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We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.
—Teilhard de Chardin: The Phenomenon of Man
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison house begin to close
Upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality”
The Perfect Illusion
In holotropic states, we can transcend the boundaries of the embodied ego with which we usually identify and have convincing experiences of becoming other people, animals, plants, and even inorganic parts of nature or various mythological beings. We discover that the separation and discontinuity that we usually perceive within creation are arbitrary and illusory. And when all the boundaries dissolve and we transcend them, we can experience identification with the creative source itself, either in the form of Absolute Consciousness or the Cosmic Void. We thus discover that our real identity is not the individual self, but the Universal Self.
If it is true that our deepest nature is divine and that we are identical with the creative principle of the universe, how do we account for the intensity of our belief that we are physical bodies existing in a material world? What is the nature of this fundamental ignorance concerning our true identity, this mysterious veil of forgetting that Alan Watts called “the taboo against knowing who you are”? (Watts 1966). How is it possible that an infinite and timeless spiritual entity creates from itself and within itself a virtual facsimile of a tangible reality populated by sentient beings who experience themselves as separate from their source and from each other? How can the actors in the world drama be deluded into believing in the objective existence of their illusory reality?
The best explanation I have heard from the people with whom I have worked is that the cosmic creative principle traps itself by its own perfection. The creative intention behind the divine play is to call into being experiential realities that would offer the best opportunities for adventures in consciousness. To meet this requirement, they have to be convincing and believable in all details. We can use here as an example works of art such as theater plays or movies. These can occasionally be enacted and performed with such perfection that they make us forget that the events we are witnessing are illusory and react to them as if they were real. Also, a good actor and actress can sometimes lose their true identity and temporarily merge with the characters they are impersonating.
The world in which we live has many characteristics that Absolute Consciousness in its pure form is missing, such as plurality, polarity, density, physicality, change, and impermanence. The project of creating a facsimile of a material reality endowed with these properties is executed with such artistic and scientific perfection that the split-off units of the Universal Mind find it entirely convincing and mistake it for reality. In the extreme expression of its artistry, represented by the atheist, the Divine actually succeeds in bringing forth arguments not only against its involvement in creation, but against its very existence.
One of the important ploys that help to create the illusion of an ordinary material reality is the existence of the trivial and ugly. If we all were radiant ethereal beings, drawing our life energy directly from the sun and living in a world where all the landscapes would look like the Himalayas, the Grand Canyon, and unspoiled Pacific islands, it would be too obvious to us that we are part of a divine reality. Similarly, if all the buildings in our world looked like Alhambra, the Taj Mahal, Xanadu, or the cathedral in Chartres, and we were surrounded by Michelangelo’s sculptures and listen to Beethoven’s or Bach’s music, the divine nature of our world would be easily discernible.
The fact that we have physical bodies with all their secretions, excretions, odors, imperfections, and pathologies, as well as a gastrointestinal system with its repulsive contents, certainly effectively obscures and confuses the issue of our divinity. Various physiological functions like vomiting, burping, passing gas, defecating, and urinating, together with the final decomposition of the human body further complicate the picture. Similarly, the existence of unattractive natural scenes, junkyards, polluted industrial areas, foul-smelling toilets with obscene graffiti, urban ghettoes, and millions of funky houses make it very difficult to realize that our life is a divine play. The existence of evil and the fact that the very nature of life is predatory makes this task almost impossible for an average person. For educated Westerners, the worldview created by materialistic science is an additional serious hurdle.
It is certainly easier to associate divinity with beauty than with ugliness. However, in a larger context, including ugliness into the universal scheme makes the spectrum of existence fuller and richer and helps to disguise the divine nature of creation. The image of the hideous can be executed with great perfection and to be able to do it constitutes an interesting challenge. When we realize that the complex nature of Cosmic Consciousness includes, among others, certain characteristics that we find on our level reflected in artists and scientists, the tendency to explore the entire spectrum of possibilities, including the ugly and disgusting, suddenly does not seem very surprising.
The world of art, including painting, literature, and movies, can hardly be accused of onesidedly favoring the beautiful and uplifting. Similarly, scientists certainly do not shy away from exploring any aspect of existence and many of them do not hesitate to pursue their passionate quest even if their discoveries have dismal and ugly consequences for our world. Once we realize the origin and purpose of the cosmic drama, the usual criteria for perfection and beauty have to be drastically revised. One of the important tasks on the spiritual journey is to be able to see the divine not only in the extraordinary and ordinary, but also in the lowly and ugly.
According to our usual criteria, Albert Einstein is a genius who certainly towers high above his fellow humans, let alone above a primate like a chimpanzee. However, from a cosmic perspective, there is no hierarchical difference between Einstein and an ape, since they are both perfect specimens of what they were intended to be. Within a Shakespeare play, a king is certainly superior to his court jester. However, the status of Lawrence Olivier as an actor does not oscillate depending on which of them he plays, as long as he delivers a perfect performance. Similarly, Einstein is God impeccably impersonating Albert Einstein and a chimpanzee is God playing perfectly the role of a chimpanzee.
Ordinarily, possessing a reasonable esthetic sense, we would admire the work of Michelangelo or Vincent van Gogh and not feel much appreciation for kitsch. This would make perfect sense if we were comparing ordinary human efforts that have such drastically different results. However, the true originators of these works were not the embodied selves of the authors but the Absolute Consciousness and the cosmic creative energy working through them with a specific purpose. If the creative intention was not to produce a great piece of art, but quite specifically to add the phenomenon of kitsch to the cosmic game, this project was perfect in its own way.
The same can be said about an ugly toad, a creature that was included in the universal scheme for a specific purpose by the same source that was capable of creating swallowtail butterflies. peacocks, and gazelles. It is the absolute perfection of creation, understood in this sense, that seems to be responsible for the “taboo against knowing who we are.” The virtual reality simulating a material universe is worked out with such an acute sense for miniscule detail that the result is absolutely convincing and believable. The units of consciousness cast as the protagonists in the countless roles of this play of plays get entangled and caught in the complex and intricate web of its illusionary magic.
Creative Play of the Demiurges
The insights into the nature and dynamics of the cosmic game do not have to emerge on the level of the supreme creative principle. Gail, a minister who participated in our training program for professionals at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, had in her psychedelic session an interesting sequence that portrayed cosmogony as a competitive creative game of four demiurgic suprahuman entities. Although her experience is very unusual, since it involves several demiurgic beings rather than one creative principle, I will include it here. It illustrates with exceptional clarity many of the issues related to the problem of incarnation of spiritual beings and the “taboo against knowing who you are.” Here is the corresponding excerpt from her session:
I found myself in a dimension that seemed to lie beyond space and time as we know it. What comes to my mind when I think about it now is the concept of hyperspace used by modern physicists. However, such a technical term would not describe the profound feeling of sacredness, the awesome sense of numinosity associated with my experience. I realized that I was a suprahuman being of immense proportions, possibly one that transcended all limitations, or one that existed before any limitations were known. I did not have any form, being just pure consciousness with superb intelligence suspended in Absolute Space. Although there was no source of light there, I cannot say I was in complete darkness.
I shared this space with three other beings. Although they were purely abstract and amorphous like myself, I could clearly feel their separate presence and communicate with them in a complex telepathic fashion. We amused each other by various brilliant intellectual games; fireworks of extraordinary ideas were being thrown back and forth. The complexity, intricacy, and level of imagination involved in these games by far surpassed anything known among humans. It was all pure entertainment, l’art pour l’art, since in the form we were, none of it had any practical implications.
I have to think in this context about whales who float in the ocean with their enormous brains and are endowed with intelligence that matches or surpasses ours. Since nature does not create and maintain organs and functions that are not being used, the mental activity of the cetaceans has to be comparable to that of humans. Yet. because of their anatomy, they have only minimal capacity to give any tangible physical expression to what is going on in their minds. I once read a speculation of a researcher who suggested that the whales may be spending most of their time entertaining each other using their amazing voices that carry in the ocean over distances of hundreds of miles. Do they tell each other stories and communicate artistic creations? Do they have philosophical dialogues or play sophisticated games? Or are they like Indian or Tibetan yogis who in their deep meditations, in the solitude of their caves and cells, experience connection with the entire history of the cosmos and other realities?
After this introduction, describing the general ambience and context of her experience and reflecting on the disembodied existence as a purely spiritual being, Gail focused on the part of her session that has immediate relevance for our discussion about the “taboo against knowing who we are.”
One of the beings came up with an intriguing idea. It suggested that it would be possible to create a game involving a reality with many different creatures of various sizes and forms. They would appear to be dense and solid and exist in a world filled with objects of different shapes, textures, and consistencies. The beings would come into existence, evolve, have complex interactions and adventures with each other, and then cease to exist. There would be groups of creatures of various orders, each existing in two forms—male and female—that would complement each other and participate in reproduction.
This reality would be bound by distinct space and time coordinates. Time would show a mandatory flow from the past through the present to the future and later events would appear to be caused by the preceding ones. There would be vast historical periods, each different from the others. One would have to travel to get from one place to another and there would be many different ways to do it. A variety of rigid limitations, rules, and laws would govern all the events in this world, as it is with all the games. Entering this reality and assuming different roles in it would provide exquisite entertainment of a very unique type.
The three spiritual beings were intrigued, but incredulous, and expressed serious doubts about the suggested project. As exciting as it sounded, it seemed unlikely that it could be implemented. How could an unlimited spiritual being existing in the world of all possibilities be made to believe that it is confined to a solid body of a strange shape, with a head, trunk, and extremities, and that it critically depends on the ingestion of other dead creatures and the presence of a gas called oxygen? How could it be convinced that it has a limited intellectual capacity and that its ability to perceive is constrained by the range of something like the sensory organs. It seemed too fantastic to be seriously considered! In what follows, Gail describes how the demiurgic beings resolved the problem.
A heated intellectual exchange ensued. The originator of this plan responded to all our objections, insisting that the project was perfectly feasible. He/she was convinced that sufficient complexity and intriguing nature of the script, consistent association of specific situations with compelling experiences, and careful covering of all the loopholes was all that was necessary. It would trap the participant into an intricate net of illusions and trick him/her into believing in the reality of the game. We were getting increasingly fascinated by all the possibilities and finally became convinced that this unusual project was viable. We agreed to enter the game of incarnation excited by the promise of extraordinary adventures in consciousness.
This experience has somehow resolved whatever concerns I have ever had regarding the matter of karma. It left me with a firm conviction that I am in essence a spiritual being and that the only way I could have possibly gotten involved in the cosmic drama was through a free decision. The choice to incarnate involves voluntary acceptance of a large number of limitations, rules, and laws, as it always does when we decide to play a game. From this perspective, it does not make sense to blame anybody for anything that happens in our life. The fact that, on a higher level, we have a free choice whether or not we enter the cosmic game creates a metaframework that redefines everything that occurs within it.
Vicissitudes and Pitfalls of the Return Journey
There exists another important reason why it is so difficult to free ourselves from the illusion that we are separate individuals living in a material world. The ways to reunion with the divine source are fraught with many hardships, risks, and challenges. The divine play is not a completely closed system; it offers the protagonists the possibility to discover the true nature of creation, including their own cosmic status. However, the ways leading out of self-deception to enlightenment and to reunion with the source present serious problems and most of the potential loopholes in creation are carefully hidden. This is absolutely necessary for the maintenance of stability and balance in the cosmic scheme. These vicissitudes and pitfalls of the spiritual path represent an important part of the “taboo against knowing who we are.”
All the situations that provide opportunities for spiritual opening are typically associated with a variety of strong opposing forces. Some of the obstacles that make the way to liberation and enlightenment extremely difficult and dangerous are intrapsychic in nature. Here belong terrifying experiences that can deter less courageous and determined seekers, such as encounters with dark archetypal forces, fear of death, and the specter of insanity. Even more problematic are various interferences and interventions that come from the external world. In the Middle Ages, many people who had spontaneous mystical experiences were risking torture, trial, and execution by the Holy Inquisition. In our time, stigmatizing psychiatric labels and drastic therapeutic measures replaced accusations of witchcraft, tortures, and autosda-fé. Materialistic scientism of the twentieth century has ridiculed and pathologized any spiritual effort, no matter how well founded and sophisticated.
The authority that science enjoys in modern society makes it difficult to take spirituality seriously and pursue the path of spiritual discovery. In addition, the dogmas and activities of mainstream religions tend to obscure the fact that the only place where true spirituality can be found is inside the psyche of each of us. At its worst, organized religion can actually function as a grave impediment for any serious spiritual search, rather than an institution that can help us connect with the Divine.
The technologies of the sacred developed by various aboriginal cultures have in the West been dismissed as products of magical thinking and primitive superstitions of the savages. The spiritual potential of sexuality that finds its expression in Tantra is by far outweighed by the pitfalls of sex as a powerful animal instinct. The advent of psychedelics that have the capacity to open wide the gates to the transcendental dimension was soon followed by irresponsible secular misuse of these compounds and the threats of insanity, chromosomal damage, and legal sanctions.
Failed Experiment in Astral Projection
We are so deeply imbedded in our belief in an objectively existing and predictable material world that a sudden collapse of our familiar reality and violation of the “taboo against knowing who we are” can be associated with indescribable metaphysical terror. I will illustrate this point by completing the story about my “astral projection” from Baltimore to Prague that I introduced earlier (p. 89–91). I interrupted my account at the point where I felt trapped in a space-time loop, not knowing in which of these two cities I actually was. Here is the rest of this extraordinary adventure in consciousness:
I felt that I needed a much more convincing proof of whether or not what I was experiencing was “objectively real” in the usual sense. I finally decided to perform a test—to take a picture from the wall and later check in the correspondence with my parents if something unusual had happened at that time in their apartment. I reached for the picture, but before I was able to touch the frame, I was overcome by an increasingly alarming feeling that it was an extremely risky and dangerous undertaking. I suddenly felt under the attack of evil forces and perilous black magic. It seemed to me that what I was about to do was a hazardous gamble, in which the price was my soul.
I paused and made a desperate effort to understand what was happening. Images from the world’s famous casinos were flashing in front of my eyes—Monte Carlo, Lido in Venice, Las Vegas, Reno—I saw roulette balls spiraling at intoxicating speeds, the levers of the slot machines moving up and down, and dice rolling on the green surface of the tables during a game of craps. There were circles of players passing around cards, groups of gamblers involved in baccarat, and crowds watching the flickering lights of the keno panels. This was followed by scenes of secret meetings of statesmen, politicians, army officials, and topnotch scientists.
I finally got the message and realized that I had not yet overcome my egocentrism and was not able to resist the temptation of power. The possibility of transcending the limitations of time and space appeared to me to be intoxicating and dangerously seductive. If I could exert control over time and space, an unlimited supply of money appeared to be guaranteed, together with everything that money can buy. All I would have to do under those circumstances was to go to the nearest casino, stock market, or lottery office. No secrets would exist for me if I could have mastery over time and space. I would be able to eavesdrop on summit meetings of political leaders and have access to top-secret discoveries. This would open undreamed-of possibilities for directing the course of events in the world.
I understood the dangers involved in my experiment. I remembered passages from different spiritual books warning against toying with supernatural powers before we overcome the limitations of our egos and reach spiritual maturity. There was something that appeared even more relevant. I found out that I was extremely ambivalent in regard to the outcome of my test. On the one hand, it seemed extremely enticing to be able to liberate myself from the slavery of time and space. On the other hand, it was obvious that a positive outcome of this test would have far-reaching and serious consequences. It clearly could not be seen as an isolated experiment revealing the arbitrary nature of space and time.
If I could get confirmation that it was possible to manipulate the physical environment at a distance of several thousand miles, my whole universe would collapse as a result of this one experiment, and I would find myself in a state of utter metaphysical confusion. The world as I had known it would not exist any more. I would lose all the maps I relied on and felt comfortable with. I would not know who, where, and when I was and would be lost in a totally new, frightening universe, the laws of which would be alien and unfamiliar to me. If I had these powers, there would likely be many others who would have them too. I would have no privacy anywhere and doors and walls would not protect me anymore. My new world would be full of potential dangers of unforeseeable kind and unimaginable proportions.
I could not bring myself to carry out the experiment and decided to leave the problem of the objectivity and reality of the experience unresolved. This made it possible for me to toy with the idea that I had been able to transcend time and space. At the same time, it left open the possibility to see the entire episode as a peculiar deception caused by a powerful psychedelic substance. The idea that the destruction of reality as I knew it was objectively verified beyond any reasonable doubt was simply too frightening.
The moment I gave up the experiment, I found myself back in the room in Baltimore where I took the substance and within a couple of hours my experience stabilized and congealed into the familiar “objective reality.” I never forgave myself for having wasted such a unique and fantastic experiment. However, the memory of the metaphysical terror involved in this test makes me doubt that I would be more courageous if I were given a similar chance in the future.
The Secrets of False Identity
We can now sum up the insights from holotropic states concerning the “taboo against knowing who we are.” On all the levels of creation, with the exception of the Absolute, the participation in the cosmic game requires that the units of consciousness forget their true identity, assume a separate individuality, and perceive and treat other protagonists as fundamentally different from themselves. The creative process generates many domains with different characteristics and each of them offers unique opportunities for exquisite adventures in consciousness. The experience of the world of gross matter and the identification with a biological organism existing in this world is just an extreme form of this universal process.
The mastery with which the creative principle is able to portray the different realms of existence seems to make the experiences of the roles involved so believable and convincing that it is extremely difficult to detect their illusory nature. In addition, the possibilities of overcoming the illusion of separation and experiencing reunion are associated with extreme difficulties and complex ambiguities. In essence, we do not have a fixed identity and can experience ourselves as anything on the continuum between the embodied self and Absolute Consciousness. The extent and degree of free choice, that we have as protagonists on the different levels of the cosmic game, decreases as consciousness descends from the Absolute to the plane of material existence and increases in the course of the spiritual return journey. Since by our true nature we are unlimited spiritual beings, we enter the cosmic game on the basis of a free decision and get trapped by the perfection with which it is executed.