I’ve been watching Avengers : Age of Ultron, and it’s got me thinking about reason.

Specifically, on the state of reason, and the version of it I will call transcendental reason.

I have, in my mental peregrinations, achieved levels of insight that created a mental state unlike any other. It is both alienating and comforting, insightful and ignorant, disconnected yet hyperconnected.

It is, in my belief, the result of a certain mindset receiving the emotional input of a very high level of the sensation of insight. So high, in fact, that it empties the mind of everything else, and for a brief time, the individual exists in a mental space of seemingly perfect clarity.

And it… is…. marvelous.

Not for everyone, of course. For people without that particular mindset, it would be, I assume, positively ghastly. To them, it would feel like dying as all their hot-circuit emotions are shorted out and only the cold-circuit emotions remain. To them, it would be like being disconnected from reality entirely and left in a world without warmth, comfort, or humanity.

But to a certain mindset, a not entirely healthy one, it is bliss.

Suddenly, the cacophony of thoughts, suppressed emotions, and all the other noises of the mind are silenced, and that is what creates this sensation of utter clarity.

And for that particularly cerebral mindset, clarity means calm and calm means quiet and for once, everything makes sense and all is in order.

In this state of mind, all the complexities of the world seem laughably simple, the individual feels entirely in command of themselves, and everything feels like it is in the right place.

It is, in fact, the perfect complementary opposite of the mystical epiphany. It is my opinion that when mystics, the religious, and other transcendentalists have their spiritual breakthroughs, what is actually happening is that, by whatever means, they have managed to stun their left hemisphere minds into inactivity.

And the left mind is the separator, the divider, the discrete intellect. So when it is inactive, all separations disappear and, as a result, the person feels at one with the universe. All things are one, all separations are illusions, and all is warmth and light and love. Everything in the world glows with an inner light, and a feeling of enormous harmony and peace comes over the individual.

And it doesn’t matter whether things comes from thought, prayer, drugs, or meditation. The result is the same and that’s why transcendental mystics worldwide teach nearly identical lessons of unity, harmony, humanity, transcendent reality, and a very deep sort of meaning.

Transcendental reason, on the other hand, happens when this feeling of insight (however achieved) is so profound that it causes the right side of the mind to become functionally inactive, and therefore leaves the left brain all alone to run the show.

This is why it requires a certain kind of mindset to consider this enjoyable. It takes a mind that is heavily invested in reason\thought over intuition\emotion, and therefore is in constant struggle against the “noise” of emotion, intuition, the mystical mind, and so forth.

For such a mind, the sudden cessation of “noise” is bliss, and because it is the separating and ordering side of the mind that is in control, there is a sensation of perfect detachment from the world and all its hot-circuit complications, and everything being safely and neatly in order.

For people with that kind of mindset, like myself, this is marvelous. Peace at last. It is a sensation so profoundly moving and ecstatic that it might very well the thing that drives the search for knowledge and insight within the emotional machinery of the scientific mind.

If insight was sex, transcendental reason would be the orgasm, because it is akin to the pleasure of the insights that came before it, and yet of such a quantitative difference that it creates a qualitative difference as well.

The thing about it is that it is very, very cold. Emotion still exists, but it’s only the subset that is compatible with left-brain functioning. Even the bliss created by this state of mind is as cold as space. It is the bliss of relief from overstimulation, like escaping a hot, loud party into cool night air.

It would be easy to simply dismiss this phenomenon as some accident of mind or maybe, if we are feeling generous, an occasional bonus to reward the individual for being so intelligent.

But the kind of mindset that experiences these moments of transcendent reason is not a healthy one. It is, in fact, profoundly unhealthy, in that it treats most of what is going on inside its mind as useless (or worse) noise and ignores (and therefore does not deal with) everything but the small portion of the mental iceberg which shows above the water.

That is, shall we say, no way to run a railroad.

And no matter the polarity, transcendent experiences have a tendency to have a very profound experience on the individual afterward. This can lead to negative outcomes as the normal balance of power in the mind is thrown out of whack by the experience and causes the individual’s mind to break down.

And it often begins as something seemingly positive. The transcendent mystic becomes warm, generous, and overflowing with positive sentiment. The transcendent thinker becomes calm, confident, and even swifter of mind than they were before.

But we have two hemispheres for a reason. The mystic turns into the fanatic and loses all sense of proportion, personal autonomy, and moral restraint. The thinker turns into the brutal rationalist without mercy, empathy, or tolerance.

I don’t know what it is like to have the mystical transformative experience. It sounds wondrous and potential very therapeutic, but I have a feeling a rigidly reason-bound mind like mine is not open to that sort of transcendence.

But I have experienced the other end of the spectrum, and as wonderful and strange as it was, it was also profoundly alienating, and I would not wish to experience it again.

I am disconnected enough already, thanks.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.