This time I would like to approach the vista offered by the Exceptional State using the poetic imagery created by William Wordsworth, more especially “Ode to Immortality”
On discovering the principle of mechanical leverage (law of lever and balance) Archimedes (287-212 BC) is reported to have said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world”. In this simple image we can sense the enormous potential power of this simple principle. If we could find said lever and fulcrum, then the apparently impossible would be possible. The Exceptional State is a method of knowledge which leads to an experience of the self and the world and our relationship to it way beyond the current atomic paradigm. The fruits of this state are literally unimaginable for the matter bound mind. Instead it leads us safely and inexorably into a realm where many commonly held truths are seen from a different perspective.
One of the first hurdles that we have to overcome as we start on this path is a strong tendency in culture to treat the inner life as less real than that content given to us by our senses. Invariably and for understandable reasons what our eyes see, ears hear and other senses smell or feel is considered more real than fleeting inner impressions of light, sound or feeling. These experiences are all invisible to external observation and are often deemed less real. As we strengthen the inner life it dawns on us with gentle warming rays how the outer life is merely a stimulus to the inner life. This inner life finds itself based in truths beyond those of natural science and consequently lead to insights way beyond what is considered the leading edge of science. Christ told Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36). The Exceptional State is the healthy state whereby a person can consciously and with increasing ease move between the world of the senses and the world of the spirit. We can listen to people who have had near death experiences, mystical experiences or psychedelic experiences and realize that they are giving their own testimonies of what it is like to see life from the other side of the veil. Research in the field of NDE shows that such a strong and traumatic experience invariably leads to decades of inner work as the individual tries to reconcile living in a world where most people are afraid of the very thing they know is only the beginning of a new stage of life. There are lots of interesting scientists that examine the continuation of consciousness beyond life. Pim van Lommel is one of those voice and in his book Consciousness Beyond Life (https://pimvanlommel.nl/en/consciousness-beyond-life/ > ) collates a lot interesting and convincing data points from 20+ years of systematically studying the phenomena to give an overview of this field. The book also paints a very clear picture of the way in which a brush with death, perhaps counterintuitively for many, in the vast majority of case has a hugely positive transformative effect on people’s lives. Ervin Laszlo had this to say about the book.
“We have been confusing our radio receiver with the symphony on the air. When our receiver shuts down, the symphony continues on the air, only it’s no longer manifest to our ear. Pim van Lommel shows that the symphony of human consciousness does continue and also remains accessible in the non-ordinary states of consciousness that in our culture occur most frequently at the portals of death. His evidence is robust, and can no longer be ignored either by the science community, or by society at large.”
Concerning psychedelics the field is large, extremely large and I feel under qualified to say anything of substance other than to mention the interesting work of Rick Strassman as documented in “DMT: The Spirit Molecule”. Amanita dreamer (https://www.youtube.com/@AmanitaDreamer) is also an interesting cultural phenomena with her use of the agaric mushrooms to heal her own mental problems. I am not advocating this, only recognizing its existence. One thing is clear, when you listen to the testimonies these people it is obvious that the inner life has been intensified, but also that the results can often be confusing and difficult to reconcile with living a normal life (Whatever that might be). I recently heard it described as opening the door to the spirit worlds, but not knowing what it is that you have let in. The Exceptional State properly understood means opening this door in full possession of consciousness and being able to decide whether or not to let these influences, these beings, these active forces into our being. Research into the fields of multiple personality /
dissociative disorders as well as the voluminous research into the placebo/nocebo effect are also mentioned in passing here as they also provide evidence of the non-material nature of our soul lives.
There is nothing we know that is not the product of our thinking. This spiritual activity of thinking impacts our feeling and willing life, but even these inner activities can only be known through thinking. Thus it is no exaggeration to say that thinking is the essence of our being because it is that by which we know ourselves. We experience ourselves in feeling and willing, but only know ourselves through thinking. The thoughts we produce are a revelation of our essential nature.If we can recognize this central nature of thinking in our being we can also understand that by investigating this activity of thinking we can study its behaviour, its characteristics, its field of action and by doing so we are also increasing our self-knowledge. The exceptional state is nothing other than an investigation of that which lives and creates in us every waking moment of the day.
As I sit here writing these words I hear the rain pounding on the roof and the windows. With that sound I am drawn, by my thinking, out of the chair I am sitting and for a brief period of time I am the rain pounding on the tiles. My thinking can put me anywhere I am capable of imagining and this activity of thinking can be intensified to ever greater levels so that instead of being a momentary shadowy experience it becomes an experience where I feel the roof, I feel the rain. I feel the raw power of nature and live in the wind. Of course, my body never leaves the chair, but my consciousness was not in the chair, it was free of its body limits. For a short while consciousness forgot that it is usually tied to the body, just like happens when we fall asleep. Except that I can recall the experience and know the cause of it. In reviewing this activity of my thinking using my memory I am experiencing an aspect of myself which takes me beyond myself. As I consider the richness of this line of thought I am reminded of John Donne expressing this reality in the line
“It is the mind itself that make a heaven of hell and hell of heaven”.
Thomas Traherne expressed it like this “
“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.”
To the best of my knowledge Wordsworth did not live briefly on a roof on a rain swept night, but he was with his intensified soul filled thinking able to wander lonely as a cloud floating high o’er vales and hills, at once see a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. However, a liberated thinking capacity does not need to limit itself to what is knowable through the senses. Thinking, like Christ, is not of this world, though it can shed its understanding light on this world. A liberated, intensified thinking can lead us to experience our essential nature in ways not possible if it remains tethered in slave like fashion to impressions originating in the physical body. In Wordsworth’s Ode to Immortality we can feel running through this poem a locus of consciousness which clearly, at least initially, feels itself unfettered.
Some literary critics may remain content with an interpretation that reduces this to an allegory or a metaphor for the loss of innocence. However, someone more familiar with the experiences to be attained through the exceptional state will sense how Wordsworth, simply by linking our birth to a state of sleep, has experienced something far more profound. He is telling us that he remembers a time when he was a being without a body. He knows that he left this state, he left this spiritual home, to sojourn in the world of the senses. Furthermore, his own personal experience was that during his infancy this state persisted for a while because in infancy he did not entirely forget his origins. He is also convinced that this is not unique to him because he speaks of our infancy, rising with us and our home.
He then drops the use of we and us and replaces it with individual experience of a boy, who whilst still feeling connected is more conscious of his experience of self rather than in a universal we. As the impact of the life of the senses intensifies, so also the youth sees this inner life die away and superseded by common day experience. It is through inner work that we become capable of seeing the former glory from which we originate, yet also retaining individual consciousness. This aspect of not having to sacrifice individual consciousness is a large topic and will be left for another article.
And so the poem continues like a pendulum alternating between reflections on the immensity of the inner life of the soul and the joy and the suffering to be found in this state of forgetfulness. This dual nature of reality is visible to the philosopher, the lover of wisdom and the true, but remains unseen by the blind until the eternal sleep which will again remind us of the eternal nature of the mind. Those who see truth in Wordsworth feel, like the Seer, blessed. This blessedness, as well as immense awe, is also one of the feelings that intensifies as we work more consciously on strengthening the inner life to experience in ever greater intensity the exceptional state.
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