A review of "Is My I-Phone Conscious? Throwing a Sound Grenade at Skeptics and Mystics"
This is an article by David Chrisopher Lane, the resident Wilber-basher at Frank Visser's website. It's also freely available at that site. Lane has written several interesting and sharply critical pieces on Eckankar and MSIA (the group behind the Insight seminars). This is the aspect of Lane that I like – most comparative religion scholars, by contrast, defend sects and cults. I admit that I don't like his skeptical-materialist side, but that's me. I'm a former “skeptic”, while Lane is a former “spiritual person”, so clearly we have moved in sharply opposite directions (although I have no plans to go on pilgrimage to India any time soon).
In “Is My I-Phone Conscious?: Throwing a Sound Grenade at Skeptics and Mystics”, our man mostly shows his skeptical side. The article is a criticism of the truth-claims of mystics from a materialist or (sometimes) agnostic perspective. Lane is most effective when attacking sectarian mystics who claim that their particular visions, and their particular theological or culture-laden interpretation of the same, are absolutely true whereas all competing mystics are in error or on a lower level. This, presumably, is the claim of the Hindu-Sikh Radhasoami tradition Lane himself immersed himself in during his spiritual period. It's less clear whether it would affect, say, Advaita Vedanta or the Traditionalism of Frithjof Schuon, since these traditions claim that all or most mystical visions are “true”. Here, Lane simply appeals to the materialist faith in science: since science has explained so many other things in a naturalist fashion, why can't it explain consciousness, too? As usual, Lane relies on maverick guru Faqir Chand to drive home his points, but Chand never denied miracles or the existence of a supersensible reality ultimately identical to Brahman. He simply had another explanation for why miracles happen than the more traditional Hindu teachers.
In his article, Lane has a tendency to down-play the similarities between mystical visions in different cultures, instead emphasizing the sectarian aspect, thereby making mysticism more unwieldy than it really is. Curiously, Lane admits that our experiences of the material reality are culture-laden and hence constructed, thereby weakening one of his main arguments against mysticism. If *all* our perceptions, both mystical and non-mystical, are heavily dependent on our cultural matrix, the logical conclusion is surely that there isn't any relevant difference between mysticism and everyday consciousness in *this* sense. Both may be false, but then, both may also be “true”. Lane also concedes that certain material phenomena (such as certain tunes generated by his son's I-Phone) can't be picked up by everyone, but this is once again a potential argument in favor of mysticism, which cannot be experienced by everyone either.
Christianity presents a slightly different problem. The Christian religion is ultimately based on the (real or perceived) actions of a historical figure, Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, and hence not simply on mystical visions. Here, Lane argues that the Gospel accounts are contradictory and hence cannot be trusted. They are also contradicted by the Gnostic sources and the Talmud. His discussion on this point is very brief, though.
Lane has a point when he calls for greater humility towards spiritual experiences, rather than sectarian fanaticism around the Only True Visions. However, this sounds rather hollow since the author doesn't show the same humility when discussing the “scientific” position, which he supports uncritically. Somehow, it seems that his reality checks (or sound grenades) only go one way!
With that, I leave you for today.
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