at noon on April 8,1962 to take my return flight to Boston and experience PMU, I recall he gave an inspiring Sunday morning lecture on the key religious experience - mystical union - known in the Hindu religion as samadhi.
  3. I had no Hindu religious preparedness before my experience of PMU. I believe one needs to develop religious preparedness at a young age, perhaps between 3 and 13 years of age. How could I ever have developed Hindu religious preparedness after the age of 30 years? Thanks to my parents and Rabbi Minda, when my trauma began its release or abreaction, my precious Jewish religious preparedness - developed when I was a child and a youth and existing quietly in my subconscious - awoke and kept me stable throughout the trauma's release. As you will recall from Key #1 of the Introduction to the book, this was when I had to 'walk the plank.' I suspect that Swami Prabhavananda understood, far more deeply than I, the importance to me of my Jewish religious preparedness during the time he knew me. As a result, he never really encouraged me to become a Hindu or become a member of the Ramakrishna Order. Please note, though, that despite these insights he did not decide to reject me. He just let things flow in a natural way: Such are the ways of a great religious man.
  4. The GTR is emerging - in part - from my long attempt to wrestle with, integrate, and comprehend the above factors.

PART II

Analytical Methodology

Part II first focuses on presenting the system dynamics-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) Methodology in Chapter 5. Then, Chapter 6 goes into more detail. It illustrates how TFP is used to analyze my core consciousness during purgation. This analysis leads the reader to the essence of my religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). As a byproduct of this analysis, Chapter 6 also presents the solution to Chalmers' hard problem (CHP). Please note that mystical union is not analyzed in Volume I of this book.

Chapter 5: Introduction to the three step, system dynamics-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) Methodology

This chapter gives an abbreviated TFP analysis of my experience of purgation. It briefly illustrates how the three steps of the system dynamics-based, TFP methodology are used to analyze purgation. Here are the beginning moments of my experience of purgation:

A subjective or deep inner experience began to present itself to me at about noon on April 8,1962, nineteen days after my 30th birthday: I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. This was the very beginning of my ten hour religious experience of purgation, which culminated in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. During those beginning moments I was baffled: I thought, "Where is this experience within me coming from?" Right there was the key problem: Where does this experience originate? In science this problem - associated with the onset and the continuation to the end of subjective or deep inner experiences - is an example of what is now being called Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP). The four paragraphs below answer the first of the following three questions:

  1. Where did the ten hour religious experience of purgation originate?
  2. Under what conditions did my subjective or deep inner experience become labeled as a ten hour religious experience of purgation?
  3. How was it possible for my religious experience of purgation to proceed all the way to its ten-hour completion and then culminate in the great experience of mystical union - despite purgation's intense PsychicStress, Fear, and Anxiety?
Solving Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation aims at identifying the origins or material forces within me, driving purgation's core consciousness phenomena during that experience. My system dynamics analysis of my core consciousness phenomena during purgation found that the dynamic material forces driving my dynamic core consciousness during purgation were the spontaneous releasing - one by one - of about 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, muscles in my heart. Those pairs of heart muscles had become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then, 20 or 21 years later - at the age of 30 - my trauma and its associated cramped or paralyzed heart muscles had become ripe for release. Finally, the abreaction or spontaneous release of those heart muscles began.

However, it is very important to be aware that during the releasing process of a trauma the trauma's associated psychic stress, fear, and anxiety are usually too much to bear for the experiencer. He or she usually panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then develops some sort of mental illness. Therefore, in order for the experiencer to be able to deal with that psychic stress, fear, and anxiety associated with the release of a trauma, the experiencer must use prayer, religious preparedness, etc. Such activity is the Primary Purpose of Religion. That is, my blessed prayers and religious preparedness enabled me to bear the anxiety, fear, and psychic stress without panicking, having a nervous breakdown, etc. This allowed me to go through the emotional crisis and arrive at a complete abreaction or release of my trauma. Because I used prayers, etc, throughout the ten-hour release of my trauma and because the experience was rooted deeply in my heart, my spontaneous religious response has dominated my memory of the abreaction or release of my trauma.

In my particular case, my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles spontaneously went through the process of releasing themselves. The dynamics of my releasing heart muscles drove the dynamic data of my core consciousness phenomena. That dynamic data of core consciousness was then immediately and permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM) at the time of that abreaction or release. The data of core consciousness being stored in my LTM was about the dynamics of my core consciousness during the entire ten hour purgation experience, including the core consciousness data about the state of openness of my heart. (Please note: Because my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles were spontaneously releasing themselves one by one, it naturally caused the state of my cramped up heart to begin to return to its full or open or natural position: Therefore, my heart was opening.)

Twenty two years later, in 1984 when I was 52 years old, I began the system dynamics-based analysis. The first thing I delved into was the dynamic core consciousness data for my ten hour experience of purgation. Immanuel Kant would have called that dynamic core consciousness data, associated with purgation and stored in my LTM, the dynamic phenomena of purgation. Also, he would have called the estimated 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic muscles in my heart, that were - one by one - being spontaneously abreacted or released, the dynamic noumena.

I will now present how I was able to get the answer to question #1:

Getting the answer to Question #1: Identifying the noumena or the origin of the purgation experience.
(This is the scientific solution to Chalmers' hard problem [CHP] for the case of my deep ten-hour religious experience of purgation.)

My analysis leading up to identifying the noumena has been focused on analyzing the core consciousness data of the phenomena stored in my LTM, because I am proceeding according to Newton's Rules of Philosophizing rather than Descartes' Discourse on Method. Proceeding according to Newton's method, which is now called the scientific method, eventually resulted in the transcendental grounding (Natorp/Kim 2003) of core consciousness during the deep inner experience of purgation. The aim of the task of transcendentally grounding purgation is to identify the dynamic physical objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving the phenomena: These phenomena were associated with my core consciousness during my entire experience of purgation.

Though Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to transcendentally ground phenomena in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. The solving of CHP could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, required for solving CHP, occurred:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

SD is the underlying analytical tool of the three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (For a short introduction to these three steps see the next paragraph. Later, you can also study Chapter 5 or Section I in Chapter 6.) Using the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology, I am able to mathematically analyze my first person core consciousness data residing in my LTM. In that analysis, shown in Section II in Chapter 6, the SD-based TFP methodology scientifically structures the data for purgation in a very compatible way: As a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). The reason the TFP methodology is compatible with biological phenomena is because the MNFS structure is the same structure as the entire neurophysiological system. The neurophysiological system underlies and drives core consciousness.

Here are the three steps of the SD-based, TFP methodology. The methodology is illustrated by briefly showing how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

My analysis of core consciousness during purgation began in 1984 and has continued steadily right up to the present time. The key breakthrough was Step III, above. It occurred sometime between late 2007 and early 2008. The list of nine items below gives the sequence of scientific tasks I have been performing since 1984, together with the collection of observations and insights that I became aware of during that analytical period. Basically, I used Steps I, II, and III of the SD-based, TFP methodology to analyze the core consciousness data in my LTM. Please note that all the core consciousness data for purgation, residing in my LTM, is associated with or driven by the dynamic noumena. That core consciousness data was dynamic. It varied - moment by moment - during my ten hour experience of purgation.

In summary, here is how this SD-based TFP methodology was used to solve CHP for the case of core consciousness during purgation: I first focused on my core consciousness data, associated with my deep ten hour religious experience of purgation. It resided in my LTM. I then use Steps I and II of the TFP methodology to analyze that data. (For details of this formalized analysis and construction of the purgation feedback system, see Section I and Section II of Chapter 6. The results of this scientific task are summarized in item 1 of the nine item list below. Then, by focusing on Step III, I obtained the results summarized in items 2 thru 9 of the list below. In those items my SD-based, TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation identifies the probable dynamic physical objects or transcendental objects or noumena that are the origins or driving forces of my core consciousness during purgation. This comprehensive analysis of purgation illustrates how the SD-based, TFP methodology was able to solve CHP for my deep inner experience of purgation.

  1. In Steps I and II the SD-based, TFP methodology was used to construct the 38 variable SD flow diagram and its associated mathematical model. This construction used the core consciousness data collected in my LTM during my experience of purgation (see Figure 2 and its derivation in Sections I and II of Chapter 6). The flow diagram in Figure 2 was completed in 1994.
  2. Then, in 2007 I began to use perhaps the most critical and most important step, Step III. First the Step III technique found that the flow diagram for core consciousness during purgation, developed in item 1 above and shown in Figure 2, is a second-order negative feedback system (SONFS). Once the order of the flow diagram or feedback system is identified, the dynamic characteristic of the noumena is also identified.
  3. Then, to determine the noumena driving the phenomena, I needed to search through all the dynamic physical objects within my neurophysiological system and find those dynamic objects that operate as a SONFS. At this particular early period in my search I have found only one promising candidate: Any set of dynamic antagonistic muscles operates as a SONFS.
  4. During my 10 hour experience of purgation I sensed or observed that the dynamics of purgation was being experienced mainly in my heart. Therefore, if the promising candidate is antagonistic muscles, they must be heart muscles.
  5. The great stress, fear, and anxiety - accompanying the releasing process of each set of antagonistic heart muscles - indicated that those muscles had been cramped or paralyzed prior to the estimated 72 minute period when the spontaneous releasing of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles occurred. That estimated 72 minute period occurred between the estimated 545 minute mark and the estimated 617 minute mark (see Figure 1 in Section II.B of Chapter 6).
  6. During the Step II analysis (which is located just after the Introduction in Section II of Chapter 6), I sensed or estimated that there were about a dozen or so pairs of cramped antagonistic heart muscles released during purgation.
  7. Therefore, the dynamic noumena - that drove my dynamic core consciousness phenomena during purgation as a SONFS - was probably releasing a dozen or so pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles over an estimated 72 minute period.
  8. I then asked myself what had caused the cramping or paralyzation in my heart muscles. I then remembered I had a childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old: The trauma had probably caused the cramping or paralyzation.
  9. Therefore, the origin or driving force of the purgation experience was probably the abreaction or release of the effects of my childhood trauma.
I believe this is the probable solution to Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of my deep religious experience of purgation. It tells of the origin of my ten hour experience of purgation. It answers the first of the three questions.
(See the summary at the beginning of Chapter 6. It gives the answers to the second and third questions.)

Additional information associated with the above summary of my solution to CHP for the case of purgation:

The above brief summary illustrates how Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) is solved for deep inner experiences, like purgation. It also illustrates how the mind/body problem is solved. Even though these solutions are very insightful - particularly for scientifically oriented philosophers, psychiatrists, and religious people - high level scientists will probably not be satisfied with this kind of solution. For example, for such scientists the solution to CHP is only the first breakthrough. Granted, this first breakthrough - the solution to CHP - is the key to any thorough extended analysis. Nevertheless, neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts - working together - will wish to perform three additional analytical steps to finalize the analysis for the case of purgation. I cannot perform those three analytical steps, because I am not skilled enough in neuroscience and cardiovascular science. (I am a theoretical mechanical engineer and system dynamicist.) The three additional analyses required are:
  1. Determining the precise location in my heart of the cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. This is a very difficult "easy problem" (see Chalmers' statement about the easy problems of consciousness at the end of the summary in Chapter 6).
  2. Determining the neurobiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) during purgation. This is also a very difficult "easy problem." (see the statements on CHP by Crick, Koch, and Searle at the end of this summary). These difficult "easy problems" are available for analysis only after the CHP breakthrough for purgation has been precisely solved (see item 1 just above). Once item 1 has been solved, the neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts need to neurophysiologically link the dynamic sets of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles with the dynamic core consciousness going on during the experience of purgation. (My early conjecture is that the key to this linkage is understanding the operation of the experiencer's somatosensory system. It looks to me like that system extends all the way from (1)the cramped heart muscles that are being released to (2)the postcentral gyrus in the experiencer's cerebral cortex. The location of the latter part of the somatosensory system is probably where the dynamic core consciousness associated with purgation had been generated during the release of my trauma.)
  3. The method for testing the scientific validity of my SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation is shown in Chapter 6, Section II.B, item 11.

Chapter 6: Scientific analysis of my religious experience of purgation.
(As a byproduct, I will also present the solution to Chalmers' hard problem for the case of purgation.)

(I am using the three step, System Dynamics (SD)-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology to formally analyze my core consciousness data residing in my long term memory (LTM). That data is associated with my ten hour religious experience of purgation. Purgation culminated in the great 4 to 7 second experience of mystical union. However, mystical union is not being analyzed here. Mystical union cannot be analyzed using SD, because mystical union is not dynamic. Eventually, my analysis of mystical union will be presented in Volume II of this book. That analysis will start with the application of the first law of thermodynamics.)

(Draft of December 16,2008)

CHAPTER 6 IS IN DISARRAY AT PRESENT, EXCEPT FOR SECTION I JUST BELOW.

Section 1: BRIEF SUMMARY OF CHAPTER 6

[This is a brief summary of my scientific analysis of my deep religious experience of purgation. It was only by using The Primary Purpose of Religion that I was able to experience purgation. Otherwise, I would have panicked during purgation and had a nervous breakdown. This brief summary will also briefly summarize my solution to Chalmers' hard problem for the case of purgation.

A subjective or deep inner experience began to present itself to me at about noon on April 8,1962, nineteen days after my 30th birthday: I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. This was the very beginning of my ten hour religious experience of purgation, which culminated in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. During those beginning moments I was baffled: I thought, "Where is this experience within me coming from?" Right there was the key problem: Where does this experience originate?

Here are the four questions that will be answered in this brief summary of my scientific analysis of purgation:

Solving Question #1 and Question #2 have the same answers: It's called solving Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation. The solution aims at identifying the origins or material forces within me, driving purgation's core consciousness phenomena during that experience. My system dynamics analysis of my core consciousness phenomena during purgation found that the dynamic material forces driving my dynamic core consciousness during purgation were the spontaneous releasing - one by one - of about 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, muscles in my heart. Those dozen or so pairs of heart muscles had become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then, 20 or 21 years later - at the age of 30 - my trauma and its associated cramped or paralyzed heart muscles had become ripe for release. Finally, the abreaction or spontaneous release of those cramped up heart muscles began.

However, it is very important to be aware that during the releasing process of a trauma the associated psychic stress, fear, and anxiety are usually too much to bear for the experiencer. He or she usually panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then develops some sort of mental illness. Therefore, in order for the experiencer to be able to deal with that psychic stress, fear, and anxiety associated with the release of a trauma, the experiencer must use prayer, religious preparedness, etc. Such activity is the Primary Purpose of Religion. In my case the release of the dozen or so cramped muscles was associated with one long hour of intense anxiety, fear, and psychic stress. That is, my blessed prayers and religious preparedness enabled me to bear that long one hour of anxiety, fear, and psychic stress without panicking, having a nervous breakdown, etc. This allowed me to go through the emotional crisis and arrive at a complete abreaction or release of my trauma. Because I used prayers, etc, throughout the ten-hour release of my trauma and because the experience was rooted deeply in my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles, my spontaneous religious response has dominated my deep religious memory of the abreaction or release of my trauma.

In my particular case, my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles spontaneously went through the process of releasing themselves. The dynamics of my releasing heart muscles drove the dynamic data of my core consciousness phenomena. That dynamic data of core consciousness (also called the phenomena) was then immediately and permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM) at the time of that abreaction or release. The data of core consciousness being stored in my LTM was about the dynamics of my core consciousness during the entire ten hour purgation experience, including the core consciousness data about the state of openness of my heart. (Please note the following: Because my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles were spontaneously releasing themselves one by one, it naturally caused the state of my cramped up heart to begin to return to its full or open or natural position: Therefore, my heart was opening.)

Twenty two years later, in 1984 when I was 52 years old, I began the system dynamics-based analysis. The first thing I delved into was the dynamic core consciousness data for my ten hour experience of purgation. Immanuel Kant would have called that dynamic core consciousness data, associated with purgation and stored in my LTM, the dynamic phenomena of purgation. Also, he would have called the estimated 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic muscles in my heart, that were - one by one - being spontaneously abreacted or released, the dynamic noumena.

I will now present how I was able to get the answers to the above four questions:

(a) Getting the answer to Question #1: Identifying the noumena or the origin of the purgation experience.
(The answer to Question #1 is also the answer to Question #2: The scientific solution to Chalmers' hard problem [CHP] for the case of my deep ten-hour religious experience of purgation.)

My analysis leading up to identifying the noumena has been focused on analyzing the core consciousness data or the phenomena stored in my LTM, because I am proceeding according to Newton's Rules of Philosophizing rather than Descartes' Discourse on Method. Proceeding according to Newton's method, which is now called the scientific method, eventually resulted in the transcendental grounding (Natorp/Kim 2003) of core consciousness during the deep inner experience of purgation. Transcendentally grounding purgation is also called the eidetic reduction of the phenomena or the core consciousness operating during purgation. The aim of the task of transcendentally grounding purgation is to identify the dynamic physical objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving the phenomena: These phenomena were associated with my core consciousness during my entire experience of purgation.

Though Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to transcendentally ground phenomena in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. The solving of CHP or Question #1 and Question #2 could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, required for solving CHP, occurred:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

SD is the underlying analytical tool of the three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (For a short introduction to these three steps see the next paragraph. Later, you can also study Chapter 5 or Section I in Chapter 6.) Using the three steps of the SD-based, TFP methodology, I am able to mathematically analyze my first person core consciousness data residing in my LTM. In that analysis, shown in Section II in Chapter 6, the SD-based TFP methodology scientifically structures the data for purgation in a very compatible way: As a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). The reason the TFP methodology is compatible with biological phenomena is because the MNFS structure is the same structure as the entire neurophysiological system. The neurophysiological system underlies and drives core consciousness.

Here is a short introduction to the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology. The methodology is illustrated by showing how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

My analysis of core consciousness during purgation began in 1984 and has continued steadily right up to the present time. The key breakthrough was Step III, above. It occurred in 2007. The list of nine items below gives the sequence of scientific tasks I have been performing since 1984, together with the collection of observations and insights that I became aware of during that analytical period. Basically, I used Steps I, II, and III of the SD-based, TFP methodology to analyze the core consciousness data in my LTM. Please note that all the core consciousness data for purgation, residing in my LTM, is associated with or driven by the dynamic noumena. That core consciousness data was dynamic. It varied - moment by moment - during my ten hour experience of purgation.

In summary, here is how this SD-based, TFP methodology was used to solve CHP for the case of core consciousness during purgation: I first focused on my core consciousness data, associated with my deep ten hour religious experience of purgation. It resided in my LTM. I then use Steps I and II of the TFP methodology to analyze that data. (For details of this formalized analysis and construction of the purgation feedback system, see Section I and Section II of Chapter 6. The results of this scientific task are summarized in item 1 of the nine item list below. Then, by focusing on Step III, I obtained the results summarized in items 2 thru 9 of the list below. In those items my SD-based TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation identifies the probable dynamic physical objects or transcendental objects or noumena that are the origins or driving forces of my core consciousness during purgation. This comprehensive analysis of purgation illustrates how the SD-based, TFP methodology was able to solve CHP for my deep inner experience of purgation.

  1. In Steps I and II the SD-based, TFP methodology was used to construct the 38 variable SD flow diagram and its associated mathematical model. This construction used the core consciousness data collected in my LTM during my experience of purgation (see Figure 2 and its derivation in Sections I and II of Chapter 6). The flow diagram in Figure 2 was completed in 1994.
  2. Then, in 2007 I began to use perhaps the most critical and most important step, Step III. First the Step III technique found that the flow diagram for core consciousness during purgation, developed in item 1 above and shown in Figure 2, is a second-order negative feedback system (SONFS). Once the order of the flow diagram or feedback system is identified, the dynamic characteristic of the noumena is also identified.
  3. Then, to determine the noumena driving the phenomena, I needed to search through all the dynamic physical objects within my neurophysiological system and find those dynamic objects that operate as a SONFS. At this particular early period in my search I have found only one promising candidate: Any set of dynamic antagonistic muscles operates as a SONFS.
  4. During my 10 hour experience of purgation I sensed or observed that the dynamics of purgation was being experienced mainly in my heart. Therefore, if the promising candidate is antagonistic muscles, they must be heart muscles.
  5. The great stress, fear, and anxiety - accompanying the releasing process of each set of antagonistic heart muscles - indicated that those muscles had been cramped or paralyzed prior to the estimated 72 minute period when the spontaneous releasing of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles occurred. That estimated 72 minute period occurred between the estimated 545 minute mark and the estimated 617 minute mark (see Figure 1 in Section II.B of Chapter 6).
  6. During the Step II analysis (which is located just after the Introduction in Section II of Chapter 6), I sensed or estimated that there were about a dozen or so pairs of cramped antagonistic heart muscles released during purgation.
  7. Therefore, the dynamic noumena - that drove my dynamic core consciousness phenomena during purgation as a SONFS - was probably releasing a dozen or so pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles over an estimated 72 minute period.
  8. I then asked myself what had caused the cramping or paralyzation in my heart muscles. I then remembered I had a childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old: The trauma had probably caused the cramping or paralyzation.
  9. Therefore, the origin or driving force of the purgation experience was probably the abreaction or release of the effects of my childhood trauma.

(b) Getting the answer to Question #2:

I believe this is the probable solution to Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of my deep religious experience of purgation. It tells of the origin of my ten hour experience of purgation. It answers the second question of the set of four questions.

Additional information associated with the above summary of my solution to CHP for the case of purgation:

The above brief summary illustrates how Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) is solved for deep inner experiences, like purgation. It also illustrates how the mind/body problem is solved. Even though these solutions are very insightful - particularly for scientifically oriented philosophers, psychiatrists, and religious people - high level scientists will probably not be satisfied with this kind of solution. For example, for such scientists the solution to CHP is only the first breakthrough. Granted, this first breakthrough - the solution to CHP - is the key to any thorough extended analysis. Nevertheless, neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts - working together - will wish to perform three additional analytical steps to finalize the analysis for the case of purgation. I cannot perform those three analytical steps, because I am not skilled enough in neuroscience and cardiovascular science. (I am a theoretical mechanical engineer and system dynamicist.) The three additional analyses required are:
  1. Determining the precise location in my heart of the cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. This is a very difficult "easy problem" (see Chalmers' statement about the easy problems of consciousness at the end of this summary).
  2. Determining the neurobiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) during purgation. This is also a very difficult "easy problem." (see the statements on CHP by Crick, Koch, and Searle at the end of this summary). These difficult "easy problems" are available for analysis only after the CHP breakthrough for purgation has been precisely solved (see item 1 just above). Once item 1 has been solved, the neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts need to neurophysiologically link the dynamic sets of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles with the dynamic core consciousness going on during the experience of purgation. (My early conjecture is that the key to this linkage is understanding the operation of the experiencer's somatosensory system. It looks to me like that system extends all the way from (1)the cramped heart muscles that are being released to (2)the postcentral gyrus in the experiencer's cerebral cortex. The location of the latter part of the somatosensory system is probably where the dynamic core consciousness associated with purgation had been generated during the release of my trauma.)
  3. The method for testing the scientific validity of my SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation is shown in Chapter 6, Section II.B, item 11.

(c) Getting the answers to Questions #3 and #4:

During the release of my trauma I used my prayers, my imagination, and my religious preparedness to survive the PsychicStress, Fear, and Anxiety associated with the release of my trauma. During my successful survival effort, the release of all of my cramped antagonistic heart muscles (about a dozen) occurred. In this way I got through purgation with the blessed Lord at my side. Then, purgation culminated in the deep and sacred, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union.
Figure 2, shown below, is the System Dynamics (SD) flow diagram for purgation. That SD flow diagram has 38 variables. Each of those variables is labeled either as a phenomenon variable or a core consciousness variable. Of course, each variable is associated with my - moment by moment - experience of purgation. Please be aware that the particular feedback loop associated with the release of each of the KnotsInHeart is one of the two critical feedback loops of the flow diagram. The successful use of the KnotsInHeart feedback loop, eventually, enabled me to walk the plank. (The KnotsInHeart feedback loop goes from KnotsInHeart to Ratio to PsychicStress to FearDeath to PrayerIntensity to PrayerQuality to ForgivenessResponse to KnotsInHeart to Ratio to etc.) Using my religious preparedness, the KnotsInHeart feedback loop enabled my blessed heart to release - one by one - each of the 12 or so KnotsInHeart. Those knots (or cramped heart muscles) had been caused by my childhood trauma 20 or 21 years before this ongoing release of my childhood trauma!

Now, let us consider what would have happened if I had not been religiously prepared: A non-praying or unreligious person - whose trauma was beginning to be released - probably would not have used PrayerIntensity or PrayerTrueness, even though those two variables were desperately needed by the critical KnotsInHeart feedback loop. However, the unreligious person will usually not make an intense prayer contribution to the feedback loop. Unfortunately, the unreligious person does not know that the ForgivenessResponse needs his efforts in order to negotiate the release - one by one - of each of the 12 KnotsInHeart. Instead, the unreligious person (without religious preparedness) would have been completely baffled. Not knowing what to do, he probably lingers with his PsychicStress and FearOfDeath, as his anxiety rapidly builds up. Eventually, the unreligious person panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then slowly develops some sort of psychosis. Avoiding such a fate is the primary purpose of religion.

Figure 2: The system dynamics model or flow diagram or noema for core consciousness during purgation or dark night of the soul:


Section 2: The three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) Methodology.

(Section 2 is under construction. It supersedes my 2002 Palermo publication, entitled Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology.)

Introduction

Below are presentations of Step I, Step II, and Step III of the three step system dynamics(SD)-based analytical and phenomenolgical methodology called Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP). This formalized SD-based methodology is the realization of Husserl's long quest for what he called "philosophy as a rigorous science." For example, in order to solve Chalmers' hard problem (CHP) the analyst must locate the noumena. Therefore, one of the aims of the three step, presuppositionless analysis of core consciousness during a subjective or deep inner experience is to scientifically locate the dynamic noumena or transcendental objects in the analyst's neurophysiological system during a specific deep subjective experience. These noumena were driving the core consciousness data or the phenomena during the experience. The phenomena were stored in the experiencer's long term memory (LTM).

Here is a short introduction to the three steps of the SD-based, TFP methodology, taken from Section 1 above. The methodology will be used to illustrate how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

Here is the strategy for obtaining the noumena or transcendental objects, driving the phenomena or core consciousness data in the experiencer's LTM:
  1. Use Steps I and II of the three step, SD-based, TFP methodology to model and simulate the phenomena. The phenomena are a collection of core consciousness data stored in the analyst's LTM during the time of the deep subjective experience. The SD-based, TFP methodology then structures the phenomena (in the "natural attitude") as a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). That structure is shown in Figure 2.
  2. Use Step III to determine the order or structure of the feedback system associated with the dynamic phenomena, shown in Figure 2. That order or structure is a second order negative feedback system (SONFS). Therefore, for the case of the noumena, the order or structure of the feedback system associated with the dynamic noumena must mirror the structure of the dynamic phenomena in Figure 2.
  3. Then, the analyst must find the material objects or noumena in the neurophysiological system that operate with the same behavior patterns as the phenomena. When those objects or noumena are dynamic, they will be driving core consciousness during the deep subjective experience. For example, because of the above mirroring, the TFP methodology can be used to scientifically solve Chalmers' hard problem (CHP) for the case of any deep subjective experience.
To illustrate the use of TFP for solving CHP, I will be using the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology to analyze the following phenomena: The core consciousness data stored in my LTM during my 10 hour, deep, subjective, religious experience of purgation. The data being used for analyzing the dynamics of core consciousness during my 1962 religious experience of purgation was stored permanently in my long term memory (LTM) ever since 1962 when I experienced purgation. This kind of analysis is usually called Newton's scientific method. The 10 hour experience of purgation just preceded the 4 to 7 second experience of mystical union. I call the combined experience of purgation culminating in mystical union, PMU.

Steps I and II of the SD-based, TFP methodology are well known to system dynamicists. For Step I see (Richardson 1981 or Sterman 2000). For Step II see (Forrester 1961). Step III is the key to the noumena, leading toward the solution to Chalmers' hard problem. To prepare yourself for using Step III, please study (Forrester 1968b). A brief summary for my entire analysis of purgation is given at the beginning of Chapter 6, which is this chapter.

Step I: Causal Loop Feedback Phenomenology:

The first step of the SD-based, TFP analytical methodology is illustrated by its application to core consciousness during the religious experience of purgation. It begins by recalling the data of core consciousness in my LTM during my 10 hour, 1962 experience of PMU. I began to recall this data of core consciousness from my LTM in 1984, using the causal loop diagraming technique [see (Richardson 1981 or Sterman 2000)]. The causal loop diagram technique is a simple exploratory technique, often used - but not always - during the preliminary stage of any kind of system dynamics (SD) analysis. However, when this preliminary SD technique is used for exploring core consciousness during a deep experience like the abreaction or release of a trauma or during a religious experience, it fits into the category of a simple phenomenological methodology. I will be calling this simple phenomenological methodology, Causal Loop Feedback Phenomenology (CLFP). The application of the CLFP methodology to analyze purgation enabled me to unearth or recall from long term memory various dynamic aspects - or noemata - of core consciousness during purgation and then organize them into a simple preliminary feedback structured system. My use of CLFP began to reveal - in rough form - the structure of core consciousness during purgation. It also revealed some of the main concepts Husserl referred to in his transcendental phenomenological (TP) methodology, such as the noema, the noemata, noesis, directedness of consciousness, intentionality, intentional inexistence, and the natural attitude (see Follesdal 1998). After a few years with the CLFP analysis I was able to probe or explore fairly deeply into the contents of my long term memory where the 1962 experience of PMU resided. While I was making the CLFP analysis, I was opening up the memory of PMU that had laid dormant within my long term memory (LTM) during the 22 years between 1962 and 1984. During this CLFP analytical phase my soul began to build up Fire again. This occurred because my remembrance of PMU was opening up again, releasing pent up energy associated with those deep memories. During this firey period I wrote An Engineer's Story, given in Chapter 1.

Step II: Mathematical Feedback Phenomenology:

Once the CLFP analysis of purgation was exhausted or was milked dry of preliminary insights, I was ready to begin the more scientific, second step in the SD-based, TFP analytical process. This step is a scientifically-based phenomenological analysis: A formalized, SD-based, mathematical kind of phenomenological analysis of core consciousness. It is the RSP, the rigorous science of philosophy that Brentano and Husserl were seeking during their brilliant careers. I eventually called that phenomenological analysis, Mathematical Feedback Phenomenology (MFP). MFP is really a classical SD analysis, but I want to indicate that MFP is an SD-based analysis focused on a phenomenological task and, therefore, I want to give it a phenomenological name.

Now, it is important to state here a fact psychologists are very familiar with: The dynamic data of core consciousness during deep experiences, like trauma or religious experiences, are very precisely and permanently retained in long term memory (LTM). Using this fact, which I became aware of during my experience with the CLFP step, the objective of my MFP analysis focused on constructing a formalized SD model (see Forrester 1961) that uses simulation to precisely describe my memory of the dynamics of my core consciousness data in my LTM during purgation. This key task was performed by mathematically modeling and then simulating - in an iterative way - a relatively simple set of aspects or variables of core consciousness during purgation, moment by moment, over each variable's or aspect's 10 hour duration. This iterative process was performed until the actual dynamics of each aspect or noemata of my core consciousness during purgation had been precisely described (using moment by moment simulations) and purgation's two sector structure or flow diagram or noema had been carefully determined. There are, presently, 38 variables or noemata in that formalized SD model of purgation, 23 of which are aspects of my core consciousness during purgation. This MFP analysis of purgation is given in Section II, below.

I was completely absorbed with the above two steps of this analytical process. However, the analysis took a great deal of time to complete: The CLFP period took about two years, from December 1984 to some time in 1986 or 1987; the MFP period or step took about 8 years from 1986 or 1987 to December 1994. Metaphorically, the results of the CLFP analysis could be thought of as like a model T Ford; the MFP analysis could be thought of as like taking the old model T Ford apart and rebuilding it into a more exact machine with fairly precise capabilities. Much was learned about purgation during the initial CLFP period or step. What I learned enabled me to begin the MFP step. That step is a much more serious, mathematical-based, analytical process.

The relatively simple 38 variable, two sector, MFP model of purgation, shown at Figure 2 below, could have been refined more and more as my insights grew deeper and clearer. Also, the number of variables or noemata I was using could have been increased as the variables or noemata of the MFP analysis become more comprehensive and more refined. There is no limit to the potential depth and fineness of detail of the analysis. However, one must be willing to give the time required for such a refined analysis. In 1994 I was 62 years old. Time was running out for me. I had to move on to other, more pressing, tasks.

MFP is unique. It is a formalized, first-person, mathematically-based, SD analysis of the dynamics of core consciousness data during a deep experience. Such an analysis has never been done before. Its application to purgation is the first use of the MFP methodology. The MFP analysis of purgation reveals that the SD-based MFP methodology is the keystone of the RSP, the rigorous science of philosophy (Farber 1943/2006) toward which prominent phenomenological philosophers - like Brentano and Husserl - had quested for, but had never attained. Note carefully: The CLFP and MFP analyses are SD-based analyses. SD is the underlying analytical tool of the first and second steps of the comprehensive, analytical methodology I am calling Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP).

So, it is important, now, to look at the SD methodology, which underlies the TFP analysis, from a broad perspective for a moment. SD can be used to model and simulate the dynamics of any kind of system that is changing or moving. In this book I am focusing my SD analysis on the dynamics of my own core consciousness system during the 10 hour experience of purgation. However, core consciousness during the 4 to 7 second state of mystical union is in a timeless state: There is no change in core consciousness during the timeless and changeless state of mystical union. Therefore, neither SD or TFP can be used to model and simulate a core consciousness that does not change. That is, SD cannot model and simulate a changeless, and hence a timeless, state like mystical union. Nevertheless, I believe the state of mystical union will eventually be scientifically analyzed, starting with the first law of thermodynamics (see this link for a discussion of a scientific approach for analyzing mystical union). As for the history of SD, it was conceived and developed by Jay W. Forrester (Forrester 1961). The analytical power, brilliance, and simplicity of the SD method is only one of the great achievements of Forrester's legendary career at MIT. I believe his SD methodology satisfies the requirements for being the logos, an all encompassing methodology for analyzing any kind of system that is changing or moving. The concept of the logos was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus.

Step III: Transcendental Grounding step of Feedback Phenomenology:

The completion of Steps I and II, the CLFP and MFP analyses, are where my SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation stood during the period between 1994 and the Summer of 2007. During that period I was struggling with comprehending the concept of the transcendental. Then, when I finally began to understand that concept I began to realize that TFP's final step would be Step III:

During the very important Step III the analyst examines the Figure 2 flow diagram of core consciousness during purgation, determined in Step II. In general, Step III takes the flow diagram, developed in Step II, and then determines the noumenon or the part of the experiencer's neurophysiological system that is driving the moment by moment change going on in the experiencer's core consciousness. Step III is finding out or diagnosing what was actually going on within my body physically or materially or neurophysiologically or behavioristically. In particular it was finding the particular part of my neurophysiological system that was driving my core consciousness during purgation.

To obtain the identity of the transcendental object, to know its location, and to understand its dynamics, the analyst used the order of the FP model of core consciousness during purgation - determined in Step II. In Step II the analyst found that the order of the SD model of purgation was a second order negative feedback system (SONFS). It turns out that the dynamics of muscles have this very same type of feedback system. This insight enables the analyst of purgation to search for muscles that were being released. If they are found, they are the muscles driving core consciosness during purgation. Those muscles would have the kind of dynamics within the experiencer's body that mirrors the dynamics of the experiencer's core consciousness. The analyst of purgation then uses this insight, together with the help of consultants, such as a neuroscientist and a cardiovascular expert to determine both the kind of moving part and the moving part's specific location in the experiencer's neurophysiological system. After working alone with the SD technique of Step III for the case of purgation since 2007, it was stated just above that I presently believe the specific location of the moving part in my neurophysiological system is at a point where cramped antagonistic heart muscles were being abreacted or released. That is the dynamic noumenon or transcendental object that is driving core consciousness during purgation.

Here are some more precise insights into the three step TFP methodology, for the case of purgation:

Section 3: How Steps I, II, and III of the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology are used to analyze the deep subjective religious experience of purgation.

(Section II is under construction. It supercedes my 2001 Emory/Atlanta publication, entitled General Theory of Religion.)

Introduction

Since December 1984 I have been slowly and carefully developing Steps I and II of the system dynamics (SD) based Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (see Section I). At the same time I have been slowly applying this developing TFP methodology to analyze the phenomena associated with my religious experience of purgation residing in my LTM. That is, located in my LTM is the moment by moment dynamics of my core consciousness during the purgative stage of my religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). The dynamics of a rather limited amount of extended consciousness during purgation is residing there also, but it is dominated by, or attached to, core consciousness. As a result extended consciousness has not been modeled or simulated.

Normal, everyday, experiences are dynamic and appear to be 100% dominated by extended consciousness. Deep or traumatic or religious experiences also appear to be dynamic, but they are dominated by core consciousness. During the experience of purgation the experiencer's consciousness is almost 100% dominated by core consciousness. On the other hand, consciousness during the 4 to 7 second state of mystical union does not change. It is not dynamic and, therefore, cannot be modeled and simulated. The focus of the TFP analysis of purgation, presented in this paper, is on core consciousness. Extended consciousness has been bracketed out. (To more fully sense or understand the first and second paragraphs, it is necessary to carefully study my narrative of PMU in Chapters 1, 2, and 3 of my book manuscript.)

This deep religious experience of PMU occurred in 1962 when I was 30 years old. My memory of that great experience never fades. It is well known that deep and traumatic experiences, like my religious experience, never fade. They are only repressed. Indeed, every moment by moment detail of core consciousness during that religious experience can be remembered, even now after all the years since it was first recalled in 1984. Most of the time the experiencer does not attempt to recall the experience of PMU. Most of the time he or she is distracted by social or worldly or less important personal matters.

My TFP analysis of purgation has been proceeding in the following way:

The TFP analysis of purgation has slowly progressed since 1984, as described above. It is now focused on Step III. In Step III I am identifying the dynamic noumena or dynamic physical objects driving core consciousness during purgation. That is, in Step III I am able to transcendentally ground core consciousness during my experience of purgation in dynamic material objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system. My aim in Step III is to penetrate to the dynamic noumena or material objects located in my neurophysiological system or to the reality underlying core consciousness during my religious experience of purgation. After steady iterative work on Steps I, II, and III of this SD-based, TFP analysis of purgation ever since 1984, I believe the TFP analysis is finally beginning to reveal both the origin of purgation and some of the neurophysiological reality - the noumena or cramped or paralyzed heart muscles - underlying the experience of purgation. This work is leading to a testable analysis of purgation and to a general theory of religion (GTR).

Purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU) is central to all major religions. It is stage 11 and 12 of my fourteen stage religious crisis shown at Table I, below. Table I also gives the names of stages 11 and 12 in the language of a few other major cultures or religions.

TFP is a marriage between system dynamics (SD) and Edmund Husserl's phenomenology (Husserl 1982). After TFP's development since 1984, it appears to me that TFP is slowly becoming the rigorous, presuppositionless science of philosophy for which Husserl and his teacher, Brentano, strived for throughout their careers in phenomenology, but never attained. I believe FP is becoming the rigorous and presuppositionless science, because the FP methodology uses SD to make a formalized mathematical analysis of my own core consciousness during purgation and because the analysis is testable (see item 11 in Section II.B, below). Essentially, the TFP method coordinates the SD analysis of purgation with some of Husserl's phenomenological concepts and some of his philosophical ideas. These results are leading toward an integrated many dimensional understanding of the great religious experience that is at the heart of all religions. This many dimensional understanding includes: neuroscience, cognitive science, consciousness studies, physics, system dynamics, integration of science and religion, phenomenology, philosophical studies, psychiatry, psychology, cultural anthropology, and religious studies.

Section 3.A: How Step I of the TFP methodology is used to analyze core consciousness during my experience of purgation.

(Step I of the TFP analysis of purgation will be written about and also illustrated, using important causal loop diagrams.)

Section 3.B: How Step II of the FP methodology is used to scientifically analyze core consciousness during my experience of purgation

(The present state of my work on Section II.B is presented in items 1 through 12 below. I will often be referring to the very important Figure 2, just below.)

Figure 2: The system dynamics model or flow diagram or noema for core consciousness during purgation or dark night of the soul:


  1. The architecture of the model in Figure 2:
    The architecture of the model of core consciousness during purgation has a quickly operating (milleseconds to seconds) parallel processing cognitive mechanism in the upper sector that interacts with a relatively slow system (seconds to hours) in the lower sector. According to Guha (1991), the former originates in the thalamocortical system and is nonconscious; the latter originates in the limbic-brain stem and neurocirculatory system and is mostly conscious. Jackendoff (1987) calls the former the computational mind and the latter the phenomenological mind. Communication between these two sectors of the model is provided by about seven transducers or transition variables, six of which are associated with prayer and attention and one of which is a kind of energy within the mind (PsychicEnergyFactor). These transducers are conscious.

    All of the conscious variables in the lower sector of the model are named in what Husserl called the 'natural attitude.' For example, KnotsInHeart is not a thing. It has no reality as such. There are no knots in the heart, but there may be cramped or paralyzed muscles in the heart. Thus, naming the variables in the natural attitude means the name it feels like to the experiencer as he recalls his core consciousness during the 10 hour experience of purgation. It is not the name of what is actually going on in the experiencer's body. Thus, simulating the variables of purgation in the natural attitude is a way to present a moment by moment description of my experience of purgation.

    Thus, the model's representation for my core consciousness (Damasio 1999) is shown in the lower sector. The intentionality of consciousness during purgation is about a somatosensory mental image. This mental image is about the heart opening against a resistance in the form of knots in the heart. This mental image does not exist. Using the insights of Meinong (1904), Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology labels such intentionality, 'intentional inexistence.' The mental image does not exist, because it is not a material object. Further, hearts are not opened and they don't have knots. However, eventually, in the second phase of the FP analysis, the SD-based FP analysis finds that what exists are antagonistic heart muscles. Even though the mental image does not exist, it can be modeled and simulated because there is a one to one relationship between the movement of the heart muscles and the dynamics of the mental image. The mind uses the imagination to convert the movement of the heart muscles to the dynamics of the mental image. That is why it is called a somatosensory mental image. There is a saying that a picture is worth 1000 words. For a person experiencing the incredibly stressful and fearful dark night of the soul or purgation, a mental image is worth 1000 neurophysiological facts. Hence, in the crisis of purgation the mind uses a somatosensory mental image. An image makes it easier and quicker for the mind to comprehend and to act or respond to the essentials of what is sensed within. Variables of the model associated directly with the somatosensory mental image include HeartOpenness, KnotsInHeart, FearDeathDueToKnot, and the set of feedback loops associated with them. ForgivenessResponse, PsychicStress, and OpeningPressure are also associated with this mental image. A simulation of these conscious variables allows us to get a good description - in the natural attitude - of core consciousness and how it is driven, moment by moment, during the stressful and fearful experience of purgation.

    The 11 variables representing the nonconscious cognitive mechanism are located in the upper part of the model, above a semicircle that goes just above KnotOriginInsight, AttentionalFocus, and PsychicEnergyFactor. I conceived or invented this cognitive mechanism sector and use it, because it is able to work well with the lower part of the model. Eventually, this cognitive mechanism sector will be replaced by a model developed by scientists in the field of cognitive science. At present we must use my invented model. It incorporates the concept of redundancy from engineering; Miller's (1956) concepts from information theory concerning channel capacity and recoding; Miller's 'magical number seven' used in cognitive science; and the retrieval accuracy of short term memory concept developed by Schouten and Bekker (1967), Wickelgren (1979), and Luce (1986). The concept of redundancy comes into play during mystical union when the primary information processor shuts down and the background information processor takes over in its place. How the model of consciousness operates when time stops during mystical union will be discussed more fully in items 4 and 5, below.

    Preliminary definitions of each of these variables are given by the 38 variable (11 in the upper sector, 27 in the lower sector) mathematical model, shown in item 6 below. The constants in the equations and the table functions have been tuned to give an accurate simulation of the 10-hour Dark Night or purgative stage right up to the moment just preceding mystical union. Of the 38 variables, 23 are aspects of core consciousness. All 23 are located in the lower sector. The simulations of these 23 aspects of core consciousness are all simultaneous. For example, simultaneously, the experiencer (myself) was conscious of the dynamics or change of the following aspects of core consciousness during purgation: the rise in the opening pressure on my heart, an opening heart, the presence of a knot in my heart and the removal of a knot, the rise and fall of the intensity of fear of death and psychic stress, the rising intensity and falling intensity of my prayer, the rise and fall of the degree of attentional focus of my mind, etc.

  2. Dynamics:
    In my normal life HeartOpenness was stable at 5% of maximum possible openness and there were a stable set of twelve KnotsInHeart. This is shown at Time=0 in the simulation at Figure 1 at item 3, below. (Keep in mind that these numbers are only my best estimates: the initial value of HeartOpenness could have been anywhere from 2% to 10% or 15%; the initial value of KnotsInHeart could have been anywhere between 8 and 15 knots.) However, just after the beginning of the Dark Night or purgation (Time>0), the phenomenological mind undergoes a change in such a way that OpeningPressure jumps from its NormalOpening Pressure of 5% all the way up to 80%. This is reflected by the fact that I have programmed AdditionalOpeningPressure to go from 0 to 75% at Time = 0. To understand the initial dynamics of the model at this point, keep in mind that the flow diagram for the 10-hour experience of purgation shown in Figure 2 has, at present, only two sectors. Eventually, the flow diagram or noema of core consciousness for the entire religious crisis may have 3 or more sectors. Therefore, the step input from AdditionalOpeningPressure is assumed to come from or originate in either a shift in loop dominance (Forrester 1985) or a bifurcation (Strogatz 1994) associated with a projected, but not yet modeled, adjacent sector or sectors. This step input causes limbic-brain stem variables in Figure 2, such as HeartOpenness, PsychicStress, FearDeathDueToKnot, KnotsInHeart and the like, to change or become dynamic, all coordinated by way of the feedback loops in the structure.

    KnotsInHeart, HeartOpenness, and the three memories in the cognitive mechanism are called state variables by mathematicians. In system dynamics terminology they are called stocks or levels or accumulations. Each stock or state variable has the characteristic of accumulation, analogous to a bathtub accumulating water. Using this bathtub analogy, 'How open is the heart at this moment?' is analogous to 'How full of water is the bathtub now?' ForgivenessResponse, HeartUnfoldmentRate, PrimaryInformationProcessingRate, BackgroundInformationProcessingRate, and InnerSensingRate are examples of rates. They act like either the bathtub's inlet faucets or outlet drains. Whether the faucet is an inlet faucet or outlet drain is indicated by the large arrowhead. (Eliminate the darkened arrowhead and use the open arrowhead to indicate the direction of flow of the thing or entity that is passing through the 'faucet'.) The much smaller arrowheads indicate the direction of causation. For example, the arrows coming from PrayerTrueness and PrayerIntensity and pointing at PrayerQuality indicate that the first two variables determine the value of PrayerQuality at any time. Specifically, the mathematical model gives the following definition of PrayerQuality:

    PrayerQuality = 0.5*(PrayerTrueness + PrayerIntensity) ............equation 1

    When PrayerQuality reaches 100%, which is the 'forgiveness threshold', the ForgivenessResponse is triggered and one KnotInHeart is removed in a ratchet-like fashion. (The knot is removed, rather than added, because the undarkened arrowhead points away from the KnotsInHeart stock.) Action then shifts to a negative feedback loop associated with HeartOpenness and PsychicStress: The removal of this one knot begins to unseal the restricted and rigid or tight heart, causing PsychicStress to decrease rapidly, which then causes the HeartUnfoldmentRate 'faucet' to open. This causes HeartOpenness to fill or open further, causing PsychicStress to rise again as the heart begins to encounter the next knot. As a result FearDeathDueToKnot, and then PrayerIntensity, and WillfulAttention, begin to rise again. The rise in fear and attention leads to a shift in loop dominance: Action shifts to the cognitive mechanism, which is essentially a negative feedback loop concerned with solving the problem of the origin of the knot (Ellis 1995). The fear and attention driven PrimaryInformationProcessingRate in the cognitive mechanism speeds up, leading to an increase in KnotOriginInsight. This increasing insight is concerned with the solution to the following problem: What is the particular sin, guilt, or hatred that is at the origin of this next knot? The gradual solution to this problem and my gradual acceptance of this solution leads to greater PrayerTrueness and then greater PrayerQuality until the latter reaches the 'forgiveness threshold,' triggering the ForgivenessResponse again. Then, the next knot cycle begins.

  3. A closer look at the knot removal mechanism:

    Figure 3: Two-minute simulation of four of the 23 aspects of core consciousness during the Dark Night of the Soul or purgation:

    The four simulations in Figure 3 above focuses in on a two-minute period between the 607 and 609 minute marks. This two minute period occurs during the 72 minute unstable period shown in Figure 1, between the 545 and 617 minute marks. This 72 minute unstable period is the period during which all 12 KnotsInHeart are purged. Once all the 'knots' have been purged, mystical union occurs during the 617th minute. My experience of mystical union has enabled me to estimate that it lasted anywhere from 4 to 7 seconds.

    Figure 1: 960 minute simulation of four of the 23 aspects of core consciousness during purgation or dark night of soul:

    Please note that in Figure 3 and Figure 1 I am showing the simulations of variables such as Time, FearOfDeath, etc. with 5 place accuracy (e.g., 607.84 minutes, 87.2%), but obviously I can not recall consciousness during my experience with such accuracy. What I am actually doing is making these kinds of simulations and then stepping back and evaluating if this simulation compares well with my memory of the actual experience. If it does not compare well, I either change a constant in the mathematical model shown at item 6, below, or, if the situation calls for it, I change the structure of the model shown in Figure 2. Then, I resimulate until all the simulations of variables simultaneously match the experience. Please bear with me on my use of 5 place accuracy. Engineers do things like this; scientists don't like it. The engineer is focused on the first 2 or 3 digits. He is thinking: "Maybe the 4th and 5th digit can be used when converting from hours to minutes to seconds, etc. It wouldn't hurt to use 5 digits." This iterative process took me many, many months, but it was a labor of love. During this iterative process I was recalling the sacred and fascinating experience of purgation and mystical union in finer and finer detail.

    Thus, Figure 3 above shows a simulation of an intense two-minute period of the Dark Night of the Soul or purgation during which the 5th, 4th, and 3rd knots in the heart were purged. For example, the 4th from the last knot is removed at the 607.84 minute mark as shown by curve 1. Then begins the 3rd from last knot removal period, a 47 second period from the 607.84 to the 608.63 minute mark, during which curve 4, FearDeathDueToKnot, rises because of rising PsychicStress caused by the heart opening against the knot restriction variable, MaximumBearableUnboundedness (see Figure 2). This fear and trembling associated with a rising FearDeathDueToKnot leads to a rise in PrayerIntensity. Note: when a rising PrayerIntensity is approaching 100% it is like the prayer intensity of a drowning man, when he is about to go down for the last time. PrayerTrueness is insightful, focused prayer. When PrayerTrueness is approaching 100%, it is like the trueness one feels when a rackety complex machine is carefully adjusted by a skilled mechanic and begins to hummm or run true. (PrayerTrueness's simulation and PrayerIntensity's simulation are not shown in Figure 3.) PrayerQuality, shown as curve 2, is made up of both PrayerIntensity and PrayerTrueness (see equation 1 on the previous page).

    At the end of this 47 second period, just before the removal of the 3rd from last knot at the 608.63 minute mark, is the culminating point of the 3rd knot removal period when, in fear and trembling, the mystic-to-be accepts in the depths of his heart the deep insight into his sin, hatred, or guilt. This high value of PrayerTrueness is what is needed to bring PrayerQuality to 100%, the 'forgiveness threshold,' and trigger the ratchet-like action of the ForgivenessResponse, causing the removal of the 3rd from last knot at the 608.63 minute mark.

    Then FearDeathDueToKnot drops suddenly from 87.2% of maximum all the way down to around 1% of maximum. At that relatively peaceful and blissful state of core consciousness there is extreme thankfulness to the Lord. This extreme thankfulness comes about because the blessed Lord has answered his earnest prayer, granted forgiveness, and thus saved the pilgrim from impending death due to the stress, anxiety, and fear caused by the third from last knot.

    "Forgetful of myself,
    My head reclined on my Beloved,
    The world was gone
    And all my cares at rest,
    Forgotten all my grief among the lilies."
    (from the 'Dark Night' by John of the Cross).
    Then the 2nd or next to last knot period begins, as the cycle repeats itself in this purgation or dark night of the soul. Meanwhile, TruenessOfMind (curve 3) is rising inexorably as the knots are purged, leading eventually to mystical union after the last knot is removed.

  4. Dynamics associated with mystical union:
    The flow diagram or model in Figure 2 incorporates the controversial idea that mystical union cannot occur by WilledAttention alone. To do that, it brings into play what I am calling NaturalAttention. It works like this: At the end of the purgation all twelve knots had been purged from my heart and the heart was opening, paced by the HeartAdjustmentTime. Because there were no longer any KnotsInHeart now, PsychicStress and hence FearOfDeath and hence WilledAttention had all dropped to zero. AttentionalFocus was increasing now only because of a rise in NaturalAttention. The rise in NaturalAttention had resulted from a pure, knot-free heart (KnotsInHeart = 0) that had caused TruenessOfMind to go into an exponential rise. The rise in TruenessOfMind was exponential, rather than sudden, because of the smoothing factor (Forrester 1961) in the equation for TruenessOfMind (see its equation in the mathematical model in section 6, below). The resulting powerful and increasing NaturalAttention and then increasing AttentionalFocus caused a steady decreasing of the RetentionTime in short term or working memory. As the RetentionTime decreased, RetrievalAccuracy associated with short term memory decreased until it eventually reached the 'insufficient accuracy' shutoff point. This triggered the PrimaryInformationProcessor in the cognitive mechanism to shut down. (See the equation for PrimaryInfoProcRate in the mathematical model shown in section 6.) However, because of redundancy built into the cognitive mechanism, cognition immediately switched over to the BackgroundProcessor. The shutdown in the PrimaryInformationProcessor caused the cessation of all inner sense, including the inner sense of time, the ability to think, imagine, will, and make immediate recall. My conjecture here is that these are all associated solely with the PrimaryInformationProcessor. This conjecture is based on my experience during the moment of transition from purgation into mystical union. During the 4 to 7 seconds of shutdown I found myself in the timeless state of mystical union. This is indicated when the value of the artificial output variable, ReadinessForUnion, goes off to infinity.

  5. The background processor:
    The kind of consciousness that is associated with what I am calling the background Processor is a timeless and unchanging state. This state has been known by all people who have experienced mystical union, samadhi, etc. Thus, this state of consciousness has been known of for millenniums: Hindus have called it the purusha or saksin; ancient Greeks have called it nous; Spinoza called it 'that part of the mind that is eternal.' Husserl appears to have called it the pure ego, but I am not sure of that. The cessation of operation of the primary information processor during mystical union left the pilgrim without the sense of inner time and the ability to think, imagine, will, and make immediate recall. However, during this state of mystical union the background processor - working automatically - allows the pilgrim to timelessly and consciously be aware of the unsurpassable greatness for a duration that lasted anywhere from 4 to 7 seconds. Awareness of this unsurpassable greatness is my idea of the knowledge of God. The background processor processes and records that observed information into LongTermMemory2. Later, when the experiencer (who is now what I define as a mystic) descends from the state of mystical union and correspondingly the primary information processor returns to operation, the mystic can use the primary processor to recall the information recorded by the background processor about mystical union. That is because information processed and stored in long term memory by the background processor during mystical union is preconscious. That is, the information is permanently available for conscious recall.

  6. Mathematical model for purgation:

    Use a dt of .005 minutes.

  7. The TFP analysis of deep experiences like purgation has three steps:

  8. Neurophysiological correlates:
  9. Behavioristic correlates, conditioned learning, and unconditioned learning or revelation:
    1. The flow diagram or noema for core consciousness during purgation, shown in Figure 2, details the autonomous mental imagery, ideation, and mediating processes between a stimulus and a response that provides the mystic-to-be with the conditioned learning needed to become a mystic (compare Figure 2 with Figure 4). There are an estimated twelve cycles of autonomous conditioned learning, centered around the ForgivenessResponse. These twelve cycles of purgation are nested within one cycle of consummatory reinforcement due to mystical union.

      The sensory receptor of the stimulus (see Figure 4 above) is AdditionalOpeningPressure. It sends signals which cause a somatosensory stimulation of heart muscles driven by both the parasympathetic and the sympathetic system. This sympathetic stimulation tends to increase cardiac output (HeartOpenness). The parasympathetic system opposes this tendency (KnotsInHeart). This antagonistic stimulation generates the kind of somatosensory mental imagery and its associated ideation and mediating processes between the autonomous stimulation and the ForgivenessResponse that produces the conditioned learning.

      Perhaps, the most critical of purgation's autonomous ideations and mediating processes revolve around the ForgivenessResponse. For example, the threshold or limen for the ForgivenessResponse is at PrayerQuality = 100%. A rise in PrayerIntensity occurs first, but even a high value of PrayerIntensity of around 80% to 100% of maximum is still subliminal. It does not evoke a response, because the equation for PrayerQuality in the mathematical model indicates that for the ForgivenessResponse to occur there is a need for a summation at the synapse:

      PrayerQuality = 0.5*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).............equation 1

      Thus, PrayerIntensity 'sets' the ForgivenessResponse. That is, it is set in the direction of finding a way to remove the knot in the heart. Then comes the increasing subtlety of ideation originating in the central nervous system (CNS), which is associated with PrayerTrueness. PrayerTrueness incorporates ideations of sin, guilt, etc. Such ideation aids in the eventual elevation of PrayerQuality until it reaches the ForgivenessResponse threshold and elicits the response, which is the removal of a 'knot in the heart.'

      Woodworth and Ladd (1911) clarified the above sequence for the case of a cat trying to get out of a cage to get food: (words in brackets show the analogy of the cat's dilemma with the mystic-to-be's dilemma during purgation)

      "The animal [the mystic-to-be or the experiencer of PMU] desires ... to get out and reach the food [removal of knots in heart]. Whatever be his consciousness, his behavior shows that he is, as an organism, set in that direction [PrayerIntensity aimed at removing knot]. This adjustment [set] persists till the motor reaction is consummated [PrayerTrueness rises until PrayerQuality reaches 100% and the ForgivenessResponse occurs], it is the driving force in the unremitting efforts of the animal to attain the desired end [removal of knot]. His reactions are, therefore, the joint result of the adjustment [set, PrayerIntensity] and of stimuli from various features of the cage [problem solving, PrayerTrueness]. Each single reaction tends to become associated with the adjustment [set]."
      The learning is reinforced after the ForgivenessResponse by the reduction in stress (PsychicStress) and fear (FearOfDeath) and the increase of rapture (Rapture). Therefore, conditioned learning occurs for each of the 12 knots removed during the 10-hours of purgation. In addition, a structured memory trace of new neural connections is made (Hebb 1958).
    2. Then, after my TFP analysis of purgation, I studied the structure of consciousness in 'the natural attitude' during purgation in the flow diagram in Figure 2, together with its simulation (see Figure 3). By this study, I was able to understand the conditioning of my mind that occurred during my religious experience of purgation. It became clear that my conditioning would not have occurred without, first, the successful removal of all the knots in the heart, and, second, purgation's culmination in the state of mystical union. If the culmination had not occurred, no culminating reinforcement to my conditioning would have occurred and, as a result, I would not have been conditioned to forgive, to love God, and to pray to God. However, the fact is I was conditioned:
      • I was conditioned to forgive twelve times, each time a knot was purged, during purgation. Mystical union then provided culminating reinforcement to this 12 cycle conditioning to forgive.
      • I was conditioned twelve times to pray to 'the Lord.' I was conditioned that if prayer is to be successful, it must be performed with all of my mind and heart and soul (PrayerIntensity). In addition, I was conditioned that prayer must be true to the very core (PrayerTrueness). I was conditioned to believe that 'the Lord' would forgive guilt, sin, error, or hatred if I prayed in this way. Mystical union then provided culminating reinforcement to this 12 cycle conditioning to pray.
      • Because of the success of prayer in removing the knot and the blessed thankfulness that followed, I was also conditioned to love God, whom I believed had saved my life (see Chapter 2). Mystical union then provided culminating reinforcement to this 12 cycle conditioning to love God.
      • In this way I believe I was conditioned during PMU to be a person who strives to live a religious life.
    3. In summary, the mystic-to-be undergoes the following conditioned learning:
      • The reinforced conditioned learning about the purgation-based aspects of the religious life: a life based on heart-centered prayer and forgiveness of sin, hatreds, guilt, etc.
      • This conditioned learning is confirmed through consummatory reinforcement by the experience of the unsurpassable greatness during mystical union.
      Later, this learning will be part of the mystic's teachings.
  10. The neural correlates:

    (.... Needs to be written.....)

  11. Testing the TFP analysis of purgation by predicting the direction of information flow in the neurophysiological system. A scientific test of the TFP analysis of purgation can be made by predicting the directionality of information flow in the neural correlates between the variables in the causal loops of the flow diagram of Figure 2. A test of these predictions, however, can only be performed when neurophysiologists and other neuroscientists are enlisted to greatly refine what is presently my rather brief set of neural correlates of consciousness for purgation. These neural correlates are assembled as part of item 8 of Section II.B of the TFP analysis of purgation, just above. (Note: As for mystical union, no test can be made of that part of the TFP analysis of PMU, because during mystical union the inner sense of time ceases. If the experiencer - who is also the analyst - does not experience an inner sense of time, the analyst cannot determine movement of information. Hence, the direction of the movement of information in the neurons cannot be determined for mystical union, but the neural correlates can definitely be determined for consciousness during purgation.)

    Testing of the TFP analysis of purgation is analogous to the testing that validated Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. In the famous initial test of the General Theory of Relativity, first Einstein had predicted the gravitational effects of Mercury's mass on the movement of light from the Sun to the Earth during the eclipse of the Sun by Mercury. Then, a successful test confirming that prediction excited physicists throughout the world. As more and more tests confirming various other predictions became available, physicists became more and more confident in the validity of the General Theory of Relativity.

    Similarly, as the neural correlates of consciousness for purgation - or the abreaction of my trauma - become more and more refined through the help of neurophysiologists and other neuroscientists, eventually these neuroscientists can predict the direction of information flow in specific neurons at key points in the neurophysiological system of the human body, using the small arrowheads in the feedback loops in the flow diagram in Figure 2. Then the tests are as follows: Neurophysiologists examine both the physical orientation and the direction of causation in critical neurons. Then, if the predictions of direction of information flow in each critical neuron are found to be correct, scientists will become more and more confident in the validity of my analysis of purgation.

  12. Understanding the reality underlying the experience of PMU (the essences, meanings, and delusions associated with purgation and mystical union.)
    A. Preliminary Insights:
    Here are some preliminary insights emerging from my scientific analysis of purgation and mystical union (PMU): Cramped or paralyzed muscles in my heart, which were caused by a childhood trauma that I had experienced at the age of 9 or 10, were spontaneously released or abreacted at the age of 30 during purgation. These cramped or paralyzed muscles had been released, one by one, during those 10 hours of purgation (see Figures 1 and 3). When all of the cramped or paralyzed muscles had been released, I went into the state of mystical union.

    Now, the above comprehension of my experience of purgation is based on my scientific analysis that has been going on from December 1984 to the present time. Figures 1, 2, and 3, above, were generated during the system dynamics (SD) phase of that analysis. That system dynamics-based analysis of core consciousness during purgation finds that the flow diagram or noema for core consciousness during my experience of purgation, shown above in Figure 2, is structured as a second order negative feedback system (Forrester 1968b). At the present time I am conjecturing that the structure of a second order negative feedback system is the same structure as that which would result if one were to model the dynamics of the release of cramped muscles. Given the fact that I experienced those muscles as located in my heart, I will assume they were cramped heart muscles. Underlying that conjecture is the fact that muscles act in an antagonistic way. For example, the sympathetic system and the parasympathetic system act antagonistically on any muscle pair. So, eventually a detailed, formalized, SD analysis of the release of cramped heart muscles could be performed by a biomedical specialist, skilled in SD. If the biomedical specialist's SD model of the dynamics of muscles is shown to be a second order negative feedback system, it would indicate there is a high probability that core consciousness during the experience of purgation was transcendentally grounded in the neurophysiology of my heart muscles [look for (Kim 2003) in the bibliography for a link to the writings of the Neokantian philosopher, Paul Natorp, on transcendental grounding].

    However, an important question for the biomedical specialist is: Where were the cramped/paralyzed muscles in my heart located? I was an athlete in my youth and in college. Generally speaking, my heart was sound. Therefore, I am conjecturing that the cramped/paralyzed muscles were probably muscles associated with areas of the heart that were not directly related to the pumping action of my heart.

    B. Based on the above analysis, here is my understanding of the origin of purgation and mystical union:
    1. My TFP analysis of PMU, summarized in the above Preliminary Insights section, gives a fairly good basis for conjecturing that when purgation started there were certain muscles in my heart that were cramped or paralyzed (KnotsInHeart = 12).
    2. Once I got the insight that is stated in item #1 above, the question that arose in my mind was: How did those muscles in my heart get cramped/paralyzed in the first place? My conjecture is they became cramped/paralyzed during a childhood trauma that occurred in 1941 or 1942 when I was 9 or 10 years old. Am I sure of this? No, but I have no memory of any other trauma but that trauma. (My ability to remember goes back to when I was about 4 or 4 1/2 years old. It is possible my heart was cramped/paralyzed in the womb or in childbirth or during the years between my birth and 4 years old, but my conjecture that it occurred during the childhood trauma is, I think, more probable.)
    3. It follows from the conjectures in items #1 and #2, above, that those cramped heart muscles had then been slowly put into more and more tension as my body and the rest of my heart grew during the period when my body matured from the age of 9 or 10 to the age of 30. So, at the age of 30 the tension in the cramped muscles would probably be like the tension in the string of a bow when it is drawn for the purpose of shooting an arrow. Following the conjectures further, during my religious experience the tension in those cramped antagonistic muscles was released, muscle by muscle or knot by knot, in 1962 at the age of 30. As the tension in the muscles was released, knot by knot, potential energy in the tense or stretched muscles was converted to the release of what Freud called 'cathectic or bound energy.' This release of the muscles and their 'bound energy' is central to the experience of purgation and mystical union and the freeing of my cramped heart. (Note: the release occurred during a vacation after having finished a stressful engineering project. It will be useful to read my narrative of that project: I had given all my mind and heart and soul to that project.)
    4. Thus, my conjecture is purgation is the sacred experience I underwent in 1962 at the age of 30 during the intense, fearful, but also blessed, release of those cramped or paralyzed antagonistic heart muscles. Mystical union, which immediately followed purgation, is the sacred experience I underwent during - what appears to be - the release of massive amounts of potential energy that had formerly resided in the tense or stretched muscles. Underlying these energy conjectures is the first law of thermodynamics. For more detail on the conjecture concerning mystical union, please see this link, particularly detail in items 1 and 2 of the link.
    5. If these conjectures are true, my experience of PMU is the abreaction of my childhood trauma.
    6. These insights about PMU apply also to the key religious experience that appears to be found in all religions (see Table I in the Introduction, particularly stages 11 and 12). This is the basis for the GTR.

Section II.C: How Step III, the linking of the phenomena to the noumena, is accomplished.

(To be written)

Section II.D: The nine item list, that summarizes the solution to Chalmers' hard problem.

(To be written)

Section II.E: Summary of the TFP analysis of purgation.

This Summary is in the form of the history of my thought processing since 1962, as I made the three step analysis of purgation. As the reader will see, my thought processing gradually gets finer and finer as it gets closer and closer to locating or transcendental grounding the dynamic noumenon that is linked to and is driving the dynamics of the core consciousness phenomenon during the 10 hour experience of purgation.

PART III

Applications

Chapter 7. Clarification of key religious concepts:

Toward the Meaning of the Experience of Purgation and Mystical Union: My mind has been directed toward gaining these insights ever since I began this study in 1984, indeed, ever since I began the religious journey in December 1957.

1. The essence of faith.

Sometimes, desperate people - when their backs are to the wall facing defeat, death, and/or disintegration - make a miraculous recovery. Examples are found among warriors, businessmen, athletes, people on their death bed, prisoners, former addicts of one kind or another, etc. Do you remember the people of London during the Battle of Britain? Do you remember the people of Grand Forks, North Dakota during the Red River flood of 1997? Do you remember the night that Archie Moore came back from a terrific beating in the first round to steadily make his way back and ultimately defeat a powerful Canadian boxer? An Engineer's Story is a narrative that details one person's experience of this mode or capability, including the desperate circumstances that brought it about.

All such people are knowers of a greatness within that has enabled them to function in these situations in a mode far more profound, powerful, and skilled than their ordinary abilities. This human capability probably evolved during the desperate battle conditions of our earliest hominid ancestors. This capability is always available to human beings. To know this is the essence of faith.

2. The meaning of life: Cracking the Code!

There is something driving us to our full potential: to our ultimate end or object; to our telos. This telos is ultimate trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, and love, but we never seem to attain it. Whatever trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, or love we attain, we sense it is not enough. We need more.

In my case my full potential, my telos, was only satisfied when I had experienced mystical union. It was in mystical union that I experienced ultimate trueness, freedom, integrity, grounding, and love. When that occurred I felt my search was over. I was finally satisfied. Therefore, it was this that I had been driven to, unconsciously. The drive toward this goal is mostly hidden from us; it is unconscious: An unconscious life force or entelechy is silently and wordlessly informing us: 'Come to the state of ultimate freedom, trueness, integrity, grounding, and love.

From the point of view of intentionality our lives are about reaching this goal, the state of ultimate freedom, trueness, integrity, grounding, and love. That is, in our daily lives this is the unconscious intentionality of our conscious lives. This unconscious intentionality is driven, in turn, by some sort of unconscious life force.

With these insights the mystic had cracked the code: He had found the structure underlying the dance or game of life and he had a conjecture on what drives the dance.

3. The nature of God: The essence of religion

Focusing on the transition from purgation to mystical union gives powerful insights: During purgation my imagination produced mental imagery and the emergence of an archetype when I really needed it. These products of my imagination played a central role in stabilizing my mind during the experience of purgation. However, they suddenly ceased functioning at the moment of cessation in mystical union. The fact that God was experienced then, after those two aspects of the imagination had shut down, conflicts with the present position of both the scientific community and the Western psychological community. The Western psychological community's extensive study of the mind has convinced them that God is a product of the imagination. My position is that we must go deeper: The experience of God originates at a much deeper level:

During mystical union inner sense ceases; including the inner sense of time, the ability to think, to imagine, to will, and to make immediate recall. Simultaneously, one has an ecstatic experience of merger with the essence of one's inner self or inner Being. This timeless essence or Immensity or Ground cannot be conditioned, either by society or authorities or by anything else. The ecstatic experience of this Ground, occurring after purgation when my heart had been purified and fully opened, is an experience of an unsurpassable Greatness that fully satisfied my desperate search for groundedness.

Immediately after, when I came down from mystical union and ordinary consciousness partially returned, I was in a heavenly state. This state is called bhava by the Hindus and 'the Peace that passeth all understanding' or 'Beulah land' or heaven by Protestant mystics. It is a state of supreme bliss.

A few months later, I gradually returned to ordinary consciousness. Then, in 1985 or thereabouts, I began to search my language for a name for the formless and unsurpassable Greatness experienced in mystical union, because I needed to communicate the insights emerging from this work. Because I was born and raised in the United States and English is my native language, the only name I could find that satisfied my heart and mind was the word, God, the name my precious mother spoke to me about when I was a boy.

If I had been born and raised in a Hindu culture, the name I would have chosen would have been Brahman; If I had been born and raised in a Muslim culture, the name would have been Allah; If I had been born and raised in a Japanese Buddhist culture, the name would have been No Thing or Emptiness; etc.

Chapter 8: A practical application for the General Theory of Religion: Curing Mental Illness throughout the World by means of a Collaboration between Science and Religion.

Here is the outline of an open collaboration between System Dynamicists, who have been studying my system dynamics-based General Theory of Religion (GTR), and the talented and versatile scientists now working in the field of Genomics at The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard:

The highly regarded Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is taking a position toward mental illness that I find complements the position taken by my General Theory of Religion (GTR). There may be a way to integrate these two approaches through an open collaboration:
  1. The Broad Institute believes the application of the most advanced genomic tools will solve the problem of what is causing mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Once the genomic cause is known for each illness, the Broad Institute believes conceiving and developing novel, more effective treatments for such illnesses can finally be accomplished. The Broad Institute is now involved in a 10 year, $500 million project along these lines.
  2. The GTR's scientific position is that most mental illnesses begin their development at the moment when the abreaction or release of a trauma has led to panic and a nervous breakdown. When the panic and nervous breakdown occur the abreaction process or the release of the trauma ceases, usually during the unsuccessful releasing process of the first set of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. However - and this is very important - if there is no panic and nervous breakdown during the abreaction of the trauma, the entire release of the trauma will be successfully completed and mental illness will not develop. The GTR's position is that the primary purpose of a religion is to religiously prepare children of that particular religion, in case those children are traumatized in the future. Specifically, the GTR's position is that the aim of a religion is to prepare those children so they will be able to deal with the beginning signs of panic that will be present when the trauma is eventually beginning to be released. In short, the primary purpose of a religion is to avoid the panic and the nervous breakdown, associated with the eventual release or abreaction of a trauma. If the children's religious preparedness has been done effectively, no panic and nervous breakdown will occur. As a result, there will be no mental illness among the devotees of that religion. Therefore, if a study of a person's genomics shows a tendency toward - for example - schizophrenia, this form of mental illness will only begin to develop in that person after panic and a nervous breakdown occurs. Note carefully: the GTR's position is that a religiously prepared child will eventually be prepared to deal with the release of a trauma later in his or her life: He or she will be able to keep the panic and nervous breakdown from occurring. This has been carefully described in Key #1 of the Introduction to the GTR, where I reveal how I was able to avoid panic and a nervous breakdown at the age of 30 during the abreaction or release of my childhood trauma. That childhood trauma occurred when I was a child of 9 or 10 years old. I was religiously prepared, mainly by my mother and father and by Rabbi Minda overseeing his Sunday school. The critical years were between the ages of about 1 through 15 years old.Therefore, I believe a careful study of religious preparedness is the most important and the most central phenomenon for scientists and religious leaders to study. Collaborating scientists conducting such a study might include some of the talented and versatile scientists at the Broad Institute, some system dynamicists who are now studying and becoming interested in my internet presentation of my General Theory of Religion analysis, and some religious scholars, etc. The main idea here is that if the panic and nervous breakdown do occur during the abreaction, then - and only then - will the results of the Broad Institute's genomics approach - described above - come into play. Here is another important point: the GTR is finding that the primary purpose of a religion is very similar for most of the religions existing throughout the world (see Key #2 and Key #3 just below). Therefore, the results of the collaboration between system dynamicists, who are studying, analyzing, and publishing about a great variety of complex systems, and the versatile scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, who are focused on the use of Genomics to cure mental illness, could begin a very interesting long term project: A project that may eventually wipe out mental illness throughout the world, but only in conjunction with local religions throughout the world.
We are asking the Broad Institute to consider making the integration of these two approaches to the origin and cure of most mental illnesses the centerpiece of their very important 10 year, $500 million project. Success on such an open collaboration between those scientists working with the genomics approach, those working with the religious approach, and those working with the psychiatric approach could not only bring about the elimination of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression, but could also bring about deep cultural integration and cultural teamwork between genomics, religion, psychiatry, and the pharmaceutical industry. Such integration and teamwork will always be desperately needed in a modern culture.

In the modern era, it is so critical that leaders of the government, the industrial community, the business community, the scientific community, the pharmaceutical industry, the universities, the psychiatric community, and the religious communities learn to work together. I believe such cultural teamwork would bring about healthy, vibrant societies throughout the world: Societies as free as possible from those mental illnesses that result from the panic and nervous breakdown associated with the release or abreaction of a trauma.

Key #2: A Brief Introduction to the General Theory of Religion.

"... if there is ever to be a universal religion, it must be one which will have no location in place or time; which will be infinite like the God it will preach, and whose sun will shine upon the followers of Krishna and of Christ, on saints and sinners alike; which will not be Brahminic or Buddhistic, Christian or Mohammedan, but the sum total of all these, and still have infinite space for development..." (Vivekananda 1893)

Table I, below, gives the 14 stages of my 53 month religious crisis. The details of Table I give the reader a brief and concise base for understanding the similarities of religions and for understanding the deep concept of a general theory of religion.

Please notice that Purgation is listed at Stage 11 and Mystical Union is listed at Stage 12 of the Judeo-Christian terminology. The Hindu terminology uses the term Overcoming Samskaras for the experience of Purgation and uses the term Samadhi for the experience of Mystical Union, etc.

Key #3: Why a Culture Cannot Survive without Religion.

(Why has religious belief survived throughout the whole history of mankind?)

Here are some of the most important religious insights of the book: They are based on my very detailed scientific, presuppositionless, System Dynamics(SD)-based Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) analysis of my religious experience, particularly the finer and finer simulations of my core consciousness during purgation. This analysis is being carried out in detail in Chapters 5 and 6. The finer and finer simulations have slowly uncovered the practical reason why prayer, imagination, and religious belief have survived from the time of migrating primitive tribes to the present:

SUMMARY OF THE GENERAL THEORY OF RELIGION

(Here is a collection of important aspects of this book. There will be more than the four Sections shown here, when I am finished with this summary.)

Arlen Wolpert

System Dynamist and Independent Scholar

Draft of January 26,2009

Section 1: How I have used the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) methodology to solve or realize Husserl's quest for a scientifically rigorous psychology and a scientifically rigorous psychiatry. My illustrative example is focused on the release or abreaction of my childhood trauma and its relationship to my religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union.

A brief presentation of my TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation

A subjective or deep inner experience began to present itself to me at about noon on April 8,1962, nineteen days after my 30th birthday: I was walking down a hill with a small suitcase in my hand. As I walked reflectively and in peace down that hill in the warm and brilliant Southern California sun, my heart slowly began to feel full. My mind was drawn inward. This was the very beginning of my ten hour religious experience of purgation, which culminated in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. During those beginning moments I was baffled: I thought, "Where is this experience within me coming from?" Right there was the key problem: Where does this experience originate? In science this problem - associated with the onset and the continuation to the end of subjective or deep inner experiences - is an example of what is now being called Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP). The four paragraphs below answer the first of the following three questions:
  1. Where did the ten hour religious experience of purgation originate?
  2. Under what conditions did my subjective or deep inner experience become labeled as a ten hour religious experience of purgation?
  3. How was it possible for my religious experience of purgation to proceed all the way to its ten-hour completion and then culminate in the great experience of mystical union - despite purgation's intense PsychicStress, Fear, and Anxiety?
Solving Chalmers Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of purgation aims at identifying the origins or material forces within me, driving purgation's core consciousness phenomena during that experience. My system dynamics analysis of my core consciousness phenomena during purgation found that the dynamic material forces driving my dynamic core consciousness during purgation were the spontaneous releasing - one by one - of about 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, muscles in my heart. Those pairs of heart muscles had become cramped or paralyzed during my childhood trauma, way back when I was 9 or 10 years old. Then, 20 or 21 years later - at the age of 30 - my trauma and its associated cramped or paralyzed heart muscles had become ripe for release. Finally, the abreaction or spontaneous release of those heart muscles began.

However, it is very important to be aware that during the releasing process of a trauma the trauma's associated psychic stress, fear, and anxiety are usually too much to bear for the experiencer. He or she usually panics, has a nervous breakdown, and then develops some sort of mental illness. Therefore, in order for the experiencer to be able to deal with that psychic stress, fear, and anxiety associated with the release of a trauma, the experiencer must use prayer, religious preparedness, etc. Such activity is the Primary Purpose of Religion. That is, my blessed prayers and religious preparedness enabled me to bear the anxiety, fear, and psychic stress without panicking, having a nervous breakdown, etc. This allowed me to go through the emotional crisis and arrive at a complete abreaction or release of my trauma. Because I used prayers, etc, throughout the ten-hour release of my trauma and because the experience was rooted deeply in my heart, my spontaneous religious response has dominated my memory of the abreaction or release of my trauma.

In my particular case, my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles spontaneously went through the process of releasing themselves. The dynamics of my releasing heart muscles drove the dynamic data of my core consciousness phenomena. That dynamic data of core consciousness was then immediately and permanently stored in my long term memory (LTM) at the time of that abreaction or release. The data of core consciousness being stored in my LTM was about the dynamics of my core consciousness during the entire ten hour purgation experience, including the core consciousness data about the state of openness of my heart. (Please note: Because my cramped or paralyzed heart muscles were spontaneously releasing themselves one by one, it naturally caused the state of my cramped up heart to begin to return to its full or open or natural position: Therefore, my heart was opening.)

Twenty two years later, in 1984 when I was 52 years old, I began the system dynamics-based analysis. The first thing I delved into was the dynamic core consciousness data for my ten hour experience of purgation. Immanuel Kant would have called that dynamic core consciousness data, associated with purgation and stored in my LTM, the dynamic phenomena of purgation. Also, he would have called the estimated 12 pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic muscles in my heart, that were - one by one - being spontaneously abreacted or released, the dynamic noumena.

I will now present how I was able to get the answer to question #1:

Getting the answer to Question #1: Identifying the dynamic noumena or the dynamic physical objects or the origin of the purgation experience.
(This also happens to be the scientific solution to Chalmers' hard problem [CHP] for the case of my deep ten-hour religious experience of purgation.)

My analysis leading up to identifying the noumena has been focused on analyzing the core consciousness data of the phenomena stored in my LTM, because I am proceeding according to Newton's Rules of Philosophizing rather than Descartes' Discourse on Method. Proceeding according to Newton's method, which is now called the scientific method, eventually resulted in the transcendental grounding (Natorp/Kim 2003) of core consciousness during the deep inner experience of purgation. The aim of the task of transcendentally grounding purgation is to identify the dynamic physical objects or noumena in my neurophysiological system that were driving the phenomena: These phenomena were associated with my core consciousness during my entire experience of purgation.

Though Kant (1724-1804), Franz Brentano (1838-1917), Paul Natorp (1854-1924), the Marburg School of Neokantianism (1870-1920), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945), Aron Gurwitsch (1901-1973), and others (see Holzhey 2005) studied such phenomena deeply, they were unable to transcendentally ground phenomena in a scientific way, because science was not advanced enough in the 18th, 19th, and the first half of the 20th century. The solving of CHP could only have been attained after the first half of the 20th century, because it was only after World War II that the two critical breakthroughs in science, required for solving CHP, occurred:

  1. The publication of the powerful System Dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961, 1968b).
  2. The invention of computers for implementing the SD methodology, particularly implementing the solution to sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.

SD is the underlying analytical tool of the three step Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology (For a short introduction to these three steps see the next paragraph. Later, you can also study Chapter 5 or Section I in Chapter 6.) Using the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology, I am able to mathematically analyze my first person core consciousness data residing in my LTM. In that analysis, shown in Section II in Chapter 6, the SD-based TFP methodology scientifically structures the data for purgation in a very compatible way: As a multiloop nonlinear feedback system (MNFS). The reason the TFP methodology is compatible with biological phenomena is because the MNFS structure is the same structure as the entire neurophysiological system. The neurophysiological system underlies and drives core consciousness.

Here is a short introduction to the three steps of the SD-based TFP methodology. The methodology is illustrated by showing how it is used for analyzing core consciousness during purgation:

My analysis of core consciousness during purgation began in 1984 and has continued steadily right up to the present time. The key breakthrough was Step III, above. It occurred in 2007. The list of nine items below gives the sequence of scientific tasks I have been performing since 1984, together with the collection of observations and insights that I became aware of during that analytical period. Basically, I used Steps I, II, and III of the SD-based TFP methodology to analyze the core consciousness data in my LTM. Please note that all the core consciousness data for purgation, residing in my LTM, is associated with or driven by the dynamic noumena. That core consciousness data was dynamic. It varied - moment by moment - during my ten hour experience of purgation.

In summary, here is how this SD-based TFP methodology was used to solve CHP for the case of core consciousness during purgation: I first focused on my core consciousness data, associated with my deep ten hour religious experience of purgation. It resided in my LTM. I then use Steps I and II of the TFP methodology to analyze that data. (For details of this formalized analysis and construction of the purgation feedback system, see Section I and Section II of Chapter 6. The results of this scientific task are summarized in item 1 of the nine item list below. Then, by focusing on Step III, I obtained the results summarized in items 2 thru 9 of the list below. In those items my SD-based TFP analysis of core consciousness during my experience of purgation identifies the probable dynamic physical objects or transcendental objects or noumena that are the origins or driving forces of my core consciousness during purgation. This comprehensive analysis of purgation illustrates how the SD-based TFP methodology was able to solve CHP for my deep inner experience of purgation.

  1. In Steps I and II the SD-based TFP methodology was used to construct the 38 variable SD flow diagram and its associated mathematical model. This construction used the core consciousness data collected in my LTM during my experience of purgation (see Figure 2 and its derivation in Sections I and II of Chapter 6). The flow diagram in Figure 2 was completed in 1994.
  2. Then, in 2007 I began to use perhaps the most critical and most important step, Step III. First the Step III technique found that the flow diagram for core consciousness during purgation, developed in item 1 above and shown in Figure 2, is a second-order negative feedback system (SONFS). Once the order of the flow diagram or feedback system is identified, the dynamic characteristic of the noumena is also identified.
  3. Then, to determine the noumena driving the phenomena, I needed to search through all the dynamic physical objects within my neurophysiological system and find those dynamic objects that operate as a SONFS. At this particular early period in my search I have found only one promising candidate: Any set of dynamic antagonistic muscles operates as a SONFS.
  4. During my 10 hour experience of purgation I sensed or observed that the dynamics of purgation was being experienced mainly in my heart. Therefore, if the promising candidate is antagonistic muscles, they must be heart muscles.
  5. The great stress, fear, and anxiety - accompanying the releasing process of each set of antagonistic heart muscles - indicated that those muscles had been cramped or paralyzed prior to the estimated 72 minute period when the spontaneous releasing of the cramped or paralyzed heart muscles occurred. That estimated 72 minute period occurred between the estimated 545 minute mark and the estimated 617 minute mark (see Figure 1 in Section II.B of Chapter 6).
  6. During the Step II analysis (which is located just after the Introduction in Section II of Chapter 6), I sensed or estimated that there were about a dozen or so pairs of cramped antagonistic heart muscles released during purgation.
  7. Therefore, the dynamic noumena - that drove my dynamic core consciousness phenomena during purgation as a SONFS - was probably releasing a dozen or so pairs of cramped or paralyzed, antagonistic, heart muscles over an estimated 72 minute period.
  8. I then asked myself what had caused the cramping or paralyzation in my heart muscles. I then remembered I had a childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old: The trauma had probably caused the cramping or paralyzation.
  9. Therefore, the origin or driving force of the purgation experience was probably the abreaction or release of the effects of my childhood trauma.
I believe this is the probable solution to Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) for the case of my deep religious experience of purgation. It tells of the origin of my ten hour experience of purgation. It answers the first of the three questions.
(See the summary at the beginning of Chapter 6. It gives the answers to the second and third questions.)

Additional information associated with the above summary of my solution to CHP for the case of purgation:

The above brief summary illustrates how Chalmers' Hard Problem (CHP) is solved for deep inner experiences, like purgation. It also illustrates how the mind/body problem is solved. Even though these solutions are very insightful - particularly for scientifically oriented philosophers, psychiatrists, and religious people - high level scientists will probably not be satisfied with this kind of solution. For example, for such scientists the solution to CHP is only the first breakthrough. Granted, this first breakthrough - the solution to CHP - is the key to any thorough extended analysis. Nevertheless, neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts - working together - will wish to perform three additional analytical steps to finalize the analysis for the case of purgation. I cannot perform those three analytical steps, because I am not skilled enough in neuroscience and cardiovascular science. (I am a theoretical mechanical engineer and system dynamicist.) The three additional analyses required are:
  1. Determining the precise location in my heart of the cramped, antagonistic heart muscles. This is a very difficult "easy problem" (see Chalmers' statement about the easy problems of consciousness at the end of the summary in Chapter 6).
  2. Determining the neurobiological correlates of consciousness (NCC) during purgation. This is also a very difficult "easy problem." (see the statements on CHP by Crick, Koch, and Searle at the end of this summary). These difficult "easy problems" are available for analysis only after the CHP breakthrough for purgation has been precisely solved (see item 1 just above). Once item 1 has been solved, the neuroscientists and cardiovascular experts need to neurophysiologically link the dynamic sets of cramped, antagonistic heart muscles with the dynamic core consciousness going on during the experience of purgation. (My early conjecture is that the key to this linkage is understanding the operation of the experiencer's somatosensory system. It looks to me like that system extends all the way from (1)the cramped heart muscles that are being released to (2)the postcentral gyrus in the experiencer's cerebral cortex. The location of the latter part of the somatosensory system is probably where the dynamic core consciousness associated with purgation had been generated during the release of my trauma.)
  3. The method for testing the scientific validity of my SD-based, FP analysis of purgation is shown in Chapter 6, Section II.B, item 11.

Section 2: Comparison of the two competing analytical methodologies being used in the field of Phenomenology: Method I is my Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) methodology, developed between 1984 and 2008. Method II is Edmund Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology (TP) methodology, developed between 1901 and 1938.
(Draft of January 16,2009)

Method I: This is my three-step, system dynamics(SD)-based, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP) methodology. It was developed during a 24 year period from 1984 to 2008. How to use TFP is made clear by an illustrative example presented in this book: That example is the TFP analysis of my deep, subjective, ten hour, religious experience of purgation.
  1. Introduction to Method I:

    During the 24 years from 1984 to 2008 I have been absorbed in the following project: Developing the TFP methodology, while at the same time using TFP to deeply understand my dynamic, deep, ten hour, subjective, religious experience of purgation.
    (Purgation culminates in the great, 4 to 7 second, experience of mystical union. However, in this book my experience during mystical union will not be part of the illustrative example. By the way, I am calling this classical, two stage, dynamic, religious experience: PMU.)

    After the religious experience of purgation occurred in April 1962, the data for the dynamic core consciousness system associated with purgation has been residing permanently in my long term memory (LTM). That is the data that I am using, as I apply the Transcendental Feedback Phenomenological (TFP) methodology to scientifically analyzed the dynamics of my core consciousness system associated with my ten hour religious experience of purgation. That dynamic religious experience of purgation occurred spontaneously when I was 30 years old.

    TFP uses the system dynamics (SD) methodology (Forrester 1961) to formally and mathematically and scientifically analyze my core consciousness system, which is also called my phenomena system.

    Here is a brief summary of the strategy of my TFP methodology, as it goes about analyzing the dynamics of my core consciousness system, permanently residing in my long term memory (LTM). Please keep in mind that the data for the dynamics of my core consciousness system during purgation occurred in April 1962. At that time the data began to permanently reside in my LTM. Then, my TFP analysis of that data occurred during the analytical period between 1984 and 1994.

  2. Here is a more detailed presentation on how this project goal was accomplished: First, I used the unformalized Step I, the SD-based causal loop diagram technique, to begin exploring the dynamic core consciousness data in my LTM. After becoming familiar with the data, using Step I, I then used the formalized Step II, the basic SD technique itself, to mathematically model or structure core consciousness during purgation. Step II structured purgation's core consciousness system as a multiloop nonlinear feedback system. This structure has the same form as the standard structure of the entire neurophysiological system. The resulting mathematical model and its structure then enabled me to simulate my core consciousness system during purgation. These simulations describe my experience of purgation. The model of my core consciousness system during purgation is called the phenomena for the experience of purgation. Then, I began using Step III of the TFP methodology: With it I performed the eidetic reduction according to the TFP methodology. I transcendentally grounded the dynamic core consciousness system or dynamic phenomena in my noumena. The noumena is the name for the set of dynamic physical objects, located in my neurophysiological system, that were driving the dynamic core consciousness or the dynamic phenomena. (see Forrester 1968b) The Step III analysis found that my dynamic experience of purgation originated from or was grounded in the spontaneous release of about a dozen sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles.
  3. The three-steps of the TFP methodology are roughly the same as the steps used in Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenological (TP) methodology, developed between 1901 and 1938. However, I am finding that Steps II and III of the TFP methodology gives TFP a much more subtle mathematical formalization and, as a result, gives the TFP methodology the power to scientifically determine the dynamic physical noumena that was driving the dynamic phenomena or core consciousness during my experience of purgation. In order to accomplish such an analysis, the TFP methodology goes far beyond Husserl's TP methodology. Among other subtle techniques associated with the TFP methodology, TFP incorporates feedback system techniques and incorporates the use of a computer, capable of solving sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equations.
  4. Summarizing: The first two steps of the TFP methodology enabled me to model and simulate the dynamic core consciousness data or phenomena data during my experience of purgation, moment by moment, over its ten hour length. The key to this kind of analysis is the data for my experience of purgation was permanently stored in my LTM and, as a result, was always available to me. These moment by moment simulations were able to describe the dynamics of core consciousness during my religious experience of purgation. Then, Step III of the TFP methodology performed the eidetic reduction according to the TFP methodology: I transcendentally grounded the model of my religious experience by locating purgation's origin in my neurophysiological system: Specifically, I found that the dynamic phenomena, which is the dynamic core consciousness data during purgation, was driven by the release or abreaction of about a dozen sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles. Those sets of heart muscles had become cramped during my childhood trauma when I was 9 or 10 years old. During the 20 or 21 years between the childhood trauma and the release of the trauma at 30 years of age, my trauma was becoming ripe for release until it made its spontaneous release at 30.
Method II: This is Husserl's Transcendental Phenomenology (TP) methodology, developed during the 37 years between 1901 and 1938. As was stated in paragraph #3 above, TP does not use the scientific method. In addition, the TP methodology has not been made clear by a presentation of an illustrative example, showing how the TP methodology is used. However, I believe that Method I, which is my three-Step FP methodology, is actually the realization of Husserl's scientific aim for the TP methodology. This scientific aim of Husserl began in 1911 and lasted until his death in 1938. Husserl called that scientific aim, Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (Husserl 1911). To clarify how the three steps of my Method I can be used to realize Husserl's scientific aim for his TP methodology, please study the rest of this Summary Item #1, shown below:
  1. First, we need to identify Husserl's best English presentation of his TP methodology. It is generally accepted that Husserl best presentation in English was meant for the Fourteenth Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. However, it was generally thought that Salmon, the man who made the original translation from German to English, did not do a good job. The leaders of the Phenomenology community in the English speaking world decided to correct this situation. A new translator was hired and a revised translation was made. This new translator was Richard E. Palmer. Palmer's translation was accepted by those leaders. The resulting publications, associated with Palmer's revised translation, can be found at the following two links: Husserl 1971 or McCormick 1981. At the present time I am going to present here only the first paragraph of Palmers revised translation of Husserl's single paragraph Introduction to his TP methodology: It is shown below in quotation marks.
  2. Now, I will begin to explain how my three-step, TFP methodology fits into Husserl's scientific aim for his Transcendental Phenomenological (TP) methodology. I have placed three footnote numbers in Husserl's first paragraph. That first paragraph gives Husserl's Introduction to his presentation. It is shown below in quotation marks. These three numbers will then lead the reader to my three footnotes. I believe the reader will find from those footnotes that Husserl's methodology needs to be more scientific. Because of the lack of scientific formalization in his Transcendental Phenomenology (TP) methodology, Husserl tried until the end of his life in 1938 to scientifically develop his TP methodology. However, even though Husserl was an outstanding mathematician, he did not succeed. The reason he did not succeed was (1) Forrester's system dynamics (SD) methodology had not been developed and published until 1961 and (2) computers for solving sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equation had not been developed until World War II, or shortly thereafter.
  3. Here is Palmer's revised translation of the single paragraph Introduction to Husserl's genuine summary of his TP methodology. It is followed by my footnotes:
  4. Here is Salmon's single paragraph Introduction to Husserl's TP methodology: It is very misleading:
    "Phenomenology denotes a new, descriptive, philosophical method, which, since the concluding years of the last century, has established (1) an a priori psychological discipline, able to provide the only secure basis on which a strong empirical psychology can be built, and (2) a universal philosophy, which can supply an organum for the methodical revision of all the sciences."
In summary, I recommend that Method I, Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP), should be established as the standard methodology in the field of Phenomenology, because my TFP is able to obtain a much more scientifically rigorous empirical psychology. This is leading to a scientific-based psychology or psychiatry. Ultimately, I believe TFP is leading the way to Husserl's long term aim: Philosophy as a Rigorous Science (PRS).

The reason Husserl's TP methodology is now somewhat obsolete is as follows:

  1. Forrester's system dynamics (SD) methodology had not been developed and published until 1961. Husserl died in 1938.
  2. Computers for solving sets of simultaneous nonlinear differential equation had not been developed until World War II, or shortly thereafter.
Brilliant as Husserl was in philosophy and mathematics, his technical or analytical work is mired in the state of scientific knowledge existing in the first half of the 20th century.

Section 3: The two paths taken by my mind in dealing with my religious experience: Doxa and Episteme.

Here is a brief introduction to these two important concepts: Doxa and Episteme.
  1. When I began experiencing the release of my trauma at 30 years of age, my focus was on avoiding panic and a nervous breakdown. By trying to avoid panic and a nervous breakdown during the release of my trauma, I was engaged with the Primary Purpose of Religion. For this task religion uses doxa. Doxa, in this case, is an imaginative method that is sometimes used successfully to deal with a deep threat to one's life. In my case doxa was focused on my fear, stress, and anxiety associated with the release of my cramped heart muscles during the abreaction or release of my childhood trauma.
  2. Later, when I began to work toward scientifically establishing the General Theory of Religion at the age of 52, I began using episteme. Episteme, in this case, is the use of a formalized scientific method to obtain the scientific truth about my religious experience.
What I have found from my religious experience is that without using religious doxa I could not have avoided panic and a nervous breakdown during the release of my trauma. I could not have walked the plank. As a result I could not have experienced purgation and mystical union. Without the data of purgation in my long term memory (LTM), I could not have used episteme to develop the General Theory of Religion (GTR).
I know that without using doxa I could not have walked the plank. By not using doxa, I would have panicked, had a nervous breakdown, and ended up with some form of psychosis. In addition, I could not have experienced purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU) and therefore could not have had the data for PMU in my LTM. As a result, I could not have used episteme to develop the GTR.

It is important that scientists and intellectuals, particularly those interested in the field of mental illness, humble themselves a bit when dealing with the concept of doxa: During the release or abreaction of a trauma; or during wartime battle in defense of one's country; or during great stress, fear, and anxiety: doxa is a very important player in the Primary Purpose of Religion.

Path I: The Path of Religious Doxa:

In order to comprehend religious doxa, I need to tell you about the most important 3 or 4 minutes of my life. During those 3 or 4 minutes the first of about 12 sets of cramped antagonistic heart muscles was being released. During those 3 or 4 minutes I had to 'walk the plank.' Once you understand how a religiously prepared person is able to successfully 'walk the plank,' you will begin to understand doxa and the primary purpose of religion.
Yea,
Though I walk through the valley
Of the shadow of death
I will fear no evil:
For thou art with me;

from Psalm 23 of the Bible or the Old Testament

Path II: The Religious Path of Episteme:

At the foundation of religion is the religious experience of purgation culminating in mystical union (PMU). Though PMU is thought to be a rare experience, I don't believe it is as rare as most people think. I believe most of those who experience it keep it to themselves. PMU is central to all cultures. For example, each culture has a name for mystical union. That name usually comes down from the Ages: satori, no-thing, wu-wei, enlightenment, nirvakalpa samadhi, fana, devekut, ecstasy, born again, etc. (see stage 12 of Table I, a few pages below). During mystical union one experiences the fundamental note of one's existence or the sacred ground of one's being. Of those people who have experienced mystical union, some have been more successful than others in the important task of integrating that experience into their way of life and their philosophy and presenting and interpreting its greatness to their culture.

This book presents yet another approach to interpreting that great experience: The approach of Episteme. For the first time, ever - the approach is a formalized, presuppositionless, scientific approach: It uses the powerful Forrester-style system dynamics (SD) methodology to model, simulate, and transcendentally ground the data of my core consciousness during purgation. This data has been located or stored in my long term memory (LTM), ever since 1962.

The SD analytical methodology can be applied to analyze and comprehend almost any kind of system, but when the analyst applies SD to scientifically model, simulate, and transcendentally ground his own dynamic core consciousness system that was operating during a deep experience, such as his core consciousness system operating during his 1962 religious experience of purgation, the analyst is using a very complex, subtle, and unique kind of application of the SD analytical methodology. As a result, I have given a special name for that kind of application of the SD analytical methodology: I call it Transcendental Feedback Phenomenology (TFP).


The painting shown above is by the American painter, Winslow Homer, and is entitled 'Fog Warning.' It is displayed at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: It represents, for me, the mystic struggling to return home - against long odds - after having gained the Great Catch: The knowledge of God during mystical union.

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(Link here to a separate list of my own publications.)
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