The mind is the sum total of all consciousness. This is
true whether we refer to the individual mind apparently circumscribed by
the physical organism, or the Synergetic Mind of extended Consciousness.
On the individual level, this mind exhibits what is essentially a
bicameral structure, having a foreground of perceived events, and
a background of unperceived, but still psychologically active,
events. The foreground is customarily referred to as the conscious mind,
while the background is referred to as the unconscious mind.
The foreground of
the mind is composed of the great flood of waking impressions of the
senses provided by the central nervous system – an enormous inundation
of electrochemical signals that is fundamentally chaotic in character.
This mass of sensation is resolved into the much less chaotic world that
we actually experience through the senses by the action of primarily one
mental structure – the ego. The ego is developed through acculturation –
a socialized, indoctrinated entity that noted author and consciousness
researcher Deepak Chopra has described as “a social fiction.” The ego is
primarily the result of social training throughout the lifespan of the
individual. It is nonetheless a perceptible aspect of consciousness that
“I” experience as my personal sense of self – my sentient
self-awareness. The ego learns through the ongoing process of cultural
exposure what to accept as significant information, and what to reject
as inconsequential “nonsense”. The ego constructs the impression of the
world that we accept as “reality”. This world has physical, social,
personal, and moral features, among others. And it is implicitly
composed of what is not rejected by the ego far more than what is
accepted!
We owe our
ascendance as a species to the social aspect of the ego’s
information processing. Although human beings certainly have the
largest, most complex brains of all land animals, brains that support
tool use, analytical thought, binocular vision, and upright movement, it
is our ability to socially coordinate our activities that is the supreme
human achievement. Most people, including many intellectuals and
academicians, simply take this capability for granted, not questioning
its psychological origins in the mind. It is precisely at the juncture
of this socialization issue with perceptual psychology that we begin to
venture into the background of consciousness, into the vast
unperceived region that, in fact, forms the foundation of waking
consciousness experienced in the ego, and the origin of all
consciousness as the Synergetic Mind.
To a certain extent,
the ego is aware of the background. It senses the instinctual drives of
the Freudian Id, and the occasionally-felt impressions of the frequently
traumatic acculturation process that created ego awareness in the first
place. Because these impressions are generally quite disturbing to the
ego, the tendency is not to explore this region too extensively. So we
can say that the ego is surrounded, and psychologically defined, by a
boundary region of personal unconscious impressions. It is not
surprising that the social foundations of culture are not noticed under
these conditions – they lay beyond the boundary! Only psychological
specialists, philosophers, and social explorers venture into the lands
beyond our inhibitions!
If a given
individual is willing and able to pay the price of traversing the
“inhibition zone” surrounding the ego and conscious mind, a fascinating
landscape of symbolism and symbolic expression emerges in the extended
mental background. Although some of these symbolic expressions are still
primarily personal, as one travels father away from the conscious region
they become more universal in character. The Swiss psychiatrist
Carl Jung called these universal expressions archetypal symbols,
and postulated that they were generated by preexisting instinctual modes
that then emerged into perception as culturally defined symbols. To
Jung, the cultural differentiation that has been the hallmark of human
achievement results from a layer of instinctual expression that exists
apart from the physical drives, yet determines how we comply with them
to satisfy our needs, through social role specialization. And just as
the ego tends to inevitably emerge in consciousness as a consequence of
brain neurology, so the archetypal symbols also emerge on a more subtle
level of expression, frequently beyond conscious perception. It is at
this level that the personal mind begins to evolve into the Synergetic
Mind.
As one travels ever
more deeply into the background of the mind, the archetypal symbols
become progressively more fundamental in nature, culminating in what
still stands today as the theoretical origin of consciousness – the
Primal Self – or simply Self. This structure is so esoteric that
its very existence is a matter of hot debate in academic circles. It
certainly can only be accessed in deep meditation, and (presumably) in
certain near-death experiences. It is a state of consciousness existing
in non-dual expression – the usual polar conditions that allow us
to conceptualize reality – hot and cold, love and hate, good and evil –
are absent at this level. It is a unified field of experience that is
frequently experienced as Deific Manifestation – God Forms.
This is the structure that lies at the base of consciousness, and
generates everything else, including the ego and personal conscious
experience.
The interface region
between the foreground and background of the Psyche has assortedly been
characterized as “preconscious”, “semiconscious”, and “transitionally
conscious” by various different authorities over the years. This author
prefers such admittedly non-scientific terms as “Synergetic
Consciousness”, “Synergetic State”, or “Synergetic Plane”, because they
convey more information about this transitional psychic region in more
useful working contexts.
The Synergetic State
is accessed by turning attention away from the ongoing flow of the
senses and ego activity related to the foreground region. As soon as,
and for as long as, we defocus from the foreground, we begin to
experience some essence of the background. The Synergetic State includes
several distinct types of experiences, including dreams, fantasies,
meditative perceptions, mental visions, various altered states of
symbolic perception, emergent archetypes, and many psychic modes of
activity including remote viewing, astral projection, and various types
of extrasensory perception. The Synergetic State is the “supermarket” of
consciousness from which the ego selects those “products” that it
considers appropriate to build our perception of what is “real” and
relevant in life. The preferred products will, of course, always
be those linked to an immediate and tangible positive outcome for the
organism in the material sense. Now, there is nothing necessarily wrong
with this, but there is also nothing necessarily right with it either.
The problem with the ego is that it is only as reliable as the
acculturation which produces it, and materialistic acculturation
produces an ego state that tends to overlook and denigrate much useful
Astral content as being “unreal” or “irrelevant” in character. It may be
true that Astral information is generally intangible, but intangible
does not equal “irrelevant” or “useless” by any means. The key to
working with the often fantastic Synergetic images lies in understanding
their meaning as symbolic content that subsequently influences
literal perception.
The Synergetic State
is generally referred to in the Mystery Theories as the Astral Plane of
conscious expression, and is conceived of as immediately presupposing
the obvious Physical Plane experienced in the physical senses. It is
held in the Mysteries that the images of the Astral Plane “condense out”
into the experience of the Physical Plane, and so they do, with the
further observation that the acculturated ego is the selective agency of
that condensation, determining what is “real” through the use of
cultural reinforcement schema. Some of those schema are valid as
survival mechanisms – others are most questionable from any point
of view. In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church fomented the belief
that cats were Satanic creatures linked to the Devil and witchcraft. The
result was a prolonged period of cat eradication throughout Europe.
Without the cats to predate them, the rats then proliferated,
causing a succession of plagues on the continent. Certainly, predators
have a ferocious aspect, but eliminating them from the ecosystem
invariably causes ruin. The cat is a Synergetic symbol often present, as
are cat’s eyes, but these manifestations must be viewed with a calm and
deliberating gaze – not in a panic of fear and irrational prejudice. The
first rule of Synergetic exploration is: no matter what appears
to be manifesting, keep your courage and stand your ground!
There are
predominantly two modes of symbolic expression in the Synergetic State –
the personal and the collective. A given Synergetic symbol
will invariably have unique significance for the individual, based upon
that person’s background experiences. The same symbol will have a
collective, and more or less universal, significance that is reflective
of its archetypal origin. At some point, the personal unconscious truly
becomes the collective unconscious, as we dive deeper into the Psyche.
The basic rule of thumb here is that the personal significance must be
understood and accepted before the collective level can be accessed and
successfully worked with. If I have been traumatized by being attacked
by a dog, this must first be dealt with before the Archetype of
Cerberus, the three-headed Hound of Hades, can be understood and
confronted in the Synergetic State. And, because we have all been
traumatized to some extent or other, the synergetic experience should be
approached with respect for the archetypal potencies therein, and any
investigations conducted carried forth with caution and patience.
Probably the most
functional conscious approach to accessing either the personal or
collective Synergetic Plane is voluntary meditation. This is an
essentially simple process in which the individual finds a relatively
quite, calm physical space, closes the eyes, and begins to focus
attention on the breath, progressively allowing breathing to become
slower and deeper in the process. This slow, deep breathing will induce
an initial trance state characterized by ego reduction and enhanced
symbolic perception. With ongoing practice, the Synergetic Plane can be
accessed continually in normal waking awareness, and the symbolic
content displayed there used as spiritual guidelines in all other
psychic practices. The beginning meditator may well encounter a variety
of mental obstacles, including impatience, distractions, negative
personal recall of traumatic events, and confusion. Eventually psychic
Gatekeepers of various kinds are encountered at the collective level of
Synergetic Manifestation, and these entities must also be negotiated
with for further passage into the higher Planes of Manifestation. There
are a number of particularly menacing entities present in the
traditionally termed Lower Astral Plane that may be encountered –
essentially demonic influences – and the practitioner must be courageous
and persistent if success is to be had in bypassing this level if
it is heavily present in personal consciousness. Simply keep at it,
taking breaks of whatever length are required in the meditative practice
to psychologically heal, and then resume meditation. If necessary, a
course of therapy may be undertaken to assist mental healing as well.
Synergetic symbolism
and symbolic interaction must be understood if any other progress is to
be made in the Mystery Studies. For this reason, the student is
encouraged to confront the challenges that may appear in the course of
Synergetic investigation of any kind, using the technique (or
techniques) of choice. Once the Synergetic Gateway is opened on the
personal and collective levels, the way is clear to access the total
Psyche and unlimited Conscious power beyond!