Psychedelic apocalypse

Tanker's post Apocalypse next week? 02/16/08 reminded me of one of my favorite psychology books, Power: The Inner Experience (1975) by David McClelland. Despite the New Agey title, it's a mainstream psychology book. McClelland is probably best known for his organizational studies that look at the dynamics of participants' needs for power, "affiliation" (community) and achievement.

One of the chapters of his book is called "Visions of Power". It looks at various examples of what he calls power visions: the dream of the Sioux mystic Black Elk known from the book Black Elk Speaks; the Christian Bood of Revelation; some contemporary Christian power visions; and, a power vision from Richard Alpert, aka, Ram Dass. (Okay, maybe it's a tiny bit New Agey!)

The Book of Revelation is my favorite book in the Christian Bible for literary value. One of these days I'm going to post about how I myself have stood on the "throne of Satan" mentioned in Revelation. No, really. (Hint: it's in Berlin.) McClellan gives a great description of the book:

Revelation is a strange book. It reads like a dream - or, more precisely, like the experiences of someone who has just taken LSD or some other psychedelic substance.

Although I'm guessing most people would consider that a "bad trip", as the hippies used to say.

It is full of bizarre visual images - of dazzling thrones and angels, of horrible beasts and tortures. Difficult to understand in terms of ordinary interpretations of reality, it has led to considerable confusion among theologians who have tried to make sense of it. From the psychological point of view, however its thematic content is farily easy to understand. John, a disciple of Jesus Christ, reports the vision to seven Christian churches in Asia Minor whose members are being persecuted by Roman officials. His purpose is clearly to encourage them, to help them remain loyal to the church despite their sufferings. The whole first section of the book reports a message received directly from Jesus Christ stating unequivocably that He is planning to come again quickly. His followers, therefore shoud remain loyal, because when He comes He will reward them and punish forever those who do not believe in Him.

Such visions from the Bible obviously still speak to people today in some of the same ways that the presumably did in John's time. But there can easily be major translation problems, not just from the koine Greek but even more so from their conceptual world to ours. Dreams, visions and miraculous healings were a part of the lives of people in that time in a way that they are not for contemporary people, even mystical-minded Christians. And Revelation does indulge in an extreme polarization of good and evil.

To Frederick Nietzsche, the Western concept of evil originated in situations like those faced by the persecuted Christian churches. In his view, the Greek societies depicted in Homer and the classical tragedies knew good and bad, not good and evil. Or rather, the aristocrats who ruled those societies viewed the world that way. What was aristocratic was good, what was not aristocratic was bad. Not evil, in the sense of being despicable, horrible, repulsive, awful, etc., but bad. Bad to them primarily meant non-aristocratic.

He thought that Judaism developed a "slave morality", in which that aristocratic values were inverted but also changed. What was good was the life values of the slaves, the oppressed Jews. Their oppressors and their values were not just other, not just "bad", but "evil", absolutely to be condemned. And Nietzsche thought the Christian religion intensified that sense. His concept of the "slave morality" fits pretty well with the perspective of Revelation. The persecutors weren't just opponents, they were evil agents of Satan who must be destroyed and cast away into eternal fire.

McClellan summarized some of the psychologically valuable things and also more problematic implications of the power visions he studied, include Revelation. On the beneficial side of the ledger:

The virtues of power visions are self-evident. They deal effectively with the problems that originally bothered Buddha - the problem of suffering that arises from desire, the fear of death or non-being, and the impermanence of the material world (in Pali, dukkha, anatta, and anicca). Ideally through meditation and other techniques, one is able to experience union with the ultimate ground of being and to recognize desire, the ego, and material possessions as transitory and unimportant. One transcends them. In our psychological framework, the individual is released from the self as an origin of powerful acts and experiences submission to a power beyond the self. In a culture like the contemporary American culture, such an orientation has particular value, since Americans tend to overstress the self - the importance of self-reliance, of self-actualization, of making right choices for which the individual will be held accountable. (my emphasis)

But then there are definite down sides:

The limits of the power vision are equally apparent. It does not deal directly with problems of action and social organization; if it becomes the overwhelmingly dominant form of expression of the power need, it can even draw attention away from these problems. Black Elk found that his power vision was of little assistance in helping his people prosper as a nation. Personally it made him more effective, particularly in healing people, but as a means of helping to save his Sioux nation as had seemed possible, it was a failure. The same can be said of the Christian power vision in the early days after Jesus' death. It helped many people individually, but as a group they continued to be martyred and persecuted. John's vision promised that Jesus was to come quickly and straighten things out in the Day of Judgment. Yet He failed to come, at least in the worldly sense, and the church was left to solve the problems of action and social organization in other ways. Ram Dass' vision makes no promises about producing a better social order. It is oriented towards individual rather than social salvation. (my emphasis)

Then there's this:

Furthermore, the power vision works best in a social organization that is hierarchically arranged and run by one supreme authority, whether at the level of the ashram or of the nation state. In such situations, organizational matters are taken care of by a simple chain of command, and there is no necessity for committees to plan what should be done, for discovering methods of sharing power to make decisions at various levels, and so on. Although such organizations have an appealing simplicity, and often produce high morale, moder organization theory shows their limitations for accomplishing many tasks.

The sort of power vision that polarizes good and evil an such an extreme way as the Book of Revelation fits very well to authoritarian organizations and movements. We see it not only in many elements of the Christian Right but in cult groups of various kinds.

Tags: authoritarianism, book of revelation, christianity, david mcclellan