Shades of the Prison-House – Part Two
We who have become fully-fledged members of our society, imagine that the world to which we have become accustomed, is not only real and substantive, but is the only world that exists.
We fail to see that in our process of acquiring the culture of our society, we have voluntarily surrendered rich possibilities of experience in other worlds. However grand we may suppose our present world to be, it is a world which, by comparison, is narrow, gray and drab, compared to the immense possibilities which attended us at our birth.
Young children live in worlds of experience which seem magical in comparison with the dull, constricted world which they later inherit. It is one of the continuing tragedies that their vivid worlds of free expression are termed “imaginary” by their parents.
Children are threatened, cajoled, rewarded and beaten into submission, until they are ready to reject the exquisite feast that lies before them, for the dry repast which society has prepared in its place.
The “reality” in which young children live and express themselves, is a kaleidoscope of multi-hued experience which vibrates with the spontaneous joy of the creative spirit.
Just how rich and rewarding this world of expression is, was revealed to Samuel Silverstein, a public school teacher in Torrington, Connecticut, when he conducted a research project involving a group of eight-year old children.
These children shared a world of common experience which was incomparably richer than the world which Silverstein had come to accept as real. On one occasion the children reported that they could hear ethereal music.
Since Silverstein was unable to hear this music, and since there was no one else around who was responsible for it, he asked the children to explain where it was coming from. Some said it came from the sky. Others said it came from heaven. The explanations of these children were recorded by Silverstein in his project notebook, dated May 6, 1954.
“Several children said the sounds came into their bodies through their heads and they could hear the singing inside their bodies. Others said it could also come in through the shoulder or other parts of the body. Cathy told me more about what happened to her.
“She said she heard singing up in heaven and it started first from a flash of light in the sky. From this flash of light a huge vibration of colours came down and the next thing she knew she saw flowing colours around her body and also inside her body. And this must have made the music because she had heard it in and around her body.” 1
Unfortunately in the majority of cases, experiences such as these are rejected by adults as illusory. But these experiences are not simply the imagined fantasies of childish minds. They form the very fabric of their daily lives.
These children actually experience these things as part of their extended world of consciousness, and these “illusory” sights and sounds have as much reality to them as those things which form the limited world of their parents.
Children who recount these experiences invariably become the butt of ridicule. As a result, they learn to shut these events out of their world of common experience. As the days pass, they learn to construct a view of the world which is more in keeping with the pattern of thoughts moulded by their society.
At last there comes day when these rich tapestries of sight and sound are lost altogether. They “fade into the light of common day”.
Childish experiences are not just limited to the realm of heavenly choirs. Many children share their childhood with other playmates. Since these playmates are not visible to their parents, they are assumed to be fantasies designed to satisfy their need for companionship. These children are frequently punished for their excessive imaginations.
When the noted psychic Eileen Garrett was a young girl, she recalled how she shared her childhood with three children – two little girls and a boy. These three children came to visit her daily.
Sometimes Eileen only spent a short time with them, while on other occasions they would spend the entire day together. Not a single day passed without her seeing them. They remained her constant companions until she was thirteen years of age.
Eileen never doubted the reality of her companions. When she touched them she found them soft and warm. There was one thing, however, that distinguished them from other humans.
While Eileen saw other people surrounded by a fringe of light, her three young companions were composed entirely of this light. Yet, like most other adults in similar situations, Eileen’s aunt and uncle ridiculed the existence of these playmates. They warned her that “God will surely punish you for telling lies.” 2
Children are not only able to traverse freely across a wide spectrum of experience, but they have potential powers which far surpass the limits of their later lives. Writing in The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, Joseph Chilton Pearce related how his young son became passionately attached to a soldier doll which he called “G. I. Joe”.
For almost two years the boy was totally wrapped up in this doll and played with nothing else. Then for a spell of four days Pearce noticed that his son was unusually withdrawn. He refused to leave the house, preferring to sit quietly with his doll.
Finally he explained to his father why he had been so “rude”. He said that it had suddenly occurred to him that he had the power to make G. I. Joe become alive, and that it was possible for the two of them to spend their lives together.
He realised however, that if his soldier-doll did become alive, it would only be alive for him, and that no one else in the family would be able to share in their exploits. He realised too, that by pursuing his dream of giving life to his doll, he would have to sacrifice his human family.
Pearce confessed that he did not know why the family had won out over the lure of G. I. Joe. What was more remarkable perhaps, was that the young boy had come to recognise the limits of his family’s world, and knew that by indulging his potential powers, he would thereby cut himself off from the narrow world of his family.
Pearce’s son was clearly aware that the earthly world inhabited by his parents was only part of a wider world which he was free to experience. It must have been a supremely sad moment for him to discover that the rich world which he was able to enjoy was not shared by his parents, and that what was perfectly real to him, was merely illusory to others, who could not open themselves to its reality. 3
It is usually only the impact of some traumatic shock, or else the influence of some psychedelic substance, that enables adults to rediscover this pure world of potential experience.
It was the rediscovery of this wider world which so impressed the American psychologist and philosopher William James, after his experiments with nitrous oxide led him to pen the following widely-quoted lines:
“Some years ago I made myself some observations on this nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken.
“It is that our usual waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, while all about it, parted by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
“We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably have their field of application and adoption. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.” 4
The young child is free to roam throughout these potential realms of consciousness. However, as it succumbs to the process of acquiring the culture of its society, this expansive world of experience becomes steadily constricted, until the child becomes confined to the consensus version of “reality”.
These cultural beliefs become the “shades of the prison-house” that begin to close upon the growing child. Young children are vividly aware of these wondrous realms of consciousness and move freely in them.
To the adult restricted to a world of “rational consciousness”, these wider realms have long since been consigned to the region of imagery and fantasy. The child’s witness to these states is all too often rejected, for they are considered to be a threat to the stability of the personality of the child.
Just as flights of fancy are not welcome in an adult, so too they are not encouraged in the child. By a process of threat and punishment, the child is all too often frightened into subjugation. It is then, as in the case of Eileen Garrett, that their companions “fade into the light of common day”.
For those who can traverse other realms, “reality” has a much wider connotation than it has for adults who are confined within their narrow boundaries of experience.
While Carlos Castaneda was being taught his new definition of “reality”, he was made to smoke a hallucinatory mixture of herbs which was called the “devil’s weed”. Under the influence of this psychedelic stimulus, and under the guidance of Don Juan, Carlos found himself turning into a crow. He described this extraordinary metamorphosis:
“I had no difficulty whatsoever eliciting the corresponding sensation to each one of his commands. I had the perception of growing bird’s legs, which were weak and wobbly at first. I felt a tail coming out of the back of my neck and wings out of my cheekbones.
“The wings were folded deeply. I felt them coming out by degrees. The process was hard but not painful. Then I winked my head to the size of a crow. But the most astonishing effect was accomplished with my eyes. My bird’s sight !” 5
When Carlos later experienced the sensation of flying through the air, he became obsessed with the need to discover whether what had occurred to him was “real” or whether it was imaginary. “Did I really fly, Don Juan?”
“That is what you told me. Didn’t you?” Not satisfied with the authority of his own experience, Castaneda pressed his mentor further. “You see, Don Juan, you and I are differently oriented. Suppose for the sake of argument one of my fellow students had been here with me when I took the devil’s weed. Would he have been able to see me flying?” 6
Castaneda was at the time still dominated by the consensual belief system of western culture, which held that it was impossible to fly. Since he felt that he had really done so, this must surely have been a hallucination of his mind. The classical way to determine whether or not he had really flown, seemed to him to depend on the corroboration of a friend who was there at the time.
In answer, Don Juan explained that whether or not anyone else would have seen him fly, would have depended upon the cultural conditioning of the person concerned. If he or she was capable of sharing Castaneda’s new description of the world, they would surely have seen him fly. If not, they would simply have continued to see him as he was.
The doubts expressed by Castaneda speak for the entire human condition. We constantly doubt the value of these paradoxical and philosophical explanations, for we remain convinced that there is some absolute standard whereby “reality” can be affirmed.
But the reality of what is seen always depends upon the observer, and draws its validity from that act of observation. As the Indian sage Sri Dattatreya remarked to his disciple:
“I will tell you the truth of the objective world, as it is. What is seen is absolutely nothing but sight.” 7
We not only learn to create the world around us by linking images together in memory, but at the same time that we create the world, we also create ourselves. The universe is nothing but a series of images in consciousness, that are renewed from moment to moment.
We derive our sense of personality through these self-same images in consciousness, and we reinforce our image of ourselves with every passing moment. When I look at a tree, its reality is based on a series of mental impressions registering upon my consciousness, and my reality is derived from the fact that these images occur to me.
Since the tree registers upon “my” consciousness, “I” interact with the tree. Every subsequent interaction serves to reconfirm “my” existence, as well as the existence of the world around me.
But we play this game in every mental state, whether we are dreaming, or engaged in a psychedelically induced vision, or subject to some other form of trance. We attribute reality to what we experience, and we derive our identity in that state from the fact that whatever is experienced presumes that there must be an “experiencer”.
But there is in truth only the process of perception, whatever sense or senses happen to be involved. By this process of perception, we infer our own reality from what we experience, while we attribute outward reality to the objects of our experience.
The only world we can possibly know is the world that appears before us in consciousness, which is then projected outside of ourselves by our consciousness. However the world that is projected upon my consciousness is a product of my thoughts, reinforced by my beliefs.
The world which appears to others is built up in the same way. There can in fact be no world that is common to us all. We all live in separate compartmentalised worlds of our own making. The enlightened being, by contrast, is freed from this identification with successive images, and so lives in the freedom of pure Awareness. As Maharaj points out:
“In your world you are truly alone, enclosed in your-ever-changing dream, which you take for life. My world is an open world, common to all, accessible to all. In my world there is community, insight, love, real quality; the individual is the total, the totality in the individual. All are one and One is all.” 8
We cannot share in this world of the One in all, until such time as we surrender our lives and the desires that bind us to the private world that we have made. To the questioner who asked whether his mind and the mind of Maharaj were similar, the latter replied:
“How can it be? You have your own private mind, woven with memories, held together by desires and fears. I have no mind of my own.” 9
We find it impossible to believe that this vast universe could be a product of our own individual minds. How could this be we cry out in amazement? Our world is populated by billions of other people who are born into our world, and who subsequently live, die and disappear.
Our common sense tells us that it is we who are born into the world. How then can the world be born in us? This question was put to Maharaj:
Question: “How can it be? A child is born into the world, not the world into the child. The world is old and the child is new.
Maharaj: The child is born into your world. Now, were you born into your world, or did the world appear to you? To be born means to create a world round yourself as the centre. But do you ever create yourself? Or did anyone create you? Everyone creates a world for himself and lives in it, imprisoned by his ignorance.” 10
As Maharaj points out, the fact that other people are born and die within our world of personal consciousness, does not mean that there is a real world outside of us, in which we appear to be but a tiny part.
The existence of other people, together with their apparent births and deaths, are movements within our own pageant of consciousness. These people do not have an existence that is separate from our consciousness.
They may be said to exist, but their reality as persons stems from the reality with which we have endowed them. Because we believe that we ourselves are “real” people, we assume that all other people who appear in our consciousness are equally “real”.
But if the reality of our own identity is brought into question, then the fate of all the others hangs in the balance as well. For as Maharaj stresses:
“When you believe yourself to be a person, you see persons everywhere. In reality there are no persons, only threads of memories and habits.” 11
(Continued in Part Three)
References
1 Samuel Silverstein, “Out of the mouths of babes“, Fate magazine, May 1979, pp. 128-129.
2 Eileen Garrett, “My Life“, Rider, London, 1939.
3 Joseph Pearce, “The Crack in the Cosmic Egg“, Pocket Books, New York, 1973, p. 29.
4 William James, “The Varieties of Religious Experience“, Mentor, New York, 1958, p. 298.
5 Carlos Castaneda, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge“, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1968, p.189.
6 Ibid, p. 147.
7 “Tripura Rahasya“, op.cit., p. 78.
8 “I Am That“, Conversations with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, translated by Maurice Frydman, Book I, Chetana, Bombay, 1973, p. 20.
9 Ibid, Book II, p. 150.
10 Ibid, Book I, p. 238.
11 Ibid, Book I, p. 42.
