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The Ecology of Consciousness - Part 3
James V. Hardt, Ph.D.
Biocybernaut Institute
 continued from part 2
Mysticism and Shared Feedback
Another example is from zoology. Recently a new
phylum of animals was discovered (Riedl, 1969). The animals are marine
invertebrates and the phylum is called Gnathostomulida. A phylum is a
primary taxonomic division of plants or animals which groups together
organisms sharing a fundamental pattern of structural organization and
presumably a common descent. Since it is estimated that zoology has
already discovered and described 80% of all animal families, 95% of
all the orders, and nearly all of the animal classes, a new phylum
(which is a high level of structure than families, orders and classes)
should be rare indeed. It should also be exceedingly valuable in
increasing our understanding of the structures possible for animals
and thus should significantly enhance our understanding of the general
principles of animal structures. As Riedl puts it:
About 24 phyla now divide the metazoa
at the upper level of classification. A new phylum might give us a
chance to increase our knowledge of principles of structural
organization by 1/24.
Actually a few examples of the "new animals"
(gnathostomulids) have been known since 1930, but recently they have
been discovered in such numbers and such diversity that they have been
seen to constitute a distinct phylum with at least 43 species in 10
genera.
Mystics have been around for along time
too. Benson, Beary, and Carol (1975) briefly reviewed Christian,
Jewish, and Moslem mystical writings and find some from as far back as
the 10th century. They also found writings from scriptures in India
(the Upanishads) dating from before the 6th century BC which note that
people can attain:
... a unified state with the Brahman
(the Deity) by means of restraint of breath, withdrawal of senses,
meditation, concentration, contemplation, and
absorption.
If phenomenology and other sciences of mind and
awareness wish to understand the structure of consciousness, they had
best not ignore the mystical experience, which Deikman (1966b) has
described as having five principal features: (a) Intense
realness, (b) Unusual sensation, (c) Unity, (d)
Ineffability, (e) Trans-sensate phenomena. Even
ineffability need not be a barrier to phenomenological enquiry because
Strasser (1969) has pointed out for his Dialogal Phenomenology that,
"No one today doubts that between the 'I' and the 'you' there can
exist relations which not only remain verbally unexpressed, but which
are also of themselves nameless, 'anonymous.'" Another of Deikman's
five principles which we shall consider is Unity. Marechal (1964) has
surveyed the mystical literature and supports Deikman's view of the
unitive aspect of mystical experience:
... the consensus of the testimonies
we have educted is too unanimous to be rejected. It compels us to
recognize the existence of a special psychological state, which
generally results from a very close interior concentration, sustained
by an intense affective movement, but which, on the other hand, no
longer presents any trace of "discursiveness," spatial imagination or
reflex consciousness. And the disconcerting question arises: after
images and concepts and the conscious Ego have been abolished, what
subsists of the intellectual life? Multiplicity will have disappeared,
true, but to the advantage of what kind of unity?
One answer to Marechal's question can be found in
the "Trust in Heart Sutra" of the Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen:
The way is perfect like vast space where
nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess. ...
As long as you remain in one extreme or the other
you will never know Oneness. Do not remain in the dualistic state;
avoid such pursuits carefully. If there is even a trace of this and
that, of right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in
confusion. Although all qualities come from the One, do not be
attached even to the One. When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer
offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.
The experiences of Hardt in an extended alpha
feedback setting, while not reaching a complete ego dissolution, did
include unusual sensations (floating), a form of unity (merging with
the feedback tone), and a degree of ineffability (conceptual thinking
aborted the experiences). Intense realness may also have been
implicated in the way his consciousness became so involved in the
experience that he even "forgot to breathe." Trans-sensate phenomena
and a truly Unitive experience with the Boundless may have been
offered by the opportunity of entering the engulfing pool of
blackness, the abyss. We have established the clear possibility that
biofeedback could lead to mystical experiences in a controlled
experimental setting, which we have analyzed and shown to be also
suitable for a phenomenological physiology enquiry. It would seem
important to the goals of phenomenology to move rapidly to undertake
the study of mystical phenomena. In this way there will be enhanced
understanding of the total structure of human consciousness, - and
there are other motivations. Deikman (1966) suggests some of those
additional motivations:
Both Eastern and Western mystic
literature describe an experience that goes beyond ordinary sense
impressions and yet is a perception, a perception of something so
profound, uplifting and intense as to lie beyond communication by
language and to constitute the highest human experience. It would
appear that contemplative meditation is one instrument for achieving
such a state.
Blewett (1969) is of a similar opinion:
From time to time certain men have
experienced a state in which massive insight has taken place. In such
a state there occurs a major breakdown of the barrier that ordinarily
prevents conscious awareness of the latent content of the
unconscious. Throughout recorded history and throughout the world this
state has been highly prized and has been sought after through a
multitude of methods and disciplines. It has been called by many names
such as enlightenment, cosmic consciousness, cosmic awareness,
beatitude, satori, Nirvana, peak experience, mystical or spiritual
experience, self-realization, or self actualization.
Blewett points out that the search for
understanding of the nature of man (which includes phenomenology) must
not neglect the religious and mystical texts that comprise such a
repository of wisdom and insight. We would urge that the search
include not just the study of such past insights drawn from the
mystical awareness, but an active, current program to induce such
states in as many persons as possible in order to enhance not only
individual experience and the study of the structure of all
experience, but to raise the level of dialog between people. Keeping
in mind Strasser's description of "verbally unexpressed relations'
between the "I" and the "you", let us consider an interpersonal
biofeedback experiment, Brown and Klug (1974). They were exploring
alpha feedback as a technique for enhancing rapport. Alpha training
was done in pairs with the feedback tones provided only when both
trainees produced alpha simultaneously or nearly
simultaneously. During the course of 40 minutes of training, the
subject pairs showed a significant increase in the amount of time that
alpha occurred simultaneously. To test the development of "rapport"
subjects were placed in different rooms and separately monitored for
EEG activity.
... the effect of the feedback
training was tested by asking each subject to signal when he believed
alpha to be occurring in his partner. These tests revealed a striking
accuracy in some subjects, usually only one of each pair, to predict
the presence of alpha in their partners, but occasionally subjects
were completely unable to predict. In those pairs in which one of the
pair demonstrated ability to predict the occurrence of EEG alpha in
his partner, both members of the pair reported similarities in
subjective activities.
When this study was reported to the 1974 meeting
of the Biofeedback Research Society, Barbara Brown provided additional
details of a most intriguing nature. In one case with a boy-girl pair,
the boy had been trying to "make points" with the girl who was trying
to hold him at "arms length." After the rapport training, and during
the testing when they were in separate rooms while the boy was
accurately guessing presence and absence of the girl's alpha activity,
the girl reported an almost "palpable sense of presence" of the boy in
her room, which she was a loss to dispel by the objective knowledge
that he was physically present elsewhere.
We have all heard of telepathy before, but perhaps
it is time to begin new investigations of a whole range of mystical or
paranormal phenomena now that we are aided by our rapidly developing
biofeedback technology. Just imagine the enrichment and the enhanced
levels of human dialog which could become possible with long-term
training similar to that of Brown and Klug. More recently
Grinberg-Zylberbaum and Ramos (1987), working in Mexico City, have
also studied rapport between pairs of people sitting eyes closed in
the dark and 50 cm distant from each other while their EEGs were
monitored. They reported that the existence of coherence between
simultaneous alpha bursts of the two people were a necessary and
sufficient condition for both of them to report the experience of
rapport. Furthermore, the person with the higher amplitude alpha
activity functioned as an "attractor" drawing the frequency of the
lower amplitude person toward the alpha frequency exhibited by the
higher amplitude person.
Continue to Part 4 
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