Untitled (18 page)

  My state of consciousness underwent another process of purification and became absolutely pristine and radiant. I recognized that this was consciousness of a diamond. I realized that diamond is chemically pure carbon, an element on which all life as we know it is based. It seemed meaningful and important that it is created by extremely high temperatures and pressures. I had a very convincing sense that the diamond somehow contains all the information about nature and life in an absolutely pure, condensed, and abstract form, like the ultimate cosmic computer.

  All the other physical properties of the diamond seemed to be pointing to its metaphysical significance—beauty, transparence, luster, permanence, unchangeability, and the capacity to transform white light into an amazing spectrum of colors. I felt that I understood why Tibetan Buddhism is called Vajrayana (
vajra
meaning "diamond" or "thunderbolt" and
yana
meaning "vehicle"); the only way I could describe this state of ultimate cosmic ecstasy was to refer to it as "diamond consciousness." Here seemed to be all the creative intelligence and energy of the universe as pure consciousness existing beyond time and space. It was entirely abstract yet containing all the forms of creation.

  We can see from this description why transpersonal states of consciousness involving inorganic materials can provide such profound insights into ancient and aboriginal spiritual systems that include precious stones and metals in their mythologies. Similarly, if you have ever had the experience of identifying with water you will understand why this element has been so important in Taoism. If you have had transpersonal experiences with fire you will find it easy to comprehend why the Parsees saw it as sacred, why a variety of cultures worshiped volcanoes, and why the Sun is perceived as a supreme deity by so many peoples and religious groups.

  Through experiential identification with granite, it is easy to see why the Hindus perceive the Himalayas as a gigantic reclining Shiva. One can get an entirely different sense of why various cultures have created colossal granite sculptures of their deities. These objects not only
represent
divine figures, they
are
the deities themselves since the materials from which they are shaped are intimately associated with vast, undifferentiated, imperturbable, and immutable consciousness of the cosmic creative principle in nature.

In a rare form of transpersonal experience, consciousness expands to include the Earth in its totality. People who have these experiences are deeply moved by the notion of our planet as a cosmic unity. They perceive the different aspects of our planet—geological, biological, psychological, cultural, and technological—as manifestations of a sustained effort to reach a higher level of evolution and self-actualization. It becomes clear that the processes on Earth are guided by a superior intelligence that far exceeds all human capacities, and that this intelligence deserves to be respected and trusted. We should be extremely cautious about our efforts to manipulate or control it from our limited human perspective. I am reminded here of the words of Lewis Thomas (from
Lives of the Cell
).

Viewed from the distance of the Moon, the astonishing thing about the Earth, catching the breath, is that it is alive…. Aloft, floating free beneath the moist, gleaming membrane of bright blue sky, is the rising Earth, the only exuberant thing in this part of the cosmos. If you could look long enough, you would see the swirling of the great drifts of white cloud, covering and uncovering the half-hidden masses of land. If you had been looking for a very long, geologic time, you could have seen the continents themselves in motion, drifting apart on their crustal plates, held aloft by the fire beneath. It has the organized, selfcontained look of a live creature, full of information, marvelously skilled in handling the Sun.

  The transpersonal experiences revealing the Earth as an intelligent, conscious entity are corroborated by scientific evidence. Gregory Bateson, who created a brilliant synthesis of cybernetics, information and systems theory, the theory of evolution, anthropology, and psychology came to the conclusion that it was logically inevitable to assume that mental processes occurred at all levels in any system or natural phenomenon of sufficient complexity. He believed that mental processes are present in cells, organs, tissues, organisms, animal and human groups, eco-systems, and even the earth and universe as a whole.

  Another writer-scientist, physicist J. E. Lovelock, hired by NASA to establish criteria for deciding whether or not there might be life forms in areas of the universe where they (NASA) were considering sending space probes, examined the information and decided that the Earth was itself a living, breathing organism. According to his findings, our planet behaves very much like a living cell. He showed that it metabolizes, and that it is "a self-regulating entity" with highly sophisticated homeostatic capabilities. He called the Earth an "intelligent being." His evidence for this was based on his observations of the homeostatic functions.

Much of the routine operation of homeostasis, whether it be for the cell, the animal, or the entire biosphere, takes place automatically, and yet it must be recognized that some form of intelligence is required even within an automatic process, to interpret correctly information received about the environment…. If Gaia (the living, breathing, intelligent Earth) exists, then she is without doubt intelligent in this limited sense at least.

  While the objective evidence for the Gaia theory might not be sufficient to convince hardcore scientists, it is certainly supported by the existence of transpersonal experiences that are fully congruent with it. For example, in one of our five-day workshops in Holotropic Breathwork, a young German woman had a persuasive experience of becoming the archetypal Great Mother Goddess. Then the experience developed further and she felt herself becoming planet Earth (Mother Earth). She reported that she felt no question at all that she had merged with and had become the consciousness of the Earth. She experienced herself as the Earth, as a living, breathing organism with an intelligence, an organism that was evolving toward a still higher level of awareness.

  As the Earth consciousness she felt that the metals and minerals that were a part of her, constituted her skeleton. Similarly, the biosphere, all forms of life, was her flesh. She experienced within herself the circulation of water from the oceans to the clouds, from there into creeks and rivers and finally to the great seas. The water system was her blood and the meteorological changes, such as evaporation, air currents, and rainfall, ensured its circulation, the transport of nourishment, and cleansing. The communication between all living things, large and small, constituted her nervous system and brain.

  Immediately after the experience, she described how important the healing rituals of primitive peoples had been to her in her experience as the Earth. She told how human activities had affected her, especially how dances, songs, and prayers performed by aborigines had brought great comfort. Once having returned to her everyday state of being, she found it difficult to imagine that the rituals had really been important, though in the state of identifying so closely with the Earth she was absolutely convinced of their importance to her overall welfare.

As we experience the spatial boundaries of our world dissolving in the transpersonal realm, we begin to also experience the dissolution of the temporal boundaries upon which we have come to depend in our everyday lives. Just as we can leap beyond physical boundaries, we can leap backward and forward through the years; we can visit our own lives, or the lives of others, as if all time existed only in a single moment.

  While our perceptions of time and space are intertwined, there are subtle differences to look for as we experience these boundaries fading. Let us go forward now to explore some of these differences.

—T. S. Eliot,
Four Quartets

 As described by the poet, transpersonal consciousness allows us to experience past and future, leaping across boundaries that clocks, calendars, and the aging of our own bodies seem to make so real and so inexorable. Here we enter a world where we might experience ourselves as an embryo in the earliest stages of our intrauterine development or, even further back, the fertilizing sperm or fertilized ovum at the moment of conception.

  Many people who have experienced the transcendence of linear time have gone even further back than the time spans of their own lives, connecting with ancestral memories, or drawing upon the memory banks of the collective unconscious, that vast sea of awareness that we have shared with all of humankind since the beginning of time. Such experiences, from various periods of history and from different countries, are often associated with a vivid sense of a personal memory of our spiritual rather than biological history; we can talk here about
karmic
or
past life recall.
On occasion people have reported memories of specific animal ancestors in the evolutionary pedigree. However, consciousness does not seem to be limited to human history or the history of living organisms. It is in principle possible to experience the history of the Earth before the appearance of Homo sapiens and even prior to the beginning of life on the Earth. Our consciousness seems to have the amazing capacity to directly access the earliest history of

the universe—witnessing dramatic sequences of the Big Bang, the formation of the galaxies, the birth of the solar system, and the early geophysical processes that occurred on this planet billions of years ago.

  For our purposes here, let us begin at the smallest scale of human life and move to the larger. For a variety of reasons, it is useful to first explore our ability to experience, through the transpersonal consciousness, the earliest stages of our own lives.

The experiences people report for the embryonal and fetal stages of their lives cover a wide range, indicating that the quality of our experiences in these earliest phases of life is anything but universal. At the most positive end of the spectrum, people report that in their intrauterine life they experienced feelings of "oceanic ecstasy." They felt a powerful mystical connection with all of life and the cosmic creative force that made it all possible. At the opposite end of the spectrum, people experience intense crises, with dominant feelings of anguish, paranoia, physical distress, and the sense of being attacked by demonic forces. Many but not all embryonal memories are associated with phylogenetic, karmic, and archetypal experiences, and with organ, tissue, and cellular consciousness.

  Reports of embryonal and fetal experiences suggest that it is possible to experience not only gross disturbances during this period—such as the threat of abortion, the danger of natural miscarriage, intense mechanical concussions and vibrations, loud sounds, toxic influences, and physical diseases of the mother—but also the mother's feelings. It is quite common to experience the mother's emotional shocks, anxiety attacks, outbursts of hate or aggression, depression, sexual arousal, as well as feelings of relaxation, satisfaction, happiness, and love.

  The exchange of information between the fetus and the mother can include many nuances of feeling as well as the transfer of complex thoughts and images. While reliving early life in the womb, many people have reported how keenly aware they were of thoughts and feelings that their mothers never verbalized in their everyday lives. For example, the person recalling intrauterine life might suddenly get in touch with the mother's sense of conflict or resentment over her pregnancy or, conversely, might feel the mother's happiness with the pregnancy and her joyous anticipation of the birth.

  Having witnessed countless episodes of people moving back through time to re-experience their lives in the embryonal and fetal stages of life, and having experienced such episodes myself, I find it impossible to dismiss them as fanciful products of our imaginations. In many cases, the experiences recounted were verified against information provided by the mother, relatives, obstetricians, and medical records. We have also compared layperson's descriptions of their fetal and embryonal life and development with information provided by medical handbooks. The result is that we have discovered amazing correlations between the objective information gathered from outside sources and the experiences people described. The following account of a training session of a psychiatrist is an excellent example of the complexities of embryonal experiences. It provides us with detailed descriptions of the earliest stages of our lives, even back to the moment of conception.

  My consciousness became less and less differentiated, and I started experiencing a strange excitement that was dissimilar to anything I have ever felt in my life. The middle part of my back was generating rhythmical pulses, and I had the feeling of being propelled through space and time toward some unknown goal; I had a very vague sense of what the final destination might be, but the mission appeared to be one of utmost importance.