The Sociability of Sensations

Abstract

The following is a discussion of the possibilities for social integration presented by the interface between social and sensory experience in two groups whose interaction is based on an altered state of consciousness – ‘spiritualism’ and ‘transcendental meditation’ In spiritualism, group belief and activity are concerned with communicating with the spirits of dead relatives and others, through particular group participants or ‘mediums’. T.m. groups on the other hand are concerned with initiation and teaching in the use of a ‘mantra’, a Hindu meditation technique introduced into the West by Maharishi mahesh yogi, the movement's founder and leader. Such altered states offer a means whereby extremely individual experiences, such as those associated with psychosis and neurosis, can be acknowledged and made socially acceptable. The sensory impressions of spirit influence can take almost any form to be accepted as valid by participants, while it is a measure of the authenticity of the impressions generated during transcendental meditation that they cannot be successfully explicated. Thus the groups may be said to provide ‘acknowledgement by omission’ of participants' experience, and to represent examples of ‘sharing the unshareable’.2