STATES
OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Charles
T. Tart
·
A
discrete state of consciousness (d-SoC) is a unique, dynamic pattern or configuration
of psychological structures, an active system of psychological subsystems – 10
such subsystems are:
(1)
Exteroception
(2)
Interoception
(3)
Input-processing
(automated selecting/abstracting of sensory input so we perceive only what is “important”
by personal and cultural, i.e. consensus reality, standards)
(5)
Subconscious
(Freudian)
(6)
Emotions
(7)
Evaluation/decision-making
(skills and habits)
(8)
Space/Time
Sense (psychological)
(9)
Sense
of Identity
(10)
Motor
Output (muscular/glandular outputs to external world and body).
·
A
discrete altered state of consciousness (d-ASC) is a d-SoC that is different
from some baseline d-SoC, with unique properties of its own – basically a
deviation from the ordinary state. (Individuals have different capacities/skill
in “transiting” between d-SoCs and d-ASCs.) Induction to a d-ASC from a d-SoC
involves 2 operations – disrupting forces to the d-SoC (psychological
and/or physiological) that disrupt the 4 stabilization processes by interfering
with the 10 subsystems - or by withdrawing attention/awareness energy from
them; and patterning forces that pattern structures/subsystems into a
new d-ASC which, if it is to last must develop its own stabilization processes.
De-induction from a d-ASC to d-SoC follows the same process – disrupting the
d-ASC, a transitional period, then re-patterning.
·
For
ordinary people in ordinary SoCs, the amount of attention/awareness energy
subject to conscious control and deployment is quite small compared to the
relatively permanent investments of energy in certain basic structures
composing the individual’s personality and his adaptation to the consensus
reality of his culture.
·
Awareness refers to the basic knowledge
that something is happening, to perceiving or feeling or cognizing in its
simplest form. Consciousness is more complex awareness, as modulated by
the structure of the Mind, which refers to the totality of both
inferable and potentially experiencable phenomena of which awareness and
consciousness are components.
·
In
computer analogy, going from one d-SoC to a d-ASC is a quantum jump akin to
putting a radically different program into the computer, i.e. the mind. The
experiential basis of the jump is usually gestalt pattern recognition, the
feeling that “this condition of my mind feels radically different from some
other conditions, rather than just an extension of it. This would be a move
from a baseline S of C to, say, hypnotic states, LSD, meditative, marijuana,
etc., and the jump could be perceived as a “buzz” if the individual bothered to
look at it. Even strong emotional states may be a d-ASC. [For
instance, a friend once had a ‘hanging upper lip’ effect when talking about
esoteric matters: after ‘exorcism’ i.e. understanding what the psychosomatic
connection was, for some time he only felt a ‘buzz’ or ‘tingle’ rather than
experiencing the physical manifestation - a signal of the aborted ‘transit’
between emotional SoCs] The transition sequence from one discrete state to
another (from sleep/REM EEG findings) follows the following process: intact ego
® de-structuralized ego ® re-structuralized ego.
¾
References
from Carlos Castenada:
¨
From
“A Separate Reality”: Peoples’ ordinary, repeated, day-to-day activities keep
their energies so bound within a certain pattern that they do not become aware
of non-ordinary activities. (quoted by Tart as an example of loading
stabilization).
¨
From
“Tales of Power”: Certain training exercises (e.g. “not doing”) are designed to
disrupt the habitual deployment of attention awareness energy into channels
that maintain (“doing”) ordinary consensus reality – training exercises such as
meditation help break habitual patterns.
¨
While
the effect of psychedelic drugs is of a variant “tripping” nature, Don Juan was
not interested in having Castenada ‘trip’, but rather tried to train him to
STABILIZE the various drug effects so that he could get into particular d-ASCs
suited to particular kinds of tasks, at will.
- - - - - - - - -
·
To
induce a d-ASC it is necessary to disrupt enough of the 10 psychological
subsystems that the dynamic baseline pattern of consciousness cannot maintain
its integrity, [E.g. conversations of a complex, abstract nature may
‘de-pattern’ another’s reality position] or by pushing certain functions beyond
their accustomed limits. Drugs or intense physiological procedures, e.g.
exhaustion or exercise, may also disrupt a d-SoC. Then re-patterning of the
d-ASC is necessary – e.g. a mandela which makes no sense in a b-SoC may be a
patterning agent ®
meditation. [normal conversation itself is, surprisingly, a secondary example
of hypnotic induction.] Stepping stones may be necessary from a d-SoC to a
d-ASC (such as jhana states of Buddhist meditation as per Goleman’s chapter in
Tart’s ‘Transpersonal Psychologies’) until such time as the process/path is
sufficiently over-learned as to be effective without the intermediate steps.
·
See
Appendix A for hypnotic induction procedures.
·
Alternating
between left and right brain hemispheric processing via skilled, mindful
‘transits’ allows for different perspectives on solving problems [hence of
evolutionary benefit]. Many d-ASCs result in increased right brain skill,
allowing intuitive patterns to become apparent to one. Removal of energy from
left brain linear analysis allows more energy for right brain intuitive
patterns and relationships to become apparent. Music or dance exercises may
facilitate this shift.
·
Identity
states are subtle divisions within d-SoCs, roles which we have developed to
cope with life demands. Gurdjieff called these identity states the multitude of
“I”s operating within us, many of which are separated by “buffers” and unaware
of each other or to the entity unless an Observer has been created. These
identity states can transit very quickly from one to another (without our
notice) – Gurdjieff saw the rapid, unnoticed transition between identity
states, and their relative isolation from one another, as the major cause of
the psychopathology of everyday life.
·
Pseudo-merging
of two d-SoCs is possible as an individual more and more makes the transition
between two states; he may automate the transition process to the point that he
no longer has any awareness of it and/or efficient routes through the
transition process are so thoroughly learned that the transition takes almost
no time or effort. (similar to rapid transitions between identity states). As a
greater number of potentials are thereby available in two states than in one,
such merging can be seen as growth, depending on cultural valuations and the
individual’s intelligence in utilizing the two states. Availability does not
guarantee wise or adaptive use.
·
Tart
refers to the case of hypnotic subject William and the Extended North Carolina
Scale. (Numbers are called out by William to designate his subjective hypnotic
state – e.g. on the visual blackness scale, the blackness increases 0 to 60 as
William goes deeper into the hypnotic state, after which the black is sensed as
full of potentiality.)
·
State-specific
communication – each d-SoC or d-ASC appears to have its own language and what
is clear in one state is difficult to communicate to others in another state
(or even make sense to oneself after transition); the ineffability of
describing some experiences or knowledge.
·
The
state of mystical unity, of Void consciousness, seems to be the experience of
pure awareness, transcending all opposites, like the pure energy state;
while consciousness, the condition of awareness deeply intermeshed and
modified by the structures of the mind and brain, is a realm of duality, the
analogue of the matter state.
Awareness (wave) « Consciousness (particle)
·
Consciousness
as we ordinarily know it in the West, is not pure awareness but rather
awareness as it is embodied in the psychological structure of the mind or
brain. Ordinary experience is of neither pure awareness nor pure psychological
structure, but of awareness embedded in and modified by the structure of the
mind/brain, and of the structure of the mind/brain embedded in and modified by,
awareness. These two components, awareness and psychological structure,
constitute a gestalt, an overall interacting, dynamic system which makes up
consciousness.
·
Ordinarily,
humans are in a state of illusion (waking dreaming/waking
hypnosis/ignorance/maya (Indian)/samsara (Buddhist) wherein true reality is
distorted by both cultural consensus reality and one’s own associations out of
the past or imagination to the point that we, in essence, are living our
illusions (associations) instead of true reality. Some associations derive from
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSES (we more readily see what we want to see) – a strategy
which is supportive of the ego structure. This can go so far as to involve the
psychological process of PROJECTION, wherein internal associative illusions
become so strong that they are projected onto the environment and wrongly
perceived as actual perceptions. (Internal processes and memories are fed back
into the Input/Processing subsystem and re-emerge in awareness with the quality
of perception added). In social terms, one may not be able to act out the
perceived result (be inhibited against expressing hostility) but would
internally seethe as a result of such a samsaric/waking dream (AKA normal
consciousness).
- - - -
- - - -
·
To
find a way out of illusion/samsara, note that the ordinary d-SoC is the creator/maintainer
of consensus reality on a personal level, and since the sharing of similar,
ordinary “normal” d-SoCs by others is the maintainer of the consensus reality
on a social level, ways out are:
1)
To enter a d-ASC
(chemically or non-chemically), spend as much time there as possible, and get
all your friends into that d-ASC too. You would choose a d-ASC you valued,
where you felt “high”.
2)
Discriminative
Awareness of the
onset of associative processes/projections is another defense from illusion.
3)
Also,
De Ropp’s “Watchman At The Gate” guards against one’s ‘riotous slums’
(knowledge of one’s associational and reaction patterns, pre-potent needs and
the particular stimuli which set them off) and this knowledge can clarify one’s
primary perceptions. (Remove energy from stimuli/reactions before chains
are activated.)
4)
Non-attachment – neither welcome nor reject any
partial stimulus or experience- train the mind (e.g.Vipassana) to not
automatically grab attention/awareness energy so readily, leaving the energy
available for volitional use. Do not indiscriminately allow fusion of
perceptions and reactions. Two flaws of non-attachment are:
a)
apparent indifference wherein one believes
he is unaffected by various things, but this is only an inhibiting effect and
he is still tensed. Self-observation/feedback from others is the corrective to
this flaw.
b)
the reactive
machinery is still in place (although out of sight) and in a new circumstance
jumps out and grabs the awareness/attention energy and plunges one into
samsaric states (Eastern gurus in a new Western environment succumbing to
unanticipated temptations).
5) Dismantling
Structures – the above mindfulness techniques can actually dismantle some
of the unwanted structures of the mind, in that some structures seem to need to
operate in the dark but cannot continue to operate when one is fully aware
(insight) as to what is happening. Also, some structures seem to have to be
operated periodically to maintain their integrity. Some of the above practices
(or Gurdjieff’s self-observation, wherein one clearly watches one’s reactions
without trying to distort them) starve the structures of energy and they lose
integrity. One can actually observe this starving/withering effect through
disciplined self-observation. Many structures and subsystems are such an
intimate part of a person’s encultured personality that it is difficult for one
to see one’s mechanism clearly. Psychotherapy feedback (therapist or
group) may force a person to confront their structures, although often
therapy’s goal is only to ‘readjust’ a person to consensus reality.
·
See Appendix B for
Tart quotes from his other writings.
- - - - - - -
APPENDIX “A”
·
Inducing Hypnosis:
The
procedures for inducing hypnosis are many and varied, but certain steps are
common to most of these procedures. The first such step usually involves having
you sit or lie comfortably, so you do not have to exert any effort to maintain
your bodily position, and telling you not to move and to relax your body as
much as possible. This step has a variety of effects. For one thing, if you are
somewhat anxious about what is going to happen, your anxiety, which is
intimately related to bodily tension, is at least partially relieved if you
relax. You limit your ability to feel anxiety. This makes it easier for you to
alter your state of consciousness. Also, when your body is in a relaxed
position and lying still, many of the kinesthetic receptors adapt out, as in
going to sleep. Thus the body as a whole begins to fade out as a conscious experience;
this known, patterned stimulation fades and no longer serves as a load and
patterning force to help stabilize your baseline State of Consciousness
(b-SoC).
Second, the hypnotist commonly tells you to listen only to his
voice and to ignore other thoughts or sensations that come into your mind.
Ordinarily you constantly scan the environment to see if important stimuli are
present. This constant scanning keeps up a continuous, varied pattern of
information and energy exchanges among subsystems, which tends to keep
subsystems active in the waking state pattern: as varied perceptions come in,
you must decide whether they are important, you must draw on memories from the
past in making these decisions, etc. By withdrawing attention/awareness energy
from this scanning of the environment, you withdraw a good deal of
psychological energy and activity from a number of subsystems: a major loading
and patterning process is attenuated.
A third common instruction is that you should not think about what
the hypnotist is saying, but just listen to it passively. If the hypnotist says
your arm is feeling heavy, you are not to think, "He says it's feeling
heavy, I wonder if it really will get heavy, I remember it got heavy a long
time ago but that's because there was a weight on it; well, I guess I shouldn't
be doubting….” In the ordinary discrete State of Consciousness (d-SoC) you
constantly think about what is being said to you and what is happening to you,
and this maintains a great deal of evaluative and decision-making activity and
again activates other subsystems. Thus, this step also slows down the constant
thinking that helps to maintain your ordinary d-SoC through loading
stabilization.
Fourth, you are frequently told to focus your attention on some
particular thing in addition to the hypnotist's voice. Let us take the example
of your being asked to look fixedly at some simple object like a candle flame
or a bright, shiny disk. This fixation serves to reduce further your scanning
of the environment, with the same effects mentioned above, but it has an
additional effect. It is unusual for you in your ordinary d-SoC to stare
fixedly at one thing. If you do, all sorts of unexpected (to most people)
visual effects occur because the retina becomes fatigued. Colored halos start
to appear around the object being stared at, shadows appear and disappear,
apparent movements occur, parts of the object fade. To the extent that these
are not part of your usual experience, they constitute a kind of input that the
Input-Processing subsystem is not used to handling, and so they tend to disrupt
the normal functioning of this subsystem.
Further, because the hypnotist earlier stated that he has the
power to make you have unusual experiences, the fact that you are now having
unusual experiences enhances the prestige of the hypnotist and gives you more
trust in him. This is a kind of trick: by using physiological effects that you
do not realize are the expected result of staring at anything, the hypnotist
manages to take credit and so enhances his psychological effectiveness. The
importance of this will become even clearer later when we discuss the Sense of
Identity subsystem.
Fifth, the hypnotist commonly suggests to you that you are
feeling sleepy or drowsy. This elicits a variety of memory associations that
help the induction process. Since going to sleep means that your b-SoC breaks
down, this suggestion acts as a disruptive force. And since going to sleep is
associated with a fading out of your body image, this suggestion enhances the
fading of the body image that is already occurring because of the adaptation of
kinesthetic receptors to your relaxed, still posture. Further, since going to
sleep is a passive activity, the suggestion encourages a sense of passivity on
your part and so reinforces the earlier instructions not to think about what
the hypnotist is saying but simply to accept it. The references to sleep also
draw up memories and expectations of your identity fading, so energy is not
required to keep evaluating the situation in terms of your personal values.
Sixth, as well as suggesting sleep, the hypnotist often further
indicates that this sleep is not quite the same as real sleep because you will
still hear him. The hypnotist may not need to suggest this overtly: everyone in
our culture knows enough about hypnosis to realize that the subject can still
hear the hypnotist. This is a specific patterning force. The suggestions
telling you that what is happening is like sleep primarily serve to disrupt
your d-SoC, but since the hypnotist does not want you actually to go to sleep,
he adds a patterning force to produce a passive sleeplike state in which
communication with the hypnotist is still effective.
Seventh, once you appear passive and relaxed, most hypnotic
procedures go on to simple motor suggestions, such as having you hold an arm
horizontally out in front of you and telling you it is getting heavy. Motor
suggestions like this are relatively easy for most people to experience, and as
you begin to respond to these suggestions the hypnotist's prestige is further
enhanced.
This automatic response to suggestion affects your Sense of
Identity subsystem. Ordinarily it is your own "voice" inside you that
tells you to do a thing that you then do. Now the hypnotist's voice takes over
this role, and your sense of self begins to include the hypnotist. The special
modulation from this subsystem that constitutes the ego sense is added to the
stimuli that would ordinarily be perceived as the voice of an outsider.
Psychoanalysts call this the transference element of hypnosis,
especially when some of the transference involves parental transferences onto
the hypnotist. The deliberate or implicit encouragement of identification with
the hypnotist's voice is an application of patterning forces.
Success with simple motor suggestions also produces a novel kind
of body stimulation: you feel your body moving, but with different qualities
than ordinarily. Your arm, for instance, feels exceptionally heavy and seems to
move by itself. This kind of datum again does not fit the habitual
input-processing patterns, and so tends both to disrupt the stabilization of
your d-SoC and to help pattern the hypnotic state.
As you respond well to simple motor suggestions, the hypnotist
usually goes on to harder and more impressive motor suggestions and various
kinds of cognitive suggestions, and continued success leads to increasing
inclusion of the hypnotist within your ego sense.
Finally,
we should note that an important factor in understanding the hypnotic
induction technique is the subject's implicit expectations of what it is like
to be hypnotized and how a hypnotized subject behaves. Shor did a survey
showing that among college students there is a fairly good general knowledge of
what hypnosis is like, in spite of some misconceptions. So if a subject agrees
to be hypnotized and believes that the hypnotist can do it, he has implicit
expectations that affect his reactions to the particular things the hypnotist
does.
·
The
Hypnotic State
If the induction is successful and the neutral hypnotic state is
developed, the result is a discrete Altered State of Consciousness (d-ASC)
characterized by a quiet mind; most of the structures are inactive, many of the
psychological subsystems are not actively functioning. Typically, if a deeply
hypnotized subject is asked what he is thinking about or experiencing, the
answer is "Nothing." However, this state is also characterized by
greatly enhanced suggestibility, a greater mobility of attention/awareness
energy, so when a particular experience is suggested to the subject he usually
experiences it far more vividly than he could in his ordinary discrete Altered
State of Consciousness (d-SoC), often to the point of total experiential
reality. Thus the hypnotic state shows a high flexibility of functioning, even
though it is relatively quiet between particular functions. The state is also
characterized by a quality called rapport, a functioning of the Sense of
Identity subsystem to include the hypnotist as part of the subject's own ego.
It is easy to see how the various techniques mentioned above
destabilize the ordinary pattern and operate on various psychological
subsystems to push them toward extreme values of functioning. But where is the
actual transition? We do not know. Studies of hypnosis have generally paid
little attention to the transition between hypnosis and waking. Some
psychoanalytically oriented case studies have reported marked transitional
effects, but no study has tried to map the exact nature and extent of the
quantum jump.
Much modern research that has tried to determine whether hypnotic
suggestibility is indeed greater than waking suggestibility has committed an
important methodological error: using group data without examining individual
data. Thus, unless every individual makes the transition at exactly the same
point on the appropriate measures of psychological subsystem functioning, no
transition point would appear in the group data. Put another way, if there were
some one variable on which the jump was made from the normal state into hypnosis,
and one subject jumped from a value of two to six to make his transition, and a
second subject jumped from three to seven, and a third from four to eight,
etc., the group data would show absolute continuity and no evidence for a
transitional phase. Superimposing many maps destroys the patterns. The systems
approach stresses the importance of examining the transitional period of
hypnotic phenomena.
One further idea should be mentioned. Because most or all
subsystems in the un-programmed deep hypnotic state, so-called neutral
hypnosis, are idling or relatively inactive, the hypnotic state may be better
than the ordinary waking state as a b-SoC with which to compare other states.
The ordinary waking state seems an incredibly complex, active, and specialized
construction compared with the hypnotic state.
- - - - - -
APPENDIX “B”
Tart quotes from other sources:
·
There
are meditation techniques which repeatedly ask the question “Who am I” and
question each answer more and more deeply. At the higher levels of experience,
one’s personal identity temporarily disappears altogether as the person becomes
aware of, and identified with, higher spiritual forces or entities. Failure to
lose one’s sense of personal identity is frequently regarded as failure to
achieve success in the spiritual discipline. After profound mystical
experiences, involving union with the highest levels of the universe, one’s
personality may reappear in the person’s subsequent life, but it is now only a
collection of characteristics of no great importance, a STYLE or TOOL
of expression rather than the basic nature of the person, who is now in touch
with and identified with something deeper. (Source: ‘Transpersonal Psychologies’, Chapter 2 – dealing with the counter-assumption that
“a sense of personality, personal identity is vital, and its loss is
pathological”).
·
[Caution
is recommended in interpreting the meaning of experiences.] Knowledge or
experience of the psychic, meditation, lucid and ordinary dreams, altered
states, mystical experiences, psychedelics: All of these can open our minds to
new understandings, take us beyond our ordinary limits. They can also
temporarily created the most convincing, ‘obviously’ true, excitingly true,
ecstatically true delusions. That is when we must practice developing our
discrimination. Otherwise the too-open mind can be worse off than a closed but
reasonably sane mind. (Source: ‘Open Mind, Discriminating Mind’)
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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