The Varieties of Presence
The particular "presence" associated with authentic teachers is an ongoing quality. Their followers recognize it readily (and distinguish it from lesser forms of mere charisma) (see chapter 22). The 1979 Hardy survey of religious experiences was based on subjects who grew up in our contemporary Western culture. 20% of them reported having experienced a different variety of presence. These were brief episodes that included a sense of "presence" (described as though something nonhuman in nature were present).14 A brief sense of presence has also been reported by some 40% of subjects whose brains were being stimulated by weak artificial electromagnetic pulses. The issue of suggestibility has been raised considering that "15% of a control group'' were said also to "sense a presence.'')15
Most readers, and myself, have grown up in a pervasive Western monotheistic context. Suppose you or I were briefly to sense a presence during some kind of spontaneous, awesome, alternate-state experience. One obvious option would be to attribute the rest of that experience to some divine presence, to God. Several aspects of this epiphenomenon of presence now become germane to the temporal lobe issues under discussion. The scientific issues have cultural overtones, and have invited debates likely to continue.
• One issue has been overlooked. Presence serves subtly as a metric of distance. A spatial judgment is implicit when we sense that ''something'' important is ''near'' to (or ''far'' from) our central witnessing awareness.
Early steps in such a normal global auditory 3D system take shape in the roof of the midbrain (Z:241-242). From the colliculi here, messages then relay up through the medial geniculate nuclei in the thalamus. Recent magnetoencephalo-graphy (MEG) research shows how we go on to localize sounds in 3D space at the cortical level. We channel the data from our two ears into the discriminative cortex of our right upper temporal region. This is where we ''hear'' distance.16 Survival value is inherent in a 3D system that triangulates a threatening sound and localizes it as either nearby or far distant.
But evolution refined our circuits. No longer does the whole system serve just a primitive early-warning function. Now it can mediate positive resonances that arise in more intimate social circumstances of ''nearness.'' (As, for instance, when a loved one is not just present, but has snuggled close and is whispering softly in your ear.)
• A second issue: How are we to interpret the reports when brief episodes of presence arise naturally in a meditative/spiritual context? In this instance, presence often might represent a cluster of lesser phenomena, describable under the general category of ''quickening'' (see part V) [Z:371-465]. When such a sense of presence is infused with a positive affect, it might represent an overexpression of phenomena vaguely similar to what has just been referred to above: something toward the normal, more intimate, ''nearness'' end of that range of abilities we use to localize events in peripersonal 3D space. Normally we seem to represent such a general sense of spatial ''nearness'' in or near the association cortex at our temporoparietal junction.
As one working hypothesis, it would seem relatively easy for a person to develop a sense of presence when this region shares in the spread of an especially heightened sense of attention (see chapter 47). Other impressions might also reflect unusual constellations of spatial representations within this general network of associations. For example, sometimes a normal person may sense that the whole environment is drawing nearer. At other times, a person might sense that the physical ''self'' is tending to ''fade'' into the environment.
However, a vague, spatial sense of presence is only one superficial issue. It is another matter to account for phenomena during which the self and the environ ment envelop each other and convey the impression of unification. (This discussion continues in chapters 78 and 79.)
• A third issue: What role, if any, does presence play in reports of Buddhist experience? Zen Buddhist icons do not resemble the kind of God figure, reaching out to touch Adam, that Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel. Nor does authentic Zen pay attention to minor quickenings. Zen tends toward relatively quiet periods of no-thought meditation. Zen teachings do not focus intensively on theistic concepts or visual imagery.
• A fourth issue: Some persons refer to a variety of unusual experiences, often accompanied by a sense of presence, under the term ''God experiences.''17 In our Judeo-Christian culture, many so-called God experiences are said to occur in ''religious personalities.'' These persons are said to be characterized by egocentrism, chronic anxiety, and suggestibility. This interpretation of egocentrism would emphasize that it means the greater degree of ''relative reliance placed on one's personal experience as a proof of reality.''18
Although the Zen Buddhist experiences of kensho and satori are authoritative, they arrive on a foundation of selfless emptiness. They remain to be run through the gauntlet—at yet another layer of reality testing—by the roshi's rigorous criteria for proof. Moreover, in the orthodox Zen context, these brief states of enlightenment still tend to be regarded as nothing special. Such a hard-nosed, skeptical perspective tends to negate every pretense that a residual I-Me-Mine might attach its "own" supposed proof of reality.
• A fifth issue: Can earlier reports from the Persinger laboratory be confirmed that when weak, complex transcranial magnetic fields are directed toward the temporal lobes they induce ''sensed presence'' and other mystical experiences? No confirmation comes from investigators in Sweden.19 They report that they had used the same or similar kinds of weak stimulation. Their carefully controlled double-blind study was based on 46 undergraduate theological students and 43 undergraduate psychology students. They assessed the psychological profile of these subjects using both a ''temporal lobe inventory,'' an absorption scale, a ''New Age Orientation Scale,'' and two other scales describing various relevant perceptual and emotional symptoms that are linked to mystical experiences.
When the sham-fields were applied, their subjects ''were just as likely to have marked sense presence experiences as those in the magnetic field condition.'' Whether their 89 subjects were religious or nonreligious, ''personality characteristics indicative of suggestibility consistently predicted the mystical and somatosen-sory experiences.''
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