CHAOS AS THE UNIVERSAL SOLVENT
Re-Creational Ego Death in Tantric Consciousness
by Iona Miller, CHAOSOPHY 1993,
Ch. 3
This article appears in PSYCHEDELICS REIMAGINED,
Thomas Lyttle, Ed., Introduction by Timothy Leary, Autonomedia, NY, 1999.
ABSTRACT: There is a generic process in nature and consciousness
which dissolves and regenerates all forms. The essence of this transformative,
morphological process is chaotic--purposeful yet inherently unpredictable
holistic repatterning. The Great Work of the art of alchemy is the
creation of the Philosopher's Stone, a symbol of wholeness and integration.
The liquid form of the Stone, called the Universal Solvent, dissolves all
old forms like a rushing stream, and is the self-organizing matrix for
the rebirth of new forms. It is thus a metaphor or model for the
dynamic process of transformation, ego death and re-creation.
The alchemical operation SOLUTIO, called "the root of alchemy," corresponds
with the element water. It implies a flowing state of consciousness,
"liquification" of consciousness, a return to the womb for rebirth, a baptism
or healing immersion in the vast ocean of deep consciousness. It
facilitates feedback via creative regression: de-structuring, or destratification
by immersion in the flow of psychic imagery through identification with
more and more primal forms or patterns--a psychedelic, expanded state.
Chaos Theory provides a metaphorical language for describing the flowing
dynamics of the chaotic process of psychological transformation.
"All substances are part of my own consciousness.
This consciousness is vacuous, unborn, and unceasing."
Thus meditating, allow the mind to rest in the uncreated state. Like
the pouring of water into water, the mind should be allowed its own easy
mental posture in its natural, unmodified condition, clear and vibrant.
--Leary, Metzner, Alpert; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE
To summarize, I have spoken of seven major aspects of SOLUTIO symbolism:
(1) return to the womb or primal state; (2) dissolution, dispersal, dismemberment;
(3) containment of a lesser thing by a greater; (4) rebirth, rejuvenation,
immersion in the creative energy flow; (5) purification ordeal; (6) solution
of problems; and (7) melting or softening process. These different
aspects overlap. Several or all of them may make up different facets
of a single experience. Basically it is the ego's confrontation with
the unconscious that brings about SOLUTIO.
--Edward Edinger, ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE
Tantra and alchemy spring from the same root -- the generic process of
the liquification of consciousness, in which the old rigid self dissolves
into the revivifying waters of the fountainhead of the divine source, and
renews itself in this bath, and is reborn in renascent form. It means
a process of ego dissolution and personality deconstruction, swimming upstream
against the flow of the stream of consciousness to our Unborn roots, beyond
our personalistic behaviors, emotions, thoughts, and beliefs about who
"we" are. Tantra is one elegant means of achieving cosmic consciousness,
of communing with the mystic Source.
In the alchemical operation of water, solutio, the body is joined
with the soul and spirit. The skin-boundary dissolves into visceral
as well as spiritual perception. Awareness of physical processes
may be greatly amplified, appearing as impressions, intuitions, sensations,
sounds, odors. The body is always speaking silently. Through
this raw, physical expression, that which was solid becomes liquified,
dissolved, deliteralized. The concrete image of the body "morphs"
into the flow of pure energy, in a variation of Transubstantiation.
It is the "rapture" of being siezed up into the heavenly realm.
THE MEDICINE OF PHILOSOPHERS
Alchemy had one great prescription for the accomplishment of the Great
Work: "Solve et Coagula"--reduce or dissolve all to its primary,
most fundamental essence and embody that creative, holistic spirit.
The ancient alchemists sought to transform "lead" into "gold." We
repeat this process as modern alchemists when we seek the transformative
medium which allows us to recognize our rigidities ("lead") and facilitates
our healing and expression of our full creative potential ("gold").
That medium is the ever-flowing river of our consciousness.
The organic, regenerative process of "re-creational ego death" is common
to mysticism, experiential psychology, and psychedelic journeys.
Spiritual exploration, or soul travel, is shared by all three modes of
immersion in the universal stream of consciousness. They are all
variations on the theme of the consciousness journey, and echo our shamanic
roots, and the mythemes of eternal return and hero/heroine. Participants
reach a deep, integral level, and direct experience of Higher Power, often
merging with the Creation or the Creator.
All these modes facilitate psychedelic consciousness, though any given
experience may vary in duration and depth. Their prescribed frequency
varies: meditators are advised to "die daily;" in psychotherapy
once a month may be enough for regenerative therapy; psychedelic use varies
from single experiences, to monthly, to annually. Despite different
modes of induction, all these experiences reflect the illusory nature of
time, space, and ego as reality constructs. The primary nature of
consciousness is revealed.
The word psychedelic has its roots in the Greek psyche, soul, and
delos,
visible, evident. It is direct evidence of the soul, the pure manifestation
of soul. Stace (1960) identifies nine qualities of the psychedelic
experience as follows: 1) unity of all things; 2) transformation of space
and time; 3) deeply felt positive mood; 4) sacredness; 5) objectivity and
reality; 6) paradoxicality; 7) alleged ineffability; 8) transiency, and
9) persisting positive changes in subsequent behavior.
In the practice of mysticism there is identification with progressively
more subtle "bodies" or vehicles of consciousness, culminating in a transform
from a mental or causal body to a vehicle of pure Light. In experiential
psychotherapy, transformation results from deepening within the flow of
psychic imagery, progressively identifying with more primal forms, and
ultimately with formlessness. In tantric and psychedelic experience,
expansion of consciousness dissolves ego boundaries leading to morphological
transformations and ecstatic communion.
In alchemy, one sought not only to find or create the Stone, but also to
apply it, or use it creatively in the everyday world. Now, we might
speak of integrating or actualizing the results of our transformations
in daily life. Thus, self-actualization or self-realization implies
the grounding of the spiritual fruits of inner exploration.
The liquid form of the Philosopher's Stone was known as the UNIVERSAL SOLVENT.
According to the alchemists, the operation of solutio (liquification)
has a twofold effect: it causes old forms to disappear and new regenerate
forms to emerge. To a rigid consciousness, the primal ocean of the
unconscious is experienced as chaotic, violent, irrational processes of
generation and destruction.
Through "creative regression," the generic form of ego death, consciousness
recycles, recursively bending back upon itself. The direction is
a recapitulation of, a re-experiencing of sequences from earlier life,
conception and birth experience, ancestral awareness, genetic and physiological
recognitions, molecular and atomic perception, and quantum consciousness.
As consciousness explores and expands, ego dissolves. Pure consciousness,
the fundamental luminosity, is the ground state of unborn form. The
generic purpose of ego death is to liberate our embodied being, precipitating
communion with and re-patterning by the Whole. When all forms finally
dissolve into unconditioned consciousness, the ground state of the Nature
Mind is revealed as the mystic Void, the womb of creation.
When the constructed forms which hold personality together are voluntarily
relinquished, consciousness "liquifies" and rapidly moves toward the unconditioned
state. Though easy to say, it is sometimes difficult to achieve such
liberation from the mental-conceptual activity of the nervous system.
When we do, the quiescent nervous system is open and receptive to the conscious
recognition of pure energy transforms with no interpretations.
The Universal Solvent dissolves problems, heals, allows life to flow in
new, creative patterns. These new patterns embody the evolutionary
dynamic. According to chaos theory, free-flowing energy is capable
of self-organization. In consciousness this means that the obstructions
to free flowing energy must first be dissolved. Through re-creational
ego death, consciousness dissolves into healing communion with the whole
of existence, renewing itself, emerging with a new creative potential.
The need for the periodic destruction of outmoded systems implies the value
of recycling consciousness through death/rebirth experience. The universal
solvent is not ordinary water, but "philosophical" water, the water of
life, aqua permanens, aqua mercurialis. It is also the panacea, "elixer
vitae," "tincture," or universal medicine. To periodically dip
into these healing waters has a tonic, rejuvenating effect which pervades
all aspects of being, like a soothing balm.
This divine water signifies the return of The Feminine, a reflective consciousness
with inner awareness and archetypal spiritual perceptions. This Feminine
Divinity is the Anima Mundi, or Soul of the World, the universal animating
principle, the upwelling spring of the creative Imagination, the dynamic
flow of imagery, pattern, and form. This dynamic has been known as
Isis, Shakti, Maya, Shekinah, Sophia, Demeter/Persephone, Mary.
In psychedelic mysticism, the animating principle is being referred to
as Gaian Consciousness (Abraham, 1992), which we might view as a rebirth
of ancient ecstatic, communal consciousness. It is the psychobiological
basis of deep ecology, the flow of relationships. The return of chaos
heralds the "greening of consciousness," the greening of the cultural wasteland.
Hillman (1985) describes the anima not as a projection of, but rather the
projector of psyche. We are contained within Her fantasy, not She
within ours. Grinnell (1973) describes the transformative process
of solutio which facilitates the fluid, mobile basis of consciousness:
For aqua permanens is a mode of the arcane substance; its symbol is
water or sea-water, an all-pervading essence of anima mundi, the innermost
and secret numinosum in man and the universe, that part of God which formed
the quintessence and real substance of Physis, at once the highest supercelestial
waters of wisdom and the spirit of life pervading inorganic matter.
The arcane descriptors of this paradoxical liquid Stone are cryptic, couched
in metaphor. But what does it mean experientially and pragmatically?
How does this chaotic transformative process engineer our consciousness?
The divine water, as a liquid symbol of the Self, can be experienced in
many ways. It has been described as innocuously as the "stream
of consciousness," and as poetically as the "Heart of The River of Created
Forms."
Solutio implies the liquification of consciousness through the dissolution
of rigidities which inhibit free flow. They include roles, game patterns,
defense strategies, rigid attitudes and beliefs, interpretations, complexes,
"old" myths, and "frozen" energy surrounding traumas which manifests as
fear and pain.
Fossilized or ossified energies create obstructions to free flow, like
boulders in a stream produce turbulence. Destructuring transformative
processes can dissolve them, increasing the sense of flow. This "liquified"
consciousness is psychedelic, a nonordinary expanded awareness which dissolves
fixations and habits, and loosens cramped attitudes.
Mystic ecstasy, or the psychedelic state is mind-manifesting, consciousness
expanding. It dissolves the identification of our consciousness with
our histories, bodies, emotions, thoughts, and even beliefs. We are
free to explore myriad forms, structures, and patterns, and/or become formless,
resting in that unborn, unconditioned, unmodified healing state.
We experience the essence of other forms of existence. The Oneness
of all life and existence is directly experienced through a variety of
transformations ranging from plant and animal identifications to planetary
and universal consciousness.
Entering the turbulent flow of the stream of consciousness, we can ride
its currents back to the Source, pure unconditioned cosmic consciousness.
We can imbibe the life-giving qualities of this "water" through mind-expanding
experiential contact with this deep consciousness.
The transformative process is also reflected in our modern physical worldview
as chaos theory, which we can view as a modern "myth," a new metaphor for
the dynamics of consciousness. Chaos is ubiquitous in nature, pervading
all dynamic processes, perturbing them unpredictably. Chaos theory
shows us that nature is continually unfolding new forms from the chaotic
matrix of creation.
Our dynamic consciousness is an essentially chaotic process. Chaos
tracks a time evolution with sensitive dependence on initial conditions.
When we "return" experientially to the "initial conditions" of our existence,
our whole being is holistically repatterned. Our historical limitations
are superceded by the creative power of the eternal Now.
We can allow chaos, as the universal solvent, to liquify consciousness
and re-create ourselves. This presumes a therapeutic atmosphere,
a "safe" set and setting, because each phase of the journey is an encounter
with uncertainty.
The journey into deep consciousness appears inherently chaotic because
the state of uncertainty pervades each moment of transition. Underlying
moments of transience there are momentary blanks in awareness--little voids--flickering
microstates which repattern each phase. Whether the experience is
one of loss of personal boundaries or direct perception of stark, raw reality,
or visionary dreams, there is no predicting where the chaotic orbit of
consciousness will roam next.
To embrace chaos in our consciousness journeys, therefore means to cooperate
and flow with the transformative process, opening ourselves to our deepest
emergent potential. It's O.K. to let go periodically and temporarily
become unstructured nothingness and open to holistic re-patterning.
Chaos is self-organizing, self-iterating, and self-generating. It
is an evolutionary force. The tendency of new forms emerging from
chaos is toward a higher degree of adaptation, hence evolution (Kauffmann,
1991). This "recycling" of consciousness leads to a self-referential
vortex.
Chaotic systems revolve around nexus points, known as strange attractors,
because of their unpredictable quality. Rather than being "point-like,"
they are more like vortices within vortices. The Philosopher's Stone
is like a psychic lodestone (or vortex). It acts like an inner magnet,
ordering the contents of our consciousness around it (through feedback
loops) in chaotic, yet meaningful fashion.
The Philosopher's Stone may thus be seen as a "strange attractor" in the
life of anyone engaged in the quest for transformation. It is an
instinctual attraction toward processes which dissolve the ego and liquify
consciousness, leading to transpersonal experience after symbolic death/rebirth.
Freedom in the exploration of imagery comes from the creative capacity
to experience loss.
Experientially, it appears as being channeled into the swirling mass of
interacting symbols, an overwhelming vortex of pure information.
We are sucked inexorably into interaction with the self-symbol, sucked
into ourselves, like flotsam is pulled into a whirlpool. This is
the vortex of the system, the vortex of self, where all levels cross.
It overwhelms or tangles the mental processes, the self-imaging processes
that maintain the illusion of stable personality and individual boundaries.
In solutio, the body is joined with the soul and spirit. The
skin-boundary dissolves into visceral as well as spiritual perception.
Awareness of physical processes may be greatly amplified, appearing as
impressions, intuitions, sensations, sounds, odors. The body is always
speaking silently. Through this raw, physical expression, that which
was solid becomes liquified, dissolved, deliteralized. The concrete
image of the body "morphs" into the flow of pure energy, in a variation
of Transubstantiation. It is the "rapture" of being siezed up into
the heavenly realm.
The flow of dynamic energy from the deep Self reawakens and activates the
body, and also that portion of the unconscious that the body carries. The
body not only carries, but is the memory of the entire evolutionary cycle.
Consciousness can access any portion of this material memory through creative
regression. The body manifests kinesthetic, preverbal, and preconceptual
memory of its direct experience. Immersion in the healing creative
energy flow is like a spiritual baptism, which facilitates creative reformation
of ordinary consciousness, and even the physical body.
Solutio, as a state of consciousness, unites the powers of above and below,
transpersonal and personal. It is the integration of the higher spiritual
powers with personal experience that embodies the healing dynamic.
This produces the paradoxical poison-panacea. The dual nature of
the universal medicine points to a consciousness state beyond both opposites.
In Greek myth, Athena gave Asklepios, the divine healer, the blood of Medusa
as the universal medicine. In its negative aspect it was toxic and
produced death. The positive aspect brought healing; this mysterious
potion is the "cure-all," the "solution." Divine water (sometimes
symbolized as blood) is dangerous, poisonous, seductive, addictive, even
deadly in its primeval, untransformed state--madness.
In the science fiction novel, DUNE, the new messiah and the Reverend Mothers
of the Bene Gesserit sisterhood imbibe the psychoactive "water of life"
with impunity. Moving past the fear and pain, they transcend time/space
and commune with the continuum of all existence. What sets them apart
from others, on whom the potion has a fatal effect, is their ability to
withstand and convert its initial toxic effects into a religious ecstasy.
They know how to navigate in that turbulent flow, during their consciousness
journeys--"moving without travelling."
The alchemical solution to this problem of primordial, raw experience is
to "cook" it into a reflective consciousness. Recycling itself, the
ego cooperates in its own "re-creational death," connecting with the transpersonal
forces of rebirth and renewal. The reborn personality is resurrected,
restored to life through new meaning.
The ego acknowledges the Self as its new center of gravity, and personality
heals. Experiential connection to the living reality of the Self,
the "waters of life" is the panacea, the magical elixer of life.
Solutio (and its prime agent, chaos) arises spontaneously from the depths
as irrational images, dreams and fantasies.
In dreamhealing, the dream symbols are followed deeper and deeper down
to the primal level where all structure dissolves into its original source.
This journey into the depths, and subsequent emergence, is the basis of
shamanic healing. As we journey in the autonomous consciousness stream,
guided movement deeper into and beyond the fear and pain brings up the
classical imagery of the solutio, as resistance subsides. There is
no part of it that is not us. The transformative process dissolves blockages,
obstructions or "frozen" consciousness which disturb and distort the free
flow of energy.
1) RETURN TO THE WOMB OR PRIMAL STATE
The alchemist Paracelsus said, "He who enters the kingdom of God must
first enter his mother and die." That death-like silence is also
our mother, the virgin womb of the imagination.
The dynamics of "creative regression" are common to mystical experience,
psychedelic exploration, and therapeutic consciousness journeys.
All lead to immersion in the flow of the stream of consciousness.
Creative regression is a generic form of the myth of the eternal return,
chronic recurrence, reiteration. In the dynamics of chaos theory
we find this recursive motion in the concept of iteration--self-similarity--which
produces the similarity in infinitely descending scales of fractal generation.
Iteration is like a stretching and folding of the spacetime continuum.
Experientially it manifests within us as a spiritualizing instinct, a recursive
"bending back" of instinct toward that which is primordial and divine.
Thus, whether induced through psychoactive substances, mystical transport,
or experiential psychotherapy typical imagery recycles, recapitulates,
or reiterates cascades of impressionistic transformations spanning the
entire spectrum of archetypal experiences--morphological transformations.
These include but are not limited to childhood, birth, embryonic development,
ancestral, mythic, genetic, evolutionary, universal, and quantum consciousness.
Access to the entire continuum of organic and inorganic evolution as well
as the collective unconscious becomes available. That information
most pertinent to the whole self emerges in the stream of consciousness
as virtual experience. What is pertinent is what gets spontaneously
"downloaded," and it repeats and reiterates the basic issues in yet another,
eternally creative way. Stan Grof has catalogued an extensive taxonomy
of these states, most notably in THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY (1988).
Such experiences of cosmic consciousness constitute a "return to the Mother,"
the blissful fusion of primal union, at both personal and universal levels.
The direction of this dynamic process is recursive, bending back through
deep time, ontology, and phylogeny. It echoes the semantic roots
of the words religion and yoga, which imply a "linking backward" in the
bond between gods and man, a craving for ecstasy, and transcendence of
the limitations of physical form (Milkman, 1987).
Jung called this dynamic an opus contra naturam, a work against
nature. But chaos theory shows us it is actually quite organic, natural,
and instinctual. In alchemy it was the Great Work. Consciousness
turns back on itself, reiterating each level of organization, de-structuring
each strata as it dives deeper toward the unconditioned, formless beginning,
or "unborn" state. This primal state is amniotic bliss experienced
as the Void, the cosmic womb.
Images of the Great Mother system become reactivated, though not exactly
in their original form. Imagery like fractals is self-similar, but
not entirely identical. This creative regression is to the prepersonal
domain, the preverbal, preconceptual domain, not the transpersonal spiritual
domain (transverbal, transconceptual).
Typically in the first few dreamhealing sessions, a person will enter a
dream symbol doorway which leads back to a conception memory. They
may or may not recognize it as such during the journey. But in content,
the symbolism is very clear. The imagery is fundamental or primal,
appearing as a dance of energy, matter, and consciousness--the body-ego's
conscious experience.
These images are close to the stuff of our creation -- the prima materia
--
of our existence. We may experience it as free-floating: a paradox
of chaos and a deep-felt sense of flowing and peace. The imagery
here is psychedelic -- consciousness expanding -- an autonomous manifestation
of imagination. The panoply of the ceaseless transformation of energy
may overwhelm the senses, leading to a sense of total chaos. There
is nothing to do but let go, surrender to it, merge with it, flow with
it.
The dancing energy waves and patterns are perceived as deep whorls, spinning
spirals, black holes, infinite voids, gray clouds of nothingness.
There is melding of the senses -- synesthesia -- such as "tasting" music,
"seeing" sound, etc. Simple throbbing and other extremely primitive
sensations may be experienced. Experience of this state produces
a new acceptance of the original conditions of conception, and re-structuring
of the primal self-image.
We go into the primal chaos to begin the process of reformation from our
pre-structural beginning. In essence, we re-enter the womb as we
are initiated in the mysteries of the psyche. We re-conceive our
primal self image, healed by communion with the creative Source.
2) DISSOLUTION, DISPERSAL, DISMEMBERMENT
The classic text of re-creational surrender or sacrifice of self is THE
BARDO THODOL, or THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. It is explicitly for
the living who undertake the death-like regression into the unconscious,
as well as the dying. Because of their orientation toward consciousness
journeys, THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE and THE AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD
are useful translations or contemporizations of the transformational classic.
The realm of death is the twilight zone between consciousness and matter.
Here psychoid phenomena manifest through the mingling of these modes.
Here mind/matter duality ceases, creating enchantment, uncanny synchronicities,
time warps, psychic experience, revelation of the mind of matter, the Nature
Mind.
The moment of ego death is heralded by certain symptoms of transition.
Resistance by the mind to this creative dissolution brings about physical
symptoms which range from shaking and a sense of increasing pressure and
anxiety, to paradoxical flashes of hot and cold, to extreme dizzyness and
disorientation. As the classic psychedelic manual says, "The hard,
dry, brittle husks of your ego are washing out; Washing out to the endless
sea of creation." (Leary et al, 1964).
Distressing or disturbing symptoms symbolize the violence of the passage
of consciousness from form to formlessness. Images of the body disintegrating
or being blown to atoms (fear of exploding = fear of expanding) are characteristic
psychedelic experiences. Perhaps the very elements of our bodies
"remember" their formation in the crucible of some supernova. There
may be identification with merciless destruction, the Dance of Shiva, the
raging elements of nature, a variety of forms of explosive discharge.
Here are visions of fires, floods, raging storms, earthquakes, volcanoes,
turbulent lakes of magma.
Consciousness "breaks up" into its elemental forms, manifesting as overwhelming
imagery. This first phase of dissolution may be characterized by
the futility of resistance, magnetic downward spirals, gravity wells, loss
of morphological identity.
E.J. Gold describes the second stage of the voyage as one of being overwhelmed
by illusions produced by conditioning. Yet the primal element of
pure forms breaks through and the voyager recognizes "the basic component
of consciousness which when combined produces what is called the element
Water."
In consciousness journeys, chaos functions as the universal solvent, that
which dissolves all patterns and forms including the rigid, outmoded aspects
of the self. In the dream journey, one might enter a spinning vortex
and
become dismembered by centrifugal force, torn limb from limb. We
remain in this state of dis-integration until we re-member our essential
self, embodying the wounded healer.
That sense of disintegration comes as the ego gives up its "unified" linear
perspective (bivalent) to the multiple consciousness or awareness (multi-valence)
of the deep self. Fear makes it feel like fragmentation, but in truth
there is nothing in that imagery that is not us. The death throes
of the ego prepare it for rebirth, through communion with cosmic consciousness,
a new incarnation of the spirit, death and resurrection.
The nature of universal consciousness is oceanic. When the ego is
in danger of "getting in over its head," it panics as if faced with drowning
in the depths of this vast ocean of consciousness. It overwhelms
the ego which cannot fathom this abyss.
This aspect of solutio brings mythic images of the dying god, of violent
death and sacrifice, and of the isolation of the hero. It means nothing
less than the sacrifice of the old self. The dissolution phase may
mean myths of the triumph of darkness; myths of floods and the return of
chaos, of the defeat of the hero.
In Gold's words, "Death comes to all forms; everything eventually is
broken up by dissolution, so there's no point clinging to yet another biological
form out of desire, longing for stability, or from fear and weakness."
3) CONTAINMENT OF A LESSER THING BY A GREATER
The ego "takes the plunge," it lets go and dissolves its old matrix, its
old boundaries. When its boundaries melt, ego-consciousness dissolves
into deep consciousness. The "wave merges with the ocean," and experiences
its own deep transpersonal nature. It moves swiftly through the fear
and pain, awakening to an infinitely wider reality of universal energy
waves. In the ocean of creativity, "your own consciousness, shining,
void and inseparable from the great body of radiance, has no birth, nor
death." (Leary, 1964).
Experience of the pure, unmodified state of consciousness transcends all
opposites, and therefore consciousness journeys provide an experiential
"container" for the reconciliation of paradox within a larger field of
experience--a broader, transcendent perspective. The transformational
process acts as a "container" (alchemical retort) of the contents of psyche.
But these contents, reduced to their essence are "nothingness," simply
dreams and imagination. Emptiness is the real Philosopher's Stone.
By dissolving into non-relative consciousness, mood swings or identification
with conflicting polar positions may be transcended by an enlarged state
of consciousness which embraces and contains the entire continuum.
Flow replaces polarity.
Jung spoke of the transcendent function as a symbol-forming force continuously
creating emergent imagery which facilitates whole-self realization.
It is thus an evolutionary and adaptive force. Mindell (1985) speaks
of the flow in alchemical terms:
The alchemists called this flow the 'aqua permanens', or permanent
water. Aqua permanens is the fluid process, the energy or
life which was locked up in the tension of conflict which has now been
freed through the flow between the opposites. Fluidity comes from
conflict. Whereas before there was a boundary between conflicting
opposites, between intent and reality, streaming energy now transforms
therapy into natural science.
Dreams, visions, or the stream of consciousness can be used therapeutically
as an evolutionary force to guide people from a small sense of self and
expand them toward a larger image. This expansion of the sense of
self may require some adjustment. The illumination (awakening to
larger Reality) may also come through a nature-mystic experience, intense
sexual experience, E.S.P., a consciousness journey, or meditation.
Enlightenment (even the "seed" of enlightenment) is an experience of awe,
bliss, and infinite possibilities.
The ego realizes it is not the center of the whole person, but only "manages"
the personality. There are autonomous archetypal forces which inhabit
the psyche with their own agendas, patterns, and goals. Our psyche
is transpersonal; it has no boundaries. Our conscious awareness is
only a manifestation of this larger consciousness. Within this larger
consciousness, we are at home with a plurality of visions. The parts
contain the whole (to a degree), enfolded or embedded like a fractal or
hologram.
Containment may take place symbolically in the therapeutic relationship.
The consciousness guide, therapist, or shaman functions as a guide to the
netherworld. The "wounded healer" has a numinous quality which provokes
the projections of others. Shamans work within the belief systems
of their subjects to expand their sense of what is possible. Those
subjects' experiences generally reflect the style and beliefs of the shaman--the
shaman's positive expectation of particularized results.
Exposure to the infinitely broader worldview of a shamanic personality
will automatically move a "smaller" personality into solutio, dissolution.
This rapport or participation mystique is an unconscious, automatic process--a
positive sort of psychic contagion. This unconscious dynamic may
be responsible for the phenomenon of "contact high."
4) REBIRTH, REJUVENATION, IMMERSION IN THE CREATIVE ENERGY FLOW
Psychedelic, as well as mystical literature contains many examples of surrendering,
letting go, accepting, merging, and joining the flow of the "Nature Mind,"
where all is consciousness--the audible life stream. This "Diamond
Consciousness" is awareness of creative flux of the Void, the fluid unity
of life. We flow within it, and it flows through us.
The death-rebirth sequence typically opens a person to the transpersonal
domain with its virtually infinite creativity. It reveals and unfolds
our future potentials. In dreamhealing, chaotic consciousness is
also creative consciousness. Terence McKenna reminds us that, "Riverine
metaphors are endlessly applicable. They represent the flowing of
forces over landscapes, the pressure of chaos on the imagination to create
creatively. . .The key is surrender and dissolution of boundaries, dissolution
of the ego."
When we immerse ourselves in that creative energy, we find healing on many
levels of our being. It may feel tingly or effervescent, or like
streaming energy. Direct experience of this level brings a true sense
of oneness with all that exists, the seamless fabric of existence.
It opens us to re-patterning by the whole--a re-construction or re-patterning
of personality through holistic change at the most fundamental level.
Immersion in the oceanic experience of universal consciousness is a life-changing
experience. It is experience of the web of life, the biological life
flow, an ineffable current of bliss. Once we experience that larger
world and self--the rhythmic pulse of all life--we are never the same again,
so long as we remember.
Communing with this energy, experiencing these states of consciousness,
has been the practice of shamans since the dawn of man. Shamanic
consciousness means the ability to enter and exit altered states at will.
This power is connected to the liquid expression of life--the sap of life--the
vegetable forms of the liquid Stone, and its identity with psychotropic
plants. This notion reiterates that of the "greening of consciousness."
Franklin Merrell-Wolff (1973) spoke of the distillate of his mystical experience
as follows:
"The Current is clearly a subtle, fluid-like substance which brings
the sense of well-being already described. Along with It, a more
than earthly Joy suffuses the whole nature. To myself, I called It
a Nectar. Now, I recognize It under several names. It is also
the 'Soma,' the 'Ambrosia of the Gods,' the 'Elixir of Life,' the 'Water
of Life' of Jesus, and the 'Baptism of the Spirit' of St. Paul. It
is more than related to Immortality; in fact, It is Identical with Immortality."
When the ego is completely dissolved in this renewing bath, we experience
timeless consciousness, and are reborn based on a new, healthier primal
self-image. This rejuvenation comes from connecting with pristine
consciousness, the eternal aspects or forces of nature. Even though
we cannot conceive of it, we can experience the infinite, the eternal,
the transcendent. Visions of Creation, Emanation, the upwelling Source,
emerge.
Spiritual reincarnation means bringing to life that which was formerly
dead or unawakened, through connection with the original creative power.
It is the theme of the Quest -- the greening of the Wasteland. The
process of rebirth is the mythic enactment of "the one story" whose pattern
is found in every narrative. Beneath the differences, the meaning
-- having to do with the loss and recovery of identity -- does not change.
This story of the loss and regaining of identity is the framework of most
literature, from which comes the hero with a thousand faces. Some
variation of the hero's adventures, death, disappearance, and marriage
or resurrection are the focal points of most stories.
The original sense of identity (romance and comedy), its loss (tragedy
and irony), and its recovery in the regenerate world of romance and comedy
is mirrored in the mythic quest. Myths of the birth of the hero,
revival and resurrection, creation and defeat of the powers of darkness
and death are perennial themes.
The descent and subsequent ascent, going deep into the consciousness journey
and emerging transformed, is a form of death/rebirth, a powerful archetypal
theme which is initiatory in character.
5) PURIFICATION ORDEAL
Aesculapian dreamhealing, uses many ritual forms of purification, such
as diet, sweats, and baths. But the psychic purification is a process
of shedding fears and pain which prevent us from flowing. Fear and
pain are what keep us "stuck."
Each initiation contains an ordeal within its enfolded nature. At
least it feels like an ordeal to the old ego structure which must dissolve
or die. The quantum leap of initiation, being seized from one
state and moved to another, involves a sudden and profound change.
It requires an adjustment. Also, life may present synchronistic challenges,
outside the dreamhealing sessions.
One dreamhealing participant was having a sweat. She was sent to
look for an offering in the form of some wood to burn in the ritual. She
finally returned with a huge gnarled log, which was quite representative
of her twisted back (scoliosis). That wood really stank when it first
was consigned to the fire--but as time went on, it burned pure and smelled
extraordinarily sweet. She emerged with more mobility than she could
remember every having and the healing persists.
In yoga, we hear about clearing blocks at the various chakras through purification
practices. Progressive stages of purification allow the energy of
the serpent power to flow or rise ever-higher through the chakra system.
Thus, the yogi realizes the true nature of self. Mindell (1982) has
commented on this process in regards to flow and healing:
In healing ceremonies, light, water, love, release of emotions, energy
flow, circulation, harmony and crystal clear water are all descriptions
of curative experiences. The water is a description of free flowing
energy which cleans the body by unlocking egotism and its resulting cramps.
. .The sap of plants flows in the body of the enlightened yogi. In
India lack of flow in the imaginary veins and arteries which carry energy
and blood is blamed for illness. Cleaning these conduits and reestablishing
flow is all-important. . .there is a resistance at some point to the flow
of energies. In fact, all disease is merely a restriction of the
flow of life force in a particular area.
Speaking more of the mental aspect of the process he uses water as an image
of purification ordeal:
Whenever a complex exists, consciousness rigidifies and tries to steer
around the strong emotions connected with the core of the complex.
Water therapy allows the complexes to speak, encourages the body to dance
its own rhythm and lets the unpredictable come alive. A water experience
is holistic and unifies the entire personality so that ego, Self, dreams,
body, inner and outer come together in one human being.
The more rigid the ego and the more powerful a governing complex, the
more threatening the flow of the body or the psyche appears. A rigid
and frightened personality becomes terrified, split off from nature, and
cannot believe that a Self or a body consciousness exists that can organize
behavior once ego rulership is given up. . .Water is medicine against the
rigidification of intuition, physical mobility, and feelings.
Another expression of purification ordeal occurs with psychedelics.
It is a mental purge of gross karma which manifests as wrathful visions
or second bardo nightmares. These visions, as well as the peaceful
ones must simply be endured, despite awe and terror. They may be
horrific visions of apocalypse and catastrophe--bloodthirsty hallucinations.
They come as the ego struggles to maintain its boundaries, as the mind
seeks to reconstruct the personality. But the experience of this
hellish state of consciousness is not mandatory with every journey.
Recognition of the greater Reality brings instantaneous liberation from
this ordeal.
Edinger (1973) uses Job from THE BIBLE as a classic example of an ego's
confrontation with the awesome powers of the unconscious through its trials
and travails. Job's encounter with the Self brings about a death/rebirth
experience. Job feels like he is being punished, and insists on discovering
the meaning of his experience.
Job encounters Jahweh in dreams first, anticipating later conscious encounter.
Job is shown the abysmal aspect of God and the depths of his own psyche
with its monstrous aspects, much like the wrathful visions of THE BARDO
THODOL. Finally, Job's questions are answered, not rationally, but
through living experience, conscious realization of the autonomous archetypal
psyche. The realization comes to birth only through the ordeal.
All these struggles in the cycling of death/rebirth may be linked back
through symbolic similarity to the individual birth ordeal. It is
characteristic of chaotic systems that events originally separated by time
and space can become enfolded closely together.
Events linked by the same state of consciousness are related; learning
is state-related (Tart; Rossi). Our lessons and our ordeals are related
to our states of consciousness. Thus personal and transpersonal experience
of this eternal cycle of the generation of forms become fused and conditioned
by the individual aspect of archetypal experience.
6) SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS
There is more than a linguistic link between the metaphor of a liquid solution,
and the solution of a problem. The moment of "a-ha" comes
frequently in process-oriented therapy, as direct realization brings fresh
understanding through the "empty mind," or "beginner's mind."
Solutions come through creativity. They may appear effortlessly.
The relationship between healing and creativity is implicit--healing is
the physical analog of creativity, like attitude changes and intuition
are its emotional and mental analogs. Healing is a special case of
creativity, or creative problem-solving.
During reverie states, the mind goes into chaotic patterns for problem-solving.
The more difficult the problem, the more chaos. Dreamhealing facilitates
entry into these healing states of consciousness.
McAuliffe (198 ) reported in OMNI on the work of Paul Rapp detecting chaos
in brain wave fluctuations:
After analyzing the EEGs of humans, Rapp has also come around to this
friendlier view. "When we are healthy and alert, the interval between
electrical waves is never rigidly fixed," he reports, "but always vacillates
around a certain frequency range." Moreover, when we are mentally
challenged, the interval between the electrical wave becomes even more
variable--or chaotic. This suggests, in Rapp's opinion, that chaos
"may actually be highly beneficial during problem solving.
Clearly the greater the mental challenge, the more chaotic the activity
of the subject's brain. . .What does all this mean? In Rapp's opinion,
chaotic activity may be an asset in problem solving. "You want to be
able to scan as wide a range of solutions as possible and avoid locking
on to a suboptimal solution early on," he explains. "One way
to do that is to have a certain amount of disorderliness, or turbulence,
in your search."
We can draw a direct analogy between the dreamhealing process and creative
process. Dreamhealing begins with the pilgrimage, which expresses
one's intent or commitment. The creative process begins with receptivity,
which includes interest, preparation, and immersion in the subject matter.
Next in dreamhealing comes the confession, or the identification
of the problem, where you have missed the mark. Creativity also requires
the ability to identify the problem, see the right questions, to use errors,
to have detached devotion.
The purification or cleansing of dreamhealing parallels the generalized
sensitivity to problems that come during creativity, an attunement to the
realization of what needs to be done.
The offering is a sign of letting go, sacrifice of the old ego form, the
commitment to healing. Creativity requires the surrender of time
and self to the process of flow; fluency of thinking; flexibility; abandoning
old ways of thought.
The heart of the quest is dream incubation, a reverie which seeks connection
with higher power. Creativity also requires incubation, reverie,
serendipity, spontaneity, adaptation, tolerance for ambiguity, and originality.
This permits uncommon responses and unconventional associations.
Healing occurs in a moment of oneness, chaotic consciousness. In
creativity it is paralleled by the moment of illumination, redefinition,
invention, vision.
Dreamhealing requires amplification, or work on dreams and validation.
Elaboration is its counterpart, the use of two or more abilities for the
construction of a more complex object or theory, plus verification.
Re-entry implies actualization, renewal, grounding, maturing. Creatively
it means real-time application, follow-through, product, utilization of
the result. It implies choosing the post-session personality, as
re-calibrated through the imprint of the whole. It means stabilizing
that state of creative consciousness which emerged in the session.
In all cases, guided or not, the creative or healing process follows approximately
this model. The resources are contacted deep within and they well-up
in sometimes unexpected ways from the deep Source.
7) MELTING OR SOFTENING PROCESS
Melting turns what was solid into a liquid. Variations on the theme
include moistening and softening. Whether we look at modern consciousness
journeys, ancient reports, or psychedelic experiences the metaphors are
the same. Melting or softening is the result of incubation in dreamhealing,
yoga, and alchemy.
THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE offers such suggestions as "Let the
feelings melt all over you," "Let your body merge with the warm flux,"
"Allow your own mind also to melt away very gradually." Feelings
of the body melting or flowing as if wax are typical of the psychedelic
experience, as boundaries dissolve.
Leary et al note a state of consciousness where, "All the harsh, dry,
brittle angularities of game life [are] melted. You drift off --
soft, rounded, moist, warm. Merged with all life. You may feel
yourself floating out and down into a warm sea. Your individuality
and autonomy of movement are moistly disappearing."
An older report is this passage from THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING, a seventeenth
century alchemy text:
The Father sweats, surrounding his Son,
And pours out his prayer to God,
To Whom all things are possible,
Who creates, and has created all things.
He prays that his Son may be led from his body,
And he be reborn as he was at first.
God grants his prayer, it is not ignored,
Telling the Father to lie down and go to sleep.
God sent down rain from heaven
Through the clear stars; in truth,
It was fruitful silver indeed.
The Father's Body is moistened and softened.
By the help and Grace of God, at the end,
We may obtain Thy gracious Gift!
The Father strongly sweats and glows,
While oil and True Tincture from him flows.
The feverish father sweats the tincture of the wise from his body.
The hidden fire causing the sweat is the antithesis of the moisture that
it produces. This heat is the warmth of incubation, which is
equivalent to a "brooding" state of meditation. The aim of this meditation
is self-incubation for transformation and resurrection.
This liquefaction is a characteristic state of consciousness during psychedelic
sessions. When the normal structures of awareness break down, consciousness
transforms to a flowing or fluid state.
Speaking of his fusion of non-linear dynamics, post-structuralism, and
psychedelic experience, psychonaut Manuel DeLanda was interviewed by MONDO
2000 (Issue 8; Winter, 1992). He reports on his experience in the
language of chaos theory.
The metaphor they use is solid, liquid, gas. If the system is
solid, too crystallized, its dynamics are completely uninteresting.
If it's gaseous, it's also uninteresting--all you have to do is take averages
of behavior and you know what's going on. Liquids have a lot more
potential, with all kinds of attractors and bifurcations. Now what
they're coming to believe is that the liquid state in nature--not just
actual liquids, but liquidity in the abstract sense of being not too rigid
or too loose--these liquid systems "poised on the edge of chaos" are natural
computers.
...When you trip, you liquify structures in your brain, linguistic structures,
intentional structures. They acquire a less viscous consistency,
and your brain becomes a super-computer. You are able to think concepts
you were not able to think before. Information rushes in your brain,
which makes you feel like you're having a revelation. But of course
no one is revealing anything to you. It's just self-organizing.
It's happening by itself. ...free-flowing matter and energy are capable
of self-organization.
I don't think there are higher states of consciousness. You liquify
yourself, and you go through phase transitions, and then it seems to you
that you are in a higher state of consciousness. When I'm tripping,
I'm thinking concepts I'm sure no one's ever thought before, and in a way
it's like a higher state of consciousness, but it's not a plane that was
waiting there for me to access it. It's something I'm building that
moment by destratifying my brain.
There might be an ethics here: how to live your life poised at the edge
of chaos, how to allow self-organizing processes to take place in all the
strata that bind you. In your life, you could create maps of attractors
that bind your local destiny--those behaviors that are habitual and so
on. And try to find those bifurcations that would allow you to jump,
if not to complete freedom--that doesn't exist--but to another set of attractors
less confining, less binding, less stratifying. Or learn to lead
your life near a bifurcation without ever crossing it--the lesson of being
poised on the edge of chaos.
In reducing all to pure water, the prima materia and the ultima
materia become synonymous. That primal consciousness state, that
creative and chaotic consciousness is the beginning of the operation of
"water", and its ultimate realization.
It becomes easy to see why the operation of water is the "root of alchemy."
Through consciousness journeys which liquify our rigid notions of self
and world, we re-create the adventures of the hero or heroine. The
theme is the loss and recovery of identity.
The hero is deserted, betrayed or even killed, but then comes back to life
again. They may be swallowed by a huge sea monster, or wander in
a strange dark underworld and then fight their way out again. The
shift is from abandonment and isolation, to struggle, to the triumph or
marriage phase, (unitive consciousness).
The myth of the defeated hero (rigid ego) brings images of the triumph
of dark forces, myths of floods and the return of chaos. Then the
stage is set for miraculous rebirth--The Son is born from the Father, as
in THE BOOK OF LAMBSPRING passage. This process of rebirth
is the universal medicine.
REFERENCES
Aaronson, Bernard S., "The Hypnotic Induction of the Void," Journal of
the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, Vol. 26:
No. 1, p. 22-30; No. 2, p. 63-72; No. 3, p. 114-117; No. 4, p.129-133.
Abraham, Ralph; McKenna, Terence; Sheldrake, Rupert; TRIALOGUES AT THE
EDGE OF THE WEST; Bear and Co., Santa Fe, 1992.
Davis, Erik, "DeLanda Destratified"; MONDO 2000, #8, Winter 1992, p. 45-48.
Edinger, Edward F.; ANATOMY OF THE PSYCHE, Open Court; LaSalle, Illinois,
1985.
Edinger, Edward F.; EGO AND ARCHETYPE, Penguin Books Inc., Baltimore, 1973.
Evans-Wentz, W.Y.; THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Causeway Books, New York,
1973.
Gold, E. J.; AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD; Gateways
Grinnell, Robert; ALCHEMY IN A MODERN WOMAN, Spring Publications, New York,
1973.
Grof, Stanislav; THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY; SUNY Press, Albany, 1988.
Hillman, James; ANIMA; Spring Publications, Dallas, 1985.
Kauffman, Stuart A., "Antichaos and Adaptation"; SciAmer, August 1991,
p.78-84.
Leary, T., Metzner, R., Alpert, R.; THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE, University
Books, New York, 1964.
McAuliffe, Kathleen; "Get Smart: Controlling Chaos"; OMNI
Merrell-Wolff, Franklin; PATHWAYS THROUGH TO SPACE; Warner Books, New York,
1973.
Milkman, Harvey & Sunderwirth, Stanley; CRAVING FOR ECSTASY; D.C. Heath
& Co., Lexington, Massachusetts, 1987.
Miller, I. & Miller, R.A.; THE MODERN ALCHEMIST (formerly The Book
of Lambspring); Phanes Press, Chicago; in press (available Spring 1994).
Mindell, Arnold; DREAMBODY; Sigo Press, Boston, 1982.
Mindell, Arnold; RIVER'S WAY; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985.
Rossi, Ernest: THE PSYCHOBIOLOGY OF MIND-BODY HEALING, W.W. Norton &
Co., Inc., New York, 1986.
Stace, W.D.; MYSTICISM AND PHILOSOPHY; Lippincott, New York, 1960.
Swinney, Graywolf and Iona Miller; DREAMHEALING: CHAOS AND THE CREATIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS PROCESS, Asklepia Press, 1992.
Tart, Charles; STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS; E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New
York, 1975.
Washburn, Michael; THE EGO AND THE DYNAMIC GROUND; SUNY Press, New York,
1988.
Click here for Virtual
Tantra Homepage.
Click here for Iona Miller Collected
Works Home Page.
File Created:
6/2/00 Last Updated: 2/17/02