In 2006 I wrote two pieces about the magnificent film, Pan's Labyrinth for my blog on the now defunct Gaia.com. These ended up being read over 25 thousand times and being linked to and quoted from in many locations on the internet.
What follows is my initial review of the movie - I have since written part two, which deals more explicitly with the mythic structure and psychological symbolism of the film.
The Plot
Guillermo Del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth is a contemporary masterpiece of traditional mythic form. Political repression, family relationships and the mythic psyche all inhabit the canvas that Del Toro paints dark with the palette of the struggle to find meaning and resolution within traumatizing circumstances.
Rurally set in Franco's Spain of the 1940's, the principle story concerns itself with a sickly pregnant mother, Carmen, and her pre-pubescent daughter, our heroine Ofelia. These two have entered the world of the coming infant's father - the archetypically evil Captain Vidal of the fascist army.
Ofelia's real father is a casualty of the war, and her new stepfather is a cruel and inhuman sadist. Carmen is clearly grasping at straws to try and ensure survival for herself, her daughter and the child she is carrying through a very troubled pregnancy. Captain Vidal cares only for the son he imagines is growing in Carmen's womb as a mirror for his pinched and hateful sense of masculine power.
Ofelia takes solace as she has done for some time in her much-read treasure trove of fairy tale books, but as she crosses the threshold into the Captain's domain the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur. What ensues is a near classic unfolding of the stages of the mythic journey as laid out by Joseph Campbell. Don't let the inclusion of the mythic and fairy tale material fool you - this is no typically superficial representation of the inner world, in which magical forces enact a Disney-esque victory over evil for the pure-of-heart true believer. Del Toro restores his mythic motifs to their proper place as the symbolic representations of a psyche struggling to come to terms with traumatic social and familial conditions while forming a nascent sense of self. We are not in Kansas anymore.
This tragically constellated family unit is installed in an old mill that has been turned into a small military base to try and squash a Red rebellion from the hills. The Captain has a huge stone basement room to himself, where he spends his non-combatant time in reverie with his phonograph, booze, straight-razor, shaving mirror, and the repaired watch his father smashed at the moment of his death so that his son would know the time and "honorable" nature of his demise. The expendable Carmen is near death in a bedroom upstairs. The kindly and noble country doctor is under instructions to save the baby at all costs. The proud and unbroken housekeeper, Mercedes, and the Doctor are in secret collusion with the rebels.
The Mythology
Meanwhile the aptly named Ofelia is interacting with the mythic dimension of the psyche as she struggles to survive in impossible circumstances. She becomes immersed in the fantasy of herself as a reborn princess from a world where "there is no suffering or pain." In a meeting with the Faun - a most well-realized and captivating supernatural trickster, she agrees to take on three tasks that will take us into the heart of darkness on her quest to be reunited with her lost and kingly father.
The creatures of the mythic fairy tale realm are unsurpassed in their representation, and Del Toro is playing a supremely hip and psychologically savvy jazz with his storyline here, but it is in the resonances with real world torture, cruelty and loss of innocence that he strikes his most telling (and contemporary) chords.
Pan's Labyrinth dances nymph-like, or perhaps maenad-like (the Dionysian imagery works here too) between inner and outer reality, civilization and barbarity, the loss of innocence and the perverse quest for power, nature and the unnatural repression of our humanity. Ofelia is as appropriately lost and fallible in her fantasy world as she is in reality, and her guides carry an unpredictability that is sometimes as scary as the monsters she faces.
The Psychology
It is here that I would like to introduce the work of extraordinary Jungian therapist and theorist Donald Kalsched. His book The Inner World of Trauma; Archetypal Defenses of the Personal Spirit uses myth and fairy tale as a reflecting pool to witness both the healing genius and the potential for pathology in the traumatized psyche.
Kalsched uses (amongst several others) the myth of Eros and Psyche as well as the Rapunzel fairy tale to illustrate his "self-care system" hypothesis of how "when human resources are not available, archetypal resources appear", and how the Protector figure in classic tales as well as contemporary psyches has also the double face of being the Jailer. In other words, the very defense that initially saves you from unbearable pain becomes the limiting factor to resolving the healing process and participating fully in a real life-in-the-world.
This is no small insight for a world that has lost its appropriate relationship to both the psyche and its dream-language of mythic symbols. Too often, as in the case of both fundamentalist religion and New Age spirituality, this potent symbolic language is misinterpreted as literal information or as a factual map to a world in which we escape the trials of human maturity and depth. In this case we are still trapped in the dissociative fantasy defense against trauma, instead of making the complete journey into the rich imaginative connection between the inner and outer worlds that allows a fulfilling, though imperfect, engaged human life.
This theme is echoed through the several stories Kalsched utilizes, and once grasped can be seen again and again, particularly in powerful movies like The Piano, the under-appreciated The Cell, The Fountain, Jacob's Ladder, and Fearless. It is here too in Pan's Labyrinth.
Here again is Vincent d'Onofrio's contemporary Pan from The Cell. Here's Doug Jones' Pan from the film in question. Both of these mythic character depictions carry the Archetype of Protector/Jailer of the inner-world. Here too is Sam Neil from his similar but less mythically-themed role in The Piano.
Consider this kind of work in total alignment with a 21st Century Spirituality that concerns itself with the intellect, the psyche, and the life lived in authentic struggle with reality. The movie should make you shudder more than a little- it is about the confrontation with what Jung called the Shadow - and that aint' easy for anyone, but it is the road toward a more integrated, liberated, grounded and spiritually awake self. Consider it, too, a powerful antidote to such patty-cake "spiritual" fare as The Secret and What the Bleep.
In a forthcoming piece, I will enjoy unpacking Ofelia's mythic journey and comparing it to some other myths, fairy tales and movies to elucidate Kalsched's theme of the self-care system and how the psyche deals archetypally with trauma.
For now i leave you with my soulful recommendations for those interested in life-changing and mind-opening cinema:
Pan's Labyrinth The Fountain Babel Fearless The Piano The Cell Jacob's Ladder {here is William Blake's painting of the same name inspired by a Biblical myth.}
The Distance Between Spiritual Experience and Interpretation Posted on Feb 3rd, 2008 by Julian
This is a favorite subject of mine - the distance between experience and interpretation. It is undeniable that human beings in all times and cultures have been hardwired for spiritual experiences – some of course more than others. But is this proof of any of the multiple metaphysical belief systems that we tend, I would suggest, to superimpose onto the experience?
The central difficulty here is that the altered state of a spiritual experience is so convincing (and so important, beautiful and meaningful in its own right) and we are so suggestible during and afterward, that it is almost ubiquitous to be convinced that the experience is undeniable (or at the very least strong) proof of whatever belief system the ensuing interpretation is coming from - when actually the two may be barely related!
Humans love to go into altered states. There is not a culture in the history of the planet that has not come up with some way of fermenting, drinking, eating, fasting, dancing, sweating, drumming, smoking, snorting, chanting, breathing, meditating, stretching, sensory depriving or sensory overloading its way into altered states of consciousness.
In addition some people have more labile neurophysiology than others – be they epileptic, hypo-glycemic, bipolar, schizophrenic or merely garden-variety creative, empathic types with thin ego-boundaries.
Thankfully we have developed an ever-deepening understanding of some of the more extreme dysfunctions of the brain and have ways of diagnosing and treating these problems that are more effective than ever before. One cannot help but be curious about the similarities between say religious and schizophrenic statements about reality and wonder how much of the difference is one of degree, and to what extent the vocabulary of experience being used is coming from the same part of the brain.
How do we make sense of the fact that for both a) the person in thegrips of an ardent religious conversion as well as b) someone experiencing clinical insanity, the novel and metaphysical revelations being described are not only convincing but are held as extremely important, often not only for the individual in the grip of the experience, but for all of humanity?
I want to suggest that this is an extreme form of an activity of our physiology and its related interior - the psyche, that at its best can be positively transformational, healing and creative and at its worse can be fundamentalist, violent and crazy.
Three Layers of Spiritual Experience
I think it’s interesting to think about this phenomenon in terms of three layers:
1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.
2) The personal stage of development from which one a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.
3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both a) Occurs in the first place and b) Is then interpreted
I think too that there is a powerful relationship between this proclivity toward altered states and the dream-like imaginative activity of creating mythology. The language of myth is one of metaphor and symbol - I think of it as a cultural dream. Myth is no less significant, numinous and meaningful than a potent personal dream or powerfully transporting piece of art.
Dream, art and myth all come form the same place; the deep unconscious psyche, and it is in altered states of consciousness that the pathway is opened between the conscious mind, with its steward the ego and the unconscious mind with, at its center, what Jung thought of as "the Self." I also like the word "soul" in this place.
So we find ourselves in a complex matrix of meanings, conditioning, emotional associations, instincts, primal forces and numinous energies whenever we deeply interact with dreams, high art, mythology and the altered states that give us access to the same layers of human consciousness.
Myths have always been a way to explain what we do not understand, a way to try and answer the unanswerable big questions about how the world began, what happens after we die, why things happen the way they do, what the purpose of existence is, where evil comes from etc..
This does not mean that cultures that dream up myths necessarily think of them metaphorically! The story-telling is taken as literally true when it is created, and most often what we see is that the myth is believed to have been "revealed" to the shaman or the holy man, or the wise elder or told to them by an animal, a spirit, an angel, god himself. But the point is - in a manner of speaking, the collective psyche dreams up the story. It comes from the deep unconscious and as such, just as with personal dreams, it speaks the language of symbol, metaphor, and archetype. I think of this as being the "soul language."
(As an aside I want to add that Joseph Campbell called myths "masks of god." He said that the high function of the "mask" was to help us see beyond it to what cannot ever be represented concretly.)
Three Functions of Myth
For the moment, let's say that there are three functions that myth serves:
1) Offering a poetic vocabulary with which to approach a state of awe, wonder and reverence for the world we live in, consciousness and life itself. 2) Reducing existential anxiety by explaining the unknowable and containing the fear of death. 3) Creating a shared psychic cosmology that is a container of belonging and belief for the culture.
These three functions are directly related to the above three layers, so let's put them together:
1) The universal tendency toward altered state/spiritual experiences needs a vocabulary with which to express and explore the largely non-verbal, non-rational states. 2) One of the ways we manage existential anxiety and psychological conflicts is often through spiritual or religious belief, petitioning, superstition, self-soothing etc. 3) The powerful sense of belonging, identity and taboo enacted by the socio-cultural context creates a convincing template within which the spiritual experience or altered state should be interpreted.
In other words there are reasons that Catholic nuns do not have visions of Avalokiteshvara on their deathbeds and that Tibetan monks don't have visions of the Blessed Virgin under similar circumstances. There are reasons there are "no atheists in foxholes," or that under conditions of extreme stress otherwise non-religious people may find themselves praying for a situation to turn out a certain way. There are reasons that the "soul language" that gets so sliced and diced into word-salad by schizophrenics tugs on our sleeves with its appearance of deep cryptic meaning. There are reasons that when people have powerful conversion experiences, open up emotionally, commune deeply with nature, take mind-bending drugs, experience intense trauma, or other altered state experiences they tend to come out the other side with a meaning that fits a fairly predictable socialized interpretation and that can often be seen as serving a particular personal psychological purpose - for better or worse.
(Of course this gets trickier in the multicultural/postmodern world in which (particularly in the West) there are now ever evolving sub-cultures that often draw threads of interpretation and belief from multiple sources - but though the collage may be more complex, the functions remain detectable and demonstrable. I must also add as an aside here that there is a level of radical spiritual experience in which one is actively going beyond acculturated metaphysical beliefs, experiencing revelations that subvert one's psychological defense structure and that make a strong enough impression on the right kind of psyche that the second two functions above are inactivated in the service of the first. This is most often the exception to the rule and for me marks the difference between transformational and translative spirituality...)
Cross-Cultural Examples
A 12-year-old boy in the Bible belt falls on the floor and begins speaking in tongues - he knows this is proof of the Holy Spirit and gives his life even more fully to Jesus. He vows to become a missionary in Africa.
An 18 year old girl on Ecstasy in London gazes in rapt absorption at the dance floor, her heart blowing open, mind stunned by the beauty of ordinary people and the power of music to unite people into a single moving organism of love and celebration, she is convinced that the Universe has led her precisely to this moment and that the Wicca initiation she received from her aunt the week before has connected her to her destiny.
The 22 year old couple hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains stand at the look-out point and breathe deeply as they do partner yoga stretches, the vast blue sky above them, the sun gleaming off the leaves of the trees and the warm rocks, they know without a shadow of a doubt that they are soul mates and the earth is a conscious being radiating love and wisdom at them.
The 29 year old woman goes to darshan with Amachi, the hugging saint. Her psychic reader has told her that she clearly has past-lives with the guru and that intersecting with her energetically in this life will help her to overcome the pain she feels at a failed relationship and recent abortion. In the arms of Amachi she feels accepted, filled with love, recharged energetically and blown away at the accuracy of the psychic's "information." What's more - gazing into the eyes of the guru she knew without a shadow of a doubt that God forgave her abortion, that it was the right thing to do and that she would have another chance to be a mother when the Universe was aligned.
The 35 year old Muslim man finally makes his pilgrimage to Mecca. A thousand men circle that most holy of stones - the Kaaba. This is the most important moment in his life and he is filled with awe, tears streaming down his face, he is caught up in the power of the presence of the prophet of the inevitability of his own destiny. He renews his commitment to bringing Islamic rule to the whole world for the glory of Allah and to donate as much of his income as he can to the cause of removing Israel from the face of the planet.
The 42-year-old homeless woman is transfixed, staring into the window of the restaurant. The customers are uncomfortable with her intent gaze and do not realize that she is looking at her own reflection. They are even less aware that she is seeing the Virgin Mary reflected back at her. She offers her unconditional healing love to all the world and knows that she must come again each morning to this spot until the police come and tell her to move, at which point she becomes again the bitter, persecuted crazy lady screaming foul curse words at the cops.
The 55-year-old therapist's young son is killed in a car wreck. As he walks past the cafe where his son loved to hang out and sometimes played his music at the open mic night he hears Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" coming through the open door. He stops in his tracks and weeps. He weeps for all the things he never said and for all the things his son will never do, he asks forgiveness for he ways in which he knows he failed him. When the song reaches it climax he feels a soft breeze on his skin that covers him in gooseflesh and imagines his son's voice singing a low harmony on the chorus. He tells his wife and she is sure this was a communication from the spirit world, but he doesn't think it was anymore or less than a powerful moment of grief, gratitude, forgiveness and expansion.
Conclusion
I suggest that it isn't enough to merely affirm (though we should do this at the very least) these experiences in a non-ethnocentric way - I think that if we want to a) understand, facilitate, and integrate them better and b) keep creating more and more effective world-centric humanistic contexts within which to more adequately interpret the experiences, we need to tease apart the mystical, psychological and socio-cultural layers of the experience.
When we are able to do so, we can see ourselves more clearly, use the power of the experience more effectively and side step some of the classic traps that too often make spiritual experience the domain of superstition, fundamentalism, psychological denial and rationalization, cultish belief, ethnocentric nationalism and basic delusion about reality.
So far the laudable contemporary liberal desire to be affirming of all forms of spiritual experience does not do this teasing apart and so has a tendency to uncritically embrace the cultural baggage and defensive psychological distortions along with the universal sense of awe and deep opening.
Of course, on the other side, the laudable modern desire to be rational tends to throw out the baby of the potent and meaningful experience with the bathwater of the superstitious cultural baggage and the rather obvious defensive psychological distortions.
Both of these impulses are based in partial truths that end up missing the point. Finding out which part is true and which is mistaken is essential if the two are to be integrated.
The fact that all human beings are wired to some extent for experiences like these and that in certain cases such experiences can be positively transformational to our lives, in no way makes any of the culture bound and anxiety reducing interpretations any more true in the literal sense.
My sense of it is that we need to be able to differentiate a) what is truly universal in our physiology and it's experiential counterpart the deep psyche and even in the general archetypal form and themes that underlie the specific content of the mythic/metaphysical interpretation, from b) the interpretation itself.
Its a tricky task but one that is quite doable if we are rational and honest with ourselves.
Its about picking apart metaphor from reality, literal from figurative, defensive from expansive, conditioned from transcendent etc, in an attempt to understand both the meaningful trans-rational power of spiritual experiences and the ways in which their pre-rational interpretation can be deceptive.
To forego (or fudge) this task out of multi-cultural PC politeness, sentimental attachment to the supernatural, or soupy relativist confusion leaves us spiritually and intellectually impoverished and no closer to understanding this remarkable and central human concern.
it is possible to forge a 21st Century Spirituality that harnesses the exquisite transformational beauty and power of spiritual experiences without the non-essential cultural baggage, metaphysical belief and reality distorting interpretations.
If we:
a) Enact an inquiry-based practice that initiates us experientially into the universal physiological and psychological mind-body energetics, state shifts and stage-wise growth, b) Maintain a space for shadow-work and other forms of psychological process/awareness and c) Keep integrating and developing rational cognition and critical thinking,
we increase the possibilities of reaping the benefits of spiritual experience and side-stepping some of the long-standing drawbacks.
Above is a video that is getting a lot of play in the spiritual community, I wrote this post when it originally aired on the TED channel, but as you may know this new blog is a place I am gradually uploading to from an archive on Gaia.com - which was recently shut down.
The video is inspiring, it's exciting, it's deeply personal, poignant, intelligent and funny - but ultimately I think the message and it's underlying assumptions are hugely problematic.
I am going to save my comments until this has been up for a little while, and let any readers make their own observations.
My suggestion: watch it once and take the emotional/altered state ride - its great! Then watch it again and pay more attention to the details...
* Let me say first of all, this is not intended in any way to be hostile toward Ms. Taylor. She is obviously a bright and sincere woman, who has recovered from and struggled to make sense of a very intense experience of brain injury. She is clearly in touch with a feeling of wanting to share a message that is positive with the world. Her talk is engaging, intelligent, self-revealing and impactful.
At the same time, she is unwittingly enacting a set of fallacies that a basic knowledge of transpersonal psychology, integral theory, philosophical reasoning and recent studies on meditation and neuroscience can enable us to see.
Why does this matter?
Well, the subjects she is touching on regarding the brain, altered states of consciousness, stagewise development and the future of humanity are important and meaningful ones - and they not only deserve to be addressed with more clarity, but when misrepresented as she is doing perpetuate misconceptions that do none of us any good, let alone the ideal of world peace and unity.
Now before you get all bent out of shape, let me acknowledge that yes, of course this is opening a door for many who might otherwise not link these subjects or be exposed to certain possibilities. At the same time I maintain, as I have done with The Secret, What The Bleep, Steve Pavlina's blog and other purveyors of these kinds of fallacies - that it is sometimes better to not be exposed to important ideas than to be exposed to distorted, poorly-reasoned, incorrect manglings of important ideas, dressed up as the next big thing...
For those who will say - ah but this is stage appropriate, don't be so mean to people who think this way, I have one statement: fallacious arguments are not the domain of any healthy stage, especially once one has developed the capacity to reason. There is a healthy version of the interaction between Ms. Taylor's experience and an interpretation that weaves together spirituality, science and philosophy that would represent what integral calls healthy Green - this however is not it.
Here's why:
ALTERED STATES & THEIR INTERPRETATION
1) The talk falls into the trap of conflating an altered state experience with an uncritical interpretation of that experience, without differentiating the two and creating a three strands of science set of well described links and hypotheses. Now, I know its a short talk, but this could be done in a more exciting, though grounded/conservative way, that would map out some very fertile territory for future inquiry, instead of jumping right into a very grandiose narrative about saving the world by choosing to be in your right brain as much as possible.
What i think is going on here is that Ms. Taylor has yet to integrate the experience of this radical altered state with her scientific/cognitive abilities. Understandable - it was a radically different state of mind than she had ever experienced. Furthermore, as the talk progresses it becomes apparent that Ms. Taylor is in a bit of an altered state on stage, this is captivating at first, but read as a little hysterical and manic on second viewing. again - no judgment or mean-ness here, this is just a subjective observation of her mental state. I mean the words "hysterical" and "manic" in their technical usage - not as some kind of ad hominem.
I have written at length here about the importance of recognizing the distance between altered state experiences and the conditioned interpretations that we are all prone to filter them through based on three factors:
1) The universal (with varying degrees of intensity) human proclivity toward not only experiencing altered states but also towards finding those altered states to some extent meaningful and significant.
2) The personal stage of development from which one a) Interacts with or “co-creates “ the experience and b) Interprets the experience – both based on one’s psychological profile.
3) The socio-cultural context within which the experience both a) occurs in the first place and b) Is then interpreted
You'll notice that Ms.Taylor does something that a lot of badly structured attempts at integrating science and mysticism do - she starts off with simple but good scientific information and then dives right into spiritual assertions without carrying over a similar kind of rigor or analysis. Notice the cadaverous human brain, the qualifications, the scientific background that make us take her seriously - but then as soon as she goes into the emotive, exciting, compelling and humorous discussion of her stroke experience, she starts using certain words without defining them via, unpacking them with, or linking them to, the brain science she is using as their support.
Unfortunately, the listener may get the impression that Ms Taylor's empirical objectivity carries over into her subjective and socially conditioned statements of interpretation and conclusion - lending them more than their deserved objective weight.
This means that even though she gives a very faithful and balanced account of her experience in the body of her talk - the inability to use her muscles, the inability to think, understand language, the presence of extreme pain and chaos etc - as well as the novelty, beauty, wonder, freedom of being in an expansive state, she still somehow manages to arrive at a conclusion in her talk that is unsatisfying.
That conclusion, that begins at around 15:30 is that we could "choose" to step to the right of the left hemispheres and live in peace and beauty. Observe how emotionally charged this idea is for her and how it becomes the central driving force toward her recovery.
Then, at around 16:50:
"So who are we? We are the life force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we want to be in the world. Right here right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right hemisphere where we are -- I am -- the life force power of the universe, and the life force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form. At one with all that is. Or I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere. where I become a single individual, a solid, separate from the flow, separate from you. "
Nirvana. Spirit. Energy. Surrender. Not the choreographer of my life. One with all that is. My moment of transition. Planes of reality. Life force power of the universe.
All of these are words that carry emotive power - and that's fine, they are descriptors of a experience, and they also exist within a context of meaning - but what would do her cause a better service and make the talk more than a cool story that seems to bolster somewhat superficial spiritual ideas, would be if she did more of a step-by-step linking of what integral theory labels the Upper Left (UL) and Upper Right (UR) quadrants. it would also help to step back a little and look at the socially constructed (LL) phrases used above and bear in mind that these are non-empirical observations - which is fine - but they should be identified as such! Instead it all kinda blurs together in an undifferentiated way that could be mistaken for integration or holism, but alas is more of a fun mess..
In other words, how about: I was experiencing something that felt to me like what I had heard called Nirvana. How interesting that a stroke that limited the function of certain aspects of brain function would induce a state of spaciousness, freedom from fears and pre-occupations, wonder at my connection to the universe. Perhaps this has to do with such and such structure in the brain that I know from my background deals with such and such processing, which makes me wonder what a healthy version of this pathological side-effect might be and what would make that possible.... This would ground her interpretation instead of sling-shotting it into speculative metaphysics and emotive argument that stumbles into several naive pitfalls.
This leads to my second point:
CHOICE AND BRAIN STATES
2) Again somehow Ms. Taylor comes to the conclusion that we can "choose" to be in the right brain, and that being in the right brain is the answer to our problems and the prescription for peaceful Nirvana.
Really, this is laden with two fallacies. One is that the left brain is 'the problem," the other has to do with an overstating of the possibility of choice regarding states of consciousness. (Stages too - but I'll get into that in a moment..) Bear in mind she was thrust into this expereince by a stroke - no choice there...
This plays too easily into the approach to spirituality that, rather than encouraging an integration of cognition, emotions, creativity, embodied experience - a real embrace of all that we are, pushes what I call the "self-attacking" position that something, whether it is sex, or 'the ego," or as in this case, the left brain, or materialism, or emotional attachments, something about what and who we are is in the way of being free and enlightened, and if we could just get rid of that, overcome it, choose something else that would be the key!
This is a dualistic oversimplification of any serious process of self-transformation and it does us two forms of dis-service. First: it feeds the fantasy that there is a simple answer, a utopian prescription that we could all just "choose."
Second: because of the previous heady misconception - it serves to keep people in an unfortunate cycle of failing at the impossible (just choosing to be in the right brain, transcending the ego altogether, not having sexual desires, completely controlling my emotions) but holding onto the idea that its their fault and they aren't trying hard enough, setting strong enough intentions, being disciplined enough, surrendering to the guru enough, choosing deliberately enough to be "in love" and so on.. This cycle is basically a dead-end, even though we all go dancing merrily down it with a gleaming hopeful eyes and well-intentioned hearts.
BRAIN PATHOLOGY = ENLIGHTENED AWARENESS
3) The third problem here is the most glaringly obvious: the talk conflates brain injury with enlightenment. It conflates disorganized pathology with integrated development and then draws conclusions from one based on the other, again without creating good links a la some kind of quadrant analysis.
This mistake shoots itself in the foot, because the quadrant reductionism and the variation on the Pre/Trans Fallacy being enacted here allow one to easily arrive at additional poor conclusions, thus: maybe spiritual experiences are just brain pathology, or maybe what we call the healthy brain is in the way of being more spiritual. This doesn't do brain science or any kind of viable spirituality any favors whatsoever!
While a reading of contemporary neuroscience and its study of meditative states (a la Newberg) gives a solid set of links between areas of the brain that serve particular functions and the experience one has as those areas are "turned on or off " by meditation, nowhere does one find the kind of conflating that suggests that states of mental illness are identical to states of meditative absorption.
Differentiating the qualitative value of various altered states and what they do and don't mean is a crucial responsibility that this kind of research needs to be engaging.
(It's also unfortunate that she mentions her brother's schizophrenia and then leaves that loose end dangling while making a case for her brain disorder as a doorway into Nirvana - the implications are obvious and unfortunate - again they do neither meditators nor mentally ill people any favors... and leave the rest of us giddily confused on the matter.)
To quote Meister Eckhart " The madman is drowning in the same waters in which the holy man is swimming."
(I have gone into some depth and detail about this in the Kundalini Dragon post you can find on this blog.)
STATES vs STAGES
4) Altered states of consciousness are one thing, stages of development are another. We learned through the 60's and 70's (and had mapped out by Transpersonal Psychology) that one could experience meditative rapture, psychedelic ego-death, darshan from the great master, and the euphoria of mass demonstration or celebration and still return relatively unchanged to one's existing stage of development.
This niggling reality forced theorists to make a distinction between states and stages and try to make sense of which states were useful glimpses of higher stages and how they could then be translated into a developmental process that would turn the altered state into a permanent trait.
What the research clearly shows, is that one does not develop stagewise by wishing it so, by believing, by choosing, by magical intervention, or by one-off altered state explosions - one progresses through stages of development at the higher end of the spectrum by hard work, practice, self-inquiry, process, healing, study etc...
As inspiring as an altered state - or someone else's account/interpretation of their altered state may be as fuel for transformation - leaving out a map that actually engages the process of transformation renders the inspiration somewhat empty and lacking in direction.
IN CLOSING
Let me end by saying that I am immensely sympathetic to the message, the emotional tone, the intentions of this talk, and I have immense compassion for Ms. Taylor and her experience. At the same time, i think that identifying the popular fallacies that limit the healthy and differentiated integration of mind-body, brain/spirituality, stages and stages, science and mysticism, empiricism and idealism - and offering alternative lenses, is an important, grounding and forward-looking task.
It is the passion I share with Ms. Taylor for the subject that inspires this critique. May it be of service!
There is a famous quote from one of the early Transpersonal Psychologists, Jack Engler, "You have to be someone before you can be no-one."
This is a very simple and direct way of acknowledging a developmental process. In my workshop series and new 8 CD lecture and yoga class series Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy, I use the chakra system as a way to talk about both the developmental process and the mind-body connection. So I'd like to start by using some of the core themes from those lectures as a way to make some distinctions that I think are important for integrative spirituality. I will briefly touch on: experience vs interpretation, conscious mind vs unconscious mind, ego strength vs ego defense, healthy anger vs toxic anger, compassion vs codependence, insight vs belief, literal vs symbolic and of course prerational vs transrational - for more please consult the CD lectures.
Now it might help to start off by defining what I mean by integrative spirituality. My sense of it is a spirituality that integrates attention to mind and body, integrates Eastern and Western approaches, and integrates psychological and spiritual techniques and frameworks.
This is what Transpersonal Psychology set out to do in the 70's, following on from Jung and Maslow and in the wake of the 60's psychedelic mind-expansion, fascination with Eastern myticism and the important work of people like Alan Watts and Joseph Campbell. This zeitgeist produced the extraordinary work of Ken Wilber, Stan Grof, Jack Kornfield, John Welwood, Jack Engler and other brilliant theorists, clinicians, and serious spiritual practitioners.
One of the key observations in this movement has been looked at from different angles that are all related to the above quote from Engler. Wilber's famous essay The Pre/Trans Fallacy, Welwood's concept of "spiritual bypassing," Stan Grof's observation about the "flight toward the light," and much of Kornfield's work points to the problem of non-integrative spirituality being used in the service of avoiding dealing with the necessary awareness work and emotional healing that continuing development and integration require. In other words, spirituality itself (especially spirituality based in magic, mythic and metaphysical beliefs) can become a defense against actual spiritual and psychological growth.
As far as working in an integrative way - I think of both mind and body as having surface and depth components. There is the (surface) conscious mind and the (depth) unconscious mind, each being home to the ego and the Self. The surface level has to do with mental focus, intentionality and ego-strength, as well as cognitive development, critical thinking, symbol interpretation. Goal-setting, Cognitive Reframing, Concentration and even Witnessing meditations are good here, as well as intellectual pursuits that refine critical and symbolic analysis.
Too little surface mind work and one can be very undisciplined, caught up in drama, chronically self-sabotaging etc..
The depth component of the mind invites us beneath the surface - Vipassana, Tonglen and Lovingkindness meditation, psychotherapy, Holotropic Breathwork, certain kinds of yoga, bodywork, and ecstatic dance, all can take us into that shamanic type space where the defenses come down and we go through an experiential process of working with repressed emotions, painful memories, insecurities and traumas held in the unconscious, as well as archetypal imagery, self-parenting and the arising of insight into our personal process and the universal human condition.
As is more often the case than not - too much surface mind work at the expense of depth mind work can create a kind of over-identification with beliefs, an overvaluing of the power of intention, an emphasis on controlling both reality and one's feelings through the mind, and - as should be obvious, a lack of depth in terms of the psyche/soul.
The less common problem has to do with too much destabilizing depth work and not enough of the grounding, calming, focusing ego-strength buiding of the surface work.
One corrolary to this is a kind of unboundaried overabundance of intuitive awareness with a lack of either the structure of ego-strength or the awareness of the depth work - such that the intuitive stream is often undifferentiated from one's shadow material, projections etc and ends up being overly literalized in a kind of superstitious way. Many sensitive and/or traumatized poeple drawn to spirituality take this route.
In Jungian terminology, this alchemical process is one of creating/strengthening the "ego/Self axis." Another way of saying this is that we open up more of a connection between the deep Self and the surface ego. Overall the healthy psychospiritual process creates a stronger channel of communication between the surface and depth, between our conditioned external self and our authentic inward experience, feelings, needs, thoughts and aspirations. It also frees up blocked energy from unresolved conflicts and allows both the developmental process along several lines to continue and the integrative resonance between those different lines to be more harmonious. When I use the word "lines" I am referring to the Integral concept and specifically for my purposes I am interested in the cognitive, emotional, spiritual, and kinesthetic lines of development.
Another doorway in is to talk about the relationship between intention and process. The intention (surface) creates a doorway into a process (depth) which in turn will re-shape the intention as well as the ego setting the intention through input from the Self. It's a feedbaclk loop.
The Self is constantly communicating with us through things like dreams, intuitions, projections, fantasies, emotions, psychosomatic symptoms. Think of the (deep) Self as being more authentically in touch with what is really going on under the surface of the defenses (rationalization, denial, magical thinking, projection etc) - the Self has a clearer picture of the whole of our experience and has acccess to the disowned shadow material of emotions, desires, experiences, resources and archetypes that our ego has not yet learned to tolerate, actualize, and integrate.
As to the body, I think of the body too as having a surface component in it's structural anatomy and a depth component in it's organ system, glandular and blood chemistry. The surface component of the body is well addressed by physical practices like yoga, other forms of exercise and various kinds of bodywork/massage. The depth component can be well addressed by organ cleansing, nutrition, supplement protocols and the benefits of detoxifying sweat and nervous and glandular system stimulation and modulation created by exercise - particularly in this case - yoga and ecstatic dance.
So in terms of addressing surface and depth in both mind and body - the integrative approach I apply is to synergize finely tuned physical practices that allow space for process with with nutritional cleansing/supplementation and various meditation techniques that train for different skills.
This combination of anatomical, spiritual and psychological approaches adds up to an energetic initiation that is quite profound - and a new heightened awareness of the mind-body connection/process.
Altered States, Kundalini, Unwinding
At their most essential level meditation, yoga, breathwork, psychotherapy and dance all are ways to access a revelatory experience of not just the mind-body connection, but a kind of dropped-in awareness field in which the innate intelligence of the bodymind can rebalance, unwind, spontaneously express and begin to awaken to it's deeper energetic and awareness capacities. Part of this revelatory process can include the arising of the altered state awakenings and psychophysical phenomena attributed in the East to Kundalini and in the West to the somato-psychic wave, somatic discharge, unwinding etc...
These states are accesible at any level of one's developmental process. For the purposes of this discussion let's say that these altered state/energetic processes can arise while one's "altitude" is centered in any of the chakras and can also be the result of an unresolved strand of experience (or even what Grof calls a Co-ex system) emerging from any of the chakras/developmental levels. To clarify, i should say that I think of the chakras as being a) anatomical structures: key "high-charge" muscles, glands, organs, nerve plexi, b) a way of talking about how the inward experience of the body in a particular physical area resonates emotions and energetic qualities, and c) a metaphorical/imaginal way of talking about mind-body matrix and it's developmental and healing processes.
Being Someone
So, to return to our starting point - if you have to be someone to be no-one, what does this mean? One has to have a strong, healthy ego, or sense of self, in order to healthily engage in any kind of transcendence of that ego or sense of self. In terms of my chakra model this means that the developmental process in chakras one through three has to be pretty solid in order to move forward to chakras four though seven in a healthy way. Now of course, chakras one through three have to do with several key issues: the right to exist, survival, taking pleasure in our physicality, emotional and sexual trust, gender identity/value, object relations, sense of self, boundaries, will, self-esteem, to name a few...
The difficulty of course comes in two forms: first, whether we realize it or not, most of us have fairly serious unresolved issues in these earlier chakra levels and second, many if not most people interested in spirituality have come to a spiritual path out of some kind of pain, suffering, longing for something that we do not have/feel. So spirituality actually is a bit of a magnet for wounded people. Now, if the kind of spirituality that is encountered is not integrative, it will likely perpetuate the very defenses (denial, rationalization, magical thinking) that are keeping the ego and the Self from being in an integrated fluid relationship. Often there is so much static because of the elaborate beliefs that people take on in the name of spirituality that it is almost impossible at first to be in touch with any real feelings, to enter into any authentic process of going beneath the surface and listening to the psyche, the body-intelligence, the heart wisdom. Intention is often held up as a supreme control mechanism instead of just step one of a process of going within and healing/growing. Intention is given a kind of literalized magic power to affect outer reality, instead of being understood as a way to focus the mind enough to go under the defensive omnipotent fantasies into the places of vulnerability wherein lies the true gift - our disowned aspects of self.
So in this sense "integrative" also means to integrate the aspects of our experience, feelings, needs, potentials that we have relegated to the unconscious because of various disturbances in healthy development in the first three chakras. It is in defense against dealing with this very primal and often painful material that a kind of prepersonal spirituality can spring up - one that dissociates from having to deal with these feelings and usually judges them as unspiritual, too attached, egoic etc - all as a kind of oversimplified misreading of outdated yogic/buddhist philosophy, and then also buys into various prerational metaphysical explanations for how reality works and how everything from your bank balance to your happiness is a function of your intention or will manifesting.
Distinctions
So let's talk a little about the third chakra in my system. I want to start by making a much-needed distinction between ego-strength and ego-defense. We have a social convention of saying that someone with a lot of bravado and conceit who needs to be the center of attention has a big ego. This is technically incorrect - they actually have a small ego - but a big ego-defense. Another way to say it is that they are lacking in ego-strength and are over compensating with an ego-defense. The last thing this person actually needs to do is have their ego cut down to size by more meditation and fierce diet of transcendence. Why? because you have to somone to be no-one. You need a healthy strong ego before you can drop your ego-defenses. How do you develop ego-strength? well, it comes own to internalizing the kinds of positive feedback that only a small number of people in your life can ever really give you. It has to do with a very vulnerable, very young part of us not having received love, acceptance and the kind of mirroring that allowed a strong sense of self to be internalized.
Now, if one is suffering from low self-esteem it is not enough, nor is it integrative, to simply try to set an intention to be more confident - even if it works it is still at some level just an act. Authentic confidence will develop over time from learning how to be present and loving with the insecure part of yourself. Lovingkindness meditation, certain approaches to practices like yoga and dance, and certain psychotherapeutic techniques (not to mention the healing relationship with a good practitioner) can support that process of that healing inner re-parenting.
Kohut is really the master here: We have a primary narcissism as children that is entirely appropriate and that is asking to be mirrored. We need to feel important, special, loved, accepted, admired etc... If this happens for us we relinquish the primary narcissism with an internalized positive sense of self that can tolerate the disappointments, unfairness and struggles of life as we continue growing. If this does not happen sufficiently and/or if there is abandonment or invasion trauma - then we deveop a secondary nasrcissism that is still attempting to get those needs met and that is part of the coping structure of a poorly developed sense of self (low ego strength) that has a hard time tolerating how unfair, disapppointing and out of my control reality actually is....
On to our second distinction: healthy anger vs toxic anger. i think of anger as a third chakra energy. Healthy anger sets boundaries, communicates violations, expresses moral outrage. Healthy anger can be channeled into hard work, creativity, passionate engagement. Healthy anger can create real intimacy - because it is honest and direct. Toxic anger is usually tied to some kind of repressive cycle such that it builds up and needs to be discharged either by out of proportion reactivity or passive agression. Healthy anger is a function of ego-strength. Toxic anger is usually part of an ego-defense.
Compassion vs Codependence
Now if we are "someone" - meaning if we have a healthy sense of self or ego strength, then we can develop compassion. Compassion in the sense of being able to imagine another's suffering - precisely because we can tolerate feeling our own suffering. Compassion is distinct from codependence. In codependence we imagine that we can fix the other person's suffering and then they will give us the love that we need or then they will admire us in the way that we need. Codependence can also be a kind of merging with another person, whereas from the healhty differentiation of ego-strength we can both imagine how someone's suffering feels and know that it is their suffering and not ours. Being able to imagine their feelings allows us to empathize, knowing where their feelings end and ours begin allows us to not be overwhelmed or burdened in such a way that we might shut down - or try to shut them down. Codependent dynamics based in an inability to tolerate the reality of suffering in ourselves and others are extremely common in non-integrative spirituality and give rise to all sorts of defensive beliefs that are the orthodox lingua franca in some circles.
As we engage in practices that allow development and healing to occur, insight arises. Insight is distinct from belief in one simple way: belief is an outside-in phenomenon. Insight is as the word suggests an inside-out phenomenon. In other words imposing a belief that one has decided is worthwhile, or that one has heard is spiritually correct is very different from going through a process that allows insight to emerge experientially.
Symbolic Thinking and Existential Initiation
As we continue to develop into the higher cognitive stages of what Piaget called formal operations and beyond to what theorists like Wilber and Gebser have called vision logic and integral cognition, we develop deepening abilities to understand systems of meaning, poetic and archetypal symbolism and spiritual metaphor. From these stages we are able to reclaim what the rational stage cast off from the literal mythic and magic stages of development and reinterpret it through the symbolic lens of our deeper more sophisticated capacities.
Personally I feel that the great initiation into genuine transpersonal spirituality has to do with integrating the hard-won development of cognitive, emotional and spiritual lines into an existential awakening to the mind-blowing miraculous sacredness of reality as it is in a way that redefines the old world ways of using those terms and finally understands that words like god and spirit actually refer to our own complete true nature and have been a way of trying to wake up to ourselves all along. In that moment the mysterious and the mundane are revealed as one and the same and any metaphysical construct that needs to somehow look outside of reality as it is is seen as a ghostly substitute for this one brutal, beautiful, unfair, magnificent, tragic, grace-filled ride through the inner and outer cosmos.
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.
I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of sure defeat.
I have been told, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.
"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the right stimulus, and at a touch they are there is all their completeness…
No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question…"
William James The Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 388
With this quote from a book published in 1901 by a man whom many regard as the father of psychology, I would like to begin a consideration of both the importance and the trickiness of altered state experience and phenomena, be they energetic, psychological, physiological and/or spiritual.
(Note: I got so involved with the information/perspectives I wanted to share here that a more personal account will appear in the comments section below..)
For now let me just say that my journey began at a young age - I began meditating at 15, emulated my 60's idols by experimenting with psychedelics in an intentional way after reading Tim Leary and Ram Das at 18 while exploring minor rock stardom in South Africa, came to the USA and started yoga at 19. I chased the light of new Age peak experiences in my early 20's - travelled to India, spent time in the ashram with Osho sanyassins, sat with countless satsang teachers, tried hard to create my reality, kill my ego and become one with the universe while remembering my past-lives and putting out the intention to call in my soulmate.......
I ended up realizing that therapy was indispensable, that I was in fact using spiritual beliefs to avoid my deep emotions and the reality of suffering, put in many, many hours on the Holotropic Breathwork mat, went on intense meditation retreats, practiced hardcore yoga early in the morning for years, had my body and psyche ripped open by kamikaze bodyworkers, struggled to make sense of the combination of of light and shadow in my charismatic mentor figures and eventually differentiate from them - and over time developed my own approach to integrating and facilitating energetic and altered state process work via yoga, bodywork, dialog, dance and breathwork.
How then to unpack the power, beauty, terror, magic and wonder of altered states and Kundalini experiences?
I will start by putting my perspective in a context. Ken Wilber's Four Quadrant model from Integral Theory works nicely.
Four Quadrant Gloss
UR = Upper Right UL = Upper Left LR = Lower Right LL = Lower Left
Chemistry and Brain States
We know that from an empirical point of view (UR, Objectivity) consciousness, and more specifically our state of consciousness is a function of brain states and biochemistry. Too little serotonin and one is depressed, too much dopamine and one is in the midst of a manic episode, scarring from head trauma can produce epilepsy, ingest just the right amount of LSD or mescaline and the folds in one’s trousers or the architecture of a rose (as Aldous Huxley famously described in The Doors of Perception) can become imponderably mysterious, beautiful, fascinating and spiritually rich. So too the sense of spaciousness, expansive loss of ego and connection to the cosmos one experiences in deep meditation can be tracked in relationship to brain function as in the recent work of Dr. Andrew Newberg:
"During meditation, people often feel a sense of no space. Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk's brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated. Using a brain imaging technique, Dr. Newberg and his team studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for approximately one hour. When they reached a transcendental high, they were asked to pull a kite string to their right, releasing an injection of a radioactive tracer. By injecting a tiny amount of radioactive marker into the bloodstream of a deep meditator, the scientists soon saw how the dye moved to active parts of the brain.
Later, once the subjects had finished meditating, the regions were imaged and the meditation state compared with the normal waking state. The scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain during meditation. "There was an increase in activity in the front part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained. In addition, a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the brain, or parietal lobe, recognized as the area responsible for orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads to a lack of spatial awareness.
Dr Newberg explained: "During meditation, people have a loss of the sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time and that was exactly what we saw." The complex interaction between different areas of the brain also resembles the pattern of activity that occurs during other so-called spiritual or mystical experiences."
Experiential Awareness and Stage-Based Interpretation
In the subjective personal realm (UL), one’s state of consciousness, and particularly how one interprets those states can be discussed with regard to stages of psychological development, traumas (or complications in that developmental process), self-awareness, spiritual practices, education etc. Most significant here for me are the psychological, spiritual and cognitive lines of development.
I will go into the area of stages of development later, but as to spiritual practice, one of my favorite lines comes from New York Zen teacher Baker Roshi, who says “Enlightenment is an accident, but meditation makes you accident prone.”
In other words: the altered state of consciousness sought by the meditator and the stabilized stage of development in which that state is integrated are not guaranteed by meditation – but meditation does set up the conditions within which that process can occur.
Even more than meditation, we see an ever growing interest in yoga practice, especially because of the positive state change that it creates. While most beginning meditators have a good few years of difficult, boring, frustrating and confronting mental excercise ahead of them before states like the one's Newberg is describing start showing up for more than 5 or 10 seconds at a time, yoga is more predictable more quickly, given the specific stimulation and soothing of the nervous system, glands and brain and the circulatory effects of the physical practice.
I would argue that with specific regard to states of consciousness the UL and UR (or subjective awareness and objective biochemistry )are in an interwoven relationship that is almost impossible to separate. The changes in state that yoga and meditation produce are clearly rooted in physiological processes that involve glandular activity, the nervous system, areas of the brain etc – those processes depend upon an exercising of awareness that trains one in generating the physiological activities that drive the state change via either movement, breath, posture and intention/concentration.
Gopi Krishna’s famous initiation into kundalini is a perfect example. This was an ordinary man practicing meditation without a teacher who happened upon a powerful and harrowing experience of his own UR/UL relationship that led him to the conclusion that there is a biopsychic evolutionary principle dormant in the body. For more see his eloquent and powerful account in the classic Kundalini The Evolutionary Energy in Man.
(Please note that whenever I recommend this book I do so with a disclaimer that will follow further down the page. )
Here in the meantime is a short introduction to Krishna, as well as video of an excellent interview with him. It's worth your while to watch this and perhaps have it open in another window as you keep reading....
Regarding the UR/UL relationship, this line from the interview particularly stands out “Yoga was developed in India to make experiments on the brain.”
A man after Dr. Newberg’s own heart!
Mythic and Cultural Interpretive Overlay
Now on to the cultural context (LL) within which states of conscious arise, are conditioned and interpreted. Of course, both the UL&UR factors described above emerge (or fail to emerge) and are made sense of within a cultural (LL) framework. States of consciousness that are universally possible in human beings will be given very different kinds of support or repression, training and interpretation depending on the society in which they are experienced. It is an individual of rare brilliance, disposition and self-realized insight that can step back from their own cultural framework and see their spiritual/altered state experience on it's own terms and as something ultimately transcendent of that framework.
Notice how Gopi Krishna, whose defining experience happened in 1937, has an absolute clarity about the universally human nature of the revelations that arose for him. He expresses in the interview a (way ahead of his time) multi-cultural inclusivity, but we do still also hear his underlying Vedic philosophy and metaphysics.
Principle One: Consciousness and Physiology are Deeper (More Universal) to the Human Condition than Cultural Differences.
In support of the above principle, see this remarkable article by researcher, yogi, professor and psychotherapist, Dr. Stuart Sovatsky on the cross-cultural similars to Kundalini in which he notes that:
“Kundalini/pranic awakening and its cross-tradition similars—the spontaneous spinal rockings known in Judaism as davening and in Sufisim as zikr; the "taken-over" gyrations of gospel "holy ghost" shaking and dancing and charismatic/pentacostal "mani-festations"; the Dionysian "revel"; Quakerism’s and Shakerism's autonomic quaking and shaking; Tai Chi guided by chi itself; the shamanic trance-dance; Buddhism’s and Raja-Yoga’s effortless "straight back" (uju-kaya) meditation; the yogically derived ecstatic belly-dance and Flamenco; and even the full-bodied, spontaneous Reichian "reflex"—literally embody the spiritual path.”
Sovatsy too is pointing out the innate/endogenous nature of transformational processes in the mind-body matrix.
Social Infrastructure
Lastly (and mostly for symmetry’s sake) I will mention the LR quadrant. Suffice it to say that in the West we have almost no social infrastructure, religious or psychological for understanding and interpreting altered states. Religion has mostly become the domain of belief – with little room for direct experience and introspective/psychophysical practices of the sort that engage initiatory energetic experiences. Psychology with regard to altered states remains mostly the domain of psychiatric intervention and homogenization of consciousness. Notable exceptions are the budding yoga/ecstatic dance/meditation communities – they are doing good work, but there is a lot more to be done with regard to initiating, integrating and contextualizing authentic, discerning stage-wise growth.
I would however be seriously remiss not to mention the work of Stuart Sovastky, Lee Sannella and Stan Grof in creating clinical resources for those going through intense psychophysical (kundalini) process. See here for some interesting info on that...
What seems most important in the creation of intelligent and supportive LR infrastructure/institutions is an integration of both the mind-body spiritual/energetic awareness of what may be occurring for the individual and it’s possible value – as well as the cold-eyed realism of DSM-based psychological assessment. After all, in the words of Meister Eckhart “ The madman is drowning in the same waters that the Holy man swims in…”
In other words a good starting point is this: all kundalini is not psychosis and all mental illness is not kundalini.
Bless This Dragon and All Who Ride Her
So, what is Kundalini?
Well I want to begin by putting this word where I feel it belongs. In India, Kundalini is the name of a mythic serpent goddess, said to reside at the base of the spine – to be awakened from her slumber by yogic practice or spiritual grace. On awakening she moves through the chakras, or major energy centers of the body, cleansing them of physical and emotional blocks and initiating a powerful psycho-spiritual awareness process.
I think it is very important to bear in mind that “kundalini” is one culture-bound signifier for an experience that transcends culture. Also we should bear in mind that mythic symbols always lose a great deal of their potency when interpreted literally – especially with any kind of exotic idealized projection of magic onto another culture or time.
The experience signified by the word “kundalini” – as pre-eminent scholar on the subject , Stuart Sovatsy indicates above, is common to many cultures and goes by many names.
Principle Two: Names and Beliefs are Always Secondary to Practice and Direct Initiatory Experience.
In my own study, personal experience and clinical practice, I have observed phenomena that have led me to the conclusion that the serpentine imagery invoked by both the Kundalini mythology and the caduceus/Hermetic symbology refers to an innate physical process in which the body makes spontaneous movements that :
a) at their most basic level of expression release tension and stress, b) as they are expressed more deeply bring deeply held emotions to the surface, and c) as the stress, trauma and conflict get processed ultimately express as an ecstatic and pleasurable full-bodied fluid aliveness.
These movements are called “kriyas” in the yogic tradition, the “reflex” or the “orgasm reflex” in Reichian body-based psychology, “unwinding” in Craniosacral therapy, and are said to relate to “primary process” in Primal Therapy. They are also seen in Network Chiropractic, Shiatsu, Ecstatic Dance and Holotropic Breathwork. The Kalahari Bushmen in Southern Africa have an all-night dance ritual in which certain participants will begin to shake and experience a burning in their spine which they will then be able to share with others in the group via a healing laying on of hands.
The awakening of energy and softening of what Reich called the "body armor" or chronic muscular tensions has implications for every aspect of our psychological and physical functioning - instinctive, sexual, emotional, creative, spiritual etc...
My perspective is that the UL experience signfied by the words chakra, shushumna and kundalini respectively have UR correlates in the nerve plexi that branch off the spinal chord, the dural tissue that surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and the biopscyhic life force energy that is running body and mind.
The video that follows down the page will illustrate how I interact with this reality on a daily basis. What you will not see is the powerful opening into the unconscious and the ensuing psychospiritual process that can also emerge.
Somatic Experiencing creator Peter Levine is a Phd. Biologist who has done fascinating research on the way animals release intense nervous system activation after life-threatening situations by laying down and surrendering to full-bodied release that looks like they are just vigorously “shaking it off” but when the videotape is slowed down it reveals sequences of movement that look like running and biting, fleeing and fighting. The nervous and glandular energy aroused to sustain the threat to survival has been discharged. Levine also teaches that a natural nervous system homeostasis that cycles between tension and release, resource and trauma can be re-accessed and utilized to allow managable and integratable processing of unresolved intense stress that still lurks in our physiology.
So breath, touch, movement, emotional process, all can serve as an entry point into this altered state in which the mind-body system processes, releases, re-enlivens and rebalances itself. In my work I use yoga, dance, breathwork and hands-on bodywork as doorways into this powerful process. The novel and revelatory experience of energy can serve as a resource, as can elements like touch, breath, sensation, music, trust etc...
To experience my work come on a Transformation Retreat.
In the video below, I, and some close friends from my bodywork and yoga world use breath and touch to release stress and tension – and enter an ecstatic state. In a more formal healing session this work would go on longer and start to access both emotional process and physical structural shifts. Music at the end is by my friend Jesse Hozney from his CD Music for mass Transit. Unfortunately can't find info on the main track - let me know if you recognize it....
If you haven’t seen energetic process like this before, it will usually bump right up against the cultural taboos we all carry- taboos about the body, vulnerability, touch and sexuality. Think of the images you are seeing as illustrating the awakening of an embodied ecstatic state of consciousness that is not limited by the shame that those taboos enforce. We are conditioned to live in a very limited framework that does not allow for very much emotional honesty, pleasure, open-ness or vulnerability – and yet it is in the discovery and development of our capacity for precisely those things that we become more fully ourselves and that we awaken to authentic and grounded spirituality.
I would hazard a guess that it is this kind of ecstatic group ritual space that the Christians in ancient Europe (and wherever else they colonized) were so offended by and branded as Satanic or related to witchcraft. In the article above Sovatsky mentions both the pre-Patanjali ecstatic Tantras of ancient India as well as the Dionysian revels of ancient Greece. It should however be noted that the naturally occurrance of energetic process in ancient cultures does not mean that their interpretation or integration benefited from the contemporary perspectives (Integral analysis, mind-body integration, depth psychology, modern science, postmodern insights etc..) we can now bring to bear! The way lies ahead, not behind us...
Breathwork
My initial experiences of energetic unwinding/kundalini came through Holotropic Breathwork, an experiential therapy that involves deep sustained breathing, pre-programmed evocative music and the occasional application of physical bodywork techniques.
The work (like any truly effective practice or therapy) softens the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind, and allows physical tensions, repressed emotions, memories, longings and insights to emerge into awareness and be processed in an experiential, embodied way. It produces a profoundly altered state of consciousness in which instinctive animalistic body states, infantile and childhood memories and feelings, unacknowledged truths and deeply spiritual capacities can and do all arise. As this process unfolds it is standard to go through the unwinding/kundalini processes I have been describing. Entheogens
One of the most striking, perplexing and undeniable stimuli toward altered states has to be psychedelic or entheogenic sacraments.
For the sake of brevity, this piece of writing can only gesture toward all the different reference points I am wanting to establish, so for now I will just say that the use of plant medicines that produce altered states is something that anthropologists have found to be ubiquitous and widespread, from Mesoamerica to Africa to India to Ancient Greece, to Egypt and Sumeria, to the Amazon Rainforest to Mexico to Siberia. For more on this a good starting point is the book Persephone’s Quest by R. Gordon Wasson et al.
There is considerable evidence and highly educated guesswork that suggests that humanity’s interactions with potent psychoactive plants and fungi may have played a major part not only in the development of culture, mythology and spirituality/religion, but also in evolution itself. For more on this see references in Joseph Campbell as well as the more explicit work of ethnobotanist Terrence McKenna and writers like James Arthur, Daniel Merkur, Robert Forte and pre-eminent scholar of world religion Huston Smith.
Stan Grof – called by Ken Wilber the world’s greatest living psychologist, spent his early years doing extensive clinical research on the psycho-spiritual implications of altered states and specifically of the information revealed via psychedelics. He later developed Holotropic Breathwork as an alternative approach when psychedelics were outlawed.
Integration
Personally, seeking out and then learning how to integrate altered states has been a central thread in my life story as an adult. From early experiences with psychedelics (like Jack Kornfield, Stan Grof, Ram Das and most of my counter-culture spiritual heroes) to meditation retreats, psychotherapy, bodywork, holotropic breathwork and yoga, I have found that altered states present two very difficult problems with regard to integration: Principle Three: States and Stages Are Not the Same Thing.
In the altered state the barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind becomes more permeable – creativity blossoms, mythic archetypes emerge, long hidden emotions and memories arise and potential spiritual capacities like compassion, insight, and equanimity may be experienced.
See Stan Grof for more on this, but also Abraham Maslow, particularly his idea of “self-actualizers “ who guide their lives by their “peak experiences.”
What Transpersonal Psychology has grown to understand in the last 40 years is that entry into a peak altered state, while convincing and authentic at the time is not the equivalent of having reached the stage of development to which the state is alluding.
In other words a vision of the mountain top doesn’t mean you don’t still have to start climbing from the bottom when the vision fades...
Principle Four: While Altered States are Available to Everyone Regardless of their Stage of Development, One’s Interpretation of the Altered State will be Entirely Dependent on One’s Psychograph (or combined developmental profile.)
In other words: One’s general stage of development will determine how one interprets the altered state once they are back in their steady state. So the same experiential territory might be interpreted completely differently by someone with a literalist faith in mythic religion, as opposed to someone who has done a lot of psychological work, as opposed to someone who is very invested in New Age metaphysics, or someone who has a background in Adveita Vedanta. The tricky part is that because the (primary) altered state is so convincing, our (secondary) interpretive lens will be lent an often unwarranted authority….
This is a very difficult trap to side-step - and then proceed with as grounded and accurate an interpretation as is possible...
So integration has to include perhaps both the attempt to step back and look at the experience with some degree of objectivity, as well as consulting with guides or “community of the adequate” members whom we trust and respect. This will help put altered state work squarely in the necessary "three strands of science realm."
Integration, as well as even being able to manage altered states is also a function of something I call the “trauma/resource ratio.” Each of us has a different ratio between overwhelming traumatic occurrences and resources that support groundedness, self-esteem, compassion, courage etc…This is not something we choose but is the product of the complex relationships between genetics, life experience, childhood, gifts and abilities we have been able to develop etc… The trauma/resource ration will determine how well we are able to manage and integrate altered states of consciousness and energetic process.
Difficulty in managing and/or integrating altered states and energetic process can show up as:
* Ungroundedness or Dissociation * Regressive Worldview/Belief System * Overwhelming/Out of Control Physiological Symptoms * Psychotic Delusions * Extreme Narcissistic Inflation * Obsessive Chasing of the Peak State * Rationalization/Denial of Reality in Favor of "Other Realms" * PTSD * Complete Lack of Self-Care Resources
(Sidenote: Cults and toxic Gurus rely on these elements to keep people disempowered and "hooked in".)
Although we do not choose the trauma/resource ratio we start with, we can choose to become authentically aware of our situation and do the crucial work to cultivate resources while finding safe spaces to process trauma. At various stages in one's cycle it is often necessary to step away from practices that evoke energetic proces and/or altered states and spend some time doing the crucial but unglamorous work of grounding, soothing, re-orienting and integrating. In Closing
I said earlier that I always recommended Gopi Krishna's classic book on Kundalini with a disclaimer/caveat. the reason for this is that Krishn'as experience as recounted in the book is terrifying and somewhat psychotic in places and I have my own theory regarding this aspect of the book.
My observations:
* He had no physical practice to keep him grounded and facilitate processing the powerful energy that was washing though him. * (In predictably culturally influenced ways) He reveals a very puritanical attitude toward sexuality and * A very stoic attitude toward emotions. ( So neither his sexuality nor his emotions were outlets for expression, release and relief - they were held in dualistic regard as not being sacred or part of the process. Danger!) * He felt he had to hide his experience from others. ( A set-up for deepening alienation and paranoia.) * He had no guidance and no community.
This is a perfect set-up for a pretty bumpy ride. Lots of repression and very little resource - his journey really is very traumatic. That said it is still an eloquent and powerful account of energetic initiation and deep self-realization.
In contrast and by way of conclusion i want to reiterate that energetic process and altered states are powerful, universal human experiences that can, under the right conditions, be utilized responsibly, beautifully and in ways that create not only exciting experiences but also genuine stage-wise growth. This possibility is well-served by:
* An Integral 4 quadrant framework. * Active cultivation of resource. * Safe space for processing trauma. * Responsble, knowledgable and experienced teachers/guides/healers * Transformational community * Physical practices that move energy. * Shadow work that allows for deep emotional process. * Three strands of science type methodology. * Continuing education and practice.
These combine well with the four principles I suggested through the piece, and which I will reiterate here:
* Consciousness and Physiology are Deeper (More Universal) to the Human Condition than Cultural Differences. * Names and Beliefs are Always Secondary to Practice and Direct Initiatory Experience. * States and Stages Are Not the Same Thing. * While Altered States are Available to Everyone Regardless of their Stage of Development, One’s Interpretation of the Altered State will be Entirely Dependent on One’s Psychograph.
Thanks for your time! Namaste ~Julian
Reading/Media List:
As listed above, my CD set Radical Transformation: A Map to Mind-Body Ecstasy Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man Gopi Krishna Peter Levine Waking The Tiger Ken Wilber Collected Works Volume Four: Integral Psychology & Transformations of Consciousnesss Stan and Christina Grof The Stormy Search for the Self Alexander Lowen Bioenergetics Donald Kalsched The Inner World of Trauma
I want to talk about four key initiatory thresholds that define 21st Century Spirituality in the realms of Body, Mind, Shadow and Spirit.
In order for spirituality to be substantive it has to include both a theoretical and an experiential component - and those two components have to be in an evolving dialog of inquiry.
In other words it's not enough just to have a cool sounding theory or belief system that you then filter everything through, and it's not enough just to have some groovy experiential space that you enter via a practice, activity or other stimulus. Nor is it even enough to have both an experiential and a theoretical aspect that are somehow connected. I am saying that what is essential is that the theoretical/mental framework and the experiential process have to inform one-another in a genuinely inquiry-based way and thus be in an evolving organic process that is about authentic relationship to truth, beauty and goodness.
The questions: What is true? What is beautiful? What is good? invite us into an open-ended inquiry that keeps the process alive and honest. They force us to reallly look at the veracity of what we think/believe as well as it's ethical implications and it's relatiionship to that intuitive sense of beauty/elegance/meaning in the high sense. When something is innately beautiful it reflects what is deeply true. When we are interested in what is true we are more likely to act for the good. When we are in touch with the good there will be a sense of beauty that we are striving towards.
So these three questions create the conditions in which a kind of spiritual excellence - what the greeks called Arete, can arise. The tricky part is that these three questions do not make us comfortable and they do not give us any easy answers - rather they insist that we engage, inquire and struggle with life as-it-is.
This noble struggle can lead to four key initiations that I see as rites of passage into an integrated 21st Century Spirituality. These four initiations arise in the four domains of Body, Mind, Shadow and Spirit.
Like all initiations they ask us to open to something new and to leave something behind. They invite us into a serious transformational process that takes time and is nothing less than a reshaping of who we are and how we hold our life experience and relate to the world.
As I work with students in all four domains, I invite the use of three key principles: breath, presence and compassion as touchstones and resources along the way.
I will give a brief summary here and then take another four seperate blog posts to expand into each of the initiations:
Body/Energy
This is the area where I spend a lot of time on a daily basis, guiding people into a deepening relationship to their bodies. Many approaches to spirituality ignore or avoid the body, but being grounded in one’s physical body is the foundation of 21st Century spiritual practice. The first initiation is into the sacred nature of this body - the only body that you have. Using sensation-based meditation, breathing techniques, yoga, touch and movement I introduce students to an experience of the body as an energetic doorway into ecstasy and deep healing.
This is not abstract, nor does it require any belief. I am talking about a direct experience of both energy flow and the emotions held in the body that confounds the rational mind and is notunder the control of the ego - like any initation it is an opening to an ontological reality that was not previously known...and it is extremely potent.
(To understand more of what you are seeing in this video go to my Riding the Kundalini Dragon article here.)
Shadow/Heart
Many spiritual approaches remain faithful to the ubiquitous cultural taboo against acknowledging shadow material and it's associated deep feelings.
Deep feeling is a doorway into the soulful language of the heart. Rather than avoiding, denying or judging our emotions, 21st Century Spirituality invites an open space for deep feeling wisdom and authentic healing. The second initiation is into our emotional intelligence. Using heart-based meditation and breathing techniques I encourage non-judgmental awareness of the feeling body and creates a sacred space for healing, forgiveness and love. This lays the foundation for profound shadow-work. In our "shadow bag" we carry everything that has been denied, repressed, avoided, demonized etc.. For all of us this means rage, grief, shame, fear, trauma, bbut it can also mean sexuality, creativity, intelligence, intution and many other things that our family or society deemed unacceptable for us to express/develop.
Stepping outside the pervasive circle of shadow denial is terrifiying at first, but becomes revelatory and empowering as we learn how to tolerate the new awareness.
Mind/Inquiry
Using and developing the mind is something that either gets completely avoided and seen as unspiritual or "in the way" by many approaches, or gets oversimplified and distorted into the magical thinking "you create your own reality" credo by other approaches.
The initiatiion I am interested in here is two-fold. First, it has to do with strong rational development that utilizes healthy critical thinking (what is true?) to develop discernment that is related to ethics (what is good?). Second, it has to do with cognitive development into the area of interpretive, symbolic, metaphorical intelligence that can engage in hermeneutics at the level of poetry, mythology, art and mysticism (what is beautiful?).
Developing the mind and keeping it strongly engaged is a key component of 21st Century Spirituality. In a sense the initiation here is one of turning the power of the rational gaze and the interpretive intelligence onto our inner an outer worlds with an unflinching integrity.
Spirit/Consciousness
In all three of the previous initiations there is a window opened into a deepening awareness of the essential consciousness that stands in it's everpresent clarity at the center of mind and body, shadow and light. The three key elements that I invoke and invite people to keep returning to:breath, presence and compassion can also be seen as three names for "spirit."
Yoga, meditation, intelllectual inquiry, dance, breathwork, bodywork, emotional release all are rivers that find their culmination in any given moment in the ocean of spirit.
21st Century spirituality recognizes the paradox of process and is-ness of immanence and transcendence. In the midst of the process of mental development, emotional excavation, body awakening there are moments, glimpses of freedom, grace, beauty, pleasure, compassion, forgiveness that give the impression of what we can only call "spirit."
Through an authentic and grounded recogntion of and work with the intergated/overlapping domains of mind, body and shadow the fourth initiation occurs - that of recognizing the entire process and it's ground as being itself spirit.
There is nothing to believe in, no need for metaphysics, just an awakeness to what is and on ongoing inquiryinto truth, beauty and goodness, via breath, presence and compassion - as well as a stillpoint, a clearing in which it is all arising and passing away...
I am a writer, yoga teacher and bodyworker. The possibilities of a 21st century spirituality that is informed by science (especially neuroscience) and psychology (especially attachment theory, somatic psychology and developmental psychology) are my passion.
Find out more about my work at http://www.julianwalkeryoga.com
