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No better genre exists to present to the exoteric world the Mystical than science fiction. Home of fiction as the vehicle for the thought experiment in the modern world, works of science fiction act as simulations where authors re-explore ancient questions of the nature of the self and of reality, of the relationship between the two, and whether any distinction even exists at all. These ancient questions all have their root in, or at least are related to inquiries into, mysticism. But what does mysticism mean? Mysticism is Man’s attempt to make a conscious, lasting connection with the Divine/Absolute that will result in enlightenment of both self (or lack thereof) and of reality (or lack thereof)¹. Works of science fiction provide an outlet for this expression by acting, “as simulations of the mystical experience in and of themselves” ¹. But what is science fiction? Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction (typically set in the future) whose stories have a grounding in real scientific principles and in a scientific materialist worldview. According to science fiction’s greatest mystic Phillip K. Dick (PKD), it is to also simulate a, “society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our [own]… this world must be different… to give rise to events that could not occur in our society… so that... a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind.” ¹
Art always reflects the artist. And if science fiction is believed to be the home of mysticism in the world of fiction, it only stands to reason that science fiction writers use the medium as a means of processing their own mystical experiences, particularly the mystical experiences induced from consumption of psychedelic compounds. Best known in pop-culture are the experiences of PKD and Aldous Huxley with LSD, especially how the former’s science fiction writing was influenced by psychedelics and how those experiences corroborated his own personal beliefs about the nature of reality. PKD held the Gnostic idea that reality as we understand it to be is in fact a falsehood created to obfuscate the real, pure, and true world our sense-perceptions keep beyond arm’s reach. He believed just having an awareness of this false world was not enough, that one had to be, “awaken[ed] from the spell cast by the world's claim to reality” ¹.
Only through direct connection with the Absolute can we break free from illusion. And to break free from this illusion, says PKD, the illusion must be broken through and destroyed, leaving only the ultimate true reality and divine revelation as the only possible options left. This is why PKD uses science fiction as his medium and why, more specifically, he preferred to, “build universes which do fall apart… to see them come unplugged, and… to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem.”¹ Episteme cannot substitute for gnosis. PKD knew this, and what better medium could he convey this to us than through science fiction? Opposite to the goal of PKD’s definition of science that gives rise to speculative worlds to play out mystic experience, there are also the simulations whose worlds, “do fall apart… to see them come unglued… to see how the characters in the novels cope with this problem.”¹ (For a discussion on one of PKD’s stories that features a world come unglued and its ramifications, click here.) It is through the ungluing of the supposed reality and the drawing away of the veil that we can finally see truth and commune with the Absolute.
“All men are born in illusion. How can we be free if we are born in illusion?” asked Arjuna to Lord Krishna in Peter Brook’s 1989 Mahabharata (watch on YouTube here) when told to let go of all attachment, to fully embrace his role in the here and now, in this current instantiation, without embracing the impermanent fruits of acting out his role. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna serves a role akin to a shaman for Arjuna, guiding him to communion with the Divine through his experience by proper thought and action directed by proper thought. In science fiction, this role was once played by Krishna (Yes! That’s exactly what he’s doing! Playing his role!) has now been filled by the extraterrestrial.¹ It was the shaman’s role to guide people through mystical experiences, with or without the aid of psychedelics, aiding them in their navigating facets of reality inaccessible to normal states of consciousness which may in fact comprise a greater portion of reality than that which we can perceive. Now, it is forces from beyond the stars descending to Earth who intend to induce incomprehensible experience to one of its species that cannot be accounted for through rationale. In fact, to understand this experience, this theophany – this encounter with the Divine – we must rely on, as Bergson argues, “our direct pre-linguistic apprehension of the world… [that is] always a product of intuition and not a product of intellectual activity.”²
Arthur C. Clarke, the runner-up greatest mystic of science fiction only to PKD, demonstrates the extraterrestrial influence on mystical experience on a collective level to the human species. Clarke provides a mystic beginning to humanity and a mystic ending through his stories. In the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey co-written by Stanley Kubrick and Clarke, a beginning of humanity is accounted for that is a result of divine intervention taking the form of a black monolith that descends to Earth to influence the evolution of a particular hominid species. Here, the shaman guiding the initiate to gnosis has been replaced with the extraterrestrial exerting influence on a species for reasons seemingly unknowable to them but for ends reminiscent of those of the shaman’s. Still, the same effect is had on the subject encountering the Divine: the imbuing of something foreign or alien to the material experiencer as a result of this theophany that in turn results in the individual attaining a better understanding of his self and of reality. In traditional accounts of mystic experiences, this something was secret knowledge about how the world really operates and true nature of his being or lack thereof. In 2001, it presumably was a genetic change in proto-man’s DNA that would eventually allow him to engage in higher-order thinking. This shift would be needed to help facilitate the mystic ending Clarke has in store for humanity.
What if these ends are truly unknowable to the individual? What if these ends can only be realized and known through collective experience? In Arthur C. Clarke’s 1953 novel Childhood’s End (a copy of which may be found here for free download), these questions are answered. Five decades after the arrival of the alien species called the Overlords who have assumed stewardship over humanity and the Earth for unknown reasons, stopping all conflicts and undoing environmental damages, humanity as we know it ceases to be, undergoing a metamorphosis. The Overlords eventually reveal their reason for coming to Earth: to help facilitate humanity in becoming the latest species to join the cosmic collective consciousness referred to by the Overlords as the Overmind. It is the Overmind that directs the Overlords to worlds whose inhabitants have evolved to the point of becoming ready to merge with it. Like shamans of old, the Overlords have come down in their sleek silver flying saucers to dispense transcendent knowledge that will break us free from material bondage. The Overlords serve as an alien species of bodhisattvas, nomadically roaming the Cosmos at the behest of the Overmind, aiding in the enlightenment of other species. Ironically, the Overlords themselves are locked in an “evolutionary cul-de-sac” where they cannot escape material existence (despite reaching its limitations) to merge with the Overmind , and so are awarded the next-highest honor in helping other species transcend.
Aldous Huxley in his The Perennial Philosophy argues that there is a set of universal truths that permeates, “again again, from the standpoint of every religious tradition.”³ One of the four core ideas of Huxley’s perennial philosophy states that “man possesses a double nature, a phenomenal ego and an eternal Self”⁴ and it is by identifying with this eternal Self over the ego that he is able to make connection with the Divine Ground from which all things emanate and experience the mystical. This idea is also summed up in the Sanskrit teaching that translates to “that art thou” which is used to explain the relationship between the internal Atman that is immanent in all human beings and emanates from Brahman, “the Absolute Principle of all existence.”³ It is the goal of the Atman to reunite with Brahman. The Sanskrit “thou art thou” is similar to the greeting used by the protagonist in Robert Heinlein’s 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land (to access a free copy, click here) that translates from its native Martian to English as “thou art God.” Both phrases aspire to cut through the milieu of the roles where two beings can interact without ego, without social games, and recognize each other’s Atmans on their paths back to Brahman. In the novel, you could replace all instances of “thou art God” being used with “thou art thou” and nothing about the story would be changed or lost.
By attempting to merge what is known with what is not or possibly even with what cannot be known, Huxley’s perennial philosophy and science fiction both inhabit a similar mystic space with the same goal to write, according to Deleuze in his Difference and Repetition, “at the frontiers of our knowledge, at the border which separates our knowledge from our ignorance and transforms the one into the other.”⁵ This transformation from ignorance to knowledge is a result of mystical experience, of re-establishing connection with the perennialist Divine Ground or Hindu Brahman. This transformation, however, should not be confused with the core aim of mysticism, which is to experience with the Absolute, not simply to be made aware of it and to study and contemplate it alone (although these are important too). Again, episteme cannot substitute for gnosis.
Despite science fiction being a speculative fiction that grounds itself in a scientific materialist worldview that uses science and scientific principles to convince the reader to, in the words of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, “temporarily suspend their disbelief,” this grounding in science still contributes to the practice and study of mysticism in a similar manner as religion. According to Robert M. Wallace in his Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present, both science and religion, “transcend by seeking inner freedom and truth. It’s just that science, being restricted to what we can know by scientific methods, is narrower.”⁶ Naturally, this relationship would extend to science fiction, the red-headed stepchild of science.
Sources
Mysticism in Science Fiction: Science Fiction as a Vehicle for Mystical Thought and Experience. Anna Rogers, Texas A&M University (2019)
On Defense of Mysticism. Jack F. Notes for Nomads (2022)
The Perennial Philosophy. Aldous Huxley, Harper Perennial Modern Classics (2009).
Introduction to the Bhagavad-Gita by Aldous Huxley. Translated by Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood. Vedanta Press (1972). For a free copy, click here.
Difference and Repetition. Gilles Deleuze. Translated by Paul Patton. Continuum (2001).
Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present. Robert M. Wallace. Bloomsbury Academic (2019).
Part of a science fiction writing series by the Mule.