States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
6. Stabilization of a State of Consciousness
The basic function of a d-SoC is to cope successfully with an
(external) environment. A d-SoC is a tool that senses and interrupts
what the world is and plans and executes strategies for dealing
with that changing world. A good tool should not break easily
when applied to the job: the system of structures and energies
that constitutes a state of consciousness should maintain its
integrity in coping with the changing world it was designed for.
It would be most unadaptive, for example, if, while you were driving
on the freeway, your d-SoC suddenly converted to a d-ASC of great
ecstasy that totally shut down your senses! A d-SoC is a dynamic
system: its components change all the time, but the overall
pattern/organization that is its nature is maintained because
the possible interactions between the component structures and
subsystems are controlled and limited by various stabilization
processes.
This chapter describes four major ways of stabilizing a system
that constitutes a d-SoC. They are analogous to the ways people
control one another. If you want someone to be a good citizen
(1) you keep him busy with the activities that constitute being
a good citizen, so he has no time or energy for anything else;
(2) you reward him for carrying out these activities; (3) you
punish him if he engages in undesirable activities; and (4) you
try to limit his opportunities for engaging in undesirable activities.
The following discussion applies to stabilizing a d-SoC as a whole,
but it should also be applied to the stabilization of the individual
structures/subsystems within a d-SoC.
Loading Stabilization
The first type of stabilization is ballasting or loading, to use
an electrical analogy. In electrical ballasting, you impose a
large electrical load on a circuit that draws on the power resources
sufficiently so that very high voltages cannot occur; the power
supply lacks the capacity to produce them, given the load. Loading
in general refers to any activity that draws a large proportion
of the energy of the system so that the system does not have excess
free energy available. A load may also store energy, giving the
system inertia that prevents a sudden slowdown or speedup.
Psychologically, loading means keeping a person's consciousness
busy with desired types of activities so that too little (attention/awareness)
energy is left over to allow disruption of the system's operation.
As Don Juan told Carlos Castaneda {10}, people's ordinary, repeated,
day-to-day activities keep their energies so bound within a certain
pattern that they do not become aware of nonordinary realities.
For example, right now, in your ordinary d-SoC, a number of things
act as loading stabilization processes. The stable physical world
you constantly deal with, the dependable relationships in it,
give you a pattern of input that constantly stimulates you in
expected patterns, in ways you are used to. If you push your hand
against your chair, the chair feels solid, just as it always has
felt. If you push it again, it still feels solid, and so on. You
can depend on the lawfulness of the spectrum of experience we
call physical reality. But, if the next time you pushed on the
chair, your hand passed through it, you would be surprised
or alarmed. You would begin to suspect that this was not your
ordinary d-SoC or find it difficult to maintain your composure,
your ordinary d-SoC.
Your body (and your internalized body image) is another source
of stabilization by loading. Every morning when you wake up you
have sensations from one head, two arms, and two legs. Although
the exact relationships of the parts of your body to one another
change as do your body's internal feelings, the changes are within
a well-learned range. If you suddenly felt half your body starting
to disappear, you would question whether you were in your ordinary
d-SoC.
Body movement also supplies a type of loading. If you move your
body, it has a certain feel to it. The kinesthetic feedback information
on the relation of parts of your body and on muscle tensions as
you move is within an anticipated range. If your arm suddenly
felt three times as heavy as usual when you lifted it, this again
would disrupt your ordinary d-SoC. Conversely, if you felt sleepy
but did not want to enter the d-ASC of sleep, getting up and moving
around would help you stay awake.
A final example of loading concerns the thinking process. You
have a constant internal thinking process going on, constant internal
chatter, which runs through familiar and habitual associative
pathways and keeps you within your ordinary d-SoC. You think the
kinds of things that please you; you feel clever as a result of
thinking them; feeling clever makes you relax; feeling relaxed
makes you feel good; feeling good reminds you that you are clever;
and so on. This constant thinking, thinking, thinking loads your
system and is extremely important in maintaining your ordinary
b-SoC.
The importance of this constant loading of consciousness by thinking
in maintaining and stabilizing our ordinary d-SoC cannot be overestimated.
A Hindu metaphor for the ordinary d-SoC compares it to a drunken,
horny monkey, carousing madly through the treetops, driven by
its desires for sex, food, pleasure. The linkages between thought
processes and emotional processes addict us to clever thoughts
and make it hard to slow or stop the thinking process. Don Juan
instructed Castaneda {10} to "not do," cease the constant
thinking and doing that maintain ordinary consciousness, and Castaneda
found this extraordinarily difficult to accomplish. This experience
has been shared by innumerable practitioners of meditation who
have found how difficult it is to escape from the incessant chatter
of their minds.
Negative Feedback Stabilization
The second type of stabilization is negative feedback. Particular
structures or subsystems sense when the rate or quality of operation
of other subsystems goes beyond certain preset limits, and they
then begin a correction process. This correction process may be
conscious, as for example, anxiety resulting when your thoughts
stray into certain areas you consider taboo. The anxiety then
functions to restabilize subsystems within the acceptable range.
You may not be conscious of a particular feedback correction process,
however. You may be lost in thought, for example, and suddenly
find yourself very alert and listening, although not knowing why.
A sound that indicated a potentially threatening event may have
occurred very briefly, and while not intense enough to be consciously
perceived, it was sufficient to activate a monitoring structure
that then sent out correction signals to bring the system of consciousness
back within optimal (for dealing with the threat) limits. This
kind of negative feedback stabilization essentially measures when
a subsystem's or structure's operation is going beyond acceptable
limits and initiates an act of correction, reduces the deviation.
Positive Feedback Stabilization
The third stabilization process, positive feedback, consists of
structures or subsystems that detect when acceptable activity
is going on and then stimulate the emotional reward systems (making
us feel good when we do a particular activity) or otherwise strengthen
the desired activity. We may or may not be particularly conscious
of feeling good, but we like to maintain and repeat the rewarded
activity. During the formation of our ordinary d-SoC during childhood,
we are greatly rewarded by our parents, peers, and teachers for
doing various socially approved things, and because most of our
socially approved actions are initiated by socially approved thoughts
and feelings, we then internalize this reward system and feel
good simply by engaging in the thought or actions that were rewarded
earlier.
Let us illustrate how negative and positive feedback stabilization
can work. Suppose you are driving home late at night and are rather
sleepy. Driving carefully was an active program in your ordinary
d-SoC, but now, because of fatigue, your mind is drifting toward
a hypnagogic state even though you are managing to hold your eyes
open. Hypnagogic thoughts are very interesting and your mind starts
pursuing them further. Because the integrity of your ordinary
d-SoC is now beginning to be disrupted, you do not make an appropriate
correction as the car begins to drift over toward the shoulder
of the road. You run off the shoulder, narrowly avoiding an accident,
and this jars you back to full wakefulness. Learning occurs; a
structure is formed. Sometime later the same circumstances occur
again, but this time the new structure notes two facts—that your
thoughts are becoming interesting in that hypnagogic way and
that you are driving. Via the Emotion subsystem, the new structure
sends a feeling of anxiety or alarm through you that immediately
activates various subsystems toward the "physical world survival
priority" mode of operating, and so reinstates full consciousness.
This is negative feedback stabilization. Then you feel clever
at not succumbing to the hypnogogic state. It shows you are a
good driver; all sorts of authorities would approve: this constitutes
positive feedback for keeping your consciousness within the wakefulness
pattern.
Thus, a state of consciousness learns that certain processes indicate
that part of its system is going beyond a safe limit of functioning
(the error information) and then does something to restore that
ordinary range of functioning (feedback control). You may or may
not directly experience the feedback process.
Note that the terms positive feedback and negative feedback,
as used here, do not necessarily refer to consciously experienced
good or bad feelings, although such feelings may be experienced
and be part of the correction process. Negative feedback refers
to a correction process initiated when a structure or system starts
to go or has gone beyond acceptable limits, and designed to decrease
undesirable deviation. Positive feedback refers to an active reward
process that occurs when a structure or subsystem is functioning
within acceptable limits and that strengthens functioning within
those limits.
Limiting Stabilization
A fourth way of stabilizing a d-SoC, limiting stabilization, consists
of interfering with the ability of some subsystems or structures
to function in a way that might destabilize the ongoing state
of consciousness. It limits the range of possible functioning
of certain subsystems.
An example of limiting stabilization is one effect of tranquilizing
drugs in blunting emotional responses of any sort, limiting the
ability of certain subsystems to produce strong emotions. Since
strong emotions can be important disrupting forces in destabilizing
an ongoing state of consciousness, this limiting stabilizes the
ongoing state. Sufficient limiting of crucial subsystems would
not only stabilize any d-SoC (although at some cost in responsiveness
of that d-SoC in coping with the environment), but would prevent
transit into a d-ASC that required changes in the limited subsystems
either for inducing the d-ASC or for stabilizing the d-ASC if
it were attained.
Loading stabilization can, in some instances, be a limiting stabilization,
but the two types of stabilization are not identical. Limiting
directly affects certain structures or subsystems, while the effect
of loading is indirect and operates more by consuming energy than
by affecting structures directly.
In a system as multifaceted and complex as a d-SoC, several of
each of the four types of stabilization activities may be going
on at any given instant. Further, any particular action may be
complex enough to constitute more than one kind of stabilization
simultaneously. For example, suppose I have taken a drug and for
some reason decide I do not want it to affect my consciousness.
I begin thinking intensely about personal triumphs in my
life. This stabilizes my ordinary state of consciousness by loading
it, absorbing most of my attention/awareness energy into that
activity so that it cannot drift off into thoughts that would
help the transition to an altered state. It also acts as positive
feedback, making me feel good, and so increasing my desire to
continue this kind of activity.
Many stabilizing processes use psychological energy, energy that
could be used for other things. Thus there is a cost to stabilizing
a d-SoC that must be balanced against the gain the results from
the focus obtainable from a stable d-SoC. The question of the
optimal degree of stabilization for a given d-SoC when functioning
in a given degree of stabilization for a given d-SoC when functioning
in a given environment is important, although it has not been
researched. If there are too few stabilization processes, the
d-SoC can be broken down too easily, a circumstance that could
be most unadaptive—when driving for example. If the d-SoC is
too stabilized, if too much energy is being consumed in stabilization
processes, then that much less energy is available for other purposes.
Some of the psychological literature on rigidity as a personality
variable might provide a good starting point for investigating
optimal stabilization.
A d-SoC, then, is not simply a collection of psychological parts
thrown together any old way; it is an integral system because
various stabilization processes control the interaction patterns
among the structures and subsystems so as to maintain the functional
identity of the overall system.