dinoiii
January 2nd, 2006, 04:37 PM
Dinoiii’s Rant V: Alternative States of Consciousness
William James wrote, “...the world of our present consciousness is only one of the many consciousness that exist.” There are ordinary and extraordinary aspects of the many worlds that deserve our attention. After all, they are where we live.
The usual label for these worlds is altered states of consciousness, but this term is faulty on at least two counts. First, it presumes a baseline state from which consciousness becomes altered. What is our baseline state, that against which we may define others as altered? If it is walking, then what sort of walking? Is it when we’re absorbed in an exciting game or when we’re waiting in a long line at the bank? If sleep is the baseline, then is it the dreamless or dreamful sort? And what of alterations of state that occur across lifetimes? Is the infant state the baseline because it is the one we started with, or is adulthood the baseline because that’s the state of definers? Clearly, there is no acceptable answer.
The second fault is that altered implies abnormal, because whatever the unaltered state might be, it is presumed to be the normal state. Consider such states as “drugged,” “besotted,” and “hypnotized.” Abnormality, from a touch to totality pervades the lot. This is dangerous because when many of us hear abnormal, we think sick or wrong. This linkage is best avoided.
Using the term alternative seems to give us a way out of these binds. Alternative does not assume a baseline state, only that there are a number of states. It carries no connotation of abnormality. Furthermore, alternative has he happy implications of choice and will. I may choose one from among a number of alternative states, and even voluntarily take myself there. I may go to sleep or an exciting movie. I may turn my attention to music. I may do my thing covertly; I may become bored and you may never know it.
Sometimes the world forces the changes. If a dog suddenly darts out from between a pair of parked cars while I’m driving down the street, my state will be transformed from relaxed vigilance to panicky hopeful action. The world can also exert its influence in gentler ways as well. Catching the smell of italics in Spring or of new hay in Summer will override, if only for a moment, the sourest frame of mind.
I believe there are good and bad ways to take an active role in choosing one’s alternative states of consciousness. Who can predict with certainty where the next drink will leave them? And hallucinogen users are always faced with the possibility, indeed the probability, of a bad a bad trip or an unpleasant flashback.
There’s something profoundly amiss with chemical approaches to manipulating consciousness. Drugs lack precision. They are unpredictable because they are non-physiological. They don’t operate naturally, that is, within the body’s own domains. Knowing a little of the chemistry of the brain allows the conclusion that its biochemicals seldom respect functional or behavioral boundaries. One brain chemical can be importantly involved in many functions, in separate brain areas, and in delicate balance with other chemicals. Thus a drug that works on one chemical system may have a wide variety of effects, many of which are unpredictable because we don’t know the details of the brain’s chemical balance sheet, including how it can vary from time to time and person to person. Using an agent like LSD is like inviting an artist-terrorist to come and work his will in your head. Can you say whether beautiful images will pour through your senses, or whether your mind will be blown to the most unpleasant of bits? This is gambling, NOT choosing. It is giving, not taking, control.
Like Lewis Thomas who finds himself to be “constitutionally unable to make hepatic decisions,” we should stand in awe of the complexities involved in statecraft at the chemical level. If our growing knowledge of brain chemistry teaches us anything, it is that this route to alternatives, like many other of life’s easy routes, is often a path to perdition.
What are good ways to realize our alternatives? I cast my lot with mental and behavioral ways. The mind is, far and away, the most potent determiner of consciousness. We engage some states of consciousness as though they are mental gears, shifting from one to another to meet our needs or wishes. We take pleasurable drives through private fantasy lands and business trips through jobs of work. We run errands, sometimes less pleasant ones, as to the dentist, and other times neutral ones, as to the hardware store. Best of all, we use processes we’ve evolved with and grown up using. We operate naturally, inside the body’s domains, using its own rules and powers; we make up our minds.
Are there use tools to help perform these mental operations? Yes. Among them are meditation and hypnosis.
Meditation comes in a variety of forms and strengths. One may opt to strip it to its behavioral core as Wallace has done in developing programmed relaxation, or one may incorporate it into an elaborate set of religious, or even athletic, beliefs. It matters little for purposes of the present argument, for the procedures are essentially similar. At its most basic level, to mediate is to focus attention on a limited piece of the mental world, and, through the exercise of that focus, to attain an alternative state. States may differ according to one’s goal and the formulas one uses. They may range from intense relaxation to the concentrated preparation needed to drive ones hand through a brick wall. Practice and discipline are important, and rising through the levels of achievement is arduous work.
Hypnosis may come a little easier, as it is essentially a passive technique that involves surrendering a measure of control. To be hypnotized, one must accept the hypnotist’s directed focus and suggestions.
A key element is trust. It is easy to cultivate trust if the situation is right. For example, it is very easy to trust George Lucas as he presents his world to us in a movie theater, and to get caught up in his suggestion that we are watching folks relive, resolve, and refight some of mankind’s finest legends through the vastness of future space. In less compelling or familiar situations, trust is harder to come by. In hypnosis, those on both sides of the contract, hypnotist and subject, must work skillfully and cooperatively to build trust. It doesn’t always work.
Many people are impressed – positively or negatively – by the magic they see in meditation and hypnosis. Like all magic things, they are seen as easy if you know the tricks, and the impossible if you don’t. They are also seen as illusory and unreal. Our disaffection may reflect some basic problems generated by an uncritical and exclusive belief in such popular folkways as the scientific method.
The validity of many hypnotic and meditative phenomena is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate scientifically. But is that a reason for throwing them out? I think not, and I wish I could say why in terms that I, as one educated in science, could accept fully. I feel rather like I did when I first heard the story of Carl Jung’s reply to the question, “do you believe in God?” He answered, “I don’t believe, I know.” I had no choice but simply to accept his answer. I couldn’t invalidate it. It seems likewise with the force of mind, and with the tools we’ve developed to realize that force. It works. They work. We can neither explain (yet) nor invalidate them. We can generate alternative states, and we can know, largely in our private, mental worlds, that we are doing so by choice, by will, and through carefully cultured techniques.
Sometimes, we don’t need the rigor of a practiced procedure like meditation or hypnosis. Sometimes, we can get caught up in a state and be transported to fantastic heights with no effort on our parts. On the best of these occasions, we will enjoy what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences.” These can happen anytime – while solving a problem, or walking in the park, or listening to music, or busting ass in the gym, or making love, or doing (automatically) the dishes, or (with deepest absorption) gardening. We are taken over for a time, carried to the best of all possible worlds and given a vision of life’s possibilities. When these come our way, we are captured in a net of choiceless joy. We should be thankful.
How did we come to be so lucky as to have alternative states of consciousness? What could be their adaptive significance? Why should a capability for intense and ineffable joy we find in peak experiences have been bred into our strain? And what was there about being able to shift mental gears at will, that gave those of our ancestors who could, an edge over those who could not? Some answers may lie in the current uses of these abilities. For one, we live in our minds, and the richness of our lives is measured by the alternatives we can generate. Perhaps, the stories we can thus tell are attractive, and bring our genes into useful proximity to those of like-minded listeners. Also, the imagination and creativity that are by-products of alternative states have pragmatic value in the nitty gritty business of making the practical and vogue world that attracts mates and allows mating. These are contrived arguments, as any must be in answer to the complex question of adaptive significance. But they fit, and I enjoy them.
In any case, if there is a bottom line, it’s this: Alternative states are essential features of our humanity. Without them we would be altered beyond recognition.
I will live to rant again...
D_
William James wrote, “...the world of our present consciousness is only one of the many consciousness that exist.” There are ordinary and extraordinary aspects of the many worlds that deserve our attention. After all, they are where we live.
The usual label for these worlds is altered states of consciousness, but this term is faulty on at least two counts. First, it presumes a baseline state from which consciousness becomes altered. What is our baseline state, that against which we may define others as altered? If it is walking, then what sort of walking? Is it when we’re absorbed in an exciting game or when we’re waiting in a long line at the bank? If sleep is the baseline, then is it the dreamless or dreamful sort? And what of alterations of state that occur across lifetimes? Is the infant state the baseline because it is the one we started with, or is adulthood the baseline because that’s the state of definers? Clearly, there is no acceptable answer.
The second fault is that altered implies abnormal, because whatever the unaltered state might be, it is presumed to be the normal state. Consider such states as “drugged,” “besotted,” and “hypnotized.” Abnormality, from a touch to totality pervades the lot. This is dangerous because when many of us hear abnormal, we think sick or wrong. This linkage is best avoided.
Using the term alternative seems to give us a way out of these binds. Alternative does not assume a baseline state, only that there are a number of states. It carries no connotation of abnormality. Furthermore, alternative has he happy implications of choice and will. I may choose one from among a number of alternative states, and even voluntarily take myself there. I may go to sleep or an exciting movie. I may turn my attention to music. I may do my thing covertly; I may become bored and you may never know it.
Sometimes the world forces the changes. If a dog suddenly darts out from between a pair of parked cars while I’m driving down the street, my state will be transformed from relaxed vigilance to panicky hopeful action. The world can also exert its influence in gentler ways as well. Catching the smell of italics in Spring or of new hay in Summer will override, if only for a moment, the sourest frame of mind.
I believe there are good and bad ways to take an active role in choosing one’s alternative states of consciousness. Who can predict with certainty where the next drink will leave them? And hallucinogen users are always faced with the possibility, indeed the probability, of a bad a bad trip or an unpleasant flashback.
There’s something profoundly amiss with chemical approaches to manipulating consciousness. Drugs lack precision. They are unpredictable because they are non-physiological. They don’t operate naturally, that is, within the body’s own domains. Knowing a little of the chemistry of the brain allows the conclusion that its biochemicals seldom respect functional or behavioral boundaries. One brain chemical can be importantly involved in many functions, in separate brain areas, and in delicate balance with other chemicals. Thus a drug that works on one chemical system may have a wide variety of effects, many of which are unpredictable because we don’t know the details of the brain’s chemical balance sheet, including how it can vary from time to time and person to person. Using an agent like LSD is like inviting an artist-terrorist to come and work his will in your head. Can you say whether beautiful images will pour through your senses, or whether your mind will be blown to the most unpleasant of bits? This is gambling, NOT choosing. It is giving, not taking, control.
Like Lewis Thomas who finds himself to be “constitutionally unable to make hepatic decisions,” we should stand in awe of the complexities involved in statecraft at the chemical level. If our growing knowledge of brain chemistry teaches us anything, it is that this route to alternatives, like many other of life’s easy routes, is often a path to perdition.
What are good ways to realize our alternatives? I cast my lot with mental and behavioral ways. The mind is, far and away, the most potent determiner of consciousness. We engage some states of consciousness as though they are mental gears, shifting from one to another to meet our needs or wishes. We take pleasurable drives through private fantasy lands and business trips through jobs of work. We run errands, sometimes less pleasant ones, as to the dentist, and other times neutral ones, as to the hardware store. Best of all, we use processes we’ve evolved with and grown up using. We operate naturally, inside the body’s domains, using its own rules and powers; we make up our minds.
Are there use tools to help perform these mental operations? Yes. Among them are meditation and hypnosis.
Meditation comes in a variety of forms and strengths. One may opt to strip it to its behavioral core as Wallace has done in developing programmed relaxation, or one may incorporate it into an elaborate set of religious, or even athletic, beliefs. It matters little for purposes of the present argument, for the procedures are essentially similar. At its most basic level, to mediate is to focus attention on a limited piece of the mental world, and, through the exercise of that focus, to attain an alternative state. States may differ according to one’s goal and the formulas one uses. They may range from intense relaxation to the concentrated preparation needed to drive ones hand through a brick wall. Practice and discipline are important, and rising through the levels of achievement is arduous work.
Hypnosis may come a little easier, as it is essentially a passive technique that involves surrendering a measure of control. To be hypnotized, one must accept the hypnotist’s directed focus and suggestions.
A key element is trust. It is easy to cultivate trust if the situation is right. For example, it is very easy to trust George Lucas as he presents his world to us in a movie theater, and to get caught up in his suggestion that we are watching folks relive, resolve, and refight some of mankind’s finest legends through the vastness of future space. In less compelling or familiar situations, trust is harder to come by. In hypnosis, those on both sides of the contract, hypnotist and subject, must work skillfully and cooperatively to build trust. It doesn’t always work.
Many people are impressed – positively or negatively – by the magic they see in meditation and hypnosis. Like all magic things, they are seen as easy if you know the tricks, and the impossible if you don’t. They are also seen as illusory and unreal. Our disaffection may reflect some basic problems generated by an uncritical and exclusive belief in such popular folkways as the scientific method.
The validity of many hypnotic and meditative phenomena is difficult if not impossible to demonstrate scientifically. But is that a reason for throwing them out? I think not, and I wish I could say why in terms that I, as one educated in science, could accept fully. I feel rather like I did when I first heard the story of Carl Jung’s reply to the question, “do you believe in God?” He answered, “I don’t believe, I know.” I had no choice but simply to accept his answer. I couldn’t invalidate it. It seems likewise with the force of mind, and with the tools we’ve developed to realize that force. It works. They work. We can neither explain (yet) nor invalidate them. We can generate alternative states, and we can know, largely in our private, mental worlds, that we are doing so by choice, by will, and through carefully cultured techniques.
Sometimes, we don’t need the rigor of a practiced procedure like meditation or hypnosis. Sometimes, we can get caught up in a state and be transported to fantastic heights with no effort on our parts. On the best of these occasions, we will enjoy what Abraham Maslow called “peak experiences.” These can happen anytime – while solving a problem, or walking in the park, or listening to music, or busting ass in the gym, or making love, or doing (automatically) the dishes, or (with deepest absorption) gardening. We are taken over for a time, carried to the best of all possible worlds and given a vision of life’s possibilities. When these come our way, we are captured in a net of choiceless joy. We should be thankful.
How did we come to be so lucky as to have alternative states of consciousness? What could be their adaptive significance? Why should a capability for intense and ineffable joy we find in peak experiences have been bred into our strain? And what was there about being able to shift mental gears at will, that gave those of our ancestors who could, an edge over those who could not? Some answers may lie in the current uses of these abilities. For one, we live in our minds, and the richness of our lives is measured by the alternatives we can generate. Perhaps, the stories we can thus tell are attractive, and bring our genes into useful proximity to those of like-minded listeners. Also, the imagination and creativity that are by-products of alternative states have pragmatic value in the nitty gritty business of making the practical and vogue world that attracts mates and allows mating. These are contrived arguments, as any must be in answer to the complex question of adaptive significance. But they fit, and I enjoy them.
In any case, if there is a bottom line, it’s this: Alternative states are essential features of our humanity. Without them we would be altered beyond recognition.
I will live to rant again...
D_