Part Four

Downward Causation Revisited

In fall 1976, I was motivated. The question “Why do I live this way?” by then had stayed with me long enough to become a burning uncertainty. Not only was I trying to change my research field at work, but also I was doing a lot of meditation in order to change my lifestyle.

There are many ways to meditate, of course, but the one practice that suited me most at the time goes by the name of japa, a Sanskrit word meaning “repeated recitation.” You take a mantra, a monosyllabic one preferably, and recite it in your mind over and over. I was particularly interested in one claim that I found in Hindu literature. It is said that if you persist in japa in all your waking hours as best as you can, even while doing other chores, the japa becomes internally established and it continues unconsciously all the time. This stage is called ajapa japa—japa without japa.

By November, my tenacity paid off: in a stretch of seven days, I found myself so settled in japa that I thought it was continuing all the time. I mean, whenever I looked internally, I found that the japa was there. “Well,” I thought, “Isn't that interesting? But what happened next was a bigger surprise.”

On the seventh day, a sunny morning, I was sitting quietly in my accustomed chair in my office doing japa. After about an hour, responding to an urge to walk, I went outside. I remember deliberately continuing my mantra while I stepped out of my office, descended the stairs, and went out of the building and across the street onto a grassy meadow. And then the universe opened up to me. For a split second, I was one with the grass, the trees, the sky, the entire universe. The sensation of connectivity was intensified beyond belief. Concomitantly, I felt a love that engulfed everything in my consciousness—until I lost comprehension of the process. This was what the yogis call Ananda, spiritual bliss, I knew. The cosmic expansion of my awareness stayed only for a moment or two. A little later, William Wordsworth's words came to mind:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparelled in celestial light
The glory and the freshness of a dream.

(“Intimations of Immortality,” Complete Poetical Works, edited by Thomas Hutchinson, revised by Ernest De Selincourt, 1961, p. 460)

I felt elated for a long time; the bliss of that experience continued unabated for two days before it began to fade. Afterward questions arose: did I have a Samadhi, the Sanskrit term for the state of pure awareness, which later I was to call the quantum self experience? I consulted Patanjali's Yoga Sutra. The description of Sananda Samadhi (“Samadhi with Ananda”) seemed to fit my experience.

After a few years, I still recalled the experience with awe and felt that it had inspired me to continue my search. But I also knew that the experience had not transformed me—I remained much the same, except maybe a little more interested in creativity.