Papers by Jonathan Bricklin
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Dec 18, 2016
A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress ... more A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain definitive pace, and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner, as if events moved necessarily in this order and at this precise rate. But that may be only our mode of regarding them. The events may be in some sense in existence always, both past and future, and it may be we who are arriving at them, not they who are happening. The analogy of a traveler in a railway train is useful; if he could never leave the train nor alter its pace, he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily successive and be unable to conceive their coexistence … We perceive, therefore, a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time, the inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present limitations..."-Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer of wireless technology, and a principal investigator of trance medium, Leonora Piper 1 Preface Three weeks before he died, Einstein sent a condolence letter to the wife of his recently deceased friend, Michele Besso. His friend's departure "from this strange world," Einstein told her, "signifies nothing." Death signified nothing to Einstein because in his eternalistic block universe, all events co-exist permanently. Parmenides (Karl Popper's nickname for Einstein) expressed it this way: "Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since now it is, altogether one, continuous." 2 Or as Einstein himself expressed it in his letter: "[T]he separation between past, present, and future, is an illusion, however stubborn." 3 If the block universe is real there are
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1999
Free will does not exist, nor can it be explained, outside the confines of subjective experience.... more Free will does not exist, nor can it be explained, outside the confines of subjective experience. William James, whose talent for depicting subjective experience was equal to his brother Henry's, desperately wanted to believe in free will. But his intro- spections did not ...
William James's radical empiricism of ''pure experience'' both anticipated and directly influence... more William James's radical empiricism of ''pure experience'' both anticipated and directly influenced the transmission of Zen in the West. In this centennial reconstruction, the author shows how the man called both the ''father of American Psychology'' and the ''father of transpersonal psychology'' was also the father of a Western approach to enlightenment. Relying mainly on introspection and etherinduced states, James made a crucial distinction between consciousness (consciousness-with-self) and sciousness (consciousness-without-self). Prime reality, he maintained, is not revealed through the subjectobject divide, but in the ''sciousness'' of non-dual experience. The coherence of organized experience (both static and successive) is accounted for without an organizing ''I.'' The ''I'' itself is seen not as the foundation of consciousness, but as a reverberation within it: a palpitating core of welcoming and opposing emotions. PREFACE In 1894, William James, M.D., author of a widely acclaimed textbook, The Principles of Psychology, turned his back on the conservative medical community that had trained him. The Massachusetts legislature, with the urging of James's professional colleagues, had sought to pass a ''Medical Registration Bill,'' requiring all healers to pass a licensing exam. Since this exam would be devised by the medical schools, James knew that it would turn all alternative practitioners into charlatans and criminals overnight. In particular, he was concerned about the banishing of mind cure therapists, such as Christian Scientists, who viewed their patients as spiritual rather than material beings, with ''no separate mind from God'' (Eddy, 1906, p. 475). In a passionate and lengthy letter to the Boston Evening Transcript, he argued that such banishment would be a disservice to science: I assuredly hold no brief for any of these healers, and must confess that my intellect has been unable to assimilate their theories, so far as I have heard them given. But their facts are patent and startling; and anything that interferes with the multiplication of such facts, and with our freest opportunity of observing and studying them, will, I believe, be a public calamity. (James, 1920, Vol. II, p. 69) Defenses of transpersonal therapies and research, along with his own original research, are one reason that James lays claim to the title of ''the father of modern transpersonal psychology'' (Taylor, 1996, p. 21; see, also, Kasprow & Scotton, 1999, p. 13). The other more significant reason is that James's philosophy accommodated their ''startling'' facts. 1 ''Unable to assimilate'' the theories of any particular transpersonal therapy, James nonetheless undercut the two metaphysical assumptions that prevented scientists from even considering them. The first assumption was that the activity of the brain's matter does not merely correspond to
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6
Free will does not exist, nor can it be explained, outside the confines of subjective experience.... more Free will does not exist, nor can it be explained, outside the confines of subjective experience. William James, whose talent for depicting subjective experience was equal to his brother Henry's, desperately wanted to believe in free will. But his intro- spections did not ...
The union of Science and Consciousness was recently celebrated in Tucson. After 11 biennial sessi... more The union of Science and Consciousness was recently celebrated in Tucson. After 11 biennial sessions as ‘Toward a Science of Consciousness’, the premier conference fostering their relationship has dropped the tentative ‘toward’. Congratulations to ‘The Science of Consciousness’. But why the long engagement? And how compatible are they really? The scientific study of consciousness was all the rage in the late 1800s. Much of the research was collected by the man the conference recognizes as the ‘“father” of the science of consciousness’, William James, in his classic textbook, The Principles of Psychology (1890). But the inability to pin down what exactly consciousness is (or isn’t — for nothing knowable is completely without it) eventually led to its downfall as a proper subject for science. When James himself asked in the title of an essay ‘Does Consciousness Exist?’, his answer set the stage for a generation of scientific neglect: consciousness as an experiencing or ‘knowing’ exist...
Journal of Conscious Evolution, 2021
The "Clairvoyant Reality" of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, r... more The "Clairvoyant Reality" of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, reprinted here in honor of LeShan's recent passing at age 100, may well be the understanding of "veridical reality" that James proclaimed would not be found "in this generation or the next".
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 2016
A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress ... more A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain definitive pace, and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner, as if events moved necessarily in this order and at this precise rate. But that may be only our mode of regarding them. The events may be in some sense in existence always, both past and future, and it may be we who are arriving at them, not they which are happening. The analogy of a traveler in a railway train is useful; if he could never leave the train nor alter its pace, he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily successive and be unable to conceive their coexistence … We perceive, therefore, a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time, the inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present limitations..." -Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer of wireless technology, and a principal investigator of trance medium, Leonora Piper 1 Three weeks before he died, Einstein sent a condolence letter to the wife of his recently deceased friend, Michele Besso. His friend's departure "from this strange world," Einstein told her, "signifies nothing." Death signified nothing to Einstein because in his eternalistic block universe, all events co-exist permanently. Parmenides (Karl Popper's nickname for Einstein) expressed it this way: "Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since now it is, altogether one, continuous." 2 Or as Einstein himself expressed it in his letter: "[T]he separation between past, present, and future, is an illusion, however stubborn." 3 If the block universe is real there are *
William James's radical empiricism of ''pure experience'' both anticipated an... more William James's radical empiricism of ''pure experience'' both anticipated and directly influenced the transmission of Zen in the West. In this centennial reconstruction, the author shows how the man called both the ''father of American Psychology'' and the ''father of transpersonal psychology'' was also the father of a Western approach to enlightenment. Relying mainly on introspection and ether- induced states, James made a crucial distinction between con-sciousness (consciousness-with-self) and sciousness (consciousness-without-self). Prime reality, he maintained, is not revealed through the subject- object divide, but in the ''sciousness'' of non-dual experience. The coherence of organized experience (both static and successive) is accounted for without an organizing ''I.'' The ''I'' itself is seen not as the foundation of consciousness, but as a reverberation within it: a palpitat...
Journal of Conscious Evolution, 2021
The “clairvoyant reality” of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, r... more The “clairvoyant reality” of pioneering psychologist Lawrence LeShan and medium Eileen Garrett, reprinted here in honor of LeShan’s recent passing at age 100, may well be the understanding of the “veridical revelation of reality” that William James proclaimed would not be found “in this generation or the next”.
What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Dec 2016
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 17, 2010
Page 1. Jonathan Bricklin Consciousness Already There Waiting to be Uncovered William James&#... more Page 1. Jonathan Bricklin Consciousness Already There Waiting to be Uncovered William James's Mystical Suggestion as Corroborated by Himself and His Contemporaries Abstract: 'Is
consciousness already there waiting ...
'Is… consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of real... more 'Is… consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of reality?' William James asked in one of his last published essays, 'A Suggestion About Mysticism'. The answer, he said, would not be known 'by this generation or the next'. By separating what James wanted to believe about commonsense reality, from what his 'dispassionate' insights and researches led him to believe, I show how James himself, in collaboration with a few friends, laid the groundwork for adopting his mystical suggestion as veridical. 'Consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered' — not 'generated de novo in a vast number of places' but existing 'be-hind the scenes, coeval with the world' — is consistent with James's 'neutral monism', his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist, and his belief that parapsychological and other transpersonal phenomena had 'broken down… the limits of the admitted order of things'. Specific parallels between James's veridical revelation and the veridical revelation of his young contemporary Einstein, are also considered.
Congruent mystical insights of two diametrically opposed philosophers, one ancient and one modern... more Congruent mystical insights of two diametrically opposed philosophers, one ancient and one modern, support the circular configuration (“mandala” in Sanskrit) of all moments as the master inference of how the universe unfolds or (seems to) progress. Such configuration accounts for phenomena that linear time cannot; avoids its paradoxes; allows for a more coherent co-existence with whatever may be experienced and/or conceptualized as God; and accommodates an environment conducive both to sublime peace and ecstasy.
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Papers by Jonathan Bricklin