Against the Literal Mind

I have cited this long passage not only to indicate, through the intuitions of a sophisticated observer, the possible reach of ancient man's intellectual achievements, but to suggest that an exceptional state of consciousness may be necessary for men to think at all intelligently about a nongeocentric cosmos. How many people pass before the Sphinx without intimating even a shadow of what Ouspensky was groping to express? And what, therefore, is inwardly required of us who wish to entertain in our minds the picture of a universe in which we are as dust?

In is highly regarded A History of Science, George Sarton makes the following comment in a chapter citing some of the astonishing aspects of the ancient Egyptian monuments:

The Great Pyramids are so wonderful that some of the scholars who tried to penetrate their secrets became the victims of a mild form of insanity and ascribed to the ancient builders occult and metaphysical intentions and an esoteric knowledge the possession of which would have been even more marvelous than the mechanical and engineering ability that they certainly possessed. (8)

Substitute "the universe" for "the Great Pyramids" and you have a fairly accurate description of the attitude of many modern scientists toward the effort at understanding meaning in the cosmos. Like professor Sarton, the modern astronomer tends to stand before a great reality assuming that his state of consciousness and his intentions do not influence his perceptions and the relationship (or lack of them) which he finds before him. Is the universe any less organic and meaningful than the Sphinx or the Pyramids? Then, we shall have to say that our scientists resemble the standard caricature of the nit-picking scholar who believes that by counting, say, the number of active verbal forms in the Aramiac Gospels he has actually taken a step toward understanding the message of the New Testament. Perhaps we should not laugh at people who take the Bible too literally until we recognize that as scientists we have exhibited the same sort of mentality toward the entire sweep of cosmic order.

At first point the comparison of the universe to a teaching can begin to help us. To be literal-minded about what is sacred means, first of all, to trust one's first impressions, one's first mental associations. The presumption in this is enormous. When I take things literally I am presuming to be so in contact with myself, so whole in my power of response that I can instantly receive what is being communicated. My subsequent thought may become quite intricate and sophisticated, as it often becomes among scientists and biblical scholars, but the fact remains that all my complex and ingenious interpretations are resting on one merely split second of very partial receptivity. Have I ever directly observed the way thought influences perception and the way emotional associations influence thought? Can I discriminate between the deeper and more shallow reception of an idea or an impression? If I do not know myself in this direct way then I do not know the instrument by which data from the world are received by men, and then what can I possibly know about the universe? Certainly this is part of the reason why meditation (or contemplation) understood as the work of directly studying one's mind and feelings, was never separated from the study of nature in the ancient traditions.

There is nothing "mystical" about this. The literal mind is a mind out of contact with the whole human organism, a partial mind which trusts itself in its isolation from the very functions which make possible a fuller receptivity to reality. Quite as though I were in a laboratory equipped with numerous refined instruments, but chose instead to examine everything with a cheep pocket glass.

The literal mind is both wrongly active and wrongly passive, both violent and servile. By using the former word, I wish to say that it is a hasty mind, compelled by fear or craving to affirm its own habits and associations. Such a mind, which believes things are as the appear to it, is an aspect of what is known as the ego in the traditional teachings. This ego is constantly hunting for ways to affirm itself; to persuade the man that he is the ego.

A man may be the slave of the literal mind and yet be what the world calls a "poet." But such a poet still weaves his symbols and interpretations around the perceptions of the literal mind. The sustained perception of objective meaning is, I believe, a very much rarer thing than we suppose. It requires a constant access to clear emotional intelligence, whereas much of what we call poetry is the imposition of subjective feelings upon a literal-minded perception of the world. Thus, both the universe and sacred writing are twisted by "interpretation," whether literal or so called "metaphoric." So I hope the reader will not take what I am saying about the literal mind of modern science to be an endorsement of the "poetic" approach to reality.

8) P. D. Ouspensky, A New Model of the Universe, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1961. ~back to text~