Evolutionary Metaphors
Page 16
Now Jung concludes his excellent essay, ‘Approaching the Unconscious’, by saying that: ‘Our actual knowledge of the unconscious shows that it is a natural phenomenon and that, like Nature herself, it is at least neutral. It contains all aspects of human nature––light and dark, beautiful and ugly, good and evil, profound and silly.’ In short what Jung is suggesting is that the unconsciousness is connected with the symbolic forces at the heart of Nature, that it is, as a product of natural forces, an expression of its tremendously complex dynamism––a force that births new and evermore complex forms into existence.
The archetypes for Grof are in a strange position between birth and death, which as Tarnas describes, becomes ‘a kind of transduction point between dimensions, a pivot that linked the biological and archetypal, the Freudian and the Jungian, the biographical and collective, the personal and the transpersonal, body and spirit’ (2001: 428). What happens in Groffian therapy is an experiential reliving of the traumas of being born, the very moments we first arrive into existence, and, indeed, right back before we exist, that is, up until the point of our apparent pre-existent annihilation. Grof’s own vision of a cosmic destruction and rebirth as experienced under the influence of LSD seems to be a symbolic representation of this same process. Essentially what happens after such experiences is a radical transformation––an ontological shift––in which the individual’s sense of disconnection with the archetypal forces of existence is wedded together in a form of ‘participation mystique’.
Our usual dismissal of the psychological realities of the birth process, Grof and Tarnas argue, is the reason why Western civilization has increasingly become dualistic, making sharp distinctions between man and nature, real and unreal, and so on. As we have seen, this breaks down in Ouspensky’s experience as well as with the shamanic initiation ceremonies and other mystical insights. Indeed, here we may turn to the epistemologist, Jean Piaget, and expand its content to include Grof’s conclusions:
Knowledge does not begin in the I, and it does not begin in the object; it begins in the interactions… then there is a reciprocal and simultaneous construction of the subject on the one hand and the object on the other. (1999: 409)
One is here reminded of Julian Jaynes’ auditory hallucination which contained the phrase: ‘Include the knower in the known’. This led him to write his famous book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, which argued of a split-brain schism in ancient man that birthed the modern self-reflective consciousness. The ‘old’ consciousness was participatory but at the expense of our sense of individuality as we understand it today. Nevertheless, there may have been, in a sense, an archetypal impetus for this expulsion from the womb-like seamlessness of ‘self and other’ which led to the rapid development of an individualized ego consciousness.
The abductee ‘Jerry’ provides a beatifically poetic and metaphorical allegory for this process of the expulsion and resulting differentiation of consciousness––and, significantly, its return:
Imagine that your essence, your soul, was part of a whole, and as part of a whole you decided to give birth, to create. You then gave birth to your thought to create and made your thought into matter. As this birth came to be solid, you then decided you would continue to create, and after some time you decided you would like to be whole again. But in order to be whole again you had to gather up all of the fragments or pieces of your whole being. In order to become whole again you must be able to then understand that you have to then create and give birth to that thought. And in order to go back to your original form you must again reverse the process. (1994: 141)
What makes ‘Jerry’s’ description so interesting is its holistic and evolutionary theme of development throughout the varying stages of disconnection, dis-integration and the yearning to return to wholeness. Furthermore, it suggests a creative dynamic which, in the initiation of creation itself, the individual becomes precisely that: an individualized ego consciousness. But, at some crucial junction in the span of his or her life, they may awaken to their predicament––they become existentially self-aware and feel themselves to be disconnected from their once entranced and illusory existence. Intransigence and contingency appear for them as an insurmountable fact of human existence, and this devalues the entire foundation of their Being. And unless this individual takes solace in religion or, like Sartre, pursues a political vision for the emancipation of mankind through social justice, then this individual is left with the profoundly shaking realisation that demands of them a far more universal sense of ultimate values, of a foundational cosmic meaning that is experientially felt, not simply intellectually ‘understood’.
In short, the individual becomes Wilson’s outsider, and requires a positive existentialism which can unify these inner conflicts, and provide a bridge towards a more integrated sense of his existence.
In terms of the new existentialism, it is precisely at this point of existential revelation that we truly ask the question of ‘Who am I?’, and it is also, in a sense, the same point we begin to ‘yearn for wholeness’––consciously or unconsciously––of which ‘Jerry’ refers to. Wilson says that these represent the ‘very outer reaches of consciousness’, a point where one ‘“wakes up” to a sense of the total absurdity of his position in the restricted world of ordinary consciousness’ (1980: 118).
In Grof’s analysis this would be the ‘Expulsion from Paradise’ phase of the perinatal experience in which one reaches the transitional stage of environmental threat, and undergoes simultaneous death and rebirth. What’s more, Grof notes the existential echoes of this experience in many of the works of art and philosophies developed by such existentialists as Sartre, Camus and Soren Kierkegaard. Existence for them has become a toxic closed-system in which there is no escape but through death or delusion. Grof, who initiated these experiences through LSD both on himself and his patients, noted that this reliving of this stage produced in some ‘a deep connection with existential philosophy’ which embodies the sense of ‘hopelessness and absurdity of this state’; indeed it is in this state of moral and spiritual entrapment, archetypally represented in the transition stage of birth in the constricting environment of the cervix, that is encapsulated in the title of Sartre’s famous play, No Exit.
Grof continues: ‘An important influence on Sartre’s life was a difficult and poorly resolved session with the psychedelic substance, mescaline.’ Significantly Wilson summarises Sartre’s philosophy by saying that everything else is ‘blocked’, with the exception of commitment to socialist politics, and his philosophy became a ‘closed subject, for there is no point in thinking further; we shall only keep returning to the recognition that all roads are blocked but this one’ (1990: 53). For Sartre and many others who accept the ultimate conclusions of existentialism, there is no ‘way outside’. No escape.
And yet, for Wilson there is a way out of this fundamentally transitional stage, and these are often experienced in non-ordinary states of consciousness, in glimpses of Faculty X and peak experiences. He continues to say that man realises this in ‘moments when he becomes aware that he contains a “god-like” chaos, that he is potentially an enormous force.’ These moments, of course, are the opposite of Sartre’s sense of limitedness, and infer a far greater reality, a rebirth in fact, into an open system of relational values and sheer meaningfulness––even a new paradigm and a whole new sense of reality itself. ‘[For] in nausea man feels isolated in an alien world of objects; in the moments of insight, he becomes aware of a connection between himself and nature––that he is capable of a meaningful relationship with nature’ (1965: 160). His consciousness becomes participatory rather than solipsistic and suffocating in its own self-imposed limitations.
All of this, of course, can be interpreted on many levels and, in the context of this essay, provides the analogy of existing between two worlds, psychologically and cosmologically––the mind and reality.
Now, this sort of intentional bridging between
man and nature, psyche and cosmos, and so on, is wonderfully described by Ouspensky when he says, in his essay ‘Superman’, that ‘Man is a little universe’. He continues:
In him proceed continual death and continual rebirth… And the desire of God in man, that is, the directing forces of his spirit, conscious of its own unity with the infinite consciousness of the universe, cannot be in harmony… with the ‘three dimensional’ consciousness of man, which is based on his separating himself from the world, on his opposing to the world his own ‘I’ and on his recognising the reality of all apparent forms and divisions. (1989: 118)
Again what Ouspensky seems to be suggesting is essentially the recognition that man, in Wilson’s terms, has the potential for ‘god-like chaos’, or, within us, we have the capacity for leaping across the apparent chasm between ourselves and the cosmos and, in doing so, understanding our psychic capacity for affirming existence and of our role in its greatest revealing of meaning and evolutionary intentionality. Man’s future evolution, Wilson writes, ‘depends upon an increased ability to use “intentions”’, however, these ‘intentions do not create ideas or insights; they only uncover meaning.’ This, of course, is in direct contrast to Sartre’s solipsism which understands all meanings to be entirely mind-generated illusions that refer essentially only to a meaningless chaos, a reality that is fundamentally impersonal, even somewhat hostile to man’s goals with its sheer inhuman neutrality. This, of course, is the world modern man finds himself in and which Tarnas so eloquently describes.
Ouspensky similarly expresses this ‘god-like’ component within human beings, and like Grof he calls it a tropism, ‘the directing forces of his spirit’, a tendency, in other words, towards wholeness. This tendency, which simultaneously pushes us forward also, paradoxically, differentiates us, for our consciousness, blinkered as it often is, shuts out more than it lets in. And yet, despite this disconnection, becomes in moments altogether integrated and whole, and is further aided by Wilson’s recognition of a way outside the entrapments of pessimism and solipsism, for consciousness, as he says, reveals meanings which have a substantially objective existence. Indeed, Wilson concludes in New Pathways of Psychology:
We are living in a world of infinitely rich meaning and we possess the equipment for ‘playing it back.’ The chief obstacle is our ignorance of the purpose of the equipment and the meaning waiting to be decoded. (1990: in Dossor: 112)
There is the sense that there are meanings that animate the deepest substratum of existence, and that, in some odd way, these meanings are the structural blueprints not only of matter and the physical and natural world, but also the structuring forces that underlie experience as well as existence in its interior and mental form. The mind, then, is just as much a part of this reality of objective meanings as it is capable of unveiling or revealing them. In fact, it is essentially revealing deeper layers of its connection to reality itself, and, as a result, there is the sense of unity consciousness and an overcoming of the Sartrean kind of existential alienation. More than this is the direct access to information or unusual powers which, as we have seen, are exhibited by the UFO entities and many of the abductees themselves.
Whitley Strieber, who has had multiple such experiences with these beings, has also noted a similar convergence of worlds, not only between causal and synchronous existence, physical and non-physical, but also between the living and the dead. He uses much the same language as others we have explored; for example in discussing the near-death experience he notes, much like the shamans, that those who undergo these intense states become ‘the wonder workers of modern times, leading us into an entirely new understanding of and relationship with our own souls.’ Strieber continues:
Their reports suggest that the soul is not only real, but that what we think of as reality is actually a small corner of a much larger world. They suggest that consciousness is not only in us and part of us, but more that we are in consciousness, journeying through a world largely unseen by us in bodies that appear to be designed to filter out any vision of the larger reality [my italics]. (2017: 89)
Again, there is the simultaneous recognition of the existence of such an objective reality of meaning, and the recognition that our bodies filter such information out for the sake of our evolution––the ‘reducing valve’. However, these UFO entities, or ‘visitors’ as Strieber calls them, appear to be somehow involved in the transition and transformation between two worlds. And that, in a sense, many of the individuals who undergo such experiences become the Western equivalent of the shaman, an individual who is able to walk between these two worlds. Strangely, but nonetheless profound in its implications, is Strieber’s claim for continued communication with his dead wife, Anne Strieber, and furthermore her response when Whitley enquired about the role of these visitors. Indeed, this provides an interesting clue regarding their baffling presence. She describes them as ‘inner beings’, and that they ‘live within reality. You’re on the surface.’ Whitley continues to say that the entities themselves aided in this communication with his deceased wife, and that they have taught them to live as a whole species ‘with the physical and nonphysical sides in contact,’ and furthermore this presages ‘the next stage in evolution’ (2017: 26).
It is this notion that the role of much unusual phenomena is essentially heuristic, it is teaching and bridging between two worlds. Strieber’s example pulls together many of the threads explored throughout this essay. And, furthermore, the sheer seamlessness of the new existentialism runs throughout, showing us not only the potential powers of human consciousness but opening the doors for the exploration of entire new realities. What it provides is a phenomenological analysis of these limitations of our body-as-receiver, and the recognition of a much wider reality that far exceeds our ordinary understanding of reality. It represents the turning point from existential entrapment in the phenomenal world to the experiential affirmation of meanings that are a fundamental part of our Being.
The new existentialism enriches the reading and understanding of much occult and paranormal literature, for it provides a practical framework for their integration. And if these visitors are indeed here to bridge two worlds, from the inside out, one might then turn to the work of Colin Wilson as one of the crucial moments when we, from this side, began to recognise a new world awaiting within our own consciousness.
In fact, in this last section I have attempted to run along several complementary theories of human nature, from the ancient practices of shamanism to the philosophical implications of the abduction phenomenon. The work of Grof and Tarnas, I feel, has also provided a large-scale context for us to understand the birth pangs of a new paradigm emerging out of the shell of the old one. What, essentially, these brief explorations into new models of reality has provided is a potential mapping of the world that Wilson intuited in his earliest works. The inner dimension of the UFO is not so much esoteric as a ‘living hieroglyph’, a symbol or an existential challenge, that provides a curious glimpse into another order of logic that is analogical and heuristic, a teaching from these ‘inner beings’.
What I have hoped to achieve with this essay is a panoramic view of a world of meanings and evolutionary potentialities as they are hinted at in the literature of ufology. Wilson’s approach to existentialism in his earliest books to his later works on the occult and UFOs all naturally grew out of this deep recognition that there is far more to life, and in Strieber’s case, even to death. Increasingly as one reads through the case studies and testimony one is reminded of the essential message of Wilson’s philosophy, and this provides a much-needed re-evaluation of our reductionist culture. One gets the sense that much like Wilson said of Goethe’s Faust, the ‘longing for the “occult” is the instinctive desire to believe in the unseen forces, the wider significances, that can break the circuit’ (1988: 25). Ufology provides much the same stimulus and attraction as the occult, and provides a means of widening man’s sense of significance and wider meanings.
Of course, a sceptic would say that this is mere immaturity, an invalid and futile attempt to supplement reality for the comfort of fantasy and delusion. And yet this doesn’t seem to be the case, for often these experiences with the UFO are often deeply traumatic and then proceed afterwards to grow into a profound and deeply seated sense of increasing significance and a widened sense of possibility. Wilson continues in The Occult to say that: ‘Man lives and evolves by “eating” significance,’ and that the ‘deeper his sense of wonder, the wider his curiosity, the stronger his vitality becomes, and the more powerful his grip on his own existence’ (1988: 26). Therefore this sort of meaningful investigation into the stranger mysteries such as the UFO represents need not be an exercise in delusion, but as an exercise in phenomenology, and a valid attempt to understand an aspect of reality that is too often undeservedly ignored. The phenomenon itself seems to be attempting to teach us something about our reality, and it certainly benefits us to know precisely what that might be.
The UFO, like the occult, becomes a poignant symbol of inner transformation, and rather than simply being a field of inner knowledge of the unseen, the UFO appears to be an entirely seen phenomenon, and seems to infer another realm of Being and beings. It is the occult radically seen. It is, in a sense, the occult world made manifest, a curious reminder of our state of spiritual neglect that presents itself as a difficult and archetypally-charged Zen kōan. Waiting, it seems, our enlightenment until it provides its full import. ‘We have to learn to expand inward until we have somehow re-established the sense of huaca [life force], until we have recreated the feeling of “unseen forces” … It has somehow got to be done,’ says Wilson. The UFO is urging us to do just that. And like most of occult significances and symbols, they refer to an inner reality, and that it is in the mind of the occult practitioner where the realities of both worlds unite. And eventually these metaphors and synchronicities incorporate themselves into our everyday lives and cease to be unreal, but as important indicators of our very real purpose.