UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

RIVERSIDE
Event Horizons of the Psyche: Synchronicity, Psychedelics,
and the Metaphysics of Consciousness
A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
Philosophy
by
David Bruce Albert Jr.
June, 1993

Dissertation Committee:
Professor John Fischer, Chairperson
Professor Larry Wright
Professor Brian Smith

Copyright by
David Bruce Albert Jr.
1993

The Dissertation of David Bruce Albert Jr. is approved:

_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Committee Chairperson
University of California, Riverside

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION

Event Horizons of the Psyche:
Synchronicity, Psychedelics, and the Metaphysics of
Consciousness
by
David Bruce Albert Jr.
Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Philosophy
University of California, Riverside, June 1993
Professor John Fischer, Chairperson
This study presents a metaphysical theory that describes the roles of the physiology of
the brain, the dynamics of the psyche, and spiritual, non-spatiotemporal realities in human
consciousness. The term portal experience is proposed to include occult phenomena associated
with witchcraft, magic, and divination; psi phenomena described by parapsychology; and
mystical experiences, participation mystique, and other phenomena associated with ancient
and modern religious systems such as Wicca. During portal experiences, information from
outside the physical world of space and time constellates itself in the mind, appearing as
symbols, numinous feelings, or a sense of transcendental one-ness. The theory of
consciousness proposed in this study explains how portal experiences of non-spatiotemporal
reality can occur in persons with physical bodies.
Jaynes' "Bicameral Mind" and Edelman's "Theory of Neuronal Group Selection" are
examined as physiological theories of consciousness. Both are rejected because they argue for
consciousness as linguistic and social, but the theories succeed in showing the role of metaphor
and of chaotic, dynamical systems in consciousness. The psychedelic bootstrapping theory
proposed in this study describes the role of entheogens, drugs which precipitate altered
consciousness, as an alternative to linguistic theories, to explain how consciousness became
possible during evolution.
Portal experiences, characterized according to Stace's "Intersection Theory", are shown
to be dynamical systems involving fractal boundaries between physical and non-physical
realities. Jung's theory of archetypes and the collective unconscious is also shown to involve
dynamical systems, in the form of psychoid processes. Jung's theory of synchronicity shows
how the chaotic physiological processes associated with consciousness in the brain, the
dynamical process of the psyche, and the fractal boundary in the metaphysical intersection are

iv

connected to one another during a portal experience, so that information from outside the
physical world can enter consciousness. Stronger versions of the theory hold that there are
psychoid processes identical with the metaphysical intersection, and that because the collective
unconscious is the same in everyone, the metaphysical intersection of spatiotemporal and
non-spatiotemporal realities is required for the existence of consciousness.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Search for the Soul........................................................................................1

Chapter 1: Portal Experience.......................................................................................................7
Chapter 2: Scientific Theories of Consciousness....................................................................33
Chapter 3: Psychedelics, Chaos and Consciousness............................................................116
Chapter 4: Intersection and the Unconscious.......................................................................146
Chapter 5: Acausality and Consciousness............................................................................171
Conclusion: Return to Nemi....................................................................................................205
Bibliography..............................................................................................................................208

Introduction: The Search for the Soul

This study presents a metaphysical theory of consciousness. Metaphysical theories of
consciousness generally fall into one of two groups: scientific theories, founded upon what is
known about the anatomy and physiology of the brain, and spiritual theories, founded upon
the insights gained from mystical and religious experiences. The two approaches usually
present themselves as antagonistic and mutually exclusive. The focus of the scientific approach
is upon information about the physical nature of the brain, often concluding that whatever
consciousness is, it must be a neurological phenomenon, while the spiritual approach focuses
upon introspective and imaginative data, often concluding that whatever consciousness is, the
body is something that gets in its way.
The scientific approach, theoretically founded upon empirical observation and testing,
fails because it refuses to account for scientific data pertaining to non-physical phenomena. By
refusing to incorporate the data of parapsychology, scientific theories exhibit a metaphysical
bias that undermines their persuasiveness as empirical systems. Similarly, spiritual theories
overlook the rather obvious fact that consciousness, or what they describe as consciousness,
exists in association with a biological human being. The methods used to induce spiritual
experiences -- breathing exercises, fasting, drugs, and others -- have physical effects upon the
body that trigger the spiritual experience. In failing to account for those physical effects, the
spiritual theories also fail as comprehensive explanations for the nature of human
consciousness.
The theory developed in this study is unique because it is founded upon both the
biology of the human nervous system, and the experiences of transcendent reality that form the
core of mystical and religious thought. It takes as its foundations the existence of alternative
realities, or "worlds", found in spiritual theories, and the pharmacology of neurotransmitters in
the brain. Specifically, this theory is offered as an explanation for those cases in which an
individual is exposed to some psychoactive substance, and subsequently reports having had a
mystical experience; or there occurs some other kind of conscious state in which either a reality
different from that of ordinary consciousness is experienced, or the experience of ordinary
reality takes on new meaning or significance. The theory developed to explain this particular
phenomenon will, of course, have much broader implications.
The discovery of this theory will lead the reader through much unfamiliar territory.
The development of this theory will require discussions of physiology, pharmacology, the
occult, Jungian psychology, mythology, chaos theory, and even black holes and quasars. From
the scope of the information required to develop a workable theory of consciousness, it appears

that, following the medieval doctrine of the microcosm, a complete theory of consciousness
would require a complete theory of the cosmos itself, quite possibly an impossible task. To
understand why I have selected certain parts of the cosmos, both macro and micro, to examine,
it may be helpful to chronicle the events leading the author to his own discovery of this theory.
During the course of my studies in neurophysiology and pharmacology in the late
1970's and early 1980's, I became convinced that what we call the mind is something far more
complex than any biological or physical account could possibly capture. As a serious scientist,
trying to give a reasonably systematic account of the origin and evolution of the mind, I
recognized that mystical experiences, voices, visions, and other physically intangible
phenomena played a crucial role in the formation of the human psyche. I was appalled by the
fact that in order to maintain a "scientific," which turned out to mean a "materialistic" theory,
more data were being excluded from consideration than were being included. It became
apparent that a materialistic theory of mind would not be able to explain the relationship
between the religious experiences of ancient man, and the rituals and practices associated with
those experiences. The real answers to the questions of what the mind is and how it evolved
would have to include far more than any physicalistic model could encompass; finding those
answers would require abandoning the "scientific" paradigms informed by materialistic
metaphysics.
The abandonment of that paradigm was a difficult step to take, for at that time, so many
people involved in the neurosciences thought they were on the verge of getting "the answer".
It was an exciting time to be involved in this kind of study. The discovery of neuropeptides,
brain hormones and other chemical messengers within the brain promised to unmask Psyche
as an intricate chemical information system; a second brain whose mysterious pathways were
chemical, and not electrical. As with most things that have promised "the answer",
neurochemistry failed to deliver, but it did serve to deepen the questions about the nature of
consciousness itself.
Being interested primarily in psychopharmacology, the study of chemicals that affect
the mind, I wanted to know what role mind-affecting substances might have played in the
evolution of the mind. According to the theory of natural selection, characteristics that appear
by chance are integrated into the historical development of a species if and only if they provide
some kind of advantage -- if they enable individual organisms to exploit their environment
more effectively. The human brain, as well as the brains of other organisms, developed in such
a way as to be sensitive to the effects of chemicals found in the environment. The sensitivity of
the brain to chemicals outside the body must have provided some adaptive advantage, else it
would have disappeared during the course of evolution.

To discover the nature of this advantage, I began to study the use of mind-affecting
substances among the ancients, and the kinds of phenomena connected with that use. One
cannot help being struck by the connection between the use of mind-affecting substances,
sometimes called psychedelics or, as Gordon Wasson called them, entheogens, and religious
beliefs and practices. Of particular interest to me were the beliefs and practices of ancient
Europe and the Celts. Their religions were oriented primarily toward what we, today, would
call nature worship. And psychedelics, obtained from the nature they worshipped, figured
prominently in their rituals. Beyond these early primitive tribal religions, psychedelics figure
in such religious and para-religious practices as witchcraft, occult magic, astral projection,
clairvoyance and others that continue today.
This obvious relationship might be alleged to explain the reason for the
nature-orientation of the religion, but it does not explain the evolutionary advantage of that
relationship. The kinds of experiences precipitated by the use of psychedelic substances
provide the clue as to the nature of that advantage. Mystical experiences, visions of other
worlds and dimensions, voices, feelings of numinosity and union with nature -- what I shall
call "portal" experiences, as they are pathways between different realities -- were sought after
and brought about by the use of psychedelics. If these kinds of experiences are regarded as
advantageous, which they surely must be else they would have disappeared during evolution,
then they must be making some kind of positive contribution to the life of the individual who
has them.
While these experiences have many features in common, of concern here is that they all
point to a reality beyond what is physically experienced. They are, to adopt Fish's term,
self-consuming: the experience points to the existence of things beyond what is directly
experienced. I use the term constellation, borrowed from Jung's writings, to describe the
impression of transcendental reality upon the mind, which often occurs in conjunction with
some ordinary perceptual experience. The vision of trees animated by souls of the dead,
common in Celtic areas, suggests the existence of a reality more complex than what is directly
seen; it is the impression upon the mind, in the form of a common visual image, of a reality
that lies beyond the physical world. Such a belief requires a cosmology that reaches beyond
what is experienced through the senses into a reality that could never be physically
experienced. The self-consuming character of the experience also indicates the participatory
nature of that reality -- that it is not a reality apart from the experient, but that the experient is a
participant in it.
Portal experiences, then and now, reveal something about the nature of consciousness
that is lost in "scientific" theorizing informed by materialistic and atheistic metaphysics. To
capture the essence of the psyche, one must first capture the soul, and to capture the soul one

must both navigate the jungle of the brain and dare to sail the seas of eternity. One must not
only face the technical challenges of the specific disciplines involved, but one must also
challenge the prejudices and biases inherent within those disciplines.
*

There is no such thing as philosophy-in-itself. Philosophical theses are not movements

from ambiguity to truth, nor from ignorance to knowledge: they are arguments from premises
to conclusions. As such, the interesting questions lie in the reason certain premises are
selected, and why they are argued in certain ways. This necessarily autobiographical
introduction is intended to establish the background out of which this paper emerges. This is
not a presuppositionless project -- I have sought to investigate and elucidate a metaphysics of
consciousness that captures those features of Psyche in which I am interested. Behaviorists,
anatomists, theologians, and others would certainly choose different data to consider, and a
different point of view from which to argue. It is not my intention to entertain arguments as to
whose metaphysics is better; I propose instead to provide a plausible account of a metaphysics
of the mind that includes the historical development of consciousness as it has revealed itself to
me through my own studies.
The problem this paper address is the development of a theory of the metaphysics of
the mind that accounts for the psychopharmacology of the brain and for the phenomena of
portal experience. Such a theory should provide a basis for the understanding of the role
played by portal experiences in the development of consciousness. This theory argues for the
position that the mind was, in essence, a co-evolutionary project between physical and
non-physical elements -- a cooperative effort between biological, physical and spiritual
dimensions.
The first chapter presents an account of portal experience, along with several examples.
Portal experiences are characteristic of not only occult and religious endeavors, but can also be
found throughout the mythological record. They always point to, or suggest, the existence of a
reality that is different from the physical world of space and time. The idea of constellation, as
the process by which information from these other "realities" is impressed upon the mind of the
observer, is introduced as the focal point of this study, along with participation mystique, the
feeling that the individual is in some way "hooked in" to the universe at large. Mythologies
often record and interpret reality in ways that reflect the uniqueness of the cultures that
produced them, but they also reveal an underlying similarity that reflects the nature of the
"other" reality. Mythologies are, among other things, symbolic interpretations on a cultural

level of the metaphysical dynamics of portal experience. Portal experiences are, according to
the arguments presented in this chapter, always interpreted symbolically.
With this "spiritual" data in hand, chapter two turns to the "scientific" data. Two
theories of consciousness are presented: Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind theory, and Gerald
Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection. These theories both argue that consciousness
became possible only through the evolution of the human brain. While the theories appear
quite different, it will be shown that in their essential components they are quite similar, and
complement each other in producing a physiological theory of consciousness.

Both Jaynes'

and Edelman's theories emphasize the role of language as a formative factor in the
development of consciousness. On both of these theories, consciousness is essentially a social
as well as physiological phenomenon. Language functions, in both theories, to bridge the gap
between what is known about the biology of the brain, and what is subjectively experienced as
consciousness.
I reject the notions that consciousness is essentially either a social or a linguistic
phenomenon, primarily because portal experiences, while they may have important social
consequences, are essentially individual affairs. A theory of consciousness that regards portal
experiences as constitutive must therefore account for the role of portal experience in the
development of each individual's own consciousness. Accordingly, chapter three presents a
theory of how the difference between the biology of the brain and the subjective experience of
consciousness could have arisen, on the basis of pharmacology and dynamical systems theory.
Consciousness, in this theory, was made possible by the appearance of chaotic systems in the
brain, precipitated by psychoactive substances found in nature.
Accounting for the possibility of consciousness is one thing; accounting for the specific
content of portal experiences is another. Both chapters two and three establish that,
physiologically, consciousness involves the presence of dynamical systems in the brain.
Dynamical systems are, roughly, parts acting together as a whole, the behavior of the whole
not being causally determined by the behavior of the individual components. Such systems are
chaotic, because they do not follow causal laws. Chapter four develops the dynamical systems
idea further, showing that consciousness from a psychological standpoint -- according to Jung's
theory of the unconscious -- is a dynamical system. The discussion also establishes the role of
dynamical systems in portal experiences themselves, and introduces the concept of fractals, as
repeating patterns that constitute the "data" of portal experience.
Having established in connection with consciousness the presence of dynamical
systems in the brain, the psyche, and the portal, the task of chapter five is to explain
constellation itself -- how it is possible for information from the alternative realities of portal
experience to be introduced into the mind of an individual with a physical body. Jung's theory

of synchronicity provides the basis for this explanation, which is presented in three versions.
The possibility thesis explains how portal experiences are possible, the identity thesis shows why
portal experiences have their unique content, and the necessity thesis argues that portal
experiences are inevitable. A comparison is made between this theory and Stephen Hawking's
theory of black holes, suggesting an even broader version of the necessity thesis.
The conclusion will summarize the theory of consciousness developed in this study,
and discuss some of its implications.

Chapter 1: Portal Experience

So is every man: he is born in vanity and sin; he comes into the world like morning
mushrooms, soon thrusting up their heads into the air, and conversing with their
kindred of the same production, and as soon they turn into dust and forgetfulness . . . to
preserve him from rushing into nothing, and at first to draw him up from nothing, were
equally the issues of an almighty power.
-- Jeremy Taylor, Holy Dying, (1651)

While walking home from a hike in the woods early one evening, I looked up at the
stars slowly emerging from the darkening sky, and thought, "The gods are putting on their
porch lights." Two things immediately struck me about this vision: that to have a mind is to
have the ability to reach beyond the confines of one's senses and touch a reality that lies
beyond sensual experience, and, that what is seen in that reality is haunted with the distinctive
stamp of the one who touches it.
Visions such as this are the stuff out which ancient religions and mythologies were
built. Not merely the seeing of the sun, moon, and stars moving through the sky, but the
impressions left by the seeing of those things, inspired ancient humankind to portray those
events on the walls of his caves, to inscribe their images on his tools, and to pass their stories
from generation to generation. The passage of the seasons, with their cyclical changes of flora
and fauna, inspired the ancients to worship the powers that moved those seasons. Indeed,
every event in the natural world seems to have held the ancients in awe and reverence.
Such impressions are the work of the imagination, defined by the Pocket Oxford
Dictionary as the "mental faculty forming images or concepts of objects not existent or present,
creative faculty of the mind." While one might ordinarily associate the ability to recombine
ideas in new and novel ways with the faculty of imagination, in the relevant sense here it is the
ability to see (or otherwise experience) beyond what is present to the physical senses. What is
suggested by the vision above is that imagination is also the ability to see into a dimension that
lies beyond physical space and time. To look at the stars and see the lamps of the gods is to
reach beyond the senses into another world -- perhaps a world of mental imagery, or perhaps
more than that.
It was Carl Gustav Jung who realized that such visions are not simply the imagery of an
individual mind. He spoke of them as "that which the outer impression constellates in the
subject."1 I have italicized the word constellates because it is the crucial concept. Just as the
stars arranged themselves into constellations in the minds of the ancients, so they and other
natural phenomena constellate the visions of humankind both past and present. Constellation
is the reciprocal of imagination: while imagination sees what is hidden to the senses, what is

revealed to the imagination through the senses must have the power to constellate itself as an
image in the mind.
By constellation I mean something similar to what Locke meant, when he argued that
objects have certain characteristics or qualities, which have the power to cause us to see them in
a certain way. Colors, for example, are not characteristics of the objects themselves (according
to Locke's theory), but instead the objects have a certain surface structure that causes us to see
them as colored. Now "powers" and "caused" are also vague terms, so the metaphor is not
wholly perspicuous. But the term constellation refers to something much like the "powers" of
objects to "cause" us to see them in certain ways; it also implies, just like Locke's theory, that
there is something empowered to do the constellating.
But what exactly is it that does the constellating? What presented itself to the ancient
mind as the thunder-god hurling bolts of lightning from the sky? What did the ancients really
see when they spoke of the moon as the Goddess who is one but also three? What is it that
revealed itself through the life and death of a humble carpenter from Bethlehem some two
thousand years ago? Whose voices did Joan of Arc hear, and who was it that visited Teresa of
Avila on St. Peter's Fest, when she reported that, "I could not help realizing that He was beside
me, and that I saw and felt this clearly?"
In all of these cases, the suggestion is that something was experienced in some quite
ordinary way, from which something very extra-ordinary was perceived. As a simpler
example, suppose a dictator erects a statue of himself in some town where his armies have
carried out ruthless oppression. In the minds of the townspeople, the statue to them means
oppression. There is nothing in the stone of the statue, nothing in its lines and curves, nothing
about the image represented in the statue to suggest oppression; to an outsider visiting the
town, with no knowledge of its history, it is just a statue. We might say that, in the minds of
the townspeople, the state has the power to constellate resentment and hatred. From the
observer's standpoint, political oppression is imagined, but from the statue's standpoint, it has
the power to constellate oppression in the minds of the oppressed.
The tentative but very unsatisfying answer about what, in the cases noted above, does
the constellating is that it is the unknown that constellates itself via images of the outside world.
What is seen is that which lies beyond the experience of the physical senses and is inaccessible
to them, beyond the world with which the observer is familiar, and beyond the ability of the
observer to describe in any perspicuous way. It is not the thing which is seen by the eyes, but
some unknown thing riding its coat-tails through the senses and into the mind of the seer.
There is nothing in the perception of the stars itself, as a sensory experience, to suggest the
lamps of the gods; it is some other thing -- something outside the physical sensation of the
stars -- constellating itself as the lamps of the gods, taking advantage, so to speak, of the visual

image. I have stamped my perception of that thing with something with which I am familiar
(porch lights being turned on at night) but it has also stamped itself with something utterly
unfamiliar -- the presence of beings totally unlike myself, totally outside any experience
accessible to the senses.
It is this feature of irreducibility -- of both familiarity and also the impossibility of
familiarity -- that gives such visions their psychological impact. They are refractory to
intellectual analysis. Certainly I know that I am looking at the stars. I know about stars, about
galaxies, about stellar fusion and gravity; I know that such things are known to science,
described by mathematical models which, I am told, are too complex to for me to understand,
but not too complex for a gifted few in whom we are told to place our intellectual trust. I know
that I am looking at stars, objects in space. Yet it is in spite of that, or perhaps in mockery of it,
that some other thing has come into my mind and seized hold of my imagination. It has
constellated itself in an irreducible paradox, something that both are and are not, immune to
reduction and dissolution by the tools of logic and science.
Such visions are the stuff of which religions and mythologies are built; I shall argue in
this study that they are also the stuff of which consciousness itself is constructed. The nature of
consciousness is a constellation of topics in itself; I will focus upon those aspects of
consciousness that are connected with the imagination, and more specifically with its
mythological and mystical aspects. By "mythological and mystical aspects" I mean the
construction of stories, symbols, belief systems, and practices associated with having visions of
realities that lie outside sensory experience. I will use the term portal experience to identify
those experiences that involve encounters with these non-sensory realities; portal because if
these experiences are what they are claimed to be, then they are movements within and
journeys through gateways between what Stace called "orders" and what I am calling "realities"
and "worlds". These modes of existence are so different from each other that one could not be
situated in the mode of physical space-time and also be situated in the unknown, but one could
stand in the gateway between them. 2
As an initial attempt to characterize what is meant by terms such as "outside", "modes
of existence", "different", and so on, let us try a metaphoric example. Imagine worlds as
ping-pong balls. There is the world in which we are situated -- we are inside one particular
ball. The "other worlds" are other balls, perhaps one, perhaps many. One cannot be inside one
ball, and inside another at the same time. But, if two were to collide such that their surfaces
temporarily melted into one surface, one could stand at the contact point.
Beyond a first glance, the metaphor is poor because worlds are not ping-pong balls. 3
We are tempted by the metaphor to think that there is some standpoint, outside all of the
worlds, from which they can be viewed. There is no such standpoint. To be "in a world", to

have a "mode of existence", is to instantiate the characteristics that mark off that world from all
the others. If we are "in" the world of physical space-time, it is because we have physical
bodies whose existence relates to the concepts of space and time in a way that is shared by the
other objects in that world. There is, of course, a great deal more that could be said about this,
but at this point in the study it is only necessary to understand that "constellation", in the sense
I am considering it, refers to the power (in the sense used by Locke) of something outside the
world in which we are situated (the world of physical space-time, for the moment) to impress
itself upon the mind of someone inside that world. It is an impression above and beyond what
can be detected by the physical senses.
When the ancients watched the movement of the seasons, they understood themselves
not as "subjective" spectators of "objective" natural phenomena, but rather as active participants
in a dynamic and living world. Anthropologist Lucien Levy-Bruhl called this participation
mystique, perhaps the most important example of the mythological and mystical imagination
and its related constellation phenomena. It is the belief that the individual human being stands
not alone, but as an active participant in the drama of the natural world around him or her.
From Druidic rites of seasonal passage to Indian rain and buffalo dances, the mythologies and
practices of the pre-technological4 human being reflect his or her place as a participant in the
world of nature, both seen and unseen.
Not only celestial objects served as vehicles of the unknown. Common in Celtic areas is
the belief in what Evans-Wentz calls the Fairy-Faith:
By the Celtic Fairy-Faith we mean that specialized form of belief in a spiritual realm
inhabited by spiritual beings which has existed from prehistoric times until now . . . And
if fairies actually exist as invisible beings or intelligences, and our investigations lead us
to the tentative hypothesis that they do, then they are natural and not supernatural, for
nothing which exists can be supernatural. 5

According to this belief, fairies are (normally) invisible beings that inhabit natural places
such as woods, rivers, and particularly mounds from which they occasionally emerge into the
physical world. Evans-Wentz presents a detailed account of the belief, showing it to be
widespread, and that it is a species of constellation -- that what is seen as a minute human form
is something that has impressed itself on the mind in that form. There are no "little people"
running around in the ground beneath our feet, but there are forces or powers constellated by
nature6 that reveal themselves to us in that way. The beings referred to as "fairies" are the
constellated forces of the natural world.

10

Closely allied to participation is animism, the belief that there is a universal vitalizing
principle that underlies existence. The beliefs in tree-gods, river-gods, and so forth are
examples of this. Regarding its role in ancient Celtic religions, Cannon MacCulloch writes:
The earliest Celtic worship, like that of most other peoples, was given to spirits of
nature, of the sea, rivers, trees, mountains, sky, and heavenly bodies, some of which, as
time went on, became more personal deities. All parts of nature were alive, as man was,
and he found these friendly or hostile . . . The belief in animism, the belief that
everything was alive, tenanted by a soul or spirit, has been universal. 7

Psychoanalytically, Jung refers to participation mystique as psychological identity:

[Psychological identity] is characteristic of the primitive mentality, and is the actual
basis of participation mystique, which, in reality, is merely a relic of the original
psychological non-differentiation of subject and object -- hence of the primordial
unconscious state. It is, therefore, a characteristic of the unconscious content in adult
civilized man . . Identity is primarily an unconscious equality with the object. 8

The feeling that humankind was a participant in the cosmos around him sprang,
therefore, from the belief in an essential unity of his own being with the world around him.
That unity came from the feeling of an underlying force that animated both his own being and
the beings around him. But how is it that humankind came to believe in the existence of such a
force? Just as Hume observed that there are no impressions or sets of impressions that could
tell me I have a "self", so there are no impressions or sets of impressions which, by themselves,
could tell me anything about an underlying unity or animating force. The "force" or "unity" is
not a part of the sensory data -- it is something that constellates itself in the mind along with
the sensory data. There are no sense-impressions of tree spirits, but rather the tree-spirit
constellates itself in the mind through the image of the tree. In the image of the tree is seen
something totally like the individual him/herself -- a being in the physical world -- and also
totally unlike his or her physical being, yet akin to a part of him/herself that is also not
physical.
That humankind should have come to regard this unknown thing as "superior" to
himself is not surprising when one considers the magnificence of its observed effects. Imagine
the explosive cacophony of a thunderstorm, the blistering heat of the summer sun, the sudden
flash in the night sky of a fireball. Contemporary scientific explanation may dissolve the
mystery of what is happening, but, recalling Leibniz' question of why there is something rather
than nothing, it is powerless to dissolve the mystery of why. Add to this the feelings of
participation and alive-ness, and it is not difficult to understand the origin of the gods. What is

11

difficult to come to terms with is why it should have been gods that were imagined, and not,
say, molecules bouncing in billiard ball fashion. 9
Participation mystique is fundamental in the construction of mythologies. Joseph
Campbell states:
The sense, then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum of simultaneously
subjective and objective experience (participation), which is all alive (animism), and
which was produced by some superior being (artificialism), may be said to constitute
the axiomatic, spontaneously supposed frame of reference for all childhood experience,
no matter what the local details of this experience may happen to be. And these three
principles, it is no less apparent, are precisely those most generally represented in the
mythologies and religious systems of the whole world. 10

It is not only the ancients who had such beliefs; they can be found in contemporary
culture. What has come to be called the "Old Religion", a rather loose collection of beliefs
deriving from ancient paganism, is very much alive today. Margot Adler characterizes it as
follows:
If you were to ask modern Pagans for the most important ideas that underlie the Pagan
resurgence, you might well be led to three words: animism, pantheism, and -- most
important -- polytheism . . . Animism is used to imply a reality in which all things are
imbued with vitality . . . All things -- from rocks and trees to dreams -- (are) considered
to partake of the life force. At some level Neo-Paganism is an attempt to reanimate the
world of nature; or, perhaps more accurately . . . to reenter the primeval world view, to
participate in nature in a way that is not possible for most Westerners after
childhood . . . Pantheism . . . is a view that divinity is imminent in nature . . . The idea
of polytheism is grounded in the view that reality (divine or otherwise) is multiple and
diverse. 11

Jung, Campbell and Adler all refer to the idea that participation, as well as being
characteristic of the ancient world, is also characteristic of contemporary childhood. What has
come to be called "maturity" in the technological world refers at least in part to the loss of
participation. Now as Jung pointed out, participation and psychological identity are never
really lost, but become unconscious. They are repressed, to use Freud's terminology, out of
conscious awareness because they are socially unacceptable. The sense of participation evoked
by the Old Religion in modern times is the coming into awareness of a capacity that has been
repressed into unconsciousness during the socialization process of technological society. In a
sense, psychoanalysis performs on an individual and therapeutically oriented basis what the
Old Religion does on a mythological and magical basis -- returning to consciousness a part of
the individual that has been forced out of awareness by social conforming processes.

12

Whether technological society approves or not, participation mystique, animism,

pantheism and polytheism are a part of the structure of the human psyche -- Jung's term for the
totality of all mental processes, be they biological, unconscious, conscious, or spiritual. Portal
experiences are historical features in the evolution of human consciousness, they are observable
features of childhood development, they are recurring patterns in the dreams and thoughts of
adults as well as children, and they are the goals of many contemporary as well as ancient
religious practices. These portal experiences are all products of what Jung called constellation
-- they are imprinted upon the mind during the course of ordinary perceptual experiences.
While, from the point of view of physiological sensations, they might be quite ordinary, from a
psychological perspective they are anything but ordinary. They have guided human belief,
thought and action since prehistoric times. The questions that we must confront are why portal
experience, constellation and participation are so universal, and why they have had such a
profound impact on both the individual human psyche and on the history of human culture.
The reasons are complex, and to fully understand them will require an understanding of the
consciousness in which the constellation takes place.
Before considering those reasons, we must confront a very important question: are
these visions the results of constellation by some outside order of being, or are they
hallucinations, products of an active and perhaps pathological imagination? The metaphysical
question behind this is, of course, whether there are, or are not, modes of existence different
from the physical, spatiotemporal mode in which the body is situated. I do not believe there is
a satisfactory answer to that question, nor do I believe that a satisfactory answer is possible.
The reason is that the analysis of the problem cannot be separated from commitments on the
part of the individual to looking at the world in a certain way; these commitments are, for all
intents and purposes "religious" beliefs in that they are commitments of faith. The "data" for
the existence of other worlds (in the ping-pong ball sense) primarily come from portal
experiences -- encounters, or alleged encounters, with those other worlds. To the person who
believes there are no such worlds, the data reveal psychopathology; to the person who believes
there are such worlds, the data are "evidence", and to the person who has no idea whether
there are such worlds or not, the data are ambiguous. Rather than leading one to believe or
disbelieve in the existence of other worlds, the data serve more to reinforce an already existing
commitment, and it is not at all clear where that commitment originates. Those commitments
structure the way the data of experience are analyzed, but are not themselves empirical data.
There is no laboratory experiment that will test whether or not there is a three-fold
moon goddess. It is no argument against the existence of such a thing that everyone has not
seen or felt it, or that you yourself have neither seen nor felt it. That most people have never
seen or felt Californium-252 is not an argument against its existence. It would in fact be

13

impossible to see or feel Cf-252 because any quantity sufficient to be visible or tangible would
emit sufficient neutron radiation so as to be instantly lethal. Its existence can only be known
indirectly, through the use of instruments by people trained in their use, coupled with our
beliefs that the instruments give us certain kinds of data.
The three-fold moon goddess of the Old Religion cannot be detected directly, either.
During certain ritual ceremonies, or as the result of certain practices, its presence may be felt,
assuming those performing those practices are properly skilled in their performance, and that
the feelings or impressions they receive constitute data for the existence of said goddess. These
two cases are closely parallel; to the nuclear researcher, the data from his or her instruments
constellates the existence of Cf-252, while to the Wiccan priestess the visions, voices and
feelings of a sabbat rite constellate the existence of the moon goddess.
We are, therefore, no closer to an answer. To offer empirical data as an answer only
frustrates the problem -- it pushes us further into the psychology of the individual assessing
the data, and farther afield from what we really want to know, which is what there is and is
not, in some last and final sense. Is there any "reality" to what is constellated, or is it just a
fanciful activity of the imagination after all? This is a difficult question to come to grips with.
One approach to this problem is to avoid it altogether -- to avoid confronting the metaphysical
difficulty by confining the inquiry to something tamer. We could opt for inquiring not about
the nature of consciousness, but rather trying to systematize observations about it. This
pseudo-scientific approach might tell us something about how consciousness works -- it might
give us a systematic picture of the phenomenology of consciousness under various
circumstances. It will, however, tell us nothing about what consciousness is -- it will give us no
clue about the metaphysics behind the phenomena, it will tell us nothing about what
distinguishes consciousness from other kinds of processes. This is a grand old problem in
philosophy, motivating much of the dissention between empiricist and rationalist traditions,
and certainly much of the work of Kant and others, and it is far from a resolved issue.
Epistemological prowess has not vindicated metaphysical cowardice.
Here is what I propose. Let us begin by taking portal experiences seriously, by which I
mean let us suppose that just as the instrument's data constellate in the mind of the researcher
the existence of Cf-252, so portal experiences constellate in the mind of the visionary the
existence of another world -- to re-invoke the previous metaphor, they suggest the presence of
other ping-pong balls. The researcher, if he is not a fool, will apply certain tests before going
forward with his or her data -- tests on his or her instruments, perhaps experiments with his or
her sample to test its purity. Likewise, the person having a portal experience will, if he is not a
fool, apply certain tests on the accuracy of his or her results -- if he claims to have had a vision
of Christ, for example, do the data accord with what he knows about Christ? Just as the

14

researcher then proceeds on the assumption that what has constellated his or her data really is
Cf-252, let us also proceed on the assumption that what has constellated the portal experience
really is another world. And both the researcher and the visionary must be prepared for the
unexpected -- perhaps when his or her data do not accord with his or her expectations, he may
have discovered something new about his or her subject, or he may have discovered something
new altogether.
The introduction of such an assumption -- that there are other modes of existence
accessible through portal experience -- introduces a degree of circularity into the analysis. It
might be disappointing to discover that the result of assuming immaterialism is the conclusion
that consciousness is, after all, not merely the physical matter of the brain. I offer three points
in reply. If we are not to be metaphysical cowards, we must assume something about what
there is in order to collect and evaluate data. The assumption of the opposite of immaterialism
-- that physical matter is all there is -- would, and where it occurs does, introduce exactly the
same problem. Second, from a purely formal standpoint, if we assume the rules of ordinary
predicate logic hold, any valid argument will have a conclusion from which its premises can be
derived, and therefore any sound argument will in this sense be circular.
Third, and most significant, is that it is perhaps not so important whether the argument
is formally circular, but rather what has been gained by its circumambulation. Circularity and
question-begging are different things; the question-begging argument leaves us unenlightened,
but the formally circular argument may lead us to interesting discoveries about the circle. The
study and pursuit of metaphysics has yet to produce any final answers about what there is.
But, the pursuit of that study has brought forth interesting discussions about the nature of
human existence, and the world in which it has found itself. Metaphysicians since Plato may
still be running in circles, but they are hopefully ever-widening circles. Like the circle of the
seasons that constellated itself as the earth-goddess in the minds of the ancients, it might not be
such a bad thing if our understanding of ourselves is enhanced in some way.
All of this is an attempt to intellectually justify what is basically a gut feeling -- that
thousands of years of human experience shouldn't be ignored simply because it doesn't fit the
reigning intellectual paradigm of the time. There is no prima facie reason why portal
experience should be labeled "superstition" and disregarded in considerations of the nature of
the psyche. Why should the criterion for intellectual acceptance be a white lab coat, rather than
a black priest's robe or an herb-scented witch's garter? I will confront that issue at the end of
the next chapter. Whether portal experiences are pathological, psychological, or metaphysical
cannot be decided without reference to criteria that are themselves metaphysical assumptions.
My purpose here is simply to present the hypothesis -- that there are other worlds known

15

through portal experience -- and to lay the groundwork for the investigation of the relationship
of this hypothesis to human consciousness.
One issue of terminology needs clarification before leaving this topic. The word
hallucination has many uses among the writers quoted in this study. Without careful
consideration, most people understand the word to mean something similar to the Pocket
Oxford Dictionary definition: "illusion of seeing or hearing external object not actually present."
Under the assumption that there is no other mode of existence than the physical, this is the
sense of the word that would be applied to the phenomenon of constellation. There is,
however, another sense of the word. Referring to hallucinogens, chemicals that produce
hallucinations, Schultes and Hofmann wrote:
In general, we experience life from a rather limited point of view . . . However, through
hallucinogens the perception of reality can be strongly changed and expanded . . . Under
the influence of hallucinogens, the borderline between the experiencing ego and the
outside world disappears or becomes blurred . . . This state of cosmic consciousness . . .
is related to the spontaneous religious ecstasy known as the unio mystica . . . a reality is
experienced which is illuminated by that transcendental reality in which creation and
ego, sender and receiver, are One. 12

This use of the word hallucination is perfectly compatible with my use of the words
participation and constellation, and entails no denial but rather suggests an affirmation of the
metaphysical thesis I have supposed. These two uses of the word hallucination are therefore
opposed to one another, and in the reading of the discussions that follow it will be important to
keep in mind which use of the word is in play.
At this point, some examples of portal experiences are in order. A careful analysis of
these experiences cannot be given; that will depend upon the development of the theory of
consciousness in this study. I will, for example, not attempt to correlate the metaphysical ideas
with physiological and psychoanalytical theories here. In offering these examples it is my
intention to merely present the data upon which the theory will operate. These are portal
experiences -- they represent encounters between physical human beings and a realm of
non-physical reality; they are points at which consciousness stands in the gateway between
different orders of being.
Let the reader be forewarned that much of what follows will be vague and unclear.
There is no precise or perspicuous way to characterize terms such as "spiritual", "other world",
"unknown", and so forth. They are necessarily incomplete -- any attempt to provide a precise
characterization will falsify what is being characterized. This is an inherent problem in
addressing topics such as mystical and portal experience, because the discussions of these
experiences refer to things and ideas that have no referents in non-mystical or non-portal

16

experiences. These ideas are not subsumable under familiarizing metaphors; any attempt to
familiarize them renders the familiarization false. The reason for this problem will become
clearer by the end of the third chapter. I can only note that there is indeed a problem in coming
to terms with the idea of portal experience and what is suggested by it; that it is a subject
imbued with conceptual difficulty, however, is no reason to ignore it.
The first set of examples concerns what is called divination. Divinatory techniques are
used to discover things that cannot be found out through the senses. By "senses" I mean the
ordinary physical senses, used in ways to discover things about the physical world. Whether it
is communicating with another person (living or dead), discovering information about the past,
present or future, or communication with some divine being, it is a matter of obtaining
information about, or through, non-sensory reality. According to one writer,
Divination means "finding the will of the gods." [It] is the art of seeing the past, present,
and future. It is the transcendence of that nebulous concept we call time . . . Somewhere
in the heart of the cosmos, what we call time has no relevance. The past, present, and
future are merely words there. Some part of everyone's brain is tuned into this cosmos,
although we are not consciously aware of it. Subconsciously, of course, we are aware of
it, and this motivates our actions. In order to activate the latent non-time mind one uses
a tool. 13

Understood in this way, divination is a clear case of portal experience, for it is an

attempt to "connect" with a reality that lies outside the domain of time. The "tools" may be in
the form of cards, crystal balls, tea leaves, pendulums, rune stones, or any multitude of other
devices. Learning to use a crystal ball, according to the same writer, proceeds in the following
way:
The apprentice is taken to a dimly lit room at the same time each day and made to sit in
front of the crystal presented to her by her teacher. The student gazes at the crystal for a
certain length of time each day. It may take weeks, even months, before she will see
anything, if she ever does at all. The apprentice can expect the crystal to cloud from
within, and grow dark. After a time, the cloud will part to reveal scenes and objects
that must be interpreted by the scryer. 14

What is acquired during this process is the "second sight", sometimes also called "seeing
with the mind's eye". It is the ability to visualize things not present to the senses; to hallucinate
in the Schultes-Hofmann sense of the word. What the eyes of the "scryer", the person doing the
divination, see is of course the crystal (or other object); the "second sight" is the constellation of
the "heart of the cosmos" that is independent of time in the mind of the scryer.

17

Dreams are also considered divinatory. Among members of the Old Religion dreams
are considered to reveal the "real" person, while waking consciousness is a kind of facade.
There is, according to this view (which is shared by many Eastern mystical traditions) an inner,
hidden "self" that is the actual person, and an outer shell that interacts with the rest of the
world that is not the "real" person but is a sort of mask presented to others. Social interactions
delude us into thinking the "shell" self is who we are; through dreaming, we discover who we
"really" are. In shamanistic cultures, dreams are considered to reveal the true nature of disease.
They are also prophetic -- when they occur to the shaman, the chief, or sometimes ordinary
people, they are read symbolically as the future destiny of the group.
Astrology is another method of divination. In common usage it has been reified into a
kind of fatalism in which one's future is determined, but the experience I described in the
beginning of this chapter, along with visions of planetary deities are all subsumable under the
domain of astrology. Newton himself was a believer; upon being chided by one of his scientific
colleagues he is said to have replied, "Sir, I have studied it, you have not." Regarding the
relationship between the individual and the stars, one writer notes:
There is a side of the Moon which we never see, but that hidden half is as potent a factor
in causing the ebb and flow of the earth's tide, as the part of the Moon which is visible.
Similarly, there is an invisible part of man which exerts a powerful influence in life, and
as the tides are measured by the motions of the Sun and Moon, so also the eventualities
of existence are measured by the circling stars. . . 15

In spite of the obvious non-sequitur, for centuries many have believed that the patterns
of their lives are written in the patterns of the stars. It is a simple case of participation
mystique. Other aspects of astrology are not so simple, however, and involve more complex
kinds of constellation phenomena, such as the "lamps of the gods" example. The constellation
of planetary gods in both ancient and contemporary humankind is evidence that the stars have
served as perceptual vehicles for the unknown. In the Old Religion, the sun is often
personified as a male god, while the moon is personified as a female goddess; the Egyptians in
addition had an all encompassing star-goddess. These images of humanoid personalities
behind the planets are the constellations of what were thought to be the vital forces that
sustained and moved these objects, as well as the lives of individual persons. Generally the
rites and rituals that pertained to these deities were not the worship or adoration rites of more
contemporary religions, but rather were attempts to place one's self in direct contact with the
deity; much like scrying in the crystal, the rites were designed to open communications
between the "non-time" part of one's mind and that part of the cosmos that is also "non-time".

18

One of the most interesting aspects of divination concerns the use of Tarot cards. Tarot
decks generally consist of 78 cards, divided into four suits of ten numbers and four "court"
cards each, plus an additional 22 non-suit cards called the "major arcana". Every writer has his
or her own favorite history of the cards, from images painted inside the Egyptian pyramids, to
visions given to various seers throughout history. Most of the mystery surrounding the cards
centers on the major arcana; Jung thought they were visual representations of unconscious
mental processes. Aleister Crowley set his sights higher:
The true significance of the Atus of Tahuti, or Tarot Trumps [major arcana], also awaits
full understanding. I have satisfied myself that these twenty-two cards compose a
complete system of hieroglyphs, representing the total energies of the universe. 16

On this interpretation, the reading of the Tarot cards is yet another example of portal
experience, for it is the coming into awareness of the "total energies", which roughly translates
into vital forces, that are not accessible to the senses. Reading the cards is not a matter of
learning interpretations, as is so often done by beginners, but is a matter of obtaining "second
sight" via the images on the cards.
The Tarot is often connected with another aspect of divination, numerology. It is in the
case of numerology that the link between the occult and traditional Platonic metaphysics is
most clear. Wrote Campbell:
In fact, the notion of participation -- or indissociation between the subjective and
objective aspects of experience -- goes so far in the usual thinking both of infants and of
the archaic philosophical systems that the names of things . . . are thought to be intrinsic
to things, as their audible aspect. In the Hebrew Kabbala, for example, the sounds and
forms of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are regarded as the very elements of reality,
so that by correctly pronouncing the names of things, of angels, or even of God, the
competent Kabbalist can make use of their force. 17

Add to this the idea that the characters of the Hebrew alphabet also served as numbers,
that there are twenty-two such characters and also twenty-two tarot trumps, and numerology
is off and running. By knowing the name of a thing, and calculating from that name its
number, one can then compare similarly derived numbers from other things, and come to
understand how they relate.
Mention of the Hebrew Kabbala, also variously spelled Qabala, Cabala, etc., leads us far
deeper into the idea of portal experience. The Order of the Golden Dawn, perhaps the most
famous of all occult societies, was founded upon Cabalistic principles. The version of the
Hebrew Cabala used by contemporary occultists probably has little to do with the esoteric
teachings of the religion of the Hebrews; it was, according to one theory, developed for

19

numerological purposes by medieval scholars seeking to encode their work and hide it from
prying and persecuting ecclesiastical authorities (though those scholars very often were the
ecclesiastical authorities). No matter what its origins, the Cabala figures prominently in the
contemporary occult scene.
The Cabala is most often represented by a diagram called the "Tree of Life". It consists
of ten points and twenty-two paths, each with its own numerological attribution. In addition,
each point and pathway has correspondences, or attributions connected with deities, minerals,
plants, personality traits, diseases, colors, and so forth. It is a taxonomist's paradise, for one
can, upon learning the name of a thing, dissect it numerologically into its minutest aspects.
Most of this is probably what Chappell called "occult garbage." As Jung points out,
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.
They will practice Indian Yoga in all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn
theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole
world -- all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith
that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. 18

Playing with calculators and tables of correspondence is no substitute for the real
purpose of the Cabala or any other mystical system, which is, I contend, the attainment of
portal experience. Divination is specifically concerned with the constellation of the unseen in
the mind of the visionary through the use of sensory objects such as crystals and cards. There
is a practice, whose purpose is the precipitation of portal experience, connected with the
Golden Dawn specifically and with the Cabalistic occult system more generally, referred to as
the "Bornless Ritual", the "Knowledge and Conversation of the Holy Guardian Angel", the
"Invocation of the Higher Genius", and other names. In considering this practice we move
outside the realm of divination proper, and into the realm of magic.
Magic has been variously defined as "The science and art of causing change in
conformity with the will" (Aleister Crowley), "The science of the control of the secret forces of
nature" (Samuel McGregor Mathers, founder of the Golden Dawn), and "The art of getting
results" (Gerald Gardner, founder of the "Gardnerian" sect of Wicca). It is a complex and
confusing subject. I shall consider three aspects of it: invocation, evocation, and sympathetic
magic.
Invocation is the practice of calling into one's own consciousness some external force or
power. It is a common practice in many religions. Sometimes it is done to confer some special
power on an individual; coronation ceremonies for religious and royal figures are examples of
this. In the practice of witchcraft, it is used to empower the practitioner to charge some item

20

with magical powers, which powers are then transferred by means of the charged item. But
most significant to this study is the Bornless Ritual of the Golden Dawn.
The Bornless Ritual is designed to bring the practitioner into contact and
communication with -- well, there is no clear definition of just what the "Bornless", the "Higher
Genius", or the "Holy Guardian Angel" really are. Israel Regardie has traced the development
of this curious rite from its original purpose as a simple exorcism to its occupation of the
central point in the thought of Aleister Crowley and the practices of the Golden Dawn. 19 There
are no clear, straightforward definitions of who or what the "Bornless One" is. Crowley writes:
Abremelin calls him Holy Guardian Angel. I adopt this: 1. Because system is so simple
and effective. 2. Because since all theories of the universe are absurd, it is better to talk
in the language of one which is patently absurd, so as to mortify the metaphysical
man . . . We also get metaphysical analyses of His nature, deeper and deeper according
to the subtlety of the writer; for this vision . . . is, I believe, the first and last of all
spiritual experience. 20

Success in the operation of invoking the "Higher Genius" is supposed to confer upon
the individual the ability to discover all magical knowledge whatsoever; it makes him or her
spiritually self-sufficient, for the aspirant has united his or her consciousness with something
infinitely greater than himself or herself. Without any further lurid detail, I think we can safely
say that this operation, which figures so prominently in the modern occult repertoire, is yet
another instance of portal experience, for it is the opening of communication between ordinary
awareness and something that lies outside it.
Evocation, on the other hand, is the calling of some magical power or force into visible
appearance outside the operator. In medieval times it was the summoning of demons. The
magician stands within a circle, usually inscribed with protective symbols, and calls the spirit
into a triangle inscribed outside the circle. He then puts various questions to the spirit, whom
he constrains to answer them by means of appeals to God, archangels, and so forth. Less
dramatically, the practice of blessing food or Holy Water is essentially the magical evocation of
a benevolent force into a common, inanimate item. Assuming the operation is successful, it is
also a portal experience.
Sympathetic magic is participation mystique at its grandest and finest. While
divination is the attempt to "read off" the unknown certain kinds of information, sympathetic
magic is the attempt to influence the world, using powers outside the realm of physical
interactions, through symbolic acts. Frazer explains it thus:

21

Analysis shows that magic rests everywhere on two fundamental principles: first, that
like produces like, effect resembling cause; second, that things which have once been in
contact continue ever afterwards to act on each other. The former principle may be called the
Law of Similarity; the latter, of Contact or Contagion. From the one the magician infers
that he can produce any effect he desires merely by imitating it in advance; from the
other , that whatever he does to a material object will automatically affect the person
with whom it was once in contact. 21

I shall illustrate with two examples. The first is a simple "love spell". Suppose there is a
person whom I wish to attract. I might proceed as follows: I obtain some item with which the
person has been in physical contact, preferably some part of the person's body such as hair or
nail clippings. I then make two candles, one containing the above item from the other person,
and one containing a similar item from myself. I then "consecrate" the candles with
appropriate herbs and oils. On the first night of the waxing moon, I begin a nightly ritual that
will continue until the night of the full moon. I set up an altar, upon which rest my candles
and perhaps other things such as incense, crystals, and other implements. Initially the candles
are at opposite sides of the altar, but each night, as I burn the candles, I move them closer and
closer together. As I do so, I may repeat some poem or chant, or sing an appropriate song;
additionally, I might arrange Tarot cards so as to tell a story of how the two come together, and
I might call upon the Moon Goddess for divine assistance. On the final night I place the two
candles in contact, allowing them to burn out and their wax to mix. I then take that remaining
wax and place it somewhere that the person in question will come into physical contact with it;
best thing is to place it somewhere that the individual in question will be in contact with it
during sleep. By this process, I would hope to attract the person to me.
At first glance this all appears very silly, but then at first glance so does general
relativity. In actuality even a simple spell such as this is a highly technical operation. The
object from the person's body is called an object link, and according to Frazer's principle of
Contagion, it represents a connection to the person in question. The underlying idea is that
while physical contiguity may come or go, there is also a spiritual contiguity that is never
broken. This notion is itself derivable from the same participation mystique in "that
transcendental reality in which creation and ego, sender and receiver, are One," noted by
Schultes and Hofmann above. There is a mode of being, according to this theory, in which
there is no differentiation between objects, no differentiation between moon and person,
between persons, or between parts of persons. It is that transcendental reality that is
considered when making an object link; it is that transcendental reality that forms the basis of
the principle of Contagion.
So, I have my link, via this transcendental reality, to the person in question. The next
step, making and consecrating the candles, makes each candle a magical link to the person it

22

represents. By applying the proper herbs and oils, according to the theory of correspondence
already noted in the discussion of the Cabala, I am also making a link to the appropriate
"energy of the universe", as mentioned by Crowley. By following the waxing moon, I draw
upon the participation of my consciousness, and also that of the other person, in the power of
the moon over emotions and feelings. The ceremony itself, of bringing the candles together
and intermixing their wax, exemplifies Frazer's principle of Similarity -- I am acting out on a
symbolic scale what I want to have happen in the world. Finally, when I place the remaining
wax in contact with the other person, I am making a link between the symbolic operation I
have performed and the person I really want to attract via the principle of Contagion.
The entire operation is a procession through the various aspects of participation
mystique. It relies upon the participation of individuals in a unifying, transcendental
dimension. It calls upon powers constellated in the mind by astronomical objects, and invokes
the doctrine of correspondences. It is, in the last analysis, an attempt to create a portal through
which my desire is conveyed to the other person by constellating it in his or her mind in the
course of ordinary perceptual experiences.
In contrast to simple spells such as these, which are usually private affairs, the great
Druidic fire festivals of Celtic Britain and Europe were the "media events" of their time. 22 Much
of Frazer's Golden Bough is devoted to a discussion of these, and similar practices of
sympathetic magic by the ancients, and their continuation in the folklore of modern times.
Frazer describes the great fire festivals of Europe, of which generally there were four,
coinciding with the solstices and equinoxes. On these occasions, great bonfires are lit (or were,
until the intervention of two world wars and technocratic governments) on the eve of the
solstices and equinoxes, and the embers from the fires are thought to be charms against evil
witchcraft and disease. In Celtic areas previously under Druidic rule, however, the major fire
festivals were held on the eves of Beltane (May 1) and Samhain (Nov. 1). Since these festivals
do not coincide with any obvious astronomical phenomena, Frazer argues that it is not a
simple case of sympathetic magic -- of drawing down the power of the sun -- that gives fire its
power to banish evil.
Rather, Frazer traces the origins of these fire festivals to the ancient sacrificial rites of the
Celts. Now during these ancient rites, evil persons suspected of being witches 23and wizards
who cast malevolent spells upon crops, animals, and people were burned in wicker baskets or
other enclosures, along with animals suspected of being witches in disguise. The banishing
power of fire, according to Frazer's analysis, comes from the myth of Balder, son of the Norse
god Odin, who was slain by a flaming mistletoe provided by the trickster-god Loki. It is this
power of fire to banish unseen influences that is invoked in the fire festivals.

23

So the fire festivals represent sympathetic magic on its grandest scale -- by imitating the
power of fire to destroy a god, the celebrants hope to call forth that same power to banish evil
from their communities. This analysis suggests an important link between portal experience,
participation and mythology. It should be clear from the examples already presented that
participation mystique -- the belief that there is an unseen dimension behind perceptual
experiences and that one is in intimate contact with that dimension -- is precisely what is
constellated in the mind by portal experience. The direct intuition of another world, a world
apart from sensory experience and yet also connected with it in some non-physical way,
impresses itself upon the mind as the individual's participation and relevance to that world,
and at the same time with his or her alienation from it. Consider the example with which I
opened this chapter: the vision of the lamps of the gods presented itself in a familiar setting,
and at the same time presented something with which I could not possibly be familiar. It
suggested the existence of another world of which my senses are not a part, and, at the same
time, suggested my participation in that world.
All of this suggests that one role of mythology is to codify and systematize participation
-- to present a "story" or context in which participation mystique is understood in a given
culture. Campbell writes:
Mythologies are addressed . . . to questions of the origins, both of the natural world and
of the arts, laws, and customs of a local people, physical things being understood in this
view as metaphysically grounded in a dreamlike mythological realm beyond space and
time, which, since it is physically invisible, can be known only to the mind . . . all the
passing shapes of the physical world arise from a universal, morphogenetic ground that
is made known to the mind through the figurations of myth. 24

Mythologies situate participation in a context; that context may be cultural, as in the

case of European fire festivals, or it may be what Campbell calls a "personal myth", which
situates participation in the context of the individual's own life. There are certainly other
functions performed by mythologies, both psychological and cultural, but it is only important
here to see that mythologies are a way of putting participation, and therefore constellation and
portal experience, into a context -- a way of situating one's self in familiar terms, in relation to
the unknown.
I will present two more examples of portal experience. The first is known as astral
projection, also called "out of body experience" (OOBE). It encompasses a variety of
phenomena, all of which are based on the theory that consciousness can be dissociated from
the physical body. The distinction between astral projection and OOBE is that OOBEs are
generally spontaneous, while astral projection is something one practices in order to

24

accomplish. Astral projection is closely related to lucid dreaming, a state of dreaming in which
one retains one's normal conscious faculties. Lucid dreams may happen spontaneously or as
the result of practice.
Astral projection is used to transfer the consciousness of the operator into some other
object, or some other reality outside the physical world. This process allows the individual to
perceive things that are not accessible to the physical senses. It basically consists of three steps:
(1) Visualizing a form of one's self, which may be the ordinary human form or the form of an
animal or tree, along with appropriate surroundings; (2) Transferring one's consciousness to
that form; and (3) Performing some task while consciousness resides in that form. Aleister
Crowley offers the following instructions:
1. Let the student be at rest in one of his prescribed positions, having bathed and robed
with the proper decorum. Let the Place of Working be free from all disturbance, and let
the preliminary purifications, banishings and invocations be duly accomplished, and,
lastly, let the incense be kindled.
2. Let him imagine his own figure (preferably robed in the appropriate magical
garments and armed with the proper magical weapons) as enveloping his physical
body, or standing near to and in front of him.
3. Let him then transfer the seat of his consciousness to that imagined figure; so that it
may seem to him that he is seeing with its eyes, and hearing with its ears. This will
usually be the great difficulty of the operation.
4. Let him then cause that imagined figure to rise in the air to a great height above the
earth.
5. Let him then stop and look about him (It is sometimes difficult to open the eyes.)
6. Probably he will see figures approaching him, or become conscious of a landscape.
Let him speak to such figures, and insist upon being answered, using the proper
pentagrams and signs, as previously taught. 25

Astral projection such as this is commonly used in ritual magic, when it is desired to
perform the ritual in some real or imaginary place to which the magician does not have access.
Similarly, contemporary witches celebrating moon or seasonal rites will often project
themselves into locations appropriate to the rite; it is also common practice for witches to meet
with their "covens", or working groups, on the "astral plane". Such practices are the basis of the
belief in witches flying on brooms, 26 and also of their taking the shapes of animals.
The most interesting aspect of astral projection and its related OOBE and lucid
dreaming phenomena is that there exists considerable scientific evidence to support the

25

validity of those phenomena. Parapsychologists have amassed not only anecdotal but also
experimental evidence in this regard. Charles Tart writes:
What makes the OOBE of parapsychological interest is that it sometimes involves
paranormal elements: the experiencer not only feels himself to be at some location
distant from his physical body, he accurately describes what is going on at that location,
the description is later verified, and we can be reasonably certain that there was no
ordinary way in which he could have acquired this information. 27

Astral projection is important not only because it is a portal experience, but because of
the dissociability of consciousness and the body it entails. It is not participation in the
mythological sense studied so far; it invokes the idea mentioned by Schultes and Hofmann of a
transcendental reality and unity, but on a level that retains personal identity. And, as already
noted, it is not necessarily something that happens spontaneously as is the usual case with
"mythological" visions -- by and large, it is something one trains and practices to do.
The type of portal experience that has received most of the philosophical attention is the
mystical experience. Mystical experience is the direct intuition of a reality not present to the
senses, usually in a religious context, accompanied by what Rudolf Otto called numinous
feeling:
(1) awe or dread, the feeling of something uncanny, eerie or weird,
(2) a sense of impotence and nothingness as against overpowering might,
(3) the conviction that one is confronted with something overwhelmingly alive, vital and
active,
(4) a sense of mystery, of wonder over something which is, in at least some respects,
radically other than the objects of ordinary experience, and
(5) fascination or attraction.

28

There is an important distinction between numinous and mystical experiences,

however. Numinous experiences generally involve the sense of being in the presence of some
"other", while mystical experiences culminate in a feeling of union with the other, of the
dissociation of the self into a larger whole that is both the experient and the other. As such,
strictly numinous experiences are often understood in terms of a personal other, while mystical
experiences involving undifferentiated unity are generally described in impersonal terms.
Since the work of Otto and Stace, it has become common in the literature to distinguish
between extrovertive, or nature mysticism, and the introvertive experience.29 Extroverted or

26

nature mysticism is an experience in which one feels a sense of unity with the objects of
perception -- one feels, for example, an underlying unity with the natural world that is based
upon some state of being not immediately discoverable by the senses. Walter Stace writes:
The crucial statement is that these external things, although many, were nevertheless
perceived-- seen by the eyes -- as all one; that is, they were perceived as simultaneously
many and one . . . In saying that the grass, wood, and stone are perceived as one,
[Eckhart] does not mean that he does not perceive the differences between them . . . he
means that they are both distinct and identical. Rudolf Otto has expressed the thought
uncompromisingly and bluntly thus: "Black does not cease to be black, nor white white.
The opposites coincide without ceasing to be what they are in themselves." 30

This is not terribly different from the idea of "hallucination" as described by Schultes
and Hofmann. There is a sense in which one is a participant in a larger context, but one retains
one's own identity, as do other objects. It is very similar to participation mystique.
On the other hand, introvertive mysticism involves the dissolution of the identity of
both the experient and the object of experience into an undifferentiated unity. Writes Stace:
Our normal everyday consciousness always has objects. They may be physical objects,
or images, or even our own feelings or thoughts perceived introspectively. Suppose
then that we obliterate from consciousness all objects mental or physical. When the self
is not engaged in apprehending objects it becomes aware of itself. The self itself
emerges. The self, however, when stripped of all psychological contents or objects, is
not another thing, or substance, distinct from its contents. It is the bare unity of the
manifold of consciousness from which the manifold itself has been obliterated. This
seems analogous to saying that if from a whole or unity of many parts we could subtract
all the parts, the empty whole or unity would be left. This is another statement of the
paradox [there should be a positive experience which has no positive content -- an
experience which is both something and nothing].
One may also say that the mystic gets rid of the empirical ego whereupon the pure ego,
normally hidden, emerges into the light. The empirical ego is the stream of
consciousness. The pure ego is the unity which holds the manifold of the stream
together. This undifferentiated unity is the essence of the introvertive mystical experience. 31

The distinction between the two is that in nature mysticism, both the identities of the
experient and the object are maintained during an awareness of an essential unity, while in the
introvertive experience, the identity of the experient and the objects (the "manifold") is
obliterated. This distinction is important in philosophical discussions of mysticism, for one of
the central problems is to understand how, if the identity of the experient does not exist, the
mystic is able to have any recollection or form any concepts of the experience, since concept
formation requires an experiencing subject. 32

27

Mystical experience is part of a larger complex of experiences sometimes referred to as

religious ecstasy, or as an altered state of consciousness. This state of consciousness is also called
flow experience, and is characterized as follows:
1. A narrowing of the focus of consciousness on a clearly delimited stimulus field;
2. Exclusion from one's awareness of irrelevant immediate stimuli, memories of past
events, and contemplation of the future; hence a focusing on the unfolding present;
3. Merging of action and awareness, also described as absence of doubt and critical
reflection about one's current activity;
4. Awareness of clear goals and unambiguous feedback, so that one knows one's
standing with reference to the goals;
5. Lack of concern regarding one's ability to control the situation;
6. Loss of self-consciousness, which in turn may lead to a sense of transcendence of ego
boundaries and of union with a larger, transpersonal system. 33

There are varying degrees of mystical, flow and ecstatic experiences, and also varying
contexts and circumstances, but all to one degree or another display the characteristics noted,
similar to Otto's numinous experiences. This is true for accounts of both introvertive and
extrovertive mysticism.
For the present purpose, however, it need only be established that mystical experiences
(and ecstatic experiences in general) are portal experiences. Stace offers a general metaphysical
characterization of the mystical experience:
There are two orders, the natural order which is the order of time, and the divine order,
which is the order of eternity. In the moment of mystic illumination the two orders
intersect, so that the moment belongs to both orders. Within that single moment of time
are enclosed all eternity and all infinity. 34

I have, in actuality, based my notion of portal experience upon this "intersection theory"
of Stace's -- that it is a simultaneous intuition of two incommensurable orders of being. 35 What
Stace has called "intersection", I have called "portal". I have chosen this term rather than Stace's
because Stace intended his discussion to apply specifically to introvertive mystical experience,
while I intend a broader range of phenomena. So of course, mystical experiences are portal
experiences; the introvertive because they are instances of Stace's definition, and the
extrovertive because they are instances of participation mystique, which is also, though more
remotely, an instance of intersection. Whether the "orders" are characterized as temporal or

28

eternal, as finite or infinite, or in some other way, or whether there are two or more than two
such orders, makes little difference to the position. What matters is that, as Stace has
previously noted, there is the element of incommensurability between the participants in the
experience.
Similar to Stace, Marion Weinstein writes:
We live in two worlds: The World of Form and the Invisible World. In this case, the
World of Form is manifest as our planet, Earth. The Invisible World includes
"everywhere" else. The witch's magic is done with the conscious use of Both Worlds.
But our goal is to move and live perfectly and easily between the Worlds -- always. 36

Weinstein's claim, along with the examples I have given, suggest that portal experience,
and its constellation phenomenon, participation mystique, embody an essential irreducibility -they refer to the existence of (at least) two orders of being totally unlike one another, which are,
from the temporal point of view, experienced at the same time. Understanding portal
experience in this way allows us to now frame the question of why they have had a profound
impact on the human psyche and human history.
It is because of this fundamental paradox of existence that the experiences have figured
so prominently in human thought. If portal experiences are "intersections" in the way that
Stace has defined them, then they are the simultaneous experience of two incommensurable
modes of being. This means that whatever is experienced in one mode of being cannot be
understood in terms of the other; in this case, the mode of the eternal can never be explained or
comprehended in temporal vocabularies, or within the domain of temporal thought. When the
mystical experience is over, the mystic is left with the direct experience of something s/he
cannot explain. What gets said about it, according to Stace, is an "interpretation" based upon
the background and experience of the mystic. I will address this issue in more detail in a later
chapter; for now I shall assume that Stace's theory is correct -- that the mystical experience is
not directly conceptualizable, but can only be understood and communicated via
interpretation.
This means that the mystic has a problem -- s/he has had an experience that has been
profound and perhaps frightening, but can be explained neither to himself nor to others
without necessarily falsifying what is said about it. The same is also true in the case of
participation in general. Referring to the opening example, full well I know that I did not see
the porch lights of the gods, yet it also clearly impressed me that way -- to describe it as having
seen porch lights is at once to offer a characterization of it, and to say something about it that I
know is false. Constellation always embodies an essential tension between the perceptual

29

experience and the deeper feeling that what was experienced was something beyond the
sensation.
It is this essential tension that places participation at the center of the human psyche. It
is a problem for the individual, and for the culture as a whole, that cannot be made to go away.
The "other world" confrontation challenges the very structure of the psyche itself, for it
challenges the ability of the individual to understand him/her self, and his/her relationship to
experience and the outside world. In the course of ordinary perceptual experience, there is a
sense of continuity between subject and object -- a feeling of familiarity and orderliness in one's
relationship to the outside world. The essential tension of the portal experience -- that it is at
once "of this world" and also "of another world" fractures that sense of continuity. The portal
experience cannot be relativized to ordinary perceptual experience, without denying its
essential character -- that it is of another world. Along similar lines, the portal experience
cannot be dismissed as "mere hallucination", because it invokes the same kinds of perceptual
responses as ordinary experiences.
There are three kinds of responses to this problem. The first two amount to denials of
it. Material reductionism is the attempt to make the problem of two orders vanish by declaring
that there is only one. Writes Timothy Leary:
Those aspects of the psychedelic experience which subjects report to be ineffable and
ecstatically religious involve a direct awareness of the processes which physicists and
biochemists and neurologists measure. 37

In this context Leary refers to those ecstatic experiences resulting from hallucinogenic
drugs, but the implication of his position (which he and others argue for elsewhere) is that any
mental experience is the result of goings on in the brain and nothing outside it. This position is
endemic to materialism, and its presumption is that there is no "other order".
On the other hand, there is also the view I call spiritual reductionism, which argues that
the only reality is the "other order", and the world of sensations and behavioral experience is
only an illusion. This view is very often coupled to the demand that one should donate all of
one's possessions to the individual espousing it. But on the more credible side, there is a
constant thread running through much of Eastern mysticism that the physical world is only
transitory and illusory at best, and the experiences that really matter are those of the spirit.
The third view, the one I shall take as the working hypothesis, is the one assumed by
the Old Religion and its modern practitioners, and the one suggested by the theory of portal
experience and the universality of participation mystique. That view is to deny both forms of

30

reductionism, and take Stace's position as the metaphysical hypothesis that these kinds of
experiences are the direct intuition of two (or more) orders of being. William James writes:
It is as if there were in human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective
presence, a perception of what we may call 'something there', more deep and more
general than any of the special and particular senses by which the current psychology
supposes existent realities to be originally revealed . . . [cases cited by James in the text]
seem sufficiently to prove the existence in our mental machinery of a sense of present
reality more diffused and general than that which our special senses yield . . . Like all
positive afflictions of consciousness, the sense of reality has its negative counterpart in
the shape of a feeling of unreality by which persons may be haunted . . . 38

James statement brings us full circle, for as the chapter opened with the observation that
mythological visions such as the lamps of the gods embody a sense of reality that is a part of
the world and also not a part of it, so James has also noted the essential tension that
accompanies such a vision. I will summarize what this circumambulation of the topic has
given us:
(1) Portal experiences are encounters between the dimension of the physical body and
an order of being that is not a part of physical reality. Such encounters are sometimes
precipitated by sensory events, but along with those events a perception of something that is
not sensory also occurs. Examples of portal experiences are divination, astral projection,
magic and mystical experience.
(2) Constellation is the taking form of that unseen reality in the mind of the experient,
and may bring with it a sense of participation mystique, the belief that the experient is a part of
a reality greater than can be known through the senses alone. Participation carries with it the
conviction that the experient is not only an observer of that reality, but also an actor in it. It
may take the form of belief in non-physical entities and/or a sense of unity with that alternate
reality. Common pagan beliefs such as animism, pantheism, and polytheism are also examples
of constellation.
(3) Participation mystique is universal among pre-technological peoples and also
among children. Mythologies are, among other things, records of participation, and attempts
to integrate participation into the lives of individuals and into the general pattern of a culture.
(4) The psychological impact of portal experiences and their constellation phenomena
derives from their intellectual irreducibility, and from their embodiment of an essential
metaphysical paradox.
A theory of consciousness that proposes to take portal experiences as data must either
presume that until the advent of techno-scientistic materialism, everyone throughout history

31

was either in error or deluded and that the "true way" is that revealed in the laboratory, or it
must come to terms with several perplexing questions that have no clear or easy answers.
First and foremost, if there is an "other" reality that is not part of the physical world, we
must ask how it is that humankind, having as far as we can tell evolved out of the physical
matter of the Earth, can come into participation with it. How can a physical being participate
in a non-spatiotemporal reality? The answer does not come easily. Chapter two of this study
addresses two "scientific" theories of consciousness, both of which assume material
reductionism. The examination of those theories will greatly facilitate an understanding of
chapter three, which presents my views on how the physiology, and particularly the
biochemistry, of the brain gives rise to the possibility of consciousness. With this basic
understanding of the physiology of consciousness in place, chapters four and five will address
the question of how and why the interaction with non-physical reality is possible.
We must also approach the questions of why participation is universal among
primitives, ancients, children and visionaries, and why participation has such profound
psychological impact. The theory of consciousness developed in Chapter 4, together with
Chapter 5, will explore both the psychological and mythological aspects of portal experience
understood as a basis of consciousness.
Regarding the study of mysticism, Stace warned:
Anyone who intends to read this book should know that he must get accustomed to
shocks. Any writer who is honest about mysticism, as well as familiar with it, will know
that it is utterly irreconcilable with all the ordinary rules of human thinking, that it
blatantly breaches the laws of logic at every turn. Many writers will attempt to . . .
soften the shocks, to make the subject palatable to what they call common sense . . . But
to do this is to falsify the whole matter, and nothing of the sort will be countenanced
here. 39

Let the reader be warned to expect many shocks; a theory of consciousness that
countenances the existence of other worlds, and in fact takes the experience of those worlds as
its raw data, will have little to do with common sense. But it is not in the name of common
sense, but rather in the name of a better understanding of ourselves and our relation to the
world, that this theory has been developed. Like Jeremy Taylor's morning mushrooms, it is the
pursuit of that which has drawn humanity up from nothingness which has motivated this
study.

32

Chapter 2: Scientific Theories of Consciousness

Simple systems behave in simple ways . . . complex behavior implies complex causes . . .
different systems behave differently. Now all that has changed. In the intervening
twenty years, physicists, mathematicians, biologists and astronomers have created an
alternative set of ideas. Simple systems give rise to complex behavior. Complex
systems give rise to simple behavior. And most important, the laws of complexity hold
universally, caring not at all for the details of a system's constituent atoms.
-- James Gleick

Let us begin with an observation: all of the phenomena discussed in the previous
section -- dreams, mystical experiences, imagination -- are associated with persons who have
physical bodies. While there may be phenomena associated with the mind that do not have
this requirement, as a starting point we can begin by observing that persons who display the
characteristics associated with the mind also have physical bodies. We are, therefore,
beginning with the study of the mind as it is found in living human beings.
What feature of the physical person is connected with the mind? The answer is not so
simple, and was not, in the history of science, easily found. Here, too, we shall make some
preliminary observations about the relationship of the mind to the body:
1. The brain is the focal point of those physical processes that are associated with the
mind. The information about the physical world that is presented to the mind is gathered by
the nervous system from sensory organs and transmitted through neural circuits that converge
in the brain. Similarly, the physical processes in the nervous system that result in movement
and action, which appear to be under the control of the mind, originate within the brain, and
are transmitted from the brain to the organs of the body. At the very least, from an anatomical
point of view, the brain is the focus of information gathering and originating functions in the
body.
2. Physical damage to the brain, either through injury, disease or defect, results in the
inability to perform certain kinds of physical functions normally associated with the activity of
the mind. Functions such as perception, cognition and memory, as well as the initiation and
coordination of physical movements are impaired or lost if certain areas of the brain are
damaged or missing. Furthermore, surgical invasion of the brain is used to affect physical and
mental functioning in disease and experimentation.
3. There appears to be a relationship between the physical complexity of the brain and
the mental complexity of the creature. This is a highly subjective evaluation, and has often
mislead theorists into supposing that because the human brain is the most structurally complex
brain known, then human consciousness must be the "best". The observation I am making here
is simpler: that increasing brain complexity allows for increasingly complex information

33

processing, both in terms of what the creature can acquire, and in terms of what the creature
can do with it.
While none of these observations support the conclusion that the mind and the brain
are one in the same, they do lend support to the premise that a useful starting point for a study
of the nature of the mind is a study of the structure and function of the brain.
This chapter will discuss two theories of the origin of consciousness. Both of these
theories presume that the origin of consciousness is to be discovered in the biological evolution
and development of the brain. I present these theories because both of them contain elements
that are crucial to the theory developed in this study. However, as we shall see, both of these
theories also contain elements that are unacceptable for the theory of consciousness that will
emerge from this study.
i. The Bicameral Mind Theory.
In contrast to those who argue that consciousness arose by exclusively biological means
deep in the evolutionary past of humankind, Julian Jaynes proposes that consciousness is of
very recent origin. His theory, known as the Bicameral Mind theory,40 argues that consciousness
arose basically as a social phenomenon, made possible by biological developments in the brain
to accommodate language. As such, consciousness appeared quite suddenly during the course
of human history, about 3000 BC.41
The bicameral mind theory involves many technical arguments, in several related
disciplines: psychology, physiology, and anthropology, among others. Before considering the
technical details, I will try to summarize, in a general way, how the theory develops. Jaynes
begins with an argument that consciousness involves the existence of a mental "space", in
which one can visualize one's self in relation to the outside world -- a sort of "third person"
perspective on one's own behavior. That perspective arises out of the use of linguistic
metaphor, which functions to describe unfamiliar things in terms of familiar things. The use of
metaphor results in the appearance of a mental picture of the outside world, and also a mental
representation of one's own behavior in that world. This mental representation of the world
allows for the construction of several kinds of perspectives, and for the appearance of
decision-making abilities.
If, as Jaynes argues, this "subjective" consciousness is of recent origin, it follows that
some other form of behavioral control existed prior to the advent of decision-making ability.
That control mechanism was the bicameral mind, in which the right cerebral hemisphere
observed social behavioral patterns, and transmitted commands necessary to perpetuate those
patterns to the linguistically competent left hemisphere that were head as the "voices of the

34

gods." The Iliad is allegedly a record of this kind of mental condition. During the second and
third millennia BC, geological and social changes disrupted the patterns that formed the basis
of bicameral control, such that the bicameral mind failed as a control mechanism. Those
individuals that survived this period were those who developed a different kind of behavioral
control mechanism -- namely, linguistic, subjective consciousness.
What is the "problem of consciousness"? According to Jaynes, the problem arises out of
the disunity of what we perceive about ourselves and how others perceive us (or at least how
we perceive their perceptions of us). This difference between our in-the-world-ness and our
in-the-self-ness leads to the recognition that there is something unique inside of the self that is
not accessible to the outside world; that there is some special part of one's being that can be
known only through introspection. The "problem", then, is to understand what this special
thing that can be known only to the introspecting self is.
Historically, the problem has been treated as the mind-body problem, as exemplified by
Descartes, who thought that the mind was a separate substance from the body. This debate
has see-sawed back and forth between various views that embrace a substance-dualism, such
as Descartes, to variants of monism that argue for the body and the mind being one and the
same. To Jaynes, who embraces the "scientific-materialism" variant of monism, the "problem"
is to understand how inwardness, that unique quality which is discovered through
introspection, could have arisen out of matter, and when.
Jaynes discusses a number of solutions to the problem of consciousness, all of which he
finds unsatisfactory. 42 Particularly interesting is his discussion of why consciousness is not a
property of matter. The theory that consciousness is a property of matter holds that whatever
the more elaborate features of consciousness may be, they are ultimately traceable to the
activities of physical particles. The difficulty with this theory is that it is offered to explain how
one is conscious of things -- how one interacts with one's environment. That, according to
Jaynes, is not the question -- the question is how to account for the experience of introspection.
Particularly revealing is his dismissal of the notion that consciousness might be something that
"attached" itself onto the body from outside the realm of biology and evolution. This view,
according to Jaynes, presents itself as attractive because of the "chasm" between animal
behavior and the reflective and introspective functions of the mind. Alfred Wallace, the
co-developer of the theory of natural selection, was led to such a view. Jaynes dismisses it
thus:

35

Indeed, it is partly because Wallace insisted on spending the latter part of his life
searching in vain among the seances of spiritualists for evidence of such metaphysical
imposition that his name is not as well known as Darwin's as the discoverer of evolution
by natural selection. Such endeavors were not acceptable to the scientific Establishment.
To explain consciousness by metaphysical imposition seemed to be stepping outside the
rules of natural science.
And that indeed was the problem, how to explain
consciousness in terms of natural science alone. 43

Jaynes continues with a discussion of what consciousness is not -- what sorts of things
the mind can do in the absence of consciousness. 44 Consciousness is not reactivity, for example,
because one can react to a variety of environmental changes without taking note of them. It is
not necessary for concepts: we are, according to Jaynes, conscious of particular objects, and that
object (or its mental representation) stands for the concept. We do not have a concept of trees,
but rather images of particular trees that stand for the general concept. These images reside in
aptic structures, neurological pathways that serve specific functions, and are not a part of
consciousness -- they have no role in introspection, and such aptic structures could exist and
function in the absence of consciousness.
Consciousness is not needed for learning, nor for thinking nor for reasoning. It
actually interferes with Pavlovian conditioning, and it plays no role in operant conditioning.
Jaynes cites the interesting and testable case of the psychology students who were able to train
their professor right out the door of the lecture hall by displaying attentive behavior when the
professor neared the door and destructive behavior when he moved away from the door -- all
done without any awareness on the part of the professor.
More fascinating is the idea that consciousness is not required for problem solving.
Judging, the process of solving right/wrong problems, is not conscious. 45 Instead, it relies on
neural structures. The process consists of the giving of a struction, a determining tendency or
an instruction as to how to think about the problem, which disappears from consciousness
once it is given. The problem is "solved" by an aptic structure, whose solution then appears in
consciousness. As an example, consider the struction: "Think of an oak tree in summer." The
flow of images into consciousness that results from the struction is generated by non-conscious
structures; there is no introspection that will reveal how those images are produced.
Other kinds of problem solving are similarly devoid of conscious process. In a
generalized case, the problem is set up as a struction, which then disappears from
consciousness until some non-conscious process arrives at the solution. There are three stages
of creative thought: (1) a preparation period of conscious activity in which a complex struction
is formulated, along with attention to other relevant materials; (2) an incubation period in
which the entire matter disappears from consciousness; and (3) an illumination period, in
which the results of the non-conscious processes become conscious. Logic, according to Jaynes,

36

serves a propping-up role in the justification of the solution, but it is always invoked after the
solution appears.
One of the most important characteristics of consciousness is its assumption of a
"mental space" in which it functions. While there is no actual location in space of
consciousness, it often posits its location as somewhere behind the eyes. While out-of-body
experiences occur from a phenomenologically different location, the important point is that
consciousness is always localized.
While all of this material is prefatory in nature, it is essential to the establishment of
Jaynes' two most critical points: (1) that human life not terribly different from ours, and indeed
entire human civilizations, are possible in the absence of consciousness, and (2) that whatever
consciousness is, it is distinct from, and not explicable by, the neurological processes of the
brain.
If most of what we would think of as the "intellectual" functions of the mind have little
or nothing to do with consciousness, as Jaynes' discussion of what consciousness is not would
have us believe, then what could consciousness be? Recall that what consciousness does is
introspect -- it looks in upon the functioning of the mind and tries to understand itself. As
such, it is a sort of meta-mind that is generated out of other mental processes. But what
processes?
Consciousness, according to Jaynes, is related to, and developed out of certain features
of language use -- specifically, consciousness is generated out of a recursive metaphorization
process. It is a sort of on-going story telling, based upon metaphor stacked upon metaphor,
which gives rise to a mental "space" from which one views one's self. To understand the self,
one must understand the process of metaphor.
Language, according to Jaynes, is "an organ of perception, not simply a means of
communication."46 Metaphor is the most important constituent of language; it is the means by
which language expands. Metaphor is:
. . . the use of a term for one thing to describe another because of some kind of similarity
between them or between their relations to other things. 47

Jaynes argues that language expands synchronically -- meaning as a description of what

is happening in the present -- by answering the question "What is . . . " with the metaphor "It is
like . . . "48 This kind of linguistic growth generates more complex and definitive descriptions
of the world as it is experienced. But language also expands diachronically, back and forth
through time, describing what has happened and what will happen. This is the means by
which abstract concepts are generated, on the basis of information (gathered by aptic
structures) which is no longer observable. The lexicon of language is:

37

. . . a finite set of terms that by metaphor is able to stretch out over an infinite set of
circumstances, even to creating new circumstances thereby. (Could consciousness be
such a new creation?) 49

The understanding of things based upon familiarity is the way scientific theories work.
In the distant past, a thunderstorm would have been understood in terms of a battle, the
familiar sounds of swords crashing being the means by which the unfamiliar sounds in the sky
were understood. Today, with scientific theories about the material universe known by every
grade scholar, thunderstorms are understood as friction, heat, shock waves, and so forth. Folk
mythology led to one kind of understanding about the universe; folk science has led to
different metaphors, and a different understanding of what the universe is. The important
point is that what gets understood from experiences is a metaphorization of what is familiar -where folks babble the Iliad, that becomes the means by which experiences are assimilated;
where they babble the Principia, that too serves as the role model for thought. A scientific
theory is just such an understanding -- an experience or observation understood in terms of a
familiar model.
If understanding something amounts to arriving at a familiarizing metaphor, then there
is a serious problem for the understanding of consciousness: ". . . there is not and cannot be
anything in our immediate experience that is like immediate experience itself." 50 The problem
here is that consciousness is not a thing, but rather a process. It has only a metaphoric location,
and only metaphoric functions. If consciousness has this phenomenologistic existence, and
that existence is a metaphorizing process, then the question arises as to what it is a metaphor
of.
Metaphors have an underlying structure, the understanding of which is essential to the
understanding of the nature of consciousness. The metaphrand is the thing to be described; the
metaphier is the familiar thing to which the metaphrand is compared. In the case of "The ship
plows the sea," the metaphrand is the way the ship moves through the sea, and the metaphier
is the movement of a plow through the ground. More complex metaphors have a deeper
structure: paraphiers are ideas associated with the metaphier, and paraphrands are paraphiers
that become associated with the metaphrand.
Consider the example: "The snow blankets the ground." 51 The metaphrand is the
completeness and thickness of the snow cover; the metaphier is a blanket covering a bed. But
the metaphor gets its "punch" from its underlying structure: the paraphiers are the pleasing
thoughts that arise from the blanket covering the bed -- warmth, resting, and so on -- which
then become paraphrands of the metaphrand: the ideas of the earth being protected under the
snow, resting during winter, awakening in spring as from a long sleep.

38

Consciousness is the work of such lexical metaphors. Specifically, the subjective

conscious mind is an analog of the "real world".52 An analog is a kind of model in which every
feature of the model is generated by a similar feature in the thing being modeled. A map is an
example of an analog: every feature of the map is "generated" by a feature of the landscape the
map models -- every line on the map represents a road, or some other feature of the actual
landscape. Similarly, everything in consciousness is generated by some aspect of behavior in
the "real world". Just as a map is a representation, or model, of the landscape, consciousness is
a representation of experience. Consciousness is, however, a special kind of representation, in
that its contents are, and are only, things related to physical behavior. The generating process
is the work of lexical metaphors -- recursively metaphorized paraphiers of experience. This is
to say that the nuances of experiences -- those qualities of experience that are really reactions to
the experiences -- become the items that consciousness tries to understand. That is how the
awareness of being aware -- what consciousness is, according to Jaynes -- comes about.
Since consciousness is a "map" of one's behavior in the world, we can say that
consciousness is organized by the "real world", because only those things that were physical
behavior in the "real world" are possible candidates for inclusion in consciousness. This means
that what lies in consciousness reflects what is in the world, and those relationships that exist
in consciousness between perceptions mirror the relationships between things in the world.
What, then, does this analogized metaphorical process do, given the previous analysis
that it plays very little role in intellectual activities? Consciousness, when generated, is the
metaphrand of the paraphrands of experience -- it is the mental "space" in which the nuances of
behavior are experienced. But, when used, it is the metaphier of past experience -- the
repository of subjective qualities of experience, operating through aptic structures to modify
behavior. Consciousness allows one to situate one's self in relation to one's experience much as
a map allows one to situate one's self in relation to the surrounding terrain. Just as the traveler,
reflecting upon his or her position on the map and his or her relationship to the terrain could
use the map to plan his or her journey, consciousness allows the individual to reflect upon his
or her relationship to the world, and plan behavior accordingly.
How is the "real world" analogized within consciousness? As would be expected, the
features of the "real world" that are important to behavior are represented in the six features of
consciousness discussed by Jaynes. 53 Spatialization is that feature of consciousness that mimics
the spatial separation of objects in the behavioral world. Additionally, those things that are not
spatially separated in the behavioral world are "spatialized" in consciousness -- they are
thought of as being separated in space. The primary example of this is thinking about time;
when one thinks of successive events, according to Jaynes, one views them as separated in
space, as from left to right. Jaynes says:

39

But of course there is no left or right in time. There is only before and after, and these
do not have any spatial properties whatever -- except by analog. You cannot, absolutely
cannot think of time except by spatializing it. Consciousness is always a spatialization
in which the diachronic is turned into the synchronic, in which what has happened in
time is excerpted and seen in side-by-sideness. 54

Thoughts, ideas, and other physically intangible things are also "spatialized" in this
way. Nothing can be thought of except in spatial relationship to something else. The reason
for this is that consciousness is an analog of the physical world, and humankind's
representation in that world is a physical body that behaves in a physical context. Since,
according to Jaynes, "Every conscious thought that you are having in reading this book can . . .
be traced back to concrete actions in a concrete world," 55 only those things that are analogs of
physical behavior can become the subjects of consciousness.
This is highly reminiscent of Kant's transcendental aesthetic, in which Kant argues that
space and time are necessary conditions for the possibility of perceiving anything. They
function, according to Allison,
As a priori conditions of human sensibility, that is, as subjective conditions in terms of
which alone the human mind is capable of receiving the data for thought or experience.
56

The difference here is that Jaynes is collapsing time into space. Nonetheless, there is a
striking similarity between Jaynes and Kant on this point: that consciousness can only
assimilate those things that are present in the world in which behavior takes place. Jaynes, in
accordance with the materialism of his thesis, intends for this to mean that only those things
that are features of the physical world can have a place in thought. Factoring this metaphysical
position out of the discussion, I think it can be claimed that only those things that are the
subject of action can be the subject of thought -- that only when some behavior on the part of
the individual takes place (or can take place) can some feature of experience become conscious.
This behavior-oriented view of consciousness results in a theory that is strikingly
similar to the phenomenology of Husserl and later existentialists. The "bipolar field" of nous
and noumena, echoed throughout European and analytical philosophy as the subject-object
distinction, was understood by Sartre to mean that there is never self-consciousness, but always
consciousness in relation to an other. This will have important implications in the discussion of
mystical experience; I simply wish to note in passing that Jaynes' theory seems to situate itself
within the general line of thought: that in order for an awareness of something to take place,
that something must be distinct from, or at least viewed as distinct from, whatever has the
awareness of it.

40

Excerption is that feature of consciousness that accounts for the ability to pay attention
to only a small part of a thing at one time, never "seeing" the whole thing in its entirety. The
analog to behavior is obvious: if, for example, you are asked to think of a three-ring circus, you
perhaps think of tents, then specific animals, perhaps one or more rings, and so on, but you
never think of the whole thing in its entirety at once, just as you would not physically see
everything connected with a circus at one time.
In the previous discussion of concept formation, it was noted that one does not really
have a concept of "tree", but rather a series of images of particular trees. These images are
excerptions of actual experiences, whether those experiences are physical contacts with trees,
reading about trees, studying the biochemistry of auxins, or whatever. One could never be
conscious of everything one has experienced in relation to trees at one time, but rather would
be conscious of a series of images excerpted from the actual experiences.
One important characteristic of consciousness that results from excerption is that a
particular excerption may come to function as the stand-in for a generalization of all
excerptions of some kind of experience. Consider stereotypy as an example. A person
encounters several members of a particular race. This person excerpts from those experiences
certain features which come to "stand for" what is characteristic of all members of that race.
More abstractly, one might, through a repetitive excerption process, come to have a certain
image of a tree which then functions as a stand in for all trees -- one might, based upon one's
excerpted image, think of all trees as having leaves, as bearing fruit, as having holes in their
trunks inhabited by animals, and so on. Of course, upon careful reflection, one realizes that
these things are not true of all trees, but as an approximation, such an excerpt serves to inform
consciousness of what one would expect of a tree in the behavioral world.
If things are understood in terms of the excerpts made of them, then what is
understood about something depends upon what is excerpted from the experience of that
thing. The process of excerpting is influenced by many factors, especially one's feeling toward
the thing being excerpted. There is a dialectical relationship between excerption and affect,
such that things which are enjoyed are excerpted in ways distinctly different from things that
are not enjoyed, and the excerptions one has made of something influence how one will react
to future experiences of that same thing, or similar things. Regarding excerptions of
experiences of other people, Jaynes says:
How we excerpt other people largely determines the kind of world we feel we are living
in. Take for example one's relatives when one was a child. If we excerpt them as their
failures, their hidden conflicts, their delusions, well, that is one thing. But if we excerpt
them at their happiest, in their idiosyncratic delights, it is quite another world. Writers
and artists are doing in a controlled way what happens 'in' consciousness more
haphazardly.57

41

The interesting point here is that this dialectic of excerption has a great deal to do with
the way the world is perceived. One excerpts from one's experiences certain features, which in
turn control what gets excerpted from future experiences. By this process consciousness
generates a coherent view of the world, but it must be remembered that such a world-view is
heavily laden with affective and prejudicial components. One sees the world as one wants to
see it, and through the process of controlled excerption, experience is bound to verify the
"truth" of that world view because the excerption of experience is controlled by expectation,
desire, and so forth. The way one comes to view the world is from a view that is unique to the
one who has it, and it is inseparable from the emotional traits of the individual who forms it.
So, in the case of the two individuals observing the psychic bending a spoon, one sees
psychokinesis because it accords with the way he sees the world, while the other sees fraud
because psychokinesis does not accord with the world in which he feels he lives. One wonders
how narrow the gap might be between "feeling" one lives in a certain kind of world, and
actually living in that world. Here, as in other places, Jaynes flirts with, but never actually
admits to, an idealism in which consciousness and the world collapse into one another. Note
how different this position is from the phenomenological view noted previously. It would, at
this point, seem that there are incongruities between the excerption process and the
spatialization process.
Note also that excerption is not the same process as memory. Jaynes explains the
difference:
An excerpt of a thing is in consciousness the representative of the thing or event to
which memories adhere, and by which we can retrieve memories. If I wish to remember
what I was doing last summer, I first have an excerption of the time concerned, which
may be a fleeting image of a couple of months on the calendar, until I rest in an
excerption of a particular event, such as walking along a particular riverside. And from
there I associate around it and retrieve memories about last summer. This is what we
mean by reminiscence, and it is a particular conscious process which no animal is
capable of. Reminiscence is a succession of excerptions. Each so-called association in
consciousness is an excerption, an aspect or image, if you will, something frozen in time,
excerpted from the experience on the basis of personality and changing situational
factors. 58

It is, perhaps, by the process of excerption that symbols come into being. Symbols are
images that stand for experiences or concepts. The formation and function of symbols in
relation to religious experience will be discussed in greater detail later, but it is important to
take note that excerption is one process by which a particular can come to be a place-holder in
consciousness for something more general. On the basis of Jaynes' discussions, it is also

42

apparent that symbols will have different meanings for different people, and that individuals
will differ not only in how they symbolize things, but in what they are capable of symbolizing,
based upon what kinds of excerptions they make. Looking forward in the discussion, it should
come as no surprise that a portal experience, if it is what it claims to be -- an experience of a
reality distinct from what Jaynes calls the "real world" -- would be symbolized and understood
in differing ways by different people, and that some people, because of their affective attitudes,
will not be able to excerpt or symbolize the experience at all, and thus never have any
consciousness of it.
Two related features of consciousness are the Analog-I and the Metaphor-Me. The
analog-I is a sort of first-person imagination of the Self. It is, for example, through the analog-I
that one would imagine one's self walking down a particular road. When one speaks of one's
self concentrating on a problem, it is the analog-I that one is actually describing.
Corresponding to the first-person analog-I is the third-person metaphor-me. This
representation of the Self functions in the generation of what are called autoscopic images -visualizations of the self in some particular scene. If I am reminiscing about a fishing trip, and
see myself standing in a river, it is the metaphor-me that is making this kind of visualization
possible.
These two features of consciousness are important in the understanding of how the
individual relates to the world, for they are themselves excerpts of experience. Exactly what
part of behavior is excerpted into the analog-I determines what kinds of experiences are
possible for the individual, and what that individual's attitude will be to that experience.
Similarly, the understanding of how one relates to some kinds of experience is dependent upon
what gets excerpted into the metaphor-me. Consider, for example, the biblical descriptions of
Hell and torment: their impact derives from one's ability to picture one's self in the portrayed
scenes. In the absence of such self-representations, these portrayals of suffering are devoid of
impact.
Such is also the case with portal experiences: the ability to represent one's self in the
context of the experience is crucial to the ability to be conscious of the experience. Those whose
self-excerptions are incompatible with portal experiences will not be able to situate themselves
within the experience, and thus it will never, for them, be conscious. An interesting problem
arises in that some claims about the nature of portal experiences, and particularly the mystical
varieties thereof, suggest that a major component of the experience is the disappearance of the
self, or its dissolution or combination with the Self of some other being. This is a problem that
will be discussed later, but it does raise the issue of whether certain kinds of portal experiences
can be conscious at all.

43

While excerption gives snapshot views of certain experiences, in a broader perspective

narratization fits particular experiences into a consistent on-going picture of one's life.
According to Jaynes, we see ourselves as the main character in a continuous, on-going story.
New situations are perceived in accordance with that story, and those that do not fit into the
general story line are discarded. This is to say that we selectively include or exclude
experiences and aspects of experiences depending upon how well they accord with the mental
image we have of ourselves. Here again we see this dialectical relationship between the self
and the world, in which the world to some extent affects one's attitudes, which in turn
determine what features of the world interact with consciousness.
Narratization is also the process by which we assign causes to our behavior.
Consciousness is always able to come up with some explanation of why we do certain things.
The thief might explain his or her behavior because of poverty, while the scientist explains his
or hers as pursuit of truth. The ability to spatialize one's behavior is intertwined with the
ability to generate explanations for that behavior. But it is not just behavior that undergoes this
explaining process:
But it is not just our own analog 'I' that we are narratizing; it is everything else in
consciousness. A stray fact is narratized to fit with some other stray fact. A child cries
in the street and we narratize the event into a mental picture of a lost child and a parent
searching for it. A cat is up in a tree and we narratize the event into a picture of a dog
chasing it there. Or the facts of mind as we can understand them into a theory of
consciousness. 59

The process of making excerpts and narratizations compatible with one another is
conciliation. This is the equivalent in consciousness of the perceptual process of assimilation.
Assimilation is the ability to recognize objects, even though they are never perceived in exactly
the same way. One might assimilate a particular visual image as "my pencil", even though one
had never seen it in exactly that situation, or from exactly that perspective. There is a certain
scheme that organizes perceptions of objects into recognizable form, such that a new
perception is recognized as a certain object depending upon which scheme it fits.
In consciousness, a similar process occurs. Using Jaynes' example, if you were to think
of a mountain meadow and a tower at the same time, you might conciliate the excerpts by
visualizing the tower rising from the meadow. On the other hand, if you try to think of a
mountain meadow and ocean at the same time, it is likely that conciliation would not occur,
and you would flip back and forth between two images instead of seeing the two as one whole.
What this really means is that there are certain constraints on the ability of
consciousness to bring different kinds of ideas or images together. Were one to narratize one's
self walking along a mountain path, excerpts of one's visual perceptions such as trees, streams

44

and so on would all fit into the picture. But other images might not -- dead fish floating in the
stream from polluted water could not fit into the image, they would have to be brought
together by narratization (that is, by an explaining process). The consequence is that there are
certain kinds of experience that "mesh" with one another, and certain kinds that require some
effort to bring them together. Jaynes says that there are "principles of compatibility" which
determine what kinds of images can be conciliated, and those principles are based upon "the
structure of the world." 60
Here is where the two kinds of views that Jaynes has been espousing about
consciousness collide with each other. In the case of spatialization, Jaynes seems to be arguing
that experiences are structured by what is behaviorally possible -- for Jaynes, this means what
happens in the material world. On the other hand, there is a strong thread running through
his discussions of excerption, narratization, and conciliation suggesting that there is no direct
contact with the "real world", but rather everything is mediated by one's attitude toward the
experience. Jaynes' "out" is that no one actually believes that what is in consciousness is
actually the thing itself:
In all these instances, we find no difficulty or particular paradox in the fact that these
excerpts are not the things themselves, although we talk as if they were. Actually we
are never conscious of things in their true nature, only the excerpts we make of them. 61

This, of course, is the Kantian move: to say that although we never have access to the
actual thing-in-itself, we have a set of perceptions of those things that are organized on a
schema based upon the "real world" that insures the accuracy of those perceptions. Kant relied
upon a set of a priori categories to provide that organizing schema, while Jaynes relies upon
the structure of the physical world to organize perceptual data. Where Kant appealed to
transcendental deduction, Jaynes appeals to materialism.
The same problem arises for this theory as arises for the categories -- how did they get
there in the first place? If, according to Jaynes, there is nothing in consciousness that was not
in behavior first, then how does the organizing schema get there if there is no schema to
organize it in the first place? The answer is that language provides that organization;
remember that all these functions of consciousness are built out of a recursive metaphorization
process, which involves making repeated associations between the familiar and the unfamiliar.
There is no fixed schema comparable to the Kantian categories -- there is instead a wealth of
data built up out of metaphorization out of which the schema takes form. Those
metaphorizations grow out of experience in the "real world", so what is in consciousness is a
map of what the physical body has experienced. The limits of consciousness are the limits of

45

what can be metaphorized out of experience. Those limits, then, are defined by physical,
cultural, and individual constraints.
Since Jaynes has characterized consciousness as introspection, it is not surprising that
the features of consciousness he has identified are all concerned with creating a "mental world"
in which the individual can introspect. In this respect Jaynes has simply re-inscribed the
mind-body problem. However, Jaynes argues that there are not two separate "worlds", but
rather that the mental world is generated out of the physical world, the mental bearing the
same relationship to the physical as a map bears to the landscape. This mental world provides
the means for the individual to be placed within the context of experience, and to reflect upon
the relationship of him/her self to those experiences. The "barrier" between mental and
physical is crossed, on the one hand, by behavior in which thoughts are translated into physical
action by a process that is not well explained within Jaynes' writing. On the other hand,
language's metaphorization process provides the means by which behavioral experiences are
analogized into mental contents.
If the hallmark of consciousness is this self-reflective capability and not the intellectual
or problem-solving capacities of the mind, and if consciousness is of recent origin within the
last few thousand years, then there have existed entire civilizations of people who were not
conscious. To understand the difference between these non-conscious "bicameral" civilizations
and the present state of affairs, it is necessary to examine the workings of the bicameral mind,
and how it differs from the subjectively conscious mind.
Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind is derived from a number of studies on the
functional and anatomical relationship between the right and left cerebral hemispheres. In a
nutshell, his theory is that instead of a subjective self and the ability to picture that self in
varying situations, what directed the behavior of bicameral humankind were commands
transmitted from the right hemisphere to the left hemisphere, perceived by the left hemisphere
as voices. So, where subjectively conscious individual's behavior is directed by the conscious
image of him/herself and his or her surroundings, the behavior of bicameral humankind is
directed by what he understood to be the voices of the gods.
The bicameral mind theory is an intricate and complex interweaving of physiological,
psychological and historical data. It will be discussed in some detail, as I consider it to be the
only reasonable alternative theory of the origin of consciousness to the one I will develop in
this study. It addresses what I believe are the major issues surrounding the topic, and it
addresses those issues by taking them seriously, rather than by discrediting them. Much of
what I will be presenting later in this study will contrast with the ideas developed by Jaynes,
and understanding Jaynes will be essential to an understanding of those contrasts.

46

Jaynes' primary example of bicamerality is the civilization described in the Iliad. He

contends that there is no consciousness evident in the Iliad, as there are no words for mental
acts. Words such as psyche, thumos and noos, which in a later age became associated with
various functions of the conscious mind, stood for strictly physical, behavioral things. 62 The
Iliad also contains no concept of the will; instead, the characters follow the commands given
them by the voices or visions of the gods. All actions of the characters are directed by gods;
there is no self-reflection or thought on the part of the characters as to what they should do.
Such contemplation lies within the sphere of subjective consciousness; in the case of the Iliadic
characters,
. . . the gods take the place of consciousness. The beginnings of actions are not in
conscious plans, reasons and motives; they are in the actions and speeches of the gods.
To another, a man seems to be the cause of his own behavior. But not to the man
himself. 63

Jaynes further claims that the authorship of the Iliad itself was not the work of conscious
minds. Instead, it was dictated by similar god-voices. That it is written in poetic meter rather
than in conversational dialogue is offered as support for this claim. According to Jaynes, the
function of meter in a poem is to "drive the electrical activity of the brain,"

64

and thus the

poem itself represents a creative process initiated by god-voices and sustained by the
neurological activity produced by its style.
What, then, were these voices that were the minds of the Iliadic civilization? These
god-voices were heard as clearly by the Iliadics as voices are heard today by schizophrenics
and those with certain neurological disturbances. The "gods" were:
. . . organizations of the central nervous system and can be regarded as personae in the
sense of poignant consistencies through time, amalgams of parental or admonitory
images.65

The "gods" are hallucinations,66 produced by the nervous systems of those who hear
their voices:
Usually they are only seen and heard by the particular heroes they are speaking to.
Sometimes they come in mists or out of the gray sea or river, or from the sky, suggesting
visual auras preceding them. But at other times, they simply occur. 67

Jaynes' point in all of this is that what directed the behavior of pre-conscious
humankind was based in the neurological structure of the brain. That directing power was
perceived by those persons as another "person" -- a "god" who appeared to them and issued

47

commands in a way which Jaynes compares to Freud's superego directing the ego. The
behavior of the characters of the Iliad, and indeed of those members of the civilizations existing
at the time it was written, was directed by the nervous system without any conscious reflection
or awareness on the part of the individual. He or she simply followed orders as "noble
automatons who knew not what they did." Jaynes sums up:
In distinction to our own subjective conscious minds, we call the mentality of the
Myceneans a bicameral mind. Volition, planning, initiative is organized with no
consciousness whatever and then 'told' to the individual in his familiar language,
sometimes with the visual aura of a familiar friend or authority figure or 'god', or
sometimes as a voice alone. The individual obeyed these hallucinated voices because he
could not 'see' what to do by himself. 68

Jaynes' hypothesis is that before the existence of subjective, reflective, introspecting

consciousness, the mind of humankind consisted of an "executive" god and a "follower"
human. This kind of mentality is incomprehensible to the reflecting conscious mind. Jaynes
metaphorizes the "follower" as the almost unconscious act of driving a car while thinking of
something else -- the conscious mind is not involved with the car, the act of driving being
virtually automatic. The difference is that if something novel were to happen, say something
blocking the road ahead, the conscious mind would quickly intervene in the automatic process.
Not so for the bicameral mind; there is no consciousness to intervene. What would happen in
that situation is a voice would be heard, directing the driver to take some action.
This voice, the bicameral "executive", is heard as clearly as the voice of the person
standing next to you. There is no deliberation on the part of the follower, there is no doubt or
question about the authenticity of the voice, there is no wonder or alarm, no thought such as
"Who is this telling me to do this?", because these are all reflective features of the subjectively
conscious mind. There is no notion of the Self to take offense at being ordered about, and there
is no mind-space from which to reflect upon the nature of the voice.
Is this to say that the bicameral mind is entirely robot-like? Of course not; in the
beginning of this chapter, those mental functions noted as not requiring consciousness are all
available to the bicameral mind. The difference is that while subjectively conscious humankind
can reflect upon the relationship of actions to the rest of the world, bicameral humankind can
only be a participant in that world.
Auditory hallucinations are not uncommon even in subjectively conscious minds. They
sometimes occur in times of stress, such as the hearing of a parent's voice offering comfort.
Such voices may also be heard in response to "persistent problems." The solution to a problem
may appear in the form of a voice or visual image. Studies have shown that such
hallucinations are often localized, as coming from some particular spot, and are often voices of

48

some familiar person. Another significant feature is that such hallucinations often occur during
the ages in which the onset of schizophrenia is common. 69
The issues raised by schizophrenic hallucinations are important, both in the present
discussion of Jaynes' theory, and in upcoming discussions of mystical experience. These voices
vary in form and content: they may babble meaninglessly, sometimes in a foreign language,
they may be of familiar people or god-like entities, they may be supportive or antagonistic or
both, and they may occur in multiple as a dialogue.
In most cases, the voices are localized -- they come from some specific location.
Interestingly, many patients associate "good" voices as coming from the upper right, while the
"bad" ones come from the lower left; a similar association is made with god-voices in some
cultures.70 What is important in this, according to Jaynes, is that:
. . . the nervous system of a patient makes simple perceptual judgments of which the
patient's 'self' is not aware. And these . . . may even be transposed into voices that seem
prophetic. A janitor coming down a hall may make a slight noise of which the patient is
not conscious. But the patient hears his hallucinated voice cry out, "Now someone is
coming down the hall with a bucket of water." Then the door opens, and the prophecy
is fulfilled. 71

Thus the hallucinated voice gains authority and obedience from the patient. In this
case, Jaynes is arguing that there exists some kind of threshold, below which stimuli that are
perceived by the nervous system do not enter consciousness. We will see later that Jung uses
the same argument -- that a certain amount of "energy" is needed to make mental contents
conscious, and those things that do not have the requisite "energy" are perceived
unconsciously. 72 What is happening in the case of the schizophrenic's hallucinated voice is that
the unconscious perception is becoming conscious through the voice.
Visual hallucinations, while not as common in schizophrenic patients, can be just as
vivid. Deaf patients often have hallucinations of sign-language. These sign-language
communications take the place of auditory hallucinations, performing the same function as the
hearing of voices.
An interesting category of experience, called "acute twilight states", may be
accompanied by hallucinations of a "religious nature". In these states, entire scenes may
appear to the individual, replacing the sensory world entirely. This is important in relation to
many classes of portal experience, particularly mystical experiences. The whole question of
how mystical experiences, visions and so forth relate to schizophrenic hallucinations presents
many complex problems. For the moment, it appears that Jaynes would place these kinds of
experiences in the same category as schizophrenic hallucinations.

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Jaynes proclaims, "Hallucinations must have some innate structure in the nervous
system underlying them."73 He bases this upon the observation that people who have been
deaf from birth or very early childhood sometimes report hearing voices, speaking intelligibly
to them. One wonders what 'intelligible' could be if a congenitally deaf person had never
learned spoken language! Jaynes cites the case of a congenitally deaf woman with self-inflicted
guilt feelings about a therapeutic abortion, who heard the voice of God accusing her. How, one
must ask, could such a person have understood to whom the voice belonged, let alone what it
was saying, having never heard a spoken sound?
The details of this and other cases cited by Jaynes are not made clear, but one could
propose an explanation: that what was understood may have been psychologically equivalent
to understanding a spoken voice, but phenomenologically different in a way that cannot be
characterized, because there is no way the same individual could know, and not know, the
sounds and meanings of spoken language. The psychological effect on the woman in question,
who had presumably read about God and read literature alleging that God disapproves of
abortion, could have been the same as if a voice had been heard; the same neurological
pathways might have responded, although no voice was actually heard.
This claim of Jaynes' -- that auditory hallucinations must be neurological in origin -- is
important in two respects. First, Jaynes will argue that the production of voices in the
bicameral mind was due to the action of certain neurological structures, and the function of
those neurological structures was responsible for the nature of the voices. Second, it will of
course be the claim of this study that while there must be neurological structures associated
with the perception of such 'hallucinatory' voices, it is not the case that they must be of
neurological origin. If Jaynes' claim that the voices must be neurological in origin does not
stand up, and it would appear that there are straightforward reasons to be suspicious of the
evidence for his claim, then what he claims henceforth about the bicameral mind is also in
doubt. We shall allow Jaynes his italicized claim and proceed with an examination of the
theory, and then return to the impact of the possible vacuousness of that claim.
Jaynes considers the hallucinations of present day schizophrenic patients, and the
voices of the gods heard by bicameral humankind, to have the same origin:

50

If we are correct in assuming that schizophrenic hallucinations are similar to the

guidance of gods in antiquity, then there should be some common physiological
instigation in both instances. This, I suggest, is simply stress. In normal people, as we
have mentioned, the stress threshold for release of hallucinations is extremely high;
most of us need to be over our heads in trouble before we would hear voices. But in
psychosis-prone persons, the threshold is somewhat lower . . . This is caused, I think, by
the buildup in the blood of breakdown products of stress-produced adrenalin which the
individual is, for genetic reasons, unable to pass through the kidneys as fast as a normal
person. 74

Jaynes speculates that during the era of the bicameral mind, the threshold for
hallucinations was drastically lower than it is today. Any occasion that required the making of
a decision, which Jaynes equates with stress, was sufficient to bring on the voices of the gods.
Situations that could not be resolved by habit, or that presented a conflict between normal
behavioral patterns, generated sufficient stress for voices to be heard. The function of the voice
is to resolve the stress-producing situation by causing some behavioral action that changes the
situation.
Why is it that hallucinated voices should exert such a profound effect upon the behavior
of the individual who hears them? Sound is a very special kind of sense modality -- it cannot
be turned off, closed out or ignored. Jaynes argues that there is an intimate link between
hearing and obedience: that in order to hear and understand someone, there is a sense in which
one's own identity has to be suspended. One must, for a brief moment, become the other
person. It is, according to Jaynes, the moment of "dawdling identity" in which language is
understood. Thus, to understand a command, there must be some brief moment in which the
issuing of the command by someone else must be the issuing of the command to yourself.
The parameters that influence this kind of interaction are the spatial distance between the
speaker and listener, and the opinion which the listener has of the speaker. The closer the
distance between the two, the more controlling the voice will be; the less the listener is able to
resist the authority of the speaker and the more submissive the listener will be to the will of the
speaker. Opinion serves as a "filter of influence" over the language of others; the more highly
one holds another in esteem, the easier it will be for his language to be controlling.
Now in the case of hallucinated voices, there is no spatial distance because there is no
physical source for the voice. There is no way the listener can put himself in perspective to the
voice; no way for him or her to understand the separation between himself and the source of
the command. If, in addition, one were to be a member of a bicameral culture, where such
voices are commonly regarded as the doings of superior beings, then one would likely offer
little in the way of resistance to the authority of such hallucinated voices. 75 Thus, in a bicameral
culture, "To hear is to obey." The hearing of voices is volition or will in the bicameral mind.

51

It is interesting that Jaynes opts for a pharmacological cause behind the hearing of
voices. He is focusing upon the role of catecholamines (such as adrenalin) in the etiology of
schizophrenic hallucinations. Jaynes also supposes the same etiology for the voices of the gods
in bicameral humankind. Since the present study will focus upon a different class of chemical
substances, it is quite possible that what Jaynes describes is fundamentally different from the
experiences described in this study. It is, of course, impossible to determine the blood levels of
the various neurologically active substances in persons living several thousand years ago. But
phenomenologically, at least, it appears that what Jaynes describes is very similar to the cases
of portal experience described in this study. Mystical visions of religious figures, astral
projections and other visual and auditory perceptions of realities allegedly different from
sensory experience seem to be similar in both form and content to what Jaynes describes.
While it would be difficult if not impossible to develop any evidence that would decide the
issue, it is worth keeping in mind that the kinds of experiences I have classified as "portal"
might be different in etiology than what Jaynes has described as "schizophrenic".
Physiologically, the bicameral mind is best understood along the lines of the right brain
- left brain model of cerebral hemisphere functioning and differences. 76 Since the hearing of
voices is of paramount importance in the bicameral mind, the discussion further focuses upon
the development and function of the speech areas of the brain.
There are three primary speech areas, all found on the left hemisphere: Wernicke's area,
Broca's area, and the supplementary motor cortex. Of the three areas, Wernicke's area is the
most critical for speech. These speech areas are aptic structures -- functional areas of cells and
interconnections that operate without the intervention of consciousness. Now an interesting
problem arises: most of the critical functions of the brain -- regulation of breathing, vision, and
so on -- are represented bilaterally. The function of a special area of the brain on the left is
duplicated by a corresponding area on the right, such that disease or destruction of one area
would leave the other intact and functional. But not so for the speech areas; at first glance, the
function of the left speech areas is not duplicated on the right. Damage to left speech areas
produces, to varying degrees, permanent damage to speech faculties. Jaynes asks,
The situation is then one where the areas on the right hemisphere that correspond to the
speech areas have seemingly no easily observable major function. Why this relatively
less essential part of the brain? Could it be that these silent 'speech' areas on the right
hemisphere had some function at an earlier stage in man's history that they now do not
have?77

Jaynes' answer boils down to this: that the selection pressures responsible for this arose
out of bicameral civilization; that the left hemisphere was used for the development of human

52

language, while the corresponding areas on the right hemisphere served the language of the
gods. In the human brain, Wernicke's area is connected to the area on the right hemisphere
anatomically corresponding to it by a tract of fibers called the anterior commissure. It is Jaynes'
contention that the voices of the gods were organized in the right "Wernicke's area" and then
transmitted via the anterior commissures to the left Wernicke's area, where they were heard as
speech. Jaynes offers five sets of observations in support of this claim. 78
(1) Both hemispheres understand language. Experimental evidence indicates that those
who have suffered damage to left brain speech areas can understand language, though cannot
speak. The Wada test, which involves anesthetization of the left speech areas, produces similar
results. Commissurotomy patients, and those who have had the entire left hemisphere
removed, demonstrate language understanding by the right hemisphere. If Jaynes is right in
his claim that the right hemisphere formulated the voices of the gods, then the ability to
understand the language in which those voices were formulated would be of obvious
importance.
(2) There is some remaining, vestigial "god-like" functioning in the right hemisphere.
Since the voices of the gods did not involve actual spoken voices, Broca's area and the
supplemental motor cortex need not be considered. We might expect, then, that stimulation of
the right "Wernicke's area" would produce effects similar to the hearing of god-voices. Such
experiments were carried out by Penfield in the early 1960's. These studies were carried out on
epileptic patients prior to the removal of damaged brain tissue; the damaged areas were not
associated with the speech areas in any of the experimental subjects. The experiments
consisted of electrical stimulation of the right "Wernicke's area".
The results are fascinating. Many patients reported the hearing of voices, albeit "hazy"
voices, and a feeling of "losing touch with reality." Often the voices could be heard but not
understood; in some cases the voices caused the patient to be reminded of someone, or to have
a severe emotional reaction. The voices were often understood, though not clearly heard, as
admonitions or recriminations against the patient, often in the person of a parent. In many
cases, though, the voices were clear, and localized. Some patients heard music instead of
voices, and others also experienced visual effects. But in all cases, the sounds were actually
heard, as clearly as they would have been if spoken.
Jaynes notes that a significant characteristic of these experiences is their otherness; that
they all involved a feeling of being acted upon by someone (or something) outside the patient.
Penfield and his collaborators concluded that these experiences were flash-backs to forgotten
past experiences, and that the failure to recognize the speaker in most cases was due to
forgetfulness on the part of the patient. Jaynes claims otherwise:

53

But far more representative of the data as a whole is the patient's persistence under
questioning that these experiences could not be called memories . . . because of this, and
because of the general absence of personal active images, which are the usual kind of
memories that we have, I suggest that the conclusions of Penfield and Perot are
incorrect . . . Rather the data lead away from this, to hallucinations that distill
particularly admonition experiences, and perhaps become embodied or rationalized into
actual experiences in those patients who reported them on being questioned. 79

This evidence suggests that the right "Wernicke's area" is indeed able to activate, if not
organize on its own, hallucinations that appear to contemporary patients with the same
qualities as the visions of the gods appeared to the characters of the Iliad. From this we are to
infer that the right "Wernicke's area", in bicameral humankind, could have generated the voices
and accompanying hallucinatory effects of Iliadic visions. At the very least the evidence shows
that the anatomical and physiological mechanisms for the production of hallucinations similar
to the visions of the Iliad are still present and functional in the brain of contemporary human
beings.
(3) The right and left hemispheres can behave independently. Most of this evidence
comes from work with "split brain" patients who have undergone complete commissurotomy
for the treatment of epilepsy. One must tread carefully when examining this evidence, if for no
other reason than that it is obtained from patients who are severely ill, and it is not clear what
effect the general illness might have on normal brain function. 80 Nonetheless, there is plentiful
evidence to suggest, if not convince, that the right and left hemispheres are capable of
independent action and thought, and additionally that they think and act in different ways.
These differences form the crux of Jaynes' argument for the "bicamerality" of ancient
humankind, the claim essentially being that the "god" and the "man", while being anatomically
the same individual, were functionally different persons.
Patients who undergo this procedure immediately show defects in speech and other
functions to varying degrees. After a year or so of recovery, however, the patients appear to
behave and function normally; they report that they sense nothing wrong. Only under
carefully controlled tests do the oddities of brain function appear.
Consider the case of reading. When one looks at a printed page, all of the visual
information on the right is transmitted to the left hemisphere, while the information on the left
is transmitted to the right hemisphere. In persons with intact commissures, this information is
relayed back and forth, so that both hemispheres have access to all of the visual field. Not so in
commissurotomized patients. On a simple level, the patient only reports seeing what is in his
right visual field. What is in the left field is just not there. But, since the right hemisphere has
no speech articulation capabilities, it might be that the right hemisphere "sees" and
understands, but simply cannot speak.

54

This is indeed the case. If, for example, a test is devised where different objects are
viewed in the right and left visual fields, the right hand can point to the correct word for the
object seen on the right, while the left hand can point to the correct word for a different object
seen on the left. The subjectively conscious "self", being linguistically based and therefore
"located" in the left hemisphere, sees one thing; the right hemisphere, while not linguistically
articulate, sees and responds to another thing. The brain, at least in split brain patients,
functions as though there are, "Two persons in one head."
Further, if questioned about his actions in the above experiment, the patient can explain
what his right hand did, and what he saw that made him or her do it. But he is unable to
explain the actions of his left hand. There is no awareness of what the right hemisphere is
doing, or why. The right hemisphere is also capable of emotional responses which go
undetected by the left. If, for example, during a series of pictures in the above experiment a
picture that would normally elicit an emotional response (a nude model, for example) is
flashed to the right hemisphere, the patient will show physiological responses such as
blushing, but the left hemisphere has no awareness of what precipitated the response. It
appears that the right hemisphere is the normal triggering entity for emotional responses. In
test situations, if the right hemisphere is taught the correct answer, and then "hears" the left
make a mistake, it will respond with behavior suggesting disapproval:
It is not simply a way of speaking to say that the right hemisphere is annoyed at the
erroneous vocal responses of the other. And so perhaps the annoyance of Pallas Athene
when she grasped Achilles by his yellow hair and twisted him away from murdering his
king. Or the annoyance of Yahweh with the iniquities of his people. 81

Two points in connection with Jaynes' general theory arise here. First, Jaynes has
claimed that nothing is capable of becoming conscious that is not behavioral. If consciousness
amounts to a process analogous to speech, then it makes sense that only the left hemisphere
supports linguistically based conscious awareness, since only the left hemisphere is capable of
speech. On the other hand, if consciousness is a mind-space built up out of a recursive
metaphorization process, then it just might be the case that while the right hemisphere is not
able to express itself linguistically, it may still support some kind of consciousness. The
experimental evidence supports the conclusion that the right hemisphere has behavioral
capacities. Simply because it does not generate speech does not mean that it does not generate
behavior, and it also does not mean that it is incapable of metaphorization. Therefore, there
may indeed be a species of mind resident in the right hemisphere.
Second, these observations are all carried out in commissurotomized patients, and it
does not appear that commissurotomies were routinely performed in bicameral humankind.

55

Jaynes will later claim that because of the brain's plasticity, the brain of bicameral humankind
could have been organized differently, such that the two hemispheres had a greater
independence than in contemporary humankind.
(4) The differences in cognitive function between right and left hemispheres echo the
differences between god and humankind. The evidence suggests that the "man" side was the
linguistically articulate left, while the "god" side was the speechless right, and there are vestiges
of such differences in the functioning of the brain in contemporary humankind. Regarding the
function of the "god", Jaynes states:
The function of the gods was chiefly the guiding and planning of action in novel
situations. The gods size up problems and organize action according to an ongoing
pattern or purpose, resulting in intricate bicameral civilizations, fitting all the disparate
parts together, planting times, harvest times . . . all the vast putting together of things in
a grand design, and the giving of the directions to the neurological man in his verbal
analytical sanctuary in the left hemisphere. 82

If this is the case, then we would expect to find vestiges of that organizational function
in contemporary humankind. The clinical and experimental evidence supports the claim that
the right hemisphere functions in pattern recognition. Patients who have injuries or surgical
damage to the right hemisphere are unable to solve maze puzzles, while those with similar
damage to the left do not show impaired maze skills.
The Koh's Block Test is often used to diagnose right hemisphere damage. It consists of
matching up a set of blocks with a set of geometrical drawings. Damage to the right
hemisphere renders this test impossible. Further, in Commissurotomy patients, the left hand
can normally do the test, while the right hand cannot. Regarding these results, Jaynes says:
The inference has thus been drawn from these and other studies that the right
hemisphere is more involved in synthetic and spatial-constructive tasks while the left
hemisphere is more analytical and verbal. The right hemisphere, perhaps like the gods,
sees parts as having meaning only within a context; it looks at wholes. While the left or
dominant hemisphere, like the man side of the bicameral mind, looks at parts
themselves. 83

Similar results have been found in electroencephalographic studies in normal subjects:

when asked to perform pattern-recognition tests, the electrical activity of the right hemisphere
increases, whereas verbal and analytic tests result in increased electrical activity in the left
hemisphere.
One specific function critical to the survival of bicameral humankind was the ability to
quickly determine if an individual he encountered was hostile or friendly. Jaynes designed an

56

experiment to test the hypothesis that the right hemisphere was capable of carrying out that
kind of recognition. The experiment, in its crudest form, involves a set of two faces that are
mirror images of each other. One side of the face shows a happy expression, the other side
shows a sad expression. In the majority of cases (over 80%), when asked which face is happy
or sad, the respondent chooses the drawing whose left side illustrates the characteristic. These
findings, along with more sophisticated versions of the experiment, suggest that it is the right
hemisphere which recognizes hostility or friendliness on the part of a stranger. In fact, it
appears that the right hemisphere is where nearly all facial recognition takes place. As Jaynes
comments, "And to tell friend from non-friend in novel situations was one of the functions of a
god."84
(5) Current scientific evidence about the nature of the brain suggests a high degree of
plasticity; that is, the structure of the brain is not firmly fixed genetically, but is subject to a
great deal of mutability. This is really Gerald Edelman's area of expertise, and will be
examined in more detail in the discussion of his work.
Jaynes invokes this evidence in order to explain how it is possible over a relatively short
period of time, that there could have occurred the kind of changes in the brain that would
allow the transition from a bicameral mind to a subjectively conscious mind. Specifically, the
problem is to understand why the voices of the gods have all but disappeared. In summary,
the plasticity argument is that it is not the case that specific parts of the brain perform
genetically dedicated functions; rather, it is the case that there is a large amount of redundancy
and mutability of function. The brain's information processing schemes are mostly learned,
rather than hard-wired.
The physiological advantage for this is obvious: injury to certain parts of the brain
means that to some extent, other structures can take over for the damaged parts. But the
degree of redundancy is astonishing: in the optic tract of the cat, for example, 98% of the fibers
can be cut and the animal can still recognize objects! 85 There are clinical cases where a person
has appeared normal for his/her entire life, and upon autopsy it has been discovered that what
were thought to be essential structures in the brain are congenitally absent.
Jaynes' argument from this evidence is that individuals who grew up in bicameral
civilizations were taught to behave in certain ways, which included hearing the voices of the
gods. Later civilizations placed pressures upon their members not to do so. These social
pressures in turn altered the relationship between right and left hemispheres, such that what
was clearly heard by bicameral humankind is all but absent in subjectively conscious
humankind.
The function of the bicameral mind was to provide a means of social control. Out of
that mechanism of control evolved the possibility of civilization. Civilization evolved out of

57

primate group behavior, and rode on the coat-tails of the evolution of language out of primate
visual and auditory calls. Jaynes has done considerable work on the evolution of language,
and I do not plan to summarize that work here. What is important for this study is to
understand how the bicameral mind worked, how the change from bicamerality to
consciousness occurred, and what the significance of that change was. In the discussion that
follows, I am omitting considerable information as to how the process of civilization occurred,
and I am omitting the archeological and anthropological evidence cited by Jaynes for this
hypothesis.
The auditory hallucinations characterized as the voices of the gods may have originated
with the hearing of commands from a king or leader. Rather than being like tape-delayed
playbacks, the hallucinations reflected not so much what the leader said, but what was
necessary to continue the survival of the group; the leader himself hallucinated voices telling
him or her what to say and do, based upon the same need -- the survival of the group. We
have seen that the right hemisphere is responsible for the discerning of patterns and meanings;
if that is the case, then the voices of the gods were really instructions from the right hemisphere
as to how to maintain the pattern of social life. Comments Jaynes:
I have suggested that auditory hallucinations may have evolved as a side effect of
language and operated to keep individuals persisting at the longer tasks of tribal life.
Such hallucinations began in the individual's hearing a command from himself or from
his chief. There is thus a very simple continuity between such a condition and the more
complex auditory hallucinations which I suggest were the cues of social control in
Eynan and which originated in the commands and speech of the king. 86

There is also a continuity, and evidence for such continuity, from hallucinated voices of
the king, through hallucinated voices of dead kings, through hallucinated voices of deified
kings, to the hearing of hallucinated voices of deities. Much of this depends upon the religious
tradition of the culture. But it is clear that the function of the bicameral mind was to maintain
the social order; more precisely, to maintain the pattern of life in which it found itself. Novel
situations were perceived and analyzed by the right hemisphere, and heard as the voices of
those in authority by the left:
. . .the gods were at the same time a mere side effect of language evolution and the most
remarkable feature of the evolution of life since the development of Homo sapiens himself
. . . the gods were in no sense 'figments of the imagination' of anyone. They were man's
volition. They occupied his nervous system, probably his right hemisphere, and from
stores of admonitory and preceptive experience, transmuted this experience into
articulated speech which then 'told' the man what to do. 87

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As long as there were patterns that the right hemisphere could discern, the bicameral
mind functioned well. But by the year 2000 BC, the settled patterns of bicameral civilizations
were all but destroyed.
Bicameral civilizations are inherently unstable. They depend upon a well-established
authoritarian hierarchy to establish the patterns that are observed by the right hemisphere.
This hierarchy is not maintained by fear or repression, nor by law or force; these methods are
only effective upon a subjectively conscious mind that has a concept of self in relation to
experience. The bicameral mind has no individuality or will of its own; its thoughts and
actions are the province of the gods. According to Jaynes, bicameral civilizations were, at least
between members of the same culture, probably the most peaceful form of social existence:
there was no "self" from whose perspective hatred, jealousy or mistrust could be felt.
Given that the whole psychological perspective of bicameral humankind was directed
by the patterns discerned in his surroundings by the right hemisphere, what would happen if
those patterns were disrupted, such that the right hemisphere could no longer identify a social
pattern in need of preservation? This, according to Jaynes, is exactly what led to the collapse of
bicameral civilizations, and the awakening of the subjectively conscious mind.
One of the factors leading to the collapse of bicameral civilization was the development
of trade between different cultures. Two individuals meeting from different bicameral cultures
would, according to Jaynes, probably be directed by their voices to pursue friendly relations.
This could lead to an exposure to different kinds of culture -- different gods, different patterns,
and so on. In times of peace and prosperity, this could result in a mutual understanding, with
the gods enjoying mutual respect for each other; meaning, of course, that the voices heard by
the individuals involved were supportive and friendly.
But suppose one or both of these individuals were from a culture where things were not
peaceful or prosperous. The gods, meaning the right hemisphere, would detect the threatening
pattern and command the individuals to all-out war. About this, Jaynes says:
There is thus no middle ground in intertheocracy relations. Admonitory voices echoing
kings, viziers, parents, etc., are unlikely to command individuals into acts of
compromise . . . And hence the instability of the bicameral world, and the fact that
during the bicameral era boundary relations would, I think, be more likely to end in
all-out friendship or all-out hostility than anything between these extremes. 88

Bicameral civilizations, and particularly urban ones, were susceptible to collapse from
influences both within and without. Jaynes remarks that one function of priests within such
societies was to "sort out the voices", giving recognition to those that were really from the gods.
As the culture grew in size, the balance between bicameral regulation and collapse became

59

more and more delicate. Thus, any threat to the patterns that gave rise to the regulatory voices
was a very real threat to the culture itself.
This all sounds a bit like various science fiction stories about carefully structured
cultures that succumb to outside influences, either of human or geological origin, but the claim
is a very serious one. Recall that bicameral humankind had no analog 'I' from which to judge
and contemplate action; rather, all he had was his god-voice. On a larger scale, social control
was a matter of a hierarchical society regulated by these same god-voices, both in the ears of
the rulers and in the ears of the subjects. The end of the voice meant the end of the culture, and
to some extent, also the end of the individual. For without the guidance of the voice, how was
the individual to act?
The appearance of writing further destabilized the bicameral mind, for with the
appearance of written information the authority of the auditory hallucination waned. Consider
the Codes of Hammurabi, cited by Jaynes as a prime example of bicameral order; that these
were written down meant that the authority rested not in the voices of the gods, but in the
stone on which the Codes were engraved. While this may have been a better device for
maintaining a civil structure, it ultimately undermines the bicameral regulatory mechanism,
because it is a kind of authority that doesn't have the immediacy of the hallucinated voice. One
cannot pinpoint the location of the authority of the Codes in space. The Codes are, for most, an
abstract authority rather than a concrete, localized command.
The combined effects of trade, which allowed for exposure to other kinds of patterns,
and of writing, which presented a different kind of authority, was that the god-voices were
beginning to wane in effectiveness. Comments Jaynes:
This loosening of the god-man partnership perhaps by trade and certainly by writing
was the background of what happened. But the immediate and precipitate cause of the
breakdown of the bicameral mind, of the wedge of consciousness between god and
man, between hallucinated voice and automaton action, was that in social chaos the
gods could not tell you what to do. 89

Several events during the second millennium BC presented novel situations that the
weakening bicameral mind could not sort out. Perhaps the most significant of these events
was the eruption and explosion of Thera, somewhere between 1180 and 1170 BC. This was a
geological catastrophe of unimaginable proportions: whole areas of land suddenly were under
water, entire cities and cultures wiped out in a day. This resulted in huge numbers of refugees,
displaced from their land and their gods; the god-voices being dumb to this collapse of familiar
patterns. As these refugees moved into other inhabited areas, the established bicameral
patterns collapsed.

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Another event during this time that contributed to the bicameral collapse was the
advance of the war-like Assyrian empire, whose armies pushed blitzkrieg-like throughout the
middle east, conquering, enslaving and slaughtering. The most interesting thing about the
Assyrian empire at this time is that it was ruled through a system of fear and cruelty -- harsh
laws declaring barbarous punishments for the mildest of offenses.
Why this harshness? And for the first time in the history of civilization? Unless the
previous method of social control had absolutely broken down. And that form of social
control was the bicameral mind. The very practice of cruelty as an attempt to rule by
fear is, I suggest, at the brink of subjective consciousness. 90

What is the relationship between fear and subjective consciousness? Fear requires a
sense of self -- a sense that there is something that could be destroyed. In a bicameral mind,
there is no fear, because there is no sense of self. In order for fear to be, there must be
something to be threatened. Jaynes is suggesting that rule by fear requires the presence of
some sort of analog 'I', and thus at least the beginnings of subjective consciousness. 91
What happened when the bicameral mind, the means by which the social control that
made civilization possible, collapsed? Jaynes has assembled considerable anthropological
evidence to document the change, which will not be considered here. In some cases, the entire
civilization collapsed, cities were abandoned, and the entire culture disappeared. But in most
cases this did not happen:
But the inertia of more complex cultures prevented the return to tribal life. Man was
trapped in his own civilization. Huge cities simply are there, and their ponderous
habits of working keep going even as their divine control lapses away. Language too is
a brake upon social change. The bicameral mind was an offshoot of the acquisition of
language, and language by this time had a vocabulary demanding such attention to a
civilized environment as to make a reversion to something of at least 5000 years earlier
almost impossible.92

This of course presents us with a problem: if the bicameral mind was the means by
which social control, such as persisting at tasks required for urban life, was maintained, how
can Jaynes say that when the bicameral mind collapsed, those tasks continued by virtue of their
own "inertia"? What does this "inertia" amount to? If it is just habit, then what role did the
bicameral mind really play? One reply is that the bicameral mind was primarily a device for
dealing with novel situations; ordinary, routine habitual things could be handled by the aptic
structures associated with habitual behavior.
Jaynes says that in order to fully understand the transition from bicameral mind to
subjective consciousness,

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What we need is a paleontology of consciousness, in which we can discern stratum by

stratum how this metaphored world we call subjective consciousness was built up, and
under what particular social pressures. 93

There are two caveats in Jaynes' discussion of this matter. The discussion is specific to
the way consciousness was generated in history, and this is a different matter from the
generating process previously discussed. Consciousness arose out of a generating process
situated in relation to the time, place and culture in which it appeared; that process is different
from the ongoing generation process previously described.
Second, and of far greater concern, is that Jaynes' discussion applies only to the Near
East. Jaynes, in various places, intimates that consciousness arose exclusively within the
cultures of this area, and spread or was carried to others. This is probably the most damning
feature of Jaynes' whole thesis, for what it implies is that certain peoples and cultures, to the
exclusion of all others, were responsible for bringing consciousness to the world.
The most serious problem this view presents, other than engendering well-deserved
contempt from those who are not of the chosen few, is that the whole notion of consciousness
discussed by Jaynes -- its features, its functions, its origins -- may be so heavily biased by this
"cradle of civilization" view as to be worthless outside of the context of the cultures under
discussion. And since the cultures discussed by Jaynes are not the subject of the present study,
there is the possibility that Jaynes' whole theory might be irrelevant. While I reject the cultural
supremacism inherent in this kind of view, Jaynes nonetheless has things to say that are
relevant in a broader context.
The basis of subjective consciousness is clearly the existence of the analog 'I'; this is the
mental construct from which the world is viewed. In a bicameral culture, everyone is basically
the same -- has the same opinions, the same feelings, the same habits, and so forth. When one
comes into contact with those from another culture, however, one cannot help but observe the
differences. It is the observation of these differences that gives rise to the analog 'I': the
recognition there is something different about others, that they are indeed different persons,
may have led to the idea that the observer himself is a person. This, of course, is the reverse of
the position that one infers others' minds from one's own. If Jaynes is right, one infers one's
own Self from observing the "Selfs" of others.
The ability to narratize may have originated in the writing and telling of epics during
this period. Reading itself, Jaynes suggests, was, in contrast to the more contemporary practice
of understanding words, actually hallucinating from cuneiform, and was thus a right

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hemisphere function. Narratization, then, may have originated as the recording of

god-commands from the past.
Jaynes goes on to argue that the actual origin of the analog 'I' may have been in deceit;
more specifically, in treachery. In the case where one's village was overrun by some hated
invader, the ability to "be one thing on the inside and another thing on the outside" might be
essential to survival. This is impossible for bicameral minds, who think and obey in one swift
sequence. The harboring of hatred, and eventual taking of revenge requires a mind-space that
is different from behavior-space, and that mind space might well have been the analog 'I'.
The effects of natural selection must also be considered. In an age where rapid changes,
both social and geological, were the rule, there is an obvious selection pressure against those
whose minds cannot adapt to new situations. It is probable that those with strictly bicameral
minds perished by the millions during this era. Those with more adaptable mind-structures
survived. Furthermore, there are indications of cultural pressures against bicamerality. Jaynes
cites biblical evidence that children with bicameral characteristics were slaughtered; a claim
that refers back to the cultural bias previously noted.
Jaynes' bicameral mind theory provides an interesting approach to the study of the
origin of consciousness. The bicameral mind, characteristic of ancient civilizations, consisted of
a physiological interaction of right and left brain hemispheres such that actions necessary to
preserve the patterns of civilization were carried out in obedience to commands perceived as
voices. Decision making in the bicameral mind was not a reflective process, but rather an
obedience to the voices of the gods. The bicameral mind, as a behavior controlling mechanism,
was historically rendered ineffective by the catastrophic destruction of ancient civilizations by
geological events and invading armies, which destroyed the patterns used by the bicameral
mind to direct behavior. Contact with unfamiliar cultures gave rise to linguistic metaphor,
which in turn made possible the creation of a mental "space" in which the individual could
conceptualize his/her relationship to the outside world. This mind space is the basis for
subjective consciousness, and the ability to make decisions about one's behavior.
According to Jaynes' theory, both the bicameral and the subjective mind are social
constructs, bicamerality relying upon the observation of social patterns and subjectivity being
built out of linguistic metaphor. Additionally, subjective consciousness is based upon
behavior, for it models the individual's behavior in the world, generating a mental image of the
self as it relates, behaviorally, to other things in the world. While this may be a rather narrow
view of the nature of consciousness, the technical aspects of the theory will be important in
establishing the relationship of consciousness to portal experience.
ii. The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection.

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Neuroscientist Gerald Edelman's theory of the origin of consciousness, the Theory of

Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS), is intended to "put the mind back into nature." 94 According to
Whitehead, the combined effect of Galileo's founding of mathematical physics, which meant
the world was to be described in abstract terms, and Descartes' substance dualism, positing
that the mind was something separate from the physical body, was to remove the mind from
nature. The understanding of the mind was to be something separate from a scientific
understanding of nature. Edelman's project is to undo this separation -- to provide a
completely naturalistic understanding of what the mind is.
As one might suspect from the above, the theory is a materialistic theory. But there is
more to Edelman's theory than another contribution to the tedious litany of scientific
materialism. The TNGS is a comprehensive explanation of what Jaynes called "plasticity". Like
Jaynes, Edelman invokes both the neurophysiology of the brain and the development of
language to account for the evolution of consciousness. But Edelman's account of brain
development is detailed, and the role of language in his theory is very different from what
Jaynes proposes. His discussion of natural selection will be important in the understanding of
how portal experiences, which are individual matters, can relate to the development of
consciousness in a group. And, most importantly, Edelman is a bitter foe of the idea that the
brain is some kind of computer. 95
Edelman considers consciousness to be a process rather than a substance -- it is
something the brain does by virtue of the way it is structured, but consciousness is not the
structure itself. This is an important point in Edelman's theory, because it will allow Edelman
to argue for an independence of consciousness from the biological processes of the brain.
Consciousness arises out of the brain, but consciousness is not identical with the biological
matter of the brain. While the biological matter of the brain is arranged in such a way as to
allow for the emergence of consciousness, that biological matter is not consciousness itself.
This general point is very important to the theory of consciousness presented in this study, as I
will also be arguing that while consciousness requires the biological brain, it also exhibits an
independence from the brain, and requires other things besides the brain.
The brain, according to Edelman's theory, is organized into structures that analyze
information from the senses. These internal "mappings" develop according to physical and
chemical processes that preclude any possibility of the brain being "wired" in any specific way.
Instead, the embryological development of the brain proceeds in such a way as to make
possible the emergence of signaling processes that function independently of the anatomical
connections in the brain, once a certain level of structural complexity is reached. This is the
simplest level of consciousness, which allows for the integration of sensory information into a

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mental representation of ongoing activities. To conceptualize the past and the future,
structural changes in the brain that accommodate language use are required.
As a starting point for the discussion, Edelman cites three "common sense" notions:
1. Things do not have minds.
2. Normal humans have minds; some animals act as if they do.
3. Beings with minds can refer to other beings or things; things without minds do not
refer to beings or other things. 96

The last item on the list is what Brentano called intentionality. It signals that for
Edelman, just as with Jaynes, consciousness is always consciousness of something; that
consciousness always exists in a subject-object relation. This will become a major problem in
the discussion of mystical experience; for now, while Jaynes focused upon introspection as the
defining characteristic of consciousness, Edelman has chosen intentionality.
Further, Edelman cites William James' idea that mind is a process, and not "stuff",
meaning that the mind is something that matter does, and not is. It is a process that arises from
the biological matter of the brain. This means that one cannot describe the mind without
considering the biological description of the brain. Interestingly, Edelman cites what he
considers to be three "category mistakes" in the discussion of the mind, which he proposes to
remedy:
The first is the proposal that the solution to the problems of consciousness will come
from the resolution of some dilemmas in physics. The second is the suggestion that
computation and artificial intelligence will yield the answers. Third, and most
egregious, is the notion that the whole enterprise can proceed by studying behavior,
mental performance and competence, and language . . . without first understanding the
underlying biology.97

Edelman's procedure is to try to understand how the brain and nervous system
function, how the mind is a product of that functioning, and how those functions came to be.
While there is nothing special about the matter out of which the mind arises, the way in which
that matter is organized is indeed special, for it is that organization that gives rise to
consciousness. Edelman's theory is completely based upon the structure and morphology of
the brain, and relies extensively upon the arrangement of neurons in the cerebral cortex into
maps. Topographic maps relate two-dimensional receptor sheets (the retina of the eye, for
example) to sheets of cortical neurons; this mapping allows the surfaces of the body to be
represented in sheets of neurons within the brain. These maps are interconnected by
numerous fiber tracts -- the anterior commissures that connect the speech areas of the right and

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left hemispheres are examples. Despite its complexity of interconnections and cell types, the
general anatomy of the brain is organized in the following way:
It is made up of sheets that have topographic maps and of rounded nuclei, or "blobs." It
sends multiple fibers to connect the maps to sensory sheets and out to the muscles of the
body. And maps map to each other. 98

These maps form during embryological development. Their formation is related to

both structural features -- how different neurons grow and project into the brain -- and also
functional activity in the neurons themselves. The brain is a self-organizing system; there is no
precise "wiring diagram" for the brain, but instead the brain, to a large degree, "wires" itself
during development. As sensory areas develop in the embryo, they project into the developing
brain which in turn develops the mapping and interconnecting structures to accommodate
those areas. So, while at first glance the brain may appear to be organized like a vast electrical
network or telephone exchange, nothing could be further from the truth. It is also the case that
nearly 70% of the neurons in parts of the developing nervous system die before the
development of the structure of which they are a part is completed. In individuals of the same
species, even in identical twins, the precise wiring of neurological structures is never the same.
What this means is that the brain cannot be "hardwired" according to some genetic
code. Genetics actually plays very little part in the ultimate structure of the brain.
Furthermore, there is such an overlap of neuronal mapping and fiber interconnections that, in
Edelman's words,
. . . if we "asked" a neuron which input came from which other neuron contributing to
the overlapping set of its dendritic connections, it could not "know." 99

Edelman's point in this discussion is that the brain cannot, with any faithfulness to its
biology, be compared to a computer in the sense that computers depend upon sets of
well-defined connections to carry out their function. In a computer, information processing
depends upon precisely defined connections and relations between connections. In the brain,
no such relations exist. Computers are wired according to a precise plan that determines how
they will deal with information. Not so the brain; its overlapping and map fluctuations
between individuals preclude the possibility that understanding how it is wired will explain
how it works.
Vital to the understanding of how the brain works is an understanding of the chemical
and electrical dynamics of the brain, which, "resemble the sound and light patterns and the
movement and growth patterns of a jungle more than they do the activities of an electrical

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company." 100 It is out of these dynamic interactions that consciousness arises. So, while the
brain may be a physical-chemical system with a set of discoverable interconnections, neither a
description from the point of view of physics, nor from the point of view of the
interconnections exclusively, will yield a description of consciousness.
Edelman is trying to coax us away from the "standard" anatomical view that brain
function derives from a precisely encoded genetic pattern that is realized in precisely formed
structures and interconnections within the brain. The precision of those structures arises not
out of any genetic wiring diagram, nor out of any pre-determined functionality; it cannot be
that way, because individuals with functional minds have brains that differ considerably in
structure. The brain is a very complex system of interconnections and interdependencies, with
repetitive and overlapping connections between structures. It is not possible to design a flow
chart that relates brain function to brain structure, and giving up the demand for that kind of
description will be essential to understanding how the mind arises out of the brain.
The most serious error that both philosophers and psychologists have fallen into is that
of trying to give an account of the mind without including a biological account of the brain.
The error began with Descartes' positing of a mind-substance different from the body. The
tradition continued with Locke, whose tabula rasa was advanced in the absence of any
biological account, with Berkeley's idealism which is squarely opposed to evolution, and even
with Hume's skepticism which based itself wholly upon sense impressions and therefore failed
to account for much more complex activities of the mind. It is noteworthy here that were
Hume's skepticism to be taken seriously, Edelman's theory could not be, for there is no sense
impression that could reveal the existence of brain mapping. While Edelman thinks that Kant's
answer to Hume is not too far off the mark, Kant's answer fails to accord with learning theory
or relativity physics. 101
Edelman's main objection to psychology and philosophy is to their disregard for
biology, and especially for evolution theory:
The message boils down to this: The fundamental basis for all behavior and for the
emergence of mind is animal and species morphology (anatomy) and how it functions.
Natural selection acts on individuals as they compete within and between species . . .
Given the record of the history of the philosophy of mind and of psychology, the
continued avoidance of the biological underpinnings of such a program is not likely to
enhance our understanding of how the human mind emerged and how it functions . . .
The center of any connection between psychology and biology rests, of course, with the
facts of evolution.102

Having taken his shot at the competition, Edelman now turns to his own objects of
adoration: Darwin and his theory of natural selection, which Edelman calls "the theoretical

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basis of all biology."103 The theory of natural selection states that within any group of
organisms, there will be variations in characteristics such that individuals differ in their
survival ability and efficiency:
Natural selection results in the differential reproduction of those individuals whose
variations (read "structural and functional capabilities" -- their phenotype) provide them
and their progeny with statistical advantages in adapting to environmental change or
competing with individuals of the same or different species. 104

Those individuals possessing characteristics that give them a survival advantage will,
through longevity and/or increased reproductive capacity, contribute to increasing the
frequency of those characteristics within the group. While one can tell that natural selection
has occurred by examining gene frequencies, the selection process itself operates upon
individuals and their characteristics: "The main level at which selection occurs is the individual
and his behavior."105 Although Darwin understood the process, and understood that certain
kinds of selection processes could be indirect -- that things get propagated because of their
relationship to other things that are directly selected -- the method of genetic inheritance he
proposed was erroneous as the cellular mechanisms of inheritance were unknown in his time.
Thus, what Edelman calls "Darwin's program":
It consisted of understanding what we need to know in order to understand the
evolutionary origin of the human mind . . . how the morphology underlying behavior
arose during evolutionary history, and how behavior itself alters natural selection. 106

There are, according to Edelman, four things needed to complete Darwin's program:
1) An analysis of the effects of heredity on behavior, and vise versa.
2) An account of how behavior influences natural selection and [how natural selection]
in turn influences [behavior].
3) An account of how behavior is constrained and made possible by animal form or
morphology.
4) An understanding of how animal form arises and changes during development. 107

This last requirement is most fundamental, "the central riddle of modern biology,"
which requires understanding the relationship between evolution and the way structures
develop during embryogenesis.

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Great progress has been made toward an understanding of the first part of Darwin's
program, the relationship between genetics and behavior. Contemporary evolution theory is
actually Neo-Darwinism, which combines the work of Gregor Mendel, knowledge of the
biochemistry of DNA and other cytogenetic mechanisms, and natural selection theory. This
has allowed a reconciliation of Darwin's erroneous "gemmule" theory into a coherent picture of
how natural selection works down to the biochemical level. The science of ethology, which
studies the relationships between genetics, evolution, and species interactions, has made
progress toward an understanding of the interactions between behavior and heredity.
Behavior such as bird songs, for example, has both genetic and epigenetic components. Work
has also been done to identify parts of the brain associated with such behaviors. But many
attempts by sociobiologists to connect human behavior with genetics are misleading -- the
mechanisms controlling behavior are more complex than simple gene expression.
The remaining part of Darwin's program is to understand the relationship between
form and behavior. And the relationship between genetics and form is uncertain:
Genes do not act directly, but rather in complex combinations, to alter form. And form
alters behavior in subtle ways. More tellingly, subtle changes in form sometimes lead to
rather extraordinary changes in behavior. What we want to know is how alterations in
form, either in the whole animal or at microscopic levels of brain, muscle, or bone affect
behavior, and how behavior alters form. This is the part of Darwin's program that
remains largely incomplete. 108

At the core of the problem is the issue of how such a rapid increase in size and
complexity of the brain could have occurred, in paleontological terms, over a relatively short
period of time. Further, there is approximately a 99% identity between the genes of a
chimpanzee and of a human; yet there are such profound differences in cranial capacity and
function that a simple genetic explanation will not do. And, of course, since language will
figure prominently in Edelman's theory, the problem is to understand the relationship between
brain structure and language.
Edelman's program is to understand the relationship between evolution, form and
behavior; more specifically, to understand the relationship between brain structure and
consciousness. There are many lines of evidence that support the relationship between form
and behavior: that increased cranial capacity is associated with increasingly complex behavior;
the relationship between speech organs and the brain; the linking of specific areas of the brain
with specific functions. All of this supports the idea that understanding the evolution of the
mind requires understanding the evolution of form. The study of the biology of the brain is,

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according to Edelman, a more promising path than the "diffuse evidence for mentation" in the
archeological record.109
Edelman goes on to discuss the biochemistry of genetics, summing up as follows:
1. DNA "makes" RNA which "makes" protein (where the quotes mean "specifies" -- it is
the cell that actually makes the chemicals).
2. The shape of the protein depends upon its sequence of amino acids, which depends in
turn on the original sequence of the code words in the corresponding DNA.
3. The function of the protein depends on its shape.

110

The key points in the discussion, however, revolve around the morphology of organs.
Yet it is the case that the structure of organs ultimately depends upon the nucleic acid sequence
in the DNA, and, that evolution works by modifying the sequence of the DNA. The questions
now focus on:
1. How does the one-dimensional genetic code specify the shape of a three-dimensional
animal (not just a three-dimensional protein molecule)?
2. How can we account for changes over time in the developmental processes leading to
such shapes so that new shapes evolve? 111

The answer to these questions lies in the study of the arrangements of cells in the
developing embryo, for many of the changes that result in the specific morphology of organs
such as the brain occur because certain cells are adjacent to certain other cells during
embryogenesis. The development of cells in the embryo is place-dependent, a phenomenon for
which Edelman has coined the term topobiology, and which has been known for some time in
the study of embryology as embryonic induction. It means that cells develop into certain organs
because of chemical and other cues received from adjacent cells.
A number of processes take place during the development of the embryo that are
related to place dependence. Cells divide and multiply, and form themselves into epithelial
sheets and loose mesenchyme. Many cells die during development. Cells may adhere to one
another, or lose their adhesion and move to another place. Cells also differentiate, expressing
different combinations of genes. It is through differentiation that brain cells become brain cells.
The chemical cues that cause this differential genetic expression come from other cells. Hence,
embryonic induction works because cells release chemicals that alter the genetic expression in
nearby cells.

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An example of this process is the development of the nervous tissue in chicken (and
mammalian) embryos. At a very early stage, the embryo exists as a two layered sheet. As cells
from the upper ectoderm layer divide, they push into the space separating the two layers.
These migrating mesenchyme cells release chemicals that cause a part of the ectoderm to
develop into the neural plate, destined to be the central nervous system. Experimental removal
of these cells results in the failure of the embryo to develop a central nervous system.
The critical requirement for the successful development of the embryo is the timing of
the structural changes with the differential expression of the genes. While combinations of
genes are responsible for the inherited shape of a species, it is the mechanics of cell movement
in the embryo which control that expression process:
This is the key requirement of topobiology. It explains why genes specifying the shapes of
proteins are not enough; individual cells, moving and dying in unpredictable ways, are
the real driving forces. Making proteins or cell surfaces that latch onto each other, each
specific for a given cell like a Lego toy, does not account for how genes specify shape.
While the cells of an embryo of a species resemble each other on the average, the
movement and death of a particular cell at any particular place is a statistical matter and
that cell's actual position cannot be prespecified by the code in a gene. 112

The process of topological development is controlled by morphoregulatory molecules,

of which there are several kinds. They are proteins, specified by particular DNA segments.
The production of these morphoregulators is controlled by inductive signals, chemical agents
called growth factors. In addition, genetic differentiation of the cell itself is controlled by
homeotic genes which code for proteins that bind to the DNA in various places, determining
which genes are expressed and which are hidden.
It might be useful at this point to situate the biochemical discussion in relation to the
remainder of Edelman's project. One of the things Edelman wants to show is that the brain is
not comparable to a computer. In order to do this, he must show that the functions of the brain
cannot be explained by any pre-determined wiring scheme. The observations of brain
structural variation support that claim. But he must also show how it is possible that the
structure of the brain can evolve, and therefore be intertwined with the primary biological
mechanism of evolution, DNA. The claims appear to oppose each other, for on the one hand
structure cannot be pre-determined, and on the other hand it must be DNA dependent. The
"out" Edelman is preparing for himself is that while the general structure of an organism is
specified by the DNA, the exact connection of every single nerve cell has more to do with the
highly variable processes of topobiology, depending to a high degree upon cell to cell
interactions, which in turn vary with cell death, which is probabilistic and not specifiable in the
genetic code.

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This explains how the one-dimensional nucleic acid sequence of DNA specifies the
three-dimensional structure of a fully developed organism. It also explains how a relatively
minor change, such as a DNA mutation, can result in a dramatic change in an organism: if such
a change were to affect the timing of the production of a morphoregulator, cell adhesion and
movement could be drastically changed, with pronounced changes in the mature organism
that might affect its survival.
Most relevant to the present topic is that the development of mappings in the brain, as
well as other developmental characteristics of the nervous system, are primarily topobiological
processes. The migration of cells in the developing brain is controlled by morphoregulatory
molecules, selective cell death, and other signaling processes that, if experimentally altered,
result in the failure of maps to form. Edelman sums up:
Notice the main features of this drama. It is topobiological, or place-dependent. Events
occurring in one place require that previous events have occurred at other places. But it
is also inherently dynamic, plastic, or variable at the level of its fundamental units, the
cells. Even in genetically identical twins, the exact same pattern of nerve cells is not
found at the same place and time. Yet the collective picture is species-specific because
the overall constraints acting on the genes are characteristic of that species. 113

The understanding of the developmental biology of the brain has put brain science into
a state of crisis. The problem of trying to understand the relationship of heredity to behavior in
the light of the falsity of computer-like theories is one crisis. How intentionality arises out of
matter is another. Edelman proclaims that the resolution of these crises must be "scientific":
"that is, it must be testable or falsifiable by experimental means." 114
Edelman sees the major crisis as this: while physicists and other physical scientists
could analyze the objects of their study in ways that removed their own personal biases from
consideration, those who wanted to study the mind were confronted by the problem that what
was under study was precisely the thing that scientific observation was supposed to ignore -mental events and operations. 115 The problem, given that it appears unfruitful to compare the
brain to a digital computer, is to find some way of "scientifically" studying the mind. And this
must proceed in the light of the structural variability in embryogenesis, and the requirements
of (neo-) Darwinian evolution.
It must also proceed, to cohere with scientific principles, in the absence of any teleology
between the environment and the organism. By this I mean that evolution does not select for
certain characteristics "in order that", at some time in the future, the organism will display
some particular characteristic. There is no direct transfer of information between environment
and organism. Environmental changes do not cause changes in organisms; they select for them:

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In sum, there is no explicit information transfer between the environment and

organisms that causes the population to change and increase it fitness. Evolution works
by selection, not by instruction. There is no final cause, no teleology, no purpose
guiding the overall process, the responses of which occur ex post facto in each case. 116

The factors in the environment that determine which organisms are on the average the
fittest do not pass any information to the organisms themselves; there is no instruction of the
organisms by the environment. Instead, the adaptive process works by selecting those
organisms that are fittest. The organisms being acted upon by the environment form a selective
recognition system: the population of organisms is able to change in response to the
environment without those changes being directly caused by the environment, and without
any a priori information about those changes.
An example of a somatic selective system -- a selective recognition system that operates
within one individual for one lifetime -- is the mammalian immune system, which serves to
illustrate the difference between recognition and instruction. The immune system, itself a
product of an evolutionary selective recognition system, is able to tell "self" from "non-self"
through a complex process of molecular recognition. It also displays a "memory" of substances
it has "learned" to recognize as foreign. Surprisingly, it also has the ability to recognize as
foreign, synthetic chemicals it has never encountered.
The previously held instruction theory was that foreign molecules bound to cells in the
immune system, and transferred information about their shape to the cells. These cells were
then able to recognize the invader molecules based upon information transferred to them by
the invader.
The current "theory of clonal selection" is, in contrast, a recognition theory. According
to this theory, within the immune system there exists a large number of cells, each with the
ability to recognize specific foreign molecules (actually, what is recognized is the shape of the
molecule). When a foreign substance enters the body, it binds to those cells that already have
recognition sites for it. The binding stimulates the cells to reproduce at a rapid rate, producing
a large number of cells that can recognize (and destroy, by various means) the invading
molecule.
Notice that this second theory amounts to evolution on a somatic scale. A population of
lymphocytes (immune cells) exists with varying characteristics (recognition sites). An
environmental change occurs (the introduction of a foreign substance) which results in a
change in the population. The foreign substance does not tell the population what to do; the
population recognizes the change and reacts by "evolving."

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This type of dynamic behavior is unique to biological organisms. Both immunology

and evolution are thus "recognition sciences" because they rely on recognition mechanisms
rather than instruction mechanisms. Edelman maintains that neuroscience is also a recognition
science, and that the brain is a selective recognition system. This is an attractive alternative
because it relieves us of the "horror of the homunculus," a problem that comes about by
assuming that there is some entity, even a neurological one, that acts as an "information
processor". If the brain is a selective recognition system, " . . . in which matching occurs ex post
facto on an already existing diverse repertoire," there is no need to postulate an information
processor and/or homunculus.
The requirements on such a theory must explain how structural and functional
variation, and especially variability and change in mapping, are integrated with evolution and
development, allow for integrated responses to perceptual stimuli, and relate to language. It
must also account for how perceptual and conceptual categorization, memory, and
consciousness arose through evolution. And:
To be scientific, it must be based on the assumption that all cognition and conscious
experience rest solely on processes and orderings occurring in the physical world. The
theory must therefore take care to explain how psychological processes are related to
physiological ones. 117

The TNGS is Edelman's proposal to explain all of this. The TNGS, while technically
complex, has three main "tenets". The first, developmental selection, explains how the general
pattern of the brain for each species is set up. It involves the topobiology of the developing
brain, dealing with the movement of cells associated with the neural plate, cellular adhesion,
and morphoregulatory substances. There is competition between cells of the developing brain,
along with statistical probabilities of death and survival, which insure that although the DNA
specifies certain constraints on how the brain will develop, there is no predetermined wiring
diagram for the brain -- even identical twins will have different wiring patterns. These
processes yield a basic structure of neural networks called the primary repertoire.
The second tenet of the TNGS is that acting upon the primary repertoire is a different
kind of selection process that is totally epigenetic. This set of processes, called experimental
selection, results from the strengthening or weakening of certain synaptic connections. The
connections between neurons are weakened or strengthened based upon the activity of the
neurons themselves, and this is largely a biochemical process. Experimental selection "carves
out" of the primary repertoire a set of functional circuits and networks, called the secondary
repertoire. To some extent, this process never really comes to an end -- even in mature brains,

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new circuits can be carved out of existing ones to allow for compensation due to damage, or the
development of new functions.
The third and most complex tenet of the TNGS is reentrant mapping. It is necessarily
complex because this is the part of the theory that links psychology and physiology. Its
purpose is to account for the way in which brain maps interact, and how the mind arises out of
those interactions.
As previously discussed, the brain is organized into sheets of neurons that represent
receptor surfaces as maps. A given receptor surface, such as the retina of the eye, may have
multiple maps; in the monkey, the visual system has over thirty maps. These maps serve
somewhat different functions -- some maps are connected with color recognition, orientation,
movement and so on. Activation of a single receptor cell may activate neurons in several
different maps; the maps communicate with each other via parallel and reciprocal connections,
on which reentrant signaling takes place. This means that as a group of neurons is activated in
a given map, others in corresponding maps are also activated. So, maps "talk" to each other in
the sense that activation of one group of neurons serving one kind of function may activate
other groups of neurons in other maps, serving other functions. The reentrant signaling
process forms the basis by which psychology and physiology are linked in the TNGS.
These interconnections are formed by a selectional process. It involves the
strengthening and weakening of connections between neurons in the primary and secondary
repertoires. During this selection process, neurons become closely associated with one another
into what Edelman calls neuronal groups. Neuronal groups tend to respond as a whole, rather
than individual neurons responding by themselves. Because of this, the primary unit of
selection in the brain is the neuronal group -- it is the primary unit of neurological functioning,
just as the primary selection unit in evolution is the individual (phenotype), and in the immune
system is the lymphocyte:
We may summarize by saying that, in general, no individual neuron is selected in
isolation; no individual neuron in a map reenters to only one other neuron in another
map; and no individual neuron has the properties alone that it shows in a group. 118

The reasons for this have to do with the way neurons intertwine their fibers during
development. Neurons develop much denser connections with adjacent neurons than with
distant ones; these connections are modified during experimental selection, which fine-tunes
group function.
In order for the TNGS to provide the bridge between physiology and neurology, it must
be able to account for perceptual categorization at a physiological level. Neuronal groups in

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different maps, independently receiving inputs from different sources (other maps and/or
different sensory modalities) develop reentrant connections to each other to form a classification
couple. The classification couple is the basis for linking different kinds of experience together.
By this method groups within many maps may be linked together, and may themselves
generate new signals that create new classification couples. Through reentrant connections,
maps correlate different events happening at the same time, with no need for any central
processing.
These multiple, reentrant connections link up with behavior-related non-mapped
structures in the brain to form global mappings. Global mapping allows events occurring in
local maps, such as the visual system, to interact with sensory systems, motor behavior, and
other mapping systems. This makes "matching" of the animal's behavior to its sensory inputs
possible, via a dynamic system of connections and responses.
There are, therefore, several levels of reentry -- between neurons in a group, between
groups in related maps, between maps in related systems of maps, and between global maps
and non-mapped structures. Categorization is a matter of selecting neuron groups throughout
an entire mapping to give an appropriate response. These responses are based on the
dynamics of group selection and signal transmission.
The remaining problem is to understand what "appropriate" means, in terms of the
underlying physiology and in terms of evolution. According to the TNGS, categorization
always occurs with reference to some internally set "criteria of value", that determine what an
appropriate response is. These value criteria are determined by evolution, and neurologically
reside within those brain structures concerned with maintaining body functions -- respiration,
heart rate, temperature, and so forth. Categorization "manifests itself in behavior that
appropriately fulfills the evolutionarily selected requirements of such life-supporting
physiological systems." 119
These "value criteria" work by influencing the chances that certain synaptic connections
will be strengthened or weakened. They do not pre-program or "instruct" certain behaviors; to
use a metaphor, they "reward" certain behaviors by strengthening the synaptic connections that
gave rise to them, increasing the chances that those behaviors will be repeated. Selection by
value is an ongoing process in which different behaviors are evaluated on the basis of their
"fitness".
These value-selected behavior patterns are "homeostats", and their function is to "help
the brain and the body to maintain the conditions necessary to continue life." 120 While there do
exist some species-specific behavior patterns that are evolutionarily selected, most behaviors
affecting homeostats are somatically selected; they are brought about by selection processes
within the individual. Categorization occurs through selection based upon value; both

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experimental selection and value are necessary to produce definite behavior patterns. 121
Perceptual categorization thus relates information coming from different sensory modalities
and internal reentrantly connected mappings on the basis of naturally selected value criteria.
The purpose of the TNGS is to provide the theoretical framework by which "higher
brain functions", and ultimately consciousness, can be explained and accounted for in accord
with the principles of biological evolution. Edelman's claim is that nothing outside the TNGS
need be added to understand the biological basis of consciousness. The TNGS accounts for
how evolutionary selective systems gave rise to somatic selective systems such as the immune
system and the brain.
The "higher brain functions" are perceptual categorization, memory and learning.
These three functions are closely related. Perceptual categorization is carried out by
classification couples and global mapping. Memory is ultimately about previous
classifications. And learning combines both along with naturally selected value criteria in
non-mapped parts of the brain, many of which are species-specific:
The sufficient condition for adaptation is provided by the linking of global mappings to
the activity of the so-called hedonic centers and the limbic system of the brain in a way
that satisfies homeostatic, appetitive, and consummatory needs reflecting evolutionarily
established values. 122

Learning functions to "connect categorization to behaviors having adaptive value under

conditions of expectancy."123 Just as the life-sustaining systems have set-points which
homeostatic systems strive to maintain, so other physiological systems also have
evolution-determined set-points. "Expectancy" is the condition under which those set-points
are not satisfied. Learning occurs when changes in behavior yield changes in synaptic
connections in global mappings that satisfy those set-points.
Regarding memory, Edelman states that it is "the ability to repeat a performance." 124
Memory is a dynamic system property of neuronal groups; as such, the kind of "repeat
performance" depends upon the system in which memory occurs. Rather than being some
kind of coded information as in a computer, brain memory (actually memory in any selective
system, such as the immune system) is "the specific enhancement of a previously established
ability to categorize." Memory emerges from the changing patterns of synaptic enhancements
within a global mapping, similar to those by which perceptual categorization occurs. While
memory can involve the activation of previously facilitated connections between groups, it is
highly contextual -- not necessarily all of the connections will be activated, and what actually
gets recalled will be influenced by changes in the overall mappings since the original
categorization.

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Since perceptual categories themselves are dynamic properties that change with
behavior and other ongoing categorizations, memory is therefore a recategorization process.
Memory, in this view, "involves continual motor activity and repeated rehearsal in different
contexts." It is therefore subject to modification by different behavioral situations, but is also
capable of "great degrees of generalization," because individual categorizations become
associated with an increasing number of other categorizations over time. The TNGS explains
the memory properties of association, inexactness and generalization by their dependence
upon signaling processes, which are probabilistic in nature.
Of course it is not sufficient that memory simply associate simultaneous events; it must
be able to order them in time. The TNGS proposes that this is accomplished via connections
with what Edelman calls the "organs of succession": the cerebellum, the basal ganglia, and the
hippocampus. The cerebellum has as its most obvious function the coordination or smoothing
out of motor movements, by sequencing and timing the activation of various muscles.
Edelman suggests that, by interconnecting with the various mapping structures for perceptual
categorization, the cerebellum may also sequence and coordinate memories of events. The
basal ganglia are primarily concerned with "motor programs"; in contrast to the cerebellum
which coordinates immediate movements, the basal ganglia plan out which movements will be
performed. The basal ganglia also connect with value-system structures. They are a complex
set of structures with many complex functions, but as far as memory is concerned, it appears
that they are involved in sequencing series of memory events.
The hippocampus is an interesting and important structure that appears to be primarily
concerned with the transfer of information from short to long-term memory. It connects via the
entorhinal cortex to virtually every area of the cerebral cortex (and, by implication, to all of the
mapping areas). Disease and experimental studies have shown that damage to the
hippocampus impairs the ability to remember things that are not the subject of immediate
behavior. The TNGS suggests that the hippocampus is involved in transferring data from
immediate perceptual categorizations into long-term memory -- perhaps other mapping
structures.
The important thing about these memory studies is that nothing beyond what the
TNGS suggests is needed to explain memory or its anomalies. The TNGS invokes successive
levels of mapping to explain how categorization takes place, how it changes over time, and
how it is "remembered" by mapping into other maps.
In a broader sense, categorization requires more than just memory -- it also requires the
ability to form concepts. Edelman is using the term "concept" in a very restricted sense, one
that appears in evolution prior to the appearance of language: "An animal capable of having
concepts identifies a thing or an action and on the basis of that identification controls its

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behavior in a more or less general way."125 This requires the ability to connect perceptual
categorizations that are apparently unrelated, and allow responses to general properties like
"object", "up-down", and "inside". The TNGS requires that specialized brain areas develop in
order to form such concepts. Specifically, the structures required are those that carry out
mapping of maps -- yet a higher order of mapping than global mappings. One candidate for
such an area is the frontal cortex; its anatomical connections suggest that it receives such input
from topographic maps that carry out perceptual categorization, and also from memory
structures such as the hippocampus and ordering structures such as the basal ganglia. Its
connections into the limbic system also suggest that the frontal cortex is an area where
memories and concepts are modified by value criteria.
Concept formation areas allow the brain to categorize its own activities, particularly its
own perceptual categorizations. Its association with ordering structures explains how concepts
can refer to past events -- things that are not the immediate subjects of perceptual
categorization. It provides "maps of the maps", allowing associative functions without the
need for postulating a central information processor. Concept formation is also, by its nature
intentional -- being built out of perceptual categorizations, it ultimately refers to things outside
itself.
Consciousness itself has four properties, identified as "Jamesian" after William James: it
is personal or "possessed by individuals," it is "changing but continuous," it is intentional
(refers to other objects), and it is "selective in time," meaning that it deals with only parts of
objects at a given time and never sees the whole at once. As such, there is a distinction
between primary consciousness and the higher-order consciousness of humankind:
Primary consciousness is the state of being mentally aware of things in the world -- of
having mental images in the present. But it is not accompanied by any sense of a person
with a past and future. It is what one may presume to be possessed by some
nonlinguistic and nonsemantic animals . . . In contrast, higher-order consciousness
involves the recognition by a thinking subject of his or her own acts or affections. It
embodies a model of the personal, and of the past and the future as well as the present.
It exhibits direct awareness -- the noninferential or immediate awareness of mental
episodes without the involvement of sense organs or receptors. It is . . . [conscious] of
being conscious. 126

Edelman's theory of consciousness has three underlying assumptions. The "physics

assumption" states that "the laws of physics are not violated, that spirits and ghosts are out . . .
"127 This is the usual materialistic assumption -- that physics describes the physical world, and
that's all that is allowed.

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The second assumption is the "evolutionary assumption": ". . . that consciousness arose
as a phenotypic property at some point in the evolution of the species." Now this assumption
means that consciousness served some purpose -- it enhanced the fitness of those individuals
possessing it. It "implies that consciousness is efficacious -- that it is not an epiphenomenon
("merely the redness of the melting metal," when pouring is what counts)." 128
The third assumption is more difficult, and concerns the role of phenomenal or "felt
properties", also called qualia:
Qualia constitute the collection of personal or subjective experiences, feelings and
sensations that accompany awareness. They are phenomenal states -- "how things seem
to us" as human beings. For example, the "redness" of a red object is a quale. Qualia are
discriminable parts of a mental scene that nonetheless has an overall unity . . . in the
normal waking state, qualia are accompanied by a sense of spatiotemporal continuity.
Often, the phenomenal scene is accompanied by feelings or emotions, however faint.
Yet the actual sequence of qualia is highly individual, resting on a series of occasions in
one's own personal history or immediate experience. 129

The problem presented by the existence of qualia is that while physics, as a science,
rests upon the idea that individual idiosyncrasies can be factored out, no such "science" of
consciousness can exist because qualia, which by their nature are individual and idiosyncratic,
cannot be factored out without factoring out the topic under study. Whatever "report" an
individual might give of a qualia experience, it will be based upon a personal context.
Rather than trying to escape the problem by denying the existence of qualia, the
solution is to consider that qualia are a common experience, and their nature can be correlated
between observers. The assumption is that while qualia may be individualistic, the experience
of qualia can be correlated between observers, much as the experimental observations of
physicists can be correlated. This allows for a "scientific" investigation of the properties of
qualia, and consequently of consciousness. The distinction inherent in this assumption is that
higher-order consciousness is able to report these experiences, whereas primary consciousness
is bound to the immediacy of its own experience and hence cannot make any such report.
In considering primary consciousness, one must distinguish two functional
organizations in the central nervous system. The limbic-brainstem system evolved primarily
for the regulation of body functions. This system is responsible for the homeostats and other
physiological setpoints necessary for life maintenance. It is, therefore, a "value" system, with
many looped circuits, few if any maps, and a relatively slow response time. Most of this
system's "inputs" and "outputs" are within itself; it monitors and controls body functions.
In contrast, the thalamocortical system is made up of multiple, reentrantly connected,
topographically organized mappings that receive inputs primarily from the outside world via

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sensory structures. This system, consisting of the thalamus, cerebral cortex and "cortical
appendages" such as the basal ganglia and hippocampus, evolved later than the
limbic-brainstem system in order to coordinate more complex motor functions, and with the
evolution of learning, allowed adaptation to more diverse and unstable environments.
Learning, in Edelman's view, resulted from the interconnection of these two systems: ". . . the
means by which categorization occurs on a background of value to result in adaptive changes
in behavior that satisfy value."130
Important to the formation of primary consciousness is the ability to create a scene -- " a
spatiotemporally ordered set of categorizations of familiar and nonfamiliar events, some with
and some without necessary physical or causal connections to others in the same scene."131 The ability
to create a scene, mediated by the thalamocortical system, allowed animals to correlate
unrelated events to events in the present or past related to adaptive behavior. As an example,
one might correlate the rising sun (an unrelated event) with the need to seek shelter from heat
(a value-based behavior). The importance of such an event depends not only upon present
circumstances, but also upon the relative value of other things with which it is correlated.
Primary consciousness depends upon three evolutionary developments: the
development of a cortical system connected in such a way that concepts in the cortical system
could be linked to values in the limbic-brainstem system; the development of "value category"
memory, which categorizes responses (perceptual categorizations) in the thalamocortical
system based upon value criteria in the limbic-brainstem system; and, the development of a
new kind of reentrant circuit that allows for reentrant signaling between value-category
memory and global mappings. The effect of this new circuitry was to allow the creation of
scenes with which ongoing perceptual experiences could be linked. The presence of these three
items -- perceptual categorization, conceptual recategorization, and reentrant signaling, results
in a "perceptual bootstrapping" process that yields the ability to create scenes. Primary
consciousness allows for the creation of a scene in which seemingly unrelated events are linked
into an ongoing "mental picture".
As such, primary consciousness has no ability to "model" the past or the future,
although it does correlate perceptual events based upon past learning -- it cannot tell what the
past was like, nor can it infer what the future might be. It also satisfies the "Jamesian"
requirements: it is individual, based upon the animal's own learning; it is continuous yet
changing, adding new perceptual events to an ongoing image; it is intentional, referring to
events outside itself; and it is not exhaustive, for it acts on only what it perceives.
Primary consciousness is biologically efficacious, as it means the animal can modify its
behavior in novel situations based upon past rewards. It relates the present to the past, and
allows for the correction of errors. And while it is required for the evolution of higher-order

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consciousness, it lacks the ability to form any concept of a self, or any mental pictures of the
past. Edelman then goes on to speculate that based upon anatomical and archeological studies
identifying animals which appear to have the requisite cortical structures, primary
consciousness may have evolved some 300 million years ago.
Primary consciousness relies upon perceptual categorization to deal with information
from the outside world, conceptual categorization (similar to perceptual categorization, arising
out of reentrant pathways between maps) to deal with internal global mappings within the
brain, and reentrant circuitry to connect them with value systems to produce a scene that
correlates present events with past behaviors. But, in primary consciousness there is no sense
of time, just a succession of present events. Edelman has therefore nicknamed primary
consciousness the "remembered present." Higher-order consciousness, however, is able to
create images of past, present and future, to have a notion of a "self", 132 and to have a direct
awareness of its own thought processes. While primary consciousness is a prerequisite for
higher-order consciousness, something else is required to move beyond the "remembered
present".
That extra item is a symbolic memory, which is a memory for symbols and their
meanings. 133 It is Edelman's contention that such a memory developed through the evolution
of language capacity and use. To summarize a long and detailed story: The evolution of
language, or perhaps we should say the adaptation to the selective advantages of language
use, resulted in the evolution of anatomical structures necessary for speech. The brain, through
its ability to form concepts, already had the necessary capacities for meanings. As language
developed, the capacity for language also evolved with the appearance of speech structures;
there was a co-evolution of language and speech-producing structures, including parts of the
brain such as the left Broca's and Wernicke's areas. 134 These new, specialized areas of the cortex
"linked acoustic, motor, and conceptual areas of the brain by reentrant connections," thus
providing a new kind of memory -- the ability to recategorize phonemes, the basic units of
speech -- which gave rise to symbolic memory.
Just as there is a perceptual bootstrapping process in the brain, according to language
theories cited by Edelman there is also a "semantic bootstrapping" process, which links
phonological capabilities with conceptual capabilities. In order for this process to work, the
brain must have pre-existing semantic capabilities -- it must have some inherent means of
dealing with meanings. These capabilities are provided by the conceptual abilities of reentrant
mapping plus symbolic memory:

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It is obvious why the acquisition of true speech leads to an enormous increase in

conceptual power. The addition of a special symbolic memory connected to preexisting
conceptual centers results in the ability to elaborate, refine, connect, create and
remember great numbers of new concepts. It is not the case that the language centers
"contain" the concepts or that concepts "arise" from speech. Meaning arises from the
interaction of value-category memory with the combined activity of conceptual areas and
speech areas. 135

The central feature of higher-order consciousness is "being conscious of being

conscious"; in order for this to take place, there must be connections between memory systems
and conceptual systems that relate the "self" to the environment. There must be a conceptual
model of the "self" and of the past as well. For this to happen, a number of steps must take
place that "alter the individual's relation to the immediate present." There must be an ability to
delay responses; the necessary brain repertoires to intervene in the sensory-motor pathway
must be present, and such structures exist in the frontal cortex. This happens through the use
of symbols, and specifically the use of speech symbols to relate rewards in social settings. This
is to say that the "self" is a concept (or set of them) that relates value criteria, speech symbols
and social interactions: "long term storage of symbolic relations, acquired through interactions
with other individuals of the same species, is critical to the self-concept." 136 Most of this has to
do with symbolizing social interactions in speech and relating them to value criteria, which
then yields a self-concept. Also, the ability to distinguish these speech-symbol models from
ongoing perceptual experiences allows for the modeling of the past -- the distinguishing of
scenes of the past from scenes of the present. The ability to model the future also proceeds
from this ability to distinguish symbolic concepts from perceptual categorizations. And,
finally:
While the embodiment of meaning and reference can be related to real objects and
events by the reentrant connections between value-category memory and perception
(primary consciousness), simultaneous interactions can also occur between a symbolic
memory and the same conceptual centers. An inner life, based on the emergence of
language and a speech community, becomes possible. 137

Of course the question arises as to what the adaptive advantages of such consciousness
might be. Primary consciousness allows the animal to compare perceptual information with
past experience; it allows the maze of signals coming in from a complex environment to be
sorted out according to importance, set by evolutionary value criteria. Higher-order
consciousness adds the "self" to this picture, increasing the ability for social interaction, and,
more importantly, the ability to model past and future allows for the planning of behavior, the
anticipation of future events, and the ability to reorganize plans.

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This view of higher-order consciousness helps to clarify the role of qualia in the TNGS
theory of consciousness. One discriminates between different qualia via different neural
circuits. "Green" and "warm", for example, do not invoke the same pathways. These qualia
become associated with unique speech symbols, on the basis of the relevant neural pathways -it is the pathway that gets named. Qualia are recategorizations of "value-laden perceptual
relations in each sensory modality or their conceptual combinations with each other." 138 They
are perceptions, attached to values, and attached onto speech symbols. And there is an
interrelationship between the existence of a repertoire of speech symbols and the
recategorizations. It is not just that the wine-taster, who has a large number of terms for wine
qualia, can more accurately report the qualities of the wine; he can more accurately experience
those qualities because the ability to form qualia is based upon the ability to associate
perceptions with speech symbols. According to Edelman, a scientific study of consciousness
becomes possible because these reports of qualia can be correlated.
Edelman does consider two objections to his theory. The first is that the TNGS does not
really answer the question of what it is like to be conscious; it does not explain how and why
one experiences the feeling of consciousness. It does not, in short, explain the Cartesian claim
of being sure, if of nothing else, that one at least is conscious.
The problem is that in trying to answer this particular question, why I am aware of my
consciousness, we are stepping outside the bounds of what a scientific theory can do.
Regarding the limits of scientific theories, Edelman states:
Science is concerned with the formal correlations of properties, and with the
development of theoretical constructs that most parsimoniously and usefully describe
all known aspects of that correlation, without exception. It must couch its descriptions
in terms that can be exchanged and understood between any two human observers.
Any description that does not assume a conscious, understanding human observer as its
target, one who can object to flaws in logic, relate experiments, and construct new ones,
is not a scientific description. 139

Now this is a fairly rigorous demand on scientific theorizing. It rules out certain kinds
of descriptions -- for example, my own personal report of sensations, recollections, and so forth
-- anything that is based upon my own reactions to some particular thing. While we could
scientifically correlate reports from many subjects concerning some kind of experience, we
could never correlate my feelings or thoughts because they are uniquely mine, and could never
be reproduced by someone else (or at least could not be reproduced in such a way that we
could test whether or not the reproduction was accurate).
The problem is a bit like asking the physicist to give an answer to Leibniz' question of
why there is something rather than nothing. As Edelman states: "To attempt such an

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explanation would be fruitless; under these circumstances, no science based on experiment

could recommend itself as better than any other." It is simply the case that a scientific
explanation of the phenomenon of feeling conscious cannot be given. This "mystery" of
consciousness, and its ability to elude scientific description, is no more mysterious than the
inability of physics to answer Leibniz' question.
But this is hardly satisfactory; it does not satisfy one's curiosity to say that a scientific
explanation of everything about consciousness is not possible. The "mystique" remains.
Comments Edelman:
As we have seen, one overriding difficulty haunts any attempt to explain the mind: It is
that the mind arises as a result of physical interactions across an enormously large
number of different levels of organization, ranging from the molecular to the social.
Furthermore, these interactions are often idiosyncratic or irreversible, and the structural
features central to their workings include parallel, one -- many, or many -- many
mappings. Our brains (and particularly philosopher's brains) are not very good at
visualizing such complex orderings. 140

There are several things that are fairly easy to imagine about the mind. We have little
difficulty in understanding the workings of neural circuits in their overall aspects -neurophysiology explains action potentials, synaptic transmission, and why stimulating a
receptor causes activation of a neuron in the brain. Descriptive psychology explains how
behavior and the environment interact with one another. "Acts of social transmission", such as
ethological imprinting and folk psychology, explain (or at least enlighten) beliefs, desires, and
intentions.
But there are things that are difficult to come to grips with. It is difficult to imagine the
"net result of the simultaneous action in parallel of complex neural populations." A
linguistically based consciousness thinks in sequences; it is difficult if not impossible to
visualize how such a circuit works. It is also difficult to understand "dynamic system
properties" that cannot be derived from an understanding of the workings of the components
out of which the system is constructed. We have little difficulty in understanding the operation
of a computer, whose program depends upon a precisely specified set of connections in the
computer hardware to carry out its information processing; it is difficult to conceptualize a
dynamical system, whose information processing bears little or no relationship to the wiring
and connections out of which it arises. Memory is an example of this; knowing all about the
synaptic changes that yield memory will neither tell us what memory is, nor how it works. The
more complex psychological phenomena, such as consciousness itself, are also elusive. And,
perhaps the most difficult of all, how it is that a "self" can arise through the interaction of
conscious and unconscious processes.

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The second objection is that much of what drives behavior is unconscious. Indeed, a
review of Jaynes' discussion suggests that much of what we would call "mental functioning"
proceeds in the absence of any direct awareness. To deal with the unconscious, the TNGS must
propose a theory of attention. James defined attention as "the taking possession by the mind,
in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or
trains of thought."141 The importance of attention is not only that it directs behavior, but that it
focuses on certain things and obliterates from awareness everything else.
While many theories of attention focus on "filtering out" of input signals, the TNGS
suggests that mechanisms for attention developed out of the "evolutionary pressure on an
animal to select one out of a set of appropriate actions." An animal that is in danger, or is
hungry, must be able to select and quickly act upon one particular action out of many available
ones; the ability to select the most appropriate action out of many alternatives has obvious
survival value.
Such a "motor theory" of attention predicts that not only global mappings, but
non-mapped structures such as the basal ganglia are important in attention. Such an attention
system must strike a balance between internal demands and environmental novelty; in
higher-order consciousness, volitional states related to plans, values and world modeling are
also involved. Such modifications of global mappings, as must be involved in attention, would
likely involve large portions of the nervous system.
While consciousness plays a significant role in the learning of many skills, once learned,
they can be performed with no conscious attention. A theory of attention must account for
how such actions can disappear from awareness and yet continue to be performed. The motor
cortex, which is primarily responsible for the initiation of muscle activity, connects with the
basal ganglia which exhibit inhibitory and disinhibitory (meaning the basal ganglia can inhibit
inhibition arising from elsewhere) effects. The basal ganglia, as "organs of succession" where
motor planning occurs, prepare certain areas of the cortex for excitation, while shutting down
other areas:
In accord with a given plan, the basal ganglia selectively disinhibit thalamic nuclei
projecting into the cortex. This leads to anticipatory and selective arousal of cortical
areas corresponding to the motor program. These cortical areas become more sensitive
to those sensory inputs that are consistent with the performance of the task via a global
mapping. Such a mechanism can explain focused attention. 142

Environmental novelty can interrupt the motor program (that is, alter attention) by
sending "alarm" signals through the midbrain value-system that block the execution of the
motor program in the cortex. Additionally, consciousness can alter attention by changing the

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priority of parallel reentrant loops connected to the basal ganglia in the case of primary
consciousness, or in the case of higher-order consciousness, can alter the disinhibition patterns
of the basal ganglia via its connections to the frontal cortex. This capacity to focus attention is
always subject to a competition between conscious and unconscious factors, "the latter being
those that can never become conscious."143 Slips of the tongue are an example of this.
According to Freud (according to Edelman) two aspects of the unconscious can be
distinguished: the preconscious, which contains those elements that can be easily transformed
into conscious states, and the unconscious proper, containing things that can never, or only with
great difficulty, be made conscious. Threatening or unpleasant elements can be made
inaccessible to consciousness through the process of repression. The TNGS suggests important
roles for value-laden systems in memory, and if repression amounts to "the selective inability
to recall," then memory recategorizations involving repression would be subject to the activity
of value-systems. If the "self" is, as Edelman suggests, constructed socially in higher-order
consciousness, then there is an evolutionary advantage to having mechanisms that would
repress recategorizations that are a threat to the self-concept. Additionally, this means that
introspection is highly fallible, for there exist mechanisms that block things from consciousness
such that introspection could never find them. For this reason introspection can never, as
Descartes claimed it could, yield certainty.
In summary: Besides undercutting the Cartesian project, the TNGS refutes those
theories that suggest the brain could be some kind of computer, or that the mind is some kind
of epiphenomenon. It shows how consciousness appeared as a result of natural selection, how
it displays the "Jamesian" properties, and what the limits of scientific theorizing about
consciousness are. Perhaps the most important aspect of Edelman's theory is its argument for
consciousness as a process that functions independently of the physical process of the brain
itself. This is of obvious importance to a theory of portal experience which holds that the brain
is both essential to, yet not the determining factor in, experiences of non-spatiotemporal reality.
iii. Discussion.
I have presented these two "scientific" theories of consciousness to provide a theoretical
basis upon which to build an understanding of how human consciousness relates to portal
experiences. While these theories are quite different, there are elements of each that help shed
light on the phenomenon of portal experience, and its relationship to the metaphysics of
consciousness. In this section, I will discuss the major points of each theory, and try to show
how the two can be combined. I will then address the more general conflict between these
theories and the more "mystical" theory that is the subject of this study.

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Jaynes' theory is a psychological theory, based upon the phenomenology of

consciousness. His theory may be analyzed into four parts: The assumptions about
consciousness; the generating process that explains how consciousness arises out of behavior in
the individual; the historical theory that accounts for the shift from bicamerality to subjective
consciousness; and what Jaynes cites as a need for a paleontology of consciousness to situate the
generating process within the historical theory.
The first assumption Jaynes makes is that whatever consciousness is, it must be the
thing that is discovered by introspection. Specifically, the question is:
Where can this subjective experience which we introspect upon, this constant
companion of hosts of associations, hopes, fears, affections, knowledges, colors, smells,
toothaches, thrills, tickles, pleasures, distresses and desires -- where and how in
evolution could all this wonderful tapestry of inner experience have evolved? How can
we derive this inwardness out of mere matter? And if so, when? 144

It is not really introspection that Jaynes is interested in, rather it is the "mind space"
from which introspection occurs. The concern is over how this species of "Self" came to be,
because it is from there that the "tapestry of the mind" is viewed. So the assumption is that
there is such a mind-space, and Jaynes' validation of this assumption is phenomenological -we think (and more importantly behave) as if there were such a space. This space, we learn later
in Jaynes' writing, is the analog-I, the product of the generating process. This assumption is
further supported by Jaynes' examples of what consciousness is not, and a listing of mental
activities for which consciousness is not necessary.
The "behaving as if" there were such a space is a critical point for Jaynes' theory,
because his argument for the evolutionary advantage of consciousness is that it allowed for
controlling behavior in novel circumstances that could not be resolved by the bicameral mind.
What made the difference in survival, historically, is that subjective consciousness allowed one
to analyze data and make decisions where the patterns analyzed by the bicameral mind did not
exist, such as in social or environmental chaos.
The assumption of this mind-space entails the corollary that consciousness is always
consciousness of -- that there always is a subject-object relation, and that there always is some
"other" required for consciousness to exist. Jaynes states this explicitly. This is so because
consciousness is the subjective experience of a relation between this inner mind-space and
some other thing in the outside world. This view enjoys a history from Husserl through Sartre
and onward, and this tradition leads us to the conclusion that "self-consciousness" is not
possible, and there is always a certain angst in consciousness that separates consciousness from
itself.

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I mention this because in the case of portal experiences, and particularly in the case of
certain mystical experiences, it is precisely this dissolution of the difference between
consciousness and object that occurs. The literature has many examples; Richard Gale's
characterization is typical:
Within the mystical experience there is an undifferentiated unity, affording no foothold
for any concept. During the mystical experience, as viewed phenomenologically from
the standpoint of the experient, there is a dissolution of the dualism between subject and
object as well as a unification of what was originally a multiplicity of objects. 145

Ignoring for the moment the metaphysics suggested by this, what matters is that
phenomenologically, as it seems to the observer, the "consciousness of . . . " vanishes and is
replaced by a "consciousness in . . . ", for want of a better metaphor. During this type of
mystical experience, classified as introvertive, the distinction between self and non-self -between subject and object -- disappears, at least phenomenally so. We have therefore arrived
at a confrontation between mystical experience and an assumption entailed by Jaynes theory -either "self consciousness", albeit in a mystical form, is possible, or it is not, as the assumption
of an inner mind-space discovered by introspection entails.
This is not a new problem; the notion of undifferentiated unity, and the dissolution of
the subject-object relation has haunted philosophical analysis of mysticism from the beginning.
But it forces us to squarely face the problem of trying to integrate Jaynes' theory into an
understanding of mystical experience.
One possibility would be to say that Jaynes' theory is irrelevant, that it does not include
a discussion of mystical experience or its relation to consciousness; that it is about something
else. We could make that move if and only if Jaynes' theory did not include an explanation of
mystical experience, which it does. Experiences that are phenomenally identical with mystical
experiences are called "hallucinations" by Jaynes, and are classified as products of the bicameral
mind. Mystical experiences are immediate in just the way Jaynes suggests, but in addition,
they also involve a subjective self that describes them. Jaynes' theory includes mystical
experiences, so we cannot ignore what it has to say.
Just as normally conscious people behave "as if" there were an internal mind-space from
which they view themselves and their surroundings, so do mystics behave "as if" their
experiences were consciousness in undifferentiated unity. (I say "in" rather than "of"
undifferentiated unity, because the nature of the unity precludes the dualistic interpretation.)
Since it is the phenomenology of subjective consciousness that provides the starting point for
Jaynes' theory, we must confront the problem presented by the phenomenology of
undifferentiated unity head on.

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In a more global context, Jaynes' theory is a behavioral theory because Jaynes claims that
the analog-I is built up out of behaviors in the world. As Jaynes says, "There is nothing in
consciousness that was not first in behavior." Now it seems a trivial point that behavior is
"other oriented" -- one seldom "does", but rather "does to", "does with", and so on. Behavior, at
least at the performance level cited by Jaynes, is a matter of interacting with the environment.
So of course it has a subject-object structure. And if consciousness is analogized behavior, then
it should reflect the dualistic structure of its parent phenomenon just as any other map reflects
the character of the terrain it represents.
Likewise, Edelman's theory is a "perceptual" theory, as it relies on perception to kick off
the bootstrapping process that generates primary consciousness. And Edelman has explicitly
assumed "intentionality", which he takes to mean "referring to others." It is equally trivial that
perception, at least as used by Edelman at a neurological level, is also other-oriented.
Perhaps mystical experience reveals another kind of consciousness, a "mystical"
consciousness, which is not other-oriented. At least from a phenomenological point of view,
there is something about mystical experience that is not captured by either the "behavioral" or
the "perceptual" theory, and that something is the lack of subject-object differentiation. This
amounts to saying that not only Jaynes and Edelman, but the entire phenomenological
movement is wrong -- that self-consciousness is possible -- but maybe it is wrong only in a very
special case.
That very special case is important because just as the phenomenology of introspection
gets Jaynes' theory going, so the phenomenology of mystical experience must start us
wondering if Jaynes' theory (and Edelman's theory, for that matter) will be satisfactory. We
cannot dismiss mystical experience as simply not conscious, for the "as if" justification that
motivates Jaynes' theory is also present in introvertive mystical experience.
One move we might make is to deny the phenomenological dualism of any experience.
It could be argued that in some sense any experience involves the immediate unity of subject
and object, or at least unity via some medium. I have in mind the Lockian idea that there is a
continuous train of matter from the object of experience to the brain of the experient. This is
not a very attractive solution in view of the subject matter of this study -- it would be hard to
claim any kind of direct link between the brain of Nostradamus and his apocalyptic visions.
The important thing is that mystics make claims that it is the phenomenology of their
experience that matters, just as Jaynes claims it is the phenomenology of ordinary experience
that matters.
Another possibility is to say that there is something fundamentally different about
mystical consciousness that distances itself from either a behavioral theory or a perceptual
theory. Phenomenologically, mystical experiences are different from ordinary perceptual or

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behavioral experiences. But it seems to me that they are not different enough to exclude what
Jaynes has to say about them. They are described using language, they are remembered, they
are interpreted, and most importantly (at least for Jaynes), they modify behavior.
Let us try a different approach. Jaynes argues that mystical experiences are
"hallucinations", products of the bicameral mind. He draws a sharp distinction between
bicamerality and subjective consciousness; basically a distinction between two sides of the
brain. Phenomenologically, the difference is between whether experiences are immediate or
experienced in relation to a "self". The relevance of the distinction is how behavior is
controlled. Mystical experiences of the introvertive sort present us with a problem because
while they have a characteristic immediacy -- there is no "self" between the experient and what
is experienced -- they also have a subjective quality. Mystics, for instance, demonstrate an
awareness that the experience was theirs and not everyone's or no-one's. We cannot dismiss
the mystical experience as a "hallucination" because the same phenomenology, the "behaving
as if" that motivates the relation of the self to behavior in subjective consciousness, is also
displayed by the mystic towards the experience.
Jaynes has offered examples of apparent bicameral intrusions into subjective
consciousness in the form of classical (meaning described by Bleuler) schizophrenia. In many
of these cases, patients "hallucinate" and also are aware that the voices, visions, and so forth are
appearing to them as individuals. Jaynes' explanation, albeit tentative, is that this is the result
of an adrenergic disorder that "narrows" the separation of bicameral and subjective
consciousness.
It may very well be that there are circumstances other than adrenergic disorders that
also narrow the right-left brain separation. To shift the vocabulary a bit, let us provisionally
say that what Jaynes has characterized as subjectively consciousness, namely the analog-I,
roughly corresponds to what is psychoanalytically characterized as the ego, while what Jaynes
has characterized as the bicameral mind roughly corresponds to the unconscious. I hope to
make this analogy clearer in a chapter that follows, but for now let us analogize what Jaynes
has said as follows: There are circumstances, possibly neurological disorders, that narrow the
gap between ego and unconscious, such that unconscious things may impinge upon and even
displace the ego's control of awareness and behavior. And to add my part: There may be
things other than neurological disorders that can do this, and among them, mystical
experiences.
The psychoanalytical literature abounds with such examples, from the dreams and
hysterias of Freud's patients to the mandalas, archetypal visions, and even mystical
experiences of Jung's theories. These examples suggest that the separation between
bicamerality and subjectivity that Jaynes relies upon might be much less absolute that Jaynes

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suggests. I am in good company in doing this, for the whole thrust of psychoanalysis and its
adherents is that much of what motivates behavior is in fact unconscious. The counterexample
I will present in my discussion of the generating process also supports the fragility of the
right-left separation.
The upshot is that consciousness may be much richer than merely introspecting upon a
mind-space. It is a theater of many players, some available to introspection, some hidden from
it, and some invisible to it. But where does this leave Jaynes' theory? Not to be abandoned in
its entirety, for as we shall see it gives us an important clue about the way consciousness arises
from experience. But it mustn't be accepted in its entirety either, for consciousness, or at least
mystical consciousness, is not a simple as Jaynes has characterized it. Introspection upon the
self certainly is a feature of consciousness, but it is not the only one. Jaynes may be right about
how such introspection is possible, but there is more to the story.
The "generating process" is Jaynes' account of how behavior gives rise to consciousness.
This process amounts to a recursive metaphorization of experience; it is through repeated
metaphors that the analog-I is produced out of behavior. Let us take a closer look at this
process.
Metaphor, as already cited, is "the use of a term for one thing to describe another
because of some kind of similarity between them or between their relations to other things."
"Understanding" is achieved when a metaphor that familiarizes the unknown thing with some
known thing is made. Not only does our individual understanding grow by metaphor, but
language itself grows in this way. It is here that we run into the problem.
By characterizing Jaynes' generating process as a "recursive metaphorization process" I
mean that it is repetitive, and the repetition has specific entry and exit conditions. Recursion is
a technique used by programmers to repeat a given process on some data until some kind of
test condition is satisfied. In Jaynes' case, the recursion process is started by perception -coming into contact with something unknown -- and continues until the exit condition,
familiarization and integration of the experience into the "ongoing story of one's life," is
achieved.
Jaynes states that language expands when the question "What is . . . " is answered by
the metaphor "It is like . . ." The problem is that "It is like . . . " is not, strictly speaking, a
metaphor -- the inclusion of "like" makes it a grammatical simile. Jaynes, and many others as
well, do not consider this difference important. But I think it is crucial. Jaynes argues that the
analog-I is much like a map of the "real world", meaning the domain of physical behavior. This
mapping is done by repeated metaphorizations -- the analog-I is an amalgamation of
re-metaphorizations of behavior. To adopt Edelman's terminology (and I think there is a very
close similarity between the two theories here) the analog-I is the product of reentrant signaling

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between perceptual mappings. It is not a thing -- it cannot be teased out of the brain with a
scalpel, but rather it is an ongoing repetitive signaling process.
Jaynes' claim is that the analog-I mirrors the "real world" because what gets
metaphorized is experience in the "real world" (if one includes things like "listening" and
"looking" as behaviors, which I think Jaynes would). This is how Jaynes bridges the problem of
dualism: while there is a mind-space that is phenomenologically distinct from the world,
metaphysically it is not distinct because it is the result of a direct causal process from physical
world to mind-space via language.
Metaphor is a part of language. The capacity to metaphorize evolved out of the
capacity for speech. As such, metaphorization is a strictly left-brain matter, for the right brain
homologs to the speech areas are not capable of generating speech. Since metaphorization is
based upon the ability to speak, it must in turn rest upon linguistic abilities. This leads Jaynes
to conclude that the ability to metaphorize, and consequently the capacity for consciousness,
rests upon the capacity for language. So, while Jaynes has said that nothing can be in
consciousness that was not in behavior first, his theory is really more restrictive than that -nothing can be in consciousness that was not in linguistic behavior first. This is because the
metaphorization process itself is linguistic, and can only respond to those things to which the
brain's speech centers can respond.
I will not argue that similes, which Jaynes has characterized as "metaphors", are indeed
linguistic. To understand the familiarizing simile, "Big John is like a bear," one need only know
the meanings (and nuances of meanings) of the words to get some idea of what John must be
like. It is a perfectly conscious process -- we can explain every step of reasoning that takes us
from bear to John. But there may be classes of metaphors -- including grammatical metaphors,
perhaps -- that cannot be understood through any exclusively linguistic process.
Consider the following example. In the early 19th century, the science of organic
chemistry blossomed. With the discovery that carbon atoms could form chains, chemists were
hard at work discovering the structures of natural compounds. But there was one hitch: they
could not discover the structure of benzene, a chemical whose structure forms the basis of
many more complex molecules. An entire avenue of research was blocked by this one
difficulty. The problem was overcome thus:
In 1858, August Kekule (of the University of Bonn) had proposed that carbon atoms can
join to one another to form chains. Then, in 1865, he offered an answer to the question of
benzene: these carbon chains can sometimes be closed, to form rings.

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"I was sitting writing at my textbook, but the work did not progress; my thoughts were
elsewhere. I turned my chair to the fire, and dozed. Again the atoms were gamboling
before my eyes. This time the smaller groups kept mostly in the background. My
mental eye, rendered more acute by repeated visions of this kind, could now distinguish
larger structures of manifold conformations; long rows, sometimes more closely fitted
together, all twisting and turning in snake-like motion. But look! What was that? One
of the snakes had seized hold of its own tail, and the form whirled mockingly before my
eyes. As if by a flash of lightning I woke; . . . I spent the rest of the night working out
the consequences of this hypothesis. Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then
perhaps we shall learn the truth." -- August Kekule, 1865. 146

And thus was resolved a fundamental problem in the science of the 19th century. A
totally new chemical structure, unseen and unforeseen by the best minds of the era! And, I
shall argue, a classical example of a metaphor that is not linguistic.
At first glance, this appears to be a simple case of problem-solving, characterized by
Jaynes as a process that is not conscious. Kekule, who on the basis of a similar vision had
earlier proposed that carbon atoms could form chains and thus established the basis for organic
chemistry, was clearly in a position to form a struction -- a "determining tendency" about how
to think about the problem, along with a great deal of information about the problem. The
difficulty here is that whatever struction could have been formed would not have been
adequate to solve the problem -- there was no "determining tendency" in the science of the time
that could suggest the formation of a carbon ring. That particular struction had to come from
somewhere else; somewhere outside the intellectual and linguistic consciousness of the time.
The source of the struction is not difficult to identify. The image of the snake
swallowing its own tail is a common motif, or recurring image, in mythologies the world over.
It is so common that Jung was led to propose as an explanation the existence of the collective
unconscious; in addition to the personal unconscious discovered by Freud, the repository of an
individual's repressed and forgotten thoughts and memories, there is a universally distributed
element of the unconscious that is the same for everyone worldwide. I will say more about this
in a later chapter, but it is in the collective unconscious that the images giving rise to such
motifs reside. And, I suggest, it is from the collective unconscious that the struction for the
benzene ring arose.
So far this is not too bad, for Jaynes could say that what psychoanalysis characterizes as
"unconscious" he characterizes as "right-brain", and therefore Kekule's vision is a clear case of
bicamerality. The trouble is that it is also a clear case of metaphor. Consider what Jaynes has
said about the structure of metaphors and its relation to the vision: the metaphrand, that which
is to be explained, is the structure of benzene, the metaphier, the thing with which one is
familiar, is the familiar (to Kekule) carbon chain, the paraphiers are the dancing atoms of

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Kekule's visions, and the paraphrand, the quality of the paraphiers that gets associated with the
metaphrand is the snake swallowing its tail.
And now Jaynes is in very deep trouble, for if the basis of this metaphor lies in the
collective unconscious, that element of the psyche that gave rise to cave paintings prior to the
appearance of language, then this metaphor and perhaps many others are not linguistic. What
gets analogized into the mind-space of subjective consciousness is not exclusively behavioral
after all, but is at least in part imagery from the collective unconscious. And if those images are
the products of what Jaynes calls the "right-brain", then far from being a discarded remnant of
ancient preconscious humankind, bicamerality is an essential and functional component of subjective
consciousness! If the origin of Kekule's metaphoric vision was imagery from the collective
unconscious, then metaphors are not exclusively linguistic, and the generating process is
driven by things other than language.
It is the business of psychoanalysis to identify the role and extent such unconscious
imagery plays in consciousness; similarly, it is the business of anthropological mythologists
like Joseph Campbell to discover the role such images have played in the history of human
culture. The researches and successes of those disciplines make clear that Jaynes' historical
theory -- that bicamerality was displaced by linguistically based subjective consciousness -- is
false. The kind of metaphor relevant to Kekule's vision is symbolic -- in a very special sense of
the word symbolic that will be discussed in the next chapter -- as opposed to being linguistic.
It simply is not true that bicamerality disappeared from the scene. It is true, however, that if
subjective consciousness is based upon the analog-I in the way that Jaynes has characterized it,
it cannot be the result of an exclusively linguistic generation process, and it cannot be true that
"there is only in consciousness what was first in behavior."
While Jaynes theory is not acceptable as a comprehensive theory of consciousness, it
has yielded many valuable insights. Jaynes' discussion of bicamerality will help in the
understanding of the relationship of the unconscious to consciousness. It is perhaps true that
while bicamerality did not disappear, its diminished role in awareness may help explain
difficulties in coming to terms with portal experiences and their relationship to consciousness.
It probably also explains the need for psychoanalysis in the first place. Most importantly,
Jaynes' "generating process" sheds important light on how it is that unconscious contents -including, perhaps, the "object" of mystical experiences -- are revealed to conscious awareness.
Before moving on to a consideration of the relevance of Edelman's theory, there is one
more aspect of Jaynes' theory to consider. He claims that in order to understand the
relationship of the "generating process" to the "historical process", we need a "paleontology of
consciousness." That is, to see how the generating process of subjective consciousness worked
its way into human culture, we would need to be able to examine a historical record of

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consciousness. That is perhaps not so important in a consideration of Jaynes' theory if his

historical theory is false, but there remains a sense in which it is very important. It is this: if
psychoanalysis explains the role of the collective unconscious in an individual's history, and
mythology explains the role of the collective unconscious in the history of a culture, then what
remains is to understand the relationship between the two: what role the collective unconscious
as manifested in each individual has played in the history of the world. It is that relationship
which underlies the significance of the mystical theory of consciousness proposed in this study.
Edelman's theory, while considerably more technical in terms of the science involved,
can be divided into three basic parts: its assumptions, the neurological theory, and the
bootstrapping theory, which includes the notion of a dynamical system property.
There are several sets of assumptions. First, there are the three "common sense notions"
that get the theory started. They are: that things do not have minds, that humans do have
minds and some animals act as if they do, and that what is characteristic of consciousness is
intentionality. I will consider the first two of these assumptions together. They amount to
saying that the only things that we can be sure are conscious are humans, and some animals
act as if they are. On what are these assumptions founded? I would challenge the statement
that "common sense" holds that animals merely act "as if" they are conscious -- I would think
the naive view is that they are conscious.
How is it that we recognize consciousness in others? As a starting point, consider a test
from artificial intelligence theory -- the so-called Turing test. A system "passes" the Turing test
if persons interacting with it believe that they are interacting with a person and not with a
computer. Edelman's assertion, viewed in this perspective, is that humans and some animals
"pass".
Passing the Turing test amounts to a recognition on the part of the human judge that
there is another conscious person with whom an interaction is taking place. That recognition
comes about on the basis of the test system's responses to the judge's actions. A common
strategy for artificial intelligence programmers is to program a system that "adapts" itself to the
judge's actions; that is, the program tries to feed back to the judge his own actions, thus
mimicking what the judge will undoubtedly consider to be a person -- himself. 147
There is a close comparison between this "recognition" phenomenon in artificial
intelligence and Hegel's notion of the dynamics of consciousness. It is Hegel's idea that one
sees one's self as a reflection of others and, in turn, one comes to see others as a reflection of
one's self. The whole process is dialectical -- there is no clear separation of what is self and
what is "other", because the concepts of self and other are intermingled with one another.
If so, then recognition of consciousness in others is actually a recognition, to some
degree, of one's self in others. To recognize another as "conscious" is to be able to empathize

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with the other -- to put one's self, if only in fantasy, in the other's shoes -- to have some feeling
for what it would "be like" to be the other. I believe that this "empathizing" process is very near
to the way a "common sense" recognition of consciousness works.
To say that I assume other humans are conscious is to say that I can imagine what it
would "be like" to be in their place. Nagel raises a similar question:
The interesting problem of other minds is . . . the conceptual problem, how I can
understand the attribution of mental states to others. And this in turn is really the
problem, how I can conceive of my own mind as merely one of many examples of
mental phenomena contained in the world. 148

The problem is further exacerbated by Edelman's qualia assumption, which defines one of
the characteristics of higher-order consciousness as the immediate subjective experience of
certain perceptions that cannot be generalized to others. The unfortunate consequence of
combining the qualia assumption with my "empathy" view of common sense is that we wind
up in a solipsistic position: while I can imagine others as instances of my own mind, I cannot
imagine others as having minds that are not my own. And this directly contradicts the
"common-sense" assumption that humans, as a general class, have minds.
Nagel has a strategy for overcoming this problem. It begins with something very like
Edelman's discussion of the qualia assumption -- we assume that the minds of others are much
like our own, each with its own unique point of view:
When we conceive of the minds of others, we cannot abandon the essential factor of a
point of view: instead we must generalize it and think of ourselves as one point of view
among others. The first stage of objectification of the mental is for each of us to be able
to grasp the idea of all human perspectives, including his own, without depriving them
of their character as perspectives. 149

Now this imaginary conglomerate of a "human point of view" is what allows us to think
of our own ideas as events in the world. This, I think, exactly parallels Edelman's solution to
the problem posed by qualia for empirical science. But, Nagel has more. Just as we can
conceive of experiences we could imagine in others, we can also think of experiences we can't
imagine in others. This allows us to imagine things that aren't exactly analogous to our own
experiences (perhaps the mystical experiences of others?):
We include the subjectively unimaginable mental lives of other species, for example, in
our conception of the real world . . . We know there's something there, something
perspectival, even if we don't know what it is or even how to think about it. 150

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If we want to use Nagel's exit from subjective solipsism, we are forced to reconsider
Edelman's assumptions: that things, and maybe other animals, might very well have minds.
How are we to judge? That I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a tree is no argument
against the tree's possession of a mind.
Common sense assumptions are dangerous things. Edelman has, quite innocently,
bitten into a very serious philosophical problem. I don't think he meant to do that. Let us
reconsider what work the assumptions do for Edelman's theory. Edelman, at bottom, wants to
propose a theory of human consciousness. Since it is to be an evolutionary theory, he wants us
to see what might be the evolutionary antecedents to human consciousness in other species.
Maybe we should leave it at that, regarding his assumptions as trying to focus the discussion
upon the issue of human consciousness and its evolutionary predecessors, instead of
philosophical generalizations about the problem of other minds. But, we must keep in mind
that if we attempt to generalize the theory outside its immediate domain -- perceptually based,
linguistically derived higher-order consciousness -- and specifically when we try using it to
explain mystical experience that might not be neurologically perceptual or behavioral, we may
have to return to the problem.
Along those lines, we can also treat Edelman's assumption about intentionality as
philosophically innocent (and perhaps naive). Edelman's theory is based upon the role of
perception as an organizing force within the brain, and specifically perception based upon
some kind of behavior -- looking, listening, sniffing, and so forth. The point of his assumption
is to guide us away from issues such as introspection and toward the role that perception plays
in generating primary consciousness. As such, this is a rather crude assumption, but I think
this is all Edelman is trying to do in making it.
The Theory of Neuronal Group Selection itself may be divided into two parts: the
neurological theory and the linguistic theory. Focusing upon the neurological theory, there are
the three tenets of the TNGS that involve the developmental biology of the brain, and the
theories of primary and higher-order consciousness that introduce the concepts of bootstrapping
and the dynamic system property.
The first tenet of the TNGS, developmental selection, describes the embryonic
development of the brain from its primitive ectodermal germ layer. The key points in this tenet
are that brain development is topobiological and that its evolution is selectional rather than
instructional. Edelman's primary concerns are to argue for the existence of neuronal maps and
groups, and to argue against computational and connectionistic models of brain function.
The argument against computer-like models of brain function is roughly this:
computers depend upon sets of precisely specified connections with pre-determined functions
in order to process information. The brain, developing topobiologically, and as such its basic

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structure being largely dependent upon the statistics of cell survival, cannot possibly conform
to some pre-determined pattern of connections. Furthermore, genes do not code for
"connections", but rather code for morphogenic regulators that influence topobiological
development in general ways and not cell-specific ways; therefore, no "wiring diagram" can be
pre-specified. In view of these considerations, the functions of individual cells in the brain
cannot be dictated by either genetics or by specific connections, nor can the function of the
brain as a whole be directly dependent upon the connections of its individual cells.
I do not wish to delve into the philosophic issues concerning connectionism or
computationalism, save to mention that there are more complex versions of these views than
those which Edelman seems to be attacking. I think Edelman is to some extent picking out the
most absurd points from these views and attacking them as a straw man. Whether this is so or
not probably does not matter; what does matter is whether or not Edelman's theory is a
reasonable basis for understanding the relationship between the biology of the brain and
consciousness, independent of what other theoretical platforms may be available.
The overall result of developmental selection is the appearance of a primary repertoire of
neurons that is further refined during development. Here is where the second attack on
computational models arises. The brain, argues Edelman, is a self-organizing, selective
recognition system, rather than an instruction system. A computer program is instructional -it provides a set of instructions to the hardware, directing it to perform specific tasks in specific
ways. A self-organizing selectional system does not work this way -- it chooses its own ways
of performing the task, programming itself but also altering its own structure in the process,
based upon its successes and failures. A computer program does not alter the structure of the
hardware; the brain does in fact alter its own wiring. While computers essentially "know" how
to do a task before they begin, self-organizing systems must "learn". This training process
means that there must be some criteria to determine whether or not the task has been
accomplished; Edelman calls these "value criteria" and locates them in the phylogenetically
older parts of the brain that are not self-organizing.
This is the role of the second tenet, experimental selection: to refine the connections within
the brain so that behavior leads to the satisfaction of value criteria. This means actual alteration
of brain wiring, weakening and strengthening of synaptic connections, accommodation of cell
death, and so forth. Since it never really comes to an end, it means that while the general
pattern of the brain is specified genetically through morphoregulation, the specific processing
strategies implemented in the brain are individual and continually changing, being formed and
re-formed by the unique experiences of each individual organism.
There is good news and bad news in this. The good news is that it means there are no
pre-set patterns of thought or behavior; it is not the case that we "cannot" have certain kinds of

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concepts or perceptions, but rather that we have trained ourselves to have (and not have)
certain kinds of experience. One of the contentions of Jungian theory is that we have the
general capacity for the kinds of experience I have classified as "portal", yet through social
pressures (which amount to training) we have shut down those capacities. We are speaking at
a neurological level here -- what it means is that we train ourselves to perceive the world in a
certain way, even though we have the capacity to perceive it in other ways. Furthermore, we
retain those capacities; it is a matter of re-training to get them back. The bad news is that when
we train ourselves to perceive in a certain way, it may well close off the possibility of having
certain kinds of experience. Again, we are speaking at the neurological level of perception -certain kinds of data may not be available because our consciousness has trained the neural
circuits not to process it. And this may well close off the possibility of portal experiences; that
is, until something stimulates the desire to re-train.
This experimental selection process yields a well-defined set of mappings in the brain -sets of neuron groups that developmentally grew out of sensory mappings, but now
functionally carry out more complex operations. This brings us to the third tenet of the TNGS,
reentry, and specifically to the existence of multiple, reentrant connections between mappings.
The neurological bases of reentry are not difficult to understand, but its consequences are
dramatic.
In the cerebral cortex, sensory areas such as the retina of the eye are mapped onto the
surface of the brain in such a way that there is roughly a one-to-one correspondence between
receptor cells and target brain cells in the map. But, as we move deeper into the cortex, the
maps become more complex -- there are interconnections of neurons within a given map, and
interconnections between neurons of different maps. For example, as one penetrates deeper
into the visual cortex, one finds maps of cells that respond to specific shapes, colors, directions
of movement, and so on. It is by means of these mappings that primitive perceptual
categorizations occur. Concept formation, according to this theory, arises out of
interconnections between maps -- cells that respond to red connect with cells that respond to
the smell of apples forming a "classification couple", and the concept of an apple, with all its
nuances, arises from these inter-map associations.
The significance of reentry is that these maps not only receive inputs from sensory
areas, but they receive inputs from other maps that reconnect to themselves. Out of these
reentrant connections arise the possibility of the brain's maps "conversing" amongst themselves
in the absence of any specific perceptual stimuli. Thus, reentry makes possible certain kinds of
self-generation, and perpetuation, of perceptual-like experiences. Memory, according to the
TNGS, is one such reentrant signaling process. Maps connect with non-mapped areas of the
brain forming global maps which control behavior; the interconnection of maps with

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behavioral and perceptual functions allows for "matching" the animal's behavior to the
environment based upon value criteria.
Furthermore, it is not simply a matter of individual neurons; the TNGS holds that the
functional units within maps are not neurons but neuron groups, which means that whether a
specific functional unit is active or quiescent is determined by not only outside input but
activity within the group itself. This is yet another level of signaling complexity and reentry.
And it is through reentry that the self-organizing capabilities of the brain are realized, for it is
the strengthening and weakening of reentrant connections that alters the flow of information
through the brain's circuitry.
There is another important consequence of reentry, but before moving on to that let us
take stock for a moment. How are we to evaluate the TNGS as a model for brain function?
Much of it is empirical, and much of it is theoretical. It is a scientific theory, in that it tries to
match up empirical observations at many different levels -- from embryonic proto-neurons to
adult brains -- into a coherent theoretical picture. There has been some criticism of the theory,
but as Edelman says, most of it is against the idea of neuron groups and not against the ideas
of topobiology, selection and reentry. Outside of a highly technical discussion, documenting
the interpretations of results by one investigator versus those of other investigators, it would be
difficult to evaluate the theory's adequacy in scientific terms.
It has some rather striking philosophical implications, however. If it is true, then the
way we think to some extent controls what we think, or can think. Reentry means that while
certain perceptual patterns may increase or decrease the likelihood of having certain other
kinds of perceptual experience, training can alter those effects. It means that thinking in a
certain way (and by thinking I mean at a very low level -- paying attention to certain things
and ignoring others) may tend to perpetuate itself to the exclusion of other opportunities.
And, it means thinking in certain ways may lead to behavior patterns that are peculiar to that
way of thinking.
For quite some time I have thought that a great deal of social insensitivity to
environmental destruction arises out of the fact that the urban environment, with its tall
buildings and straight roadways, leads to a kind of perceptual pattern that renders the urbanite
insensitive to the more rounded and jagged patterns of the wilderness. Experimental evidence
has shown that animals raised in an environment of vertical lines will be unable to distinguish
between rounded objects, for example. Those who have spent their lives in wilderness areas
exhibit a "path finding" ability that enables them to find their way through the woods, whereas
the city-dweller quickly gets lost and walks in circles. Could it be that the city-raised, through
their environment of straight lines, do not have the necessary classification couples to adapt

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their perceptions of the wilderness to their behavior? The TNGS certainly makes this an
attractive explanation, and perhaps an attractive theory as well.
Perhaps the part of Edelman's theory that will be most difficult for philosophers to
come to terms with is the notion that consciousness is a dynamical systems property. Since
this idea will be important in the next chapter, we must give it some consideration. A
"dynamical system", crudely put, is a system -- a set of functionally related components -whose behavior changes its own structure. In mathematical terms, it is described by nonlinear
equations. It is the stuff of chaos physics, which we will consider in the next chapter.
The important thing for the present discussion is that primary consciousness arises out
of the neurological structure of the brain, not from the sum of the functioning of its individual
parts, but from the association of those parts into a larger whole. It is an "emergent" property
in the sense that nothing we could know about neurons could predict that it would arise or
how it would behave. Yet it is not an epiphenomenon, for consciousness can, through
directing attention and training, alter the structure of the neurological system out of which it
arose. The dynamical systems property is a characteristic arising out of the system and its
behavior, and not out of its individual components.
I think the difficulty in understanding dynamical systems properties is that
philosophers habitually think within the confines of metaphysical theories of causation, and
dynamical systems properties run counter to the concept of causation. A "Humean" causation
theory, for example, holds that in order for one thing to cause another, there must be
contiguity, succession and regularity -- the things must touch, one must come after the other,
and it must be repeatable (an instance of some "law"); there are additional modifications to
accommodate probabilistic causation. To the adherent of this kind of theory, the dynamical
systems property will be unintelligible, for there is no action on the part of any individual
system component that will alter the dynamical property in any way that is subsumable under
any law or regularity and there is no physical contact between consciousness and neurons. The
real difficulty, I think, is that "Humean" causation is a linear theory -- it is founded upon the
dynamics of linear causal systems, and it assumes that once a thing "causes" it does not change.
Dynamical systems are non-linear -- their causes are altered by their effects, and events in
dynamical systems do not always proceed in a straightforward, linear time fashion.
I hope to make this a bit clearer in the next chapter, when examples from physics and
systems theory will be offered. It is unlikely, however, to become any clearer to the devotee of
Humean causation, or anything related to it, because the notion of dynamical systems is
anathema to the notion of causal order. To understand consciousness, we must give up the
idea that knowing something about neurons will help us. What we must know about is the
way they are interconnected -- by plastic, multiple reentrant pathways -- and this helps us

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understand why the brain is a dynamical, self-organizing selective system that can give rise to
such properties.
The question remains as to how such a property is generated by the system, and that is
the function of the bootstrapping process. If we are going to rule out causation as a way of
understanding this, then there probably isn't much to say other than to describe what happens.
Multiple reentrant signaling allows for sustained activity in the brain, and also allows for
self-generated activity to occur. The bootstrapping process for primary consciousness,
perceptual bootstrapping, occurs when, during the course of evolution, reentrant connections
form in sufficient number to enalbe perceptual recategorization to occur; classification couples
can signal other classification couples in an ongoing process that does not depend upon
outside stimulation. Perceptual bootstrapping amounts to the maps in the brain striking up a
conversation among themselves. This "chatter" can, in turn, modify the connections between
maps via ongoing experimental selection.
The primary consciousness that arises out of this perceptual bootstrapping allows for
the creation of a "scene", a correlation of events that are not, at least within perception,
spatiotemporally related. It allows one to realize that clouds mean rain, for example. It is easy
to see why a non-linear, non-causal systems property would be ideal for this function. The
limitation on primary consciousness is that it cannot abstract things out of a temporal context -it cannot create a scene of the past, or imagine one of the future. In order for this to happen, a
new kind of memory must be developed -- one that can symbolize the elements of a scene.
That symbolic memory is, according to Edelman's theory, derived from the brain structures
related to speech. So, just as there is a perceptual bootstrapping process that makes the
creation of a scene possible, the addition of a symbolic memory allows for a "semantic
bootstrapping" process that yields higher-order consciousness, and the ability to situate one's
self in relation to the past and future.
This is very difficult material. I have asked the reader to abandon all intuitions about
causation, to accept the idea of non-linear systems and their emergent properties, and to
correlate it all into a theory of consciousness. I have probably done little to clarify matters
beyond what Edelman himself has said. Let us step back from this and see where it fits into
the more general project of this study.
From the discussion of Jaynes, we were left with the idea that consciousness has
something to do with a recursive metaphorization process, in which the nuances and subtleties
of experience become the subjects of new metaphorizations. Edelman's theory gives us a
clearer understanding of how this works: Reentrant signaling between perceptual mappings
allows the associations of one experience to be recategorized -- metaphor, even the
non-linguistic kinds, may amount to reentrant signaling between perceptual maps.

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But there are some glaring inconsistencies between the theories. Edelman assigns no
functional role to the right-brain analogs of the speech areas, while Jaynes assigns them a
central role in symbol formation. Edelman would have us believe that the ability to have a
symbolic memory derives from the evolution of left-brain speech centers, while Jaynes argues
that such an ability is native to the right hemisphere and antedates the development of
complex language ability. Most significantly for this study, Edelman does not give us any
basis, at least within the context of the TNGS itself, to come to grips with the collective
unconscious, while Jaynes, unwittingly perhaps, has done so.
Here, in short, is what I think these "scientific" theories of consciousness have provided:
1. We now have a sound basis for believing that whatever human consciousness is, it
arises out of the biology of the brain. Things that affect the functioning of the brain may, in
turn, affect (and effect) the consciousness that arises therefrom.
2. While human consciousness may arise out of the brain, it is not the brain that
determines what consciousness is. As a dynamical systems property it is not causally bound to
the brain, and its features are not causally limited by the structure and function of the brain.
3. In addition to the role played by the personal unconscious, determined in part by
biologically set value criteria, there appears to be input from another dimension of the
unconscious -- the collective unconscious. That input is symbolic, and is understood and
interpreted through a metaphorization process that is not entirely linguistic in nature. Things
that are not directly related to consciousness may, via symbols, become conscious through a
recursive metaphorization process.
4. It is possible that while behavior and perception are, at a neurological level,
phenomenologically dualistic, there may be an aspect to consciousness that is not.
There is one more set of concerns that needs to be addressed before leaving this section;
these concerns have to do with the relationship between science and metaphysics. Since this
study is, at least nominally, about the metaphysics of consciousness and its relationship to
mystical and other portal experiences, it has no doubt struck the reader as odd that such a
great deal of space has been devoted to theories that, at least on the surface, appear
antagonistic to the entire project. I must confess that the writing of this chapter has been
difficult; not so much because of the complexity of the material, but because of the overall point

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of view from which the material was written -- it is not the theories themselves that are
antagonistic, but it is the point of view from which they are argued.
As I have said, philosophical arguments (and, probably, scientific theories as well) are
processions from premises to conclusions. Interesting questions arise out of why certain
premises are chosen over others, and why they are argued in certain ways. It is here that the
point of view of the philosopher or theoretician does its work.
The reader will have noticed that I have paid very little attention to the linguistic parts
of both Jaynes' and Edelman's theories. Much of the work done by both actually concerns the
role of language, and I have all but left it out of the discussion. I have done this for two
reasons. First, in considering the example of Kekule's vision, we have been led away from the
role of language in consciousness, and toward the role of the collective unconscious; this is
particularly true in the case of portal experiences, which this study specifically addresses.
The second reason is more difficult to come to terms with. It has to do with the reasons
that both authors, as well as many authors in philosophy, appeal to language as an ontological
basis for consciousness. It is a dangerous matter to psychoanalyze the philosopher from
his/her philosophy, but that is what we must do if we are to understand why a philosopher
has chosen one set of premises and one route of argumentation over others. The reason for the
emphasis on language, I believe, has to do with the fact that language is a social practice and a
social phenomenon -- it is something that arises out of interpersonal interactions, and not from
within the individual. Edelman explicitly states that the "self" is a purely social construction;
that without social interactions, there could be no "self".
I regard this point of view -- that whatever consciousness is, it must have arisen out of
interactions with others -- not as a conclusion to be tested but as a point of view to be
explained. And there is an explanation. In his essay Psychological Types, Jung distinguished
between two fundamentally different psychological orientations that underlie and organize the
whole structure of the mind. These are the extraverted and the introverted psychological types.
Of the extravert, Jung says:
Now, when the orientation to the object and to objective facts is so predominant that the
most frequent and essential decisions and actions are determined, not by subjective
values but by objective relations, one speaks of an extraverted attitude. When this is
habitual, one speaks of an extraverted type . . . His entire consciousness looks outwards
to the world, because the important and decisive determination always comes to him
from without.151

Of the introverted type, Jung says:

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The introverted is distinguished from the extraverted type by the fact that, unlike the
latter, who is prevailingly oriented by the object and objective data, he is governed by
subjective factors . . . Whereas the extraverted type refers pre-eminently to that which
reaches him from the object, the introvert principally relies upon that which the outer
impression constellates in the subject. 152

Now the issues are considerably more complex than just this, and it is not my point to
discuss the personal ramifications of these types. It is my point, however, that there are two (at
least) fundamentally different ways of looking at the world, and there is no way to resolve the
two through argument. It is not an intellectual conflict between the two; it is not a matter that
one is "right" and the other is "wrong". The two views represent fundamentally different
orientations of consciousness.
Marilyn Nagy traces the extent to which this difference has permeated the history of
theology and philosophy, principally as the feud between nominalism and realism:
The issue of what is most real -- the objects of sense and the predications we make about
them, or the higher concepts by means of which we order the realm of our own being -continues to puzzle us, and presumably it always will . . . 153
The question at issue is the typical opposition between the abstract standpoint, where
the decisive value lies with the mental process itself, and the personal thinking and
feeling which, consciously or unconsciously, underlie orientation by the objects of
sense. 154

It is my contention that the search for the source of consciousness in language is an

instance of "orientation by the object," to be identified with the extraverted type. I am not
trying to draw conclusions about the personal psychology of the authors who do this; I simply
claim that the searching for the basis of self-hood in social processes suggests an extraverted
orientation of their thought.
In contrast, the orientation I am following is that consciousness is an internal process,
and its nature is to be discovered in the internal workings of mental processes. Portal
experiences, in particular, are individual affairs, and their impact on consciousness derives
from their immediacy to the mental processes of the experient, and not to some social process
describing them. This is not to say that external factors are not important; it is to say that they
are not ontological.
This is an irresolvable difference, if Jung is correct. It will continue to plague
philosophical arguments as long as it goes unacknowledged. By acknowledging this conflict
and situating my own work within it, I do not argue that the opposing orientation is "wrong",

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but that it is different. I offer this as the reason that I have given the linguistic components of
the two theories considered in this chapter such small consideration.
The second matter concerns the reason certain premises are selected for arguments or
theories, and I refer specifically to both Jaynes' and Edelman's assumptions of materialism.
There are several aspects to this problem.
One wonders by what right "scientific" has come to mean "materialistic", to the
exclusion of any other possibility, when there is no empirical test that could determine whether
it is true or false. As Professor Barry Stroud commented during a lecture regarding this
association, "[there is the belief that] Science describes the physical world, and that's all there is;
but the 'and that's all there is' is not a part of science!" Edelman writes:
Science is concerned with the formal correlations of properties, and with the
development of theoretical constructs that most parsimoniously and usefully describe
all known aspects of that correlation, without exception. 155

This is a strictly empirical view -- that science observes properties, correlates them, and
then constructs theoretical models that explain those properties. I see no reference or limitation
in this view to what may be investigated, or to which properties may or may not be correlated.
This is all fine and well, until we read in Jaynes:
[Science] is something about understanding the totality of existence, the essential
defining reality of things, the entire universe and man's place in it. It is a groping
among the stars for final answers, a wandering the infinitesimal for the infinitely
general, a deeper and deeper pilgrimage into the unknown. 156

Now, were one to press me for a definition of metaphysics, I don't think I could have
come up with anything closer to the point! If we are looking to correlate observed properties -phenomena -- and classify them, and generalize about them, then we are working in empirical
science. But when we look for "final answers"? There is something woefully unsatisfying
about sticking to statistics. Particularly in the case of something as personal as consciousness,
we want to think that our observations, correlations and theories tell us not just how we are but
also what we are. And that leads to what Edelman would call a "category mistake" -- assuming
that the observation reveals the essential nature of the observed. Now this is a very old debate
in philosophy and elsewhere; it has occupied a large part of the field since the days of
Descartes, and recounting the whole sorry mess would not assist us here. A fair summation of
the last three hundred years of philosophy might be this: There is no generally satisfactory
answer to the question of just what observations can tell us about objects.

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What does the assumption of materialism do for a scientific (or any other) theory? This
assumption, as with Edelman's assumptions about what does and does not have a mind, helps
to focus the discussion. One of the problems facing any experimenter or theoretician is to limit
the class of things under study. A botanist studying pollination would, quite logically, limit
the scope of his study to those plants that actually produce pollen; he might go even further, to
limit the study to one particular species that could be investigated in some detail. He would
then generalize his results to other species, being careful to determine that the generalization
was actually applicable to those things to which it is applied; in other words, what is true of
one thing is true for others only if one is careful about what one includes in the larger class.
One must make assumptions to get the study going; those assumptions focus the study
and define what kinds of investigations need to be carried out. But those assumptions also
limit the generalizability of the conclusion. For Edelman and Jaynes to have assumed
materialism -- that whatever the mind is, it is a product of the brain and the brain's interaction
with physical objects and relations between physical objects -- properly limits the
generalizability of their theories to those matters dealing with the biology of the brain. If their
theories are to remain "scientific" in the sense defined by Edelman, they cannot comment on
things that were not studied; whatever "immaterialism" might amount to, the theories must
remain silent about them.
But, of course, neither author remains silent. Jaynes dismisses "metaphysical
imposition" as inconsistent with "natural science", and Edelman refuses to consider "spirits and
ghosts". Were these authors claiming to describe the biological foundations out of which
consciousness arose, that would be acceptable; they are, however, purporting to give
comprehensive, all encompassing theories of consciousness. They are not proposing "formal
correlations," but rather "final answers." Nothing, however, in their experimental methods has
tested for anything outside of the material. It could be argued that no such test is necessary if
the theory describes the phenomenon in the most useful, complete and parsimonious manner
without the need for considering other possibilities. The response is obvious: neither author,
and neither theory, has given any account of portal experiences other than to declare their
irrelevance or reduce them to hallucinations (in the sense defined by Jaynes).
In the first chapter, I have opted for taking these experiences seriously, and for making
the assumption that they hold an important place in both the evolution of consciousness and in
imaginative abilities. I have said, in essence, that we should take them at face value -- that they
are the immediate experience of a reality that is not spatiotemporally connected to the physical
world -- and with that as a starting point, let us see what it tells us about consciousness. This is
a metaphysical thesis, which I have proposed to investigate in (for metaphysics) a novel way --

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to begin with what we know about the brain, and see how that relates to what we can discover
about consciousness under the assumption that portal experiences are what they claim to be.
What I have assumed is contrary to the assumption of materialism. I have assumed the
possibility that what consciousness is, and the possibility that some of the things with which it
interacts, are not subsumable under a naive definition of "matter". There are two justifications
to which I will appeal for this, one concerning the materialism assumption itself, and the other
concerning the "physics assumption" that rides its coat tails.
We must make assumption to get started; we cannot do without them. The question is
whether those assumptions are legitimate in relation to the topic under study: if we are moving
within a certain class of phenomena, is the experimental design appropriate to that class; if we
are considering certain ideas, are our assumptions a plausible starting point for the
consideration.
Alvin Plantinga has addressed this issue in the context of religious beliefs, but his
discussion is equally appropriate here. Plantinga's argument is that, depending upon the
circumstances, certain beliefs are "properly basic" while others are not; it is "properly basic" for
a Christian to believe in God, but not in the Great Pumpkin. The worry is over the justification
of religious beliefs -- in the absence of observational or inferential criteria. As I have suggested,
there are no observational criteria that can ground the belief in (which translates to
"assumption of" in a scientific theory) materialism or its contradiction, and the inferential
criteria are a matter of to which phenomena one gives priority. Instead, there are according to
Plantinga "vague circumstances" that serve to justify a belief as "properly basic". These vague
circumstances "call forth" certain beliefs as properly basic.
Consider Gerald Edelman as an example. His work is of a scientific nature, and
specifically concerns the biology of the immune system, embryonic development and brain
research. He moves in the milieu of laboratory research. For him, the "vague circumstances",
which could never be tallied up in any scientific way, include a commitment to a certain way of
looking at things and doing things, and having practiced those things for many years (not to
mention having won a Nobel prize for his work). For him, the belief in materialism is
"properly basic", because it is such an integral part of what he says and does.
Now consider the citizens of Salem, Massachusetts in 1692; it is the year of the famous
witchcraft trials. The judges at those trials assume that witchcraft, or at least the hexing
domain of it, is real. What justifies this belief? They have been raised in a religious life that has
taught them about demons, devils, evil and demonic possession. Their entire life has moved in
the milieu of the Zoroastrian struggle between good and evil. And, by God, they can see its
work in the convulsions of the victims brought before them! For the citizens of Salem, an

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assumption of the fact of witchcraft could be called "properly basic", while for Gerald Edelman,
it could not.
Ah!, we might say, but they were mistaken. We, from our privileged scientific
perspective, know that it was not witchcraft that caused those convulsions, but the LSD-like
alkaloids in their ergot-infected grain. They did not know about ergot alkaloids, they did not
know proper grain storage techniques, they did not have the proper tools for the medical
diagnosis and treatment of lysergic acid intoxication. They were ignorant and we are not; they
were wrong and we are right.
No, it is we who are wrong. Our "privileged scientific perspective" is founded upon a
set of assumptions that are not themselves scientifically verifiable -- assumptions of
materialism, of causation, of spatiotemporality. To say that our explanation is "right" is to say
that it accords with the Universe as we view it. To say the citizens of Salem were wrong is to
say more than they were wrong about that particular thing, it is to say their whole form of life,
their whole culture was "wrong". And while this may serve to gratify our egos it is, as
Wittgenstein pointed out, erroneous. We cannot judge the rightness or wrongness of a form of
life of which we are not a part; we can dismiss it prejudicially, but we cannot disprove it
empirically or logically.
Similarly, I cannot say that Jaynes and Edelman are "wrong" in their assumption of
materialism without it being a matter of prejudice and not science. I can legitimately say that
their assumption of materialism is inappropriate to this study; the forms of life through which
portal experiences move are different from those which Jaynes and Edelman live, or, at least,
are founded upon different assumptions.
Unfortunately, we are not yet at the bottom of the problem. To say that a certain
culture founds itself on a set of assumptions -- and much of the economic, political and social
character of the superpower cultures of the 1990's certainly does rest on the assumption of the
supremacy of the "scientific" viewpoint -- implies that the culture has a vested interest in
maintaining those assumptions as truths. It is straightforward Maoist doctrine that to destroy
a society one must first change the way its people think. To challenge the assumptions is to
challenge the security of the culture; to challenge the accepted "truths" of a society is to
challenge what Sabina Lovibond called the "intellectual authority relations" that maintain the
balance of power in that society. According to Lovibond (and Marx), maintaining political
power rests upon maintaining the ideology that keeps certain people in power and others out.
It is not a matter of which ideas are "truth", it is a matter of "truth" being defined by power.
I think this is the reason that ideas that challenge the absolute authority of the physical
sciences are met with such fervent ridicule from the academic establishment. It is not, at
bottom, an intellectual response to a new idea but rather a political response to a challenge to

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power. It is sad that this is the case, for it means that philosophy does not exist in the kind of
intellectual freedom-space that most philosophers would like to believe in; it means that
philosophy is in reality an arena of struggle for political power.
One way of responding to this problem might be: If this miserable state of affairs is the
case, then so mote it be!, let us make it the best possible struggle. Let us begin by showing
what it is about the alternative view that is relevant in the history of the culture and in the life
of the individual. Let us analyze what the opposition has said about it, ferret out his hidden
motivations and internal contradictions, take from him what can be used to build a new world
and discard that which perpetuates the old. Let us then proceed to show why our
assumptions would lead to a better life.
All extravagance aside, I think this means that I am not obliged to show why some
version of immaterialism is better than materialism in any ultimate or final sense. I have
selected a set of phenomena for which I hope to provide the best possible account; an account
that includes a metaphysics of consciousness which provides a plausible explanation of the
phenomena under study. Whether it contradicts what is "generally accepted" is a political and
not a philosophical question.
There is yet another dimension to the assumption of materialism; it has to do with what
Edelman has called his "physics assumption":
The physics assumption is that the laws of physics are not violated, that spirits and
ghosts are out; I assume that the description of the world by modern physics is an
adequate but not completely sufficient basis for a theory of consciousness. Modern
quantum field theory provides a description of a set of formal properties of matter and
energy at all scales. It does not, however, include a theory of intentionality or a theory
of names for macroscopic objects, nor does it need them. What I mean by physics being
just adequate is that I allow no spooks -- no quantum gravity, no action at a distance, no
superphysics -- to enter into this theory of consciousness. 157

Now this is a very curious assertion. What Edelman means by "no spooks" is explained
further on -- he wants to reject the idea, proposed by Penrose and others, that the answer to
what consciousness is will come in the future, from the resolution of certain problems in
theoretical physics. Penrose (according to Edelman) suggested that when a theory of quantum
gravity is worked out, that theory will be the explanation of consciousness. It is the idea that
the discovery of the nature of consciousness must be put off into the future to which Edelman
objects.
But a problem remains: Edelman has clearly declared for materialism, a version of
materialism suggesting that the biological matter of the brain is the source and sustenance of
consciousness. He has also declared physics as the "mother of all sciences" (this book was

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written before the Iraq war), being the one that most accurately and completely describes
nature. If that is so, it is very hard to see how he can remain committed to a view of
materialism, traceable to Locke, that matter is basically "stuff", and that "stuff" is the basis of
consciousness.
Experimental physics has made many remarkable discoveries concerning the nature of
matter; discoveries of subatomic particles, and the creation and destruction thereof. Theoretical
physics has gone even further -- the vibrating atoms in the void being replaced by superstrings
of infinite length and ten, eleven, or twenty-six dimensions. The issues surrounding the nature
of matter are not simply those of substance -- whatever "I know not what" turns out to be, it is
clear that it is not the "stuff" of primary qualities. So when Edelman declares for physics and
for materialism, it is not clear exactly what that declaration amounts to, save that on careful
consideration it cannot be the simple, common sense view of matter to which Edelman appears
to appeal.
Now Edelman's response to this would be that it is precisely the machinations of
theoretical physics that he wants to exclude. The whole idea of mathematically describing
nature -- originally Galileo's project, the describing of nature in abstract terms -- is what took
the mind out of nature in the first place. But this is ridiculous; it is equivalent to asking us to
accept Bohr's atom, but reject the mathematics that predicted and described it. Comments
Hawking:
Up to now, most scientists have been too occupied with the development of new
theories that describe what the universe is to ask the question why. On the other hand,
the people whose business it is to ask why, the philosophers, have not been able to keep
up with the advance of scientific theories. In the eighteenth century, philosophers
considered the whole of human knowledge, including science, to be their field and
discussed questions such as: Did the universe have a beginning? However, in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, science became too technical and mathematical for
the philosophers, or anyone else except a few specialists. Philosophers reduced the
scope of their inquiries so much that Wittgenstein, the most famous philosopher of this
century, said, "The sole remaining task for philosophy is the analysis of language."
What a comedown for the great tradition of philosophy from Aristotle to Kant! 158

There is no question that the mathematics that transforms the naive notion of matter
into collapsed superstrings of infinite extension is difficult. There is little doubt that this
difficulty has earned physics the title of "mother of all sciences" in the post-Iraq-war sense as
well. And it is spooky, especially to the adherent to eighteenth century materialism, because
theoretical physics transforms reality into something that lies beyond the hopeful naive realism
of that time, and this time as well. But if we are to come to grips with the philosophical
questions of why we must be prepared to come to grips with the questions of how. This

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amounts to a denial of the distinction between physics and metaphysics; a perusal of the work
of Hawking or anyone else in the field of cosmology will support the view that said distinction
is no longer valid. When physics consisted of rolling balls down inclines and philosophy
consisted of meditating by the fire, perhaps that distinction was proper. But both disciplines
have become more sophisticated, and that sophistication has intertwined the issues of what
and why. Edelman's rejection of that intertwining -- his adherence to the "empirical" part and
his rejection of the Galilean "spooks" -- is unacceptably naive.
Granted, this makes great demands upon both philosophy and science -- it means the
philosopher must learn something of the technical disciplines, and the scientist must be
prepared to step back from his work into a larger perspective. It is difficult, especially for
philosophers who have come to rely on appeals to science as a substitute for metaphysics
without a clear understanding of what those appeals entail. Of that difficulty Nagel says:
. . . a lot of philosophers are sick of the subject [metaphysical problems in the philosophy
of mind] and glad to be rid of its problems. Most of us find it hopeless some of the time,
but some react to its intractability by welcoming the suggestion that the enterprise is
misconceived and the problems unreal. This makes them receptive not only to scientism
but to deflationary metaphysical theories like positivism and pragmatism . . . It is
natural to feel victimized by philosophy, but this particular defensive reaction goes too
far . . . There is a persistent temptation to turn philosophy into something less difficult
and more shallow than it is. It is an extremely difficult subject, and no exception to the
general rule that creative efforts are rarely successful. 159

And this explains why a theory of mystical experience must begin with a scientific
description of the brain -- because I am primarily a cosmologist, and that entails rejecting the
distinction between empirical science and speculative metaphysics. It means we must consider
what science has discovered and we must invite the spooks to stand and be counted. We must
ask how the biology of the brain relates to the experience of God, and we must be prepared to
dig for the answers.
Aleister Crowley coined the term "Scientific Illuminism" for his program whose goal
was a scientific understanding -- and practice -- of the occult. It was his belief that the goals of
religious enlightenment could be achieved through careful experimentation, correlation and
categorization. I suggest it is that program we should follow -- to get everything we can out of
observation, but not be enslaved by it; to go forward in abstraction, but not become lost in it.
This chapter has devoted extensive consideration to the technical details of two theories
-- the bicameral mind theory and the TNGS -- because these theories argue for the biological
basis of consciousness. If we are to take portal experiences seriously, we must also taker
seriously the obvious fact that portal experiences occur in persons with physical bodies, and

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those bodies have something to do with the consciousness in which portal experiences occur.
The bicameral mind theory, together with the counterexample of Kekule's vision, suggests a
way by which things that are not immediately present to the senses can become conscious
symbolically; this idea will be developed further in chapter four. The TNGS characterizes
consciousness as a dynamical system, an idea that will be investigated in greater detail in the
next chapter. The significance of a dynamical systems theory of consciousness is that it will
allow for an explanation of how a non-spatiotemporal reality can interact with a consciousness
that is associated with a physical brain.

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Chapter 3: Psychedelics, Chaos and Consciousness

My . . . word!
- - Dr. Humphry Osmond, testing the psychedelic drug DMT.

A theory of consciousness that takes seriously the idea of portal experience must
confront a dilemma. Since we are giving an account of human consciousness, and it is apparent
from the previous chapter that human consciousness has something to do with the brain, then
the theory must ground itself in the biology of the brain. On the other hand, since portal
experience involves the direct awareness of something that is not a part of the physical
space-time world, it must also ground itself in something outside physical space-time. This
means that, from a purely physiological perspective (and, from a purely "spiritual" perspective
as well), the theory must be incomplete: it must violate Edelman's requirement for a scientific
theory to "parsimoniously and usefully describe all known aspects of that correlation, without
exception." It must necessarily mention things that lie outside the domain of its data, to which
those data are correlated. Specifically, a theory that bases itself on the biology of the brain and
accounts for portal experience in the way it has been defined must mention and allow for the
possibility that there are things outside the biological matter of the brain, and indeed outside
the world in which that matter is situated, that affect the consciousness that occurs as a result
of the physiological processes in the brain. The physiology of the brain is only part of the story
of the mind, and the physiological theory must allow for the presence and influence of the
other part.
The purpose of this chapter is to consider the physiological part of the story, and also to
lay the groundwork for a theory of consciousness that allows for the intrusion of the unknown.
The next chapter will establish the link between the physiology of consciousness and the
unknown. Here is where the first real "shock" mentioned by Stace will occur: the description of
the physiological process must point to the existence and role of something outside that
process. Now there is a sense in which both Jaynes and Edelman have already done that -their theories depend as much upon the role of language as they do upon the role of neurons.
And it is far from clear just what, in metaphysical terms, "language" might amount to. Both
Jaynes and Edelman have, however, considered language as an interrelationship between brain
anatomy and social interaction. Having argued against the role of language in consciousness,
and more importantly having considered portal experience as an encounter with the unknown
on an individual basis, I find the appeal to language unacceptable.
The physiological theory must, therefore, move us toward an interaction with
something that is not a part of the physical space-time in which the physiology itself operates.

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In order to accomplish this, the physiological theory will have to suggest that consciousness is
a process that is different in kind from the homeostatic mechanisms of the brain. Edelman's
theory comes to this very conclusion: that while homeostatic mechanisms are to a large extent
hard-wired and dependent upon simple causal relations in the brain, consciousness is a
dynamical systems property, which does not partake of the biological cause-effect relationship.
But Edelman has relied upon a linguistic bootstrapping process to get the dynamical system
going; as I have taken a position opposed to the ontological role of language, I must find other
means. The theory I am proposing in this chapter amounts to a theory of bootstrapping
consciousness as a dynamical systems property, without the inclusion of language as a
contributory factor.
There is, in addition to the notion of consciousness as a dynamical systems property,
another link between the present work and Edelman's theory. Edelman describes primary
consciousness, the result of perceptual bootstrapping, as the "remembered present". It is
characterized by its immediacy with surrounding events, and its inability to conceptualize
those events as past or to project the future. Compare this idea of the "remembered present" to
the characteristics of "flow experience" noted in the first chapter -- specifically that flow
experience involves:
. . . exclusion from one's awareness of irrelevant immediate stimuli, memories of past
events, and contemplation of the future; hence a focusing on the unfolding present . . . 160

Edelman, regarding primary consciousness, writes:

It is curious that we, as human beings with higher-order consciousness, cannot "see the
world" with our primary consciousness alone . . . Yet one who has such . . . higher-order
consciousness needs to link one mental image to the next in order to appreciate the
workings of primary consciousness! Higher-order consciousness cannot be abandoned
without losing the descriptive power it makes available. (I often wonder whether this
abandonment is what some mystics seek.) 161

Edelman's description of primary consciousness, along with Stace's description of

undifferentiated unity and the above characterization of flow experience suggest a linkage
between consciousness, stripped of its linguistic ontological bias, and portal experience. In this
chapter I will propose a bootstrapping mechanism by which consciousness, as a dynamical
systems property, is physiologically linked with those practices that historically have been
used to induce portal experience.
I will assume as a starting point much of what Edelman has said about the biology of
the brain. That the brain develops topobiologically means that it is not specific

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interconnections that determine how information is processed, but rather that the general
pattern of the brain makes certain kinds of processing schemes available. In particular, the
existence of multiple, reentrantly connected mappings allows for the repetitive and
self-originated signaling to occur that makes bootstrapping possible. And most importantly,
Edelman's theory addresses itself to the constraints natural selection, and views consciousness
as a selective recognition process rather than as an instruction process.
The theory of consciousness developed in this chapter supports a fundamental
discontinuity between the biological processes of the brain and consciousness. This theory
emerges from studies in the biochemistry, physiology and anatomy of the brain, and also some
recent findings in systems theory. It concludes that, viewed from a physiological perspective,
consciousness is something quite different from the ordinary biological processes of neurons -so different that a complete understanding of those biological processes would fail to provide a
complete understanding of the mind. Furthermore, this theory illuminates one of the most
long-standing problems in the theory of mind: how it is that an immaterial mind can influence,
and be influenced by, a physical system. While the brain may be essential to the realization of
consciousness in a physical medium, it is not consciousness itself.
I will begin with a discussion of some neurophysiological points that are important in
the understanding of how information is processed at the cellular level. Whereas Edelman and
Jaynes have focused principally upon the anatomical features of the brain, I will focus on the
role of neurotransmitters and other internal chemical agents that alter the cellular mechanisms
of information processing. There exist, in addition to the brain's own biochemistry, chemical
agents that are external to the brain, but found in nature, which also affect neural function.
This will strongly suggest an evolutionary linkage between these external chemical agents,
primarily of botanical origin, and the development of the human brain, such that the structure
and function of the brain are intimately related to the presence and activity of these chemical
agents. An examination of the biochemical activity of some of these agents, along with
information recently developed in systems theory, physics and neuroscience, suggests the
possibility that consciousness in the human brain may have occurred as an evolutionary
partnership between human and plant, and that consciousness is a fundamentally different
process from homeostatic mechanisms such as respiratory and digestive system control. That
fundamental difference exists because the process of consciousness is a dynamical systems
property, different in kind from the biological regulatory mechanisms of the brain.
i. Neurophysiological Basics.

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It is thought that cells originally evolved in a liquid medium, something like the ocean,
but more dilute. In this primitive environment, self-replicating molecules, proteins, and other
complex structures developed, perhaps spontaneously. As the oceans receded and land bodies
emerged, the concentrations of salts increased, such that the chemical environment that once
favored the development of the basic biological molecules became inimical to their existence.
The all-important energy transfer reactions catalyzed by protein enzymes are extremely
sensitive to pH, salt concentration and osmotic pressure, and as these aspects of the chemical
environment changed, the survival of primitive biological entities depended upon their ability
to insulate themselves from these changes.
Those organisms that survived these changes were ones that had evolved means of
isolating their internal components from the chemical instability of their environment. The
internal components of these organisms developed in an aquatic environment, so the problem
is one of maintaining a constant internal aquatic environment, in terms of pH, electrolytes, and
so forth, in the face of a changing external aquatic environment. The isolating mechanism that
evolved was the lipid bilayer semi-permeable membrane. This membrane is not completely
water impermeable -- it must pass oxygen, some water, and other molecules necessary for
sustaining life. Since this "leaky" membrane allowed some undesirable electrolytes to enter the
cell, a mechanism for removing them was also necessary. The primary electrolyte that is
concentrated in the ocean is sodium, so cells evolved with a sodium pumping mechanism. This
sodium pump is a protein located in the cell membrane, which picks up a sodium ion inside
the cell, expends some cellular energy (in the form of ATP), and ejects the sodium ion to the
outside of the cell.
All cells, be they plant or animal, have such a sodium pump, and it is estimated that
85% of the cell's metabolic energy is used up by this sodium pumping process; the cell's single
most significant expenditure of energy is the maintenance of the "primal ocean" within the
bounds of its membrane. This sodium pumping process, by removing positively charged
sodium ions, generates a separation of charge across the cell membrane. If one measures the
voltage across the cell membrane, one finds the inside of the cell negative with respect to the
outside. This condition is called polarization, and is characteristic of all living cells.
It is not known how or where the excitable cell evolved, but sometime during the
evolution of multicellular animals (and, perhaps, plants also), specialized cells developed
which take advantage of the electrochemically polarized cell membrane to transfer information.
These excitable cells have, in their cell membranes, specialized protein gate molecules, the most
common being the sodium gate. The sodium gate is capable of opening a channel in the
membrane that allows sodium ions from the outside to enter, partially neutralizing the
electrical charge across the membrane, depolarizing the membrane near the gate. The gate itself

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is opened by partial depolarization of the membrane; the threshold voltage is the degree of
depolarization required to open the gate. Once the depolarization is complete, the gate closes,
allowing the sodium pumps to remove the excess sodium and return the membrane to its
resting potential, or normal state of polarization.

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A typical neuron (as an example of an excitable cell) may be functionally organized into
two regions: the dendrite, and the axon. The axonal area, often elongated and sometimes
reaching several feet in length, possesses sodium gates in its membrane. It has a resting
potential of about -70 millivolts (mV) -- if one measures the voltage across the cell membrane,
one finds that the inside of the cell is 70 mV negative, with respect to the outside. The axon
attaches onto the neuron cell body at a region called the axon hillock. When the axon hillock is
depolarized to its threshold potential, about -55mV, the sodium gates in the axon membrane
open. This does not happen instantaneously along the entire length of the axon, but instead
proceeds as a wave of gates opening and closing. Correspondingly, a wave of depolarization,
an action potential, moves along the axon. As the action potential passes the membrane, other
kinds of gates and pumps are activated that restore the resting potential; this process of
restoration takes a certain amount of time, during which the membrane cannot conduct
another action potential -- this time frame is the refractory period. There is an absolute refractory
period, during which an action potential cannot be initiated under any circumstances, and a
relative refractory period during which an action potential can be initiated, but depolarization
greater than the normal threshold is required. Action potentials proceed down the axon at a
fixed rate, determined by the time required for the sodium gates to open. Because of the
absolute refractory period, there is a maximum frequency at which the axon can conduct action
potentials. The axon can, therefore, be thought of as a digital device -- it transmits information
as pulses of fixed size and speed; the content of the information is the frequency at which
action potentials occur.
At the end of the axon lies a terminal bulb, an enlargement of the axon that contains
bubble-like vesicles filled with chemicals. When the membrane at the axon terminal
depolarizes, these vesicles move to, and fuse with the cell membrane, discharging their
contents into the extracellular fluid. The number of vesicles discharged depends on the
number of action potentials reaching the terminal in a given time frame: a higher frequency of
action potentials results in greater chemical discharge at the terminal.

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The axon terminal is usually located in close proximity to the dendritic area of another
neuron, but it may also attach onto a muscle cell, another axon, its own axon or dendrite, or it
may be a specialized structure for releasing chemicals into the blood or cerebrospinal fluid.
When applied to a dendrite the junction is a synapse, and the chemical released by the axon is a
neurotransmitter. Within the membrane of the dendrite are specialized protein receptor

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molecules. When neurotransmitter molecules are released by the axon terminal, they travel
through the extracellular fluid in the synapse and attach onto the receptor molecules in the
dendritic membrane. There, depending upon the receptor, the dendritic membrane may be
depolarized or hyperpolarized (made more negative than the resting potential); this process is
usually accomplished by the receptor allowing various electrolytes to move through the cell
membrane when activated. Usually, receptors are neurotransmitter specific -- each receptor
can be activated by only one kind of neurotransmitter. Receptors that, when activated, cause a
depolarization of the membrane are excitatory, while those causing hyperpolarization are
inhibitory.
A given neuron may have millions of receptor sites on its membrane, arranged in an
elaborate dendritic tree that may connect with thousands of axons from different neurons.
While a neuron may have receptors for many different kinds of neurotransmitters, it usually
produces only one kind of neurotransmitter itself. Its axon may branch into an elaborate tree
structure that in turn synapses with many other neurons, where it may exert, on some, an
inhibitory effect, while on others, an excitatory effect. Since there are no sodium gates in the
dendrite, changes in membrane potential caused by activated receptors spread over the surface
of the membrane by electrostatic propagation. The principle is similar to that of a capacitor:
two conductors (in this case, the extracellular and intracellular fluids) are separated by an
insulator (the cell membrane); any electrical potential difference occurring at any point will
spread out over the surface of the conductors. But as the potential difference spreads out, it
weakens, until it spreads out so far that it becomes undetectable. Thus, the effect of a single
receptor being activated quickly diminishes as the distance from the receptor increases. As
more receptor sites are activated, a greater effect is exerted on the resting potential of the
membrane, some increasing and others decreasing the potential.
The critical point in the functioning of the neuron is the overall potential at the axon
hillock. Should the sum of the resting, excitatory, and inhibitory potentials reach the threshold
level, an action potential is initiated. The greater the depolarization at the axon hillock, the
greater the frequency with which action potentials are initiated, owing to the relative refractory
period. Thus, the neuron has been described as a biological analog/digital converter, because it
translates the membrane potential (an analog sum) into bursts of action potentials (digital
quantities).
A more detailed look at the synapse shows that the biochemical interactions occurring
there are complex. As an example, consider a noradrenergic myoneural synapse, in which a
neuron is applied to a muscle cell. (Muscle cells, like neurons, are excitable and generate action
potentials, though the mechanism is somewhat different.) When the neurotransmitter
norepinephrine is released from the axon terminal and crosses the synapse, it attaches onto an

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alpha receptor, depolarizing the membrane. The shape of the receptor is such that the
neurotransmitter fits onto the receptor site much as a key fits a lock; when the key is in the
lock, the receptor changes shape to allow electrolytes to pass through the membrane, altering
its potential. When the key is out of the lock, the receptor returns to its normal configuration.
It must be realized that this process of a neurotransmitter attaching to a receptor is not as
simple as the key-and-lock analogy suggests: the "attachment" is really more like a bouncing on
and off. There are enzymes present in the synaptic fluid that destroy the neurotransmitter:
Monoamine oxidase (MAO) destroys norepinephrine in the synapse. So, as the
neurotransmitter is released from the axon, some of it is destroyed before it ever reaches the
receptor. Those neurotransmitter molecules reaching the receptor may be destroyed on the
first "bounce," they may fail to be destroyed and reattach to the receptor, and be destroyed on
subsequent bounces. There may also be chemicals in the blood, such as the drug ephedrine,
that can release the neurotransmitter without any action potential being present, and there may
be other chemicals in the blood that can activate the receptors independent of the
neurotransmitter.
We can now state some general principles for drugs and chemicals that act on nerve
cells:
(1) The drug may mimic the action of a neurotransmitter, by reaching the receptor site
through the blood (or cerebrospinal fluid) and attaching onto it. Such a drug might be either
the neurotransmitter itself, or chemically similar to it. These substances are called agonists or
mimetics. An example of the former is phenylethylamine (PEA), itself a neurotransmitter in
hypothalamic ganglia, which is also found in chocolate. An example of the latter is cocaine,
which presumably binds to norepinephrine receptors in the limbic system of the brain.
(2) The drug may prevent the neurotransmitter from attaching onto the receptor, often
by binding to the receptor but failing to activate it. These substances are antagonists or blockers.
Among them are the phenothiazine-derived tranquilizers such as Thorazine, and the closely
related antihistamines. Another such agent is curare, which binds to acetylcholine receptors in
myoneural synapses, blocking access of the neurotransmitter to the receptor sites.
(3) The drug may affect the hydrolytic enzyme responsible for the destruction of the
neurotransmitter, either blocking or enhancing its action. Perhaps the best known of these are
the organophosphates -- primary ingredients of both insecticides and nerve gases -- that block
the action of acetylcholinesterase in myoneural synapses, resulting in inability of muscle cells
to be "turned off."

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(4) The drug may directly effect the release of the neurotransmitter, as with ephedrine
(mormon tea) in the example above.
(5) The drug may overwhelm the influence of the neurotransmitter by activating
antagonistic receptors. In the myoneural example used above, there are in addition to the
alpha-receptors to which norepinephrine binds, also beta-receptors, which to some extent exert
opposite effects on the cell. A sufficient quantity of a substance that binds to and activates the
beta-receptors might overwhelm and mask the effects of naturally occurring norepinephrine.
(6) The drug may affect the action-potential generating mechanism itself, either by
interfering with cellular energy producing mechanisms, or by blocking the sodium gate itself.
General anesthetics, like cyclopropane and nitrous oxide, are thought to interfere with cellular
energy production. Tetrodotoxin, of "Serpent and Rainbow" fame, is thought to act by blocking
the sodium gates, preventing the conduction of action potentials.
ii. Neuropeptides.
The above discussion represents the state of knowledge regarding the chemistry of the
brain as of the early 1970's. The general picture is one of localized effects: neurotransmitters act
over short distances upon cells in close proximity, and the effects are short-lived. During the
mid- and late 1970's, a series of developments in biochemistry occurring in rapid succession
fundamentally changed the way the chemistry of the brain is viewed.
The first step was the development of a technique called autoradiography. Assuming
that neurotransmitters attach to specific receptor molecules on neurons, the theory is that one
can locate, in a slab of brain tissue, the cells to which the neurotransmitters bind by the
following technique. One first prepares a sample of neurotransmitter with a radioactive label
(usually tritium). The sample may then be injected into a living animal, the animal killed and
the brain tissue removed, or the sample may be used to bathe a specimen of brain tissue. The
tissue is washed to remove neurotransmitter that has not been bound by receptors, frozen and
cut into thin sections, and then placed in contact with photographic film. After a few days the
film is developed, and one sees dark spots in the locations where the tritium has decayed,
corresponding to the receptor sites for the neurotransmitter.
A modification of this technique can be used to locate those neurons that produce
various neurotransmitters. If one knows the process by which a given neurotransmitter is
synthesized in the cell, one can prepare a radioactively labeled precursor substance -- one that

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is used by the cell to manufacture the neurotransmitter -- and similarly inject it into tissue
samples. The labeled neurotransmitter shows up on the axon terminals of the relevant
neurons.
Pharmacologists were long puzzled by the question of how certain drugs, particularly
the opiates, affected brain function. Acting on the theory that the action of these drugs must be
mediated through neurotransmitter-specific receptor sites, several research groups began to
search for "opiate receptors" in brain tissue. In the mid 1970's, such receptor sites were found
in areas of the brain concerned with perception and emotional responses (hypothalamus,
limbic areas, spinal cord). With this discovery, the search was on for other receptor sites
involved in drug action. Receptor sites for many psychoactive drugs and naturally occurring
neurotransmitters have been found by this method.
But in the opium case, a problem remained: there was no known neurotransmitter that
bound with the opium receptors. Could it be the case that, for some reason, the mammalian
brain was "wired" for opium, a substance completely alien to the mammalian body? In 1975,
and in subsequent years, the answer was found: there exist, in the brain and its surrounding
cerebrospinal fluid, naturally occurring polypeptides (chains of amino acids) that bind with
these receptors. The first to be discovered were the enkephalins, then beta-endorphin, and
others. These are substances produced by specialized neurosecretory cells, whose chemical
messengers are released into the cerebrospinal fluid instead of into a synaptic junction, where
they can travel throughout the structure of the brain and affect cells having the appropriate
receptor sites.
The "opium receptors" in the brain are, therefore, really receptors for internally
occurring neuropeptides. It has been theorized that various activities, including acupuncture
and hypnosis, may mediate the pain response by causing the release of these neuropeptides.
This theory is substantiated by the observation that narcotic antagonists (i.e., naloxone, a drug
used in the treatment of opiate overdoses) which block the effects of opiates also block the
effects of these kinds of treatments, in addition to blocking the effects of the relevant
neuropeptides.
Further, endorphins exhibit the phenomenon of cross-tolerance with opiates. When a
dosage of morphine that is effective in suppressing a particular kind of pain is given to an
animal repeatedly, the effect soon begins to decrease -- a higher dosage of morphine is needed
to achieve the same effect. This is the tolerance phenomenon. Once a tolerance to morphine
has been built, it is found that a larger amount of endorphin is needed to relieve similar pain
than would have been needed in an animal without tolerance. When two substances show this
cross-tolerance phenomenon (the building of tolerance to one substance also builds a tolerance
to another), it suggests that the two substances are acting through the same pathway.

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The "same pathway" business is somewhat tricky, for it might mean the substances are
acting on the same receptors sites, that they are acting on different receptors on the same cell,
that they are acting on different cells that are interconnected in some way, or any multitude of
other possibilities. The demonstration of cross-tolerance suggests that the substances are
affecting related brain processes. Cross-tolerance studies have been important, even more so
than autoradiography, because they are nondestructive (can be done in primates and humans).
They have been the primary means used to establish relationships between drugs and
neurotransmitters.
The discovery of enkephalins, endorphins and other neuropeptides sent a shock wave
through brain research: neuropharmacology promised to provide the bridge between
physiology and psychology. While traditional neurophysiology lacked the descriptive power
to explain how the mind emerged from the brain, biochemistry and pharmacology had made
the link between chemistry and mental function by describing the effects of the opiates in both
physiological and psychological terms. As with most discoveries that promise intellectual
panacea, neuropharmacology failed to deliver; while, nearly twenty years later, behavior seems
no closer to reduction to biology, important insights were gained. The picture of information
processing in the brain that emerges from studies in neurochemistry is far more complex than
can be accounted for by wiring diagrams and synaptic junctions: Different parts of the brain
can communicate with each other by direct contact, and by chemicals sent through extracellular
fluids. It is also known that other organs of the body communicate with the brain by chemical
means: neurons in the brain monitor levels of hormones in the blood -- adrenocorticoids, for
example -- and in turn control the endocrine glands by releasing chemical agents.
iii. The Pharmacology of Consciousness?
It is also clear from the above studies that the functioning of the brain may be
influenced by substances originating outside the body. This is so because many substances in
nature, occurring in both plants and animals, act upon the brain either by mimicking or
antagonizing neurotransmitters and neuropeptides, or, sometimes, by binding with receptor
sites that have no other known function. This last case is the most conceptually troublesome,
for it raises questions of how such receptor sites evolved, given that they do not respond to
internal chemical mechanisms. Actually, the problem is a much broader one: Why, we must
ask, is it the case that the mammalian brain, including that of humans, evolved in such a way
as to be sensitive to chemicals that occur outside the body?
Such plant substances affecting brain action are common in nature. The collaborative
work of Dr. Schultes and Dr. Hofmann 164 has shown an astonishing worldwide distribution of

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hallucinogenic compounds in plants. What is surprising is that mammalian evolution should

have occurred in such a way that the basic functioning of the control centers of the body's two
most vital systems -- the brain of the central nervous system, and the heart of the
cardiovascular system -- are affected in fundamental ways by the presence of compounds that
the animal is likely to encounter under quite innocent and ordinary circumstances. Animals,
when foraging for food, generally are not out to get "high," yet they often encounter plants
containing chemicals that accomplish just that. In fact, the distribution of psychoactive
compounds in plants makes it highly unlikely that any animal, in the wild, will fail to
encounter such a compound in its routine search for food.
There are several hypotheses that may be considered to explain this surprising
situation.
(I) It may be a mere coincidence that the evolution of the brain produced mechanisms
sensitive to substances produced outside the body. To use an analogy, the camera-type eye
appears to have evolved twice in the animal kingdom: once, in the mollusks, and again, in the
mammals. There is no developmental connection between the two; their embryological
development is distinctly different. Yet environmental circumstances, together with natural
selection, produced, at a gross level, the same kind of structure in distantly related creatures.
So, we might say, that it was just a coincidence, a freak of nature, that both squid and human
have a camera-type eye. Similarly, it might be argued that the presence of receptor sites in the
brain that respond to chemical substances in plants is a similar coincidence of evolution.
I am not inclined to take this hypothesis with much seriousness. "Coincidence" is too
easy a substitute for "we don't know why." The expenditure of energy required by both plant
and animal to develop these biochemical mechanisms, some of them quite complex, is
considerable; that this similarity should be sustained through the evolutionary process as a
matter of chance makes the "coincidence" hypotheses seem absurd.
What determines, in the evolutionary process, whether a particular development will
continue is whether it has adaptive value -- whether that particular development somehow
enhances the ability of the organism to exploit its environment. The energy drain on an
organism imposed by the development of a particular biochemical process will be sustained by
natural selection only if that process yields a net gain in the organism's ability to flourish. In
other words, nature doesn't waste energy on frivolous things, and, therefore, we probably
shouldn't consider what nature has done as frivolous. The "coincidence" hypothesis has all the
flavor, and credibility, of ". . . a man found in a closet by a jealous husband who hopefully
explains, 'Just by coincidence, while you were away on business I happened to wander into
this closet without my clothes on . . . '" 165

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(II) In the light of the above considerations, we might suppose that it was of adaptive
value to plants to develop these biosynthetic pathways. That is to say that those plants that,
through genetic variability, developed biosynthetic pathways that affected the mammalian
central nervous system, had some kind of adaptive edge over their siblings; somehow, these
changes enabled them to exploit their environment more effectively and flourish.
There is no question that some of these synthetic pathways do aid in the survival of
plants. Many plants produce toxic materials that harm or kill animals feeding on them. Over a
long period of time, those animals whose behavior does not include feeding on such plants
tend to out-survive and out-reproduce those animals that do feed on these plants. The
long-term effect of this biochemical interaction is that as the animal population evolves, the
number of surviving plants that produce toxic substances also increases.
But two problems with this hypothesis arise. First, many of these substances are not
toxic, at least not in a way that threatens the life of the animal that feeds on it. Marijuana, for
example, produces a substance that has virtually no long term toxic effects. Insects that feed on
the plant seem unaffected by its active constituents. THC, the active principle, seems to do
nothing for the survival of the plant, it seems harmless to those creatures that parasitize the
plant, and yet, the process by which it is produced in the plant is extraordinarily complex. To
top it off, THC-specific receptors have been found in mammalian brains (in the limbic,
hypothalamic, hippocampal and frontal cortical areas), and no substance in the brain is known
to bind to these receptors. Much to the dismay of bathtub mushroom growers, there are
mutants of Psilocybe cubensis that do not produce the psychoactive compound psilocybin, yet
these mutants grow and reproduce as well as their "flesh of the gods" siblings.
In both cases, it appears that the production of psychoactive compounds does little to
insure the survival of the plant. Certainly, the biomasses of both Cannabis and Psilocybe have
been, under human cultivation, dramatically increased because of their biochemical
constituents, but to assume this is the reason for the evolution of their unique biochemical
processes would not be a legitimate application of evolutionary theory. Evolution is not
teleological -- a biochemical mechanism does not develop "in order that," at some time in the
future, it will be of advantage: marijuana did not develop the synthetic pathways for THC
several millions of years ago in anticipation of growing in someone's closet in the twentieth
century.
This leads us to the second problem: that many of these biosynthetic pathways
developed, chronologically, before the evolution of the mammalian brain. The biosynthetic
pathways for psilocybin in mushrooms, lysergic acid amides in morning glories and ergot
fungi, THC in Cannabis, and mescaline in Lopophora were around long before there were any

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mammals to either feed on them or cultivate them. Which leads, inevitably, I think, to the third
hypothesis:
(III) It was of adaptive value to mammals, and particularly to humankind, to evolve
brains that were sensitive to psychoactive substances occurring in nature. Now this is a very
strange idea. More likely, one would think, that the central nervous system of humans should
have evolved in such a way as to isolate it from the effects of chance encounters with
psychoactive substances. But the opposite is clearly the case, and not, apparently by accident.
It is interesting that, for most of these compounds, the naturally occurring isomers (structural
variants) are the ones that are psychoactive, while closely related synthetic variants, which
could just have easily evolved in the plants but didn't, have no psychoactive activity in
animals. From a thermodynamic standpoint, the brain could just have easily evolved receptors
for structural variants that do not occur in nature, but it didn't happen that way. Hofmann
writes:
It is perhaps no coincidence, but of deeper biological significance that of the four
possible isomers of LSD, only one, which corresponds to natural lysergic acid, causes
pronounced mental effects. Evidently the mental functions of the human organism, like
its bodily functions, are particularly sensitive to those substances that possess the same
chemical configuration as naturally occurring compounds of the vegetable kingdom. 166

It appears, contrary to intuition, that the evolution of the human brain proceeded in
such a way as to deliberately take advantage of psychoactive compounds found in nature. To
express this idea in "proper" evolutionary terminology: There was an adaptive advantage for
those creatures whose central nervous systems evolved in such a way as to be influenced by
the presence of biological compounds found in their environment -- compounds that, because
of their wide distribution and presence in materials likely to be consumed as food, would
eventually exert some kind of influence upon the animal's nervous system. In Edelman's
terminology, the brain as a selective recognition system evolved in such a way as to recognize,
and be modified and reorganized by, these naturally occurring substances. And, in the case of
many of these substances, the consequences of ingestion were neither lethal nor altogether
unpleasant -- not consequences that would deter the animal from consuming the plant in the
future.
But what was this adaptive advantage? What is it about the influences of these
substances that enhance the survival of the animals consuming them? Why are those animals
that consume these materials, and have nervous systems that are affected by them, better able
to exploit their environments? Before trying to provide a neurophysiological answer to this
question, let us first examine some data surrounding the use of these substances in primitive

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human cultures. It is in the setting of these primitive human societies of the past that,
supposedly, the evolution of human consciousness itself took place. Write Schultes and
Hofmann:
The use of hallucinogenic plants has been a part of the human experience for many
millennia . . . they have long played an important role in the religious rites of early
civilizations and are still held in veneration and awe as sacred elements by certain
peoples who have continued to live in cultures less developed and bound to ancient
traditions and ways of life. How could man in primitive societies better contact the
spirit world than through the use of plants with psychic effects enabling the partaker to
communicate with supernatural realms? What more direct method than to permit man
to free himself from the prosaic confines of this mundane existence and enable him to
enter temporarily the fascinating worlds of indescribably ethereal wonder opened to
him, even though fleetingly, by the hallucinogens? 167

It is impossible within the limits of this paper to recount the history, both past and
current, of the use of psychoactive plants by both "primitive" and modern cultures (see note 3).
It is enough to say that, almost universally, psychoactive plants found their way into the native
religious and shamanistic practices of peoples everywhere. 168 They are common ingredients in
medieval (and contemporary) "witch's brews" and "flying ointments", used for the purpose of
inducing astral projection. 169 As noted in the above passage, the value in the use of these plants
is that they somehow alter the awareness of the individual such that he or she perceives things
differently -- as though in another world. The hallucinations -- effects upon the central nervous
system -- produced by the consumption of plants containing psychoactive compounds, are, to
the partaker, visions of "another world."
We need to tread very carefully in our interpretation of the word "hallucination." We
may be all too ready, in this era of knee-jerk "just say no" thinking (or whatever the antonym of
"thinking" is), to assign an interpretation suggesting that what is perceived under the effects of
these substances is something that is not "real," or is inferior in some other way to what is
perceived in the absence of these substances. Perhaps, according to Schultes and Hofmann,
quite the contrary:

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In general, we experience life from a rather limited point of view. This is the so -called
normal state. However, through hallucinogens the perception of reality can be strongly
changed and expanded. These different aspects or levels of one and the same reality are
not mutually exclusive. They form an all-encompassing, timeless, transcendental
reality. The possibility to . . . produce changes in the awareness of reality constitutes
the real significance of the hallucinogens. The ability to create new and different images
of the world is why hallucinogenic plants were, and still are, regarded as sacred. What
is the essential, characteristic difference between everyday reality and the images seen
during hallucinogenic inebriation? In normal states of consciousness -- in everyday
reality -- ego and outside world are separated; one stands face to face with the outside
world; it has become an object. Under the influence of hallucinogens, the borderline
between the experiencing ego and the outside world disappears or becomes blurred . . .
A feedback mechanism is set up between receiver and sender. Part of the ego reaches
out to the external world, into the objects around us; they begin to come to life,
acquiring a deeper and different meaning . . . The experience of deep communication
with the outside world may even culminate in the sensation of being at one with the
whole of creation. 170

What "hallucination" means, in this context, is not seeing what is not there, but instead
seeing what is there in a different way, and perceiving what is, under ordinary circumstances,
inaccessible to perception. The perceptual, and perhaps also cognitive, functions of the mind
operate in fundamentally new ways, when affected by psychoactive substances. 171
To return to the question of adaptive value: let us suppose that, at some time in the
distant past, while the fundamental structure of the human brain was in its evolutionary
infancy, a genetic mutation occurred (more likely a series of them) such that some brains
appeared with receptors for certain kinds of naturally occurring plant substances. The
ingestion of those substances resulted in fundamentally new kinds of perceptual awareness,
and perhaps also fundamentally new ways of processing information.
I suggest that these "fundamentally new awarenesses and processes" are what we today
call "consciousness". The capacity for consciousness in the brain is the result of the appearance
of new kinds of physiological processes, different in kind from the mechanisms of biological
regulation and control. This is to say that what made the difference between a brain concerned
merely with homeostatic mechanisms and basic biological survival, and a brain concerned with
an awareness of the intricacies of its own existence and the world around it, was the evolution
of receptors that, when acted upon by naturally occurring psychoactive compounds, produced
new and different ways of processing information.
The adaptive value of the evolution of receptors for extra-corporeal substances, then,
was the development of consciousness. It is interesting to think that what we see in primitive
societies, in their religious and shamanistic rites using psychoactive plants, is the mind
reaching beyond the biological limitations of the brain into new ways of understanding the
world, and perhaps into new worlds. The observations of Schultes and Hofmann do indeed

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suggest that psychoactive substances are somehow able to alter the way in which the world is
perceived, and the ways in which that information is analyzed. The universality of their use
among ancient humankind inextricably links the pharmacology of hallucinogenic plants, and
the effects they produce, with the evolution of the human mind and human culture. Such
perceptual and cognitive "alterations" may very well be the progenitors of awareness and
reflection; the processes that differentiate perception from sensation may be the same ones that
distinguish thought from reflex. Consciousness could be considered an adaptive advantage if
it provides better ways of exploiting the environment, and it does seem, from Edelman's
discussions, that the ability to reflect upon one's actions might help plan for the next meal,
build shelters, and so forth.
That psychoactive plants have played a role in the evolution of human consciousness is
an inescapable conclusion, if we are to take evolution theory seriously. It is also an interesting
conclusion of Edelman's work that consciousness is a radically different kind of process than
biological control mechanisms. It is exciting, however, that there is experimental evidence
which not only confirms Edelman's conclusion, but suggests a link between his theory and the
possibility that the existence of consciousness itself may have originated with the consumption
of natural psychoactive substances.
iv. Perception and the Strange Attractor.
Recent experiments in neurophysiology 172 show that when an animal perceives a scent,
a series of complex neurological process are initiated. Beginning with scent-specific receptor
cells in the nasal passages, neural activity passes into the olfactory bulb, a neural "relay center"
that lies between the nose and the olfactory cortex of the brain. When the information reaches
the olfactory bulb, it initiates a process by which the discharge activity confined to the
relatively few neurons connected to the receptors themselves spreads and eventually involves
the entire structure of the bulb. Neurons are recruited into the information processing net by
signals from the brain itself -- when the animal is hungry, for example, or has other reasons to
pay attention to smells, neurons from the brain release substances into the bulb that increase
the gain, or responsiveness, of the neurons in the bulb. When the animal detects an odor, if the
smell is recognized, or if the animal has other reasons to be interested in it (such as being
hungry), the activity spreads from a few relatively specialized neurons to a much wider group.
What the olfactory bulb sends to the brain, under these circumstances, is a mixture of
scent-specific perceptual data, plus a signal that the data are "interesting."
When the signal reaches the brain, a similar process takes place. The dedicated sensory
neurons of the outer cortex that map the scent-specific receptors in the nasal passages develop

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both sensation-specific potentials, and general arousal potentials as well. These general arousal
potentials contain no information about what is being sensed, but rather indicate that the sense
data are important. It is by means of this activity that other neurons are recruited into the
processing network -- the more the animal is interested in something, the greater the number of
neurons responding to the stimulus.
This is exactly the sort of behavior that Edelman's TNGS predicts. Recall that the TNGS
describes the brain as a series of multiple, reentrantly connected mappings. Activity in one
perceptual map signals other maps that it has been activated -- in effect, it broadcasts a "data
coming in" message. Via reentrant connections, activity in even one small part of a map can
lead to increased activity throughout the map. Activity in one neuronal group spreads to
others in the same map and to other maps. General arousal potentials amount to reentrant
signaling between neuronal groups in a given map, and between interconnected maps. So,
upon stimulation of a receptor (in this case an olfactory receptor), if there are mappings
connected to that receptor, and especially if there are classification couples, or multiple
reentrantly connected mappings associated with it (one way of looking at the meaning of
"interesting"), a volley of neurological activity will follow that has more to do with the
perceptual recognition of that receptor's information as being information rather than with the
sensory content of the information itself.
Of primary interest, and also predicted by the TNGS, is that the underlying behavior of
these neurons appears to be chaotic. Chaos theory is derived from the idea that apparently
random behavior in a system may actually follow some underlying pattern, although that
pattern does not follow any discernible set of specific law-like rules.173 Basic to the idea of
chaos is the notion of a dynamical system: There is a state of the system, which is the essential
information about the things making it up, and there is a dynamic, a series of equations that
describe how the system behaves. Under ideal conditions, given the initial state of the system
and the equations that describe it, one could predict what state the system will be in at any
particular time, or has been in at any prior time. One can produce a phase diagram for the
system, showing the predicted states of the system over time; the shape of that diagram is
called an attractor, because it is the pattern around which the system's behavior tends to settle.
Consider, for example, a simple system -- a dripping water faucet. In the cases where
the water flow is low, the time periods between drips are regular, and the behavior of the
system can be diagrammed by simple attractors that show clear relationships between prior
and future states of the system. An attractor could be produced, for example, by plotting the
time between two drips against the time between the two succeeding drips. The attractor that
appears is a doughnut-shaped toroid attractor, which indicates that one could, based upon

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knowing the time between one set of drips, within limits of error and uncertainty predict what
the time between the next two drips would be.
However, once the flow to the faucet is increased beyond a certain point, the system no
longer behaves predictably -- it becomes "turbulent". Turbulence is a problem in flow
mechanics that has long puzzled physicists, for turbulence seems to break all the laws
governing the flow of fluids. It is observed that the time frame between one set of drips is no
longer predictive of the time frame between the next set of drips. If a phase diagram is
constructed under these conditions, the toroid attractor of an ordered system is replaced by a
horseshoe-shaped chaotic attractor.
Chaos, characteristic of dynamical systems, arises out of the observation that the system
no longer behaves according to models predicted by law-like equations. As discussed in the
previous chapter, linear systems are those whose overall behavior tracks the behaviors of their
individual components. As an example, consider a simple linear acceleration system described
by the equation F=ma. Under ordinary circumstances, the overall force in the system, F,
changes in direct proportion to changes in mass and/or acceleration, within the limits of error.
All laws, including F=ma, hold within a range of errors and uncertainties. That is to say that
we may describe the system as F=ma, but the real description of the system is more complicated,
including terms for errors of measurement, statistical factors connected with Heisenberg
uncertainties, and so forth.
But the simple equation, F=ma, even when taking errors of measurement and quantum
uncertainties into account, is still not the whole story. There are other non-linear terms whose
changes are not tracked by the behavior of the system in any predictable way. We ordinarily
"drop out" those terms, partly because they muddle the experiment and make the "lesson" we
are supposed to learn from it confusing, and also because under certain well-defined sets of
circumstances they can be ignored. But under other sets of circumstances, which may be
difficult to predict or control (especially outside the laboratory), those non-linear terms can rear
up from nowhere and, in fact, become the primary determinants of how the system behaves,
thus making the system look as if it violates the "laws".
At first glance, dynamical systems therefore appear to be random. But a careful
analysis of their attractors reveals that they are not random at all. They are self-organizing -- the
way in which they behave is governed by factors not mentioned in the equations that model
them. Examination of chaotic attractors shows a definite underlying structure -- the attractors
are fractals, repetitive geometric shapes that defy classification as one, two, or three
dimensional structures. They are repetitive across scale -- no matter what magnification one
uses to examine a fractal, one will see the same patterns repeated. This

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repetition-within-repetition pattern is characteristic of self-organizing systems, and it indicates

the role of non-linear components in determining the system's overall behavior.
Chaotic systems are not random; they do follow patterns, it's just that those patterns are
not causal -- "causal" understood as perpetuating a set of law-like relations between states of
the system. The reason for this is complex: it has primarily to do with the total energy in the
system. In an ordered system, closely related states lie close together on their phase-space
attractor diagrams -- if state B follows state A, and state D follows state C, and if state C is very
much like state A, then we would expect to find state D quite close to state B. To put it less
abstractly, if two situations are similar to one another, we would expect that whatever follows
those situations to also be similar: If two light switches are OFF (and are electrically connected
to similar circuits), and they are both turned ON, if the lights came on in one case, we would
expect them to come on in the other case as well. But in a chaotic system, this does not happen.
The lines describing system states diverge rapidly; in a chaotic system, state D would be
nowhere near state B. That is to say that what happens following two similar situations might
be very different.
Returning to the example of the faucet, given that we know the state of the system at
some particular point (i.e., the state as a set of physical quantities that describe the system,
which, in our example, include the time needed to generate a drip), and we know the rules that
relate one state to another (i.e., the equations that govern laminar flow of fluids), we should be
able to predict what the next state of the system will be. But, in a chaotic system, such
predictions don't work -- one state is not predictive of the next. In essence, the laws go out the
window in chaotic systems -- "laws" are no longer useful as modeling tools to explain the
transition from one state of the system to another. At the level of the behavior of the system as
a whole, causal laws are not the determinants of the system's behavior. In a chaotic system,
what determine behavior more than anything else are the initial conditions -- the state of the
system when it begins operation -- and perturbations, or externally applied forces that modify
the system's behavior. While a linear system tracks the effects of externally applied forces by
changing its overall behavior, a self-organizing system will tend to settle into a pattern of its
own, visible in its fractal attractor, and respond to perturbations and changes in initial
conditions by compensating in ways that perpetuate its characteristic pattern. A perturbation
may produce radically different behavior in the entire system, but the system will tend to
return to its characteristic pattern of behavior. On the other hand, if the perturbation is
sufficiently great, it may destroy the system, or re-organize it along the lines of a different
pattern.
Freeman, who investigated the chaotic behavior of perceptual systems, offers the
following characterization of chaos:

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At the risk of oversimplification, I sometimes like to suggest the difference between

chaos and randomness by comparing the behavior of commuters dashing through a
train station at rush hour with the behavior of a large, terrified crowd. The activity of
the commuters resembles chaos in that although an observer unfamiliar with train
stations might think people were running every which way without reason, order does
underlie the surface complexity: everyone is hurrying to catch a specific train. The
traffic flow could rapidly be changed by simply announcing a track change. In contrast,
mass hysteria is random. No simple announcement would make a large mob become
cooperative. 174

It is alleged, by Freeman and others, that the perceptual mechanism for olfaction in the
brain is chaotic, based upon several observations: First, that there is a certain amount of resting
activity that occurs in the absence of stimuli. This self-organizing behavior is characteristic of
chaotic systems -- they are always active, even when not doing any specific task; there is an
excess of energy to be dissipated, and the system dissipates that energy like a thermodynamic
safety-valve, even if it does nothing else. The second observation is that, in response to a
stimulus burst, the entire system becomes rapidly involved in the process. This rapid change
of system state in response to a small stimulus is also a characteristic of chaotic systems. The
final indicator is the appearance of a chaotic attractor in Freeman's perception experiments,
showing that the neural activity following specific scent stimulation does not follow any
predictable pattern.
How does chaos originate in the brain? It is hypothesized that the release of
neurochemicals controls the gain, or ability of neuron systems to amplify (in terms of numbers
of neurons involved, and numbers of action potentials involved). The gain level is set by the
brain, depending upon how interested an animal is in receiving sensory input, and whether it
recognizes the input it receives. When the gain is set high enough, a small stimulus is capable
of exciting large numbers of neurons into instantaneous activity. The high gain of the system
liberates an excess of energy -- in the form of sensitivity to stimuli and readiness to release
action potentials -- such that the slightest sensation in any individual neuron can trigger
activity throughout the system.
This chaotic behavior of neural systems constitutes a departure from the kind of
regulatory system that maintains basic biological functioning. For example, in the regulation of
blood pressure, the constriction and relaxation of muscle cells in arterial walls regulate the
volume of space occupied by the blood, and therefore the pressure of the blood within that
space. When the pressure-regulating centers in the brain detect a drop in pressure (assuming
the body is functioning within normal limits), signals are sent via the sympathetic nervous
system that result in a constriction of arterial muscle, raising blood pressure. In this kind of

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system there is an orderly progression from stimulus to response; the survival of the organism
depends upon the orderliness of that response. In contrast, a chaotic system may produce
radically different results from identical instances of original state and stimulus. While such a
system would have disastrous results for the regulation of blood pressure, it might be ideal for
the development of new ideas from old data.
It is suggested that "(chaos) may be the chief property that makes the brain different
from an artificial intelligence machine."175 Because they are self-organizing and self-regulating,
chaotic systems may be indicative of the process by which new ideas are generated in the brain.
In any event, the brain is able to process information by recruiting increasing numbers of
neurons into perceptual circuits; "attentiveness" to a particular stimulus is, at the physiological
level, reflected in the numbers of, and chaotic behavior of, neurons brought into the
information network.
Now the TNGS specifically states that consciousness arises in the brain as a property of
a dynamical system. According to the perceptual bootstrapping model, when a sufficient
number of reentrant connections develop between multiple mappings, a self-organizing system
is initiated. This system operates according to chaotic dynamics that are different from, and
independent of, the law-like dynamics that characterize their isolated parts. Consciousness is
not, therefore, a property of the parts of the brain, nor of their interconnections -- it is a
property of their non-linear behavior when bootstrapped into a dynamical system. Freeman's
work on the chaotic properties of perceptual circuits is strong supporting evidence for the
dynamical system predicted by the TNGS.
Consciousness, according to the TNGS, is a chaotic process, or at least reveals its
presence through the chaotic behavior of neuron systems -- a more generalized phenomenon in
the brain, of which Freeman's experiments have caught only a glimpse. As Freeman writes:
Consciousness may well be the subjective experience of this recursive process . . . it
enables the brain to plan and prepare for each subsequent action on the basis of past
action, sensory input and perceptual synthesis. In short, an act of perception is not the
copying of an incoming stimulus. It is a step in a trajectory by which brains grow,
reorganize themselves and reach into their environment to change it to their own
advantage. 176

To continue with Freeman's "trajectory" metaphor, perception is the beginning in a

series of neural processes in which information received from the senses is analyzed by
processes that act autonomously, independent of anatomical constraints. It is the beginning in
a series of reentrant signalings, according to the TNGS, that link perceptual experiences and
value criteria. The mind, as the organ of consciousness -- theoretical as it may be -- is

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something that resides (but perhaps only partly resides . . .) within the tissue of the brain, but
has a character of its own that is not defined by the anatomy of the brain itself.
The chaos model of consciousness, together with the multiple reentrant signaling model
of the TNGS, are attractive because they explain how sensory data can be recombined in new
and novel ways. It also accounts for how new ideas can originate within the mind,
independent of outside stimuli. Creativity and originality may have their roots in the ability of
the mind, through chaotic behavior, to bypass the law-like constraints of simple biological
control mechanisms. Thus, the chaotic processes that suggest the presence of conscious
activity are necessarily different, and different in fundamental ways, from the processes of
biological control out of which they may have evolved.
It remains to be explained how this chaotic activity, this dissimilar kind of neurological
process, developed out of orderly control mechanisms. Edelman has argued for two
independent "bootstrapping" processes. Perceptual bootstrapping occurs when the
interconnections and mappings of the brain reach a certain density or "critical mass", so to
speak. The result of this process is primary consciousness, which allows for the creation of
scenes that relate apparently unconnected phenomena into a unified picture. The second
process, semantic bootstrapping, is a linguistic process that gives rise to higher-order
consciousness, the ability to conceptualize in terms of past and future, and the appearance of a
"socially constructed self".
Bootstrapping is difficult to characterize precisely, because under it is subsumed those
processes that presumably transfer control of a system from conditions of law-like linearity to
self-organizing dynamics. Since a characterization of bootstrapping must of necessity include
terms that are themselves non-linear, it is unlikely that any "causal" definition or
characterization is possible. A characterization of bootstrapping that is faithful to its role in
initiating chaos will therefore be "incomplete", in the sense that Edelman's demand on a
scientific theory requires that it exhaust the data and exclude all other possibilities. An
accurate characterization of bootstrapping will require that it include mention of things outside
the "complete" description of the biological system in which it arises -- things like non-linear
terms, and, as we shall see in the next chapter, the possibility of participation in the other
worlds of portal experience. To one who expects the world to behave in ways faithful to
causality, bootstrapping will appear as mysterious and inexplicable. About all that can be
done, therefore, is to simply describe what happens, since any attempt to argue that a certain
thing "caused" another thing will defeat the purpose of the characterization. Edelman has done
this in the case of both perceptual and semantic bootstrapping; it is my intention in this chapter
to characterize the physiological side of bootstrapping, and in the next chapter to characterize
the terms that make it "incomplete".

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I will propose a different model of bootstrapping, motivated not by interests in

language or "socially-constructed selves," but by an interest in the phenomena discussed in the
first chapter. We are looking for a model of consciousness that addresses the relevance of
portal experience and participation mystique, and we will not find it subsumed under
linguistics.
Instead, I suggest that we will find it lurking in those circumstances that, both
historically and in contemporary settings, are associated with the production of portal
experiences. Specifically, we shall look to the almost universal incidence of the use of
psychoactive plants and drugs to induce portal experience. As already noted by Schultes and
Hofmann, the use of psychoactive plants has been, and still is, associated with religious and
other practices connected with portal experience. As human beings evolved, and co-evolved
with the world around them, psychoactive plants were a part of their interaction with each
other, with the outside world, and within themselves. It is important to keep in mind that the
participation mystique of the ancients is also associated with the development of consciousness
in childhood, as noted by Campbell and Jung. I will, in brief, argue that consciousness was,
historically, bootstrapped by the action upon the human nervous system of psychoactive
plants ingested as part of ancient humankind's religious practices, connected with the
precipitation of portal experience.
v. Drugs, Chaos and Consciousness.
The discussions in this chapter have established the following:
(1) Neural activity in the brain involves chemical substances produced within neural
tissue that act upon chemical-specific receptor sites on individual neurons;
(2) There are a variety of substances produced outside the body, some of which are
widely distributed in nature among members of the plant kingdom, which are capable of either
mimicking or interfering with these neurotransmitters and neuropeptides;
(3) Evolutionary considerations suggest that the brain evolved in such a way as to be
sensitive to these substances;
(4) Some of those substances produce marked changes in the way the world is
perceived, and may affect not only what can be perceived, but also how it is understood;

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(5) Perception involves chaotic processes in the brain, which are thought to be initiated
by an increased sensitivity to stimuli, and involve a radically different kind of neural activity
than is present in the non-chaotic state. Consciousness, according to the TNGS, is a chaotic
process originating in perceptual structures, and the identification of chaos in the brain may be
indicative of the operation of consciousness.
Where Edelman has proposed perceptual and linguistic bootstrapping processes that
initiate the chaotic activity in the brain, the theory I will propose is perhaps best called
psychedelic bootstrapping. This theory holds that consciousness itself, or, more properly, the
ability of the brain to support the consciousness process, derives from the evolutionary
interaction between the brain and substances occurring outside the body that have the ability to
affect neural processes within the brain. The ability of consciousness to be realized within the
physical medium of brain tissue is the result of a co-evolutionary interaction between plants
and brains, and contact with psychoactive substances initiated the chaotic neural behavior that
allowed consciousness itself to develop. In support of this hypothesis I shall consider the
relationship between one specific set of neural structures in the brain, and one set of
psychoactive substances.
Neural fibers arising from the dorsal and median raphe nuclei of the brainstem (a
nucleus is a dense collection of nerve cell bodies) are widely dispersed throughout the brain,
having direct contact with structures in the limbic system and the frontal cortex (and therefore,
recalling the discussion of Edelman's theory, with value structures and perceptual
mappings).177 These neurons receive input from the spinal cord reticular formation (also called
the reticular activating system, or RAS), an interconnecting network of neurons that receives
inputs from the entire somatosensory system; one could say that the RAS neurons have their
fingers on the pulse of body activity. The neurons arising from the dorsal and median raphe
nuclei, in addition, have reentrant connections: fibers that branch back upon themselves, so
that their axons synapse on their own dendrites. These neurons release a monoamine
chemical, 5-Hydroxytryptamine (5HT), also called serotonin. Biochemical studies show that
5HT acts as an inhibitory neurotransmitter; lesions of these neurons, as well as the
administration of specific anti-5HT agents, tend to produce stimulation and wakefulness.
For reasons that Edelman has pointed out, including the fact that chaos precludes any
attempt to deduce function from structure, there is no clear and unambiguous account of what
these neurons actually contribute to the process of consciousness. One possibility, strongly
suggested by the biochemical data, is that the neurons of the brain generally have some preset,
resting level of activity. If left on their own, they will discharge at some variable rate

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determined by the patterns of the chaotic, dynamical system arising out of their multiple
reentrant connections.
But the neurons of the brain are not left alone. Specialized neurons in the brain secrete
a substance, 5HT, which inhibits their normal activity. There is an interesting disanalogy with
an automobile: in a car, driving along the freeway, you normally control your speed by varying
pressure on the accelerator. In the brain, the accelerator is biochemically welded to the floor, so
to speak, and the speed at which the brain operates is controlled with a chemical brake pedal,
5HT -- "Your body's way of stepping on your mind," as one observer put it.
The most potent psychoactive agents known, the lysergic acid derivatives, occurring
both in nature in various members of the Convolvulaceae (morning glory family) and ergot
fungi, as well as in laboratory products, along with other agents with which they are
cross-tolerant -- psilocin and psilocybin in mushrooms, and mescaline in peyote cacti -- are 5HT
antagonists. 178 When these substances are administered to animals, 5HT accumulates in brain
tissue, showing that it is not being released by the neurons that produce it. Since LSD and its
relatives are effective at extremely low dosages, it is thought that they may bind to the 5HT
neurons at their feedback sites, preventing them from releasing 5HT. Psilocybin, psilocin and
mescaline, effective only at larger doses, are thought to block the activity of 5HT at the receptor
sites.
In any event, it appears that, using the automotive disanalogy above, the effect of these
agents is to take the foot off the brake pedal. The resulting increased neural gain, to use
Freeman's terminology, throughout the brain leads to the spontaneous, self-organizing neural
activity that is characteristic of chaotic systems. Small stimuli, either recalled from memory or
as a result of sensory input, lead to complex neural processes that deal with information in new
and novel ways. Things are perceived differently, information is processed differently; the
well-ordered and rhythmic brain processes of breathing and digestive regulation are
supplemented by new chaotic processes of consciousness. Experiences of sensation take on
meaning, and the world is understood in fundamentally different ways.
The study of the cellular activity of 5HT, the anatomical distribution of serotonergic
(serotonin containing) neurons in the brain, and the observed influences of antiserotonergic
drugs upon consciousness suggest that these substances alter both perception and information
processing. This "alteration" corresponds with what we would expect to observe if a shift in
processing mode, from an orderly control mechanism to some chaotic mode, were to occur.
The antiserotonergic drugs such as LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and their natural and
laboratory analogs, block the central inhibitory mechanisms in the brain, which results in
resetting the gain in various neural pathways to a higher level. This compares to the increasing
of the gain in perceptual circuits noted in Freeman's experiments. There is, in Freeman's data,

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the observation of a difference in processing mechanisms between sensation and perception -the sensory ones are regular and predictable, while the perceptual ones are chaotic. Freeman
suggests that this is due to the brain resetting the gain as a function of interest. I suggest that
this difference, from an evolutionary point of view, originated with chemicals outside the brain
doing the resetting; because of its adaptive value, through natural selection, the consciousness
process became self-sustaining and autonomous, and because it is adaptively advantageous,
the brain retains the ability to be influenced by these substances.
It is hypothesized that some such process may have been the initiator of consciousness
in the previously vegetative human brain. A prehistoric man or woman, while searching for
food, comes upon an ergot-infected wheat field, an LBM ("Little Brown Mushroom"), a pretty
Baby Woodrose. He or she eats; the active principle in the plant blocks the inhibitory chemical
pathway that has kept the brain operating within well-ordered limits, and suddenly, the limits
of physical sensation are transcended and the doors of perception are opened. Once initiated
from the outside, the process becomes self-organizing and self-sustaining. Those in whom this
process has appeared, because of their ability to think beyond the world of sensation, recall the
past and plan for the future, have an adaptive advantage over those who have not advanced
beyond simple biological control. Selection pressures favored the development of spontaneous
chaotic processes -- the more receptive the brain to chaotic processes, the better the survival of
the individual. Evolution arrives at the development of brains that are -- to a limited extent -capable of self-initiating the chaotic process themselves.
This is the psychedelic bootstrapping theory -- that consciousness, as a property of a
dynamical system, was initiated by chemicals with specific receptor sites in the brain, whose
effects were to disable the biological control mechanisms in the brain that prevent the initiation
of chaotic processes. There is a weaker version of this thesis -- call it psychedelic perturbation -which holds that chaos was initiated in the brain just as Edelman's perceptual bootstrapping
model suggests, but that the psychoactive plant substances were able to perturb the dynamical
system into a different pattern. I favor the stronger bootstrapping thesis because it fits more
closely with the idea that receptors for externally occurring substances were actually selected for
during evolution. The brain, as a selective recognition system, evolved in such a way as to
favor the appearance of sensitivity to these naturally occurring substances.
I have considered only one biochemical system in the brain -- the serotonergic neurons
of the dorsal and median raphe nuclei -- and its relationship to consciousness. There are other
systems that could be considered: the dopaminergic neurons that respond to substances such
as cocaine, the neurons sensitive to opiates and to belladonna alkaloids -- the list is very long.
It is my intention with this isolated example to show how the bootstrapping process might

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have occurred, and how it is related to the use of psychoactive plants in a setting of portal
experience.
It is also my intention to establish that, whatever actually occurs during a portal
experience, there is associated with that experience a chaotic brain process, be it through
psychedelic bootstrapping or through perturbation by drugs or by other means. The effect of
the psychoactive substance is to alter the brain's information processing scheme so that the
portal experience becomes accessible. The consumption of psychoactive materials is
historically linked to the occurrence of portal experience; a perusal of Schultes' and Hofmann's
studies will confirm this. The reason for this linkage is that the processes initiated by those
substances -- chaotic, self-organizing dynamical systems -- are essential to having a portal
experience, as I will show in the next chapter. I believe it is also the case, though I present no
physiological evidence for it here, that other practices associated with the induction of portal
experience -- meditation, fasting, intense prayer, psychological and physiological stress, and
others -- act through the same mechanism.
In the end, it probably does not matter much whether the psychedelic bootstrapping or
the psychedelic perturbation version of the theory is historically correct. What does matter is
that semantic bootstrapping is out of the picture. That portal experiences such as Kekule's
vision of dancing carbon atoms have symbolic but not linguistic components, and that, as
noted by Jung, the common symbolism of visions and mythologies transcends linguistic and
cultural boundaries, forces us to look elsewhere for an explanation of the constellation
phenomenon.
In this chapter, I have shown that practices associated with the induction of portal
experiences are also associated with the precipitation of chaotic states in the brain. In
agreement with Edelman, those chaotic processes are the observable signs of the dynamical
system which consciousness is. We do not as yet have a complete theory of consciousness, as
the physiological theory in its present form does not include an account of participation
mystique, but we do now have the tools to prepare that account. With this physiological
model of consciousness in hand (or in head), we may return to the questions posed in the first
chapter -- questions of how the biological human can be a participant in the metaphysical
unknown, and how that unknown can reveal itself through constellation and participation
mystique.
While the psychedelic bootstrapping theory is basically an empirical hypothesis, based
as it is upon data, theory and observation, it helps to form the basis for a metaphysical theory
of consciousness. A theory of consciousness that proposes to take seriously the fact that portal
experiences occur in physical and biological beings must begin with an account of what is
known -- or what can be theorized -- about the biological processes that are involved in that

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consciousness. It shares this feature with both the bicameral mind theory, founded upon
right/left brain studies, and the TNGS, founded upon the developmental biology of the brain.
Using an empirical hypothesis as a starting point for a metaphysical theory might not be the
usual approach, but it is necessary to develop a theory which alleges that the physical is what
makes possible the metaphysical.
Being an empirical hypothesis, one might wonder what sort of test could be applied to
determine its truth or falsity. Since, like the bicameral mind theory, it has historical as well as
observational components, it is perhaps therefore not a strictly scientific theory which could be
tested in any straightforward way. How would one test for whether the bicameral mind "broke
down" in the way Jaynes suggests? It probably can't be done, nor could anyone construct a
drug-free world and see if consciousness fails to develop. Nor could one create a universe and
see whether or not a big bang occurs. These kinds of hypotheses are theoretical constructs that
serve to explain, they are not specifications to be tested by experiment.
The psychedelic bootstrapping theory is important to the general theory of
consciousness developed in this study for several reasons. It seriously undermines the
"spiritual reductionism" position, because it explains how and why psychoactive drugs, which
are physical substances, can have extraordinary effects upon consciousness. This is a key
requirement for the theory of consciousness developed in this study, because this theory views
portal experiences as encompassing (at least) two different modes of existence -- the
spatiotemporal, physical existence of the body, and some other non-physical kind of existence.
Constellation is something that occurs in the consciousness of someone who has a physical
body, and an explanation of constellation should therefore include something about that
physical body.
Edelman's TNGS argues that consciousness is a dynamical system, bootstrapped in part
by language. But the analysis of Kekule's vision in the last chapter points away from language
as a causative factor, and suggests that we must look elsewhere for a bootstrapping process.
While the Kekule example points toward the role of the collective unconscious, which will be
examined in the next chapter, it does not provide a way of understanding how consciousness,
as a dynamical system, arose out of the physiology of the brain. The psychedelic
bootstrapping theory offered in this chapter is intended to explain how consciousness, as a
dynamical system, appeared in the brain. The importance of consciousness as a dynamical
system will become clear in the fifth chapter.
Lastly, the psychedelic bootstrapping theory suggests that consciousness is not
something that was produced exclusively by human evolution. Other things were involved
--the evolution of biochemical mechanisms for producing certain kinds of substances in plants
-- and the evolution of the human brain proceeded in such a way as to take advantage of those

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mechanisms. But the reason those synthetic pathways appeared in plants in the first place is
not clear. This will be discussed further in the fifth chapter.

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Chapter 4: Intersection and the Unconscious

The curtain lifts and shows another curtain covered with representations of all kinds of
birds and beasts and fish, with the images of stellar constellations. An old man comes
from the side. He is dressed like a peasant and bowed with age and toil. He holds a
large globe of crystal. Lifting it above his head he speaks:
Look children of a day upon this globe. In it you will see the woods and the hills and
the heavens and the face of the deep and all other things reflected as your own faces are
to others, but set apart that you may gaze and wonder . . . He who looks long shall see it
cloud, and then shall the clouds break and the woods and the hills and the heavens and
the face of the deep and the face of man shall be seen there again, but transformed by
the light of the interior spirit . . . Behind all life burns the archetypal life, and to the
archetypes do all things return, knocking again and again at the windy doors.
- - W. B. Yeats

Having characterized the physiological processes in the brain associated with

consciousness as a self-organizing dynamical system whose underlying patterns are fractal, it
is the task of this chapter to examine portal experience and consciousness in more detail, for
the purpose of establishing that both portal experience and consciousness involve dynamical
systems. Portal experiences themselves are dynamical systems because Stace's "two orders"
theory suggests that the borderline between the two orders -- or the gateway between them -- is
exactly the kind of "boundary" where fractals normally occur. From a psychological
perspective, consciousness is also a dynamical system; Jung's theory of the unconscious
presents a similar boundary condition. Having characterized the brain, the psyche and portal
experience all as dynamical systems, it will then be possible to confront the main thesis of this
study in the next chapter, which explains the relationship between them.
i. The Dynamics of Portal Experience.
This section will argue that portal experiences involve dynamical systems. Portal
experiences, and particularly those connected with mythology, involve an element of
interpretation, and yet also reveal an underlying similarity. The concept of the fractal is
introduced as an explanation for the interpretation of portal experience. From the fractal
character of the interpretation, it is argued that portal experiences are dynamical systems.
In the first chapter, I presented a description of portal experience along the lines of
Stace's intersection theory. The intersection theory holds that mystical experience occurs, from
the standpoint of the mind of the mystic, as the intersection of two distinct orders. These
orders are incompatible with each other such that one could not be situated in one order, for
example, the temporal order of sequential, non-repeating time-ordered events, and also be

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situated in the other order, the eternal, in which time does not exist. The mystical experience
consists of the intersection of these two orders in the mind of the mystic, such that an
existential impossibility is realized -- the mystic's mind is situated both in time and in non-time.
I have used this characterization of mystical experience as the type species for the more
general class, portal experience. A portal experience is an "intersection" with some other order
of being, during which content from the other order is constellated in the mind of the experient
via ordinary perceptual stimuli: the stars become the lamps of the gods. This constellation may
be accompanied by numinous feelings, by a conviction of participation, or by the intuition of a
transcendental at-one-ness. The remarkable consistencies between portal experiences reveal an
underlying similarity or unity, yet there are differences due to the intervention of individual
interpretive processes.
These observations suggest that portal experiences involve the same kind of
interactions seen in dynamical systems, and specifically in those systems that involve
boundaries or interfaces between states or objects that are incompatible with each other in some
relevant way. Dynamical interactions occur when things that don't mix come into contact:
between the laminae of moving fluids, from whence turbulence arises; between oil and water,
whose dynamical interface scatters incident light into a rainbow of colors; between freezing
water and cold air, whose boundary becomes a many-faceted snowflake. 179
A classical illustration is the "coastline of Britain" problem. 180 It begins with a simple
question: How long is the coast of Britain? The simple answer: Well, measure it! One way of
measuring it would be to use a surveying satellite -- the "eye in the sky" would give us some
measurement, accurate to within, say, one kilometer. Imagine that we now use some kind of
ground based measuring instrument, a meter stick for example, and obtain a measurement.
The figure we obtain with the meter stick would be larger than the satellite measurement,
because the smaller unit of measure captures finer detail -- the nooks and crannies of the
coastline. Suppose that instead of a meter stick, we now use something that measures in
millimeters. We would get yet a different answer, much larger than the other two, because the
still smaller increment of measure has captured more of the detail.
Intuitively, we might think that as we decrement the unit of measure, the measurement
we get is more "accurate" -- closer to the "real" length of the coastline -- because the smaller the
unit, the finer the detail that is revealed. Were the coastline a strictly Euclidean figure, that
might be the case. But the coastline is not a simple Euclidean figure, and the intuition is
wrong. The coastline is made up of repeating patterns, repeating on different scales -- one
would see essentially the same pattern, whether looking down from a satellite or at an
individual grain of sand. This repetition of pattern means that there will always be some
smaller scale, and some larger measurement. Our intuition that the smallest possible unit of

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measure would be the most accurate leads us to the surprising conclusion that the most
accurate measure of the coastline of Britain is that it is infinitely long!
The erroneous intuition is engendered by the Euclidean view of geometry. According
to this view, there are well-defined dimensions into which objects are categorized. Solid objects
are three dimensional, requiring sets of coordinates located on three perpendicular axes to
describe them. Similarly, planes are two dimensional, lines one dimensional, and "points", the
theoretical building blocks out of which all existing objects are constructed, have zero
dimension. These dimensions are regarded as absolute categories; a thing has certain
dimensional characteristics that are inherent to it.
So let us ask, what is the dimensionality of a ball of twine? From a distance, it appears
as a point -- zero. Closer, it is a sphere -- three. Closer still, it is revealed to be an entangled
line -- one dimension. So what is its "real" dimension, we ask in exasperation? The shocking
answer is that there is no "real" dimensionality to the ball of twine -- it depends upon one's
perspective. As mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot writes, "The notion that a numerical result
should depend upon the relation of object to observer is in the spirit of physics in this century
and is even an exemplary illustration of it."181
The spatial references noted above, "far away" and "closer", are vague terms. There is
no exact boundary between the perspective from which the ball of twine is a point and the
perspective from which it is a sphere. Similarly, there are no exact criteria for specifying the
unit of measure that yields the "right" answer to the coastline of Britain problem. What
Mandelbrot proposed was that we re-think our notion of dimensionality; that instead of
absolute Euclidean categorizations, dimensions be thought of as fractional and relative. On
this model, while there can be no answer to the coastline of Britain problem in terms of
absolute length, there can be answers that reflect its "roughness" or pattern characteristics. It
then becomes a question of from which perspective the problem is viewed -- obtaining aerial
surveys or hiking the beaches -- and applying the roughness calculations to get the relevant
length.
Now all this should strike the reader as very strange. Philosophers, in particular, often
proceed from an unacknowledged, but nonetheless assumed, acceptance of Locke's notion (or
something like it) of primary qualities -- solidity, extension, shape, motion and number -- as
characteristics that inhere in the objects themselves. An object has a certain shape, a certain
length, a certain mass, and so forth, independent of whether anyone observes these or not. It is
the secondary qualities -- color, taste, sound, and smell -- which are observer-dependent, being
produced in the mind of the observer by the primary qualities themselves. There is some "way
the object is," which is accessible through measurement, and that "way it is" then causes the
mind to perceive the subjective qualities associated with that object.

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The fractal argument undermines the whole idea that there is some fixed "way the
object is." Instead, it appears that, just like the secondary qualities, the primary qualities
themselves are not inherent in the object after all, but are interpretations in contexts. The
length of the coastline of Britain is not some quantity that, when discovered, will tell us
something about the way the coastline "really" is. In fact, there is no number that could be
given for the length of the coastline, in the absence of a context or an interpretation on the part
of the observer.
Fractal geometry effectively reduces "extension", as a primary quality, a characteristic
supposedly inherent in the object, to a secondary quality, something produced in the mind of
the observer, within a context. How long the coastline of Britain "really" is depends upon
whether you are planning aircraft routes or hiking the beaches -- the length of the coastline
depends upon the reason you are interested in knowing it. I am inclined to think that all of the
primary qualities -- characteristics supposedly pertaining to the object independent of whether
or how it is observed -- can be impugned (and impaled) with this kind of argument. The
outcome is that what we thought were characteristics of objects, characteristics that if we came
to know them then we would know how the object really is, turn out to be a function of what
our interests, purposes and perspectives are, plus some abstract characterization -- a
"roughness calculation" -- that yields a picture of what the objects are like for us, under the
circumstances.
This is roughly the same point Berkeley made against Locke -- that the primary
qualities turn out to be matters of perception and judgment, just like the secondary qualities. A
simple gloss of Berkeley's position is that, because there are no qualities inherent in the object,
what an object is is simply the way it is perceived; there is no way a thing is -- no characteristics
that inhere in the object -- outside of its being perceived. We do observe, however, that there is
a constancy to the world, such that a book, for example, appears the same way every time I see
it; there is no reason to suppose that it flickers out of existence, simply because I am not
looking at it. Berkeley's response to this problem is that constancy in the world is guaranteed
by the presence of an eternal perceiver -- God. Because God perceives everything at all times,
the existence of objects, when no one is looking at them, is insured because they are always
perceived by God.
I like to compare fractal geometry to Berkeley's response to Locke, minus God. The
constancy we see, or think we see, is not guaranteed by anything; in fact, there is no constancy.
The coastline of Britain is not some final length after all; it will be different every time we
encounter it, if we encounter it from different perspectives, interests or intentions. The "way
things are" is bound up with the psychology of the observer, his relationship to the object, and
the "roughness" of the object itself. Lest one think that "roughness" is, at last, something fixed

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in the object, it must be pointed out that roughness is a phenomenological description of the
way the object interacts with us -- the way we perceive its repetitive qualities -- and is at bottom
a product of our own psychological makeup, biases, and expectations.
Fractals, such as the coastline of Britain, occur at boundaries between things that are
different from one another in some relevant way -- the sand and the water are, for purposes of
measuring the coastline, immiscible. The meeting between the two is not some clean,
well-defined Euclidean line, but is instead a "fuzzy", convoluted twisting pattern that defies
attempts to characterize its measurements in some last and final way. The coastline of Britain
is an interpretation of the meeting between two -- shall we say -- worlds, the world of water
and the world of land.
Having thus tipped my hand, I shall suggest outright that portal experiences are also
fractals. Stace's intersection theory, which I have used as the conceptual model for portal
experience, states that it is a meeting of "two orders", which are characterized as immiscible
with one another. The ping-pong ball metaphor I offered in the first chapter is perhaps not the
best characterization, for it suggests a well-defined boundary of meeting between the worlds.
The orders mentioned by Stace are not ping-pong balls, and they do not have well-defined
boundaries. Stace's characterization is that one order is the temporal, and the other the eternal;
there is no suggestion that the two roll around on a table top and bounce into each other on
occasion. A spatial metaphor such as ping-pong balls obscures the problem, for the spatial
metaphor is valid only in the spatiotemporal order, and cannot describe an encounter with a
non-spatiotemporal order. This agony of indescribability will not disappear from the problem
of understanding what is meant by two orders.
Much of what I have said about portal experiences in chapter one is intended to show
that they embody an element of interpretation. Jaynes argues that the function of metaphors is
to familiarize the unfamiliar, and the "lamps of the gods" mentioned in chapter one, containing
terms that are both familiar and unfamiliar, is a metaphor for the boundary between two
orders. What is constellated in the mind of the observer who sees stars and infers the lamps of
the gods, is something unfamiliar that is metaphorized into a more familiar setting.
Interpretation, in this use of the term, is metaphorization in the sense that Jaynes describes it -it is an attempt to come to terms with the unfamiliar by relating it to something familiar.
Constellation, according to this characterization, is the juxtaposition of two (or more) orders,
plus the application of familiarizing metaphors to the patterns of the fractal boundary between
those orders.
This sense of interpretation -- familiarizing metaphor -- is also the relevant sense in the
coastline of Britain problem. What we thought was familiar -- the length of the coastline -turns out, under Mandelbrot's analysis, to be highly unfamiliar. We come to terms with that

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unfamiliarity by placing it in a context; we satisfy ourselves as to the length of the coastline by

relating it to the reason we had for asking about it. Similarly, the boundary between the orders
is constellated in the mind by the application of familiarizing metaphors, often relating to the
perceptual experience that accompanies the vision -- the stars becoming the lamps of the gods.
If the "fractal" explanation of portal experience holds, then, since fractals are repeating
patterns, we might expect to find in the reports of portal experiences repeating patterns as well
as individual familiarizations. Mythologies, while displaying variety, also display an
underlying similarity. Anthropologist Levy-Bruhl called these underlying patters "collective
representations". They may take the form of identical, or nearly identical, symbols seen in
different cultures -- the ubiquity of the cross symbol is one case, the snake swallowing its tail
image in the Chinese yin-yang and the vision of August Kekule is another. More commonly,
these similarities take the form of a similar pattern, or motif. The pattern of the dying god
Balder in Norse mythology, Osiris in Egyptian mythology and Gilgamesh in Sumeria is one
example; the "trickster" image of the Norse god Loki also found in fairy tales in the form of
Tom Thumb and other characters is another example. The idea of death and rebirth that
figures so prominently in Christianity, is also to be found in the Greek myth of Persephone,
and numerous other mythologies.
Jung argued that these images which recur in different mythologies were integral parts
of the human psyche, and that they are "inherited". Their role in Jung's theory of the psyche
will be considered in the next section; for now we need only examine what could be meant by
the term "inherited". As Jung points out, these recurring images cannot be the products of
education or cultural indoctrination. Whether a particular individual acquires these patterns in
this way or not is of no concern here; we are trying to understand why the same images are
seen in cultures that have no contact with each other. If by "inherited" we are tempted to think
that somehow these images are hard-wired into the brain by evolutionary selection, we need
only recall Edelman's theory of topobiology to realize that this is impossible.
Jung never really makes clear what he meant by "inherited". I suggest the following
explanation. As discussed in the first chapter, mythologies perform on a cultural level the
same function as metaphor and interpretation on an individual level -- they are cultural
metaphors. This is the view of Joseph Campbell:
Every myth . . . is psychologically symbolic. Its narratives and images are to be read,
therefore, not literally, but as metaphors. Mythologies are addressed, however, as
dreams normally are not, to questions of the origins, both of the natural world and of
the arts, laws and customs of a local people, physical things being understood in this
view as metaphysically grounded in a dreamlike mythological realm beyond space and
time, which, since it is physically invisible, can be known only to the mind. 182

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According to Jungian theory, which is endorsed by Campbell (or at least this part of it),
myths are, to a culture, what dreams are to the individual. It is through myths, and dreams,
that certain underlying patterns are revealed. Writes Campbell:
And as the insubstantial shapes of dream arise from the formative ground of the
individual, so do all the passing shapes of the physical world arise (according to this
way of thought) from a universal, morphogenetic ground that is made known to the
mind through the figurations of myth. These mythic figurations are the "ancestral
forms", the insubstantial archetypes, of all that is beheld by the eye as physically
substantial, material things being understood as ephemeral concretions of the energies
of these noumena. 183

The important point is that myths record on a cultural basis the underlying patterns
that are constellated in the minds of the members of that culture. The recurring patterns in
mythologies suggest a recurring pattern of constellation -- that what is being metaphorized in
these similar tales of varying cultures has an underlying similarity.
Let us backtrack for a moment. If we were studying the coastline of Britain, we would
expect to see different characterizations based upon the contexts in which it is examined. But,
we would also expect to see some similarities, because the fractal geometry of the coastline
reveals the same pattern, no matter on what scale it is examined. We would expect surveyors
using scales of kilometers making the same kinds of discriminations -- which nooks and
crannies to count, and which to ignore, for example -- that we would expect a hiker to make on
a scale of meters. We would also expect a surveyor in Scotland to make the same kinds of
discriminations as one on the southern coast.
Stace's intersection theory, as the model for portal experience in general, claims a
juxtaposition of worlds that are immiscible in the context of the portal experience, in exactly the
same way that water and sand are juxtaposed and immiscible in the coastline of Britain
problem. It is also Stace's claim that the descriptions offered by those having mystical
experiences are interpretations:
If you allow the entrance of mystic illumination into your philosophy, then either you
must accept a logic of the identity of opposites (Hegel's or some other like it), or you
must admit that the Ultimate is incapable of being comprehended by the conceptual
intellect. And this is the same as admitting that absolute otherness of God for which we
have contended. The lesson of the futile struggles of philosophers to solve their
contradictions, and of the final failure of the Hegelian logic, is that for which mystics
have always contended, that the Ultimate cannot be comprehended by reason. And this
is the same as saying that God is utterly other, that the mystery and incomprehensibility
of God are absolute and irremovable, that all religious language is symbolic and not
literal. 184

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If portal experiences are understood in the way Stace has characterized mystical
experience, then, according to Stace, we must either resort to some sort of dialectical logic that
collapses the difference between "opposites", in this case the two worlds of the intersection
theory, or we must accept that it will not be possible to describe the other world. Proceeding as
Stace suggests, if we disregard the Hegelian alternative, then we must consider whatever is
said about mystical experiences to be interpretations.
Stace's argument for the descriptions of mystical experiences as interpretations 185 is
roughly this: There is a distinction between an experience, and the interpretation of that
experience. While it is not necessarily the case that there are any uninterpreted experiences,
there is a useful distinction to be made. The illustration is the visitor who attempted to shake
hands with a figure of a policeman at Madame Tussaud's. According to this distinction, there
was the experience of seeing the figure, its clothing, shape, color and so on, and then two
separate interpretations -- that it was a policeman, and then that it was a wax figure. If there
were no distinction between experience and interpretation, according to Stace, it would not
have been possible for the two interpretations to accrue from the one experience. Writes Stace:
"If such an incident ever occurred, it must have been because the visitor had a sense experience
which he first wrongly interpreted as a live policeman and later interpreted correctly as a wax
figure."186
There are two points to be raised in connection with this argument. The first, raised by
Stace, is the possibility that all mystical experiences might be identical, while their
interpretations are different. This is to say that what is experienced by the Christian mystic as
the presence of God or Christ, by the Hindu as a vision of Brahman, by the witch as the
three-fold moon goddess, and by Hofmann as transcendental one-ness, might at bottom be the
same experience. There are two alternative hypotheses, that the experiences are different or
that they are the same. Defenders of theistic mysticism, such as Zaehner and Pike, argue that
the Christian mystical experience is indeed different from others, but such writers also deny
the intersection theory because it contradicts Christian doctrine which denies the unity of
humankind and God. If we accept the intersection theory, then what we must ask is whether
there are only two worlds, in which case all mystical experiences are basically the same
"intersection", or whether there might be more than two worlds, in which case there is the
possibility that there may be many kinds of mystical experience.
In the end, for the purposes of this study, it probably makes very little difference
whether there are only two worlds, or there are more than two. What matters the most is the
immiscibility of those worlds, and the inability of the "other world" to be conceptualized in
terms of the world in which the mystic is situated. Regarding this inability to conceptualize,

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Stace makes a distinction, which he traces to Plotinus, that there are two separate issues:
whether concepts can be formed during the experience, and whether they can be formed after
the experience. During the experience, no formation of concepts is possible:
You cannot have a concept of anything within undifferentiated unity because there are
no separate items to be conceptualized. Concepts are only possible when there is a
multiplicity or at least a duality. Within a multiplicity, groups of similar items can be
formed into classes and distinguished from other groups. We then have concepts and
therefore words. Within the undifferentiated unity there is no multiplicity, and
therefore there can be no classes, no concepts, and no words. 187

Now after the experience, we can form concepts about it. We can distinguish between
two states of consciousness -- being angry and being joyous, for example -- and we can also
distinguish between those states of consciousness that are undifferentiated unity and those that
are not. We can then form concepts and apply words. It would, of course, be mistaken to
assume that those words describe the experience itself; what they describe is the contrast we
make between our states of consciousness. The descriptions of mystical experiences are
therefore interpretations, as they amount to the way the differences between the intersection
experience and ordinary experiences are separated and compared.
In the first chapter I argued that for the purpose of this study, we need not distinguish
between the introvertive mystical experience, to which Stace refers in the above, and other
kinds of portal experience. Stace argues that there are no degrees of mystical experience -either there is undifferentiated unity, or there isn't. In the more general class of portal
experience, there may be degrees of what might be called "immersion", or degrees to which the
ordinary consciousness of the world is overwhelmed by the constellation of the intersection.
Stace's argument has assumed that there can be only one state of consciousness at a time; that
the intersection must wholly supersede any other kind of awareness. I see no reason to assume
this. Jung's theory of the unconscious states that there may be many kinds of mental processes
active at any one time. There is the same element of inconceptualizability to all portal
experiences, characterized as intersections, as for Stace's specific case of introvertive mysticism.
The experience of intersection itself is inconceptualizable, whether the experient loses
awareness of his or her physical surroundings or not. That one could, as a nature mystic
would, both have the experience and describe it at the same time is no argument against the
theory because there may be more than one kind of mental process active in the mind of an
individual at the same time; this is the way in which I understand the term "expanded
consciousness".

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The conceptualizations formed about the mystical experience are interpretations

because they are evaluations of a state of consciousness, and not reports of experience. I
suggest that they are really metaphors, in the way Jaynes has characterized them. They are
attempts to familiarize the unfamiliar. Stace objects to the metaphorization theory, originating
with Otto, in two ways:
A metaphor implies a resemblance. But wherever there is a resemblance a concept is
possible. X can only be a metaphor for Y if X resembles Y in some way. But any two
resemblant things can be placed in a class because of the resemblance. Therefore to say
that X is a metaphor for something in the essence of God is to say that something can be
conceptualized.
Metaphorical language is only meaningful and justifiable if it is at least theoretically
translatable into literal language . . . In other words, the user of the metaphor, or
whoever is to understand it, must already know what it is meant to symbolize. The
metaphor can only operate to bring before his mind what he already knows or has
experienced. It cannot produce a knowledge or experience which he did not have
before.188

The two problems are related. Jaynes' characterization of metaphor is that it is a tool for
familiarizing the unfamiliar. Stace's contention is that in order for this to work, one must be
familiar with the metaphrand and the metaphier in order for the comparison to be made. In
Stace's example, the "mystical void" is metaphorized as "desert" or "darkness"; we know what
"voidness" is, we know what "desert" and "darkness" are, and we seem to have an intelligible
metaphor. But if we know what "voidness" is, then we have a concept, which cannot be the
case if this is a metaphor for mystical experience. Without his concept, we would have no way
of selecting metaphier and metaphrand, to get the comparison going.
In reply to Stace, I think it is wrong to characterize metaphors as one-shot attempts at
familiarization. They may be, as Jaynes suggests, recursive and repetitive processes. The
original metaphor is a contrast between states of consciousness; the metaphier becomes the
metaphrand of a new metaphor. There is no implication of familiarity with what is contained
in the mystical state of consciousness, only a comparison of that state with another. The most
important thing is that the metaphorization is an ongoing process -- metaphors of mystical
experience are built up out of metaphiers becoming metaphrands. "Voidness" is a metaphor
for something else, probably itself metaphoric for yet something else, ultimately referring back
to the mystic's judgments about his or her state of consciousness during the experience.
The other point concerns Stace's idea of "correct" interpretation. The comparison to the
visitor at Madame Tussaud's is a poor one, because it leads us to think that there are some
criteria that will decide which interpretation is "right" and which ones are "wrong". It is like

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asking, in desperation, "Well, what is the REAL length of Britain's coastline?" There is, on the
fractal model, no "real" length, only interpretations, whose "correctness" is a function of their
application within a particular context.
What is proposed here is that the intersection of the worlds in a portal experience is not
a Euclidean point, but is instead a fractal boundary, with no clear delimiting conditions but
nonetheless discernible patterns. That pattern may constellate itself in the mind in a number of
ways, which are subject to an interpretation process that consists of repetitive
metaphorizations. The metaphorization process is repetitive because there is an awareness, to
varying degrees depending upon the experient and the nature of the experience, that the
metaphors really do not familiarize -- there are no concepts from within the experience to be
familiarized, only a state of consciousness.
It is further claimed that the fractal boundary between the worlds, supported by the
intersection theory and the interpretation argument, shows that the interaction between the
worlds is a dynamical system -- that the interaction is a process unique to itself, generating its
own self-organized pattern (the fractal) that is not reducible to the behavior of the contents of
either world. As already argued, fractals are the observable "signatures" of dynamical systems.
This amounts to saying that the "intersection" is not of one world or another; it is a relationship
between the worlds, which reflects the makeup of those worlds according to its own
self-organized pattern.
The justification for this position comes from the observation that the descriptions of
portal experiences often contain elements unique to the individual or the culture in which they
occurred, but also contain discernible patterns common among them. These patterns suggest
that while the experience may not be conceptualizable, it may guide the consciousness of the
experient in some way.
Understanding the nature of that guidance is to understand the relationship between
portal experience and consciousness, which is the overall purpose of this study. We have, at
this point, an examination of portal experience and an examination of brain physiology in
hand. Before we can answer the question of how the physiology of the brain relates to portal
experience, we must consider the nature of consciousness itself -- we must characterize the
terrain upon which the biological brain meets the other world.
ii. Dynamics and the Psyche
Much of the theoretical basis for this study rests upon Jung's theory of the psyche, and
particularly his theory of the unconscious. This section is devoted to an examination of his
theory, and in particular will show that, like the psychedelic bootstrapping theory and the

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intersection theory, the psyche also involves a dynamical system. Jung's theory holds that the
unconscious contains processes that are common to all of humankind, and these processes are
understood by consciousness symbolically, through dreams, visions, and so forth. The
relationship between consciousness and unconscious is a dynamical system because it involves
processes that cannot be shared between them, and the relationship is always interpreted
symbolically. These unconscious processes are archetypes, which serve to motivate thought
and behavior. Behind the concept of the archetype is the philosophical theory of vitalism; it is
the idea of an animating principle that drives the theory of the unconscious.
Jung's concept of the psyche grew out of his dissatisfaction with Freud's theory.
Freud's approach is biologistic: he contends that a human is basically a biological entity, and
that consciousness developed out of human nature as a biological organism. Freud has a
tripartite view of the psyche, a term used rather loosely to denote the totality of an individual's
mental processes. The id, "lowest" and most primitive realm of the psyche, is for the most part
unconscious, outside the realm of intellectual awareness, and consists of instincts, motivating
forces of biological origin that predispose the organism to behave in ways that preserve and
reproduce biological organisms. The superego, on the other hand, represents the effects of
conditioning in a social environment -- to Freud, the "highest" and most recently developed
part of the psyche -- and basically consists of restraints that the organism must exercise in
order to survive in a social setting. The ego, focal point of consciousness and personality, thus
becomes the battle-ground between the id's "I want" and the superego's "I ought." As a result,
the ego is filled with complex behavior strategies designed to gratify, in some way, biological
instincts in socially acceptable ways. Ruptures between id drives and superego restraints lead
to neuroses and psychoses.
Basic to Freud's notion of the unconscious is the principle of repression, that certain
conscious ideas, experiences, and memories are "pushed" out of consciousness into the
unconscious. Further, because many instinctual drives cannot be satisfied the moment they
arise, or in some cases not at all, they must be sublimated, expressed symbolically or released by
the organism in some acceptable way, else they appear as destructive behaviors. Freud argues
that the id contains two basic motivating factors: eros, the instinct to preserve and reproduce
the organism, and thanatos, the self-destructive and aggressive instinct.
Thus, for Freud, the motivating factors behind human behavior, and ultimately the
constituents of persons, are given by heredity on the one hand, in the form of biologically
originated instincts, and environment on the other hand, in the form of social restraints.
Consciousness, and consequently what may be psychologically described as the self, therefore
consists in how these forces are expressed and balanced out. Additionally, Freud attaches
normative interpretations to the parts of the psyche: the id, for him, contains the lowest, most

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detestable motivations and drives, while the superego represents the positive accomplishments
of millennia of civilization.
Against this background, Jung was to develop his own theory of the psyche. While
Freud viewed the elements of the psyche as distinct entities in their own right, Jung's view of
consciousness is more like a continuum: various contents of the psyche may pass in and out of
awareness, more or less depending upon their importance at a given time, while other psychic
contents remain inaccessible to consciousness under all circumstances. But the most
remarkable feature of Jung's theory is that, while some unconscious contents are the result of
the individual's experiences, other contents are common to all of humankind. Freud's theory
describes the personal unconscious -- a repository of the individual's own experiences that are
repressed; what is in the unconscious are memories, impressions and feelings that have been
pushed out of consciousness. Jung proposes that, in addition to the personal unconscious,
there is also a collective unconscious containing psychic information that is shared among all of
humankind -- its contents are the same for everyone, and are not the products of a lone
individual's experiences.
Before proceeding, let us clarify some of Jung's terminology. 189 The psyche is "the
totality of all psychic contents," essentially everything that bears on the function of the mind.
The ego is "a complex of representations which constitutes the centrum of my field of
consciousness and appears to possess a very high degree of continuity and identity." The ego
is the subject of consciousness, meaning that the ego is the thing to which the processes of
consciousness are represented -- it is the point from which consciousness is observed, the
perceived unity to which consciousness refers. The ego is not the Self, because the Self
embodies both conscious and unconscious processes -- as the ego is the subject of
consciousness, the Self is the subject of the psyche, and often appears in dreams and fantasies
as an ideal or idealized personality, distinct from the ego; the Self, on this reading, is what the
person is, in contrast to the ego which is what the person thinks he or she is.
Consciousness is the relation of processes to the ego -- it is the awareness of mental
processes by a subject that has continuity and identity. Those psychic processes that are
unconscious are those which are not related to the ego -- they do not represent themselves to the
continuing subject of awareness. The terminology here is awkward because I (following Jung)
am refusing behavioral definitions. For example, Jaynes' characterization of the analog-I,
similar in many ways to Jung's ego, is an internalized "mapping" of behavior, a representation
in the mind of what the individual has done. Jung's terminology is vaguely Kantian, focusing
more upon perceptual experience and feelings, rather than upon behavior.
Jung's theory of the structure of the psyche holds that what lies in the unconscious,
those mental processes of which one is unaware, are representations. No straightforward

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definition of "representation" is offered, though Jung, in his discussion of this point, lists
"perception, apperception, memory, imagination, will, affectivity, feeling, reflection, judgment,
etc."190 What separates the representations in the unconscious from those in consciousness is
that those in the unconscious have a lower level of psychic "energy", and that there is no
"subject" to whom the contents are represented. The objection to this view is that in order for a
representation to be possible, there must be a conscious subject -- some one or some thing to
whom the contents are represented; either there is a subject, which would be conscious, or
there is no representation. Jung's answer to this objection is that unlike consciousness, which is
characterized by a unity of process -- the ego, an awareness that all the contents are the
contents of the same consciousness -- the unconscious has no such unity. Rather, the
unconscious is fragmentary, and consists of many autonomous mental processes that occur
without the unifying feature of an ego. So there are, in effect, countless unconscious "subjects",
but no unitary subject to which all of these processes are related -- there is no sense that these
different processes are parts of a larger whole.
If it is possible to have unconscious, ego-less representations, then there may be
unconscious contents (i.e., representations) that cannot be apprehended by consciousness, not
merely because they are lacking in the requisite "energy" to become conscious, but because they
are different in kind from the ordinary conscious representations. That is to say that there may
be things in the unconscious of which one cannot be directly conscious, because they are so
different from the kinds of representations that consciousness can process.
There is a close harmony between this idea of Jung's, that there can be things in the
unconscious which can not become conscious, and the idea that mystical experiences are
inconceptualizable. Stace's theory, and my elaboration of it, hold that there can be no concept
formation during the mystical experience -- it is a state of consciousness (to use Stace's phrase)
in which there is undifferentiated unity, and therefore no subject to which the experience can
be related. If we relax Stace's use of the word consciousness to include what Jung calls the
psyche, then the claim about mystical experience is equivalent to Jung's claim that there can be
things represented to the psyche that are not represented to the ego. Stace claims that the
mystical experience can be conceptualized only on a symbolic basis; Jung will make a similar
claim about the contents of the unconscious. The suggestion is that what is constellated by a
portal experience (understood as generalized intersection) may be the symbolic interpretation
of something that can not itself become conscious.
If there are unconscious contents that cannot be made conscious -- there are reasons
why they cannot be represented to the ego -- then the only way consciousness can be aware of
them at all is indirectly:

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Yet because there is. . . sufficient energy to make it potentially conscious, the secondary
subject (of unconscious representations) does in fact have an effect upon ego
consciousness -- indirectly, or as we say, 'symbolically'. 191

Once such unconscious representations attain enough "energy" to make them

conscious, the only way for them to be apprehended is in a disguised form, different from their
original content, but analogous to it in some way. On this theory, the contents of the
unconscious become known through symbols. A symbol is an:
. . . expression as the best possible formulation of a relatively unknown factor which
cannot conceivably be more clearly or characteristically represented . . . Insofar as a
symbol is a living thing, it is the expression of a thing not to be characterized in any
other or better way. The symbol is only alive insofar as it is pregnant with meaning . . .
every psychological phenomenon is a symbol when we are willing to assume that it
purports or signifies something different and still greater, something therefore which is
withheld from present knowledge. 192

Symbols are distinguished from signs, which stand for the things they represent. The
custom of handing over a piece of turf at the conclusion of a real estate sale is a sign, the piece
of turf representing the whole of the land. A symbol does not stand for the thing it represents
as an instance of it; it is "the best possible formulation" of something that cannot be
represented. Thus, unconscious contents, if they can not be represented to the ego, must, if
they have sufficient energy for the ego to be aware of them, be represented symbolically.
Again, there is a close parallel to the metaphoric interpretation of mystical experience -- unlike
Stace's claim that a metaphor requires familiarity with both metaphier and metaphrand, the
theory I have offered is that the recursive metaphor strives to symbolize that which cannot be
familiarized.
Jung's theory is that unconscious contents do have a subject -- it is not the unified
subject of the ego, but rather a multiplicity of unconnected processes. To understand the
nature of this "fragmentary" unconscious, Jung made detailed studies of the texts of the
medieval alchemists. Such writings refer to "luminosities" and "gleaming islands" within the
soul, which Jung understood to be metaphorical for the autonomous, individual mental
processes of the unconscious. Jung claims that animal consciousness has this kind of structure:
that of diffuse "luminosities", but no integrated concept of unity or Self. Such fragmentary
processes are the evolutionary precursors of consciousness; indeed, Jung thought that the ties
of the ego that hold conscious processes together are very weak, and, in primitive humankind,
were easily dissociated because of the weakness of those ties. One source of psychosis is the
collapse of this unifying structure, and the less well evolved that structure is, the more likely it
is to collapse. Thus, for primitive humankind, whose ego-structure lay precariously close to

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fragmentation, his rites of exorcism were rituals designed to "recall" unity to the dissociated
fragmentary processes from which it evolved.
There is a similarity to Jung's claim of the fragmentary unconscious, and Edelman's idea
of primary consciousness. Primary consciousness is the ability to create a scene, which unifies
unrelated phenomena. It has no sense of self, no ability to conceptualize time, and no ability to
relate the ongoing present to past or future into a unified picture. The unifying factor, the
"socially constructed self", is bootstrapped by language use. Jung's fragmentary unconscious is
unable to conceptualize sequences of events because there is no unifying subject -- no ego -- to
which the events are represented.
What sorts of contents actually reside in the unconscious? Freud had discovered
several: What is known, but not being thought of; what has been forgotten; what has been
perceived but never noticed (such as things recovered from memory by hypnosis); "future
things taking shape" -- ideas, etc., which will eventually become conscious; and repressed
things. These items all share common characteristics with the contents of consciousness -- they
all have the ability to become conscious, given the appropriate circumstances. It was Freud's
psychoanalytic techniques of free association and dream analysis that allowed those contents to
become conscious. Such unconscious contents, falling outside the realm of ordinary awareness,
appear "mysterious" to consciousness: the mind can't come to grips with forces operating in the
psyche outside its scope of awareness. These unconscious processes, when they become
conscious, characteristically appear autonomous, refractory to logical analysis or persuasion,
and have an all-or-nothing quality. These characteristics often appear in cases of mental
disorder, where some such process has seized control of an individual's psyche by displacing
the ego as the subject of consciousness.
In addition to these contents, Jung postulated the existence of psychoid processes, mental
contents so unlike consciousness that they cannot be directly represented. These psychoid
processes are contents that have nothing to do with consciousness, and do not have their roots
in forgotten or repressed experiences. They are the "luminosities" to which the alchemical
literature referred, and they do indeed have a mysterious character to them: the idea that there
are contents within the psyche that consciousness can never directly understand is mystifying
to say the least. Such processes must of necessity be represented to consciousness
symbolically, either through the medium of dreams and fantasies, or through the medium of a
mandala, a symbolic representation of the relationships between such processes, commonly
seen in mythology and also in the drawings of patients undergoing psychoanalysis.
The idea of psychic "energy" is key to the understanding of why certain unconscious
processes appear to consciousness through symbolic form. Freud thought that psychic energy
was libido: the results of the sublimation of sexual drives from the id. Jung does not share this

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view; rather, he thinks that psychic energy is derived from conflict within the psyche of any
sort. The opposition of elements within the psyche stimulates interest in those elements.
While Freud thought the psyche was composed of three discrete parts, Jung's view is
that it is more like a continuum. He uses the metaphor of visible light: there exists an invisible
infrared, a visible spectrum, and an invisible ultraviolet. The visible spectrum corresponds to
consciousness, those mental processes of which we are aware, and of which we are aware as
being "our own." The psychic "infrared", invisible to awareness, is where mind meets body:
where biological processes take on a mentally representable character, some becoming
conscious as they attain greater energy. The psychic "ultraviolet" is the realm of the "soul":
where individual mind meets undifferentiated spirit, whose contents have attained too much
psychic energy to be apprehended by consciousness.

193

The spectral metaphor breaks down

because Jung does not assign normative values to the contents of the unconscious -- they are
just there, and all are essential to the existence of the psyche. What is important is that the
difference between psychic contents is not one of better or worse, but rather of representability
to consciousness, and of importance to the psyche itself. Psychic energy manifesting itself
within the realm of consciousness is will:
. . . the will influences the function. It does this by virtue of the fact that it is itself a
form of energy and has the power to overcome another form (instinct) . . . 'Will' implies
a certain amount of energy freely disposable by the psyche. 194

For Jung, this psychic energy is the result of conflict within the psyche. Freud thought
that it arose from conflicts between instincts, but Jung's view is more mystical. While some
psychic energy does derive from instinctual sources, Jung's ultimate position is that free will
derives from the opposition within the psyche of body and spirit. For him, that paradox is the
ultimate conflict, and provides the energy that drives psychic processes.
The psyche is made up of processes whose energy springs from the equilibration of
energy from all kinds of opposites. . . So regarded, psychic processes seem to be
balances of energy flowing between spirit and instinct. 195

The discussion of psychic energy and will is intended to clear space for several
considerations. First, that free will is an integral part of the psyche: "... at the upper limit of the
psyche where the function breaks free from its original goal, the instincts lose their influence as
movers of the will."196 Thus, Jung thinks that whatever determinism might operate at the
biological level is irrelevant to the activity of the will. Second, it must be realized that just as
the psyche is inherently biological, it is also inherently spiritual: one might, on the Freudian

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view (as is often erroneously done) attribute to the activities of the "subconscious" those
contents which are somehow beneath the level of consciousness; Jung forces us also to consider
the existence of a "superconsciousness", at the interface of mind and spirit, which might also
provide its own motivating forces. So, the "forces" that bring various contents to consciousness
need not be exclusively biological in origin. Third, the energy available to the contents of the
psyche is not necessarily restricted to those experiences of which the individual is, was, or ever
could be, directly conscious -- in fact, certain contents may assimilate and discharge psychic
energy without ever entering the sphere of awareness. Certain contents that are, by their
nature irrepresentable to consciousness may, by various means, attain sufficient psychic energy
that they fall within the range of consciousness. By virtue of their irrepresentability, such
contents can only become conscious through some kind of symbolic representation -- what
consciousness "sees" is some sort of caricature of the content itself. That is the basis for the
psychoanalytic theory of the origin of dreams and fantasies: they are unconscious contents that
have attained sufficient energy to be apprehended by consciousness, but must, by their nature,
be represented to consciousness in symbolic form.
The purpose of psychoanalysis, at least that developed by Freud, is to bring to
consciousness unconscious contents that are in conflict in some way, generating psychic energy
that disrupts the consciousness structure of the individual. But Freud believed that all
unconscious contents can ultimately be made conscious, as their source is within consciousness
itself. As already mentioned, Jung thought that, in addition to this "personal unconscious",
there was also within the unconscious psyche a repository of contents, psychoid processes, that
did not have their origins in the experience of the individual because of their dissimilarity and
irrepresentability to consciousness. Such contents, Jung reasoned, must have their origin
somewhere other than in experience; Jung came to think that they were inherited -- leaving
open the question of whether they are of biological, or perhaps of spiritual, origin.
In trying to understand these psychoid processes, Jung made extensive studies of
mythology and comparative religion, and noted the universality of certain themes and
symbols. The remarkable similarity of these symbols, particularly among tribes and peoples
who could not possibly have had any contact with one another, was overshadowed only by the
similarity of those symbols to those produced by Jung's own psychoanalytic patients in their
dreams and fantasies. This suggested to Jung that not only were the psychoid processes of the
unconscious "inherited", but that somehow, they were the same for all persons, no matter when
or where they existed. Thus, he coined the term "collective unconscious" to refer to those
psychoid processes held in common by all of humankind.
The medieval alchemists had described the elusive contents of the collective
unconscious as "luminosities", and Jung understood those "luminosities" to be autonomous

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psychoid processes, accessible to consciousness only through symbol, but nonetheless affecting
consciousness by assimilating psychic energy. Jung termed those processes "archetypes", and
thus was formulated the most striking, and controversial, aspect of his theory of the psyche:
That the unconscious consists not only of personal items, but also of shared, collective images,
the archetypes, that are universal to all of humankind. Jung wavers on whether instincts count
as elements of the psyche or of the body proper; nonetheless, just as instincts are inherited
patterns of behavior, activated by patterns of environmental stimuli, the archetypes are
patterns of apprehension and expression -- responses from the unconscious mind, often to
stimuli not directly perceived by consciousness, that may attain sufficient psychic energy to
impinge upon conscious processes. As instincts influence behavior, so do archetypes influence
perception, imagination and thought.
Of the archetypes, Jung writes:
The concept of the archetype. . . is derived from the repeated observation that, for
instance, the myths and fairy tales of world literature contain definite motifs (patterns)
which crop up everywhere. We meet these same motifs in the fantasies, dreams,
deleria, and delusions of individuals living today. These typical images and
associations are what I call archetypal ideas. The more vivid they are, the more they
will be colored by strong feeling-tones. . . they impress, influence, and fascinate us.
They have their origin in the archetype, which in itself is an irrepresentable
unconscious, pre-existing form that seems to be a part of the inherited structure of the
psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time. Because
of its instinctual nature, the archetype underlies the feeling-toned complexes, and shares
their autonomy.197

The distinction Jung makes in this passage between archetype and archetypal image is
that the archetype itself can not be apprehended by consciousness; what consciousness
experiences is a symbolic image of the archetype. Jung claims that the evidence for the
existence of archetypes comes from the presence of similar, if not identical, images in dreams,
fantasies (both childhood and adult), and mythology. Along these lines, he developed the
psychoanalytic technique of "active imagination", similar to what is today called "creative
visualization". When an archetype is "activated" -- that is, when some psychoid process
undergoes a conflict that raises its psychic energy to a level sufficient to impinge upon
consciousness -- compulsive behavior, or other signs of neurosis appear: signs that some
autonomous process is trying to gain control of the psyche. The idea behind the "active
imagination" technique is that the patient is encouraged to pursue his fantasy, describing what
he sees and feels, so that the analyst may determine what sort of psychoid process has become
activated. Similarly, Jung thought that many dreams were archetypal images trying to gain a
foothold in consciousness.

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What exactly are the archetypes? Jung thought there might be countless many of them,
the more common ones being manifested in recurring mythological themes. The hero's
journey, for example: the hero, to attain some ultimate good, must first subdue an evil, often in
the form of an animal or dragon. The archetype behind that image, Jung thought, is the
archetype of the Self, struggling for its existence against the onslaught of the fragmentary,
instinct-like unconsciousness out of which it arose. The dragon represents the elemental,
primitive, instinctual nature of the psyche, and the hero must, before he can become a "whole"
person, overcome the tendency of the psyche to lose its unity.
The contents of dreams, fairy tales, and fantasies have their origins in archetypes.
These fragmentary mental processes come into conflict with one another, or with the psychic
energy of consciousness itself, and appear symbolically, both as images and as themes.
Themes of birth, death and rebirth, images of wizards and wise men, quests for Grails and
damsels in distress: all of these are images of forms of apprehension within the unconscious,
and when "activated", often by conflicts in life, they appear to us as indicators that action needs
to be taken.
Archetypes figure prominently in the rituals of primitive humankind. Such rituals
employ symbols, both visually, and in terms of performance by the participants, that
correspond to archetypal images. The function of such rituals is twofold: they provide a means
for releasing the energy, originating in some conflict, by which archetypes become activated,
and, they invoke the "participation mystique" of Levy-Bruhl, discussed in chapter one.
Primitive humans envisioned themselves as a part of, or "in tune with", the events of the
universe around them. As such, they symbolized those events in their rituals, and attempted
to insert themselves in the overall scheme of things by participating in those events, albeit
symbolically, and to attain some degree of harmony with the events around them. As alien as
this may sound in the modern world of "objective thinking", it might be argued that these
archetypes represent to some degree our connection with the world around us, and the failure
of modern society to integrate itself with the world via those archetypes may be the prelude to
ecodisaster.
Jung's theory is that part of what it is to be human is to have these ingrained images
within the psyche. But what is their origin? Here is where Jungian theory becomes
incommensurable with the biologism of Freudian theory: Jung seems to argue that, just as
instincts represent the "interface" between biologically determined body and mind, so
archetypes are the "interface" between individual mind and undifferentiated spirit. Jung
writes:

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. . . archetypes have, when they appear, a distinctly numinous character which can
only be described as "spiritual" . . . It not infrequently happens that the archetype
appears in the form of a spirit in dreams or fantasy products, or even comports itself
like a ghost. There is a mystical aura about its numinosity, and it has a corresponding
effect upon the emotions. It mobilizes philosophical and religious convictions in the
very people who deemed themselves miles above any such fits of weakness. Often it
drives with unexampled passion and remorseless logic towards its goal and draws
its subject under its spell, from which despite the most desperate resistance he is
unable, and finally no longer willing, to break free, because the experience brings with
it a depth and fullness of meaning that was unthinkable before. 198

For Jung, what appears in consciousness as the result of an encounter with an archetype
is metaphorical -- it amounts to a poetic allusion to the experience itself. What gets believed as
a result of that encounter? It will depend upon the person, and the circumstances surrounding
the encounter.
There is a close parallel between Jung's theory of archetypes, Stace's theory of
intersection, and Jaynes' theory of the bicameral mind. What Jung considers the "unconscious",
Stace would consider the "other order", and Jaynes would call the "right hemisphere". This
similarity suggests that the content of mystical beliefs is deeply metaphorical; the content of
beliefs about portal experience is symbolic, as it represents something that cannot be made
conscious. Portal experiences, even if they are metaphysically one type of experience -- that of
intersection -- might produce different results in different individuals, depending upon the
symbolic interpretation of the experience. Further, such experiences might produce different
results at different times, in different cultures, and so forth. The similarities between portal
experiences, the patterns of the fractal border between the worlds, may lie at some
metaphysical level beyond conceptualization, and hence their symbolic interpretations. Such
portal experiences, under conditions where cultural circumstances accord them plausibility,
might lie at the bottom of complex belief structures and world views. It may very well be that
the structure of the world's mythologies, metaphorical themselves according to Joseph
Campbell, rests upon a foundation of portal experience.
Before ending this discussion of Jungian psychology, we need to return to the issue of
"psychic energy" that lies at the core of Jung's conception of the archetypes. There is a deeper
idea behind Jung's theory of psychic energy, which Marilyn Nagy traces to the nineteenth
century idea of vitalism, and particularly those connected with Hans Driesch. 199 Driesch
explains:

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There is something in the organism's behaviour -- in the widest sense of the word -which is opposed to an inorganic resolution of the same and which shows that the living
organism is more than a sum or aggregate of its parts, that it is insufficient to call the
organism a "typically combined body" without further explanation. This something we
call entelechy. Entelechy -- being not an extensive but an intensive manifoldness -- is
neither causality nor substance in the true sense of those words. But entelechy is a
factor in nature, though it only relates to nature in space and is not itself anywhere in
space. Entelechy's role in spatial nature may be formulated both mechanically and
energetically. Introspective analysis shows that the human reason possesses a special
kind of category -- individuality -- by the aid of which it is able to understand to its own
satisfaction what entelechy is; the category of individuality thus completing the concept
of ideal nature in a positive way. 200

"Entelechy" is Driesch's word for the vital force whose presence differentiates the living
from the non-living. It acts in space and time to organize living systems out of the inorganic.
Driesch also used the word "psychoid", which Jung adopted for essentially the same thing.
Just as we cannot detect the presence of the vital force by physical measurement, only by its
effects on living things, so we cannot be directly aware of psychoid processes, but we can see
their effects upon consciousness symbolically. Jung writes:
The vital principle extends far beyond our consciousness in that it also maintains the
vegetative functions of the body which, as we know, are not under conscious control.
Our consciousness is dependent upon the functions of the brain, but these are in turn
dependent upon the vital principle and accordingly the vital principle represents a
substance, where as consciousness represents a contingent phenomenon. Or as
Schopenhauer says: "Consciousness is the object of a transcendental idea." Thus we see
that animal and vegetative functions are embraced in a common root, the actual subject.
Let us boldly assign to this transcendental subject the name of "soul." What do we mean
by "soul"? The soul is an intelligence independent of space and time. 201

Jung's argument is that the vital principle animates both consciousness and those parts
of the psyche that are unconscious, including its biological functions. Consciousness is
contingent because, on Jung's theory, there can be life without consciousness. The vital
principle is a "substance" because it is non-contingent -- without it, there can be no life. We
need not entertain discussions relating to the Cartesian notion of immaterial substance here,
though I think Jung's idea harmonizes with it. We need only see that for Jung, the vital
principle is something that is not part of physical space-time.
Nagy traces this idea of the non-physical vital principle to the writings of Ludwig
Busse, who opposed the idea of Gustav Fechner that mind and matter are identical. This idea
grew out of the discovery of the laws of thermodynamics, and the alleged "proofs" of a
mechanistic universe that accompanied their popularization. Against mechanism, Busse
argues that the laws of thermodynamics are:

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. . . transformation formulae which describe the process of exchange of energy in the

realm of matter . . . But the question is, do we live in a completely closed system in which
everything that happens is necessarily bound to the causal-mechanistic sequence? It
must be remembered that the energy laws are mere empirically discovered laws whose
validity for the whole of nature has not been proved. They do not reach the level of a
priori necessary rules of thought. We need not disagree with the laws of energy in the
realm in which they apply in order to suggest that we live only in a relatively closed
system. There may be arenas in which the laws do not apply, namely when the psychic
influences the physical, or when the physical influences the psychic. 202

The essential problem faced by Jung was one of explaining psychophysical causation -how the mind could influence the body, and visa versa. For Freud, this is not a problem, as the
mind simply is the brain; Jung rejected this view in favor of a much richer concept of the
psyche. Jung's idea of psychoid process, borrowed from Driesch and Eugen Bleuler, both
vitalists, was intended as a bridge between the psychic and the body.

Though not directly psychic in the sense of having a potential for becoming conscious,
nor directly instinctive in the sense of being connected to the [biological] drive forces,
there may be "psychoid processes at both ends of the psychic scale." 203

Nagy offers two further examples of Jung's vitalist position:

We are forced to assume that the given structure of the brain does not owe its peculiar
nature merely to the influence of surrounding conditions, but also and just as much to
the peculiar and autonomous quality of living matter, i.e., to a law inherent in life itself.204
It has become a prejudice which hinders all progress, with nothing to justify it . . . Life
can never be thought of as a function of matter, but only as a process existing in and for itself , to
which energy and matter are subordinate . . . We have no more justification for
understanding the psyche as a brain-process than we have for understanding life in
general from a one-sided arbitrary materialistic point of view that can never be proved,
quite apart from the fact that the very attempt to imagine such a thing is crazy in itself
and has always engendered craziness whenever it was taken seriously. 205

This discussion of Jung's vitalism is included to help clarify what he meant by the term
"psychic energy", and also because I defend the thesis that Jung's theory of the psyche amounts
to proposing that the psyche is a dynamical system. I have, in the case of portal experience,
used three general criteria for establishing the presence of dynamical systems: (1) The presence
of two or more "worlds" or orders of being, immiscible in some relevant way; (2) A
self-organizing system that generates its own fractal patterns of behavior, independent of
causal relations between the parts of that system; and (3) A fractal boundary condition between

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the two that defies characterization without symbolic interpretation. The "intersection"
characterization of portal experience has been shown to satisfy these criteria. Jung's theory of
the psyche also satisfies them. The theory argues for an unconscious, some of whose processes
can never become conscious -- an immiscibility, in a relevant way. The vitalism espoused and
endorsed by Jung contends that there is a vital force or principle, distinct from the matter of the
body and not bound to the body by any mechanistic cause-effect relationship, yet able to
interact with the body and particularly with the brain. And finally, Jung's whole
psychoanalytic theory is based upon the idea that the contents of the unconscious can be made
conscious only through symbols.
Jung's vitalistic comments point toward the psyche as being something associated with
the body, but independent of it in important ways. The psyche has inherent patterns of its
own, and while it interacts with the body, it is not reducible to the body. The ideas of "an
autonomous quality of living matter" and life "as a process existing in and for itself" is the same
kind of description applying to Edelman's description of consciousness as a dynamical system.
The psyche as arising out of the body yet not causally bound to it is "chaos talk", of the kinds
used by Edelman in chapter two and myself in chapter three.
It is also, according to Nagy, "God talk":
[Jung] says that the psyche, as will and consciousness, must have a "supraordinate
authority, something like a consciousness of itself" if it is to be differentiated from the
compulsive force of instinctive function . . . Jung realized that "psychic finality rests on a
'pre-existent' meaning which becomes problematical only when it is an unconscious
arrangement. In this case we have to suppose a 'knowledge' prior to all consciousness" .
. . This is God talk. That, at least, is the term most usually applied in Western
philosophical thought to indicate supraordinate, intending mind. 206

And "God talk", in the context of this study, is "portal experience talk". It suggests that
through Jung's theory, a relationship appears between the dynamical system of Edelman's
brain physiology, the dynamical system of portal experience, and the dynamical system of the
psyche. What I have called constellation in the context of portal experience, Jung calls the
intuition of an archetype, and both are understood symbolically. The autonomous and
independent psychic processes of Jung's theory are analogous, though perhaps not identical
with, Edelman's characterization of primary consciousness as a dynamical system in the brain.
Having established portal experience, the psyche, and the neurophysiological aspects of
consciousness as dynamical systems, we are now in a position to approach the central thesis of
this study -- to understand how they are related.

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Chapter 5: Acausality and Consciousness

"What is Fate?" Nasrudin was asked by a scholar.
"An endless succession of intertwined events, each influencing the other."
"That is hardly a satisfactory answer. I believe in cause and effect."
"Very well," said the Mulla, "look at that." He pointed to a procession passing in the
street. "That man is being taken to be hanged. Is that because someone gave him a
silver piece and enabled him to buy the knife with which he committed the murder; or
because someone saw him do it; or because nobody stopped him?"
-- Idries Shah

Chapter one presented several examples of portal experiences. The theory of portal
experiences, based upon Walter Stace's intersection theory, holds that there are worlds other
than the spatiotemporal world with which we are familiar, and those worlds cannot be directly
experienced by beings situated in the spatiotemporal world, such as ourselves. Those worlds
are revealed to us through portal experiences, which are, in effect, the mind being situated at a
point of contact between the worlds. That point of contact reveals certain contents as patterns,
which are constellated in the mind and understood symbolically, resulting in what Levy-Bruhl
called participation mystique. Other kinds of portal experiences, including divination, magic,
and mystical experience, are characterized along similar lines.
From an empirical standpoint, there seems to be a close association between the brain
and the mind. This association is supported by evidence from experimental and physiological
psychology. In addition, the close correlation, historically, between the use of pharmacological
"hallucinogenic" agents from plants and other sources, and both ancient and contemporary
religious practices associated with portal experiences, suggests a relationship between the
physiology of the body, the psyche, and portal experience.
The challenge posed by these correlations is to understand how it is possible for a portal
experience (of a non-spatiotemporal world) to constellate itself in the mind of a person whose
consciousness is associated with a physical brain. How can an individual whose psyche, as
argued in chapters two and three, is in some way a product of the biology of the brain, become
aware of something not spatiotemporally related to that brain?
In preparation for answering that question, it has been established that there is, in the
brain, a dynamical system associated with consciousness. Edelman argues that consciousness
is such a dynamical system, and Jaynes' model of a repetitive metaphorization process coheres
with the physiological description offered by Edelman. The theory of portal experience implies
a dynamical system at the junction of the worlds, supported by the symbolic nature of their

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interpretation and the boundary condition between the two worlds, along the lines of Stace's
theory of intersection. The psyche -- characterized according to Jung's theory -- also reveals the
presence of a dynamical system, in the interaction between conscious and unconscious.
It remains to be shown how these three dynamical systems interact with one another.
Understanding the relationship between the brain, the psyche, and the "portal", will explain
how constellation -- the process of the other world influencing consciousness -- is possible. It
would explain how the witch's flying ointment "transports" the user to the sabbat rite. We
would be in a position to understand what has come to be called "The Miracle of Marsh
Chapel", an experiment in which several divinity students, given the psychedelic drug
psilocybin, reported mystical experiences. 207 Such an explanation would enable us to
understand these things without having to deny that the portal experiences are what they are
claimed to be -- experiences of another world -- and without having to deny that those
experiences were possible because of the evolution and biology of the brain.
Let the reader be warned, however, that the explanation offered is more of a
characterization of what happens, rather than an account of how it happens. The twentieth
century mind's curiosity is accustomed to being pacified by causal explanations -- expositions
of a series of events that lead up to the phenomenon in question, implying that the
phenomenon to be explained follows from a metaphysical connection between those events. If
we are to explain the relations between dynamical systems, themselves exempt from causal
explanation for reasons already given, then such an explanation will not be available. Probably
the best that can be done is to explain what happens, give examples, and leave it at that. The
reader who expects to be shown how a certain sequence of events leads up to the relationship
posited will remain unsatisfied. It may be, as Penrose has suggested, that at some point a
theory of quantum gravity, influence, or some other thing will further enlighten the workings
of the process. For now, the relationship can only be described, and its consequences
examined.
i. An Acausal Connecting Principle.
In his paper On Synchronicity,208 whose subtitle, "An Acausal Connecting Principle" I
have borrowed for this section, Jung discusses the means by which events that are not causally
related nonetheless influence one another. Jung's theory of synchronicity, his term for the
acausal relation, forms the basis for understanding how the three dynamical systems described
in this study are related to each other. Synchronicity is the means by which events that are not
causally related influence each other.

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Jung's discussion begins with the observation that natural laws, as causal principles,
are only statistically valid, and only valid for "macrophysical" quantities. According to the
uncertainty principle, the prediction of what state a subatomic particle will be in can be made
only on a statistical basis -- certain probabilities may be assigned to certain states, but a precise
prediction cannot be made. On this understanding, the behavior of objects made up of such
particles is a statistical average of the behavior of the particles themselves. As such, "natural
laws" are only valid on a statistical basis -- they are only true within some statistical
probability.209
The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality. But
if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and
only relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining
natural processes and therefore presupposes the existence of one or more other factors
which would be necessary for an explanation. This is as much to say that the connection
of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another
principle of explanation. 210

Jung's argument contradicts the idea that there is some metaphysical principle that
always connects cause and effect -- that there is some necessity underlying the relationship
between events. Since causality, formulated as natural law, is only valid some of the time, then
there must be other principles that are valid where and when causality is not.
One such principle might be chance -- that two things happen at the same time, and
there is no relationship between them at all. By "no relationship" is meant that whether the one
event occurred or not would not have influenced the occurrence, or manner of occurrence, of
the other. If the causal principle were universally valid, argues Jung, then all occurrences of
chance would be susceptible to causal explanation. Chance is, according to Jung, what we call
those cases where the "causality has not yet been discovered." But, if the causal principle is
only statistically valid and therefore applicable only some of the time, then there will be cases
of chance where a causal principle does not apply, and some other principle does.
To discover those cases where causality could not apply, we need a way of
distinguishing between those cases where it is likely that causality may apply, and those where
it is unlikely. We must therefore, according to Jung, choose those cases for consideration
where it is highly unlikely that any casual connection exists -- "acausal events may be expected
most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable."
Jung cites several examples of such cases. The "duplication of cases" is an example in
which a series of similar cases appear in medical practice -- several cases of broken arms in one
day.

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When for instance I am faced with the fact that my tram ticket bears the same number as
the theatre ticket which I buy immediately afterwards, and I receive that same evening a
telephone call during which the same number is mentioned again as a telephone
number, then a causal connection between them seems to me to be improbable in the
extreme, although it is obvious that each event must have its own causality. 211

There is, however, stronger evidence for this kind of relationship, found in the
experimental work of J. B. Rhine and others. The experiments consisted of an experimenter
turning over a series of cards, each card bearing some geometric pattern, and a subject screened
off from the experimenter, guessing the image on the card. As Rhine performed the
experiment, the card pack consisted of twenty-five cards with five of each symbol: a star, a
square, a circle, a group of wavy lines, and a cross. The chance probability is roughly five in
25; one could get that number of successful "hits", or accurate predictions, by calling "star"
every time. The observed success rate was 6.5 out of 25, which is 1.5 hits over and above what
is predicted by chance alone, with a probability of 1:250,000 that this deviation from the
expected could occur by chance alone. One particular subject scored an average of 10 out of 25
hits, which has a chance probability of 1:298,023,876,953,125.
The significance of these studies is to show that the probability of either a causal
explanation or a pure chance explanation is extremely small. In proper statistical terms, the
null hypothesis that the results are due to chance, has a very low probability of being true.
Unless some causal connection between the experimenter's drawing the cards and the subjects'
guesses is conceivable, then there is a high probability that the observed results are not due to
either chance or causation.
Several variations on the above experiment have been performed, in order to further
reduce the possibility of a causal connection. In one set of experiments, the distance between
experimenter and subject was increased to 250 miles, with an overall success rate of 10.5 out of
25. Similar results were achieved in experiments where the separation was one or more rooms,
and where the separation was some 4000 miles. Regarding this result, Jung states:
The fact that distance has no effect in principle shows that the thing in question cannot
be a phenomenon of force or energy, for otherwise the distance to be overcome and the
diffusion in space would cause a diminution of the effect, and it is more than probable
that the score would fall proportionately to the square of the distance. 212

Other experiments conducted by Rhine show that whatever it is that enables the subject
to guess the cards with accuracy better than chance, is also independent of time. One set of
experiments consisted of the subject's guessing which cards would be drawn on the following
day; the results showed a chance probability of 1:400,000. Bearing in mind Mandelbrot's

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comparison of fractal geometry to relativity theory, and my characterization of the psyche as

fractal, Jung writes:
The results of Rhine's experiment . . . means a considerable probability of there being
some factor independent of time. They point, in other words, to a relativity of time,
since the experiment was concerned with perception of events which had not yet
occurred. In these circumstances the time factor seems to have been eliminated by a
function or condition which is also capable of abolishing the spatial factor . . . We must
give up at the outset all explanations in terms of energy, which amounts to saying that
events of this kind cannot be considered from the point of view of causality, for
causality presupposes the existence of space and time in so far as all observations are
ultimately based upon bodies in motion. 213

The Rhine experiments show, according to Jung, a series of cases that are
experimentally, and meaningfully (more on "meaningfully" shortly), related to one another,
without any possibility of a causal connection between them, and a very low probability of
explanation on the basis of chance. Jung states: "It seems more likely that scientific explanation
will have to begin with a criticism of our concepts of space and time on the one hand, and with
the unconscious on the other."214 Jung uses the term "causal" in a way that is not terribly
different from the characterization of "Humean" causation given in an earlier chapter -- that
causation depends upon contiguity, succession, and regularity -- to which we add the idea that
it involves a flow of "energy" from cause to effect, energy understood as physical momentum,
force, and so on. The effect of a moving body hitting an object, on the theory used by Jung, is
the result of energy from the moving body acting upon the target object; "causation" under this
description is a purely mechanistic principle. This mechanistic principle must be set aside in
the case of the Rhine experiments for two reasons: that the effect does not diminish with
distance, as would be the case if a physical force were involved, and that the effect seems
time-independent of the cause, as in the case of predicting the cards drawn on the next day.
Much of the material discussed by Jung in the context of synchronicity is also discussed
by Charles Tart in more recent studies. Tart contrasts what he calls the "spiritual psychologies"
with the orthodox, prevailing scientific view, physicalism -- "a notion that all events are
ultimately reducible to lawful interactions of matter and energies within the space-time
continuum." 215 That the scientific community as a whole rejects parapsychology and its
conclusions is symptomatic of prejudice, not of any lack of scientific diligence. The conflicts
between parapsychology as a science, and the physical sciences are, according to Tart, rooted in
a conflict between physicalism held as a "religious" belief, and the things affirmed by
parapsychology that physicalism denies. Writes Tart, of those who deny the possibility of
non-physicalistic phenomena:

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I'm afraid the almost universal answer will be that you simply accept the belief common
in the scientific community without ever having given much thought to it, and that you
have never looked at the scientific evidence which might contradict this belief. Indeed,
the pattern I find among most colleagues is that they know a priori that there are no
such phenomena, therefore they have never bothered to read any evidence which might
indicate there was and then say they have never seen any evidence to contradict their
belief.216

It is fairly common, within the scientific community as well as without it, to deny the
existence of evidence that does not conform to a belief already held. This is why there is such
difficulty in dealing with a concept like synchronicity -- it runs contrary to the idea of cause and
effect. Nonetheless, parapsychology has amassed evidence that points to an acausal
connecting principle, or some other theory that denies the exclusivity of physical space-time.
Among the subjects investigated by parapsychologists are telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance,
precognition, and so forth -- the kinds of phenomena discussed in the first chapter of this
study. The method of parapsychology is to apply empirical research methods to these
phenomena, much as the Rhine experiments applied observation and statistical correlation to
card reading. Tart states that roughly one out of three parapsychological experiments is
successful in showing a correlation of events more probable than chance alone; if those results
themselves were due to chance, there should only be about one out of one hundred
experiments successful.
Tart uses an argument similar to Jung's against causality in the case of psi, or
parapsychological, phenomena:
To get information about an event from one location in space and time to another
location in space and time, some form of energy must be modulated in such a way as to
contain the relevant information, and must pass from one location to the other. 217

Tart then cites phenomena associated with physical energies -- distance, shielding,
detectability, focusing, and time -- and shows that psi phenomena do not follow those rules.
Consequently, Tart draws roughly the same conclusion as Jung: that they are not subsumable
under physicalistic descriptions, but must be viewed from a psychological -- as distinct from
physical -- perspective. As in Jung's case, Tart suggests that the information relevant to psi
phenomena flows into the unconscious.
Jung's criticism of space and time is that those concepts became fixed largely because of
the introduction of measurement. They are mental postulates, "hypostasized concepts born of
the discriminating activity of the conscious mind." 218 They are mental in origin, which is why
Kant (according to Jung) regarded them as a priori categories. 219 Since space and time are of

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mental origin, then we should not be surprised that they exhibit a form of relativity governed
by psychological conditions:
This possibility [of psychological relativization of space and time] presents itself when
the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself. That is precisely what happens in
Rhine's experiments: the subject's answer is not the result of his observing the physical
cards, it is a product of pure imagination, of "chance" ideas which reveal the structure of
that which produces them, namely the unconscious. 220

The "structures" to which Jung refers are the archetypes. Jung argues that what is
revealed by the Rhine experiments is something about the unconscious and its archetypes,
namely that its functions are not subsumable under causal principles, but some other kind of
principle. This is to say that space and time neither govern the operations of the unconscious,
nor restrict what is meaningful to it. Psychoid processes, in other words, are not subsumable
under causal laws, even though it is clear that they relate to processes that are causal -- the
prediction of cards to be drawn at a later date is not causally related to the drawing of the
cards, while the drawing of the cards itself is a causal process. The prediction is, however,
experimentally related to the drawing, and is also meaningfully related.
The criterion "meaningfully related" is meant to distinguish between events whose
relationship has some significance to the observer, as opposed to events that do not.
Synchronicity refers to the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningfully but not causally
connected events: "the simultaneous occurrence of a certain [mental] state with one or more
external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state -- and,
in certain cases, visa versa."221 Synchronism, on the other hand, refers to two or more events
that simply occur at the same time. The subject correctly identifying the card drawn in another
room is an example of synchronicity; the subject correctly identifying the drawn card, and
someone sneezing in a bar in San Francisco at the same time is an example of synchronous
events. Note that, because of the psychological relativity of space and time, synchronistic
events need not be synchronous; the correct prediction of the cards drawn on the next day
qualifies as an example of synchronicity. Jung cites an example of a person in Europe who
dreamed the death of a friend in America; as it turned out, a letter describing the death
confirmed the details mentioned by the dreamer, except that the death actually occurred an
hour before the dream.
Now the theory of synchronicity rests "on the simultaneous occurrence of two different
states," one of them being the normal, causally explicable state, and the other state causally
underivable from the first. In the case of the Rhine experiments, Jung claims that because of
the subject's state of expectation, there is already in his unconscious an image of the result,

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which enables his conscious mind to score better than chance. In the case of the dream of the
friend's death, there was, in the mind of the dreamer, already an unconscious knowledge of the
death prior to the dream. Synchronicity therefore implies "an a priori, causally inexplicable
knowledge of a situation which is at the time unknowable." 222 There are two factors connected
with synchronicity: an unconscious image that comes into consciousness either directly or
symbolically in the form of a dream, idea or premonition, and an objective situation to which
this content is related meaningfully, but not causally. Writes Jung:
We must completely give up the idea of the psyche's being somehow connected with the
brain, and remember instead the "meaningful" and "intelligent" behavior of the lower
organisms, which are without a brain. Here we find ourselves much closer to the formal
factor which, as I have said, has nothing to do with brain activity. 223

Jung argues that synchronicity is an explanatory principle on a par with causality. It is

"an empirical concept which postulates an intellectually necessary principle," namely a
principle by which things are related acausally. Note the similarity to Hume's characterization
of causality -- that causation is never observed directly, only sequences of events that lead us to
postulate causality as a connecting principle. Synchronicity, according to Jung, is possibly the
principle that explains the soul-body relation. The problem of understanding how physical
processes in the brain are related to the psyche is solved by the empirical insight that they
relate to each other acausally, thereby undermining the requirement for causal space-time
connections between the two.
A causalistic explanation of synchronicity seems out of the question . . . It consists
essentially of "chance equivalences" . . . The meaningful coincidence or equivalence of a
psychic and a physical state that have no causal relationship to one another means, in
general terms, that it is a modality without a cause, a "acausal orderedness" . . . [If
causeless events exist] then we must regard them as creative acts, as the continuous
creation of a pattern that exists from all eternity, repeats itself sporadically, and is not
derivable from any known antecedents. 224

"Acausal orderedness," repeating patterns, "not derivable from any known antecedents"
-- this is vocabulary we have already encountered elsewhere. It is the chaos-talk and
dynamical-systems-talk of Edelman, Freeman, Gleick, and others. I think Jung was probably
too quick to say that we must give up the idea that the psyche has anything to do with the
brain. It might be better, in the light of what has been shown in this study, to say that we must
give up the idea that the psyche is causally derivable from the brain. The "Miracle of Marsh
Chapel" is a clear instance of synchronicity, but somewhat more complex than the type
described by Jung -- there is an empirical connection between a physical event (the effects of

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psilocybin on the physiology of the brain), a psychological state, and the "portal" or intersection
(which is not a space-time event).
Jung's discussion of synchronicity is included to suggest and characterize the acausal
principle involved. I contend that the relationship between the physiology of the brain, the
psyche, and the intersection of portal experience is explicable using the synchronicity principle.
Jung asks, "How does the unconscious image arise, and how the coincidence?" Having
characterized the relevant phenomena as dynamical systems, an intelligible -- albeit acausal -answer now emerges.
ii. Synchronicity and Portal Experience.
As the overall behavior of dynamical systems is strongly influenced by their initial
conditions, such systems, when perturbed in some way, tend to return to those initial
conditions. The patterns established at the onset of chaotic behavior tend to be maintained in
the face of changing external conditions. This is as opposed to linear systems, which, when
perturbed in some way, tend to remain in a perturbed state unless or until something from the
outside re-adjusts them. A mixture of oil and water, when shaken, will eventually return to its
separated state, while an object in motion, if a force is applied, will not return to its original
path and velocity unless some other counteracting force is applied.
Gleick tells the story of the Dutch physicist, Christian Huygens, who invented the
pendulum clock, and accidentally discovered an interesting property of dynamical systems as
well.225 Huygens had several clocks lined up against a wall, and noticed that they were all
swinging in perfect synchronization. Knowing that he could not possibly have built all of the
clocks accurately enough to account for this, he supposed that somehow the movement of the
clocks was being coordinated by vibrations transmitted through the walls. Nothing
understood about pendulums, by themselves, could account for this phenomenon.
Huygens had observed a property unique to dynamical systems called entrainment, or
mode locking. Mode locking explains why the same side of the moon always faces the earth,
and why satellites in general tend to spin with a rotation that is some whole-number ratio to
their orbital period. Gleick cites several other examples:
Mode locking occurs throughout electronics, making it possible, for example, for a radio
receiver to lock in on signal even when there are small fluctuations in their frequency.
Mode locking accounts for the ability of groups of oscillators, including biological
oscillators, like heart cells and nerve cells, to work in synchronization. A spectacular
example in nature is a Southeast Asian species of firefly that congregates in trees during
mating periods, thousands at one time, blinking in a fantastic spectral harmony. 226

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Very little is known about how mode locking actually works; this probably amounts to
saying that a causal explanation of mode locking cannot be given. Gleick states that, in the case
of satellites, the "nonlinearity in the tidal attraction of the satellite tends to lock it in." It is a
general property of non-linear systems to "lock on" to each other, such that their observable
characteristics appear to follow the same pattern. As I have previously discussed, the linear
factors in a system are those factors associated with causation -- contiguity, succession, and
regularity. To say that the non-linear components of a system are responsible for mode locking
is as much as saying that mode locking is an acausal connecting principle.
What Jung described as synchronicity in the psychological realm, what Tart
characterized as psi phenomena, and what Gleick calls mode locking in the physical realm are
one and the same principle. The phenomenon of mode locking, synchronicity, or psi, is the
observed effect of a principle by which one thing influences the behavior of another acausally.
Jung's characterization of synchronicity as a relationship between causal and acausal states
parallels the idea of mode locking between satellites, whose initial conditions are established by
causal systems (force, acceleration, etc.) and are maintained by dynamical systems. Just as no
causal principle can account for the prediction of cards drawn on the next day, no causal
principle can account for the synchronized beating of heart cells or flashing of fireflies.
Synchronicity is the ability of one system to influence the behavior of another, such that
the two systems share a common behavior pattern. It is, therefore, the thesis of this study that
portal experience is a mode locking, or synchronicity, between the dynamical system processes
associated with consciousness in the brain, the dynamical systems associated with the
unconscious in the psyche, and the dynamical system associated with the interface of two (or
more) worlds in the metaphysical intersection. This is to say that during portal experience,
there is a flow of information, by acausal means, between brain, mind, and the spiritual "other
world".
The theory of synchronicity suggests a clear explanation for events such as the "Miracle
of Marsh Chapel". Physiologically, there is a dynamical system in the brain associated with
perception, as experimental evidence has shown. The patterns of that system, besides being
related to perceptual events, are also related to patterns in the dynamical system of the psyche.
These patterns "mirror" each other to some degree, perhaps to degrees that vary under
different circumstances. By "mirroring" I mean that although the patterns of the psyche and
the brain follow their own self-organized course, because they are mode locked to each other
by the acausal connecting principle there are similarities of pattern, just as there are similarities
between the pattern of the coastline of Britain and the grains of sand out of which the coastline

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is constructed. The patterns of the brain and of the psyche do not cause one to be similar to the
other; they are similar to one another because they are acausally connected.
The acausal connecting principle is the means by which the patterns of one dynamical
system are reflected in the patterns of another. The causal antecedents in the brain, in the
psyche, and in the portal experience are all different -- the physical events leading up to a
portal experience, the relationship of unconscious to conscious, and the metaphysical
intersection are causally unrelated. But they influence one another, such that what is "seen" in
a portal experience, via perceptual circuits in the brain, contains information from the
intersection and the unconscious.
The psychedelic drug, in this case psilocybin, perturbs the pattern of the dynamical
system in the brain. It does this, according to the psychedelic bootstrapping theory, by
increasing the energy and speed of information flow in the anatomical structures of the brain as
it decreases the overall level of chemical inhibition on the action potential generating process.
The pattern in the brain, being mode locked to the psyche, perturbs the relations between
conscious and unconscious. According to the analysis of Jungian theory I offered in chapter
four, the relationship between consciousness and unconscious is dynamical and fractal, such
that things in the unconscious that become conscious do so symbolically.
Now according to the synchronicity theory offered by Jung, there are things in the
unconscious that resemble perceptions, but are not directly accessible to the conscious mind -the image of the cards drawn in the future is one example. In the case of portal experiences,
there are psychoid processes that are mode locked to the intersection of metaphysically
incongruous worlds; another way of saying this is that the intersection is represented in the
unconscious by psychoid processes whose general patterns mirror the patterns of the
intersection.
The perturbation of the dynamical system relating conscious and unconscious in the
psyche, from the pharmacological action of the drug, results in the system of the psyche
re-establishing its pattern in a way that accommodates that perturbation. Dynamical systems
always try to return to their own self-organized pattern, but they do so by adjusting
themselves to incorporate the conditions that disturbed them. According to this theory, the
disturbance resulting from the drug results in a shift of psychic pattern that may, under certain
conditions (but does not necessarily always . . .) incorporate the patterns of previously
excluded processes from the unconscious. The psyche, in attempting to reestablish its
self-organized structure in the face of perturbation, incorporates a wider variety of contents
into its structure; the portal experience results from the incorporation of a psychoid process,
mode locked to the metaphysical intersection, into the structure of the psyche.

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The perturbation allows for the emergence of a new pattern, one that is mode locked, at
least in part, to the interface between worlds. What transpires between the worlds thereby
alters the patterns of the psyche, such that information from the "other world" -- symbolically
revealed by the fractal boundary between the worlds -- can imprint itself in the conscious mind.
That "influence" is, in Jungian terms, a psychoid process, that impinges upon consciousness
symbolically, or as Stace put it, as an interpretation of a psychological state. The symbolic
interpretation of this psychoid process thus includes the perceptual character of the experience
because it is mode locked to the brain, the psychological character of the experience because it is
mode locked by the relationship of the conscious and unconscious within the individual, and
the metaphysical intersection which is mode locked to the unconscious. This account explains the
similarities and differences between mystical experiences: the similarities are due to the
patterns of intersection being reproduced in the unconscious, and the differences are due to the
psychological and physiological conditions under which the intersection is experienced.
This I shall call the "weak" version of the thesis -- that portal experience is a
synchronicity between brain, psyche, and intersection. The weak version is sufficient to
overcome the "mind-body problem", by showing that there is only a mind-body problem if one
refuses to abandon causality as an a priori category. As Jung suggested, the relationship
between mind and body is understood as a synchronicity of psyche and the reentrant, parallel
signaling processes in the brain. The problem of psychophysical causation is no problem
because there is no causation -- the interaction is subsumed under the acausal connecting
principle.
The weak version is also sufficient to establish the basis of participation mystique, and
of constellation. The original example in this study was one of seeing the stars, and perceiving
the lamps of the gods. It was argued that constellation amounts to a power in the "other
world" to manifest itself in the mind of the observer, and the acausal connecting principle gives
us a theory of how this occurs. Seeing the stars establishes a certain kind of discharge pattern
in the brain, which is synchronistically connected with the unconscious, psychoid process
generated by the intersection of the "other world". The seeing of the stars is thereby
"meaningfully" (synchronistically) associated with the psychoid process, which, on the basis of
the intersection theory, is the imprinting on the unconscious of a pattern -- and therefore
information -- from another world! The content of a portal experience is, inescapably,
determined in part by a dimension, reality, mode, world, or whatever, that is not contiguous
with the world of space and time.
Constellation is the synchronistic connection of a perceptual event with an unconscious
content. It explains the vision of the lamps of the gods -- the seeing of the stars is
synchronistically (acausally, but nonetheless meaningfully) related in the psyche to a psychoid

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process that is mode locked to the world of the gods; or, at least, is mode locked to a pattern
that occurs when the world of the gods intersects the world of the body. Participation
mystique is the constellation of the "other world" in the perceptual experiences of natural
phenomena.
The acausal connecting principle has sufficient explanatory power to account for
precognition and ESP; it can similarly account for the other phenomena described by Tart. A
review of chapter one will show that all of the phenomena characterized as portal experiences
are explicable on the basis of synchronicity. Divination is the bringing into consciousness,
symbolically, of an unconscious content -- a psychoid process mode locked acausally to some
pattern that lies outside space-time continuity -- that is interpreted as information about the
future, past, or some place inaccessible to the diviner. The "Knowledge and Conversation of
the Holy Guardian Angel" is also the direct intuition into consciousness of a psychoid process,
whose nature will be discussed shortly.
A special word about magic is in order. Magic, being the "opposite" of divination in
that it involves causing something to happen, is also synchronistic. The difference between the
"perceptual" portal experiences and magic is that in the latter case, magic involves imposing
the patterns of one's own consciousness on the outside, rather than simply being influenced by
those patterns. Mode locking is not a one-way street; patterns that can be influenced can also
do some influencing. According to the synchronicity theory advanced here, magic can be
understood as imprinting one's own psychic patterns on the patterns of other dynamical
systems, altering their course in ways that, to the disappointment of many aspiring magicians,
are not causally predictable. There is a saying connected with magic that "you get what you
need, not what you want"; this peculiar habit of magic failing to work as expected is because
magic consists not in forcing one's pattern on something else, but of blending one's pattern
with it.
This leads us to a stronger formulation of the synchronicity thesis. We can approach
this version of the thesis by asking what happens when two dynamical systems are "locked in"
on each other. Dynamical systems behave according to self-organized, fractal patterns. When
perturbed from their inherent patterns, dynamical systems generate corrective measures within
themselves to restore the original pattern. Mode locking is the means by which the
contractions of different muscle cells within the heart, for example, are kept in time with each
other. Now there seems to be a contradiction here -- that systems have their own inherent
patterns that they tend to follow on the one hand, and, on the other, that individual cells
(dynamical systems in themselves) are synchronized to each other according to some other
pattern. The difficulty is remedied by understanding mode locking as the means by which the
underlying patterns of both systems are modified -- acausally -- so that the self-organizing

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patterns of each individual system are harmonized into one self-generated pattern for the
conglomerate. This is essentially to assert that dynamical systems that are mode locked behave
as one functional system; in the case of the heart, even though it is made up of many individual
dynamical systems, it is functionally one system. The patterns of one system are shared by the
others.
And so, the stronger version of the thesis -- that during portal experience, the
physiological processes of consciousness in the brain, the psychological processes of
consciousness, and the mystical processes of intersection are fused into one dynamical system.
This one system is the "transcendental one-ness" mentioned by Hofmann, the "undifferentiated
unity" mentioned by Stace, and the "unexampled passion and remorseless logic . . . depth and
fullness of meaning" of an archetype mentioned by Jung. It is a stronger version of the thesis
because it alleges an identity condition between the dynamical systems, not merely an
influence condition.
It may very well be that there are different degrees of mode locking -- that the pattern of
one's consciousness may, to varying degrees, be influenced by patterns from the outside. This
would explain the varying stages of mystical experience described by Stace and others. It
might also be that "consciousness" as a unitary term is misleading -- consciousness may really
be a collection of dynamical processes, both in the brain and in the psyche, that are mode
locked to each other to varying degrees, and also mode locked with things outside the body
and mind to varying degrees. There might be some kind of portal experience that is a mode
lock between certain psychic processes, while other processes are unaffected. The information
from the "mystically locked" process filters into awareness later, in a dream, vision, or
premonition.
Both of these versions of the synchronicity thesis fulfill the original project of this study
-- to establish an anti-reductionist theory of consciousness that accommodates the physiology
and biology of the brain, the phenomenology of the psyche, and the metaphysics of portal
experience. For the synchronicity theory to work, we cannot deny, but must affirm both the
importance of the biology of the brain and the metaphysics of intersection. But there is yet a
stronger version of the thesis to be considered.
iii. Synchronicity and the Collective Unconscious.
There are three lines of evidence which suggest that the theses described so far are not
strong enough to fully explain the phenomenon of portal experience and how it relates to
consciousness. The arguments presented so far account for the how of portal experience and
participation mystique, but they do not account for why. To borrow Leibniz' question, a

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satisfactory thesis must explain why there are portal experiences, instead of why there are no
portal experiences.
The first line of evidence suggesting the need for a stronger version of the thesis is
derived from the observation that participation is a common element in the development of
children, even in societies where scientific technology biases attitudes strongly against such
fantasies. Writes Campbell:
The sense, then, of this world as an undifferentiated continuum . . . may be said to
constitute the axiomatic, spontaneously supposed frame of reference of all childhood
experience, no matter what the local details of this experience happen to be. 227

Mythologists such as Campbell have shown that similar patterns, or motifs, appear in
mythologies the world over. The work of Jung and others has established that similar patterns
appear in unconscious contents -- patterns that not only resemble the imagery of the
unconscious contents of other individuals, but also resemble the imagery found in mythology.
Jung's explanation for this situation is that such patterns are "inherited", and are an essential
element of the psyche.
It is not at all clear what this "inheritance" could amount to. One thing that it cannot be,
if Edelman's topobiological brain development theory holds, is some sort of physical wiring in
the brain. If consciousness, in Edelman's theory, is a dynamical system, it would be difficult to
conceive of how it could be a biological phenomenon at all, since the contents of consciousness
(or at least the physiological processes in the brain associated with consciousness) are not
causally determined by the biological components of the brain.
To understand the collective unconscious as a set of images or patterns common to all
of humankind, we must have a theory that acausally -- because consciousness is a dynamical
system, whether viewed psychologically or physiologically -- provides some common ground
for the similarity of the structure of the psyche in everyone. The empirical discovery of the
collective unconscious points to the existence of some common psychic structure, which cannot
be explained biologically. The "collectiveness" must lie somewhere other than in the biology of
the brain. While the two versions of the synchronicity thesis offered so far account for the
possibility of portal experience, the existence of the collective unconscious points to some
necessary principle underlying the existence of the psyche.
The second line of evidence suggesting the need for a stronger version of the
synchronicity thesis is related to the first. Participation, which Jung equates with "identity",
does not simply disappear as Jaynes suggests, but instead becomes unconscious. The images
that reveal themselves in childhood fantasies disappear into psychoid processes, residing

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outside the bounds of awareness. They reappear in dreams and waking fantasies of normal
adults. They also appear in "slips of the tongue" and other behaviors whose motivations
remain obscure to the conscious mind.
According to Jungian theory, the psychoid processes that reveal themselves in
childhood fantasies, and in primitive mythologies as well, remain ingrained in the
unconscious. These psychoid processes continue as functional elements of the psyche,
accumulating and discharging psychic energy without impinging upon consciousness. When a
psychoid process -- incapable of becoming conscious in itself -- accumulates sufficient psychic
energy, it enters the sphere of awareness via symbolic representations. Dreams, on this theory,
are the result of psychoid processes that have accumulated sufficient psychic energy to be
conscious, forcing their way into the ego's awareness symbolically.
When a psychoid process represents itself to the ego in this way, it is an indication that
some sort of conflict in the psyche is occurring, and that the psychic energy needs to be
"discharged". Very often the mere appearance in the ego of unconscious symbology is
sufficient to discharge its energy. But in other cases, the conflict is not resolved. Should an
unconscious conflict remain unresolved and continue to accumulate energy, it can eventually
reach a state where the psychoid process can partially, or wholly, displace the ego as the
subject of consciousness.
When that happens, the symptoms of mental illness appear. The cases of neurosis and
psychosis that form the classical literature of psychoanalysis are understood in Jungian terms
as behavior that is under the direction of a psychoid process. The processes of perception,
memory, and so forth, whose normal subject is the ego, now represent themselves to another
process that is, by its nature, unable to communicate with the ego. Thus, the "split personality"
is born, where in effect there are two (or possibly more) "subjects" to whom consciousness is
represented. In the worst case, the ego may be completely obliterated by the psychoid process,
resulting in what Bleuler called dementia praecox, known in modern terminology as
schizophrenia. In these cases, it is as though the "person" is gone, and it is as if an alien being,
unable to communicate with the ego consciousness of either the patient or the doctor, has taken
possession of the patient's psyche.
To reiterate, under normal circumstances, psychoid processes accumulate and discharge
psychic energy either without any awareness on the part of the subject, or release their energy
through the ego via symbolic representations. This is the quite normal function of fantasies,
dreams, and so on. When those normal outlets are suppressed, the energy is not discharged,
and pathology appears. That pathology may take the form of drastic and spectacular mental
illnesses, or it may be more subtle.

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It is classic Freudian theory that unresolved conflicts in the unconscious can lead to
physical pathology -- Freud's and Jung's studies on hysterical patients testify in favor of this
hypothesis. The effects may be less dramatic, but nonetheless destructive. Much work has
been done in the last decade on what used to be called psychosomatic illness, and it is now fairly
well established that the effects of "stress" can be highly detrimental to health. One such source
of stress in unresolved conflicts in the unconscious, as Freud suggested. These conflicts come
from the repressed fantasies and desires of the individual. Jungian theory, on the other hand,
holds that such conflicts can come not only from repressed personal contents, but also from
conflict arising within the collective unconscious -- the pathology of stress may have its origins
in conflicts that have nothing to do with the personal life of the individual!
The appearance of archetypal images in psychopathology is evidence -- according to
Jungian theory -- that such a process from the collective unconscious can be responsible for
disease. This implies that, contrary to what Jaynes' theory argues, the "bicameral" or
unconscious elements do not disappear, but remain integral and non-optional parts of the
psyche. The suggestion is that the appearance in diseases of psychoid processes from the
collective unconscious points, as does the universality of mythic image, to a necessary principle
in the constitution of the psyche. As such, the appearance of an archetype in a psychological
disorder also signals the possibility of a healing, for once the symbol has become conscious, its
energy can be understood and therapeutically released. The appearance of the archetype
allows for the possibility of healing the fracture in the psyche that resulted in the accumulation
of psychic energy in the first place. This idea of the healing sickness contrasts sharply with
theories such as Jaynes', which hold that such a "hallucination" is always pathological in itself.
Before going on to consider the remaining line of evidence for a stronger version of the
synchronicity thesis, we might pause and consider why it is that the contents of the
unconscious become pathological. If the psychoid processes of participation are an integral
part of the psyche, as Jungian theory holds, then why do they become destructive -- why is it
that one part of the psyche turns against the rest? To answer this question, we will have to
return to what Jaynes and Edelman have said about the role of language in consciousness. The
reader will recall that, with an implied ad hominem, I summarily dismissed language as an
ontological factor in the development of consciousness. But to understand how
psychopathology from the collective unconscious arises, we must reconsider the relationship of
language to consciousness.
Jaynes' theory is roughly that the bicameral mind -- the mental state in which the right
brain communicates with the left brain through hallucinated voices -- was historically displaced
by the emergence of subjective consciousness. Subjective consciousness is linguistically driven,
being the product of repetitive metaphorizations in which the description of some unknown

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thing becomes the subject of a new series of metaphors. Out of this repetitive process arises the
analog-I, a mental representation of the behavior of the body. The analog-I is metaphorized
behavior, and is the "self" of subjective consciousness.
There are several claims associated with this theory: that "there is nothing in [subjective]
consciousness that was not in behavior first," that metaphors are linguistic processes, and that
the source of the "hallucinated" voices in the bicameral mind must be neurological. I have
discussed these claims in chapter two, but it is worth repeating here that I have denied all three
of them. If metaphors are not exclusively linguistic, as the Kekule example shows, then there
may be things represented to the psyche that are not part of behavior -- things that have
nothing to do with attention mechanisms, speech, and so on. If the analog-I is a linguistic
entity, and metaphors are not all linguistic, then there may be metaphorization processes that
are not conscious -- not representable to the analog-I because they are not related to behavior.
I have already suggested that there is a rough comparison between the Jaynesian and
Jungian vocabularies -- that the "right brain" is functionally similar to the unconscious and that
the "analog-I" is roughly the ego. There are other similarities: The repetitive metaphorization
process is equivalent to the psychoid process, as it is an independent mental process with its
own input and output conditions. The "hallucinated voices," which are occasionally, as in the
case of the Iliad, also visual images, smells, and so on, are the archetypal images already
discussed.
Understood according to this translation scheme, the grounds for psychopathology are
obvious. If subjective, linguistically based consciousness is isolated from the unconscious with
no communication, as the bicameral mind theory holds, and there are things which may
generate psychoid (metaphorization) processes that are not linguistic, then, according to the
dynamics of both theories, there may be mental contents that meet most of the requisite
conditions for consciousness, but because of their nature (non-linguistic) can not themselves
become conscious. Since the "breakdown of the bicameral mind," the communications between
right and left hemispheres, or between unconscious and conscious, are severed and the
unconscious contents cannot discharge their energy (represent themselves to the analog-I), it
follows that there may be psychic contents struggling with the analog-I for control of behavior.
Jaynes' theory, given my undermining of his arguments that consciousness is
exclusively behavioral and linguistic, suggests roughly the same picture as Jung's theory -- that
the failure of unconscious contents to be integrated into consciousness results in mental, and
perhaps physical, disease. Jaynes admits that even after the historical disappearance of the
bicameral mind, stress (read here as "undischarged unconscious contents") may precipitate
"hallucinations" (read here as "archetypal visions"), but they are considered by Jaynes to be
pathological. Jungian psychology, on the other hand, considers the appearance of such a

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vision to be a part of a healing process -- that it begins the process by which the energy from
the unconscious is discharged, and the contents of the unconscious are integrated into the
psyche. The ending of the disease, according to Jungian theory, begins with the appearance of
a symbolic vision in consciousness that signals the nature of the problem, while according to
Jaynes' theory, the appearance of the vision is the problem.
Jaynes explains the collapse of right/left (or unconscious/conscious) communications
on the basis of anatomical changes and brain plasticity. But a clearer explanation emerges from
a comparison of Jaynes' subjective consciousness theory and Edelman's theory of semantic
bootstrapping. Like Jaynes, Edelman argues for consciousness arising out of a repetitive
process, but Edelman's description is neurological as opposed to being psychological.
According to Edelman's TNGS, primary consciousness, characteristic of higher animals, arises
out of repetitive signaling processes between perceptual maps in the brain, once a critical
density of interconnections is achieved during evolution. This allows the animal to construct
"scenes" in which causally unrelated events are correlated. The evolution of human speech
organs, and their associated symbolic memory in the brain, enabled higher-order consciousness to
arise in humankind via a semantic bootstrapping process. 228
How does one become "conscious of being conscious?" In order to acquire this capacity,
systems of memory must be related to a conceptual representation of a true self (or
social self) acting on an environment and visa versa. A conceptual model of selfhood
must be built, as well as a model of the past . . . This is achieved largely through
symbolic means, by comparison and reward during social transmission and learning. 229

Described thus, the "socially-constructed self" of Edelman's theory appears much like
the analog-I of Jaynes' theory. It is based upon modeling of behavior -- in Edelman's case, social
behavior -- as a mental representation of that behavior. Edelman's theory requires brain
repertoires, known to exist in the frontal cortex, that can delay behavioral responses and
associate with memory in order for this representation process to take place. The self is
"socially-constructed" because it is a model of one's social behavior, requiring the operation of
symbolic memory that is a function of language use.
From the standpoint of this study, Jaynes' and Edelman's theories are essentially the
same -- that repetitive processes in the brain associated with language lead to mental
representations of behavior. It is out of these processes that the self arises, and with it the
ability to be aware of one's own mental processes, which constitutes consciousness for these
theorists. Just as Edelman contends that the repetitive signaling associated with perceptual
processes generate the dynamical system of primary consciousness, higher-order
consciousness is a dynamical system arising out of repetitive processes associated with

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language. Jaynes' theory can be read the same way -- that the repetitive metaphorization
process that generates the analog-I amounts to a linguistically driven dynamical system.
According to both theories, then, consciousness is a dynamical system bootstrapped by
language, and the processes and structures associated with language use, resulting in a
"socially constructed" or behaviorally analogous representation of the self. It is from the
vantage point of that "self" that mental processes are apprehended, and in this way the
awareness of one's mental activity is possible.
I shall, borrowing a term from another discipline, refer to this linguistically based
consciousness as false consciousness, and I fully intend the term as deprecatory. A brief
examination of Wittgenstein's theory of language games will help clarify the reason for the
negative connotation. One characterization of Wittgenstein's theory is:
[This] view here has rightly been taken to involve a claim to conceptual self-sufficiency
for all forms of life. It has also been thought that it involves a kind of compartmentalism
of the modes of discourse or forms of life . . . each mode of discourse must be
understood in its own terms, and . . . the relevant criticism of that mode of discourse
cannot be made from outside of that discourse, but can take place only from within it. 230

According to this interpretation, Wittgenstein's theory is that, what Edelman calls

"speech communities", are conceptually isolated frameworks, in which the language used in
one language game cannot be correctly understood or interpreted from the standpoint of a
different language game. In the case relevant to the above quote, the language games are a
primitive culture whose members believe in magic, and a "scientific" (meaning "materialistic")
culture that does not. According to this position, the "scientific" culture cannot meaningfully
criticize beliefs within the "primitive" culture because it is a different form of life. The meanings
and uses of words, as well as the conceptual framework by which "reality" is defined, are
specific to self-contained speech communities, and cannot be meaningfully applied outside
their own context, or form of life.
It is never exactly clear where the boundaries of a language game are established. It
might be, for example, that a certain physicist might use the word "chaos" within a particular
language game -- the context of theoretical physics -- to mean one thing, and with quite
different meaning when he reads of urban rioting in the context of a newspaper article. It
would probably not be the case that criticisms directed at the "chaos" described in the
newspaper would apply to the "chaos" of the physicist's experiments. Language game, form of
life, and speech community all refer to the idea that "modes of discourse," or habitual ways of
speaking, involve meanings and usages that are peculiar to the systematic way in which they

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are used, and that those "modes of discourse" organize the meanings and interpretations
within the language game.
I prefer to interpret the word "discourse" as referring to what happens when one loses
one's sense of direction, and the reason for this follows. There is, according to Jungian theory, a
"wholeness" to the psyche that is possible only when there is a smooth flow of psychic energy
from the unconscious to the ego. That "wholeness" is fractured by linguistically oriented
consciousness in the following way. Language games are, by virtue of their self-organizing
character, dynamical systems. This is also true because of their "everyone's and no one's"
nature -- while language games depend upon individuals who speak for their existence, they
are not causally dependent upon the speech of anyone. Now what I have characterized as false
consciousness -- the linguistically bootstrapped "self" -- amounts, I believe, to a mode locking
between the brain and psyche of the individual and one or more language games. This is clear
from both Edelman's and Jaynes' theories, which hold that repetitive processes in the
individual are brought into conformity with social behavior by patterns of language use. To
play a language game is to replicate the patterns of social behavior in one's psyche and brain.
Recall that the overall purpose of this discussion is to establish the need for a stronger
version of the synchronicity theory -- one that goes beyond the possibility and identity
assertions. The intermediate goal of this particular discussion is to establish that there is some
component of the psyche that is essential and non-optional, whose existence can be explained
only by a stronger version of the theory. If Jaynes and Edelman are correct -- that the bicameral
mind or primary consciousness has been displaced by a linguistically and socially based
consciousness -- then it should be the case that those elements of the psyche that motivated
bicameral behavior are no longer effective in controlling conscious processes. The unconscious,
moving back toward the Jungian vocabulary, should have disappeared from the picture once
the ego took on a social and linguistic structure.
This, of course, is plainly not the case. Dreams, fantasies, and visions continue.
Neurosis, hysteria and psychosis continue to manifest themselves, all revealing underlying
patterns that defy linguistic explanation. The patterns manifested in these phenomena are the
same across cultures and across time -- barriers that "speech communities" cannot cross.
Linguistic consciousness is false consciousness because it ignores, if not outrightly defies, the
psyche as a unity of unconscious and conscious. To mode lock onto a language game is to
move away from the ability to integrate those aspects of the psyche that do not directly reveal
themselves to consciousness -- it is to abandon the archetypes.
The effect of this schism in the psyche -- between the "socially-constructed self" and the
unconscious -- is easy enough to observe: "Just read the newspapers," as Campbell once
commented. He was referring to the prevalence and savagery of crime against persons and

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property in our so-called social order. This situation results, according to Campbell, from the
loss of the "personal myth", which in Jungian terms, amounts to the inability to integrate the
symbolic imagery from the unconscious into conscious life. Unconscious processes, deprived
of their audience in consciousness by socially and linguistically conditioned patterns of
thought, continue to accumulate energy until they seize control of behavior in symbolic, and
often horribly violent, acts of release.
Linguistic consciousness is false consciousness because it denies the role of the
unconscious as a perceptual mechanism, by which events not represented to consciousness
nonetheless register within the psyche, and it also denies the unconscious as the seat of
psychological motivation. Jungian theory, and Freudian theory as well, hold that much of
what "causes" behavior comes from the unconscious; though we might give all sorts of socially
acceptable reasons for doing things like writing papers, getting married, and out-doing the
Joneses, the psychic energy that drives those behaviors originates within the unconscious,
outside the sphere of awareness, linguistic or otherwise. While we can readily identify the role
of the unconscious in motivating certain behaviors -- we often do things that, on later reflection,
we have no idea why we did them -- psychoanalytic theory holds that most, if not all,
behaviors originate in the same dynamics of the psyche. It is from the unconscious that the
libido of Freudian theory, and the psychic energy of Jungian theory originate.
There is an interesting analogy between the notion of a "socially-constructed self" and
the linguistic false consciousness that accompanies it, and Jung's psychoanalytic theory of
psychosis.231 According to Jung's theory, psychosis results when the ego, as the center of
consciousness, is displaced by a psychoid process that has accumulated sufficient energy to
take control of the psyche. While linguistic false consciousness is not a psychoid process, as its
origins lie outside the (inherited) collective unconscious, such false consciousness is an
independent, self-organizing mental process. Should this process, its energy fueled by social
reinforcements and reprobations, accumulate sufficient energy, it could displace the
individual's ego and thereby cut the ties between conscious and unconscious. Of course the
psychoid processes from the unconscious do not disappear; they continue to accumulate
energy which cannot be discharged because the ego, the "normal" route through which this
energy flows, has been displaced by a false consciousness with no connections to the
unconscious. Instead of the sort of "wholeness" of the psyche proposed by Jungian theory, the
psyche of the individual takes on a fragmented character, with different psychoid processes
vying with linguistic false consciousness for control of the psyche. The energy of the
unconscious seizes control of the individual in unpredictable, and uncontrollable, episodes of
violent and destructive behavior.

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When the mass consciousness of an entire society is controlled by language in this way,
the society becomes similarly detached from its mythological foundations. Its identity is lost,
displaced by a self-organized process that is insensitive to the collective unconscious out of
which that society arose. The result -- "Read the newspapers."
While there is nothing inherently wrong with language, or with its usefulness as a
communication tool, there is something very wrong with allowing language to gain control of
the ego. The "wholeness" of Jungian psychology rests upon the free flow of psychic energy
from unconscious to conscious. The displacement of the ego by a "socially-constructed self",
whose dynamics are given by factors outside the individual psyche, blocks that flow of energy.
Whether the effect is compulsive behavior, stress, psychosis, psychosomatic illness, or
whatever, it is (according to this view) at least partially the result of mode locking one's mind
on social chatter as opposed to reconciling one's self with one's personal myth.
If the above arguments succeed in establishing that there are parts of the psyche that
are necessary to its existence, and those parts do not arise from within linguistically or socially
constructed consciousness, we must ask how it is that those parts got there. They could not,
according to Edelman's topobiology, have been biologically transmitted. That they are a priori,
in the sense that they form the given matrix within which consciousness is manifested, is
established by the commonality of imagery between childhood fantasies and historical
mythologies. If the collective unconscious -- the entity we are describing -- exists, we must ask
how it got into the psyche and why it is there in everyone.
The answer to this question leads us to the strongest formulation of the synchronicity
thesis. The possibility of synchronicity is demonstrated by the symbolic nature of portal
experience and dynamical systems theory; the identity of synchronicity is demonstrated by the
commonality of imagery in portal experiences. The necessity of synchronicity -- the strongest
version of the thesis -- is established by the universality of the collective unconscious. That the
collective unconscious is present in everyone is shown by mythological and psychoanalytical
studies; the role of the collective unconscious as a motivational and creative factor is shown by
the role of archetypes in behavior and dream imagery. The collective unconscious is, according
to psychoanalytic theory, an inseparable part of the psyche. Its presence is necessary, and
therefore the mechanisms by which the collective unconscious is ingrained within the psyche
are also necessary.
The necessity thesis implies something far beyond psychoanalytic theory. According to
the identity thesis, the common imagery of the collective unconscious is the product of a mode
lock with a metaphysical intersection of worlds; the only reasonable explanation for the
universality of unconscious imagery is that it arises from a source that is present everywhere
and at all times, and that source has a structure that never changes with respect to time or

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physical location. That, according to Nagy, is "God-talk", and indeed it is, for the necessity
version of the thesis leads us to the conclusion that human consciousness, as we know it, has as
a necessary condition for its existence the intersection of metaphysically discontinuous worlds.
A pre-requisite for the existence of human consciousness is the existence of something that is
not a part of the spatiotemporal world in which the body is situated, and that something plays
a crucial role in organizing the collective unconscious. What is in the collective unconscious,
and what is therefore a necessary condition for the existence of human consciousness, is
something that arises from a source that lies outside the domain of physical space-time, and is
not causally related to physical space-time in any way.
This is to say that the spiritual -- the world that is outside time and space -- is as
necessary as the physical for the existence of consciousness. It is to echo, in more eclectic
terms, Kierkegaard's assertion that, ". . . the self, in relating itself to itself and in willing to be
itself, transparently rests in the power that established it (God)." 232 And it is, in less sexist terms,
to echo the ancient words of Julianus:
It becometh you to hasten unto the Light, and to the Rays of the Father, from whom was
sent unto you a Soul, endowed with much mind. 233

iv. Synchronicity and Teleology.

The original purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between portal
experience and consciousness, with the provision that reductionism -- the dismissal of either
the need for a physical body or of the metaphysical character of the experience -- would not be
allowed. It was hypothesized that portal experiences consist of the constellation in the mind of
contents that originate from some world other than the physical spatiotemporal world in which
the body is situated. Along the way, we discovered that consciousness is itself something
different from the causal order of the physical world -- that it is a dynamical system, whether
viewed physiologically or psychologically. The fractal nature of that dynamical system both
enables it to, and suggests that it does, interact with the metaphysical intersection of worlds in
portal experience. But, that interaction is possible only because there is a part of the psyche
that originates outside the spatiotemporal order. Jung's theory of synchronicity, along with the
theories of mode locking and psi, show the possibility of portal experience via an acausal
connecting principle. Mode locking in particular means that when two systems are acausally
connected, they behave as one system. This leads to the identity thesis -- that during the portal
experience, physiological processes in the brain, psychological processes in the psyche, and the
metaphysical intersection are effectively one dynamical system. This identity condition is one

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in which the information contained in one system is also the information contained in the
others.
In addition to portal experiences themselves, such identity conditions are also to be
found within the collective unconscious, in the form of archetypes. The archetypes are
identical in everyone, suggesting a mode lock between psychoid processes in the unconscious,
and something that is eternal and omnipresent. Since the collective unconscious is a
fundamental factor in the motivation of behavior and thought, it was concluded that the
metaphysical intersection between "eternal" and "temporal" is necessary for the existence of
human consciousness.
It is therefore concluded that from the possibility of the existence of portal experience it
is shown that portal experience is necessary as a constitutive element of the human psyche:
without the other world, and without the repetition of patterns from that world in the
individual psyche, there is no consciousness.
Perhaps the reader will have noted that I left one issue in chapter three unresolved. The
theory of psychedelic bootstrapping I presented holds that it is of adaptive value for
humankind to have brains that respond to substances produced outside the body, for the
purpose of initiating the conditions needed for portal experiences to occur. According to
evolutionary theory, a particular development is sustained only if it provides an adaptive
advantage; the sensitivity to substances precipitating portal experiences is, according to this
theory, advantageous because portal experiences are necessary for consciousness. Put another
way, those individuals with the ability to respond to these natural psychoactives had a survival
advantage over those who did not have the ability because they were able to have
consciousness, or enhance the consciousness already there, by means of portal experience.
What I did not address was the question of what constituted the adaptive advantage for
the plants to produce those substances. Many of these substances are simple enough
compounds, but some are extraordinarily complex, requiring complex biochemical synthesis
pathways and considerable expenditures of energy of the part of the plant. While many of
these substances may have had the discouragement of predators as their original function, the
rapidity of animal evolution has long since rendered them ineffective for that purpose. For
plants to continue to produce such substances requires, on evolution theory, that there be some
adaptive value for the plant in doing so, but no clear biological adaptivity is evident.
This situation presents us with a crisis for evolution theory: there is a clear adaptive
advantage for human beings to be sensitive to plant drugs, but there is no clear adaptive
advantage for the plants to produce them. There is, therefore, an adaptive advantage to
humankind for plants to produce these substances, but no clear advantage to the plants. It
would appear that these plants are expending considerable energy in the production of

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something that is useless to them, but useful to someone else, and that it is advantageous (in
the evolutionary sense) for them to continue doing so. Unless one is willing to bury one's head
in the sand and believe something like the "closet" argument, then the crisis must be faced: that
there are factors involved in evolution that cannot be explained on the basis of species isolation.
To put it bluntly, we must come to grips with the evidence suggesting that plants are
producing psychoactive substances in order that consciousness be possible in humankind, and
perhaps other species as well. The use of the phrase in order that specifically acknowledges that
there may be teleological factors in operation -- that there may be some overriding purpose
manifesting itself in evolution.
That Jung's psychology, which forms the central framework of this study, affirms a
vitalistic doctrine has already been shown. That it is also teleological, in that it affirms that
there is a purpose to life, is not difficult to show. Marilyn Nagy traces the development of the
teleological idea from Aristotle's notion of a final cause to its fruition in the vitalism of Hans
Driesch. Nagy writes:
The achievement of the teleological view is this: the meaningless materiality, the matter
of the universe, is seen as transformed by the presence within it of order and form and
goals. 234

The process of individuation, which Jung defines as "a process of differentiation, having
for its goal the development of the individual personality," 235 defines the goal or purpose
inherent within the psyche. Individuation is the process by which the individual's own
personality is separated and distinguished from the social norm. There is thus a certain
amount of tension between the individual and the collective, precipitated by the individuation
process as a differentiation of the individual from the collective. Writes Jung:
Individuation always finds itself more or less in opposition to the collective norm, since
it means a separation and differentiation from and a building up of the particular; not,
however, a particularity that is especially sought, but one with an a priori foundation in
the psyche. 236

Jung goes on to argue that it is only through the individuation process that the
collective norm is understood. But this understanding requires a process that occurs within the
individual, with its own internal motivations and energies.
The psychological process of individuation is clearly bound up with the so-called
transcendent function, since it alone can provide that individual line of development
which would be quite unattainable upon the ways dictated by the collective norm. 237

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This "transcendent function" is something that is both individual and collective, for its
function is to mediate the contents of the conscious and unconscious into a meaningful psychic
life. Jung writes of a "new center" of the psyche, which is achieved by the transcendent
function that is the focal point of "energy" flow between conscious and unconscious:
If the unconscious can be recognized as a co-determining factor along with
consciousness, and if we can live in such a way that conscious and unconscious
demands are taken into account as far as possible, then the centre of gravity of the total
personality shifts its position. It is then no longer in the ego, which is merely the centre
of consciousness, but in the hypothetical point between conscious and unconscious.
This new centre might be called the self. 238

The self, as the focal point of the psyche, is not merely constructed out of consciousness,
but also has unconscious components. The self is, according to Jung, an archetype in its own
right, for it is "given" in the unconscious and comes to fruition through symbolic interplay with
consciousness. This is to say that the self is an independent entity, not dependent upon other
processes, including social and linguistic processes, for its existence. Its primary function is to
motivate and define the individuation process, by which the individual is distinguished from
the collective whole. Jung then argues for moral reason why the self should be at the center of
the psyche -- as noted above, it is only from the vantage point of an individuated personality
that the collective norms can be appreciated and understood. Jung argues that a purely
scientific (meaning materialistic) approach to psychology can never capture the roles of feeling
and value which are crucial to the psyche. Writes Nagy:
The concept of the self, on the other hand, offers a natural connection to universal
psychic processes in which feeling and value are the primary components. "The self . . .
is the eidos behind the supreme ideas of unity and totality that are inherent in all
monotheistic and monistic systems." In itself the self is no more than a psychological
concept describing an experience of the "God within us." But "the beginnings of our
whole psychic life seem to be inextricably rooted in this point, and all our highest and
ultimate purposes seem to be striving towards it." The self is then, for Jung, the central
archetype of the psyche. Individuation is a necessary postulate because without it the
value experiences of the human person cannot be counted as real. 239

In connection with the vitalist argument discussed in chapter four, this archetype of the
self is possessed of a "life line" of its own, which structures the individuation process, and
hence the personal identity of the individual. The archetype of the self is the "Holy Guardian
Angel" of the Bornless Ritual, discussed in chapter one, and it is now clear why this particular
magical operation should have assumed such importance to those practicing it. This
conception of the self amounts to saying that the psychological makeup of the individual is, at

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least in part, given by a "foreknowledge" that is not a part of the individual's own personality.
The "purpose" of one's life, then, is given by a condition that has its origins outside
individuality and outside biology as well -- its origin is in an archetype whose structure,
according to the synchronicity thesis, lies outside space and time. As Nagy rightly comments,
this is "God-talk", meaning that the consciousness of the individual is at least in part of
spiritual origin.
The teleological aspect of Jung's theory boils down to the assertion that consciousness,
in its fully formed and differentiated state, has its origins both in the psychic life of the
individual, and in a transcendent, collective form in the unconscious. That form, according to
the necessity thesis, is the metaphysical intersection. The synchronicity thesis I have developed
supports the teleological conclusion that there are forces outside the individual's own
development and outside the world in which the individual's biological body is situated, that
in some way, structure behavior and consciousness.
We therefore see the teleological theme arising at two points: in the case of the
production of substances in plants that precipitate portal experiences, and in the case of the
psyche in which those experiences occur. Whether such teleology implies a "universal
intending mind" or not is open to question. It certainly does suggest a kind of holism, a
metaphysical inter-relatedness in which the particular facts of individual existences are
harmonized, a realm of "transcendent one-ness". The synchronicity thesis, built upon the
concept of dynamical systems, suggests that there may be a wealth of acausal interaction in the
universe, of which this discussion of portal experience and the psyche has only caught a
glimpse.
v. Synchronicity and Scientific Theory.
Throughout her book, Marilyn Nagy draws considerable attention to the
incommensurability of the vitalist and teleological aspects of Jungian psychology with
empirical science. As already discussed in chapter two, the fundamental discord between
science and what might be called "spiritual" rests not upon the nature of the empirical project,
but rather upon the suppositions employed by those who engage in that project.
What I take to be the idealized empirical position was articulated by Claude Barnard,
and is quoted by Nagy:

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When a man of science takes a philosophic system as his base in pursuing scientific
investigation, he goes astray in regions that are too far from reality, or else the system
gives his mind a sort of false confidence and an inflexibility out of harmony with the
freedom and suppleness that experimenters should always maintain in their researches.
240

Nowhere is the conflict with this sort of idealized science more clearly demonstrated
than in the field of parapsychology. As Tart comments, many "scientific" researchers are
inclined to immediately dismiss the data of the paranormal without any consideration that they
might reflect important phenomena. What this means is that, in the case of scientific
investigation, there are criteria outside the data themselves which structure what can be
counted as data. Jung writes:
Inasmuch as every scientific theory contains a hypothesis, and therefore an anticipatory
designation of a fact still essentially unknown, it is a symbol. 241

Jung is discussing scientific theory in the context of symbols, but the point is applicable
here: all scientific theories contain hypotheses that structure the way in which the data are
interpreted. There are no uninterpreted data, according to this view, but rather what gets
counted as data, and how it is counted, is structured by a set of underlying assumptions.
As such, there is no a priori reason why science and vitalism, or science and
synchronicity, should be incompatible. It could be argued, for example, that Edelman's theory
embodies the essential element of the vitalist doctrine -- that what is basic to the life process is
something causally unrelated to the physical system out of which that life arises. Dynamical
systems introduce that very possibility, and according to Edelman's theory, do so within the
confines of a materialistic doctrine. So, there is no prima facie reason why vitalism should be
incompatible with either the scientific project or the materialistic dogma.
Of course what is proposed in this study is totally incompatible with materialism,
physicalism, or any other belief asserting that "reality" and "physical matter" are co-referring
terms. But then, such materialistic beliefs are incompatible with superstring theory and black
hole cosmology as well, for those theories find their explanatory grounding in frameworks as
alien to materialism as the intersection theory. Whether the intersection theory and theoretical
physics will eventually find a common meeting point is difficult to say; my own "scientific
illuminism" bias is that there probably will be such a meeting of the theoretical.
There are some very interesting parallels between the intersection theory and
Hawking's theory of black holes. Black holes are formed when the nuclear fuel that keeps a
star shining is used up. During the "life" of the star, the heat of the fusion reaction counteracts
the gravitational pull of the star's mass -- it is a push and shove game between heat, which

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tends to blow the star apart, and gravity, which tends to make it contract. If the star's mass is
below the Chandrasekhar limit, when the nuclear reaction stops, the Pauli exclusion forces
balance the star's gravitation and the star shrinks to some finite size, perhaps becoming a
neutron star or other object. But if the star's mass is above the limit, the gravitational forces
overcome the Pauli exclusion forces, and the star contracts infinitely -- it continues to collapse
into itself until it no longer exists as a physical object. What the collapsed star becomes is a
singularity, essentially a "hole" in space-time. Writes Hawking:
. . . according to general relativity, there must be a singularity of infinite density and
space-time curvature within a black hole. This is rather like the big bang at the
beginning of time, only it would be an end of time for the collapsing body and our
astronaut [a person observing this near the singularity itself]. At this singularity the
laws of science and our ability to predict the future would break down. 242

Because of its infinite density, there is an extremely strong gravitational field associated
with the singularity. According to one theory, anything approaching the singularity would
either be torn to shreds by the gravitational field, or else would be held in a sort of time-freeze,
due to the negative curvature of space-time, such that it would never actually contact the
singularity itself -- to the thing approaching the singularity, it would appear that the
singularity is always in the future, whereas to a hypothetical outside observer, time, for that
thing, would have come to an end.
The "outside observer" is purely hypothetical, because the gravitational field associated
with the singularity is so strong that, in its vicinity, light is drawn inward toward the
singularity and cannot escape. There is, therefore, an area surrounding the singularity that
appears "dark", because any light within that area is trapped by the singularity's gravitational
field. Thus, "black holes" -- areas surrounding singularities in which light is trapped and
therefore appear black. Since, according to relativity theory, nothing can travel faster than
light, this means that there is some distance from the singularity within which no information of
any kind can escape to the outside universe. The absolute distance beyond which nothing can
escape is called the event horizon. This theory has been called the "cosmic censorship
hypothesis", referring to the isolation of the singularity from the outside universe by its
gravitational field, and the isolation of the outside universe from the breakdown in space-time
within the singularity -- as Penrose put it, "God abhors a naked singularity."
There are, however, suggestions from relativity theory that it might actually be possible
for one to encounter a naked singularity, or miss the singularity itself and pass through a
"wormhole" in space time within the black hole, emerging in a different part of the universe, or
in some other time. In addition, black holes "ain't so black" in Hawking's words, because

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although nothing trapped within them can escape to the outside, when particles from the
outside encounter the event horizon and are annihilated by the gravitational field, their "virtual
particle" pairs outside the field are also annihilated, releasing energy that can be detected. Such
virtual pairs are postulated to exist because, as (according to thermodynamics) energy can
never be created nor destroyed, and particles are a form of energy, then when a particle comes
into existence, its "positive" energy must be balanced by the appearance of a matching virtual
particle that has "negative" energy, the sum of the two being zero. Now in the vicinity of a
black hole, the gravitational field is so strong that real particles can have negative energy, and
should one of these fall into the hole, its virtual "positive" partner will appear to have been
"emitted" from the black hole. As these particles with negative energy are absorbed, the mass
of the black hole begins to decrease; it is speculated that at some critical point of mass
reduction, the black hole would cease to exist, "in a tremendous final burst of emission,
equivalent to the explosion of millions of H-bombs."
There are several astronomical entities that are thought to be black holes -- remnants of
stars whose nuclear fuel ran out. But black holes come in at least two varieties -- the round,
black kind, created out of stationary objects, and a more flattened, bright kind, created out of
spinning objects. These flattened black holes are surrounded by strong magnetic fields that
interact with matter approaching them such that they emit jets of energy from their polar
regions. These black holes emit enormous quantities of energy from matter falling into them.
It is thought that quasars, the most distant detectable astronomical objects (detectable only
because of the energy they emit) may be huge, galaxy-sized objects with matter-consuming
black holes at their centers. It is also speculated that the bright core of galaxies, including the
Milky Way, may be bright because of one or more black holes at their core, consuming matter
and radiating energy.
I have included this brief discussion of theoretical cosmology to show some important
parallels with the intersection theory. We could, for example, consider the event horizon to be
analogous to the "boundary" between the two worlds of the intersection theory; on both
theories, a transfer of information between the worlds is impossible, and one could not possibly
be "in" one world, and the other, at the same time. The "other world" -- the singularity -- has
characteristics very different from ours (the "laws" and predictability don't apply). While the
event horizon is an absolute limit beyond which nothing can escape, there are relative limits for
things other than light -- other objects can still "fall" into the black hole from beyond the event
horizon, as they don't move with the velocity of light. This might mean that the event horizon
is fractal -- it is a boundary between worlds different in some relevant way, it is relative to the
observer, and there are patterns in the form of energy emissions associated with them.

201

The necessity version of the synchronicity thesis claims that consciousness is possible
only because of the juxtaposition of metaphysically discontinuous worlds. This suggests an
analogy between the metaphysics of consciousness and the structure of the physical universe.
Just as consciousness is an emanation of the metaphysical intersection, so the physical universe
itself might be an emanation of the intersection of two worlds -- the world of space-time, and
whatever "world" is identified by the term "singularity". The energy that organizes human
consciousness and drives behavior, according to the synchronicity thesis, is derived from the
dynamics of intersection; could it be that the energy that drives the movement of galaxies, and
the creation and destruction of their material components, is also driven by an intersection?
Might it be the case that there really is only one intersection, that reveals itself to consciousness
as the archetypes, and to the senses as the physical universe? Such speculations are definitely
not the "analysis of language," but they do raise themselves as answers to Hawking's challenge:
if philosophy is supposed to address the question of why, is physics prepared to accept that
perhaps, at some level, there is a why?
It is sufficient for the present study to argue that synchronicity, teleology, vitalism, and
the various other ideas presented herein are not incompatible with science per se, but find their
foes in the metaphysical suppositions that underlie the attitudes that have become socially
attached to the scientific endeavor. Against those suppositions, I doubt any argument can be
mounted, nor is it worth trying to do so. If, as I argued in chapter two, these suppositions are
faith-like commitments on the part of the believer that structure not only experience but also
what experiences are possible, it would be futile to "argue" for something like the intersection
theory.
Similarly, my characterization of linguistically based consciousness as "false
consciousness", and all of the charming things I had to say about it, are obviously the products
of a psychological orientation that places the individual in an ethically superior position to the
group. To judge linguistically based consciousness as "false", meaning "fake", is to affirm the
same kind of psychological orientation as Jung's assertion that individuation is necessary for
the sake of value. Again, I doubt that any "argument" can be made for such a position; as is the
case with underlying metaphysical suppositions, psychological type orients one to the data,
and selects what can be counted as data, though it is not in itself testable as data.
I can not, with any pretense of credibility, argue against the metaphysical suppositions
that deny the intersection theory, Jungian psychology, or dynamical systems theory. I can only
claim to have given an explanation of how the constellation phenomenon is possible, and
expounded the rather surprising conclusions that emerge from that possibility. There is of
course a great deal more that can be said; if consciousness really is a dynamical system, then
we need to re-think perception, for example. There are many lines of inquiry that are touched

202

by the assertions herein. But the path I set out upon has completed its circle; while we may, to
borrow Feynman's words, not be any closer to God, we are perhaps closer to understanding
what closeness to God (or Goddess) might be, and also what the consequences of that closeness
might be.
Perhaps the mechanist and the materialist who find the theory of this study outrageous
can take some comfort in the knowledge that, as I do not play their language game, my
criticisms of that game are irrelevant. It may be that in some last and final sense, no
metaphysical thesis can be criticized or evaluated. While it may be that one cannot evaluate a
form of life, there is one form of evaluation that is nonetheless applicable. One cannot judge
the internal coherence of a form of life from without, but one can ask where that form of life is
going: one can ask what kind of world emerges from the patterns of thought and behavior
peculiar to a certain mode of existence.
To be sure, there are those who look at the stars and see only stars. Perhaps they see
the universe as a great machine, each part moving smoothly and in perfect cadence with its
designated role. There is, I suppose, some sense of security in knowing one's place in an
ongoing chain of cause and effect. But in this there is also despair; there is an abandonment of
the possibility of psychological selfhood for the sake of social acceptability.
There are also those who see the lamps of the gods, who hear the song of the wind, who
feel the magic of the seasons. To have felt the "transcendental one-ness" seems, somehow, so
much more than to have succumbed to the security of belonging. To have experienced
constellation is, after all, to have felt the hand of that which pulled humankind up from
nothingness; it is to have returned to the archetypes, the formative elements of the psyche, via
the windy doors of consciousness. And that is no small feat.

203

204

Conclusion: Return to Nemi

Consciousness is the intertwining of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual,
manifesting itself in the individual as the capacity for imagination and self-awareness.
Historically, consciousness appeared in ancient man because the human organism evolved in
such a way as to respond to the ingestion of specific substances with the production of
fundamentally new kinds of physiological processes. These chaotic, acausal processes allowed,
borrowing Huxley's words, the doors of perception to open into a reality that lies outside
physical space and time. The intrusion of that "outside" reality into the developing psyche
gave rise to the collective unconscious. The symbolic imagery of the collective unconscious,
constellated in the dreams, visions, and mythologies of past and present-day minds, testifies to
the fundamental role of that "outside" reality in the existence of consciousness.
To have looked to the stars and seen the lamps of the gods, is to have experienced a
part of consciousness that seems alien in the modern world of scientific materialism. But this is
to look at the problem backwards; perhaps it is the scientific materialism that should be
regarded as alien, in a world where the mind is the constellation of the infinite, and physical
matter the mere dream of singularity.
The philosophical issue surrounding the discussion of portal experience -- the
constellation in the mind of information from outside space and time -- is this: what must there
be, what must be true, to understand portal experience? As a final example, consider the
following case of a relative of the author's. The person in question is about to leave a gambling
casino, when she reports, "Wait a minute, that slot machine winked at me." In goes the quarter,
and out comes the jackpot.
We could bury our heads in the sand, hoping that such examples will go away, leaving
our conventional "scientific" wisdom intact, or we could take the more courageous course and
ask "What does this tell us about the world?" This study has taken the latter option, and the
examination of events like this has told us three things.
First, it tells us that to predict the future, or to see places or things not immediately
present to the senses, there must be some metaphysical realm in which the events and
existences of the physical, temporal world are recorded. The intersection theory holds that
there are such realms, and that past, present, and future are recorded in the fractal patterns
where that world (or worlds) intersects physical space-time.
Second, that information must be available to minds located (or at least partly located)
in the world of physical space-time. The theory of the unconscious holds that there are
psychoid processes, of which consciousness is not aware, that are mode locked to the
metaphysical intersection, which can and do receive information from that "other world". That

205

information is relayed to consciousness symbolically, not as a stand-in for the event itself, but
as a pattern that must be interpreted to have significance. Slot machines do not "wink," yet the
impression of winking is known to correlate, in the mind of the person perceiving it, with
hitting the jackpot. That the machine will hit is already known within the unconscious; the
perception of winking is its symbolic representation to consciousness.
Third, there must have been a way that this kind of psychological process, linked with
the physiological functioning of the physical brain, came about during evolution. According to
the psychedelic bootstrapping theory, these processes were made possible by the evolution of
chemical receptors in the brain that respond to substances outside the brain, facilitating chaotic
processes in the brain.
The possibility version of the synchronicity thesis shows how portal experiences are
possible, given psychedelic bootstrapping, intersection, and the existence of the unconscious.
The identity version of the thesis proposes that there are parts of the psyche that, because of
acausal mode locking, are indistinct from, and therefore identical with, the metaphysical
intersection -- there are things in the mind that come from outside space-time. The necessity
version of the thesis argues that because those identity items are the same for everyone, and
because they are fundamental factors in the motivation of consciousness, then for
consciousness to exist at all, there must exist worlds, modes, or dimensions of reality that are
not physical, spatial and temporal.
No space ship or space traveler, we are told, can survive the experience of an event
horizon; nothing can cross an event horizon without being torn asunder, destroyed in its
essential being, to reappear in a world of singularity in a form or nature incomprehensible to
the world of order. But this is only a scientific metaphor for the mystical initiation of birth,
death and rebirth: to become what one is not, one must overcome what one is. A philosophical
theory of consciousness that flirts with an event horizon -- that argues for both the physical and
the spiritual nature of consciousness -- must necessarily share the same fate; to move from a
description of intersection to the experience of intersection, one must abandon all theories
whatsoever.
The value of such a theory lies not in whether it is "politically" or "scientifically" correct,
whether it is logically provable, or whether it fits one paradigm or another. As with any
self-consuming artifact, its value is not in what it says to the reader, but in what it provokes
within the reader. There is a story about the baroque organ builder Johannes Silbermann, that
when he designed an organ for a church, he would stand in the middle of the building and
strike the floor with his cane; from the echoes and vibrations thus produced, he would create
an organ suited to the acoustics of the building. Philosophical theories are similar to this in

206

many ways. While a given theory may strike the reader in some specific way, its importance is
to be found in the way the theory reverberates in the mind.
Frazer entitled the final chapter of his Golden Bough "Farewell to Nemi." In it he
proclaims: "The hope of progress -- moral and intellectual as well as material -- in the future is
bound up with the fortunes of science, and that every obstacle placed in the way of scientific
discovery is a wrong to humanity." However, he also goes on to say that just as modern
scientific theories have displaced their predecessors, so those theories themselves are "merely
hypotheses" that serve to explain, which may themselves be "superseded by some more perfect
hypothesis." A "more perfect hypothesis" is one that does a better job of explaining, or explains
more, that the one it supersedes.
A theory that explains the lamps of the gods is a "more perfect hypothesis" than one
that explains seeing the stars, because it tells us more about ourselves and the world around
us. The theory of portal experience gives us a richer conception of reality than a materialistic
theory of the mind, and it encourages us to add phenomena to the explanation, rather than
demand that we exclude them.
Frazer's book ends with a farewell to Nemi. The theory of consciousness presented in
this study, however, provokes a return to the sacred grove haunted by the goddess Diana and
the magic of the seasons. To understand consciousness, one must understand the Goddess,
and one must understand what it is that constellated itself as the Goddess. And to understand
that constellation, one must return to Nemi, and to the archetypes that were constellated in the
mind there and elsewhere in the ancient world. Mythology must be read not only as a
historical record of culture, but as the movement of the eternal in the consciousness of
humanity.
To abandon the archetypes, for the sake of language or for the sake of science, is to
abandon something essential to the existence of consciousness. It is to burn the bridges in the
psyche that made consciousness possible in the first place. We, as a culture, can continue to
deny our psychic heritage and continue to "read the newspapers," or we can return to Nemi, to
its wonders and its horrors, to its stars and its gods, and discover, as Julianus writes:
. . . whence, or in what order you have come: so that although you have become a
servant to the body, you may again rise to the Order from which you descended, joining
works to sacred reason.

207

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213

ccxiv

Carl G. Jung, "Psychological Types", The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, V. deLaszlo, ed. (Modern Library, New
York, NY, USA: 1959), 217.
1

The real reason I chose the term portal is that the hint book for one of my favorite computer games, Might and
Magic III, declares that, "Witches are physical portals between the realm of reality and the realm of magic."
That conveys, less analytically but more accurately, what I had in mind.
2

Note also that this explanation of "modes of existence" is extremely rough, for the simple reason that if
language is a product of experience in the physical world, as one author whose work is reviewed in this paper
contends, then it is logically impossible to give any description of what a different reality would be like. I shall
not attempt to offer such an explanation, and I shall have to qualify the mutual exclusivity idea later on. For
now it is enough to assume that there may be ways of being that do not involve physical matter located in
space and time.
The concept of metaphor will be very important later in this study. I am, in this section, not using the concept
in any particularly deep way; I am trying only to help clarify the two worlds concept here. That a metaphor
involves one thing standing for another -- in this case, ping-pong balls standing for worlds -- is a very different
use of the term "metaphor" than the use that will be made of it later. In Jung's terminology, this "stand-in"
usage constitutes a sign, in much the same way that handing over a small chunk of land at the conclusion of a
real estate deal is metaphorical. Later in this study, the term "metaphor" will involve the use of symbols, in
which one thing is offered as an approximation of the other, rather than as a stand-in for it.
3

My use of the term "technological" is to identify those cultures whose ideals are dictated by their technologies,
as opposed to the other way around; it conveys the idea that an individual's identity and his understanding of
his relationship to others, including the outside world, is given by his capabilities to manipulate and control
them, versus the condition in which his understanding of himself and others is given by his sense of
participation with them. It would be more appropriate to rely upon the distinction between what Jung called
extravertive and introvertive psychological types, and which type is dominant in the life of a given culture.
There are also resonances here with Jaynes' bicameral versus linguistic consciousness, discussed in the next
chapter.
4

W. Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries (Carol Publishing Group, New York, NY, USA: 1990),
xxiv.
5

I use the word "nature" not in the restricted sense of meaning physical reality, but in the broader sense of
meaning the world that pre-dates man's technological tampering with it, and the restrictions on his senses to
what technology can prove about it. As Evans-Wentz's comment suggests, fairies on this view are beings that
are associated with and a part of the world, just as are the forces behind the motion of the sun and moon,
though neither are a part of physical space-time.
6

J. A. MacCulloch, The Celtic and Scandinavian Religions (repr. by Greenwood Press, Westport, CN, USA: 1948),
13.
7

Jung, "Psychological Types", 255.

It might well be the case that for early materialists, and particularly atomists, such a vision was constellated in
their minds. It will be odd indeed if it turns out that materialism has sprung from the same roots as mysticism!
9

10

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythologies (Penguin Books, New York, NY, USA: 1959), 85.

11

Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon (Beacon Press, Boston, MA, USA: 1979), 24-25.

Richard Evans Schultes and Albert Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, (McGraw-Hill, New York, NY, USA: 1979),
176-177.
12

13

Helen Chappell, The Waxing Moon (Links Books, New York, NY, USA: 1974), 55-56.

14

Chappell, 58-59.

15

Max Heindel, Simplified Scientific Astrology (Wilshire Book Co., No. Hollywood, CA, USA: 1928), 1.

Aleister Crowley, "The Confessions of Aleister Crowley", in Robert Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot (Samuel
Weiser, York Beach, ME, USA: 1983), 9.
16

17

Campbell, The Masks of God, 85.

18

Carl G. Jung, "Psychology and Alchemy", in Wang, The Qabalistic Tarot, 7.

Israel Regardie, Ceremonial Magic (The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, UK: 1980), 57-77.
This is probably the definitive work on the Bornless Ritual.
19

20

Aleister Crowley, "Equinox I:159", in Regardie, Ceremonial Magic, 64-65.

James G. Frazer, The New Golden Bough (Abridged), Theodor H. Gaster, ed. (Mentor Books, New York, NY,
USA: 1959), 35.
21

Frazer, 695-738. This entire section makes fascinating reading, not only for its chronicle of the spectacular
fire festivals of Europe and the customs observed along with them, but for Frazer's analysis of the mystical
connections behind them, which can only be crudely summarized here.
22

I use the terms "witch", "wizard" and so forth here in the sense used by Frazer -- of persons who work evil
magic to destroy animals, persons and property. Such sense of the terms are very different from that used in
contemporary Old Religion discussions, where the terms refer more generally to anyone associated with the
use of magic and the beliefs in the ancient mythologies. Under this latter use of the term, the exorcists as well
as their victims in ancient times would count as "witches".
23

24

Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (Harper and Row, New York, NY, USA: 1986), 55.

Aleister Crowley, Liber E and Liber O (reprinted by Samuel Weiser, York Beach, ME, USA: 1976), Liber O,
Section V., no page number.
25

There is also the theory that the "witch on a broomstick" image originated with the practice of utilizing broom
sticks to apply psychoactive "flying ointments", discussed in Chapter 3, directly to the mucus membranes of the
vagina, promoting rapid absorption of the psychoactive components into the blood stream. Such preparations
were (and are) used to induce astral projection experiences, thus completing the "flying broomstick" picture.
26

27

CharlesTart, Transpersonal Psychologies, 3rd ed. (Harper San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA: 1992), 149.

William L. Rowe and William J. Wainwright, Philosophy of Religion (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York,
NY, USA: 1973), 252. These points are from Otto's The Idea of the Holy.
28

This use of the terms "introvertive" and "extrovertive" is to be distinguished from Jung's use of the terms
"introvertive" and "extravertive", discussed in the next chapter.
29

30

W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (J. P. Tarcher, Los Angeles, CA, USA: 1960), 64-65.

31

Stace, 86-87.

The distinction is also important for those who wish to establish the existence of "theistic mysticism", the
direct experience of some specific deity. This is commonly the case in Christian mysticism, where mystics
assert that their experience was one of the Christ or of God.
32

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Flow Experience", Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, ed., (Macmillan, New
York, NY, USA: 1987), V: 362.
33

34

W. T. Stace, Time and Eternity (Princeton Univ. Pr., Princeton, NJ, USA: 1952), 75.

There are, of course, many objections to Stace's general thesis -- that, metaphysically, there is really only one
kind of mystical experience, only one kind of undifferentiated union, only one kind of intersection, and that the
variety of mystical experiences is due to the interpretation placed upon the intersection by the experient. In
general, I have followed this theory. Objections are raised primarily by those who wish to argue for unique
types of mystical experience, and particularly in the Christian tradition, who argue for the experience of the
Christian God as different from anything else. Nelson Pike argues for this point in his recent Mystic Union, in
which he states that while there may be phenomenological unity between God and mystic, there is metaphysical
duality; this of course contradicts Stace's position (and mine) that there is metaphysical unity. I believe that
Pike and others opt for this kind of position because, since they have situated themselves within traditional
Christian theology, they are bound to observe the Christian doctrine that there can be no metaphysical unity of
God and man, other than in the person of the Christ. Having opted for participation mystique and its related
constellations including animism, polytheism and pantheism that are more characteristic of the Old Religion, I
have pretty well thrown Christian doctrine out the window anyway, so I do not consider these alternative
positions any further. I am content to say that there may be other kinds of mystical experiences that I have not
catalogued, and there may be other kinds of portal experiences than are described herein, and while my thesis
may apply to those, I have not examined them in any detail here.
35

36

Marion Weinstein, Earth Magic (Phoenix Pub. Co., Custer, WA, USA: 1980), 5.

Timothy Leary, "The Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation", The Psychedelic Reader ,
Gunther M. Weil, Ralph Metzner, and Timothy Leary, eds. (Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, USA: 1973), 197.
37

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, UK: 1982),
58-63. William James must be one of the most quoted figures in all of philosophy and science; nearly every
author, including Jaynes and Edelman (discussed in the next chapter) use him as a source. He is probably also
the most mis-quoted, for no matter what stand the author takes, he seems to find substantiation within James'
writings.
38

Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy, 65.

Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin Company,
Boston, MA, USA: 1976 and 1990).
39
40

I should point out at the outset that Jaynes is a lucid and careful writer. It is difficult to summarize what has
already been expressed clearly and succinctly. Readers interested in this material are urged to read Jaynes'
book for themselves, as what I can present here is necessarily only a sketch of an intricate and complex work.
41

Jaynes, 4-17. Those believers in consciousness as a property of matter, as a property of protoplasm, as

learning, as metaphysical "imposition" (as this paper argues for), as a "helpless spectator", as emergent
evolution, as behaviorism, and as a property of anatomical structures may all see their favorite theory dashed
to pieces in these few pages. Maybe.
42

Jaynes, 10. Since the primary goal of this paper is to provide an explanation of consciousness as a
"metaphysical imposition", there will be more to say on this matter later. It looks, however, that I might have
to content myself with being less well known than Darwin, consoling myself with the knowledge that Wallace
is unknown only to those who have never studied natural selection.
43

44

Jaynes, 21-46.

45

Jaynes, 36-40.

46

Jaynes, 50.

47

Jaynes, 48.

Jaynes, 49. Note the use of the word "like" (in Jaynes' example), which, grammatically at least, makes this
example a simile and not a metaphor. The distinction will be important later.
48

49

Jaynes, 52.

50

Jaynes, 53.

51

Jaynes, 57.

Jaynes, 55. By "real world" I presume Jaynes means the set of experiences that are directly reported by the
senses.
52

53

Jaynes, 59-66.

54

Jaynes, 60.

55

Jaynes, 61.

56

Henry E. Allison, Kant's Transcendental Idealism (Yale Univ. Pr., New Haven , CN, USA: 1983), 7.

57

Jaynes, 62.

58

Jaynes, 62.

59

Jaynes, 64.

60

Jaynes, 65.

61

Jaynes, 61.

62

Jaynes, 69.

63

Jaynes, 72.

64

Jaynes, 73.

65

Jaynes, 74.

Note that Jaynes' use of the word hallucination is different from Hoffman's. While Hoffman views
hallucinations as seeing and thinking in novel ways, Jaynes uses the word in the sense of referring to what is not
"really" there.
66

67

Jaynes, 74.

68

Jaynes, 75.

Jaynes, 87. Let it be noted that Jaynes' primary objection to one such study is that it occurred in England, ". . .
in a country where ghosts are exciting gossip, it is difficult to have accurate criteria of what is actually seen and
heard as an hallucination." One must wonder if, in intellectual disciplines in which the materialist metaphysics
of the 18th century is common gossip, it is possible to have any criteria for anything at all that are not
themselves hallucinatory. With what gossip might ghosts and goblins dismiss Jaynes? Onward.
69

A student of Buddhism once remarked to me that one's death is seen behind the left shoulder, whereas one's
future life is seen to the right. Heaven help the spiritually dyslexic!
70

71

Jaynes, 90.

It is interesting to note here that Jaynes' primary reference on schizophrenia is the work of Bleuler, of whom
Jung was a student.
72

73

Jaynes, 91.

74

Jaynes, 93.

Jaynes, 98. This, of course, does not explain why schizophrenics, who are members of a culture that ridicules
such voices, place such high esteem in them. Maybe since that same culture ridicules schizophrenics, the high
esteem is engendered by the feeling of kinship.
75

This discussion, as with Jaynes', will use terminology appropriate to right-handed persons. Complications
arising out of left-handedness, and out of lateral dominance issues will not be treated here; according to Jaynes,
these characteristics are all accomodated by his theory.
76

77

Jaynes, 103.

78

Jaynes, 106-125.

79

Jaynes, 112.

Jaynes, 113. Jaynes cites the work of J. Bogen, R. Sperry, and M. Gazzaniga; all familiar names in the field of
split brain research.
80

81

Jaynes, 117.

82

Jaynes, 118.

83

Jaynes, 119.

84

Jaynes, 122. Note also that item #5 is misnumbered as item #6, also on this page.

85

Jaynes, 123.

86

Jaynes, 140.

87

Jaynes, 202.

88

Jaynes, 207.

89

Jaynes, 208-209.

90

Jaynes, 214.

This accords with H. P. Lovecraft's pronouncement: "The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear,
and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown." The unknown is where the bicameral mind
can find no patterns, and where the analog 'I' cannot analogize. Lovecraft's discussion of this subject is
particularly interesting in relation to this theory. See H. P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature (Dover
Publications, NY, USA: 1973), 1.
91

92

Jaynes, 216.

Jaynes, 216. In a subsequent chapter I will argue that there exists just such a "paleontology of consciousness"
-- Jung's collective unconscious -- and that what it says about consciousness is very different from what Jaynes
proposes.
93

Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (Basic Books, no city given, USA:
1992).
94

Edelman, 211-252. Edelman is an ardent opponent of just about everything philosophers have said about the
mind, particularly those materialist philosophers who do not account adequately, or at all, for the biology of
the brain. His "Critical Postscript" contains a wholesale attack on virtually every philosophical theory of the
mind. I will not review its arguments here, but, as with Jaynes' abrupt dismissals of the opposition, it makes
entertaining reading.
95

96

Edelman, 5.

97

Edelman, 15.

98

Edelman, 22.

99

Edelman, 27.

100

Edelman, 29.

These dismissals, glib as they are, are intended to set the stage for a theory of mind that starts with a theory
of brain. We shall see subsequently that they reveal a good deal more than the shortcomings of philosophy of
mind. It may well be that Edelman simply carries forth in the same tradition -- by dismissing as irrelevant what
does not accord with his own theory. It does seem a bit quick, and critically dissatisfying, to dismiss Kant
because his theory doesn't agree with relativity physics -- itself only a theory. A prime example of this kind of
"selectivity" is Edelman's discussion of Freud -- including a picture of the "great man" -- while completely
ignoring Jung. Nonetheless, to continue with Edelman's theory we shall accept his dismissals provisionally, to
discover what lies at the end of his path.
101

102

Edelman, 41.

It is, of course, also interesting to note that besides mentioning Freud and not Jung, Edelman devotes a
whole chapter to Darwin, while only mentioning that Wallace denied that natural selection could account for
the development of the mind without offering any of Wallace's arguments. I suppose this is because Freud and
Darwin were materialists and Wallace and Jung were not; the former two having contributed to the success of
the physical sciences, gaining prestige for materialistic scientists.
103

104

Edelman, 42.
105

Edelman, 44.

106

Edelman, 44-45.

107

Edelman, 46. (adapted)

108

Edelman, 48.

Edelman comments specifically that the burial of the dead is evidence for consciousness; one wonders on
what basis an anthropocentricity that allows one to conclude that animals only behave "as if" they were
conscious would allow the exclusion of consciousness from elephants, who also bury their dead.
109

Edelman, 57. I am not including the details of genetic molecular biology as they are not terribly important to
the discussion beyond just knowing in a general way how the process works.
110

111

Edelman, 57.

112

Edelman, 60.

113

Edelman, 64.

Edelman, 66. An interesting but very dull view of science. By what experimental means is the principle of
testability to be verified? What experiment would falsify or verify the existence of black holes? Perhaps
casting logical positivists and their intellectual progeny into them would be a good start. This is a rather
antiquated and narrow view of the scientific enterprise; one that is hard to reconcile with the more interesting
aspects of cosmology; the most common solution to the dilemma being that adherents to this view don't seem
to read theoretical cosmology. But wait . . . Edelman goes on to say that ". . . nor need every part of it be
immediately or obviously falsifiable." That's good; on John Hick's argument for eschatological verification, I
suppose we can continue with the study of mystical experience.
114

Edelman, 66-67. Edelman explains how scientific observation and theorizing works to exclude the observer
from the observed. He says: "While their sensations and perceptions went into the performance of their
experiments and into intersubjective exchanges with their colleagues, these sensations and perceptions were
excluded from their theoretical and formal explanations." While this author has no idea what an
"intersubjective exchange" might be (though I can think of several possibilities, ranging from asinine to absurd),
I submit that it is ridiculous to think that science, or any other human pursuit, exists in some kind of
intellectual theory-space separate from those who practice it. Science is, to subvert Wittgenstein's concept, a
game of sorts, whose players have a vested interest in continuing the game. Scientific truth is the ideology that
keeps science going, and that keeps the funding coming.
115

116

Edelman, 74.

Edelman, 82. Why does "scientific" imply or require "physicalistic"? Parapsychology stands in direct
contradiction to this assertion, though anyone believing the above implication would deny, without argument
no doubt, that parapsychology is a science. Assertions like this draw the credibility of the author into question,
not to mention the credibility of the theory. Furthermore, I see no reason why relating psychological and
physiological processes need imply or require that one believe that is the only possible relationship, unless it is
the only relationship one wants to find.
117

118

Edelman, 87.

119

Edelman, 90-91.

120

Edelman, 94.

Edelman, 94-98. Edelman discusses some of the scientific objections and support for the TNGS.
Interestingly, Edelman notes that the major attacks against the theory have been against the notion of neuronal
groups (for whose existence Edelman provides experimental evidence in the cited pages) and not against the
notion of bridging physiology to psychology.
121

122

Edelman, 100.

123

Edelman, 101.

124

Edelman, 102.

125

Edelman, 108.

126

Edelman, 112. Where did "linguistic" come from?

127

Edelman, 113.

128

Edelman, 113.

129

Edelman, 114.

130

Edelman, 118.

131

Edelman, 118.

Edelman, 125. Edelman constantly uses the term "socially constructed self", which will turn out to mean that
the notion of the self is built out of social things rather than out of individual things. I refuse the concept of a
"socially constructed self", for reasons that will be explained in the discussion of these theories: the notion that
the "self" is socially derived is anathema to mystical consciousness, for reasons that will become apparent later.
The reader should, therefore, bear in mind that the use of the word "self" in the context of Edelman's
discussions is very different from the use to which the word will be put later in this study.
132

133

Edelman, 125.

Note that Edelman makes no reference to possible roles for the equivalent right-side areas, which figure
prominently in Jaynes' theory.
134

135

Edelman, 130.

Edelman, 132. A concept which, itself, is probably pathognominic for psychological extraversion. See
forthcoming discussion; for now, keep in mind that the belief that the self is based upon relations with others
defines a psychological type -- a "take" on the information -- and not an unassailable fact of the matter.
136

137

Edelman, 133.

138

Edelman, 136.

139

Edelman, 138.

140

Edelman, 140.

141

Edelman, 141.

142

Edelman, 143.

143

Edelman, 143.

144

Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness, 3.

Richard M. Gale, "Mysticism and Philosophy", Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Steven M. Cahn and
David Shatz, eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK: 1982), 113-114.
145

R. T. Morrison and R. N. Boyd, Organic Chemistry, 3rd ed. (Allyn and Bacon, Inc., Boston, MA, USA: 1973),
319.
146

I refer to programs such as ELIZA, which work by rephrasing questions and answers put to them, and
WHIMSY (available commercially in various versions) that try to adapt their "conversational" style to that of
the judge.
147

148

Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford, UK: 1986), 19-20.

149

Nagel, 20.

150

Nagel, 21.

Carl G. Jung, "Psychological Types", The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, Violet deLaszlo, ed. (Modern Library,
New York, NY, USA: 1959), 192.
151

152

Jung, 216-217.

Marilyn Nagy, Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung (State Univ. of New York Press, Albany, NY,
USA: 1991), 76.
153

154

Jung, in Nagy, 76.

155

Edelman, 138.

156

Jaynes, 434.

157

Edelman, 113.

158

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, New York, NY, USA: 1988), 173-174.

Nagel, 11-12.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "Flow Experience", Encyclopedia of Religion, Mircea Eliade, ed. (Macmillan, New
York, NY, USA: 1987), V: 362.
159
160

Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (Basic Books, (no city given), USA:
1992), 124.
161

162

Charles F. Stevens, "The Neuron," Scientific American 241(3):54-65.

163

Leslie L. Iversen, "The Chemistry of the Brain," Scientific American 241(3):134-149.

Two classical references on the occurrence of psychoactive compounds in plants are: Richard Evans Schultes
and Albert Hofmann, The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (Charles C Thomas, Springfield, IL, USA: 1980)
and, by the same authors, Plants of the Gods (McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead, UK: 1979). Professor Schultes,
formerly Director and Curator of the Harvard Botanical Museum, probably has done more than anyone else to
164

inform the world of the use of psychoactive plants by primitive cultures. His studies began during World War
II, while looking for alternative sources of rubber in the Amazon rain forest, and took him throughout the
world. Dr. Hofmann, the inventor of, and discoverer of the unique properties of LSD, performed much of the
work, in collaboration with Schultes, which identified the biochemically active principles of psychoactive
plants.
Robert Anton Wilson, "Cabala: Tasting the Forbidden Fruit of the Tree of Life," High Times 71, July 1981, 63.
Although not directly relevant to the present subject, it might be worthwhile to keep in mind that this frame of
reference has probably influenced the process by which I have reached my conclusions in mysterious ways.
165

Albert Hofmann, in Peter Stafford, Psychedelics Encyclopedia (And/Or Press, Berkeley, CA, USA: 1977), 48.
An interesting description of the first LSD "trip" ever taken, also by Hofmann, along with a similar description
of a psilocybin mushroom trip by the same person, are also to be found here.
166

167

Schultes and Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, 9.

By "native religion" I mean those religions, practices and rituals that occur among peoples native to a
particular area. This is to be distinguished from religious practices that are forced upon people by conquerors.
Thus, in native European religions, the use of psychoactive plants was, apparently, quite common. Recipes for
"witch's brew," "flying ointment," and so forth, supposedly developed and used in antiquity, specify a wide
range of ingredients including belladonna, mandrake, henbane, wolfbane, marijuana, opium poppy, and
others, all of which are psychoactive to some degree. Christianity, forced on the people by the conquering
Romans, has no such mind-expanding provisions, merely neurotoxic wines.
168

Harold A. Hansen, The Witch's Garden (Samuel Weiser, York Beach, ME, USA: 1976). Also see Plants of the
Gods by Schultes and Hofmann, noted above, and Herman Slater, The Magickal Formulary (Magickal Childe,
New York, NY, USA: 1981). The recipes are scattered throughout occult and historical literature, and are
generally inaccurate as the "real" flying ointments were proprietary to individual covens. There are some
generalizations that can be made from the literature, however. All of these recipes contain one or more
ingredients rich in "belladonna" alkaloids including atropine and scopolamine, usually nightshade, henbane,
and mandrake -- these are anticholinergics, blocking the action of acetylcholinesterase at the synapse and are
strongly hallucinogenic. Some recipes call for hemlock, wolfbane, and other species which are outrightly toxic.
There may also be present opium poppies, Cannabis, various species of mushroom (both toxic and
hallucinogenic varieties), as well as other plants of dubious pharmacological importance. Animal fat is a
common ingredient; owing to the insolubility in water of most of the hallucinogenic components, the lipid
serves to dissolve the active principles and carry them into the body.
169

170

Schultes and Hofmann, Plants of the Gods, 176.

Schultes and Hofmann, Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens, 69. Dr. Hofmann describes his encounter with
Psilocybin mushrooms:
171

"As I was perfectly well aware that my knowledge of the Mexican origin of the mushrooms
would lead me to imagine only Mexican scenery, I tried deliberately to look on my
environment as I knew it normally. But all voluntary efforts to look at things in their
customary forms and colours proved ineffective. Whether my eyes were closed or open, I
saw only Mexican motifs and colours. When the doctor supervising the experiment bent
over me to check my blood pressure, he was transformed into an Aztec priest, and I would
not have been astonished if he had drawn an obsidian knife. In spite of the seriousness of
the situation, it amused me to see how the Germanic face of my colleague had acquired a
purely Indian expression. At the peak of the intoxication, about 1 1/2 hours after ingesting
the mushrooms, the rush of interior pictures, mostly changing in shape and colour, reached
such an alarming degree that I feared I would be torn into this whirlpool of forms and colour
and would dissolve. After about six hours, the dream came to an end. Subjectively, I had
no idea how long this condition had lasted. I felt my return to everyday reality to be a
happy return from a strange, fantastic but quite really experienced world into an old and
familiar home."
I include this interlude to document the interaction between expectation and perception, also alluded
to by Leary and others in their "set-setting" discussions. The idea is that while the psychoactive substance may
alter perceptual function, it does not completely disengage it from the mind of the perceiver, nor from the
perceiver's immediate surroundings.
172

Walter J. Freeman, "The Physiology of Perception," Scientific American 264(2):78.

173

James P. Crutchfield, et. al., "Chaos," Scientific American 255(6):46.

174

Freeman, 83.

175

Freeman, 85.

176

Freeman, 85.

E. Lawrence House, Ben Pansky and Allan Siegel, A Systematic Approach to Neuroscience (McGraw-Hill, New
York, NY, USA: 1979), 379.
177

J. R. Cooper, et. al., The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology, 3rd ed. (Oxford Univ. Pr., Oxford, UK: 1978),
196-220. One of the interesting phenomena associated with 5HT is its "paradoxical" effect: when applied
directly to the surface of mammalian nerve cells, it exerts an inhibitory effect, but when applied to tissue
aggregates, it appears to facilitate discharge. It is thought that this facilitation is due to 5HT's inhibition of
inhibitory cells. Thus, there are two proposed modes of action for hallucinogenic drugs of the 5HT group: they
may block the cellular inhibitory effects of 5HT (an antagonistic action), they may act in an inhibitory way upon
inhibitory cells, thus facilitating stimulation (an agonistic action), or it may be some indescribable combination
of the two. The accumulation of 5HT in tissue aggregates following the administration of LSD suggests the
agonistic role for this drug, although other members of this group may act differently.
179
James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (Viking Press, New York, NY, USA: 1987), 309-314.
178

180

Gleick, 94-96.

181

Gleick, 97.

182

Joseph Campbell, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space (Harper and Row, New York, NY, USA: 1986), 55.

183

Campbell, 55-56.

184

W. T. Stace, Time and Eternity (Princeton Univ. Pr., Princeton, NJ, USA: 1952), 166.

185

W. T. Stace, Mysticism and Philosophy (J. P. Tarcher, Los Angeles, CA, USA: 1960), 31-38.

186

Stace, 31.

187

Stace, 297.

188

Stace, 293.

Carl G. Jung, "Psychological Types", The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, Violet deLaszlo, ed. (Modern Library,
New York, NY, USA: 1959), 240-285.
189

190

Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche", The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, 42.

191

Jung, 45.

192

Jung, "Psychological Types", 275.

193

Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche", 51-53.

194

Jung, 53.

195

Jung, 77.

196

Jung, 53.

Jung, Collected Works 10:846, in Jung: Word and Image, A. Jaffe, ed. (Princeton Univ. Pr., Princeton, NJ, USA:
1979).
197

198

Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche", 75-76.

Marilyn Nagy, Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung (State University of New York Press, Albany,
NY, USA: 1991), 247-257.
199

Driesch, H., "Science and Philosophy of the Organism", Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung,
248-249.
200

201

Jung, "On the Nature of the Psyche", Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, 251.

202

Jung, 253.

203

Jung, 256.

204

Jung, "Psychological Types", Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, 255.

205

Jung, "General Aspects of Dream Psychology", Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, 255-256.

206

Jung, 257.

Timothy Leary, "The Religious Experience: Its Production and Interpretation", The Psychedelic Reader,
Gunther M. Weil, Ralph Metzner, and Timothy Leary, eds. (Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, USA: 1973), 191-213.
207

Carl G. Jung, "On Synchronicity", The Nature of Human Consciousness, Robert E. Ornstein, ed. (W. H.
Freeman, San Francisco, CA, USA: 1973), 445-457. This version of "On Synchronicity" appeared in a work Jung
208

co-edited with Wolfgang Pauli (of "Pauli exclusion principle" fame) . There is another earlier version of this
paper, appearing in Jung's "Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche", and reprinted in The Portable Jung, Joseph
Campbell, ed. (Penguin Books, New York, NY, USA: 1971), 505-518. The earlier version has more examples
and anecdotal information, whereas the later version, which I have used here, is the more analytical.
There is, of course, another formulation of this idea: as opposed to being "truths" that are valid only within
statistical limits, the "laws" may be regarded as statistical formulations themselves. Thus, F=ma, which on
Jung's formulation would be "There is some probability that F=ma," becomes something like "The probability of
F being some value depends upon the probability of m being some value and the probability of a being some
value." In the former case, there are circumstances under which the "laws" do not apply, which is the point
Jung wants to make. In the latter case, one could say the law applies to everything, within the limits of
probability. But, in this latter case, one could never tell what is an instance of the law and what is not; it is of
doubtful predictive value because everything could be considered an instance of the law, to some
(unspecifiable) degree of probability.
209

210

Jung, "On Synchronicity", 446-447.

211

Jung, 447-448.

212

Jung, 449.

213

Jung, 449.

214

Jung, 450.

CharlesTart, "The Physical Universe, the Spiritual Universe, and the Paranormal", Transpersonal Psychologies,
Charles Tart, ed. (Harper San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA: 1992), 115.
215

216

Tart, 119.

217

Tart, 127.

218

Jung, 450.

This appears to be incorrect. Kant regarded causality as an a prior category; space and time are the a priori
conditions for the possibility of perception; causality is a function of the understanding, while space and time
are related to perception. This means that all perceptions, for Kant, carry with them intuitions of space and
time; much like Jaynes' assertion that it is impossible to conceive of anything that is not spatialized.
Nonetheless, Jung's point is still valid, for the Kantian position is not undermined by the assertion that space
and time are mental constructs.
219

220

Jung, 450.

221

Jung, 451.

222

Jung, 452.

223

Jung, 452.

224

Jung, 456.

225

James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (Viking Press, New York, NY, USA: 1987), 292-293.

226

Gleick, 293.

227

Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology (Penguin Books, New York, NY, USA: 1959), 85.

Gerald M. Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: One the Matter of the Mind (Basic Books, (no city given), USA:
1992), 124-136.
228

229

Edelman, 131.

Kai Nielsen, "Wittgensteinian Fideism", Contemporary Philosophy of Religion, Steven M. Cahn and David
Shatz, eds. (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, NY, USA: 1982), 237-254. Nielsen is arguing against Peter Winch's
assertion that scientific criteria, from the standpoint of our technological [or perhaps more appropriately,
technotheistic] culture, cannot be applied to primitive people's belief in magic.
230

231

This analogy was suggested to me by Dr. Howard V. Hendrix.

Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death, ed. and tr. by Hong and Hong (Princeton Univ. Press, Princeton,
NJ, USA: 1980), 142. It is Kierkegaard's thesis that the self exists only insofar as it is derived from God; that
despair is a form of sin, which is a loss of the relationship with God.
232

Sapere Aude, Chaldean Oracles of Julianus (Heptangle Books, Gillette, NJ, USA: 1977), entry number 160.
"Sapere Aude" is allegedly the pen name used by Dr. William Wescott, member of the Order of the Golden
Dawn, in the early years of the twentieth century. About Julianus little is known, save that he served in the
Roman army around the year 173 A.D., and his work was studied by Plotinus and other neo-Platonist scholars.
233

Mailyn Nagy, Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung (State University of New York Press, Albany,
NY, USA: 1991), 226.
234

Carl G. Jung, "Psychological Types", The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, Violet de Laszlo, ed. (Modern Library,
New York, NY, USA: 1959), 259.
235

236

Jung, 260.

237

Jung, 260.

238

Jung, "Commentary on the Golden Flower", Philosophical Issues in the Psychology of C. G. Jung, 216-217.

239

Nagy, 219.

240

Nagy, 241.

241

Jung, "Psychological Types", Basic Writings of C. G. Jung, 275.

242

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time (Bantam Books, New York, NY, USA: 1988), 88.