Several people have expressed interest in the subject of my dissertation.

This message is a summary of what I wrote; the whole thing can be obtained

thru UMI (warning- 400pgs!) Windows is fighting me every step of the way in

posting this, so I hope it comes through OK.

Event Horizons of the Psyche: Synchronicity, Psychedelics, and

the Metaphysics of Consciousness

(c) 1993 by David Bruce Albert Jr.

Dissertation Summary

1. Constellation and Portal Experience

It is not uncommon for ordinary experiences to carry with them

special meanings. An advertisement for a child's toy might bring

to mind fond (or not so fond) memories of childhood, of persons and

places, of joys and fears. A painting or a song may stimulate the

emotions, or retrieve memories of long-forgotten thoughts and

experiences. When ancient astronomers looked at the stars, the

patterns in the sky called to mind the shapes of animals and people

from stories and from everyday life. There are no bears or hunters

in the sky, but the arrangement of the stars suggested those things

to the ancients, and thus arose the astronomical constellations.

In each of these cases, what has been called to mind are

things in the past experience of the individual. There is another

class of cases, however, in which what is called to mind are things

that could not possibly be in the individual's past; things

fascinating, perplexing, and often frightening; things so different

from ordinary experience that they seem to come from a world alien

to our ordinary thoughts and experiences. It is as if through an

ordinary experience, a gateway to something out of the ordinary has

been opened.

Visions of gods and goddesses, of fairies and woodland

sprites; of dragons and monsters; and of heavens and hells -- these

things often find their way into consciousness on the coattails of

quite ordinary experiences. I have used the term constellation to

identify the process by which perceptions of things outside

ordinary experience are formed in consciousness; imagination, in

the sense of being aware of what is not being directly experienced,

and what is not the product of past experience, is a reciprocal

term.

There are many examples of constellation. Fairies in the

forest and mermaids in the sea are simple examples; dreams and

childhood fantasies are common ones. Perhaps historically the most

important example is participation mystique, the belief that the

individual is a part of a larger reality than what can be directly

experienced through the senses, and that the individual is an

active participant in that reality, along with other beings a part

of, and apart from, the world of ordinary experience.

Participation mystique is the source of the belief in fairies and

vampires; the celebrations of the seasons, as well as ancient

fertility and death rites origniated with the belief that humankind

is a part of a larger reality than the physical world, and that

human activity is as much a part of that "other" reality as that

reality is an influence on human and natural events. Out of

participation mystique grew the belief in magic, that one could

influence the goings on the world by symbolic acts. Divination,

the practice of discovering the past and foretelling the future,

rests upon the belief that one can connect one's mind with a

reality in which events are not separated by time. Similarly,

witchcraft spells rely on the principle that manipulating physical

objects can affect distant objects through a common dimension in

which objects are not separated from one another by physical space.

Mythologies serve, among other things, as records of

participation mystique. The stories and images of myths and fairy

tales may be viewed as symbolic representations of encounters with

"other world" realities. They are attempts to integrate the

contents of what is perceived as a different order or dimension

into individual lives, and into the general life of a culture as a

whole. To study mythology is to study the way a culture has

reacted to the unknown.

Perhaps the most stunning example of constellation is the

mystical experience, in which the individual feels that his or her

mind lies in the presence of, or is in fact united with, some

spiritual being, or becomes aware of a "transcendental reality"

within which all beings are untied. This being is not a part of

the ordinary world of space and time, but inhabits a world of the

eternal and infinite, which during the experience, the mystic

experiences first hand. Walter Stace used the term intersection in

his theory of mystical experience, which states that there are two

separate orders, the finite and the infinite, and that during the

mystical experience, the two orders "intersect" in the mind of the

mystic. According to this theory, it is not possible for anything

to be both finite and infinite, or temporal and eternal, but it is

possible for the mind of the mystic to occupy the point of

intersection between these mutually exclusive worlds. I have

generalized Stace's theory from the specific case of mystical

experience to the broader class of experiences in which things that

cannot possibly be a part of the physical world are constellated in

the mind. I refer to this more general class as portal

experiences: while one could not be in the physical world and the

world that is constellated in the mind, one's consciousness could

stand in the gateway between them.

The most carefully studied portal experience is astral

projection, sometimes called psi phenomena, out-of-body experience,

or ESP. The evidence collected by parapsychologists strongly

suggests that these experiences are neither psychological

fabrications nor chance occurrences, but are actually experiences

of some kind of reality that is different from the ordinary reality

in which events are ordered in time and separated in space; they

are experiences of a dimension in which time and space have no

meaning.

The metaphysical problem posed by portal experience is this:

how is it possible for an individual with a body situated in the

physical world to experience a dimension or world that, according

to the intersection theory, lies outside the physical universe and

is therefore inaccessible to beings within the physical universe?

There are two common responses to this problem. The first, which I

call material reductionism, is to proclaim that the only real world

is the world of the physical body, and that experiences claiming to

be of non-physical worlds are "hallucinations", falsifications or

aberrations, and are not to be counted as experiences of what is

"real". The other kind of response is spiritual reductionism,

which claims that the real world is the world of the eternal and

the infinite, and that the physical world and the body are

illusory.

In this study I oppose both forms of reductionism. In

rejecting material reductionism, I take seriously the idea that

what is constellated in the mind during a portal experience is a

perception of a reality outside space and time. The rejection of

spiritual reductionism means that we must consider what role the

physical body plays in a portal experience. To overcome both

reductionist views, a theory of consciousness must be developed

that explains how it is possible for an individual with a physical

body to experience a non-physical dimension, and how it is possible

for a reality outside space and time to constellate itself in the

mind of a person with a brain.

2. Physiological Theories

If we are to reject both forms of reductionism, then a theory

of consciousness that accounts for portal experience must include a

theory of the physiological and anatomical features of the body

associated with consciousness. While a physiological theory of

consciousness will not be a complete theory of consciousness, as it

cannot explain portal experience characterized as metaphyical

intsersection, it can serve as point to begin answering the

question of how portal experiences are possible for individuals

with physical bodies.

In this study, I have examined two theories of consciousness

that deal with the role of the body, and specifically of the brain

and nervous system. The first is Julian Jaynes' bicameral mind

theory. According to this theory, the salient feature of

consciousness is the ability to introspect -- to have a kind of

"mental space" from which reflection is possible.

Now for Jaynes, consciousness originates out of behavior; he

paraphrases Locke: "there is nothing in consciousness that was not

in behavior first." The behavior that produces the mental space

from which reflection is possible is the use of language, and

specifically the use of metaphor. Metaphors are the means by which

the unfamiliar is made familiar by comparison to things already

familiar. Things encountered in behavior that are unfamiliar are

assimilated by means of metaphors, which are themselves used to

familiarize other things. Out of the repetitive metaphorization

process, a sort of mental map of behavior is created; this Jaynes

calls the "analog-I". This linguistically produced map of the

individual's behavior in the physical world is, according to

Jaynes, the mental space from which reflection occurs, and

therefore is the source of consciousness. Consciousness serves

primarily to control behavior, and involves the ability to mentally

see one's self in relation to others and the world.

This kind of consciousness, which Jaynes calls "subjective",

is historically of fairly recent origin, having appeared in the

middle east during the first two millennia BC. Before the

appearance of subjective consciousness, the control of the

individual's behavior was carried out by the "bicameral mind", an

arrangement in the brain by which, instead of reflecting on his/her

behavioral choices, the individual heard and obeyed the voices of

the gods. The bicameral mind theory is based on studies showing

that the right cerebral hemisphere is capable of discerning complex

patterns; patterns such as behaviors that are necessary to maintain

a civilization. The right hemisphere has, however, no linguistic

capabilities. So, the behavior necessary to maintain the pattern

of life in a civilization was determined by the right hemisphere,

and formulated into commands that were transmitted to the

linguistic left hemisphere, and heard as "voices of the gods."

This kind of mental functioning is, according to Jaynes, evident in

the Iliad. The significance of the bicameral mind is that there

have been entire civilizations that have existed in the absence of

consciousness, and in the absence of reflective control of

behavior.

The bicameral mind can function as a behavioral control

mechanism only if there are patterns it can discern. During the

first two millennia BC, geological catastrophes, expanding trade

and invading armies disrupted the social patterns to which the

bicameral mind oriented itself. As a result, the bicameral mind

failed as a control mechanism. It was replaced by subjective

consciousness, which according to Jaynes, may have had its origins

in the observation of differences between peoples of different

cultures, or in the harboring of resentment toward invading armies.

Jaynes' theory is that the primary function of consciousness

is to control behavior. Behavioral control was originally a

physiological mechanism, by which individuals were commanded by

voices of the gods, originating in the physiology of their own

brains. When that mechanism failed, it was replaced by an

elaborate linguistically based mental image of the self, from which

one could contemplate one's actions.

Just as Jaynes' theory has both physiological and linguistic

components, Gerald Edelman's Theory of Neuronal Group Selection

(TNGS) also invokes both physiology and language as the elements

out of which consciousness arises. Edelman's theory takes as the

salient feature of consciousness intentionality, the ability to

refer to other things, which according to Edelman is unique to

humans and some higher primates. Edelman offers the TNGS as an

explanation of how consciousness appeared as a result of natural

selection.

According to the TNGS, the brain develops embryologically as a

set of maps, which duplicate within the brain the sensory areas of

the body. The maps are interconnected in a rather haphazard way,

being the products of cell movements during development. The

functional connections between mappings are carved out of this

primary repertoire by patterns of neurological activity, which

strengthen or weaken connections according to their usefulness.

Rather than being constructed out of a set of precisely determined

connections, the brain originates as a poorly organized structure

that is fine-tuned to the needs of the individual during

development and early infancy. This is to say the brain is not

wired according to some genetic blueprint that determines behavior,

but is instead a self-organizing system, whose behavior, to a large

extent, determines its own structure.

Consciousness is possible, according to the TNGS, because of

the existence of multiple parallel reentrant connections, that

allow maps to generate signals within themselves, as opposed to

being entirely dependent upon the outside world for stimulation.

These connections allow maps to signal each other and to re-signal

themselves. By means of these reentrant connections, visual maps

associated with color and shape can be linked to olfactory maps,

and the animal can thereby come to recognize an apple. The

operation of these mappings is controlled in a general way by value

criteria, physiological regulators residing in specific hard-wired

portions of the brain, that are sensitive to hunger, pain, and

similar things connected with the survival of the organism.

Therefore, while the brain is self-organized, it is constrained by

value criteria that are evolved and inherited.

When the number of reentrant connections reaches a certain

critical density, however, a process called perceptual

bootstrapping takes place. Physiologically, bootstrapping is

characterized by the appearance of signaling processes that operate

independently of the physical structures out of which they arose.

The neural activity in the brain behaves according to

characteristic patterns, and maintains those patterns in the face

of physiological changes. This is primary consciousness,

characteristic of higher animals. It allows for the construction

of a scene, in which things not directly connected with one another

can be associated. For example, the morning sun, heat, and thirst

can be assembled into a mental image, such that the animal knows it

must begin its search for water in the morning.

Primary consciousness is important because it signals the

appearance, in evolution, of mental processes that are not directly

dependent upon the operation of individual neurological components.

Primary consciousness is a dynamical system, of which more will be

said later. Its significance is that the behavior of primary

consciousness cannot be described in terms of the behavior of parts

of the brain; primary consciousness is a self-organizing system,

and although it originates in the neurological structures of the

brain, the behavior of those structures does not control the

behavior of consciousness.

Primary consciousness is limited to the ability to create

scenes of things in the immediate present; it cannot conceptualize

the past or future. The ability to relate the past, present and

future requires the development of symbolic memory, which arose out

of -- you guessed it -- the ability to use language. The

anatomical structures associated with symbolic memory are,

according to the TNGS, those structures in the brain associated

with speech organs. The addition of symbolic memory to primary

consciousness allowed for semantic bootstrapping, and the

appearance of higher-order consciousness, which adds to primary

consciousness the ability to conceptualize past and future.

For Jaynes, the "self" is a mental map of behavior, created

out of repetitive metaphorizations. According to Edelman, the self

is socially constructed, being a symbolic memory of social

interactions. The bicameral mind theory and the TNGS are similar

in several ways, most importantly in that they both involve the

idea of consciousness being a process that consists of repetitive

signaling, and has an independence in its operation from the

physiological structures out of which it arose.

I have several criticisms of these theories. Both are

strictly materialist theories: Jaynes states that whatever the

origins of hallucinations or voices may be, it must be

neurological, while Edelman says that a theory of consciousness

must exclude all "spooks" and "spirits", and answer only to the

laws of physics. The "laws of physics" specifically excludes such

theoretical topics as quantum gravity, which interestingly enough

are the ones that call into question the physical nature of matter.

For our purposes in this study, I have set as a constraint that we

must reject both spiritual and material reductionism; that a theory

of portal experience, and a theory of the consciousness that

experiences it, must allow for the possibility that portal

experiences might really be what they claim to be -- experiences of

non-physical reality. So the materialist assumption -- the

assumption that whatever consciousness is, it must involve only

physical things -- is rejected.

The second objection concerns the appeal to language as an

ontological factor in the development of consciousness. The

objection proceeds along two lines. First, the appeal to language

appears to come completely out of the blue; it is simply stated

that this is where consciousness comes from, that the self is

socially constructed, that the analog-I is a behavioral map.

Little argument is given for the linguistic appeal, and no

alternatives are mentioned. I believe that this appeal to language

is an instance of what Jung called psychological extraversion, the

orientation of one's thinking being controlled primarily by social

and other factors outside the individual. The appeal to language

as the foundation of consciousness is the fulfillment of a

psychological attitude that seeks the understanding of itself in

others.

This is in contrast to what Jung called the introvertive type,

which orients itself based upon subjective factors -- appeals to

the mental processes of the individual. Now there is no argument

as to whether one type is better than the other, nor do I argue at

this point that the appeal to language is "wrong" in some

metaphysical sense of falsity. I am only calling attention to the

possibility that the appeal to language as the basis of

consciousness is a feature of the attitude of the theorist, and

that there is at least one alternative attitude available: that

consciousness is an individual affair, and the factors affecting

its development are to be found by searching within and not

without. Since portal experiences are individual affairs, and we

are developing a theory of consciousness that accommodates them,

some alternative to language may be more appropriate.

The second line of objection is primarily directed at Jaynes'

theory, and his claim that metaphors are exclusively linguistic.

The counterexample is that of the chemist who discovered the

organic ring structure, as the result of a vision he had while

staring into the fire. There were no concepts in the linguistic

community of the time that could have yielded this structure.

Instead, it seems to have originated in the unconscious, in the

same mental functions that gave rise to similar images in the

mythologies of ancient cultures. It is as if an image from the

minds of the ancients arose in the mind of the scientist to solve

his intellectual problem. If this is the case, then the

metaphorization process by which the scientist understood the

vision as the solution to his problem is not exclusively

linguistic, and the bicameral mind is not a relic of the past, but

an integral part of contemporary consciousness.

The additional, and rather obvious objection to Jaynes' theory

is that he concentrates exclusively upon the cultures of the middle

east. While this may accord with the "cradle of civilization" view

that the cultures of the middle east are responsible for the

appearance of higher mental functioning throughout the world, they

do not accord with the historical facts that there were other,

flourishing civilizations in Europe, Africa, the Orient, and the

Americas at the same time the Assyrians were spreading their empire

of terror. That the cultures of the middle east eventually found

their fruition in the conquering armies of Rome does not speak for

their intellectual or moral superiority.

What we have gained from the perusal of Jaynes' and Edelman's

theories is an understanding of consciousness as a repetitive

signaling process that operates independently of the physiological

mechanisms out of which it arose. And while consciousness may not

be linguistic, it certainly has something to do with the repetitive

metaphorization process described by Jaynes. Jaynes has given us

an explanation of interpretation, which will be important in

understanding portal experiences. Edelman has given us the notion

of consciousness as a dynamical system, which will be important in

the understanding of how consciousness and portal experience are

related.

3. Psychedelic Bootstrapping.

An understanding of portal experiences requires a theory of

consciousness that not only explains how they are possible, but how

they can be understood. The individual must be able to situate

him/her self with respect to the experience, in order to integrate

its content into consciousness. The example of the chemist's

vision shows that such an understanding can be symbolic, and that

symbols may not necessarily be dependent upon language use.

Consciousness must be able to both experience, and interpret. For

linguistic theories, interpretation (and to some extent experience

as well) is a matter of being situated within a speech community.

To rescue the idea of consciousness as a dynamical system, and at

the same time to deny the primacy of language, an alternative

theory of bootstrapping -- of the process by which a dynamical

system is generated by physiological systems in the brain -- must

be provided.

The theory of bootstrapping that I propose is founded upon the

biochemistry of neural synapses. Information is transferred from

neuron to neuron by chemical interactions, and there are chemical

substances from outside the body that can affect those

interactions. It is very curious that evolution proceeded in such

a way as to make the body's main control centers -- the heart and

the brain -- sensitive to the actions of chemical substances

encountered in the environment. At first glance, we would have

expected the opposite. According to the theory of evolution, a

given trait is maintained by organisms if and only if it provides a

survival advantage. Therefore, there must have been some survival

advantage to evolving a nervous system sensitive to the effects of

chemicals produced outside the body.

The theory of psychedelic bootstrapping, which I suggest is

the mechanism by which consciousness as a dynamical system appeared

during evolution, claims that consciousness arose as a result of

the brain's sensitivity to outside chemicals. Experimental

evidence shows that dynamical system activity appears in the brains

of rats when they recognize scents. These experiments also show

that this activity is associated with the reduction of inhibitory

influences on the relevant neurons -- in a manner of speaking, the

brain takes its foot of the brake pedal, allowing the neurons

involved to run at full speed.

Chemical substances including LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and

others -- sometimes called psychedelics or entheogens -- are known

to interfere with inhibitory substances in the brain.

Specifically, there are groups of neurons in the brain that are

devoted to generally inhibiting the activity of the cerebral

cortex, and these neurons produce inhibition by releasing

substances whose inhibitory activity is blocked by the

aforementioned psychedelics.

It is therefore hypothesized that consciousness, as a

dynamical system such as described by Edelman, arose during

evolution when brains with a sufficient density of reentrant

connections encountered psychedelic substances that blocked their

internal inhibitory systems, allowing for the appearance of

dynamical system processes. According to this theory, the

evolutionary advantage gained by sensitivity to psychedelics was

the development of dynamical systems which made consciousness

possible.

One cannot help being struck by the relationship between

psychedelics and portal experiences. Records of ancient rituals,

as well as observations of contemporary shamanistic cultures, show

that portal experiences often occur after consuming psychoactive

substances. The most highly publicized case in modern times is the

"Miracle of Marsh Chapel", in which a group of divinity students

given psilocybin reported having mystical experiences. Now while

the observation that psychedelics often produce portal experiences,

and the theory that psychedelics bootstrapped consciousness do not

construct a valid argument about the nature of consciousness, there

is a strong suggestion that both consciousness and portal

experience are related to dynamical systems in the brain.

4. Intersection and Unconscious.

The psychedelic bootstrapping theory, along with the TNGS and

a TNGS-influenced interpretation of the bicameral mind theory,

claim that whatever consciousness is, it is associated with a

dynamical system in the physiological processes of the brain. A

similar study of portal experiences, and of the unconscious whose

role has already been suggested in connection with the chemist's

vision, shows that in these processes, too, are to be found

dynamical systems.

What exactly is a dynamical system? It is a collection of

parts functioning together as a whole, but functioning in such a

way that the behavior of the system as a whole is not dependent

upon, nor predictable from, the behavior of the individual parts.

Dynamical systems are called "chaotic" because the cause-effect

relationships seen in ordered systems are not functional. We would

expect, in an ordered system, for the behavior of the system as a

whole to "track" any alterations in the behavior of any of its

components -- if one steps on the gas pedal, for example, one

ordinarily would expect the car to speed up. But chaotic systems

do not behave this way. They are self organizing, meaning that the

system as a whole operates in some characteristic way, or according

to some characteristic pattern, and any perturbation of its

components may or may not be reflected in the system's overall

behavior. Additionally, the system may modify the behavior of its

components, such that the notion of cause and effect becomes

hopelessly muddled by complex non-linear interrelationships.

Dynamical systems typically appear at the boundaries between

things that are different from each other in some important way.

At the boundary between oil and water, for example, one finds a

dynamical system that gives rise to brightly colored interference

patterns. Such boundaries are fractals, complex geometric

structures made up of repeating patterns. It is characteristic of

a fractal that the observed patterns are the same, no matter the

order of magnitude under which they are observed.

The classic example of the fractal is the "coastline of

Britain problem". If one were to ask the length of Britain's

coastline, one would discover, contrary to intuition, that there is

no last and final answer. The length depends upon the order of

magnitude in which the investigator is interested. If one were

going to fly around the island in a plane, one would get a certain

answer, while if one were an ant proposing to walk the distance,

the answer would be very different. The physical characteristics

of things, according to this theory, are not fixed quantities;

instead, they are functions of the characteristic patterns of their

dynamics, plus the order of magnitude in which one is interested.

They embody, therefore, an element of chaos and an element of

interpretation.

Portal experiences, understood along the lines of Stace's

intersection theory, involve the meeting of worlds or dimensions

that are immiscible with each other in some relevant way. The

eternal, for example, is not simply a lot of temporality, but is

different in kind from temporality. In the eternal, there is no

ordering of events according to time; there is no past, present or

future. Consequently, one could not be situated in both the

eternal and the temporal. But, according to the intersection

theory, one could be situated at the meeting point of the two.

Now this metaphorical description of these modes of existence

as "worlds" or "dimensions" carries with it the danger of

falsification through spatialization -- we may think of the

"worlds" as ping-pong balls or some other such thing, which they

are not. The "worlds" are modes of existence incompatible with one

another, but nonetheless, there is a boundary between them of which

the individual is conscious during a portal experience.

Furthermore, mystical experiences, and by generalization

portal experiences, are all subject to interpretation. According

to Stace, the mystic does not understand the "other world" which

has been experienced, but instead interprets the relationship of

that world to his/her own consciousness. Portal experiences are

therefore "ineffable" in their own right, and are subject to

interpretation.

Since portal experiences involve both a boundary condition

between immiscible worlds, and are understood through

interpretation, we have the necessary conditions to claim that

portal experiences are dynamical systems. What is observed in a

portal experience is a pattern, or set of patterns, produced by the

dynamical interactions at the boundary of the worlds. Just as we

see a brightly colored shimmering when water meets oil on the

pavement in a rainstorm, so the mystic sees an equivalent spiritual

shimmering when he/she is conscious of the metaphysical

intersection. We interpret the oil slick as a rainbow of colors;

the mystic interprets the intersection in a rainbow of symbology.

In the example of the chemist's vision, we saw that the

unconscious, a collection of mental processes of which

consciousness is not directly aware, plays a role in the

metaphorization process. In that example, it was in image from the

unconscious -- dancing figures joining in a circle -- that

suggested a new chemical structure. Freud's theory of the

unconscious holds that there is a whole host of mental processes --

things forgotten, things repressed, and others -- that are

inaccessible to consciousness in that they cannot be directly

recalled, but nonetheless play an important role in thought and

behavior. In addition to this personal unconscious, Jung added the

theory of the collective unconscious, a repertoire of mental

processes that are basically the same in everyone. It was from the

collective unconscious that the imagery of the chemist's vision

originated.

According to Jung's theory, what determines whether a

particular mental process can become conscious is the amount of

"psychic energy" it possesses. While it is possible for

unconscious contents, called psychoid processes, to assimilate

sufficient energy to become conscious, they cannot be directly

represented to consciousness because they are different in kind

from the processes of consciousness. The unconscious therefore

makes itself known to consciousness symbolically, through dreams,

visions, and the like. These symbols are characteristic patterns

which appear to the individual, but also appear in mythologies as

motifs, repeating patterns that are similar in all cultures.

The appearance of unconscious symbology in consciousness

signals the activity of an archetype, a psychoid process

originating in the collective unconscious. Whereas Freud thought

that much of the motivation for behavior comes from sexual drives,

Jung's theory is that archetypes play a major role in shaping

thought and driving behavior. The idea of the collective

unconscious itself is derived from the observation that the

archetypes are identical in all individuals and in all cultures,

and throughout history.

Jung's notion of psychic energy, which explains the influence

of the unconscious upon consciousness, is derived from the vitalism

of the 19th century, and particularly the ideas of Hans Driesch.

Vitalism is the idea that living matter, and sometimes inanimate

matter as well, is imbued with a force or power that directs its

behavior. Jung thought the vital principle was not a physical

force, but one that nonetheless animated consciousness. According

to Jung's theory, we have a non-physical force that interacts with

the body through the psyche, revealing itself on occasion through

archetypal symbology.

The theory of the collective unconscious therefore is one of

an incommensurability of conscious and unconscious processes, and

that the "vital force", which is not a part of space-time, reveals

itself to consciousness symbolically, as an interpretation. We

therefore have the necessary conditions to argue that the psyche,

on Jung's theory, is a dynamical system. Much like the

metaphysical intersection, there are two dimensions -- conscious

and unconscious -- and a symbolic interpretation of the

relationship between them, in the form of archetypal images.

5. Acausality and Portal Experience

The purpose of this study is to show how it is possible for

portal experiences to become conscious, and, reciprocally, to

develop a theory of consciousness that explains how portal

experiences are possible. The three major players are the

metaphysical theory of intersection, which describes portal

experience as a meeting of metaphysically incommensurable worlds;

the theory of psychedelic bootstrapping, which describes the

processes in the brain associated with consciousness; and Jung's

theory of the psyche, which describes the relationship between

conscious and unconscious. All three elements have been shown to

embody dynamical systems. To show how portal experiences become

conscious, it needs to be shown how the dynamical systems involved

interact with one another.

To understand this interaction, we again turn to the work of

Jung, this time to his theory of synchronicity, which he called the

"acausal connecting principle." The theory of synchronicity is

offered as an explanation of events that influence each other, but

which are not causally connected.

Jung's paradigm case against causality is the work of J. B.

Rhine, in which subjects were asked to guess the shapes on cards

drawn by an experimenter. Some subjects displayed an ability to

guess the card correctly at a frequency far greater than predicted

by chance. Furthermore, the subjects were not only able to

accurately guess the cards irrespective of physical separation

between experimenter and subject, but were also able to guess

correctly cards drawn at a later date.

A causal relationship between events depends upon a transfer

of energy between them; one billiard ball bumping into another

transfers energy from one to the other. If there were a causal

relationship between experimenter and subject, we would expect,

since causal relationships involve energy transfer, that the effect

would diminish according to the inverse squares law; an expectation

which is contrary to observation. It also appears that a causal

theory cannot explain the correct guessing of cards drawn in the

future. According to Jung, these experiments meet the criterion

for synchronistic events: things that are meaningfully, but not

causally, related.

In order to come to grips with synchronicity, what we must do,

according to Jung, is to begin with a criticism of our concepts of

space and time. Causation, understood in the physicalistic,

sometimes called "Humean" sense, means that events are related by

contiguity, succession and regularity. Things that cause effects

in others must touch them, the cause must come before the effect,

and there must be a regular, repeatable pattern of interaction. In

the case of synchronistic events, there is no need for either

contiguity or succession, as the Rhine experiments show. Now what

Jung means by "meaningfully" is something in the mind of the

observer, which is probably not too different from the Humean idea

of regularity.

Synchronicity is, in itself, an explanatory principle on a par

with causality; it is "an empirical concept which postulates an

intellectually necessary principle". Jung suggests that it might

be the means by which the soul-body relation may be explained. He

describes it in terms of "acausal orderedness", a "pattern that

exists from all eternity", and "not derivable from any known

antecedents." This is exactly the same vocabulary used to describe

chaotic, dynamical systems, and suggests that synchronicity might

be the principle by which dynamical systems interact with one

another. Whereas ordered systems are linear and causal, behaving

according to time-ordered, energy-transferring principles, chaotic

systems are non-linear, exhibiting patterns of behavior that are

causally independent from the behavior of their component parts,

and not ordered according to time or showing effects that diminish

with distance.

Several kinds of dynamical systems are known to interact with

each other acausally. The phenomenon of satellites spinning at

some integer multiple of their orbital periods; of electronic

receivers synchronizing themselves to transmitted signals; of Asian

fireflies flashing in synchronous; of cardiac muscle cells

contracting simultaneously; and of mechanical clocks synchronizing

themselves to one another are all examples of what is called mode-

locking, a characteristic behavior of non-linear systems. Systems

that are mode-locked track each others' behavior, each system

influencing the behavior of the other, without any causal

relationship between the two.

Systems that are mode-locked duplicate each others'

characteristic patterns of behavior. What Jung called

synchronicity in the psychological realm is the same acausal

principle that physicists call mode-locking; it is the ability of

one disordered system to influence another acausally, such that the

systems share a common pattern of behavior. Using this acausal

connecting principle, we can propose an explanation for events such

as the "Miracle of Marsh Chapel." The psychedelic drug alters the

pattern of discharge in the brain, resulting in the appearance of

chaotic processes that are mode-locked to the dynamical interaction

between conscious and unconscious, and to the dynamical interaction

between intersecting worlds. Since all three systems are mode-

locked, the change in pattern in the brain is able to change the

relations between conscious and unconscious, such that patterns

from the intersection can influence consciousness.

This I have called the possibility thesis, because it explains

how portal experiences are possible. Portal experiences,

intuitions of metaphysical realms outside space and time, are

possible because of dynamical systems in the brain, in the psyche,

and in the intersection, that can interact with each other

acausally. Mystical experiences that occur as a result of physical

changes have a non-reductive explanation, because both the

spiritual and the physical are involved. Because the intersection

is something consciousness cannot apprehend directly, constellation

amounts to the appearance of metaphysical "others", outside space

and time, in consciousness by way of unconscious symbology.

There are, however, two stronger versions of this

synchronicity thesis of portal experience. When two (or more)

dynamical systems are mode-locked, the pattern of the one system is

replicated in the pattern of the other. This amounts to saying

that, when two or more systems are mode-locked, they behave as one

system. The identity thesis is, therefore, that during portal

experience, there is a unity between brain, psyche, and

intersection, such that it is most appropriate to speak not of

three dynamical systems, but only of one. This is the

"transcendental one-ness" and "undifferentiated unity" reported by

mystics -- that in the relevant and meaningful sense, there is only

one entity during the experience, the system in which body, soul

and universe are participants.

The strongest version of the synchronicity thesis grows out of

the observation that the collective unconscious is a constant

factor, revealing the same patterns in individuals and cultures,

across time and across geographic separations. The collective

unconscious is, according to Jung's theory, an essential component

of the psyche, from which the "energy" that makes consciousness

possible arises. The contents of the collective unconscious are

psychoid processes that are the same for everyone, and are

necessary for the existence of consciousness.

How can we explain the identity of these psychoid processes

across time and space? The only reasonable explanation is that

they have their origin in something with a constancy not affected

by changes in time or space; something that itself lies outside of

time and space. They are, according to this necessity thesis,

processes in the unconscious that are mode-locked to, and therefore

(according to the identity thesis) not distinct from, a

metaphysical intersection of the kind described by Stace. This

amounts to saying that consciousness has, as a necessary condition

for its existence, the existence of one (or more) metaphysical

intersections between incommensurable dimensions -- that in order

for consciousness to exist, there must be worlds or dimensions that

are not physical. This is the only reasonable explanation for the

collective unconscious -- that the origin of the archetypes is to

be found in something outside space and time.

There is an interesting analogy between this necessity theory

of consciousness, and black-hole cosmology. It is thought be some

that the energy which maintains the existence of galaxies has its

origins in black holes located in their centers. When physical

matter crosses the black hole's event horizon, the point of no

return from which nothing can escape, and moves from the physical

world into the black hole's world of singularity, energy is

released. The analogy with consciousness is that the energy that

organizes mental processes into a conscious whole is ultimately

derived from the opposition within the psyche of conscious and

unconscious processes, the unconscious processes having their

origins is a world very different from the world of space and time

that organizes ordinary perception.

Conclusion

This study has moved from the attempt to understand how it is

possible to have experiences that appear to be of alternative

realities, to the theory that without those realities, there can be

no consciousness. The value of this theory, like the value of

portal experiences themselves, lies not so much in what they are,

but in what they provoke. There are those in whom the argument for

non-physical realities, and their role in consciousness, provokes

disbelief, contempt and ridicule; there are also those in whom

materialism provokes the same responses. It is to be hoped that

this theory provokes an interest in the investigation of what

consciousness is, rather than fueling the rhetoric over what it

must or should not be.