Spontaneous Human Consciousness

Chapter 1: The Lamps of the Gods

While walking home from a hike in the woods early one evening, I looked up at the stars slowly emerging from the darkening sky, and thought, “The gods are putting on their porch lights.” Along with this thought came a feeling of awe and wonder, as though I was peering for the first time into a new and strange world. This new world had been there all along, so I felt, but I had just never noticed it. What immediately struck me about this vision is that there is something about the mind that can reach beyond the confines of one’s senses and touch a reality that lies beyond physical experience, and that what is seen in that reality is haunted with the distinctive qualities of the one who sees it.

From visions like this arose the religions and mythologies of modern humanity’s ancestors. It was not just the seeing of the sun, moon, and stars moving through the sky, but also the impressions left by the seeing of those things, that inspired the ancients to portray those events on the walls of their caves and to tell their stories from generation to generation. The passage of the seasons, with their cyclical changes of flora and fauna, inspired the ancients to worship the powers that moved those seasons. Indeed, every event in the natural world seems to have held the ancients in awe and reverence.

These impressions are the work of the imagination, the ability of the mind to form images and concepts of things that are not directly experienced, and to create fundamentally new ideas. Imagination is more than just the ability to recombine old ideas in new ways. It is the ability to see, or otherwise experience, things that are not directly detectable by the physical senses. What is suggested by the vision above is that imagination is also the ability to see into a dimension of existence that lies beyond physical space and time. To look at the stars and see the lamps of the gods is to reach beyond the senses into another world -- perhaps a world of mental imagery, or perhaps a world that is much more than that.

It was psychologist Carl Gustav Jung who realized that these visions are not simply the imagery of an individual mind. He spoke of them as “that which the outer impression constellates in the subject.” Just as the stars arranged themselves into constellations in the minds of the ancients, the stars and other natural phenomena experienced through the senses constellate images of an unknown dimension in the visions of mystics and seers both past and present. Constellation is the complement of imagination: the imagination sees what is hidden to the senses, but what is revealed to the imagination as something other than what is seen must have the power to constellate itself in the mind. For the stars to appear as the lamps of the gods, there must be something other than just stars constellating itself in the mind as another world.

The philosopher John Locke thought that objects have certain characteristics or qualities, which have the power to cause observers to see them in a certain way. An apple, for example, is not red in itself, but it has a certain surface structure that causes us to see it as red. Locke said that for the apple to appear red, it must have the “power” to make us see it that way. Constellation refers to something much like the “powers” of objects to cause one to see them as colored. When something is constellated in the mind, there must be something empowered to do the constellating.

What is this thing that has the power to constellate itself as the lamps of the gods? What appeared to the ancient mind as the thunder-god hurling bolts of lightning from the sky? What did the ancients really see when they spoke of the moon as the Goddess who is one but also three? What is it that revealed itself through the life and death of a humble carpenter from Bethlehem some two thousand years ago, and what moved an ancient prince to forsake his life of riches and become the Buddha? Whose voices did Joan of Arc hear, and who was it that visited Teresa of Avila on St. Peter’s Fest, when she reported that, “I could not help realizing that He was beside me, and that I saw and felt this clearly?”

Whatever it was, something happened in an ordinary way, but something very extra-ordinary was perceived, or understood by the mind. The term commonly applied to this kind of experience, where there is a difference between what the senses experience and what the mind understands, is hallucination. Used in this way, the word implies that there is really nothing there beyond what the senses detect, it is just a trick or delusion of the mind. There is another way in which the word hallucination is used, however. Richard Evans Schultes, the Harvard botanist who spent most of his life studying -- and often living among -- native tribes of the Amazon, and Albert Hofmann, best known as the inventor of LSD, wrote, in their Plants of the Gods:

In general, we experience life from a rather limited point of view . . . However, through hallucinogens the perception of reality can be strongly changed and expanded . . . Under the influence of hallucinogens, the borderline between the experiencing ego and the outside world disappears or becomes blurred . . . This state of cosmic consciousness . . . is related to the spontaneous religious ecstasy known as the unio mystica . . . a reality is experienced which is illuminated by that transcendental reality in which creation and ego, sender and receiver, are One.

Hallucinogens are chemicals that cause hallucinations, but the way in which Schultes and Hofmann use the word is very different from the way it is commonly used. Their use of the word implies constellation. There is something beyond the reach of the senses that is fundamentally different from ordinary reality. It can reveal itself to the mind as something quite ordinary, but carries an extra-ordinary meaning. It is the “transcendental reality,” a meaning hidden from the ordinary physical senses, that constellates itself in the mind during this type of hallucination.

But what exactly is this “transcendental reality”? The simplest answer is that it is the Unknown that constellates itself through images of the outside world, but this does not tell us much. We give it many different names: God, angel, ghost, demon, spirit, heaven and nirvana. These names don’t tell us anything other than we don’t know what it is. The Unknown is that which lies beyond the experience of the physical senses, beyond the world with which we are familiar, and beyond our ability to describe in any clear and accurate way. The Unknown is not the thing that is seen by the eyes -- it is something riding on the coat-tails of ordinary objects through the senses, and into the mind of the seer. There is nothing in the seeing of the stars themselves, as a sensory experience, to suggest the lamps of the gods. It is some other thing -- something outside the physical sensation of the stars -- constellating itself as the lamps of the gods, taking advantage, so to speak, of the visual image. I have stamped my perception of that unknown thing with an image I understand -- porch lights being turned on at night. But the vision has also stamped itself with something utterly unfamiliar -- the presence of beings totally unlike myself, totally outside any experience accessible to the senses.

It is this paradox of the familiar and the unfamiliar that gives these visions their psychological impact. They are impossible to understand logically. One may know that one is looking at the stars -- things known to science, involving fusion reactions and gravity, described by mathematical models and observable under experimental conditions. Stars are objects in space; yet it is in spite of this knowledge -- or perhaps in mockery of it -- that some other thing comes into the mind and seizes hold of the imagination. Constellating itself as a paradox, these visions of the Unknown present the intellect with a problem that will not go away -- a problem that lies beyond the power of the mind to fully understand, yet also compels it to try. They fascinate the imagination and seduce our logic and reason, filling the mind with awe and wonder.

This is the kind of vision that lies at the foundation of religions and mythologies. In this book I will present evidence and argue that they are also responsible for the existence of human consciousness. Consciousness is that faculty of the mind that is aware of experience, and is aware of itself. This awareness is called introspection; it forms the basis from which each individual experiences the world, and from which each individual initiates activity in the world. Consciousness is the center of one’s unique individual existence -- it is what makes you the person you are.

In asking questions about consciousness, we discover that there are as many different ideas about consciousness as there are persons who study it. We will focus upon those aspects of consciousness that are connected with introspection, imagination and constellation, and particularly with experiences that involve the mythological and spiritual aspects of human experience. By “mythological and spiritual aspects” I mean the creation of stories, symbols, belief systems, and practices associated with having visions of realities that lie outside sensory experience.

I will use the term portal experience to refer to experiences in which the consciousness of the individual interacts with the “transcendental realities” referred to by Schultes and Hofmann -- dimensions or forms of existence that are not a part of the spatiotemporal universe. The spatiotemporal universe is that form of existence or reality that exists in space and time, with which we are familiar through our senses and ordinary experiences. A portal experience is therefore an encounter between an individual with a physical body, and some form of non-physical being or dimension so different from the physical world that the senses cannot detect it. The term portal was chosen because if these experiences are what they are claimed to be, then they are journeys through gateways between different realities. These realities are so different from each other that one could not have a physical body and also be in the Unknown. One could, however, stand in the gateway between them without disintegrating -- one can be located at the point where these different realities touch.

It must always be kept in mind that in trying to describe non-spatiotemporal reality or existence, we are using metaphors that never accurately characterize the thing being described. Using these metaphors may tempt us to think that the way we explain these realities just is the reality itself. We might use a phrase like “outside of space and time” to describe the world of gods and spirits, for example. Of course it is impossible to be “outside” of space because location is defined in terms of space. If one is not “inside” space, then one does not have any location in which one could be “outside” of anything. We must not forget that these descriptions are metaphorical. They are like poetic comparisons of things with which we are familiar to thing we don’t understand. Metaphors suggest things to the imagination that cannot be accurately described with language.

Language that has developed out of everyday experience is not effective in describing abstract experiences or existences like infinite and eternal with much clarity. In attempting to use that language to characterize things that lie outside ordinary experience, we must not expect that the description will be completely accurate, or even close to the mark. It is a mistake to try to understand infinite, for example, as a great deal of space. Infinity is not just a lot of space, it is the absence of location in space. Likewise, eternal is not just a very long time, it is the absence of events being separated by time.

We might also be tempted by these metaphors to think that there must be some standpoint, outside of all these different dimensions, from which they can be viewed as one would view planets through a telescope. That, too, is misleading. If an individual exists at all, that individual exists in some particular way. Individuals cannot separate themselves from existence in one form or another, so there is no neutral standpoint from which portal experiences can be observed. One must be in one way or another to have them, which means one must necessarily experience them from some particular point of view. As long as we remain human, we can never be in the Unknown itself. The Unknown can only be seen through the imagination, and can only be understood indirectly when it constellates itself in the mind.

Do Other Realities Really Exist?

When we use metaphors like infinite and eternal to describe the Unknown, we raise the question of whether or not there is “really” anything out there other than the spatiotemporal universe with which we are familiar. Are portal experiences the results of constellation by some outside order of being, or are they hallucinations in the commonly used sense of the word -- products of a deluded mind? There are those to whom the idea of “other reality” appears to be nothing but silliness; at worst indicative of some kind of mental illness, or at best the work of an over-active imagination.

Metaphysics, as the word is used among philosophers, is the study of what exists and what does not. When we ask the metaphysical question of whether or not the Unknown -- meaning non-spatiotemporal reality -- exists, we are frustrated to discover that there is no satisfactory last-and-final answer to that question, nor is it likely that a last-and-final answer is possible. The reason for this is that the way in which we try to answer the question cannot be separated from beliefs of the person doing the answering. Everyone has certain basic beliefs about the way the world is -- what there is and what there is not, what is possible and what is not, and so on. Sometimes those beliefs are the results of theories or arguments. More often, however, they lie beneath the surface of conscious awareness as assumptions that do not make themselves obvious, but nonetheless play important roles in guiding the thoughts and beliefs of the individual.

The information suggesting the existence of non-physical worlds primarily comes from portal experiences -- personal encounters with those other worlds. To the person who believes there are no such worlds, these experiences are nothing more than mental confusion or illness. For the person who believes there are such worlds these experiences are evidence that supports or proves the existence of those worlds. To the person who has no idea whether there are such worlds or not, the information is ambiguous. Rather than leading one to believe or disbelieve in the existence of other worlds, the data serve more to reinforce an already existing belief, and it is not always clear where that belief comes from. While we often don’t even know that we have these beliefs, they control the way we interpret experiences, and they ultimately determine what kinds of things we regard as possible and impossible.

There is no laboratory experiment that will determine whether or not there exists a three-fold Moon Goddess. It is no argument against the existence of such a thing that everyone has not seen or felt it, or that you yourself may have neither seen nor felt it. That most people have never seen nor felt the radioactive element Californium-252 is not an argument against its existence, either. It would in fact be impossible to see or feel Cf-252 in the ordinary sense of seeing and feeling, and live to tell about it. Any quantity of the element sufficient to be visible or tangible would emit enough neutron radiation so as to be quickly lethal. Its existence can only be known indirectly, through the use of instruments by people trained in their use, coupled with beliefs that the instruments give certain kinds of information that support the belief in the existence of Cf-252. In other words, the data from the instruments constellate the existence of Cf-252 in the minds of those who use them.

The three-fold Moon Goddess cannot be detected directly, either. During ritual ceremonies, or as the result of meditations and visions, the presence of the Goddess may be felt -- that is, constellated in the mind of the participant. This assumes those performing these rites are properly skilled in their performance, and that the feelings or impressions they receive constitute evidence for the existence of the Goddess. These two cases are closely parallel. To the nuclear researcher, the data from the instruments constellate the existence of Cf-252, while to the pagan priest or priestess the visions, voices and feelings of a sabbat rite constellate the existence of the Moon Goddess.

The answer as to whether there exists a non-physical reality is, therefore, no closer. To offer empirical data -- information derived from direct experience -- as evidence only frustrates the problem. The more we ask the question, the farther we push into the psychology of the individual doing the answering, and the farther we get from what it is we really want to know.

One approach to this problem is to avoid it altogether -- to avoid confronting the metaphysical difficulty by confining the inquiry to something tamer. We could simply ignore portal experiences altogether, and ask about something else. One could confine the study of the mind to what surgery and experiments reveal about the brain. One could focus upon language use and ignore the metaphysics altogether -- although that approach has, on occasion, conjured up some quite perplexing metaphysical issues. Or one could simply proclaim that the brain is really some kind of computer, and assume the answers will come from computer science, eventually. While these approaches might be entertaining to some, they tell us nothing about portal experience or the consciousness that has them. Furthermore, as is painfully obvious in a society filled with worthless “scientific” explanations, they do nothing to alleviate the depression, malaise and senseless violence with which we are concerned. If we want to address these issues, we cannot hide in the philosophic cave and hope that portal experiences will go away.

We have to start somewhere, and in this book we will start by taking portal experiences seriously. We will assume, for the moment, that portal experiences are what they appear to be -- encounters with a non-spatiotemporal existence. By “taking seriously” is meant the same thing as believing that an instrument indicates the existence of Cf-252. Portal experiences constellate in the mind of the visionary the existence of a world totally unlike the world of space and time experienced by the senses. The nuclear researcher will, if not a fool, apply certain tests before going forward with the data -- tests on the instruments, perhaps experiments with the sample to test its purity, and so on. Likewise, the person having a portal experience will, if not a fool, apply certain tests on the accuracy of what is constellated by it. If the vision is of Christ, for example, do the sights, sounds and messages from the vision accord with what is known about Christ? Just as the researcher then proceeds on the assumption that what has constellated the data really is Cf-252, let us also proceed on the assumption that what has been constellated by the portal experience really is another form of existence, inaccessible to the physical senses. And both the researcher and the visionary must be prepared for the unexpected. Perhaps when the data do not accord with expectations, something fundamentally new in nuclear research may have been discovered. Similarly, those dealing with the subject of portal experience seriously must be prepared for the emergence of ideas very different from those of ordinary physical life.

One might immediately object that the introduction of the assumption that there are non-spatiotemporal forms of existence accessible through portal experience, also introduces a degree of circularity into the argument. If we begin by assuming that immaterialism -- the idea that non-physical realities exist -- is true, are we not just running around in circles if we wind up saying that consciousness is more than just the brain? Three points are offered in reply. First, if one is not to be a metaphysical coward, hiding in the philosophic cave from experiences and information about the world that might not turn out as expected, then one must assume something about what there is in order to collect and evaluate the evidence. The assumption of materialism -- that physical matter is all there is -- would, and when it is made does, introduce exactly the same problem. Second, from a purely formal standpoint, if it is assumed that the rules of ordinary logic hold, then any valid argument will have a conclusion from which its premises can be derived, and therefore any sound argument will in this sense be circular.

Third, and most important: it is perhaps not so important whether the argument is formally circular, as it is whether something has been gained by walking the circle. Circularity and question-begging are different things. The question-begging argument leaves us unenlightened, but the formally circular argument may lead to interesting discoveries about the circle. The study of metaphysics has yet to produce any final answers about what there is and is not, but the pursuit of that study has brought forth important discussions about the nature of human existence and the world in which humanity has found itself. Metaphysicians since Plato may still be running in circles, but they are hopefully ever-widening circles. Like the circle of the seasons that constellated itself as the earth-goddess in the minds of the ancients, thinking in circles might not be such a bad thing if the understanding of humanity and the world around it is enhanced in some way.

Perhaps this is all an attempt to intellectually justify the belief that thousands of years of human experience should not be ignored, simply because those experiences do not fit the reigning intellectual paradigms of the time. There is no obvious reason why portal experiences should be labeled “superstition” and ignored in considering the nature of consciousness. Whether portal experiences are pathological, psychological, or metaphysical cannot be decided without referring to standards that are themselves metaphysical assumptions. One can make such judgments only if one has already assumed what exists and what does not.

Since it appears that portal experiences may have some role in human consciousness, the only responsible thing for us to do is to present the hypothesis that there are other worlds known through portal experience, and investigate the relationship of this hypothesis to human consciousness. Neither this book nor any other, no matter what it claims, and no matter how pompous and presumptuous the author, can deliver a last and final proof or disproof of the Unknown that does not ultimately rest upon the beliefs, convictions, and motivations of the investigator.

Visions of the Unknown

The type of portal experience that has received the most attention from philosophers and theologians is the mystical experience. In some ways, mystical experience is the most spectacular and profound kind of portal experience. It has founded and destroyed entire religions and cultures; it has driven some insane, and brought others back from the depths of incurable insanity. It is the direct experience of the Unknown, a one-on-one confrontation with another world, often in a spiritual or religious context.

Mystical experiences can be of the extrovertive type, in which the seer feels an underlying union or “at-one-ness” with objects, or with the environment as a whole. The rites and meditations of nature religion may, if they progress far enough in the mind, lead to this feeling, and for this reason extrovertive experiences are sometimes called nature mysticism. This is the kind of experience Schultes and Hofmann meant by their use of the word hallucination. Introvertive experiences involve a direct union of the seer and the Unknown. In this type of experience, the seer loses all sense of his or her own being. At least psychologically, the seer exists in what Walter Stace calls an undifferentiated unity with the Unknown. This is the kind of mystical experience most often associated with religious contexts, in which the seer joins in mystical union with what he or she believes to be a supreme Power or God.

One characteristic that mystical experiences have in common is what Rudolf Otto called numinous feeling, which he describes in his Idea of the Holy:

(1) awe or dread, the feeling of something uncanny, eerie or weird,

(2) a sense of impotence and nothingness as against overpowering might,

(3) the conviction that one is confronted with something overwhelmingly alive, vital and active,

(4) a sense of mystery, of wonder over something which is, in at least some respects, radically other than the objects of ordinary experience, and

(5) fascination or attraction.

These numinous feelings occur in other portal experiences as well. They are signs that the Unknown has constellated itself in the mind; that a confrontation between the world with which we are familiar, and a totally alien form of existence is underway. The effect is sometimes called ecstasy or flow experience, and is perceived as a gradual melting away of the familiar world and one’s own mental faculties, as one “flows” into the Unknown.

Walter Stace, probably the most influential philosophical writer on the subject of mysticism, describes the experience of confronting the Unknown in his Time and Eternity. In that work he develops the Intersection Theory as a clear and concise explanation of what is happening during a mystical experience:

There are two orders, the natural order which is the order of time, and the divine order, which is the order of eternity. In the moment of mystic illumination the two orders intersect, so that the moment belongs to both orders. Within that single moment of time are enclosed all eternity and all infinity.

While Stace formulated this explanation specifically for mystical experiences, I will be using the Intersection Theory as the general model for all forms of portal experience. During portal experiences of any kind, there is a meeting in the mind of the spatiotemporal world and the world of the Unknown. Depending upon other factors connected with the experience, including the beliefs and expectations of the seer, and how the Unknown itself behaves, the seer may understand the experience in a variety of ways, including mystical union. During the experience the mind exists in a kind of metaphysical duality; the mind of the seer has, so to speak, one foot in the physical world and one foot in the non-physical. The body does not simply vanish into thin air, nor does God, or whatever the thing experienced may be, enter the physical universe. The two orders touch but do not collide or intermix, and the touching manifests in the mind as portal experience.

Portal experiences are the way we perceive or understand intersection -- when we come into contact with a metaphysical intersection, we have a portal experience. Intersections need not necessarily involve only two orders. Some versions of superstring theory, for example, argue for as many as twenty-three or more possible dimensions, so there is no reason to assume that there is only one kind of intersection. Constellation and imagination often work together during a portal experience, when the seer projects upon the Unknown a familiar image such as a religious figure, and information from the Unknown comes into the mind through that image.

Intersection always constellates itself as an irreducible paradox. It always has the characteristic of being understood in familiar terms, and yet also remaining somehow beyond comprehension. It is this paradox that fascinates, and often frustrates, the intellect to the point that many philosophers simply give up on the possibility of explaining it. There appears to be no clear explanation of how information from another dimension could ever really become conscious to a person with a physical body. This problem has led many to think that the content of the experience -- what it is about -- is simply an interpretation arising out of the mind and culture of the mystic. There really is no constellation of an Unknown, only the psychology of the mystic.

Constellation always embodies an essential tension between the perceptual experience -- what one sees and feels -- and the deeper feeling that what was experienced was something beyond sensations. In attempting to describe or understand a mystical experience -- or any portal experience, for that matter -- the mystic must resort to the use of a metaphor. Here we run into the same problem as with trying to describe the Unknown with language. Metaphors attach meanings that are understood to something that is not understood. The Unknown is so utterly different from anything familiar that in trying to familiarize, the metaphor necessarily falsifies what the Unknown is really like.

The Unknown world confrontation challenges the very structure of the mind itself -- it challenges the ability of individuals to understand themselves, and their relationship to experience and the outside world. During ordinary perceptual experience, there is a sense of continuity between subject and object -- a feeling of familiarity and orderliness in one’s relationship to the outside world, and that the object perceived is an object just like the person doing the perceiving. The presence of the Unknown in a portal experience fractures that sense of continuity. The portal experience cannot be relativized to ordinary perceptual experience without denying its essential character -- that it is of another world. The feeling that what is perceived is something like the observer is replaced by a feeling that the Unknown is so totally different that it can never really be understood.

Students of mysticism have attempted to circumvent this problem in two ways. Materialist reductionism is the attempt to make the problem of two orders vanish by declaring that there is only one order. Writes Timothy Leary:

Those aspects of the psychedelic experience which subjects report to be ineffable and ecstatically religious involve a direct awareness of the processes which physicists and biochemists and neurologists measure.

While Leary is referring to experiences resulting from hallucinogenic substances, the implication is that any mental experience is the result of goings on in the brain and nothing outside it. This position is characteristic of materialism -- the belief that the only things that exist are those made up of physical matter -- and its presumption is that there is no Unknown order.

In contrast to materialist reductionism, spiritual reductionism argues that the only reality is the Unknown order, and the world of sensations and behavioral experience is only an illusion. This view is occasionally found coupled to the suggestion that since possessions are all illusions, one should have no reservations about donating all of them to the individual teaching this view. Nonetheless, there is a common thread running through many traditions emphasizing mysticism that the physical world is only transitory and illusory at best, and the experiences that really matter are those of the spirit.

I mention this issue because it is a standard problem in the philosophical literature dealing with mysticism. If we are going to claim that portal experiences have an important role to play in human life, then we must be able to explain how the Unknown can affect the mind of the seer or visionary. It is because of this problem that neither a physical nor a spiritual reductionist theory of consciousness will be of any help. If portal experiences are to be taken seriously, then this problem puts us on notice that we had better have a theory of consciousness that explains how the Unknown-body interaction can take place. We must deny both forms of reductionism, and take both the physical aspects of the individual, and the spiritual aspects of the Unknown, as real and significant.

In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James writes:

It is as if there were in human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a perception of what we may call ‘something there’, more deep and more general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology supposes existent realities to be originally revealed . . . [several cases cited by James in the text] seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present reality more diffused and general than that which our special senses yield . . . Like all positive afflictions of consciousness, the sense of reality has its negative counterpart in the shape of a feeling of unreality by which persons may be haunted . . .

Mystical experiences leave us not only with the paradox of portal experience, but with visions of other worlds and existences that rupture our understanding of ordinary life. Once initiated into the dark and mysterious world of the Unknown, life can never be the same. We are also left with questions about ourselves, and particularly how it is possible for us to have an experience like this. If it is true that portal experiences are basic experiences, by which I mean that having portal experiences is fundamental to conscious human existence, then we need to understand what it is about us that makes these experiences possible. That characteristic turns out to be the fundamental greatness of humanity itself.

Mystical experience may be the most spectacular encounter with the Unknown, but the Unknown reveals itself to us in many other guises. Modern civilization, rooted in the materialism of scientific explanations and in its obsession with technology, teaches us to think that the only “reality” is what we see in our immediate surroundings. We are taught by boorish “skeptics” and pompous “authorities” to ridicule anything suggesting a reality that lies beyond the reach of technology. In spite of that, portal experiences occur today in many different forms, just as they did for the ancients. The discussion of other forms of portal experience that follows may therefore seem strange and ridiculous to those who have been seduced by pseudo-scientific philosophies and technology worship. The reader should heed the warning of Walter Stace in his Mysticism and Philosophy to expect the unexpected:

Anyone who intends to read this book should know that he must get accustomed to shocks. Any writer who is honest about mysticism, as well as familiar with it, will know that it is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary rules of human thinking, that it blatantly breaches the laws of logic at every turn. Many writers will attempt to . . . soften the shocks, to make the subject palatable to what they call common sense . . . But to do this is to falsify the whole matter, and nothing of the sort will be countenanced here.

Participation Mystique and the Dawn of Consciousness

The scientific method of the last several hundred years has taught us to think of ourselves as detached observers. We watch the universe as though through a telescope or a microscope; human observers are the subjects to whom the activities of objects in the universe appear. When the ancients watched the movement of the stars and the seasons, however, they did not see themselves as mere spectators. They believed themselves to be active participants in a dynamic and living world, actors in a drama that encompasses all of existence. Anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl called this feeling participation mystique. Participation mystique is the belief that individual human beings stand not alone in the world and apart from its events, but that we are active participants in the events of the natural world. The record of those beliefs is to be found in the mythologies, fairy tales and folklore of all peoples on Earth.

From Druidic rites of seasonal passage to Indian rain and buffalo dances, the mythologies and religious practices of pre-technological humanity reflect the belief that people are participants in the world of nature, both seen and unseen. Nearly every aspect of the natural world -- from the stars in the sky to the rocks on the ground -- constellated images of the Unknown in the minds of the ancients. Among the ancient Celtic peoples, for example, is the belief in what Evans-Wentz calls the Fairy-Faith:

By the Celtic Fairy-Faith we mean that specialized form of belief in a spiritual realm inhabited by spiritual beings which has existed from prehistoric times until now . . . And if fairies actually exist as invisible beings or intelligences, and our investigations lead us to the tentative hypothesis that they do, then they are natural and not supernatural, for nothing which exists can be supernatural.

According to this belief, fairies are invisible beings that inhabit natural places such as woods, rivers, and particularly mounds from which they occasionally emerge into the physical world. The belief is an instance of constellation: what is seen as a minute human form is something that has impressed itself upon the mind in that form. There are no “little people” running around in the ground beneath the feet, but there are forces or powers constellated by nature that reveal themselves in that way. Fairies are the constellated forces of the Unknown that make their way into the mind via natural phenomena, and take on minute human form.

Around these constellated images arises a belief system in which appeasing or offending the fairies can befriend or enrage nature itself. The fairies act as intermediaries between physical and non-physical reality, and it is the non-physical Unknown that structures the events of the physical world. Participation mystique is thus a two-way street: the Unknown manifests itself as images of fairies and other beings, and we in turn interact with the Unknown through the medium of these images. In contrast to the objectivism of modern science, these beliefs lead us to think of the world as interactive. Perhaps it is not really fair to call the “objective” view scientific, for as we shall see, this interactive view has re-surfaced in modern physics as the theory of a participatory universe.

From the psychological point of view, C. G. Jung refers to participation mystique in his Psychological Types as psychological identity:

[Psychological identity] is characteristic of the primitive mentality, and is the actual basis of participation mystique, which, in reality, is merely a relic of the original psychological non-differentiation of subject and object -- hence of the primordial unconscious state. It is, therefore, a characteristic of the unconscious content in adult civilized man . . Identity is primarily an unconscious equality with the object.

Psychological identity is the feeling of underlying unity between the individual and objects in the world. It is reminiscent of nature mysticism, and suggests that the portal experience of unity with nature may be a basic constituent of human consciousness. By saying that this unity is unconscious, Jung does not imply that it is merely psychological. In a later chapter, we will see why Jung believes this underlying unity is one of the factors necessary for the existence of consciousness.

Closely allied to participation is animism, the belief that there is a universal vitalizing or life-giving principle that underlies existence. Things (and people) exist only because they are connected with a vital force or power that moves invisibly throughout the universe. Animism gives rise to beliefs in tree-spirits, enchanted wells, and other natural objects and places holding mysterious powers. MacCulloch describes the role of animism in ancient Celtic beliefs:

The earliest Celtic worship, like that of most other peoples, was given to spirits of nature, of the sea, rivers, trees, mountains, sky, and heavenly bodies, some of which, as time went on, became more personal deities. All parts of nature were alive, as man was, and he found these friendly or hostile . . . The belief in animism, the belief that everything was alive, tenanted by a soul or spirit, has been universal.

Animism is a basic part of participation mystique. The feeling that humanity is a participant in the cosmos springs from the belief in an essential unity of the individual’s own being with the world through an invisible force. How is it that humanity came to believe in the existence of such a force? There is nothing in the direct experience of nature that suggests the existence of this force or unity. It is something that is constellated along with the sensory data of experience. One comes to believe in tree-spirits because when one looks at a tree, the Unknown uses the image of the tree to constellate itself in the mind.

It is not surprising that the ancients should have come to regard this unknown force as superior to themselves, when one considers the magnificence of its observed effects. Imagine the explosive cacophony of a thunderstorm, the blistering heat of the summer sun, the sudden flash in the night sky of a fireball. While contemporary scientific explanations may empty the mystery out of how these experiences occur, they can never explain why they happen. It is through this hole that the Unknown slips, unnoticed at first, gradually building in strength until it seizes the imagination, filling the mind with the same wonder that filled the minds of the ancients.

From this it is easy to understand the origin of nature-gods. What is not obvious is why it should have been gods that were imagined, and not, say, molecules bouncing in billiard ball fashion. Why should it have been the lamps of the gods that were constellated in the vision with which this book opened, and not visions of quarks and neutrinos?

The reason for this lies at the heart of consciousness itself. Constellation would be frivolous and uninteresting, and participation mystique would be silly and foolish, if just anything could be constellated in the mind. We shall discover in a later chapter that there are deep connections between consciousness and both the natural world and the world of the Unknown, and that something very much like the vital force is at work in consciousness. It is because of these connections and forces that the Unknown has constellated itself as nature spirits and gods. These connections form the basis for the existence of consciousness, and it is for this reason that portal experiences are necessary conditions for the existence of human consciousness.

Not only does participation mystique have a fundamental role to play in the existence of consciousness, but it is also important in the creation of mythologies. In The Masks of God: Primitive Mythologies, Joseph Campbell writes:

The sense, then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously subjective and objective experience (participation), which is all alive (animism), and which was produced by some superior being (artificialism), may be said to constitute the axiomatic, spontaneously supposed frame of reference for all childhood experience, no matter what the local details of this experience may happen to be. And these three principles, it is no less apparent, are precisely those most generally represented in the mythologies and religious systems of the whole world.

Mythologies can be thought of as what psychologist Julian Jaynes calls a “paleontology of consciousness.” They are records of portal experiences, and of the emergence of human consciousness. In the folklore of each culture is to be found the way in which that culture understood not only the physical world, but also the way in which the Unknown constellated itself in the members of that culture. There is a saying in developmental biology that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” meaning that the physical development of each individual in some ways repeats the evolutionary history of the species to which that individual belongs. Similarly, through the work of Jung and Campbell, it has come to be realized that to a very great degree, psychology recapitulates mythology. The psychological makeup of each individual in many ways repeats the mythology of that individual’s culture, and more interestingly, repeats those elements of mythology common to all cultures. Many of those elements rest directly upon participation mystique, which again points us toward the role of portal experience in the creation of consciousness.

While usually thought of as an ancient relic, participation mystique can be found in modern culture. Not only in abstract theoretical physics, but also in what has come to be called the Old Religion, a rather loose collection of beliefs deriving from ancient paganism. Margot Adler characterizes the Old Religion as follows:

If you were to ask modern Pagans for the most important ideas that underlie the Pagan resurgence, you might well be led to three words: animism, pantheism, and -- most important -- polytheism . . . Animism is used to imply a reality in which all things are imbued with vitality . . . All things -- from rocks and trees to dreams -- (are) cconsidered to partake of the life force. At some level Neo-Paganism is an attempt to reanimate the world of nature; or, perhaps more accurately . . . to reenter the primeval world view, to participate in nature in a way that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood . . . Pantheism . . . is a view that divinity is imminent in nature . . . The idea of polytheism is grounded in the view that reality (divine or otherwise) is multiple and diverse.

The Old Religion uses both ancient and modern rites and methods to attempt to re-insert the individual into the world of participation mystique. The rising popularity of pagan belief systems is a sign that people are becoming increasingly aware that modern culture has separated them from some basic part of their own existence. While the “scientific” mind looks for laws and punishments to control the increasingly violent behavior of society, others have realized that the solutions must come from within, and indeed from the very forces that shaped the origins of humanity.

Jung, Campbell and Adler all argue that participation, as well as being characteristic of the ancient world, is also characteristic of contemporary childhood. The feelings of participation and unity found in mythology arise spontaneously within each individual, often during childhood as well as adult life. During dreams and fantasies, the spontaneous appearance of participation mystique signals the onset of individual consciousness -- it recapitulates, on an individual basis, the historical development of consciousness in the human species. What is called “maturity” in technological society refers at least in part to the loss of participation. The fantasies, dreams, feelings and ideas of participation are ridiculed and repressed -- pushed out of conscious awareness -- because they don’t fit the world of technnology and complex social order. This repression has dangerous consequences, for it can lead to the disappearance of consciousness itself.

As Jung pointed out, participation and psychological identity are not really lost when they become unconscious. By rekindling the beliefs and ideas that pre-date technology and urbanized society, the Old Religion brings forth the repressed capacity for participation. These are the very same beliefs that, according to Jung and Campbell, arise spontaneously within the minds of the ancients, the children of today, and during the use of psychoactive substances. The beliefs, activities and feelings of animism, pantheism and polytheism associated with participation mystique so rigorously suppressed by modern society will turn out to be the source of human consciousness and the greatness of human individuals that has been lost. That loss is the source of malaise, depression, and ultimately the outbreaks of senseless and destructive violence that permeate the world of today. If we are to confront and overcome these problems, then we may well have to give up some of our social “maturity” to recover some of the most basic human traits that society and technology have stolen from us.

Peering Through the Darkness of Time

Divination is the process of “finding things out” that cannot be discovered through the ordinary physical senses. Whether it is communicating with another person (living or dead), discovering information about the past, present or future, or communication with some divine being, divination is a matter of obtaining information about, or through, a reality inaccessible to the physical senses.

In The Waxing Moon, Helen Chappell explains divination as follows:

Divination means “finding the will of the gods.” [It] is the art of seeing the past, present, and future. It is the transcendence of that nebulous concept we call time . . . Somewhere in the heart of the cosmos, what we call time has no relevance. The past, present, and future are merely words there. Some part of everyone’s brain is tuned into this cosmos, although we are not consciously aware of it. Subconsciously, of course, we are aware of it, and this motivates our actions. In order to activate the latent non-time mind one uses a tool.

This “somewhere in the heart of the cosmos” is really another term for what I have called the Unknown -- it is a dimension or form of existence that is not spatiotemporal. The idea behind divination is that if we could “move” our ability to perceive out of our ordinary world of space-time and into a form of existence where events and objects are not separated by space and time, we would then be able to “see” not only the past and the future, but also persons and objects at great distances. If we are to remain human, we can’t really leave the world of space and time, but we can “touch” that other dimension through intersection. For divination to work, we would need to have a portal experience during which we look into the Unknown and then look back at our own world at another time or location.

Because this kind of divination, called scrying, involves the constellation of images from the Unknown, the visions are not always as clear as one would like. The visions are very often metaphorical or symbolic, and are subject to interpretation, not only by the seer but by the person consulting the seer. Worse, it is difficult to tell whether what is “seen” is the result of constellation alone, or contains elements projected into the Unknown through the imagination of the seer. This problem often results in “the future” looking conspicuously like what the seer wants it to be.

It is to get around this problem that those who practice divination go through some kind of training. The purpose of the training is to “quiet the mind” -- to turn off the imagination -- and to subdue the tendency of the mind to project upon the Unknown what it wants to see. As part of that training, many who practice divination utilize a “tool” of one kind or another, such as the familiar crystal ball. This tool serves as both a hypnotic cue to hold the imagination at bay, and as a sensory image through which forces from the Unknown are constellated, much like a tree serves as the image through which spirits and fairies appear.

Chappell describes one training regimen for using a crystal ball:

The apprentice is taken to a dimly lit room at the same time each day and made to sit in front of the crystal presented to her by her teacher. The student gazes at the crystal for a certain length of time each day. It may take weeks, even months, before she will see anything, if she ever does at all. The apprentice can expect the crystal to cloud from within, and grow dark. After a time, the cloud will part to reveal scenes and objects that must be interpreted by the scryer.

What is acquired during this training is sometimes called the second sight, or seeing with the mind’s eye. Scrying is the ability to visualize things not directly obvious to the senses through portal experience -- to hallucinate on command, in the way Schultes and Hofmann use the word. The eyes of the seer focus upon the crystal, while the mind opens itself to images that constellate through the crystal, arising from the intersection of the mind of the seer with the “heart of the cosmos.”

Scrying works by bringing the conscious mind into contact with the unconscious part of the mind that is connected with the Unknown. This intersection generates images that are, hopefully, reflections in the Unknown of other times and places in our own world. Chappell’s comment that some part of the unconscious mind is already “tuned in” to the heart of the cosmos is interesting because as we will see in a later chapter, Jung also thinks this is true. Jung’s proof of this idea will have important ramifications in understanding the nature of human consciousness. Not only that, but it may “foretell” significant events in the future of the human race.

While scrying is an attempt to produce visions of the Unknown at will, these visions may also occur spontaneously, most often during dreaming. While asleep, many of the repressions and social controls over the mind are relaxed, allowing us to become aware of things that social conditioning teaches us to ignore. During dreams, lines of communication open up within the mind, and images that are normally unconscious, such as that part of the mind “tuned in” to the heart of the cosmos, may appear. In cultures where portal experiences are taken seriously, dreams are often considered prophetic, and are used as sources of guidance. We have a great deal more awareness of, and control over, our dreams that is commonly believed, and many seers train to develop this faculty as a source of visions.

Not only is the Unknown connected with the unconscious mind, but there are aspects of our own selves that are locked away in the unconscious. Once the social controls of ordinary life are relaxed during sleep, we may see a part of ourselves we didn’t know was there. Among followers of the Old Religion -- and members of some psychoanalytic traditions as well -- dreams are thought to reveal the “real” person, while the waking personality is a kind of facade. There is an inner, hidden self that is the actual person. The part of the person that interacts with the rest of the world is not the real person, but is a sort of mask presented to others, a shell that surrounds and hides the real self. Social interactions delude one into thinking this “shell self” is the real self. Through dreaming one discovers who one “really” is -- the self behind the social shell.

Another more familiar form of divination is astrology. Astrology is commonly misunderstood as a kind of fatalism, a belief that one’s future is firmly set according to outside events, and the course of one’s life cannot be changed. That is not the idea at all. That we can see a reflection of ourselves in events around us is simply another form of participation mystique, and there is no suggestion that we are powerless to change those events.

It was with great contempt for closed-mindedness that Newton, who believed in astrology, rebuked a colleague who ridiculed the subject: “Sir, I have studied it, you have not.” As Max Heindel writes:

There is a side of the Moon which we never see, but that hidden half is as potent a factor in causing the ebb and flow of the earth’s tide, as the part of the Moon which is visible. Similarly, there is an invisible part of man which exerts a powerful influence in life, and as the tides are measured by the motions of the Sun and Moon, so also the eventualities of existence are measured by the circling stars. . .

For centuries many have believed that the patterns of their lives, and the events of the world, can be observed in the patterns of the stars and planets. The point in astrology is that there are hidden aspects of our lives and our world, much like the unconscious mind, that influence the events of our lives. By studying the patterns of the stars and other astronomical phenomena, we become aware of how these unseen forces manipulate the events of the world, and therefore how we can more effectively interact with those forces. Individual events are not necessarily predictable, but general trends in the course of one’s life may be seen in the patterns of stars and planets.

Much as throwing a pebble into the sea forever alters the course of the tides, so the things we think and do influence other events in the universe. Similarly, the patterns of events in the universe alter the course of individual lives. These influences are not always easy to observe directly. By careful observation of patterns of events in the cosmos, one can, according to this theory, observe the effects of these subtle influences.

Perhaps the most important role astrology has played in human consciousness is as a form of participation mystique, in which visions of gods, spirits and ideas have constellated themselves through the images of objects in the heavens. Recalling the vision with which this chapter opened, the stars and planets have historically been the most important source of portal experiences. The gods, goddesses, spirits, angels and demons of not only the Old Religion, but many contemporary belief systems as well, first made their appearance to seers through the celestial bodies. Considering the spectacle presented by the night sky in non-urbanized locations, and the spectacular astronomical events that often unfold in that sky, it is not surprising that the stars, planets, and other sky objects held the ancients in awe, and that many things were constellated through them.

One of the most sophisticated forms of divination involves the use of tarot cards. The origin of the tarot is unknown, and is often the subject of imaginative speculation. Some think they were found painted on the walls of the Egyptian Pyramids, while others claim the cards were given as visions from gods or angels. Whatever their origin, modern tarot decks usually consist of 78 cards, divided into four suits of ten numbers and four court cards each, plus an additional 22 non-suit cards called the major arcana. Most of the mystery surrounding the cards centers on the major arcana. Jung claims that these 22 cards are visual representations of the unconscious mental processes he calls archetypes, of which more will be said later. The turn-of-the-century magician and occultist Aleister Crowley set his sights a bit higher in his Confessions:

The true significance of the Atus of Tahuti, or Tarot Trumps [major arcana], also awaits full understanding. I have satisfied myself that these twenty-two cards compose a complete system of hieroglyphs, representing the total energies of the universe.

When used in divination, the images on the cards serve as vehicles for the constellation of information from the Unknown in the mind of the reader. Whether one believes that the future can be foretold, or that they are symbolic representations of the unconscious mind, or that they are indeed representations of the “total energies of the universe,” the cards often do bring forth knowledge that appears hidden from ordinary consciousness and the senses. The effect is much the same as with a crystal ball, except that the images on the cards focus the imagination of the reader, as opposed to “quieting the mind” and turning the imagination off.

How strange this discussion must seem -- of gods and goddesses, of crystal balls and foretelling the future -- to the scientifically educated and informed mind of the twentieth century! Before heeding the obnoxiously pompous and eternally verbose “skeptics” who claim this is all nonsense, the reader should keep in mind that it is the scientifically educated and informed mind, and not the mind of the ancient diviner, that suffers from malaise and depression. Any argument presupposes a willingness to consider alternative points of view. In this book we make an even stronger demand upon the reader: a willingness to consider the possibility that the world might not be as one expects. There is much to be learned from ideas one might consider strange, and much to be lost when the mind is closed to those ideas without giving them any consideration. This is especially true when those ideas, strange as they may seem, turn out to be what kept ancient peoples from falling into malaise and depression in the first place.

Manipulating the World with the Mind

So far, we have focused on ways in which the Unknown constellates images in the mind. But if the Unknown can affect us through unseen forces, might it not also be possible for us, through the mind, to affect the Unknown as well? Just as the Unknown has the power to constellate itself in our minds, we have the power to constellate ourselves in the Unknown. We can imagine the world being different than it is and, by projecting the imagination into the Unknown, we can use the Unknown to affect events in our own world.

Magic, sometimes also spelled magick, with the “k” added by Aleister Crowley to distinguish it from that which “has attracted too many dilettanti, eccentrics, and weaklings,” is not so much an escape from reality, as it is an attempt to form and influence it. Magic is the reverse of divination: it is the attempt to alter the structure of the familiar world, by projecting one’s thoughts through the Unknown dimension of intersection.

Magic has been variously defined as “The science and art of causing change in conformity with the will” (Aleister Crowley), “The science of the control of the secret forces of nature” (Samuel McGregor Mathers, founder of the Golden Dawn), and “The art of getting results” (Dr. Gerald Gardner, founder of the “Gardnerian” sect of Wicca). It is a complex subject with many disciplines, traditions and practices. We will confine our examination of magic to its relationship to portal experience and consciousness.

While participation mystique draws the individual into a deeper understanding of the world, sympathetic magic is the attempt to influence events in the world through symbolic acts, using powers outside the realm of physical interactions. Sir James Frazer explains it thus in The Golden Bough, his classical work devoted to the study of the subject:

Analysis shows that magic rests everywhere on two fundamental principles: first, that like produces like, effect resembling cause; second, that things which have once been in contact continue ever afterwards to act on each other. The former principle may be called the Law of Similarity; the latter, of Contact or Contagion. From the one the magician infers that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it in advance; from the other, that whatever he does to a material object will automatically affect the person with whom it was once in contact.

In its simpler form, sympathetic magic forms the basis of spell casting, magical charms, talismans and so forth. By doing something symbolically on a small scale, using objects that take the place -- in the mind -- of the objects or persons one desires to change, magic can affect those larger objects through the Law of Similarity. The effect is a kind of symbolic resonance, similar to the phenomenon of one tuning fork causing another to vibrate without touching it. Resonant vibrations are set up between the mind of the magician, forces in the Unknown, and objects in the world, so that the magician can alter the behavior of objects (including persons) without touching them. The spell can be made more potent, according to the Law of Contagion, if one of those symbolic objects is something that was once in contact with, or can be placed in contact with, the objects or persons to be affected.

For example, one can create a “love spell” using candles to symbolize the lovers, and going through, doll-house fashion, some kind of love ritual. The symbols can be made more effective if they incorporate hair, nail clippings, or other “relics” of the persons involved, and even better, if the symbolic objects can be placed in contact with the persons they represent.

Now all of this seems very silly to the “scientific” mind, and it would be silly if the symbolic acts were the whole story. To make the spell work, it must become a portal experience. While performing the symbolic ritual, the mind of the performer must be in a state of intersection so that the symbols and symbolic acts are projected into the Unknown-world, in the same way that the Unknown projects itself into the mind during visions. According to the Law of Contagion, the symbolic projections into the Unknown-world attract and affect the things they resemble in the physical world. The same kinds of “tools” used in divination are used in magic to help the spell caster enter and navigate the portal experience. There are considerations of proper colors, oils, incenses, and even the hour of the day and phases of the moon in operating with the Laws of Similarity and Contagion. As is the case with divinatory visions, whether such spells really work, or are simply psychological play toys, depends less upon metaphysics than upon the skill and discipline of the spell caster.

Some traditions in magic turn away from attempts to alter the physical world, and focus more upon spiritual development. The practices used by these traditions combine both participation and magic to produce mystical experiences that interconnect the individual with the Unknown at the deepest levels of experience and understanding. By doing this, one can establish communications with a part of one’s own person that has access to the vast stores of knowledge contained in the Unknown. The intention is not so much to transform the world, but to transform the self with these powers and knowledge.

In contrast to simple spells and magic for spiritual development, which are usually private affairs, the great Druidic fire festivals of ancient Britain and Europe were the “media events” of their time. These magnificent affairs exemplify participation mystique on its grandest and most spectacular scale. As Frazer describes them in the Golden Bough, great bonfires were lit on the eves of the solstices and equinoxes. The purpose of these fires was -- and still is, where these traditions are still practiced -- to “draw down” the power of the sun, using the Law of Similarity. Burning embers, and other objects placed within the fire, are thought to hold the power to banish evil, just as the sun has the power to banish the darkness of night.

The Druids had two additional fire festivals that were held on the eves of Beltane (May 1) and Samhain (Nov. 1). Since these festivals do not coincide with any obvious astronomical phenomena, they are not simply attempts to imitate the power of the sun. Rather, Frazer traces the origins of these fire festivals to the ancient sacrificial rites of the Celts. During these rites, criminals and persons suspected of being witches and wizards who cast malevolent spells were burned in wicker baskets or other enclosures, along with animals suspected of being witches in disguise. The banishing power of fire, according to Frazer’s analysis, comes from the myth of Balder, son of the Norse god Odin, who was slain by a flaming mistletoe provided by the trickster-god Loki. It is this mythological power that is invoked by these fires. By imitating the power of fire to destroy a god, the celebrants hope to call forth that power to banish evil from their communities, and bring forth prosperity.

These rites are symbolic acts, through which the participants hope to influence the world using the mysterious powers of the Unknown. Instead of using physical objects to connect with the Unknown as in spell casting, these rites attempt to open communications with the Unknown through mythology. Myths are records of participation mystique: they are stories by which the Unknown is understood in a given culture, and often they are also the means by which members of a culture connect themselves to the Unknown itself. As Joseph Campbell writes in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space:

Mythologies are addressed . . . to questions of the origins, both of the natural world and of the arts, laws, and customs of a local people, physical things being understood in this view as metaphysically grounded in a dreamlike mythological realm beyond space and time, which, since it is physically invisible, can be known only to the mind . . . all the passing shapes of the physical world arise from a universal, morphogenetic ground that is made known to the mind through the figurations of myth.

Mythologies provide a framework through which the Unknown is understood. They are metaphors, as Campbell argues, for things that cannot be understood directly, and can be personal as well as cultural. Being metaphors for the Unknown, they are also points of contact, so to speak, by which the doors to the Unknown can be opened. Practitioners of both mysticism and magic use symbolic rituals derived from mythology to create portal experiences through which they can interact with the Unknown. Myths provide a familiar symbology for communication with the Unknown -- they are the “language” with which we speak to the Unknown world, and, as we shall see, they are also the means we use to communicate with the deepest parts of ourselves.

Consciousness Outside the Body

Magic and divination both involve interactions between ourselves and the eternal and infinite Unknown. Whatever the Unknown may be, it is something fundamentally different from what we are. But, as Chappell mentions, there is a part of our own selves of which we are not directly aware. This hidden part of our own minds, which we call the unconscious, has its own connections with the Unknown, and experiences the world in ways very different from our ordinary senses. Connecting with that inner part of our own selves is one way of stepping through the gateway into the Unknown.

This kind of conscious-unconscious interaction occurs during astral projection and out-of-body-experience or OOBE. These phenomena suggest that consciousness can be separated from the physical body. Under normal circumstances consciousness does not really leave the body, but during the portal experience associated with these phenomena, consciousness intersects with those parts of the unconscious that are non-physical. This intersection gives the impression that the mind has left the body, and in a very real sense the impression is correct. In magic, we project our ideas through intersection into the Unknown; in an OOBE it is our own selves that moves through the gateway, via that unconscious part of the mind that is connected with “the heart of the cosmos.”

The main difference between astral projection and OOBE is that OOBEs are generally spontaneous, while astral projection is something one practices in order to accomplish. OOBEs include many prophetic visions, in which the mystic is guided through some vision or world by another being, such as in Dante’s Inferno. The near-death experience is another form of OOBE in which a person near physical death, or sometimes under anesthesia, has visions of other worlds or other times and places.

Astral projection is the intentional act of projecting one’s consciousness outside of the body. It is closely related to lucid dreaming, a state of dreaming in which one retains one’s normal conscious faculties. During lucid dreaming, the individual retains normal cognitive and rational abilities, but finds one’s self situated in a very different world than the one to which those faculties are accustomed. Lucid dreams may happen spontaneously or as the result of practice, and learning how to have lucid dreams is one of the steps in learning astral projection.

Whereas a mystical experience usually involves the disappearance of one’s personality, the idea behind astral projection is to maintain one’s awareness and other conscious faculties while interacting with other worlds, or with the physical world using non-physical powers and forces. Astral projection is the process of transferring one’s consciousness into some reality or state outside the physical world. This transfer allows the individual to perceive things that are not accessible to the physical senses, and to act in ways that are physically impossible. The process basically consists of three steps: (1) Visualizing a form of one’s self, which may be the ordinary human form or the form of an animal or tree, along with appropriate surroundings; (2) Transferring one’s consciousness to that form; and (3) Performing some task while consciousness resides in that form.

Aleister Crowley, in Liber O, offers the following instructions:

1. Let the student be at rest in one of his prescribed positions, having bathed and robed with the proper decorum. Let the Place of Working be free from all disturbance, and let the preliminary purifications, banishings and invocations be duly accomplished, and, lastly, let the incense be kindled.

2. Let him imagine his own figure (preferably robed in the appropriate magical garments and armed with the proper magical weapons) as enveloping his physical body, or standing near to and in front of him.

3. Let him then transfer the seat of his consciousness to that imagined figure; so that it may seem to him that he is seeing with its eyes, and hearing with its ears. This will usually be the great difficulty of the operation.

4. Let him then cause that imagined figure to rise in the air to a great height above the earth.

5. Let him then stop and look about him (It is sometimes difficult to open the eyes).

6. Probably he will see figures approaching him, or become conscious of a landscape. Let him speak to such figures, and insist upon being answered, using the proper pentagrams and signs, as previously taught.

Astral projection is commonly used in ritual magic, when it is desired to perform the ritual in some real or imaginary place to which the magician does not have physical access. Similarly, contemporary witches celebrating moon or seasonal rites will often project themselves into locations appropriate to the rite; it is common practice for witches to meet with their “covens” on the “astral plane”. This is the basis of the belief in witches flying on brooms, and of their taking the shapes of animals. It is also the idea behind lycanthropy, the belief that persons can “transform” into wolves or other creatures.

One of the most significant aspects of astral projection and OOBE is that there exists considerable scientific evidence to support the validity of these phenomena. Parapsychologists have amassed not only anecdotal but also experimental evidence in this regard. Charles Tart writes in Transpersonal Psychologies:

What makes the OOBE of parapsychological interest is that it sometimes involves paranormal elements: the experiencer not only feels himself to be at some location distant from his physical body, he accurately describes what is going on at that location, the description is later verified, and we can be reasonably certain that there was no ordinary way in which he could have acquired this information.

What is most puzzling about astral projection is that it gives the impression that the mind and the body can separate from one another. Even if it is through the unconscious that we experience the worlds of dreams, spirits, and magic, the scientific evidence supports the fact that there is at least some part of us that is not a part of the body and the physical world. If this is true, then maybe mystical experiences, participation mystique, divination and magic are really no more “supernatural” than ordinary seeing and hearing. Our assumption that portal experiences are experiences of Unknown worlds and existences appears to have the same kind of scientific support as the existence of radioactive elements.

No wonder the materialist and the “skeptic” expend so much effort ridiculing the phenomena of portal experience. The very people who demand “scientific proof” of everything are the ones who are the most afraid of the evidence. If portal experiences are genuine, then there is another world, we are not just bodies in a social culture, and there is more to life than the routines associated with modern society. Worst of all, this means that materialism is not just a false theory -- it is an outright lie, perpetrated to keep people from knowing the truth about themselves. And it is not a harmless little “white lie”. The violence and misery of modern life arises directly from people not understanding who and what they really are, and living their lives as something they really are not.

What is Human Consciousness?

To address problems such as depression and random violence, we must discover what is different about the world of today from the world of the past, and why that difference has led to these problems. What has changed is the sense of human greatness that arose in the past through portal experience, and has disappeared from individuals in the modern world. Now that we have seen some of the experiences out of which that greatness arose, we must directly address the nature of the greatness itself.

We have called the greatness consciousness, but what exactly does this word mean? The meaning of the word consciousness is expressed as a theory: an explanation of what consciousness is, how it came into being, and how it does the things it does. Theories and explanations are usually given from some point of view -- as consciousness relates to language, memory, behavior, and so on. Since we are looking for the lost greatness of human individuals, we will consider consciousness under the circumstances in which it originally appeared -- in the context of portal experiences and the effects they produce in human consciousness: constellation, imagination, participation mystique, and other phenomena connected with spirit and the Unknown.

Let us begin by saying, as a preliminary definition of consciousness, that it is the faculty of the mind that is aware of itself, and is aware of experience -- it is the ability of the mind to know what is going on. This awareness pertains to ordinary sense experiences like taste, touch, and so on, to thoughts and ideas, to emotions and feelings, to memory and imagination, and to portal experiences. The fact that consciousness does so many things, and can be aware of so many different kinds of experience, makes coming up with a precise definition of consciousness difficult. Consciousness seems to be a different mental faculty, depending upon the point of view from which one considers it.

Some faculties of the mind can be easily eliminated as functions of consciousness, although the list might at first be somewhat surprising. Consciousness is not what enables one to play the piano, for example. The pianist who thinks about what each finger is doing will surely make mistakes. While consciousness may be involved in certain aspects of learning to play the piano and learning a specific piece, the performance itself is pretty much on autopilot as far as consciousness is concerned. Similarly, consciousness is not problem solving. When there is a problem to solve whose solution is not immediately apparent, the problem is thought about, then forgotten, and at some later time the solution appears in consciousness as if by magic, out of nowhere. The actual problem solving is unconscious, and while justifications for the solution may be possible retrospectively, consciousness appears to have no role in the actual solution, only in the formulation of the problem.

Along similar lines, it can be argued that consciousness is not language use. One does not reflect upon each word used in a sentence, nor does one think about each sound heard in speech. Language is processed by the brain unconsciously, the thoughts represented by language being formulated and understood by consciousness, but processed linguistically without direct awareness. One does not think about, nor is one ordinarily aware of, the individual movements of the tongue and mouth while speaking; nor does one ordinarily pay attention to the syllables and letters of words that are heard. One can, of course, focus conscious attention upon those processes, but that is not the normal circumstance under which language is used.

Despite the wide range of experiences that consciousness has, we do notice that there is a common thread running through all of them: in addition to being aware of what it is doing, consciousness is also aware of itself. This self-awareness is what distinguishes consciousness from all other mental processes. Inquiring about consciousness requires one to introspect, or look in at the functioning of one’s own mind. In doing so it is discovered, as psychologist Julian Jaynes notes, that the most basic function of consciousness just is to introspect. An unconscious mind, or unconscious processes within a conscious mind, simply experience things without any awareness that those things are happening to it. A conscious mind experiences in relation to itself -- it is not just that things happen, but they happen to me. There are, therefore, two distinct but related elements to consciousness: the ability to have and to understand experiences, and the presence of a someone -- the self -- to whom these experiences happen.

On the basis of this observation, let us state more formally that consciousness is the subjective experience of the Self. This can, and does, mean two closely related things. Consciousness is what experiences things as a unique individual -- it is what yields the idea that things happen to me. And, consciousness is that unique individual -- it is the existence of the individual I, and awareness of that I. As Julian Jaynes put it, consciousness is the concept of the self, plus the “mental space” required to understand experiences in relation to that self. This mental space is introspective distance: it is the separation between the self and the world that makes it possible to envision the self as something different from the world. It is this ability to separate the self from experience that makes it possible for an experience to be my experience. At bottom, consciousness is what makes you who you are -- it is the mental process that understands that things happen to you, and it is the you to whom things happen.

Subjective means that each individual experiences things in ways that are unique to that individual. While consciousness may have some general characteristics as a mental phenomenon, it is also true that consciousness is unique in each individual. Only I experience what I experience, and only I know what I know in the way I know it, because experiencing and knowing are always connected with a unique self: the only way to be aware of an experience is for me (or you) to be aware of it. While two individuals may think about the same thing, their thoughts are essentially different because they can be thought only in relation to the self, which is unique in each individual, the Vulcan mind-melt notwithstanding. The self is the subject to which all of the individual’s experiences refer. The self exists through time, and provides the sense of continuity so that all of the experiences an individual has throughout life refer essentially to the same person.

This uniqueness of individual experience leads to an issue in philosophy known as the problem of qualia. Qualia are the “qualities” of experience that are subjective -- they are the impressions experiences produce in the mind. The problem can be posed in this way: Suppose two persons look at an object and notice that the object is colored red. They identify the object as red because they have learned to associate the word “red” with a particular quality of experience. It cannot be established, however, that the quality of the first person’s experience is the same as the second’s. It might be that the subjective quality of the second person’s experience of “red” would be what the first person would identify as “blue”, if those inner experiences could be transferred between individuals. The essential problem is this: How can I know that my experience of red is the same as your experience of red? Is what one person sees through a telescope, or on the indicator of an instrument, the same as what another sees? Can it ever really be that, “Your thoughts are my thoughts; what you know, I know?” And even more importantly, is the Unknown constellated through one portal experience the same Unknown that appears in another portal experience, either in another person or in the same person at another time?

One of the most significant features of portal experiences is that they appear differently to different persons. Is this difference because the experiences themselves are fundamentally different, or are they the same experience interpreted differently? Are God, Allah, Buddha and Kerridwyn the same thing experienced differently, or are they different aspects of the Unknown? In the end, this question is an artifact of the way we think about experience. It arises only if one makes certain underlying assumptions about experience: that experiences have an underlying unity or same-ness, to which the qualia in individual consciousness can be compared. Asking whether the qualia of redness in you and in me are the same, presupposes that there is something in the universe producing those qualia in both of us that is the same fundamental experience for both of us. It assumes that the universe has some basic “way it is”, to which our mental states can be compared. This assumption is sometimes called “objectivism” -- that the universe exists as a set of objects with fixed characteristics, and “knowledge” is correctly matching mental impressions up with those characteristics.

There are important reasons, which will be presented in the next chapter, for denying objectivism and the theory of knowledge that accompanies it. Sound reasons exist, originating within theoretical physics, for believing that there is no fixed “way the world is.” Experiences are fundamentally subjective, it turns out, and this means that even if the qualia of redness are the same for you and me, “red” is still a fundamentally different experience for both of us. This is because the self that experiences red, and everything else, is necessarily different in both of us.

I mention the issue of qualia because it is a standard problem that arises when we argue that consciousness is connected with individuality and a unique self. Those who deny, for one reason or another, that there is any kind of unique individuality claim that the problem of qualia leads to a philosophical position called solipsism, the idea that nothing in the world exists except me. If we can’t show that the experiences we all have are the same in some way, so these persons argue, then there is no way to prove that there is anything except our own thoughts.

That is ridiculous, of course: one need only trip over a stone in the street to convince one’s self that there are other things besides one’s own thoughts. The problem of qualia is a manufactured problem. It arises only if one assumes an objective universe, and if one assumes that there is no unique self in each individual to which all experiences happen. We will see in the next chapter that there is a philosophical agenda to deny the existence of a unique self, where that agenda comes from, and what its ultimate purpose is. The “problem” of qualia is only a problem if one is motivated to deny the uniqueness of the individual.

Each individual experiences things -- including intersections -- in relation to the self, and therefore, necessarily and unavoidably, portal experience in each individual is unique. Consciousness thus personalizes experiences by relating them to the self, and this personalization stamps experiences with individual characteristics. Portal experiences in different individuals may share similar characteristics, but subjectively, the experiences are never the same. The “problem” of qualia disappears when we understand that since experiences are always in relation to a unique self, it is impossible for one person’s experience to be the same as another’s. There is no “problem” because individual perspective is a basic constituent of all experiences, and is a necessary condition for the possibility of having any experience. This does leave, however, the question of whether the experiences are of the same or different things. We shall return to this issue later.

The Ghost in the Machine

It is not unusual in philosophy to assume that consciousness has something to do with subjectivity and something to do with a unique self. But what, exactly, is this self, and where does it come from? Introspective space is fairly easy to understand -- it is analogous to stepping back from something to get a better look. The self is a bit more elusive, for it is not clear just what, in any very basic sense, it really is. It often appears to philosophers that raising the issue of the self simply pushes the question of what consciousness is back onto the question of what the self is, and this is not a satisfactory place to stop asking. According to the definition of consciousness stated above, consciousness and self are so deeply intertwined that an explanation of one must include an explanation of the other; consciousness includes the self, and cannot be understood without it.

Historically, there have been two general approaches in trying to understand the self. One approach has been to assume that the self is a thing, an object or entity, endowed with awareness and the essence of individuality. But what kind of thing? Descartes thought the self was located within the pineal gland, a small structure buried in the brain between the cerebral hemispheres. Other items of brain anatomy have been proposed as the seat of consciousness. The problem with these anatomical suggestions is that they have all been demonstrated, either through experiment or through observation, not to be the seat of consciousness. Individuals born without them, or persons in whom they have been damaged or destroyed as the result of injury or disease, still have the experience of consciousness.

If the self is an object, and it is not a part of the brain, then where is it? The historically offered answer to this question is that the self is not located within the brain or the body at all, but rather exists as a non-physical entity, in the form of an immaterial soul. This immaterial soul is where consciousness takes place, which explains why alterations to the brain generally do not change the identity of the person -- the subjective sense of who one is, one’s past memories, beliefs, and so on. It also offers a very handy solution to the problem of understanding intersection: the immaterial soul interacts with non-physical modes of being because the soul itself is non-physical.

The solution to the problem will not come quite so easily. The immaterial soul theory cannot explain how things that affect the body and brain can become conscious in the first place -- it is an instance of spiritual reductionism. In philosophy, this particular difficulty is known as the mind-body causation problem. Physical objects affect other physical objects according to the classical laws of physics -- collision, momentum, inertia, electrical charges, magnetic fields, and so on. Nothing in those laws, or in any of our experience, indicates that physical objects can affect anything other than physical objects, nor are there any suggestions that non-physical entities can interact with physical ones. The only exception to this rule is portal experience, and since that is what this theory is trying to explain, it cannot be taken as the explanatory principle itself.

The processes by which information is gathered about the world through the senses -- sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch -- are all physical processes. The senses operate according to physical laws, ultimately causing chemical and physical changes within the brain. If physical objects can only affect other physical objects, and the self is an immaterial soul, then how can the self ever get information about the physical world? Similarly, if consciousness and the self are located within an immaterial soul, it is not clear how decisions made by consciousness can result in actions performed by the physical body. To drive the nail into the wood, one must hit it with a hammer or with something else; just thinking about it will not get the job done.

The theory that the mind is some kind of ethereal entity that drives the body by unknown processes is sometimes called the ghost in the machine. It has come into disrepute in modern times not only because of the mind-body causation problem, but also because it violates two of the most fundamental assumptions made by virtually every modern theory of consciousness. Those assumptions and their merits will be discussed in the following chapter. Since we intend to take portal experiences seriously, then we will need to account for how both physical and non-physical forms of existence can interact with consciousness. For intersections to generate experiences that can become conscious, there must be a way to solve the mind-body causation problem, or there must be a way to understand consciousness and intersection so that the mind-body causation problem does not apply. This issue will be the subject of a later chapter.

There is a much deeper problem in viewing the self as a thing, whether immaterial or physical. Philosophers call this problem the homunculus regression, and it arises in asking how the self, whether physical or immaterial, assimilates information about the outside world. When consciousness is thought of as an entity to which things happen -- the subject of experiences -- the self winds up being much like a little man running around inside the head (or soul). When an object in the world is seen, that object is displayed, movie-screen like, to the self, which then interprets, understands, etc. But how, inside the self, does that work? Inside the self there is another “self”, another little man that watches a movie screen, and another little man inside him. And so it goes, on and on; like the woman who described the Earth as resting on the back of a tortoise, and that tortoise resting on the back of another tortoise, and so on, “tortoises all the way down”. It will not do to assume that the self is like a little man inside the head (or soul) because consciousness winds up being little men all the way down, and one never gets an answer to the question of what consciousness really is.

The futility of trying to understand consciousness as an object or thing has led philosophers and scientists to largely abandon this approach, and instead try to understand consciousness as a process. A process is a progression of related or interconnected events, which, taken together, perform some specific function. A process is not a thing or object that one can pick up or weigh. It has a unity and an identity that arises from its component events acting together as a whole.

As an example of a process theory, psychologist Julian Jaynes, in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, argues that consciousness is neither a little man nor a disembodied spirit. Consciousness is the result of the repetitive use of linguistic metaphors to represent experiences in the world. Language, according to this theory, is more than a tool for communication -- it is the mechanism by which one perceives, or assimilates experiences of the world. This is done through the use of metaphors, linguistic elements that explain the unfamiliar in terms of the familiar. A metaphor such as “The snow blankets the ground,” attempts to explain what the snow is doing in terms of something more familiar -- what a blanket does. There are, in addition, nuances of meaning connected with “blanket” that have little to do with anything the snow really does -- warmth, resting, etc. Metaphors therefore go beyond describing the experience itself -- they associate experiences with other mental contents.

According to Jaynes, the metaphorization process produces a mental map of the world. This is a map of experience, with all of its subtle nuances, that ultimately forms a picture of the self -- the unity in which all of these experiencces reside. That map is based upon one’s behavior in the world. When one behaves, or takes some action, the metaphorization process generates a mental picture of that action. The sum of all of those pictures of actions constitutes the self of consciousness. The self is thus an analog, as Jaynes calls it, of behavior embellished with the nuances and shades of meaning added by the metaphorization process.

While I do not endorse this theory, it is an excellent example of how consciousness can be understood as an ongoing series of events, as opposed to an object like a little man. One thing that should be immediately obvious is that process theories of consciousness tend to be far more complicated than object theories. It is easier to visualize a little man than an abstract collection of events. Unfortunately, object theories have, so far in the history of philosophy and science, failed to produce any useful information about consciousness. Process theories, on the other hand, have given much insight into the nature of consciousness, into why consciousness itself is so complex, and particularly into why consciousness appears as different things under different circumstances.

The theory of consciousness developed in this book is a process theory. The only satisfactory way to explain portal experience, and to hunt down the lost greatness of humanity, is to understand consciousness as a process involving biology, psychology, physics, philosophy, and other areas. In spite of its complexity, the theory is not a difficult one to understand. However, it may, for some, be quite difficult to believe. Any theory or argument presupposes a willingness on the part of the reader to consider ideas not already believed. It is the goal of the author to make the elements of this theory not only understandable but believable as well.

In the end, what one is willing to believe about the world and one’s own self constrains what one believes one can do, which in turn affects what one is. If one wishes to change the world, one must first be willing to imagine one’s self as different from what it is thought to be. World-change follows self-change, and if we want to change the world of violence and depression, we must begin with a willingness to see ourselves as something different from what we have been taught to think we are.

Chapter 2: The War Against Human Consciousness

There have probably been, throughout the history of philosophy, more theories about consciousness than about anything else. This is primarily because people are more interested in what they are than in anything else. Theories of consciousness come and go. Some are quickly forgotten, while others seem to captivate interest forever. The present state of affairs in philosophy and science is no exception. Every discipline from physics to neurology, from metaphysics to linguistics, has generated a profusion of ideas about what you and I are.

What justifies us casting yet another stone into these muddy waters? First, the present theories of consciousness are fundamentally wrong in what they assume about consciousness, wrong about how consciousness originates, and wrong about what consciousness actually does. Second, people believing an incorrect theory -- especially a theory about what they, as individuals, at some basic level are -- may have dire consequences for what happens to individuals and to the world as a whole. Finally, there is not, either in the past or in the present, a theory of consciousness that adequately explains portal experience. So, before embarking on the presentation of a theory of consciousness that explains portal experience, an analysis of why existing theories of consciousness are inadequate is in order.

A theory of consciousness, or of anything else, is an attempt to explain something based upon the available information -- it is an attempt to explain what is not kknown on the basis of what is known. To situate the explanation in a framework of familiar ideas upon which one can build an understanding of what one seeks to know, assumptions and other information are added which define the scope of the study. These are statements of what the theory takes as basic -- statements about the world that are assumed to be true, without the need for any further proof or argument. In common mathematics, for example, it is assumed that “a = a” is true. It is an axiom or assumption of the mathematical system. There is no attempt to prove it because it cannot be proven. It is a basic assumption made about the way numbers work in order to work with them at all.

Assumptions guide the way a theory explains its topic, and to some degree control what a theory can and cannot conclude about its topic. If we make the wrong assumptions, such as assuming the earth is flat, we get a false conclusion -- sail far enough and you will fall off the edge. Similarly, if we make the wrong assumptions about consciousness, we get false conclusions about who and what we, as human beings, are.

It is my belief that many of the problems we face today such as depression, malaise and random destructive violence arise from people believing false conclusions about who and what they are. These false conclusions grow out of having made bad assumptions about the nature of the world, and particularly about human consciousness. While most people probably don’t have any formal philosophical view about themselves, nonetheless the ideas that are commonly believed today about persons and consciousness structure the way we think of ourselves, and the way we behave.

Rather than trying to refute any specific theory of consciousness, we will instead look at the two most common assumptions made by nearly every modern theory of consciousness. It is these assumptions that have cut humanity off from its inherent greatness, and in so doing, are responsible for the depression and violence we see on a daily basis in the modern world. We discard these assumptions that have set humanity on the path of destruction, and offer a new set of assumptions that will help us develop a better understanding of consciousness, and regain the human greatness that has been lost.

The Materialist Assumption

The first assumption made by nearly every theory of consciousness that enjoys current popularity is materialism, the belief that the only thing that exists is physical matter and its related physical phenomena such as energy and force. There are no ghosts, no disembodied spirits, no gods or angels, no immaterial souls, nothing whatsoever outside the spatiotemporal -- meaning located within physical space and time -- universe. The problem of mind-body causation described in the previous chapter has given encouragement to the materialist assumption. Much time and effort have been wasted, according to materialists, in pursuing the notion that consciousness is some kind of disembodied soul or spirit. There is no way such a soul or spirit could interact with the physical world, because there just is nothing other than the physical matter.

A theory of consciousness that incorporates materialism as one of its assumptions must therefore explain consciousness in terms of the properties of physical matter, according to the laws of physics. Whatever consciousness is, it must be the result of physical processes within the tissue of the brain. While most materialists argue that there is more to consciousness than the brain itself -- that language, social interactions, and physiological processes in the body have a role to play, for example -- consciousness ultimately resides within the brain and the neurological events that take place within the brain.

The point of materialism is to construct as basic a theory of consciousness as is possible -- one that, unlike the “little man” theory, yields some last and final answer to the question of what consciousness is. Materialism does this by assuming that the universe is made up of some kind of basic building block, and that everything that exists is put together using those building blocks. Those basic building blocks are physical matter. By reducing consciousness, and everything else, to physical matter, the problem of having “little men all the way down” is avoided. When, after an examination of all the processes involved in consciousness, the level of physical matter is reached, there are no more questions to ask.

The most obvious problem with materialism is that in making a statement about what there is and what there is not, it rules out the possibility of explaining portal experience. Stace’s intersection theory requires both a physical and a spiritual mode of existence in order for portal experience to be possible. A reductive theory of either the materialist type, or of the spiritual type for that matter, cannot explain intersection without asserting that there is no such thing -- one side of the intersection or the other must not really be there. No reductionist theory can address intersection without denying that intersection exists. If intersection is taken as the basic thing to explain, this means that no reductionist theory will be useful in explaining it.

Materialism is a bad assumption because if we make it, we must deny that portal experiences happen. If portal experiences are essential to human greatness, then materialism forces us to deny that there is any such greatness. Since human consciousness and portal experience are closely tied together, as we shall see in a later chapter, the materialist must deny not only greatness but consciousness itself, or at least the existence of consciousness that can have portal experiences.

Materialism thus leads us to the false conclusion that scientifically verifiable, psychologically necessary and culturally significant phenomena do not really exist. In so doing, it leads us into a culture without greatness, and a culture with depression and random violence. It paints a distorted picture of who and what we as human beings are, a picture that is inconsistent with the historical evidence, and a picture that is hopeless in solving the problems of modern culture.

Against this argument, the materialist can simply assert that intersections and portal experiences are all hallucinations, or are false in some way or another. If this is done, however, one is not constructing a theory of consciousness to explain portal experience. One is justifying an assumption by altering the facts -- one is propping up the materialist assumption by denying that intersection exists. It is a sad truth that in modern science and philosophy, this is exactly what is done much of the time. Materialism is one of those beliefs held so basic by modern thinkers that anything suggesting it is false, or not accepting it as basic, is ridiculed and considered unbelievable.

For example, Jaynes discusses several phenomena that share some of the features of portal experiences. Of voices heard within the mind that have no apparent outside source, for example, Jaynes states, “... they must have some innate structure in the nervous system underlying them.” Why must they be neurological? Because if they are not, then materialism is false. It is in making this kind of assumption that many theories of consciousness have gone astray. They have assumed that materialism must be true, no matter what the data or other explanations may be, and have thereby cut themselves off from understanding consciousness in a way that includes the experiences and qualities most important to it. In so doing, they have also cut off those who believe in them from an understanding of some of the most important experiences consciousness can have.

This is unfortunate because materialism is, after all, only an assumption about the way the world is. It is neither a testable hypothesis nor a provable theory. It cannot be tested experimentally, because the only experiments that can be done to prove it false would have to take into account non-spatiotemporal data, which the materialist claims are all “hallucinations”. It is logically contradictory to demand that the only evidence that could prove materialism is wrong must be physical, and it is not a sufficient justification for the materialist assumption to say that one cannot observe physical cases where it is false. This is especially true when some theoreticians of consciousness argue that consciousness itself is proof there is an immaterial form of existence!

Along the same lines, it cannot be argued that because immaterialism -- the assumption that there may be forms of existence other than physical matter -- has no physical evidence to support it, it must not be true. Consider the Darwinian theory of evolution: there is no evidence for that theory, either, that can be put on the table by itself and will show that evolution is true. There are data -- skulls and bones, rocks, birds in trees, and so forth -- which are simply there, and whose presence does not support one theory any more than another. The theory that they just appeared by magic is equally supported by the mere fact of their existence. What makes these data into evidence for evolution is that they can be fit into a consistent, coherent and fairly complete story -- the theory of evolution -- that explains how they got there, why, and what role they play in a bigger picture. The rocks and skulls by themselves to do not tell any kind of story, they are just there. It took the creativity and insight of Darwin, Wallace, and others to explain how and why they are there.

Similarly, a theory that argues for the existence of a god, an immaterial soul, mystical experience, or anything else that involves a non-spatiotemporal reality, is not false simply because there is nothing that can be put on the table to show the theory is true. There are data to support the existence of demons and angels, of UFOs, of portal experience and its related constellation and imagination phenomena. There are also theories, such as the intersection theory, which attempt to fit these data into a consistent, coherent and complete picture that explains them. One cannot argue against such a theory by saying that the data do not count as evidence independent of the theory. To do so is to hold the immaterialist theory to a different standard than scientific theories which many people believe.

The problem is really a psychological one. For me to consider something that contradicts what I already believe, you must prove it to a much higher standard than theories that are consistent with what I already believe. That approach may be fine for pseudo-scientific cranks and “skeptics” who desperately want to hang on to believing that the world is the way they have accepted it as being. For the serious scientist, philosopher, or anyone who seeks to understand human consciousness, that point of view must be regarded as utter nonsense. We have to get beyond the tendency to believe only those things that make the world appear to be the way we want it to be, if we are going to learn new things -- if we are going to venture beyond what we already known, into the unknown. And if we are going to get beyond the problems of modern culture, we must also get beyond the ideas that culture accepts and believes -- the ideas that underlie the problems themselves.

If materialism is just an assumption, why does it have so much sway in modern thought? Most likely because it is so deeply connected with the way in which the sciences are practiced, and the fact that the sciences have tremendous political and intellectual power in modern society. Materialism is not itself a part of science -- it is an assumption that is believed by mmany scientists, and not the result of any experiment or study. Science is an empirical discipline: it is governed strictly by what is discoverable through experience, or through the logical analysis of experience. Since there is no experiment that can prove or disprove materialism, it cannot be an item of scientific data.

Instead, materialism is a strictly metaphysical assumption -- no more or less so than beliefs about the existence of gods or demons. It is no argument that because it is widely held, it must be a good assumption. During the Middle Ages, when the bubonic plague was sweeping through Europe, it was widely believed that the source of the malady was demonic entities in the form of cats. In slaughtering cats by the thousands, the people were unwittingly destroying the only creatures that could have saved them from the catastrophe that followed. With the plague being spread primarily through the rodent population, the absence of cats ensured the proliferation of rodents, and the spread of the disease. Popular ideas are not always correct, nor are they necessarily harmless in their incorrectness.

The reason that materialism has so much force lies in the historical origins of the scientific disciplines. During the Enlightenment and Renaissance times, the most powerful institution was the Roman Church, whose authority rested upon metaphysical assumptions about the existence and nature of God. The aristocracy supported, and in turn was supported by, the Church. The “divine right of kings," for example -- another unproveable metaphysical assumption -- justified the power of the aristocracy over everyone else.

With the rise of the educated middle classes during the Enlightenment, their aspirations to political power and independence could not be met within the framework of the divine right of kings. It is one of Mao Tse-Tung’s basic principles of revolution that to change the world, one must first change the way one thinks. To gain political power over someone else, you must first free yourself of the ways of thinking that gave that person power over you in the first place. What better way to justify taking power away from the wealthy than to assert that there is no God to grant them divine right in the first place?

This is what happened during the Enlightenment. The middle classes adopted materialism as an anti-theological ideology, in support of their struggle for political and social power against the aristocracy. This went hand-in-hand with the science of the time, using physical apparatus as opposed to divine revelation and inspiration, to investigate the physical world. Now that the divinely justified aristocracy is gone, the continued presence of this assumption in the sciences of today is little more than “ideological baggage” from a time long past.

Is science necessarily materialistic? The empirical discipline of parapsychology -- which studies phenomena such as ghosts, ESP, and OOBEs -- suggests that science and materialism do not necessarily go together. Parapsychologists have amassed considerable evidence for the existence of non-physical states of being and phenomena. Yet the lack of credibility given parapsychology by mainstream science does show the power that the political ideology of the Enlightenment still holds. That which is not materialistic is regarded, by and large by the scientific community and the public as well, as “unscientific.”

Since it is strictly an ideological matter and not a part of science itself, materialism has become a “touchstone” for credibility in philosophy as well as science. There is no reason to suppose that materialism is true as a universal proposition, but, like Gessler’s hat in William Tell, if one does not salute it, one has no standing in the discipline. Behind this closed-mindedness lurks the fear that if an anti-theological assumption could undo a theological assumption, and the social and political power groups supported by it, then a theological assumption could just as easily be the undoing of an atheistic ideology, and the political and social powers that rest upon it. If immaterialism ever takes hold in this culture, it could topple the scientific dynasty that dominates today’s universities and governments. That is a powerful motivation to push immaterialism -- whether it leads to true and useful theories or not -- as far out of the picture as possible.

One of the results of assuming that materialism is true has been the eclipse of the spiritual side of human experience. By denying the existence of the immaterial, and demanding the hat be saluted for credibility, materialism has effectively cut off humanity from the Unknown. The social institutions of religion are, for better or worse, alive and well. It is the personal experience of the spiritual that materialism has pushed out of the picture. At one time, this personal spiritual interaction formed the core of human thought -- as participation mystique, magic, mystical experience and divine revelation. This personal spiritual experience, very often in the form of portal experience, is closely connected with development of consciousness, as well as with creative thought and expression. By ridiculing and condemning these aspects of human experience, the widespread belief in materialism has resulted in a new Dark Ages, and the emergence of the darkest of human problems into the modern world. The pompous “skeptic” and the arrogant “scientific authority” cannot replace the loss of these basic human qualities in this, or any other culture.

This is all very sad, because there is enough room in both science and philosophy for all kinds of beliefs and assumptions. The criterion for whether or not an assumption is a good one should be the usefulness of the theory it produces, and not whether it salutes the hat. The usefulness of a theory lies in its ability to explain and predict. If a theory of consciousness requires rejecting the very phenomena it seeks to explain, then it is a bad theory, resting upon one or more bad assumptions. A theory of consciousness that rejects portal experiences because they are inconsistent with materialism is a theory of materialism, and not a theory of consciousness.

The assumption of materialism has, therefore, two negative consequences. Theories and other ideas that do not incorporate it are rejected out of hand, not because they are bad theories or ideas, but simply because they are not materialistic theories. And, it prevents the consideration of ideas in the culture that do not conform to its doctrine. Materialism is just an assumption, which cannot be proven and could be false, and could be excluding ideas from consideration that are not only true, but might have beneficial consequences for humanity. As long as materialism is allowed to function as a blinder, the Dark Age of materialism will continue to hover over all of humanity, and the problems it brings with it will continue to plague us, and all because of an assumption, and not because of anything factual.

If we are to understand human consciousness in a way that does not require throwing away a substantial part of human experience, and does not itself cut us off from the greatness of our ancestors, then materialism must be rejected as a basic assumption. We cannot assume there is no such thing as intersection, if what we are trying to understand is how intersections become conscious, and what role portal experiences play in preventing widespread depression and violence. This does not mean that the physical aspects of existence should be rejected as a basis for understanding consciousness. Quite the contrary, this theory will rely upon scientific information about the brain to explain how consciousness arose, and what gives consciousness many of the characteristics it has. But consciousness is much more than the physical brain and its processes. It is a much greater phenomenon -- it is human greatness itself -- the understanding of which begins with a basic understanding of the brain, but must move beyond the brain for the whole story to emerge.

Why the Brain is Not a Computer

As materialism gained wider acceptance among the intellectual communities of the past several centuries, materialists tried to fit the universe and all of its phenomena into a complete materialist theory. Going hand-in-hand with materialism, mechanism -- the view that the universe is really a giant machine -- became popular as the technology for constructing increasingly complex machines developed. When the only machines were simple levers and inclines, there was little appeal in looking for deeper meanings therein. As machines became complex and intricate, however, many imagined that the universe -- which is also complex and intricate -- might in fact be a gigantic machine.>

Of course this view has not prevailed in modern physics, but in other disciplines, vestiges of it remain alive. In the area of mind and brain studies, mechanism has surfaced in several theories arguing that the brain is actually some kind of computer, or can best be understood in terms of computer theory and technology. With the advent of modern high speed digital computers and their ability to process complex information, the comparison between brain and computer has become attractive and plausible to some.

In order for brains and computers to be considered similar, two conditions must be met: brains and computers must do the same things, and they must do those things in the same way. It has been said by some that brains can be analogized to computers, meaning they do the same things, because they appear to accomplish many of the same tasks -- they both add and subtract, they both have memory, they both can process language, and so on. This tempts some to think that, since brains and computers do the same things, their underlying operation must also be similar -- they are, in other words, homologous, meaning they are put together in the same way and work in the same way. This is dangerous path to follow, for it leads to serious errors in reasoning. Analogy does not imply homology -- similarity in function does not indicate similar development or similar underlying structure, nor does it suggest that in doing similar things, brains and computers are doing them in similar ways.

For example, the camera-type eye of cephalopods such as the squid and octopus, and the camera-type eye of vertebrates such as birds and mammals, at an anatomical level appear analogous. They both involve vision, and they both involve creating images with lenses. However, the embryological development of the eyes is completely different, and what the eyes enable the animal to do is also quite different. The camera-type eye arose twice during evolution, and while they both have to do with vision, their underlying structure and functionality are different, and the nature of the vision phenomenon produced is very different. We cannot therefore assume that on the basis of superficially similar eyes, that the human and the squid “see” in the same way, or even “see” the same things. Similarly, we cannot assume that because computers and brains can add and subtract, that they share any underlying similarity.

The most important dishomology between brains and computers is that computers are designed, while brains are evolved. Computers are designed and built by engineers to carry out specific functions. Someone knows, ahead of time, what the computer will have to do, and builds the computer to carry out those specific tasks. The computer’s processor can only handle information that fits certain pre-defined criteria, and can only manipulate information in pre-defined ways. The ability of a computer to process information rests entirely upon the design of its electronics, and once the electronics are built, the way in which the computer hardware processes information cannot be changed.

In addition to the limitations imposed by hardware design, the computer can manipulate information only under the direction of a program -- a set of instructions or rules that tell the processor what to do. The program uses the pre-defined capabilities of the computing hardware to carry out more complex computing tasks. It depends upon the processor “understanding,” and always responding in exactly the same way to, specific instructions as to how information is to be processed. If the computer receives information that the processor cannot understand, or does not follow the rules set down by the program, information processing grinds to a halt. Anyone who has used a computer is familiar with this kind of problem. Pressing the wrong key on a keyboard can, under the right conditions, bring the whole system to a dead stop.

The computer is, therefore, an information processing machine: it is designed to process specific kinds of information in specific ways. The information processing capability of the machine rests within electronic or mechanical components that are designed to carry out specific functions. These components operate under a set of specific instructions that define the nature and limits of the information to be processed, how it is to be processed, and what will be done with it when processing is completed. Every piece of the machine must function in accord with its design, and the way in which those pieces function cannot be altered. While some very sophisticated machines can, in some cases, alter their own programs, there is still another program that is controlling this alteration.

Unlike the design of a machine, evolution is not teleological -- it does not proceed with some purpose or goal in mind ahead of time. This is a fundamental principle of evolution theory: evolution does not do things in order that something else happen, it does things in response to the conditions in which organisms find themselves. The characteristics of organisms that developed through evolution are not the result of following some pre-determined rules or design. Quite the opposite, organisms have the characteristics they have because those are the characteristics that enabled them to survive. For example, it is not mere coincidence (or providence) that environmental conditions on Earth are just right for human life as we know it. Human life has the characteristics it has because it is here, having evolved under the conditions existing on Earth. The human organism is a response to the environmental conditions present on the Earth, and exists in the way it does because it has been shaped by the Earth’s environment. Similarly, the brain and consciousness do not exist to accomplish some specific task or function programmed or designed into them; they exist because they are effective tools for survival in the environment in which they evolved.

One of the most important characteristics that has appeared in the brain as a result of evolution is adaptability -- the ability to change the way it processes information. It is common in brain studies to distinguish between the old brain and the new brain. The old brain is probably the only part of the brain that can be successfully compared to a computer, although the comparison is not terribly interesting. The old brain is hard wired, in many respects resembling a computer processor. Certain neurons -- individual nerve cells -- have specific functions, such as controlling blood pressure, breathing, body temperature, digestive muscles, and so on. When these neurons receive certain kinds of information, they respond in pre-defined ways, resulting in pre-defined actions. In this way they behave very much like a computer.

The interesting analogies generally refer to the new brain -- primarily the cerebral cortex -- which handles the more complex information processing functions, including consciousness. While the computer is built with each part of its structure having a precisely defined function, the cerebral cortex has not evolved in that way. There is very little specific structure to the cortex, in terms of the way it processes information, until it actually begins to process information. According to Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, the basic information processing unit in the brain is the neuronal group, a collection of neurons that interconnect with one another. Neuronal groups are organized by the brain on the fly -- the brain puts itself together to accommodate the information it actually processes. Unlike a computer, the new brain is not born pre-wired to handle certain kinds of information in a certain way. It learns how to process the information it comes into contact with.

Information processing in the brain is not designed, as in a computer, but is learned, according to the arrangements of neurons that produce the most useful results. Neurons join into groups during brain development. The interconnections between neurons and neuronal groups are formed as a result of exposure to environmental conditions and learning, not as a result of any pre-determined or programmed genetic plan. Moreover, the interconnections between neurons can change over time, as the result of learning and cell death. Unlike computers, which depend upon information processing units with definite functions and interconnections, the brain can change the structure and relationship of its information processing units on demand. If a particular neuronal group does not produce useful results -- does not produce “4” in response to “2+2”, for example -- it is not necessary to replace the entire brain. The neuronal group simply reorganizes itself until it does work, or until the function is taken over by some other group. This is completely unlike a computer in every respect, as illustrated by the recent problems in the design of a popular microprocessor unit that necessitated its replacement on a large scale.

The fundamental dishomology between brains and computers is that computers do what they are designed to do, while brains figure out how to do what they need to do. This dishomology leads directly to the most important disanalogy between brains and computers -- computers operate according to a program,, brains do not. A program depends upon the computer hardware following a specific set of instructions in specific ways. The brain, because its information processing structure can be changed, cannot have any pre-defined instructions. This is why one does not have to teach a computer to add -- it already has a program for doing that. A person must be taught how to add because the brain does not “come” with a program for addition. Instead, addition must be learned.

There is a very important reason for this difference between brains and computers. A machine operates within limits defined by its designer, and information that does not fit within these limits is either ignored, or brings the machine to a halt. A creature that processes information in this way is not likely to survive for very long. The environment on the Earth, and particularly on land, is constantly changing both in short and long term respects. Those creatures that have survived on land are those whose brains evolved in such a way as to adapt to those changing conditions.

The most important “changing conditions”, from an evolutionary standpoint, are what paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould calls contingencies -- changes in the environment that cannot be predicted or planned for. In designing a computing machine, one can predict, to some extent, what kinds of situations it will be required to handle. To survive daily and seasonal temperature changes, for example, one would not need anything more sophisticated than the old brain. These kinds of changes follow predictable patterns, and one can devise sets of rules for dealing with these changes.

Contingencies introduce conditions under which the rules do not apply -- situations that change the environment so radically that following the usual rules would lead to death. Gould mentions the circumstances under which the dinosaurs became extinct as an example. The impact of an asteroid or other object on Earth some 60 million years ago created environmental conditions to which the dinosaurs could not adapt. Mammals -- at that time limited to very small creatures scurrying about in the bushes -- with their mutable brain structure could adapt to those conditions, and did continue to evolve, as opposed to becoming extinct. The reason mammals could adapt to the new environmental conditions is that their brains could change not only the way they process information, but also the kinds of information they could process.

Contingencies break the rules, and brains that do not depend upon rules are best able to survive contingencies. For this reason, there is an enormous adaptive advantage to those animals that have brains with mutable processing structures. Adaptation is the process in evolution that takes the place of design; it is the process by which creatures change in response to their environment. Evolution works by the survival of those who can adapt, where adapting means learning new survival strategies and breaking old rules.

The most successful rule breaking strategy yet to appear in evolution is consciousness. One does not need consciousness to follow rules; the old brain by itself is enough for that. What the self and introspective distance do is to allow consciousness to distance itself from direct experience, to consider how experience relates to the self, and formulate responses to experience based upon thought and reflection. Consciousness detaches the mind from direct experience, and by stepping back from experience, one can consider alternative meanings and behaviors -- and one can break the rules one has learned, if it is to one’s advantage to do so. Recalling the list of mental activities presented in the last chapter that are not functions of consciousness -- playing the piano, using language, etc. -- all of these involve following rules, and consciousness, when it intervenes, is often more of a problem than a solution.

Because consciousness does not follow rules, and the information processing structure of the brain has evolved in such a way as to be adaptable, neither consciousness nor the brain can be considered similar to a computer in any respect. The underlying dishomology in the information processing systems of brains and computers leads to disanalogies in the way they process information -- computers must follow rules, brains need not do so. The most important evolutionary advantage for consciousness is that it can respond to contingency, and it does this by not being bound to any set of rules. The way in which consciousness does this -- the underlying neurological functionality -- involves the activity of a dynamical system, which will be a central topic of the next chapter. The important point in the context of the computer-brain analogy is that dynamical systems generate their own behavior and characteristics in response to their environment -- they learn, and are not programmed. They are not rule-governed, which is the very essence of a program, and the very essence of the difference between brains and computers.

The most serious problem with believing the brain is some kind of computer is that it leads to imagining that consciousness has certain qualities -- principally rule-governance -- that evolution has ensured it does not have. It teaches us to think that we are creatures of rules and habit, and while that might be true to some extent, it is only because consciousness chooses to behave in that way. We must not allow ourselves to be so misled by our fascination and obsession with technology that we believe that we as human beings are something that we are not, and above all, we must not fall so deeply in love with technology that we come to believe we actually are that technology.

Moreover, the word “computer” must not be used use in some fantastic or futuristic sense. It must be used in such a way as to mean what the word means, and that is a specific type of machine with specific characteristics which are wholly different from the conscious human brain. Because a computer is fundamentally a rule-governed machine, it is doubtful that it could ever really be conscious. It might be that in the future some kind of device could be constructed that would have all the characteristics of the brain necessary for consciousness, including the ability to adapt and modify its own structure. In that case, such a device should probably be called an artificial brain, and not a machine or a computer, because it would have the characteristics of neither.

The Social-Ontological Assumption

The second assumption made by most modern theories of consciousness is that, one way or another, consciousness is dependent upon social interactions for its existence. There is, according to this assumption, no such thing as consciousness as a phenomenon of the individual. Without society, there is no consciousness according to this view, and indeed some go so far as to say that what we think of as “consciousness” is really no more than a mental image of ourselves as members of society.

Perhaps the most basic form of social interaction is communication, and for that reason many have focused on language use as the basis for consciousness. Julian Jaynes, for example, argues that the self is really just a metaphorization of our behavior, and this process can only occur after the ability to use language in sophisticated ways has developed. Gerald Edelman’s theory argues that consciousness can arise only when the ability to symbolize is established, and this occurs as a result of the development of speech centers in the brain. Other theories of consciousness infer from the structure of grammar to the structure of consciousness, or from the way words are used to the way the mind works.

Why such a romance with language as the basis of consciousness? One attractive reason for focusing on language use is that it is fundamentally behavioral in nature -- it involves activities that can be observed and measured. Theories of consciousness that focus upon perception are subjective, involving the way in which things affect the individual on the inside, and therefore cannot be objectively measured and analyzed. To satisfy the “scientific” attitude, anything worth studying must be measurable. Hence, the appeal of using easily measured phenomena like language as the basis of consciousness.

Another reason for the attractiveness of language is that it involves rules. Consciousness is a difficult thing to define, much less analyze, because it often appears to be haphazard in what it does. If consciousness can be reduced to a set of rules, something like grammar and syntax, then it is much easier to set limits on what needs to be considered as consciousness. Rule-based phenomena are easier to measure than haphazard ones -- one can design an experiment to study grammar, but one cannot design an experiment to compare qualia. So, a theory of consciousness that includes what can be measured in a laboratory, and excludes what cannot be measured -- things like qualia and portal experiences -- will be more attractive to the theorist who does not want to run afoul of modern scientific dogma.

Like materialism, the social-ontological assumption -- the assumption that consciousness arises out of social interactions -- is an assumption that underlies the way people think about consciousness. It is not a conclusion, nor is it the result of an experiment. And, like materialism, there are deeper reasons people persist in believing it. For those who feel that humanity is really at the top of the evolutionary scale, the things humanity does reflect the eliteness of that position. This view is anthropocentricity, the belief that humanity is at the center of everything, that the world revolves around us. One thing humanity has done that stands out above other terrestrial life forms is the formation of urbanized civilizations. These civilizations have strong social interdependencies to the point that individuals cannot provide for their own needs, but must depend upon others for their physical survival. If what humanity does is to form that kind of society, then it is only a short inferential jump, under the influence of anthropocentric sentiments, to say that humanity just is complex social behavior.

The social dependence upon others that exists in the urban environment becomes internalized as the belief that we, as individuals, exist only in relation to others -- we do not stand alone, either physically or mentally. This psychological dependence upon others is what gives the social-ontological assumption much of its appeal, along with the fear that if human society should be disrupted, persons -- as “individuals” -- would not be able to survive. Because there exists a social arrangement in which persons cannot survive -- or at least believe they cannot survive -- without others, then what persons are becomes psychologically dependent upon the social environment in which they live. The self as an individual disappears, and exists only as an abstraction of one’s relationship to others.

This feeling of dependency on others for one’s individuality is nowhere more clearly seen than in people’s own self-descriptions. The common answer to the question, “What are you?” is “a mother”, “a student”, “an engineer”, and so on; never “I am angry”, “I am conscious”, or “I am who I am”. These answers reflect a sense of self that is derived from relations with others, and reflect a dependency upon others at the deepest level of one’s psychological makeup. This at first seems to support the claim commonly made by those who advance social-ontological theories of consciousness that without the group, there is no self, no consciousness, no individuality. Of course using this as “evidence” to support the assumption of social ontology is an example of the post-hoc fallacy. The belief that one is a social place-holder does not prove that is what one is; it only shows that is what one has been led to believe one is.

While social anthropocentrism provides the psychological motivation for believing social ontology, the intellectual support for this view grows out of the once-popular psychological theory of behaviorism. Behaviorism, originally put forth by B. F. Skinner, is the idea that organisms, including humans, can be described and understood in terms of their behavior alone. According to this theory, concepts such as consciousness, thought, perception, and other non-behavioral aspects of the mind are either illusions, or simply the mental consequences of behavior. Jaynes’ theory, for example, is a behaviorist theory. Jaynes explicitly states, “There is nothing in consciousness which was not in behavior first,” and the existence of consciousness itself is a product of behavior -- it is a mental image of one’s actions and relations to others.

Behaviorism has not retained its popularity, at least among clinical psychologists -- those who treat patients -- because it fails to account for what is clinically often the most important aspect of the mind: the way the world is perceived and understood. Indeed, the whole point of consciousness as discussed in this book is to interpret the environment and to modify behavior. Those are mental faculties which cannot be incorporated into the behaviorist model. Nonetheless, because consciousness seems to always involve elements of subjectivity, and subjectivity is a difficult thing to reduce to measurable observation, behaviorism in one form or another has retained much of its popularity among the academic community. Behavior is easier to study and measure than thoughts and feelings. Since language is primarily behavioral -- or at least those elements of it studied by philosophers and scientists -- language-as-consciousness theories remain popular and plentiful.

It is common in philosophy to argue against a theory by presenting counterexamples -- situations in which the theory does not work. The most important counterexample to behaviorism is portal experience itself. Portal experiences are primarily perceptual and not behavioral in nature, and represent an influx of information from outside the world of the senses and of behavior. If we are going to take portal experiences seriously, then we have to consider things like perception and awareness, which do not have a place in the behaviorist model.

In the counterexample presented here, we will see how portal experience results in the direct flow of information from a world outside the senses into consciousness. It is a form of mystical experience, thought not in quite the context one would expect such an experience to occur. This experience shows that not only does the subjectivity of consciousness matter, contradicting behaviorist views that it does not, but also contradicts the weaker version of behaviorism supported by Jaynes and others -- that the contents of consciousness are provided exclusively by behavior.

With the blossoming of the science of organic chemistry in the 19th century, scientists began to discover the secrets of the chemicals that make up living things. But there was one door they could not unlock: the structure of benzene, a basic building block of many complex organic compounds, remained elusive. Scientists knew that organic compounds could form long chains, but benzene is not a chain. The lack of progress in this area frustrated an entire branch of research, until in 1865 August Kekule, who had originally proposed that carbon atoms could form chains, had a dream:

I was sitting writing at my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire, and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept mostly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures of manifold conformations; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together, all twisting and turning in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I woke; . . . I spent the rest of the night working out the consequences of this hypothesis. Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then perhaps we shall learn the truth.

Thus the riddle of benzene, and all those compounds derived from it, was solved: carbon atoms can form rings, as well as chains, and benzene is a ring. This example is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it shows how metaphors appear in visions as symbols, and that metaphors can be visual and not exclusively linguistic. One cannot see atoms dancing about, of course, but one can understand how atoms behave through the symbolic image of their dance. While some argue that this role of metaphors in consciousness means that consciousness is basically linguistic, we can see from this example that the metaphorization process can operate outside the realm of language, suggesting that metaphors, one way or another, may be a more basic process in consciousness than language itself. Second, this example illustrates a particular type of portal experience -- what Carl Jung calls an archetypal vision -- and this kind of portal experience is important in understanding how information enters into consciousness itself.

Most important for the argument at hand, the vision shows how the contents of consciousness are not exclusively from behavior, and do not necessarily derive from the social environment at all. The contents of the vision are not trivial -- this is one of the most important discoveries of modern science. Could it be that this, and perhaps other important “scientific” discoveries, are the results of portal experiences? If so, and if this knowledge did not come from the social environment, where did it come from?

Kekule’s own words point us toward the answer: “One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail...”. This image of the snake swallowing its tail is a common motif, or recurring image, in mythology. It is to be found in all of the world’s mythologies; in differing contexts, but always in the same basic form. It was undoubtedly known to Kekule, and it is this basic image that provided the foundation of his theory of carbon rings. But why this image in his “dream” at the time it did, and why it had this particular meaning for him cannot be explained socially, linguistically, or behaviorally. That the image of the snake should have arisen at that time, and that the metaphoric connection between that image and the scientific problem should have been made, requires a different kind of explanation.

Where do these images come from? It is absurd to suggest they are features of language, for they are identical in peoples that have no linguistic relationships to one another. The only other alternative that will keep the social-ontological assumption alive is to claim that they are a part of the biology of the organism -- they come from DNA. There is, however, a telling argument against that position which comes from the work of Gerald Edelman. Recalling the discussion of why the brain is not a computer, the storage of information in hardware -- in physical objects, including computers and brains -- requires a precisely laid out information network. The only way to store information in a physical object is to store it in the structure of that object, and that structure must be extremely precise to store the information accurately. For images such as snakes and green men, both of which are common motifs, to be stored in DNA, that DNA would have to precisely control the structure of at least those parts of the brain where the images are kept.

The trouble with suggesting that mythological motifs are stored in DNA is that morphogenesis -- the process of going from DNA to brain -- is far from precise. The layout of cells in the brain, and the ways in which they connect with each other, are dependent mostly upon their interactions with one another, both in terms of physical pushing and shoving and in terms of chemical messages between cells. Cells die during the morphogenetic process, and the death of a cell is a probabilistic event -- whether a cell survives or dies is more a matter of probability than genetic coding. For a cell to influence other cells, it has to be alive -- once a cell dies, its influence on morphogenesis terminates. This means that while DNA may direct certain basic layouts in the brain, the precise connections between cells are determined more by geometry and probability than by heredity. It is not possible, therefore, for DNA to carry motifs and images in its genetic code. There is no way the code could translate into brain structures with sufficient precision to duplicate the images throughout the world and throughout human history.

If the images are not in DNA, then where are they? They must be located somewhere that all the peoples of the earth, throughout all time, have had access to them. There is no physical medium that has those qualities. The only satisfactory answer to the question of where the images come from is fantastic, and is absolutely impossible if one continues to hold the materialist and social-ontological assumptions. But, as Sherlock Holmes once said, if one has eliminated all the possibilities, then it is the impossible that must be true. The answer is impossible only under the materialist and social-ontological assumptions. If those assumptions cut off the only answer that makes sense, then it is the assumptions that must go.

Much of the information presented in this book is aimed at making that fantastic, impossible answer plausible. Making it plausible requires not only giving up some of the most treasured assumptions of the twentieth century, but also a willingness to consider the fantastic possible. It was not so long ago that splitting the atom was also considered an impossibility, and the sending of voices and pictures through space pure fantasy. It is hoped that by the end of this book, when the answer to this riddle and the implications of that answer are presented, the impossible will have become the undeniable, and the fantastic will have become the familiar. It is sufficient here to point out that the image could not have come from DNA, nor from behavior, nor could it have come from society. It came from somewhere else, and that is enough to show that social ontology is a bad assumption for explaining portal experience.

It is too late in the history of humanity, so it is argued, to disregard the role of culture in making persons what they are. Similarly, it is too late in the history of neuroscience to disregard the role of the brain in consciousness. That the brain has a part to play in the existence of consciousness, and even moreso in the form of consciousness -- that consciousness thinks in terms of images, voices, and other sensory modalities -- is beyond serious doubt. Similarly, that the environment, including social interactions, has something to do with the content of consciousness -- the things it thinks about -- is also an empirical observation that lies beyond serious doubt.

But are the brain and society the causes of consciousness, or does consciousness originate elsewhere, and take on the qualities of the biological and social environment simply because they are there? This question is not a simple one to answer, because the answer rests upon the assumptions one makes about consciousness. Theories of consciousness that rest upon materialism will discredit phenomena that suggest materialism is false, and will discredit and deny experiences that suggest that consciousness can experience things outside the physical world. Similarly, theories resting upon a social-ontological assumption will discredit phenomena that are individualistic, and particularly phenomena that are individuating -- tending to make the individual different from the group. They will also deny the possibility or credibility of experiences that cannot be validated as a group -- things that are unique to individuals, and cannot be shared. Since portal experiences carry information from outside the physical world, and since they are individuating, then to understand portal experience we must reject both the materialist and social-ontological assumptions.

Life Without Consciousness

If it were the case that it made no difference what people believed themselves to be, then it would not be worth arguing that current theories of consciousness are false. But this is not the case. The vision persons have of themselves defines the way they see themselves in relation to the world, and thereby governs both their perception of the world and their behavior toward it. A person is, to turn Jaynes’ position on its head, the projection through behavior of the self that exists in consciousness; the way one interprets and responds to the world is a function of what one believes one's self to be. For a conscious being, the self is very much the determining factor in thought and action -- it can follow the rules, it can break them, or it can make up new rules.

Like materialism, social-ontology is at bottom an assumption -- it is something taken for granted, and therefore difficult to either prove or refute. Materialism and social-ontology cannot be proven false. What we can do, however, is to show that assuming one or both will do us no good, and may ultimately cause some harm. So far, it has been shown that portal experience is incompatible with both assumptions, and that if we want to understand portal experience, we must reject materialism and social-ontology. If we assume either, we must give up any hope of understanding portal experience and intersection, and we must also give up understanding ourselves as persons that have these kinds of experiences. So, even though materialism and social-ontology cannot be proven false, it can be argued that we should not assume them, because they will do us no good.

Even moreso than for materialism, the case can be made that the social-ontological assumption should not be made, because assuming it can and does lead to undesirable consequences. The fundamental problem with the social-ontological assumption is that it leads to the elimination of consciousness and individuality as they have been examined in this book. Social-ontology does not only lead to the inability to understand portal experience, but once internalized, cuts us off from even having portal experiences. It is this severance of modern humanity from its historical and spiritual roots that has led us into the depression and violence of modern society. Social-ontology destroys us as conscious human beings, and transforms us into social robots. In so doing, as we shall see, it opens the floodgates of mental illness and destruction.

One of the most important things consciousness does is to personalize experience -- it makes the things that happen to each individual unique to that individual, and to no one else. This is because consciousness always understands experience in relation to the self. By doing so, consciousness individuates, making each person unique as a person. The purpose of this individuation, from an evolutionary standpoint, is to generate within each person an individual perspective. This perspective is a view of the world, a point of view, a unique “take” on experience, from which that person observes and acts in the world. If there were no consciousness, then persons would have no individual perspectives from which to view the world. They would be rule-following entities with computer-like brains, all behaving in the same way, losing the ability to survive contingency. Theories of consciousness that assume materialism and social ontology reduce “persons” to genetics plus relationships -- biological organisms controlled by social factors. Persons become products of mindless biochemical processes that fit themselves into pre-established social patterns of behavior. In other words, these assumptions turn people into sophisticated insects.

The whole point of the social-ontological assumption is to do away with the belief that there is something inherently unique in each individual. According to Edelman’s morphogenesis argument, it is not reasonable to say that DNA makes a person -- at least as far as the mind goes -- an individual. The social-ontological assumption leads us to believe that persons are “individuals” only as members of a group, and they are persons only because of the group. The group defines persons and individuality -- personal identity comes from outside the person, not from within. “Individuality” does not really exist -- it is simply the way that one is taught, by society, to view persons.

The social-ontological assumption is really a more subtle version of behaviorism itself. Persons are what they do, according to this view, and concepts like “individual” have no meaning outside of the social environment in which they are situated. There is no such thing as “consciousness”, nor is there any need for the concept -- persons just are their social behavior. One can see this position nowhere more clearly than in B.F. Skinner’s novel, Walden Two, in which he portrays a behavioristic society. What is immediately evident in reading this work is that there is no notion of “I” or a self. Every person is simply a place-holder in a social order. The characters have no depth -- they are like theatrical masks without substantive psychological structure standing behind them. What is really most shocking about the work is that there is no consciousness, no perspective, no dissent, no alternatives: everything that happens is a smooth progression of the social order. This is behaviorism in its purest form -- and the social-ontological assumption pushed to its ideal limit. In the end, there is no consciousness, or at least no need for one, understood as a phenomenon of the individual. If you want to know what insects with language would be like, you need only read Walden Two.

By doing away with the uniqueness of the individual, the social-ontological assumption depersonalizes experience. It removes from experience the subjective quality of it being my experience, the very quality introduced by consciousness in the first place. Experience is no longer understood in relation to the individual that has them, but instead in relation to the convergence of social forces that define “individuality” in the social sense. Experience becomes a community phenomenon instead of an individual one. Ideas like “consensus reality” -- that reality is what the community agrees upon -- replace qualia and subjectivity. What is true for perception is also true for behavior -- the disappearance of the self under social ontology means that behavior is in relation to social standards and not in relation to individual judgment. The social-ontological assumption therefore strikes at the very heart of consciousness: by denying the existence of the self, the social ontological assumption denies that there is consciousness. Where social ontology is believed, it directly attacks consciousness in individuals. Skinner’s novel is just a novel, but the effects that the social-ontological assumption is having in modern culture are not fictitious, for it is this self-denial that is responsible for the loss of our greatness.

Of course the real test of the social-ontological and behaviorist positions would be to show that there have been, or exist today, societies without consciousness. If it can be shown that human civilization can exist without consciousness, then perhaps the social-ontological assumption is a good assumption after all. It is Julian Jaynes’ position that throughout most of human history, civilizations and societies have existed and flourished without consciousness. Consciousness is, according to this theory, a relatively recent event in human history appearing around the year 2000 BC.

From a behaviorist point of view, the most important factor in establishing and maintaining a social environment is control of behavior. A society can exist only insofar as the behavior of individuals is regulated and controlled by the needs of the society. If there is to be a civilization without consciousness, then there must be some other mechanism by which behavior is controlled, in order for a society to exist.

The mechanism for the control of behavior that existed before the appearance of consciousness is what Jaynes calls the bicameral mind. The term bicameral refers to the idea that the human brain is functionally divided into two separate units, characterized as the “right brain” and the “left brain”. This characterization is based upon research into the differences in how the right and left sides of the brain process information, and what role they play in the control of behavior. The theory is that in the absence of consciousness, the behavior of the individual was neurologically, instead of consciously, controlled.

What would a civilization in which behavior is controlled by the bicameral mind be like? Jaynes cites as his main example the civilization portrayed in the Iliad. In the Iliad, there are no words for, nor descriptions of, mental acts. Words describing what are now thought of as mental constituents -- psyche, thumos, and noos, for example -- at the time referred to strictly physical phenomena. There is no evidence in the Iliad for the idea of will -- there is no self-reflection, no consideration of alternatives, no motives or reasons. What drives the behavior of the individual characters are the voices of the gods -- voices heard by the characters commanding them to behave in certain ways, understood by the characters as being the commands of divine beings. While to an observer individuals may appear to be in control of their behavior, to the individuals themselves, they are merely following the commands of the gods.

This is a very difficult thing for minds endowed with consciousness to fathom: how individuals could not have a self, some kind of mental perspective from which to observe and judge, consider and reflect, and finally choose which behavior to follow. But the bicameral mind is not conscious in the sense that the word is used in this book. It has no sense of self, no sense that there is some unique me to which life’s experiences happen, no sense of unity or continuity. If conscious individuals hear voices, be they of the gods or not, they do not simply follow the voices’ commands -- they stop and think, consider, and evaluate. In a mind without consciousness, in which there is no sense of self and no “mental space” in which to consider experience in relation to that self, there can be no contemplation or evaluation, only obedience. The god’s voice becomes the behavior of the person.

What is the source of these god-voices that so completely control the behavior of persons in pre-conscious civilizations? The answer is, according to Jaynes, not to be found in any search for divine intervention, but rather it the physiology of the brain. The voices are “hallucinations”; not in the sense that the word is used in Chapter One, but in the sense that they are products of the neurological processes of the brain. The voices appear to be coming from the environment, but are really coming from inside the head.

Evidence of many kinds indicates that there are important differences in the ways that the right and left sides of the brain deal with information. The left side is primarily concerned with processing information sequentially, meaning that it deals with information in a step-wise manner, one thing at a time. For example, the left side of the brain is the side primarily concerned with language: language, whether spoken or written, is expressed one word at a time. The left brain is very good at putting words together into complete sentences, and at organizing thoughts into linear sequences of words.

In contrast, the right side of the brain primarily deals with information as a pattern or matrix, meaning it processes information as an entire picture, rather than stepwise, piece by piece. The right brain is therefore involved in pattern recognition, and in the analysis of visual data that are presented as an entire picture all at once, rather than in pieces. You can easily convince yourself of the difference between right and left brains by trying to explain how it is that you recognize a familiar person’s face. You cannot give an explanation for how this is done, because the recognition is carried out by the right brain which cannot formulate a linguistic, step-wise description of its activities. The only explanation that can be given is a step-wise recognition of the parts of the face, generated by the left brain, which plays little or no part in the actual recognition of the face itself.

The left and right brains are connected with each other, so that both play a part in ordinary mental operations. One hears music one note at a time, but one also recognizes the notes as part of a larger musical piece -- one appreciates the sounds themselves, but also the larger piece of which they are a part. One sees both the forest one tree at a time, and the forest as a whole. Thus, the bicameral mind -- two houses, acting together as one, but in different ways. Both sides of the brain process information, but deal with it differently, providing a much richer and more detailed picture of the world than either could by itself. The left and right brains are therefore not only interconnected, but to some extent duplicate each other’s functioning. There are visual processing areas, sound processing areas, and so forth on both sides -- each side receives the same information, but appreciates it differently.

One interesting exception to the duplication of function between left and right sides concerns the areas of the brain that deal with language. It appears, experimentally, that Wernicke’s area, Broca’s area, and the supplementary motor cortex are involved in language processing only on the left side, while their right side counterparts apparently have little to do with language. That is, little to do with it in a conscious brain. It is these right-brain “speech areas”, particularly the right Wernicke’s area, that play a crucial role in the control of behavior in the pre-conscious brain. These areas are the source of the voices of the gods in the bicameral mind.

Jaynes cites experimental evidence that the right brain does indeed possess the ability to express itself in linguistic terms, although it cannot organize those expressions into what are perceived as “voices”. What happens is that the right brain speech areas transmit their information to the left brain, where the voices are “heard”. This phenomenon can be observed to some degree today -- under conditions of extreme stress, ordinary persons will often “hear” voices, or otherwise feel they are being spoken to. Schizophrenic patients “hear” such voices as clearly as we hear ordinary speech. It is most interesting that when the right Wernicke’s area is experimentally stimulated in human subjects, the subjects report not only hearing voices, but “losing touch with reality” and a profound sense that the voices are coming from some other-worldly source.

Having identified a possible neurological mechanism for the origin of the “voices of the gods”, it remains to identify the source of their content -- why the voices say what they say, and what their purpose is. Recalling that the salient feature of the right brain’s processing is its ability to perceive patterns, Jaynes theorizes that the voices of the gods were organized by the right brain in order to control behavior and preserve the patterns it sees in the social environment. The right brain sees that people behave in certain ways, and generates commanding, god-like voices to ensure that the individual behaves similarly. The individual may acquire these patterns either through training, through observation, or through the commands of a leader. Of course in the latter case, the commands of the leader originate in his or her own right brain, with the purpose of preserving those behaviors necessary to continue the survival of the civilization.

The difference between conscious and bicameral minds is that there is no sense in the bicameral mind in which thoughts and experiences are related to me, because there is no subjective self to which they can be related. Perceptions and behaviors simply are and happen without reference to any unique individual. Bicameral minds do not reflect upon whether or not they should do something -- they obey the voices that command them to do it. It is difficult from the perspective of having a self to understand how this could not be a horrible thing -- being commanded relentlessly by “voices in the head” -- but where there is no self to be offended by such voices, the voices are a source of reassurance and direction.

The bicameral mind evolved, according to Jaynes’ theory, to facilitate the establishment of social living. The “voices in the head” provide the means by which the rules of a society are perpetuated and obeyed by its members. The bicameral mind is the ideal rule-following mind. It does not stop to think or reflect; it sees what others do, and commands that each person do the same.

Bicameral societies were the most peaceful and stable social environments ever to occur. This because the behavior of each individual was automatically integrated by the right brain into the framework of the society. Peaceful, that is, to one another. To other societies they were intolerant and ruthless enemies. The voices of the bicameral mind commanded destruction of those whose patterns of life were different from, and therefore threatening to, the social order with which it was familiar. So, while bicameral societies may have been the best neighbors among themselves, to outsiders they were the fiercest of adversaries. Since the bicameral mind had no sense of self that could be destroyed in battle, bicameral-minded warriors were the fiercest of fighters.

There have been, throughout time, many civilizations -- very likely bicameral ones -- that have come and gone, without leaving a trace other than unoccupied ruins. What happened to the ancient Mayans, to the civilization that built the Pyramids of Egypt, to the builders of the stone faces on Easter Island? How could such civilizations disappear without a trace? The answer lies in the inherent instability of bicameral civilizations. The bicameral mind is a rule-following system: it analyzes patterns in the social environment, and generates behaviors that preserve those patterns. What happens if those patterns become confused, disrupted, or simply vanish altogether? What happens is that the right brain can no longer formulate behavioral strategies -- if there are no patterns to observe, the voices simply disappear.

How could this happen? Mostly because life, at least on this planet, is seldom mechanical or rule-governed. While in isolated societies there may be ways of excluding many things, such as outsiders, that do not fit the existing patterns, excluding nature is beyond the limits of behavioral control. Nature is filled with contingencies -- events that are not predictable, not foreeseeable, not a part of the existing order, but nonetheless happen. Droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, meteor crashes, storms -- all of these things happen, and impact the existing patterns of behavior in the societies they affect. Contingencies violate the rules, and behavior that depends upon following rules cannot survive the effects of contingencies. When its social patterns are disrupted, the rule-following mind, like the computer with an incorrect key press, simply grinds to a halt.

The development of trade between cultures was one of the factors contributing to the fall of bicamerality. As urbanization progressed and societies became unable to provide for their own needs, interaction with outsiders became increasingly necessary. This had the unfortunate consequence of introducing behaviors from other societies into the picture. The eruption of the volcano Thera, somewhere around 1170 BC, destroyed entire cultures in one day, and sent forth hordes of refugees into other cultures. These were refugees whose voices had disappeared because their right brains could not fathom the catastrophe, and whose behaviors disrupted the patterns of the cultures into which they swarmed.

The bicameral societies of the middle east and Mediterranean collapsed during this time, because natural events and social interactions disrupted the patterns necessary for the right brain to formulate behavior. We can infer that a similar fate met the bicameral societies of other times and locations. Rule-governed behavior works only as long as there are rules to follow. When the rules vanish, organized behavior collapses and instinctual behavior, which has very little to do with maintaining social order, takes over. The civilization simply vanishes. The cities and monuments built to nourish the voices of the gods stand in silence as monuments to the orders they once served.

It is out of this confused, disordered mass of humanity that Jaynes believes consciousness arose. Contributing to the emergence of consciousness was the appearance of writing, which involves abstraction from the voices and therefore the beginnings of the mental capacity to form images of the self as well as others. Another contributory factor is commerce, and particularly the practice of deceit. Deceit requires the ability to maintain an image of the self that is different from behavior -- to cheat someone, you have to think one thing and do another. The ability to form an abstract image of one’s own person thus began to emerge. Along with that came the ability to separate one’s self, in the abstract, from one’s surroundings, to consider and judge, and to decide upon various behaviors.

Jaynes’ analysis of pre-conscious civilization points out the possibilities, and limitations, of society without consciousness. In cases where a society can be isolated and uniform, it is possible to have a peaceful and thriving culture without consciousness. Nature is, however, fraught with contingency. When those contingencies affect a bicameral civilization, the civilization crumbles. The bicameral civilizations described by Jaynes are quite similar to the fantasy society described by Skinner. What Skinner and his behavioral theory fail to address is the role of contingency, because it is impossible for the behaviorist model to accommodate events that do not fit predictable patterns.

Jaynes seems correct in explaining how there can be civilization without consciousness, and how social behavior can be achieved by the wiring of the brain alone. Ants, termites and bees build “civilizations” and have social orders, yet they do not appear to be conscious. Jaynes is wrong, however, about the origin of consciousness itself -- at least about the origins of consciousness as is necessary to explain portal experience. The counterexample of the chemist’s vision shows that consciousness can have perceptual and not behavioral content -- that there can be things in consciousness that are not in behavior first. To account for portal experiences, there must be more to consciousness than behavior and language.

The existence and survival of societies and civilizations relies heavily upon the following of rules by their members. Social orders do not flourish in the face of contingency, they prosper only in situations of consistency. From this it follows that bicamerality, oriented neurologically toward following the rules of the group, is the ideal mental state for civilization. The bicameral mind, with its neurological predisposition toward conformity, produces a homogeneous mental picture of the world -- shared goals, beliefs, and values, as well as behaviors. The content of the bicameral mind is organized by the perception of social behavior patterns -- it thinks what the group thinks.

On the other hand, consciousness, with its self-oriented perspective and rule-breaking capacity, is the antithesis of social order. The ability of consciousness to break rules -- to find and follow exceptions to established patterns of behavior -- means that when consciousness appears in a social setting it introduces problems. The conscious mind organizes itself by how it perceives experience in relation to itself. The values and beliefs of consciousness are its own -- its behavior originates from within, and not from custom or command. This is not to say that the conscious mind cannot be commanded, only that obedience is but one of many choices for it.

It should come as no surprise that one of the solutions to the problems of modern society might well be the return to the “peace” of bicameral civilization. The social-ontological assumption and bicameral-mindedness go hand in hand. By promoting the idea that persons are members of a society and not unique individuals, modern consciousness theories encourage the old bicameral control mechanisms to push consciousness out of the way. Similarly, social-ontology is exactly the view of persons that the bicameral mind needs to function.

The Attack on Consciousness in Modern Society

The theory of consciousness presented in this book argues that human consciousness does not arise out of any particular social situation. Human consciousness arises spontaneously within individuals, in any sort of social -- or absence of social -- setting. Social conditions do not cause consciousness, but they can encourage, or discourage, conscious behavior once it appears.

If consciousness is disruptive to social order, why would any society want to encourage it? Why not do everything possible to suppress it, in the interest of preserving the society? Consciousness does not exist for the purpose of maintaining social order; that is the role of the bicameral mind. Consciousness developed as a survival mechanism, a way or surviving changing conditions that exceed the limits beyond which rule-following systems can exist. No matter how orderly and structured a society is, it is still at the mercy of the environment. The survival of any social order depends upon its ability to roll with the punches dealt out by that environment. A society whose members cannot think beyond present conditions is doomed.

Since consciousness can think beyond rules and convention, the conscious mind is the resource for fundamentally new ideas -- ideas that can disrupt existing social paatterns, but which can also survive disaster. A rule-following mind can create technology, but only a mind that could separate itself from the patterns and rules of Newtonian physics could have conceived relativity. Civilizations are not stagnant -- they grow in population, resources usage, and space requirements. Only a conscious mind that can separate itself from the present can plan for a world that does not exist in that present.

In spite of these advantages, consciousness does present a threat to social order. Social order is founded upon shared ideas, beliefs, values, goals and behaviors. Because consciousness is inherently individualistic and rule-breaking, it develops perspectives unique to the individual in each of these areas. The whole point of consciousness is that while it may hear the voices in the head, it is not compelled to follow them. The conscious individual is therefore not a part of the pattern of accepted behavior, and the bicameral voices that control social behavior demand its destruction as they do of anyone who does not fit their patterns.

Whether in the past or present, the requirements for the continuation of any social order are the same. This is particularly true in urbanized societies. Population-dense cities, in which individuals are unable to provide for their own survival and must depend upon others to meet their most basic life needs -- food, water, shelter, sanitation, etc. -- can only exist under circumstances where order is rigidly enforced. The social patterns of behavior become life-sustaining in an urban setting, whether that setting is the ancient cities of several thousand years ago, or the densely populated metropolises of today. These social interdependencies are even more crucial today, for humanity’s obsession with technology has robbed people of many of the basic survival skills possessed by their ancestors, and made them even more dependent upon social interaction for survival.

Whether these social interactions are crucial to human survival or not does not matter. People believe they are, they believe they cannot exist without their routines and their technologies, and these beliefs have brought forth a re-emergence of the ancient bicameral mind. While consciousness is a factor in the creativity and inventiveness that have led to more sophisticated technologies and societies, because it represents a fundamental break in the patterns of social behavior it is not surprising that there are attempts in modern society to suppress or obliterate the existence of human consciousness. Consciousness is the source of much friction and discord in any society, while the bicameral mind is the ideal mental state for a peaceful and prosperous society. For those to whom the preservation of society is the most important goal, recameralization and the elimination of consciousness is a logical step in survival.

It is not suggested that recameralization is being done consciously -- that anyone is saying “We must wipe out consciousness to survive.” The bicameral mind is an unconscious entity -- it is a part of the wiring of the brain, and it does what it does without consciousness being directly aware of its motivations, activities or goals. The conscious mind does not hear the voices of the gods, at least not under usual circumstances. The commands of the bicameral mind are for the most part perceived indirectly through the emotions -- as fears, drives, repulsions, and so on. The right brain’s directives make themselves known without direct awareness on the part of consciousness, and therefore without consciousness being able to intervene. Those feelings are later rationalized to consciousness in various ways -- after they have exerted their effects upoon behavior.

How is recameralization possible when, from a survival standpoint, consciousness appears to be the more favorable condition? The reason this is possible is that under the social conditions in an urbanized environment, the bicameral mind offers a much easier path for social behavior. Going against the prevailing social patterns, whether in thought or in action, introduces a great deal of tension and stress. So, living in an urban setting creates a situation where bicamerality is “easier” than consciousness. This “easiness” is itself an emotional reaction triggered by the bicameral mind.

Everyone experiences some degree of the struggle between bicamerality and consciousness. Take, for example, the case of standing in a long line that never seems to move. Assuming it is for something important, the conscious mind reacts to the delay with anger and frustration. Soon, however, a sense of calmness appears -- you stand in line, becoming a part of the line. The frustration of “I am stuck in this line” is replaced by a sense of becoming a part of the line -- the me withers away, and with it, the sense of frustration. That is what the bicameral mind is like. There is no sense of me to be frustrated, no feeling that my time is being wasted -- only the “calm” of being a part of the soocial pattern.

In the conscious mind bicamerality takes a back seat -- the voices are displaced by the sense of self. The bicameral mind is nonetheless present and functioning in the background, waiting for a chance to assert itself. What most often gives it that chance is fear. While consciousness is well aware that there is some degree of dependence upon others for its own well being, situations that threaten to disrupt the system of social interdependency and the familiar patterns of the social environment provoke a specific kind of fear in the latent bicameral mind.

As H. P. Lovecraft wrote, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Fear is a powerful motivation, and it often motivates unconsciously, causing one to do things that later cannot be explained, or for which one manufactures explanations that are illogical or absurd. The parts of the brain connected with generating emotions of fear are much older, from the standpoint of evolution, than either consciousness or bicamerality. Once these neurological structures are activated, they overwhelm conscious control of thought and behavior. The bicameral mind, being a part of the wiring of the brain and older than consciousness in evolution, is more intimately connected with the neurological systems associated with fear than is consciousness. When the bicameral mind perceives situations that threaten it, it unconsciously activates the fear response, which in turn strengthens the effects of the bicameral mind, eclipsing the efforts of consciousness to reason with the situation. The result -- one behaves bicamerally, one follows the voices, or their more subtle emotional cues. In the face of the powerful fear-brain interaction, consciousness can only watch in disbelief -- or simply wither away.

Not all fears are directly connected with bicamerality. Any fear probably can, under the right circumstances, trigger the appearance of voices in the head, or their modern emotional substitutes. It is a specific kind of fear -- fear of social disruption -- that triggers the reactions that bring forth bicamerality and suppress consciousness. You hate someone: he is different, he is perceived as a threat to the social pattern of life, and right brain sets off the fear reaction, all unconsciously. Fear takes over, and this person winds up tied to a fence with his head beaten in. You try to explain it: “He is scum,” “He is immoral,” “Because the Bible says so,” all of which are utterly absurd. They are explanations for thoughts and behaviors of the unconscious bicameral mind, cooked up by consciousness to explain and to justify behaviors it can’t understand.

Beginning with unconsciously motivated fears, consciousness is demonized and pushed out of the picture, leaving the bicameral mind to step in and restore social order. Consciousness cannot fathom why clinics should be bombed and doctors shot in their homes, why people should be tied to fence posts and beaten or dragged through the streets until dead, or why children should be shot in schoolyards. But the bicameral mind, asserting itself in modern times through the very medium it created -- commanding, irrational and uncompromising religious doctrine -- carries out these hideous acts with a passion for social conformity and a penchant for violence that only an unconscious, psychotic mind can comprehend.

Even in the absence of overtly violent behavior, there are trends in modern society moving toward recameralization, spreading like a cancer that threatens to destroy individuality and consciousness itself. Museum and art exhibits are banned, schools are encouraged to treat students like prisoners with uniforms, unwarranted searches and drug tests, ideas are banned from school curricula, and media censorship is applied with a ferocity that crushes ideas before anyone hears them. Instead, the mind is fed the mental equivalent of junk food. Celebrities, slogans and dull-witted comedies are paraded before the eyes as “entertainment”, the alternative to intelligent thought upon which the bicameral mind feeds and consciousness starves. And all of this is done unconsciously, motivated by the unconscious drive for social stability and conformity, and the fear of social disruption.

In order for recameralization to proceed, certain conditions must be met. First, there must exist patterns of social behavior to which the right brain can orient itself. In modern urbanized civilization, these patterns are everywhere. They are in directly observable behavior such as jobs, social events, entertainment, and so on. There are patterns of beliefs: “scientific” versus “superstitious”, “mainstream” religious versus “cults” and “nuts”; patterns of value: “conservative” versus “liberal”, and “family values” versus “immorality”; patterns of expression: “politically correct” versus “crude”, “indecent” and “obscene”; and even patterns of personal appearance: “dressed for success” as opposed to “freaky”, “filthy”, “unkempt”. Some of these patterns are regarded as “acceptable” -- that is, they fit what the right brain sees as necessary to perpetuate society. Other patterns of behavior are regarded negatively, and even as dangerous, because the bicameral mind sees them as threats to accepted social order.

It is the existence of these perceived threats that fulfills the second condition for recameralization: there must be behaviors or other conditions that the right brain can use to activate the fear response. Whether these conditions are real, in terms of physical survival, or merely conditioned or implanted through social pressure, makes no difference. All that matters in the activation of the fear response by the bicameral mind is that they are perceived as threats. Whether refusing to wear a necktie is, or is not, a threat to society itself does not matter; what matters is that the unconscious bicameral mind believes it is a threat, and turns on the fear response.

The third condition is that there must be something to get the voices going; something that provides sufficient stimulus to trigger the fear-bicamerality mechanism and overpower conscious control of the mind. Even though the bicameral mind is not usually experienced in terms of voices today, the same kind of trigger is necessary to enable it to take control of behavior. In ancient cultures, this trigger condition was normally provided by the speech of a king or leader. The voice of the leader was heard, understood by the right brain, and re-transmitted by the right brain when necessary. Voices of the “gods” were often just modified speech of a king, parent, or other recognized authority figure. The authority voices served to synchronize the minds of the listeners -- to insure that everyone thought the same thing at the same time. This behavioral synchronization, in ancient times, served to keep the bicameral mechanisms in control of the mind.

In order for recameralization to occur today, it is necessary to trigger the fear-bicamerality response. The speech of a leader is not sufficient for this alone; the behavioral synchronization must be coupled to the fear of social disintegration. For recameralization to proceed, this synchronized fear must be spread simultaneously throughout the population, so that everyone gets the same message at the same time, without the intervention of individual opinion. In ancient cities, this kind of communication was possible -- the people simply congregated to hear the leader speak, or it was transmitted throughout the civilization by town criers. The voices moved at the maximum speed at which information could be transmitted throughout the culture. As civilizations became more physically spread out, it was impossible for this method to succeed. The voice of the leader did not move as fast as the voice of the local tavern owner or neighbor, individual opinion and reflection interfered, and the bicameral control mechanism began to falter.

For the first time since the ancient civilizations, modern culture has the ability to instantaneously transmit a piece of information throughout the entire society so that everyone gets the same information at the same time. Media saturation, through radio, television, and now the Internet, means that everyone hears the same words at the same time. This is very important to the operation of the bicameral mind, for it provides a common pattern upon which the right brain can focus. It means that everyone thinks the same thing at the same time, or near enough to the same time so that other opinions cannot intervene. Whether everyone agrees with what is being said or not does not matter. What matters is that everyone’s behavior and thoughts are synchronized by what is said. The ability to transmit information visually further intensifies the reaction of the bicameral mind. The right brain processes information as a matrix, making it highly receptive to information presented in a visual format, such as from a television picture.

But it is not just any information that is of concern here. Jaynes notes that much of the information directed toward social behavior patterns in ancient societies was in the form of poetry or verse -- the form of the information itself is a pattern. These patterns, according to Jaynes, “drive the electrical activity of the brain.” Experiments indicate that information presented in this way stimulates electrical activity in the brain, reinforcing the neurological pathways upon which the bicameral mind is dependent. Modern culture is not devoid of poetry or verse, and very often this kind of information is presented as musical lyrics.

More commonly, information intended to drive social conformity is presented in the form of slogans or other trite sayings: “Just say no,” “family values”, and “dress for success”. These slogans not only form a pattern in themselves, but they carry along with them the implied fear of social disruption that energizes the bicameral mind and turns on the fear response. Quite unconsciously, when we hear slogans, and particularly those uttered and repeated by authority figures -- “for the sake of our children”, “to proteect our way of life”, “to keep America strong” -- the bicameral mind is triggered, conscious reflection grinds to a halt, and we begin to think and feel the same way as our pre-conscious ancestors.

When slogans are heard repetitively they stimulate the electrical activity of the right brain, reinforcing the ability of the bicameral mind to displace conscious thought. Slogans get the voices going: when one thinks in terms of slogans, one is “thinking” bicamerally. When you go to the supermarket and think of advertising slogans while choosing products, you are experiencing the effects of the bicameral mind. This is mental activity without the intervention of consciousness, being driven by neurological processes that are not subject to critical review by the conscious mind. Unless one exerts strong mental effort, consciousness doesn’t intervene in the process: you buy the product, get it home, and then wonder why you bought it.

The value of this has been known to the advertising industry for quite some time: get people to remember slogans or rhymes, and they will be unconsciously motivated to buy the product. Interestingly, most advertising slogans are not about the products themselves; they are directed toward social conformity. They are not about what the product does, or why one would need it. For the most part they depict how the product will enhance one’s social position in relation to others -- make friends, win a mate, make everyone happy, and so on. The idea that buying the product will fit into the social pattern, coupled with the neurological stimulation provided by repeating the slogan itself, provides a powerful stimulus -- an unconscious stimulus by way of the bicameral mind -- to encourage buying the product.

The suspension of consciousness induced by slogans and social conformity creates the conditions under which recameralization can occur. There is nothing new or novel about these methods -- they are the means employed in bicameral societies to ensure their survival and success. They appear strange to us because, for so long, human society has been unable to undermine the critical and independent nature of individual consciousness. Media saturation provides the means for getting the voices in the head going again -- voices that were silenced when the bicameral civilizations of the ancient world collapsed, as human and environmental evolution overtook them. But now those voices are coming back.

Technology versus Consciousness

Unfortunately for human consciousness, media saturation is now being applied to ends quite different from merely selling products. It is being used to promote recameralization and the obliteration of individual consciousness. The desire for a perfect society, free of crime and social disruption, has resulted in an all-out war against individual consciousness. From the ideas that a society can exist only as long as its members follow its rules, and that consciousness evolved in such a way as to break the rules, it follows that the survival of a society would be greatly enhanced under two circumstances. First, that human consciousness can be suppressed or obliterated, and second, that some means other than consciousness exists for dealing with contingency. Even if consciousness cannot be made to completely disappear, it can nonetheless be unseated in its control over behavior. If behavioral control can be returned to the socially conforming bicameral mind, the goal of a perfect social order would appear to be within reach.

It is widely believed in this society that technology can solve many of the problems resulting from unforeseen disasters. There exists medical technology to counter disease and injury, chemical and mechanical technology to manipulate both the environment and the organisms that live in it, architectural technology to enable greater population densities, and entertainment technology to provide not only pleasure, but also the means of keeping the voices going. Of course all of these have their bad side effects, but drawing attention to those bad effects are not a part of acceptable social behavior. Medical technology leads to overpopulation, chemical technology leads to pollution. Dense-packing of populations in cities leads to depression and despair as consciousness, overwhelmed by media saturation and sloganism, passes into oblivion. The pain of disappearing consciousness is eased by the burps, squeaks, and rhythmic, bicamerality-stimulating movements of computer games and boom-boxes, and the shallowness of individual experience replaced by television programs. Consciousness becomes a burden, much like the case of standing in the long, slow line -- a burden that can only be relieved by relaxing in social conformity. When we surround ourselves with technology, we begin to behave like machines.

If it is believed that technology can solve all of the problems -- whether it in fact can or cannot -- all that is needed to return to the peacefulness of bicameral society is the elimination of individual human consciousness, and something to get the voices going. I call the method by which this is being done the O.B.I.T. Phenomenon, named after a machine that appeared in the 1960’s Outer Limits series in an episode of the same name. The O.B.I.T. phenomenon is the process by which individual consciousness is replaced by the bicameral mind -- it is the method employed by modern society to recameralize the conscious mind. The entire process is directed toward the elimination of the self, and the introspective distancing from experience that is required for consciousness to exist.

The process works by destroying inwardness -- the capacity of consciousness to keep its internal workings inside itself, separate from the world of social interactions and other experiences. Inwardness is what might be called the “privacy” of one's own mind. Inwardness is necessary for introspective distance -- consciousness needs inwardness to distance itself from the world of experience and social interaction, and to develop a point of view on that world from which judgment and behavior can proceed. The situation is analogous to discovering the shape of the Earth -- to see that it is round, one needs to leave the surface, go out into space and look back. Similarly, for consciousness to function, it needs to be able to distance itself from the world. It must be able to separate the self from experience to develop a perspective on experience. If that inwardness can be destroyed, then consciousness itself is destroyed -- the self and the world collapse into one. The contents of the mind become the social environment and experience, which is precisely the mental environment in which the bicameral mind operates.

There are three phases to the O.B.I.T. phenomenon. The first is what Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, in his Two Ages, calls leveling -- the process by which the content of the individual’s mind becomes public. Consciousness is able to develop a perspective on the world because there is a certain amount of tension between what is inside an individual’s mind, and what exists in the world. A point of view is not the world, and consciousness must constantly adjust itself -- its perspective and its view of the self -- in relation to experience.

If what is inside the individual mind is made public -- if there is no difference between what consciousness thinks and knows, and what everyone thinks and knows -- then the tension between the individual and experience disappears. Experience becomes immediate -- there is no separation between the self and experience. Introspective distance and the individual point of view collapse, and consciousness ceases to exist -- the world becomes the mind. In Kierkegaard’s words, leveling “nullifies the principle of contradiction”, meaning it cancels the differences between individuals, and between individuals and the public as a whole. When there is no longer any difference between the individual and experience, between individuals, and between each individual and the public as a whole, then consciousness grinds to a halt. There is no inwardness -- no “private” mental space from which consciousness can operate.

Kierkegaard identifies the most significant aspect of this leveling process as chatter, “the annulment of the passionate disjunction between being silent and speaking.” Only the person who has consciousness -- who has things within the mind that are not a part of the public picture -- can have anything really important to say. If all a person has inside is what everyone has inside, then there is no “inside”. Since saying private things makes them public, “silence is inwardness” -- the essential trait of consciousness is tto keep its inner workings to itself. When individuals put the contents of their minds into the public domain -- not the intellectual contents, which generally derive their importance from public discussion, but the matters that are most private to the individual -- what ensues is chatter, endless talk about issues that are of no importance. Private matters lose their importance in chatter because what is important in private is of no significance in public. The effect of chatter is to break down the barriers that distinguish one person from another, by endlessly talking about private matters in public.

Chatter is seen nowhere more clearly than in contemporary television news programs. In past years, these programs focused upon delivering information about events happening around the world, events of significant influence on the structure of the world. Their purpose was to inform, to educate, and generally to uplift the viewers by increasing their scope of awareness.

This is no longer the case. What dominates the news media now is what one editor called “smut” -- the “human interest” stories that dump the most private matters of individuals into the public face. Cameras are shoved in the faces of disaster victims, while they are relentlessly questioned about, “How do you feel about losing your home?” What an idiotic question, and how idiotic the mind that could conceive of asking it! The effect of this kind of “news” is not to convey to the public any important or useful information, but to bring forth the inner emotions of individuals for public consumption. Grown adults crying on national network television over missing children or other personal problems -- why is this kind of emotional display important to me or to anyone else? As a conscious being, of course it is not; but this is the kind of “smut” the bicameral mind thrives upon.

Making the private matters of each individual public affairs to be chattered about destroys the inwardness of the individual, and destroys the distinction between individuals, making the individual a social entity. This is equally true for both the person “exposed” and for those who watch it. The destruction of anyone’s privacy is, to some degree, the destruction of everyone’s privacy -- another person’s personal matters coming into your mind as much collapses the difference between individuals as would your private business becoming public. Chatter doesn’t care who listens or who talks -- both are equally gratifying to the bicameral mind.

If “human interest” stories are smut, then the ultimate obscenity is surely the “talk show”, whose participants, with all the grace of a street-corner flasher, bare their most private affairs for public view. Just as the artists of post-World War I Germany’s “dada” movement portrayed the horrors of war, the talk shows of radio and television portray the horror to which humanity can sink when dignity and respect for persons are traded for entertainment. There can be no rational purpose for which the most private matters of individual’s lives are brought forth into public view, and there can be no rational justification for the viewers’ morbid interest in watching this material. Indeed, it is not a rational or a conscious phenomenon, but the lack of reason and judgment that popularizes this kind of chatter. Consciousness can provide no explanation for why one would do this -- or why one would watch it -- because the desire to listen and watch it comes from unconscious brain processes.

The bicameral mind thrives on chatter because it exposes the innermost patterns of an individual’s life to public view, gratifying bicamerality’s craving for social interconnection. Chatter turns the individual into social pattern. It produces a feeling of “well-ness”, not because it satisfies any need of the individual, but because the bicameral mind is so intimately connected with emotional circuits in the brain. People watch the chatter shows mindlessly, as though addicted to them. The effect of chatter is indistinguishable -- on both psychological and physiological levels -- from the effects of drug addiction because both stimulate the neurological pathways associated with pleasure. There is nothing in chatter for consciousness except despair -- consciousness can exist only when its innermost workings are hidden from view, and when the innermost working of others also remain private. By making the private matters of the mind public, chatter obliterates the distinction between individuals, and destroys the introspective space in which the self finds itself different from others.

The leveling process is also at work in what has become endless chatter about “relationships”. People spend countless hours -- and dollars -- seeking to establish, improve, and “succeeed” in their “relationships”. The problem is that, at least as far as consciousness is concerned, there is no such thing as a relationship -- individuals exist, and individuals relate to one another. What is essential in the relating of individuals is the tension between what each individual keeps inside and what is shared with others. When individuality is traded for “relationships”, as Kierkegaard writes, “The coiled springs of life relationships lose their resilience; the qualitative expression of difference between opposites is no longer the law for the relation of inwardness to each other in the relation.” When individuality disappears and the “relationship” takes over, the tension -- the differences between individuals -- that gives individuals something to say and contribute vanishes.

It is the “coiled springs of life relationships” that give relations between individuals significance, and not the endless chatter that levels their differences. To focus not upon the individuals, but the “relationship” -- as though it were some kind of existing entity -- is to deny the individuality of its members, and to obliterate the difference between what is a part of the individual and what is shared. It is at bottom to deny what is essential to the consciousness of the individual. Consciousness does not always make for smooth “relationships”, because it must always keep itself hidden from others. Consciousness must always keep itself private, or it loses its distance from the world around it. “Relationships” are, on the other hand, the sole content of the bicameral mind. Everything is a relationship to bicamerality -- there are no individuals and nothing to keep hidden, for everything is in the public view. To focus one’s attention upon the “relationship”, instead of upon the individuals that constitute it, is therefore to give up consciousness for bicamerality.

Chatter surfaces in more sophisticated ways as what is often called “political correctness”. The point of political correctness is to act, and ultimately to think, in ways that are not offensive to others -- in ways that do not characterize or distinguish between individuals on the basis of traits shared by individuals as a group. The demand for “gender neutrality” in language is an example of this. On the surface, this looks as though it should be a good thing, but its effect can be the leveling of distinctions between individuals, and groups of individuals, by denying their uniqueness and their history. Individuals have histories, both personal and cultural, and to deny those histories is to deny the uniqueness of the self. To insist that one speak in ways that do not identify the differences between individuals is to force a mind set that denies those differences. While it may not always be pleasant to be exposed to materials that reveal differences between individuals, races, sexes, and so on, that “unpleasantness” is the kind of fuel that drives conscious reflection and action. Leveling those differences means that consciousness loses its sense of identity, and leveling the talk about those differences deprives consciousness of its ability to reflect upon others and itself.

This should not be taken to mean that stereotyping -- assigning a set of characteristics to an individual based upon a single physical or mental attribute -- is any less of a leveling process. Stereotyping is refusing to acknowledge that consciousness makes a difference in the individual. It denies that there exists a uniqueness in persons that transcends opinion and prejudice. It cannot be inferred that because an individual has a certain physical trait, belief, or behavior, that the individual belongs to a class in which appearance, thought and behavior are necessarily connected to one another. Making that inference is an outright denial of individuality, and an outright denial of consciousness in that individual. Stereotyping and “political correctness” are really one and the same phenomenon. They both focus upon characteristics assigned by society, as opposed to characteristics uniquely developed within the individual.

The effect of consciousness, by relating a unique self to experience, is to personalize experience. Even though, on the surface, one may share the same experience as another, what consciousness perceives will be unique to each individual -- the same outward experience will have very different inward meaning. The result of leveling is to depersonalize experience -- to eliminate the uniqueness and the inwardness, so that experiences are the same for everyone. The trend of describing personal experiences in terms of “processes” or other mechanical, impersonal terms is an example of this depersonalization. One does not suffer pain and misery over the death of a friend or relative -- one “goes through the grieving process.” This kind of chatter insults the very real pain and uncertainty suffered by consciousness, and substitutes for it public chatter. “They are just going through the grieving process” denies that there is any real, personal pain being suffered -- that there is anything special about what has happened. To those suffering it is very real, and it is very special -- until they are “helped” to see that it is just a “grieving process.” In other words, until they “learn” to substitute public chatter for private experience -- until they surrender the tension of consciousness for the “peacefulness” of bicamerality.

It is this kind of depersonalization that the bicameral mind needs to generate a behavioral “fit” to social patterns. Only when there is no individual mental content -- when every aspect of the individual is public -- can the bicameral mind proceed to orient individual behavior to social pattern. As long as consciousness exists, there will always be something hidden -- hidden beliefs, hidden motivations, hidden thoughts -- which disrupt the bicameral mind’s control over behavior, and cannot be tolerated in a bicameral society. Consciousness necessarily introduces tension in a society, because it necessarily contains tensions of its own -- tensions between what is observed and what is believed, between the self and others -- which are not accessible to the general public. Leveling eliminates those inner contents, and eliminates the tension between individual and public by eliminating what is essential to the individual -- consciousness.

Leveling -- the depersonalization of experience -- is the first step in the destruction of individual consciousness. The second step is to replace what is inside consciousness with public material -- to replace the personal contents of consciousness with public content. What is held in the consciousness of the individual -- necessarily different from, and hidden from, the public -- must be replaced with something that is held in common by the general public. Chatter puts the contents of each person’s mind into everyone else’s mind, but that is not enough.

To activate the bicameral mind, the “public content” must be a pattern of thought that can be analyzed by the right brain, and reinforced by the voices. As Kierkegaard writes in Two Ages, “For leveling really to take place, a phantom must first be raised, the spirit of leveling, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage -- and this phantom is the public.” For leveling to succeed in displacing consciousness, there must be a mental content -- information devoid of significance or personal impact, incapable of individuation -- ready to move in and replace consciousness. This content is provided by social indoctrination, the process by which “the I becomes we”, and its content must be purely social pattern. It cannot have any intellectual significance, for if it did, it would stimulate the reflective capacity of consciousness -- consciousness would insist upon thinking about it, and thereby obstruct the bicameral mind’s control. This information must be in a form that is not readily accessible to consciousness. Ideally, it should exist only as a social behavior pattern, but most importantly it must not exist as written documents, which stimulate sequential analysis by the left brain. In this culture, the most common form of social indoctrination is what has come to be called morality.

Morals are codes or standards of conduct -- statements of what is desirable and undesirable, and visions of abstract goals or ideas. Morals, in which are included for the sake of convenience similar ideas such as “values” and “ideals”, characterize the society that holds them. They define what is expected of its members, and the general direction in which the society develops. They are guidelines for behavior, but also guidelines for thought, creativity, and expression.

Laws, too, are codes of conduct, but differ from morality in several very important respects. Laws are externalized control mechanisms -- they are enforced by one person or entity upon another. They are explicit -- they are stated in very precise terms, usually in writing, and displayed for all to see. Laws are subject to scrutiny and review -- they are enacted by explicitly defined and hopefully rational deliberative processes, and they are enforced according to specific guidelines. Most importantly, laws are subject to review by criminal courts, which judge an individual’s guilt or innocence, and constitutional courts, which judge the desirability of the laws themselves. Finally, laws usually have well defined and explicitly stated punishments for their violation.

Morals are unlike laws in every respect. They are internalized control mechanisms. Except in cases where morals are turned into laws -- which quite commonly are overturned as unconstitutional or otherwise undesirable -- there is no one who specifically enforces them. The success of morality as a control mechanism depends entirely upon individuals enforcing it upon themselves. Again, unless morals are turned into laws, they are never explicit, and they are never written down as such. They are transmitted socially, through social interactions, oral stories, oral reprimands, written fables, and so forth. Morals are not subject to review -- it is not possible to clearly state a vision or ideal in the first place, much less bring it before a public court to be analyzed and judged. There is no criminal punishment for violation of a moral -- the punishment is either inflicted upon the individuals by themselves, or upon the individual by society as social ostracism.

These differences between morals and laws are extremely important, for they demonstrate the difference between conscious and bicameral control mechanisms. Morals, not being explicitly stated, are not directly apprehended by consciousness. Instead, they exist as patterns in social behavior and thought. They are not accessible to, and therefore never really scrutinized by, the conscious mind. They are recognized by the bicameral mind as patterns necessary for the preservation of social order. Taboos, for example, are never really examined logically. One cannot say why wearing clothes of the opposite sex is “bad” or “wrong”. Under conscious analysis, there is no logical reason why it should be “bad”, and indeed, in many cultures, it is not regarded as “bad”. The reason these things are regarded as bad is that they violate social morals -- invisible patterns of social conduct perceived by the right brain and enforced unconsciously, and never really brought under the scrutiny of conscious reflection. It is simply understood that “you just don’t do” these things, without any reasons ever being given why, nor it ever being explicitly stated. There are no “morality police” to arrest, and no “morality courts” to judge, for doing any of those things. One’s “punishment” is that one is made to feel disgusting, and one is regarded with disgust by other members of the culture.

The point about punishment is perhaps the most important difference between laws and morals. The enforcement of laws is based upon punishment -- that something unpleasant will be done if one violates them. There must be some sense of self -- some feeling that I am being hurt -- in order for punishment to work, and in order for fear of punishment to exist in the first place. While it may be thought that some laws are just and appropriate, and one obeys them because they seem like good ideas, other laws appear ridiculous, and are obeyed only because of the fear that some harm will be sustained to the self if they are not obeyed. The bicameral mind, having no sense of self, has no basis on which to fear punishment, and no basis upon which punishment can be effective. There is no understanding in the bicameral mind that punishment is being done to me, because there is no me that can be harmed by it. The only form of “punishment” the bicameral mind can comprehend is social ostracism -- being cast out by the society. Socrates, himself a member of a bicameral society (at least according to Jaynes), was given the option of either banishment from Athens or death. He chose death -- by far the lesser punishment for a bicameral mind -- because banishment would have meant the end of the patterns by which his bicameral mind ordered and oriented itself.

Morals are often turned into laws, because violation of morals does pose a serious threat to social order -- at least to social order founded upon conformity and pattern. The view that morality should be legislated is paternalism -- that government should treat its citizens as parents treat their children. This not only denies the political sovereignty of the individual, but the mental sovereignty of consciousness. Paternalism is an important step in the elimination of individual consciousness because it appeals to the unconscious bicameral mind and not to intellectual thought. These laws very often appear as condemnations of specific groups of individuals -- homosexuals, marijuana smokers, fortune tellers. The reasons given for them are always absurd and idiotic, and are usually sloganized -- “saving the children”, “promoting the family”, “insuring the American dream.” Only a mind that has completely lost the capacity for intellectual analysis could find any justification in this kind of explanation, and the bicameral mind is precisely that kind of mind. The bicameral mind is not a mind in the sense understood by consciousness. It is very much a machine, like a computer, that requires rules -- in the form of social patterns -- in order to function. Consciousness plays no part in understanding this kind of control. Morality and paternalism are the social manifestations of unconscious mental activity.

The most obvious aspect of morality’s appeal to the unconscious mind lies in its orientation toward sexual and reproductive behavior, to the point of irrational obsession. One would think that if people had evolved without sexual organs, this culture would have no sense of morality at all. Sigmund Freud theorized that it is the repression of sexual behavior that ultimately makes human civilization possible, and the bicameral mind theory support this idea. Sexual and reproductive behaviors are very closely tied into the old brain -- those parts of the brain whose behavior patterns are, for the most part, biologically evolved and neurologically controlled. These parts of the brain are closely interconnected with the neurological mechanisms of the bicameral mind. Morality’s incessant chatter about sexual conduct fuels the energy of the bicameral mind, further stimulates the “voices”, further pushing individual initiative and opinion into the background.

Morals are generally not presented as direct, logical and intellectual statements. More often than not, if presented at all, they are in the form of slogans, simple stories or trite sayings -- “Just say no” and the Ten Commandments’ series of “Thou shalt nots” are examples. As is the case with other slogans, when they are repeated over and over, they “drive the electrical activity of the brain”, as Jaynes says, reinforcing neurological control mechanisms over conscious ones. They become the voices in the head, and so much more so if they are never subjected to intellectual analysis. Facts do not become voices, only repetitive slogans do.

As an example, U. S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Shalala, in a speech discussing drug use, stated: “People are getting mixed messages about drug use... the push for the medical use of marijuana in California suggests that it might be safe... we have to get the message across that it’s illegal and wrong.” Never mind the facts, ma’am, just get the voices going. An intelligent discussion of the topic -- whether the use of marijuana is medically advantageous or not -- is precisely what is not wanted, for intellectual analysis stimulates the left brain and feeds consciousness. Intellectual analysis and argument create the possibility that individuals might decide the issue for themselves, rather than blindly following authority. The position articulated above is one of social conformity -- of getting the voices going and keeping them going -- for the sake of social conformity and not for the sake of the sick and the suffering. What the bicameral mind needs to control behavior is a moral conviction that a behavior is wrong -- one that is absolute and not subject to rational evaluation, and one that can be presented in slogans such as: “It is wrong for the children”. Those who have an interest in enforcing social conformity prefer that thought and behavior be controlled by the bicameral mind, not by individual consciousness.

This example also illustrates the point of introducing morality in the first place -- to serve as a substitute for the conscious control of behavior. When behavior is governed by slogans -- “Just say no” -- this is a sign that a publicly held behavior pattern is being substituted for individual judgment. An even better indicator is if the slogan requires a suspension of the critical faculties of the conscious mind, as in the above example. This emphasis on morality and de-emphasis on critical thought and review indicates that pressure is being exerted to replace conscious behavior with bicameral behavior. Instead of individuals considering whether something is right or wrong on the basis of their own experience, it is considered right or wrong on the basis of whether it fits the social pattern.

This kind of behavioral control -- by morals, and by the bicameral mind -- depends upon shared values, visions and goals. There are, of course, no such things as “shared values”. It is a phantom, a pattern in public thought that serves to synchronize the thoughts and behaviors of individuals. It has no meaning other than that. Consider “family values”, for example. There are no such things as “values” that are held in common by all families, much less by all individuals. In fact, the majority of “families” are single persons, child-free partners and single-parent households, not the two-parent multi-child living arrangements to which these “values” supposedly apply. The slogan has come to mean something where it really means nothing: a never-quite-articulated set of behaviors and beliefs that defines a certain kind of society, a society that does not exist. The slogan is a psychological cue that activates the bicameral mind and suppresses consciousness.

Leveling, media saturation, sloganism, emphasis on morality and conformity as opposed to individual judgment and critical evaluation -- all point to the replacement of individual consciousness by socially transmitted patterns of behavior, appealing to the right brain and getting the voices in the head going. This is not the first time in recent human history this series of events has occurred. The absurdity of Hitler’s “Aryan” philosophy went unnoticed, even to the German intellectuals of the time, in the sloganism and carefully engineered social programming that made it the cornerstone of German thought. Even Heidegger, the great existentialist philosopher, succumbed to the patterns and pressures of Hitler’s media campaign. Nazi Germany exemplifies what happens when a culture reverts from consciousness to bicamerality: the passion for orderliness, the fierce intolerance and brutality, and finally the tragic end for all involved when evolution and contingency intervene. Is contemporary society to follow the same path? Under the banners of “Just say no” and “family values," is consciousness to be traded for the “comforts” of social order and technology, for brutality toward those who do not conform, and for the inevitable tragedy before which all previous bicameral cultures have fallen?

In order for this to happen, there is one more requirement that must be fulfilled -- the active suppression of human consciousness itself. The bicameral mind cannot tolerate individuality. It can only tolerate “individuals” in the sense that they are elements of a social framework. Independent thought and action are anathema to bicamerality, and are intolerable and impossible in a culture sustained by social pattern. Leveling and social indoctrination create strong pressures and reinforcements for the bicameral mind to assume control of behavior. In modern society, there is every mechanism necessary to stimulate the neurological activity of the right brain, and to provide the patterns necessary for the bicameral mind to assume control of behavior. What remains to be done is the suppression of individual consciousness in those who already have it, and the prevention of its emergence in those who do not.

It is, of course, impossible to enter one’s psyche and forcibly remove a part of it. If consciousness were a part of the brain, that would indeed be possible. As already mentioned, consciousness is not a property of any specific part of the brain. Consciousness is -- or at least the physical component of consciousness is -- a property of the brain as a whole and not of some individual part of it. So surgery is out: consciousness cannot be destroyed surgically without destroying the brain, which would also destroy the bicameral mind. What can be done, however, is to destroy the conditions under which consciousness can exist, and to make consciousness so unpleasant that when it appears, its suppression becomes automatic. One listens to the voices because the alternatives are utterly intolerable.

To function, consciousness requires an introspective space of its own, a separation from the world around it from which to abstract and contemplate experience. That mental space is “privacy” -- the opportunity to be alone to think, to introspect, and to behave in ways that are not open to the scrutiny of others. Privacy is a respite from the forces that generate and promote the voices in the head. It is a sort of private laboratory and playground in which consciousness can assert itself in thought and behavior without the knowledge or criticism of others.

Destroy privacy, then, and one strikes a very serious blow at one of the most essential requirements for consciousness to develop and maintain itself. Chatter is one means of doing this. By constantly bombarding the mind with idiotic babble of no importance whatsoever, chatter tries to close the distance between the self and the world. When introspective distance collapses, experience and self become one and the same -- the world becomes the mind. If consciousness is constantly bombarded with information from the environment -- socially patterned information -- and cannot separate itself from that environment, the result is that consciousness cannot introspect and loses control over behavior. Consciousness withers away, and its place is taken by the “socially correct” bicameral mind.

One factor in this destruction of privacy is the pervasiveness of noise in modern culture. Sound is special in the sense that one cannot turn off one’s hearing -- one can close one's eyes or hold one's nose, but the ears are always on. As a result, sound takes on a special priority in the brain’s information processing scheme by directly “driving the electrical activity of the brain”, thereby stimulating the neurological pathways through which the bicameral mind asserts itself. More importantly, as Jaynes notes, sound has a special kind of authority in the mind. The hearing of, and obedience to, commands requires that listeners -- for a brief moment in time -- suspend their own personal identity and “become” the speaker, issuing the command to themselves. Jaynes calls this the moment of “dawdling identity” -- it is a moment in time when individuality is compromised by social interaction. Since this occurs as the result of a neurological pathway, it is reasonable to assume that other kinds of sounds, in addition to spoken commands, can stimulate the neurological structures that invoke bicamerality and suppress the effects of consciousness. Noise therefore favors the bicameral mind over consciousness.

Noise is universally present in urbanized society. The incessant and inescapable thumping of stereos and boomboxes, the pounding of construction equipment, people singing and whistling without regard for the privacy of others. Radios and televisions are left on, cranked up at full blast, when no one is listening. Why? Because the noise itself -- not what it is about, but what it is -- drives the neurological pathways in the bbrain like an addictive drug. None of this can be turned off -- one cannot close one’s ears and walk away. Supermarkets and shopping malls do not play music for your enjoyment. They play it because music stimulates the bicameral pathways that get the voices going, voices that say “Buy me!”, voices carefully nurtured by slogans and repetition in the mass media. Noise invades privacy, and along with it collapses the mental space required by consciousness to exercise its evaluative and introspective activities. Noise has an immediacy that cannot be avoided, and that immediacy directly assaults the self and its separation from others. To the conscious mind, noise is threatening and infuriating; to the bicameral mind, it is manna.

Noise is closely related to the touching behavior seen commonly in social insects and other animals. Along with the rhythmic nature of noise stimulating the right brain directly, touching is a form of communication, tying together members of the society. This communication is unconscious. The possible value of members of a group bumping up against one another, either physically or by proxy through noise or other means, is utterly lost to consciousness. It is, however, a powerful stimulant to the bicameral mind, activating neurological pathways that communicate and control social behavior.

The most serious assault on individual consciousness comes from technology, and its ability to obliterate the private space in which one’s thoughts and behaviors are kept from public view. “Invasion of privacy” is really destruction of privacy, and consequently destruction of consciousness. Privacy-destroying technologies prevent consciousness from thinking and behaving in ways different from existing social patterns. They remove even the opportunity for consciousness to do so, thereby destroying the mental space between the self and the group, and opening the way for bicameral behavior control. Like noise and chatter, privacy destruction pushes the individual out of the picture, and substitutes social pattern and robot-like control.

In the early 1960’s, the Outer Limits television science-fiction series ran a program called “O.B.I.T.”, named after the machine featured therein. At that time, the most privacy-invading technology available was the lie detector. The lie detector was beginning to see use not only in criminal investigations but in private businesses, educational institutions, and other organizations bent on knowing the inner thoughts of those over whom they held authority. The O.B.I.T. machine -- the “Outer Band Individuated Teletracer” -- was the logical extension of the lie detector into the science fiction realm. It was a device that could read people’s thoughts without their knowing, through walls, “limited to within 500 miles, but we’re working to extend that.” The existence of O.B.I.T. is revealed during the investigation of the murder of a security officer who was operating the machine at the time of his death. While there were those who thought, at the time of its installation, that “the machine is highly successful in eliminating undesirable elements”, after its installation divorces, alcoholism, suicides and nervous breakdowns at the facility increased sharply.

Put on the witness stand, the military officer responsible for its implementation breaks down:

“Its awful, awful... I feel responsible, I should have spoken out... I was (in favor of O.B.I.T.) at first, but I was wrong. It’s the most hideous creation ever conceived. No one can laugh or joke; it watches, saps the very spirit. And the worst thing of all is, I watch it. I can’t not look. It’s like a drug, a horrible drug. You can’t resist it, it’s an addiction.”

The O.B.I.T. machine destroys privacy -- it destroys even the possibility of privacy. It brings one's thoughts and actions out into the open, to be chattered about, to be judged and reviewed by others. The bicameral mind thrives under these conditions, but consciousness cannot function or survive in such an environment. Consciousness fights back in the only way it can -- destructively. It turns against itself and against others. Consciousness has survival strategies, too -- strategies generally incompatible with social order. One cannot laugh or joke because consciousness, and its introspective space, must be intact to see and appreciate humor. One can only laugh if one can separate one’s self from the experience itself, and the destruction of privacy in physical space collapses the possibility of privacy in mental space.

The most interesting thing about the officer’s speech is the comparison of O.B.I.T. to drug addiction -- it is something one cannot help one’s self from doing, once it starts. This is interesting because the bicameral mind, being a purely neurological entity, works through many of the same neurological pathways that are activated by addictive drugs. The force of the bicameral voices -- and their modern emotional substitutes -- is, at the neurological level, identical with the effects of an addictive drug. Like those who are “addicted” to talk shows, once the neurological pathways of bicamerality are activated, they become irresistible forces controlling the mind. Privacy-destroying technologies are the “drug paraphernalia” of the bicameral mind.

This would all be moot if O.B.I.T. were merely science fiction, but in fact O.B.I.T. technology has manifested itself within modern society in several ways. It is being applied with a determination and pervasiveness that threatens the existence of consciousness itself. The most obvious manifestation is the lie detector, but its use is limited by the fact that one knows when it is being applied, and there are fairly simple meditative techniques for defeating it. More dangerous to privacy and therefore to consciousness is the increasingly widespread use of electronic surveillance technology. One can buy, through mail order, devices for phone tapping, long-distance voice and visual monitoring, radio transmitters with hidden microphones or video cameras; this list goes on and on. The list does not include technologies available to the “intelligence community” that, according to the O.B.I.T. officer, “must of necessity employ many secret devices.” This technology is increasingly being applied to the monitoring of individuals in every aspect of their lives. Businesses and education, as well as government agencies use this technology to monitor not only the activities of their employees and others while at work, but also away from the workplace. It is now not uncommon to find businesses installing such equipment in rest rooms. The effect of this technology is to eliminate any sense of privacy, any sense of personal dignity, any sense of personal security, and ultimately any sense of mental isolation from the prying eyes of society -- a condition in which consciousness cannot survive, and bicamerality flourishes.

The most dangerous O.B.I.T. technology to invade society is the increasingly widespread use of drug testing. Drug testing does not simply test for whether a person is using drugs or not. It tests for what one does in one’s private behavior, whether or not it has effects upon what one does at other times. It allows society to monitor an individual’s behavior at all times. It is O.B.I.T. technology at its worst, for it brings forth into the public view what is done in absolute privacy, without regard for whether that behavior has any consequences for the public as a whole. It is a tool for enforcing social conformity, a touchstone for membership and esteem. It is the “most hideous creation ever conceived,” because its aim is to destroy even the possibility of privacy, and to drive consciousness out and socially conforming bicamerality in.

Drug testing is not used, for the most part, to detect crime -- it is used to demonstrate individual conformity to social standards. The current proposal to test all teen-agers before issuing a drivers license not only shows how far the bicameral mind has pushed its way into public policy, but it shows its inherent cowardliness. The bicameral mind does not have the courage to meet consciousness on its own terms, but must strike at those least able to defend themselves against it. This is cowardice at its lowest, but cowardice is something that can only be comprehended by a conscious mind. To the bicameral mind, this is simply a logical step to maintain the patterns of social behavior.

Not only does drug testing attack the privacy required by consciousness for its survival, but, as will be seen in the next chapter, drugs -- of certain specific kinds -- have an important role to play in the evolution and appearance of human consciousness. In attempting to obliterate exposure to certain kinds of drugs and drug-like substances, drug testing strikes at the heart of what makes consciousness possible in the first place. This, of course, is not bad news to the bicameral mind at all. The elimination of consciousness from a society is exactly what must be achieved for the “peacefulness” of bicamerality and social order to return.

“People who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear from O.B.I.T.,” or so the advocate of the system claims. This is a claim that is heard all too often in contemporary culture as well. Consciousness always has something to hide -- the self is only a self as long as it remains hidden. Once made public it is no longer a self, and consciousness is no longer possible. It makes no difference whether one has done anything “wrong” or not. Consciousness is only consciousness as long as it remains hidden from public view, and individuals are only individuals as long as their private affairs remain private.

In spite of the technologies used against it, consciousness can and does continue to arise in the modern world. As will be shown later, consciousness can arise spontaneously within individuals, even under the most oppressive conditions. Society has an answer for that problem, too. As noted above, consciousness has its own survival strategies against privacy destruction. Those strategies often involve thoughts and behaviors that turn the individual against society. Behaviorally, this can mean drug or alcohol abuse, violent behavior, or even suicide. More often, consciousness reacts to threats against it with feelings of depression. Despite the social chatter about its biological causes, depression is what happens when consciousness and individuality come under attack from the bicameral mind and the social pressures that drive it. To the bicameral mind, chatter and noise are tranquilizers; to the conscious mind, they are destructive forces that bring on anguish and despair. Depression is “biological” only in the sense that neurological mechanisms in the brain can go to war against consciousness.

Depression arising from spontaneously appearing human consciousness is a serious social problem, not only because it signals the existence of individuality and the failure of bicamerality, but because it interferes with the individual assuming a “proper role” in the social order. That interference takes the form of not only mental anguish, but psychosomatic illness, reduced job performance, and even destructive behavior. The solution to the “problem” of depression is “therapy”, the goal of which is to make the individual a “productive member of society” -- in other words, to destroy individual consciousness and replace it with the bicameral mind. Depressed individuals are put into chatter groups that function to expose the inner working of the mind to public view. What is stressed is the development of “interpersonal skills” -- in other words, the individual is indoctrinated with “relationship” chatter, and taught to see himself or herself as a member of society, and not as an individual. When “therapy” fails, “medications” that suppress the brain mechanisms supporting consciousness are used. It is most interesting -- and also revealing -- that many of these “medications” are chemmically related to, if not identical with, the same drugs used to suppress the “hallucinations” brought on by psychoactive drugs. As will be shown in the next chapter, these psychoactive drugs are in many cases the same ones that play an important role in the development of consciousness itself. What this all means is that in the name of making people “feel better” and making them “productive members of society”, their minds and brains are tampered with to destroy individuality and consciousness.

Hand-in-hand with depression goes the idea of self-deprecation -- that whenever something goes wrong, it is because of me that it goes wrong. When others do things that result in pain or suffering for the individual, it has become fashionable for the individual to ask, “What have I done to make others behave this way?” Blaming one’s self for the actions of others has become “politically correct.” This assaults consciousness in two ways. First, it denies that individuals make choices on their own -- something consciousness does, and bicamerality does not. Assuming that a boss, family member, or someone else does things because of what you do, denies that person the freedom to choose his or her own behavior, and denies that person the responsibility and the consequences of choosing to behave in one way or another. It reduces both yourself and the other person to a “relationship” -- something the bicameral mind likes to see -- and denies individuality and freedom of choice.

The second thing self-deprecation chatter does is to teach you to hate yourself -- to despise that part of yourself that chooses independently of its relationship to others. Learning to blame and hate yourself and your individuality strongly reinforces the bicameral mind. Loathing one’s self is an excellent way to push the self out of the picture. The “cure” for this self-loathing is “counseling” -- to develop “interpersonal skills” that enable to you “successfully interact with others.” In other words, to give up what you are, and to accept existence as an ant-like member of society, not as an individual. When you blame yourself for what others do, you deny not only your own self, but the self of others as well.

In modern culture, the self-deprecation theme has descended to an even lower level, in the form of the idea that individuals should not have the means for protecting themselves against physical attack. It is a basic principle of survival that individuals are ultimately responsible for their own well being. Denying individuals the ability to protect themselves against others not only attacks consciousness and individuation, but strengthens one’s dependence upon others at the most basic level of survival. The judge who let the rapist go free because the victim wore suggestive clothing is only slightly less self-deprecating than laws prohibiting individuals from having the means to defend themselves. Rather than defending themselves against attack, society considers it “acceptable” that people be attacked, and receive “counseling” for their injuries. A successful self-defense is an individuating event; a victimization is not only self-deprecating, but gives society the opportunity to rub salt in the wound with its chatter and leveling, at a time when the individual is most vulnerable.

But the story of O.B.I.T. is not yet finished. The climax of the movie comes when a scientist, driven to a nervous breakdown by the machine, turns the machine against the man responsible for its operation. To the horror of all present the machine reveals that the man is a hideous space-alien. The alien’s speech may be the most revealing -- and perhaps prophetic -- commentary on the use of surveillance technology in this culture:

The machines are everywhere! You’ll make a great show of smashing a few of them, but for every one you destroy, hundreds will be built. And they’ll demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them. Oh you’re a savage, despairing planet, and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. You demand, insist on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone, your families, your neighbors -- everyone but yourselves.

In the name of security, in the same of safety, in the name of “saving the children”, technologies have been introduced and propagated which threaten to destroy the very essence of individuality. They threaten to destroy consciousness and replace it with something far more alien than any space visitor could be -- a remnant of humanity's pre-conscious past that survives on order and conformity, and shuns the thought and expression of individuality. O.B.I.T. technologies create distrust, destroy privacy, and drive humanity backward in the evolution of the mind, no matter in what form they manifest themselves. It is not being suggested that drug testing was created by space-aliens. It is being argued that drug testing, its related O.B.I.T. technologies, and its related social practices of leveling and social indoctrination are propagated by unconscious motivations and rationalized to consciousness in absurd ways, by a part of the mind that threatens to undo all that evolution and consciousness have produced. This part of the mind is an entity more alien to modern humanity than the weirdest science-fiction creation. It speaks in god-like voices and obeys without reflection, destroys all that do not conform to its designs, and has been brought to a tragic and bloody end every time it has appeared in human culture. The O.B.I.T. phenomenon is a design of the bicameral mind, and the degree to which it has permeated our culture, in one form or another, is cause for the most serious and urgent alarm. O.B.I.T. is also the abbreviation for “obituary”, and the use of O.B.I.T. technology in this culture will be the obituary of humanity as conscious beings, if it is not brought to an end.

Thinking in a Different Direction

Having sounded the alarm, recall that this whole sorry situation was precipitated by believing an assumption -- that consciousness is a socially created phenomenon. When materialism is added to social- ontology, we arrive at the view that “Man is a social animal.” Once we embark on that path, we find ourselves moving not the direction of understanding portal experience, but in the direction of reducing behavior to that of other social animals such as ants and termites. We lose the fundamental greatness of humanity, and descend into a culture of malaise, depression, violence and destruction. Knowing where these assumptions lead, and that neither of them will do us any good in understanding portal experience, we are compelled to discard them and find a different starting point.

The purpose of presenting critiques of materialism and social- ontology, and what they do in a society where they are believed, is not so much to analyze the assumptions themselves as it is to bring them out of their hiding place in the unconscious mind. Much of what people believe about themselves and the world around them grows out of ideas and beliefs that never really make it into conscious awareness, until someone calls attention to them. You probably believe, for example, that time is linear -- that it moves in one direction. Why? Did you ever stop and think about why you believe this? Other cultures do not: many forms of pagan belief teach that time is circular, and that things happen in cycles, not from beginning to end. Ask yourself why you believe many of the things you do, and you will find that there is no readily apparent reason why. They are things that just slipped into the mind, and into the way you think, without you ever having really thought about them.

Once these ideas are made conscious, individuals can choose whether they wish to continue to believe them and to follow the course in which they are driving society, or to reject them and choose another path. While the unconscious bicameral mind exerts a strong influence over the activities of individuals and their society, it is able to do so only so long as it remains unconscious. Once its activities are brought into conscious awareness, we can choose to suppress the recameralization process, and live in a different way than what is dictated by unconscious control -- assuming, of course, that we do this before recameralization completely destroys consciousness. There is still consciousness in this culture, though it is increasingly coming under attack. If there were no consciousness, you would not be reading this book -- reading is one activity that is characteristic of consciousness, and the fact that people read this and other books means that all is not lost.

To undermine the bicameral mind, its unconscious control over behavior, and the direction in which it is moving human culture, the first step is to expose it for what it is. The next step, with which we now proceed, is to propose alternatives to “Man is a social animal”, and the psychological and cultural consequences that go along with it. Showing that there are alternatives means that there are choices to be made, and other possible ways the world can be. The present does not have to be as it is, not as long as there are conscious minds that can change it.

The theory developed in this book denies both popular assumptions -- materialism and social-ontology -- because they do not lead to a useful explanation of the phenomena the theory is developed to explain, and because they lead to consequences that are for humanity disastrous. It would be ridiculous to assume that intersection, as described by Stace, is what he says it is, and that materialism is true. Intersection denies materialism, and a theory that takes intersection seriously cannot take materialism seriously. Similarly, intersection and its related phenomena are individual experiences -- they do not happen to a group, but to individuals, and they are a function of individual consciousness.

There are only three arguments for denying intersection -- and therefore portal experience -- as a basic type of experience: that it is inconsistent with materialism; that it cannot generate any significant mental content; and that it cannot be scientifically verified. Having taken intersection and portal experience as basic -- regarding them not as explanations but as the things to be explained -- renders the first objection moot. If we are trying to explain intersection, which requires a non-spatiotemporal reality, we cannot logically assume that non-spatiotemporal realities do not exist. We must reject materialism as unscientific and illogical, when it requires that we reject the existence of the very thing we set out to explain.

The second objection is really the mind-body causation problem in a different guise. How is it possible, so the objection goes, for a being with a physical body to experience a non-physical reality? Of course the intersection theory says the two states of reality never really mix, but only touch at the moment of intersection. The question then becomes, how is it possible for information to flow between the two states of reality, if non-physical things cannot cause physical things? How could a human consciousness, connected with a human body, ever perceive non-physical reality at all?

The short answer to this problem is that while consciousness is a part of this spatio-temporal universe, it is also deeply connected with the spiritual -- with those things that lie outside the world of time and space. As will be explained in a later chapter, consciousness acts like a channel between physical and non-physical existence, because consciousness itself is partly physical and non-physical. The means by which consciousness carries out this function involves the activity of what physicists call a dynamical system, about which more will be said later.

As to the third argument -- that intersection and its related phenomena and experiences cannot be scientifically verified -- this “objection” is only a subterfuge. The Big Bang is not scientifically verifiable, either. It happened only once, there was no one to witness it, and it cannot be duplicated in a laboratory. Yet the Big Bang is believed, on the strength of the circumstantial evidence for it, and on the strength of its explanatory power as a theory. The same could be said of the theory of evolution -- more specifically, neo-darwinism: there is no “evidence” for it in the sense that there is some object or experiment that shows it is true. There are only skulls, bones, birds in trees, statistical observations and the biochemistry of DNA -- and the inferences of individuals who saw a larger meaning in those things.

Theories like the Big Bang and evolution are not instances of general laws that can be tested. One can do a simple experiment to show that the law “f=ma” is true and “f=m/a” is not. There is no such experiment that can test the Big Bang. There are, however, experiments whose results are consistent with the Big Bang -- the experiments would not come out the way they do unless the Big Bang, or something like it, were true. Theories like the Big Bang and evolution are inferences to best explanations -- they are logical stories that fit related phenomena and observations together into a much larger picture. They are testable only in the sense that observations either fit the picture or they do not. These theories make general predictions as to how certain kinds of experiments should come out, though the experiments themselves do not directly prove the theory. The “evidence” for theories like the Big Bang and evolution is therefore circumstantial. Observations tend to support or deny the theory, but they do not directly prove or disprove it, because the theory is an explanation and not a cause or an effect. The evidence is also highly inferential. A particular observation counts as evidence only because someone can devise an argument as to why it is evidence -- it does not stand on its own.

The Intersection Theory also has circumstantial evidence to support it -- the reports of those who have experienced it, and the changes it has made both in individuals and throughout human history. It is a powerful explanatory basis for understanding the phenomena described in Chapter One. If credibility is given to portal experiences -- and there is no reason not to do so unless one has assumed something that denies it -- then portal experiences constitute the same kinds of circumstantial evidence for intersection and for the reality of non-spatio-temporal existence, that experiments in physics constitute for the Big Bang, and that paleontology constitutes for evolution. As Stace wrote, “There are two orders...” or perhaps more, and this constitutes an underlying assumption of the theory. The justifications for assuming that intersection exists are that portal experiences provide circumstantial evidence for it, there is no real evidence against it, and it is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding an important and significant aspect of human experience. And, as we shall see, taking portal experiences seriously can profoundly affect the way individuals see themselves, and in turn affect the kind of world we live in.

The real objection to the intersection theory and its related phenomena is that they are inconsistent with existing socially accepted beliefs, and are therefore individuating and disruptive of social unity. Intersection offends the bicameral mind -- it introduces something into the picture of reality that does not fit social pattern. Those who have talked with God, have seen a UFO, have seen a ghost, experienced mystic union or been healed by Christ are somehow different from everyone else. They do not fit the pattern of the group, they are a threat to the group, they are outcasts and must be shunned for the good of the group. A social order is dependent upon the cohesiveness of its members, and those things that tend to individuate its members cannot be tolerated. Or so the bicameral mind would say.

If the social-ontological assumption is to be denied, and we are going to look for an alternative to recameralization, then this argument has no merit. That something is believed by a group is no reason for individuals to accept or reject it. It is better to face the consequences of accepting one’s own individual experiences as real, than it is to accept someone else’s dogma as reality. It is better to face those consequences because individuals are products of processes that endowed them with the ability to have these kinds of experiences, and did so because they are essential to human existence and survival. Evolution may have produced social behavior, but with the appearance of consciousness evolution moved beyond society. If social order is incompatible with consciousness, then it is incompatible with evolution, and with the laws of physics and biology that drive evolution forward.

While there are forces within the present culture that are moving toward the suppression and disruption of consciousness, there are two rays of hope still shining. First, human consciousness can always change its direction. Once we have exposed the bicameral mind and its activities, we can reject the leveling and social indoctrination processes, and we can certainly resist, refuse, and where necessary destroy invasive technologies. Second, and most important, human consciousness can arise spontaneously, no matter how oppressive its environment. This is the futility inherent in trying to establish a bicameral society. Social order represents a direction that evolution abandoned with the development of individual consciousness. Living under conditions of rigid social order is running evolution backwards -- it means ignoring the capacity of individuals to be individuals, a capacity that would have been lost in evolution if it were not important to human survival. No matter how hard society tries to suppress, oppress, or repress it, consciousness will come forth, and when it does, bicamerality collapses. Collapsing bicamerality takes with it the social order from which it arose, and often human life en masse as well. The assumption of materialism and social-ontology, and the ascension of bicamerality to a position of dominance, sets the stage for tragedy of unthinkable proportions. This is a process we can choose to stop, and we stop it first by changing the way we view ourselves.

Philosophy’s Fall from Greatness

If human consciousness embodies a fundamental greatness, then how is it that greatness came to be lost? It is the fault, first and foremost, of philosophy, the discipline which responds to the basic questions of who people are and why they are that way. Why has philosophy shrunk from the greatness of Plato, Kant, and Kierkegaard, and now wallows in the analysis of language? How did our thinking come to be infected with materialism and social ontology? And why do these ideas have the power to destroy human greatness in the world today?

There are a number of factors operating in the present culture that have led to this. At the bottom of it all is, I believe, a seldom articulated but widely held belief in a doctrine I shall call the inevitability of the present. This belief, more often than not expressing itself through the emotions and unconscious motivations, says that the world cannot be otherwise than it is. Things are they way they are because they must be that way. The way the world exists in the present is fixed -- it is a given that cannot be changed. We can work to change the future, but those efforts must always be in the context of the way things are in the present.

Of course the inevitability of the present is a false doctrine. It is not true, and what falsifies it is human consciousness. The whole point of individual consciousness, and the whole reason for its adaptive value in evolution, is that consciousness can envision and change the present. It can make the world a different place than it is, and it can do so NOW, not in some abstract time-to-come. Consciousness does this by isolating the self from the immediate world through introspective distance, allowing us to see things differently.

You can, if you are not already doing so, read this book while standing on your head, or upside down, or whatever you choose. When you make that choice, you are changing the present, and perhaps (or perhaps not) the future as well. Consciousness evolved as a survival tool for instances when the rules of the past no longer work in the present; it acts to accommodate, manipulate and alter the world as we presently see it. The world is a far more dynamical and malleable entity than we ordinarily -- according to the rules our culture has taught us -- think it is, and consciousness is precisely the tool needed to live in a changing and changeable world.

The bicameral mind, on the other hand, must have its rules and routines for survival, and hence the inevitability of the present is exactly the world view it needs to survive. The belief that the world cannot be changed is very likely the starting point for the slide from consciousness to bicamerality. It is giving up on the power of the individual to create his or her own world, and that giving up is the jumping off point for the slide from greatness to the recameralization of the mind.

What could cause someone to believe such a doctrine? There are two easily identifiable factors involved, and probably many others. The first is a direct result of the events of the twentieth century, and specifically the wholesale slaughter of Nazi Germany that has come to be known as the Holocaust. In raising the issue of the Holocaust, it must be remembered that the Nazis persecuted and executed many ethnic, racial and political groups for their “final solution”, and carried out their murder with mechanical efficiency. Those who were not directly affected by it have nonetheless been indirectly scarred by it. Many of the great thinkers of our present age, if not themselves directly victims of the Holocaust, nonetheless belong to its generation. The Holocaust, and other events like it, have left very deep scars upon the conscience and consciousness of modern humanity, and upon its philosophy as well.

Those scars take the form of a specific kind of philosophical nihilism. Nihilism is Nietzsche’s word for giving up on things that matter, and focusing upon things that are of no consequence. It means giving up on life, and one thing that leads to it is a feeling of being unable to control one’s own destiny. The experience of the Holocaust left us with the feeling that we are not in control of our future. When millions are murdered, and the world is powerless to stop it, a sense of having lost control of our fate creeps into our thoughts. In the face of such a horrendous event, we internalize the outside events into our own psychology -- they become a part of the way we think. When we internalize this loss of control of our destiny, we begin to think of the world as a place that we cannot change. Whatever change we can effect must necessarily lie in some abstract future -- something that does not exist in the present -- for the present is a situation that we cannot alter. This feeling of helplessness has been reinforced by the proliferation of nuclear weapons in our present world. Just as in the concentration camps, persons no longer see themselves in control of their fate, because someone else has their finger on the launch button.

It is easy to see how this feeling of loss of control of human destiny has worked its way into philosophy. When ideas of individuality and consciousness are replaced with behaviorism, materialism, social-ontology, and obsession with technology, it shows that we have given up on ourselves, and are looking to the outside world for direction. We no longer think of the future as being a product of our conscious manipulation of the present, but rather as an abstract state of affairs that will come to pass as the result of outside forces and events. And so, language -- which we cannot change in the present -- becomes an attractive way of looking at human existence. We are players -- and not the creators -- in the game of language. It is an environment in which we function, not a world that we create, and for those who have lost faith in their ability to change the present, it is an ideal refuge.

To carry this a bit further, the idea that we are mere blobs of biological “stuff”, moving within a cultural environment that we do not create, robs us not only of the belief that we can change the world, but also of the motivation to change it. In the face of the Holocaust and its cultural and psychological scars, giving up on the desire to change the world makes it a much easier place to live in. The bicameral mind steps in, neurological control of behavior returns, and the sense that there is a self that can be harmed by outside events vanishes. Thus, the events of the Holocaust and the nuclear arms race have, I believe, led directly to this philosophical nihilism that opens the door for recameralization to take place.

The second factor that leads to the displacement of individual consciousness is the disposability of persons. It is a phenomenon of our present culture, and it means that individual persons are regarded as disposable entities. When people are viewed as place-holders in a culture -- players in a play, members of a team, entities that occupy a spot in the social hierarchy -- they lose their value as individuals, and become valuable only for what they produce. An “engineer” is not a person; it is a description of how a particular entity functions in a social arrangement, and has nothing to do with the individual that fills that role. When the social description of a person takes the place of the person, the value of the individual as an individual becomes diminished.

The philosopher Kant called respect for persons a categorical imperative, meaning it is an unconditional principle upon which all else must be based. It is precisely that respect for persons that has been lost in modern culture. Individuals in this society are simply wadded up and thrown away like so much trash, when they do not fit the role society assigns to them. The job applicant is judged more on his or her quality of dress, on the results of a drug test, on their being a “people person”, than on his or her merits as an individual. The individual does not matter in these considerations; what matters is how well one fills the role, and who the person is has no importance -- or gets in the way. The individual who doesn’t fit the role is simply discarded.

How could there be homelessness, how could there be mass unemployment, how could there be random drive-by shootings, how could medical doctors be shot in their homes by snipers and children shot in their classrooms, if it were not true that the value of human individuality has disappeared from this culture? These things could not happen if there existed even the slightest vestige of respect for persons. That is, respect for persons as individuals, and not as social place-holders. A place-holder can be replaced with another place-holder, and the loss of the entity holding that place is of no significance; a human individual is unconditionally unique and cannot be replaced.

When this social devaluation of the individual is internalized, it takes the form of the devaluation of the self. When the self gets pushed out of the picture, the bicameral control mechanisms take over. It is a logical consequence that the social devaluation of persons will be internalized as the personal devaluation of the self, and when this happens, consciousness comes under attack. Depression, anxiety, suicide, destructive violence, and indifference all manifest themselves as consciousness and individuality struggle for survival against social and neurological oppression.

Should we blame technology for the disposability of persons? To be sure things like the O.B.I.T. phenomena play a major role in devaluing individuals as persons, and it is also true that in an industrialized society, respect for technology to great degree replaces respect for persons. Technology teaches one to respect the system of which it is a part, and to think of persons as machine-like entities with a function to perform. There is no escaping the fact that when one falls in love with a machine, one begins to see the world -- and the people who live in it -- as simply another kind of machine, with parts that can be replaced at will. Eventually, when surrounded by machines, people begin to think like machines.

But technology is, in the end, only a tool. When we allow technology to push individuality out of the picture, it is because we have chosen to do so, under the influence of corrupt assumptions and bicameral directives. There are other factors that have led to the modern disrespect for persons. We cannot overlook the fact that the sheer numbers of persons in the world today makes it easy to view individuals as disposable. If there are a hundred or a thousand applicants for a particular job, it is all too easy and convenient to ignore the individual and focus on the role. If there were only one applicant -- one and only one person who could fix your little computer, for example -- then you would have a much more tolerant attitude toward that particular individual as a person. When persons cannot be replaced, there is little choice but to respect them.

Overpopulation is therefore a major contributor to the disposability of persons. Persons get thrown away by this culture because there are simply so many of them that individuals do not matter. When the person who is a few months away from a retirement pension is fired, nobody cares. That place-holder is simply replaced by another, more convenient, entity to hold that place. The individual just disappears from the picture. Respect for persons disappears when the volume of persons makes it unnecessary.

Philosophy embraces this form of nihilism by espousing doctrines that either devalue, or fail to consider altogether, the existence of the individual. Here again, the appeal to language as a fundamental principle removes the individual from the picture. Language is neither me, nor you, nor anybody else, as an individual. It is a phenomenon in which we participate, and language exists only insofar as we participate. No individual is necessary for language to exist; indeed, a computer can have a language. And so we have philosophies arguing that persons are best thought of as some kind of linguistic computer.

This devaluation of the individual goes hand-in-hand with the Holocaust-engendered feeling of loss of control, and together give rise to the inevitability of the present. If one feels that one is an insignificant being with no control, then why be at all? Into this despondent vacuum slips the bicameral mind. Consciousness fights back with depression, “therapy” integrates the person into cultural norms, and Presto! Where there was once an individual, there is now a social animal.

The inevitability of the present is a philosophy of powerlessness. Once the technological and sociological horrors of the modern world are internalized, deflationary philosophies like materialism, determinism and social-ontology take hold. This is how philosophy fell from greatness, and how the greatness of the individual has been lost in modern culture. Obsessed with the idea that we are only actors in a play we cannot change, and obsessed with technology that reduces human beings to gears in a machine, consciousness and the individual have been pushed out of the way by the socially controlled bicameral mind. Of course consciousness has not disappeared completely; if it had, what would be the purpose of a book such as this?

What if, as Nietzsche asks, “a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more...’” What would happen? The world as you know it would collapse, the bicameral mind would falter and its voices become silent, the phoniness of social existence would dissolve in a horrific collage of frightening images, and only the self would be left. That is the whole point of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return -- to strip away all of the phoniness, all of the games, all of the lies we have been told and tell ourselves we believe, and to force us to face who we really are. The demon is what I call Spontaneous Human Consciousness: it is the voice of the individual that cannot be silenced no matter how oppressive society becomes. It will well up from the depths of the unconscious mind when you least expect it, to dissolve the world as we tell ourselves it must be. It is the demon that has insured human survival against the collapse of countless civilizations. And if we wish to survive, we had better learn to bring that demon forth, for it is also the angel that is our only hope of salvation from death and destruction.

Learning to live with consciousness means learning to live without the inevitability of the present. It means finding a different set of assumptions, and a different way of looking at the world. We can throw off materialism and social ontology, and we can trade the social animal for the conscious individual. But to do so, we need a starting point: we need a set of assumptions or principles upon which to build our search for the self.

Three Basic Assumptions

The first step in undoing the O.B.I.T. phenomenon, and the recameralization that depends upon it, is to understand the nature of human consciousness. To do so, we need to discard materialism and social-ontology as a framework for understanding consciousness, and replace them with a set of assumptions that will allow us to construct an view of ourselves that does not lead to misery and violence.

As with any theory, first and foremost, it must be decided what will be taken as basic -- what, in the beginning, will be the starting point from which the theory proceeds. We have already taken Walter Stace’s theory of intersection as basic: we proceed with the understanding that portal experiences have at their root the juxtaposition of unlike states of being or modes of existence. Beyond that, there are three general principles that will be necessary to propose a theory of consciousness under which portal experiences are possible.

1. The Strangeness Principle

Physicist Edward Teller, echoing the words of J. B. S. Haldane, once said, “The universe is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine.” This principle is an imperative to not dismiss theories because they seem far fetched or fantastic, but instead to actively pursue those theories that push the limits of what is known and what is thought to be impossible. It is no argument against a theory that its conclusions go beyond what is accepted, nor that it considers things that lie outside conventional assumption. Quite the opposite -- the Strangeness Principle demands that we explore the bizarre and the unusual, if we are to learn more than we already know. Having taken something as unconventional as intersection to be basic, it is no argument against this theory to say it is fantastic, if it can logically explain portal experience in ways that are consistent with the facts as they are known. This is true even if the theory requires leaping well beyond the limits of what is known into realms of thought that defy even the most vivid imagination.

It is perhaps because of this very willingness to suspend disbelief, and to go beyond the limits of conventionality and “common sense”, that physics has been able to soar so far beyond philosophy in the last hundred years in the traditional philosophical disciplines of cosmology and metaphysics. While philosophers still contemplate the meaning of Newton’s laws, physics has challenged the limits of the imagination with relativity and quantum theory, and its studies of the cosmically large and the subatomically small. Edelman refers to this willingness to suspend disbelief, and to entertain the incredible and the mysterious, as the introduction of “spooks,” and regards it as a sign that physics has lost touch with “reality”. On the contrary, it is these very “spooks” that have redefined reality for physics and its related disciplines, and have moved it beyond the Enlightenment views that still largely dominate philosophy. On this point, physicist Stephen Hawking writes:

Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand, the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep up with the advance of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this century, said, “The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language.” What a comedown for the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant!

There is no question that the mathematics transforming the naive notion of matter into collapsed superstrings of infinite extension is difficult. And it is spooky -- especially to the adherent to eighteenth century materialism -- because theoretical physics transforms reality into something that lies beyond the hopeful naive realism of classical physics. Because philosophers -- and others -- have been unwilling to give up their old beliefs, philosophy has become a stagnant discipline. And with that stagnation comes the rot of materialism and social-ontology, and the human misery that follows them.

We can only understand the why of human consciousness if we allow our imagination to roam beyond the worm-eaten views of how; views that have been discarded by modern physicists because they are corrupt and misleading. At some level, the how of things is deeply intertwined with the why, and we will only understand consciousness when we have considered how it relates to the ideas of modern physics. When physics consisted of rolling balls down inclines and philosophy consisted of meditating by the fire, perhaps distinguishing between the science and philosophy of consciousness made sense. But since that time, both disciplines have become more sophisticated, and that sophistication has intertwined the issues of how and why. The insistence upon rejecting the “spooks” of theoretical physics in a theory of consciousness closes off the only avenue of investigation that can lead to the answer of what consciousness really is, how it appeared, and where it is going.

Granted, this makes great demands upon both philosophy and science. It means the philosopher must learn something of the technical disciplines, and the scientist must be prepared to step back from specialized work into a larger perspective. This is difficult, especially for philosophers who have come to rely on appeals to science as a substitute for metaphysics -- substituting how for why -- without any clear understanding of what those substitutions mean. Philosopher Thomas Nagel writes:

. . . a lot of philosophers are sick of the subject [metaphysical problems in the philosophy of mind] and glad to be rid of its problems. Most of us find it hopeless some of the time, but some react to its intractability by welcoming the suggestion that the enterprise is misconceived and the problems unreal. This makes them receptive not only to scientism but to deflationary metaphysical theories like positivism and pragmatism . . . It is natural to feel victimized by philosophy, but this particular defensive reaction goes too far . . . There is a persistent temptation to turn philosophy into something less difficult and more shallow than it is. It is an extremely difficult subject, and no exception to the general rule that creative efforts are rarely successful.

A theory of portal experience -- and of the consciousness that can experience it -- must of necessity include discussions of the scientific understanding of the brain and other matters. It must also include a discussion of cosmological topics, because portal experience understood in terms of the intersection theory is a cosmological event. One cannot hide from the “spooks” if one hopes to understand who and what persons are. The “spooks” must stand and be counted, for they are as much a part of the world as are we. A useful theory of portal experience must of necessity include a theory of the brain, a theory of psychology, and a theory of the cosmos. To connect them together, one must be willing to go beyond the limits of each.

Going beyond those limits means entering into a world of much strangeness. For most theorists dealing with consciousness today, the idea that brain, mind, and universe are connected up in some way to a non-spatiotemporal reality is utterly fantastic. It is even stranger to think that they affect each other in some way, and may actually be dependent upon one another for their existence. Yet we shall discover that to understand portal experience, this strange connection between mind, body, matter, and spirit must exist. We shall find that in order to experience intersection, consciousness must be something very strange indeed. But that is where the facts take us, and so that is where we shall go.

2. The Uncertainty Principle

In 1926 physicist Werner Heisenberg formulated his famous Uncertainty Principle, which has led to profound and remarkable changes in the way the universe is viewed. Under classical mechanics, the universe is viewed objectively -- as an entity that exists in some specific way, and to know what the universe is “really” like, one just needs to see it as it “really” is. The Uncertainty Principle, upon which quantum mechanics is founded, changes all that. It states that the act of observing the universe changes the universe in ways that are not only inescapable, but also unpredictable. The Uncertainty Principle signaled the end of the mechanist’s dream -- the vision that the universe is some kind of precise, intricate machine -- and substituted for it not only a universe of unpredictability and contingency, but also one in which humans, as observers, are active participants. To look is to change, and to change in ways that cannot be predicted.

Perhaps one of the most difficult consequences of quantum theory -- at least for philosophers -- to come to grips with is that it completely undermines the “objectivist” view. According to Uncertainty, the universe does not exist in any specific, determinate way -- there just is no way the universe “really” is. This is not to say that objects in the universe do not exist -- of course they do. What the Uncertainty Principle says is that the characteristics of objects depend in part upon the way we observe and interact with them, which is in turn dependent upon both probability and the characteristics of the observer. Things appear the way they do to us because we observe them, and those observations not only contain built in fudge-factors due to probability, but also our observing things changes them in ways that aren’t predictable.

The problem of contingency -- of why things happen in the way they do -- has long been an issue in philosophy. The most commonly held response is that the universe is made up of objects with specific characteristics that behave according to specific laws that control the way those objects behave. This is the theory of determinism. By introducing uncertainty and the effects of the observer, quantum theory effectively obliterates the theory of determinism. There is no way the world is, independent of the way in which it is observed, and events in the world -- even those that appear to follow rules or laws -- are subject to the effects of probability and observation.

The situation is best illustrated by a thought-experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat, devised by physicist Erwin Schrödinger to explain radioactive decay. The decay of radioactive isotopes appears, to us, to be a random event -- all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, an atom undergoes radioactive decay. It was not until quantum theory began to take shape in the early part of the twentieth century that the phenomenon could be adequately explained.

Schrödinger’s thought-experiment asks us to imagine an apparatus consisting of a box containing a live cat, a radioactive sample, and a mechanism that breaks a bottle of cyanide gas should the radioactive sample decay. If the sample decays, the cat dies. What Schrödinger said was that since the decay of a radioactive isotope is a quantum event, governed by the Uncertainty Principle, then until the decay is actually observed -- or observed not to have happened -- the isotope exists in a superposition of states, meaning that it actually exists in both decayed and undecayed form.

The situation is very much like a box with a ball bouncing around inside. Until we open the box and look, we don’t -- and can’t -- know which side of the box the ball is in. The ball is, according to this idea, distributed throughout the entire box in a wave state, a cloud-like version of its existence that fills the entire box -- the ball is, in effect, everywhere in the box at the same time. When the box is opened, we collapse the wave function, and the ball returns to its normal physical state, in one side of the box or the other.

The surprising consequence of this is that, until the box is opened, the cat exists in both dead and alive states -- it is both dead and alive at the same time! The only way to tell what is going on is to open the box, at which point one observes the state of the cat at the moment the box is opened -- and one changes the state of the universe by doing so. If the box is not opened, it is not simply the case that one does not know what state the cat is in -- it is the case that both states exist simultaneously, in what Schrödinger calls a superposition of states.

What this means is that for any event -- or anything that depends upon an event -- that is governed by the rules of probability, all possible outcomes exist until one of them is observed. There is not just one “way the world is” -- there are many ways, many realities, in a world governed by probability. Some have taken this idea even further, arguing that there are in fact many worlds and universes, just like our own, with boxes and cats and radioactive isotopes. Our act of observation doesn’t create one world or another, according to this view, but instead collapsing the wave function amounts to selecting which world we are in through observation.

Science is just beginning to understand how pervasive the rules of probability are in the world. Since most physical events in the world depend upon the structure of the physical matter in which they take place, and the structure of matter is governed by probabilistic quantum rules, some argue that everything in the physical universe is probabilistic -- or depends upon probability in some way -- and therefore everything is subject to the Uncertainty Principle.

For example, genetics and heredity are governed by the rules of probability. It is not a matter of “chance” that you inherit the physical characteristics you have. If it were a matter of chance, there would be an equal likelihood that you would resemble a dinosaur or some other animal, as that you resemble your parents. Long before the role of DNA in heredity was understood, Gregor Mendel showed that genetics and heredity obey probabilistic rules, and not random chance. It is because of this that evolution is possible -- that meaningful information can be transmitted from generation to generation. As we shall see, it is ultimately because of probability and the Uncertainty Principle that consciousness itself is possible.

One result of viewing the universe in terms of probability has been the weakening of the principle of causation -- the theory that things happen in the way they do because they are forced to happen in that way. According to causation theory, dropping a piece of chalk causes it to break because of the dropping, plus a set of laws and circumstances that force it to break once it is dropped. The opposite of causation -- chance -- is the idea that some things happen in the way they do without being forced, controlled or influenced in any way. Chance theory means that some events are purely random occurrences. The Uncertainty Principle, and the view of probability it supports, suggests that neither causation nor chance are credible explanations for the way things happen. More will be said about this later in discussing the acausal connecting principle proposed by psychologist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli. For now, it is sufficient to state that experiments in quantum mechanics show that probability and observation, and neither causation nor chance, may be the most important factors in shaping the universe and the “reality” we experience.

The Uncertainty Principle is, interestingly enough, the reappearance in modern physics of participation mystique -- the idea that individuals are not detached from the universe, but participants in it. The activities of human observers alter the universe just as much as events in the universe affect the individuals in it. Physicists use the word participatory to describe this kind of “interactive” universe. The participatory universe of today is no different from ancient humanity’s understanding that not only did the seasons affect their lives, but that their own actions affected the world around them. Our participation in the cosmos changes the cosmos itself, and it may be that the difference between science and magic has more to do with a difference of language than of theory. Participation also tells us that portal experiences are “human” not because they are interpreted by humans, but because the human observer necessarily defines the character of the experience itself.

The word “reality” is often used as though it has some simple, objective-like meaning. The philosopher John Locke, for example, argued that the universe is seen in the way it is seen because it causes observers to see it in that way. Objects in the universe have some way they really are, and we see them correctly when we see them as they really are. Quantum physics paints a very different picture. The universe exists in a superposition of states until it is observed, and what is observed is not only a matter of probability, but also is a function of how it is observed. Objects in the world therefore do not have any way they really are -- what they really are is what they are observed to be. Observation is a participatory event, and changes not only the observer but what is observed as well.

This has important ramifications for the problem of qualia discussed in the previous chapter. What the Uncertainty Principle indicates is that all experiences are fundamentally subjective as well as objective. All experiences involve not only something that is observed, but also someone that does the observing, and both are changed in some way by the experience. The problem of qualia is a “problem” only when it is supposed that the universe exists in some definite way, independent of observation, and that there is some kind of standard to which observations can be compared to judge their “correctness”. The issue of whether “redness” is the same for me as it is for you arises only if one supposes that there is something outside of observation to which my “redness” and your “redness” can be compared. If there is no such thing, then there is only “redness” as it appears in me and in you, and nothing beyond it. There is no “correct” version of redness, only individual experiences of it. Consequently, the “problem” of qualia is not a problem because there is nothing to certify experience apart from experience itself.

“Reality” is the state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Whether one chooses from one among many existing worlds by observation, or one turns a superposition into reality by observing it, consciousness alters the world. As Paul Davies notes, this means that human consciousness -- the perspective from which the universe is observed -- inescapably alters the nature of the univverse itself. This is not only an argument against epiphenomenalism -- the theory that consciousness is an inconsequential byproduct of other mental activities -- but it also means that the very nature of portal experience is given, in part, by the nature of consciousness itself.

Similarly, the “problem” of contingency -- of why things happen the way they do -- vanishes once we understand that events are participatory. At some very fundamental level, “reality” is what each individual observes it to be. Consciousness creates reality, because there is no reality outside of observation and subjective experience. While there may exist objects in the universe, their are no characteristics inherent in the objects themselves beyond what is observed. The philosopher George Berkeley argued that to exist is to be perceived -- existence just is being observed. “Consciousness creates reality” is not a metaphor according to this theory. Without consciousness and observation, there would be no existence, no reality, no world at all. Strange as this view may sound, it is consistent with the Uncertainty Principle, and some views of cosmology derived from it.

There are those who would dismiss the Uncertainty Principle as a theoretical curiosity, and cling to the belief that the universe really is as John Locke saw it. Unfortunately, it is too late in the history of science and technology to believe this view. The Uncertainty Principle gave rise to quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics gave us the laser, the computer chip, the solar cell, the nuclear weapon, and other technologies that shape the modern world. If one accepts those technologies, then one accepts the theories that created them. Just as believing “Man is a social animal” entails believing materialism and social-ontology, so believing in the laser and the computer entails believing in the Uncertainty Principle which is, as Stephen Hawking writes, “a fundamental, inescapable property of the world.” The technologies are mere roadside stops on the path of theoretical physics; the path of the Uncertainty Principle leads into a dark woods filled with strangeness beyond imagination. As we shall see, it is the Uncertainty Principle that makes the acausal connecting principle possible, which in turn makes portal experiences -- and consciousness itself -- necessary and inescapable constituents of the world.

The Uncertainty Principle also serves as a warning in dealing with any theory, be it of consciousness or otherwise. All theories, based upon observation, are functions of what and how one observes. The assumptions one starts with are an inescapable part of the theory itself. If one approaches consciousness with materialist-colored glasses, then one will see only a materialist-colored consciousness. That does not mean other things are not out there, only that one has failed to observe them. The world of the materialist and the social-ontologist is therefore neither “real” nor “unreal” in itself. It is made real by those who believe in it, and the problems of modern society are created by believing these assumptions about what people are. The world these assumptions make real is not the world that includes portal experiences. If we wish to understand portal experience, we shall have to believe something different -- we shall have to make a different world real. In so doing, maybe we can make “real” a world different from the one that includes malaise, depression, and the social problems of modern culture.

3. The Incompleteness Principle

A perfect social order -- a “utopia”, as the word is often used -- is impossible. It is not impossible merely because of contingency, nor because of consciousness. It is impossible because a perfect system of any kind is impossible. The idea of a perfect society is inherently flawed -- any social order based upon rule-following that tries to completely control itself will ultimately destroy itself. This self-destructive characteristic of systems -- collections of related parts operating toogether under a set of rules -- is a consequence of the Incompleteness Principle.

In mathematics, Gödel’s theorem states that any complete system will contain contradictions, and any system that does not contain contradictions is necessarily incomplete. This means that any mathematical system in which all theorems are provable will contain elements that contradict one another, and any system that does not contain contradictory elements will have theorems that are not provable. Generalizing this principle to other kinds of systems, it means that any set of rules that covers every aspect of a system’s behavior will contradict itself at some point. A set of rules that does not contradict itself will necessarily be incomplete -- there will be aspects of the system’s behavior that do not follow the rules.

It is because of the Incompleteness Principle that reductionist theories are useless. Any reductive theory -- materialistic, spiritualistic, or otherwise -- attempts to explain everything in terms of one specific set of rules. They do this by excluding certain things from the system that don’t fit the rules -- materialists, for example, exclude portal experiences by calling them “hallucinations,” while spiritual reductionist theories exclude the brain by calling the body “an illusion.” These theories become closed systems -- theories in which all possible states of the world are covered by the rules of the system. At first, that might not seem a bad thing. But it doesn’t work.

The materialist system must necessarily include rules of observation, and there is no way to tell on the basis of observation alone what an observation is an observation of. A materialist cannot tell, on the basis of the experience itself, whether an experience is a “hallucination” or is an observation of something that exists, because both produce identical changes in the brain. The materialist system either winds up including portal experiences, and therefore contradicting its own assumptions, or it winds up making a special rule that excludes portal experiences, thereby contradicting its rules of observation. Either way, the closed system is a failure.

There are much more serious consequences of the Incompleteness Principle. It is a property of systems, whether they are philosophical systems, physical systems, or social systems. A perfect social order is impossible because it is a closed system -- every person, every event, every possible thought and action must be covered by a set of rules. This is particularly true for a bicameral society, which is based upon rule-following. A bicameral society is doomed because its rules cannot cover contingencies -- by definition, states of the system that cannot be predicted. The world in which humans live is incomplete, and therefore a perfect social system is impossible. The other problem for a bicameral society is that the bicameral mind itself contains inconsistencies -- the bicameral mind is a part of the unconscious mind, and once consciousness is gone, unconscious behaviors other than bicamerality begin to emerge. Behaviors originating from within the id, a part of the unconscious mind described by Freud, result in random, unpredictable and destructive behaviors.

The attempt to reduce human behavior to a set of rules results in the emergence of behaviors that undermine the rules and destroy the social order, and, in addition, lead to a state of mind that cannot cope with environmental conditions that are not covered by the rules. More rules and harsher punishments do not work, as is plainly obvious in modern society. Depression and malaise on the one hand, and destructive violence on the other hand, both from human activity and dished out by nature, are becoming more frequent and devastating. This is due to the effects of the Incompleteness Principle upon a culture whose members believe it can make itself into a perfect society by following the rules.

The only way to avoid the self-contradiction and destruction brought on by the Incompleteness Principle is to construct an open system -- one in which all of the possible elements and states are not covered by a set of rules. That is, we avoid inconsistency and self-destruction by intentionally making the system incomplete. A system that is not rule-governed is a disordered or chaotic system. Science is beginning to discover that such incomplete systems -- systems where sets of rules do not define everything that can happen -- are very common in nature. Nature avoids self-destruction by being chaotic.

It is because consciousness is a chaotic system that it is able to deal with contingencies and avoid the self-destructiveness of the bicameral mind. In order to be a chaotic system, consciousness developed in such a way as to break away from the rule-following mechanisms of the brain. For this to happen, something was introduced into consciousness from outside the brain’s rule-following systems -- something from outside the body, outside the physical universe, outside the rules that govern the behavior of physical systems. This “something” is what makes portal experiences possible, and by understanding how portal experiences work, we can bring that “something” back to life, and hopefully arrest the slide of humanity into the decay of violence and misery brought on by the recameralization of modern society.

Perhaps the best example of how society has been pitted against consciousness is found in Kierkegaard’s famous maxim: “A logical system is possible, an existential system is impossible.” It is possible, according to this statement, to have a system of logic -- a complete and consistent set of non-contradictory rules -- for understanding how the world works. This cannot be, you might say, in view of Gödel’s theorem that any complete system must be self-contradictory. You would be right, given the rules of logic as they are generally understood, pertaining to things like language and arithmetic. But there are other kinds of logic.

It was to overcome this very problem that Hegel, a nineteenth century philosopher obsessed with the idea that the world is a system, invented a new kind of logic. Hegel was acutely aware of the problem of contradictions. In his own work, he gives the example of Antigone, caught in a contradiction of rules. The rules of Antigone’s culture demand that the dead be buried, and that the leader always be obeyed; when the leader decrees that her dead brother not be buried, a conflict between the rules arises. In order to deal with conflicts such as this, Hegel came up with a set of rules for resolving contradictions, so that the system itself remains unbroken. Those rules are known as dialectical logic.

Here is how Hegel’s dialectic works. Suppose we have a master and a slave. The master has freedom, the slave does not. But the master is dependent upon the slave for his existence; indeed, the master is enslaved by his dependence upon the slave, his responsibility to care for the slave, and so on. The slave in turn has the freedom to destroy the master by refusing to obey and work. So, in a curious twist of logic, the master becomes the slave, and the slave becomes the master. As this interplay between master and slave continues, according to Hegel, the master and slave as individuals disappear from the picture, and what emerges is a product of the interaction between the two -- the food gets to market, the fields get plowed, etc.

In the terms of Hegelian logic, the master and the slave are the “thesis” and the “antithesis”. The contradiction, conflict and interaction of the two produces a “synthesis” -- a situation in which the original conflict has disappeared, and something entirely new has emerged. Hegel proceeds to explain history, culture, religion, and pretty much everything else in terms of this dialectical logic. He shows how history is the result of the interplay between theses and antitheses, resulting in an endless stream of syntheses through which culture evolves.

If we allow the rules of dialectical logic, statements such as “A is not-A”, “the internal is the external”, and other apparent contradictions are legal statements, because everything is transformed from what it is into something else by synthesis. “A is not-A” is a valid statement because the synthesis of A and not-A is something completely different, and such a synthesis occurs whenever contradictions arise. Dialectical logic is therefore a logic of transformation -- it describes the ways in which things change within a system. It allows the system to remain intact by transforming the things that make it up, when they come into conflict.

Now this is a critical point, and is precisely the reason behind Kierkegaard’s statement that, “A logical system is possible, an existential system is impossible.” Abstract entities such as historical events and hypothetical masters and slaves can be transformed by logical synthesis, but when it comes to things that exist in the world, it is a different story. Existing objects do not transform. If I wish to sit in a chair, it is not the case that I and the chair both disappear, and a new entity emerges. That fact can be made apparent through the prank of placing a tack on somebody’s chair -- that the synthesis fails will be painfully obvious.

If synthesis fails with physical objects, it fails even more dramatically when the dialectical participants are existing human individuals. Individuals do not disappear in synthesis; indeed, they are only able to come into conflict because they are individuals that cannot be made to go away. Once the self of consciousness appears, the only way to “transform” the individual is to destroy the self, thereby destroying the individual. The only way to “synthesize” conscious individuals, therefore, is to make their consciousness disappear -- to destroy them as individuals.

In Either/Or, Kierkegaard demonstrates this through the example of a marriage that works by Hegelian logic. The partners would have us believe that their marriage is a synthesis, something greater than either individual that grows out of their interaction. The individuals no longer exist; what exists is the marriage as a synthesis of the partners. But what Kierkegaard shows is that this is just an excuse for one partner dominating the other. The individuals do not “synthesize”; the Hegelian marriage works only because one of the partners, as a conscious individual, is destroyed in the bargain. There is no synthesis, no moving beyond the partners; there is only the psychological death of one of them. Hence the phoniness of Hegelian logic: where Hegel thinks that individuals can appear and vanish like the blinking lights of fireflies, what really happens is that individuals, as conscious persons, are destroyed.

Why is marriage such a crucial part of modern, urbanized culture? It is because it is precisely this transformation of the “I” into “we” that is necessary to destroy individuality and pave the way for recameralization. If the individual “I” can be melted into the abstract “we” of the marriage relationship -- using sex as bait, one of the bicameral mind’s favorite tactics -- then the consciousness of the individual can be obliterated, and replaced by an “I” that is only an “I” as a part of the rule-governed, socially approved “we.” “I” no longer think, want or do; it becomes “we”, an abstract entity that can be subjected to rules and social convention. Marriage is thus the same kind of “advertisement” for recameralization as a bikini-clad girl is for buying a bottle of after-shave, and as a social phenomenon becomes a tool for repressing individuality and consciousness.

Of course it doesn’t work, and cannot work because existing entities cannot be transformed by logic into abstract ones. “An existential system is impossible”, and, like the prick of the tack that cannot be reasoned away, consciousness fights back. Consciousness arises spontaneously, the demon whispers, and depression, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorce, child abuse, and suicide fill the newspapers.

This is what is wrong with the “relationship” babble of pop psychology. It assumes that the individuals involved cease to exist; that they “become” the relationship. That, of course, is absurd. Individuals are not theses and antitheses, and they do not dissolve like sugar in water to become a synthesis. No matter how hard one tries to eliminate one’s individuality, sooner or later, into your loneliest loneliness the demon will come and ask the question, and the world of the “relationship” will collapse. The misery and violence of modern domestic life is the direct result of attempting to turn the “I” into “we”, the hideous synthesis of an insane logic driven by an oversocialized, psychotically driven bicameral mind.

The dialectical logic fails when it deals with entities that cannot be transformed. When we are talking about abstract ideas, the synthesis works, but when we are talking about existing individuals, it is impossible. Individuals cannot be synthesized, and any attempt to do so will provoke a war with consciousness. Thus, “an existential system is impossible”: a system that presupposes existing individuals as its members cannot succeed because the only way for it to overcome its own incompleteness is to destroy its members. Of course this is exactly what the O.B.I.T. phenomena attempt to do, and to some degree are successful. But no matter how hard consciousness is suppressed, sooner or later, the demon will emerge, and the system will collapse under its own incompleteness.

The universe is necessarily incomplete, and the more one tries to complete it -- to make it fit pre-determined ideas about the way it must be -- the more one falsifies and contradicts. Consciousness survives by being incomplete, and an explanation of consciousness must therefore be an open theory. It must leave room for new data, new possibilities, new ways of interpreting experience, and it must not try to be all-inclusive.

There are those who would say that materialism and social-ontology are good assumptions, because they enabled humanity to get beyond the archaic theology and degenerate monarchies of the middle ages. They brought humanity out of the plagues and famines of the dark ages, and opened new paths of thought and discovery. In their time, true enough. But the academic and social institutions of today have themselves become archaic and degenerate, crushing every idea and individual that is not faithful to them, and bringing forth their own plague of technology-driven recameralization. If we are to escape the almost certain fate toward which recameralization leads, we need a New Enlightenment, and a dethroning of the social institutions that have grown out of the social-animal paradigm. We need a new starting point, and a new set of assumptions upon which we can build a new image of ourselves as conscious beings.

If we are going to understand portal experience we must assume strangeness, uncertainty and incompleteness, because consciousness displays all of these characteristics. But in making these assumptions, the reader must be willing to give the imagination some space to work. Much of what follows will appear strange, uncertain and incomplete, and this will no doubt cause some difficulty for the mind that has been so thoroughly conditioned by modern culture to think of itself as a blob of “stuff” floating in a social sea. To overcome the nihilism of the inevitability of the present, and reclaim consciousness from the bicameral mind, we have to break new ground -- we have to boldly go where we have not been before. But, in digging this new ground, we shall find that we have indeed been here before, and that the relics of the past hold the power to create a new and different future.

Chapter 3: From Matter to Miracle

A theory of portal experience must explain how it is possible for human consciousness to have such an experience. In order to do that, it must explain what consciousness is, insofar as consciousness is necessary to have portal experience. The mind-body causation problem presents a serious obstacle to the understanding of portal experience. It is difficult, no matter how much free rein the imagination is given, to understand how things that are not physical in nature can affect the physical matter of the brain to produce visions, voices, and so on. According to the intersection theory, reductionism is not an option for solving the problem. A theory of portal experience cannot ignore either the body or the spirit -- the term I shall use to identify the non--spatiotemporal dimension of intersection. If explaining portal experience requires solving the mind-body causation problem, and we cannot get rid of either the mind -- or in this case spirit -- or the body, then the only thing left to get rid of is causation.

Causation is another of those metaphysical ideas that, like materialism and social-ontology, often underlies the way people think as opposed to being an item that a theory tries to prove. There do exist many theories of causation, but there does not yet, in the history of either science or philosophy, exist a satisfactory theory of causation -- there does not exist any adequate explanation of how one thing forces another to occur. Even without any satisfactory explanation of what causation is, it is still widely taken as a basic assumption of most scientific and philosophical theories -- it appears more often an underlying assumption rather than an explicit conclusion. The philosopher Immanuel Kant, for example, thought that causation is one of the basic categories -- ways in which the mind understands the woorld -- that is necessary for thought to take place at all. Others believe that there must be some kind of “glue” between events, by which one event results in another happening.

Common ideas and beliefs do not always turn out to be philosophically or scientifically useful. It may be, no matter how contrary to common sense it appears, that there just is not any “glue” of the physical or metaphysical sort that forces things to happen in certain ways. Causation may be, as philosopher David Hume suggested, a figment of the mind after all -- causation is an explanation cooked up by the mind to understand what it sees, it is not a force or rule in the world that forces things to happen in certain ways. Simply because observation suggests things happen in a certain way does not mean that there is anything compelling them to happen in that way. Along the lines of the Uncertainty Principle, we might say that causation got into nature because of the way it is observed, not because it is there independent of observations.

If that is the case, then the mind-body causation is not a problem in itself. It is a problem with the way the universe is observed, put there by the prejudices of observers. Portal experiences happen -- this is one of our basic assumptions -- aand since they happen, there must be something wrong with the mind-body causation problem that says they can’t happen. The bumble bee flies in spite of mathematical models that say it should not. One does not immediately assume that there is something wrong with bumble bees. Instead it is inferred that there is something wrong with our theories of flight. What is wrong with the mind-body causation problem is the idea of causation, not the mind or the body, or the intersection of the two.

If causation is to be thrown out as an explanation for how immaterial and material worlds interact, then some other explanation for that interaction will have to take its place. We know from previous chapters that consciousness is a rule-breaking entity, and therefore is an open, chaotic system. In this chapter, we will see how the human brain itself developed the capacity to function as a chaotic system, opening the way for the appearance of consciousness. Chaotic systems do not behave according to the rules of causation, and it is this feature of the brain that enables consciousness to overcome the mind-body causation problem. The reader must keep in mind, however, that because this is an open theory -- one that seeks to avoid the consequences of Incompleteness -- what is said about the brain will not by itself be enough to explain consciousness. But it is the brain that gives us the capacity to become conscious, and it is therefore with the brain that we begin.

The Miracle of Marsh Chapel

Theories, both scientific and philosophical, that are intended to explain a general class of phenomena often begin by presenting specific cases. In explaining those cases, general principles are developed that have universal application. In this chapter, we shall begin with one specific instance of portal experience, and once we understand the role of the brain in this specific case, we will have a more general understanding of how the brain makes consciousness possible.

The case we will examine is what has come to be called The Miracle of Marsh Chapel, an experiment done as a part of Walter Pahnke’s dissertation research in association with the Harvard Psilocybin Research Project in the early 1960’s. The experiment is useful for understanding portal experience because it was done under scientifically controlled conditions, in which the events leading up to the occurrence of portal experiences were recorded. The experiences occurring during the experiment were carefully documented and compared to a checklist of criteria specific for mystical experience, provided by none other than W. T. Stace himself, the formulator of the intersection theory. The conditions of the experiment were such that it can be meaningfully generalized to other types of portal experiences, no matter how they occur, and no matter what type of portal experience they are.

The experiment occurred on Good Friday in 1962. Twenty divinity students were given an inspirational lecture by the Dean of the Chapel, then divided into five groups of four. Two members of each group were given a placebo, a pill containing 200 mg of nicotinic acid, a B-vitamin that produces physiological phenomena much like psychoactive substances -- chemicals that affect the functioning of the mind -- but no mental effects. The other two members of each group were given 30 mg of psilocybin, a psychoactive chemical found certain species of mushroom, having characteristics similar in many ways to LSD. As a result of the experiment, the subjects receiving the psilocybin had experiences scoring significantly higher on Stace’s checklist for mystical experience than those receiving the placebo. Nine out of ten psilocybin subjects reported that the experiences were “authentic” in the religious sense, while only one of the placebo subjects reported any kind of spiritual experience at all. The researcher reported that 8 out of the 10 psilocybin subjects believed their experiences had made a “profound impact” upon their religious thinking.

Of course it is impossible to determine, by checklist or any other objective criteria, that a portal experience has occurred. Portal experiences are subjective phenomena that occur in the consciousness of the individual, and do not necessarily have observable behavioral correlates. But in subjects who are familiar with mystical experience, who report the subjective experience of mystical experience, and whose experiences match up with criteria indicative of intersection, it is reasonable to assume that the results of this experiment are as close as one can get to portal experience produced on demand.

This Miracle clearly illustrates the role of what is known as “set and setting” in portal experience. The mind-set, or attitude, with which an individual approaches portal experience, along with the conditions under which it occurs, greatly influence the content of the experience. What a person “sees” in the intersection is very much influenced by what one expects to see, and the circumstances under which it is seen. It would have been quite surprising, for example, if any of these Miracle subjects has seen visions of the Buddha or Moon Goddess. The lecture they received prior to the experiment, the fact that they were all Christian divinity students, and the fact that it took place in a Christian chapel to a large extent explain why their experiences accorded well with a checklist of criteria specific to Christian mysticism. Albert Hofmann’s description of his own experience with psilocybin-containing mushrooms further illustrates this point:

As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican origin of the mushrooms would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried deliberately to look on my environment as I knew it normally. But all voluntary efforts to look at things in their customary forms and colours proved ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I saw only Mexican motifs and colours. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent over me to check my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest, and I would not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife. In spite of the seriousness of the situation, it amused me to see how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a purely Indian expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours after ingesting the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly changing in shape and colour, reached such an alarming degree that I feared I would be torn into this whirlpool of forms and colour and would dissolve. After about six hours, the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had no idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a happy return from a strange, fantastic but quite really experienced world into an old and familiar home.

The phenomenon of “set and setting” is an example of the Uncertainty Principle described in the last chapter. The “way the world is”, in terms of experience, is as much a feature of the attitude of the observer as it is of the world itself. So much moreso in the case of portal experience, pharmacologically induced or otherwise, because portal experiences are fundamentally subjective -- they cannot be separated from the mind in which they occur. This also helps to explain why constellation occurs in the way it does -- why trees, animals, mountains, and other features of the natural world become connected with spirit. That objects and events in the natural world served as vehicles for the entry of spirit into the minds of the ancients simply means that they were the sets and settings in which portal experience occurred -- the conditions under which spirit was observed.

The phenomenon of “set and setting” is an important clue that portal experiences involve chaotic -- as opposed to causal -- processes.> If portal experiences are causal, then the same pill should produce the same type of experience every time. But this is not the case. Not only are the experiences different among different individuals, but they may be different in the same individual under differing conditions. The “reality” of the experience is created as much by the observer as by what is experienced or observed.

What is of special importance for this study is that these results were produced under controlled conditions -- the only difference between the control and experimental groups was the drug psilocybin. While portal experiences can and do occur under conditions unrelated to psychoactive substances, and involve much more than the presence of these substances, this experiment allows the identification of a single factor making the difference between having and not having the experience. Psychoactives like psilocybin act according to physiological mechanisms in the brain. Understanding the action of the psychoactive therefore allows one to begin to understand the role of the brain in portal experience, and the conditions within the brain under which portal experiences are possible. It also indicates that, because the brain evolved in such a way as to respond to naturally occurring substances by producing portal experience, there might be significant reasons why the brain evolved in this way.

The Possibility of Consciousness

It is thought that cells, be they animal, plant or bacterial, originated in the primal oceans of Earth millions of years ago. As land masses appeared and the concentrations of salts in the oceans increased, cells developed means of preserving the conditions of the primal oceans within their membranes. These conditions are maintained principally by proteins in the cell membrane called sodium pumps, which pump excess sodium from inside the cell to the outside. In the process of doing this, a voltage difference is created across the cell membrane. Pumping the positively charged sodium ions out creates a condition of negative charge inside the cell. Most cells in the human body therefore have a negative potential difference across their membranes: the inside of the cell is negatively charged when compared to the outside.

The cells in the brain responsible for its information processing capabilities are nerve cells or neurons. When not processing information they have a charge or resting potential of about -70mv across their cell membranes. For comparison, an ordinary flashlight battery has a difference of 1500 millivolts across its terminals when new.

Structurally, neurons are composed of three distinct regions: the dendrite, which gathers information from other neurons; the cell body or soma, which contains the nucleus; and the wire-like axon, over which the cell transmits information to other neurons. Axons connect to dendrites at junctions called synapses. At the end of each axon is a terminal, or enlargement that presses on the dendrite of another neuron. When activated, the axon terminal releases neurotransmitters, chemicals that move across the synaptic cleft, the small space between axon and dendrite. The dendrite has specialized proteins in its membrane called receptors. Neurotransmitters released by axon terminals in the synaptic cleft attach on to receptors on the dendrite much as a key fits a lock. Axons release specific neurotransmitters, which can only affect receptors that specifically recognize them.

Once the receptor is activated by a neurotransmitter, depending upon the type of receptor, it can either depolarize the neuron’s cell membrane, meaning drive the voltage across the cell membrane toward zero, or it can hyperpolarize the membrane, driving the voltage more negative. The changes in potential across the cell membrane spread out over the surface of the cell until they reach the point on the soma from which the axon emerges called the axon hillock. The normal resting potential at the axon hillock is about -70mv as noted above. Should the activity of receptors depolarize the cell to the point of about -55mv, known as the threshold potential, special channels in the axon called sodium gates open, allowing a rapid influx of sodium ions into the cell. This rapid influx drives the potential across the cell membrane positive, and propagates down the length of the axon as an action potential. Action potentials are pulses of information that neurons transmit down their axons, and when the action potential reaches the axon terminal, it causes neurotransmitters to be released, passing the information on to the next neuron.

The dendrites of most neurons in the brain are extensive and highly branched. Individual neurons may have millions of receptor sites, where they interconnect with other neurons. Axons, too, can branch extensively. A single neuron’s axon can connect with thousands of neurons and interconnect with itself as well -- an axon may actually synapse with a dendrite of the same neuron. Thus the information coming into a neuron may be very complex. It receives information from thousands of other neurons, resulting in depolarizations and hyperpolarizations on its membrane, which add up at the axon hillock and initiate the firing of action potentials. The stronger the depolarization at the axon hillock, the more rapidly the neuron fires action potentials, which releases more neurotransmitter into the synapses and depolarizes (or hyperpolarizes) other neurons.

This is how neurons function at the cellular level, and how they interconnect with one another. The connections between neurons can be very complex, and individual neurons can signal themselves as well as other neurons. It is also important that the signaling between axon and dendrite is chemical. There are no sparks that jump from neuron to neuron -- the message is chemical in nature. It is at the point of the synapse that many chemicals affecting brain function, including those often classified as psychoactive or psychedelic, and especially psilocybin and its related compounds, exert their effects upon the nervous system. Such substances may imitate or interfere with neurotransmitters, thereby altering the transmission of information between neurons.

The complexity of the brain, and the complexity of the functions it can perform are a result of not only the number of neurons in the brain, but also the way in which they interconnect. There does not exist a simple, non-controversial explanation of how the brain develops from a single celled embryo into an organ that supports consciousness. But there do exist several ideas that, when taken together, lead us to understand how the brain evolved to support a chaotic system like consciousness.

According to Gerald Edelman’s Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, the brain grows as a system of neurons whose structure and function are organized primarily by the environment, as opposed to being organized in some fixed pattern by genetics. The brain is a selective recognition system, meaning that it develops with a large number of possible configurations or arrangements, and recognizes certain features in the environment which in turn select specific arrangements of neurons from among those possibilities.

What drives evolution is the ability of living things to arrange themselves, or adapt, to the situation in which they live. This is why living organisms, and particularly brains, are not much like machines or computers. Selective recognition is of obvious adaptive advantage to the brain: the brain comes, from embryology, as a tabula rasa or “blank slate”, and the finishing touches are added in response to environmental conditions. The brain actually learns how to process information according to the situation in which it lives.

We could think of this selective recognition idea in terms of the superposition of states described by Schrödinger. What Edelman calls the new brain or thalamocortical system develops through an interplay of geometric and probabilistic events. The way cells in the growing brain push and shove each other, which cells live and which cells die, and the activity of chemicals produced by cells that affect the growth of nearby cells are governed by probabilistic rules and not by genetic directives. This process of topobiology produces a primary repertoire of neurons without any functional or structural organization beyond the general patterns of development characteristic of the species. The primary repertoire contains many possible ways the brain can be wired -- superpositions of what the brain can become.

During the development of the primary repertoire neuronal groups begin to form. Neurons seldom act as individuals in the thalamocortical system. They associate with neurons of similar type and adjacent location into functional groups. While at a biochemical level individual neurons are complete information processing units, the functional basic information processing unit in the brain is the neuronal group. Group formation provides for a much richer information processing system. Connections between members of the group may be strengthened or weakened by adding or subtracting synaptic junctions, so the group may alter they way in which it processes information.

Once the primary repertoire -- the raw material for brain development -- is in place, the second phase, experimental selection, begins. It is at this stage that the selective recognition system begins to operate. As the brain receives information about the environment through the senses, it begins to select -- or observe, if you wish -- certain connections that produce more favorable responses than other connections. The wave-function begins to collapse, as the brain selects specific pathways out of many possibilities. This selection process is what we call learning -- the brain wires itself, as opposed to being “instructed” in the way a computer is built.

What selects one pathway as more favorable than all others? Certain parts of the brain -- particularly the old brain, which Edelman calls the limbic-brainstem system -- develop according to specific, pre-determined rules. The old brain is programmed by genetics to behave in specific ways, in much the same way a computer is built. It processes certain kinds of information according to pre-determined rules, laid down by specific wiring arrangements. The limbic system is concerned with many basic brain functions and with emotions, while the brainstem contains homeostats, nerve centers that monitor basic body conditions such as temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygen, and so on. These homeostats are responsible for maintaining the conditions necessary to sustain life in the body, and act through fairly simple physiological mechanisms to maintain the body’s internal conditions within normal limits.

The role of the limbic-brainstem system in brain development is to provide value criteria -- physiological standards that select from among available behaviors those which tend to maintain the conditions necessary for survival. These value criteria provide the basic standards by which the new brain learns to wire itself. Connections in the new brain are selected on the basis of how well they meet value criteria in response to varying environmental conditions. This goes all the way from simple behaviors, like learning not to drink things that are bitter, to more complex behaviors like learning that “2+2=4” is preferable to “2+2=3” on the basis of the teacher’s response. We should also note that it is the limbic-brainstem system that is used by the bicameral mind to exert unconscious effects upon behavior. The bicameral mind connects social patterns to the physiological and emotional responses of the brain via the limbic-brainstem system.

As neuronal groups are selected according to value criteria, the secondary repertoire of neuronal groups emerges. This is the basic, functional brain wiring system that enables an animal to move about in the world, avoiding those things that do harm, seeking out those things that are beneficial, and above all else, learning to adapt to new conditions. As Edelman states, the development of brain structures, “resemble the sound and light patterns and the movement and growth patterns of a jungle more than they do the activities of an electrical company.” That should not be surprising, for the development of a forest is also a selective recognition system. Forests grow according to the way in which trees survive, developing in patterns that accord with environmental conditions rather than any pre-defined plan. Moreover, the wiring of neuronal groups is not static; connections can be modified in response to changing conditions. Selective recognition and self-organization are on-going processes, and this self-organizing ability of the brain is one of its features that leads to the possibility of a rule-breaking consciousness.

The final phase of brain development is the organization of neural circuits into mappings. As sensory organs develop and connect with the brain, the brain responds by creating maps of those sensory organs on the surface of the cerebral cortex. There are visual maps, auditory maps, maps for touch and taste, and so on. As one looks deeper into the cortex, the mappings become more sophisticated. While the visual map is, on the surface, a one-to-one correspondence with the sensory cells of the retina, as one goes deeper into the cortex one finds maps for shapes, motion, colors and so on. These maps connect with each other reentrantly, meaning that maps signal other maps and also themselves. When one sees an apple, for example, reentrant signaling between maps allows for red and round to be associated with one another. It is through this communication between maps that the ability to connect and correlate different items of sensory data begins to take place.

The way mappings connect is a function of selective recognition. The brain doesn’t “come with” mappings -- they are put together by the brain in response to the actual conditions in which it lives. When a baby lies in its bed, staring at the walls and furniture, the baby’s brain is actually wiring itself according to the features of its environment. It has been shown by experiment that infant animals raised in an environment of horizontal lines are later unable to distinguish between patterns of vertical lines. This has two interesting consequences. Explorers and armies, both past and present, routinely employ native guides to assist them in traveling through the wilderness. Part of the reason for this is familiarity, but another reason is that the natural world has patterns very different from the city. Nature consists primarily of rounded shapes, while the urban environment consists primarily of sharp horizontal and vertical lines. The city dweller quickly becomes disoriented in the wilderness, primarily because the urban-raised brain is not adapted to processing the kinds of patterns found in the natural world. This also helps to explain why urbanized cultures, as a rule, care very little about the natural environment, and destroy it wantonly. The urban brain just isn’t wired to comprehend the patterns and structure of the wilderness, or to value its existence.

Cortical maps connect with each other at the deepest levels of the cerebral cortex to form global mappings, very loosely interconnected sensory mappings that connect with non-mapped parts of the brain controlling muscle movement and value criteria. It is within these global mappings that perceptual categorization occurs, in which sensory events are correlated with one another. The reentrant signaling for red and round become associated with the smell and taste of an apple, along with eating and the satisfaction of hunger. Global maps signal each other reentrantly, which allows for recategorization, the revaluation and association of sensory and memory information. Because global mappings are where behavior is initiated, recategorization means that global mappings allow for a matching of behavior to the environment. Sensory information and behavior are correlated by global mappings with value criteria -- the animal finally eats the apple, and remembers that eating apples satisfies hunger. The sight of the apple is recategorized with smell and taste, and with the satisfaction of hunger -- it becomes more than just sight.

It is this reentrant signaling and recategorization that allows for the emergence of primary consciousness. Maps signal each other through interconnected neuronal groups in response to stimuli from sense organs, from memory, from homeostats and from other maps. Reentrant signaling pathways can be altered on the fly -- connections between neuronal groups can change, as well as connections and pathways within groups, making recategorization possible.

It is because of reentrant signaling and recategorization that the creation of a scene, the fundamental characteristic of primary consciousness, is possible. A scene is a correlation of sensory events, behaviors and value criteria into a unified whole. Scenes connect causally unrelated events into a complete picture. There is no common cause for the smell, visual appearance, and satisfaction of hunger that an apple provides; the connection between them into a single, unified event is completely the work of primary consciousness, even in our own brains.

The adaptive value of primary consciousness is obvious: it allows for learning behavioral strategies that enhance survival. One learns to associate hunger with eating specific foods, for example, and rain with getting wet and finding shelter. Because of reentrant signaling and recategorization, these strategies are subject to continuous re-evaluation. These strategies are not programs, nor are they instructional. They are selective recognition strategies by which behaviors that satisfy the physiological needs of the animal are matched with sensory information from the environment.

Primary consciousness therefore contains mechanisms for dealing with contingency at a very simple level. Because of recategorization, the match between sensation, behavior and value criteria is constantly under evaluation, and can adapt as environmental conditions change. Primary consciousness can, however, deal with contingency only at the level of specific behavioral response. It cannot deal with contingency in terms of an overall survival strategy, because such a strategy requires the ability to plan and to respond to conditions that are anticipated, and do not exist in the environment. Planning for an earthquake, for example, requires behaving in response to conditions that do not exist in the present -- it requires thinking about what conditions would be like, not what they are. Primary consciousness can respond to the environmental changes produced by earthquakes, but only within the limits possible for behavior under the circumstances. It can’t anticipate the future -- primary consciousness does not have this planning and conceptual ability.

Primary consciousness is found in those animals that have the brain structures necessary to support it. These include a well-developed cortex that can accommodate complex mapping and reentrant signaling, the structures necessary for memory and its interconnection with mappings, and the structures necessary to connect global mappings with homeostats in the brainstem. Accordingly, most mammals, some birds and perhaps some reptiles are capable of primary consciousness. Edelman places the appearance of primary consciousness in evolution at about 300 million years ago.

Primary consciousness is not consciousness in the sense that the word has been used in Chapter One. There is no sense of self in primary consciousness. There is no image of one’s behavior, or indeed any sense of image at all -- there are simply scenes. There is no sense that I am a part of that scene, or that it is a part of me. There are no abstract ideas or concepts, and there is no ability to model the future or the past -- primary consciousness is, in Edelman’s words, “the remembered present”. There is no unity between scenes, no concepts of continuity or of individuality from which to interrelate scenes. This does not mean that there is no memory of things past, but it does mean that there is no concept of past. There is no understanding of a history of events, and no ability to project the memory of past events into the future. Planning is therefore not a feature of primary consciousness.

One does not need to go far beyond primary consciousness to arrive at the bicameral mind. Everything that is needed for social behavior of the bicameral-mind type -- pattern recognition, perceptual categorizzation, and value criteria -- is already in primary consciousness, and many social animals like dogs appear to operate at this level. This is not to say that complex societies can exist on primary consciousness alone. Human civilizations -- even bicameral ones -- are extremely complex, and require more complex brains and information processing to make them possible. What this does show, however, is that the basic structures necessary for bicamerality and social behavior exist at a very primitive level of development in the brain. It also suggests that the basic mechanisms for social behavior were present in the brain long before the evolution of human consciousness as described in Chapter One. While the bicameral mind may take advantage of the more developed capabilities of the modern human brain, the basic neurological structures through which it acts are very old, from an evolutionary standpoint. Most of what happens in primary consciousness is “unconscious” as far as modern human awareness goes, so it follows that the mechanisms by which the bicameral mind controls behavior are also, for the most part, unconscious.

Another step in the evolution of consciousness is required to move from primary consciousness to the ability to symbolize and to model past and present. This is the development of higher order consciousness, and its appearance requires the development in the brain of symbolic memory. Symbolic memory evolves, according to Edelman, through the development of speech and language. It is the functions necessary for speech that enable the brain to remove itself from the immediacy of experience, and to conceptualize space and time. The addition of symbolic memory, in association with global mappings that can delay responses in behavior, is what generates the higher-order consciousness with which we are familiar. This symbolic capability, together with language and social behavior, give rise to concepts of the self as well.

It was necessary for us to part company with Jaynes’ bicameral mind theory when the development of consciousness became entwined with behaviorism and social-ontology, because consciousness explained in that way could not account for the counterexample of the chemist’s vision, and cannot explain portal experience. It will also be necessary to part company with Edelman’s theory for the same reasons. Indeed, Edelman’s idea of the self is called the socially constructed self, and not only brings with it the consequences of assuming social-ontology, but also the inability to explain contents of consciousness that are not a result of social behavior. Higher order consciousness is not the introspective individual consciousness that has portal experiences. Introspective consciousness can not be understood on the basis of the brain alone -- it is not materialistic -- because if it were, the mind-body causation problem would apply, and portal experience would be impossible. Nor is introspective consciousness social-ontological, as is Edelman’s higher order consciousness, because if it were there could be no individuating experiences, including portal experiences.

It does not appear that Edelman’s idea of consciousness can get beyond Jaynes’ description of the bicameral mind. Edelman’s theory of recategorization does allow for the accommodation of contingencies, but if recategorization were sufficient to answer the problem of contingency, it is not clear why evolution would have continued beyond primary consciousness. More complex survival strategies require modeling and planning, but planning in relation to a socially constructed self cannot get beyond the level of the bicameral mind. Should the socially constructed environment collapse, the socially constructed self will collapse along with it.

While neither Edelman’s theory nor Jaynes’ theory can provide a theory of consciousness that can explain portal experience, they do provide many important insights into the nature of consciousness and the brain in which it resides. Both theories -- the bicameral mind and higher-order consciousness -- bring us to the brink of consciousness, but neither makes the leap from social-ontology to individual consciousness, nor from the brain to portal experience. Portal experiences involve states of being outside the physical world of the brain and its biochemical processes. To move consciousness beyond the brain, we must look for something inside the brain that points beyond it -- some indication that the brain connects with something outside of itself.

The Disordered Brain

The reader may have noticed that something slipped into the discussion of primary consciousness without receiving any explanation, and that “something” is the mental faculty of memory. Memory presents a special problem in brain studies, not unlike the problem of consciousness itself. While there are structures in the brain that have important roles in memory -- moving information into and out of memory, moving from short to long-term memory, and so forth -- there appears to be no brain structure in which memory itself resides. There is no part of the brain where memory is located, and no part of the brain that can be removed that also removes memory. Memory is, like consciousness, not a property of any specific part of the brain, but a property of the brain -- at least of the new brain -- as a whole. If memory is not a part of the brain, how can it be connected with the brain? It must be a very special kind of property that allows the brain to possess certain characteristics that cannot be explained on the basis of the functioning of its parts.

Edelman refers to this property of the brain as a whole as a dynamical systems property. A dynamical system is a system -- a collection of independent components or parts functioning together as a single unit -- whose characteristics are not causally related to the functioning of its parts. Dynamical systems are sometimes called disordered or chaotic, primarily because of this fundamental break in causal relationships between the parts of the system and its behavior as a whole. In a dynamical system, the parts of the system do not work together under a set of rules that describe all possible states of the system -- the system itself becomes something quite different from its parts. Richard Feynman once said, “Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?” The problem with dynamical systems is that “what happens next” in the system cannot be determined from the existing conditions. Knowing what each part is doing will not explain the behavior of the system, and the condition of each part cannot be determined from the behavior of the system as a whole.

An automobile engine, for example, is not a dynamical system, at least not under normal circumstances. It works only as long as its parts all function according to their design. If the distributor cap breaks, the engine stops working. The operation of the engine is causally dependent upon the function of its parts. Each one of the parts causes the system as a whole to work, and the contribution of each part can be easily determined. An engine is therefore an ordered system, because its parts relate to the whole on the basis of simple rules or principles, and the operation of the engine as a whole is directly dependent upon the proper operation of each part. It can be inferred that if the engine is working, then the parts must all be working -- the distributor cap is not broken if the engine runs. Similarly, if all the parts work properly, it can be accurately predicted that the engine will run.

The classical example of a dynamical system is turbulent flow, the irregular flow of a liquid through a pipe or other object that occurs under certain conditions. Turbulence has long been a problem in physics, for it seems to break the rules of natural law. It was not until the introduction of dynamical systems theory that an understanding of why turbulence breaks the rules developed. Of course dynamical systems theory introduces new questions and problems, but the problem of understanding why turbulence does not fit ordered models of behavior was solved.

In an ordered system, the existing conditions predict the way the system will behave. This can be seen in an ordinary water faucet. If the faucet is turned on slightly so that water begins to drip, one will notice that there is a regular interval between drips. As the flow of water is increased, the interval between drips shortens, but there is always a regularity to the system -- the interval between one set of drips and the next set, provided the flow is not changed, will be the same. The conditions of the system, such as pipe diameter, water viscosity, temperature, and flow rate, are predictive of the way the system will behave -- they determine how fast the water will drip. This works up to a certain point. When the flow rate is increased beyond that point, the behavior of the system changes. At this point, the time intervals between drips become irregular -- the interval between one set of drips does not accurately predict the length of the interval between the next set of drips. The flow rate of the system, therefore, does not determine the time interval between drips, nor do the other conditions of the system, such as temperature and pipe diameter, control the drip rate in any predictable way. The flow in the system has become turbulent, and no longer obeys any predictable pattern of behavior -- it acts independently of the conditions under which the system operates.

This is chaotic behavior: the condition of the system and its parts do not predict the system’s overall behavior. If the state and behavior of a system are graphed, the figure that appears is an attractor, a graphical representation of trends in the behavior of the system. For an ordered system the attractor appears as a round clump or doughnut-shape called a toroid, and toroidal attractors reveal that within the limits of uncertainty and error, the conditions of the system predict its behavior. For disordered systems strange attractors appear: the dripping faucet produces a horseshoe-shaped attractor, weather systems produce butterfly shapes -- each dynamical system has its own characteristic attractor.

Analysis of the attractors of disordered systems reveals that they are fractals, geometric figures composed of repeating patterns. The appearance of a fractal attractor shows that a chaotic system does not behave randomly. Chaotic systems follow an underlying pattern, however, the pattern is not determined by the parts of the system. The chaotic system’s pattern of behavior is self-organized by the dynamical system itself -- the pattern in a system’s attractor is created by the dynamical system as a whole, and not by its parts. While altering the conditions may affect the overall size and shape of the attractor, the underlying patterns of which it is composed are self-organized by the dynamical system itself, and do not change unless the system is destroyed.

What this means is that a dynamical system sets up its own pattern of behavior. While causal conditions, such as those factors that predict the dripping of the faucet, have a role to play in initiating the dynamical system, once the system takes off on its own those conditions no longer determine the system’s behavior. Once a system goes chaotic, you can’t predict “what happens next” based upon the state of the system’s parts.

Walter Freeman, whose research supports the theory of dynamical systems in the brain, offers the following comparison between chaos and randomness:

At the risk of oversimplification, I sometimes like to suggest the difference between chaos and randomness by comparing the behavior of commuters dashing through a train station at rush hour with the behavior of a large, terrified crowd. The activity of the commuters resembles chaos in that although an observer unfamiliar with train stations might think people were running every which way without reason, order does underlie the surface complexity: everyone is hurrying to catch a specific train. The traffic flow could rapidly be changed by simply announcing a track change. In contrast, mass hysteria is random. No simple announcement would make a large mob become cooperative.

Dynamical systems abound in nature. The growth of a forest, the beating of the heart, the flow of a river and the growth patterns of organisms are all best described by dynamical systems. The reason one does not see dynamical systems easily is that one has been trained not to look for them. The ideas of mechanism and causation that so permeate the “scientific viewpoint” encourage one to think causally and not dynamically. While the sciences themselves increasingly rely upon dynamical systems as an analytical and explanatory tool, the popular viewpoints tracing back to Enlightenment ideology find dynamical systems most upsetting. Philosophers such as Kant argue that thinking can only be done in terms of causation, and this underlying assumption of causation has resulted in the imposing of causation upon nature where it may well not exist. Adding to this difficulty is the fact that systems theory is quite abstract: one cannot “see” an attractor, or on the basis of simple observations tell whether a system is ordered or dynamical. One can only observe the results and infer. Attractors are not physical objects, they are diagrams in state-space -- an abstract mathematical dimension in whiich the behavior of systems is described -- and therefore cannot be observed directly.

Edelman’s statement that the growth of the brain more closely resembles a jungle than an electrical company suggests that the growth of the brain itself may be a dynamical system. While each individual tree contributes to the growth of a jungle, the characteristics of the jungle as a whole are not traceable to individual trees. The death of a single tree does not change the overall behavior of the forest itself. Similarly, while the brain is composed of individual neurons, neither the final structure of the brain nor its overall behavior are traceable to the structure and behavior of individual neurons. Edelman’s whole theoretical project in many ways amounts to the application of dynamical systems theory to brain development and function. Edelman’s ideas of self-organization, selective recognition, recategorization and reentrant signaling are all characteristics of dynamical systems. While the underlying physical processes within individual neurons and synapses may be best understood through causal explanations, the theory of dynamical systems provides many new insights into the “mysterious” functions of the brain as a whole.

In theorizing that memory is a dynamical system, Edelman is seeking to explain how information can be stored in memory without being stored in any specific part of the brain. Memory is a property of the system as a whole, a set of patterns stored in an attractor. Unlike a computer that stores information as coded bits in specific hardware structures, the brain stores it as “the specific enhancement of a previously established ability to categorize” -- meaning, in the establishment of a pattern. The contents of memory are effectively stored in state-space, and therefore cannot be localized to any specific brain part. This explains why individual cell death in the brain does not alter the contents of memory. It also explains why memory recall is never exact. Recall involves duplicating the original patterns of discharge, and since global mappings are constantly undergoing reorganization, memory amounts to a recategorization, in which the original patterns are intermixed with new perceptual associations. When information is added to memory, it gets mixed in with other patterns of information, so that when recalled, what is “remembered” is information that has become contextualized with other items of memory. Memory comes down to an attempt to reconstruct the maps, interconnections and discharges in the brain when the event occurred, but since the brain is constantly undergoing revisions of its mappings the reconstruction can not duplicate the original conditions precisely. So memory recall is never exact, because the information gets intermixed with other information, and because the brain’s constant changing makes exact duplication of the original discharge patterns impossible.

If memory is a dynamical system, there is every reason to believe that consciousness is also a dynamical system. Like memory, it is a property of the brain as a whole and not of any of its individual parts, and like memory, it emerges from the underlying neurological structure of the brain but is not casually dependent upon that structure. While the parts of the brain are involved in getting information into and out of consciousness, they are not themselves consciousness, just as they are not themselves memory. Reentrant signaling in the brain allows the patterns of neuronal discharge to take on an identity and independence from the circuitry out of which they arise.

Perhaps the most mysterious aspect of consciousness is how it is able to generate a self -- an ongoing, reflexive image of consciousness as a unique entity. The dynamical systems theory of consciousness provides a simple explanation. While dynamical systems can assimilate information from their environment and transmit information to that environment, their essential identifying character -- their underlying fractal patterns -- are self-generated by the system as a characteristic of that system, and not as a characteristic of any information coming into that system. The self, being the uniquely identifying characteristic of consciousness, is most easily understood as being the unique identifying fractal pattern of the dynamical system of consciousness. In other words, the self is the strange attractor of consciousness. Describing the self in this way accounts for its ability to incorporate not only behavioral, but perceptual and introspective components, without changing who the person is. The self is not simply an image of behavior -- it is a composite of all experience and thought, superimposed upon a unique and underlying pattern that sets individuals apart from one another.

Experiences are always subjective for the same reasons that memory recall is never exact. Consciousness is aware of experience only insofar as perceptual and behavioral patterns intermix with the self-pattern in the dynamical system of consciousness. Just as memory recall is always mixed up with other information, so experiences are always contextualized with the underlying self-pattern in consciousness, or, in terms we have already used, experience is always in relation to the self. The only way you can be aware of an experience at all is for it to be your experience, personalized by your own self.

Because consciousness is not causally tied to the parts of the brain or their specific operations, the dynamical system of consciousness is functionally separated from the information coming in about the world through the senses. Thus, introspective distance, the “mental space” that separates consciousness from experience and behavior, is a direct consequence of understanding consciousness as a dynamical system. The break between the causal behavior of the brain and the dynamical behavior of consciousness means that environmental conditions do not cause behavior. This is the difference between conscious and reflex behavior. Reflex behaviors, such as those under the control of the old brain, depend upon an unbroken causal chain from stimulus to response: burning the hand causes sensations that directly cause the hand to be jerked away. The break between causation and chaos introduced by consciousness breaks the stimulus-response chain, creating the “mental space” from which thought and reflection can be brought to bear.

It is this break between causation and chaos that explains why consciousness breaks the rules, whether those rules are patterns of social behavior or learned behavioral strategies. Introspective distance allows consciousness to separate itself from the immediacy of the environment; consciousness is, in fact, a separate entity from the world around it. This separation allows consciousness to think about what is going on, instead of just reacting. Consciousness can follow rules, and often does -- when hungry, we usually will pick up a red apple and eat it, because we have learned that behavioral strategy. But, we have the option of not doing so. If we know the apple has been sprayed with pesticide, for example, we can choose not to follow the behavioral strategy we have learned. Similarly, we can choose not to take the drug test, not to wear the necktie, and so on, because consciousness give us the ability to be ourselves, and not to be the world in the way that an unconscious mind necessarily must be.

We could say that the unconscious, socially conforming bicameral mind is the world, because the causal connection between sensation, reaction and behavior is unbroken. It might at first appear that the bicameral mind is dynamical -- chaotic systems are very good at pattern recognition, and a key element in the bicameral mind is its ability to recognize social patterns. But this is not the case. Experimental evidence cited by Jaynes suggests that the wiring of the right brain by itself, independent of any chaotic activity, is capable of the kind of pattern recognition necessary for the bicameral mind to operate. The entire chain of events responsible for socially conforming behavior in the bicameral mind can be best explained as a causal mechanism dependent upon the wiring of the brain, and the operation of its parts. As Jaynes says, the voices are neurological, arising out of the interconnections in the brain, and requires no other entity or system to carry out its functions.

Understanding consciousness as a dynamical system explains why the bicameral mind has so much sway over behavior and thought in otherwise conscious persons. Since the bicameral mind is itself a neurological entity, it is causally and neurologically connected with the structures in the limbic-brainstem system that control emotions and physiological functions. Being a dynamical system, consciousness can affect these structures only indirectly, whereas the bicameral mind is directly wired to them. We can bring these neurological mechanisms under conscious control, just as we can bring other physiological mechanisms under conscious control, but doing so is not automatic. It takes effort and will to do so, and often the unconscious mechanisms have done their work before consciousness is even aware of them. The dynamical system theory of consciousness also explains why, under normal circumstances, we no longer hear the voices of the bicameral mind. Consciousness has superseded the unconscious control mechanisms, and the wiring of the brain does not “speak” directly to consciousness; it can only speak indirectly, through the emotions and physiological mechanisms to which it is connected. What the ancients would have heard as voices, we feel as revulsion and physical discomfort.

Finally, the existence of consciousness as a dynamical system avoids the consequences of the Incompleteness Principle. Nature, after all, found a way around the consequences of rule-following, causally controlled behavior. Introspective distance, the break between causation and chaos, opens the system and makes consciousness incomplete, in such a way that consciousness cannot be controlled by rules. This allows for on-going reflection and evaluation, and for formulating entirely new behaviors.

Is there any actual evidence for the existence of chaotic systems in the brain? Just as we cannot detect the “glue” between causal events, there is nothing we can do to directly observe the presence of a dynamical system. We can only infer its presence from observation, and specifically by an abstract analysis of the system’s behavior, portrayed in state space. If we see a chaotic attractor, we infer a dynamical system.

The research of Walter J. Freeman indicates that the perceptual system for olfaction -- the sense of smell -- in the brain is chaotic, based upon several observations. First, there is a certain amount of resting activity in the olfactory structures that occurs in the absence of stimuli. This self‑organizing behavior is characteristic of chaotic systems -- they are always active, even when not doing any specific task. Dynamical systems are always doing something, if only “talking to themselves” or, in Edelman’s terminology, reentrantly signaling themselves. This self-generated activity is how dynamical systems generate their unique patterns -- and how consciousness generates the self.

The second observation is that in response to a stimulus burst, the entire olfactory system is rapidly activated, and becomes involved in the processing of the sensory data. This rapid change of system state in response to a small stimulus is another characteristic of dynamical systems. While dynamical systems do not change their characteristic patterns of behavior, they do propagate information throughout their structure rapidly, and modify their overall behavior quickly. Because there is no causal chain in which every individual part of the system must react, the entire system can respond quickly to changes or stimuli as a system, rather than as a collection of parts.

The third observation is the appearance of strange attractors in Freeman’s perception experiments. Utilizing both computer models of the rat’s olfactory bulb and direct experiments, Freeman was able to observe chaotic attractors in response to scents recognized by the rat as “interesting”. That scents which have some meaning would generate a large response, while scents of no significance generate little or no response, is consistent with Edelman’s theory of recategorization and reentrant mappings. Those scents that have become associated with behaviors or other significant events engage the entire system, whereas scents with no meaning to the rat go largely unnoticed.

These observations support the theory that information from the physical senses enters the brain, and is “perceived” -- it enters consciousness -- through the activity of a dynamical system. As Freeman writes, the dynamical systems observed in connection with perception are really part of a much larger phenomenon:

Consciousness may well be the subjective experience of this recursive process . . . it enables the brain to plan and prepare for each subsequent action on the basis of past action, sensory input and perceptual synthesis. In short, an act of perception is not the copying of an incoming stimulus. It is a step in a trajectory by which brains grow, reorganize themselves and reach into their environment to change it to their own advantage.

While it should not be inferred that the mere existence of a dynamical system is evidence for consciousness, nor that all dynamical systems are themselves conscious, the experimental evidence does suggest that dynamical systems can fundamentally alter the way the brain behaves, and can explain phenomena such as the self, introspective distance and rule-breaking associated with consciousness. The perceptual chaos documented by Freeman is ephemeral and stimulus-specific, while the self is an ongoing process and consciousness does not depend upon any specific sensory conditions for its operation. The perceptual systems may, however, be the precursors of consciousness, and they show that the brain can operate in ways that violate causal rules.

The most important consequence of suggesting that consciousness is a dynamical system is that it opens the door for understanding how portal experiences are possible. Having shown that the brain, or at least information processing systems arising out of the brain, can operate outside of causal rules, we have effectively obliterated the mind-body causation problem. The answer to the riddle of how non-physical phenomena can cause changes in a physical brain is that they don’t -- they operate through non-causal, indirectt pathways.

The physical sense affect consciousness -- your eyes, reading this book, get information into consciousness somehow. It can not be a causal process, because consciousness is not causally related to the senses. It is therefore no greater mystery how immaterial spirit interacts with consciousness than it is how the physical senses interact with consciousness. To understand that interaction, we will need some kind of principle that explains how dynamical systems interact with things acausally.

We can think of this acausal principle in terms of something like radio waves. Someone speaks into a microphone, the information is converted into invisible waves that move through space, get picked up by a receiver and converted back into speech. Similarly, information from the environment is picked up by the senses and transformed into patterns that are picked up by consciousness. Consciousness decides what to do, and transmits its decision in patterns that are picked up by the brain and passed on to those brain structures that control behavior. This is only a crude analogy, of course. There is a more detailed and specific explanation of how these interactions occur, which will be the subject of the next chapter.

Psychedelic Evolution

A dynamical system is not, by itself, enough for consciousness. Consciousness is a very special system. It is an ongoing process, with a self-organized self-pattern, that can interact with the physical world and the world of spirit as well. While perceptual chaos comes and goes, consciousness is there for life -- perhaps before life, and perhaps beyond it as well.

It appears that there are three physiological conditions necessary for the emergence of consciousness as a dynamical system. First, the brain must be sufficiently complex, providing a repertoire of connections and pathways that are not dedicated to specific, pre-determined functions. This is one reason why smaller animals such as insects do not have consciousness comparable to humans, if they have it at all. Invertebrates and smaller vertebrates do not have the circuitry available for the complex interconnections and signaling necessary to support dynamical system activity.

Second, the brain must be self-organizing. The repertoire of neurons cannot exist as dedicated circuits and fixed connections, such as in a computer or insects. The behavior of the brain as a system must be able to alter its underlying neural structure by strengthening or weakening connections between neurons and groups. This is how classification and reclassification are possible, and how basic associations between senses, value criteria, and behavior are established. This self-organizing capability explains why consciousness can have so much control over brain function. It also explains how the brain can compensate for damage to some of its parts -- the functions are simply re-routed through other undamaged areas.

Finally, reentrant signaling between maps and other brain areas allows for information to be generated with the brain -- the brain can “talk to itself”, as opposed to simply responding to stimuli. This “talking to itself” gives rise to the possibility for a self-generated pattern to emerge, as well as the ability of consciousness to think about itself or other things in the absence of specific sensory information.

These are the conditions within the brain required to support the activity of a dynamical system; they make it possible for a dynamical system to exist. There is one additional condition required to establish dynamical system activity in the brain -- to get the dynamical system itself going. Since the dynamical system is not causally related to its underlying structures, something must happen that breaks the causal chain between structure and function. This event or condition that breaks the causal chain and initiates dynamical system activity is called bootstrapping. Bootstrapping allows a dynamical system to begin the process of self-organization and characteristic pattern formation -- to pull itself out of its underlying structure by its own bootstraps. Bootstrapping is very often a situation in which the underlying conditions for a dynamical system exist, and something from the outside triggers chaotic activity.

Freeman’s hypothesis is that within the brain, the release of neurotransmitters controls the gain -- the ability of neuron systems to amplify signals -- in terms of numbers of neurons involved and numbers of action potentials generated. The gain level is set by the brain depending upon how interested an animal is in receiving sensory input, and whether it recognizes the input it receives. When the gain is set high enough, a small stimulus is capable of exciting large numbers of neurons into instantaneous activity. The high gain of the system liberates an excess of energy -- in the form of sensitivity to stimuli and readiness to release action potentials -- such that the slightest sensation in any individual neuron can trigger activity throughout the system. Thus, the brain is prepared for chaotic activity by the levels of neurotransmitters present, and some outside sensory event is able to trigger the dynamical systems associated with perception.

For introspective consciousness to appear as a dynamical system, some kind of bootstrapping event must occur that breaks off system activity from the underlying causal and neurological mechanisms in the brain, and initiate the self-organizing process. While dynamical systems such as consciousness are self-organizing in the sense that they develop and maintain their own unique patterns of behavior, they also respond to the conditions of their environment. Information from the physical senses, information from memory, and information generated by reentrant signaling between maps are all available to consciousness, as well as information generated by homeostatic mechanisms in the limbic-brainstem system. That consciousness has these connections with the physical brain, along with Freeman’s hypothesis that bootstrapping has something to do with neurotransmitters, makes it logical to begin the search for the bootstrapping event within the neurological structure of the brain.

The Miracle of Marsh Chapel suggests that the psychoactive drug psilocybin had some role to play in the portal experiences that occurred during the experiment. Although portal experiences can occur spontaneously, in general they do not happen without some precipitating condition or event. Persons with high fever or other disease conditions will occasionally have visions similar to portal experiences. It may even be that the “near-death experience”, which has all the characteristics of portal experience, is the result of the dynamical system of consciousness temporarily losing its connections with the failing neurological structures of the brain.

In religious mysticism one often hears the instruction, “inflame thyself with prayer,” as a means of bringing about mystical experience. Those who practice in the occult traditions use similar methods of intense concentration to initiate portal experience. Persons employing these methods use candles, incense, music, physical movements such as dances or special sitting and standing positions, and eating or tasting herbs or foods -- every sense of the body is brought into play. In contrast to these “stimulating” conditions, others employ “meditative” methods, the aim of which is to “quiet”, or shut down input from the senses into the brain. These practices involve not only physical stillness, but mental exercises designed to stop the chatter of thoughts in the mind. What these methods and practices all share in common is the production of unusual neurological conditions in the brain -- either through the absence of sensory stimulation, or the intensity of sensory stimulation -- which in turn alters the physiological and psychological environment in which consciousness operates.

Historically, the most common precipitating event for portal experience has been the introduction of some foreign substance into the body that triggers the experience. The most well known example of this is the medieval “witches’ brew”, containing a mixture of nightshade, mandrake, Cannabis, various mushrooms and other plants that contain potent psychoactive components. The brew is often compounded with animal fat -- human or otherwise -- to aid in the absorrption of the psychoactive components through the skin. As well as producing an astral projection experience, the use of this concoction also produces the physical sense of flying, hence the image of witches “flying” through the night. We should note that while these substances are effective, the “margin of safety” -- the difference in dosage between the psychoactive effects and potentially lethal physiological effects -- for many of the substances used in this preparation is very small. Neither “witches’ brew”, nor anything else containing belladonna alkaloids should be thought of as material for casual experimentation, as these materials all too often produce one-way “trips” in the uninformed.

While concoctions similar to the witches’ brew are to be found in cultures throughout the world, most substances used for the induction of portal experience are not as toxic, and have more profound effects. In Mexico, tribal shamans or curanderos (y curanderas) -- mystic-healers -- use psilocybin-containing mushrooms to precipitate portal experiences in which visions are seen, and “healing forces” are channeled toward the sick. Psilocybin is one of the least toxic psychoactives. While only a few mushrooms are needed for psychoactive effects, one would need to eat nearly one’s body weight in fresh mushrooms to experience any toxic effects.

Some Native American tribes use peyote, a small desert cactus containing mescaline, pharmacologically related to psilocybin, in ritual ceremonies for producing visions. These visions may be prophetic, or may have special meaning or religious insight to the persons who have them. Some African tribes use psychoactive plants to produce visions of the “ancestors”, spirits of the dead who educate children and direct the activities of the tribe. It is said that the “assassin cults” of the Middle East were able to instill fierceness in their members by providing them with hashish, a material produced from the marijuana plant. The warriors were then told that the experiences they had with the hashish would be how they would spend their afterlife, if they died in the service of the master. In modern occult practices, these and similar substances are used to induce mystical and clairvoyant visions, and for ritual magic and spell casting.

It is impossible, within the limits of this book, to do more than just begin to indicate the extent to which psychoactive substances have been used -- and are today used -- to produce portal experiences. The collaborative works of Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann, two of which are listed in the bibliography, detail decades of research by these scientists into this very phenomenon. In Plants of the Gods, they write:

The use of hallucinogenic plants has been a part of the human experience for many millennia . . . they have long played an important role in the religious rites of early civilizations and are still held in veneration and awe as sacred elements by certain peoples who have continued to live in cultures less developed and bound to ancient traditions and ways of life. How could man in primitive societies better contact the spirit world than through the use of plants with psychic effects enabling the partaker to communicate with supernatural realms? What more direct method than to permit man to free himself from the prosaic confines of this mundane existence and enable him to enter temporarily the fascinating worlds of indescribably ethereal wonder opened to him, even though fleetingly, by the hallucinogens?

No matter where on Earth one goes, from Siberia to Central Africa, from the deserts to tropical rain forests, native peoples have discovered one means or another for creating portal experience. It is as though nature has provided the means, no matter what the climate, for human consciousness to reach beyond ordinary experience into the Unknown. One would think, based upon the evidence, that nature wants humanity to have this experience.

Of course that would be thinking not only teleologically, but also backwards. It is not that nature provides the means by which humans have portal experiences; humans evolved in such a way as to have these experiences, as a result of evolving in the natural environment. Nature does not “feed the head”, the head feeds on nature. This is really a very surprising situation, for one would, at first glance, have assumed that the body’s most important control center would have evolved in such a way as to maintain itself in a stable condition, independent of the environment as much as possible. One would think that the brain would have developed in such a way as to isolate itself from chance encounters with various substances that alter its basic functioning, but this is apparently not the case.

Chemicals that affect the nervous system most often act at the synaptic junctions between neurons, because the messages transmitted between neurons are chemical in nature. Psychoactive chemicals may be absorbed through the skin, the lungs, or the digestive tract, where they are carried throughout the body by the bloodstream. In addition to the bloodstream, the brain and spinal cord have their own system of fluid circulation, and chemicals can reach synapses by way of this cerebrospinal fluid. Once at the synapse, there are several ways in which a chemical can affect information transfer between neurons. Most commonly, these chemicals mimic the action of neurotransmitters, but provide a much stronger or longer lasting effect; these are known as agonists or mimetics. For example, phenylethylamine (PEA) is a neurotransmitter found the old brain region of the hypothalamus. It is also found in chocolate, and is responsible for that food’s “love drug” reputation. Cocaine is chemically similar to norepinephrine, and is thought to work by attaching to norepinephrine receptors in the limbic system. Alternatively, substances called antagonists may prevent the neurotransmitter from attaching to its receptor, thereby blocking the chemical message between neurons. Curare, for example, is thought to work by covering up the receptors at the synaptic junctions between neurons and muscle cells, thereby preventing the chemical message from being delivered. There are other mechanisms by which chemicals affect the nervous system, but these are the ones of principal concern in the study of psychoactive substances.

What is so surprising is that synapses in the brain would have evolved in such a way as to be affected by substances occurring in nature, and which could easily be encountered by a person or animal during normal feeding. The best studied case of this nature-brain interaction is probably that of opium and its related compounds, which led to some very surprising discoveries about the way the brain works. Opium has long been used, both medicinally and otherwise, for the relief of physical and mental pain, but pharmacologists were puzzled about how it actually affected brain function. Acting on the theory that the action of these chemicals must be mediated through neurotransmitter-specific receptor sites, several research groups began to search for “opiate receptors” in brain tissue. In the mid 1970’s, such receptor sites were found in areas of the brain concerned with perception, pain and emotional responses -- the hypothalamus, limbic system, and spinal cord. This discovery sparked the search for receptor sites for other pharmacologically active substances, and since that time, receptors for most psychoactive substances have been found.

Most psychoactives are either agonists or antagonists of neurotransmitters. But in the case of opium there was no known neurotransmitter that bound with the opium receptors. Could it be that, for some reason, the mammalian brain was “wired” for opium, a substance completely alien to the mammalian body? In 1975, and in subsequent years, the answer was found. There exist, in the brain and its surrounding cerebrospinal fluid, naturally occurring polypeptides -- chains of amino acids -- that bind with these receptors. The first of these neuropeptides to be discovered were the enkephalins, then the endorphins, and others. These are substances produced by specialized neurosecretory cells -- neurons whose chemical messengers are released into the cerebrospinal fluid instead of into a synaptic junction. Once in the cerebrospinal fluid, these chemicals can travel throughout the brain and affect cells having the appropriate receptor sites.

The “opium receptors” in the brain are, therefore, really receptors for internally occurring neuropeptides. The active principles in opium -- morphine and related compounds -- are mimetics for endorphins and enkephalins. It has been theorized that various non-pharmacological methods for relieving pain, including acupuncture and hypnosis, may work by causing the release of these neuropeptides. This theory is substantiated by the observation that narcotic antagonists such as naloxone, which block the effects of opiates, also block the effects of these kinds of treatments, in addition to blocking the effects of the relevant neuropeptides.

Further, endorphins exhibit the phenomenon of cross‑tolerance with opiates. When a dosage of morphine that is effective in suppressing a particular kind of pain is given to an animal repeatedly, the effect soon begins to decrease -- a higher dosage of morphine is needed to achieve the same effect. This is the tolerance phenomenon, which appears as the result of alterations in synaptic connections. Once a tolerance to morphine has been built, it is found that a larger amount of endorphin is needed to relieve similar pain than would have been needed in an animal without tolerance. When two substances show this cross‑tolerance phenomenon -- the building of tolerance to one substance also builds a tolerance to another -- it suggests that the two substances are acting through the same pathway. “Same pathway” does not always mean “same receptors”, however. It can mean different receptors on the same neuron, receptors on different neurons that are interconnected, different parts of a reentrant circuit, or many other possibilities. The demonstration of cross‑tolerance merely suggests that the substances are affecting related brain processes or structures.

The discovery of enkephalins, endorphins and other neuropeptides sent a shock wave through brain research. A new method of communication in the brain had been discovered, and this new method suggested a bridge between the physiology and the psychology of the brain. Neurophysiology could never explain how the brain produces subjective psychological states such as pain or euphoria. The discovery of these “natural opiates” suggested that the link between psychology and physiology would be found in a previously unknown process.

While this great scientific hope never really materialized, it did serve to open up new lines of questioning. Most importantly, why does the brain contain synapses that respond to externally occurring substances? Such substances affecting brain activity, most often occurring in plants, are common in nature. The collaborative work of Schultes and Hofmann has shown an astonishing worldwide distribution of hallucinogenic compounds in plants. What is surprising is that mammalian evolution should have occurred in such a way that the functioning of the body’s most important control system -- the brain -- is affected in fundamental ways by the prresence of compounds that the animal is likely to encounter under quite innocent and ordinary circumstances. There are three hypotheses that may be considered to explain this remarkable situation:

I. It may be a mere coincidence that the evolution of the brain produced mechanisms sensitive to substances produced outside the body.

The similarity of the camera-type eyes of vertebrates and cephalopods is an example. There is no developmental connection between the two; their embryological development is distinctly different. Yet environmental circumstances, together with natural selection, produced, at a gross level, the same kind of structure in distantly related creatures. So, we might say, that it was just a coincidence -- a freak of nature -- that both squid and human have a camera‑type eye. Similarly, it might be argued that the presence of receptor sites in the brain that respond to chemical substances in plants is a similar coincidence of evolution.

This is hardly a credible explanation. “Coincidence” is more often than not a quick-and-easy substitute for “we don’t know why.” Cephalopods and humans both have camera-type eyes because they are the most effective tools for each creature to survive in its respective environment. It appears as a “coincidence” only when we don’t fully understand the factors in the environment contributing to their development.

The expenditure of energy required by both plant and animal to develop the biochemical mechanisms for producing these substances -- some of them quite complex -- and for responding to them is considerable. That the similarity of plant substance and brain neurotransmitter should have been sustained through the evolutionary process as a matter of chance alone makes the “coincidence” hypotheses absurd.

What determines, in the evolutionary process, whether a particular development will continue to be present in a species is whether it has adaptive value -- whether that particular development somehhow enhances the ability of the organism to survive and exploit its environment. The energy drain on an organism imposed by the development of a particular biochemical process will be sustained by natural selection only if that process yields a net gain in the organism’s ability to flourish. In other words, nature does not waste energy on frivolous things, and, therefore, we probably should not consider what nature has done as frivolous. The “coincidence” hypothesis has all the flavor and credibility of, as Robert Anton Wilson once wrote, “. . . a man found in a closet by a jealous husband who hopefully explains, ‘Just by coincidence, while you were away on business I happened to wander into this closet without my clothes on . . .’”

Coincidences do happen -- things do happen that seem to relate to one another on a superficial level, but have no underlying causal connection or relationship. That does not mean there is no underlying relationship, only that we cannot find a causal explanation for it. It is not the case, for example, that opium alkaloids found in nature and endorphins and enkephalins found in the brain are unrelated. Human evolution proceeded in such a way as to produce a brain that utilizes these substances, and not others, as active agents in the neural pathways associated with pain and euphoria. They are not causally related -- the environment did not cause the brain to evolve in this way. They are selectionally related -- the brain evolved in the way it did by seelective recognition of these substances, and selective recognition systems are dynamical, and not causal, systems.

Genetic mutations -- under the control of probabilistic rules -- may lead to changes in individuals, but those changes are not propagated by evolution unless they confer an adaptive advantage. How receptors sensitive to opiates and other psychoactives originally appeared makes little difference. What does matter is that considerable energy on the part of the human organism has sustained the development of this specific kind of receptor for a very long period of history. To deny that this expenditure of energy does not accomplish something advantageous for the human organism would require the same level of gullibility as believing the man in the closet. “Coincidence” -- understood as the development of similar or complementary characteristics in unrelated species such as camera-type eyes and substance-receptor combinations, without underlying cause or other relationship -- makes little sense once one understands the mechanisms behind evolution.

II. It was of adaptive value to plants to develop biosynthetic processes that can affect the brains of animals.

According to this hypothesis, those plants that developed biosynthetic pathways for substances affecting the mammalian central nervous system had some kind of adaptive advantage over their siblings. There is no question that some of these chemicals do aid in the survival of plants. Many plants produce toxic materials that harm or kill animals feeding on them. However, over a long period of time, those animals whose behavior does not include feeding on such plants, or develop mechanisms to counter the effects of these chemicals, to out‑survive and out‑reproduce those animals that do feed on these plants. The long-term effect of this biochemical interaction is that as the animal population evolves, the number of surviving plants that produce toxic substances also increases.

There are several problems with this hypothesis. First, many of these substances are not toxic, at least not in a way that threatens the life of the animal that feeds on it. Marijuana, for example, produces a substance that has virtually no long term toxic effects. Insects that feed on the plant seem unaffected by its active constituents. Insect evolution proceeds at a very rapid rate, primarily because of their high reproductive potential. While at some point a substance produced by a plant may be toxic to a given insect species, the species will either evolve in such a way as to avoid the plant, or in such a way as to be insensitive to the plant’s toxins. The latter case is quite common, and is obviously of no advantage to the plant.

THC, the active principle in marijuana, appears to do nothing for the survival of the plant. THC seems harmless to those creatures that parasitize the plant, and yet the process by which it is produced in the plant is complex. To top it off, while THC‑specific receptors have been found in mammalian brains in the limbic, hypothalamic, and hippocampal of the old brain, and frontal cortical areas of the new brain, no known substance in the brain has yet been found to bind to these receptors.

Psilocybin is for all practical purposes non-toxic, and there is no known role for it in the growth of mushrooms in which it occurs. Much to the dismay of bathtub mushroom growers, there are mutants of Psilocybe cubensis that do not produce the psychoactive compound psilocybin, yet these mutants grow and reproduce as well as their “flesh of the gods” siblings.

In both cases, it appears that the production of psychoactive compounds does little to ensure the survival of the plant. Certainly, the biomasses of both Cannabis and Psilocybe have been, under human cultivation, dramatically increased because of their biochemical constituents. To assume this is the reason for the evolution of their unique biochemical processes would, however, not be a legitimate application of evolutionary theory. Evolution is not teleological: a biochemical mechanism does not develop “in order that,” at some time in the future, it will be of advantage. Marijuana did not develop the synthetic pathways for THC several millions of years ago in anticipation of growing in someone’s closet in the twentieth century. And, a particular mechanism will not continue through the evolution of the species if it does not continue to provide an adaptive advantage. If we want to explain THC production in terms of toxicity to insects, we can’t explain why it would continue to be produced once the insect population has evolved means for detoxifying or otherwise avoiding the substance.

Another problem with this idea is that many of these biosynthetic pathways developed, chronologically, before the evolution of the mammalian brain. The biosynthetic pathways for psilocybin in Psilocybe and other mushrooms, lysergic acid amides in morning glories and ergot fungi, THC in Cannabis, and mescaline in Lopophora were around long before there were any humans to either feed on them or cultivate them. These substances were, however, present in the environment during the time that the human brain was evolving. If the adaptive advantage they confer upon plants is to discourage feeding by animals, this cannot explain why the human brain evolved to respond to these substances. Plants did not evolve to produce these substances in response to what mammals did with them; mammals evolved in such a way as to take advantage of these substances, already there in nature.

The real problem with this hypothesis is that it requires assuming that plant evolution is instructional. Selective recognition can explain why substances toxic to predators appear during evolution. It cannot explain why those substances continue to be produced once the advantages of their toxicity disappear. To argue that it is of adaptive advantage for plants to produce something that is of no value to them requires arguing that they are doing so because they are being caused to produce it. As Edelman argues, one of the most basic features of evolution is that it is selectional and not instructional -- the environment does not tell organisms wwhat to do, organisms recognize survival strategies on their own. Selection requires adaptive advantage -- if there is no advantage, then selection is not an explanation. Unless one can show there is an environmentally based causal and instructional chain -- which is denied by evolution theory -- thhen it cannot be argued that the relationship of these substances to brain receptors is under the control of plant evolution. Which leads inevitably to the third hypothesis:

III. It was of adaptive value to mammals, and particularly to humans, to evolve brains that were psychoactively sensitive to substances occurring in nature.

Now this is a very strange idea. More likely, one would think, that the central nervous system of humans should have evolved in such a way as to isolate it from the effects of chance encounters with psychoactive substances. But the opposite is clearly the case -- and not, apparently, by accident. It is interesting that, for most of these compounds, the naturally occurring isomers -- variants in chemical structure but not makeup -- are the ones that are psychoactive. From a thermodynamic standpoint, the brain could just have easily evolved receptors for structural variants that do not occur in nature, but it did not happen that way. Peter Stafford quotes Albert Hofmann in his Psychedelics Encyclopedia:

It is perhaps no coincidence, but of deeper biological significance that of the four possible isomers of LSD, only one, which corresponds to natural lysergic acid, causes pronounced mental effects. Evidently the mental functions of the human organism, like its bodily functions, are particularly sensitive to those substances that possess the same chemical configuration as naturally occurring compounds of the vegetable kingdom.

It appears, contrary to intuition, that selective recognition in the brain proceeded in such a way as to deliberately take advantage of substances found in nature that could fundamentally alter its operation. For this to occur, and for it to have continued through the evolution process, there must have been an adaptive advantage for those creatures whose central nervous systems evolved in such a way as to be influenced by the presence of psychoactive compounds found in their environment. In the case of many of these substances, the consequences of ingestion were neither lethal nor altogether unpleasant -- they were not consequences that would deter the animal from consuming the plant in the future. What was this adaptive advantage? What is it about the influences of these substances that enhance the survival of the animals consuming them? Why are those animals that consume these materials, and have nervous systems that are affected by them, better able to survive and flourish in their environments?

This point -- that the brain evolved in such a way as to incorporate mechanisms whose function could be altered by widely distributed, naturally occurring substances -- is a key point in understanding why human consciousness exists. If evolution had not proceeded in this way -- and there appear to be many points at which it could have proceeded differently, in terms of how both plants and animals evolved -- human beings would likely never have developed beyond being social animals. It is this ability of the brain to respond to natural substances with fundamental changes in the way it operates that makes human consciousness, and portal experience, possible and perhaps inevitable.

What are the effects of these substances? The works of Schultes and Hofmann indicate a clear and unambiguous answer: the effect of ingesting naturally occurring psychoactive substances is the induction of portal experience. Whether accompanied by an appropriate ritual or not, and whether taken on purpose or by accident, it is clear that the brain adapted itself by selective recognition to produce portal experiences when these substances are consumed. For this effect to have been maintained through eons of evolution, there must be an adaptive advantage it yields. The logical conclusion is that portal experiences themselves are advantageous to the survival of those creatures that have them. As we shall see, this ability to have portal experiences in response to psychoactive chemicals is the physiological basis for the existence of consciousness.

Bootstrapping Consciousness

How is it possible for a chemical substance to induce portal experience? That they do so is clearly seen in the Miracle experiment. Psilocybin, the substance used to induce portal experience in the Miracle, is a member of a group of pharmacological agents know as 5HT-antagonists. 5HT -- technically 5-hydroxytryptamine, also called serotonin -- is a neurotransmitter found in many parts of the brain. 5HT-antagonists are substances that interfere with the action of 5HT. The class of 5HT-antagonists includes the most potent psychoactive substances known, the lysergic acid derivatives, found not only in laboratory products such as LSD, but also found in ergot fungi and in the morning glory family Convolvulaceae. Other members of this class include psilocin, also from “magic mushrooms”, mescaline from peyote cacti, and other natural and laboratory compounds. These substances all exhibit cross-tolerance with other members of the class, though there are reasons to suspect the specific mechanism of action may be different.

In the brain, neural fibers arising from the dorsal and median raphe nuclei of the brainstem (nuclei are dense collections of nerve cell bodies) are widely dispersed throughout the brain. These fibers have direct contact with structures in the limbic system and the frontal cortex, and therefore, according to Edelman’s theory, are connected with both perceptual and value-criteria related structures as well as global mappings. The neurons in these fibers receive input from the spinal cord reticular formation, also called the reticular activating system or RAS, an interconnecting network of neurons that receives inputs from the sensory network throughout the body. One could say that the RAS neurons have their fingers on the pulse of the body’s activity. The neurons arising from the dorsal and median raphe nuclei also have reentrant connections -- fibers that branch back upon themselves, so that their axons synapse on their own dendrites. These neurons release 5HT. Biochemical studies show that 5HT acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter -- damage to these neurons, as well as the administration of specific 5HT-antagonists, tend to produce stimulation and wakefulness.

There is no clear and unambiguous account of what these neurons contribute to the process of consciousness, partly because the existence of consciousness as a dynamical system precludes any attempt to deduce the function of any specific part from the function of the system as a whole. However, one possibility suggested by the biochemical data is that the neurons of the brain have some preset, resting level of activity. If left on their own, they will discharge at some variable rate determined by the patterns of the chaotic, dynamical system arising out of their multiple reentrant connections. But the neurons of the brain are not left alone. The 5HT secreting neurons connected with the RAS regulate the general activity of discharge in the brain by slowing it down, to a degree determined in part by the sensory activity they monitor throughout the body.

This model of brain activity suggests an interesting disanalogy between the brain and a car. Driving along the freeway, one normally controls one’s speed by varying pressure on the accelerator. In the brain, the accelerator is biochemically welded to the floor, so to speak -- the maximum speed of operation is determined by the physiology of individual neurons. The speed at which the brain operates is controlled by varying pressure on the brake pedal -- a biochemical brake pedal consisting of 5HT: “Your body’s way of stepping on your mind,” as one author put it.

When lysergic acid derivatives are administered to animals, 5HT accumulates in brain tissue, showing that it is not being released by the neurons that produce it. Since LSD and its relatives are effective at extremely low dosages, it is thought that they may bind to the 5HT neurons at their reentrant connection sites, inhibiting them from releasing 5HT. Psilocybin, psilocin and mescaline, effective only at larger doses, are thought to block the activity of 5HT directly at the receptor sites. No matter what the mechanism, the effect of these agents is to take the biochemical foot off the brake pedal.

Opening the valve on a water faucet increases the energy until a point is reached that the causally ordered system of laminar flow breaks down, and chaotic turbulence ensues. By increasing the gain of the brain’s wiring, psychoactive substances increase the amount of energy in the system, just as opening the valve does with the water faucet. The resulting increased activity overwhelms the ability of causal systems to control the brain, and the spontaneous, self-organizing neural activity that is characteristic of chaotic systems appears. The data therefore suggest that the action of psychoactive 5HT-antagonists is to bootstrap a chaotic system in the brain. The result of this psychedelic bootstrapping process is, as we saw in the Miracle experiment, the production of portal experience. This is the same result obtained by primitive people using these substances, and by many who use them today -- as Schultes and Hofmann say, a state of “cosmic consciousness”, a perception of reality that is “strongly changed and expanded.”

Let us take stock of where we are now. On Edelman’s suggestion, we have considered the idea that consciousness is a dynamical system. This explanation seems to fit the facts: understanding consciousness as a dynamical system enables us to explain the self as a self-organized fractal pattern, and introspective distance as the break between the causally controlled neurological activity of the brain and the chaotic -- but not random -- activity of the conscious mind. How did that dynamical system arise out of the brain? The brain is complex enough to support such a system, but something had to happen to trigger the appearance of chaotic behavior itself. What was the trigger for consciousness? What could have bootstrapped the self out of the wiring of the brain?

The obvious candidate is psychedelic bootstrapping. In all of the cases of portal experience examined in the first chapter, it is clear that these experiences happen to individuals -- there must be “someone” there to have the experience. The only “someone” that can have individuating experiences like qualia and portal experiences is the self of introspective consciousness; the bicameral mind cannot have this kind of experience because it would mean cutting the bicameral mind off from social pattern. Without consciousness there can be no portal experience, from which we can infer that wherever there are portal experiences, there is also consciousness.

We have already seen that consciousness is of adaptive advantage: it is the means by which contingencies are survived. The rule-breaking capacity of consciousness, derived from its nature as a dynamical system, is what enables life to continue beyond the limits that a rule-following bicameral mind can survive. In proposing that psychedelic bootstrapping is responsible for the origin of human consciousness, we immediately see that the adaptive advantage of a brain that can respond to psychoactive substances is the enhanced survival capacity conferred by consciousness.

On reflection, there are no other obvious candidates for bootstrapping consciousness. Neither primary consciousness nor the bicameral mind could, by themselves, account for the ability to have portal experiences. What is needed for portal experience is a fundamentally new process, something that breaks with all of the existing information processing schemes in the brain, opening the doors to a totally new way of understanding the world -- and indeed, a new way of understanding what the world is. A dynamical system has, compared to the rule-following mechanisms of the bicameral mind, all of those qualities, and the conditions created by psychoactive substances are exactly the ones necessary for the emergence of consciousness as a dynamical system. It therefore is reasonable to conclude that psychedelic bootstrapping produces not only portal experiences, but in the evolutionary history of the human brain is also responsible for the appearance of consciousness itself.

This is why I have argued that portal experiences are basic -- they are what consciousness, at its most basic level, does. While consciousness certainly does other things -- like considering and formulating rule-breaking behavior -- its most fundamental nature is having portal experiences. Things that interfere with having portal experiences, such as chatter, leveling and privacy destruction, therefore also interfere with consciousness. This is the real evil of materialism and social-ontology: by coercing us into believing that there are no such things as portal experiences, they attack consciousness at its core. The same could be said of the “War on Drugs” -- in attempting to cut off humanity from its original source of consciousness, it is really a “War on Consciousness,” and an obvious subterfuge for recameralization.

Does this mean that in order to become conscious, everyone must use psychoactive drugs? At one time this was undoubtedly the case; at some point in the evolution of the human brain, psychoactives were required for consciousness. But not so today. The human brain has the capacity to become conscious spontaneously, without any precipitating event. This is because brain evolution is not static, and it did not stop with the advent of psychedelic bootstrapping. The adaptive advantages of consciousness led to a natural increase in the overall gain of the brain by selective recognition. Those brains that had greater gain, even without psychoactives, were more likely to develop consciousness on their own that those with lesser gain. The result: today, we have brains that have sufficient gain to become conscious spontaneously -- evolution has done over the eons what once required a mushroom, leaf or flower.

When consciousness appears spontaneously today it appears as if by magic, without any underlying causes, and interestingly, often in the context of magic. When the brain begins to go chaotic, it sees the same things the ancients saw: fantasies, dreams, imaginary playmates and so on are the childhood equivalents of portal experiences, and are telltale signs of emerging consciousness. Yet another sign of recameralization is the condemnation directed toward these childhood experiences. Cut off the developing mind from those experiences most basic to it, and you effectively weaken consciousness and reinforce bicamerality.

The human mind of today is a battleground between competing mental processes. Not only do consciousness and bicamerality compete for control, but instincts and a whole array of social and physical pressures tug at consciousness for attention. The role of psychoactives like psilocybin in modern culture is to strengthen the dynamical system of consciousness against these other factors. Once released from this cultural “noise”, modern consciousness can experience the same effects as did the ancients. Hence the bicameral mind’s opposition to “drug abuse.” We can produce portal experience on demand, just as the ancients did, and by doing so we break with the social patterns of the bicameral mind, and we are recalled to the origins of consciousness itself.

But what, exactly, is the relationship between portal experience and consciousness, and why are the two so closely intertwined? We have seen the adaptive advantages of consciousness, but why should it be so closely associated with portal experience, and not something else? I have said that while the chaotic systems discovered by Freeman in connection with perception might be the precursors of consciousness, there are some important differences. The most obvious difference is that perception is not consciousness, and that consciousness endures throughout life (and perhaps before and beyond), while perceptual chaos is short-lived. It also does not appear that perceptual chaos is connected with portal experiences. In the next chapter we will examine the relationship between consciousness and portal experience, and we shall find that in order for us to be who and what we are, we must be something very different from what this culture has taught us to be.

Chapter 4: Leaping into the Unknown

Establishing the activity in the brain associated with consciousness as a dynamical system allows us to bypass the mind-body causation problem, because we have, at long last in the tedious and mostly vacuous history of modern metaphysics, gotten rid of causation. We no longer have to ask questions like, “How does the brain do such-and-such?” because it isn’t the brain that does it. What consciousness does can be understood in terms of dynamical systems properties, and not the causal rules of anatomy or computer programming. We can dispose of the restrictions and closed-mindedness of materialist and social-ontological theories, and open the gateway to a whole realm of experience that modern science-worship has kept closed for way too long.

But what is it we are opening the gateways -- or portals -- to? When we step through the portal, we enter an entirely new realm of existence, once known to our ancestors, but forgotten in the mechanized, urbanized world of technology and recameralization. This is the world we visited in Chapter One, a realm where scientific explanations are not possible because the rules of causation that are used to construct scientific explanations do not apply. Understanding all the conditions will not tell us what happens next, nor can we formulate any clear idea of what “next” means, because time and space have no meaning here. It is a strange world we find, or so it will seem at first, but what is strangest of all is that it is our “scientific” understanding and theorizing that brought us here.

One of the most important questions we must answer is why the dynamical system of consciousness is different from other dynamical systems in the brain, such as those associated with perception. The most obvious difference between consciousness and perceptual chaos is that consciousness in an on-going process. Perceptual systems come and go, while the self is something that endures and unifies all conscious experience so that the memories, perceptions, thoughts and so on all pertain to one and the same person. Psychedelic bootstrapping explains how consciousness gets started, but it does not explain what keeps it going; it establishes the conditions necessary for consciousness, but bootstrapping alone won’t tell us what happens next.

In nature, dynamical systems often occur when processes or physical systems that are very different from each other come together. Pour water and oil into a glass, for example, and the layer that separates the two is a dynamical system. The intersection theory tells us that during a portal experience, two forms of existence very different from one another -- the physical brain and the spiritual Unknown -- come together. Could it be that this meeting point is also a dynamical system, and if so, could it have something to do with consciousness, and with what keeps consciousness and the self going throughout life? Even stranger, since portal experiences are basic to consciousness, might it be that this meeting point just is the greatness we have been searching for?

The Unconscious Mind

For our purposes so far, consciousness has been characterized in rather simple terms -- as self and introspective distance. It is not unusual to reduce consciousness -- or any other phenomenon -- to its most basic level in order to understand how it functions and how it comes into being. But consciousness, as a part of human life, is much more complicated. Consciousness is but one of many mental processes in the psyche -- the totality of the individual’s mental processes and contents. In addition to consciousness, the psyche contains unconscious processes of which consciousness is not directly aware, perceptual and motor activities, physiological processes and so on. The mental environment is complex, and to fully understand consciousness and portal experience, it will be necessary to fill out the somewhat skeletal theory of consciousness presented so far by describing how consciousness relates to the rest of the psyche.

The most promising theoretical framework in which to understand the psyche is found in the work of psychologist Carl Jung. Jung’s theories directly address the topics of mythology and participation mystique, and their relationship to consciousness and the unconscious mind. While Jung does not directly address the idea of dynamical systems -- the role of dynamical systems in nature was not well understood during his lifetime -- nonetheless his work strongly suggests that dynamical systems are at work in the psyche. Jung’s work also points toward the underlying relationships between consciousness and portal experience.

At one time Jung was a student of Sigmund Freud, but he was not entirely satisfied with Freud’s theories. Freud’s work, in general, adheres to the materialist and social-ontological assumptions -- his work assumes that the motivating factors behind behavior are biological and social in nature. Freud’s theory holds that the psyche consists of three parts, the id, ego, and superego.

The id is the “lowest” and most primitive realm of the psyche. It is for the most part unconscious -- outside the realm of awareness and inaccessible to introspection. The id is made up of instincts -- motivating forces of biological origin that predispose persons to behave in ways that both preserve and reproduce, as well as ways that are violent and destructive. These forces are characterized as Eros, the motivation to reproduce and perpetuate, and Thanatos, the motivation to kill and destroy. According to Freud, much of what underlies the thought and action of the individual is to be found in the competition of these two forces, originating in the biology of the human body, for expression through behavior. The id might be thought of, in anatomical terms, as the old brain of Edelman’s theory, and its function is primarily the preservation of the physical body. It must be kept in mind, however, that instincts can be much more complex than neural discharge, and can involve parts of the new brain as well.

In contrast to the id, the superego represents the effects of conditioning in a social environment -- to Freud, the “highest” and most recently developed part of the psyche. The superego consists primarily of restraints that a person must exercise to survive in a social setting. It is a product of the social environment, and is the source of morality, rules, expectations, and so forth.

The superego can be thought of as Freud’s equivalent of Jaynes’ bicameral mind. It is the part of the psyche where the conditions necessary to perpetuate civilization, as opposed to the individual, reside, and from which those factors arise that compete with the id for control of behavior. Freud assumed, as have many theorists, that social behavior is a desirable thing -- that complex social behavior is what distinguishes human beings from other animals -- and that the primary drives that make people do what they do originate within the physical body.

The ego is the focal point of consciousness and personality. It is the self of Freud’s theory -- the center of consciousness -- which defines the actual personality and behavior of the individual. It is sometimes characterized as the battle-ground between the id’s “I want...” and the superego’s “I ought...”. It is the point of view from which the world is perceived, and from which behavior originates. As a result of competition between the id and superego, the ego is filled with complex behavior strategies designed to gratify biological instincts in socially acceptable ways.

Freud was primarily interested in the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness, and this theory of the ego explains certain kinds of neuroses and psychoses as ruptures in the ego -- a tearing apart of the self -- caused by competition between id drives and superego restraints. Basic to Freud’s notion of mental illness is the principle of repression -- that certain conscious ideas, experiences, and memories are pushed out of consciousness into the unconscious. Repression occurs when desires arising out of the id cannot be met within the context of restraints imposed by the superego. The “unacceptable” desires do not disappear, but they vanish from consciousness. These repressed desires may reappear pathologically as destructive behavior and mental illness, or they may be sublimated, resurfacing through creative and artistic activities. They may also reappear symbolically in dreams, the analysis of which can reveal the conflicts that lie at the bottom of otherwise inexplicable behaviors and neuroses.

The concept of the unconscious mind in Freud’s work is that of a personal unconscious. What lies in the unconscious mind is a result of mental contents repressed by the individual -- conflicts that exist in the individual, drives, motivations and so forth. While the underlying biology of all individuals may be the same, the way in which that biology is expressed is different for each person, being a product of circumstances, social situation, and other factors. Thus the unconscious mind, while it contains contents that are similar to those of consciousness, has different specific contents in each individual.

The ego cannot be directly aware of biological instincts or social patterns -- both the id and superego are unconscious. We feel their effects as desires and tensions -- I am hungry, but I should not steal food from others. Most of the time, the ego is able to satisfy the id and superego with behaviors that are acceptable to both -- I buy an apple. But when repressed biological and social drives and conflicts become strong enough, they appear in consciousness symbolically through dreams, visions, voices, and so on. Repression prevents us from understanding these forces directly, so they sneak in under radar, so to speak.

The ego is a somewhat fragile structure in the psyche. Since the ego exists because of competition between biological and social forces, it is constantly under attack, and is vulnerable to forces from both the id and superego. Freud’s psychoanalytical theory refers to the “collapse of the ego” -- the dissolution of the self -- as a condition caused by underlying conflicts, resulting in psychoses such as schizophrenia. When the ego is unable to resolve these conflicts, either because they have been repressed or because it cannot devise an appropriate strategy, the self can disintegrate, destroying the personality of the individual, leaving only a mass of instincts, drives, and “voices” not unlike those of the bicameral mind. The purpose of psychoanalysis is to interpret these symbolic eruptions as conflicts within the unconscious, and to resolve those conflicts before they threaten the structure of the ego and express themselves destructively.

The ego -- “consciousness” in this theory -- has no independent existence of its own. Freud’s theory could be called a “causal” conception of consciousness -- in contrast to the dynamical view proposed in the last chapter -- because consciousness is “caused” by biological drives, social conditions, and conflicts between the two. Consciousness exists only so long as man is a social animal -- a biological organism whose behavior is constrained by the social environment. Freud’s theory remains popular today because it embraces both of the “modern” assumptions: materialism by way of the biologically driven id, and social-ontology in the socially conforming superego.

Jung, too, was interested in the causes and treatment of mental illness, but his work in the subject drove his investigations deep into the nature of consciousness itself. According to Jung, the ego is much more than just a battle-ground between unconscious mental processes: it is “a complex of representations which constitutes the centrum of my field of consciousness and appears to possess a very high degree of continuity and identity.” That the ego is an on-going process in its own right, possessing a sense of its own identity that continues through time suggests the self of introspective consciousness. Furthermore, Jung says the ego is “the subject of consciousness,” meaning it is the mental process where conscious awareness takes place -- it is “who” the events of consciousness happen “to”.

Jung’s idea of the ego is very much like the self of introspective consciousness, but they are not quite the same thing. As mentioned in Chapter One, some spiritual traditions teach that there is a “shell self”, a part of ourselves of which we are aware and through which we interact with others, and a “hidden self” of which we are not directly aware. The self is a bit more complicated than just the way we see ourselves; there is a part of our own makeup of which we are not consciously aware. Jung embraces this view, arguing that the self can interact with unconscious as well as conscious processes. The self is what individuals are, in contrast to the ego, which is who individuals think they are.

The unconscious or “hidden” self not only reflects ourselves as we “really” are, unaffected by social games and interactions, but also is able to interact with other unconscious processes. A prime example of such an unconscious process is the “part of everyone’s brain tuned into this cosmos” where time has no relevance, as mentioned by Chappell. Because this part of the self is unconscious, it often appears in dreams or fantasies as an idealization of the person, and may carry with it information from other unconscious processes. Some kinds of divination work by connecting the unconscious and conscious parts of the self together, or as we might say today, by “expanding consciousness” to include more than the social facade-self of the ego.

Consciousness, according to Jung, is the awareness of mental processes by the ego. This is really the same thing as the introspective consciousness we have been discussing all along: the awareness of things going on by a self that is separated from the world by introspective distance. The unconscious part of the self is responsible for introspective distance: it prevents the ego from being swallowed up by the world. Because the unconscious part of the self cannot interact directly with conscious processes, the self can not collapse into perception or behavior. This keeps the ego going as a unique and individual process that observes the world, rather than becoming a part of the world as does the bicameral mind. Consciousness is thus a “complex of representations” -- a vast assortment of perceptions, thoughts, memories, feelings, impressions, and other mental contents and processes -- held together by the ego which experiences them as a single enduring subject or self, with a sense of its own identity.

Unconscious psychic processes are those mental events of which the ego is not aware, or as Jung says, do not represent themselves to the continuing subject of awareness. In Jung’s terminology, for anything to affect the mind, there must be a “representation” -- a mental counterpart to an event in the world such as a perception or memory -- and a “subject” to whom the event is “represented”, meaning some sort of process that is affected by the representation. In the case of a conscious process such as seeing an apple, the visual image of the apple is “represented” to the ego, meaning that you notice the apple is there.

These unconscious processes do not, at least directly, affect the ego, and therefore “you” do not know they exist. Instead of these processes affecting the ego, they are “represented” to unconscious “subjects” that have no underlying unification or identity. The unconscious mind is fragmentary, composed of countless autonomous subjects and representations that share no underlying unity and do not interconnect with one another, or with the ego. Unconscious “awareness” exists as many independent mental processes that do not connect with one another, and that have no sense of “me” to which they all relate. Bizarre as it may seem, this means that there are things the mind does -- things are understood, decisions are made, and actions are taken -- without our awareness and without any connection to one another.

There are two general categories of unconscious processes. The first, like those in Freud’s personal unconscious, are representations similar to those of consciousness. They are things of which consciousness can be aware, but for one reason or another consciousness just is not aware of them. Jung’s list of these processes includes, “perception, apperception, memory, imagination, will, affectivity, feeling, reflection, judgment, etc.” This would include situations such as walking past an apple tree without noticing it. You could have noticed the tree, but as Jung says, the representation lacks sufficient psychic energy for it to affect the ego. More will be said about psychic energy later, but for now it can be thought of as importance or focus -- if you were hungry, you would have noticed the tree. The unconscious subjects in these processes vanish when the representation itself disappears, or when the process attains sufficient psychic energy to become conscious: as I get hungry, I remember the tree.

We could think of these unconscious subjects as being the psychological equivalents of Freeman’s perceptual chaotic systems. Seeing an apple results in the appearance of a dynamical system that functions as the “subject” for the perceptual image or “representation” of the apple. Because these systems occur in connection with global mappings and reentrant signaling, other aspects of the psyche are brought to bear -- signals from the old brain that deal with hunger, signals from memory, and so on. All of these “representations” combine in the “subject”, and if the dynamical system accumulates enough energy, consciousness becomes aware of it. Otherwise the signals die out, the dynamical system collapses, and the apple never gets noticed.

As well as containing processes that can, given enough psychic energy, become conscious, the unconscious also contains processes that are not representable to the ego at all. Consciousness normally processes information that is very much like the senses -- vision, touch, hearing and so on. Representations that are different from this kind of information simply can not become conscious, no matter what their psychic energy. These representations, and their associated unconscious subjects, lie outside the range of what the ego can comprehend; like the X-rays and infrared waves the eye cannot see, the ego never becomes directly aware of these unconscious processes.

Jung calls these irrepresentable unconscious contents psychoid processes. Psychoid processes are mental contents that have nothing to do with consciousness, do not have their origins in forgotten or repressed experiences, and cannot become conscious because they are so different from consciousness that it cannot comprehend them. These unconscious contents, falling outside the realm of ordinary awareness, appear “mysterious” to consciousness. When they attain sufficient psychic energy to otherwise become conscious, the ego may become aware there is “something” there, but because the ego cannot decipher the meaning, the psychoid process cannot discharge its energy through consciousness.

Should such a process appear in the unconscious, it can continue to amass psychic energy until it becomes sufficiently powerful to challenge consciousness for control of the psyche. In spite of its sophistication, ego-consciousness is a relatively weak mental process, and can be easily dissociated or broken apart by runaway unconscious processes. Under the right circumstances, this is how the “undifferentiated unity” with the Unknown occurs during a mystical experience: the ego is dissociated, at least temporarily, and the mind of the mystic is joined with the Unknown. Under less favorable circumstances, some other unconscious process such as a Thanatos or Eros process from the id seizes control of the psyche, and we have the classical case of “demonic possession”. The victim’s personality -- the self -- disappears as the ego is shattered by an unconscious process, and the person appears to have been “taken over” by a malevolent entity, bent upon destruction or other evil deed. This is in a very real sense true, for the “person” as a conscious being no longer exists under these conditions. Jung argues that many primitive rites of exorcism really do the same thing as modern psychotherapy -- attempt to unseat the unconscious process and restore the structure of the ego and its control over the psyche.

Psychoid processes are not always destructive. A psychoid process was, for example, the source of the chemist’s vision mentioned in Chapter Two. The chemist’s unconscious mind had been working on the problem of benzene for a long time; when it arrived at the solution to the problem, however, it was unable to express that solution directly to consciousness. The intellectual climate of the time had no conception of atoms forming rings, so consciousness could not directly understand the solution. Instead, the solution was expressed in a roundabout way, via the image of a snake seizing its own tail.

This is how psychoid processes that have attained sufficient energy for conscious awareness are expressed -- via symbols. Jung writes:

Yet because there is. . . sufficient energy to make it potentially conscious, the secondary subject [of unconscious representations] does in fact have an effect upon ego consciousness -- indirectly, or as we say, ‘symbolically’.

A symbol is an unconscious representation in disguised form, a form that consciousness can recognize, and yet still retains its original meaning and energy. Once unconscious representations attain enough psychic energy to make them conscious, they enter into consciousness in a modified form that consciousness can recognize via symbols. Just as in Freud’s theory, symbols are the way unconscious representations sneak into consciousness under radar. But their source, according to Jung, may be very different than what Freud believed.

Of symbols, Jung writes:

[A symbol is an] expression as the best possible formulation of a relatively unknown factor which cannot conceivably be more clearly or characteristically represented . . . Insofar as a symbol is a living thing, it is the expression of a thing not to be characterized in any other or better way. The symbol is only alive insofar as it is pregnant with meaning . . . every psychological phenomenon is a symbol when we are willing to assume that it purports or signifies something different and still greater, something therefore which is withheld from present knowledge.

Symbols are distinguished from signs, which stand for the things they represent. An example of a sign is paper currency -- it “stands in” for a certain amount of gold or silver. A symbol does not stand for the thing it represents as an instance of it; it is “the best possible formulation” of something that cannot be represented to consciousness directly. Symbols are “alive” in the sense that they represent an on-going unconscious mental process. They are messengers that tell consciousness in a round-about way what is going on in the unconscious.

Dreams, according to Jung, are symbolic representations of unconscious contents. The images and events of dreams do not communicate their meaning directly, but transmit their information to consciousness in a form that consciousness can process, though not always completely understand. Fantasies, daydreams, and even creative impulses are also the results of unconscious processes that have attained sufficient energy to become conscious, but cannot be expressed to consciousness directly. Often dreams and fantasies display patterns and images in the form of a mandala, a symbolic representation of the relationships between such processes commonly seen in mythology, and in the drawings of patients undergoing psychoanalysis.

Notice how this is different from Freud’s theory. Freud thought that everything in the unconscious is ultimately representable to consciousness; it is because of repression that consciousness does not deal with unconscious contents. Understanding symbols means coming to grips with the various conflicts and drives that produce them, dissipating their psychic energy through conscious reflection and behavior. Jung adds to this the idea that there are representations that consciousness ultimately cannot understand, whether it wants to or not. When these representations attain sufficient energy, they appear symbolically. Simply interpreting the symbol might not, according to Jung’s theory, be enough to dissipate the representation’s energy if it is something consciousness cannot directly understand.

We have already seen this “incomprehensibility” of mental contents in the form of the Unknown side of intersection. It was argued in Chapter One that because of this inability of consciousness to understand the Unknown directly, mystics explain their visions metaphorically. While we most often associate the word symbol with visual images, symbols can take many forms, and metaphors are symbols in language. Metaphors use shades of meaning attached to things with which we are familiar, to stimulate the imagination to understand things that are unknown. The use of metaphors helps to explain the experience of the Unknown, bit it also frustrates the problem -- the metaphor never really duplicates or explains the Unknown, so the psychic energy of the vision is not dissipated.

The idea of symbolic representation explains why the Unknown often appears by constellation through a familiar image or experience. The Unknown gets into consciousness “under radar” through an ordinary experience, and familiar objects begin to take on new meanings as the building psychic energy of the Unknown makes its presence felt in consciousness. The Unknown transforms familiar objects into powerful symbols -- the stars become the porch lamps of the gods -- as the intersection of Unknown and consciousness opens the portals to worlds previously unseen and unimagined.

Because psychoid processes can transmit information into consciousness that it cannot directly comprehend, they often serve as the portals through which fundamentally new ideas emerge. In the writings of medieval alchemists Jung discovered references to “luminosities” and “gleaming islands” within the soul, which he understood to be metaphorical for these autonomous psychoid processes in the unconscious. When these unconscious processes become conscious symbolically, they characteristically appear autonomous, refractory to logical analysis or persuasion, and have an all-or-nothing quality. They are so different from consciousness that they may be both frightening and fascinating at the same time. These are exactly the qualities noted in Chapter One that pertain to portal experiences. They are also the qualities that pertain to the bicameral mind, and to mental illnesses whose origins lie in unconscious processes. The means by which the Unknown enters into consciousness is not very different from the ways in which social conformity and mental illnesses exert their effects. What makes the difference is the source of the psychoid process, and the source of the psychic energy that animates it.

Where does this “psychic energy” come from? Freud thought that psychic energy was libido: primarily sublimation of sexual drives from the id. Biological impulses whose direct expression is socially unacceptable are repressed, but the ego can tap their energy for other activities. In this way, the energy that would normally go into preserving and reproducing individuals is transformed into activities that preserve and protect the culture. The ego -- and therefore consciousness -- thus exists and survives because of conflicts between individual biology and social order.

Jung does not share this view. While psychic energy derives from conflicts in the psyche, those conflicts need not arise out of social-biological interactions. A conflict or opposition of any sort in the psyche can generate psychic energy; it gives rise to a representation-subject complex that grows and accumulates energy until it is discharged. The opposition of elements within the psyche stimulates interest in those elements -- the more serious the conflict, the more psychic energy the processes will develop.

Jung views the psyche as a continuum, which he explains with the metaphor of visible light: there exists an invisible infrared, a visible spectrum, and an invisible ultraviolet. The visible spectrum corresponds to the ego and consciousness -- those mental processes of which one is aware, and of which one is aware of as being one’s “own”. This includes most ordinary experiences and representable unconscious processes that have attained sufficient psychic energy to attract the ego’s attention.

The psychic “infrared”, invisible to awareness, is where mind meets body. These are instincts -- biological processes that take on a mentally representable character, some becoming conscious as they attain greater energy. Instincts are unconscious processes, and on their own have a relatively low level of psychic energy -- we are never really aware of the neural discharges in the old brain from which instincts arise. If left undischarged, instincts can amass sufficient psychic energy to appear in consciousness symbolically. The emotion of “love”, for example, can be thought of as the symbolic expression of an underlying instinct.

If the body is the “infrared”, then what corresponds to the “ultraviolet”? According to Jung, the psychic “ultraviolet” is the realm of the soul or superconscious mind. This part of the psyche is where individual mind meets undifferentiated spirit or Unknown, whose contents have attained too much psychic energy to be understood by consciousness. Just as we cannot see X-rays because they are too energetic for the receptors in our eyes, the conscious mind cannot directly understand the contents of the superconscious mind because they have too much psychic energy. The difference between the “infrared” and “ultraviolet” in Jung’s theory is a difference in psychic energy and representability, and not one of better and worse or “higher” and “lower” as in Freud’s theory.

It is this postulate that the psyche is at least in part composed of an immaterial form of existence that has brought Jung’s work under attack from so many “modern” theorists. Of course it directly violates the principle of materialism, and snatching the superego away from society and turning it over to the gods as superconsciousness insults social-ontology for good measure. For this reason many label Jung’s work as “unscientific”, and one philosophy professor exclaimed that Jung’s work is “Not philosophy!” during the very quarter his department offered a class on Freud.

Why this irrational bias against Jung? It is because his work elevates humanity above the level of social animal, because it draws us upward from biology and society, and because it teaches us to imagine instead of to conform, that it is so hated and feared by modern “scholars”. Jung was not unscientific; he was not materialistic, and that means not fitting into the pattern of accepted academic thought. Believing Jung means rejecting materialism and social-ontology, and the intellectual and political dynasties that rest upon them. It means rejecting, above all else, the bicameral mind and the methods employed in modern culture to recameralize the mind and destroy individual consciousness.

In denying the credibility of Jung’s theory, Marilyn Nagy states that:

It may be that neither the terms which have traditionally been used in Western philosophical/theological thought nor the analogous terms which Jung used in his psychology will survive encounter with the facts that life in the modern world entails.

I think that is backwards. If contingency plays the role in evolution that Gould and others suggest, it is unlikely that the “modern world” will survive in the absence of something beyond the despair of tedium and conformity into which the so-called “facts” of the modern world have plunged the human race. If we want a better world, or at least one that is different from technological control and enslavement, rampant hate-violence and depression, we are going to have to look beyond the closed-mindedness and fanatical irreligious doctrines that got us here in the first place.

What is so utterly amazing to me is that it has been known, since the work of Mendel over a century ago, that human genetics is neither causal nor “pure chance”. It is probabilistic, and therefore subject to the same probability rules that give rise to strangeness, uncertainty and incompleteness. Incompleteness means that no physical description of the human body will ever tell us who we are, and to find ourselves, we must of necessity look beyond biology and biologically-driven social conditions. Despite this, the “modern” mind clings to its dogma, that, quoting Nagy again, “blind chance governs all life processes.”

But if it is the truth we seek, then we have no choice. As we will shortly see, the superconscious mind, and its connection with the Unknown of mystical experiences, is the only logical explanation for the very things we set out to understand. A scientific theory -- or a philosophical one, for that matter -- is only as good as it is useful in explaining what it purports to explain. While materialists must approach the subject of portal experience immersed in fear-phantasms and denial, Jung’s work paves the way for us to understand it logically, and to make useful predictions and draw meaningful conclusions. That is as “scientific” as any theory can hope to be.

Just as dynamical systems theory enabled us to break the mind-body causation deadlock, Jung’s theory of the superconscious mind takes the first step toward breaking through the mind-Unknown barrier. As we will shortly see, the idea of the superconscious mind is derived from observations that cannot be logically explained in any other way. It is ultimately the meeting between the body, via instincts, and Unknown appearing through superconsciousness that generates the psychic energy that makes the dynamical system of consciousness different from all other such systems. As long as there is a body, and as long as there is an Unknown, there exists the possibility of a dynamical system sustained by the meeting of the two, and that system is the ego or consciousness of Jung’s theory.

We experience psychic energy of an intensity appropriate to conscious awareness as will. Jung writes:

. . . the will influences the function. It does this by virtue of the fact that it is itself a form of energy and has the power to overcome another form [instinct] . . . ‘Will’ implies a certain amount of energy freely disposable by the psyche.

The psychic energy of will is the result of conflict within the psyche. While some psychic energy can come directly from unconscious processes, Jung’s argument is that free will primarily comes from the opposition within the psyche of body and spirit. This opposition -- ultimately an intersection -- is what generates the energy that drives psychic processes, and keeps the ego together. While other dynamical systems in the brain come and go, consciousness endures because its energy is derived from opposing forms of existence that can never collapse into one another. Will is psychic energy available to the ego -- it is the energy consciousness uses to control the psyche. Writes Jung:

The psyche is made up of processes whose energy springs from the equilibration of energy from all kinds of opposites. . . So regarded, psychic processes seem to be balances of energy flowing between spirit and instinct.

Free will is an integral part of the psyche: “... at the upper limit of the psyche where the function breaks free from its original goal, the instincts lose their influence as movers of the will.” According to Jung, while instincts may play a part in providing psychic energy to the ego, they do not control consciousness, nor do they control what it thinks about nor how it behaves. Consciousness “breaks free” from the body by virtue of the psychic energy released when the spiritual superconscious encounters biological instinct. This says, in psychological terms, the same thing that chaos theory says in physical terms -- the initial conditions cannot control what happens next, because they dynamical system of consciousness is not “caused” to behave in specific ways by the underlying biology of the brain.

Now this whole issue of free will and uncaused behavior raises another bogey in modern philosophy. Materialists have long advocated the theory of determinism, which states that everything that happens is caused by something else to happen in the way it does. Determinism is a way of attacking the idea of individual consciousness by robbing consciousness of its ability to think and act from its own free will, and subjecting it to the same rules that govern the operation of machines. Determinism is pathetically false, as we have already seen. The very essence of chaotic systems is that they do not follow causal rules, and that their behavior is not “caused” by the conditions out of which they emerge. Jung’s idea of free will is really just an expression of what we have already discovered -- that consciousness is not bound to follow rules because it is a self-organizing dynamical system.

Jung’s idea of psychic energy is intended to explain how various processes within the psyche interact, and how ego-consciousness is able to exist as a continuing process that exerts control over other mental processes. The ego does not simply come and go as conflicts arise and resolve; the individual identity of persons does not seem to derive from biological and social conflicts, and exist only in relation to these factors. For persons to exist as life-long entities, there must be a life-long opposition in the psyche that sustains them. For reasons we shall see shortly, Jung was led to believe that this opposition has its origins in forces that cannot be explained on the basis of biological or physical matter. Thus we see that Jung’s theory of the psyche incorporates the basic elements of intersection on its own -- consciousness becomes a meeting place of biological instinct and spiritual Unknown. If consciousness is really this kind of intersection -- the same kind of intersection found in portal experiences -- then the question of how portal experiences become conscious may really boil down to how consciousness itself comes into being.

It is not hard to imagine how instincts become conscious. Neural discharges within the brain cannot causally interact with the dynamical system of consciousness, so as their associated unconscious processes assimilate psychic energy, consciousness becomes aware of them symbolically. But what of the superconscious mind? How does the psychic “ultraviolet” enter into consciousness, and what role does it play there?

Archetypes and Consciousness

How did Jung come to believe that a part of the human psyche has its origins outside the brain, and indeed outside the universe of space-time altogether? Freud believed that the unconscious consists of repressed individual experiences, and that unconscious processes threatening the ego can be discharged by understanding how their symbolic appearances in consciousness relate to the individual’s own experiences. Jung suggests, however, that there also exist psychoid processes in the unconscious that do not have their origins in the body or in consciousness. These psychoid processes are so different from consciousness that they cannot be understood directly, and if this is so, then how do they get into the psyche in the first place? If they don’t come from the brain, and they don’t come to us through conscious experience, then where do they come from? Jung came to think that they were inherited, but he does not mean by this anything connected with genetics.

In his work as a psychoanalyst, Jung noted a striking similarity between the dreams and fantasies described by his patients, and the recurring images or motifs found in mythology. From his studies in mythology and comparative religion Jung realized that these patterns and images are universal among all of mankind, revealing themselves in themes and symbols in the mythologies and folklore of peoples the world over, and throughout all of human history. Like the snake swallowing its tail in the chemist’s vision, these universal patterns seem to be a common denominator in human existence. These symbols and images could not arise, therefore, within individual experience or biology, but must arise in some common substrate from which all individual human psyches arise. This substrate cannot be culture or society, because it produces identical imagery and symbology in people that have no cultural or social connection with each other, and as we saw in Chapter Two, Edelman’s theory of topobiology rules out a biological source for these psychic contents.

Jung called this universal psychic substrate the collective unconscious. It is a repertoire of psychoid processes from which the symbols, themes and imagery of mythology arise, and is universally shared by all of humanity, wherever or whenever human beings exist. This is in sharp contrast to Freud’s conception of the personal unconscious, for the presence of these images in the collective unconscious means that there are unconscious processes that originate outside of individual biology and experience.

In describing the collective unconscious with words like “wherever” and “whenever”, the same metaphors are being invoked as in using words like “eternal” and “infinite”. There are the same terms used by mystics to describe the Unknown of intersection, whether understood as God, Goddess, or some less personal form of spiritual existence. The only way the collective unconscious can be available to everyone, everywhen, is for it to be something that exists outside the limitations of space and time. As Jung realized, this is as much as saying that the superconscious mind, through which images from the collective unconscious emerge, has its roots in the world of spirit.

Mystics and visionaries write of hidden sources of wisdom within the mind, of “Some part of everyone’s brain is tuned into this cosmos, although we are not consciously aware of it,” while the medieval alchemists spoke of “luminosities” or “gleaming islands within the soul.” Jung understood these terms as symbolic descriptions for the autonomous psychoid processes originating within the collective unconscious, which he called archetypes. Archetypes are psychoid processes from the superconscious mind that appear symbolically in consciousness as the result of conflicts and “balances of energy flowing between spirit and instinct.”

While instincts are much like reflex behaviors -- knee-jerks within the mind -- archetypes are more often patterns of understanding or interpreting, though they can also assume powerful controlling positions in the psyche. They are responses from the superconscious mind, often to stimuli not directly perceived by consciousness, that influence and organize thoughts and experiences. Under normal circumstances, archetypes are too energetic for consciousness to be aware of them, like the X-rays the eye cannot see. They are “activated”, which is to say their energy affects consciousness, when other contents in the psyche come into conflict with them. Just as we can see X-rays only when they affect film, so archetypes become “visible” when conflicts within the psyche alter their energies so that consciousness sees them symbolically.

Of the archetypes, Jung writes:

The concept of the archetype. . . is derived from the repeated observation that, for instance, the myths and fairy tales of world literature contain definite motifs which crop up everywhere. We meet these same motifs in the fantasies, dreams, deleria, and delusions of individuals living today. These typical images and associations are what I call archetypal ideas. The more vivid they are, the more they will be colored by strong feeling-tones. . . they impress, influence, and fascinate us. They have their origin in the archetype, which in itself is an irrepresentable unconscious, pre-existing form that seems to be a part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time. Because of its instinctual nature, the archetype underlies the feeling-toned complexes, and shares their autonomy.

Archetypes are psychoid processes that cannot appear in consciousness directly, but instead reveal themselves through symbolic archetypal images. These images, bursting with psychic energy from superconsciousness, carry with them powerful emotional and psychological overtones. Evidence for the existence of archetypes comes from the presence of similar, and often identical, images in dreams, fantasies (both childhood and adult), and mythology. To discover archetypal images in consciousness, Jung developed the psychoanalytic technique of active imagination. When an archetype becomes activated, signs of an ego under attack, such as compulsive behavior, neurosis, and delusions often appear. These are indicators that some autonomous process is trying to gain control of the psyche. The active imagination technique encourages the patient to pursue fantasies and dreams, describing what is seen and felt so the analyst may determine from the images described what sort of psychoid process has become activated. Archetypes have the capacity to disrupt the ego because of their psychic energy, just like other unresolved unconscious conflicts. The difference is that archetypes have their origins in the collective unconscious, and therefore reveal themselves through a common imagery. Archetypes do not arise from the biology of the body, and when they appear, they are messengers that something much more serious is taking shape.

What exactly are archetypes? Jung thought there might be countless numbers of them, the more common ones being manifested in recurring mythological themes. The hero’s journey, for example, is a motif or pattern present in many mythologies, and is also an archetype. The mythological hero, to attain some ultimate good, must first subdue an evil, often in the form of an animal or dragon. The archetype behind that image is the archetype of the self, which because it is only partly conscious, must be represented to consciousness symbolically. The image is one of the self struggling for its existence against the onslaught of the fragmentary, instinct-like unconsciousness out of which it arose. The dragon represents the elemental, primitive, instinctual nature of the psyche -- Freud’s id -- and the hero must, before becoming a “whole” person, overcome the tendency of the psyche to lose its unity. What this particular motif suggests is that archetypal forces may be important in holding the psyche together, and particularly in sustaining consciousness.

The contents of dreams, fairy tales, and fantasies have their origins in archetypes. Themes of birth, death and rebirth, images of wizards and wise men, quests for Grails and damsels in distress: all of these are images of forms of apprehension within the unconscious, revealing a common pattern of understanding the mind and the world. When activated, they are often messengers to consciousness of underlying conflicts, and indicators that conflict-resolving action needs to be taken.

Archetypes are not always signs of impending mental illness; they can also be messengers to a consciousness reaching out to the world of spirit. When, either through the use of psychoactive substances or other techniques, the energy level of consciousness itself is altered, archetypes can appear spontaneously without underlying psychological conflict. Archetypes figure prominently in the rituals of primitive humanity. Such rituals employ symbols, both visually, and in terms of performance by the participants, that correspond to archetypal images. These rituals can provide a means for releasing psychic energy, originating in some conflict by which archetypes become activated, and thus helping to prevent disintegration of the ego. But they can also invoke participation mystique, and serve as means by which spirit constellates itself in consciousness. From feelings of participation in nature to mystical experiences and visions of other times and places, archetypes are the primary means by which consciousness becomes aware of the world of the Unknown -- they are constellations of spirit in through familiar images and patterns, and gateways to other worlds and forms of existence.

The appearance of archetypal images is the first point at which primitive humanity, and developing individual consciousness in the present day, comes face to face with the Unknown. Jung writes:

. . . archetypes have, when they appear, a distinctly numinous character which can only be described as “spiritual” . . . It not infrequently happens that the archetype appears in the form of a spirit in dreams or fantasy products, or even comports itself like a ghost. There is a mystical aura about its numinosity, and it has a corresponding effect upon the emotions. It mobilizes philosophical and religious convictions in the very people who deemed themselves miles above any such fits of weakness. Often it drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws its subject under its spell, from which despite the most desperate resistance he is unable, and finally no longer willing, to break free, because the experience brings with it a depth and fullness of meaning that was unthinkable before.

In the last chapter, we reached a point in our argument that we had to face the logic -- no matter how strange it seems -- that the only way for introspective consciousness to emerge from the brain is because of a dynamical system that comes into existence through psychedelic bootstrapping. It also appears that when that system comes into existence, the first thing it does is to have a portal experience, and for this reason portal experiences are considered basic to consciousness. What was not clear from this argument is why consciousness is such a special dynamical system that it continues to exist throughout the life of the individual, and does not simply disappear when the bootstrapping event ends -- when the drug wears off, for example.

The answer to this mystery is now at hand. The psychic energy that sustains consciousness derives, according to Jung, from the equilibration of opposites within the psyche -- the “balances of energy flowing between spirit and instinct.” Psychedelic bootstrapping in effect “kicks” the neural gain of the brain to the point that a dynamical system emerges, and that dynamical system is able to interact with psychoid processes from the superconscious mind. These processes -- the archetypes -- establish the flow of energy within the psyche that sustains consciousness, and are responsible for the occurrence of portal experiences when consciousness appears. Whether in the psychedelic enhanced awareness of primitive (or modern) humanity, or in the evolution enhanced brains of today, the appearance of archetypes and their corresponding constellations of imagery are the events in which introspective consciousness originates.

It is because of the role archetypes play in the establishment of human consciousness that I have called the theory of consciousness as a dynamical system linking spirit, body and mind Spontaneous Human Consciousness. Human consciousness appears spontaneously because the archetypes appear, as Jung says, spontaneously, without underlying causal conditions. While dynamical activity in the brain paves the way for consciousness, it is not enough without the presence of spirit to sustain the ongoing processes of the self and introspective awareness. The world of spirit does not follow the rules of causation by which the human mind confines its limits of understanding, and therefore the archetypes and the consciousness they bootstrap appear as if by magic.

We began with the objective of finding the greatness of humanity, and at long last we have found it. The archetypes are the very forces that draw consciousness up and out of the biology of the brain, and bring forth the uniqueness and individuality of each person, connecting the body with the world of spirit. The greatness of humanity is that it has been drawn upward from the world of the body, from the world of causation and from the ideas of materialism, and thrust into a new dimension of creativity and possibility by its interconnection with the world of spirit. We don’t have to look for this greatness in society, in science, in religion or anywhere else -- it was, and still is, inside of us all along.

We now clearly see why the bicameral mind and the empty philosophical systems and culture that nurture it so hate and fear the personal experience of the spiritual. The deflationary philosophical systems of materialism, social-ontology, mechanism and determinism are cultural talismans to keep spirit at bay. But it is a losing battle; the brain will go dynamical, the archetypes will appear, and consciousness and the self will emerge, and will do so spontaneously, as the processes giving rise to consciousness act independently of culture and biology. As we shall see, there is very little culture and the bicameral mind can do to stop it. The question is, what will we do with this human greatness -- will it be crushed by oversocialization and technology, leaving us with depression, hate-violence and eventual extinction, or will we choose a different path?

But what a strange twist of events this is! Where we at first sought to understand portal experience in terms of the human consciousness that has them, we now find that the only logical explanation that can account for the facts of consciousness is that consciousness itself is an intersection. We can only understand consciousness, it turns out, in terms of portal experience. Portal experiences are basic to consciousness because, after all, that is what consciousness itself is. Without the archetypes, there is only the flickering of dynamical activity in the brain, no sustained self-pattern, no introspective distance, and no ability to survive contingent events. We owe our existence as conscious beings, and perhaps our ability to survive in the world at all, to the appearance of spirit through the superconscious mind.

The Vital Force

How did this surprising reversal come about? The reasons lie within the idea of psychic energy that forms the core of Jung’s theory of archetypes. There is a deeper meaning to Jung’s theory of psychic energy, which Marilyn Nagy traces to the nineteenth century idea of vitalism, and particularly to those ideas proposed by Hans Driesch. Vitalism is the theory that there is a special force, independent of ordinary physical forces, that animates living things. It is closely related to animism -- the idea that the universe is “alive,” or animated by an unseen power or force. These are a very old ideas, originating from participation mystique, which fell out of favor as materialism and mechanism gained popularity. The failure of mechanism as a general theory of the universe, and the failure of materialism to produce useful answers to the deeper questions behind the sciences, have led some to reconsider the idea that there is some “organizing principle” or force in nature that underlies living systems, and perhaps some non-living systems as well. Driesch, quoted by Nagy, writes:

There is something in the organism’s behaviour -- in the widest sense of the word -- which is opposed to an inorganic resolution of the same and which shows that the living organism is more than a sum or aggregate of its parts, that it is insufficient to call the organism a “typically combined body” without further explanation. This something we call entelechy. Entelechy -- being not an extensive but an intensive mmanifoldness -- is neither causality nor substance in the true sense of those words. But entelechy is a factor in nature, though it only relates to nature in space and is not itself anywhere in space. Entelechy’s role in spatial nature may be formulated both mechanically and energetically. Introspective analysis shows that the human reason possesses a special kind of category -- individuality -- by the aid of which it is able to understand to its own satisfaction what entelechy is; the category of individuality thus completing the concept of ideal nature in a positive way.

Entelechy is Driesch’s word for the vital force whose presence differentiates the living from the non-living. It acts in space and time to organize living systems out of the inorganic, but is not itself a physical force. Driesch also used the word psychoid, which Jung adopted for essentially the same purpose -- processes that can’t be directly understood by consciousness. Just as one cannot detect the presence of the vital force by physical measurement, only by its effects on living things, so one cannot be directly aware of psychoid processes, but only by their effects upon consciousness symbolically. Interestingly, Driesch points out that it is only because of “individuality” -- what we have called the self -- that we can come to terms with the entelechy at all. This is because the self is partly unconscious, and this is where the connection with the entelechy takes place.

Along these lines Jung writes:

The vital principle extends far beyond our consciousness in that it also maintains the vegetative functions of the body which, as we know, are not under conscious control. Our consciousness is dependent upon the functions of the brain, but these are in turn dependent upon the vital principle and accordingly the vital principle represents a substance, where as consciousness represents a contingent phenomenon. Or as Schopenhauer says: “Consciousness is the object of a transcendental idea.” Thus we see that animal and vegetative functions are embraced in a common root, the actual subject. Let us boldly assign to this transcendental subject the name of “soul.” What do we mean by “soul”? The soul is an intelligence independent of space and time.

The “soul” is the vital principle that animates both consciousness and those parts of the psyche that are unconscious, including its biological functions. Consciousness is contingent because there can be life without consciousness, but the vital principle is non-contingent because there can be no life without it. The vital principle is a “substance”, but not a physical substance -- it exists apart from space and time. What Jung means by “substance” is that the soul is an actual existing entity, outside the universe of space and time, whose existence underlies the function of physical living systems.

Nagy traces this idea of the non-physical vital principle to the writings of Ludwig Busse, who opposed the idea of Gustav Fechner that mind and matter are identical. Fechner’s idea grew out of the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics, and the alleged “proofs” of a mechanistic universe that accompanied their popularization. Against mechanism, Busse, quoted by Nagy, argues that the laws of thermodynamics are:

. . . transformation formulae which describe the process of exchange of energy in the realm of matter . . . But the question is, do we live in a completely closed system in which everything that happens is necessarily bound to the causal-mechanistic sequence? It must be remembered that the energy laws are mere empirically discovered laws whose validity for the whole of nature has not been proved. They do not reach the level of a priori necessary rules of thought. We need not disagree with the laws of energy in the realm in which they apply in order to suggest that we live only in a relatively closed system. There may be arenas in which the laws do not apply, namely when the psychic influences the physical, or when the physical influences the psychic.

We have already seen this argument, deriving from the Incompleteness Principle. While the rules or “laws” of physical systems describe how physical objects behave -- another assertion with which we shall soon take issue -- they cannot prove that other kinds of systems do not exist. Indeed other such systems do exist -- dynamical systems -- in which the “laws” do not apply. Consciousness is one such system, and whatever rules or “laws” may apply to physical systems do not restrict what such a dynamical or “relatively closed” system can do.

The essential problem faced by Jung is explaining the mind-body causation problem -- how the mind could influence the body, and visa versa. For Freud, this is not a problem as the mind simply is the brain. Jung rejected this view in favor of a much richer concept of the psyche. Jung’s idea of psychoid process, borrowed from Driesch and Eugen Bleuler, both vitalists, was intended as a bridge between the psychic and the body. Jung writes that, though not directly psychic in the sense of having a potential for becoming conscious, nor directly instinctive in the sense of being connected to the biological drive forces, there may be “psychoid processes at both ends of the psychic scale” -- at the “infrared” of matter and the “ultraviolet” of spirit.

Instincts and archetypes are psychoid processes because neither has the capacity to directly become conscious. One can no more be directly aware of the activity of neural circuitry in the old brain, than one can be directly aware of spirits or gods. They are both represented to consciousness symbolically. The importance of the psychoid process, and especially of the archetype, is that they embody the same vital force that underlies the function of biological systems. The mind-body causation problem is thus resolved by theorizing that a common force underlies spirit, mind and body.

Nagy offers two further examples of Jung’s vitalist position:

We are forced to assume that the given structure of the brain does not owe its peculiar nature merely to the influence of surrounding conditions, but also and just as much to the peculiar and autonomous quality of living matter, i.e., to a law inherent in life itself.

By “law inherent in itself” Jung does not mean anything biological or physical. He is referring to Driesch’s idea that living systems are not the sum of their parts, but also embody the entelechy -- a force not causally related to the body’s parts, but necessary for the living system to exist.

[Materialism] has become a prejudice which hinders all progress, with nothing to justify it . . . Life can never be thought of as a function of matter, but only as a process existing in and for itself, to which energy and matter are subordinate . . . We have no more justification for understanding the psyche as a brain-process than we have for understanding life in general from a one-sided arbitrary materialistic point of view that can never be proved, quite apart from the fact that the very attempt to imagine such a thing is crazy in itself and has always engendered craziness whenever it was taken seriously.

The terminology in which vital forces are described should have a familiar ring. Driesch’s comments that an organism is not simply the sum of its parts, and that the vital force influences organisms acausally in space but is not itself situated in space; Busse’s statement that there are situations in which “laws” do not apply; Jung’s comments of “law inherent in life itself” and “a process existing in and for itself” are all characteristics of a phenomenon we have already encountered. The nineteenth-century vitalists saw -- quite correctly -- that nature could never be fully described in terms of causal laws, and expressed their views in the only alternative vocabulary they had -- that of the “soul”, spirit, and so on. Thanks to the efforts of physicists and mathematicians there is now the vocabulary of systems theory, and the “vital force” of the last century can be recognized as the dynamical system of today’s science.

It must be remembered that Jung did not have the theory of dynamical systems at his disposal. We have already disposed of the mind-body causation problem by using dynamical systems theory to dispose of causation as a useful explanation for how the mind works. Jung’s argument that there is a common force -- entelechy -- connecting matter, mind and spirit together is really the same thing as saying that instinct and archetype meet in the dynamical system of consciousness, and that this system interacts with both body and spirit, albeit indirectly via symbols and psychoid processes.

Just as the Uncertainty Principle re-introduced participation mystique into the sciences, dynamical systems theory puts the “vital force” back into nature. It explains how there can be principles underlying the operation of living -- and non-living -- systems that are not traceable to the parts of the system, and do not operate causally. Jung’s vitalistic comments point toward the psyche as being something associated with the body, but independent of it in important ways. The psyche has inherent patterns of its own, and while it interacts with the body, it is not reducible to the body. The characteristics “an autonomous quality of living matter” and life “as a process existing in and for itself” are the same kinds of descriptions applying to consciousness as a dynamical system. The psyche as arising out of the body yet not causally bound to it is “chaos talk”, of the kind used by dynamical systems theorists to describe acausal interactions. It is also, according to Nagy, “God talk”:

[Jung] says that the psyche, as will and consciousness, must have a “supraordinate authority, something like a consciousness of itself” if it is to be differentiated from the compulsive force of instinctive function . . . Jung realized that “psychic finality rests on a ‘pre-existent’ meaning which becomes problematical only when it is an unconscious arrangement. In this case we have to suppose a ‘knowledge’ prior to all consciousness” . . . This is God talk. That, at least, is the term most usually applied in Western philosophical thought to indicate supraordinate, intending mind.

“God talk" is “portal experience talk,” and as we have seen, the theory of archetypes makes the role of the spiritual in consciousness non-optional. Portal experience is more than just an experience of consciousness -- it lies at the very foundation of consciousness itself. This relationship of consciousness to spirit is expressed in many ways, often carrying religious overtones. The “Christ within” and the “part of everyone’s brain tuned in to this cosmos” are metaphorical descriptions of this underlying relationship of the self to spirit. Mystical visions describe the lamps of the gods and snakes swallowing their own tails, and not molecules bouncing around in the void, because they are the products of archetypal images whose connections with spirit are revealed in images that point beyond the body and the world of physical matter. The appearance of archetypes in dreams and fantasies carries with it not only personal significance, but also images from the more general phenomenon of intersection -- and therefore from the world of spirit -- which have significance beyond individual existence and beyond the physical universe itself.

Images of the Unknown

How does the Unknown manage to sneak into consciousness, if it is so different from consciousness that consciousness can not directly understand it? Much of the psychological impact of portal experiences -- including archetypal images and their role in sustaining consciousness -- arises from the symbolic representations through which they appear in consciousness. A symbol is not just a caricature of the experience; it carries with it the sense of awe, wonder, and often fear, that comes from an encounter with the Unknown. Even though we are separated from the Unknown by a barrier of irrepresentability, the Unknown nonetheless manages to constellate itself in consciousness through its symbols, opening gateways to otherwise inaccessible knowledge and powers, and releasing psychic energy from the superconscious mind that can alter consciousness forever.

In asking how these symbols appear, we are really asking a very fundamental question about how dynamical systems work, and how they interact with the world in general. Even though dynamical systems, including consciousness, have their own unique “signature” patterns, they must also be able to assimilate and discharge information and energy if they are to be of any use. The perceptual chaos discovered by Freeman must, if it is to be of any use to the animal, be able to assimilate and transmit information about the outside world. Similarly, consciousness is of no use if all it can do is think about itself.

Of course dynamical systems such as consciousness do interact with the outside world, but since they are not causally related to the physical structures out of which they emerge, it will do us no good to look for the solution in brain anatomy. This is especially true in the case of the archetypes, whose presence in the superconscious mind involves processes entirely different from those found in physical matter. Instead, we must turn to one of the most basic properties of dynamical systems to understand how these symbolic interactions take place.

In nature, dynamical systems often appear at boundaries or interfaces. For example, the factors at work at the boundary of a spreading forest are best understood in terms of dynamical systems, because the forest “edge” is a boundary condition or interface between forest and other ecological systems. If one pours oil and water into a glass, the meniscus layer formed where they meet is a dynamical system. Consciousness, too, is an interface between instincts arising within the brain and archetypes arising from spirit within the superconscious mind.

Dynamical interactions occur when things or processes that cannot intermix come into contact. Like other dynamical systems, these boundary systems are self-organizing, displaying their own unique patterns of behavior. When rain water hits an oil-soaked pavement, we see an explosion of colors as sunlight is split into a rainbow of iridescent colors by the patterns of the dynamical system arising at the oil-water interface. Snowflakes are formed by dynamical interactions between freezing water and cold air, just as the imagery and visions of portal experiences arise when undifferentiated spirit from the superconscious mind intersects with consciousness.

The classical illustration of this kind of boundary condition is the “coastline of Britain” problem. The coastline of Britain -- or of anywhere else -- is a boundary condition, in which ocean and land are juxtaposed but do not intermix. There is, or at least one begins by thinking there is, a definite line of demarcation between land and sea. The problem is to determine the length of that line, and the most obvious solution to the problem is to measure it. One way of measuring it would be to use a surveying satellite that would yield some measurement within a certain amount of error. Suppose that the length of the coastline is now measured with some ground-based instrument, such as a meter stick. The figure obtained with the meter stick would be larger than the satellite measurement, because the smaller unit of measure captures finer detail -- the nooks and crannies of the coastline. Should the same measurement be used with an instrument that measures in even smaller increments -- microns, for example -- an even larger length will be obtained, because the smaller increment resolves even finer detail.

Intuitively, one might think that as one decrements the unit of measure, the measurement obtained will be more “accurate” -- closer to the “real” length of the coastline -- because the smaller the unit of measure, the finer the detail that is resolved. Were the coastline a strictly Euclidean figure, such as a triangle or square, that might be true. But the coastline is not a simple Euclidean figure, and the intuition is wrong. The coastline is not a simple straight line: it is made up of repeating patterns, repeating on different scales. One would see essentially the same pattern, whether looking down from a satellite or at an individual grain of sand. This repetition of pattern means that there will always be some smaller scale, and some larger measurement. As one continues to decrement the unit of measure, one merely goes deeper and deeper into the underlying pattern of the system, and the overall measurement continues to grow without bound. The intuition that the smallest possible unit of measure would be the most accurate leads to the surprising conclusion that the most accurate measure of the coastline of Britain is that it is infinitely long!

According to Euclidean geometry, there are well-defined dimensions into which objects are categorized. Solid objects are three dimensional, requiring sets of coordinates located on three perpendicular axes to describe them. Similarly, planes are two dimensional, lines one dimensional, and “points” -- the theoretical building blocks out of which all existing objects are constructed -- have zero dimension. These dimensions are regarded as absolute categories -- an object has certain dimensional characteristics that are inherent to it, and objects cannot change dimensions without some change to their structure. The only way to make a three dimensional object into a two dimensional object is to squash it.

What, then, is the dimensionality of a ball of string? From a distance, it appears as a point -- zero. Closer, it is a sphere -- three. Closer still, it is revealed to be an entangled line -- one dimension. There is therefore no “real” dimensionality to the ball of string -- no dimension inherent in its structure. Instead, as we would expect from the Uncertainty Principle, the dimensionality of the ball of string depends upon how it is observed. As mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot writes, “The notion that a numerical result should depend upon the relation of object to observer is in the spirit of physics in this century and is even an exemplary illustration of it.”

There is nothing about the ball of string itself that will tell us its dimensional characteristics, just as there is nothing about the coastline of Britain that will tell us which measurement is “correct”. These characteristics of objects are imposed upon the objects by us, and not the other way around, as classical geometry would have us believe. What Mandelbrot proposed is that we re-think the notion of dimensionality: that instead of absolute Euclidean categories, dimensions be thought of as fractional and relative to the conditions under which they are observed. The term for this is fractal, indicating a boundary condition that has no fixed dimensionality, but occupies a “fractional dimension” whose characteristics depend upon observation.

While there can be no answer to the coastline of Britain problem in terms of absolute length, there are answers that reflect its “roughness” or pattern characteristics. It then becomes a question of the perspective from which the problem is viewed -- obtaining aerial surveys or hiking the beaches -- and applying the roughness calculations to get the relevant length. The length of the coastline of Britain depends upon what we want to do with it -- whether we are walking or flying -- plus some factor that describes its characteristic pattern.

Fractals are the way we “see” dynamical systems. They are our observations of the self-generated patterns that separate these systems from the conditions out of which they arise. Interestingly, the state-space attractors of dynamical systems are themselves fractals. It is the fractal character of the system’s self-organized pattern of behavior that breaks the causal chain between the system’s parts and the behavior of the system as a whole.

The idea of a fractal consciousness helps to explain the role of psychic energy, and why certain things move between unconscious and consciousness. Some things are never noticed, and this is because they do not have enough energy to modulate the “carrier wave” of the self. Things that have enough energy to modulate the self get our attention; those things in which we are interested are re-enforced and propagated throughout the pattern of the self, while the patterns of other things simply die out and disappear from consciousness. Things that have too much psychic energy, such as psychoid processes associated with mental illness, push and shove the self-attractor around until the dynamical system of consciousness itself is destroyed -- this is what psychoanalysis refers to as the collapse or dissociation of the ego. In the case of archetypes, their psychic energy can so alter the patterns of the self that consciousness is transformed into an entirely new system, and the person is forever changed by the experience.

When we notice that the growth pattern of a forest closely resembles the veins in individual leaves, we are seeing the finger print, so to speak, of an underlying dynamical system. Likewise, when we see similarities between individual visions and mythological motifs, we are seeing the work of dynamical systems arising within the superconscious mind, at the interface between mind and spirit. The archetypes are, for all intents and purposes, dynamical intersections whose symbolic representations within consciousness are fractals.

Because intersections are boundary conditions, it is not surprising that they would manifest themselves symbolically in consciousness. As with the coastline of Britain, these symbols are patterns whose meaning must be filled in by specific circumstances. The repeating patterns that make up the coastline have no meaning in themselves, until we “interpret” them by applying them to a specific situation -- do we intend to hike the beaches, or fly from place to place? We would misjudge the amount of aircraft fuel needed if the distance calculations appropriate to walking on foot were used. Similarly, the patterns that appear in consciousness from an intersection must be “interpreted” for them to have any meaning at all.

This is why predictions of the future are never exact. Just as the coastline of Britain has no “exact” length, the symbols that appear in visions are patterns that have no exact meaning. The meaning appears only when the pattern is applied to specific circumstances. The mythological motif of the snake swallowing its tail has one meaning to a tribal shaman, and quite another to an organic chemist. The metaphors that mystics use to describe their visions may have totally opposite meanings to different individuals. Similarly, what the fortune teller “sees” in the cards or crystal is a pattern that takes on meaning only when applied to the seeker’s question, which more often than not reflects the seeker’s wishes as opposed to the facts of the matter.

Interpretation is, therefore, a necessary part of understanding intersections. It involves the same processes by which anything becomes conscious. Consciousness is itself a dynamical system, a boundary condition between biological instinct and superconscious spirit, and its fractal, repeating self-generated pattern is the self -- the self is really the chaotic attractor of consciousness, the unique pattern that appears when body meets spirit. We can think of the way in which perceptions, ideas, thoughts and so on become conscious along the lines of the way a radio signal is transmitted. An AM radio signal consists of a carrier wave of radio energy that is “modulated” by speech, music, and other sounds; the patterns of music and voices are superimposed upon the carrier wave. In consciousness, the self pattern is “modulated” in a similar way by other conscious processes. The attractor of consciousness gets pushed and shoved around, and other patterns are superimposed upon it, so that conscious “awareness” really boils down to an integration of information into the self pattern.

Because conscious awareness can happen only when the self is “modulated”, all conscious contents are necessarily unique in each individual. The “problem” of qualia thus is not a problem at all -- it is a fact of the way consciousness works. As previously stated, consciousness personalizes experience because all experience is in relation to the self. We now see why this is so: the only way for something to get into consciousness is for it to intermix with the pattern of the self -- to essentially become a part of who and what you are.

Portal experiences are, for this reason, always interpreted differently by each individual that has them. It is no argument against the validity of portal experience to say that no two persons describe the Unknown in the same way; it is a fact of the matter that no two individuals can describe it in the same way because all experiences are unique to each individual. We agree that a certain color is “red” because we are taught to associate a certain mental image with a word. But this is a behavioral association and not a cognitive one; it is a phenomenon of social behavior that everyone grunts the same word for a certain color, and not a feature of what each individual perceives that color to be. Portal experiences, including encounters with archetypes, derive their meaning from what they do within consciousness, and not from how people behave toward them.

From the last chapter, we have seen that consciousness is necessarily connected with the body, although the relationship is dynamical and not causal. The fact that we think in terms of visual images, voices, feelings and so on is because the form of consciousness -- the way it thinks -- is partly shaped by the environment in which it finds itself. But consciousness is also partly spiritual, and the archetypes play a fundamental role in determining what consciousness actually is, and in how it operates.

What Jung discovered as the collective unconscious is a repertoire of fractal archetypal images that appear when consciousness encounters spirit. These images appear when consciousness begins to develop in children, when consciousness first emerged in primitive humanity, when present-day consciousness is “expanded” or “altered” to be receptive to their psychic energies, in the visions of mystics, in the dreams and fantasies of “modern” humanity, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, when psychoid processes associated with mental illness threaten the existence of the ego. Careful study reveals an underlying pattern and unity to these images, from which Jung understood that they originate in a common source.

If the “fractal” explanation of portal experience and the idea of the collective unconscious hold true, then we should expect to find both repeating patterns and individual familiarizations in reports of portal experiences. This is exactly what Jung found. Mystics of different religions report “seeing” beings or phenomena appropriate to their belief system, yet these experiences more often than not carry similar or identical meanings. The Wiccan sees the Moon Goddess, the Christian sees Christ, and the tribal shaman sees a tree spirit. All of these visions share a common transcendence of space and time, and yet all are culturally and individually relativized.

One also finds these collective similarities and individual differences in mythologies, which display both cultural variety and underlying similarities of pattern. Anthropologist Levy-Bruhl called these underlying patterns “collective representations”. They may take the form of identical, or nearly identical, symbols seen in different cultures -- the ubiquity of the cross symbol is one example, the snake swallowing its tail image in the Chinese yin-yang and in the vision of chemist August Kekule is another. More commonly, these similarities take the form of a motif or similar pattern. The image of the dying god Balder in Norse mythology, of Osiris in Egyptian mythology, and of Gilgamesh in Sumeria; the “trickster” image of the Norse god Loki, of the thief and holy man Nasrudin, and of fairy tale characters like Tom Thumb; and the idea of death and rebirth that figures so prominently in Christianity, also found in the Greek myth of Persephone and the Sumerian myth of Ishtar, are examples of the similarities and differences through which archetypal images are constellated in various cultures.

Mythologies perform on a cultural level the same function as metaphor and interpretation on an individual level. Mythologies are cultural symbols -- shared interpretations of a common experience, and more specifically, the way in which members of a culture understand the constellation of archetypal images in their environmental and social circumstances. This is the view of Joseph Campbell:

Every myth . . . is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read, therefore, not literally, but as metaphors. Mythologies are addressed, however, as dreams normally are not, to questions of the origins, both of the natural world and of the arts, laws and customs of a local people, physical things being understood in this view as metaphysically grounded in a dreamlike mythological realm beyond space and time, which, since it is physically invisible, can be known only to the mind.

Myths express, in symbolic fashion, what can not directly be understood by consciousness. Consciousness does not directly understand participation mystique; it can not explain or give reasons why there is a “transcendent reality” that underlies and unifies all existence. Consciousness can not explain why there are seasons; consciousness can, through science, observation and experiment explain what seasons are and how they come to pass, but it can not comprehend why. It can not explain these things because the relationships are dynamical and not causal, and because the forces that are responsible for why lie outside the realm of psychic energy that consciousness can understand. Myths “explain” these things as constellations of symbols which, within each individual, have the ability to connect with archetypal forces and energize the psyche to new levels of awareness.

It is through these symbols that the why questions can be answered. Deriving from archetypes, mythological symbols can act as gateways to the Unknown, through which wisdom from the Unknown can be acquired. Writes Campbell:

And as the insubstantial shapes of dream arise from the formative ground of the individual, so do all the passing shapes of the physical world arise (according to this way of thought) from a universal, morphogenetic ground that is made known to the mind through the figurations of myth. These mythic figurations are the “ancestral forms”, the insubstantial archetypes, of all that is beheld by the eye as physically substantial, material things being understood as ephemeral concretions of the energies of these noumena.

Just as the true of “hidden” self can only be revealed through dreams and symbolic imagery, the forces that underlie the physical world -- what we have characterized as the vital force -- can only be understood symbolically. But these symbols can also act as psychological cues for the appearance of archetypes. Both in psychoanalysis, and in the rituals and talismans of magic and religion, mythological symbols can invoke the appearance of archetypes themselves. The symbolic images found on Tarot cards, for example -- which Jung thought were representations of archetypes -- serve this dual purpose: they can be used to predict the future, and in some circumstances, they can also be used to change it.

Archetypes are the bearers of consciousness from the world of spirit, and because of this, the imagery they create suggests worlds, forces and beings that lie hidden within and beyond the experiences of the senses. Recalling Margot Adler’s characterization of the Old Religion as belief in animism, pantheism and polytheism, it is apparent that these beliefs are constellations in consciousness of the very forces out of which consciousness arises. The idea of an unseen force that permeates and enlivens all existence, manifesting itself in a profusion of images that transcend ordinary experience and transform the mind of the seer is really just another way of expressing the idea that archetypes from the collective unconscious create and sustain consciousness, and interconnect individual consciousness with the transcendent reality from which the archetypes, the world, and ultimately consciousness itself emerge.

These ideas, whether expressed as archetypes or gods, announce the very emergence of consciousness itself in humanity. When consciousness first erupted from psychedelic bootstrapped brains, these are the things it saw. This particular belief system is much more than just an ancient religion or a modern “cook” philosophy -- it is the fundamental and most basic system of thought in human consciousness. While other religions have appeared since that time, and have built upon those foundations and created yet other foundations, animism, pantheism and polytheism remain at the center of the way human consciousness works. Children have the fantasies they have, people have the dreams they have, and the stars constellate themselves as the lamps of the gods for the simple reason that human consciousness works in this way and not some other -- because of the brain and the world in which it evolved, and because of the spirit that brought consciousness into the world in the first place.

The ability of consciousness to interact with the world of spirit and the idea that consciousness can only interact with the world in relation to the self raises some interesting issues. We have already mentioned the “Vulcan mind-melt”, the idea that one person can become directly aware of what another person knows. Can it really be possible for me to know what you know, for your thoughts to be my thoughts? I think not. If knowledge amounts to a “modulation” of the self “carrier wave”, then another person probing your mind would encounter something similar to listening to a radio station broadcasting in a foreign language. One might make out bits and pieces of what is said, but the general stream of information would be unintelligible because the information is “encoded” in a pattern that makes sense only to the individual to whom that pattern belongs. Knowledge is never absolute, but is always relative to the individual, and to the sum of the individual’s beliefs, thoughts, experiences and so on.

Another popular idea is that somehow, someday, we might be able to transfer the contents of our minds into a machine, or even “back up” ourselves onto a computer disk, and “restore” ourselves at some later time, in the event of untimely death or brain injury. For the same reason mentioned above, this idea is completely incoherent. Knowledge is knowledge only insofar as it is superimposed upon the self, and cannot be separated from the self without destroying its content. Since a machine, depending upon instruction and programming, does not appear to have the capability of becoming a dynamical system, then there can be no self upon which to superimpose the knowledge. Even if a machine could go dynamical, it would have a self pattern of its own, and the data from your mind would be unintelligible to the machine. As for backing the mind up on disk, if consciousness is fractal, it exists as a continuum of repeating patterns which cannot be reduced to discrete data sets anymore than a mystical experience can be reduced to the words used to describe it.

Perhaps consciousness cannot be propagated through a physical medium such as a computer or a storage device, but can consciousness be separated from the body and continue to exist? This raises issues of ghosts, OOBEs, and even the possibility of “life after death”. As we have been using the word, consciousness -- the ego of Jung’s theory -- exists only because of the boundary between body and spirit, and the flow of psychic energy between the two. In the absence of one or the other, consciousness as a dynamical system can not continue to exist. Or can it? We need to keep in mind that while consciousness has at least some of its roots in the physical body, consciousness itself exists in abstract “state space”, which is not the same thing as physical space-time. There is no reason to believe, therefore, that consciousness cannot “leave the body”, because it is not really “in the body” in the first place. The idea that consciousness can “travel” to times and places where the body is not is in no way inconsistent with the theory that consciousness is a dynamical system, and there is no reason from our understanding of consciousness to suspect that OOBEs and astral projection are impossible or unreasonable.

The issue of ghosts -- a consciousness that survives the death of the body -- is another matter. What consciousness needs to exist is a source of psychic energy from which it can derive the free will that keeps the system in operation. In the absence of a physical body, the “equilibration of opposites” from which psychic energy derives no longer exists. It would seem, however, that since the superconscious mind has too much psychic energy for consciousness to use directly, if that energy could somehow be down-converted to a level that consciousness could use, consciousness could keep itself going on spirit alone.

While we cannot directly see ultraviolet light, we can use fluorescent materials to convert the ultraviolet energy into a form our eyes can see. Consciousness does assimilate psychic energy from spirit, but this is done through the symbolic representations of archetypal images -- these images are the way consciousness “sees” energy from the superconscious mind. My suspicion is that consciousness can keep itself going in this way, but the world it experiences is quite different from the ordinary world of space-time. While the underlying pattern of a disembodied consciousness may remain essentially the same, all of its interactions with the world are via symbolic representations. The world of the ghost is therefore very dream-like, and as the “consciousness” continues to assimilate psychic energy which it cannot discharge, it rises to the same level of energy as an archetype, at which point the self is assimilated into superconsciousness itself. This is as much as saying that not only is there life after death, but that conscious life can lead to a spiritual union with the Unknown. It makes no difference in what form spirit is understood; whether as God, Goddess, archetype, Osiris, undifferentiated unity or anything else, the end result is the same. If consciousness really has its origins in forces outside space-time, then when the life through which that consciousness is manifested ends, the spiritual forces return to their source, taking with them everything that they have experienced and learned.

While this idea of returning to the world of spirit is found in many religious and spiritual traditions, others believe in the idea of reincarnation -- that consciousness, once freed from the body, can attach itself on to another physical entity. Some pagan traditions believe that upon death, the “soul” -- spiritually energized consciousness -- can attach itself onto natural objects such as trees, rocks, animals, or even planets and stars. Other traditions teach that the soul will continue to be reincarnated in human consciousness until it reaches a level of “enlightenment” that enables it to unite directly with superconsciousness. In these circumstances, the soul acts something like an archetype, entering the young mind through the superconscious mind, and stimulating the flow of psychic energy that bootstraps consciousness. The soul continues to evolve through a series of incarnations, until it is able to assimilate sufficient psychic energy to become one with the world of spirit.

However strange these beliefs may seem, they are perfectly consistent with the ideas we have developed from the physiological, dynamical and psychological aspects of human consciousness. What these ideas are not consistent with is materialism and social-ontology. The whole point of materialism and social-ontology is to cut us off from the archetypes and the world of spirit, and to substitute for them the socially controlled bicameral mind. By denying the existence of spirit, and ridiculing archetypal imagery whenever it emerges, these “modern” beliefs throw us back into an age before human consciousness existed. Neither the suit-and-tie self-righteous moralizing babble from the political right, nor the scientific socialism and techno-worship from the left, can replace what they have taken away. Materialism and social-ontology, and the bicameral mind the serve, give us nothing but a world of depression, malaise, intolerance, hatred, violence and despondency, and cut us off from a better life now, and eventual union with spirit later.

What is sin, after all, but separation from God, or whatever term one wants to use for the world of spirit from which consciousness arose? Sin is not failing or refusing to follow rules shouted down from the pulpit or the legislative hall. It is a disease, what Kierkegaard called the “sickness unto death”, that eats away from the inside and destroys the consciousness of the individual. In so doing, death becomes the end of existence. This is what materialists believe, and to a large extent it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Once one severs one’s connection with spirit, there is no reservoir of psychic energy to continue the self after physical death.

Fortunately, the soul is not so easily destroyed. As we shall see in the next chapter, while archetypes can disrupt the ego, they can also reclaim it from the mire of social control and runaway destructive psychoid processes that permeate the “modern” world. We must fight for ourselves against the social and technological forces directed against us, but we have powerful allies. In the end, the bicameral mind and its crank science and empty philosophies only have power if we choose to give them power. We can take that power away, and in returning it to ourselves, re-connect with the greatness out of which human consciousness arose.

The Acausal Connecting Principle

The observation that dynamical systems can interact with each other by mixing their attractor patterns directly contradicts the idea of causation. For one thing to affect another causally, there must be a sequence of events by which one physical condition constrains the behavior of another. Since dynamical systems, and their attractors, act independently of the physical systems from which they arise, a causal theory will not explain how dynamical systems interact. We are left with one last and final piece of the puzzle of consciousness that must be put into place -- understanding how dynamical systems like consciousness and archetypes influence and interact with each other. If the process is not causal, then what is it?

Despite the fact the much of the groundwork for dynamical systems theory was done nearly 100 years ago, many of the properties and rules that govern dynamical systems are not known. Chaos theory, and the non-linear mathematics used to describe dynamical systems did not really emerge from theoretical research into the role of an explanatory scheme until the 1970’s. The whole idea of dynamical systems remained pretty much hidden from view until the publication of James Gleick’s Chaos in 1987.

Jung himself knew nothing of chaos theory, but nonetheless was aware of certain principles which are now an established part of the science. One of these principles is the way in which dynamical systems interact with one another. The only way to make the theory of archetypes and psychic energy work -- and in our case, to explain why human consciousness is spontaneous and has the other characteristics we have observed -- is to explain how consciousness can connect with the world of spirit, bypassing the rules of physical causation. Working together with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, Jung developed just such an acausal connecting principle, which he called synchronicity.

Let the reader be forewarned that such an explanation is necessarily one that invokes principles other than causation. The curiosity of the twentieth century mind is accustomed to being satisfied by causal explanations. Causal explanations are expositions of a series of events that lead up to the phenomenon in question, implying that the phenomenon to be explained follows from an underlying metaphysical connection between the events that precede it. If one is to understand the relations between dynamical systems, themselves exempt from causal explanation for reasons already given, then a causal account will not be possible. The reader who expects to be shown how a certain sequence of events leads up to the relationship between dynamical systems that explains portal experience will remain unsatisfied. The explanation of acausal interactions will necessarily be acausal, and therefore will not be much like the kind of “explanation” one is used to.

One of the ways used to explain causation is the “natural law”, an abstract formulation stating that when a certain set of conditions exist, certain results will follow. Jung observes that natural laws as causal principles are only statistically valid -- natural laws only explain things some of the time. Writes Jung:

The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and only relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes and therefore presupposes the existence of one or more other factors which would be necessary for an explanation. This is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another principle of explanation.

One way of understanding causation is to assume that the “glue” that binds events together is a natural law. A natural law is an abstract formulation -- usually mathematical -- of what philosopher David Hume called “regularities” in observations. Regularity means that whenever events of a certain kind occur, they must regularly be followed by events of another specific kind. To argue that dropping a piece of chalk from a certain height causes it to break, there must be, among other conditions, the observation that whenever pieces of chalk are dropped from the height in question, they break.

Or so some have interpreted Hume to have said. What Hume actually says is that in spite of this relationship, there is nothing in these conditions that demonstrates necessity. Necessity is the term philosophers use for the “glue” between cause and effect. It implies that there is something that forces one event to happen as the result of another. While regularity may suggest that events tend to happen in a certain way, there is nothing in these observations that reveals a metaphysical “glue” which forces breaking to occur after dropping. The idea that there is such a “glue” or necessity is purely in the mind, according to Hume.

Philosophers since Hume have argued that there really is a “glue”, and that what Hume called regularities are natural laws. After the work of Newton, who described the motion of the universe in terms of mathematical formulations, philosophers argued that Hume’s regularities were really observations of natural laws such as those Newton discovered. The underlying necessity, or “glue” between cause and effect is therefore a natural law, or so the argument goes. When certain conditions exist, certain effects occur because they are instances of a natural law.

Jung’s point is that natural laws cannot be precise because, according to the Uncertainty Principle, the conditions under which they operate are not precise. Necessity requires exactness. If necessity is a feature of natural laws, then certain specific, predictable events will always follow -- necessarily -- when certain conditions exist. The results will always be the same. If events only produce results predictable within statistical limits -- if the same thing doesn’t always happen when an event occurs -- then there is no necessity. More importantly, there may not really be such things as natural laws, or at least not in the way Newton understood them. Newton’s ideas were based upon a universe of exactness and predictability; what we know from quantum mechanics is that the universe is not really that way at all.

The effects of probability are easily observed in state-space diagrams of causal systems. The attractor of a causal system, if the laws were exact, would be a single point. But the attractor that is observed is not a point, it is a cloud of points, because of the effects of statistical probabilities upon the behavior of the system. What this means is that natural laws do not determine the way in which events happen -- at least not by themselves. Laws correlate events within statistical limits -- they are observations of regularity and not necessities, just as Hume argued. Because natural laws do not accurately predict the behavior of systems, then there must be principles other than causality at work.

One such principle might be chance -- that two things happen at the same time, and there is no relationship between them at all. By “no relationship” is meant that whether the one event occurred or not would not have influenced the occurrence, or manner of occurrence, of the other. If the causal principle were universally valid, argues Jung, then all occurrences of chance would be susceptible to causal explanation. There would always be a reason, ultimately traceable to a natural law, that explains the “chance” event. Chance is, according to Jung, what we call those cases where the “causality has not yet been discovered.” If the causal principle is only statistically valid and therefore applicable only some of the time, then there will be cases of chance where a causal principle does not apply, and some other principle does. Chance is therefore not an explanation of why things occur; it simply indicates cases where the reasons for their occurrence have not been discovered, whether those reasons are causal or not.

To find an alternative principle to causation, one must examine situations where it is highly unlikely that there could be any causal connection between events. As Jung suggests, “acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable.” Jung cites several examples of such situations. The “duplication of cases” is an example in which a series of similar cases appear in medical practice -- such as several cases of broken arms in one day. Writes Jung:

When for instance I am faced with the fact that my tram ticket bears the same number as the theatre ticket which I buy immediately afterwards, and I receive that same evening a telephone call during which the same number is mentioned again as a telephone number, then a causal connection between them seems to me to be improbable in the extreme, although it is obvious that each event must have its own causality.

Jung found stronger evidence for this kind of relationship in the experimental work of J. B. Rhine. The experiments consisted of an experimenter turning over a series of cards, each card bearing some geometric pattern, and a subject screened off from the experimenter guessing the image on the card. As Rhine performed the experiment, the card pack consisted of twenty-five cards with five of each symbol: a star, a square, a circle, a group of wavy lines, and a cross. The “chance” probability of guessing the correct symbol is five in 25; one could get that number of successful predictions by calling “star” every time. The observed success rate was 6.5 out of 25, with a probability of 1:250,000 that this deviation from the expected success rate could occur by chance alone. This means that it is highly unlikely -- the odds being 1 in 250,000 against -- that there is no underlying relationship responsible for the experiment coming out this way. One particular subject scored an average of 10 out of 25 hits, which has a probability of being due to chance alone of 1:298,023,876,953,125.

These studies show that the probability of either a causal explanation or a pure chance explanation is extremely small. Unless some causal connection between the experimenter drawing the cards and the subject guessing the symbol is conceivable, then there is a high probability that the observed results are not due to either chance or causation. Given that the experiment was designed in such a way as to minimize the possibility of any causal connection, there is every indication that some other principle must be involved.

Several variations on the above experiment have been performed, in order to further reduce the possibility of a causal connection. In one set of experiments, the distance between experimenter and subject was increased to 250 miles, with an overall success rate of 10.5 out of 25. Similar results were achieved in experiments where the separation was one or more rooms, and where the separation was some 4000 miles.

Regarding this result, Jung states:

The fact that distance has no effect in principle shows that the thing in question cannot be a phenomenon of force or energy, for otherwise the distance to be overcome and the diffusion in space would cause a diminution of the effect, and it is more than probable that the score would fall proportionately to the square of the distance.

Force and energy, in the sense referred to by Jung, are physical phenomena whose effects diminish with distance, according to what is known as the “r-squared” law. According to this principle, the effect of energy emitted from some object rapidly diminishes as the distance from that object increases -- a light gets dimmer as one moves away from it. If the results of these experiments were due to physical phenomena, increasing the distance between subject and experimenter should have decreased the success rate. This is not what was observed.

Other experiments conducted by Rhine show that whatever the principle is that enables the subject to guess the cards with accuracy better than chance, it is also independent of time as well as space. One set of experiments consisted of the subject’s guessing which cards would be drawn on the following day; the results showed a chance probability of 1:400,000. Jung writes:

The results of Rhine’s experiment . . . means a considerable probability of there being some factor independent of time. They point, in other words, to a relativity of time, since the experiment was concerned with perception of events which had not yet occurred. In these circumstances the time factor seems to have been eliminated by a function or condition which is also capable of abolishing the spatial factor . . . We must give up at the outset all explanations in terms of energy, which amounts to saying that events of this kind cannot be considered from the point of view of causality, for causality presupposes the existence of space and time in so far as all observations are ultimately based upon bodies in motion.

The Rhine experiments show a series of cases that are experimentally and meaningfully related to one another, without any possibility of a causal connection between them, and a very low probability of explanation on the basis of chance. We will say more about “meaningfully” shortly, but what it implies is that there are factors in the psyche at work. Since it is highly unlikely that the events in the Rhine experiments are either causally connected or are unrelated to one another, this is exactly the kind of situation where one would expect to see some other kind of connecting principle involved. In discovering how these events are connected, Jung states: “It seems more likely that scientific explanation will have to begin with a criticism of our concepts of space and time on the one hand, and with the unconscious on the other.”

More recent work along similar lines has been conducted in the field of parapsychology. Parapsychologist Charles Tart contrasts what he calls the “spiritual psychologies” with the prevailing scientific view of physicalism -- “a notion that all events are ultimately reducible to lawful interactions of matter and energies within the space-time continuum.” The idea that an acausal connecting principle, somehow involving the psyche, is responsible for connecting the events of the Rhine experiments is utterly contrary to the view of physicalism. Writes Tart, of those who deny the possibility of non-physicalistic phenomena:

I’m afraid the almost universal answer will be that you simply accept the belief common in the scientific community without ever having given much thought to it, and that you have never looked at the scientific evidence which might contradict this belief. Indeed, the pattern I find among most colleagues is that they know a priori that there are no such phenomena, therefore they have never bothered to read any evidence which might indicate there was and then say they have never seen any evidence to contradict their belief.

It is fairly common, within the scientific community as well as outside it, to deny the existence of evidence that does not conform to a belief already held. The reasons for this were discussed in Chapter Two. Nonetheless, parapsychology has amassed evidence that points to an acausal connecting principle, or some other theory that denies the exclusivity of physical space-time.

Among the subjects investigated by parapsychologists are telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, precognition, ghosts and near-death experience -- the kinds of phenomena that we have classified as portal experiences. The method of parapsychology is to apply scientific research methods to these phenomena, much as the Rhine experiments applied observation and statistical correlation to card reading. Tart states that roughly one out of three parapsychological experiments is successful in showing a correlation of events more probable than chance alone. If those results themselves were due to chance, there should only be about one out of one hundred experiments successful.

Tart uses an argument similar to Jung’s against causality in the case of psi, or parapsychological, phenomena:

To get information about an event from one location in space and time to another location in space and time, some form of energy must be modulated in such a way as to contain the relevant information, and must pass from one location to the other.

Such “modulated energy” must, if it is a physicalistic phenomenon, conform to the r-squared law. Experiments show that psi phenomena (which include the Rhine experiments) do not diminish with time or distance. Consequently, Tart draws roughly the same conclusion as Jung: that these phenomena cannot be explained by physicalistic principles, but must be viewed from a psychological -- as distinct from physical -- perspective. The mind is inescapably involved in these things, and furthermore, it is involved in ways it does not directly comprehend -- the subject cannot explain how he or she knows what card has been drawn. Tart concludes, as did Jung, that the information relevant to psi phenomena flows into the unconscious.

Jung’s criticism of space and time is that those concepts became fixed largely because of the introduction of measurement. Space and time are mental postulates, or as Jung calls them, “hypostasized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind.” Consequently, physicalism and causation are ideas cooked up by the mind. This is why Kant regarded them as a priori categories: they exist in the mind independent of experience, and are characteristics of the way the mind works, not characteristics of the way the world works.

Since space and time are of mental origin, then it should not be surprising to find that they exhibit a form of relativity governed by psychological conditions. By this Jung means that seeing through time and space in the way that diviners “see”, or in the way that subjects “saw” cards in the Rhine experiments, is in part dependent upon the mental state of the seer, and is not limited by any “facts” about the world. This is really another instance of the Uncertainty Principle -- that the way we observe, including the mental conditions we observe with, has something to do with what is observed. Jung writes:

This possibility [of psychological relativization of space and time] presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself. That is precisely what happens in Rhine’s experiments: the subject’s answer is not the result of his observing the physical cards, it is a product of pure imagination, of “chance” ideas which reveal the structure of that which produces them, namely the unconscious.

When someone “sees” a vision in a crystal ball, or of cards drawn in another room or a later date, it is not the cards that are seen, but rather images arising within the unconscious. What is revealed by the Rhine experiments is something about the unconscious and its archetypes. The unconscious psychoid processes through which visions are revealed do not rely upon causal processes, and can not possibly be explained by causation or natural laws. That the correct prediction of cards drawn in the Rhine experiments is experimentally related to the drawing suggests that some principle must be involved, and that the prediction is meaningfully related indicated that this principle operates via the mind.

Synchronicity is Jung’s term that refers to the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally connected events: “the simultaneous occurrence of a certain [mental] state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state -- and, in certain cases, visa versa.” Because the connection between synchronistic events is made within the mind of the observer, space and time are relative and not causal factors. While the observer can still keep track of time -- the observer is asked to predict cards drawn tomorrow, say, and not ones drawn yesterday -- there is nothing illogical, contradictory, or impossible about being able to “see” future events because time and space are only relative factors, subsumed under the mental state of the observer. Jung offers another example of synchronicity: a person in Europe who dreamed the death of a friend in America. As it turned out, a letter describing the death confirmed the details mentioned by the dreamer, except that the death actually occurred an hour before the dream.

The idea of synchronicity rests upon “the simultaneous occurrence of two different states,” one of them being the normal causally explicable state, such as the drawing of a card, and the other state causally underivable from the first -- the prediction of the right card on the previous day. Jung says that because of the subject’s mental state of expectation, there is an image of the result present in the unconscious mind before the call is made, which enables the conscious mind to score better than chance. In the case of the dream of the friend’s death, there was, in the mind of the dreamer, an unconscious knowledge of the death prior to the dream. Synchronicity therefore implies, as Jung writes, “an a priori, causally inexplicable knowledge of a situation which is at the time unknowable.” It implies that the information is already in the unconscious mind before conscious awareness, and that information got into the unconscious by acausal means. As Jung states:

We must completely give up the idea of the psyche’s being somehow connected with the brain, and remember instead the “meaningful” and “intelligent” behavior of the lower organisms, which are without a brain. Here we find ourselves much closer to the formal factor which, as I have said, has nothing to do with brain activity.

It must be re-emphasized here that the concepts of dynamical systems, fractals and chaos were not well understood nor well publicized during Jung’s lifetime. Jung’s comment that the psyche cannot be “connected with the brain” should be read with the understanding that at the time it was written, “connected” meant “causally connected”. Edelman’s work with dynamical systems shows how the psyche can be connected to the brain without being causally dependent upon it, and indeed the whole theory of Spontaneous Human Consciousness rests upon the idea that the brain and the psyche are somehow connected, but not causally or even physically connected.

The point Jung is making is that we can not hope to explain the workings of the mind based upon causal connections with the operations of the brain. Physicalism must be false because the results of the Rhine experiments, and even our ordinary observations, show that the psyche transcends the limits of causal behavior. Yet because there is a meaningful correlation between the psyche and the events it observes, the connection between mind and world can not be pure chance, either. Instead, the psyche is related to events in the world by the principle of synchronicity.

Jung regarded synchronicity as an explanatory principle on a par with causality. Just as causation explains the relationship of certain kinds of events, synchronicity explains the relationship between events that are meaningfully, but not causally, related. It is “an empirical concept which postulates an intellectually necessary principle.” Synchronicity, according to Jung, is a candidate for explaining the soul-body relation, and therefore solving the mind-body causation problem. The problem of understanding how physical processes in the brain are related to the psyche is solved by the empirical insight that they relate to each other acausally according to the principle of synchronicity.

In the Miracle experiment, for example, psilocybin doesn’t cause the mystical experience, it causes changes in the brain. The drug can’t cause the mystical experience, because to do so it would have to cause changes in a non-physical reality, which violates the rules of causation. The mystical experience is a synchronicity event -- it is a mental state that is meaningfully related to physical changes in the brain, without being caused by them.

Synchronicity eliminates the requirement for causal space-time connections between body, mind and spirit, and dissolves the mind-body causation problem. We have, of course, already dissolved this problem using the theory of dynamical systems. But synchronicity brings us closer to understanding how the connection between dynamical systems works. Jung writes:

A causalistic explanation of synchronicity seems out of the question . . . It consists essentially of “chance equivalences” . . . The meaningful coincidence or equivalence of a psychic and a physical state that have no causal relationship to one another means, in general terms, that it is a modality without a cause, an “acausal orderedness” . . . [If causeless events exist] then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not derivable from any known antecedents.

Terms such as acausal orderedness, repeating patterns, and “not derivable from any known antecedents” -- states that are not dependent upon their conditions -- should by now be quite familiar. It is the “chaos-talk” of dynamical systems theory. Experimental work by Rhine, Tart and others, and research in dynamical systems theory shows that there is an acausal connecting principle, but it must be remembered that this principle cannot be validated by causal explanation or experiment. The acausal connecting principle does not work through a series of events related to one another by natural law; if it did, it would be causation. Not only the principle being explained, but the explanation itself, must be of a very different sort.

While underlying conditions do not “cause” the behavior of dynamical systems, the overall behavior of dynamical systems is strongly dependent upon the initial conditions under which the system is established. The characteristic patterns -- the attractors -- of such systems are fixxed when the system is established, and the system will tend to return to those patterns should it be disturbed. This is very different from causal, or linear systems, which, once disturbed, tend to remain disturbed until some correcting force is applied. If shaken, a mixture of salad oil and water tends to separate once the shaking stops. The interface between oil and water is a dynamical system, and once the outside shaking force is removed, the system returns to its original pattern of behavior -- the oil and water separate. The heart tends to beat at a certain rate. A dynamical system controls heartbeat, and when that system is disturbed -- through exercise, for example -- the rate changes, but the pattern of elecctrical discharge within the heart remains the same. Once the disturbance is removed, the heart returns to its normal, self-generated rate of discharge.

The attractor of a dynamical system may be pushed, bent, modulated, and altered in many ways, but its pattern of behavior remains, and once the altering force is removed, the system returns to its original behavior. On the other hand, once a causal system is disturbed, it does not return to its original behavior on its own. If we nudge a ball rolling along the floor, it will not return to its original path unless an additional correcting force is applied. Causal systems do not have characteristic patterns of behavior -- they are totally at the mercy of the conditions in which they exist.

In his book Chaos, James Gleick tells the story of the Dutch physicist Christian Huygens who invented the pendulum clock, and accidentally discovered an interesting property of dynamical systems. Huygens had several clocks lined up against a wall, and noticed that they were all swinging in perfect synchronization. Knowing that he could not possibly have built all of the clocks accurately enough to account for this, he supposed that somehow the movement of the clocks was being coordinated by vibrations transmitted through the walls. Nothing understood about pendulums, by themselves, could account for this phenomenon -- the causal laws that govern the movement of pendulums cannot explain how this happens. It is a case where events are meaningfully connected but not causally related.

Huygens had observed a property unique to dynamical systems called entrainment, or mode locking. Entrainment explains why the same side of the moon always faces the earth, and why satellites tend to spin with a rotation that is some whole-number ratio to their orbital period. Gleick cites several other examples:

Mode locking occurs throughout electronics, making it possible, for example, for a radio receiver to lock in on signal even when there are small fluctuations in their frequency. Mode locking accounts for the ability of groups of oscillators, including biological oscillators, like heart cells and nerve cells, to work in synchronization. A spectacular example in nature is a Southeast Asian species of firefly that congregates in trees during mating periods, thousands at one time, blinking in a fantastic spectral harmony.

Very little is known about how mode locking works. What is known is that it cannot be a causal principle. In the case of the fireflies, for example, a causal explanation would require that some signal apart from the blinking itself be transmitted throughout the tree that results in the fireflies blinking. This signal would have to be transmitted instantaneously throughout the entire group, else the blinking would not be all at once, but rather it would spread outward from its point of origin. Since no such signal exists, and a signal that can be transmitted instantaneously by physical means is impossible, there must be an acausal principle involved.

Gleick states that, in the case of satellites, the “nonlinearity in the tidal attraction of the satellite tends to lock it in.” Linear systems are ones that operate according to causal principles -- their operation can be described with linnear equations, not unlike those found in common algebra. A non-linear system is one whose behavior cannot be described in terms of ordinary equations. Other factors are required, and those factors are responsible for breaking the causal connections within the system. It is a general property of non-linear -- or dynamical, another word for the same thing -- systems to “lock on” to each other, such that their observable characteristics appear to follow the same pattern. To say that the non-linear components of a system are responsible for mode locking is as much as saying that mode locking is an acausal connecting principle. It is, just as Jung states for synchronicity, “an empirical concept which postulates an intellectually necessary principle.”

Entrainment means that under the right circumstances, dynamical systems tend to incorporate the patterns of other systems into their own. While causal events can not change the characteristic pattern of a dynamical system once it is established, dynamical systems can quite easily “modulate” each other’s patterns. This is a basic characteristic of the way dynamical systems operate, and it means that these systems interact with each other acausally.

Like causation, entrainment is not a principle to be explained -- it is a fundamental explaining principle. One does not ask how causation “works” -- philosophers have asked that for a very long time, and there is no satisfactory answer. It is known that causation does work in certain circumstances -- that natural laws are useful for explaining some phenomena. It would therefore not be reasonable to expect a better explanation of entrainment than can be given for causation. Entrainment is a phenomenon that can be observed. It is not simply an assumption -- it can be detected, like causation, in state-space diagrams of systems, and it can be observed experimentally. Mode locking is the fundamental principle by which dynamical systems exchange information, and it is “systems-talk” for what Jung called synchronicity.

What Jung describes as synchronicity in the psychological realm, what Tart characterizes as psi phenomena, and what Gleick calls entrainment or mode locking in the physical realm are one and the same principle. They are simply different names for the same acausal connecting principle. The acausal connecting principle establishes the relationship between systems whose initial conditions are established by causal systems involving force, acceleration, and so on, and whose ongoing behavior is maintained by dynamical systems. This applies as much to orbiting satellites as it does to the psyche. When Jung describes synchronicity as, “The meaningful coincidence or equivalence of a psychic and a physical state that have no causal relationship to one another,” this is simply the application of the acausal connecting principle in the realm of the psyche.

While we may feel a bit uneasy about the acausal connecting principle, mostly because we can’t offer a causal explanation for it, it should be pointed out that the existence of an acausal connecting principle is basic not only to an understanding of consciousness, but also in the understanding of quantum physics. The Uncertainty Principle is not a causal phenomenon -- it is based upon acausal connections between events. Experiments have shown that quantum events are indeed not related by causation. As an example, it is possible to produce certain particles in pairs. The laws governing the production of these particle pairs state that both particles spin, but necessarily spin in opposite directions. If one produces such a particle pair, then looks at the spin of these particles as they move away from each other at nearly the speed of light, one finds that they indeed spin in opposite directions. Now if the spin direction of one member of the particle pair is changed after the particles separate from each other, one would predict, based upon the laws governing particle spin, that the spin of the other particle should also change. That is what is observed in the experiment -- changing the spin of one particle changes the spin of the other. The problem with this result is that for the other particle to “know” that the spin of its partner has changed, some kind of information would have to move between the particles at nearly twice the speed of light. According to the laws that govern the transfer of energy, it is impossible for energy to move at faster than the speed of light, if it is to follow the rules of causation. Therefore, however it is that one particle “tells” the other its spin has changed, it can’t be causation at work.

What are we to do with this result? If we give up on the laws that restrict energy travel to less than or equal to the speed of light, we would have to give up pretty much everything we know about relativity and quantum mechanics. Since we know that both of those theories work -- they both explain things, and they both produce useful theoretical and practical results -- then instead of giving up physics, we give up causation. Since, as Hume said, we have no proof of causation, and we have an experimental situation in which causation does not a cannot apply -- the physicist’s equivalent of the Rhine experiment -- then we must concede that there is, in fact, an acausal connecting principle. Physicists sometimes refer to this principle as action at a distance.

The whole idea of an “objective reality” that follows a certain set of causal laws or principles -- the idea of determinism -- is completely inconsistent with the facts. Writes John Gribbin in In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat: “Objective reality does not have any place in our fundamental description of the universe, but action at a distance, or acausality, does have such a place.” The physics which makes lasers, computer chips, and other modern technology possible has at its foundations not only uncertainty, but also the principle that events are interconnected by relationships other than causality. Action at a distance -- another name for acausality or synchronicity -- just is a basic feature of the way the universe works, whether “common sense” approves of it or not. There is nothing “supernatural” about physics, about consciousness, about archetypes, or about portal experiences after all -- what makes them appear “mysterious” is their incompatibility with the eighteenth century ideology that holds “modern” thinking captive.

The acausal connecting principle is the “solution” to the Incompleteness Principle. It explains why the universe does not fall apart at its subatomic seams, and it also explains why consciousness can exist as a unique self-generated entity, and can break the rules of the environment in which it appears. Neither the universe, nor the consciousness that evolved within it, are bound to follow a pre-ordained or imposed set of rules. The “system” of the universe is made up of competing and inconsistent rules -- like causation and probability -- through which dynamical systems interact with one another.

The acausal connecting principle is what allows different systems to “intermix” or modulate their patterns without any underlying causal connection, and without destroying one another. Just as in the case of Huygens’ pendulum clocks, the patterns of consciousness and of archetypes can intermix, without the requirement that the physical activity of the brain be involved. This is how intersections become conscious, and how consciousness itself comes about as the result of archetypes. It is also because of this acausal connection that interactions between consciousness and spirit are symbolic and interpretive. Acausal connections involve dynamical systems, and we “see” dynamical systems as fractal images, whether those systems are mixtures of oil and water, or of spirit and consciousness.

What sustains human consciousness, and makes it different from here-and-gone perceptual chaos and instinctual psychoid processes, is its acausal connection with spirit. Mode locking between spirit and consciousness makes possible the ongoing flow of psychic energy that keeps consciousness going as a self-organizing entity. It is also because of mode locking that human consciousness is spontaneous. Mode locking between archetypes and a brain driven dynamical by evolved high-gain neural circuitry, by psychoactives, by meditative practices or physiological conditions is not a causal event, and nothing about the anatomy or physiology of the brain can predict when or how such mode locking will occur. It is, from the causal point of view, without basis or antecedent condition. Consciousness just appears out of nowhere, manifesting itself in the archetypal images of dreams, fantasies and visions. It is the hand of God touching, or the lamps of the gods illuminating, the emerging soul within each individual.

If dynamical systems such as archetypes and consciousness can interact acausally and intermix their fractal patterns, then is it not also true that our own consciousness influences the patterns of archetypes as much as they influence us? If visions are possible under this theory, then is not magic -- influencing the world through portal experiences -- also possible? There is no reason to suppose that dynamical interactions are one-way streets. However, just as one must have certain knowledge and experience to understand the symbology of archetypal visions, one needs similar adeptness at manipulating symbols to obtain useful results from symbolic magic.

But there is a more important consequence of this acausal connection between psyche and spirit. If our consciousness can be “modulated” by the patterns of archetypes, then is it not also the case that the patterns of the archetypes themselves are “modulated” by our consciousness? If archetypes are the manifestation in the superconscious mind of the vital force or entelechy, then the collective unconscious is as much a product of us as it is of spirit. We are as much a part of the collective unconscious as it is of us, or so the rules of synchronicity lead us to conclude. Could it be true that we are all interconnected, not by any set of rules, laws, decrees or moralizing babble, or by any form of social interaction, but by a continuum of energy that underlies the existence of the universe itself? If the greatness of humanity lies in spontaneous human consciousness, then perhaps humanity is destined for an even greater greatness. If this is so, then what are we going to do about it?

Chapter 5: Beyond the Shadow of Utopia

The ancients worshipped trees as divine spirits, and for us, the image of a tree serves as a unifying metaphor for the idea of consciousness as a physical-psychic-spiritual entity. With its roots in the ground, absorbing nutrients and moisture from the soil, the trunk channels life giving substances upward from the Earth. At the top of the tree the leaves spread outward from a complex network of branches, receiving illumination and energy from the Sun, transforming the Earth’s chemistry into a highly organized living system.

From its roots in the old brain, consciousness receives the energies and forces of nature and Earth. What Freud saw as the id is really only a primitive classification of the natural forces that affect the psyche, understood in terms of a materialistic ontology. The forces of nature are more complex that Eros and Thanatos; they are the energies of mystic participation that gave rise to ideas of a cyclic nature and the nature spirits that drive it. Similarly, the energies of spirit illuminate the mind through archetypal images like the rays of the Sun striking the leaves. When the upward moving forces of nature collide with the downward moving forces of spirit, the explosion of chaotic activity creates individual human consciousness, with its self-organized Self, its unique pattern of identity, and its power of free will to determine its own destiny.

The analogy is a good one, for it shows how consciousness growing out of both biology and theology retains its independence from both. Identically cloned trees will have different patterns of branches because of the probabilistic forces that control their development and their unique patterns of matter-light interaction. Identical twins are not identical persons nor identical consciousnesses; once nature and spirit collide within the psyche, DNA becomes irrelevant. Those things that create the possibility of consciousness do not control its eventual identity.

It would be well to keep this in mind in this age of genetic cloning, for their is an underlying belief among many that cloning the body is the same as cloning the person. Some think that a lost pet or child can simply be cloned, but identical genetics does not mean an identical body because of the probabilistic processes of morphogenesis, nor an identical mind because of fractal consciousness.

If this is all true, then what has happened to us? How has the mighty tree fallen; how did we fall from the greatness of the archetypes and superconsciousness to drive-by shootings, tying people to fences and bludgeoning them to death, dragging people to their deaths behind pickup trucks, and even worse? How could someone connected to the world of spirit through the spectacular images of archetypes do such things?

The answer is, of course, that they cannot. People can only commit such unspeakable acts when their ties to the Unknown have been completely severed. Though less dramatic but nonetheless destructive, runaway reproduction and environmental devastation are also consequences of this separation from the Unknown. Having seen the role of the Unknown and its archetypes in creating and maintaining consciousness, we must conclude that such acts are only possible when consciousness itself has disappeared.

The culprit is materialism, or more correctly, our blind-faith belief that we are social animals. Believing that there is no such thing as spirit poisons our thoughts to the point that the spontaneous appearance of archetypes is ignored or ridiculed. While technology, social-ontology, chatter and privacy destruction all have important roles to play in the fall from greatness, in the end it is the emptiness of our own beliefs that severs what we think we are from who we really are.

To be fair, in its day materialism brought forth many benefits. It turned inquiring minds away from dogmatic theology, and focused attention upon observation and experiment. In so doing, it brought humanity into the picture of understanding the world. Adopted as a social doctrine, materialism and its accompanying rationalistic and social philosophies fueled the French Revolution, and rid the world of the divine right of kings and its abusive aristocratic social systems.

But once institutionalized, materialism, like the theological philosophies before it, became a tool for perpetuating the institution. Ideas that found intellectual and social movements often become dogmas, and instead of stimulating creativity and inquiry, become the means for suppressing and oppressing alternative opinions. In our own time, the ideas of “pure chance” and atoms in the void have descended into the same senselessness as counting angels on the head of a pin, and those who do not embrace and espouse the vacuous metaphysics of materialism are regarded as crackpots and charlatans.

Along with diminishing the importance of the individual, the institutionalization of materialism and social-ontology as political and social philosophies has eclipsed the importance of the intellect and creativity, collapsing humanity into a new age of darkness. Where the late 19th and early 20th century saw the blossoming of the “age of the mind” -- of Einstein, Heisenberg, and Jung, among many others -- the acceptance of deflationary philosophies in the late 20th century has plunged humanity into a mindless “age of the body”. No longer are education, thought and creativity the marks of stature; now it is physical attractiveness and social aggressiveness -- the very same qualities that make for stature in a public zoo. The lowest and stupidest become the best and the greatest, while the most intelligent and creative are ridiculed and ignored, in an age where passing a drug test and “dressing for success” are the criteria for social acceptance.

Much of this fall from greatness has happened in the last forty or so years, when mass media fell from education and information into entertainment. Filled with chatter, in the name of earning ratings and selling products, the media have descended to the least common denominator of body this and sex that, trading carefully researched news and challenging ideas for deodorant and exercise videos. When the least common denominator becomes the standard, is it any wonder that human behavior declines to something even lower than what is seen among caged animals?

This “modern” world is for the “do-er” and the “go-getter”; it is no place for the thinker and the mystic. This is as Nietzsche predicted in his theory of the ascetic ideal: humanity continues this downward spiral until everything that is important becomes meaningless and worthless, and everything that is unimportant and worthless becomes the most important. The philosopher and the artist are ridiculed, while the athlete and the actor become the heroes. How many schoolchildren know the name and history of some football player or supermodel, and how many know the name of the most recent Nobel prize winners, of any artist or poet, or even know who the Dali Lama is?

This descent into the mire of stupidity happened because culture has broken the connection between individual and spirit. Where the archetypes serve to draw us up from the slug-like life of the body, materialism and social-ontology have destroyed our inner contact with spirit, ridiculed and persecuted the appearance of archetypal images, and allowed us to fall back into the “age of the body” much as decaying mushrooms fall back into the dung-heap from which they arise. The consequence of this social and mental indolence is, as we have observed, the same fate that has befallen all other “civilizations” in which the individual has been sacrificed for society -- eventual extinction at the hands of contingent events.

If we want some other future, then the strongest possible steps must be taken to banish the bicameral mind and the stupidity and mediocrity into which it has led us, and restore the greatness of individual human consciousness and its connections with the world of spirit. Materialism and social-ontology must be sent the way of the divine right of kings; we need new ideas and new perspectives to replace mindless social conformity with a divine right of individuals. We begin this by taking ourselves seriously: what we are is spontaneous human consciousness, and what we are not is our society, our technology, or the modern obsession with the body. The body is merely dust; what made it different from dust in the first place is human consciousness, and to rise above the dust heap, it is to the archetypes that we must return.

Archetypes are unconscious processes. They can assimilate and discharge psychic energy without any awareness on the part of the individual. Because they are dynamical systems directly connected with spirit, they can appear without discoverable antecedent conditions or causes in consciousness. The consciousness that archetypes bootstrap is therefore spontaneous, and that consciousness will arise spontaneously when an archetype becomes activated in a psyche connected with a brain that is biologically capable of supporting dynamical systems.

It is for this reason that the appearance of introspective consciousness among children is an entirely spontaneous event. When such spontaneous consciousness appears in children, it often appears as participation mystique, just as it appeared in their ancient ancestors. Whether in dreams or fantasies, an underlying sense of unity appears, along with the beginnings of a sense of self. Joseph Campbell writes:

The sense, then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum . . . may be said to constitute the axiomatic, spontaneously supposed frame of reference of all childhood experience, no matter what the local details of this experience happen to be.

Campbell, Jung and others have shown that motifs similar to childhood fantasies and dreams appear in mythologies the world over, and in the unconscious imagery of adults. Jung’s explanation for these patterns that are essential components of the psyche is that they are “inherited”, meaning they have their origin in a common psychic substrate -- the collective unconscious -- to which all consciousnesses have access. This substrate, which Hans Driesch called vital force, is the immaterial continuum from which consciousness arises.

But we are toying with a dangerous idea here. If there is a universal, spiritual collective unconscious from which archetypes and consciousness originate, could that collective force have a consciousness of its own? Could its behavior be intentional, acts of a conscious will toward some meaning or purpose? Science rejects teleology -- the idea of an underlying purpose, force or intelligence in the universe -- because doing so produces the most useful theories. “Useful” must be qualified, however, as meaning physicalistic, materialistic and causally explicable. Once we enter the world of dynamical systems, and especially those connected with archetypes, we necessarily leave the world of physicalism and causation behind, and enter the strange world of uncertainty, incompleteness, fractals and entrainment. In this new world, the idea of teleology translates into entrainment between systems, a perfectly ordinary phenomenon. We may find, however, that this ordinary phenomenon leads us to some shocking, perhaps frightening, and certainly exhilarating conclusions.

Can There Be Consciousness Without Archetypes?

What Jaynes calls the bicameral mind is really a psychoid process. It arises out of the neural circuitry of the brain, and for the most part operates unconsciously. We are never directly aware of the patterns of social behavior that the right brain monitors. We only become aware of the bicameral mind’s activity when it perceives a threat to social patterns of behavior and activates the fear response. This fear may be perceived as “voices in the head” or, more commonly today, through emotional responses.

Just as archetypes appear in consciousness symbolically, the bicameral mind appears symbolically in consciousness as society, an image of the social patterns the bicameral mind uses to orient itself. There is no such thing as society. If there is such a thing, then where is it? How big is it? How much does it weigh? The answer is that it does not exist at all; it is an abstract, symbolic representation that arises in consciousness as a result of an unconscious, socially-oriented process. Unlike archetypes whose patterns are self-generated, the images of the bicameral mind are not its own, but are assembled from observations of social behavior into the unconscious phantasm of society.

What sustains the bicameral mind is not psychic energy from archetypes, but psychic energy arising out of the conflict between biological instincts and the requirements of social conformity. In addition, because the bicameral mind is a thing opposed to individuality and consciousness, it derives additional energy from conflicts arising between individual consciousness and social interactions. Consequently, the bicameral mind, or social psychoid process, as it is more appropriately called, is an unconscious process that feeds off the ongoing tension between individual and culture, over which consciousness has little control.

The symbolic imagery of the social psychoid process finds its expression in philosophy and other intellectual pursuits as the social-ontological assumption, and various theories that derive from this assumption. This view would have us believe that there is no consciousness of the kind we have been discussing. What exists is society, and one way or another society is what gives us a sense of individuality. “Individuality” is, according to this assumption, simply a phantasm of membership in a social order, a reflection of the place in the machine of society that each person fills.

We have already examined this view, but it gives rise to a question we must now face: Can consciousness arise out of social processes, as opposed to the spiritual and dynamical processes we have examined so far? Is consciousness really a social phenomenon, as opposed to an individual phenomenon? If consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, or by-product, of social behavior, then maybe archetypes, spirit, and the greatness alleged to have disappeared may not exist at all.

For society to bootstrap consciousness, it has to “get in the head” one way or another. There are two ways for this to happen. One is by way of the social psychoid process. If archetypes can bootstrap consciousness, then why can’t the social psychoid process fill the same role along the lines of Jung’s theory?

There are several reasons why a social process can not bootstrap consciousness. The most important reasons have to do with the fact that the social psychoid process is not a dynamical system. Because its patterns are merely copies of the behavior it observes, it has no unity or identity of its own. If consciousness depended upon such a process, the identity of consciousness would change from moment to moment, and there would be no continuity or self. We would not be the same person throughout time, and there could be no memories or coherency of behavior. We could not remember things from moment to moment because memories all relate to the self, and if the self were to change over time, memories of the past would always be gibberish.

More importantly, since the patterns of the social psychoid process are entirely dependent upon social observation and behavior, if such a process were responsible for consciousness, in the absence of others our minds would simply shut down. There would be no psychic energy to sustain the ego, and any conscious awareness of ourselves would vanish in the absence of others. We would simply go into a coma any time we are alone. This is empirically false; it does not happen. Quite the opposite: most of the time we regard “being ourselves” as really only possible in the absence of others. Individuating phenomena like portal experiences are possible only for a consciousness that is sustained by an ongoing dynamical system, and they are not possible for any mental process that must draw upon social situations for its existence.

Furthermore, it would be impossible for introspective distance to exist for such a socially-created consciousness. A consciousness arising out of social processes would have no separation from them, because the only patterns it could have would be the very ones it observes in social behavior. The external would be the internal, in Hegel’s words, and there would be no way for such a consciousness to envision or choose alternatives to existing patterns of behavior. Such a consciousness would have no adaptive value over the bicameral mind itself, and it is not only unlikely, but also historically false, that such a consciousness would have survived in evolution.

Because it seems impossible for a social psychoid process to be the bearer of consciousness, most who cling to the social-ontological view appeal to the second way society can get into the head -- via language. Both Edelman and Jaynes, as well as many philosophers and scientists, argue that language lies at the bottom of consciousness. We are who we are, think what we think, and do what we do because of language, according to these ideas.

Language is largely an unconscious process. While language may be used consciously, the processes by which it works remain invisible to consciousness. It is true that language is most often learned through conscious processes, but it could be argued that language can also be learned without consciousness, as is the case with computers. Further, language is most often used unconsciously. Ordinarily, there is no conscious choice of words or grammar in speech -- the words just come out automatically.

The problem with this idea is that while the mental operations governing language use often operate unconsciously, language can nonetheless be understood by consciousness. Language is fully representable to consciousness, and there is nothing about language that consciousness can not understand. In other words, while language use can be unconscious, it is not a psychoid process. The significance of this is that consciousness can discharge any psychic energy that is built up by language processes. A psychoid process accumulates psychic energy because consciousness can not understand it, whereas other unconscious processes disappear when consciousness assimilates their energy. For this reason, language can never accumulate the necessary energy to either bootstrap or sustain consciousness.

A Mind without a Soul

Even though the social psychoid process cannot bootstrap consciousness, this does not mean that it can not take control of the psyche. The theories of both Freud and Jung contend that a psychoid process amassing sufficient psychic energy can displace or destroy the ego-consciousness of the individual. While growing in energy, these processes are represented to consciousness symbolically. Their images appear in dreams and thoughts, and if not drained of their energy one way or another, the images increase in intensity until the consciousness of the individual collapses in a collage of frightening thoughts, bizarre behavior and eventual madness.

The way in which the spontaneous consciousness of childhood is replaced by the social psychoid process is identical with the path of emerging mental illness. The archetypal images that appear in childhood dreams and fantasies are ridiculed and dissolved in social chatter until, one by one, the very archetypes that give rise to consciousness are robbed of their power. We are told, “There is no such thing as Santa Claus,” when the archetype of the benevolent spirit is not only psychologically, but in the case of Saint Nicholas historically, real; “There are no fairies or secret playmates,” when their archetypes are found in every mythology and sacred history of all humanity. These are just two examples of how the lies of social conformity rob the child’s emerging consciousness of its connections with spirit.

Once the ties with spirit are weakened, the social conformity pressures are really turned on. Much of the “stress” and “difficult times” of adolescence that one hears so much whining about are directly the result of pressures for social conformity attacking the individual. As in any other ego-threatening condition, signs of neurotic, compulsive and obsessive behavior emerge. Suicides, teenage alcohol and drug abuse, delinquent and senselessly violent behavior, depression and malaise, irresponsible sexual activity, and so on are all signs of impending ego collapse. They indicate the ego is beginning to lose control of behavior, and that unconscious processes are sneaking through the barrier of ego consciousness.

Into the psychic vacuum of dissolving consciousness slips the social psychoid process. Feeding off the psychic energy arising out of the conflict between consciousness and “society”, the social psychoid process locks on to the moralizing babble of organized religion, the chatter and leveling of mass media, the mechanical stimulus-response activity of computer games, the rhythmic thumping of popular music, and the strength-in-numbers of being a “team player”. Once consciousness is pushed out of the picture, mindless socially conforming behavior ensues. The “I” becomes “we”, and the promise of spontaneous human consciousness is lost in mindless work, reproduction and entertainment. O.B.I.T. technologies are brought to bear, insuring that if archetypes or consciousness should try to re-emerge, they will be suppressed.

From a psychoanalytic point of view, the condition in which the control of the psyche by ego-consciousness is replaced by a psychoid process is referred to as psychosis. Psychosis is a mental illness -- what, in primitive cultures, was considered demonic possession -- in which the consciousness of the individual is destroyed by a psychoid process. The individual is no longer “who” he or she is, and the individual’s identity is taken over by an unconscious process. We must conclude from this that what is called “maturity” and “normal” in today’s culture amounts to a situation in which individual consciousness is replaced by the social psychoid process -- a condition, in fact, of psychotic mental illness.

The proof of this is evident throughout modern culture; all we need do is, as Joseph Campbell said, “Read the newspapers.” One function of consciousness is to keep unconscious processes under control. The ego does this because it has a self structure that relates behaviors and their consequences to the well-being of itself. In asking, “What will happen to me if I do this?” the ego brings destructive impulses from the unconscious under control, using its psychic energy of free will. If the ego is dissociated, or broken apart by a powerful psychoid process, it is no longer able to exert this kind of control. Unconscious processes have no underlying unity with one another -- there is no sense of self -- and consequently psychoid processes do noot exert any control over each other. Bizarre thoughts and beliefs, paranoid delusions and feelings of persecution, and dangerously violent behaviors emerge unchecked.

We opened this chapter by asking how deranged acts of violence are possible, and the answer is because there is no ego-consciousness to stop them. Everyone, at some time or other, gets strange ideas or violent impulses, and for the most part consciousness is able to intercede before they become destructive. Whether it is attractive feelings toward a stranger at the beach, or angry feelings toward someone whose behavior is offensive, consciousness steps in and takes control before something dangerous occurs. Once the unreasonableness and potential self-destructiveness of the situation is realized, the unconscious impulse is either drained of its energy, or sublimated and expressed in ways that are not self-destructive.

But if consciousness is not in control -- if the ego has been dissociated by the social psychoid process -- then there is no one to step in between impulse and behavior. Domestic arguments become assaults, attraction becomes rape, anger becomes murder, hazing becomes a schoolroom shooting, frustration becomes a mail-bomb, and amorousness becomes overpopulation when the internal becomes the external, and the self vanishes in chatter and leveling.

These are the external, observable consequences of psychosis on a culture-wide scale. On the inside, the effects of social psychosis are even more bizarre. Mental illnesses often first manifest themselves as irrational and inexplicable beliefs and feelings of persecution and intolerance. Schizophrenics will spend hours washing their hands to the point that the skin comes off, in the belief that they are being attacked by germs or worms. Is the persecution of homosexuals in modern society any less of a psychotic delusion? What possible consequence could this behavior have for anyone other than the participants? Rationally, of course, there are no consequences, but to a mind devoid of reflective thought and seized by psychotic oversocialization, anything that isn’t “normal” -- fitting the social psychoid process’s version of “reality” -- must be destroyed. The same could be said of racial intolerance -- there is nothing in the theory of conscioousness, or pertaining to the world or archetypes and spirit, that mentions differences in ethnicity or skin color. Yet those who are, or are perceived to be, homosexuals or “mud people” are brutally murdered and discriminated against on a routine basis in our modern, scientifically and technologically advanced culture.

To this list could be added the more modern and “scientifically informed” intolerance of drug use. There is a difference between use and abuse, but of course any use that threatens social conformity is necessarily abuse to social psychosis. This is the reason for the draconian intolerance and persecution of those who use psychoactives. These are the very substances that bootstrapped consciousness eons ago, and could well do the same in today’s psychotic culture. “Expansion of consciousness,” leading to direct interaction with archetypes and spirit, is as likely in the casual user as in the Miracle experiment, and the social psychoid process knows this perfectly well. The threat to mindless, soul-less socialization is a very real one, and the social psychoid process must use all of the resources available to it to prevent spontaneous human consciousness from reappearing in the modern world. Could it possibly matter, on a reasonable and realistic level, whether someone grows and uses their own marijuana? Of course not, provided it is done so responsibly, but the social psychoid process can not understand the idea of “responsibly”, and assumes that any use is abuse, and is a threat to existing social order.

It seems that the less of a real threat an idea or behavior is, the more severely it is persecuted by the social psychotic. This is nowhere more apparent than in religious intolerance. Religion, understood in this context as the personal relationship between the individual and spirit, is perhaps the innermost sanctum of individuality. How one views one’s hidden self, and how that self relates to the archetypes from which it emerged is the most personal belief one can have. And yet, both historically and in the contemporary world, these beliefs are the focus of the most horrendous intolerance and persecution. This intolerance is precisely because these beliefs are personal, and are therefore a function of consciousness and individuality. Social psychosis fears individuality because individuality is the calling card of ego-consciousness, the very thing that the social psychoid process must subdue in order to gain control.

The danger to the social psychoid process posed by religious belief is eliminated by transforming religion into a social institution. Enshrine the belief in social behavior, substitute for the belief a socially constructed morality, enforce conformity with the threat of excommunication or damnation, and you have the formula for transforming a potential threat to social psychosis into a pillar of support. The religious belief that relates individual to spirit is thus emptied of its individual content, and mutated into a feeding frenzy for the bicameral mind.

Nowhere is this travesty against spirit more apparent than in the mass-media marketing of God and Christ through radio and television. Recently I heard a radio minister express what he called a “devotional thought”, that the rewards of peace and heaven were to be obtained through submissiveness. The rewards of social conformity, perhaps, but not of anything connected with spirit. The minister went on to say that the greatness of Christ was that he was submissive. Now I do not profess to be a doctor of the Christian religion, but I can nonetheless read, and nothing I ever read in the Bible or anywhere else suggested that Christ was submissive. Christ never forgot who He was, He never ceased to be who He was, and He never surrendered Himself to those around Him. He never said, “Just tell me who you want me to be and what you want me to do, and I will do it.” His humility was not submission; it was His weapon against the wealthy and powerful who sought to destroy Him. Like Gautama, Gandhi and other ministers of spirit, His poverty was a clear and unambiguous refusal to be co-opted and absorbed by the social order. There never was a stupider thing said than Christ was submissive, and there never was a more clear example of the perversion and desecration of religion by socially psychotic minds than such a use of Christ to suggest and enforce social conformity.

The social psychoid process often sees what it wants to see in the behavior of others. It is dangerous to mistake humility for submissiveness, for as Gandhi showed, one man’s humility can overcome an Empire’s power. Only the insecure need to be aggressive, only those with nothing to say need to hear themselves talk, only the weak need use force, and only those devoid of the inner strength of consciousness need the strength in numbers of “society”.

Whether it is the submission of a wife to her husband, or of a job applicant to a drug test, submissiveness is a consequence of individuality swallowed up by society, and consciousness replaced by psychosis. The social psychoid process has no free will, it has only the motivation to conform. While it is true that submissiveness can produce a kind of peace -- the same kind of peace that one feels standing in a line -- this peace is acquired only at a terrible price. The destruction of individual consciousness means not only the destruction of the society by contingencies, but the severance from spirit means the loss of life beyond death.

I believe a case could be made that the Bible itself is something of a record of the emergence of consciousness. The Old Testament depicts a culture of rules, where conformity is the criterion for acceptance. We see the paradoxes and incompleteness, too: “Thou shalt not kill,” and yet those who commit offenses are to be stoned to death, and one should not suffer a witch to live. On the other hand, the New Testament moves from the external to the internal: it is the thoughts and feelings, emanating from consciousness, that become the important factors. Christ Himself, being both man and God, is the quintessential archetype of consciousness. That in the end, neither condemnation nor torture and death could destroy Him, is both a promise and a warning of things to come.

We must remember that the concept of “society” is inherently flawed. “Society” is a symbolic representation of a psychoid process, a process that threatens the existence of humanity on both an individual and a collective basis. The concept of “society” is flawed because, as with many psychotic delusions, it views itself as a complete and infallible system. To maintain this delusion, the social psychoid process must both fight against consciousness, and be blind to the possibility of contingent events. While we see the asteroid, prophecy and “doomsday” shows on television, they are rarely taken seriously. People continue with their routines, their jobs, their reproduction, all the while oblivious to the fact that sooner or later, these things will all come to dust.

That outcome is avoidable, but only if “society” is abandoned as the paradigm of human life. Spontaneous human consciousness is an alternative pathway, a different way to live than urbanized society. Consciousness is also a mechanism for survival, while history has shown that urbanized living is not. The promise of the resurrection of Christ, of the enlightenment of the Buddha, and of the uncountable other expressions of the archetype of the self in religion and mythology is that we can reclaim our consciousness from social psychosis. Those same belief systems also express the severest of warnings, if consciousness is allowed to be swallowed up by the psychotic conformity of the bicameral mind.

The Healing Sickness

What prevents the ego from collapsing under the stresses and difficulties of ordinary life is its connection with spirit. Psychoid processes can arise from the id as a result of emotional stress, physical illness, and other factors. As these processes accumulate psychic energy, they can either be dealt with by consciousness directly, or through their symbolic representations. The ego holds its own against these processes by drawing upon the psychic energy residing in the superconscious mind. Provided that this connection between mind and spirit is strong, the ego can resist most of the challenges it faces.

In today’s culture, however, the attacks against the ego are so many and so strong that it is a wonder consciousness exists at all. The most dangerous attack comes from the underlying beliefs in materialism and social-ontology, for these beliefs weaken the connection between mind and spirit. When one considers the strength of the social psychoid process, and how much reinforcement it gets from leveling, chatter, and O.B.I.T. technologies, the philosophically deflated psyche is left on it own, and becomes highly vulnerable to even the slightest attacks from the unconscious. As we have seen, breaking the connection with spirit, both through social ridicule of archetypes and the transformation of religion from a spiritual to a social institution has left the ego with few resources upon which to draw. As the energies against consciousness mount, the ego collapses and social psychosis supervenes.

Basic to Jung’s theory of psychoanalysis is that accompanying the appearance of unconscious motivations and behaviors in psychotic illness, there will also be the emergence of visions and images similar to those found in mythologies. These visions are archetypal images, and they are indicators that archetypes in the superconscious mind are attempting to reconnect with the psyche, and re-establish consciousness. The disappearance of the ego opens the floodgates, so to speak, and just as instincts and the social psychoid process break through, so can superconscious archetypes.

Because archetypes are psychoid processes, they can themselves seize control of the psyche and destroy consciousness. This does on occasion happen, and while the consequences are considered insanity in this materialistic and social-ontological culture, in other cultures it is considered the mark of holiness. In cultures that respect spirituality, the appearance of an archetype is regarded as a sign of divine intervention, and is taken as a signal that a person will become a healer, shaman, visionary, or holy person. It is the connection with spiritual Unknown that confers this special status upon the individual in whom it occurs. These archetypal appearances may be nurtured to the point that the entire psyche of the individual becomes dominated by the archetype, just as in this culture, every effort is made to insure that the social psychoid process dominates the psyche. When this archetypal domination occurs -- and it is a rare and extreme case that the psyche is completely controlled by an archetype -- the outward symptoms are identical with psychosis. The person is unable to provide for basic needs. Every effort is made to protect and nurture such individuals, for they are considered links between physical existence and the realm of spirit. The inwardness of this condition is one of complete immersion in the collective unconscious -- such persons are, in actuality, the very embodiment of spirit itself. These persons are living portals, and have the wisdom and powers of spirit at their immediate disposal. You will not find such people climbing the ranks of society, for they are for all purposes not-of-this-world. To achieve this state is the goal of many meditative and magical practices, and some think that reincarnation through many lifetimes is necessary to accomplish it.

While it is unusual that an archetype will completely seize the psyche, its energy can be used to displace other psychoid processes. Once a psychoid process has seized control of the psyche, the only thing that can unseat it is another psychoid process. There is no self from which psychic energy can be channeled; the energy must come from somewhere else. What we find in the archetypal images appearing in psychosis is a potential source of energy that can be used to reverse the disease process. The energy with which the social psychoid process is imbued is very great, but it is also entirely dependent upon social conditions. The energy of spirit is infinite, and while the social psychoid process can fight only so hard before it runs out of steam, and archetype can fight in the psyche forever.

To introduce a perhaps unwelcome metaphor, when the processing system of a computer ceases to function, the computer must be shut down and restarted, a process called rebooting. A similar process must occur in the psyche to restore conscious control where consciousness has been dissociated by a psychoid process. The appearance of the patterns and motifs in the psyche characteristic of archetypes reveal the emergence of exactly the kind of psychoid process -- one of infinite and eternal proportions -- that can seize control of the psyche and banish the fragmentary processes of psychosis, social or otherwise, creating the conditions necessary for the return of consciousness. Just as archetypes bootstrap consciousness through dreams, fantasies and other images in the developing minds of children, they can reboot consciousness in a psyche ravaged by disease and suffering.

This is one reason the social psychoid process so desperately fears psychoactive drugs and “the occult” -- they are means by which the psyche can connect with archetypes, and purge the mind of social psychosis. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, many psychiatrists discovered that certain psychoactives could greatly enhance and accelerate the therapeutic process by which archetypes are used to cure psychosis. This research was suppressed by the “War on Drugs” for obvious reasons -- it is these very archetypal images that hold the power to destroy the social psychoid process, and banish it from the psyche for good. Similarly, those who participate in the rites and practices of the Old Religion are condemned as “nuts” and heretics, primarily because such rites have as their object the induction of archetypal visions.

To reboot consciousness, we must first shut down the psychoid processes that have taken control of the psyche. In the case of the social psychoid process, this means we must introduce individuating events into the psyche, experiences and mental contents that break the individual off from the external continuum of social behavior. Because the connection with spirit is individual and not social in nature, the very emergence of archetypal images signals a breaking off of the individual from the social pattern. Jung writes:

The psychological process of individuation is clearly bound up with the so-called transcendent function, since it alone can provide that individual line of development which would be quite unattainable upon the ways dictated by the collective norm.

When an archetype appears in the psyche, it pulls the focal point of the psyche away from psychoid processes because of its energy, and toward the direction of spirit. In doing so it revitalizes the ego, which lies closer to spirit than other psychoid processes, including social ones. The social psychoid process notices this, and a war in the psyche between archetype and social psychosis ensues.

If you want to know what happens when the social psychoid process meets an archetype, there is no better illustration than in an excerpt from Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov entitled The Grand Inquisitor. The story beings with the appearance of Christ in Seville during the Spanish Inquisition. He is promptly taken prisoner by the Inquisitor, who unleashes a angry diatribe, the essential point of which is that while Christ may have been the initiator of the religion, it has since been taken over by the Church, and He has no right to return and interfere. While the Inquisitor rants his mad speech, Christ simply stands in silence. In the end, for all of the Inquisitor’s power and ferocity, the power of His silence is too great, and the Inquisitor collapses into a pathetic, sobbing mass of powerlessness.

The metaphor for the divorce of spirit from religion is obvious, but so is the parallel between archetype and social psychosis. Against the appearance of an archetype in the mind, the social psychosis begins its mad diatribe of condemnation. Every form of ridicule and insult, every threat and image of destruction, and finally every possible injury is paraded before the psyche, but the archetype need only stand in silence. The archetype’s energy pulls the psyche away from social psychoid process, and in the end the social psychoid process withers and collapses. The energies of spirit are released, and in a moment of spectacular imagery the self reappears. Consciousness returns, the psyche is restored, and the social psychoid process, for all its ferocity and might, is revealed to be what it truly is: a disease, nothing more than a runny, snotty nose in the mind.

This process by which an archetype displaces psychosis -- a process which is actually a portal experience -- has the paradoxical name of the healing sickness. It is only when consciousness is gone, or nearly so, that spiritual forces from the superconscious mind can make themselves felt, and can discharge their healing energies into consciousness. If we are to pull humanity out of the despair and violence of a socially psychotic culture, then we must rout out the social psychoid process and replace it with consciousness. The signs of a culture-wide ego collapse are already there. Random acts of violence, mass depression and malaise, and the complex of rigidity, intolerance and persecution all indicate impending psychosis. The emerging archetypal images are there, too -- the increasing popularity of the Old Reliigion, fascination with astrology and tarot cards, people turning to religion for insight and comfort, and the mythic imagery of movies like the Star Wars series.

But the most striking appearance of archetypal images is found in the prophecies and predictions of mass devastation. Every culture, from ancient to modern, has received warnings of its imminent destruction. These warnings are seldom heeded, and perhaps this is one of the reasons that so many civilizations have vanished from the face of the Earth without a trace. Prophecies are regarded as nonsense by the social psychoid process because, like most psychotic mental conditions, it believes itself to be indestructible, and anything to the contrary is ridiculed, ignored or suppressed.

Prophecies should never be regarded as silly; they are not, for the most part, concoctions of charlatans and crackpots. They are constellations of images from the superconscious mind, archetypal images that are both memories from the collective unconscious of what has happened to past civilizations, and visions of what will happen to our own, if the connections with spirit are broken. All prophetic images share a more or less common pattern, and yet they are expressed differently by the prophets of different ages and cultures. This is exactly what we would expect of an archetypal image; it is a form or pattern, whose detail is filled in by the seer according to the time and place in which the vision occurs. This variability is therefore not a sign of foolishness, but rather a signal that an archetype has been activated.

Whether these images appear as floods, fires, earthquakes, or falling objects from the skies, they all tell the same story. They are visions of what happens when consciousness, as a means of dealing with contingent events, is traded for psychotic social conformity. Their appearance in the literature and folklore of a culture indicates that the ego is in trouble, and that the culture as a whole teeters on the brink of extinction.

Why are we so fascinated by these images and stories? At some deep level in the psyche, there is a sense that something is very wrong. Even in a properly “matured” and socialized psyche, what we see in the newspapers leaves its mark in the unconscious, and like the unconscious processes that solve problems while asleep, the daily news is digested and understood. The horrors we witness on a daily basis connect up with archetypal images and the collective unconscious, and when we see or read similar things in prophetic visions, they are brought to life in consciousness as fascinations and outright fear.

The fact is, at some level we want these prophecies to come true. We know the world is messed up, and we don’t know what to do about it. So, we hope that outside events will intercede, and save us from the mess we have put ourselves in. Whether it’s Y2K computer glitches, volcanoes, horrendous storms or alien invaders, we want someone or something to step in and solve the problems for us. Unfortunately, as both prophecy and history reveal, when those events step in the result is always catastrophic.

The tragedy is that we don’t have to wait for contingent events to wipe out the mess of society. We created the mess, we believed the lies of materialism and followed the ways of recameralization and technology, and we have the means to halt our progress toward mass destruction. But to do that, we have to take action. Relaxing in the indolence of media chatter and submitting to technological tyranny will not solve the problem. We must call forth the healing sickness, and as with the mental patient, we must return to the archetypes from which human greatness emerged.

If we are to avoid catastrophic destruction, we must bring the age of “we” to an end. The starting point is individuation; we must punctuate the sentence that begins with “we” before the sentence that beings with “I” can be formulated. The healing sickness begins by turning away from the social psychoid process, and breaking each individual off from the psychotic image of “society”. Once that has happened, the conditions under which archetypes can emerge and revitalize consciousness must be created and sustained. Of course, the social psychoid process will concoct every possible objection, but in the end it is our own survival that is at stake, and the alternative is what you see on the doomsday shows. If we are to come to a different end, then we must choose a different path from the one social psychosis has put before us.

The Personal Myth

What makes it possible for the ego to resist those forces directed against it is the connection with spirit. While archetypes bootstrap and reboot consciousness, the connections between mind and spirit are routinely maintained by what Joseph Campbell calls the personal myth. Recalling Jung’s idea that there is a part of the self that remains unconscious, the personal myth is essentially the fractal, archetypal image resulting from the unity of conscious and unconscious parts of the self. The personal myth is what we have already discussed as the “real” self.

The personal myth is a symbolic image that integrates conscious experiences and thoughts with energies from the superconscious mind. Often, this personal myth is taken from images in mythology, tailored to the specific experiences and situation of the individual. This is one way in which mythologies help to support consciousness, for those images call forth archetypal energies that stabilize the ego and solidify the individual against social and environmental pressures. In many primitive tribes, a child will be assigned a totem animal, tree, or other object. Totems are potent sources of power and wisdom, for they are connected with archetypes via the mythologies of the culture. The child is taught to identify him or her self with that totem, and by doing so draws upon the psychic energy released by archetypes.

Whether derived from fairy tales, religious or historical figures, or from patterns that appear spontaneously in consciousness, the personal myth is the inner vision one has of who one is. The personal myth has a history of its own, made up in part of conscious experiences, real or imagined events, and interactions with archetypes and spirit. When this image appears in dreams and thoughts, it is a sign of the presence of spirit, and a source of revitalizing energy to the ego. Often, especially in dreams, the personal myth is the image through which one interacts with archetypes themselves. Though we may not always be directly aware of its presence, by providing form and structure to the self, the personal myth directs the way we think and behave.

The social psychoid process has no personal myth, no connection with spirit, and no underlying unity to its operations. Instead of the personal myth, the social psychoid process sees itself in a socially constructed self, an image of one’s social behavior. Since this image has no self-generated pattern, it looks for one in the social order, and often finds it in the images of media celebrities. This culture’s neurotic obsession with actors, athletes and supermodels -- the Cult of Celebrities -- really stems from the need for the social psychoid process to find an image in which to unify its functions. Why the need to know every moment of some actress’s life? Because the social psychoid process has no soul, no self in which to immerse and consolidate itself; it manufactures that unity in chattering about someone else’s life. Of course the chatter is all external -- it is about the social activities of the celebrity, and so the image is really socially constructed and has little to do with the person whose form it takes. It would appear, from the newspapers, that many celebrities in reality are nothing more than their socially created images. But for others, when personal details inconsistent with the image come out, they are either ignored or the image is shattered, and the social psychoid process moves on to a different image through which to view itself.

Many of the pressures brought forth against consciousness by the social psychoid process are directed against the personal myth. By dissolving the conscious image of the self from the underlying unconscious processes that sustain it, all that is left of the self is what can be expressed through social interaction. Chatter, and especially the “self-image” babble that fills pop psychology, further limits one’s appreciation of who one is to what can be articulated in language. The real self, because it is partly irrepresentable to consciousness, can never be fully expressed in language, and chatter’s demand to do so simply fragments the ego and weakens consciousness.

The personal myth is an entirely private vision. It can not, and must not, be shared with others. To do so desecrates the self and defiles the individual. When the personal myth is brought forth by chatter, the innermost essence of the self is made external, subject to the criticism, ridicule and pointless babble of others. Because it can never be fully explained in language, one is led to believe that the real self must not exist. One believes the chatter, loses the symbolic image of the self in dreams and the imagination, the ties to the world of spirit are cut, and social psychosis begins.

When mythologies disappear from a culture, the resources that can be used by consciousness to construct a personal myth and connect with archetypes through mythological images are lost. Consciousness is weakened, and the result is what we read in the newspapers. It is Joseph Campbell’s theory that myth has disappeared from modern culture. When cultural myth is replaced by O.B.I.T. technologies, chatter and indoctrination, the environment in which personal myth can sustain individual consciousness disappears, and psychoid behavior emerges. Neither a media “superstar”, a “supermodel”, nor a “supercop” are substitutes for cultural myth. They are absurd concoctions of the social psychoid process that insult consciousness and reinforce social conformity. A myth is a myth and not a media image because it connects the individual with archetypes, and not with instances of social conformity.

The purpose of a myth, Campbell once said, is to keep the individual from being “swallowed up” by the culture -- to keep the individual connected to the archetypes, and to keep consciousness alive. Just as archetypal images appear spontaneously in individuals with disintegrating egos, mythologies begin to appear culturally when consciousness is threatened on a mass basis. Campbell cites the Star Wars movies as examples of mythology emerging in culture. The characters in those movies are not concocted “role models”, they are embodiments of motifs found throughout the world’s mythologies. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader will be remembered long after “Just Say No” has faded from memory; not because they are any more “real”, but because they instantiate the archetypal principles that underlie the existence of the human psyche. These images constellate the same powers that the myths of King Arthur and his Knights constellated in the minds of generations past. When archetypal images appear in a culture, it is a sign that culture has lost its myth, and its members have lost their connections to archetypes within their psyches. It is both a warning of impending danger, and an opportunity to begin healing.

One need not look too far back in history to see what happens when a social psychoid process seizes control of a culture that has lost its mythology. The fragmentation of German culture following World War I, and the hardships forced upon the German people at the end of that War effectively destroyed the unity of Germany as a nation. Instead of finding unity in mythology, the German people found their identity in one man. Hitler’s genius was in his ability to manufacture images and pseudo-archetypes; he created the social psychoid process that brought Germany back together. His entire social program, from the imagery and propaganda of his “Aryan people” to the extermination of “undesirable elements”, exemplifies the conditions under which the social psychoid process can replace the consciousness of a shattered culture. Hitler did not have to force his philosophy upon the people; they embraced it with enthusiasm, because it provided a sense of unity that had been lost when the historical myths of the culture vanished.

The fate that befell Nazi Germany is the fate that eventually befalls every bicameral culture -- annihilation by contingent events. The invasion of Europe by the Allies was not something Hitler’s “mythology” could contend with, and the entire structure of the culture, physically and mentally, collapsed. World War II was a contingency, and social psychoid processes, no matter how well engineered, are powerless against contingent forces because they cannot adapt. Any culture founded upon principles of uniformity and constancy will collapse when contingency eventually overtakes it, and when the internal inconsistencies resulting from the Incompleteness Principle tear it apart from within. This is as true for the social psychoid process that exists within the present culture as it was for the Nazis and for the civilizations of ancient humanity. The present culture will no more be a “Thousand Year Reich” than was Hitler’s Germany, because the contingent forces of the environment and the consequences of Incompleteness will not cease to operate.

It is said that O.B.I.T. technologies are necessary because of the threat the behaviors they suppress pose to “society”. In truth, it is the social psychoid process itself that imperils human survival. This is vividly illustrated by an announcement made by a scientific group a few years ago, that within 8 years a major destructive earthquake would strike the Los Angeles area. The response to this announcement by the population was -- nothing. People continue their daily routines -- their jobs, their “family values”, their talk shows -- without any awareness of the danger that lurks. People who do not prepare for contingencies are destroyed by them -- the cost in human life and suffering of a large earthquake in a major population center will be staggering. Yet no one thinks of this. The social psychoid process that governs so much of urban life cannot recognize or perceive the danger, let alone prepare for it. The process can only find its way in constancy, and when that constancy inevitably disappears, the result is hideous.

If this is not the outcome we want, then we must choose a different direction. The social psychoid process can not gain a foothold in the psyche as long as the real self is at the center of conscious attention. The real self is the means by which consciousness is attached to the archetypes, and it is through the image of the personal myth that the energies of spirit enter consciousness. This is where the mixing of patterns from archetypes, consciousness and brain chaos intertwine. The hidden part of the self is what is tuned in to the “heart of the cosmos”, and what makes portal experiences possible.

To reclaim consciousness from social psychosis, the real self must be restored to its place in the center of the psyche. The revitalization of the personal myth is the individuating event that occurs when an archetype overwhelms a psychoid process. A myth is really a metaphor for an archetype. It is an image of a particular pattern by which spiritual energy is manifested in individuals and in cultures. The healing sickness is itself an instance of an archetype which is recorded in mythology as the hero’s journey. In this motif, an individual of no particular note becomes a hero by subduing some terrible evil. A boy becomes a great chief by overcoming an enemy; the knight becomes king after slaying a dragon; Christ overcomes the temptations -- the story is omnipresent in cultures and mythologies everywhere. The myth is in turn a metaphor of the psyche -- of the ego’s struggle against fragmentation, and of the power of spirit to subdue uncontrolled psychoid processes.

The personal myth appears spontaneously when archetypes enter the psyche. It is with the personal myth that individuation begins, and the beginning of individuation is the beginning of the end for the social psychoid process. As said before, we have to learn to take ourselves seriously, and what is most important to the self is its own image. It is not the suit-and-tie, dressed for success, properly groomed and successfully drug tested image of “productivity” that is the real self; this is a socially manufactured phantasm of what society -- itself a delusion the social psychoid process -- expects us to be. The real self is what calls from the netherworld of dreams and the shadows of idle thoughts. If we hope to escape the depression and violence of the modern world, then it is the real self that must be taken seriously, for it is the true greatness of human life.

Smashing the Machines

It makes no difference how hard you try, you can not breathe under water. Whether connected with spirit through archetypes or not, it will not work. If you try to breathe under water, you will drown, and the only way to avoid drowning is to take your head out of the water. The same logic holds for consciousness. Immersed in chatter and O.B.I.T. technology, the social psychoid process will drown spontaneous human consciousness whenever it appears. The only way to prevent this from happening is to eliminate the conditions under which the social psychoid process can survive.

While archetypal rebooting can be an individuating event, it does not change the cultural conditions that suppress consciousness. It is not enough to sit in a closet and meditate for a few minutes each day, for as soon as you come out of the closet, the social psychoid process and the psychotic culture it has created are there waiting for you. Nor will using a psychoactive drug, by itself, change anyone’s life, if that life continues to be lived as a social animal. These things are effective only when they are individuating -- when they break off the individual from the social psychoid process. There can be only one master in the psyche, and if that master is to be consciousness, then the social psychoid process, and the conditions under which it can take control of the psyche, must be destroyed. External changes in the world must parallel internal changes in the psyche, else the all of the efforts to re-establish the personal myth are for naught.

A cultural transformation, from domination by the social psychoid process to domination by consciousness must occur if the prophecies of destruction and death are to be avoided. Merely restructuring society will not change its underlying processes. Neither working within the system, nor replacing it with another system will undo the damage that the system of civilization itself has done to the psyche. Passing laws against drug testing or electronic surveillance will not eliminate their capacity to threaten consciousness. The reason these “solutions” can not work is that they do not change the environment in which the individual is subservient to “society”, and the social psychoid process remains in control.

As long as the social psychoid process exists, it will threaten consciousness, and suppress consciousness whenever it appears. The social psychoid process draws its energy from the social suppression of individuality. To get rid of the social psychoid process, the conditions under which it can accumulate psychic energy have to be replaced by conditions that encourage the appearance of archetypes. This means transforming culture from an entity of “we” to a cooperative of “I’s”, and to do this, the power of the social psychoid process to suppress consciousness must be taken away.

While the internal attack on the social psychoid process begins with the personal myth, the external attack must begin by eliminating the ability of the social psychoid process to unleash its energy against individuals. While chatter and leveling are important factors in the social domination of individuals, for the most part the televisions and talk-shows can be turned off; they are not physically forced upon individuals, and they can be resisted with the flick of a switch. O.B.I.T. technologies like drug testing and surveillance are, however, generally forced upon individuals against their will. They are oppressive, rather than suppressive, technologies; since they are already used against the will of individuals, crying and protesting in the streets or wearing silly colored ribbons will not get rid of them. The whole point of these technologies is to force submission, and as long as they are around they are powerful weapons against consciousness. To disarm the social psychoid process, there is no choice but to eliminate these technologies. There is no point in whining about it: the machines must be smashed.

By smashing the machines I do not mean endless chatter about why they should or should not be used; I mean reducing surveillance technologies to scrap with hammers and axes, after the fashion of the Luddites. It is precisely because the physical and violent destruction of oppressive technologies is socially unacceptable, that doing so is such a powerful weapon against the social psychoid process. It not only renders the social psychoid process incapable of carrying out its war on consciousness, but it is internally individuating by not only refusing to submit, but also by destroying the means of enforcing submission.

Why were the statues of Lenin destroyed with the collapse of the USSR? Why were Nazi symbols blown up by advancing troops? Why are flags burned and pictures of dictators shot full of holes? Because, like Gessler’s hat, these things are symbols for the social oppression of the individual; they are, in effect, totems for the social psychoid process. By reducing these things to ashes and dust, the psychological cues used by the social psychoid process to control the psyche are eliminated. Of course O.B.I.T. technologies are more than symbolic; they are actual weapons against consciousness, and their destruction confers both an external and internal sense of liberation.

The machines have to be smashed, or, as the O.B.I.T. alien proclaims, “hundreds will be built.” Destruction of technology hits the social psychoid process where it hurts the most: it is a direct rejection of what is perceived to be the most important “benefit” this society has provided. Technology allows for “relaxing in indolence”, and while it is true that life without technology is harder, it is also less indolent, less likely to be controlled by those who provide the technology, and less likely to stupefy one into trading one’s self for convenience.

Not only must the surveillance machines be destroyed, but the machinery of one’s life that is governed by social conformity must also be smashed. It is not enough to go out and blow up drug testing machines, if one continues to live one’s life based upon automatic responses to unconscious motivations. One has to re-orient one’s own life to consciousness. Life as a social animal is lived according to machine-like rules, and those rules must cease to control thought and behavior if smashing the machines is to accomplish anything.

The personal myth is the beginning of individuation, and smashing the machines allows the personal myth to flourish. If the personal myth is to be kept alive, smashing the machines must be followed by smashing the routines of socially psychotic life. This means turning off the chatter, and refusing to be leveled. The social psychoid process teaches us to think in terms of “have-to’s”, and many of those have-to’s are related to mind-numbing technologies. We don’t have to watch the television, we don’t have to listen to the music, we don’t have to multiply like fruit flies, and we don’t have to check email. Refusing to do those things, like smashing the machines, energizes consciousness with free will and robs the social psychoid process of yet another source of power.

It seems that today, everyone talks about the internet. Oh, it is the promise of a new future, so we hear, that will eliminate unemployment and ignorance, provide instant access to everything, and eliminate all barriers between everyone and everything. Yeah, right. At one time, these very same expectations were held for television, but things didn’t work out that way. Where the internet started out as a valuable means of information exchange, it has degenerated into nothing more than two-way television. The internet not only spews out the same chatter that dominates soap-opera and talk-show television, but invites you to swim in the same psychological cesspool as those whose chatter their privacy and dignity away. Being “interactive” means it is twice as mind-sucking, for it encourages people to reduce themselves to machines, to think like machines, and to live like machines.

It is no surprise that philosophy would have eventually gotten around to the idea that the brain -- and consciousness -- are some kind of computer. The social psychoid process is very computer-like in its behavior and its information processing schemes. What appears to be a romance with technology is really an attraction of likeness -- the social psychoid process sees itself in the computing machine, for a machine is essentially what the social psychoid process is. Thus, the social psychoid process becomes addicted to technology, and technology becomes the external manifestation of the social psychoid process.

The social psychoid process therefore raises every possible objection to anything that threatens technology. Every unconscious fear-phantasm is brought forth to protect the machines. From inside the individual as fear, guilt, and shame, to social threats, punishments and ostracism, nothing is spared to create, propagate and preserve technology and the psychological dependence upon it. This is why smashing the machines is both so dangerous and so necessary: it breaks the feedback loop between internal and external, cutting the social psychoid process off from one of its most important sources of power. Smashing the machines cuts off the external reinforcement for the social psychoid process which is then left, like the babbling Inquisitor, to face the archetypes alone.

Disurbanization

Abandoning the social “self image” for the personal myth, and smashing the O.B.I.T. machines creates the possibility for the healing sickness to begin. These things invite the archetypes into the psyche, and make it possible for consciousness to re-emerge. But for consciousness to flourish, one more individuating event is necessary. The conditions under which the social psychoid process itself arises must be changed, so that when it appears, consciousness finds a world in which it belongs, and not one in which it is an unwelcome stranger.

Neither the personal myth nor smashing the machines will destroy the underlying problems of modern society. They help; they initiate the healing sickness, but the point at which we turn from sickness to healing is the point at which we begin to build a better world. The problems of modern society are problems that lie at its very roots; the problem is bound up with the concept that people can and should live as social animals and not conscious individuals. Consciousness can not thrive in an urban setting because of the social interdependencies that sustain the social psychoid process. Metropolises are roach nests of destructive psychoid processes, and if we want to clean the roaches out of the psyche, we need to clean out their nests.

Why is it that so many visions of the future are visions of bigger and better cities? Whether in science fiction or science fact, those who turn their eyes toward the future so often see the same thing: larger populations and denser cities. What kind of a future would this really be? We have already seen that: increasingly psychotic behavior and destruction. These visions of regimented and pigeon-holed humanity are delusions of the social psychoid process, and they are not realistic in the light of what we know about the way unconsciously driven cultures operate. This is not a future for consciousness, and we must reject the psychotic delusion and find some other way. If humanity is not to be left behind by the evolution of the rest of the universe, it will have to get beyond the idea from 9000 BC that “progress” means bigger cities.

How did the social psychoid process appear in the first place? According to Jaynes, it is a mechanism for survival in a social environment. In large cities, where individuals can not provide for their own basic needs, the social psychoid process insures that persons are intertwined with one another so as to function as a self-supporting unit. Individual persons can not take care of themselves, but under the influence of unconscious socializing processes, they can work together to provide for each other.

As we have seen, this scheme does not work. Not only because the displacement of consciousness results in the emergence of destructive unconscious processes, but also because we live in a world of environmental change, and without consciousness persons can not adapt and civilizations crumble. Since we know that complex urban societies are ultimately doomed, then what we need to do is find some paradigm for human culture other than densely-packed cities, and the social psychosis necessary to sustain them. If urbanized culture is going to fall apart anyway, then why not take matters into our own hands before disaster strikes, and come up with some other way to live? Some way of living other than population dense cities must be found, and I call this alternative disurbanization.

Smashing the machines dissolves the idea that people have no choice but to live in large cities. Freed from the tyranny of social psychosis, people discover that they don’t need the crowding, the smog, the pollution, the noise, the “services”, or the neighbors. As people move away from the psychological cesspool of the city, urbanized culture can break up into smaller units, something like villages, with less interdependence and greater room for individuality.

The social psychoid process will undoubtedly raise every possible objection and obstacle to the notion of disurbanization, but such objections must be regarded as mental static. Psychoid processes always present themselves as indestructible and inevitable. Before seriously attending to the social psychoid process’s objections to disurbanization, consider how impossible a democratic government seemed in the Soviet Union of the 1970’s, or how impossible that there could be a government with a Black president in the South Africa of only a few years ago, and so on. To the social psychoid process such things are impossible. It is only by creating a fundamental break between individuals and society that such things can come about. That these events have happened shows it is possible, and shows that the objections to them are only objections, not barriers. The advantages of disurbanization are too great to be outweighed by the complaints of the bicameral mind.

Disurbanization pulls the rug out from under the social psychoid process. No longer do the conditions under which individuals must be subservient to the collective exist, and there is no more energy to sustain psychotic social conformity. Like the mental patient whose mind is cleared by archetypal connections, people discover that what they thought was a necessary condition for survival was really a deception leading them to disaster.

What would such a culture be like? Would it have to be like cave people? Not at all. The human intellect has advanced considerably since the time of living in caves, and there is no reason to suspect or require that human beings de-evolve. Exactly the opposite: human evolution is in no way tied to technology, nor to the machine-like behaviors required in urban civilization. With the appearance of consciousness, the social psychoid process became maladaptive, or to coin a perhaps more colorful term, “counter-evolutionary”. Instead of allowing humanity to evolve and progress, the social psychoid process has frozen humanity in a web of social behavior and technology that has arrested human evolution altogether.

Evolution is a response to the environment, and once the machines are smashed, the social psychoid process is drained of all its power. Individuals are no longer isolated from the environment by the machines of urban culture, but are required to change and adapt, and human evolution is free to proceed. Instead of holding evolution at bay and freezing human progress in a web of social acceptability and technological control, disurbanization returns humankind to the path of progress.

It can not be specified a priori what a disurbanized culture would be like. If disurbanization is to succeed in advancing consciousness, the form of culture must be discovered and not dictated. But one thing is certain: an increasing population cannot be supported by disurbanization. The breakup of urban population centers and the dissolution of their social interdependencies can occur only when the population level is low enough that individuals can meet their own needs, or can meet them in cooperation with others such that dependency for survival can no longer fuel the social psychoid process. Accomplishing this is a matter that individuals must resolve and impose upon their own conduct. The purgation of the social psychoid process cannot be done by decree; it must be chosen and acted upon by individuals.

It is not suggested that disurbanization can be accomplished overnight, nor is it necessary that the reduction in population necessary to sustain a disurbanized culture be accomplished by genocide. The entire human population of this planet will, for all practical purposes, be dead 100 years from now. The human population could be reduced to zero in that time by simply not reproducing. By discontinuing the “morality” and “values” propaganda that encourages and sanctifies reproduction, the population of the Earth can be reduced drastically within 50 to 100 years. Population reduction can be accomplished through “attrition”, and disurbanization can go on to a large degree during that time.

Human overpopulation is perhaps the most dangerous threat to the continued survival of humanity. What makes it dangerous is that it is insidious -- it produces harm to humanity and the environment in which humanity lives without calling direct attention to itself. Overpopulation does not mean standing-room-only, or that people are falling off cliffs into the ocean. It is more subtle than that. Overpopulation means that people impact the environment to a degree that the environment cannot recover; it means that more is being taken away from the planet than can be replaced. Pollution, and specifically toxins and heat, are generated faster than they can be dissipated, and as a result the environment changes. Forests are cut down, the level of oxygen in the air declines slightly and health problems begin to emerge, while carbon dioxide builds up and heat accumulates, resulting in hurricanes, floods, massive wildfires, and the extinction of animal and plant species. Cancers become more common; not because we are better at detecting them, but because, as many experts believe, toxins are accumulating in the environment that lead to a greater frequency of cancer. People get sick because the environment has been poisoned.

One could analogize the effects of overpopulation to the accumulation of a credit card debt. One wants a little more luxury in life, so one uses the credit card to buy clothes, fix up the car, and so on. But as the monthly payments increase, one finds that there is no longer money for the very luxuries one wanted to have: no more money for restaurants, no more going to the theater, no expensive vacations. This happens long before the bank forecloses on the house: the harmful effects appear well before catastrophe occurs, but unless corrective measures are taken, the catastrophe is inevitable. Overpopulation works the same way: humanity has accumulated an ecological “debt” to the planet, and the harmful effects of pollution are being felt right now, even though the entire planet does not yet resemble a rock music concert.

Of course the most serious effect of overpopulation is the effect it has on consciousness, because it is only through conscious activity that the destructive trend can be reversed. Overpopulation requires urbanization, because individuals are living out of balance with the environment and cannot provide for their own needs. Instead of individual independence, we have social interdependence, and the mental state of recameralization that is necessary to sustain the social structures required for urban survival. The social psychoid process emerges and takes control, its obsession with sex and reproduction leads to an ever increasing population, and eventually to the destruction of the very environment necessary for human survival. This is why disurbanization is so essential a step in the de-cameralization of the mind: reverse the effects of overpopulation, and the conditions under which the social psychoid process thrives are eliminated.

I can already hear the social psychoid process raise its poisonous jabber: “It is a God-given right to reproduce!” No one is saying that to save humanity reproduction should cease; only that it should be done responsibly, and not as the goal of human life itself. God did not give humanity the “right” to reproduce. God, or however you wish to view spiritual unity, gave humanity consciousness, from which mindless instincts and drives can be controlled. Uncontrolled reproduction enslaves humanity to the social psychoid process, and destroys the natural environment through which spirit originally made its presence felt. If the human race is to survive, the social psychoid process can not be allowed to devastate the planet and hold humanity captive in an urban environment that exists because there are too many people for each to provide for his or her own well-being. Human births are not “miracles” nor “blessed events” -- they are mindless, spiritless biological processes. The miracle is consciousness -- the direct manifestation of spirit in the world. Using one’s free will to control the body and its instincts, to dismantle the world of social psychosis, depression, and random violence, and to create a better world of enlightenment and progress is the most blessed event conceivable, because it is through this very free will that the power of spirit is wielded.

As the population begins to decrease, individuals can move away from large cities into smaller communities of a few hundred or thousand, depending upon the capabilities of the surrounding environment to provide the necessities for life. Such communities would be self-governing, and perhaps federated with other communities by trade agreements. Some communities might specialize in certain products or services, while others focus upon creative or artistic pursuits. By living in communities where individuals are closer to the means of their survival, the dependency upon a regimented social order for survival no longer structures individual life. The whole point of disurbanization is to destroy the environment in which the social psychoid process thrives, by destroying the social interdependencies needed for survival in an urban setting. Cleaning the people out of the cities cleans the roaches out of the psyche, and clears space for the blossoming of consciousness.

A population spread out in small communities is far better able to survive the effects of contingency that one in a dense-packed city. Disurbanization can create sustainable communities -- ones that exist in a balanced relationship with their environment. Depletion of resources occurs hand-in-hand with uncontrolled reproduction, and helps sustain the social interdependencies required by the social psychoid process. Breaking up large cities and dispersing their populations into small enclaves not only means that those enclaves can provide for themselves; it also means they can provide for themselves in ways that don’t destroy the environment upon which they depend.

Small, self-sustaining communities are better able to adapt to changing environmental conditions than large cities because the behavior of individuals living in them is not fixed neurologically. Persons living in small communities that are neither technologically nor psychologically isolated from the environment are better able to adapt to changing conditions and better able to cope with contingencies because their actions are under conscious control. Individual survival is more close connected with environmental conditions than with social behavior, and this is exactly the circumstance under which consciousness, both as an evolutionary survival tool and as a connection with spirit, first appeared. This is why disurbanization effectively returns humanity to the path of progress and evolution, leaving behind the stagnation and degeneration of the city.

Most importantly, from the standpoint of consciousness, individuals would be able to select a community whose character is appropriate to the individual’s personal myth. Autonomous communities develop autonomous mythologies, and while those mythologies have common roots in the collective unconscious, the way in which they are expressed creates different communities with different activities and different character. In such a situation, the nature of an individual is not determined by the community, the community in which one lives is selected by the individual, much as the brain figures out for itself by selective recognition how to add two and two.

The saying, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” has much validity in terms of individual health and productivity. Put a philosopher in a technician’s job, or a prophet behind a desk, and you get essentially the same result as forcing a square peg into a round hole -- something breaks somewhere, and the breakage often extends beyond the individual in question. Individuals who are prevented from living their personal myth become psychotic, and although for a while they might be “productive”, in the end the result is disaster.

A socially psychotic culture has no use for teachers, but only for those who preach the pattern. It has no use for musicians, except those it can make into celebrity-surrogates for the self. It has no use for thinkers or visionaries at all, and these people are discarded like waste, or forced into despair and psychosis. In a culture dominated by the social psychoid process, the best minds go insane, as Ginsberg said. In a conscious culture, the philosopher is free to think, the poet to write, the farmer to farm and the prophet to teach, and everyone benefits. A conscious culture thrives on ideas and art; because it is tied to the forces of evolution, it always seeks new pathways and new alternatives.

There are two possible scenarios for the future of humanity. One is a future in which there are millions -- perhaps hundreds of millions -- killed in contingent events that strike urban population centers. The other is one in which millions of babies are simply not born, and perhaps no one is killed when contingency strikes because there are no urban population centers. Because the social psychoid process is an illness that thinks itself indestructible, modern urban culture is headed for the first outcome. The only way to choose the second outcome is to smash the machines, dismantle urban society and its psychotic mentality, and live the personal myth along with -- and not psychotically opposed to -- the world around us.

Reconnection

The social psychoid process has disconnected the human mind from many of the processes in nature and in spirit from which it evolved. These processes form the basic character of consciousness, and to a large extent define what it is to be a human being. Once the machines are smashed and disurbanization begins, it is necessary to reconnect the psyche of the individual to those processes that have been lost to it. This means not only reconnecting with spirit and with the natural environment, but also reconnecting with other human beings.

It would seem at first glance that connecting with others is what the social psychoid process is all about. On reflection however, we discover that the social psychoid process has nothing to do with people. It connects the unconscious mind with abstract patterns of behavior, and in so doing, reduces people to nothing more than abstract characters in the phantasm of society. Driven by the social psychoid process, modern humanity understands connections between individuals in terms of strict rules and patterns -- the “thou shalt nots” of socially indoctrinated morality. The ways in which people relate to each other in modern culture are psychotic -- they are based upon unconscious drives, “body language”, “dressing for success”, “family values” and similar cretinisms.

Once the conditions under which the social psychoid process exists are changed, some other means of relating to people, as conscious individuals, must be devised. The whole scheme of dictated, unconscious, and judgmental behavior goes out with the social psychoid process, along with the invisible, unconscious “morality” that supports it. What takes its place is a different kind of morality, based not upon rules but upon a fundamental respect for persons as individuals. This kind of morality might be called metaphysical morality, for it grows out of the nature of consciousness. Respect for others grows out of respect for one’s own self, and without that self respect, there can be no consciousness.

Joseph Campbell tells the story of two police officers who saw a man preparing to jump over a cliff. As the first officer approached the man, he jumped; the officer grabbed his arm and was pulled over the edge of the cliff. His partner grabbed him just in time, and they were able to pull themselves back above the cliff. When asked why he did not let the man’s arm go to save himself, the first officer replied, “If I had let him go, I could not have gone on living.”

In his On the Metaphysical Basis of Morality Schopenhauer discusses the possibility of such an interconnection between individuals. Morality, on this view, is not a social phenomenon and has little to do with codes, standards, and judgments. Instead, it has to do with the interconnections between persons that lie at the metaphysical basis of being a person. We know from Jung’s theory that the collective unconscious, as the source of archetypes, is a continuum or “transcendent function” in which all human consciousnesses participate. To find a unity between all persons that grows out of who people are instead of what they have been forced into becoming, we need only look in the origins of consciousness itself.

This transcendent unity is understood as respect for persons because it sees in others what is essentially itself. Harm done to a conscious individual is in a very real sense harm to one’s self, for, as we have seen, the collective unconscious is a two-way path. Everything we, as conscious individuals, do registers in the transcendent continuum that underlies our own being. To attack or defile another is to attack one’s own consciousness -- it is to cease living as a conscious individual.

What a metaphysical morality would mean, in terms of conduct, cannot be specified by rules, codes or standards. It is a purely contingent morality, meaning it is dependent upon circumstances, because consciousness must evaluate what respect for others amounts to. Does it mean grabbing a falling person by the arm, or does it mean letting that person make the decision for him or her self? Once can not appeal to a rule to answer that question; one must judge under the circumstances.

Of course this conception of morality is utter nonsense to the social psychoid process, which can only understand relations between individuals in terms of rules and standards. It must be remembered that much of what is considered “immoral” is immoral because it threatens the social psychoid process, and not because it is in any way “bad” or “evil” in itself. The social psychoid process serves itself, and not the self of the individual nor the interests of others. In so doing, the social psychoid process clears the way for uncontrolled destructive behaviors to emerge from the unconscious. These random destructive acts are “immoral” because the social psychoid process can not control them, but they exist in the first places because the social psychoid process has hijacked the psyche and pushed consciousness out of the driver’s seat, allowing destructive psychoid processes to emerge in thought and behavior. Metaphysical morality is unthinkable and impossible under psychotic social conditions because there is no consciousness to relate others to an underlying unity, and there is no ego to scrutinize potentially destructive behaviors in the light of how such behaviors would affect the self and others.

The philosopher Kant argued that respect for persons is a categorical imperative; it is a fundamental principle without which any understanding of right and wrong is impossible. It turns out to be much more than that, for a lack of respect for persons means a diminution of the self, and opens the gateways to social psychosis. The plethora of laws in modern society, through which the government sticks its nose in the most private matters of individuals, is a complete disrespect for persons. The idea that someone else knows what is best for you means that others do not respect you, and do not respect themselves. Paternalism, the idea that a government should treat citizens as a parent treats a child, is nothing but an excuse for culture-wide descent into psychotic behavior. The objection that people need rules to live is true only for a socially psychotic mind devoid of a soul and a conscience.

The breakup of urbanized society creates not only the opportunity for individuals to reconnect with each other as individuals, but also to reconnect with the natural environment out of which consciousness first arose. Living in apartment buildings and mass-produced tract houses creates a barrier between the consciousness of the individual and the environment -- a barrier of constancy and artificiality. The underlying principle of evolution is adaptation to change, and removing the psyche from a changing environment arrests is adaptive process, of which consciousness is one.

The old brain of humanity did not evolve in inner cities or skyscrapers -- it evolved in the natural environment. The patterns by which the old brain is “wired” have been selected by the brain during its evolution to match the characteristics of the species with that environment. When that match is not available in the psyche -- when life is physically isolated from the natural environment -- the old brain loses its orientation, much as a seafarer would be lost without a compass. Its activities become confused and inappropriate, resulting in disease and destructive behavior. The id is not destructive by itself -- it evolved as a survival mechanism. It becomes destructive when it becomes disoriented, and when it cannot find the conditions in the world under which it evolved. When that isolation occurs, psychoid processes appear in response to inappropriate stimuli, resulting in what we read in the newspapers.

The old brain is as much a part of the psyche as the cerebral cortex and the archetypes. Constellation produces its characteristically intense emotional reactions because it energizes pathways in the old brain. The constellation of an archetype in a mythic image is a resonance throughout the psyche, involving not only spirit but intellect, instinct, consciousness, and underlying neural discharge. Such resonance in the old brain is dependent upon its ability to connect with the conditions under which it evolved. The stars did not become the lamps of the gods on a city street; the image was constellated in a dark forest. It could only have been constellated under such circumstances because the necessary connections between spirit, psyche and environment could not have been made otherwise. While the new brain may be able to wire itself in response to existing conditions, the old brain cannot do so. For constellation to occur -- and for consciousness itself to survive -- the old brain must be able to connect with the environmental conditions it recognizes. Environmental reconnection is not optional for the existence of human consciousness.

The disconnection of the psyche from the natural environment is as much responsible for the malaise, depression and psychotic behavior that fills the newspapers, as is psychological isolation from archetypes. The old brain is synchronized to the world by selective recognition and evolution, while the superconscious mind is synchronized with spirit through archetypes. Consciousness is the bridge between the two, effectively completing the circuit from matter to spirit. Breaking the circuit at either end, either by disconnecting consciousness from spirit or consciousness from environment, dissociates the ego because the flow of psychic energy is disrupted.

Just as dreams and fantasies reconnect the psyche with spirit, disurbanization makes it possible to re-establish the connection between psyche and environment. This does not mean that everyone has to become a farmer, but it does mean that a closer connection between what goes on in the world and what goes on in the mind is necessary for consciousness. To a large extent, what we regard as comforts in modern society are perceived as “comforts” because they satisfy the social psychoid process and its desire for social dependency. We think of living close to the land as a “hardship”, but what it really does is reconnect the psyche with the environment, and in the process disconnect the psyche from the rules and interdependencies upon which the social psychoid process feeds. This is yet another reason why the machines have to be smashed, and why less drastic measures will not suffice. The environment in which the social psychoid process thrives must be changed into one where psychic reconnection can occur. All of the information we have considered, from dynamical systems theory and psychedelic bootstrapping to Jung’s theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious, suggests that human consciousness originated when humanity lived in a close relationship with the environment. These conditions must be re-established, if we are to have a world of consciousness and not a world of depression, malaise, violence and eventual extinction.

What happens under these conditions? The circuit between earth, mind and spirit is completed, and what results is the same thing that resulted for our ancestors. Portal experiences occur spontaneously, drawing, as Jung says, the center of the psyche away from uncontrolled instinct and toward spirit. This drawing upward manifests itself in the same way it did for the ancients: in the images and energies of participation mystique. Spiritual forces constellate themselves in the images of natural phenomena because it is these natural phenomena that complete the circuit, through the old brain, to the biological and physical systems of the Earth.

This is why so many of the “communes” of the 1960’s and 1970’s found themselves gravitating toward the Old Religion. The Old Religion is what Campbell called the “spontaneously supposed frame of reference” for spontaneously emerging human consciousness, and for mythology as well. As we have said, this is a characteristic of the way human consciousness works. If human consciousness were a social phenomenon, as Edelman, Jaynes and many other claim, then this would not be the case -- something other than participation is what we would see when consciousness appears. But this is not the case: in every situation, either historical, experimental, or therapeutic, in which reconnection has been allowed to occur, the result is always the same. The imagery of archetypes and participation emerge, and where the social situation is allowed to run its own course, the Old Religion, in one form or another, assembles itself as a fundamental belief system that integrates human activity and thought with the flow of psychic energy from spirit to Earth.

Along with the appearance of the Old Religion, the old powers of the psyche also emerge. Clairvoyance and telepathy, once freed from the ridicule of the social psychoid process, provide valuable insights that can not otherwise be obtained. Practices that encourage participation and psychic powers, such as ritual divination and magic, become accepted parts of social life. While many communities, past, present, and hopefully future, find and celebrate their own common mythologies, individuals have the freedom to pursue their own connections with spirit through their own devices. For some this means psychedelics, for some meditation or reverie, for some ritual magic and divination, for some shamanism -- each must find his or her own way.

Does this mean everyone in our future of consciousness sits cross-legged on a rug, smoking marijuana and reading tarot cards all day? For the diviner, whose place in the circuit from spirit to Earth is to do so, perhaps. That is as respectable, and essential, to the survival of the community as those who find their path in agriculture or crafts and skills. Just because the social psychoid process can not comprehend the value of anything that is not materially productive does not mean such things do not have significant, if not indispensable, value in a non-psychotic society. That a psychotic mental state holds something in disrepute is no reason to assume it is worthless.

I do not mean to suggest by this discussion that the more common religious beliefs and systems of today have no value. As we have seen, many religions are built around archetypal figures that embody the basic structure of a spiritually-connected human consciousness. What is of value in religion -- any religion, traditional, “old”, or “new age” -- is the degree to which in connects the psyche with spirit. The success of the old religions in accomplishing this connection is due to their spontaneous nature, which makes them very personal. This personal connection with spirit, through an archetype, can be made in many contexts, although individuals often find that certain images constellate better for them than do others. Those who have a strong sense of identification with feminist politics, for example, often find that female images are better vehicles for constellation than male images. Some respond better to the naturalistic settings and images found in Wicca, while others are better able to achieve connections with spirit through the images and sounds of gothic cathedrals.

The problem with modern religions is that they are all too often associated with social institutions whose goals have moved from spirituality toward social conformity. What is important in any religion is the personal connection it makes with the spiritual, and the transformative power that connection holds for that individual. What is of unimportance in religion is the social doctrine that grows up around it, for doctrine and dogma too often interfere with the spiritual connection. It is sad that religion has become a haven for “moralists” and “family values” crackpots, for such creatures of the social psychoid process have nothing to do with the transformative power of spirit. When religious institutions become social and political entities, they wind up like the Grand Inquisitor -- opponents of the very spirituality they claim to represent. The only connection such institutions hope to make is between your money and their pockets.

The essential component of any religion is faith. Faith is neither following nor submission; it is not being led down someone else’s path or living the dictates of someone’s dogma. It is a strictly internal matter. Faith is an act of free will by which one commits one’s self to the truth of the impossible: that matter and spirit can exist as one. Whether through the image of Christ or Buddha, or through mystical experience and participation mystique, in the end faith means reconnection with archetypes and spirit. The leap of faith, no matter the context in which it is made, is essentially the same thing as the healing sickness. It is the act of will by which one is elevated from instinct toward spirit, and by which archetypes banish psychosis and consciousness appears.

Authenticity

From the moment of birth onward, the social psychoid process strives against individuality. The culmination of years of indoctrination, suppression and oppression is what we call “maturity”, the complete integration of the psyche into the social environment. One is not mature until the manifestations of archetypes and participation mystique are crushed, all desire to pursue creativity and spirituality is “reinvented” toward socially useful purposes, and the social psychoid process so completely controls the psyche that any spontaneous emergence of archetypal forces is quickly subdued. Those in whom the images still flicker are condemned and ostracized as “immature”, and either subjected to “therapy”, “medications”, or other mind-control techniques, or are simply left out of the social environment to rot in the gutters.

In spite of this, the images appear, and short of destroying or chemically shutting down the brain, the images will continue to appear. To fight them is to fight not only the power of spirit, but the forces of evolution as well. If we want a world free of psychotic violence, then we must not turn away from the images, but invite them in. While reconnection with spirit and with the Earth are important, perhaps the most important reconnection we need to make is within ourselves.

Consciousness gives rise to personal myth, the symbolic representation of both hidden and visible self in consciousness. But it is not enough just to have a personal myth; the personal myth must mean something to the person that has it. As a fractal symbol, the personal myth reflects the integration of the self with both the archetypal and environmental forces that act upon the psyche. We might say that while the “self image” or “reinvented self” of yuppie psychobabble reflect the individual being properly situated in the social environment from the social psychoid process’s point of view, the personal myth reflects the individual being optimally situated within the flow of energy from spirit to Earth through consciousness.

To live life within the balance of forces created by consciousness, one must live the personal myth. While this does not necessarily mean that one must live life as a mythological figure, it does mean that a conscious life, free from psychotic possession, has to be lived so as to instantiate the patterns represented by the personal myth.

To borrow a term from the existentialist philosophers, the matching of personal myth to the way life is lived is called authenticity. An authentic life is one lived according to the patterns of the personal myth. Participation mystique is, on the outside, what personal myth is on the inside, and just as participation mystique inserts one’s life into the events of the world, authenticity aligns one’s life to the events within. Personal myth and cultural myth are aligned, without the individual being swallowed up by culture, and the internal and the external -- the psyche and the world -- reinforce one another symbiotically without destroying each other.

Authenticity is the conscious equivalent of the social psychoid process’s maturity. To live authentically, one must trade personal myth for maturity, participation mystique for social order, metaphysical morality for “family values” and other such tripe, and the “comfort” of conformity for individuality. One must also live in an environment where this is possible, hence smashing the machines and disurbanization. The authentic life is the goal toward which all the processes of consciousness and against social psychosis strive.

There is just one catch. True authenticity is impossible, according to many existentialists, because it requires absolute self-consciousness. To live a life that is authentic, one must “know one’s self”, and this appears to be impossible because consciousness must always stand apart from the thing it seeks to understand. Any time consciousness tries to become conscious of itself, it necessarily must step back, in introspective distance, from itself. Thus there exists a basic tension in consciousness -- that to be conscious of something, it must necessarily be distanced from that something, and therefore can never really know itself. A person can therefore never really know what he or she is, because to do so would require distancing one’s self from one’s self. To express this problem in Jung’s terms, the self includes psychoid processes of which consciousness cannot be aware, and therefore the ego can never know what the self really is. Thus, according to this line of argument, authenticity is never really possible.

According to Kierkegaard, this tension between what consciousness thinks it is, and what it really is, is the fundamental source of angst or dread. Angst is a force within consciousness that, like psychoid processes and external factors, tends to weaken consciousness and, under the right conditions, can tear consciousness apart. Angst is exploited by the social psychoid process in attempting to suppress individuality and induce conformity. The point of such taunts as “get a life” or “reinvent yourself” is to exacerbate the angst arising out of the conflict between self and social environment, to tear the self apart and substitute for it a socially constructed “self-image” that conforms to social expectations and relaxes in the indolence of public chatter.

I have to disagree with those who contend that self-consciousness is impossible. We have already seen how it is possible, although in a somewhat disguised form. The personal myth is the symbolic representation of absolute self-consciousness: it is the fractal pattern arising out of the juncture between visible and invisible self, that is perceived by consciousness as a mythic pattern. While this form of self-consciousness may not be completely expressible in language or art, it is nonetheless a true representation of the self. To know one’s self is to know the personal myth.

Nonetheless, there remains the element of angst in trying to live an authentic life. It is an ongoing struggle for consciousness to live one’s life in such a way as to understand and express the personal myth. Because the personal myth is expressed as a pattern, it appears in ever changing meanings and guises. Not only that, but the internal is never the external, and the same tension that appears when a mystic tries to explain a vision also arises when one tries to manifest one’s inner thoughts and feelings to the outside world.

To borrow another existentialist example, a waiter can never be a waiter in the way that an inkwell is an inkwell. An inkwell is an inkwell because there is no difference between what it is and what it does. A waiter is only a waiter because he acts the part, and according to this argument he can never really be a waiter because there is more on the inside than what he does. A certain amount of angst appears when the waiter tries to be a waiter, because he can never escape what is different about himself from the role he plays. Similarly, one can never live the personal myth exactly, because there are individual patterns on the inside than can never really be expressed externally.

But we can try. We can narrow the gap between internal and external without collapsing the two, and bring ourselves closer to a truly authentic life in the way the personal myth is expressed. In so doing we turn angst into a weapon against the social psychoid process, and into a tool for living authentically.

Authenticity requires a constant striving to bring forth the personal myth into the world. Every time one tries to express the inner myth, it seems as though the world inches just a little bit further away. In an environment where the social psychoid process is dominant, one is tempted to give up. But in a disurbanized, reconnected environment, what would otherwise be frustration becomes a source of invigorating psychic energy. Whenever the personal myth is expressed in the world, either through thought or action, it draws a little more of the world’s energy into itself. As if in pursuit of a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, every time the rainbow moves a little farther away, we are drawn to pursue it with even greater enthusiasm. This constant striving for the expression of the personal myth, accompanied by an ever increasing flow of psychic energy is called passion.

Passion is the word Kierkegaard uses to indicate the opposite of chatter and leveling. It is a never ending struggle to be one’s inner self, and it is the kind of struggle that the harder one tries, the more energetic and enthusiastic ones becomes about trying. It draws inwardness outward, not by destroying it in chatter and gossip, but in a passionate striving to make the outer world reflect the inner self. As Kierkegaard writes in Two Ages:

For example, every letter that bears the mark of inwardness in the expression of an essential felt passion has eo ipso form... the tension and resilience of the inner being are the measure of essential culture. A maidservant genuinely in love is essentially cultured; a peasant with his mind passionately and powerfully made up is essentially cultured. Whereas there is only affectation, the pretense of form, in the external piecemeal training correlative with an interior emptiness...

What Kierkegaard means by “external piecemeal training correlative with an interior emptiness” is the expression of the social psychoid process. The social psychoid process has no consciousness, no self and no inwardness from which passion can arise. The writer who is all the more committed to writing in spite of difficulties, the artist who pursues art in spite of frustration and failure -- these are the marks of passion. The yuppie who works for social recognition and career advancement is nothing but an empty dullard, an inwardly empty thing that can only understand itself in relation to external correlations with social rewards. There is nothing inside the dullard save what others put there, whereas those who strive passionately are driven to do so by an inner flame that seeks its own reflection in the outside world.

What characterizes passion is not so much its outward appearance as its inward intensity. It is not simply devotion to and end, it is consumption in the devotion, and not in the end itself. It occurs when the self seizes a part of the world as its own, and experiences the fullness of the tension between world and self. Faith, for example, understood as belief in the Absolute Paradox or something like it, is passion -- it is the commitment to the truth of something that every element of the mind rebels against. It is passion because it recognizes the absurdity and impossibility of what it believes, but believes it with all its heart anyway. Belief without this passionate tension can never be faith.

Passion can only be passion when it “bears the mark of inwardness”, when it is an expression of the what the self essentially is. Spontaneity is always passionate. Things that come from within the individual without cause can come only from the expression of inner being acausally. Art is often passionate, but so is science; Newton’s Principia and Einstein’s relativity are as much passionate expressions of inner truths as any painting, music or literature. Passion is also transformative; it is essentially a kind of portal experience, in which inner and outer worlds touch. Consciousness reaches outward to the world, tries to make a part of that world a part of itself, and in doing so sees, or projects, the self outwardly.

Passion is the outward expression of the self; the inward correlation of passion is the release of psychic energy when self touches world called ecstasy. When the patterns of consciousness and outside world match up, an entrainment event occurs whereby energy from the world is released directly into consciousness. For this reason, portal experiences are always ecstatic: they always involve an influx of energy from spirit into consciousness. This is most obviously the case in an introvertive mystical experience, where the perceived separation between self and spirit collapses. The energy released in this type of experience can draw the psyche so far upward that a return to “normal” life is impossible.

This is why the appearance of an archetype in consciousness, whether it be spontaneous or induced, always carries with it intense emotional reaction and transformative power. Constellations are always ecstatic. They always bear the energy of spirit, and transform the perceptual matrix of consciousness. Ecstasy is not necessarily pleasant, however -- the experience of Hell is as much ecstasy as the experience of Heaven. Ecstasy is always deeply resonant within the psyche -- it always impacts not only what consciousness sees as world, but also what it sees as self.

Passion is always in pursuit of ecstasy. It is the very union of personal myth and archetype that is passionately sought, and every step that is taken in that direction releases ecstatic energy that drives passion further and further. Cultural myth and participation mystique are the patterns of archetypes in the outside world, and thus seeing the self in the world draws the psyche into the world of archetypes and spirit. The interaction of passion and ecstasy constantly draws the psyche upward, away from the depression and violence of culturally psychotic life, and toward the spiritual continuum of the collective unconscious, from which consciousness arises.

This is the world of authenticity -- of passionate striving and ecstatic vision, of personal and cultural myth, of reconnection and metaphysical morality. It is a world of intensity, of creativity, of individuality and of greatness. It is never a world of chatter or indolent relaxation. It is, as Kierkegaard writes:

... violent, riotous, wild, ruthless toward everything but its idea, but precisely because it still has one motivation, it is less open to the charge of crudeness. However externally oriented his ambitions, the person who is essentially turned inward because he is essentially impassioned for an idea is never crude... Where there is essential inwardness, there is a decent modesty between man and man that prevents crude aggressiveness...

Passion and ecstasy are essentially violent -- perhaps tumultuous would be a better wordd. The world of passion and ecstasy is what Kierkegaard called “The Age of Revolution”. It is a world of action, of change, of struggle and of instability. As such, it fosters consciousness and disdains the indolence of social conformity. What distinguishes the Age of Revolution from a socially psychotic culture is that events are passionate and ecstatic expressions of inner self, and not the random and senseless destruction of unconscious processes that are what Kierkegaard calls “crude”. Passion can be violent, but because it expresses the self, it is respectful of the self in others “that prevents crude aggressiveness”. Smashing the machines, for example, is a passionate and violent act, but in the hands of consciousness it need not descend to the smashing of persons. The machines can all be smashed -- every single one of them -- without the lloss of a single human life.

This is the healing sickness through which individuals and culture must go, to cast off the social psychoid process and return to consciousness. Smashing the machines of technological control and surveillance, disurbanization, reconnection with spirit, and authenticity by way of personal myth re-involve humanity in the physical and spiritual processes out of which it arose. The greatness of humanity can be reclaimed from socially maintained psychosis, and the world of revolution can replace the world of depression, malaise, and senseless violence. But it can not be done by relaxing in indolence. Social “causes” and “values” will not unseat the social psychoid process. Consciousness must be pursued with passionate dedication, and with the strength of character to face whatever obstacles lie in the way.

Utopia, if the word is understood to mean a perfect social order, is not possible. A perfect system of any kind is impossible, because it will succumb to either external contingencies or internal incompleteness. As the Oracles of Julianus proclaim:

Stoop not down unto the Darkly-Splendid World; wherein continually lieth a faithless Depth, and Hades wrapped in clouds, delighting in unintelligible images, precipitous, winding, a black ever-rolling Abyss; ever espousing a Body unluminous, formless and void.

But, like Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, humanity “hath done it anyway.” By abandoning the archetypes, trading personal myth for technological convenience, creativity for conformity, initiative for obedience, evolution for security and consciousness for social psychoid process, humanity has chosen to descend into the Darkly-Splendid world. We can descend further into the Pit, and suffer the same fate as other human civilizations, or we can take the first steps upward through the healing sickness.

Where do those steps lead? What lies beyond the Age of Revolution, beyond disurbanization and reconnection? We can not know the answer to that, any more than the first fish emerging out of the water onto land could have known what lay ahead. But the Oracles offer a hint:

Explore the River of the Soul, whence, or in what order you have come: so that although you have become a servant to the body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining works to sacred reason.

If consciousness really is a product of undifferentiated spirit, or what Driesch called the Entelechy, what could this shifting of the psyche toward the spiritual mean for humanity, and what could it mean for the Universe itself?

The Teleology of Consciousness

There are two senses of the word why relevant to understanding consciousness and portal experience. The first meaning of why addresses the reasons for consciousness being the way it is. Beginning with the assumption that portal experiences are genuine intersections with the non-spatiotemporal world of spirit, we have discovered several important characteristics that consciousness has, and how consciousness came to have those characteristics. We know that consciousness is a dynamical system, and we know how, because of the physical characteristics of the brain, it came to be a dynamical system. The presence of common motifs and images in consciousness and mythology reveals an underlying connection with spirit through the collective unconscious, and those images are transmitted to consciousness via entrainment and fractal patterns. And we have seen that consciousness as a dynamical system confers important survival advantages, that have led to its propagation through evolution.

This meaning of the word why could be called the backward-looking sense of the word, because it deals with the conditions that lead up to the appearance of consciousness. Even though this sense of why deals with dynamical systems, it is nonetheless a causal explanation, for it appeals to events and conditions in the past to account for events in the present. This is the sense of why most commonly addressed by science, for it relies upon things that we can observe in the present to deduce how the present became what it is.

But when we open the dynamical system can-of-worms, we find that understanding everything about the antecedent conditions is not the whole story. As Feynman said, knowing all the conditions does not tell us what happens next, and being possessed of inquisitive minds, what happens next is the thing we want to know. We therefore turn to what might be called the forward-looking sense of the word why, which addresses the role that consciousness plays in a larger context. The forward-looking questions look beyond consciousness as a consequence, and ask whether consciousness is but one step in a larger progression of events and processes.

This is the meaning of why normally addresses by philosophy, or at least formerly addressed by philosophy until the rise of deflationary metaphysics and pointless analytical jabber in the twentieth century. Having already rejected materialism and social-ontology, we give ourselves a free hand to return to the days before philosophy decayed into the analysis of language. The backward-looking sense of why got us from the Miracle experiment to dynamical systems theory, but it did not tell us why, the forward-looking sense, that things should have worked out that way. It could have been the case that consciousness had turned out to be socially constructed, and that humanity dealt with mass extermination in the same way as insects -- insects die by the billions every day, but they also reproduce by the billions. It didn’t turn out that way for humankind, and we are left with asking why in the forward-looking sense: to what purpose or for what reasons did spontaneous human consciousness, and not something else, take hold in the human psyche?

We could try to be metaphysical cowards and retreat to the position that there is no purpose or reason, it simply happened by “pure chance”. We have already seen the folly of this position. “Pure chance” is, according to Jung, merely an excuse for an ignorance of causal explanation. We live in a probabilistic universe; if it were not probabilistic, the universe would not exist at all. Unless you are given to believing Robert Anton Wilson’s man in the closet, “pure chance” as an explanation of why will not do.

In asking what role consciousness plays in a larger picture, we unavoidably re-open the issue of teleology. Teleology is the idea that natural processes are shaped by some overall purpose, or tend toward some specific end or goal. Science generally shuns teleology, because it is not a useful tool for understanding causal systems: teleology is essentially forward-looking, while causal explanations are backward-looking. It does not help to consider what will happen to all car engines in the next one hundred years, or what their greater significance might be, in trying to understand why the engine of a car does not work; it is more fruitful to look for broken parts.

The problem with applying teleological arguments to causal systems is that they wind up postulating the goal as a cause. We would not have gotten very far in understanding the Miracle experiment if we had assumed that everything in the biological history of the Earth happened “so that” portal experiences could occur. Quite the other way around: we appealed to a causal explanation -- adaptive advantage -- to understand how the events from single neurons to dynamical systems were propagated through evolution. From this we discovered that we have survived on this world because of consciousness, and the things that attack consciousness imperil our own survival.

Teleological principles applied to causal explanations often introduce a kind of determinism that leads to the idea of backward causation -- that the events of the future fix the events of today. Aristotle, who believed in final causes -- a version of teleology -- argued this way when he said that either there will be, or there will not be, a sea battle tomorrow. The truth of the statement, “There will be a sea battle tomorrow,” is determined by the events of tomorrow, but the statement in nonetheless true or false today. This is like saying you will either be sick tomorrow or you will not, and whether or not you will be sick has been decided by things that will happen, over which you have no control. This whole line of thinking denies that the universe is probabilistic; we would, from a non-teleological standpoint, have to say that “There will be a sea battle tomorrow” has no particular truth-value today. It might be more or less likely depending upon circumstances, but it cannot be either true nor false today because the events that shape sea battles are subject to probability and not determinism, either forward or backward moving.

But we are not looking at a causal system when we ask about consciousness, and therefore determinism is not an issue. Forward and backward causation are not the means by which events influence one another in dynamical systems; they are connected by the acausal connecting principle which works through fractals and entrainment, and is not bound up in time and space energy relations. We do not have to suppose either linear time not physical contact in dealing with consciousness, and we can observe conditions under which those assumptions are false. We have a much broader base of explanatory principles to which we can appeal, and the contradictions of supposing teleology in causal systems do not arise because we are not dealing with causal systems.

When one moves from causal to dynamical systems, goals and purposes do not have to be considered as causes. The mode-locking relationship between dynamical systems means that one system can influence another without there being an underlying cause. We don’t have to suppose that dynamical systems interact because someone or something makes them do so; it is a natural part of their behavior to intermix fractal attractors and exchange information. The introduction of dynamicality switches the notion of teleology from causal determinism or intending mind to one of an ongoing progression of interrelated events.

Instead of asking how things came to be, the forward-looking sense of why in a dynamical world yields the question, “Where are things going?” Without any direction or coercion, does the world of nature, consciousness, and spirit progress toward some end or goal? At first it might not appear so, for dynamical systems enjoy an independence from underlying causes that makes them entities unto themselves. Yet, a closer look suggests an underlying unity between dynamical systems that is not possible within the realm of causal relations. We have already caught glimpses of that unity, in the form of metaphysical morality and the collective unconscious. Metaphysical morality is based upon the acausal connection between the individual self and the underlying spiritual unity from which each individual self emerges.

There are certain features of consciousness that are utterly inexplicable by appeal to causal principles. As we have seen, the archetypes and their universal images can not be explained in terms of causation. It cannot be explained why plants such as Cannabis expend large amounts of biochemical energy to produce substances that are of little survival value in the plant. It is impossible to provide a causal explanation for why selective recognition in evolution propelled the human brain into the realm of dynamical systems in the first place. There can be no causal explanation of why there exist portal experiences at all -- consciousness could in theory have been bootstrapped by archetypes without conscious awareness of their presence.

The images of mythology, of dreams and fantasies, and of the healing sickness are all related to each other, and what relates them is the underlying unity of the collective unconscious. None of these make any sense on their own, but a sense of coordination and purpose emerges when we understand the relationship between them. Like wise, the events and conditions out of which consciousness arises -- brain chaos, psychedelic bootstrapping, archetypes, and so on -- by themselves make no sense; they are just a mass of data. But when we understand the unity between them, and how they relate to one another through the collective unconscious or vital force, the pieces begin to fit together.

The pieces fit together because of the entrainment property of dynamical systems. Individual systems that are mode-locked to one another share each other’s patterns, and are able to function as a coordinated unit. Without appeal to causation, intention, or pre-ordination, dynamical systems can integrate their activities acausally, and in doing so an overall unity and purpose emerges.

The collective unconscious is really Jung’s psychological term for Driesch’s vital force or Entelechy. It is the undifferentiated continuum that lies behind consciousness, and the force that makes a living system more than the sum of its parts. As Driesch writes, the Entelechy is “a factor in nature, though it only relates to nature in space and is not itself anywhere in space.” It is, in other words, the underlying unity between the dynamical systems of nature and consciousness.

Because of this link between individual consciousness and universal vitalizing principle, consciousness is what Stanley Fish called a self-consuming artifact. The existence of consciousness points beyond itself; while individual consciousness is an independent entity, it points to some meaning that lies beyond itself. Spontaneous human consciousness is more than consciousness -- it has a greater meaning and purpose that is found in the unity with other consciousnesses from which it emerges.

The acausal connections between consciousness and Entelechy are two-way streets, suggesting that as well as emerging from this unity, each individual consciousness contributes something to it. Perhaps the Entelechy itself evolves, becoming more and more complex as the patterns of individual consciousnesses are assimilated by it. If so, and the Entelechy is a universal animating principle, then it is reasonable to ask where it is going, and toward what end does the Entelechy evolve?

Holes in Space and in the Psyche

The interconnection of consciousness with natural events extends well beyond the drawing of cards and the passing of seasons. There are some striking parallels between consciousness and ideas in theoretical physics, and particularly with respect to the idea of black holes. A black hole is formed when a star of sufficient mass runs out of nuclear fuel. As the star begins to cool, gravitational forces overcome subatomic repulsive forces, and the star collapses until it no longer exists as a physical object. What the collapsed star becomes is a singularity, essentially a hole in space-time. Writes physicist Stephen Hawking:

. . . according to general relativity, there must be a singularity of infinite density and space-time curvature within a black hole. This is rather like the big bang at the beginning of time, only it would be an end of time for the collapsing body . . . At this singularity the laws of science and our ability to predict the future would break down.

A singularity is a point in space and time where the ordinary rules of physics do not apply. It is not all that difficult to envision a singularity. Suppose you were standing at the geographic north pole, at the very point of the Earth’s rotational axis. Several very odd things would be true, that would be true no where else except at the south pole. No matter which way you turn, you would be facing the same direction. If you were to walk backwards, you would be traveling in the same direction you are facing. At this point, a singularity of sorts, the ordinary rules of geography do not work.

Similarly, at the point of singularity within a black hole, the rules of physical space-time do not apply. It is as though the star passes through a gravitational portal, and the region where the star used to be is, for all intents and purposes, now occupied by the Unknown. Whatever the singularity might be, it is not a thing belonging to the physical universe, and because of this, we would expect the event horizon, the area surrounding the singularity where gravitation is so strong that not even light can escape, to be a dynamical system. It is the same kind of interface as that found in intersection, and work done by Hawking and others suggests that event horizons are indeed chaotic.

Black holes come in at least two varieties -- the round, black kind, created out of staationary objects, and a more flattened, bright kind, created out of spinning objects. These flattened black holes are surrounded by strong magnetic fields that interact with matter approaching them such that they emit enormous quantities of energy from matter falling into them. It is thought that quasars, the most distant detectable astronomical objects -- detectable only because of the energy they emit -- may be huge, galaxy-sized objects with matter-consuming black holes at their centers. It is also speculated that the bright core of galaxies, including the Milky Way, may be bright because of one or more black holes at their core, consuming matter and radiating energy.

In asking why there is consciousness, in the forward-looking sense, we were led to the idea of an underlying unity between dynamical systems. But two questions, to which Jung does not provide what I think are satisfactory answers, remain. First, if consciousness emerges from a universal animating principle -- call it collective unconscious, vital force, spirit, Entelechy, God, Nuit, or whatever -- how did that principle or force get there in the first place? It had to be there before consciousness first appeared, else it could not have been the original source of consciousness.

The second question, closely related to the first, is where does psychic energy come from? To say that it arises from the “equilibration of opposites” really doesn’t tell us much. Simply pouring water into oil doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that would give rise to consciousness, nor does it seem like something that could release energy into the psyche at a level sufficient to overcome the biology of the body and create a consciousness that is more than the sum of its parts.

For the vital force to be a truly universal principle, it must be something that arises on a universe-wide basis. For it to animate everything, it must penetrate everywhere. But it cannot be spirit itself, else it would not be able to interact with physical systems. The vital force must arise out of a dynamical system, and exist in the form of a fractal interface or attractor to which other systems have access in state-space. This would allow for transfers of energy that bypass the rules of physical causation. The irrelevance of physical causation would make the action of such a force or principle spontaneous, without obvious physical causes or conditions.

I believe that such an animating principle exists, because it is the best explanation for observable phenomena such as mythic images and the Rhine experiments. This principle has its source in a fundamental, underlying intersection between the physical world and the world of spirit. While this kind of intersection is what mystics experience in what Schultes and Hofmann call the unio mystica, its observable counterpart is the event horizon. Just as a mystical experience is an intersection within the mind, an event horizon is a similar intersection in outer space. Whether what lies at the heart of a black hole is the same kind of thing as spirit or not does not matter; what matters is that it is not-of-this-world, and that is enough to generate the kind of intersection and fractal attractor that can interact acausally with other dynamical systems.

It is most interesting that one reporter, hearing the sound produced by analyzing data from a black hole, described the sound as resembling a human heartbeat. The human heartbeat is the result of a dynamical system that coordinates the contraction of the heart, and gives the heart its own self-established rhythm. Is this a coincidence -- like the man in the closet -- or does it show a deeper relationship, organized by a universally present dynamical system?

Perhaps it is stretching the limits of weird science to suggest that energy-ejecting black holes and quasars provide the energy that ultimately finds its way into consciousness as what Jung called psychic energy, but it is no stranger than the idea that the cat is both alive and dead at the same time in Schrödinger’s box. The absence of strangeness is not the criterion for acceptability, not in physics, and nor should it be in philosophy. What we encounter in the mind as Unknown, we encounter in space as singularity; they are simply different vocabularies for the same thing. Note that we are not reducing the vital force to a physical phenomenon. Once we assume it comes from an interface between singularity and physical universe, we have already taken the essential step against materialism: we have denied that physical matter is all there is, and we have denied that the rules governing the behavior of matter are the only rules there are.

Everything in the universe in which we live has access, via state space, to this enormous source of energy. Once the brain goes dynamical, the floodgates are opened to fractal images appearing from the vital force -- the archetypes. It is no wonder that portal experiences are accompanied by inrushes of psychic energy, when we consider the energy reserves available via entrainment to the cosmic powerhouses at galactic cores.

Whether manifesting itself in the mind as an archetype or some other form of portal experience, or in space as an event horizon, the vital force or collective unconscious is everywhere. It would not matter whether consciousness or quasar came first, anymore than it matters whether the subject guesses the right card before or after it is drawn. The world of acausal connections does not depend on linear time, no matter how strange that seems. Just as Jung and
Driesch thought, though they could never have imagined the evidence for it, there is an underlying unity that interconnects the dynamical events of the universe. The simple phenomenon that Huygens observed in his synchronized clocks is nothing less than the heartbeat of the universe itself.

The archetypes are the bearers of this unity and energy in consciousness. Beyond bootstrapping and maintaining consciousness, they are also the sources of energy by which consciousness itself evolves. Jung writes:

If the unconscious can be reorganized as a co-determining factor along with consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total personality shifts its position. It is then no longer the ego, which is merely the centre of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious. This new centre might be called the self.

Under the influence of archetypes, consciousness becomes more spirit-like. It moves closer to the unity from which it emerged, and in so doing the unity also evolves. Gould and others have suggested that our changing understanding of the “laws” of physics may actually be a sign of this universal evolution. Where we once only saw causality, we now see dynamical systems because the universe is itself evolving away from causation, and closer to the vital principle.

Dynamical systems often appear when energy levels in a system reach some critical point that non-causal factors, unnoticeable under ordinary circumstances, assume significant proportions and rupture the causal relationships in the system. This is true whether those energies are psychic in the case of consciousness, or physical in the case of turbulence. The energy from the black hole furnaces of quasars and galactic cores could well be fueling the same process in the universe that archetypes fuel within the psyche -- the movement from causation toward dynamicality, and, ultimately, from matter toward spirit.

As the universe accumulates energy, what Jung metaphorically called the “centre of gravity” shifts upward, toward spirit. Dynamical activity pushes causation out of the picture, and the universe tends toward an interconnected wholeness. We need not suppose an intending mind or will to drive this process; it happens of its own accord, a perfectly natural form of evolution. If this is so, then where does the process lead? We do not have far to look for the answer.

The Galactic Academy

The Rhine experiment suggests and underlying unity between physical events -- the turning of cards -- and events in consciousness that transcends space and time. Jung explained this unity as an acausal, synchronistic connection by way of the unconscious. As Jung said, the knowledge of the card drawn is already in the unconscious; the seer need only recover this knowledge to correctly call the draw.

What other kinds of knowledge might be in the unconscious? Wee have already seen another kind of knowledge: the recurrent images of myth and archetype. While these images are the bearers of psychic energy, they also organize thoughts and behaviors. Their images teach us how to understand the world and ourselves. The hero’s journey is more than just a story; it is a model for how to defend consciousness against threatening psychoid processes. But the archetypes are only forms of thought and apprehension. They are given meaning and purpose -- in Jung’s words, they are meaningfully correlated -- in the mind of the person to whom they appear. They are frameworks, whose specific meaning is filled in by consciousness.

There are other examples of this kind of knowledge. Rupert Sheldrake, whose theory of morphogenetic fields shares many similarities with the collective unconscious, argues that there could exist a “galactic academy” of knowledge, in which the knowledge amassed by life on one planet could be shared throughout space without the need for physical contact. The experiences of individuals are “copied” into the morphogenetic field, and since the morphogenetic field is not a strictly physical phenomenon, it can then by “retrieved” by any species with access to morphogenetic fields. Morphogenetic fields are forces produced by living organisms; it follows from this that all living organisms would have access to the knowledge and experience of all other organisms.

It would appear that the collective unconscious and the morphogenetic field are similar phenomena described in different vocabularies. Individual consciousnesses are mode-locked to the collective unconscious by way of archetypes, but as we have said, entrainment can be a two-way street. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that information existing in individual consciousness could be spread throughout the collective unconscious, and any organism with a dynamical consciousness could recover that information. The Vulcan mind-melt might be possible after all, although there are a few complications.

This knowledge would be primarily accessible through portal experiences, and could carry with it such enormous bursts of psychic energy that it might well alter the meaning of the information itself. Drawn up to a higher level, the psyche might interpret the knowledge differently than would ordinary consciousness. This often happens in otherwise innocent spiritual experiences. An individual approaches divination for the answer to some mundane question, and the “answer” from the collective unconscious carries with it so much psychic energy that the questioner’s mind is transformed, and no longer cares about the question. A sightseer goes to visit the site of some oracle or religious figure out of curiosity, and is so overwhelmed by the psychic energy released by the encounter that he or she abandons ordinary life for a more spiritual path. Spirit chooses whom it will and when it will.

What would such “universal knowledge” be like? Since information is transferred between dynamical systems in the form of patterns, the information would be much like an archetype -- a repeating pattern that must be “meaningfully correlated” by the individual receiving the information. Knowledge obtained from the galactic academy would be very dream-like, and would be dependent upon consciousness to fill in its meaning.

This idea has appeared before in philosophy, as Plato’s idea of forms. According to Plato, there are two orders: becoming, the world of physical bodies and objects in which we live, and being, an unchanging ethereal state in which absolute truth resides. Like archetypes in the collective unconscious, the forms reside in the world of being. The forms are the idealized images of which physical objects are imperfect copies. Triangularity, for example, is a form that is the perfect embodiment of a three-sided figure. The triangles we see, all having different sizes, angles and so forth, are triangles because they embody the form of triangularity. But none of these physical triangles are perfect -- they have bent lines, they can be destroyed, and they are all different from one another.

Thus, a form is very much like an archetype. It is a pattern or framework, that must be filled in by the observer to have any meaning. According to Plato, only the truly wise person can know a form directly, and these persons are few and far between. The rest of us understand the form through its imperfect physical or mental correlates. It follows from this that the knowledge of the world we have, all based upon imperfect copies of forms, is fundamentally flawed and inaccurate. We can never come to know a form this way. Instead, we learn of the forms through recollection. Plato’s theory of reincarnation suggests that after death, the soul goes to the world of being, where it has direct knowledge of the forms. When that soul reincarnates, it enters the world of becoming, but still retains its memory of the forms. We can recall that information from the soul, and thus achieve an understanding of triangularity, beauty, goodness, and the other forms without appeal to their imperfect copies. Thus, truth comes not by learning from experience, but by recalling the forms.

There are so many parallels between Plato’s theory of forms, Jung’s theory of archetypes and Sheldrake’s galactic academy that I believe they are really the same basic idea. The collective unconscious, or world of being, or morphogenetic field has within its fractal attractor innumerable patterns of information. The knowledge is already in the unconscious, and it can be called forth by portal experience, or by Platonic recall, which amounts to the same thing. This knowledge, in its raw state, is purely formal and must be filled in by consciousness to have meaning -- as with archetypes, consciousness understands forms by way of symbols. Thus, we understand triangularity by imagining triangles.

But what of the wise person, who can understand the forms directly? The wise person is one who has undergone certain preparations to see the forms, which turn out to be very similar to the preparations set forth by many spiritual traditions to produce mystical experiences. Once the “centre of gravity” of the psyche has been pulled to a higher level by preparation, the form (or archetype) can be experienced directly, without the need to visualize an imperfect copy or symbol.

If this information constitutes a galactic academy, then who, besides us, has access to it? This raises the issue of extra-terrestrial life forms, and what these life forms would be like. From a mental standpoint, would their consciousness be anything like ours? Would we even recognize them as conscious? Human consciousness is human because of the conditions under which it evolved -- the Earth’s environment, and the contingent events that have happened on Earth. Unless the environment and contingencies of another planet are exactly like ours, it is likely that alien consciousness would not be exactly like ours. But, if consciousness is also the product of the collective unconscious, then there is every reason to suspect that no matter how different another planet’s environment might be, there would be some underlying substrate in consciousness that we would have in common with extra-terrestrials. Their consciousness might not be recognizable as human, but we might have some basis for communication and understanding nonetheless.

The idea of the galactic academy depends upon an underlying unity between consciousness and some pre-existing, formal system of collective knowledge. The observation that we do seem to acquire this kind of knowledge, whether through recall, archetypes or morphogenetic fields, gives us a hint of the direction toward which consciousness may be evolving. We tend to know things in terms of how they are different from one another -- a table is a table because it has a certain shape that other things do not have. But at the galactic academy we learn a different way. We learn that a beautiful painting, a beautiful woman and beautiful music share a unity with one another through patterns in the unconscious. Perhaps all things share an underlying unity with one another, and as the universe evolves, that unity accumulates ever increasing energies, pulling the “centre of gravity” higher and higher, drawing more and more of the universe into itself. Could it be that the galactic academy is a prep school for the greatest event ever to occur in the universe?

The Conscious Universe

The laws of thermodynamics tell us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. But it can change form, as from electricity to heat and light. In the twentieth century we have learned that matter is really a form of energy, and the black hole furnaces at the centers of galaxies and quasars consume matter and release enormous quantities of energy.

Where does that energy go? Most of it is no doubt ejected into space, as light and other forms of radiation. Perhaps some of it is released into other dynamical systems entrained with the black hole’s event horizon. Wherever the energy goes, one thing appears obvious: the universe is trading matter for energy, and accumulating energy in ever increasing amounts.

Why, in the forward-looking sense, is this happening? To what end is the universe consuming itself? Physicists have theorized two possible scenarios for the end of the universe. One is “thermal rundown” or “brown-out”, in which the universe eventually runs out of energy and becomes nothing but inert matter. The other scenario is “Big Crunch”, in which the matter of the expanding universe reverses direction and begins to implode inward. This is the reverse of the Big Bang, where the energy that pushes the universe outward runs out, and the gravitational forces pull the entire universe back into one clump of matter. Both of these scenarios ultimately reduce to physical matter as the final constituent of reality, and we know where this belief comes from.

Matter is energy, and the universe seems to have found ways to run the conversion long before the first atomic bomb. Perhaps there is yet another end-of-the-universe scenario, one that does not reduce to inert matter and does not imply final destruction. This new scenario is one that can not be envisioned with causal models, and can not be understood in terms of materialistic atheology. It requires the application of other principles, principles that we have already seen in operation.

Dynamical systems feed on energy. As we have seen, the appearance of energy magnifying circuits in the brain, coupled with psychedelic bootstrapping, provides the energy that initiates dynamical systems activity in the brain, leading to consciousness. Archetypes enter the picture, and as consciousness appears and accumulates energy, its “centre of gravity” is pulled upward, toward ever increasing levels of energy until it finally, possibly after many incarnations, crosses the event horizon into the world of spirit. The energy is returned to its source, and in so doing, both the world of matter and the world of spirit are transformed.

Could this vision of consciousness simply be a microcosm, an image in miniature, for the events of the entire universe? If the universe, through its energy-releasing and dynamical event horizons, can create a universal animating principle that can energize other dynamical systems, then it could just as easily entrain all of those various systems into one functional, interconnected unit. As easily as the human brain is able to interconnect its various dynamical systems of perception and memory into one overall coordinating system of consciousness, the universe could well interconnect all of its constituent systems into a unified whole, complete with self-generated fractal pattern. As the universe releases energy, and that energy fuels dynamical systems activity, the “centre of gravity” is pulled upward, away from matter and toward the source of the energy itself. If this occurs, the same things that happens in the brain happens in the universe as a whole; when the “centre of gravity” is pulled up far enough, the universe becomes conscious.

Is this really so strange an idea? Is it any stranger to argue that the universe could become conscious, than it is to argue that a gelatinous lump of water and minerals inside the skull can become conscious? Only if one’s imagination is held prisoner by deflationary philosophical assumptions could these ideas seem strange at all. Once we get beyond materialism, reductionism and social-ontology, we see that we are not necessarily the only ones capable of consciousness. Consciousness is, as Edelman said, a dynamical systems property, and since the activity of a dynamical system is not dependent upon the nature of its parts, there is no reason to believe that a universe-wide dynamical system could not behave as a conscious being.

We have already seen the beginnings of this universal consciousness. The galactic academy, or collective unconscious, is not only the source of consciousness, but also the final unity to which consciousness returns. The archetypes reach out to the developing human brain, and in the end take the consciousness they have created back with them to their source. The galactic academy’s library -- its repertoire of self-generated patterns -- grows with each consciousness it creates. Universal consciousness evolves, and with each atom of matter dissolved in an event horizon, its energy grows and the Entelechy is pulled upward.

As the collective unconscious evolves, so human consciousness also evolves. The archetypes bring with them more complex patterns and greater reservoirs of energy. Once disconnected from the psychosis of oversocialized urban life, the human psyche is free to evolve along with the universe. If we can manage to throw off the paradigm of urban life, and finally get the city out of our heads, then we as a conscious species can evolve along with the universe, instead of being left behind.

What happens as human consciousness evolves? From Jung’s theory, it appears that it becomes more spirit-like, as the archetypes that bootstrap consciousness become more complex and energetic. The state of mind that accompanies mystical experiences becomes the norm, leaving the blind reactions to instincts and susceptibility to psychosis behind. This is matched by the continuing evolution of universal consciousness. Both individual and universe continue to evolve, pulling ever and ever upward, accumulating more and more energy, until . . .

Nirvana. At-one-ness. Rapture. Atziluth. Kether. The final utterance: I am who I am. What are all these words, and what do they mean? Though volumes have been written about them, they all really mean the same thing: a world so different than the world we know, that we cannot possibly grasp their meaning. Like the passage of a star’s center through the portal of gravity and into the Unknown, or the passage of the mystic’s mind through the portal of intersection into unity with spirit, it is the transformation of everything we know into something we cannot imagine.

At least, we can not imagine it on our own. This new world is the world from which archetypes emerge, from which the symbology of myth and legend originates, and which is seen by mystics and visionaries. It is the birthplace of consciousness, and the repertoire of all conscious experience throughout the universe. We have seen this world in our own childhood, we recall it in dreams and fantasies, and we see and feel it all around us when archetypes touch the psyche and, even if only for a moment, push the social psychoid process out of the way.

Of course there is another world that mystics and visionaries have seen -- one of death, destruction and desolation. This other world is the world of the social psychoid process, and these visions are both recollections of the failure of human civilizations, and warnings about the future of a world descended into oversocialized psychosis. An unconscious universe faces the same fate as human civilizations ruled by the social psychoid process -- decay into silent, physical ruins of what could have become greatness.

We can relax in indolence, and we can have the future that the social psychoid process has mapped out for us. We can have more shootings and suicides, more depression and malaise, more “medications”, more children, and more wasted lives and wasted Earth. Propelled by the energy of cosmic furnaces and transcendental intersections, the universe will move onward, and those things that do not move with it will be consumed in the final moment of enlightenment, reduced to energy that feeds a consciousness of which humanity has chosen not to be a part.

Or, we can reclaim the greatness that has been stolen from us by deflationary philosophies and the psychotic mentality that keeps us imprisoned as social animals in the death-rows of the city, awaiting execution by contingent events. Instead of dropping out of the galactic academy, we can get back on the path of evolution and spirit, for despite the reductionist debates on both sides, we have seen that evolution and creation are really the same thing, and lead to the same point of transformation.

We have looked into the globe and seen, as Yeats said, the archetypal images. We have seen the images of the woods and the hills and the heavens, and felt the energies these images constellate in the psyche. Humanity’s ancestors felt them, children feel them, and in moments of fantasy, dream, and psychedelic-induced visions we again feel them. When we follow the archetypes through the windy doors, we enter the world of human greatness, and leave the psychotic world we read of in the newspapers behind. It is your right to claim that greatness, to abandon the ways of humanity’s preconscious ancestors, and, as the Oracles of Julianus proclaim, “again rise to the Order from which you descended.”