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myth : consciousness It is
a part of the Cartesian mode to
think of
consciousness
as being some
thing peculiar to the
mind,
that the
mind is the organ originating
consciousness.
It is not.
The mind is an
organ that inflects
consciousness in a certain direction
to a certain set of purposes.
There is a
consciousness here in the
body.
The whole living universe is informed
by consciousness.
Consciousness is a form of energy, a
natural force.
Where you really
see life
energy, there is consciousness.
There is a
wonderful story of the
deity, of the
self that thought, "I
am."
As soon as it thought "I am," it was afraid.
It was an entity now, in
time.
Then it
thought, "What should
I be afraid
of, I am the only
thing that is."
As soon as
it felt
lonesome it
imagined that if there were
another it would not be
lonesome, and so it felt
desire.
It swelled split in two,
became male and female, and begot the
universe.
"All things depend of
one beginning, and the beginning depends of that which is one and alone."-
Hermes Trimegistus
The
Czechoslovakian psychiatrist Stanislav
Grof treated psychological problems with lysergic acid diethylamide,
LSD, for years.
Stan Grof on
the Brain and Consciousness
{"LSD has a high-risk/high-reward ratio.
Lysergic acid diethylamide requires a time
commitment - an LSD trip can last as long as 20
hours. Early rituals suggested a deliberate, even thoughtful approach to drug
taking. Although he got a little lax about it as time went on, Timothy Leary's
ideas about "set and settting," which
emphasized the importance of the psychological state of the user as well as the
environment in which the drug would be used, recognize that the way to avoid a
bad hallucinogenic experience has a lot to do with
how well you know yourself and how
willing you are to remove yourself from bad-vibe people and excessive external
stimuli, like televisions or ringing
phones.
If we're looking for a yardstick to measure how people's
feelings about consciousness have changed over
40 years, we could do worse than to consider the enormous
philosophical gulf between
LSD and, say,
Prozac. Whereas one expands
consciousness, the other belongs to a
class of drugs whose phenomenal success rests largely on their ability
to keep the mind from
expanding into uncomfortable places (ie facing reality squarely).
Whereas
one reduces a person's 'functionality' in the interest of questioning
reality, the other is about becoming
'more functional' while questioning
very little." - Meghan Daum
"Over his long life, Albert Hofmann (the
first chemist to synthesize lysergic acid diethylamide) took LSD many times.
Albert Hofmann developed a personal mysticism
involving nature, for which he had a lifelong
passion. One thing this very tolerant man decried in the Western drive for
facile satisfaction was an
alienation from nature. The use of LSD made
him more and more conscious of it. In
nature Albert Hofmann saw "a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality." - Robert
Stone
A
Bicycle Trip
"The potential of LSD seems to be extraordinary
and unique. The ability of LSD to deepen, intensify and accelerate the
psychotherapeutic process is incomparably greater than that of any other drug
used as an adjunct to psychotherapy, with the exception perhaps of some other
members of the psychedelic group." - Stanislav Grof
LSD was first
suggested as a tool in psychotherapy in 1949. The following year saw the first
studies in medical/psychiatric journals. By 1970, hundreds of articles on the
uses of LSD in therapy had appeared in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, the Journal of Psychology, the Archives of General
Psychiatry, the Quarterly Journal of Studies of Alcoholism, many
non-English-language journals, and elsewhere. Psychiatric and psychotherapeutic
conferences had segments devoted to LSD, and two professional organizations
were formed for this specialty, one in Europe and the other in North America.
International symposia were held in Princeton, London, Amsterdam, and other
locations. From 1950 to 1965, LSD was given in conjunction with therapy to an
estimated 40,000 people worldwide.
"LSD and other psychedelics function
more or less as nonspecific catalysts and amplifiers of the psyche. In the
dosages used in human experimentation, the classical psychedelics, such as LSD,
psilocybin, and mescaline, do not have any specific pharmacological effects.
They increase the energetic niveau in the psyche and the body which leads to
manifestation of otherwise latent psychological processes. The content and
nature of the experiences that these substances induce are thus not artificial
products of their pharmacological interaction with the brain ("toxic
psychoses"), but authentic expressions of the psyche revealing its functioning
on levels not ordinarily available for observation and study. A person who has
taken LSD does not have an "LSD experience," but takes a journey into deep
recesses of his or her own psyche." - Stanislav Grof}
Stanislav Grof
found some patients re-experienced
birth and, in the re-experienced of birth, the first stage is that of the
fetus in the womb,
without any sense of "I" or
of being
Fear is
the first emotional
experience of the
fetus in the womb.
Then
shortly before birth the rhythm of the uterus
begins, and there's terror! (The walls are
closing in!)
Fear is the first
emotion, the emotion that says "I."
Then comes the horrific stage of
getting born,
the difficult passage through the
birth canal, and then -
my
God, bright light,
loud sounds and other beings!
Can you
imagine!
Isn't it amazing that
this repeats just what the myth says - that
self said, "I
am," and immediately felt fear?
When self
perceived it was alone,
self felt desire for
another and became two.
Self breaks into the world of light
and pairs of opposites.
There
is the plane of consciousness where
one identifies and communes with that
which transcends pairs of
opposites.
The
nature of our experience of reality is I
and you, this and that, true and
untrue,
male and female, good and evil, black
and white - every one of them has its opposite.
When
we are turned outward,
we seem to see imperfections in
reality.
If
we look
inward, we see that our inability to accept
reality as reality truly is
- is the
source of our attitude that
reality is imperfect.
Once we look
inward at our own consciousness - our
self - we begin to understand our inner
reality
and we can then judge if that
inner reality reflects outer existent
reality - the field of
existence.
There are
dimensions of your being,
a potential
for realization and
consciousness
that are not
included in most peoples concept of
self.
Life is much deeper and
broader than most conceive it to be.
Most live with only a fractional inkling
of reality,
and fail to see
within themselves
what gives
life
breadth and depth.
You
can live in terms of that depth of
your life.
It is possible to experience a plane of
consciousness where one identifies and communes with that which transcends
pairs of opposites and if you experience it, you will suddenly see that all the
religious mystical experiences are the same.
Time and space
form the
sensibilities that bound
our experiences. Our senses are
enclosed in the field of time and
space, and
our minds
are enclosed in a frame that consists as
categories of
thought.
To be touched by God we must allow our
consciousness to expand beyond the field of enclosure.
We enclose God when we try to think of
God.
We wall
God out if we are not careful.
Instinctual reason is one
category of
thinking.
Figuring out how you can
solve a problem is not
instinctual reason.
Instinctual reason lies within
sensing the fundamental structure of the
order of the universe.
-adapted from Joseph
Campbell
Also see Joseph Campbell on:
in the beginning
image
myth
life
archetype
metaphor
mystery
the
serpent
religion
dream time
hero
God
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