Mystical Musings in Mysore: A Lost Journal and a Curious Conversation

by Sam Glannon

A number of you have asked me about my experiences in Mysore - whether I would document them, write an ongoing blog about them, or otherwise describe and present them.

I have chosen not to do so thus far.

However, I will relate to you here a certain excerpt from the journal of Yogi Roscoe W. Chandler, one time passing acquaintance of Tat Wale Baba, whose formidable leather-bound journal, containing some two thousand pages of miscellaneous recollections, free verse, and pointless ravings. I found this journal, either lost or abandoned, in a short term rental apartment I was staying in.

It captures the general tone of my conversations while living in Mysore.

In it, he relates a conversation he had with a friend, Doctor Hugo T. Hackenbush, former consulting surgeon to the Maharaja of Mysore. Their conversation is transcribed in the journal as follows:

"...We were seated in the breezeway of the Santosha Cafe For Yogis, on the main road in Mysore, Karnataka State, South India. My friend was asking my opinion as to the merit or lack thereof in considering yogic and meditative experience as a source text for the investigation of the nervous system.

'It is my belief,' I began, 'that mystical experience has some utility in our efforts to consider novel solutions to the mind/body problem, although perhaps in your estimation, this utility is limited.'

'I don't entirely understand your idea, I'm afraid,' replied the Doctor, attempting to shoo away a stray kitten, which had climbed onto the table and was attempting to avail herself of his plate of eggs, 'get lost, you.' He repulsed the supplicant feline.

The Doctor continued, after drinking deeply from his fifteenth cup of chai - 'in the accounts of the mystics of human history, I perceive only the momentary delusions of recluses and hermits. What value this can have for the serious consideration of scientific matters I cannot readily see. Those of us who adhere to a modern materialist perspective regarding consciousness in the mode of Daniel C. Dennett cannot make much use of these things.'

'Perhaps it is useful to consider the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty,' I began by replying, 'and recall the experiments he carried out with World War I veterans. He investigated some aspects of human perception, and for instance phantom limb syndrome, as it was then known. By considering these sorts of phenomena, he was able to infer certain realities of the functioning of the human nervous system.'

'I am with you thus far,' said the Doctor, 'but I fail to see the connection to mysticism.'

'Consider for a moment,' I began, 'the difference between evaluating the truth or falsity of mystical experience in its content on the one hand, and of considering it as a formal subject of investigation on the other. Formal in this case meaning 'taken as a type', as a form, the way a novel or poem can be taken as a form. By this I mean considering it not as a direct statement of truth, but as an enunciation of an underlying reality in its mode or in its form.

Merleau-Ponty did not investigate the contents of the sensation of the missing limb, he investigated what it meant that the nervous system produced this effect.'

'Ahh, I am beginning to get your meaning,' replied the Doctor, 'go on.'

'And so think of meditation and the experiences produced therein as an access point to a domain of human experience which has something deeper to say about the person having the experience. Even further, that person is involved in that experience through their volition and in their perception in a way which is dialectical in nature. You might recall Henri Michaux's 'Miserable Miracle' as containing a parallel example of a slightly different nature. The experience is being experienced by and being produced simultaneously by the subject who perceives it.'

At this moment, we were distracted by numerous loud car horns from the adjoining street, as is typical in all of modern India, and I paused, looking around the cafe. Two Australian backpackers were pouring over a train schedule while eating pancakes. A heavily tattooed woman was asking the people at the next table where it might be possible to buy a copy of the Yoga Rahasya. A small man in the corner was reading Murakami, ignoring all else that transpired around him.

Once the noise subsided, I continued - "the fact of mystical experience itself is a testament to a number of realities, important ones, of human lived experience. Without delving more deeply into the substance of what I mean (and this, you realize, will be the subject of my nineteenth book, forthcoming in the year 2277) I will only comment that there is a dialectical relationship between language - by which I mean language-based thought of the sort we refer to as 'rational though' - and lived experience, such that each creates the other. Or to put it another way, mystical experience is the limit experience which shows the very boundary line of human rational thought.

Mystical experience is the lacuna through which consciousness may evade suffering itself, a great window in the sky through which the soul may escape from attachment to the material world.

"You're beginning to sound like some sort of new Terrence McKenna, I should say," replied the Doctor, intending by saying this to severely insult me. I took no offense at his sardonic comment.

After saying this, the Doctor lapsed into silence. I considered the matter closed.

'By the way,' I asked, redirecting the conversation to more mundane matters, 'I heard from our mutual friend, J. Cheever Loophole, that you're no longer acting as the physician to the Maharaja. What are you doing for work these days?'

'I'm making most of my money from selling intricate whirligigs on Tiktok Shop,' replied the Doctor. 'I derive some additional income from my side hustle, which is decalcifying oboes. And I'm translating the Bhagavad Gita into Esperanto with the assistance of my harmonium teacher. I'm also a yoga teacher.' "

There, the page is torn, and the text continues thereafter in recounting other indecipherable matters. This should give you some idea of the general tenor of my conversations and interpersonal interactions in Mysore, although it is not a direct account thereof.