(Those who read this book are likely to be divided into two classes: those who are prepared to accept the evidence for ESP and psychic phenomena generally, and those who are not so prepared. The second group is urged to read the Introduction; the first group may wish to skip it, and go directly to the explanations found in Chapter 1.)


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INTRODUCTION

0.1 THINGS ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEM

"The whole universe is 'maya' Illusion."
-Bhavagad Gita

When the great Lavoisier was told that a meteorite had fallen somewhere in France, his brilliance did not save him from a classic blunder: "Stones cannot fall from the sky, because there are no stones in the sky," he replied. Thus do even the most intelligent among us subordinate the acceptance of data to imperfect theory. To enable us to better acceptance of unusual data, it is obviously necessary to expand our models. For experiences, like guests in a house, can be received only if the host has concepts roomy enough to accommodate them. Otherwise, as history clearly shows, they are "explained away." Before beginning our analysis, it hence is expedient to look at the possible expansion of two commonplace hypotheses about natural events.

The first issue has to do with the degree of reality assigned to such extraordinary (i.e., psychic or psychedelic) events. Ordinary belief is that only those events and percepts perceived during normal states of consciousness can be considered "real," since one meaning of reality is frequency or "normality." This concept is complex because the idea of errors of measurement and levels of validity, while familiar to psychologists and other scientists, has scarcely been grasped by the popular mind (c.f. the usual statement of a "nonsignificant" difference).

The second issue, an even grander one, has to do with how much we violate "0ccam's Razor" in a cosmology to account for the world of experience. Greek mythology is pretty redundant on this score; many of us suspect that positivistic scientific atheism is also insufficient to account for all the alleged facts. Between redundancy and insufficiency there is a great gulf which ought to be filled so that we would have a hypothesis, necessary but barely sufficient to cover the cases. The theory must be sufficient, for as Lavoisier's comment showed, if it is not, the unusual cases will be brushed aside.

A favorite question of sceptics upon delving into non-ordinary experience is, "Are all these ideas real?" Let such a person ask himself seriously, "Are parallels of latitude, electrons, and isotropic

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lines real?" Each of these concepts has characteristics removed to some extent from the tangible qualities of matter. The parallel is a convention, the electron a bundle of waves not having position, the isotropic fails to make an angle with any line it intersects, but each is real in the sense that it imparts meaning to observations within the context of a given scientific theory. The fact that it cannot be seen or easily conceptualized because of its paradoxical properties is no reason to deny its existence.

A wave of light behaves as if it were a wave; it also behaves as if it were a series of quanta particles called photons. What is light ? We do not know. We know only that it behaves in two different and apparently incompatible ways, each of which appears to be a valid way of conceptualizing light, but neither of which is obviously the whole truth. If light (and the electron) - among the simplest things in the universe - are this complicated, can we really expect to understand ultimate reality, as distinct from a quasi-reality which we define by its behavioral properties? The quasi-reality is a concept of ours - a theory (for example) to account for some of the properties of light; it should not be worshipped or venerated; it should be regarded as a guess, to be corrected, amended, and enlarged by those who come after us. In exactly the same way, the ideas and constructs in this book are not revelation, ultimate truth, religion, or anything like that; they are primitive guesses in a developing field, hopefully less superstitious than that which they attempt to replace, but certainly more erroneous than the refinements which will follow them.

One thing which rational man rarely seems to question is the "giveness" or objectivity of nature. But since man's mind is part of the noumenon of the universe, then it can interfere in the operation of that universe, and hence nature is not "loose and separate" but subject to the influence of mind, at least in part. We are told that on the astral plane "thoughts are things," and that the instant a thought is entertained, it is objectified. Obviously conditions on the astral plane are much different than here in the flesh, but Shakespeare's dictum that "There is nothing either bad or good but thinking makes it so," may be true in a different and more profound way than expected. It may be true that in general, "objects" are affected to a lesser or greater extent by thought of mind. In our plane, because few people believe that objects are so affected, and fewer yet try to affect objects, they are in general not affected. In other realms, more interaction between knower and object may be accepted.

The noumenonist view has very distinct advantages for the philosopher. It rids him of the nagging questions which constantly beset the investigation of psychic phenomena, "Is this phenomenon real?" It also provides a rational explanation for the miracles performed by masters in seeming defiance of physical laws. We were prepared for relativity in space-time by the spinning electron-cloud and the two

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clocks on different rockets running slow with respect to each other. We are likewise ready to admit, as did Sullivan, that the observer is also a participant.

Imagine that a high school sophomore is just being introduced to Euclidean geometry. Some misguided adult as well teaches him about non-Euclidean geometry where there can be either no parallels or more than one to a given line through an outside point. Unless he were a very bright student, he might well become confused. A similar situation exists when attempts are made to introduce most of humanity to the next world before they have succeeded in comprehending the laws of this one. The cognizing of experience by the human mind functions to arrange, organize, and select that experience so as to discover meaning in it. The discovery of meaning results in the interior benefit of increased mental health, and in the exterior benefit of increased control over nature. But cognizance of an experience too difficult or chaotic for one to make meaningful (as in drug-induced psychedelia) increases the opposite tendency, resulting in the interior harm of decreased mental health and the exterior harm of decreased control over the phenomena.

One of the possible reasons we may have been placed in this vivency is to cognize (and so bring order out of) it, so that we may be able latter to cognize more complex experiences. Sexual function before one has either matured or solved the identity crisis, results at best in masturbation, or at worst in other sexual activity in which love and tenderness, the redeeming graces of the stage, are completely absent. In a similar way, psychedelic function before one has matured or solved some of the antecedent problems of internal integrity, results at best in an arid wandering in a world of spirits, and at worst in psychological chaos, loss of personal integrity and control of one's mind and body. We should learn to stand before we walk, and walk before we run.

Let us suppose that Aristotle and some modern physicists were to compare views on the nature of physical reality.

In place of the rather simplistic ancient views of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water, the modern physicist would probably emphasize:

 
1. The nature of material reality is extraordinarily complicated, consisting of as many as thirty basic units of which none can be apprehended by the unaided senses, and most are so esoteric and fleeting as to be barely perceptible by the most advanced instrumentation.

2. While within this multi-diversified universe, there is some semblance of order, and some possibility of prediction, the full study of physics reveals as many continuing mysteries as it resolves old riddles.

3. There seem to be material objects of about as many magnitudes greater than man as there are objects of as many magnitudes less.

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This fact suggests that the present bounds of the universe are limited by man's still awakening understanding of it.

4. The everyday concepts of firmness, hardness, opaqueness, weight, form, and impermeability (which give the material universe a certain comforting quality), are seen in the light of modern physics to be illusions of perception.

5. Modern views of the universe sometimes result in complementary or paradoxical viewpoints, both of which appear to be correct, and each of which seem to violate some aspects of naive intuition (e.g. the wave-corpuscular theory of light; the motion aspects of the theory of relativity).

6. In the world of physics, some very odd concepts (e.g. the mathematical symbols, "e," "pi," and "i," Planck's constant, and his quantum theory, "strangeness" numbers, "the eightfold path" "e=mc2") appear to be central in the development of theory.


If these unusual statements hold in the material physical universe, may not a similar set of statements hold for the non-material universe? Blofeld (1970:95-99) points out the complexity of deciding what is real and what is unreal: in a long explanation from which we abstract:
 

In a mystical context the distinction between what is 'real' and what is 'unreal' is never sharp, and perhaps not meaningful . . . Once we accept the doctrine that the entire universe is mentally created, we are bound to recognize that all sentient beings including ourselves are partakers in the act of creation.


Watts (1972:355) says:
 

I wonder then, how much consideration you give to the fact that most of your own assumptions about the good life and reality come directly from the scientific naturalism of the nineteenth century, from the strictly metaphysical hypothesis, that the universe is a mechanism obeying Newtonian laws, and that there is no other god beside it.
0.2 CONTINGENCY

Let us now turn to another aspect of theory: truth-value. We like to believe, rather naively, that every statement is either entirely true or entirely false, but as the study of confidence levels in either physical or mental measurement quickly shows, this dichotomy is not viable. Some degree of contingency or doubt exists in all statements; the issue is at what point can we begin to use contingent statements in theory? This problem has been satisfactorily solved in physical and mental measurements by confidence levels, notably the 5%, 1% , and

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0.1% (the 5% level means that if you accept this statement you will be wrong only 5% of the time).

Naturally, we would like confidence levels to be as high as possible; but in placing confidence levels too high we screen out the acceptance of phenomena which are almost certainly true. Hence, in true pragmatic fashion, the "goodness" or value of the statement is a significant aspect. Part of the greater confidence we have in the statement "The sun will rise tomorrow" over "Murphy will rise tomorrow" is that the value of the sun's rising is so much more significant.

Hence, it is important to distinguish between two kinds of contingency; adverse and beneficial. To illustrate, ask yourself how you would react to each of the following chances if you were asked to take them ?
 

1. You are asked to eat in a restaurant where one out of every one hundred diners is poisoned.
2. You are notified that it is possible that upon application, you will inherit money from the estate of a distant relative.
Number 1 is the adverse contingency which most would avoid. When results prejudicial to health are involved we rightly demand the level of confidence must be as high as possible - much higher than the 99% level herein indicated. On the other hand, in the second statement the only untoward effect is the trouble of inquiry, and one would be foolish not to explore the possibility even if it were much lower than 1%. When there are large potential gains to be realized from a contingency which involves no (or little) opposing loss, we are justified in accepting (and in practice do) a much less "safe" contingency than we do when the adverse contingency is more severe. As a matter of fact, the position is relatively proportional to the gain/loss ratio.

Let us take another example. There is debate over whether vitamin C in larger than MDR dosages is useful as a cold and cardiac preventive. But since the potential harm and cost seems minimal, and the potential gain seems great, one is justified of adopting a liberal attitude. The gain/loss ratio here is somewhere between 10/1 and 100/1. A rule of thumb for translating this into action would be a dosage whose upper limit is more than twice what the MDR represents. So we conclude that if there is a chance between .01 and .1 that vitamin C is useful as noted, we are prudent to use it, although its value is far from being established at the 5% or the 1% level of confidence.

When it comes to differences between faith, belief, and facts, other differences in validity become important. Notice for example the sets of statements in A, B, and C:

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A1. There are angels all around us.
A2. The world will end in 1999.
A3. God fills all space.
Bl. There were pre-Columbian European visitors to the New World.
B2. Fermat's last theorem is true.
B3. Continents drift on the surface of the earth.
Cl. The square of the sides of a rt triangle equals the sq. of the hyp.
C2. Bad money drives out good money.
C3. PVT' = P'V'T.
Three different validity levels are evident in A, B, and C. In A, the statements may or may not be true; they seem at this time to be impossible of proof; each is an article of belief or faith. In B, we have a hypothesis for which there is some evidence, at least enough to have convinced some people, but full proof is lacking at this time. In C, we have a generally accepted law, a principle, a theorem, or a generalization.

Two important realizations are now apparent:
 

a) It is difficult to set the boundary conditions for "real" phenomena; indeed, what we think of as solid and tangible in the material world is a misapprehension, on another level of reality.
b) The truth value of statements, far from being all true or all false, must be measured in terms of confidence levels, and the acceptance of these levels is relative depending to some extent on the goodness of outcome.

One does not need to be unusually well versed in either science or parapsychology to realize that the ordinary positivistic scientific materialism of the last century simply is unable to explain even the facts of science, let alone those of parapsychology. The concept that matter was "loose and separate" that it was made up of little hard indivisible balls, or that the laws applying to the microcosm were similar to and could be intuited from those applying to the macrocosm - all these ideas have been swept away by such mundane concepts as the relativity theory, the quantum theory, the Heisenberg principle, and the proliferation of fundamental particles posited by modern physics, to say nothing of the discoveries in parapsychology. Carl Becker, (1932), sums it all up well:
 
It is one of the engaging ironies of modern thought that the scientific method which was once fondly hoped would banish mystery from the world, leaves it every day more inexplicable than ever.
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and Roszak (1972:74) quotes Manas to the same effect:
 

The 300-year experiment by which western man attempted to achieve absolute certainty by barring from the real world the non-objective facts of subjective experience has not worked.


Carl Rogers (1973:385) in a recent important statement comes to the same conclusion that there "is more than one reality" and feels that the mystic may be nearer right than the psychologist. LeShan (1969) in a paper which started out to destroy the myth of other realities than the physical world, ended up by constructing a theory which pointed to a reality outside time and space, in which the paranormal "sensitive," the mystic, and the modern physicist were all at home  - "a reality based not upon our senses, but on our inner perceptions."

If scientific theories have proved insufficient to explain the universe, anthropomorphic religious doctrines have proved equally unsatisfactory. Existentialism is proof that the concept of the Eigenwelt - the inner world of man - does not need conventional sectarianism for buttressing, but is a self-validating experience which stands on its own right. Let us see if we cannot make the admission of the Eigenwelt and psychedelia more acceptable to many natural and behavioral scientists. To do this we need to select a world-view hypothesis, which will explain a maximum of data with a minimum of theory, and which will further be amenable to change, addition, and discovery. The following hypothesis is such an example.

We wish to explicate a concept called "The Spirit of Man," which is poorly defined because it is either identified as God (in most past holy writings) or as some paranormal aspect of the self (in most psychological and philosophical books). The concept is also poorly defined because in the growing child it is first associated with the untoward emotions of awe, anxiety, or dread which serve to inhibit curiosity and understanding. Sullivan (1954) gave it the name "not-me" to describe uncanny dissociated types of behavior, often found in children's nightmares and night terrors, and often seen in schizophrenic-type experiences of older "compartmentalized" people who have not been able to establish comfortable relationships with the preconscious part of themselves.

Troward (1909) identified the "subjective mind" as having the dual properties of unlimited intelligence and power, but without personality, hence subject to the will of each of us when properly related to it. We identify the concept as "The Spirit of Man" indicating the species' intelligence imbedded in the preconscious of each of us. Strictly speaking, there is only one preconscious (Jung's collective unconscious), and this same entity which we have called the Spirit of Man is the protector and maintainer of his health and vitality, and hence the source of his creativity and psychedelic experiences. Powerful as it is, it is within conscious control, and the regnancy of man over

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nature resides in this potential control he may exercise over the genius of his species. Such a concept lifts man to a new level of thought and action, and gives to him godlike qualities and responsibilities. It constitutes the next evolutionary advance and ushers in the psychedelic age.

This concept can be summarized as follows: That the Spirit of Man which we know as the preconscious,
 

1. is a unity, and a plenum,
2. exists in a state of complete suggestibility,
3. has complete memory of all matters, past, present, and future, and
4. is able to control, maintain, and safeguard the body and its health, and
5. produces phantasms of the living or dead or the content of dreams, and
6. influences conditions and events.
Despite this awesome power, the spirit of man needs the conscious will for proper direction, and these ideal conditions of "mystic marriage" of the two minds obtain:
 
1. in all at the moment of death,
2. in yogis and other advanced adepts who have reached full powers of the psychedelic stage through satori, samadhi, and similar at-one-ment of the conscious and preconscious aspects,
3. potentially in all (during the hypnogogic state between waking and sleep); but only in those trained to hold conscious will while drowsing,
4. in those under hypnotic spells, or in trance states, under the control of another person,
5. in certain spontaneous dissociated states.
Under these conditions, the following processes often take place: out of body experiences, traveling clairvoyance, telepathy, precognitions, knowledge of secret information, ESP and PK effects, psychic healing, apparitions, zenoglossia, (or speaking with tongues), and the entire range of psychic and psychedelic phenomena.

Murphy (1963:33) states the claim for this process in popular parlance:

 
Your subjective mind sees without the use of the natural organs of vision. It has the capacity of clairvoyance, and clairaudience. Your subjective mind can leave the body, travel to distant lands, and bring back information . . . Through your subjective mind, you can read the thoughts of others, read the
contents of sealed envelopes and closed safes . . .


What the Spirit of Man needs for full expression is not an extension of its powers (which are already infinite by our standards), but rationalization and control of them by the enlightened will and con-

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sciousness of perfected individuals. This blending of the individual will and consciousness with the immense power of the preconscious signifies a mystic marriage which has symbiotic values for both the individual and the collective spirit. Hence, the chief issue before us is not merely an orgiastic abandonment to the thrills of the psychedelic state, but a more-or-less rational control of it. We say "more-or-less" because the marriage of the individual will and collective spirit produces (as in most good marriages) a unity which represents the outcome of agreement and accord rather than domination by either. While this unity is not the same as the individual's freedom before marriage, it possesses "team" elements of power release and complexity which make it much more potent and complete.

In positing such an entity, we claim no infallibility; even that the concept is completely accurate. We regard the concept as a useful pragmatic construct, which appears to be the minimum article of belief necessary to advance scientific investigations. We have no quarrel with others who posit grander cosmologies; theirs may well be preferred over ours by some. We merely suggest that the construct is valuable as a method of getting some advance in a developing area of research.

Because we have been conditioned to think of "God" as "He" and not "it," and as perfected and completed instead of being in the process, we find it difficult to imagine a (divine) entity which changes and becomes more complete with our own developmental stages. Yet that developmental process in the individual is in one sense the effort of the Spirit of Man to perfect and complete itself, rising to the level of rational will and consciousness through the developing life experience of each one of us. We thus experience in each successive developmental stage of our lives a more completed and developed Spirit of Man and hence are more continually comfortable with it. This comfort increases as we gradually learn how in some measure to control the preconscious. The "not-me" which, through various kinds of dissociated experiences (principally nightmares), frightens the child, is an almost completely chaotic manifestation of experience. The preconscious experienced through alpha wave meditation is more tractable and more in rapport with, and in control of, the external environment.

The function of rational consciousness, and particularly the will which results from self-conscious involvement in the world of nature, is not just for the experiencing of nature, but for its understanding and control. If man does not use his self-consciousness to harness and employ the preconscious (which is the embedded Spirit of Man), he wastes his own opportunity and also deprives the Spirit of Man from rising in this one instance to the self-conscious level. Man is necessary for the evolution of the universe! Indeed, he is inevitable.

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While we have enunciated the Spirit of Man concept, we do not insist on it in preference to the older and more established theory enunciated by The Perennial Philosophy. The two theories are complementary with respect to time, the former asserting that creation is not yet accomplished, and the latter insisting that it is completed. Both are probably part-truths, like the wave and corpuscular theory of light. In projective geometry the properties of the points at infinity are anomalous: do they form a line, a circle, or what? The properties of limits are generally exceptional, and so it should come as no surprise to us that from our position of finiteness there are at least two equally valid ways of looking at infinite reality. We have dwelt on the former theory because it needs more popularization. In view of what has been said about reality in the preceding section, the writer is eclectic enough to regard these various ways of looking at reality as somewhat interchangeable, depending upon our needs for elegance or redundancy in the theory at any given instant. The Spirit of Man theory and the full Deist position both account for the phenomena of psychedelia; the former is the more frugal; the latter more elegant. Consider what was said by Einstein (in reply to a rabbi about the death of a child): (New York Times, March 29, 1972, page 24, column 6)
 

A human being is a part of the 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.
This introductory chapter has been mainly an iconoclastic and destructive one, attempting to tear down some well cherished beliefs. It has certainly proved nothing. It may well have offended. What purpose has it served, and why has it been necessary, particularly at this spot? It has been placed here deliberately in an attempt to help the reader break out of the rut of conventional thought, so that he can accept with an open mind some of the strange data which we have in store for him. For experiences, like guests in a house, can be received only if the mind has concepts roomy enough to accommodate them. Otherwise, as history clearly shows, they are "explained

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away." One is reminded of Mark Twain's comment that every new idea goes through three stages, "First people say it is impossible; then they say it conflicts with the Bible; then they say they have always believed it."

0.3 PROSPECTUS

Since this book represents a continuation of the concepts developed in an earlier volume The Development of the Creative Individual, it appears appropriate here to set down in summary form the major arguments with which that book and this one are concerned.
 

1. Developmental process is best conceptualized as a periodic succession of affective-cognitive developmental stages in a tripartite cycle emphasizing in order "the world," "the ego," and "the other" (for full table see page 51). The Eriksonian stages represent the affective developmental aspects. The Piagetian stages with the addition of creativity, psychedelia, and illumination, represent the cognitive side. Escalation from stage to stage involves succession, discontinuity, emergence, differentiation, and integration. Creativity is thus a stage function. This argument is more fully explicated in The Development of the Creative Individual, and reprised in Chapter 2.

2. Psychedelia (mind-expansion) is also a developmental stage. Since psychedelic cognition implies experience in the psychic world, it is necessary to investigate that world in as scientific a manner as possible. This argument is explicated in Chapter 3.

3. Since what exists can be measured, it is necessary to begin the measurement of the development of self-actualization into the psychedelic stage, as we have previously begun the measurement of the creative stage. Some early attempts at this measurement are discussed in Chapter 4.

4. Dysplasia is our term for developmental arrest which holds back self-actualizing potential. Dysplasia theory has important implications for psychedelic activity, which are discussed in Chapter 5

5. The converse of developmental dysplasia is developmental forcing which attempts (by such means as drugs, hypnosis, possession or alpha wave feedback) to accelerate an individual into an advanced stage (such as psychedelia) for which he may not be developmentally prepared. Aspects and consequences of such developmental forcing are reviewed in Chapter 6.

6. Psychedelia is a stage on the road to self-actualization, and as such, it partakes of some of the "powers" and "glories" of that quest. These matters are discussed in a final chapter.