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"Deautomatization and the Mystic Experience" and "Bimodal Consciousness
and the Mystic Experience"~Sandra
Stahlman
Interviewed at his home in Mill Valley, CA, by DC on December 21, 1997
with his wife Etta
Arthur J, Deikman, M.D. has done groundbreaking work in the
scientific study of meditation and the mystical experience. His thirty
years of research in this area has resulted in numerous scientific papers
and three books: "Personal Freedom" (l976), "The Observing
Self-Mysticism and Psychotherapy"(l982), and "The Wrong Way
Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society"
(1990). These works reflect a modern perspective on spirituality based on
developmental, psychodynamic, and cognitive psychologies- informed by
personal experience with the Zen Buddhist and Sufic traditions. Currently,
Dr. Deikman is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of
California, San Francisco, where he combines teaching, research and
private practice.
As with many of these interviews, I don't include my questions herein.
- DC
I had an experience camping in the Adirondacks in 1951 in the summer
and I wanted to understand it. I read some of the literature on it I got
the chance to do some research in 60 or 61 and hadn’t forgotten my
experience so I did my research on meditation. I’d read the Yoga of
Pagantali and used his instructions on focusing on a blue vase. I had my
students do it for fifteen minutes to a half hour and interviewed them on
their experiences. There were some striking changes from their short
period of meditation. I continued these experiments and it seemed to me
that I was becoming a teacher of meditation and should know something
about it.
I was in med. school in Stockridge Mass and came out to the SFZC. It
was about 67. I met Silas and had an interview with Suzuki-roshi at
Sokoji. I brought in a tape recorder but he didn’t want it. I said I was
studying consciousness and wanted to know more about it. He said, "I
don’t know anything about consciousness. I just teach my students how to
hear the birds sing."
I asked him if his higher state was the same all the time or varied and
he did this making a sign wave gesture with his hand.
He said if I wanted to know about consciousness I should go to LA and
sit sesshin with Yasutani. Katagiri-sensei gave me zazen instruction. I
called LA about the Yasutani sesshin and they said they were full but
since Suzuki-roshi had recommended it they took me. I didn’t even know
what a sesshin was. Maezumi-sensei was translating at the sesshin. It was
hard but the food was great. Yasutani said we have to adjust our effort in
working on a koan like a violinist tunes his bow. If it’s too tight it
will screech, if it’s too loose it won’t work. In that sesshin I felt
like my head was so big. I got into altered states where my dimensions
changed. I had scary experiences. In time they all went away. I woke up
one night thinking that someone was hitting wooden blocks and it was just
the person sleeping next to me smacking their lips softly in their sleep.
The best thing about the sesshin was that I found I could do it. Maybe
Suzuki-roshi sent me there because of timing,
After the sesshin I came back and saw Suzuki-roshi. In the summer I
took the wife and kids to Tassajara. It was my first trip West. While
there I had my first glimpse of what Zen was about. I told Suzuki-roshi
about it and he agreed that that might be the case.
Back in Mass I continued to practice zazen and made periodic trips back
to the West Coast and when I went I always had contact with the Zen
Center, interaction with Suzuki-roshi and some of his students like Yvonne
or Katherine Thanas.
I had reached a point where I was going to quit because I’d get into
higher states but they would pass. I mentioned this to Craig Boyan, the
one who went to the Meyer Baba group, and Craig went running upstairs and
he came back and said Suzuki-roshi will see you now. I went to him and
explained that I had these higher states but they just passed so what’s
the use and he laughed and said, "That’s right, no use. All these
states come and go, but if you continue you find there’s something
underneath." I said you can’t have it because in the act of having
it, it’s gone." He said he was very pleased with my understanding of Zen. Of course, this could have just
been a form of encouragement. So I continued and continued seeing him
whenever I went there.
In 71 we moved to the West Coast. It was the year he died. In the final
ceremony where he handed over the temple to Dick Baker, the Mountain Seat
Ceremony, as he came down from the dais and walked out, he looked directly
at me and shook his staff.
My focus wasn’t Zen, it was Suzuki-roshi. If he’d prescribed bactic
[devotional] practice I’d have done that. After he died ZC didn’t have
what I wanted. Where he was was where I wanted to be - in that place of
sanity.
I interviewed Trungpa in Boulder but wasn’t interested in being his
student.
Later with Etta, reading the teaching stories of Adris Shah, we had
that same sense of there being something there we wanted. The teaching
stories had a kind of nutrition, water for thirst.
At Tassajara we’d go to Suzuki-roshi lectures and our seven year old
daughter who was quite hyperactive would fall asleep in Etta's lap and Etta
was amazed. It seemed there was something going on there.
[A later phone call with Arthur. He had doubts about the letter
about the Suzuki-roshi conference at Stanford [May, 1998] - bringing
Suzuki's widow out and son and so much money needed. He thought that
people should just sit around and talk about what they got from him, how
their lives and experiences developed. What did those who studied with him
get out of it? I asked him what he got out of it and he said that sort of
information comes out best in a group experience.- DC ]
At Tassajara there were a few students who had done a thirty day
sesshin together on the outside, thinking that if seven days was good that
thirty would be better. They talked to Suzuki-roshi and described all
their experiences and said that they had gained a higher state from it and
asked what shall we do now? He said, "Concentrate on your breathing
and it will go away."
The experience I had in 51 camping on a major lake. I’d done some
soul searching and had come to the conclusion that there is a source in
what I valued in music and art and I needed to get closer to it. So I sat
daily on a rock. I shut my eyes and sat there for half an hour and
attempted to focus on something though I didn’t know what it was. In
time I started to notice more detail in the rocks and trees, started to
perceive an emanation coming from them, from everything, something
intrinsically very valuable. I wanted to get closer to it. I knew that
most people couldn’t see it. It lasted for the summer. I began med.
school and couldn’t find anyone there who knew anything about what I’d
experienced. I wanted to understand it. I went back to my college and saw
my old poetry professor. Someone said to read Saint Augustine and that
wasn’t sufficient. I almost left med. school to follow up on it but I
didn’t. I was determined to get back to that experience though and began
reading mystical literature of various kinds.
In the late sixties when I had published a paper on meditation Ralph
Metzner came over and told me about Millbrook and suggested that I go
there and take LSD with them and my analyst said I should do that in a
more legit way. So I went to the West Coast and looked up the Institute of
Advanced Studies or whatever it was called. Willis Harmon later of the
Noetics Inst. and Charles Savage, a psychoanalyst and MD - they had a
permit to use psychedelics. I had a research grant also to study
meditation. They had pure Sandoz LSD and Psilisibin and I took each of
them once, the LSD with Mescaline. They gave me Meduna’s mixture - CO2
and Oxygen to get a taste of going out of your mind. It was like a freight
train from consciousness. I brought in pictures of my family and things
that were familiar. I think they were testing a theory that a big one time
intensive experience could bring about helpful changes. I think you need
more time than that. Thinking back on that I remember Suzuki-roshi saying,
"If you’re dissatisfied with your zazen it shows you have a gaining
idea in mind."
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