Absorption
Two Studies of Human Nature
by
Johannes Bronkhorst
University of Lausanne
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ABOUT ABSORPTION
This book argues for the central role played by absorption in the functioning of the human mind. The importance of absorption makes itself felt in different ways; the two studies combined in this book concentrate on two of them.
The first one argues that, largely as a result of language acquisition, humans have two cognitive styles, which in normal circumstances are simultaneously active. Absorption is a (or the) means to circumvent some, perhaps all, of the associations that characterize one of these two cognitive styles, resulting in what is sometimes referred to as mystical experience, but which is not confined to mysticism and plays a role in various “religious” phenomena, and elsewhere.
The second study provides a theoretical context for the observation that absorption is a source of pleasure. Since the human mind is at least in part guided by pleasure, which it seeks to repeat, states of absorption leave memory traces that subsequently direct the mind. However, these memory traces do not “recall” the states of absorption, but rather the objects or circumstances that accompanied them. The resulting activity of the mind differs in this way from person to person, and can pursue wildly diverging goals.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Johannes Bronkhorst is professor of Sanskrit and Indian studies at the University of Lausanne. He has published widely in the history of Indian religious, philosophical and scientific thought, and in religious studies in general. Among his recent books: Greater Magadha (2007), and Buddhist Teaching in India (2009). A study, Buddhism in the Shadow of Brahmanism, is in preparation.