|
Exploring the Ontological Status of Imaginal Consciousness 
ABSTRACTS OF THE PAPERS (With Additional Background Links) Introductory Talk: Paul
Devereux
Henri Corbin coined the
term " imaginal" to describe a particular state of consciousness coveted
by the mystics of ancient Persia. While this was understood within a religious
context, the imaginal state still occurs in people today outside of any
coherent cultural context. Rather, we have a fragmented range of contexts,
so we talk of lucid dreaming, alien abductions, out-of-body experiences,
hallucinogenic visions, and so forth. It is a remarkable level of mind
in which the senses can seem to be operative within a stable visual reality
possessing full spatial fidelity - it is just that the "reality channel"
has changed. Is this simply the product of neurophysiology, or is some
objective, if different and non-consensus level of reality involved?
Michael
Grosso
Wiliiam Blake, prophet
of the Mundus Imaginalis, once declared that after death we enter the world
of imagination. With the help of psychical research, and related studies,
we can begin to map the nature of imaginal states: their distinctive properties,
and how they may relate to the possibility of life after death. With Blake
as our mentor, we conclude with remarks on how this might be of use in
the art of living and dying.
Ian
Marshall
I assume a double-aspect,
emergent view of the universe; its basic entities possess mass, position,
charge, proto-consciousness and proto-intention. Hence neurology and physics
may cast light on mental phenomena. The brain EEG or MEG of lucid dreaming
or trance resembles that of waking consciousness, except for the reduced
or absent response to sensory input. This gives each person a private,
subjective Otherworld. Can there be other forms of input to this state,
to give a shared, objective Otherworld? I will discuss three physical models
which, though speculative, allow this to varying degrees.
Charles
D. Laughlin
While it is true that we
may imagine worlds that do not exist, and may fail to imagine worlds that
do, there often appears to be a striking correspondence between mythic
stories and aspects of reality. We will examine the process of creative
imagination within a neurobiological frame, and suggest a theory that may
explain the functions of myth in relation to the hidden aspects of reality.
True myth is peppered with archetypal entities and interactions that operate
to reveai hidden processes in reality relative to the human condition.
The imagery in myths in a sense "sustains the true." That is, mythopoetic
imagery keeps the interpretative processes of experience closer to the
actual nature of reality than rationality operating alone is able to do.
Indeed, while the rational faculties can easily lead us awry, genuine myth
rarely does. Explanations of events offered by traditional peoples are
frequently couched in terms of mythic themes and events. This talk will
focus especially upon those mythic themes that represent facets ofthe quantum
universe, and which give us clues as to the relationship between consciousness,
symbolism and reality.
Alan
Worsley
Convincing imaginal experiences
- dreams, OOBEs, NDEs, alien abduction - occur unexpectedly to people who
are unprepared, possibly frightened, with specific cultural expectations.
In these circumstances ontologicai considerations ("Is it real?") tend
to be neglected. Consequently, coherent informed pre-arranged experiments
concurrent with the experience are unusual. Techniques to induce comparable
experiences predictably while maintaining clarity of thought allow intra-state
experiments to investigate phenomenology. They afford opportunities to
observe, even guide, subjective content and also obtain physiological measures
(EEG, brain scan). Evidence thus gathered and verified suggests induced
alternate realities can be as remarkable and realistic as spontaneous cases.
Jacques
F. Vallee
At a time when the stability of the world's economy is in question, and the technical community faces its greatest challenge ever in the passage to the Euro and the Year 2000, it is not difficult to think of dramatic developments impacting the human environment. History teaches, however, that profound change in consciousness is subtler than mere extrapolation of today's crises. Here we attempt to reframe several future scenarios around fundamental issues: will the development of novel technical structures such as the quantum computer challenge the very notion of what it means to be human? Can the new communications media continue to grow without precipitating a major restructuring of social systems, and what are the implications? Survival (both individual and societal) will mean something different in the next century, and so will novel spiritual movements based on the Web. These developments will carry danger as well as seduction. Those who try to ignore them may find themselves trapped in visionary fantasies with which humanity hasn't had any previous experience. Day Two Line-Up Peter
M. Rojcewicz
Imaginal phenomena are first and foremost archetypal images, self-originating and autonomous manifestations of the psyche, fundamental ground of mind and nature. Our every idea, perception and bodily sensation is a psychic event existing first as an image. AlI realities physical, social, mythic, religious - are inferred from psychic images. They are the fundamental stuff of consciousness. The continuum of extraordinary imaginal encounters with ETs, fairies, dream figures, angels, ghosts, Men in Black, apparitions and other anomalous entities are archetypal images of ontological and epistemological complexity. Their paradoxical nature is described in folk belief traditions as simultaneously psychic and somatic, physical fact and creative fiction, personal and impersonal. Archetypal images are simultaneously immanent in and between people and transcendent of people. We can never be sure if we invent them according to patterns they set, or they invent us. Any definition of imaginal reality is, therefore, an approximation at best, a metaphor remaining "as-if." Imaginal encounters help us to recover a mythopoetic vocabulary of the soul. Imaginalia are nudges by
the soul toward developing the capacity for personifying images as real
"persons" and assuming an aesthetic perception of reality. Extraordinary
encounters with imaginal others returns the psyche/soul to its non-human
imaginal ground. Our century has lost vital contact with soul, seeing it
as an outdated notion. When we can see deeply through images to realities
beyond the literal, we enlarge our imaginative capacities and expand the
soul through aesthetic modes of knowing. It is as if the ego must undergo
encounters with non-human entities or abductions to otherworlds of the
soul where we ourselves are images, in order to help us recover our aesthetic
ability to take in the world and see images as true realities and actual
powers. The images we create in turn create us. The ways we imagine the
world provide us with images by which we view ourselves. As such, encounters
with imaginalia are experiences of death. We die to the ego's illusion
of ourself as a literalism of biology and society when we realise that
we are multiple personifications of the life of images within us, objectitied
images of the imagination. By engaging imaginal persons immanent in all
people, things, and events, we realise that the greater part of the soul
is outside the body and thereby shatter the illusion of the world as without
psychic life. A life lived along the psychic and extrapsychic continuum
of imagination avoids spending itself in either unrestrained sensual materialism,
or tinker bell-headed spiritualism. Folkloristic, aesthetic, and archetypal
perspectives will be used to discuss the movement of consciousness toward
imaginal perspectives.
Richard
Rudgley
Henri Corbin used the term
imaginal in order to provide an adequate cultural translation of Iranian
notions concerning the faculty of imagination, finding our word imaginary
having been subverted by reductionist thinking. The relevance of his pioneering
research in this sphere has not been appreciated by anthropologists. The
potential of an 'ethnography of the imaginal' is outlined. The idea of
the imaginal world is used in the interpretation of Amerindian and Melanesian
cosmologies. Particular emphasis is placed on shamanism and ritual activities
involving psychoactive plants. Indigenous beliefs concerning the ontological
status of the imaginal world (and the role of hallucinogenic agents in
entering altered states of consciousness) are compared with our own cultural
ideas. Cross-cultural study reveals that the ontological and social status
of imaginal consciousness is radically different in many indigenous societies
and that our own denigration of this human faculty is the exception, rather
than the rule, in human cultural experience.
Karl
Jansen
Ketamine (K) is a dissociative
anaesthetic which can produce trips to other realities which are identical
to near-death experiences. In this session, I will discuss the most recent
explanations for this finding. These range from events in the brain itself
to the possibility that the brain acts as a transceiver, converting energy
fields beyond the brain into features of the mind - as a television converts
waves in the air into a visible and audible drama. K may retune the brain
to provide access to certain fields which are usually inaccessible. This
retuning may open doors to realms which are always there, rather than actually
producing those realms, just as the broadcast of one channel continues
when we change channels. The dramatic effect on the mind of adding K to
the brain raises important questions about the relationship between the
Universe, Spirit, Mind, and Body.
Dean
Radin
Audience/Panel
Question and Answer Session
BRIEF BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION Michael
Grosso received his Ph.D. in philosophy
from Columbia University where he also studied classics. He is presently
chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department at New Jersey City University.
His main interest is in consciousness, creativity, and the parapsychology
of religion. Books include: Frontiers of the Soul, Thg Millennium Myth,
and Soulmaking: Uncommon Paths to Self-Understanding, he has also published
many articles in popular and scholarly journals on topics ranging from
Marian visions to out-of-body experiences. He is currently completing a
monograph titled Consciousness and Survival: Expanding the Paradigm for
The Institute for Noetic Sciences. Recently he wrote several papers and
gave presentations on the theme of what he calls "creative dissociation."
The latter studies in dissociation led Grosso in 1995 to take up again
his early love of painting. His work attempts to bridge the gap between
surrealism and psychical research. He has opened a studio in Warwick, New
York, and exhibits in NYC. Website address:
Karl
Jansen was born in New Zealand where
he graduated as a medical doctor. He then completed a research degree in
human brain science, and moved to the University of Oxford, England, where
he gained a Ph.D (D.Phil.) in clinical pharmacology, focussing on the mind/brain
interface. Moved to London to train in psychiatry at the Maudsley and Bethlem
Royal Hospitals: is now a Member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
His current main interest is in uniting lessons from altered states of
being with aspects of quantum physics to develop a 'quantum psychiatry.'
He is based at the new South London and Maudsley NHS Trust, and welcomes
messages so mailto:
Stanley
Krippner, Ph.D. is Professor of Psychology
at Saybrook Graduate School in San Francisco. A leading researcher and
teacher in the field of consciousness studies, he has in many books and
more than 500 articles investigated developments in consciousness research,
education, and healing. In 1972, in Tokyo, he read the first paper on parapsychology
ever accepted by an International Congress of Psychology. He has served
as president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, the Parapsychological
Association, and the American Psychological Association's Division of Humanistic
Psychology and Division of Psychological Hypnosis. He is a Fellow of numerous
other institutions and is co-author of The Mythic Path, and co-editor of
Broken Images, Broken Selves: Dissociative Narratives in Clinical Practice.
Charles
D. Laughlin, PhD. is Professor of Anthropology
at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. Trained in both ethnology and in
the neurosciences, he is a co-founder of the neuroanthropological theory
of consciousness and culture called "biogenetic structuIalism" and has
done ethnographic fieldwork among the So of Northeastern Uganda, Tibetan
lamas in Nepal and India, and the Navajo in the American Southwest. His
interests focus on religious ritual and states ofconsciousness, healing
systems, sacred symbolism, cross-cultural dream phenomenology, the evolution
of brain and technology, and the biophysical interface between conscious
brain activity and the structure of the quantum universe.
Dr.
Ian Marshallstudied mathematics, philosophy
and psychology at Oxford University, then medicine in London. He has been
involved in hospital psychiatry and in Jungian and humanistic therapies,
and is now in private practice as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist. He
has published papers on ESP, quantum physics and consciousness. Books co-authored
with his wife Danah Zohar are The (Quantum Self(1990), The Quantum Society
(1994), and Who's Afraid of Schrodinger's Cat? (1998). They are now completing
Spiritual Intelligence, to be published world-wide in early 2000.
Dean
Radin, Ph.D. has alternated between
conventional telecommunications research (Bell Labs and GTE Labs) and experimental
studies of psychic phenomena (Princeton, Edinburgh, and Nevada Universities,
and SRI International). He was elected President of the Parapsychological
Association in 1988, 1993 and 1998, and has received numerous research
awards. Author of The Conscious Universe, 1997, and over a hundred journal
articles and technical reports, Dr. Radin presently works at a major Silicon
Valley think tank on theoretical and technological aspects of psychic phenomena.
Peter
M. Rojcewicz, Ph.D. is a folklorist
and Chair of Interdivisional Liberal Arts, The Juilliard School, New York
City. Has taught and frequently lectures at the C.G. Jung Foundation, NYC.
Was invited to Dharamsala, India, by the Fourteenth Dalai Lama to speak
on the nature of imaginal phenomena. He is an award winning teacher and
recipient of the Worcester Poetry Prize and the National Library of Poetry
Award (2nd prize). See his article on the imaginal entitled "Between One
Eye Blink and the Next: Fairies, UFOs and Problems of Knowledge" in Peter
Narvaez, ed., The Good Peopk?: New Fairylore Essays, 1991.
Richard
Rudgley is currently based at the Pitt
Rivers Museum, Oxford, undertaking research into the prehistoric and ancient
use ofpsychoactive plants. In 1991 he became the first winner of the British
Museum Prometheus Award which resulted in the publication of his critically
acclaimed book The Alchemy of Culture: Intoxicants in Society (British
Museum Press, 1993). He is also the author of The Encyclopaedia of Psychoactive
Substances (Little Brown. 1998) and Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age
(Century, 1998).
Jacques
Vallee was born and educated in France,
where he graduated from the Sorbonne and Lille University with a master's
degree in astrophysics. Coming to (Austin, Texas) in the United States
in 1962, he obtained his doctorate in computer science at Northwestern
University, where he was a close associate of Professor J.Allen Hynek,
the Air Force's scientific consultant on the UFO problem. While he pursued
a career in computer science, Dr. Vallee wrote extensively on technical
and scientific subjects. His diaries, covering many aspects of paranormal
research in the United States and Europe, have been published under the
title of Forbidden Science, complementing his trilogy on UFO studies: Dimensions,
Confrontations and Revelations. Jacques Vallee has also published several
science-fiction novels in French, and was awarded the Jules Verne prize
for a space-opera entitled Le Sub-Espace that anticipated current theories
about non-human consciousness in a universe with multiple dimensions.
Alan
Worsley is a psychologist and author,
and conducts independent instrumented research into consciousness during
sleep, dream guidance and lucidity induction. In 1975, at Hull University,
England, he made the first communication from dream state by coded eye
movement signals recorded by Keith Hearne on EEG polygraph. In the 1980s,
he was subject and experimenter in experiments at St Thomas's Hospital,
London, with Peter Fenwick, using conscious dream control to study correspondence
between reported dreamed events and actual physiological activity. This
study demonstrated Morse code communication from the dreamer, and, by showing
the dreamer's ability to receive and acknowledge coded signals, possible
two-way communication with and between dreamers.
THE CONSCIOUSNESS
CONNECTION
Directors/Co-Founders Paul
Devereux.
Author, international lecturer, broadcaster, and consultant. Has written
twenty books to date (1979-1999), and his writing spans the range from
academic to popular on archaeological and consciousness research themes
and geophysical anomalies. Recent book titles include: Re-Visioning the
Earth, The Secret Language of the Stars and Planets (with Geoffrey Cornelius),
UFOS & Ufology (with Peter Brookesmith), and The Long Trip. Peer-reviewed
papers have included: 'Three-dimensional aspects of apparent relationships
between selected natural and artificial features within the topography
of the Avebury complex'. in Antiquity; 'Acoustical Resonances of Assorted
Ancient Structures' (with Robert Jahn and M Ibison), in Journal of the
Acoustical Society ofAmerica; 'The Archaeology of Consciousness', in Journal
of Scientific Exploration. Is currently at work on three new books, and
engaged (1999-2000) upon an extensive field research programme on 'shamanic
landscapes' throughout the Americas. He is a Research Fellow of the International
Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL), Princeton, and takes part in
collaborative research on lucid dreaming, ancient sites dreaming, and geophysical
anomalies. He is director of The Dragon Project, UK. Paul Devereux is also
a speaker at this conference.
Charla Devereux. Author, lecturer, and organizer of international conferences and symposiums. Senior program analyst, IBM; founder and executive vice-president of The Natural Oils Research Association; co-founder/co-organizer with Dr. Keith Shawe (National Research Institute, UK) and Professor James Simon (Purdue University, US) of the International Training Program in Essential Oils: Advanced Studies - the first academically certified course in its field in the US. Has developed an introductory course for aromatherapy, and is founder of Arome Essential Oils. Books have included: Diet Logic; The Aromatherapy Kit; The Lucid Dreaming Kit (with Paul Devereux). Recent lecture presentations include: 'Food as Medicine for Mind and Body'. New Aspects of Whole Health and Food Quality, Schweisfurth Stiftung, Neuss, Germany, 1998, and 'The Practice of Aromatherapy', 20th Congress, International Federation of the Societies of Cosmetic Chemists, Cannes, France, 1998. Member of the Education Steering Committee to establish educational standards for aromatherapy. Advisor to The Environic Foundation International, Washington D.C. Has co-organized and hosted specialist tours in England, Scotland, Egypt. Trish
Pfeiffer. Career in marketing; a researcher
in the Parapsychology Foundation's lab in NYC; founder and former director
of the Center for Exploring New Dimensions of Consciousness; a founder
of the Marion Foundation in Marion, MA; serves on the Advisory Board of
The Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (FIONS). Lifelong researcher
in consciousness studies, quantum physics, anomalous phenomena, philosophy
and alternative models of reality.
|
