@paulhanke,
paulhanke;124248 wrote:... I have often wondered if it could be a characteristic of beings caught up within evolution to experience flashes of what the next evolutionary jump might bring, at least as far as cognitive abilities are concerned ... but how would one distinguish between such a flash of "real" ability and/or insight versus, say, something akin to William James' experimentation with nitrous oxide? ...
Great question
I suggest you have a look at Richard Maurice Bucke's title,
Cosmic Consciousness, published in 1901. He presents exactly this idea, and backs it up with a lot of documentation. Of course, these ideas, and his book, are far from mainstream. But I really don't think that Bucke should be written off. He was a really a representative of the American 'transcendentalist' movement, as were Emerson, Thoreau and Whitman, and later, Franklin Merrill-Wolff. He was the warden of a large psychiatric treatment centre which pioneered humane ways of dealing with mental illness.
Cosmic Consciousness - which in my view is probably one of the very first, and most influential, books of what was to become New Age - presents a serious idea, that humanity is indeed developing towards a state of consciousness which is 'as far above ordinary human consciousness as we are above those of animals'. He presents a quasi-scientific argument for this idea, and then proceeds to document it with reference to Jesus, Buddha, St John of the Cross, and others whom he believed possessed this faculty.
I am indebted to this book, as it basically presents a model, even possibly a scientific model, which makes sense out of the whole idea of 'higher states' and provides a cross-cultural study of same.
There are some odd things about the book, and some predictions that have spectacularly failed to materialise ("air travel will usher in a new age of world peace" being one of them.) Bucke is obviously a highly idealistic and very original thinker. But I don't think eccentric or wrong in his basic ideas. YOu can probably find the foreword on Google Books.
---------- Post added 02-02-2010 at 12:15 PM ----------
as for the question of differentiating hallucinations and so on from genuine insights, of course it can be argued that all non-ordinary states are simply delusional, and many people will want to do that. But there is a massive amount of literature on these topics which show the same insights, themes and realizations occuring in numerous individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. In other words, it is not hard to validate the common core of these experiences. There is a library of reference materials on a website called the Council on Spiritual Practises.
... unfortunately, the human mind has a tendency to fail in predictable ways (e.g., schizophrenia) - so even a common core of non-ordinary experiences falls short of convincing if there is no demonstrable way to ground it in Reality (which could be a serious epistemological problem if Reality isn't 100% intelligible!) ...
