New Learning
Thomas Bradford Roberts
From: Psychedelic Reflections, Lester Grinspoon and James
B. Bakalar
©Human Sciences Press, 1983.
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"Thomas B. Roberts is Associate Professor in the Department of Learning
and Development at Northern Illinois University. He is coauthor of The Second
Centering Book and Transpersonal Psychology in Education, and has edited
the anthology Four Psychologies Applied to Education: Freudian, Behavioral,
Humanistic, Transpersonal." —Psychedelic
Reflections
It didn't make sense. Their speech was clear, their thoughts logical,
and their ideas and descriptions coherent. We were fellow graduate students
in a Stanford seminar on the human potential. They were describing their
first LSD trip, taken the previous Saturday. And it didn't make sense—to
me—then. Like almost everyone else in the late 1960's, I had learned
that LSD was a dangerous, mind-altering drug, one that sensible people didn't
take; but they seemed sensible both before and after. I had learned that
LSD alienated people and ruined relationships; but this young, married,
graduate-student couple had shared a deep and meaningful experience that
brought them closer together. They talked of increased love for each other
and for humanity. I had learned that LSD makes people suicidal, jumping out
of high windows and that sort of thing; yet they seemed well-grounded and
down to earth. I had learned that LSD makes people hysterical and psychotic;
but they seemed relaxed, rational, and reality-oriented. I learned that LSD
puts one into a nightmarish hell, full of terrifying hallucinations and
Goya-esque agonies; they described a feeling of overwhelming awe for the
beauty surrounding them. They said things felt "more sacred, more intense,
and indescribably wonder-filled." I had learned that LSD drives one mad,
yet they seemed saner than ever. I had learned that LSD was an escape into
unreality; yet their lives seemed to be enriched somehow. A few others in
the class nodded understandingly, and exchanged words and smiles of warm
recognition—even a sort of congratulation! This didn't make sense. We
weren't a class of long-haired freaks. We were hard- working, high-achieving,
graduate students from engineering, the social sciences, humanities, and
assorted professional schools. This didn't make sense at all.
It does now. LSD helps people experience all these things, good and
bad, and many more. Like most people in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I
"learned" about LSD from TV, newspapers, and magazines. I "learned" that
doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists were treating many patients who
were suffering from "LSD psychosis." I "learned" that LSD was responsible
for changes in social mores, sexual openness, political activism, and a whole
cultural shift.
Since then, however, through my own experiences with psychedelics
and subsequent readings stimulated by those experiences, I've learned it
is easier to learn an erroneous opinion than to correct it. The popular news
media prefer to focus public attention on the spectacular, bizarre, and
frightening. Mental and physical health professionals see only those who
have problems; sick people are their clientele. A person who took LSD with
beneficial effects would hardly be likely to take the time and money to go
to a doctor and report that he is well. Finally, some of the experiences
one commonly has during psychedelic sessions run directly contrary to the
dominant intellectual positions of the 1960s, which assumed that any deviation
from our ordinary state of consciousness, especially a mystical state, is
error or sickness. Today's sciences and psychologies are accommodating additional
views, but in the sixties and early seventies such positions were intellectually
heretical.
I followed the academic orthodoxies of the time. A son of educators,
reared on the campus of a New England university, member of a highly rational
Congregational church, undergraduate devotee of behavioral psychology at
Hamilton College, I became a doctoral student who planned to study educational
tests and measurements and computer-assisted instruction while picking up
an MBA on the side. To me mind was limited to intellect, and intellect implied
reason, cognition, and their verbal expression. Who would expect such a person
to advocate the development of nonverbal, nonrational, and noncognitive mental
abilities? I certainly wouldn't; but I certainly do. This widened definition
of mind marks a major effect of my own LSD experiences. LSD has stimulated
a new interest for me in examining human learning, experience, thinking,
and behavior in terms of states of consciousness (SOCs). This essay exemplifies
the fun of thinking in a consciousness way. (1)
NOTE TO MY STUDENTS: From my experiences and through reading, I have become increasingly respectful of the power of LSD. Like any powerful thing, it can be either destructive or constructive depending on how skillfully it is used. Among other things, it can concentrate your attention on the most vulnerable, most unpleasant parts of your mind. These should be explored only under the guidance of a qualified therapist, one who has had extensive psychedelic training. If you need help, most currently-trained mental health professionals are unlikely to be able to help you; in fact, because of their mistraining, they are likely to worsen your state. Furthermore, street dosages are of unknown strength and questionable purity. Until the time you can explore your mind using LSD of known strength and purity under qualified guidance within the law, I urge you to limit yourself to studying the literature and to working within professional and other organizations for the resumption of legal, scientific research.
Perception-extender
Like a microscope, LSD magnifies. Instead of magnifying things outside
the body, it magnifies inner experiences. Memories, ideas, fantasies,
perceptions, thoughts, emotions, fears, hopes, sensations, bodily processes,
any one of these can in effect come to occupy a person's whole attention.
This amplification, like that of a microscope, allows the experiencer to
investigate parts of his or her mind with increased attention to the enlarged
details. But, again like a microscope, it narrows the field of perception,
often temporarily distorting the relationships among the parts. As with slide
views through a microscope, an LSD researcher must assemble a collage of
close-up fragments to obtain an overall view of his or her own mental experience,
and still more pieces for an overall map of the human mind.
This essay neither describes these fragments nor composes a collage.
That has already been excellently done (e.g., Masters & Houston, 1966;
Grof, 1975); and the research is surveyed by Grinspoon and Bakalar (1979).
My purpose is to look at the influence of psychedelic experiences on myself
and to speculate about the implications of these experiences for the world
of learning. The essay assumes that studies done to date will be confirmed
by additional research. If past experiences is any guide, some will be and
others won't. The sooner we are clear about which ones, the better off we
will be.
One thing is clear: LSD (I am using "LSD" as shorthand for the whole
class of psychedelic drugs) raises exciting and important questions. As an
amateur psychologist, I am interested in what LSD indicates about the mind.
As an educational psychologist, I am curious about the implications for learning
and development. As a human being and a citizen of my country and my planet,
I wonder what insights it provides for culture and society. This essay is
an attempt to think about these issues rather than to solve them; to bring
them forward for open, intelligent discussion rather than to keep them buried
in an intellectual underground-to encourage additional careful, legal research
and its open communication rather than clandestine, illegal research and
word-of-mouth rumor. Although this essay is based on my own experiences,
it reflects more than my individual case. Most of the ideas are common currency
among my consciousness colleagues. The essay is more collection than creation.
Learning
I've titled this essay "New Learning" for several reasons. As an educational psychologist, I'm interested in the implications of LSD research for the study of human learning and for further human development. Through LSD experiences I have learned to look at myself and society in a new way. These experiences have been, in effect, an additional higher education for me, equal in impact, effort, knowledge, beauty, and scope to obtaining a doctorate at Stanford. I value both sets of experiences highly. To me, the LSD-Stanford comparison shines brightly in both directions. Besides, this is a book written largely by and for educators and others who want to increase learning. Finally, I use the gerund to connote a continuing process. The educational topics, philosophical issues, intellectual questions, and personal insights which evolved from my LSD experiences and subsequent investigations are a continuing source of growth. They have piqued my curiosity about areas of literature, religion, anthropology, and philosophy that I underrated before. The sciences, social sciences, and arts have taken on additional coloration and deeper meanings. In a very real sense, LSD experiences resemble a liberal education.
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ISSUES, TOPICS, AND QUESTIONS
I developed an interest in this essay's ideas directly through my psychedelic experiences and indirectly through reading largely stimulated by these experiences. This is not to say that LSD is the only road to such ideas. Clearly, it isn't. But in my experience and in the experiences of some of my friends and colleagues, LSD was our road.
MINDMAP, MYSTICISM, MORALITY, AND METHODOLOGY
Redrawing the Mindmap
Stanislav Grof may well be the living Western psychologist with the
widest and deepest sample of human psychological behavior. He, his patients,
and co-experimenters have crossed and recrossed the mental terrain. Their
combined observations have strength not only because of their own diversity
(other mapmakers have used diverse populations) but primarily because they
have systematically mapped previously excluded regions. From a sample of
approximately 4,000 LSD sessions with a wide range of psychotics, neurotics,
and normals, he describes a four-level mindcollage in Realms of the Human
Unconscious. The shallowest level consists of current thoughts and perceptions,
the "Abstract and Aesthetic Level," as Grof calls it. The second level consists
of experiences and fantasies of the person's life. Most therapies focus on
this level, and Grof calls this the "Psychodynamic or Freudian Level." Below
this is the "Perinatal Level," having to do with experiences at or around
birth; this level is associated with the work of Otto Rank. These three levels
all have to do with experiences of the person. Beyond this is a region where
personal identity, time, and space become variables. This is the "Transpersonal
Level."
If Grof's map served only in therapy and simply as a phenomenological
record of LSD experiences, it would be a useful curiosity, but otherwise
unimportant for the world of learning. But the map is also congruent with
the mindmaps of powerful thinkers from several fields, notably the humanities,
who draw on many cultures for their evidence. (2) This convergence of disciplines
presents a view of the human mind in agreement with current views in some
particulars, but at variance in others.
Experimental Humanities?
The disciplinary regularities described by these authors and the general worldview they present were derived from large-scale surveys of their fields. Grof's LSD research goes beyond this to experimental verification which confirms their findings. Humanistic studies in turn help to corroborate psychedelic observations. Psychedelic research's roomy additions to the house of intellect make it possible to found new disciplinary specialties that hybridize science and the humanities, for example, experimental symbolism and "experiential philosophy." All the books mentioned in Figure 1 explicitly derive their ideas from altered states of consciousness, yet our academic community is predominantly consciousness-naive. Studies of human nature and the human mind which omit non-ordinary states are clearly incomplete.
Mysticism and Mysticism
A decade ago I, too, had learned the standard scientific orthodoxy
on mysticism: I despised and caricatured mysticism as a view that the world
is basically unknowable and that reason and observation are useless, probably
confusing. What would I, as a rational human being, have to do with this
holdover from the Dark Ages? What good was a psychology that valued such
trash?
After experiencing mystical states several times and reading a bit
about them, I now realize that I failed to make an important distinction.
Mysticism as a philosophical stand on what can be known and how it can be
known differs greatly from the study of mystical events as psychological
experiences. My rejection of philosophical mysticism had led me blindly to
reject the psychological study of mystical experiences.
Several current psychotechnologies, including LSD, increase the likelihood
of mystical experiences. Now that we can stimulate them, we can begin to
bring to bear scientific experimentation. Richards' dissertation, Counseling,
Peak Experiences and the Human Encounter with Death: An Empirical Study of
the Efficacy of DPT-assisted Counseling in Enhancing the Quality of Life
of Persons with Terminal Cancer and Their Closest Family Members (1975),
illustrates the scientific study of mystical states. His work includes a
survey of the literature on experimental mysticism, repeatable treatment,
standardized observations, and confirmable/disconfirmable hypotheses and
conclusions. The study is replicable.
A Science Growth-Spur
When science expands, education follows. With consciousness pioneers opening access to new territories, whole ranges of human abilities are already beginning to be developed. For example, in the 1960s I was taught that people could not voluntarily control the autonomic nervous system—the "vegetative nervous system," as my biology text pejoratively called it. In 1980 we teach that one can learn to control this system by biofeedback, meditation, yoga, and various uses of imagery. As with biofeedback learned states of consciousness, the study of psychedelic-stimulated SOCs is, in principle, not opposed to science and reason. On the contrary, the refusal to study them is both unreasonable and antiscientific.
The Therapeutic Effect of Mystical Experiences
What did Richards and others discover across the Appalachians of the
Mind? When the travelers returned, had they been driven crazy? Neurotic?
Psychotic? Were they out of touch with reality? Did they withdraw from family,
friends, and loved ones? "Yes," said the stay-at-homes, clutching their
psychoanalytic maps. "Beyond these mountains live fearful beasts. Let no
one enter there."
The travelers and their guides, however, told different stories. Some
alcoholics and addicts dropped their dependencies. Suicidal patients discovered
a love of life. Some who departed neurotic and psychotic returned improved,
although many needed several additional trips. Patients with terminal diseases
felt less fear of death, and their general anxiety was lowered. Most of all,
they related honestly, lovingly, and openly with their families and closest
friends (Grof, 1975, 1981; Grof & Halifax, 1978; Richards, 1975; summarized
in Grinspoon & Bakalar, 1979).
If mystical experiences are integrated into the personality, they
are highly therapeutic. Single-state scholars and theoreticians are hard-pressed
to explain this therapeutic value. Denial is easier. But if an enlarged map
of reality includes altered states of consciousness, then experiencing such
states logically leads to a fuller view of reality, and therapists tell us
that a fuller view of reality is therapeutic.
Moral Development: A Second Path?
Bits of observation may fall together in unexpected ways when a new
methodology presents a new data or a new way of thinking reorganizes existing
observations. Looked at from a consciousness perspective, some issues surrounding
moral development combine in a startling way. Four bits of information are
linked together:
First, mystical experiences, or peak experiences, are by their nature
non-ego states, i.e., transpersonal states. It is not surprising that people
who experience this state report a decrease in such ego needs as the neurotic
accumulation of wealth or power. In Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences,
Maslow reports this value-shift during peak experiences (1964), and Huxley
claims it is part of most major philosophical traditions (1944).
Second, during peak or mystical experiences, people directly experience
what Maslow calls "being values, " and what Kohlberg calls "universal moral
principles. " These include such things as the sanctity of life and compassion.
Third, these qualities then act as goals or motivations for future
actions. Personal compassion, social responsibility, global awareness, and
a cosmic perspective grow.
Fourth, LSD, the new therapies, and other psychotechnologies can trigger,
or at least facilitate, peak or mystical experiences.
Putting these four together we have a sequence from the new therapies
to mystical experiences to "being values" to moral action. Have we
unintentionally, blindly, and unknowingly stumbled onto another path of moral
improvement? Have we discovered rapid, even chemically-induced moral development?
My emotional reaction is an indignant "No, it can't be!" Yet, that is what
some of the evidence suggests. In any case, the relationship between mystical
states and morality is my nomination as the most-needed piece of consciousness
research.
Because it is based on the study of many states of consciousness,
the psychology of consciousness includes a greater number and wider variety
of observations than a single-state psychology. It offers a source of hypotheses
and research designs. However, we should remember that many early findings
are probably inaccurate. Great contributions and great mistakes are twins
of new paradigms. Because of the newness of consciousness research, some
variables are probably still hidden. This speeds up the frequency of
disconfirmations, and slows confirmations. An organized research agenda,
regular dissemination channels, research conferences, and so forth are now
appropriate for this field and will help separate false hopes from hot leads.
Methodology—Down the Mind Mine
The greatest advances in civilization, science, and learning often
result from new ways of doing things, new methodologies. In my judgment the
most important thing about psychedelics is that they give us a powerful and
broadly applicable research methodology. (3)
The typical Western approach to studying the mind is to look at its
activities and products and to infer its structure and functions from them.
Studying the great religions, philosophies, and psychologies of the world,
what similarities do we find? What do language and literature indicate about
the human mind? This is the research method of many of the authors in Figure
1. One minor benefit of psychedelic research is that it adds a few novel
boulders to the mountain of human experience. A larger contribution is that
psychedelic insights offer ways to categorize some of these observations
and ways to specify relationships among them.
The second major Western way to study the mind is to look at abnormal
behavior to see what it indicates. Here, too, the evidence is largely
descriptive, although current therapeutic interventions add some clinical
and experimental notes. Psychedelic and psycholytic therapies add to the
knowledge we receive via this route. Because psychedelics were developed
and used in recent history for therapy rather than for intellectual research,
a misleading connotation of mental illness as their only appropriate domain
blinds people to their research potentials elsewhere. Instead of inferring
the structure of the mind from its surface geography and from occasional
interventions, psychedelic methodology provides direct access to the underground
veins and strata, the deep structures and processes where thoughts, feelings,
and motivation originate.
Fortunately for researchers, sometimes in these states it is possible
to alternate between deep mental experience and a close-to-normal state.
They can even happen simultaneously. For example, once toward the end of
a psychedelic session I remembered a group of childhood nightmares. At the
time they had the quality of immediate experience rather than memory. Every
few minutes, I got up from bed to make notes on these experiences, then returned
again to re-experience them. The period of alternating states lasted about
20 minutes, and I was able to recall and record "childhood nightmares" which
included the name of a playmate whom I hadn't thought of for over a quarter
of a century. Some of these dreams came from very early childhood and perhaps
infancy. From this experience, I hypothesized that some early childhood
nightmares are birth memories. This was not a new idea, but it was newly
credible to me.
As I look at my colleagues' professional contributions, I find, rightly
or wrongly, that I evaluate most highly the ideas of those who are experienced
in various states of consciousness or who are at least familiar with the
research from reading. Within the consciousness group, I trust the theories
and hypotheses of psychedelic researchers more than those of LSD-naive
researchers. Researchers with knowledge of several states have an even greater
advantage. This is not to say that all good research is psychedelic nor that
all psychedelic research is good research. Obviously, this isn't the case.
But as a general rule, it is preferable to generalize from diverse observations
rather than from a narrower field. I predict that by the end of this decade,
psychologists, philosophers, and educators, as well as mental and physical
health practitioners who are unfamiliar with consciousness research will
be as out-of-date as they would be today if they were unfamiliar with Freud,
Skinner, or Piaget.
Professional Creativity
The work of Harman et al. (1966) indicates that psychedelics may be a useful methodology in the incubation and illumination stages of creative problem-solving. Most of the engineers, physicists, mathematicians, architects, and designers in his samples reported valuable solutions to their professional problems from psychedelic acceleration of creativity. This synthesis-facilitating use of psychedelics is different from the mind-research mentioned above. We need more systematic research on how to do psychedelic research. An unfortunate side-effect of psychedelics' illegality is that the publication and sharing of the methods and findings is discouraged.
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EDUCATIONAL FUTURES IN A CONSCIOUSNESS CONTEXT
Consciousness Roots of Mental Fruit
When consciousness (the overall pattern of mental functioning) is seen as a group of variables, cognition, perception, affect, and so on, are seen as psychological processes embedded in SOCs with each other and with other psychological processes. All our cognitive structures and mental processes seem to vary from one state of overall psychological functioning to another. How much variation in thinking is there from state to state? What alternate forms of thinking exist in alternate patterns of mental functioning? What, if any, uses might they have for humanity?
Failure to Recognize the Primacy of States of Consciousness
Is the Major Intellectual Error of our Times
> Present ideas of the mind are almost wholly derived from our ordinary
state's experience and cognition and are for use within it. Although
contributions to them may well have been aided by reverie or other nearby
SOCs, we ignore these origins.
We are largely hunter-gatherers of the mind. Its civilization has
just begun. We trim and prune here and there. We espalier diverse facts with
convenient theories. From a consciousness perspective, increased harvests
depend on acknowledging thought's deep roots in other SOCs. A mind cultivator
not only weeds the surface ideas, but also tends the conceptual and preconceptual
soils.
The idea that such inner-directed attention is narcissistic is a peculiar
one. While they may be stimulated by external events, aesthetic creation
and awareness, problem-finding and problem-solving, judgments of quality,
spiritual experiences, intellectual and other mental processes are all internal
events, processes happening "inside the head." Calling inner-directed attention
"narcissistic" or "me-oriented" is inaccurate, anti-intellectual, and just
plain ignorant.
Cognition and Consciousness
Can one intentionally improve inner processes? Some improvement comes
from better ideas, that is, more accurate, useful, and varied concepts. Focusing
on better cognitive strategies to process or manipulate the content, cognitive
psychology asks a higher, second-level question: whether there are more efficient
ways of thinking. Consciousness studies ask a third-level question: How do
cognitive strategies and cognition vary from state to state? From a cognitive
perspective, different states of consciousness are, among other things, radical
reorganizations of information processing systems and strategies. Different
states of consciousness also provide different "strategies" of perception,
abilities, memory, emotion, etc.
At each level, the degree of mental freedom increases. It is no accident
that mystical experiences are associated with an open-minded tolerance for
ambiguity (Thomas & Cooper, 1980). This kind of tolerance is also correlated
with abstract thought, creativity, decreased prejudice, and low authoritarianism.
From a consciousness perspective, the first pair are associated with higher
stages of mental development, the latter pair with decreased ego involvement.
The two occur together.
Consciousness Education
Before LSD drew my attention to state of consciousness as a variable,
I accepted the usual cognitive goals of education: knowing more facts and
learning to think better, avoiding fallacies, moving up Piaget's stages of
intellectual development, finding more useful concepts and theories, matching
theory with observations, and so forth. While I still value these aims, I
now see them in a different context.
The items below are discussed more thoroughly in Consciousness,
Psychology, and Education (Roberts, 1980a).
First, education has focused almost entirely on developing the cognitive
skills of our ordinary state. I am not suggesting that we change this, at
least not yet. But we should be aware that this is a policy decision, not
a necessary "given." What forms does cognition take in other states?
Second, human abilities and disabilities depend on various broader
patterns of overall mental functioning, states of consciousness. As SOC's
change, certain skills are enhanced and others are diminished. Previously
rare or unusual abilities, such as parapsychological abilities and the placebo
ability, may be learnable by providing access to the states of consciousness
where they reside. Many human physical and mental disabilities seem to be
best treated in unusual states of consciousness such as hypnosis, meditation,
and psychedelic therapy. So-called "spontaneous remission," "miraculous"
cures, and "therapeutic touch" all seem to be associated with changes in
SOC. In institutions other than schools (and perhaps some day in schools)
people may want to explore and develop the capacities manifested in these
states of consciousness.
Third, abstract formal operations do not necessarily represent the
highest type of intellectual development. That may be true for our ordinary
state (including suggested stages beyond Piaget's); but other (perhaps more
advanced) forms of intellectual development with stages of their own may
await us in other states.
Fourth, educators and psychologists need not define intelligence solely
in ordinary-state ways. Intelligence may also be seen as the general ability
to use a large number of mental patterns (states of consciousness), as the
ability to select and enter the most appropriate SOC for the task at hand,
or as the optimum use of each specific SOC. In this last sense the meaning
of "intelligence" varies from state to state (Roberts, 1980b).
Fifth, there is a contextual broadening best described from a
psychoanalytic perspective. This view sees secondary process thinking (rational,
adult thinking) as optimal. It now seems to me that there is at least tertiary
thinking, which consists of selecting one's overall pattern of mental
functioning. This is a higher ability than learning to use any specific pattern
or one of its resident abilities.
Sixth, education in our usual state and all the research and development
surrounding it become additionally important viewed in this context. Current
educational goals, objectives, methods, curricula, tests and measurements,
developmental stages, taxonomies, philosophies, and practices may all have
analogues in other states. How do we adapt our ideas about our current SOC
and its education to other SOCs?
Liberal Education
As its name indicates, liberal education is an education for freedom: freedom from the accidents of locale, group, time, class, and so on. It offers the freedom to develop one's mind fully. Consistent with these objectives, consciousness education adds the great states of consciousness to the great ideas and great thinkers. The historic role of SOCs in the humanities, arts, and sciences is neglected in current education, even as content, despite an occasional titillating exception such as Kubla Khan, bacchanalia, or a maligned saint's misconstrued ecstasy. These are used more to enliven classes than to teach about the further reaches of mind. A truly liberal education should teach students about this part of themselves and our civilizations, and should also give them rudimentary experience with selected states and their resident capacities. Enriched by a consciousness perspective, liberal education can extend freedom and mental refinement far beyond the parochialism of single-state learning.
Placebo Ability
We use a misnomer when we speak of "the placebo effect." "Effect"
attributes improvement to spurious treatments which are selected precisely
because of their lack of effect. The label is not only a logical inconsistency
which explains nothing, but a barrier to research.
If "placebo-ing" is seen as something we do, rather than something
that happens to us, it becomes an ability like any other human ability, one
which might be learned and practiced. Regimens such as prayer, visualization,
deep relaxation, and an assortment of religious and psychological practices
make good "placeboing" sense. Physical educators should help their students
learn to assist their own natural immune mechanisms, which are part of the
placebo ability. Wellness and illness are largely long-term physical
performances. We know they can be learned and unlearned, but we do not yet
know the extent of this learning.
Consciousness Studies, a New Discipline
What makes a discipline and differentiates it from other disciplines?
At least the following: separate theories and concepts, specific problems
addressed, explanations of observations not otherwise explained, applications
to life, a distinctive research methodology, a separate literature, and an
identifiable group of people who share interests, professional organizations,
publications, and a system of information flow. By these criteria, Consciousness
Studies will soon deserve its own place in the academic world.
Consciousness methodologies include traditional and new ways of altering
consciousness. Accepting both outside, objective evidence and inner, subjective
evidence, it offers a larger data base than either of these alone. Correlating
the two is an important type of research. Training in subjective research
methods, for example through meditation or LSD, is as cognitively demanding
as traditional statistics, research design, and instrumentation. As Needleman
(1975) says:
In our modern world it has always been assumed... that in order to
observe oneself all that is required is for a person to "look within. " No
one even imagines that self-observation may be a highly disciplined skill
which requires longer training than any other skill we know....The...bad
reputation of "introspection" ...results from the particular notion that
all by himself.. . a man can come to accurate and unmixed observations of
his own thought and perception.... the heart of the psychological disciplines
in the East and the ancient Western world consists of training at self-study.
Consciousness Studies form its related fields. Parts of the scientific
community have difficulty accepting data from other SOCs, just as our ancestors
found it hard to accept observations from the telescope and microscope. If
it is done properly, consciousness research can meet the requirements of
scientific method: observation, free communication, replicability, theorizing,
and confirmation/disconfirmation (Tart, 1975).
By providing a more accurate and complete view of our psychological
apparatus, our mind, consciousness research can aid other disciplines too.
As Kubie (1954) points out:
A discipline comes of age and a student of that discipline reaches
maturity when it becomes possible to recognize, estimate, and allow for the
errors of their tools....Yet there is one instrument which every discipline
uses without checking its errors, tacitly assuming that the instrument is
error-free. This, of course, is the human psychological apparatus.
Like statistical methods, consciousness methods, as well as the particular
findings themselves, may help other researchers sophisticate their procedures
and analyses.
A final reason to consider Consciousness Studies a separate discipline
is the subjective feelings of those in the field. Consciousness colleagues
in a variety of universities, departments, and nonacademic occupations feel
as much akin to one another as to their departmental colleagues, if not more
so. This feeling of shared interests and perspectives is a powerful uniting
force which undercuts disciplinary differences. Although there is little
institutional structure reflecting these shared ideas and values, the trust,
common interests, and enjoyment form an invisible Department of Consciousness
Studies.
Mindmagicians
Mindpower is more fascinating than machine power. Such books as the Carlos Castenada series and works by Tart, Ornstein, and Grof surprised their publishers by selling well in a hitherto unseen market. Best sellers such as Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Edwards, 1979) are introducing consciousness education to teachers and parents. Anatomy of an Illness (Cousins, 1979) illustrates this interest in (holistic) health and wellness. I don't want to make my case seem stronger than it is; I'm not satying that consciousness culture is now dominant, only that it will be if current trends continue. For the present, it is a clear cultural leitmotiv.
Want Ads
What new organizations and industries may evolve? Prophecy is not my line, but enough is clear now to spot a few needs.
EDUCATION
Introduction of consciousness teaching in classrooms, as content as well as practice. Rewriting textbooks and curricula to include consciousness ideas.
Adding consciousness teaching techniques in colleges of education.
Research institutes to study consciousness on both applied and basic levels, a consciousness think-tank.
Foundations, institutes, and professional organizations to develop these
possibilities.
HEALTH AND THERAPY
Research institutes to examine the relationships of SOCs to mental and physical health. Consciousness treatment and development centers, to apply what is found in research, e.g., psychedelic treatment centers and mind development centers.
Professional training institutes to teach this new specialty and to retrain existing professionals.
Certification and licensure, standards, boards, agencies, and professional standards committees.
Holistic health centers. Many are already thriving.
New centers and/or programs to train consciousness counselors and therapists.
Rewriting and republishing of therapy books to include consciousness.
INDUSTRY AND BUSINESS
Biofeedback instruments, e.g., Kirlian biofeedback devices need to be invented. Centers to teach executives, engineers, etc., to use their consciousness capacities. Consciousness exploration as motivation, transcendence as a need beyond self-actualization in Maslow's hierarchy.
Long-range planning seminars and institutes.
GOVERNMENT
The use of consciousness as a criterion for laws, regulations, licenses.
Accreditation standards.
Recognition of a consciousness constituency.
Funding of research on consciousness and possible benefits, and on problems
coming from its development.
What role does LSD play in this? As the most powerful of many consciousness techniques, it dramatically draws attention to these needs. As it has been officially neglected and misunderstood, it points to our neglect and misunderstanding of the whole consciousness area. As a stimulator of consciousness research in the academic and mental health communities, it is likely to encourage development throughout our culture.
Peace
We think of peace as a political and social phenomenon, seldom recognizing
that these surface experiences interact with deep layers of the mind. Experienced
LSD researchers come in touch with deep internal responses through the drug's
magnification of external events. Conversely, experiencing a cluster of internal
feelings/memories/fantasies/thoughts colors the external world. At the perinatal
level there are two clusters (BPMs) which respond strongly to outside stimulation
and contribute to warlike feelings. Basic Perinatal Matrix II involves feelings
of constriction and helplessness; it is appropriately called "No Exit Hell."BPM
III represents enormous energy, natural and man-made cataclysms, especially
violence and wars; it is appropriately called "Titanic Struggle. "
The wrong set of social and economic circumstances brings these BPM's
to the fore. For example, Grof noticed remarkable detailed similarities between
the memories of Nazi concentration camp survivors and the unconscious fantasies
of people who had lived more ordinary lives (Grof, 1977). He hypothesizes
that the situation within the camps, especially toward the end of the war,
activated BPM's II and III, stimulating the camp guards to enact violent
and sadistic urges that inhabit these clusters.
War activates these BPM's and strengthens them, just as their power
is called on to justify war. As countries wind themselves up to go to war,
their leaders use perinatal symbols to marshal public opinion, not consciously,
but because the war-instigating symbols feel right; and they feel right because
of this connection. Hitler used the BPM sequence to manipulate his people:
(1) BPM I, the "Good Womb," was symbolized by tales of the past golden age
of the Germanic peoples; (2) BPM II, "No Exit Hell, " was the present,
constricted by external and internal enemies, intensified by economic disaster;
the need to get out was expressed symbolically as the desire for expansion,
lebensraum; (3) the way out was titanic struggle (BPM III), and (4) the birth
of a 1,000 year Reich (BPM IV). De Mause found this imagery to be typical
in nations which are preparing for war intentionally or merely blundering
toward it (cited in Grof, 1977).
While the informed public recognizes shallow psychodynamic-level appeals
to sexual interest, power, status, and so forth in advertising and propaganda,
we are not so aware of manipulation on the perinatal level. Until we recognize
this, humanity will have a short war fuse which can easily be lit by many
social, economic, political, and cultural situations. Other situations can
transform this destructive energy into creative, constructive,
socially-beneficial actions. What are the perinatal consequences of social
conditions? What are the social consequences of perinatal conditions?
As we come to understand the human mind more completely, we will naturally
see its roles in war and peace more completely. The observations, speculations,
and questions above suggest how war and peace studies can be enriched by
a fuller understanding of mind and consciousness. This is merely one illustration
of the possibilities of consciousness analysis in the social sciences.
Freedom of the Mind
Who has the right to control your mind? To explore it? To use it? With the invention of consciousness techniques, a new kind of freedom faces a new kind of control. People want to explore and develop their minds, and psychedelics are an efficient way to do so. This desire is part of human nature, but law and social ignorance block the way. I propose that we recognize a general human right: the right to explore, control, and develop one's mind. Other people or society at large can limit this right only to the degree they are affected. It will not be so easy to delimit this limitation.
The High Cost of Bad Law
When comparing the scientific and medical writings on LSD with sensational
newspaper, popular press, and TV accounts, a startling observation leads
to a startling conclusion. In the scientific and medical research reports,
psychological damage is almost missing; in the popular news it is featured.
During legal research the patient or client is carefully screened and expensively
prepared for the experience. The dosage and its purity are known. The setting,
which is a major influence, is chosen to maximize safety and minimize danger.
And a qualified professional is on hand to assist. In cases that make the
popular press, on the other hand, consciousness adventurers are neither screened
nor prepared. The dosage and purity are unknown. The setting is random and
often unpleasant. Professional help is absent. These different conditions
account for the rarity of serious problems in the scientific reports and
the presence of frequent tragedy in the popular reports.
All the specific unfavorable conditions derive from one larger situation:
LSD is illegal. In the legal situation, the LSD-taker can be prepared and
high-risk people screened out; the dosage and its purity are assured; setting
can be planned for optimum benefit. All this is difficult in illegal situations.
Under present laws, it is illegal for a professional to administer LSD; and
fear of police and public exposure increase psychological stress at a time
when the person is most vulnerable. Given LSD's magnifying property, this
fear can become psychologically overwhelming. In an unstable person it could
be fatal. By driving LSD use underground, we multiply its dangers while
minimizing its benefits.
Policy
Given the consistent failure of anti-LSD legislation to stop use since
the mid-sixties, what is the most responsible course for public polity?
Over-the-counter purchase and prescription by untrained professionals are
both risky. I propose centers to screen and prepare those who need or wish
to take psychedelics. We need to provide a place to administer doses of known
purity and strength under qualified, specially-trained guidance and with
optimal set and setting. Each state and most large cities could use several
psychedelic centers. Major universities, medical schools, and research institutes
would also benefit from these centers. A professional staff training program
would have to precede the establishment of such institutions.
After incubating for a quarter of a century, after being repressed
by governmental and professional restraints for a decade and a half, after
struggling for recognition and acceptance, psychedelic research is finally
breaking through to the clear light of evidence and reason. Intellectual
curiosity, civic duty, professional obligation, humanitarian values, and
moral responsibility provide grounds for further research.
For me (and I assume for some of my coauthors) my most intensely
intellectually stimulating, short-term experiences have been psychedelic
sessions. Psychedelics open wide the doors of learning. Where will those
mind-doors lead? Only when we do additional research will we know.
Most of all, psychedelics are just one group among many consciousness
methodologies. There are also certain aspects of biofeedback, meditation,
hypnosis, prayer and other spiritual practices, other mind-drugs, yoga and
other movement disciplines, nutrition, t'ai chi and the consciousness martial
arts, sex and exercise routines, training in intuition, relaxation and
visualization.... The list could go on for hundreds of trainings, spiritual
paths, and esoteric fields. Research might be done in cooperation with groups
which practice these. What insights, if any, might they have about the human
mind? Only when we do more research will we learn.
For a wandering, directionless culture the full development of our
minds is a project equal in scale to pioneering west of the Appalachians
or exploring outer space. A new cultural mythic ideal is emerging: the myth
of the fully developed mind. It is an eminently democratic ideal. Only some
can become adventurers on land or in space, but in mind exploration, everyone
is at the frontier.
Note to My Colleagues
"The rejection of any source of evidence is always treason to that ultimate
rationalism which urges forward science and philosophy alike."
—Alfred North Whitehead
I write this, not expecting you to believe what you read here just because I say so, but hoping this essay will interest you enough to examine LSD research yourself. If you apply the same research standards and spirit of open intellectual inquiry to this body of research as you apply to your own work and to the reports you read, you'll find that psychedelic research raises as many exciting questions for you, your students, and your field of expertise as it does for me and mine. For 2 decades reason; science, and philosophy have been betrayed because of our irrational rejection of psychedelic evidence. It is a professional duty to help redress this error. When you read the evidence, I think you'll see it that way, too.
NOTES
(1) My apologies to grammarians offended by the noun "consciousness"
used as an adjective. I do this because "conscious" has misleading common
usages. Avoiding grammatically correct but lengthy phrases such as "the
psychology of states of consciousness," or "education which takes states
of consciousness into account," I opt for a simple, useful, and ungrammatical
barbarism by stipulating my adjectival use of "consciousness" to mean "pertaining
to states of consciousness. " (back)
(2) In contradistinction to writings on the psychedelics which are
occupied with experiences the mind can hare, the concern here is with evidence
they afford as to what the mind is. Judged both by quantity of data encompassed
and by the explanatory power of the hypotheses that make sense of this data,
it is the most formidable evidence the psychedelics have thus far produced.
The evidence to which we refer is that which has emerged through the work
of Stanislav Grof. (Huston Smith, Forgotten Truth. The Primordial Tradition,
p. 156). (back)
(3) "0bscurantism is the refusal to speculate freely on the limitations
of traditional methods. It is more than that: it is the negation of the
importance of such speculation, the insistence on incidental dangers....
Today scientific methods are dominant, and scientists are the obscurantists."
(Alfred North Whitehead) (back)
FIGURE 1 (back)
Toward a Twenty-First Century MindviewInvestigator(s)Discipline/FieldDateTitleJ. Campbellsymbolism and mythology1949The Hero with a Thousand FacesJ. Campbellsymbolism and Mythology1972Myths to Live ByS. Grofpsychotherapy1975Realms of the Human UnconsciousS. Grof & C. Grofthanatology and anthropology1979Beyond DeathS. Grof & J. Halifaxthanatology and anthropology1977The Human Encounter with DeathJ. Halifaxanthropology1979Shamanic VoicesA. Huxleyphilosophy1944The Perennial PhilosophyA. Maslowpsychology1964Religions, Values, and Peak ExperiencesR. Masters & J. Houstonpsychology and education1966The Varieties of Psychedelic ExperienceJ.W. Perryabnormal psychology (schizophrenia)1976Roots of Renewal in Myth and MadnessH. Smithreligion1976Forgotten TruthK. Wilburreligion, philosophy, and psychology1981Up From Eden
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On loan from: The Psychedelic Library
Psychedelics and Personal Growth