Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research 2 страница

 

Reconstructing his history, I found out that his major problems started at the time of his compulsory employment in Germany during World War II. The Nazis referred to this form of slave labor using people from occupied territories in hard dangerous work situations as Totaleinsetzung. At that time, two SS officers forced Peter at gun point to engage in their homosexual practices. When the war was over, Peter realized that these experiences created in him preference for homosexual intercourse experienced in the passive role. This gradually changed into fetishism for black clothes and finally into the complex obsession described above.

 

Fifteen consecutive psychedelic sessions revealed a very interesting and important COEX system underlying this problem. In its most superficial layers were Peter's more recent traumatic experiences with his sadistic partners. One of the accomplices whom he managed to recruit bound him with ropes, locked him into a cellar without food and water, and tortured him by flagellation and strangulation following his wish. Another one of these men hit Peter on his head, bound him with a string, and left him lying in a forest after having stolen his money.

 

Peter's most dramatic adventure happened with a man who promised to take him to his cabin in the woods that he claimed had just the cellar Peter wanted. When they were traveling by train to this man's weekend house, Peter was struck by his companion’s strange-looking bulky backpack. When the latter left the compartment and went to the bathroom, Peter stepped up on the seat and checked the suspect baggage. He discovered a complete set of murder weapons, including a gun, a large butcher knife, a freshly sharpened hatchet, and a surgical saw used for amputations. Panic-stricken, he jumped out of the moving train and suffered serious injuries. Elements of the above episodes formed the most superficial layers of Peter's most important COEX system.

 

A deeper layer of the same system contained Peter's memories from the Third Reich. In the sessions where this part of the COEX constellation manifested, he relived in detail his experiences with the homosexual SS officers with all the complicated feelings involved. In addition, he relived several other traumatic memories from WW II and dealt with the entire oppressive atmosphere of this period. He had visions of pompous Nazi military parades and rallies, banners with swastikas, ominous giant eagle emblems, scenes from concentration camps, and many others.

 

Then came layers related to Peter's childhood, particularly those involving punishment by his parents. His alcoholic father was often violent when he was drunk and used to beat him in a sadistic way with a large leather strap. His mother's favorite method of punishing him was to lock him into a dark cellar without food for long periods of time. All through Peter's childhood, she always wore black dresses; he did not remember her ever wearing anything else. At this point, Peter realized that one of the roots of his obsession seemed to be craving for suffering that would combine elements of punishment by both parents.

 

However, that was not the whole story. As we continued with the sessions, the process deepened and Peter confronted the trauma of his birth with all its biological brutality. This situation had all the elements that he expected from the sadistic treatment he was so desperately trying to receive: dark enclosed space, confinement and restriction of the body movements, and exposure to extreme physical and emotional tortures. Reliving of the trauma of birth finally resolved his difficult symptoms to such an extent that he could again function in life. The above COEX system also had some connections to elements of a transpersonal nature.

 

While the above example is more dramatic than most, it illustrates well the basic features characteristic for other COEX constellations. In experiential work, the COEX systems operate as functional wholes. While the person involved experiences the emotions and physical feelings characteristic of a particular constellation, the content of its individual layers emerges successively into consciousness and determines the specific nature of the experience.

 

Before we continue our discussion of the new extended cartography of the human psyche it seems appropriate to emphasize in this context a very important and remarkable property of holotropic states that played an important role in charting the unconscious and that is also invaluable for the process of psychotherapy. Holotropic states tend to engage something like an "inner radar," bringing into consciousness automatically the contents from the unconscious that have the strongest emotional charge, are most psychodynamically relevant at the time, and are available for processing at that particular time. This represents a great advantage in comparison with verbal psychotherapy, where the client presents a broad array of information of various kind and the therapist has to decide what is important, what is irrelevant, where the client is blocking, etc.

 

Since there is no general agreement about basic theoretical issues among different schools, such assessments will always reflect the personal bias of the therapist, as well as the specific views of his or her school. The holotropic states save the therapist such difficult decisions and eliminate much of the subjectivity and professional idiosyncrasy of the verbal approaches. This "inner radar" often surprises the therapist by detecting emotionally strongly charged memories of physical traumas and brings them to the surface for processing and conscious integration. This automatic selection of relevant topics also spontaneously leads the process to the perinatal and transpersonal levels of the psyche, transbiographical domains not recognized and acknowledged in academic psychiatry and psychology. The phenomena originating in these deep recesses of the psyche were well-known to ancient and pre-industrial cultures of all ages and greatly honored by them. In the Western world they have been erroneously attributed to pathology of unknown origin and considered to be meaningless and erratic products of cerebral dysfunction.

 

The Perinatal Level of the Unconscious

 

The domain of the psyche that lies immediately beyond (or beneath) the recollective-biographical realm has close connections with the beginning of life and its end, with birth and death. Many people identify the experiences that originate on this level as the reliving of their biological birth trauma. This is reflected in the name perinatal that I have suggested for this level of the psyche. It is a Greek-Latin composite word where the prefix peri-, means "near" or "around,” and the root natalis "pertaining to childbirth." This word is commonly used in medicine to describe various biological processes occurring shortly before, during, and immediately after birth. Thus the obstetricians talk, for example, about perinatal hemorrhage, infection, or brain damage. However, since traditional medicine denies that the child can consciously experience birth and claims that the event is not recorded in memory, one does not ever hear about perinatal experiences. The use of the term perinatal in connection with consciousness reflects my own findings and is entirely new (Grof 1975).

 

Academic psychiatry generally denies the possibility of a psychotraumatic impact of biological birth, unless the trauma is so serious that it causes irreversible damage to the brain cells. This is usually attributed to the fact that the cerebral cortex of the newborn is not myelinized, which means its neurons are not fully protected by sheaths of fatty substance called myelin. The assumption that the child does not experience anything during all the hours of this extremely painful and stressful event and that the birth process does not leave any record in the brain is astonishing, since it is known that the capacity for memory exists in many lower life forms that do not have a cerebral cortex at all. However, it is particularly striking in view of the fact that many current theories attribute great significance to nuances of nursing and to the early interaction between the mother and the child, including bonding. Such blatant logical contradiction appearing in rigorous scientific thinking is unbelievable and has to be the result of a profound emotional repression to which the memory of birth is subjected.

 

People, who reach in their inner explorations the perinatal level, start experiencing emotions and physical sensations of extreme intensity, often surpassing anything they consider humanly possible. As I mentioned before, these experiences represent a very strange mixture and combination of two critical aspects of human life -- birth and death. They involve a sense of a severe, life-threatening confinement and a desperate and determined struggle to free oneself and survive. The intimate connection between birth and death on the perinatal level reflects the fact that birth is a potentially life-threatening event. The child and the mother can actually lose their lives during this process and children might be born severely blue from asphyxiation, or even dead and in need of resuscitation.

 

As their name indicates, an important core of perinatal experiences is the reliving of various aspects of the biological birth process. It often involves photographic details and occurs even in people who have no intellectual knowledge about their birth. The replay of the original birth situation can be very convincing. We can, for example, discover through direct experience that we had a breech birth, that a forceps was used during our delivery, or that we were born with the umbilical cord twisted around the neck. We can feel the anxiety, biological fury, physical pain, and suffocation associated with this terrifying event and even accurately recognize the type of anesthesia used when we were born.

 

This is often accompanied by various physical manifestations that can be noticed by an external observer. The postures and movements of the body, arms, and legs, as well as the rotations, flections, and deflections of the head can accurately recreate the mechanics of a particular type of delivery, even in people without elementary obstetric knowledge. Bruises, swellings, and other vascular changes can unexpectedly appear on the skin in the places where the forceps was applied, the wall of the birth canal was pressing on the head, or where the umbilical cord was constricting the throat. The accuracy of ll these details can be confirmed if good birth records or reliable personal witnesses are available.

 

The spectrum of perinatal experiences is not limited to the elements that can be derived from the biological processes involved in childbirth. The perinatal domain of the psyche also represents an important gateway to the collective unconscious in the Jungian sense. Identification with the infant facing the ordeal of the passage through the birth canal seems to provide access to experiences involving people from other times and cultures, various animals, and even mythological figures. It is as if by connecting with the fetus struggling to be born, one reaches an intimate, almost mystical connection with other sentient beings who are in a similar difficult predicament.

 

Experiential confrontation with birth and death seems to result automatically in a spiritual opening and discovery of the mystical dimensions of the psyche and of existence. It does not seem to make a difference whether it happens symbolically, as in psychedelic and holotropic sessions and in the course of spontaneous psychospiritual crises ("spiritual emergencies") or in actual life situations, for example, in delivering women or in the context of near-death experiences (Ring 1984). The specific symbolism of these experiences comes from the Jungian collective unconscious, not from the individual memory banks. It can thus draw on any spiritual tradition of the world, quite independently from the subject's cultural or religious background and intellectual knowledge.

 

Perinatal phenomena occur in four distinct experiential patterns characterized by specific emotions, physical feelings, and symbolic images. Each of them is closely related to one of the four consecutive periods of biological delivery. At each of these stages, the baby undergoes a specific and typical set of experiences. In turn, these experiences form distinct matrices or psychospiritual blueprints whose content can manifest in holotropic states of consciousness and that we find echoing in individual and social psychopathology, religion, art, philosophy, politics, and other areas of our life. We can talk about these four dynamic constellations of the deep unconscious that are associated with the trauma of birth as Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPMs).

 

Each perinatal matrix has its specific biological, psychological, archetypal, and spiritual aspects. In addition to having specific content of their own, BPMs also function as organizing principles for experiences from other levels of the unconscious. They have specific connections with related postnatal memories arranged in COEX systems and with the archetypes of the Great Mother Goddess, Terrible Mother Goddess, Hell, and Heaven, as well as racial, collective, and karmic memories, and phylogenetic experiences.

 

BPM I (Primal Union with Mother).

 

This matrix is can be referred to as the "amniotic universe;" it is related to the intrauterine existence before the onset of delivery. The fetus does not have an awareness of boundaries or the ability to differentiate between the inner and outer. This is reflected in the nature of the experiences associated with the reliving of the memory of the prenatal state. During episodes of undisturbed embryonal existence, people can have feelings of vast regions with no boundaries or limits. They can identify with galaxies, interstellar space, or the entire cosmos. A related experience is that of floating in the sea, identifying with various aquatic animals, such as fish, dolphins, or whales, or even becoming the ocean. This seems to reflect the fact that the fetus is essentially an aquatic creature. One might also have archetypal visions of Mother Nature - nature that is beautiful, safe, and unconditionally nourishing, like a good womb. This can involve visions of luscious orchards, fields of ripe corn, agricultural terraces in the Andes, or unspoiled Polynesian islands. Mythological images from the collective unconscious that often appear in this context portray various celestial realms and paradises.

 

The persons reliving episodes of intrauterine disturbances, or "bad womb" experiences, have a sense of dark and ominous threat and often feel that they are being poisoned. They might see images that portray polluted waters and toxic dumps, reflecting the fact that many prenatal disturbances are caused by toxic changes in the body of the pregnant mother. Sequences of this kind can be associated with visions of frightening demonic entities. Those who relive more violent interferences with prenatal existence, such as imminent miscarriage or attempted abortion, usually experience some form of universal threat or bloody apocalyptic visions of the end of the world. This again reflects the intimate interconnections between events in one's biological history and Jungian archetypes.

 

The following account of a high dose psychedelic session can be used as a typical example of a BPM I experience, opening at times into the transpersonal realm.

 

All that I was experiencing was an intense sense of malaise resembling a flu. I could not believe that a high dose of LSD that in my previous sessions had produced dramatic changes — to the point that on occasions I was afraid that my sanity or even my life was at stake — could evoke such a minimal response. I decided to close my eyes and observe carefully what was happening. At this point, the experience seemed to deepen, and I realized that what with my eyes open appeared to be an adult experience of a viral disease now changed into a realistic situation of a fetus suffering some strange toxic insults during its intrauterine existence.

 

I was greatly reduced in size, and my head was disproportionately larger than the rest of my body and extremities. I was suspended in a liquid milieu and some harmful chemicals were being channeled into my body through the umbilical area. Using some unknown receptors, I was detecting these influences as noxious and hostile to my organism. While this was happening, I was aware that these toxic "attacks" had something to do with the condition and activity of the maternal organism. Occasionally, I could distinguish influences that appeared to be due to ingestion of alcohol, inappropriate food, or smoking and others that I perceived as chemical mediators of my mother's emotions —anxieties, nervousness, anger, conflicting feelings about pregnancy, and even sexual arousal.

 

Then the feelings of sickness and indigestion disappeared, and I was experiencing an ever-increasing state of ecstasy. This was accompanied by a clearing and brightening of my visual field. It was as if multiple layers of thick, dirty cobwebs were being magically torn and dissolved, or a poor-quality movie projection or television broadcast were being brought into focus by an invisible cosmic technician. The scenery opened up, and an incredible amount of light and energy was enveloping me and was streaming in subtle vibrations through my whole being.

 

On one level, I was a fetus experiencing the ultimate perfection and bliss of a good womb and could also switch to the experience of a newborn fusing with a nourishing and life-giving breast of my mother. On another level, I was witnessing the spectacle of the macrocosm with countless pulsating and vibrating galaxies and, at the same time, I could actually become it and be identical with it. These radiant and breathtaking cosmic vistas were intermingled with experiences of the equally miraculous microcosm from the dance of atoms and molecules to the origins of life and the biochemical world of individual cells. For the first time, I was experiencing the universe for what it really is — an unfathomable mystery, a divine play of energy. Everything in this universe appeared to be conscious and alive.

 

For some time, I was oscillating between the state of a distressed, sickened fetus and blissful and serene intrauterine existence. At times, the noxious influences took the form of insidious demons or malevolent creatures from the world of fairy tales. During the undisturbed episodes of fetal existence, I experienced feelings of basic identity and oneness with the universe. It was the Tao, the Beyond that is Within, the Tat tvam asi (Thou art That) of the Upanishads. I lost my sense of individuality; my ego dissolved, and I became all of existence.

 

Sometimes this experience was intangible and contentless, sometimes it was accompanied by many beautiful visions —archetypal images of Paradise, the ultimate cornucopia, golden age, or virginal nature. I became a dolphin playing in the ocean, a fish swimming in crystal-clear waters, a butterfly floating in mountain meadows, and a seagull gliding by the sea. I was the ocean, animals, plants, and the clouds — sometimes all these at the same time.

 

Nothing concrete happened later in the afternoon and in the evening hours. I spent most of this time feeling one with nature and the universe, bathed in golden light that was slowly decreasing in intensity.

BPM II (Cosmic Engulfment and No Exit or Hell).

 

Individuals reliving the onset of biological birth typically feel that they are being sucked into a gigantic whirlpool or swallowed by some mythic beast. They might also experience that the entire world or cosmos is being engulfed. This can be associated with images of devouring archetypal monsters, such as leviathans, dragons, giant snakes, tarantulas, and octopuses. The sense of overwhelming vital threat can lead to intense anxiety and general mistrust bordering on paranoia. Another experiential variety involves the theme of descending into the depths of the underworld, the realm of death, or hell. As Joseph Campbell so eloquently described, this is a universal motif in the mythologies of the hero's journey (Campbell 1956).

 

A fully developed first stage of biological birth is characterized by a situation where the uterine contractions periodically constrict the fetus and the cervix is not yet open. Each contraction causes compression of the uterine arteries, and the fetus is threatened by lack of oxygen. Reliving this stage is one of the worst experiences a human being can have. One feels caught in a monstrous claustrophobic nightmare, exposed to agonizing emotional and physical pain, and has a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness. Feelings of loneliness, guilt, the absurdity of life, and existential despair reach metaphysical proportions. A person in this predicament often becomes convinced that this situation will never end and that there is absolutely no way out.

 

Reliving this stage of birth is typically accompanied by sequences that involve people, animals, and even mythological beings in a similar painful and hopeless predicament. One experiences identification with prisoners in dungeons and inmates of concentration camps or insane asylums, and senses the pain of animals caught in traps. He or she may even feel the intolerable tortures of sinners in hell and the agony of Jesus on the cross or of Sisyphus rolling his boulder up the mountain in the deepest pit of Hades. It is only natural that someone facing this aspect of the psyche would feel a great reluctance to confront it. Going deeper into this experience seems like accepting eternal damnation. However, this state of darkness and abysmal despair is known from the spiritual literature as the Dark Night of the Soul, a stage of spiritual opening that can have an immensely purging and liberating effect.

 

The most characteristic features of BPM II in its extreme form can be illustrated by the following account.

 

The atmosphere seemed increasingly ominous and fraught with hidden danger. It seemed that the entire room started to turn and I felt drawn into the very center of a threatening whirlpool. I had to think about Edgar Alan Poe's chilling description of a similar situation in "A Descent into the Maelstrom." As the objects in the room seemed to be flying around me in a rotating motion, another image from literature emerged in my mind—the cyclone that in Frank Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz sweeps Dorothy away from the monotony of her life in Kansas and sends her on a strange journey of adventure. There was no doubt in my mind that my experience also had something to do with entering the rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland, and I awaited with great trepidation what world I would find on the other side of the looking glass. The entire universe seemed to be closing in on me and there was nothing I could do to stop this apocalyptic engulfment.

 

As I was sinking deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of my own unconscious, I felt an onslaught of anxiety, turning to panic. Everything became dark, oppressive, and terrifying. It was as if the weight of the whole world was encroaching on me exerting incredible hydraulic pressure that threatened to crack my skull and reduce my body to a tiny compact ball. A rapid fugue of memories from my past cascaded through my brain showing me the utter futility and meaninglessness of my life and existence in general. We are born naked, frightened, and in agony and we will leave the world the same way. The existentialist were right! Everything is impermanent, life is nothing else but waiting for Godot! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity!

 

The discomfort I felt turned to pain and the pain increased to agony. The torture intensified to the point where every cell in my body felt like it was being bored open with a diabolic dentist's drill. Visions of infernal landscapes and devils torturing their victims suddenly brought to me the awareness that I was in Hell. I thought of Dante's Divine Comedy: "Abandon all hope ye who enter!" There seemed to be no way out of this diabolical situation; I was forever doomed without the slightest hope for redemption.

 

 

BPM III (The Death-Rebirth Struggle).

 

Many aspects of this rich and colorful experience can be understood from its association with the second clinical stage of delivery, the propulsion through the birth canal after the cervix opens and the head descends. Beside the elements that are easily comprehensible as natural derivatives of the birth situation, such as sequences of titanic struggle involving strong pressures and energies or scenes of bloody violence and torture, there are others that require special explanation. Here belongs particularly sexual imagery, satanic scenes, and the encounter with fire; all these motifs are typically associated with this matrix.

 

There seems to be a mechanism in the human organism that transforms extreme suffering, particularly when it is associated with suffocation, into a strange form of sexual arousal. This explains why a large variety of sexual experiences and visions often occur in connection with the reliving of birth. One can feel a combination of sexual excitement with pain, aggression, or fear, experience various sadomasochistic sequences, rapes, and situations of sexual abuse, or see pornographic images. The fact that, in the final stages of birth, the fetus can encounter various forms of biological material — blood, mucus, urine, and even feces — seems to account for the fact that these elements also play a role in death-rebirth sequences.

 

Another category of motifs associated with BPM III includes archetypal elements from the collective unconscious, particularly those related to heroic figures and deities representing death and rebirth. At this stage, many people have visions of Jesus, his suffering and humiliation, the Way of the Cross, and the Crucifixion, or even actually experience full identification with his suffering. Others connect with such mythological themes and figures as the Egyptian divine couple Isis and Osiris, the Greek deities Dionysus, Attis, and Adonis, the Sumerian goddess Inanna and her descent into the underworld, the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, or the Mayan Hero Twins from the Popol Vuh.

 

The frequent appearance of motifs related to various satanic rituals and the Witches' Sabbath seems to be related to the fact that reliving this stage of birth involves the same strange combination of emotions, sensations, and elements that characterizes the archetypal scenes of the Black Mass and of Walpurgis’ Night: sexual arousal, aggression, pain, sacrifice, and encounters with ordinarily repulsive biological material — all associated with a peculiar sense of sacredness or numinosity.

 

Just before the experience of (re)birth, people often encounter the motif of fire. This is a somewhat puzzling symbol. Its connection with biological birth is not as direct and obvious as are many of the other symbolic elements. One can experience fire either in its ordinary form or in the archetypal variety of purifying flames. At this stage of the process, the person can have the feeling that his or her body is on fire, have visions of burning cities and forests, or identify with immolation victims. In the archetypal version, the burning seems to have a purgatorial quality. It seems to radically destroy whatever is corrupted and prepare the individual for spiritual rebirth.

 

Many of the symbolic themes associated with BPM III are described in the following account.

 

Although I never really clearly saw the birth canal, I felt its crushing pressure on my head and all over, and I knew with every cell of my body that I was involved in a birth process. The tension was reaching dimensions that I had not imagined were humanly possible. I felt unrelenting pressure on my forehead, temples, and occiput, as if I were caught in the steel jaws of a vise. The tensions in my body also had a brutally mechanical quality. I imagined myself passing through a monstrous meat grinder or a giant press full of cogs and cylinders. The image of Charlie Chaplin victimized by the world of technology in Modern Times briefly flashed through my mind.

 

Incredible amounts of energy seemed to be flowing through my entire body, condensing and releasing in explosive discharges. I felt an amazing mixture of feelings; I was suffocated, frightened, and helpless, but also furious and strangely sexually aroused. Another important aspect of my experience was a sense of utter confusion. While I felt like an infant involved in a vicious struggle for survival and realized that what was about to happen was my birth, I was also experiencing myself as my delivering mother. I knew intellectually that being a man I could never have an experience of delivering, yet I felt that I was somehow crossing that barrier and that the impossible was becoming reality.