I would also note soon after that 9/11 was an appropriate occasion for my reflection because this event was fully aligned with Otto’s and Jung’s numinous experience. As they suggested, all numinous experiences are compelling—whether positive or negative in nature. We are drawn to both new life and sudden death when they appear before us. Many years ago, James Redfield (1993) wrote a best-welling book called The Celestine Prophecy in which he describes experiences that grab our attention. They are scintillation and suggest another dimension of reality. Perhaps this is the type of experience that Matt Friedman assembles to suggest that a spiritual life does exist in the heart and soul of even a secularist like me. For a moment I will put on my psychologist hat and offer a somewhat different explanation for what Redfield (and perhaps Rudolph Otto and Carl Jung) have described.

I turn to the description of a dynamic process—the forementioned Peremptory Ideation. This unconscious process was proposed by George Klein—a researcher and theorists who brought together psychoanalytic theory and cognitive psychology (producing an integrative perspective known as “ego psychology”).  Many years ago, Klein (1967) proposed that in our internal world (psyche) we create a specific idea or image that begins to “travel” around our psyche (head and heart) picking up fragments of unconsciously held material (memories, feelings, thoughts). The train of ideation becomes increasingly rich and emotionally powerful. It picks up intrapsychic debris (images, thoughts, memories) as it moves through our unconscious mind.

At some point, this ideation begins to pull in material from outside the psyche. External events suddenly take on greater saliency (more emotional power and vividness)—and it is because they are now connected to the internal ideation. Klein suggested that this ideation now takes priority with regard to what is valued, attended to and remembered in the external world. It assumes a commanding (“peremptory”) presence. A positive (reinforcing) loop is created, with the external material now joining the interior material—all clustered around the original (often primitive) ideation.

While Klein focused on the internal dynamics of the peremptory ideation, I propose that this internal ideation might find alignment with a similar external ideation that is coming from the witnessing of a powerful event such as 9/11 or the birth of a baby. We can envision the internal ideation “hooking on” to the ideological “train” that is passing by outside ourselves. Particularly irrational and anxiety-saturated external ideation can be particularly attractive, given that the internal ideation is likely to be quite primitive. The internal ideation is often swirling with ghosts and goblins from our own childhood and the collective (unconscious) heritage of our ancestors and culture. With this powerful alignment of internal and external, we become victims of collective peremptory ideation. Attention is demanded by this new coalition: we are obsessed, closed-minded, passionate and driven to action. This might account for at least some of Matt Friedman’s assemblage.

The State of Spirituality

I have gained a third perspective on spirituality from Suzan Guest. She is a dear colleague (now deceased)–who served at one point as provost of my graduate school. Suzanne was an extraordinary psychologist who had also trained as a psychic at a training institute in her hometown of Vancouver British Columbia. An interesting requirement was embedded in the admissions policies of this ethical training institute. Graduates were not allowed to charge money for the psychic services they provide.