|
Michael Whiteman was Emeritus Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics
at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His work is unique in
combining physics, psychical research, Eastern and Western mysticism,
ancient and modern philosophy, depth psychology, and music. He treated
the subjects with utmost rigor yet from the level of personal knowledge,
having had a life-time of psychical and mystical experience.
Author of six books and several book chapters, articles, papers and
editorials, he was able to integrate these fields in the unifying idea
of ‘scientific mysticism’. He was critical of conventional scientific
materialism, which is unwilling (or even incapable) of coming to grips
with non-physical experience and life in worlds other than physical. His
methods rested on observation, conceptual analysis and insight, in tune
with Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology.[1] This aims at gaining
face-to-face self-evidence, shedding the usual ‘cloak of ideas’. Science
in Whiteman’s usage was not an exercise in theorising; he was a radical
empiricist.
Biography
Joseph Hilary Michael Whiteman was born in London in November 1906. From
Highgate School, London, he won a scholarship to Cambridge University
between 1926 and 1929, where he obtained a first class in the
mathematics tripos. In 1933 he became scholastic head of Staffords
School in London’s Harrow Weald, where he met his musician wife.
The couple emigrated to South Africa in 1937. First appointed to the
Diocesan College (Bishops) in Cape Town, in 1939 he was appointed a
junior lecturer in the Department of Pure Mathematics at the University
of Cape Town. He was active in music, and in 1941 took on editing The
South African Music Teacher, a position he held for 55 years. He was
awarded Trinity College diplomas in composition, also a B.Mus. at the
University of South Africa in 1943. In the same year he was awarded a
Ph.D. by the University of Cape Town for a thesis on the foundations of
mathematics.
After a spell as lecturer in music from 1944 to 1946 at Rhodes
University, Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, he was appointed lecturer
in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town.
He remained active in music, conducting his own piano concerto in the
Cape Town City Hall with his wife as soloist. In 1947 he was awarded a
M.Mus. by the University of Cape Town.
In 1962 he was appointed Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at
the University of Cape Town, and on his retirement in 1972 was given the
title of Emeritus Associate Professor. He lectured on mysticism at the
University of Cape Town’s Summer School, and conducted several study
groups on mysticism, Sanskrit and related subjects. His first
publication in the field of psychical experience was on angelic choirs
in The Hibbert Journal of 1954 (reprinted in volume 3 of Old and New
Evidence on the Meaning of Life.[2] ). It was a wide-ranging account of
non-physical states in which music, mostly song or chanting, has been
reported. Its importance was in ‘pointing to the unique source from
which all wisdom and goodness springs.’
In 1956 he published his first paper in the Journal of the Society for
Psychical Research on out-of-body experience. He came to the attention
of the newly-formed South African Society for Psychical Research,
centred at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and was
invited to give lectures there; he also took part in conferences on
parapsychology held at the university in 1973 and 1980. The South
African SPR awarded him the prestigious Marius Valkhoff Medal and
elected him a vice-president of the Society. He joined the London-based
Society for Psychical Research in 1953, and was elected an honorary life
member in 1999. He also had close connections with the American SPR.
He developed a particular concern for what he saw as the miscarriage of
justice arising from the failure of the judiciary to understand aspects
of psychopathology connected with spiritual development. Two cases in
particular, of adolescent girls charged with murder, prompted an
engagement with legal processes and, largely, the writing of volume 2 of
his Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life.[3]
A special correspondent to the Cape Times wrote in November 2006,
“Michael Whiteman, mathematician, musician and mystic, turned 100 last
week, but is far too busy with his music and his writing to think of
dying.” Yet it all came to a sudden end in February, 2007, when he was
found dead in his home by his daughter Sibyl, having suffered a heart
attack.
Psychical and mystical experiences
Whiteman drew a distinction between ‘psychical’ and ‘mystical’
experience. The former includes the study of purportedly non-physical
events, the latter extends to states that have a sense of higher
significance and ultimates, openness to guidance, transformed being, and
orientation to the perceived source of the Right and Good. His
world-view was not the result of speculative theorising, but of direct
observation combined with conceptual analysis. This is evident in his
definition of mysticism in an early work, The Mystical Life[4]: ‘the
study of everything non-physical, including the other worlds and their
archetypal governance, as well as our spiritual bodies, the facts and
their relationship being known by the self-evidence of direct
observation and not by reasoning or speculation.’ Mysticism was taken to
be fact-finding, not concerned with theorising or religious belief.
He recorded incipient out-of-body experiences as early as age five to
six. He was not alarmed since he ‘perceived and understood intuitively
the character of the situation and phenomena.’[4] A ‘major spiritual
skill’ of recollection developed around the age of 20; a ‘great
discovery’ came ‘when in following some music in the score I suddenly
realised that there was a way of voluntarily holding some chosen sound
conceptually in mind, so that a deeper, precisely characterised and
liberating essence was revealed in it.’[3] Following this discovery of
‘essential insight’, ‘my chief aim became at once to liberate every kind
of sensation in that way.’[3]
Development of insight was helped by a course in Pelmanism, which
required the ability to ‘stop time’ in observation and reproduce each
detail of an event in the memory ‘with its timeless
conceptual-perceptual character.’[3] This developed a ‘power of timeless
recall of particular sensations’ which he came to call Recollection.
‘The thought that was then borne in upon me with inescapable conviction
was this: “I have never been awake before”.’[4]
A practice of ‘Active Recollection’ led to ‘the momentous discovery,
essential for later spiritual development, that such a continuous and
effortless kind of Recollection (Continuous Recollection) could be
voluntarily induced. [The discovery] expanded into the awareness of a
boundless whole whose details were known simultaneously, being open to
exploration as on a map without losing primary contemplation of the
whole. Time had become like space.’[3] The ‘spiritual skills’ of
Recollection are discussed below.
Almost diagnostic of mystical experience is the overwhelming experience
of light. One occasion Whiteman described:
Above and in front, yet in me, of me, and around, was the Glory of the
Archetypal Light. Nothing can be more truly Light, since that Light
makes all other light to be light; nor is it flat material light, but a
creative light of Life itself, streaming forth in Love and
Understanding, and forming all other lives out of its substance: a Light
become Life not through addition to material light, but by the removal
of the impurity of fixation.[4]
From an early age, Whiteman reported being aware of an inner femininity,
which became established in separative (out-of-‘body’) states. In
heightened states of separation, leading to ‘Mystical Form Liberation’,
he noted that ‘Reports of mystics show that when a mystic is transformed
as “Son” or “Daughter” it is not at all as a copy of the physical
personality in appearance, but is usually of some age between about
seven and fourteen, and may go back to shortly after birth. But the
conviction will be that such bodily form truly represents the lasting
core identity.’[2] In physical life he was unmistakably and exclusively
male; to consider him bisexual or transgendered at a physical level
would be a radically mistaken conflation, since what he described was
existence in wholly different worlds of being and function. He
repeatedly emphasised that an appearance as core identity in no way
resembles the appearance of a physical personality.
Scientific Mysticism
The term ‘scientific mysticism’ appeared as a title in the trilogy, Old
and New Evidence on the Meaning of Life. Volume One was entitled An
Introduction to Scientific Mysticism.[5] He aimed to bring mysticism
into the field of science as being ‘open-minded, rigorously tested,
rationally coherent, and illuminating.’[5] As noted earlier, his
definition of mysticism indicates empirical science, sharing territory
with psychical research. The importance he attached to direct evidence
was emphasised in the subtitle of his first book of 1961, The Mystical
Life,[4] whose subtitle is An Outline of Its Nature and Teachings from
the Evidence of Direct Experience. The word “evidence” also appears in
the title of his three-volume series, Old and New Evidence on the
Meaning of Life.[2,3,5] His methods rested on observation, conceptual
analysis, and insight regarding what he termed ‘the inner constitution
of nature.’ This is a phrase from the subtitle of his book, The
Philosophy of Space and Time,[6] which was also subtitled A
Phenomenological Study. Phenomenology was understood in Husserl’s sense,
noted earlier.
A sixth book is titled Aphorisms on Spiritual Method: The “Yoga Sutras
of Patanjali” in the Light of Mystical Experience.[7] This is a unique
presentation of the Sanskrit text with interlinear and idiomatic English
translations and commentaries. Based on his wide knowledge of classical
Indian languages, he recognised that the Sutras incorporated an
abundance of Buddhist technical terms, a fact underplayed in standard
translations made within the Hindu tradition. He showed close
connections between thinking in the Sutras and Husserl’s phenomenology.
The non-mystical, physical interpretation of passages in the Sutras and
other ancient texts, as generally encountered in English translations,
were rigorously criticised in his radically authentic treatment.
All this was linked to a ‘universal theology’ connecting Minoan, Vedic,
Upanishadic, Buddhist, Hebrew, Pauline and Johannine mysticism as one
coherent tradition. Later writings were considered to be corrupted by
dogma and theory. To him theology simply meant ‘the application of the
phenomenological method to our awareness of the Divine.’ So, ‘the word
“God” must be taken to stand for Archetypal Reason in all.’[2]
Potentiality and actualisation
A key to Whiteman’s scientific mysticism is the idea of potentiality and
actualisation. It had been developed by the physicist Werner
Heisenberg[8]. Behind a physical event one has to recognise what
Heisenberg called ‘an objective tendency or possibility, a “potentia” in
the sense of Aristotelian philosophy.’ For Whiteman the term ‘reality’
could apply only to underlying reason, potentiality, not to appearances,
to actualisation. Appearances are manifested only on an occasion of
observation, when all potentialities—from the universal to the
individual—are integrated to produce a unique actualisation. The state
of the observer is itself part of the potentiality governing any
appearances, so the process of actualisation will be different for
different people.
Whiteman believed the potentiality-actualisation principle operates in
the mental sphere of every individual: thought and images are
actualisations in the consciousness of an individual’s ‘thought-image
sphere’, as he called it, which includes memory and imagination.[5] He
saw telepathy to result from the interaction or resonance between the
thought-image spheres of individuals; the interaction is not actualised
at the physical level and so transfer of information occurs
independently of physical space and time. Clairvoyance is resonance
between the potentiality-sphere of a physical object or event and the
thought-image sphere of an individual, resulting in the actualisation of
impressions in the individual’s thought-image sphere. Once again,
resonance or interaction happens independently of physical space and
time, as there is no physical actualisation. Psychokinesis may be
regarded as a reverse clairvoyant interaction; potentialities usually
linked in some way to an individual result in physical actualisations.
Whiteman saw precognition as actualisation in an individual’s
thought-image sphere of potentiality-fields that may affect future
physical events. The individual may even intervene in the physical
actualisation of these events by altering the potentiality-fields, and
so allow prevention of a precognised event from happening.[5] Even if
potentiality-fields are time-ordering, resulting in a succession of
events actualised in the physical world, the ordering is not fixed in
the way a road map is fixed. They are accessible in states of physical
detachment, and so allow limited alteration and the exercise of free
will.
Out-of-body experience
Whiteman defined mysticism as ‘the study of everything non-physical,
including the other worlds ...’ As just discussed, potentiality-fields
have the capacity to deliver different spaces or worlds of physical and
non-physical actuality, depending on the state of the observer. So, ‘The
difference between one “world” and another then depends upon the state
of life in which the observer happens to be settled.’[2]
Direct experience of ‘the other worlds’ occurs mainly in out-of-body
experience, which Whiteman preferred to term separative experience,
since there is usually awareness of a body of some kind. The commonest
type he termed ‘primary separation’, in which there is no awareness in
the physical body, even though what appears to be the physical body can
be viewed. In ‘secondary separation’ the physical body is under some
degree of conscious control, but principal awareness is in another
organism seemingly not located in the space of the physical body. In
‘tertiary separation’ the physical body is normally under complete
control, but there is full awareness of being in a different bodily form
despite the locations of the two bodies seeming to be superimposed.
Difference between the two bodies may be radical, such as one being male
and the other female. For Whiteman the highest mystical experiences were
generally of this type, noted earlier as ‘Mystical Form Liberation’.
In separative experience he saw a need ‘to distinguish between what is
deceptive or illusory and what has the quality of face-to-face
objectivity and truth which we describe by saying that a thing is
real.’[5] This requires setting up a numerical scale, which he called a
General Index of Reality. This index covers a range from ordinary
dreaming (zero rating) to what is experienced as spiritually releasing
with a high degree of reality, namely mystical experience (high rating).
Features scoring in the Index include continuity of memory between
physical and non-physical experience, free observation, ability to
compare physical and non-physical states accurately, awareness of
substance and tangibility, communication of thought with others, and a
feeling of transcendence of physical life.
The General Index does not include claims of observing physical things
during a separative experience. Regarded by most people as being
veridical, these observations could have been made by clairvoyance or
remote viewing, and do not necessarily mean that something somehow
separated from the physical body to make the observation. As Whiteman
stated, any claimed physical supporting evidence merely has ‘chiefly
propaganda value for the uninformed or sceptical, who do not realise
that separation is not established by them, but who may thereby be
induced to accept the “interior” testimony as having some bearing on
“scientific fact”.’[5]
Whiteman’s Index might seem of limited value to standard parapsychology,
where a useful scoring system would identify experiences that rate
better than dream, hallucination or some form of pathology. In
Whiteman’s Index the direction of ranking is towards mystical
experience, which is hardly looked for in parapsychology, even shied
away from. The order of ranking is: undeveloped, borderline, psychical,
pre-mystical, mystical. Out of a possible sixteen points, experiences
reaching six to eight points rank as ‘psychical separations’, scoring on
criteria listed two paragraphs above. Further requirements of ‘mystical’
rank were noted earlier, and demarcate ‘mystical’ from ‘psychical’. Yet
in the eyes of a physically-fixated investigator, the mystical
requirements would indicate reduced reality rating, since ‘reality’
means ‘like physical experience.’ For Whiteman this was a cardinal
error; higher reality means ‘unlike physical experience’.
Other spaces
All separative experience, physical-like or transformative, was
considered by Whiteman to occur in spaces other than physical. They are
often so similar to what is presented physically that they are mistaken
for the physical. ‘Duplicate physical’ space, he called it. He wrote,
‘if one is taken into a “psychic” space when not familiar with such
states, or with fixed ideas about them, and if the phenomena resemble
physical ones closely ... there may be a strong persuasion to think that
the objects are being observed physically; and this applies even to
possible duplicate presentations of the observer’s physical body in its
actual situation.’[5]
‘Fixed ideas’ assume there is only one ‘real’ space that can be
manifested, namely the physical world. A fixed idea will contribute to
the potentialities governing a separative experience, and lead to the
actualisation of a physical-like ‘duplicate’ scene. Yet for someone free
of the constraints of one-level thinking, Whiteman wrote of an
‘inexhaustible variety’ of appearance in other spaces. The highest lead
to ‘perfectly acceptable forms of transcendent unified beauty,’ where
‘the surroundings, correspondingly, are distinguished by the quality of
the light, and gain in intelligible character, perfection of beauty,
depth of glowing heart quality, unitive freedom and sense of blending
with other minds, as the highest condition, which is that of Mystical
Form Liberation, is approached.’ In these descriptions, Whiteman states,
‘“I” and “me” do not stand for the familiar consciousness of self in the
physical personality, or, in fact, for anything that can be known in an
ordinary physical state of mind. To understand what is meant, the
characteristics of the merged ordinary self must be ruled out.’[4]
Skills, cycles
We cannot achieve a heightened spiritual state, Whiteman believed,
‘without psychological and spiritual faculties of attention, judgement,
purposiveness and self-discipline’, based on three ‘foundational skills’
named Active Recollection, Continuous Recollection, and Faith +
Obedience[5].
Active Recollection aims to recall or recover the essence in what is
perceived, ‘and thus the attainment of objective insight and
release.’[5] Husserl termed it the phenomenological epoché or stoppage,
‘the necessary operation which renders pure consciousness accessible to
us.’[1] It is termed samādhi or sati in Indian literature.[5] Continuous
Recollection is ‘the freely stabilised ground of release at which Active
Recollection has been aiming.’[5] Obedience is not a state of
subservience but orientation to ‘the transcendent Source of Right and
Good.’[5] It operates in conjunction with Faith in this transcendence.
The skills are structured into a four-part system known since ancient
times and appearing in modern contexts in learning theory, Freud and
Jung. Described as the four creative functions, these are ‘purposive
drive, deciding on means, putting into practice, and a virtually secret
maturing of one’s skills in consequence.’[2] In ancient texts they are
represented as four stages in the passage of the sun, rising in the
east, zenith in the south, down to earth in the west, and underground in
the north[2,5]. This corresponds with aspiration (E), assessment (S),
action or manifestation (W), fulfilment or non-attachment (N); it also
corresponds respectively with Faith, Obedience, Active Recollection,
Continuous Recollection.[5]
He placed great importance on identifying opposites or ‘counterfeits’ to
this psychological cycle, namely self-will, self-satisfaction,
automaticity, complacency, which may lead to a corresponding cycle of
‘stresses’ of death-feeling, shame, pain, fear. Correction involves
‘inner contests’ between helpful and harmful impulses. These were
recognised as essential for spiritual growth, although fraught with
turmoil. Growth of personality was not thought possible without them.
The structure of personality
Personality was regarded as being in the realm of potentiality,
actualising physically as behaviour. His own experience and classical
Indian texts led him to believe that personality has a corporate
structure, centred round a largely unrecognised ‘core identity’. It
falls under influence of various ‘contributory minds’, also largely
unrecognised in ordinary life. It is the task of the individual to have
knowledge and command of these minds, and to discern his/her core
identity as the origin of inmost disposition. The skills discussed above
play a vitally important role in this task of self-exploration and
overcoming the limiting fixations and attachments of ordinary life.
Personality as a corporate structure can survive physical death,
Whiteman considered, being composed of imperishable minds; but sooner or
later the structure disintegrates. Fragments, either the core identity
or contributory minds, may re-enter physical life, either as ‘strict
reincarnation’ in the case of core identity, or ‘loose incarnation’ in
the case of a contributory mind.[5] They can carry memories of a former
life, which suggests ‘past life recall’. But Whiteman recognised
alternatives to reincarnation interpretations: other entanglements of
minds, such as retrocognition and psychometry, do not entail memory of
successive lives assumed by reincarnation.[5]
In his search for underlying logic and universality, Whiteman converted
his ‘psychological’ cycle into a sixteen-fold number system, with the
aim of integrating it with a ‘physical’ sixteen-fold number system
derived from three space and three time dimensions. From combining these
number systems he intended to provide ‘a clear-cut explanatory system
... as, for instance, the basic laws of mechanics are exhibited before
any problems are tackled.’[3] The result was highly complex and its
usefulness in psychology is still to be explored.[9] The
correspondences, however, satisfied his view that to explain what we
experience is to
admit a subjective cycle, such as mystics, many theologians, and some
psychologists have admitted. This cycle, in its most complete form is
sixteenfold, and parallels exactly what may be called the “world cycle”
(as it appears in Quantum Field Theory) in every way, while manifesting
itself in every kind of human experience. This is a form of potentiality
which is discernible, and indeed can be lived by the individual in an
enormous variety of “altered states of consciousness”.[2]
Scientific mysticism was a revolutionary attempt to discern and
characterise this potentiality. Whiteman was confident that mind has
this ability, able to discover underlying reason and meaning in life. He
was convinced that behind any particular observation there is an
intelligible structure ‘operative in and analysable out of the total
experience.’[6] He did not accept Kant’s idea of the unknowability of
things-in-themselves. Instead, we can attain ‘intellectual or perceptual
knowledge which transcends in a certain clear and unmistakable way the
onward urge of time, the rigid apartness of spatial objects, and the
apparent isolation of the individual mind in its state of fixation on
bodily impressions. It is a state of release. Fixation being overcome,
the mind opens out into universality.’[6]
References
1. Husserl, E. (1931). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure
Phenomenology (trans. W.R. Boyce Gibson). London: Allen & Unwin.
2. Whiteman, J.H.M. (2006). Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of
Life: the mystical world-view and inner contest. Volume 3 Universal
Theology and Life in other Worlds. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
3. Whiteman, J.H.M. (2000). Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of
Life: the mystical world-view and inner contest. Volume 2 Dynamics of
Spiritual Development. Gerrards Cross: Colim Smythe.
4. Whiteman, J.H.M. (1961). The Mystical Life. London: Faber and
Faber.
5. Whiteman, J.H.M. (1986). Old and New Evidence on the Meaning of
Life: the mystical world-view and inner contest. Volume 1 An
Introduction to Scientific Mysticism. Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe.
6. Whiteman, J.H.M. (1967). Philosophy of Space and Time and the
Inner Constitution of Nature: a phenomenological study. London: Allen
and Unwin.
7. Whiteman, J.H.M. (1993). Aphorisms on Spiritual Method: the
‘Yoga Sutras of Patanjali’ in the light of mystical experience. Gerrards
Cross: Colin Smythe.
8. Heisenberg, W. (1959). Physics and Philosophy: the revolution
in modern science. London: Allen and Unwin.
9. Poynton, J. (2015). Science, Mysticism and Psychical Research:
The Revolutionary Synthesis of Michael Whiteman. Newcastle upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
|
