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)

(4)            Memory

(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).

Examples of d-SoCs are ordinary waking state, non-dreaming sleep, dreaming sleep, hypnosis, alcohol intoxication, marijuana intoxication and meditation.

A d-SoC is stabilized by 4 processes –

(1)            Loading with appropriate tasks

(2)            Negative feedback (correcting for deviations beyond tolerance)

(3)            Positive feedback – rewards when structures/subsystems within tolerance

(4)            ‘Limiting’ – i.e. restricting the range of functioning of structures and subsystems wherein intense operation would de-stabilize the system.

 

·        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.

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·        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.

 

ENERGY    ®                           ¬        MATTER

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).

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·        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.

 

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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.

 

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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’)

 

 

 

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