Vol. 19-2000

he International Journal of
ranspersonal tu les
Volume 19, 2000
Grilled Plumeria 1 The Castrati ("Skoptsy') Sect in Russia:
77
The Editors History, Teaching, and Religious Practice
Sayings and Doings of Master Raven: 2
Irina A. Tulpe & Evgeny A. Torchinov
A Fable in Progress Cat Haiku 88
Robert Aitken Dee Ito & Marshall Arisman
Reading the Raven:
14 A Model of Experiential 99
Hermeneutics in Hagiography Comparative Religion
Nelson Foster Andrew Rawlinson
Is the Mind in Search ofItself?
15
The Universe of Meanings 109
Herbert Guenther V V Nalimov, Jeanna Drogalina-Nalimov,
Brushing Up Against the Buddha
23
&K Zuyev
Marshall Arisman Arthur 119
Waiting for Circus Animals' Desertion:
27
Valerie Kessler & Jacques Mettraux
A True Story of a Cryptic Spiritual Zoo in Psychological and Spiritual Roots of 133
the Rag-and-Bone Shop of My Heart Transpersonal Psychology in Europe
T R. Soidla Laura Boggio Gilot
Carlos Jurado: Master Alchemist
34
Towards a Quintessential Approach
141
Philippe L. Gross to Crisis and Disease: The Crossroads-
Seasons of Love and Grief
41
Crossfire-T uming Point-Conflict Theory
Robert D. Romanyshyn
(CCPC)
Salvador Harguindey
The Healing Power of Shamanism
49
Beyond Mind: Steps to a
163
in Transpersonal Psychology
Metatranspersonal Psychology
Manuel Almendro
Elias Cap riles
Identifying Spiritual Content in
59
About Our Contributors 185
Reports From Ayahuasca Sessions
Stanley Krippner & Joseph Sulla
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Grilled Plumeria
What a strange machine man is!
You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes,
and out of him come sighs, laughter, and dreams.
-Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
T
HIS VOLUME of The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies is the third
we have published, and the fourth is well into production. The inaugural
editorial, "The Pleasure of Sages" (VoL 17, No.1), declared: "We don't
expect our readers to live by bread alone. We nourish seasoned words and cater to
subtle flavors." Raised largely on a diet of American transpersonal psychology, we
are grateful to our contributors and editorial board for enriching our transpersonal
palate.
Our publication policy states: "The Journal seeks transpersonal contributions of
special merit, emphasizing engaging theoretical views, syntheses, metaperspectives,
historical scholarship, personal essays, evocative writing, and artistic works." From
Ayahuasca to Zen, the contents of this volume provide a hearty menu of
internationally spiced morsels and illustrate that a journal with high standards can
be inviting as well as informative, artistic as well as academic.
o
The other day, a white plumeria blossom
with a gold-tinged center lodged itself
between the coffee carafe and the hot
plate. Instead of French roast, a more
exotic aroma filled the morning air-
grilled plumeria. And at our editorial
desk, more delicacies arrived.
Philippe L. Gross, Editor in Chief
S. 1. Shapiro, Executive Editor
Honolulu, Hawai'i
The InternationalJournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19, 1 1
2000 by Panigada Press
Hikari ("Light")
Nakagawa Soen
2 The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
Sayings and Doings of Zen Master Raven
A Fable in Progress
Robert Aitken
Puna, Hawai'i, USA
SEARCHING FOR A MAsTER
W
HEN RAVEN was living near Jack Rabbit HOshi, he visited him frequently
to inquire about the Way. One day he asked, "I hear that the Buddha
Shakyamuni looked up from beneath the Bodhi tree and saw the
morning star and announced his 1 get the feeling that something is
missing from the story. What happened when he saw the star?"
Jack Rabbit laid back his ears, closed his eyes, and said, "He realized the truth
of mutually dependent arising."2
"Well," thought Raven, "Jack Rabbit HOshi seems to know his Buddhism, but
maybe I'm not a Buddhist." So he flew off to see Prairie Dog HOshi. When he
announced himself, Prairie Dog poked her head out of her burrow, blinking in the
bright sunshine. Raven told her about his encounter with Jack Rabbit HOshi, and
asked, "What happened when the Buddha saw the morning star?"
Prairie Dog crawled out and stood erect. She crossed her paws on her chest,
scanned the horizon briefly, and said, "He realized the underlying fact of oneness."3
''Well,'' thought Raven, "Prairie Dog HOshi seems to know her metaphysics, but
maybe I'm not a metaphysician." So he flew off to see Moose HOshi and found him
feeding on waterweed in the creek at Densepine. Perching himself on a rock, he
croaked for the HOshi's attention. When Moose looked up, Raven told him about his
encounters with Jack Rabbit HOshi and Prairie Dog HOshi, and asked, "What
happened when the Buddha saw the morning star?"
Moose dipped his face in the creek again and came up munching. "Delicious
waterweed," he said.
"Well," thought Raven, "That sounds more natural." He sat on the rock a
moment, but Moose said nothing further and just went on feeding. "Okay," thought
Raven, "maybe I'll come back, but for now 1 think I'll continue this pilgrimage." So
he flew off to see Brown Bear HOshi. Announcing himself, he stood and waited
outside the den. Brown Bear eventually emerged and squatted silently on his
haunches. Raven told him how Jack Rabbit HOshi had said the Buddha
Shakyamuni realized the truth of mutually dependent arising, how Prairie Dog
HOshi had said he had realized the underlying fact of oneness, and how Moose
HOshi just said, "Delicious waterweed."
''What is your opinion, HOshi?" asked Raven.
Brown Bear made a strange sound, and Raven couldn't tell whether it was a
chuckle or a growl. Finally he spoke. "Something's still missing," he said. Raven
waited respectfully, but the HOshi remained silent.
''Well, thought Raven, "Brown Bear HOshi seems to know about something.
Maybe 1 should stick around for instruction."
The InternationalJournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19,2-13 3
METAPHOR
As they got better acquainted, Raven would ride on Brown Bear's
back as he foraged for food. When they were setting out one day,
Raven asked, "Do you teach exclusively with metaphor?"
Brown Bear said, "The robin sings in the oak tree; the finch sings
in the madrone."
Raven asked, "What do they stand for?"
Brown Bear turned his head to look at Raven and asked, "The lark
sings in the deep blue sky-what more can you ask?"4
Raven asked, "What is this singing?"
Brown Bear turned back to the path and grunted, "We'll have
auditions again tonight."
FAITH
One morning after a round of zazen,
5
Raven asked Brown Bear, "Does
faith have a role in Zen practice?"
Brown Bear said, "Great faith."
Raven asked, "How should 1 direct it?"
Brown Bear said, "One, two, three."
THE UNBORN
Relaxing with Brown Bear under the night sky, Raven asked, "What is
the unborn?"
Brown Bear said, ''Awesome.''
Raven asked, "Is it the same thing as the void?"
Brown Bear asked, "Where does all this come from?"
TURNING POINTS
Raven sat with Brown Bear at zazen one early morning, and
afterwards he asked, ''Why don't we study turning points that are
relevant for the forest today?"6
Brown Bear said, "Ask me a relevant question."
Raven asked, "Does the bear-hunter have Buddha nature?"
Brown Bear growled, "MU."7
"There you go," Raven said, "Mu is an old Asian word."
Brown Bear said, "That's the problem."
CHARACTER
One evening, in a discussion of his personal problems, Raven asked
Brown Bear, "What is the role of character in Zen practice?"
Brown Bear said, "I try to keep my promises."
Raven said, "I try to keep my promises too, but I'm easily
distracted."
Brown Bear said, "The cold wind reminds me."
~ ff ("N ""D h")
lV1U 0, oes not ave Yasutani Haku' un
Zen Master Raven 5
BIRTH AND DEATH
One evening after chanting sutras, Raven said, "Over at Jack Rabbit Rashi's
community, we were taught that we should be free from birth and death. I've
never known how to go about this."
Brown Bear said, "That's because it isn't possible."
Raven: "There was a clear implication that it is."
Brown Bear lunged at Raven with a horrific snarl. Raven let out a croak and
flew to the gray pine nearby.
Brown Bear looked up at him and asked, ''What happened to make you croak?"
Raven hopped down to a lower perch and said, "I would rather ask the robin to
explain."
Brown Bear sniffed and said, "Now the robin is taking over."
Raven said, "Only his beautiful song."
Brown Bear asked, "What happened to the stones and trees?"
Raven let out a croak.
Brown Bear asked, ''Where did they go?"
Raven croaked and then croaked again.
Brown Bear nodded his big head slowly and bared his teeth at Raven. "The
robin seems to have a bad cold this morning," he said finally, and both he and
Raven laughed and laughed.
THOROUGHGOING
Raven came to Brown Bear's den and walked right into his lair. "Time for me to
be moving on," he announced.
Brown Bear asked, "What will you say about your study here?"
Raven said, "Brown Bear is quite thoroughgoing."
Brown Bear said, "Try camping out for a while."
THE DREAM
Raven took Brown Bear's instruction to heart. He wandered a long time, from
forests to upland meadows to icy lakes. Finally, with the pinfeathers under his
beak getting sparse, he found an abandoned place in a tall spruce tree. He fixed it
up, and students began to gather, including Porcupine, who had studied with
Coyote Rashi. Other early students were Woodpecker, Grouse, Badger, Owl, and
Black Bear, who lived nearby. They would sit in a circle in the little meadow
under the tall spruce. Raven would sit with them and afterwards he would
respond to their questions, and at more formal teaching times, he would take a
perch in the outer branches of an oak tree close by-the "Assembly Oak," as it
came to be called. A stone outcropping served as an altar. One fine day Raven
took his perch and said to the assembly:
''We are children in the dream of the Buddha Sbakyamuni. He points to the
center of our circle, and the King of the Gods sticks a blade of grass in the ground
where he points. Our temple is established, and the Buddha smiles.
8
The bedrock
heaved up from beneath the turf there on the western edge of our circle is his
presence. We bow and chant his sutras with his throngs of followers down through
the ages. His incense fills the air. His teaching gives us pause. Stop here with him."
The circle was silent. Finally Owl called out, "Are you sure that's not just your dream?"
Raven-bobbed his head. "It is my dream."
6 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, vol. 19
THE PIVOT
After zazen one evening Porcupine asked, "We examine turning points
as our practice. What is the pivot on which this study turns?"
Raven said, "The large intestine."
Porcupine asked, "So it's all physical?"
Raven said, "All physical, all mental, an moral, all spiritual, all
void, all material."
Porcupine thought about this, and finally asked, "What's the
upshot?"
Raven said, "Trout in the pool, lilies on the bank."
EGO
During one of the early gatherings at Tallspruce, Badger asked
Raven, "How can I get rid of my ego?"
Raven said, "It's not strong enough."
"But I'm greedy," Badger said insistently, "I'm self-centered and I
tend to push other folks around."
Raven said, "Like I said."
THE SPIlRIT OF ZEN PRACTICE
Relaxing with the others after zazen one evening, Owl asked, "What is
the spirit of Zen practice?"
Raven said, "Inquiry."
Owl cocked his head and asked, "What do I inquire about?"
Raven said, "Good start."
TRUTH
One warm summer evening, Mole appeared in the circle for the first
time, and during a lull in the discussion afterwards, he cleared his
throat and asked, "Is it always right to tell the truth? Sometimes it
does more harm than good."
Raven said, "Then it's not the truth." Mole sighed and was silent.
Owl spoke up and asked, "Then should I lie at such a time?"
Raven said, "Ten the truth."
ESSENTIAL NATURE
One early morning, Woodpecker flew in for a special meeting with
Raven, and asked, "I've heard about essential nature, but I'm not sure
what it is. Is it something that can be destroyed?"
Raven said, "That's really a presumptuous question."
Woodpecker ruffled her feathers a little and asked, ''You mean I
shouldn't question the matter?"
Raven said, ''You presume there is one."
Zen Master Rdven 7
BEDROCK BUDDHA
Once a disciple of Yogi Rhino sent Raven a message, saying, "You just
have a stone outcropping to represent the Buddha. You should come
over here and meet a living Buddha."
Raven mentioned this in a talk and said, "If that fellow stays on
with Yogi Rhino, he might realize that living Buddhas are all over the
place, and yet our bedrock stands forth alone."
INSPIRATION
Raven took his perch on the Assembly Oak and said, "Some folks say
that you must find your inspiration in your own heart. In a way that's
true; you must find the place of peace and rest and carry out your life
on that ground.
"It is also true that inspiration comes from somewhere else. The
Buddha looked up from his seat under the Bodhi tree and noticed the
morning star. With that he had his great realization. What did he
realize? That's what we have to get at.
"The Buddha gave a broad hint about his new understanding when
he said, 'Now I see that all beings are the Buddha.'9 All beings, all
that exists, each and everything, precious in itself, coming forth
saying, 'Here I am!' "
Grouse muttered something, and Raven said, "Grouse, did you have
a question?"
Grouse said, "Here I am, but I don't think I'm so precious."
Raven said, "Cluck for us, Grouse." Grouse clucked.
Raven croaked.
One evening, Gray Wolf appeared in the Tallspruce circle for the first
time. After she had introduced herself, she said, "Is it all right to ask a
question?"
Raven said, "Not only all right."
"Thank you," said Gray Wolf, "Maybe it's obvious to everyone else, but
I don't understand the notion of karma. Could you explain it to me?"
Raven said, "Murder will out."
Gray Wolf said, "Sometimes crimes are never solved."
Raven said, "Help me not to live a lie."
PROPINQUITY
Cougar also came by that evening for the first time. Mter Raven's final
response to Gray Wolf, he asked, "Then is karma just cause and
effect?"
Raven said, "Propinquity propinks."
Cougar shook his head vigorously and said, "Sometimes it makes
me irritated."
Raven said, ''Your great chance."
THE PURPOSE OF ZEN PRACTICE
Badger attended the circle irregularly because of family responsibilities.
One evening he was able to come for zazen and questions. He asked,
''What is the purpose of Zen practice after all?"
Raven asked, "Do you have an inkling?
Badger hesitated. "I'm not sure," he said.
Raven said, "Doubts dig up the Blue Planet."
BUDDIDST TERMS
Mter zazen one evening, Woodpecker asked, "I'd like to understand basic
Buddhist terms, but I'm not sure that would help my practice. What do
you think?"
Raven said, "They help us sort out our vows."
Woodpecker asked, "Then they're a kind of appropriate means?"l0
Raven said, "Like the rain."
BROWN BEAR'S PURPOSE
That same evening, Porcupine asked, "What did Brown Bear have in
mind when he took up his role ofteacher?"ll
Raven said, "To make little girls ask questions."
Porcupine said, "Don't patronize me, Hoshi. My question is: 'What did
Brown Bear have in mind when he took up the role of teacher?' "
Raven bobbed his head. "Excellent! Excellent!"
Porcupine stamped her foot. "That's not an answer!"
Raven said, "He didn't have answers in mind."
MAINTENANCE
Mallard attended meetings for a while before asking her :first question:
''Aren't we wasting time just sitting here while the Blue Planet goes to hell?"
Raven asked, "Do you waste your time eating?"
"Is that all it is," Mallard asked, "Just personal maintenance?"
Raven said, "Mallard maintenance, lake maintenance, juniper
maintenance, deer maintenance."
BUDDHA
The next evening, Woodpecker spoke up and said, "I'd like to follow up
on Buddhist terms. Let's start with the basic one. What is Buddha?"
Raven said, "I won't say."
"Oh, come on!" Woodpecker exclaimed.
Raven let out a croak and flew up into the Assembly Oak.
DELUSION
Another time Woodpecker asked, "What can you say about delusion?"
Raven said, "Juniper bush."
Woodpecker said, "How is the juniper bush a delusion?"
Raven said, "It shades me on a warm afternoon."
Woodpecker thought a moment and then asked, "Then naming
things is delusion?"
Raven said, "Just so you know the risks."
Zen Master Raven 9
MYTHOLOGY
Raven took his students to see Stag Sensei, who taught Kung-fu at
Cedarford. Stag gave a little talk and showed them some of the
exercises. Then in the Founder's Glade they bowed before a large
stone in the form of Bodhidharma.
Back home that evening, Porcupine asked, "Was Bodhidharma
really the founder of Kung-fu?"12
Raven said, "That depends on your mythology."
Porcupine asked, "What is your mythology, HOshi?"
Raven said, "Open."
ENLIGHTENMENT
One day when they were sitting around having a snack, Woodpecker
asked Raven, "What is enlightenment?"
Raven said, "I won't deny it."
Badger asked, "What will you affirm?"
Raven said, "Containment."
Badger said, " What kind of containment?"
Raven asked, "What about you?"
Woodpecker hesitated.
Raven said, "The moon is not on the fringes."
DEATH
Mole came to Raven privately and said, "We haven't talked about
death very much. I'm not concerned about where I will go, but
watching so many family members die, I'm wondering what happens
at the point of death?"
Raven sat silently for a while, and then said, "I give away my
belongings."
THE HOLY SPIRIT
Reverend Crane invited Raven and his students to an ecumenical
service at The Little Church in the Grotto. Afterwards, the TaUspruce
community was abuzz about the experience. The next evening, Owl
asked, "Is the Holy Spirit something like Buddha nature?"
Raven said, "The two ideas are similar."
Owl said, "Then Christianity and Zen are somehow linked."
Raven said, "No, not at all, they are totally different and distinctly
separate."
Owl was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "How are they different?"
Raven said, "Their ideas of idea are different."
Owl asked, "How are their ideas of idea different?"
Raven said, "They're like two pots, one clay and one iron. Drop
them from the same height and the clay pot breaks into smithereens
and the iron pot just bounces and goes clunk!"
10 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
VERY SPECIAL
In a group munching grubs one afternoon, Mole remarked, "The
Buddha Shakyamuni was very special, wasn't he! I'm sure there has
never been anyone like him."
Raven said, "Like the madrone."
Mole asked, "How is the madrone unique?"
Raven said, "Every madrone leaf." Mole was silent.
Porcupine asked, "How does the uniqueness of every madrone leaf
relate to Zen practice?"
Raven said, ''Your practice."
METAPHYSICS
That evening, Owl said, "I'm still thinking about our experience at the
Little Church in the Grotto. Can a Buddhist be a Christian?"
Raven said, "Love thy neighbor."
Owl asked, "Can a Christian be a Buddhist?"
Raven said, "There are lots of them."
Owl asked, ''Aren't you bypassing a conflict in metaphysics?"
Raven asked, ''What has metaphysics got to do with it?"
Owl asked, ''What is the antecedent of it?"
Raven said, "Good move, Owl."
FIRST PERSON SINGULAR
Wolverine came by unannounced one evening in early autumn.
"Hello," said Raven, "I'm Raven."
Wolverine said, "The Roshi is meeting this one for the first time."
Raven said, "Is that so? What happened to the first person singular?"
Wolverine said, "No-self has appeared."
Raven said, "Could've fooled me."
VENERATION AND WORSIDP
Woodpecker said, "I'm like Owl, still thinking about our visit to the
Little Church in the Grotto. I wonder, what's the difference between
veneration and worship?"
Raven said, "One makes your tummy warm, the other doesn't."
Woodpecker asked, ''Which is which?"
Raven said, "Not my business."
Zen Master Raven 11
MAKE SENSE
One evening Raven took his perch on the Assembly Oak and said, "I
worked with Jack Rabbit Roshi for a long time, and there were certain
things in his teaching that troubled me. 1 never asked about them,
and finally 1 just came to the end and left. I think now that if I had
spoken up sooner it might have helped us both. So now, I would ask
you, is there anything in our program that troubles you?"
There was a long silence. Finally Turkey, a visitor that evening,
spoke up. "I've been wondering," she said, "why it is that you don't
have more song birds in your community?"
Raven said, "Maybe they're content just to inspire us from the trees."
Turkey asked, "How can they be inspired?"
Raven said, "Make sense."
THE NEW DISCUSSION LEADER
At the end of an evening meeting, Raven announced, "The Assembly
Oak will preside tomorrow night."
Woodpecker said, "This I'll have to see."
Next night Raven appeared at his usual place in the circle.
Woodpecker said, "You said the Assembly Oak would preside
tonight."
Raven said, "I'm here, but I forgot my notes."
Notes
1. Raven is referring to the Mahayana account ofthe Buddha's realization story, of
which there are two versions. The first, in which the Buddha exclaims, "Now I see
that all beings are the Tathagata. Only their delusions and preoccupations keep
them from realizing that fact!" is derived from the Hua-yen ching. See Thomas Cleary,
The Flower Ornament Scripture, 3 vols. (Boulder: Shambhala, 1984-1987), II: 314-
315. The other version is derived from Dogen Kigen's Hotsumujoshin (Developing
the Supreme Mind), which has the Buddha exclaim, "At this moment, I and an
beings have attained the Way!" See Kosen Nishiyama and John Stevens, trans.,
ShobOgenzi5: The Eye Treasury of the True Law, 4 vols. (Tokyo: Nakayama Shabo,
1977), II: 122.
2. Jack Rabbit summarizes the classical version of the Buddha's words on this
realization, which are too long to quote in full here. See Hajime Nakamura,
Gotama Buddha (Los Angeles: Buddhist Books International, 1977), pp. 58-60.
3. Prairie Dog's words do not have a source in accounts ofthe Buddha's
realization, so far as I can determine.
4. I like to think that Brown Bear is echoing Stevenson:
The children sing in far Japan,
The children sing in Spain,
The organ with the organ man
Is singing in the rain.
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses, in The Works of Robert Louis
Stevenson (New York: Walter J. Black, n.d.), p. 972.
5. Zazen is the Japanese term, now naturalized, for seated, focused meditation.
6. "Turning points" refers to k6ans, themes of Zen practice to be made clear.
7. Mu is the Japanese pronunciation (and probably the ancient Chinese
pronunciation) of a Chinese word meaning "No; does not have." It is found in the
story, "A monk asked Chao-chou in all earnestness, 'Has the dog Buddha nature
or not?' Chao-chou said, 'Mu.' " This is often the first case taken up in Zen study.
See Robert Aitken, The Gateless Barrier: The Wu-men kuan (Mumonkan) (San
Francisco: North Point, 1990), p. 7.
8. Raven seems to be echoing a Zen Buddhist folk story about the Buddha and
Indra. "When the Buddha was walking with his disciples, he pointed to the
ground and said, 'This spot would be a good place to build a sanctuary.' Indra,
Emperor of the gods, took a blade of grass and stuck it into the ground, and said,
'The sanctuary is built.' The Buddha smiled." See Thomas Cleary, Book of
Serenity (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1990), p. 17.
9. See Note 1.
10. Woodpecker, with her interest in terminology, had already picked up on the
expression, "appropriate means" (upaya in Sanskrit), a reference to the way of
teaching that fits the time, place, and the person involved.
11. Porcupine's question seems reminiscent ofthe stock question in Zen literature,
"What is the reason Bodhidharma came from the West?" See D. T. Suzuki, Essays
in Zen Buddhism: Second Series (New York: Samuel Weiser, 1976), pp. 225-253.
12. Bodhidharma (died c. 532) is thought to have brought Dhyana Buddhism from
India to China and established it as Ch'an (Zen), and is also thought to have
founded such martial arts as Kung-fu.
Zen Master Raven 13
Reading the Raven
Hermeneutics in Hagiography
Nelson Foster
Nevada City, California, USA
MONG THE productions of the famed
Buddhist tradition usually known as Zen
is a thousand-year-old genre of biography
unprecedented in its obscurity, oddness, and
brilliance. Called yii-lu in Chinese or goroku in
Japanese, these texts represent themselves as
life-histories of great Zen masters, but they ignore
virtually all that a modern reader seeks in a
biography, telling nothing about their subjects'
childhood traumas, mature personalities,
shopping habits, or sexual peccadillos and little
even about their looks or lifestyles. Instead, they
give disjointed, decontextualized accounts of
entirely incomprehensible dialogues (thus the
term yii-lu "discourse record") that the masters
are purported to have had in the course of their
careers. I say "purported" since recent scholarship
reveals that these so-called records were rarely
assembled until their subjects had been dead for
one or two centuries.
Within this peculiar genre, the present
manuscript is especially peculiar-in several
ways. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the first
original discourse record to be published outside
of Asia and the first whose various personae are
mostly animals (i.e., other than humans).
Presumably the dialogues recorded here actually
occurred between human beings but have been
transferred from lip to beak, so to speak, with the
intention of protecting the speakers' identities-
but on this point we can merely speculate. In terms
of literary pedigree, the animal characters seem
to be of ancient and mixed breed. Their European
antecedents notably include the talking creatures
of Aesop's fables, Grimm's fairy tales, The Wind
in the Willows, and Orwell's farm, while on the
American side, I would be remiss if I did not note
Native American myths and tales, the Uncle
Remus stories, Edgar Allen Poe's raven, and
Freddy the Pig. Heading the list of Asian
forerunners would be the hero of the rollicking
sixteenth-century, Chinese Buddhist novel Monkey ,
and the frogs and other beasts who caper across
the page in Japanese ink paintings, caricaturing
priests and all sorts of other people.
Robert Aitken, compiler and annotator of this
record, has little to say about its origins, stating
only that the text "came to him mysteriously"-
an ambiguous remark, to be sure. However elusive
the record's ultimate source, Aitken Rashi is
himself well known, ranking among the foremost
contemporary Zen teachers outside of Japan. He
studied Zen for thirty years under a series of
distinguished Japanese masters-Nyogen
Senzaki, Nakagawa SOen, Yasutani Haku'un, and
finally Yamada KOun, who authorized him to teach
independently in 1974. Even now, in his eighties
and happily retired, he continues to lecture, write,
and give personal instruction as his energies
permit. The Sayings and Doings of Zen Master
Raven, excerpted here, will be his tenth book, and
whatever may be determined about its validity
as a text or its place within the yii-lu genre, that
Aitken Rashi has had such a big hand in bringing
it to print attests to its authenticity as Zen
teaching. Although I don't understand a single
word of it myself, I commend Raven's record to
you as a source of pleasure and who knows?-
maybe even enlightenment.
Nelson Foster coedited The Roaring Stream: A
New Zen Reader CEcco Press, 1996).
Is the Mind in Search of Itself?
Herbert Guenther
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
The once so comfortable notion of mind being a single and simple entity has been
thoroughly discarded by a variety of disciplines that have probed its mystery. More
and more it is realized that mind is an emergent phenomenon in the evolution of
which many factors play an important role. In Buddhist experience-rooted and
process-oriented thinking (rdzogs-chen) mind is a complex dynamic system, described
in mythopoeic images that cannot but deeply impress the questioner.
T::
WORD "mind" has exerted and still exerts
a strange fascination, so much more so that
essays, popular and scientific and in-
between these two extremes, continue to be written
about this subject as if it were a thing or entity that
could be dissected, mapped, and reduced to
something called "objective." This commonly
accepted and practised approach to what is labelled
"mind" involves two fallacies. The first one is the
fact, suppressed or ignored, that that which we are
looking for (and then try to pinpoint among other
things) is the unobjectifiable, nonsubjective and
nonobjective dynamic reality (for want of a better
phrase for an abiding mystery) that does the looking
and searching. And as the Indian logicians, foremost
among them the Buddhist N agmjuna, were quick
to point out, in the same way as the little finger of
one's hand cannot touch itself, this essentially
cognitive reality, called mind, cannot cognize itself
However, the inherent and seemingly unnoticed
fallacy of this sort of thinking was that it assumed
cognition to be a thing among other things and that
its adherents did not realize that experience-qua-
experience of which they spoke so much is not a
thing and never can be a thing.
The second fallacy, particularly widespread in the
Western world, reflects Rene Descartes' failure to
recognize the mind's dual character for what it is
and his misconception of the mind's nondual duality
as a duality of materials (that, writing in Latin, he
referred to as res) which it is not. There was for
him, on the one hand, the material stuff (matter) or
res extensa, the extended substance/matter, of which,
among other things, our brains are made, and, on
the other hand, the immaterial stuff(matter) or res
cogitans, the thinking substance that presumably
designates not only the individual mind which
thinks but also the material stuff of which the brain
is constituted. The incongruity of Descartes'
reasoning shows up in the noticeable phenomenon
that if we do some damage to the brain we also
do some damage to the mind. Under these
circumstances why do we need either, a brain or a
mind, if we cannot separate the one from the other?
The time-honored adage "mind over matter," the
bastard child of Descartes' wooly thinking, is either
wishful thinking or plain nonsense-take your pick.
Descartes' worst mistake, which was to have
disastrous consequences, was his confusing a
duality of material substance with a duality of
interpretation. An interpretation depends on a point
of view or perspective, a context. Any physical thing
can have many contexts and, hence, many
interpretations, involving and being facilitated by
language that is already and always culturally
loaded.
In particular, our language, so rich in nouns that
stand for things, is geared to a preeminently static
The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VoL 19, 15-22 15
worldview in which structure takes precedence
over function, quantity over quality (of which Lord
Rutherford once proudly said that "quality is
nothing but poor quantification"-a statement that
does not hold good anymore even in the so-called
"hard sciences"), and thingishness over
operationalness or process. Now, the first point to
be emphasized is that mind is not a thing, but a
process that can be interpreted in two ways. In one
interpretation it is a complex dimension consisting
of electrons, molecules, chemicals and whatever
any ofthe ''hard sciences" may come up with, which
leads us back to a universe of matter and is
decidedly reductionist. In the other interpretation
it is a question of what these movements (of
supposedly material entities) mean to the mind
that they are assumed to constitute, which leads
to the philosophical problem of emergence.
Though overshadowed by the analytical-
reductionist presentation of its tenets, Buddhism
isbasically concerned with dynamic processes that
are self-organizing, self-structuring, and self-
complicating. Its very claim of being first and
foremost a Way confirms its process character, for
the Way is the going, not an inert link between
two points, each one of them being a dead-end,
regardless of whether we call the one dead-end
samsara and the other dead-end nirvana.
The problem of emergence is already intimated
in the opening statement of one of the oldest
Buddhist documents, pertaining to the Pali
Abhidhamma literature, the Dhammasangani.
There we read: "When a healthy conscious attitude,
belonging to the world of sensuous relatedness
... has arisen, then ... " Following this preamble the
"then" is elaborated upon in a list of function-nouns
pertaining to the various levels in the "psychic
household" in which they perform their respective
duties. In this opening phrase that unequivocally
emphasizes the positive aspect of Buddhism, the
word ''when'' according to the overall context also
implies a "where," denoting the situatedness of
human beings in a world oftheir own making. We
should never forget that when and where are
context-dependent concepts, not absolutes.
More difficult to assess is the original term citta,
rendered "conscious attitude" in the present context
and in view of the fact that an attitude is itself a
complexity whose meaning the usual translation of
this term by "mind" fails to convey. That it was
conceived of as an emergent phenomenon is
vouchsafed by the predicate uppanna hoti, where
uppanna is the past participle of a verb meaning ''to
emerge, originate, come forth." The difficulty of
rendering this term adequately is compounded by
the fact that it occurs in a list of three technical terms:
citta-manas-vijnana, said by Vasubandhu, the
epistemology- and structure-oriented author of the
Abhidharmakosa, to have one and the same meaning,
which they do not have. For the experience- and
process-oriented thinkers, what we refer to as "mind"
and conceive of as a single entity is an octuple pattern
relating to and suffusing a living human being as a
whole and, thereby, making him and/or her an
experiencer. Whenever we deal with experience we
find that we live in an imaginal (not imaginary) world
in which these images are meaningful self-
manifestations or self-presentations (not re-
presentations) of the whole's dynamics.
Every emergent phenomenon, such as the one
called "Mind," that on closer inspection turns out
to be a complexity of operations, displays a double
dynamics. On the one hand, as its qualification
"emergent" intimates, it points to its source from
which it has emerged, and on the other hand, it
transcends itself in being more than the features
or patterns that went into its making and hence
cannot be reduced to anyone of them.
What is this emergent complexity's source? It
is, in strictly Buddhist terms, the whole's (Being's)
nothingness that, far from being an empty
container (as which it is so often misunderstood
by an uncomprehending literalism), is but the
whole's energy. In the abstract language of modern
science, it is a symmetry breaking process, and, in
the mythopoeic language of lived-through
experience, a lighting-up. Whether we speak of
some symmetry-breaking or some lighting-up, it
occurs spontaneously-sponte ("of its own
accord")-without any extraneous stimulus. Still,
the questions of what is symmetry said to break
and turn into broken symmetries, and of what is
that which lights up and, in so doing, turns into
luminous phenomena and presences, have not yet
been answered.
Let us begin by asking ourselves what symmetry
means. Symmetry is both an aesthetic and a
mathematical concept. In the domain of aesthetics
we prefer symmetry/symmetries, although too many
can be boring and lose any aesthetic appeal. In
mathematics, there are many different kinds of
symmetry: reflections, rotations, and translations-
16 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VOL 19
to mention only the most important ones. Without
going into the details of an absorbing subject, suffice
it to say that the most familiar symmetric form is
our body that is ''bilaterally symmetric," which is to
say that its left half is (broadly speaking) the same
as its right half. But not only are the two sides not
exactly the same, they occupy different regions of
space with the added complication that the left side
is a reversal of the right side-its mirror image. The
moment we speak of a mirror image we introduce
the mathematical concept of reflection that, by
relating the two halves ofthe body; leaves the human
form invariant-at least in its appearance, if not in
its essence or its respective eigenstate. Invariance
must not be confused with rigidity. Rather, as
something dynamic--(note our ingrained tendency
to thingify whatever we encounter )-it initiates its
own bifurcation that marks a qualitative change in
the system's (the whole's) original state that, from
a dynamic perspective, is unstable and, for this very
reason, makes emergent phenomena possible. In
Buddhist experience-based and process-oriented
thinking that goes by the name of rDzogs-chen, this
initial dynamics is technically referred to by the term
de-bzhin-nyid, usually (and uncomprehendingly)
rendered by "suchness." Actually this term is a
compound, meaning an unspecified "this" (de) that
continues (bzhin) being this "this" and "making this
its being-this possible" (nyid). Its lighting-up
"results" in a bifurcation that in its incipience is
experienced and then described in terms of in-
tensity and ex-tensity. Both in-tensity and ex-tensity
are complementary concepts; their complementarity
means that the one cannot be without the other. It
does not mean a struggle of opposites as which
complementarity is often misunderstood. Since we
as embodied beings are males and females we
cannot but interpret this bifurcation into in-tensity
and ex-tensity in terms of masculinity and
femininity such that in-tensity is associated with
masculinity and ex-tensity with femininity. In-
tensity as the masculine principle (in the nature of
all that is) becomes the joy and exuberance in
working out the inspirations and projects that ex-
tensity as the feminine principle (in the nature of
all that is) has to offer. Hence ex-tensity becomes
synonymous with creativity that as such involves,
if not, say, is, an appreciative discerning. Both the
joy in working out one's potential and the
appreciation of the potential to be worked out are
mutually reinforcing, which is another way of
restating the principle of complementarity. The
bifurcation into or complementarity of in-tensity and
ex-tensity reflects an original state's instability, but
what are we to understand by this original and/or
initial instability? The answer seems to be provided
by the fact that in-tensity (the masculine principle)
and ex-tensity (the feminine principle) are
homologous by having a common origin that is the
whole's (Being's, the universe's) "intelligence."
Intelligence in this sense has nothing to do with the
much vaunted IQ, rather, intelligence is a way of
knowing where to go. A more philosophical term for
this kind of knowing is intentionality or purpose.
Never at rest (stagnant) it always is creative. In
other words, it remains invariant under all its
transformations ("creations"), which means that we
have to think of two contrary notions as a single
dynamic one, as demanded by the late French
scientist-phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard (1884-
1962) and, long before his time, insisted on by the
Buddhist rDzogs-chen thinkers.
Because of the important role creativity plays in
a living person's life it should not come as a surprise
that the complexity called Mind is feminine in
nature. When we who are both the whole and yet
only part of it, a "closure" that yet is "open" (as the
philosophical jargon puts it), encounter the forces
working in and through and upon us, we image them
in preeminently human shapes that display distinct
qualities and, as we might say; character traits. In
a sense they are the feminine principle's "signatures"
in the sense in which the physician Paracelsus
(1493-1541) understood the German word Signatur,
and in which Jakob Bohme used his signatura
rerum as a means to understand the nature or
essence of all that is.
1
Most revealing is the exegesis
of the term phyag-rgya-ma by Klong-chen rab-
'byams-pa Dri-med 'od-zer who says:2
phyag means "to hold (fast to)," that is, to hold
fast to the level where the darkness-gonellight
having spread (experience),3 rather than to
samsara;
rgya means "to seal," that is, "to impress on
samsara the seal of (self-) refinement and
pellucid consummation;"4
ma means "similarity to life-sustaining food,"
that is, in the same way as a person is going to
die when there is no food, so also, ifthe (deeply
felt) understanding (of what one really is),
depending on the phyag-rgya-ma, is not born
(in one's self), this (lack of understanding) will
fetter one in the three realms of worldliness.
Is the Mind in Search of Itself? 17
Now let us return to the emergent complexity
that we so inadequately call Mind and that, on closer
inspection, is already a "closure" of a greater
dimension onto itself. Imaged in human shapes that
reflect sociocultural frameworks, its constituents are
eight femininities. These eight femininities, ever-
present psychic realities that are simultaneously
generative and fostering, divide into two groups, of
which one group occupies the four cardinal points
of the compass, the other group the four quadrants-
a neat example of creativity's self-geometrization.
The basically descriptive names of the four
femininities of the first group are:
Gaud (in the East), Cauri (in the South),
Pramoha (in the West), and Vetali (in the North).
The descriptive name Gauri means "the brilliant
one" and she is experienced as being of pure white
color. The descriptive name Cauri means "the
thieving one" and she is experienced as being of
yellow color. The descriptive name Pramoha means
"the enrapturing one" and she is experienced as
being of red color. The name Vetali means and
denotes a "female vampire, a reanimated corpse"
and she is experienced as being of black color. In
passing, it may be pointed out that the colors
ascribed to these psychic realities in female forms
are highly suggestive: white is the color of purity;
yellow is the color of gold that is the target of thieves;
red is the color of passion, mostly sexual; and black
is the color of death, both physical and spiritual.
As "signatures" in the above mentioned sense,
they are the expressions of an individual's psychic
reality beginning with his or her "ontic foundation,"
in the original texts variously termed citta in
Sanskrit and sems or kun-gzhi (literally meaning
"a ground through and through" and by extension
"the reason for all-that-is," in which case it is also
called kun-gyi gzhi-ma, the feminine particle ma
emphasizing its female dynamics) in Tibetan. In the
Tibetan rDzogs-chen context it is always understood
as a closure of wholeness onto itself. The dynamics
of this foundation turn into the individual's
egological mind or self (manas in Sanskrit and yid
in Tibetan). As a process, this egological mind
evolves into its tainted or polluted state
(klistamanas in Sanskrit and nyon-yid in Tibetan),
the taints or pollutants being the three or five
libidinal-affective-emotional agents that, as their
characterizations as "poisons" emphasize, quite
literally poison the whole system and, figuratively
speaking, poison the whole atmosphere or context
in which this egological mind operates. By a further
process of becoming narrower and narrower and
ever more compact or dense, the individual's body
evolves as the site over which his or her sensory
functions (vijnana in Sanskrit and rnam-shes in
Tibetan) are spread out. The point to note is that
this "Mind-suffused" (if I may say so) body as a
totality of perceptual operations is itself already an
ongoing process of embodiment, tangibly
experienced, and as such is also an orientational
point with respect to its spatio-temporal
surrounding world-in other words, an organ of
perception that sets up and fulfills itself in the
tangibly perceptible.
The four femininities of the second group are
listed as:
Pukkasi (in the South-East), Ghasmari (in the
South-West), Smeshani (in the North-East),
and Candali (in the North-West).
Their names stem from designations oflow-caste
individuals, reflecting the hierarchical structure of
ancient Indian society (still very much alive when
it comes to family matters). The lowliness ofthese
femininities is intimated by their impure colors:
Pukkasi is said to be of a reddish yellow color;
Ghasmari of a dark green (greenish black) color;
Smesani of a dark blue (bluish black) color; and
Candali of a yellowish white color.
As "signatures," these femininities are, according
to the order in which they are listed, expressions of
the functions of sight as a gleaming and radiating
that emanates from one's eyes (mig); of sniffing in
the sense of creating and detecting smells with the
nose (sna) playing a decisive role; of tasting in the
sense of creating and detecting flavors, with the
tongue (lee) playing the decisive role; and of hearing
or listening or hearkening as playing an active role
in communication, relationship, and cooperation. Its
sense organ is the ear (rna) that, rather than being
a mere receptor, is able to change the sound
configuration so that only those phonemes that are
important to and more common to the surrounding
language and culture in which the individual finds
himself or herself, are picked up.
This octuplet offemininities may be conceived of
as a multivalued function of a complex variable that,
when we attempt to describe and fathom it is
translated (in the mathematical sense ofthe w;rd)
onto a different "plane." In so doing, we find that
18 The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol 19
we cannot return to the same value ofthe complex
function or contain or exactly define it. In the
language of phenomenology the "perceiving" act
fulfills itself in the "perceived," and in the language
of common parlance the "subject" fulfills itself in
the "object."5 In this process of "translating" one
plane onto another plane, of , 'mapping" the meaning
of one plane (say, the "subject" plane) onto another
plane (the "object" plane), a certain distortion ala
Alfred North Whitehead's "misplaced concreteness"
enters the picture. This "object" plane continues the
character of the "subject" plane by being conceived
of as consisting of "signatures." The distortion
occurring in this translation from one plane onto
another one and in the mapping of the latter plane
is particularly noticeable in the ''look'' of the eight
femininities constituting and presiding over the
"object" plane. This octuplet is referred to as the
"eight phra-men." (There is no corresponding
Sanskrit word for this Tibetan term.) Thus, the
"object" plane ofthe "through and through ground"
(also known as sems and citta) is the totality of the
external and the internal, and its phra-men is the
Lion-faced femininity who is experienced as being
yellow in color; the "object" plane of the "egological
mind" (yid, manas) is the welter of meanings, ideas,
and notions, and its phra-men is the Tigress-faced
femininity who is experienced as red in color; the
"object" plane of the egological mind's tainted or
polluted state (nyon-yid, klistamanas) is the
individual's ostentatiousness, and its phra-men is
the Vixen-faced femininity who is experienced as
black in color; and the "object" plane of the
(underlying) site for the sense organs and itselfbeing
a sense organ is (the body as) the tangible (reg-bya),
and its phra-men is the Jackal-faced one who is
experienced as deep blue in color.
The "object" plane of the visual function
performed by the eyes is (the dimension of) patterns,
and its phra-men is the Vulture-faced one who is
experienced as red; the "object" plane of the olfactory
function performed by the nose is (the dimension
of) smells, and its phra-men is the Heron-faced one
who is experienced as yellow; the "object" plane of
the gustatory function performed by the tongue is
(the dimension of) flavors, and its phra-men is the
Raven-faced one who is experienced as black; and,
lastly, the "object" plane of the language function
performed by voice is (the dimension of) phonemes,
and its phra-men is the Owl-faced one who is
experienced as blue.
The animal faces of the eight phra-men
femininities are highly suggestive in that this
translation of one plane onto another one carries
with it a certain wildness. The (relative) calmness
of the first set of femininities translates into the
(distinct) fierceness ofthe second set offemininities
which has been interpreted to the effect that the
four faces of terrestrial wild animals act as
"signatures" of vanquishing the deadening
(negative) forces in the four resonance domains of
which an individual-qua-individual is constituted,
and that the four faces of aerial animals act as
"signatures" of serving the living beings' existential
interests by way of four originary awareness modes.
Ours is an imaginal world which means that we
live in a world of images, imaginal realities, that
deeply affect us in our enworldedness. The
underlying and pervasive dynamics or creativity
with its intent ex-tensity as the feminine aspect of
wholeness, a nondual duality because of the com-
presence of an ecstatic (ek-static) in-tensity as the
masculine aspect, lends itself to a spatial conception
of it that allows us to speak of its self-geometrization:
the four cardinal points and the four quadrants of
the compass. In the mythopoeic language oflived-
through experience this octogonal pattern is
described in terms of eight femininities who, on
closer inspection, seem to present four primary
divinities (Gauri, etc.) and four secondary
attendants or executives (Pukkasi, etc.). However,
we must be careful not to take the qualifications by
primary and secondary too literally and to
misconstrue the whole set of eight femininities as
"divine" and ''human'' entities or objects. Rather,
they present facets of a primordiality that is neither
wholly divine nor wholly human. At best they
illustrate the principle of complementarity that
states that the one pole (aspect) cannot be without
the other pole (aspect) and that both eventually fuse
in the abiding mystery from which they have
emerged by way of a process of bifurcation.
When we now turn to the strictly cognitive
elements in the creativity aspect of wholeness of
which the eight femininities are their "signatures,"
we, for the most part, still labor under the
misconception of the separateness and separability
of what is said to be a "subject," on the one hand,
and an "object," on the other hand. In order to bridge
this horrendous gap, we then attempt to belittle or
obliterate it by saying that where there is a subject
there also is an object-a static interpretation of
Is the Mind in Search o/Itself? 19
the dynamic principle of complementarity-and
that each live ("subjective") cognitive act has-(a
fatal word in our language)-its dead ("objective")
counterpart, which contradicts the very nature
of experience-qua-experience as an indivisible
whole. As is well known in educated circles,
Edmund HusserI (1859-1938) attempted to
resolve this subject-object dilemma by introducing
the notion of intersubjectivity without, however,
really overcoming his solipsism and failing to
notice the distinction between "I" and "Self'-
concepts that figure prominently in psychology.
Let us describe what happens in my
oculocentric situatedness when I am looking. First
of all, I find myself in a world of possibilities,
presented to me, as it were, to explore them in
their thereness, which means that I am already
hooked-caught up by and tied to wholeness. In
other words, it is these possibilities that try to
catch my eye, to hunt and maybe frighten and
threaten me who believes that I am the one who
does the looking. Thus, the "objects" are "subjects"
themselves. My looking at the objects makes the
objects look at me and, in this role change, the
look of the "subject" -object is fierce and calls up
the image of a wild animal, a lion or a vulture, to
mention only two from among the eight phra-men
who so vividly illustrate that in the imaginal
world that is ours there are only "subjects."6
Here a few concluding words may be said about
the color symbolism that is far from an arbitrary
assignment, by singling out the experiencing
individual's "ontic foundation" with its specific
function performance. As an abiding "signature,"
imaged and experienced as a feminine figure of
sheer brilliance, she is called Gauri (the Brilliant
One), and her color (complexion) has a pure white
quality. Her specific function performance as
sight, conceived of as an equally abiding
"signature," is imaged and experienced as a low-
caste female, called Pukkasi whose color
(complexion) has a reddish yellow quality,
intimating, as it were, the immense wealth,
suggested by the color yellow-(yellow being the
color of gold, the most precious material)-our
ontic foundation has in store for us, and the desire
for this wealth, suggested by the color red-(red
being the color of passion, both physical and
mental-spiritual).
This same ontic foundation, when roused and
getting into action, is encountered by us as ever-
present participants in the unfolding of
wholeness, in its "signature" character specified
as phra-men, meaning some intrapsychic forces
that "pounce" on us, as a "Lion-faced" femininity
whose color (complexion) is plain yellow, and in
its specific function performance it is encountered
as a "Vulture-faced" femininity whose color
(complexion) is red. Certainly, this coming face to
face with our endowments can be a frightening
experience. Their wealth is simply overwhelming
and holds us captive by, quite literally, ensnaring
us, and its enticement is in its making us ever
more desirous of it. The wild animal faces, those
of a lion and a vulture, "staring at us," as it were,
reveal this other dimension of our ontic foundation
(which it is better to acknowledge than to repress).
Figure 1, on the facing page, graphically details
the intricacies of the complexity called Mind.
It may now be asked, how does our "I-ness" or
ego, so often thought of as a kind of "homunculus"
sitting in our head and generating in us the sense
of being a unitary (and maybe unique) person, fit
into or emerge from the complexity "Mind?" The
answer is already provided by the reference to
the yid (Skt. manas) and the nyon-yid (Skt.
klistamanas) that in the whole's closing-in onto
itself are what in mathematics are called phase
space and phase portrait.
7
Phase space has as its
coordinates all the values of all the variables of
any dynamical system (as is the whole, wholeness,
or Being) that are about to organize the emergent
total range of potential behaviors. Phase portrait
presents all possible behaviors (of the system)
starting from all its potential and possible initial
conditions as a unified "reality."
Vividly experienced and visualized as female
figures, these intrapsychic forces tell us a lot about
themselves. As Cauri and Pramoha, to mention
only two of these forces and their most conspicuous
features, the one "stealing" what is not her
property and, in so doing, also changing its color
(the brilliant white of the ontic foundation into a
shimmering and glimmering yellow), and the
other "casting a spell" on what are stolen goods
and thereby, too, changing their color into a
flaming red, are veritable temptresses whose
complicity shows up in the delusive and so
seductive notion that "I am running the show,"
which I am not. Poetically, this presumed
factuality of an ego has been expressed by the
20 The Internationaljournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, vol. 19
Figurel
The Intertwining and Interdependence ofthe Internal and External
Imaginal Realities in the Eightfold
Jackal-face
Owl-head
- -
/'
Vetali
........
/
""
/
(reg-bya)
"-
The zero point
/ Candali Smeshani"
energy of the
/
(rna) (lee)
\
,#
/
\ --
,#
whole's closure
onto itself
/
--\
I \
I
Gauri
\
Vixen-face
IPramoha
(kun-gzhi) I
Lion-face
\ (nyon-yid)
I
\ I
\ /
\
Ghasmari Pukkasi /
/
\
,,(sna) (mig) /
"- Cauri
/
""
/
........ (yid) /'
- -
Vulture-head
Heron-head
Tiger-face
Note. The outer circle indicates the whole's closure onto itself; the inner broken circle indicates the
outer closure's innermost dynamics; the - indicates the intertwining of the inner and outer
dimensionalities of this closure, suggestive of the aphorism of the German poet Novalis (Friedrich
Leopold, Freiherr von Hardenberg, 1772-1801):
Das Aussre ist ein in einen Geheimniszustand
erhobenes Innre (vielleicht auch umgekehrt)
(The external is the internal elevated into a state
of mystery [maybe it's also the other way round]).
The - indicates the inseparability of structure and function.
German poet laureate Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe in his monumental work Faust, part I, verse
4117 (written in 1808):
Du glaubst zu schieben und du wirst geschoben
(You believe to push, while you are being
pushed).
Before him the French classical writer La
Rochefoucault had expressed the same idea in his
Maximes (written in 1782):
L'homme croit souvent se conduire lorsqu'il est
conduit
(Man often believes he's driving while he is
being driven).
Since Cauri and Pramoha as "abiding
'signatures'" of wholeness-in-its-closure with their
"executives" called Ghasmari and Smesani,
respectively, have as their com-presences the phra-
men femininities called "Tiger-face" (stag-gdong)
Is the Mind in Search o/Itself? 21
and "Vixen-face" (wa-gdong) whose com-present
"executives," in turn, are the femininities called
"Heron-face" (kang-mgo) and "Raven-face" (bya-rog-
mgo-can), we may cite concerning this quadruplet
the Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko's words:
Life is a rainbow which also includes black.
8
In this connection and in passing it may be
pointed out that, while the "abiding 'signatures' "
femininities have faces (gdong) in the strict sense
of the word, their com-present phra-men
femininities have heads (mgo) whose faces are
more like grimaces that stare back at all their com-
present femininities rather than just looking.
The above is what is meant by an ego; while, as
its emergence shows, it is a self-limiting process
that seems to have enough continuity so that, as
time passes, it seems to be the same ego. This, of
course, is not the case; all the time it changes with
everything around it, both "inside" and "outside."
What about the Self with which the ego in its
hubris attempts to identify itself? The Self, too, is
not a thing, but a process that is qualitatively
different from the ego. While the ego, as its
descriptive examination has shown, is such that it
easily panics when it is "stared at" by its own make-
up and, when it does so, is doomed, the Self
distributes itself throughout an the processes that
make up the emergent mind and seems to have a
mind of its own, to be purposive and to
period. Unlike the ego that is becoming
progressively narrower and narrower and dimmer
and dimmer, the Self as an emergent phenomenon
is becoming increasingly erlichtet (alight) and,
while preserving its luminosity, spreads the light
that is us, This purposive character of the Self
reminds us of the words of the late Swiss
psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1965):
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of
human existence is to kindle a light in the
darkness of mere being. (p. 326)
By now the reader may have discovered that the
title ofthis essay is intentionally tantalizing. If the
Mind or Self (that is us) already knows there is no
point in searching, and if the mind or self (that, too,
is us) as a diminished Self is searching, it is up
against quite a host of problems and questions. The
enigma ofMindimind or Selflselfis one that each of
us has to tackle, be it only for realizing that there
are no solutions or answers, but only questions.
Notes
1. Although Jakob Btihme (Anglicized as Jacob Boehme)
wrote in German, his followers translated his writings
into Latin, hence the Latin phrase.
2. Theg-pa'i mchog rin-po-che'i mdzod, (sDe-dge
blockprint, vol. 2), f01s. 108b-109a.
3. This is the literal rendering ofthe Tibetan term sangs-
rgyas by which the so-called "Buddhahood" experience
is described. Western rendering ofthis term fails to note
the difference between an experience and an individual
person by mistaking an epithet for a proper name.
4. This is the literal rendering of the Tibetan term
byang-chub, corresponding to the Sanskrit word bodhi.
The Tibetan term is a dynamic ontological concept. The
idea of "sealing" calls to mind Martin Heidegger's
dictum that all beings are marked by Being.
5. On this idea see Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1962),
Phenomenology of Perception, p. 377, and its
interpretation by David Michael Levin (1988), The
Opening of Vision, p. 467.
6. In this connection special mention should be made
ofthe lucid study by James Elkins (1996), The Object
Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing.
7. For details of the meaning of these terms see Ian
Stewart and Jack Cohen (1997), Figments of Reality:
The Evolution of the Curious Mind, pp. 49-50.
8. Quoted in The Guardian, 11 August 1987.
A. Works in English
Elkins, J. (1996). The object stares back: On the nature of
seeing. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Jung, C, G. (1965). Memories, dreams, reflections, New
York: Vintage Books.
Levin, D. M. (1988). The opening of vision: Nihilism and
the postmodern situation. New York: Routledge.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962). Phenomenology of perception (C.
Smith, Trans.). London: Routledge.
Stewart, I., & Cohen, J. (1997). Figments of reality: The
evolution of the curious mind. Cambridge, England:
Cambridge University Press,
B. Works in Tibetan
Klong-chen rab-'byams-pa Dri-med-'od-zer. (n.d.) Theg-pa'i
mchog rin-po-che'i mdzod, sDe-dge blockprint, vol. 2.
22 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol 19
Brushing Up Against the Buddha
Marshall Arisman
School of Visual Arts
New York, USA
An artist born in America today stands a ten times greater chance of
being admitted to a mental institution than an art college. Perhaps it is
the way we educate artists that drives them mad. Art is eliminated from
school curriculums in favor of science and math. Most parents want their
children to become lawyers, dentists, doctors, accountants, computer
programmers-anything, as long as they don't choose to become artists.
Japan, on the other hand, makes living artists National Treasures.
Many of the artists work in the traditional forms of pottery and doll
making.
i ,','
24
S
ATORU ARRIVED at the hotel breakfast table out of breath and unable
to speak English. Patting his chest repeatedly, he bowed, took a
deep breath, and finally said, ''Very exciting news! A National
Treasure is considering serving you tea!"
1 smiled.
"It is a great honor to even be considered," Satoru said, obviously
disappointed at my lack of response.
"I am confused," 1 said, "I'm not Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns. I'm
not a world famous artist. 1 doubt the National Treasure has seen my
magazine illustrations or any catalogs from my exhibitions in this
small island."
"Kyushu," Satoru said.
"I know," 1 said, watching Satoru's automated hand move from his
chest to his slightly protruding stomach. He waived the waitress
away. 1 watched the mist from the hot springs fog the window behind
him.
"Did he come to the slide lecture last night?" 1 asked.
"No," Satoru said, "I asked him that when he called this morning."
"Tell me more about him," 1 said.
"For many years he was a Buddhist monk. Now he is married and
has three small children."
"How old is he?" 1 asked.
"Ninety years old," Satoru said.
"Pretty amazing man," 1 said, smiling.
Satoru, pretending not to hear me, continued to pat his stomach.
Having spent two weeks with Satoru as my traveling companion and
translator, 1 knew that his ulcer was acting up. 1 knew that this situation
would only aggravate his condition.
"Stomach no good," he said to himself as we walked the narrow streets
from the hotel into town. Checking his address book, we entered an
exclusive art gallery and antique shop. Locking the door behind us, we
were led to a small viewing room where a small statue, covered in blue
silk, was sitting on a glass table.
Two business men in black suits carefully unwrapped the statue and
stepped back reverently. The morning sun reflected off the porcelain
figure of a samurai in full battle gear. Satoru remained seated as 1 put
on my glasses and slowly walked around the sculpture. It was exquisitely
crafted with every detail painted to perfection. Beautiful as it was, it
left me cold.
''Very beautiful," 1 said repeatedly, as 1 studied the figure.
The official invitation arrived at the hotel that afternoon accompanied
by the two art dealers and three more men in suits.
"Ground rules," 1 thought, as we ordered drinks from the bar. Sipping
a glass of milk, Satoru listened intently and took notes as the senior
suit spoke to him in Japanese, often reading back for clarification.
Tapping his stomach, Satoru finally turned to me.
"This will be a formal tea ceremony," Satoru said.
"The master himself will conduct it. A very great honor for all of us."
1 nodded, smiling at the men around the table.
The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
-
"Major point," Satoru said, raising his finger for emphasis ... Under no
conditions should 1 ask to see his studio. This would be a serious insult
to him: his wife, his children, no one was allowed in his studio. To ask
and then be refused would cause loss of face for everyone.
"1 understand," 1 said.
THE CEREMONY
A
LARGE WOODEN door opened into a formal rock garden in front of the
house. Framed in the doorway, a small man with a wrinkled face
dressed in a simple kimono smiled and extended his hand as we
approached. He didn't wink, but he did. Following him into the house, 1
instinctively knew we had met before. Not in this lifetime. 1 knew why 1
was there. We were old friends.
The bitter, frothy, bright, green tea was long in the making. The
pungent taste bit my tongue as 1 raised the ceramic bowl with both
hands to my lips. Without looking up, 1 said to Satoru, ''Ask him if 1 can
see his studio."
Satoru, stunned speechless, watched in horror as the old man rose to
his feet. He beckoned me to follow him with one hand and held the others
back with the palm of his other hand.
We entered a small, eight-mat studio at the top of the narrow stairway.
The freshly laid mats smelled like sea grass. The side walls were lined
with book cases, and a small lacquered table sat in front of a window at
the north end of the room. The north wall had three pedestals holding
three separate dolls. They were the only art objects in the room. Placing
his hand on my shoulder, he motioned for me to inspect the dolls.
The doll on the left reminded me of Mrican fetish dolls made from
mud and blood. The clay surface was cracked and the color of burnt
orange. It was vaguely threatening, and 1 could feel the goose bumps
rising on the back of my neck when he handed it to me.
"When 1 made this doll, 1 get sick," he said. "Then my wife get sick and
my children get sick."
"1 believe it," 1 said, quickly returning the doll to the pedestal.
"This doll," he said, grabbing the arm of the doll on the far right, "1
make to get well. Then 1 get well, my wife get well and my children get
well."
The rag doll hung limp from his hand like a Raggedy Ann doll, the
button eyes and sewn lips forming a smile. He handed me the doll, and
1 nestled her in the crook of my arm.
"This doll," he said holding up a porcelain figure much like the one 1
had seen in town, "1 make for money."
1 have often thought back about that afternoon. Satoru visits New
York occasionally. His ulcer is worse. We have never spoken about the
National Treasure. Satoru pretends it never happened.
Brushing Up Against the Buddha 25
Desnudo cidsico, 1973
Carlos Jurado
aiting for Circus Animals' Desertion
A True Story of a Cryptic Spiritual Zoo in
the Rag-and-Bone Shop of My Heart
T. R, Soidla
Institute of Cytology
St. Petersburg, Russia
I started writing this paper questioning iftimeless messengers rather than timeless
messages-however inspiring-are the most direct way towards Self. This
transpersonal question, instead of being definitely answered, led me to rather painful
inner travel through some personal and global problems-documented herein.
Costume less Consciousness-
That is he-
.. . He dare in lonely Place
This awful stranger Consciousness
Deliberately face-
-Emily Dickinson (1976, p. 617, p. 574)
INTRODUCTION: ARCHETYPES LEAVING, ARCHETYPES
COMING. WILL THIS BE A GROUNDHOG DAY STORY?
I
HAVE THOUGHT about my stopping publishing
so many papers about all the zoomorphic
archetypes of a personal mytho-bestiarium.
Some independent friendly outer sources have also
hinted at this. With regard to publishing regular
journal papers along these lines-yes!-I would
agree that it is high time to change my mind. Still,
I would rather keep the zoo growing in one way or
another. Giving some vague but discernible shape
to the formless, writing silly name tags and adding
corresponding descriptions into my archetype
journal-all this armchair fieldwork has become a
part of my peri-omega existence ofthe past several
years. I can only hope that this evoking and naming
game will find some justification in the Ground's
timeless eyes and some graceful place in its
messengers' -eternal groundhogs' -timeless
displays. At least I am looking forward to a certain
amount of kind patience. Some amused tolerance
indeed seems to have been the main answer to my
activities of the last seven years by the basically
good-natured visible (and invisible) surrounding
world. No wonder, possibly these guys have no time
to pay any serious attention to me; they have their
own serious business going on-having great
private and public consequences, in some cases,
for the whole Universe. (But, at the same time,
busy or not, among all the other things, they seem
to be also involved 24 hours a day in teaching me
the great art of navigation towards Self. How do
they manage to do it? Thank you, friends!)
FACING THE PAST: ON HYBRID STRUCTURES.
T
HERE IS an important point that was not
explicitly conveyed in the papers of mine
concerned with my personal archetypes and myths
(Soidla 1995a,b,c, 1997a,b, 1998a,b,c,d, 1999a,b; cf.
Feinstein & Krippner, 1988; Andreev, 1997). This
is the hybrid nature of the messengers of the
Timeless. The ancient Egyptians obviously had a
clear understanding of this. They depicted gods as
having human bodies and animal heads. The same
is true of many other ancient cultures. These god
images are essentially mixtures of timeless
material with personal life stories and culture. The
images of course are symbolic-mythological
i:
dreams and visions do not necessarily combine
different heads and bodies. The blending is done
on a more subtle level and only subsequent analysis
can reveal the hybrid structure of this kind of
material. The same is true of my personal set of
archetypes. Like a child who would like to draw a
hat and glasses onto a photo in a newspaper, one
can mentally add some visible signs of hybrid
nature to my archetypal gallery of animals to be
closer to the inner truth behind these images.
How DID THEY COME TO ME-THESE PSYCHOPHYSICAL
ENTITIES AND WHOLES?
I
HAVE WRITTEN down several stories (Soidla
1998a,b,c,d, 1999a,b) of how archetypal
mythological timeless material has come into my
life. I would like once again to note that each time
this has been a complex process involving mental,
intuitive, emotional, and physical events. This is
controversial stuff, as in a way it can be perceived
as touching upon the issue of the reality of the
world we live in. As any fundamental claim would
stir up a lot of emotions that will not be very helpful
when dealing with things like personal versions of
archetypes, let's pretend that all these physical
consequences just do not exist, even if they seem
to be clearly hinted at. Future science will deal
with them one fine day. My papers must be
considered as only an attempt at a soft description
of complex phenomena taking place during
timeless interventions into my life story.
Archetypes have approached me as vague
concepts or odd events or even quite clear
synchronicities (Jung, 1973) referring to some older
memory material. This usually activates my
attention energy. In the situation of heightened
attention energy level a lot of unusual things seem
to surface at once: more synchronicities, including
rather bizarre physical displays, especially
memorable dreams, ideas that seem to answer my
questions to the world. No great wonder that when
one is attentive one sees more. Yes, but one who
has undergone these kinds of experiences knows
that the flow of unusual events seems to be quite
out of proportion to one's usual ways of functioning
in the world of everyday reality. Different events
look like different parts of huge invisible wholes
that have entered one's personal space. Dreams
comment on intuitions; synchronicities expand the
borders of ideas. There is great intensity in this
new style of flow of events (in one's personal life
story) that one auspicious day infects one's very
reality. When dreams seem to prepare one for
unusual synchronicities of the following day, it feels
as if the physical laws of the Universe are no longer
obligatory-the world is vibrant and alive with
unusual possibilities.
Isn't this feeling of flow the same that has
created religions? Can this special state of high
intensity-sometimes breaking barriers of physical
reality-indeed continue for whole nations during
hundreds of years? One can read the Old Testament
and decide. But even on a personal scale these
special periods are impressive. They create not only
feelings of awe and wonder, they bequeath many
great stories that one would like to retell to people
again and again. They also create meanings and
values that will remain as a new foundation of one's
psyche for the ensuing quiet, normal periods of life.
The processes of creating one's personal mythology
material (most likely based on inherited latent
timeless seeds) taps (and activates) remarkable
sources of life (or whatever) energy. It can even
seem that the set of events and concepts that has
forced its way into one's life story is some other
side of this energy flow. And at the same time, this
process in the human mind is essentially self-
describing. Yes, often, quite contrarily, it just
provides a provocative silence and inability to
communicate some most important new basic
intuitions, that paradoxically-like a call of
Another-will stir other souls. But often it also
provides new metaphors, ideas, images, that help
one to come to terms with this new (self-created)
stuff of one's consciousness.
Great Consciousness, enormous are your
wonders!
Thank you, Timeless, for these precious gifts.
WHO NEXT? WITHIN A NARROW CLERIHEW ...
W
HO WILL be the next messengers of the
Timeless to teach me some important
lessons before the personal omega point darkness
will swallow me? I mentioned Groundhog, a
titular animal of the remarkable movie
Groundhog Day. The film is about a set of
experiences that keeps being repeated in the
hero's magical new "Groundhog Day reality" until
he manages to make some real changes in his
psyche. A great film, reminiscent of a similar
story-Strange Life of/van Osokin-by Ouspensky
28 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Wll. 19
(1948), entitled, by the way, in the Russian original
version as Cinema-drama. Or will I experience my
next major archetype only after passing the dark
tunnel of my personal omega, out there?
Then there is the green (or pale or whatever)
apocalyptic horse (Volohonsky, 1999) whose more
peaceful realization can feel rather enchanting, as
in the scene of carrying off the bride in the recent
movie Life is Beautiful. Yes, but we remember what
followed, suffering was lurking there, around the
next comer; and also the great display of human
dignity, the great gesture of a jester's stoicism, so
close to some deep instincts of our soul.
When I was writing the first paragraph of this
Who next ... part of my paper, Javanese sparrows
outside my window created such a noisy but tender
chirping display that I went to the window to look
at them. Now a dove repeats a single word with
unearthly emphasis. What is the message?
Another one-word message of these days has
been much more clear but not too close to my
archetypal Zoo world. A bird keeps coming to our
yard to repeat Christ, Christ, Christ ... in a clear
shrill voice.
WHAT IS THE MESSAGE? WHO IS THE MESSAGE? SOME
TABLOID STUFF ON THE TIMELESS.
P
OSSIBLY ON some mock "hard eyes" level
(Leonard, 1978) one must see the world of
synchronicities in the following way: Magic
animals, humans, demigods, gods-we are all
messages to each other in the great play of
Consciousness. (As on the physical level we are
caressing, chasing, picking up, killing, eating each
other; on the emotional level-loving, hating,
despising-whatever else. A shocking economy of
the timeless in all this global share of time!
Shocking, like all the timeless material, seems to
be at the rational ego-centered mind level.)
Do the levels interact? Suppose a message to you
arrived late-because the messenger, say, a bird, on
the way to you noticed a message to me (a worm)
and stopped to eat it. And should I also consider the
case of a possible quarrel between electrons in my
computer? Invisible forces leading these messengers
must usually be precise, holistic, and safe. But possibly
not always. Yeah, the feeling ofbeing led by an invisible
force seems to be rare among contemporary people.
But this is most likely just due to the suppression of
the knowledge of one's connection with the Timeless
in contemporary minds. This means that these people
must be just acting as messengers on another level,
an unconscious one. Maybe this way it works even
better, and civilized twentieth-century people are still
better vehicles of messages of great Consciousness
than people of previous centuries more involved with
concepts like fate, God's will, and so on, coloring the
messages with heavy personal and cultural material.
At the ego-level it certainly feels this way.
A FINGER POINTING TOWARDS THE SUN AND MOON.
W
EARE all inhabitants of the field of consciousness.
Searching towards the source of one's thoughts
and of one's free will one will encounter the ego. But
there is the source of the ego itself, and this is
also a deeper source of one's will, intuitions,
creative thoughts. Are there really two wills, etc.-
two of anything else? One usually does not see it
this way. Being in the ego world, only ego seems
to be real. When one is with Self (Anonymous,
1972) one no longer sees any ego and there is again
only one source of will and creativity-of course a
different one. It is in the twilight zone of spiritual
quest that one has all these questions of two wills.
Spiritual search, by its nature, is dualistic and it
is exactly the very dualism that must be overcome.
Spiritual quest is a state wherein one is closer to
Right Understanding, but more separated from
the One Reality. In a state of quest one asks
reasonable questions but is least able to
apprehend the right answers. A quest breeds
paradoxes, fantasies, dreams, and nightmares.
Maybe one could put it this way: A small moon,
the human ego is-so that if one grows capable of
pointing (during the rare minutes of a "spiritual
eclipse") with a finger towards both Moon and
Sun, the tiny moon ego will become invisible, like
a small dark spot on a huge disk of the flaming
Sun (Self, Source). But what about seeing through
a narrow window many strange people on the field
pointing towards something up there (the Sun,
that is not visible to me)? Nothing is wrong
viewing the seekers this way. And nothing is
right-because one does not see the only thing
that brings meaning to this scene.
A MESSENGER I WAS NOT WAITING (READY?) FOR.
I
HAD AN illusion of being ready for almost any
messenger. The dream I had the night after
writing the previous (A finger ... ) paragraph shows
this not to have been the case. In my dream I was
informed that a distinguished alien visitor would
Waitingfor Circus Animals' Desertion 29
, i. i
appear, but I must be prepared-this visitor being
a toad. (I must possibly add that two weeks ago I
purchased a brown wooden toad necklace for my
wife.) I had a crazy first thought that I, of course,
shall be ready, but what about my fellow citizens
who most likely would feel contempt? I felt some
sadness about this distinguished visitor who will
certainly meet some savage misunderstanding here.
The person arrived. And what? There wasn't the
slightest possibility of misunderstanding. A powerful
stream of compassion of an unquestionably great
(but for this visit clearly restrained in its capacity)
mind reached me and my fellow countrymen. It was
the great presence of a great personality who led
the mental exchange with me and the other people
who were present, leaving no place for any
ambiguity. We felt a bit unprepared, a bit lost. Half-
pictures, half-concepts, were involved with this
dream, but also a considerable amount of novelty.
And then we had one more visit-this time by an
even more distinguished but a bit more formless
and more powerful visitor. At this point the lesson
became a bit "melted" as the dream began fading.
Such a sequel to my power animals archetypes
was a somewhat unexpected development, possibly
demonstrating that the archetypes I speak about
command a lot of intelligence, compassion, presence,
and even personality oftheir own. It became obvious
during my morning constitutional that this dream
was really one that belongs to the realm of great
dreams. There has been a mysterious person,
presumably living nearby, whose reality seemed
to be under some doubt. At a theatre, he had
approached me and the Ss-my friendly hosts in
Honolulu-and claimed to have seen us every
morning during our walk. We, on the other hand,
did not remember having seen him and during the
following several weeks there was no trace of him
around. But the morning after this memorable
dream, he made a glorious appearance-
accompanied by his wife and two dogs. His
emergence-as if from nothing, or rather from the
dark realm of our doubts-was a powerful statement
of the existence of hidden realities. I noted earlier
the dream and wakeful synchronicities' complexes
that seem to convey an especially overwhelming
message of the presence of the Timeless (Soidla,
1995c, 1998d). Just a reminder about the Timeless
is itself a most important message among any
possible timeless messages.
PASSING THE RAG-AND-BONE SHOP OF MY HEART, PASSING
THE SPIRITUAL ZOO, REACHING TOWARDS THE SOURCE.
H
AS THE new messenger already arrived or
must I wait for another one? Stating it this
way suggests some obvious parallels between what
I am saying and messianic thinking. But maybe
all ofthis is not too important. Personal archetypes
are passing, circus animals deserting (cf. Yeats,
1996). Human life has its, often most painful, end.
One can feel nostalgic for awhile for one or another
archetype, as for some other powerful visible or
invisible images of human experience. It all passes
away. What remains is the Timeless, hinted at
more or less explicitly by the images one has
confronted. Feeling the presence of the Timeless,
of the Source ... is the only thing that really matters:
I would just like to add, that for me, the messengers
these days have been more important than their
messages. Their very existence points so clearly
towards the immutable presence of the Timeless.
But again, what really counts is only the Timeless.
Only one's real Self, Source.
Thank you Source ...
Thank you, messengers of the Timeless.
Good-bye?
THE fiRST CIRCLE OF IMPORTANT CORRECTIONS. PERSONAL
AND GLOBAL LEVELS SPEAKING ABOUT SUFFERING. A fiNAL
TESTING GROUND. COMPASSIONATE TOAD OF THE OMEGA
REALM, TENDER FINCHES, NOW I UNDERSTAND A BIT MORE
ABOUT YOUR MESSAGE.
I
WANTED TO stop at this G?od-bye, maybe ~ u s t to
add- some commentanes. Once agaIn my
misunderstandings were compassionately but
forcefully corrected. A cluster of events came upon
me: a recurring malfunction to S's computer that I
am using; a persisting nasty irritation in my
mouth; and for a day or two even the doorknob of
my room in S's house went crazy so that I had
difficulty leaving my room. Some other less notable
problems also occurred. And messages within
messages. But all these mostly symbolic events
were preempted by the news about the Kosovo
crisis erupting (March of 1999), a real globalization
ofthe idea of everything going wrong. Every day
brings news about some escalation oflow-tech and
high-tech hostility and human suffering in this
30 The International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
region. Does this tremendous whole that seems to
be entering my life, marked by this constellation
of events, this message-as if of the Timeless-
tell me something very bad about my (or our
common) personal future? Maybe yes, but I would
not like to take this as a final threat. (And, of
course, every one of us will die one day.) But, yes,
it changes the context of what has been written
above. Particularly, I was not quite ready to say:
The message is nothing-the messenger (and the
implied contact with the Timeless) is everything.
Yes, this was certainly an overstatement given the
current level of my spiritual progress. Obviously
many messages of consciousness can divert me into
thinking more about physical reality than about
the Timeless.
This is not only my personal problem. The
history of religions demonstrates how often obscure
but powerful messages have been created on
national and transnational levels and have led
people's minds into dogmatic stagnation and to
obsessions with blood and religious powers.
Knowing the power and the obsession-creating
potential of these messages-who can blame the
people? Restoring the original purity of impulse
has demanded the greatest (trans)personalities
like Buddha and Jesus to appear. Yes! Messages of
the Timeless can also get mixed with dangerous
personal stuff on the smaller scale of just one's life
story. These hybrid structures can be very powerful,
but too dark to follow safely. It is better to develop
some subtle discrimination. Perhaps, in my
striving towards the Timeless, I must be aware of
the continuous universal flow of compassion to keep
my consciousness pure and await these complexes
to dissolve on their own. Our attention is so easily
attracted to such complexes, but in the absence of
energy provided by fear and frustration (and in
the medium of purified consciousness) sooner or
later they will shrink-whatever the status of grim
predictions or obsessions they seem to carry. Let
the navigational art ofthe Timeless-related sea of
personal life story come to help me.
Of course, at the same time, all these reminders
are certainly preparing me for some grim personal
realities on the way to reaching the inevitable
omega point. Most likely the forthcoming suffering
will not directly touch the people close to me-but
then how much of suffering takes place every
minute in our world, even in seemingly peaceful
days. Personal or global-will it really be so
different? Suffering, one day, just finds its way to
one's mind. This time it came with dark global
events. Will it be mastered? Will I be able to drink
of the Timeless even in the emerging dark
admixtures containing so much heavy material of
my own personal and general human condition?
Questions, more questions. In the real time of
writing these very words the bird came again to
tell me: Christ, Christ.
Source, thank you for everything. Teach me, help
me to reach your presence in my journey towards
the personal omega point.
Timeless Source, teach me to deal with suffering,
grant me an unobstructed view of you, a pure
perception of your bell when it rings ...
MIT BOMBEN UND GRANATEN. SILENCE.
T
HE WORLD is a place of great currents of
suffering these days. It has always been this
way. It is I who has been most often not thinking
about it. The world is. Suffering is.
The Timeless is and isn't. This is the only
something I know beyond suffering and beyond
being.
This knowledge has not yet been tested in any
extreme ways. Nor, I'm afraid, will I be able to
communicate the results when suffering takes hold.
But then each of us learns in hislher own way.
Bon voyage, friends!
Thank you again, messengers of the Timeless.
Thank you Ramana bells, resonating with deep OM.
Thank you, compassionate omega messengers of
our suffering who are always present "behind the
filmiest screen."
Thank you silence.
Christ, Christ, Christ, says the bird.
ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER ILLUSION-OR WHAT?
P
ATHETIC PARAGRAPH endings-even when
provided by life itself-can be impressive, but
one must not be misled into believing that some
final truth has been reached. After a few minutes,
hours, or days, anything that seems to be finally
clear and obvious is always followed by some
unexpected twist of the plot.
Waiting for Circus Animals' Desertion 31
I wanted to finish my paper, the last part of my
transpersonal Hawaiian journal (see also Soidla,
1999a,b) with the ecstatic "words" of the real bird
whose synchronistic timing had been perfect. This
decision was reinforced by an auspicious sign: just
when I wrote down the last words of the paper, my
friend S brought to my room a compact disc of
Ioannis Koukouzelis, a composer of very beautiful
Byzantine church music. I was in a very special
mood, full of hope that the meaning of all the world
and personal suffering I was perceiving during this
first week of the Kosovo crisis (and of my own illness
and other quite ominous synchronicities) will now
be made clear and resolved by Christ. The figure of
Christ has always been dose to me, but still not
occupying the very central position in my mind that
would help me to make some long overdue,
important final change in my life. But now all
synchronicities seemed to take a new happier turn:
even on the cover of the CD that S gave me, I
immediately noticed a beautiful mosaic of
Constantinople with a central, resurrected Christ
figure in white-quite fitting for the coming Easter
days. But I decided, at first, not to use the
Koukouzelis episode in my paper. The bird sentence
made a wonderful final point and the impression
could be spoiled by additional words. Even apart
from the paper-it seemed that speaking about the
episode would dilute and in a way devalue the
powerful spiritual experience I had.
I was filled with hope and decided that I must
not fall into any spiritual trap at my coming visit
with the fifty or so University of Hawai'i students
taking transpersonal classes: I must clearly declare
my Christian identity. Did I succeed? Yes and no. I
had some of the eagerness of a second-time
neophyte, no doubt, but myoId self still coexisted
with the new center. On a surface level, several times
I had a feeling of having gone wrong somewhere.
This was when I spoke about obvious shortcomings
of organized religions (both in classes and
afterwards talking with individuals). The question
is, had I succeeded with some real Metanoia-
fundamentally changing my mind-would these
critical words concerning historical religions have
been left unsaid or stated in a different way? Raising
these questions is not very productive because it
isn't the details but the situational context of these
words of mine, the overall gestalt of my actions, that
can reveal what was really happening. And possibly
what will happen. The story is not yet finished.
Anyway, the next day or so S casually mentioned
to me that he had not really given the Koukouzelis
CD to me, it was just on loan. No problem, but I
was unable not to perceive this event as symbolic-
a kind of departure of the dear figure. Here my
story was assuming a quite unexpected and
unpleasant twist. During the same day, before
going to bed I discovered that the white cross that
I always wear (given to me by my wife) was gone,
somehow fallen off unnoticed earlier in the evening.
I could not escape the sad feeling that my reunion
with Christianity had taken a somewhat wrong
turn. I was plunged back into feeling that
everything was as ominous as during the first days
of the Kosovo crisis that had coincided with my
personal crisis. I searched for the cross but was
unable to find it.
During that night I had a strange vision. My
yoga training provided me with the ability of
triggering colorful inner visions by directing sexual
energy "upwards." Difficult to explain, but easy to
do once it's mastered. (My mastery of this technique
is certainly limited [Soidla 1995a,b,cl.) I direct my
energy this way half-automatically in a dream and
then awake to some hypnagogic borderline sleep-
state. This time it obviously happened again, but
the energy this time felt different. At least when I
saw the emerging image, none of the usual sexual
arousal was present. I saw part of a brow and two
closed eyes of an obviously dead man. I was not
able to change the framing of this image, so I cannot
relate any other details. A source of light like a
bright small lamp in a dark room was glowing in
the upper left corner of the picture-its glow was
intensifying to an almost painful point as I realized
that it was in some way connected with the
spiritual power of the vision. I was lucid and
conscious of the date being the Friday night of
Easter week, so I was quite aware who must be
dead in this vision. I felt this meant that the help
I was badly in need of was hardly available, but
nevertheless I asked for help, sealing my prayer
with an inner promise to live the life of a good
Christian (my spiritual materialism quickly
calculated this to be a realistic promise). Then some
energy compassionately entered my neck and
throat filling them with soothing warmth and
tingling. Here I fell asleep.
Were these events telling me of the illusory
nature of my spiritual life? Were they severing
my remaining ties with Christianity? Was it a
warning telling me to be very attentive, very
mindful, so as not to lose something that is most
important? I have been trying to follow the last
version of the message I got (of being more
mindful-a good thing in any case), even if really
all three and possibly some more meanings were
communicated. During my morning walk I was
making the sign of the cross (as if to replace the
missing cross on the physical level by its symbolic
counterpart in my consciousness) every time I
remembered my loss, my problems, or the
atmosphere of Easter that fills these beginning
days of April with the Timeless.
A few days passed. During Easter Sunday, I
suppressed my bad instincts that were telling me
to do some work. I tried to keep my promises. So
I spent this day in a moderately "transpersonally
correct" way. Superstitions (or are they warnings
of our metaphysical instincts?) can be really
effective mindfulness bells.
My health problems have not gone away. Kosovo
is still a reminder of suffering for me and for all of
us (succeeded and amplified by Chechnya with a
different political background but the same human
problems). But the white cross mysteriously
reappeared a day later when I was looking through
my clothing in a closet. Suddenly, the cross was
just there, on the floor. I put it on immediately.
Thank you!
THE WORLD ORCHESTRA
Circus animals are leaving. Shadows grow.
"When Bells stop ringing ... "
Christ, Christ, Christ, says the bird.
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Waitingfor Circus Animals' Desertion 33
Desnudo con cdmara triple, 1973
Carlos Jurado
Carlos Jurado: Master Alchemist
Philippe L. Gross
Editor, The International Journal of Trans personal Studies
Honolulu, Hawai'i, USA.
Autorretrato con sombrero, 1977
Carlos Jurado
Carlos Jurado is known as a painter and photographer, but his art wouldn't be
what it is if his life weren't art. Many photographers, especially members of
photography clubs, can be quite obsessed with the latest technical gizmos, as if
those extras could magically increase the quality of their seeing and art. Jurado's
approach to photography reflects a very different direction. He stays close to
photography's origins by using the most basic camera, a box with a tiny hole-the
pinhole camera. Using this "archaic" camera, Jurado shows us how unimportant
equipment is relative to the photographer's skill, artistry, and quality of seeing.
But the moral isn't to disregard equipment or techniques. In fact, Jurado's love of
tools and methods is another aspect of his art: he builds his own cameras and
invents his own processing techniques. For example, he built a camera that takes
three images simultaneously on the same negative: wide angle, normal, and telephoto
(see image on facing page). What better way to demonstrate the constructive nature
of photography ... and of "reality." Furthermore, true to his heroes of photography,
Fox Talbot, Niepce, and Daguerre, Jurado has explored their "alchemic processes,"
expanding upon them and inventing new ones, including an "addichrome" process
(involving a separate color screen sandwiched into the negative both while
photographing and printing the image, a process which allows him to create unique
color photographs). But Jurado does not identify himself as a technician-he feels
more comfortable with the term "alchemist," which adds an aura of magic to his
work. Keeping a sense of wonder lies at the heart of Jurado'sjoie de vivre-it pulsates
in his art and in his life.
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19, 34-40 35
Jurado's subjects are often commonplace objects. He is not searching for the
unusual, but somehow manages to transform his daily surroundings into an
uncommon world. Often, Jurado uses little objects, bibelots, that sit around his
home-he has made several images of a toy skeleton which was lying around
the house. Some critics interpreted this as an obsession with death, but as Jurado
says: "They tell me that I have a fIxation with death because I shoot skulls. The
truth is that I shoot them because they are in the house, and they are in the
house because my wife, Chichay, likes them." In his life and in his art, Jurado
illuminates the endless ways the constructive nature of reality fools us and
preconceptions mislead us.
Recently I had the privilege of meeting this great artist, and with the translation
assistance of his daughter Zinzuni, gathered some of Carlos Jurado's thoughts
on his approach to photography.
PG: Do you feel that photography has changed
your way of seeing?
CJ: It's an interesting question. I had not
thought about this before. Many times I see
things and think, this could be a photograph.
So, in some way not a lot .. .it does change, it
does give a new way of seeing, but it is not
conscious.
PG: Would you say that photography has
enriched the quality of your life?
CJ: Yes, any activity that you take seriously
enriches your life. It is a new possibility to
communicate something.
PG: What attracts you to pinhole photography?
CJ: It's a medium that satisfIes me for many
reasons. For example, the atmosphere that I get
is not possible with other, modern cameras. My
education is as a painter, and pinhole
photography is more related to painting than to
traditional photography. Practically, this gives
me more freedom. I can make any format I
want, including angles that conventional
cameras, for commercial reasons, do not permit.
But that is just one reason. Mostly, what I like
about the pinhole camera is that it allows me to
explore beyond our conventional limits.
Editor's note: In addition to the present article, photographs
by Carlos Jurado appear on pages 26, 58, 162, 184, and on
the back cover.
PG: Could you describe your inner photographic
experience, such as states of consciousness? Do
you have to be in a specifIc state of mind to see
an image?
CJ: There are two aspects to it. One is
involuntary and has to do with the space I am
in. Then there is another one that I planned
beforehand, or that I have to do to serve a
purpose ... a specifIc theme show, for example.
I have to make a distinction here because there
are different types of photography. If I go to the
Chiapas where there is a social movement, I
have certain ideas about taking certain kinds of
photographs. I have to open my heart to
understand what is going on to be able to do it
right. But the kind of work I do is not
documentary.
PG: Does your relationship to your subject
change through photography?
CJ: That object that is there, real, will have a
completely different presence in the image. It's
not the same, it's another thing. And that other
thing is my creation. But with pinhole
photography, each time I make a photograph,
it's an adventure. This doesn't happen with a
conventional camera because I know exactly
how it is going to come out. Not so with the
pinhole camera: it's much more exciting!
PG: Is that part of the excitement of pinhole
photography, that feeling of not knowing?
CJ: Not exactly, I like it because of the different
effect that I can't get with another camera.
Perhaps it's a way of communication that is closer
to my personality: it is all interior.
For one reason or another that I cannot define
exactly, I am solidly opposed to a system of life
that makes it mechanical. I know that I don't
have it right, but the pinhole photography is
closer to an act of magic than an act of technology.
Although I know
that in reality
p:inhole photogra-
phyis also a
technique, I don't
experience it that
way. I prefer
feeling its magical
side.
PG: Is there a
spiritual dimen-
sion to your
photography?
CJ: Not religious,
no. It does not
transform my
personality, but
there is an effect
with several
ramifications. It's
Ahorcadito en fa Bafiera, 1996
like being in front of a piece of white canvas. I
know what I want to do but not exactly how-
what it's going to be at the end. In that particular
moment, of course, it can be a different
dimension, sometimes frightening! The creative
process cannot be easily explained: sometimes I
have to work on something ten times over. Then,
a new dimension opens up and I know what I
want, but I never know when the opening will
come about.
When you are going to execute an act of
creation you really have to be in a different
dimension to go through and achieve what you
want, but that act of creation, whatever it is, gives
you that dimension that is not the one that you
have in your everyday life. And an act of creation
can provoke many different creations. In painting,
for example, you are working on a particular part,
and in my case, if I am not satisfied, I cover it up,
sometimes I even scratch the canvas and have to
patch it in the back-in that moment there is a
dimension that is awfully hard. In some other
cases things come out well, the way I want, and
then I hope the path will remain clear.
The greatest satisfaction in life is when a piece
of work exactly fits my intention. Then I feel
fulfilled for several days. This can really change
my dimension. When there is a problem that I
can't resolve, either
in photography or
in painting, I can't
sleep, my
relationship with
everybody becomes
very aggressive, I
feel poorly until I
resolve the
problem. It can last
for days. When I
finally resolve the
problem, I feel
fulfilled in every
respect. I am not
religious at all, but
I would say what
religious people
would say-that I
have found God.
Carlos Jurado Photography,
like any other
artistic expression, gives you another point of
view of everyday life; that's what creation is for-
to create other worlds. But of course it depends
what kind of world you want to create. Some
artists like tragic things or grotesque things, and
there are people who like seeing that. I think that
life is complex, difficult sometimes, and art should
express beautiful things. In Mexico, mural
paintings are very popular. But if a painter were
to decorate a hospital or put the history of
medicine on its walls, a patient who came in
would be terrified to see how his legs would be cut
off. Art should be the opposite.
Carlos Jurado: Master Alchemist 37
Ahorcadito con Vaso, 1996
Carlos Jurado
Desnudo en fa ventana, 1973 Carlos Jurado
Carlos Jurado: Master Alchemist 39
I I
Naturalez Muerta II, 1992
Carlos Jurado
Seasons of Love and Grief
Robert Do Romanyshyn
Pacifica Graduate Institute
Carpinteria, California USA
This article is an account ofthe author's moving experience ofthe sudden death of his wife.
Through reveries of his experiences ofthe seasons ofthe soul in grief, the author invites the
reader into the depths of his or her experiences ofloss. From being a ghost in those early
moments of loss in the season of grief, through the moments of shipwreck in the season of
mourning, to the transformation of one's life in the season of melancholy, the author
emphasizes how the process of grieving is a matter of surrender to the deep currents and
rhythms of the soul. In the soul's winter landscapes of grief and mourning, there are no
maps to chart the way into and through the grieving process. But there are stories told by
witnesses who have travelled into these depths, and this article is such a record. The core
message is that we grieve because we have dared to love, and we can love again because we
have taken the time to grieve.
E GRIEVE because we have dared to love,
and we can love again because we have
allowed ourselves the time to grieve. Is
that all? Is this the only fruit of the harvest of my
grief, the only thing I have at the end of a seven-
year journey which began with the sudden and
unexpected death of my wife? And yet, if so, it
seems everything to me, this connection rooted
in the soul between grief endured and love
regained. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke, one of my
companions on the journey, has said that love is
the most difficult work of all, beside which,
however, all else is but preparation (1962, pp. 53-
54).
The difficulty oflove lies, of course, in the fact
that it is seeded with loss. How easy, I imagine, it
is to love if you are, for example, an Angel. Or is
it? I have sensed many times, when in the
presence of a poet like Rilke, when in a state of
reverie while reading his Duino Elegies, that it
might not be so easy for an Angel, and that in
fact we might even be better at love than they
are. In his ten magnificent elegies, those songs of
lament and praise at our condition of being
neither Animal nor Angel, Rilke does say that it
is perhaps the Lover who is best understood by
them, who comes closest to them. But he hesitates,
and I wonder if his hesitation says more about
their condition than it does about the difficulty of
loving in the face ofloss, which is our fate. It was
in this spirit, when I was very deep into the
grieving process that I wrote these lines:
Angels wish they had beards
To enjoy the pleasure of the sound
Of scraping the passage of time from faces
Worn with sorrows, lighted with joys.
They wish too to sense the clarity oflemons
And to smell the scent of someone in love.
They want to hear a lover say,
"I will always tease your flesh."
In their airy kingdoms beyond this world,
In their beautiful indifference,
In their silent stillness,
They dream, always, their own betrayals:
To grow old and ill, even to die,
And to hear a lover say,
Even once, if only once,
"I would rather lose you to another lover than to
God." (Romanyshyn, 1995, p. 104)
The Internationaljournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19,41-47 41
But, in truth, I simply do not know if Angels are
less practiced at love than we are, and in the end
all that I do know is that Rilke is right about the
difficulty for us, who as transient creatures, as
mortal beings, love and can love only in the face of
loss. And so, when he asks, what monument we
should leave for Orpheus, poet and perhaps
greatest of lovers, who even persuaded the gods
and goddesses of the underworld to release his
beloved Eurydice from the embrace of death, it
makes sense that he should say, "Set up no stone
to his memory" (Rilke, 1970, p. 25). Orpheus, like
his songs, is breath, air, wind, subtle, evanescent,
transitory, fleeting. For one such as him, for this
lover, a monument of stone would be too fixed.
Better to remember him with the rose which, like
Orpheus, comes and goes, the rose which in its
blooming is already beginning to fade.
That Orpheus failed at the last moment is the
point ofRilke's, I think, hard won insight. We have
nothing on this side of the grave in the face of death.
Not even the most persuasive poet, with all the
charms of his songs, could conquer death. In its
presence and under its sway, language fails,
meaning evaporates, and reason disappears. And
yet, we are called to love, knowing not only that
whom and what we love will, one day, pass away,
but also, like the Rose, is passing at this moment,
and at every moment.
So, indeed, the harvest of my journeys into and
through griefis simple. But it is rich. By following
the seasons of the grieving process, I want to
explore the depth of this richness. The grieving
process is, or at least it was for me, an arc which,
beginning with a personal loss, ended with a
transpersonal feeling of love. Before I begin,
however, I want to offer an image oflove's vocation,
and two responses to it which, I think, situate the
difficulty of loving in the face of loss within a
tension of opposites.
First the image: It came to me at the intersection
of my own grieving process and Rilke's poetry, an
image of Eurydice as Rilke describes her in his
poem, "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." (Rilke, 1995,
p. 55-60). The reader will not find this image in
the poem, nor does it belong to me. It arose
suddenly, like the first ray of morning light which
pierces the darkness, and she exists in that space
between a reader in search of something, and a
text longing to betray its secrets. In this subtle
space ofthe imaginal realm, where Angels live, the
country of the soul, Eurydice lingers, delicate like
a mist. Already a shade, she recedes from Orpheus'
look, and the appeal of his outstretched arm. He
has lost her. She has already outgrown him. She
has already become the bride of death. To love in
the face ofloss is to know that Love is the Bride of
Death.
Orpheus, we are told, suffered so grievously that
he infuriated the Maenads who tore him to pieces
in their frenzy. Could they not stand the solitude
of his grieving? Did they sense in the depth of his
grief the depth of his love? And if he, archetype of
lover and poet, was so unable to bear his loss that
it resulted in his death, what can we expect of
ourselves?
How low! how fleeting are the joys of Earth
How vain to build on hopes this side the grave
Full soon the Rose that blooms may fade by Death
Beyond the powers of human skill to save.
(Romanyshyn, 1999, p. 84)
This response to loss in the face oflove is so human.
If not quite despair, these words express the
anguish and the sorrow of love's vocation. Who
wrote these words, I do not know. I saw them only
once, many years ago, while traveling in the west
country of England. They were inscribed on a
wooden beam near the altar in an old church. I
saw them once, but I have not forgotten them. I
remember them, I believe, because they strike a
chord in the human heart which is a true response
to the difficulty to love in the face ofloss.
But another response seems possible. As strange
as it may seem, I have found it in the study of
alchemy, nestled within its powerful images and
contained in its language which reaches into the
depths of the soul before it ever touches the surface
of the mind. In its origins, alchemy is a hope that
our knowledge and skill can discover that part of
ourselves that survives death. In its origins, it
begins, as all knowledge does, with the tension
which exists for us between the harsh fact of our
mortality and the longing for something more
beyond the grave. And in the end, alchemy's
response to this tension is, I believe, the awareness
that it is love which survives death.
Is it possible that the goal of the alchemical
work, the philosopher's stone, is the subtle,
imaginal body of love made between two earthly
lovers, that third, invisible body which is the
creation of their loving gestures? In one of the
classic alchemical texts, "Aurora Consurgens,"
ascribed to St. Thomas Aquinas, that great
scholastic doctor of the Church, we find the
confession that love is stronger than death. And
we find this beautiful hymn to this love which
embraces death:
0, my beloved bride, thy voice has sounded in my
ears and is sweet. You are beautifuL .. Come now,
my beloved, let us go out into the field, let us
dwell in the villages. We will rise up early, for the
night is far spent and the day is at hand. We will
see ifthy vineyard has blossomed and if it has
borne fruit. There thou wilt give me thy love, and
for thee I have preserved old and new fruits. We
shall enjoy them while we are young. Let us fill
ourselves with wine and ointments and there
shall be no flower which we will not put into our
crown, first lilies and then roses before they fade.
(Von Franz, 1980, p. 270)
While we are young and before they fade! True,
these words are not precisely a Rilkian embrace
of love in the face of death, and yet they are a
different response than those anonymous words
I saw in that church long ago. Not only do they
acknowledge the kinship of love and death, but
also they accept this marriage between them, and
in this acceptance express a kind of joy for life
and an exuberance for living.
Without looking for it, I found in the journey
of my own grieving process the seeds of new life
and love. Even more than this, I found, again
without searching for it, that loving and being
loved has radically changed for me. Enduring
grief, love has become more free of fear, more
expansive in its openness to a kinship with Nature
that reaches to the Stars, more aware and present
to the sacred in the ordinary, and finally more
attuned to the presence of something which is
Divine and which seems to draw me towards itself,
like a Beloved, as if an creation is a loving act of
gathering back into itselfthe pilgrims that we are,
Orphans on the journey home. In what follows, I
will try to give a brief account of my experiences
of grief as home-work.
~ Between Two Heartbeats ~
O
N JULY 1, 1992, my wife, to whom I had been
married for twenty-five years, died. She said,
"Oh, my God," and fell to the floor. Her death was
sudden, and unexpected. It came without warning
and with no mercy. It came with a swift, terrible,
and utter finality. A brief fifteen minutes before
her death, I had approached her as she stood at
the kitchen sink. I had placed my hands on her
shoulders, and she turned and smiled. In that
turning, in the arc ofthat space opened up by her
gesture, I had said these words: "You are so
beautiful."
When she died, my life shattered like a pane of
fragile glass. In a single moment, in the space
between two heartbeats, everything that I ever
was, and everything that I wanted to be, was
erased. In the interval between the moment just
before her death and the moment just after it, a
black hole opened in my soul and sucked into it
the past that we had made together and the future
we were dreaming.
There are, I believe, no maps for the journey
into the grieving process, no programs ofthe mind
which can allow one to escape, or even short-circuit,
the double death which happens when a lover dies.
Shortly after my wife's death, I dreamed I was at a
party. My wife was there, clothed in a radiant
garment of green, a green which itself pulsated
with life. She was alive, mixing with our friends,
and it was I who was dead. In the dream, I was
sitting in the corner of the room, and I was invisible.
I was there, but no one could see or was seeing me.
In this strange place of reversal, I found no
concepts to contain my experience and no facts
which made sense of it. To be sure, ideas and facts
about the grieving process were in great
abundance, but they required, or at least assumed,
that I was still a rational human being, with a mind
which could make sense of death and the grieving
process. Our culture of technology, with its
addictions to control and power, with its blind belief
that there is a twelve-step process for every
experience, supports this reasonable assumption,
and hurries us through the process of grieving. But
loss shatters the mind, which, like an old, empty,
fragile house, is blown apart by the winds of grief
which blow from the soul.
Below the reasonable mind, grief works its way
into the core ofthe body, into the core ofthe gestural
body, that subtle field which two lovers build
between them over the course of a lifetime. In this
respect, grief is a "cellular" matter, and the grieving
process a matter of a slow dying, a progressive
Seasons of Love and Grief 43
shrinking of that gestural field. Grief eats away at
this body, and it needs the slow time of the soul, its
natural rhythms which are like the seasons, to do
its work. Ifwe hurry the process, do we risk falling
ill? I do not know, and certainly I make no judgment
here about the high frequency of illness following
the loss of a loved one. I am saying only this: there
is no victory over death and the grieving process.
There is only surrender to this dying of that third
mutual body created between two, a surrender with
no guarantee that one will love again, or even come
back into life again. No guarantee because this
dying, like death, is not subject to the will, because
this surrender to the grieving process is not really
about a choice, because the voice, for example, which
once found its place in the ear ofthe beloved now, in
spite of oneself, empties into a void, or the smile
which once found its reflection in the lighted eyes of
the other becomes, after her death, a clown's grin.
Reflecting on the death of a woman whom he
loved, Rilke asks, "Who talks of victory?" "To
endure," he adds, "is aU" (in Hendry, 1983, p. 74).
So, no maps for the soul's journey into the grieving
process. Only images, and dreams, and stories
brought back from that far, winter country ofloss,
told by a witness who, by grace and not by will,
has endured.
e-, Seasons of Grief e-,
I
N The Soul in Grief: Love, Death and
Transformation (Romanyshyn, 1999), I offer a
poetics ofthe elements ofthe grieving process. I call
it a poetics to distinguish it from a psychology of
grief, and in using this word I mean to declare my
indebtedness to the works of Gaston Bachelard,
particularly his last major work, The Poetics of
Reverie (1960/1971). Poetics is a way of knowing and
being which is neither that of the rational mind and
its concepts nor the empirical eye and its facts, a
way of knowing and being which is attuned to the
imaginal depths of the moment. It is a kind of
presence which elsewhere I (Romanyshyn, in press)
have described as that of the witness compared to
the critic, a way of being in relationship to otherness
which practices hospitality toward and a radical
fidelity to experience as it is given. If poetics has a
method to it, it is nothing other than phenomenology,
and ifthe practice ofthis method has a mood, which
I believe it does, then it is that of reverie.
Of the many things that can and should be said
of reverie, I can offer here only a few morsels from
Bachelard (1960/1971): "Reverie puts us in the state
of a soul being born" (p. 15); it is that way of being
which enlarges our lives ''by letting us in on the
secrets of the universe" (p. 8); reverie gives to us "a
metaphysics of the unforgettable" (p. 21); "Reverie
brings to light an aesthetics of psychology" (p. 81).
A poetics of the elements of the grieving process
takes us into the landscape of the soul, where its
reveries in grief can open the secrets of the universe.
Here grief becomes a threshold beyond the personal
into transpersonal and transhuman realms, where
consciousness is experienced as the vital force within
all creation. And so, for example, I write about green
as a form of consciousness, about color as perhaps
the first form of consciousness, because grief does,
or at least for me did, open the small window of my
conscious mind to the unforgettable experience of
green as the vibrating, pulsating, throbbing,
tumescent force of the vegetable body, of a green so
green that only the sky could be more blue. No
conceptual or factual understandings of the grieving
process could have escorted me to this moment, an
aesthetic moment of transformative power.
Blaise Pascal, seventeenth-century antidote to
the rationalism of Des caries , once said that the heart
has its reasons which reason does not know. The
soul in grief is a riff on this insight of Pascal. Its
reveries oflove and loss are a testament to the claim
that the soul in griefhas its seasons which the mind
does not know. In giving a brief account of these
seasons of grief, I must emphasize at the outset that
as seasons they are not psychological stages which
chart a line of progress or development through the
grieving process. Would we ever say that fall is
progress over spring, or that summer represents a
step in development over winter? They are seasons,
just that. They are seasons which have their proper
moments, seasons which not only come and go, but
also linger within each other, like the smell of a
summer rose does when the days of winter have
grown long.
Being a Ghost: The Season of Grief
O
NE MOMENT the one you love is a living,
breathing being, a vital presence in your
world. And in the next moment she or he is gone,
erased, ripped from the fabric oflife. The rupture
is brutal, a shock so terrible that one is stunned
into disbelief. In a space of time that is less than
that between two heartbeats, the life force, or
whatever one might call it, which animates each
of us , disappears. Even when one has had time to
prepare, I have been told that the change from
life to death is still shocking. In a sense, death is
always unexpected, and one can never be
prepared for its first entrance.
When my wife collapsed in front of me, it took
me less than a second to reach her side. But she
was already gone, had slipped behind a veil I could
not penetrate, and her face had already taken on
the look of something alien, foreign, strange, a
caricature of life, the face of a doll. Dolls have
always terrified me, because they mimic life in a
cruel way. They are so close in their resemblance
to the living person, and yet so drained of the spirit
of life. The face of death terrified me in the same
way. The doll's face is the face of death; the face of
death is the face ofthe doll. Both of these faces are
intolerable images. I wonder: Do we give dolls to
our children to prepare them in some unconscious
way for the horror of death?
The season of grief is the season of the
intolerable image, the moments, when in a state
of shock, one is haunted by these images,
assaulted by them. One becomes numb in this
season of the grieving soul, and there is, I believe,
a kind of psychic protection to this benumbed
condition. But there is also something more to it,
a kind of deep resonance with the body ofthe one
who has died.
In these moments of the grieving process, I was
split in two. My body, the visible part of me, was
functioning on automatic pilot. Going through the
motions of living, I was identified with the dead
body of my wife. My actions were without spirit. I
was a caricature oflife, a robotic doll, a machine.
In this state, nothing really touched me or moved
me. Indifference was the hallmark of these
moments. My spirit, on the other hand, was
already elsewhere, behind some veil, living on the
other side of the split which had fractured my soul.
I was a shade blown here and there in the storms
of the soul's grief I was a ghost haunting the outer
edges of the world which seemed far away. I was
invisible.
For a ghost haunting the outer margins of the
world, the things of the world also die. At first, I
noticed how the things which were part of my
wife's life, like her clothes and jewelry, or her
manuscripts and the photos that she took, were
growing limp and weak. Without her animating
presence, they were dying, slowly, and in their
presence I could sense their mute appeal. They
were looking to me for some sort of explanation,
but I had no voice. The ghostly character of my
life was mirrored by their own increasingly
spectral quality. Gradually, the distance between
us became so great that all that remained for me
was a feeling of their departure. In the depths of
grief, things took on a faraway look, and there
were moments in this season of the grieving
process when I saw things turn away from me,
divest themselves of the yoke of my life and the
life shared with my wife amidst them. They were
now going elsewhere, recovering, as it were, their
own existence, liberated from the burden of our
memories. Dust was the evidence of their
departure, the breath and soul of things left
behind, the dead dreams of things that once
belonged to and participated in our life. I was a
ghost living in an empty world.
Shipwreck: The Winter of Mourning
M
OURNING IS the long, slow, cold winter of the
grieving process, the moments when one
stops being even a ghost and slips further away
from the world. In this winter landscape of the
soul, I longed for and welcomed oblivion, a state
of nonexistence. I was beyond even any wish to
die, beyond any thought of suicide. Every breath
was a labor, and I hoped only that this work of
breathing would cease of its own accord.
The winter of the grieving process, like the
winter of the world, was a season when my soul
fell into the rhythms of nature, when I felt myself
becoming animal and plant, stone and mineral.
Before a beech tree in the half-light of a cold
November morning, I could feel the pulsing of my
blood resonate with the slow tides of the tree's
sap in its languorous pace. And beyond even this
hesitant vitality, there were occasions when I
slipped into a stony stillness, and felt kinship with
the endurance of the stone weathering the lash of
the sea. In this state, there was only a kind of
unwilled patience, that kind of patience which
marks the elemental world of nature and its forces.
Time had no meaning for me in these moments.
One hour as noted by the clock could have been a
second or an eternity. Wrapped within a cocoon of
grief, I was beyond the human world, in a place
that was archaic and prehuman. Does it fit the
phenomenology of the experience to describe these
moments as transpersonal? I hesitate. They had
more of a prepersonal or impersonal feel to them.
And yet, there was some dumb sense of prelude
in the midst of these moments, not a hope for some
emergence of new life from the cocoon of sorrow,
but only some vague feeling that all these
moments had a horizon to them beyond which
something else was waiting to happen. Is this how
the feeble tuber is drawn toward the surface of
the earth, as it slowly pushes its way through rock
and stone before it cracks open the frosted ground
of a dying winter? In this total surrender to the
grieving process was there a kind of tropism of
the soul at work? I do not know. I only know that
in addition to this vague sense of prelude, there
was in these moments also the felt sense of a kind
of guardian keeping watch over this uncontrolled
descent into the protohuman layers of the soul.
In the times in which we live, there is not much
encouragement to endure the winter times of the
soul in grief We have no public rituals for it, and
on a personal level there are so many voices which
speak against it. The journey into the dark night
of mourning takes time, and there is no guarantee
that one will ever return. Better to let the dead
bury the dead and to get on with one's life as
quickly as possible. And yet, I believe, that when
we hurry the soul out of its mourning, loss lingers
to poison life. Without a surrender to the soul's
ways of grief and mourning, the mind is forced to
busy itself with the appearances of life. In
addition, I believe that in halting prematurely the
soul's process, we retard the dead on their journey.
The dead need our grief and mourning so that
they can be free of our need of them.
The winter season of mourning was for me the
most difficult part of the grieving process, the
moments when, whatever part of me remained
conscious and aware, I was most afraid. Nothing
in these moments was of much use to me, no
advice, no well-intentioned injunctions, nothing
except those who were able to be with me in the
darkness and the silence as witnesses, often
without words. It was this simple, raw kind of
presence, the kind which sometimes an animal
brings to you in your grief, which mattered. It
was this presence of the witness, and it was grace.
That I am here now writing this article, and that
I have written an account of this journey taken
without maps, is, in the last resort, an act of grace.
Not by my will, but by the grace of something
other which cradled me between those archaic,
prepersonal forces of nature and those
transpersonal realms of the spirit, particularly
evident in the season of melancholy, has the
grieving process been endured.
Double Vision: The Seaon of Melancholy
A
T THE end of the "Eighth Elegy," Rilke offers
an image and raises a question. The image is
of a man who, standing on the last hill which
overlooks his vaHey, stops, and turns, and lingers.
The question is who has made us in this fashion,
so that no matter what we do, it seems that "we
live our lives, forever taking leave" (1939, p. 71).
Forever taking leave, and the look which
pauses for a moment, for just a little longer, before
it turns away! When the winter of mourning
abates, we see with different eyes. The look which
lingers is a kind of double vision where each
occasion, each moment, is witnessed as if for the
last time and as if for the first. Everything is new
and old, and in the season of melancholy I am
attached to these archaic-new things with a kind
of tenderness which acknowledges their presence
in the moment, in this moment without any ability
on my part to make it last, and with a kind of
wonder and joy at their epiphany. In the winter
of the soul in grief, I could never have imagined
that I could or would love another because we die,
that I could or would cherish another because of
our mortality.
The season of melancholy is a moment, too, of
a kind of natural grace, when the simplest events
and occasions seem like a miracle. A spider's web
framed in moonlight becomes a silver star, and
without any rhyme or reason you know that this
is true, that web and star are interconnected,
belong together in some great chain of being. In
this season of melancholy, there are these
moments of quiet surrender when the mysteries
and wonders that dwell in the heart of the
ordinary show themselves. The morning song of
the bird coincides with the dawning light, and in
this moment you understand a secret of creation.
When the bird sings, light comes into the world;
when light comes into the world, the bird sings.
You understand that the bird's song is the world's
46 The Internationaljournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
light, the way in which light speaks. You grasp
for a moment that light and song are one.
Something in all these moments betrays the
divine character of the world. Something in them
convinces you that a god's breath truly does
animate the world, that it is spread throughout
all creation, and that we are all in-spired by and
embraced within its holy aroma. In moments like
this the grieving process took on the feel of being
a long journey toward home, a journey in which
the figures of the Orphan and the Angel became
companions along the way. Without knowing how
I knew it, I did know in the season of melancholy
that melancholy is the aftertaste of our angelic
existence, or the foretaste of it, or both. And I knew
through the figure of the Orphan that our personal
sorrows are always a current in the deeper waters
of a shared sorrow over the dim remembrance that
we truly do come from elsewhere, and that we
are pilgrims in search of home.
In the season of melancholy, then, I realized
that grief is home-work, that love and its losses
are the pathway home, that our wounds and our
sorrows are what humanize us so thoroughly that
we begin to see in ourselves and in each other our
god-face, the face of god. The irony here is that it
is the Orphan, the most homeless of all, who comes
in the darkest hours to whisper that there is a
way home. A kind of peace and joy settles on you
in these moments, and the heart, this organ of
courage, and of memory, and oflove, expands. How
could one ever expect that from grief and loss
there can come an increase in our capacity to love,
and a recognition that love is, indeed, the force
which binds all of creation? Of course, one could
never expect it. But it is, or can be, the fruit of
grief endured.
~ The Gift of the Moment ~
R
ECENTLY, AFTER a talk which I gave about the
soul in grief, I was asked to say one simple
thing about the grieving process. In reply, I said
that grief brings the gift of being able to stay in
the moment. And yet, having been to that far
country of grief, I mostly fail to receive this gift.
In so many ways, my daily actions still consume
me in such a way that I forget, and I miss the
moment in its splendors. My heart contracts, and
my eyes fail to see the small miracle in the spider's
web. I lose my capacity for that double vision and I
no longer stop, and turn, and linger in the moment.
These failures, however, are also part of that
journey home, because they deposit in the soul
another instance of grief over loss. These small,
daily failures linger, just below the threshold of
awareness, but still close enough to remind me
that once I did feel the slight brush of an Angel's
wing on my cheek as the soft wind blew by.
References
Bachelard, G. (1971). The poetics of reverie (D. Russell, Trans.).
Boston: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1960)
Hendry, J. F. (1983). The sacred threshold. Manchester, En-
gland: Carcanet Press.
Rilke, R. M. (1939). Duino elegies (J. B. Leishman & S.
Spender, Trans.). New York: Norton.
Rilke, R. M. (1962). Letters to a young poet (M. D. Herter
Norton, Trans.). New York: Norton.
Rilke, R. M. (1970). Sonnets to Orpheus (M. D. Herter Norton,
Trans.). New York: Norton.
Rilke, R. M. (1995). "Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes." In S.
Mitchell (Ed. & Trans.), Ahead of all parting: The selected
poetry and prose of Rainer Maria Rilke (pp. 55-60). New
York: Modern Library.
Romanyshyn, R. D. (1995, Fall-Winter). The Orphan and the
Angel: In defense of melancholy. Psychological Perspec-
tives, No. 32, 90-111. (Los Angeles: C. G. Jung Institute)
Romanyshyn, R. D. (1999). The soul in grief" Love, death and
transformation. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.
Romanyshyn, R. D. (in press). On angels and other anoma-
lies of the imaginal life. In K. Raine (Ed.), The Temenos
Academy Review. London: Golgonooza Press.
Von Franz, M.-L. (1980). Alchemy. Toronto: Inner City Books.
Nueva Orleam, 1997 Carlos Jurado
The Healing Power of Shamanism
in Transpersonal Psychology
Manuel Almendro
President, ATRE, Spanish Transpersonal Association
Madrid, Spain
This report summarizes a process of several years of developing a practical and experiential
encounter with nonordinary states of consciousness, both in the therapy room and with natives
in the Mexican Sierra Mazateca. (We also work in the Amazonic tradition.) These encounters
support the idea that the thousand-year-old native culture has kept in silence exceptional and
surprising knowledge about the functioning of the human psyche. And it is also a way to enrich
the field of therapy and psychology. These doors opened when a Mazatec family whom I had
known for twenty years one day invited me to share a trip together. The rise of trans personal
psychology can be seen as an evolutionary opportunity and its further development can bring
about an understanding ofthe great healing power in shamanism. It also conveys a message of
reconciliation with life to the distraught scientific world, in such a way that the core of its message
calls for the recovery of the perennial archetype of the path that awaits behind the virtual
development of our genetized society. Many of the participants in the seminars whose testimonies
are presented here are psychology professionals who thus go beyond the idea oflife as programmed
behavior, letting themselves be touched by the ancestral wisdom of a humble Mazatec Indian.
ea. The Beginning ~
I
MET Don Patricio at the very beginning of 1980
in a rainy town in the mountains of Oaxaca
(Mexico). He lived in his "ranchito," where he
made a living for himself and his family growing
coffee. The steaming liquid, a result of his work
materialized in his crops, induced satisfaction and
meditation during the sharing sessions and
activities at the end of his "spiritual work." I was
informed that thanks to some Spanish visitors
who started planting coffee, the valley found a
better way to earn a living.
At that time there were still remnants of the
hippie trend. The local people, both the natives and
federal police, were extremely uncomfortable with
some groups of people and individuals who came in
contact with their culture without having any
respect for it at all. Natives can tell who comes
looking for mere sensations and who really wants
to participate in a cultural experience that can be
deeply transforming and significant. Mazatecs value
the effort involved in making a living and having a
roof over their heads-which certain foreigners
could not understand, not having lived with any of
these problems. For me it was clear that it was not
only a matter of getting mushroom indigestion.
Since then, I have visited this man on several
occasions, and I can say that he and his family
opened their house to me. I have also seen that a
warm relationship, Latin style, is common here. The
visitor must cope with certain ambiguities,
especially at the onset ofthe relationship. Mixtures
oflove and hate and a certain unlimited admiration
can occur on both sides.
During one of the various visits my companion
and I paid Don Patricio, I remember that at the
suggestion of a veteran hippie we went to a well-
known local shaman.
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19,49-57 49
I
, ,
Entering his house, we were struck by the large
altar and the great number of calendar saints and
large icons, highlighted by dozens of candles which,
in the dark, anticipated the experience of visionary
confusion set off during a trance. We passed him
by, and at the suggestion of a homeopath decided
to keep on looking.
Later, a young drunkard came up to us on the
street waving a wax figure of Maria Sabina. We
asked him who it was and what he answered was
unexpected: "Ten thousand pesos." A bit shaken
by the commercial interest, we walked away.
I remember that after visiting the homes of the
most respected shamans with my friend the
homeopath, we got a tip from a "serious and reliable"
Mazatec grocer who led us to Don Patricio.
He was a man in his seventies, who greeted us
while sharpening the edge of his hunting knife-
which he continued doing during our entire
conversation.
Days later, we got ready for work. With a resigned
and deep look, and a tabard over his shoulders as if
ready for a march, sitting on a bed, Don Patricio
awaited our arrival. It seemed that the usual fog in
the village was especially thick that night. In the
old days that climate produced tuberculosis, of which
a kind old man on the bus had been cured from,
thanks to the Maria Sabina mushrooms. His words
were full of veneration and also respect and fear as
he talked about the Spirit and the Lady.
And then the time came. We go down in silence
to the altar; his son is with us too and offers us
some chairs. Don Patricio sits by our side. He cleans
the sand off the mushrooms and offers them to us.
While we eat and pass on that acid flavor that
seems to scratch our throats, he lights the chunks
of incense in a bowl. Don Patricio asks us for the
chocolate he requested we bring and we all look
forward to the reliefit will bring us. When we finish
eating and are awaiting the unknown, Don
Patricio's son reassures us that it will be a good
trip. Mterwards he leaves, and Don Patricio closes
the door and turns off the light.
Everything began in the blink of an eye. In the
middle of our small talk, an inner powerful motor
was set in motion. On a screen ahead of us there
began a breathtaking flight following a light that
soared up in spirals in the midst of the vast
darkness.
I lost all sense of time and space; I was just an
awestruck subject in the face ofthat unforeseeable
sequence of events. There was no chair, no house,
nobody ...
Suddenly a faraway voice begins to sound,
although I have no clear idea of what it's saying ...
I pay more attention and recognize it is the voice
of Don Patricio, who walks into the pitch-black
darkness like a pilgrim with his cane ...
His pleas, almost moaning at first, have a funny
sound, sliding down from word to word, Mexically-
like, whistling "s" after "s" ...
He seems to repeat the same litany: "Lord,
Christ, Lord, here we are again before you in this
dark and cold Mazatec Sierra to ask you for more
and more ... and much more!"
I feel that this Don Patricio perceives us; I
recognize the reason for his call; now we go
together; it's something we feel although no one
sees anything. I also realize that Don Patricio
reconciles me with his Christian words, put down
by my environment and myself for many years ...
I continue to go after the voice that still seems
pleading and I realize that, at the same
breathtaking speed as me, my homeopath friend
is at my side as another entity ...
Suddenly the voice seems to disappear, and at
the side, a red whirlpool appears, with tracheal
rings. I decide with all my might to reject those
jaws and at once the voice of our guide reappears.
I follow it and my fear turns into joy and laughter.
Now I hear his voice easily and, laughing away,
we dodge aU sorts of dark and shapeless obstacles.
I am only attracted by the rising and winding light
and by his voice, giving me pleasure and a sense of
safety.
More whirlwinds shake us; they seem like
buildings, like cities full of huge modern glass
buildings. Everything passes nonstop and the voice
transports us ritually to and fro, as if in an alluring
"via crucis." Immediately after, the voice introduces
us:
Here I bring you, Lord, Don Manuel and Don
Corrado, who come from far away to know your
marvelous deeds. They are good people, Lord,
so we expect from your presence that all goes
well in their lives. You know, Lord, that
important people come here from far away to
see this poor old Indian in this dark and cold
Mazatec Sierra to ask you for more and more
and much more ...
The voice, the light, and the beat of the crook
rise intermittently. We follow Don Patricio, who,
at that moment, embodies the archetype of the
pilgrim. Suddenly we see faces appear and come
closer, looking us straight in the eyes. When they
try to approach us, a grating stops them and they
grab the bars, sticking out their horrible tongues
at us in revenge ...
Nonchalantly, I follow the voice while I continue
to laugh. Everything appears colored red with
shapes that vanish. Following a carnival of images
that appear as in a humor vitreous and then change
to a Renaissance heavenly tone, I observe their
shining vestments. Looking closer, I notice in them
the typical Indian embroidery (Hliipil) that can
only have been inspired by the mushrooms ...
After a short rest, Don Patricio rushes off, only
to slow down gradually. The inner mystical climb
is more trusting and peaceful after vomiting, in
which a deep cleansing was felt all over.
The predominant color now is dark blue with
bright lights. Somehow I see colors that don't exist.
Don Patricio lights a cigarette, takes a grass he
calls San Pedro, rubs his hands and offers us some,
while he whispers: "San Pedro has something to
tell us." He puffs deeply at his cigar, making big
clouds of smoke, but it's not the smoke but rather
thousands of glittering sparks that spread all over
the house giving us a sense of protection and
incredible well-being ...
A smell of green fields renews the air in the
room. We continue the climb peacefully, with
ongoing pleas and prayers, but now aimed in a
specific direction.
Suddenly a typical folding screen appears in
clear reality. Since a while ago, I feel a part of what
is happening, body and soul, not an outside
spectator. I remain still, flabbergasted, while a total
silence takes hold of everything. Paying attention,
I see a pair of eyes looking straight at me from
close up, eyes that inspire friendship and respect.
Everything is subject to this presence. The thing
that strikes me most about this strange and human
being, together with his long hair and beard, is
the strong swaying of his feet from one side ofthe
folding screen to the other .. .I feel him as ifhe were
me; there is distance and simultaneity, power,
majesty, and mystery.
Everything indicates that we have reached our
destination. Don Patricio breaks the situation and
the mystery of that omnipresence with an
overwhelming respect and humility. With a
whisper, he commends us to Providence and does
the same for his family and his crop.
Shortly after, at dawn, we are impressed by the
misty and phantasmagoric Mazatec Sierra.
Group Exploration
Y
EARS LATER I thought that this knowledge
should be known in all its dimensions, so I
prepared certain people to experience it directly.
It was one of the most fascinating group
experiences I have ever known as a therapist.
Today I believe that the study of the human
mind cannot leave aside the findings of other
civilizations, even though they are not based on
sophisticated apparatus. This knowledge is more
quantum than Cartesian, and is linked more to
transformation than to acquisition and
manipulation ofthe environment. And also because
the age-old knowledge other civilizations possess
deals with the key to life and death.
We have additional reasons to make contact, as
apprentices, once more with those civilizations,
especially with the Latin American people, who
have been linked to us in such a drastic and decisive
way.
These people who participated in a group session
with Don Patricio previously went through a long
preparation with me. Some were psychologists, and
none ofthem were, so to speak, "experience-freaks."
Also, the work was prepared with intensive
processes in Oaxaca, with body exercises we could
call holotropic vibrations, aimed at generating the
ideal atmosphere for transformation that is not
dependent on techniques.
Mter the work with Don Patricio, they spent
days on end integrating the experience in order to
enrich their daily lives with it. Sharing such
moments, we can realize that any simple life-like
the life of Joe described by Yensen (1987)-is really
an amazing and unique life.
Many of the experiences described by them
begin with: "I started off with a strong physical
experience, my body was transformed, I felt a plant,
a mineral, and an animal. .. also I felt surrounded
by strange animals."
Someone else, a man, describes the following:
"I go into an open space where there are animals
and shapes surrounding me, snakes and fish, but
most of all, eyes of different sizes and shapes ... "
In all cases, we see that the shamanic experience
appears in oneway or the other. It is followed by a
Healing Power of Shamanism 51
celebration and an ascent to higher levels of reality.
One such case is that of a young woman:
I saw the head of a leopard and! turned into
the leopard, following Don Patricio who went
into a cave followed by two or three other
people ... an invisible hand took out all my guts
and big white worms crept in and out of all
the holes ... ! wasn't scared, just surprised ... At
another point ! swirled around in a beam of
white light ... huge white crystals were
growing .. .in some others, a gothic cathedral
floated inside ... at the same time! was the
cathedral. ! penetrated into the earth and the
soil went in and out of my eyes, my mouth ... my
blood became a fluorescent green liquid that I
watched rise from my feet through two huge
pathways and when it reached the head, it
spilled out ... l felt a great love for everyone.
One of the foreign psychologists explains her
experience this way:
What I feel in the presence of Don Patricio is the
desire to bow my head. I go into a totally
terrifYing trip; at first I go along the labyrinths
and depths of death, images of death, images of
bones, a lot of bones, eyes, a lot of eyes,
shadows ... afterwards comes the ascent and 1 go
on a journey to strange and beautiful cities ... at
the end of my journey I get to my country and
there I ask for peace ... finally, rays of white light
reveal the presence of a divine energy and I
become ecstatic, moved beyond words.
Another woman explains:
It all started with a vibration in my hips that
spread to the rest of my body. I felt something
crack. .. my butt bulged out, my lower jaw grew
and stuck out from the rest of my face and
forehead ... ! was a real gorilla, with guttural
sounds .. .
I can understand that some people should
question the reason for all this. Obviously, there is
no commercial value in offering death experiences.
We must understand it in the way the previous
woman ends the report of her experience:
I'm becoming a tree, of a very hard and compact
wood ... the trunk has a big diameter, the roots
are far into the earth and it has a luxuriant
foliage. There's a lot of vegetation and I'm part
of it. I feel Nature and I am overcome by a
feeling of peace that's hard to describe.
I believe that the journey through all the stages
of evolution of Nature is embedded in us, and so
it appears in this experience. I also think that it
has to do with the cleansing of our subconscious
and with physical cleansing, and the result is
genuinely healing and harmonious.
The main issue would be to do research on these
realities we have left aside because they are not
part of ordinary observable matters-this is a real
challenge for a researcher. I believe that in the
shamanic model of research, the incompleteness
of our Cartesian-Newtonian certainties is exposed,
which isn't to say that they are not useful, too, as a
model, but rather that it can be enriched and
improved.
I am convinced that training in, and going
through, these experiences could offer health
professionals a new perspective to understand
psychosis and certain neuroses. That is, of course,
if we don't become trapped in a reductionist
pharmacological outlook.
It is interesting to note that the theories ofthe
biologist Rupert Sheldrake (1989) are in a way
related to these experiences. Most people are
seeing the same morphogenetic field containing
the same forms and the same resonances
throughout the ages. For example, encountering
geometrical shapes, animals that turn into
luminous forms, while, at the same time, fear
disappears. All these forms are already in the local
Indian art: the so-called alebrijes, beautiful
animals of great value made mostly of wood and
embroidered on clothes and fabrics.
In the group experience, there are often
heartfelt expressions of love:
! was surrounded by the most fascinating people
I have ever met. Wrapped in love, safety, and
support, I walked along the path of my destiny;
it was them, it was me, we were one, joy
exalted ... as I touched and saw that unknown
and, at the same time, well-known world .. .I was
learning to be the pilot of my own boat ...
In another account worth mentioning, a woman
said:
.. , ! feel like I'm in a luminous womb and I'm
turning in slow motion. I don't know whether
I'm alive or dead and in a split second I see my
whole life pass before my eyes ... even today I
feel the influence of this second that changed
my life ...
I believe that this age-old knowledge should
be approached with great respect and humility,
especially when one loses faith in the rational
arrogance of our culture and one sees that it is from
an Indian, far from our culture, that one finds a
key to open a whole new dimension of life that
makes it truly alive and liveable. But we have to
go beyond the books.
As preparation, it is almost essential to cleanse
ourselves of our ancestral and family traumas in
order to have a certain degree of self-control and
an open and relaxed attitude.
Also, during the transpersonal work, there are
shamanic experiences with entry into "holotropic
spaces," both in Spain and in Oa."(aca.
In an Induced Vibration exercise in Oaxaca, a
young man describes the following:
1 continue to roam in that space and suddenly I
begin to see dwarfs, thousands of them all over
the place, all around me ... 1 see a person who is
like a sorcerer or a Mayan priest ... he leads me
to a kind of square cave, very bright, where
there is a display cabinet with three hearts in
it ... as if in a ritual ceremony and, unexpectedly,
he rips out my heart and puts in one of the
others from the display cabinet, and says that
this will be repeated three times at different
points in life ...
Also, in this kind of experience, old material is
integrated, as was the case with this woman:
There's no solution anymore. A hand appears
first, and I see the woman that first appeared
seven years ago in a dream and she helps me
come out. She says I have to keep going along
that path alone ... I run into the deer ... Then 1
ran into the eagle, that took me up flying and
showed me the world from up high, and other
worlds ...
Just as with Don Patricio, in the vibration it is
easy to hear: "I saw a lot of spirals or whirlwinds;
they were like nebula in motion."
And also:
Fear appears, the relationship with the
father ... l see a luminous door, I go in and start
rising ... I'm left alone and the music guides me
to a tribe of Indians who I mix in with. In a
kind of ritual, they give me some objects (they
look like maracas, musical sticks or canes). 1
take them, feeling very strongly that they are
a protection for the path I must still tread ... the
experience still lasts.
Or more personal, such as:
The more I breathe the darker it becomes, a
darkness tainted by a mauve mass I must
cross, a mass that holds my fear, my solitude,
where I am with myself. I follow the tunnel of
the unknown and there, unexpectedly, at the
end ofthe tunnel a ray oflight appears ... where
one can see the simplicity oflife and draw the
beauty of its geometry ...
The "shamanic and biblical transformation"
also happens intensely in vibrational and
respiratory processes:
A fish appeared in front of me. 1 thought it was
going to kiss me but it swallowed me. Inside its
belly and sensing the gastric juices start acting,
I took charge and punched a hole in its walls,
close to the tail, and came out ... l lay down and
felt that I was pure energy, that I passed from
the cosmos to the microcosmos, surrounded by
planets.
I must admit that in the breathing and
vibration exercises, when a good atmosphere is
created there are also "perinatal and biographical
therapies" that are essential in personal
processes. For instance in this psychologist:
I'm in my mother's womb with my twin brother
and it's time to come out. I'm very scared .. .I
stop my exit but I realize that I am also
stopping his, I'm hurting him and I feel guilty,
I'm leaving him aside just as the family has
done very often. Finally I'm born ... 1 manage
to process my guilt.
Certain knowledge of deep repressed layers
appears. Among these are sexual abuse during
childhood, and so on. Whenever I can, I examine
them to see whether they are real or imaginary,
whether the family is likely to abuse or not,
although the essential is the psychological reality.
These words are expressive enough:
The profile ofthat presence became more and
more distinct: it was my mother, the mother I
carry inside, the mother I perceived when I
was in her womb ... she was a dark mother, very
scared ... a mother who despised herself, who
suffocated her femininity, who was ashamed
of me because a man had desired her sexually
and the fruit had not been a boy ... After
shamanic breathing, I relived all the pain and
choking of the traumatic experience of my own
birth ... l feel that I experienced it when 1 was
born ... and little by little it became more
conscious, and after some time it was a real
life experience. We had been vibrating ... I felt
a black presence in front of me. I asked him,
"Who are you?" and felt how he jumped on me.
In a matter of seconds I was a three- or four-
year-old girl. I was in my grandmother's room,
in her bed, and I felt my grandfather touching
me. I was a little girl, very little, and I felt
paralyzed, with all the pain and impotence ... my
mind repeated "It can't be, this can't happen to
me," and I cried and cried over the terrible,
painful and traumatic wound. In the light of
that experience, the disconnected and
senseless puzzle of many aspects of my life
began to fit together; I understood my rejection
of my body, my fear of femininity, of men, of
sexuality, the mystery at home surrounding
my grandfather ... repression, silence and fear
of eternal condemnation. It wasn't my
grandfather, it was that force that possessed
him ... and an intuition crossed my heart:
there's just one solution, forgive yourself and
reconcile yourself with your body. The hand of
my travel mate helped me to go into that
forgiveness, caressing my body and embracing
inwardly who I am. A warm and loving light
began to penetrate me and carry me. I entered
into an indescribable space full of peace and
love that words can't express ...
It is true that in the group integration it is
possible to specify, and at times glimpse, the
particular connotations of each experience in terms
ofthe personal life of each ofthe group members.
The result was an incredible enrichment, although
there is still much research to be done on these
experiences which, by the way, are part of the artistic
and religious expressions of humankind which share
that so-called "collective unconscious." Moreover,
they allow the person to choose a path in life that is
based neither on drugs nor on consumption.
The trips experienced with Don Patricio and his
family were innumerable and almost indescribable.
I could say that they are territories with their traffic
signals, their cities and pathways, just as "here on
earth" (says Don Patricio didactically). It is true that
Don Patricio obeys an order and the city of Santa
Fe appears, flooded with malva, and many other
such spiritual places. The evangelists appear in
order: St. John, who offers his pen, up until St. Peter
who'll offer his keys; all this seasoned with other
apparitions, such as the peacock, and so on.
Interestingly, and due to syncretism, each saint
corresponds to a native entity. So, according to R.
Gordon Wasson, Ruck, and Hoffman (1985), we find
different maps that chart a single territory and
which match with one another when they are lived
out correctly. I cannot deal with :it in length here,
but one day, during personal work with the Mazatec
family, after saying a Christian name, Don Patricio's
son whispered, "Cuathemoc," and he appeared in
all his splendor. I felt bracelets on my wrists and
feet, just like the ones worn by the Aztec warriors-
the bracelets gave me the force-and afterwards I
heard: "We're ready," and we entered into a world
fun of cities and drawings that decorate the
pyramids and the objects left by that civilization.
This knowledge needs no explanation nor
justification; it simply is.
In that moment I perceived that Cuathemoc is
a state of being in the Aztec tradition. Somehow, by
crossing the plane of matter we were crossing the
plane of death. I perceived that the journey after
death recorded in age-old texts is probably not very
different from the nature of this knowledge. The
return is what counts.
Among the trips we did as a group with Don
Patricio, I especially remember one in which the
group, as a whole, went floating through the
universe in an experience of unity. However, I
kept feeling a purring sound that struck me. It
was like some kind of "engine" that pushed us
all. At a certain point, I realized that the purring
sounds were the prayers of Don Patricio's wife,
who was behind us, pushing us along and uniting
us, and her strength was humility. I had never
seen her incarnate that way until that moment.
~ Psychological Reframing:
A Possible Introduction to
a Cartography of the Spirit <qy
E COULD review or cartograph the experiences
I have outlined in a sort of investigation of
where we've been. To find their source, we can look
at modern holotropic psychology (Grof, 1988).
We must consider the return to this knowledge
as a return to the Spirit, a return to what lies
beyond space and time. Thus, if we consider that
there are four Basic Perinatal Matrixes (BPM)
(Grof, 1988) that pertain to the "hylotropic" world,
or world of Matter, then there will also be four BPM
for the "holotropic" world, or that of the Spirit.
The entrance into the holotropic entails a first
matrix or BPM I, full of darkness and amniotic
covering. It is a dark firmament that forebodes
various possibilities. This feeling of cosmic
enclosure can produce anxiety and anguish, but
also peace and warmth.
The BPM II takes us to an experience of
geometrical forms drawn as ifby a laser beam. It
is as if the forms that must take shape in the
space/time of matter proceeded from there. It is a
matrix that keeps the secret of the "morphogenetic"
and the "holographic." Here are the perfect forms
of objects: offlowers, viruses ... a primeval frame of
reference, with the characteristics of the ideal
suggested by Plato.
The step on to the BPM III may be too sudden.
The progressive and somehow hierarchical field of
archetypes creates the feeling that one must tread
carefully. The different array of archetypes, from
the playful ones to those who appear as
omnipotent, flows as if in an invisible and viscous
liquid. Simultaneity is the law, and personal fear
feeds the eyes of the surrounding beings. If an
archetype takes flesh, it is because it has found a
"loophole," and then comes the outbreak or
possession; it seems that the law of life rules
absolutely. Certain archetypes can make
unscrupulous and irresponsible individuals turn
a peaceful afternoon into a bloodbath. There are
no higher or lower archetypes in the holotropic
sense, since it all depends on the relative position
ofthe traveler, a position which will take shape in
the space/time of matter.
In the higher levels of that archetypal world we
find the astronomic entities, the entities of chess,
cards, tarot, and so on-characters that have, for
some reason, marked human history.
BPM IV is an "exit to the Blue," to the world of
the higher spirits, to their kaleidoscopic temples, to
their silent, serene, and enigmatic ground: to the
virgins, who at the speed of lightning, glow
instantaneously in their presence. Shiva, Na Mu
Kuarr, Se UmBo Sal. .. appear pointing to the subtle
realms where Buddha, Christ live, which would be
but doors opening to the inexpressible. When today
we still admire those pyramids, either in Egypt or
in the Mayan or Aztec world, we can fathom that,
in fact, they are energetic temples copied from the
holotropic world to which those people had access.
Later, they returned to Matter, to the hylotropic,
with the guides that the entities or entity
recommended, and those temples were the places
of connection or remembrance, of nutrition and
prayer, during the lifetime of those who had made
contact. The whole tribe moved, dressed, carried out
their whole daily life around those revelations and
contacts. Still today, similar energetic temples can
be found in the N agtial, inhabited by entities that
somehow rest in those sanctuaries.
Good shamans have their entity to which they
travel to acquire health and knowledge; all their
power will depend on the power of that entity.
Possibly Christ, today, is behind the impressive
humility of more than one shaman, rather than in
the glory of the official stratum. It is obvious,
however, that the builders of the great Christian
temples of Europe were familiar with the process
discussed here.
What is important is to highlight that it is a
two-way journey, for it is senseless to have an
encounter ifit is not reflected in one's daily life, in
the other beings and in the passage through our
Earth. It is ajourney to the ''vertical-transpersonal''
that reverts to a return to the "horizontal-
transpersonal and interpersonal," marking thus
the true evolution of life on Earth throughout its
history; the transpersonal extends into the
personal, and so the personal acquires knowledge.
We must recover the old road of the Well of
Health, of the Marvel Flower that still lives on in
children's literature, the solitary experience of
Birth and Death. We must make the inner child
grow so that the black clouds of our suffering
become only passing dust, a fuel which will nurture
with respect and wisdom a journey through a
destiny that depends on us ...
Alvaro Estrada (1977), recounting his relation-
ship with Maria Sabina, recalls that she used to
say, with wise innocence: "The little things (mush-
rooms) ten me what to say and how to sing." Maria
Sabina became known as one of the masters of
Mexican wisdom ever since the night of 29 July
1955, when R. Gordon Wasson went on his first
mushroom experience in the Mazatec Sierra
(Wasson, Ruck, & Hoffman, 1985). Don Juan in-
structed braying as a means of controlling anguish
(Fort, 1991). Certain therapies in pre-Buddhist
Tibet, practiced as a way of healing, say that the
person should be devoured by the spirits haunt-
ing him or her, and that the climax of these pro-
cesses would lead to healing (Evans-Wentz, 1971;
Manzanera, 1996). Don Patricio begins by a com-
plex ceremony to invoke the entities who will
guide the journey. Whole families attend his ses-
sions to be cured, and children also participate.
~ Conclusion ~
T
o CONCLUDE this article on shamanic healing
as a means towards knowledge, it seems
important to recognize that:
The individual is looked upon as a developing
whole in well-detailed shamanic-type processes.
These processes take place in the participants'
physical, psychological, and spiritual planes as
well as in their relationship to their environment.
Here I am referring both to close environments-
that is, their relatives and their social and natural
environments, as well as to remote ones-those
related to experiences with unfathomable and
cosmic worlds. And all of it is well protected with
incomparable simplicity and familiarity.
These age-old shamanic methodologies could be
accessed from an opening in Western psychology
into worlds of ancestral wisdom through
responsible investigations, for they offer an
inestimable panorama of the psyche's depths
facing a vital healing and understanding, that is
to say, to really establish a complementary
relationship between this ancestral wisdom and
modern science far removed from the prevailing
protectionist paternalism ofthe dominant culture.
"That" which produces this opening towards the
internal microscope and towards what is beyond
time, space, and matter cannot in itself be
rationally encompassed or defined, even if
according to some options it is "an intelligence ... a
conscience" that exists in atoms, plants, prayers-
everything. Anyhow, we can't pass from
ethnocentrically criticizing "spirit worshippers" as
superstitious to become "molecule worshippers"
with a formula included.
In this respect, we believe that it is not useless
to give warning that some researchers following
the reductionist model of a determinist, materialist
culture find themselves at the same time within a
psychological type of reductionism, alleging that
every shamanic, entheogenic, and non ordinary
state of consciousness experienced is exclusively
explainable as an intellectual process. There is no
room for transpersonal nor suprapsychological
processes. I don't doubt that these researchers'
contributions are important; nevertheless, once
again we end up denigrating the indigenous and
negating their "spirits' " personal experience.
I commented on this to a Mazatec Indian-one
who knows-and he told me that the spirit doesn't
always open the door to the heart ofthat mystery
that leaves one breathless and where there is no
room for a learned and narcissistic psyche .
The steps to enter into that "other side,"
according to my experience, have certain
similarities across cultures as diverse as the
Mazatecs, who are warmer and more sociable, and
the Shipibos or Ashaninkas, who are more
individualistic. Their maps have similarities in
their polyhedral spaces and colors (shown, by the
way, in their handicrafts). On some measures they
may differ, but not in their essence. Even in those
personal experiences, genuinely indigenous
spaces may agglutinate with historical spaces far
apart from that culture, such as eschatological
situations in European latitudes, personal
experiences in world war scenarios, and others:
challenges that entail not a few dislocations and
meanings for the individual. It is not easy to frame
and annotate all of this. Perhaps we should
humbly contemplate it as an expression of the
wholeness and the vast complexity of life itself,
something which we often forget, something that
in the end sinks into the intimacy ofthe trip and
each individual's compromise with life. Each of
these instances is a path of endurance for they
are uplifting in that they urgently need receptors
into which can be inserted certain cognitive and
perceptive thrusts which tumble cultural systems
learned from our psyches and from our bodies.
Nevertheless, we cannot forget the risks, for
as the age-old proverb states: "there would be no
false gold if there were no real gold." Today,
exploitation has already started in such a way
that some respectable Indians are worried by this
commerce that places doubt upon the humble
approach taught by tradition.
The healing power of shamanism develops a
way of healing as a path of knowledge which
abruptly burns out substitutes and thus
demonstrates that these experiences, when
realized with respect and caution, open a path
towards a quest that can only be established in
the following:
1. Benefits of healing rooted in the individual's
sense of life and not in a simple suppression of
symptoms.
56 The International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, Vol 19
2. Restoration of the enchantment of life,
confirmed by us in people submerged in
materialist rigidity.
3. Puncturing the limits embedded in a type of
perception that reduces life to calculable and
predictable matter.
4. Opening the perception to the unfathomable,
whose nature doesn't fit into any predetermined
equation.
Come what may, the age-old world holds in its
womb the wisdom needed by the rational mind,
in spite ofthe false gold and ofthe obscure areas
in shamanic knowledge itself, which are not alien
to the dual constitution of our knowledge.
A wisdom that offers undeniable sense and
conscience for life.
Notes
Background to the work discussed here can be found in
Almendro (1994, 1998).
References
Almendro, M. (1994). Psicologia y Psicoterapia Transpersonal
[Transpersonal psychology and psychotherapy]. Barcelona:
Kair6s.
Almendro, M. (1998). La Consciencia Transpersonal
[Transpersonal consciousness]. Barcelona: Kair6s.
Estrada, A. (1977). Vida de Marfa Sabina [The life of Maria
Sabinal. Mexico, D.F.: Siglo XX.
Evans-Wentz, W. Y. (1971). Yoga Tibetan y doctrinas secretas.
Buenos Aires: Kiev. (Originally published in English as
Tibetan yoga and secret doctrines)
Fort, C. (1991). Conversaciones con Carlos Castaneda [Con-
versations with Carlos Castaneda]. Madrid: Heptada.
Grof, S. (1988). Psicologia Transpersonal. Barcelona: Kair6s.
(Originally published in English as Beyond the brain)
Manzanera, J. (1996). Chad: La via del terror [Chad: The path
of terror]. Nueva Dimension, 278, 54-57.
Sheldrake, R.(1989). Una Nueva Ciencia de la Vida.
Barcelona: Kair6s. (Originally published in English as A
new science of life)
Wasson, R. G., Ruck, C.A. P., & Hoffman, A. (1985).El Camino
de Eleusis. Mexico, D. F.: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica.
(Originally published in English as The road to Eleusis)
Yensen, R. (1987). Helping at the edges oflife: Perspectives of
a psychedelic therapist. Journal of Near-Death Studies, 6,
149-161.
Pequeno esqueleto sentado, 1996
Carlos Jurado
Identifying Spiritual Content
in Reports From Ayahuasca Sessions
Stanley Krippner
Saybrook Institute
San Francisco, California, USA
Joseph Sulla
Ceu do Mapia, Brazil
There has been little rigorous research on the spiritual content of ayahuasca sessions, despite
the tribal use of this herbal concoction and the existence of three Brazilian churches in
which ayahuasca is considered a sacrament. The Casto Spirituality Scoring System, a reliable
measure designed to identify spiritual content in dream reports, was utilized to answer the
following question: "Is it possible to identify spiritual content in ayahuasca reports?" This
system was found to be feasible in identifying "spiritual objects," "spiritual characters,"
"spiritual settings," "spiritual activities," "spiritual emotions," and "spiritual experiences" in
ayahuasca reports taken from pertinent literature. The Casto system defines "spiritual" as
one's focus on, and/or reverence, openness, and connectedness to something of significance
believed to be beyond one's full understanding and/or individual existence.
F
OR MILLENNIA, indigenous cultures have used
plant preparations in their spiritual
. ceremonies
1
to communicate with other-
worldly spirits as well as to maintain their linkage
with the natural world. Western culture severed
this connection when Zoroaster banned the
Haoma plant, when the Eleusinian rituals in
Greece fell into disrepute, and when witches were
persecuted by the Inquisition, in part because of
their utilization of mind-altering substances.
Western theologians and philosophers spoke of
the necessity of humankind to dominate and
manipulate nature; this "modern" worldview
supplanted the "premodern" worldview with the
latter's position that human beings were part of
nature, and separated from it at their peril.
What philosophers refer to as the "modern"
worldview is responsible for impressive advances
in technology, industry, and scientific discovery.
However, it has not prevented (and may even have
been partially responsible for) unprecedented
fragmentation, nihilism, and devastation. As
Berman (1984) states: "Western life seems to be
drifting toward increasing entropy, economic and
technological chaos, ecological disaster, and ulti-
mately' psychic dismemberment and disintegra-
tion" (p. 1). However, the epoch of "modernity" may
be in the process of being supplanted by the era
of "postmodernity." Some writers (e.g., Gergen,
1994) see "postmodernism" as a welcome correc-
tive to the excesses of modernism, replacing its
mechanistic and redudionistic assumptions and
activities with those that are more organic and
holistic in nature.
Metzner (1999b) calls for an "ecological
postmodernism" that would include the ecological
context of human life in psychology and other
areas of contemporary inquiry. Drawing on such
diverse sources as Native American rituals, the
goddess cultures of pagan Europe, and the visions
of Hildegarde von Bingen, Metzner holds that
human beings must find their rightful place not
as rulers, but as participants in the integral and
interdependent community of all life (p. 166).
Metzner sees modern Western civilization's "war
on Nature" as an exteriorization of intrapsychic
conflicts, the "shadow side" of its preoccupation
with its own imbalance and separation. For
Metzner, human overpopulation, addiction to
fossil fuels, preoccupation with material goods,
and the resulting environmental degradation are
psychopathological symptoms of a dissociation
from the natural world. He sees the spread of
religious rituals based on sacred plants as an
aspect of "ecological postmodernism" that would
contribute to sustainability, symbiosis, and the
preservation of all life forms.
Reich, Oser, and Scarlett (1999) correctly point
out that in postmodern times the concept of
spiritual development has come to mean something
different than religious development. Indeed,
pp. 97-102) informants told him that concoctions
containing this plant are used to "travel" to "other
worlds" to visit their tribal divinities. In addition
to the term ayahuasca, the brew is called yage,
caapi, kahpi, cadana,pinde, natem, natena, rami,
and a variety of other names, depending on the
tribe that uses it (Rudgley, 1993, p. 65; Schinzinger,
1999, p. 8). The term hoasca has been introduced
not only to describe the sacred brew used by one of
the ayahuasca-based religious groups in Brazil, but
also as a descriptor in the ethnopharmacological
literature (e.g., Callaway et aI., 1999). Artifacts
from Ecuador indicate that ayahuasca was known
and used by indigenous groups there as far back
as 2000 B.C.E.
The universal ingredient in all of these concoc-
tions is Banisteriopsis caapi, often called the "vine
of the souls," but other plants such as Psychotria
viridis, a leafy
bush, must be
added to potentiate
its effect (Figure 1).
However, some for-
mulae are unique
to one group of In-
dians residing in
the Amazon and
Orinoco River Ba-
several research studies have
indicated a relationship between
waking spiritual incidents and
positive outcomes in individuals'
lives, such as psychological well-
being and improved psychological
attitudes (e.g., Hood, 1974;
Kaas, Friedman, Lesserman,
Zuttermeister, & Benson, 1991;
PoUner, 1989) as well as
individuals' relationship to the
world, for example, investigating
the purpose oflife and their place
in that purpose (e.g., Grof, 1988,
p. 265; James, 1902/1958, p. 389).
Figure 1. Banisteriopsis caapi & viridis (Courtesy ofD. McKenna) sins, or even to a
Contributing to this literature have been varied
reports of purported spiritual experiences
triggered by mind-altering brews and concoctions
derived from plants. These experiences have been
described in the literature through first person
accounts, historical anecdotes, and ethnographic
accounts.
Ayahuasca
F
URST (1976) suggests that the ritual use of
mind-altering substances in the upper Amazon
dates back to at least 3000 B.C.E. Serious Western
research into the nature of these preparations
began with the expeditions of Richard Spruce, an
ethnobotanist who explored the Amazon and the
Andes between 1849 and 1864; among the species
he discovered was the Banisteriopsis caapi jungle
vine (Rudgley, 1993, p. 64). In 1855, he observed
that concoctions containing elements of this vine
were ingested ritually. Reichel-Dolmatoff's (1972,
single shaman. An-
other factor compounding the accounting of the
brews is the diversity in methods of preparation.
The most commonly recorded processes involve ei-
ther infusing Banisteriopsis bark in cold water or
boiling the bark and.lor the stems for long periods of
time, adding other ingredients as is deemed appro-
priate (Dobkin de Rios, 1975).
The chemicalN, N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT)
is found in several Amazonian plants (including
Psychotria viridis), but it has no psychotropic
effects when taken orally. This is due to the
monoamine oxidase enzyme found in human
saliva, which breaks down the chemical,
rendering it inactive. The Banisteriopsis vine
contains a variety of harmala alkaloids, type-A
monoamine oxidase (MAO-A) inhibitors that are
found throughout the body and counteract the
effects of this enzyme, allowing DMT (and other
substances normally inactive) to flow freely,
binding to serotonergic sites in the brain. In
addition to conferring activity on DMT, MAO-A
60 The Internationaljournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol 19
inhibition may contribute to actions of other
psychoactive substances sometimes found in the
beverages (Canaway et aI., 1999). For these
reasons, thousands of plants have been used to
produce ayahuasca brews with various effects.
For example, Rudgley (1993) has described the
use of an ayahuasca-based concoction, caapi, by
the Tukano Indians of the Colombian northwest
Amazon. Consumption is restricted to males, and
for specific ceremonies such as funerals, the
diagnosis of ailments, and shamanic vision quests
(p. 67). Several pieces ofthe fresh ingredients are
cut and then mashed to a pulp in a wooden trough
to which cold water is then added. The mixture is
strained and transferred to a specially decorated
ceramic vessel, ideally made by an elderly woman,
polished by a phallic-shaped stone, "purified" by
tobacco smoke, and used exclusively for the drink
by participants who have prepared themselves by
a prescribed diet and a period of sexual abstinence.
Ingestion is preceded by a recitation of creation
myths and genealogies, accompanied by the sounds
of a rattle and, later, flutes, whistles, singing, and
dancing. The experient's report usually begins with
a description of phosphenes (circles, triangles,
spirals, and other neurologically-based images) and
later of such culturally-conditioned imagery as
jaguars, snakes, and mythical landscapes (Reichel-
Dolmatoff, 1987). The resulting condition is
considered superior to one's ordinary state of
consciousness, and is reflected in artistic
decorations, architectural designs, and the
decorations found on Tukano pottery and musical
instruments. Rudgley (1993) observes that the
imagery reinforces key concepts and values in the
Tukano cultural belief system.
Luna (1992), while conducting field work in the
Peruvian Amazon in 1985, met don Pablo Amaringo,
a former mestizo shamanic healer who showed him
a series of exquisitely detailed landscapes he had
painted. When asked how he had learned to paint,
don Pablo replied that under the influence of
ayahuasca he had been shown by the spirits how to
combine colors to produce a panoply of hues. Luna
was familiar with artwork stimulated by similar
brews, and asked don Pablo ifhe would paint some
of his ayahuasca visualizations. A few days later,
don Pablo completed the first two such paintings,
most of which related to Amazonian shamanism.
Eventually, the two men collaborated on a book,
Ayahuasca Visions (Luna & Amaringo, 1991), which
explores the iconography of forty-nine paintings
which present hundreds of animals, plants, spirits,
and mythological beings. A comparison of don Pablo's
work with that produced by the Takano (Reichel-
Dolmatoff, 1978), the Siona (Langdon, 1992), the
Canelos Quicha (Whitten, 1981), and the Shipibo
(Gebhardt-Sayer, 1984) demonst:rates that the
images are influenced by the individual's cultural
background. As such, they provide a great deal of
:relevant information about the artist's culture and
its guiding mythology (Luna & Amaringo, 1991, pp.
43-44).
Dobkin de Rios (1992) has chronicled the ritual
use of ayahuasca by an urban shaman,
Hildebrando, better known as don Hilde. During
her field work, Dobkin de Rios interviewed each of
the ninety-seven men and women seen by don
Hilde in Pucallpa, Peru, the site of his office. She
observed that the client plays an active role in the
ayahuasca ritual:
Intrinsic to the drug effect is the power of the
plant to evoke expressive experiences equal in
force and drama to the best theatre available
anywhere. The ayahuasca client's particular
experience during the healing ritual is
multifold-he [or she] is actor, playwright,
stage director, costumier, make-up artist and
even musician. A fast-moving, brilliant
kaleidoscope of colours, forms, geometric
patterns, movement and counterpoint provides
the most unique experience most individuals
ever encounter in normal wakIDg consciousness.
This effect is produced entirely from within
the individual's own psyche. The stage
manager throughout this is the healer.
Through music, chants, whistling, or even
percussion sounds, he [or she] evokes
patterned visions which are important to the
client. (p. 158)
Again, these visions have been canalized by the
client's culture. From his earliest years, the
Amazonian city resident or farmer hears
discussions of ayahuasca use, listens while people
who have partaken in these sessions analyze them
in retrospect, and determines whether there has
been an appropriate response to the d:rug. Dobkin
de Rios (1992) concludes that "the stereotyping
of drug visions is not unusual" because there are
specific expectations surrounding the session (p.
156).
In Peru it is common for allopathic physicians
to refer some of their patients to ayahuasceros
(i.e., shamans who use ayahuasca) when they are
Spiritual Content in Ayahuasca Sessions 61
unable to make a diagnosis, identifY a problem, or
find a cure. The ayahuasceros sing sacred songs or
icaros, which call forth spirits who, in turn, are
thought to attempt healing (Dobkin de Rios, 1992).
In addition to the use of ayahuasca by Indian tribes
in the Amazon (Schultes & Hofmann, 1980), the
brew is utilized in at least three organized religious
groups that consider it a sacrament: Santo Daime,
Uniao do Vegetal, and Barquinha. Apart from the
indigenous population, it has been estimated that
there are at least 15,000 monthly users of
ayahuasca within the urban populations of South
America (Callaway et a!., 1999). In 1987, the use
of such beverages within a religious context was
officially recognized and protected by law in Brazil,
after lengthy investigations into its alleged threats
to national security and public health (Ott, 1994).
This was the first time in 1,600 years that a
government had granted permission to its
nonindigenous citizens to use a mind-altering
substance in a religious context (McKenna,
Callaway, & Grob, 1998).
Santo Daime traces its origins to Raimundo
Irineu Serra, a 7-foot-tall Brazilian rubber tapper
of African-Brazilian descent, who was born in the
state of Maranhao in 1882. At the age of 20, Serra
traveled to Acre, Brazil, to participate in the boom-
ing rubber trade. En route, he encountered several
native tribes that allowed him to witness the manu-
facture of the ayahuasca brew. In one of his ses-
sions with the natives, a woman calling herselfthe
"Queen of the Forest" appeared to him. Irineu,
who came from a Christian background, identi-
fied her with the Virgin
Mary. The woman told
him to enter the
rainforest alone to pre-
pare and drink the
ayahuasca brew for
eight days. Subsequent
instructions were to
spread her message
throughout the world.
Ayahuasca was to be
called daime (i.e., "give
When Irineu left the rainforest, he brought with
him a complete structure for a Daime ceremony
that consisted of a syncretic mixture of Amazonian,
African, and esoteric Christian elements. The
central focus for these Santo Daime ceremonies
was the singing of hymns, which he claimed to have
"received" while within the "force" of the Daime.
In the 1930s, Irineu assembled a congregation in
Rio Branco, in the Brazilian state of Acre. He could
not read, write, or transcribe music but his hymns
were soon put into written form by his followers.
He became known as "Master Irineu," the first
great leader of the Santo Daime movement.
Initially, Santo Daime was a rural phenomenon
(Richman, 1990-1991, p. 39). In recent decades,
however, Santo Daime has maintained its centers
in the rainforests and has established new
assemblies in Brazilian urban areas (Larsen, 2000).
One of us (JS) has spent several months in Ceu
do Mapia, a Daime community of several hundred
people located in the southwest Amazon, on a tribu-
tary of the Purus River. Ceu do Mapia is equipped
with a small hospital, a school, and a bevy of small
wooden houses; rice, beans, and manioc are grown
locally, chickens are bred, and a few cows are raised
for their milk, while bananas, cashew fruits, and lem-
ons can be found in the nearby village. A large star-
shaped church has been built at the village's center,
but small, focused healing takes place in a smaller
building called the "Star House." Feito, the ritualis-
tic preparation of Daime, is a communal event;
month-long festivals are held twice a year, while heal-
ing ceremonies are scheduled when needed.
The Star House
is not the only
place where spirit
guides are incor-
porated or "chan-
neled." "White
Table" works
are held twice
monthly (on the
7th and 27th of
each month) at
the church. There
me," as in "give me love, areseveralteTTeros
give me light, give me where Umbanda
strength"), because the Figure 2. Umbanda ceremony, Ceu do Mapia, Brazil (Courtesy of]. Sulla) works occur, and
woman insisted that this beverage was the sacred a "Santa Casa" (or "Holy House") has been built
blood of Jesus Christ and that it would give light, where a great deal of healing through mediumship
love, and strength to all who would use it. occurs. The spirits incorporated are not always
62 The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, Vol 19
benign; often, suffering, rebellious, or malignant
spirits appear. A unique element of UmbaDaime
(the synthesis of Umbanda and Santo Daime) is
that these spirits are "illuminated" by giving them
ayahuasca (Figure 2).
There are an estimated 5,000 Daime members
in Brazil (as well as another 2,000-3,000 overseas
members). There are several doctrinal groups, and
many types of Santo Daime ceremonies. Typically,
the ceremonies take place in church settings with
a six-pointed table in the center. The ceremonies
are typically called "works," because participants
attempt to work on their own spiritual evolution
during each session. "Celebration works" are
differentiated from "concentration works" and
"healing works." Each "celebration work" involves
a period of highly structured singing and dancing,
followed by an hour intermission, and concludes
with another period of singing and dancing.
Maracas, drums, guitars, and other instruments
may be heard during the ceremonies (Figure 3).
Figure 3. Alex P. de Alverga (right) and Santo Daime church members
singing hymns. (Courtesy ofD. McKenna)
The songs and musical rhythms are designed
to help participants focus on their "inner work,"
aided by such symbols as the sun, moon, stars, the
Star of David, and pictures ofthe Christian saints
and Daime founders. In some centers, elements of
other African-Brazilian religions such as
Umbanda, as well as such spiritistic beliefs as those
based on the writings of the French spiritualist
Allan Kardec, have found their way into the
ceremonies. Every few hours, participants have the
opportunity to imbibe the ayahuasca brew.
Master Irineu's group grew steadily; many
people followed him because he developed a
reputation as a great healer. In the early 1950s,
one of his most avid followers claimed to have
received another series of visions from the Queen
of the Forest, ordering him to establish a new
branch of the Daime doctrine which incorporated
more elements of Umbanda. This man became
known as Master Daniel and his church was named
Barquinha (or "Little Boat").
In Barquinha, ceremonies center around a table
shaped like a cross. Participants usually sit in
contemplation for the first half of the ceremony, then
began to dance with "spirits" summoned through
carimbas and pontos (sacred songs). The spirits
summoned are also found in Umbanda--encontados
(nature spirits), crianc;as (spirits of children),
caboclos (spirits of those who descended from unions
of Native Amazonians and Africans),pretos velhos
(spirits of Africans sold into slavery or their
descendants), and mermaids (representations of
Iemanja, the African "Goddess of the Oceans" who
protected the slaves on their hazardous journey to
Brazil). Ayahuasca is served periodically during the
ceremonIes.
The Uniao do Vegetal ("Union ofthe Vegetable"
or UDV) was founded in 1961 by another rubber
tapper, Jose Gabriel Da Costa, who had been
trained in the manufacture of ayahuasca by the
natives of the rainforest, and who later became
known as Master Gabriel. When Gabriel first
drank the cha misterioso (the mysterious tea), he
knew ont as the cinema do Indio or Indian cinema,
a term used by his fellow rubber tappers, many of
whom had ingested the substance themselves.
Gabriel was introduced to the tea by a rubber
tapper who had a reputation of drinking the tea
with one hand, sugar cane liquor with the other
hand, and using the tea to seduce women
(Schinzinger, 1999, p. 11).
During his first burracheira (i.e., the altered
state of consciousness induced by ayahuasca),
Gabriel was taken to the forest and shown how to
identify the two plants used to prepare the tea. On
the very next day, he and his son gathered the
plants, prepared the tea, and drank it again with
his wife. Over the next few years, Gabriel
established the teachings given to him in the
burracheira, combining them with his Portuguese
Catholic roots and the years he spent as a leader
of Urn banda. He was also exposed to the writings
of Allan Kardec and the teachings of the Bolivian
and Brazilian Indians with whom he tapped rubber
and drank ayahuasca. Presently, UDV claims
some 6,000 members who are distributed among
at least 60 nucleos throughout Brazil (Luna & White,
2000; Metzner, 1999b) (Figures 4,5,6,7).
UDV ceremonies focus around a table, with the
Mestres (Masters) sitting in the middle. A series of
chamadas or "calls" open the ceremony. Sacred
readings from the writings of the church founders
are read; often the Mestres will give their reflections
on these texts. A large portion of ayahuasca is served
at the beginning of the ceremony, and then
participants sit in silent meditation, sometimes with
recorded music played in the background. Some
Mestres sing hymns from the church repertoire. In
the second half of the ceremony, participants share
their reactions or ask the Mestres questions about
the session. Men and women were separated until
the mid-1980s, and this practice persists in some
congregations or nucleos. UDV sponsored the
International Conference of Hoasca Studies in Rio
de Janeiro in 1995, an event that attracted an
international audience and received wide media
coverage.
Master lrineu and Master Gabriel both died in
1971; they both tapped rubber in the same region
but apparently never met. In 1996 we met an
associate of Master Daniel, a Padrinho (or
"godfather") of Barquinha in Manaus, at the 15th
conference of the International Transpersonal
Association. The theme of the conference was
"Technologies of the Sacred," and all three
ayahuasca-based religions were discussed by
several of the participants.
Grob et al. (1996) conducted a study of 15 male
UDV church members, 11 of whom had diagnoses of
alcohol abuse disorders and phobic disorders, with
such symptoms as binge drinking and violent
behavior before regular use of the tea. These subjects
were interviewed three times over a two-week period,
and compared with 15 members of an age-matched
control group of non-UDV members. No harmful
sequelae were observed and the 11 UDV members
with pathological diagnoses had all remitted. A
pharmacokinetic study of the same 15 Uniao do
Vegetal church members by Callaway et al. (1999)
found "no signs of physical or psychological
deterioration," and concluded that "the regular use
of hoasca in a ceremonial context seems to increase
one's ability to psychologically adapt to the larger
process ofllfe" (p. 255) (Figures 8,9,10).
In the summer of 1993, a group of biomedical
researchers from the United States, Finland, and
Brazil met in the Amazonian city of Manaus to
investigate the psychological and biomedical effects
of ayahuasca. They conducted their study with
members of the UDV church in Manaus who had
used the substance regularly for at least ten years.
No negative effects were observed, but an increased
density of serotonin uptake sites in blood platelets
was detected (Callaway et al., 1994). The latterresult
was paradoxical because most psychotropic
substances decrease serotonin. However, it provides
a due as to the therapeutic effects of ayahuasca
because the serotonin system is deficient in violent
alcoholics (Grob et al., 1996). Psychologically, the team
found their subjects to be "more relaxed" than non-
UDV members, and demonstrated "more purpose
and direction in their lives," and a greater concern
for the preservation of the natural environment. A
"hallucinogenic rating scale" was constructed which
placed ayahuasca on the mild end of the spectrum in
contrast to intravenous DMT which was on the
opposite pole.
However, this scale did not address the
phenomenological contents of the ayahuasca sessions.
What was needed was a different kind of research
procedure that would make such a contribution. We
decided upon content analysis to accomplish this
objective because this method has been developed to
systematically and objectively identifY characteristics
and themes of communications or documents and
the relative extent to which these characteristics and
themes pervade a given communication or document
(Berg, 1989, p. 106; Holsti, 1968, pp. 597,601; Weber,
1990, p. 9).
~ Research Qu.estion ~
A
s THERE has been little rigorous research on
the spiritual content of ayahuasca sessions,
this research study was designed to answer the
following question: "Is it possible to identify
spiritual content in ayahuasca reports, and if so,
how?"
~ Definition of Terms ~
S
EVERAL DEFINITIONS were employed in this
research study and guided its focus:
"Trans personal studies" can be defined as
disciplined inquiries into those observed or
reported human behaviors and experiences in
which one's sense of identity appears to extend
beyond its ordinary limits to encompass wider,
Preparation of Ayahuasca by a Uniao do Vegetal Temple, Brazil
Figure 5. (Courtesy ofD. McKenna)
Figure 6. (Courtesy of D. McKenna)
Research Study of Dniao do Vegetal Members
Figure 8. (CourtesyofD. McKenna)
66 The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VoL 19
broader, or deeper aspects of human life and/or
the cosmos, including purported divine elements of
creation (Krippner, 1997).
The "divine" was defined as that which is regarded
as holy (belonging to, derived from, or associated with
religious or spiritual powers) and sacred (that which
is dedicated to or worthy of veneration or worship)
(American Heritage Dictionary, 1993), thus deserving
the highest respect. The locus of the divine can be
either outside of oneself, as when it has the nature of
a superhuman entity or a deity, or within oneself, as
when it is thought to reside within one's "inner,"
"deeper," and/or ''higher'' self "Reverence," in this
research, was defined as an attitude or feeling of
profound awe and respect (American Heritage
Dictionary, 1993).
Achterberg and Lawlis (1980) define "imagery"
as "the internal experience of a perceptual event in
the absence of the actual external stimuli" (p. 27).
Therefore, imagery in ayahuasca experiences does
not have to be visual, but can be auditory, olfactory,
gustatory, or kinesthetic as well.
"Spiritual" was defined as one's focus on, and/or
reverence, openness, and connectedness to something
of significance believed to be beyond one's full
understanding and/or individual existence (American
Heritage Dictionary, 1993; Elkins, Hedstrom, Hughes,
Leaf, & Saunders, 1988; Krippner & Welch, 1992,
pp. 5, 122; Shafranske & Gorsuch, 1984, p. 233).
There is an overlap between "spiritual" experiences
and those referred to as "transpersonal," "mystical,"
or "religious," but these are not regarded as
synonyms. In "transpersonal" experiences, one's
sense of identity appears to extend beyond its
ordinary limits; in "mystical" experiences, this
extension appears to unite with something considered
"divine," "sacred," or "holy"; in other words, all
"mystical" experiences are "transpersonal," but not
all "transpersonal" experiences are "mystical." In
"religious" experiences there is a reported contact
with something that an organized body of believers
considers to be "divine," "sacred," or ''holy:''
Definitions of "spiritual" and "religious," and of
"spirituality" and "religion" are often similar. For
example, William James (1902/1958) defines
"religion" as "feelings, acts, and experiences of
individual men [and women] in their solitude, so far
as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to
whatever they may consider divine" (p. 42). However,
this definition is very much like the definition of
"spiritual" as given above, especially in its implied
link between beliefs and action. Therefore, for darity's
sake, "religion" or "religious" was distinguished in this
research from "spiritual" as pertaining to, and
adherence to, an organized system of beliefs about the
divine, and the observance by a body of believers of
rituals, rites, and requirements of that organized
system of beliefs (American Heritage Dictionary, 1993).
"Shamans" can be defined as socially-sanctioned
practitioners who deliberately alter their conscious
functioning to obtain information not ordinarily
available to their peers, using this information in the
service oftheir community (Krippner & Welch, 1992).
The term "entheogenic" has come into use to
describe substances that purport to release one's
"inner divinity" (Roberts, 1999, p. 24). As such, the
term is considered by many to be more precise than
the terms "psychedelic" (i.e., "mind-manifesting") and
"hallucinogenic" (i.e., "mind-wandering"). Many
writers claim that the latter term is not appropriate
for ayahuasca sessions, few of which produce full-
blown hallucinations. However, "psychedelic" can be
viewed as an umbrella term that encompasses
substances that evoke "entheogenic" experiences as
well as the "sensory-perceptual," "psychological-
recoUective/analytic," and "symbolic-mythic," levels
of experience described by Masters and Houston
(1966), and the "biographical-recollective" and
"perinatal" levels of experience described by Grof
(1985). Masters and Houston's "religious-integral"
and Grofs "transpersonal" levels of experience could
be regarded as "entheogenic," but not everyone who
ingests ayahuasca reaches those levels. In the
meantime, a case can be made for using such terms
as "entheogenic" to describe experiences rather than
substances, because not everyone ingesting
ayahuasca and similar plant concoctions will have
an "entheogenic," "transpersonal," or "spiritual"
experience.
2
e-..., Instru.mentation ~
H
ALL AND VAN DE CASTLE'S (1966) system of
. dream content analysis, with its predeter-
mined categories and subcategories, is frequently
used to detect common and recurring elements in
dreams. While Hall and Van de Castle's categories
do not include spiritual categories per se, they do
include categories that sometimes contain spiri-
tual content items, e.g., physical surroundings,
characters, social interactions, activities, achieve-
ment outcomes, environmental press, emotions,
descriptive elements. The reliability of scoring, or
consistency of measurement, was found by Hall
and Van de Castle to be 73% for physical surround-
ings, 76% for characters, 70% for social interac-
tions, 85% for activities, and 63% for emotions. Hall
and Van de Castle's original normative data has
been replicated in other studies; for example, Hall,
Domhoff, Blick, and Weesner (1982) found few dif-
ferences between the normative data of Han and
Van de Castle's original research and their own
participants.
Kira Lynn Casto developed a "spirituality
scoring system" to supplement Hall and Van de
Castle's work (Casto, 1995). Named the "Casto
Spirituality Scoring System" (CSSS), she
modified several categories in Hall and Van de
Castle's (1966) system to identify spiritual
content (Figure 11). Their "objects" category was
altered to "spiritual objects"; their "characters"
category was altered to "spiritual characters";
their "settings" category was altered to "spiritual
settings"; their "activities" category was altered
to "spiritual activities"; their "emotions" category
was altered to "spiritual emotions."
Hood's (1975) Mysticism Scale was used to
develop a "spiritual experiences" category yielding
several possibilities, that is, experiences in which
there is a sense of direct contact, communion, or
union with something considered to be ultimate
reality, God, or the divine; experiences in which one's
sense of identity temporarily reaches beyond or
extends past his or her ordinary personal identity
to include an expanded perspective of humanity and!
or the universe; experiences where one appears to
enter a sacred realm or condition that goes beyond
the ordinary boundaries of space and linear time.
The difference between "activities" and
"experiences" is similar to the psychological
differentiation between behavior (i.e., externally
observable actions, including verbal behavior)
and experience (i.e., lived events that are
phenomenological reports). The phrase, "1 was angry
at God" would be scored for "spiritual emotion." The
phrase, "I told God that 1 was angry," would be
scored for both "spiritual emotion" and "spiritual
activity." The phrase, "I was angry at God, and this
reaction produced a red glow in my heart that sent
intense heat throughout my body," would be scored
for "spiritual emotion" and "spiritual experience."
The phrase, "I told God that I was angry, and this
reaction produced a red glow in my heart that sent
intense heat throughout my body," would be scored
for "spiritual emotion," "spiritual activity," and
"spiritual experience."
Some dreams contain religious content but not
spiritual content. A Brazilian woman reported that
in her dream:
I found a place with perfumes and soaps. There
were some gifts that I had received from my
older brother. Someone gave me a little car and
a doll. Someone else showed me a chain made
of sandalwood which was very sweet-smelling.
I received two blue envelopes that were sealed.
Then I designed a chapel, a little church in a
unique style which would be used only for
weddings.
This dream could be scored for "religious content"
because of its references to a chapel, church, and
weddings. However, none ofthese meet the criteria
for "spiritual content" as outlined in the CSSS.
FigureU.
Casto Spirituality Scoring System
Spiritual Objects: Objects used for focus, and
reverence, to open and connect one to
something of significance that is believed to
be beyond one's full understanding and/or
individual existence.
Spiritual Characters: People, animals, or
beings that are meaningfully connected to
something of significance that is believed to
be beyond one's full understanding and/or
individual existence and that one associates
with a sense of reverence.
Spiritual Settings: Places where one feels
meaningfully connected to something of
significance believed to be beyond one's full
understanding and/or individual existence and
that are associated with a sense of reverence.
SpiritualActivities:Activities used to open and
connect one to something of significance
believed to be beyond one's full understanding
and/or individual existence and that are
associated with a sense of reverence.
Spiritual Emotions: Felt emotions that are
regarded as meaningfully related to something
of significance which is believed to be beyond
one's full understanding and/or individual
existence, associated with a sense of reverence.
Spiritual Experiences: Experiences in which a
sense of direct contact, communion, or union
with something that is considered to be
ultimate reality, God or the divine; and/or
experiences in which one's sense of identity
temporarily reaches beyond or extends past
his or her ordinary personal identity to include
an expanded perspective of humanity and/or
the universe; and/or experiences where one
appears to enter a sacred realm or condition
that goes beyond the ordinary boundaries of
space and lineal' time.
We felt that Casto's system might be applied to
ayahuasca sessions reported by individuals
representing a wide variety of spiritual
backgrounds. One person might report
experiencing "intense ecstasy accompanied by
white light conveying a blessing by Jesus Christ,"
another might report an experience of peace
accompanied by white light felt to be a precursor
to "the Nirvana described by the Buddha," and
still another might report an experience
accompanied by white light that represents the
arrival of Ox ala, the Mrican-Brazilian orisha (i.e.,
deity) of purity. All three reports would be scored
for "spiritual experience," for "spiritual activity"
(e.g., the blessing, the description, the arrival),
for "spiritual object" (e.g., the white light), and
"spiritual character" (e.g., Jesus Christ, the
Buddha, Oxala), despite the disparate traditions
represented.
~ Reliability ea,
T
HE SCORES of two judges using the CSSS had
been compared before this study was initiated
(Casto, Krippner, & Tartz, 1999). A content item
was not judged to be "spiritual" unless it had
received scores from both judges. Each dream was
compared for presence or absence of each content
category. Kappas (correlations) reported by the
two judges using the CSSS were. 946 for "spiritual
objects," .943 for "spiritual characters," .918 for
"spiritual settings," .946 for "spiritual activities,"
.993 for "spiritual emotions," and .929 for
"spiritual experiences." The reliability ofthe CSSS
as a whole was .946, which indicates high
reliability between scorers. An agreement
between raters was counted if either both raters
scored a spiritual dream element for a particular
dream or both raters did not score a spiritual
dream element for a particular dream.
ea, Procedure ~
F
OR THIS pilot study, we collected a small sample
of ayahuasca session reports, subjecting them
to analysis with the CSSS. Both indigenous
accounts and those obtained from ayahuasca
church services were included. Some ofthe reports
were extremely lengthy, so we selected excerpts
from the reports that would illustrate each of the
CSSS categories to determine their utility in
studying spiritual elements of ayahuasca sessions.
ea, Limitations and. Delimitations ea,
T
HIS STUDY was limited in that the session
reports were not selected from a random
selection of experients. Furthermore, like all
experiential reports, they are vulnerable to faulty
memory, distortion, or outright fabrication.
This study was delimited to experiential
reports available in English, and to those which
occurred in a spiritual setting, either with
shamans in South America, in one of the
ayahuasca churches, or in a location organized
by an ethnobotanist or ayahuascero familiar with
the "set" and "setting" required for something
meaningful to occur (see Metzner, 1999b, p. 162).
E APPLIED the esss to ten phenomenological
accounts, beginning with the original report
of Master Irineu that dates back to the 1920s. His
report of the "Queen of the Forest" was scored for
"spiritual character," her command to him to drink
ayahuasca for eight days was scored for "spiritual
activity," and his conviction that he must follow these
orders was scored for "spiritual experience." There
might have been additional spiritual elements
involved in Master Inineu's experience, but they are
not apparent from the information available.
The esss defines "spiritual objects" as those
"used for focus, and reverence, to open and connect
one to something of significance that is believed to
be beyond one's fun understanding and/or individual
existence." An example is given by Luna and
Amaringo (1991) in an excerpt of their description
of one of Amaringo's paintings, "Curandera
Transformed Into a Boa":
A great vegetalista curandera has become a
beautiful queen wearing a golden crown, with
the body of a blue serpent with disc-shaped
marks ... The blue glasses that appear under
the queen's throat are purified glasses from
which the genies ofthe trees drink when they
are invited to have liquor or the ayahuasca
brew. (p. 60)
In this report, the "purified glasses" was scored
as a "spiritual object." In addition, the queen was
scored as a "spiritual character."
The esss defines "spiritual characters" as
"people, animals, or beings that are meaningfully
connected to something of significance that is
believed to be beyond one's fun understanding
and/or individual existence and that one
associates with a sense of reverence." An example
of a "spiritual character" can be found in an
excerpt from an American psychologist's self-
described "initiation to ayahuasca" under the
direction of an ethnobotanist:
As the images offorms and objects recede back
into the swaying fabric of visions, I realize that
I am seeing them as if projected on the twisting
coils of an enormous serpent, with glittering
silvery and green designs of its skin ... My
emotional response is one of awe and humility
at the magnificence of this being and its
spiritual power ... (in Metzner, 1999a, p. 160)
This excerpt also was scored for "spiritual emotion"
(i.e., "awe and humility").
The esss defines "spiritual settings" as "places
where one feels meaningfully connected to
something of significance believed to be beyond
one's full understanding and/or individual
existence and that are associated with a sense of
reverence." An example can be found in an account
by a college philosophy professor's first ayahuasca
experience in the Peruvian highlands with 14 other
participants:
I found myself in a psychomanteum, a place
specially constructed for divination and
communication with deceased relatives. There
was a large mirror on the wall, in which a face
took shape and became three-dimensional.
This face and the eyes told that ... that I, as
Robert Dudley, had previously worked under
the tutelage ofthe Elizabethan magus Dr. John
Dee ... I saw the machinations of the ego-
personality and its subtle deceit of the Self .. .I
realized that intellectual success is not the end-
all, but rather love and compassion wisely
applied. (in Metzner, 1999a, pp. 94-95)
The psychomanteum was scored as a "spiritual
setting," Robert Dudley was scored as a "spiritual
character," and the realizations as a "spiritual
experience. "
The esss defines "spiritual activities" as those
"used to open and connect one to something of
significance believed to be beyond one's full
understanding andlor individual existence and
that are associated with a sense of reverence."
Narby's (1998) first ayahuasca experience took
place in the Peruvian Amazon; he recalled:
These enormous snakes are there, my eyes are
closed and I see a spectacular world of brilliant
lights, and in the middle of these hazy
thoughts, the snakes start talking to me
without words. They explain that I am just a
human being. I feel my mind crack, and in the
fissures, I see the bottomless arrogance of my
presuppositions. It is profoundly true that I
am just a human being and, most of the time,
I have the impression of understanding
everything, whereas here I find myself in a
more powerful reality that I do not understand
at all and that, in my arrogance, I did not even
suspect existed. I feel like crying in view of
the enormity of these revelations. Then it
dawns on me that this self-pity is a part of my
arrogance. I feel so ashamed that I no longer
dare feel ashamed. Nevertheless, I have to
throw up. (pp. 6-7)
The snakes' conversation "without words" was
scored as a "spiritual activity." This excerpt also
contains "spiritual characters" (the snakes),
"spiritual emotions" (the self-pity, arrogance, and
shame), and "spiritual experiences" ("I find myself
in a more powerful reality that I do not
understand at all" and "these revelations").
The esss defines "spiritual emotions" as "felt
emotions that are regarded as meaningfully
related to something of significance which is
believed to be beyond one's full understanding
andlor individual existence, associated with a
sense of reverence." One of the authors (SK)
recalls:
In 1992, I was invited to participate in an
ayahuasca ritual held by a Santo Daime
congregation in coastal Brazil. Although that
particular church was quite Christian-
oriented, I observed s e v e ~ a l references to
African-Brazilian deities in the songs we sung
while waiting for the opportunity to imbibe the
sacrament. The church's trabalhos ("ritual
works") were highly structured; to the beat of
rattles, church officials taught the rhythmic
right-to-left dances to newcomers, and gently
corrected them if they made mistakes. After a
preparatory period of about two hours, the
singing and dancing stopped and glasses of a
dark green fluid were offered. Once the
congregation had imbibed, there was additional
music-drums and guitars supplemented the
maracas-followed by a period of silent
reflection. This cycle was repeated four times,
and participants could consume the brew once,
twice, three times, four times, or not at all. For
me, the Daime experience was associated with
few alterations in consciousness. There were no
remarkable changes in perception, input-
processing, memory, subconscious
sense of identity, or motor output. My major
shifts were in emotions. I have seldom felt such
complete peace of mind or one-pointedness; I
rarely have had such a complete immersion in
the here and the now. People on all sides of me
were having very different experiences. A friend
of mine shifted his identity remarkably,
believing that he had turned into a huge
emerald. Another friend of mine was escorted
to the back room for individual counseling when
she became overwhelmed with grief after
retrieving a painful memory. A few members of
the congregation had visceral reactions and
went outside to vomit (and were assured that
their nausea was a positive "cleansing" rather
than anything negative). It was clear that the
ayahuasca ritual produced different
experiences for everyone; in my case the
experience remained stable for about two hours.
My cares and worries dropped away, as I found
my spiritual center, and was able to maintain
this feeling of equanimity for several months.
This report was scored for "spiritual emotion" (the
"peace of mind") as well as for "spiritual experience"
(the "immersion in the here and now").
The esss defines "spiritual experiences" as
those "in which a sense of direct contact,
communion or union with something that is ,
considered to be ultimate reality, God or the divine;
and/or experiences in which one's sense of identity
temporarily reaches beyond or extends past his or
her ordinary personal identity to include an
expanded perspective of humanity and/or the
universe; and/or experiences where one appears
to enter a sacred realm or condition that goes
beyond the ordinary boundaries of space and linear
time." The anthropologist Wade Davis (1998) took
ayahuasca in the Colombian Amazon, reporting:
Reality was not distorted, it was dissolved, as
the terror of another dimension swept over the
senses ... Then the terror grew stronger, as did
my sense of hopeless fragility ... My thoughts
themselves turned into visions ... This was the
actual world, and what I had known until then
was a crude and opaque facsimile. (pp. 160-161)
This excerpt was scored as a "spiritual experience"
but the reported "terror" also was scored as a
"spiritual emotion."
A Buddhist meditator known as "Renata"
reported:
I felt totally alive, open, responsive, and
fearless! Accepting the fleeting nature of all,
it was so simple to be fully present for every
moment. Perhaps for the first time ever, I felt
an implicit trust in my capacity to guide myself
through the incredible labyrinth of dark and
light. It is this experience of trust which is
perhaps what I value most from my journey.
(in Metzner, 1999a, p. 133)
This report was also scored as a "spiritual
experience" as well as containing "spiritual
emotions."
Peter Gorman (1992) has written a lengthy
description of his ayahuasca sessions. In one of
them, he recalled:
I watched the bird from a great distance, then
I felt myself merging with it. Soon, I was looking
down from the bird's perspective, my sharp
eyesight picking out minute details of the
landscape below. I flew over a mountain range
and peered into a stream. I saw fish moving
about, and watched rich hues of blue and green
sparkling from their scales. Unexpectedly, I
tilted off the horizon and plummeted toward
them. I felt no fear, only hunger; I wanted a
fish. I split the water with hardly a splash and
in an instant was racing skyward again with a
fish in my beak. A piece of it slipped into my
stomach unchewed. I remember thinking I
didn't eat food that way. (p. 51)
This excerpt does not meet the qualifications for
spiritual content because it does not suggest an
with "ultimate reality" or "the divine."
However, it could be regarded as an example of a
transpersonal experience in which "one's sense of
identity appears to extend beyond its ordinary
limits to encompass wider, broader, or deeper
aspects of human, life, and/or the cosmos." Wade
Davis' (1998) sense of "dissolving" could also be
regarded as transpersonal content in his
ayahuasca session. In other words, the esss
allows investigators to differentiate among
spiritual, religious, and transpersonal content of
entheogenic reports; often there will be an overlap,
but these terms are not synonyms, and the overlap
should not be taken for granted.
In working with dream reports, the same
phenomenon occurred; a dreamer reported feeling
"temptation" to "take one of the icons" on the wall
of a church; this dream was considered to have had
religious content but not spiritual content. Another
dream report mentioned "the Sacred Heart of Jesus
and Hebrew" candelabrum" and the dreamer's
comment, "How impotent is religion in stopping
the war." This dream's religious content was not
scored as "spiritual" because a sense of reverence
was lacking, an indispensable criterion for dreams
scored for spiritual content.
On the other hand, there are many ayahuasca
reports that contain what Uniao do Vegetal Mestres
refer to as peia and cacete, the torment that results
from the thoughts and actions that have caused
lack of attention to spiritual growth. Annelise
Schinzinger (1999) recollected:
One of my peias came in the form of feeling I
had wasted four hours of a session, because I
had let my mind be taken on "monkey-mind"
rides. When I returned my attention to what
was going on in the session, I realized how
much of the session I had missed because of
my lack of will to concentrate ... Experiences
like this motivated me to focus my attention
more: on the spoken word, on the music being
played, and on the flow of energy. (p. 43)
In this report, spiritual growth is revered, and lack
of attention to this growth has produced torment;
hence this report was scored for "spiritual
experience." In addition, it demonstrates the link
between belief and action that Reese (1997)
considers the operational marker of spirituality.
In summary, we would give a positive answer to
our question: "Is it possible to identify spiritual
content in ayahuasca reports, and if so, how?" Using
our definition of the word, "spiritual," we were able
to find several reports of ayahuasca sessions where
spiritual content could be readily identified, using
the Casto Spirituality Scoring System.
~ Discussion e - ~
P
RACTITIONERS OF what Karasu (1999) has called
. "spiritual psychotherapy" will recognize the
potential therapeutic value of the CSSS. According
to Karasu, "this type oftherapy has its own tenets,
not as principles of therapy but as principles of
existence" (p. 143). Both spiritually-oriented
psychotherapists and native shamans have
commented on "loss of soul" as a contemporary
malady (Moore, 1994; Krippner & Welch, 1992).
Spiritual psychotherapy, whether native or
modern, is concerned with human anguish,
isolation, alienation, meaninglessness, and with
existential guilt over not living up to one's
potentials (Karasu, 1999, p. 155). Many therapeutic
schools underplay their clients' spiritual
dimensions, but Jungian, existential, humanistic,
and transpersonal psychotherapists are among the
exceptions.
Karasu (1999) insists that "spiritual therapy is
not religious counseling" (p. 158). Religious
counselors typically represent organized and
structured forms of spirituality with specific
traditions, proscriptions, and required rituals. By
contrast, spiritual psychotherapy rejects strict
formality, substituting flexibility and freedom" (p.
159). Kovel (1991) adds that everyone has the
potential for transcendent experiences. Spirituality
is a path of contemplation in which the divine is
found in the given world and within ourselves (pp.
319, 546). Kovel's description of "transcendent
experiences" offers a term that might encompass
spiritual, religious, and transpersonal experiences.
Subsuming the best of spiritual, religious, and
transpersonal perspectives, Karasu (1999) states:
Spiritual therapy seeks the self beyond itself,
in order not to be self-preoccupied; in short it is
egoless. It is geared toward self-transcendence,
the love of others in a universal, timeless, and
spaceless field. Spiritual therapists help their
recipients to relinquish self-serving actions, to
express compassion and forgiveness. (p. 161)
Within this framework, a spiritual psycho-
therapist could utilize material from ayahuasca
sessions to assist clients, using as analogues the
practices of traditional shamans in the Amazon
throughout the millennia.
Adele brought a dream to one of us (SK) that
had originally recurred for about three years when
she was a child, and now had returned. The setting
of the dream was a hilly countryside, and the
dreamer was seated outside a cave that seemed to
be sacred. As she waited expectantly, a faceless
monk in a black robe entered the sacred cave,
chanting, "In time I come for everyone." Adele's
feelings were fear, respect, and reverence. This
72 The Internationaljournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
dream report was pivotal in allowing Adele to
examine the existential issues surrounding death,
as it occurred at a time in her life when the
realization that she might lose family members
became acute. Eventually, Adele resolved these
fears by focusing on the feelings of respect and
reverence in her dreams, concluding that death
is part of the life process, and that an awareness
of its inevitability enhances the immediacy and
enjoyment of each daily activity. Similar cases
might emerge when psychotherapists work with
clients who bring ayahuasca experiences to the
therapeutic session.
The transformative power of an ayahuasca
experience is dramatically illustrated by Santo
Daime Padrinho Sebastiao's account of the first
time he drank the beverage in Mestre Irineu's
church:
I drank the Daime, went to my corner and sat.
Afcer some time things began to happen, and
I became fearful. I got up to leave very quietly
because everyone was silent. I started to leave
on tiptoe and as I passed by the place where
people drank the sacrament, the Daime
enveloped me in an awful smell. It made me
go quickly back to my space. As I arrived on
the bench, I heard a voice saying, "The Mestre
asked if you are a man, and up to now the only
thing you have done is moan." Then myoId
body hit the floor and there it stayed. I was
outside my body looking at the old junk that
was me.
All of a sudden I saw two men who were
the most beautiful beings I had ever seen in
my life. They were resplendent, like fire! They
began to take out my whole skeleton from
within my living flesh without hurting
anything. As they worked, they vibrated
everything from side to side, and I, on the other
side, was watching all they were doing. Next,
they took out my organs. One ofthem held my
guts in his hands. Together they used a hook
that opened, separated, and extracted from my
guts three nail-sized insects, which were
responsible for what I felt walking up and
down inside me.
Then the one who had been seated next to
my prostrate body, which was still stretched
out on the floor, came very close to me and said,
"Here it is! What was killing you were these
three insects, but now you will not die from
them anymore." Then they closed my body. Do
you see any scars? There are none. Thank God
I healed, like a child. (De Alverga, 2000, pp.
74-75)
From this experience, Padrinho Sebastiao was
initiated into Santo Daime. The esss would score
this for "spiritual characters" (the two "beautiful
beings"), "spiritual activities" (the "work" with
Sebastiao's body), and "spiritual experiences" (the
out-of-body experience, and the encounter with
the two men from which Sebastiao "healed like a
child"). The bodily "work" is similar to that of
many shamans who are "called" to their profession
by a dream or vision of dismemberment, death,
and rebirth (e.g., Krippner & Welch, 1992, p. 67).
In the case of Sebastiao, he devoted himself to a
spiritual mission that was crucial to the
development of the Santo Daime church.
Sebastiao's out-of-body experience is similar to
those reported by other people over the millennia
(Alvarado, 2000), but are not a rarity among
ayahuasca experients. The American researcher
Dennis McKenna (2000) recalls a Uniao do
Vegetal session, in 1991, in which he heard a voice,
seeming to come from behind his left shoulder:
It said something like, "You wanna see force?
I'll show you force!" The question was clearly
rhetorical, and I understood that I was about
to experience myself changed into a
disembodied point of view, suspended in space,
thousands of miles over the Amazon Basin. I
could see the curvature ofthe earth, the stars
below shone steadily against an inky backdrop,
and far below I could see swirls and eddies of
clouds over the basin, and the nerve-like
tracery of vast river systems. From the center
ofthe basin rose the World Tree, in the form of
a giant Banisteriopsis vine. It was twisted into
a helical form and its flowering tops were just
below my disembodied viewpoint. (pp. 155-156)
In retrospect, McKenna felt he had finally
experienced the "true profundity" and the
ultimate "force" of ayahuasca.
This discussion would be incomplete without
a consideration of how ayahuasca-induced
spiritual experiences meet criteria found
elsewhere in the literature. One of the most
instructive models has been created by Deikman
(1980) to categorize mystical experiences; we feel
that the same model can be used to study spiritual
experiences. According to Deikman's model,
experiences labeled "mystical" (or, for us,
"spiritual") embody an array of occurrences. They
may be "untrained sensate," "trained sensate," or
"trained transcendent." Untrained sensate
phenomena occur in individuals who do not
actively practice a spiritual discipline; they occur
most frequently in natural settings or under the
influence of drugs. Trained sensate phenomena
differ from untrained sensate phenomena only in
that the experients have prior knowledge or
expectation of the occurrence; hence, they may
be prone toward interpreting their experience to
conform to their acquired learning. Trained
transcendent phenomena are experiences that
have been cultivated through disciplined practice.
Deikman suggests that a sense of "ego-loss" (i.e.,
transpersonal experience) is most characteristic
of the latter category. We feel that the use of the
esss could test this hypothesis and other aspects
of Deikman's model; spiritual experiences
involving "ego-loss" or what Deikman calls the
"unity of all things" could be compared across his
three categories.
Additional research projects suggest
themselves. Do fantasy-prone persons (Krippner,
1993; Lynn & Rhue, 1988) report more spiritual
content from their ayahuasca sessions than other
experients? Does high spiritual content in
ayahuasca reports contradict or mirror scientific
descriptions ofthe natural world? Narby's (1998)
speculations about the link between ayahuasca
serpent imagery and the DNA double helix would
suggest the latter. Does high spiritual content in
ayahuasca reports parallel the recovery from drug
addiction and other dysfunctional behavior claimed
by many ayahuasca advocates? (e.g., Richman,
1990-1991). Does the spiritual content in
ayahuasca reports support the proposition of some
psychotherapists (e.g., Frank & Frank, 1991) that
myth, symbolism, and rhetoric are key elements
of successful psychotherapy in whatever form it is
practiced? Is the vividness of ayahuasca imagery
related to behavior and attitude change, as has
been reported by some Western psychotherapists
(e.g., Achterberg, 1985)? In addition, the esss
allows investigators to chart the increase or
decrease of spiritual content during a single
ayahuasca session or during a series of sessions,
leading to a better understanding of the
phenomenology of these occurrences.
Roberts (1999) has suggested that entheogen-
induced experiences may facilitate the functioning
of the immune system. If such a study is ever
attempted, the CSSS would be one of several
scales (e.g., Hood, 1975; Pahnke & Richards, 1966;
Whiteman, 1986, p. 656) that could be used to
identify and evaluate the spiritual content of
reports by those individuals whose immune
functions are enhanced following the ingestion of
ayahuasca. Evolutionary models of spiritual
growth (e.g., Combs & Krippner, 1999) could also
be evaluated by the use of the esss in
combination with verbal reports.
A final research question is the origin of the
brew itself. Davis (1998) asks, "How did the
Indians learn to identify and combine in such a
sophisticated manner these morphologically
dissimilar plants with such unique and
complementary chemical properties?" (p. 166).
Schultes and Raffauf (1990) have commented,
"One wonders how peoples ... with no knowledge
of chemistry or physiology, ever hit upon a solution
to the activation of an alkaloid by a monoamine
oxidase inhibitor. Pure experimentation? Perhaps
not. The examples are too numerous" (p. 9). N arby
(1998) adds,
So here are people without electron
microscopes who choose, among some 80,000
Amazonian plant species, the leaves of a bush
containing a ... brain hormone, which they
combined with a vine containing substances
that inactivate an enzyme of the digestive
tract, which would otherwise block the ... effect.
And they do this to modifY their consciousness.
It is as if they knew about the molecular
properties of plants and the art of combining
them, and when one asks them how they know
these things, they say their knowledge comes
directly from [the] plants. (p. 11)
And, for now, that may be the most parsimonious
answer.
Notes
This study was supported by the Saybrook Graduate
School and Research Center Chair for the Study of
Consciousness in honor of Dr. Stanley Krippner.
1. The words "ritual" and "ceremony" are used in a
variety of ways, but Krippner (1994) has made the
following distinction:
Rituals may be conceptualized as prescribed, stylized
(often symbolic), step-by-step performances of mythic
themes; as such, they attempt to promote social
solidarity, provide for life transitions, and reinforce
a society's values, belief systems, and rules of conduct.
Rituals are generally performed in specific places, at
definite times, by mandated persons. Although used
interchangeably with "rite" and "ceremony" by some
writers, it may be useful to define "rites" as "mini-
rituals" of passage from one stage to another (e.g.,
puberty rites, baptism rites) and "ceremonies" as
elaborate "maxi-rituals" that often include a series
of rituals (e.g., coronation ceremonies, four-day Sun
Dance ceremonies). (p. 183)
Because the ayahuasca sessions described in this paper
are elaborate events, we have used the term "ceremony"
as a descriptor.
2. Masters and Houston's (1966) "sensory-perceptual"
and "psychological-recollective/analytic" levels roughly
correspond to Grof's (1985) "biographical-recollective"
level, while their "symbolic-mythic" level resembles
Grof's "perinatal" level which, in turn, reflects his "basic
perinatal matrixes" and "systems of condensed
experience." According to Grof, both the ''basic perinatal
matrixes" and the "systems of condensed experience"
can incorporate "mythic sequences" (p. 97).
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The Castrati ("Skoptsy") Sect in Russia
History, Teaching, and Religious Practice
IrinaA. Tulpe
Evgeny A. Torchinov
St. Petersburg State University
St. Petersburg, Russia
This paper outlines the history ofthe Russian mystical Castrati (Skoptsy) sect and suggests a
brief analysis of the principal religious practice of the Castrati: their technique of ecstatic
sessions (radenie). The Castrati sect was related to the sect of Christ-believers (hristovovery or
hlysty) in the second part of the eighteenth century, and borrowed their practice of the ecstatic
dances. The founder of the Castrati sect was a Russian peasant, Kondraty Selivanov, whose
personality and personal experience exerted a powerful influence on the teaching and rituals.
In the Castrati sect, the idea of castration as the only way to become liberated from sin and to
obtain holiness became mixed together with religious worship of a highly ecstatic and expressive
character. The roots ofthe connection between these two sides (i.e., castration and ecstasis) of
the Castrati practice can be traced to the transpersonallevel of perinatal experience related to
the Basic Perinatal Matrixes (BPM) described by Stanislav Grof.
I. CHRISTIAN SECTARIANISM IN RUSSIA:
GENERAL SURVEY
T.
.. HE HISTORY of Christian sectarianism in
Russia began in the second half of the
seventeenth century. Some of its trends
(e.g., small groups which lost their old significance),
after different changes and transformations, exist
even today, being a kind of relic of a social and
religious conflict which was very serious in older
times but is now almost forgotten.
It is in the sectarian teachings and forms of the
religious service that the religious dissidence of the
Russian folk mostly appeared: non-Orthodox and
openly antiecclesiastical by its nature. The ways
to achieve religious salvation "discovered" by mys-
tical and rationalistic sects differed essentially from
one another, but all of them were grounded in the
direct connection with God, which excluded the
Church as mediator between the believers and God.
In Czarist Russia the Orthodox faith was the
state official religion; during the Synod period,
when there was no patriarchy in the Russian
church (1721-1917), the Russian Orthodox Church
was a part ofthe state ruling machine. Church as
well as State considered sectarian dissent to be a
dangerous enemy; therefore, they took harsh po-
lice measures to eliminate the sectarian move-
ments. In the 1840s the sectarian problem was
given over to the Ministry of the Inner Affairs (MIA,
i.e., the Ministry of Police) to solve. Thus, the ma-
jority of our information concerning the leaders of
the communities of the sectarians, their teachings,
and the forms of the religious services of the sec-
tarians, as wen as about their ways oflife and their
traditions, and so on, that is, all the information
which was the foundation for innumerable
"antisectarian" publications and governmental
decrees, was extracted from the materials kept in
the archives of the MIA, including the materials
of the trials, reports of the "repented" sectarians,
priests and special officers of the Ministry, and so
on. The origin ofthe major part of the sources has
determined the critical apprehension of them by
contemporary researchers.
IL THE CHRIST-BELIEVERS
A
T THE time of its appearance, the first
sectarian movement was a sect of the Christ-
believers, but the sectarians called themselves
"the God people." The term "Christ-believers"
The Internationaljournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19, 77-87 77
reflects the main point of their doctrine: every adept
is able to become Christ. This sect is well known
in the Russian literature as hlystovstvo or
hlystovschina: there was an existing opinion, that
in their gatherings, after attainment of some
ecstatic states, the believers beat themselves with
belts (hlyst in Russian), repeating the words, "1 am
beating myself, I am seeking for Christ" (Sebya
hlyshchu, Hrista ishchu). In this case, the word
hlyst may be translated as "flagellant." But there
are no documents from the sectarian communities
supporting the view that such a practice really took
place anywhere. Also, the necessity of flagellation
does not follow from the religious teaching of the
sectarians. The accusations that the sectarians
engaged in bloody sacrifices were also absolutely
groundless (Mel'nikov, 1869, p. 387). Mel'nikov
reproduced a legend (he referred to "The
Investigations" of Dmitry of Rostov) about
"christlings" ("baby-christs") which were the fruits
of the so-called "Christ's love." According to "The
Investigations," they had to be ritually killed by
the sectarians with the blow of a spear in the left
side ofthe baby's body (as in the case ofthe crucified
Jesus and in the Church rite ofthe Eucharist); then
the sectarians drank the baby's blood. The body of
the sacrificed baby then had to be dried and
changed into powder which in turn had to be added
to the bread used with the water for the sectarians'
"Eucharist." But it was Mel'nikov himself who
confirmed the statement that this crime was never
found and demonstrated by the juridical
investigation (Mel'nikov, 1869, p. 388).
The doctrines of the majority of the Russian
sects mostly originated in the folk milieu which
contained its own religious images of salvation.
Sectarian teachings were patterned after the
frames of the Ch:ristian soteriological paradigm,
accepting, nevertheless, the traditions of the Rus-
sian popular faith rather than the ideas ofthe New
Testament. The sectarians denied the authority of
the "letter" ofthe Holy Writings and the scriptural
tradition as such. On the other hand, they believed
in the revelation of the Holy Ghost as the princi-
pal source of their teachings. These two attitudes
could not stimulate the process of formalization
and systematization of the vague images into a
coherent symbolism ofthe faith.
The founder of the sect of the Christ-believers
was a peasant from Kostroma, Danila Filippovich.
The miraculous story tells us that the Lord
Sabaoth, on a chariot of fire, among the heavenly
powers, descended in glory on Mount Gorodina
(Vladimir district). The heavenly powers returned
to Heaven but Lord Sabaoth stayed on the earth,
obtaining the purest body of Danila Filippovich,
who then became the living God himself. His liv-
ing place was near the town ofKostroma. He taught
about spiritual prayer which can stimulate the
Divine Spirit to enter the body ofthe praying per-
son. To show that religious books of any kind are
useless for salvation, he put old (written and pub-
lished before Patriarch Nikon's reform) and new
books into a sack, throwing it into the Volga River:
"Do not believe in the books. Believe in the Holy
Ghost only!"
He transmitted his teaching epitomized in
Twelve Commitments:
1. I am the God predicted by the prophets; I de-
scended to the earth to save human souls; there
is no God but me.
2. There is no other teaching. Do not seek for it.
3. You are established in this teaching-stay here
finnly.
4. Keep God's commitment to catch the Universe
(cf. Jesus told Simon, "Stop being afraid. From
now on you are going to catch people"-Luke 5: 10).
5. Do not drink alcohol; do not commit the sin of
flesh.
6. Do not marry. Married people must live with
wives as if they are their sisters. If you are un-
marned-do not marry; if you are married-be-
come unmarried.
7. Do not use foul words; do not pronounce them.
8. Do not visit marriages and christenings; do not
participate in drunken chats.
9. Do not steal. If you steal only a penny, in the
other world this penny will be put on the top of
your head and when it melts from the hellish fire
you will be in pain.
10. Keep these commitments in secrecy; do not
tell them even to your father and mother. If you
are beaten with the belt or fired by flame---be
patient! Those who will be faithful will obtain the
Heavenly Kingdom and spiritualjoy on the earth.
11. Visit each other, share bread and salt, and be
in love among you, keep my commitments, pray
to God.
12. Believe in the Holy Ghost.
There is no God besides Lord Sabaoth, but his
son Christ perpetually incarnates in human bod-
ies. The first "Christ" of the Christ-believers was
Ivan Suslov. According to their legends, fifteen
years before the miracle on Mount Gorodina, a
hundred-year-old peasant woman gave birth to a
son. A local priest refused to baptize him for some
weeks; nobody agreed to become his Christian par-
ents. But nevertheless there appeared a man who
baptized the baby by himself, giving him the name
of John (Ivan). Until he was thirty years old he lived
with his father, but later Ivan was called by Lord
Sabaoth Danila Filippovich to follow him. For three
days he ascended Ivan Suslov to Heaven thus "giv-
ing to him His Divinity." The preaching of Suslov
became known to Czar Aleksey Mikhailovich. Suslov
and his followers were captured but he refused to
confess his "crimes." That is why on Thursday he
was crucified on the Kremlin wall near the Spassky
("Savior's") Gates. On Friday he was buried on the
"Skull Place," but on Sunday night he was resur-
rected before witnesses. Then he appeared in front
of his disciples in a village near Moscow where he
continued to preach. He was captured again, tor-
tured, and crucified; his skin was cut from his body.
But one of the female disciples covered his body with
a piece of cloth, and this cloth miraculously changed
into his skin. He died but was resurrected again on
Sunday. He was then captured for the third time.
But this time, the Queen, Natal'ya Kirillovna, who
was ready to bear the future Emperor Peter the
Great, had a prophecy that her child would be born
in safety only if all prisoners obtained freedom. Ivan
Suslov was liberated among them. He lived in Mos-
cow for many years thereafter, eagerly spreading
his teaching. In 1699, Danila Filippovich (who was
already a hundred years old) came to Moscow from
Kostroma to have a long talk with his divine son. It
is told that on 1 January 1700, after a long ecstatic
session (radenie), Danila Filippovich in the presence
of all his followers ascended to Heaven. Suslov left
Moscow, wandered in Russia for some years, and
came back home before his death on his centennial
birthday. The sectarians believed he died only as
flesh but his soul ascended in glory to Heaven to
join his divine Father.
Suslov was followed by Prokopy Lupkin and
there appeared a number of "Christs" after him. The
sect ofthe Christ-believers was not a coherent, uni-
fied trend; it was divided into different branches,
according to their understanding of the idea of
Christ's incarnation; most of the sectarians treated
their leaders as images of Christ and not as later
reincarnations of the Son.
1
The main novelty in . the Christ-believers' com-
munities was their interest in the allegorical inter-
pretation ofthe Bible according to the new revela-
tions of the Holy Ghost. The way of salvation nev-
ertheless remain unchanged: asceticism and unity
with the Holy Ghost in mystical prayer sessions.
A. P. Schapov, wen-known in the nineteenth cen-
tury as a researcher of the sectarian movements,
wrote that the self-proclamation of the simple
peasants as "christs-redemptors" and of peasant
women to be "our ladies" was a mystical apotheo-
sis, or religious and mystical expression of the hopes
of the oppressed serf-peasant rural population:
crude, wild, self-styled confirmation oftheir human
dignity and their civil rights (Schapov, 1867, p. 188).
Christ-believers were sure that the world was de-
void of grace, that it was filled with evil, but
eschatological ideas as such were not widespread
here. The sectarians were interested not in the com-
ing end ofthe world but in their personal renewal
(the inner feeling of this renewal) in God's King-
dom established on earth.
2
Despite their real sta-
tus and social existence, they were certain that they
were "God's people": "You are fools, you are fools,
simple village men. And these fools are like beets
with honey.3 But in these fools the Lord God dwells
too" (a sectarian verse).
The principle, "Believe in the Holy Ghost," which
was a foundation ofthe Christ-believers' tradition,
determined the vague, fluid, amorphous nature of
the understanding of the revelation; this circum-
stance called to life new sectarian leaders-"christs";
it also stimulated transformation of the original ide-
ology, and even the appearance of radically new
ideas and trends.
III. THE CASTRATI
T
HE CASTRATI sect, in its genesis, was closely
connected with the sect of Christ-believers.
Considering castration to be the main and princi-
pal condition of salvation, it was the logical comple-
tion of the ascetic program of the Christ-believers.
The first sources on the history of the Castrati
(Skoptsy in Russian) were the police investigation
documents. The first official reaction to the Castrati's
activities was the decree of the Empress, Catherine
II, (2 June 1772) to Colonel (then State Councilor)
Alexander Volkov ordering him to investigate and
judge the Skoptsy from the town of Orel (central
Russia). In 1807, the Holy Synod proclaimed the
Castrati sect to be the most dangerous and blasphe-
mous heresy, and in 1835, this definition was included
in the Law Codex ofthe Russian Empire. The Sen-
ate defined the Castrati as "the enemies of human-
kind, destroyers of the morals, criminals against
laws-Divine and civil" (Varadinov, 1863, p. 84). In
1836, the heads of the districts were ordered to make
lists of the Castrati sectarians; in the next year a
decree appeared which forbade giving the Castrati
prizes and signs of distinguished service.
The Castrati ("Skoptsy") Sect in Russia 79
The founder of the Castrati sect was a peasant
from the district of Orel, Kondraty Selivanov. If the
main idea of the Christ-believers was the perpetual
and continuous reincarnations of Christ and his per-
manent presence on the earth, the Castrati had only
one Christ, who descended to the earth for the sec-
ond time, being incarnated in Russia. This Christ
was Selivanov. He was also believed to be Emperor
Peter HI, because this time Christ appeared in his
glory and not in the "image of a slave."4 His mission
of redemption was to explain the way of salvation,
that is, castration. Selivanov was considered by his
followers to be the author of "Strady" ("Sufferings",
or "Labours"), a special kind of auto-hagiography, and
of "Epistles."
Sehvanov began to preach in one of the Christ-
believers' communities ("ships") in the 1770s. He
had to escape persecution from his former fellow
worshipers as wen as from the authorities. He was
arrested and exiled to Siberia where he lived in the
town of Irkutsk. In 1795, he suddenly appeared in
Moscow as Peter lIP Selivanov was arrested again
and sent to St. Petersburg where he probably had a
conversation with the son of Peter III, the reigning
Emperor, Paul I (who hated his mother Catherine
II and admired his father). Selivanov recommended
that the Emperor castrate himself (there is a sec-
tarians' poem about this conversation). AB a result,
he was put into an insane asylum. But at the begin-
ning of the reign of Alexander I (1802), he was lib-
erated at the request ofthe rich Castrati-merchants
of St. Petersburg; after this he lived in liberty in
their mansions. During this time Selivanov became
very famous in the aristocratic circles of St. Peters-
burg; many very high officials and individuals from
the nobility visited his ecstatic sessions (radenie).
According to one of the spiritual songs of the
Castrati, Selivanov even had a secret meeting with
the Emperor Alexander I during which ''his grand-
father," Selivanov, gave a prophecy to the Czar about
the defeat of the Russian troops at Austerlitz (dur-
ing the war of Russia, Prussia, and Austria against
Napoleon). In 1817, the merchant Solodovnikov built
a mansion especially for Selivanov, where, during
the mystical ecstatic sessions, two to three hundred
believers gathered.
In 1820, Selivanov was taken by the authorities
to Spaso-Efunyevsky monastery (the town ofSuzdal')
where he was completely isolated.
6
He died in 1832,
when he was extremely old (probably more than one
hundred years old), but his followers were sure that
he only went into occultation and would be changed
soon into his new appearance and glorification; it
would be the beginning of the apotheosis of the
Castrati right in this earthly life.
7
The history of Christianity contains some isolated
instances of the individual fanatical "struggle with
the flesh" in the form of castration: " ... there are eu-
nuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of
the Kingdom of Heaven" (Matthew 19: 12). But in
Russia, in the second part of the eighteenth century
and in the first part of the nineteenth century, the
Castrati sect became a mass religious movement
engaging hundreds of thousands of people in its ac-
tivities. Persecution by the authorities could neither
destroy the sect nor discredit its charms, so attrac-
tive to a part of the Russian population. Repression
only stimulated religious fanaticism, making the sec-
tarians' faith in the truthfulness oftheir chosen way
stronger.8 Exiles stimulated the spreading of the
Castrati's ideas outside both capitals (Moscow and
St. Petersburg) as well as outside the inner prov-
inces and districts of the empire: in such regions as
the Urals, Siberia, Caucasus, Bessarabia, and so on.
The Castrati's way of life, based on the principles of
their faith, was also very attractive to common people.
All objective observers noted that the Castrati were
very hardworking and industrious; their ordinary life
was cleaner and more authentic than the ordinary
life ofthe nonsectarian population. For example, the
Castrati who lived in Yakutia, with its severe polar
climate, were engaged in agriculture, they grew
millet, and they were famous for their rejection of
drinking and for their moderate behavior.
In the first part of the nineteenth century, the
Castrati sect was practically spread through all of
Russia (with the exception of eight districts), but in
the second half of the nineteenth century it probably
consisted of only some thousands of followers (mostly
merchants, salesmen, craftsmen, etc.). One of the ana-
lytical notes of the Ministry of Inner Affairs stated
that "the forces of the Castrati are not great, only
some thousands in the whole Empire and the sec-
tarians as such could not do anything but by pos-
sessing colossal monetary resources they were able
to stimulate disorders" (Nadezhdin, 1872, p. 167).
Neo-Castrati Sect
T,
HE NATURAL decline of religious fanaticism in the
process ofthe "routinization of charisma," de-
scribed by Max Weber, led to the rejection of the
practice of castration, that is, a return to the Christ-
believers' variety of asceticism ("spiritual castra-
tion"). But on the other hand it also stimulated some
attempts to revive the original enthusiasm.
At the beginning of the 1870s, in Moldavia (and
later, in the Crimea), there appeared the so-caned
Neo-Castrati movement. To overcome a crisis in the
movement, its leaders proclaimed a new coming of
the Father-Redemptor. At the end of 1871, and in
the first half of1872, a circle of "Chosen Ones" (about
forty individuals) was established; they were re-
sponsible even for the theoretical elaboration of the
teaching (conversations about angels, the soul, the
Holy Ghost, etc.). The "Holy Chosen Ones" were
called "the door to salvation"; it was proclaimed that
the Redemptor, transfigured in their souls, would
act through them as through His capital and spiri-
tual government. According to this trend of the sect,
the teaching of the Holy Chosen Ones had its source
in the precious store of the previous messages of
the Redemptor: it had its roots in the Book of Seven
Seals spoken of in the Revelation of St. John and
which was unsealed by the Only Born, God's Son,
Jesus Christ, but the Holy Chosen Ones obtained
the power to complete and to fulfin everything given
in the Revelation due to their ''holy vocation." Soon
the time would come when the Redemptor Peter
III (Selivanov) will appear on earth, changing the
existing order of things and judging everybody; then
the Castrati win obtain freedom and peace.
Christ, God's Son, who was born from the Virgin
Maria and appeared in the person of Kondraty
Selivanov (Peter HI), now entered the body of
Kuz'ma Lisin, who was a peasant tailor. In his spiri-
tual quest he was a member of such rationalistic
sects as Dukhobors (Spiritual Fighters) and
Molokans (Sect of the Spiritual Milk), but after a
serious illness caused by "warmth of the soul" he
castrated himself with "the great seal" (i.e., cut off
not only his testicles but his membrum virile as well).
In his prophecies he declared that he would go to
St. Petersburg where the Czar will recognize him,
giving him a seat at his right hand and ordering
the liberation of all the Castrati. Lisin sent his
preachers forth throughout Russia. In the ecstatic
sessions, he gave them appointments after which
they had to leave their families and native places to
go and preach Lisin's revelations. At his trial (1876)
he said: "According to the prophesy I was recognized
as the Redemptor, and I believed in it." He did not
apostasize his faith and his mission, either during
the trial or in prison. The researchers about this
movement noted that it was important to believe in
the possession of a spiritual force which is able to
transfigure believers into beings of a special na-
ture (Sakharov, 1877, pp. 400-447).
The last Castrati communities were liquidated
in Soviet Russia at the end of the 1920s and at the
beginning of the 1930s, but some old sectarians
can be still found in the rural districts of Russia.
Like the Christ-believers, the Castrati rejected
the authority of the Bible, believing in the revela-
tions of the Holy Ghost which were contained in
their spiritual verses. These verses contained basic
ideas ofthe Castrati's worldview, some events ofthe
history of the sect, and moral norms and principles.
These verses-raspevtsy ("preliminary songs")-
were sung during the prayer meetings of the sec-
tarians (radenie), the ecstatic practice of which was
inherited by the Castrati from the Christ-believers.
In the view of the Castrati, the principal evil of
the world is rooted in Zepost' (bodily beauty, sexual-
ity, sex appeal, etc.) which prevents people from com-
municating with God.
9
The way to perfection be-
gins with the elimination ofthe cause, to be followed
by the liberation of heart and mind. Castration as
an elimination of the roots oflepost' determines the
overcoming of all weaknesses and sins caused by
Zepost'. From the Russian popular faith the Castrati
inherited a vague, amorphous, and unstable under-
standing of the heavenly powers and the mystery
of redemption. G. Fedotov (1991, pp. 37-38) noted
that the people did not forget about the soteriological
meaning of the Cross, but had a very weak idea of
the sacrificial meaning of Christ's death. According
to folk beliefs, the central event in Christ's mission
of redemption was the baptism of Christ (and the
popular Russian name of Christianity is "baptis-
mal faith"), and the Castrati also understood "the
baptizing with fire" (castration) as redemption. The
information obtained from the Castrati did not con-
tain any specific data regarding the rites accompa-
nying the castration. Castration "whitens" the body
and soul, causing the castrated one to be inspired
by the direct contemplation of God.
The Castrati in fact had no teaching about the
resurrection of the dead and about the fate of the
souls of dead people at all. They rejected prayers
for the dead and had no special burial rites (there
were only rare testimonies that the dead were bur-
ied in the ritual prayer vestments).l0
The Castrati community existed as an indepen-
dent kingdom with the founder of the community
at its head. The communities were called "ships"
and their leaders-"captains," "masters," and
"prophets" (but not "Christs" in the manner of the
Christ-believers). Every "ship" had its master and
teacher, chosen from among "the prophets"; this
position could be given to either a man or a woman.
The "Captain" was a keeper of the faith and some-
thing like a manager of the communal life. The "She-
captain" was an assistant ofthe male "Captain" and
coordinator. The members of the community were
called ''brothers-captains,'' ''white sheep," "pigeons,"
''birds of paradise," and so on.
The building which was used for the prayer meet-
ings (sometimes it was called "cathedral") was no
different from the houses of common people or from
the usual huts of the peasants. The prayer room
was large (for:fifty or even a hundred participants);
it contained benches along the walls. The rite of
consecration of such rooms is unknown to us. The
room was often divided into two parts: for male and
female believers. The portrait of Selivanov was of-
ten hung on the wall. The Castrati from the town of
Saratov often said that they had no need of the
churches: their own bodies, as the place where the
Holy Trinity dwelled, were better temples than
ordinary churches.
The Castrati's attitude towards the cult of icons
and relics was definitely negative. They said: "We
have live images/icons and live relics" or "Icons are
made by human hands; they do not hear, they do
not speak, and thus, they are not able to send any
happiness to us." So, they treated the Orthodox
Christians as the idolatrous pagans. The Castrati
from the town of Kaluga said about the Orthodox
icons: "There is grass (i.e., colors) in front and wood
behind."
Nevertheless, they did not protest against the
Orthodox pictures of didactic character that had no
"mysterious" meaning. For example, at the home of
one of the Castrati, a lithograph printed with the
approbation of the Moscow spiritual censure was
found: in its center, Christ was depicted as a kind
shepherd with a sheep in his hands and angels
around them, as if they were dancing in a circle.
Around Christ there was the inscription: "I have
found the lost sheep." The title of the picture was:
"The True Image of Repentance."
The picture "Crucifixion of Flesh" was also very
popular among the Castrati and Christ-believers.
It was approved by the spiritual censure (1845) and
printed in Moscow. It contained the image of a Chris-
tian who won victory over his flesh, allegorical im-
ages of the world, the Devil, and a person who ob-
tained monastic dignity and took Christ's Cross:
there was an image of a monk crucified on the cross
holding a lamp in each hand, with a lock on his
mouth (i.e., keeping silent); to the right there was
an image of the Flesh as a woman with a Turkish-
style dress-she stood on hell, shooting with a bow
into the monk; in front ofthe monk stood the Devil
giving the monk a piece of paper attached to a spear,
with the inscription, "Go down from the cross"; a
falcon sat on the spear. Behind the Flesh there was
an image of a Church, and the image of Christ was
placed above everything-he held the crown in one
hand and the laurels in the other (arrows, swords,
and a shield were depicted to the side of Christ).
The everyday clothes of the male believers did
not differ from the clothes of the followers of the
Orthodox Church. Women did not wear ornaments
such as earrings and finger rings; their heads were
covered by black cloths. During the prayer sessions
the Castr_ati wore special long white shirts; in some
communities the women wore a dress over the shirt.
During the sessions the sectarians were barefooted
or used special simple socks. Among the essential
paraphernalia of the sessions was a piece of white
cloth or handkerchief which was called "cover" or
''banner.'' It was used in different ways during the
prayer sessions, playing the role of a symbol of pu-
rity; sometimes the sectarians raised it up as a flag
or put it on the face of the "prophet" absorbed in a
deep trance, and so on.
N THE PRACTICE OF ECSTASY (RADEN IE)
T
HE SECTARIANS believed that the practice of
prayer meetings with ecstatic dances was es-
tablished by God. At the beginning of the nineteenth
century, a sympathetic priest from the village of
Knyaz (district ofKaluga) found for them some rel-
evant texts from the Bible (verses dedicated to King
David dancing around the Tabernacles of the Tes-
tament). In addition, they were probably follow-
ing the explanations of some person who was cer-
tain that Jesus practiced radenie in the Garden of
Gethsemane (Luke, 22:44).
The descriptions of the practice of the ecstatic
meetings of radenie left by the Castrati or some sym-
pathetic persons show that in the different "ships"
this practice had different special features: there
were no strict and rigid established rules beyond
the necessary minimal set of the elements of the
service (prayers, singing, dances, prophesying).
Some examples:
1. The recollections of F. P. Lubyanovsky (later
he became a Senator) about his visit to Selivanov's
apartments in St. Petersburg when he became a
witness ofthe radenie:
There were in that place a god-mother, an old
but still healthy woman, and prophetesses. Four
of the prophetesses entered the room; they were
pale but strong and good-looking girls. They
bowed to the Savior, received his blessing, and
stood in a circle holding each other's hands.
When the Savior gave his permission, they be-
gan to whirl-as a whirling wheel. Continuing
their whirling they began not to sing but to howl.
This time, four men who were sitting on a bench
with leather gloves on their hands applauded
them with great vigor. I could not understand
the words because of the noise though, the old
man (i.e., Selivanov) as it seemed to me, tried to
amuse me by saying a number of times that he
rejected everything, giving everything to God.
(Lubyanovsky, 1872, p. 475)
2. Information (recorded in 1846; in Mel'nikov,
1869, pp. 288-291) of a retired fel'dfebel' (low rank-
ing member of the old Russian army) Nikolai Ivanov
(who became a member of the sect in Kronshtadt,
the central base of the Russian Navy near St. Pe-
tersburg). In his circle, the "Sufferings" ofSelivanov
were read, and the readers cried with many tears.
He seldom participated in the ecstatic sessions be-
cause health problems prevented him from danc-
ing. He refused to be castrated. In 1813 he left the
sect and married.
Ivanov was led to a room with a large carpet hav-
ing the images of angels and archangels. He was
afraid to step on the holy images ... He saw a bed
which was extremely richly decorated with gorgeous
covers and golden ornaments. On the bed lay an old
man clothed in a thin, batiste shirt. The accompa-
nying persons called him "God."
He was ordered to go to the prophet. He bowed,
remaining on his knees, and the prophet promised
him "a golden diadem and deathless clothes." After
this, Ivanov was led to the so-called "Cathedral," or
"Place ofthe Gatherings" (Sobor). This was a large
room where there were many chairs along the walls
and more than a hundred persons. All of them were
dressed in long white shirts; they were singing and
dancing in two rows (called "to go by the ship"). In
the small space left by them in the center of the
circle, a number of people were whirling. Ivanov sat
on a chair, his knees covered with the white cloth (a
symbol of purity). He was also told by an attendant
of Selivanov to sing together with the whirling per-
sons, applauding with his hands in accordance with
the rhythm of the songs. It lasted until the evening.
About nine o'clock, the singing and dancing sud-
denly stopped for five minutes, and the dead silence
changed them. After this, the people began to sing:
"Kingdom, Kingdom, Spiritual Kingdom; in you, in
this Kingdom the great Grace lies." And then si-
lence reigned again.
Ivanov continues:
Suddenly, the doors opened, and the god, dressed
in a short green silk robe, quietly entered the
room. He was supported by two men called John
the Baptist and Peter the Apostle. They were
dressed in dark priestly robes with belts. Seeing
them, everybody fell on their knees and the god
waved with his white batiste cloth speaking thus:
"My holy cover is above all of you."
Then he came to the women's room (the sepa-
ration ofthe sexes during the meetings was estab-
lished by Selivanov himself-see Men'shenin, 1904,
p.40).
The women's chapel was located in the neigh-
boring room, and there was a broad window on
the wall which divided the two rooms: it was
opened when the god came there. There was a
bed near the window and the god sat on it. John
the Baptist and Peter the Apostle also stayed
in the women's room at the god's bed. The proph-
etesses began to prophesy for the god, and af-
ter that everybody (men and women) began to
whirl. The god stayed there about an hour; then
he went away followed by the same persons who
followed him before. The window to the women's
room was closed again but the whirling dances
did not stop.
About midnight, all the whirling people be-
gan to jump together, and the walls were trem-
bling. The people cried: "Ai, Spirit!" I was fright-
ened greatly and was going to escape from them
through the window but was stopped. Suddenly
the cries were changed into the quiet singing:
''King God, King God." Then everybody began
to whirl again.
Soon the session finished, and all the partici-
pants went home, but I stayed to sleep in the
same building, in a special apartment with a man
who led me there. The second day was like the
first one, and I left them only on the third day.
3. The following description is taken from in-
formation collected by P. I. Mel'nikov about the
Castrati "ship" in the town of Alatyr (district of
Simbirsk) in the family of merchant Milyutin
(Mel'nikov, 1873, pp. 55-124):
Melyutin's sister, Natal'ya Mikhailovna, was
caned "The Vital Book" because she knew the
New Testament and parts of the Old Testament
by heart; she interpreted the Bible according
to the teaching ofthe sect. The Castrati joined
the tradition of the oral commentaries on the
Bible not because of inner motives but because
of the need to speak with the "profane world"
in its own language. N atal'ya Mikhailovna
taught (and it was also the doctrinal position of
the Castrati from Nizhny N ovgorod as well) that
Adam and Eve were immaterial creatures with-
out flesh, and that they had no genitalia, but
seduced by the Devil, they ate the forbidden
fruit and their bodies obtained imitations ofthe
apples: breasts for women and testicles for men.
When she was asked how procreation was pos-
sible without genitalia (as the Lord God ordered
it), she answered that God was an omnipotent
being; and He could make children for Abraham
from stones (Matthew 3:9).
The ecstatic sessions took place in Milyutin's
house, and people from other towns often partici-
pated in them; the number of participants was
more than a hundred. The sessions took place at
night; men wore special long shirts, and the women
were clothed in simple dresses. The sectarians
bowed in front of the portraits ofthe Castrati Mas-
ters: Selivanov, Shilov, and Milyutin. Men and
women sat separately.
The sessions began by singing the ritual song,
"Give us, Lord, Jesus," then another song was
sung: "0, Jesus Christ, our Light, be merciful to
us. 0, God's Son, 0, you, Holy Ghost, our Light, be
merciful to us! 0, you, Mother, who bore God, our
Light, be merciful to us! And save us, God's People,
who pray hard on the earth!"
Milyutin proclaimed:
"Bless us, 0 the Highest Creator, Merciful our
Father to sing your song to see everybody in the
glory!" The people replied with the song about
Father Redemptor coming in glory from the city
ofIrkutsk: " ... You are with us, King as the King
and God as the God! He is with us, our falcon,
our Lord Holy Ghost! He passed through fire,
fire and flame, fire and flame. He is going, he is
coming to the royal towns. To the royal towns,
places of the paradise to the house of David, to
the mystery of God. The mystery of God is com-
pleting now. And there resides in the house of
David God's grace and all the blessed, and all
angels and all archangels with the cherubs and
seraphim and all the powers of Heaven ... "
This song stimulated euphoria in the sectar-
ians. They stood in a circle, beginning the
dances, singing other songs. Then different
kinds of individual and joint ecstatic dances
took place and whirling more and more
rapidly ... Sometimes the whirling was so strong
that its wind blew out the fire of the candles.
Everybody danced, jumped, and whirled until
complete exhaustion and delirium which was
thought to be the revelation of the Holy Ghost.
And even the floor became wet from sweat, and
the clothes remained wet for some hours.
After Milyutin's sign, the individual radenie fin-
ished and the sectarians began radenie by "ship":
everybody began dancing in a circle or jumping.
Other kinds of dances, whirling and jumping, also
were in use. Then there was prophesying, followed
by the convulsive movements of the prophets. Other
witnesses also described the same elements of the
sessions-singing, joint and individual dances, ex-
hausting whirling-to obtain the ecstasy of the pres-
ence ofthe Holy Ghost within the bodies of the sec-
tarians, prophets, and so on. It is interesting that
one of the witnesses (peasant Ivan Andreanov, a
member of Aleksey Gromov's "ship") said that
radenie (or "spiritual bathing") demanded silence
and complete mindfulness without thinking: other-
wise the Holy Ghost would not be able to enter the
body of the sectarian. The same witness also related
that a neophyte entering the "ship" must accept
some commandments: helshe must refuse to drink
wine or beer, and must live without "passions." N eo-
phytes were also forbidden to participate in all secu-
lar holidays and festivals. It was said that if they
would follow these commandments they could be-
come cherubs, angels, prophets, or spiritual teach-
ers. The sectarians had to keep their teachings and
practice in complete secrecy. One female sectarian
(Avdot'ya Ivanovna by name) reported: "It is so nice.
And the bliss is great, and when you entered this
state there was no more memory of yourself, no
memory of other people--only inner light existed
and there was nothing around you" (Kel'siev, 1869,
p. 4). The sectarians also said that the power ofthe
Holy Ghost during the prophecies embraced all the
personality of the prophet, and all hislher human-
ness became "dead" during the prophesying. And
this state was accompanied by the feeling of great
and powerful joy and bliss.
It is interesting to consider the issue of the rela-
tionship between the ecstatic nature ofthe Castrati
cult and the phenomenon of ritual castration as
such. Certainly, from the strictly historical point of
view, the Castrati inherited their ecstatic sessions,
whirling, dances, jumping, and so on from the
mate:mal sect ofthe Christ-believers. But this con-
nection is too simple to explain this phenomenon.
The Castrati did not reject the Christ-believers'
practice; it can even be said that they made it more
expressive and accentuated.
Besides the Castrati sect, we know about at least
one more religious cult where castration and the
extreme forms of religious ecstatic worship were
mixed together: it is the ancient Hellenistic (of
Phrygian origin) cult of Attis and Great Mother
Cybele. The priests ofthis cult were the castrated
galli, who served this divine couple through ec-
static dances and trances. One point here is of spe-
cial importance: Russian sectarians, as well as
believers in the Phrygian god, had a cult of an ex-
tremely ecstatic ("Dionysian") character, which at
first glance may seem rather strange for the reli-
gion of the castrates. To help explain this we will
take the liberty of repeating a rather long passage
on the subject from an article published recently
by one of us (Tortchinov, 1998):
The ecstatic character of such cults (the extreme
form of which is orgiastic trance) is rather wide-
spread in different mystery cults, e.g., in the
mysteries of Dionysus, which included the ex-
cessive worship of maenads, the female votaries
of this god, who in their wild ecstasy tore apart
the bodies of animals and even human beings.
Here I must mention the transpersonal phe-
nomenon, which Grof called the ''Volcanic'' or
"Dionysian" ecstasy. It is distinctly opposite to
the "Apollonic" or "Oceanic" ecstasy correspond-
ing with BPM [Basic Perinatal Matrix] I and
its feelings of quietude, serenity, and unity with
all forms of existence.
The Volcanic ecstasy has been characterized
by Grof as having extreme physical and emo-
tional expression, a high degree of aggression,
destructive impulses of inner and outer orien-
tation, powerful impulses of a sexual nature,
and rhythmical orgiastic movements. It is a
unique mixture of emotional and physical suf-
fering together with wild sensual passion and
desire. Here love is the same as hate, the agony
of death is the joy of rebirth, apocalyptic horror
is the excitement of the creation, and so on.
A person feels the coming of the great event-
of spiritual liberation or unio mystica. But even
if this feeling is of great force, it cannot attain
its realization and the completion of the dra-
matic sequence of death and rebirth: Volcanic
ecstasy corresponds to BPM III, the states of
which need for their realization the transition
to the experience of BPM lor BPM IV (Grof,
1993, p. 337).
The feelings and images of religious nature
which correspond to the Volcanic ecstasy are
bloody sacrifices, the Black Sabbath of the
witches, Dionysian orgies, and so on.
To me, the rites of the suffering gods (espe-
ciallyas explicitly given in the mysteries of At tis,
with their flagellations, bloody wounds, and
self-castrations) represent this type of ecstasy
with the passage to the illuminating ecstasy of
BPM IV But why is this kind of ecstasy espe-
cially related to masochism and self-castration?
It has been noted by Grof, a transpersonal
psychologist, that the recollections about pain
in the perinatal experience during psychedelic
sessions (the most painful impressions are re-
lated with BPM III) express themselves in the
patient's striving to be rescued from pain
through following pain to the source of pain (i.e.,
to the place of suffering in the body or the pain-
fulorgan).
Note here another important detail. The ex-
perience of BPM III is rooted in that stage of
the birth process when synergism of the mother-
and-child takes on the character of struggling
and even hostility. The associations with the
feelings of the victims of rape are rather wide-
spread in this case (the feeling off ear, hypoxia,
the attempts to obtain freedom, the enforced
sexual excitement, etc.). This painful experience
has some common features with the experience
ofBPM III (this circumstance increases the psy-
chic trauma of the victim of a real rape-Grof,
1993, p. 237) ... In addition, subjects, who have
experienced BPM III in psychedelic sessions of-
ten compare the birth process with the process
ofthe sexual (especially, enforced) act. But what
in such cases does the self-castration mean?
I think that its basis consists of a complex of
experiences grounded in the ecstatic states of
BPM III: the attempt to counteract the pain
caused by the situation of the synergetic conflict
with the maternal body and the attitude about
the negation of the birth process associated with
sexual intercourse. It is a physical expression of
the negation of the birth process (which is the
process of the extrusion of the foetus from the
maternal body) or through the coming back to
the blissful synergism ofBPM I ... or through the
completion of this process in the birth/rebirth
which leads to establishing of a principally new
unity with the mother. .. The same idea lies in
the meaning ofthe theme of incest, which is es-
pecially clear in the mystery myths of the
Dionysian cycle ... Archetypically, incest rejects
the birth process as some progressive act: in in-
cest this process turns to its source signaling the
attitude of coming back to the womb to restore
the basic synergetic unity with the maternal
body to attain the perfect union with the female/
maternal principle archetypically represented in
the image of Cybele as Magna Mater, as Mother
par excellence.
Here, we can recollect some ideas ofthe Rus-
sian religious thinker V. V. Rozanov (1856-
1919), who wrote about the extremely feminine
character of the founder of the Russian sect of
eunuchs (skoptsy), Kondraty Selivanov, for
whom self-castration was like cutting off an
unuseful and alien detail so as to realize the
perfectly feminine type of personality (Rozanov,
1914). (Tortchinov, 1998, pp. 157-158)
Therefore, we can find the transpersonal roots of
the Castrati sectarians in the perinatal impres-
sions as well as in the psychological attitude to-
wards imitations offeminine patterns of behavior.
Notes
1. One ofthe most influential developments of the Christ-
believers was the group of the "fasting" founded by a serf
peasant from the district of Tambov, Abbakum Kopylov.
He taught that Christ was a holy Spirit dwelling in the
flesh chosen, that was in himself, then in his son Filipp,
then in his son's wife. The long fasts, lasting for 7-10 days,
played an important role in their practice; there existed
strict food limitations among them. The prize for their as-
ceticism was a "spiritual joy" obtained during ecstatic joint
prayer sessions.
After A. Kopylov's death, a schism occurred among the
followers (1830's). Its initiator was Kopylov's worker, Perfil
Katasonov, who founded a new group called "Israel," or "Old
Israel." He considered himself and his followers to be "the
chosen people" who would establish God's Kingdom on the
earth. In fifty years, in different districts of Russia, there
existed more than 20,000 of his followers. But after the death
of this charismatic leader "Israel" lost its unity. From the
renmants of this group appeared ''New Israel" headed by
the new Christ-Mokshin. After Mokshin, a peasant from
the district of Voronezh, Vasily Lubkov, became their Christ;
he was a protege ofMokshin. Lubkov paid enormous atten-
tion to the strengthening of the hierarchy of the sect. At the
end of the nineteenth century "New Israel" became a reli-
gious denomination with leaders who had unlimited author-
ity and with strictly ordered praying sessions. There ap-
peared theatricalized mysteries which presented different
Biblical events: during the mystery, "The Last Supper,"
Lubkov chose his "evangelists," "apostles," and "prophets";
during the play of "The Mountain Sermon" he declared his
teaching; he was also a central figure of the mystery "Trans-
figuration."
2. About the profundity and sympathetic energy of these
feelings ofthe believers, see Mel'nikov's information: a cer-
tain hlyst (Christ-believer) told him: "I feel that through-
out myself, inside of myself, there is a heavenly light and
there is nobody but myself in the whole Universe; it means
that God dwells in me, and without God there is nothing to
be what began to be [the last words are a citation from the
Russian translation of John 1:3 - Authorsl. All the uni-
verse with God, I mean, entered my belly, and there was
nothing but myself." Another story: when the hlyst "god
mother" Avdot'ya Stchennikova was arrested (Nizhny
Novgorod district, 1851) she entered a trance; leaving it,
she began to speak very rapidly in two voices-as herself
speaking to Our Lady and as Our Lady answering
(Mel'nikov, 1869, pp. 377, 379).
3. A popular peasant dessert dish.
4. In the texts ascribed to Selivanov there is no mention of
his "royalty," but the Castrati tradition thought of him as
"lord-father" Petr (Peter) Fedorovich, spiritually born from
a righteous lady, Empress Elizaveta (Elizabeth) Petrovna,
who left her throne (or according to some legendary ver-
sions-never ruled at all) to a court lady whose appear-
ance was like that of the empress, changed her name to
Akulina I vanovna, and dwelled in the district of Orel. They
believed that the new emperor, Peter III, castrated him-
self while he still lived in Germany; after a brief reign he
knew that his wife Catherine (the future Empress
Catherine II) was going to murder him, so he then left his
palace in secrecy to preach "the fire baptism," that is, cas-
tration, among the common people.
5. Selivanov's identity as Peter III was "confirmed" by one of
the Emperor's court servants, Semen Kobelev (born about
1740, during the reign of Elizaveta Petrovna, he served at
the court of Great Prince Petr Fedorovich-the future Em-
peror Peter III). Kobelev was castrated at the end of the
eighteenth century; in 1819 he was exiled to the Solovetsky
monastery. A. P. Schapov noted about this case:
In the eighteenth century, when the slavery of serfs at-
tained its climax and the power of crude force caused all
human relations to be forgotten, there were spontane-
ous uprisings of a great number of serfs in one place or
another and the serfs eagerly hoped for redemption. And
just at this time Emperor Peter III gave the right of
freedom [from governmental service] to the nobility. At
that time, rumors began to spread among the common
people that Peter III was going to liberate the peasants
from slavery. Those rumors stimulated Pugachev [a
leader of the great peasant rebellion] to declare himself
to be Peter III [who was in reality murdered during a
coup d'Etat by the supporters of his wife, Empress
Catherine II]. And Kondraty Selivanov also proclaimed
himself as Emperor Peter III. A great number of people
followed both of them waiting for redemption from those
two men. (Schapov, 1867, pp. 187-188)
6. In 1820 the Director of the Ministry of Inner Affairs,
Count Kochubei, sent his resolution to the Abbot of Spaso-
Efimyevsky monastery, Parfeny, in which he insisted on
the following points: (1) Kondraty Selivanov (''head of the
Castrati") was forbidden to communicate with any person
with the exception of those monks who may be appointed
by the abbot for religious conversations and missionary
preaching to Selivanov; (2) He was forbidden, as well, to
receive posts or any other messages from outside (includ-
ing money or parcels); Selivanov had to be completely iso-
lated from outside communications; (3) His residing in the
monastery had to be kept in secrecy. The monastery re-
ceived from the state 600 rubles per year to pay for
Selivanov's maintenance (later on it was reduced to 550
rubles) (Mainov, 1880, pp. 763; 766).
7. There is a spiritual song about the coming of Selivanov:
Heaven and Earth were quaking, all peoples and lUngs
came to Russia, Emperor Alexander I and all his offi-
cials fell at Selivanov's feet. But an evil spirit confused
their minds; everybody forgot who was the savior of
Russia; Selivanov was exiled to Suzdal'. But God pun-
ished Russia: Petersburg suffered from a great flood
(1824). Alexander I prayed to God and God mercifully
pardoned him; the storm ended. Then, Emperor Nicolas
I ordered that an empty coffin be buried as if Selivanov
died so that the pilgrims would not go to Suzdal'.
(Men'shenin, 1904, pp. 69-70)
8. One of the witnesses of the way the Castrati behaved
themselves on the eve of their transportation to Siberia
from the prison in Petershoff (one ofthe suburbs of St. Pe-
tersburg) reported: "Our consolations, our information, our
recommendation for their way which could be helpful for
them in their first steps on the alien side-nothing of these
could be of interest to them or could touch them. They be-
have themselves as if they were in a kind of ecstasy, being
ready to fight against exile; it could be seen that exile will
neither break their character nor weaken their resolution.
It seemed to us that they were people who were going to
fight with a great amount of strength, that this most harsh
punishment (i.e., exile) will reveal its completely ineffec-
tive nature and absolute emptiness, as if they were sure:
we lived here, and we will be able to live there ... "
(Maksimov, 1869, pp. 334-335).
9. In the "Sufferings" Selivanov said: " ... my soul hates Zepost':
it is like the most furious serpent is eating the whole uni-
verse, taking humans from God and preventing them from
being in union with God" (Men'shenin, 1904, p. 41).
10. The notes of a Castrate, Aleksey Elensky, contained the
following discourse: "After death we do not rely on the prayers
of living people or on priestly paraphernalia and ritual food.
Everybody must by their faith, and even by all their life,
create the image of Christ inside of themselves so as to be
transfigured into Christ. If we pray to Christ we will be par-
doned by Christ, and if we are pardoned by Christ we will be
glorified in the image of the Son of God" (Elensky, 1867).
References
Elensky, [A. M.] (1867, October-December). Delo 0 Kamergere
Elenskom. Soobschil 1. P Liprandi. Elensky. Chast'izvestiya
na chem Skopchestvo utverzhdaetsya [Case of Kamerger
Elensky. Presented by I. P. Liprandi. (Elensky). Part of in-
formation regarding the data about the fundamentals of
the Castrati faith]. Chteniya v imperatorskom Obschestve
istorii i drevnostei rossiyskih pri Moskovskom universitete
[Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and
Antiquities at Moscow University], Book 4, 66-82.
Fedotov, G. (1991). Stikhi dukhovnye [Spiritual verses]. (Russkaya
narodnaya vera po dukhovnym stikham) [Russian folk beliefs
according to spiritual verses]. Moscow: Progress and Gnosis.
Grof, S. (1993). Za predelami mozga. Rozhdenie, smert' i
transtsendentsiya v psihoterapii [Beyond the brain: Birth,
death and transcendence in psychotherapy]. Moscow:
Izdatel'stvo Transpersonal'nogo Instituta.
Kel'siev, V 1. (1869, October). Svyatorusskie dvoevery [Double-
faith believers of Holy Russia]. Zarya [Dawn] Journal, 1-80.
Lubyanovsky, F. P. (1872). Vosporninaniya [Memoirs]. Russky
Arkhiv [Russian Archives] Journal, 1-6, columns 472-476.
Mainov, V N. (1880, April). Skopchesky eresiarkh Kondraty
Selivanov. Ssylka ego v Spaso-Efimyevsky monastyr' [The
Castrati heresiarch Kondrati Selivanov. His exile to Spaso-
Efimyevsky Monastery]. Istorichesky vestnik [Historical
Herald], 1, 755-778.
Maksimov, S. (1869). Narodnye prestupleniya i neschastiya.
Chast' tretYa. VII. Prestupniki protiv very [People's crimes
and troubles. Part three. VII. The criminals against faith].
Otechestvennye zapiski [Fatherland Notes], 183, No.4, 321-
362.
Mel'nikov, P. I. (1869, May). Belye golubi [White Doves]. Russky
Vestnik [Russian Herald], 81, 244-294.
Mel'nikov P. 1. (1873, June-September). Materialy po istorii
hlystovskoi i skopcheskoi eresei, sobrannye P I. Mel'nikovym.
Otdel pyatyi. Svedeniya 0 Milyutinskoi sekte [Materials on
the history of the Hlyst and Castrati heresies collected by
P. 1. Mel'nikov. Part 5. Information on Milyutin's Sect]. Read-
ings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiq-
uities at Moscow University, Book 3, pp. 55-124.
Men'shenin, G. P. (Ed.). (1904). Poeziya i proza sibirskikh
skoptsov [poetry and prose of the Siberian Castrati]. Tomsk:
Typography of A. A. Levenson & Co.
Nadezhdin, N. I. (1872). Zapiska 0 znachenii Selivanova i
drugikh lits v skopcheskoi eresi [Notes on the role and mean-
ing of Selivanov and other persons in the Castrati heresy].
Readings in the Imperial Society of Russian History and
Antiquities at Moscow University, Book 3,163-168.
Rozanov, V V (1914). Apokalipticheskaya sekta (hlysty i
skoptsy) [Apocalyptic sect (the Flagellants and the Eu-
nuchs)]. St. Petersburg: F. Vaisberg & P. Gershunin.
Sakharov, N. (1877, September-October). Poslednee dvizhenie
v sovremennom skopchestve [The last movement in the con-
temporary Castrati sect]. Hristianskoe chtenie [Christian
reading], 400-447.
Schapov, A. P. (1867). Umstvennye napravleniya russkogo
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schism (third article)]. Delo [Business], 12, 170-200.
Tortchinov, E. A. (1998). Cybele, Attis, and the mysteries of
the "suffering gods": A transpersonal interpretation. Voices
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nal of Trans personal Studies, 17, 149-159.
Varadinov, N. (1863). Istoriya Ministerstva vnutrennikh del.
Vos'maya, dopolnitel'naya, kniga. Istoriya rasporyazhenii
po raskolu [History of the Ministry of Inner Affairs. Addi-
tional. History of the decrees on the schism], Book 8. St.
Petersburg: Typography of the Second Department of the
Councilary of His Imperial Majesty
WHISKERS LIKE WHISPERS
LIGHTLY TOUCH OUR CONSCIOUSNESS
BARELY KNOWN BUT THERE
88 The Internationaljournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19
Dee Ito
New York, USA
Cat Haiku
Marshall Arisman
School of Visual Arts
New York, USA
P
EOPLE WHO are passionate about cats see the world differently from other people.
Living with them day by day, we become more tolerant of quixotic behavior,
eccentricity, and weirdness in our friends and families. Cats stir within us an
insubordinate spirit, and we learn to survive calmly while all around us is chaos. Our
cats, by being who they are, give us courage to be who we are. We recognize that they
exist in our lives as lessons, if only we what we are supposed to be learning.
Sometimes it's very difficult.
The haiku-an old and revered Japanese poetry form-often reflected Zen Buddhist
illumination. In these times, illumination is difficult to come by. Concentrating on the
seasons was a traditional meditation, but using cats as the subject for haiku is equally
revealing for us. If we stretch the criteria for haiku
formulated by Bash6-one of Japan's most esteemed
poets-cats serve quite nicely to enlighten us. BashO
says a haiku should have "extreme compression of
thought, casualness of expression, and the very subtle
suggestion of the Karmic law of cause and result."
We have used the strict form, seventeen syllables
in three lines-five in the first, seven in the second,
and five more in the third.
The InternationalJournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, VoL 19, 88-98 89
II
I
TALKING TO SOME CATS
MAKES ONE FEEL LESS NEUROTIC
UNTIL THEY TALK BACK
IN ZEN THE MOMENT
IS TIMELESS AND ALL THERE IS
CATS SEIZE IT AND PLAY
Cat Haiku 91
CHIC SIMPLICITY
CHARACTERIZES MOST CATS
WE ARE OVERDRESSED
92 The International Journal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VoL 19
IT'S THE QUIET CAT
WHO SITS ALONE ON THE SHELF
KNOWS YOU BEST OF ALL
Cat Haiku 93
SOME CATS DRAW AND PAINT
MINE HAVE MORE HUMBLE TALENTS
THEY CONTEMPLATE LIFE
94 The InternationalJournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VoL 19
TELLING YOUR CAT LIES
ABOUT REALITY IS
THE WAY TO STAY SANE
Cat Haiku 95
i.
IN MEDIEVAL DAYS
CATS WERE EVIL INCARNATE
BAD TIMES LAUNCH BAD THOUGHTS
HER LONG, LITHE BODY
STRETCHES OUT EAGERLY TO YIELD
CONTROL FOR BEAUTY
Cat Haiku 97
INVENTED BY CATS
THE NAP IS A REFRESHMENT
FOR BODY AND SOUL
A Model of Experiential Comparative Religion
Andrew Rawlinson
La Voulte, France
Presented here is a higher-order vocabulary-with numerous examples-that can
handle the fundamental elements of all traditions: not only the general ones
(ontology/cosmology/anthropology/soteriology; consciousness/spiritual practice/
teacher/transmission) but the particular ones (initiation, effort, bliss, illusion) and
what might be called the "extra-traditional" ones (standard, intellect, what is
"right"), The shorthand for this model is Hot/Cool/Structured/Unstructured,
H
UMAN BEINGS are incorrigible comparers. "Daddy, are clouds mashed
potato in the sky?" my son asked me at the age of five or so. Twenty
years later, he is doing an MA that includes comparative religion. He
is not finding it easy-and he isn't the first. I don't claim to have aU the answers,
in fact, I may not have any. But a lifetime of wrestling with this topic has led me
to one conclusion: comparative religion must begin with a vocabulary, a form of
seeing, that is of a higher order than the traditions themselves.
"Higher order" does not mean "wiser" of course. The aim is simply to fashion
a shape in which we can place the various traditions (and without first having
to make up our minds what a tradition is)-because only then can they move
about with some degree of freedom. Then we can go in and out of them with
some degree of freedom, too.
One of the attractions of this approach is that it is highly adjustable. Anyone
can take the model I propose and fine-tune it by adding other elements or
improving the ones I've given. It's an adaptable shape, not a fixed one. So it's
got some life in it.
The starting point is two pairs of polar concepts: Hot and Cool; Structured
and Unstructured (see Diagram 1).
Diagraml
Th.e Four Variables
Hot
Structured Unstructured
Cool
The Internationaljournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19,99-108 99
Hot is that which is other than oneself; that which has its own life. It is not
something that one has access to as of right. It is powerful and breathtaking,
and is associated with revelation and grace. It is very similar to Otto's numinous.
Cool is the very essence of oneself; one need not go to another to find it.
Hence one does have access to it as of right. It is quiet and still, and is associated
with self-realization.
The meaning of Structured is that there is an inherent order in the cosmos
and therefore in the human condition. There is something to be discovered and
there is a way of discovering it. A map is required to find the destination.
By contrast, Unstructured teachings say that there is no gap between the
starting point and the finishing post. Method and goal are identical. We are not
separate from reality/truth/God and so no map is required. Everything is
available now and always has been.
Although these four statements concerning the human condition are all
related, they are based on quite different axioms. But they are all true. I shall
give examples from the great traditions in a moment, but first we need to see
that the two pairs can be combined-see Diagram 2.
Diagram 2
The Four Combinations
Hot
Hot Structured Hot Unstructured
The cosmos is vast and inhabited by
innumerable powerful beings; liberation
consists in finding one's way through the
labyrinth with the appropriate passwords
There is a divine power, quite other than
oneself, which encloses us and is the source
of liberation
Structured Unstructured
Cool Structured Cool Unstructured
Liberation is within oneself but it must be
uncovered by disciplined practice
One's own nature is liberation; everything
else is illusion
Cool
This model can hold a lot of detail. For example, we can use it to highlight
different versions of four categories that are fundamental to aU traditions in
some form or other:
ontology
cosmology
anthropology
soteriology
the nature of reality
the nature of the universe
the nature of humankind
the nature of liberation
The different versions of these four are given in Diagram 3.
Diagram 3
The Different Categories of Teaching Found in Spiritual Traditions
Ontology: many powersibeings
Cosmology: a vast labyrinth
Anthropology: humankind contains all powers
[the microcosm/macrocosm homology]
Soteriology: the great journey; the initiatic
adventure
Structured
Ontology: everything has its place; everything
comes and goes
Cosmology: a harmonious whole
Anthropology: humankind is the centre ofthe
universe
Soteriology: clear awareness; nonentanglement
Hot
Cool
Ontology: only God is real; he is unknowable
Cosmology: the universe is God's creation!
projection and is entirely dependent upon him
Anthropology: humankind is nothing before God
Soteriology: acceptance of God's will
Unstructured
Ontology: only the Self is real; or reality is empty
(shunya)
Cosmology: illusion
Anthropology: humankind is identical with reality
Soteriology: know yourself
It is interesting to look at the subtraditions within Christianity, Hinduism, and
Buddhism (in that order) that fit each section of the model, along with some
essential characteristics and images that exemplify them-see Diagram 4. We
can bring together teachings as diverse as Tantra, Pentecostalism, Advaita
Vedanta, and Theravada Buddhism; and also relate qualities such as bliss and
awareness, or hierarchy and (pure) being, which are central to any discussion
of the spiritual life.
However, a few explanations may be needed.
First, it is no accident that the characteristics on the Structured side are
more numerous than those of the Unstructured side. Naturally (and I use the
word in its literal sense), the Unstructured cannot have a wealth of qualities
since it obliterates distinctions.
Second, the members of each polar pair complement each other. Take Hot
Structured and Cool Structured as examples (see Diagram 4):
A Model of Experiential Comparative Religion 101
Diagram 4
Further Aspects of the Model
Hot
Examples:
"esoteric" Christianity (Freemasonry,
Rosicrucianism)
Hindu tantra
Vajrayana
Characteristics:
knowledge (in the initiatory sense)
hierarchical /
will
expansion away from a point
hot magic (necessary and powerful)
Images:
Structured
magician, gambler
JUMP!
Examples:
PhilokaliafPrayer of the Heart
Patanjali
Theravada
Characteristics:
awareness /'
gradual /'
effort
concentration on a point
cool magic (optional and peripheral)
Images:
yogi, craftsman
WORK!
Examples:
Pentacostalism
Chaitanya
Pure Land
Characteristics:
bliss
Images:
lover, martyr
SUBMIT!
Examples:
Meister Eckhart/the via negativa
Advaita Vedanta
Mahamudra
Characteristics:
being
Images:
sage, hermit
LET GO!
Unstructured
Cool
Hot Structured
initiatory knowledge is something one is granted-and it
may be disturbing
the path requires the exercise of will, which allows the
practitioner to break through the barriers that are in his/her
way in an ever-increasing series ofleaps
it also requires the use of (hot) magic, which is simply the
manipulation of the laws of the cosmos in the service of
self-transformation; this is not an option-it is bound to
happen and one has to be prepared for it by rigorous training
examples:
Vedic ritual, which is concerned with participation in the
sacred world of the gods;
Don Juan's way of the naguaZ, which is full of the unexpected
if not downright impossible. (I leave aside the question of
whether Castaneda invented the whole thing.)
Cool Structured
awarene is dispassionate and part of oneself
all that is required is constant effort; the path is very restrained;
there is a task to be accomplished but the method is ordered
and gentle; the practitioner starts on page one of the manual,
so to speak, and works his/her way through to the end;
everything happens as it should in the fullness of time
at a certain point, (cool) magical powers appear, it is true-
but they are incidental to the aim, which is balance and
timing
examples:
Confucian ritual, which aims to establish a correct relationship
with the cosmic principle;
The Course in Miracles, which is "magical" but so
reassuring.
Similarly, JUMP! and WORK! have an element in common (they are both
Structured), just as JUMP! and SUBMIT! do (though this time it is the Hot
element); and similarly for SUBMIT! and LET GO! (both Unstructured) and
WORK! and LET GO! (both Cool).
Third, the opposite corners ofthe model have nothing in common (which is to
say that they will find great difficulty in communicating with, or even
understanding, each other): the magician (Hot Structured) regards the hermit
(Cool Unstructured) as a stick-in-the-mud, someone who avoids life and its
challenges, while the hermit sees the magician as at best aU show and flummery,
and at worst as positively dangerous. The yogi (Cool Structured) looks upon the
martyr (Hot Unstructured) as someone with more conviction than sense; the
lover has no doubt that the craftsman has missed the point completely.
Similarly, JUMP! (Hot Structured) is the exact opposite of LET GO! (Cool
Unstructured); and the same is true of the other two corners: SUBMIT! (Hot
Unstructured) and WORK! (Cool Structured).
I am not saying that the traditions I have given as examples are limited to
the section of the model to which I have assigned them. Tibetan Buddhism, for
instance, which is the best-known form of Vajrayana, has an obvious Cool
Structured side (or level). But I am saying that its highest values are Hot
Structured rather than Cool Structured. That is why, in the end, it is worlds
away from Theravada, whose highest values are Cool Structured (even if some
of its forms present nibbana as a Cool Unstructured ideal).
We can also apply the model to the four principles of what I call spiritual
psychology:
human beings are best understood in terms of consciousness and its
manifestations;
consciousness can be transformed by spiritual practice;
there are gurus / masters / teachers who have done this;
and there can be transmission of this awareness from teacher to disciple.
(See Diagram 5.)
Diagram 5
Spiritual Psychology According to the Model
Consciousness: divine and hierarchical
Spiritual Practice: a series ofleaps/
initiations
Teacher: magicianlknows the secret
Transmission: by ordeal
Hot
Consciousness: divine and universal
Spiritual Practice: submission
Teacher: servant of God/embodiment of God
Transmission: a gift
Structured
Consciousness: natural and particularized
Spiritual Practice: graduated and gentle
Teacher: clear discriminator/guide
Transmission: learning how to use a map
Consciousness: natural and universal
Spiritual Practice: just realize
Teacher: embodies truth
Transmission: none-truth already exists
Cool
Entering the
Tradition
formal, public
Entering th.e
Tradition
by unexpected
encounter
DiagramS
Trad.itions and Spiritual Psychology
COOL STRUCTURED
Traditional Way of Life
organic, intricate
Spiritual Qualities
Social: responding to the needs of beings
Individual: unpretentious, simple
Teaching
Nature of teaching: open, complete, ordered
Consciousness: natural and spread out
Ontology: everything has its place
Cosmology: a harmonious whole
Anthropology: humankind is the centre of the universe
Soteriology: nonentanglement
Teach.er-Pupil Transmission
Teacher: clear discrimination/guide
Transmission: follow the map
Spiritual Practice
graduated and gentle
Inner States
Diagram '1
Tradition.s an.d Spiritual Psychology
HOT STRUCTURED
crucible/means of transmission
Spiritual Qualities
Social: a whirlwind of projects
Individual: ecstatic, unpredictable
Teach.ing
Nature of teaching: cryptic/esoteric
Consciousness: divine and hierarchical
Ontology: many powers, many beings
Cosmology: a vast labyrinth
Anthropology: microcosm/macrocosm homology
Soteriology: the great adventure
Teacher-Pupil Transmission
Teacher: magician/trickster
Transmission: by ordeal
Spiritual Practice
recreating the cosmic within oneself
Inner States
access to all levels, all powers
Realization!
Liberation
detachment
brings freedom
Realization!
Liberation
serving the
cosmic purpose
Entering the
Tradition
just ask God
(or His lovers)
Entering the
Tradition
there is no
tradition; the
Self already
exists
DiagramS
Traditions and Spiritual Psychology
HOT UNSTRUCTURED
celebration ofthe divine
Spiritual Qualities
Social: serving the divine
Individual: giving love; responding to the love of others
Teaching
Nature of teaching: only God
Consciousness: divine and universal
Ontology: only God exists
Cosmology: God's projection/play
Anthropology: humankind is nothing before God
Soteriology: acceptance of God's will
Teacher: servant/embodiment of God
Transmission: a gift
Spiritual Practice
submission
Inner States
remembrance of God
Diagram 9
Traditions and Spiritual Psychology
COOL UNSTRUCTURED
none
Spiritual Qualities
Social: let things be
Individual: unruffable calm
Teaching
Nature of teaching: there is no teaching
Consciousness: natural and universal
Ontology: only the Self exists
Cosmology: illusion
Anthropology: humankind is identical with reality
Soteriology: know yourself
Teacher: embodies truth
Transmission: none-truth already exists
Spiritual Practice
just realize
Inner States
oneness
Realization!
Liberation
to love and
serve God
Realization!
Liberation
the Self is
already complete
And we can apply the model to Hot / Cool/Structured / Unstructured traditions
(see Diagrams 6,7,8,9). (Note that these diagrams include the four principles of
spiritual psychology: consciousness comes under TEACHING; spiritual practice is
SPIRITUAL PRACTICE; teachers and transmission come under TEACHER-PUPIL
TRANSMISSION.)
Diagram 10
The Four Different Meanings of 6'Teaching"
The teaching is never given all at once
but only when necessary and then
only in cryptic form.
This is typical of all forms of esoterism
Hot
There is no teaching-only love and
submission.
E.g., Meher Baba: "[ come not to teach
but to awaken"
Subud is another example
Structured --------------I------------Unstructured
The teaching is open and complete but
there is no point in reading p. 100
before you read p. 1.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutras are a good
example
The teaching is constantly given-the
same truth over and over again-
but no one understands.
Ramana Maharshi, Taoism, and Zen
are examples
Cool
Every aspect of the spiritual life can be placed in this model. And that
includes the notion of "teaching" itself (see Diagram 10). But here are some
others. Mter The Book of Enlightened Masters (see Notes) came out, I received
a letter from a reader who was concerned about standards in the spiritual life.
In fact, the very idea that there are standards that are straightforwardly
graspable is itself Cool Structured. Clearly, Hot Structured, Hot Unstructured
and Cool Unstructured will see the matter very differently:
Cool Unstructured only one standard-so it isn't really a standard at an
Hot Unstructured only one standard (God)-so it's beyond all standards
Hot Structured many standards, all ofthem stretchable and collapsible
before your very eyes (assuming you can catch a
glimpse ofthem in the first place)
This affects the question of whether a teacher lives up to certain standards-an
issue I come back to at the end of this article.
The nature, place, and function of the intellect also change its import
according to the Hot / Cool/Structured / Unstructured model. And just as
accessible/rational standards are Cool Structured, so is the intellect as it is
understood and lauded in the modern West. But Unstructured teachings, whose
highest value is beyond form, are never going to have much time for a faculty
that is by its very nature concerned with form and structure. Nor are Hot
teachings: they will always place something way beyond the intellect at the
centre ofthe path (and as the knower oftruth). For Hot Unstructured traditions,
it will be faith or love; for Hot Structured ones, it will be courage, risk-taking.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with the Cool Structured ideal: everything
has its place in the great scheme of things and it's all discoverable with the
right tools and the right method. But it is only one option. And it has its
limitations (as all the possibilities-Cool Structured, Hot Structured, Hot
Unstructured, Cool Unstructured-do). Not to realize this is to dress up cultural
prejudice in the guise of spiritual evaluation.
Then there is the notion of universalism: there are Cool Structured/Hot
Structured / Hot Unstructured / Cool Unstructured versions of it (see Diagram 11).
Diagram 11
The Four Different Meanings of "Universalism"
Hot
Don't expect a straight path; it will
deviate and disappear. It will also
reappear-but in a guise that you may
not recognize. So keep your wits about
you. It's actually all the same path-and
it's the same for everyone (but with
surprises and tricks for everyone, too).
There is only God or the divine. When
all you see are His projections, things
appear different; when you see Him,
everything has just one taste. This is the
universal truth-but whether you "get"
it or not is in His hands.
Structured
All paths can lead to the same goal, like
radii of a circle which meet at the centre.
But you should stick to the path you are
on.
Space always exists. It's the only thing
that does-except that you can't even
say it "exists." Only things in space do
that; then they stop existing. The
universal teaching always points to
space, never to "things."
Cool
The last example I want to give is that old bugbear, ethics/morality. Shouldn't
a path embody or teach the "right" way to be and to behave? Answer: yes-but,
as we would expect by now, the way this is done depends on the vocabulary and
values we are using. Rationalism, which is the dominant ethos of our culture, is
Cool Structured. Therefore it expects rational, considerate behaviour. But a
Hot Structured teacher isn't going to buy that: slhe's going to be demanding,
unpredictable and ostensibly inconsiderate. (Gurdjieff is a good example in
modern times; so is Neem Karoli Baba-see the excellent Miracle of Love by
Ram Dass [Dutton, NY, 1979]). Some may not find such an option convincing or
attractive. But that's another matter. The point is that from a Hot Structured
perspective, such behaviour is entirely appropriate-in fact, beneficial (whereas
rational, considerate behaviour, the Cool Structured ideal, isn't).
AHot Unstructured teaching or teacher, on the other hand, will frequently-
and perhaps ultimately-be utterly impractical (when seen from a Cool
Structured point of view). Bliss tends to be like that. (As Ramakrishna once
said, "First love God; then build your hospitals and schools.") And it can burn,
too. It says, "Throw all that stuff out!" "What?" we cry, "Throw out everything in
my life? Be reasonable!" But the Hot Unstructured isn't reasonable.
As for the Cool Unstructured, it just doesn't pay any attention to the things
of life. When Ramana Maharshi first went to Arunachala at the age of 17, he
was so absorbed in the Self that he just sat there. Boys threw stones at him. He
didn't even notice, much less complain about it. Gradually, over the next 50
years, an ashram grew up around him. He just let it. It had nothing to do with
him. Some people complained that Brahmins were being fed separately from
untouchables, as caste rules required. How could a place dedicated to the one
Selfthat is found equally in all be caught up in such petty-such false - matters?
Ramana paid no attention to these complaints, just as he paid no attention to
the structure that had perpetuated caste distinctions in the first place. He just
remained the same: the ultimate (and only) Cool Unstructured ideal.
My final point is this. It is our great good fortune that we live in a time and
place where exemplars ofthe entire range of Hot / Cool! Structured / Unstructured
splendour are available. Of course, there are weak and distorted versions of all
ofthem. But that's always been so. And because they are all available, they can
in some sense be compared. What this sense might be is still in the process of
being established. But it's being established by us, those of us who are on the
journey. That is why this article is entitled, ''A Model of Experiential Comparative
Religion." It's new and it's right here, waiting for us to go out and discover it.
Notes
The basic ideas outlined here are an elaboration of what can be found in my book The
Book of Enlightened Masters (Chicago: Open Court Press, 1997).
The Universe of Meanings
v. V. Nalimov
Moscow State University
Moscow, Russia
Jeanna Drogalina-Nalimov
Moscow State University
Moscow, Russia
K. Zuyev
Financial Academy
Moscow, Russia
Translated ftom the Russian by Jeanna Drogalina-Nalimov
"Russian Visionary"-this was the subtitle of an
article in an Americanjournal (Thompson, 1993)
devoted to Vassily Vassilievich Nalimov-a
Russian scientist, whose fate is dramatic, absurd,
and at times fantastic in a rather Russian way.
Although he had no possibility of graduating from
the Physico-Mathematical Department of Moscow
State University because of his moral and political
conflict with Komsomol, much later Nalimov
became a Professor at this University, where for a
period of ten years he worked as assistant director
of the Interfaculty Laboratory of Statistical
Methods headed by the academician Andrei
Nikolaevich Kolmogorov, one of the most
distinguished mathematicians of our time.
The Gulag period of WN, covering 18 years of
prisons, labor camps, and exile, was not just a
"dramatic misfortune," but rather a result of
conscious opposition by this free thinker to the
totdlitarian ideology. Brought up by teachers of
one of the branches of the Western esoterical
underground, throughout his life he carried
through the ideas of Christian anarchism.
One of the books by Nalimov, abundant with
ideas, was defined by one reviewer as a "feast,"
plentiful enough for anyone to find a treat. This
feast metaphor can be related to all the works of
Vassily Vassilievich.
SSM.l One of the central features of your world
outlook is a special interpretation of the notion
of meaning distinguished from its common use
in logic. Would you, please, explain your idea.
VVN. My position is close to philosophical
hermeneutics. From my point of view, meaning
is an ontological notion and not a logical one. It
is a category of Being. Meanings, to my mind,
exist primordially, just as fundamental physical
constants do (the Anthropic principle). They are
not created-they exist.
The nature of meanings can be grasped only
through their changes, only through their
manifestations in Being, containing
consciousness.
The dynamic revelation of the nature of
meanings can be realized only by the
simultaneous analysis of a semantic triad:
meaning, text, language. Each element of this
triad can be defined by the two others. Here we
address the so-called "cyclic definition." Let's
state it as follows:
Meanings are what create texts by means of
Language.
Texts are what is created out of Meanings with
the aid of Language.
Language is what turns meanings into Text.
The International Journal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, Vol 19, 109-118 109
The triad becomes a synonym for Consciousness.
Texts, as I see it, are structures arranged by
probabilistic weighting of meanings. Weighting
is ascribing a probabilistic measure to
elementary meanings.
Probabilistic weighting is anti-Aristotelian logic.
It allows operating with fuzzy meanings which
are revealed at the deep levels of consciousness.
It is the logic of creative process. The
Aristotelian logic is that of a secondary one. It
reduces the semantic continuum to the discrete
words behind which a variety of meanings are
hidden. Wishing seriously to understand
discretely written texts, we appeal to hidden
fuzziness. Understanding becomes personal.
Moreover, it is always defined by the situation.
Let's recollect: during the two last millennia
religious thought was incessantly occupied with
reinterpretation of the same initial texts,
charging them with various meanings-weights.
Nowadays this process seems to have become
accelerated. Ina more veiled form it takes place
both in philosophy and even in science.
My task is an attempt to understand the role of
meanings in the Universe: to put it in a more
modest way, at least to estimate the role of
meanings in the existence of humankind.
SSM. Vassily Vassiliyevich, why, in considering
philosophical problems, do you resort to
mathematics? Many readers fail to accept such
an approach.
VVN. There are sufficient grounds for it.
Understanding comes into us in images.
Apparently the thinkers of the Christian
Mediterranean were already conscious of it. In
the Gospel of Philip we read the surprising
words: "Truth did not come into the world
naked, but it came in types and images. One
will not receive truth in any other way. There is
a rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is certainly
necessary that they should be born again
through the image" (Robinson, 1981, p. 140).
In previous times, people borrowed images from
ordinary life, directly addressing sensory
experience. Now these images are semantically
exhausted. Philosophy is coming to a standstill-
I wrote about it in my book In Quest of Other
Meanings (Nalimov, 1993).
Further development of philosophy requires
some new images. As I see it, they can be
borrowed from mathematics and modern
physics, which is also mathematically saturated.
Finally, it has become clear that humankind is so
uniquely arranged as to perceive the world
through mathematical notions: through number
in all the varieties of its manifestation; through
time estimated by number; through space given
by a variety of geometries; through probabilistic
measure also calculated by number; and, finally,
through logic joining with mathematics (logic of
calculus). In the beginning ofthe twentieth
century it became possible to speak about the
mathematization of logic, although this theme
had been brought up earlier by Leibniz.
The resort to mathematics has allowed me to
axiomatize my system of notions. Philosophy is
properly to become deductive (such as Spinoza
tried to make it). Nowadays, especially in
existentialism, we deal rather with
philosophical. .. poetry. And this is perfect in a
way. But a lack ofaxiomatics precludes the
possibility of further discussion. And then what
is the meaning of philosophy?
In my constructions, mathematics is easily
understood. I formulate axioms and construct a
model proceeding from them, not proving
theorems. My approach is close to the so-called
intuitionistic logic, on which intuitiomstic
mathematics and related branches of constructivist
mathematics (Brauwer; Geiting) are based.
SSM. Would you please speak about the
mathematical model of consciousness you are
evolving?
VVN. As my main achievement, I consider
elaboration of the probabilistically-oriented
theory of consciousness-an axiomatic system
constructed by applying the Bayesian formula
used earlier only in mathematical statistics.
My initial premises are the fonowing:
1. Assume that the entire evolving world that we
perceive may be regarded as a set of texts. Our
culture is based on texts. Human beings
themselves are texts. When we deal, for example,
with the biosphere, then individual species and
other constituents represent texts. In the
inanimate sphere, landscapes are texts as welL
2. Texts are characterized by discrete (semiotic)
and continual (semantic) constituents.
3. Semantics are determined by the
probabilistic ally given structure of meanings.
Meanings are what turn a symbolic system into
a text.
4. All potential meanings of the world are
initially correlated with the linear continuum of
Cantor, the numerical axis, /-1, on which all real
numbers are located in the order oftheir
increasing values. Otherwise, the meanings of
the world are compressed the way numbers are
compressed on the real axis.
5. Compressed meanings represent the packed
(unmanifested) World: the semantic vacuum.
6. Unpacking (emergence of texts) is realized
through probabilistic weighting of the axis Il:
different measures are ascribed to its different
intervals. The metric of the scale Il is assumed to
be initially given and remains unaltered.
7. Correspondingly, the semantics of each
concrete text is given by the distribution function
(probability density) p(Il). We shall assume the
distribution function to be sufficiently smooth
and asymptotically close (if it is not stated
otherwise) to the abscissa. In the general case it
is possible to speak of texts determined by the
probability distribution function set on a
multidimensional space. Meanings in the text
are always given selectively. We are not to know
everything. Recall the proverb: "To know
everything is to know nothing." The function p(ll)
turns out to be the window through which we
can examine the semantic world.
And now the Rule of Inference:
Any change in the text-its evolution-is linked
with a spontaneous emergence in a situation y of
the filter P(y/ll) that interacts multiplicatively
with the initial function pC!!). The interaction is
given by the well-known Bayesian formula:
p(ll/y) = kp(Il)P(y/ ll)
where: the distribution function p(/-1/y)
determines the semantics of a new text emerging
after the evolutionary impetus y; k is a
normalizing constant. In our case, the Bayesian
formula acts as a syllogism: from the two
premises pC!!) and P(y/ll) necessarily foHows a
text with new semantics p(ll/y). In Bayes'
syllogism, in contrast to the categorical syllogism
of Aristotle, both the premises and the corollary
are not atomic butprobabilistically fuzzy.
The Bayes formula (theorem) is traditionally
used for calculating a posteriori events through a
priori probabilities. I have made a
generalization, attaching to the statistical
formula a new-logic meaning. Now it is possible
to speak of a Bayes-Nalimov syllogism, and
accordingly, of a new Bayesian logic.
SSM. What does the probabilistic logic given by
the Bayesian syllogism yield?
VVN. It opens up an opportunity to comprehend
the process of grasping texts. How do we
understand texts? How do we understand one
another when we speak a language whose words
are semantically polymorphous (have no atomic
meanings)? For instance, how do Russians guess
which meaning of the English word "set" is used
in a phrase ifit is explained by 1,816 words in
the two-volume English-Russian dictionary?
Why do we enjoy texts rich in metaphors? How
do we understand phrases obviously illogical,
sometimes meaningless, in terms of ordinary
logic? How do we translate foreign texts when we
often fail to find proper synonyms in the other
language for the key words of the text?
I think that these and similar questions are key
ones, both for understanding the nature of our
consciousness and in searching for ways of
developing artificial intelligence. I already
formulated them acutely twenty-five years ago.
The first answer, although not elaborated
precisely enough theoretically, was my book
Probabilistic Model of Language. Later, I
returned to this subject in all publications
dealing with the problem of consciousness.
To put it briefly, the answer is: in reading or
conversation we get involved in a language
game, submerging the words important for the
given text into any new situation y, generating
the understanding filter The verbal
meaning, thus, is narrowed down-is concretized.
But the choice of the filter is always personal.
Bayesian logic, unlike Aristotelian logic, is always
free-free in understanding the text. We know, by
experience, how totalitarianism tried to get rid of
this freedom. That very freedom in understanding
is what makes society flexible.
Language games may not only narrow down
verbal meanings but expand them as well. In
such cases, filters, related to a new situation y,
attach a high level of significance to the verbally
not-enough-manifested (for the given word)
interval of the scale Another example of
meaning expansion is forming new two-word
terms. Such a newly coined term is, for example,
the word combination "artificial intelligence,"
which combined two principally opposed
elements. The meaning of this term should be
regarded as given by a two-dimensional
distribution revealing a correlation
between two probabilistically arranged semantic
structures. I myself introduced a new two-word
term, Bayesian syllogism, which unites
meanings which were not united before. It is
noteworthy that to elucidate the meaning of a
word in ancient India, it was ascribed a long
chain of synonyms (as mentioned by V Toporov).
Thus multidimensional semantics was used.
Understanding of scientific, philosophical, and
religious concepts is also Bayesian by nature. It
is possible to ask, say: Was Lysenko a Darwinist?
The answer will undoubtedly be positive.
Darwin's theory was constructed as a rather
fuzzy system of notions. Lysenko approached
Darwin's theory of evolution from his deeply
personal viewpoint. His filter of preference was
such that the major mass of probability density
ofthe function got into the tail part ofthe
distribution p(/-l) that determined Darwin's
structures. Thus Lysenko's version of Darwinism
came into being-a bad joke in science. But, you
see, in our country, Hegelian Marxism was also
perceived in Lenin's version and was maintained
by millions of people, including many scientists,
philosophers, and members of the church
orthodoxy. And here it would be necessary to
note that some interpretations of philosophical
or quasiphilosophical statements can take on the
proportions of a world outlook epidemic. And
today, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's warning is urgent:
"Stupidity-is an even more dangerous enemy of
good than rage ... Against stupidity we are
unprotected." And how will our philosophical
elaborations be interpreted? Filters arise
spontaneously, and this means that we can fail
to discover the reason for their emergence. They
cannot be predicted.
In the system of Bayesian logic, responsible for
deep thinking, some ideas are being revealed
more clearly than in the system of accepted
logical constructions. Let's explain this with one
example.
Free will-what does it mean? It was Hegel who
paid attention to the fact that the idea of
freedom is subjected to the "greatest distortions"
to a greater degree than any other idea. Indeed,
Western thinkers, following the path of logical
thought, always tried to thoroughly separate free
conduct proper from determined conduct. And
this, naturally, resulted in endless
misunderstandings.
Unconditional freedom is inconceivable. An
absolutely free person must first of all be free
from the system of personal value concepts. It
means that a person's state of mind, defined by
the function degenerates into a
nontruncated (tending towards infinity)
rectangular distribution. Due to the normalizing
condition, the segment cut off on the ordinate by
the straight line setting this distribution will
tend to zero. Strictly speaking, the notion of the
distribution function loses sense, and the
generation of any filter also becomes
senseless. Individuality dies a natural death,
having been deprived of its value properties; it
turns into nothing or everything. Meanings
disappear, having lost their selective evaluation.
The semantic continuum returns to its initial,
packed state. It appears that freedom is only
freedom for the choice of filters. And if so, then
only a nonfree person can be free. Here lies the
paradox of the notion of freedom.
The above considerations give us an opportunity
to comprehend the meaning ofthe state of
Nirvana-the most difficult Asian concept to be
grasped by Western culture. Nirvana is the
smoothing down, karma-given selectivity in the
system of value concepts. It is loss of personality
set by semantic selectivity. It is also loss of
creativity, due to the inability to use filters. It is
absolute freedom. Freedom generated by the
death of personality.
SSM. Let us talk now about your concept ofthe
semantic nature of personality. In your book
Spontaneity of Consciousness there is an
intriguing paragraph about human ego as a
probabilistically given manifestation of the
semantic field. Will you explain it, please?
VVN. I distinguish four structural constituents of
personality:
1. Human individuality-an individual's Ego-is
set by the probability density p(I-t). This function
may be needle-shaped, fuzzy, sometimes many-
apexed, or sharply asymmetric, depending on the
individual's psychic peculiarities. Ego is not a
stable state but aprocess, for the system of values
is under continual change, especially in crucial
situations. Ego may be regarded as a text, but a
perfect text, alive, and capable of incessant
reinterpretation of itself.
2. Metaego is a faculty of spontaneous generating
filters. This seems to be the most powerful
characteristic of personality: a person remains
oneself until he or she preserves the faculty of
generating nontrivial filters, especially in crucial
situations. In its moral aspect, human dignity is
so realized. And ifhuman Ego is openness to the
world of terrestrial activity, then Metaego is
openness to the cosmic or else-to the
transpersonal realm. Humans act as a bridge
between two aspects ofthe Universe: its
presentness and its timelessness. (Note, my
approach is dose to trans personal psychology,
based on transbiographic experience.) The Cosmic
principle-is timeless; it preserves the still-
persisting past as wen as the potential diversity of
the possible future. By a free choice of selectivity
filters, we are merged in transpersonal aspects of
the world's history, bearing the responsibility for
its evolution.
3. Multidimensionality of consciousness. It is
described by probability densities on
multidimensional semantic space p(1l
1
, 1l
2
Il).
Thus separate components of personality
manifestations are correlated to a certain degree.
Each of us is at least two-dimensional, or the inner
dialogue that we ceaselessly engaged in with
ourselves would be senseless.
Multidimensionality of personality may be very
great. The striking example of such a personality
was F. Dostoyevsky, the author of a paradoxical
variety of characters. It seems as ifDostoyevsky
"splashed out" his burdensome multidimensionality
into the heroes of his novels.
Multidimensionality is broadly discussed in Western
psychiatry. It has proven to be related both to
obvious pathology and creativity. An absolutely
disordered, orthogonally split personality is
pathological. In extreme cases, such splitting may
result in manifestations, at different times, of
discrete personality components, one being unaware
of the other's drives. It may also happen that two
components of a personality will separately use the
same body. But correlation of the personality
components may, as well, form a hannonious
multipersonality open to the free perception ofthe
world. A multidimensional approach to personality
is undoubteoUy the way to overcome social
alienation and aggression. This is a formation of a
new person, adapted to the environment of social
and intellectual polymorphism. The increase of the
text dimension leads to the growing sophistication of
unpacking the semantic continuum: there emerge
new parameters of unpacking, namely, the
correlation coefficients.
4. Hyperpersonality is a concept of a personality as
a semantic structure embodied in various physical
objects. Examples ofthis are hypnosis, the
psychoanalytical phenomenon of transference, the
formation of the collective consciousness in the
agitated crowd, the collective ecstasy in religious
mysteries, and the special practice of merging
personalities in Tantrism.
SSM. To complete your concept it probably makes
sense to talk also of the map of consciousness you
have proposed.
VVN. We can present our consciousness as a
multilevel structure:
1. Level of Logical Thinking. Meanings are
revealed here through Aristotelian logic. This is
a computer-like part of consciousness. Here texts
adaptable for comprehension are created. This
level functions as an information service of
consciousness.
2. Level of Pre-Thinking. On this level, the initial
premises based on Bayesian logic are worked
out, whereupon texts using Aristotelian logic are
constructed.
3. Cellars of Consciousness. On this level,
sensual contemplation of images takes place.
Here we meet with archetypes of the collective
unconscious (in Jung's terms).
4. The Structure as a Whole is based on the
physical body where neuropeptides act. What is
meant is primarily the general somatic state of a
person. The altered states of consciousness that
are the object oftranspersonal psychology arise
when the upper, logically structured level is
switched off. Switching off is achieved by
directed influence on the body: relaxation,
sensory deprivation, regulated breathing, special
physical exercises or even special kinds of
massage, or by taking psychedelic drugs.
Everything that can affect personal time may be
controlled. Within this system of ideas, it is not
the brain but the whole body that represents a
level of consciousness.
5. Level of Metaconsciousness. This level seems
to belong to transpersonal, cosmic consciousness
(noosphere, or cosmic pleroma of the Gnostics)
interacting with human, bodily encapsulated
consciousness via Bayesian logic. On this cosmic
level (we shall call them "Bayesian filters"), the
spontaneous emergence of creative impulses
occurs.
6. Involvement in a proper Cosmic Process.
There are enough grounds to presume that in
the Cosmos-in other worlds-flowing processes,
though beyond direct influence, still affect
human earthly life through people. It is hard to
believe that we are the only dwellers in the
Universe. Here I speak not so much of a belief in
such a possibility as of the wisdom of our
imagination.
SSM. Hence, it seems to the point to speak
about meanings in the biosphere?
VVN. I proceed from the fact that all
morphophysiological properties can be considered
as elementary meanings generating texts ofthe
animate world. All possible variety ofthese
properties was assumed to be originally packed on
numerical axis /-t. Then the biosphere appears as
probabilistically weighted unpacking of the
continuum of biological meanings. Here I refer to
the concept by the geneticist Khesin, who stated
that universal elements of the total genepool of
the living world are incorporated in different
combinations into individual genomes of different
systematic groups. Separate individuals-
elementary units ofthe living world-are same
texts given by the probability density p(/-t). Hence,
species are respectively given by
multidimensional distributions constructed on the
axis /-tl' /-t2" /-tn corresponding to individuals.
Omitting details of the Bayesian description of
evolutionism, I confine myself to some brief
examples. To begin with, we pay attention to the
teleogenetic similarity of animals noted by A. A.
Lubishchev, manifested by the fact that
evolution yields similar solutions independently
of factors that bring them about (similarity
between ichthyosauruses, dolphins, and fishes);
N. I. Vavilov's homological series-the idea that
whole families of plants are, in general,
characterized by a definite cycle of changeability;
the neotenic theory of human origin justifying
the notion of the spotty nature of evolution, that
is, rapid and radical change of the entire pattern
of attributes.
SSM. Let us dwell upon the problem
"consciousness-matter." You have been working
on it for a long time, haven't you?
VVN. It is a perennial problem which will hardly
ever be elucidated enough. The Cartesian view
prohibited the discussion of this problem for
three hundred years. Descartes' dualism: body is
spatially extended, mind is not. Consequently,
we deal with two different substances. This
opposition was not destroyed by Kant's concept
of space, which is nothing more than an a priori
given form of sensual perception.
Now we know that an a priori given form of
sensual perception depends upon an observer
and can be differently set. In my model, I have
shown that consciousness can be interpreted in
terms of geometrical notions. This is essential,
since theoretical physics is being realized via
nontrivial geometrization of physical concepts.
Wishing to bridge consciousness (meaning) and
matter, we should deepen the degree of
geometrization of semantic constructions. It is
possible to show that constancy of metric
Bayesian logic is equivalent in a certain degree
to possible metric logic. This means that the
postulate on constancy of metric can be rejected
and evolution of the P(Il) function can be
regarded as occurring at the expense of local
deformation of the scale in the proximity ofthe
points of semantic space. Thus, a deeply
geometrized image ofthe World can be revealed.
Any text is now regarded as an exited (i.e., of
different scales) state of semantically satiated
space. Here we came close to the ideas, which
back in the beginning of our century, were
elaborated by the well-known German
mathematician Weyl. Now those ideas have
resulted in the creation of a general theory of
gauge fields by Utiyama and Regger. Thus, there
appears hope for the possibility of constructing a
super unified field theory embracing both
worlds-physical and semantical. True, a unified
field theory is still under construction.
SSM. In your latest book (N alimov, 1993), the
reader's attention is drawn to the chapter
devoted to self-organization. Would you talk
about this subject?
VVN. It is a serious and at the same time very
difficult topic. Ifwe look at the history of human
evolution, we see that the world outlook of early
humankind was predominated by cause-effect
relations. The world was endowed with strict
logic. Everything was created by someone, and
ruled by someone, up to the very last detail. In
the Gospel it is said that "the very hairs of your
head are all numbered."
At present the situation has changed essentially.
We have no more imagination to explain with
reference to the cause-conditioned principle, the
emergence of fundamental constants in the
Anthropic principle or the origin of the total
gene pool. And how to explain a demonic
principle, so powerfully exposed in the twentieth
century! The "archetype" of determinism does
not work any more. It was Nietzsche who
understood that the "world seems logical to us
because we have made it logical."
We begin reflecting on self-organization. Self-
organization is spontaneity. Spontaneity is
absence of reason. It is resorting to probabilistic
logic, the logic of free thinking-which is not
restricted by the Aristotelian syllogism.
Earlier in our conversation, I tried to show how
spontaneity generates texts in the field of
thinking and in biological evolutionism. The
same is supposed to be observed in animate
nature-the border between the animate and the
inanimate, as we now know, is indistinct.
Here, say, let us consider a landscape of a rocky
sea bay. All processes in it flow very slowly,
imperceptible to our eyes. But make a mental
attempt to change the time scale, and watch it
from the position of a long-living plant such as a
sequoia. Then we shall observe lifelike changes,
especially in the case of our regarding the bay as
a holistic ecological system. There arises a
natural question: do changes in this system
follow cause-effect relations, or do we rather deal
here with spontaneity of the occurring processes?
Who can give an answer without referring to a
previously set conviction? Let's be reminded of
Hegel's words that "Earth is a living wholeness
or a special organism ... " or recollect myths
wherein Earth is an alive body being under a
dream state.
Spontaneity is involuntarily associated with
consciousness, for only consciousness can act
freely-irrespectively of cause-effect relations.
Resorting to spontaneity is a rejection of the
tyranny of our making the World logical. And
again questions arise: "Does consciousness exist
in the whole Universe, at least in weak forms?"
"How is it possible?"
According to the Anthropic principle, the state of
our Universe is conditioned by the selection of
some definite numbers. In Schrodinger's
equation we deal with the probability density
expressed by number. But the nature of number
is not physical but semantical. We can speak of
number in the Universe only ifthere is an
The Universe o/Meanings 115
Observer. And do we know that only a human
can be an Observer? Maybe the whole Universe
is arranged in such a way that it is provided
with an ability to be an Observer? And if so, then
the whole Universe is the carrier of quasi-
consciousness.
This is a serious subject for reflection. It is a
radical shift in our world outlook.
SSM. What you have said results in the
conclusion that accumulating knowledge we
simultaneously increase ignorance, which, in
addition, is seriously established.
VVN. Yes, while developing our Knowledge, we
come nearer and nearer to approaching the
Ultimate, the Mystery. We are facing a gigantic
Image oflearned Ignorance (Non-Knowledge),
which cannot be diminished by narrowing, but
deepened by expanding. Mysterious is humankind.
Mysterious is the World. And God is a Mystery.
We may speak of non knowledge, for as people, it
is not given to us to know the truth. Everything
comprehended by us is very conventional.
Nothing more. Our progress lies in incessantly
expanding and deepening the context under
which we are wording our statements. But
nevertheless, all our constructions turn out to be
ignorance. Long ago our ancestors were
confident to know how the World was created;
but they knew only one geometry-Euclidean,
and only one logic-Aristotelian.
And what do we know now with the same
assurance? Our "confident" knowledge is turning
out to be nonknowledge.
Our Knowledge is extended through learned
Ignorance.
SSM. How are your ideas attuned to
philosophical classics?
VVN. My approach may be considered as a
further development of Plato's philosophy (to a
certain degree, even of Anaxagoras), and also,
certainly, of Plotinus, who intuitively grasped the
role of number in the Universe. Plato stated the
primordial existence of ideas. His doctrine of One
(in the Dialogue "Parmenides") looks like an
attempt at revealing the idea of a continuum via
the then available notions. Plato's One is related
to many by number. His many is not a part of One
but embraces the entire whole. And that is exactly
what is shown in my model-that the
primordially existing continuum of meanings is
manifested through number without being split
into parts.
Nicholas Cusanus, in 1440, wrote a work under
the title "On Learned Ignorance." Descartes had a
statement (though quite a cursory one)
concerning the incalculable nature of meaning:
" ... It would not be easy to enume:rate the eternal
truths." Spinoza's concept of the primary
principle, Substance, consisting of infinite
attributes, looks almost like our concept of a
semantic vacuum. Kant stated that " ... all human
cognition begins with intuitions, proceeds from
thence to conceptions, and ends with ideas." Hegel
speaks respectively of the reproductive power of
imagination "elevating images on the surface of
consciousness." Nietzsche said: "First images-to
explain how images arise in the spirit. Then
words applied to images." He says on the nature
of personality: "My hypothesis: The subject is
multiplicity." Wittgenstein: ''What the picture
represents is its sense." Merleau-Ponty wrote:
"Because we are in the world, we are condemned
to meanings." Sartre: "transcendental
consciousness is impersonal spontaneity," "man is
condemned to be free," "man .. .is condemned at
each moment to invent man." From Heidegger:
"Language is a home of Being." Gadamer:
" .. .language is a cent:ral point where 'I' and world
meet or, rather, manifest their original unity." And
last but not least, Whitehead: "Creativity is the
universal of universals, characterizing ultimate
matters offact."
In my model, creativity is superpersonal. It is
transcendental Spontaneity. I wish to regard the
creative principle as the basis ofthe World. It
opens up the prospect of elucidating the meaning
ofthe World and the place humankind occupies in
it. The meaning ofthe World lies in the revelation
of its potential meanings. The meaning of human
life lies in the active participation in this process.
SSM. Vassily Vassilievich, you are a combination
of a philosopher, physicist, mathematician,
logician, maybe, even an esotericist ... Who are you
in your own mind?
VVN. I am a free thinker-by calling and not by
profession. For a large part of my life I worked as
a scientist in the field of physics and applied
mathematics. I received my wages exactly for that
very work. Philosophy and religion were the
subjects of my concern since early youth-and
that was paid for by years of Gulag. I studied
philosophy selectively, reading and discussing
only what I was interested in. For my candidate
exam on philosophy I received only satisfactory,
as I could not answer what was written in the
epilogue to the third volume of Das Kapital by
Marx. Yes, I failed to have ever read this classical
work-it is beyond my reading.
My philosophically orientated books were issued
in large editions and rather quickly went out of
print. But I have no idea who read them. In any
case, the Institute of Philosophy ofthe Russian
Academy of Sciences displays no interest in them.
Yet, following the Russian poet Maximilian
Voloshin, I can say, "my home is open to meet all
roads." Many people come to my place, including
students and postgraduate students of the
philosophy department of Moscow State
University, as though restoring the old university
tradition-holding seminars at the home of their
professor ... the old professor.
AB before, I am interested in religious themes,
assuming each of us, even though not being a
professional theologian, can develop one's own
personal theology.
SSM. You are not afraid to be reproached as a
dilettante, are you?
VVN. Dilettantism, undoubtedly, is dangerous.
But often it comes about due to narrowness of
knowledge, due to excessive specialization. And
that is exactly what becomes a serious danger.
Narrow specialization is especially obvious in the
USA-the leading country of the world. The
temptation of success through narrow
specialization is simultaneously great and
dangerous.
We are facing a very strange situation: each
individual engaged in creative activity is good
only in a narrow field. Culture acquires a scrappy
character. It stops working. It has the appearance
of existing, but does not exist-there is culture,
but it does not actually work.
The system of higher education needs to be
reformed. A university, in accord with its meaning
should prepare not just narrow experts, but
intellectuals educated in a broad way.
Specialization should be provided in the course of
work-but grounded on a well-prepared
foundation which prevents immersion only in
professional affairs. I wrote about this, but it was
not responded to. I like the above-mentioned
Russian poet Voloshin, liked him since my youth.
And one of his lines remains forever in my
memory: humans are "saturated with memory, as
the Earth is," which means that humankind is
multidimensional, is great. That should come to
be true.
SSM. What is your idea ofthe future, if it's
possible to make a forecast on the basis of
accumulated knowledge, collective and individual
experience?
VVN. I do not believe in forecasts. They are
always insufficient with respect to data. The
rejected (as insignificant) factor easily can become
essential and even crucial. In real life we deal
with spontaneity, that is, with unpredictability.
And nevertheless, ifforced to extrapolate (it is not
yet a forecast), destruction seems to be inevitable
in the near future.
What can rescue the Earth and humankind living
on it?
I think only the emergence of a new Culture in
the third millennium. The Culture which is
Christianly humane, humane without hypocrisy.
The Culture of new meanings, and, accordingly, of
other values.
What is necessary for it to come about? To make
people understand the tragedy ofthe situation. To
make an attempt to formulate a new world
outlook, to offer for consideration new meanings,
new value preferences, to propose a new image of
a hero.
The problem of Consciousness is pushed to the
foreground. To be exact-the problem of
ConsciousnesslMatter and LifelDeath associated
with it. This is what I am concerned about now
most of all, as these problems become key ones
for the individual and collective future of people.
We have not yet learned "to be death dressed," a
phrase once bequeathed by "the poet and
penniless rider," Alexander Vvedensky.2 Though
it is time. High time.
And more: we are in need of a renewed mental
impulse. We are in need of new charismatic
personalities. And this is an appeal to Cosmic
powers, to those who have already visited the
Earth, and wandering in worlds and in
centuries, enriched and prepared, could help to
transform the earthly situation.
Everything said here may seem strange and
provocative, but what else can be expected when
the worst of all evils-stupidity-is raging like
an epidemic all over the Earth!
SSM. We would like to end our conversation
with one more question: What are you working
on now, what will your readers be rejoicing at
next?
VVl",L The Publishing House "Progress" is
issuing my book of memoirs The Rope-Dancer, in
which I tell about the fate of Russia through the
example of my own family, who suffered heavily
like many other families of our country, and
about my spiritual teachers, about a spiritual
philosophical movement to which I belonged,
about the Gulag, about science-about
everything that has influenced my life as a free
thinker brought up by the ideas of Christian
anarchism.
Another Publishing House, "Labyrinth," is
preparing to publish the brochure "On the Verge
of the Third Millennium: What We Have
Grasped Approaching the XXIst Century." In the
summer of 1995, I expect to have out my article
"Am I a Christian?" I have also started
preparation for publishing the book Reality of the
Unreal: Probabilistic Model of the Unconscious.
An Attempt of Modern Natural Philosophy. This
book was issued in the USA in 1982. In Russian,
it will appear for the first time, as Glavlit
3
in due
time has authorized the manuscript only "for
export." So, we are now trying "to import" the
manuscript.
4
SSM. Vassily Vassilievich, in 1863, the Russian
poet and diplomat Fedor Tyutchev wrote the
following lines which, unfortunately, are
becoming even more manifest nowadays:
An awful sleep is burdened over us,
An awful, ugly dream:
In blood up to heels, we are fighting the dead,
Having revived for new burials ...
Is it possible to say that all your philosophical
books and articles are written so as to interrupt
that "awful dream"?
VVN. Perhaps ... but am I heard?
Notes
The present work was prepared for publication by
Jeanna Drogalina-Nalimov and was supported by a
grant from the Russian Foundation of Studies in the
Humanities 2000, Project No. 00-03-00083. We are
grateful to AlIa Yarkho for parts of the translation.
1. This interview was originally published in Russian
in the journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Social Sciences and Modernity [SSM] (Obshchestvennye
Nauki i Sovremennost'-ONS), 1995, No.3, pp. 122-132.
The interviewers were Jeanna Drogalina-Nalimov
(Moscow State University) and K. Zuyev (an editor of
SSM).
2. He was arrested and perished in 1941.
3. Chief State censorship in literature in the Soviet
Union.
4. It is noteworthy to add here that in the period 1992-
1996, VVN published four books and some thirty-two
papers. Moreover, it was the period after his heart
infarction when although he was physically very weak,
spiritually he was very strong, responsible, and focused.
References
Nalimov, V. V. (1993). V poiskakh inykh smyslov [In quest of
other meaningsl. Moscow: Progress.
Robinson, J. M. (1981). The Nag Hammadi Library. San Fran-
cisco: Harper & Row.
Thompson, A. M. (1993). Vasily Vasilyevich N alimov: Russian
visionary. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 33(3), 82-98.
A
R
T
H
u
R
Translated and Adapted from the French by Philippe L. Gross and Valerie Kessler
The International Journal of Trampersonal Studies, 2000, VoL 19, 119-132 119
Far away, Arthur lived on a small planet,
all by himself.
He behaved somewhat humanlike.
But he was more fortunate.
Arthur 121
Self-sufficient, thanks to the energy of the nearby stars,
Arthur knew not of hunger, thirst, cold, or pain.
His body was immune to aging,
and his serene face reflected great vitality.
His days were spent observing the bare surface of his planet,
his nights examining the sky,
rich with comets, planets, and stars.
For millennia, Arthur found joy in this cosmic panorama.
One night, a new idea crossed his mind.
What if he could reach one of those points of light so far away?
This revolutionary idea surprised him greatly.
Where did it come from?
The new thought would change his life forever.
Until then, Arthur had lived intuitively-
completely in harmony with his surroundings,
every action reflecting complete accord between mind and body.
Now, he felt a need for change.
Concentrating all his energy, in a flash,
he executed a prodigious jump across space,
landing on a distant planet called Earth.
Arthur 123
His first contact on the new planet was with birds.
Seeing them fly so elegantly with stretched out wings was a great visual treat.
Their ability to float weightlessly in the wind,
then twirl effortlessly in the breeze,
brought Arthur countless hours of enjoyment.
124 The Internationaljournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, VOL 19
Trees were just as fascinating.
On his own deserted planet, sand dunes alternated with wide plains of stones.
Earth, therefore, was a source of astonishing discoveries.
Arthur was particularly enamored of a tall tree that became his observing site.
Perched high up, he would observe the graceful flying creatures who fuled him with such wonder.
Arthur 125
Arthur's curiosity soon extended to the entire vegetable and animal world ...
then to human beings.
Observing them,
he accumulated a wealth of information about their daily lives,
habits, and concepts of life.
He was particularly curious about dreams, beauty, poetry,
and the harmony between soul and spirit.
Arthur's most astonishing discovery
was how unhappy humans became because of their social lives.
He tried very hard to understand this phenomenon,
but remained perplexed.
Eventually he concluded that a less crowded planet
would greatly benefit human beings.
Arthur 127
From then on,
Arthur devoted his attention to eliminating humans
bit by bit.
He would lure them for a walk
then either kick them down ravines
or push them into rapids to drown.
Arthur soon realized that his task was not so easy.
As hard as he worked to exterminate some individuals,
new ones kept appearing.
Apparently, human beings could easily multiply-
a never-ending problem!
Arthur 129
Arthur eventually came to realize
that his plan was failing.
For the first time in his life,
he became depressed.
As time went by,
Arthur grew gloomier.
He could no longer tolerate
this overpopulated place,
where everyone seemed to rush mindlessly around,
heavy-hearted, faces tensed,
preoccupied with meaningless worries.
The exploding population obviously needed
a more radical approach.
So Arthur worked out a Machiavellian plan. Yes,
he-Arthur-the Perfect Being,
decided to speed up the Great Devolurion.
He was determined to bring an end quickly
to this world gone awry
and return all its inhabitants to
Nothingness.
Arthur 131
Arthur created a black box
with a large red button on top.
Inside the box,
he trapped enough energy from the stars
to his Grand Plan.
Everything was set,
but a nagging doubt made him hesitate.
He decided to leave his final decision
to fate.
As Arthur flipped a coin high into the air
... he caught a glimpse of his old planet.
Psychological and Spiritual Roots of
Transpersonal Psychology in Europe
Laura Boggio Gilot
Founder and President, Italian Association of Trans personal Psychology (AIPT)
Cofounder and President, European Transpersonal Psychology Association (ETPA)
Rome, Italy
European sources of transpersonal psychology involve science and the spiritual tradition: both are relevant
for consciousness research, developmental studies, and psychotherapy. The almost common element of
scientific sources (Jung, Assagioli, Durckheim, Frankl) is the concept of the ego-Self axis, whereas in
Christian mysticism it is virtues-humility, devotion, and surrender to God's will, leading to mental
silence-fundamental for the unity of the Soul with the Divine. Eastern and Western spirituality are
complementary, as the former, based on awareness practices, is deeply relevant for the opening of the
third-eye chakra, or spiritual intuitive intellect (wisdom), and the latter for the opening of the heart
chakra (love). Joining the paths of love and wisdom is an important finality of an integral model of
transpersonal development, education, and psychotherapy. May the research on the integral model
unify the efforts of American and European seekers for the benefit of the world and humanity.
Sickness comes from matter,
but healing comes from Soul.
-Paracelsus
T
RANSPERSONAL PSYCHOLOGY originated in
the USA in the late 1960s and developed
in Europe in later decades as a new field of
research and endeavour proposing a revolutionary
approach to theories of mental health based on a
unified paradigm joining scientific psychology and
traditional wisdom. In the very beginning, the word
"transpersonal" referred to "the farther reaches of
human nature" (Maslow, 1969) and to states of con-
sciousness in which "the sense of identity or self ex-
tends beyond the individual or personal to encom-
pass wider aspects of humankind, life, psyche, and
cosmos" (Walsh & Vaughan, 1993, p. 3).
In the preface to his book Toward a Psychology
of Being Maslow (1962) defined transpersonal
psychology as a transhuman and more elevated
perspective, centered on cosmic rather than
individual needs and interests, thus going beyond
the single human condition, and to be elaborated
on the basis of compassion and love for human
nature, rather than on disgust and indifference.
Through such a higher psychology the science of
life could be also a life of passion, hope for humanity,
and revelation of values.
In more recent times, especially through Ken
Wilber's research (e.g., 1997), transpersonal
psychology has become a specialized field of
developmental studies, addressing the stages of
identity and consciousness in which the highest
talents, creativity, and intuitive intelligence flourish
as optimal well-being and behavior, contributing to
the peaceful evolution of the planet. In this frame
of reference, transpersonal psychology intends to
offer not only a context for mental healing, but a
system of growth in which potentialities that are
latent in the unconscious can be integrated to
the point of attaining the spiritual goal of
Enlightenment, corresponding to direct realization
ofthe spiritual essence of the Self and to Liberation
from the suffering due to ontological ignorance.
The realization of the Self, as outlined in the
meditative tradition, corresponds to the apex of all the
lines of development: the cognitive ones, corresponding
to superconscious intuition which perceives the
The InternationalJournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, VoL 19, 133-140 133
universal principles; the affective ones, corresponding
to unconditional and inclusive love; the moral ones,
corresponding to action without attachment in the
service of life; and the interpersonal ones,
corresponding to solidarity, compassion, and
generosity toward others (Boggio Gilot, 1987).
Transpersonal studies have developed in the USA
emphasizing the value of the Eastern meditative
tradition, overall Hindu and Buddhist, for its methods
of awareness and transformation, and much work
has been done toward a synthesis between these
methods of meditation and psychology. Antecedents
to trans personal psychology, however, existed in
Europe much before the birth of the American
movement. As pointed out by Descamps (1991):
"Transpersonal psychotherapy was, at its beginning,
a typically European construction, with the Swiss
Carl Gustav Jung, the Italian Roberto Assagioli, the
French Robert DesoiUe, the Austrian Viktor Frankl,
the German Karl Durckheim. These are the five
precursors of transpersonal psychotherapy."
In addition to the foremost psychologists
mentioned by Descamps, the leader of the French
Transpersonal Association, Europe has also
contributed a precious spiritual tradition, mainly
from Christian sources, and both contributions are
relevant for the development of research in the field.
The in European
Transpersonal Psychologists
The common element of four of the above five
European trans personal pioneers is the
conception of the ego-Self axis.
Carl Gustav Jung
G
OING FAR beyond the narrow psychoanalytic
concept of personality, based on the mechanis-
tic, materialistic, and biomedical model, Jung (1980,
1983) defined the Self as a totality, embracing indi-
vidual and collective unconsciousness and synthe-
sizing all of their polarities in a wholeness. He
pointed out that the Self is not only a totality but
also a center transcending the ego and operating
on it. Such a paradoxical description ofthe Self as a
wholeness and transcendent center is widely de-
scribed in the Upanishads, the last part of the Vedas,
the ancient Hindu sacred texts on which is founded
the Advaita Vedanta tradition, providing the larg-
est source of knowledge on the nature of the Self
and Self-realization. Jung used a symbolic language
to define the Self. The symbol he used was the circle,
an archetypal figure of wholeness where the circum-
ference represents all the forms of individuality and
the center the point to which aU refers. In other
words, the circle represents the Self as the center of
an extension that includes all human components
and that maintains and holds in equilibrium the
entire psyche and the personal ego.
Comparing the totality of the Self to the
fragmented ego expressing itself as a mask or
persona, Jung used another metaphor, noting that
as the earth turns around the sun, so the ego
turns around the Self As a central and transcendent
principle, the Selfis like an interior guide of a superior
order: differentiated by the conscious personality, it
is a higher subject acting as a regulating factor,
inspiring the ego and bringing it to maturation. The
Self operates beyond the psychological contents
and independently of conscious efforts.
Roberto Assagioli
T
HE FATHER of psychosynthesis, Assagioli,
shared with Jung the concept ofthe ego-Self
axis. In his view, the Self is behind, or above, the
conscious ego, and exists in an area of reality which
is different from the flow of psychological
phenomena and from organic life: the Self cannot
be influenced by their contents, but its own
influence can deeply modify the psychophysical
conditions (Assagioli, 1973).
Assagioli recognized that the Self has a
permanent nature and is interconnected to
universal life. In other words, the Self has a
universal and transcendent nature that is beyond
the limits of death and finitude. It is the archetypal
essence of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and the
seat of the manifest spiritual virtues which
originate from an undifferentiated and indivisible
reality (Spirit, Consciousness, Summum Bonum).
Compared to Jung, Assagioli goes beyond theory
and proposes a practical experiential goal. For
Assagioli, Self-realization becomes connected to
applied and transformative spirituality: he referred
to this as the goal of psychosynthesis and the
highest meaning of human development.
Assagioli emphasized that Self-experience is
different from Self-realization. The former is a
temporary and transitory experience which can
arise when ordinary consciousness is deconstructed
for various reasons, such as through meditative
techniques or deep visualizations as well as through
traumas or experiences of deep love. Far more than
a transitory experience, Self-realization is, instead,
the ending point of the developmental process of
integration of all the unconscious potentialities: it
is the highest stage of identity and consciousness.
Viktor Frankl
T
HE MEANING of ego transcendence is implicitly
found also in the theories of Viktor Frankl
(1983), the Austrian codifier oflogotherapy. In this
context, the human dimension goes beyond
psychological patterns and includes a higher noetic
area. Suffering is related not only to psychodynamic
causes, but also to noetic disturbances resulting in
existential frustration and inner void and despair.
Going beyond the behavioristic perspective,
according to which individuals merely obey or react
to external stimuli, the Austrian psychotherapist
stressed the free capacity to address the issues of
life and to realize the specific meanings of an
individuated existence. The need for meaning is
independent from others and is an expression of
human nature and a sign of mental health. The lack
of meaning is behind the many corruptions of
modern life, and the repression of the need for
meaning has a relevant role in the genesis of
psychopathology and suicide.
The meanings pointed out by Frankl refer to the
actualization of human potential, consisting in the
unconscious talents of intelligence, creativity, and
values: the psychology which addresses meanings
is a ''high psychology," that is different from, but
complementary to, "depth psychology."
The search for meaning is what produces the shift
to ego transcendence--namely, putting oneself in
relation with something higher. Ego transcendence
is based on universal values and meanings, which
include the actions of helping others. In this context,
the evolution of human growth shifts from that of
Homo sapiens, who move between success and
failure, to that of Homo patiens, who understand
suffering as a means of evolution toward a higher
and more expansive way of being in the world.
Karl Durckheim
F
OREMoST PSYCHOLOGIST and spiritual teacher
Karl Dfuckheim (1982), proposed an inner path
that takes as an example the great self-realized
Masters and balances the two cultures of meditation
and psychology. Deeply connected to the dimension of
the sacred, Diirckheim finds that love of God gives
meaning to inner life and that spirituality nourishes
the search for mystery inside the intimate Soul.
To Diirckheim, the ego dimension is a part of the
great unity of the Self, and unifying the ego-Self
dichotomy gives the highest meaning to life.
Overcoming ordinary personality and discovering the
unifYing essence of the Selfis the issue of real maturity
and optimal mental health. The goal of transcending
the ego is realized through the path of initiation-
that requires silence and action: silence for the time of
inner search, and action for activating creativity to
the service of life. Joining contemplation to action and
service is the basic and fundamental way to realize
transpersonal development.
The level of the human being and the expression of
the Self are mirrored in the relationship to life when
action produces well-being and harmony. The supreme
level of human development manifests itself as a
constancy in overcoming egoism: The more elevated
the level of the human being, the more his/her life is
determined by unity in behavior, feeling, and thought.
In this context, unity is not a philosophical term or an
abstract theory but a practical way of living, consisting
of intuition, cooperation, love, and service. Diirckheim
stresses the power of liberated human beings who are
witnesses and messengers of the transcendent,
superior order of life. These human beings of ''high
rank" are unattachable-authenticaUy free from the
boundaries of any kind of attachment to material and
mental dimensions.
Dedicated to healing suffering but working
differently than an Eastern guru, Diirckheim has been
a spiritual psychotherapist using psychodynamic,
analytical methods combined with the best of authentic
religious life.
~ Ego Transcendence in
Christian Spirituality ~
T
HE THEME of ego transcendence is present in
an the writings of these European pioneers
of trans personal psychology, but the way to reach
it is only part of spiritual traditions. In this
context, since the very beginning, and up through
the present, the transpersonal movement has
mostly approached Eastern traditions rather than
Western ones.
Perhaps this cultural choice could be related
to the more explicit reference of Eastern tradi-
tions to a transformative spirituality associated
with optimal mental health and development.
Eastern sacred texts contain deeply detailed
Transpersonal Psychology in Europe 135
methods of mental awareness and transformation
which help the healing processes at both the psy-
chosomatic and the psychological level. Moreover,
as exemplified especially in Patanjali's Yoga tradi-
tion, they consist of progressive techniques which
are especially helpful for the difficulties of the neo-
phyte, whereas Christian tradition teachings are
often more fit for advanced meditators at an evolved
stage oftrans-ego development. At the present time,
therefore, research in comparative Eastern and
Western spirituality seems to be an urgent need, as
it can contribute to a deeper understanding of
transpersonal processes and methods.
In my experience as a transpersonal psychothera-
pist and researcher in developmental theories, with
both a Christian background and deep experience
as a seeker in the Yoga-Vedanta tradition, I have
found common and complementary elements in
Western and Eastern spirituality relevant to
transpersonal development and optimal mental
health. In a developmental perspective, Hindu
teachings are crucial for the integration of cogni-
tive translogical structures (e.g., the process of dis-
crimination in Vedanta develops superconscious
intuition), whereas Christian mysticism is especially
valuable to opening the heart chakra and for the
deep transformation from egocentric feelings to al-
truistic and unconditional love. The combination of
the wisdom of Vedanta with the agape of Christian-
ity seems to unifY the masculine and feminine po-
larity of spirituality and for this reason can repre-
sent an integral way for transpersonal development
(Boggio Gilot, 1992). In a healing perspective, both
Christian and Hindu practices produce positive
mental qualities and well-being.
Let me point out some basic Christian assump-
tions which I found relevant for transpersonal
purposes in both a developmental and a healing
perspective. They are taken from Meister
Eckhart, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross,
Thomas Merton, the Fathers of the Philokalia ,
and from two anonymous jewels of Christianity, The
Imitation of Christ and The Cloud of Unknowing.
The common denominator in these Christian
sources is the idea that the spiritual path is
composed ofthree basic stages: purification, insight,
and unification with God. In this context, virtues
and mental qualities which are deeply relevant for
ego transcendence and liberation from suffering are
cultivated and developed. The most important ones
are humility, devotion, and surrender to God's will.
These spiritual qualities, which are the basis of the
Christian path, are also valuable for the
transformation of mental factors of ignorance and
separation, and their practice can have a direct
application in psychotherapy.
Humility
I
N MEISTER ECKHART (1987), humility is described
in terms of forgetting oneself. This is very similar
to the Eastern concept of disidentification or
detachment. Forgetting oneself does not mean that
we must lose the love for ourselves or separate from
our needs, but that we have to transcend the
arrogant personal importance and the blind
assumption that only our ideas are valid. A similar
concept is found in Thomas Merton (1991), who
points out that we have to detach not from things
but from ourselves in order to see God. The obstacle
is our separate win.
Both the Eastern and the Western traditions
consider egocentric intentionality as a barrier to the
integration of transpersonal potentialities and to
Self-awakening. Personal will (by which is meant
not the indispensable mental function but the praxis
of an activity dominated by egocentric aims and
attached to its pleasures and possessions) is the real
enemy of spiritual unity.
In Christian mysticism there are two levels of
humility: one comes from contemplating human
fragility and the higher one from contemplating the
perfection of God.
In The Cloud of Unknowing (Anonymous, 1992)
humility is described as the true knowledge and full
awareness of one's own ego as it is. A similar concept
is found in St. Teresa of Avila (1992), who describes
humility as the virtue that allows us to see ourselves
as we are. Since humility is connected with
knowledge, it is also connected with awareness and
insight about the ego's unconscious dimensions. In
fact, if we reach humility we are no longer disturbed
by what we are, we stop defending ourselves from
our shadow, and we accept seeing our real nature.
In other words, the condition of humility, as
acceptance of oneself, permits one to overcome the
defensive mechanisms which create perceptual
filters that obscure the vision of oneself.
Because it permits the acceptance and knowledge
of oneself, humility is the main quality of clear
vision, psychological integration, and mental
healing.
In the absence of humility, and when pride is
present, illusion and suffering develop. Psychothera-
pists know that superego pathology, which
constellates neurotic and narcissistic conflicts, is full
of pride and therefore void of humility.
Pride is a main factor of inner hate, as it builds
omnipotent expectations and motivations which
damage peace of mind and create inner conflicts.
The narcissistic struggle against one's unacceptable
limits and defects is a characteristic of the proud
mind, which creates separation in the inner world.
Substituting humility for pride is a task of
psychotherapy, in order to create healing factors
which alleviate mental conflicts.
Devotion
L
IKE HUMILITY, devotion is a main quality for
the Christian lover of God, applied as an
expression of reverence toward God and all His
creation. Devotion has an implicit meaning of all-
pervasive and inclusive love for nature and humanity:
it fosters ecological concern, compassion, empathy,
and forgiveness. Moreover, devotion is an attitude of
pure intentionality, which represents the essence of
spiritual transformation.
In The Imitation of Christ (Anonymous, 1997), it
is said that the basis of the elevation to God is the
intention to reach Him. Right intention is the devoted
attitude of looking beyond the visible reality,
including one's body and desires, toward the
invisible essential goodness. In the Vedanta tradition
(Samkara, 1981), devotion is considered an ardent
will for liberation from ignorance, expressing itself
as the unceasing search for one's real nature (the
Self, or immanent Divine). In this context, devotion
is at the service of Self-realization. The more devotion
provides a pure and selfless intentionality, the more
it donates a heart full of love. The Christian pure
intentionality, as the Vedanta ardent will for
liberation, is the cry of the heart for unity with the
Sacred and such a state of spiritual desire propels
one toward right action and loving feelings.
From an ethical point of view, intentionality, as
the ardent direction to realize the divine qualities,
releases consciousness from ego attachment and
promotes a redirection of desires and choices from
egoistic projects to altruistic and loving ones.
Besides being an ethical quality fostering the
loving relationship with God, devotion is a
fundamental tool for developing intuition:
transpersonal insight is the gift of an open and loving
heart. In fact, the space of mind where devotion exists
as an attitude or pure intentionality toward the
Sacred, qualifies itself as a state of silent receptivity
where intuition starts to develop. Like humility,
devotion is also a quality of mental healing, dissolving
solitude, insecurity, and weakness.
Surrender
I
N THE Christian path, devotion is the door to
surrender to God's will: the peak of realization
of inner peace. It consists in accepting everything
that happens in life, as it is and as it comes, with
trust and serenity, listening with hope to the
teachings of life. Such a deep acceptance brings
the human being closer to the Truth, and also
builds calmness, another quality of mental health.
The awareness produced by humility, the sense
of love and insight produced by devotion, and the
serenity produced by surrender to God, are also
qualities of mental health which open one to unity
and interpersonal harmony.
The person who experiences humility, devotion,
and surrender becomes less and less concentrated
on personal needs and more concentrated on the
needs of others, thus forgetting personal difficulties
and problems while becoming attentive to those of
others. Such an egoless and altruistic attitude
opens one to Service and is also a way of healing
one's wounds. Helping others and forgetting oneself
produces an openness through which it becomes
possible to receive transcendent healing energies;
moreover, it gives meaning to life, dissolves fear,
and increases freedom.
On Solitude
I
N THE path of ego transcendence, both in the
Eastern and the Western traditions, it is easy to
encounter obstacles and pitfalls. The Christian
sacred texts advise the seeker of God that even
Service, which is the essence of egolessness, can
become an obstacle for spiritual evolution if one is
attached to the idea of being a good person; in this
sense, Service might reawaken pride and personal
importance. The advice is to consider oneself as a
selfless servant, to be protected from the ever-
present risk of pride. The real spiritual ascender
knows that what really matters is not what one
does, but what one becomes by doing. The real aim
of Service is to acquire the virtues that can help in
transcending the ego's prison.
In order to avoid pitfalls, Christian purification
teaches that it is necessary to live in solitude and
silence, dedicated to prayer and meditation. The
condition of mental silence is also mentioned in the
Hindu tradition as a basic qualification for
enlightenment.
Patanjali (1992) states that "Yoga is the
suspension of mental contents." Yoga, which means
unity of the individual soul with the universal soul,
requires the dissolution of mental contents and the
absorption in the void as pure awareness without
thought and images. Like Patanjali, St. John of the
Cross points out that since perfection consists ofthe
unity ofthe soul with God, in order to realize it, the
mind must be released from sensorial reactions,
intellectual thinking, and imagination. Any kind of
mental process is an obstacle to the divine unity
and must be dissolved. As do the Eastern masters,
St. John (1979) describes how personal attachments
to sensorial desires and temporal possessions
prevent the silence of mind and produce weakness,
affliction, anxiety, and lack of awareness. In other
words, the path of purification of will, thought,
imagination, feeling, and sensation leading to
silence develops qualities of spiritual insight and a
progressive freedom from suffering.
For the Fathers of the Philokalia (Philocalia,
1981), absolute solitude (Hesychasm) is the
fundamental means to develop mental silence,
preventing stimuli which capture attention and
move the flow of thinking. In Hesychasm, solitude
is cultivated by living in a cell: this is not only a
concrete environment, but metaphorically it is the
private inner space of prayer and meditation. The
cell is the inner dimension wherein the meditator
abides and leads the spiritual practice. It refers to a
state of consciousness of introversion and attention
to inner movements, which submits the person to
the so-caned inner struggle against the mental
enemies or egotistic drives.
In the spiritual path, the more virtues that
develop, the more knowledge and healing develop.
Purification fosters gratitude and love for God, but
also peace of heart and interpersonal harmony.
~ Mental Health Beyond
Egocentric Suffering ~
1\ S ALREADY mentioned, the integration between
.l1...psychotherapy and spiritual teachings offers
an expanded framework for spiritual growth and
mental healing (Boggio GHot, 1998). Such an
integral model is neither just another way of
dealing with psychopathology nor another school
of psychotherapy. It is a larger perspective for
developing psychological diagnosis and therapy
which reveals the role of egoism in mental suffering
and the role of spirituality for mental healing.
In this integral perspective, transformative spiri-
tuality is a means of ego transcendence and a heal-
ing factor for egocentric suffering. Transformative
spirituality emphasizes the fundamental role oflove
as a factor in the solution of conflicts and wisdom
as a factor of peace, freedom, and creativity. In this
frame of reference, two main categories of practice
are relevant:
1. The Eastern practices of awareness and
observation-in order to understand mental
processes and overcome the illusory perceptual
filters which create boundaries of consciousness.
2. The Christian practices of virtues-in order
to develop positive states of mind based on love.
Observing the Sources of Mental Suffering
I
N THE awareness and observation path, it is
possible to realize how egoistic factors can be
hannful and produce mental suffering. For example,
greed for pleasure and the focus on obtaining only
gratifications, avoiding any frustration, is the root
of existential anxiety and hostile defence against
the world.
The need for ego assertion is at the very root of
rage, fear, hate, and rebellion. The stronger the
reference to oneself, in terms of "I likell don't like, I
wantJI don't want," the more the person is weak
and dependent on others. Such a dependence is a
fundamental fragility consisting in the incapacity
to bear the normal sorrows and failures of life. In
other words, egocentric vulnerability is proportional
to the feeling of personal importance: From the
strong attachment to oneself comes possessiveness
and the anxiety oflosing things, and therefore gives
rise to dependence and aggressiveness.
In the egoistic mind, solitude is always present.
No one in the world can warm the solitude which
inhabits a heart closed by egocentrism. Moreover,
passions, such as desires and aversions, create a
basic feeling of insecurity and fear. The stronger
the egocentric drive, the greater the terror of being
disappointed and deprived. Resentment, jealousy,
envy, and competition are factors of egocentric
suffering present in those who are unable to accept
that their will can be defeated.
The anxiety of abandonment is the result ofthe
egoistic pretense that others must nourish one's
inferiority and frustrated needs. Such people tend to
become satellites of others and expect love and food
from them, in the illusion that others have the power
to nourish them. From the egocentric attitude,
particularly the pretense of being perfect, also comes
the feeling of inferiority and shame for one's limits
and defects. Such a narcissistic context, connected to
the idea of perfection, is based on the will for power
and can be found in individuals who are extremely
concentrated on their ambitions.
Integral psychotherapy teaches that optimal
mental health can only be reached beyond the
boundaries of ordinary egoistic attitudes, starting
with their building rocks: pride and avidity. Real
poisons of mind, they are at the very root of the sense
of separation from the unity of life. They build
ignorance and are the sources of all other factors of
suffering.
One who is possessed by avidity and pride
experiences the stress of competition, fear offailure,
fragility, touchiness in interpersonal relations, and
anxiety for the future. One who is enthralled by
avidity and pride experiences the worst state of
dependence and weakness. Possessiveness and
defensive attitudes are the effects of avidity and
pride: they develop dishonesty and violence as
means to compensate for the ego's insecurity.
The Practice of Virtues as Healing Process
O
THE. created by such
. POISOns of the mmd reqUITes a process of mental
purification, which is nothing else than a cultivation of
spiritual qualities. ill Christian tenns, the practice of
humility heals the wounds of pride, which are intoler-
ance, fear, and competition; the practice of devotion heals
the wounds of possessiveness and liberates one from
the sense of separation from others; the practice of sur-
render to God's will heals the wounds of both pride and
avidity and releases one from any personal desire.
The purity of mind reached through humility, devo-
tion, and surrender allows the archetypal fonns to start
being integrated. Courage, strength, will, and creativ-
ity are reflections of humility and devotion, as mental
stability and lack of anxiety are effects of the surrender
to God's will.
In the spiritual path, both East and West, libera-
tion from egocentric suffering starts when conscious-
ness becomes inhabited by attention to mental con-
tents. It then grows through the awareness of the
duality of evil, or egocentric illusions, and goodness,
as altruistic creativity. Liberation is eventually real-
ized as the joyful expression of a nonego state, when
personal importance is abandoned and we live con-
centrated on cultivating virtues.
Liberation becomes a state of invulnerability when
surrender to the divine will is attained, as the serene
acceptance of the good and evil of one's experiences,
beyond attachments and aversions, in the joyful rever-
ence for all that occurs in life.
Conclu.ding Remarks
S
PIRITUAL TEACHINGS help us understand that ego
transcendence, through transformative
spirituality, yields not only an ethical way of being
but also optimal health and lastingjoy. In the path
of ego transcendence through dissolution of the
egocentric boundaries, the themes of mental
health, consciousness expansion, and development
of virtues appear in a continuum and demonstrate
the interface between psychology, spirituality, and
social ethicalness.
Ego transcendence is what our world really needs
in order to foster peace. Beyond ego there is unity
with the interrelated life ofthe universe, embracing
the infinite, and harmony with the Sacred.
By observing life in the perspective of unity with
the Sacred, any concern disappears and the ever-
present inner joy awakens.
When, in permanent joy, the archetypes of the
Self appear as the essence of beauty, goodness, and
truth, all that has been sought after in the external
world stops existing. Any external expectation dies
and the feeling of deep fulfillment and gratitude
takes the place of any personal drive.
In the harmony of a purified mind, ego
transcendence permits us to be what we really are:
no longer a false and weak identity struggling for
power, success and wealth, but lasting channels of
the divine power andjoyous witnesses of its beauty.
To strive toward this ultimate goal is the spiritual
task of trans personal research and its real
meaning-that any seeker should keep in mind and
pursue with the best of efforts, talents, and love.
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Appendix
Transpersonal European Organizations
T
HE FORMAL transpersonal movement started in
Europe with the establishment of the European
Transpersonal Association (EUROTAS) in 1987.
EUROTAS was founded by Monique Tiberghien
(Belgium), Marc-Alain Descamps (France), Laura
Boggio Gilot (Italy), and Rumold Mol (Netherlands).
Beyond personal frontiers and in the context of
different disciplines, cultures, and professions,
EUROTAS is open to a wide range of trends with a
transpersonal perspective and is not limited to
any particular discipline, school of thought, or
technique.
Over the years, some EUROTAS members, oriented
toward a deeper context for research and
transformative spirituality, gave rise to a more
professionally oriented organisation, the European
Transpersonal Psychology Association (ETPA).
ETPA was established in 1999 by Laura Boggio Gilot
and Marc-Alain Descamps as an association of
professional psychologists and psychiatrists for
the study, teaching, and research of transpersonal
psychology and psychotherapy in the integral
perspective. Pointing out the relevance of integral
psychology, as defined by Ken Wilber, ETPA is focused
on transformative spirituality and consciousness
development beyond ego, through spiritual practices,
in order to understand reality and heal individual
and social life.
In this context, ETPA fosters a dynamic epistemology
toward body, mind, soul, and Spirit wholeness, and
unified or nondual consciousness, in which the
qualities of intuitive awareness, compassion, and
discriminative wisdom are expressed in a socially
engaged spirituality.
Teaching and research of transpersonal psychology
and psychotherapy in an integral perspective include:
developmental research, consciousness disciplines,
teaching and practices of the nondual tradition,
purification and self-healing techniques, awareness
training, clinical aspects of spiritual crises,
relationship between psychotherapy and meditative
practices, and Eastern and Western psychology.
ETPA's members are recommended to be committed
to daily spiritual practices, such as meditation,
action without attachment, service, cultivation of
altruistic love, and truthfulness.
In addition to individual membership, ETPA
includes the following six national associations:
Al:PT, Italian Association of Trans personal Psychology
President: Laura Boggio Gilot
AFT, French Transpersonal Association
President: Marc-Alain Descamps
ALUBRAT, Portuguese-Brazilian TranspersonalAssociation
President: Mario Simoes
ATRE, Spanish Transpersonal Association
President: Manuel Almendro
OrA, German Transpersonal Association
President: Martin Gruber
NTF, Norwegian TranspersonalAssociation
President: Loyd Henriksen
Towards a Quintessential Approach to Crisis and
Disease: The Crossroads-Crossfire-Turning Point-
Conflict Theory (Cepe)
Salvador Harguindey
Clinica USP-La Esperanza
Vitoria, Spain
An attempt is made to integrate reality, exterior and interior, from its highest to its lowest forms of
expression. From peak experiences to chaotic "pit experiences," linear to cyclical to timeless time is
perceived in a nondual, spiraling model and unified field. Deep crisis and conflict help to create an
integral, perhaps quintessential, general theory of human creativity and human destructiveness, in
order to integrate destiny, fate, free will, and vocation. Outstanding historical and literary examples
become psychological guinea pigs of a spiritual laboratory. Destructive dynamics and behaviors allow
reaching a better understanding of evil in order to both prevent it and heal it. Since peak experiences
may have enough in common to make them "all one," the opposite, chaotic-pit experiences, can also
make the deepest crises and conflicts, from psychospiritual to political, all one.
Now, of all diseases the fashion is the same but
the seat varies. So, while diseases are thought
to be entirely unlike the other, owing to
differences in their seat, in reality all have one
essence and cause.
-Hippocrates
e& An Etiological-Universal Approach to
Disease and Conflict C&
BRAHAM MASLOW in psychology, and Otto
Warburg (1956) in cancer research, have
both said that we can only cure what we can
understand. Others, from Albert Einstein (1954) to
John White (1988), expressed a similar view, that a
problem is never solved at the same level at which
it was created. In an attempt to integrate the effects
of environmental versus genetic tendencies in the
mass-effect pathogenesis of"disease"-both physical
and psychological-a mathematical formulation
was proposed earlier relating time and location,
while progressive thoughtful integration as opposed
to reductionistic specialization was stressed
(Harguindey, Katin, Edgerton, & Takita, 1981).
Although initially these efforts were focused on the
field of cancer research, now it is appropriate to try
wider generalizations of this unitarian approach.
The main shortcoming of modern science is not the
lack of scientific knowledge, of "data," but a lack of
insight to integrate many areas of research into
larger fields of understanding. A brand new
perspective seems necessary to embrace many
different levels and branches of knowledge into
higher, deeper, and more encompassing and
comprehensive syntheses. The final aim would be
to reach a metasynthesis of aU knowledge-a new
"theory of everything" (Hawking, 1988, pp. 155-169).
This new line of thought considers "analysis" as a
reductionistic descent into matter and "synthesis"
as a new ascent towards spirit (Aivanhov, 1988).
The overwhelming materialism of the modern
world has become extremely cunning in disguising
novelty as true progress. Such a shortsighted
attitude towards human life and the search for
meaning demonstrates a total lack of understanding
of higher learning experiences, such as the existence
of episodes of sudden insight and/or peak
experiences as the main background for true
scientific creativity (Einstein, 1954). So far, the
modern and postmodern tendency to disintegrate
the whole into smaller and smaller parts (analysis)
The InternationalJournal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vo!' 19, 141-161 141
has clearly won the battle over efforts directed
towards reaching new integrations and
generalizations in any field of science or medicine
(synthesis). Thus, any trend towards integral
approaches appears to be in evolutionary conflict with
the trend towards increasing specialization. The
specialist is bound to know each time more and more
about less and less. Relentlessly following a pattern
of redudionistic thought leads to progressively
narrower views, eventually allowing the specialist to
know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.
Contrariwise, a more holonomic and transpersonal
approach to the life sciences needs to delve into
con-text before text, con-science before science,
placing spirit over mind and mind over matter
(Dossey, 1986). Such efforts represent an attempt to
recover the soul ofthe soulless scientific community
that prevails nowadays (Dossey, 1989; Sheldrake
1990a, 1990b;Tada, 1996; Tart, 1999;vvtcite, 1988;
Wilber, 1998). The present contribution will also focus
upon "an integral approach to crisis and conflict." It
represents a preliminary attempt to describe in an
all-embracing manner some generalities of "the
etiopathogenic and healing process," descent and
ascent, as an effort towards an all-encompassing
interpretation and understanding of physical and
psychological and/or spiritual disease.
From the point of view of treatment, a radical
approach to any psychological and/or physical disease
(the root approach), is sought after. To reach the core
of a neoformed or neoforming process, from cancer
degeneration to psychological disease, it is necessary
to descend to the most intimate depth and essence of
a process. The ideal situation arises when we can act
at the quintessential level, leaving outside, in a second
plane, the external, more superficial and partial
manifestations ofthe tree of a disease, its trunk (the
stalk approach) or even its branches (the branch
approach), the text ofthe disease.
The ideal situation arises when we can focus upon
the energetic con-text of any disease process, its
quintessential conditioning and etiological source. In
different fields of science, from biology to physiology
to physics to psychology, this context was caned
terrain by Pasteur, internal media by Cannon,
propitiatory field by Popper, morphogenetic fields by
Sheldrake, quantum-energetic and unified field by
Einstein, and collective unconscious by Jung: different
words for an integral field-seed-root-terrall approach.
However, such an "underground perspective" can
never be seen from the surface, that is, with the eye of
the flesh and eye ofthe mind (the Cartesian-dualistic,
rational method). Beyond (and below) this point, a
powerful burst of insight mediated by the inner eye is
the only means to provide the necessary vision in the
dark to penetrate a process to its very depths and grasp
at once its intimate nature, an amethodic-method
ready to unmask the core of the problem. Such an
approach has been called "the intuitive intellect" by
Aldous Huxley and "the third kind of knowledge" or
"intuitive and transcendental knowledge" by Spinoza.
This is the same kind of knowledge that can penetrate
to the Divine base of all beings (Huxley, 1992), while it
proceeds from an adequate idea ofthe absolute essence
of certain attributes of God and the adequate
knowledge ofthe essence ofthings (Spinoza, 1976, pp.
197-198).
However, the proposed in-depth research places
a high demand on the investigator, who has to
prepare himself or herself to go to "the very bottom
ofthings" in a highly committed, nondual (taoistic)
way. The aim is to contemplate the whole situation
with one's own inner eyes from the core and furnace
of the process-even becoming one with the very
same disease--until the researcher and the subject
cannot be considered two anymore. This
psychospiritual descent can lead the researcher to
join Dante on the way down to Hades. The only hope
now rests in the thought that healing and salvation
springs from the center of evil, an "initiatic" teaching
that can be found in many sources, from the I Ching
to Heraclitus, Holderlin, Aurobindo, Goethe,
Dostoyevski, Herman Hesse, and so forth. This
becoming nondual with any serious and life-
threatening disease process-from physical to
psychological to spiritual--can only be coped with
by approaching it through a metamotivated spirit
accompanied by a high degree of transpersonal
empathy and generosity. The entire cycle of descent-
ascent then becomes a deep-fishing expedition that
probably not many would be willing to choose to
embark upon on their own accord. Going back to the
very beginnings of modem medical thought we realize
that they were not dualistic at all. Hippocrates said
that one can only cure the diseases one has gone
through oneself, a thesis that runs parallel with the
shamanic dictum that only the injured can heal.
Thus, a descending trip seems absolutely necessary.
This is also the challenge demanded by living nature
itself in order to get a good grip on a disease and
bring it back to the surface, sometimes just before
our getting choked and swallowed by its destructive
dynamics (S. Pamker, 1982, 1987).
The major difficulty is still to unmask the process
well before the first external symptoms and signs
of abnormality and manifested pathology, before its
"exteriors" arise to the surface and a terrible crisis
explodes. In the cancer context, for example, this
was called "the sleeping time" of a disease process
by Nobel prize winner Otto Warburg (1956). The
underground approach, however, teaches that no
large crisis ever comes "out of the blue,"
spontaneously, without a reason or cause. On the
contrary, a living and active silent pathogenesis
always dwells behind the curtains, sometimes for a
long time, without being noticed. Thus, although a
severe disease or problem may appear to be
causeless and spontaneous to an outside observer,
this is never so to an inside observer. The secret is
that the rational, too rational at times, empirical
and positivistic mind-the fashion of the times-is
rarely if ever able to be aware of the existence or
recognize the hidden patterns and destructive
energetic forces operating behind the screen of
external reality. Either the outside observer is not
prepared for it, or worse, does not want to and/or is
afraid of it. Denial, dogmatism, and pride are always
easier; they make life much more comfortable. You
can make more money too. But true creativity is
killed and lost. And the search for truth too.
Any serious disease process usually ends up as
the external manifestation of some kind of crisis.
The onset of a deep crisis indicates that a deep-
seated conflict is in need of resolution. In order to
achieve a restitution ad integrum, or true cure, the
ascending, healing branch of the evolution of an
abnormal process always follows the opposed trend
leading to the etiopathogenesis and onset of the
disease. Since it is always impossible to analyze
and embrace, not to say control, the multiplicity of
factors at many different levels of organization
involved in a degenerative process-this limiting
the reductionistic-scientist approach-a more
comprehensive and holistic attitude appears to be
essential in order to discover the common final
pathways leading to any disease process. This
demands a transcendence oflevels, ajump towards
a more synthetic and higher encompassing whole,
and such an endeavor can only be achieved by a
previously ascended and expanded consciousness.
This attitude also represents a leap into the
unknown, a necessary one that will open previously
unthinkable and untrodden ways, new hopes and
an "opening of the future." This going over the top
ofthe problem itself, a complete breach of planes, is
the type of approach that was described at the
beginning of the field of relativity physics (Dossey,
1986, p. 243; Wilber, 1987). Now we need a similar
kind of new perspective in psychology, medicine,
oncology, politics, and so on.
Truly transformational events have been
associated with the onset of different new paradigms
in the epistemology of science (Kuhn, 1975, p. 146).
These large changes are usually preceded by a period
of time in which the previous paradigm and model of
thought has exhausted its possibilities and the new
one has not arrived yet. The nature ofthis interlude
can be most conflictive, unstable, and even
dangerous-the interparadigmatic period. A high
degree of confusion, even violence, may ensue when
the expected new world has not been born yet and
the old one is agonizing (Wilber, 1999), Unfortunately,
this appears to be the present situation in nature,
ecology, human development, medicine, sociopolitics,
the global situation, spirituality, and so on. It is a
time of crisis and conflict, when a so badly needed
ascent of the whole of reality is not yet possible,
perhaps because the new idea has not yet
materialized in a mature form on the surface of the
given, using the terminology of Hegel. This can be
secondary either to the fact that the foundation stones
of the new life are not yet planted deep enough into
the (right kind of) ground, or because the seed is of
the wrong kind. In any case, the new reality somehow
keeps hiding from us.
The First
Period: The Descending Path.
The Cancer Example ea,
T
HE EVOLUTIONARY changes to come are usually
announced by the most sensitive and
developed minds and consciousness of the times,
the so-called "cutting-edge in evolution" (Capra,
1985, p. 309; Ferguson, 1985, pp. 221-222; Kuhn,
1975, pp. 150-151, 153-154). At the present
interparadigmatic moment, what appears to be
lacking is "to come across" a deep foundation stone
for the new building of the so-caned new paradigm,
Until then, any attempt of construction of a world-
centric vision based upon a vision-logic approach
(Wilber, 1999, pp. 102, 116) to human life will be
like building castles in the air. In the meantime,
the urgently needed metanoic jump towards a new
megasynthesis of knowledge (S. Hawking's, 1993,
new "theory of everything"?) becomes impossible
(Figure 1, area K to B).
Towards a Quintessential Approach to Crisis and Disease 143
Modernity seems to have provided humankind
with most of its successes and failures, some
enlightenment at first, later increasing darkness.
It is time for a change, not in the sense of translation
but of true transformation (see Wilber, 1999). From
a quantum-relativistic stage and/or dimension in
mental evolution, what is needed is some kind of a
quintessential approach to the essence and dynamics
of crises and conflicts. Also, a much better
understanding about the phenomena of sudden
insight and "naked" creativity is needed
(Harguindey, 1998, ch. 14).
Like Hippocrates' dictum at the beginning of this
article, the pathogenesis of any conflict leading to
the outburst of the lowest point of any crisis seems
to follow very similar or even the same general
pattern. This may apply to the most serious
scientific, social, and political problems, as well as
personal ones, the latter in their different aspects
of physical, psychological, and/or spiritual disease.
Thus, if its hidden descending and regressive
dynamics (Figure 1, points K, B, and M) (Washburn,
1995, ch. 7; 1999, p. 34) are not interfered with in a
"preventive medicine" manner, sooner or later this
blind unawareness will aHow the explosion of the
nuclear core. This is exteriorized in the form of pain,
suffering, disgrace, tragedy, and many other
destructive realities, even death. The sudden
manifestation of a fragmenting and destructive
crisis-from a psychotic episode to a heart attack
and the onset of revolutionary political violence-
can be compared to the beginning of an earthquake.
It is a devastating revelation that we are unable to
predict when and how an eruption is going to take
place, since it appears seemingly without any
previous notice. We must yet learn how to become
sensitive to the basic warping chains and essential
predetermining contexts that eventually lead to the
final outburst ofthe crisis (Figure 1, point C).
The underlying dynamics of specific preprocesses
have to be placed in other deeper subjective and
intersubjective contexts. These can be from
propitiatory and energetic backgrounds to complex
morphogenetic or neomorphogenetic (from
neoplasia) fields (Harguindey & Gillis, 1981;
Harguindey, Anton Aparicio, & Martin Algarra,
1989; Harguindey, Pedraz, Garcia Cafiero, Perez de
Diego, & Cragoe, 1995; Harguindey, Pedraz, Garcia
Cafiero, & Katin, 2000). This attempt at
understanding the whole demands-even in the
field of research of any area of medicine, and most
of all, of malignant diseases-an integrated and
hermeneutical approach to cancer pathogenesis and
even treatment. This "neomorphogenetic seed and
root-approach" strongly indicates the active
presence of hidden and implicated contexts always
preceding and rather rigidly predetermining the
manifestation of one or another kind of abnormal
process (Harguindey, 1998, p. 595). This perspective,
buried to the rational, reductionistic, and empiric
eye, allows us to scratch deeply into the underground
etiological roots and seeds of disease. Sooner or later,
a certain neoenergetic level will automatically
activate a mass effect that will transform quality
(energy) into quantity (mass), so conditioning one
or another manifestation of unhealthy external
reality. Thus, a general "underground approach,"
similar to the one that belongs to the level of study
and interpretation of the conformational patterns
of quantum fields in theoretical physics, can be
applied to diverse areas of understanding.
From ancient Asian philosophies as portrayed
in the I Ching-a kind of "I Change"-to Heraclitus
and to outstanding modern thinkers, it is accepted
that the spinning and spiraling wheel oflife has its
ascendant and descendent branches. These
branches are bound to complete entire cycles (Eliade,
1994; Panikkar, 1993, 1998) (see Figure 1). The
cosmic cycles, if exclusively measured in linear time,
can last from instants to entire eras and eons. At
the beginning, the stagnation and instability within
the descending arm of an interparadigmatic-
interface period (Figure 1, J to K zone), either in
the personal, social, scientific, or spiritual aspects
of growth, follows the pattern of a degenerating
trend. This decaying time, if left to its own, will
eventually lead to a situation of chaos (point C). The
"B zone" (see Figure 1) stimulates the increasing
formation of unstable "free radicals," from the
psychological to the political arena, revolting almost
randomly and being in transit all the time between
different orbital and energy status (the physics of
psychology?).
The "B to C area" represents the margin, the
limit. When the descending dynamics approach the
point of chaos (Figure 1), an "apocalyptic or
cataclysmic time" progressively ensues. Point C now
becomes a "pit experience" (versus Maslow's "peak
experiences" lived at the D and H points), the lowest
turning point. Here, the power of negative
attachments and dependence on the old ways tries
to prevent the final necessary fall to be activated
in order to rebound at the bottom ofthe crisis. This
paradoxical defense mechanism can only prolong
Figure 1
Evolutionary Time, Linear and Cyclical
Omega Point (Transpersonal Eden)
(Cyclical-Linear Time)
"New World," "Eternal Present"
"Metanoia, " "Enantiodromia" H!.,........,.---
Holonomic Growth
(Integral-Ontonomic)""'"" an
Birth of New Paradigms"" .... "
" .Jnterparadigmatic Leap
Peak-Point (GOODNESS)' Q----.....
Descending Cycles
(Decaying Time)
Ascending Cycles
, ,R.egenerating-Renewal Time
(Metacosmesis)
om Time Cyclic-Linear Time
C (Myth of the eternal return)
aApocalyptical-Cataclysmic Time
. fl, me" Pit-Point (Chaos Time) (EVIL)
--.". __ un "' Tangential Time (Cyclical-Linear)
" , Cyclical Time (Descending)
iilLinear Time (Descending)
: , First Eden (Prepersonal)
"
I,
i!
the agony. From a spiritual perspective, the soul (at
least Dante's) somehow needs to touch the bottom
of the sea of darkness, its own hell and chaos, before
swimming across the descending-ascending branch
through the ocean of the night. Otherwise, it will
have no chance to ascend towards the surface before
drowning within the bottomless experience. Thus,
before any new order has a true chance to acquire a
reorganized form of stability (reconstruction), the
end of a descending branch (deconstruction) and the
bottom of the (ultimately healing?) cosmic cycle
creates a great deal of pain and suffering,
disassociation, fragmentation, and regression. This
type of integral pattern can also be applied to
understand what Eliade (1994) has called "the terror
of history" (ch. 4). Eventually; unchecked progression
ofthe descending trend will reflect a total blockade
(see I Ching, "The Stagnation," 1967, p. 129)
sometimes carrying both destructive (sadistic) and/
or self-destructive (masochistic) components, from
person to society.
The descending stage means that the necessary
links to bring the fragmented chain together have
not yet been found, making integration, health and
growth impossible. Now the borders of the deep
abyss underneath are still too far apart to be
'Jumped across." The excessive separation of the
edges of the wound (from physical to psychological
and spiritual) implies that the beginning of the
healing and seaming process (the ascending
branch) cannot yet take place. "Down there," total
darkness and chaos signals a state of maximal
disi.ntegration, inferior disassociation and
involution between different "lives," perspectives
and attitudes (Washburn, 1990). Finally, the
descending precritical situation (K and B zone) is
imbued with a connotation of a certain
"predeterministic necessity" prior to any possibility
of transformation, enlightenment, and rebound
towards higher realms of existence, both subjective
and objective (Grof & Grof, 1992). Perhaps this
represents some of the fundamental meanings of
teleological evolution.
Within the descending path, the negative,
destructive and involution forces (thanatos) show
strength enough to easily overpower any vital and
positive ones (eros). At the B-C Raskolnikovian
interval (Figure 1) even indiscriminate violence can
take place, manifesting itself as an incurable
disease. Under such distressing circumstances, the
role of self-contraction, destructiveness, and death
can display themselves as superior to the value of
growth, peace, creativity, and life (Buber, 1952, pp.
130-131). Indeed, this situation may last after the
C-point of chaos has been fully overcome (second
interparadigmatic-interface period), and linger on
at the beginning of the ascending path, the time of
renovation, the regeneration-renewal time
(metacosmesis) (branch F, Figure 1). Some of the
most negative aspects may linger on until full
resolution ofthe problem ensues or at least until a
clear opening-a "window of opportunity" in the
terminology of Trias (1994), is perceived at the end
of the tunnel.
The managing of the bottom of the crisis will
successively need to deal and cope with: (1) the
paralyzing intensity of the descending and
conflictive interparadigmatic situation (branch B);
and (2) the final acute worsening of the growth
crisis (point C). The latter can also manifest itself
as a mind and/or "soulstorm," a spiritual (and/or
physical) emergency (Grof & Grof, 1992) which
dwells in the same quicksand territory of an acute
psychotic episode and/or panic attack. The
evolutionary and growth meaning of such living
in dire straits can only be fully recognized a
posteriori, either by the individual fighting the
crisis or by his or her supportive team. Sometimes
the chain reaction and vicious circle (a fast
revolution of the wheel beyond and/or under the
C-point) will be impossible to stop. This can be
applied from the personal and psychological to the
sociopolitical disciplines (Rothberg, 1999, p. 42).
At this crossroads-crossfire turning point and crisis
(CCPC) salvation can only be found through the
acquisition ofthe necessary degree of detachment
to accept the active presence of chaos as part of
the living system (the "witnessing capacity").
The concept of a "mass-effect" may be thought of
as the necessary "quantity" of energy accumulated
to reach the minimal level required to induce an
instantaneous "qualitative leap" leading to
transfonnation. At the time that maximal involution,
disassociation, and hyperpolarization of any system
(the hyperdualistic state) is approaching, if the
patient (or society) cannot detach enough, the
situation enters into the vortex and engulfing
windstorm ofhislher (its) mind and spirit. This can
lead into a black hole of infinite density and gravity
turned into a deep abyss, the bottomless pit of a dark
night of the senses and the soul. The blessed are the
meek in spirit now has turned into its opposite,
appearing as a damned are the rich in spirit. At
this point, an emergency call to the disfigured and
fragmented, breaking ego, asking for deep-felt awe
and humility is urgently needed, since life is at
stake and life and death are at a crossroads. In this
preterminal situation, which appears as beyond any
hope of recovery, all kinds of help are welcome. Now
continuous panic attacks and an endless feeling of
impending doom dominate the entire picture. If at
the D-peak experiences the highest conceivable
human intensity, and even greatness, coalesce, the
overcoming of a fun-fledged pit experience may also
reveal that humans, even under the worst
circumstances, may be allowed to feel and touch
their very divine nature (Frankl, 1979).
~ At a Crossroads: Within. the Chaos of
the Hamlet Crisis, The C-Point e-<}"
A
T THE C-point (Figure 1), the storm has now
turned into a tornado and awareness into a
nightmare. Now the spirit dwells within the eye of
a hurricane and the infinite gravity ofits own black
hole attracts it to a center from which nothing
appears to be able to escape. Premonitory feelings
previous to the worst phase of the crisis are
sometimes brought about by a number of
announcing presages (Tolstoi, 1990). Until now,
however, these presages have been largely
disregarded, more or less willingly, consciously or
subconsciously. The pit experience at this point
creates a terrible pressure and contraction oflinear
time. The B to C part of the spiral may show itself
through a myriad of "irrational" symptoms and signs
while inducing a high degree of acute confusion ("a
Hamlet-like crisis"). Here, linear-rational time
ceases to exist and/or finds its limits at the crossing
of the lowest area of the spiral (C-zone, "tangential
time"). This is a double edged-sword that, on one
hand, creates a wall between the individual and the
outside world-perhaps thus protecting both of
them-but, on the other hand, will finally help to
disinter that power of intuition and superior insight
that up (and down) to that moment had been kept
buried in the unconscious.
This "evil-good paradox" eventually allows that
what are mysteries to rational intelligence can from
now on be explored from other perspectives and in
different ways (transrationality). In this cruciform
and most painful stage-the crossroads-crossfire-
turning point-the Hamlet-like subject under the
experience may even find it impossible to distinguish
external reality from inner subjectivity and the real
from the unreal and :imagined while he or she needs
to look for help in the "far beyond." Under these
circumstances the individual cannot stop his or her
mind from all kinds of automatic processes that are
far beyond its will and voluntary control. Not being
able to find a moment of peace and solace the
individual feels tortured, as if all the p o w e ~ s of
nature seem to have allied against him or her. The
"Hamletian" person can, for example, think that he
or she is damned by life, feel "possessed," or regret
having been born.
Communication with the outside world becomes
severely impaired, or even fully abolished. The
spiritual isolation and solitude of the mind and the
constrictive pain of the soul can become unbearable
and absolute. This psychospiritual emergency
situation can be accompanied by a most variegated
syndrome, including severe physical and multiorganic
symptoms that have been described elsewhere (Grof,
1985). Strangely enough, the deepest form of insight
seems to be calling from the bottom of the sea of the
experience. From that utter darkness, something,
somehow, is pushing the entire situation to rebound
upwards towards the surface. The deepest conflict
and crisis holds promise of a healing potential for
growth and overcoming, a new ascent towards
reintegration that will eventually allow recovery of a
preestablished harmony (Grof & Grof, 1992). This
"two-way" street, descending-ascending, or
retroprogressive (Paniker, 1987) seems to hide the
revolutionary potential to tum around (and upside-
down, or vice versa) the wheel of fate and destiny.
Thus, conflict and crisis finally pave the way and lead
towards a new unifYing synthesis oflife and nature.
The upward change may lead to new theories of
human motivation, placing us at a vantage point to
approach a fuller understanding of human nature,
from destructiveness to creativity. This overcoming
may lead to the birth, unfolding, and actualization
of new paradigms (points D and H). This might
also allow us to both differentiate and synthesize
time's two components, linear and cyclical,
transforming and raising human nature to a full-
fledged transpersonal situation, and life to a brand
new conception (metanoia, transpersonal Eden,
eternal present, enantiodromia [Oxford English
Dictionary, 1989]) (see Figure 1).
A
T THE C-point everything is mixed and boiled up
in the same pot of a witches' kitchen: what is
real and what is not real? time and timelessness; what
the subject should do and should not do; what the
mind thinks is good can be the worst evil. The sense
oflinear time can be totally lost; even an instant may
seem to last forever. On the contrary, hours and days
can fly by almost unnoticed within the trance ofthis
unchanging time, a hell-like pseudoeteruity opposite
to "the timeless moments" of Maslow's peak-
experiences. Words, either spoken or written, are
useless to express the depth and intensity of the
core of this nuclear-splitting experience. The
fragmenting and cracking impact of such an
experience is well beyond any possible control-the
epicenter of an earthquake, also called by others
"the intersection ofthe timeless moment" (Waldron,
1998, p. 103; Washburn, 1999, p. 259). Dante tried
to explain it with the following words: "How useless
are the words to express the concept, and how pale
the concept to express what I saw." "To be or not to
be" is no longer the question here, since it becomes
impossible to differentiate the meaning of "being"
or "not being" as different and separate ideas.
The under-earth psychic quake has taken the self
by surprise to a big bang-like involutionary phase.
These episodes could even be considered or renamed
as "bottomless-pit experiences," whatever the
religious connotations such terminology may carry.
There, the soul finds it impossible to escape from
that mental and spiritual blackhole within which
the spirit has been suctioned and gobbled up. The
ego, now shattered into a thousand splinters,
becomes absent and defenseless, even detached from
the last remnants of itself. The person going through
this experience feels that a climax has been reached
that announces final destruction (Washburn, 1999,
p. 249). Within this stage, aHkinds of hallucinations
may show the false presence of an oasis occasionally
appearing in front of the eyes of the spirit. Total
stillness and paralysis may herald an autistic-
catatonic stage only occasionally broken by the
sudden onset of panic attacks that insist upon the
inescapable feeling of being tortured; any sign of
hope is no longer existent. This state of mind is
transmitted by Dostoyevski's well-known dictum:
"If in hell there would be physical punishment, it
would be a relief," and by Teresa of Avila's "I die
because I don't die;" however these words may now
carry a more hopeless meaning than the one
intended by the Spanish mystic.
~ Good and Evil at a Crossword Puzzle:
Some literary Exemplars. The Abraxas
TIme and Timelessness. Towards a General
Theory of Human Destructiveness? ~
"G OOD" and "evil" seem to lose their separation
and confrontation at the C point of maximal
chaos. Even now some components of its opposite
D "peak" points can "interfere." So a smile may
accompany despair, and utter darkness and a shy
ray of light can melt together. The whole reality shows
itself as a single primal filL",{ of energy that alternates
its outer aspects according to propitiatory contexts
and predetermining energy status (taoistic adualism,
advaitaism). The mind then finds itself defenseless
to resist the burden and evil thoughts which can run
rampant "over the top ofthe head" (Washburn, 1999,
pp. 236-239; John ofthe Cross, 1996, p. 135). It is the
timeless time of the coincidentia oppositorum or
mysterium tremendus. Here the night of the spirit
overlaps with the night of the senses without any
clear separation between them. However, if the
intense pain and negative temptations are resisted
and the self can detach itself enough to the point of
"becoming its own outside witness," the old man
finally dies and the new man is born (Grof & Grof,
1995, p. 152). Until fun transformation takes place,
the rationality of the outside world appears as
irrational to anyone moving at the end of the
descending period. Also, rationalism considers
irrational any playing around, or even trying to
overcome, these quicksand areas of the evolutionary
spiraling process, since no salvation is yet possible.
The soul still is in danger of drowning in the I Ching-
like great waters of the storm.
Linear time has disappeared into atemporality,
symbolically uniting the divine and the demonic in
the same psychic universe CAbraxas time). Abraxas
was the name that Herman Hesse conceived as a
godhead whose symbolic task is the uniting of godly
and devilish elements (Hesse, 1978, p. 78;
Harguindey, 1998, p. 652). In that unfortunate
eternal present of Divine Damnation, Heaven and
Hell are not experienced as two quantitative or
qualitative opposites but as two complementary
forces, both belonging to an incommensurable and
primordial adualistic context ofliving energy (God
as coincidentia oppositorum in Jung?). Most
interestingly, these timeless moments of total
disassociation and hell-like confusion can be
recognized in many of the world's classic literary
characters, such as in Goethe's Faust ("two souls
dwell in my chest"), in Tolstoi's Anna Karenina
("within me there is another one, and I am afraid of
her"), in the split thoughts and deeds of
Dostoyevski's Dimitri Karamazov and Raskolnikov,
in the doubts of Odysseus, in Herman Hesse's
Demian, in Hamlet, and so on. From the unitarian
CCpe-approach, an extraordinary similarity can be
perceived among the conflicts and double bonds of
each of these literary examples and many others
(Harguindey, 1998, chs, 7, 14), This psycho(il)logical
situation may also teach that, at least up to a certain
point, "all big conflicts are one," perhaps indicating
a final common pathway for each and all
psychospiritual diseases, This generalization could
eventually pave the way towards the existence of
"a general theory of human destructiveness," at least
on a preliminary basis, Finally, the in-depth
interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedies and
Dostoyevski's late novels (Crime and Punishment;
The Idiot; Demons; The Karamazov Brothers)
become first-line examples of this kind of in-depth
teaching and learning, Their main characters are
prime examples of acute psychic and/or spiritual
crises, living C and D turning points, as well as
expressions of all the descending and ascending
components and stages,
Within the bottom of the crisis will forever stay
buried the concept of the absolutism oflinear time
as a valid means to approach the understanding
ofthe wholeness of the "real world," from objective
to subjective, Causality and rationality cannot be
considered as absolutes anymore and the only valid
concepts to try to understand everything that the
whole spectrum of life can embrace (Harguindey,
1998, pp, 605, 617), Nor does the concept of chance
seem to be able to stand the test, Finally, the in-
depth study of the core of the crisis can open new
possibilities to both discriminate and understand
the relationships between predestination, fatalism,
personal responsibility, destiny, free choice, and
self-transcendence,
~ The End of the Dark Stage ~
S
INCE "healing springs from the center of evil"
(Holderlin) and "the only way to go to Heaven is
through hell" (Dante), overcoming the deepest
darkness of the "crisis" soon begins to show its other
numinous face and meaning, the opportunity of a
new reintegration and life, Now the person begins
to feel the necessary inner strength to progressively
detach from chaos and make increasing distance
from the bottom of the pit, The amount of distance
should be enough to allow the person to realize that
he or she is something more than aU that personal
"stuff," This is the beginning of becoming a trans-
person,
The new wave of an ascending time of
regeneration and renewal (metacosmesis) begins to
materialize (Figure 1, ascending branch F), Beyond
the limits of linear rationality and twisted
irrationality of the past, life gives birth to a new
transrational universe, carrying a new human being
and a new order with it, Hermann Hesse (1978)
summarized these considerations in the following
words: "Chaos has to be recognized and lived
through before it can be reintegrated into a new
order" (ch, 5), In a previous publication (Harguindey,
1987), I tried to express the entire meaning and
consequences of the turning-over from the B to the
F zones-the persona1/transpersonal breakthrough
across the C point-as follows:
When the rational appears senseless and the
absurd tries to become logical, the essential
conflict, born in well-nigh virgin reaches of
human nature, is sparked off If at that
transcendental moment which verges on the
transtemporal, a violent flare of creative instinct,
seemingly originating outside man, comes to halt
the destruction and overcome death, the miracle
happens, At this point, conversion, psychological
or religious, takes place, It is at that perilous
juncture that the Marvelous-the Good, the True
and the Beautiful-bursts forth, All of a sudden
we find ourselves believing that we understand,
even if only during an infinitesimal time, the
radiant Reason that sustains life and the
intimate Beauty that throbs quietly behind the
nature of the Universe, The birth of the new
vision has arrived,
Following that intense experience, nothing is the
same as before and everything seems brand new,
Myths and symbols are now clarified, the
postulates of different philosophies merge, and
good and evil join together, transcending their
fusion, Guilt has now died, original sin ceases to
exist, The eternal comedies of humankind turn
into tragedies and the apparent tragedy of life
begins to take on hues of a divine comedy, And
when reality thus changes, all limits disappear,
Finally, the meaning of time acquires a different
and new dimension, filling life with meaning to
its smallest details, From this point on existence
begins to make sense, what previously separated
human beings now brings them together, and a
natural form of human brotherhood arises,
(Harguindey, 1987, inside covers)
A sense of meaning and purpose is
concomitantly born, imbuing the soul with the light
of new hope, This purpose is of a quality superior
and exterior to human beings (transpersonal and
transtemporal), a purpose that to the mystical
person appears as superior, purifying and/or
intelligent (Wilber, 1993, p, 130),
~ From the Ascending Path to the
Interlude of the Second
Interparadigmatic-Interface Period ~
T
HE BOTTOM of the crisis also ends up with the
overpowering, reigning ego, and the absolut-
ism ofthe personal stage of evolution is swallowed
up within it (Harguindey, 1998, chs. 7; 14, p. 621).
It is only well after the overcoming of the apocalyp-
tic C-point that the true differences between the
psychotic-regressive (fragmenting) and the mystic-
unitive (creative) stages appear as more and more
evident. Progressively, ascent towards healing fol-
lows a series of mathematical-like automatisms that
could be described as fonowing an amethodic
method. Decisions seem to "take place by them-
selves," taking over the role of free choice and free
will, at least until the self can take fun command of
the whole personal-transpersonal process.
During this rerationalizing or transrationalizing
stage, decisions are made based on the new faith
and insight more than on logic and reason. Reason
itself is not of a blind nature anymore, but of an
enlightened kind. Faith becomes illuminated as a
consequence of the fulgency of the past C-
experience-as evil in the final service of goodness
or the Devil in the final service of God, a Jobean
and Faustian situation. The worst pit experience
has now become an inside constituent belonging to
the very same process of healing and redemption.
Nothing in the spiraling process of life and time,
linear or cyclical, does ever surpass, either from
above or below, the outside boundaries of linear time,
which act as containers ofthe limits and dimensions
oflife (Figure 1, ascending and descending lines L
and M). Finally, any area above or below lines L
and M belongs to true timelessness, the void and
the unknown, perhaps implying other more
encompassing and subtle dimensions.
The inner activity of the ascending path keeps
moving up towards a time of regeneration and
renewal (metacosmesis) (line F) that, after ''locking
up reality" at the cross-over point E, will eventually
reach the highest climactic points D and H
("Goodness," birth of new insights, infused science,
etc.). It is at these points-peak experiences-that
the birth of new paradigms, even metanoic changes
leading from an entire eon and era into a new one,
may materialize. It is a time for peace and stability.
A sense of being "born again" takes over the new
self. Synchronicities appear as normal happenings.
The new (trans)ego has acquired the necessary self-
confidence to be able to synthesize and rerationalize
the irrational. The detachment obtained allows new
basic interpretative approaches to the hidden
worlds and depths experienced and left behind. A
"capacity to witness" one's own life confers upon one
an increasing degree of freedom. This peaceful
interlude is passively active (the Taoist wu wei) in
preparing the whole being to explore new and
unknown frontiers waiting ahead.
From Crisis to Creativity and Scientific
Insight: A Positive Side Effect
A
T THIS time stage (zone E to H), the first practical
and beneficial effects can be observed. Scientific
insights and discoveries can be passively "received"
or integrated as if coming from a dream, even dis-
guised as ecstatic and archetypal "forms." Deep in-
sight and intuition are stimulated by the extreme
degree of hypersensitivity learned from the whole
experiential process of breaking through the C zone.
Some new truths appear to flash into the mind both
from the inside and the outside of the self. The not-
too-weU-understood and always extraordinary phe-
nomenon of the birth of the creative genius also
arises from these postcritical stages. Some flashing
experiences of insight can still induce severe psy-
chosomatic symptoms in the intuitive and adualistic
investigator. Researchers can even see themselves
as psychological and/or spiritual guinea pigs upon
whom some strange forces are working. At first the
individual may feel like a passive witness of his or
her own creative process, not even understanding
its nature and purpose, a feature well known by
the first physicists of the quantum-relativity fields
(Dossey, 1986; Wilber, 1987).
The initial and brutal onslaught ofthe nonegoic
realms has receded from its previous fury and the
body-mind-soul has progressively acquired the
necessary autonomy and discipline to provide an
ordered expression to a multiplicity of images,
voices, and intuitions (Washburn, 1999, p. 320).
Strong feelings of wonder, surprise, and awe at the
discoveries that are "infused into them" may take
over "initiated" researchers, who may feel that they
are observing life from both inside and outside.
Near-death and out-of-the-body experiences can
remain at these ascending stages as marks left
from the lashing ofthe abysmal C-point experience
along the persona]/transpersonal change of the
evolutionary spiral.
The hypersensitivity acquired also allows for the
possibility that an entire world of myths and
symbols can jump to the surface from the
unconscIOUS. This feature may represent a
subconscious defense mechanism providing the
means to achieve an integrated hermeneutic
interpretation, a kind of understanding which is
badly needed. Serendipity and peripheral vision are
also introduced as an aftermath of the bottom of
the crisis. Further automatisms ofthe true creative
and learning processes keep pushing and digging
for a radical and outreaching degree of
understanding, aiming at a "complete explanation
of conflict." This stage also encourages perception
of global interconnectedness of the many scattered
fragments left behind by the previous descending
analytic branch (areas J and B). At a later stage,
the pieces of the puzzle of both branches, descent
and ascent, will ''hierarchically'' glue together into
an integrated and healing process of synthesis.
Time for Overcoming Pathology
T
HE QUESTION that the self asks itself after the crisis
. should not be the kind of superficial, personal,
and self-defeating question that previously overcame
it: ''Why is all this happening (to me)?" Instead, the
person is tested by a symbolic cosmic screaming that
shouts to him or her from within: ''What is the mean-
ing of all this?" (Ortiz Oses, 1982; Ortiz Oses & Mayr,
1988). This outcry is a desperate attempt to find sense
and meaning in all the appearance of absurdity and
senselessness experienced through the previous de-
scending and abysmal periods. The now unchained
Prometheus-like self, naked and powerless in front
of the gods, begs, craves, and demands a complete
answer from them. States of high contemplative ec-
stasy and revelation may flash upon the individual
spirit. This utter immersion in the nondualistic inti-
macy of inner transcendental experience, ecstasies
and revelations, even considering its "scientific" as-
pects, has been depicted masterfully by John ofthe
Cross in his poem, "I entered not knowing where"
(1996, pp. 135-138). The words draw a perfect de-
scription ofthe entire cycle ofthe spiral ofthe time/
timelessness experience, from its lowest to its high-
est aspects, both at once.
Even now the self feels misunderstood by its
surroundings, thinking of others as complete
strangers to its personal and transpersonal worlds.
These "bilateral" feelings of alienation may have
to endure an almost total lack of communication,
great hardships in what were previously healthy
relationships with family and friends. Well into the
ascending branch, diagnoses such as manic-
depressive psychosis, temporal lobe epilepsy, and
schizophrenia can persist in the minds of some
professionals, although they had probably been
diagnosed before, at the onset of the B-C spells.
The remaining difficulties in finding a sharp
separation between the potentially positive aspects
of the initial postcritical ascent (branch C to E)
and its dissociating aspects (cataclysm ofB-period
and chaos of the C-point), are secondary to the
existence of a high degree of overlapping among
different phases, sometimes making it impossible
to know at which stage the "impatient patient" is
at in a given moment.
Sometimes, the intensity of the ascending branch
ofthe spiral accompanying psychospiritual rebirth
presents a dynamic too steep to climb and too fast
and unexpected to be integrated in an orderly way
(superior dissociation). Other associated pathologies,
both physical and psychosomatic, may reveal
different aspects of the underlying process of
intimate contact with the undifferentiated and
primordial deepest source (Grof, 1985, ch. 2). Finally,
the urgent need now felt to learn, to know, and to
understand and integrate can be present as severe
episodes of anxiety, which, ifleft to themselves, can
conform this "too creative" dissociation induced by
a ''higher than tolerated" speed of growth.
In summary, the instability of this second
interparadigmatic period (F zone) does not make
the ascending branch a "rose garden" for the self. It
still has serious problems coping with a changing
situation that tilts between the ultimate possibility
of final transformation and ascent and the fear of
falling backwards into the regression and
fragmentation of a new C-situation. The final
success will be only after bringing back to the sm:f'ace
a still half-sunk spiritual Titanic and rebuilding it
into a solar Titan of the spirit. This "day after"
situation has to pay all its (karmic?) dues for
overcoming the previous mindstorm experience
depicted as a transcritical crisis of smaller intensity.
Further description of the symptoms and signs of
these pathologies have been described elsewhere
(Grof, 1985; Grof & Grof, 1992, 1995; Washburn,
1999; Wilber, 1993). While our experimental Dante-
like guinea pig keeps climbing along the path, from
Hell through Purgatory towards Paradise (the
necessary trip), high feelings of altruism, utopia,
delight, and beatitude may appear. The possibility
of a deep sense of meaning and increasing
interconnectedness keeps dawning. Short spells of
deep-felt peace and silence at the E-crossroads take
place and can be interpreted as a relief sent by some
angelic or celestial blessings. It is in the middle of
this "silence" that the unknown and the unknowable
become manifest (Krishnamurli, 1994).
After the new E-passing over, any previous feelings
of self-despising and despair, not to mention narcissism
or egocentrism, are now turning into growing feelings
of healthy self-esteem. Anew kind of beyond-personal,
transcendent love (agape) begins to emerge along with
increasingly integrated growth and ascent (F to D or
E to H zone).A1l self-importance is lost; the selfbegins
to be able to recognize its ultimate union with the
divine, an unavoidable vocational trend that,
paradoxically, will eventually become the initiate's
highest freedom of choice. Now, a new fonn of universal
and suprarational reason, or re-rationalized
transrationality, embraces all the previous partialities
and blindnesses of both rationalism and irrationality.
This shows the way to a new form of thought
(metarational, vision-logic?) climbing to a new
dimension of freedom, a higher step in the ladder of
evolution towards the divine in humankind, which is
only limited by cosmic necessity, as portrayed by
Spinoza's "three ways of knowing" (Spinoza, 1951,
1976, pp. 195-200). In summary, it is not the old,
confusing and challenging, "to be or not to be" that
matters anymore, but that now the self IS through
Not Being and IS NOT by trying to be (only) itself
(cosmic adualism). Hints of a higher transpersonal
destiny appear to insinuate a deep sense of meaning
and purpose into the whole spiraling process, both
ascending and descending, from personal to global.
< - ~ The End of a Spiraling Cycle and the
Outburst of the Peak-Turning Point ~
F
URTHER ASCENT along the E to H branch of the
spiral accumulates a great deal of
"psychospiritual immunity," preventing further
regressions and relapses. At this point in the chain,
the healing process has practically won the battle,
since now the abyss is so far behind that it is hardly
recognizable anymore. One is "one" again. The time
is favorable to do what the I Ching characterizes as
"to cross the great waters," the moment to try to do
great deeds and to overcome big problems. It is also
the time for Ulysses to be back home and peacefully
resting on the sand of the beaches surrounding
Ithaca. The many pains and wounds inflicted during
the long sea travel and the many difficulties
overcome, now sunk in the deep waters of the sea of
the darkest nightls, have healed. The new dawn is
here. All the devilish tricks and multiple-choice tests
presented to the selfby the undifferentiated spirits,
always ready to challenge our higher destinies, have
been overcome. Now we can recognize that even the
worst and most irrational difficulties were no more
than that: a test, an exam to pass or fail, where
no trick questions were ever asked and no
cheating was possible.
Finally, in our experimental laboratory and
nonorthodox university of human consciousness,
evolution, and transformation, the big family of self-
actualizers and spiritual guinea pigs, from
Prometheus to Faust to Ulysses to Dante, are
welcomed back and given honors. At the same time,
we ask our heroes, those who had the daring "to
jump to the next stage of consciousness" (Wilber,
1995), for their forgiveness and compassion.
Once again, linear and cyclical time run into each
other and disappear into timelessness at the D and H
contact-points, both melting into a living-now divine,
previously hellish-feeling of an eternal present. It is
a new timeless time for the highest expressions of
creativity, of "the wise and holy" (see I Ching, 1967,
''The Creative," p. 79). Perennially, people of all times
and ages, both Eastern and Western, have reached
the conclusion that all this spiraling growth indicates
that at the end of all endings and cycles, no matter
how great the loss, a :final G point comes alive. It is at
this point that Ulysses recovers his motherland of the
spirit. Now Dante reaches the highest circles of The
Empyrean, where eternity "becomes that moment
for which all times are the present," and Faust finds
that ''Woman Etemal"who "draws us on high" (Goethe,
1976, p. 308). Now, all and everything are no more
than One, and the Good, the True, and the Beautiful
merge into One Single Essence. It is the end of all
things and at the same time the beginning of all things:
all is light, harmony, peace, synchronicity, elective
affinity, here and now. However, since we humans
cannot express ourselves without ''talking about time,"
we can only dream of the placeless place and the
timeless time where the minds and spirits of Plato,
Christ, Buddha, and Lao-Tzu abide.
~ A Note ~
T
HE OVERWHELMING amount of literature about
peak, mystical and/or nudeo-transcendental
experiences, as well as about the high-plateau
experience (transpersonal maturity) and Maslow's
post-mortem life (Cleary & Shapiro, 1995), is too
great to include in the scope of this paper. Mter
the D-peak turning point, perhaps a new cycle is
beginning and a new descending branch (line D
to E) is already working around us; however, any
new spiral will always move at a higher and more
developed level than the previous one. In any case,
metanoia has occurred; aNew Life too. And the
Omega point is always waiting-always-present,
always-there, always-here, always-transpersonal,
always-timeless, always-eternal; who knows if,
somehow, personal too.
ea. The CCPC Theory ~
T
HE APPROACH outlined here aims at being
integral in trying to investigate and define the
hidden and subtle whats, whys, and hows of any
"underlying" process in order to suggest a general
and integral theory of crisis, conflict, and evolution.
In previous publications, I tentatively named it: "The
Crossroads-Crossfire-Turning Point-Theory of
Conflict" (CCPC) or "Crisis Irruption Theory"
(Harguindey, 1998, ch. 14). The goal is to try to
understand, to the maximum possible depth, the
entire living process-from the personal to the
universal-paying attention to the cosmic cycles and
the parallelisms existing between microcosm and
macrocosm, following the dictum "as above, so
below." The bulk of our attention is directed to the
two opposite and main turning points, the lowest
and the highest (C and D points). It is too early to
predict if these all-encompassing attempts and
considerations will help us to better understand and
to prepare future strategies to heal human evil
(Harguindey 1998, ch. 7; Peck, 1983). Nor is it
possible at this time to claim that new preventive
measures can be activated in order to avoid the most
negative effects of the onset of deep psychospiritual
crisis, personal and sociopolitical. Finally, the ''A
interval" (E to N zone) will separate consecutive
transitional stages, indicating different eras,
paradigms, or even personal ''lives.''
An integral approach of this kind would have to
be able to achieve an early identification of the
dynamics leading to both the deepest crises and the
highest ecstasies. This is of paramount importance
in order to be useful to afford help through the
descending path, to bypass the lowest points of the
conflict, and to speed up the healing resolution.
Hopefully, this in-depth cyclical approach can also
provide an opportunity to reach out towards a better
understanding of the "presence" of the past, making
sense of chaos, tragedy, and senselessness; and
lending meaning to what was previously considered
either to be simple "chance," undeserved happiness,
or absurdity and tragedy. Another learning aftermath
would be to open new ways to the understanding of
the implicated potential of the destiny-inducing
multifactorial contexts involved in the whole CCPC
process (the presence ofthe future). This implies the
integration of the whole path of disintegration-death-
reintegration and its effects in predetermining
the different futures opened up by the highest and
lowest turning points. This global attempt may
help to lead consciousness higher and higher into
new and unpredictable contexts and openings at
many different levels: personal, transpersonal,
spiritual, evolutionary, world-centric, and so on.
The pit and/or peak turning points separate
different transitional stages in the life of the
individual. The new learning should be able to help
during all these stages, from the overcoming of the
Oedipal complex to the first adult crisis, and from
the ego-pathologies of adulthood, like the adult-
narcissistic crisis, to the feelings of worthlessness
and meaninglessness in old age, to preterminal
physical situations during the final transition stage
in linear time (Washburn, 1999).
To be ahead of time is necessary in order to warn
others about the dangers lying ahead, from
personal to spiritual to sociopolitical. This kind of
wisdom can only be learned through previous deep
experiential processes, which have always allowed
a few cases of "cutting edge consciousness" to
achieve an intimate and nonduallearning of the
general dynamics of "big crisis and conflict"
(psychospiritual preventive medicine) (Weil, 1997).
ea. A Good Perspective Needs Distance ea.
T
HE MOST important aspects appear after
personal consciousness is able to set itself at a
certain distance from the entire, sometimes
Dantesque, expedition to the predynamics leading to
an "oncoming earthquake." However, there is no
chance to succeed in such an attempt to achieve
perspective before (1) breaking through the core of
the crisis, and (2) overcoming the aftereffects of
climbing the ascending path. In the aftermath of this
learning experience, the new sensitivity acquired may
make it possible to predict some of the presence and
direction of the future. If this could be proven
scientifically, human beings would find themselves
at a vantage point enabling them to prevent some of
the destructive consequences of the shaking created
by the epicenter of a psychic quake: a process that
until the last moment hides its secrets within the
entrails of the earth while getting ready to destroy
the entire building of life, both in the individual and
in society. This is exactly what happened in the
etiopathogenesis of that almost incurable disease that
was the Nazi movement presided over (since the Devil
knows when) by Hitler's pre/trans fallacy and
Towards a QuintessentialApproach to Crisis and Disease 153
pseudologia phantastica (Harguindey, 1998, p. 199;
Jung, 1989, p. 59; Wilber, 1999, p. 10).
At this point it is difficult to know if such prophetic
foretelling of oncoming crisis and conflict will
eventually prove to be reproducible enough to obtain
scientific credibility. The main difficulty arises from
the multiple factors and conditions intermingled in
the predynamics of severe conflicts, as well as the
underground subtlety, subconsciousness, and
complexity ofthe livingprecontexts leading to the onset
of deep crisis and/or dark night of the soul. Right now,
any attempt to foresee and integrate all the
m1.:11tifactorial conditioning that is about to reach a
"critical mass effect" appears to be an impossible task.
The main issue is how to therapeutically intercept,
through an "implosion," the sparkling fire that can
prevent the sudden explosion of an lIDcontrollable
psychic quake, such as what happens in a spiritual
emergency. Examples of unexpected backgrounds
leading to the irruption of crisis can be found in the
effects induced by the sudden death of a beloved person,
a strong emotional upheaval, the irruption of a
psychotic episode, and the diagnosis of a deadly disease.
An integral approach also requires broadening the
concept of how much empiricism can embrace. If it
can be extended from its present-day straitjacketing
conditions, an outreaching high jump leap of global
consciousness could radically transform the present
interparadigmatic state of human affairs and
evolution. What is already beyond doubt is that any
attribute of absolutism and the validity of the
ra tionalis tic-modern -scien tific-red uctionistic-
"Popperian" approach (lines L and M) is well over.
Its accompanying concept of the unilateral aspect of
the arrow of linear time, past to present to future
(chronos), has already been buried by the end of the
descending path of the spiral by the overcoming of
the bottom of the crisis and also by the reproducible
features and consequences ofnucleo-transcendental
experiences. At both the C and H points, the
absolutism of linear time and rationalistic thinking
(and modernism together with its rational madness)
has disappeared as the only valid means of
understanding. Furthermore, the ascending spiral
(teleological? a metaphoric DNA helicoid of the spirit?)
overcomes the final closing up of a cyclic-mythic time
whose other absolutism of "the power of the will"
(versus the always open Taoist wu-wei) is the main
characteristic of any prepersonal to Freudian-Marxist
to fascist-totalitarian philosophy. In either case, all-
linear or all-cyclical, such old and obsolete conceptions
of life only leave fear, personal and/or group
narcissism, egocentrism, and a will to power as the
ultimate possible "meaning" for human life and
evolution-a very poor bet indeed.
Finally, it should be realized that myths and
symbols are not good or bad in themselves, since
they have been essential in both backing up the
highest spiritual and scientific achievements of
humankind, and the lowest, as in the gas chambers
of Auschwitz. We make them "good" if we take them
as mediators for growth, meaning, and learning
experience (the hermeneutic approach). We make
them "bad" if we give them an absolute deterministic
value of what the external world should be and how
it should be conformed. So, the "touch and go" D
and H turning points, as wen as the more objective
E points, may reflect intersections (the Christian
cross? Buddhist illumination?) of both kinds of time,
cyclical and linear, at certain points. This suggests
(and proves?) an ascending openness ofthe myth of
the eternal return (Eliade, 1994) (points I to G, or
line N, holonomic growth). Another beneficial "side-
effect" of this "both-ways-now" model could be the
possibility of aiming at an integration ofthe ladder
structural model of Wilber (1990, 1999) and the
spiral model proposed by Washburn (1990,1999),
and, perhaps, too, Eastern and Western approaches
to both temporal and transcendental affairs. At the
same time, the place and respective roles of the
psychoanalytic method and transpersonal-integral
psychology could be further elucidated (Washburn,
1999; Wilber, 1993). The aim here is to arrive at a
fully integrated mystic-unitive psychology and
psychospirituality that can serve as the basis for a
necessary integral, personal, and global
transformation.
~ Predestinies, Fate, Destiny, Free
Choice, Vocation, and Superior Destiny.
Is it About Time to Understand Time? ~
A
FEW QUESTIONS arise. Will humans ever be able
to create their own synchronicity situations?
Can humans become forgers of their own highest
possible destiny beyond the limits of personal karma?
Can a superior kind of understanding help both
individuals and humankind as a whole to climb
through more healthy ways the always-steep ladder
of life and evolution? Will the transpersonal work
involved ever have any impact in improving solidarity
and compassion at a global level, and so "change the
world," or will the transpersonal movement end up
being just a gang of utopian and idealistic "crazies"
uselessly screaming in the wilderness of a "madding
crowd," like twentieth-century reborn imitators of
John the Baptist? Anew ascending and quantum leap
has become a must, from individual to sociopolitical
realms. Such a leap may be a most difficult task, but
is possible and necessary; requmng us to look at life
and the world using Spinoza's sub specie aeternitatis
concept (Spinoza, 1976, p. 157). This position
represents a humble and timeless ivory watchtower
that lives in the future no less than in the present and
the past, the three tenses now melting into one and
so becoming that relativistic illusion that Einstein
(1954) applied to linear time. No wonder the religious
fervor that the well-known physicist felt towards the
pan-en-theistic (not pantheistic) and nondual concepts
of the advaita vedantist-like Spinoza (1976,
introduction). In the same vein, the words of Lao Tzu,
"The past and the future follow each other," suggests
a living presence of the past in the present as wen
as in the future. This kind of thinking is also
conveyed by Goethe's two declarations: "What I
possess I see it as from the distance, and what has
passed, to me becomes existence" (Goethe, 1976,
dedication of "Faust"), and ''My love is with the ones
who work for eternity" (Goethe, 1982). This involved,
and always evolving, nondualism, both a
transcendental and at the same time immanent form
of religiosity and spirituality, has also been explored
in great depth by Panikkar (1993, 1998).
A true all-embracing perspective should improve
our learning about the relationships between good
and evil and all their unfolding dynamics, as well as
the relationships among fate, destiny, and free will
(Harguindey, 1998, ch. 7; Peck, 1983). In this vein,
the dynamics ofthe descending path (branch J to B)
reduce the number of predestinations, which are
constricted to a maximum degree at the pit of the
crisis (fate). On the other hand, the dynamics of the
ascending pathway allow once again for the concept
of a progressive and higher degree of freedom
to emerge (free will). Finally, the highest peak
experience, which will complete an entire cycle, will
bring into the soul the sense of a transpersonal role
(higher mission, vocation or transpersonal destiny).
According to Carl Jung, vocation is a call from
which no one can escape and which at the same time
indicates the way to achieve our highest degree of
freedom, meaning, and goodness. TIlls confirms that
the most intimate essence of human beings is of a
spiritual nature (Panikkar, 1993).A superior destiny
so becomes what Gandhi referred to as "the only
freedom that is worth fighting for." Abraham Maslow
believed that at the level of the highest
metamotivations a kind ofSpinozistic transcendence
of the dichotomy between free will and fate ensues.
At that spiritual crossroads, one embraces, happily
and freely, all one's circumstances and limitations,
one's own destiny-not with a sense of renunciation,
but with love and enthusiasm (eupsychia). Maslow
(1982) also stressed that the deeper the degree of
discermnent, the higher the tuning between free will
and determinism (p. 400). Further applications of the
crossroads-crossfire-turning point-conflict theory
(CCPC) could be found by using both the C and H (or
D) transition zones as "the starting areas of deep
consciousness" to study the relationships between
evolution and involution. Here is when and where
things really turn around at all levels of
understanding, from the personal to the historical
and sociopolitical areas (Harguindey, 1998, p. 648;
Wilber, 1995). Great efforts have to be made to dig
into the complex contexts which may finally sink and
choke the spirit in an unredeemable fate or determine
the opening of a new way towards true realization, a
higher creative destiny and, hopefully, final
deliverance and salvation. In the same vein, a great
deal of experiential evidence seems to indicate that
mystical experiences CD point) have enough in
common so that it can be said that all are one. The
other end (C point) may also allow us to think that
all conflicts are one. If this were so, the possibility
arises of preliminarily conceiving the development
of a general theory of destructiveness and a general
theory of human creativity. Finally, the insight
provided by a high contemplative status can have
direct access to the necessary energy level for a
qualitative change to become fully activated, thus
making metanoic transformation possible (John of
the Cross, 1996;Panikkar, 1999,p.140;Wilber, 1986).
Personal and global evolution and, in many cases,
final destiny, seem to be strongly conditioned but
not fully and/or rigidly predetermined (predestinies)
by very few "specific events." Many daily small
turning points continuously penetrate within the
temporal space and existence of the individual in
apparently chance-like and subtle ways. Rarely, if
ever, do these events manifest their strength as
forgers of personal evolution. Nor at the time oftheir
initial onset are they fully conscious and freely
chosen. However, most simple and innocent
decisions or behaviors frequently hide within
themselves a strong predeterministic potential for
the future (Lao Tzu, 1994, pp. 156-157, 159). Subtle
and unnoticed acts can, even suddenly, become
points of no-return and in so doing forge posterior
junctions, bifurcations, and new and unexpected
conformations ofthe tree oflife. When interpreted
from within the CCPC time/timelessness context,
such "destiny-locking" features carry an enormous
potential-enough to strictly predetermine all
future fate, personal or sociohistorical, once their
fire has been ignited.
Thus, any previous and underlying process that
ends up in the activation of a CCPC dynamic can vary
from being fully unconscious to subconscious to fully
conscious (but denied). A myriad of small conditioning
factors may create integral propitiatory fields that
conform the range, mobility, level of consciousness,
freedom of choice, and final destiny of a particular
situation. Here it is apropos to recall the words of Lao
Tzu when he specifically addresses the obscure
problem of the intricate relationships between fate,
free will, and destiny: "The beginnings of fortune are
subtle, the origins of disgrace confusing. The factors
determining fortune and disgrace are subtle to the
point that they can not be foretold. Wise men see their
beginnings and their ends" (Lao Tzu, 1994). Finally,
from a highly developed psychological and spiritual
perspective, the tragic destinies of many universal
characters in world classical literature (e.g., Werther,
Karamazov, Prince Myshkin, Anna Karenina, most
of the main characters in Shakespeare's tragedies)
teach us something not otherwise quite evident: that
human fate is a direct or indirect consequence of
human beings' own, conscious or unconscious, "frames
of mind" and deeds (Harguindey, 1998, ch. 14).
Both universal and psychospirituallaws have to
be the same for all human beings, whether through
one or a thousand lifetimes. Then, personal
responsibility becomes the main and ultimate factor
in human personal/transpersonal destiny. This
philosophy cannot be thought of as only rational, of
course. However, even the most enlightened being
still falls short of finding a complete explanation of
facts such as childhood suffering and death in
historical time (Frankl, 1979), for example, from
Auschwitz to infants dramatically rescued (or not
rescued) after being buried alive for many days under
the 1999 Turkish earthquake. The "terror of history"
ofMircea Eliade (1994) is still awaiting a final answer
that canjustifjr everything to the rational eye. In any
case, those subtle destiny-locking decisions may
indicate the existence of some kind of "mathematics
of the spirit" working behind the world of senses and
the empirical world. The questions are always
around, always playing "hide and seek," always
asking us to interpret all exteriors from all interiors,
and vice versa, stimulating us to make a leap ahead
as in a Zen koan. Perhaps they are attempting to
help us to transcend all outer appearances, pushing
us towards an integral hermeneutic approach to
everything, that moment to moment is asking us not
"What is this?" not even, "How did it happen?" but
"What is the meaning of it all?"
~ The Death-Life Miracle and the "Cosmic
Necessity" Concept in Evolution ~
I
T WAS deemed worthwhile to pay close attention
to those critical turning points in the destiny of
some of the most universal, as well as unhealthy,
tragic and/or conflictive characters of classical world
literature. An intuitive and empathic understanding
of the descending dynamics of their fates allows us
to foresee at one synthetic glance many of the
characteristics of subtle and subconscious
(pre)detennining processes (the meaning of the past).
The insight provided by the CCPC approach enables
us to even re-rationalize, and so get to understand,
what initially appeared as absolutely sick and
irrational.
Many times, a predeterministic situation that
carries a high degree of enfolded and subliminal
destructive energy can turn, almost instanta-
neously, into a highly creative and constructive
situation, perhaps mimicking episodes of manic-
depressive psychosis, such as in The Karamazov
Brothers or Anna Karenina. This apparent mixing
of C and D points, pit and peak, may implicate the
concept of the "natural miracle" of Taoism, under-
mining linear causality as the only valid morpho-
genetic or neomorphogenetic principle (Jung, 1967,
1976 [ch. 14], 1987; Peat, 1988). The manifested
energy of the new transformed and transforming
momentum (metanoia) may even suggest a complete
breach of the continuity of linear time between a
"before" and an "after" the crisis. This "Abraxas
time/timelessness" is a death-life situation, how-
ever supralogical and transpersonal; a qualitative
and nonlinear transition in between different levels
of consciousness. This situation implies both a
"presence of the past" and a "presence of the future"
within the predeterministic possibilities opened by
the different emergent situations (Harguindey,
1998, p. 613; Sheldrake, 1990b). Thus, the final
breakthrough of a new conformation of reality
brings about the external materialization of a sub-
liminal propitiatory pattern that until a certain point
in time had been kept hidden in its own archetypal
matrix. This is what orthodox and academic medi-
cine knows as "idiopathic," that is, unknown.
Everything looks completely new and virginal
when seen from a transformed, higher and more
integral perspective, the stage of re-rational and!
or transrational understanding (synthetic, vision-
logic, quintessential?). This allows us to think
about the past as "it all had to be that way" because
of some inner necessity of the entire process
(pre destiny, fate, personal destiny, free will,
superior/transpersonal destiny, even ignorance).
However, approaching the conformation of the
whole range of reality from the CCPC theory and
the Abraxas time/timelessness moments allows us
to "stop" time in order to observe and live past,
present, and future melting into one single and
timeless thing, like a pre mortem panoramic
experience. This situation reopens the new
relativistic and transpersonal sub specie
aeternitatis perspective and places the spiritual
mind in a position to predict the propitiatory
probabilities ofthe three tenses. This is similar to
the Taoist approach to the relative and cycling
aspects of time as summarized in Lao-Tzu's (1994)
words: "The past and the future follow each other."
This thought appears to express a similar lesson
to Einstein's dictum: "For us, physics theorists,
past, present and future are no more than an
illusion, however a stubborn one" (Einstein, 1954).
The entire CCPC approach may lead to further
penetrative insight into what we have tentatively
called, as a "parataoist" and "parakarmic" concept,
the mathematics of the spirit. This concept implies
the necessity of subliminal mass-effect induced
sudden changes, for better or for worse, as they
are widely and deeply considered in the I Ching or
Book of Changes. This concept is similar, or perhaps
even identical, to the Spinozist proposal that things
take place out of their own inner and cosmic
necessity (Spinoza, 1976, pp. 163, 168, 198). In this,
I join Wilber in the historical rehabilitation of the
panentheistic (not pantheistic or atheistic),
persecuted by prepersonal fundamentalism, holy
and misunderstood, transpersonal Spinoza (Wilber,
1995, pp. 611-612).
Some Conclusions Abou.t Human Life
and. the Limits of Life in
an Experimen.tal Test Tube and Under
the Microscope of a Spiritual Laboratory.
Closedness and Openness of the Myth
of the Eternal Return
O
NeE THE wheel ofthe Myth of Eternal Return
has turned, further insight and hindsight are
stimulated. This may allow us to know well in advance
where, when, and how a new physical, psychological,
psychosomatic, or spiritual earthquake is bound to
take place, creating despair and leading into chaos
(Grof & Grof, 1995). Some authors and philosophers
think that historical features depend upon cosmic
cycles in nature and thus can become potentially
intelligible and predictable (Eliade, 1994, p. 134; I
Ching, 1967). The critical turning points are often
preceded by "deep foretelling presages" (Tolstoi,
1990). They finally become outwardly manifest
when the accumulation of multifactorial
quantitative changes in protoenergy bring a brisk
qualitative change in external (objective) and/or
internal (subjective) realities, bringing about
disassociation and chaos. This could be compared
to a change in nuclear structure, inducing ascending
or descending energetic changes in psychospiritual
"orbitals." Such changes, even prestructural, finally
induce a "consciousness mass effect." Those turning
points can also be observed, experienced, and
approached as phenomena of synchronicity,
instantly (transtemporally?) modifYing everything
up to the point that, generally only a posteriori, we
are able to sharply pinpoint and identifY as a ''before''
and an "after" those singularities (metanoia). The
D and C points appear to an outside and not too
sensitive observer as two separated and opposite
kinds of reality, each one of a very different nature
which can somehow, even miraculously, melt into
one. On the other side, the inside and adualistic
observer realizes that both sides are part of one and
the same coin of a single and incommensurable
reality, the "Here and Now miracle." Finally, an all-
encompassing and integral perspective may even
foretell the new possibilities ofthe oncoming future
and/or alternative futures, and even alternative
pasts, since neither one is written. It can help to
forecast the potentials of a predetermined context
by the "energetic momentum" ofthe stage where a
certain dynamic situation is moving or becoming
activated (the "presence" of the future). In this way,
the CCPC approach might lead to deepening insight
and knowledge of the meaning of linear and cyclic
time, their dynamic relationships and beneficial and/
or deleterious potentials, as wen as to the
"prescientific" and "parareligious" knowledge ofthe
deterministic capacities oftheir intersections. In any
case, when the crisis touches the bottom (pit
experience) the only hope is that "worsening of the
pain and evil precipitates final rescue and
deliverance" (Eliade, 1994, p. 137).
The overlapping and crossing of both kinds of
time builds up a psychospiritual cross sparkling a
new light at a crossroads at either the D, E, or C
points. The intersection of linear and cyclical time
in any of those limits ignites a timeless condition
variously denoted as Christ-consciousness, true
enlightenment, or Buddha-nature, manifesting the
liveliness of Tao and emerging into a new reality
and ascension (line F, metacosmesis, also called
paradoxical regeneration by Eliade [1994]). The
areas surrounding the blindness of the C points (kali
yuga) are marked by violence, destruction, historical
suffering, cataclysms, and so on. However, they do
not represent a meaningless death-end but are
forerunner signs and announcing presages of deeper
and further transitions, intrapersonal to global, even
from one cosmic "age or eon" to another (Eliade,
1994; Panikkar, 1996, 1998). The direct access to a
D or H point reveals and actualizes peak
experiences, conveying the potential of giving
birth to entire new worlds and to the emergence
of new paradigms, from scientific to social to
psychospiritual. Cyclic time is not of a self-contained,
closed nature, but finally opens, allowing
interparadigmatic ascent (double line A) and
integral, holonomic growth (line N). The final
energetic jump between two consecutive E points
settles the openness of a cycle and allows ascending-
holonomic evolution, as well as "meaning"
(interparadigmatic ascent). The entire process
restructures itself as a metaphoric DNA helicoid of
the spirit, like a directing mandala of spiritual
evolution and historical development.
It is even possible that a dynamic and fully
integrated approach to wholeness and self-healing
is the main, or perhaps the only, mechanism that
humanity has at its disposal to overcome the "terror
of history." This perspective also suggests the
possibility that human life is somehow opened at
both ends ofthe spectrum to a somehow living void
both below and above the limits marked by the L
and N lines and along the line I to G. Thus, this
model allows us to conceive that the whole of life,
even personal life, should be interpreted from a
transhistorical and transpersonal perspective
(Eliade, 1994, ch. 3). This demands, however, that
we witness the whole process oflife from a detached
and sub specie aeternitatis outlook, while it helps
us to better understand Spinoza's dictum: The more
we understand particular things, the more we
understand God (Spinoza, 1976, p. 152)-a sentence
of hope, perhaps, even for empirical scientism.
The different philosophies about the final
openness or closedness of the Myth of the Eternal
Return also determine not only our concept of
ourselves, and what reality is, but also define the
opposite political agendas, stage of consciousness,
even the ultimate meaning of human life. It also
places in very different positions the role of
humankind in cosmic ontology, evolution, and
history, as well as sending in one or another direction
the ultimate essence of human nature, free will, and
destiny. Philosophical approaches defending the
closedness ofthe Myth only leave us with an archaic,
senseless, and meaningless repetition of the same
situations over and over again. They condemn
humankind to be the helpless subject of the
incurable vicious circle of the terror of history, forever
sunk in mythic-racial, collective-prepersonal, and
malignant narcissism, as well as a Nietzchean will
to power. These would become the only remaining
crutches left to help humankind in a sad and
meaningless pilgrimage through life and history.
This closed conception of Myth can only lead into
the archetypal context and cosmogony behind any
totalitarism, either the "all profane" or the diverse
fundamentalisms of the "all sacred," sharp
descenders or exclusive ascenders in Wilber's
terminology (Wilber, 1995, ch. 9), Marxism to
Fascism. However, a more holistic and better
understanding and acceptance of the Myth as a "self-
transcending phenomenon" contributes to the
alleviation, if not to the total elimination, of the
terror of history. Finally, through this latter
conception of the Myth it is also possible to overcome
the limitations of "personal-linear" time--in other
words, to have a chance to achieve final liberation,
deliverance, and salvation for alL
In summary, the present state of affairs in the
world makes it likely that we are approaching a
new metasynthesis and megasynthesis in the form
of an integral new theory of everything, a further
digging into universal interrelationships and
connections. The cepc approach is likely to contain
the potential to help human beings realize that all
kinds of different conflicts may have one and only
one final common pathway and dynamism,
however expressed through a multiplicity of
external manifestations (an all is one). This
nondual and parataoist concept leads us to
consider a very few but very broad, general and
nonspecific universal laws archetypically behind
any morphogenetic or propitiatory field. These laws
predetermine all possible outer manifestations,
good and evil, in the different disciplines of science
and knowledge, as wen as their innermost nature
and relationships (Buber, 1952; Harguindey, 1998;
Peck, 1983; Tada, 1996; Wilber, 1998). Next, the
CCPC approach may contribute to reaching a
better understanding and interpretation of the
degrees of dualistic and/or nondual relationships
between the immanent and transcendental aspects
of human nature and life (Panikkar, 1993, 1998).
Finally, it may contribute penetrating further into
understanding the origins and nature of naked,
that is, without any antecedents, outbursts of
insight, true creativity, and serendipity, as well as
the phenomena of synchronicity.
~ The Spiraling Cycles Are Always Open,
So New Questions and Answers Arise.
Some Questions Die While New Ones Are
Always Born, Time and Eternity ~
T
HE fiRST question arising from the CCPC theory
would be: Can this utterly synthetic approach
pave the way towards a general and quintessential
approach to crisis and conflict and help us to improve
our understanding of the ultimate nature and range
of reality? The second query would be: Can the
CCPC ''both sides now" theory help to broaden our
concept of "empiricism" and deeper epistemology?
And thirdly, can this concept help to focus change
and crisis resolution in fields ranging from the
personal to the scientific and to the social and
political realms?
Another possibility that dwells within the CCPC
context comes from a serendipity-mediated
widening of Maslow's idea of using as "psychological
human guinea pigs" the highest achievers and self-
actualizers in order to study the most highly creative
beings of humankind ("the creators") (Maslow, 1968).
Turning this idea "upside down" now, I wonder if it
would be of practical importance to try exactly the
opposite approach. This would require taking as
"guinea pigs" (or, simply, research pigs from Orwell's
animal farm) the most depraved and sickest
characters of both the real world and literary fiction,
from Hitler and the Nazis to Lady Macbeth and the
Karamazov brothers. Evil minds would so acquire
a constructive, however involuntary mission, in an
attempt to understand in a systematic manner the
general characteristics, patterns of consciousness
(de)formation, and dynamics of "the destroyers," the
opposite end ofthe spectrum ofthe self-actualizers.
The main goal of this enterprise would be to cure
human evil and malignant narcissism (Peck, 1983)
and replace them with empathy and compassion.
In any case, an integral and multidisciplinary
hermeneutic field of study should be created.
~ A Light at the End of the Tunnel?
The GPoint ~
S
INCE CYCLICAL time is not a system that closes
up on itself, but jumps to the next stage at the
completion of its critical turning points, the entire
pattern, with all its ups and downs, seems to move
in an anti-entropy ascending pattern (see Figure
1). This is likely to lead (teleological?) evolution from
a prepersonal-cyclical phase (point I), through a
personal-linear phase towards a transpersonal Eden
(point G), a broad "pointless" point, infinitesimal to
infinite, where linear and cyclical time finally
become one, an instant/eternal present. This
philosophy, mainly defended by Teilhard de Chardin
(1965, 1989) and Mircea Eliade (1994), also alluded
to in religious texts (Cor. 15: 28), eventually
advances humankind towards an Omega point, a
new world, an enantiodromia, a transhuman
condition, and so forth. At the unchanging G-stage,
the historical and linear concept of time, and history
itself, as we know it, may come to an end. Suffering,
and death itself, loses an significance at this point.
It is simply not "necessary" anymore since it becomes
meaningless. In a way, it becomes nonexistent.
The sensitivity acquired through the entire
experiential process brings about a clarification of
faith which is not dualistic or blind anymore.
Senseless, interparadigmatic stagnation is left well
behind. The time spent in the darkness of the cave
now seems unreal, even nonexistent, a dream, a
dreamless nightmare, at most. The deep waters of
the sea of the unconscious come up to the surface
and become conscious. The nondual researcher,
however, will still have to face many problems of
communication with the outside world-still
dwelling in the haughty ego of modernity, immersed
in a submarine full of pride and ignorant
materialism. Such a world, each day less content
with itself, is now adrift at its own interparadigmatic
stage of evolution and superficial, unconscious
consciousness. So a "breach of planes" will persist
until "cosmic necessity" arises. Perhaps one of the
missions of the transpersonal movement is first to
wake it up, then to bring it back and actualize it
from both the past and the future.
Now decisions can be made according to the new
learned faith, enlightenment, and understanding.
The Great Crisis has been definitely overcome. Now
we fully realize-what a "eureka!" feeling-why
"crisis" also means "opportunity to grow." A high-level
approach, as the recently named sacred hermeneutics
CPanikkar, 1999) is finally welcome. Perhaps it is to
each of these new pioneers and nondual researchers,
that Goethe, the lyrist, dedicated these words of
encouragement, praise, and hope:
Spacious world, capacious life,
Years with honest effort rife,
Tireless searching, firmly founded,
Never ended, often rounded.
Old traditions well respected,
Innovations not rejected,
Noble aim, with cheer professed:
Well, we're sure that we've progressed.
(Zeydel, 1955, p. 170)
Now some humans live again in linear time, also
in cyclical time, and in its eternal spirit in the
intersection of both. There, here, forming a cross,
its transtemporal and transpersonal time now
allows such humans to perceive from their very
center, endlessly, a subtle fragrance that whispers
to them day and night, night and day, that at last
there is nothing to worry about because there is
something within and/or about and/or beyond the
human condition that is timeless and eternal.
Notes
I wish to acknowledge the help of David Gutierrez
Balmaseda.
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Carlos Jurado
162 The InternationalJournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, vol. 19
Beyond Mind
Steps to a Metatranspersonal Psychology
Elias Capriles
University of the Andes
Merida, Venezuela
Many transpersonal psychologists seem to identify sanity with transpersonal
experience in general-in some cases, including in this category the "illusory
experiences" of previous reincarnations, divine archetypes, and so on. Herein, a
psychology is outlined that I call metatranspersonal, insofar as it does not
consider access to transpersonal realms per se to be the purpose of therapy.
This aim can only be overcoming the delusion that consists of experiencing the
relative as absolute, the illusory as real, that which we posit as given, the
interdependent as independent, and so forth.
T
HE IMPRESSION I have of the transpersonal
. literature! is that often transpersonal
psychologists do not necessarily distinguish
between: (1) what Buddhists call Awakening or
Enlightenment, which here I shall designate as
Supreme Sanity,2 and which implies the
spontaneous self-liberation of all types of
comprehension in terms of thoughts, ideas, or
concepts, notwithstanding whether they are (a)
coarse or discursive, (b) subtle or intuitive, or (c)
"super-subtle";3 (2) conditioned experiences of
transpersonal realms marked by the basic samsaric
4
delusion that will be discussed later on-and
particularly, the experiences of the "Formless
realms," which according to Buddhism are the
summit of samsara or conditioned cyclic experience,
marked by delusion; and (3) the state wherein
neither samsara nor nirvana are active, which the
Dzogchen (Tibetan, rDzogs-chen) teachings call
"kunzhi" (Tibetan, kun-gzhi) (and which, as foreseen
by Jigme Lingpa [Tibetan, Jigs-med gLing-pa] , in
our times many yogis would confuse with the
Dharmakaya or first level of Enlightenment).
5
The final, optimal, and radical objective of all
psychotherapy should be sanity. Though most
transpersonal psychologists agree that sanity is not
the same as normality (in the sense of functional
adaptation free from conflicts to the social
pseudoreality), it is important to point out that
sanity does not consist of establishing oneself in
whatever trans personal realm, but rather of
achieving a correct apprehension of reality-that
is, the absence of delusion.
6
This correct
apprehension should not be understood as
agreement with the conventional scientific
interpretation of reality. In Alfred Korzybski's (1941)
terms, it means that we do not mistake our
conceptual maps for the territory of the given, nor
do we believe that a map is absolutely correct and
true while its opposite is absolutely incorrect and
false. In other words, true sanity corresponds to the
absence of what I will call "delusory valuation" (or
"overvaluation ofthought") and which I will consider
in greater detail later on.
~ The Delusion at the Root of the
Malaise of Civilization ~
"D ELUSION" MEANS that a person's perceptions
do not correspond to reality, that they distort
it. The fact that we have to exclude from our
consciousness ego-dystonic contents (i.e., contents
that are incompatible with one's self-image), and
that we have to distort our perception of reality in
order to maintain our ideologies already implies
that we are under delusion. Similarly, to the extent
that our acts produce results contrary to those we
wish to achieve, we are under delusion-and it is
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vol. 19, 163-183 163
clear that our attempts to obtain pleasure,
happiness, and security constantly result in pain,
unhappiness, and insecurity.
An extreme example of the above is the ecological
crisis that, according to some scientists, in the
absence of immediate, radical change, would put
an end to life on the planet (perhaps even before
the middle ofthe twenty-first century)1-and which
is a direct consequence of our attempts to produce
an earthly paradise by technological means and of
wanting to put an end to death, pain, and everything
we wish to avoid. Our attempts to reach heaven by
means of a technological Tower of Babel may have
instead produced a hell on earth and placed us at
the brink of extinction. We sacrifice all future
generations and many members of the present ones
in exchange for an apparent comfort that is only
accessible to a "privileged" few, but which is unable
to provide even these few with true happiness.
8
Everything seems to suggest that the type of
perception at the root of the modern project is
marked by delusion. As pointed out by Gregory
Bateson (1979) and Anthony Wilden (1972/1980),
among others, the theoretical nucleus of delusion
consists of" ... an essentially religious belief in the
(supposedly) real existence of such popular fictions
as the 'autonomous ego,' closed structures,
atomistic individuals and isolable entities ... "
(Wilden, 1972/1980).
One of the most essential characteristics of our
delusion is the fragmentation of a world which, as
strongly suggested by present physics, in itself
forms a perfectly undivided continuum.
9
This can
be illustrated with the Eastern fable in which a
group of men in the dark tried to determine the
identity of an elephant. Each took hold of a part of
the pachyderm, arriving at a different conclusion
about it: the one who held the trunk said it was a
hose; the one who grasped the ear thought it was
a fan; the one who put his hand on the back
believed it was a throne; the one who embraced a
leg concluded that it was a pillar, and lastly, the
one who grabbed the tail threw it away in terror,
thinking it was a snake.
10
The delusion being discussed is the avidya, or
un-Wisdom, which a Mahayana, Vajrayana and
Atiyana version
ll
of the Buddhist teaching of the
Four Noble Truths regards as the Second Truth.
In the version being discussed, the Four Truths
are:
12
(1) Normal life is duhkha: lack of plenitude,
dissatisfaction, frustration, and recurring pain and
suffering. (2) There is a cause for duhkha, which
is avidya: the essential delusion I have been
referring to, which involves the lack of
nonconceptual holistic Wisdom. (3) It is possible
to overcome duhkha by reaching what Buddhism
calls Awakening or Enlightenment (which I have
been referring to herein as Supreme Sanity),
consisting of the nonconceptual unveiling of the
given, which dissolves all illusory fragmentation
and, in the long-run, results in the manifestation
of a systemic conceptual wisdom. (4) There is a path
for going from duhkha and avidya to the state of
plenitude, Wisdom, and Supreme Sanity that
Buddhists call Awakening or Enlightenment.
The mechanisms of deception that Sartre called
"Bad Faith," meaning self-deceit, and that Freud
13
interpreted as "repression" or "concealing by the
Subconscious," depend on our fragmentary vision
and are at the root of mechanisms such as the
"hedonic hue,"14 and so on. These prevent us from
discovering that our usual condition involves
dissatisfaction and a lack of plenitude that cannot
be overcome as long as the condition in question
persists, and the mechanisms of deception bar
awareness that this condition generates repeated
frustration, reiterated pain, and recurrent
suffering. Therefore, in order to overcome delusion,
as well as the ensuing duhkha, first we must realize
that both of them mark the totality of our
experience. Shantideva compared duhkha to a hair,
the normal individual to the palm of a hand, and
the Bodhisattva (the individual oriented towards
Supreme Sanity) to an eyeball, pointing out that
in the palm ofthe hand the hair of duhkha, which
goes unnoticed, can remain indefinitely, but in the
eyeball, where its presence becomes patent and
unbearable, it has to be removed immediately.
The delusion called avidya makes us worse than
the people in the fable about the elephant, as our
sensation of being entities inherently separate from
and independent of the rest of nature, and, in
general, our fragmentary perception of the
universe as a group of inherently separate, self-
existing and disconnected entities, leads us to
develop the technological project aimed at
destroying the parts of the world that bother us
and appropriating those we wish to use or possess,
and thus to disrupt the system of which we are a
part and which we depend on for our survival.
Unable to grasp the unity of the coin of life, we
develop powerful corrosives to destroy the side we
consider undesirable-death, disease, pain,
discomfort, and so on-and preserve the side we
consider desirable-life, health, pleasure, comfort,
and so on. When these corrosives are placed on
the side ofthe coin we want to destroy, a hole bores
through, also destroying the other side.
To illustrate the fragmentary and restricted
state of consciousness that has been called "small
space-time-knowledge" (Tarthang Tulku, 1977),15
which is inherent to avidya or delusion, the Buddha
used the example of a frog that, having been
confined all its life to the bottom of a well, thought
the sky was a small blue circle. As noted by Gregory
Bateson (1979), when this type of consciousness
perceives an arch, it does not realize that it is part
of a circuit; the individual tree in front of us does
not allow us to see the forest. Consequently, when
an arch bothers us, we direct our powerful
technological weapons against it, destroying the
circuit of which the arch is a part; trying to burn
the tree in front of us, we set fire to the forest,
causing our own destruction.
For the concept of delusion to be sufficiently
clear, we must define the term "delusory valuation"
(or "overvaluation of thought"). It indicates the
process whereby a vibratory function that seems
to emanate from, or be concentrated in, the center
of the chest at the level of the heart, charges
thoughts with the illusion of value and truth,
causing us to either confuse them with the territory
they interpret and take them to be entities-in-
themselves (as occurs, e.g., in sensory perception),
or to be the absolute truth-or something
absolutely false-about what the thoughts
interpret.
16
It is when delusory valuation (or
"overvaluation of thought") becomes more
pronounced-so that the sensation in the center
of the chest associated with the vibratory function
at the root of delusion becomes more perceptible-
that it is said that one is being affected by a passion.
~ Supreme Sanity as
Absence of Delusion ~
T
RANSPERSONAL EXPERIENCES are delusory (and
thus samsaric) insofar as they are colored by
delusively valued (i.e., "overvalued") thoughts.
Therefore, transpersonal perspectives that merely
focus on the achievement of trans personal
experiences, and which fail to distinguish between
nirvanic, samsaric, and neither-samsaric-nor-
nirvanic transpersonal experiences, cannot help
guide people towards true sanity. Though
broadening the scope of consciousness may give
access to the transpersonal realm and the
experiences of cosmic unity, and so on, that are
characteristic of it, this does not necessarily
amount to the transcendence of ego-delusion. If,
rather than identifYing with the limited entity
indicated by our name, we identify with something
much broader-the entire universe, the division-
free continuum suggested by the New Physics, God,
Buddha-nature, and so on-what we do is but
expand our ego. And we do this in such a way that
our delusory identification with a concept or series
of concepts would produce more pleasant results,
and, therefore, would be more difficult to recognize
as such, and consequently, to overcome.
In Buddhist terms, when one broadens one's field
of consciousness without overcoming the delusory
valuation (or "overvaluation") at the root of the basic
human delusion or avidya, one enters transpersonal
realms and broadens one's ego rather than
overcoming delusion in the state of Supreme Sanity
which Buddhists call Awakening or Enlightenment.
One also gains access to the ''higher realms" of cyclic
existence or samsara, whose nucleus is the delusion
called avidya. According to Buddhism, most of our
everyday experiences belong to the kama loka,
kamadhatu, or "realm of sensuality," while the
most enjoyable sensual experiences form the
"realm of the gods of sensuality." Some experiences
of aesthetic value can give us access to the rupa
loka, rupadhatu, or "realm of form." The above two
realms have in common the usual distinction
between figure and ground that results from
limiting one's attention to a segment of one's
sensory field (that is perceived as figure), while
the rest of the field is submerged in a kind of
"penumbra of attention" (and thus becomes ground).
As our attention becomes more panoramic and
seems to surpass the above usual distinction, giving
us access to transpersonal realms-and, moreover,
the knower identifies with the known pseudo-
totality-it is said that we have gained access to
the arupa loka, arupadhatu, or "Formless realm."17
However, instead of overcoming delusion and
samsara, the individual who ascends to the
Formless realms makes delusion and samsara
become considerably pleasant-which makes it
exceedingly difficult to overcome them.
The ascension to the higher realms through
spiritual methods or other activities or circumstances
has been compared to an arrow shot upwards. Since
the arrow rises by the impulse ofthe limited energy
of the action, and the force of gravity attracts it
downwards, sooner or later it will have to fall. Yung-
chia Hsiian-chiieh writes:
18
''When the force that
Beyond Mind 165
thrusts the arrow is spent, it will again fall to the
ground and its ascent only will have created adverse
karma for future times."
In Tibet, an individual who, by means of spiritual
techniques, ascended to the higher realms-and, in
particular, to the Formless realms-was compared
to a bird taking flight which sooner or later would
have to descend. Today we can use an airplane
instead of the bird in this example, and compare to
the airplane's shadow our becoming the entity that
others see as ourselves and our establishing an ego.
The airplane rises and keeps flying as long as fuel
feeds its engines (the actions or practices at the root
of the healthy habits involved) and as long as certain
contributing circumstances are present (e.g., a
particularly calm environment, the admiration of
disciples, the extent of personal fame, the absence
of confrontation with adverse opinions, etc.-and
in some cases even objects or substances). As the
airplane rises, its shadow broadens and becomes
progressively more blurred until, at a given altitude,
it seems to disappear. This is similar to what
happens to the practitioner who ascends to the
summit of conditioned existence (samsara), whose
sense-of-self expands until it includes the whole
universe, and finally gains the illusion of ''being
someone who has transcended any notion-of-self."
However, the airplane's shadow (the individual's
sense-of-self), has not disappeared. The machine
cannot keep flying indefinitely; the amount of fuel
in its tank is limited and favorable contributing
conditions at some point will be substituted by
unfavorable ones, and sooner or later it will have to
descend and meet its shadow once more. The
individual who "descends" from the heights is
accustomed to the apparently unlimited character
of the sky (which here represents the wide scope of
consciousness) and therefore is most likely to
experience some degree of claustrophobia upon
facing his or her "shadow." This had never
disappeared, even though it had remained invisible
for some time, and feeling confined to its tight limits
once more will make the person reject the whole of
his or her experience. Rejection of the experience
will transform into pain whatever sensations may
manifest, and the higher the individual's
bioenergetic input,19 the more acute will be the
pain. Since in the above situation the individual's
bioenergetic input is bound to be quite high, he or
she is very likely to face a hellish experience.
The fuel that sustains the spiritual high is the
repeated action (Sanskrit: karma) that establishes
healthy habits or attitudes. Buddhists designate it
with the Sanskrit word hetu, which means "main
cause," and compare it to the seed that allows a plant
to be produced. Contributing conditions-including
the effect of objects or substances, the environment,
and so on-are compared to light, humidity, earth,
heat, and so on. When the action at the root ofthe
habits involved runs out or the contributing
conditions change-in terms ofthe simile, when the
airplane's fuel runs out or when atmospheric or
mechanical conditions make it impossible for it to
continue its flight-the individual will have to
confront the "shadow" again. Consider Laing's (1961)
diagram of spiral simulations below (Figure 1) and
the following comment:
Elusion is a relation in which one pretends
oneself away from one's original self; then
pretends oneself back from this pretence so as
to appear to have arrived back at the starting
point. A double pretence simulates no pretence.
The only way to "realize" one's original state
is to forgo the first pretence, but once one adds
a second pretence to it, as far as I can see, there
is no end to the series of possible pretences. I
am. I pretend I am not. I pretend I am. I
pretend I am not pretending to be pretending ...
Figure 1
first pretence
A ---tB
Spiral of Pretence
A
B
second pretence
B ---tAl
The positions A and Al on the perimeter of the
circle are separated by an impermeable barrier
which is thinner and more transparent than
one can imagine. Begin at A and move towards
B. Instead of going back in a clockwise direction
to A, continue in an anti-clockwise direction to
p o i n t ~ . A and Al are "so near and yet so far."
They are so close that one says: "Is not Al just
as good as A, if it is indistinguishable from A?"
(Laing, 1961, p. 30)
If what we value is the state that Laing
represented with point A, we will believe we have
reached A, as we will not be able to accept that
what we have achieved is but its imitation.
Point A corresponds to our true nature, which
is not personal but universal, and which, insofar
as it cannot be thought about or conceptualized,
Mahayana Buddhists refer to by the term aehintya
or "the Unthinkable." Chuang-tzu compared the
experience of this nature to that of a baby who ...
stares all day long without blinking its eyes-
it has no preferences in the world of externals.
To move without knowing where you are going,
to sit at home without knowing what you are
doing, traipsing and trailing about with other
things, riding along with them on the same
wave---this is the basic rule of life-preservation,
this and nothing more. (in Watson, 1968, p. 253)
Point B is our usual condition marked by
delusion, in which we delusorily value (or
overvalue) the concept according to which we are
the finite and limited entity indicated by our name
that we believe to be distinct and separate from
the rest of what is represented by point A of the
diagram.
Lastly, point Al is the illusion that one has
achieved the unveiling ofthe condition represented
by A-an illusion that corresponds to the Formless
realms which, according to Buddhism, are the
summit of samsara (i.e., ofthe experience marked
by the delusion called avidya).
When one arrives at B, one feels at a distance
from the plenitude of the universe, and therefore
one experiences a powerful sensation of "lack of
plenitude" that one attempts to fill by every means
possible. However, since one has been conditioned
to hold on to one's separate identity, in one's
attempts to recover totality and plenitude, one will
strive to affirm and maintain one's self as an
individual. Consequently, instead of returning to
A one will choose to advance to AI' identifying with
a spurious conceptual totality made possible by a
limited panoramification of the focus of conscious
attention.
Contrariwise, "returning to N' after having
become fully adapted to the social pseudoreality may
be explained-after Norman Brown (1968)-as the
reestablishment ofthe oceanic feeling. (This feeling,
according to Freud, characterizes the infant, and
implies plenitude which, it should be noted, Freud
was wrong to characterize negatively.) The feeling
may also seem to be reestablished without the loss
of the capabilities acquired by the adult, and even
with their further development, as the individual
has been freed from the self-impediment issuing
from delusorily valued self-consciousness.
2o
Access to transpersonal realms and the so-called
mental level cannot amount to True Sanity. Ifwe
hold on to a condition that seems unlimited and
appears to encompass the entire universe, it will
be because we cannot overcome the delusory valuation
of our experience. In most nontranspersonal states
this delusory valuation results in a greater or lesser
measure of pain, so we decide to avoid the pain by
holding on to the transpersonal realms. This would
not occur if we overcame delusory valuation (i.e.,
overvaluation), in the absence of which no possible
experiences would involve suffering, and there
would be no idea whatsoever of an ego that should
avoid suffering.
In agreement with several Eastern mystical
philosophies, Korzybski (1941) suggested that, when
we believe our conceptual maps to be the territory of
the given, or when we take them to be absolutely
true or absolutely false representations of it, we are
under delusion. True Sanity consists of self-liberation
from the confusion of maps with the territory, and
from the delusory valuation of conceptual maps in
general-and therefore, of self-liberation from the
experiences of all realms. No matter what realm of
experience we may be in, we should not allow
ourselves to be carried away by any delusorilyvalued
thought: neither by discursive thoughts forming a
chain that traps us in a circle of confusion, passion,
and delusion, nor by the intuitive type of thoughts
involved in sensory perception. Upon discovering that
one has been deceived by a thought, the practitioner
of systems such as Dzogchen looks directly at the
thought that is present at the time in order to discover
its essential nature, thus setting the conditions for
its self-liberation and the concomitant unveiling of
anoie gnosis
2
1---that is, ofthe unthinkable true nature
of thoughts and of all reality. This amounts to the
dissolution of delusion in the unveiling of the
absolutely true (the state represented by A), which
may be compared to the awakening from a dream or
to the removal of a veil.
22
We may delusorily value a thought about our
possibilities for the future or any other practical
matter; a reasoning about the ultimate nature of
reality; the perception of a group of passersby; the
apprehension of gods and demons; or the experience
of a state of greater space-tillie-knowledge in terms
of concepts such as Being, Oneness, God, Buddha-
nature, and so on.
23
No matter what conceptually-
tinged experience the individual may face,
recognizing an interpretation in terms of thoughts is
involved. The individual looks the thought that is
present at the moment right in the face and, instead
Beyond Mind 167
of becoming hypnotized with its content, sees what
it (is)24 in truth-thus creating the conditions for
the perception to liberate itself spontaneously
together with the subject-object duality and the
vibratory activity at the root of delusoryvaluation.
25
It is then that the absolute condition represented
by A is unveiled, beyond the relativity of subject and
object, and of concepts defined by their opposites.
Individuals who lack a practice such as this one,
upon gaining access to the transpersonallevel may
remain attached to it, and may likewise get trapped
in other levels too--and particularly in states of
extreme suffering. Contrariwise, those who free
themselves completely from delusory valuation
cannot fall into a condition of suffering again.
Since they no longer feel separated from the
plenitude of the universe, even if they function in
nontranspersonal realms they recognize the illusory
character ofthe separateness they experience; their
lives are a perennial plenitude without any sense
of lack. Moreover, they take care of the whole
universe as their own body, and since they do not
experience themselves as separate selves, they are
free from selfishness and from its ill effects.
Now we can explain the title of this article.
The Dzogchen teachings call "mind" the
functioning of our psyche in terms of the delusory
valuation of thoughts and, in particular, of
thought-structures such as the noetic-noematic
(subject-object) dichotomy, and counterpose the
mind thus conceived to the unveiling of anoic
gnosis, corresponding to Supreme Sanity.26
Metatranspersonal psychology is, then, the one
leading beyond mind, so that the unveiling of anoic
gnosis may become firmly established.
The term "metatranspersonal" is to "transpersonal"
what the adjective "metashamanic" (that I coined in
a former paper [Capriles, 1990b]) is "to shamanic."
As will be seen below, metashamanic practice uses
seemingly shamanic elements for purposes that go
far beyond those characteristic of shamanism as such.
Likewise, metatranspersonal psychology acknowl-
edges the need to gain access to transpersonal realms,
but does not consider this as its final purpose.
27
According to this metatranspersonal perspective,
the aim of therapy is the capacity to transit through
all realms of experience without attaching oneself
to any of them and to achieve self-liberation from
the experiences of all.
Though shamanic cultures had a pan-
communicative vision that caused human beings
to relate communicatively with natural phenomena
and therefore to preserve the ecological order,
shamanism also has serious defects. Michael Harner
(1973) pointed out that the South American shaman
thinks the reality to which is gained access through
shamanic means-that is different from everyday
reality and that Western culture would consider
supernatural-is the true reality, and that the
everyday vision shared with others is a false reality.
Information on shamanic cultures from other
regions suggests that what Harner says may be
applied to shamanism in general: although some
shamanic tribes and cultures may attribute a
greater or lesser degree of reality to the everyday
vision of a normal individual, most of them attribute
a higher degree of reality to "supernatural"
shamanic experiences that are equally sustained
by delusory valuation. It is perhaps the greater scope
of the focus of consciousness and the greater
intensity of the experience associated with the
higher bioenergetic input (kundalini or thig-le) at
the root of such experiences that make these seem
more real to shamans than the ones they face in
their everyday lives.
28
In Tibet and its zone of cultural influence, popular
culture has preserved important shamanic
elements
29
that representatives of the two most
important religious systems never tried to
discourage. Lamas, Bonpo as wen as Buddhist,
referred to local spirits and demons as relatively
existing entities capable of causing great harm to
human beings and social life, and, in general,
encouraged the belief in supernatural entities that
could harm or help human beings. The reason for
this is that as long as the tendency is still present
to experience "supernatural" reality as inherently
absolutely true, and to become its potential victims,
it is of no use to simply tell oneself that the reality
in question does not exist. In fact, the bravest and
most capable students of Lamas of both systems
used to be taught practices (considered very
dangerous) that would allow them to experience the
"supernatural" reality of their gods and demons and,
if aU went well, to recognize that it was illusory and
thus free themselves from its influence and power.
Repetition of the practice resulted in the progressive
neutralization of the tendency to experience the
supernatural reality accessed by shamanic and yogic
means as self-existing, independent of the
practitioner's mental processes, and absolutely true.
As they learned not to take seriously visions and
experiences that seemed so real, practitioners also
learned not to be conditioned by the illusion that
their normal everyday experiences were self-
existing, independent of their own mental processes,
and absolutely true. Liberating themselves from
delusory valuation during shamamc experiences,
they were able to free themselves from it, and
therefore from delusion in general-in their daily
lives as well.
Dzogchen and some other Tibetan spiritual
systems regard as delusory both our experience of
everyday reality and the experience of
supernatural reality to which shamans and yogis
may have access.
30
This does not mean that they
consider both realities as mere hallucinations; they
acknowledge the existence of something given that,
once processed and interpreted by our mental
functions, is experienced as the world in which we
live, with all its entities. Delusion arises when we
fail to recognize that entities do not exist inherently
and absolutely; that they depend on other entities
and on our own mental processes :in order to exist
in the manner that they exist for us. Thus, delusion
is a confusion regarding the mode of existence of
entities (including human beings): when we believe
that our objects and we ourselves exist inherently
and substantially (in the sense of being self-existing
and not needing the mind and/or other objects or
subjects to exist), that the relative is absolute, we
are under delusion. This delusion is a result of the
delusory valuation of thought.
Delusion gives rise to a series of emotional
responses that produce recurring suffering,
dissatisfaction, and frustration. If we believe in the
inherent, absolute existence of supernatural reality,
we may become the victims of demons and spirits,
as has happened to many Tibetans and members of
tribal cultures; if we believe in the inherent, absolute
truth of the entities, beliefs, and values of normal
everyday reality, we will strive to maintain our
identities, possessions, and so on, thereby giving rise
to: (a) constant discomfort, dissatisfaction, and
personal frustration; (b) contradictions and social
conflicts; and (c) ultimately, an ecological crisis such
as the one we presently face.
To conclude this section, it may be relevant to
note that when individuals who have freed
themselves from delusion face what others
experience as a contradiction and which produces
in them emotional responses, they do not value it
delusorily and therefore do not perceive it as a
contradiction. It is well known that the Zen Buddhist
method that the Japanese call koan (Chinese: kung-
an) study, consists of confronting students with what
they perceive as an unsolvable contradiction and
requiring that they resolve it. AB long as they are
under delusion, the students will strive day and
night to solve the koan. However, sooner or later,
their effort to understand in terms of delusorily
valued (or overvalued) thoughts will collapse and
the students will no longer perceive a contradiction
in what they were trying to solve. Then, for a longer
or shorter period, they will be in a state of unlimited
freedom, beyond the yoke of the delusory valuation
of concepts and, therefore, beyond all limits.
Similarly, what Gregory Bateson (1972, Part HI)
called pathogenic double-bind
31
will produce a
pathological effect on the child with corresponding
predispositions, but will not produce the same effect
in a normal adult-and will not produce any effect
whatsoever in the individual who has freed him or
herself from delusory valuation.
e, The Mandala, the Descendent Path
and Serial Metanoias ~
J
UNG DISCOVERED that mandalas, which appeared
spontaneously to some neurotic patients in
dreams or hallucinations, were maps pointing out
the path to sanity-which, in its supreme form, is
not merely the overcoming of neuroses (which Jung
correctly understood to be spontaneous, potentially
self-healing processes), but the overcoming of basic
human delusion. Jung pointed out that the center
of the mandala represents the essential nonduality
and nonplurality of both the physical and the psychic
universe, while the periphery represents the world
of duality and plurality-which, when these two
latter characteristics are taken as absolute, self-
existing, and given, is a world of deceit and delusion.
In spite ofthe fact that Jungwrote "psychological
commentaries" on the translations of two important,
original Dzogchen books (Evans-Wentz, 1927,
1977), he failed to grasp some of the mandala's
levels of meaning, particularly in the Dzogchen
teachings. From a standpoint related to the latter,
let us consider the three main regions of a
mandala:
(1) The periphery represents the normal state
in which we are totally immersed in delusion and
completely deceived: since we are confused and at
the same time confused about the fact that we are
confused, we consider our judgments and
perceptions to be sound. (2) The four wrathful
guardians (dharmapala) or dakini in the
intermediate zone, who guard the gates to the
center, represent the dynamics of the transition
Beyond Mind 169
between periphery and center. (3) The central
figure in yab-yum (male-female erotic-mystical
union) is the Adi-Buddha or Primordial Buddha,
who represents the unveiling of anoic gnosis in
its nonduality, its nonplurality, its nakedness (i.e.,
its being free ofthe delusory valuation ofthought),
and its absence of delusion and deceit.
Let us consider these three zones of the
mandala as stages in the path to Supreme Sanity.
(1) In the periphery, delusion or basic
contradiction is active but has not been disclosed
as such. (2) In the intermediate zone, represented
by the wrathful guardians or dakinis, delusion or
basic contradiction has been disclosed as such and
therefore has turned into extreme conflict. (3) In
the center, delusion or basic contradiction has
dissolved in the unveiling of anoic gnosis-that
is, of the absolute nondual condition free from
delusion. The contradiction consisting of basic
human delusion and represented by the periphery
has to turn into conflict for it to dissolve, if all
goes well, in the unveiling of the anoic gnosis
corresponding to the true condition of re ality. 32
The principle of the mandala is central to
different mystical traditions and appears in the
literature and fine arts of many civilizations. In
order to explain this fact it is not necessary to
establish genetic links among different traditions
and civilizations: if Jung's patients could
hallucinate mandalas or dream them up and thus
obtain spontaneous maps ofthe process they had
to undergo in order to heal, there is little doubt
that all true mystics are naturally familiarized
with the dynamics represented by mandalas.
Idries Shah has told the story of a disciple of
the Sufi Master from Murcia, Ibn EI-Arabi, who
dreamed that Master Maaruf Kharki was
engulfed by fire. Thinking that the great Master
was in hell, the man was seized with great
tribulation, so he decided to ask EI-Arabi for an
explanation. The Master told him the fire did not
mean that Maarufwas in hell; it represented that
which the dreamer had to go through in order to
reach the state of Maaruf-a region of experience
that Sufis often call the abyss of fire.
The principle ofthe mandala is also the essence
of Dante's Divine Comedy and its dynamics
correspond very precisely to the structure of the
"beyond" in the famous work by the great
Florentine poet. Guided by Virgil, Dante leaves the
realm of the living-the mandala's periphery-and
descends into hell. According to Bateson (1972,
"The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory ofAlcohohsm"),
there is a positive feedback loop at the root of the
process of the reductio ad absurdum of basic human
delusion, which (whether it takes the form of a
neurosis, a psychosis, or the first stage in the
traditional path to Supreme Sanity) may be what
Freud caned Thanatos or the death instinct.
Dante's entrance to hell means that the
contradiction that characterizes the periphery of
the mandala has turned into conflict, and that the
conflict is developing-blindly driven, directed, and
catalyzed by Thanatos.
Dante's descent through hell towards its lowest
circle and the poet's passage to purgatory through
the opening at the bottom of hell, describe the
development of conflict towards the threshold level
at which the unveiling of anoic gnosis redirects the
process in a clearly healthy direction, introducing
a mechanism of interruption and spontaneous self-
liberation from Thanatic positive feedback loops.
Dante is not yet ready to unite with Beatrice and
establish himself in heaven (which in the Divine
Comedy does not represent the realms ofthe gods
of Sensuality, Form, or Formlessness, but the
unveiling of anoic gnosis), because he has to purge
or purifY his deeply-rooted delusions and wayward
passions through the turning of contradiction into
conflict each time it manifests itself and the
subsequent self-liberation from both conflict and
contradiction in the unveiling of anoic gnosis.
However, since hell is supposed to be eternal (so
there can be no way out ofit), this process no longer
belongs to hell, but to purgatory: the unveiling of
anoic gnosis has already given Dante a glimpse of
heaven, and therefore the poet knows that the
conflict and suffering he faces are not eternal but
transitory, key elements of the purification he has
to undergo in order to establish himself in heaven.
Henceforth, the process will no longer be catalyzed
solely by Thanatos; it will be catalyzed also by the
holistic Wisdom resulting from the repeated self-
liberation from basic contradiction (delusion) and
conflict in the unveiling of anoic gnosiS.
33
Once delusion has been purged to a considerable
degree through its repeated self-liberation in the
unveiling of anoic gnosis, Dante ascends through
the heavens until he establishes himself in the
empyreal-that is to say, at the very center of the
mandala.
In the terminology used by David Cooper in The
Death of the Family (1971),34 the path to Supreme
Sanity is a process of metanoia
35
that leads us from
eknoia (the normal state of being part ofthe mass
in which individuals are outside their own minds)
towards noia or en-noia (properly centered mind,
which has ceased to be part of the mass) and anoia
(or no-mind).36 One of the problems I see in Cooper's
map is that it sets too rigid a series of successive
metanoias and a slightly imprecise order in the
succession of steps in the process being discussed.
Another problem I see with The Death of The Family
is that it seems to posit that spontaneous episodes
of madness in unprepared individuals-provided
that they are not institutionally distorted or
aborted-may be sufficient to allow them to achieve
the degree of sanity characteristic of a true Master
in a genuine (metashamanic, metatranspersonal)
Wisdom-tradition. Consider the following diagram
from Cooper (1971).37
Figure 2
Process of Metanoia
1 Paranoia
~
Eknoia
Anoia
/.13 Antinoia
N
~
Ola
3-v (En-noia)
11 = met anoia
According to The Death of the Family, sanity
consists of the fluid movement (metanoia 3)
between noia and anoia. Anoia-like the Chinese
term wu-hsin, literally meaning no-mind-
indicates the overcoming of the core of delusion
that the Dzogchen teachings call mind. Thus,
although the condition of anoia may be regarded
as transpersonal, it implies the self-liberation from
all thoughts, and therefore it excludes the Formless
realms. Since it corresponds to the manifestation
of nirvana, it excludes the condition the Dzogchen
teachings call kunzhi (in which, as noted above,
neither samsara nor nirvana are active).
It should also be noted that the consolidation of
the absolute dissolution of the illusion of
individuality implied by anoia may only take place
interdependently with the development of an
individuation similar to the one conceived by Jung.
To survive as a species, the extreme selfishness and
blind individualism that have led us to the brink of
destruction will have to dissolve in anoia. However,
we will have to establish a noia also, which implies
the overcoming of the impersonal serialization
imposed on us by social institutions. The former
means that we have to become progressively free
from the delusory valuation of the ego that causes
us to feel that we are the center ofthe universe and
makes us extremely selfish.
38
The latter means that
we have to free ourselves from the power and
influence of the internalized others making up our
superego, with whom we have become agglutinated
and who make it impossible for us to act in a
genuinely autonomous manner.
In traveling on the path to Supreme Sanity we
stop functioning like robots controlled by others
who are robots controlled by others ... ad infinitum.
This, however, does not mean we become our own
masters-nor does it mean we develop a more
centered and stronger ego. We must overcome the
inner schism between one aspect that controls and
another that is controlled, along with the illusion
of a central, true ego; this means that, as we free
ourselves from the influence of others, we become
free from ourselves as well-that is, we overcome
the illusion of "ego."
Though the net of internalized others, which
according to Cooper (1971) corresponds to the
Freudian superego, is a constellation of relations,
it functions in terms of the images-expressions,
voice inflections, and so on-of significant others
in their relations with us or with other others-
maybe partly because, as noted by Bateson (1979),
images pass through human interfaces with
greater ease and economy. Thus, although we must
understand human individuals as systems of
relations, we must also bear in mind that such
relations have a very personal character.
~ Existential Psych.ology, th.e
Humanistic Movement and Janov's
Primal Therapy v. the Purification
Described in the Divine Comedy ~
D
DRING THE 1960s, the humanistic psychology
movement helped to prepare the way for the
advent ofthe transpersonal psychology movement.
One of the basic ideas common to many figures in
the humanistic movement was that sanity did not
lie in the perfecting of the defense mechanisms
whereby we elude both pain and the contents that
psychoanalysts call ego-dystonic, but in
dismantling our defense mechanisms, so that we
Beyond Mind 171
could be fully in touch with our own pain and be
aware of the contents that previously we were
compelled to elude.
In the arena of therapy, the purpose of methods
such as Janov's (1970, 1972a, 1972b) primal therapy
was to allow for the discovery of a primal distress,
which one had felt compelled to elude by building
the ego and perfecting its defense mechanisms. One
of Janov's clients had experienced a deep feeling of
anxiety upon witnessing a scene from a play, and
J anov advised him to behave as the actor in order
to enter fully into that feeling. When the client
followed his advice, he experienced the urge to utter
a grievous scream. J anov made of this supposed
need to utter what he called the primal scream, one
ofthe axioms of his system. His clients had to reach
the state where they would feel an irrepressible
impulse to scream and freely give way to this
impulse: the scream itself would be a liberation.
J anov had recognized the need to face hell, but
had not understood that, rather than fmding a
momentary relief from it by giving way to an
emotional outburst, the individual had to go
through hell-as Dante in the Divine Comedy-
to reach heaven and become established therein.
If one releases tension through an outburst of
emotion, one loses the opportunity to use the
tension to recognize and liberate the dual
appearance at its root. Tension necessarily implies
the appearance of two poles opposing each other
and requires that a mental subject feel separate
from its object and reject it. When the feeling of
tension cannot be withstood any longer, it becomes
the sole object of consciousness-and consciousness,
believing itself to be an autonomous mental subject,
feels different from it and rejects it with ever
increasing vigor, exacerbating tension. This is a
unique opportunity to search for the mental subject
apparently different and separate from the tension,
in order to see whether or not such a subject truly
exists. On doing this we may discover beyond
concepts that there is no such subject nor a duality
between consciousness and tension-whereby the
apparent duality between the illusory subject and
its object might eventually dissolve like a feather
in a fire. The individual has a first glimpse of the
state of Supreme Sanity as the tension instantly
self-liberates, loosening up completely. The
repeated occurrence of this results in the gradual
development of the capacity for the instantaneous
self-liberation from duality, tension, and delusion
in daily life, as well as in the development of holistic
Wisdom.
Although J anov did not assert that the purpose
of his therapy was merely to achieve a partial,
momentary release of tension, in practice this was
often the outcome-a mere katharsis or
purification almost as superficial as the one posited
in Aristotle's Poetics. It may be true that a
psychological trauma will only be resolved if the
individual reexperiences the traumatic episode at
its root; however, the result of therapy will not be
optimal if the client merely expresses the emotions
that he or she was unable to express and was forced
to repress in the original experience. If the client
did so, the result would be a temporary and partial
relaxation that would not uproot the cause of all
tension-which is the delusory valuation of illusory
duality; the partial relaxation thus achieved would
give way to a new accumulation of tension that
the individual would not know how to liberate, and
so the client would continue to be at the mercy of
everyday life situations. This is why so many of
Janov's clients had to submit themselves to his
therapy repeatedly in order to reexperience the
primal feeling and send forth a new scream.
The only purification that is definitive and
irreversible is the one achieved through the process
illustrated by the Divine Comedy (that was used
to illustrate the Dzogchen path, but which applies
to all genuine paths), which definitively neutralizes
the basic human delusion at the root of all
evil, resulting in a radical and irreversible
transformation of the individual's experience:
uprooting the cause, so that its negative effects
cease manifesting. Upon reaching the point of
greatest tension we must observe the appearance
of duality that gives way to the tension and
determine whether or not it is justified. Since at
this point tension will depend upon the mental
subject's rejection of the unpleasant sensation of
tension appearing as object, we must look towards
the place where the mental subject seems to be, in
order to check whether or not it is in fact an entity
separate and distinct from the tension and flow of
experience. Upon failing to find such a supposedly
separate subject, sooner or later the illusory duality
may spontaneously dissolve (i.e., self-liberate) in
the manifestation of the anoic gnosis that reveals
the nondual and nonplural nature of reality.
As long as we elude the frustration, dissatisfac-
tion, unhappiness, anguish, fear, and pain that
pervade our everyday experience, we will have no
172 The InternationalJournal ofTranspersonal Studies, 2000, VoL 19
chance to apprehend the illusion of duality at their
root-and therefore no way to overcome either the
root, the trunk, or the branches. Only when the
illusion of duality is disclosed as such and turns
into conflict is it possible to overcome it, so that we
cease being subject to its negative consequences.
Our purpose should not be that of existentialist
philosophers who advise us to live in hell, which
they consider as authenticity itself, nor that of
humanistic psychologists who try to help us rid
ourselves of psychological defense mechanisms, yet
fail to provide us with the means to overcome the
delusion at the root of suffering. Nor should it be
that of primal therapy, which amounts to the su-
perficial catharsis achieved through an emotional
outburst. The purpose of any genuine therapy
should be Supreme Sanity. To achieve it, both a
conscientious preparation and the oral instructions
of a genuine mystical tradition are required.
Other humanistic approaches to psychotherapy,
including some transpersonal ones, have a similar
shortcoming. Though an individual is forced to face
something that had always been avoided, the cli-
ent is not given the means to overcome the basic
delusion at the root of aU suffering. In the best of
cases, the clients of such therapies will achieve a
superficial catharsis through emotional relief, and
may perhaps develop the ability to be more open
before others as their need to deceive both others
and themselves diminishes. However, clients may
pay a price for this success. By exposing themselves
"exactly as they are," they make themselves and
other people believe that their true identity, their
true being, is what they show others at that mo-
ment-but which is actually an unconscious phan-
tasy, in this case corresponding to Jung's shadow. 39
Such belief is, of course, prior to the therapy and,
undoubtedly, it is more authentic to show it than
to conceal it. The problem is that the therapy has
not helped the individual to become free from the
delusion at the root of all problems; on the con-
trary, the treatment has taken delusion for granted,
affirmed, and sustained it.
We have to descend into the Labyrinth and face
the Minotaur-not to affirm and maintain its
illusory existence by believing it to be our true
identity-but, on the contrary, to discover it to be
a mere illusion and thus deprive it of all power. As
we are progressively freed from the grip of
unconscious phantasy-that is, from the hold of
the shadow-the source of most of the harm that
we cause others and ourselves is gradually
neutralized. The key to achieve this lies in the
treasure of instructions found in the ancient
Wisdom traditions and in the relationship with a
true Master holding a genuine lineage.
40
These
elements may allow us to spontaneously access
Supreme Wisdom, putting an end to delusion and
concomitant suffering, and may help us to free
ourselves from all neurosis or imbalance. The
Lankavatara Sutra reads:
Things are not as they seem to be,
nor are they otherwise.
We are not our ego or conscious identity, but we
are not our shadow or unconscious phantasy either.
Notes
This essay, along with another paper of mine written in
Spanish and entitled "Pas os hacia una fenomenologia
metaexistencial de los estados de conciencia" ("Steps to a
Meta-Existential Phenomenology of Mind"; Maracaibo,
Venezuela, Utopia y praxis latinoamericana, No.2;
published with serious printing errors), summarize the
theoretical nucleus of a book I am preparing to be published
under the title Beyond Mind: Steps to a Metatranspersonal
Psychology and a Metaexistential Phenomenology of Mind-
of which a shorter version will appear first, and then a
longer one, if I can complete the necessary research (still
seeking publishers).
Thanks are due to Vincent Morley for his previous
corrections of the language and to Mayda Hocevar for her
help with the bibliography. I also acknowledge Helga
Ramirez's help during the process oftranslation.
1. Both transpersonal psychology and the antipsychiatry
movement have made extremely valuable contributions to
the study ofthe human mind and experience, as they have
vindicated and validated realms of experience that formerly
psychological and psychiatric schools generally had
regarded as pathological. Among these lies precisely the
condition that, according to the criteria established in this
essay, constitutes True Sanity (corresponding to what
Buddhists call Awakening or Enlightenment). Therefore,
my essay is not intended as a condemnation of
transpersonal psychology as a whole, nor of those of its
proponents who have labored to communicate its
extraordinary value. (Note that, although the term
"antipsychiatry" was coined by David Cooper, and R. D.
Laing never included himself in the category indicated by
the word, I follow the custom-initiated, according to Adrian
Laing [1996], by David Cooper in his Introduction [Cooper,
1968l-of including Laing in the term.)
Thus, when I speak of meta trans personal psychology I
am not calling for the birth of a new psychological
movement; I am only proposing a shift of emphasis in some
expressions of transpersonal psychology so that they may
discriminate between delusory transpersonal experiences
and the (equally transpersonal) state of Supreme Sanity
corresponding to Awakening or Enlightenment.
Beyond Mind 173
It must be noted that, although this essay is subtitled
"Steps to a Metatranspersonal Psychology," psychologies
ofthe type that I call "metatranspersonal" have existed as
long as there have been genuine Wisdom traditions
resulting from the Awakening or Enlightenment of one or
another individual-and therefore any steps to it are
unnecessary.
Finally, I must state that since 1977 I have been a student
ofDzogchen Master Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, who has been
my main teacher since 1986. Since this teacher has criticized
those who claim that in the West Buddhism has to be
transmitted in the language of psychology, it may seem
strange to the rest of Rinpoche's disciples that I write this
article. However, I myself do not see any contradiction
between Namkhai Norbu's assertion and my writing this
essay, which I produced precisely because I felt that most of
those who have tried to express Buddhist psychology and
"therapy" in Western terms have to some extent distorted
it, and I fear that many people may have been misled by
these distortions. The point is that, although I do not think
Buddhism has to be taught in terms of Western psychology,
I thought it was important to show some of the distortions
introduced by those who do; and indicate how those
distortions may be corrected. And, in so doing, I availed
myself of the opportunity to briefly present the Dzogchen
(rDzogs-chen) path in ajournal whose readers may be among
the most likely individuals to benefit from this path.
2. Within transpersonal psychology, Wilber (1977) has
referred to the state of Supreme Sanity as Liberation, the
Sanskrit equivalents of which (moksha; mukti) are used in
various Hindu traditions to indicate the state of Supreme
Sanity. The Tibetan equivalents of Liberation (thar-pa;grol-
ba) refer to the Hinayana Buddhist's individual liberation
from suffering. The Tibetan equivalent of Awakening or
Enlightenment (byang-chub, corresponding to the Sanskrit
bodhi, the Chinese WU, the Japanese satori, etc.), in turn,
indicates the realizations ofthe 1l1ahayana, Vajrayana and
Atiyana forms of Buddhism, which imply what the
Yogachara called omniscience. This, rather than indicating
a type of ESP, refers to a more complete form of realization,
involving panoramic awareness and special capabilities
allowing the individual to effectively help others to go
beyond samsara. Though in general I use terms such as
Awakening or Enlightenment in order to indicate the
outcome of true spiritual development, since this essay
deals with psychology, it seemed more appropriate to speak
of Supreme Sanity.
3. In terms of his division of the psyche into separate,
autonomous compartments (already denounced by Herder),
Kant situated ideas in Reason, aesthetic and teleological
judgments in the Faculty of Judgment, concepts in the
Understanding, and sensory intuitions in Sensitiveness or
Sensibility-all of which interacted with each other. For
example, in what is generally termed recognition, the
concepts of the Understanding were applied to the realm
of Sensitiveness-and the same occurred in other mental
operations with the judgments of the Faculty of Judgment
and with the ideas and ideals of Reason). Since all of the
above are different types ofthoughts (the contents of which
are understood by a single, unitary psyche), here I have
chosen to refer to all of them with the generic noun
"thoughts," and divide them-as the Dzogchen teachings
do-into "coarse" thoughts (which Descartes called
"discursive"), "subtle" thoughts (which Descartes called
"intuitive"), and "super-subtle" thoughts, such as the "triple
projection" which gives rise to the illusion that there is an
experience, something experienced, and an experiencer
(which Descartes failed to identify as thoughts and wrongly
took to be part of the nature of agiven, substantial reality).
In this essay, the term "conceptual" should be understood
as including all three types ofthought, that is, (a) coarse or
discursive, (b) subtle or intuitive, and (c) super-subtle.
Since definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam
specificam, all contents of thoughts are relative: they are
defined by their inclusion in a broader genus and by contrast
with those within the same genus which they exclude. The
absolute (as base), on the other hand, is the true nature
common to all entities and all thoughts. The delusion that
many Mahayana Buddhists regard as the Second Noble
Truth consists of experiencing the relative as absolute, the
dependent as independent, the insubstantial as substantial,
that which we posit, as inherent or given, and so forth.
In regard to Kant's theories, in particular, it should be
noted that he posited a priori elements in each of the
compartments he drew within the human psyche, in an
attempt to validate both his own experience and the
idiosyncrasies of his society by positing those elements as
universal and objective. The existence of a priori forms of
Sensitiveness or Sensibility would confirm the supposedly
objective existence of the world and of human experience
in general; the existence of a priori concepts of the
Understanding would validate the scientific and
nonscientific knowledge prevailing in his society,justifying
the said knowledge's claim to truth; the existence of a priori
aesthetic judgments would validate his society's tastes, as
the objective appreciation of universal beauty; the existence
of a priori teleological judgments would explain and to some
extent justify the theological endeavor of members of
theistic religions; the existence of a priori ideas and ideals
of Reason would support the claim to objectiveness and
universality ofthe morality and ethics of his own society.
However, the above would not work in the light of the
myth of lila (i.e., the cosmic game whereby Universal
Cognitiveness, manifesting as restricted human
consciousness, eludes its true nature and believes itself to
be a separate, autonomous creature thrown into a world of
multiplicity). Nor would it work in regard to Heraclitus'
philosophy (according to fro 123 DK, the LogoslPhysis likes
to hide; according to fro 2 DK, though the Logos is common
to all, each individual believes he or she has a separate
intellect of his or her own; according to fro 50 DK, those
who listen, not to the I, but to the Logos, wisely acknowledge
that all is one). In this light, any a priori element
determining human experience must be a source of
delusion, error, and confusion rather than oftruth, beauty,
and so on.
Of course lila is but a myth; however, the "hard" sciences
are no longer Kant's ally, as in our time they strongly support
the ancient vision ofthe universe as an undivided continuum
(including both what we regard as its mental aspects and
its physical aspects)-which implies that separateness and
multiplicity are but an illusion. Since there can be no source
of cognition other than Universal Cognitiveness, the above
implies that-as symbolized by the myth of lila-the illusion
in question is generated by Universal Cognitiveness, which
thus eludes its true nature and believes itself to be a separate,
autonomous creature in a world of multiplicity.
4. Samsaric: belonging or pertaining to samsara or cyclic
existence and thus being marked by duhkha-the
suffering and dissatisfaction which is the Buddha's First
Noble Truth-and by avidya-delusion, the Buddha's
Second Noble Truth, the cause of the first. The Four Noble
Truths are discussed later on.
5. Here the term kunzhi (kun-gzhi)-in Sanskrit alaya-is
used independently of namshe (rnam-shes)-in Sanskrit,
vijnana-and should be understood in the Dzogchen (rDzogs-
chen) sense, in which it indicates a condition in which neither
samsara nor nirvana are active. The first stage in the
development of samsara is the one called kunzhi namshe (kun-
gzhi rnam-shes), which translates into Sanskrit as alaya
vijnana, but is understood in the typical phenomenological
Dzogchen sense (that is very different from the metaphysical
meaning given it by the Yogachara) in which it indicates a
disposition to know the totality constituted by kunzhi as
an object of consciousness.
The condition of kunzhi arises in our experience again
and again, even though most of us fail to notice it clearly
enough to be able to remember it. A typical case of this
may be the recurring experience ofkunzhi lungmaten (kun-
gzhi lung-ma-bstan) or "neutral base of all": a mental lapse,
lacuna or hiatus-which may be so brief as to be
unnoticeable to most people, or long enough to become
quite conspicuous-during which the normal samsaric
mind is not functioning, yet the mind in question has not
dissolved in the manifestation of nirvana.
6. The criterion of sanity or mental health as absence of
delusion has been common in some trends of phenomenological
and existential psychology. However, according to
existentialism, authenticity lies in the nonelusion of hell by
means of the self-deceit that Sarire called Bad Faith. My
criterion may be regarded as metaexistential (Capriles, 1997)
insofar as it does not identifY sanity with living in hell, but
proposes that we go through hell-as Dante did in the Divine
Comedy-in order to become established in heaven-that is,
in the anoic gnosis (see note 21 on this term) that unveils the
true nondual, nonpluralistic, and nonconceptual nature of
reality and which represents true sanity.
In Buddhism, typical examples of illusion are the
perception of a falling hair by someone who suffers from a
cataract, seeing a shell as yellow while suffering from
jaundice, perceiving lights or balls upon closing one's eyes
or looking at the sky, seeing something bidimensional as
tridimensional, and so forth. Delusion is a confusion of
categories or logical types: believing an illusion to be an
absolutely true, substantial reality; taking the relative as
absolute; thinking the interdependent is independent; taking
what we value as inherently valuable; and so forth.
7. Is it correct to state that our scientific and technological
project has produced such terrible results? The well-known
manifesto, A Blueprint for Survival (Editorial Team of the
magazine The Ecologist, 1971), backed in a Statement of
Support by many ofthe top scientists of the United Kingdom
and by organizations such as the Conservation Society,
Friends of the Earth, the Henry Doubleday Research
Association, and the Soil Association and Survival
InteTIlational, stated:
An examination of the relevant information available
has impressed upon us the extreme gravity ofthe global
situation today. For, if current trends are allowed to
persist, the breakdown of society and the irreversible
disruption of the life-support systems on this
planet ... certainly within the lifetimes of our children,
are inevitable.
Several decades ago, Michel Bosquet had already warned:
"It took humankind thirty centuries to achieve its present
momentum; it has thirty years left to stop before reaching
the abyss" (Salvat Encyclopaedias, 1973). From the
perspective ofthe year 2000, we know that Arturo Eichler
was right when he pointed out that it could be an
exaggeration to affirm that human society and/or the
planet's life-sustaining systems will be destroyed within
the twentieth century; however, he warned that only an
immediate total transformation could maybe allow us to
survive beyond the first half of the twenty-first century
(personal communication, 1993).
Lester Brown, from the Worldwatch Institute in
Washington, DC, affirmed in the Global Forum on the
Environment and Development for Survival that was held
in Moscow, January 15-19, 1990:
If we do not invert some of the current tendencies in
the near future, we run the very real risk that
environmental degradation may produce economic ruin,
as it has already done in parts of Mrica, and that both
could begin to reinforce each other, making any future
progress extremely difficult ... for the year 2030, we will
have either produced an environmentally sustainable
world economic system or clearly we will have failed,
and much before that, environmental degradation and
economic ruin, feeding each other, will have led to social
disintegration. We will make it by 2030 or clearly we
will have failed. (Brown, 1990)
8. Like all other members of the technological civilization,
those who live in opulence constantly experience
underlying dissatisfaction and anxiety and lack the
experiential sense of the worth of life at the root of
meaningful existence.
9. See the appendix to "La fisica ref uta el error" in the
first ofthe essays in Capriles (1994).
10. This story first appeared in a Buddhist sutra. Then it
reappeared in Sufi poetry: according to the Hadiqah by
Sana'l, the men were blind, while Rumi's Mathnavi placed
them in the dark. Recently the story has been used by Tibetan
Lama Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche, as well as in texts on
systems theory and in earlier works by the present author.
11. There are different ways of classifying the "vehicles" or
levels of Buddhist teaching and practice. In Tibet, the
Nyingmapa classify them in nine vehicles, while the
Sarmapa divide them into seven. However, both traditions
summarize the whole of their vehicles in three main levels,
Beyond Mind 175
which nowadays are in general the Hinayana, the
Mahayana, and the Vajrayana-but which in some older
Nyingmapa texts (such as Nubchen Sangye Yeshe's Samten
Migdron and Nub Namkhai Nyingpo's Kathang Dennga-
both works written towards the end ofthe first millennium
A.D.) were the Sutrayana (including Hinayana and
Mahayana), the Vajrayana, and the Atiyana (i.e., Dzogchen
qua vehicle). In our times, this older classification has been
reintroduced by Lama Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche.
12. The Second Noble Truth, in particular, is explained in
different ways. The one I have used here is the one I deem
most essential, since avidya is the cause of trishna-that
is, of the thirst of existence that the Hinayana regards as
the Second Noble Truth. On why avidya is the cause of
trishna, see Capriles (1994, third essay; 2000a).
13. Freud opened up a new phase in the Western study of
the psyche upon affirming, as a doctor and scientist, and
outside of any esoteric circle, that the individual should
remember, and in a sense reexperience, the painful,
traumatic situations that affected him or her, especially
during the individual's early years. Prior to Freud's work,
only certain mystical and philosophical traditions insisted
on the need to face anguish and pain; as secular society
had generally done, science often taught people to elude
everything that produced displeasure and to live in a world
of illusions.
However, Freud thought that mental health lay in
establishing a good ego-function-that is, in achieving an
optimal functioning of the "repressive" mechanisms that allow
us to evade the pain caused by the dynamics ofsamsara, along
with all ego-dystonic contents (aspects of ourselves that
contradict our self-image). According to the Viennese doctor,
mental health lay in conforming to society, no matter how
sick society was; therefore, health amounted to adaptation to
a generalized pathology and thus implied contracting the said
pathology. Freud's ideal was the achievement of an optimal
functioning of the psychological mechanisms allowing us to
believe the story we have to believe in order to be motivated
by the incentives offered by the Establishment and be like
the rest ofthe well-adapted individuals, without having to
face an abnormal level of suffering. Moreover, Freudian
analysis increased the individual's self-concern, which is
at the root of suffering and of all neuroses.
Thus, Freud took a first step towards the necessary
encounter with primordial pain and anxiety, comparable
to that taken by S!i:lren Kierkegaard in the field of
philosophy-although the former never hinted that, in
order to reach a greater degree of authenticity, the
individual should cease eluding Angst (on the contrary, as
we have seen, Freud's ideal was the achievement of an
optimal functioning of the mechanics of elusion). The
proposal in this essay is not that we perfect the mechanisms
whereby we elude anguish and pain, nor that we constantly
live with such feelings, but that we momentarily face
anguish and pain in order to use them as a springboard to
take the Springet (leap) to the state of Supreme Sanity.
In terms of the Freudian scheme, the superego had to
control the id, restraining the passions and instincts, in order
to produce and maintain a well-adapted ego. More
precisely, the unconscious' preconscious mechanisms (i.e.,
"the subconscious") had to place the "unconscious" under
restraint, preventing the latter's "impulses" from
conditioning behavior and thus causing the individual to
betray his or her aspirations, ideals, and conscious objectives.
In civilized societies, the core of social control is the
individual's inner "repression," which functions on the
basis of what Freud called the superego and David Cooper
(1971) explained as a hierarchic constellation of
internalized "others." The superego's most important other
is the original other, who is generally one's mother-
though afterward the opinions and points of view of others
may occupy positions of greater importance than those of
the mother or original other. In any case, once the superego
has been established, we can only see ourselves through
the eyes ofthe internalized other. Shame-inducing looks
sculpt and sustain the dark, negative image of ourselves
that is a most important aspect of what Jung called the
shadow and which, based on Freud's concept of
unconscious fantasies, Laing (1961) and Cooper (1971)
designated as unconscious phantasy. In turn, looks of
admiration carve a positive ideal self-image which, in the
case of normal, well-adapted individuals, corresponds to
a greater or lesser degree to socially sanctioned ideals,
and which the individuals in question must strive to
embody in order to escape the hell they had been thrown
into by shame-inducing looks. In our day (partly because
of contradictions in what is socially sanctioned), most
people fail to embody this ideal image; instead, a majority
must content themselves with developing a regular ego,
conscious identity, or self-image, as well-adapted to society
as possible. This regular ego-located between the
extremes represented by the dark and negative self-image
and the ideal, positive self-image is closer to one or the
other depending on the extent to which one or the other
prevails in the way significant others (external or
internalized) see the individual.
Insofar as we deny being the dark and negative illusory
image and try to become the positive/ideal self-image or
the habitual self-image, we affirm ourselves as the
(illusory) dark-and-negative-image-that-should-be-denied,
thus remaining under the power of the source of evil that
is this very image. As Jungian psychology (Jung, 1960)
has shown, the more real and powerful source of evil is
the need to deny this image in oneself and project it onto
others. Since at a conscious level we have to believe
ourselves to be our self-image, once we become the dark
and negative fantasy, we are compelled to project it outside
ourselves, identifying it with other individuals and hating
them as though they were the said fantasy. This is the
source of some of the worst prevailing evils.
Instead of the Freudian concept of repression by the
unconscious, Sartre developed the concept of self-deceit
or Bad Faith, according to which the agent of deceit is not
an entity alien to the individual's consciousness (such as
Freud's subconscious), but consciousness itself. However,
this does not mean that our self-deceit is produced
independently ofthe influence of others. When we deceive
ourselves in order to become the positive, ideal self-image,
or even our regular self-image, we do so under the impulse
of what I have called normalizing double-binds (see note
31 on double-bind), which consist of the looks, expressions,
and words ofthe others making up our superego: the deceit
being discussed is carried out by our conscious mind under
the hypnotic pressure of significant others, originally from
outside ourselves, but afterwards from inside our own
psyche. Consequently, this explanation to some extent
conciliates the Freudian concept of repression with the
Sartrean concept of Bad Faith or self-deceit.
In regard to Freud's ideas, it is important to bear in
mind that the triadic structure of the psyche (conscious-
subconscious-unconscious or ego-superego-id) is not an a
priori inherent in the nature of human beings in general,
but the result of the repression required by delusory
civilization. Thus the unconscious is not an a priori closet
for skeletons (Bateson, 1972), but the sum ofthe contents
that we have eluded by means ofthe self-deceit that Sartre
called Bad Faith.
In spite of interpretations of the philosophy produced
by the "first Sartre" as the result ofthe French philosopher's
having faced a Basic Perinatal Matrix n (BPM II) during
the mescaline trip he recalled in Psychologie de
l'imagination (1940), his philosophy was successful in
showing how, as long as Being-for-Itself (the nucleus of
avidya) is active, it is impossible to achieve plenitude,
satisfaction, and so on. (Note that Grof [1985] defines BPM
n as corresponding to the beginning of the biological birth
process itself and its first clinical stage, during which the
original balance of intrauterine existence is disturbed,
firstly due to chemical alarm signals, and afterward to
muscular contractions-a process which, once fully
developed, causes the fetus to be periodically constrained
by uterine spasms while the cervix is still closed and
therefore there is no way out ofthe uterus.) Moreover, since
the philosophy in question excluded the possibility of
nirvana-Sartre's holon-it could not be used to posit
samsaric states as nirvana. Contrariwise, the philosophy
of the "second Heidegger," which is based solely on samsaric
experience, has been taken by some interpreters to be a
philosophy of Awakening or Enlightenment analogous to
one or another Buddhist system, and its terminology has
been used to translate the Dzogchen teachings-which has
radically distorted the latter's meaning (see Capriles, 1994,
2000b, in press, work in progress 1, work in progress 2).
Hence the advantage I see in Sartre's philosophy: if we
modifY it so that it contemplates the possibility of nirvana,
the result will be a quite complete system of Buddhist
philosophy (see CapriIes, 1997, 2000b, work in progress 2);
if it is not modified, no one will ever think of using it to
express a Buddhist view or it would be distorting the latter.
The discussion in this note refers to works ofKierkegaard
(1844/1984, 1941a, 1941b), Sartre (1948a, 1948b, 1957,
1966), and Riedlinger (1982).
14. I am translating the Spanish term matiz hed6nico,
which indicates our ability to remember pleasant events
more easily than unpleasant ones-without which we
would be unable to keep striving towards samsaric aims,
as we would be fully aware of their inherent
dissatisfactoriness and pointlessness.
15. The state of small space-time-knowledge associated with
a low bioenergetic input (kundalini or thig-le), implies a
restriction of the scope of one's focus of awareness, in such
a way that it encompasses only a fragment at a time ofthe
continuum of the given, and has limits that are scarcely
permeable. This state is the condition of the delusion
corresponding to the Second Noble Truth: without it there
could be no fragmentary perception, no illusion of
separateness, and no elusion or repression. Nonetheless,
in order to overcome delusion, it is not enough merely to
expand one's space-time-knowledge: such expansion will
only produce illusory experiences of the type designated
by the Tibetan Buddhist term nyam (nyams), the Chinese,
mo-ching, and the Japanese makya, and which Sufis
designate with the Arabic term hal-all of which should be
reCognized and allowed to self-liberate if we are to overcome
delusion.
The bioenergetic input changes interdependently with
the brain's biochemistry and may be modified by practices
such as kundalini yoga, yantra yoga and the Tibetan
practices of rtsa/rlung/thig-le. For reasons already
mentioned, this change is not sufficient for overcoming
delusion; moreover, in the individual who is not prepared,
it may induce psychosis or psychotomimetic experiences.
This is because the expansion and permeabilization of
consciousness unveil the insubstantiality of one's being and,
moreover, allow into one's conscious awareness contents
that are ego-dystonic (incompatible with one's self-image)-
and thus threaten one's ego-function and sense of identity.
This expansion and permeabilization of consciousness may
also cause the pain inherent in delusory valuation to be
experienced in its fullness, activating positive feedback (i.e.,
self-catalyzing) loops of discomfort, pain, and anxiety: the
stronger the discomfort, the stronger one's rejection of it-
which causes discomfort to increase, eliciting further
rejection.
Consequently, youth desiring to transform
consciousness and society should avoid the psychedelic
hedonism typical ofthe hippies in the 1960s, which in the
short-term produced some immediate psychosis and
suicides, and in the long-run favored a conservative and
repressive dialectic reaction that manifested as the rise of
spiritual groups based on control and deceit, as well as the
popularization of illegal nonpsychedelic, ego-enhancing
drugs, and a political reaction to the right.
16. For a more detailed consideration of the term "delusory
valuation," see Capriles (1994, 2000a, 2000b).
17. In Buddhism there has been a great deal of discussion
as to whether the arupa laka represents a surpassing of
the figure/ground distinction (e.g., the Mahasanghika
affirmed that arupa included rupa or figure in a subtle
sense). It is implicit in Tarthang Tulku (1977), that in the
arupa laka space/time/knowledge has expanded, but to a
limited extent-one has not reached the condition of Total
Space-Time-Cognitiveness.
18. He was one ofthe five spiritual heirs of Hui-neng (Wei-
lang), Sixth Patriarch of Ch'an Buddhism in China. See
Yoka Daishi (Yung-chia Hsuan-chueh) in Yoka Daishi!
Taisen Deshimaru (1981).
19. As explained in note 15, the bioenergetic input is what
Indians call kundalini, corresponding to one of the two main
meanings of the Tibetan word thig-le. Its increase is related
to modifications ofthe biochemistry ofthe brain. For more
details, see note 15.
Beyond Mind 177
20. This self-hindrance or self-encumbrance is illustrated
by the little English poem: "The centipede was happy, quite,
until the toad in fun said, 'Pray, which leg goes after which?'
This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a
ditch, while considering how to run" (Watts, 1957, p. 27).
21. (a) I call this gnosis because it is a function of
cognitiveness/awareness and because certain Gnostic
trends calledgnosis the cognition of the absolute; (b) I add
the adjective anoic because in the unveiling of such gnosis
the mind (noia)-implying the noetic-noematic (subject-
object) duality, delusory valuation, and other experience-
shaping, delusory mechanisms-is disconnected.
22. This is not a universal Dzogchen instruction, and by
itselfit is absolutely insufficient as a path to Awakening or
Enlightenment. In Dzogchen there are three series of
teachings, which are the Semde (sems-sde), the Longde
(klong-sde), and the Menngagde (man-ngag-sde), each of
which has many different types of sets of instructions. At
this point I give this instruction as an example, because I
deem it to be particularly relevant to illustrate what I have
been calling the "descending path," and it may be regarded
as paradigmatic of that path.
Moreover, the fact that I provide a Dzogchen instruction
to illustrate the "descending path" does not mean that I think
the descending path is exclusive to Dzogchen. All genuine
Wisdom traditions teach different varieties of the descending
path, and all Wisdom traditions differentiate between
different types oftranspersonal experience--some delusory,
some some neither delusory nor Awakened. I
provide an instruction belonging to the Dzogchen teachings
because those are the teachings I practice and know best,
and I use the mandala as a symbol of the path because I
deem it most useful to illustrate all genuine paths to
Awakening-whether or not the paths in question use the
mandala as a symbol. The same applies to my explanations
in terms of bioenergetic input (kundalini or thig-le).
For example, when, in Rinzai Zen practice (or in the
use ofthe koan by many Soto Masters), the mass of doubt
manifests, probably the pupil will not be told to apply
instructions such as the ones I am providing in this paper-
and yet the experience in question will correspond to that
of the intermediate zone of the mandala. Likewise, in
Hinayana Buddhism, Buddhagosha's Atthasalini
illustrates the descending path by contrasting those who
build a wall with those who destroy it brick after brick as it
is built (which does not imply an active endeavor but, in
the words of the text, the introduction of "a deficiency in
the mechanisms that sustain birth and death"). In Sufism,
the descending path was illustrated with the competition
between the Chinese painters and the Greek painters (in
Sana'i the Chinese represented the genuine, descending
path and the Greeks represented the spurious ascending
one; in Rumi it was the other way around). Other traditions
have illustrated the same path with their own images.
Moreover, though (as we shall see later on) in general it
is said that the principle ofthe Sutrayana is renunciation,
that the principle ofthe Vajrayana is transformation, and
that the principle oftheAtiyana (Dzogchen qua vehicle) is
self-liberation, this principle of self-liberation is not
absolutely exclusive to Dzogchen. To continue with the
example ofthe koan, when by means ofthis method a Zen
student undergoes for the first time the spontaneous
collapse of delusion and samsara and "experiences" satori,
this is an instance of self-liberation.
Finally, when I say that a Dzogchen practitioner would
recognize as such any conditioned (samskrita) state and
not be deluded by it, this applies to authentic practitioners
of all genuine paths; what perhaps may be particular to
Dzogchen are the methods whereby the conditioned state
is dissolved in the unveiling of the unconditioned
(asamskrita): in Dzogchen, the methods in question are
always based on the principle of self-liberation.
23. When an increase in the bioenergetic input (kundalini
or thig-le) induces an expansion of the focus of
consciousness, states of greater space-time-knowledge
may occur. Then the usual impulse to conceptualize the
ensuing states and experience them in terms ofthe concept
we applied to them may lead us to understand the states
being discussed in terms of delusorily valued concepts such
as Being, Oneness, God, Buddha-nature, and so on.
24. The term "is" is in parentheses following the usage of
parenthesis established by Jean-Paul Sartre for words
that are required by a language's grammar, but which
contradict the meaning one intends to express: if Seeing
takes place, the phenomenon of being, corresponding to
the most basic delusory appearance of samsara, will have
dissolved, and so the term "is" will not refer to anything,
but merely be a necessary convention of language.
25. For this to function, the practitioner should have
obtained what is known as "direct introduction" (which
in terms of Zen roughly corresponds to a first satari).
On the other hand, this description of self-liberation
only refers to its lower level, and is by no means sufficient
for undertaking the practice. To do so it would be necessary
to approach a Master holding the lineage of an authentic
Wisdom tradition. My book (Capriles, 1990a) on the practice
of the Dzogchen upadesha may be consulted as well.
26. "Mind" is "sem" (sems) in Tibetan and "chit" (chitta)
in Sanskrit. It should be noted that the use of the term
mind to indicate the nucleus ofthe delusion called avidya
and the ensuing samsara is not exclusive to Dzogchen
teachings. The Bodhicharyavatara, the famous Mahayana
text by Madhyamika philosopher Shantideva, states (IX-
2): "It is agreed that there are two truths: the conventional
and the ultimate. Ultimate reality is beyond the scope of
the mind; the mind (and all that is within its scope) is
said to be "the conventional." The meaning of the term
wu-hsin in Ch'an Buddhism also implies that mind (hsin)
is the core of delusion (however, in other contexts the same
term, hsin, means "heart"; in still other contexts it has a
meaning similar to that of the Sanskrit words chittata
and chitta eva as used in teachings of Vajrayana and
Atiyana Buddhism-and sometimes it may also refer to
the unveiling of this chittata or chitta eva, thus being
roughly a synonym or the Tibetan term rig-pa).
27. My insistence upon warning against taking
transpersonal experiences as the aim of human life may
have given the reader the wrong idea that transpersonal
experiences per se are a hindrance. This is by no means
the case; actually, Awakening or Enlightenment itself may
be regarded as a transpersonal condition-and I regard
Awakening or Enlightenment as the natural (so to say)
"purposeless purpose" oflife.
Actually, even the transpersonal states ofthe samsaric
arupa loka or arupadhatu and the neither-samsaric-nor-
nirvanic state ofkunzhi (kun-gzhi) are potentially useful.
Among other reasons, they may not only be a source of
faith for people treading the path "to" Awakening or
Enlightenment, but may even serve as a springboard to
the Awakened state. (In terms ofthe Dzogchen teachings,
we could compare such states to reflections in a mirror
that the prepared individual may use to discover the
empty and yet reflecting and luminous essence or nature
of the mirror.) They only become hindrances when they
are posited as aims in themselves or are mistaken for
Awakening or Enlightenment.
Thus, what I am warning against is the danger that
people who write works taken by others as guides on the
path may overemphasize the transpersonal, as though in
itself the achievement of trans personal experiences were
an aim of spiritual practice and/or therapy. Though I con-
sider transpersonal psychology to be very valuable, its
very name seems to lay an exaggerated emphasis on the
transpersonal; moreover, many transpersonal psycholo-
gists place an exaggerated emphasis on the transpersonal
without discriminating among the nirvanic transpersonal,
the samsaric transpersonal, and the neither-nirvanic-nor-
samsaric transpersonal.
The above implies that, though (as emphasized in this
essay) the path to Awakening or Enlightenment is a
"descending path," this path does not exclude "ascending"
experiences. For example, in different Buddhist systems
(including Dzogchen) pupils are taught the meditations
to achieve the experiences of the higher loka or dhatu
(e.g., the various levels of the arupa loka or arupadhatu)-
and the same happens in genuine non-Buddhist paths.
However, the pupil is warned against taking experiences
of the higher loka or dhatu (or the state of kunzhi, for
that matter) to be Awakening itself, or to confuse them
with true attainments of some kind. He or she has the
means to use the states in question as reflections to
discover the nature of the mirror representing absolute
cognitiveness/awareness (i.e., what the Vajrayana and
Atiyana teachings of Buddhism indicate by the Sanskrit
words chittata and chitta-eva). Thus the descending path
does not exclude the ascending one: it includes it, but as
something that is part ofthe descending path, to which it
is subordinated.
28. In Grof's case (e.g., 1985, among several other texts),
there has been a very close relationship between the
transpersonal and the shamanic (and therefore, regarding
his psychology, my metatranspersonal proposal is closely
linked to my former metashamanic one: see Capriles,
1990b). In fact, Grofwould regard as equally transpersonal
(and therefore would take them to be equally healthy,
valuable, and therapeutic), on the one hand, (1) various
types of shamanic experience (perception of demons and
other supernatural beings and realms, remembrance of
"former reincarnations," identification with animals,
plants and minerals, etc.), along with the conceptually
conditioned, panoramic experiences of oneness with the
universe, and on the other hand, (2) the self-liberation of
all delusory valuation (i.e., of "overvaluation") at the root
of Supreme Sanity.
29. To say that Tibetan folk culture has preserved
shamanic elements seems to imply that the liberating and
metashamanic approach of Tibetan spiritual systems is a
development based on preexistent shamanic systems. Sufi
Master Idries Shah (1975) suggested the opposite ofthis:
that shamanism is a degeneration of the genuinely
liberating approach I have called "metashamanic." Shah's
thesis fits the Tibetan-Indian-Persian-Greek-Roman
approach that posits temporal processes called aions
(Sanskrit: kalpa), divided into eras of growing
degeneration, as well as the Taoist degenerative
conception of human evolution and history.
30. A Jungian explanation based on concepts such as the
collective unconscious and synchronicity may seem quite
plausible to account for the manifestation of gods, demons,
spirits, and other "apparitions." However, the Dzogchen
teachings traditionally have offered a more sophisticated
and yet simple explanation of such phenomena, based on
the nonexistence of a division between an inside and an
outside of the individual, as well as based on three types
of manifestation of energy (see Capriles [2000a]).
31. For an explanation of this term, see Bateson (1972),
particularly, (a) "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia," (b)
"The Group Dynamics of Schizophrenia," (c) "Minimal
Requirements for a Theory of Schizophrenia," and (d)
"Double-Bind, 1969." In an earlier work (Capriles, 1986),
I dealt with the concept of the double-bind, distinguishing
between pathogenic double-bind, therapeutic double-bind,
and normalizing double bind. The latter type, which
Bateson and his colleagues did not consider to be a double-
bind, is the one in which the person in the position of
power, because of a smoother-functioning Bad Faith, is
not tormented by guilt. The victim is compelled to
assimilate a contradiction, and caused to ignore, by means
of Sartrean "Bad Faith," that a contradiction is being
assimilated. Thus no conflict is experienced. This is the
type of double-bind that leads children to become "normal"
by adapting to a hypocritical and self-contradictory society.
It is worth noting that recent evidence which
supposedly would have sustained the genetic and organic
theories of what is known as schizophrenia, has not
undermined the double-bind hypothesis. The point is that
Bateson did not conceive his hypothesis as excluding
genetic or organic elements: from the start, he showed
how, if there were a genetic basis for the supposed
nosological entity thus designated (and the same would
apply if an organic basis of schizophrenia were proven to
exist), its existence would be compatible with his own
hypothesis. In contraposition, Laing did explicitly and
radically discard all genetic and organic theories.
32. Normal people who feel that their impression of being a
separate and substantial entity is well-founded and
absolutely true, experience terror when faced with their own
insubstantiality-represented by the center of the mandala.
Thus, in the peripheral phase, the guardians ofthe four gates
represent the terror of insubstantiality that prevents people
from passing into the center of the mandala-a terror that
is expressed etymologically by the word "panic."
Beyond Mind 179
Normality is characterized by a restricted focus of
conscious attention that is scarcely permeable-which is
the necessary condition for our being able to consider
ourselves and other entities as substantial and for our
maintaining a habitual self-image and sense-of-self
(which, according to the Sartrean theory of Bad Faith,
requires us to "intentionally" conceal many facts and
occurrences, and according to the Freudian theory,
depends on repression, which is exercised by the
unconscious' preconscious aspect). The increase in the
bioenergetic input (Tibetan: thig-le; Sanskrit: kundalini)
causes the individual's focus of conscious attention to
expand and become more permeable, but cannot produce
or cause the condition of Supreme Sanity that Buddhists
call Awakening or Enlightenment. In the unprepared
individual who clings to the illusion of substantiality,
instead of resulting in the unveiling of the center of the
mandala, this expansion-permeabilization ofthe focus of
conscious attention may induce disturbances,
psychotomimetic experiences, or even a psychosis.
The word panic, which indicates a powerful and
uncontrollable irrational fear, is derived from Pan, the
god representing totality. Pan may insinuate himself
through the pan-oramification of consciousness that takes
place when the bioenergetic input increases; this would
cause our own insubstantiality to become patent and
(insofar as we are taught to cling to our supposedly
separate identity and to dread the disappearance of this
identity, and to the extent that neurosis prevails in our
times) possibly unchain experiences of terror. On the other
hand, the expansion and permeabilization ofthe focus of
conscious attention may allow ego-dystonic contents into
the individual's conscious awareness-which, as we have
seen, are a threat to the ego function and the individual's
self-image. Moreover, the panoramification in question
causes the individual to experience any discomfort or pain
in its fullness-which may unchain self-catalyzing,
positive feedback loops of pain, anxiety, and discomfort.
Thus, in the case of those who find themselves in the
periphery of the mandala, the guardians represent the
dread of the insubstantiality that is fully unveiled in the
state symbolized by the center-that is, they represent
panic in the etymological sense of the word. Terrified by
the guardians (fears) that block the entrance to what they
take for a dead end leading to an abyss, beings possessed
by delusion cling to delusion-that is, to the periphery.
As expressed in a special context by Laing (1967), they
think that farther, in the direction of the center, "there is
an abyss, there are wild beasts."
People enter the intermediate zone when they can no
longer adapt to socially sanctioned deceit and thus cannot
feel comfortable in it. Since delusion involves the tropism
to cling to delusion (which may be associated to the infant's
tropism to cling to the mother in case of danger-even
when the source of danger is the mother), the discomfort
thus experienced causes the individual to cling even more
forcefully to the source of discomfort-a reaction that
Laing has compared to someone who is leaning on a bus
and, when the vehicle begins to move, grabs the handrail,
which is the closest but most dangerous object. This
tropism is involved in the self-catalyzing process
characteristic of the intermediate zone of the mandala,
which leads the individual to a threshold level at which,
if all necessary conditions are given-including the
knowledge of the instructions and other favorable
elements-the tension inherent to delusion spontaneously
breaks and he or she "enters" the center.
Mter "entering" the center, a high bioenergetic input
has to be maintained in order to keep the wrathful
guardians or dakinis wide awake and alert, so that
whenever the individual leaves the center he or she will
not fall into the relative tranquility of the periphery (which
would allow the person to feel comfortable in delusion):
the dynamics represented by the wrathful guardians or
dakinis will catch him or her, and the ensuing disturbance
will function as a reminder to apply the instructions.
Later on, every time the individual leaves the center,
if a high bioenergetic input is feeding the wrathful
guardians or dakinis, the dynamics they represent will
push the individual spontaneously towards the center.
Finally, upon neutralizing the tendencies to leave the
center, the person will not leave it anymore. Then the
wrathful guardians or dakinis will represent his or her
own actionless, spontaneous activities, which will help
others to access the state of Supreme Sanity-even though
those others are no longer perceived as sentient, samsaric
beings to be helped. Though the mind is not active, the
individual's spontaneous behavior-now symbolized by
the wrathful dharmapalas or dakinis-will repel those
who are unprepared, causing them to be perceived as
outrageous and fearsome-but will attract those who are
prepared, creating the conditions for them to swiftly move
towards the center. The practitioner will have become a
Lama-heruka, as shocking as a wrathful deity, and his or
her spontaneous activities will correspond to the wrathful
dharmapalas or dakinis.
33. Bateson (1972, "The Cybernetics of Self: A Theory of
Alcoholism") explained this process in terms of the
relationship between primary process, which is analog and
mainly related to the functioning of the brain's right
hemisphere, and secondary process, which is digital and is
principally related to the functioning ofthe left hemisphere.
While earlier computers were analog and worked based
on a continuous increase or decrease of quantities (e.g., a
continuous increase or reduction of the magnitude of an
electric current), present computers are digital and have
a binary function based on "yes" (1) and "no" (0)
alternatives. Instead, the human brain processes both
types of signals; the brain hemisphere normally situated
on the right mainly processes analog signals, while the
brain hemisphere normally located on the left mainly
processes digital signals. Our experience and our acts are
the result ofthe combination of both processes (in addition
to the functioning of one or two more regions of our brain
and central nervous system); therefore, they cannot be
reduced to one or the other.
In terms ofthe concepts introduced by Sigmund Freud
in his Project for a Scientific Psychology (1895/1974), the
analog function of the human brain is called primary
process, and the digital one, secondary process (Wilden,
197211980; Bateson, 1972, 1979). As a matter of fact, the
characteristics that Freud attributed to primary process
correspond to those typical of the processing of analog
signals, and those that he attributed to secondary process
correspond to those characteristic of the processing of
digital signals. According to Fenichel (1945), primary
process does not involve negatives, does not indicate verbal
tense and mode, places emphasis on relationships rather
than on who is who in them, and is metaphorical. On the
other hand, secondary process involves negatives, specifies
verbal tense and mode, places emphasis on who is who in
relationships, and is literal.
Nietzsche foreshadowed Freud's distinction between
primary and secondary process when he noted that the
creative unconscious (a term I am not keen on using) is
not critical and that the creator can only criticize his or
her creation retrospectively.
Though many of Freud's theories have lost credibility,
neurological and behavioral research in the second half
ofthe twentieth century has to some extent substantiated
the division into two types of mental process-primary
and secondary-established in the Project of 1895. Works
by Jacques Lacan (1957) and by Gregory Bateson (1972,
1979) and others (Pribram & Gill, 1976; Wilden, 1972/
1980) have based themselves on Freud's Project.
34.As pointed out by Joseph Berke (Barnes & Berke, 1971),
many ofthe terms coined by Cooper were used frequently
by Ronald Laing in conversations with colleagues.
35. This term, used to designate a religious conversion,
may be translated as "change of mind" or "transition to a
new state of mind." Cooper does not speak of a process of
metanoia but of successive metanoias.
36. Let us remember the venerable meaning given this
term by Desiderius Erasmus in The Praise of Folly (Moriae
encomium) (1970). I am giving it the meaning of the
Chinese term wu-hsin as used in Ch'an Buddhism (see
note 26), which indicates the surpassing of the illusion
that there is a separate, autonomous subject of experience
and action (as well as of the rest of the connotations of
the term sems as understood in the Dzogchen teachings).
37. According to Cooper (1971), a first metanoia should
take us from eknoia to paranoia; a second metanoia should
take us from paranoia to noia (or en-noia), and a third,
repeated metanoia should allow us to freely flow between
noia (or en-noia) and anoia (which in this case may be
anti-noia), until finally we may become established in
anoia. It must be noted that I am not using the term
"paranoia" in the sense of developing persecutory feelings
over a long period, but in that of its etymology-that is, to
indicate the transformation into conflict of the
contradiction inherent to eknoia, so that one may use
conflict to question one's dualistic experience as explained
in this paper's main text (both when considering the
mandala and when confronting primal therapy).
38. The dissolution or self-liberation of delusion is abrupt
and instantaneous; however, the constant repetition or
continuity of this self-liberation progressively neutralizes
delusion, so that its manifestation in daily life
progressively dilutes until it finally disappears altogether.
39. The meaning of the term "shadow" in the example
illustrating a yogi's ascent to the formless realms should
not be confused with the Jungian sense of the term. The
airplane's shadow represents our Being-for-Others and our
Ego, but in the Jungian sense the term indicates the
fantasies about ourselves that we feel compelled to exclude
from our ego and to see as the ego of other individuals.
In Capriles (1976, 1986), on the basis of Sartrean
categories and of different types oflooks bestowed by others,
the genesis of the shadow or unconscious phantasy was
explained as a result of the mother or original other (and
other significant others in positions of authority) seeing
the infant as a shameful, objectionable object, on the
occasions on which the infant exhibits behaviors that she
(and/or other significant others) consider unacceptable. The
genesis ofthe ideal identity was explained as the result of
the said others' looks of approval and admiration on the
occasions when the infant exhibits socially desirable
behavior. The genesis of conscious identity was explained
as a result of the interaction of the two above types of
perception of the infant by significant others-both of which
necessarily respond to the individual's karma from
"previous lifetimes" and function as contributory conditions
for one or another set of karmic traits and impulses to
become dominant in a given lifetime.
Likewise, the genesis of social deviations was explained
(without denying possible genetic and/or prenatal
influences) in terms ofthe extent to which the mother or
original other bestows on the infant an approving look-
or else denies it, making the child feel compelled to seek
approval and admiration from deviant children or adults
who admire traits of behavior that society in general
rejects (and who project a Jungian shadow that to a large
extent may be contrary to the one projected by individuals
"well-adapted" to society). All of this necessarily respond
to the individual's karma from "previous lifetimes," and
function as contributory conditions for one or another set
of karmic traits and impulses to prevail.
In Tibetan spiritual traditions, possibly we can
distinguish two main methods leading to the reintegration
of the shadow or unconscious phantasy, and to the
overcoming of all types of identification (whether it be
with the shadow, with the regular self-image or conscious
identity, with the ideal identity, or with the
pseudototalities ofthe arupa-lokas):
(a) The supreme vehicle, known as Atiyana (Dzogchen
qua vehicle), is based on the principle of self-liberation. On
the first level of self-liberation, one looks at the present
thought and reCognizes its essential nature (which is also
the essential nature of that which is interpreted by the
thought and of the individual interpreting it)-upon which
the thought in question instantaneously self-liberates in
the unveiling of anoic gnosis. On the second level, the
thought's true essence is automatically reCognized as the
thought begins to arise-and so the latter self-liberates
upon arising. Lastly, on the third level, by resting in the
unveiling of anoic gnosis, which is naturally self-liberating,
thoughts liberate themselves spontaneously as they pass-
like drawings made on water. As the constant self-liberation
ofthe propensities for delusion to manifest neutralizes our
karmic tendencies, progressively we free ourselves from
the shadow and the ego, from unconscious phantasy and
conscious identity.
Beyond Mind 181
(b) In the vehicles immediately "inferior" to Dzogchen-
the inner or superior Tantras-the principle is that of
transformation: by means of visualization one transforms
into a deity. This is often of the opposite sex, in which case
it is associated with the animus 1 anima and with the
shadow). It embodies and represents various aspects of the
shadow or unconscious phantasy, and/or of our ideal self-
image, but has to be perceived as a manifestation and
symbol of our fundamentally pure and self-perfect nature.
Visualizing himself or herself in this manner, the individual
performs practices with the body's bioenergetic system in
order to increase his or her bioenergetic input (kundalini
or thig-le) and thus expand the scope of consciousness-
which, in turn, allows for the possible unveiling of anoic
gnosis and thus of our empty (fundamentally pure) and
self-perfect nature, and therefore reveals the illusory nature
of both the ego and the shadow.
(For more detailed explanations of both methods see,
especially: Norbu [1986/1997, 1992); Capriles [2000a).)
In Dzogchen, this unveiling of our true essence or nature
in anoic gnosis is called Tawa (lta-ba) or Vision. What is
known as Gompa (sgom-pa) or Contemplation consists of
remaining in this Vision, so that all arising thoughts self-
liberate upon manifesting. This progressively neutralizes
our delusory valuation in general and, in particular, our
tendency to believe ourselves to be an ego and (by negative
implication) a shadow-that-must-be-projected. Spontaneous
action in this state of Contemplation is known as Chapa
(spyodcpa) or Behavior. Finally, the Fruit or Drabu ('bras-
bu) is the definitive establishment of the egoless state of
actionless action, beyond all limitations.
It must be noted that Behavior or Chapa implies
overcoming the impulse to exclusively adopt virtuous and
spiritual behavior of which one may be proud (and which
thus would project an enormous Jungian shadow). Instead,
one manifests different types of behavior, including some
of which religious conventionalists would feel deeply
ashamed (but which, in spite of being somehow "crazy,"
would not be harmful either to other sentient beings or to
the natural environment), so that the ensuing negative
sensations may help one to reCognize and thus liberate
the impulse to become what others see as oneself Among
the most eccentric representatives of this Behavior of the
"crazy yogi" (the archetype of which is known as Dorje TroIo,
an aspect of Guru Padmasambhava), was the Tibetan yogi
Drugpa Kunle, whose biography appeared in Dowman,
(1980). The poem "Calling the Lama from Mar" by Dudjom
Rinpoche (n.d.), expresses Dzogchen Behavior in the
following terms: "The careless craziness of destroying
clinging to a style ... may this human lifetime be spent in
this State of uninhibited, naked ease."
'fo conclude, some words must be said in regard to the
classification of vehicles into "higher" and "lower" ones.
Above it was noted that, according to the Old or Nyingmapa
(rNying-ma-pa) school of Tibetan Buddhism, the Atiyana-
Dzogchen was the highest vehicle, based on the principle
of self-liberation. The (inner or higher) Vajrayana was the
middle vehicle, based on the principle of transformation,
and the Sutrayana was the lower vehicle, based on the
principle of renunciation. However, in the kaan method,
belonging to the Sudden Mahayana of the Sutrayana,
satari manifested through self-liberation. Moreover, as
often noted by Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and other
Dzogchen Masters, no vehicle is absolutely "higher" than
any other one; which vehicle is superior depends on the
capacity of a practitioner at any given moment. Thus, the
Hinayana may be supreme to some individual, the
Atiyana-Dzogchen to another one-and one ofthe others
may be supreme to the same individual at different
moments, according to what works for him or her at that
moment.
40. A Master must have been officially recognized by his
or her teacher, who must have been officially recognized
by his or her teacher ... and so on unto the very source of
the teaching he or she holds.
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Beyond Mind 183
Mufieca con ventana, 1985 Carlos Jurado
About Our Contributors
Robert Aitken, Roshi, is one of the foremost leaders of
the Zen Buddhist movement in the West. Born in
Pennsylvania, he moved to Honolulu as a small child
and attended public schools and the University of
Hawai'i where he took a master's degree in Japanese
literature. During World War II, he was interned in
Japan. Discussions with R. H. Blyth, fellow internee and
writer, led to an interest in Zen Buddhism. After the
war, Aitken Hoshi studied with the Zen monk Senzaki
Nyogen in Los Angeles, then with Nakagawa SOen Hoshi,
Yasutani Haku'un ROshi, and Yamada Koun Rashi in
Japan. He established the Diamond Sangha in Honolulu
with Anne Aitken and subsequently established centers
in North and South America, Australasia, and Europe.
He received full transmission as an independent teacher
of Zen Buddhism from Yamada Hoshi in 1985. Now a
widower at 83, Aitken Hoshi is living in retirement in
the district of Puna on the Big Island ofHawai'i. A prolific
writer and scholar, he has published nine books on Zen
Buddhism: A Zen Wave: Basho's Haiku and Zen (1978);
Taking the Path of Zen (1982); The Mind of Clover:
Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics (1984); The Gateless
Barrier: The Wu-men Kuan (Mumonkan) (1990); The
Dragon Who Never Sleeps: Verses for Zen Buddhist
Practice (1992); Encouraging Words: Zen Buddhist
Teachings for Western Students (1993); The Ground We
Share: Everyday Practice, Buddhist and Christian (with
David Stendl-Rast, 1994); The Practice of Perfection: The
Paramitiis from a Zen Buddhist Perspective (1994); and
Original Dwelling Place: Zen Buddhist Essays (1996).
Author's address: RR2, Box 4873, Pahoa, Hawai'i
96778, USA.
Manuel Almend.ro, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist
and leads the Oxigeme project in Madrid, an integration
of psychotherapies that includes personal and
transpersonal ways, ancient wisdom and modern
science, the integrative ontological with the evolutive
chronological process in the human being. He has
created a therapy based on nonordinary states of
consciousness in body-mind called Induced Vibration.
In addition to academic studies and Western psychology,
he has worked in ancient wisdom traditions with Zen
and Vipassana masters (Son; Deshimaru; Dhiravansa).
Since 1980, Almendro has further developed his
integrating way with Mazatecan (Mexico) and
Amazonian Indians. Almendro just completed a
research project about chaos theories and psychology
and psychotherapy conducted over the last five years
which represents a contribution to the creation of a
new theory about human personality from the
perspective of chaos theory and our unstabilized
present condition. Manuel Almendro is the president
of ATRE, the Spanish Transpersonal Association, and
gives courses and lectures throughout Europe and
America. He has authored various articles and books
on trans personal psychology, published mainly by
Kairos Publishers in Barcelona.
Author's address: c/o San Vicente Ferrer, 16, laD
28004 Madrid, Spain.
E-mail: malmendro@correo.cop.es
Marshall Arisman's paintings and drawings have been
widely exhibited both nationally and internationally
over the past twenty years. His work may be seen in
the permanent painting and drawing collection of the
Brooklyn Museum, the National Museum of American
Art, and the Smithsonian collection, as well as many
private and corporate collections. His original visual
essay "Heaven Departed"-paintings and drawings
describing the emotional and spiritual impact of nuclear
war on society-was published in book form by Vision
Publishers (Tokyo, 1988). He is the Chairman of the
M.F.A. degree program "Illustration as Visual Essay"
at the School of Visual Arts in New York. Arisman was
the first American invited to exhibit at the Guang Dong
Museum of Art in Mainland China (April, 1999). The
show featured his Sacred Monkeys series, some of which
appeared in IJTS, Vol. 18, No.2.
Author's address: 314 West 100th Street #31, New
York, New York 10025, USA.
E-mail: marisman@adm.schoolofvisualarts.edu
Laura Boggio Gilot, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist
and psychotherapist, professionally trained in the
Italian Society of Therapeutic Psychosynthesis (SIPT)
and an instructor of Yoga-Vedanta meditation under
the guidance of Advaita Master Raphael. She is the
founder and president of the Italian Association of
Transpersonal Psychology (ArPT), cofounder and past-
president of the European Transpersonal Association
(EUROTAS), and cofounder and president of the European
Transpersonal Psychology Association (ETPA). Boggio
Gilot has given courses and lectures in Europe, in
Colombia, and in the United States at the California
The International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 2000, Vo!. 19, 185-189 185
School for Integral Studies, the Institute for Humanistic
Psychology in San Francisco, and the California School
for Professional Psychology in Fresno and Berkeley.
Besides having published about one hundred articles
and a number of coauthored books, she is author of
Modern Man and Neurosis (Uomo moderno e nevrosi,
Ed. Paoline, Rome, 1980, 2nd ed., 1998);
Psychosynthesis and Meditation (Psicosintesi e
meditazione, Ed. Mediterranee, Rome, 1983); Form and
Development of Consciousness (Forma e sviluppo della
coscienza, Ed. Asram Vidya, Rome, 1987); The
Transpersonal Self (Il Se transpersonale, Ed. Asram
Vidya, Rome, 1992); Principles of Transpersonal
Psychology (Principi di psicologia transpersonale, AIPT,
Rome, 1995); and Growing Beyond Ego-Principles and
Methods of Transpersonal Psychology (Crescere oltre
l'io-Principi e metodi della psicologia transpersonale,
Cittadella editrice, Assisi, 1997). She has also edited
Suffering and Healing-Psychology and Spiritual
Tradition (Sofferenza e guarigione-Psicologia e
tradizione spirituale, Cittadella editrice,Assisi, 1993),
In addition, she edited the EURoTAS annual publication,
EURoTAs News, from 1994 to 1998.
Author's address: Viale Gorizia 52, 00198 Rome, Italy.
E-mail: aipt@mclink.it
Elias Capriles is a member of the Department of
Philosophy and Chair of Eastern Studies at the
University oftheAndes. Born in Venezuela, in the early
1970s he went to India and Nepal; influenced by the
work of Ronald Laing and David Cooper, he ran
"spiritual emergency" refuges in Goa and Kathmandu.
Since the mid-1970s, he studied Dzogchen with Thinle
Norbu, Dilgo Khyentze, and Dudjom Rinpoche. From
1977 through 1982 he spent most ofthe time practicing
the Dzogchen Upadesha in retreat in the Himalayas.
In 1983 he returned to Venezuela and began writing on
a variety of subjects: most branches of philosophy,
psychology, sociology, the history of civilizations,
Buddhism, and Dzogchen. Having met N amkhai N orbu
Rinpoche in the mid-1970s, he invited him to Venezuela
and founded the Dzogchen Community there. Capriles
is one of the three Venezuelans featured in La
philosophie en Amerique Latine (Que sais-je, Presses
Universitaires de France); his works have been
published in South America, Spain, Italy, Russia, and
the USA. In addition to teaching and research at the
University oftheAndes (Merida, Venezuela), he teaches,
worldwide, Namkhai Norbu's gradual Buddhism-and-
Dzogchen Santi Maha Sangha training.
Author's address: Apartado Postal 483, Merida
5101, Venezuela.
E-mail: eliascaprileS@latinmail.com
Jeanna Drogalina-NaHmov is affiliated with Moscow
State University. She graduated from Moscow Linguistic
University in 1960. Since 1974, she worked in the
Laboratory of Mathematical Theory of Experiment
headed by V V N alimov at Moscow State University in
the group, characterized by academician A. N.
Kolmogorov, as Nalimov's "linguistic flowerbed." The
trans disciplinary character ofthe Laboratory gave V V
N alimov the chance to work not only in the field of
mathematical statistics but also in a much broader field
which he defined as the "global ecology of humankind,"
encompassing language and consciousness. Drogalina-
Nalimov assisted him for more than twenty years as a
translator, editor, and coauthor of publications in
Russian and English. In particular, several chapters of
Professor Nalimov's book Realms of the Unconscious:
The Enchanted Frontier were written in collaboration
with her; she was also the leading experimenter and
prepared the experimental materials, conducted the
experiments, and processed the results for the volume.
She prepared for publication the latest book by V V.
N alimov-Scattering About Thoughts: On the Roads and
at the Crossroads (Moscow: Progress-Tradition, 2000,
344 pp.).
Author's address: Udaltsova 4-327, 117415
Moscow, Russia.
E-mail: NalimoV@VNalimov.home.bio.msu.ru
Herbert Guenther, Ph.D., D.Litt., was born in Bremen,
Germany, in 1917. He earned his Ph.D. in Indian Phi-
losophy and Linguistics at Munich University in 1939,
and his Ph.D. (Dr. phil. habil.) in Indian Philosophy at
Vienna University in 1943. This degree was required
for being allowed to teach at German and Austrian uni-
versities (the so-called venia legendi). Consequently, that
very year, he became Dozent at Vienna University. In
1950 he moved to India where he became Assistant Pro-
fessor at Lucknow University, and in 1956 he became
Assistant Professor and Chairman of Tibetan Studies
on a nonsectarian basis at the Varanaseya Sanskrit
Vishvavidyalaya (a.k.a. Benares Sanskrit University),
Varanasi, where the medium of instruction was San-
skrit. In 1964 he was invited to come to Canada to
become Professor and Head of the newly founded De-
partment of Far Eastern Studies at the University of
Saskatchewan, Saskatoon. He retired in 1984 as Pro-
fessor Emeritus of Far Eastern Studies. In 1983 he was
awarded the degree of D.Litt. from the University of
Saskatchewan; in 1987 he received a citation and pre-
sentation of a ceremonial scarf and a silver plaque for
outstanding contributions to Indian culture by the
Anantajyoti-Vidyapith Academy at Lucknow, UP. (In-
dia), and in 1999 he was selected and proclaimed
International Man of the Millennium in recognition of
his services to education by the International Biographi-
cal Centre of Cambridge, England. He is listed in the
Outstanding People of the 20th Century, published in
1999 by the International Biographical Centre, Cam-
bridge, England. Guenther is the author of more than
thirty books, many of which have been translated into
German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese, and of more
than ninety scholarly papers. He is married and has
two married daughters, one grandson and two grand-
daughters. He lives with his wife in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, Canada.
Author's address: 1320 13th Street East,
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7H OC6, Canada.
Salvador Harguindey, M.D., Ph.D., graduated at age
22 from the University of Navarre, Spain, with his
medical degree, and later received his Ph.D. in cancer
research (etiopathogenesis, clinical and chemical) from
the University of the Basque Country. He trained in
endocrinology and clinical oncology at the University of
Edinburgh in Scotland and at Roswell Park Memorial
Institute in Buffalo, New York, for a total of twelve years.
Harguindey has authored more than 100 scientific
publications, many on a new and integral approach to
the understanding of cancer diseases based upon
hydrogen ion dynamics, from etiopathogenesis to
treatment. He is a member of the European Society for
Medical Oncology and the Association of Trans personal
Psychology, and he has given presentations at a variety
of international conferences. Harguindey has published
two philosophical-psychospiritual novels, The Lives of
Daniel and George and The Cradle of Don Quixote, and
a recent 715-page transpersonal treatise,A New Vision
on Life and Politics-all in Spanish. His next
transpersonal novel, The Flight from Peter Pan to Christ:
The Great Movie of Life, will be published early next
year. His main interests are problem-solving of
interethnic and nationalistic conflicts, the numinous
aspects of scientific creativity, the relationship between
science and spirituality, literary theory, and "final
common pathways" approaches to treatment of
malignant diseases. Harguindey is a licensed private
pilot in both the USA and Spain.
Author's address: c/o Postas 13-3
0
izq., 01004
Vitoria, Spain.
E-mail: sharguindey<g;jet.es
Dee Ito began her career by creating sketches for Bunny
Rabbit and Mr. Moose on Captain Kangaroo-a CBS
children's television show. Moving along, she wrote prize
copy for game shows, wrote and produced advertising
for Coca-Cola, Nestle, Exxon, Revlon, and Clairol. She
became Copy Chief at McCann Erickson International
before leaving to open her own office in 1975 to provide
services as a creativity and marketing consultant and
to pursue independent writing projects-clocumentary
films, books (nonfiction and children's), public service
advertising for art organizations, and articles on natural
medicine, women's rights, women's health, graphic arts,
illustration, and art education. She writes poetry and
fiction and collaborates on art projects with her
husband-Marshall Arisman-for fun. Their cats
provide them both with inspiration, perspective, and
endless amusement.
Author's address: 314 West 100th Street # 31,
New York, New York 10025, USA.
E-mail: deeito@aol.com
Carlos Jurado was born in 1927 in Chiapas, Mexico.
He received his formal artistic education at the
Esmeralda School of the Instituto N acional de Bellas
Artes in Mexico City, where he studied under Maria
Izquierdo, Antonio Ruiz, and Diego Rivera. Throughout
his career he has mastered many different media,
including painting, engraving, serigraphy, offset
printing, offset lithography, political cartoons, and mural
work. Since 1973, when he added photography to his
repertoire, he has worked with traditional photography
and various experimental techniques. For example, he
designed and built a variety of pinhole cameras from
cardboard and masking tape to take a range of image
types such as telephoto, stereoscopic, multiple exposures,
and autochromes. Charles Dee Mitchell wrote in the
February 1997 issue of Art in America: "Jurado has
never ceased his playful investigation of his medium's
possibilities ... Todaywe are accustomed to photography
that produces digitized wonders the size of billboards;
Jurado, operating as a one-man shop in the living room,
kitchen and bathroom of his studio/home, reminds us of
the original excitement and subsequent pleasure that
must have accompanied the discovery that so unlikely
a contrivance as a camera worked at all." Since 1950,
Jurado has participated in numerous exhibits, including
a 1986 retrospective of his work at the Museum of El
Chopo in Mexico City. His photographs have appeared
in a variety of publications and have been shown in
exhibitions in venues such as the Fox Talbot Museum
of Photography in England, Ie Musee de la Photographie
a Charleroi (Belgium), the Museet for Fotokunst
(Odense, Denmark), the Center for Contemporary
Photography (Kansas City, Missouri, USA), and the
Photographic Resource Center (Boston, USA). In 1973
he won an award at the first annual Scientific Film
contest (Mexico City) for his documentary La Camara
de Carton (The Cardboard Camera). In 1974 the
National University of Mexico published his bookElArte
de la Aprehension de las Imdgenes y el Unicornio (The
Art of Capturing Images and the Unicorn). Additional
highlights of his career include founding the college of
Art at the University of Veracruz, founding a system of
art courses for the public, and developing the "Alternative
Technology" school dedicated to the use of inexpensive but
high quality materials throughout the artistic process. To
see more of Jurado's work, visit the following website:
httpJ/zonezero.com/exposicioneS/fotografos/jurado
Author's address: Mazatlan # 5 A-6 Col. Condesa,
Mexico, D.F. CPO 06540, Mexico.
E-mail: adojuhr@prodigy.net.mx
Valerie Kessler has always favored visual
communication. Through images, she expresses her
relationship to her surroundings and others. Valerie
sketches lines and shapes, letting her inner sensitivity
emerge. To properly characterize Arthur's quest, a
certain balance and harmony is required between text
and drawings. Together, text and art leave a subtle trace
in the imagination. This search for expressiveness is
Valerie.s main passion. Valerie and Jacques Mettraux
regularly collaborate on short stories like ''Arthur,''
Valerie creating the illustrations and Jacques the text.
Author's address: Chemin des Grottes 2, 1700
Fribourg, Switzerland.
E-mail: v.kessle:r@bluewin.ch
Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology
at Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco. A
Fellow of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion,
the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, the
American Psychological Association, and the American
Psychological Society, he has conducted field research
in Brazil for three decades, where he visited several
Santo Daime and UnHio do Vegetal centers. He is the
editor of Dreamtime and Dreamwork, the coeditor of
Broken Images, Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives
in Clinical Practice and Dreamscaping, and the coauthor
of Dreamworking, The Mythic Path, and Spiritual
Dimensions of Healing. Krippner is the past president of
the Association for the Study of Dreams, the Association
for Humanistic Psychology, the Parapsychological
Association, and the American Psychological Association's
Division of Psychological Hypnosis. He has worked with
shamans and shamanic healers on five continents and
has taken an active role in protecting the cultural legacy
of indigenous peoples.
Author's address: Saybrook Graduate School, # 300,
450 Pacific Avenue, San Francisco, California
94133, USA.
E-mail: skrippne:r@saybrook.edu
Jacques Mettraux lives and works in Fribourg
(Switzerland). Mter having completed his graduate
studies in the Human Sciences with a specialty in
Cultural Anthropology at the University ofNeuchatel,
he worked as a journalist and then held a managerial
position in tourism. Currently, he works as a consultant
in an unemployment office. Interested in human
relationships and in the manifestations of social
patterns, he has focused his attention for several years
on the intricacies oflanguage through the art of writing.
Jacques and Valerie Kessler regularly collaborate on
short stories like "Arthur;" Valerie creating the
illustrations and Jacques the text.
Author's address: Chemin des Grottes 2, 1700
Fribourg, Switzerland.
Vassily Vassilievich Nalimov (1910-1997), D.Sc.,
began his professional career in physics but it was
interrupted by Stalin's repressions in 1936, from which
time until 1954 he lived in prisons, the Kolyma labor
camps (Siberia), and "eternal" exile to Kazakhstan
(Central Asia). The spectrum of his thought and activity,
influenced by external circumstances and his personal
interests, was very broad: engineering work at plant
laboratories and in scientific research institutes;
mathematical statistics; applications of experimental
design; scientometrics; elaboration of a probabilistic
approach to language and consciousness; and the
philosophy of science and human existence. Since 1965
he was on the staff of Moscow State University, serving
for ten years as assistant director of the interfaculty
Laboratory of Statistical Methods, and later he headed
the Laboratory of Mathematical Theory of Experiment.
Professor N alimov published more than 250 papers and
30 books; some of them were translated into different
languages-English, German, French, Polish, and
Hungarian. Four volumes were published in English
by lSI Press (Philadelphia, USA): In the Labyrinths of
Language:A Mathematician's Journey; Faces of Science;
Realms of the Unconscious: The Enchanted Frontier; and
Space, Time, and Life. These works were described by
the late Professor Robert G. Colodny (USA) as a "survey
of the physical cosmos and man's intellectual and
emotional pilgrimage through it over time." Dr. Eugene
Garfield, who founded the Institute for Scientific
Information (USA), wrote: ''N alimov's career was varied
and prolific," and he was "in many ways a Renaissance
man, bridging the 'two cultures' of science and
humanities ... Ris books sound a call to reexamine our
assumptions about many of the most important aspects
of modern culture-whether in the East or the West."
Andrew Rawlinson, Ph.D., was a scholar in English
Literature at Cambridge University but took his B.A.
in Philosophy. His doctoral thesis, an analysis of the
Lotus Sutra (Saddharmapundarika), was done at the
University of Lancaster, where he subsequently taught
Buddhism for nineteen years. He was twice visiting
professor at the University of California: at Berkeley
and Santa Barbara. He also taught courses on altered
states of consciousness (drugs, meditation, art,
madness), including a multimedia version in the
cinema at Berkeley before a startled class of several
hundred. He is now retired and writing a book on the
rock' & roll' universe, ranging from the Marquis de Sade
to Elvis via Blake and the Chipmunks. He lives in
France with his wife; they have four enormous children.
Author's address: La Voulte, 34390 Mons la
Trivalle, France.
E-mail: rawlinsoWanadoo.fr
Robert D. Romanyshyn, Ph.D., is a former
psychotherapist who found his way into psychology
through philosophy many years ago, and in the last
decade has found his way out of psychology through
poetry. Faithful to his surname, which means "son of a
gypsy," he has been an intellectual vagabond who has
roamed across the boundaries of established disciplines.
A lover of the ghosts who inhabit the imaginal landscapes
of the soul, he counts as his companions and mentors the
likes of Jung, Rilke, Heidegger, and a host of painters,
poets, and physicists. In addition to his most recent book,
The Soul in Grief Love, Death and Transformation, he
has published two other books and numerous articles in
journals and edited volumes. Ris most recent article is
188 The Internationaljournal of Trans personal Studies, 2000, VOL 19
.. On Angels and Other Anomalies of the Imaginal Life,"
and he is presently at work on a new book entitled The
Archetype and the Quantum: Conversations between
Jungian Psychology and Quantum Physics. Romanyshyn
loves to travel and has lectured extensively in the USA,
Europe, and Africa. Currently he is a core faculty member
at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He lives in
Summerland, California, with his wife Veronica and two
children.
Author's address: Pacifica Graduate Institute
249 Lambert Road, Carpinteria,
93013, USA.
E-mail: romany@pacifica.edu
Tonu R. Soiilla, Ph.D., D.Sc., was born in the small town
of Rakvere in Estonia. He graduated from Tartu State
University in 1963, received his Ph.D. in biology (genetics)
from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) State University in
1969, and his D.Sc. in biology (genetics) from Leningrad
State University in 1991. He has conducted research in
the molecular genetics of yeast and nucleotide sequence
analysis in silico. Soidla has authored more than 80
scientific publications devoted to these areas and (since
1992) also to transpersonru studies. He has also given
presentations at a variety of international conferences.
Soidla serves as Associate Editor of The International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies and is an Assessing
Editor of The Journal of Mind and Behavior. He is a
member of the European Society for the Study of Science
and Theology. In the field of transpersonru studies, Soidla
has blended some armchair theories of memory coding
with a lot of personal mythology. He was a Visiting Scholar
at the University ofHawai'i in the spring of 1999, where
he taught a graduate seminar titled "Spontaneity of
Being: Transpersonalism in Russia."
Author's address: Institute of Cytology, Tikhoretsky
Avenue 4, St. Petersburg 194064, Russia.
E-mail: tsoidla@link.cytspb.rssi.ru
Joseph SuUa is a psychology student who has taken
courses at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and
the University ofHawai'i. He has made five expeditions
to various ayahuasca centers in Brazil, including Ceu
do Mapia, where he learned about Santo Daime
traditions, participated in ceremonies, and studied local
herbalism and Umbanda with Madrinha Maria Alice
Freire. Sulla's fieldwork resulted in much of the
historical material appearing in his article with
Krippner.
Author's address: P. O. Box 1514, Honoka'a,
Hawai'i 96727, USA.
Evgeny A. Torchinov, Ph.D., D.Sc., is a Professor of
the Faculty of Philosophy of St. Petersburg State
University and Chair of the Department of Oriental
Philosophy and Cultural Studies. He specializes in the
field of Chinese studies: specifically, history of the
religions of China (Taoism and Buddhism). He has
published a number of monographs on different aspects
of Taoist and Buddhist studies. In his book Religions
of the World: Experience of the Transcendence
(Transpersonal States and Psychopractices) published
in Russian in 1997 (St. Petersburg Centre for Oriental
Studies), he analysed mystical experience in non-
European and European religions according to the
psychological approach of Stanislav Grof. Some of his
contributions have been published in English (USA) and
Chinese (China).
Author's address: Faculty of Philosophy, St.
Petersburg State University, Mendeleyevskaya
Liniya 5, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
E-mail: blade@comset.net
Irina A. 'lUlpe, Ph.D., is an associate professor in the
Department of Religious Studies of the Faculty of
Philosophy of St. Petersburg State University. Her
special fields of study are the history of Russian
Christian sectarianism and the religious arts in different
traditions. She was also trained as an archeologist
(excavations of the Hellenistic sites in the Crimea
Ukraine, arranged by the State Museum of the
of Religions). She is an author of a number of articles on
the history of sectarianism in Russia, religious arts,
Biblical Judaism, and the religious beliefs of the
Hellenistic population of the Crimea of the first centuries
C.E. as they were reflected in archeological artifacts.
For her studies ofthe religious practices ofthe Christian
sectarians in old Russia, Tulpe uses unique sources from
the Russian archives and eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century periodicals.
Author's address: Faculty of Philosophy, St.
Petersburg State University, Mendeleyevskaya
Liniya 5, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
Konstantin Zuyev, Ph.D., graduated from the
Department of Physics of Moscow State University and
specialized in the field of philosophical problems of
natural sciences and methodological and social impacts
of new information technologies. He is a member of the
International Academy for Informatization. In recent
years he has been engaged in problems of political
philosophy and research dealing with political problems,
and delivered talks on political science and philosophy
at the University ofN orth Carolina in 1997 while holding
a fellowship from IREX (International Research and
Exchanges) at the University of Iowa's department of
political science.
Author's address: Alabyana 15-36, 125252
Moscow, Russia.
E-mail: Victork@glasnet.ru
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