My own view is that understanding consciousness is like trying to pin down a trickster.
In many mythological traditions there are characters, tricksters, that behave in
the most unpredictable, unsatisfactory way. They create confusion where there is order,
they cause strife where there was harmony. What consciousness is, is that which
creates as much as discriminates, it makes up as much as it learns. It is a process
of the brain that allows us to manipulate the world not just perceive it. It requires
that we invent our own reality in order to manipulate the reality that was there
to begin with. Therefore, we never perceive anything without fundamentally creating
some aspect of it. Scientifically, consciousness emerges from neural activity in
sufficiently complex brains. It also gives rise to what Teilhard de Chardin called
the noosphere: the layer of language, social systems, technology that convey information
from knower to knower; a layer of physical activity that acts downward to transform
the lower layers of biosphere and geosphere.
The following are some of the ways in which I explore the nature of consciousness:
Bible Studies God created humans in His image. The
stories that follow show how our relationship with God has grown and developed.
With Christ we have a new teaching of what God wants from us. What does it mean
to be created in His image? Since we are not omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent,
and God is not limited to any specific physical form as we are, it can only mean
one thing...we have a soul, a character, a consciousness. In Eden that consciousness
was changed when we disobeyed God. Then it was that sin determined our consciousness.
Later when God came to Earth as Jesus, he showed us that we can be free from sin
by believing in Jesus as our savior. Our personal relationship with Jesus, the
relationship of one psyche to another, is our salvation. His mind to our mind changes
us through our consciousness. This understanding of consciousness is creative in
the sense that we create it by relating to God. We choose our words to Him and
make our choices in how to respond to Him. It is this freedom to choose in the
relationship that is our most sacred gift.
I have begun to document, on this site, my thoughts on what God's word means for
us today, specifically how He wants us to develop so that we can make Heaven on
Earth (see [Bible Studies]). I also plan to write about
what it means to believe that Jesus died on the cross for our sins and that we are
personally saved by that act. This fact is repeated often but rarely explained.
Basic questions like how and why are often answered in a circular way repeating
often heard dogmatic statements leaving one with the impression that you either
get it or you don't and there is no middle ground that anyone understands. Jesus
has always stood in the middle so this middle ground is important! But the middle
ground is not compromise, it is suffering and joy. I hope, on this web site, to
shed light where I have had light shed for me so that being saved will become more
accessible to more people. God wants nothing less than for us to be able to, through
Him, transform our consciousness, conquer sin and become the instrument of salvation
for others.
Comparative Mythology The stories of cultures from
around the world have similarities that speak to underlying truths about consciousness.
Furthermore, a comparative study of mythologies indicate similar developmental patterns
across cultures. Mythologies reflect the imagination of the the most creative individuals
in a given culture. Their stories arise from depths of the psyche and into their
consciousness. In their attempt at explaining the meaning of life in the deepest
way, mythological stories reflect the nature of consciousness.
Joseph Campbell has written extensively on this subject as have many other Jungian
scholars. This subject ties in closely to depth psychology and dream analysis.
Dreams provide stories that reflect the waking conscious personality in the mirror
of the total psyche, an entity with many universal characteristics. This is reflective
of the fact of our common biological and neurological structure. My belief is that
mythology is the oral traditional form of psychology embodied in an entertaining
story form that grew out of ritual and ended up as a means for preserving knowledge
of the nature of consciousness in an oral culture.
The advent of writing allowed for the recording of these stories but tended to stop
the evolving creative process of mythology. In exchange for exact preservation
we got untouchable doctrine. Authority shifted from the human knower to the recorded
document and the creative, spiritual relationship with God was, on a cultural level,
largely frozen. The specific combination of words was taken as the truth and not
that to which the words point. This created the illusion of truth as being perfectly
expressed once in the distant past and then never being subject to growth, correction
or evolving human experience. Even if God's truth is unchanging (although it includes
change), we human knowers are not and we only see God's truth through our limited
understanding. And just as a child may need to hear a simplistic truth, as an adult
we know that black and white perspectives are seldom the answer. Myths access truths
as we experience them, as stories of our experience of the dynamic tensions of
conflicting realities.
Creative Mythology Writing in a mythological mode
allows the artist to discover the particular universal mythological themes at work
within. We are all expressions of the unique and the common, the subjective and
the objective. The act of creative writing allows for an intentional conscious
effort to release the personal expressions of the unconscious. This allows access
to the consequences in the extemes of our conscious attitude to be shown up in the
extremes of our unconscious (unroutine, unexpected) spontaneous, though recurring,
thoughts and images. In other words, our consciousness is often a configuration
of extreme attitudes and beliefs at the expense of other practical and valid understandings
which the psyche as a whole (as designed by God) was made to accomodate. To disengage
us from sin, we must learn to untie the knots we tie with our conscious attitudes,
even those we cannot see. The beam in our own eye is greater than the mote in another's
but often invisible to ourselves.
By re-awakening the creative, spiritual dialogue with God, by looking for and telling
the story of His work in the world, we can grow in our relationship to God as a
society and not continue to stagnate behind centuries of the worship of a book over
the living God, His Son and the Holy Spirit. Of course, this does not mean that
anyone who says they are inspired actually is. But as in the past with the composition
of the Old and New Testament by spiritual leaders and scholars, so too should we
be concerned with finding God today. Just as the Bible spans centuries and reflects
profound changes in the culture of those who authored its books, so too would new
works be wholely different and subject to community recognition. As is clear there
are many churches and no simple authority in that regard. What would be selected
as new divinely inspired works would have to be acknowledged by the widest possible
community of Christians.
Depth Psychology - Structure of the Psyche - Dream Analysis
Carl Jung developed
concepts that describe characteristics of human consciousness that in my view say
more about the character of our consciousness than any other psychologist has been
able to. Jung developed the existing understanding of the conscious and the unconscious
as complimentary opposites of the total psyche with a personal and collective dimension.
Borrowing terminology from classical physics, he outlined an economy of psychic
energy extending Freud's concept of libido to not have just the sexual urge as its
object. In fact, there are patterns of spontaneous conscious experience with universal
dimensions that suggest a template of ideas or archetypes that typify creative or
uninhibited thought. Dreams and myths express these universals and can serve as
the data for a field study of archetypal psychic content organizing our world and
our instinctual drives toward understanding and action.
Constellations of archetypes form about our personality and give form to our consciousness.
Archetypes are not all coordinated but tend to get differentiated into sub-personalities
which either compliment or conflict with our preferred psychic attitude. Awareness
of the structure of our psyche gives rise to an internal dialogue between these
inner personal characters. The ego and its personal opposite, the shadow, clash
and coordinate. The ego and its universal opposite the anima(men)/animus(women)
meet in moments of ecstasy and despair. The conscious effort to develop these relationships
for a centered, satisfied, intentional whole is called by Jung the individuation
process. The individual learns to manipulate the universal forces at work in his
or her mind, the separate personalities, to balance needs and perspectives, achieving
goals often expressed in teachings of the world's mythological traditions. The
ego adapts to the world and the total psychic background, conquering and submitting
to forces it may or may not master.
Mandalic Analysis A mandala is an image representing
a whole. It usually has a circular or square shape overall. Creating mandalas
is a way of expressing the ego's relationship to the whole psyche. Making a list
of all things in any given category is also working with a mandala. The more personal
the category, the more personally meaningful the whole the list expresses. For
example, I could list all the known species of birds that live in my area. That
would express a whole but would only be as personal as my interest in birds. If
I made a list of all the things I like to do, then that would be more personal.
If I made a list of all the things I like to do and the things I hate to do, then
I have created an image of my own psychic profile. Filling out a circular space
with meaningful images placing them in size and shape "where they belong" or making
a full list of some personal nature is an act of mandalic self-expression. Circles
and squares in dreams often represent the whole psychic orientation. Cross-referencing
one's mandalic creations with other fields of study in consciousness may reveal
characteristics of consciousness of both a universal and personal nature.
Neurobiology The mind is what the brain does. This
is true to a great extent, although I believe that there is a greater physical substrate
to the mind. Any physical form that results from the mind of humans whether it
be art or architecture, books or music, speech or dance is an expression of the
body of consciousness. The total of all physical manifestations of human consciousness
is a layer of physical activity that arises from and acts downward upon the lower
layer of biological activity. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called this layer the
noosphere. Our language, our culture, our songs and our web pages embody our consciousness.
But neurobiology is the true basis for study of how the brain gives rise to the
mind. The base units of the brain, the neuron, are all largely similar dispite
their varieties. Electrochemical impulses represent the communication between these
cells and the pattern of that communication in the context of our memory and our
experience is our consciousness. Of all the sciences of the mind, neurobiology
stands at the extreme as the exemplar of the scientific method of exploration.
Philosophy To my knowledge the Western philosophical
tradition first delineated the mind-body problem as a problem. Descartes helped
to "solidify" the concept of mind as an entity that interacts with the physical
world. Now we are left to puzzle over just what this mind is. Since there is a
very good chance that the mind is not going to be something we can discern with
our senses, it will have to be pondered in terms of abstract concepts. Having said
this I realize that my senses and my thought are events in my mind, my consciousness.
So don't we, in fact, observe consciousness through our senses?
So philosophical consideration begins and ends with understanding consciousness
just as it has historically, it starts with a Platonic dialogue and ends with linguistic
analysis. The history of philosophic thought seems to me to be just as revealing
as any of its particular lines of thought. Similarly one can see in the history
of mythological thought patterns reflective of the cycles and processes associated
with consciousness.
I suspect that a philosophy of mind tied closely to neurobiology and a study of
adaptive complex systems will promote a new foundation for knowledge. We will need
to understand truth as multi-modal meaning that there is no center of truth but
small handful of semi-independent methods or modalities which generate the experience
of truth. The structure of the brain does not indicate an equivalent to a central
processing unit. It employs multiple sensory modalities to obtain the truth. It
creates perceptions by cross-referencing these different modalities as well. Similarly
the axioms of logic and the principle values of a culture are two different sets
of truths that give rise to two different epistemological systems. At the same
time we wouldn't be logical if we didn't value it and conflicting values (logically
inconsistent values) can cause a person to lose respect and a sense of morality.
Psychological Typology A psychological typology is
a description of the varieties of biased types of personality development. Jung's
psychological typology, probably the main spring from which all modern personality
tests were inspired, outlines ways in which individual personalities can perceive
and order the world. These types are all present in each individual but developed
preferentially and often to the exclusion of its opposite type. The dynamics of human
interaction and, especially, the difficulties of resolving subjective perspectives
into a broader objective truth has everything to do with psychological type after
simple contradictions are cleared away. In its most profound implications, a psychological
typology indicates that truth is multi-modal and that there is not one single, superior
way or system of knowing truth. One's personality prefers a certain way and the
individual may believe that their way of knowing is superior. But that is an ego-centric
view which would tend to justify extreme responses to those with equal conviction
but different formulations of truth based on their own psychological typology.
Jung's original formulation included the following four types: thinking, feeling,
intuition and sensation. There are furthermore the attitudes: introverted and extroverted.
The Myers-Brigg's
Type Indicator was developed as a standardized way to determine
an individual's psychological typology. As with any Mandalic analysis (see above
section) the method is subjective and creative and not amenible to rigorous scientific
dissection. This is to be expected as the use of personality tests should never
be considered as defining the individual. At its root, in a personality test, there
is always an oversimplification that the individual has one distinct over-riding
attitude or preferential type. In reality, the personality is more complex. Different
environments may elicit different psychological attitudes from a given individual
in such a way as to dilute the idea of a predominant, specific type for that individual.