Posts Tagged Ken Wilber

Biology as Metaphor and Mythology, Part One: “The Map Is Not the Territory” and Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness

Posted by sillymickel in authenticity, globalrevolution, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, philosophy, psychology, science, spirituality, uniqueness on January 31, 2014

Biology Reflects Consciousness: Biological Changes Reflect Changes in Experience and Create the Spectrum of Consciousness

“The Stuff of the World Is Mind-Stuff”

We are living in stimulating and revolutionary times. For, even as we watch, the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm is collapsing in the ocean of the new physics, “matter” is being swept away by “wavicles,” and scientists are beginning to acknowledge what the poet-seers have always known: that physical reality is metaphor, that the external world and all of its components are subtle yet elaborate webs thrown upon the formless, meaningful forms created from no-thing-ness . . . that matter is metaphor for Consciousness — which is the only real stuff knowable about existence, in fact is the only stuff of the Universe.

Physicist and astronomer, Arthur Stanley Eddington (1928) phrased it: “The stuff of the world is mind-stuff.” More recently, University of Minnesota physicist Roger S. Jones (1982) unveiled a position which he calls an “idealistic reevaluation of the physical world” (p. ix). He writes

I reject the myth of reality as external to the human mind, and I acknowledge consciousness as the source of the cosmos. It is mind that we see reflected in matter. Physical science is a metaphor with which the scientist, like the poet, creates and extends meaning and values in the quest for understanding and purpose. (1982, p. ix)

Even more recently, anthropologist Armand Labbe (1991) summed it up at a Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness conference saying, “Ultimately our physics . . . is going to demonstrate that essentially there is no such thing as matter. All there is, is mind and motion.”

Granted, this is an extreme position, a strict Idealist stance. But it is the only truly supportable one, in light of what we know from the new physics. That would be enough in itself to cause us to reflect on it. But this perspective is also supported, even demonstrated, by the discoveries of the “new psychology” as well. More about that later.

It is ironic that it would be the most “materialistic” and “hardest” of the sciences that would be leading the charge against the primacy-of-the-physical-world postulate (and, unfortunately, leaving the rest of the sciences — both social as well as natural sciences — behind). The discoveries from quantum physics, though some of them almost a hundred years old now, are, only with difficulty, being assimilated into the other sciences. For the most part, they are largely ignored; science going along ‘as if’ . . . that is, as if the Newtonian-Cartesian paradigm were still viable, as if the physical world was really “objective” reality, as if the mind could validly be considered an epiphenomenon of brain activity. So the old paradigm holds sway despite its inadequacy.

This is understandable, however. For truly acknowledging these newer perspectives requires a reformulation of theoretical positions, a rethinking of the Universe in much the same way that astronomical theories needed to be reformulated after the Copernican revolution. What we do not need are theories that disfigure themselves in trying to incorporate some (not all) of the new information and new perspectives in the way of the convoluted theories of the pre-Copernican astronomers who refused to accept the newer paradigm postulations.

This book, to the contrary, consistently presents a new-paradigm perspective.

In doing so it includes a rethinking of some theoretical constructions associated with Ken Wilber who, from this analysis, appears as inconsistent as pre-Copernican astronomers in devolving his theories.

The Import and Consequences of the Primacy-of-Consciousness Postulate

It may also be argued that the new-paradigm primacy of consciousness is irrelevant to much of what is done in normal science. Whatever the truth of that, it must be acknowledged that theoretical positions that ignore the very foundations upon which they are based—that is, the subjectivity of the observer—are going to be weaker for that. Yet, acknowledging even that, one could argue that there is no clear idea of how to go about applying these new perspectives. How could they be used? How could they be relevant? What implications might they have?

It is in answer to these questions that I offer the following analysis of how these perspectives could be used in the understanding of child development. I propose a devolutional model—one that is rooted in Wilber’s (1977) “spectrum of consciousness” theory. It is based also in the findings of new-paradigm experiential psychotherapies—that is, those that place primacy upon experience over concept, “territory” over “map,” and percept over object.

The implications of this approach, I hope to show, are for no less than the validity of the current direction of child-caring, the effectiveness of mainstream psychiatric approaches, and the direction of psychological and spiritual growth. It is my belief that such implications will not be considered to be irrelevant or unimportant; and I will deal with them at length in Part Three.

Biology As Metaphor

At any rate, the knowable premise of the new science is that our physical world is a construction (of consciousness); that it can be metaphor, only, of the unknowable That Which Is; that, therefore, matter is metaphor. It follows that the sciences, which study this reflection of the unknowable Real, provide metaphors about metaphors.

Moving in the Air Without Support

Schopenhauer saw it much the same way. His understanding of “ideas” is very close to what I am saying about science being composed of metaphors about metaphors. Gardiner (1966) explains this viewpoint of Schopenhauer:

Schopenhauer distinguished a further class of ideas, namely, what he termed “ideas of Reflection,” or sometimes “ideas of ideas” (Vorstellungen von Vorstellungen). It is in terms of these that we think about and communicate the contents of our phenomenal experience. In other words, they are the general concepts by virtue of which we can classify phenomena according to common features that are of interest or importance to us, forming thereby a conceptual structure or system which may be said to mirror or copy the empirical world. The function of this system is essentially a practical one; it provides a means of memorizing, and generalizing from, our observations of how things behave under varying conditions, and hence of putting to use what we learn from experience. Schopenhauer insisted, moreover, that this system cannot legitimately be separated from the foundation of empirical reality upon which it is based, and he claimed that concepts and abstract notions that cannot be traced back to experience are comparable to bank notes “issued by a firm which has nothing but other paper obligations to back it with.” Consequently, metaphysical theories that pretend to offer an account of the world purely a priori, and that in doing so employ terms or propositions not susceptible to empirical interpretation, are empty of cognitive content; they “move in the air without support.” (p. 327)

In modern terms, “the map is not the territory” — the scientific construct is not the same as the experiential/ empirical reality of existence; and the farther they are removed from each other, the more unsubstantial becomes the construct — ultimately collapsing of its own weight.

Analyzing Scientific Dream-Weaving

Nonetheless, these metaphors — despite the threat of their moving “in the air without support” and cognizant of their practical value; these metaphors — because of the fact of their being for the empirical world a reflection or “mirror,” which we then call “physical facts,” “objective reality,” or “scientific truths”; these metaphors can be analyzed in the same way that dream symbols are analyzed, that is, to uncover their deeper meanings.

Furthermore, this uncovering means essentially that we can discern their meanings for ourselves; “deeper meaning” being that understanding that relates the symbol to ourselves and that gives us understanding of our inner and outer actions and guidance for such behavior. In this way we can relate these “ideas about ideas,” these scientific truths, back to our empirical, experiential, subjective reality . . . back to the base that they were originally the reflections and mirrors of. Thus we can come full circle, looking at ourselves from both inside as well as outside of ourselves and approaching, to the degree that a person can, a fuller understanding of ourselves and the world with which we are inseparable.

Specifically, then, for our purposes here, in looking at the biological sciences’ metaphors of the human body — especially as concerns its structure, function, and ontogenetic and phylogenetic developments — we can discern and analyze an “underlying” meaning — a reflection of the Real, or of what Wilber (1977) calls Mind.

It is especially heuristic to analyze body for, as it has been said, body is concretized mind. This is not to mean concretized Mind—in Wilber’s sense—but concretized ego (in the sense of the separate self, in the sense of mind as used by Satya Sai Baba and other teachers who say that, ultimately, mind must be destroyed). Therefore, in contemplating the metaphors of the biological understanding of body, we can discern patterns and derive meanings concerning the separate self—its evolution, relationship to the whole, patterns of activity, stages of development, essence, and its experience of itself.

Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness

My attempt here is to skeletonize a portion of such an overall endeavor to show how it can be done and what kinds of meanings can arise. I will relate stages in the ontogenetic development of the human body to the dualities (splittings) of consciousness that, according to Wilber (1977), create the spectrum of consciousness.

Specifically, I will correlate the patterns of change in both form and experience (feeling) that a human undergoes with levels of consciousness. I will do this beginning with the sperm and egg; through the fetal, newborn, child, and adolescent forms; to the adult. What I am saying is that the forms that characterize the biological history of each individual (as delineated by the science of biology) and the processes that characterize the psychological history of each individual (as reported to us in the psychological sciences of the new experiential growth modalities) reflect, and correlate with, the changes in consciousness that Wilber describes as creating the spectrum of consciousness.

Continue with Cellular Memory’s Challenge to Materialism and Support for Panpsychism: The Body Arises from Consciousness, Not Vice-Versa, but There Is a Legitimacy to Heuristic Inquiry Into Form

Return to Tribes and Wonder Versus Civilization and Suffering: More Nestling Up With the Implicate Order, Or Before and After the Western Fall (Split)

To Access the Entire Book, of which this is an excerpt, Go To Falls from Grace. It is now available in print and e-book formats at Amazon.

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Continue with Cellular Memory’s Challenge to Materialism and Support for Panpsychism: The Body Arises from Consciousness, Not Vice-Versa, but There Is a Legitimacy to Heuristic Inquiry Into Form

Return to Tribes and Wonder Versus Civilization and Suffering: More Nestling Up With the Implicate Order, Or Before and After the Western Fall (Split)

To Access the Entire Book, of which this is an excerpt, Go To Falls from Grace

ABOUT THE AUTHOR, Michael Adzema. Video below … interviewed by Michael Harrell

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https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/2mm9OBbYjRE

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— Related: See also other published versions of these ideas….

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Dance of the Seven Veils I (2017).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Seven-Veils-Psychology-Mythology/dp/154243632X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

*Prodigal Human: The Descents of Man* (2016).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-Human-Descents-Return-Grace/dp/1530838134/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1485034667&sr=1-1

*The Secret Life of Stones: Matter, Divinity, and the Path of Ecstasy* (2016).

At Amazon —https://t.co/WMyo609jCi

*Wounded Deer and Centaurs: The Necessary Hero and the Prenatal Matrix of Human Events* (2016).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Wounded-Deer-Centaurs-Necessary-Prenatal/dp/1499653999?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc

*Funny God: The Tao of Funny God and the Mind’s True Liberation* (2015).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Funny-God-Minds-Liberation-Return/dp/1499504845/ref=sr_1_7_twi_pap_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485034771&sr=1-7

*Falls from Grace: The Devolution and Revolution of Consciousness* (2014).

At Amazon — http://amzn.to/2anYVzi

*Planetmates: The Great Reveal*(2014).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Planetmates-Great-Reveal-Return-Grace-ebook/dp/B00JZ418DA?ie=UTF8&ref_=asap_bc#nav-subnav

Experience Is Divinity: Matter As Metaphor (2013).

At Amazon — http://amzn.to/2aeeZUA

*Apocalypse NO: Apocalypse or Earth Rebirth and the Emerging Perinatal Unconscious* (2013).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-NO-Return-Grace-Book-ebook/dp/B00FG09NNE/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr

*Apocalypse Emergency: Love’s Wake-Up Call* (2013).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Emergency-Loves-Wake-Up-Return/dp/1492810355/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

*Culture War, Class War: Occupy Generations and the Rise and Fall of “Obvious Truths”* (2013).

At Amazon at

https://www.amazon.com/Culture-War-Class-Generations-Obvious/dp/1492864021/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

See Michael Adzema at Amazon for any other of the twelve books currently in print.

At https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Adzema/e/B00J7F0URC/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

arthur stanley eddington, Birth, Consciousness, CULTURE, fetus, humans, Ken Wilber, life, metaphor, Nature, new physics, perinatal, poet seers, prenatal, Psychology, Religion, roger s jones, science, species, the Spectrum of Consciousness, trauma, truth, unconscious, understanding, womb

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The Journey to Light Leads Through Perinatal Darkness: Correcting the Arrogant Modern Ego … Religions Are About Control … Spirituality, Surrender

Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Culture, Generations, globalrevolution, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, philosophy, psychology, spirituality on July 13, 2013

Will We Survive? Putting Our Society “On the Couch”: Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life … The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Apocalypse – No! Chapter Eleven: Control Versus Surrender … Heaven Leads Through Hell

Does It Look Like We’ll Duck Armageddon? The Information Tsunami, Ego Erosion, and Movies Are Collective Dreaming

Are the Changes Needed to Avoid Apocalypse Occurring? The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind, Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

Is there any evidence that the changes that need to happen for us to stave off apocalypse and save our world are actually occurring?

The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind

I have mentioned there are studies of the psychology of generations, beginning with the Baby-Boomers or Sixties Generation, that show both an increased access to the perinatal as well as a tendency to act out perinatal influences in less harmful…though more blatant…ways than generations prior. We have seen that this tendency goes hand in hand with actual engagement in activities to counter the negative perinatal act-outs that exist in our environment, for example, campaigning against war, pollution, racism, violence, and so on.

But in “Chapter Three: The Perinatal Media,” I introduced the common anthropological tenet that the projective systems of a culture—that is, its art and artifacts—can be analyzed to get a glimpse into the worldview of a particular society. For our purposes, I pointed out how our movies are especially potent glimpses into our collective consciousness as well as our collective unconscious. You might say that our cinema is the “royal road” to our collective unconscious.

Movies As Collective Dreaming

Our flicks perform admirably well as collective dreams in that, unlike the other products of our collective consciousness such as other art and artifacts, they are multimedia stories, much like dreams are. But more than that, they are shared by more of the populace than any other art form. I am not including TV separately as an art form, since I put it in the same category as films, especially when many films are broadcast on TV and much else on TV also has the same character of being multimedia stories.

Finally, the strength of a particular element of the collective consciousness can be easily determined by the popularity of a particular movie that represents it or by that element’s increasing inclusion in a number of films. For example, in “The Perinatal Media,” I discussed the emerging new elements of faces coming out of walls and forceful oral insertion.

Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

All together, these mean that, just as a psychotherapist might analyze a client’s dreams to get an idea of his or her unconscious workings and contents, one can interpret mainstream movies to get an idea of the workings and contents of our society’s “collective mind”—both conscious and unconscious.

This is no more complex than saying that when we see things in movies that people rush to see, they are drawn to it because those things are also in their own minds. And the more they flock—the greater the success of a movie—the more pervasive in a society are those themes, elements, and contents. Certain aspects—themes or elements in films—are said to really “resonate” with people and therefore people make the movies that contain them popular and successful.

When this is said, it only means that people are consciously or unconsciously drawn to things that exist within themselves. Conversely, no existence inside? No interest.

So in this and upcoming chapters I will use films as the dreaming out loud of our collective mind. Put less esoterically, I will be analyzing a few examples of mainstream movies for their content, and I will be assuming the content I find there exists as well in the society that has watched it…has dreamt it.

I will also be assuming that movies that are mainstream, by which I mean can be found readily for sale as DVDs on-line or in retail stores and have become part of the popular conversation are indicative of pervasive elements in our collective consciousness and unconscious. They can be looked at for the unacknowledged workings of our society as a whole.

I will not deal with the actual numbers of people who have attended particular movies. For I will assume out of the tens of thousands of movies that are produced each year—by small and large producers—those that have made it into the theaters of virtually all the communities of our society, and from there onto the DVD lists and the shelves of stores of all those communities, have by those facts alone demonstrated their resonance with the collective social mind. Otherwise, we would get into the maelstrom of analyzing critic’s opinions of these movies; and with that, to modify a saying, opinions are like asses: everyone has a different one.

Something’s Happening Here … Again

One final point about the heuristic value of the analysis of films for the workings of the collective mind: Elements and themes in movies change over time. I have shown how new elements may be evidence of new elements of our collective unconscious minds coming into consciousness in detailing how the faces-in-the-wall element has developed. (See “All in All It’s Just Another Face in the Wall.”)

But when old, familiar plots have different outcomes, this is important as well. When elements change or evolve over time, this speaks of something going on. This points to changes or evolutions in our collective consciousness. And when elements and themes and plots change or evolve rapidly, we can accurately say that the changes in consciousness are equally swift.

These are some of the tools we will be using in this and upcoming chapters as we take a look at a few examples of mainstream films and what they might be reflecting back to us about our own society’s changes in consciousness. But first let me say something about what may turn out to be the most important of the thematic evolutions or changes in film elements that we have been seeing.

Information Avalanche and Pre- and Perinatal Themes

In the last half century we have been hearing a great deal about the need to expand consciousness to balance the negative effects of the extremes of technological advance. Fortunately this change of consciousness is to some extent inevitable—or at least greatly aided—by certain side effects of the technological explosion…specifically in the area of telecommunications.

Ego-Eroding Information Deluge

As cultural boundaries are eroded by a multicultural information avalanche, people are forced to lower their inner defenses and ego boundaries. Confronted by such incoming information people will either take some of it in, learn, and thereby grow beyond their former selves or they will need to expend themselves in an all-out effort to shore them up.

A potent example of the first, currently, is the way people worldwide are opening to and learning from each other using social media via the internet; the revolutionary potential of this creation of an open global consciousness is already showing itself in uprising for democracies and economic justice virtually everywhere on Earth. A clear example of the second—where folks are putting everything into blocking out information and beating back the personal growth that would result—is in the backlashes to these liberal forces, which are also occurring throughout the world—as a Tea Party in the United States and as the fortification of authoritarian regimes from China to Syria and Turkey, from Iran to Israel.

We have seen that the first response—where folks allow the discomfort inherent in personal growth—is typical of a more advanced form of child-caring that is centered on the needs of the child. We know also that the latter reaction goes with child-caring centered on the needs of the care-givers, or parents…and not the child. In this latter instance of parenting, it is understandably called child-rearing or raising a child as opposed to child-caring. We have noticed that the first response goes along with increased self-analysis and introspection and the latter one with acting out, aggression, and culture war.

Information Tsunami Pushes Consciousness Revolution

So, this tsunami of information in all areas, where previously we could smugly hold forth ego-satisfying views, pushes both toward an overthrow of those narrower perspectives and the establishment of broader, more encompassing ones as well as toward an ever increasing irrationality in fending off this information, at any and all costs.

I discussed at length in a previous section how this informational upswelling has led to a need to process it all in new social formats and the rituals of the talk and reality shows.

“Consciousness Raising” As “Shoveling It”

For the most part, this growth or expansion of consciousness, when it happens, is seen as a linear increase and correspondingly is labeled a “raising” of consciousness. This is true whether we are talking about societal or individual progress.

Ken Wilber’s transpersonal theory is the most popular version of such a ladder-style path. In it the process of growth is analogous to that of climbing a mountain or shoveling compost into a pickup truck—one simply moves upward or piles it on. [Footnote 1]

But there are those who think otherwise.

Yes, Tina Turner, We Do Need Another Hero … a Different Kind: The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Religions Are About Control; Spirituality, Surrender. Let Go, Let God to Correct an Arrogant Modern Ego

The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Those in the know about the pervasive pre- and perinatal influence on personality and behavior, and especially those of us actively engaged in working through the effects of such early traumas, are fully aware, like Dante, that the path to heaven leads through hell. We have found that the path to the transpersonal light leads through the psychodynamic and perinatal darkness, that the path up and the path down are parts of the same path outward. [Footnote 2]

A Dark and Hideous Shadow World

Our experience has been that the information avalanche and multicultural onslaught have eroded our personal boundaries to an influx, not only of transpersonal bliss-love-compassion, but equally—and very often, initially—to a dark and hideous shadow world, a backwards bizarro world, of pernicious and insidious disorganized feelings comprised of elements ancient, infantile, pathological, biological, scatological, and perinatal. These are some of the forms spiritual emergence can take, especially initially. And they are the ones most likely to be seen as spiritual emergencies.

Pre- and Perinatal Themes in Cinema

Therefore, it is interesting to see these views confirmed by the bubbling up of psychodynamic and perinatal themes in our collective consciousness as evidenced by current films, books, and music. I have mentioned the pre- and perinatal themes and symbolism in films and explained why, along with other elements of postmodern times, they are evidence of something significant occurring in the consciousness of our age—an emerging perinatal unconscious.

But there is another element evolving in current films which has to do with a changing or evolving collective attitude toward these perinatal elements. And along with a changing attitude, there is evidence pointing to an evolving collective response to it.

Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life

“Control Spiritualities” and Patriarchal Cultures

Specifically, a different kind of heroic response, which characterizes the perinatal arena, can be said to characterize the postmodern movies replete with perinatal symbolism. Most striking of all, this different kind of heroic response corresponds to a different kind of spirituality than what is commonly portrayed in this society, or at least has been the norm up until now.

For basically there are “control” spiritualities and “surrender” spiritualities, with rarely the twain meeting. “Control spiritualities” are adapted to patriarchal cultures and involve the use of the ego to “control” and be in charge of even the realms of the supernatural. This is so because an ultimate evil—a devil or Satan—is postulated, which is given equal weight along with God in determining one’s ultimate fate. This type of spirituality is normally what is called religion.

“Surrender Spiritualities” and God As Being Good

But there is another brand of spirituality that is based on a belief in the ultimate goodness and rightness of All That Is. God’s goodness being essentially the dominant force in the Universe, herein it is considered safe to “surrender” in one’s relation to Reality, to expect that one will be guided correctly, in fact perfectly, in the act of letting go. Thus letting go is not to be feared—as in the control spirituality—but is to be practiced and fostered. In this perspective, which we might call surrender spirituality, control is seen as the problem, not the solution.

“Control” and “Surrender” Psychotherapies

Of course these two approaches to spirituality represent two approaches to psychotherapy as well. The control attitude is the dominant mode of psychoanalytically-based approaches—those in which the “demon” of the id is postulated.

The attitude of “letting go” and “surrender,” on the other hand, is the dominant mode of the experiential psychotherapies, which are themselves rooted in the tradition of humanistic psychology with its belief in the ultimate goodness of the human organism and which thus allows a faith in the ultimate rightness of human processes.

“Hero’s Journey” As “Control” Psychotherapy

Since the control attitude, in any of its manifestations, requires the postulation of an ultimate evil against which one must remain vigilant and must fight, the common “hero’s journey” myth—with its typical fighting and slaying of supposedly evil parts of the personality and reality symbolized as dragons and other monsters—is a prevalent focal myth to this attitude. Corresponding to this myth are the emphasis on disciplines and practices seeking to develop the ego and the will…over against the dangers that are postulated to exist in the Universe requiring these disciplines and, so-called, ego developments.

A Different Heroic Response in “Surrender” Paths

Since the “feeling” therapies and the other spiritual and experiential psychotherapeutic modalities with which they are allied are so different in attitude to the traditional “control” attitude, should there not be corresponding differences in myths to exemplify them? Indeed, there are.

In history, the surrender spiritualities have had correspondences in myth in which the dragon is not fought, conquered, and slain, but rather is either tamed and becomes one’s ally or pet—Saint Margaret is the prime example in the West, but this is a depiction prevalent in the East—or else one is swallowed by the “dragon” or monster and, after a while, is reborn.

Jonah is the prime example in the West for this latter depiction. But again this reaction to the fearful dissociated aspects of the personality, or the Shadow, is not a common one in the Western patriarchy, and it is much more common in traditional cultures and in the East.

A Shift to “Surrender” As a Corrective to a Western Overweening Ego?

All of this may be changing in recent times in the West, as once again the humanistic attitude and the new spiritual perspectives, as well as the experiential psychotherapies such as primal therapy, make us increasingly aware of the ultimate beneficence of the body, and of the Universe beyond even that, and of the importance of surrender and letting go as a corrective to the overweening control and defensiveness of the diminutive Western ego.

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

Footnote

1. See especially Ken Wilber, The Atman Project. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980.

2. See, for example, Michael Adzema, “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 25(3), 83-116. Reprinted online at the Primal Spirit site at “A Primal Perspective on Spirituality.”

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

Return to Apocalypse No! Chapter Ten: Where There Is Hope, Cultural Rebirthing

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The Consciousness of Stones: Transpersonal Perspective, Part One — Affirming Idealism, Debunking Materialism, and Rationalism as Egoistic Self-Abuse

Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, globalrevolution, History, meaning, nonconform, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality on June 15, 2013

The Map Is Not the Territory, Reality Is What Is Directly Experienced: In Support of Panpsychism and the Primacy-of-Consciousness Postulate

Some Assumptions

The perspective contained in this final argument on Experience Is Divinity: Matter As Metaphor and in the upcoming work, Falls from Grace, arises out of a set of assumptions that should be made clear at the outset. In addition, certain words are used with particular meanings that might not be clear to the reader initially. These terms are devolution, regression, the Divine, Experience , and metaphor; and I will deal with each of them in due course. In this part, “The Transpersonal Perspective,” I will discuss the definitional, epistemological, ontological, and methodological issues that pertain to the body of this work.

This book’s working set of assumptions is congruent with those of transpersonal psychology and the perennial philosophy as put forth by Ken Wilber (1977), and it is compatible with the metaphysical view constructed by Carl Jung. The basic assumption within that set is that Reality is

(1) something that is directly experienced and

(2) is not the interpretation of that experience.

That is, that as soon as one begins to interpret, one is already abstracting from What Really Is, one is removing oneself from that Reality and is beginning the process of increasing abstraction, degression, and devolution (meaning the reverse of evolution, the opposite of growth forward) from What Is.

(1) Reality Is Something Directly Experienced

Let us take each premise in turn. That Reality is something that is directly experienced is related to the position of Idealism, in philosophy, which is contrasted with the position of Common-Sense Realism or Materialism. Not only does Idealism have a strong historical legacy in philosophy, it has vital contemporary and empirical support from both the mainstream and cutting edges of our sciences.

Debunking Materialism

To establish Idealism more strongly we might want, first of all, to undercut the prevailing notion of Common-Sense Realism or Materialism.

On the contemporary side, biologist, natural scientist, and philosopher Rupert Sheldrake (1991a) lists nine “essential features of the mechanistic world view”:

1. Nature is inanimate

2. Inert atoms of matter

3. Determinate, predictable

4. Knowable

5. Universe a machine

6. Earth dead

7. No internal purposes

8. No creativity

9. Eternal laws (p. 17)

You will notice how many of these aspects of the mechanistic worldview overlap with what I have been calling Materialism. At any rate, Sheldrake (1991a) then states, and goes on to demonstrate, that “every one of those essential claims has been refuted by advances of science. In effect, science itself has now superseded the mechanistic world view” (p. 17).

Why this is not common knowledge is answered by Sheldrake (1991a) in pointing out: “Although science is now superseding the mechanistic world view, the mechanistic theory of nature has shaped the modern world, underlies the ideology of technological progress, and is still the official orthodoxy of science” (p. 17). And furthermore about this reluctance to change: “It has had many consequences, not the least of which is the environmental crisis” (p. 17).

Nevertheless, it is our duty to shed popular or convenient positions when they are contradicted by the evidence … or else we should give up our endeavor’s claim to be a truthful one. In so doing, Sheldrake’s (1991a) conclusion is that

[T]he modern changes in science have effectively transcended each of these features. These changes in science have not happened as part of a coordinated research programme designed to overthrow the mechanistic paradigm. They have happened in specialized areas, seemingly unconnected with each other, and often without any consciousness that this was leading to a change in the overall world view of science. What I am going to suggest is that we can now see that this has effectively refuted the mechanistic world view within the very heart of science itself. (p. 18)

And similarly, as concerns Materialism specifically:

Inert atoms have given way to the idea of atoms as structures of activity. Matter is not fundamental in modern physics. Energy and fields are fundamental. Energy is what gives things actuality or activity; it’s like the flow of change. Fields are what organize the flow of energy. As David Bohm says, “Matter is frozen light,” It’s the energy of light, or light-like energy trapped within a small space going round and round upon itself within fields. So matter is energy bound within fields. And as Sir Karl Popper has pointed out, “through modern physics, materialism has transcended itself,” because matter is no longer the fundamental explanatory entity, no longer the fundamental feature of things. Fields and energy are the most fundamental things. (p. 19)

Affirming Idealism

With Materialism in disrepute, it is logical to consider the alternative of Idealism. Idealism is the position, in philosophy, that states that matter’s existence is dependent upon our perception of it, that we cannot know that matter exists outside of our perception of it, and hence that what is most fundamental about Reality is the observer, not the observed . . . that the observed always presupposes an observer, prior to that.

This position fits in exactly with the idea of “biologically constituted realities” as I have described it elsewhere. This idea is that “worlds,” including “physical worlds,” are dependent upon the particular biological paradigm that constitutes the observer. Another way of saying that is that the “structure” of the observer … most notably, what is commonly called the “species” … determines the “world” that will be apprehended.

By “structure” I naturally mean a “psychic” structure (which we mistakenly label a physical structure such as the anatomy of a species, of course, because of our culturally constituted materialist bias) as opposed to a physical structure—for after all we are herein arguing for the more fundamental reality of psyche 1 over matter.

At any rate, it follows that an infinite number of worlds are possible, corresponding to an infinite number of perceivers. That is to say that perceivers consist in an infinite number of conceivable “biological paradigms”; we call them species.

Furthermore, subjective worlds vary as well within the individual biological structures that comprise each species. For the worlds of species vary with the individual perceivers or members which are by definition of similar, but not identical, construction to each other.

At any rate, in our materialistic age, such an “Idealist” position that posits the essence of World as psychical or subjective is looked down upon. Indeed, it has been roundly dismissed as “logically impeccable but incredible.”2

Rationalism As Egoistic Self-Abuse

Similarly, we have an argument against Idealism—more specifically the version of it called panpsychism, which is, by the way, the position being asserted here—by Wittgenstein in his Philosophical Investigations. His conclusion is that the position of panpsychism is unintelligible. Stating “Could one imagine a stone’s having consciousness?” he concludes that if one could it would only amount to “image-mongery” (Sec. 390, p. 119e). The implication is that since we cannot do something adequately—that we cannot understand something completely—there is something wrong with it!

This kind of reasoning qualifies for the “All-Time Boners in Philosophy Award.” For the argument—while claiming not to be saying anything about the truth or falsity of a position, nor about its provenness or unprovenness—would want us to evaluate positions, and even possibly dismiss them as viable (i.e., as possibly true), based upon whether we (as a species) are capable of understanding them with our intelligence.

Whereas, not only does this limit our knowledge endeavor—removing it from any possibility of speaking of truth unless it somehow (miraculously, I suppose, or through some sort of chosen-by-God kind of privilege) happens to coincide with what is intelligible to us; not only does it eliminate the scientific and philosophical enterprises in their attempts at venturing, ever on, after what may actually be true (or at least “truer” than we had previously held); but it presupposes that what is unimaginable at one time, or to one person, will be unimaginable, or unintelligible, to all others in all other times.

This is one particular instance where Rationalism displays its egoistic self-abuse . . . hence its inherent fallacy. For we know by looking at the record that what is unimaginable at one time, or to one person, ends up being imaginable to another. For example, do we suppose that an early “animistic” hunter-gatherer could imagine a physical universe as we picture it today—with black holes, a heliocentric solar system, a Big Bang, quarks, and quasars?

Do we say that because this primal person could not imagine these that we must dismiss them as possible truths (i.e., as possible good models of our reality). Or must we say that our conceptualizations of these things amount to “image-mongery” and thereby dismiss them on those grounds.

This last point leads beyond it in compelling us to realize that all forms of what we call “intelligible” venturing after truth are already a matter of “image-mongery.” That is to say that all our attempts equate with imagining models of what is; none of which can be said to actually constitute the thing described inasmuch as the map cannot constitute the territory.

Hence we are led, again, to a realization of the inevitably anthropocentric nature of such arguments as Wittgenstein’s attack on panpsychism—and the equivalent degree of arrogance that corresponds with them. For the argument reduces itself to “if we can’t imagine something, it doesn’t exist!”

Leaving behind such a fatuous and uninspired rationale, let us return to the position of Idealism anew.

Continue with The World of “Matter” Is But the Appearance of Mind to Itself: The Footprints on the Shores of the Unknown Are Our Own

Return to How End Times Can Be Seen as Beginning Times: Science As Myth, Part Six — Emanationism and the Cyclical Nature of Time and Change

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“The Footprint We Have Discovered on the Shores of the Unknown Is Our Own”: On Science as Idolatry … A Physicist Reports on the Truth Behind Scientific Conjuring

Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, Culture, economics, globalrevolution, History, meaning, nonconform, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality on May 17, 2013

Revolution in Science … Shunned: The Dire Import of Scientific Cowardice Regarding Their Own Findings as Relates to Humans’ Continued Existence on Earth … Science as Myth, Part One

The Implications of Matter As Metaphor

Consistently applying the new-paradigm perspective on matter and consciousness — as is attempted in this book … that is, of matter as an epiphenomenon of consciousness and the primacy-of-the-psychic-world postulate — requires a rethinking of theoretical constructions even in the fields of consciousness and psychology, which one would think at first hand to be amenable to this sort of view. However, our cultural context is such, our Western viewpoint so engrained, that even in these fields there seems a huge temptation to bow to the prevailing winds and a consequently understandable reluctance to go out on a limb against those.

Thus, we have many hybrids — theorists who it appears are trying to please too many people, too many former mentors, or whatever; and who find themselves, consequently, unable to go steadfastly forward, following through consistently on the implications of the transpersonal perspective. For example, from a consistent new-paradigm vantage point, Ken Wilber (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983) — the “consciousness” guru of the more intellectual, less experiential wing of the transpersonal movement — appears as inconsistent as pre-Copernican astronomers in devolving his theories.

Therefore, much of this next part will entail addressing the way the perspective presented in the previous part, “Matter As Metaphor,” affects, expands, changes, and reverses the tenets put forth in transpersonal psychology and philosophy — especially those aspects associated with Ken Wilber.

The Revolutionary Import, in Science, of the New-Paradigm Perspective

But let us set aside transpersonal thinking for the moment to focus on the larger picture. It may also be argued that in the larger context of normal science, in general, the new-paradigm primacy of consciousness is simply irrelevant.

However, I take strong exception to that. It is not simply innocuous that scientists refuse to acknowledge the implications of their findings. For in fact the implications of them would require a revolution and an overturning, and in many cases, a throwing out as obsolete of much of what scientists have paid highly for and struggled long and hard to learn.

The Lengths To Which They Go

So it should not be too surprising to observe the lengths to which scientists will go in avoiding the implications of their findings. Their actions and behaviors have all the earmarks of what, in therapeutic circles, is called denial.

For example, Roger Jones (1982), a physicist, in his remarkable book titled Physics As Metaphor, points out how physicists in their day-to-day activities hardly consider the implications of twentieth-century findings in their field. He begins by noting that, “Quantum mechanics, then, may just possibly imply an essential role for consciousness in the scheme of things. . . .” (1982, pp. 6-7).

Nevertheless, he adds that

[T]he real issue is whether or not such ideas figure significantly in scientific research. It is, in fact, the rare scientist who is concerned with such matters. The Copenhagen interpretation may be the prevailing philosophy of quantum mechanics today . . . but it is hardly a hot topic over lunch at the research lab. Most scientists take a rather pragmatic and condescending view of philosophy, and its niceties have no direct bearing on their day-to-day research, thinking, and discussion. . . . Fifty years after the Copenhagen interpretation forced consciousness on an unwilling scientific community, there is precious little to be found in the research literature of physics to suggest any bridging of the mind-body gap.

In fact, in the last fifty years, the trend in mainstream physical science has been away from consciousness and holism and toward the mechanistic and divisible world of the nineteenth century. Fritjof Capra argues that despite the much touted promises of an ultimate unification in physics, modern elementary particle and quark theory is basically a throwback to the atomistic, thing-oriented notions of premodern physics and is contrary to the holistic, process-oriented currents in modern thought. (Jones, 1982, p. 7)

The Emperor’s New Clothes

In fact, Jones (1982) goes so far as to say that in teaching physics and in publicly maintaining its precepts he often felt as if he were living a lie:

I found myself thinking hard about why and how to interest children in science, and this in turn awakened several philosophical issues that had troubled me over the years. As a practicing physicist, I had always been vaguely embarrassed by a kind of illusory quality in science and had often felt somehow part of a swindle on the human race. It was not a conspiracy but more like the hoax in The Emperor’s New Clothes. I had come to suspect, and now felt compelled to acknowledge, that science and the physical world were products of human imagining — that we were not the cool observers of the world, but its passionate creators. (p. 3)

The Footprint We Have Discovered Is Our Own

His implication is that physicists are aware of the subjective and arbitrary nature of the pronouncements and assertions they make about physical reality. It follows that they assert, with such authority and with the certitude of fact, things which they know to be only conjecture, or at the most, conjuring.

Jones (1982) concurs,

I . . . suggest that scientists (and indeed all who possess creative consciousness) conjure like the poet and the shaman, that their theories are metaphors which ultimately are inseparable from physical reality, and that consciousness is so integral to the cosmos that the creative idea and the thing are one and the same.

What else are we to think when the theory of relativity teaches us that space and time are the same as matter and energy, that geometry is gravity? Is this not an equating, an integration, of mind and matter? Is this not an act of poetic, perhaps of divine, creation? And what of the astronomer’s black hole, the perfect metaphor for a bottomless well in space from which not even light may escape? Which is the reality and which the metaphor? And what of quarks, the claimed ultimate constituents of matter, locked permanently within the elementary particles they compose, never able to appear in the literal, physical world? Are they not constructs, figments of the mind, symbols for a collection of unobservable properties?

How is the quark more real than figurative? . . . Indeed, as Sir Arthur Eddington said in 1920, the footprint we have discovered on the shores of the unknown is our own. (p. 5)

Science as Idolatry

Finally, Jones goes so far as to equate with idolatry the elevation of such man-made scientific constructs to objective status. And he suggests that such deceptiveness and failure to be completely candid is linked to some of our major modern crises:

For the full elaboration of the idea of science and the physical world as a construct of the mind or a collective representation, I owe a great debt to Owen Barfield and his writings, especially his book Saving the Appearances — A Study in Idolatry. It was Barfield who helped me most to fathom the deceptiveness of science by seeing that when metaphors become crystallized and abstract, cut off from their roots in consciousness, and forgotten by their creators, they become idols. For an idolator is not so much one who creates idols, but one who worships them.

This failure to recognize the central role of consciousness in reality and thus to treat the physical world as an independent, external, and alien object has been a chronic problem throughout the modern era of scientific discovery, since the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and has reached a critical stage in the twentieth century with its unconscionable, and largely unconscious, ravaging of the environment. (Jones, 1982, p. 5)

Continue with When Tradition and Religion Break Down, All Truth Is Liable to Erupt: The Center of the Onion Is Nothing … The Last Secret to Be Told Is That There Is No Secret.

Return to Are Aliens Actually Angels Attempting to Midwife Us Into the Next Higher Stage of Our Ascension to hOMe? Matter as Metaphor, Part Ten

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We Are the Centaurs, My Friends: We Are the Necessary Heroes for Deluded Promethean “Fathers,” Open the Jar, Pandora, and Why the Gods Are LOL

Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality on January 20, 2013

We’ve Fallen and We Can’t Get Up: Like Chiron, We Need to Take Inside Us the “Sins” of Promethean Fathers to Stop Millennial Cycles of Suffering

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Seven: Return of the Centaur and How We Look to the Gods

Enter the Centaur: Wherein Lies Real Hope – Sixties and Millennial Generations Are Shamans for Deluded Promethean “Fathers”

Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers

Prometheus Brought Us Blind Hopes

Another aspect of this is that Prometheus is said to have “caused blind hopes to live in the hearts of men.” Indeed, we are also now seeing how blind was our reliance on technology and the vaunted but vain “rational mind”—which has now been seen to be a rationalizing mind.

For we realize this self-congratulatory thinking has been keeping out uncomfortable truths and building illusory, manic Atman projects of escape from the consequences of our actions. None of which, we are now finding out, are capable of working.

Enter the Centaur: Real Hopes – Chiron

But to jump ahead. There is hope in the Prometheus myth as well. There is shown a way forward for humanity, which at this particular time in history appears to have been prophetic. For Prometheus is saved from his sufferings by the Centaur, Chiron. Chiron sacrifices himself—Christ-like—taking on Prometheus’s suffering and dying in his stead.

Return to The Centaur

Earthy, Sensual, Noble

The Centaur — half human, half animal — does not, like Icarus, paste on wings and try to separate from groundedness in the Earth. No. Centaur qualities are earthy, sensual, sexual. They embrace the noble qualities of the horse … reminding us that as primal beings, early humans, we were noble humans … as they say, a bit ethnocentrically, “noble savages.” We once stood, sure-footed and tall, and we walked confidently upon the Earth, knowing we belonged here.

Wounded Healers, Shamans, Gardeners of Consciousness, Poets … Brave and Foolhardy Journeyers Into the Unapproved and Hidden

Traditionally associated with intoxicants and with the bacchanalian, centaurs can see into other realities, nonordinary ones. They are open to altered states of consciousness. They are not averse to looking into their deeper natures, their “undersides,” their unconscious; that is how they came to be one with Nature in the first place.

Indeed, Chiron is also known as the wounded healer and is associated with the shamanic. Being, like Chiron, healers, centaurs are skilled in both physical and mental health. Thus they are wholistic and psychotherapeutical. They are philosophical. Plato was one. Walt Whitman was one. They are poetic.

Mystics, Scapegoats, Natural … A-mused and A-musing Not Deluded and A-mazed

They are scapegoated, like Chiron was, for the sins of society, and in modern times they have scornfully been referred to as “hippies” and “beatniks” — but they include the bohemian types of all times. Being rooted in a more fundamental nature or reality they are mystic. Jesus was one. Following a “different drummer,” as it were, they are the Wayseers.

Connected to the real source of truth in Nature and the Divine, they are in touch with their muse … and are both a-mused and a-musing…but they are not into the maze of culture, the matrix, they are not fooled or a-mazed.

The Centaur is completely in tune with her and his planetmate-nature, the Divine and Natural order—as in the Jungian and mystic understandings of individuation as being a re-uniting with a fundamental and earlier reality — returning home, humble and prodigal-son like.

The Opposite of Ordinary Folks…Who Build Stairways to Heaven and Towers to Their Vanity

This is the opposite of most folks who spend their lives seeking to vainly build stairways to heaven, Towers of Babel to the divine, to be muscular Nietzchian supermen, or to struggle up Wilberian ladder-style paths for imaginary achievements and to an understandably elusive “enlightenment.”

We Are the Centaurs, My Friends

This self-sacrificing tendency in humans I will be talking about at length at the end of this book where I point out how we need to stop acting out and begin taking back the projections we make onto the Unknown and thereby stop the Promethean cycles of suffering going on for millennia. We need to, like Chiron, take upon ourselves the “sins of the fathers.” As Tom Waits sang it, “I’m gonna take the sins of my father (mother, brother, sister), down to the pond…I’m gonna wash them.”

Exactly that. We must make the heroic sacrifice of taking inside ourselves those perennial urges to act out on others what was done to us. In environmental terms we must make the sacrifices of lowering our standard of living and cutting back on the lavish appetites and lazy indulgences fed by excessive technology, cultural trinkets, and superfluous commercialism, which other generations were allowed to take to the limits of their times. For if we do not, then there will be very little left for future generations—assuming there’ll be any.

These cultural “achievements” — wrought of burning of fossil fuels, release of fiery energy from the atom, and despoiling of natural resources — all of them in some way rooted in the theft of fire long ago, which started it all, must be let go of. We must refrain from being driven by these addictions and substitutes for actual felt experience, take the “fire” within instead of burning it up without. So in physical terms we must bring those excessive urges home within ourselves and ground them in Nature, bring them back into our physical bodies, we must be Centaurs. And within our bodies experience the discomfort of such a monumental millennial turnabout.

So, no. This is not easy or comfortable.

No. Not easy or comfortable.

Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur … Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon

Open the Jar, Pandora, and Return of The Centaur … Wherein Lies Real Hope

Open the Jar, Pandora

In psychological terms, real change lies in peering deep into the Pandora’s jar of the unconscious to recover the real hope that is there. Remember, Zeus punished humanity for Prometheus’s theft by sending Pandora. Pandora opened the jar she was told never to look into—another broken law of the Divine, like that of Eve and Prometheus—and out came all the ailments that now plague humankind. It is said Pandora tried to close it but “it was too late.” Still, the legend tells us what was left inside was hope.

I don’t think you have a better description of the way most folks, including most psychologists, handle the discomfort of early pain: They can’t help but be affected by it…some of it does “leak out.” But they expend all kinds of efforts toward bottling it up as much as possible, suppressing, repressing, using all kinds of defenses—including what mainstream psychotherapists call “healthy” ones.

Well, There’s No Sense Going Half Way!

Yet I can tell you as a primal therapist, breathworker, and primal person that is the exact wrong thing to do. From the perspective of deep experiential psychotherapy and Holotropic Breathwork one must open the “jar” all the way up. One must surrender to the discomfort within—not acting it out but acting it in…or rather, surrendering to the feelings that come up and expressing them (opening the jar wide).

The jar is the personal unconscious, and what we find is that the only answer to all these troubles is to look deeply into them; for when we do we find the real hope that lies beneath the pain. Or as I have phrased it, there comes a time when one feels through the “negative grids” (the “pain grids”) to the “positive grids” (the “joy grids”). Therein is the hope.

What we find is that when one has faced and integrated perinatal pain, then the blissful experiences from earlier in womb time opens up. In Grof’s terms referred to earlier in this book, when one allows oneself to experience the depression of BPM II (constricted womb) and the tribulations of BPM III (birth itself), then one is open to the euphoria of BPM I (early womb experience). Rather than seeing through a veil of perinatal negativity and illusion and acting out from the unreal self or ego, one is getting closer to one’s real self as a positive, truly creative being, .

This is not a fleeting experience, for it allows a completely new perception on one’s life, vastly different from what one normally thinks. One has access to positive patterns laid down at earlier and more fundamental times in one’s life. One can build a life that works, for once. One can make choices that trigger one into happiness, not ones that are self-destructive and conducive to unhappiness.

This is true in therapy and on the spiritual path but also in ordinary life. For any time one confronts or looks deeply into one’s discomforts there is a time when there is release from it, there is a time when one is in a better place for having faced it. As the Tao symbol indicates, there is a seed of light in the depths of darkness.

Additionally I can tell you that opening up even more to the reality of consciousness, as opposed to constructing egoic “castles in the sky,” leads to uncovering the “spiritual grids” beyond even the “positive grids.” That is when we go beyond even hope to actual redemption, re-union with estranged divinity, faith, empathy, love, and finally compassion. And that is when we as Centaurs go from being just wounded and suffering to being, like Chiron, healers…and caring teachers.

So, for centaurs, for those who take this path, it is more depressive than aggressive. And up to the euphoric culmination I described above, it is painful and ongoing as well, just as Chiron’s wound was incurable and tormenting. These become the shamans and wounded healers, like Chiron, throwing themselves into the fire, rather than shooting fire all about themselves at others. Centauric folks take on the suffering lest they end up being like all those before them who sheepishly and selfishly passed the burden down.

Return of the Centaur

In another part of this book I point out how there are, beginning with the Sixties, now generations who are doing just that—working out these pains, not acting them out.

I just recently delineated the way these primal pains are emerging and how they are being worked through, not acted out, in younger generations and in alternative, rock music, and therapeutic cultures for a number of decades now.

Finally, in a related work of mine, Culture War, Class War, I have written how the Sixties Generation is a centaur generation and how the millennial generation is continuing that tradition. I’ve pointed out Sixties folk are centauric in standing upon (sitting upon) the achievements of previous generations but also reversing the perverse Promethean human direction by reuniting with our rootedness in Nature.

Chiron Return…Every Fifty-One Years

This humble and correct primal returning has been done, is continuing to be done, and will keep on being done as the Sixties generation continues working out its power struggle at the top, but now aided by a Millennial generation—comprised mainly of their daughters and sons — who are rather centaur-like themselves … as this book and the related works continue to show.

And who, because of this, following different stars grounded in realities both deeper and higher, they boldly confront their societies, bringing about change, creating rapid evolution, revolution; and in doing this they have already created an Arab Spring and an Occupy Wall Street movement. They will bring about profound change in that they are opposed to the powers that be, just as their parents were opposed to the “establishment” of their day and created a “counter” culture.

The Chiron cycle is fifty-one years, meaning the last time we had energies like we do now in 2013 was in 1962. If you lived through or know about that decade, you know that 1962 through 1972 were among the most transformative, progressive, and revolutionary years in the history of the world…and it indeed was a worldwide phenomenon. Considering the dire developments and challenges being laid at our feet, as this book has been laying them out…and requiring as much social but personal change as well…the centaurs couldn’t have returned any too soon.

How We Look to the Gods and Prometheus Redux … Building More Nukes and Drilling More Holes – Icarus Keeps Flapping and the Gods Can’t Stop Laughing

View From the Heavens and Prometheus Redux … Icarus Is Flapping and the Gods Are Laughing as We Build Nukes and Drill Holes

Prometheus Redux

Before leaving Prometheus for good, let us consider some other interesting aspects of its rendering that provide insight into this book’s exploration of the deepest psychological—perinatal—roots of our apocalypse now:

There are four legends of the Prometheus myth—all of them are reflected, coincidentally, in themes in this and its related books, Culture War, Class War and The Great Reveal. They are

According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed.

“Betraying the secrets of gods to men” includes the biggest divine prerogative—dominion over death. Also, this implies that humans were given the forbidden knowledge which humans are incapable of controlling, which I dealt with at length in a previous section, using as modern examples our stirring up the forces of the atom and the secrets of the DNA.

According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

One of the results of Promethean hubris was control of Nature but therein also detachment from Nature. As I have been showing, our birth pain led us to the Promethean mistake of fire and meat. Both of these contribute to what I have called the thingification of humans, especially in modern/postmodern times. By that I mean our extraordinary pain coming into the world and then in general in life causes us to split off from the feelings in our bodies. We objectify all of Nature: We remove all its feeling and spiritual components and leave Things as the only reality, including ourselves and other humans. We “thingify” our babies; and as adults we embrace thingification (repression, detachment, estrangement, suppression, alienation) as a way of defending against this pain.

According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, forgotten by the gods, the eagles, forgotten by himself.

This separation from the pain creates the personal unconscious. But as a species, we have created a collective unconscious—what I have called the Unapproved and Hidden of all cultures. And as I have said, the truth became increasingly invisible over time…our real nature, what we did, and the true cost of our estrangement became ever more buried, obscure…eventually unknowable.

According to the fourth, everyone grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily.

This refers to what happens when we face these uncomfortable truths and resolve them. Ultimately we leave behind these dramas when we have dealt with them so much they no longer have any charge for us… in other words, they become boring… we “weary.” The patterns are still there, but they contain no charge for us.

So the first legend asserts that we are damaged and pained as karmic retribution for our defiance of Nature. And in these last three legends we have the ways we have reacted to the Promethean wound within us: ”We become unfeeling, detached, rock-like. We become one with our defenses, thingified.

The second says that we repress this information and it becomes increasingly hidden (“forgotten”) as our species has “evolved,” but also individually, as we get older in life. This is generally what is done with the Promethean wound of birth pain. The third says that some of us face and deal with the wounds. Eventually they are gone beyond, truly gone beyond, as eventually all the charge on them disappears, they have no more control over us or pull on us, as we just naturally weary of them…they dissipate.

There remains the inexplicable mass of rock. The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.^[28]

Finally, inexplicable substratum of truth is a pretty damn good description of the Unapproved and Hidden … also known as the Collective Unconscious… But in my rendering of it—dealing with our species unconscious, not just personal, “racial,” societal, or cultural—it contains much more than Jung imagined and because of that reverses many of the interpretations and meanings arising from it from what the Jungians, Joseph Campbell, or Freud understood.

Finally – Futility… The Gods Are Laughing at Us

One final message can be taken from these ancient minings of unconscious Truth which is also a commentary on our current mainstream reactions to the dire developments which are now reaching an apocalyptic peak:

Icarus Flapping – LOL

In the Icarus myth, “Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms.” I don’t think there is a better image for the way we look in our actions in the face of apocalypse. The gods, aliens, Titans, angels, and the planetmates must be laughing their asses off at the sight of humans continued “flapping” about with ever more technology, pushing ever forward into the face of doom and apocalypse—the sun, the fire for Icarus—even as the Earth below us continues to fail, disintegrate, get polluted and poisoned, and no longer support our continued hubris.

We’re Falling and We Can’t Get Up

Oh, yes, we’ve started the Icarus fall…our wings of technology are “melting”—literally in the case of Fukushima—but ever faster we “flap”—seeking to build more nuclear plants, hiding from the populace the extinction level events that are happening RIGHT NOW at Fukushima, seeking to drill ever more even with the BP spill clear as can be in the rear view mirror, lining the Koch Brothers pockets in touting the benefits of coal as an energy source, melting the rocks around natural gas so that our tap water catches fire and poisons folks who drink it, and so much more. So, yes, even more furiously we flap, the harder for every increase in our fall.

We furiously pick up litter as our organs rot from radiation poisoning. Oh, yes, we’ll die. But where we fall it will be tidy. We register voters and sign petitions as our organs rot from radiation poisoning. Oh, yes, we’ll die. But we’ll all be able to vote. [Footnote 1]

View From the Edge

We’ve had a long journey through the world of ancient myths and prehistory in delving into the way our prenatal state of oxygen insufficiency has pushed us to make fire and polluted environments attractive to us. We’ve seen how these early pushes have set us apart from all other species and placed us on an inexorable slide—which we in good time embraced and claimed as a goal and achievement even—to the edge of an apocalyptic abyss.

Next we look at how this unconscious state of an Oliver Twist style of oxygen deprivation affects us politically and socially…no matter any conscious or moral rearranging of “furniture” on the decks of our individual Titanics.

Continue with Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

Return to Will “Progress of Man” Be Humanity’s Epitaph? Apocalyptic Foretellings Hidden in Myth and a Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Ecocide

Footnote

1. Every time I look at this, It looks worse than I thought. This one makes me think there’s no way any of us will survive this. And if we do, then our children won’t. It’s that bad. And what pisses me off is that progressives want to poo-poo this.

Continue with Prenatal Hunger Games and “Blood Wars”: The Fetal Fight About “Pure Blood” We Act Out in Politics, War, and Oppression … Class War, Culture War, Revolution….

Return to Will “Progress of Man” Be Humanity’s Epitaph? Apocalyptic Foretellings Hidden in Myth and a Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Ecocide

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The First Retreat from the Natural Self Was Matriarchal Consciousness; It Should Hardly Be Our Goal: You Cannot “Balance” a Duality … You Can Only Transcend One.

Posted by sillymickel in activism, allegory, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, History, nonconform, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality on January 8, 2013

Matriarchy Is Not an Answer to Patriarchy: Is “White Man’s” Pride and Prejudices Keeping Us from Seeing Our Real Solutions, Our Primal Return?

A Golden Age

The question that naturally arises from the preceding chapter’s conclusions on the current state of affairs and their unfortunately intractable response is, What can be done about the present crisis in consciousness? But in order to do anything about our situation, we must delve a little deeper into understanding this state of consciousness and into how it has come to be that way. A more thorough exposition of exactly that endeavor can be found in several other works of mine (The Great Reveal, Apocalypse Emergency, Apocalypse—No!, 21st Century and Its Discontents, and Adzema, 1993a, 1993b).

From Ancient Greece?

For our purposes here, I would like to point out that similar conclusions to what we have arrived at about our crisis have been coming forth from many quarters of our culture in modern times. Examples are Rupert Sheldrake’s The Rebirth of Nature, Marilyn French’s Beyond Power, Theodore Roszak’s The Voice of the Earth, Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, Richard Tarnas’s The Passion of the Western Mind, John White’s The Meeting of Science and Spirit, and Ken Wilber’s Up from Eden. Nevertheless, what almost all of these perspectives lack is a well-grounded anthropological perspective (Beyond Power being the notable exception). Their analysis of the historical process that has brought us to this pass is often heavily conditioned by a Western bias towards history which sees humanity as beginning in ancient Greece during a matriarchal “Golden Age.”

Completely overlooking, in this way, the full 99% of our specie’s history that occurred prior to that time — when we truly did live in harmony with Nature, as foragers and then hunter-gatherers — these theorists naturally come to the conclusion that our problems in consciousness arose when we switched over from a matriarchal mode of existence to a patriarchal one: That is, with the advance of nomadic patriarchal conquerors over the pastoral and agricultural “matriarchal” cultures of the Hellenic period of ancient Greece.

Matriarchal Is Not an Answer to Patriarchal

This is unfortunate because to seek to find a Golden Age in the matriarchal period has required of such writers that they completely overlook many of the obvious shortcomings of the matriarchal view. This is not to say that the matriarchal cultures may not have been more harmonious with Nature … and with their inner natures … than their patriarchal successors. That they were less violent is also true. Therefore, that matriarchal cultures were less “fallen from grace” than patriarchal ones is not something I would dispute.

What I think is crucial to make known, however, is that the matriarchal cultures themselves were also “fallen from grace”: from a previous, even more “golden” state — one which was even less violent and more harmonious with Nature. [Footnote 1]

Is “White Man’s” Pride and Prejudices Keeping Us from Seeing Our Real Solutions, Our Primal Return?

But the writers in this area are apparently unaware of the true conditions of cultures outside of or prior to the Western “royal” line. Evidently, they are still to some extent influenced by the Western conditioning which has us scapegoat and denigrate such cultures and viewpoints as “primitive,” “savage,” and “uncivilized.” Thus they have us begin our history with a supposed “Greek miracle,” where we are said to have just “awakened” from a prior collective addiction to superstition, magic, and violence.

Robert Lawlor, in his book, Voices of the First Day, is one theorist who has not made such a mistake. In fact, Lawlor’s depiction of the aboriginal Australian world view demonstrate exactly the kind of “unfallenness,” “higher consciousness,” and harmony with Reality that most “matriarchal” theorists think they are espousing. It is one that is more truly in line with what might actually be our Reality — as the cutting edges of our sciences are finally telling us … despite themselves. It is interesting how we have come full circle in this way.

The First Retreat: Matriarchal Consciousness

Nevertheless, in response to the popular “return to the matriarchy” view, it is important to point out that it is not necessarily a good thing to go to matriarchal consciousness as a way of correcting patriarchal consciousness, even if it does represent a marginally better state of affairs. For one does not correct the problems inherent in a duality by swinging to the other end in that same duality.

You Cannot “Balance” a Duality … You Can Only Transcend One.

That approach simply reinforces that particular split, that particular duality. After all, one would not think it a good idea to go from a period of totalitarian fascism to one of complete anarchy, for example. That would only put in play the forces to create another extreme crackdown. Neither would one consider it wise to swing from an extreme of hedonistic behavior to one of anal-compulsive repression; nor would one wish to order up a period of flood to counter one of drought!

“Balancing” Opposites Is an Impossible Struggle. Only a “Conjunction of Opposites” Brings Transcendence.

Though this pendulum-swinging tendency is often observed, it is hardly a desirable thing. So, as it turns out, neither is it an ideal solution to go from patriarchality to matriarchality — just to “balance the opposites” . . . as some matriarchal advocates espouse. For doing either of these extremes sets up and reinforces the forces at the opposite extreme, readying them for the next wild swing in the other direction! No, one can only correct a duality by transcending that duality. And transcending, by the way, involves a synthesis — that is, either a going beyond, or a going before, to a state where both elements are not opposed — to a state where there is a “conjunction of opposites,” not their continued opposition.

Primal Consciousness

Hunter-gatherer consciousness — termed paleolithic consciousness by one researcher — and especially the even earlier forager consciousness was characterized by just such a, relatively, non-dualistic acceptance of That Which Is … for the most part. Its way of life, corresponding, has been called the “original affluent society,” in that it is estimated that only four hours a day were needed for attending to survival concerns.

But a mistrust set in. Fearfulness and intractability in the face of change followed; and hence there arose the desire to attempt to control Nature, rather than to follow Her and conform to Her rhythms.

Continued with Ritual As Shadow: Magic, Ritual, and Superstition Occur with the Beginnings of Ego and the Agrarian Desire to Control Nature — the Matriarchal Consciousness

Return to “Why Did He Do It? White Man.” It Is Only Now That His Own Demise Is at Hand That Rational Man Stops to Reflect — The Primal Return

Footnote

Continue with Ritual As Shadow: Magic, Ritual, and Superstition Occur with the Beginnings of Ego and the Agrarian Desire to Control Nature — the Matriarchal Consciousness

Return to “Why Did He Do It? White Man.” It Is Only Now That His Own Demise Is at Hand That Rational Man Stops to Reflect — The Primal Return

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Does It Look Like We’ll Duck Armageddon? The Information Tsunami, Ego Erosion, and Movies Are Collective Dreaming: Dreaming Out Loud, Part One

Posted by sillymickel in activism, authenticity, being yourself, Class, Culture, economics, Generations, globalrevolution, History, individualism, life, meaning, nonconform, occupywallstreet, philosophy, Politics, psychology, spirituality, US on September 28, 2012

Dreaming Out Loud, Part 1: Are the Changes Needed to Avoid Apocalypse Occurring? The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind, Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

Is there any evidence that the changes that need to happen for us to stave off apocalypse and save our world are actually occurring?

The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind

But in “Chapter Eight: The Perinatal Media,” I introduced the common anthropological tenet that the projective systems of a culture—that is, its art and artifacts—can be analyzed to get a glimpse into the worldview of a particular society. For our purposes, I pointed out how our movies are especially potent glimpses into our collective consciousness as well as our collective unconscious. You might say that our cinema is the “royal road” to our collective unconscious.

Movies As Collective Dreaming

Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

When this is said, it only means that people are consciously or unconsciously drawn to things that exist within themselves. Conversely, no existence inside? No interest.

Something’s Happening Here … Again

Information Avalanche and Pre- and Perinatal Themes

Ego-Eroding Information Deluge

Information Tsunami Pushes Consciousness Revolution

I discussed at length in a previous section how this informational upswelling has led to a need to process it all in new social formats and the rituals of the talk and reality shows.

“Consciousness Raising” As “Shoveling It”

But there are those who think otherwise.

Footnote

1. See especially Ken Wilber, The Atman Project. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1980.

Continue with Yes, Tina Turner, We Do Need Another Hero … a Different Kind. Dreaming Out Loud, Part 2: The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Return to Better Hitler Had Jumped Into Mosh Pits. Rebirthing Rituals, Part 8: A Drive to Healing, the Hard Rain Fallin’, and Millennial Promise

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Enter the Centaur: Wherein Lies Real Hope – Sixties and Millennial Generations Are Shamans for Deluded Promethean “Fathers”: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 14

Kaleidoscope of Postmodern Life, Part Fourteen: Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers

Prometheus Brought Us Blind Hopes

Enter the Centaur: Real Hopes – Chiron

Return to The Centaur

Earthy, Sensual, Noble

Wounded Healers, Shamans, Gardeners of Consciousness, Poets … Brave and Foolhardy Journeyers Into the Unapproved and Hidden

Mystics, Scapegoats, Natural … A-mused and A-musing Not Deluded and A-mazed

The Opposite of Ordinary Folks…Who Build Stairways to Heaven and Towers to Their Vanity

We Are the Centaurs, My Friends

So, no. This is not easy or comfortable.

Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur … Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15

Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13

No. Not easy or comfortable.

Continue with Real Hope Lies in Pandora’s Jar and Return of the Centaur…Since the Last Time Was 1961, It’s None Too Soon: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 15

Return to A Re-Visioning of “Civilization” in Light of Impending Apocalypse … Prometheus Made us “Civilized” … And Doomed: 21st Century and Its Discontents, Part 13

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Posts Tagged Ken Wilber

Biology Reflects Consciousness: Biological Changes Reflect Changes in Experience and Create the Spectrum of Consciousness

“The Stuff of the World Is Mind-Stuff”

The Import and Consequences of the Primacy-of-Consciousness Postulate

Biology As Metaphor

Moving in the Air Without Support

Analyzing Scientific Dream-Weaving

Biological Phases As Levels of Consciousness

Continue with Cellular Memory’s Challenge to Materialism and Support for Panpsychism: The Body Arises from Consciousness, Not Vice-Versa, but There Is a Legitimacy to Heuristic Inquiry Into Form

Return to Tribes and Wonder Versus Civilization and Suffering: More Nestling Up With the Implicate Order, Or Before and After the Western Fall (Split)

To Access the Entire Book, of which this is an excerpt, Go To Falls from Grace. It is now available in print and e-book formats at Amazon.

Continue with Cellular Memory’s Challenge to Materialism and Support for Panpsychism: The Body Arises from Consciousness, Not Vice-Versa, but There Is a Legitimacy to Heuristic Inquiry Into Form

Return to Tribes and Wonder Versus Civilization and Suffering: More Nestling Up With the Implicate Order, Or Before and After the Western Fall (Split)

To Access the Entire Book, of which this is an excerpt, Go To Falls from Grace

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— Related: See also other published versions of these ideas….

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*Dance of the Seven Veils I* (2017).

At Amazon at

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Will We Survive? Putting Our Society “On the Couch”: Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life … The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Apocalypse – No! Chapter Eleven: Control Versus Surrender … Heaven Leads Through Hell

Does It Look Like We’ll Duck Armageddon? The Information Tsunami, Ego Erosion, and Movies Are Collective Dreaming

Are the Changes Needed to Avoid Apocalypse Occurring? The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind, Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

The “Royal Road” to Our Collective Mind

Movies As Collective Dreaming

Putting Our Society “on the Couch”

Something’s Happening Here … Again

Information Avalanche and Pre- and Perinatal Themes

Ego-Eroding Information Deluge

Information Tsunami Pushes Consciousness Revolution

“Consciousness Raising” As “Shoveling It”

Yes, Tina Turner, We Do Need Another Hero … a Different Kind: The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

Religions Are About Control; Spirituality, Surrender. Let Go, Let God to Correct an Arrogant Modern Ego

The Path to Heaven Leads Through Hell

A Dark and Hideous Shadow World

Pre- and Perinatal Themes in Cinema

Control vs. Surrender, Death vs. Life

“Control Spiritualities” and Patriarchal Cultures

“Surrender Spiritualities” and God As Being Good

“Control” and “Surrender” Psychotherapies

“Hero’s Journey” As “Control” Psychotherapy

A Different Heroic Response in “Surrender” Paths

A Shift to “Surrender” As a Corrective to a Western Overweening Ego?

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

Footnote

Continue with Apocalypse – No! Chapter Twelve: Atman Projects vs. Surrender Solutions

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The Map Is Not the Territory, Reality Is What Is Directly Experienced: In Support of Panpsychism and the Primacy-of-Consciousness Postulate

Some Assumptions

(1) Reality Is Something Directly Experienced

Debunking Materialism

Affirming Idealism

Rationalism As Egoistic Self-Abuse

Continue with The World of “Matter” Is But the Appearance of Mind to Itself: The Footprints on the Shores of the Unknown Are Our Own

Return to How End Times Can Be Seen as Beginning Times: Science As Myth, Part Six — Emanationism and the Cyclical Nature of Time and Change

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Revolution in Science … Shunned: The Dire Import of Scientific Cowardice Regarding Their Own Findings as Relates to Humans’ Continued Existence on Earth … Science as Myth, Part One

The Implications of Matter As Metaphor

The Revolutionary Import, in Science, of the New-Paradigm Perspective

The Lengths To Which They Go

The Emperor’s New Clothes

The Footprint We Have Discovered Is Our Own

Science as Idolatry

Continue with When Tradition and Religion Break Down, All Truth Is Liable to Erupt: The Center of the Onion Is Nothing … The Last Secret to Be Told Is That There Is No Secret.

Return to Are Aliens Actually Angels Attempting to Midwife Us Into the Next Higher Stage of Our Ascension to hOMe? Matter as Metaphor, Part Ten

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We’ve Fallen and We Can’t Get Up: Like Chiron, We Need to Take Inside Us the “Sins” of Promethean Fathers to Stop Millennial Cycles of Suffering

Wounded Deer and Centaurs, Chapter Seven: Return of the Centaur and How We Look to the Gods

Blind Hope vs. Real Hope … Chiron Is Martyr for The Sins of the Fathers

Prometheus Brought Us Blind Hopes

Enter the Centaur: Real Hopes – Chiron

Return to The Centaur

Earthy, Sensual, Noble

Wounded Healers, Shamans, Gardeners of Consciousness, Poets … Brave and Foolhardy Journeyers Into the Unapproved and Hidden

Dance of the Seven Veils I (2017).