The Eye of the Mind – Part One
In order to understand the true nature of the world around us, we can use the example of a tree. The tree appears to exist as a real, physical object that exists outside of ourselves, and is part of the natural world that surrounds us on every side.
Yet according to Sages and mystics who express the wisdom of the ages, the tree that seems so real to us is actually an illusion. It is an illusion because what seems to be a real physical object is actually a projected image in consciousness emanating from the mind of the observer.
The fact is that we have allowed ourselves to be deceived by our senses. Most of us have never doubted for a moment the validity of what we see, hear, taste, smell and feel. Yet the truth is that we simply cannot trust our senses.
Anyone who has travelled over a flat surface on a hot day will have noticed an odd natural effect which appears to take the form of a shimmering expanse of water. It is a sight that is commonly seen in deserts and other sandy plains.
The appearance of water is an illusory effect caused by the refraction of light waves by layers of air having different densities. It is the presence of these different densities of air that produces the reflective effect that looks like water.
It is only when we discover that the water does not exist that we realise that our eyes have betrayed us. What looked like a real phenomenon, namely water, is then seen to be an illusion. Our eyes have conveyed to us the impression of something that was not really there.
But our eyes are capable of conjuring up far more exotic scenes than the mere presence of water on the desert sand. There is a vast body of evidence which falls into the category of experience that is referred to as hallucination.
Hallucinations are images or events which appear to be real at the time they are experienced, but which are later found to be unreal. What was thought to be a real object or event is found to be illusory, as may be seen from the following examples.
The physicist Fritjof Capra described such an occasion late one summer afternoon, when he was sitting by the ocean watching the waves roll in. As he gazed on this tranquil scene, he suddenly became aware of a startling transformation.
“As I sat on that beach my former experiences came to life; I ‘saw’ cascades of energy coming down from outer space, in which particles were created and destroyed in rhythmic pulses; I ‘saw’ the atoms of the elements and those of my body participating in this cosmic dance of energy; I felt its rhythm and I ‘heard’ its sound, and at that moment I knew that this was the Dance of Shiva, the Lord of Dancers worshipped by the Hindus.” 1
On that summer afternoon, Capra saw images and heard sounds that had a profound impact on him. Yet it is clear that what he saw and heard was not a part of the normal world that was in front of him at the time.
It is extremely unlikely that anyone sitting alongside of him would have experienced what Capra did. What he “saw” and “heard” was rather a projection of his own mind, a vision that was no doubt cleverly tailored to his education as a physicist, and to his deep interest in Eastern mysticism at the time.
Philosopher and teacher David Spangler had a similar visionary experience, although couched in somewhat different terms. It occurred when he was a child, living in Morocco, in North Africa.
“One day, we were driving into Casablanca and I was in the back seat of the family car. I remember we were passing a large roadway sign that was advertising an orange soft drink. And I was looking at the sign, and all at once, I had a physical sensation as if someone was pumping air into me.
I felt like I was expanding. And I realised that I was looking down at the car and at my body and at my parents’ bodies from a distance above the car. And immediately that perspective changed, and I had an experience that I describe as awakening from amnesia. I felt myself in a state of complete unity with the rest of creation.
And there was a visual component to that in the form of light and in looking through that light, of seeing almost like you see those photographs of a spiral galaxy, of seeing the universe spinning around me, and yet I was also doing the spinning. I was both observer and participant.” 2
David Spangler saw and experienced something that day that seemed vitally real to him. In the context of his everyday world, however, it is clear that what he experienced was not real at all.
While his body was travelling in that car in Morocco, he saw something that was very different from the actual scenes that were unfolding before his eyes at the time. His experience was an example of hallucination, an illusory vision, which psychology explains as a projection of the mind.
Hallucinatory experiences are not limited only to occasions when the observer is fully conscious. They may also occur when the physical body of the percipient is comatose and unconscious.
In 1944, Carl Jung broke his foot, and shortly thereafter suffered a heart attack. While he was lying unconscious in his hospital bed, he underwent a series of visionary experiences.
These visions were characterised by such intensity that Jung concluded that he must be dying. In one of these visions, Jung described how he suddenly found himself floating high above the earth.
“Far below I saw the globe of earth, bathed in gloriously blue light. I saw the deep blue sea and the continents. Far below my feet lay Ceylon, and in the distance ahead of me the subcontinent of India. My field of vision did not include the whole earth, but its global shape was plainly distinguishable and its outlines shone through that wonderful blue light.”
As his vision continued, Jung left the earth and soon thereafter felt himself drawn to a dark block of stone, like a meteorite, floating in space. He noticed that the stone block had been hollowed out into the form of a temple, which he approached.
“As I approached the temple I had the certainty that I was about to enter an illuminated room and would meet there all those people to whom I belong in reality. There I would at last understand – this too was a certainty – what historical nexus my life or I fitted into. There I would learn why everything had been thus and not otherwise. There I would meet the people who knew the answer to my question about what had been before and what would come after.”
Alas, Jung’s eager anticipation was to remain unfulfilled, for before he was able to enter the temple of stone he was drawn back to his body on the hospital bed, whereupon the vision ceased. In recalling this vision, however, Jung was particularly struck by its extraordinary vividness, which seemed to make all earthly experience pale by comparison. As he recorded in his memoirs:
“It is impossible to convey the beauty and intensity of emotion during those visions. They were the most tremendous things I have ever experienced. I would never have imagined that any such experience was possible. It was not a product of imagination. The vision and experiences were utterly real; there was nothing subjective about them; they all had a quality of absolute objectivity.”
So real and so objective did these visions seem to Jung at the time, that his return to normal consciousness seemed “gray” by comparison. He added: “The view of the city and mountains from my sick-bed seemed to me like a painted curtain with black holes in it.” 3
The intensity and conviction of utter reality experienced in these visionary states is also the hallmark of the hallucinogenic images produced by the ingestion of drugs and other psychedelic substances.
While the scenes themselves are later recognised to be images projected by the mind, at the time they are experienced they possess a shining purity which stuns the percipient with its force. As Doctor Sidney Cohen writes:
“One thing is certain. Under LSD one has the overwhelming feeling that it is the real reality.” Under the influence of drugs,” the world looks as it did on the morning of Creation.” 4
Aldous Huxley confirms the vivid sense of reality which characterises the drug experience:
“The most striking of these common characteristics is the experience of light. With this intensification of light there goes a tremendous intensification of color, and this holds good for the outer world as well as of the inner world. Along with light, there comes a recognition of heightened significance.
“The self-luminous objects possess a meaning as intense as their color. Here, significance is identical with being: objects do not stand for anything but themselves. Their meaning is precisely this: that they are intensely themselves, and, being so, are manifestations of the essential givenness and otherness of the universe.” 5
Despite their vividness of colour and meaning, however, drug experiences fail to fulfill their magical potential. As Sidney Cohen again points out:
“The question remains: Is it a psychochemical image or a priceless glimpse of reality? Now a dozen years later, I would suggest that it is another facet of illusion just as our sober state is.” 4
In April, 1976, Lauren Elder joined pilot Jay Fuller and a friend Jean Noller on a short flight from San Francisco to Death Valley. As they approached the crest of the Sierra mountains, their plane was unable to gain sufficient altitude to clear the pass through which they were headed, and it crashed some fifteen feet short of the rocky crest.
The wreckage of the plane hung precariously on the precipitous crags. All three passengers were badly injured in the crash, and they were forced to spend an agonizing night trying to survive.
When morning came, Lauren found that she was alone, and that her two friends had succumbed to their injuries. Knowing that she would not be able to survive another night on the peak by herself, she resolved to climb down into the desert which lay more than a mile below.
Finally, after eighteen hours of excruciating progress down sheer rock faces, waterfalls and across perilously balanced rocks, Lauren reached the safety of the small community of Owens Valley. After being hospitalised, she subsequently recovered from her injuries.
She later wrote a book about her experiences, in which she recounted her painstaking journey down the eastern face of the Sierras, during which she found herself confronted from time to time by unexpected apparitions, which blended in with the rocky landscape. She described one such incident:
“I sat on a rock to take a short rest and raised my eyes to scan the mountain. That was when I saw them. They were curved along a ridge of rocks directly across from me – a row of houses built of beautifully mellowed redwood, skillfully integrated into the landscape. They looked like chalets and I thought it must be a new resort area.”
When Lauren approached one of these houses, a man suddenly strode into view.
“I saw him and stopped short. A man with long, light hair was standing on the deck of the highest house, stretching. He was wearing a robe. His arms were out and a white robe billowed around him.”
Lauren called out to him but could get no response. She decided that he was, in fact, a statue. As she progressed further, she saw sled tracks in the snow. “Kids had been playing there recently. I could even hear them. The sounds of their laughter floated from beyond the houses like the ringing of clear glass bells“. A little while later, she spotted the figure of a woman.
“She was sitting on a rock ledge just above my head, in the shade of an overhanging boulder: a middle-aged woman with a sketchbook and a toolkit fitted out with paints. She was sketching wildflowers and she looked the part perfectly. Everything about her was no nonsense, from her blue denim slacks to her red checked shirt, stout Oxfords, and white ankle socks.” 6
Before reaching the sanctuary of Owens Valley, Lauren continued to see a rich miscellany of other phantoms, including Mexican farm hands, cyclists, young men in pickup trucks and tourists in Airstream trailers. She called out to them all, pleading for help. But her efforts were always in vain. Each apparition simply mocked her by its silence, until she realised that each new form was yet another vision projected by her mind.
Under the stress of life-threatening situations, the mind has the ability to create a dazzling array of images of people and objects, each impeccably crafted with intricate detail. While these images seem perfectly real to those who see them, they do not possess the normal characteristics of reality, and can provide no aid to those in need. Yet their very presence sometimes provides hope in the face of anguished despair.
But while the onset of hallucinatory images is generally attributed to stress, drugs, alcohol and other stimulants, the mind is quite capable of producing illusory images under conditions of complete normality.
All that is necessary to produce this flow of images is to deprive the senses of their customary environmental feedback for a while. The mind then readily substitutes images and events of its own.
In 1954, Dr John Lilly undertook a series of personal experiments in sensory deprivation, while he was working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Lilly devised a special isolation tank in which he could be completely enclosed.
In these tests, he immersed himself naked inside the tank, in water maintained at a constant temperature of 93º F (33.9º C), and used a head mask in order to breathe. The tank was totally dark, and no sounds from outside could penetrate this womb-like environment.
Although Lilly referred to these experiments as “sensory deprivation”, he found that, once immersed in his tank, he was quite unaware of any feeling of deprivation. In fact, he experienced an extraordinary state of inner well-being.
While he had expected that the absence of all outward sensory stimuli would induce a strong desire to sleep, he found instead that he enjoyed a heightened sense of awareness, and at no time did he lose his sense of conscious awareness. Much to his surprise, he found that he was soon able to create an artificial reality within the tank.
“I went through experiences in which other people apparently joined me in this dark silent environment. I could actually see them, feel them, and hear them. At other times, I went through dreamlike sequences, waking dreams as they are now called, in which I watched what was happening. At other times I apparently tuned in on networks of communications that are normally below our levels of awareness, networks of civilizations way beyond ours.” 7
Several years after Lilly had conducted his experiments in sensory deprivation, Jerome Bruner devised a similar series of tests in which volunteers were placed in isolation in sound and light-proofed rooms. While undergoing these tests, subjects wore velvet gloves and lay on foam rubber mats.
As Lilly had discovered in his isolation tank, Bruner found that after an initial period in this void-like condition, the subjects began to hallucinate. They not only heard voices, but were able to see, hear and touch the entities that sprang to life, and to conduct actual conversations with them as well.
It was clear to Bruner that subjects were able to create complete scenarios by drawing on their past experiences. Their entire sensory system became involved, and the resulting visions appeared so realistic and lifelike, that the subjects were completely unaware that they were hallucinating. The events they visualised seemed quite normal and in harmony with everyday events. 8
We have seen that the mind is capable of producing scenarios which involve the entire range of our senses as a result of many different stimuli. These mental pageants can arise in dreams, under the influence of alcohol, chemical or psychedelic agents, or else as a result of stress and trauma.
When they arise through the mere absence of normal sensory stimulation, it is significant that the mind is capable of projecting these illusions, whether the percipient is physically conscious or not, and regardless of whether the brain is damaged or intact. As Carl Jung has noted:
“There are certain astonishing observations in cases of profound syncope after acute injuries to the brain and in severe states of collapse. In both situations, total loss of consciousness can be accompanied by perceptions of the outside world and vivid dream experiences. Since the cerebral cortex, the seat of consciousness, is not functioning at these times, there is as yet no explanation for such phenomena. ” 9
Jung’s mystification is easy to understand. If the world exists as a three dimensional reality outside of ourselves, and if the function of the senses is simply to convey messages to the brain reflecting the content of this world, then how is it possible for impressions of the world to continue to be experienced when the brain is severely damaged, and the body physically unconscious?
According to Sages and mystics the answer is simple. The cerebral cortex is not the seat of human consciousness.
The reason why people continue to experience hallucinations, even when they are unconscious, or suffer from severe brain damage, is because the brain, the body, and the entire world exist within consciousness, and not the other way around.
Consciousness is not dependent on the brain, and is therefore not limited by the limitations of the physical body. Projections of the mind continue to occur, albeit on a different level from that of the normal waking experience.
Although consciousness is capable of projecting a vast range of mental panoramas under varied circumstances, we remain convinced that the experiences of our waking state represent the only “true” reality. We relegate all other states of mind to “alternate” categories – states that are presumed to possess less fundamental reality than that of the normal waking experience. Yet this conviction is widely challenged by those who experience these alternate states.
The overriding feature of every hallucinatory experience is that it seems to be completely “real” at the time it is being experienced. As Henry Margenau and Lawrence LeShan remark:
“One of the fascinating things about alternate realities is that at the time you are really using one it makes perfect sense to you, and you know it is the only way to view reality. It is only common sense.” 10
This is endorsed by John Lilly. Writing of his own experiences of these alternate realms, he states:
“One thing that does stick with me is the feeling of reality that was there during the experiences. I knew that this was the truth.” 11
(Continued in Part Two)
References
1 Fritjof Capra, “The Tao of Physics“, Bantam, New York, 1977, p. XV.
2 Quoted in “Voices and Visions: A Guided Tour of Revelation“, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Montreal, 1985.
3 Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections“, recorded and edited by A.Jaffe, Pantheon, New York, 1961, pp. 289-295.
4 Richard Alpert and Sidney Cohen, “LSD“, New American Library, New York, 1966, pp. 16-18.
5 Aldous Huxley, “Moksha – Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience”, edited by M. Horowitz and C.Palmer, Tarcher, Los Angeles, 1977, pp. 59-63.
6 Lauren Elder with Shirley Streshinsky, “And I Alone Survived“, Dutton, New York, 1978.
7 John Lilly, “The Center of the Cyclone“, Bantam, New York, 1973, p. 41.
8 Jerome Bruner, “A Study of Thinking“, (with Goodnow and Austin) Science editions, New York, 1962.
9 Carl Jung, op. cit., p. 322.
10 Lawrence LeShan and Henry Margenau, “Einstein’s Space and Van Goch’s Sky“, Macmillan, New York, 1982, p. 11.
11 John Lilly, op. cit., p. 58.
