Chapter 2: The Dark Night of the Soul or Purgation. A more detailed account:

A. Let us start with the total picture of my religious experience:

Figure 1: Sixteen hour simulation of purgation, mystical union, and deep sleep, ( stages 11, 12, and 13 respectively).

Here is the estimated timetable for the 960 minute religious experience simulated in Figure 1, above.

• 0 minute mark to the 60 minute mark: The simulation begins at noon Pacific time. It starts with the 15 minute walk from the monastery to the cab stand, during which the heart began to open, and extends through to the arrival of the cab at the Los Angeles airport.
• 60 minute mark to the 120 minute mark: The one-hour wait at the airport.
• 120 minute mark to the 450 minute mark: The flight from LA to Boston, leaving LA at about 2:00pm and arriving at Logan airport in Boston around 10:30pm Eastern time.
• 450 minute mark to the 555 minute mark: The discussion with the police officer at the airport plus the cab ride from the airport to my apartment plus about one-hour of preliminaries - thinking, pacing the floor, etc. - before lying down on my bed.
• 555 minute mark to the 615 minute mark: The unstable period during which the 12 KnotsInHeart are purged. The 8-step iterations, listed in Section C, below, occur here.
• Mystical union, lasting anywhere between 4 to 7 seconds, occurred around the 617 minute mark.
• 617 minute mark to the 960 minute mark: Deep sleep.
• Awaken at sunrise to the Divine State at the 960 minute mark.

B. Here are simulations of the release of three of the twelve knots in my heart during purgation.

Figure 3: Two minute simulations during the walking of the plank.

The gathering of these four critical simulations attempts to simply describe - via simulation - how the potential mystic 'walks the plank' for three of the twelve knots released during purgation. The release of the crucial first knot is not shown simulated in Figure 3. The release of knots is shown only for the following knots: The 5th from last, the 4th from last, and the 3rd from last knots. Two of the simulations track the oscillation of the intensity of two critical variables, FearDeathDueToKnot and PrayerQuality. During the same two minute time period the other two simulations track (1) the decrease of the variable, KnotsInHeart, and (2) the rise of the variable, TruenessOfMind. As TruenessOfMind rises, it is eventually going to lead to mystical union when all 12 KnotsInHeart have been released. Notice in Figure 3 that a knot is released only when the variable, PrayerQuality, reaches 100%. Here is the mathematical model for the variable, PrayerQuality:

PrayerQuality = (0.5)*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).......eq.1

C. The 8-step iterative sequence, below, attempts to give the reader an idea of what was going on within me each time a knot was released from my heart during purgation (Stage 11):

1. An unfoldment force within the deepest part of my heart led to an opening of my heart.
2. This initial opening produced a certain degree of rapture, but gradually it also brought a psychic stress and fear of death as the opening heart began to encounter a resistance, perceived as a knot in the heart.
3. The terror or psychic stress caused my mind to either conjure up or discover the following interpretation or explanation for the presence of the knot: Each knot in my heart had a one-to-one representation in my mind of a particular guilt, sin, error, or hatred.
4. As the fear of death and stress mounted due to the opening heart working against that particular knot, my mind's analytical faculties quickly found and became aware of a particular attachment or impurity in the mind associated with that particular knot in the heart, be it a remembered sin, guilt, error, or a hatred.
5. Because of the extreme stress I began to pray to a God whom I called the Lord.
6. As the stress began to mount even further almost to the point of death in this Dark Night of the Soul, either of the following occurred:
   • For the case in which a knot represented a sin, I presented the sin to the 'Lord' like a drowning man crying for help. Because of the fervor or integrity of prayer at this desperate moment of stress, the Lord, out of the void within, accepts this plea for mercy -- if the Lord so wills. The Lord forgives: the impurity or sin associated with that particular knot in the heart is dissolved and the knot is untied. Then the stress lessened and the mind felt infinitely relieved.
   • For the case in which a knot represented hatred of a rival, my first move was reluctantly to prepare my mind to forgive. Instantly this lingering was not tolerated because the stress quickly mounted. At the ominous approach of a rising stress that threatened to burst my heart, hatred for my rival at last began to seem superficial. Indeed, the rival was felt to be a friend now; without the so-called rival there in my mind to forgive I felt I could not escape death; the rival existed as a blessed oasis in this wilderness. Hatred for him turned to love. Indeed, I slowly began to discover that in the depths of my heart I had loved my rival all the time. The knot was untied, the stress lessened, and I felt infinitely relieved.
7. This success of prayer, in which a hate turned to love and in which I felt the presence of a forgiving God, encouraged dialogue to develop with this concept of God with Form: The Lord. This assisted my mind in letting go of the whole neurotic complex in my brain that connected to or centered around that particular knot in my heart. I attached myself instead to this concept of God, my Blessed Friend, the source of comfort. (Deuteronomy 4:29 and Matthew 22:37)
8. Thus, my heart felt less stress and terror with that knot now untied and my mind became less complex. The mind was therefore a further step more stable and ran more true. I could rest in grateful companionship with The Lord. Moreover, with the knot now removed rapture deepened a further step toward ecstasy or bliss and the focus of my mind on the present moment within became more pervading.

D. Summary:

E. Some Notes:

1. The 12 knots were removed from my heart during the one-hour unstable region of the simulation of purgation in Figure 1 when time was between the 555 minute mark and the 617 minute mark.)
2. For more detail please see Figure 3. It shows a two minute simulation of that unstable region, from the 607 to the 609 minute mark, during which three knots were purged
3. I am using an initial value of twelve knots in the heart, because it coincides with the 12 petals of the Hindu concept of the heart chakras. However, from my rememberance of the experience of purgation I am estimating that the initial value could have been anywhere between seven to fifteen knots in the heart.

F. The various kinds of consciousness that existed during purgation, mystical union, and the two month Divine State that followed PMU:

1. When my heart began to open in the 'warm and brilliant Southern California sun,' as described in The Engineer's Story of Chapter 1, core consciousness began to emerge (see Figure 1 at time = 0). During the next nine hours core consciousness slowly began to become more and more dominant and to overshadow extended consciousness. When (as described in Chapter 1) I returned to my apartment in Boston's South End and 'lay down on my bed,' core consciousness began to dominate the final hour of purgation (the period of time from the 550 minute mark to the 617 minute mark). Figure 1 only simulates core consciousness. Extended consciousness was also present, particularly during the first nine of the ten hours, but (using Husserlian terminology) it was 'bracketed-out' in the FP phenomenological analysis (see Chapter 6).
2. When I went into the state of mystical union, core consciousness also ceased or at least OpeningPressure, Fear, and Stress ceased. It seems to me that a different kind of consciousness existed during the 4 to 7 seconds of mystical union. There is no scientific name yet for that state of consciousness. For the time being let us call it Allah consciousness or Brahman consciousness or God consciousness, etc: a divine kind of consciousness. In this state one experiences an unsurpassable and unforgetable greatness. This greatness is experienced while one is in a timeless state. There is no change in the state of this consciousness. This is unique. Usually, consciousness is constantly changing and time seems to change from past to future. My present conjecture of what is going on here is given at this link.
3. For the remaining 6 hours of the simulation in Figure 1 above, I was in deep sleep and not conscious. Thus, the phenomenological analysis terminates at the moment of transition from purgation to mystical union.
4. When I awoke at the 960 minute mark I was in a very balanced and serene state of consciousness, a state quite different from the states mentioned above. This serene state lasted for two months. Csikszentmihalyi's (1975) description of the flow state is akin to that two month state, but he does not emphasize the balance and serenity inherent in that heavenly state. Further information on these forms of consciousness are given at this link.

Arlen Wolpert
May 8,2008
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr22.html

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