Dream Yoga

Just How Moral are Integralists?

Joseph Dillard — Thu, 15 Feb 2018 11:34:20 +0000

Eric Weinstein’s 4 Quadrant Model and the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect

Eric Weinstein has developed a 4-quadrant model that throws light on how integralists have so managed to over-estimate their level of moral development.[1] It consists of two intersecting axes, one horizontal, an “x” axis, and one vertical, a “y” axis.

On the “x” axis one places some interest or cause, like gender equality, selflessness, consciousness, or some measure of development associated with any of the four axes of AQAL holons. (For example, the development of self-sense and cognition from prehension to vision-logic and beyond, in the upper left quadrant; the development of culture from physical to centauric in the lower left quadrant; the development of behavior from atoms to complex neocortex in the upper right quadrant; and the development of society from foraging to informational in the lower right quadrant.)

Right is positive and left is negative, meaning that the farther right something is placed, the “higher” or “better” the interest or cause is rated: greater gender equality, more selflessness and consciousness, or higher development. The farther left something is placed the “lower” or “worse” the interest or cause is rated.

On the “y” axis one places morality or virtue. Higher is positive while lower is negative, meaning that the higher something is placed, the “better,” more altruistic, moral, and generally virtuous the cause is considered. The farther south something is placed the “worse,” more selfish, immoral, and generally depraved the interest or cause is rated.

This creates four quadrants. It is probably wise to assume that you inhabit all four to a greater or lesser extent, depending on what life role you are in. Otherwise, you run the risk of disowning and becoming blind to characteristics about yourself that can trip you up and bring you down.

The upper right quadrant, which Weinstein refers to as “dupes,” is better termed, for our purposes here, as “True Believers.” Those who place themselves as strong believers in a cause which they hold to be morally beneficent are dogmatists who are sure they are right and that they are fighting for a noble cause. There is no room for dissent and reality is black and white. Consequently, these people think they are rational when in fact their position is based on beliefs, which may or may not be rational, in their cause and their own morality. However, we can be sure that their position is rooted in pre-rational morality and probably, but not necessarily, is an expression of prepersonal level of development. This is so because this perspective of True Believers is dogmatic and expresses splitting into dualistic and bipolar extremes that shut out dissent. It is difficult to claim rationality and shut out dissent at the same time, although it is not impossible. Note that you can have a highly developed cognitive line and self-system and still be operating out of prepersonal emotionalism. We have been seeing a lot of vivid examples of that lately. Almost all True Believers in this quadrant are sure they are rational, open-minded, just and fair, because they represent the “true,” “right,” and “good” position. This position, because it excludes the other three, is not inclusive and therefore runs into difficulties proving its claims to rationality. Ask yourself, “In what life situations and regarding what causes do I become a True Believer?”

The lower right quadrant, which Weinstein refers to as “Rent Seekers,” Integral Deep Listening (IDL)[2] refers to as “Opportunists.” This is because they pursue their own self-interest for reasons of physical or economic security, power, or status. These people are often intelligent, and smart enough to mask their self-interest in proclamations of concern for others. They are chameleons and hypocrites, saying whatever needs to be said, breaking whatever rule or law is necessary to get what they want. The only restrictions they respect involve the bringing down of consequences that create greater damage to their self-interest than advantages. Opportunists are typically willing to sustain short-term damage to their self-interest, such as damage to their reputation or the payment of fines, if overall benefits outweigh the likely costs.

The essential characteristic of Opportunists is not simply that they are untrustworthy, but that they are deceitfully untrustworthy; they not only lie; their lies are convincing, because they themselves often believe them. Examples are that greed, war, exploitation, and abuse are good, because the cause or interest for which they fight is good: increased wealth, power, status, or control, not just for themselves, but for their tribe: their family, religion, political party, profession, or nation. Media and all forms of marketing fit into this category. Everyone is pushing a cause, and the question to ask is qui bono? “Who benefits?” Self-image or self-estimation causes these people to place themselves on the top half of the vertical, moral axis of goodness, as when Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, proclaims that he is doing “God’s work” when he is in fact feeding at the trough while enhancing his power and status. Ask yourself, “In what life situations am I most likely to become an unscrupulous opportunist?”

Those in the bottom left quadrant are neither moral nor do they believe in the interest or cause at hand. Weinstein calls them “troglodytes,” which is as good a name as any, because it is a caricature that is used by others to consign their enemies to this quadrant. For example, when Wilber refers to those at a mid-prepersonal level of development as “Nazis,” he is creating a caricature of mid-prepersonal consciousness as immoral and as acting against noble and righteous causes. No one puts themselves in this quadrant or labels themselves a troglodyte; its function is to serve as propaganda and self-justification through the vilification of others. If I can put you in the lower left troglodyte quadrant I don’t have to take you seriously. I can validate my claim that I am superior to you. By doing so I may get others to agree and join with me in scapegoating you and in validating my delusions of superiority. In this way, I can avoid dealing with my fears that I am not only wrong but vulnerable, and can cast out my fears that I might at any moment lose my position of phony, superficial power and control. My best guess is that when I am lost in some mindless addiction I am closest to inhabiting the Troglodyte quadrant. How about you?

The top left quadrant is by far the most interesting of the four. It is the domain of those who respect the value of a cause, considering it worthy of respect. While these people are advocates for some virtuous quality that underlies a particular interest or cause, they have doubts about how it is formulated. They view the situation as more complicated than the True Believers make it out to be. People who have a high estimation of the morality of an issue but doubt its formulation are skeptics and doubters. They not only hold an ambiguous position but declare such ambivalence to be the wisest approach.

These people are called “First Principle Thinkers,” or “Contrarians,” by Weinstein but IDL views them first and foremost as skeptics. They have an investigative, rational, and scientific frame of mind. They ask questions. They consider motives and intentions instead of accepting claims at face value. If unaware of the other three quadrants, their intentions and dynamics, these skeptics remain victims of their context while throwing dust in the gears of the True Believers and Opportunists. If aware of the other three quadrants, they have the capacity to steer all four positions toward a higher order of organization.

Skeptics drive True Believers and Opportunists mad. They are seen by the True Believers as apostates and betrayers of the faith, to be driven out and condemned. They are viewed by the Opportunists in the lower right quadrant as naïve obstructionists. They are naïve because they believe in a good that is greater than self-interest and are therefore weak and easily controlled by others; they are obstructionists because they do not lend their support to the continuous great game of the opportunists, the rigging of the system to favor them. Ask yourself, “When does my skepticism get me into trouble?” “When do I need to ask more questions instead of making assumptions or interpretations?”

With this overview, we are in a position to consider how Weinstein’s model applies to the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect.[3] Weinstein illustrates his model with the example of the infamous Peterson-Newman debate.[4] In it, Newman takes the position of a True Believer regarding equal pay for women and attempts to trap Peterson into either agreeing or being dismissed as a misogynistic Troglodyte in the lower left quadrant. Peterson insists on the underlying moral principle of equality, but insists equally that multiple factors determine the pay of women and that the cause of equality is not always best advanced by advocating for equal pay for women. This places Peterson in the upper left quadrant as a Skeptic, because he defends an underlying moral value, equality, which places him on the upper end of the y axis of morality, but expresses serious doubts about equal pay for women as a realistic approach to achieving it, placing him on the left, or negative end, of the x axis. Weinstein points out that the function of most media and propaganda is to present itself as representing a moral cause and thereby functions as a True Believer, forcing others to either accept its position or be defined as immoral troglodytes.

Because it leads elitists to believe they are more moral than they actually are, the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect explains why and how both Opportunists and True Believers rank themselves high on the vertical moral y axis, even when they do not, in actuality. Both Opportunists and True Believers mistake championing or identifying with a noble cause, such as a worldcentric, 2nd Tier multi-perspectivalist world view, with a high degree of morality or virtue. However, we have seen that those who hold such a world view are as capable of lying, stealing, cheating, and abuse as anyone else. Because they are more powerful, because they embrace a broader perspective, they are more culpable, accountable, and responsible for their immorality than those at lower levels who inhabit more narrow perspectives. Opportunists do not believe that they inhabit more narrow perspectives than True Believers. They believe they are smarter than both the True Believers and the Skeptics because they are Neo-Darwinists, following adaptive survival strategies that they calculate as providing the greatest chance of winning, or coming out ahead of others.

True Believers and Opportunists are both elitists, True Believers because they both fight for a righteous cause and view themselves as virtuous. Opportunists are elitists because they are confident they are smarter than the others and will come out ahead with more money, power, control, and status.

Integralists generally place themselves in the top left quadrant of skepticism because they have the ability to contemplate issues from a variety of perspectives. This is indeed true, and in relation to most other people, integralists do indeed fall in this category more than those who do not adopt a multi-perspectival world view. However, there are distinctions within the integral community, and some integralists are more True Believers than others, while others are more Opportunists. There are also attempts within the integral community to play “pin the tail on the donkey,” which means to get their peers to label integralists who disagree with them as troglodytes. If you go to the integral blogs on Facebook you will encounter these types. You will also encounter attempts within the integral community to play “unmask the poser,” which means to get one’s peers to label Skeptics as Opportunists. To understand the dynamics of these integral games we have to first define what integral True Believers, Opportunists, Troglodytes, and Skeptics look like.

An integral True Believer is someone who not only agrees with Wilber’s description of integral AQAL, but uses it to identify their own level of development. Beyond that, they vigorously defend that self-definition as late personal or 2^nd Tier. There are soft and hard varieties of this game. The soft players simply accept AQAL definitions of their level of development for themselves and worship at the Church of Integral AQAL. The hard variety of Integral True Believer vilifies their opponents and casts them, as Troglodytes, into the outer darkness of the lower left quadrant. Instead of offering arguments, they name-call or summarily dismiss the arguments of others as “not serious,” or not worthy of their time and interest. If you hang out on integral blogs for very long you will run into this type rather quickly. We see this position in Wilber himself in his unwillingness to engage in the various challenges to his model raised by a variety of voices within the integral community, many of them represented on Frank Visser’s IntegralWorld.Net website. Both Wilber and Rob Smith represent the “soft” variety of Integral True Believer.

Integral True Believers can also be detected by their promotion of consciousness, intention, and interior quadrant realities over behavior, interactional, social, and exterior quadrant realities. Consciousness is causative and prior; the exterior and collective are downstream products of interior states and stage development. This position is generally denied, as when Wilber makes the case that consciousness is a property of all four quadrants, but in fact, it is indeed the priority for Integral True Believers, as demonstrated by an unwillingness to let go of the metaphysical language of consciousness: spirit, God, and soul. These proclaim a fundamental True Believer dogmatic investment in the idealism of Weinstein’s upper right quadrant and Wilber’s upper left quadrant of interior individual intention. This bias is invisible to integralist True Believers, who are convinced they are rational, skeptical, and objective, and point to their multi-perspectivalism to prove it. Again, in relationship to most people, they are indeed, and in that regard, their position is a vast improvement over non-world-centric world views. However, within the integral community itself, and within the broader community of spiritual elitists, they are True Believers, convinced of their moral rectitude in addition to the righteousness of their cause. Certainly, that is how they appear to the unwashed 95% of the global population.

There are, of course, many other categories of True Believer who are not integralists, for example, believers in feminism, like Cathy Newman. The “hard” variety of such non-integral True Believers will attempt to turn all integralists into Troglodytes by insisting they are misogynists or because they are not believers in this or that religious mythology or pet philosophical position. These people are not interested in having a serious discussion with integralists because they are certain they are Troglodytes.

Integral Opportunists are those who are more interested in advancing their world view than in morality. The incentive is rarely monetary or for power, but is essentially one of status. This position says, “I am a superior integralist because my world view is superior to yours.” Both True Believers and Opportunists take this position, but Opportunists are more driven by the desire to be recognized for the brilliance of their contributions to the integral debate. If you are active in the integral community, you know who these people are. If you are not, but are active in the broader realm of spiritual development, you will recognize this personality type. The “Evolutionaries” who signed the Robbie Mook petition in support of the candidacy of Hillary Clinton put themselves in this position by declaring a personal commitment to a cause they viewed as just and noble but which was not.[5] Instead, largely unknown to them, they were simply making a status statement while demonstrating their lack of commitment to any objective measurement of morality. This statement is based on the well-known factual record that Clinton personally ordered illegal drone murders as Secretary of State,[6] broke Federal regulations regarding privacy of records that would land you or me in jail,[7] planned and carried out the illegal invasion and destruction of Libya[8] and rejoiced at the brutal murder of its leader by US-funded and supported terrorists.[9] Clinton also supported the arming and funding of ISIS in Iraq and Syria[10] and planned the overthrow of the democratically elected government of the Ukraine.[11] These are all well-documented, well-known facts, conveniently ignored by the glitterati of the spiritual and “self-help” “evolutionary” opinion leaders of our day and age. These people no doubt would place themselves in the upper left “skeptical” category, but in fact they are Opportunists, at least on this issue, of central importance to the fate of the US and the world.

Integral “Troglodytes” are integralists who are placed in the lower left quadrant of no morality or investment in a worthy cause. These are people who understand integral AQAL and adopt its world-centric multi-perspectivalism, but who disagree in ways that are both important and threatening to True Believers and Opportunists. They would certainly place me in the troglodytic category, an amusing indictment of their own blindness. If you go on various integral blogs, you will not find the branding of others as Troglodytes to be a rare occurrence. Those who do not agree with some integral article of faith are often dismissed by some True Believer or Opportunistic integralist as “not serious,” “ignorant,” or simply as an exemplar of ethnocentrism, tribalism, or, at best, the shadow of late personal “green.” Such labeling is an elitist dismissal that will suffice when the ability to provide a rational argument is unavailable. Labeling is itself a cognitive distortion which identifies its users as pre-rational at that time and in that instance, as they are using emotionally-based, irrational cognitive biases and logical fallacies to attack others in order to maintain their own smug sense of complacent security in the validity of their own world view.

Integral Skeptics are the most complicated of these four groups. They are pains in the asses of integral True Believers and Opportunists. Integral Skeptics doubt the broadly given narrative of integral AQAL in one or more core or key point. They are heretics, generally permitted or placated by integral True Believers and Opportunists, while they attempt to win the Skeptic over to their position, so as to validate their own world view. As soon as it becomes clear that a Skeptic will not be won over, he or she is dismissed as “not serious” at best, and as Troglodytes at worst.

A different type of Integral Skeptic, those who are skeptical just because of a reflexive distrust of everything and everybody, are indeed pains in the ass. While they serve a good function in that they force questioning, they are not a constructive force. They have little interest in this or that positive cause or issue of concern to the integral community, and therefore offer nothing useful. However, their intention is still not malicious and is more virtuous than not.

Such skeptics are to be distinguished from virtuous Skeptics, who score high on the moral y axis but who remain highly dubious considering the interest or cause at hand. They may agree with the intent of the cause, but believe it is simplistic or incapable of solving the problems it attempts to address. These people are generally very good and important for integral and for human development in general, but they are rarely differentiated by integral True Believers and Opportunists from obnoxious and unhelpful Skeptics. The result is that the baby generally gets thrown out with the bathwater, and both varieties of Skeptic are consigned to Troglodyte status. Of those that I know in the Integral community, I place Bruce Altman, Heather Fester, Frank Visser, Mark Edwards, Bonnitta Roy, Brian O’Doherty, and Eric Price in the healthy Skeptic category, with Eric definitely at the pain in the ass end of the healthy Skeptic continuum. The point is that there are a good number of talented, committed integralists who have not succumbed to the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect.

The reductionism and dismissal pursued by integral True Believers and Opportunists is a statement of elitism due to the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect. In the case of True Believers, the elitism is based on certainty regarding a world view, a just cause, and moral integrity: “If we can just get enough people to 2^nd Tier, we will transform the world into an integral utopia.” The elitism of integral Opportunists is based on belief in a more clever survival strategy. These people are sure they understand integral, and they use integral, public boards, and integralists to pursue their own agenda, generally one of cultivating their own status. Both Opportunists and True Believers lose because they discount voices within integral they need in order to see through and transcend the limitations inherent in their self-imposed elitist status. Integral itself and human development as a whole also lose because integral discounts non-elitist positions in order to preserve the superiority of its own world view. These are products of the Kohlberg-Wilber Effect.

Other articles on ethics, morality, and the problems blocking progressives and spiritual elites from greater lucidity by Joseph Dillard can be found on IntegralWorld.Net.

[1] Eric Weinstein’s 4-quadrant model. Theknifemedia.com

[2] Integral Deep Listening is a psychospiritual technology for developing waking and dreaming lucidity developed by the author. See IntegralDeepListening.Com.

[3] The Kohlberg-Wilber Effect is the topic of another chapter of the book from which this essay is taken, Integral Ethics. It states that due to a confounding of moral judgment with moral behavior, integralists and spiritual elitists in general badly over-estimate the level of their moral development.

[4] Channel 4, UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMcjxSThD54

[5] This link has been shut down, probably out of embarrassment and disgrace. The justification of these “evolutionaries” in Robbie Mook’s petition was basically that Hillary Clinton was more moral than Donald Trump. This is indicated when they say, “…we feel that Donald Trump has not appealed to our better nature…” The implication is that Donald Trump is either amoral or immoral while Hillary Clinton is moral. But then, what is required is an explanation of how immoral actions of Clinton, while holding public offices of Senator and Secretary of State, “appeal to our better nature.” Clearly, these are overlooked, apparently out of fear or abject terror at the possibility of a worse choice (Trump) getting elected.

Did these “evolutionaries” support Clinton? Absolutely. The petition reads, “In publicly voicing our clear support for her candidacy…” Any attempt to waffle, excuse, or backtrack on their support by these people is not supported by their signed statement. The obvious intent of this petition was to use the credibility of these individuals to convince wavering voters to vote for Hillary Clinton. Here is a list of the 100 integral, new age, cultural creative and “spiritual” luminaries that announced their endorsement of Clinton. It’s quite the list:

Stephen Dinan, CEO, The Shift Network; author, Sacred America, Sacred World
Devaa Haley Mitchell, co-founder, The Shift Network
Marianne Williamson, author, Tears to Triumph
Jack Canfield, author, The Success Principles
Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., author, The Millionth Circle
Caroline Myss, Anatomy of the Spirit
Ram Dass, author, Be Here Now
Chip Conley, hospitality entrepreneur, bestselling author of Peak
Jean Houston, author, The Possible Human
Robert Thurman, author, The Essential Tibetan Buddhism
John Robbins, author, Diet for a New America
Jack Kornfield, author, A Path with Heart
Michael Singer, author, The Untethered Soul
Shiva Rea, founder, Global School for Living Yoga
Larry Dossey, MD, Author, One Mind
Marci Shimoff, author, Happy for No Reason
Sylvia Boorstein, author of Happiness is an Inside Job
Gay Hendricks, author, The Big Leap
Kathlyn Hendricks, co-author, Conscious Loving Ever After
Craig Hamilton, CEO, Evolving Wisdom
Claire Zammit, founder, Feminine Power
Lissa Rankin, MD, author of Mind Over Medicine
Tami Simon, CEO, Sounds True
Dr. Stanislav Grof, author, Beyond the Brain
Deborah Rozman, CEO, HeartMath Inc., author, Heart Intelligence
Howard Martin, co-author, The HeartMath Solution
Rinaldo Brutoco, CEO, The ShangriLa Group
Rev. Canon Charles Gibbs, spiritual leader, poet, global peace activist
Rabbi David Ingber, founder and spiritual director, Romemu
Donna Eden, author,Energy Medicine
David Feinstein, co-author, The Energies of Love
Michael Dowd, author, Thank God for Evolution
Anodea Judith, author, Wheels of Life
Gangaji, author, Hidden Treasure
J. Manuel Herrera, Silicon Valley elected official
Bo Rinaldi, visionary talent agent and angel investor
Terry Patten, co-author, Integral Life Practice
Marcia Wieder, CEO, Dream University
Corinne McLaughlin, co-author, Spiritual Politics
Gordon Davidson, co-author, Spiritual Politics
Steve McIntosh, author, The Presence of the Infinite
Carter Phipps, author, Evolutionaries
Ocean Robbins, CEO, The Food Revolution
Dan Millman, author
Cassandra Vieten, co-author, Living Deeply
Azim Khamisa, author, peace activist
Sadhvi Bhagawati, managing editor, Encyclopedia of Hinduism
Olivia Hansen, president, Spiritual Life TV Channel
Connie Buffalo, president, The Renaissance Project
Sandra Ingerman, author, Soul Retrieval
Patricia Albere, founder, Evolutionary Collective
Derek Rydall, author, Emergence
Jan Philips, author, The Art of Original Thinking
Margaret Paul, author,Inner Bonding
David Gershon, author, Social Change 2.0
Derrick N. Ashong, Founder & CEO, Amp.it
Dr. Nina Meyerhof, author, Pioneering Spiritual Activism
Shelley Lefkoe, co-founder of the Lefkoe Institute
DC Cordova, CEO, Excellerated Business Schools for Entrepreneurs
Lisa Schrader, author, Kama Sutra 52
Kurt Johnson, author, The Coming Interspiritual Age
Daniel Stone, principal, Making Change Real
Lion Goodman, CEO, Luminary Leadership Institute
Steve Bhaerman, author, Spontaneous Evolution
Elisabet Sahtouris, Gaia’s Dance
Marc Allen, president and publisher, New World Library, author
H.E. Rev. Patrick McCollum, global peacebuilder
Dr. Sue Morter, founder, Morter Institute for BioEnergetics
Carista Luminare, president, Luminary Leadership Institute
Rev. angel Kyodo williams, author, Being Black
Debra Poneman, founder, Yes to Succes Seminars
Rev. Marcia L. Dyson, founder, Women’s Global Initiative
Ken Page, author, Deeper Dating
Dawson Church, author, The Genie in Your Genes
Brian Burt, CEO, MaestroConference
Avon Mattison, global peacebuiler
Sera Beak, author, Red, Hot & Holy
Dr. Effie Chow, Qigong Grandmaster
Philip M. Hellmich, author, God and Conflict
Scott Coady, founder, Institute for Embodied Wisdom
Pete Bissonette, president, Learning Strategies
Zen Cryar DeBrucke, author, Your Inner GPS
David Nicol, author, Subtle Activism
Saniel Bonder, Author, Healing the Spirit/Matter Split
Dr. Rick Levy, president, The Levy Center for Mind-Body Medicine
Bill Kauth, author, A Circle of Men
Rob Evans, author, The Collaboration Codeseries
Carolyn Buck Luce, author, Reimagining Healthcare
Lisa Garr, author, Becoming Aware, Host of the Aware Show
George Cappannelli, CEO, AgeNation
Raz Ingrasci, Chairman, Hoffman Institute International
Jim Garrison, CEO, Ubiquity University
Cynthia James, author, I Choose Me
Noah Levine, author, Dharma Punx
Mirabai Starr, author, Caravan of No Despair
Rob Fisher, author, Experiential Psychotherapy with Couples
Manuela Mischke-Reeds, author, 8 Keys to Practicing Mindfulness
Dawa Tarchin Phillips, author, CEO, Empowerment Holdings
Stuart Davis, artist
Gayle Rose, CEO, EVS Corporation

[6] Priyadarshi, M., Hillary Clinton Email Probe Update: Clinton Approved Drone Attacks That Killed Hundreds Of Civilians Using Her Cellphone. Inquisitr.com. June 11, 2016.

[7] Dilanian, K. Clinton broke Federal Rules with Email server, audit finds. nbcnews.com. May 25, 2016.

[8] Paylich, K. No classified information? Hillary Clinton planned Libya no-fly zone through personal email. Townhall.com. June 18, 2015.

[9] YouTube: Hillary Clinton: “We came, we saw, he died.”

[10] Walia, A., Wikileaks exposes Hillary Clinton’s ties to ISIS supporters & the war on terror. Collective-evolutioncom. August 4, 2016.

[11] Zuesse, E. Hillary Clinton’s six foreign-policy catastrophes. Washingtonsblog.com. Feb. 21, 2016.

Dream Sociometry, Dream Yoga, Integral, and World Views

Joseph Dillard — Thu, 01 Feb 2018 12:14:23 +0000

The following is the introduction to Dream Sociometry by Joseph Dillard, published by Routledge, 2018.

Dream Sociometry is an integral life practice and yoga based on the sociometric methodologies created by psychiatrist J. L. Moreno, creator of psychodrama and multiple experiential forms of psychotherapy. Dream Sociometry interviews multiple dream characters or elements in a waking circumstance, such as 9/11, or personal issues, such as cancer, a career change, or divorce.[i] This work has since been elaborated into a broader transmutational practice called “Integral Deep Listening” (IDL).[ii]

Since Dream was created in 1980, the world of research has witnessed a monumental turn toward inter-disciplinary studies, most powerfully and effectively represented by Ken Wilber’s Integral AQAL. “AQAL,” which stands for “all quadrants, stages, states, lines and types,” summarizes a broad and deep cognitive multi-perspectival map that has generated multidisciplinary approaches to medicine, law, anthropology, physics, language, ecology, religion, spirituality, and, of course, psychology. This has in turn generated an enormously fertile depth of connectivity, not only among ideas, but among people on the cutting edge of a wide variety of professions.

This preface is intended to be an orientating overview of where the body of this text, which involves instruction in an injunctive methodology, lies in the context of first Wilber’s AQAL and, more particularly, current integral thought, using the latter to also locate Dream Sociometry in the broad field of dream investigation.

Dream Sociometry is multi-perspectival

Dream Sociometry extends the concept of multi-perspectival in ways that initially may appear as outrageous, irreverent, profane, and irrelevant as Freud’s Id-based theories of dreaming did to the Victorian English at the turn of the 20th century. Looking for meaning, much less transmutation, in spit or a blender and in their relationships to say, cartwheels or chimpanzees initially appears not only to be an exercise in self-centered projection, but a waste of time. However, integral has reaffirmed an ancient truth, that all points, all instances, all relationships, are worm-holes to, into, and, as Buzz Lightyear reminds us, even beyond the infinite, once we are armed with clear intention and a wise methodology. Clearly, a movement from a cognitive multi-perspectivalism to an experiential multi-perspectivalism, which is the purpose and function of Dream Sociometry, has to be undertaken from the outside in as well as from the inside out. As such, it is an enactment of the principle of non-exclusion, of anekantavada. Such an approach generates not only an introspective phenomenology in the upper right as a vehicle for practicing integral deep listening with intrasocial collectives, such as Sanghas of dream elements, in the lower left, cultural quadrant of holons, but also, through deep empathy, transmutes “Its” in the lower right, or social quadrant, of humanity, into “We” and “Us” and beyond that, into a non-dual “I” which enfolds both self and other as alternative framings of infinitely-faced Shivas at a Halloween party gone amuck.

Any child who has played “mommy” or “soldier” all the way up and through Dzogchen masters can use Dream Sociometry, or, its shortened forms, the IDL interviewing protocols and Dream Sociodrama, to get unstuck by first objectifying their blind spots and then marrying them with a life-transforming action plan. [iii] Far broader than shadow work, and even the honored psychotherapeutic excursions of Gestalt, Dream Sociometry draws down fire from heaven and interweaves it with savory delights from the depths of Plato’s Cave. Due to its integral nature, Dream Sociometry is a psychospiritual practice that can be applied to move forward on any developmental line and integrated into waking, meditative, dream, deep sleep, and mystical states. It is equally applicable to different styles, whether culturally scripted, gender-based, or professionally framed, because its basic structures and functions are as universal as dreaming, imagery, and empathy, as a core developmental unfolding.

We can view the current, ongoing and accelerating interdisciplinary thrust within and among multiple fields of knowledge as a breaking down of various cognitive dualisms. Traditionally, the work of deconstructing both cognitive and experiential dualisms has been left to the interior quadrant fields of mysticism, values, reframing interpretations and world views, and the generation of new paradigms. While interior quadrant approaches are essential, they are only half the picture, and Wilber has acknowledged same by identifying integral life practices in the major areas of body (nine practices), mind (six), spirit (eight), and shadow (seven) and the auxiliary areas of ethics (seven), sex (five), work (seven), emotions (six), and relationships (seven).[iv]

Dream Sociometry extends this experiential emphasis within multi-perspectivalism into each of the four quadrants in order to deconstruct fundamental dualisms, including self vs. other, reality vs. fantasy, objective vs subjective, good vs. evil, secure vs. endangered, comfortable vs. stressed, life vs. death, sober vs. addicted, victim vs. persecutor/rescuer, loving/compassionate vs. selfish, conscience vs. immorality, Heaven vs. Earth, divine vs. profane, sacred vs. secular, God vs. self, Divine will vs. Sin, freedom vs. bondage, ultimate vs. conditioned truth, and clarity vs. delusion.[v] It does so in the interior individual (UL) quadrant of intention, private thoughts, and feelings by phenomenologically redefining the self as including but transcending the particular duality under consideration; in the interior collective (LL) quadrant of culture, value, interpretation, and world view, by identification with alternative perspectives, interpretations, and values that redefine our own perspective, interpretations, and values as including but transcending the duality; in the exterior individual (UR) quadrant of observable behavior by practicing a yoga, or integral life practice, that transcends and directs personal goal setting regarding both integral life practices and behavior in general; and in the exterior collective (LR) inter-objective quadrant of relationship, systems and society, by creating structures that are embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended.[vi] This identification can be approached as a form of co-presence (), “the mutual in-dwelling of each being by all other beings, and their co-participation on the cosmic envelope: a holographic or nondual form of relatedness.”[vii] Instead of this co-presence generating a non-dual self, it creates an open-ended, expansive, ability to dance without attachment from one identity to another.

Dream Sociometry is a dream yoga

As a yoga that involves dreams and dreaming, Dream Sociometry represents broader, more encompassing definitions of both “dream” and “yoga.” It is neither a physical, hatha yoga, nor is it a jnana. maya, bhakti, kundalini, or raja yoga. It is instead a multi-perspectival transpersonal discipline, a behavior in the UR quadrant, that is meant to integrate not only other UR behaviors and integral life practices, but the realms and activities of the other three quadrants as well, using a trans-rational framework, that is, a methodology that is rational but which transcends rationality in significant ways. For example, when you interview a drunken octopus that is sitting on your head and quoting Einstein, although it appears preposterously irrational and pre-rational, you are hardly doing something that can be considered irrational, because it assumes a thoroughly rational methodology, but yields perspectives, beingness, and life processes that transcend and include both the prepersonal and the personal. Consequently, the relationships among both transcendent consciousness and social holons can be recognized, transformed and transmuted.[viii] As such, it is also intended to provide context for directing and improving the quality of whatever other yogas and integral life practices one takes up through their organization and prioritization via triangulation.[ix]

While state differences are real and significant enough from a psychologically geocentric perspective, these disappear from the perspectives of interviewed dream characters and the personifications of life issues, together referred to as “emerging potentials.” Consequently, Dream Sociometry deconstructs the artificial state dualism between dreaming and waking life. Life itself does not appear to discriminate between dreaming and waking states, meaning that dreaming is as “real” as waking while we are dreaming or lucid dreaming, and waking is as illusory and delusionary as dreaming, when viewed from perspectives embedded in dream contexts. Dream Sociometry is a dream yoga in the sense that it an organizing and structuring discipline for all four quadrants in many states at most levels, from multiple perspectives that more accurately and inclusively personify the priorities not primarily of self, but rather, personifications of the priorities life itself.

Disidentification and identification, two processes that are fundamental to any intrasocial experiential multi-perspectivalism, are not only the polarities of manifested life, as evolution and involution, but are two faces of the “withdrawn” virtual described by Shaviro, Deleuze, and others, which enters into manifestation as emerging potentials.[x] We take this process of element identification, or inhabiting another perspective, for granted, because it is as familiar, profane, and immediate as breathing; it was the play-work of our childhood. However, as Wilber points out, disidentification-identification is the twin process by which we objectify our proximal self as distal selves, a process fundamental to growth on any and every developmental line. In addition, identification-disidentification is the developmental dialectic itself, in that identification is the stable, thesis “translative” phase, in which we spend most of our time, generating balance and homeostasis. Disidentification is the antithetical disrupter, yet capable of generating both transformation and transmutation if anticipated and approached with both creative enthusiasm and as upstream prevention. However, if antithesis is feared, rejected, ignored, or fought, as is often the case, then this disrupter generates what IDL terms “wake-up calls,” first in the form of dream whispers, then repetitive dreams, then nightmares, then objectified waking dream-dramas, such as relationship issues, health problems, and “accidents.” Obviously, diseases and life misfortunes are due to multiple factors; however, by welcoming antithesis through chosen disidentification and identification with personifications of such wake-up calls, Dream Sociometry can make higher-order synthesis more likely. This is a claim that you are not only invited to validate for yourself through the application of both cognitive and transpersonal epistemologies to Dream Sociometry, what Wilber calls the “eyes” of mind and spirit, but are required to do. For, as with any injunctive method, to become a peer, that is, someone whose feedback has validation, one has to follow the three injunctions of any empirical method: follow the instructions, do the experiments, and submit your results to peers in the method.

Bruce Alderman’s grammatical philosophemes as applied to Dream Sociometry

Much of what follows in this preface is an application of an integral grammar of philosophy, as magnificently elaborated by Bruce Alderman in Sophia Speaks, to Dream Sociometry and to IDL in general. While Wilber has stated that experience is essentially perspectival, Alderman notes that this approach prejudices a pronounal context, one of six basic grammatical philosophemes, all of which disclose fundamental and essential characteristics of ontology (being) and thereby clarify the uses and limits of epistemology (knowing). The others are nounal, adjectival, verbal or processual, adverbial, and prepositional. Each of these contextualize the identification-disidentification process in important, expressive ways. What the following framings, based on some of the newest and most promising thinking in integral, attempt to provide, is a pluralist ontological typology of dreaming in particular and more generally of imagery and, macrocosmically, of socio-cultural experience. From an integral mapping, each approach is true but partial; each is important in that it provides powerful, genuine, and useful understandings and approaches for advances in each of these three domains.

Pronoun-based approaches

A pronounal approach to Dream Sociometry, following thinkers such as Buber, Rosenszweig, Peirce, Habermas, and Wilber, views interviewed dream characters and personifications of life issues as perspectives that are ontological realities. Following Peirce, Wilber notes that nouns depend on a prior experience of the hearer with the object of the noun, while the pronouns “I,” “You,” “We,” “It,” “Its,” and so forth are experientially immediate, meaning that they require no previous familiarity with their object. “Others,” often perceived as “its” or even “heaps” or “artifacts,” not worthy of holonic attribution, such as dirty socks or the asteroid belt are, with Dream Sociometry, not transformed, but transmuted into first “We” and “Us,” as we respectfully and empathetically listen, in a deep and integral way, to their values and perspectives, and then into “I,” as we internalize, expand, and grow into identities that include yet transcends our own. As such, we are not simply disclosing an epistemology or way of knowing or of “looking at,” but becoming a broader ontological presence, both expressed and withdrawn.

Each and every perspective is indeed partially a self-aspect, sub-personality, personal fantasy, or subjective delusion in that it is part of and party to our thoughts, feelings, and experience. Unless it is in some way dissociated, which is atypical, a dream crocodile or an imaginary turnip is both a self-aspect, yet unknown or recognized as such, and therefore generally perceived as an “it” in the lower right (LR) quadrant of systems and relationships. [xii] For example, a thief in a nightmare is an aggressive “other;” he or she is an “it” in the LR quadrant, which we understand to personify parts of ourselves with which we are in conflict. This is the understanding of “shadow” approaches based on Jung and advocated by Wilber. However, in addition to being a self-aspect, these perspectives can and do express significant degrees of autonomy, while providing world views that are not our own. As such, their authenticity is violated, through an act of reductionism, when we view them solely as self-aspects, “shadow,” or frame them as denizens of a personal or collective unconscious.

Dream Sociometry demonstrates that the perceptual reality, as well as conclusions derived from interviewing a vampire bat are as rational and useful as those derived from the same interviewed vampire bat viewing you as an artifact of its personal or collective unconscious, in shades of Chuang Tzu.[xiii] Throughout the interviewing process and even after identification, interviewed emerging potentials remain ontologically discrete, “other,” and autonomous. As such, when Dream Sociometry is approached via a pronomial framing, “Its” in the LR become both “We’s” and “Us” in the LL collective quadrant, while our sense of self in the UL quadrant expands to include both. We become them as much as they become us.

Application of recommendations in the UR through the integral life practice of dream yoga objectifies a phenomenological process, making it accountable to the global commons. This has far-ranging implications for integral ethics, which requires significantly increased grounding in the LR quadrant.[xiv] Therefore, pronomial framings of imaginative processes of all sorts, including conscious visual cognition, is powerful, effective, and useful, in that the ability to co-exist with multiple perspectives not only represents a higher-order tolerance of ambiguity, but both invites and incorporates multiple emerging potentials for problem-solving while avoiding epistemological reductionism.

Pronomial aspects of AQAL include its emphasis on perspectives. For example, AQAL is itself a form of cognitive multi-perspectivalism, a world view that incorporates and integrates multiple world views which are themselves perspectives. When AQAL approaches the four quadrants of holons as “Its,” “We’s,” and “Is,” it is framing holons from a pronomial perspective.

Types of dreamwork that take a primarily pronomial approach include all interpretive approaches in the tradition of ancient Egyptian dream interpretation, Artimidorus, Freud, and Jung, that is, that view dream contents as symbols, or representative perspectives, rather than as things in themselves, processes, or modes of being.

Such approaches emphasize transforming “Its” into “We” or “Us,” and then to “I.” This is observed in the assumption that “others” are psychological projections of self-aspects, to be re-owned through the taking of responsibility for their creation, beingness and meaning. This is essentially an interior collective quadrant focus because it emphasizes interpretation. It represents a psychologically geocentric world view in that these interpretations are made by the self, the locus of identity of the dreamer, whether asleep and dreaming or awake, and only secondarily by others.

Substantive, or noun-based, approaches

This same critique applies to nounal approaches, only the emphasis is more strongly placed on the ontological or substantial reality of interviewed elements. Cognitive linguistics views dream and imaginative images as radial or metaphorical extensions of discrete objects or experiences previously encountered in waking life. In harmony with Object Oriented Ontology, which follows the philosophy of such thinkers as Democritus, Aristotle, Descartes, Newton, Harmon, Bryant, and Wilber, objects of our awareness are ontologically real substances. Similarly, Dream Sociometry notes that phenomenologically perceived entities, whether encountered during a dream, a lucid dream, or when interviewed, are bounded things as well as authentic, objectively experienced others, with the same unquestioned otherness as objects in the external reality you are experiencing at this moment.

For example, when you fully allow yourself to become a dragon with heartburn from a nightmare, whether during the dream or later, during an interview or later, during sadhana, its underlying reality provides an undeniably authentic context for its responses during the interview.

Nounal approaches to dreamwork are substantive and ontologically real. They involve encounter with entities that are intrinsically and fundamentally “other.”

Nounal dreamwork approaches include shamanism, which is reflective of waking, concrete naïve realism that does not question the reality of that which presents itself as objectively “other.” It also includes lucid dreaming, in which the lucid dreamer assumes that his or her experience is as real (or delusional) as waking, even though the dream is perceived to be a self-created reality. The thinking is something like this:

While this porcupine is a self-created figment of my imagination, I have the power to turn it into a seductive soul mate and make passionate love to it. Therefore, I still experience it as an objective and real “other,” only one that is self-generated and subject to my control.

Nounal approaches provide perhaps the best bridging between dreaming, whether non-lucid or lucid, and waking experience, in that both commonly assume naïve realism.

Mystical experience, whether in dreams, meditation or some other state are essentially nounal, because the experiencer returns quite convinced that they have not only experienced reality, but Reality, that is, not only personal truth, but collective, universal Truth that applies equally to everyone.

Near death experience is also primarily a nounal approach to experience for similar reasons.

Nounal approaches to Dream Sociometry view the being of each interviewed entity as individual, meaning that the universe is flooded with an unlimited number of authentic beings. However, this is not a shamanistic approach because shamanism assumes, in the concrete mode of naïve realism, that whatever is perceived in any state is alive in some other plane or dimension. While this is indeed a nounal approach to dream, mystical or other imagery, Dream Sociometry tables such assumptions in favor of simple phenomenalistic respect. Instead of presuming the reality or non-reality of the immediateness of this beingness, a form of projective mind-reading, we simply get out of the way as best we can and listen to its response to the questions in the interviewing protocol in a deeply respectful and integral way. Therefore, a nounal approach to Dream Sociometry approaches interviewed elements as authentic, real, and individual entities and holons, each with four quadrants, but does not impart a reality to them beyond their own remarks, while not taking these remarks at face value either. We are not dealing here with gods, but neither are we dealing with shadow. Instead, it is both/and, and, as with Nagarjuna and his tetralemma, the excluded middle. Doubt, analysis, and interpretation are tabled during the interview in order to give a priority to respectful listening. However, after the interview, interpretations are invited and re-employed.

Dream Sociometry does not make these interviewed elements into secondary substances, as Aristotle did and as followers of Freud and Jung do when they turn them into symbols. To do so deprives them of their substantiality by making their beingness dependent on some referent, rather than hearing, seeing, being and respecting each in its own right, for what and who it proclaims itself to be. Therefore, to take a nounal approach to Dream Sociometry is to not insist that these interviewed elements refer to anything or to associate them with any life issue or realm of personal meaning, at least not during the interview or later, when we return to a full identification with this or that element. However, at other times, when we return to our normal waking “I” as reference point, it is not only inevitable but helpful to create such references and generate such associations. It is a matter of timing: there is a time for full identification and phenomenological suspension of our assumptions, preferences, and expectations, and there is a time for using LL interpretations to incorporate what we have experienced into an expanded world view, an UL sense of self, UR behavior, and LR relationships.

Many metaphysical systems, ancient and modern, dismiss ordinary objects as unsophisticated and unworthy of philosophical attention and thereby generate a metaphysical dualism where none exists, is necessary, or helpful. This has been all the more so for dream elements and personifications of waking life issues, such as a fire that one might experience “burning” in their spinal prolapse. In this regard, we can borrow two concepts, Undermining and Overmining that Grahm Harman, the founder of modern object-oriented , originated (Harman, 2011a). Undermining refers to one of two types of reductionism, the above-mentioned dismissing of dream and imaginary elements as unsophisticated and unworthy. Undermining makes the assumption that at least some categories of dream elements and waking fantasies are simply surface, superficial representations of some substantial referent reality “beneath” or “within.” Viewing dream elements as symbols is an example of such undermining. An overmining reductionism commits the epistemological fallacy, that is, it contends that dream elements or personifications of life issues do not exist outside of perception, so that reality does not exist within these “others,” but instead within the flow of experience itself.

Dream Sociometry avoids both of these approaches by first dropping such assumptions in a clear and simple phenomenological reduction and, secondly, by identifying with the “other” as completely as possible, in a way that might be reminiscent of possession by a Greek muse. This is somewhat of a threatening approach to many Westerners, who have been brought up to maintain self-control and individuality, while viewing the surrendering of self-control and the self as a regressive descent into decompensation and chaos. The methodology that you will learn here, when followed, demonstrates that myth for what it is: a scripted cultural bias that entombs the self in a rigid chrysalis from which it cannot escape and which slowly smothers it to death. The abandonment of these twin reductions allows Dream Sociometry to be viewed through the lens of “a democracy of objects,” a concept that Harman and other object-oriented philosophers, such as Levi Bryant (2011a), Tim ), and Ian Bogost (2012) embrace, and that Bryant coined (Bryant, 2011a).

In this regard, Dream Sociometry accepts the idea that we partially construct or “translate” the objects of our perception, say, when we interview a character and “become” it, either during the interview or later, while rejecting the idea that these elements are nothing more or could be anything other than human constructions. The reason why, besides obvious reductionism, is that it closes us off to negentropic aspects of life that are attempting to be born within us and through us. When we dismiss or minimize the ontology of an interviewed element, we are turning a presence that has sacred, kratophonic, and transcendent elements into something profane and secular before we have even given it a chance to disclose itself. Such dismissal discredits a basic principle of reciprocity: we are thereby so treating these elements in a way that we do not want to be treated ourselves.

Dream Sociometry also reflects ontological realism, the thesis that “objects are irreducible to our representations of them” (Bryant, 2011b). This principle seems obvious when elements are interviewed using Dream Sociometry. For example, the unique individuality and autonomy of a cyclops and peanut butter cup far transcends their relationship with each other, as depicted in the Dream Sociogram.[xvii] In that they often interpret the intention or meaning of their beingness in ways that we do not, it is manifestly obvious that they are not reducible to our representations of them.

While the application of principles of ontological realism to dreams and fantasies may seem quite strange and even bizarre to both philosophers and psychologists, it provides an important and significant validation of the autonomy and dignity of collectives in quadrants of both culture and society. It becomes impossible to dismiss the other as “Its” and thereby exploit or abuse them, or to dismiss the other as a figment of one’s imagination and disregard or disrespect it. Both of these responses represent a failure of empathy, a fundamental therapeutic capacity that Dream Sociometry enlarges and entriches. Abstract philosophical principles are employed in tandem with a thanatomimetic methodology that generates a higher-order ethic in both the interior and exterior collective quadrants. In a very real sense, Dream Sociometry takes nounal philosophy to its necessary conclusion: the sacrilization of the delusional, illusory, and profane. However, it does not make the determination that an interviewed element is either an object or a thing, both or neither. A slab of butter or crayon can make that determination for itself, if it wants to.

Adjectival approaches

When a dream image is assumed to be a symbol, it often functions adjectivally, in that it personifies or represents qualities that modify what is the center of experience, generally, the substantial reality of the dreamer. For example, a storm cloud is assumed to personify the “stormy” temperament of the dreamer. In an adjectival ontology, such modifiers are reality; images do not stand for, represent, or modify some underlying substance or reality. The storminess is what is real, not some individual with some temperament.

When an adjectival, instead of a pronounal or nounal approach to interviewing elements is used, the result is rather Buddhist. Like the Buddhism of the Dhammapada, adjectival approaches note that things can only be known through their qualities – what they say and do, because their beingness is forever undisclosable. Because the beingness of a dream element cannot be directly experienced, its qualities are what are real. In the case of Buddhism, there is no self, or underlying ontological substance, only the five qualities, called skandhas, which interdependently co-originate to conjure up the delusion of a permanent self. However, against this position, it can be argued that the act of identification in Dream Sociometry involves becoming the beingness of the element itself, rather than simply knowing it indirectly through its qualities. Still, in so doing, while we encounter the fullness of beingness in the here and now, an objective assessment shows that this presence is ad hoc, flickering in and out of existence, based purely upon the attention that we give it. The temptation is therefore to reduce images to epistemological artifacts, holonic “heaps,” products of our own “looking at” or knowing.

Dream Sociometry recognizes the legitimacy of this position by noting that it is not the form of this or that image that matters, but the intention behind, within, or beneath the qualities by which it is known. Is the ground toward which you are falling in a dream, hard, giving; does it transform into a feather bed, or does it disappear? If the quality itself is interviewed, rather than the ground itself, what does it have to say about itself?

An adjectival approach to dreamwork emphasizes the nature and interpretation of adjectival modifiers. Rather than focusing on the reality or non-reality of an element, or what perspective it takes, an adjectival approach attempts to enact or get to the meaning of “threatening,” “confused,” “ashamed,” or “nauseated.” Gestalt and psychodramatic approaches often take this approach, when they ask a client or auxiliary to take an “ashamed” position or act out the role of “threatening.”

Verbal approaches

While a pronoun-based approach views being as perspective, a noun-based approach views being as substance, and an adjective-based approach views being as the appearance of its qualities, verbal-based approaches view being as process. Dreams are not about the dreamer but about whatever is going on in the dream or imagery – flying, walking, running, swimming. These actions, or lack of them, such as a dream rock sitting on a shore for eons, involve any dream element, not just the dreamer. Heraclitus, Plotinus, Hegel, Bergson, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Rescher, and Roy are some of the luminaries that have advocated the view that being is process. In this view, processes are ontologically more fundamental than substances or things because beings exist due to dynamic processes. For example, weather is a process, not a thing. Lightening, thunder, wind, rain, and snow are manifestations of underlying processes rather than real existent beings in their own right. According to Whitehead, what would be real about a dream buffalo is that it is an actual occasion which “prehends” its relation to other natural occasions – the other objects and elements in the dream, including the dreamer. Such an approach leans heavily, following Maturana and Luhmann, on an autopoietic, or self-generating process, but without their assumption that a self, object, or holon organizes or carries out that process.

The term IDL uses for dream elements and the personifications of waking life issues, “emerging potentials,” resonates with a verbal or process-oriented approach to dreaming. Just as Whitehead’s “actual occasions” relationally prehend the past and the future and thereby generate novel and emergent features in the process of actualization, so imagery appears to autopoietically self-create in interdependent relationship to its dream, mystical, drug-induced or waking context.[xviii] By so doing, it manifests in an emergent, or awakening form, possibilities, intentions, and potentials that are themselves processes. While creative emergence is transformational, when we take it forward by becoming the image in sadhana, it can be transmutational, in that what is emerging and potential can become actualized in the actual occasion we call ourselves. As we become what it is, who we are becomes identified with the emerging potentials inherent in those actual occasions that are being born not only into our awareness, but into our identity, our sense of who we are.[xix]

Whitehead describes this process as concrescence, “the process by which entities become what they are through their relationships to other entities, while also contributing novelty through the unique ways in which those relations are integrated.”[xx] Concrescence is therefore an excellent way to understand how Dream Sociometry and IDL understand the autopoietic self-generation of imagery and their interdependent relationships to both other images and waking realities. The amazing variety of these relationships are elaborated in the sequel to Dream Sociometry, Understanding the Dream Sociogram. For Whitehead, and for verbally-based process approaches in general, nothing stands behind the connectivity of relationship. There is no one “doing” or “having” or “in” relationship. There is simply the co-arising of relationships among actual occasions. Again, this is a very Buddhist concept, in which pratityasammupada, or interdependent co-origination, replaces a self seeking salvation (as in Christianity), or the obedient self (as in Judaism and Islam), or a self seeking ahimsa (freedom) (as in Hinduism), or as a self seeking harmony and freedom from chaos (as in Chinese culture), as the central conception upon which its further premises and injunctions depend.

Dream Sociometry resembles in some regards Bonnitta Roy’s processual thesis of direct perception as adequate participation. She writes,

Because perspectives are shaped by “look for,” as distinguished from the perception of “seeing,” they too are part of the epistemological domain and are subject to persistent error, illusion and confusion and thus, persistently advance into higher and higher orders of complexity . . .[xxi]

While elements that are interviewed in Dream Sociometry are indeed perspectives shaped by “look for,” when we become this or that perspective, say, a skunk, we shift from “look for” to “seeing,” or direct phenomenological encounter and identification with that skunk. We are looking out at the world through its skunky eyes. By so doing, we are accessing a frame of information that we would normally not call our own and that most people would consider a perspective. This is the difference between a 2nd, or even 3rd-person perspective, and its transformation/transmutation into 1st person. We are becoming, or directly identifying, with that perspective, no longer “looking at,” or objectively encountering it. Consequently, Dream Sociometry, and IDL interviewing in general, may qualify for what Roy would call “knowing as direct perception,” or “knowing in the sense of Gnostic knowing.” It is in this sense that identification with a perspective becomes transcendent of the ontological/epistemological dualism. Impermanence is the underlying reality; permanently existing things are constructs of processes that, given enough time, are shown to not be permanent or substantial at all. This is also a highly Buddhist view; it attributes the illusion of selves to the speed at which processes occur, creating the illusion of solidity and reality, as in a film; to the ability of the mind to recollect past experiences and therefore create causal chains of ownership; and to a lack of observational discrimination in the untrained mind.

Psychodrama and Gestalt therapy are approaches to dreamwork that emphasize a processual orientation, in that they are more interested in investigating the meaning and function of some dream or waking action in one’s life rather than attributing it to someone or viewing it as a perspective. A psychodramatist might have the subject and auxiliaries run around the room to explore the meaning of “running,” or they might give voice to “burning,” “digesting,” “drinking,” or “smoking.” What then becomes important in the understanding of the dream or life issue is the meaning of some action, not its attribution or the discovery of some one “right” meaning.

Adverbial approaches

In an adverbial approach to Dream Sociometry and the therapeutic identification with imagery in general, like adjectival approaches, images symbolically or metaphorically represent, stand in for, depict, or modify an underlying reality, such as a bodhisattva, ghost, or larvae, as these can be seen as the embodiment of a mode of becoming. When we become them we are pulled into their own distinct field of becoming: Maitreya is going to take us places that Padmasambhava or Avalokitesvara will not; a ghost will take you places an Uber driver will not; a larvae will have you experience a unique unfolding, depending on whether you embody the process of becoming a fly or food for SkyNet in the Matrix.

Adverbial approaches explore the various ways that images function as processes. Examples of such relational modes, according to Heidegger, include space, world, self, others, possibility, matter, function, meaning, and time. For Whitehead, such relational modes include color, form, pattern, number, space, time, and gravity, and these describe, adverbally, how actual occasions emerge prehensively into existence. From an adverbial standpoint, dream images, which are processes, not substances or perspectives, are actualizing themselves through this or that adverbial pathway or “modal expression.” Is its spatial relationship what is emphasized by a waterfall when interviewed, or is it its size, function, its meaning, or when its water crashes into the pool below in the dream? All these are adverbial modes of expression, and any interviewed element is going to emphasize some more than others, and these will be vital to understanding its autopoietic self-generation in terms of process, or what it does in the dream or life context that it embodied.

Where, as in the case of image as adjective, the underlying reality “symbolized” is a substance, in the case of image as adverb, the underlying reality “symbolized” is a process, whether some other modifier, such as an adjective, another adverb, or a verb itself, such as the growing into some embodiment.[xxii] Instead of asserting its reality apart from what it modifies, as adjectival approaches do when they depict the way that the dreamer feels and what she thinks when she is crying as being the reality, adverbial approaches do not generally claim to replace or substitute for the underlying reality of the process at hand. Crying itself is the reality. Instead, they complement or add descriptive depth to what is basically a verbal approach to understanding what is going on when we dream and when we identify with some metal image.

An adverbial approach to dreamwork will emphasize the way in which this or that element embodies some process of becoming. Is it being done out of some role in the Drama Triangle? Is the element speaking or acting in a persecuting, victimized, or rescuing manner? Is becoming being fought, welcomed, or ignored?

Eastern approaches that see life as a dream can be viewed as adverbial, in that all states are not only processes, but experiential modes, lacking any intrinsic reality. The underlying “reality” not only lacks bhava, “own being”; it is delusional. Dreaming is the mode of becoming that modifies the action of living. However, note that Eastern approaches are not consistent in this stance in the same way that post-modernism is, in that both Vedanta and Madhyamika take refuge in fundamental dualisms of relative and absolute truths, or realms that are finally substantive and nounal.

Whether images as complementing modes of verbal processes are conceived in pluralistic (Heidegger), monistic (Spinoza), or non-dual framings (Whitehead, Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen, or Kashmiri Shaivism), they all emphasize the importance of how an image manifests itself in relationship to other things, which are all equally substantial or insubstantial images, depending on which position you take. Indeed, these various approaches apply equally to “real” and “imaginary” “things” or “beings,” as noted by Rescher (1996), Object Oriented Ontology, and Actor Network Theory, as described by Harman in The Prince of Networks (2009).

Interestingly, Buddhism and Hinduism are not consistent in their application of this perspective to dreaming. They regress to an essentially nounal psychological geocentrism, in which the self does the interpretation of experiences that are either sacred and real or profane and illusory.

Prepositional approaches

A common thread in all these approaches is the question, “Is there something beneath, behind or within images that creates them or do they create themselves?” Is their essence derivative of an underlying substantial ontology or are surfaces the ontology itself? Notice that the key words in these questions, “beneath,” “behind,” “within,” and “underlying” are prepositions: they are not things or objects in themselves but describe types of relationships. These are bridging concepts, that connect one something with another. When you focus on relationship or bridge itself, as the source of meaning, substance and being, you create a prepositional ontology. Thinkers who have done so include Latour, Souriau, Nancy, Serres, and Sloterdijk, indicating the post-modern and contemporary arising of this latest approach to the framing of reality.

Prepositions may modify both nouns and verbs, functioning as both adjectives and adverbs, while being neither. Consequently, they are perhaps the most encompassing or multi-perspectival (what Latour calls “plurimodal”) of the various approaches to imagery that have preoccupied humanity to this point. They do not attempt to restrict humanity to the metaphysical deadlock of one mode of being or another. However, they are also the most abstract.

From the perspective of IDL, prepositional approaches attempt to transcend dualities by emphasizing the underlying reality of interdependent relationship. For example, in a dream where you are attacked by a man with a knife, there is an obvious duality. However, when you interview the knife, the duality is likely to disappear, replaced by an awareness of an interdependent, co-created relationship, what Nancy (2000) refers to as the “with” of “being singular plural.” By emphasizing “with,” Nancy is indicating the primacy of equivalency of relationship among beingness as individually or collectively constructed. It becomes obvious that the man, the knife and “you” are not the underlying realities, objects or functions of the drama, but rather modes depicting multi-perspectival relationships, the fabric of which can be expressed by various means, including the interdependent constellations explored in Dream Sociograms. Note that exactly the same processes of encounter apply to say, a terrorist attacking a group of people in waking life; life itself makes no differentiation, and the same “with,” that is, “being singular plural,” applies to it as well, and, likewise, a similar “coessentiality” can be depicted interdependently in a Dream Sociogram.

From a prepositional framing, “subjects and verbs are derivative and verbs must follow the flows that prepositions make available.”[xxiii] The result for Dream Sociometry is that relationship and interaction is primary, and these are determined by subtle, inferred connective intentionalities that point out a type of relationship, but then leave it to specific dream elements and waking images and processes in both realms to enact. Such an approach doesn’t care who or what character is represented in waking life or dreaming, or even what they are doing; what matters are the underlying intentions that are depicted by arbitrary relationships and actions. Depicted elements are arbitrary in that other relationships, characters, and actions could make the same point just as well. Dream Sociometry can be viewed as a highly prepositional approach in that its Dream Sociograms emphasize the depiction of relationships and the intentionalities that they personify. For example, are characters, actions, and feelings in opposition or agreement? Is the intention of the group united in the embodiment of growth, or do intrasocial dynamics depict antithetical relationships?

Prepositional windows on reality therefore force a non-dualistic, relational perception of experience, moving non-dualism from the realm of the mystical and transpersonal into the domain of mundane, everyday experience. This breaks down the classical distinction between “sacred” and “profane,” “meaningful” and “meaningless” “day residue” imagery.

While Nancy and the other prepositionalist philosophers make a case for relational non-dualism on a cognitive level, Dream Sociometry takes a phenomenalistic and experiential, multi-perspectival approach that takes into account not only approaches that are biased toward perspectives, such as pronounal ones, but which attempt to honor and include the contributions of each of these various grammatically based approaches to understanding reality. We are invited to think of all four quadrants at once instead of dividing reality into individual and collective ontologies that occupy interior or exterior spaces in possessive or non-possessive ways.[xxiv]

As I write this in the fall of 2017, almost 40 years after developing Dream Sociometry, in the spectacular lake-filled countryside of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, as the fall equinox once again approaches, I observe a rising desire to take the vast cognitive multi-perspectival map of integral and ground it experientially in ways that affirm life in the world, in order to address the underlying issues of selfishness, greed, inequality, and discrimination that continue to largely rule both individuals and humanity as a whole. Both metanoia, or transformation, as the changing of suffering into transcendence, and transmutation are not only possible, but increasingly recognized to be essential, if we are to address the multiple causes of the equally multiple catastrophes that humanity has visited upon itself and the planet. A hymn familiar in New Age circles famously begins, “Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me.” The intention is to affirm personal responsibility for recognizing and ameliorating the interior, or microcosmic, etiological factors that are projected outward onto the other in forms of life problems, interpersonal conflicts, economic exploitation, discrimination, and the deconstruction of living systems. However, personal responsibility can be taken too far; reality creates us as much as we create it. The macrocosm, in the form of issues of public policy, terraforming, governance, public health, and many other issues, is equally important and demand equal emphasis. Dream Sociometry, as a collective approach to owning the macrocosm by expanding our self-definition to encompass it, embraces an integral methodological pluralism not simply as a cognitive mapping, but as a personally enacted commitment to humanity and life itself.

Notes

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[i] An example of Dream Sociometry with 9/11 as well as examples with dreams and life issues are found at IntegralDeepListening.Com, “Examples.”

[ii] See DreamYoga.Com and IntegralDeepListening.Com.

[iii] For examples of the protocols and Dream Sociodrama see http://www.integraldeeplistening.com/questionnaires/ Many examples of single element interviews, both of dreams and life issues, are available at the blog of IntegralDeepListening.Com.

[iv] Wilber, K., Patten, T., Leonard, A., & Morelli, M. (2008). Integral Life Practice: A 21st-Century Blueprint for Physical Health, Emotional Balance, Mental Clarity and Spiritual Awakening.

[v] An explanation of how Dream Sociometry and more broadly, IDL deconstruct these dualities is in Dillard, J. Healing Integral, Pt 2: Transformations for the Future, pp. 27–36.

[vi] Thompson, Evan. (2015b). “Context matters: Steps to an embodied cognitive science of mindfulness.” UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain research summit “Perspectives on Mindfulness: the Complex Role of Scientific Research.”

[vii] Alderman, B., Integral in-Dwelling, p. 9.

[viii] For example, see Lex Neale’s AQAL Cube.

[ix] Dillard, J. (2015). Waking Up, Deep Listening Press, Berlin. Also: http://integraldeeplistening.com/triangulation-a-superior-approach-to-problem-solving/

[x] (Shaviro, 2010)

[xi] Alderman, B. Sophia Speaks: An Integral Grammar of Philosophy. Alderman_ITC2013.pdf

[xii] In Wilber’s integral theory, humans and entities, including dream characters, are “holons,” consisting of four major “quadrants.” These are the interior individual upper left (UL) phenomenological quadrant of largely undisclosed feelings, thoughts, and intentions; the interior collective lower left (LL) inter-subjective quadrant of values, interpretations, world views and culture; the exterior individual upper right (UR) behavioral quadrant of observable and measurable structures and processes; and the exterior collective lower right (LR) inter-objective quadrant of interaction, systems, and society..

[xiii] “I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?” Zhuangzi.

[xiv] See Dillard, J. (2017). Healing Integral. Berlin: Deep Listening Press.

[xv] (Lakoff & Johnson, 1999)

[xvi] (Robinson, 2004; Bryant, 2011a; Harman, 2011c)

[xvii] The Dream Sociogram provides a visual representation of the patterns of interdependent co-arising of intrasocial collectives, whether originating in dreams, life issues, mystical states, or drug trips. Examples are associated with the Dream Sociomatrices noted above, and an exegesis of their patterns of relationship is a topic of Understanding the Dream Sociogram.

[xviii] Emergence and autopoiesis are two of five generative processes that Roy and Trudel (2011) have identified. The other three are construction, development, and evolution.

[xix] This is not unlike the Tibetan Buddhist practice of yidam, discussed by Bezin, A., in What Is the Difference Between Visualizing Ourselves as a Buddhist Deity and a Deluded Person Imagining They Are Mickey Mouse? and answered in Dillard, J., Tibetan Yoga and Integral Deep Listening.

[xx] Alderman, B. Sophia Speaks, p. 45.

[xxi] Roy, B. Gnostic Revival.

[xxii] “Smbolized” is placed in quotes to indicate that this is an assumption and projection by waking identity that is not typically made by interviewed elements.

[xxiii] Alderman, B. Sophia Speaks, p. 70.

[xxiv] “Possessive and non-possessive” is a reference to Lex Neale’s third dimension in his AQAL Cube expansion of holons.

Added the following: Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh. NY: Basic Books.

Added to Bibliography: Robinson, H. (2004). Substance. In E.N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. (Winter 2009 Ed.). Retrieved from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2009/entries/substance/.

Added: Morton, T. (2011). Here comes everything: The promise of object-oriented ontology. Qui parle, 19(2), 163-190.

Bonnitta Roy’s “Awakened Perception” and Integral Deep Listening

Joseph Dillard — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 09:05:06 +0000

Joseph Dillard

Abstract

Bonnitta Roy anchors both perception and the self in the participation of mind, body, and brain in a phenomenalistic and integral redefinition of both self and experience. The result is a call for sensory clarity, as generated by extreme meditative, sport, and musical direct perception, as a prerequisite to authentic human relating. To this formulation Integral Deep Listening (IDL) adds an emphasis on a collectively-oriented, experiential and multi-perspectival phenomenology that demonstrates the necessity of the cultivation of morality and empathy as objectively-determined assessments necessary for the emergence of an authentic, balanced self.

What is a phenomenological approach?

When approached in an integral context, phenomenology is deep perceptual examination that is participatory, direct, and adequate. (Roy, 2017) “Participatory,” designates transactional, interdependent, and co-arising characteristics. Participatory perception is not an interaction between self and the other but among mutual selves and mutual others. Therefore, participatory perception is non-dual, due to its experiential mutuality. “Direct,” means “non-mediated;” therefore, simple and clear. “Adequacy” is defined by the purpose or intention of the act of perception. Therefore, an adequate perception is one that has adaptive utility.
Phenomenology, while traditionally considered a form of introspection that minimizes both assumptions and expectations, can be applied to any object of awareness, not only to interior ones. In fact, phenomenology, when rightly approached, recognizes introspection as an a priori assumption to be minimized, stripped away, or laid aside, in favor of simple and clear observation.
As a methodology of research, IDL, as a form of integral phenomenology, rests on three of the four axes of validation delineated by Roy (2017): 1) adequate participation with the topic through direct, phenomenological inquiry, 2) an individual, collective, cultural or political transformative potential, and 3) purposeful action-inquiry toward the good. (p. 7) To the good, IDL adds the true and the beautiful, the other two elements in the Socratic Triune. Each of these three counterbalance the other two, disclosing important domains of value in their own right, and each representing broader constellations of related, supportive families of values. Roy believes her four axes of validation of an integral phenomenology are best addressed through the four criteria of appeals to deepest spiritual intuitions, validation through scientific enquiry, are politically actionable, and aesthetically, generate harmony, balance, proportionality and other elements of beauty.
IDL criteria of organic enquiry as a form of transpersonal research include focus on transformative validity, that is, the thesis as an “evocative vehicle of feeling as well as thinking.” Roy, (p. 7) In IDL interviewing, we experience this in the affective elements of becoming a hedgehog, spit, or an infinite plenum of love and gratitude. Secondly, IDL reliably presents diverse and intimate views of whatever topic is under phenomenal investigation. Third, those who hear or read an interview become engaged in a parallel process of transformative interpretation.
What Roy calls the exploration of micro stages, states and the micro-genesis of experience through integral phenomenology Roy, (p. 8), IDL calls the exploration of intrasocial realities through an experiential and thoroughly phenomenological multi-perspectivalism.
Both Roy and IDL have arrived at a similar, desensionist approach to language as a result of the application of a rigorous phenomenology. Sam Harris has said,

“What the whole world most needs at this moment is a means of convincing human beings to embrace the whole of the species as their moral community. For this we need to develop an utterly nonsectarian way of talking about the full spectrum of human experience and human aspiration.”

Roy’s deeply sacred approach to integral phenomenology minimizes the use of such terms as “spiritual,” “God,” “divine,” “soul,” and language associated with energy bodies, such as “etheric,” “subtle,” or “causal.” IDL does the same, based on the lack of reference to such language by most interviewed emerging potentials as well as the stripping away of associated assumptions as an aspect of its phenomenological method.

Roy on the nature of perception

“Perception is a kind of multi-layered ecology of participation, where figure and ground, agent and environment, content and context can filter themselves in or out.” Perception, according to Roy, can be differentiated from affect, cognitive assumptions (“tacit knowing”), and “virtual” perception. “Virtual perceptions” are simulated perceptions, including inner hearing, images, taste, smell and touch, whether experienced in memory, fantasy, dream, or an altered state of consciousness. They only are delusions if they are first assumed to be real and then discovered to not be what is assumed. However, as part of a phenomenological encounter, ontological status can be suspended as well, allowing the object of perception to define itself. “…correct perception as adequate participation; and perceptual errors as a consequence of lack of adequate participation. This solves the perennial parable of the snake that is mistaken for a rope.”
“Perception, as an ecology of overlay, can be construed as a continual dialing in and out of available features “afforded (offered or provided) by the world” until it satisfies the conditions for a needed or desired action. A convenient analogy would be tuning a radio to a station that satisfies a threshold of fidelity.” Roy views “…perception as the out-pouring energy toward the object that is desired or loved; whereas affect (is) the flooding-in energy of relationship…” (p. 70)
“…perception, as direct participation is perfectly attuned to the world, because it is something that the world does, in mutual participation with us. Error, confusion, deception and bias all result from a lack of adequate participation. Fully realized, authentic participation results in the experience of enhanced, direct perception of the rich, abundant, vivid display of reality, and a keen insight into our place in this sacred world.” “According to (Gelukba Sautrantika, a Tibetan Buddhist scholastic tradition with a highly refined theory of epistemology), the possibility for non-dual knowing is given by the interpenetrating mutuality of thought, perception, and world, which leads to liberating insight.”
“Direct perception, in the purest sense, is perception absent the participation of imagination. We can also think of direct perception, as degrees of awareness of the role of the virtual and imaginary in our experience. The greater degree of awareness, the greater choice we have to intentionally add in or subtract out the components of experience that are extraneous to the objects of perception. The integration of awareness and intention, consciousness and choice, is spiritual wisdom.”
While direct perception can be cultivated through mundane and secular trainings in sports, music, and other disciplines, it is most clearly and powerfully articulated and developed by Zen and Tibetan Gelukba.
The common assumption is that it is the responsibility of the self to do the integration of perception by mind, brain, and body. Perception is participatory and represented by the various intersections of virtual mind, body, and brain by Roy’s diagrams in her appendices.

IDL as an integral form of phenomenological enquiry

Several factors make Integral Deep Listening an integral form of phenomenological enquiry, following Roy’s criteria.

A phenomenological enquiry into knowledge

First, IDL applies a multi-perspectivalism to multiple sources of knowledge. Knowledge in IDL comes from learning and following the methodology. Learning IDL provides tools for objectification from scripting, drama, cognitive distortions, and intention in the form of personal goals, expectations and preferences. Following the method builds knowledge in the forms of trust in the methodology, multi-perspectival awarenesses, and the type of experiential knowledge that comes from the application of triangulated recommendations.
This is not fundamentally a cognitive process, in the way apprehension of both dreams and waking experience is normally understood. Rather, as elements of these sources gain our attention as wake-up calls or simply arouse our curiosity, whether in the form of life issues, dream material, or imagery, thought, affective, or intentional material from meditation or other altered states of consciousness, these elements become first objects of direct identification and then interviewed using the appropriate IDL interviewing protocol.
These multi-perspectival sources of knowledge may be internal, in the form of knowledge about the self, affect, cognition and virtual perceptions and information, and “sensory information.” “Virtual information” arises as thoughts and mental images, memories, fantasies and dreams, while “sensory information,” involving proprioceptive and other forms of sensory input, life issues that address either the immediate socio-cultural sphere of interpersonal relationships, financial security, and physical and mental health, on the one hand, and the broader socio-cultural sphere, on the other. These multi-perspectival sources of knowledge raise important issues, both via methodology and interview responses, in areas of enquiry, including the natural sciences, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, the arts; as well as transpersonal wisdom. Therefore, a phenomenologically-based experiential multi-perspectivalism is applied to both cognitive realms of knowledge and immediate realms of experience that encompass not only cognition and affect, but core connectivity to both body and ecosystems.

A phenomenological enquiry into wisdom

Second, IDL is intended to access wisdom in several ways. Wisdom comes from the objectification of self via repeated disidentifications with multiple perspectives that may or may not be self-definitions; this is an assumption laid aside by phenomenological methodologies. Wisdom in IDL also is a consequence of depersonalization without fragmentation or decompensation but, on the contrary, heightened integration through the incorporation of expanded, more adequate self-definitions into a thinner, clearer, more transparent sense of self. Wisdom in IDL also arises via identification with higher octaves of core values, such as confidence, empathy, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing; and a heightened ability to balance not only such values but the contents of each of the four quadrants (feelings, thoughts, and bare consciousness, multiple perspectives and values, behavior, and interaction with both others and the environment.)
Interviewed perspectives tend to possess more wisdom than we do because their perspectives include our own and therefore possesses our degree of wisdom while adding the wisdom intrinsic to their own perspectives, thereby providing perspectives that provide some degree of wisdom to that we already possess. Wisdom as well as knowledge in IDL also comes from the application of interview recommendations. This is not only because application provides opportunities for expansion of identity in ways that are increasingly adequate, but because becoming more adequate perspectives than our own at appropriate times and in appropriate ways is wise.

Phenomenological identification with transformational perspectives

Third, there is a good case to be made that experiential access to perspectives that both include and transcend our own is transformational. Interest in transformative knowledge for IDL involves both learning about and becoming the perspectives of interviewed elements from dreams or the personifications of waking life issues, collectively referred to as “emerging potentials.” These may reflect stuck, fixated, or regressed perspectives or subtle, causal, high witnessing (turiya) or non-dual (turititya) perspectives. Knowledge of these perspectives becomes transformative to the degree that they are successfully incorporated into an expanded sense of identity, as is the intent of such practices as Tibetan Deity Yoga.
Notice that those perspectives derived from “external” or Lower Right social, interactional and interobjective “Its” as well as others, including gurus, lamas, and experts, can be invaluable in the development of this or that line of expertise, while still not including our own perspective. This is because, after all, the perspectives of others are theirs, not ours, and the claim that those perspectives includes ours, while possibly correct in some broad metaphysical sense, is, on a functional level, not only an assumption, but an extremely dangerous one. For example, when Saul fell off his horse and had a vision of Jesus on the road to Damascus, he reframed the meaning of Jesus’ life not only for himself but for all humanity. The assumption of universal validity, if fervently believed and accepted by others, becomes a toxic substitution for the impulse to find one’s own truth and path forward. IDL is also transformative in that it allows life to negentropically and autopoietically amplify its priorities in subjects, regardless of their level of development or state of consciousness.

Whole person involvement

Fourth, to the extent that the whole person can be seen as the interactive participation of mind, brain, body, and world, IDL attempts to allow life to sculpt or reorganize these into forms appropriate for the resolution of specific life issues and for the furtherance of the priorities of life itself. Whole person involvement for IDL involves personal investment in both primary and auxiliary integral life practices mediated and directed by triangulation.

Phenomenologically multi-perspectival, not psychologically geocentric

Fifth, IDL is integral in that it is experientially multi-perspectival in the sense that it is not self-sense oriented or centered. AQAL is fundamentally a cognitive multi-perspectivalism based on understanding multiple world views from a perspective of knowledge about levels, lines, states, quadrants, and styles. Because we tend to identify with our thoughts, our sense of self adheres to our level of understanding, meaning that because we understand 2nd Tier we assume we are 2nd Tier. IDL interviewing is an experiential multi-perspectivalism that is independent of one’s knowledge of integral AQAL or any other cognitive multi-perspectivalism.
While valuing and honoring both psychological geocentrism and psychological heliocentrism, IDL is a practice that de-centers identity from any one self or any particular cluster of self-roles. Nor does it attempt to access a unified, transcendent sense of self in the sense of either Jung or Vedanta. Instead, application of IDL interviewing reveals a self that is increasingly transparent and clear, without any particular locus of ownership. Instead, this orienting and adaptational core shifts from task and perspective without adopting some stereotyped role that is a subset of some broader definition of self.

Integrative of a spectrum of modes of knowing

Sixth, IDL attempts to integrate a spectrum of modes of knowing associated with the four quadrants of holons: sensory impressions, words and thoughts, images, feelings, dreaming and shamanistic or other states, images, whether from normal creativity, thinking, problem-solving, and higher order knowings that are subject to some operational form of objective verification, identification during interviewing and later, in specific waking contexts or in meditation, sensorimotor modes, and in direct means, that is, by becoming the object of knowing, as in IDL element identification.
One becomes the object of knowing through direct means by making objects within any of these domains subjects for identification in the interviewing process and later, in various forms of application. IDL also attempts to recognize and honor these holonic aspects of any specific interviewed element. We do so when we disidentify with our self-sense in order to respect, learn from, and transmute by taking the perspective of the experienced other. This can be a simple presence or an interview as elaborate and specific as those found in the IDL interviewing protocols. Such interviewing can be extended into dreams, both normal or lucid, or other states of consciousness, including meditation. The integration of a spectrum of modes of knowing for IDL involves the integration of sensory impressions, whether from waking, dream or other states of consciousness, words and thoughts in waking,

The importance of experiential multi-perspectivalism within a phenomenalistic context

Much traditional identification, such as becoming one with an object that is the focus of a meditation, like a flame or bodhisattva, or with an interior virtual flame or bodhisattva, or with the body-mind-brain constituents of the flame or bodhisattva, bypasses multi-perspectivalism in preference of unification. The result is a mergence of self and the object of identification without ever surrendering one’s sense of self and authentically taking up the perspective of the flame or bodhisattva as an equally authentic and autonomous perspective. Without this step, unification is relatively superficial, because there never has been a full realization and embodiment of the perspective of the other. This is rather like sex without empathy, without having experienced love, intimacy and oneself from the perspective of the other.
The relative superficiality and depth of transformation and transmutation that results from these different approaches is significant and important. Where transformation turns objects of fear, anger, sadness, or confusion into positives, transmutation, as defined by Wilber, is “looking directly into a negative state of Form in order to directly recognize its already present state of Emptiness of Primordial Wisdom.” The first tends to lead to psychological heliocentrism while the second to an authentic experiential multi-perspectivalism.

The line-dependence of enhanced perception

Roy differentiates “six key features of enhanced perception in extreme sports: clean intention, tuned attention, sensory acuity, enhanced proprioception, time-space dilation and self-less-ness,” and states that “it turns out that these are exactly the kinds of disruptions to the EBMB, “the embodied body-mind-brain”) that advanced meditation training (especially Zen, but including vipassana) are designed to do.” (p. 19)
“Such disruptions occur between self and body in specific auxiliary lines related to athletic training. We can suspect that the creation of such disruptions will take us to similar states associated with advanced meditation training at the interface between self and brain and self and virtual or imaginative realms.”
A basic problem arises. These states of selfless, exceptional harmony appear to be line-dependent rather than attributes of overall development. While they are authentic, generalized physiological states, functions, and adaptions, they appear to only express within this or that consciously focused context. For example, when a musician gets into a state of “flow” he or she can experience both spatial and temporal dilation and exceptional interpersonal connectivity among members of the ensemble. However, this appears to have no correlation with drug use or success in relationships. Why not? In another example, Joe Montana, the famous quarterback, reported that the entire time he played American football “unconsciously,” implying a selfless state of flow, yet there is no indication that this state extended into other lines, such as moral, empathetic or some sub-lines of cognitive development, such as world view. Why not?
This ties in with our knowledge that Zen monks could actively go to war for imperial Japan and Dzogchen Tibetan monks who could meditate in selfless flow and sensory clarity without experiencing any moral ambiguity about living in and supporting a feudal serfdom. It would appear then, that while these important and fundamental neurological and cognitive potentials and competencies have the potential to be generalized, they are generally limited in their expression to specific lines of conscious choice or preference. This is quite important, because most people think they are this or that developmental line. For example, most people identify with their emotions, which together comprise not only several sub-lines but a whole stage (mid-prepersonal) of development of the self.
In addition, most people identify with their thoughts; we typically think we are what we think; our world view, for example, defines who we are. If we learn AQAL and adopt cognitive multi-perspectivalism, we tend to assume we are developed to vision-logic, if not beyond, simply because we identify with the level of development of our cognitive line. If we develop status, we can easily define ourselves by the praise other people shower upon us; if we become wealthy, we can easily assume that we are powerful. Many athletes so focus on proprioceptive development that attention, awareness, and even identity are entrained to the physical. Therefore, if they have an accident and are no longer able to perform, they can lose purpose and meaning for living and with it, their sense of self. Obviously, there is great truth in the adage, “We become what we do.”
While meditation experientially teaches us that we are not what we think, feel, and do, identity itself still tends to be invested in this or that developmental line, generally the cognitive, several lines of ego (not self) development, and one or more highly developed auxiliary line. Even the amazing objectivity regarding identity that is developed by meditation, including the ability to stand back and watch ourselves go by, to disidentify with our thoughts, feelings, and actions, is itself a developmental line of witnessing or objectivity. When we identify with that, we may fail to generalize these extraordinary competencies to some underlying, ground, authentic self and not recognize it at all. Our tendency is to not only identify with our strengths but with those states which are blissful and that we most desire.
As a result, there is the distinct possibility of being an exceptional meditator, complete with all the sensory acuities: clean intention, tuned attention, sensory acuity, enhanced proprioception, time-space dilation and self-less-ness, while remaining a very imbalanced person who does not exercise, has a lousy diet, poor communication skills, or someone who does not give much back to society and the world.

The importance of generalizing enhanced perception to the self

Therefore, the key question to ask regarding a practice involving any of these three interfaces with self, (body, mind, brain) is, “What determines whether this expansion remains line specific, that is, activated only within the context of sports, music, or the expression of a particular line, or is generalized to overall self development?” This is important, because we can easily assume that such capabilities inure to the self, when upon examination, as noted above, we find that individuals with these very high aptitudes, including mystics who have developed clear awareness and objective witnessing to a refined degree, may not be well-rounded individuals at all. Therefore, a central interest of IDL is the promotion of a phenomenology that primarily brings these characteristics of advanced meditation training to the self rather than merely to this or that developmental line.
The question then becomes, “how do we cultivate a state of selfless flow that is foundational to development rather than associated with this or that line?” To do so we first have to differentiate a foundational sense of self from the self that is identified with lines of ego development or various other auxiliary lines. For example, for you or me to identify as a musician, mystic, business person, lawyer, as having a 2nd Tier world view, as an ethical or an empathetic person, or as high in this or that line of ego development, is different from cultivating a self that reflects a balance of cognition, morality, and empathy. If the self is that which climbs the ladder of development, then it must include whatever is the most lagging or fixated core line.

What is the core self?

Roy notes a number of characteristics of the self: “Normally, the perspective of the self includes 1) feeling of ownership of the body, 2) sense of agency over its actions, 3) being anchored to or located in the body and 4) referencing the world to the body and 5) referencing affects (emotional tones) to the self.”
We can also turn to AQAL for help in identifying what that self might be and what it might not be. Although Wilber does not seem to be insistent on this, or even consistent in making this assertion, it does appear that for AQAL the self, as distinguished from this or that other line, is dependent for its development on the evolution and balancing of at least four basic lines: the cognitive, which leads, the moral and relationship lines, and the self line itself, which therefore must follow, if it is dependent on the other three for its development.
It appears that Wilber believes morality is a core line because it seems unfathomable to posit a transpersonal self that has not first passed social criteria of trustworthiness, just as you cannot have trans-rational mystical experience without first developing and including reason. Otherwise, you merely generate the pre-trans fallacy, in which you are unable to differentiate prepersonal mystical openings from transpersonal mystical stages. Something similar operates on the moral line: You can’t have transpersonal morality that does not include “personal” morality, or morality dictated by social standards. If you look at the autobiographies of a considerable number of gurus and mystics, they provide examples of the moral version of the pre-trans fallacy, in that they think that they have transcended social moral standards when they have never first demonstrated respect for them or the ability to live in compliance with them.
The moral line is only determined by interior intention and judgment in its early developmental stages; as it evolves, it is increasingly accountable to others by the objective criteria of trustworthiness. You want to know, “Can I trust you?” “Will you lie to me? When? About what?” “Will I abuse you? If so, how? When?” You don’t care what my level of moral judgment is. You don’t care if my intention is not to harm you; your interest is whether I will harm you, and if so, when and how. Becoming accountable to objective standards of morality is a huge step and not to be assumed, as many integralists appear to do. It is obvious that many politicians, CEOs, lawyers, and spiritual gurus believe they are moral because they judge their morality by their intentions or peer appraisals, not by the court of the global commons, much less by triangulation.
The other line that Wilber appears to consider to be core is the relationship line, or that which deals with the quality of interaction that we have with others. Who gets to judge the quality of our interactions with others, ourselves, others, or both? Clearly, such judgments are interactional processes involving both, however higher order empathy is not determined by our intent but by the assessment of the global commons and beyond that, by triangulation. Like the moral line, the quality of relationship is objectively determined by others using criteria of trustworthiness, but more fundamentally, by respect and empathy. These two are more fundamental, because someone can act morally and still be respected, as a judge who makes what he or she, and even society as a whole, believes is a moral judgment but who does not demonstrate any empathy and therefore garners no respect. Therefore, of the multiple sub-lines that constitute the relationship line, the critical, irreducible line appears to be empathy: the degree to which others judge us as respecting, appreciating, and understanding their position. This does not require agreement, but only that the other assesses that they are respected, appreciated, and understood. Therefore, the formulation that we will use here is that at minimum, authentic self development is dependent on the development of the cognitive, moral, and empathetic lines. This means that while auxiliary lines can and do demonstrate remarkable selflessness and similarities to meditative witnessing at their higher reaches, there is no necessity that those benefits inure to the self line itself.
Like the moral line, it is only at early stages of the development of the empathetic line that we believe empathy is determined by our intention to take the perspective of others. As empathy develops, we realize that it is determined by the objective feedback of others. Do they assess us as authentically taking their perspective or not? Similar to morality, failure to take this step allows a version of the pre-trans fallacy regarding empathy to manifest. We believe we are being empathetic at a high level, in this case a personal-social level, when in fact we are functioning at a prepersonal level of empathy because we do not make ourselves accountable to others in our degree of empathy. We might say that like our morality, it may be authentic, but it is shallow. It lacks the depth that comes from submitting our own assessments of our intention and judgment to the court of the global commons.

Lagging and fixated core lines lead to an under-developed authentic self

If the self line is indeed dependent upon the development of the core lines of cognition, morality and empathy, then we have to tend to the most lagging and fixated of these lines, to give them priority, if we want to develop an authentic sense of self. If instead, we only focus on the development of one, like the cognitive, and assume that because we are our thoughts that our moral and empathetic lines naturally will evolve to keep up with our cognitive line, they are instead likely to remain lagging and fixated.
This is highly likely, because human nature is to want to succeed and not to fail. To succeed we develop our strong lines, our assets, our strengths, because others respect, praise, pay us and otherwise reinforce us when we do so, and because it is both easier and more fun to develop our strengths, our natural aptitudes, than it is to focus on areas where we know we are weak or feel we are a failure. Typically, the result is that we develop a sense of self that is identified with the level of development of our cognitive line in conjunction with whatever auxiliary lines we have developed, such as marked proficiencies, like sports, music, math, or art, as well as various ego lines (Loevinger’s ego development, ). In fact, we can so build our identity around a highly successful auxiliary line, as professional athletes, performers, artists, businessmen, and politicians do, that even our cognitive line is lagging. One can be wealthy, famous, charismatic, and powerful and be non-empathetic, immoral, and pre-rational. That is, our reasoning is determined by our emotions. One can have mystical experiences or be a proficient meditator, and have the morality of a rabbit and zero empathy. In such cases, what does it mean to talk about “self development?” If we equate self development with sensory acuity in such individuals, what sort of self are we glorifying and building?

The line dependence of both perception and identity

IDL argues that perceiving the world as it really is, is line dependent. If you develop proprioceptive abilities, then you experience the world as it really is proprioceptively; if you develop objectification abilities, you experience the world as it really is by interior, cognitive and consciousness measurements of objectivity. These can and do differ from socio-cultural contexts in which we are immersed, as we have seen with the examples of Zen Monks and Tibetan Dzogchen masters.
The “conscious I” cannot function on a personal level, much less a transpersonal one, without objective feedback from the environment. This is not merely the sensory environment, but the social environment – how others evaluate our trustworthiness and ability to demonstrate respect. All four quadrants require interdependent balancing for tetra-mesh, or development of the self to the next highest level. Mystics tend to take social criteria for granted, because their emphasis is on interior and personal criteria – their state of consciousness and their own ability to sharpen their sensory acuity in different specific desired circumstances. Mystical experiences themselves trivialize socio-cultural contexts.
The mystical mind participates in the idea of enlightenment, a relationship between the self and the virtual, rather than the perception of who and what they are in the context of life itself. The talented individual, whether in sports, musicianship, the visual arts, or mathematics, participates in the idea of a gifted, capable self rather than the perception of a grounding in an authentic self. The knowledgeable individual who understands cognitive multi-perspectivalism participates in the idea of a self developed to 2nd Tier rather than the perception of a self balanced in its moral and empathetic, as well as its cognitive development.
What we select into or out of participation with our idea of the self is largely a product of what is culturally and personally valued and therefore reinforced or encouraged. That means that some combination of a partial, and therefore inaccurate, cultural context, and a partial, and therefore inaccurate, personal context, determine our idea of the self. This “idea” therefore may have little relationship to self from the multi-perspectival perspectives taken by life itself regarding the level of development of the self.
Our mind therefore participates in a subjective, delusional, dreamlike “idea” of the self rather than veridical perception, which arises with increasing approximation to the perspective that life itself takes in its perception of the self. Not much of reality, that is, the perspective of life itself toward the self, gets through our filtering, because it has no survival value, nor is it reinforced. Life itself may care nothing about adaptation, which is about survival, since life itself is not born and does not die since it is not some thing. Survival is a structure enabling evolution, but is not negentropy, autopoiesis, and evolution itself. Survival is set up to filter out the perspective of life because life itself cannot live or die and cares nothing about adaptation, successful or otherwise. Manifesting forms care about such things; to continue to manifest in form and as forms, we must care about such things. However, any definition of life that contains both the manifest and unmanifest honors a context that includes and transcends both. Forms, like snowflakes, live and die, but those events do not affect life itself whatsoever. It is in this sense that the perspective of life takes a radically different approach to the self than living, breathing forms require in order maintain existence. “In itself, consciousness has very little to do with information. Consciousness involves information that is not present; information that has disappeared along the way.” (Norretranders, 1991 pg. 125)
“What is excluded from consciousness is as important, if not more important, than what enters it. The brain is assaulted by at least ten million bits of information from the eye every second, the skin is sending a million bits a second, the ear one hundred thousand, our smell sensors a further one hundred thousand bits a second, our taste buds perhaps a thousand bits a second. … All in all, over eleven million bits a second from the world to our sensory mechanisms. We consciously perceive about forty bits a second– and that figure is probably exaggerated.” (Tor Norretranders (1991). p. 126)3 This is one reason we are not all “psychic.” I have known, and perhaps you have too, psychics who were unable to screen out impressions about the lives, feelings and futures of others as we normally do. These people can be miserable, inundated and overwhelmed by information, much of what is not understood, helpful, or rational, because the contexts which give it patterning and meaning is missing. Those who seek broader, non-filtered perception without first creating clear mechanisms for the selection of affective/sensory input are asking for trouble. The lack of information is in fact an asset in the context of whatever is the focus of attention, generally the development of one or another auxiliary line.

Achieving non-filtered perception as an attribute of the authentic self

Because it is exactly through the high development of such lines that the sacred is most likely to manifest, their development is viewed as desirable. But how do we develop non-filtered perception as an attribute of the self? First, we need to develop our lagging, fixated core lines. This means that we need to submit our morality to the judgment of the global commons, not just our intentions or the assessment of our peers. Similarly, we need to submit our empathy to the same standard of evaluation. Secondly, we need to listen to the assessment of our morality and empathy by interviewed emerging potentials, primarily because such perspectives are more likely to disclose the priorities of life itself, rather than contemporary socio-cultural norms. Comparing the resulting perspectives with those of others and common sense is triangulation. Third, we can develop our morality by treating a wide variety of others in the three realms of brain, mind, and body, as we would want to be treated by cultivating deep listening in an integral way to all three. We do so when we interview either actual elements from these realms or their personifications, and follow those recommendations that pass the test of triangulation. Fourth, interviewing forces identification which in turn impels the evolution of empathy, making sure that it does not remain a lagging line. Fifth, we need a regular meditative practice that authentically discloses the impermanence of particular elements of experience.
Our “emancipated perception from the socially performing, intersubjectively focused ‘I’” is not necessarily a return to an authentic self, but a return to an authentic relationship to the context of the here and now. The distinction is important. A skunk or a criminal can have an authentic relationship with nature. We can even say that their sense of self is authentic, in that it may be authentically balanced in the core lines, at early or mid-prepersonal. Perception that is emancipated from the socially-performing, intersubjectively focused “I” can be expedited by identification with intrasocially-performing, intrasubjectively focused “I’s.” Intrasocial perspectives are not only interior collectives, but exterior collectives that are virtual in that they are perceptual abstractions from the simplicity of what is. Interviewing both interobjective and intersubjective “I’s” turns them first into intrasocial and intrasubjective “We’s,” and then into multiple authentic “I’s.” The result is that we not only dissociate from any one central locus of identity, but get behind the apparent ontological reality of personifications of intentions, opening up spaceless, timeless, and non-dual ways of perceiving the secular, moment to moment, with “ordinary mind.”

Reversing the construction of the self

Regarding the creation of both self and “reality, Roy states, “Some of this sculpting and carving would be done in primordial, pre-intentional stages, while some would be guided by intentional states and attentional needs, as well as eidetic phases involving memory and mental image-making while further cuts would be made through meaning-making processes of the social self. The whole gestalt would eventually, in imaginative and synthetic parts of the mind, be polished by symbolic, narrative, linguistic and conceptual elaborations of many kinds.” (p. 45)
“For Brown (2002), the affect-laden intentional states preconstitute the subjective ground of experience. His theory of microgenesis places the “image” stage as a prior and requisite stage for the “body” to appear, and as a result exists for the subject as an object among other objects in the world.” When we dream, as when we are awake, we “are aware of the image, the product of the process, but not of the imaging itself.” (Heron, 1992. p. 145)
Applying this idea to dreaming, dream perception is not about overlaying direct perception with the imaginative aspect of experience (“eidetic elements”), but mistaking the preconstructed affect-laden intentional states for reality itself. When we take the perspective of one of these intentional states itself, we can begin to perceive the “intention of the intention,” or the emptiness behind and within the preconstituted affect-laden intentional state.
We back up or reverse the gates of microgenesis, moving from dream action (the experience of the perspective in its role in the dream) to conception (the interpretation of the perspective of its role in the dream) to imagery (the awareness that the role itself is ad hoc and without bhava, or “own-being,” or any determinate ontological status), to emotion (the objectification of affective aspects of the perspective) to intention (the recognition that the intentions that are personified by the perspective are themselves empty.)
IDL interviewing is a complementary adjunct to meditation in accomplishing the reversal of this creative process. It tackles the entanglement of identity with virtual, eidetic reality. We can think of the dream image, say a cabbage, or the pit that personifies our depression that we interview, as the “whole gestalt would eventually, in imaginative and synthetic parts of the mind, be polished by symbolic, narrative, linguistic and conceptual elaborations of many kinds.” The mental images, concepts, and eidetic phases offered up by the interviewed element is a step backward in the sculpting process. Both their remarks and our identification with their perspective or world view itself reveal its intentional states and attentional needs that gave rise to the image. Beneath that, if we pay attention, we can easily experience in the primordial, pre-intentional nature of the perspective, non-dual, deathless, impermanent specifics within a very concrete, autonomous, and highly relevant eidetic construct. These openings are not only duplicatable; their infinite variety quickly teaches us that unmanifest, impermanent, and highly authentic life is innate within every moment and occasion.
IDL interviewing demonstrates the truth of Roy’s statement that “participation is never replication. It always creates emergent novelty.” (p. 67) When we participate in the perspective of this or that emerging potential, the emergent novelty of what is created is typically unexpected in the authenticity of its “fit” in all four quadrants of our current experience.

Complementary aspects of Roy’s phenomenology of perception and IDL

Roy’s integral phenomenology “provides a foundation for an embodied approach to both introspection as an inquiry into the nature of thinking, and metaphysics as an inquiry into the architecture of thought.” IDL is not particularly interested in or designed to investigate either the nature of thinking or metaphysics. As an integral life practice designed to direct other integral life practices, IDL is not primarily interested in the architecture of thought. Instead, IDL is an integral phenomenology that focuses on actionable identifications. It asks, “What, if anything, are the consequences when I 1) become some interviewed element, both during an interview and afterward, in specific, recommended contexts, and 2) follow the triangulated recommendations of these emerging potentials?”
Roy’s integral phenomenology also “combines a direct examination of lived experience in contemplation and vipassana meditation, with contemporary neuro-cognitive science and neuro-affective science.” While IDL respects neuro-cognitive and affective sciences as validating contexts, it is not particularly integral in that regard. It does not have interest in combining its practice, as a dream yoga and integral life practice, with the blessings provided by seeming correlations with high science. Rather, its proof claims are essentially those of transpersonal empirical yogas: follow the instructions and validate them by submitting your results to peers in the method. Beyond this, to keep from getting lost in the echo chamber of collective dogmatic groupthink, results need to be validated by their efficacy in the eyes of the global commons as well as scientific elites. Do these methods make sense to the children of third world farmers? Can they make a transformational difference in their lives? Can they be implemented by adolescents, the lonely, alienated, depressed or anxious in ways that improve their lives?
For Roy, “the ultimate goal of integral phenomenology is for individuals to shift from the passive modes of experience, to their active, enlightened modes. When the modes of experience remain passive, highly conditioned and habituated, the person expresses socially conventional, self-referential, neurotic forms of behavior, that are primarily unconsciously and reactively driven. Enlightened modes of experience provide the basis for enlightened action in the world, which is post-conventional, other-referential, compassionate, and open to more degrees of freedom, in awareness, intention and choice. Activating the modes of experience means shifting affect to intuition, perception to insight, tacit knowing to open participation, and inner perceptions to creative imagination.” (p. 8)
IDL uses experiential multi-perspectivalism as one tool in a toolbox. The issues to be “fixed” by these tools, and which Roy refers to as “passive modes of experience,” it calls “sleeping,” “dreaming,” and “sleepwalking.” For IDL, “activating the modes of experience” means shifting to “waking up,” which is plainspeak for enlightenment. IDL prefers “waking up,” because while enlightenment implies a specific destination and perfection itself, “waking up” implies ongoing holonic evolution and involution, that is, a continuous, non-ending developmental process. The “dreaming,” or “passive modes of experience” addressed by IDL are scripting, drama, cognitive distortions, and self-directed goal setting. The “waking up,” or “activated” modes of experience addressed by IDL are goal setting directed by triangulation, IDL interviewing, application of recommendations that meet the test of triangulation, and meditation.
Roy describes enlightened action in the world as “post-conventional, other-referential, compassionate, and open to more degrees of freedom, in awareness, intention and choice.” IDL describes action that is reflective of waking up as invested, that is, embodied, grounded, or participatory in identification in all four quadrants; empathetic, that is, validated by others as reflective of deep listening in a respectful and clear way, and objectifying, that is, that practices identification with experiential multi-perspectivalism as a yoga of witnessing and waking up.
IDL is not interested in shifting affect to intuition but in making both authentic. Similarly, it does not recognize a necessary dualism between perception and insight but instead focuses on developing embodied wisdom through experiential multi-perspectivalism. IDL views tacit knowing as a necessary preliminary step to open participation, two necessary steps in a developmental progression of application, rather than as oppositional constructs. Similarly, IDL values both inner perceptions and creative imagination. For example, the perspectives of interviewed elements are their inner perceptions, intrinsically authentic and valuable. At the same time, they are intrinsically manifestations of creative imagination.
Roy refers to awakened, active perception as insight. She also describes it as “direct perception: a sustained open awareness of one’s lived experience as direct participation.” She describes direct participation as including “interactions among the multi-modal perceptual organs within the body-brain-mind of the person, as well as interactions between the person and the living world.” “If experience is an ecology of participation, then states of mind should be expected to be fluid and transitory between a spectrum of varieties of experience. In other words, because of the deep continuity of world, body, and mind, all experiential states are inclusive of world, body and mind—all the time.” (p. 84)
What this definition does is divide the objects of direct participation as interactions with micro and macro realities. IDL views this as a reflection of a perspective of the self, of psychological geocentrism. When one takes the perspectives of various interviewed emerging potentials, the result is that the clear-cut, “normal” distinction between subjective and interior and objective and exterior experience is replaced with a multi-perspectivalism in which there is no clear self that is the locus of experience. Therefore, experience is no longer reducible to either the body-brain-mind of a person, or to interactions between someone and the living world. Ontological status is indefinite, with objective/subjective realities neither affirmed nor denied.
Roy states, “Sensory clarity, I believe is the pre-requisite for authentic human relating. We have to get to square one before we can build a shared or collective understanding…” (p. 69) “…meditative practices can train the mind to decouple the imaginal or eidetic component of perception from the experience, creating a more naïve, more direct perception.” (p. 78) The sensory clarity that can be provided by meditation and which is exhibited in states of flow are extraordinarily important not only for decision-making but experiencing world views and self-definitions that far transcend our typical, socio-cultural, scripted identities. However, we can only hope that we do not “have to get to square one before we can build a shared or collective understanding.” IDL views sensory clarity as one manifestation of “square one,” essentially for the individual interior intentional-cognitive and exterior behavioral “brain” quadrants. “Square one” for the collective quadrants is equally important and involves fundamentally different perspectives and perceptions because “direct participation” in individually, or self-driven contexts, is bound to locate both etiology and expression in vastly different domains. It is not that the sort of sensory clarity Roy is describing and recommend does not embrace, enhance, or encompass the collective quadrants, only that the world, others, and ourselves look quite at variance based on our starting position.
With IDL, that starting position is consciously collective and “other,” with disidentification from any and all self-definitions and attempts at both identification and unification with multiple “Its.” A phenomenology of the collective quadrants does not assume an interior or introspective orientation, but drops that assumption, with objects of observation those that are typically perceived as “other.” These include dream images while we are dreaming and the contents of mystical experiences. A collective orientation, phenomenologically-based or not, assumes accountability to and with others that is not necessarily implied by individual quadrant orientations. This is because both perception and development have the self as the primary locus of attention, not the collective. Again, this is not to imply that individual quadrant emphasis ignores or takes a reductionistic approach to collectives, only that contexts are structured by perspectives that take the self as the organizing principle. We know this is occurring when one thinks, “But how could one do otherwise?” “And if one could, wouldn’t it lead to fragmentation, decompensation and regression?”
IDL interviewing demonstrates definitively that such concerns are artifacts of identification with an individual quadrant focus rather than experiential realities. This identification is a by-product of the formative years of our life when self-control and the creation of a sense of self were the primary work. That orientation then becomes either a habitual bias or a fear-based addiction, or both which is not automatically outgrown because one embraces cognitive multi-perspectivalism or high development on this or that line. This critique embraces the vast majority of mystical narratives, which are either psychologically geocentric or psychologically heliocentric. They do not relate the experiences from the perspectives of multiple participating “others.”
The foundational nature of relationship creates an intrinsic emphasis on accountability in the collective quadrants. Morality and empathy become fundamental criteria instead of sensory clarity or cognitive objectivity. This is the case because trustworthiness and respect, as determined by objective others, are as important fundamental criteria in the collective quadrants as sensory clarity and cognitive objectivity are in the interior quadrants. Any adequate definition of a healthy self that is balanced in its development is going to meet criteria in all four areas by emphasizing, teaching, and balancing sensory clarity, cognitive objectivity, trustworthiness, and respect. This awareness is not based on insight, as normally understood as heightened awareness by an experiencer regarding either an interior or exterior problem, experience, or relationship. However, the result is comparable: a growing awareness that “the perceptual organs and the living world are not two, but one larger ecology…” (p. 18)
In every IDL interview we can ask ourselves, “What are we participating with?” The answer may be, “With my own projections, my thoughts, feelings, preferences and interpretations.” The participation may involve “memories, fantasies, worries, cognitive and culturally conditioned biases.” Or, it may be, “I am taking the perspective of this dream goblin or cobra personification of my life fear of snakes as completely as possible.” The assumption that such perspectives are “shadow,” “self-aspects,” “parts,” or “subpersonalities” inhabiting the unconscious, subconscious, personal or collective unconscious, another dimension or realm, are all assumptions that are tabled in any authentic phenomenological methodology. IDL simply refuses to make such assumptions in order to give preference to integral deep listening. The reward is participation with authentic embodied perspectives that are both transformational and transmutational.

Conclusion

Cognitive multi-perspectivalism, which typifies the arc of integral into 2018, creates a false identification of the self with the cognitive line which far surpasses the other core lines of morality and empathy in its level of development. Therefore, because we tend to identify with our leading lines, the pervasive delusion within the integral community is that an understanding of AQAL and subsequent integral developments indicates a self that has evolved into 2nd tier. This delusion is supported by approaches to integral that bias the interior quadrants that intrinsically organize reality around a stable, central self. The result is a massive pre-trans fallacy, not regarding spiritual experience, but regarding the development of identity itself. Sensory clarity by itself has not been able to either spot or rectify this fundamental perceptual delusion; what is required are collectively oriented forms of experiential multi-perspectivalism which not only de-center the self but determine level of development not only by interior and individual criteria but by the assessments of the global commons and triangulation.
As a yoga of the collective quadrants, IDL not only needs but requires the participatory integral phenomenology of sensory clarity integrating body-mind-brain in order to bring all four quadrants into developmental balance. It is only with an accurate assessment of the level of development of the authentic self that we can hope to lift it beyond the socio-cultural scriptings that keep it fixated at mid-prepersonal.

Bibliography

Anderson, R. and Braud, W. (2015) in The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology, (Friedman & Hartelius, eds. 2015).
Brown, Jason (2008) The Inward Path: Mysticism and Creativity, Creativity and research Journal Vol. 20 # 4: Taylor and Francis Online [http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10400410802391348] (2005) Process and the Authentic Life, Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Books (2002) The Self-Embodying Mind, Barrytown, NY: Station Hill Press
Heron, John (1996) Cooperative Inquiry. London: Sage Publications
Norretranders, Tor (1991) The User Illusion New York: Viking
Roy, B. (2017). Awakened Perception: Perception as Participation.

AWAKENED PERCEPTION 1
BONNITTA ROY CS_19
Awakened Perception
Perception as Participation
Bonnitta M. Roy Masters of Arts Consciousness Studies The Graduate Institute August, 2017
AWAKENED PERCEPTION 2
Contents
Abstract …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 4 Guiding Inquiry………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 5 Methodology: Integral Phenomenology …………………………………………………………………………….. 6 Part I: Discovery …………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 8 Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 8 A brief history of perception…………………………………………………………………………………………… 12 Perfecting perception …………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15 Perception by the numbers……………………………………………………………………………………………… 25
Some definitions ……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 25 Part II: Background……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 33 The Phenomenology of the Background…………………………………………………………………………… 33
Searching for the Background …………………………………………………………………………………….. 34 Neurodynamics of the Background …………………………………………………………………………………. 45 Neural Gates……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 50 Opening the Gates of Perception …………………………………………………………………………………. 53 (Re)Directed Perception…………………………………………………………………………………………………. 58 Part III: Mind ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 63 The Perceptual Brain……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 63
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The Primacy of Participation ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 67 Sensory clarity ………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 68 From Self to World ……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 71
The Role of the Imagination …………………………………………………………………………………………… 77 States of Mind …………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 83 An Ecological Theory of Perception………………………………………………………………………………… 85 Affordances………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 86 Enhanced Perception………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 95 Part IV: Awakened Perception………………………………………………………………………………………. 100 A Buddhist Examination………………………………………………………………………………………………. 100 Part V: Concluding Remarks ………………………………………………………………………………………… 106 References………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 109
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Abstract
Perception has been called into questions by eastern traditions and western scholars for millennia. In a few “secret” places in Zen, Chan and r-Dzogchen Buddhism, the ultimate valid truth is directly perceived. I propose a modern methodology called integral phenomenology that integrates deep phenomenal examination with contemporary research (both east and west) on perception, to reclaim the notion of direct perception as adequate participation. In doing so, I develop an ecological model of perception, which includes “hybrid zones” where different perceptual states overlay each other, leading to non-ordinary experience, state transitions, and eventually, self-liberating insight and non-dual wisdom. This modern methodology must pass the critical examination of the highest Buddhist authority on direct perception—the Gelukba Sautrantika school. This is a critical challenge, and yet, if successful, shares the Sautrantika’s schools optimism that liberating wisdom can be gained by starting with everyday ordinary experience—a hallmark of integral phenomenological method.
Keywords: Direct perception, participation, kensho
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Guiding Inquiry
The hypothesis beneath this work is that a modern minimalist approach to awakening, can accelerate conscious transformation. In this approach, “awakening” is defined as awakening to the nature of experience. This paper focuses only on one of the four1 key aspects of experience: perception.
My guiding question in this paper:
Can a model of perception based on participation pass the critical examination of the Buddhist traditions, complement neurophysiological research, and support meaning-making around first- person accounts of ordinary and non-ordinary perceptual experiences?
My guiding purpose in this work:
To develop modern approaches and heuristics to accelerate transformations of consciousness toward re-enchantment with the world, and to create conditions for people to flourish and the planet to thrive.

1 The other three are: affect, tacit knowing, and virtual perceptions(inner hearing, inner images, inner taste, inner smell, inner touch, and other simulations of perception)
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Methodology: Integral Phenomenology
The Wiley Blackwell Handbook of Transpersonal Psychology (Friedman & Hartelius, eds. 2015) includes a section on future directions for transpersonal research. In it, Rosemarie Anderson and William Braud (2015) highlight three approaches that are particularly suitable for transpersonal research: intuitive inquiry, integral inquiry, and organic inquiry. My approach, which I term integral phenomenology borrows from all three approaches in the following ways.
1. From
reflecting on extant topical texts and developing the preliminary interpretive  lenses
transforming and refining interpretive lenses
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intuitive inquiry
2. From
a. the goal of acquiring both knowledge and wisdom
b. interest in transformative knowledge
c. whole person involvement
d. integrating a spectrum of modes of knowing: sensory impressions, words and  thoughts, images, feelings, intuitions, realizations in altered states of consciousness, sensorimotor modes, and direct means (becoming the object of knowing)
e. integrating sources of inspiration, including the natural sciences, psychology, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature, the arts; as well as spiritual wisdom and folk traditions; and personal and anecdotal evidence.
integral inquiry
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3. From organic inquiry a. focused on transformative validity, i.e., the thesis as
i. ii. iii.
an “evocative vehicle of feeling as well as thinking presenting a diverse and intimate view of the topic in order to engage the individual reader in a parallel process of transformative interpretation
In addition to the above, integral phenomenology relies on the research data from the field of neurophenomenology as a source of valid interpretation of direct, phenomenological inquiry. (Laughlin and Rock, 2015). As a methodology of research, integral phenomenology rests on four axes of validation: 1) adequate participation with the topic through direct, phenomenological inquiry, 2) corresponding or confirming evidence from the neurosciences, including neurophenomenological evidence, 3) an individual, collective, cultural or political transformative potential, and 4) purposeful action-inquiry toward the good. A rubric for addressing these four criteria is what I call the 4-A’s (Forays):
1. Appeals to our deepest spiritual intuition
2. Available to scientific inquiry
3. Politically Actionable
4. Aesth-ethically beautiful
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Introduction
Part I: Discovery
This paper is part of a larger project on what I call integral phenomenology. Integral phenomenology is a methodology for people to become aware of the nature of experience. This approach examines the micro-states, micro-stages, and micro-genesis of experience along four foci of inquiry: affect, perception, tacit knowing, and inner perceptions. It provides a foundation for an embodied approach to both introspection as an inquiry into the nature of thinking, and metaphysics as an inquiry into the architecture of thought. Integral phenomenology combines a direct examination of lived experience in contemplation and vipassana meditation, with contemporary neuro-cognitive science and neuro-affective science. Its larger, “big picture” interpretive framework includes the three narrative sciences of development, anthropology and evolution. The ultimate goal of integral phenomenology is for individuals to shift from the passive modes of experience, to their active, enlightened modes. When the modes of experience remain passive, highly conditioned and habituated, the person expresses socially conventional, self-referential, neurotic forms of behavior, that are primarily unconsciously and reactively driven. Enlightened modes of experience provide the basis for enlightened action in the world, which is post-conventional, other-referential, compassionate, and open to more degrees of freedom, in awareness, intention and choice. Activating the modes of experience means shifting affect to intuition, perception to insight, tacit knowing to open participation, and inner perceptions to creative imagination.
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First, by disentangling the modes from the knot of phenomena and stimuli that constitute conventional experience, we can begin to examine their underlying dynamic patterns and processes. This can be done by integrating phenomenological methods of inquiry, with scientific, philosophic, and narrative works associated with them. By going back and forth, from reading about a specific experiential mode to direct inquiry of that specific mode, through phenomenal examination of ordinary experience, integral phenomenology builds greater and deeper understanding, and accelerates personal transformation.
The focus of this paper is on perception– its micro-state, micro-stages, and micro-genesis. I will explore how perception can shift from its conventional, passive role to a more awakened, active role called insight. I will explore the notion of direct perception as a sustained open awareness of one’s lived experience as direct participation. This direct participation includes interactions among the multi-modal perceptual organs within the body-brain-mind of the person, as well as interactions between the person and the living world. In enlightened states of perception, we have the insight that the perceptual organs and the living world are not two, but one larger ecology, in which myriad phenomena emerge through dynamic participation, eventually giving rise to innumerable subject-object definitions at the terminal end-states of experience.
Perception has been called into question by scholars and philosophers and scientists, spiritual traditions and artists for more than 2500 years. This had led to paradoxical conclusions. On the one hand, everything we can know about the world relies on some mode of perception. And yet, we are all familiar with many ways in which perception succumbs to error and illusion. We
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delight in perceptual illusions of all sorts, and are dumbfounded by experiments like the Gorilla, who saunters across the basketball court, hidden in plain sight. Science has the tools to prove perception wrong, but every one of its tools ultimately relies on some mode of perception to get to that proof. Whether we use the scientific method to correct and revise, or question and replace ordinary sensory information, we must concede the fact that in the process we are also simultaneously confirming our confidence in our own ordinary senses, since all empirical science ultimately rests on ordinary sensory observation—whether that is a blip on a computer screen, sounds from a recorder, or colors on a photographic plate.
Time and again we are reminded of the failures of the eyes to directly see and the ears to directly hear what is actually happening in the real world. And yet, athletes are capable of extraordinary feats that would be impossible if the senses were not operating exactly in tune with reality. We are told that perception biases the self, and yet, it is in certain states of flow, or when under extreme conditions and outrageous challenges, when the sense of self is absent, that perception performs in optimal ways.
Spiritual adepts of the east tell us that all we can perceive is but an illusion or a dream, but their behavior tell us otherwise, since they all performed as if the perceived attributes of experience were real. In the western philosophical tradition, we see more of the same. David Hume, for example, declared that there was no reason to believe the perception that it was preferable to walk out a building on the first floor rather than from the third. And yet, he never walked out of the third floor window. Kant said that perception had to be overcome by the use of cognitive faculties that transcended the phenomena, and the postmodernists have argued that all perception
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is linguistically and culturally mediated. And yet Johnson and Lakoff (Johnson 19787; Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Lakoff and Nunez 2001) have argued that all cognitive and linguistic faculties, including logic and mathematics, ultimate derive their meaning and their architectures from embodied modes of perception.
In this paper I hope to resolve these paradoxes through the notion of perception as different configurations of participation. In each experience we can ask ourselves “What are we participating with?” In some cases, the participation will involve memories, fantasies, worries, cognitive and culturally conditioned biases. In some cases, the participation may be pared down to raw data streams interacting with neural cells, as for example, light exciting retinal cells. In between there is a huge spectrum of variation, depending upon what levels of experience are “in play” and which are absent, determined by what aspects of perception are “online” and which are “offline.”
Here the notions of hyper-trophy or amplification and hypo-trophy or attenuation of perceptual modes become important concepts. They are associated with the neuroscience of perception which demonstrates that perceptual experience is determined by complex global dynamics that emerge from excitatory and inhibitory feedback processes in the brain. This dual relationship, between excitation and inhibition explains the complex causal relationship between perceptual experience and non-ordinary states in meditation practices and scientific exercises designed to elicit them. For example, exciting some areas of the brain inhibits the activity in other regions, but these other regions may themselves have inhibitory effects on different areas, which has a net effect of exciting them.
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We shall also see that each perceptual organ (defined as the sensory organ and its associated body-brain networks) interact in multiple complex ways among themselves to produce variations of perceptual experience. Furthermore, every perceptual experience is associated with a discrete “subject” or “sense-of-self” that is partially determined by what aspects of perception are amplified, attenuated, or absent. These three correlations: 1) among the aspects of perception, 2) exciting and inhibiting feedback loops, and 3) the sense-of-self that occurs, can be shown to delineate as different states of consciousness that have been described by spiritual traditions, and identified by neuroscience as discrete brain states. This will enable us to derive a definition of direct perception, or more accurately, of sensory clarity. I will argue that sensory clarity is awakened perception, and that it is a key credential to any claim of enlightened awareness.
Sections of this paper describe my own journey towards a better, more robust understanding of unconventional, non-ordinary perceptual states that I have experienced at different times in my life. I interweave my own stories with accounts that appear in the literature resources I have incorporated into my research. In the final section of the paper I subject my work to a critical examination to the framework of direct perception developed by the Sautrantika scholastics of the Gelukba tradition, considered the highest r-Dzogchen school of Buddhism.
A brief history of perception
Countless arguments have been made calling perception into question. Some of us are aware of the eastern religious traditions that strongly assert that all perceptual phenomena are illusory. The Sanskrit term “Maya” involves a rich and complex history of meaning around the illusory nature of experience, warning us that reality does not exist as it appears, that perception is peppered by

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error, confusion and ignorance, that the mind veils, the emotions cloud, and thought obstructs perception in ways that deliver a false impression of reality. In the eastern traditions, this false impression is blamed for the human condition of dukkha, our ordinary state of suffering which is called samsara. Samsara is contrasted with nirvana, the enlightened condition associated with the cessation of suffering. In the enlightened state a person is said to be able to directly perceive the true nature of reality. Still, what is revealed as reality’s true nature differs quite dramatically among the traditions. Some traditions, such as Hinduism and certain “mind-only” schools of Buddhism describe the true nature of reality mostly in mystical, metaphysical or idealist terms. In contrast, other traditions, such as Daoism, Hua-Yen or Chan Buddhism in China, and Zen Buddhism, seem to describe reality in ways that remind us, as western readers, more of what we commonly think of as nature—that part of reality that involves mind to some extent, but exists, and carries on in a sense “by itself.” On the one hand we are told that the nature of reality is the nature of enlightened mind; but on the other hand, we are told that reality is that which originates and evolves minds, some of which happen to be in enlightened states.
Although we typically think of western culture in terms of scientific materialism, western philosophy has also been firmly steeped in idealist positions for more than 2500 years. Consider Plato’s Allegory of the Cave which describes a world where perceptions are mere shadows projected on the walls of a cave, and like prisoners who cannot break free of their chains and escape the cave, most of us never break free of illusion and escape into the light of reality. Here, in this light, we would discover the Pure Ideas and True Forms of a higher, more real, reality, that are accessible not through perception, but through enlightened Reason.
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Although the modern enlightenment produced a philosophy of Reason that laid the foundations for scientific materialism, this philosophy, primarily based on the work of Kant, maintained a skeptical attitude toward perception. This attitude still afforded the mind and its faculties of reason, a more direct route to reality than the body and its faculties of perception. Kant built an impenetrable wall between phenomena which is what we experience, and noumena which is what is real, by saying that we can never actually perceive the real, we could only investigate it through various means. This led to a kind of correspondence theory of reality in which certain tools of logic, mathematics and reasoning, when used according to certain rigorous methods, could be trusted to map directly onto the noumena. The best we could achieve would be an accurate map of reality. Science was understood to be the practice of continuously improving and updating the map. As a result, science would go on to substantially undermine the common- sense perceptions of ordinary people, with fantastic notions of relativity and quantum mechanics.
The post-modern critique completely debunked any lasting notion of naïve perception and replaced it by firmly establishing the social, cultural and linguistically constructed nature of experience. It emphasized the constant processes of social, cultural and linguistic conditioning that over-determined the outcome of perceptual processes. Post-modern variations of Buddhist traditions highlighted the problematic self-reflective and self-referential properties of the ego, and its infinite regress into conceptual abstractions. The wall that Kant had built between experience and reality, was reinforced with self-confirming loops of media to such an extent that problematized not only perception, but also of any hope of “authentic, unmediated raw experience.” In this world, there would never be the possibility of a “seeing the clouds for the first time” or “experiencing your first kiss” because all “first impressions” were always already
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mediated impressions, always already primed by social media and fashioned into existence first in the mind, and etched into lasting existence in inescapable memories. It seemed that perceptual moments had become obsolete. Or had they?
Perfecting perception
If perception proved not to be trustworthy in the mind of thinkers it would prove to be more than trustworthy in the bodies of extreme athletes who had trained to be able to give up thinking when it mattered most.
When he went to strap on his chute, he noticed the canopy was wet. It should have been the end of his plans. A wet chute is unevenly weighted. When deployed, parts will inflate, others will not. Potter, not thinking clearly, decided the water was evenly dispersed and wouldn’t be a problem.
And it wasn’t a problem– at least not for the first five seconds of the jump. “When I leaped,” he says, it was right into the zone. Immediately my senses started peaking. I was moving at ninety miles per hour but could see in credible detail– minute fissures in the rock, tiny patches of lichen, bat guano.
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At the six-second mark, roughly 500 feet from the ground Potter deployed his chute. It opened asymmetrically. The wet sections collapsed, the dry ones inflated. Instantly, with the air currents unevenly distributed, Potter started spinning. From above, his friends started shouting “Avoid the walls!” Important safety tip, except with his guidelines twisted, there was no way to steer .
Then the miraculous intervened: the guidelines began to untwist. Potter seized the moment, yanking his toggles. He knew the better move was to reverse his direction– which would have sent him backward and out into open space– but for reasons he still cannot fathom he turned left instead. He was now heading directly toward the cave wall. Worse, the moment he turned, his chute collapsed, draping itself completely over his head.
But Potter’s senses were peaking. In the fleeting instant before his vision vanished, he caught a glimpse of orange. “We were filing the jumps,” he recounts, “so we’d hung a rope about 400 feet off the deck for the camera man. It was glowing orange. And that was what I saw: a flash of glowing orange.”
He reacted immediately, grabbing for the rope, catching it too. But there was no way to tighten his grip. Potter was less than 300 feet from the ground and closing in on terminal velocity. His hands were already burning from the
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instantly cauterized. The pain was unbelievable.
….Potter did manage to stop himself for a moment — but couldn’t hold it.
Again he started plummeting. Again he clamped down. Again he managed to stop. Not a moment too soon. With the chute still covering his eyes, he had no way of knowing, but Potter had halted himself merely six feet above the ground.
His friends shouted down “Just let go!”
Potter landed in a heap on the cave floor. His hands were destroyed, other parts as well. (Kotler 2014, pg 51-52)
How was he able to do this – make his senses keen(peaking)
Dean Potter is just one of thousands of extreme athletes who are pushing human performance beyond all previous measures and expectations. Cliff jumping and wing suit flying may be examples of how technology opens up new performance ventures, but in these cases technology is not the limiting factor—human potential is. And within our human potential, we are pushing beyond not so much the limits of the body (that’s where technology steps in to help give us
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wings and reinforce out outer protective shell)—but we are experimenting with the upper limits of human consciousness. In particular, these upper limits relate to our intentional-motivational and attentional states. Intention processing and attention processing follow discrete neuro- chemical pathways in the embodied brain-mind that contribute to global participatory processes of the living person—the “embodied body-mind-brain” (EBMB).2
In addition to physical skill and endurance training, extreme sports requires athletes to train their consciousness to access not only higher degrees of potential, but also higher human potentials that are essential to perform in these domains, where “performance” often means “to survive the ordeal.” Intentional states need to be clean, i.e clear of emotional associations. Attention needs to be sharp and fine-grained to relevant targets (that are usually moving and changing at the same time). Performance at this level requires keen sensory acuity (what Potter refers to as “his senses peaking”) and enhanced proprioception—a more-than-ordinary awareness of the body’s own position, orientation, and angular momentum in space operating at levels beyond the normal human capacity to deal with accelerated change.
There is something even more exceptional happening here that separates the top athletic performances from the rest of the field—and often separates those that survive and those that don’t: the ability to dilate the experience of space and time, and the ability to turn off the central governing “self-complex.” These six key features of enhanced perception in extreme sports: clean intention, tuned attention, sensory acuity, enhanced proprioception, time-space dilation and
2 I will use the term EBMB as a holistic view of the body, as the actions of the person, the brain as the neuro- chemical processes of the person’s body, which include the brain and its afferent and efferent networks, and the mind as the subjective experience of the person, to suggest the global participatory dynamics in operation. EBMB is neither a physical nor a metaphysical attribute, it is a process term which represents “the human operating system.”

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self-less-ness, can only be attained by techniques specifically designed to take advantage of the neural plasticity of the EBMB. These techniques first disrupt the habitual, default patterns of the human operating system, and then secondly, train them to handle novel action potentials. It turns out that these are exactly the kinds of disruptions to the EBMB that advanced meditation training (especially Zen, but including vipassana) are designed to do.
The physics of baseball (Adair, 2002) prove that the fielder must start running before he hears the crack of the bat, and that when he catches the ball over his shoulder, it had been impossible for him to see it first. His EBMB was processing an enormous amount of information in order to deliver his glove to where the ball was headed, just at the right time. For this to happen, the EBMB must be perfectly aligned with how the world really is. The same extraordinary levels of performance characterized the career of quarterback Joe Montana. But Montana reports that the entire time he played football “unconsciously.” There are coaches of trainers all over the world, training people how to perform better by “getting the self out of the way” (Gallwey, 2010). In these non-ordinary states of performance, the EBMB is more attuned to the world as it really is. So what goes wrong with everyday ordinary perception? And why are we so concerned that we don’t actually perceive the world how it really is?
In the summer of 1978 I was living in Berkeley California as a first-year graduate student. One night, two friends took me up to the observatory high up in the northern hills of the city. From there you could look out over the bay to the beautiful nightscape of San Francisco. When you get to the observatory, you park on one side of a pedestrian bridge and walk onto a huge terrace courtyard on the other side. The courtyard is surrounded by a 4’H stone wall. Because the way it is built, at night you don’t realize you are several stories

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high. The short wall gives you the impression that you are standing on a courtyard at ground level. This turned out to be almost a tragic illusion that one night. We brought with us a frisbee and took up positions at the periphery of the courtyard, the three of us like points along an equilateral triangle. We lost ourselves in the warm and sweet scents of the Berkeley hills, the wafting breeze and the flow of the game.
The last frisbee throw of the night got away from me. It soared above the short periphery wall into the complete darkness of night. There were no lights illuminating the distances below. Spontaneously I jumped over the wall like I had jumped over many stone walls that line the pastured fields all across my home state of Connecticut.
The next sequences of events are clearly etched into my memory like years in a storyline. Yet they must have happened in less than 2 seconds:
As I leapt, and while still on the rise of my jump, my ears tuned into a familiar set of sounds—the HVAC equipment that was running outside the main building, some 4 stories below. Instantly, this perception triggered up with some episodic memory in my mind—matching perfectly with the sounds of the HVAC that I heard for two years outside my 4th floor dorm room back in college. Somehow, all in an instant of time, my EBMB processed this information, realized I was not 4 feet but 4 stories above ground level, turned myself around, got hold of the outer edge of the wall, and pulled myself up, over and back onto the terrace floor.
Stunned, my friends hadn’t even time to move from their positions.
Had perception both failed me and saved me at the same time? What part of my perception was sleeping when I jumped over the wall? What had awakened my perception of the actual reality? Notice I say “my ears heard” not “I heard” the sound of the HVAC below. When the EBMB “takes control” of the situation, in this case out of necessity, it is as if the first person subjective

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“I” gets brushed aside, and this third-person objective “organism” chooses how to act. This organism scans the environment and chooses the course of action in a nano-instant. Like a reflex, except that there is a whole lot more information loading up and matching up. One door of perception is closed—the intersubjective “I” who is playing frisbee, and the other door of perception is thrown wide open. The “I” discovers itself to have been separated from reality, distracted by the intersubjective and social themes that were playing out between friends. The organism always returns to reality, always finds itself at one with the reality, and therefore recovers the act-uality, which is to “act in accordance with reality.”
Extreme athletes are learning how and training each other to emancipate perception from the socially performing, intersubjectively focused “I” and return it fully to the organismic EBMB in order to capitalize on its perceptual acuity and instinctive and spontaneous athletic acumen. In other words, they are training themselves to enter into the “zone of peak performance.” One of the key attributes of this zone is time dilation—the sense that the sequence of events that ordinarily would be crammed inside too thin of an instant to detect, let alone assess the situation, discover affordances to work with, formulate options and choose to act—that the sequence of events unfolds in a way that we observe it, we live it out, even though the “we” is not the EBMB in charge.
Steven Kotler (2014) talks about the new science of ultimate human performance as learning to hack flow states from both a body and a mind perspective, and by integrating both psychological and neuroscientific approaches. Flow states are associated with neurochemical systems that function as performance enhancers as well as mood-boosters. The neurotransmitters most
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involved are dopamine which creates engagement and increases attention; norepinephrine which directs focus and locks attention on target, as well as increasing arousal without spiking emotional imbalance; endorphins which alleviate any potential pain signals and keep them from delaying action or reducing endurance; anandamide, which is a psychoactive chemical that elevates mood, amplifies lateral thinking, and inhibits fear response; and serotonin which enhances coping and endurance capacities. Kotler (2014) writes:
These five chemicals are flow’s mighty cocktail. Alone, each packs a punch, together a wallop. Consider the chain of events that takes us from pattern recognition through future prediction. Norepinephrine tightens focus (data acquisition); dopamine jacks pattern recognition (data processing); anandamide accelerates lateral thinking (widens the database searched by the pattern recognition system). (p.68)
As I mentioned above, this chain of events, unfolds in the time-dilated state of flow. “We” are allowed to witness, to observe intently, but not to interrupt or insert an agenda that is meaningful only in the context the intersubjective “I.” Josh Watizkin (2007) interprets the experience of time slowing down as the same as opening up the space in which we can act. Reflecting on a push- hands match he won to earn a world champion Tai-Chi title, Waitzkin writes:
Now think of me, Josh, competing against a less refined martial artist. Let’s say I am in the process of instigating a throw that involves six technical steps. My opponent will experience an indecipherable flurry of action, while for me the six eternal steps of the throw are just the outer rim of a huge network of
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chunks. Our realities are different. I am “seeing” much more than he is seeing. (p. 143-144) … The slightest variations in the way my opponent responds to my first push will lead to numerous options in the way I will trigger into the throw. My pull on his right wrist will involve twenty or thirty subtle details with which I will vary my action based on his nuanced micro-responses. As I sit back on the ground and trip his right foot, my perception of the moment might involve thirty or forty variations. (p. 145-146)
These are, Waitzkin explains, the space-time dilation of flow states is a kind of sensory precision that is gained through intense focus on simple perceptual details.
Now my unconscious navigates a huge network of subtly programmed technical information, and my conscious mind is free to focus on certain essential details that, because of their simplicity, I can see with tremendous precision, as if the blink in my opponent’s eyes takes many seconds.
The key to this process is understanding that the conscious mind, for all its magnificence, can only take in and work with a certain limited amount of information in a unit of time—envision that capacity as one page on your computer screen If it is presented with a large amount of information, then the font will have to be very small in order to fit it all on the page. You will not be able to see the details of the letters. But if that same tool (the conscious mind) is used for a much smaller amount of information in the same amount of time, then we can see every detail of every letter. Now time feels slowed down. [emphasis mine] (p. 146)
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It was the summer of 1977. I was a junior in college, working at Princeton University on a National Science Foundation grant for a lab that was researching the neurophysiology of learning. My role there was to prepare the research subjects –species Limax maximus—the common garden snail—by vivisecting the nervous system wholly intact from the body, and set micro- electrodes into key neural nuclei so the electrical patterns could be visualized on an oscilloscope. My instruments were tiny micro-fiber glass filaments attached to scalpel handles. I had to work with my arms secured by the wrists in stirrups to stabilize my movements. Precision required all work to be done under a microscope. The first day I watched as the microfiber blades hopelessly flailed under the microscope from the otherwise imperceptible trembling of my hands. This meant I had to give up all sugar and caffeine for the summer. Still, I found it impossible to work with required precision, and ruined specimen after specimen. I just couldn’t imagine how I might make the precise, micro-level movements that were needed, with my macro-level hands and fingers. The coordinates just wouldn’t compute. How could I have control over my hands at a level I couldn’t perceive?
Then one day I had an idea. I looked through the micro-scope and transported myself into the micro-world that existed there. I imagined my fingers to be telephone poles, and the spaces between my hands to be entire football fields. I drew imaginary yard-lines in between and envisioned how I and an entire team of football players could run around in between. In this imaginary world, the micro-fiber blades were the size of kitchen knives, and the specimens were the size of whole salmon. Still a difficult task to fillet out all the bones—but no longer an impossible one. In this virtual world the space to act had been opened, and with it came the slowing down of time. Each specimen prep took 4-6 hours of uninterrupted work, not unlike the demands placed on a surgeon facing a long procedure. Yet before I had a chance to be
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distracted by the thought “I wonder what time it is,” the requisite hours had passed and the work was done. Soon I was depended upon to do all the specimen preparations for everyone in the lab.
What is clear from these accounts, is that perception can be emancipated from the concerns of the social self, from the numerous distractions of the intersubjective “I”; from the compression of time and compaction of space, from worry and fear and rigid adherence to a single-minded ego- centric frame of reference, into a time-space dilation in which perception functions with speed, precision and efficacy. Furthermore, this emancipation is associated with the experience of being “in the zone” or an extraordinarily pleasant states of “flow”; and that this zone or these states are dependent upon discreate neurochemical pathways that rely mostly upon five neurochemical transmitters. These flow states are also related to experiences of time-space dilation brought on by demands for extreme perceptual acuity and achieved through intense focus, and/or the ability to tap into time-space dilation through imaginative exercises.
Perception by the numbers Some definitions
Neuroscience has calculated the way information flows through our sensory organs and how that information is (or is not) exchanged with the brain and the conscious mind. In order to make sense of this, I want to precisely define “sensory organs,” “brain,” and “conscious mind.” They are all functions within what we have previously termed the EBMB – the embodied body-mind- brain. We can say that the sensory organs are mainly “part of the body,” while the terms “brain” and “conscious mind” refer to the mind-brain of the EBMB. The word “embodied” in EBMB

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seems to be redundant, but in this case embodied means more than the body as conventionally understood as built upon a skeletal frame and outlined by our skin. In this case embodied refers to an ongoing interaction with the world, of other sentient and non-sentient participants. Embodiment is fundamentally participation.
The phrase “sensory organs” refers to the conventional ways we point to our eyes, ears, skin, tongue, nose, as the “instruments of perception” but includes more than them. The phrase “sensory organs” includes both the afferent and efferent electro-chemical neural networks through which information flows and is processed at specific sites along discrete pathways, through the body, to and from the brain and other organs such as the gut, heart, and lungs. The term “brain” here specifies those regions of the neural networks that are confined to the anatomical region of the brain—the organ in your skull. The brain has been extensively mapped into specialized regions, and its electrical activity has been extensively studied to give us a pretty good idea of the brain’s unique roles in perception.
Finally, the term “conscious mind” refers to that part of perceptual information that we have conscious access to at any given time. It refers to the perceptual information that the subjective “I” perceives consciously. Consider, as an example, the Buddhist story of the man who mistakes a rope for a snake. Assuming his sensory organs and brain are normal, we would say that the sensory organs are perceiving the qualities of the snake, in the context of the light, angle, sounds, how much of the snake is exposed, etc. Some of this information reaches the brain, and some of it does not. In addition, the brain is processing memories and thoughts, and incorporating imaginative “leaps” while attempting to integrate these into the sensory information to get a “full understanding” of the situation. Now remember, embodiment means participation. As all these
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elements of the embodied experience come together, some aspects will become more conscious to the “I” and some will be “deselected” from the conscious experience. The conscious mind that emerges, depends upon what information is selected and what is deselected. The conscious “I” therefore, ends up participating with an incomplete set of information. If the information that is “served up” to the “I” is heavily biased by memories of being bitten by a snake, or by warnings that primed the imagination to see a snake, then we would say the “mind” is participating with the idea of a snake, rather than the perception of a rope.
This notion of selection and deselection is a very important aspect of perceptual experience, and suggests something like an evolutionary-adaptive fitness landscape.(As Jason Brown (2005) surmises: “Is speciation in the process of evolution analogous to specification in an act of cognition?” The point here is that not everything the sensory organs are participating with, gets through to the conscious I. In fact, not much actually gets through!
The fact is that every single second, millions of bits of information flood in through our senses. But our consciousness processes only perhaps forty bits a second– at most. Millions and millions of bits are condensed to a conscious experience that contains practically no information at all. Every single second, every one of us discards millions of bits in order to arrive at the special state known as consciousness. But in itself, consciousness has very little to do with information. Consciousness involves information that is not present; information that has disappeared along the way. (Norretranders, 1991 pg. 125)
“The numbers are vast,” writes Tor Norretranders (1991)
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The eye sends at least ten million bits to the brain every second. The skin sends a million bits a second, the ear one hundred thousand, our smell sensors a further one hundred thousand bits a second, our taste buds perhaps a thousand bits a second. … All in all, over eleven million bits a second from the world to our sensory mechanisms. We consciously perceive about forty bits a second– and that figure is probably exaggerated. (p. 126)3
“That is to say,” Norretranders (1991) emphasizes, “only one millionth of what our eyes see, our ears hear, and our other senses inform us about appears in our consciousness.” The neuroscientist Jason Brown (2005, 2002,) says that this singular conscious perception, is a terminal outcome of a global microgenetic process which follows a branching, evolutionary-tree-like pattern. This microgenetic process includes several pre-conscious stages that progressively unfold the perception of a space-time world of objects. His microgenetic process model includes the sensory organs, but does not begin there. Microgenesis begins in deeper regions of primordial awareness associated with the neuro-affective pathways of the EBMB. Roy (2015) also describes the microgeney of perception (what she calls “percepto-genesis) as a tree-like architecture
Perceptions, although primed by affect, are not guided by them. Rather, perceptions are guided by what we might call the ‘appetitive drive of the senses.’ The senses are not passive organs that function like windows opened up onto the world. The senses are more like open roads—they are designed to go somewhere. This is something that Goethe knew—our senses are not passive receptors but they are dynamic and creative actors that enact
3 Norretranders later says the more correct figure is 16 bits a second.

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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 29 perception. The sequence from affect to perception, from feeling into the world
to reaching toward the world is a process called ‘perceptogenesis.’
It is a process that can be described as having a tree-like architecture, where the roots represent the affect channels, which are immersed in and draw from the given-ness of the world, and the branches that reach toward the sky are the sensory organs. The affect channels provide the energy, the intentional- motivational state that vitalizes both the penetration into the world through the sympathetic drives of feeling, and the thrust out toward the world through the appetitive drive of the senses. The two movements prescribe an arc of transformation, where affect and perception objectify as image in the mind of a self. (p. 52)
The image of a tree helps us understand the way the sensory apparatus “sculpts” information content into sizable “chunks” for the conscious mind. “The primary activity of mind is to chunk experience into public and private events,” writes Jason Brown (2005); where we would substitute his term mind with “body-brain” and the notion of public and private events to conscious mind and unconscious process. “The price of this chunking,” Brown (2005) goes on to say, “is a loss of relations and a delimitation and focality of the events of interest.” We are hard- wired at birth for perceptual processes to sculpt information in ways that evolved for us as a species. Microgenetic theory (Brown 2002) adds to this notion of sculpting, a sense of evolutionary “survival” of the perceptual objects that make it through to conscious mind, by surviving the sculpting processes of progressive specification (speciation) of the perceptual objects. For this Brown (2002) requires making the distinction between sensation—which is an
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in the conscious mind.
Sensation enters into the microgeny at successive points. … a deep preobject is gradually sculpted by sensation to a final object. … The object is what survives a transit through this sequence. It is whatever happens to actualize. Depending on the moment in the object structure that predominates, one has a dream, an image, or an object perception. (Brown 2002 p. 8)
People tapping into states of peak performance, have learned to make these unconscious processes conscious so they can be tuned to different advantages. It is possible to train the EBMB to sculpt perfectly tuned patterns which embed an enormous amount of information relative to, let’s say a game like chess, and packaged in the right sized “bits” for the conscious mind to access and bring to conscious perception on demand. The world Tai-Chi champion Josh Waitzkin introduced above, is also a world chess champion. He now heads an educational organization devoted to his “Art of Learning” program, where just this kind of “enhanced perceptual training” is being developed. “The clearest way to approach this [topic],” Waitzkin (2007) writes, is with the imagery of chunking and carved neural pathways.
Chunking relates to the mind’s ability to assimilate large amounts of information into a cluster that is bound together by certain patterns or principles particular to a given discipline. The initial studies on this topic were … performed on chess players who were considered to be the clearest example of sophisticated unconscious pattern integration. (p. 138)
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Evolution has already given us a default setting on how our neural pathway are carved, limiting most of the perceptual information to unconscious processing, so as not to overwhelm the conscious mind. The next section explains the bio-neurology of these pathways, with their various gates of entry, as discrete regions whose functional anatomy have been shaped by evolution. It will detail from a neurophysiological perspective, why Brown’s microgenesis model, Roy’s tree metaphor, and Waitzkin’s analogy are all correct: that the mind has “the ability to take lots of information, find a harmonizing/logically consistent strain, and put it together into one mental file that can be assessed as if it were a single piece of information.” (Waitzkin 2007 p. 139)
And while it is true that these neural pathways are developmentally conditioned during one’s lifetime, they are not developmentally fixed. In other words, they can also be developmentally repatterned. Old pathways can be made flexible, and new pathways can be carved into new sensory flows that dramatically enhance the ultimate perceptual experience. Understanding this, we will find that it is possible to turn what looks like a deficit (the lack of information reaching conscious mind) to an asset (training and tuning the more powerful unconscious processes toward a conscious focus).
For now, we can translate these different ways of talking about the content of perception into the terms I am using in this paper, namely EBMB, sensory organs, body, brain and mind, in the following way:
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The EBMB is a participant in the world actively engaging and exchanging millions of bits of information back in multiple directions. The body as a holistic organism, cognizes all this information in specific dynamic patterns that have evolved as the species evolves. The sensory organs are active participants in the world—they scan and probe, seek and hunt for those relationships in the world for which they have specifically been tuned by evolution. The sensory organs also participate with the brain through discrete neural pathways that lead to and from the brain. These neural pathways are not simple, open highways—they comprise a complex network of “gates” which select and deselect information, route and re-route the direction of information, and chunk information into manageable portions that can serve as conscious perceptions in the mind. This has the net effect of “sculpting” a conscious perception consisting of a tiny fraction of the global sensory information from world to the “I” of the mind. Note, however, that the “I” of the mind itself participates with more than just sensory information. The mind also participates with virtual information arising as thoughts and mental images, memories, fantasies and dreams. Virtual information is associated with different regions and different dynamics of the brain. The mind has to integrate sensory information with this virtual information. Yet something very important is still left out—the information that is “perceived and processed” by/in the body itself—the rich and complex proprioceptive operations, which by far outnumber all the other information flowing through the EBMB. The body itself is a perceptual organ, that “cognizes the lived experience into the background of all perceptual experience.
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Part II: Background
The Phenomenology of the Background
Until recently, Western scientists and philosophers have missed the role the body plays in constituting the “background field” of perception. Typically, perception has been viewed as a cognitive function of the brain and mind. Studies were limited to the brain’s neural processing of sensory information and the mind’s conceptual framing of it.
When we think of the body, we usually think in terms of sensations rather than perceptions. We relate to bodily sensations as “feelings”—both physiological and emotional. We are able to make these feelings conscious, to hold them into awareness, without conceptualizing or naming them. In fact, the philosopher Eugene Gendlin (1962 ) has shown that the bodily felt-sense is more precise than language. There are many ways we try to describe our feelings beyond merely labelling them with a word. And although language often proves itself inadequate for this purpose, we usually don’t become skeptical about whether we are really feeling a particular sensation. In other words, we can foreground the bodily felt-sense in our consciousness without naming or conceptualizing it.
The percepts of the body, on the other hand, are embedded in the deepest unconscious processes that are responsible for the most primordial levels of experience. These body-percepts are deeper
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even than the felt-sense, because they are the background information that enables us to locate the felt-sense in our own body. Only in rare, non-ordinary states do these percepts rise above the threshold of conscious experience, so it is more accurate to say they are processes of proto- experience. They are the processes of the “background.” The proprio-percepts of the body enable us to experience the sense of the body as occupying space, as well as enable us to have the sense of space surrounding us in multiple dimensions. When the proprioceptive organs work along with the other senses, the body “cognizes” its own action in the world, making it possible, for example, for the outfielder to run to where the ball will fly, before they hear the crack of the bat; or for the batter to start their swing before the release of the ball, in order to have time to hit it.
Searching for the Background
The deeper “layers” of the psyche lose their individual uniqueness as they retreat farther and farther into darkness. “Lower down,” that is to say as they approach the autonomous functional systems, they become increasingly collective until they are universalized and extinguished in the body’s materiality, i.e., in chemical substances. The body’s carbon is simply carbon. Hence “at bottom” the psyche is simply “world.”
~ C.G. Jung, “The Psychology of the Child Archetype” (1940), In CW, Vol. 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, p. 291
Trying to “find” sub-threshold percepts is like the fish trying to find the water it swims in. On the one hand, it is everywhere, and pre-constitutes or is the precondition of being-in-the-world. On the other hand, it must, in some way, be also hidden in plain sight. For this reason, scholastics in

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the east and philosophers in the west and have been searching for “the phenomenon of the background” ever since the axial age (Bellah and Joas, 2012) when consciousness leaped into its modern, theoretic-rational structure. Prior to the axial age, humans were not capable of reflective consciousness—they could not use their minds to “turn around” to search inside their consciousness. When we did, we discovered divergent ways to think of the background—as something transcendent or as something transcendental.
In the east, the move was toward the transcendent—that the “background” that composed or pre- constituted human awareness, was a transcendent consciousness that existed independent of the material world. This consciousness (Big Mind, Brahman, storehouse consciousness, Clear Light, Pristine Awareness) is often conceived as having different layers or levels of ever-more subtlety. These levels are often simplified to the terms gross, subtle and causal levels of consciousness. In the east, “searching for the background” is a vertical and additive process of awakening, in which we are trained to dis-embed our attention from gross or coarse appearances, and expanding one’s personal awareness into more subtle levels of consciousness. It is a vertical process because the more subtle realms of awareness are construed to be accessed by “higher levels” of consciousness. It is an additive process because each higher level transcends and enfold the lower levels so as to be both higher and more inclusive. (see Roy 2014)
Following the enlightenment, western philosophers rejected mystical explanations of the background phenomena, and turned instead to meta-physical/ meta-cognitive explanations. This resulted in the positing of transcendental causes that were construed as pre-given mental events
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that were accessible to the human mind through laws of logic and reason. Like eastern transcendents, these transcedentals were outside the realm of phenomenal experience, which involves appearances and sensory perceptions. But unlike the eastern explanations, transcendentals were properties that existed because of human minds not beyond them. Transcendentals existed because human minds could reason through the phenomena to them. These were the noumena that could never be experienced, because they were necessary pre- requirements or apriori in order for experience to happen. The Kantian transcendentals include logic and mathematics, and the apperception of space and time. Western enlightenment therefore was vertical but not additive—it required higher capacities of reasoning, to get at deeper, more fundamental truths, such as laws of logic and science. Science and the academic disciplines thereafter supplied the additive practices – augmenting the fundamental laws of nature with more and more empirical descriptions.
A third approach in searching for the background, is neither vertical nor additive. Rather it is pursued through deeper-descending and subtracting practices. Husserl’s introspection for example, entailed a process of “bracketing” out the world (the subtracting phase) and tuning in to the primordial phenomenological apperceptions underlying conscious experience (the deeper- descending phase). Gallagher & Zahavy (2008) Varela & Shear (2002). Husserl was especially interested in the phenomenology of time consciousness. Husserl described three overlapping yet successive phases of consciousness: protention-primal impression- retention. Pro-tention is basically a pre-conscious orienting phase, of “pure intention” or “intention without an object” which overlaps and gives way to the primal impression of phenomenal objects, which in turn
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way (and overlapping) the successive protention phase of the incoming “next moment.”
By bracketing experience and focusing down onto a core component of consciousness, namely the presentational present, Husserl not only revealed the phenomenal nature of time- consciousness, but also excavated a new transcendental explanation of the background phenomenon as the “stream of experience” occasioned by the succession of intentional states.
Gallagher and Zahavi (2008) point out how Husserl’s analysis of the structure of inner time- consciousness serves a double purpose for western phenomenologist in the tradition of introspection: “It is not only meant to explain how we can be aware of objects with temporal extension, but also how we can be aware of our own stream of experiences. (p.88)
There are thus two important aspects to this [Husserl’s] retentional continuity. The first, the ‘longitudinal intentionality’ … provides for the intentional unification of consciousness itself, since retention is the retention of previous phases of consciousness. Second, since the prior phases of consciousness contain their respective primal impressions of the experienced object, the continuity of that experienced object is also established. (p. 88)
Husserl’s presentational time serves as an invariant structure that makes possible the flow of consciousness as we experience it. They are structures not given in experience, but invariant structures that are independent and prior to experience. Unlike Kant’s transcendentals, however,
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they do not exist on some metaphysical plane, but are structures of mental states associated with intention, and as such, can be made explicit as phenomenological processes in introspection. Husserl’s temporal structure brought the notion of the background back from the noumenal to the phenomenal—that of the processural structures beneath experience. Still for the most part, this background was thought of as comprised of mental events. Husserl called these mental states “validities” (Dreyfus 2012) that “make up the ‘unnoticed,’ ‘concealed,’ background. [emphasis mine] Heidegger led the way for a new kind of existential phenomenology whose adherents rejected the idea that mental events, such as intentional states, could relate subjects to objects. (Dreyfus 2012) Instead, they said that all mental events, including intentional states, depended on a background that could never be made explicit, because the background was part of the phenomenon of world. Heidegger described this “world-bearing” aspect of being as “absorption.” “[His] existential phenomenology discloses the holistic, preconceptual, preintentional background into which we are already absorbed. Heidegger thought of the background “as an atmosphere” (i.e. like water to a fish) and as an atmosphere
the background is precisely not the aggregate of mental states that Husserl from his detached phenomenological point of view mistakenly assumes.
It is in this sense of absorption, that the background withdraws from phenomenological examination, in order to be the background. The background is in a sense a “performance of the world” that enables the absorbed subject to pre-figure phenomenal objects in consciousness.
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 39 Over the course of the 20th century, “the notion of the background has progressively moved into
the foreground of philosophical discussion. (Shusterman, 2012)
Over the past century, philosophers have increasingly recognized that the mental life of which we are conscious and through which we act to realize our intention cannot adequately function without relying on a background of which we are not properly conscious but which guides and structures our conscious thought and action. (Shusterman, 2012 p. 206)
It was generally agreed that the background would not only be pre-conceptual and pre- representational, but also pre-intentional. Over the course of few centuries, the background had “moved” in the imagination of scholastics and philosophers, both east and west, from the highest domains of the mystical and metaphysical, to the realm of the mental and intentional. Now it was generally agreed that the background was to be found elsewhere, even further down in proto- realms of experience.
The theory of the body is already a theory of perception. ~ Merleau-Ponty
****
It was Merleau-Ponty (1964) who first claimed the primacy of perception as the ground of experience: “The perceived world is always the presupposed foundation of all rationality, all value and all existence.” (p. 13)

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By these word, the “primacy of perception,” we mean that the experience of perception is our presence at the moment when things, truths, values are constituted for us; that perception is a nascent logos; that it teaches us, outside all dogmatism, the true conditions of objectivity itself… (p.25)
Making perception primary, was and remains a radical philosophical position. It implies that perception is prior to experience and is pre-requisite to experience itself. His claim runs straight against Kant’s transcendental idealism and Husserl’s transcendental intentionality. In fact, Merleau-Ponty argues that perception has been called into question, because whenever you make the transcendental the priority, you have a contradiction of thought, that “turns perception into mere appearance.” Although he accepts the Kantian doctrine that “all our experience of the world is through a tissue of concepts that lead to irreducible contradictions,” he argues that the consequences of this even Kant failed to grasp. Here he echoed the American pragmatists, whom he alluded to as “the realist philosophers of America,4” who helped him distinguish between the “universe of perception” and its “intellectual reconstructions. As early as 1900 William James, writing about “The Abuse of Concepts”, (James 1977) in philosophical inquiry, rather casually implicates the perceptual order as the prior ground of experience:
The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes. (p. 234)
4 According to an entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online retrieved from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/

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“The great difference between percepts and concepts” James writes, “is that percepts are continuous and concepts are discrete.” Concepts “make cuts” in the unbroken flow of perception, that are “purely ideal.”
If my reader can succeed in abstracting from all conceptual interpretation and lapse back into his immediate sensible life at this very moment, he will find it to be what someone has called a big blooming buzzing confusion, as free from contradiction in its ‘much-at’onceness’ as it is all alive and evidently there.” (p. 233)
Note that James was already intuiting the “sculpting and carving” functions we talked about in previous sections. The contradictions of conceptual interpretation result from the “cutting up” of the ongoing-continuity of the perceptual processes.
“Conceptual knowledge is forever inadequate to the fulness of reality to be known,” writes James (1977). “Reality exists of existential particulars … and of existential particulars we become aware only in perceptual flux.” (p.245)
James warns us that concepts are secondary and inadequate that “falsify as well as omit, and make the [perceptual] flux impossible to understand.” He explains why intellectual examination of perceptual experience creates the impression that perceptions are mere appearance, writing that “Conceptual treatment of perceptual reality makes it seem paradoxical and incomprehensible; and when radically and consistently carried out, it leads to the opinion that perceptual experience is not reality at all, but an appearance or illusion.” (p 245-6). Why this is so, James summarizes in the following way:
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Briefly this is a consequence of two facts: First, that when we substitute concepts for percepts, we substitute their relations also. But since the relations of concepts are of static comparison only, it is impossible to substitute them for the dynamic relations with which the perceptual flux is filled. Secondly, the conceptual scheme, consisting as it does of discontinuous terms, can only cover the perceptual flux in spots and incompletely. The one is no full measure of the other, essential features of the flux escaping whenever we put concepts in its place. (p. 246)
A century later, Merleau-Ponty took this line of reasoning further, into the search for the “background phenomenon” by identifying “bodily space” as the “silent, structuring, concealed background. In his book Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty (1962) attempts to redefine the “body” beyond its interoceptivity and proprioceptivity, and associated changes in the body’s posture and gestures and their associations with images and significance via a perceptual translation into visual and articulate language, which as such pinpointed the body as the center of classical perceptual experience. “And yet,” Merleau-Ponty writes, “the body schema clearly overflows this associationist definition.” (p. 101)
Rather, these associations must be constantly submitted to a unique law, the spatiality of the body must descend from the whole to the parts, my left hand and its position must be implicated in an overall body plan and must have their origin there… (p.101)
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The emphasis here is away from body-as-schema and toward spatiality as given through the body. Remember, spatiality had been, for both Kant and Husserl, a transcendental category of experience. Merleau-Ponty is pointing to the body as the “perceptual organ of spatiality.” With latitude, we might say that the body “casts” spatiality, a field of continuous flux and flow which is simultaneously both body and world in participation. The body is expanded to mean, in a very real sense, an emanation of the space of participation.
The emphasis here is on perception as direct participation of the body’s spatiality, which is to say of direct involvement in a “field” of body-and-world. The emphasis is on its direct or unmediated nature, “that there is no intermediary (image or representation) between perceiver and object perceived.” This cuts strongly against the grain of classical, representational theories of perception:
According to one classical formulation of this representational view, our mind cannot on its own reach all the way to the objects themselves, and the typical claim has therefore been that we need to introduce some kind of interface between the mind and the world if we are to understand and explain perception. Our cognitive access to the world must be mediated by some kind of mental representations relating to the everyday objects we ordinarily claim to perceive, as inner effects to external causes. [According to this view, then] to perceive the world is to generate a representational structure within the mind—something like a picture or map that represents external reality. (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2012 p. 101)
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Merleau-Ponty opened up the possibility that the background is not the pre-perceptual ground, but the perceptual-as-ground itself. It suggests that there are perceptual processes that are pre- intentional, pre-representational, and pre-conceptual. These would mean that the background was the pre-intentional pre-representational, and pre-conceptual perceptual processing of the world.
Bodily space can be distinguished from external space and it can envelope its parts rather than laying them out side by side because it is the darkness of the theatre required for the clarity of performance, the foundation of sleep or the vague reserve of power against which the gesture and its goal stand out, and the zone of non-being in front of which precise beings, figures, forms can appear. (Merleau-Ponty 1997, p. 102)
It would be a participation where world and body meet in the very fine-grained, finely attuned places where the distinction between “world” and “body” became too fuzzy to conceptualize. This field would be pre-ordered, open potentiality, where proto-perceptions emerge from the adaptive coupling of body and world, in active mutual participation.
“The world is experienced, not as a fully formed presence, but as a set of possibilities determined by an on-going dynamic interplay of environmental opportunities and sensorimotor abilities. (Gallagher & Zahavi, 2012 p. 111)
These proto-perceptions would then go onto different phases of “sculpting and carving” at different mind-brain “stations” along perceptual organ pathways, neural networks, and cognitive streams of consciousness. Some of this sculpting and carving would be done in primordial, pre-
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intentional stages, while some would be guided by intentional states and attentional needs, as well as eidetic phases involving memory and mental image-making while further cuts would be made through meaning-making processes of the social self. The whole gestalt would eventually, in imaginative and synthetic parts of the mind, be polished by symbolic, narrative, linguistic and conceptual elaborations of many kinds.
Neurodynamics of the Background
The body cognizes itself through its own body-consciousness, namely that of touch, which is “self-othering. The eye cannot see itself, the ear cannot hear itself, the tongue cannot taste itself, the scent organs cannot smell themselves. Neither can the self cognize itself; rather it is the outcome of a cognized moment. Only the body can cognize itself through its own body-consciousness, namely that of touch, which like one’s own two hands embracing, is simultaneously self-othering. In this very same way, the body’s aspect consciousness, its kinesthetic awareness, simultaneously self-others the world. This is the definition of unmediated cognition– the primary anchoring of perception in the world with and as the world, in participation.
In this section I want to introduce the notion that the “body cognizes itself.” What I mean by this is that the perceptual processes associated with the EBMB create a holistic “knowing” of the body’s relation-in-the-world. This tacit knowing emerges through continuous participation with the world, down to finer and finer graininess where the boundary between body and world becomes “fuzzy” for the categorizing, conceptual mind. Consider for example, tasting food. The

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molecules of the food come into contact with my tongue. At this level of detail, the food is part of the world and the tongue is part of my body. At a finer level of detail the molecules of the food come into contact with the molecules of my taste receptors. From there on, it’s all chemistry, which is the same “kind of chemistry” we find in the world. Chemistry is itself a participation at a fine level of detail.
The body “cognizes” by integrating three parallel-processing streams: interoceptive, and proprioceptive, and exterioceptive. These parallel streams are sub-systems that semi- independently integrate perceptual information (sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, kinaesthetic and vestibular organs) according to three different referents. Interoception processes the body’s position in space, mainly by referencing the head and its movements. Proprioception cognizes the body’s own position, mainly by referencing its center of balance. Exterioception cognizes the body’s position in the world, mainly through referencing relative positions of other objects. It’s truly extraordinary how much information the body must work with simultaneously: processing six perceptual data streams through three parallel processes, into a holistically cognized tacit knowledge of its worldly participation. In this case, “to cognize” means to realize itself as both body and world. These are the processes of the “background” that Merleau-Ponty described. The background is a holistic continuous inter-integration of body and world. It does not “appear” because it is not a thing, nor does it come to rest as a terminal point in a perceptual stream. Rather, as background, “the body” performs a “cognizing purpose” through continuous
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participation.
James H. Austin (1999) describes the perceptual spaces of the body as “the normally hidden capacity for sensate inferences.” It allows us to maneuver in 360 degree (i.e. circumspatial) space through a holistic integration of position, balance, movement, and enormous processing of incoming perceptual information. Unlike ordinary, conscious perception, which references experience to the body as a single point location and the world in front of our eyes—or even unlike inner mental images and thoughts that do the same—the body’s perceptual space includes the ever-expanding and unfolding continuum of space in all directions. Hence, the athlete’s space becomes an enlarged skill-filled volume of possibility. The outfielder runs in concert with the ball before the crack of the bat, negotiating body and ball through vast, circumspatial trajectories, just as we “know without thinking” to “reach without looking” behind us for our scissors or beneath us for our keys.
In contrast, [to normal frontal-local perception] our hidden awareness is unconscious and circumspatial. It may seem to start out with that property which we refer to by calling it our ordinary “sense of place.” But psychological tests suggest that our usual sense of place is already relatively large, and that it does not restrict itself to that limited zone which ordinary frontal vision perceives out in front of us. No, our true sense of space goes on to encompass a cycloramic field of no less than 360 degrees. Indeed, as our large visual brain
5 Hylozoism is a philosophical point of view in which matter is in some sense alive, or that matter and life are inseparable.

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whole “visual world behind the head.” (Austin 1999 pg. 488)
These background processes explain why, after higher level processing, we can parse the neurology of visio-spatial awareness into egocentric and allocentric frames of awareness. fMRI identifies these as discrete neural pathways through the temporal lobe, the one progressing upward in a dorsal stream, the other pursuing a downward course through a ventral stream. (Austin 1999).
The egocentric mode references objects to points along the midline axis of our head and body. It takes the form of an object as it appears to me, the viewer. Its, purpose is design for action. It is hard-wired into our nervous system along with the dorsal-ventral body plan in utero:
How did we develop this capacity to be aware, so unconsciously, of the spatial envelope around us? In utero, as yet unborn, our brain stem had no context for the richness of adult three-dimensional space, let alone for the extra dimensions it could reach during the alternate states of maturity. This tiny stem was still largely unconditioned. Yet the brain stem of a new-born baby is no tabla–rasa, no blank floppy disk on a computer. It is already channeling stimuli into certain designated regions. These will serve its primitive needs to localize. In this sense, the stem is a floppy disk already formatted. (Austin, 1999 p. 490)
Allocentric perceptual modes, by contrast, are more like GPS systems. They are tuned to detached, objective spatial information. This perspective develops later in children between the
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ages of 3 and 5 years. (Austin, 2009 p. 55). It is fundamentally world-referenced. It coordinates objects in the world in relation to each other and their environment ‘out there.’ The Allocentric mode takes the form of an object as 1) an independent entity, 2) with its own intrinsic center, 3) occupying a position in the environment relative to other objects, and 4) is independent of our presence. It is only in the unconscious levels of perceptual processing that these two modes operate independently, because by the time they are once again further passed along and integrated into manageable chunks for the conscious I, they have been integrated into a holistic baseline perception, in normal, ordinary awareness:
Normally, this second, other-centered version will go on silently to join our first Self-centerd frame of spatial reference in a merger as complementary as yin and yang. In this ongoing synaptic alchemy, a mosaic of interactions blends two parallel physiologies into a joint working partnership. (Austin, 2009 p. 57)
These two modes of perception are normally merged in conscious experience. But they can sometimes become unhinged, and therefore experimentally detected. Take for example an ingenious experiment designed to elicit selective deficits of egocentric or allocentric processing in patients with temporal damage to different temporal lobe areas. The experiment involved subjects looking at two groupings of (images of) apples—four on their left field of vision, and four on their right. Patients with parietal lesions associated with deficits in egocentric processing. failed to report the four apples, exclusively on one side or the other, depending on the side of the parietal lobe damage. Patients with parietal lesions associated with deficits in allocentric processing were also shown apples in two groupings (left and right); but in this case six of the eight apples had a black “spoiled” marking either on the apple’s left or right side. There were
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 50 three “left spoiled” marked apples, and three “right-spoiled” marked apples and two unmarked
apples. The apple images were arranged in the following grouping
Left visual field: left mark, right mark, no mark, left mark Right visual field: left mark, right mark, no mark, left mark
Patients with allocentric deficits identified only the apples with markings on the opposite side of the patient’s dysfunction, regardless of the side of the visual field the apples themselves were placed. These experiments confirm that the “hidden background” of spatial processing operates along two discrete phenomenological streams of perception. For one of these streams the primary anchor of reference is the ego-body. For the other, the primary reference is distributed throughout “objective” relational space among the objects themselves. Along with the interoceptive, proprioceptive and exteroceptive cognizing functions, these two “streams of spatial reference) constitute the manifold of “bodily (world)-space” – the primordial, perceptual background of experience.
Neural Gates
We look at much more than we “see.” Each second, by gross estimates, somewhere between 10^7 and 10^11 bits of afferent information smite our various sensory end organs. To shelter us from this barrage, the normal brain engages in an enormous filtering operation. Only the rare stimulus, murmuring the right password, manages to pass through. As a result, consciousness finally
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 51 registers and perceives only a mere sixteen to twenty bits of information each
second. (Austin 1997 p. 278)
The neurodynamics of the EBMB are mind-boggling in their complexity. The holistic performance of the perceptual system depends on dynamics of feedback, feedforward, timing delays, excitatory and inhibitory responses, serial and parallel processing, and whole-part relationships. The key layers of this complex architecture are (from bottom up):
1) Holyzoic zone a. Level 1 – Participatory interface with world
. 2) Level 2 – Bodily Space (the background is “cognized” through a manifold serial processing system)
i. exterioception (primary purpose: action)
ii. proprioception (primary purpose: balance and skill
iii. interoception (primary purpose: well-being)
. 3) Object-Space (referential processes of figure-grounding)
i. Allocentric modes
ii. Egocentric modes
. 4) Mind-Space (deselection through serial processing)
a. Carving and chunking through serial processing of information 5) I-me-mine Self Complex
a. Accommodating and assimilating perceptual dynamics with virtual components of mind, i.e. memories, mental models, narratives, linguistic, conceptual and abstract thinking, imagination, dream and fantasy
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We can use a heuristic to illustrate the various levels as a simple illustration of these levels of consciousness. (see appendix A). In this heuristic, the world and the cognizing body start at the bottom, and more “refined” perceptual information moves toward the top, toward the final self- complex. The bottom sections comprise the “EB” of our “Embodied-Body-Mind-Brain” model. The top sector represents the “M” mind, and the pinnacle is the Self-structure, which includes more than just the EBMB. (We might say that, when we add the self, we are working with the EBMB-S) The “B” brain would be the hard-wiring that is diagramed in the illustration. The horizonal dashed lines represent where we would expect to find discrete “neural gates” which selectively allows certain information to pass “up” while confining most of the perceptual information to deeper levels. These “neural gates, would be the reason we have different layers of “accessibility” – from the pre-conscious (world) to the fully conscious self.6 The deepest levels are completely unavailable to what we ordinarily think of as “consciousness” and yet they constitute the profound consciousness of the embodied body which “cognizes the hylozoic realm.” Introspective practices can reveal the complex knot of thoughts, stories, memories, expectations and fears that constitute the subconscious layering of the Self-complex.
Contemplative practices and focusing-attention practices such as chess and Tai-Chi enable people like Josh Waitzkin to become consciously aware of the normally pre-attentive dimensions of mind. While we have seen that the allocentric and egocentric modes of perceptual processing were proved to be discrete by neuroanatomical and neuropathological experiments on patients in whom they stopped functioning holistically, it is possible, through advanced meditative
6 This paper stops with the fully conscious, but pre-reflective self. The self-state system becomes extended through self-conscious, reflection, and then further toward social, collective and transpersonal states. These latter are outside the scope of this paper.

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practices, to tease them apart and to experience their subtle nuanced natures. It is also possible, in rare meditative states, to experience some of the deepest of the background processes, including the spatial dimensioning of reality that the body performs in the hylozoic zone.
Usually, though as consciousness descends deeper into the bodily domain, the threshold of consciousness is rarely breached, and the body “steps into the flow and performs in the zone”— as we see with extreme sports and exceptional athletes.
Background processes, not ordinarily available to conscious awareness, can become conscious perceptual experiences, when the “neural gates” reverse themselves. This “reversal” wherein the background processes come forward, entails the absence of ordinary perceptual features such as sense of self, a relatively “bland” external world of static objects, the body’s positional orientation in object-space, and a normal sense of time duration. Every night we go through processes where the action along these neural gates changes. No longer are outside percepts allowed through. No longer are the body’s percept allowed through. No longer is the information selected and integrated into a waking sense of I-me-mine. Instead, am explosion of virtual scenes are activated, including a dream-self and her imaginary worlds.
Opening the Gates of Perception
During a 13-day period of radical transformation, I didn’t fall asleep at all. Instead, I would lie down and fall into deep relaxation. Soon I would witness

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my body going into sleep paralysis. I could “look for” my limbs, my head, my pelvis, but could not “find them” in any part of my awareness. As the feeling of the physical body disappeared, consciousness seemed free floating. Keeping my eyes open, I was immersed in deep blackness, which I could not determine was the darkness inside the room, or the blackness behind my eyes. Either way, the blackness was strange, because usually some faint light can be seen through the windows, or some virtual imagery is active behind one’s eyes. By contrast, this was complete darkness, very still. This void eventually would become more and more spacious, and tiny little specks of “light particles” were flickering. I would say though, that only about 1 -2 percent of the area was occupied by these tiny particles – most of the “space” was a dark void. The greatest impression of this void is that it was 360 degree dimensional. And expanding into ever-increasing dimensional space. There were no objects that could be used as referents to this dimensionality. The impression of dimensionality was given by this “movement” of expansion into spherical space. My consciousness seemed to expand with it. It was as if I were a particle of light that I could not, of course see. A tiny speck of awareness flickering in a great sea of expanding void. Most of the experiences were affectively neutral. But one evening, this expansion into the infinite void was accompanied by an increasing feeling of bliss. Of freedom. The further my awareness expanded, the more bliss, the more freedom. “Going out to forever” became a subtle goal, a probable destination. Then the body called me back. I heard a very faint, child-like voice, way back down from “where I had come” calling me to re-occupy the physical body, so “she”(the body-child) would not die. I experienced this as profound spiritual choice—absolute freedom and bliss on the one side, and guaranteed suffering on the other. I realized the Bodhisattva commitment to embodiment, for the benefit of all sentience. And so, I returned. This was the 13th and final evening of my most radical transformative journey. I had come back “for good.”

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My experience shows how the “background phenomenon” can be experienced as a non-ordinary state of consciousness. This was not a dream—as I had full waking consciousness, which included the ability to witness and record the progression of experiential events. The background phenomenon constitutes the “spatial dimension” we create in our dreams. This one evening, however I was not dreaming, and my sensory perceptions were “gated out” through the phases of deepening sleep. And yet, “I” remained awake to witness as the background phenomenon predominated my experience. This process is described as the “downward passage” (Bradford, 2008) “which follows an orderly sequence characterized by “loss of [perceptual]objects” as they “degrade in a predictable fashion,” as aims dissolve and motoricity ceases through relaxation practices (associated, in my case with the on-coming of sleep paralysis).
In pursuing the downward passage, the mystic is buffeted by feelings embodied previously in objects of desire, affection, and fear. Ideation likewise runs forward with increasing independence of conscious intention. Inner- speech may surface in conscious awareness as auditory hallucination. (p.57)
The end-state of such “downward passages” is an outcome of what goes off-line, and what remains on-line. In many cases, described by Brown, the downward passage “opens the gates of eidetic and archetypal images to flood through, as temporary substitutes for lost objects.
“The many forms of imagery, dreams, memory and thought images, hallucinations and illusion, eidetic and afterimages are markers of successive phases in the object-development … .” (Bradford 2008)
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… dreams, hallucinations, and imaginal images, followed by memory and thought images; then illusions, eidetic and after-imagery and finally the physical objects whose veridical perception entails the conviction of their being real. (p.59)
Of course, what is meant by “lost objects” in this paper, is not merely a phase in a microgenetic process. In this paper “loss of objects” also refers to an interruption of the body’s participation in the hylozoic zone, that result from sleep paralysis, and neural gating of perceptual information that occurs during sleep processes. In my case, there was at first absolutely no eidetic content, with only the background and a few tiny specks of light, which were most probably effects of baseline retinal activity—and only in the final stages followed by the auditory hallucination and a “return to the body.” Similar states occur during normal sleep phases—processes that are highly dependent upon “neural gating” at reticular nuclei junctions in the thalamus. Austin (1999) describes the role of this neural gate in desynchronized sleep (D-sleep) which ‘enables our brain (a) to reactivate itself during otherwise drugged stupor of slow-wave sleep, but (b) to accomplish this so gently that we’re not sent all the way up to the waking state.
During our waking hours, stimuli from the outside shape consciousness. But during D-sleep the field of awareness can turn inward.7 Now it can pursue directions other than those dictated by new sensory stimuli entering from the outside. In many other respects, D-sleep and wakefulness seem to be “fundamentally equivalent brains states.” (p. 316)
7 Where “turning inward” means 1) participation exits the hylozoic zone and 2) allocentric processes are interrupted.

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Traditional meditation rituals are designed to take advantage of key triggers associated with “the passage downward” to root, background experiences. (Austin 1999) These include sleep-wake cycles timed to circadian rhythms that are most likely to express D-sleep. Depending upon the “spiritual pedagogy and doctrine” that accompanies students throughout their training, these state experiences can be seen for what they actually are—revealing the innate background processes of human consciousness—or for what we wish or imagine them to be—astral, divine or transcendent phenomena. Nature-based traditions such as Zen (Japanese) and Chan (Chinese) Buddhism tend to select the former, while the theistic tendencies of the Indo-European cultures, tend to elevate these experiences to transpersonal and divine domains.
Zen does, however have a term for such events: internal absorption. It arises as a paradoxical result of being both intensely awake and perceptually asleep. Its main characteristic is how much drops offline from experience while the sense of self remains strongly online. (Contrast this to normal dream states where exterior sensations drop offline, but virtual perceptions—images, stories, entire dream worlds and a virtual self—come online; while the waking self is completely absent. In states of internal absorption
The person’s mental field lacks sensations of vision, hearing and touch. Something stops them from entering from outside the world. Absent too are the subtler proprioceptive sense arising from inside the physical self. All that remains is clear awareness expanded to the nth degree throughout a vacuum plenum. (Austin, 1999 p. 476)
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Most of the EBMB’s consciousness-processing happens below the threshold of our conscious awareness. Perceptual information is directed along multiple subsystems that integrate multi- modal information in various ways to create discrete layers of awareness. In addition, what comes “online” and what remains “offline”, changes through ordinary sleep-wake cycles each day. The background processes are ever-present and constitute some of the most subtle of meditative experiences. These experiences “reveal the water to the fish” as it were; in moments of profound insight about the nature of the hylozoic zone and the non-separation of self and world. Some of what we know about the background comes from patients who suffer unusual perceptual disorders. Consider for example, the phenomenon known as Blindsight. Ordinary sight involves two visual systems. The higher-order system (the “first system”) is the one that crosses the threshold of conscious experience. It processes in the lateral geniculate regions of the visual cortex in the (B) brain. Here is where the data from the retina is translated into a high- resolution image of the object so that it can become a conscious visual percept in the (M) mind. The second visual system is gated below the threshold of (M) mind by the superior colliculus to pulvinar processing stations in the posterior parietal lobe of the (B) brain. This second system is the “background operating system” of the visual perceptual organ, but is not limited to sight. Like other “background operations” it is an integrated polymodal processor, which wholly unconsciously “constructs an orderly visual envelope of space enlivened by our hearing, touch, and other sensory modalities. (Austin, 1999) How can it do all this?
Because its single, so-called visual cells are not exclusively visual. Many of them also respond to the auditory and somatic sensory stimuli which enter from that very same region of space. They are polymodal, synesthetic. (pg 242)
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So, in the colliculus, hearing, feeling, and seeing come together. Through selective amplification and (de-selective) attenuation of vast amounts of stimuli, the system “promotes less to become more.”
Suppose its cells receive a single sensory stimulus, and they make only a relatively weak initial response. The colliculus then “turns up the gain.” Its circuits amplify the interactions among incoming stimuli. The result is to multiply, not merely to add, the physiological impact from each successive stimulus. In this manner, collicular nerve cells boost their responses enormously. (p. 242)
In patients who suffer from blindsight, the first visual system is temporarily or permanently “off- line” leaving only the second, background system. For these patients, their visual system seems to work “intuitively” since the fact they can point to and correctly manipulate target objects without consciously seeing them, suggests that there is a deeper, intuitive intelligence at work. Blindsight unveils the performance of the deeper, synesthetic visual system. In normal sighted persons, the perceptual information is “passed up” through a series of both hierarchical and horizontal processing. Complex negative (inhibitory) and positive (excitatory) feedback mechanisms sharpen, refine and complexify, through visual association processes, a sophisticated perception of the object. “Currently, thirty or more cortical regions function as visual association areas,” Austin (1999):
When anatomists try to plot out their intricate interconnections, their diagrams resemble the map of the Tokyo subway system. Some areas function more as feature detectors, Others go on to process representations of images. Out of
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granted: the miracle of vision. (p.243)
Similarly, in special meditative cases and “happy” accidents, the egocentric spatial-referencing system may drop offline, leaving only the allocentric system operating in the background. Apparently, this is what happened to Douglas Harding, when, as a young architect trekking in the Himalayas, he was struck with a peculiar absence of localized space. Instead, he experienced the global awareness of space-surround, “utterly free of me.” “I had lost a head and gained a world. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.” (Austin 1999).
Just how intricate, effective and independent of I-consciousness these background processes are is mind-boggling and ego-humbling. The Daoists have a term for it: Wu-Wei which means doing by not-doing. It is spontaneous effective action guided by direct participation.
One night, in the middle of my 13 days of radical transformation, I received a call from the person who took care of my horse at her barn. The horse, a big thoroughbred named Remington, had a history of very bad stomach ulcers, and seemed to be in so much pain that he might die. Since I was in a permanent state of awake witnessing, I drove to the farm in the middle of the night to be with him. I walked into his stall, and sat down on the floor. He thrashed about in pain for several minutes, then collapsed with his head upon my thigh. Normally, I would have been very emotional through this; but since I was in this altered state of witnessing, I was filled with a sense of charged clarity. It was not a calm state, but a state of intensified energy and awareness. It was as if his energy body suffused with mine, and expanded out into the

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universe. Only the body was perishing. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his tongue crawled out of his mouth and onto my thigh. There was nothing but intensified silence and a huge expansion of energy. He died. I did nothing. I was nothing more significant at that moment, then a simple prop to keep his head from falling into the manure. Then the energy aroused itself, and he stood up, gently as not to hurt me. He shook his head and got on with eating his hay. I returned to my truck. It was an early winter evening, a moonless night with a soft snow falling. I drove the unlighted curvy backroads to my home. I remember being mesmerized by the way the headlight illuminated the treeline of the country roads. Suddenly, I was transported into a space that seemed 3000 feet above the road, like when you are in an airplane, taking off or landing. My conscious self occupied the background space of expanded awareness, while my body-self continued to navigate the truck on the journey home. I remember wondering to myself “who is driving that truck?” I brought my “self” back down and into my body by intentionally “feeling for” the steering wheel. The first perceptual inputs were auditory—the sound of the tires and engine humming along the road. Then when I could feel my hands on the wheel, the entire scene recomposed itself.
There are two exceptional things happening in this event: 1) the “location of the self” and 2) the independence of the action-oriented body. The sense of self comes to be located in the “expanding disembodied space” of the background phenomena, absent any perceptual information, while the body itself navigates perfectly, guided by sensory processing. From the view of the self, there is what is called in Zen, the experience of internal absorption, (Austin, 1999) which is characterized by
(1) no spontaneous thought; (2) an intensified, fixed, internalized awareness; (3) an expansion of especially clear awareness into ambient space; 4) the disappearance of the bodily self; (5) a distinctive closing off of all sight and

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respiration. (p. 475)
What remains most amazing to me, is not so much this “apparently transcendent” experience, which can be ascribed to discrete changes taking place in the “neural gates” of the hippocampus labelled by neuroscientist as CA1 and CA3 cells (Austin, 1999)
What would happen if a person stopped that stream of messages which normally flows from CA3 cells on to CA1 cells? As part of his theory, Mandell postulates that such a deficit of messages might cause the comparator functions of the hippocampus to fail. As a result, the theory goes on to propose that … a “transcendent” consciousness would arise. (p.184)
Rather, what is most striking to me is that the EBMB carried on perfectly well “without me;” while “I” dallied about, happily discombobulated in ambient space!
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The Perceptual Brain
Part III: Mind
So far, we have discussed the embodied, body, and mind components of the EBMB. The “embodied” aspect pertains to the hylozoic zone and the interparticipation of body and world; “body” pertains to the full spectrum of “bodily space”: the exterioceptive, proprioceptive, and interoceptive perceptual organs, as well as the allocentric and egocentric orientations. “Mind” refers to the serial processes that create “chunking” of information, as well as the functions that integrate the virtual perceptions, associations and memory into the I-Me-Mine self-complex.
This section focuses on the “B” brain aspect of perception. We can think of “B” representing the “wiring diagram” of the illustrations in the Appendix. In other words, “B” represents the neurological relationships and anatomical structuration that are responsible for perception. The neurophysiology of perception is excruciatingly complex, and researchers feel they have just begun to identify some of the key dynamics and relationships. This paper addresses just a few aspects that are key to our understanding of the perceptual pathways from world to self. These pathways can be thought of as having “neural gates” that stratify information processing into deeper, polymodal subsystems that process a huge amount of information through parallel processes; and “higher” order systems that are themselves stratified across the three thresholds of consciousness—subconscious, conscious, and self-conscious.
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From a neuroanatomical perspective, the stratification primarily occurs in two discrete regions: 1) the deep mid-brain centers such as the thalamus, superior colliculus, and central gray, and 2) specific nucleated sites along the dorsal-ventral pathways of the temporal lobe. From a neurodynamic perspective, electrochemical pulses, “neural firing dynamics” up to speeds of 350 times per second, are responsible for bursts that can last or as long as 1.5 seconds. (Austin 1999) In certain regions, such as the reticular nucleus of the thalamus, when these bursts fire, they “close the gate” within the thalamus and block sensate messages from passing further up the perceptual brain. Typically, after a burst, there is a pause, which can last up to 3 or 4 seconds. This produces an overall effect of rhythmic, wave-like activity, that flows across key neuroanatomical features.
The conventional belief is that the reticular nucleus does not actually… “slam” the sensory gate within the thalamus. Rather, it helps the brain generate complex, rhythmic oscillations. First, these shift in the direction of hyperpolarization. Next, they rebound toward greater degrees of depolarization, that tendency toward excitation which is its functional opposite. As these oscillations shimmer in thalamocortical circuits, their waves take the form of rhythmic spindle activity in the EEG. (Austin, 1999 p. 267-8)
Cycles of excitation and inhibition also operate in a top-down fashion, such that increased activity in the evolutionarily newer parts of the cerebral cortex, excites GABA cells downstream in the reticular nucleus, which in turn activates the inhibitory bursts that attenuate sensate processing up the perceptual brain. (Austin 1999) In this way, higher-order attention processes in the mind can and do shunt away sensate information arising from the lower-order background. These higher-order attentional processes, associated with manipulating concepts and other virtual
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objects in thought (such as planning seating arrangement for a wedding in your head) has long been known to create “absent minded-ness” with regards to perceptions in the concrete world. Fortunately, the background processes most often “catch ourselves” being oblivious of things like oncoming cars. We are beginning to understand how to hack these processes in reverse, by quieting the symbolic, representational, and incessant worrying activities in our prefrontal cortex, in order to slip into the stream of peak perception required of exceptional performance—a condition that is often termed “hypofrontality.” Hypofrontality with heightened sensory awareness enables extreme athletes to achieve remarkable feats. However, due to the excitatory- inhibitory cycles of the nervous system, once the task is done, the sensory gates crash and close out all perceptual information. Absent both higher order processes and the sensory stream coming in from the sensory organs themselves, these athletes slip into deep unity-absorption states associated with the ambient, circumspatial “vacuum plenum” of the background. Whatever perceptual information is left—the vast expanse of space, the towering mountain, or a dying bird—everything, including the sense of self, collapses into it, creating an incomparable experience of one-ness.
Later on that fateful day of errors described earlier in this paper (Kotler, 2014)
When Dean Potter (see above) finally got that parachute off his head, he found himself sitting on the floor of the Cellar of Swallows. Above him, his friends were running around, trying to facilitate his rescue. He paid them little mind. His body was pretty destroyed—again he didn’t notice. Instead, his focus was entirely on the ground beside him, where a small swift with a broken wing lay dying. Instinctively, Potter picked up the bird, cradling it in his shredded
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palms. The connection was immediate. As soon as their flesh touched, he felt a powerful psychic union, as if his consciousness had merged with the bird’s consciousness. In that instant, they were no longer two wounded creatures: they had become one… (p. 55)
Potter ended up in this place of unity-consciousness: “I know it’s hard to believe,” he’s recorded saying, “but the experience was so powerful, the connection so true. I just sat there with that bird, holding it while it died. When it died, I died with it. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, I mean I became that dying bird.
From a phenomenological perspective, the stratified perceptual brain can be understood in several ways: 1) what sensate information is “online” and what is “offline”; 2) what threshold of consciousness has the information crossed; 3) what aspects of experience are hyperactive, and which are hypoactive; 4) what sensations are amplified, and which are attenuated; 5) what is foregrounded and what is backgrounded; 6) where (if any) is the inside-outside boundary and 7) which (if any) self-state arises.
Research that integrates neurology and phenomenological reports from meditators trained primarily in Zen traditions, suggests that when meditators sustain global awareness or maintain single-pointed concentration, they are training the perceptual brain in ways that uncouple the recurring cycles of the brain’s neural gates into more highly flexible and variable configurations. From this standpoint, Zen meditation training can result in notable effects: 1) Allow for persistent attention through wake-dream-sleep phases; 2) lower the threshold for conscious

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awareness into deeper layers of perceptual streams; 3) flood the conscious mind with vastly more perceptual information; 4) open the background processes to perceptual experience by, for example, consciously toggling between egocentric and allocentric modalities, which would disrupt the interior-exterior boundary of experience; 4) merging with the open, spatial modality of the background processes; and 5) awakening to the (nondual experience) of participation in the hylozoic zone. These effects are considered desirable to the extent that they dampen symbolically-conditioned and ego-centered modes of perception and amplify allocentric modes. This expands both the range of awareness into more inclusive domains of compassion and care.
The Primacy of Participation
As you read this paper, take a moment to reflect on the question:
What are you participating with?
There is not a lot of perceptual information in the grayscale marks on the page—and yet they provide stimuli for all kinds of activities in your mind. The phonetic alphabets enables simple marks on the page to be modulated from exterior perceptual data (the markings) into interior, aural perceptions as speech inside your head. Speech in turn invites mental images, and associative memories and feelings that participate in chunking the information into packages of salient meaning. The message I am trying to convey is translated into meaning you are attempting to make. The meaning is always a variant of the message. Participation is never replication. It always creates emergent novelty.
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The Zen notion of direct perception was never meant to suggest that we can see the world as it is. It is more correct to say that the awakened state sees the perception for what it is. Perception is a matter of degrees of constraints in an infinite field of participation. The first, obvious constraint, is our human species biology. A second constraint involves our individual physiology—whether the perceptual organs are fully developed and healthy; as well their degree of skill, i.e. degree of attunement, refinement and acuity. A third constraint is state-specific and concerns a person’s thresholds for conscious awareness—our ability to be “aware of” if not “fully conscious of” for example, the saccadic movements of my eyes, the perspectival constraints of my language, or even the normally pre-attentive ground of perceptual experience. While it is not possible to break through the first two constraints, direct perception in the Zen sense of Kensho-awareness, deepens and expands awareness such that it lowers the threshold of consciousness, such that even the background composition enters into the perceptual experience. Still, amongst these rare experience that qualify as Kensho, there are different degrees of perceptual awareness. The full spectrum of the perceptual experience might not come into conscious awareness all at once. There are often initial phases of absorption in the spatial ground, followed by an intensely vivid, and polymodal synesthetic “surround sound” phase whose panoramic vistas may (or may not) be accompanied by a subtle egocentric reference.
Sensory clarity
Over the last 10 years I have worked with many groups and individuals both in the context of cooperative inquiry. When groups come together for transformative practice, they go through stages wherein they dis-embed from the limited role of their social self, and move into deeper, more authentic engagement with each other. (See Roy, 2016). There is a key indicator that the
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group is shifting from inauthentic modes of relating to open, participatory complex processes of relating that are creative, insightful and generative of collective healing. The key is when individuals begin to fall into a state I call sensory clarity. They realize, as if for the first time, that there is just a group of people sitting in a room together. This realization comes after a tortuous experience where people debate, challenge, attack, disassociate, pontificate, politick for power, complain, agonize – a full spectrum of neurotic behaviors set into motion by the projections, fears, defenses, and narratives stored up in the false persona of the social self. Once all this is dropped, and only when all that is dropped, do the senses actually come “on line” and people see each other as they really are, perceive the “scene” as it really is, in its simple, ordinary concrete reality. The experience is both remarkable and humbling at the same time. Remarkable, because as the senses come online, the colors, textures, and scents become vivid and crisp; and the heightened sense of touch can activate the sexual libido (kundalini) of the body (lower chakra). It is humbling in its complete ordinariness: absent the incessant internal dialogue, social strategizing, and psychic warfare that we are always otherwise participating with, the simple fact of our ordinary humanity comes to the foreground of our perception.
Sensory clarity, I believe is the pre-requisite for authentic human relating. We have to get to square one before we can build a shared or collective understanding—what Martin Buber 8called I-Thou -ness. Understanding perception therefore, becomes a matter of importance in the realm of human relationship. Too often we facilitate group process by mitigating emotion, whereas too little attention is spared for the senses. It all comes down to What are you participating with?
8 http://teacherrenewal.wiki.westga.edu/file/view/I+and+Thou+1958.pdf

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If sensory clarity is a marker of the possibility for relational depth, I began to wonder if activating and alivening perception could be a portal to generating relational depth and intimacy. Too often we associate intimacy with affective modes of being—with feelings and emotions. I began to think of the many ways people have always added color and jewelry to themselves as part of their courting behaviors—effectively making the perceptual experience more intense. I also began to think of the role of music and song, and the way that being in the rich perceptual environment of nature or a museum, makes a great first date! Not to mention the deeply sensory experience of two people touching. I began to think of perception as the out-pouring energy toward the object that is desired or loved; whereas affect was the flooding-in energy of relationship. I wrote (Roy, 2015) “perceptions are guided by what we might call the ‘appetitive drive of the senses.’”
The senses are not passive organs that function like windows opened up onto the world. The senses are more like open roads—they are designed to go somewhere. This is something that Goethe knew—our senses are not passive receptors but they are dynamic and creative actors that enact perception. (p.52)
Equine Assisted Therapy
For over 15 years I have partnered with my horses to create equine facilitated transformative practices for adults. For the first 10 years, the practices involved mostly working with affective dimensions of human experience. Horses are especially good at stripping away our monkey minds and social narratives and allowing us to drop into our bodily sensations. Most people go

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about their ordinary lives with something like “locked-in” syndrome – they are participating only with thoughts, mental models, narratives, expectations, associations, etc… in their mind. Over time, however, I noticed that people involved in certain spiritual communities who seemed to be able to quiet their monkey mind, were often less successful in engaging the horses beyond passive accompaniment. The horses wouldn’t bond, follow, joke around, or engage. Eventually I discovered that there was another kind of locked-in syndrome in which the person is fully absorbed in their body, and incapable of experiencing the outer world. They were in a very real sense, perceptually dead. I actually had to train people to use their everyday senses – like their eyes and ears and hands – to experience the horse in a sensory way. This was a real shock to me, and it continues to boggle my mind today. No wonder people don’t have any clarity around their experiences in the world! Can it be true that most of us are dissociated from our bodies and disengaged from the world? If so, we are only left with the coarse-grained linguistic categories with which to relate – leaving us misunderstood and isolated in the process.
From Self to World
The perceptual organs are in direct participation with the world. But the ordinary, everyday self withdraws into a simulated world of virtual perceptions, memories and thoughts that create and maintain the I-me-mine complex. This is the “house that monkey builds” (Trungpa 1987), the illusory fantasy world of ignorance (Austin, 1998) that splits us off and trap us inside. This creates an existential condition I call “Locked-in Syndrome” and leads to the errors and confusions that call perception into question. We can think of “locked-in syndrome” as the ego’s frame of reference. From this particular frame of reference, visual perception is deceptive, because it does not correct for refraction of light in water. However, if a person uses their body

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to throw a spear at a fish, the perceptual EBMB as a holistic participation does the “calculation” perfectly. Locked-in syndrome makes us think that vision operates like a camera, rather than understanding perception as a holistic participation with the world. Experiments in visual perception exacerbate the locked-in frame of reference, as subjects’ heads are literally held in place in front of displays. As it turns out, saccadic eye movements, subtle movements of the head, and the body’s proprioceptions of angular rotation, play essential roles in perceptual acumen. (Clark, 2011). When we are locked-into our monkey mind, mistaking the simulated world for the world that arises from direct participation, our science degrades into linguistic recursion. For example, we know that the color blue was distinguished as its own color much later in human history than the other primary colors. From the point-of-view of the ego, obsessed with the virtualized world of language and thought, the reason why must be because there was no word for the color—that the word invented the perception, rather than the other way around. Recent research (https://www.dunnedwards.com/colors/specs/posts/the-history-and-science- behind-the-color-blue) suggests a more embodied reason—that colors become lexically distinguished when people develop distinct uses for them. Just think about how significant this explanation depends upon embodied participation. Whether the color “exists or does not exist” in the environment is not the question. The question becomes “whether there is adequate participation” for the color to emerge as a distinct perception. This brings us to the notion of correct perception as adequate participation; and perceptual errors as a consequence of lack of adequate participation. This solves the perennial parable of the snake that is mistaken for a rope. As Roy (2014) describes:
Let’s go back to the story of the rope that is mistaken for a snake. The senses perceive “what is.” If all of the reality enters in as context, then the person will

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experience the rope as a rope. If, however, the context is limited to a memory of a snake that once bit a dog, then the person is most likely to experience the rope as a snake. When the villagers hear her story, even though their senses perceive the words directly, if the context is limited to this story, then their experience will be one of limited participation, and they too will mistake the rope for a snake.
Adequate participation perfects science as it leads us to a “good” theory which “orients us toward a correct view,” which is to say, away from the separate, privatized view of the ego complex, and toward a view with more degrees of freedom. The ideal view, therefore, would be one with the requisite degrees of freedom to perceive that slice of reality of interest.9 Participation, therefore, is the way our own EBMB activity enacts or brings forth new systemic wholes (Varela 1991) which in turn creates new potentials for participation. Furthermore, the notions of adequate participation, informs the enactive and embodied aspect of skillful action and ethical wisdom in the world (Varela 1992).
Recent studies in enactive neuroscience (Clark 2016, 2011; Gallagher 2008, 2005; Gibson,2015; Noe,2004) stretch the focus of enactive participation further into the dimensions of the “body- mind” (the “BM” in the EBMB). In these approaches, the BM itself doesn’t sit inside the brain, the mind or the body, but is fully extensive with “world” through the body’s gestures. The complexity of our human activities, they reason, are such that they cannot possibly be encoded
99 The astute reader will recognize this as a version of the law of requisite variety in cybernetics: see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/REQV AR.html

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and stored representationally in our separate bodies. Rather the body “stores the activity codes” for the kinds of participation that will retrieve the relevant information or compute the relevant data. We all know how we learn to count using our fingers. Clark (2011) tells us that gesture goes far deeper than that. He shows how gestures alone, or motor acts in general, “somehow shifts or reduces aspects of the overall neural cognitive load” in an “organismically extended process of thought.” Consider writing as an example. Clark’s view suggests that it is not that the paper serves merely as a medium in which to store our thoughts, rather, the participation is a bi- directional and emergent one where “the paper provides a medium in which… via some kind of coupled neural-scribbling-reading-unfolding, we are enabled to explore ways of thinking that might otherwise be unavailable to us. (p.126) Physical materials, as Vygotsky (1986) understood them to be, are carriers of cognitive effects. According to McNeill (2005), then, this implies “that the gesture, the actual motion of the gesture itself, is a dimension of thinking.” (p.98) Echoing McNiell, Clark (2011) writes
Our free (i.e. spontaneous, nonconventional) gestures are not… merely expressions of or representations of our fully achieved inner thoughts, but are themselves “thinking in one of its many forms.” (p. 127)
Ordinarily, we think of painting as depicting an eidetic image in the mind of the artist. A theory of action in perception (Noe, 2004) considers painting to be a deictic act, wherein the artist is not depicting, but reaching and pointing through polymodal bodily actions, involving the hand, the head, the eyes and more. “Instead of plotting a course through an internal map, you act on what you look at, and you let the fact that what interests you is there in front of you place a guiding function.” (p. 24)
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Seeing, on the enactive view, is like painting. … The painter looks to the world, then back to the canvas, then back to the world, then back to the canvas. Eye, head, canvas, paint, world are brought into play in the process of constructing the picture. Seeing, like painting, involves the temporally extended process of reaching out and probing the scene. (p.223)
Andy Clark (2011) calls Noe’s model of perception “SSM”- a strong sensory-motor model. SSM’s extend perception into the world through the activity of the body. Clark identifies a possible model that push the EBMB even further with his Hypothesis of Extended Cognition (HEC). The HEC predicts that whenever and wherever possible, cognitive information is exported onto the physical world in ways that create “affordances” for continued skillful action. Writing down a note to pick up a friend on the way to work, and placing it on the seat of my car is one example. Perception and cognition thus become not a matter of perceiving and knowing a world, but of reaching toward and building a world of affordances through gestures.
Neural correlates suggest that this “dual-stream” hypothesis is correct—i.e., that there is a perceptual system that is EBMB-based, and one that is further removed from the realm of direct sensorimotor engagement. (Clark 2011) According to this research, the visual processing system has two streams—a ventral stream geared toward “enduring objects, explicit recognition, and semantic recall” associated with more eidetic types of perceptual cognition. This stream operates whenever real-world objects are unavailable for employing as external instruments of perception. When such real-world affordance are available, another, semi-autonomous dorsal stream,
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operates in the here and now, to guide motor action in the world, without the mediation of eidetic representation. Like so many other recent discoveries, these distinct streams were “teased apart” by studying patients with deficits in one but not the other visual processing stream (Clark 2011). 10The discovering of “dual-streaming” processors lead Clark to suggest a new hypothesis of embodied perception and cognition: HOC (Hypothesis of Organism-Centered Cognition) which states
Human cognitive processing (sometimes) literally extends into the environment surrounding the organism. But the organism (and within the organism, the brain/CNS) remains the core and currently the most active element. Cognition is organism centered even when it is not organism bound. (p. 139)
Some of the hypothetical territory here depends on how far are we willing to go with our conceptual categories. Consider again, for example, how we maintain our balance (part of the proprioceptive functions). Inside the inner ear a grain of calcium rocks on a kind of “saddle” that is lined with tiny hairs that sense its movements. As the head moves relative to the center of the earth’s gravity, the tiny hairs perceive the movement and position of the calcium. Now imagine being in a row boat, with a saddle for a seat. In your imagination, place a smooth and rounded stone in that saddle, and think of how you could use it to keep your balance as you stand in the boat. What if you had a serious ear infection, and your internal balance system went offline?
10 Note, previously we described the ego-centric and allocentric pathways that correlated with the ventral and dorsal subsystems of bodily space, which is consistent with the ventral-dorsal properties of visual processing described by Clark.

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Would you be willing to extend the category of perceptual organ out of the EBMB and into the boat? Switching to the notion of correct perception as adequate participation, resolves the problem in one fell swoop. Perception is not a static architecture bounded within a conceptual category of one’s choosing. It is an active operation involving organism and world, that both extends and contract, reaches and retracts, to optimize participation.
The Role of the Imagination
In ordinary experience, the imagination is tightly woven into the fabric of perception at various layers. There is the imaginary part that is intentional—for example, when we allow ourselves to imagine faces and animals in the morphing shapes of clouds. There are pernicious types of imaginary components that lurk beneath our consciousness, such as when we overlay bias and prejudice in creating false memories in reporting on crimes and mishaps. Direct perception, in the purest sense, is perception absent the participation of imagination. We can also think of direct perception, as degrees of awareness of the role of the virtual and imaginary in our experience. The greater degree of awareness, the greater choice we have to intentionally add in or subtract out the components of experience that are extraneous to the objects of perception. The integration of awareness and intention, consciousness and choice, is spiritual wisdom.
Perception and imagination begin to interweave deep in the (ordinarily) preattentive, subthreshold levels of experience. Because of this, the early phenomenologists (Crowell 2001; Gallagher & Zahavi, 2008; Kockelmans 1967; Welton, 1999;) argued that the imaginal, eidetic properties could never be perceived, because the perceptual properties of experience were
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 78 themselves, products of imaginal operations. Only recently has western neurophenomenology
and neuroscience begun to unravel their relationships in deeper layers of the EBMB.
Consider, for example, how we ordinarily perceive “first person perspective.” We look from “here” to “there.” We are unaware of the perceptual processing deep in the EBMB which subtle image-mind the shape of your body into this “picture” of reality. If you watch this video of a squirrel running up a tree, you will have what I call “go-pro” perspective. Because the movements are unfamiliar, the “body” your imagination ordinarily supplies as the “background” doesn’t match up with the perceptual experience. Of course, there is a little bit of both “go-pro” and “first person” perspective in your experience. The point is, meditative practices can train the mind to decouple the imaginal or eidetic component of perception from the experience, creating a more naïve, more direct perception. Thereafter, the imaginal functions of the virtual-simulation operations of the mind, could reconfigure themselves in a kind of retroactive fashion, and offer you an imaginal body to go along with the video experience. You would be able to become squirrel. It is precisely this kind of “shape-shifting” that fascinated the Daoists sages and Shamans, who noticed that energy conspires with form to create perceptual experience. (Angle, Hall and Ames 1998; 2009; Hansen, 1992; Kjellberg and Ivanhoe 1996; Mair, 1983).
This imputing of a subtle mental model of the body onto “first person perspective” has led philosophers and phenomenologists to assume that the imaginative aspect of experience must be prior to the bodily spatiality of the world, and hence must somehow “taint” or “indirect” this aspect of experience. This has led to the idea of “the body in the mind.” (Brown 2002, 2005; Heron 1992, 1996). For Brown (2002), the affect-laden intentional states preconstitute the subjective ground of experience. His theory of microgenesis places the “image” stage as a prior

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and requisite stage for the “body” to appear, and as a result exists for the subject as an object among other objects in the world. In similar fashion, Heron (1992) describes the basic life-cycle of the ego as moving from emotion to imagery, then conception and finally action. “the imaginal mind [is] at work in perception … it is a shaping and moulding process; perceptual imagery is being made by the psyche…
I am not aware of my imaginal mind busy with the generation of perceptual imagery whether through seeing or hearing or touching. I turn what is a continuous process, a transaction, into something out there that I am looking at. I am aware of the image, the product of the process, but not of the imaging itself. (p. 145)
While it is correct to say that first person perspective already includes eidetic elements, it is incorrect to conclude that perceptual experience begins at first person perspective. Gendlin (2009) was already aware of this distinction when writing about the implicit understanding in the body:
The first person process is not a ‘perspective’ First person process has been widely misunderstood as being inside an externally-observed body.15 I have tried to show that first person process is bodily-implied environment interaction. Our conceptual systems are explications developed from within environmental interaction, and then tested in it. In the usual view there is an unbridgeable gap between first and third person ‘perspectives’. But only the
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third person is a perspective, a view (the ‘view from nowhere’, the observed without the observer). [page 349] The word ‘perspective’ assumes that the environment is something merely viewed, not interacted with and behaved in. First person process is not a perspective. If first person process is understood from first person process, we can explicate how it is bodily, implicitly conscious, far exceeding the objects of attention (of viewing), always an implicit understanding, needing no added observer.
Thompson (2005) uses the term “sensorimotor subjectivity” as the “zero point,” the “null point of orientation,” or absolute indexical “here” prior to subjective being in relation to which things appear perspectivally:
The lived body manifests itself in perceptual experience, not primarily as an intentional object but as an implicit and practical “I can” of movement and motor intentionality. (p. 249)
The question is not whether we can virtualize the body using internal images and representational simulations. Rather, the debate involves whether virtual imagery is necessary for perceptual experience to occur. A third option is to suppose that the virtualization of visual perception is necessary but not sufficient for conjuring up mental imagery; and that in order to do so, requires the facilitation of on-going sensorimotor processes. The distinction between body schema and body image, described by Gallagher (2005) can help us better understand these options. For Gallagher, the deeper proprioceptive layers of the body are responsible for maintaining a coherent schema that locates and coordinates body movements. Body image on
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the other hand, involves higher-order processes that rely on mental framing at or above thresholds of conscious attending. Gallagher compares patients who suffer from two dramatically different types of deficit in their body awareness. Personal neglect” resulting from brain injury, involves the loss of “ownership” over movements in parts of the body. Arms and hands may manipulate objects successfully (as in dressing or undressing oneself) but the person is not aware of the intention or the act. According to his terminology, in cases of neglect, the deficit involves the imaging functions of the EBMB. In very rare cases, the body fails to locate or coordinate itself by itself and instead requires the patient to continually reference their body image and attend to their body as object, in order to make any movement at all. In the first case of neglect, Gallagher argues, the body schema is intact, but parts of the virtual body are lost.
In the second case, the body schema is lost, and the body image operates as the compensatory function. In some instances, for example with a patient named Ian, needs to see not only the target object, but also his hand in order to successfully reach out for objects. In other instances, Ian relies on cognitive control under the guidance of virtual body imaging, to articulate basic movement such as walking. This results in movement that is less fluid than normal—movement which looks more like a result of robotic “decision-path” calculation, rather than organic, embodied activity. The kind of movement that people ordinarily make when learning a complex dance sequence for the first time. For Ian, “imagined movement,” Gallagher says, “lowers the threshold for continuous action.”
In place of the missing body schema processes, we might say that Ian has substituted a virtual body schema—a set of cognitively driven motor processes. This virtual schema seems to function only within the framework of a body image that is consciously and continually maintained. If he is denied access to
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a visual awareness of his body’s position in the perceptual field, or denied the ability to think about his body, then, without the framework of the body image, the virtual body schema ceases to function—it cannot stand on its own. (p.53)
Ian’s condition shows us that in normal experience “there is no phenomenal difference between motor space, proprioceptive space and perceptual space.” Yet it also brings up a kind of chicken- and-egg question, as to which is more fundamental. Gallagher surmises that it is only because Ian’s vestibular and proprioceptive functions of his head and neck remain intact, that the visual- imaginary mapping successfully links the body to action. (p.63) Further research is warranted to determine the minimum viable structures and relationships required for different sensorimotor functions and associated actions. In any case, Gallagher anticipates that what will be found is something like an “ecological circle” between afferent signals coming from the body schema pathways, and efferent signals relaying back from the body image network. This of course, is the same kind of “circle” responsible for neuropathies such as phantom limb. (Doidge, 2007).
This notion of an ecological circle in the EBMB is useful in other ways (see Appendix C). We can think of the body schema as located in the hylozoic zone—the ecological overlay of the body and the world. We can think of the body image as the ecological overlay of the body and the virtual mind. In this way we can calibrate the continuity of world and image, body and mind.
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 83 States of Mind
The imagination plays a preeminent role in the emergence of non-ordinary states of consciousness. The notion of “ecological overlay” is helpful in understanding how perceptual experience organizes as different state experiences, without disrupting the continuity of the EBMB. Thompson (2015) identifies what he terms “altered embodiment” along this ecological spectrum. These experiences are associated with specific neural correlates that overlap with those that specify first-person and third-person perspectives. I have already described how even in conventional first-person perspective, there is a subtle imaginative overlay of some third- person perspectival content. It is not difficult, therefore, to think of how amplifying one or the other, or combining elements of both, would result in non-ordinary experiences of world spaces and body spaces, and the location of the self.
Normally, the perspective of the self includes 1) feeling of ownership of the body, 2) sense of agency over its actions, 3) being anchored to or located in the body and 4) referencing the world to the body and 5) referencing affects (emotional tones) to the self. Any and all of these can be amplified or attenuated in non-ordinary states of mind. (Thompson 2015) Autoscopy is a phenomenon wherein the person perceives their body from an outside, third-person perspective, while otherwise fully awake. “Fully awake” here means you are simultaneously perceiving yourself located inside your actual body, for which you assume ownership and agency; while in addition, you perceive a duplicate body which arises as object of a third-person perception which you neither “occupy” nor “move.” A slightly different phenomenon, where the sense of the “I” that owns and controls, and to whom the world appears, alternates back and forth between the
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combined, a state experience called “bi-location.”
As I walked down the rows of corn growing in the valley, my sense of relative size became fluid. As a grew smaller and smaller, the corn rose higher and higher, until it seemed like I was looking up at the sky from the bottom of a deep canyon. The sun caught me at my throat and split me in two—a tiny self at the bottom of that canyon, and an expansive self who was floating above in the sky, witnessing its disappearance into nothingness.
“The world of out-of-body experiences,” concludes Thompson (2015) “seems to be the world of the imagination.”
In my view, the impression of seeing things in an out-of-body experience is like the impression of seeing things in a dream; in both cases, what’s happening isn’t perception, but the mental simulation of perception. (p.224)
Perhaps it is helpful to say that an OOBE, is a particular ecological overlay between the perceptual body and the imaginal mind. Perhaps it is too rigid to assert that a given experience is “one kind of experience” and not another. If experience is an ecology of participation, then states of mind should be expected to be fluid and transitory between a spectrum of varieties of experience. In other words, because of the deep continuity of world, body, and mind, all experiential states are inclusive of world, body and mind—all the time. The differences Thompson has been describing all involve the degree to which the body schema operates and the degree of the body-image(ined) overlays. We might say that the “overlay” can be transparent in

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ways that complement the body schema, or, as the overlay becomes more opaque, the image- minded, virtual bodies, conflict with and eventually displace the embodied body schema. Falling asleep is an ordinary phase transition in this process of attenuation of the body and amplification of the imaginal mind.
First our ordinary perceptions quiet down, and the body sensations cease. We lose contact with our senses, and control over our bodies. The imaginal mind creates the dream world out of the overlays of perception, perspective, memories, fantasies, and narrative scenes and stories. Like film clippings on the floor of the editing room, snippets of reality can be spliced apart and spliced together in an infinite number of ways. One of the best ways to explore what imaginal overlays are operating in the background of waking life, is to learn how to be lucidly aware of the dreams you make.
An Ecological Theory of Perception
Using this notion of overlay, we can extend the scope of continuity of experience beyond conventional waking states and into other states of mind, such as the dream and sleeping states, and also including the mind’s dying process and excursions into non-ordinary states of consciousness. Perception is a kind of multi-layered ecology of participation, where figure and ground, agent and environment, content and context can filter themselves in or out. I am thinking of the slider tool in a photo imaging app, where the transparency of objects can be set from 0 to 100 percent. Similarly, the overlays of perception, operate in continuously shifting modes of transparency, creating different reveals, revealing new worlds. It should be noted that these
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 86 “transparency settings” are not reserved to visual objects, but involve what we are calling all the
“perceptual overlays” that make our experience complex, dynamic, and richly textured.
In the Appendices C-H I try to illustrate this idea of an ecological overlay of perceptual experience. Appendix C illustrates where the hylozoic zone is created by the overlay of the world and the body. This composes what we have been describing as the bodily space or background, (Merleau Ponty 2012, 1964), body schema (Gallagher 2005), first person process (Gendlin 2009), and the zone of sensori-motoricity that Thompson (2007) refers to as the “null zone” or “zero point.” The shorthand I have used in this paper is simply EB, embodied body. In contrast, the body image, (Gallagher 2005) participates in the overlay between the body and the virtual functions of the mind—what we commonly refer to as the imagination or liminal space, and what I have labelled as the BM, body-mind. Appendix F is a way to illustrate where the ecological overlay of the many virtual bodies described above by Thompson (2015) would appear and disappear, phasing in and out of transparency, moving back and forth between the realms of possibilities and actualities (Whitehead 1978). Perception “rescues from vagueness”, wrote Whitehead (1978) and warned us of “reducing perceptions to consciousness of impressions on the mind.”
Affordances
In our ecology of perception, we identify the hylozoic zone as the world-body overlay; and the body image as the overlay of body-mind. What I construe to be the overlay between world- mind? I call this overlay “brain” since “brain” is the physical, or worldly aspect of mind. More
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significantly, “brain” represents what has evolved through the world as world. This is the MB, mind-brain at the end of our EBMB (embodied- body- mind -brain). This is the region labelled “affordances” in Appendix E. It is the region where the world accommodates the brain and where the brain accommodates the world. Brain and world constitute a continuum, in the same way as body and world—through complex, dynamic processes of relating. This dynamic “structural coupling” (Thompson 2007; Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991) of brain and world is the basis of the notion that the world offers up novel possibilities, or “affordances” (Gibson 2015; Masciotra 2007) for the world and brain to co-create novel ways to participate.
A good example of affordance is the how we invent new uses for old items, when we don’t have the right tool to do the job. Objects, lying around in the world, “afford” possibilities that the mind doesn’t always see, until it sees it in a new light. We scan the room and go through the drawers, “looking” to find something we are not sure what we are looking for—until we find it. Then, brain and object, mind and world become one in the action made to solve the functional problem. Objects take on new meaning, the world grows richer. A blade of grass becomes a reed in a whistle, a whistle becomes a straw, the straw a handle to hold a nail in a tight spot. Every object in nature affords some possibility in the mind of a person. Affordance is a result of tight evolutionary fit between the organism and environment, which allows the organism to “dynamically steer” in the direction of the “good;” which is a satisfaction of a “search drive” in an adaptive landscape. Perception, as an ecology of overlay, can be construed as a continual dialing in and out of available features “afforded by the world” until it satisfies the conditions for a needed or desired action. A convenient analogy would be tuning a radio to a station that
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final configuration. Regardless, the continuum from world to mind, is never broken.
This is a dance of “dynamic co-emergence” (Thompson, 2007): “all that a subject perceives becomes his perceptual world and all that he does, his effector world” (p. 59) This way of talking about affordances is subtly biased toward the subjective or organismic pole. The complete set of couplings between world and mind, constitute what von Uexkṻll Barbieri, 2008; Buchanan 2008) called the Umwelt, or the world that is disclosed through participation of the organism and their world. The emphasis here is on the world-building or world-disclosing activities (Heidegger 1962). We can think of two agents participating in an overlapping Umwelt, where worlds and minds collide. This extension of perception extended as world, is illustrated in Appendix E. The intimate connection between the natural objects and the perceptual organs of man, was something that Goethe (1988) recognized:
The human beings knows himself only insofar as he knows the world; he perceives the world only in himself, and himself only in the world. Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us.
Goethe is saying that every new connection extends the organs of perception further as world, and generates self-knowledge. This very closely parallels the notion that perception, when awakened, gives rise to insight-wisdom in the Buddhist tradition (see following section). This underscores the fact that the perceptual organs are not merely passive instruments or message bearers, but they are actively engaged in the creation of a significant environment.” (Buchannan 2008). Furthermore, the mind is not required to interpret meaning from this engagement, because
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the significance is entailed in the environment-organism coupling, which acts as a “storehouse of meaning” that is accessible through iterative process of probing and participation. Pick up an old baseball bat, and you will re-live the significance of the hit; slip on a baseball glove, and you will recapture the significance of the game. “The creation of the Umwelt occurs through the interpretive work of the organism” [emphasis mine], writes Buchanan (2008):
the interpretive process remains a biological relation that occurs between an organism and its other, where neither is reducible to a cause-effect scenario. They both give and receive the sign of the others, and it is in the convergence of these signs that an interpretive process takes place. [emphasis mine] (p.33)
Goethe wrote: If the eye were not sun-like It could never behold the sun
to which von Uexkull replies If the sun were not eye-like It could not shine in any sky
(Buchanan 2008, p.33)
In other words, there is something about the sun that affords seeing. This is not a trivial statement. That the world affords significance points to its inexhaustible richness and generativity. This is the basis of how perception gathers the world-disclosing information that generates insight-wisdom.
Gibson’s (2015) own ecological theory of visual perception describes in detail the key aspects of the animal-planetary overlay that generates perceptual information. These aspects are the
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invariant constants that have been present throughout the evolution of animal life. We might think of them as the way that the planet has extended itself into animal life. The fundamental affordances of animal life are (1) The Medium: water, earth or air; (2) The Substance: water, earth or air; (3) The Surfaces: where media meet and create an interface. Note, according to Gibson’s taxonomy of affordances, water is a medium for aquatic animals, but a substance for land dwellers (whose medium is air). The affordances of the environment, are what it offers, provides, or furnishes, either for good or ill. Like vonUxekull’s Umwelt, and Thompson and Varela’s notion of structural coupling, affordances, for Gibson, imply the “complementarity of the animal and the environment.” Gibson offers a radical hypothesis of perception, which says that to perceive is to reveal what the world affords. Its radical implication is that to perceive is already an act of evaluation and meaning-signifying. This would explain the deep purposiveness interwoven into the very fabric of existence. As Roy (2006) emphasized, our fundamental values are laid down in the very primary micro-stages of moment-to-moment awareness. She writes
I look out over a springtime meadow, taking in all the colors and textures and aromas. My eye settles on a daisy—not just any daisy, but just this particular one. My mind relaxes in the joyful play of this daisy and I. These are inherently valuable existents which exteriorize for me over the duration of the cognitive moments. For the bee, bird, and butterfly, there are a set of different values… (p.145)
Changing values changes the way we participate in perceiving the world. This reveals different affordances. Think of the way we might scan though a bookshelf at a
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bookstore, without looking for something in particular. What catches our eye, depends upon some subtle ways our intentional-motivational state primes our behavior. We move along, picking up information—clues where to move next. We may be irritated in the self-help section, and get pleasantly lost in the biographies. A book of images, photographs or artwork draws our attention, and we move as our values move. We move, in a very real sense, guided by the appetitive drive of our senses. This is the same way that we move in and among the worldly significance. We interact with the world, and change it. Change affords new affordances, new significance, new ways of participating. “For all we know,” writes Gibson, “there may be many offerings … that have not been taken advantage of…” (p.121)
To perceive directly, for Gibson, is to participate as the world affords. There is complementarity, but no intermediary. Take light, for an example. We ordinarily consider it a medium of transfer of information, between the world of objects and our perceptual organs. But, Gibson argues, we don’t see light itself. Light in the environment is ambient array. It is an aspect of the medium (atmosphere or water, for land or aquatic animals) which, along with other aspects of the environment, i.e. substances and surfaces, interacts to create information. We in turn perceive this information directly. We see the green leaf because we receive this information: “the leaf is reflecting green and absorbing red.” Perception is the direct receipt of information in the environment. As such it needs no interpretation. In a structureless environment, the ambient light itself would carry no information, and hence, could not be seen. Seeing is gathering information about the real world. It is direct participation with information that is structured in the environment. We not only perceive the world directly, but we directly perceive the structure of
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(2014) calls perceptual learning. It is an intimate process, in which the world enters us:
It adds that we resonate to and incorporate the information that specifies those phenomena directly into the neural networks that our perceptual systems activate. This process changes us… we are no longer our old self that has simply added another item to our archive of retrievable information. By incorporating new structural information directly into our appropriate neural network, we become a new, reorganized self… (p.39)
The above discussion shows how a theory of affordances dissolves the crisp boundary between world and self, object and subject, in the same way that our theory of the hylozoic zone dissolved the sharp categories of world and body. Appendix G illustrates a third “fuzzy boundary”—the zone that overlays world and mind. We can think of this zone of extended mind, in terms of what Masciotra (2007) calls the network of virtual actions and spielraum (room to maneuver). The mind, in this case, constitutes the network of virtual actions; and the world of affordances constitutes the spielraum. We often think of creative insight as an activity of mind. The mind’s virtuality and ability to simulate novel experiences, is only one key component of creativity. It might be secondary to how we participate with, and what affordances are provided by, the environment.
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“It is easier to enhance creativity by changing conditions in the environment than by trying to make people think more creatively.” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996 p.1)
The spielraum represents the conditions in the environment that set both the contraints on and possibilities for creative excavation of affordances that have not been previously seen. This is perception as insight – bringing into reveal, the structures of the world, such that they align with creative ways of acting. A spielraum is not constituted merely by the objects in the environment, but by the objects as they relate to actions the body is capable of performing. Consider, for example, two climbers facing a rock wall. Their perceptual organs “see” the same wall; but the more experienced climber will see more “holds” for climbing. The more experienced climber will be able to virtualize more possibilities for a route up the wall, and then exercise these possibilities in real actions. For the expert, there are more affordances in their spielraum, including more potentials through which they can search in the virtual possibility space. The expert can translate these potentials into training exercises for the amateur, which will then, above a certain threshold of experience, become part of their real-world-actionable spielraum.
All agency is born of this suitable fit between the network of virtual potentials in the mind of the actor, and the set of affordances provided in the space in which the actor maneuvers. We might say that, in this zone where the mind and the perceptual world overlap, the mind provides the possibility space, the perceptual organs provide the search engine, and the world supplies the affordances.
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Where then, might we ask, is perceptual information stored? Is it in the virtual simulations of the mind? In the perceptual pathways of the EBMB, or in the world? From the enactive view described here, the information is not stored any where but it is stored in the number of possible functional relations between mind, perceptual body, and world. In this sense, information is more of a result of being able to anticipate and respond; to be able to search and retrieve affordances as needed, then the ability to store some thing some where and subsequently to access it from there. Rather, what Clarks is describing is an active, in-the-present-moment, dynamic, living participation. This is the sense in which Any Clark (2011, 2016) alludes to when talking about cognitive extension and “supersizing the mind.” Here intelligence is thought of as the ability to organize virtual networks, with affordances in the world that are always “ready at hand” (Heidegger 1962).
Perceptual acuity, (direct perception, adequate participation) reveals what is “ready at hand.” Clark see this as an economy of embodiment, such that whenever and wherever it is possible to export the cognitive load of information/retrieval/storage tasks into the world, organisms will always choose to do so. According to his hypothesis, the organism retains the sensorimotor action- patterns that will generate successful search and retrieve processes in response to anticipatory processes set in motion by perceptual flows and intentional states. His three threads and two hypotheses are significant enough to quote in their entirety, so I have included them in Appendix I. They explain why the storage, processing, and transformation of information is spread indiscriminately among the brain, body and world—hence the idea of an ecology of overlapping perceptual zones which self-organize the continuity of living body and dynamic world. Clark proposes a Principle of Ecological Assembly which states that “information-
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external resources.” (p.197)
Enhanced Perception
So far, I presented an overarching model of perception as an overlapping ecology of mind, world, and body. I named the hylozoic zone where world and body overlapped; body image where body and mind overlapped; and affordances where mind and world overlap. In addition, I discussed that each of these overlaps could be extended further, to explain phenomena such as virtual bodies, extended mind and enhanced perception. Appendix H illustrates the zone of enhanced perception, which is an extension of the hylozoic zone in the overlay of world and body. This extended overlay represents what perception might be like if the sub-threshold information came into vivid awareness. In Zen Buddhism the experience is called kensho and it considered to be the confirming experience of direct perception. The following four excerpts are first person accounts of this type of enhanced perceptual experience.
Peter Matthiessen The Snow Leopard
(In this short excerpt, Matthiessen gives us a sense of the preparatory space of kensho, which beings with a sense of reorganization, recognition, and the clearing away of mental and emotional obstructions.)
The search may begin with a restless feeling, as if one were being watched. One turns in all directions and sees nothing. Yet one senses that there is a

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source for this deep restlessness; and the path that leads there is not a path to a strange place, but the path home. . . The journey is hard, for the secret place where we have always been is overgrown with thorns and thickets of “ideas,” of fears and defenses, prejudices and repressions. ~ Peter Matthiessen
Scott Russell Sanders Staying Firm (In this passage, Sanders describes what I call “sensory clarity” something that on the one hand
is ordinary, but, due to its perceptual vividness, becomes a sacred engagement.”
I have spied that secret place from time to time, usually as through a glass darkly, but now and again with blazing clarity. One time it glowed from a red carnation, incandescent in a florist’s window. Once it shimmered in drifting pollen, once in a sky needled with ice. I have seen it wound in a scarf of dust around a whirling pony. I have seen it glinting from a pebble on the slate bed of a creek. I have slipped into that secret place while watching hawks, while staring down the throat of a lily, while brushing my wife’s hair. The experience is not a glimpse of realms beyond, nor of becoming someone new, but of acknowledging, briefly and utterly, who I am. ~ Scott Russell Sanders
Alfred Starrett, Your Self, My Self & the Self of the Universe
(In this longer excerpt, Starrett wonderfully describes the no-self/Universal self experience of kensho, and its profound allocentric qualities resulting in an intensely luminous “surround- around” spatiality of creation.)
In the year 1925 my family lived on a small farm in Danvers, Massachusetts. My father was chief engineer at the Salem Electric Light Company. He had

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neither the time nor the inclination to work the land, but the farm was a pleasant place for the children in the family—two older sisters and a younger brother besides myself. I 5 was ten years old that summer and thoroughly enjoying my love affair with the world. One pleasant moonlit night I responded to the call of some inner urge for adventure by climbing out of my bedroom window to the roof of the porch just below. From there, as I knew from many past excursions, it was easy to cross over the top of a couple of intervening sheds and reach the edge of the roof of the big barn. Soon I was up on the ridgepole of that tall building and I sat down feeling that I was at the highest point in all creation. The old farmhouse and the outbuildings were at my back and before me stretched low rolling fields toward a distant stand of trees and then rising hills. The air was clear and still. Moonlight washed out most of the stars and illuminated the scene. Below me Grunt, our pet pig, was making snuffling noises in his pen. As I sat quietly there on the roof of the barn I began to notice a strange transformation coming over everything I could see. Things were becoming luminous before my eyes. They shone from within, flowing with light in a riot of colors that continuously increased in intensity. It was as if the grass of the fields, the brown fences, the red barn that belonged to our neighbor, the white walls and green roof of our own house when I turned to look back—as if they all were made of stained glass with sunlight shining through them. As this inner light grew brighter I noticed that it pulsed with a steady rhythm that appeared to me to be the beating of some gigantic heart, as if it were the life-throb of the Self of the World. The scene became a living, scintillating dance of glory— everything beautiful and everything just right in relation to everything else. The very darkness of the distant trees and hills became shining purple and blue. Then something more strange happened. While still retaining awareness as an individual, the sense of “me” at a fixed location in space and time expanded into less limited conscious perception. I can try to suggest what happened by saying there was a shift of identity from the self of an observer to all that was there to be observed. Instead of seeing that living light, I became the light. It was seeing without any specific person
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doing the seeing from any particular perspective. The whole circle of the horizon was before my eyes simultaneously. My personal life became universal life. The rhythm of the luminous pulse beat was the surging rhythm of my own vital processes which had become identical with inner shaping and sustaining power of all creation. I could feel directly the variant urges, strivings and relationships of the different forms of the one limitless life. I felt in a tree its love for the earth and air; the holding-on of fence posts; the grass reaching toward the light; all things gathered and held in the supporting embrace of earth. I was also sensitive to conflict among the various forms, where life struggled with life and one kind of existence was absorbed into another kind. But the opposing tensions were experienced as one hears dissonant chords in great music which add to the beauty as they are resolved in harmony. How long the experienced lasted I cannot say, but eventually the process reversed itself. My conscious awareness took up again the perspective of a particular location on the roof of the barn. The light of glory faded. My seeing became a natural human vision again and I had returned to the sensory limitations of a little 6 boy with an aching bottom from sitting for some unknown length of time on the ridgepole of the barn roof. ~ Alfred Starrett
In the fall of 2004 I had a radical shift in consciousness. I had this profound insight that there were no sources or sinks – that Love was not something stored over there, that could be moved to where it was needed; or that I could give or receive love. Rather, Love was the ground and dynamic source of all that is. I realized how all my life I had been running around trying to redistribute Love—from the perceived sources, to the perceived sinks, from those that could give to those in need. This included myself (give love to helpless animals, protect vulnerable people, look for someone to love, and for someone to love me). It was a kind of transactional kind of love, underscored by a sense of scarcity. In one fell swoop this final, underlying structure of my

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stream of cosmic consciousness. I was going to the post office to pick up the mail. Boom!
Everything grew crystal clear like something completely transparent, except with brilliant hues of color. A hundred thousand kinds of crystal light—indigo, crimson, gold, sapphire, verdant greens of all hues—shown with incredible vividness and brilliance, yet with the transparency of crystal. I could hear the “clank clank clank” of the flagpole being rung like a bell by the metal end of the rope, high up in the air and behind me. At the same time, I could hear the soft “swish swish swish” of the blades of grass, each distinctly, like a slow progression of brushes over an orchestra of cymbals. To my surprise the sound they made tasted sweet. I could feel the undulating clouds beneath me and the warm breath of the earth, rising up to kiss them. Every sense was heightened and expressed itself overall as a kind of surround-around spaciousness. I did not want to move, for it seemed that taking even a single small step would be an impossible brutish act in an otherwise perfectly resonate energy field. No such disruption happened, for a long long time. But soon the ordinary way of seeing things, redeemed themselves from this spell of grace, and I made it into the lobby where the post-office boxes were lined up. At first, I couldn’t remember which box was the one to open—and it felt strange, like a small amnesia. Which box? Which box? I had lost the memory in my body that knew which box it was. Then I reasoned—for the first time—that the number “30” in the address “30 South Main Street” identified the number on the box. It was like a grand puzzle was finally solved! The mind is useful, after-all.

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Part IV: Awakened Perception
A Buddhist Examination
No paper on awakened perception would be complete without passing the test of a Buddhist examination of the notion of direct perception. The key question in this section is whether this model can withstand the scrutiny of a Buddhist examination of these topics. Does the model provide useful heuristics for disentangling the complex ways in which the traditions talk about them? If so, might there be a need for the model for a modern approach to consciousness studies based on integral phenomenology?
Of course, there are many different Buddhist schools, whose opinions, beliefs and scholastics differ significantly from each other, not unlike the many different ways that western neuroscientists, phenomenologists, cognitive scientists and psychologists hold different accounts of perception. In this paper I rely on Anne Klein’s (1988) interpretation of the Gelukba Sautrantika system, considered to be the most advanced exegesis of the direct perception, its relationship to conceptual thought, and their complementarity. It is a version that offers ordinary people the very real possibility of non-dual self-knowledge—which is simultaneously knowledge of self and world, self as world, and world as self—and as such has much of the defining characteristics of the ecological overlay model. According to this tradition, the possibility for non-dual knowing is given by the interpenetrating mutuality of thought, perception, and world,
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possibility of liberation through awakening perception.
The Gelukba’s hold that conceptual thought can lead to direct perception and the non-conceptual realization of self-liberating insight. This possibility however depends on having a correct conceptual framework. There are several key tenets to the Gelukba’s framework. The first tenet has to do with ultimate truths, which are non-conceptual and apprehended directly, and conventional truths, which rely on conceptual apprehension. The key characteristics of ultimate truths is that they apprehend what is called “specifically characterized, impermanent phenomena”; whereas conceptual truths apprehend “generally characterized phenomena.”
William James (1977) also noticed this distinction between perceptual flux and flow, the “big blooming buzzing confusion,” the “aboriginal sensible muchness” and the concept which “never varies” and “expresses eternal veritas.” In the western mind, it was therefore the “staying power” of the concept, James noted, to “contrast the knowledge of universals and intelligibles as god- like, dignified, and honorable to the knower, with that of particulars and sensibles as something relatively base which more allies us with the beasts. Hence these conceptual, intelligible universals were associated with ultimate truths in the western mind.
.. by all rationalist authors the ultimate reality is supposed to be static also, while perceptual life fairly boils over with activity and change. (p.247)
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In the three highest Buddhist systems, Sautrantika, Cittamatra, and Madhyamaka, the opposite position was established, where only the impermanent, non-conceptual and specifically characterized were considered as ultimate truths (Klein 1998). In line with the Buddhist schools, James understood that that to be conceptually known, “our flowing life must be cut into discrete bits and pinned upon a fixed relational scheme.” James understood the problem with intellectualism, is the need to pin something down, as a fixed, permanent thing, and the farther we push it down the path of conceptual definition, the farther and farther removed it is from perceptual experience, which is movement, flux, variety, change—in other words, impermanence.
But intellectualism quickly breaks down. When we try to exhaust motion by conceiving it as a summation of parts ad infinitum, we find only insufficiency, Although, when you have a continuum given, you can make cuts and dots in it ad libitum, enumerating the dots and cuts will not give you your continuum back. The rationalist mind admits this; but instead of seeing that the fault is with the concepts, it blames the perceptual flux. (p.247)
The Buddhist schools, on the other hand, understood impermanence, motion, flux, and change as the first noble truth; and the direct ascertainment of subtle impermanence as a sign of the highest instance of direct perception. In the Gelukba’s framework, impermanent things fully appear to direct perception, and permanent things are apprehended by conceptual thought. (Klein 1998) Furthermore, what makes the things apprehended by conceptual thought, permanent, is not that they themselves are lasting and eternal, as thoughts come and go just like everything else in the phenomenal continuum. What makes them “permanent” is their ability to affix a single, unchanging generalized category, onto phenomena that are otherwise always undergoing
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continuous change—regardless whether that change is observable or imperceptible. Consider, for example, the category “chair.” The conceptual mind is happy to stick with this term, regardless of whether the chair has three legs or four, undergoes multiple replacement parts, is constructed ad hoc by a convenient stump on the side of the road, or is displayed as an image on a screen. Despite these dramatic differences, the word chair remains the same. The instances of all the “chair” themselves is never specified, but only generally characterized.
In the Gelukba’s view, conceptions are valuable because they are essential tools for overcoming ignorance. And yet, our primary ignorance results from not recognizing the generalizing, categorizing, static and reifying nature of conceptual thought. This too can be directly perceived, through non-conceptual meditative awareness of the thought processes. By which faculties does the EBMB perceive the nature of its own mind? By lowering the threshold of consciousness such that one can follow the cutting, carving, chunking processes of thinking. Through meditative training, accessing flow states, and “happy accidents” awareness is able to access the deeper body-world interfaces where impermanent perceptions flow. That path to where knowledge is liberated from ignorance, requires that the subtle impermanence of even the most fundamental things, is cognized in a non-conceptual way.
In the Gelukba system, each perceptual organ is understood to be its own consciousness—eye consciousness, ear consciousness, taste consciousness, etc. These are said to be hampered by their lack of ascertainment. The mind also has its own consciousness, which is said to be “hampered by a lack of specificity.” Yet, according to the Sautrantika view, each type of consciousness—sensory and mental—are ultimate consciousnesses when directly perceived.
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To perceive directly means to “engage with the entire collection of features,” in other words, to be aware of the ecological field of participation, from world to thought and back again. In doing so, we see that conceptual thought is not the omega point of conscious arising. Rather it is just another node in a continuous network of flow.
A conceptual thought, which is an object of mental consciousness, takes on the appearance of standing in for the whole, but the individual who perceives the experiential flow knows otherwise. Each thought is an iota, a grain of sand in an endless desert, whose shape constantly shifts in the eternal winds. An ultimately valid knowledge would be simultaneous awareness of the grain (the perceptual data) the desert (the generalized whole), and the shifting winds (the process of cognizing whole experiences).
An ultimately valid object—whether it be a thing, a feeling, a thought, a concept—would therefore be defined as a “set of direct perceptions that satisfy a duration of mind.” The duration of mind might remain below the threshold where the hylozoic zone emerges from the world, and as such remain simply, world. The duration of mind might extend all the way through the formative processes of the fully articulated, self-reflective I-me-mine. The duration of mind might extend into the spaces that overlay the ecological field of participation, constituting novel states of experience. This notion of duration, is complementary to the Gelukba’s emphasis on the process nature of consciousness (Klein 1998)
Conceptual thought and direct perception can operate simultaneously, but they are not established or initiated simultaneously with respect to the same object.
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In the first moment of seeing an impermanent object such as a tree, direct perception– the eye consciousness– is active’ then there is a moment of mental direct perception, which cannot be noticed by ordinary persons. Following this, conceptuality begins to operate. Thus, in the first period there is only direct, clear perception by the eye consciousness; once conceptuality begins, it operates simultaneously with subsequent moments of direct perception. This means that while the eye consciousness, for example, is apprehending the specific characteristics of its object, the thought derived from that eye consciousness superimposes a meaning generality onto that object. (p. 130)
“By understanding the profound compatibility between thought and insight,” writes Klein (1998) one can have confidence that what begins as a mere echo of sound in the mind can progress to actual direct experience.” The model of perception as ecological overlay, is offered to echo this sound, and to help build confidence. Integral phenomenology, as a method of unpacking experience through the examination of everyday ordinary affective, perceptual and conceptual phenomena, is offered as a “good enough” starting point, since, as Klein tells us, the Gelukbas emphatically believed :
“The starting point is precisely the ordinary type of conceptuality and direct perception one now has.”
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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 106 Part V: Concluding Remarks
Perception is a key domain of experience, yet it is hardly ever the focus of contemporary awakening practices, which have emphasized the affective and virtual domains (usually prioritizing the former, and prejudicing the latter.) In both the eastern traditions and western science and philosophy, the emphasis has been on calling perception into question. In the process we have de-realized the world, and pushed it forever out of our reach. The core theme of this paper is that perception, as direct participation is perfectly attuned to the world, because it is something that the world does, in mutual participation with us. Error, confusion, deception and bias all result from a lack of adequate participation. Fully realized, authentic participation results in the experience of enhanced, direct perception of the rich, abundant, vivid display of reality, and a keen insight into our place in this sacred world. There is a sense of re-enchantment with the world. The philosopher Roy Bhaskar (2002) hoped that this kind of re-enchantment would set humans on a new course toward helping each other flourish and helping the planet to thrive. Our ability to perceive the deep continuity of body and mind, world and body, and mind and world are key to this journey away from destruction and toward regenerative practices.
In this paper I have introduced the notion of perception as an ecological overlay and a simple set of heuristics to illustrate them. The illustrations enable us to point to “What are we participating with” for any perceptual experience in different states of consciousness. Here the notion of what is hyper-active and hypo-trophied, what parts of perceptual experience are amplified, and which are attenuated, what is online in consciousness and what is offline, what is part of the I-me-mine self complex and what remains subthreshold to self consciousness—and how all these phrases
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ultimately point to complex neural processing systems, comprised of parallel subsystems, function as “neural gates” through feedback-feedforward, excitatory and inhibitory-dis-inhibitory relationships in the body-brain. I have introduced the notion of the EBMB, the embodied-body- mind-brain and the organs of perception as a useful way of conceptualizing the complex interactive and overlapping dynamics of perceptual experience.
This term “EBMB” underscores the overlapping of the world and body, hence “embodied body”, the overlap of mind and brain, hence “body-mind”, and the overlap of the mind and the physical brain, hence “mind-brain.” The brain, being a physical organ, represents the physical world, and completes the ecological circle. The heuristic of ecological overlay enables us to use language that is more nuanced and reflects the subtle distinctions in perceptual experience, beyond the coarse categories “body,” “mind,” “world.” In this way we are better able to talk about new areas of interest: how affordances are situated in the world and are revealed through insight; the distinction between body schema and body image; the hylozoic zone and bodily space; the allocentric and egocentric systems in object-space; among others. Furthermore, I have shown how and where all these “hybrid dimensions” can be further extended into a larger and larger perceptual field. The heuristic gives us an easy way to map the kinds of phenomena that happen in these zones of extension, such as virtual bodies, extended mind and enhanced perception (kensho). These zones of extension can be helpful in mapping the territory of non-ordinary states of experience. An adequate theory of perception must accommodate all of them.
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A “good” theory orients us toward the direction of a correct view, where direct perception arises with the experience of an adequate participation with reality. (Roy 2014) In this sense, we might consider the Gelukba Sautrantika system a “good” theory. Any new theory of awakened perception must pass its strict examination, and few western theories of perception have complied with its view. On the other hand, the Sautrantika system does not pass the test of our modern scientific understanding which continues to expand the field of our knowledge about perceptual participation. I hope that integral phenomenology, which integrates direct experience with a scientific curiosity, can help bridge these gaps.
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Buchanan, Brett (2008) Onto-Ethologies New York: SUNY Press Chemero, Anthony (2009) Radical Embodied Cognitive Science, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
Crowell, Steven Galt (2001) Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press

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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 110 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly (1996) Creativity, New York: Harper Perennial
Csordas, Thomas, ed. (1994) Embodiment and Experience, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
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Donald, Merlin (2001) A Mind So Rare, New York: W.W. Norton & Company (1991) Origins of the Modern Mind, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press
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Transpersonal Psychology, Palo A lot, CA: Wiley Blackwell Gallagher, Shaun and Dan Zahavi (2008) The Phenomenological Mind, New York: Routledge
Gallagher, Shaun (2005) How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Gallwey, Timothy (2010) The Inner Game of Tennis, New York: Random House
Gendlin, Eugene (2009) What First and Third Person Process Really Are Journal of Consciousness Studies, 16, No. 10–12; retrieved on 6-28-2017 from http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/pdf/gendlin_what_first_and_third_person_processes_really_are .pdf
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Hall, David L. and Roger T. Ames (1998) Thinking from the Han Albany, NY: State University of New York

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AWAKENED PERCEPTION 111 Hansen, Chad (1992) A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, New York: Oxford University Press Heidegger (1962) Being and Time, New York: Harper Row
Heron, John (1996) Cooperative Inquiry. London: Sage Publications
(1992) Feeling and Personhood. London: Sage Publications Hoffmeyer, Jesper (1993) Signs of Meaning in the Universe, Bloomington, IA: Indiana
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Kotler, Steven (2014) The Rise of Superman. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
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Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh, New York: Basic Books Lakoff, George, and Rafael Nunez (2001) Where Mathematics Comes From, New York: Basic
Books Masciotra, Domenico, Roth and Morel (2007) Enaction, Rotterdam, NE: Sense Publishers
McDermott, John J. (1977) The Writings of William James, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press

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Reality New York: The Free Press Wood, John, ed. (1998) Virtual Embodied, New York: Routledge Young, Shinzen (2016) The Science of Enlightenment, Boulder, CO: Sounds True

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APPENDICES
APPENDIX A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Appendix D

Appendix E

Appendix F

Appendix G

Appendix H

Appendix I
Andy Clark’s Theory of Ecological Assembly
The Three Threads
1. Spreading the Load. The body and brain, thanks to evolution and learning, are adept at spreading the load. Bodily morphology, development, action and biomechanics, as well as environmental structure and interventions, can reconfigure a wide variety of control and learning problems in ways that promote fluid and efficient problem solving and adaptive response.
2. Self-Structuring of Information. The presence of an active, self-controlled, sensing body allows an agent to create or elicit appropriate inputs, generating good data (for herself and for others) by actively conjuring flows of multimodal, correlated, timem- locked stimulation.
3. Supporting Extended Cognition. The presence of an active, self-controlled, sensing body (a) provides a resource that can itself act as part of the problem-solving economy and (b) allows for the co-opting of bioexternal resources into extended but deeply integrated cognitive and computational routines.
Hypothesis of Cognitive Impartiality
Our problem-solving performances take shape according to some cost function or functions that, in the typical course of events, accord no special status or privilege to specific types of operation (motoric, perceptual, introspective) or modes of encoding (in the head or in the world).
Hypothesis of Motor Deference
Online problem solving will tend to defer to perceptuomotor modes of information access. That is, we will often rely on information retrieved from the world even when relevant information is also neutrally represented.

Bonnitta Roy’s article is forthcoming in Integral Review with sneak previews at her Patreon:

https://www.patreon.com/bonnittaroy

Trickle-Down Spirituality

Joseph Dillard — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:18:59 +0000

Joseph Dillard

joseph.dillard@Gmail.Com

In this chapter from a forthcoming book, “Integral Ethics,” trickle-down spirituality is explained using an analogy to trickle-down economics, to delineate common forces within spiritual elites that unintentionally generate inequality and injustice. If these processes are not understood and addressed, even the best spiritual elites, including Integral, eventually collapse.

What does trickle-down economics have to do with spirituality? First, we need a bit of background regarding what trickle-down economics is. Trickle-down economics is an economic theory that advocates reducing taxes on businesses and the wealthy in society as a means to stimulate business investment in the short term and benefit society at large in the long term. In general, it is a form of laissez-faire capitalism, and more specifically supply side-economics. Whereas general supply-side theory favors lowering taxes overall, trickle-down theory more specifically targets taxes on the upper end of the economic spectrum. “Trickle-down” is a pejorative term created by humorist Will Rogers as a vivid description of opposing economic philosophies:

This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They [Republicans] didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellows hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue.[1]

However, the concept dates back to at least William Jennings Bryant and his famous “Cross of Gold” speech of 1896:

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it.

Multiple studies have found a correlation between trickle-down economics and reduced growth,[2]^,[3],[4]while its opposite, tax cuts for the poor and middle classes with high tax rates for the wealthy, have been shown to stimulate economies. In the 1992 election campaign, independent candidate Ross Perot called trickle-down “political voodoo.”[5] In the 2011 election in New Zealand, candidate Damien O’Conner called trickle down, “the rich pissing on the poor.”

Associated with “Reaganomics,” which lowered the maximum tax rate from 70% to 28%, the phrase “trickle-down” is often used today to criticize economic policies which favor elites, while being framed as good for the average citizen. A 2012 study by the Tax Justice Network indicates that wealth of the super-rich does not trickle down to improve the economy, but tends to be amassed and sheltered in tax havens with a negative effect on the tax bases of the home economy.[6] In 2013, Pope Francis referred to trickle-down theories:

Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system.[7]

A 2015 paper by researchers for the International Monetary Fund argues that there is no trickle-down effect as the rich get richer:

[I]f the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth.[8]

In the 2016 U.S. presidential candidates’ debate, Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of supporting the “most extreme” version of trickle-down economics with his tax plan, calling it “trumped-up trickle-down.”[9] Trickle-down economics is still alive and well in 2018, as witnessed by the passage of Donald Trump’s tax legislation, which many analysts have concluded largely favor the wealthiest at the expense of the middle and lower classes.

How Integral and spirituality in general inadvertently supports trickle-down spirituality

Trickle-down spirituality emphasizes interior quadrant spirituality, intention, values, world view and consciousness as a means to stimulate the growth of exterior quadrant systems, relationships, behavior, society, moral action, and justice. For example, a world view of cognitive multi-perspectivalism, a LL perspective, creates the framing in which all elements of AQAL are cognitively apprehended. The strength of transpersonal experiences of transformative oneness easily leave us convinced that reality is consciousness and consciousness is reality. After such experiences, it is difficult not to agree with Plotinus, that all reality emanates from the One. The self or Self, the climber of the ladder, an UL perspective, creates the locus of both perception and reality from which all others and all events are perceived and evaluated. All three of these assumptions prejudice the interior quadrants, not only for integral, but for all “new thought,” “cultural creative,” “evolutionary,” and “spiritual” elites.

Trickle-down spirituality also views interior quadrant spirituality, intention, values, and consciousness as a means of creating a societal revolution through a paradigm shift in national and global consciousness. The idea is, “If you adopt my consciousness, and its benefits will trickle down to you. You and your world will be transformed.” Spiritual elites typically make this assumption.

Trickle-down spirituality typically assumes that the stimulation of growth in some world view will transform the consciousness of the world, “lifting all boats.” That world view may be the cognitive multi-perspectivalism of Ken Wilber’s, AQAL, the positive thinking of some New Age guru, like Ernest Holmes, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Maxwell Maltz, or Og Mandino, Tony Robbins, or Oprah Winfrey. It could be the quantum spirituality of people like Deepak Chopra or the descensionist spirituality of Stanislov Grof and Michael Washburn, or the scientific spirituality of people like Fritjof Capra or your favorite school of chakra-infused energy medicine. It could be the “oneness” ideologies of the Eckhardt Tolles of the world, or it could manifest as psychotherapeutic spirituality like “The Forum.” Then again, trickle-down spirituality can manifest as the enlightened guruism of your favorite teacher of Tibetan Dzogchen, Zen satori, or Theravadin mindfulness. All of these are forms of trickle-down spiritualism because they favor interior quadrants over exterior ones, consciousness over behavior, transformation over balance, elitism over equality, and dogma over justice.

Trickle-down and laissez-faire

There is nothing wrong with interior quadrants, consciousness, transformation, elite competence, or strong beliefs. Problems only arise when they are chronically favored over opposite qualities required to maintain homeostasis. Trickle-down spirituality is a very popular form of laissez-faire, because it not only does not threaten proponents of trickle-down economics, it supports them by signaling solidarity with elite priorities of status, power, control, and privilege. It does so by adopting and championing basic principles commonly identified with laissez-faire economics. A product of the Enlightenment, laissez-faire capitalism was conceived as the way to unleash human potential through the restoration of a natural economic system. Here are some of its similarities to trickle-down spirituality:

Just as laissez-faire capitalism trumpets non-interference in the marketplace in the name of natural law, so trickle-down spirituality demands adherence to some set of “spiritual” principles, whether called dharma, positive thinking, obedience to “commandments,” scripture, one’s guru, karma, AQAL, or the “developmental spiral.” The core principles requiring adherence include personal responsibility, merit, and development: improve yourself and the whole world will get better.

Just as Adam Smith viewed the economy as a natural system and the market as an organic part of that system, so trickle-down spirituality views consciousness as the fundamental, prevailing reality and human society as its product. The spiritual market place can get away with this generalization because of the multiple ways that it defines “spirituality” and “consciousness,” first referring to UL states, like waking, dreaming, sleeping, and life after death, then to a particular UL state (enlightenment), then an UL stage (subtle or causal), then to some stage of all four quadrants of human holons, including society. This ambiguity renders these terms useless for any conversation in which clarity of meaning is important, but highly useful for those conversations in which ambiguity can be used to create out of thin air the illusion of consensus and emotional solidarity. For those who value insight over wisdom and catharsis over balance, trickle-down spirituality is a cause worth fighting for.

Smith saw laissez-faire as a moral program and the market as its instrument to ensure men the rights of natural law.[10] Spiritual elitists are sure of their moral superiority, because they judge morality by their intentions, not by their trustworthiness in the eyes of those whose lives are impacted by both their actions and inaction. This morality trickles down, as the Christian morality of the Spanish, Portugese, English, French, and Belgians did to the inhabitants of the Americas and Africa. Trickle-down spirituality works on the same principle and generates similar results, albeit not of the same intensity. Similarly, the trickle-down spirituality of elites is a moral program; its world view is its instrument for insuring humans the blessings of an expanded, more liberating world view.

By extension, free markets become a reflection of the natural system of liberty. ^“For Smith, laissez-faire was a program for the abolition of laws constraining the market, a program for the restoration of order and for the activation of potential growth.”[11] For elitists, trickle-down spirituality becomes a reflection of divine order in individual life as enlightenment and in society as utopia. Like Smith’s laissez-faire capitalism, spiritual trickle-down is a crusade for the abolition of ethnocentric and non “worldcentric” world views that are “less adequate,” thereby cementing its advocates as elitists of the worst sort: those who punish their intellectual and moral inferiors “for their own good.” This is both bad civilizational parenting and ideological colonialism.

Just as laissez-faire capitalism trumpets the “invisible hand,” so trickle-down spirituality affirms the primacy of the self and its responsibility to itself for itself, in the belief that when we each are on our own path to enlightenment, the consciousness of mankind is uplifted. We can see how well this has worked in Hinduism with the doctrine of karma and the caste system. It worked so well that it had to be outlawed, once the concept of human rights was introduced by the West.

Just as laissez-faire capitalism fights the intervention of government, trickle-down spirituality is an opponent of barriers to individual responsibility, choice, initiative, power, and control. Tony Robbins’ immortal statement of ultimate altruism comes to mind as an interesting example of this fight, direct from one the leaders of the elite community of “opinion makers:” “Success is doing what you want, when you want, where you want, with whom you want, as much as you want.” It is fascinating that many people view this quote as “inspirational” and “motivational” rather than as grandiose, narcissistic, and extraordinarily self-centered. What level of development does Integral AQAL tell us Tony Robbins has probably attained? How are we to reconcile that with this quote? Are we really supposed to imagine that any rational person will hear this pronouncement as “shadow” of some advanced stage of some highly-evolved individual? Is it wise to excuse such utterances as a small slip in an otherwise illustrious and sterling career of inspiring leadership?

Unlike laissez-faire capitalism, trickle-down spirituality has no problem using government to establish and expand its priorities, at the expense of opposing world views. This is an example of the performative logical fallacy, in that spiritual elites declare a world view of cognitive multi-perspectivalism and spiritual excellence, implying pluralism and egalitarianism. But in declaring their world view superior to all others, in a demonstration of their elitist exceptionalism, they unwittingly contradict themselves.

Dogmatism and trickle-down spirituality

Is it possible to have a multi-perspectival world view and be a dogmatist, that is, a True Believer, in a prepersonal and pre-rational ideology, at the same time? Most integralists would argue “no.” There is evidence, however, that dogmatism does indeed exist within trickle-down spirituality.

It is dogmatic to believe that the world will be renewed if only a certain percentage of its population adopts a similar, multi-perspectival world view to our own. While this is the position of Wilber’s integral, it is endemic to elitists everywhere. If the rest of the world would only accept American democracy and freedom (as well as exploitation by American multi-national corporations), they would be happy and the world would be at peace. If the people of the world would only accept into their hearts Jesus as their personal savior, all suffering, sin, and pain would vanish from the earth. If people would only practice Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen, Zen, or Vipassana, they would experience enlightenment and end all suffering. If people would only accept laissez-faire capitalism they would see that the wisdom of markets would raise all ships and bring prosperity to all. If people could have only elected Hillary Clinton, or would only vote for similar progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren in future elections, and return a Democratic majority to congress, then pluralism and egalitarianism will heal the wounds and set the nation back on the path to prosperity and peace.

If you and I will only accept some world view that someone is selling, then we too will be elitists; we will join the exceptionalists; we will be sheep, not goats, the elect, not the damned. This is a very, very ancient game. It is impressive that so many people who pride themselves on being 2^nd Tier are still under its spell.[12]

It is dogmatic to believe that a more inclusive, transcendent world view is equivalent to a higher level of development. We can all name transpersonal adepts who were moral lizards, yet we still want to not only believe in our favorite sources of enlightenment but make excuses for all sorts of obviously stupid, selfish, or unethical behavior. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and expecting different results. The belief that my particular version of snake oil will cure your ills is a very ancient tradition. Examine all world views, and particularly those which promise you some elitist status. If you go for the worm you will not see the hook. If you bite, you surrender both your autonomy and credibility in the eyes of the global commons.

It is dogmatic to believe that a more inclusive, transcendent world view is intrinsically better. Beavers do not build better dams if they adopt a more inclusive, transcendent world view. People are not more effective, loving, empathetic, or moral if they adopt a more inclusive, transcendent world view. You can and will find people at tribal and ethnocentric world views who are as capable in all these qualities as you are. Some will be more so. The correlation between developmental stages, which are very real, and advancement in these qualities, which is implied, is assumed, not demonstrated. The global commons does not judge trustworthiness or respect by scientific developmental standards, such as those painstakingly compiled by Wilber in the back of Integral Psychology. Those are developmental processes associated with maturation; morality and empathy are determinations that do not rely on developmental level, but rather on the objective assessment of others who do not care what our developmental level is. What they care about is whether we are trustworthy, skillful, competent, enjoyable, and demonstrate respect. These competencies are largely independent of ideology, level of development, exceptionalism, and elitism. They exist or are absent on all levels, equally. You are as apt to find them equally within packs of wolves as within Dzogchen masters, when each group and individual is evaluated within its own context. There is nothing intrinsically elitist about any of the core attributes by which we determine who to respect and trust.

It is dogmatic to believe that people who profess an inclusive, transcendent world view are more moral (or helpful) than those who do not. This is a common mistake of democratic progressives. They confuse ideology with effectiveness, a point that is summarized by the following test: If you want to find out if a student is university material, give him or her a can and a can opener. Those who can’t open the can are university material. While this is indeed cynical, unfair, and untrue, by exaggeration it makes the point that there are many areas in life where ideology or level of development may not have any bearing at all or which might even have a negative bearing. If you want to survive in the wilderness, do you want someone at 2^nd Tier or someone with wilderness survival skills? If you answer, “I prefer someone with both,” you avoid the uncomfortable obvious answer because it does not fit your variety of dogmatism. This is also an explanation for why, in a contest between Pepsi and Coke, Donald Trump got elected. A lot of people didn’t care that Hillary met elitist standards of a higher level of development because they didn’t trust her. Enough people gambled on something else – anything else – over prevailing ideology, to tip the scales. In a contest between Pepsi and Coke, where you know your only choice is bad health and wasted money, ideology or world view is not going to determine what wins out.

Inequality and social injustice are increasing

Inequality is increasing, and most people will agree that some forms of inequality, like access to employment, education, and health care, not only matter, but describe states of injustice. The poor are getting poorer while money is pooling at the top 1%. Only eight people, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Bill Gates of Microsoft, and investor Warren Buffet, together have as much wealth as the poorest half of the world’s population – some 4 billion people. The world’s 10 biggest corporations together have revenue greater than the 180 poorest countries combined.[13] On economic, health, and moral grounds, poverty matters. The wealthy are both more powerful and happier than the poor in significant ways. 1.5 million school children in the US do not have a home to live in, and are going to school each day from shelters or from the homes of friends or relatives who have taken them in because they’ve lost their homes. This, in the richest country in the world, home of the greatest collective gathering of spiritual, eduational, technological, economic, and financial elites in the world. In 2016, over 40 million of 320 million Americans were classed as food insecure, meaning they did not have enough food for an active and healthy life. Again, this is in the richest country in the world with the greatest collection of elites. Could there possibly be a correlation? The US is also one of the few developed countries in the world where college is not free or virtually free to all those who are admitted. Instead, we have college graduates or people who have had to drop out of college who hold a total of $1.48 trillion in outstanding college loan debt, much of it carrying extortionate interest rates of 6% or more.

The World Happiness Report states that “The USA is a story of reduced happiness. In 2007, the USA ranked 3rd among the OECD countries; in 2016 it came 19th. The reasons are declining social support and increased corruption…and it is these same factors that explain why the Nordic countries do so much better…(the) US showed less social support, less sense of personal freedom, lower donations, and more perceived corruption of government and business.”[14] Overall well-being among U.S. adults has declined substantially in 2017.[15] The “Happy Planet Index,” which is an index of human well-being and environmental impact gives higher scores to countries with lower ecological footprints. The US scores among the worst. Why? Although it is completely blind to this reality and vehemently denies reality, the ideology of spiritual elites is either neutral or supportive toward exploitative trickle-down capitalism. Either actively, in its desire to win adherents and prosper, or passively, by not actively resisting, spiritual elites continue to be in collusion with plutocrats in advocacy of an exploitative world view.

Most people would not only cite the dismal and worsening state of well-being in the US as evidence that trickle-down economics has been a cruel fraud, but that beyond that, it is evidence we support a system that inflicts massive economic injustice. However, most of us accept this situation. For example, we continue to believe that voting for “progressive Democrats” will actually improve government and reduce plutocracy. We refuse to recognize how our elitist world view supports an exploitative plutocracy that destroys equality and strangles social opportunity. To understand the psychology of such irrational acceptance, we have to take a deep look into trickle-down spirituality, a deeper, more profound form of delusion than trickle-down economics.

Integral assumptions that inadvertently support trickle-down spirituality

We know that trickle-down spirituality is not a straw man logical fallacy because it is baked into various forms of spiritual elitism. For example, integral AQAL assumes that higher levels of development, say 2^nd Tier, are intrinsically superior to lower ones, say, late prepersonal, as if an oak tree is better than an acorn or an adult is better than a child. Just because higher levels transcend and include lower ones does not mean that a lower level is not only adequate for a condition; it may be superior. If you want to build a termite colony, it is far better to be a termite than a human. Clearly, what is superior for any stage of development is balance within that stage; a transcendent, more inclusive stage can be totally irrelevant, useless, or unhelpful for where you are in your development. An excellent example of this is how much adult knowledge is not only irrelevant to the needs of children but can be positively counter-productive or even harmful, like porn and exposure to violence. Another is how unusual it is for those who have near death or mystical experiences to integrate them in ways that positively impact their lives in lasting ways. Experiences that are far beyond the pale are notoriously difficult to integrate into our ongoing sense of self, yet spiritual elites continue to build both reality and the salvation of the world around them.

The irrelevance of issues important for higher levels of development, such as meditative objectivity, to the growth priorities of lower levels, such as learning to share, is one reason why it is nonsense to compare animal and human intelligence. Instead, we need to compare adaptability within environmental contexts. For example, a dolphin’s intelligence is much superior to a human’s intelligence for life in a marine environment without technological assistance. A human’s intelligence is much superior to a dolphin’s intelligence for life in a terrestrial environment, even without technological assistance. The idea that higher levels are superior to lower is elitist; it is an important assumption of trickle-down spirituality and is one of its sustaining structural elements. What we can say is that higher levels on any developmental line have adaptive advantages, but these are lost if core lines, like empathy and morality are ignored or fixated. What does it matter if you are a Zen monk practicing non-dual meditation for twenty years if you kill for the emperor because you believe it is ethical and just? What does it matter if you have practiced Tibetan Dzogchen non-dual meditation for decades if you see no problem with having your lifestyle supported by indentured slaves in a feudal theocracy? Just how “enlightened” are you? Just how empathetic are you?

Another core elitist concept is responsibility. For New Age positivity in particular, responsibility is a core competency. It can become so central as to be grandiose, as if our thoughts create what others think and do. Responsibility is not always a superior position. For example, the idea that we create our reality is found to be absurd, when evaluated with even the slightest amount of objectivity. To say that children who suffer cancer somehow are responsible for their disease is so immoral as to be criminal. To say that human behavior creates sun spots and flares is breathtakingly grandiose, as if human consciousness and its stupidity were more important to the sun than maintaining its own homeostasis. The idea of karma, in which we created our current circumstances by our choices in past lives, is another example of a vast abuse of the concept of responsibility. We might call such beliefs the “mythology of responsibility.”

A primary LR purpose of this mythology is social control. If I can make you believe that you are where you are because you chose it, you will passively and compliantly accept whatever injustice I generate. Indeed, you may even view that injustice as a form of grace, of your courage and devotion as displayed by your acceptance of sudra, or outcast status, for yourself and your family. Similarly, when we take responsibility for the mistakes or failures of others, as parents often do for their children, we are taking on the role of rescuer within the Drama Triangle, helping neither them nor ourselves.

Consequently, the doctrine of personal responsibility can be, and often is, used as a tool by spiritual elites to generate trickle-down spirituality. When I teach you to take responsibility for everything, What I do as an elitist becomes your responsibility, not mine. My responsibility trickles down to you and what trickles up to me is license. You make me free to abuse you and make yourself free to accept your inferior status in an unjust system.

We have seen that a fundamental assumption for trickle-down spirituality is that higher development in the form of enlightenment is the cure to human suffering. If you become enlightened, the benefits of enlightened consciousness will trickle down to bestow grace upon others in the world. But enlightenment did not keep Buddhism from being exterminated in India and Tibet. Why not? Non-dual meditation did not keep Japanese Zen monks from taking up weapons and becoming passionate supporters of imperial fascism. Why not? The assumption of relative enlightenment did not prevent 100 stellar “evolutionaries,” that is, contemporary “thought leaders” across multiple fields, from supporting the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. Why not?[16] Where is the evidence that higher levels of development, personal responsibility, and enlightenment “trickle down” and lift up the entire world?

Further problems with trickle-down spirituality

Trickle-down spirituality emphasizes a privileged, exceptionalist world view over collective measurements of the quality of relationships, such as trustworthiness and respect. While these are interior collective values, their measurement is not. The consequence is that trickle-down spirituality is elitist; it doesn’t hold itself accountable to the global collective, but only to its own world view.

Trickle-down spirituality, again like trickle-down economics, is self-centered. Because it places the expansion of individual consciousness, personal enlightenment and individual development before collective support, group improvement, and collective quality of life, it alienates itself from the collective to which it wants to appeal. It says, “I love and support you” while in practice it demands the collective adopt its world view and priorities as its own. It says, “Think like I do, believe what I do, and you will be happy and enlightened.” The vast majority suspect this as deceitful and manipulative, and consequently, does not trust the motivations of spiritual elites. This is not difficult to understand. All one has to do is compare standards of living of those following some brand of trickle-down spirituality and those who do not. Use the global happiness scale, for instance, which compares countries on a number of components of satisfaction. If spiritual trickle-down were indeed superior, we would see those benefits demonstrated in measurable improvements in exterior quadrant criteria, since the claim is that interior spiritual transformations “trickle down” and out to behavior and the world as a whole. What we find instead is that those countries that are “thought leaders” in trickle-down spirituality, particularly the United States, from which sprang all varieties of New Thought, New Age, Integral AQAL, and many forms of energy-quantum wonderfulness are in the crapper in terms of measurements of global happiness. Why is that?

Inherent delusions of trickle-down spirituality

Trickle-down spirituality views consciousness as the fundamental, prevailing reality and human society as a product of it. Holons are centered on the self as ontological singular identities. Holonic development is not centered on societal holons – manifestly real, present, and extraordinarily powerful determiners of individual and social success and happiness, but on consciousness holons. However, societal holons, organized around collectives and largely exterior to our control, are as real and arguably more important and powerful to the everyday lives of all species, including humans, as are interior, individual, consciousness holons organized around the self. There is no doubt, as Wilber has pointed out in Integral Spirituality, that level of socio-cultural civilizational development, that is, LR holons, frame, limit, define, and determine the developmental possibilities of individual members. Subsets do not transcend the sets of which they are members; Jesus, born into a socio-cultural world view that viewed disease as caused by demons, obviously shared that world view, and no amount of contemporary exegesis is going to make him something other than a product of his socio-cultural context, just as are you and I. But trickle-down spirituality does not give contextual social holons equal billing, much less superior billing, in those domains in which their influence predominates, such as economic security, human relations, control and power relationships. The result is both imbalance and spiritual elitism that complements economic elitism.

Trickle-down spirituality is not only inherently self-centered; it is grandiose. It says, “I know your truth.” What could be more elitist? Most forms of religion, spirituality, and new age positive thinking, teach that if you embrace some particular version of trickle-down spirituality, declared to be “True,” that good things will happen to you. Good will trickle down. These benefits may include good health and economic prosperity due to your positive thinking.

There is an important difference between eliminating cognitive distortions and positive thinking. For example, thinking, “Everything is crap,” is a cognitive distortion because you don’t know everything. Therefore, it is an irrational, pre-rational, emotionally-based exaggeration. What may indeed be true is to say or think, “I feel like everything is crap.” That may be an authentic expression of how you feel. But notice that there is nothing positive about this thought, even though it is not a cognitive distortion. This is the difference between eliminating cognitive distortions and positive thinking. To eliminate cognitive distortions is not necessarily positive, but it is realistic. However, positive thinking, as a form of spiritual elitist trickle-down, imposes no requirement of realism. Positive thinkers can and often do live in states of self-created delusion and want you to validate their waking dream.

Psychic ability and the burning of karma have long been promised trickle-down benefits of Hinduism. Just meditate and follow this or that bhakti, raja, karma, or hatha marga, and grace, good fortune, and spiritual powers will “trickle-down” as blessings from above. Buddhism promises the extinguishing of all suffering will trickle down if you just follow the Eightfold Noble Path. The Old Testament cites various blessings of God that will trickle down if you are obedient. Jews, Christians, and Moslems generally accept the truth of this version of trickle-down spirituality. The New Testament cites salvation, grace, and protection from evil as trickle down benefits for believers. There is even the implication, based on the miraculous healings of Jesus, that believers in spiritual trickle-down will be physically healed. Indeed, this belief was codified as Mary Baker Eddy’s “Christian Science” in 1879. Confession in the Catholic Church provides a form of trickle down that leads to the forgiveness of sins by God, the entering into a state of grace, and the prospect of heaven after death. The attainment of inner peace, whether through meditation or the attainment of high mystical states, is widely assumed to “trickle down” into a blessed life.

While one can believe in any or all of these things and experience multiple benefits, it does not follow that any of these world views are better or are more likely to generate happiness. It does not follow that the benefits come from the belief in spiritual trickle-down, any more than someone landing a job at McDonald’s is a product of economic trickle-down. Happiness is most predictably a product of balance within one’s life circumstances, whatever they may be, rather than the following of this or that system of belief, whether it is Integral AQAL or snake-handling evangelicals. If you have graduate degrees and live in Boston, you are no more likely to be happy than someone who is a farmer in Equador. In fact, it can be argued that it is more difficult to be happy with graduate degrees in Boston, because you have a great deal more factors to bring into balance in order to be happy.

Spiritual elitism, a form of exceptionalism, is no guarantee of happiness. Paths that promise happiness via their exclusivity can actually make it less likely that you will find the life balance required for happiness. For example, in integral AQAL, the higher you go the more likely you will have core lines out of balance. This is a direct contradiction to the basic premise of trickle-down spirituality, because it declares that happiness does not come from anything trickling down, but from bringing into balance who you are today, where you are.

Your lines of cognition and “spiritual excellence” can easily outrun your moral and empathic lines. The result will be a reduced chance that you will find happiness, and a greater chance that you will have a “legitimation crisis” and experience “evolutionary self-correction.” This is a reason why the higher you climb the less likely you are to be happy. It is why genius in any field is inherently subject to imbalance. You increase the likelihood that you are out of balance the higher you climb on any line, because you are most likely ignoring your lagging or fixated lines. This is normal; we are reinforced for developing our strengths and are reminded of our failings when we deal with our weakest areas. Because this is aversive, we cultivate our strengths and ignore our weaknesses, throwing ourselves out of balance. We build our lives on our strengths, on this or that variety of inauthentic elitism.

Integral AQAL has its own version of spiritual trickle-down. If enough people will meditate, learn AQAL, and attain a multi-perspectival world view, a “tipping point” will be reached, and society as a whole will be transformed, bringing an age of relative peace, stability, and happiness. Therefore, a basic teaching of Integral is to encourage you to aspire to a higher developmental level, like “teal,” to a broader, clearer, more inclusive consciousness. These continue to be basic themes of Wilber’s most recent writings, to be found in both his Trump and a Post-Truth World: An Evolutionary Self-Correction, and The Religion of Tomorrow. The problem is that this is trickle-down spirituality: if you will only climb higher, we will tip the scales and bring manna from heaven and create heaven on earth. Our consciousness will “trickle-down” and lift everybody up.

“Legimitation crises” disclose trickle-down spirituality

Trickle-down spirituality is easy to advocate and maintain as long as the spread of a belief system, such as integral AQAL, is accompanied by a general improvement of social well-being. However, when socio-cultural realities turn south, religious, spiritual, and integral elites need ways to explain these uncomfortable setbacks. Similarly, when our belief in our own cherished version of trickle-down spirituality is attacked, we can be as determined in our defense as any plutocrat whose belief in trickle-down economics is threatened.

Trickle-down spirituality is easy to believe when times are good, but in the face of the unrelenting growth of ruthlessness and injustice, cognitive dissonance becomes more difficult to rationalize away. Historically, set-backs, disease, economic distress, and various social catastrophies that threaten our belief in the delusion of trickle-down spirituality have been ascribed to evil or a “lack of faith.” We did not pray or sacrifice enough to the right god, or were disobedient. In China, floods, earthquakes, and invasions happened because people were not aligned with the will of “Heaven.” Bad times were not only the result of our misbehavior, but our punishment for “falling away.”

It is as difficult to show how submission to belief in a broader, more inclusive consciousness creates economic security, provides health care, education, or opportunity as it is to demonstrate that rewarding plutocrats with more wealth will make our lives better. Indeed, if the claims supporting spiritual trickle-down are closely investigated, they are largely found to amount to prepersonal, pre-rational magical thinking in the service of those who benefit from the status quo at our expense. If we just believe in what someone tells us we need to believe, then happiness, wisdom and goodness will trickle down into our lives. It is a little like keeping our eyes glued to the TV set while thieves move our furniture out the back door.

If we examine the data on health, economic security and education levels among those populations which have believed most fervently in spiritual trickle-down, what we find are multitudes who are discriminated against and ask for more abuse. In India, this description fits the untold millions who have lived and died within the lower castes of the Hindu caste system. In pre-1959 Buddhist Tibet, this description fits generations of feudal serfs, tied to the land, generally controlled by monasteries, and laboring without any chance for economic or educational betterment. In Catholicism and indeed, in Christianity in general, we have a history of a predatory, pedophilia priesthood using a combination of fear, groupthink, and magical promises to maintain both control and compliance. This description also fits progressive Democrats and integralists who supported “2^nd Tier” Bill Clinton because he read Wilber and thought he was a genius, or corrupt drone assassin Hillary Clinton because she was “green” egalitarian and pluralistic, the “lesser of two evils.” These people keep going back to the same dry well, voting for the next round of progressive Democratic hopefuls because they are fervent believers in trickle-down spirituality. I am not under any illusions that anything I write is going to change their minds, but there are some that are questioning and are waking up; they are wondering why Obama didn’t turn out to be so great after all, or why multiple “Blue Waves” that have returned Congress and the Presidency to Democrats have not reversed the regression of the US to a fascist, totalitarian plutocracy. It’s because trickle-down spirituality is in collusion with trickle-down economics. It is an unsuspecting, useful tool of the plutocracy. It’s past time to wake up.

What we find historically, continuing into the present, is that elites are proficient at getting both other elites and non-elites to accept the upward distribution of wealth, opportunity, and privilege. Spiritual elites today, including Integral AQAL, are in unconscious collusion with this corrupt status quo, to the extent that they advocate for spiritual trickle-down at the expense of social justice trickle-up. Wilber has repeatedly stated that quick advancement in levels of development follow from the right types and amounts of meditation. Is this true? Where is the evidence?

Challenging these arguments

While we may believe in the perniciousness of trickle-down economics, most of us have very strong defenses that protect us from applying these conclusions to our own cherished world view. This is because our core beliefs define us; we identify with them. If they are attacked, we take it personally; we feel attacked. First, we use various rationalizations, justifications, obfuscations, redirection tactics and strategies designed to minimize or deny the reality of the threatening arguments. If this fails, we experience cognitive dissonance. This is a sign that we are unable to reconcile our core world view with compelling evidence that won’t go away and leave us alone. As a multi-decade True Believer in Integral AQAL, and before that, in all manner of new age, positive thinking, religious, and spiritual belief systems, this is what happened to me. I am not speaking as an outsider. Here are some of my favorite excuses, rationalizations, and avoidance strategies that I have used at one time or another, to keep me believing in one or another form of trickle-down spirituality:

My spirituality is not trickle-down elitism: How do you know? If it was, would you care? Denial is the strongest defense.

I know the truth. We double down. Because of all the scientific research that supports developmental levels of Integral AQAL and Spiral Dynamics, etc., we lose the forest for the trees. Almost all systems are congruent once we accept their basic premises. For Christ sake, “The Face on Mars” was internally congruent! Pick your favorite conspiracy theory; once you accept its fundamental premises, it all makes sense; therefore, it must be true! Trickle-down spirituality attacks the basic premises of those delusional systems that generate elitism, exceptionalism, and injustice. For example, an adherent of Integral AQAL might toss trickle-down spirituality off with the thought, “He’s just a social justice warrior,” (an ad hominem logical fallacy) or view this critique as a statement of the shadow side of a green or orange world view. This is reductionism. If the premises of one’s world view are being attacked, it is not rational to appeal to the assumptions inherent in that world view as a defense. However, it is an understandable defense. Because a flat worm cannot perceive in three dimensions, it has no choice but to hear and comprehend its experience in terms of two dimensions. Regarding ad hominem attacks, I welcome them. I have been meditating since I was 13 and have had my share of meditative awakenings and mystical experiences. I’ve written a book about near death experiences. I am a fan of transformation and the transpersonal. I’m not out to trash it.

The dog ate my homework: Changing the subject by blaming someone or something else is the next strongest defense. Someone else is to blame for the failings of my world view. It was global capitalism, the Deep State, consumerism, mass media, global conspiracy, space aliens, Donald Trump – anybody and anything but me and the delusional, intrinsically fallacious nature of my world view.

You are distorting Integral AQAL (or a belief system of your choice) in an unfair or malicious way. This is a version of blaming someone else. Our normal response whenever we feel our values, our world view, or our sense of self, is being attacked is to personalize, which is an emotional cognitive distortion. Instead of listening to and applying the arguments, we simply change the subject from ourselves to the other person or those parts of their argument we disagree with. Because we feel victimized, we turn the other party into an attacker, persecutor or abuser and find ways to dismiss their arguments on grounds that are emotional, not objective or rational. Instead of dealing with the implications of the argument on its own merits we dismiss them as distortions. This is an excellent and almost impervious defense. It is almost guaranteed to keep us stuck and stupid.

Ascendency is not bad! Attacking trickle-down spirituality is not an attack on transformation, aspiration, idealism or even ascensionism. These are important and necessary. The problem is imbalance created by a belief in trickle-down dogmas that lead to injustice.

Spirituality embraces communion! It does indeed, and saying that trickle-down spirituality is toxic does not imply that some forms of spirituality do not advocate “trickle-up.” Many do. For example, the social service branches of religions, such as the Islamic Red Crescent and the Christian Salvation Army are valuable, important examples of spiritual trickle-up. Whenever you stand up to injustice, whenever you question elitism and exceptionalism, you are supporting trickle-up. Trickle-down is the problem, and communion is an essential element of any healthy spirituality, as Wilber has repeatedly stated.

Elites are good! Indeed. Elites are good and necessary; the elitism of trickle-down spirituality is destructive and unnecessary.

I’ve known what you’re saying all along. This is the position of universal smugness. It emerges when some bubble breaks and we tell ourselves we knew it was going to break all along. This is an excuse and a rationalization, because whether or not we knew of some possible consequence is irrelevant if that knowledge had no impact on our colluding behavior. If our knowledge did not make us more empathetic, ethical, respectful, and trustworthy, how real was it? How functional or valid was that knowledge? Are we not instead indicting our inaction? However, this rationalization can be healthy. If you are indeed expanding your world view, I will be the first to give you the credit for doing so.

It’s my fault. You just didn’t try hard enough. Your allegiance to the dharma was not sincere; you’re a sinner; you repeated “OM” with your eyes closed when they should have been open; you believed in Buddha when you should have believed in Jesus…yawn. This is a problem rather than a solution focus. We can always postpone focusing on solutions by wrapping ourselves up in the drama of some irrelevant failing. Feeling guilty for your addition to your beliefs and world view won’t change it, so don’t waste time feeling bad about your history of collusion.

I didn’t know. While this is a version of “It’s my fault,” it is so pervasive that it deserves its own category. “I didn’t know” is an excuse, not an explanation. Of course you didn’t know; if you had known the full consequences of your delusion, you would have thought, felt, and acted differently.

What is “social justice trickle-up?”

Just as we have drawn an analogy between economic and spiritual trickle-down, it is important to consider economic trickle-up in order to arrive at a functional understanding of spiritual trickle-up as an alternative to spiritual trickle-down. Two well-known and proven consequences of trickle-down economics are the off-shoring of jobs and assets. Jobs are off-shored in order to raise profits by paying lower salaries, thereby moving income out of the country, where it benefits other economies other than one’s own. In a larger picture, this is altruistic – to a point. Consider an analogy to giving a pint of blood. That’s altruistic. Giving two gallons of blood, however, is no longer altruistic; it’s suicidal. In the long run it helps no one, because your ability to give any future blood is gone, because you’re dead. Similarly, if you kill an economy by reducing the ability of its citizens to afford to buy the goods it produces, that economy can no longer support the world economy.

The equivalent to the off-shoring of jobs for trickle-down spirituality is the neglect and discounting of the abilities of those viewed as “non-elites.” Those who are not members of the “elect” are ignored or discounted in one way or another. Perhaps they are considered “deplorables,” self-centered “ethnocentrics,” or not capable of participating in the loving, magnanimous world view of the exceptionalists. As a result, creativity and resources that otherwise could be used to support the common good are externalized and placed out of reach of the masses. That’s unjust. Obviously, just like offshoring, this is a strategy that brings solidarity to spiritual elitists in the short-term but undercuts and impoverishes them and their cause in the long-run.

In trickle-down economics, assets are off-shored for their protection. Instead of being recycled to generate income so consumers can buy their products, financial elites simply hoard, like Scrooge McDuck. This can only be construed as pure greed based on fear. The equivalent for trickle-down spirituality is the accumulation of wealth, privilege, status, control, and power within the elite in ways that do not benefit the laity or general public, even those who share a general world view, but not the status of the elite. For instance, Rajneesh liked to buy Rolls Royces. To the best of my knowledge, they were for him, not for his students, even though he could only be in one of them at a time. Typically, heads of religious orders do not pay taxes, have their homes and expenses taken care of for them, and are surrounded by luxuries, servants, and playmates of every imaginable sort. Ironically, the public supports these wasted expenditures, because the elites serve as representative status symbols with which they identify. An extreme example is the British royal family, which has absolutely no need for public support, as it is immensely wealthy, yet the public continues to waste tax money on them as if they were pampered poodles. Therefore, we must avoid the conclusion that elitists, spiritual and otherwise, are persecutors and we are victims. Elitists are largely created and maintained by us; neither the plutocrats that steal us blind with trickle-down economics or the “spiritual” elites that disempower us with trickle-down spirituality could exist without our support and consent.

Thomas Piketty, in his Capital in the 21^st Century, has made a relevant and related point. He shows that inequality is not an accident, but rather a feature of capitalism. It can only be reversed through state interventionism, because only the state has the authority to put limits on the power of plutocrats. This state intervention is required, because as long as the rate of return on investment exceeds the rate of economic growth of an economy, the income and wealth of the rich will grow faster than income from work. The result will be increased, or widening, inequality in society.

The broader psychological point is that inequality is a feature of elitism of all sorts, not just financial or spiritual elitism. The dynamic is the same. Inequality will increase as long as membership, such as church or temple members or members of Integral, grant exceptional status, privileges, and license to their leaders. The disparity, or inequality between elites and “laity” will grow. This can only be reversed by membership requiring leaders to be subject to at least the same, if not higher, standards of accountability and transparency, if not privilege, as they are. Clearly, people in leadership positions are necessarily granted privileges that others are not, but these need to be justified by their job description (such as free air travel) and not abused. In practice, members, laity, followers, etc. are not inclined to insist on standards of accountability or transparency or even to exercise realistic control over the accumulation of wealth of leaders.

As Piketty argues, unless capitalism is reformed through state intervention, largely by taxing the rich to force the redistribution of income so that it recycles throughout the economy instead of being hoarded in offshore accounts, stock buy-outs, and sunken into largely non-negotiable assets, like property, democracy is threatened. Similarly, unless the elites who benefit from trickle-down spirituality are forced, by membership rules and regulations, to account for and recycle their resources, the disparity between sheep and goats will grow wider until the differences are so obscenely grotesque that the entire enterprise collapses in upon itself.

Applying these concepts to Integral, which sees itself as the cutting edge of creating not only “the religion of tomorrow,” but a future integral social order, Integral will continue to be a top-down, elitist and hierarchical organization until such time as membership, that is, those who have an investment in integral as an organizational structure, require a more democratic structure. This is not to imply that Wilber himself is not open to same. I view his writings as a dissemination of wisdom in a form of healthy trickle-down of competence, knowledge, and ability. This is an example of discrimination between elite competency and elitism. Wilber also stays in touch with the writing in the field and the chatter on internet blogs. He has invited input, participation, and discussion, as for instance, his invitation to integralists to meet with him and discuss the political future of the country. However, these discussions were themselves somewhat limited to integral elitists, in that only those who could afford the admission fee were heard.

There are multiple reasons why trickle-down spirituality is the path of least resistance, just as is trickle-down economics. The profit motive is like crabgrass –it never sleeps; privilege has intrinsic advantages and many of these are actively supported by those who have little, even when doing so is to their own disadvantage. Therefore, while it is easy to slam elitists, we are talking about our own human nature and how difficult it is to generate authentic balance and to reduce inequalities that are often desirable. We call out for justice while supporting injustice. The contradictions in society are not going to go away until we address them within ourselves.

In summary

As a supporter of Integral AQAL since 1985, I am not writing to tear it down but to enhance its credibility, so that it can reach a broader range of people who can benefit from an expanded, more interconnected, world view. Because Integral AQAL is conceptually sophisticated and built around spirituality and consciousness, it attracts and appeals to similar elites, but less so scientific and economic elites or to the vast majority of humanity which has neither the time or interest in conceptual sophistication. To not devolve into a cult or a historical footnote, integralists have to learn how to differentiate between elite knowledge and ability, on the one hand, and trickle-down spiritual elitism on the other. We need to start calling elitism out in each other when we think we see it, but more importantly, be able and willing to offer solutions built on respect, trustworthiness, and ability.

Assume you are a trickle-down spiritual elitist. I do. Know the warning signs: Adherence to your world view as a dogmatic belief system. If you talk in coded, elitist jargon, that is one clue; a sense of defensiveness or personalization if people question your world view; a dismissal of the relevancy or legitimacy of the arguments of those that do not share your world view or who do not share your understanding of a common word view; a tendency to surround yourself with those who validate your world view; wasting precious time and energy trying to convince others of the legitimacy and wonderfulness of your world view; a failure to call out elitism; a failure to invite others to call out your elitism.

Probably the best antidote to trickle-down spirituality is to 1) stop supporting or feeding its spiritual and economic manifestations, and 2) to find ways, preferably anonymously, to provide more justice to those who are not elites, who have had less opportunity than you, and who do not share your world view. Don’t try to convert them; instead, find out what they need and help them where they are, not where you think they need to be. In other words, cultivate and practice respect, trustworthiness, sharing, and humility. Especially humility.

[1] “Will Rogers on “trickle up” economics”. WiredPen. 2015-01-30.

[2] Era Dabla-Norris; Kalpana Kochhar; Nujin Suphaphiphat; Frantisek Ricka; Evridiki Tsounta (June 15, 2015). Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality : A Global Perspective. International Monetary Fund.

[3] Tcherneva, Pavlina (March 2015). “When a Rising Tide Sinks Most Boats: Trends in US Income Inequality”(PDF). Levy Economics Institute. Bard College.

[4] “In the Real World of Work and Wages, Trickle-Down Theories Don’t Hold Up”. The New York Times. April 12, 2007.

[5] “The Living Room Candidate – Commercials – 1992 – Trickle Down”. www.livingroomcandidate.org.

[6] Heather Stewart (July 21, 2012). “Wealth doesn’t trickle down – it just floods offshore, research reveals”. The Guardian. London.

[7] “Evangelii Gaudium : Apostolic Exhortation on the Proclamation of the Gospel in Today’s World”. vatican.va

[8] Era Dabla-Norris; Kalpana Kochhar; Nujin Suphaphiphat; Frantisek Ricka; Evridiki Tsounta (June 15, 2015). Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality: A Global Perspective. International Monetary Fund.

[9] Jacob Pramuk (September 26, 2016). “Clinton: Trump would cut taxes for the rich in ‘trumped up’ trickle down economics”. CNBC

[10] Gaspard, Toufick. A Political Economy of Lebanon 1948–2002: The Limits of Laissez-faire. Boston: Brill, 2004.

[11] Gaspard, Toufick. A Political Economy of Lebanon 1948–2002: The Limits of Laissez-faire. Boston: Brill, 2004.

[12] For those who are not members of the integral elite, “2^nd Tier” refers to people who have developed past late personal egalitarianism and pluralism into a world view that transcends but includes all previous world views, including that of late personal. As such, it is multi-perspectival and associated with a transitional space between the personal and transpersonal, that Wilber calls “vision-logic.”

[13] Gates, Bezos among 8 with same wealth as world’s poorest half. King5.com

[14] World Happiness Report http://worldhappiness.report/ed/2017/

[15] http://www.well-beingindex.com/americans-well-being-declines-in-2017

[16] Evolutionaries for Hillary Clinton. Change.Org.

Lucid Deep Sleep

Joseph Dillard — Fri, 29 Sep 2017 09:49:36 +0000

Now that you can wake up in your dreams, now what? What would it be like to be awake all the time, regardless of what state of consciousness that you are in?

The above picture depicts the timeless, directionless plenum of space in which all form arises. The Buddhist word for this is Sunyata. We know that some 98{be93f16b5d2e768a85ea81ebc8356f268811d3908838ae6233aa33d012b25ec9} of the universe consists of something physicists call “dark matter.” In this sense, the formless, spaceless, timeless, emptiness of the universal plenum is what is “most real” about existence, and yet we normally see right through it, oblivious to the richness, abundance, and creativity that is the nature of pure presence. How do we access this level of consciousness, the wellspring of abundance and all creativity?

All of us think that we are awake, but few of us are. Those who are most likely to be most awake, and therefore have the most credibility regarding how to wake up out of our self-created life dream, are those who can stay awake while in the deep sleep state. Can you?

Hinduism and Buddhism refers to this state as turyatita, and formless meditation while awake, then entering formless meditation when becoming lucid in a dream, and then maintaining that clear meditative awareness, appears to be the classical way of developing deep sleep lucidity. Geshe Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche accesses and teaches deep sleep lucidity.

In turiyatita, there is no duality or form. There is no sense of self, because a sense of self creates an experience of duality with that which is not-self. Similarly, there are no mental contents or any experience of mind at all. Here is a story about turiyatita:

Zen master Tai-yung, passing by the retreat of another Zen master named Chih-huang, stopped and during his visit respectfully asked, “I am told that you frequently enter into Samadhi. At the time of such entrances, does your consciousness continue or are you in a state of unconsciousness? If your consciousness continues, all sentient beings are endowed with consciousness and can enter into Samadhi like yourself. If, on the other hand, you are in a state of unconsciousness, plants and rocks can enter into Samadhi.” Huang replied, “When I enter into a Samadhi, I am not conscious of either condition.” Yung said, “If you are not conscious of either condition, this is abiding in eternal Samadhi, and there can be neither entering into a Samadhi nor rising out of it.”

Koan: Chih-huang, Tai-yung, Samadhi at http://wanderling.tripod.com/tai_yung.html

Ken Wilber describes turiyatita as a state in which “the Witness (or the observer within every individual), itself dissolves into everything that is witnessed and there is the pure nondual realization of One Taste.”

Integral Transformative Practice: In This World or Out of It?

http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j18/wilber.asp

Some authors (Dustin Diperna, distinguish between turiyatita as a temporary state characterized by bliss and ecstasy, as contrasted to the stable state of final liberation. We are using turiyatita here to refer to a stable and permanent stage of development, not a temporary, experiential state, or as DiPerna’s liberations. Another way of saying this is that the goal is to maintain turiyatita from lucid dream awakening into deep sleep and to then maintain it throughout the duration of deep sleep, into your next dream period, and from thence in an uninterrupted fashion into your waking life experience.

Some may doubt whether such a state actually is possible. Ken Wilber has written about its reality in a personal, provocative, and convincing way:

“….At some point in the evening we got into a discussion about meditation and the changes it can produce in brain waves. A young man training to be a psychiatrist asked me to get out a videotape I have of me connected to an EEG machine while I meditate he believed none of the discussion about how meditation could profoundly alter brain waves, and he wanted ‘proof.’

The tape shows me hooked to an EEG machine; this machine shows alpha, beta, theta, and delta waves in both left and right hemispheres. Alpha is associated with awake but relaxed awareness; beta with intense and analytic thinking, theta is normally produced only in the dream state, and sometimes instates of intense creativity; and delta is normally produced only in deep dreamless sleep. So alpha and beta are associated with the gross realm; theta with the subtle realm; and delta with the causal realm. Or, we could say, alpha and beta tend to be indicative of ego states, and delta of spirit states. Delta presumably has something to do with the pure Witness, which most people experience only in deep dreamless sleep.

This video starts with me hooked up to the machine; I am in normal waking consciousness, so you can see a lot of alpha and beta activity in both hemispheres. But you can also see a large amount of delta waves; in both hemishpheres the delta indicators are at maximum, presumably because of constant stable witnessing. I then attempt to go into a type of nirvikalpa smadhi — or complete mental cessation — and within four or five seconds, all of the machine’s indicators go completely to zero. It looks like whoever this is, is totally brain-dead. There is no alpha, no beta, no theta–but there is still maximum delta.

After several minutes of this, I start doing a type of mantra visualization technique — yidam mediation, which I have always maintained is predominantly a subtle-level practice–and sure enough, large amounts of theta waves immediately show up on the machine, along with maximum delta. The fact that theta, which normally occurs only in dreaming, and delta, which normally occurs only in deep sleep, are both being produced in a wide-awake subject tends to indicate a type of simultaneous presence of gross, subtle, and causal states (e.g., turiyatita). It is, in any event, attention-grabbing.”

One Taste, Ken Wilber, pp, 75-76

Here is what one student writes: “The best way to induce lucid deep sleep is to receive direct introducion into the nature of mind from a Dzogchen master, and then go to sleep without dropping the primordial letter A, or any of the seed syllables of the yidam, if you don´t practice dzogchen but tantra. It works perfectly for me!”

You are invited to add your experiences and to share your favorite teachings and references about deep sleep lucidity at the deep sleep lucidity page of the DreamYoga.Com blog.

Using Dolphin Encounters

Joseph Dillard — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 12:40:26 +0000

The big brains, curiosity, and extraordinarily social behavior of dolphins make them ideal subjects for the projection of human hopes and aspirations. While it may be impossible to eliminate the human tendency to anthropomorphize completely, our fascination with dolphins has led to claims that they are more evolved than humans or that they even have extraterrestrial origins. Such distortions not only do violence to dolphins, but to ourselves, in that they keep us from experiencing the authentic personal development that encounters with dolphins can actually provide.

Integral Deep Listening is a phenomenological approach to personal development, and we both teach and encourage such an approach on our yearly excursions to swim with the wild spotted dolphins of Bimini. Phenomenological approaches encourage the suspension of assumptions, interpretations, expectations, and belief systems regarding what we experience in favor of cultivating an open-focused, receptive awareness which allows us to be touched more deeply than our cultural and social scripting normally allows. For example, the word “dolphin” is a place holder or marker for an actual experience; functionally, our words stand for our experiences and actually replace experiences with purely subjective reproductions of them. Such place holders can be immensely powerful. The word “lemon” can make you salivate. The word “shark” can create the physiological reactions of the alarm phase of the “fight or flight,” or General Adaptation Syndrome. But while such mental representations are powerful tools for comprehension and growth, they also disallow the full experiencing of lemons, sharks, and dolphins. Our meanings get in the way of living now, and that stunts our development.

Integral Deep Listening attempts to compensate for the human addiction to meanings and the resulting blockage of raw, vital, and potentially transformative experience by not only encouraging the suspension of such meanings during dolphin encounters, but by asking, “If meaning-making, projection, anthropomorpization, and interpretations of dolphins are unavoidable, what framework is likely to do the least violence to their authentic natures while opening us to the greatest possibilities for personal development?” To this end, IDL assumes that all experiences are best framed as wake-up calls. What this means is that whatever happens to you and whomever you meet, including a dolphin, is best viewed as an opportunity to wake up. “Waking up” means more than paying attention. It means to move toward integration of body, mind, and spirit, toward personal fulfillment, collective interdependence, and enlightenment. Furthermore, IDL assumes that waking up can be usefully framed in terms of six core qualities that describe the round of breath, day, seasons, and the life cycle itself. These are confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing. IDL therefore asks of a dolphin encounter, “How can I use this experience to wake up?” “How can I use this experience to evoke and expand these six core qualities associated with waking up within me today and long after this encounter?” Many teachers, trainings, and excursions offer transformative experiences, but they rarely last. This is because temporary states are not stable, habitual, lasting stages. A goal of IDL dolphin encounters is to turn a marvelous temporary state of freedom, floating, light, and oneness into an ongoing life that is imbued with more of those qualities. In order to do so we need to understand these six core qualities and how they operate. We then approach encounters with dolphins within that context. We then learn to approach all encounters with others in our daily lives in terms of those qualities.

What are these six core qualities and why are they of central importance? First, there is no one formulation that is best or that will work best for everyone. What is important is that we transcend and include formulations that keep us asleep and experiment with using those that make sense to us and that seem to have a reasonable chance of waking us up. Close observation of the breath reveals that it has six parts, an abdominal inhalation, a chest inhalation, a slight pause at the top of the breath, a chest exhalation, an abdominal exhalation, and a longer pause at the bottom of the breath. This cycle is mediated by the autonomic nervous system, which means that it is mostly unconscious, and can be observed during sleep in animals as well as humans. It is also under the control of the central nervous system, which means that we have the ability to change the rate, depth, and focus of this fundamental life cycle. Each of these parts or stages of breathing can be associated with life processes that, while evident throughout the cycle of breathing, are most pronounced at this or that particular stage. Abdominal inhalation is rebirth and awakening. It is new growth and new life. Chest inhalation is aliveness, expression, and growth. The pause at the top of the breath is a balance point between the alertness that inhalation brings by supplying oxygen to the cells of the body and brain, and the relaxation that each exhalation provides. Chest exhalation is a letting go of life and energy and a detachment from them. Abdominal exhalation is a more profound surrendering, death, and freedom. The longer pause at the bottom of the breath is a space of deathlessness, openness, and clarity.

A little contemplation discloses that this same cycle can be observed in daily life, in the round of seasons, and in the round of life. Consequently, the breath can be used to anchor many different realms of experience and collect and sort through many systems of meanings in a way that tie back to this moment and this breath. It can be effectively used to direct experience in this moment, prior to the meanings that language imposes on life.

Each of these stages can also be associated with the six core qualities that are in turn associated with awakening. Abdominal inhalation, as a primal awakening and rebirth, is a death-defying, fearless confidence. It is the negentropy or building up of the universe that defies the law of entropy or running down predicted by the laws of physics. We see this mindless, brazen confident fearlessness in the sprouting of a seed and in the brashness of baby animals and humans. Chest inhalation, as the personification of aliveness, is seen in human curiosity and exploration and finds its fullest expression in a life of selfless, compassionate service. The pause at the top of the breath is not only the rare gift of balance in life but the wisdom that such balance both assumes and generates. Chest exhalation is both acceptance of oneself and others and detachment from the drama of others, our circumstances, our thoughts and emotions. Abdominal exhalation is the inner peace that freedom from those dramas produces within us. The pause at the bottom of each breath is the objective witnessing of both internal and external drama as well as of the cycle itself.

When you free dive with wild dolphins you are much more aware of your breath than you otherwise might be. This is because your ability to hold your breath translates into an ability to share the experience of the world that dolphins experience. The best free divers have learned that thinking takes energy and that learning not to engage thoughts or feelings translates into longer diving time. Consequently, meditation, which is most fundamentally a process of learning to witness or observe the contents of our awareness, is not only important to transformative dolphin encounters, but to developing the phenomenological perspective that allows us to be deeply touched by these extraordinary beings beneath the matrix of our linguistic meanings.

In using meditation to develop the breath control necessary to experience longer free dives with dolphins we can learn to follow our breath with our awareness and at the same time build a sense of unity with dolphins and with all creatures that share this cycle of breath, the associated stages of life, and core qualities that support all life in a foundational way.

What does it mean to experience life in general, and dolphins in particular, in terms of these six core qualities? First, we have to consider what it means to experience ourselves in terms of these six core qualities.

What does it mean to be confident and fearless? At worst, it means to foolishly ignore genuine danger. At best, it means to identify with a definition of self that does not die and that therefore does not fear. What would it mean to experience a dolphin in such a context? What would it mean to experience your friends, associates, co-workers, and family in such a context?

What does it mean to be compassionate? Compassion is different from love, because love has as its opposites fear and hate. Compassion embraces both love and its opposites. A good model of compassion is the sky, which gives of itself unreservedly to be inhaled for the sustenance of all living things and which also receives what is exhaled from the earth and its creatures with equal completeness. At worst, being compassionate means to be enslaved by social conscience, by the “oughts” and “shoulds” of our childhood scripting. At best, it means to give and receive completely and selflessly. What would it mean to experience wild dolphins in such a way? What would it mean to experience your daily life in such a way?

What does it mean to be wise? Wisdom is different from intelligence, be it test-taking ability, street smarts, charisma, mathematical ability, or the mastery of this or that aptitude. Wisdom is intuitive knowing. It is the ability to be in the right place at the right time in order to say or do that which will awaken yourself and others. At worst, wisdom is self-righteous self-assurance, of the type seen in those who have mystical experiences and think their truth is the truth for others or in those who have had the good fortune to have money and status and believe that makes them special. At best, wisdom is balance of body, mind, and spirit, in work and play, in self and relationships, in life and death. What would it mean to experience wild dolphins from a space of such wisdom? What would it mean to experience your daily world from a space of such balance?

What does it mean to be accepting? At its worst, acceptance is ignoring important distinctions and betraying your responsibility to discriminate. It is accepting things in yourself and in life, such as social injustice, that are not to be accepted. At its best, acceptance is about not taking anything personally. It is about realizing that life is not about you, that if you hadn’t been born but some other child had been, your parents would have treated that child pretty much the same way you got treated, if it behaved in a similar fashion. It is to understand that the thoughts you think and the feelings you feel aren’t really about you; they are automatic programs that are highly predictable and are mostly about drama, not living. Real acceptance gets you out of the way so you can hear and see dolphins, others, and yourself. What would it mean to experience wild dolphins from a space of such acceptance?

What does it mean to have inner peace? At worst, inner peace is lazy complacency. At its best, inner peace is freedom from stress and drama. What would it be like to experience dolphins from such a perspective? What would it be like to shift your values in such a way that you routinely experienced your daily life from a space of inner peace?

What does it mean to witness? At worst, witnessing is an insulating numbing and dissociating that protects you so that you can die more comfortably. At best, witnessing is freedom from drama. That drama is easily understood as the endless repetition of the three roles of victim, rescuer, and persecutor. When you are in these roles when you experience wild dolphins you do not see them, you only see this or that role. When you learn to witness, you no longer need to rescue dolphins nor do you see them as rescuers of the planet. You no longer need to persecute those who hurt dolphins or their environment, nor do you need to see those who do as persecutors. You no longer need to see dolphins as victims of the stupidity, greed, and cruelty of humans, nor do you need to see yourself as a co-victim of environmental degradation. Can you move to such a perspective? If you do, how would it change your ability to experience wild dolphins? How would it affect your relationships with others and how you feel about yourself?

These six core qualities are together antidotes to the drama of victimization, rescuing, and persecution that keeps both humans and dolphins locked in a dance of mutual destruction. Compassion and acceptance are natural antidotes for rescuing. Wisdom and fearless confidence are the antidotes for persecution. Inner peace and witnessing are the natural antidotes for the role of victim. Integral Deep Listening develops these antidotes through interviewing dream characters and the personifications of life issues. For instance, if a participant in a dolphin encounter is afraid of sharks, that fear is given a color and that color is turned into a shape or form, like a ball or an animal, and is then interviewed in such a way that the fear is heard and the participant wakes up. Repeated interviews within the culture of a group invested in outgrowing drama and embracing the core qualities creates an environment that allows participants to use their encounter with wild dolphins as a way to heal, balance, and transform their lives.

Meditation designed to develop the six core qualites is a great way to prepare for dolphin encounters. Essentially, this approach involves observation of breath. Here are some guidelines:

At the beginning of your meditation, set your intent. What do you want to do and not do during your meditation? What are you attempting to accomplish?

As you begin to center yourself, focus on your exhalations. Exhale your thoughts and feelings with each exhalation in order to calm your mind.

During meditation, if you have thoughts, feelings, images, or sensations, exhale them. If you have drowsiness or lack of focus and energy, focus on your inhalations to bring more clarity with additional oxygen.

Allow your abdominal inhalations to increase wakefulness and confidence.

Allow chest inhalations to increase aliveness and compassion.

Allow the pause at the top of the breath to increase balance and wisdom.

Allow your chest exhalations to increase your detachment and acceptance.

Allow your abdominal exhalations to increase your sense of freedom and inner peace.

Allow the pause at the bottom of your breath to increase centeredness and witnessing.

Here is a protocol for setting intention at the beginning of meditation. Create your own.

Pre-Meditation Statement of Intent

Most people sit down to meditate without having clear intent. Maybe it is to be a time of focusing or concentrating attention, to observe breath, to relax, visualize, get guidance, or enter a higher state of consciousness. When meditators do not clearly set their intent, competing intentions, often out of awareness, conspire to disrupt the meditation period.

Rightly understood, meditation is a practice of bare intention, without content. It strengthens and clarifies intent by preferring it to other aspects of experience, such as thought, emotion, visualization, sensory stimulation, relationships, or accessing different or higher states of consciousness. Subsequently, IDL recommends that you begin every meditation session with a statement of your intent.

What follows is an example of a statement of intent based on IDL. Use it as a source of ideas for creating your own. When you arrive at something you like, print it out and read it over before you meditate until you can repeat it in your thoughts.

“I am here to meditate.

I am not here to

think,

problem-solve,

plan,

reflect,

contemplate,

or talk to myself in any way.

When thoughts arise, they are like clouds in the sky:

they aren’t about me.

With every out-breath I exhale whatever thoughts arise.

I am not here to experience the roller coaster of my emotions,

including bliss and ecstasy.

When feelings arise, they are like weather; it isn’t about me.

With every out-breath I exhale whatever feelings arise.

I am not here to watch internal TV,

to look at anything or to visualize anything.

When images arise, they seem inconsequential, like a mirage.

With every out-breath I exhale whatever images arise.

I am not here to explore sensations

of heat and cold, pain or relaxation.

I am not here to explore kundalini or chakra energies.

When sensations arise I will treat them as I do

when they arise when I am asleep or watching a movie:

they exist, but they are relatively inconsequential.

With every out-breath I exhale whatever sensations arise.

I am not here to go into trance or

experience altered states of consciousness, whether

sleep,

hypnosis,

samadhi,

the subtle,

causal,

or the non-dual.

If such shifts occur they are not about me.

With every out-breath I exhale whatever state arises.”

“I am here to become the sky.

As the sky I score ten, on a scale of zero to ten, in confidence,

because I as sky am fearless,

since I cannot die and nothing can hurt me.

I am completely awake and aware.

I inhale Joseph’s fear and unconsciousness.

As the sky I score ten in compassion,

because as sky I give myself completely to

humans, animals, trees, and minerals

for them to use me as they wish to live more fully.

I am compassionate in that I completely take in whatever they exhale.

I inhale Joseph’s selfishness and laziness.

As the sky I score ten in wisdom

because I am in all things and therefore know all things.

I am completely balanced between

day and night,

hot and cold.

I inhale Joseph’s ignorance and imbalances.

As the sky I score ten in acceptance

because I do not judge

my weather or color as good or bad

and do not judge what goes on above me or below, in the world.

I inhale Joseph’s non-acceptance, attachments, and addictions.

As the sky I score ten in peace of mind

because nothing affects me.

I am free.

I inhale Joseph’s stress and imprisonment.

As the sky I score ten in witnessing

because I observe the dramas of life and nature without identifying with them.

As the sky I am clear and empty.

I inhale Joseph’s enmeshment in drama and his cloudiness.

“Because I am the sky,

I am transparent and luminous.

I have no self, yet I am completely

awake,

aware,

and alive.

Because I am the sky,

I both respect the laws that govern life

and experience them with

joyful absurdity

because of their dreamlike nature.

Because I am the sky,

I experience the abundance of life

both within me and around me.”

“As the sky, I am prana.

I am breath.

I enter you and the cells of your body,

feeding them and

lighting your mind.

I leave you and become one with all.”

“Because I am these things,

life is sacred.
This moment is sacred.

Sky, as breath, breathes me now.”

The first part of this statement of intention defines meditation negatively, as the absence of each of the five skandhas, or components of identity. By doing so, it gives awareness nothing to hold onto. The nature of these five skandhas are elaborated in “The Five Trees and Meditation.”

The second part of the statement defines meditation positively and experientially, by asking you to become the sky and experience what life is like from its perspective. While it is obvious that the sky is a metaphor for a perspective of pure witness, it is also a metaphor for the five other core qualities of enlightenment referenced here. You are asked to experience yourself as each of them, from the perspective of sky.

The third part of the statement is based on the three refuges of Buddhism: “I take refuge in the Buddha, in the Dharma, and in the Sangha.” “Buddha” means “the enlightened one,” or one who is fully awake, yet with no self. “Dharma” means law, or organizing structure, or truth. IDL sees these as perspectival: totally dependent upon one’s perspective. As a consequence the dharma is not only dreamlike; we are free to choose how we view it. IDL recommends that whatever structures exist in your life, whether they are helpful or hindrances, be viewed with joyful absurdity. “Sangha” is the Buddhist word for spiritual community. In IDL there are two sanghas, your internal, or intrasocial support community, which you encounter and evolve through interviewing and application, and your external support community, made up first of peers and teachers in IDL, then by others who share its values and culture, and finally by the entirety of your waking identity and its social environment: all sentient beings. To fully recognize and embrace these two sanghas is to experience outrageous, unlimited abundance.

The next part centers your sense of who you are in sky and as sky as prana and breath, not as your body, thoughts, or feelings, as you normally do.

The final part centers you in the sacredness of this moment and this moment and this moment as sky, as tens in each of the six core qualities.

At the end of your meditation it is important to set your intent for whatever comes next. Ask yourself, “What thoughts and feelings are likely to come up or get in the way the next time I meditate? What can I do between now and then to reduce them?” Do those things, and watch your meditation improve.

A New Model for the Treatment of Addiction

Joseph Dillard — Thu, 28 Sep 2017 05:44:59 +0000

The Challenge of Addiction Treatment

Anyone who has worked for many years in the treatment of addiction knows that treatment is complicated and multi-faceted and that the rate of relapse is high. The most effective solutions control the most variables for the longest amount of time, which basically means either voluntary or involuntary confinement for extended periods. Clinicians also know that prevention is far easier and less expensive in the costs to human lives and society as a whole, and that discrete addictions, such as smoking, are relatively easy to manage, if not treat, than are pervasive ones, like severe alcohol and drug addictions.

Addiction treatment must help the individual stop using drugs, maintain a drug-free lifestyle, and achieve productive functioning in the family, at work, and in society. Because addiction is typically a chronic disease, people cannot simply stop using drugs for a few days and be cured. Most patients require long-term or repeated episodes of care to achieve the ultimate goal of sustained abstinence and recovery of their lives.

A key insight of the two major Indian traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism, is that addiction is caused by attachment (upadana) and craving (trishna, tanha). In Hinduism the problem is defined as identification with an illusory self instead of the real self. In Buddhism, the problem is defined as identification with an illusory self. There is no real self. In Buddhism, the fundamental addiction is to our sense of self, and all other addictions support it. The entirety of Buddhism can be thought of as an addiction rehabilitation program, with elective in-patient treatment (monasteries) recommended for those who really want to get well. Focus is placed on the underlying, root addiction, in the belief that when it is removed the cravings that associate all other addictions will end.

Clearly, these Indian traditions define addiction much more broadly than do contemporary Western traditions. This is because Western medicine defines disease as deviation from social definitions of normalcy while Indian traditions define disease as normalcy itself. In other words, the Indian approach to the treatment of addiction is a frontal assault on basic assumptions of what it means to be addicted and what it means to be healthy. In the West, health means freedom from pain and societal adjustment. In these two Indian traditions, control by any form of attachment or craving is addiction, and the most fundamental of these is addiction to our sense of who we are. The corollary of this is that we are controlled by our fear of non-existence. All other addictions are viewed as symptoms or secondary outpicturings of this core addiction. Consequently, in the Indian perspective, pursuit of prosperity, health, and social status are addictions, whether they are supported by society or not, because they do not produce enlightenment or freedom from identification with a false sense of self.

The reason why this Indian definition has not been widely adapted in Western clinical models is that most people with addictions just want a return to “normalcy,” as does the greater society which underwrites much of the cost of treatment. It is more than enough if only an addict can once again work, support a family, and not cause societal disruption. Consequently, there is not much support from either social systems or patients for an expanded definition of addiction. However, the high percentage of relapse associated with treatment using present models is forcing a movement toward broader models of addiction.

The model discussed here is not based on either the Western allopathic or the Indian models of addiction. It is derived from a concept from Transactional Analysis, developed by psychiatrist Eric Berne in the U.S. in the 1950’s, called the Drama Triangle.

Transactional Analysis has developed its own choice-based model of treatment of addiction;

the one presented here is not derived from it.

We will call it the “Drama Model” of addiction, and it states that the core addiction of humans is not to substances, attachment, or craving, but to drama. People can be dramatic, as when they act in a play, go to a masked ball, or exaggerate a point, and not be doing drama in the sense that it is used here. Following Berne,

drama is a transactional game, which means it has a covert motivation and a payoff. While all games are not destructive, those that are played within the context of the three roles of the Drama Triangle are.

In the Drama Model, substances, attachments, and cravings are not in themselves problematic; you can use substances and experience both attachments and cravings with or without drama. Without drama, these are less likely to become addictive, although some highly addictive substances, like tobacco, are wise to avoid. However, many things can be used or done beneficially when there is no drama accompanying them. For example, there are many benefits associated with attachment to health and cravings for a balanced life. It is only when drama is introduced that they become addictive and harmful. This is a threatening model to many clinicians and users, because it refuses to portray some substances or experiences as bad and others as good. It does not because doing so turns them into persecutors in the perception of the subject or client, thereby putting treatment into the role of rescuer, and the entire model within the context of the Drama Triangle. When you fight an addiction you are fighting with yourself. When you fight with yourself, you divide your energies against yourself, alienating yourself from that part of your life force and internal resources that your addiction represents. In other words, you increase the likelihood that you will lose that fight, because you deprive yourself of resources you need to integrate, transcend, and include.

The Drama Model addresses addiction in three dimensions of life, waking relationships and behaviors, cognitive processes (thoughts and feelings), and dreams. It views waking relationships and behaviors as the external, objective realm that is easiest to see and treat. Cells and molecular behavior and treatment is also parts of this external, objective realm. The intermediate realm, dealing with thoughts and feelings, is treated by a number of modalities, but most commonly and effectively with cognitive behavioral therapy. The third realm, dreams, is by far the most internal and subjective dimension. It is largely ignored for two reasons. First, the contribution of dreaming to both the maintenance of addictions and to health is poorly understood, and secondly, no effective methodologies for working with dreams in the treatment of addition have been popularized.

Why would we want to eliminate drama in dreams? The waking residue of anxiety from nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder nightmares, which can be extremely disruptive, undoing waking therapeutic progress, is well known. For every nightmare and anxiety-provoking dream that we recall, how many remain below the threshold of awareness? Do those not remembered have any effect on waking coping? Whether we remember a dream or not the emotional residue of the state lingers, particularly through the activation of the General Adaptation Syndrome in the dream state, producing powerful hormones that measurably activate the parasympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system, whether or not we remember a dream. Secondly, the dream state tends to be regressive, meaning that we tend to use earlier, more primitive coping skills than we do in our waking life. We are more likely to react than respond, and to get caught up in drama than we are in our thoughts or our waking life. Consequently, dreaming reinforces drama and addiction, whether we remember our dreams or not.

How can we eliminate the drama in our dreams? It is a four-part process. We can learn about the Drama Triangle and outgrow it in our waking life and our thoughts. As a result, we are less likely to get into drama in our dreams. Secondly, we can access and become parts of ourselves that are not addicted to drama and whose influence will free us from our own. Third, we can practice dream incubation: we can set our pre-sleep intention not to indulge in our addiction during our dreams, whether or not we remember them. This is a relatively simple process and one that can easily be added to any addiction treated protocol. Fourth, we can opt out of drama in our dreams while we are dreaming. You will be able to tell if you are doing so by checking for drama in those dreams that you do remember. Let us look more closely at these four strategies.

In order to eliminate the Drama Triangle in our thoughts and feelings we must first become aware of when we play the victim, persecutor, and rescuer to ourselves in our own interior processes. Whenever we conclude that we are helpless or powerless we are in the role of the victim. Whenever we think, “I’m stupid.” “I’ll never succeed.” “I’m ugly.” “I’m not as talented as she is,” we are in the role of persecutor. Whenever we beat ourselves up for succumbing once again to our addictions we are in the role of persecutor. Of course when we think such thoughts about others we are in the role of persecutor as well. Whenever we indulge in our addiction or seek out a distraction to either run from it or numb us to it, such as TV, the internet, or sleep, we are in the role of rescuer. The problem with the role of rescuer is that it is disempowering. It says, “I’m not OK for who I am, and I won’t be OK until I drink or eat this, talk to that person, read this book, or go to sleep.” Another way of telling if you are in the role of rescuer is to ask yourself, “If there was something I was avoiding right now, what would it be?”

Eliminating cognitive drama involves a combination of self awareness and cognitive-behavioral therapy. You change how you feel by changing how you think; your thoughts themselves are no longer rooted in addiction to the Drama Triangle.The process of eliminating addiction to waking drama is similar. First you learn to identify when you are in the Drama Triangle. You also learn the price you pay when you build your life around drama. The focus is shifted in the Drama Model from treating the addiction, which tends to turn the addiction into a persecutor to fight, to recognizing and choosing not to get into the Drama Triangle, wherever it appears in our life. We cannot change what we are not aware of. The clearer is our awareness of the price we are paying for being in drama the more likely we are to consider alternatives.

Most people who suffer from an addiction cannot imagine a happy, balanced life without it. This includes drama. People who are addicted to the Drama Triangle, and that includes most of us, have a very difficult time imagining that they could have an interesting, exciting, fulfilling life without it. Until this changes, their addiction to drama will fuel their addiction, whatever it may be.

How can you access and become parts of yourself that are not addicted to drama and whose influence will free you from it? Integral Deep Listening is one process by which to do so. Developed by the author in 1981, you “become” or imaginatively identify with, characters from your dreams or the personifications of your life issues, such as your addictions, physical pain, an emotion like fear, or anger at someone or some life situation. Some of these will score high in qualities that are highly correlated with an addiction-free life, such as confidence, compassion, wisdom, acceptance, inner peace, and witnessing. Becoming these during the interviewing process awakens the potential for a non-addicted life, as approached from a specific innate potential perspective. Repeated interviews strengthens the identification with an addiction-free identity as you become many different self-aspects that are not locked in drama.

These self-aspects make recommendations, which when followed, generally build trust in your ability to outgrow your addiction. One common recommendation is to become this or that self-aspect in one or more specific life situations: when you have the urge to use, while you are falling asleep, when you get anxious. Other common recommendations include meditating and recalling dreams to interview occasionally. Such recommendations constitute a powerful feedback mechanism by which anyone can test the utility of the methodology for themselves.

Third, you can practice dream incubation: you can set our pre-sleep intention not to indulge in your addiction during your dreams, whether or not you remember them. Reading over an interview before sleep is a common recommendation often made by interviewed self-aspects. This is a relatively simple process and you that can easily be added to any addiction treated protocol.

Fourth, you can opt out of drama in your dreams while you are dreaming. You will be able to tell if you are doing so by checking for drama in those dreams that you do remember. If you are being chased by a monster and are scared, you’re in drama. If you are wandering around, looking for your lost keys, you’re in drama. If you are fighting or sad, you are probably in drama, which means you are feeding the life addictions that keep you from taking off in your life.

Description of a treatment protocol

Integral Deep Listening teaches clients to identify the Drama Triangle in the waking, cognitive, and dream dimensions of their life. It also puts them in contact with aspects of themselves which are not addicted. As they repeatedly experience becoming non-addicted parts of themselves they slowly grow into a self-definition that transcends and includes drama. What this means is that cravings diminish. At the same time they begin to grasp how they not only could be happy without their addiction but how they are likely to be happier. This is not primarily a cognitive realization, nor is it primarily an emotional catharsis. It is a direct experience of the living potential for an addiction-free life that exists within us right now.

One lady had smoked for over thirty years. One day she realized that she was dependent on cigarettes and nicotine. While she undoubtedly had that thought before, this time it hit her in a way that caused her to stop cold. She never picked up another cigarette. However, thereafter she continuously had cravings. She wanted to smoke! While she didn’t give into the urge, she was basically a “dry drunk,” and therefore subject to relapse at any time. One night she had a dream, one that she had had many many times before. In it there were other people smoking, and she was smoking too. However, this time in her dream she thought, “I don’t have to smoke just because these other people are smoking. I made a decision to stop smoking. I’m not going to smoke.” She never had a dream of smoking again and what is much more significant, her cravings went away.

When I have told this story to others I have received comments like, “One in a million.” I don’t believe that. The principles discussed here do not have to be believed but they do have to be tested. You can perform simple experiments for yourself in your own life with your own cravings. See if you can interrupt them in your dreams. See what difference, if any, that has on your waking addictions.

Integral Deep Listening is only one element of what must be a multi-pronged approach to the treatment of any addiction. What it can uniquely offer is direction of treatment by the inner compass of the patient and a depth of intervention through addressing the Drama Triangle in the three realms, that offers the possibility of reducing multiple addictions at the same time.

Nidra: The Yoga of Dreamless Sleep

Joseph Dillard — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 11:33:15 +0000

In Hinduism, both relaxation training and lucid deep sleep are called yoga nidra. There are various yogis that teach the former, few produce students that can maintain long periods of delta brain waves associated with deep sleep while being able to report events during that period, with conscious awareness. As we shall see, this is a functional definition of lucid deep sleep, and this is the variety of nidra yoga that we are addressing here.

In this practice awareness exists during deep, dreamless sleep, of the physical environment as well as the self, with its thoughts, feelings, and emotions, without content or differentiation. There is no perception of, because there is no longer a distinction between knower and known, perceiver and the perceived. Instead, there is clear, formless awareness, called turiyatita in Sanskrit. References to trance to describe lucid deep sleep are unnecessary because they imply ordinary waking consciousness has been put to sleep or suspended, as in shamanic journeying, which is not the case. In lucid deep sleep waking consciousness is present, only shifted into “neutral,” or functioning in a non-typical way. Similarly, it is not necessary to appeal to the operation of an unconscious or superconscious, because both imply the occurrence of something other than lucidity by waking consciousness. These are distractions from the central point of nidra yoga, that waking identity is lucid during deep sleep.

Two Accounts of Lucid Deep Sleep

In 1971, at the Menninger Foundation in Kansas City, researchers under the direction of Elmer Green used an electroencephalograph (EEG) to measure brain wave states of an Indian guru and adept, Swami Rama. He demonstrated the ability to generate different brain wave states at will, including the slow and low amplitude delta waves associated with deep sleep. “Imagining an empty blue sky with occasional drifting clouds” produced alpha waves, reflecting a state of deep relaxation that is differentiated from the beta waves normally associated with waking consciousness. Production of theta waves, correlated with dream sleep, was produced by the swami by “stilling the conscious mind and bringing forth the subconscious,” which he did for 75{be93f16b5d2e768a85ea81ebc8356f268811d3908838ae6233aa33d012b25ec9} of the 5 minute test period. Then “…the swami entered the state of (usually unconscious) deep sleep, as verified by the emergence of the characteristic pattern of slow rhythm delta waves. However, he remained perfectly aware throughout the entire experimental period. He later recalled the various events which had occurred in the laboratory during the experiment, including all the questions that one of the scientists had asked him during the period of deep delta wave sleep, while his body lay snoring quietly.^”

A second account, reported by Ken Wilber, partially takes lucid deep sleep out of the province, vocabulary, and conceptual framings of Hinduism. “….At some point in the evening we got into a discussion about meditation and the changes it can produce in brain waves. A young man training to be a psychiatrist asked me to get out a videotape I have of me connected to an EEG machine while I meditate. He believed none of the discussion about how meditation could profoundly alter brain waves, and he wanted ‘proof.’

The tape shows me hooked to an EEG machine; this machine shows alpha, beta, theta, and delta waves in both left and right hemispheres. Alpha is associated with awake but relaxed awareness; beta with intense and analytic thinking, theta is normally produced only in the dream state, and sometimes in states of intense creativity; and delta is normally produced only in deep dreamless sleep. So alpha and beta are associated with the gross realm; theta with the subtle realm; and delta with the causal realm. Or, we could say, alpha and beta tend to be indicative of ego states, and delta of spirit states. Delta presumably has something to do with the pure Witness, which most people experience only in deep dreamless sleep.

This video starts with me hooked up to the machine; I am in normal waking consciousness, so you can see a lot of alpha and beta activity in both hemispheres. But you can also see a large amount of delta waves; in both hemispheres the delta indicators are at maximum, presumably because of constant stable witnessing. I then attempt to go into a type of nirvikalpa smadhi — or complete mental cessation — and within four or five seconds, all of the machine’s indicators go completely to zero. It looks like whoever this is, is totally brain-dead. There is no alpha, no beta, no theta–but there is still maximum delta.

After several minutes of this, I start doing a type of mantra visualization technique — yidam mediation, which I have always maintained is predominantly a subtle-level practice–and sure enough, large amounts of theta waves immediately show up on the machine, along with maximum delta. The fact that theta, which normally occurs only in dreaming, and delta, which normally occurs only in deep sleep, are both being produced in a wide-awake subject tends to indicate a type of simultaneous presence of gross, subtle, and causal states (e.g., turiyatita). It is, in any event, attention-grabbing.” [1]

Understanding Lucid Deep Sleep

The central point, that lucid deep sleep is formless, content-free, focused and deeply relaxed clear awareness, is extremely important to remember in order to keep yourself from getting confused about what it actually is. Otherwise, you will obscure lucid deep sleep with various cultural practices and assumptions that have come to be associated with it. Examples include the repetition of Sanskrit mantras, the use of singing bowls, various other forms of yoga, and creative visualization. Richard Miller, a teacher of Yoga Nidra in the U.S., teaches a process of moving through the koshas, or energy sheaths, or finer energy bodies in order to reach the innermost layer of innate joy and peacefulness. Desensitization, body scanning, focus on the “third eye,” and objectification of the thinking, feeling, sensing “I” are other practices you may encounter among those who teach nidra yoga. Examples of assumptions that often accompany descriptions of nidra yoga include karma, the unconscious mind, transcendental consciousness, stress reduction, cleansing, integrating the left and right hemispheres of the brain, logical and “intuitive” perspectives, “store consciousness,” sat, cit, ananda, reactivation of the pineal gland and its production of melatonin, the “field of conscious, pranic intelligence,” communion with the divine, psychic abilities, or a shamanic awareness of other planes of existence. One must also beware of concluding that because lucid deep sleep is associated with delta brain wave patterns that it is an epiphenomenon, or reducible to physiological processes. All of these practices and assumptions add practical and theoretical scaffolding that is intended to support and clarify, but which does not exist in lucid deep sleep itself. Such assumptions are attempts to describe what formless, relaxed, clear awareness is. Once it is laboriously constructed and maintained, all that scaffolding has to be deconstructed, if you are to experience a formless, contentless state of awareness during deep sleep.

Lucid Deep Sleep as Formless Meditation

We can be relatively sure that lucid deep sleep is a byproduct of forms of meditation that involve both relaxation and an ability to maintain focused awareness without content. We can observe this understanding in Wilber’s account above, when he notes the presence of delta waves in normal waking awareness, accompanying beta and alpha waves, and indicating a cultivation of formless witnessing in everyday mind through regular and deep meditation.

What does a formless practice of meditation look like? Preliminary skills are relaxation and focus. The techniques that you use to learn to relax and focus are arbitrary, and every school claims its practices are the most effective. However, these generally involve either visualization, mental repetition, simple observation, or some version of the via negativa, neti, neti, “not this, not this,” as in the naming of the objects of awareness. Experiment with various methods from different schools, because you will find that each adds something to the depth of your relaxation and your ability to maintain focus. Variation is good, but consistency of practice is most important.

Just as in the mastery of lucid dreaming, variety and consistency of repetition of core competencies of relaxation and focus improves the likelihood of success. The more relaxed you become the more you mimic the deep sleep state; the more focused you become the more you acquire the ability to take alert and clear awareness into the deep sleep state. Consequently, working relaxation and focus into your everyday mind increases the likelihood you will practice them in your dreams, lucid dreams, and deep sleep. In order to do so, four half an hour periods of practice a day are more effective than one two-hour period, because repetition throughout the day is more impactful for the cultivation of awareness in both dream and sleep states. Approach your practice as if you were training for a marathon. First develop your endurance by building up your ability to simply sit in meditation, zen-style, for some extended period of time, say two hours. Once you have developed simple physical and mental endurance, you need to learn how be both profoundly relaxed yet awake, aware, and focused at the same time. This is because these competencies are necessary pre-requisites to lucid deep sleep. Deep, regular, daily periods of mediation program you to move into a state of clear, relaxed, focused awareness whenever you want until it becomes your habitual, everyday mind. This does not mean you stop eating, thinking, working, and feeling, and has nothing to do with purification as either a goal or a necessary preparation. Lucid deep sleep is not a trance state nor is it a matter of “dropping” your everyday mind. Instead, you are expanding it. You do so until you can easily access contexts that are formless, that is, they transcend, yet include, all possible content. Whatever comes up exists within the context of relaxed, focused, clear awareness, like the earth and all its life existing within the context of the sky, or like the earth and sky existing within the content of timeless, dimensionless space, or like space existing within the context of all possible universes.

Because most of us associate relaxation with sleep and sleep with unconsciousness, practicing meditation lying down invites sleep, and deep sleep is not meditation; it is unconsciousness, except for experienced meditators. Therefore, it is wise to take on practices that support attention, awareness, and focus. These include sitting, walking, or working while meditating, keeping your eyes open, and one or more of the above-mentioned tools (visualization, mental repetition, simple observation, or some version of neti, neti) until they are no longer required in order for you to maintain relaxed, open awareness, even when lying down. Because the repetition of a mantra, syllable, sound, or verse tends to encourage trance, a state in which your waking mind is no longer present, aware, and engaged, Integral Deep Listening encourages the simple naming of whatever arises into your awareness. This requires the alert presence of consciousness while teaching it to remain so in the spaces between the arising of contents of awareness.

Steps for Learning Lucid Deep Sleep

There exists a natural four-step process for learning lucid deep sleep. First practice formless, clear, focused, and relaxed varieties of meditation while awake, then while dreaming, then while lucid dreaming, and finally during deep sleep. While all of these can be practiced concurrently, awakening in the outer states increases the likelihood of success with attempts at lucidity while deeply asleep. Therefore, lucid deep sleep becomes much more likely the more the above three steps are followed. Conversely, it is precisely the absence of such meditative practice from the lives of most individuals that makes spontaneous occurrences of lucid deep sleep, let alone regular experiences of deep sleep lucidity, unlikely.

Does Lucid Deep Sleep Imply Enlightenment?

Nidra yoga is a dream yoga in the same way that waking is a dream state: waking up in either is a movement from relative unconsciousness into relative awareness and clarity. Lucid deep sleep is both a form of meditation and meditative consciousness itself. Once learned, this meditative consciousness can co-exist within waking, dreaming, lucid dreaming and deep sleep states. Lucid deep sleep is a clear, simple, direct practice of waking up, a skill that requires the pre-existence of non-typical degrees of relaxation and focus at the same time. Notice that it does not imply anything else. Just as anyone can lucid dream, so anyone who masters formless meditation can experience lucid deep sleep. Being able to be deeply relaxed yet focused at the same time does not imply that you are psychic, enlightened, holy, one with God, in a state of constant bliss, unusually ethical, balanced, intelligent, or rational. The self can achieve strong mental focus and deep relaxation without requiring development of other lines. The paradigm for this is wizardry, whether white or black. For example, some yogis, considered enlightened masters, and probably quite capable of lucid deep sleep, have been physically unhealthy, weak, and fat; others have been pedophiles or alcoholics. Therefore, be careful and cautious about assumptions you make about your own level of development or that of those who learn lucid deep sleep. One mark of confidence is the ability to err on the side of humility.

The Paradox of Lucid Deep Sleep

From the standpoint of the self, more consciousness is better, because it means more awareness, more control, more freedom, more power, more capability, and more growth. However, the perspective of the self is not the only point of view, worldview, context, or perspective that exists or that needs to be considered. For one, there is the perspective of life itself. To assume that the two are the same, that the priorities of life must or will coincide with those of the self, is a reflection of psychological geocentrism. Because reality revolves around the self and its worldview, life’s priorities must be in agreement. Are they? How do you know? Setting waking up or enlightenment as a life goal can easily imply an aversion to, conflict with, and minimization of, unconsciousness. This is a massive and fatal assumption, in that it puts the self in conflict with life. In such a conflict, guess who wins? The only way to know the priorities of life and then to determine whether or not they are in conflict with those of the self, is to suspend the priorities of the self and, to the best that we can, view life from the perspective of life itself. While this is impossible, because subjectivity can never be eliminated, it can be reduced, and IDL dream yoga is one way to do so. The fact that such interviews can indeed put you in contact with the priorities of life is based on the eliciting of perspectives and recommendations that do not reflect those of the self.

Two of these priorities are involution and unconsciousness. Life spends a great deal of time and energy being unaware. Why? Is life stupid? Are we smarter than life itself? The desire for consciousness during deep sleep may imply an affirmation of the belief that consciousness is better than unconsciousness and that wakefulness is better than deep sleep, lack of awareness, and death. It may equate freedom, liberation, and enlightenment with constant awareness and wakefulness, while bondage, enslavement, and delusion are assumed to be characteristics of unawareness and deep sleep. Does life itself demonstrate any of these preferences? While evolution is a process of awakening, involution is a process of moving into deep and complete unconsciousness. Which is more important, evolution or involution, awakening or unconsciousness? Is yang more important than yin? What are the implications of setting one half of reality in conflict with the other half? Is doing so supportive of the agenda of life?

Another example of how the self easily puts itself into conflict with life is the concept of expansion. Everyone wants to expand his or her consciousness. By this they mean to become smarter, wiser, more inclusive, empathetic, loving, accepting, peaceful, and good. What about contraction? Is inhalation, or the expansion of the lungs and the taking in of oxygen “better” than the contraction of exhalation? Is this the perspective of life or only of the self when it values evolution, expansion, and consciousness over involution, contraction, and unconsciousness? Is it wise to imagine that life is at war with itself, with one half being “good” and the other “bad?” Is this not essentially the position of both shamanism and manichaeistic dualism? Is it not based on repression and fear?

A larger context includes and balances both, creating a place for greater unconsciousness, rest, imbalance, attachment, limitation, confusion, fear, self-concern, unknowingness, rejection, stress, and subjectivity. If these are indeed priorities of life as well, then deep sleep will always have a respected and necessary place in life; it will never be outgrown. If our desire is to align with life’s priorities, through accessing and following our life compass, then we need to honor deep sleep for its own sake, as a fountain of emptiness and formless creativity, instead of setting a goal of becoming awake and aware at all times. The crucial distinction is between gaining the ability to be conscious, so that we have the choice whether or not to be so in any state, as opposed to needing to be conscious at all times.

Lucid Deep Sleep as a Stage in the Evolution of Life

Because the degree of brain activation during dream sleep is similar to waking, researchers have referred to dreaming as “paradoxical sleep.” Some have theorized that dreaming is an evolutionary adaptation that maintains arousal and vigilance during periods of regeneration, recuperation, and assimilation. Just as lucid dreaming is an evolutionary advance in wakefulness within the state of dream sleep, so lucid deep sleep is an evolutionary advance in wakefulness within the state of deep sleep. Just as waking awareness centers on the evolution of the self, so dreaming is evolution of a multi-perspectival, collective identity that transcends and includes any and all definitions of self. In comparison to both waking and dreaming, deep sleep is evolution of life as unified consciousness. In each of these three states there is a movement from unconsciousness to clear awareness, and a developmental sequence indeed exists: waking enlightenment or lucidity makes dream lucidity more likely, and both make deep sleep lucidity more likely. This does not mean that dream lucidity cannot or does not exist without waking enlightenment; it is obvious that it does. Similarly, deep sleep lucidity does not require waking or dreaming lucidity. Instead we speak of a natural progression: what is learned in waking tends to be carried into the dream state and what is practiced in both tends to lay the foundation for the awakening of formless, clear awareness in deep sleep.

As such, there also appears to be an evolutionary progression of wakefulness within these three states. While enlightenment can be thought of as an ongoing synthesis within the developmental dialectic of any and all stages of waking development, it is also generally associated with transpersonal and trans-rational development, meaning that it follows after growth of the self through prepersonal and personal developmental stages. As we have noted in the chapter on lucid dreaming, enlightenment within the dream state, at least from the perspective of waking consciousness, is lucid dreaming, which is similar to the awakening of a separate sense of self in a typical four-year-old. Lucid dreaming, as an evolutionary advance within the arc of dream state evolution, corresponds roughly with the late prepersonal level of waking development. Of course, enlightenment from the perspective of the collective consciousness that is the evolving self of the dream state is something much greater than the mere advancement of waking identity to lucidity within a dream.

Lucid deep sleep, when viewed within the evolution of formless consciousness known best through deep sleep and causal meditation, is a mere first awakening within deep sleep, a movement from the urobic involution of gestation to early prepersonal birth into the exterior world. The entire arc of deep sleep state evolution lies ahead when you become lucid in deep sleep. What does that evolutionary progression look like from the perspective of life itself? What are the evolutionary stages of oneness? While the four types of mysticism, energic, subtle, causal, and integral, may represent a shadow of the evolution of the formless deep sleep state, and while we may look to the increasingly subtle levels of meditative consciousness described by various schools within Buddhism for echoes of this progression,[2] it is important to remember that these are still projections by human consciousness and its perspective upon a developmental process (lucid deep sleep) that is not about the self, but about life, and which the self does not and cannot comprehend, because life is, by definition, far broader than any self or Self. As a dream yoga, Integral Deep Listening provides experiences of a non-self-centered, polycentric identity of the type indigenous to the evolution of dream consciousness, and the formless, focused clarity inherent within lucid deep sleep. These are both necessary prerequisites to getting out of your own way and “getting over yourself,” so that you may be able to more fully participate in life’s agenda for its own unfolding.

[1] Wilber, K. One Taste, Shambhala, Boston. pp, 75-76

[2] Qualities of the Four Rupa Jhanas: For each Jhāna are given a set of qualities which are present in that jhana:

First Jhāna — the five hindrances have completely disappeared and intense unified bliss remains. Only the subtlest of mental movement remains, perceivable in its absence by those who have entered the second jhāna. The ability to form unwholesome intentions ceases. The remaining qualities are: “directed thought, evaluation, rapture, pleasure, unification of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity & attention”
Second Jhāna — all mental movement utterly ceases. There is only bliss. The ability to form wholesome intentions ceases as well. The remaining qualities are: “internal assurance, rapture, pleasure, unification of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity, & attention”
Third Jhāna — one-half of bliss (joy) disappears. The remaining qualities are: “equanimity-pleasure, unification of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity & attention”

Fourth Jhāna — The other half of bliss (happiness) disappears, leading to a state with neither pleasure nor pain, which the Buddha said is actually a subtle form of happiness (more sublime than pīti and sukha). The breath is said to cease temporarily in this state. The remaining qualities are: “a feeling of equanimity, neither pleasure nor pain; an unconcern due to serenity of awareness; unification of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity & attention”. The Arupa Jhānas: Beyond the four jhānas lie four attainments, referred to in the early texts as aruppas. These are also referred to in commentarial literature as immaterial/the formless jhānas (arūpajhānas), also translated as The Formless Dimensions, in distinction from the first four jhānas (rūpa jhānas). In the Buddhist canonical texts, the word “jhāna” is never explicitly used to denote them, but they are always mentioned in sequence after the first four jhānas. The immaterial attainments have more to do with expanding, while the Jhanas (1-4) focus on concentration. The enlightenment of complete dwelling in emptiness is reached when the eighth jhāna is transcended.

The four formless jhanas are:

Dimension of Infinite Space – In this dimension the following qualities are “ferreted out”: “the perception of the dimension of the infinitude of space, singleness of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity, & attention”.
Dimension of Infinite Consciousness – In this dimension the following qualities are “ferreted out”: “the perception of the dimension of the infinitude of consciousness, unification of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity, & attention”.
Dimension of Nothingness – In this dimension the following qualities are “ferreted out”: “the perception of the dimension of nothingness, singleness of mind, contact, feeling, perception, intention, consciousness, desire, decision, persistence, mindfulness, equanimity, & attention”

Dimension of Neither Perception nor Non-Perception No qualities to be “ferreted out” are being mentioned for this dimension.

The Buddha also rediscovered an attainment beyond the dimension of neither perception nor non-perception, Nirodha-Samapatti, the “cessation of feelings and perceptions”. This is sometimes called the “ninth jhāna” in commentarial and scholarly literature.

(The above is taken from the Wikipedia article on Dhyana in Buddhism, following the Anuppada Sutta.)

Soul Mates – Eternal Love?

Joseph Dillard — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 10:43:41 +0000

The idea that there is one other special person who is a perfect fit for you is very attractive. It allows you to feel the specialness and uniqueness of your love and the sacredness of the bond you have with the one you love. It proclaims to the world and to yourself that this is the One for You, the right, timeless, and everlasting Love of Your Life. As a result, you give yourself permission to commit yourself completely and wholly to this person, because they are your perfect match. Any problems, any misunderstandings, will melt into insignificance within the mutual knowledge that this is a love that lasts forever.

The idea of Soul Mates takes the ideal of Courtly Love, developed during the Middle Ages when knights fought to win the favor of some fair lady, to a new, higher level. The romantic ideal of love was refined in the genre of romantic novels, beginning with the works of Jane Austin, until it attained an exalted metaphysical pinnacle as the concept of Soul Mate, in which the bond of love is created and sanctioned by God and an eternal Divine Order. Seen in such a light, anything that stands between you and your Soul Mate becomes a sin against Nature, Reality, Love, and Truth.

Clearly, a belief in Soul Mates meets the needs of many people. What are those needs? People need to feel special, and the idea of Soul Mates makes people feel special. People need to have their relationship choices validated so that they don’t have to question their judgment, because that would get in the way of abandoning themselves completely to the unique specialness of their love. In addition, contemplating the consequences of a poor choice gets in the way of the dizzying reality of the moment and the possibilities for future happiness it portends. Why not trust in the Power of Love? It feels beautiful, true, and right. Does it not show disrespect not to trust such a sacred thing?

The idea of Soul Mates not only makes you feel special; it validates your choice of partners. It has the additional advantage of justifying bad choices. When the relationship crashes, you can tell yourself that while this was a Match Made in Heaven, it wasn’t “meant to be” at this time. You are able to maintain both your belief in Soul Mates and the rightness of your choice of a disastrous partner.

This is also the thinking when your Soul Mate is already in a committed relationship. This complication does not change the fact that the relationship was Meant to Be and that Love Will Find a Way. It’s karma, destiny, and fate that you have found each other over all these centuries, out of all these millions of people; somehow life will change so that you will be able to be together to put the universe into the harmony, order, beauty, truth, and love that was Meant to Be. In the presence of such timeless, sacred love, how meaningful are the social vows of marriage? People do not understand the power and preeminence of Real, Divine Love.

How about multiple Soul Mates? What about when you are sure someone is your Soul Mate but then another person comes along and you are even more sure this one is your Soul Mate? You were mistaken before, but now you are sure. You know this one is really your soul mate. How do you know? It feels right; you’ve never felt like this; there is a powerful, spiritual energy not just from one but from several of your chakras to this other person. When you ask them about it, they feel it too. That’s proof. It couldn’t be that they are just saying what you want to hear so they can get what they want from you. It couldn’t be that they feel it too but that the feeling works to validate what they feel and what they want. No; it’s nothing like that.

Alas. When a belief is convenient, self-validating, and justifies doing whatever you already want to do, it is wise to take a peek behind the curtain. Is the Great and Powerful Oz really Great and Powerful, or is he a petty carnival operator making money out of generating mass delusion? Asking such a question smacks of cynicism and disrespect. Isn’t it cruel, like taking candy from a child? What harm is the candy? Why can’t one just leave well enough alone? Even if a belief in Soul Mates is a delusion, it is harmless, is it not? Why not just let lovers in love be? Why spoil the fun? Why not just let people find out on their own?

What if a baby has a cigarette instead of candy? There are cases of two year olds becoming addicted to cigarettes or alcohol because their parents think it is “cute.” Like cigarettes and alcohol, the concept of Soul Mates is addictive. How else does one explain how effectively it has taken root in the popular imagination? How else does one explain why it has remained viable in some segments of culture for decades?

The problem with viewing Soul Mates as an understandable and harmless belief is that it allows you to stand by while lives are wrecked and children are raised in unnecessary adversity. Is it harmless if your daughter has children with her Soul Mate, who turns out to be an alcoholic, gambler, and child molester? What are the consequences for your daughter? What are the consequences for your grandchildren? Are those consequences all in Divine Order? Do you want to spend years of your life worrying about the welfare of your own grandchildren, who are being raised in circumstances that are abusive, but that you can do little to change?

The Drama Triangle is a psychological game played between people, as well as in your thoughts and in your dreams. It consists of three roles, Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer. When you play one role you eventually end up playing the other two. It’s unavoidable. Soul Mates are Rescuers in the Drama Triangle. Gurus are a special variety of Soul Mate. Both lovers and Gurus come into your life to rescue you from loneliness, boredom, and insecurity, to show you the way to happiness, bliss and enlightenment. They give your life meaning it didn’t have before. What’s wrong with that? The problem is that you have fallen in love with your own idealization that you want and think you need. You are ignoring who the other person really is, because that’s not who you need them to be. You want and need them to be your rescuer.

But rescuers have a nasty habit of turning into persecutors. How come? At some point your Soul Mate’s behavior will be seen to no longer live up to your unrealistic, idealistic expectations for them. What Guru does not also fit this description? When this happens it is often experienced as rejection or abandonment. You may try many different means to get them to change, to become the person you know that they “really” are. But your well-meaning efforts will be experienced as non-acceptance and met with resistance. Prince Charming has turned into a frog or even worse, a warty toad.

Because this is so highly predictable it is amazing that most people manage to fool themselves into thinking that this time, with this person, things will be different. If you like living in the Drama Triangle, you’ll love believing in Soul Mates. You’ll love trading in last year’s model Guru for the new, improved, highly recommended Real and True Guru.

Here some questions to ask yourself. Does a belief in Soul Mates make poor judgment about relationships choices more or less likely? Is a belief in soul mates likely to be true – that there is only one right person for you in all the universe and you have found them – or is it more likely that you are indulging in a delusion that validates your current feelings?

The inconvenient truth is that believing in Soul Mates is based on fear. It assumes that abundance does not exist in the universe, that this one lover or teacher that seems so special, so right, is the only source of deep, satisfying, complete love that you will ever find in the universe. Wouldn’t such a universe be narrow, petty, and impoverished? It also assumes that you have to settle for what you’ve got, because better is not going to come around. Is that true? How do you know?

It is hard work finding appropriate partners and spiritual teachers. You’ll be disappointed and get rejected. You’ll make mistakes and then have to look at why you did so and learn from them. That’s difficult. No one likes being confronted with the fact that, despite their best judgment and strong feelings, they were flat-out wrong or just plain foolish in their choice in partners or spiritual teachers. It’s much easier to leave the choice to chance, magic, and delusional thinking and just pray that reality won’t catch up.

However, once you get the hang of it, it’s not so bad being wrong and foolish. I make a point of being wrong and foolish at least six times before breakfast, and then attempt to improve on my failure rate as the day goes on. Pretending you’re not stupid, ignorant, and mistaken takes energy away from enjoying life. Why not just admit to yourself and everyone else that you are a hopeless dweeb? They will not only be taken aback by your honesty but pleasantly surprised when you do something minor right, like remember their name. You can then learn from your mistakes instead of hiding them, as if they were bad or wrong. Mistakes are a good thing; they’re how you learn.

The truth about Soul Mates is that there is no perfect match for you; there is no perfect teacher, Guru or Master either. Everyone you meet is a fallible human being. The more you get to know your partner the more you will recognize just how screwed up they are, just like you. When you give your partner or teacher permission to be imperfect you are giving yourself permission to be imperfect. You no longer have to try to be someone’s Soul Mate. Instead you can just be you, which is both more unique and wonderful than any Soul Mate.

If you have an eleven year old child, grandchild, nephew, niece, or friend, why not talk to them about all this? You could save them years of heartbreak. You could save yourself years of protecting children from the disastrous decisions of stupid adults. Why not have them read this and ask them what they think? Help them think these issues through before they get blinded by teenage hormones. Love does not have to be blind. Reason exists to improve love. Objectivity and love not only co-exist, but need each other to make decisions that not only feel good, but stand the test of time.

If you want to learn the principles of IDL so you can help your family, friends and loved ones avoid unnecessary suffering, drama and to learn to wake up

Words that Keep You Stuck in Drama

Joseph Dillard — Wed, 27 Sep 2017 10:39:05 +0000

Some words put you in the Drama Triangle, whether you speak them or think them. You can’t use them and stay out of the Drama Triangle. You can’t use them and have inner peace. They are to be avoided.

Words that put you in the role of victim

“Can’t”

“Can’t” puts you into the role of victim because it says, “I am powerless, unable, helpless.” Do not use it. If you do, you will not only be telling yourself, “I am a victim,” you will be telling everyone else that you expect them to treat you like you are a victim. If you use “can’t,” don’t be surprised when people either try to rescue you or take advantage of your powerlessness. They are treating you the way you’ve told them to treat you.

People often use “can’t” to excuse themselves from someone’s request: “I would love to come, but I can’t.” Are you unable to come or is the truth that you don’t want to or you have another appointment? What’s keeping you from just saying you have another appointment?

“Couldn’t” does the same. It tells others and yourself that you are powerless. “I would have come, but I couldn’t.” No; you could have; no one was holding you prisoner. If you have a conflict, just say you have a conflict. Instead of using “can’t,” substitute words like, “won’t,” “choose not to,” “will not,” or “do not want to.” These may take some getting used to; they may feel too strong or powerful. That’s because you may not be used to feeling strong or powerful. Use them and you’ll grow into it.

Ask those around you to point out to you when you use the word “can’t.” It will help you to create a Drama-free culture at home and at work.

Words that put you in the role of persecutor

Always

“Always” puts you in the role of persecutor because it says, “perfection.” Perfection does not exist in reality. If the person you are talking to can find only one instance that disproves “always” they have grounds to dismiss what you are saying and stop listening to you. “You are always late,” can be disproved by only one instance in which the person was on time. “I am always thoughtful,” can be disproved by only one instance in which you were not thoughtful.

If you use “always” you will teach other people to expect you to be an opinionated, unrealistic, unreasonable person who doesn’t listen to others. If you use “always,” don’t be surprised when other people don’t want to share what they really think or feel with you, because they don’t want you to make them wrong.

Don’t use “always.” Instead use words like “usually,” or “mostly.” They communicate that you are confident, but not certain or rigid. They indicate that you believe you can defend your position but that it is not unchangeable.

Never

Like “always,” “never” puts you in the role of persecutor because it says, “perfection.” Perfection does not exist in reality, because there are instances that disprove “never.” “You are never reliable,” can be disproved by only one instance in which the person was reliable. “I am never unkind,” can be disproved by only one instance in which you were unkind.

People use “always” and “never” because they convey the intense feelings that they have. It feels like “always” or “never.” That’s the problem. Those feelings are reactions; they are too intense; they are inaccurate; they lack credibility, and to use words that express extreme feelings strengthens those extreme feelings while destroying your credibility and increasing your emotional reactivity. When you change your words to conditional and less extreme expressions, you will also find that you learn to have more control over your feelings. They will no longer rule your life, determine your happiness, make others so defensive, or cause you so much unhappiness.

If you use “never” you will teach other people to expect you to be an opinionated, unrealistic, unreasonable person who doesn’t listen to others. If you use it, don’t be surprised when other people don’t want to share what they really think or feel with you, because they don’t want you to make them wrong.

Don’t use “never.” Instead use words like “rarely,” or “infrequently.” Like “usually” and “mostly,” they communicate that you are confident, but not certain or rigid. They indicate that you believe you can defend your position but that it is not unchangeable.

Blame

Searching for someone to blame is a favorite defense for those who feel persecuted. They are saying, “I am in the role of victim, and there’s someone or something to blame!” Blaming is an avoidance strategy. It doesn’t solve any problem; it only wastes time while making your problem worse. That is because where there was one problem before, now there are two. The first problem is what you are attempting to avoid dealing with by blaming: “You left your underwear on the floor again!” The blaming creates your second problem: a snipe hunt that changes the subject without doing anything to solve the original problem. A better response would be, “What can you do to not leave your underwear on the floor in the future?”

South Africa set up a noble alternative to national and personal blaming when, after apartheid, instead of persecuting the malefactors, it set up a Truth and Reconciliation Committee. The idea was for wrong-doers and perpetrators to acknowledge their misdeeds, take responsibility, and take actions that demonstrated a desire to help their society grow into greater health. Isn’t that what matters? How does blaming anyone make anything better? Can you force anyone to take responsibility? Do you think you will feel better because you make someone else feel worse? Perhaps you will feel better because someone gets punished, but will anything get better? Aren’t you just reinforcing a culture of recrimination and blame?

When you blame others you are inevitably blaming the part of yourselves that they represent. You can’t blame someone else without blaming yourself. This means you can’t persecute someone else without persecuting yourself. Do you want to do that? Do you deserve abuse?

When you blame others you are making it more likely that they will eventually blame you. If you want to live in a relationship, family, and culture in which you are blamed and in which, instead of solving problems you remain mired in the suffering of the Drama Triangle, by all means, continue to use the world “blame.”

Fault

Get the word “fault” out of your vocabulary today. Why? It can’t be used without implying blame. Finding fault is not the same as objectively looking for mistakes, confusions, or deletions. Finding fault is looking for such things and then blaming. Instead of focusing on solutions, fault-finders have to tell others what they’ve done wrong. Why do they do this? They generally think they are performing a teaching function. They justify it as “feedback,” “information,” “help.” They see themselves as “helpers.” Go through the rescuer checklist: Was the feedback requested? Was the information helpful and appreciated? Did you stop finding fault when the other person told you it wasn’t helpful or appreciated? If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” then the information you are giving is not “feedback,” “information,” or “help.” It is fault-finding, and you are in the role of persecutor. However, you don’t see it that way because you don’t want to take responsibility for the fact that you are making yourself feel right or powerful at the expense of someone else – most probably someone you love.

If you need to criticize, ask permission. Say something like, “Something you did really irritates/upsets/concerns me, but I don’t want to get into the role of persecutor about it. I want to tell you so it doesn’t happen again, but I don’t want to make it your fault.” Wait and see what they say. They will probably reluctantly give you permission.

If you think this is too much trouble and just continue to point out the weaknesses and failures of others in a way they view as fault-finding, don’t be surprised when they lie to you about what they have done or not done in order to avoid your criticism. Don’t be surprised when they look for opportunities to find fault with you, as a way to take revenge for what they view as unfair attacks. Don’t be surprised when they distance themselves from you to protect themselves. Don’t be surprised when they are not there when you need them. Don’t be surprised when you find the same patterns of alienation of affection repeating with new relationships, because it’s not the other person who is the problem; it’s because you’re stuck in the Drama Triangle and you would rather find fault in others and yourself than get out.

Should

“Should” implies conscience, parents, God, church, script, obligation, permission from authorities, and guilt. If you enjoy feeling guilty, if you want to make someone else feel guilty, use “should” and “shouldn’t.”

This pernicious verb is often used to express externally imposed rules and laws. You “shouldn’t” jay-walk; you “should” brush your teeth. You “shouldn’t” fart in public; you “should” obey your parents. When you tell yourself you “should” do something, you put the full weight of some moral code on your shoulders. Everyone benefits from having a moral code. How about having one that you choose? When you act out of that moral code, how about doing so because it’s helpful, not because you “should?” Start asking yourself, “Am I doing this because it’s something that’s helpful to myself or others or because I “should?”

How about all those things that you have to do that you don’t want to do, like paying taxes, showing up in court, flossing, going to work, and obeying your boss? First, recognize that you don’t have to do any of those things; it’s just that the alternatives are worse. If you look at them objectively, you don’t do these things because they are in your own best interest. You are doing them for you. Once you get clear on this, you can own the fact that you want to do them more than you don’t want to do them.

“Should” and “shouldn’t create inner resistance that makes it more difficult to do things you don’t want to do or have to do. Once you recognize that you have a choice and that you are doing whatever because it is helping yourself or someone else, your resistance will become a lot less. It may even vanish entirely. You will then spend your life doing things that make your life and the lives of others, more productive, relatively outside the Drama Triangle, rather than doing things you should do, and spending your life feeling oppressed, in the victim role of the Drama Triangle.

Notice that when you use “should” and “shouldn’t” you put yourself in all three roles of the Drama Triangle. You not only get to feel you are a helpless victim, but you get to find persecutors everywhere: work, municipal hall, police, other drivers, your parents, your partner. Even your kids become persecutors, because after all, you “should” help them with their homework and make sure they grow up to be good people. “Should” also has the function of rescuing you from guilt and shame since, if you do what you are expected to do, you are blameless. This mechanism has been used since time immemorial by parents to get children to behave. Once they have internalized the tyranny of “should” they will parent themselves, making the jobs of mom and dad, teachers and police much easier. Society uses it to great benefit to get citizens to obey laws so that society runs more smoothly and authority is not questioned, giving autocrats of all kinds a free ride.

Ought

Everything above regarding “should” applies to “ought” as well. However, “ought” might be a bit more compelling and have a bit more of the persecutor about it. Stop using “ought.” It’s toxic.

Must

“Must” implies, “Don’t think; don’t question; don’t doubt; just DO what you have to do.” “Must” provides a double bind. For example, if you are in the military, you “must” obey your superiors. If you don’t, very bad things happen to you. However, if your military superiors order you to do something illegal, like torture, and you get caught, you will go to jail, not your superiors. If you “must” do your homework to pass a class, then you risk spending your life beating yourself with a stick, so to speak, to make yourself work. What do you get for that? In order to succeed you will keep yourself under constant stress. You will have no peace of mind.

When you use “must,” you put yourself in this same type of moral vice. It’s a guaranteed “lose-lose” situation, where you are going to end up feeling bad, regardless of what you do. When you use “must” with others, you are almost guaranteed to be viewed as a persecutor. You are also almost guaranteeing that the other person will resent you and will do whatever you want with passive or active resistance, meaning that it will not be done well. Parents typically find themselves in this situation with their children and wonder why.

What do you do when something must be done? How can you avoid these problems? With children, give them a choice they can’t refuse: “Would you prefer to do your homework or vacuum the house?” “Would you prefer to clean your room or clean the bathrooms?” With adults you supervise, just make it a matter of policy, part of their job description. With a partner, talk about the consequences if they don’t do it: “You don’t have to pick up after yourself if you don’t want to, and I don’t have to cook you dinner if I don’t want to.” Not too subtle. They will probably get the message. If they accuse you of blackmail, say, “What do you think would be appropriate consequences if you don’t pick up after yourself?”

But

While there are legitimate uses for this little word, when it is used in sentences it negates what has been said before the “but.” If you say, “I can be very thoughtful, but I can forget really important things,” what are you really saying? You are emphasizing that you can forget really important things. You are also teaching the other person that if they need to criticize you, they can simply remind you that you forget really important things. If you say, “I love you, but I can’t stand it when you are late,” what are you really saying? You are saying that your intolerance is more important than your love. You are also teaching the other person that if they want to get you mad, all they have to do is be late.

When you use “but” you are contradicting what you just said before the “but.” Not only is that crazy-making and confusing; it is a form of self-persecution or persecution of the other person. Sometimes we reverse these to lessen the impact of a criticism: “You are a real jackass, but I love you anyway.” This is a complement with a hook in it. You are still in the role of persecutor, making the other person into a victim.

These examples show that using “but” either mixes pepper into the honey of your words or is designed to make you appear truthful, honest, or loving by sugar-coating the medicine you are dishing out. In either case, it rarely works. It just sends a mixed message. What to do?

Why not simply eliminate “but” and use “and” instead? Why not simply say, “I can be very thoughtful, and I can forget really important things?” Why not just say, “I love you, and I can’t stand it when you are late?” Why not say, “You are a real jackass, and I love you anyway?”

If you will make this simple change you will find that you are clearer and speak with more confidence. It will also be a small step to keep you out of the Drama Triangle.

Words that may put you in the role of rescuer

“Need” and “Want”

“Need” sounds like a perfectly helpful and honest word. You “need” to get things done; you “need” to do your homework; you “need” to set goals; you “need” to be respectful, you “need” to help others. When you “need” to do something, who are you doing it for, others or for yourself? You are doing it for yourself, not the other person because you are the one with the need. This is not the normal implication of the word “need.” It generally implies outside compulsion, something someone or something has imposed upon us.

When you say, “You need to clean your room,” you are posing as mind-reader. Do you know that your child needs to clean his or her room? Don’t you mean that you want them to clean their room? If that is the case, why don’t you say so? Probably because you want to sound “nice.” Instead, you are being unclear, dishonest in your motives, and using language that gets you stuck in the rescuer role of the Drama Triangle.

This holds true even when you say, “They need me to do this,” or, “You need me to help you.” What you probably mean to say is that they want you to do this or I want to help you to do that.”

Using need can also be an invitation for the other person to climb into the role of rescuer: “I need you so much!” “I need your help!” Do you need rescuing or do you want help? If you need rescuing, you’re saying you need to stay stuck in the Drama Triangle. If you say you want help, then you may actually get help instead of rescuing. Instead of using “need,” try using want. It may feel uncomfortable, because it is more direct. It is also more powerful. It expresses more confidence and an honest desire.

However, both “need” and “want” can be used to justify indulging in a craving and thereby jumping into the role of victim, with food, others, drink, or cigarettes in the role of rescuer. In such a case, a cognitive distortion is at work. That is because you don’t “need” a substance or activity that kills you; you don’t really want a substance or activity that kills you; it just feels like you do. By using “need” or “want” in this way you are strengthening your emotional and physical cravings. Instead, use words that reflect preference but with less intensity: “I would like some chocolate”; “I would prefer it if you would repeat what I said so I know I was clear in what I said to you.”

Because using “want” and “need” in these very common ways is a cognitive distortion, you need a substitute thought or statement, such as, “I don’t need/want this cigarette; my body/needy emotions need/want this cigarette.” The basic question to ask is, “Do I want/need this so much that it’s worth it to me to jump into victim role in the Drama Triangle?” “Do I want/need to be a victim?”

Notice that “need” and “want” put you into all three roles of the Drama Triangle. Because they imply compulsion, you risk being in the role of persecutor. If you feel persecuted by a demand associated with the need, you may be in the role of victim. If you are helping others because you “need” to, you are probably in the role of rescuer.