On revelation

Eric Rhode, psychoanalyst and child psychotherapist, is a man of contemplation. In this beautifully presented book he focusses a ‘beam of darkness’, as proposed by Bion, into the unknown of human experience, drawing on myth, religion, poetry and literature to illustrate his central theme of revelation. He attempts to define the undefinable; the area of experience beyond the everyday, the void from which form emerges, the area of pre-thought and pre-imagination, only reached in a state of mind Bion refers to as ‘reverie’.

A strange coincidence occurred for me when beginning to read this book. I had recently visited Kathmandu, two weeks prior to a devastating earthquake in the region. I had purchased a Buddhist mandala and had hung it on a wall at home, unwittingly above a full length mirror resting on the floor. I soon realised that I had a choice: I

could either look at my reflection in the mirror, or if I raised my head I could see a shadowy outline of it inside the mandala. A choice between selfhood and dissolution of self; an experience exemplified through high altitude walking in the Himalaya. In On Revelation Rhode refers to the myth of the mirror of Despoina. In this myth there is a mirror encountered on coming out of the temple in which one’s reflection is seen dimly or not at all, but there is a clear view of the goddesses behind. The ego must be diminished for the vision to appear. The subject matter I was reading discussed the constant conjunction of coincidence that cannot be grasped by reason, and I seemed to be an active participant.

Rhode explores the unknowable beyond knowledge; the realm of experience outside rational, space and time-orientated cognitive functioning. He poses a question as to whether a sojourn into the unknown may be pathological. After all, to disconnect from the self is a state of mind preferred by children on the autistic spectrum who by-pass the task of human-relatedness and adaption to reality. This state of mind is recognisabl