Conditioned learning resulting from purgation and mystical union:

The system dynamics flow diagram for purgation details the autonomous mental imagery, ideation, and mediating processes between a stimulus and a response that provides the mystic-to-be with the conditioned learning needed to become a mystic. There are an estimated twelve cycles of autonomous conditioned learning that is centered around the ForgivenessResponse. These twelve cycles of purgation are nested within one cycle of consummatory reinforced conditioned learning centered around the mystical union response.

The sensory input or stimulus for both responses is AdditionalOpeningPressure, which is essentially a somatosensory stimulation of heart muscles driven by the sympathetic system. This stimulation tends to increase cardiac output (HeartOpenness). Of course, the parasympathetic system opposes this tendency (KnotsInHeart). This antagonistic stimulation generates the kind of somatosensory mental imagery and its associated ideation and mediating processes between the autonomous stimulation and the ForgivenessResponse that produces the conditioned learning.

Perhaps, the most critical of purgation's autonomous ideations and mediating processes revolve around the ForgivenessResponse. For example, the threshold or limen for the ForgivenessResponse is at PrayerQuality = 100%. A rise in PrayerIntensity occurs first, but even a high value of PrayerIntensity of around 80% to 100% of maximum is still subliminal. It does not evoke a response, because the equation for PrayerQuality in the mathematical model indicates that for the ForgivenessResponse to occur there is a need for a summation at the synapse:

PrayerQuality = 0.5*(PrayerIntensity + PrayerTrueness).

Thus, PrayerIntensity 'sets' the ForgivenessResponse. That is, it is set in the direction of finding a way to remove the knot in the heart. Then, the increasing subtlety of the ideation in the CNS associated with PrayerTrueness eventually raises PrayerQuality until it reaches the ForgivenessResponse threshold and elicits the response, which is the removal of a 'knot in the heart.' Woodworth and Ladd (1911) clarified the above sequence for the case of a cat trying to get out of a cage to get food: (words in brackets show the analogy with purgation)

"The animal desires ... to get out and reach the food [removal of the knot in the heart]. Whatever be his consciousness, his behavior shows that he is, as an organism, set in that direction [PrayerIntensity aimed at removing knot]. This adjustment [set] persists till the motor reaction is consummated [the ForgivenessResponse occurs], it is the driving force in the unremitting efforts of the animal to attain the desired end [removal of knot]. His reactions are, therefore, the joint result of the adjustment [set, PrayerIntensity] and of stimuli from various features of the cage [problem solving, PrayerTrueness]. Each single reaction tends to become associated with the adjustment [set]."

The learning is reinforced after the ForgivenessResponse by the reduction in stress (PsychicStress) and fear (FearOfDeath) and the increase of rapture (Rapture). Therefore, conditioned learning occurs during the 10-hours of purgation and a structured memory trace of new neural connections is made (Hebb 1958). The mystic-to-be undergoes:

  1. The conditioned learning about the purgation based aspects of the religious life: a life based on heart-centered prayer and forgiveness.
  2. This conditioned learning is confirmed through consummatory reinforcement by the experience of the unsurpassable greatness during mystical union.
Later, this learning will be the core of the mystic's contribution to the generative aspect of religion.

Arlen Wolpert
http://world.std.com/~awolpert/gtr462.html
Draft of November 6,2001
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