THE THESIS OF MENTALISM - THE PRIMACY OF CONSCIOUSNESS

We experience consciousness as intrinsically independent of body and even of mind, for both these can appear as 'objects' for it. It is the subject and cannot be an object.⁴

For science, then, the assumption of the primacy of matter over consciousness (i.e. ontological materialism) means that explanations of human behaviour can only rely on natural-physical causes, such as instincts or drives like 'libido' and bodily needs that the organism needs for self-preservation. Our contrary assumption (i.e. the ontological primacy of 'consciousness') leads on the other hand to understanding human behaviour also in terms of meaning, purpose, goal, will and value. This purposive or goal-oriented view (i.e. 'teleological explanation') is vitally opposed in many respects to the non-teleological view of naturalistic scientism, which assumes chance or 'accident' to be at the origin of everything and that consequently there is no purpose or meaning inherent in the universe.

Mentalism holds, in common with Platonic idealism and Vedanta, that consciousness is not only able to take in the forms of whatever is known through the sense organs, but is also informed by inner sources operating in and through consciousness, wherein values, conscience, and hitherto unrealised and unknown ideals and ideas are conceived. Since values cannot be observed through the senses, nor can pure ideas or the sheer inventions of the mind, mentalism argues that what we call reason, intellect and moral judgement have their seat in consciousness alone. This is to say that they have objective and immutable being, independent of and beyond the physical organism or the brain. The idea of truth, as an unchanging and unchangeable quality, or of complete and uninfluenced 'objectivity' of knowledge, cannot be dependent for their reality upon the existence of brains, that is, organisms which are always liable to growth, change, disbalance and disintegration.

It is important to be clear that no 'in-between view' is possible, because reason requires that ultimately everything must either be generated from conscious spirit or from inert matter. This is where the great divide between physical science/lower psychology and spiritual science/higher psychology appears most distinctly. Which of these most fundamental of assumptions is ultimately correct and most fruitful can be decided by pure reason, but not by scientific method. The irrelevance of experimental laboratory work to support the Vedantic contention explains why I do not refer to any here. It may be argued that much or most of the human mind and its faculties may well be of such a subtle (electro-magnetic) nature that it remains undiscovered by science so far. This likely fact does not alter the basic difference between the two main theses, for consciousness is not regarded as being the mind or part of it, but the innermost selfhood, for which the mind is an object. It is on the strength of this that we can change our minds, influence their development and direction, learn to control them and eventually transcend them.

Consciousness cannot be examined and dissected on a line with matter. Had it been a product of matter, rather than its creative origin, this should surely have been possible. It can, however, also be analysed up to a point by rational methods, as philosophy throughout the ages has shown. Arguments for its primacy are more extensive, more rationally consistent, inclusive and more widely held by major thinkers than otherwise.

Considering any assumption, there are two main avenues of approach to explore its explanatory power; these are reason and experience. Scientific method depends on reason and it cannot therefore test the 'reasoning method' on which it depends itself! Though experience is an unavoidable corrective to reason, it is reason that analyses it and organises observations in meaningful and coherent thought systems, not the reverse. On the other hand, reason requires both a practical and a logical working through of the ultimate consequences of any assumption in relation to all aspects of human life and experience before its scope and adequacy can be seen and its truth can be judged.

Following this insight, higher psychology requires the assumption of the primacy of consciousness because it alone allows for a satisfactory account of the whole human psyche, with its various developments and possible experiences.⁵ Yet further, this assumption alone enables a coherent approach to studying the gradual historical development of the various qualities or abilities arising by virtue of the general refinement through society of human consciousness at both the individual and collective levels.

'SUBJECTIVE' OR 'OBJECTIVE' EXPERIENCES?

There are both individual experiences and 'common experience'. Empirical science eventually accepts only common experience (i.e. what can commonly be observed or what can be validated by experiment). This means that science excludes phenomena that are not widespread and whatever cannot commonly be observed. But all common experience is still based only on a number of individual experiences. Science therefore tends strongly to exclude the exceptional and recognise only what is widespread and normal as its data. This 'common denominator' bias in empiricism is obviously a very serious source of error in psychology where individual experience can vary very greatly. This limitation applies most particularly to the investigation of consciousness, which is an 'internal' and as such is thus not itself directly accessible to external tests (i.e. by other persons). Further, those of highly-developed consciousness are few and far between. Nor can their development be understood or evaluated by anyone at a lower level of development using methods which are designed only for study of what is ordinary and general.

Considered as independent of matter for its existence and nature, consciousness alone can be the test of itself. This does not mean that normal everyday consciousness is capable of providing sufficient evidence. The method of personal experiment through experience proves far more demanding and lengthy than most people will undertake. The experiments of science cannot provide immediate proof through direct personal experience and self-inquiry, which deals with the evidence of inner awareness, not so-called objective, external fact.

Many forms of self-discipline for the refinement and development of consciousness itself have been known and practised throughout the ages and these are clearly described in many texts, ancient and new. Such texts show that the conclusion of those who have attained the higher forms of realisation is fully and unanimously in favour of the primacy of consciousness as being an indubitable experiential fact, one that becomes the more clearly and indisputably true the further its development progresses.

It stands to reason that any open-minded researcher must reconsider the spiritual assumption. This does not mean that materialism is to be ignored entirely, for it is a highly relevant working hypothesis within the sphere of material considerations, but rather that it is to be re-evaluated at every step from a non-materialistic viewpoint, and challenged where it falls short.

In our interior relationship to our consciousness, we are directly aware of it without the interference of any sensory impressions. We discover that consciousness is non-objectifiable and can therefore not be reduced to any kind of physical terms. It is always other than its passing contents. What the word 'consciousness' refers to is understood only by reference to itself (i.e. one's own consciousness). Though its contents can be described at length and analysed, it cannot be. We may have 'awareness of awareness' to an intense degree, but it is always the same one awareness, while the psychic 'contents' or all the different things that consciousness may relate to differ vastly in quality, quantity, range and clarity.

THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THINKING AND BEING

As far as each person is concerned, to be or to exist is inseparable from being conscious. The well-known philosophical axiom, that in order to think, one must exist, often leads to misunderstandings. It is evident that we must be conscious before we can think. However, it is not provable that consciousness does not persist without a live brain. There is massive testimony to the contrary. Various kinds of pathological and super-conscious experiences (samadhis) involve apparently complete divorce of consciousness from the physical body in space and/or time. Such so-called 'out-of-body experiences' under various circumstances (including during temporary clinical death) indicate the independence of consciousness and of thought from the brain. The brain may be thought of as an instrument of consciousness, one which actually limits its scope in certain respects, while at the same time making it capable of selective sensory experience of the physical world. To overcome the limitations on consciousness by its attachment to the material body, many physical methods and mental disciplines have been developed. They appear mostly to have only temporary, but dramatic, effects.

The conscious mind is 'self-monitoring' in being capable of reviewing its contents in unpredictable and new ways - such as by drawing on any nexus of ideas, cluster of events, facts or figments and so on to arrange them in innumerable ways. It becomes 'self-programming' in so far as the will directs attention towards making new types of comparison or evaluation, which it achieves by some effortless mental fiat that is recognised as such by all who have a conceptually-active mentality. This autonomous self-reflexive faculty is actively used both in the practicalities of daily life as well as in concentrated, reflective thought. It can of course also be developed by individuals so inclined well beyond normal requirement by use of a range of techniques to produce sublime reaches of imagination and intellectual systems of great accuracy and applicability.

It is obvious how human consciousness with its closely-associated faculty of thinking can affect and change the world around us: through work, including all the forms of activity in which we use, rearrange and fashion the environment. This is in accordance with mentalism's thesis of the primacy of consciousness over matter, but to give a less understood example how this Vedantic doctrine applies within the psychological sphere, we note the effect of consciousness operating creatively through the medium of the mind to influence and form the objective world, as follows:

There is a saying: "as one thinks, so one becomes". This must be viewed as holding true in certain ways; broadly and in the longer term. This has demonstrable historical relevance in many areas of human life, from politics to personal development. A simplistic interpretation of this very general insight makes it appear absurd and easily refuted. For example, one does not soon become a musical genius just by thinking one is. However, the meaning refers to repeated and strongly-motivated ideas about oneself, sustained over periods of time - usually those invested with strong emotions (whether self-destructive or positive in nature). Musical virtuosity can even be achieved by persons who are not apparent 'naturals', and a crucial part of this process is self-confidence... including continually thinking with great conviction that one can achieve the goal.

The time-scale involved in a strong conviction or belief becoming real can sometimes be short-term, while realising a conscious goal like a persistent life-long ambition may be very considerable. The same applies with thoughts, ideas and imaginings that are not consciously wished. This can be seen by considering such subjects as deep paranoid fears that find their own realisation and the power of beliefs to shape circumstances, whether they are held consciously or subconsciously. The process whereby one's thoughts influence one's destiny can seem very indirect. One's attitudes or ideals, together with the feelings and actions they generate, can work back on a person in the most subtle and incalculable ways both through one's mind and one's social environment. They can work through changing circumstances and long periods of time before they take shape and have decisive effect.

One conclusion to draw from this is that self-inquiry, which may begin with reflective examination and analysis of the contents of one's inner mental and emotional life , is an unavoidable first step in self-knowledge, self-fulfilment and eventual 'self-realisation'. The undoubted influence of consciousness, through its direction of mind working upon matter and so influencing future events, makes human conscience - as thus values and morals - a key factor in the basic make-up of human consciousness.

INDIVIDUAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Individual, personal consciousness is not strictly definable because it exists for itself, prior to all the emotional or mental contents that may pass through its sphere of attention. Consciousness is the seat of the sense of identity, the 'I' which each one of us experiences ourselves essentially to be. As such, it always remains itself independent of all the changing scenes we witness.

'Individual consciousness' here means waking awareness. This awareness normally has certain, but varying, limitations of scope and penetration, having a sphere of attention which, while more or less focused on some particular physical or mental phenomena, is thus delimited at any time to the sphere of its interest. Consciousness is therefore not itself the mind, but what illumines or energises the mind and makes us aware of our individuality, each as an 'I'.

Individual consciousness is 'subjective' in at least two senses:-

1) It always has some something before it, either in perception or in mental conception, which is distinguishable as being the 'content' of consciousness as apart from consciousness itself. Wherever we direct our attention, that consciousness remains the continuously attending or selecting entity which is inseparable from the being of the human subject. It is always the subject as distinct from an 'object'.⁶

2) It always occupies a partial viewpoint - one among many other possible viewpoints. This is in some respect because it is itself (at least, under all usual conditions) located in time and space, even though it can view different times and places through recollection, reconstructive understanding and imagination etc. This is a second reason for calling personal consciousness 'subjective' in the sense of not being total, or not ultimately objective.

What may be called the 'power of articulation of awareness' varies from time to time and from subject to subject. Consciousness varies in articulation from person to person, that is, in the scope of any single person's awareness and its acquired power of distinguishing and relating the characteristics of the 'phenomenal contents'. This power of articulation is acquired through personal development, experience, learning and various other disciplines.

Consciousness can appear vary in quality from time to time in so far as it can seem to be more or less 'awake', more or less energised, intense, fresh, agitated, peaceful, expansive or narrowed, spontaneously immediate or systematically reflective and so on. These sorts of 'qualities' depend upon the individual's powers of attention, concentration, introspection and contemplation and are most often due more to the mind than to consciousness itself. Dreaming consciousness is obviously (almost always) less articulated than waking consciousness.

The limited nature of our awareness at certain times and under various given conditions naturally suggested the notion of 'an unconscious' to denote what we have forgotten, what we may 'know' without being aware of it and so forth. Sigmund Freud is of course credited with the first extensive theory of 'the unconscious mind'. He explained the unconscious in terms of mental processes hidden from our awareness whereby the psycho-physical organism attempts - through dreams and other psychic experiences - to compensate for shocks and to re-establish psychic equilibrium when it is threatened. As is well known, Freud's colleague C.G. Jung extended the idea of the unconscious further to include a 'collective unconscious', which is a fund of very basic ('archetypal') source materials for the whole human psyche, probably inherited in some manner, and which influence the mind and reach far beyond the limitations of any individual consciousness. However, as I intend to clarify in the following chapter, the term 'unconscious' in most serious psychology has come to have a variety of usages, including those of Freud, Jung and their followers. The usefulness of the current ideas of 'unconscious' lie mainly in defining specific types of limitation that either surround or are somehow retained by the personal consciousness of an individual.

LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS (ENSTASIS)

There can be said to be different 'states of consciousness', yet the classification of them for psychological purposes is an extremely uncertain matter for various reasons. The very subjectivity of consciousness - its privacy or impenetrability to the outsider - is itself the chief scientific reason for doubting the efficacy of distinguishing other qualitatively different states of consciousness than those that can easily be identified by anyone, namely deep sleep, dream, wakefulness. However, because there exists age-old and world-wide testimonial evidence of higher or transcendental awareness, philosophical psychology must allow for unusual states or levels of consciousness that empirical psychology cannot detect.

The ancient religious literature of India, such as the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, was the first that set out to describe what is nowadays thought of as progressive stages of higher consciousness. This literature appears to be by far the most lucid and comprehensive among religious traditions, most of which owe their origin either directly or indirectly to India. Higher consciousness is there regarded as being attainable through a range of activities - devotion, worship, prayer, contemplation and the service of fellowmen - and by Patanjali mainly through severe ascetic and meditational practices. Such severe practices were only to be undertaken, however, by persons having already attained a very high degree of healthy self-development and purity of thought and act, having virtually mastered themselves at the least as regards the control of their own outward behaviour.

For the purposes of psychology both as a science and as a discipline applied to the modern world, such practices therefore remain beyond systematic and public study. The perspective opened onto the potential development of the non-neurotic and otherwise self-fulfilled individual, culminating in an inward discovery, certainly cannot be ignored by philosophical psychology. Whether it is theoretically necessary that psychology assume the (latent) existence of forms of human consciousness that differ fundamentally from those experienced by 'normal' or perhaps 'non-realised' persons, can be argued both pro and con. The weight given to the different sides of the issue will obviously differ according to whether a person judges that he or she has had any experiences of qualitatively 'altered consciousness'.

Of the many descriptions and typologies of the various states of consciousness, we find in the Western academic field of 'consciousness research' that of Ken Wilbur and associates as best summarising and analysing the main serious contentions and claims found in world culture. In the work Transformations of Consciousness (K. Wilbur, J. Engler, D.P. Brown. Boston/London 1986) a paradigm based on world-wide traditions summarises and orders all reported variations in the qualities of consciousness.

On the one hand, the descriptions of subjective conscious phenomena that Wilbur bases upon a broad source literature reopen long-neglected perspectives for all psychologists and thus helps to delineate certain potential experiences of altered consciousness such as yogis and mystics describe, and also their possible pathological counterparts as widely met with in psychiatry.

On the other hand there are considerable risks in all typologies of alleged 'stages' of consciousness or 'levels' of attained development. The risks not only involve distortion through the difficulty of isolating and accurately defining modes of consciousness and the conditions under which they do or may occur, but also intellectual mystifications of expanded awareness that can mislead people into all manner of spiritual aberration in the attempt to find short cuts to power or bliss.

By their very nature, categories tend to hypostatise human experience and unduly to treat consciousness as analysable, while it is essentially indeterminate, indeterminable and ever-synthetising by nature. The supposed relative relations of states of awareness and the sequence in which they do or should occur are likely to be inaccurate generalisations, not least because the lives of no two people are entirely alike and there are arguably exceptions to every known rule of human activity. The potential field both of human spiritual activity and inward awareness is so unbounded and flexible that any system or 'co-ordinates' that tries to fixate it through typologies, maps or other verbal and symbolic descriptions will probably misrepresent the actual ground. The Vedantic basis of this view is that Divinity, or the Universal, though real, surpasses all objective descriptions and is beyond analysis into any kind of subject-object relations. In the first and last 'analysis', then, consciousness is always immutably itself - the witnessing immediate inward consciousness of Self.

Further, generalities about mental states, especially those of tenuous and rich forms of transcendental awareness, do not represent (and thus exclude) the unrepeatable features of an individual's specific synthesised awareness in each particular nexus of life experience. Instead they may easily lead towards imprecise mystification and unqualified judgements about 'states' of consciousness, as if awareness were limited to a given number of static conditions.

Attempts to confine the expressions of human spirit to a set structure of phases may in turn cause confusion about the nature of genuine spirituality and the real causes or preconditions of spiritual development, which lie rather in right values and thoughts unified with all words and actions than in all manner of meditational exertion and psychic experience. Among the worst consequences of grading persons' experiences in ascending or descending orders is to provide fuel to the delusions of the 'holier-than-thou' moralists or those with spiritual pretensions, whether in the name of religion, psychology, 'healing' or the like, who judge passing inner experiential states to be more important than the duties, challenges or the selfless activities required in real life.