States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
8. Subsystems
We began this discussion of the systems approach to consciousness
by describing the concepts of attention/awareness, energy, and
structure. We defined a structure as a basic unit that can be
assembled into larger structures or be analyzed into substructures.
At present, our scientific knowledge is generally too rudimentary
to allow the breakdown of structures into their components. We
can, however, describe the assembly of multiple structures into
major experiential and experimental divisionssubsystemsof
consciousness. Ten such subsystems are described in this chapter.
They are convenient conceptual tools for understanding the currently
known range of variations in d-ASCs. They do not refer to localized
regions of the brain. They are concepts I have developed by classifying
the greatly varying experiences and behaviors reported in d-ASCs
into clusters of phenomena that seem to hold together, on the
basis of both their own internal similarity and other known psychological
data.
In their present form, I find these subsystems a useful conceptual
tool for organizing the otherwise chaotic masses of data about
d-ASCs. I also believe that further thinking can sharpen our ideas
about the properties of these subsystems and their possible interactions
with each other and allow us to predict d-ASCs in addition to
those already known. Making these predictions and testing them
should further sharpen our conceptions about the nature of various
subsystems, and so further increase our understanding. This is
the standard scientific procedure of conceptualizing the data
as well as possible, making predictions on that basis, confirming
and disproving various predictions, and thus sharpening the conceptual
system or modifying it. The socialized repetition of this procedure
is the essence of scientific method.
Figure 8-1 sketches
ten major subsystems, represented by the labeled ovals, and their
major interaction routes. The solid arrows represent major routes
of information flow: not all known routes are shown, as this would
clutter the diagram. The hatched arrows represent major, known
feedback control routes whereby one subsystem has some control
over the functioning of another subsystem. The dashed arrows represent
information flow routes from the subconscious subsystem to other
subsystems, routes that are inferential from the point of view
of the ordinary d-SoC. Most of the subsystems are shown feeding
information into, or deriving information from, awareness, which
is here considered not a subsystem but the basic component of
attention/awareness and attention/awareness energy that flows
through various systems.
A brief overview of a state of consciousness as a functioning
system, as represented in Figure 8-1, can be described as follows.
Information from the outside world comes to us through the Exteroception
subsystem (classical sense organs), and information from our own
bodies comes to us via the Interoception subsystem (kinesthetic
and other bodily functioning receptors). Data from both sets of
sense organs undergo Input-Processing (filtering, selecting, abstracting),
which in turn influences the functioning of Exteroception and
Interoception. Input-Processing draws heavily on stored Memory,
creates new memories, sends information both directly into awareness
and into our subconscious, and stimulates our Sense of Identity
and our Emotions. Information we are aware of is in turn affected
by our Sense of Identity and Emotions. We subject this information
to Evaluation and Decision-Making; and we may act on it, produce
some sort of motor output. This Motor Output subsystem produces
action in the body that is sensed via Interoception, in a feedback
process through the body. The Motor Output also produces effects
on the external world that are again sensed by Exteroception,
constituting feedback via the external world. Our perception and
decision-making are also affected by our Space/Time Sense. Also
shown in Figure 8-1 are some latent functions, which may be tapped
in a d-ASC, but are not available in the b-SoC.
In the following pages the basic nature of each subsystem is defined
and the range of both quantitative and qualitative alterations
that occur in its functioning over the range of various d-ASCs
is indicated. Of necessity, these descriptions are somewhat sketchy.
One of the major tasks of future research is to fill in the details
about each of these subsystems, their change in d-ASCs, and their
interaction with other subsystems.
Exteroception
The subsystem Exteroception includes the classical sense organs
for registering changes in the environment: eyes, ears, nose,
taste organs, and touch organs.
The exteroceptive organs constitute a model of a whole system
of consciousness. First, they are active organs. While all of
them can respond to stimulation when they are passive, as when
a light is suddenly shined in your eye, they normally engage in
an active scanning of the environment. Your eyes dart about; you
turn your head or perk up your ears to hear sounds more clearly;
you reach out to touch things that interest you. Similarly, consciousness
can be passively stimulated, but ordinarily it is an active process.
Second, each of the classical exteroceptive sense organs has limited
responsiveness. The eye cannot respond to ultraviolet light, the
ear cannot pick up sounds above or below certain frequencies,
touch cannot respond to exceptionally subtle stimuli. Similarly,
consciousness can be passively stimulated, but ordinarily it is
an active process.
Second, each of the classical exteroceptive sense organs has limited
responsiveness. The eye cannot respond to ultraviolet light, the
ear cannot pick up sounds above or below certain frequencies,
touch cannot respond to exceptionally subtle stimuli. Similarly,
any state of consciousness has certain limits to what it can and
cannot react.
Third, you have some voluntary control over the input to your
exteroceptive sense organs. If you do not want to see something,
you can look away or close your eyes; if you do not want to hear
something, you can move away from the sound source or put your
fingers in your ears. In any state of consciousness, you have
some voluntary control over exteroceptive functioning. But the
control is limited: if the sound is intense enough, it is difficult
not to hear it at all, even with your hands over your ears.
Although many changes in perception of the external environment
are reported in d-ASCs, these usually do not represent changes
in the exterocepters themselves, except possibly in some drug-induced
d-ASCs. Each of the classical sense organs is a masterpiece of
engineering; it is already as sensitive as it can be. Thus its
useful sensitivity is not increased, even if a person experiences
himself as being in more contact with the environment in a
d-ASC. AS we shall see later, practically all phenomena dealing
with feelings of increased contact with the environment are related
to changes in the Input-Processing subsystem.
Sometimes when a drug is used to induce a d-ASC there may be some
physiological changes in the exterocepters. LSD, for example,
may actually cause pupillary dilation, thus allowing in more light
(although one might quarrel whether this is a direct physiological
effect or a secondary effect due to the increased attention being
paid to the external environment). Similarly, since psychedelic
drugs affect neural functioning generally, they may have some
direct effects on the neural components of the sense organs themselves,
but little is known of this now. So, in terms of present knowledge
about d-ASCs, changes in the exterocepters seem of little importance.
Input to the exterocepters is usually deliberately manipulated
and patterned in the course of attempting to induce a d-ASC. Although
most of the important changes resulting from these techniques
occur in Input-Processing, some do start with direct effects on
the exterocepters and should be noted.
Input from the environment that, while varying, remains within
a learned, anticipated range, acts as a source of loading stabilization.
Thus, changing the input to the exteroception may interfere with
the loading stabilization function and/or inject anomalous input
that may destabilize a d-SoC.
A major way of doing this is to reduce or eliminate sensory input.
In the induction process for many d-ASCs, there is an attempt
to make the environment quiet, to cut down the amount of sensory
input a person has to handle. Consider, for example, the techniques
of guided imagery {3} or twilight imagery, where, while lying
down with closed eyes, a person enters more and more into fantasy.
A genuine d-ASC may develop in some cases, as fantasy intensifies,
but it is clear the sensory input must usually be kept at a low
level to both induce and maintain this d-ASC. I have seen people
get into intense experiences through guided imagery techniques,
but the simple act of opening the eyes and allowing visual input
from the physical world to enter immediately disrupts this state.
Reduction of sensory input to a level as near zero as possible
is a potent technique for inducing d-ASCs. In the fifties and
early sixties, there were many sensory deprivation experiments
during which the subject lay comfortably in a dark, quiet room
without moving. The findings were interpreted as showing that
if the brain did not receive sufficient sensory input, the subject
went "crazy." It is now clear {46, 55} that practically
all these studies were severely contaminated, as were the contemporary
studies of psychedelic drugs, by implicit demand characteristics
that account for most of the phenomena produced. If you a person
through a procedure he thinks will make him crazy, in a medical
setting, he is likely to act crazy. That tells you something about
suggestibility, but little about the effects of reduced sensory
input per se. Traditional literature from many spiritual psychologies
{128} as well as accounts from people who have been trapped in
isolation situations, indicate that sensory deprivation can be
a powerful technique in affecting consciousness. But its effect
is apparently always patterned by other factors.[1]
Changing the patterning of input to the exterocepters,
and the subsequent processing of the information of Input-Processing,
can also be a major way of altering consciousness. When the same
kind of input is repeated over and over again, so that the exterocepters
become saturated, all sorts of changes take place. For example,
if, by means of special apparatus, an image is held absolutely
still on the retina of the eye, it soon begins to break up and
display all sorts of unusual perceptual changes. Even when we
believe we are looking steadily at something, there are actually
tiny saccadic movements of the eye that keep the image moving
slightly on the retina. Like so many of our receptors, the eye
actually responds to slight, continuous change and cannot "see"
absolutely steady input.
Overloading the exterocepters is another way of inducing d-ASCs.
The principle is recognized by people who attend rock concerts.
Even if they have not taken some drug to help induce a d-ASC,
the light show of complex, changing patterns accompanied by exceptionally
loud music overloads and fatigues the exterocepters, blowing their
minds.
Interoception
The subsystem Interoception includes the various senses that tell
us what is going on inside our bodiesthe position of our limbs,
the degree of muscle tension, how our limbs are moving, pressure
in our intestines, bodily temperature. It is a way of sensing
our internal world, as opposed to our external world. Many of
the output signals from our interoceptors seems to be permanently
excluded from our awareness; many of our sensing systems for governing
the function of internal organs seem to have no representation
in consciousness, regardless of conditions. For example, the functioning
of our kidneys is regulated, but I know of no one who claims to
have a direct experiential feel for what his kidneys are doing.
We should, however, be careful about setting any ultimate limits
on what aspects of Interoception can never reach or be affected
by consciousness. The modern technology of biofeedback enables
us to focus attention on and to control many bodily processes
formerly thought to be completely incapable of voluntary control.
Many other interoceptive signals not normally in our awareness
can be put in our awareness by turning our attention/awareness
to them. For example, you may not have been thinking of sensations
in your belly a moment ago, but now that I mention them and your
attention/awareness turns there, you can detect various signals.
With practice you might become increasingly sensitive to signals
from this area of your body. Thus, as with our exterocepters,
we have some voluntary control over what we will attend to, but
this control is limited.
We can also control interoceptive input by doing various things
to our bodies. If you have an unpleasant sensation from some part
of your body, you can relax, change position, take a deep breath,
and change the nature of that signal, presumably by changing whatever
is causing it. This is an ability we take for granted and know
little about, but it is an important way of affecting interoceptive
input. Some techniques for inducing d-ASCs, such as hatha yoga
procedures, have a highly sophisticated technology for affecting
one's body and how one perceives it. This is the reason biofeedback
technology is sometimes said to have the potential to become an
"electronic yoga," a way of rapidly learning about various
internal conditions and using them to affect consciousness. We
are still a long way from attaining this, however.
As is the case with exterocepters, there is little evidence that
actual physiological changes take place in the interoceptors during
various d-ASCs, except possibly in some drug-induced d-ASCs. Also
as in Exteroception, the learned, anticipated range of constant
input from Interoception acts as a source of loading stabilization
for maintaining the ordinary d-SoC.
The pattern of input from interoceptors can be subsumed under
a useful psychological concept, the body image. You not
only have a real body whose actual sensations are picked up by
the interoceptors, but, in the course of enculturation, you have
learned to perceive your own body in learned, patterned ways,
just as you have learned to perceive the external world in socially
learned ways. The degree to which your body image corresponds
to your actual body may vary considerably. My own observations
suggest that people's internal images of their bodies can differ
amazingly from what an external observer sees.
An individual's body image may be very stable. An intriguing example
of this is the phantom limb phenomenon. When an arm or
a leg is amputated, the patient almost always reports he can still
feel the limb, even though he can see and otherwise intellectually
know it is not there. Sensations coming in from the severed nerve
tracts are nonconsciously organized in the learned, habitual way
so that the patient perceives the limb as still there. Most patients
soon lose perception of their phantom limbs as they are subjected
to considerable social pressure to do so. In some, however, the
phantom limb persists in spite of all attempts to unlearn it.
The sensations may or may not be painful.
The primary things to note are that the body image can be very
rigid and may or may not show much correspondence to the actual
body contours and what actually goes on in the body. I am convinced
that as Westerners we generally have distorted images of our bodies
and poor contact with sensations that go on in them. Since body
sensations often represent a thinking about, or data processing
of, experience, and a way of expressing emotions, our lack of
contact with our actual body sensations puts us out of contact
with ourselves. This is considered further in connection with
the Subconscious subsystem.
People's experiential reports from d-ASCs indicate that enormous
changes can take place in Interoception. The body may seem to
get larger or smaller, change in shape, change in internal functioning,
change in terms of the relationships of its parts, so that the
body may not "work" in the usual fashion. Most of this
range of experience probably represents changes in Input-Processing,
rather than changes in the interoceptors themselves.
As with Exteroception, changing your body image is a common technique
for inducing d-ASCs. Reducing interoceptive input, overloading
it, or patterning it in novel ways have all been used. The primary
effects are on Input-Processing, but the techniques start by affecting
the interoceptors themselves. Let us look at some of these techniques
briefly.
Immobilizing the body in a relaxed position is a major way of
causing the output from Interoception to fade and, consequently,
causing the body image either to fade or to change, since it is
no longer stabilized by actual input from the interoceptors. The
discussion of the induction of hypnosis, going to sleep, and meditation
in Chpater7 mentions the importance of allowing the interoceptors
to adapt out so the input from the body disappears. In sensory
deprivation techniques it is important to relax the body and at
the same time not move at all. Even a slight movement can stimulate
large numbers of interceptors and reestablish the body image readily.
Overloading interoceptors is an important technique for altering
consciousness. A good massage, for instance, or sensory awareness
exercises that make you aware of bodily stimuli normally overlooked,
have been known to induce d-ASCs. At the opposite end of the continuum
from this pleasurable kind of manipulation of Interoception, pain
and torture are some of the surest ways of inducing d-ASCs.
Patterning interoceptive input in unusual fashions is another
way of inducing d-ASCs. Mudras, gestures of symbolic significance
used in yoga, consist of putting the body into certain positions.
I suspect that the actual bodily posture has a definite patterning
effect on interoceptive input and can affect consciousness if
you are sensitive to input from your own body, the patterning
of interoceptive input may occur, but since not much awareness
is gained, posture does not pattern attention/awareness energy
in a way that would affect consciousness.
Another way of patterning interoceptive input is the altered states
of consciousness induction device (ASCID) developed by Masters
and Houston {37} on the basis of medieval accounts of the witch's
cradle. This is an upright frame into which a person straps himself.
the frame is hung from a short rope, so slight motions cause it
to rock in erratic patterns. This produces anomalous patterns
of input for the occupant to process: some interoceptors tell
him he is standing up and therefore needs to exert certain muscular
actions to maintain this posture, but other interoceptors tell
him he is standing up and therefore needs to exert certain muscular
actions to maintain this posture, but other interoceptors tell
him he is relaxed and not making these muscular actions. Other
interoceptive sense indicate that he is moving and must do things
to maintain his balance, but there are in conflict with other
interoceptive sensations that he is passive. Since he is not used
to such an anomalous, conflicting pattern of stimulation, it can
greatly disrupt Input Processing.
Input Processing
Before reaching awareness, all input data, whether interoceptive
or exteroceptive, normally goes through various degrees of processing.
The Input-Processing subsystem consists of a complex, interlocking
series of totally automatic processes that compares incoming data
against previously learned material stored in memory, rejects
much of the data as irrelevant, selects some of them as important
enough to deserve further processing, transforms and abstracts
these important data, and passes this abstraction along to awareness.
Thus, a major function of Input-Processing is rejection. At any
given instant, you are generally bombarded by an enormous quantity
of sensory data of all sorts. Most of the data is not important
in terms of defined needs, such as your biological survival. Since
your ability to handle information and awareness is limited, you
would be overwhelmed if all this mass of incoming data came through.
Instead, you receive a small abstraction of incoming information
that is important by personal and consensus reality standards.
Input-Processing is totally automatic. Look at this thing that
is in your hands with the question, "What is it?" in
your mind. Immediately you see a book. You did not have the experience
of seeing a whitish rectangular object with dark spots on it.
You did not further experience these spots as being arranged in
lines, and the individual spots as having distinctive characteristics,
which you then, by painstaking examination, arranged into words
and sentences, and so concluded that this was a book in your hands.
No, the recognition of this thing as a book was instantaneous
and automatic. To demonstrate how automatic the processing is,
look at the book again and try to see it as simply a collection
of incoming, assorted stimuli instead of as a book.
Unless you have some unusual abilities, you find it very difficult
to see this object as anything but a book.
Numerous psychological studies have focused on the way perception
is automated. Many of these studies have mistakenly assumed they
were studying the "accuracy" of perception. What they
were usually studying was the agreement with consensus reality
standards for perceiving things. An immediate, automatic perception
of socially defined reality is taken as being "realistic"
and as a sign of a "good-observer."
Thus, Input-Processing is a learned behavior, probably the most
complex a human being has to acquire. Think of the number of connections
among stimuli and the number of responses associated with the
various stimuli that an infant must learn before he can be said
to "think." the task is staggering. The infant must
learn to perceive instantly and automatically all
major features of consensus reality as his parents, peers, and
teachers do. This means that an immense amount of information
must be stored in memory (it does not matter whether it is stored
in the Memory subsystem or in a special Input-Processing memory)
and be almost instantly available to Input-Processing. Total automation
of the process is equated with efficiency: if I have to struggle
to identify an object, I feel stupid; but if I recognize it right
away, I feel competent and smart.
In relation to enculturation process, we discussed the fact that
a child has more options for his consciousness than a teenager
or an adult. This is another way of saying that the automatization
of Input-Processing and its efficiency become comprehensive with
increasing age, until by the time we are adults almost everything
in our world is instantly recognized and dealt with "appropriately."
An adult sees things almost exclusively in a culturally approved
way and makes culturally approved responses. Rigidity increases
with age: that is what Timothy Leary meant when he said, "Don't
trust anyone over thirty." The statement is overgeneralized,
but it does contain an important psychological truth: older people
are liable to be less able to see things differently from the
way they have always been accustomed to seeing them.
Numerous psychological studies show variation in Input-Processing
that are related to differences within consensus reality. An early
study of perception, for example, showed that poor children tend
to perceive coins as physically larger than rich children do.
People with strong religious values tend to pick up words and
other stimuli relating to religion more readily than they do those
relating to economics, and vice versa. People with neuroses or
psychoses tend to be especially sensitive to certain stimuli that
trigger their neurotic structures and to distort perception in
ways that fit these neurotic structures. Projective tests, in
which the subject is shown a relatively ambiguous stimulus like
an ink blot and asked to describe what he sees, are a way of investigating
the underlying structures of Input-Processing. If he repeatedly
sees a murdered baby in several different blots, we might begin
to wonder about the way he has dealt with aggression in his life
or about his feelings toward his parents.
In terms of the basic concepts of attention/awareness, psychological
energy, and structure, Input-Processing represents a large number
of structures, each specialized in responding to certain kinds
of stimulus patterns. It has a certain amount of psychological
energy always available, so that this active set of structures
almost always stands between you and your sense. Input-Processing
is automatized in the sense that the structures always draw energy
of some sort when activated and process information in a relatively
fixed way before passing this information on to awareness.
The ubiquity of Input-Processing is a main reason I have elsewhere
distinguished consciousness from awareness. Some kind of "pure"
awareness may be a basic from which we start, but ordinarily we
experience consciousness, awareness as it is vastly modified
by the machinery of the mind. Here Input-Processing in effects
places a number of structures between us and our sensory input,
and even our sensory input comes through the Exteroception and
Interoception subsystems, which are themselves structures with
characteristics of their own. Other subsystems are also structures
that modify or pattern basic awareness into consciousness. The
systems diagram presented as Figure 8-1 shows awareness in a distinct
place, but it really spreads through the various subsystems and
so becomes consciousness.
The main function of Input-Processing, then, is abstraction. This
subsystem is rather like a vast organization that keeps track
of an industry's progress and problems and, through hierarchical
chains, passes on only the most abstracted reports to the president
of the company.
Input-Processing also generalizes, gives a familiar abstracted
output to unfamiliar situations that are reasonably close to particular
perceptions that have been learned. Thus you recognize this object
as a book even though you have never seen this particular book
before: it is similar enough to other books to have label automatically
applied to it. This kind of generalization may be greatly affected
by dominated needs and emotions: all apples look alike to a hungry
man.
Various aspects of Input-Processing can show extremely large changes
in various d-ASCs. There are large quantitative changes, that
is, the range of continuous changes in various aspects of Input-Processing
may be greater or less than in your ordinary d-SoC. Your ability
to focus attention on particular percepts, for example, may be
quantitatively greater or quantitatively less in various d-ASCs.
There are also many important qualitative changes that may be
experienced as entirely new modes of perception. Some of these
may be the activation of latent human potentials. Patterns may
be seen in ordinarily ambiguous data, making it obviously meaningful.
An important effect of marijuana intoxication, for example, is
the ability to look at normally ambiguous material, such as the
grain pattern in a sheet of wood, and see it as an actual picture.
New shades of color are reported in various d-ASCs, new qualities
to sound. We shall reserve judgment for the moment on whether
these are veridical with respect to the actual stimulating objects.
Apparently fixed properties of perceptual organization may change
in various d-ASCs as Input-Processing changes. Carlos Castaneda
{9} for example, describes how Don Juan taught him how to turn
into a crow while he was intoxicated with a hallucinogenic plant:
an outstanding aspect of this experience was that his visual field
from each eye became split, so that he had two quite different
fields, just as if his eyes were on separate sides of his head,
instead of the usual overlapping, integrated field.
Illusions and hallucinations, frequently reported in d-ASCs, represent
important changes in Input-Processing. The conventional definition
of illusion is a misinterpretation of a stimulus that is actually
there, as, for example, when on entering a dimly lit room you
mistake a coat hanging on a rack for a person. Hallucination is
conventionally defined as a vision of something that is not there
at all, as, for example, when on entering the same dimly lit room
you see a person, even though the room is empty. While it is easy
to distinguish these two extremes, there is obviously a continuum
between them: there is always a certain amount of random neural
firing in your retina, a "something" there.
In a more general sense, we must realize that "misperception"
and "what is and is not there" are usually defined in
terms of consensus reality. We may hope that our consensus reality
has a high degree of accuracy with respect to physical reality,
but to assume automatically that it does is to be very parochial.
If one person hears a given piece of music as exceptionally beautiful
in its melody, and another hears it as quite common, was the first
person suffering an illusion, or was he really more perceptive?
We must be particularly careful in dealing with phenomena from
d-ASCs that our consensus reality automatically defines as hallucinatory.
Should we have so much faith in the conceptual schemes evolved
in our ordinary d-SoC that we automatically dismiss anything that
does not fit with them? It is bad science to continue to do so.
An illusion, then, is Input-Processing's interpretation of a stimulus
in a way that does not match consensus reality standards. Whether
the interpretation added by the illusion is a richer and more
accurate perception of a stimulus pattern, or a more distorted
and less accurate one, varies with individual cases. In terms
of d-ASCs we know about, my general impression is that they possess
the property of making our perception more accurate in some ways
and less accurate in others.
A hallucination is a functioning of Input-Processing whereby stored
information is drawn from Memory, worked over by Input-Processing,
and passed along to awareness as if it were sensory data. The
special label or quality that identifies the source of this vivid
image as memory is missing; the quality that identifies it as
a sensory stimulus is present. Depending on the type of d-ASC,
a hallucination may completely dominate perception, totally wiping
out all sensory input coming through Input-Processing, or may
be mixed with processed sensory data. The intensity of the hallucination
may be as great as that of ordinary sensory information, even
greater, or less.
An interesting dimension of variability of Input-Processing in
d-ASCs is the degree to which it can be voluntarily altered. The
degree of control may be high or low. I recall participating in
some experiments on the effect of psilocybin, a psychedelic like
LSD, when I was a graduate student. While intoxicated by the drug,
I had to sort through a batch of file cards, each of which contained
a statement of various possible symptoms. If I was experiencing
the symptom, I was to put the card in the "true" pile,
if I was not, in the "false" pile. I quickly found that
I could make almost every statement true if I so desired, simply
by reading it several times. I would pick up a statement like
"My palms are sweating green sweat," think that would
be an interesting experience, reread the statement several times,
and then look at my hands and see that, sure enough, they were
sweating green sweat! I could read a statement like "The
top of my head is soft" several times and feel the top of
my head become soft! Thus, while intoxicated with psilocybin my
degree of voluntary control over Input-Processing became very
large, sufficiently to create both illusions and hallucinations
by merely focusing attention/awareness energy on the desired outcome.
Another type of variation that can occur in Input-Processing in
d-ASCs is the partial or total blocking of input from exterocepters
or interoceptors. The d-ASC of deep hypnosis is an example. One
can suggest to a talented, deeply hypnotized subject that he is
blind, that he cannot feel pain, that he cannot hear, and experientially
this will be so. The subject will not respond to a light or
to objects shown him, and both during the d-ASC and afterward
in his ordinary d-SoC, will swear that he perceived nothing. His
eyes are still obviously functioning, and evoked brain responses
recorded from the scalp show that input is traveling over the
sensory nerves from his eye to his brain, but at the stage of
Input-Processing the input is cut off so it does not reach awareness.
Similarly, analgesia to pain may be induced in hypnosis and other
d-ASCs.
When input is completely blocked in Input-Processing there may
or may not be a substitution of other input. Thus information
may be drawn from memory to substitute a hallucination for the
actual blocked information. If, for example, a deeply hypnotized
subject is told that he cannot see a particular person who is
in the room, he may not simply experience a blank when looking
at that person (which sometimes happens), he may actually hallucinate
that details of the room behind the person and thus see no anomalous
area in his visual field at all.
Another important change in d-ASCs is that, experientially, there
may seem to be less Input-Processing, less abstracting, so a person
feels more in touch with the raw, unprocessed input from his environment.
This is especially striking with the psychedelics and is also
reported as an aftereffect of concentrative meditation and as
a direct effect of opening-up meditation. I know of no experimental
studies that have thoroughly investigated whether one can actually
be more aware of raw sensory data, but this is certainly a strong
experiential feeling. It is not necessarily true, however. Vivid
illusions can be mistaken for raw sensory data or (probably what
happens) there can be a mixture of greater perception of raw data
and more illusion substituted. Whether there is any particular
d-ASC in which the balance is generally toward better perception
through less abstracting is unknown at present.
Psychedelic-drug-induced conditions are particularly noteworthy
for the experience of feeling in contact with the raw data of
perception, and this makes perceptions exceptionally beautiful,
vibrant, and alive. By contrast, usual perception in the ordinary
d-SoC, seems lifeless, abstract, with all the beauty of reality
removed to satisfy various needs and blend in with consensus reality.
Also reported in d-ASCs is an experience of feeling more in touch
with the actual machinery of Input-Processing, gaining some insight
or direct experience of how the abstracting processes work. For
example, I was once watching a snowfall through a window at night,
with a brilliant white spotlight on the roof illuminating the
falling snow. I was in an unusually quiet state of mind (it was
too brief for me to decide whether it was a d-ASC), and suddenly
I noticed that instead of simply watching white snow fall
(my usual experience), I was seeing each snowflake glinting and
changing with all colors of the spectrum. I felt strongly that
an automated Input-Processing activity that makes snow white had
temporarily broken down. Afterward, it struck me that this was
likely, for white is actually all the colors of the spectrum combined
by Exteroception (eyes) and Input-Processing to the sensation
of white. Thus a snowflake actually reflects all the colors of
the spectrum, and active "doing" (to use Don Juan's
term) on the viewer's part is required to turn it into white.
There is no light energy of "white" in the physicist's
world. Similarly, persons have reported gaining insights into
how various automatic processes organize their perception by being
able to see the lack of organization of it or by seeing the alternative
organizations that occur.
Synesthesia is another radical change in Input-Processing that
sometimes takes place in some d-ASCs. Stimulation of one sense
is perceived in awareness as though a different sense had been
stimulated at the same time. For example, hearing music is accompanied
by seeing colored forms. This is the most common and perhaps the
most beautiful form of synesthesia, and is sometimes reported
with marijuana intoxication.
All techniques for inducing d-ASCs, except drug or physiological
effects that act directly on various bodily functions, must work
through Input-Processing. That subsystem mediates all communication.
Yet it is useful to distinguish between induction techniques that
are primarily designed to disrupt stabilization of the b-SoC in
some other subsystem without significantly affecting Input-Processing
per se, and those that are designed to disrupt Input-processing
directly as a way of destabilizing the b-SoC.
In this latter class is a wide variety of techniques designed
to give a person input that is uncanny in terms of the familiar
ways of processing input in the b-SoC. The input is uncanny, anomalous
in a sense of seeming familiar yet being dissimilar enough in
various way to engender a pronounced feeling of nonfitting. Often
the events are associated with an emotional charge or a feeling
of significance that makes that fact that they do not fit even
more important. Don Juan, for example, in training Carlos Castaneda
to attain various d-ASCs would often frighten Castaneda or destabilize
his ordinary state to an extraordinary degree by doing something
that seemed almost, but not quite, familiar, such as simply acting
normally but with subtle differences at various points.
The use of uncanny stimuli is not limited to inducing a d-ASC
from an ordinary d-SoC.; it can work in reverse. When a person
talks about "being brought down" from a valued d-ASC,
he means he is presented with stimulation patterns that Input-Processing
cannot handle in that d-ASC, so the d-ASC is destabilized, and
he returns to his ordinary d-SoC.
Memory
The Memory subsystem is concerned with information storage, with
containing residues of past experiences that are drawn upon in
the present. Memory is thus a large number of semipermanent changes
caused by past experience. We can think of memory as structures,
presumably in the brain (but perhaps also in the body structure),
which, when activated, produce certain kinds of information. And
we should not assume that there is just one Memory; there is probably
a special kind of memory for almost every subsystem.
Conventional psychological views of Memory also often divide memory
functioning into short-term or immediate memory, medium-term memory,
and long-term memory. Short-term memory is the special memory
process that holds information about sensory input and internal
processes for a few seconds at the most. Unless it is transferred
to a longer-term memory, this information is apparently lost.
Thus, as you look at a crowd, searching for a friend's face for
a short time, you may remember a lot of details about the crowd.
Then you find your friend's face, and the details about the crowd
are lost. There is no point in storing them forever. This short-term
memory is probably an electrical activity within the brain structure
that dies out after a few seconds: no long-term structural changes
occur. Once the electrical activity dies out, the information
stored in the pattern or in the electrical activity is gone forever.
Medium-term memory is storage of from minutes to a day or so.
It probably involves partial structural changes as well as patterns
of energy circulation. You can probably recall what you had for
breakfast yesterday morning, but in a few days you will not remember
the contents of that meal.
Long-term memory involves semipermanent structural changes that
allow you to recall things experienced and learned a long time
ago.
This division into short-, medium-, and long-term memory is of
interest because these kinds of memories may be differentially
affected during d-ASCs. At high levels of marijuana intoxication,
for example, short-term memory is clearly affected {105}, although
long-term memory may not be. Thus, a marijuana user often reports
forgetting the beginning of a conversation he is engaged in, but
he continues to speak English. There is little more we can say
about differential effects of various d-ASCs on these three kinds
of memory, as they have not yet been adequately studied. They
offer a fruitful field for research.
A most important aspect of Memory subsystem functioning in various
d-ASCs is the phenomenon of state-specific memory. In a
number of studies, subjects learned various materials while in
d-ASCs, usually drug-induced, and were tested for retention of
these materials in a subsequent ordinary d-SoC. Generally, retention
was poor. The researchers concluded that things were not stored
well in Memory in various d-ASCs. it is now clear that these studies
must be reevaluated. Memory is specific. The way in which information
is stored, or the kind of Memory it is stored in, is specific
to the d-SoC the material was learned in. The material may be
stored, but may not transfer to another state. If material is
learned in a d-ASC and its retention tested in another d-SoC and
found to be poor, the nonretention may indicate either an actual
lack of storage of the information or a state-specific memory
and lack of transfer. The proper way to test is to reinduce the
d-ASC in which the material was learned and see how much material
is retained in that state. State-specific memory has been repeatedly
demonstrated in animals, although the criterion for the existence
of a "state" in such studies is simply that the animals
were drugged to a known degree, a criterion not very useful with
humans, as explained later.
There is now experimental evidence that for high levels of alcohol
intoxication there is definite state-specific memory in humans
{21}. It is an experimental demonstration of the old folk idea
that if you lose something while very drunk and cannot find it
the next day, you may be able to find it if you get very drunk
again and then search. Experiential data collected in my study
of marijuana users {105} also indicate the existence of state-specific
memory, and I have recently received verbal reports that laboratory
studies are finding state-specific memory for marijuana intoxication.
There also seems to be state-specific memory for the conditions
induced by major psychedelic drugs.
State-specific memory can be readily constructed for hypnosis
that is, state-specific memory may not occur naturally for hypnosis,
but it can be made to occur. If you tell a hypnotized subject
he will remember everything that happened in hypnosis when he
comes back to his ordinary state such will be his experience.
On the other hand, if you tell a deeply hypnotized subject he
will remember nothing of what went on during hypnosis or that
he will remember certain aspects of the experience but not others,
this will also be the case when he returns to his ordinary state.
In any event he will recall the experiences the next time he is
hypnotized. This is not a pure case of state-specific memory,
however, because amnesia for hypnotic experiences in the waking
state can be eliminated by a prearranged cue as well as by reinducing
the hypnosis.
Another excellent example of state-specific memory is that occurring
in spiritualist mediums. A medium enters a d-ASC in which his
ordinary consciousness and sense of identity appear to blank out
for a time. He may report wandering in what may be loosely called
a dreaming state. Meanwhile, an alleged spirit entity ostensibly
possesses him and acts as if it has full consciousness. Upon returning
to a normal state, the medium usually has total amnesia regarding
the events of the d-ASC. The alleged spirit communicator, however,
usually shows perfect continuity of memory from state to state.[2]
I suspect that state-specific Memory subsystems will be discovered
for many or most d-ASCs, but the necessary research has not been
done. The kinds of state-specific memories may vary in completeness.
The ones we know of nowfrom marijuana intoxication, for exampleare
characterized by transfer of some information to the ordinary
d-SoC but nontransfer of other information, the latter often being
the most essential and important aspects of the d-ASC experience.
Ordinarily, when we think of Memory we think of information becoming
accessible to awareness, becoming part of consciousness, but we
should note that we "remember" many things even though
we have no awareness of them. Your current behavior is affected
by a multitude of things you have learned in the past but which
you are not aware of as memories. You walk across the room
and your motion is determined by a variety of memories, even though
you do not think of them as memories.
Note also that you can remember things you were not initially
aware of. When you scan a crowd looking for a friend's face, you
may be consciously aware of hardly any details of other faces,
being sensitive only to your friend's. A minute later, when asked
to recall something about the crowd, however, you may be able
to recall a lot of information about it. For this reason, Figure
8-1 shows a direct information flow arrow from Input-Processing
to Memory. We store in Memory not only things that have been in
awareness, but also things that were never much in awareness to
begin with.
An interesting quality of information retrieved from Memory is
that we generally know, at least implicitly, that we are retrieving
memories. We do not confuse these with sensations or thoughts.
Some kind of operating signal or extra informational quality seems
to be attached to the memory information itself that says "This
is a memory." There is an intriguing analogy for this. In
the early days of radio, when a newscast tuned you in to a foreign
correspondent, there was an obvious change in the quality of the
audio signal, a change that you associated with a foreign correspondent
broadcasting over a long distance on short wave. The sound was
tinny, the volume faded in and out, there were hisses and crackles.
This was a noninformational extra that became so associated in
listeners' minds with hearing a real foreign correspondent that
many radio stations resorted to the trick of deliberately adding
this kind of distortion years later when communication technology
had improved so much that the foreign correspondent's voice sounded
as if he was actually in the studio. The added distortions made
the listeners feel they were indeed hearing a faraway reporter
and made the broadcast seem more genuine. Similarly, memory information
is usually accompanied by a quality that identifies it as memory.
The quality may be implicit: if you are searching actively for
various things in your Memory, you need not remind yourself that
you are looking at memories.
This extra informational quality of memory can sometimes be detached
from memory operation per se. It is possible to have a fantasy,
for example, with the "this is a memory" quality attached,
in which you mistakenly believe you are remembering something
instead of just fantasizing it. Or, the quality may be attached
in a d-ASC to an incoming sensory perception, triggering the experience
of déjà vu, the feeling that you have seen
this before. Thus you may be touring in a city you have never
visited and it all looks very familiar; you are convinced you
remember what it is like because of the presence of the "this
is a memory" quality.[3]
When information is actually drawn from Memory without the quality
"this is a memory" attached, interesting things can
happen in various d-ASCs. Hallucinations, for example, are information
drawn from memory without the memory quality attached, but with
the quality "This is a perception" attached.
Much of the functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem (discussed
later) occurs via the Memory subsystem. You sense of who you are
is closely related to the possession of certain memories. If the
"this is a memory" quality is eliminated from those
memories so that they become just data, you sense of identity
can be strongly affected.
Other variations of Memory subsystem functioning occur in various
d-ASCs. The ease with which desired information can be retrieved
from memory varies so that in some d-ASCs it seems hard to remember
what you want, in others it seems easier than usual. The richness
of the information retrieved varies in different d-ASCs, so that
sometimes you remember only sketchily, and at other times in great
detail. The search pattern for retrieving memories also varies.
If you have to go through a fairly complex research procedure
to find a particular memory, you may end up with the wrong memories
or associated memories rather than what you were looking for.
If you want to remember an old friend's name, for example, you
may fail to recall the name but remember his birthday.
Finally, we should note that a great many things are stored in
Memory but not available in the ordinary d-SoC. The emotional
charge connected with those memories makes them unacceptable in
the ordinary d-SoC, and so defense mechanisms repress or distort
our recall of such information. In various d-ASCs the nature of
the defense mechanisms may change or their intensity of functioning
may alter, allowing the memories to become more or less available.
Subconscious
The Subconscious is usually defined as representing mental processes
or phenomena that occur outside conscious awareness and that ordinarily
cannot become conscious. They are part of the mind, but not conscious.
How do we know they exist if we cannot be consciously aware of
them? We infer their existence we observe certain aspects of our
own and others' functioning that cannot be adequately explained
on the basis of our or their immediately available conscious experiences,
and we infer that forces or phenomena outside consciousness are
affecting itfrom behind the scenes, as it were. Thus, from the
viewpoint of our ordinary d-SoC, the Subconscious subsystem is
a hypothesis, an inferential construct needed to explain conscious
behavior. A psychoanalyst, for example, observes that a patient
becomes pale and trembles every time he speaks of his brother,
yet when questioned about him says they have a good relationship.
The psychoanalyst hypothesizes that in the patient's Subconscious
there is a good deal of unresolved anxiety and anger toward the
brother.
The emphasis here is that subconscious processes occur outside
awareness from the viewpoint of the ordinary d-SoC. What
is subconscious from the reference point of the ordinary d-SoC
may become conscious in d-ASCs.
I deliberately use the term subconscious rather than the
more commonly employed unconscious to avoid the strictly
psychoanalytic connotations of unconscious mind. The classical,
Freudian unconscious (the sexual and aggressive instincts and
their sublimations and repressions) is included in the Subconscious
subsystem described here. The Subconscious also include creative
processes, the kinds of things we vaguely call intuition and hunches,
tender and loving feelings that may be just as inhibited in their
expression as sexual and aggressive ones, and other factors influencing
conscious behavior. All these things are mysterious and poorly
understood by our conscious minds.
Also included as subconscious processes for many of us are the
kinds of thinking that are now called right hemisphere modalities
of thinking {47}. The type of thinking associated with the right
hemisphere seems holistic rather than analytic, atemporal rather
than sequential in time, more concerned with patterns than with
details. But for many of us in whom intellectual, sequential,
rational development has been overstressed and this other mode
inhibited or ignored, this right hemisphere thinking is largely
subconscious.
D-ASCs may alter the relationship between what is conscious and
what is subconscious. Figure 8-2 expresses this idea. In the ordinary
d-SoC, it is convenient to think of the conscious part of the
mind as the part that is in the full focus of consciousness or
is readily available to such consciousness, to think of a preconscious
part that is ordinarily not in the full focus of consciousness
but can be made so with little effort, and a Subconscious subsystem
that is ordinarily completely cut off from conscious awareness
even though special techniques, such as psychoanalytic ones, give
inferential information about it. I have followed the general
psychoanalytic conventions (1) of showing the Subconscious as
the largest part of the mind, to indicate that the largest portion
of experience and behavior is probably governed by subconscious
forces we are not aware of, and (2) of showing the conscious and
preconscious parts of the mind as about equal in size. The barrier
between conscious and preconscious has many "holes"
in it while the Subconscious is relatively inaccessible. For example,
if you dislike someone and I ask you to think about why you dislike
him, a little thought may show that the reasons behind your immediate
dislike result from a synthesis of the person's appearance and
some unpleasant experiences you previously have had with people
of that appearance. These reasons might actually be based on deeply
buried subconscious feelings that all people of the same sex are
rivals for mother's affection, things you ordinarily cannot become
aware of without special therapeutic techniques.
Preconscious and subconscious contents may be more or less readily
available in a d-ASC, depending on the d-ASC. In d-ASC 1 in Figure
8-2, more other mind and preconscious material are directly in
consciousness and less are in the Subconscious subsystem. This,
incidentally, is one of the danger of experiencing a d-ASC: a
person may be overwhelmed by emotionally charged material, normally
subconscious, that he is not ready to handle. This can happen
with marijuana intoxication or other psychedelic-drug-induced
states, as well as with meditative states or hypnosis. In all
these states things that are ordinarily preconscious or subconscious
may become conscious.
D-ASC 2 illustrates the kind of state in which things that are
ordinarily conscious may become preconscious or subconscious.
Certain drug-induced states or other d-ASCs that tend toward stupor
might fit in this category, where consciousness feels quite restricted
and dull, even though the subject's behavior suggests that previously
conscious material is still affecting him. The alcoholic blackout
state is interesting in this context, for the person seems to
behave "normally" in many ways, indicating that much
ordinarily conscious knowledge is still present, even though this
is a blackout in terms of later recall.
D-ASC 3 represents various d-ASCs in which much subconscious material
might become preconscious: it will not necessarily well up by
itself, but it is much more readily available than ordinarily.
Thus the potential for exploring the mind is greater, but effort
must still be exerted. Marijuana intoxication can do this.
In terms of overall system functioning, I have shown a direct
information flow arrow from Input-Processing to the Subconscious,
and a feedback control arrow from the Subconscious to Input-Processing.
Processed input information may reach the Subconscious and have
effects even when it does not reach awareness. To use again the
example of scanning the crowd, even though you are consciously
looking for your friend's face, the impact of another face may
trigger subconscious processes because of resemblance to someone
emotionally meaningful to you, and may produce later effects on
you even though you were not consciously aware of seeing that
particular person.
The feedback control arrow from Subconscious to Input-Processing
indicates that the Subconscious subsystem may have a major control
over perception. Our likes and dislikes, needs and fears, can
affect what we see. This kind of selectivity in perception is
discussed in relation to the Input-Processing subsystem. I bring
it up here to indicate a distinction between relatively permanent,
learned selectivities of perception that are inherent in Input-Processing
itself, such as ability to recognize words, and selectivities
that are more dependent on the current emotional state of the
Subconscious subsystem, and so may show more variation from time
to time. For example, we have many permanent learnings that are
part of Input-Processing and that enable us to distinguish men
from women at a glance. But we have sexual needs that peak from
time to time, and these may be partially or wholly in the Subconscious
subsystem because of cultural repressive pressures. As these repressed
needs vary, they affect Input-Processing and change our current
perceptions of people of the opposite sex: they can become much
more attractive when we are aroused.
We should also briefly note the possibility of the activation
of archetypes from the Collective Unconscious during d-ASCs. The
terms archetypes and Collective Unconscious are
used in Carl Jung's sense. The Collective Unconscious refers to
a large body of biologically inherited psychological structures,,
most of which remains latent human potentials. Particular structures
are archetypes, innate patterns that can emerge and dominate consciousness
because of the high psychic energy residing in them if the right
stimuli for activation occur. Myths of heroic quests, demons,
gods, energies, God, Christ, are held by Jung to be particular
archetypes from the Collective Unconscious, which express themselves
at various times in human history. It would take far too much
space here to give them adequate consideration; the interested
reader should refer to the collected works of Carl Jung. It should
be noted, however, that some d-ASCs frequently facilitate the
emergence of archetypes.
Evaluation and Decision-Making
The Evaluation Decision-Making subsystem refers to those intellectual,
cognitive processes with which we deliberately evaluate the meaning
of things and decide what to do about them.[4] It
is the subsystem constituting our thinking, our problem-solving,
our understanding. It is where we apply a logic to data presented
to us and reach a conclusion as a result of processing the data
in accordance with that logic.
Note that a logic is a self-contained, arbitrary system.
Two and two do not make four in any "real" sense; they
make four because they have been defined that way. That
a particular logic is highly useful in dealing with the physical
world should not blind us to the fact that it is basically an
arbitrary, self-contained, assumptive system. Thus, when I define
the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem as processing information
in accordance with a logic, I do not intend to give it an ultimate
validity, but just to note that there is an assumptive system,
heavily influenced by culture and personal history, which processes
data. In our ordinary d-SoC there may actually be several different
logics applied at various times. I might apply the logic of calculus
to certain kinds of problems in electronics, but not to problems
of interpersonal relationships.
We should also note, as honest self-observation will reveal, that
much of what passes as rationality in our ordinary d-SoC is in
fact rationalization. We want something, so we make up "good"
reasons for having it.
The discussion that follows is confined to intellectual, conscious
evaluation and decision-making. Some aspects of this become automated
and go on in the fringes of awareness, but they are potentially
available to full consciousness should we turn our attention to
them. Other subsystems, such as Emotions and the Subconscious,
also evaluate data, classify them as good or bad, threatening
or benign, etc. We are not concerned with these here, however;
we shall consider only conscious, intellectual kinds of decision-making
and evaluation.
Figure 8-3 illustrates
the typical operation of the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem
for the ordinary d-SoC. The process starts (lower left-hand corner)
when you encounter some kind of problem situation in life. The
stimuli from this situation, coming in via the Exteroception subsystem,
are subjected to a large amount of Input-Processing, and some
abstraction of the situation reaches your awareness. Assume this
initial abstraction is puzzling: it doesn't make sense to you
and you don't know what to do. So the Evaluation and Decision-Making
subsystem draws upon information stored in the Memory subsystem
in order to evaluate it. Figure 8-3 shows information both coming
from Memory and going to memory to guide the retrieval of memory
information, making it selective and relevant. Further assume
that, given the presented information and what is available in
Memory, the situation still makes only partial sense. You decide
to seek more information. Controlling information is sent to Input-processing
to produce more information about the situation, to look at it
from another angle. Getting this further information, you again
compare it against what you already know, and one of two sequences
results. If the situation still does not make sense, and you have
no way of getting further information, you may take the option,
shown by the upward-slanting arrow, of simply not acting on the
situation for the time being. If it doesn't make sense, in accordance
with whatever logic you are using, you can then consult your memory
for criteria for valued or appropriate kinds of actions, given
your understanding of the situation, and then act in that appropriate
way. Your action modifies the situation, which changes the data
reaching you from the situation through Exteroception and Input-Processing,
and the whole process may be repeated. Continuous cycling through
this sort of process is what we call thinking and action.
In the ordinary d-SoC, the operation of the Evaluation and Decision-Making
subsystem is often hyperactive to the point of constituting noisenoise
in the sense that the overinvestment of attention/awareness energy
in this process lowers the ability to notice and deal with other
sources of relevant information. You cannot hear your sense over
the noise of your thoughts. The cycle shown in Figure 8-3 tends
to be endless and self-perpetuating. Something happens, you think
about it, reach a decision, and act, which changes the situation
and makes you reevaluate it. Or you do not act, but thinking about
it reminds you of something else, which reminds you of something
else, about which you make a decision, which results in action
that modifies another situation, which starts more evaluation
and association processes. For example, someone on the street
asks me for money, which starts me thinking about disinterested
charity versus the work ethic ("Why doesn't he get a job?
I work for my money. Maybe he is unfortunate, but he could also
be too lazy. Maybe I'm being manipulated; I've been manipulated
before, etc. etc.") and I'm so involved in this thought process
that I do not notice various perceptual cues that would inform
me about this person's actual situation and intentions.
Earlier, in discussing the stabilization processes that maintain
a state of consciousness I pointed out that this endless thinking
process is a major source of loading stabilization in an ordinary
d-SoC. It continually reinforces consensus reality, for we tend
to think continuously about the things we have been reinforced
for thinking about, and it absorbs such a large amount of our
attention/awareness energy that we have little of that energy
available for other processes. This Evaluation and Decision-Making
subsystem activity has an extremely large amount of psychological
inertia: if you are not fully convinced of this, I suggest that
you put this book down right now and try to turn the system off
for five minutes. Don't think of anything, don't evaluate anything
for the next five minutes. That also means don't think about not
thinking.
Now, unless you a rare individual indeed, you have seen the difficulty
of stopping activity of your Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem.
This enormous psychological inertia is excellent for maintaining
your social membership in consensus reality, but if your personality
structure and/or consensus reality is unsatisfactory and/or you
wish to explore other d-SoCs besides you ordinary one, this endless
activity of the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem can be
a tremendous liability.
Within the ordinary d-SoC, there is some quantitative variation
in the activity of the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem.
Some days you feel intellectually sharp, and your mind is quick
and you solve problems accurately on the first try. Other days
you mind seems dull; you fail to grasp things right away, have
to think a lot just to understand elementary points, have a hard
time putting things together. There is also some variation within
the ordinary d-SoC in the overall quantity of thoughts: some days
your thoughts seem to race, other days they are a bit slower than
normal. There is probably also quantitative variation in the redundancy
of thinking, the degree to which you use multiple, overlapping
processes to check on your own accuracy. And there is a quantitative
variation in the degree to which you logical evaluation is distorted
by emotional factors. When you are in a situation that activates
conscious and subconscious emotions, your logic borders on pure
rationalization; in a less threatening situation your logic may
be relatively flawless. But these variations all stay within an
expected range that you have come to think of as your ordinary
d-SoC.
All the above relatively quantitative variations in the functioning
of the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem may be exaggerated
in various d-ASCs. Your thoughts may seem to race faster than
you can comprehend them; the slowing down or accuracy of your
logic processes can seem much more extreme than in your ordinary
d-SoC. A drunk, for example, may not be able to think through
a simple problem, while someone intoxicated on marijuana may have
crystal-clear insights into a formerly baffling problem. I cannot
be more specific about this, as there has been little quantitative
research on it so far. However, experiential reports suggest that
the quantitative variations can be large.
Even more interesting are qualitative variations in various d-ASCs.
One of these is the substitution of a different logic from one
ordinarily used in your b-SoC. Martin Orne {44} has reported some
interesting demonstrations. A deeply hypnotized subject is given
a suggestionfor example, "The number three no longer makes
any sense, the idea of three is a meaningless concept." The
subject is then given various arithmetical problems such as two
plus one equals what? Depending on subsidiary assumptions the
subject makes, he rapidly evolves a new arithmetical logic that
does not involve the number three. To the question, "What
does two plus one equal?" he answers, "Four." To
the question, "Sic divided by two equals what?" he answers
either, "Two" or "Four," depending on the
subsidiary assumptions. Thus a whole new logic can be readily
programmed in the d-ASC of hypnosis. Various state-specific logics
have been reported for meditative and psychedelic states, but
they do not seem communicable in the ordinary d-SoC.
In the ordinary d-SoC, we are intolerant of contradictions in
logic; in a d-ASC, tolerance for contradictions may be much higher.
Again, an example from hypnosis is illustrative. I once suggested
to an extremely susceptible subject, while he was in the hypnotic
d-ASC, that mentally he was getting up from his chair, going down
the hall and outside the laboratory building. he described this
experience to me as it was happening. He experienced himself as
being in the yard in back of the laboratory, where he reported
seeing a mole come up to the surface from its tunnel. I asked
him to catch the mole and hold on to it, and he said he had. Later
I had him in his mental journey come back into the laboratory,
walk upstairs, reenter the room where we were sitting, and stand
in the middle of the floor. I asked him what he saw in the room,
and he gave a general overall description of the room, omitting
any mention of the chair in which he was sitting. Something like
the following dialogue then occurred:
CT: Is there anyone sitting in the chair?
T: I am.
CT: Didn't you just tell me you were standing in the middle of
the room?
S: Yes, I am standing in the middle of the room.
CT: Do you think it's contradictory to tell me you're standing
in the middle of the room and sitting in the chair at the same
time?
S: Yes.
CT: Does this contradiction bother you?
S: No.
CT: Which one of the two selves is your real self?
S: They are both my real self.
This stumped me until I finally thought of another question.
CT: Is there any difference at all between the two selves?
S: Yes, the me standing in the middle of the floor has a mole
in his hands.
It is tempting to view this tolerance for contradictions as a
deterioration in logic, but remember that contradiction is itself
defined in terms of a particular logic, and since logics are self-contained
assumptive structures, thinking in a pattern containing contradictions
according to one system of logic may not necessarily mean that
the thinking is useless or absolutely invalid. Indeed, some investigators
have hypothesized that an increased ability to tolerate contradictions
is necessary for creative thought. It should also be noted that
many people who experience this ability to tolerate contradictions
in d-ASCs believe it to be a transcendent, superior quality, not
necessarily an inferior one. Sometimes they feel they are using
a superior logic. Nevertheless, the ability to tolerate contradictions
per se is not necessarily a superior quality.
Since this book is written in ordinary, Western d-SoC logic, there
are difficulties in writing about d-ASC logics. New logics can
emerge, appropriate to a particular d-ASC. New sets of (implicit)
assumptions and rules for handling information in accordance with
these assumptions seem to be inherent or learnable in a particular
d-ASC. Within that particular d-ASC, and in repeated experiences
in that d-ASC, these rules may be quite consistent and illogical.
But writing about this is difficult because new state-specific
logics may not seem like logics at all in other d-SoCs. From the
viewpoint of some other d-SoC (usually the ordinary one) the logic
is apparent, consistent, and useful. The existence of such state-specific
logics is obvious to a number of people who experienced them in
d-ASCs: they have not yet been proved to exist in a way acceptable
to ordinary d-SoC evaluation.
The question whether there are state-specific logics or merely
inferior, error-ridden logics in d-ASCs is further complicated
by the tendency of new experiencers of d-ASCs to overvalue their
experiences in those d-ASCs. The experiences are so fascinating
and often so emotionally potent in a d-ASC that is new to you
that you tend to accept uncritically everything about it. Clearly,
the sense of "This is a remarkable, obviously true and wonderful
truth" is a parainformational quality, like the quality "This
is a memory" discussed earlier, and can attach itself to
various contents regardless of their logical truth value. The
feeling that something is true, no matter how emotionally
impressive, is no guarantee of its truth. The final test of whether
a state-specific logic exists for a particular d-ASC will involve
not only the sequential validation and replication of a logic
of an individual experiencer as he reenters a particular d-ASC
time after time, but also his ability to communicate that logic
to others in that d-ASC and have them independently validate it,
a point elaborated later in connection with state-specific sciences.
An exciting finding of recent psychological research is the apparent
existence of two discrete modes of cognition associated with functioning
of the left and right cerebral hemispheres, respectively {47}.
In the normal person there are a huge number of interconnections
via the corpus callosum between these two hemispheres, and on
that physiological basis a person should be able to alternate
between two modes of thinking quite readily, choosing whichever
is appropriate for a problem. Our culture, however, has greatly
overvalued the style of thinking associated with left hemisphere
activitylinear, sequential, rational, intellectual, cause-and-effect,
analytical thinking. Right hemisphere functioning seems more concerned
with pattern recognition, with wholes, with simultaneity rather
than sequence, and with bodily functioning. The right hemisphere
mode is more an analog mode than a digital mode. Since each mode
of evaluation is highly valid when appropriately applied to
a problem it is suited for, we become limited and less effective
if we overvalue one mode and apply it to problems more appropriate
to the other mode. In the ordinary d-SoC, especially among Western
academics, linear thinking is greatly overvalued, so we exist
in a unbalanced, pathological state. The reasoning behind this
is complex, and the interested reader should consult Ornstein's
The Psychology of Consciousness {47} and the sources he
draws upon.
Many d-ASC experiences seem to reflect a greatly increased use
of the right hemisphere mode of cognition. Experiencers talk of
seeing patterns in things, of simultaneously and instantaneously
grasping relationships they cannot ordinarily grasp, of
being unable to express these things verbally. The experience
is usually reported as pleasant and rewarding and often is valued
as a higher or more true form of cognition. Apparently left and
right hemisphere functioning is more balanced or there may even
be a shift to dominance of right hemisphere functioning. The experience
does not lend itself to verbal description, but may be communicable
in other ways, as through music or dance. It should be noted as
a major shift in the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem
that can occur in d-ASCs.[5]
In the ordinary d-SoC, constant, repetitious thinking absorbs
a great deal of attention/awareness energy and acts as a form
of loading stabilization. Since attention/awareness energy is
taken away from this left hemisphere type of activity in d-ASCs,
and the energy becomes more freely available, psychological functions
that are only latent potentials in the ordinary d-SoC may become
noticeable. They are made noticeable not only through the availability
of attention/awareness energy, but also because the noise of constant
thinking is reduced. These new functions may resemble instincts
giving us information about situations or, since a right hemisphere
mode of functioning may emit some of its output in the form of
bodily sensations (a hypothesis of mine that I believe future
research will validate), they may enhance sensitivity to such
sensations. It is as if in our ordinary d-SoC we are surrounded
by a crowd of people talking and shouting continually. If they
would all quiet down, we might be able to hear individuals or
to hear someone at the edge of the crowd who is saying something
important.
Ordinarily Evaluation and Decision-Making activity consists of
a sequential progression from one thought to another. You think
of something, that draws up a certain association from memory,
which you then think about; this draws up another association,
etc. In this temporal sequence of the Evaluation and Decision-Making
process, the progression from one thought to another, from association
to association to association, it probabilistically controlled
by the particular structures/programming built up by enculturation
and life experience. Thus, if I say the word red to you,
you are likely to associate some word like blue, green, yellow,
some color word, rather than iguana, or sixteen-penny
nail, or railroad track. The association that occurs
to any particular thought is not absolutely determined, but since
some associations are highly likely and others highly unlikely,
we could, in principle, generally predict a person's train of
thinking if we knew the strength of these various associative
habits. Thus, much of our ordinary thinking/evaluation runs in
predictable paths. These paths of likely associations are a function
of the particular consensus reality we were socialized in.
Figure 8-4 diagrams, with the heavy arrows, ordinary thinking
processes. Given a certain input stimulus for thought, a certain
deduction or conclusion is likely to be reached that will draw
highly probable association 1, which will result in certain deductions,
which will draw up highly probable memory association 2, and so
on until conclusion 1 is reached. The light arrows represent possible
branchings not taken because they are weak, improbable, not made
highly likely by habits and enculturation.
In various d-ASCs the rules governing the probability of associations
change in a systematic and/or random way, and so progress along
a chain of thought becomes much less predictable by ordinary d-SoC
criteria. This is shown by the lower chain of light arrows in
Figure 8-4. An unlikely association is made to the same input,
which calls up different memory associations, leading to different
deductions and further memory associations, etc., until a quite
different conclusions, conclusion 2, is reached. Given the same
presented problem in two d-SoCs, two quite different conclusions
may result. This is creative, in the sense of being unusual. Whether
it is practically useful is another question.
In some of the more stable d-ASCs, like hypnosis or dreaming,
I believe the rules for associations may be systematically changed.
In d-ASCs induced by powerful psychedelic drugs like LSD (which
may not be stable d-ASCs) there may be a relatively random interference
with the association processes that may still lead to creative
conclusions but that may show no lawfulness in and of themselves.
Note that the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem controls
Input-Processing to some extent in order to find "relevant"
data to help solve problems. This can be useful or it can merely
reinforce prejudices. Our evaluation of a situation may distort
our subsequent perception of it and thus increase our faith in
our evaluation, but at the price of distorted perception. In our
desire for certainty, we can throw out the reality of the situation.
Emotions
The Emotions subsystem is one which I, as a typical overintellectualized
Western academic, feel least qualified to write out. I share the
intellectual's distrust of emotions as forces that distort my
reasoning and are liable to lead me astray. And yet, like most
people, my life and consciousness are strongly controlled by the
pursuit of pleasant emotions and the avoidance of unpleasant ones.
Emotions are feelings that can be named but not easily defined.
They are feelings that we call grief, fear, joy, surprise, yearning,
anger, but that we define inadequately in terms of words: at best
we use words to evoke memories of experiences that fit those names.
The Emotions subsystem is, in one sense, the most important subsystem,
for it can exert tremendous influence. If you are experiencing
the emotion of fear, it may very well control you evaluations
and decisions, the memories you draw upon, how you see the world
and how you act. Any strong emotion tends to constellate the rest
of consciousness about it. Indeed, I think that while mild levels
of any emotion can occur within the region of experiential space
we call the ordinary d-SoC, most strong levels of feeling may
actually constitute d-ASCs. If you talk about feeling mildly angry,
somewhat angry, or extremely angry, you can imagine all these
things occurring in your ordinary d-SoC. But if you speak of being
enraged, the word evokes associations of changes of perception
(such as "seeing red") and cognition that strongly suggest
that somewhere in the anger continuum there was a quantum jump,
and a d-ASC of rage developed. The same is true for other strong
emotions. I shall not develop the idea further here, as strong
emotional states have seldom been studied scientifically as they
must be to determine if they actually constitute d-SoCs. The idea
holds promise for future research.
Our culture is strongly characterized by poor volitional control
over the Emotions subsystem in the ordinary d-SoC. Emotions can
change with lightning rapidity; external events can induce them
almost automatically. We have accepted this in a despairing way
as part of the human condition, ambivalently regarding attempts
to control emotions as either virtuous (since all emotions make
us lose control, we should suppress them) or artificial (not "genuine").
Techniques from various spiritual disciplines indicate, however,
that there can be emotional control that does not involve simple
suppression or denial of content of the emotion {128}. Don Juan,
for example, stated that since becoming a "man of knowledge"
he had transcended ordinary emotions, but could have any one he
wished {11}. In d-ASCs, people often report either greatly increased
or decreased control over their emotions.
In addition to changes in the degree of control over emotions,
the intensity of emotions themselves may also change in d-ASCs.
Dissociation from or dis-identification with emotions also occurs:
a person reports that an emotion is going on quite strongly within
him, yet is not "his": he is not identified with it
and so little affected by it.
In some d-ASCs new emotions appear, emotions that are never present
in the ordinary d-SoC. These include feelings like serenity, tranquillity,
and ecstasy. Because we use these words in our ordinary d-SoC
we think we understand them, but those who have experienced such
emotions in d-ASCs insist that we have only known the palest shadows
of them.
Space/Time Sense
Events and experiences happen at a certain time in a certain place.
The naive view of this situation is that we simply perceive the
spatial and temporal dimensions of real events. A more sophisticated
analysis shows that space and time are experiential constructs
that we have used to organize sensory stimuli coming to us. Because
the organization has been so often successful for dealing with
the environment, we have come to believe that we are simply perceiving
what is "out there," rather than automatically and implicitly
imposing a conceptual framework on what comes in to us. Ornstein
{47} illustrates this in considerable detail in his analysis of
time perception, showing that psychological time is a construct,
as is physical time, and that a simple equation of the two things
is misleading. If we bear in mind that our ordinary concepts of
space and time are psychological constructshighly successful
theoretical ones, but nonetheless only constructsthen we shall
be less inclined to label as distortions the changes in the functioning
of the Space/Time subsystem reported in d-ASCs.
In the ordinary d-SoC there is a small amount of variation in
Space/Time sense, but not much. On a dull day time drags somewhat
and on an exciting day it goes by quickly, but this range is not
large. The dull hour may seem two or three hours long, a walk
home when you are tired may seem twice as far, but this is about
the maximum quantitative variation for most people in the ordinary
d-SoC. Many other aspects of the space/time framework this subsystem
generates are unchanging in the ordinary d-SoC: effects do not
precede causes, up and down do not reverse, your body does not
shrink or grow larger with respect to the space around it.
Variations in the apparent rate of time flow may be much larger
in some d-ASCs than ordinarily. In the d-ASC of marijuana intoxication,
for example, a common experience is for an LP record to seem to
play for an hour or more. Since an LP record generally plays for
about fifteen minutes, this is approximately a fourfold increase
in experienced duration. Ornstein {47} believes that a person's
estimate of duration is based on the number of events that have
taken place in a given period, so as more things are experienced
the elapsed time seems longer. Since marijuana intoxication, like
many d-ASCs, involves major changes in Input-Processing so that
more sensory information is admitted, this experience of increased
duration for a single record and for similar events may be due
to the fact that a lot more is happening experientially in that
same period of clock time. The converse effect can also happen
in d-ASCs: time seems to speed by at an extraordinary rate. An
experience that seems to have lasted a minute or two actually
lasted an hour.
A rare but especially intriguing experience reported from some
d-ASCs is that the direction of flow of time seems to change.
An event from the future happens now; the experiencer may even
know it does not belong in the now but will happen later. An effect
seems to precede the cause. Our immediate reaction, resulting
from our deeply ingrained belief in the total reality of clock
time, is that this cannot be "true," and we see the
phenomenon as some confusion of time perception or possibly a
hallucination.
A rewarding d-ASC experience is an increased focus on the present
moment, a greatly increased here-and-nowness. In the ordinary
d-SoC, we usually pay little attention to what is actually happening
in the present. We live among memories of the past and amid plans,
anticipations, and fantasies about the future. The greatly increased
sense of being in the here and now experienced in many d-ASCs
usually accompanies a feeling of being much more alive, much more
in contact with things. Many meditative practices specifically
aim for this increased sense of here-and-nowness. Some d-ASCs
seem to produce the opposite effect: the size of the present is
"narrowed," making it very difficult to grasp the present
moment.
The experience of archetypal time, the eternal present,
is a highly valued and radical alteration in time sense reported
in various d-ASCs. Not only is there a great here-and-nowness,
a great focus on the present moment, but there is a feeling that
the activity or experience of the moment is exactly the
right thing that belongs in this moment of time. It is a perfect
fit with the state of the universe, a basic that springs from
one's ultimate nature. Some of informants in my studies of marijuana
intoxication {105} expressed this, in terms of relationships,
as no longer being the case of John Smith and Mary Williams walking
together in New York City on June 30, 1962, but Man and Woman
Dancing Their Pattern Together, as it always has been and always
will be.
The experience of archetypal time is similar to, and may be identical
with, the experience of timelessness, of the feeling that
my kind of temporal framework for an experience is meaningless.
Experiences simply are, they do not seem to take place
at a specific time. Samadhi, for example, is described as lasting
for an eternity, even though the meditater may be in that d-ASC
for only a few seconds. Occasionally in such timeless experiences
some part of the mind is perceived as putting a temporal location
and duration of the event, but this is seen as meaningless word
play that has nothing to do with reality. In some of mystical
experiences in d-ASCs, the adjectives timeless and eternal
are used almost interchangeably. Eternity probably did not
arise as a concept, but as a word depicting an experience of timelessness,
an immediate experiential reality rather than a concept
of infinite temporal duration.
Déjà vu, the French phrase meaning "seen
before," is a time experience that occasionally happens in
the ordinary d-SoC (it may actually represent a momentary transition
into a d-ASC) and happens more frequently in d-ASCs. As an event
is unfolding you seem to be remembering it, you are convinced
it has happened before because it has the quality of a memory.
In discussing the Memory subsystem, we speculated that Déjà
vu might sometimes result from a misplacement of the quality
"this is a memory" on a current perceptual event. Other
types of Déjà vu experiences may represent
an alteration of functioning of the Space/time subsystem, where
the extra informational quality "this is from the past"
is added to current perceptual events.
The quantitative variations in space perception that occur in
the ordinary d-SoC may occur in greatly increased form in d-ASCs.
Distances walked, for example, may seem much shorter or much longer
than ordinarily. Nor is active movement through space necessary
for changes in distance to occur: as you sit and look something,
it may seem to recede into the distance or to come closer. Or
it may seem to grow larger or smaller.
Depth is an important quality of spatial experience. A photograph
or a painting is usually seen as a two-dimensional, flat representation
of what was in reality a three-dimensional scene. Perception of
a three-dimensional quality in the two-dimensional painting is
attributed to the artist's technical skill. In d-ASCs, the degree
of depth in ordinary perceptions may seem to change. Aaronson
{88 or 115, ch. 17} notes that in many psychotic states, such
as those associated with depression, the world seems flat, the
depth dimension seems greatly reduced, while in many valued d-ASCs,
such as those induced by psychedelic drugs, the depth dimension
seems enhanced, deeper, richer. In some intriguing experiments,
Aaronson shows that by artificially altering a hypnotized subject's
depth perception through suggestion, to flatter or deeper, he
can produce great variations in the subject's moods, and perhaps
actually produce d-ASCs by simply changing this basic operation
of the Space/Time subsystem.
The ability to see three-dimensional depth in two-dimensional
pictures is an interesting phenomenon reported for marijuana intoxication
{105}. The technique my main informant reported is to look at
a color picture through a pinhole held right at the eye, so your
field of vision includes only the picture, not any other elements.
If you are highly intoxicated with marijuana, the picture may
suddenly become a three-dimensional scene instead of a flat, two-dimensional
one.
Another d-ASC-associated spatial change is loss of the spatial
framework as a source of orientation. Although there are enormous
individual differences, some people always keep their orientation
in physical space plotted on a mental map; they generally know
what direction they are facing, in what direction various prominent
landmarks are located. This kind of orientation to the physical
spatial framework may simply fade out, not be perceived in d-ASCs,
or it may still be perceptible but become a relatively meaningless
rather than an important type of information.
This kind of change can be accompanied by new ways of perceiving
space. Lines may become curved instead of straight, for example.
Some people report perceiving four or more dimensions in d-ASCs,
not as a mathematical construct but as an experiential reality.
The difficulties of expressing this in a language evolved from
external adaptation to three-dimensional reality are obvious.
We ordinarily think of space as empty, but in d-ASCs space is
sometimes perceived as having a more solid quality, as being filled
with "vibrations" or "energy," rather than
as being empty. Sometimes experiences believe this to be an actual
change in their perception of the space around them; sometimes
they perceive it as a projection of internal psychological changes
onto their spatial perception.
Our ordinary concept of space is a visual one, related to maps,
lines and grids, visual distances, and diagrams. Space may be
organized in other ways. Some marijuana smokers, for example,
report that space becomes organized in an auditory way when they
are listening to sounds or music with their eyes closed. Others
report that tactual qualities determine space.
I recall a striking evening I once spent with some friends. One
of them had just rented a new house, which none of us had seen.
We arrived after dark, were blindfolded before entering the house,
and spent the next couple of hours exploring the house by movement
and touch alone, with no visual cues at all. They concept that
gradually evolved of the space of the house without the usual
visual organizing cues was vastly different from the subsequent
perception of the space when the blindfolds were removed.
Sense of Identity
We noted earlier that an extra informational "This is a memory"
quality is either explicitly or implicitly attached to data coming
from the Memory subsystem and that this quality is sometimes attached
to non-memory information in consciousness, producing interesting
phenomena. The primary function of the Sense of Identity subsystem
is to attach a "This is me" quality to certain aspects
of experience, to certain information in consciousness, and thus
to create the sense of an ego. Presumably semipermanent structures
exist incorporating criteria for what the "This is me"
quality should be attached to. However, the functioning of the
Sense of Identity subsystem varies so greatly, even in the ordinary
d-SoC, that I emphasize the extra informational aspects of the
"This is me" quality rather than the structures underlying
it.
Any item of information to which the "This is me" quality
is attached acquires considerable extra potency and so may arouse
strong emotions and otherwise control attention/awareness energy.
If I say to you, "The face of someone you don't know, a Mr.
Johnson, is ugly and revolting," this information probably
will not be very important to you. But if I say to you, "Your
face is ugly and revolting," that is a different story!
But why do you react so strongly to the latter sentence? True,
under some circumstances such a statement might preface more aggressive
action, against which you want to defend yourself, but often such
a remark prefaces no more than additional words of the same sort;
yet, you react to those words as if to actual physical attack.[6]
Adding the ego quality to information radically
alters the way that information is treated by the system of
consciousness as a whole.
At any given time only some of the contents of awareness are modulated
by the ego quality. As I sit writing and pause to glance around
the room, I see a large number of objects: they become the contents
of my consciousness, but they are not me. The ego quality
has not been added to them. Much our experience is just information;
it does not have a special ego quality added.
Another major function of the Sense of Identity subsystem is the
exact opposite of its usual function: a denial of the sense
of self to certain structures. Because certain of our personal
characteristics and mind structures are considered undesirable
and/or evoke unpleasant emotions in us, we create blocks and defenses
against perceiving them as parts of ourselves. Many of these interdicted
structures are culturally determined, many are specific products
of personal developmental history and are not widely shared in
the culture. So we deny that we have certain characteristics or
we project them on to others: I am not quarrelsome, he is!
I mention this function only in passing, in spite of its enormous
importance, for it leads into the vast realm of psychopathology,
and is beyond the scope of this book.
The functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem is highly variable
in the ordinary d-SoC, much more variable than we are ordinarily
aware. There are many transient identifications, many short-term
modulations of particular information, by the ego feeling. When
you read a good novel or see a good movie and empathize with one
of the characters, you are adding the ego sense to the information
about that character. Empathy is the ability to take in information
about another's experiences and treat it as if it were you own.
However, a person's degree of control over, and self-awareness
of, empathy is highly variable. Lack of control over ability to
identify with particular things can cause psychological difficulties.
For example, if a shopkeeper treats you brusquely, you may feel
hurt and upset about it all day long, even though you know intellectually
that he is a brusque person who treats everyone that way. Your
ego sense was attached to that particular information and is difficult
to detach. Thus, various kinds of stimulus patterns can catch
the ego sense and are difficult to disentangle.
To illustrate the high variability of functioning of the Sense
of Identity subsystem, consider how it can be invested in possessions.
Suppose you are in New York City, having a "sophisticated"
discussion with a friend about the breakdown of social values
and the consequent rebellion by young people. Through the window
you see some teenagers across the street trashing a car, and,
with detachment, you point out to your friend that these unfortunate
teenagers are what they are because their parents could not transmit
values they lacked themselves. Then you notice it is your car
they are trashing, and your feelings of sympathy for those poor
teenagers vanish rather quickly!
Each person has a number of relatively permanent identifications,
well-defined experiential and behavioral repertoires that he thinks
of as himself. His role in society gives him several of these:
he may be a salesman in one situation, a father in another, a
lover in another, a patient in another, an outraged citizen in
another. Often these various roles demand behaviors and values
that are contradictory, but because he identifies strongly with
each role at the time he assumes it, he does not think of this
other roles, and experiences little conscious conflict. For example,
a concentration camp guard who brutalizes his prisoners all day
may be known as a loving and doting father at home. This ability
to compartmentalize roles is one of the greatest human dilemmas.
Some roles are situation-specific. Others are so pervasive that
they continue to function in situations for which they are not
appropriate. For example, if you take your job concerns home with
you or to a party where other kinds of experiences and behavior
are desired and expected, you have overidentified with a particular
role.
One of a person's most constant, semipermanent identifications
is with his body, more precisely, with his body image, the abstract
of the data from his body as mediated through the Exteroception,
Interoception, and Input-Processing subsystems. This body image
he identifies with may or may not have much actual resemblance
to his physical body as other people see it. The degree of identification
with the body may vary from time to time. When I am ill I am very
aware of my physical body and its centrality in my consciousness;
when I am healthy and happy I am aware of my body more as a source
of pleasure, or I forget it as I become involved in various tasks.
On the basis of this mass of transient and semipermanent identifications,
with various degrees of compartmentalization, each of us believes
in something he calls his ego or self. He may assume that this
elf is a property of his soul and will live forever. He may vigorously
defend this self against slights or other attacks. But what is
this ego, this "real" self?
This difficult question has long plagued philosophers and psychologists.
I am intrigued by the Buddhist view that asks you to search your
experience to find the basic, permanent parts of it that constitute
the essence of your ego. When you do this, you find it hard to
identify anything as being, finally, you. You may discern certain
long-term constancies in your values, connected sets of memories,
but none of these qualifies as an ultimate self. The Buddhist
view is that you have no ultimate self, thus you need not defend
it. Since it is the ego that suffers, realization that ego is
an illusion is supposed to end suffering.
In terms of the systems approach, we can characterize ego as a
continuity and consistency of functioning to which we attach special
importance, but which does not have the reality of a solid thing
somewhere, which is only a pattern of operation that disappears
under close scrutiny. I believe that this view is congruent with
the enormous changes that can occur in the sense of self in various
d-ASCs. The ego or self is thus a certain kind of extra informational
modulation attached to other contents of consciousness. It is
not a solid sort of thing, even though there must be some semipermanent
structures containing the information criteria for controlling
the functioning of this subsystem. A change in the pattern of
functioning changes the ego.
Reports from d-ASCs indicate that the sense of ego can be disengaged
from a wide variety of kinds of information and situations to
which it is normally attached. Memories, for example, may come
into your consciousness accompanied by the feeling that this is
your memory, as just information pulled from memory. This can
be therapeutically useful for recovering information about traumatic
events from a patient who is unable to handle the emotional charge
on the events. The sense of ego can also be detached from the
body, so that you are associated simply with a body rather than
your body. Reaction to pain, for instance, can be altered
this way. You may feel a stimulus as just as painful as ordinarily,
but you do not get upset about it because you are not being injured.
Situations that evoke particular roles may not evoke such roles
in d-ASCs. For example, all the necessary stimulus elements may
be present for automatically invoking the role of teacher, but
in the d-ASC the role does not appear. The sense of ego can be
detached from possessions and responsibilities, and even from
actions, so that things you do seem not to be your actions for
which you are responsible, but just actions.
Sometimes the sense of ego is detached from several or all of
the above concepts so that you feel entirely egoless for a while.
There is experience, but none of it is "possessed" by
you in any special ego sense.
The converse effect can also occur in d-ASCs: the sense of ego
may be added to things it is not ordinarily attached to. A situation,
for example, may call for a certain role that is not important
to you ordinarily but which you come to identify with strongly.
This detachment and addition of the ego sense that accompanies
d-ASCs may result in actions that are later regretted when the
ordinary d-SoC returns. In our culture, the classic case is the
person who behaves while drunk as he would never behave sober.
A certain amount of social tolerance exists for drunken behavior,
so while some people have profound regrets on realizing what they
did, others are able to compartmentalize these experiences and
not be particularly bothered by them.
These large shifts in ego sense in d-ASCs may later modify the
ordinary d-SoC functioning of the Sense of Identity subsystem.
When things you firmly identify with in the ordinary d-SoC are
experienced in a d-ASC as detached from you, your conviction of
their permanence is undermined and remains so when you resume
your ordinary d-SoC. You are then receptive to other possibilities.
Since attachment of the sense of ego to certain information greatly
increases the power of that information, these large shifts in
Sense of Identity subsystem functioning can have profound consequences.
For example, if the sense of ego is used to modulate most information
about another person, you may feel united with that person. The
usual ego-object dichotomy is broken. If your sense of being an
ego separate from other things is greatly reduced or temporarily
abolished in a d-ASC, you may feel much closer to another person
because there is no you to be separate from him. The other
may be a perceived, real person or a concept religiously respected
person, a saint, or god, you may have a mystical experience in
which you feel identified with something greater than yourself.
It is important to note, however, that the expansive or contractive
change in the Sense of Identity subsystem that allows identification
with something greater than/or outside oneself can have negative
consequences and can be used to manipulate others. Group procedures
at some religious meetings or political rallies, such as the Nazis
held, illustrate how an intense emotional state can be generated
which disrupts the stabilization of the ordinary d-SoC and leaves
it vulnerable to psychological pressure to identify with the cause
being promoted. Whether the cause is that of the Nazi party or
of Christian salvation, the method is manipulation, playing on
a subject's ignorance to disrupt his d-SoC and then reprogramming
him.
These negative aspects should be emphasized, for too many people
who have had good experiences in d-ASCs tend to think d-ASCs are
inherently good. Consider, therefore, one more example, that of
the berserkers. The English word berserk, meaning
"violently running amuck, killing and slaying at random,"
comes from the Scandinavian word berserker, referring to
groups in medieval times who took a psychedelic drug in order
to become better killers. Tradition has it that these Vikings,
to whom raiding and killing was a respectable way of life, ingested
Amanita muscaria, a mushroom with psychedelic properties,
under ritual conditions (patterning forces) to induce a day-long
d-ASC in which they became exceptionally ferocious killers and
fighters, carried away by rage and lust, supposedly impervious
to pain, an possessed of extra strength. Such a d-ASC experience
hardly creates "flower children."
Additionally we should note that the semiconstancy of the consensus
reality we live in imposes a fair degree of consistency on the
kinds of experiences and contents of consciousness to which the
Sense of Identity subsystem attaches the ego quality. Every morning
you awaken with an apparently identical body; people call you
by the same name; they have relatively fixed expectations of you;
they reward you for fulfilling those expectations; you are usually
surrounded by a fair number of possessions that reinforce your
sense of identity. As long as these consensus reality conditions
remain relatively constant, you can easily believe in the constancy
of your ego. But if these props for your Sense of Identity are
changed, as they sometimes are deliberately as a way of destabilizing
the b-SoC in preparation for inducing a d-ASC, your sense of ego
can change radically. An example familiar to some readers is induction
into the army: you are stripped of personal possessions, including
clothes; all your ordinary social roles are gone; your name is
replaced by a number or a rank; and you are "reeducated"
to be a good soldier. Induction into the army and induction into
a d-ASC have much in common, but because the army is a well-known
subset of consensus reality it is not considered odd, as hypnosis
or dreaming are.
Finally, because of its enormous ability to control emotional
and attention/awareness energy, the Sense of Identity subsystem
can at times constellate the entire structure of consciousness
about particular identity patterns, just as can archetypes (in
the Jungian sense) arising from the Collective Unconscious can.
Motor Output
The Motor Output subsystem consists of those structures which
we physically affect the external world and our own bodies. In
terms of conscious awareness, these structures are primarily the
skeletal, voluntary musculature. If I take a minute out from writing
to pet my cat, I am using my Motor Output subsystem with full
awareness. The Motor Output subsystem elements that primarily
affect our own bodies are glandular secretions and other internal,
biological processes. These latter, involuntary effectors are
controllable not directly, but through intermediates. I cannot
directly increase the amount of adrenaline in my bloodstream,
for example, but if I make myself angry and wave my fists and
shout and holler, I will almost certainly increase the amount
of adrenaline secreted.
Two kinds of inputs control Motor Output: input from the Evaluation
and Decision-Making subsystem, conscious decisions to do or not
to do something, and input from a series of controlling signals
that bypasses the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem. The
latter includes reflexes (jumping at a sudden sound, for example),
emotional reactions, and direct control of Motor Output from the
Subconscious subsystem. Subconscious control in the ordinary d-SoC
includes qualities added to otherwise conscious gestures that
reflect nonconscious mental processes: you may state, for example,
that a certain person does not make you angry, but an observer
notices that your fists clench whenever this person is mentioned.[7]
Motor Output operates with almost constant feedback control. By
monitoring the environment with the Exteroception subsystem and
the body with the Interoception subsystem, you constantly check
on the effect of your physical actions and on whether these are
desirable and make adjustments accordingly.[8]
Many voluntary movements are quite unconscious in terms of their
details. You decide to lift your arm, yet you have little awareness
of the individual muscle actions that allow you to do so. In d-ASCs,
greatly increased awareness of particular aspects of the Motor
Output subsystem are sometimes reported. Greatly decreased awareness
has also been reported: actions that are ordinarily subject to
conscious awareness, via feedback from the interoceptors, are
done with no awareness at all. During my first experience with
a psychedelic drug, mescaline, I told my body to walk down to
the end of the hall. Then my awareness became completely absorbed
in various internal events. After what seemed a very long time,
I was surprised to notice that my body had walked down the hall
and obligingly stopped at the end, with no conscious participation
or awareness on my part. To some extent this occurs in an ordinary
d-SoC, especially with well-learned actions, but the effect can
be much more striking in a d-ASC. We should distinguish lack of
sensory awareness of body actions from awareness of them but without
the sense of ego added. The latter also creates a different relationship
with motor actions.
Deautomatization of motor actions is another sort of altered awareness
of motor output that can occur in a d-ASC. Either you become unusually
aware of components of automatized actions normally inaccessible
to consciousness or you have deliberately to will each of these
component actions to take place because the whole automated action
will not occur by itself.
D-ASC related changes in the way the body is experienced via the
Exteroception subsystem and in awareness of functioning of the
Motor Output subsystem can alter the operating characteristics
of voluntary action. You may have to perform a different kind
of action internally in order to produce the same kind of voluntary
action. Carlos Castaneda {9} gives a striking example of this
in a drug-induced d-ASC. His body was completely paralyzed from
the "little smoke" in terms of his ordinary way of controlling
it. Doing all the things he ordinarily did to move produced zero
response. But if he simply willed movement in a certain way, his
body responded.
Changes in the awareness of the functioning of the Motor Output
subsystem may include feelings of greatly increased strength or
skill, or of greatly decreased strength or skill. Often these
feelings do not correspond with performance: you may feel exceptionally
weak or unsure of your skill, and yet perform in a basically ordinary
fashion. Or you may feel exceptionally strong, but show no actual
increase in performance. The potential for a true increment in
strength in d-ASCs is real, however, because in the ordinary d-SoC
you seldom use your musculature to its full strength. Safety mechanisms
prevent you from fully exerting yourself and possibly damaging
yourself. For example, some muscles are strong enough to break
your own bones if they were maximally exerted. In various d-ASCs,
especially when strong emotions are involved, these safety mechanisms
may be temporarily bypassed, allowing greater strength, at the
risk of damage.
In a d-ASC the Subconscious subsystem may control the Motor Output
subsystem or parts of it. For example, if a hypnotist suggests
to a subject that his arm is moving up and down by itself, the
arm will do so and the subject will experience the arm moving
by itself, without his conscious volition. If a hypnotist
suggests automatic writing, the subject's hand will write complex
material, with as much skill as in ordinary writing, without any
conscious awareness by the subject of what he is going to write
and without any feeling of volitional control over the action.
This kind of disassociated motor action can also sometimes occur
in the ordinary d-SoC, where it may represent the action of a
disassociated d-ASC.
This ends our survey of the main subsystems of states of consciousness.
It is only a survey, pointing out the major variations. Much literature
already exists from which more specific information about various
subsystems can be gleaned, and much research remains to be done
to clarify our concepts of particular subsystems. Particularly
we need to know exactly how each subsystem changes for each specific
d-ASC.
So we must know our parts better, although I emphasize again that
it is just as important to know how these parts are put into the
functioning whole that constitutes a system, a d-SoC.
Figure 8-1 (back)
Figure 8-3 (back)
Footnotes
[1] Lilly's work {34, 35}, in which a mature person uses the ultimate in sensory deprivation (floating in body-temperature water in the quiet and dark) as a tool, under his own direction, to explore consciousness, should be consulted by anyone interested in this area. Lilly's use of sensory deprivation as a tool under the subject's own control, rather than as a "treatment," imposed by people who are studying "craziness," is a breakthrough in research in this area. Suffice it to note here that sensory deprivation, by removing a major source of loading stabilization by the exteroceptors, can be a major tool for inducing d-ASCs and deserves much study. (back)
[2] The d-ASC or d-ASCs entered into by spiritualist mediums are a promising, but almost totally neglected field of research. Scientists have generally avoided having anything to do with mediums as a result of a priori dismissal of the claims made for survival of bodily death. The few scientists (parapsychologists) who have studied mediums have been concerned with whether the alleged surviving entities can provide evidence that they actually had an earthly existence, and whether this evidence could be explained by other hypotheses than postmortem survival. The nature of the medium's trance state per se is virtually unknown, yet it is clearly one of the most profound d-ASCs known and has tremendous effects on its experiencers. I mention this to alert researchers to an opportunity for learning a great deal with even a small investment of decent effort. (back)
[3] Note that while this is probably the cause of most déjà vu, experiences, some kinds of déjà vu, may actually represent paranormal experience. (back)
[4] Much meaning is automatically supplied by Input-Processing: when you see a stop sign, you need not consciously evaluate its meaning. (back)
[5] I do not consider right and left hemisphere modes of functioning to be two d-SoCs themselves, but rather two modes of functioning of the Evaluation and Decision-Making subsystem. The balance can vary in different d-ASCs. (back)
[6] The old childhood rhyme, "Sticks and stones will break my bones/ But names will never hurt me!/Call me this, and call me that/And call yourself a dirty rat!" must be looked upon as a morale-builder, or perhaps an admonition that we adults should heed, but certainly not as a statement of truth. We are terribly hurt by names and words and what people think of usoften much more hurt than by sticks and stones. People have "chosen" to die in a burning house rather than run out of it naked.(back)
[7] In relation to subconscious control of movement, Gurdjieff {24} put forth an idea about body movement that is interesting because it parallels the idea of discrete states of consciousness on a body level. He states that any person has only a set number of postures and gestures that he uses of his own will. The number varies from person to person, perhaps as low as fifty, perhaps as high as several hundred. A person moves rapidly, almost jerks, from one preferred posture to another. If he is forcibly stopped in between discrete postures, he is uncomfortable, even if it is not a physical strain. Since the functioning of consciousness seems to be strongly affected by body postures and strains, these "discrete states of posture" (d-SoPs) are important to study.
Gurdjieff used this as a basis for his "Halt" exercise. Pupils agreed to freeze instantly whenever the command "Halt!" was given. The exercise was intended to show the pupils some of their limitations, among other things. Gurdjieff claims it is a dangerous exercise unless used by someone with an exceptional knowledge of the human body. The idea suggests interesting research possibilities. More information can be found in Ouspensky {48}. (back)
[8] Conscious control over aspects of bodily functioning long considered to be automatic, not susceptible to voluntary control, is now a major research area under the rubric of biofeedback. The interested reader can find the most important researches reprinted each year in Biofeedback and Self-Control, an annual published by Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago. (back)