Thresholds of Consciousness (3/3): breakthroughs from above

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.

(From The World by Henry Vaughan)

In the previous post I described the experience of being dynamited into an awareness of subliminal forces operating below the lower threshold of my consciousness. Now I need to turn, in this attempt to explain why this whole issue of filters and thresholds fascinates me so much, to my experiences of higher consciousness.

I need to clarify right from the start that I am a slightly disappointed mystic manqué, so anyone hoping for stories about the higher flights of mysticism probably needs to go somewhere else to find them. However, there are aspects of my journey from the basement of my brain to something somewhat closer to the heaven of true understanding that might reward attention.

Quest

There is a 13 year gap between the closest I have ever got to a mystical experience and the breakthrough I described earlier into the cellar of my mind. Those 13 years covered a journey through further breathwork in a therapeutic community in the Lake District close to Wordsworth’s birthplace. In the end I remained stuck at the same level as I have described in the previous post – floating endlessly in the tank of tears just beneath the surface of my consciousness.

So there was then a disillusioned return to the mainstream. This was not simply the result of a frustration at my own lack of progress. I also saw that a few others who came to the commune for help, some of them seriously in need, went away in a worse state than they came after a fruitless few days in a tent at the bottom of the garden. I ended up packing my few belongings, leaving the commune and driving back to London, taking with me one of the people I felt we had failed to where he would hopefully find more effective help and friendship. I know that my having a car is evidence of an even worse attachment to the world I was affecting to despise than that of the dervish who dashed back from the mountains to the palace he had been staying at to get the begging bowl he’d left behind while the prince he had persuaded to leave his palace and come with him looked on in complete amazement, but it was at least the means by which I got someone else as well as myself out of an unpleasant and unhelpful predicament.

I was also strongly motivated by a desire to have more chance to work therapeutically with more people more effectively. I realised that this could not be done from the outside of society looking in as I had previously thought. It was better to be on the inside where most other people and many more resources were to be found.

I spent several years working in social services at a day centre. I rapidly realised that social work was not for me – too many forms to fill in and court appearances to make. Even now, I always fill in forms first of all in pencil before I commit to ink, as I always make at least one major mistake on every form, no matter how simple. As for the combination in court of drama and detail, that was always too big a stretch for me. I prefer working behind the scenes and am purblind to details.

In any case, I was far more interested in what goes on between people’s ears. So, in spite of some misgivings about the experimental side of the course, I enrolled to do a psychology degree in the evenings at Birkbeck College. I also participated in a Transactional Analysis/Gestalt Group for a year, and then began learning meditation at the same time as qualifying as a Clinical Psychologist at the University of Surrey.

While I think the meditation helped me stay grounded as I juggled a wide range of different commitments throughout that process, and while I certainly found the psychologically penetrating insights of Buddhism a humbling and effective vaccine against the hubris of scientism that infected my profession, I cannot boast of any transcendental states – just of a relative ease in maintaining a simple calm unflustered state of mind under stress and occasional access to a tingling energy which pervaded by whole being for brief periods. I still committed major blunders from time to time but I got through to the end of the qualification experience relatively unscathed, thanks in part to the ballast meditation provided to keep my mind’s boat stable in rough seas.

At the end of that long journey, triggered by a visit to Hendon library, a story I will share another time, I started to tread the Baha’i path. My first three hour visit to the Baha’i Centre in London induced a buzzing energetic state of mind which lasted for a fortnight and which hours of meditation would have failed to achieve for me. I read my way through a bagful of books with only about four hours sleep a night – those close to me who know my aptitude for sleep will testify to how remarkable that was.

Two years after that I married and soon after the birth of our son we all went as a family to Israel on pilgrimage in 1987. We stayed in Haifa and visited Akka.  The Baha’i Holy places are located there and this is where the experiences I want to describe took place.

Pilgrimage

I was unable to enter the Shrine of the Bab the first time I saw it. It was evening and the Shrine was closed so I had to stand some distance away, as the sun was beginning to set, and lean against an iron gate. I found myself uncontrollably sobbing. This was not the pool of tears I was so used to from my encounter group experiences. These were tears of profound relief. The best way I can describe how I felt is to say that it was like an exile coming home after many long years of believing he would never see his longed-for native land again.

This of course does not constitute conclusive evidence of any kind of mystical reality. It was an intense experience but can be explained, if you wish, without evoking other realms of reality than the material. Nonetheless, for me personally this was the beginning of a completely unexpected sequence of reactions to the whole experience of pilgrimage. I was as unprepared for the power of this sense of return as I had been for the breakthrough to my mind’s basement all those years earlier. That I had not been anticipating any such response suggests there was a break through of some kind from across a threshold. I cannot prove it was a breakthrough from above but it felt as though it was.

The following day I stood at the door of the Shrine of the Bab totally unable to cross that particular threshold. It was not until several others had entered before me, while I stood there dithering, that I could bring myself to go inside. Then, somehow, I managed to force myself to enter. Completely contrary to my expectation at the time, I felt waves of immense power pass over me and the whole air vibrate with an irresistible intensity.

I had expected a completely different experience altogether. I had expected something like a warm glow of love to envelope me. It would have fitted more with the sense I had of the Bab’s personality. Indiscussing the possible objective validity of near death experiences, Mark Fox attaches considerable importance to the fact that, in many reports, what the person experienced was very different from what his culture had led him to expect. That this was also true, though in a less specific way, of this experience prompts me to feel that there was something outside my own projections at work here, something to do with an objective out-there quality of the Bab’s spiritual reality. It was this combination of intensity and unexpectedness that leads to me feel this quite strongly. It was also a very different feeling from the one I had been engulfed by when I stood by the gate the previous evening. This would have primed me for some kind of repetition of the same thing: what actually occurred was very different.

Each Shrine that I stepped into on that pilgrimage had its own particular impact. The Shrine of the Master glowed gently with a warm acceptance, much as I had thought it would. So expectations were not contradicted here. However, the Shrine of Baha’u’llah at Bahji, on the other hand, also totally defied my expectations. Here was where I had expected the raw power, but felt instead enveloped in a loving embrace of such unconditional completeness that I sobbed uncontrollably once more.

I won’t test your patience by repeating the same line of reasoning again but for me it applies here also, and for two out of three experiences in the Shrines to go against expectation so intensely confirms for me my sense that there was something outside my own projections that was shaping that impact. I was not aware then and cannot recall now any influences from other pilgrims that might have had the effects upon my reactions that would have been necessary to go so strongly against the grain of my expectations.

I am sure you are all already aware that I have no expectation that these accounts of my experiences will necessarily persuade you to come to the same conclusions as I have on the basis of them. I have shared them as a way of beginning to explain why I am so fascinated by the borderlands of consciousness and what might lie beyond, and why I keep reading in search of evidence that might point ever more clearly towards their true significance. I tend to shy away from such personal sharing because I am all too aware that its power to shape a sense of reality does not extend beyond my skull. Still, maybe the risk was worth taking.

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What’s so special about the 23rd of May?

Room in the House of the Báb

On the 22nd May the world will again start to be circled in celebration. About two hours after sunset, when the new day starts for us, Bahá’ís everywhere will come together to share prayers, readings and music in memory of a very special event. What’s it all about?

In this ordinary room pictured on the left, 166 years ago, an important meeting took place. It began a process that is still unfolding to this day.  For Bahá’ís this meeting has a very special meaning, the full significance of which would not be immediately obvious  to all those attending a typical Holy Day Celebration. This is a brief attempt to unpack its key significance in the words of the central figures of the Faith.

The Guardian of the Bahá’í Faith opened his description of the event with these words:

May 23, 1844, signalizes the commencement of the most turbulent period of the Heroic Age of the Bahá’í Era, . . . . . No more than a span of nine short years marks the duration of this most spectacular, this most tragic, this most eventful period of the first Bahá’í century. . . . .

He continued:

The opening scene of the initial act of this great drama was laid in the upper chamber of the modest residence of the son of a mercer of Shiraz, in an obscure corner of that city. The time was the hour before sunset, on the 22nd day of May, 1844. The participants were the Báb, a twenty-five year old siyyid, of pure and holy lineage, and the young Mulla Husayn, the first to believe in Him. Their meeting immediately before that interview seemed to be purely fortuitous. The interview itself was protracted till the hour of dawn.

He quoted the words of Mulla Husayn:

“This Revelation,” Mulla Husayn has . . .  testified, “so suddenly and impetuously thrust upon me, came as a thunderbolt which, for a time, seemed to have benumbed my faculties. I was blinded by its dazzling splendor and overwhelmed by its crushing force. Excitement, joy, awe, and wonder stirred the depths of my soul. .  . . . .

And concludes:

With this historic Declaration the dawn of an Age that signalizes the consummation of all ages had broken.

Shoghi Effendi: God Passes By, Pages: 3-8

(For a more detailed sense of what happened see this link.)

`Abdu’l-Bahá in America

`Abdu’l-Bahá, in His visit to America in 1912, spoke briefly of the day itself:

It is a blessed day and the dawn of manifestation, for the appearance of the Báb was the early light of the true morn, whereas the manifestation of the Blessed Beauty, Bahá’u'lláh, was the shining forth of the sun. . . . On this day in 1844 the Báb was sent forth heralding and proclaiming the Kingdom of God, announcing the glad tidings of the coming of Bahá’u'lláh and withstanding the opposition of the whole Persian nation.

He then gave a brief outline of the events that followed, detailing the ensuing persecution which was severe and persists, of course, until today in Iran:

Some of the Persians followed Him. For this they suffered the most grievous difficulties and severe ordeals. They withstood the tests with wonderful power and sublime heroism. Thousands were cast into prison, punished, persecuted and martyred. Their homes were pillaged and destroyed, their possessions confiscated. They sacrificed their lives most willingly and remained unshaken in their faith to the very end.

The Báb was subjected to bitter persecution in Shiraz, where He first proclaimed His mission and message. A period of famine afflicted that region, and the Báb journeyed to Isfahan. There the learned men rose against Him in great hostility. He was arrested and sent to Tabriz. From thence He was transferred to Maku and finally imprisoned in the strong castle of Chihriq. Afterward He was martyred in Tabriz.

He holds up the life and sacrifices of the Báb as an example:

We must follow His heavenly example; we must be self-sacrificing and aglow with the fire of the love of God. We must partake of the bounty and grace of the Lord, for the Báb has admonished us to arise in service to the Cause of God, to be absolutely severed from all else save God during the day of the Blessed Perfection, Bahá’u'lláh, to be completely attracted by the love of Bahá’u'lláh, to love all humanity for His sake, to be lenient and merciful to all for Him and to upbuild the oneness of the world of humanity. Therefore, this day, 23 May, is the anniversary of a blessed event.

`Abdu’l-Bahá: Promulgation of Universal Peace, Pages: 138-139

So, there are implications in these events, remote though they seem to most of us in both time and place,  for how we should conduct ourselves today. The Guardian unravelled some of these possibilities in the following passage.

The moment had now arrived for that undying, that world-vitalizing Spirit that was born in Shiraz, that had been rekindled in Tihran, that had been fanned into flame in Baghdad and Adrianople [i.e. the places to which Bahá'u'lláh was successively exiled], that had been carried to the West, and was now illuminating the fringes of five continents, to incarnate itself in institutions designed to canalize its outspreading energies and stimulate its growth. [My emphasis] The Age that had witnessed the birth and rise of the Faith had now closed.  . . . . .

The Formative Period, the Iron Age, of that Dispensation was now beginning, the Age in which the institutions, local, national and international, of the Faith of Bahá’u'lláh were to take shape, develop and become fully consolidated, in anticipation of the third, the last, the Golden Age destined to witness the emergence of a world-embracing Order enshrining the ultimate fruit of God’s latest Revelation to mankind, a fruit whose maturity must signalize the establishment of a world civilization and the formal inauguration of the Kingdom of the Father upon earth as promised by Jesus Christ Himself.

(God Passes By, page 324)

Even such a powerful explanation as this does not convey the full impact of this Revelation on the lives of all Bahá’ís nor explain in terms which are easy for everyone to grasp why the core of the Bahá’í vision applies to everyone, Bahá’í and non-Bahá’í alike.

Shrine of the Báb at Night

In 2001 the central body of the Faith wrote a message to all those assembled in Haifa to witness the ceremony that marked the completion of the Terraces that climb above and descend below the Shrine of the Báb. The core paragraphs for our present purpose begin by explaining what the Faith and all our activities within it are for:

Reflection on what the Bahá’í community has accomplished throws into heartbreaking perspective the suffering and deprivation engulfing the great majority of our fellow human beings. It is necessary that it should do so, because the effect is to open our minds and souls to vital implications of the mission Bahá’u’lláh has laid on us. “Know thou of a truth,” He declares, “these great oppressions that have befallen the world are preparing it for the advent of the Most Great Justice.” . . . .  In the final analysis, it is this Divine purpose that all our activities are intended to serve, and we will advance this purpose to the degree that we understand what is at stake in the efforts we are making to teach the Faith, to establish and consolidate its institutions, and to intensify the influence it is exerting in the life of society.

They make completely explicit the change in our way of thinking that is required of us:

Humanity’s crying need will not be met by a struggle among competing ambitions or by protest against one or another of the countless wrongs afflicting a desperate age. It calls, rather, for a fundamental change of consciousness, for a wholehearted embrace of Bahá’u’lláh’s teaching that the time has come when each human being on earth must learn to accept responsibility for the welfare of the entire human family. Commitment to this revolutionizing principle will increasingly empower individual believers and Bahá’í institutions alike in awakening others to the Day of God and to the latent spiritual and moral capacities that can change this world into another world. We demonstrate this commitment, Shoghi Effendi tells us, by our rectitude of conduct towards others, by the discipline of our own natures, and by our complete freedom from the prejudices that cripple collective action in the society around us and frustrate positive impulses towards change.

(From the 24 May 2001 message from the Universal House of Justice to the Believers Gathered for the Events Marking the Completion of the Projects on Mount Carmel)

So, in short, the Báb surrendered His life to show us the way. Bahá’u'lláh endured roughly 50 years of imprisonment, torture and exile as He explained to us in detail what was required. The rest is up to us.

Flowers near the Shrine

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Recommended: Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of Baha’u'llah’s Declaration

I came across an interesting post on the subject of Ridván through the Huffington Post. Below is an extract: for the full article please click on the link.

On April 21 this year, the Baha’i community will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the day when Baha’u'llah, the founder of the Baha’i Faith, first publicly announced His mission in a garden in Baghdad, thus beginning the Baha’i community that today comprises virtually all the races of humankind in more than 200 countries and territories.

In a sense, the global festivities involving people of thousands of ethnic backgrounds is representative of the key message of the Baha’i Faith: that a time of happiness has arrived for the entire human race as it gradually moves from a state of collective adolescence to a stage of maturity and wholeness. “We desire the good of the world and the happiness of the nations,” said Baha’u'llah to Edward Granville Browne, the Cambridge University scholar who interviewed Him in 1890, “that the bonds of affection and unity between the sons of men should be strengthened … what harm is there in this? … these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come.” These words provide an outline of the aim of Baha’u'llah’s teachings and the work of the Baha’i community today.

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Recommended: ‘A radiant heart.’

A good friend posted this on Facebook. It seemed a good idea to share it! The words comprise the first of the Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh:

O SON OF SPIRIT! My first counsel is this: Possess a pure, kindly and radiant heart, that thine may be a sovereignty ancient, imperishable and everlasting.

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Near-Death Experiences Revisited (3/3): And then what?

I had some conversations with the Light. The Light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs. I asked the Light, “What is going on here? Please, Light, clarify yourself for me. I really want to know the reality of the situation.” I cannot really say the exact words, because it was sort of telepathy.

The Light responded. The information transferred to me was that during your life after death experience your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the Light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not.

(From the NDE Story 
of Mellen-Thomas Benedict - for more see YouTube video below)

Two Main Elements

The last post, after looking at the issue of whether there is a real experience here or just a story, paused before looking at two examples of so-called core elements of the Near-Death Experience. Though widely known, their exact significance has been hard to pin down. Mark Fox continues his exploration.

1. The Being of Light

It has long been understood that the meaning people place on this part of the experience is strongly influenced by their background culture and the nature of their religious beliefs. He quotes Badham quoting Evans-Wentz (page 71):

To appeal to a Shaivite devotee, the form of Shiva is assumed, to a Buddhist the form of the Buddha Shakya Muni; to a Christian, the form of Jesus;  to a Muslim the form of the Prophet; and so far other religious devotees, and for all manner and conditions of mankind a form appropriate to the occasion.

He accepts (page 106) the theoretical ‘possibility . . . . that there is more than one light.’ However, Badham’s position clearly makes sense to him (page 107):

. . . that some sort of transcendent core being is encountered by everybody but interpreted by them in accordance with their respective cultural backgrounds.

He explores certain problems with that which it would be impossible to deal with at length here but can be summarised by saying that there is quite a degree of variation in the interpretations given to this part of the experience. Some even feel the light has no personality at all. It therefore remains a possibility that too facile a conclusion that it must be Christ or Muhammad or the Buddha needs to be avoided.

Even so the Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) data is illuminating here (page 299):

[In previous studies] the light appears to fulfil the function of a judge, divine presence, psychopomp, or identifiable religious figure. This was clearly not the case with the RERC study, in which the light manifested or contained an identifiable presence, personality or role in only two out of the thirteen CE  accounts in which it figured. However, analysis was complicated by the fact that whilst the definite and recognisable presence was only manifested in the light on two occasions, a very significant number of other respondents – no less than eight out of the remaining eleven – reported usually overwhelming sensations of love, peace or calm either within or coming from the light indicating that it was the source of a range of identifiable feelings and therefore in some sense the possessor of personality.

The Tunnel

The tunnel with the oncoming light has formed a central element in the neuroscientific explanation of the NDE. Even in its simple form, though, the explanation has been challenged by Peter Fenwick and others. The RERC data allows for even more doubt to be cast upon it (page 262):

What should be done with accounts that included descriptions of the seemingly similar – perhaps identical – experience but which words such as ‘void’, ‘whirlpool’, ‘passage’ or ‘shaft’ to describe it? Nowhere here it is absolutely clear that a tunnel is being described. Neither is it clear that in each case the feature is black or dark.

He feels that their sheer variety casts serious doubts on a neuroscientific explanation.

There is another equally interesting dimension (page 276-277):

Before moving on, mention must be made of the curiously high incidence of descriptions of outer space encountered in this phase of the investigation. . . . . . At the very least, however, we have a total of five CE and non-CE accounts out of a total of 24 which describe an encounter with some sort of darkness motif in terms seemingly suggestive of a visit to outer space: more than 20% of the total.

It is for this reason that he feels that his study must part company with previous accounts (page 278), ‘having found descriptions of tunnels to be in the minority, having also found that other descriptors are more frequently chosen as preferred ways of describing experiences of darkness, voids and – in some cases – transitions to other realms.’

The Impact

Before we consider what all this might mean, there is one other important element to consider: the effects these experiences have upon the lives of those who have lived through them. While a strong effect on the person afterwards does not prove the experience is ‘real’ it certainly adds weight to that possibility.

Starting with Hampe in 1979 Fox reviews the traces of this theme at various places in his book (page 59):

Hampe draws attention to the transformative effects of such experiences and the possible therapeutic application of his discoveries, devoting a chapter to the ways in which exposure to such experiences may have beneficial results of the field of medicine, pastoral counselling, and for the clergy generally.

The close links with other forms of spiritual experience also becomes apparent (page 83):

[Cressy notes parallels with mystical experience] drawing attention to the transformative effects produced in the lives of both mystics and NDErs as a result of their experiences. Here, she notes, changes in the sense and meaning of the self reported by NDErs and mystics are similar, including increased feelings of self-worth and enhanced feelings of love for mankind.

Obviously therefore these after-effects are to be found in the accounts of the RERC archive. There is one particularly beautiful example (page 285):

Since the phenomenon, I have had a sense of belonging, as if I were related to every rock, tree, flower, mountain, cloud, animal and person. I am truly concerned about them and I feel a great love for everyone and everything in the universe. In other words, I am in attunement with my world, which is the whole world.

So what?

Carl Jung

So where exactly does all this richly varied but closely linked body of evidence leave us. For Fox there is a core issue (page 345):

In the light of the recognition that testimonies to NDEs are all we possess, near-death researcher Robert Kastenbaum is surely right to draw attention to the crucial issue of whether an NDE is, in fact, an experience or a report of experience.

There follows a complex consideration of this question, all the twists and turns of which are too many to include here. Instead I’ll just pick up briefly on two basic threads.

He looks at Kellehear’s theory that NDEs depict a kind of ‘transcendent society’ (page 354). He feels that as such they will appeal to many people in the West.

. . . . in its implied criticism of many of the dominant values of modernity such as competition and selfishness and its promotion of others such as spirituality and humanism, it has a post-modern appeal: it shares post-modernity’s loss of faith in many of the grounding convictions of modernity, including those which have exploited and oppressed the human spirit in the name of greed and the obsession to acquire.

He also considers Grosso’s work, which is rooted in Jungian archetypes and the idea of the collective unconscious (page 357):

NDEs, like archetypes, contain the cross-cultural consistency that the collective unconsciousness bestows, combined with the cross-cultural variation which their location in time and space inevitably creates.

He feels this last possibility has great explanatory power and points the way towards future avenues of fruitful research.

In fact, the main emphasis of his concluding chapter revolves around encouraging researchers to sink their sometimes acrimonious differences and buckle down to a serious and prolonged investigation of this phenomenon, pooling their knowledge as they go rather than each school prizing their own perspective to the exclusion of all others. His most eloquent advocacy of this deserves quoting at length at the conclusion of this series of posts (pages 344-45):

Narrative theology can explore ways in which emplotment turns experience into story. Psychology of religion can make its own contributions to exploring naturalistically the aetiology of the NDE, responding and contributing to the valuable insights provided by secular neuroscience. Sociology of religion can investigate the social and cultural forces that call forth the need for new myths when old myths lose their power. Philosophy of religion can test the epistemological accuracy and phenomenological cogency of the claim that a common core underlies the variety of reported religious experiences across cultures, including, of course, the end NDE. And so on.

I suppose in a way I have copped out here and told you where this all leaves him while remaining silent about where I find myself right now. Perhaps there’s only really time for one brief observation. When confronted by the question ‘Is any of this true ?’ I remember the words of the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith, Bahá’u’lláh (Gleanings: LXXXII):

Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel.

It therefore seems inevitable that something so transcendent would be experienced by people in many different ways, all of those ways representing an aspect of the reality of that experience. The same would therefore apply to all parts of the spiritual realm. That the descriptions vary while containing a core of common resonance is precisely what you would expect. So for me this thorough and dispassionate treatment of this all-important subject confirms me in my feeling that something real but ineffable is being described.

And I am speaking as someone who found the idea of an immortal soul one of the most difficult ideas to accept when I became a Bahá’í. I simply couldn’t understand why beings so seemingly inconsequential when compared to the awesome glory of the universe as whole should have been gifted with something so precious. It was far easier to accept the idea of God in the Bahá’í Writings as an unknowable Great Being whose consciousness had brought this all into being and was holding it in place. But that is another story for another time, I think.

Postscript

A comment from Kristine on a previous post pointed me in the direction of Eben Alexander’s book Proof of Heaven. The experience he describes has a bearing on almost all the issues dealt with in this sequence of posts. In the New Year it is almost inevitable that I will write about it.

Edited Extracts

Extraneous material cut out of interview from Mellen Benedict speaking on coastam with George Noory 

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Liberalism vs Conservatism: reflections in the wake of an election

Divided We Fall

Now we have the results of the US Presidential election, there may be an opportunity to reflect upon some underlying aspects of the polarised debate between left and right without getting pulverised with arguments from one side of the divide or the other. A fascinating treatment of some of these underlying issues is to be found in Jonathan Haidt‘s recent book, The Righteous Mind.

He begins his analysis with a study of how well each side of the divide understands the other side’s mind set, acknowledging that he tends to favour the liberal emphasis on the individual rather than society.

He reckons the findings were unequivocal (page 287):

The results were clear and consistent. Moderates and conservatives were most accurate in their predictions, whether they were pretending to be liberals or conservatives. Liberals were the least accurate, especially those who described themselves as “very liberal.” The biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the Care and Fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives.

Haidt is very honest about his own initial biases (page 289):

As a lifelong liberal, I had assumed that conservatism = orthodoxy = religion = faith = rejection of science.

The source of the study data takes a different view (ibid):

But Muller asserted that modern conservatism is really about creating the best possible society, the one that brings about the greatest happiness given local circumstances.

Moral and Social Capital

He reviews his previous position and admits (pages 289-90):

I began to see that [conservatives] had attained a crucial insight into the sociology of morality that I had never encountered before. They understood the importance of what I’ll call moral capital.

This is strongly linked to another kind of capital (page 290):

Social capital refers to a kind of capital that economists had largely overlooked: the social ties among individuals and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from those ties. When everything else is equal, a firm with more social capital will outcompete its less cohesive and less internally trusting competitors.

He spells out the link with morality (page 291):

To achieve almost any moral vision, you’d probably want high levels of social capital.

And he goes on to state (page 292):

. . . . . we can define moral capital as the resources that sustain a moral community . . . . . .  and thereby enable the community to suppress or regulate selfishness and make cooperation possible.

Unfortunately, this moral and social capital is a mixed blessing (page 293):

Moral capital leads automatically to the suppression of free riders, but it does not lead automatically to other forms of fairness such as equality of opportunity. And while high moral capital helps a community to function efficiently, the community can use that efficiency to inflict harm on other communities. High moral capital can be obtained within a cult or a fascist nation, as long as most people truly accept the prevailing moral matrix.

He feels that the liberal-left is prone to discounting or ignoring the value of this kind of capital and that is a risky position to take (page 293):

. . . . .if you are trying to change an organization or a society and you do not consider the effects of your changes on moral capital, you’re asking for trouble. This, I believe, is the fundamental blind spot of the left. It explains why liberal reforms so often backfire, and why communist revolutions usually end up in despotism.

The Need for Balance

He feels that both political perspectives are necessary for a state to be healthy. He quotes John Stuart Mill (page 294):

“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”

He proceeds to examine various aspects of the moral matrices of the two camps. This clarifies that on the American political scene the word ‘libertarian’ denotes someone of a conservative mind set.  He teases out some important aspects of this world view in order to get out from under his preconceptions about it (pages 305-306):

[Libertarians] do not oppose change of all kinds (such as the Internet), but they fight back ferociously when they believe that change will damage the institutions and traditions that provide our moral exoskeletons (such as the family).

He unpacks this (page 307):

We need groups, we love groups, and we develop our virtues in groups, even though those groups necessarily exclude nonmembers. If you destroy all groups and dissolve all internal structure, you destroy your moral capital. . . . . To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind.

John Stuart Mill

So, after this analysis of the way that liberals, with whom he identifies, fail to understand some of the crucial insights of their political opponents (and of course vice versa), he reflects upon a disturbing trend (page 309):

America’s political class has become far more Manichaean since the early 1990s, first in Washington and then in many state capitals. The result is an increase in acrimony and gridlock, a decrease in the ability to find bipartisan solutions. . . . .

The recent election has done nothing to reduce the potential damage that might ensue from this mutual incomprehension and increased polarisation. The US still has a Democratic President and a Republican Congress. This polarisation does not stop there though, he argues (page 311):

Our counties and towns are becoming increasingly segregated into “lifestyle enclaves,” in which ways of voting, eating, working, and worshipping are increasingly aligned.

Transcending the Divide

So, it seems pretty clear that a society that is divided, to put it simply, between those who place individual rights and freedoms first on the grounds of compassion and those who most value community solidarity on the grounds of fairness and responsibility, may not be able to sink its differences effectively enough to achieve the objectivity and unity of vision that will enable it to solve its problems.

From my point of view as a Bahá’í the way out of this stalemate is as plain as a pikestaff – not that you see many of those about these days. We need to develop a perspective that balances the rights of the individual with the needs of society. Even at this early stage in its development the Bahá’í Faith offers some fruitful insights into how this balance might ultimately be achieved.

The central body of the Bahá’ís has shared some profound reflections on this subject:

Freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of action are among the freedoms which have received the ardent attention of social thinkers across the centuries. The resulting outflow of such profound thought has exerted a tremendous liberating influence in the shaping of modern society. Generations of the oppressed have fought and died in the name of freedom. Certainly the want of freedom from oppression has been a dominant factor in the turmoil of the times: witness the plethora of movements which have resulted in the rapid emergence of new nations in the latter part of the twentieth century. A true reading of the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh leaves no doubt as to the high importance of these freedoms to constructive social processes.

They are in no doubt though that we cannot uncritically espouse the ideal of freedom at all costs:

Bahá’u’lláh’s assertions clearly call for an examination of current assumptions. Should liberty be as free as is supposed in contemporary Western thought? Where does freedom limit our possibilities for progress, and where do limits free us to thrive? What are the limits to the expansion of freedom?

Their feeling is that the system of elected and appointed institutions within the Bahá’í Faith offers exactly the right counter-balance to the dangers of unbridled freedom. Clearly, the fact that all Bahá’ís have chosen to believe that these institutions are divinely ordained creates a consensus about their supreme value that is hard to match in the wider world. However, it brings very significant benefits in its train:

Within this framework of freedom a pattern is set for institutional and individual behavior which depends for its efficacy not so much on the force of law, which admittedly must be respected, as on the recognition of a mutuality of benefits, and on the spirit of cooperation maintained by the willingness, the courage, the sense of responsibility, and the initiative of individuals — these being expressions of their devotion and submission to the will of God. Thus there is a balance of freedom between the institution, whether national or local, and the individuals who sustain its existence.

Of course, the core value underpinning this system is the belief in the oneness of all humanity and the preeminent need to combine the compassion of the individual with the fairmindedness of an institution within the one system.  This makes it even easier to tread the fine line between liberty and anarchy on the one hand and fairness and oppression on the other.

Bahá’ís acknowledge that learning how to understand and implement such insights as these will take generations, partly because parenting and education are key factors in the process. But it is also true that every crisis, and Americans as well as most of the rest of us are surely in the grip of one, provides a great opportunity to begin to learn how to shake off old values and methods that have grown unhelpful and replace them with new more constructive ones.

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