The psyche at times functions outside of the spatio-temporal law of causality. This indicates that our conceptions of space and time, and therefore of causality also, are incomplete. A complete picture of the world would require the addition of still another dimension….
—C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
In our everyday lives, most of us think of the world in which we live as being made up of highly individualized physical bodies—some animate, others inanimate—each possessing its own fixed and absolute boundaries. All of our senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—seem to tell us that we are, at least physically, separate from all we survey. There is a difference between ourselves and other people and between ourselves and the rest of the universe that seems to indicate that we are each sovereign, autonomous, and singular. However, consciousness research of the past few years has begun to show us that our physical boundaries may be much more illusory than real. Like the proverbial mirage of a cool, bubbling spring seen by the thirsty desert traveler, the boundaries we perceive between ourselves and the rest of the universe may best be understood as products of our minds.
At the outermost reaches of human consciousness research we discover that science has taken us full circle to a vision of our lives as being very much like that described by the wise elders of ancient and Oriental cultures. Sri Aurobindo tells us:
We have to see all becomings as developments of the movement in our true self and this self as one inhabiting all bodies and not our body only. We have to be consciously, in our relationships with this world, what we really are—this one self becoming everything that we observe. All the movement, all energies, all forms, all happenings we must see as those of our one and real self in many existences.
Similarly, we see the above theme reflected in the words of Albert Einstein:
A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”—a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of consciousness.
There are few people who have not, under certain circumstances, experienced the extension of their everyday boundaries. At such times, our illusions of separateness blur and fade like the last rays of the sun at the end of the day. For fleeting moments in the afterglow we find ourselves merging with other people, identifying with how they experience the world. Or we find ourselves tuning into the consciousness of an entire group of people, identifying with the griefs or joys of a whole society, race, or all of humanity. In a similar vein, we can lose ourselves in nature, perhaps during a trek in the mountains or deep in a redwood forest, and then we leap beyond the limits of our exclusively human existence, to vividly experience the lives of plants, animals, or even inorganic objects or processes. The following inspired passage from Eugene O’Neill’s play Long Day’s Journey into Night, where Edmund describes his night cruise on a sailboat, is a beautiful example of a transpersonal state that transcends ordinary limits of human experience.
I lay on the bowsprit, facing astern, with the water foaming into spume under me, the masts with every sail white in the moonlight, towering high above me. I became drunk with the beauty and singing rhythm of it, and for a moment I lost myself—actually lost my life. I was set free! I dissolved into the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged without past or future, within peace and unity and wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the Life of Man, to Life itself! To God, if you want to put it that way…like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second, there is meaning.1
In altered states of consciousness this new perception of the world becomes dominant and compelling. It completely overrides the everyday illusion of Newtonian reality, where we seem to be “skin-encapsulated egos” existing in a world of separate beings and objects. In the extreme forms of transpersonal perception we can experience ourselves as the whole biosphere of our planet or the entire material universe.
Identification with Other People
Perhaps the most familiar transpersonal experience for many of us happens in our relationships with the people closest to us. During love making, or while sharing other ecstatic moments, the demarcations between I and thou seem to flee. We suddenly become aware that consciousness is quite separate from our bodies. Our two consciousnesses blend together, becoming one, challenging the physical boundaries we usually take so much for granted. While this is happening we might also feel unified with the creative source from which we came and of which we are each a part.
The form of transpersonal connection we feel with another person can be referred to as “dual unity.” Such experiences can occur during the practice of spiritual disciplines, particularly Tantric yoga, during periods of great emotional shocks or extraordinary joys, such as the death of a loved one or the birth of a child, or after ingesting psychoactive substances. They are also common between mothers and infants throughout pregnancy and nursing. In the experiences of dual unity, we have a sense of completely merging and becoming one with another person, yet also maintaining the sense of our own identity.
In clinical situations I have witnessed various forms of this dual unity literally hundreds of times. A particularly interesting example was a client of mine, Jenna, who experienced herself merging with her mother while reliving the intrauterine and nursing periods of her life.
During the session, she curled up into a fetal position, characteristic of a person who is in a deeply regressed state. Every wrinkle on her face seemed to disappear and she took on the qualities of a tiny infant. In a small voice, she described how close she felt to her mother now. She had a wonderful sense of actually becoming a part of her, merging with her, until there was no difference between her mother’s feelings and her own. She felt that she could shift back and forth between being herself and being her mother. Sometimes she was an infant in the womb, sometimes a baby nursing at her mother’s breast. Then she would switch roles, becoming her pregnant or her nursing mother. She could experience being both her mother and herself as an infant simultaneously, as if the two of them were a continuum, a single organism, or a single mind.
At one point, as she was experiencing this dual unity, symbiotically merging with her mother, she opened her eyes. As she looked at me she seemed very surprised. She explained that she felt she could read my thoughts and know what I was feeling, as if all boundaries between us had been dissolved. When she in fact described my thoughts she proved to be quite accurate.2
This was, incidentally, a breakthrough moment for Jenna. As she experienced dual unity with her mother, then with me, she gained a new perspective on her early life, and she allowed herself to establish a deeper level of trust and communication with me. It is often this experience of dual unity that can help us establish deeper trust or understanding of others in our relationships with family and loved ones. It is safe to speculate, as well, that this aspect of the human consciousness may be the basis for what we call empathy.
Closely related to the dual unity experience is the experience of complete identification with another person. This occurs when we identify so fully with another person that we lose our own sense of identity and become them. A vivid example of this kind of identification occurred for my wife Christina while we were living at the Esalen Institute at Big Sur.
At the time Christina was lying in bed recovering from a viral infection. One of our friends, also living at Esalen, was the late anthropologist and generalist Gregory Bateson. During an exploratory operation surgeons had found in his lungs a malignant tumor the size of a grapefruit. The doctors told Gregory it was inoperable and that he had four weeks to live. While living at Esalen, he received many alternative treatments and actually lived more than two and a half years longer than the doctors predicted. During those years, Christina and I spent a great deal of time with Gregory and his family and become close friends.
On this particular morning, as she lay in bed, Christina had an overwhelming feeling that she was becoming Gregory. She had his giant body and his enormous hands, his thoughts, and his staunch British humor. She felt connected to the pain of his cancer and somehow knew with every cell of her body that he was dying. This surprised her because it did not reflect her conscious assessment of his situation.
Later that same day, Christina saw our friend Dr. Carl Simonton, who was visiting Esalen. Carl had spent the morning working with Gregory, using a method of visualization he had developed in conjunction with his work as an oncologist and radiologist. Carl told Christina what had transpired in his session with Gregory that morning. In the middle of the session, Gregory had suddenly announced: “I do not want to do this any more. I want to die.” They immediately called Gregory’s wife, Lois, and started talking about dying instead of fighting the cancer. The timing of this episode exactly coincided with Christina’s experience of identification with Gregory.
This merging of individual boundaries can extend much farther, to involve an entire group of people who have something in common; they might belong to the same race, be of the same nationality or culture, or share a certain belief system, professional background, or predicament. Fleeting and superficial forms of such identification with the consciousness of a group can occur without profound or lasting change in consciousness. For example, people visiting Auschwitz, where millions of Jews were tortured and slain, often experience an overwhelming sense of sharing the terror, grief, and cruel deprivation suffered by all those who were imprisoned and died there. Similarly, people visiting the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., find themselves sharing, if only for a moment, the suffering of all the young men and women who lost their lives in that war.
In altered states of consciousness, transpersonal experiences such as these can be very profound, vivid, and graphic, lasting for only seconds or for hours. It is possible, for example, to become all the mothers of the world who have lost their children to wars, all the soldiers who ever died on battlefields, or all of human history’s fugitives and outcasts. Although it may be difficult to imagine for a person who has never had these experiences, one can have under these circumstances an absolutely convincing feeling of becoming all those individuals at the same time. One becomes a single consciousness that contains hundreds or even millions of individuals.
Visionary experiences of this kind have been described again and again in sacred scriptures and the mystical literature of all ages. However, such experiences are not the exclusive privilege of the great figures of religious history—nor are they, as skeptics sometimes allege, the fanciful inventions of scheming priesthoods seeking ways to manipulate gullible crowds. One of the most surprising revelations of modern consciousness research has been the discovery that under certain circumstances, such as extraordinary states of mind, such visionary experiences can become available to virtually every one of us. They are afforded us by the transpersonal potentials of human consciousness.
The following is a contemporary example of the visionary experience of a mental health professional who visited the ancient Mayan ruins of Palenque in Mexico. This rather long report also involves transcendence of time and contains an account of an encounter with archetypal entities, which we have not as yet discussed. However, I have left the report intact because it is a particularly poignant example of the kinds of visionary capabilities available to us through transpersonal consciousness.
I found it increasingly difficult to relate to the ruins surrounding me simply as an admiring tourist. I felt waves of deep anxiety permeating my whole being and an almost metaphysical sense of oppression. My perceptual field was becoming darker and darker, and I started noticing that the objects around me were endowed with awesome energy and started to move in a most ominous fashion.
I realized that Palenque was a place where thousands of human sacrifices had taken place and felt that all the suffering of the ages somehow still hung around as a heavy cloud. I sensed the presence of wrathful deities and their thirst for blood. They obviously craved for more sacrifice and seemed to assume that I would be their next sacrificial victim. As convincing as this feeling was, I had enough critical insight to realize that this was an inner symbolic experience and that my life was not really in danger.
I closed my eyes to find out what was happening inside my psyche. All of a sudden, it seemed that history came alive; I saw Palenque not as ruins but as a thriving sacred city at the height of its glory. I witnessed a sacrificial ritual in incredible detail; however, I was not simply an observer, but also the sacrificial victim. This was immediately followed by another similar scene, and yet another. As I was getting amazing insights into Pre-Columbian religion and the role that sacrifice played in this system, my individual boundaries seemed to have completely disappeared and I felt increasingly connected to all those who had died in Palenque over the centuries to such an extent that I became them.
I experienced myself as an immense pool of emotions they had felt; it contained a whole spectrum of feelings—regret over the loss of young life, anxious anticipation, and strange ambivalence toward their executioners, but also peculiar surrender to their fate and even excitement and curious expectation about what was going to come. I had a strong sense that the preparation for the ritual involved the administration of some mind-altering drugs that raised the experience to another level.
He was fascinated by the dimensions of the experience and by the richness of insights that it entailed. He climbed the hill and lay down by the Temple of the Sun so that he could better concentrate on what was happening. Scenes from the past kept bombarding his consciousness with extraordinary force. His fascination was rapidly replaced by deep metaphysical fear. A message seemed to come to him, loud and clear: “You are not here as a tourist eavesdropping on history but as a sacrificial victim, like all the others who were sacrificed in the past. You will not leave here alive.” He felt the overpowering presence of the deities demanding sacrifice, and even the walls of the buildings seemed to be thirsting for more blood—his. He continues:
I had experienced altered states of consciousness before in my psychedelic sessions and knew that the worst fears in these experiences do not reflect objectively existing danger and usually dissipate as soon as consciousness returns to normal. As convincing as the experience was, I wanted to believe that it was “just another one of those.” But the feelings of impending doom became increasingly real. I opened my eyes and a feeling of bloodcurdling panic took over my entire being. My body was covered with giant ants and my skin was erupting into hundreds of red bumps. This was not just in my mind; this was really happening.
I realized that this unexpected complication provided an element that was previously missing to make my fears absolutely convincing. I had doubted that the experience alone could kill me, but now I was not sure what large amounts of the toxin of hundreds of giant Mexican ants unknown to me could do to one in an altered state of consciousness. I decided to run, to escape the ruins, removing myself from the influence of the deities. However, the time seemed to have slowed down almost to the point of stopping and my whole body felt enormously heavy, as if it were made of lead.
I desperately tried to run as fast as I could but it seemed that I was progressing as if in a slow motion movie. I felt as if I were caught in a tractor beam; the deities and the walls of the ruins had a firm grip on me and were holding me under their spell. As this was happening, images of the entire history of Palenque were still flashing through my mind. I could see the parking lot full of cars, separated from the ruins by a heavy chain. There was the predictable rational world of my everyday reality. I set my mind on the task of getting there, feeling that this would somehow save my life. At the time, I saw the chains as a boundary where the influence of the magic world of ancient gods ended. Has not our modern world conquered and discredited the empires based on beliefs in mythical realities?3
His expectations turned out to be correct. After what seemed like eternity, and with enormous effort, he reached the parking lot. At that moment, it was as if a heavy weight—physical, psychological, and spiritual—was lifted from his being. He felt light, ecstatic, reborn and pulsing with exuberant life energy. His senses felt cleansed and wide open; the glorious sunset during his return trip from Palenque, the dinner in a small restaurant in Villa-hermosa where he watched the pulse of life in the streets, and the tasting of fruit juices in the local jugerias were truly ecstatic experiences for him. However, he spent much of the night taking cold showers to alleviate the pain and itching from his many ant bites.
Several years later, an anthropologist friend of his, who had studied the Mayan culture extensively told him that the ants played an important role in Mayan mythology and were deeply connected with the earth goddess and the rebirth process.
The extreme form of group consciousness is the identification with all of humanity, where no boundaries seem to be found in the experiential pool of the human species. In ancient literature, there are many examples of this, such as Christ’s experience in the Garden of Gethsemane. However, I will use instead an example that comes from the world of modern technology, a transpersonal experience reported in Rusty Schweickart’s account of the flight of Apollo 9, whose mission was to test the lunar module for future, manned landings on the moon.
As his spaceship was orbiting the Earth, crossing various geographic and political boundaries at tremendous speed, Rusty found it increasingly difficult to identify himself as belonging to any particular nation. He saw the Mediterranean far below him and reflected that this cradle of civilization had for many centuries represented the entire known world. He imagined that the surface of the blue, green, and white globe that he was circling every hour and a half held everything that had ever meant anything to him—history, music, art, war, death, love, tears, games, and joys. His consciousness was undergoing a profound transformation.
When you go around the earth in an hour and a half, you begin to recognize that your identity is with that whole thing. That makes a change. You look down and you cannot imagine how many borders and boundaries you cross…. Hundreds of people killing each other over some imaginary line that you are not even aware of, you cannot even see it. From where you are, the planet is a whole and it is so beautiful and you wish you could take each individual by the hand and say: “Look at it from this perspective. Look at what is important!”
During his walk in space these revelations suddenly exploded into a profound mystical experience. The camera designed to document his activities malfunctioned and for several minutes he had nothing to do but float in space, allowing the spectacle of the Earth, the cosmos, and all existence to bombard his consciousness. Very quickly he found it impossible to maintain his individual boundaries and instead identified himself as all of humanity.
You think about what you are experiencing and why. Do you deserve this, this fantastic experience? Have you earned this in some way? Are you selected to be touched by God, to have some special experience that other men cannot have? You know the answer is no, there is nothing you have done to deserve this. It is not a special thing for you. You know very well at that moment—and it comes to you so powerfully—that you are the sensing element for man.
You look down and you see the surface of the globe that you have lived on all this time and you know all those people down there. They are like you, they are you, you represent them. You are up there as the sensing element, that point out on the end…. Somehow you recognize that you are a piece of this total life and you are out in the forefront and you have to bring that back.
It becomes a rather special responsibility and it tells you something about your relationship with this thing we call life. That is a change, that is something new and when you come back, there is a difference in that world now. There is a difference in that relationship between you and that planet and you and all those other forms of life on that planet, because you have had that kind of experience and it is so precious.4
Since his return from the Apollo 9 mission, Rusty has dedicated much of his life to bringing his vision to other people, sharing his transformation of consciousness. He has remained vitally interested and highly motivated in bringing peace and ecological harmony to our planet Earth and to humanity, with which he has become so deeply identified.
Bridging the Chasms Between Species
In the transpersonal realm it becomes possible to have experiential insight into the sensations of a mountain lion tracking its prey through a rocky canyon, the primal impulses of a giant reptile as it encounters a member of the opposite sex, or the powerful flight of an eagle. People have reported that after identification with animals they have obtained a profound organismic understanding of drives completely foreign to humans, such as the feelings that propel the eel or the sockeye salmon on their heroic upstream journeys, or the structural instincts of a spider spinning its web, or the mysterious experience of a gypsy moth’s metamorphosis from egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly.
Our transpersonal experiences of entering the consciousness of animals can be extremely convincing. These can include feeling that we have adopted the body image, or that we are having sensations and instinctual drives unique to that animal’s perceptions in their native environments. The nature and the specific features of these experiences often transcend the scope of human fantasy and imagination.
In Bruxelles, a Belgian woman attending our workshop on Holotropic Breathwork™ had the following experience that brought her some remarkable insights into the behavior of whales, knowledge that she had not previously read or heard about.
After a powerful sequence of being born with triumphant emergence into light, things started to quiet down. I was feeling more and more peaceful and calm, and my experience seemed to acquire incredible depth and breadth. I had an increasing sense that my consciousness had a distinctly oceanic quality until I felt that I actually became what can best be described as the consciousness of the ocean. I became aware of the presence of several large bodies and realized that it was a pod of whales.
At one point, I felt cold air streaming through my head and had a taste of salty water in my mouth. A variety of sensations and feelings that were alien and definitely not human imperceptibly took over my consciousness. A new, gigantic body image started to form out of the primordial connection to the other large bodies around me and I realized I had become one of them. Inside my belly I sensed another life form and knew it was my baby. There was no doubt in my mind that I was a pregnant whale cow.
And then came another wave of the birth process. However, this time it had a different quality than the previous episodes. It had gargantuan proportions, as if the ocean were stirred from its very depth; at the same time it was surprisingly easy and natural. I experienced my genitals in the most intimate way, with all the nuances of these birthing activities associated with profound visceral understanding of how whales give birth. What I found most amazing was how they use water to expel the baby by sucking it into their genitals and working with hydraulic pressure. It seemed significant that the baby was born with its tail first.5
I described this woman’s experiences to a workshop we were giving much later in California. One member of the group happened to be a marine biologist. He described how whales give birth to their young and fully confirmed that the insights of the young Belgian woman had been accurate. This is just one of hundreds of confirmations of extraordinary insights that people have received while in altered states. I have been repeatedly surprised by the voracity of these insights, which often involve highly specific and detailed information even with people who had no previous knowledge, interest, or experience in the subject.
Another experience of animal consciousness that comes to mind is that of a person who had been engaged for several years in serious self-exploration. He described how he had experienced being an eagle. He soared on the air currents, skillfully using changes of the positions of his wings. He scanned the area far below him with his eyes, noting that everything on the ground seemed magnified as if seen through powerful binoculars, allowing him to recognize the tiniest details in the terrain. When he spotted movement, it was as if his eyes froze and zoomed in. He described his new visual ability as being something like tunnel vision, looking through a long, narrow tube. He said: “The feeling that this experience accurately represented the mechanism of vision in raptor birds—something I had never thought about or had been interested in—was so convincing and compelling that I decided to go to the library to study the anatomy and physiology of their optical system.”
The experiences of animal consciousness are not limited to species that stand higher on the evolutionary ladder, such as primates, cetaceans, birds, or reptiles. They can reach the level of insects, worms, snails, and even coelenterates; such experiences involving lower life forms can also provide amazing new insights and information. I remember in particular a Holotropic Breathwork™ session in which a person identified with a caterpillar and experienced, on a very basic level, how it perceived the world, moved, and consumed leaves.
The experience culminated with the formation of a cocoon and with a specific state of consciousness associated with that stage of its life cycle. This person then witnessed at a subcellular level in his own body the miracle of metamorphosis. Following his experience he commented on how surprised he was to discover that the process of metamorphosis involved a complete disintegration of the caterpillar’s body inside the cocoon, to then emerge from this amorphous ooze in its completely new form as a butterfly. After the emergence from the cocoon he experienced the process of drying and stretching his wet and folded wings, and then the triumph of his first flight.
This person had no previous knowledge of the metamorphosis process, whereby the caterpillar’s body is completely dissolved and liquefied by proteolytic enzymes in the cocoon. He had no previous interest in entomology or biology in general; it was his transpersonal experience that awakened him to one of the great mysteries of nature—that of the morphogenetic fields that provide an energetic template for teasing out the form of a butterfly from the liquefied body of the caterpillar.
Our potential for voyaging into the consciousness of other species does not stop with animals. No matter how fantastic and absurd it might seem to traditional researchers, and no matter how it may stretch the limits of common sense, it is not possible to completely dismiss reports of people who claim to have experienced the consciousness of plants and botanical processes. Over the years I have observed hundreds of just such experiences and have even had several such experiences myself. This made it possible for me to recognize how amazingly authentic they are and how much they offer in terms of helping us unravel the alchemical mysteries of the botanical kingdom.
Experiences of plant consciousness cover a wide range, from bacteria, ocean plankton, and mushrooms, to Venus fly traps, orchids, and Sequoia trees. These experiences can offer interesting insights into the process of photosynthesis, pollination, the function of the growth hormone auxine, the exchange of water and minerals in the root system, and many other physiological functions of various plants. To illustrate this type of experience I have chosen a description of identification with a Sequoia tree, reported by a person during a holotropic session. These magnificent trees, I might add, often appear in non-ordinary states of consciousness, and their appearance never fails to evoke philosophical and metaphysical speculation.
I would have never considered seriously the possibility that there could be anything like plant consciousness. I have read some accounts of experiments pointing to the “secret life of plants” and claims that consciousness of the gardener can influence the harvest. I always considered such stuff to be unsubstantiated and flaky New Age lore. But here I was, completely transformed into a giant Sequoia tree and it was absolutely clear to me that what I was experiencing actually occurs in nature, that I was now discovering dimensions of the cosmos that are usually hidden to our senses and intellects.
The most superficial level of my experience seemed to be very physical and involved things that Western scientists have described, only seen from an entirely new angle—as consciousness processes guided by cosmic intelligence, rather than mechanical happenings in organic or unconscious matter. My body actually had the shape of the Sequoia tree, it was the Sequoia. I could feel the circulation of sap through an intricate system of capillaries under my bark. My consciousness followed the flow to the finest branches and needles and witnessed the mystery of communion of life with the sun—the photosynthesis. My awareness reached all the way into the root system. Even the exchange of water and nourishment from the earth was not a mechanical but a conscious, intelligent process.
However, the experience had deeper levels that were mythical and mystical, and these dimensions were intertwined with the physical aspects of Nature. Thus, photosynthesis was not just an amazing alchemical process, it was also direct contact with God, who was manifest through the rays of the sun. The natural processes such as rain, wind, and fire had mythical dimensions and I could easily perceive these as deities, the way they were perceived by most aboriginal cultures.
It is interesting to note here that while identifying with the consciousness of the tree, this person perceived relationships and beings that were uniquely associated with that consciousness.
I had a love-hate relationship with Fire, who was an enemy as well as a helper, cracking open my seed pods for sprouting and burning out other vegetation on the forest floor that might compete with my new growth. Earth itself was a goddess, the Great Mother, Mother Nature, and her soil was permeated by gnomelike beings, fairy-like creatures, and elementals. The philosophy of the Findhorn community in Scotland, where these entities are parts of a shared belief system, suddenly did not appear strange or alien to me.
The deepest level of the experience was purely spiritual. The consciousness of the Sequoia was a state of profound meditation. I felt amazing tranquility and serenity, as a quiet, unperturbed witness of the centuries. At one point my image of the Sequoia merged with that of a giant Buddha figure immersed in profound meditation, while the folly of the world passed me by. I thought about the transversal cuts through giant tree trunks that I had seen in the Sequoia National Park. On the mandala made of nearly four thousand annual rings, various distances close to the surface, carry markers such as “French Revolution” or “Columbus discovers America” and another halfway to the center marks the year of Christ’s Crucifixion. All the commotion of the world history meant very little to a being who had reached this state of consciousness.6
It is very common for people who experience the consciousness of plants to sense the strong spiritual dimensions of this state of being. Following such experiences they often remark that they see plants as models for life, examples of a highly spiritual way of being in the world. Unlike humans, most plants never kill or lead predatory lives. They live on what is given them by nature—nourished from the soil, irrigated by the rains, and in direct contact with the sun, the life-giving force of this planet and the most immediate expression of cosmic creative energy. While not killing, hurting, or exploiting other living things, the plants serve as food for others. To humans they also provide materials for building, clothing, producing paper, and making tools, as well as supplying fuel, medicines, and beauty.
The reports of non-ordinary states like the one above lead us to speculate that our capacity to identify with the consciousness of plants undoubtedly contributed to the fact that many cultures hold certain plants to be sacred. In many Native American cultures corn and other crops were revered as gods. For the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, for example, the Corn God, the Sustainer of Life, was extolled as a major deity. Similarly, the banyan tree is considered sacred in India, and many important saints have allegedly achieved enlightenment while meditating under its canopy. The water lily or lotus has been an important spiritual symbol in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, and Central America, while mistletoe was sacred to the Druids. Logically enough, plants with psychedelic properties that offer direct access to transpersonal experiences, such as certain mushrooms, peyote, or yaje, have been incorporated into the religions of many cultures and are considered deities, or the “flesh of the gods.”
Experiencing the Consciousness of the Biosphere
In some rare instances, people experience themselves expanding into a consciousness that encompasses all life on our planet—embracing all humanity and the entire world of flora and fauna, from viruses to the largest animals and plants. Instead of identifying with a single plant or animal species, they experience the totality of life. This experience could be described as identification with life as a cosmic phenomenon, as an entity or force in and of itself.
Transpersonal experiences often lead to a deepened understanding of the role of primal forces in nature, an enhanced awareness of the laws that govern our lives, and an appreciation for the extraordinary intelligence that underlies all life processes. Experiences of this kind typically result in an intensified concern for the natural environment. In some cases, the person’s experiences have focused on a single aspect of life, such as the power of the sexual drive, or the maternal instinct.
The following passage was recorded by a physician who vividly experienced identification with the totality of life on this planet.
I seemed to have connected in a very profound way with life on this planet. At first, I went through a whole series of identifications with various species, but later the experience was more and more encompassing. My identity spread not only horizontally in space to include all living forms but also vertically in time. I became the Darwinian evolutionary tree in all its ramifications. I was the totality of life!
I sensed the cosmic quality of the energies and experiences involved in the world of living forms, the endless curiosity and experimentation characterizing life, and the drive for self-expression operating on many different levels. The crucial question I seemed to be dealing with was whether life on this planet would survive. Is it a viable and constructive phenomenon, or a malignant growth on the face of the Earth that contains some fatal flaw in its blueprint condemning it to self-destruction? Is it possible that some basic error occurred when the design for the evolution of organic forms was originally laid down? Can creators of universes make mistakes as humans do? It seemed at that moment a plausible, but very frightening idea, something I had never considered before.
Identifying with life, I experienced and explored an entire spectrum of destructive forces operating in nature and in human beings and saw their dangerous extensions and projections in modern technological society—internecine warfare, prisoners in concentration camps dying in gas chambers, fish poisoned in polluted streams, plants killed by herbicides, and insects sprayed by chemicals.7
These experiences alternated with moving experiences of smiling infants, charming children playing in the sand, newborn animals, and newly hatched birds in carefully built nests, wise dolphins and whales cruising the crystal-clear waters of the ocean, and images of beautiful pastures and forests. He felt a profound empathy with life, a strong ecological awareness, and a real determination to join the pro-life forces on this planet.
Probing the Consciousness of Inanimate Matter and Inorganic Processes
In addition to the transpersonal extension of consciousness to other people, groups of people, all of humanity, plants, animals, and the totality of life, people have reported experiencing identification with the water in rivers and oceans, with fire, with the soil of the earth, with mountains, or with forces unleashed in natural catastrophes such as electrical storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, or volcanic eruptions. Other times, this identification involved specific minerals and metals, such as diamonds and other precious stones, quartz crystals, amber, steel, quicksilver, gold, and many others. These experiences can extend into the microworld, involving the dynamic structure of molecules and atoms, electromagnetic forces, and the “lives” of subatomic particles. Experiences of this kind are very common in the reports of altered states of consciousness of modern people. They probably also represent an important source of the animistic worldview of some aboriginal cultures. The Zuni peoples, for example, recorded experiences of strong identification with natural phenomena, such as lightening, wind, and fire. Their spiritual lore is filled with rich descriptions reflecting on the metaphysical nature of these elements and how to use the wisdom gleaned from their awareness of them in healing.
People have even reported identification with highly sophisticated products of modern technology, such as jets, spaceships, lasers, and computers. During these experiences their body images take on the characteristic shapes of these objects, and they might feel themselves assuming the qualities of the materials and processes upon which they have focused their attention.
Experiences of this kind suggest that there is a constant interplay between the inanimate objects we generally associate with the material world, the world of consciousness, and creative intelligence. Rather than being from two distinctly different realms with discrete boundaries, consciousness and matter are engaged in a constant dance, their interplay forming the entire fabric of existence. This is a notion that is being confirmed by research in modern physics, biology, thermodynamics, information and systems theory, and other branches of science. Observations of the transpersonal realm are beginning to suggest that consciousness is involved in the so-called material world in ways previously unimagined.
Experiential identification with various aspects of the inorganic world can bring to us new information about the micro- and macroworld of matter that is congruent with findings of modern science. However, transpersonal states of this kind also have other fascinating dimensions; they are typically associated with philosophical, mythological, and spiritual insights and experiences. For example, they provide interesting new understandings about the animistic religions of many aboriginal cultures who consider all of nature—mountains, lakes, rivers, rocks—to be alive. Similarly, medieval alchemy and homeopathic medicine, which see deep connections between material substances and psychospiritual states, can suddenly be seen in a new light. For people who have experienced contact with inorganic matter in non-ordinary states of consciousness, these systems of thought are based not on naive speculation but on direct experience and intuitive insight.
During experiential sessions in non-ordinary states of consciousness, two natural forces appear again and again: water and fire. It is interesting to note here that these elements also appear repeatedly in spiritual literature, each having apparently universal symbolic meanings.
In spiritual literature, water is often used as a metaphor to describe mystical states of consciousness. The parallels drawn often derive from the pure, fluid, pristine qualities of water in its natural state and its lack of boundaries. It seeks the lowest position in the world, and it has quiet, unassuming strength. It has great purifying and cleansing capacities, sharing with consciousness the paradoxical combination of immutability underlying endless change and transformation.
In a similar vein, fire is both an awesome force in the natural world and a powerful spiritual symbol. It has the potential to create and destroy; it can nourish and comfort or threaten and hurt. It can give light and it can blind. Under its influence objects are transformed, giving up their solid forms and turning into pure energy. In its most powerful manifestation—the sun—fire is a cosmic principle without which life would cease to exist. On the archetypal and mythological level, fire is seen as playing roles similar to those it plays in the physical world—the sustainer of life and a transformational force. Since time immemorial it has been worshiped in all its forms, from the humblest flicker of a candle to the fiery eruptions of volcanoes to the mysterious cosmic furnaces of the sun. In spiritual literature, fire and light are often used as metaphors for the creative source of the universe itself. In non-ordinary states of consciousness fire, like water, appears to represent those same cosmic forces that it symbolizes throughout spiritual literature.
Consciousness research also provides us with new insights about the sacred stature of various metals and stones, such as diamonds, emeralds, gold, and silver, and why these are frequently used to adorn sacred objects. Descriptions of paradise in many mythologies describe environments that abound with precious metals and stones. And the sacred scriptures of many traditions have used the stones or metals themselves as symbols of high spiritual experiences. In non-ordinary states in which people identify with these precious stones or metals, they repeatedly report that these states of consciousness have a brilliant, numinous, mystical quality.
Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley had a deep intuitive understanding of the connection between precious metals and stones and spiritual states of consciousness. In his famous lecture “The Visionary Experience,” he addressed the question of why precious stones are precious, and why a pragmatic culture like our own is willing to pay exorbitant prices for objects that have little or no practical value. He speculated that we do so because such objects serve as surrogates for the mystical experiences that our lives lack. In the lives we live they represent the closest we can come to the visionary experience, offering radiance, luster, ultimate purity, clarity, timelessness, and incorruptibility.
The following is an account of one person’s identification with amber, quartz crystal, and a diamond, successively. It illustrates the nature and complexity of experiences involving the inorganic world.
At this point of the session time seemed to have stopped. It suddenly came to my mind that I was experiencing what seemed to be the essence of amber. My visual field showed a homogeneous yellowish glow and I had a sense of peace, tranquility, and eternity. In spite of its transcendental nature, this state seemed to be related to life; it had a certain organic quality that is difficult to describe. I realized that the same is true for amber, which is a kind of organic time capsule. It is mineralized organic material—a resin that often contains organisms such as insects and plants, and preserves them in an unchanged form for millions of years.
Then the experience began to change and my visual environment was progressively clearer and clearer. I had a sense that instead of experiencing myself as amber I was now connecting with a state of consciousness related to a quartz crystal. It was a very powerful state, which somehow seemed to represent a condensation of some elementary forces of nature. I suddenly understood why crystals have such an important role in aboriginal cultures as shamanic power objects and why shamans consider crystals to be solidified light.
He thought about the Mitchell-Hedges skull, a perfect life-size replica of a human skull, a pre-Columbian ritual object found in the Guatemalan jungle, that has the reputation of having caused profound alterations of consciousness in many people who came in contact with it. It also made perfect sense to him that the first radio transmissions were mediated by crystals and that crystals play an important part in modern laser technology. He continued:
My state of consciousness underwent another process of purification and became absolutely pristine and radiant. I recognized that this was consciousness of a diamond. I realized that diamond is chemically pure carbon, an element on which all life as we know it is based. It seemed meaningful and important that it is created by extremely high temperatures and pressures. I had a very convincing sense that the diamond somehow contains all the information about nature and life in an absolutely pure, condensed, and abstract form, like the ultimate cosmic computer.
All the other physical properties of the diamond seemed to be pointing to its metaphysical significance—beauty, transparence, luster, permanence, unchangeability, and the capacity to transform white light into an amazing spectrum of colors. I felt that I understood why Tibetan Buddhism is called Vajrayana (vajra meaning “diamond” or “thunderbolt” and yana meaning “vehicle”); the only way I could describe this state of ultimate cosmic ecstasy was to refer to it as “diamond consciousness.” Here seemed to be all the creative intelligence and energy of the universe as pure consciousness existing beyond time and space. It was entirely abstract yet containing all the forms of creation.8
We can see from this description why transpersonal states of consciousness involving inorganic materials can provide such profound insights into ancient and aboriginal spiritual systems that include precious stones and metals in their mythologies. Similarly, if you have ever had the experience of identifying with water you will understand why this element has been so important in Taoism. If you have had transpersonal experiences with fire you will find it easy to comprehend why the Parsees saw it as sacred, why a variety of cultures worshiped volcanoes, and why the Sun is perceived as a supreme deity by so many peoples and religious groups.
Through experiential identification with granite, it is easy to see why the Hindus perceive the Himalayas as a gigantic reclining Shiva. One can get an entirely different sense of why various cultures have created colossal granite sculptures of their deities. These objects not only represent divine figures, they are the deities themselves since the materials from which they are shaped are intimately associated with vast, undifferentiated, imperturbable, and immutable consciousness of the cosmic creative principle in nature.
Gaia: The Experience of Planetary Consciousness
In a rare form of transpersonal experience, consciousness expands to include the Earth in its totality. People who have these experiences are deeply moved by the notion of our planet as a cosmic unity. They perceive the different aspects of our planet—geological, biological, psychological, cultural, and technological—as manifestations of a sustained effort to reach a higher level of evolution and self-actualization. It becomes clear that the processes on Earth are guided by a superior intelligence that far exceeds all human capacities, and that this intelligence deserves to be respected and trusted. We should be extremely cautious about our efforts to manipulate or control it from our limited human perspective. I am reminded here of the words of Lewis Thomas (from Lives of the Cell).
Viewed from the distance of the Moon, the astonishing thing about the Earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive…. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising Earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held aloft by the fire beneath. It has the organized, self-contained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the Sun.
The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent, conscious entity are corroborated by scientific evidence. Gregory Bateson, who created a brilliant synthesis of cybernetics, information and systems theory, the theory of evolution, anthropology, and psychology came to the conclusion that it was logically inevitable to assume that mental processes occurred at all levels in any system or natural phenomenon of sufficient complexity. He believed that mental processes are present in cells, organs, tissues, organisms, animal and human groups, eco-systems, and even the earth and universe as a whole.
Another writer-scientist, physicist J. E. Lovelock, hired by NASA to establish criteria for deciding whether or not there might be life forms in areas of the universe where they (NASA) were considering sending space probes, examined the information and decided that the Earth was itself a living, breathing organism. According to his findings, our planet behaves very much like a living cell. He showed that it metabolizes, and that it is “a self-regulating entity” with highly sophisticated homeostatic capabilities. He called the Earth an “intelligent being.” His evidence for this was based on his observations of the homeostatic functions.
Much of the routine operation of homeostasis, whether it be for the cell, the animal, or the entire biosphere, takes place automatically, and yet it must be recognized that some form of intelligence is required even within an automatic process, to interpret correctly information received about the environment…. If Gaia (the living, breathing, intelligent Earth) exists, then she is without doubt intelligent in this limited sense at least.9
While the objective evidence for the Gaia theory might not be sufficient to convince hardcore scientists, it is certainly supported by the existence of transpersonal experiences that are fully congruent with it. For example, in one of our five-day workshops in Holotropic Breathwork™, a young German woman had a persuasive experience of becoming the archetypal Great Mother Goddess. Then the experience developed further and she felt herself becoming planet Earth (Mother Earth). She reported that she felt no question at all that she had merged with and had become the consciousness of the Earth. She experienced herself as the Earth, as a living, breathing organism with an intelligence, an organism that was evolving toward a still higher level of awareness.
As the Earth consciousness she felt that the metals and minerals that were a part of her, constituted her skeleton. Similarly, the biosphere, all forms of life, was her flesh. She experienced within herself the circulation of water from the oceans to the clouds, from there into creeks and rivers and finally to the great seas. The water system was her blood and the meteorological changes, such as evaporation, air currents, and rainfall, ensured its circulation, the transport of nourishment, and cleansing. The communication between all living things, large and small, constituted her nervous system and brain.
Immediately after the experience, she described how important the healing rituals of primitive peoples had been to her in her experience as the Earth. She told how human activities had affected her, especially how dances, songs, and prayers performed by aborigines had brought great comfort. Once having returned to her everyday state of being, she found it difficult to imagine that the rituals had really been important, though in the state of identifying so closely with the Earth she was absolutely convinced of their importance to her overall welfare.
From Dissolving Physical Boundaries to Dissolving the Boundaries of Time
As we experience the spatial boundaries of our world dissolving in the transpersonal realm, we begin to also experience the dissolution of the temporal boundaries upon which we have come to depend in our everyday lives. Just as we can leap beyond physical boundaries, we can leap backward and forward through the years; we can visit our own lives, or the lives of others, as if all time existed only in a single moment.
While our perceptions of time and space are intertwined, there are subtle differences to look for as we experience these boundaries fading. Let us go forward now to explore some of these differences.