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Chapter Four
THE SYNTAXIC MODE: CREATIVITY
The
most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical. It is the sower
of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger . .
. is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, which
our dull faculties can comprehend only in their most primitive forms -
this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center to true religiousness. In
this sense, and in this sense only, I belong to the ranks of devoutly religious
men.
-Albert
Einstein
4.11 General Introduction
We come now to the culmination of our search, for if there is any fit vessel in the universe to receive the numinous element in propria persona it is the human consciousness in the syntaxic mode. All that has gone before, the trance miracles of the prototaxic, and the magical art of the parataxic, are like the dumb show and the music before the play - the mere overture to the cognitive powers and the affective glories of the syntaxic mode. Creativity is the popular name for the mode, as were trance and art for the earlier ones, but this mode is creative with a vengeance. For it displays besides creativity, escalation, emergent capacities undreamed or unheard of before, intuition, transcendence, ecstasy, metamorphosis, and salvation.
The syntaxic mode embraces three levels or stages. The first is the creative (including mediation) which we identified earlier (1972) as the sixth developmental stage, and the occultists call the third state of consciousness. This level generally involves the ordinary state of consciousness, although there may be momentary intuitive intimations of something higher. Siddhis (psychic powers) are generally absent, although a few are found in creative states, some in biofeedback and orthocognition, and perhaps more in meditation. We identify five procedures in this level:
tantric sex- 6,(page 246)
creativity-5,
biofeedback-4,
orthocognition-3,
and meditation-2.
The numbers are jhana
numbers, originally applied as positive numbers to the highest eight procedures in the syntaxic mode; we have taken the liberty of extending them downwards into negative numbers so as to characterize as accurately as possible each procedure successively. The affective thrill for tantric sex is, of course, orgasm, while for the rest of the procedures it is creative inspiration; all the procedures save tantric sex show an infusion of cognitive knowledge which comes from some other source than conscious accretion or rote learning. All this is shown graphically in Table VIII.
The next
level we have called earlier (1972) the psychedelic (for mind expansion),
and have identified as developmental stage 7. (The occultists call it the
fourth state of consciousness). This level has the property that those
in it experience a transient altered state of consciousness known as an
ecstasy in which there is loss of self, time, or space, the infusion of
a special knowledge, and purification of self. Siddhis are often
seen. There are six procedures in this level (see
Table VIII).
a) Response Experience (Jhana -1) (nature-mystic, oceanic, or peak experience);This level is the purview of the mystic life.
b) Adamic Ecstasy (Jhana 0) ("cleansing of the doors of perception");
c) Knowledge ecstasy (Jhana 1) (illumination through special instant knowledge);
d) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 2) (contact with numinous element);
e) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 3) (rapture ceases);
f) Knowledge-contact ecstasy (Jhana 4) (all feelings cease).
Finally
there exists a highest level which we now call the unitive (earlier we
had called it the illuminative). It is development stage 8, and the 5th
level of consciousness for the occultists. Words fail to be of much use
in describing this high level and its four procedures (Table
VIII.) Those few who may dwell here are in a permanent altered state
of consciousness, with attendant siddhis (which they evidently disdain
to use). Since there are very few of them, and they shun publicity, we
know very little about this level. Goleman says there are four procedures,
all involving self-transcendence, and the last two Union. They are:
a) Ineffable Contact (Jhana 5) (consciousness of infinite space);(Page 247)
b) Transcendental contact (Jhana 6) (objectless infinite consciousness);
0 Ineffable Union (Jhana 7) (awareness of "no-thing-ness");
d) Transcendental Union (Jhana 8) (neither perception nor nonperception) (see Table VIII).
Table VIII Properties of Syntaxic Procedures and Graces
Table VIII represents a primitive attempt to make synoptic sense out of Underhill (1960), Laski (1962), and Goleman (1972) in regard to the order of these higher procedures. It is probable that we have made errors of placement. Further, the table may discriminate for the sake of clarity in ways which are not found in practice (since many mystical experiences are mixed). Also there exist some minor disagreements. Goldman places meditation in occult state 5, while Laski denies that the response experience is a true ecstasy. (The
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testimony of many poets, and nature mystics would indicate that it is).
The essential feature of the syntaxic mode is the attempt to grasp the numinous element with the mind rather than with the body. It would perhaps be more accurate to state that this involves the cognition as well as the emotions, although the affective aspect culminates in ecstasy, another characteristic of the syntaxic state. Furthermore, the cognitive aspect is characterized by two specifics:
(1) an
effort to relax or tranquilize the mind by some technique of interior quieting,
in which there is diminution of perceptual intake. In Wordsworth's words:
And when upon my bed I lie(2) Some orthocognitive structuring, which is involved less with the pantheon of ultimate reality than its relationship to the self, and to the world of space/time.
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude.
The syntaxic mode is characterized by the richness and spectacularism of its emergent aspects found at successively higher procedures. Creativity and ecstasy are early examples of this, but there are others.
The issue here is the conscious disposition of prana or psychic energy. Imagine that you are at a water pipe through which water is flowing under pressure (Figure IX). In front of you are several spigots; the pipe then ascends vertically and is open ended at the top where there is a shower head. What do you do to keep from getting soaked? Obviously you open one or more of the spigots in front of you. This is a fair analogy to the flow of pranic or psychic energy. The spigots available to you are (1) sexual outlet, (2) creative outlet, (3) orthocognition, (4) meditative outlet, or the shower- head (psychic tricks). If you want to keep dry you must open one or more of the spigots, depending through which of them you wish to express psychic energy. If you shut them all off, the shower-head will overflow, which is why occult literature since time immemorial has prescribed sexual abstinence as a preparation for paranormal feats, (not because sex is bad, but because it discharges psychic energy). If psychic energy is discharged through creative or meditative spigots it can be used in individually or socially useful ways, and the more we open any of the spigots the less likely we are to get soaked by the shower head. This again shows why it is not a wise thing to get involved in occultism before one is creative or meditative.
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Fig. IX Flow of Prana or Psychic Energy
We have hitherto described the individual units comprising a mode as "procedures" because they are choices by which men can proceed. Due to a remarkable emergent property of the syntaxic mode, we must (for clarity) change this nomenclature in the middle of the mode. For while the activities of the creative level are "procedures," the activities of the psychedelic and unitive levels are not, since they are not within the conscious choice of man but come to him in some sudden, adventitious, and transcendent manner as if (to revert to religious language), by the grace of God. We have accordingly called them "graces." Poulain called them "The Graces of Interior Prayer" in his book of the same title (1912).
There are fifteen procedures/ graces in the syntaxic mode. Unlike those in the earlier modes, these are developmental and form a hierarchy of mind expansion from formal operations to the infinite. They might therefore be called degrees of expansion or development, as each successive procedure/grace is likely to possess emergent qualities. Because of this aspect the procedures/ graces are divided
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into three stages - the lowest known as the creative, the middle as the psychedelic and the highest as the unitive. These stages as we have elsewhere indicated (1972) are also developmental, being the cognitive aspects of the Eriksonian intimacy, generativity, and ego integrity affective components.
Since we write from a background of Christian culture, and since most of the literature of mysticism with which we are familiar comes from that culture, we perforce are reduced to quoting and using the language of religion which involves the concept of personal God. This usage does not signify a change in our views from the impersonal aspects of the numinous element or a reversion to orthodox Christianity; it is merely a necessity forced upon us by circumstances.
4.12 The Numinous Element As The Collective Preconscious
It is now time to take another look at that shadowy concept introduced in Chapter One - the numinous element. We have gained enough perspective to look at the concept more thoroughly, and we are also in a better position to make a rational explication. The numinous element in the prototaxic mode is such a dreadful mysterium tremendum that the uncanny emotion aroused by it precludes careful thought. In the parataxic mode, the numinous element is veiled and accessible aesthetically rather than cognitively. But in the syntaxic mode, as a result of creative strivings in the individual, the numinous element appears in a less fearsome guise as the collective preconscious. Let us trace the mechanism through which this appears in some detail.
Let us imagine a mathematical function f(x,y,z) in three dimensions. This can be intuited as a physical surface, such as a rolling landscape with hills, dales, etc. It is possible to take partial derivatives of this function in any one of three dimensions, and these partials will be very different from one another (for example, one partial might be a line running up a hill, and another at right angles might run down a valley). In a roughly similar way, when a superordinate reality such as the numinous element is "partialed" into a concept which we (locked in space, time, and personality) can visualize, it can be done in several ways. In the next paragraph we have detailed one method. But another is that the numinous element appears in each of us as the "collective preconscious." We use the term "collective preconscious" instead of Jung's "collective unconscious" because research has accumulated since indicating that this aspect of the psyche can sometimes be available to the conscious mind. Indeed, its availability results in creativity. Since we shall have much use for this concept, it is desirable to discuss it in detail, and this is done in section 4.3.
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In order properly to understand the syntaxic contact with the numinous element it is necessary to clarify a hierarchy of relationships which are difficult to explicate since we are not used to this kind of thinking. We can best do this through analogy to the mathematical process of integration, which involves summation of the area under a curve and its expression in a higher dimension. Thus involved in integration is the concept of transcendence on reaching for a higher function with greater degrees of freedom. (An example would be the relationship between an individual life and the cycle of reincarnations of which it is but one instance.) To such a cycle we give the name "entity." Again summating "entities" we reach another integration which we believe are archetypes. It is obvious that the direction of motion here is from the personal self to the numinous element.
Now let us similarly take a space-time event in the physical world and likewise integrate it over time and space. We get then what we have referred to previously (3.41) as the "durative topocosm" (roughly the spirit of the climate of an area). Integrating again creates an archetypic analog which we shall identify as "mythic devas." We have again moved from the physical towards the numinous element.
All this can be set down in Figure X, in which God is the triple integral of man with respect to time, space, and personality. Now, what is the pay-off from all this hard thinking?
It is immediate. In place of the lightning-like, ego-paralyzing discharge of the numinous element energy in the prototaxic mode, or the veiling of the numinous element in the parataxic mode, we now have constructed a series of "step-down" voltage transformers interposed between the individual mind and the numinous element which can safely discharge its awesome power in useful ways, just as the various transformers interposed between household electrical circuits and the high voltage electricity of the high-tension line can change potential destructive energy into useful power,
The advantage in this complicated mechanism is that the human ego can remain conscious and therefore profit from the contact cognitively.
At each level, the particular function contains an infinity of possibilities or potentialities which are expressed at the next lower (differential) level as a series of wavelike pulses. And the function of orthocognition is to select which of these many potentialities we choose to manifest in the world of our self-concept. Such a view is incredibly optimistic for it gives us a purchase on the durative topocosm of events which allows us to select from an infinity of potential events those particular ones which we choose to have actualized in our vivency. It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of this concept; for this reason, the reader is encouraged to reread this section at this time. We shall expand on the practical possibilities of this principle under section 4.5 on orthocognition.
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Table X Successive Integrations of Person and Thing
Figure X is also useful in considering the "three illusions" (section 4.13), since it involves a transcendence of ordinary time. One of the striking aspects of all behavior which relates to the numinous, prototaxic, parataxic, or syntaxic is this peculiar "melting" of clock time, which time appears to be a property of the ordinary state of consciousness. For example, quoting Eliade on the attempt of the primitive to "break away from profane time into the Great Time" which is the essence of mythical behavior, Greeley (1974:46) says:
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The ecstatic experience. . . . is an attempt to recapture a Great Time or primordial time or mythical time by breaking away from the present time.
In
comparing the three modes in regard to their attempts at time transcendence,
Greeley (1974:47) notes that there are similarities between trance and
ecstasy for "in both, ordinary time and place are suspended." He then again
quotes Eliade (1967:71-2) who states: "The ecstasy re-actualizes. . . .
what was the initial state of mankind."
We have
the testimony of the mystic Simone Weil (Waiting
on God) on
the fact that mystic experience is a sudden "integration" of this kind
when she says:
At times the very first words tear my thoughts from my body and transport it to a place outside space where there is neither perspective nor point of view. The infinity of the ordinary expanses of perception is replaced by an infinity to the second and sometimes to the third degree. . . .
The
issue of time transcendence is essentially a religious one: As Ellwood
(1973:72) puts it: "A touchstone of meaning in any religion is its handling
of man's experience of living in time." He points out that different religions
deal differently with the problem: one way is the technique of meditation
and mysticism which attempts to transcend time in the eternal now; another
evangelical model holds up the archetypal figures of a messiah or a "Great
Time" in which one tries to live, as one becomes convinced of the "imminent
end of the present age."
Ellwood
(1973:17) points out that there are two ways in which religion attempts
to transcend time:1
The first is mysticism which creates an interior psychological time so divorced from exterior clock ... time that ideally it does not move at all, but remains in an eternal now of bliss. The second is apocalyptic, which lives for a moment when, by divine intervention from without, time in all its destructive aspects will be demolished. . . .---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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is to space as "i" (the square root of -1) is to 1. Now "i" multiplied by itself is -1, so that in a metaphoric sense we can say that the time dimension is "half" a space dimension. Curiously one finds this out intuitively. We have full intuition of the three spatial dimensions, but we cannot intuit the fourth dimension, so we experience it as "time." Furthermore this experience is not full; it is partial, for we are on a one way street indicated by "time's arrow" which allows us always to experience duration as getting later and later, but never the opposite.
Such consideration
suggests that what is not fully intuited can most easily be transcended,
and this is precisely what we find when in the presence of the numinous
element - "time begins to melt around the edges." Furthermore, it
is also curiously suggestive that the concept "three and one half" (three
spatial dimensions and half a time dimension) keeps turning up again and
again. Item: the Kundalini serpent power is said to be wrapped three and
one half times around the lowest chakra center: (liberation consists in
unwrapping the pranic power and sending it up the spine: a rather nice
metaphor when one thinks it through). Item: Toynbee found in his study
of history that the rally-rout theory proceeds through three and one half
cycles. In the cocoon of life we potential butterflies sleep in a physical
net which secures us fully in three dimensions; but in the fourth dimension
(which we intuit as time) we are not restrained as securely and that is
where the ball of string starts to unwind.
Time present and time pastsays T. S. Eliot in "Burnt Norton."
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past
If all time is eternally present . . .
Sri Aurobindo
was very clear that time was one of the first aspects to unravel when one
became "orientated" or enlightened. His biographer Satprem notes (1968:96)
that as we become psychologically conscious "the most immediate" experience
is that "of always having been and of being forever." For this awakening,
as he says elsewhere (1968:268) involves "global vision, undivided vision,
and also eternal vision." It is therefore "the conquest of time." But language
itself is so entangled in time that we cannot properly speak of the noumenon,
for as he again declares, (1968:297):
It is a perpetual beginning which is not anywhere in time; when we say 'first the eternal, then the becoming' we fall into the illusion of spatio-temporal language. . . .----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have discussed elsewhere (Gowan 1974:134-7) the gentling of the preconscious which is one of the guises in which the numinous element presents itself to the individual. It starts in childhood as the traumatic "not-me" of Harry Stack Sullivan (see section 2.1) presented in the prototaxic mode; it continues as archetype motivating dream, myth, ritual, and art in the parataxic mode, and finally comes to conscious thought as the preconscious source of creativity in the syntaxic mode.
One can imagine this separate reality as veiled from our normal state of consciousness, so that in the prototaxic mode we must dissociate somewhat to come in contact with it, while in our reality it appears to exist (as Troward noted) in a hypnotized state, embedded in the psyche of each of us. Because of its plenary and numinous quality, such an entity will create grandiose effect; because of the dissociative chasm, these effects generally first appear in prototaxic and parataxic form. Hence the supernatural beings of archetype, myth, and fairy tale, and the enactive ritual, dance, and mimetic movements of primitive society. But creativity and the syntaxic mode is the surfacing of this element in consciousness.
We now are in a position to appreciate that the numinous element is truly like the "Smoking Mirror" god of the Aztecs; it presents itself to us in whatever guise the level of our minds is able to accept. For the savage and the immature, it is the mysterium tremendum full of sound and fury; for the image maker, it is full of image-making; for the man who is finally able to think, it reflects creative and psychedelic glories.
The numinous element is not personal. It is like a genie in a bottle in needing release by the conscious personal mind in order to assume its full and powerful service. Like a genie it does not belong to the one who is using it, but for short periods of time gives him access to the whole of human knowledge and experience, as if he were connected to the terminal of a giant computer. In addition, being the inverse of nature, it controls not only the autonomic nervous system, and hence the mental and physical health of the individual, but also all other elements represented by the self-concept, in short, the natural environment. It is one of life's supreme paradoxes that all of the substantives modified by the adjective "my" are controlled by an entity which is absolutely impersonal. Powerful and "awe-full" as is this impersonal entity, it is also property under the control and direction of our conscious rational minds if we choose to exercise this regnancy. This control of the species mind gives us dominion
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over every aspect of our environment including our future evolution, and since it makes man a co-creator, is actually the highest function of self-consciousness.
McGlashlan
(1967:116) puts it this way:
It is, after all, no new idea that the dreaming mind can be equated with a crucial mutation of consciousness. In the Bardo Thodol it is said that in the Fifth Stage of the world's development, a stage not yet actualized, "Ether" will dawn in the consciousness of man. This is the kind of statement from which contemporary educated minds turn away in immediate distaste. The word "Ether" used in such a context evokes memories of dusty and discredited systems of thought about the structure of the universe, or even less acceptably, recalls the woolly abstractions of Theosophy. But this is mere semantic prejudice. The psychical attributes of "Ether" as conceived and defined by the Lamas are, in modern terms, precisely those of the Deep Unconscious. They believed, in fact, that what we call the Unconscious is a "transcendental" consciousness higher than normal consciousness, and as yet undeveloped; and that it will become the active consciousness of the next stage of the world's development, which they estimated would occur in the twentieth century. This is at least an intriguing anticipation, across the intervening centuries, of the increasing attention now paid to dreams and the unconscious.Interestingly, the Russians approach the same concept from another angle. Berdyaev says (1944:57):
Geniality (in the Russian, not English sense) is not to be identified with genius. Geniality is the whole nature of man; it is its intuitive creative relation to life. Genius, on the other hand is the union of this nature with a special gift.... The image of God in man belongs to geniality.
The
translator of Berdyaev notes (1944:4) that the Russian word sobornost
is
the
despair of all translators from Russian. "Altogetherness" would come nearest
its meaning. It is the dynamic life of the collective body. Berdyaev, himself,
says (1944:68):
There is only one acceptable meaning of sobornost and that is the interpretation of it as the interior concrete universalism of personality, and not the alienation of conscience in any kind of exterior collective body whatever. The free man is simply the man who does not allow this alienation.(page 257)
That this
individual empathy for and participation in communitas is not equivalent
to individual absorption in the collective state is clearly stated by Berdyaev
(1944:201) as follows:
In this connection the principal difference between sobornost and collectivism is to be seen. Ecclesiastical sobornost has in history often assumed forms of human slavery and the denial of freedom ... but the actual principle of Christian sobomost cannot but be personalist. Sobornost as spiritual communality is to be found in the subject not the object; it denotes a quality of the subject, the disclosure of universality in him.
Regarding
the impersonal character of the numinous element Pearce (1971:46) says:
Attributing characteristics of personality to this function is a projection device which turns the open end into a mirror of ourselves, trapping us in our own logical devices.
It
is important to insist upon the impersonal aspect of the collective preconscious,
because this gives our concept of it a machine-like quality (something
like a giant computer), which stresses its latency (until acted upon by
the conscious will), and also its accessibility (to any conscious will
which gets to the computer terminal). This machine-like quality of "subjectivity"
or carrying out of any suggestion impressed upon it contrasts with its
numinous quality which evokes awe and dread in the archaic man which remains
in each of us. That qualities ascribed to Deity and to a machine can reside
in the same entity is a mind-stretching concept, but it will be helpful
to remember that the phrase "deus ex machina" has had a history
since classical times. It is also helpful to remember that this entity
is also an aspect of the Eigenwelt or inner world of man, and hence
we are looking at a much more humanistic view of cosmology, and to put
it crudely a "machina ex deo."
4.13 The Three Illusions Revisited
It is now
time again to look at "the three illusions" of section
1.3which
the conscientious reader may here wish to reread. If he will do so now
he will see that Shakespeare truly prophesied when he wrote The Tempest,
IV:I:
Our revels are now ended; these our actors(page 258)
As I foretold you - were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind: we are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
"The three illusions" - space, time, and personality - constitute the prison wherein consciousness is incarcerated. And the Ego locked into this prison does not know at first that any other state is possible. But when through orthocognition2 these restrictions are perceived as the illusions which constitute and define our present normal state of consciousness, then this more accurate view of reality gives us the power to intuit what other, and more liberated states of consciousness, unknown to us previously, may be like. And this expanded understanding allows us to appreciate the freeing aspects of altered states of consciousness. For whether in trance or meditation, their first effect is to free consciousness from space, free it from time, and free it from the little selfish ego.
Let us
listen to Symonds (Brown, 1895) as quoted by James (1902:246):
One reason why I disliked this kind of trance was that I could not describe it to myself. I cannot even now find words to render it intelligible. It consisted in a gradual but swiftly progressive obliteration of space, time, sensation, and the multifarious factors of experience which seem to qualify what we are pleased to call our Self. . . . Often I have asked myself with anguish . . . which is the unreality?
Campbell
(1974:33) points out that Schroedinger (1967) the great physicist, confronted
with the same question, proposed the same simple but radical solution:
he equated subject and object and stated that the "I" who observes the
universe is the same "I" who created it, so that the concept of separate
"I's" is a myth.
Space is filled with things; time is filled with events, and personality is filled with persons. Things, events, and persons constitute the realia of nature, the class of substantives, the plenum of phenomena. They comprise the objects of the normal state of consciousness. They are no more substantial than their defining parameters; for space, time, and personality define the normal state of consciousness; indeed, they specify it.
A real, three-dimensional man walks along the street, casting a two-dimensional shadow on the building. Which is more real, man or shadow? Now imagine that this two-dimensional shadow casts
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a one-dimensional shadow of its own, and further, that this one-dimensional shadow in turn casts a shadow which is a zero-dimensional point. How would you compare man and point? In a similar manner ultimate reality casts a shadow of itself in space, in time, and in personality. We are that dancing, weaving penumbral point, a zero-dimensional shadow thrice removed from multi-dimensional reality, whose antics can no more be explained by "our" own history, than the behavior of a shadow can be explained by investigating shadow instead of substance.
If our mortal condition is one of being locked into the triple prison of space, time, and personality, and if mystic ecstasy can offer a glimpse of freedom, then it is appropriate to ask if in such states there is not loss of space, time, and the sense of self. The answer is that reports of mystic states are notable for exactly these openings, (see Sections 4.72 and 4.73).
Since the orthocognition3 in "the three illusions" is so enlightening, it may be expected to occasion profound changes in affective response. These attitudinal changes are in line with the Krathwohl, Bloom, and Masia Objectives of Education in the Affective Domain (1964) which are receiving, responding, valuing, conceptualization, and value complex. Because of the importance of the "three illusions" construct, it is worth while going through this process in detail.
The initial state is one of non-reception. When the concept of "the three illusions" is first presented, it is rejected as "impossible." Then the idea is entertained on an intellectual plane only. All of a sudden, it hits one affectively, and is "received." The force of this emotional impact is hard to describe discursively; it really must be felt. It appears to involve some kind of interior reorganization: all of a sudden a whole new way of looking at things is gained. Before we were confined, and knew it not; now we know we are in a prison of time, space, and personality, and recognize there is something greater outside. When Miranda first finds out that there are other men than her father alive (and presumably more affectively interesting) she exclaims: "Ah, brave new world! that hast such creatures in it!" And this is precisely the feeling of the individual that Shakespeare has described. This "reception" is first diffident, then more complete. It spreads like a Kohlberg "decalage" over the entire emotional area.
Next comes response involving action and a change of behavior. Because all things are seen differently, one responds differently. The response is first halting, then more and more ardent. Strong attitudinal change is evident in changed behavior noticeable to others. One becomes an enthusiast, centering one's attention more and more on the new concept.
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Response leads to the next level: valuing, in which the affective aspect reaches its height in what may appear to be excesses of emotion and action. Such a stage is akin to being infatuated with love or fanatically obsessed by religion. The heart seems to be enflamed, and psychic epiphenomena may be noted. It may be time to cool the ardor of the affective domain by resort to more prosaic activities. This "cooling" should lead to the next level of conceptualization, where the new interest becomes somewhat integrated with older loyalties and some sort of a hierarchy of values begins to be established. This sorting out is completed in the final step where a value complex (or reconciliation between values) which results in a working philosophy of life, becomes evident.
The fish does not realize that water is rare in the universe, that what he considers his natural environment is an anomaly in many ways, and that he himself is an early evolutionary form. In the same way we do not realize that our normal state of consciousness with its three apparent (but illusionary) properties of location in the space of the physical world, location in time, and location in personality is also an anomaly, and that we are likewise an early evolutionary form. As the function of water is to provide an environment in which the fish may find himself and develop, so the function of the normal state of consciousness is to allow the developing ego-consciousness to be oriented in space, time, and personality, as a kind of matrix in which there can be escalation of consciousness from the prototaxic mode through the parataxic mode to the syntaxic mode. The differentiation and focusing of this consciousness from a dim generalized consciousness of flora, and the more particularized but still undifferentiated consciousness of fauna, is one of the chief tasks of human development and evolution. But this should not blind us to the fact that the normal state of consciousness is a kind of prison (perhaps a better analogy would be a confining matrix like a seed bed for sprouts), and that ultimate reality is completely outside it.
Einstein
understood this well, when he said (N.Y. Times March 29, 1972):
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us "Universe." A part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is, in itself, a part of the liberation, and a foundation for inner security.(page 261)
4.14 Right Cerebral Hemisphere Function
In the bridgework which science and mysticism are building to span the chasm which separates them, it is now appropriate to notice a remarkable development from the scientific side. This has to do with the physiological investigation of the differential functions of the right cerebral hemisphere. Although this study is veritably in its infancy, enough has already occurred so that the jocular crack: "God dwells in the right hemisphere" may have more truth than humor it in. To investigate this subject properly it will be necessary to review a bit of elementary physiology.
The brain is composed of two cerebral hemispheres, each of which governs the motor activities of the other side of the body. The two hemispheres appear to work as dual controls, being joined by a massive conduit of nerves known as the corpus callosum. About 1950 Myers and Sperry discovered that if the corpus callosumwere cut, each hemisphere could function independently as if it were a complete brain. This discovery led to a number of intriguing questions such as what are patients like who have had this operation? and are there differential hemisphere functions?
Sperry and Gazzaniga (Gazzaniga, 1957) conducted tests to show the differential function in split brain patients. These showed that for some reason, the left side of the brain quickly assumed the normal functions of speech and writing, and that the right side was unable to speak and write. The right side, however, is not without intelligence. When a patient feels fruit with his left hand in a photographer's change muff in which there are (for example) two apples and an orange, he cannot say what the fruit is, but he can signal that the two apples are alike and the orange is different. The right hemisphere of such patients also handled spatial relations better than the left. It also appears from other research to handle holistic concepts and creative imagination better. Gazzaniga (1972) summarizes his research by saying "While the corpus callosum is intact we have our normal sense of conscious unity." Sperry (1968) in a previous article has discussed the function of hemisphere disconnectedness in removing unity from conscious experience.
We call attention to the "visual image" aspect of the right hemisphere functioning, because the "visual image" keeps occurring throughout this volume as a herald of the perception of the numinous. It is found in telepathy, healing, orthocognition, and creativity. Downing (1973)
(page 262)
in doctoral study noted three important characteristics associated with creative inspiration: (a) task-irrelevant thinking, (b) experienced as an autonomous phenomenon, and (c) in the form of a visual image.
Ornstein (1973) declares that physiology has now provided in right and left hemisphere research the explanation of the two modes of consciousness, rational and intuitive. The left hemisphere is largely involved in analytic thinking, speech, and logic, and the sequential processing of information. The right hemisphere specializes in spatial orientation, artistic ability, body awareness, facial recognition, and integrating material in a holistic, creative, and simultaneous manner. We find this digital-analog computer model continually popping up to explain the right-left hemisphere differentiation.
Analogic communication with its roots in an archaic period of evolution is more generally valid than the relatively recent, more abstract digital mode of verbal communication. Wherever relationship is the central issue of communication, digital language is almost meaningless. Wherever relationship is the central issue there is a reliance on analogic communication which is very little changed from the analogic inheritance handed down to us from our mammalian ancestors. Man is the only organism gifted with the use of both the analogic and the digital modes of communication; and has found the use of these modes of communication to be in a complementarity. There is a great difficulty, as man, in his necessity to combine these two languages must constantly translate from the one into the other. (Watzlawick 1967:67):
Digital language has a highly complex and powerful logical syntax but lacks adequate semantics in the field of relationship, while analogic language possesses the semantics but has no adequate syntax for the unambiguous definition of the nature of relationships.
Fischer
(1974) reports:
It has been known for some time that the left hemisphere - the "dominant" in most right-handed and in two-thirds of the lefthanded people9 - functions as a digital, analytical, sequence perceiving, and field articulating brain hemisphere concerned with speech, language, writing, and arithmetic; while the "minor" or right hemisphere is in charge of analogical, synthesis-oriented, non-verbal information processing visual-spatial gestalts and fields, metaphoric signification through intuition, imagery, and music.10(page 263)During most ordinary activities of our daily routine (i.e., when neither hyper- nor hypo-aroused) we may "feel free" to shift from
the cognitive mode of the "major" or Aristotelian (an Apollonian) hemisphere to that of the "minor" or Platonic (a Dionysian) hemisphere and vice versa.11 While a hemisphere-specific task is solved by the appropriate hemisphere, the activity of the other is repressed or inhibited. Moreover, Aristotelian logic and language may be interhemispherically integrated with Platonic imagery. But when levels of subcortical arousal are raised (as during creative, hyperphrenic, catatonic and ecstatic states) or become lowered (as in the hypo-aroused meditative states),12 there is a gradual shift of information processing from the Aristotelian to the Platonic (cortical) hemisphere. I posit that such loss of Aristotelian freedom to make rational decisions is implicit in the findings of Goldstein and Stolzfus13 who claim that states of stimulation, excitation, anxiety, and hallucination correspond to a progressive narrowing of interhemispheric EEG amplitude differences with eventually complete reversal of their relationships.These findings are in agreement with and account for the non-verbal, visual-spatial and audio-spatial symbolic nature of dreams and hallucinations and we may now describe dreams and hallucinatory trips as truly exciting voyages from the rational, Aristotelian cognitive mode into the intuitive, metaphorical, and timeless spaces of the Platonic hemisphere.
Hence the source of imagination may be found in those hallucinatory and meditative states of self-awareness during which visual-spatial symbols and meaning become the ordering structure and function of in-sight. During these states the Aristotelian laws of "symmetry," "identity" and "tertium non datur" lose their validity: time may be reversible, things and signs may become symbols for other meanings; in short, the prevailing "laws" strangely resemble those which govern the realm of subatomic particle physics. [His footnotes]
Even
the turning left or right of eye or head movements during thinking and
problem-solving may indicate which side of the brain is operating. Bakan
(1971) related such movements to right or left hemisphere dependency. He
noted that left movers have higher hypnotic susceptibility scores, emit
more alpha waves under controlled conditions, all of which would tend to
be compatible with right hemisphere dominance. It also appears that the
right hemisphere may function better at low levels of stimulus arousal,
such as an altered state of consciousness. Further research in this area
has been done by Kinsbourne (1972). This section represents only cursory
notice of an emerging science
(page 264)
which is still in its infancy. Due both to the primitive state of the art, and the lack of expertise of the writer, it is very far from complete. But at least, the reader is put on notice that important discoveries, linking physiology with some of the more esoteric aspects of mind, are now in the making.
4.15 Siddhis4
4.151 General
In the process of mind-expansion man acquires, as a byproduct of his development, the possibility of some unusual powers. These powers are known as siddhis, seldom seen naturally, but are said to be "developed" by yogis and others as a result of spiritual training. Indeed, the beginning of these matters may be seen in creativity, and are discussed in section 4.37; the siddhis also are related to the paranormal aspects of trance (section 2.4) except that in the syntaxic mode it is not necessary to go into trance to induce them. There is an almost universal feeling among those versed in these areas that while psychedelic mind expansion is desirable, psychic powers such as the siddhis are distractions and temptations on the road to development, and that their cultivation is not in one's best interest. Huxley (1945:260) reports that "The masters of Hindu spirituality urge their disciples to pay no attention to the siddhis, or psychic powers, which may come to them unsought, as a by-product of one-pointed contemplation. The cultivation of these powers distracts the soul from Reality. . . ."
One of the reasons for this injunction is that the cultivation of such powers serves to entrench the ego, whereas the process of deliverance from the triple prison of time, space, and personality involves the transcendence of the personal ego. One of the best reasons for the triple monastic vow is that the acquisition of power before one has lost the selfish ego may place one in a lotus land where, having acquired such powers, one never wishes to renounce them.
The siddhis can be looked upon as a transitional stage in the general process of rapid change which causes "unstressing."
Unstressing is caused by the beginning of an energy flow through the body of an individual who is not yet at a high enough level to accommodate to the pranic energy properly. It offers resistance, and this resistance is in the form of unstressing symptoms.
From what
has been discussed in Chapter 2, we
are now in a position to order the symptoms of rapid progress towards enlightenment
starting from a base of unregeneracy and nearly total ill mental health
as follows:
1. the Boisen panic-reaction symptom of positive disintegration;(page 265)
2. severe somatic unstressing, bodily twitching and movement;
3. moderate unstressing, generally confined to vocalization, such as the Jackins syndrome of yelling, crying, laughing, etc.;
4. light unstressing (such as sighing); in meditation, distracting thoughts;
5. access phenomena, momentary extended pure awareness siddhis;
6. witnessing in sleep;
7. pure awareness.
We
may therefore note that whereas the table I
is a taxonomy of distance
along
the developmental path, the description above is really a taxonomy of the
speedalong
the same path, with speed being indicated by the degree of presenceof
the unstressing and level being indicated by the kindof
unstressing. Or mathematically put, if one calls the developmental level
"x," then the presence of unstressing phenomena is the first derivative
of "x." From which it looks as though the phrase "all deliberate speed"
was seconded by the Supreme Court from an even higher source.
If siddhisare akin to the relativistic effects of speed on a moving body, it reinforces the psychic dictum that they are adventitious phenomena and should not be sought or paid attention to. Our interest in them is really almost as prurient as our fascination with the revealing of a female dancer's thighs as she whirls during a polka. But like those shapely thighs, the siddhis do reveal a fundamentalform - in their case the transcendence of the laws of physics by the more general laws of metaphysics.
According to Mookerje (1966:143), the kundalini power which in ordinary folk is absorbed in bodily function, can be released and transformed until its highest sublimation results in nirvanic bliss. As the kundalini current rises through each chakra center, the individual enters a new stage of consciousness. Intense heat is generated by the passage of the kundalini energy through the successive chakras. It is our guess that embarkation upon any procedure of the syntaxic mode begins this power release. We further hazard that one of the occult values of creative performance is that the kundalini power (prana) is absorbed by the creative outlet, and that hence the psychic heat and other psychic effects are not seen. This provides a rather safer route to enlightenment.
The flow of prana through an unregenerate and unenlightened person can be compared to the flow of electricity through a coil of high resistance. There is a common result: the generation of heat. Thus the bushman in trance perspires and says that his medicine is hot. George Fox takes off his boots in winter and wanders barefoot through Lichfield because of the heat in his feet.
(page 266)
As we shall
see in the section on orthocognition (4.5), there
is a moral question involved in whether man should make any use
of these powers, or whether there should be a delicate balance between
a sparing use of them and a corresponding advance toward deliverance from
the triple prison. The fact that they are often seen in advanced persons,
who, however, are cautious in their employment, results in the fact that
there is very little public display of these syntaxic effects, in contrast
to the paranormal aspects of trance (section 2.4).
In keeping with this policy, we shall downplay emphasis on this feature,
particularly on the more spectacular aspects, and content ourselves with
a mere enumeration and some citing. These categories are as follows:
1. (general);
2. ESP: telepathy (space); precognition, psychometry, and accelerated mental process (time);
3. auras, Kirlian photography;
4. healing and the anesthesia of pain;
5. psychic heat and control over fire;
6. clairvoyance, levitation, magical flight, OBE;
7. psychokinesis;
8. physiological aspects: breathing, kundalini, psychic sound; change in autonomic processes;
9. miscellaneous effects.
It
is interesting to note that 5 represents power over fire and water (psychic
heat), 6 represents power over earth, and 8 represents power over air (the
four elements of ancient times). One can also look upon the siddhis
as liberation from the strictures of time and space.
4.152 ESP
(a) Telepathy. Telepathy is a kind of intuition, a "direct knowledge of distant facts." It seems to be an evolutionary step which is gradually being acquired by man. (Prince, 1963:13, 55,119); (Myers, 1903:261ff); Sinclair (1971:128); (Weil, 1972:187); Gowan (1974:24).
(b) Precognition. Ability to foresee the future. One of the most compelling powers, because it clearly reveals that the numinous element is outside time. Hard for most to accept, although evidence is very universal. (Prince, 1963:68, 70, 73, 98, 101, 108, 110, 114, 121, 134-6, 190, 201, 202, 216, 255, 251) which contains the precognitions of some very famous people; (Fodor, 1964:21); (Gowan, 1974:25). Riviere (1973:53) declares that it is by the awakening of the heart chakra center that the liberation "which enables one to see the three forms of time, past, present, and future" comes about.
There may well be a difference between precognition of the future and determinism of that future. For as Huxley (1945:185) points out "Knowledge of what is happening now does not determine the event."
(page 267)
Precognition of future events may be an invitation from the numinous to intervene in those events if they are untoward. Precognition seems to be a siddhi particularly applicable to jhana 0 and above, with the "de-clutching" of the ego from time. It may also be experienced in drug-induced psychedelia (Masters and Houston 1966:165).
(c) Psychometry. The ability to tell about an object's past upon handling it (Gowan 1974:25-6).
(d) Accelerated Mental Process (AMP). (See section 2.44),
4.153 Human Aura, Kirlian Photography
If indeed this subject is a siddhi, it is one which appears more easily explainable on physical principles, and also one which is more common than many others. We have placed it here because of the fact that the ability to see the human aura has in the past been said to be a sign of advancement either in the agent or the percipient. (The aura around the heads of saints would be an example.)
A pioneer in the study of the human aura from a scientific standpoint was Kilner (1911) who describes how with the aid of goggles enclosing an elixir of dicyanin B (pinacyanol) the human aura can be seen in a darkened but not black room. It consists of two parts, an inner aura of about four inches and an outer aura of about eight more. It is recognized with the rods of the eyes, and is composed of ultraviolet rays, looking grayish-blue. Kilner states (1911:37):
I believe that the rods in appropriate light are capable of receiving rays the wavelength of which is slightly shorter than that producing violet, and of translating them into visible light. In my opinion, we see the body's aura with the rods.
Kilner
(Ibid:39) points out that the rods secrete rhodopsin which is split by
light into vitamin A plus a protein; in the dark, rhodopsin is again built
up from vitamin A plus the protein, and thus A is necessary for the regeneration
of rhodopsin. Kilner (lbid:67) also noted a void between the aura and the
body, which he identified as the "etheric double." Again (lbid:73) he notes
that the aura fades upon death or loss of consciousness, and return of
consciousness brings it back gradually. The outer aura haze is to the inner
aura as the ectoderm is to the endoderm (lbid:79), hence the outer aura
is connected with sex and the nervous system, and the inner with the alimentary
system.
Kilner (lbid:84) believes that the outer haze is ultraviolet radiation. The inner aura, however, seems electromagnetic and can in some cases be magnetized. Both Kilner and Bagnall (1970) believe that the human aura is purely an objective and physical phenomenon,
(page 268)
composed of physical emanations of weak intensity, mostly ultraviolet electromagnetic waves.
In their book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, Schroeder and Ostrander (1970) disclosed to the West the advances made by S. D. Kirlian and his wife in photographing auras, especially of finger tips by direct contact onto a high voltage, high frequency charged plate. (NOTE: The process is dangerous, and should not be attempted by amateurs). There appeared to be flares from the fingertips, and indeed from any living organism, such as a leaf. Perfection of the technique enabled the Kirlians to examine the effect in time, directly instead of taking photos, and this revealed that the aura seemed to be alive and moving.
Thelma Moss at UCLA took up this study and extended it to the "auras of healers." She has been able to show that the fingertip auras of both healer and patient change after the healing session (text and photos Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1972, section C, page 1), (see also Moss, 1972). This area is now in very rapid development, with the most authoritative book at the present moment being that of Krippner and Rubin (1973).
4.154 Healing and Anesthesia from Pain
Curiously, this is a subject about which the Hindus do not talk much, although Satprem (1968:113) notes that illness is "always the result of a wrong attitude," and that progress in yoga tends to free us from it. Healers, however, are found in every society, and many of them appear to be advanced individuals who do not need to go into a trance state to heal.
The Christian tradition, however, from its Founder onward, is an unbroken record of psychic or spiritual healing. Indeed, one of the chief tenets of Christianity, as established by Jesus and all of the early disciples, was the ability to heal. In various ways, this aspect has been carried on in the Church until the present. Catholic saints can only be canonized upon proof of such miracles. Laying-on-of-hands is an ancient rite of the church. Many modern religions, and most revivalists, have at their center the concept of healing through prayer. Since the literature in this area is large and available, we shall not attempt further notice of it, contenting ourselves with a few general observations.
Syntaxic healing (healing without trance) is a central part of orthocognition (sections 4.53, 4.54), and orthocognition as a sister procedure may in some respects be considered as a twin to creativity. So healing and creativity are two aspects of a single underlying motif.
At the present time there are a number of independent psychologically oriented attempts to understand the psychodynamics of healing (not as a miracle, but as evidence of natural power of which we
(page 269)
are still
mostly ignorant).5
Acupuncture is one such example. Psychosynthesis is another. The work investigating
the auras of healers through Kirlian photography is a third, (section
4.153). Other associations and foundations investigating this area
include:
1). The Human Dimensions Institute, Rosary Hills College, 4380 Main St. Buffalo, N.Y. 14226, (Jeanne Rindge, director);
2). The Academy of Parapsychology and Medicine, 314 Second St. Los Altos, Calif, 94022;
3). The Menninger Clinic, Topeka, Kansas (Dr. E. E. Green);
4). Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) 34 W 35th St. NYC. also ARE Clinic, 4018 N. 40th St. Phoenix, AZ 85018.
Healing
appears to be an early dividend of contact with the numinous element, no
matter whether that contact is in trance (2.44)
or by ritual (3.5), or in the syntaxic mode through
orthocognition (4.5). Through these means, man
possesses the method of restoring health and of making himself whole. Syntaxic
healing involves preventative as well as therapeutic aspects; though these
are never as spectacular, they are in the long run more important.
4.155 Power over Fire, Psychic Heat
These allied siddhis represent endothermic and exothermic pranic reactions; the former is more often seen in the prototaxic state, the latter in the syntaxic. Psychic heat seems to be caused by the ascent of the kundalini power; it is a commonly described yogic power (Evans-Wentz, 1967:158-9). It is claimed that some yogis can dry thirty sheets per night in this manner (Sivananda, 1971:156).
This heat is but a special aspect of the general problem of unstressing. Ward (1957:195-201) says:
First there is this indescribable sensation in the spine, as of something mounting up, a sensation which is partly pleasure and partly awe.... This was accompanied by an extraordinary feeling of bodily lightness . . . but it was also, somehow, a feeling of living more in the upper parts of one's body ...a certain rather peculiar awareness of one's head....
Laski
(1962:78) speaking about mystic heat notes that Suso felt flame of intense
heat in breast. Richard Rolle felt true heat in heart .6
The severe somatic unstressing involving tingling, shivers, and clicks are also seen under many allied conditions. Laski (1962:73) notes that during mystic ecstasy, references to tinglings and shivers are common. Her Q44 speaks of a "ringing that goes on," her Q54 "an electric sensation in the chest spreading over the whole body," her Q57 notes "something creeping up the spine." Berenson describes "an ideated tingling on and in my skin," L10 reports "the hair on my head tingling; shudders and shocks also sometimes appear."
(page 270)
Laski (1962:88)
quotes Houseman, J. The Name and Nature of Poetry (p. 47):
Experience has taught me, when I am shaving of a morning, to keep watch over my thoughts because if a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles(1) so that the razor ceases to act. This particular symptom is accompanied by a shiver down the spine; (2) there is another which consists of a constriction in the throat; (3) and a precipitation of water to the eyes; (4) and there is a third which I can only describe by borrowing a phrase from one of Keat's last letters where he says, speaking of Fanny Brawne "everything that reminds me of her goes through me like a spear." (5) The seat of this sensation is the pit of the stomach (i.n.o.).
One
may note in this remarkable piece of somatic observation five separate
effects: (1) horripilation, (2) kundalini, (3) globus hystericus,
(4) gift of tears, and (5) solar plexus chakra center opening.
Laski (1962:258) quotes Custance regarding spine shivers and head clicks he got when creative ideas came. She says: "Here linked in the context of mental improvement are the shivers, the electric shocks, the feeling of something falling into place so often characteristic of ecstatic experiences."
If the
reader will compare sections 2.23 on Unstressing
and 2.62 on Religious Trances, he will find enough
similarity to make it obvious that we are talking about different levels
of the same process. Whether one sees this activity as "unstressing," the
ascent of the kundalini, or as the spilling over or prana of psychic energy,
really makes little difference. Even advanced yogis can feel similar sensations.
Younghusband (1930:71) quotes Ramakrishna's reports of his trance:
Something rises with a tingling sensation from the feet to the head. So long as it does not reach the brain, I remain conscious, but the moment it touches the brain, I am dead to the outside world. I try to relate what I feel when it goes above the throat, but as soon as I think it over, up goes the mind with a bound, and there is an end to the matter.One of the few novelists writing today who has an understanding of mystical experience is the Australian Nobelist White.7 (His Riders in the Chariot is a memorable account of four such persons.) In it (1964:134) he quotes an unnamed Hadisic work about a man meditating at night. His candle has just gone out:
. . . the light continued. I was greatly astonished because after(page 271)
close examination I saw it was as though the light issued from myself. Saying "I do not believe it," he walked through the house and then lay down and covered himself up and the light continued.
Eliade
(1964:412) declares:
The same continuity between ritual and ecstasy is also found in connection with another conception, which plays a considerable part in pan-Indian theology: tapas whose original meaning is "extreme heat," but which came to designate ascetic effort in general. Tapas is definitely documented in the Rig-Veda.... Prajapati creates the world by "heating" himself to an extreme degree through asceticism; he creates it by a sort of magical sweating. The "inner heat" or "mystical heat" is creative ... for example it creates the countless illusions or miracles of the ascetics or yogins.... Now inner heat forms the integral part of the technique of "primitive" magicians and shamans; everywhere in the world acquisition of "inner heat" is expressed by "mastery over fire," and in the last analysis by the abrogation of physical laws. . . .
Later
in the same place Eliade tells us that this excess of heat was obtained
"by holding the breath."
Greeley (1974:12) notes that some mystics see a pale blue light during ecstasy.
4.156 OBE, Traveling Clairvoyance, Levitation, Magical Flight
These related siddhis have to do with the movement of a vehicle of consciousness. While in levitation it does seem to be the body, it is most generally a conscious out-of-body experience (OBE) from which we get "traveling clairvoyance," and the yogic "magical flight." Riviere (1973:35) claims that these powers are gained by alerting specific chakra centers. Sivananda (1971:152) identifies the siddhi which makes this possible as "laghima." OBE and traveling clairvoyance have been widely noted in the west (Crookall, 1964, 1966, 1970, Muldoon and Carrington, 1951, 1970, Monroe, 1971, Gowan, 1974:1821), some incidents being in trance, but some without it. See also Evans-Wentz (1967:166).
Levitation is a more esoteric matter, although there exist several traditions of Christian saints who experienced it. In the East, it seems somewhat more common (David-Neel, 1971:208, Fodor, 1964:27-8). Maritain tells that the sacristan saw St. Thomas Acquinas levitated "nearly three feet off the ground" while in tearful prayer to the crucifix.
(page 272)
Magical Flight is attributed to some yogis, in a manner similar to shamanistic powers. It is not clear, however, whether the physical body of the yogi is thus engaged, or whether it is a conscious OBE.
Eliade
(1964:409) declares:
Buddhist texts speak of four different magical powers of translation, the first being to fly like a bird. In his list of siddhis obtainable by yogis, Patanjali cites the power to fly through the air.
Satprem
(1964:67) quoting Sri Auribindo, says:
If we had not had thousands of experiences showing that the Power within could alter the mind, develop its powers, add new ones, bring in new ranges of knowledge, master the vital movements, change the character, influence men and things, control the condition and functioning of the body, work as a concrete dynamic force on other forces, modify events ... we would not speak of it as we do.
4.157
Psychokinesis
This matter has been discussed previously in section 2.46.
4.158 Physiological aspects: Breathing, Autonomic Processes, Kundalini, Psychic Sound
The common element here has to do with control of the body, particularly its autonomic nervous processes, until recently thought to be independent of man's conscious control. The Hindus tell us that this is accomplished through breathing exercises which start the kundalini power on its ascent of the spinal column. (Satprem, 1968:313) declares that it is pranic energy which is released, and there are many correspondences with acupuncture.
Recently there has been independent confirmation in the West of many of these processes (Houston, 1973; Green and others, 1971b; Wallace and others, 1971, 1972).
Laski (1962:79) notes: "The impression given by mention of changes in breathing seems to be . . . of a deep breath before the ecstasy, a holding of the breath at or up to the time of climax, and a need to take deep breaths afterwards."
Suso is cited as "heaving great sighs from depths of his soul." St. Augustine says, "We sighed and there we leave bound the first fruits of the spirit and returned to vocal expression."
Laski (1962:281) notes that the definition of inspiration is: a breathing in or infusion into the mind of some suggestion, idea, or creation.
(page 273)
Psychic sound
Esoterically, sound seems to have some of the generating qualities of radiant light. The Hindus are very emphatic about the importance of basic sounds, such as AUM as generating entities; in particular the mantras are composed of such sounds. The prevalence of the "AM" sound in Sanscrit (as seen in the names of many letters of the alphabet) suggests that there is some kind of basic hum (perhaps associated with various frequencies), which represents some kind of "carrier frequency."
Westerners know very little about these matters, but "toning" (section 2.44) is one western example. It is also true that during developmental process, perhaps as the result of unstressing, one hears psychic sound. Laski (1962:84) points out that mystics very occasionally experience involuntary speech or cries during mystic tumescence (possibly a parallel to the involuntary cries of sexual tumescence). Speaking further of the noises heard during ecstasy, Laski (1962:218) notes that they are compared with water, wind, or thunder, or they may figure as voices in muffled communication as at a distance. Tennyson says that at this time he was hearing "the hum of men or other things talking in unknown tongues." 8
4.159 Miscellaneous Effects
Among the more notable are the creation of apparitions (David-Neel, 1970:60-2). This is known as a "tulpa" (see also Pearce, 1971:27), the power of invisibility (by stopping the sensory percepts of others) (David-Neel, 1971:303); the accelerated motion (lom-gom-pa) which allows yogis to traverse vast distances.
The eight major siddhis (Sivananda, 1971:152-3) involve diminution in size, increase in size, levitation and magical flight, increase in specific gravity, clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition and healing, invisibility, taming wild animals, and controlling others, and resurrection of the dead. There are also twenty-six minor siddhis, some repetitions of the eight major ones, and some (like turning base metal into gold, and finding hidden treasure) scarcely what one would expect from an enlightened person.
Mooney
(1896:948ff), crediting Brown's Dervishes,
discusses
Sufi mysticism. He tells that through various spiritual and meditative
exercises the dervish gains an internal spiritual power:
Among the practices of these powers is the faculty of foreseeing coming events; of predicting their occurrence; of preserving individuals from the harm and evil which would otherwise certainly result for them; of assuring to one person success over the machinations of another, so that he may freely attack him and prevail over him; of restoring harmony of sentiment between those who would otherwise be relentless enemies; of knowing when others devised harm against themselves, and through certain spells of preserving themselves and causing harm to befall the evil minded, and even of causing the death of anyone against whom they wish to proceed. All this is done as well from a distance as when near.(page 274)
Dramatic powers such as the siddhis are very spectacular exhibitions of the regnancy of the numinous, but like other spectacular exhibitions, one may ask if all this is really necessary had there been better planning in the first place. One of the advantages of psychedelic control in the syntaxic mode is that one avoids problems and untoward circumstances rather than reacting to crises in a spectacular manner. It is certainly more foresighted to prevent the onset of problems than to resort to heroics as a last resort. One is reminded of the considered judgment concerning the charge of the Light Brigade. "It is magnificent, but is it war?"
Discussion of the prototaxic mode ended with an anchor point of "higher" trance. Symmetry demands that discussion of the syntaxic mode begin with a prototaxic anchor point which we identify as tantric sex. While Easterners might deny that ritualized sexual intercourse is a major or even important part of tantricism, it seems otherwise to Westerners. For us there is no simpler or clearer way to explain tantric sex than to say that it refers to those aspects of sexual union which are beyond the modern9 meaning of the verb "to fuck." These aspects are explained by Donath (1971:85) as "the loss of oneself in the unity of love.. . a prototype of the ineffable spiritual experience of union with the Divine."
In a meaningful discussion of this subject, any Westerner must recognize that culture has prejudiced his mind in subtle ways that make difficult the more realistic Eastern view of sex. Honesty, therefore, requires the author to acknowledge cultural bias. His background and culture has not sufficiently prepared him for the concept that sexual intercourse can have spiritual significance. Christian teaching generally denigrates sex, at best as messy business necessary for human propagation, and at worst as sins of the flesh.
The ritualized tantric sexual act, even permitted to monks, involved the quiet union of male and female in an opposite sitting position
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in which, after entry, there is little if any motion, no ejaculation, and the position is sustained for long periods until the male loses his erection. There is thus no orgasm for the male - (Hindu writers never bothered to consider the female) - but there is continued communion of closeness and love. (A very similar practice, known as "karezza" was one of Noyes' directives to the Oneida, New York, utopian community). Since the woman is "consecrated" by ritual, and the man in effect worships her, the activity is essentially sacramental, that is "an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." The East does not regard sexual orgasm as unworthy, but they do regard it as a primitive use of kundalini power better reserved for the ascent of the kundalini up the spine with attendant siddhis.
Underhill (1930:367)says it well "As enfolded in the darkness with one we love, we obtain a knowledge far more complete than is conferred by the sharpest sight" so "The transcendent is perceived by contact not by vision," This is "to know" in the Biblical sense.
Harding (1966:112)puts the same idea:
She continues quoting the prayer in the Anglican marriage service:
There is a corresponding idea in Hindu marriage where the union of husband and wife accompanies, almost produces, a simultaneous union of the god Shiva with his consort, Shakti, on which the continuous creation of the universe depends.
Oh God who has consecrated the state of matrimony to such an excellent mystery that in it is signified and represented the spiritual union betwixt Christ and His Church.She concludes:
From these examples it is obvious that the projection of the animus and anima is of the greatest importance . . . for through it the union of a man and a woman on earth is accompanied by or even brings about the union of the masculine and feminine potencies or principles in heaven.
Tantra
teaches a conceptualization of the universe as a fundamental dualism of
male and f emale, person-hood and object-hood. The personal element is
considered male and is called purusha; the apersonal (female) principle
is known as prakriti (nature). The Jaina Sutra
declares that atoms are formed by the union of a minute amount of purusha
(proton), surrounded by many small parts of prakriti (electrons). Thus
in the microcosm we have a model of mutual attraction typified by sexual
love at the human level. Accordingly, the union of purusha and prakriti
creates the ultimate monad of pure
(page 276)
consciousness. (Swedenborg says: "Sexual love is the purest energy of the divine state, for lovers in their embrace form one angel.") The tantric view, hence, is that sex is sacred and holy, being a prefiguration of the union of the personal and apersonal elements in the universe, (see Table X), or as a Christian mystic would say "the union of the soul with God."
Tantra is an entire religious philosophy of which sexuality is only a small part. It is also concerned with the release of the kundalini serpent force, which it avers is coiled three and one half times around the lowest chakra center in the genitals. When liberated by suitable techniques (dangerous without a guru), this pranic energy ascends the spinal column, producing psychic heat and siddhisas it passes through each higher chakra center. This upward journey continues until it reaches the highest chakra center in the head (the lotus), which allows the individual to shed his ego and unite with divinity.10
What is really being described here stripped of unconscious male chauvinism and the flowery language of the East is the onward course of the procedures and graces of this chapter of which tantric sex is the initial example. Each of the chakras represents a successive step in this ascent towards the re-integration of duality in the transcendent union of jhana 8 (section 4.84) in which time, space, and personality disappear in a final at-one-ment with divinity which is both transpersonal and trans-a-personal, and in which knowledge transmutes into being. This integration is the converse of the differentiation of creation, for when the All shall perceive the All, the All shall become the All.
Haich (1972:55) in a sensible discussion of these matters, puts the case clearly when she says:
Westerners who have been miseducated by cultural denial of the growth-facilitating aspects of sexual activity, need to surmount prejudices and recognize sex as an aspect of development toward self-actualization. For sexual activity, accompanied by love, is of all ordinary acts the one most likely to contribute to the adult's progression to higher stages.
Those who set out on the path of Yoga with the intention of renouncing(i.o.) sexual activity and suddenly want to lead an abstemious life betray that they are not only ignorant of the divine origin of this energy, but even of the energy itself.
Many writers on tantracism, (e.g. Blofeld 1970), while stressing other aspects, do not even mention maithuna(sexual union). But while this omission may be a concession to Western sensibilities, it is significant that even the most exalted mystics speak of their
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union with
God in an undeniably sexual vocabulary. Consider the following from St.
Marguerite Marie, (Leuba 1925:112-3):
One day as the bridegroom was crushing her by the weight of his love and she was remonstrating, He said: Let me do my pleasure; There is a time for everything. Now I want you to be the plaything of my love, and you must live thus without resistance, surrendered to my desires, allowing me to gratify myself at your expense.
Leuba
(1925:143-155) devotes a number of pages to a pejorative examination of
alleged Freudian interpretation of such mystic love. It is not surprising
that the good professor was offended by such language in his day. But in
a time of greater sexual enlightenment it is possible to ask if all this
is the mere expression of sexual frustration, or is sexual intercourse
the clearest simile of complete and pervasive spiritual union that most
mortals understand? If this be true, then the sexual aspect of tantracism
is prefiguration of undifferentiated union, and its ecstasy is an earnest
of mystic rapture.
4.3 CREATIVITY (Jhana -5)
4.31 Introduction
If there is one entrance for Western scientific man into the arcana of developmental progress and self-actualization, that entrance is creativity. For it allows him, while still retaining his respectability as a cognitive thinker, to have intuitive brushes with the numinous element through creative outpourings from the preconscious. And it is heuristic, for it prepares him for the mind-expansion into psychedelic realms which inevitably follows. Creativity, therefore, in addition to importance in its own right for the individual, and its social value in products for society, is also the sine qua non for effective syntaxic relationship with the numinous element in the conscious state. Without its discipline, our relationship with the numinous is only found in the altered state of consciousness of the prototaxic or parataxic modes (with the single exception of art, which is a kind of non-verbal creativity). The great importance of this subject is therefore evident; it has concerned scholars such as Guilford, Osborn, Maslow, Jung, Rogers, to name only a few; it has been the subject of our own investigations (1972, 1974), and it deserves careful attention here.
The last section of the parataxic mode was devoted to non-verbal creativity in art. It is fitting that one of the first procedures of the syntaxic mode should be verbal creativity. In this section without
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retracing theory more fully explicated in the Development of the Creative Individual(Gowan, 1972), it is important to make three points in a rather summary fashion:
(1) Creativity is developmental (Gowan, 1972:53-70; Gowan, 1974:48-95): Creativity itself is an emergent and characteristic outcome of the theory of developmental stages. When the requisite degree of mental health is present, creativity is an inevitable outcome of developmental process. Maslow (Anderson, 1968:84) speaks of creativity as a "universal heritage of every human" and one which "covaries with psychological health." The individual who gains mental health as he goes through the developmental process exhibits increasing creativeness. An individual who experiences strain and anxiety evidences diminished creativity.
(2) Creativity represents an intuitive relationship between the conscious ego and the collective preconscious which not only conduces to mental health, but is very desirable for psychedelic progress (Gowan, 1972:60-67; Gowan, 1974:80-95).
While there will be more detailed exploration of this concept in section 4.39 shortly to follow, it may be helpful to say a few words about it here.
Creativity is the intuitive form of psychedelia. Since creativity is the junior cognitive stage, creative production results from leaks (as if by osmosis through a permeable membrane) between the preconscious and the conscious. In psychedelic production, doors between the two swing open, and the conscious mind is awed by suddenly finding itself master in a new and vastly enlarged domain.
It should therefore come as no surprise to us that creative people are often psychedelic, and psychedelic people are often creative. The only difference is that frequently the creative person cannot tell you how it happens and the more advanced individual can. Creative people are like children in the enactive stage where "the learning is in the muscles"; they therefore have often adopted a ritual for going into a relaxed state which will induce creativity. Some methods for accomplishing this are detailed elsewhere (Gowan, 1972:ch. 7).
In any
hierarchy of developmental process, creativity has its place
(Maslow,
1954:199-259' ), (Erikson 1963:247-274), (Anderson, 1954:84
88, (Jung,
Singer 1972:140). Elsewhere (1972:54) we say:
The amount of creativity, other things being equal, is a barometer of one's mental health. Maslow (Anderson, 1959, p. 88)(page 279)
elaborates this idea further when he says: "The creativity of my subjects seemed to be an epiphenomenon of their greater wholeness and integration, which is what self-actualized implies." It is as
natural to express creativity under conditions of high mental health as it is for a heated black object to radiate electromagnetic waves. At first there is no emanation, then with increasing temperature there is first heat, then light, and finally ultraviolet rays. Here the increase of temperature corresponds to expanded mental health, and the appearance of electromagnetic waves corresponds to creative production.
Singer
(1972:137) notes:
Singer (1972:140) analyzes the individuation process thus:
There is a process in which all men are engaged and which is a developmental process. It has been called many names; Jung called it the Way of Individuation.
The individuation process, in the Jungian sense, means the conscious realization and integration of all the possibilities immanent in the individual. It is opposed to any kind of conformity with the collective and, as a therapeutic factor in analytical work, it also demands the rejection of those prefabricated psychic matrices - the conventional attitudes - with which most people would like to live. It offers the possibility that everyone can have his own direction, his special purpose, and it can attach a sense of value to the lives of those who suffer from the feeling that they are unable to measure up to collective norms and collective ideals. To those who are not recognized by the collective, who are rejected and even despised, this process offers the potentiality of restoring faith in themselves. It may give them back their human dignity and assure them of their place in the world.
Jung
(1964:xi) states:
Man becomes whole when and only when the process of individuation is complete, when the conscious and the unconscious have learned to live at peace and to complement one another.
(3)
Verbal creativity, as distinct from non-verbal creativity, is a most important
component in this process. The chief creative virtue of the verbal aspect
is that it gives to man (even with the imperfections of language) a kind
of calculus for the commencement of the expressing of his relationship
to the numinous element syntaxically. This ability of expression, allows
for intellectual negotiability of constructs, and therefore, for consensual
validation of percepts. If we can test out our thoughts and feelings with
others, we gain first in mental health,
(page 280)
and then in the cognitive ability to categorize, and to discriminate between symbol and object. As Bruner (1966:6) sagely observes of language:
(it) ends up by being not only the medium for exchange but the instrument that the learner can then use himself in bringing about order into the environment.
The
capstone of this process is the verbal analogy, a literary proportion which
bridges the gulf between two pairs of incommensurables by showing that
they have the same ratio.11
This is the start of verbal creativity. The greatest thing (said Aristotle,
Poetics:xxiii)
"is to be a master of metaphor, since metaphor implies an intuitive perception
of the similarities of the dissimilar." And J.W. N. Sullivan in his biography
of Beethoven carried the idea even further: "A great work of art is a new
and higher organization of experience."
Lama Govinda
(1960:17) points out that since the syntaxic mode embraces the lower modes
as well that
... the essential nature of words is neither exhausted by their present meaning nor is their importance confined to their usefulness as transmitters of thought - they express at the same time qualities which are not translatable into concepts. . . .
He
concludes that it is precisely this parataxic quality (of the undefined
image) in poetry which stirs us so deeply, and concludes:
If art can be called the formal expression of reality, then the creation of language may be called the greatest achievement of art.But there are further virtues of verbal creativity, if by verbal we adjoin the entire alpha-numeric symbol system. The development of the "if-then" hypothesis, and the Aristotelian syllogism allow for the cognitive exploration of nature in an order which is amenable to measurement and validation. Thus is the scientific method born with its constant swing between intuition and validation, between hypothesis and measurement. This proving ground for creativity in the verbal mode is a necessary condition for any kind of rigorous investigation such as this book embarks on, for otherwise it would become a mere recounting of superstition, or a fearful, halting exploration in a dark cavern without a light.
Considering the individual differences among one's fellows with regard to most aspects of physique or personality, one is immediately struck with the fact that (a) the variance is real and(page 281)
(b) its magnitude is ordinarily measured in percentages. Henry may be 20 percent taller than Edward, 30 percent heavier than Jack, and 25 percent brighter than Clyde; but he is unlikely to be twice as tall, as heavy, or as bright as anyone else.
Surprisingly enough this situation does not hold in regard to creativity. On any kind of creative scale used (and creative production of adults is as reliable as any), some individuals are found whose creative production exceeds that of their fellows, not by percentages, or even simple magnitudes; but it is more likely ten, fifty, or a hundred times as great. Obviously these fortunately creative persons are not that much different. Something has happened to turn them on. Creativity is a "threshold" variable. The nature of what that "something" is - the analysis of that threshold - is the task of this chapter.
Of all the powers of man, that of creativity seems unique. The generally accepted custom among the ancients was to ascribe divine origin, inspiration, or direction to any great creative work so that the poet became the prophet. Even the aspects of initiation and selection, which are universally found in creative function, appear somewhat mysterious, and many of our greater artists and scientists seem to receive inspiration rather than to develop it.
To create, mind must withdraw upon itself for a time to focus its forces and then project an image of itself onto an external medium. Psychologically this introspection and focusing takes the form of heightened awareness of the peripheral asymmetries of a situation and a subtle settling into consciousness of concepts at the boundaries of rationality or in the preconscious. This is the incubation period in the famous Wallas explication of the four components of creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. It is understandable then that the hour of creation is a "tender time" when man wishes to draw apart from his fellows, whether up the mountain, into the desert, or away to his closet, but always into a solitary silence. Creative withdrawal and return, as Toynbee has pointed out, is a characteristic of creative acts of groups as well as of individuals.
Because creativity is a word which has recently been taken over by psychology from religion, it is almost impossible to discover it in a dictionary more than a decade old. It is still a new concept, recently attributed to the personality of man, and still to some fraught with mystical connotations. For this reason, care should be taken in defining it and in distinguishing it from other mental functions, as well as to note its possible varieties.
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Hallman (1963, pp, 18-19) gave a comprehensive definition:
A demonstration of the necessary features of each of these factors can employ both descriptive and logical procedures; it can refer to the relevance of empirical evidence, and can infer what grounds are logically necessary in order to explain certain facts.12
... the creative act can be analyzed into five major components:(1) it is a whole act, a unitary instance of behavior;
(2) it terminates in the production of objects or of forms of living which are distinctive;
(3) it evolves out of certain mental processes;
(4) it co-varies with specific personality transformations; and
(5) it occurs within a particular kind of environment.
Following this introduction (1), we enumerate the powers and virtues of verbal creativity (2), then discuss five theories about creativity, as cognitive, rational and semantic (3), as personal and environmental (4), as psychological openness (5), as mediated by the preconscious (6), as evidence of mental health and self-actualization (7). Two final sections concern creative organization, especially general systems theory, and the conclusion.
4.32 The Importance of Symbolization in Verbal Creativity
As we have seen in the previous chapter, non-verbal creativity comes to its highest outlet in art, in the parataxic mode. But there is a further explication of creativity in the syntaxic mode, namely verbal creativity, which is less intuitive and more cognitive in that the connotation and signification becomes categorical. Or to put it another way, the symbol, which was an image in the parataxic mode, now becomes a component of language in the syntaxic, so that what was formerly ill-defined and susceptible of several meanings, now becomes clear and definite, with only one meaning.
This clarification of the image, as a zoom lens clarifies an object in an optical field, is part of the process of differentiation. It differentiates first between symbol and object referent, between a map of and the experience of reality. This clarification helps the cause of truth, for it allows us to specify with far more precision the exact properties and characteristics of nature. It reaches its zenith in the language of mathematics, which is the most precise tool of all.
While the symbol separates man from reality, it is a necessary aspect of knowing reality with the conscious mind. For symbolization of reality seems to be a necessary stage of development in the mind, and the increasing order which mathematics and science find in the universe appear to be examples of this congruence between the human mind and the constitution of the universe. Some mathematical illustrations would include:
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epii + 1 = 0, e = mc2, and lg lg 10 (approx.=) sq. rt. 3
Ernst Cassirer,
in An Essay on Man (Hayakawa 1953:131), says:13
. . . man lives in a symbolic universe. . . . No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were face-to-face.... He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms ... that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium.
According
to Hayakawa "human beings live in a 'semantic environment,' which is the
creation of their symbol system." Edward Sapir went so far as to
claim (Pearce 1969:4)
. . . the real world is to a large extent built up on the language habits of the group.
To
say that a symbol belongs to a system of representation is to say that
it is "governed by certain rules of signification" (Nagendra 1972:136)
Of all the known systems of representation, language has the most clear-cut and definite rules of signification . . .
The
mathematical language is the most definite and clear-cut of all languages
(Nagendra 1972:136) notes:
The mathematical language is only a refined version of verbal symbolism.The symbol is, as Susanne Langer says, the basic instrument of thought. Thought is a shaping force in reality. It has been noted that our minds screen out far more than we accept; we would live in a chaotic world if this was not so.
Of "symbolization---as
a universal process" Mukerjee sees it as "the generic creative process
of Communication that makes man's life an endless quest." He says (Mukerjee
1959:19):
The study of symbol and the symbolic process provides not only the central frame of reference for the functional analysis of society, but also a new starting point of Philosophy, freed from the Cartesian dualism of matter and spirit, inner and outer world.. . The symbol, both psychologically and epistemologically considered is not merely a mental construct but also a dynamic synthesis of self and its universe. Symbol, then, as Mukerjee concludes, "not only gives us a(page 284)
representation of the process ... it enables us to share in or to live in retrospect the experience of the process. It is this ability to be the process and the result of the process which has caused great confusion in trying to analyze ritual's nature. Being the process and the source of the process has also been the source of its power."
And
so we have seen the symbol is a "bridging process," bridging the gap between
outer existence (the world) and inner meaning. He who understands symbol
participates in this bridging process and as Eliade states (Eliade 1959:103):
not only "opens out" to the objective world, but at the same time succeeds in emerging from his particular situation and in attaining a comprehension of the universal. This is explained by the fact that symbols have a way of causing immediate reality, as well as particular situations, to "burst."
Symbols
also possess three enormous consequences, according to Bertalanffy (Kepes
1966:275):
"1) They replace biology with history;Benjamin Lee Whorf and Edward Sapir, Susanne Langer, and Ernst Cassirer believe that thought and language are not independent processes. The traditional idea that thought comes first to be followed later by a linguistic formulation of that thought is no longer a prevalent one.
2) They replace trial and error by reasoning, and
3) They make purposiveness possible."
The process
of transforming all direct experience into language, that supreme mode
of symbolic expression, (Lee 1949:7), to quote Susanne Langer in her essay
"The
Phenomenon of Language"
. . . has so completely taken possession of the human mind that it is not only a special talent but a dominant, organic need.
Langer
sees in this all-important craving for expression the source of his powers
and his weaknesses (Lee 1949:8).
The special power of man's mind rests on the evolution of this special activity ...... his primitive mental function is not judging reality, but dreaming his desires. ... man has a constant and crying need of expression. What he cannot express, he cannot conceive; what he cannot conceive is chaos and fills him with terror.To Susanne Langer this process of symbolic transformation which all our experiences undergo (Lee 1949:8):
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... is nothing more nor less than the process of conception, which underlies the human faculties of abstraction and imagination....Both Cassirer and Langer conclude that names or naming are the essence of language. Cassirer in Language and A View of the World (Lee 1949:259) says:
Language is the highest and most amazing achievement of the symbolistic human mind. The power it bestows is almost inestimable.
Without the help of the name every new advance made in the process of objectification would always run the risk of being lost again in the next moment.
Language
is necessary and must be predictable if we are to function comfortably
in this world.
According
to Pearce (1969:143):
Speech serves no adaptive purpose ... yet speech was developed by life, and its purpose can be understood from its real function, a function long championed by Langer.... It was a part of the development of a system of logical choice, of value judgment, and of projected symbol-making, through which new possibilities for reality could be consciously directed.
The
creation of language, the facility whereby we communicate with our world
and those in it, is according to Pearce, a case of the "cause of the need"
becoming the "cause of the fulfillment of the need." Language is the means
by which we become comfortable in our world. It is through language that
we name our world, and through naming our world we create the world that
we name.
As Fischer
1974:32 reminds us:
Symbols are capable of revealing a modality of the "real" or a condition of the World which is not evident on the plane of immediate experience. Symbols, . . . point beyond themselves and open up levels of reality which otherwise are closed. In this sense symbols have a sacred, religious quality. A man who understands a symbol not only "opens himself" to the objective world, but at the same time succeeds in emerging from his personal situation and reaching a comprehension of the universal.
Before
leaving verbal creativity, there is another and very different benefit
to be noted. One of the difficulties that many persons have with efforts
to become creative is that such efforts seem to destroy
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their organizational posture. The effort to relax enough to be non-verbally creative seems to interfere with the time-competence, and other responsible aspects of being "organized." The notorious difficulties that artists have of dealing with mundane ego-tasks is well known. But as creativity becomes less affective and more cognitive, less parataxic and more syntaxic, less non-verbal and more verbal, it appears gradually to come free of this difficulty, so that in the higher reaches of verbal creativity (such as general semantics, general systems theory, or higher mathematics) one may simultaneously find high structure and high creativity.
4.33 Creativity as Cognitive, Rational, and Semantic14
Attention may now be given to an extremely important group of researchers who have regarded creativity in the main as little else than problem solving. It is a form of rational thought which connects things, which combines parts into new wholes and which (like Sherlock Holmes) performs seeming miracles through observation, insight, and meaningful analysis of semantic elements.
Hallman
(1963) calls this condition connectedness and says that it imposes
on man
. . . the need to create by bringing already existing elements into a distinctive relation to each other. The essence of human creativeness is relational, and an analysis of its nature must refer to the connectedness of whatever elements enter into the creative relationship. The analysis must demonstrate that though man does not create the components, he can nevertheless produce new connections among them. It must prove that these connections are genuinely original and not simply mechanical. Logically, this means that connectedness comprises relationships which are neither symmetrical nor transitive; that is, the newly created connections as wholes are not equivalent to the parts being connected. Neither side of the equation validly implies the other, for the relationship is neither inferential nor causal; rather, it is metaphoric and transformational.Hallman (1963) calls the roll of some of the writers who have called attention to this aspect of creative performance as follows: Bruner (1962) who states that creativity grows out of combinational activity; Taylor (1964) who points to new organizational patterns; Murray (Anderson, 1959, p. 96 ff.) who finds a compositional process; Ghiselin (1952) who abstracts a new constellation of meanings.
Creativity has also been considered as resulting from particular types of logical thought. This was indeed the view of Osborn (1953) in Applied Imagination, and the problem-solving methods he espoused.
(page 287)
These go back to Dewey (1910), Rossman (1931), and Wallas (1926) and are found in the practice of the Buffalo Creative Problem-Solving Workshop15 which Osborn founded and which is carried on by his protege, Parnes (Gowan, Demos and Torrance, 1967, pp. 32f43). Edwards (1968) has supplied us with a survey of creative problem-solving courses.
While factor analysts did not discover creativity in the factors of intellect until Guilford's "Structure of Intellect," others were making earlier appraisals of creative process which separated it from intelligence. Some of these efforts tended to equate creativity with problem solving.
Dewey (1910) offered an initial attempt at a problem-solving model for creativity by suggesting the following steps:
(1) awareness that a problem exists;
(2) analysis of the problem;
(3) an understanding of the nature of the problem;
(4) suggestions for possible solutions; and
(5) testing the alternative solutions and accepting or rejecting them.
Wallas
(1926) suggested a somewhat similar model, but with more attempt to account
for preconscious aspects:
(1) preparation (assembling the information, a long rational process);
(2) incubation (temporary relaxation, play, or turning the matter over to the preconscious);
(3) inspiration (a brief moment of insight); and
(4) evaluation (elaboration and testing of the completed process or product).
Rossman
(1931) noted that an inventor goes through a similar process and decided
on seven steps:
(1) observed needs;
(2) formulation of problem;
(3) available information collected;
(4) solution formulated;
(5) solutions examined critically;
(6) new ideas formulated; and
(7) new ideas tested.
4.34
Creativity as Personal and Environmental16
The trait
and environment theories about creativity have long received considerable
attention. There are three main areas of interest:
a. Creativity as a personality correlate, especially of originality, energy, humor, and high self-concept;
b. Creativity as a result of environment, especially parental rearing practice;
c. Creativity as a concomitant of age and stage and other auxiliary variables.
Creativity
as a personality correlate has received the main attention. Hallman (1963),
in his definitive review, says:
For example, a large body of evidence has accumulated in connection with the effort to identify the particular personality
(page 288)
traits which make for creativity. The assumption is that the creative process can be fully accounted for by providing an exhaustive list of such traits.... Fromm speaks of four traits: capacity to be puzzled, ability to concentrate, capacity to accept conflict, and willingness to be reborn every day (1959). Rogers has a similar list: openness to experience, internal locus of evaluation, and ability to toy with elements (1959). Maslow has perhaps the most extensive list (1962); the creative personality, he says, is spontaneous, expressive, effortless, innocent, unfrightened by the unknown or ambiguous, able to accept tentativeness and uncertainty, able to tolerate bipolarity, able to integrate opposites. The creative person is the healthy, self-actualizing person Maslow believes. Others who have identified creative traits are Barron (1963), Meier (1939), Whiting (1958), Angyal (1956), Mooney (1956), Lowenfeld (1958), and Hilgard (1959).
Weisberg and Springer (Mooney and Razik, 1967) chose 50 of the most creative and gifted children out of 4000 in the Cincinnati schools and gave them tests and interviews. The five highest judgment categories (all significant at the 5 percent level) following the interview were (1) strength of self-image, (2) ease of early recall, (3) humor, (4) availability of oedipal anxiety and (5) uneven ego development.
Welsh (1967) used an adjective check list on Governor's School students which indicated that high creative adolescents are independent, nonconforming individuals who have change and variety in environment and also have active heterosexual interests.
Whelan
(1965) used a theoretical key of seven scales with the following correlations
with creativity:
a. energy (r = .67): few illnesses, avid reader, early physical development, good grades, active in organizations
b. autonomy (r = .60): values privacy, independent, early to leave home
C. confidence (r = .68)
d. openness to new experience (r = .37)
e. preference for complexity (r = .13)
f. lack of close emotional ties (r = .30)
g. permissive value structure (r = .67).
Dellas
and Gaier (1970) reviewed creativity research on five variables: (1) intellectual
factors, (2) intelligence, (3) personality, (4) potential creativity and
(5) motivational characteristics. Creative persons appear more distinguished
by interests, attitudes, and drives rather than high intelligence. Creativity
seems to be a synergic effect involving cognitive style, openness, and
other personality variables.
Neither permissiveness, overindulgence, nor a great deal of love
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in the home appears to stimulate creative performance as had, in some quarters, been alleged; but a good deal of parental interaction with children, plus authoritative (not authoritarian) behavior on the part of the parents, appears helpful. The mixed results make it appear that parental rearing practices and other environmental influences are not central in producing creative persons, at least not so much so as individual personality dynamics. Some research results follow.
There have been a number of doctoral dissertations focusing on relationships between home environment and personality factors on the one hand and creativity on the other. Abdel-Salan (1963) found the male adolescent creative, self-sufficient, alternately lax and exacting and a trusting, adaptable, surgent, easy-going cyclotheme. Ellinger (1964) obtained a correlation of .6 between creativity and home environment for 450 fourth graders. Parents of creative children were more involved in activities, read more to children, went more often out to the library and used less physical punishment. Orinstein (1961), using the PARI, found maternal restrictiveness correlated .4 with low vocabulary, but neither permissiveness nor loving attitude correlated with creativity. Pankove (1966) found a positive relationship between creativity and risk-taking boys.
Arasteh (1968) concluded, after a careful survey of creativity in young children, that a loving, authoritative but somewhat permissive family structure was more productive of creative children than an autocratic or inflexible one.
Torrance (1969), in reporting intercultural research in which the author also participated (Gowan and Torrance, 1963), found strong relationships between cultural environment and creative index.
Research in which the author participated (Gowan and Torrance, 1965; Torrance, Gowan, Wu, and Aliotti, 1970) indicates that in cross cultural studies of creative performance in children, strain is put upon the child with resultant reduction in creativity by bilingualism at home or school.
Datta and Parloff (1967) attempted to determine the kind of family in which the creative individual is likely to develop. Previous studies indicated that the relevant dimension is autonomy control. Both creative scientists and their less creative controls described parents as moderately affectionate, nonrejecting and encouraging. The creatives were more likely to perceive parents as providing a "no rules" situation in which their integrity, autonomy, and responsibility were taken for granted.
A third area, that of age and stage aspects of creativity, was also researched. The effects of age on creativity have been studied in superior adults by Botwinick (1967) and by Lehman (Botwinick, 1967; Lehman, 1953, 1960). Their findings generally agree that creativity
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is more often found in younger individuals, and that young men in their twenties are especially apt to be highly innovative in science. A somewhat later apex is found for the behavioral sciences, but the peak of creative performance seems passed by the age of forty. Similar results had been reported earlier by Bjorkstem (1946).
Hallman
(1963) in his definitive review says:
Another body of data has been collected to prove that creativity can be fully explained as a series of chronological stages, each stage of which makes its unique contribution to the total process. Wallas (1926) provides the classical statement of this position, and he has been followed by Patrick (1937) and Spender (1946) in connections with creativeness in poetry; Hadamard (1954) and Poincare (1913) in mathematics; Arnold (1959), Patrick and Montmasson (1931) in science. Others who define creativity in terms of serial stages are Chiselin (1952), Vinacke (1952), and Hutchinson (1949).
In
conclusion to creativity as personal and environmental, we should briefly
notice two research approaches: measurement and biographical indices.
Regarding measurement, Rossman and Horn (1973) in an extensive factor analysis concluded that it is useful to regard creativity and intelligence as the outgrowth of distinct though overlapping influences, with creativity having definite personality aspects. Cropley (1972) in a five-year longitudinal study found predictive validity for the Torrance Creativity tests, a result which has recently been established by Torrance himself. Philipp (1967) in a doctoral study determined that creativity is a specific and not generalized factor.
Regarding biographical approaches, Schaefer (1970), Anastasi and Schaefer, (1969) developed a 165-item biographical inventory on high school students with separate keys for boys and girls. The Biographical Inventory correlated with judged creativity at r's between .35 and .55. Taylor at the Institute for Behavioral Research in Creativity at Salt Lake City has developed the Alpha Biographical Inventory for Creativity which has had considerable vogue. Malone (1974) in doctoral research, using a new, powerful computer program CHAROSEL, developed a similar biographical method for disadvantaged gifted children.40
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4.35 Creativity as Psychological Openness
4.351 General
Ever since
the development of the construct of creativity in the 1950's, and despite
the views of its early exponents, such as Guilford
and Osborn,
there has been a steady movement away from the concept of creativity as
essentially problem-solving in favor of the hypothesis that creativity
represents some kind of psychological openness. A growing and prestigious
group of researchers, Including Jung (Arieti 1967), Maslow (1954), and
Rogers (1959), to name only three, associate creative functioning with
openness to interior and exterior experience brought on by good mental
health, an anti-authoritarian style of living, and general flexibility.
Maslow's concepts of spontaneity, autonomy, democratic (anti-authoritarian)
character structure and creativity found in self-actualizing people is
a good example. Another is Roger's (1959) "openness to experience," "an
internal locus of evaluation," and "the ability to toy with concepts."
Schactel (1959) speaks of the quality of the encounter which develops into
creative performance as primarily one of openness. Schulman (1966) also
found openness of perception necessary for creative functioning.
Hallman
(1963), in his thorough review, also names openness and says:
It designates those characteristics of the environment, both the inner and the outer, the personal and the social, which facilitates the creative person's moving from the actual state of affairs which he is in at a given time, toward solutions which are only possible and as yet undetermined. These conditions, or traits, include sensitivity, tolerance of ambiguity, self-acceptance, and spontaneity. Since these are passively rather than actively engaged in the creative process, this criterion may be explained logically within the category of possibility. But again, the psychological meaning of this category may best be expressed under the concept of deferment, as distinguished, for example, from closure; of postponement as distinguished from predetermined solutions.
Openness
can be described in twelve aspects, all mentioned by Maslow (1954), as
characteristic of his group of self-actualized people. The first four aspects
are also noted by Hallman.
(1) Problem sensitivity refers to the ability to sense things as they might be reassembled, to a discrepancy, an aperture or a hiatus. It involves a particular kind of openness which divines that things are not quite what they seem. Hallman cites Angyal (1956), Fromm (1959), Guilford (1967), Greenacre (1957), Hilgard (1959), Lowenfeld (1958), Mooney (1956), and Stein (1953) as witnesses for the importance of problem sensitivity in creative performance.
(2) Ability to tolerate ambiguity is another aspect widely noted. Hallman (1963) characterizes it as "the ability to accept conflict and
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tension resulting from polarity (Fromm, 1959), to tolerate inconsistencies and contradictions (Maslow, 1963), to accept the unknown, and be comfortable with the ambiguous, approximate, and uncertain." He names Hart (1950), Wilson (1954), and Zilboorg (1959) as holding similar views. The ability to tolerate ambiguity appears also related with two other aspects. One is the ability to toy with ideas, rather playfully rearranging them into different forms. The other is preference for complexity, found by Barron (1963) in his study of artists.
(3) Internalized locus of evaluation is a Rogerian phrase for what Hallman calls a sense of destiny and personal worth which internalizes the value system so that it is not dependent upon cultural mores. This personal autonomy, also named by Maslow (1954) as characteristic of self-actualized people is really the opposite of authoritarian tendencies. The development of autonomy in young adults has been found to be negatively correlated with authoritarianism. Benton (1967), in a doctoral thesis, found openness (opposite of authoritarianism) to be predictive of creativity among students. An interesting sidelight of this aspect is the resultant philosophical, unhostile sense of humor, so characteristic of creative people, and found by Maslow as one of the qualities of his self-actualized group.
(4) Spontaneity is a quality used by both Hallman and Maslow to describe openness and creativity. It involves more isomorphic and comfortable relations with reality, so that one experiences life directly and "openly," not as if through a darkened glass. There is an appreciation and wonderment toward life, a childlike awe and admiration of that which is mysterious about the universe, blending into a mystic or oceanic feeling. All of these are qualities named by Maslow about his self-actualized people. "Scientific genius," said Poincare, "is the capacity to be surprised."
Finally, while still on the mental health aspect of creativity, the considerable testimony should be noted for creativity as at least a two-stage process as one ascends the mental health scale.
Hallman
(1963), in his definitive review, has this to say:
A third cluster of evidence surrounds the definition that creative activity involves an interchange of energy among vertical layers of psychological systems. Creativeness consists in a shift of psychic levels. Most writers identify two psychological levels and refer to them variously as the primary- secondary processes, the autistic and reality adjusted, unconscious mechanisms and conscious deliberation, free and bound energies, gestalt-free and articulating tendencies. These writers include Freud, Ehrenzweig (1953), and Schneider (1950). Maslow (1959) adds to these two levels a third one called integration.(page 293)
Another
who believes in two levels of creativity is Taft (1970), who states:
There are two styles of creativity; one a measured, problem-solving approach, and the other an emotional and comparatively uncontrolled free expression.17Taft believes that this dichotomy stems from the distinction made between primary and secondary processes by Freud. The primary process creativity (or "hot" creativity) occurs in the preconscious, and the secondary process (or "cold" creativity) requires more controls and less fantasy expression, such as scientific investigation, for example.
It is reasonable to say that there are two levels of creativity, one higher and one lower, one primary and one secondary, one major and one minor. Creative action of the lower, secondary sort gives further development to an established body of meaning through initiating some advance in its use. . . Creative action of the higher, primary sort alters the universe of meaning itself, by introducing into it some new element of meaning or some new order of significance, or, more commonly, both.
By
this time, the reader may well ask "What is it that the mind is open to
in this second level of creative insight?" This question deserves a careful
answer. In an effort to document that answer, we shall consider four examples
of openness: (a) openness under hypnosis, (b) openness under drugs, (c)
openness to ESP, and (d) openness to dreams, in the remainder of this section.
In the next, we shall then be able to formulate a theory about the preconscious
mechanism by which creativity is produced.
If you met a group of new people at one party and several days later on a completely different occasion, you again ran into the same group, you would suspect some connection between the two events, some common organizer. It is thus rather interesting that in a study of creative openness we have again run into some prototaxic and parataxic procedures which we studied in earlier chapters.
4.352 Openness Facilitated by Hypnosis
It seems evident from the research that under some conditions creativity is facilitated by hypnosis. Krippner (1972) documented some examples of this kind, including the McCord and Sherrill (1961) report of a mathematics professor whose speed in solving difficult problems was speeded up about six times. P. Bowers (1967) found that hypnosis improved performance on the remote consequences test at p = .001;
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the effect appearing to be due to reduced defensiveness. K. Bowers (1968) got no significant results in a creativity task between groups of hypnotized and hypnotically simulating groups. In a more complicated 2 X 3 research design K. Bowers and van der Meulen (1970) found hypnotically susceptible significantly more creative than hypnotically unsusceptible subjects; women also tended to be more creative under hypnosis than men. In a further study, K. Bowers (1970) found relationships between creativity, hypnotic susceptibility, and trancelike experiences for women, but not for men. He suggested that imagination in women is more stimulus incited, whereas in men it is more impulse incited.
The definitive review of research in this area is that of Bowers and Bowers (Fromm and Shor, 1972:235-290). In addition to having done a good bit of it themselves, the Bowers' deny the behavioristic bias in making hypersuggestibility the defining feature of hypnosis, and argue that trance and subjective experience of the individual under hypnosis has a real place in research on the subject. Calling the "generalized reality orientation" the GRO (or the OSC in our terms), they point out that there are many conditions besides hypnosis when the GRO fades away, and some of them have to do with fantasy and the relaxed reverie which precedes the insight stage of creative performance.
Bowers
and Bowers (Fromm and Shor, 1972(283) conclude after a review of their
research and others that unrealistic and fantasy experiences:
a. are concomitants of various ASC's including hypnosis,
b. occur more in subjects high in hypnotic susceptibility,
c. may occasionally occur in a creative act, but are
d. often experienced by creative subjects in more flexible shifting from one level of functioning to another.
They
believe that creativity involves regression to "passively experienced fantasy
and then progression to integration of fantasy with reality." They cite
both Krippner (1968) and Silverman (1968) as noting similarities between
ASC's and the inspirational stage of creativity. They conclude: "A relationship
between hypnosis and creativity does seem probable, but the precise nature
of this link is far from clear."
Bowers and Bowers (lbid:271) suggest that there is an "oscillating relationship between focused attention and fantasy which is an important condition of the adaptive regression which underlies creativity." They cite the literature on eye movements which suggests (lbid:274) that "eye movement is usually reduced under conditions of uncritical, undirected thinking characteristic of hypnosis and
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creativity." Ability to "tolerate unusual experiences" upon loss of the GRO correlates "about as high with hypnotic susceptibility as any other measure" (lbid:277). This is also a characteristic of fantasy. The creative person seems to have become able to retrieve through the oscillating procedure, those aspects of fantasy which help him to creative performance. In other words, both hypnosis and creativity have a common base in easy slippage from the GRO into fantasy. But as Bowers and Bowers (Ibid:291) conclude: whereas "conventional reality is relatively unimportant for the hypnotized person," it is vital to the creative individual for "it is the stuff that creative imagination transforms."
McHenry and Shouksmith (1970) describe an experiment in which 147 ten year olds were tested for their creative ability. Results showed that when placed in a situation exposed to the suggestion of peers, the highly creative children were very open to suggestion, but subjects high on visual imagination were not. The researchers then concluded that creative children are more suggestible.
4.353 Openness Facilitated by Drugs18
There have been many highly creative persons who have used consciousness-altering drugs (e.g., opium, alcohol, LSD, hashish), though one can only - at this time - speculate as to whether or not any of these drugs increased their creativity. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a poet and philosopher, habitually used a preparation of opium. Charles Baudelaire, a nineteenth century writer, lavishly described his sensations after eating hashish. William James (1902), the famous psychologist and philosopher, tried using nitrous oxide - commonly known as laughing gas - to "stimulate the mystical consciousness." Aldous Huxley, the novelist and essayist, took mescaline and LSD on frequent occasions. Even Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, ingested cocaine for several years and recommended it highly.
"In recent years, psychedelic ("mind-manifesting") drugs have often been used for creative purposes. In 1965, the psychiatrist Humphry Osmond and the architect Kyo Izumi announced that they had designed a new mental hospital with the aid of psychedelic drugs. Izumi (1968) took LSD when he visited traditionally designed mental hospitals to determine their effects upon persons in altered states of consciousness. In this condition, the long corridors and pale colors appeared bizarre and frightening to him; the corridor "seemed infinite, and it seemed as if I would never get to the end of it." He and Osmond assumed that the hospital would look similarly unpleasant to the mental patients. As a result of Izumi's experiences, he and Osmond designed a decentralized series of unimposing buildings with pleasant colors and no corridors.
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"Barron (1963)administered psilocybin to several highly creative persons and recorded their impressions. For example, one of Barron's subjects, a composer, writes, "Every corner is alive in a silent intimacy." Barron concluded, "What psilocybin does is to ... dissolve many definitions and ... melt many boundaries, permit greater intensities or more extreme values of experience to occur in many dimensions." However, some of the artists in Barron's study were wildly enthusiastic about their seemingly increased sensitivity during drug experience, but later when the effects of the drug wore off, they found that the artistic work they produced had little artistic merit. For instance, a painter recalled, "I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing - nor such a lack of concern with it afterwards." It appears that an artist is not necessarily able to evaluate his psychedelically-inspired work while he is under the influence of the drug.
4.354 The Role of Extrasensory Perception in Creativity19
Aside from the possibility that extrasensory perception (ESP) may have played a part in some of the creative dreams just described, there have in general been many unusual and puzzling creative achievements in which ESP may have played a role.
When Igor Sikorsky was ten years of age, he dreamed of coursing the skies in the softly lit, walnut-paneled cabin of an enormous flying machine. Sikorsky later became an eminent aircraft designer and inventor of the helicopter. Three decades after the dream, he went aboard one of his own four- engine clippers to inspect a job of interior decorating done by Pan American Airways. With a start, he recognized the cabin as identical to the one in his boyhood dream.
Max Planck, the physicist, first spoke of his "constant" when he was twenty-three years of age; however, he did not understand its implications for wave theory until much later. Indeed, he had to convince himself of its correctness; it varied so greatly from the logic of his time that he could not comprehend it when the idea first came to him.
Perhaps one of the most interesting cases of this kind is that of Michael Faraday (cited by Koestler, 1963), one of the greatest physicists of all time. Faraday was a visionary even in a literal sense. He "saw" the stresses surrounding magnets and electric currents as "curves of force in space," which he called "lines of forces." He visualized the universe as patterned by narrow curved tubes through which all forms of "ray-vibrations" or energy-radiations are propagated. This vision of curved tubes which "rose up before him like things" led him to the ideas of the dynamo and the electric motor. It also made him discard the concept of the ether and to postulate that light is electromagnetic radiation. Did Faraday enter these new realities
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through his imagination, or was he also assisted by ESP?
The case of Jonathan Swift (cited by Haefele, 1962), the writer of Gulliver's Travels and other novels, combines artistic and scientific creativity. When Gulliver reaches Laputa, the astronomers state that the planet Mars has two moons quite close to the planet. One completed its orbit every ten hours, the other every 21.5 hours. It took astronomers in ordinary reality 150 years to discover that Mars did, indeed, have two moons which completed their orbits around the planet every eight and every 30 hours.
A final instance of the possible association between ESP and creativity concerns Futility,a popular novel written by Morgan Robertson in 1898. It described the wreck of a giant ship called the Titan. This ship was considered "unsinkable" by the characters in the novel; it displaced 70,000 tons, was 800 feet long, had 24 lifeboats, and carried 3,000 passengers. Its engines were equipped with three propellers. One night in April, while proceeding at 25 knots, the Titan encountered an iceberg in the fog and sank with great loss of life.
On April 15, 1912, the Titanic was wrecked in a disaster which echoed the events portrayed in the novel 14 years previously. The Titanic displaced 66,000 tons and was 828 feet long, It had three propellers and was proceeding at 23 knots on its maiden voyage, carrying nearly 3,000 passengers. There was great loss of life because the Titanic was equipped with only 20 lifeboats.
Thus, the role played by ESP in creativity demands further study. Anderson (1962) is convinced that the association exists because both ESP and creativity have their roots in deep, unconscious levels of the psyche. She concludes that creativity "by a process of purely conscious calculation seems never to occur. Scrutiny of the conscious scene for the creative end never reveals it; it is never there."
Dreistadt (1972) attempted to relate the prophetic nature of genius with precognition, theorizing that there was either telepathy or clairvoyance in the nature of some of their discoveries. Pang and Fort (1967) in a small study got some evidence of the relation between creativity and ESP.
Honorton (1967) in exploring the relationship between creativity and ESP, found a highly significant difference on precognitive runs between the high creativity subjects and the low ones.
4.355 Dreams and Creativity20
There is considerable testimony on the fact that creativity is closely related to dreams, and some of it is spectacular. Domino (1970) has found more primary process material and more symbolism in the dreams of creative high school males than in controls. Krippner and Hughes (1971) concluded that "dreaming and creative process are related."
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There are many people who can testify to the usefulness of dreams in the creative production of daily life. Kilton Stewart (Tart, 1969:15968) tells how the Senoi, a Malayan tribe, use dreams to promote mental health, and gain control over the preconscious. Following Stewart's example, Alden Flagg (personal communication) of New York Society of General Semantics, programs his sleep so that he will dream solutions to daily problems. Eileen Garrett (1968:135) tells of much the same thing: "I give my consciousness the task of finding the answer while I sleep, and in the morning at the threshold of awakening, I find the information I sought." Many creative people have learned this trick of using dreams.
But the best and most complete summary of the use of dreams for discoveries and inventions by scientists is by Krippner (1972): "Scientists, philosophers, and inventors also have creative dreams and use the content of these dreams either literally (directly) or analogically (symbolically) in their creative work." (It will be recalled that artists, musicians, and writers generally used the content in a literal manner.)
Herman V. Hilprecht (cited by Woods, 1947:525-530) attempted to decipher two small fragments of agate which were believed to belong to the finger rings of a Babylonian, and had cuneiform writing on them of the Cassite period in Babylonian history. After midnight he was weary and exhausted, went to sleep, and dreamed the following:
A tall thin priest of old pre-Christian Nippur, about forty years of age and clad in a simple abba, led me to the treasure chamber of the temple ... He addressed me as follows: "The two fragments which you have published separately on pages 22 and 26, belong together, are not finger rings and their history is as follows: King Kurigalzu (Ca. 1300 B.C.) once sent to the temple of Bel ... an inscribed votive cylinder of agate. Then we priests suddenly received the command to make for the statue of the god Ninib a pair of earrings of agate. We were in a great dismay, since there was no agate as raw material at hand. In order to execute the command there was nothing for us to do but cut the votive cylinder into three parts, thus making three rings, each of which contained a portion of the original inscription. The first two rings served as earrings for the statue of the god; the two fragments which have given you so much trouble are portions of them. If you will put the two together you will have confirmation of my words. But the third ring you have not found in the course of your excavations and you never will find it." With this the priest disappeared. I woke up . . .
Hilprecht
later verified this interpretation by actually putting the
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fragments together at the Imperial Museum of Constantinople, thereby showing that they had once belonged to one and the same votive cylinder.
In his creative drearn Hilprecht combined identically shaped "rings" (association by similarity) and thereby reconstructed the votive cylinder. He also combined other bits of information that agreed with this reconstruction. All this represents a process of consolidation. Hilprecht's dream thus integrated a great deal of material, but by synthesizing the material correctly the dream also gave him a picture of a non-ordinary reality - a past reality. It is conceivable, too, that Hilprecht's close contact with the "rings" helped give him imagery of the past events he saw in his dream in the same manner as the touch of an object purportedly gives a psychic paragnost accurate imagery of the past history of the object.
The naturalist Louis Agassiz (cited by Krippner and Hughes, 1970),attempted to transfer the image of a fossilized fish from a stone but found the image too blurred. He gave up the project only to dream a few nights later of an entire fossilized fish. He hurried to the laboratory the next morning, but the image was as obscure as before. The dream returned the next night. When he examined the slab the next morning, the vague image appeared unchanged. Hoping to have the dream a third time, Agassiz put a pencil and paper by his bed. The dream returned and he drew the image. The next morning when he looked at what he had drawn, he was surprised that he had produced so many details in total darkness. He returned to his laboratory and used the drawing as a guide to chisel the slab. When the stone layer fell away, Agassiz found the fossil in excellent condition and identical to the image he had seen in his dream.
Agassiz' creative dream of the fossilized fish may have been induced by having perceived unconsciously a clue in the stone slab which he had ignored while awake. If so, the dream could have emphasized and drawn his attention to stimuli he had perceived subliminally while he was awake. Perhaps Agassiz also perceived the fossil fish clairvoyantly by extrasensory perception (e.g., Krippner, 1963). If this is true, subliminal perception and extrasensory perception helped Agassiz experience non-ordinary reality which quickly turned into ordinary reality once the slab was cut.
The creative dreams of Hilprecht and Agassiz gave the solution to a problem literally or directly. One can cite as well creative dreams of scientists and inventors that gave the solution of a problem analogically or symbolically.
The chemist Friedrich August Kekule (cited by Koestler, 1964:118),had a tendency to make theoretical discoveries in hypnagogic reverie states. Kekule wrote:
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I turned my chair to the fire and dozed. Again the atoms were gambolling before my eyes. The smaller groups kept modestly in the background. My mental eye, rendered more acute by visions of this kind, could now distinguish larger structures, of manifold conformations; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted together, all twining and twisting in snakelike motion. But look! What was that? One of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I awoke.The dream image of a snake holding its tail in its mouth led Kekule by analogy to his discovery that Benzene has a ringlike structure (usually represented by a hexagon) and to his "closed-chain" or "ring" theory which showed the importance of molecular structure in organic chemistry. The imagery granted Kekule a glimpse into a non-ordinary reality of molecular structure.
In 1869, D. I. Mendeleev went to bed exhausted after struggling to conceptualize a way to categorize the elements based upon their atomic weights (cited by Kedrov, 1957). He reported, "I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper. Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary." In this manner, Mendeleev's Periodic Table of the Elements was created.
(Noting that hypnagogic and reverie states are frequently associated with theta brain wave rhythms, Green, Green, and Walters (1971) have instigated a biofeedback project to train individuals to enter these states through EEG brain wave training. The association between theta production and creativity will be explored among the subjects who can successfully produce the theta rhythm.)
It can be seen that creative persons in their dreams sometimes appear to experience non-ordinary reality, and at the same time make different types of consolidations. Finding a new reality in a creative dream gives the person a novel slant or direction for consolidating his information, and the consolidation enables him to see the details and structure of the new reality more clearly. In some cases, finding a new reality not only gives the person a new direction for consolidating his information, but even involves finding additional information to be included in the consolidation.
4.36 Creativity and the Preconscious
The theory which explains most precisely the mechanism by which creativity operates is that of the preconscious (Kubie, 1958). Openness in this view is really openness to the collective preconscious, an effect of the numinous element which is shared by all. It can be considered
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as an ever-refilling well wherein all creative men have learned to dip their bucket, or as a great general computer, containing in its data banks all knowledge, and creativity is but the process of operating the terminal console. Or it can be considered as a great collator, chewing up the events and ideas of the day, and rearranging them into other forms and patterns, or like an enlarged fluid container, with a permeable membrane though which (by osmosis) creative ideas are leaked into consciousness. This theory is really the only one which explains the necessity for relaxation after cognitive preparation for the creative ideas to emerge.
Such a view immediately suggests that the preconscious is the source of man's creativity, particularly when it is strengthened, protected and enlarged through regular use and through increasing mental health. The "establishment" of the preconscious is evidence that the individual is not at war with himself, not alienated from experience, not a split personality. He can be creative because almost all his past experiences, in chewed-up and digested form, ready to be reattached to new concepts, are available to his preconscious collator. It has at its disposal a vast assortment of biological impulses, tabooed acts, rejected compromises, affected pains and pleasures, remembered facts, personal feelings, horrifying nightmares and a host of other material, none of which has been suppressed, but all of which can be reused (much like old newspapers) to print a new edition. What is in the new edition depends on how much freedom the editor (preconscious) has from the incursions of the prohibitions of the conscious and super-ego and the pressures of experiences and feelings suppressed by the unconscious. The health, growth, and stability of the preconscious thus becomes of prime importance in investigating the genesis of creativity.
Greenacre (1971) feels that the openness which produces creativity is related to infantile development prior to the Oedipus resolution. She points out the frequency of family fantasies in the highly creative, and mentions special aspects as empathy, sensori-motor capacity for expression, awareness of relationships among stimuli, and greater sensory responsiveness. Greenacre's views on the oedipal and fantasy aspects of creativity have been developed elsewhere by the author (1972:17).
Pointing out that the child lives in a mythical paradisal time, Eliade (1963:77) says in footnote: "This is why the unconscious displays the structure of a private mythology ... some of its contents carry cosmic values.... Modern Man's only real contact with cosmic sacrality is effected by the unconscious, whether in dreams and his imaginative life or in the creations that arise out of the unconscious."
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Recognizing the importance of preconscious inspiration, many creative persons have intuitively derived individual mechanisms for throwing themselves into this mode of knowledge. Gerald Heard says (Weil and Others 1971:9):
To have truly original thought the mind must throw off its critical guard, its filtering censor. It must put itself in a state of depersonalization . . . The best researchers when confronting problems and riddles which have defied all solution by ordinary methods, did employ their minds in an unusual way, did put themselves into a state of egoless creativity, which permitted them to have insights so remarkable that by means of these they were able to make their greatest and most original discoveries.
Lord
Tennyson was accustomed to pass into "an ecstatic state" and had a formula
for inducing it (Prince, 1963:144). Tennyson says in a letter written in
1794:
1 have had ... a kind of walking trance ... when I have been all alone. This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently, till, all at once out of the intensity and conscious of the individuality, the individuality itself seems to dissolve and fade away into boundless being ...
Prince
(1963:174) similarly describes the inception of Uncle Tom's Cabin quoting
from the biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe:
Prince concludes:
Mrs. Stowe was seated in her pew in the college church at Brunswick, during the communion service ... Suddenly like the unrolling of a picture scroll, the scene of the death of Uncle Tom seemed to pass before her ... She was so affected she could scarcely keep from weeping ... That Sunday afternoon she went to her room, locked the door and wrote out, substantially as it appears ... the chapter called "The Death of Uncle Tom".
The writing of this chapter of Uncle Tom's Cabinhas many analogies in authorship without conscious participation in the composition, to the same with conscious effort, and yet such facility that it seems as though, in the main, the material gushed up from a concealed spring.
Evidence
that creative persons do, in fact, have an easier relationship with their
inner selves is forthcoming from several sources. MacKinnon (1972) in a
paper entitled "Creativity and Transliminal Experience"
(page 303)
adduces proof for the hypothesis that creative persons experience greater ease in moving from conscious to unconscious states. Katz (1973) in doctoral study, exposed subliminal material to creative students and constricted controls, and the results clearly indicated that the creative group was superior in making use of the preconscious stimulus in response or reproduction.
There seems little need to pile up further evidence in this regard, since it is notable that the relation between creativity and the preconscious is much stronger than the various relationships in the previous section. Indeed their correlations with creative process can be looked upon as effects of their contact with the collective preconscious. In two earlier books (1972, 1974) we have given extensive coverage to this point, so we shall not prolong the argument here. But creativity as the relationship with the collective preconscious is only the beginning of the expansion of man's mind which we have identified as psychedelic. We shall pursue this development in the next section.
4.37 Creativity as Evidence of Mental Health and Self-Actualization
a) Introduction.A final way of looking at creativity is to regard it as early evidence of progress in mental health and self-actualization. The amount of creativity, other things being equal, may be regarded as a barometer of one's mental health. Maslow (Anderson, 1958:88) elaborates this idea further in saying: "The creativity of my subjects seemed to be an epiphenomenon of their greater wholesomeness and integration, which is what 'self-actualized' implies." It is as natural to express creativity under conditions of high mental health as it is for a black object when heated to radiate electromagnetic waves of heat and light.
The creative person is not necessarily perfect and without flaw. Actually, creativity occurs early in the development of the mentally healthy individual and promises the continuation of such mental health, much as ego strength predicts the successful termination of therapy. Creative performance tends to influence development in the direction of mental health, as fruit on a tree or dividends on a stock promise the future vitality of an organism.
After a careful case study investigation of the influence of mental health on creativity, Fried (1964) concluded that increased mental health as established through therapy improved artistic work habits, freed and sublimated aggressive, destructive tendencies into productive work patterns, reduced omnipotent fantasy which had caused the artists to destroy many of their works which were below the masterpiece level, and improved human relations which tended to preserve creative
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energy. The creativity increase in these artists undergoing therapy appeared as an early dividend resulting from their increased mental health.
The essence of process toward both greater mental health and greater creativity lies in the strengthening and developing of the preconscious so that it enlarges to assume a more important share in the tripartite membership of the individual psyche. This aggrandizement signals improved mental health and progress toward self-actualization, of which creative performance is an early indication. McLuhan and the existentialists emphasize a better balance between rational and pararational aspects of the psyche, and perhaps in this instance they are merely restating the thesis which has just been illustrated here.
b) General Research on Self-Actualization. Damm (1970) after analyzing studies of Arnold (1961), Blatt (1964), MacKinnon (1964), Barron (1963), Roe (1963), and Gerber (1965) on the relationship between creativity and mental health in adults, concludes that a strong relationship exists. Damm (1970) found students high in intelligence and creativity are more self-actualized as measured by Shostrom's (1966) Personal Orientation Inventory than students who are high in intelligence only. He concluded that students who obtained high scores on both areas were superior in self- actualization and recommended that the development of both intelligence and creative abilities should be a prime educational goal.
Hallman (1963), speaking about self-actualization, says:
Empirically, this criterion is supported by the great wealth of data which has been reported. Maslow (1956) has spoken most forcefully on this theme. He equates creativity with the state of psychological health, and this with the self-actualization process. There is no exception to this rule, he says. "Creativity is an universal characteristic of self-actualizing people." This form of creativeness reaches beyond special-talent creativeness; it is a fundamental characteristic of human nature. It touches whatever activity the healthy person is engaged in.
Craig
(1966) reviewed trait theories of creativity and listed four personality
correlates which were congruent with Maslow's holistic scheme of self-actualization
and character integration. Newton (1968) in doctoral research found high
correlation between progress toward self-actualization and intelligence.
Moustakas (1967) attempted to conceptualize creativity in terms of self-growth and self-renewal by stressing the uniqueness of the individual and his potentialities for mental health.
Helder, in doctoral research (1968) contrasted mystical and peak
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experiences
found in the more open creative stance with traditional perceptual-cognitive
consciousness. It is interesting to note that Maslow in his famous study
of self-actualizing persons, found none who were not creative. In imitation
of Maslow's work, we present some characteristics of self -actualizing
persons which seem to be related to their creativity as follows: a) introduction
b) general research on self-actualization, c) joy, content, and expectation
of good, d) serendipity, e) increased control over environment, f) sense
of destiny, g) acceptance of self, others, and nature, h) spontaneity,
i) detachment and autonomy, j) Gemeinschaftsgefuhl, k) a philosophical
and unhostile sense of humor, 1) psychological and semantic flexibility,
and m) the "witness-phenomenon." These aspects represent the maturing of
the creative phase of development, or the spread of the function through
man's mind which signals increasing readiness for the next level of mind
expansion.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rogers
(1968) in unique doctoral research investigated the childhoods of self-actualizing
persons (identified on the POI), using the high and low fifteen out of
183 undergraduate males. The degree and variety of common participation
among members of the family was significantly greater in the families of
the self-actualizing students, with their parents more approving, more
trusting, and more lenient. Fisher (1972) using the POI on nominated paranormals,
found a trend for paranormals to score in the direction of self-actualization.
McClain and Andrews (1969) has 139 students write about their most wonderful
experience, and found evidence that those who wrote about peak experiences
were more self-actualized than those who did not. Thorne and Piskin (1968)
did a factor analysis on successful executives and found five factors which
they claimed were related to self- actualization: secure individualism,
egocentrism, doing right, self-determination, and independent self-assertion.
Garfield (1968) in doctoral research found that subjects whose mental health
and growth were improved by a psychotherapy treatment of fifteen weeks,
showed significantly greater gains in creativity than a control group.
Blanchard (1970) investigated the psychodynamics of the peak-experience
and reported that "the creative act pushed the boundaries of the self .
. . " He stressed both the exhilaration arid danger in the greater creativity
which the peak-experience releases. Frankl (1966:97ff) in talking about
self-transcendence says that motivational theories based on homeostatic
principles overlook the satisfaction which is intrinsic to finding more
meaning and order in life as a result of peak-experiences.
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The self-actualization explanation of creativity is not just another way of looking at the subject; for some it is the only way. The mind expanding aspect is seen as a fundamental property of life, with creativity the aurora of the new dawn. Barron (1968:305) echoes this view:
The tendency of life then is toward the expansion of consciousness. In a sense, a description of means for the expansion of consciousness has been the central theme of this book, and it is in this evolutionary tendency that such diverse phenomena as psychotherapy, surprising or unexpected self-renewal, the personally evolved and deepened forms of religious belief, creative imagination, mysticism, and deliberately induced changes of
consciousness through the use of chemicals find a common bond.
c) Joy, Content, and Expectation of Good. One of the most interesting aspects of creativity is that affective development seems to go along with cognitive development, so that positive feelings about oneself, others, and the universe are felt by most creative persons. There is in particular an absence of generalized fear, anxiety, and insecurity, which is perhaps related to a wider competence, but seems more due to a dawning realization of the beneficence of the cosmos. The optimist is luckier than the pessimist, and creative people tend to be optimists. Perhaps this is because creativity represents the ability to solve new problems so that one is not fearful of the future. One is reminded of Bucke's characteristics of illumination (White, 1972:87ff) which mentions joy, assurance, a sense of immortality, the vanishing of the fear of sin and death. One is also reminded of the reply of Thoreau on his death-bed when asked if he wanted to make his peace with God: "We have never fallen out."
d) Serendipity. The princes of Serendip upon being sent on missions by their father to discover certain things, discovered, instead, other things for which they were not looking. The word has entered the language since it expresses a phenomenon which occurs to creative people: namely the situation of which Einstein speaks: if we quiet the mind and relax, we find to our surprise that "a new idea modestly presents itself." The discovery of things for which one was not looking, indicates that the collective preconscious is wiser than we are, for it seems to know what we need to discover, even though our conscious mind does not. In this sense serendipity replaces the random aspects of nature with an ordering in the mind which is a great time saver.
e) Increased Control over Environment. There are several senses in which creative persons gain this control. In the first place there is the purely outer consequence that a creative product solves an
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environmental challenge with a higher response. In the second place, the fact that one is creative gives one the potentiality to solve the next crisis, and hence, to have potential control. In the third place, because creativity represents an intuitive brush with the noumenon, it involves some kind of esoteric control of the environment. We shall call this control "orthocognition" and discuss it further in section 4.5; healing, in some respects the "twin" of creativity, is an aspect of this increased control.
f) Sense of Destiny. Because the creative person sees some order and plan in the universe, and believes himself to be a part of that plan, he has a sense of destiny. He is ordered in the sense that the atoms in a piece of magnetized iron are ordered. Like the last two sections, the concept involves an escalation from randomness to order, or if you are a physics major, a decrease in entropy. The creative person also becomes more independent of time, and more conscious of past-present-future all at once, and this too gives him a perspective which others interpret as a sense of destiny.
g) Acceptance of Self, Others, and Nature. If I can't accept me, I can't accept you, and if I can't accept you, I certainly can't accept those other even more dreadful people. Consequently the ability to accept ourselves (with all our faults), our loved ones (with all their faults), and finally the rest of the world (with all its faults) is a real barometer of maturity. This acceptance signals development away from egocentricity and the identity crisis. Maslow (1954:207-8) points out that self-actualizing people can accept the animal part of themselves without neurotic disgust; they can accept others because of their lack of defensiveness, but show distaste for cant and hypocrisy in social relationships. They accept nature because they see reality more clearly and without the spectacles of prejudice: "One does not complain about water because it is wet."
h) Spontaneity. Creative persons are spontaneous and free. They are not constricted or compartmentalized. They have an open, free, loving life style which resembles that of an artist more than that of an undertaker. They are intraceptive in being open to feelings; they are therefore childlike, although not immature. Maslow (1954:208-9) points out that the behavior of self-actualizing persons is marked by simpleness and naturalness. Spontaneity is related to the essential autonomy of the person of which we shall next speak.
i) Detachment and Autonomy. Creative persons are inner-oriented, and need privacy and some degree of withdrawal. They are in the world but not of it. They "march to the music of a distant drum" and hence need quiet in order to hear it. While not in the least
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immoral, they are often unconventional; they obey a higher inner law, rather than a lower outer statute. When Thoreau was in jail for refusing to support the Mexican War and Emerson bailed him out, Emerson is supposed to have said: "Henry, why are you here?" to which Thoreau replied: "Ralph, why are you not here?" This exchange is an excellent example of autonomy, as Thoreau's three years at Walden Pond is an excellent example of detachment. Creative persons appear to have psychological needs for both of these aspects, even though their expression often causes pain to their more conventional friends. Maslow (1954:212-213) discusses both of these qualities in the self-actualizing person. Of detachment he says: "They like solitude and privacy more than the average person." Their extreme concentration which requires privacy is interpreted as coldness by some people. Their autonomy results from a transcendence of lower orders of the Maslow hierarchy which require others, to one which requires the best in oneself. As a result, these persons are relatively stable in adversity, and maintain serenity and content in the midst of the vicissitudes of life.
j) Gemeinschaftsgefuhl (Brotherly love). This quality is often seen in higher creatives. It manifests itself in a general reverence for life (Schweitzer); "We are all tarred with the same brush" (Gandhi), or a broad humanitarianism (Eleanor Roosevelt). American culture tends to suppress this gentle quality in favor of violence and self-interest, so it is often more seen in other peoples; it is a much more noticeable aspect of New Zealand life, for example. It is fostered by a sense of communitas, and it answers Cain's question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" Maslow (1954:217) says of this quality: "They have for human beings in general a deep feeling of identity and affection." He notices their "general desire to help the whole human race" "as if they were all members of a single family."
k) A Philosophical and Unhostile Sense of Humor.It may seem surprising that Maslow would mention this quality, which is denigrated as a rather low one, but is in fact a characteristic of the highest importance. Whenever you see a humorist of this type, always suspect a philosopher of deep wisdom underneath: Mark Twain, Voltaire, Artemus Ward, Mr. Dooley, Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Will Rogers, and Art Buchwald are all examples. Humor of this type stems from semantic flexibility plus the ability to see behind appearances to reality. It also requires ego-transcendence or psychological objectivity. The humor must be unhostile (like Mr. Magoo of the movie shorts), not concerned with our insensitivity to the woes of
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other people. It is closely connected (as was seen in Lincoln's stories) with the telling of parables, which is a kind of verbal analogy. Humor is a peculiar characteristic of creative persons, in that it is one of the earliest predictors (appearing even in childhood) as well as being one of the highest evidences. Maslow (1954:222) found humor common to all of his self-actualizers. It was not, however, the common type of humor; it was "the humor of the real because it consists in large part in poking fun at human beings in general when they are foolish. It masked a deeper philosophy.
1) Psychological and Semantic Flexibility. One of the very interesting aspects of continued creativity is the development of a very considerable degree of psychological (affective) and semantic (cognitive) flexibility, which turn out to have emergent properties. Both cut down on the inertia of the mind, making it easier and more expeditious in the change required for new insights. Rothenberg (1971)calls this process "Janusian thinking," which he defines as the capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas simultaneously. The higher reconciliation of these ideas often leads to a creative breakthrough (e.g., the "complementarity principle" in physics). Semantic flexibility also allows the individual to avoid semantic traps which engulf the formal operations philosopher; one zeros in on the similarity of process not being confused by the dissimilarity of different languages used to describe the process. This sort of semantic flexibility leads to "problem-centering" and "problem-finding" so noticeable in really creative persons, whereas most other people get lost in the maze of symptoms, or in their outraged reactions to the situation. Psychological flexibility is an evidence of the dismantling of the egocentricity so characteristic of earlier stages. The truly creative person does not need to support his ego at the expense of the crisis situation. Finally, such flexibility leads to an ability to understand and deal with general systems theory, another effort at looking beneath the empirical to find logical unity in seeming diversity.
m) The "Witness" Phenomenon. Although not mentioned by Maslow, this effect is also part of the final perfection of creative performance. It was earlier suggested by Huxley (1954),who observing the limiting function of personality structure on consciousness said:
(page 310)
We should do well to consider much more seriously the type of theory which Bergson put forward in connection with memory and sense perception. The suggestion is that the function of the brain and nervous system and sense organs is in the main eliminative and not productive ...
This"reducing valve" theory that each of us represents "mind at large" but that the brain protects us from all this information by shutting off most of it, has significant consequences for the theory of creativity as an opening to this collective preconscious. An outcome is that the more creative we become, the more of this input we can assimilate. Sri Aurobindo (Satprem, 1968:43) calls this phenomenon "the witness," for part of ourselves witnesses the cosmic mind within us thinking on many aspects of different problems at once, whereas our individual mind can think only of one. Discovering the witness in ourself discloses that "the mind is not an instrument of knowledge, but only an organizer of knowledge" (Ibid:45). All this cosmic activity is going on in consciousness, and our expanded consciousness taps into it.
Underhill
(1930:366) makes the same point in noting the similarity between creativity
and mystic ecstasy:
As the saints are caught up in God, so these are caught up in their visions; these partial apprehensions of the Absolute Life. . . . Their greatest creations are translations to us, not of something they have thought, but of something they have known in a moment of ecstatic union. . . .
4.38
Creative Organization: General Systems Theory
In the lower levels of creative production, the individual engages in creative problem-solving. In the higher levels, the mind becomes an organizer of the knowledge which wells up in it from creative openings in the preconscious. Organization is anti-entropy; it is order in place of disorder. Consequently, it validates our general theory of creativity to find that it introduces "a new and higher order" into experience. One would expect this emergent property to occur if creativity is a stepping stone on the pathway to self-actualization.
The essence of this order or organization is to find unity in diversity, the same process in different products, a universe filled with isomorphisms. Metaphor, analogy, and homology are primitive aspects of this process, but there are higher considerations to which we need to turn.
There are several examples of this emerging order in man's understanding of nature. Mathematics, especially set theory is one, cybernetics, based on the feedback principle another, and information theory a third. Systems and human engineering theories are a fourth, decision theory a fifth, and general semantics a sixth. Since each of these areas has its own extensive literature, we shall turn to a seventh, that of general systems theory, which is far younger, less organized, and much less well known.
(page 311)
It is generally accepted that while some earlier writers had glimpsed the outlines of the subject, general systems theory was founded by von Bertalanffy in his classic of the same title (1968).
Bertalanffy (1968:vii) defines his subject as follows:
Systems theory is a broad view which far transcends technological problems and demands, a reorientation that has become necessary in science in general . . . It is operative with varying degrees of success, in various realms, and heralds a new world view of considerable impact.
Bertalanffy
(1968:38) states the purposes and aims of general systems theory as: "a
tendency toward integration, centered in a general theory of systems, aiming
at exact theory in nonphysical fields, which develop universal principles
toward a goal of unity in science, which can lead to integration in scientific
education."
Although Bertalanffy had published before then, general systems theory got its formal start in an informal meeting in 1954 at Palo Alto of K. Boulding, the economist; A. Rapoport, the biomathematician; R. Gerard, the physiologist; and Bertalanffy. They founded the society for General Systems Research, which later became a division of AAAS. The yearbooks General Systems edited by A. Rapoport have served as the house organ.
The genius of Bertalanffy, the founder of General Systems Theory, was according to Laszlo (1972:4-8) that he was the first to recognize that the process of organization of scientific knowledge might be as important as the product. This concept involved holism rather than analysis, integration rather than differentiation of scientific knowledge, the unity of nature in a diversity of forms, and the emphasis on scientific humanism rather than mechanical technology. It has come, concludes Laszlo (1972:11) "to represent a new paradigm of contemporary scientific thought," and it provides science with a new and very powerful tool.
Buckley (1967:39), a sociologist, points out that systems theory concentrates on organization and involves the following advantages:
(1) a common vocabulary across several disciplines;
(2) a technique for treating organized complexity;
(3) a synthetic approach where a holistic analysis must be made;
(4) a study of relations not entities; and
(5) an operational study of purposefulness and goal-seeking behavior.
Bertalanffy
(1968:81ff) also notes that general systems theory depends on isomorphisms.
These in turn rest on cognition, reality, and the organization of the universe
in mathematical terms. He points out analogy (superficial similarities),
homologies (identical basic laws in different disciplines) and the explanation
of specific laws as special
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cases. These general notions "acquire exact expression ... only in mathematical language."
Others who have made efforts in the direction of general systems, but whose work is too demanding for our summary treatment are the physicist lberall (1972), the economist Boulding, the linguist Watzlawick (1967), the physiologist Gerard, the educator Clark (Laszlo, 1972) and the mathematician Rapoport (Laszlo, 1972).
Of all the ways of expressing the basic concepts of general systems theory, the most useful is that of set theory in mathematics. It is none other than Laszlo (1972b:19) who says: "Looking at the world in terms of such sets of integrated relations constitutes the systems view."
The individual who has contributed most to the application of mathematical set theory to general systems is Stuart Dodd, a retired professor of sociology at the University of Washington. (A summary of his Epicosm Model of the Universe will be found in the Appendix.) Briefly (but incompletely) stated, actants (the set of all names) interact in all possible ways to organize the cosmos (the set of all things namable) in all of its parts. Nature works in the cosmos to organize creation in terms of exponents (logarithms) to the base two (bit-logs).
Bertalanffy (1968:42) points out that the bit-log of N equals the amount of information from N questions. "This measure of information happens to be similar to negative entropy, since entropy is also defined as a logarithm of probability. But entropy is a measure of disorder; hence negative entropy is a measure of order or organization . . . "
So Dodd's system works in bit-logs, with four fundamental operations: pairings (2x), squaring (x2) , norming (2x), and fulfilling (xx). These operations are special cases of the enumerative generator (1 + 1 / n) n , which give rise to basic constants (such as the square root of 3), whose four fundamental function values constantly recur.21 Since general systems is viewed as the only science of which all other sciences are but applications, these basic sets and constants are related to all physical laws and constants (such as E=mc2 and the speed of light), all of which may be derived from them.
4.39 Conclusion
We conclude this section with some general observations about creativity.
1. Creativity is an emergent function, an unexpected escalation from Piagetian formal operations. It involves divergent instead of convergent thinking. It is the lowest level of consciousness to show a distinctly "other-than-human" quality in the aspect of creative
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inspiration which forces most researchers to admit its intuitional aspect.
2. Creativity is more than problem-solving, more than mere rational semantic factors of intellect. Its essence involves openness to preconscious elements. This psychological openness, rather than "connectedness" is the foundation of the bridging between the conscious ego and the numinous element.
3. Creativity involves the "gentling of the preconscious," since it allows the conscious mind to gain insights from, and to establish an intuitive relationship with, the preconscious. The joining of the individual and general minds (as if by osmosis through a permeable membrane), seen earlier only in trance states, now becomes suffused with reality, so that it is closer within the reach of the conscious mind, and thus less irrational and frightening, and more humane and useful. The trauma and dread of the prototaxic numinous have been replaced with creative fantasy, and an intuitive relationship. It is this gentling, humanizing process exerted on the preconscious by creative function of the individual, which is the only proper preparation for the psychedelic graces. The absence of this creative experience, however, may place the individual at the mercy of untoward experiences (such as are found on bad drug trips) when he contacts the psychic area.
4. Creativity is also developmental, leading to self-actualization, for which it is a necessary prerequisite, and to high mental health which is also required for successful entry into the psychedelic graces.
5. Higher emergent aspects of creativity also appear in individuals such as the "witness phenomenon," in which the individual witnesses an almost autonomous development of ideas in his own mind, often several at a time.
6. Creativity also leads to higher organizations of experience, such as general systems theory, in which isomorphisms and homologues play an important part in uncovering the unity in diversity.
7. Finally,
creativity has a holistic quality, which restores the balance between right
and left hemisphere function, between analog and digital computer aspects
of thinking. But we leave the last word on this subject to Hall (1972)
who says:
Since creative thought is the most important thing which makes people different from monkeys, it should be treated as a commodity more precious than gold, and preserved with the greatest care.Man's mind is a device for bringing infinite mind into manifestation in time; creativity is the commencement of this actualization.
(page 314)
4.4 BIOFEEDBACK (Jhana -4) 22
4.41 General Introduction
Through a combination of experimental psychology, computer technology, and electrophysiology, it has now become possible to increase knowledge of the brain's functions and consciousness, and it seems that it may be possible to perceive and control some of the brain functions.
The primary subject of concern is the possibility of learning to be aware of the presence of one type of brain wave, the alpha type, and the possible psychological and physiological benefits that may occur from such learning and control.
Alpha wave biofeedback is a modern and enactive method of learning to generate brain waves of alpha (8-13 hertz) and theta (4-8 hertz) frequencies. It may surprise the reader that such a mechanical technique should be included as a syntaxic procedure, but we shall attempt to supply evidence that this is indeed the case. Basically, through the use of a light, buzzer, or bell, when alpha waves are being generated, the subject is taught consciously to gain control of what appears in effect to be a meditative state. Such wave frequencies are found in yogis, Zen masters, and highly creative persons. This fact does not prove that meditative states are caused by alpha waves, since the waves may be the effect of the state. The testimony, however, of those who are "into alpha," in its mental health and serendipity implications (all positive) indicates that this subject deserves careful investigation.
There is wide agreement in the research literature that the alpha rhythm represents a kind of synchrony in the firing of neurons in the cerebral cortex; Banquet (1973) noticed this effect in meditating subjects. Eleanor Criswell (1969) speculates that: "If we reduce cortical activity and still the mind, we are allowing more primitive brain structures to have more free play . . . more unification."
Green,
et
al (1971a) say:
The immediate value of feedback instrumentation is that it gives the subject an immediate indication of his progress in learning to control a given physiological variable . . . This makes it possible to detect and promote through training voluntary changes in physiological variables that are particularly related to and indicative of changes in states of attention, consciousness, and awareness - the beta, alpha, and theta brain rhythms.(page 315)The beta rhythm (13-26hz) is associated with what we might call active thinking, or active attention - attention focused on the outside world or on solving concrete problems; the alpha
rhythm (8-13 hz) is associated with a more internally focused state; the mind is alert but not focused on external processes nor engaged in organized logical thinking; the theta rhythm (4-8 hz) is usually associated with unconscious or nearly unconscious states; it appears as consciousness slips toward unawareness or drowsiness, and is often accompanied by hypnagogic or dream-like images. A fourth frequency band, the delta rhythm (0-4 hz) is primarily associated with deep sleep.In actuality there is no such thing as training in brain-wave control; there is training only in the elicitation of certain subjective states which are accompanied by oscillating voltages in the central nervous system detected on the subject's scalp.39
Hoover
(1971) points out that in discussing biofeedback training, semantics become
a problem in the use of the terms "controlling" one's brain waves. In biofeedback
training a person is not learning to directly control the neuronal electrical
activity in the cerebral cortex. Rather he is learning to control the subjective
or mental events that are indicated by the presence of alpha or theta.
In using the word "control" then, it should be thought of in this way rather
than the usual meaning of the term.
Kamiya
has been investigating the alpha wave and its potential for many years.
He has found that the alpha wave is the most prominent rhythm in the whole
realm of brain activity and that the waves tend to come in bursts of a
few waves to many hundred. In 1958, he compared EEG's made during waking
and sleeping. In these comparisons, he became fascinated with the alpha
waves that came and went in the waking EEG's and wondered if subjects could
be taught awareness of this internal state. He summarizes his work (Stoyva
and Kamiya 1968:201):
The basic working assumptions in the Kamiya alpha control studies and in similar experiments is this: If measurable physiological events are associated with discriminable mental events, than it will be possible to reinforce in the presence of the physiological event, and in so doing: a) enable S to discriminate better whether the physiological event and the associated mental event are present, b) perhaps, also, enable S to acquire some degree of control over the physiological event and the associated mental event.
Barbara
Brown (1970b) has also experimented with alpha wave control and its implications
in psychophysiology. In one study she attempted to identify aspects of
consciousness as moods and feeling states.
(page 316)
The results showed that effective enhancement of alpha activity was more regularly associated with pleasant thoughts and feelings. The uniqueness of the experiment lay in the fact that there was no external stimuli or reinforcement for the subject-instrument feedback circuit. There was no stimulus or response within the feedback circuit that could be isolated as such.
In her new book, Brown (1974) makes a number of important points about biofeedback. The role of biofeedback in muscle relaxation is very healthful, and in addition induces a state of reverie with spontaneous images which may generate desirable energies and emotions. She notes that biofeedback research has led to rediscovery of the human will, which seems to play an important part in many of the therapies derived from biofeedback. Among the most important of these are voluntary control of heart beat and pressure.23 She sees biofeedback as reducing tensions in society generally, and lessening the task of psychologists and counselors; she also feels that it may be useful in inducing meditation and in encouraging creativity. She concludes: "Biofeedback may guide the mind in a journey through inner space into far-distant spheres of consciousness."
4.42 Alpha Wave Training and Its Implications for Meditation24
Meditative states have long been known to produce altered psychological states. Two of the most popular forms of meditation are Yoga and Zen. Yoga means "union" and is usually defined as a higher consciousness achieved through a full rested and relaxed body and a fully awake and relaxed mind. It may be achieved through strenuous physical exercise, focusing on one particular function, i.e. respiration, or by focusing on mental processes. Zen is basically sitting meditation which is a kind of religious exercise.
There is some evidence that an increase in alpha production is generally found in meditative states. Kasamatsu and Hirai (1969) in studies with subjects who had varied experience in Zen training found EEG changes with the appearance of alpha waves without regard to opened eyes. The alpha waves increase in amplitude and decrease in frequency as the meditation progresses. In the later stage of meditation, theta waves also appear. The results seem to indicate that the degree of the subject's Zen state and the number of years spent in Zen training influence the appearance of the waves.
The investigators
indentified four stages which were characterized by changes in the EEG
(1969:493):
Stage I - a slight change which is characterized by the appearance of alpha waves in spite of opened eyes.(page 317)Stage II - the increase in amplitude of persistent alpha waves.
Stage III - the decrease of alpha frequency.
Stage IV - the appearance of the rhythmical theta train, which is the final change of EEG during Zen meditation, but does not always occur.
In
comparisons of the EEG's recorded during meditation with those of hypnotic
trance and sleep, the changes of Stages I, II, and III could not be clearly
differentiated from those seen in hypnagogic state of hypnotic sleep. The
changes were more persistent during meditation and the deeper sleep pattern
did not appear.
Anand, et al. (1961) found similar results in Yogis. Both their normal and resting EEG records showed predominant alpha activity. There was increased alpha amplitude modulation during meditation. The subjects also had the ability to maintain high alpha even if presented with various sensory stimuli during meditation.
The research that has been conducted on biofeedback training has mainly recorded alpha waves from the occipital areas of the cortex. The high amplitude low frequency alpha patterns have been found to shift from the occipital region at the rear of the head to central and frontal regions. Little biofeedback training has been attempted in the central and frontal areas. Usually it is more difficult to develop alpha in these areas while it occurs naturally in most individuals in the occipital area. Even so, it may be possible with biofeedback training to achieve in a few months, what it often takes years of disciplined meditative practice to achieve. Both meditation and alpha control require passive attention, physical relaxation and a feeling of flowing with the inner and outer world.
Wallace and Benson (1972) in a study of subjects who practice "transcendental meditation" found physiological changes as well as increased alpha waves. This type of meditation was taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and does not require great periods of training. In this meditative state, Wallace and Benson found that their subjects manifested the physiological signs of a "wakeful, hypometabolic state." There were reductions in oxygen consumption, carbon dioxide elimination, and the rate and volume of respiration. There was a slight increase in the acidity of the arterial blood, a marked decrease in the blood lactate level. The heart rate slowed, the skin resistance increased and the EEG pattern showed intensification of slow alpha waves with occasional theta wave activity. All of these findings are similar to those found in Yoga and Zen monks who have had fifteen to twenty years of experience in meditation. Perhaps alpha wave training may lead to the ability or produce these physiological changes in a short time span.
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Kawin-Toomim(1972) says in this regard:
She also notes the bond which has been repeatedly established in these pages between self-actualization and the direction of psychotherapy:
The possibility of using alpha control to reach "altered states of consciousness" is an exciting one ... To manipulate alpha is only to alter the occurrence of a natural state. This, apparently, is one of the things meditators do after years of training . . . It is tempting ... to think that ... training such patterns by the quicker, easier biofeedback methods will provide the same total subjective experience.
Alpha feedback is a powerful tool for the psychotherapist. The possibility of training subjects at will to experience the deep reverie and increased ability to visualize as in "awake dreaming," often found in low frequency alpha and theta brain activity, is a valuable tool for psychotherapists who use these experiences with their clients.
Gellhorn
and Kiely (Miller and others, 1973:488) believe that there are similarities
between yoga meditation and REM sleep. They resemble hypnosis in the suspension
of will, in cortical arousal combined with trophotropic relaxation in the
muscles. There is also vivid perceptual imagery and the loss of the sense
of time and space. Stoyva (Miller and others 1973:492) also reports that
hypnagogic imagery associated with 4-7 hertz theta rhythm is of a similar
nature, and associated with muscle relaxation. Green, Green and Walters
(1970) associate this hypnagogic revery state with creativity. The common
element here seems to be an opening of the conscious mind to the preconscious,
and biofeedback appears to be a viable method of making this happen.
Section III of the 1972 Aldine Annual on biofeedback (Shapiro and others 1972:145-191) is devoted to the development of consciousness and creativity through biofeedback methods, containing articles by Budzynski on twilight states, Green on healing and creativity enhancement through alpha, and Nideffer on alpha and the development of human potential. Again, the testimony of this research is to the mutual relationship of these various processes.
It appears to us that the claims of alpha wave biofeedback to facilitate the mastery of meditation through operant conditioning techniques is an assertion which needs to be examined very seriously. After all, alpha wave training is a technique which may be used with any meditational approach. In this day of instant everything, it may even
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be possible to speed up the process of self-actualization by such a means. At least the contingency deserves a careful exploration. From what has been said previously, it is obvious that the facilitation of the alpha state may not only bring one to the terminal of the "great computer," but that it will promote increased concentration, learning, and recall on the cognitive side, and pleasure and relaxation on the affective. There is not space here in this discussion on meditation to document these possibilities more fully, but there are good grounds for such speculation. We should not conclude, however, without at least one paragraph devoted to the relation between biofeedback and creativity.
4.43 Alpha and Creativity
There is perhaps some correlation between alpha-theta output and creativity. A state of reverie which is described by Green, Green, and Walters (1970) as a state of inward-turned abstract attention or internal scanning may be related to theta and low-frequency alpha. In this state there seems to be an increase of hypnagogic and dream-like images, pictures or words which must seem to spring into the mind. Many creative people such as writer Aldous Huxley, mathematician Poincare, and poet A. E. Housman, report that it is through a reverie state that their creative inspirations have come. Some researchers believe that creative persons have stumbled upon and then developed to a high degree the ability to visualize in the area in which they are creative.
Hard evidence on the relation of alpha generation to enhanced openness including creativity, ESP, and so forth, is not available. Honorton and Carbone (1971) failed to find a significant relationship between alpha generation and ESP. Lewis and Schmedler (1971) did find some relationship between high alpha and ESP, but they suggest that the relationship is not simple, and that each variable interacts with other factors. Engstrom and others (1970) in an experiment attempting the establishment of a relationship between EEG feedback training and hypnotic susceptibility concluded that alpha and hypnotic susceptibility are similar subjective states. This area would profit by more definitive research.
It is possible that both the euphoria and the alpha waves are mere epiphenomena indicating that the subject is in an altered state of consciousness which is particularly conducive to terminal access to the collective computer, and hence to telepathy, healing, precognition, and the rest of the psychic powers. Watson (1973:257) suspects that the connection between telepathy and the alpha rhythm is crucial, and cites the Russian experiments of Popov which indicated that
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each time telepathy occurred, alpha rhythms were found. He concludes (1973:256): "It seems certain that both telepathy and psychokinesis occur only under certain psychological conditions and that these are the ones marked by the production of brain waves of a particular frequency." The theta rhythm seems to be the physiological correlate of psychokinesis, and the alpha rhythm does the same for telepathy.
In concluding
the proper place of alpha wave biofeedback in the continuum of this chapter,
one is struck by the fact that the symptoms of the state are much more
cognitive than otherwise, and that it tends to resemble more that of meditation
than it does that of dissociation. All evidence of the earlier suggestibility
of the trance state has been lost, except the "passivity," and far from
there being an excursion of the ego, it is obviously present, and functioning.
In these characteristics the alpha state can hardly be said to represent
a type of developmental forcing, and perhaps the worst that can be said
of it is that it is a technique in search of a rationale. Indeed, the evidence
from research in this section is so persuasive that it suggests that the
presence of alpha might be regarded as the boundary marker between the
dissociative trance of developmental forcing, and the more positive states
of creativity and psychedelia.