Consciousness, Transcendence & Integration

[Mohan.C]

Hi Mo....possibly what you explain here is how it was like when religion began but I found out the truth about religion actually at a very young age. My parents who were told by their parents told me that nuns and priests were like holy representations of life. So I go to school and I am only in grade 2 and eight years old. My dad had just passed away and I would daydream alot that I would go home and he would be sitting in the big comfy chair in the living room...I guess it was a no-no to daydream in school so each day the nun would beat me with the strap and it would take the entire day for the swelling to go down in my hands. I would sit at night by the window and think how could my parents think nuns are holy when they are hurting me and trying to teach me hatred.
Even at such a young age the contrast of loving parents and a hatefilled nun made a remarkable impression upon me....

Hmmmm. Nuns and priests were made as holy representations of life, but my question is when did 'holy' ever came into existence? and why did it come into existence? Was it so utterly necessary to have a 'god' like symbol who would rule us all. Was there a necessity to be conformed to be civilized.

Why do I think you can't own your own mind in religion? Its quite logical that if you adhere to a fixed dogma of beliefs you agree to live with a closed mind...plus whoever has the power of your faith, has power over your life....

Religion is basically a set of values because of which human civilization appears 'civilized'. But, a religion which compels to adhere to those values is not religion, its humans teaching a religion. Religion is like a thought, its a way, and the one's expressing it are human's who make religion look small and separated because their conscience is...

I think we all feel responsibility for different things in life. I feel responsibility in this area because the journey of psycho-spiritual evolution needs to be understood...the great thinkers in ages past left us thought systems like the Qabalah for purely reasons of gaining wisdom...they hid most of the wisdom in symbols which are a language understood while one is deep in the process of transcendence and integration...wisdom gained serves no purpose in the realm of secrecy because wisdom is not wisdom until it is spoken and shared...

Exactly Mikal. They hid it. And they probably did because, without doing so, they would have made wisdom 'compulsory'. They hid it, because those who wanted to see them could see them. Those who didn't, could just smile and walk away.
Wisdom should be shared, but not compelled. If anybody wants knowledge from you, they will come to you.
And when they do, it becomes your responsibility to give them all that you have.

I am never offended by your questions Mo and for a young man I sure do admire your proclivity to be of deep thought about life....


Mikal

Thanks.


Sorry for the late reply. From now on, I'll try to reply as early as I can. But, I can't guarantee it will be soon enough.

Thank you.

[Mikal]

Hi Mo....nice to hear from you again!!

When my parents were young parents beginning out with their children the knowledge had not yet surfaced that for example priests were sexually abusing young children in particularly young altar boys. My parents would have had their religious beliefs enculturated in by their own family choice of religious preference so the attempt to transfer beliefs to me, however I had no attraction for religious belief or worship which must have been innate or I would have just conformed....which I did not.
At the time of religions peak it must have seemed necessary to them to have a god like symbol ruling all for the ensurance of outer moral sake of behavior and action.

Was there a necessity to be conformed to be civilized? Interesting question Mo and I had that question taken to broader horizons when I studied the work of Paulo Freire and he stated...."while the problem of humanization has always, from an axiological point of view, been humankind's central problem, it now takes on the character of an inescapable concern. If there is the need for humanization there must be the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility but as an historical reality." Basically what he was saying is man has made the error of seeing us as animal in nature and having the need to be humanized or enculturated to be conformed to being civilized....

In your ending statements Mo...the word "hid" or hidden comes to light. Wisdom is hidden because it was intended to be the experiential..(inner.) Historically the knowledge of experiential wisdom was hidden in myth, symbol and metaphor because these were the times or epochs of rampant religious/government persecution between the varying levels of those societies. Even in the hidden Gnostic text "The Gospel of Philip" the phrases refer to the Archons which meant..."those who govern us."
Jesus as an historical figure said from the cross..."forgive them Father for they know not what they do." He was imparting that the society who crucified him was functioning unconsciously as a massive collective mind which I just call "the stop and go mentality."

We are well beyond open and rampant persecution so now we solve the riddles of our own ancient history. I would not say we are beyond covert intimidation and manipulation of the masses but we now must speak out.

Let us take the word "responsibility" out of the equation and I become like every other member of the TOE seeking to learn and seeking to teach...

Now would you share with me whether you are religious, spiritual or whatever??
I am not here to judge, I am here to understand....I respect all ways to walk through life....


Mikal

[melanie]

I think consciousness is a combination of "knowing who you are" (being in your place of self-consciousness) + "understanding your own process followed in the steps of becoming" + now living with the perceptual intelligence (your metaphorical eye) which allows you a higher understanding of how this world works and the nature of the society you are participating in....

"Through Transcendental Meditation, the human brain can experience that level of intelligence which is an ocean of all knowledge,
energy, intelligence, and bliss."



Meditation is not about sitting around on cushions all day doing diddly- squat.
It's about allowing the mind to unfold its potential for unlimited awareness, transcendental awareness, & unity Consciousness.
While living out our everyday normal existence, even as we are doing the shopping or peeling the spuds.
It's the lively field of all potential, where every possibility is naturally available to the conscious mind.
The conscious mind becomes aware of its own unbounded dignity, its unbounded essence, its infinite potential.

The conscious mind can fathom the whole range of its existence - active and silent, point and infinity.
It is not a set of beliefs, a philosophy, a lifestyle, or a religion.

It's just knowing who you are and who you are not.
We are not our beliefs and we are not our emotions.
We are the experiencing of them.

[Mikal]

Mel I have always knocked this thought around in my head since my own experience of consciousness and my journey of integration..
Back in 1977 when I began the journey to integrate my consciousness I never knew Transendental Meditation existed...I never even had heard of the word Meditation. So what is this and what does it mean?? It more than likely means that Jung was correct when he pondered whether we have a natural instinct to reflect. It also may mean that for some of us psycho-spiritual evolution could just be writ deep into the course of our lives..maybe in our genes, our RNA or our DNA or even what is called our junk DNA..If thats true then it certainly speaks to us about life being purposive, in other words having a purpose to be....

This ocean you speak of I see as Universal and I had some intensifying experiences with that particular environment. But this perceptual intelligence I am speaking of is to function for the outer world. Now would it be too outrageous to say that we might be here about becoming a highly intelligent species fully capable of creating a more intelligent world to live in and a more sustainable society which recognizes all not just some? Philosopher David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind pondered "Does consciousness have a purpose?? Why does it seem that lower consciousness does not understand the higher functions of sociology and economics"??

I simply ask Mel...is it all connected???


Mikal

[melanie]

Mel I have always knocked this thought around in my head since my own experience of consciousness and my journey of integration..
Back in 1977 when I began the journey to integrate my consciousness I never knew Transendental Meditation existed...I never even had heard of the word Meditation. So what is this and what does it mean?? It more than likely means that Jung was correct when he pondered whether we have a natural instinct to reflect. It also may mean that for some of us psycho-spiritual evolution could just be writ deep into the course of our lives..maybe in our genes, our RNA or our DNA or even what is called our junk DNA..If thats true then it certainly speaks to us about life being purposive, in other words having a purpose to be....

This ocean you speak of I see as Universal and I had some intensifying experiences with that particular environment. But this perceptual intelligence I am speaking of is to function for the outer world. Now would it be too outrageous to say that we might be here about becoming a highly intelligent species fully capable of creating a more intelligent world to live in and a more sustainable society which recognizes all not just some? Philosopher David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind pondered "Does consciousness have a purpose?? Why does it seem that lower consciousness does not understand the higher functions of sociology and economics"??

I simply ask Mel...is it all connected???


Mikal

Yes, it's all connected.
It must have purpose, or it wouldn't keep on desiring itself.
That's what keeps it all going... desire.
The self's desire to know through expression every conceivable aspect of ITSelf as and through each created individual form.

Everything that happens, happens for a reason.
There are no mistakes.
Everything has it's purpose and reason.
Do not reject anything.




Existence is appearance only ... we are the ''experiencing'' of the soul /spirit through and as the senses.
The senses /emotions are not who we are, we are the awareness in which the senses arise and fade.
We are spirit having human experience.

colours exist as they appear... not separate from this seeing
odours exist as they appear... not separate from this smelling
flavours exist as they appear... not separate from this tasting
sounds exist as they appear... not separate from this hearing
feelings exist as they appear... not separate from this feeling

All sensations are ever 'latent' in the senses... ever unchanged...

As they appear within these senses, they magically pattern an infinitesimal aspect of all this that is known...
experienced from the perspective of each separate creature.

A quote ...

'' As we all know, everything in this universe is vibratory in nature, and so it is that when two souls establish a vibratory resonance with each other, their unified frequency brings them into a deeply resonant field of oneness, their respective consciousness merging into a single "onesciousness" - the awareness of being One. When that happens, each soul spontaneously sense the other soul's thoughts and feelings — what is generally called telepathy, a poorly understood phenomenon that involves much more than simply sharing one's thoughts with another being — and very powerful waves of tingling bliss engulf both soul beings into an ecstatic communion that brings pure joy and often draws tears of elation. To establish soul resonance between two or a virtually limitless number of souls, all that is needed is a simple act of surrendering one's control over our separate sense of self-perception, an act born out of love for and utter faith in each other's divine beingness, something which the ancient concept of namaste partly expresses. For any soul who has not yet experienced this sort of deep surrendering to the One Omniversal Force Field of Love, the universal medium through which synchronous fusion is achieved — something which is somewhat reflected by the concept of entanglement as defined in quantum physics — it takes a definitively complete leap of faith to first achieve this state of being which, by their very nature, is an innate ability all souls can experience."

At the end of the day, everything that happens is perfectly ok
It's all part of this endless dance......

And there is only the dance.

Sometimes the dance is without harmony rhythm or synchronization, sometimes it is without sense or justification.

But that is the utter all in-clusive nature of it.

All for LOVE
Allonelove wearing many faces of itself..

[melanie]

Mel I have always knocked this thought around in my head since my own experience of consciousness and my journey of integration..
Back in 1977 when I began the journey to integrate my consciousness I never knew Transendental Meditation existed...I never even had heard of the word Meditation. So what is this and what does it mean?? It more than likely means that Jung was correct when he pondered whether we have a natural instinct to reflect. It also may mean that for some of us psycho-spiritual evolution could just be writ deep into the course of our lives..maybe in our genes, our RNA or our DNA or even what is called our junk DNA..If thats true then it certainly speaks to us about life being purposive, in other words having a purpose to be....

This ocean you speak of I see as Universal and I had some intensifying experiences with that particular environment. But this perceptual intelligence I am speaking of is to function for the outer world. Now would it be too outrageous to say that we might be here about becoming a highly intelligent species fully capable of creating a more intelligent world to live in and a more sustainable society which recognizes all not just some? Philosopher David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind pondered "Does consciousness have a purpose?? Why does it seem that lower consciousness does not understand the higher functions of sociology and economics"??

I simply ask Mel...is it all connected???


Mikal

The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

by Julian Jaynes

In this book, Jaynes theorizes that ancient consciousness was radically different from modern consciousness. He suggests that ancient human beings had no sense of an interior, directing self. Rather, they accepted commands from what appeared to them to be an externalized agency, which they obeyed blindly, without question.
This externalized self was a consequence of the split between the two halves of the brain. Jaynes suggests that the left and right brains were not integrated—"unicameral"—they way they are today. Rather, the ancient brain was "bicameral," with the two brains working essentially independently of each other. The left half of the brain, the logical, language-using half, generated ideas and commands, which the right brain then obeyed. These commands were subjectively perceived by the right brain as coming from "outside"—as if a god was speaking.

Jaynes adduces evidence for this astonishing hypothesis from several sources. One is the "voices" heard by schizophrenic patients, which Jaynes interprets as a throwback to the bicameral mind of ancient times. Another is evidence from neurosurgery, where patients hear "voices" upon having their brains electrically stimulated. Another is the polytheistic gods of ancient civilizations, which spoke directly and intimately to individuals:

"Who then were these gods who pushed men about like robots and sang epics through their lips? They were voices whose speech and directions could be as distinctly heard by the Iliadic heroes as voices are heard by certain epileptic and schizophrenic patients...The gods were organizations of the central nervous system"(73-4).

Jaynes suggests that each person had his own individual "god", which always told them what to do. The theory further accounts for why the gods were so naturalistic and anthropomorphic, rather than supernatural and otherworldly.

Where did the gods go, then? Jaynes proposes that a series of unprecedented environmental stresses in the second millennium B.C. forced the two halves of the brain to merge into unicamerality. (This was a cultural, rather than a biological, transformation, Jaynes notes.) The stresses might have included natural disasters (the story of the Flood comes to mind), population growth, forced migrations, warfare, trade, and the development of writing. A common denominator among all these is the introduction of complexity and difference, things the bicameral mind deals with only with difficulty. Jaynes suggests, among other things, that traders in contact with other cultures might have been forced to develop a "protosubjective consciousness" to cope with the gods of unfamiliar people.

Jaynes suggests that the unprecedented stresses of the 2nd millennium B.C. forced the individual into isolation, within which a sense of I-ness appeared to fill the void left by the inadequacy of the god. This hypothesis posits a relatively homogeneous and stress-free existence prior to the development of consciousness. In short, Jaynes must posit that there really was an Eden, from which humanity Fell.

To establish the gods' disappearance, Jaynes cites a number of illustrations and cuneiform tablets dating from Sumerian times. He shows a stone-carven image of the King of Assyria kneeling in supplication before an empty throne, from which his god is conspicuously absent. The accompanying cuneiform script reads, "One who has no god, as he walks along the street,/ Headache envelopes him like a garment." Another tablet reads,


My god has forsaken me and disappeared,
My goddess has failed me and keeps at a distance.

The good angel who walked beside me has departed.

Jaynes interprets this as evidence of a new subjectivity in Mesopotamia. The bicameral mind has begun to collapse into the modern unicameral mind of the self-willed, self-aware "I", and as a consequence the gods no longer speak to people, as they did in the days of old (223).

These lamentations sound remarkably like the nam-shubs mentioned in Snow Crash.

The nam-shubs also mourn something precious, and speak of confusion and loss. It is not at all hard to guess that the loss of bicameral tranquility may have been accompanied by unprecedented linguistic disruption (irrespective of any causal relationship between the two.) The Tower of Babel story—which the nam-shubs strongly resemble—may have happened at a time when bicamerality was breaking down.

Be this historical truth or not (and the thesis has not been widely accepted), Jaynes has fashioned a brilliant myth of human origins. Like the authors of Snow Crash and Macroscope, Jaynes reaches far back into the past for an authentic story of a Fall from wholeness. And like them, he reaches specifically for Mesopotamian myth.

http://deoxy.org/alephnull/jaynes.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ori...Bicameral_Mind

[austintorn@aol.com]

Sensed Presences in Extreme Contexts
by James Allan Cheyne

JOHN GEIGER’S BOOK IS A HIGHLY READABLE COMPENDIUM of anecdotes about the remarkably common experience of feeling the presence of a companion for whom there is no objective evidence. The companion is seldom seen but strongly sensed and hence is often referred to as a “sensed presence.” The presence is usually taken to be a stranger, but may sometimes be a friend or mentor, a favorite aunt, a fellow adventurer, sometimes recently deceased, and usually providing moral support, guidance, or protection and sometimes described metaphorically, or literally, as a “guardian angel.” Approximately three-quarters of the companionate presences appeared in the midst of harrowing misadventures of mountaineers, polar explorers, and sailors. Thus, Geiger’s book is about one version of the sensed presence experience, the version that occurs in what Peter Suedfeld has called EUEs; “extreme and unusual environments.” The anecdotes reported by Geiger are nearly always first-person accounts of the appearance of mysterious, often neutral, sometimes friendly, and rarely threatening, presences encountered during life-and-death struggles for survival. Indeed, the subtitle of the book implies what is explicitly claimed in the book itself; namely, that the companion is a secret life-saver of either divine or biological provenance. Little evidence is provided, however, that the companion experience, however comforting, is more than a modest aid to survival, let alone the secret to survival.

It should also be noted that there is nothing special about the number three of the title. The title could have just as justifiably called The Fourth Man, The Second Man, or, in at least one case, The Seventh Person. An early version appears to have been The Extra Man. Geiger appears to have based his title on the experience of Ernest Shackleton and his two companions during their trek across South Georgia; or to be more precise, on T. S. Eliot’s reference to the event, immortalized in “The Waste Land,” with its famous question: “Who is the third who always walks beside you?” Either through poetic license or misremembering Eliot reduced Shackleton’s party from three to two: “When I count, there are only you and I together.” Elliot’s notes suggest he was rather vague about his recollection of “the account of one of the Antarctic expeditions (I forget which but I think one of Shackleton’s)”. In the original account of Shackleton, the companion was actually a fourth: “it seemed to me often that we were four, not three” (p. 37).

One of the most striking features of the experience of the companion is its elementary and minimalist properties and the consistency of these across individuals and circumstances. All of the germane information about each and every encounter in the text could likely be described in 10–20 type-written pages, and comprehensively summarized in one. The bulk of the approximately 250 pages of text consists of background and context-setting events leading up to the experience itself. The experiences themselves do become very familiar and repetitive, though interesting variants do crop up from time to time. Although the descriptions of the events leading up to the experiences sometimes go on a bit too long for my liking it must be said that they are, by and large, gripping tales well told, and, overall, mostly do provide relevant and informative context for the companion experiences. I expect most people will find this an engaging read.

Though passing reference is made to the experiences of monks and saints, biblical tales, and the Christian notion of guardian angels, most of the anecdotes are modern, spanning a little over 100 years. Geiger also provides, towards the end of the book, brief overviews of various psychological and neuroscientific theories of presence experiences. Geiger highlights critical features of the experience as well as of their precipitating conditions as he goes along. With regard to the latter, he mentions the usual suspects: monotony, darkness, barren landscapes, isolation, cold, injury, dehydration, hunger, fatigue, and fear; all often extreme, persistent, and in combination and, in the case of mountaineers, compounded by lack of adequate levels of oxygen. The accounts also frequently involve death and injury of real companions. The large majority of the anecdotes come from the experiences of mountaineers, likely because climbers have the largest proportion of truly harrowing challenges and are often exposed to almost all of the precipitating conditions for the companion experiences.
The vivid and compelling nature of the companion experiences, despite their elemental simplicity, likely cannot be overstated. Such experiences are almost invariably described as utterly compelling; far too vivid and real to be a mere hallucination; which is usually to imply that it defies naturalistic explanation. Hallucinations do not, however, constitute the only, or even most appropriate, naturalistic explanation available. Strictly speaking, the sensed presence does not fit the definition of a hallucination at all, because, by definition, hallucinations involve sensory experiences. Rather, the sensed presence of the unseen companion is a delusion; that is, a compelling feeling that something is the case in the absence of evidence. Hallucinations may sometimes accompany delusions. There may be sounds, voices and visions, even physical contact, though these are all comparatively rare. None are intrinsic to the sensed presence itself, which, by definition, is devoid of sensory experience. As William Laird McKinley stated of his Arctic experiences, there is “nothing of the senses in it at all, only an awareness” (p. 53). Yet, the same author can say of this insensible presence that “it filled me with an exultation beyond all earthly feeling” generating a feeling of the “absolute certainly of the existence of God” (p. 54). Yet, though the presence is not necessarily taken to be supernatural, there is often a dual consciousness associated with the presence in which a hard-nosed realist is simultaneously aware that the presence is not real in the normal sense of the term, yet utterly compelling; so compelling, and persistent, that food may be offered to the presence in a casual and automatic manner.

Geiger notes that hallucinations, though not often part of the presence experience itself, do sometimes accompany the sensed presence. They tend to be vague and misty apparitions or commanding voices. Rob Taylor, injured during his ascent of the Breach Wall of Kilimanjaro, reported seeing a figure and being able to “make out his form, yet never can I distinguish exact features.” The form was a human form without the clothing of a climber but rather “like a dancer in a leotard” (p. 17. Charles Lindbergh encountered multiple presences on his famous trans-Atlantic flight. He described “vaguely outlined forms, transparent, moving” in the cockpit. Yet despite his ability to describe the presences, however minimally, they actually seemed to have been out of sight, as he also says: “without turning my head, I can see them as clearly as though in my normal field of vision” (p. 85). He also wrote that the presences had “voices that spoke with authority and clearness.” Yet he admitted “I can’t remember a single word they said” (p. 87).

Almost always, there is a vague feeling that the presence is there to help in some unspecified way or, in the case of temporarily incapacitated sailors, like the solo sailor Joshua Slocum, simply trusted to man their craft. Or it may simply be a feeling that a navigational decision was made on the implicit advice of the presence. More often, the companions offer wordless advice, which is typically highly nonspecific, or provides information and advice of the sort that the individual would already know and believe…or hope. The advice is typically, “Don’t fall asleep,” “Keep moving,” and “You are going to make it.” That is, sensible commonplace advice that is more reassuring than informative. Nonetheless, this sense of reassurance is often credited by the individuals for their survival. This feeling is essentially the basis for the claim that the presence is the secret to survival in extreme conditions. As Geiger acknowledges, however, we obviously have limited access to negative cases, the stories of the presences of the non-survivors in recovered diaries are obviously rare, though such cases do exist. Perhaps as many non-survivors as survivors received support and encouragement from their presences. Alternatively, perhaps the companions of non-survivors gave bad advice. Moreover, we do not have information about how many survivors never experienced the companionate sensed presence. We have essentially one cell of the four-fold table necessary to draw the functional conclusion.

One especially interesting and harrowing anecdote of extremity is recounted by climber Joe Simpson in his book Touching the Void, about his summiting of Siula Grande (not Huascarán as indicated in Geiger’s book), and the aftermath of an accident during descent. This is perhaps the most compelling evidence for a survival function of a hallucination, but ironically, not actually involving a presence. Simpson’s recurring hallucination was simply a voice in his head, but a compelling and very authoritative one:

The voice was clean and sharp and commanding. It was always right, and I listened to it when it spoke and acted on its decisions. The other mind rambled out a disconnected series of images, and memories and hopes, which I attended to in a daydream state as I set about obeying the orders of the voice.

[austintorn@aol.com]

(con't)

Not surprisingly, this description leads Geiger to invoke, as Peter Suedfeld had done previously, Julian Jaynes’s notion of the bicameral mind. Indeed the quotation above is essentially a definition of a bicameral mind at work. Interestingly, Jaynes’s perennially controversial theory, of all those discussed by Geiger, is really the only one explicitly directed at explaining the version of the sensed presence discussed in this book. What Simpson’s account reminded me of, however, was a more current and mainstream theory involving a distinction between two levels of processing always active in human cognition. They go by different names, but the cognitive process that corresponds to Simpson’s rational and authoritative voice is commonly referred to as an “executive” or “control” process. Another level of processing, which corresponds to Simpson’s jumble of images, memories, and emotions, appears to reflect what are referred to as “automatic” processes, which operate according in an associative and appropriately named, “pandemonium mode,” in which different impulses vie for attention and execution. There has been little written about the nature of the phenomenological component to these two modes, though a little self-reflection will, I think, uncover a subtle version of Simpson’s experience in our own mundane experiences. In extreme situations the phenomenology of the two processing streams may become enhanced, perhaps through a general emergency reaction of the brain of the sort discussed by Geiger. One can readily see how the sort of experience might lead people who have experienced extreme circumstances to interpret the voice as that of a guardian angel—or a god à la Julian Jaynes. Yet Joe Simpson was a self-declared atheist before his Siula Grande experience and remained one afterward and attributes the voice to a “sixth sense” buried deep in our evolutionary past, never personifying it but consistently referring to it merely as “the voice” or “it.”

Curiously, Geiger fails to mention that Simpson did report sensing the presence of companions during a period of absence of the voice toward the end of his ordeal. He felt that he was being followed closely by two companions, who “hung back out of sight,” and whom he imagined to be other members of the expedition, Simon and Richard, who were actually at the camp ahead of him. He reported that he was happy at the thought of “company and help if I needed it.” In contrast to the positive guidance of the voice, however, the presences appear to have been merely comforting.

I have long been fascinated by how the most subtle feelings of presence can convince a McKinley of the absolute certainty of God’s existence and the much more dramatic experiences of a Joe Simpson elicited no spiritual gloss at all. Perhaps most instructive is the fact that, despite his condition of serious injury, fatigue, hypothermia, starvation, and dehydration (at the end of his ordeal he weighed 90 pounds), Simpson, upon first hearing “the voice” immediately and systematically considers alternative hypotheses. Did he leave on his Walkman? Were the sounds the result of his balaclava rubbing on his ears? Geiger concludes that ancient people, lacking Walkman-type hypotheses, fell back on religious hypotheses. Yet Geiger need not have gone back to ancient peoples. His own book is filled with numerous examples of moderns invoking religious or mystical interpretations. It does seem reasonable, nonetheless, to suppose that moderns have a greater range of possible interpretations and this must, one would suppose, make a difference in the way experiences are perceived. Yet this is clearly not the only, or even the main, story.

Geiger discusses but does not focus particularly on the supernatural, though, judging from the reviews beginning to appear on the web, these sorts of phenomena are magnets for those invested in the occult and spiritual. Geiger cites Michael Murphy as claiming that many of these experiences “defy easy explanation,” by which he means naturalistic scientific explanations. Geiger also briefly falls into this casual sophistry describing the physiologist Pugh’s explanations as dismissive. Why commentators so often consider scientific explanations “easy” or “dismissive” has never been clear to me; especially when I then read of Murphy claiming that these experiences are evidence that “humans can indeed perceive disembodied entities” (p. 7. Now that strikes me as an easy explanation.

One set of naturalistic theories Geiger reviews favorably are those that suggest that the sensed presence is a biological mechanism for coping with loneliness in only children in the form of “imaginary companions,” and for adults alone under threatening and fearsome conditions. On this view, the sensed presence provides an imaginary companion to relieve anxiety. One can see how this could be functional—avoiding despair and giving up—but it does raise another question. If it is biological—which would entail affecting the relative availability of neurotransmitters and somatic hormones—why does it need a phenomenological or experiential component? Why are brain mechanisms not arranged to just make us feel less threatened and more optimistic without the spooky experience to confuse us? I realize that this is a rather generic argument regarding consciousness, but it all seems a rather Rube Goldberg contraption to have evolved just to make us feel comfortable in extreme environments.

Perhaps the companion experience is not functional at all, in itself, but rather is an anomalous dissociation that provides evidence of a deeper, more general, function on which its own functionality, if any, is parasitic. Perhaps, for example, the feeling of presence is simply a misfiring of normally functional sensations associated with real companions.

Having done some trekking and climbing in the Himalayas and the Andes, I am somewhat familiar with the experience of spending long hours moving in single file. One has a constant sense of companions ahead and behind, as well as a sense of dependency on them. There is the constant reminder of the rope in the downhill hand binding one to the other. Frank Smythe, for example, specifically notes that it “seemed that I was tied to my ‘companion’ by a rope” (p. 4. Though Smyth was alone, if he had had a companion they would have been tied together. The rope is truly a lifeline. When a comrade falls, the others dig in with ice axes and crampons and brace themselves to break the fall of the other. Thus, there is both a strong expectancy of the others to be constantly at a regular distance, maintaining appropriate tension on the rope, and to be available for assistance. One also finds oneself periodically looking over one’s shoulder to check on the others; even though one knows and feels that they are there without looking. As noted, in the large majority of cases, the presence is just out of sight, often a couple of meters behind. Although the presence is described as guiding and encouraging, it is usually following behind rather than leading.

The sense of the presence of others is pervasive and continuous when one is with others; but we rarely remark on it because, after all, there really are others present and this is the normal feeling when they are there. We feel it explicitly when in intense relationships and acutely when in love; but mostly it is just the reassuring background feeling of companionship. Our feeling corresponds with recent memory and with current sensory experience. When this feeling becomes disconnected from what we know from recent memory and current experience, however, we may then have the experience of the sensed presence. If so, then the presence experience parallels the “feeling of knowing” something as a separate experience from the actual knowing of it that we have all experienced as the tip-of-the-tongue experience. In both cases, background becomes foreground.

This is not to dismiss or trivialize either experience, but to attempt to turn a mystery into a potentially solvable problem; namely, how does this normal feeling of being with others become dissociated from what we know from memory and current sensory experience? This, in turns, suggests the possibility that there is a separate set of cognitive and neural events constituting the feeling of presence, over and above those that register the sensory experiences generated by the actual presence of others. Perhaps this feeling reflects a mode or psychological context of “being with others,” bringing our social selves into prominence and acting appropriately and refraining from acting inappropriately in the presence of others. Finally, in extreme situations the need for companions activates the feeling of presence. This would certainly be comforting in extreme and unusual environments and, to that extent, could be construed as incidentally functional.

The Third Man Factor is an engaging book, full of adventure, especially of mountaineering (the cover appropriately portrays two figures walking along a ridge high above the clouds). Over 40 percent of all cases cited involve experiences in mountains. Regardless of differing titles, many chapters have a feeling of familiarity. One chapter, entitled “The Widow Effect,” is 37 pages long but has slightly less than five pages devoted to the sensed presence experiences of widows (and a widower). The rest of the chapter is devoted mainly to more mountaineering adventures. Nonetheless, I do confess that I find the mountain climbing stories to be much more gripping than stories about grieving widows. From my perspective, Geiger has performed a most valuable service by pulling all of these accounts together in single volume providing a good reference source for modern examples of the companion version of sensed presence phenomena. I expect I will refer back to this book many times in the future.

[Mikal]

The Origin of Consciousness
in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

by Julian Jaynes

In this book, Jaynes theorizes that ancient consciousness was radically different from modern consciousness. He suggests that ancient human beings had no sense of an interior, directing self. Rather, they accepted commands from what appeared to them to be an externalized agency, which they obeyed blindly, without question.
This externalized self was a consequence of the split between the two halves of the brain. Jaynes suggests that the left and right brains were not integrated—"unicameral"—they way they are today. Rather, the ancient brain was "bicameral," with the two brains working essentially independently of each other. The left half of the brain, the logical, language-using half, generated ideas and commands, which the right brain then obeyed. These commands were subjectively perceived by the right brain as coming from "outside"—as if a god was speaking.

Jaynes adduces evidence for this astonishing hypothesis from several sources. One is the "voices" heard by schizophrenic patients, which Jaynes interprets as a throwback to the bicameral mind of ancient times. Another is evidence from neurosurgery, where patients hear "voices" upon having their brains electrically stimulated. Another is the polytheistic gods of ancient civilizations, which spoke directly and intimately to individuals:

"Who then were these gods who pushed men about like robots and sang epics through their lips? They were voices whose speech and directions could be as distinctly heard by the Iliadic heroes as voices are heard by certain epileptic and schizophrenic patients...The gods were organizations of the central nervous system"(73-4).

Jaynes suggests that each person had his own individual "god", which always told them what to do. The theory further accounts for why the gods were so naturalistic and anthropomorphic, rather than supernatural and otherworldly.

Where did the gods go, then? Jaynes proposes that a series of unprecedented environmental stresses in the second millennium B.C. forced the two halves of the brain to merge into unicamerality. (This was a cultural, rather than a biological, transformation, Jaynes notes.) The stresses might have included natural disasters (the story of the Flood comes to mind), population growth, forced migrations, warfare, trade, and the development of writing. A common denominator among all these is the introduction of complexity and difference, things the bicameral mind deals with only with difficulty. Jaynes suggests, among other things, that traders in contact with other cultures might have been forced to develop a "protosubjective consciousness" to cope with the gods of unfamiliar people.

Jaynes suggests that the unprecedented stresses of the 2nd millennium B.C. forced the individual into isolation, within which a sense of I-ness appeared to fill the void left by the inadequacy of the god. This hypothesis posits a relatively homogeneous and stress-free existence prior to the development of consciousness. In short, Jaynes must posit that there really was an Eden, from which humanity Fell.

To establish the gods' disappearance, Jaynes cites a number of illustrations and cuneiform tablets dating from Sumerian times. He shows a stone-carven image of the King of Assyria kneeling in supplication before an empty throne, from which his god is conspicuously absent. The accompanying cuneiform script reads, "One who has no god, as he walks along the street,/ Headache envelopes him like a garment." Another tablet reads,


My god has forsaken me and disappeared,
My goddess has failed me and keeps at a distance.

The good angel who walked beside me has departed.

Jaynes interprets this as evidence of a new subjectivity in Mesopotamia. The bicameral mind has begun to collapse into the modern unicameral mind of the self-willed, self-aware "I", and as a consequence the gods no longer speak to people, as they did in the days of old (223).

These lamentations sound remarkably like the nam-shubs mentioned in Snow Crash.

The nam-shubs also mourn something precious, and speak of confusion and loss. It is not at all hard to guess that the loss of bicameral tranquility may have been accompanied by unprecedented linguistic disruption (irrespective of any causal relationship between the two.) The Tower of Babel story—which the nam-shubs strongly resemble—may have happened at a time when bicamerality was breaking down.

Be this historical truth or not (and the thesis has not been widely accepted), Jaynes has fashioned a brilliant myth of human origins. Like the authors of Snow Crash and Macroscope, Jaynes reaches far back into the past for an authentic story of a Fall from wholeness. And like them, he reaches specifically for Mesopotamian myth.

http://deoxy.org/alephnull/jaynes.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ori...Bicameral_Mind

Hi Mel...thanks for the interesting article and I will try to more deeply examine the study of the Bicameral Mind.

Presently I am studying the work of J.S. Gordon who claims that evolution per se has to do with the development of natural intelligence...this being a progressive spiritual faculty. In his study he recognizes that consciousness, mind and intelligence are not the same thing.

He states..."Intelligence forces change in the field of consciousness by using the principle of Mind to induce the soul nature to adapt to it."

He built this structure to understand what he sees as the sequential unfolding of an increasing intelligence in humanity's objective consciousness since the middle of the Lemurian Race.

1)Late Lemurian Humankind-self-consciousness.
2)Early Atlantean Humankind-family consciousness
3)Late Atlantean Humankind-tribal consciousness.
4)Early 5th race Humankind-cultural consciousness
5)Late 5th race Humankind-nationalistic consciousness
6)Early 6th race Humankind-Internationalistic consciousness
7)Late 6th race Humankind-one humanity consciousness

He states the essence of this progression is that of an inclusive expansion.

The expansion is occurring in the triple soul consciousness, appearing in parallel with humankinds objective behavior. He sees the expansion as a simultaneous triple and actively progressive foundation of functional awareness namely:

1)Intuitive consciousness
2)Sense of self-consciousness
3)Instinctive consciousness

Example: a person can be self-consciously grounded in his sense of cultural identity which he expresses in an instinctively tribal manner...

He sees individual overall behavior patterns in society stemming from this tripartite consciousness and the proportional balance or imbalance within it but the overall tripartite system is itself continually changing....

Needless to say I am fascinated by this study....


Mikal

[Mikal]

Hi Austin thank you for the interesting post. I am glad people are studying and talking about these experiences...
I have agreed to consider everything but I do not feel we have yet found the correct answer. That would be because the experience of a presence is tremendously personal, however when that presence is somehow intangibly and invisibily there...how come a witness not seeing the presence can see affects of the presence in interraction with a person and a person's environment??? We do not understand yet, that I am convinced of....


Mikal