The American philosopher William James (1842–1910) approached the psychology of consciousness in his characteristic multifarious manner. He may have been the first person to use the concept of “field” in talking about consciousness: human beings have “fields of consciousness,” which are always complex—containing body sensations, sense impressions, memories, thoughts, feelings, desires, and “determinations of the will”—in fact, “a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations.” He made it clear that when he spoke of the mind consisting of a “stream of thought,” he actually meant not just thoughts, but images, sensations, intuitions, feelings, etcetera, flowing in streams.
William James explored the paranormal and mystical dimensions of consciousness that lie outside the boundaries of the scientific worldview. He pursued a lifelong interest in what he called “exceptional mental states,” including those found in hypnotism, somnambulism, hysteria, multiple personality, spirit possession, and the inspirations of genius. In discussing such unusual states, he wrote that “the subject’s mind loses its quality of unity, and lapses into a polypsychism of fields that genuinely coexist and yet are…dissociated functionally.” He wrote that “the mind is a confederation of psychic entities,” anticipating later views on multiplicity and dissociation.
James’s interest in unusual states of consciousness led him to experiment with nitrous oxide—or “laughing gas,” as it was then known—an experience that reinforced his understanding of “trans-rational” states of consciousness. He wrote that the conclusion he drew from these experiences was that
our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different (James, 1958, p. 228).
James wrote the above statement in The Varieties of Religious Experience, probably his most influential book. In it he explored with great discernment the nature and significance of mystical or “conversion” experiences, by which he meant not only a person’s change from one religion to another, but also the process of attaining a sense of unity and the sacred dimension of life. In my book The Unfolding Self (1998), I adopted James’s empirical, comparative approach to the study of transformative experiences, whether they are induced by spiritual practices, psychedelic substances, or other means.
In addition to multiplicity, James was greatly impressed by the selectivity of consciousness. “The mind is at every stage a theatre of simultaneous possibilities. Consciousness consists in the comparison of these with each other, the selection of some, and the suppression of the rest.” The self was the unifying principle in the multiple fields of consciousness, and the selective agency that expressed itself through its interests and the directing of attention. James’s dictum—“my experience is what I agree to attend to”—anticipates my formula, discussed above:
Intention/interest attention awareness
I have come to see that William James’s writings on radical empiricism provide the epistemology of choice for the study of states of consciousness—ordinary or altered. Within the materialistic paradigm still presently dominant in scientific circles, any insights or learning gained from dreams, drug experiences, trances, intuitions, mystical ecstasies, or the like, are seen as “merely subjective,” and limited to those states—that is, not having general applicability or “objective reality.” The psychologist Charles Tart in an essay on “state-specific sciences” (1972) attempted to break the conceptual stranglehold of this paradigm by suggesting that observations made in a given state of consciousness could only be verified or replicated in that same state. This solution seems theoretically valid, but attended with practical difficulties.
William James started with the basic assumption of the empirical approach: all knowledge is derived from experience. Or, as the German proverb has it, Die Erfahrung ist die Mutter der Wissenschaften—“experience is the mother of the sciences.” Radical empiricism applies this principle inclusively, not exclusively.
I give the name of “radical empiricism” to my Weltanschauung… To be radical an empiricism must neither admit into its construction any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced (James, 1996, p. 42).
This view provides a philosophical foundation for a scientific psychology of consciousness. All knowledge must be based on observation—that is, experience; so far this view coincides with the empiricism of the natural and social sciences. It’s the second statement that is truly “radical” and that explains why James included religious and paranormal experiences in his investigations. The experiences in modified states of consciousness are currently excluded from materialistic, reductionistic science, as are all kinds of anomalous experiences, such as shamanic journeys, near-death experiences, and mystical or paranormal experiences. In a radical empiricism, they need not and should not be excluded.
After all, it is not where or how observations are made that makes a field of study “scientific”; it is what is done with the observations afterward. Repeated systematic observations from the same observer, and replicated observations from others, is what distinguishes the scientific method from casual or haphazard observations, or those made with intentions other than gathering knowledge. The epistemology of radical empiricism posits that it is possible to be objective about subjective experience using the accepted canons of the scientific method. The methodology of systematic introspection and phenomenology are the beginnings of such a more inclusive approach.
In Eastern systems of yoga and meditation, it has long been understood that reliable and replicable observations can be made in the interior landscapes of our experience. Such introspective observations are in principle no different than the observations a biologist makes when looking through a microscope, or an astronomer with a telescope. The practice of “mindfulness” is an attitude in which self-reflexive consciousness is added to the primary data of subjective experience.
The Dalai Lama, in his discussions with Western scientists and philosophers, has said,
If the scientific study of consciousness is ever to grow to full maturity—given that subjectivity is a primary element of consciousness—it will have to incorporate a fully developed and rigorous methodology of first-person empiricism (Dalai Lama, 2005, p. 160).
With “first-person empiricism,” we can supplement the observations made by others (e.g., measurements of brain waves) with observations by the subjects in their different inner states.
Of course, any and all observations, made in outer or inner realms, are subject to distortion and illusion, and therefore should always be submitted to replication, testing, and verification by others in similar conditions. But without empirical observations we do not arrive at knowledge, although we may generate theories, beliefs, speculations, and abstractions, as well as imaginative fantasies, which can in turn become the basis of storytelling and other art forms.
One of the most exciting consequences of adopting an epistemology of radical empiricism, in which no sources of new perceptions and observations will be ignored because of their provenance, is the opening up of vast new fields and possibilities of understanding, and a renewed bringing together of spiritual and scientific understandings into an inclusively integrated systems worldview.