The word consciousness is derived from the Latin con-scire - “with-knowing”. A relational, or systems, view is implicit in this etymology: pointing to the relation between subject and object, between the knower and the known. Conscious knowing (con-scire) is knowing-with-knowing-that-you-know. This can be contrasted to the unconscious knowing involved in my knowing how to grow hair, or skin cells over a wound, or the “autonomic” physiological functions of the body ; and my knowing how to tie my shoelaces, or ride a bicycle, behavioral habits which involve automated non-conscious knowing.
There is a striking difference between Western and Eastern philosophical and psychological teachings concerning consciousness. In Western culture, we tend to assume that, ordinarily, we are conscious, or we “have consciousness”. We do recognize that there are unconscious states, such as sleep, or coma; and we also have come to recognize, since the writings of Sigmund Freud, that unconscious factors (thoughts, feelings, etc) can have a profound influence on our normal consciousness. Eastern psychologies, on the other hand, including those of Vedanta and Buddhism, regard unconsciousness (called avidya, “not-knowing”) as the default condition of the human being, that we’re born with. Consciousness, according to those teachings, only develops as a result of disciplined mental and psychological practices known as meditation and the different forms of yoga.
Following this line of thought, we can distinguish unconscious psychic functioning, from the same function exercised consciously, with added awareness and perception of context (“with-knowing”). Perception with awareness of emotional and associational context is apperception. In sympathy we resonate automatically, unconsciously with someone else’s emotional state. Empathy also has that affective resonance, but in addition, there is understanding of the situation and the causes of the feelings. The distinction between knowledge-about something, or information, typically book-knowledge, on the one hand, and wisdom or understanding, which includes awareness of background and context, has often be drawn. A child’s or animal’s reaction is typically immediate, instinctive; a response implies an element of forethought and planning, “response-ability”. Even relatively simple organisms have an “orienting reflex”, which determines the direction of their attention; whereas the notion of attention implies something that is consciously chosen, as in “paying attention”. Unconscious versions of intention or interest also exist – we might call it “expectation”, or “impulse”, or “desire”. Sensing, seeing and hearing have their extended, more conscious forms – in clairsentience, clairvoyance and clairaudience. Automatic, unconscious, dichotomous judgements are made on perceptions (pleasure/pain, beautiful/ugly), our feelings (good/bad), motives and actions (right/wrong), and thoughts (true/false). When the dichotomous judgement is superimposed on the perception, feeling, action or thought, before – we call it prejudice, “pre-judgement”. The concepts “discernment”, or “discriminative wisdom”, or “good judgement”, imply a heightened degree of differentiated awareness and situational consideration. And finally, we can recognize the distinction between automatic, habitual, or conditioned thinking, on the one hand, and the process of mindfully witnessing one’s thought processes, or directing them according to our conscious intention. These comparisons are summarized in the table below.
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Ordinary habitual function |
Conscious function, with context |
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|
|
|
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perception |
apperception |
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|
sympathy |
empathy |
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knowledge or information |
wisdom or understanding |
|
|
reaction |
response |
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|
orientation |
attention |
|
|
expectation (impulse, desire) |
intention or interest |
|
|
sensing |
clairsentience |
|
|
judgement |
discernment, discrimination |
|
|
habitual thinking |
mindful thinking |
|
Historically, in the West, there have been two main metaphors for consciousness, one spatial or topographical, and the other temporal or developmental. The topographical metaphor is expressed in conceptions of consciousness as like a territory, a terrain, or a field, a “state” one can enter into or leave; or in the Buddhist conception of consciousness like empty space. Adhering to the spatial metaphor can lead to a certain fixity in one’s worldview, a craving for stability and persistence, and anxiety about change. From this point of view, ordinary waking consciousness is the preferred state, and “altered states” are viewed with some anxiety and suspicion, -- as if an “altered” state is automatically abnormal. In many ways this is the attitude of mainstream Western thought toward alterations of consciousness—even the rich diversity of dreamlife and the changed awareness possible with introspection, psychotherapy or meditation is regarded with suspicion by the dominant extraverted worldview. This despite the obvious fact that profoundly altered states of consciousness are deeply rooted in our everyday experience: every 24 hours we cycle through the three extremely different states of waking, dreaming and dream-less sleep.
A temporal metaphor for consciousness is implict in conceptions such as William James’ “stream of thought”, or the stream of awareness, or the “flow experience”, as well as in developmental theories of consciousness going through various stages. Historically, we see the temporal metaphor emphasized in the thought of the pre-Socratic philosophers Thales and Heraclitus, in Buddhist teachings of impermanence (anicca), and in the Taoist emphasis on the flows and eddies of water as the basic patterns of all life. From this point of view, wave-like fluctuations of consciousness are regarded as natural and inevitable, and health, well-being and creativity are linked to one’s ability to tune into and utilize the naturally occurring, and the “artificially” induced, modulations of consciousness.
According to Immanuel Kant, “space” and “time” are the a priori categories of all thinking. It seems appropriate that these are the two most common metaphors we have come up with in our reflections on consciousness. Perhaps the most balanced way to think about consciousness would be to keep both the spatial and the temporal metaphors in mind. We can recognize and identify the structural, persistent features of the perceived world we are “in” at any given moment, and we can be aware of the ever-changing, flowing stream of phenomena in which we are immersed. Heraclitus, in addition to the oft-quoted “we cannot step twice into the same river”, expanded on the metaphor by also saying that “when we step in the same river, the flowing water is always new and different.”
The definition of consciousness proposed by the Russian mathematician and physicist Victor Nalimov, in his book Realms of the Human Unconscious, is one that integrates both the topographical and the temporal aspect: he calls it a “semantic continuum”, i.e. a “continuum of meaning”. A continuum is defined as a “continuous extent, succession or whole”, which can be divided mentally into parts, but also considered as a whole. A continuum of meaning, like the sensorium of sense perception, conveys something of the dual quality of consciousness, -- both stable and fluid, integrative and differentiated. Some findings from the scientific study of brain function suggest that these two aspects of consciousness may be correlated with differential electrical activity in the two hemisphere – the left brain, with the language centers, being more associated with temporal processing; the right brain, active in perception of design and shape, with spatial awareness.
In contrast to ancient, Eastern and indigenous views, Western science in general and psychology in particular has never been comfortable with the study of the subjective side of life, with qualities of experience, purposes, intuitions, mystical visions or spiritual aspirations. Under the sway of the Cartesian mind-matter dichotomy, consciousness and experience were seen as belonging to the realm of religion, and science agreed to stay out of it. Later, as the ideological hold of the Church diminished and the materialist paradigm became paramount, consciousness and all subjective experience became even more firmly banished from scientific discourse.
In the 19th century, the German social philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey ( 1833–1911) attempted to establish the “mental sciences” (Geisteswissenschaften), on an equivalent footing to the “natural sciences” (Naturwissenschaften). This idea never really took hold in the English-speaking world. Instead, the social sciences (psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science) adopted and imitated the empirical observational and quantitative analytical methods of the natural sciences. In psychology, the only observations that qualified as “scientific” were observations of behavior—to the extreme of B.F. Skinner’s behaviorism, in which mental states were said to be in an unknowable “black box”. Although the influence of strict behaviorism in psychology has waned in the latter half of the 20th century, the ideological commitment to a materialist worldview has not. In the leading paradigms of cognitive psychology or cognitive science (which includes brain sciences, computer modeling, information systems and the like) consciousness is still treated as something to be explained (i.e. explained away) in the supposedly more “real” terms of “neural nets”, “brain circuits” and the like.
In the latter half of the 19th century a European philosophical movement took a completely different and new approach to the study of consciousness. The German mathematician/philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) originally conceived of his phenomenology as an attempt to rescue philosophy and the quest for absolute knowledge from the “naturalism” and relativism of the newly arising experimental psychology. He criticized the psychophysical method of Wilhelm Wundt and G.T. Fechner as providing only correlations between subjective events and physical events, and ignoring the possibilities of “pre-understanding” of what consciousness was, in its essence. For Husserl, the abstract truths of mathematics are essences that are grasped by the mind directly, without relative or empirical observation. He proposed phenomenology as the method for directly arriving at essential and universal knowledge about the nature of consciousness and meaning, in part by clarifying the implicit pre-understandings that underlie other psychological approaches.
A core concept of Husserl’s phenomenology of consciousness is intentionality : consciousness is always intentional, always “of” or “about” something, always directed, like an arrow or a mathematical vector, toward some object of meaning. The objects that consciousness intends can be external, or they can be internal aspects of our own experience. Because intentional consciousness is always “constituting” the essential features of the various domains of existence, both external and internal, consciousness has a fundamental “ontological priority”—it is the “supporting ground of reality”. The focus on intention as the fundamental constituting attribute of consciousness is congruent with the emphasis on “set (and setting)” as the prime determinants of altered states, which I shall discuss further below. The ontological primacy of consciousness in Husserl’s phenomenology is consistent with the worldview of the mystics in Eastern and Western traditions as well as the insights coming from profound altered states.
A further innovative contribution to the phenomenology of consciousness was made by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961). In his work, the focus of interest shifts from the subjective mind to the subjective body, or bodily experience (le corps propre). For Merleau-Ponty, perception is an inherently creative, participatory activity between the living body and its world. All subjectivity or consciousness presupposes our inherence in a corporeal world, a world that we perceive as the having depth, intimacy and horizon. The ecophilosopher David Abram has shown, in his work The Spell of the Sensuous, how in many ways Merleau-Ponty’s later thought anticipates the deep ecologists and others who are looking to develop a new conscious awareness of our embeddedness in the world of Nature.
The American philosopher William James (1842 –1910) approached the psychology of consciousness in his characteristic multifarious manner. He may have been the first person to use the concept of “field” in talking about consciousness: human beings have “fields of consciousness”, which are always complex, -- containing body sensations, sense impressions, memories, thoughts, feelings, desires and “determinations of the will”, in fact “a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations.” He made it clear that his famous “stream of thought” image actually meant not just thoughts, but images, sensations, feelings, etc. He wrote that “the mind is a confederation of psychic entitites” and a “theater of simultaneous possibilities.” This idea is reminiscent of C. G. Jung’s conception of personality structure consisting of an aggregate of psychic complexes: the persona, the shadow, the ego, the anima, the animus, with the Self forming the superordinate whole that includes all the parts, both conscious and unconscious.
William James explored the paranormal and mystical dimensions of consciousness, that usually lie outside the boundaries of scientific interest. He pursued a life-long interest in the phenomena of sub-liminal consciousness, what he called “exceptional mental states”, including those found in hypnotism, somnambulism, hysteria, multiple personality, demoniacal possession, witchcraft, degeneration and genius. James’s interest in unusual states of consciousness led him to experiment with nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas” as it was then known, an experience that reinforced his understanding of transrational states of consciousness. He wrote that the conclusion he drew from these early “psychedelic” experiences was “that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.”
James wrote the above statement in his The Varieties of Religious Experience, probably his most influential book. In it he explored with great discernment and eloquence the nature and significance of mystical or “conversion” experiences, by which he meant not only a person’s change from one religion to another, but the process of attaining a sense of unity and the sacred dimension of life. In my book The Unfolding Self I adopted James’ empirical, comparative approach to the study of transformative experience — delineating the basic archetypal patterns of psychospiritual transformation.
In recently re-reading William James’ writings on his philosophy of radical empiricism that I came to realize that this philosophy provides the epistemology of choice for the study of altered states of consciousness. James started with the basic assumption of the empirical (the “experience-based”) approach: all knowledge is derived from experience. Radical empiricism applies this principle inclusively, not exclusively.
To be radical an empiricism must neither admit into its construction any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced. For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as ‘real’ as anything else in the system. (James, 1912/1996, p. 42)
First, all knowledge must be based on observation, i.e. experience; so far this view coincides with the empiricism of the natural and social sciences. It’s the second statement that is truly radical and that explains why James included religious and paranormal experiences in his investigations. Observations made in objective external reality perceived through our aided and unaided senses, should not have ontological priority, or be thought of as giving “privileged access” to truth or validity. Observations made in modified states of consciousness, such as occur mystical or visionary experiences, dreams, meditation, psychedelic drug states, shamanic journey experiences, near-death experiences or UFO abduction experiences, are currently excluded from materialistic, reductionistic science. In the framework of radical empiricism, they need not and should not be excluded.
From the perspective of radical empiricism, it is not where or how observations are made that makes a field of study “scientific”, it is what is done with the observations afterwards. Repeated systematic observations from the same observer, replicating and testing them against other observations, is what distinguishes the scientific method from casual or haphazard observations, and from observations made with purposes other than gathering knowledge (such as creative expression or aesthetic contemplation). Whereas the ideology of fundamentalist scientism does not allow for the possibility of objective investigation of subjective experience, the epistemology of radical empiricism posits that it is possible to be objective about subjective experience, using the accepted canons of the scientific method. The methodology of systematic introspection, and phenomenology, were the historical beginnings of such a more inclusive approach; the systematic study of altered states of consciousness and their correlates with psychological, social and physiological variables are a further extensions of this approach.
In Eastern systems of yoga and meditation, it has long been understood that reliable and replicable observations can be made in the interior landscapes of our experience. The meditative practice of “mindfulness” is exactly an attitude in which conscious objectivity is added to the primary given (or “data”) of the experience. Religious texts describe the characteristic kinds of observations that a practitioner in a particular tradition may expect to make. This is, in essence, no different than a scientific text that describes the kinds of observations a student of biology can expect to make when looking through a microscope; or a student of astronomy can expect to make when making observations with a telescope. Any and all observations, made in outer or inner realms are subject to distortion and illusion, and susceptible to replication and verification.
One of the most exciting consequences of adopting a worldview and epistemology in which no sources of new perceptions and observations will be ignored because of their provenance, leads to the opening up of vast new fields and possibilities of understanding, and a renewed bringing together of spiritual and scientific understandings into an integrated systems worldview.
A systems view of humans and universe is a relational view of multi-level interconnectedness, the “web of life”, in the language of indigenous traditions. Things, objects and persons are temporary nodes in this web, in ever-changing patterned relations with other nodes. All being is interbeing, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s felicitous phrase. Consciousness then is the experiential side, the knowing, feeling, sensing, imaging of relations, the “knowing-with”. If we think of the space-time continuum as a transparent hollow sphere, consciousness is the subjective, inner, concaveness and the objective, outer, convexity is matter and energy, in their ceaseless transformations. According to Buddhist teachings, the inside of the sphere is emptiness, voidness, sunyata: hence no things, objects or persons actually exist. However, through the magic power of projection or maya, we seemingly perceive an objective universe, “out there”, of infinite differentiation and diversity.
The wise elder Thomas Berry, theologian turned evolutionary cosmologist, says that in the evolutionary transformation civilization is now going through, our perspective on the world will change from seeing and measuring it as a “collection of objects”, to knowing and experiencing it as a “communion of subjects”. In such a living systems worldview, the conscious communion of living subjects is acknowledged as equally real and valid as the conscious perception of identifiable objects. We don’t want or need to stop utilizing the powerful methods science has developed for analyzing the complexities and details of our world. We add to them the inner, sensuous, feeling-based, aesthetic appreciation of the essential oneness of the ever-transforming web of life, and awareness of meaningful patterns.
Oneness and differentiation exist at every level of reality. The ecologists have made us aware of how the diversity of life, biodiversity and its preservation is the core requirement for sustainability. To this, the anthropologists and historians of culture have added the recognition of the importance of preserving cultural diversity – for the unique knowledge system or tradition that each culture has developed. As a psychologist, I would want to add to the celebration of diversity, an acknowledgement of the rich psychic multiplicity of our psychic inner life: we are all multiple personalities, each of us containing a “theater of simultaneous possibilities”. Learning from indigenous cosmologies as well as the spiritual traditions of ancient times, we may well want to return to a recognition of the animistic polytheism of our forebears, recognizing and celebrating the indwelling spiritual intelligences of all inorganic and organic life-forms, as well as of Earth and other planets, Sun and other stars, Milky Way and other galaxies, and Universe. As Buckminster Fuller said, wanting to include the metaphysical as well as physical in his definition, the subjective and the objective, “Universe is everything that we can experience.”
Three Paradigms: States, Stages and Levels of Consciousness
We can, and should, distinguish three quite different paradigms for the scientific and philosophical study of consciousness: (1) states of consciousness – ordinary and non-ordinary or altered; (2) stages of consciousness development – in the normal life-cycle of the individual, or in spiritual traditions called enlightenment or liberation; and (3) levels, planes or dimensions of consciousness – which are assumed to be permanent features of the structure of the individual and of external reality. The different dimensions (levels, planes) in which we always live (though with greater or lesser awareness at any given time) are very different in their fundamental features. So different, that shamanic and other indigenous knowledge traditions refer to these different dimensions as different worlds. Thus, we are multi-dimensional beings living in a multi-dimensional universe.
(1) A state of consciousness may be defined as “the system, context or field within which the different aspects of mind, the contents of consciousness, such as thoughts, feelings, images, perceptions, sensations, intuitions, memories and so forth, function in patterned interrelationships.” A state of consciousness implies a definite division of the stream of time, between two transition points. For example, we are in the sleeping state between the time of falling asleep and the time of waking up. We are in the waking state, also called “ordinary state”, between the moments of waking up and of falling asleep. An altered state of consciousness is a period of time during which the content elements (thoughts, feelings, perceptions and so forth) are functioning in a different than usual mode. Some altered states may occur as a result of natural cycles – for example the 24 hour sleep-waking cycle called circadian; or the 90 minute nervous system cycle called ultradian. Other states may be catalyzed or triggered by some significant energetic stimulus or perception, such as the ingestion of a psychoactive drug or plant, or a hypnotic induction, or shamanic drumming, or particular kinds of music, or sexual activity, or trauma, to name just a few.
The discovery of psychedelics and the kind of time-limited, profoundly altered states of consciousness they can induce, led to a significant re-examination and evaluation of all states of consciousness, both those ordinarily experienced by all, such as waking, sleeping and dreaming, and those deliberately or spontaneously induced. There are those altered states generally considered positive, healthy, expansive, associated with increased knowledge and moral value; we may think of religious or mystical experiences, ecstasy (lit. “ex-stasis”), transcendence, visions, hypnotherapeutic trance, creative inspiration, tantric erotic ritual, shamanic journey, cosmic consciousness, samadhi, nirvana, satori; and those considered negative, unhealthy, contractive, associated with delusion, psychopathology, destructiveness and even crime, such as depression, anxiety, trauma, psychosis, madness, hysteria, rage, mania, dissociative disorders, substance addictions (alcohol, narcotics, stimulants) and behavioral compulsions and obsessions (sexuality, violence, gambling, spending).
(2) The second paradigm centers around stages of consciousness development. This refers to a progressive (or sometimes regressive) series of stages or steps that our ordinary, functional consciousness goes through. Western psychology has concerned itself with the stages of psychological development that a child goes through on its way to adulthood, -- for example Freud’s psychosexual stages, or Piaget’s cognitive stages. Erik Erikson spoke of six stages of the life cycle with characteristic challenges in each stage. I find the idea of three main stages of the life cycle a useful heuristic for thinking about consciousness development, and this model is intuitively cogent and cross-culturally pervasive. The three stages are: the Formative Years of infancy, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood till the late 20s; the Productive or Middle Years of the 30s, 40s and 50s; and the Elderhood Years of the 60s and beyond. Those familiar with the ancient symbolic language of astrology will recognize that the transition between the formative phase and the productive phase is marked by the transit called the Saturn Return. The planet Saturn takes around 28 years in its orbit around the Sun, and thus is said to “return” to the same position in the zodiacal cycle it occupied at the individual’s birth. The two-to-three year period around the late twenties and early thirties, is often the most profoundly life-changing transition in a person’s life. We would then say that the Second Saturn Return, at age 58 plus or minus a few years, marks the entrance into elderhood.
A person’s central concerns, values, outlook on life, modes of thought are characteristically different in each of these three phases. In the formative phase, the main focus is on growing, developing and learning - physically, mentally, perceptually, emotionally and socially. Our sense of identity, of who we are, gradually shifts from being totally embedded in the family matrix, to becoming part of the larger community, society and world. The second phase is the time when we “settle down” to a career path, growing a family, building a network and support system, and pursuing our life’s chosen goals – producing something, making a contribution to the community. In the elder phase there is much less drive or pressure to produce or contribute something. This is the time of reflection, remembering and contemplation. C.G. Jung said that the second half of life was the time for individuation, working toward wholeness, undividedness; whereas the first half was the time of individualization: becoming a distinct individual, uniquely special and different from the human collectivity.
The stages paradigm comes at an understanding of consciousness in a quite different way than the concept of states, ordinary or non-ordinary. It is clear that these three different basic orientations towards life don’t really amount to a permanently different state of consciousness. Rather, individuals in all three phases of their life cycle go through the ordinary states of waking, sleeping and dreaming; and may experience involuntary or intentional altered states, whether induced by drugs or mystic visions or other means. The linear sequence of stages in time is crucial to an understanding of the consciousness in each stage. For example, we think of childhood and youth being times of training and preparation for the phase of productive adulthood. In the Elder phase, by contrast, one’s thinking and reflection is much more concerned with the past, with memory, as well as with anticipatory contemplation of our mortality and life beyond.
The three-stage model is expanded to a four-stage one if we add the prenatal epoch, which has been the subject of a great deal of new research and observations in the last two decades. It is now widely accepted in the field of pre- and peri-natal psychology that the embryo and fetus is a fully sentient and conscious human being, telepathically attuned to its parents and its environment. Furthermore, the prenatal stage of development is where the most deep-seated defensive identity patterns are established, often with long-lasting consequences for the individual.
Besides the developmental models anchored to the life-cycle, there exist in the literature of Eastern and Western religious psychology, as well as in the literature of transpersonal psychology, for example in the writings of Ken Wilber among others, descriptions of different stages of spiritual development that a person may go through, on the path to enlightenment, mystical oneness or sainthood. Again, this is a different perspective than the altered states paradigm. Those who imagine that a yogic adept or Zen master is always in a state of enlightenment bliss or nirvana are confusing states and stages. The Buddhist texts are clear, for example, that Gautama Buddha entered into the state of nirvana (where there is not the arising of even a single thought or impulse) and stayed there for eight days; and then “came down”, as it were, and worked the rest of his life to teach and preach, found monasteries, walk, eat and drink among others.
(3) The third paradigm for the study of consciousness deals with what is generally called levels, planes or dimensions of consciousness. Both the Indian Vedanta philosophy and the different schools of Buddhism have conceptual maps of different realms or dimensions of consciousness. In the Christian West too, there was a traditional four-level model of the psyche: Body-Mind-Soul-Spirit. Somewhere along in the Middle Ages, this model devolved to a three-fold model of Body-Mind-Spirit, perhaps because of the influence of the Trinitarian doctrine of the Church. By the time of Descartes, who nevertheless himself was a devout Deist, the three-fold model had shrunk to the two-fold of body and mind, or matter and mind – res extensa and res cogitans. The journey of the incredible diminishing psyche reached its climax in the Behaviorist psychology of the early 20th century: here there is only body behavior that can be studied – what stimuli elicit what responses, when followed by “schedules of reinforcement”, which bring about learning. The mind does not exist – for the behaviorist, it is a “black box”.
In Freudian psychology, which has, to a large extent, became the mainstream psychology of Western culture, there is what was called the “topographical model” of layers in the psyche, arranged one on top of the other. The bottom layer is the unconscious (what we’re totally not conscious of); the next layer is pre-conscious (what we could become conscious of, if we chose to); and at the top, like the above-water tip of the iceberg, is the conscious – our everyday conscious mind. It is important to remember that this is a spatial or topographical metaphor: unconscious mental images are not literally located below conscious ones; actually, they’re not really located anywhere. Quantum physicists now tell us that mental awareness is non-local, just like photons and sub-atomic particles. Furthermore, the hidden spatial metaphor is compounded by linguistic reification (“thing-making”). In actuality there is neither an entity nor a place called “the Unconscious”. When we name an abstraction, we make it somehow more real.
One of Freud’s most profound insights was that the unconscious mind (also called id) speaks a different language than the conscious mind (also called ego). The language of the unconscious id he called “primary process”: dream-like, fantastic, illusory; and the language of the conscious ego he called “secondary process”: realistic, practical, logical. C.G. Jung, as is well-known, broadened the Freudian conception of the unconscious mind, saying it included not only the libidinal and aggressive impulses that Freud had emphasized, but also creative insights and intuitions. Whereas Freud’s natural world metaphor for the unconscious was to compare it to the sea, with its unknown depths and terrors, Jung preferred the metaphor that the unconscious was like the night-sky, shrouded in darkness, but seeded with sparks of light, symbolic of insights and intuitions.
For Jung, the “collective unconscious” was the realm of archetypes – primordial images and thought-forms shared more or less by all human beings. When archetypes appear in dreams or visions, we recognize them by their numinous, sacred power. All the deities and core symbols of the world’s religions are therefore considered archetypes or variants of archetypes. Archetypes may mingle with personalized imagery in dreams and visions, and may therefore also be expressed in religious art. An individual’s feelings and perceptions of their personal mother may be bound up with the Great Mother Goddess archetype. Later Jungian-influenced analysts and scholars drew a further distinction: inserting a layer of “cultural unconscious”, between the personal and the collective. For example, the image of the Madonna or Virgin Mary is the archetypal Great Mother expressed in the cultural symbolism of the Christian West.
In the shamanistic cosmologies of many indigenous peoples worldwide, three “worlds” (upper, middle and lower) are generally recognized, and the shaman may go on an altered state “shamanic journey”, induced by rhythmic drumming or psychoactive plants, to any of the worlds, for purposes of healing and divination. In the Western esoteric and theosophical traditions, a seven-layer model of the human constitution is often described, ranging from the densest and heaviest (the physical body), through subtle bodies of lesser density, to the highest level of onenness with the divine. Many and varied maps of these supposed levels of consciousness exist, though it is difficult to see how they could ever be tested or verified by the methods used at present in the natural or social sciences.
Compared to such traditional and esoteric teachings of many worlds, the modern scientific worldview, which recognizes only one level, namely the physical-material, as real, must be considered seriously incomplete. I believe however, along with scientists such as Fritjof Capra, Ervin Laszlo and others, that a living systems worldview should be considered the foundational science of the present age. In such a worldview, reality, both microcosmic and macrosmic, is recognized to be organized in many levels or dimensions, and the various sciences study the patterned relationships between and within levels. Such a multi-dimensional perspective is most amenable to the inclusion of the observations and mappings of the many realms of consciousness into a truly integrative and holistic worldview.
Selected References
Abram, David. 1996. The Spell of the Sensuous – Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World. New York: Pantheon Books, 1996.
Capra, Fritjof. 1996. The Web of Life – A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems. New York; Doubleday Anchor Books.
James, William. 1912/1996. Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
James, William. 1901/1958. Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: New American Library.
Laszlo, Ervin. 1996. The Systems View of the World – A Holistic Vision for our Time. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 1996.
Metzner, Ralph. 1986/1998. The Unfolding Self – Varieties of Transformative Experience. Novato, CA: Origin Press.
Nalimov, V.V. 1982. Realms of the Unconscious: The Enchanted Frontier. Philadelphia, PA: ISI Press.
Swimme, Brian and Berry, Thomas. 1992. The Universe Story – From the Primoridal Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era. San Francisco: HarperCollins.
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