<\/p>\n
In a number of previous posts, I’ve used the term “disindividuation”, which seems to have produced some confusion in readers. I always contrast this with “deindividuation”<\/a>, which is a reasonably well known but contentious social-psychological phenomenon in the psychology of groups, and particularly mobs.<\/p>\n In deindividuation, the identity of the individual becomes subsumed by the identity of a group, and the group is then treated as having its own consciousness. It leads to the dissolving of inhibitions and concern for the self, the only concern being the group.<\/p>\n There is a distinct linkage with disindividuation, for which I cannot find a link to a satisfactory internet article. Disindividuation similarly involves a weakening (sometimes near to the point of disappearance) of the sense of self in relation to the other, but the “other” in this case is commonly a much wider category than a group or mob, and is commonly identified by the one experiencing disindividuation as “God”. It is a common feature of peak mystical experiences, but has also been stimulated by researchers interfering with electrical activity in the brain in experimental circumstances, who have identified brain areas involved.<\/p>\n It is by far the most peculiar aspect of my own peak mystical experiences, which have not uncommonly involved a paradoxical sense that the self has at the same time been extinguished, and that it has expanded to include all that is, and possibly more than that. It can fluctuate, with the sense of self including anything from a small nugget within the body, through the body to the body and its immediate surroundings, the immediate neighbourhood, the world and the cosmos. The most persistent identifications (probably because they are limit situations) are with nothingness and with the All which is not less than the cosmos and which is God.<\/p>\n Meister Eckhart wrote “Thou shalt know him without image, without semblance and without means. – ‘But for me to know God thus, with nothing between, I must be all but he, he all but me.’ – I say, God must be very I, very God, so consummately one that this he and this I are one is, in this is-ness working one work eternally; but so long as this he and this I. to wit God and the soul, are not one single here, one single now, the I cannot work with nor be one with that he.”<\/span> (Sermon XCIX, from Happold, “Mysticism”). I think this captures some of the sense of the disindividuation which I am talking about.<\/p>\n One consequence is that from the point of my first peak experience, I have been unable to see anyone else as being entirely “other” to me, and indeed I had some early problems with an excess of empathy, in which the feelings of other people (which I was noticing to an extent previously inconceivable) tended to overwhelm me. I didn’t have difficulty “loving my neighbour as myself”, I had difficulty not being slave to every strongly felt wish around me to the occasional serious detriment of my narrower self-interest; my narrow self-interest was at times difficult to identify as my focus, my sense of self was so often wider than that. Another consequence, of course, was an inability to see humanity as in any absolute sense more valuable than, say, the animal kingdom, life generally or the cosmos at large; a concern for ecology is mandated as a small subset of this.<\/p>\n I had to develop some barriers against this lack of individuation overwhelming me in order to function sensibly in the world, in fact. It is all very well “dying to self”, but this opens up a confusion of competing influences unless one has the luxury of being able to settle into a life of more or less solitary contemplation and focus entirely on the All (God) and relationship with that All.<\/p>\n