Understanding
How
What They All Have in Common
If we consider all the great healers of the New Thought movement, with
all their different styles, we can see some consistent patterns.
First, they all have let go of the belief that we are “stuck” with our
bodies and its symptoms.
Each and every one of these healers has understood that our bodies
are the reflection or manifestation of our mental processes.
Second, they all have believed that it’s possible to change the condition
of the body by changing those mental processes. When Quimby “reasoned”
with someone or Nona Brooks “went into the light” or Louise Hay encourages
new affirmations, they have been working to change the mental processes
of the person as a means to change the body’s condition.
Third, they all believe in a higher power, a spiritual presence that
is infinite intelligence and wisdom, whose “body” is the universe and so
who is present throughout the universe—in the smallest and in the greatest
parts of it.
Fourth, they all trust that power to be a loving, supportive force for
good in the life of the individual—and in humanity as a whole.
They have believed that it’s our own thinking that creates the problems
of our lives and the world, and that if we can shift those thoughts, we
can eliminate many of the problems.
Fifth, they all rely on the capacity of the individual to let go of
old patterns of thought and replacing them with new ones—thus manifesting
a life based on the new thought patterns. And they recommended focusing
on the perfect idea of the divine as a way to maintain the new pattern.
Sixth, they all experienced a capacity to touch others’ minds through
their own thoughts.
They believed there is a connection between individuals that underlies
the verbal and physical connection, and they worked at that level to help
shift the thoughts of the people who came to them.
So, each and every one of these healers has worked to change their own
thoughts about their own bodies, and in doing so to change the thoughts
of those who come to them so that they, too, can experience wholeness and
wellbeing.
20th Century Science
Seekers of knowledge (the meaning of the word “scientist”) have, in
the past 75 years, found ways to observe the infinitessimally small and
the tremendously huge. They’ve measured the infinitessimally small patterns
of the molecules and atoms and sub-atomic particles that make up the matter
around us. And they’ve charted the tremendously huge patterns of stars
and galaxies and clusters of galaxies that swirl around us over distances
we can’t even count, much less comprehend.
Scientists such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, and
Stephen Hawking have developed whole new understandings of the way the
universe is structured. Others, such as James Watson, Francis Crick and
Candace Pert, have explored the many patterns of our human bodies, from
the first pair of molecules that come together in the womb through the
complex web of nerve cells and chemicals that allow us to feel and move
and speak and listen to each other.
And folks like Rachel Carson, Howard and Eugene Odum, James Lovelock
and Lynn Margulis have helped us understand the complex patterns that make
the earth a place where we can live and thrive and make homes for generations
to come.
Nearly all of what we know about the vast expanses of outer space and
the inner space of the atom has been discovered in the twentieth century.
Most of what we know about how the human body develops and maintains
itself emerged over the same years.
Our understanding of the earth—its climate patterns and the floating
plates of rock that our continents rest on—has come together in the years
since World War II. All of
our communications technologies—our worldwide telephone links and radio
networks, our televisions and calculators and computer networks—were put
in place in the last three decades of the century.
And all of those understandings—and the technologies that derived from
them—are the result of a few individuals looking for patterns—or seeing
them where others did not.
Identifying
A New Pattern
For nearly three hundred years, ever since Isaac Newton developed his
“fluxions” to explain how the planets move around the sun, scientists and
engineers have known how to calculate the shape of the arc that the ammunition
would take once it was fired. It’s
a well-known pattern, with a familiar “calculus,” or set of equations,
to describe it. So, in World
War II, the Allied military forces decided that the way to prevent German
bombs from destroying England was to hire a bunch of people who understood
those equations and connect them, by radio, with the men aiming the guns
at the planes.
One of those people was Norbert Wiener, an American of German descent,
with Jewish relatives who were suffering under the Nazi government.
Every night, with dozens of others, he would take his place at the
radio, slide rule in hand, ready to take the numbers the gunners would
give him. Over and over again,
he would calculate the differential between the curve of the ammunition
being fired and the flight of the plane and give the gunner the specific
directions to point the gun so that they would hit the planes.
At the end of the war, Wiener went home to his first love. He wanted
to know how plants hold their shape and grow.
As he observed them, he noticed that, contrary to most people’s
assumption, plants are in constant motion: the leaves and blossoms change
their position according to the position of the sun.
He was fascinated.
Here were simple plants, without even a brain, tracking the sun
the same way that his gunners had used his calculations to track the planes!
He saw that, somehow, the plants were able to perceive the movement
of the sun, communicate that to the cells that held the leaves and blossoms
in position, and so control their position.
Wiener derived from this the idea that we could take a description of
one thing and use it to describe a similar behavior in a totally different
situation. Just
as he used the same set of equations to describe both an anti-aircraft
gun and a plant, he used other sets of equations to describe other previously
unrelated systems. He called this new pattern “cybernetics,” from the Greek
term cybernetes meaning “steersman” or “helmsman” (which the Romans
turned into gubernator, in Latin, which became governor in
English). He defined it as
“the science of communication and control in living and machine systems.”
With the publication of these ideas, Wiener launched a whole new way
of thinking in the natural and social sciences, creating an opening for
others to explore similar patterns.
A series of conferences was held. A neurologist
from Scotland shared his descriptions of how communication happens within
an individual brain and between two people. A team
of anthropologists shared how common patterns could be described in very
different cultures. An economist
shared how cycles in the economy of a country could be described as similar
patterns of communication and control.And dozens of others put forth ideas and possibilities
that became the basis for everything from thermostats to cruise-controls,
from automatic pilots to Cruise missiles, from micro-chips to the internet,
from bio-feedback to genetic engineering, and from factory robots to planetary
climate control theories.
A
New World View
Prior to Wiener’s discovery, scientists were looking for patterns in
the structure of things.
They looked at things like skeleton and skin and blood when considering
a body. Or things
like bark and branches and roots and leaves when considering a plant.
They looked at how one plant was similar to another, or one animal
was like another, or two stars had similar characteristics, or two cultures
had similar language or political process, to develop taxonomies
of relationships between them.
With the introduction of cybernetics, people began to look for patterns
in the behavior of things.
A baby human behaves similarly to a baby dolphin or elephant.
A family of chimpanzees acts in many of the same ways as a family
of humans. Water
flowing through a system of dams and reservoirs can be described in the
same terms as electricity in a system of capacitors and switches.
A boat on a river, avoiding obstacles and correcting its course
as it makes its way to a dock, is the same as a robot navigating its way
across a cluttered floor and correcting its course as it moves to a particular
spot.
The most important behavior that Wiener identified was the mechanism
by which the plant “fed back” information from the “light sensor” cells
to the “position” cells, telling them which direction to move.
This “feedback control” system is the basis for the robot’s ability
to move across the floor, as well as the thermostat’s to regulate the temperature
in a room or engine. It’s the basis for an airplane’s (or rocket’s or missile’s)
autopilot, an automobile’s cruise control, a body’s blood pressure (and
temperature and hormone level) control, a factory’s production control,
and countless other systems in our world.
The underlying concept, called “circular causality”—the outcome of one
event affecting the next event—provided a launching pad for the fields
of ecology, computer modeling, and psychoneuroimmunology, to name a few.
And, as those fields were explored, new patterns of behavior were identified.
The concept of “system” was refined, to “a set of elements interrelating
to function as a whole.” Some
systems, like factory robots or cruise controls, are controlled from the
outside. Others, like plants,
societies, and the planet as a whole, seem to be controlled from within.
These latter were called “self-maintaining” systems. First
defined by Magoroh Maruyama, an anthropologist from Japan, such systems
have multiple feedback loops. Rather than having a “goal” or “ideal” set
from the outside, each element of the system relates to the others in ways
that sustains the whole set of relationships over time. A forest, for example,
with all its different plants, animals, and micro-organisms, maintains
itself through the balance of the interactions between all those elements.
A city is maintained through the interaction of people, products, wastes,
and systems to manage them.
In such a system, some of the relationships form loops: the initial
element is affected by its relationships with others (e.g., an increase
in number of people increases modernization increases immigration increases
number of people and a decrease in number of people ultimately leads to
a further decrease). Each element acts in its own interest, but together,
they form a system of balances and reinforcing activities.
In time, some systems were seen to come into being without any outside
direction. Like
groups of students forming a new club, they not only maintain themselves,
they organize themselves. These “self-organizing” systems have their own
common patterns, primary among them being “cognition,” or the development
of new processes out of a comparison of the results of old ones with the
environment around the system.
If we look at the development of life, we can see that single-celled
organisms “organize” themselves from a set of information coded in their
DNA molecules, with new processes developing out of old ones until the
cell matures and moves into the process of creating new cells.
If we look at the development of communities, we can see that individual
households meet together periodically and, as the population increases,
take on new processes and structures to support those processes, organizing
themselves according to some agreed-upon standards of morality and political
behavior.
These new patterns provide a view of the world as a dynamic set of processes,
rather than a static structure.
Constant motion and change are seen as underlying what used to be
seen as fixed and unchanging objects.
Where once we described roots and branches and leaves, now we see
oxygen-producing, moisture-collecting, and soil-transforming processes.
Where once we described fixed continents on a solid ball of rock,
now we see tectonic plates drifting on a semi-liquid core, sometimes scraping
each other and sometimes moving apart.
Where once we described human bodies with fixed characteristics,
now we see multiple systems of cells that are constantly being replaced
and regenerated.
New
Ways of Perceiving
In this world of patterns of processes, we somehow continue to perceive
structure and form.
We see a tree, not a soil-transforming process.
We see a river, not a water-moving process. We see a body, not self-maintaining
systems of cells.
The fact that we see these things says more about who we are in relation
to them than it does about the objects we are seeing.
As human bodies, we have developed as a part of and along with these
processes and our five senses have developed in cooperation with them.
We are, in a sense, part of a self-organizing system called “the
world I live in.”
Having evolved and matured on this planet, we cannot perceive the forests,
rivers, air, water, light, dark, stars, sun, etc. around us as anything
other than our senses have evolved to see them as.
It serves us to experience a tree as a solid object that gives us
shade and shelter. It serves
the tree, as well. If we didn’t, we might walk through it or otherwise
interfere with its processes (more frequently than we already do).
We cannot, that is, except through our imagination—and the tools we
invent that extend our sensory input.
We cannot, for example, see a single cell just by focusing our vision
in the direction of our skin or a drop of water, but we can imagine
what it might take to do so and invent a microscope that allows us to see
it. We cannot
see a subatomic particle. We
can, however, imagine what it might take to be able to do so and build
the equipment that tracks, and provides us images of, an electron’s or
even smaller part of an atom’s behavior.
If we do these things—if we allow our imaginations to consider what
the universe might be like beyond the range of our senses and then build
equipment to help us test our imaginings with our senses—we find that,
everything that we once thought was static, is changing. More, everything
we once thought was solid is mostly empty space!
Time,
Space, and Distances
How can this be?
Consider, for a moment, the size of the Sun and solar system.
The Earth is about 8,000 miles across or 25,000 miles around.
It would take about 13 million Earths to fill the Sun, which
is about 93 million miles away.
Venus is slightly smaller than Earth and about 63 million miles
from the Sun. Mars
is even smaller, and about 105 million miles from the Sun. And Pluto is
about 100 times further out, most of the time.
The next nearest star is 4 light-years away—that is, 60 seconds
x 60 minutes x 24 hours x 365 days x 4 years x 186,000 miles.
That’s a lot of space! And we’re in a relatively crowded section
of the galaxy!
Now, consider the structure of an atom.
The electrons in an atom are proportionately as far from the nucleus
as Pluto is from the Sun, and even smaller in comparative size.
So there’s far more space per unit of matter in an atom than in
the solar system. What’s more, the electrons aren’t very often more solid
than a cloud of energy, reducing the amount of matter even more.
If we step up in scale from an atom to a molecule, we find overlapping
electron clouds connecting distant nuclei. If we were the size of a neutron
and could travel around inside even the most complex molecules, it would
be like traveling from star to star in our galaxy: lots of empty space
and not much solid to stand on.
Not
Material Structures, But Energy Systems
In fact, it seems that the most useful way to think about atoms and
molecules is not as solid structures, at all, but as ever-changing patterns
of energy that tend to come together in a particular way more often than
not.
Once a pattern, or system, of energy has formed, there may be shifts
in the flows within it, as well.
So Wiener’s “causal loop” model may be used to explain our new,
non-solid world, as well as the old solid one that our physical senses
and “Mother Culture”taught us to perceive.
In the presence of constantly changing or increasing flows of energy,
an energy system may increase in complexity, may simply let the energy
flow through, or may push itself apart by amplifying the energy flows through
itself faster and faster.
Cause
and Effect Are Not What They Seem.
In the world in which most
of us grew up, the rules, put forth by Renee Descartes and Isaac Newton
in the 1600s, were that, if one knew the original cause, one could always
determine the effect—and that if one knew enough about the effect, one
could, ultimately, determine the cause (the basis for detective stories!).
With enough information, we were told, we could predict any past,
or any future, from the present. These ideas were called determinism.
By the beginning of the 20th
century, however, the scientists and engineers who had to work with this
model were finding that, regardless of their calculations, over time, all
their carefully designed systems would no longer function as predicted.
An engine breaks down. A weather system changes direction. Tires wear out.
While the rest of us continued to be taught a deterministic view
of the world, the builders and designers of it were learning about something
called entropy.
Briefly stated,
entropy is the tendency for a mechanical system to “lose” energy in the
form of heat every time something in it moves.
This means “you can never go back to where you started.”
We cannot simply do everything backward and have the same system
we started with—we’ve lost energy in going forward: parts have been worn
down, there’s less power (fuel, electricity) available in the storage,
etc.. It’s why
a car (or refrigerator or dishwasher), no matter how well designed and
maintained, ultimately breaks down.
This idea was so disturbing
that some folks extended it to everything.
They predicted that the universe must ultimately break down (in
billions of years) into a vast, homogeneous mass of cooling dust, called
thermal equilibrium—the “heat death of the universe.”
There was no way to stop it.
Entropy, they believed, was absolute, and all structures must ultimately
decay into heat.
Flemish Chemist
Ilya Prigogine didn’t accept this model.According to
Prigogine, mechanical structures and systems still tend to break down,
of course, but the process can be slowed—even reversed—in certain situations.
Those situations are systems that are way off balance— “far from
equilibrium”—through which energy constantly flows.
Then, what he called “dissipative structures” form and are sustained
by the energy available in their environment.
So organisms and organizations
become more complex and simple systems like the simple funnel at the drain
of the bathtub maintains and, for a time, increases, the order in its own
structure by increasing the disorder (using the energy) in the moving water
around it.
It’s almost as if the universe
were a flowing “stream” of energy, in which small turbulences become matter,
become stars, become galaxies and solar systems, become life forms, become
ecosystems and biospheres, become self-organizing beings.
And each of these structures may increase in complexity or decay
into dust, depending on their own internal structure and the shifts in
energy-flows through and around them in the universal “stream.”
Prigogine went
further and showed us that all living organisms and systems maintain or
increase their own order by creating disorder in the environment around
them. The cell, developing into a baby, increases its internal order by
increasing the disorder around it—inside the womb and its mother’s body.
Cities increase and maintain their internal order by increasing
the disorder (in the form of eradicated forests, garbage dumps, etc.) around
them.
Unpredictability
This tendency toward order
in dissipative structures is almost completely unpredictable.
The complexity of the feedback loops within them makes them super-sensitive
to small changes in the environment around them: the slightest fluctuation
in available energy can lead to a breakdown in the system or a transformation
to a new level of order.
The introduction of a catalyst in some chemical formulae, the increase
in available sunlight in some plant communities, the addition of a branch
to a fast-moving stream, the addition of a word or image to an idea—all
may lead to the formation of whole new structures, or to the breakdown
of existing structures into chaotic behaviors or heaps. We cannot know
in advance, which. In such structures the “law” of cause and effect (as
we were taught it) no longer applies.
Potential
Instead, we now
have a picture of the universe—and ourselves—in which a particular event
need not necessarily lead to any particular outcome.
In this universe, we only have probabilities of an event. A diagnosis
of “cancer,” for example, or “economic collapse,” rather than being a prediction
with a clearly determined outcome, may instead be a “critical fluctuation”
leading the system—our culture, our lives—to restructure into a new form.
The energy and information
flowing in and moving through and between various elements are constantly
increasing our system’s complexity.
As the complexity of the interactions between these elements increases,
changes in the energy and information entering the system have more impact
on the system—there’s less room to adjust and continue on as before.
Like a very delicately balanced “house of cards,” a tiny nudge can
cause major changes.
The complexity of the interactions
means that the slightest shift can lead the system to collapse or reform
into a new set of elements and interactions. The shift may be a word or
idea, a food or chemical, a form of light, or the sudden absence of any
of these. Which direction we, as systems, take at such “bifurcation points”
depends, in part, on our awareness of ourselves and our environment (our
consciousness) and on our knowing of the possibilities in the moment (our
cognition).
Consciousness
and Cognition.
Energy in its pure form is a flow of wave-particles.
These wave-particles have demonstrated some interesting characteristics
in the laboratories of quantum physicists. If a physicist sets up an experiment
to find out how many particles are emitted by an energy source, they act
like particles. If
the experiment is designed to test for waves, they act like waves.
Even if the experiment is changed after they’ve started on their way
to the measuring device, they appear in whichever form that the device
can measure. And, if the wave/particles are split into pieces, then all
the pieces respond to anything that happens to one of them, instantaneously—however
far apart they are.
Consciousness
These subatomic “wav-icles”—the smallest thing we know—seem to be making
choices about how to “show up” in these experiments.
They seem, therefore, to have a form of mind, or consciousness.These things that are too small to be seen by even the
most powerful equipment seem to be aware of how an experiment is set up
and adjust their behavior accordingly.
If we look at a much larger system—a single cell, like an amoeba—we
find that, though it lacks eyes, still it perceives light and dark and
threatening shapes and substances.
And though it lacks a brain, still it behaves purposefully It gathers
food, moves in the direction of food and away from danger, and reproduces
when it has begun to fail or the environment is supportive of new life.
And if we look at the other end of the spectrum, say our own Industrial
Culture, we see a system that takes in matter, information, and energy
to maintain itself, moving to where those things are located, avoiding
immediate dangers, etc..
Consciousness, it seems, is present throughout all systems—all energy
patterns—from the smallest and simplest to the complexities of humanity
and our cultures. In
terms of awareness and purposive behavior, the atomic structure of a car
may be said to have all the consciousness of its human counterpart.
Consciousness is even present in a “quantum vacuum” (a space from
which all atoms and particles and energy has been removed) causing new
wave-particles to “pop” into it at seemingly random intervals, usually
to “pop” out just as quickly, but sometimes to join up with other wave-particles
in the area.
We can say, therefore, that the universe has consciousness—is a “field
of infinite possibility”out of which all matter and energy take form—and that this
consciousness is present in and through all space and time.
This universal consciousness shows up in various forms and patterns
of matter and energy, including the particular form we call human beings.
It enables the patterns we are part of to maintain themselves and
it provides the matter and energy for new patterns to be formed. We can
say, then, that in order for a system to maintain itself, it must be conscious;
that is, aware of itself in its environment and behaving in alignment with
its purpose to maintain itself.
Cognition
Cognition, however, goes beyond awareness and purposive behavior into
knowing and knowing that we know. Cognition in its rudimentary form is
what leads a single cell to develop into an infant in the womb and the
cells of a fingertip to know when to curve around and meet the other side.
In order for a system to create itself, to be self-organizing,
it must know—it must perceive itself and its environment and remember that
pattern. But it also must perceive its options; it must act not only in
alignment with its own maintenance, but with the achievement of the possibilities
those options represent. Cognition
is essential to becoming a self-organizing system and essential to remaining
self-organizing. It is the fundamental distinction between a living system
and a nonliving system.
Cognition in a more advanced form is what causes a mother to know how
to love a child. It
is an emergent property of the relationship between them and, as such,
it increases as the relationship becomes more complex. It’s a process of
emergence, of discovering from one step, the next step.
Cognition results from complexity and leads to increasing complexity.
It requires a complex set of interactions in order to emerge and its emergence
creates more complexity in those interactions—as well as increased potential
for new interactions.
Cognition is a process that includes the activity of the brain but is
not located in the brain.
It’s located everywhere in the organism at once.
Energy
Systems with Cognition
So, since we are not the solid beings we have believed ourselves to
be, but energy systems instead, cognition is a process in the pattern of
energy that we are.
Much more than the consciousness of our individual wave-particle
components, we are a dissipative structure of those individual consciousnesses—in
a synergy that’s far more than the sum of its parts. We are capable of
cognition.
As energy systems, therefore, we are conscious of our environment and
behave purposefully within it.
And as cognitive systems, we
¨
are aware of the possible states of our system and of its
environment,
¨
are capable of choosing one state over another, and
¨
modify our selves and our environment within the range of
those possible states.
Our continued development (even existence!) depends on our behaving
as the cognitive systems we are. The more fully cognitive we are—of ourselves,
our environment, and the possibilities therein—the more likely we are to
be affected by a small fluctuation in the flow of energy and information
on which we depend for our existence.As a result, the more cognitive we are, the more potential
we have for transforming, rather than decaying, in the presence of a critical
fluctuation in our environment.
Archetypal
Behaviors
Like all systems, human beings generally continue to re-create what
is familiar—unless and until we decide that such structures no longer work
for us. As a result of this tendency to recreate the familiar, certain
behavior patterns have been recreated over and over again, through time
and across cultures. We call them archetypes.
Trying to understand repeated behaviors in businesses, Peter Senge and
his group have identified eight common “archetypes.”In each of them, the actual outcome differs significantly
from the intended outcome due to the reinforcing (or balancing) behaviors—the
multiple feedback loops in the system.
One of the most common is what Senge has called “Shifting the Burden.”
It’s the classic addiction pattern. We feel uncomfortable; we find something
that makes us feel better; the next time we feel uncomfortable we do the
same thing; until the only way to not feel uncomfortable is to do that
same thing over and over again. And, as in any addiction, the goal of the
system becomes “getting the fix” rather than the long-term maintenance
of the system. Ultimately, the system decays and the person—or company—dies.
A variation on this one is the “Fixes that Fail” archetype, in which
the solution used to solve a problem symptom has unintended consequences
that ultimately make the problem worse.
For example, taking anti-inflammatory medications reduces the discomfort
of swelling for the time being, but it prevents the body from sending healing
and cleansing fluids to the sore tissue, prolonging, and in come cases
preventing, the healing process.
Perhaps the most destructive pattern is the “Escalation” archetype.
One person does something that the other perceives as a threat;
the threatened party then does something defensive which causes the first
party to feel threatened and act defensively, which reinforces the original
assumption of threat and causes the escalation of defensive behavior.
The “Cold War” activities of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. are the most
frightening example of this archetype. Each nation built more and more
destructive weapon systems in the belief that the other would be prevented
from attacking them by the shear power of their defensive systems to destroy
the attacking country (not to mention the rest of the world!).
The most common examples can be found in the daily interactions
of parents and teenagers or husband and wife.
What each of these archetypes have in common is that, in the name of
survival, the people doing them are actually destroying the system they
are. Rather than
observing the range of possibilities and choosing the one that has the
greatest potential for achieving optimum well-being, they take a simple,
direct action that, ultimately leaves them worse off than they started.
Archetypes as Form in Consciousness
The concept of archetype emerged from a psychotherapist’s attempt to
make sense out of the patterns he saw in the thousands of dreams his patients
described. Carl Jung was one of Freud’s students who took off on his own.
Working with patients in institutions and as individual clients,
he saw the same stories repeated countless times.
Then anthropologists began reporting the stories and dreams from
other cultures and he saw these same themes and patterns.
Themes like the wicked stepmother, the kidnapped maiden, the hero’s
journey, the battle with a dragon, and the sometimes-comforting-sometimes-terrifying
earth mother, were everywhere. One woman may consistently replay the “abandoned
maiden” script well into her seventies.
A man may be continually “slaying the dragon” in every new project,
even when he has a home and a wife and grandchildren—and a huge pension
plan. Jung called them archetypes because they were patterns, or types,
that “arched over” individuals and cultures.
Jung suggested that the existence of archetypes across cultures means
there is a common field of consciousness of which we all are part, and
transpersonal psychologists have developed and enhanced a variety of techniques
for understanding and assisting individuals and communities.
Jung suggested that, in addition to individual mind or consciousness,
which is the basis for and result of our personal experience, there is
a mind, or consciousness which all human beings, together, contribute to
and are affected by. He called
it the “collective consciousness” and, like the personal consciousness,
he divided it into the “collective sub-conscious” and the “collective super-conscious,”
with the “sub” relating to our physicality and the “super” relating to
our ideals.
Managing Consciousness
Experience shows that we can, to some extent, moderate the effect of
the collective consciousness on our own thoughts and behaviors by shifting
our awareness elsewhere.
If, for example, we concentrate—focus all our awareness—on a set
of words, or an image, or an idea, we can “tune out” the collective for
a time, or filter only the super-conscious inputs into our individual consciousness.
Prayer, then, would be the process of focusing our awareness on the
super-conscious, filtering out the collective subconscious.
And denial, as taught by Emilie Cady and other New Thought practitioners,is the process of turning our awareness away from the
collective subconscious, as the Biblical Jesus did when he said “Get thee
behind me, Satan!”
On the other hand, if we don’t “manage” our awareness, but allow it
to “drift” without intention or direction, or if we suddenly find our old
understandings of the world suddenly no longer working, we’re likely to
feel the influence of the collective more strongly.
In traditional religious terms, we might say that the collective super-conscious
was the realm of God and the angels, and the collective subconscious the
realm of Satan and the demons.As Jung found in his patients, if we don’t discipline
our awareness, we may be equally affected by both.
What we allow our thoughts to be open to becomes a part of us, whether
we are aware of it (“conscious” of it) or not—this is how archetypes happen.
And what we think becomes a part of us and, because all consciousness
is linked in the “field of pure potentiality,” part of the collective consciousness.
This is why the first task of any healing practice is to “manage” or
“discipline” our thinking.
Relationship
and Consciousness.
Transpersonal psychology grew out of these ideas during the 1970s.
Transpersonal psychologists work on the assumption that we are part
of a larger consciousness and affect each other in far more ways than we
can see in our physical behaviors. They encourage meditation, visualization,
and hypnosis as ways to clarify the patient’s patterns of interaction with
each other and the “collective consciousness,” and have been exploring
the work of shamans and other healers as ways to access and work with that
level of experience.
With the transpersonal psychologists, we can say that our patterns of
behavior are our patterns of relating.
Since all of us are part of one whole system—the universe—everything
is connected: we can never do just one thing; everything we do affects
everything else. So
there is no such thing as an action that doesn’t have an impact on others.
All action is relating.
Relating
as Cognitive Choice
When we believed that each of us was an isolated individual who occasionally
met or interacted with another individual, we set up behavior patterns
that assumed we could act as individuals and not affect others.
When we believed the world was a solid structure and plants and
animals were individual solid structures and we were separate from them,
we set a “habit” of behavior, a self-amplifying causal loop, that may be
destroying the energy pattern that sustains us.
Now that we know that nothing is solid, we can use our cognition to
choose a different pattern, building on understandings from other times
and cultures. We
can create a new balance and choose to be a self-maintaining, even a self-organizing,
system—in a continuing pattern of energy exchange with the other elements
of the system that we depend on. Now that we are becoming cognitive, we
can choose to consider other behaviors and create different “habits” based
on that new understanding.
One branch of psychotherapy, called “family systems therapy,” applies
these ideas within the framework of the interactions among the members
of a household.Rather than treating the individual “patient” in isolation,
these therapists call in the whole family.
Their goal is to identify the patterns of behavior that encourage
the “problem” which is being addressed—patterns that usually conform to
a known archetype. Often,
they find that the family member who has been identified as “sick” is the
one exhibiting the healthiest response to the overall pattern of behaviors
among the other family members.
Typically, the therapist will enroll the whole family in a new set of
behaviors in order to shift the dynamics and take the focus off the “sick”
member. In some
cases, more traditional therapies may go hand in hand with these behavioral
approaches, but in many cases, the behavior shift is sufficient to reverse
the “problem” situation.
If we go beyond the surface interactions, though, we begin to find that
the thoughts themselves are frequently a crucial part of the interaction.
The behavior pattern may result from an individual’s living out
an “archetypal script”—like the abandoned maiden or the warrior confronting
the dragon—repeatedly, in the belief that, somehow, that pattern is necessary
for their continued survival.
Jungian therapy can help with these patterns.
If we go even deeper, we may find an agreement in the “collective consciousness”
of the family members that the family’s survival as a unit in the larger
world depends on maintaining these patterns.
This is the realm of transpersonal psychology.
Transpersonal counselors usually suggest shifting the patient’s focus
from the behaviors of others in the group and concentrating on their own
experience. When patients use various tools to “stand outside” the experience
and “release attachment” to the events and the feelings associated with
them, they begin to operate from their own super-conscious and have access
to new insights from the collective super-conscious.
When patients act on those insights, they begin to shift their feelings
from the usual anger and blame—linked with the subconscious—to new levels
of love and forgiveness—linked with the super-conscious.
This shift in consciousness usually results in a transformation
of the pattern of interaction—whether or not the change is expressed verbally
to the other members of the group.
Our relationships with each other, therefore, are not just a function
of our words and actions, but also our thinking and emotions—whatever is
going on in our consciousness.
Many of us have known this at an intuitive level, but have not been
able to understand it. Some “sensitives” can “feel” a person with deep
emotional issues from several feet away.
Some can “feel” them simply by focusing their attention on them,
wherever they may be.
Some people can consciously affect the mind or body of another through
their hands by touching them—and some by just imagining they are touching
them.More and more studies are showing that hospital patients
who are prayed for—even when they don’t know it, do much better than those
who are not.And, most people can “feel” when someone important to
them is thinking about them—then are surprised when they hear from that
person or see them within a few minutes or hours. We
are truly relating all the time.
Healing Through Cognition
In his book New Science of Life Rupert Sheldrake proposes a “field”
of “morphic resonance” (morpho coming from the Greek for “form”
or “shape”). Whenever something
occurs in nature or in our experience, he suggests, that occurrence increases
the probability of similar occurrences around the world.
His classic example is the training of rats to perform a new exercise.
Once it happens in New York, for example, rats in England learn
the same new exercise faster. In
chemistry, once one secretive scientist has, after years of effort, synthesized
a new compound, others, not even knowing it has been done elsewhere, synthesize
the same compound more rapidly and easily.
These experiences are, Sheldrake suggests, the result of
“morphogenic fields” (“form-creating,” morpho being “form”
and genic being “creating”) that are generated by the event and
magnified by its repetition.
These “fields” seem to be electromagnetic in form—like the field
around a magnet or around our bodies.
They seem to be present around the world virtually instantaneously
after the event. And, while
they have not yet been measured, their effects have been tested many times
since Sheldrake published his ideas.
Jung’s “collective consciousness” and Sheldrake’s “morphogenic fields”
appear to be different descriptions of the same system.
The thought and action of an individual being occurs within the
field of consciousness of all humanity, which is part of the field of consciousness
of the Earth, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Solar
System, which is part of the field of consciousness of the Milky Way, which
is part of the field of consciousness of the Universe.
Any change in the experience, or consciousness of the individual,
then, is a change in the whole, which then leads to increase likelihood
of such experiences elsewhere in the whole.
Equally, the patterns of the whole impinge upon the individual, encouraging
us to think and act in accordance with the morphogenic fields—the fields
of consciousness—that are already in place.
If we are merely conscious (simply maintaining ourselves as systems),
we think and act in accordance with the patterns in these fields. We “go
along with the crowd,” “keeping up with the Joneses.” It takes effort to
act in a way that is different from the norm.
Yet at every moment, we have the opportunity to step outside of the
normal pattern and begin to use our cognitive ability to create a new self,
with a new set of possibilities in relationship. Because most of us don’t
use the little opportunities, our lives—the system that is us— become increasingly
complex and “far from equilibrium.” If there are fluctuations in the system
and we are simply conscious, we may experience decay and, ultimately, death
as a result.
Alternatively, a critical fluctuation—loss of a job, a diagnosis of
disease, loss of a loved one—may cause us to stop what we’ve been doing
(and thinking and feeling) and shift to a new level of functioning as a
result of that fluctuation.
If we act in our capacity as cognitive, self-creating systems, we
can guide that shift, transforming both our personal system and the patterns
of relationship we’re part of. We can create new morphogenic fields—new
patterns of consciousness—that make it easier for us and others to act
that way in the future.
Transforming
Ourselves
When any one of us begins to become aware that we are more than the
sum of activities and roles we took on as a member of our culture, we begin
the process of transformation.
When we begin to see the patterns of our relationships and behaviors
and decide to change them, we have become already a different system from
the person who blindly repeated the same old archetypes. When any of us
begins to actively use our cognitive ability to self-create, we are transformed
to a new level of system or beingness. When any new system or activity
is formed, more *** like it are likely to be formed soon after.
Ralph Waldo Emerson called it “Self-Reliance” and, in his famous essay
by that title (written some 50 years after the Constitution had been ratified),
called on every American, every human being, to create their own lives
on their own terms. He asked us to do this regardless of what the people
around us might say or think—with the realization that as we truly care
for ourselves, we necessarily care for our neighbors, as well.
Ways and Means
Today, we have many more tools and techniques available for us to use
as we begin to assess our previous patterns and select new ones.
We also have a wider range of challenges to deal with—if only because
of the sheer number of people around us, each day.
Unlike our forefathers, who depended on face-to-face meetings and
slow mail systems to exchange information, we can talk with anyone, anywhere
on the planet, at any time. We
have watched live coverage of wars half way around the world.
We eat fresh food grown on the other side of the world almost daily.
We can see and feel and hear physical connections between us and
the rest of the world all of the time—if we pay attention.
We can also use tools and techniques developed in other times and cultures.
The mental disciplines of the Hindus and Buddhists, developed thousands
of years ago on the other side of the planet, are available to us to still
our thoughts. The
mind-altering herbs used by Indigenous Americans and Africans for millennia
are available to us to break through rigid patterns of beliefs and assumptions.
The physical disciplines of athletes, hunters, and warriors from
time im-memorial are available to us, as well.
What’s needed is to actively choose. To acknowledge that our lives have
been shaped by accepting others’ beliefs and assumptions rather than discovering
our own. To still
their voices inside us long enough to discover our own.
To begin to act on our own understandings and insights instead of
theirs. To reinforce
in ourselves the results of those actions, so we can replace the system
of beliefs and assumptions that we once lived by with a new one, of our
own design.
And, once we’ve made a choice, once we’ve acted in the direction of
our own choosing,we need to weather the storm—of accusations, of apparent
loss, of breakdowns all around us—that is almost always the result of letting
go of a past and allowing a new kind of future.
This isn’t an “overnight” process.
Most people take months, even years, to release old patterns and
replace them with new ones. But
once the choice is made, once that first action is taken, it’s not really
possible to completely revert to the old pattern.
Everything is different from that point on. And the concept of morphic
resonance says that, once it has been done, the next time—for anyone—it
will be easier.
Putting It All Together
How can this be? Based on the model of the universe and consciousness
we’ve developed so far in this section, we can say the following:
1.
consciousness pervades the universe, in all forms of matter and
energy;
2.
our personal consciousness operates on a continuum from “sub” (pertaining
to matter/body) to “super”
(pertaining to energy/idea);
3.
in the moment of active choosing, our personal consciousness is
unified across the continuum from “sub” to “super;”
4.
when unified, our personal consciousness is fully connected with
the collective consciousness of humanity at every level;
5.
humanity’s collective consciousness is part of and connected with
all other consciousness throughout the universe;
6.
throughout the universe, subatomic wave/particles of matter and
energy respond instantaneously when any wave/particle they’ve been connected
to is changed, by thought or by action;
7.
therefore, the energy/matter of the universe takes the form called
for by our choice—just as energy takes the form of particles when physicists
are measuring particles and waves when they’re measuring waves.
So we live in a universe that, literally, answers our “beck and call.”
We are part of a great whole that is perfectly designed to grant
our every desire. In
fact, our desires are not separate from the desires of that whole—all is
one in consciousness and in relationship.
The trick to experiencing the universe that way is to become
fully cognitive—that is, to be clear about our possibilities and eliminate
any beliefs or desires in our sub-conscious mind that may “block” our full,
committed action in the direction of our preferences.
In this way, by transforming our thoughts and the underlying beliefs
and attitudes that sustain those thoughts, we transform our whole life
experience.
Transformation as Healing
And so, when we transform our whole life experience we have a choice:
we can continue to experience various disturbing symptoms, or not.
By transforming the consciousness that we are, we manifest a new
body-mind system. We can transform the body-mind system that our consciousness
is manifesting into the unique, vibrantly healthy being that we were born
to be, or we can continue to experience the accumulated dis-ease of our
past thought patterns.
This is the essence of Quimby’s practice and teaching: change the belief
structure and change the body. This is the Higher Mysticism that Emma Hopkins
practiced and taught: shift awareness to a more accurate understanding
of the nature of the person and that understanding becomes the experience.
This is the Truth that Emilie Cady and the others so earnestly longed
for us to comprehend: we are not this body, but one in being with the divine
intelligence that is, throughout the universe, and we can “speak the word”
and be healed.
And so it is.
from his book, Cybernetics, published in 1948. Wiener’s
Human Use of Human Beings, 1955,
provides even more useful ideas and understandings.
The W.H. Macy Conferences, proceedings edited by Heinz von Foerster,
an Austrian physicist “trying to learn English” who later founded the Biological
Computer Lab at the University of Illinois.
H. Ross Ashby, later the author of An Introduction to Cybernetics,
with its fundamental ideas of “the brain as machine” and “the Law of Requisite
Variety.”
Margaret Mead, author of numerous popular texts on culture,
with her former husband, Gregory Bateson, who later wrote Steps to An
Ecology of Mind and Mind and Nature.
Kenneth Boulding, who later wrote The Image, and Ecodynamics,
and founded the Society for General Systems Research.
And, based on Wiener’s books, a medical doctor, Maxwell Maltz,
developed the ideas he published in the best-seller, Psycho-cybernetics.
Boulding’s classic article “General Systems Theory: The Skeleton
of Science” lays this framework out in detail and Magoroh Maruyama’s “The
Second Cybernetics: Mutual Causal Deviation Cycles” set forth the pattern
of multiple feedback cycles working within a single system to maintain
it over time.
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela called this process “autopoesis”
or “self-creation.” They developed
the concept of “cognition” in such systems in several articles and ultimately
in Varela’s book The Tree of Life.
To imagine what this might feel like, consider Patrick Swayze’s
role in the movie, Ghost, when he walks through people, walls, etc.
.
Daniel Quinn introduces the term “Mother Culture” in his award-winning
novel Ishmael.
These ideas are most clearly laid out in his Order Out of
Chaos, written with Isabelle Stenger.
Dana Zohar develops this idea in detail in her book, Quantum
Self.
An illustration of this phenomenon can be seen in the video
“ A Brief History of Time,” at the edge of a black hole.
This is Deepak Chopra’s term for the consciousness out of which
the universe, including us, takes form.
Gregory Bateson raises the question; “how do the cells at the
tip of a finger know to curve around to meet the other cells, when all
the other cells preceding them lay flat?” in his book, Mind and Nature.
Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana call this idea “autopoesis,”
which is developed further in Varela’s book The Tree of Life.
This may be why sensitive, thoughtful people seem to experience
so much more than their less complex brothers and sisters, even when the
situation looks the same from the outside!
Much of the material for this section is taken from the work
of Peter Senge and others, described in his book, The Fifth Discipline.
Jung’s book, Man and His Symbols, is his account of these
ideas.
Cady’s particular use of denials is outlined in her Lessons
in Truth written about 1897. Or, for those who find Victorian
English tedious, I have edited and updated that work, with the title Lessons
in Truth for the 21st Century.
Jung was very clear that such images were very much the “intrusion
of the collective unconscious” “animated” in our personal conscious, as
he described in his paper “The Psychological Foundations of Beliefs in
Spirits” presented to the Society for Psychical Research in 1919.
The Association for Transpersonal Psychology publishes a journal
that has included articles by Angelis Arrien,Willis Harman,Jean Houston,
Ken Keyes, Joanna Macy, Frances Vaughn, and Roger Walsh, among many others.
Much of the material on this subject draws on the work of Virginia
Satir and of Paul Watzlawic and his colleagues at the Mental Research Institute
in Palo Alto, California, as documented in Watzlawic’s Change and
related titles.
Called “Therapeutic Touch” and “Reiki,” these techniques are
practiced increasingly by massage therapists and nurses across the country.
The first one was conducted by
Randolph Byrd in 1988 at the coronary care center of the SF General Hospital:
393 patients were randomly assigned to 2 groups: 192 were prayed for by
outside intercessors informed of the patient’s names and clinical status
and who committed to pray regularly. The second group did not receive prayers.
It was a double blind study so neither the patients nor the staff
knew who was in which group. Repeat of heart failure was 4% in those prayed
for, and 10% in those not prayed for, with several other indicators affected,
as well.
Stuart Wilde’s The Force and related titles provide exercises
and concepts to develop these abilities further.
An illustration of choosing-as-action can be found in Neal Donald
Walsh’s Conversations With God, in which “God’s” voice tells the
narrator to choose something. The
narrator replies “all right, I choose
. . .” and “God’s” voice comes back with “I’m still waiting,” and
refuses to accept any answer but the narrator’s action in the direction
of his choice.
A growing movement of physicists and Christians refers to this
quality of the universe as “the Anthropic Principle." The “weak anthropic
principle” simply states that all of the patterns of structure and behavior
in the universe are perfectly balanced for human lives to exist—so perfectly
that a small deviation in any one of them would have resulted in a universe
where our bodies could not have come into being.
The “strong anthropic principle” goes even further and says that
the universe has clearly been designed to support human life and consciousness.
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