As we get deeper into our study of occultism, and realize that much of the occult deals with psychological behavior, I think it is important that we begin to ask ourselves "Just what do we mean by a science of psychology?".
There is an assumption here that we can step outside of ourselves and objectively describe ourselves, our psychology, our subjective behavior. But this assumption runs into a paradox very similar to the selfreferential paradox which is the main ingredient of Gödel's theorem. Attempting to define a science of our psychological behavior is very much like the eye trying to see itself. How can the mind, the source of all ideas, create ideas that transcend its very nature? This is a situation of infinite regress: the mind defining itself defining itself defining itself ad infinitum. Ultimately we are led to the same kind of meaningless recursion found in Gödel's theorem. At this point our endeavor becomes a boring and irrelevant intellectual game. As van der Leeuw says, clever, but meaningless in terms of our lives.
That we can have a scientific or objective view of our psychological behavior is an echo of the positivistic stance that all of Nature can be understood in terms of science, mathematics and logic. But again, we have seen from Gödel's theorem that ultimately even these forms of knowledge have their limitations. Objective descriptions of reality are inherently incapable of describing reality completely. Instead, objective representations of reality are only valid within a very narrow and confined range of experience. Not only this, but I think that the important lesson behind Gödel's theorem is that there really is no such thing as an objective view of reality. Objective stances are ultimately as subjective as anything else a human does simply because of the fact that an objective view is just as much a product of the human mind as any other viewpoint. We have to ask ourselves why we assign so much importance to an "objective", as opposed to a "subjective" viewpoint. It is relatively arbitrary to assign any greater importance to one type of mental creation over other mental creations. From such a perspective, the belief that we can objectively understand anything at all seems to be a naive childish game or the activity of people incapable of following their assumptions through.
It would seem then that any attempt to define the mind and its operations is a futile game doomed to failure. But as Charles Fort says, there are no absolutes, all things are intermediate to the extremes. We might speak of the two ends of a log, but what really exists is the log filling the space between its two ends. I think the same type of logic applies to this situation in attempting to understand the metaphysics behind a science of the mind. We can argue both the pros and cons of a philosophical basis for a science of the mind and human behavior. But in the long-run this is not going to stop people from studying, analyzing, describing, and cataloguing human behavior. We can go around and around arguing subtle metaphysical distinctions. The reality of the matter is that some descriptions will be more accurate than others. No description in itself is going to be the correct and only description. This positivistic myth is dead. We may posit a hypothetical "correct" description of human behavior that any given description will approximate better and better, but this is foolish for we know that no such thing exists, at least in terms of ideas or a particular system of thought. However, there is something that exists to which we can compare our symbolic representations of our experience and that is our experience itself.
And at this point it is legitimate to ask: whose experience? My experience? Your experience? The collective experience of the species? Here we run into the problem of what is and what is not real within the framework of experience at whatever level. We have already discussed this issue with regard to the unreality of occult facts within the scientific paradigm. When we talk about what is and what is not real within the framework of experience we are actually asking what is the worldview and what levels of experience does a particular worldview admit to be real. And the solution to this dilemma lies in the "Chinese box" approach to worldviews, a method used by the philosopher Alan Watts. The "Chinese box" approach is one in which we adapt a "metaworldview", a worldview that allows us to survey any worldview on its own level and in its own terms. From such a perspective we realize that some worldviews are capable of containing other worldviews as, for example, we have seen that occult worldviews can contain scientific worldviews or that, as Alan Watts argues, the Hindu worldview can contain the Christian world view1.
Thus the issue of "whose experience?" is a matter of "whose worldview?". And I posit that, from our meta-worldview, any worldview is legitimate raw material to draw upon for sources of information pertaining to the general human experience. A true, or more accurate, science of psychology ultimately has to be general enough to account for the tremendous variety of human experiences as reflected in the tremendous variety of existing behaviors, whether these are scientific, occult, or anything else. What I am saying is that the meta-worldview I am introducing is actually the metaphysical basis for a general theory of human behavior.
So let us then undertake to construct a science of psychology within the context of the metaphysics put forth above. What I propose here is that we can effectively synthesize the occult and scientific notions laid out in the previous chapters and construct a conceptual framework of human psychological and sociological behavior that is perhaps more accurate than existing views.
Again the issue is not one of better or worse. The issue now has to do with a more refined consideration of what comprises a science. We have seen that there is the distinction in modern science between "hard" and "soft" sciences and that, fundamentally, the "soft" sciences which are the study of human behavior, are unrelated to the "hard" sciences which study physical matter. This is due to the very complex nature of the systems under study, namely human beings and the activities of human beings, and such complex systems have traditionally not been amiable to "hard" scientific approaches. Thus, many views have and do proliferate in the social (or "soft") sciences.
Yet new considerations enter into the picture that allow us to ask again if it might not be possible to develop a theoretical framework for the sciences of human behavior somewhat analogous to the unified and interrelated types of models found in the physical sciences. These considerations fall into two broad classes. First, what is the relevance of the new sciences of complexity, namely fractal geometry and chaotic systems theory for the development of more unified social and psychological sciences? That is, may chaos and fractals allow us principles with which to find common ground among the phenomena of psychology and sociology, and perhaps even show levels at which these human phenomena mirror phenomena found in the physical sciences? And secondly, to what use can the occult ideas of human nature laid out in previous discussions be of use in the attempt to construct a science of psychology that is a more accurate reflection of our actual experience? It is the second of these questions that we shall address first.
We can use our meta-world-view to look down from above, so to speak, onto both science and occultism and see what elements these paradigms share and how each helps to illuminate the other. If we recall that the main elements common to both scientific and occult viewpoints were quantum mechanics (which implies the study of "vibrations"), fractals, chaos and, as I have argued, the experimental method, we can use these notions in conjunction with occult psychology (i.e. occult anatomy) to create a view of human behavior superior to either the scientific or occult views. It is a view that is superior to both approaches because it is the synthesis of both approaches and therefore affords us the best of both worlds. Let us see how such a theoretical model would look.
We begin with the ideas in occult physics that there are many planes of Nature upon which we, as beings, operate simultaneously. Thus we introduce into science the notions of the astral, mental and other planes. It is reasonable to ask; just how do we operationally define the planes? How can we pinpoint and distinguish phenomena on the nonphysical planes so as to be useful scientific tools? For the sake of keeping the following discussion at a level comprehensible to the realms of our physical experience, we will consider only the etheric, astral and mental planes.
At a first approximation, human behavior will be seen to operate simultaneously upon the physical, etheric, astral and mental planes. To understand the operational nature of these concepts, we must keep in mind just exactly what the etheric, astral and mental planes are. The etheric plane is the world of physical sensation, the astral plane is the world of emotion, and the mental plane is the world of thoughts and ideas. If we conceptualize our physical sensations as occurring on the etheric plane, our emotions as occurring on the astral plane, and our cognitive behavior as occurring on the mental plane, then we have our operational approach to these planes. That is, each of these planes may be thought of as separate "spaces", or worlds, in which these levels of our subjective behavior operate. These definitions will be clarified in greater detail shortly.
To the reader unfamiliar with these notions this may at first seem to be a useless gesture. It may seem that we have made little inroad to understanding the nature of sensation, emotion, and mind by simply giving them new names. Yet much of the confusion that exists in the psychological and social sciences rests in the assumption that sensation, emotions and mind are somehow caused by physical phenomena. Obviously our subjective awareness of physical sensation is dependent upon the structure of our physical bodies and of the physical world, but it does not follow that the subjectivity of physical sensation is a physical phenomena. That physical sensation is subjective points to its essentially nonphysical character. The situation becomes even more blatant with regard to emotions and mind. Traditional approaches in psychology look to the structure of our physical bodies, and especially the structure of the brain, to understand the structure of our emotions and mind. There is no doubt that there is a constant interplay amongst physical, emotional and mental phenomena, as is obvious from a couple shots of whiskey or a few too many Valium, on the one hand, or approaching a physical situation with a bad attitude on the other hand. Yet to seek to explain emotional and mental phenomena solely in terms of physical cause and effect is to only introduce confusion by marring the unique aspects of physical, emotional and mental levels of phenomena. We do both our minds and our emotions a great injustice by believing that they exist only as corollaries of our physical bodies. And likewise, the tremendous success of the physical sciences shows us that there is little need to attempt to understand physical phenomena in terms of the mind.
The advantage of the occult view is that we can now appreciate the unique features of physical, etheric, emotional and mental phenomena as selfcontained features inherent to each particular plane. That is, each particular level can be understood to be unique in its own terms, and it is not necessary to define one level in terms of the other, such as, for example, seeking a physical cause for mental phenomena or seeing a mental cause of physical phenomena. What we are left with is a view of human experience that sees a constant interaction and interplay amongst these four relatively autonomous levels of human experience: the physical, etheric, emotional (or astral) and mental. The questions that we can now ask become: 1. What are the phenomena in operation on a particular plane and 2. What are the means by which the phenomena of one plane affects another plane?
Such a switch in our view by assigning sensation, emotions and the mind their own unique levels, or planes of operation greatly simplifies our conceptual understanding not only of these phenomena, but of the interrelation between these phenomena. But alone this is not enough. We have to go deeper into our study of the astral and mental planes to truly appreciate the power of the occult views.
Yet before I go into these topics in greater detail, there is still the issue of pinpointing or identifying the phenomena of these planes in the most literal sense we can. What I am concerned with at this point is that we know of the physical world because we have senses that display to us the physical world. As a matter of fact the physical world is defined by the fact that it is the world we perceive with our physical senses of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. But how do we know of the astral or mental worlds? We cannot see, smell, hear taste or touch astral or mental objects. How do we even know they exist?
Actually the problem goes very deep, for in our culture and in our language we do not understand emotional or mental phenomena except in the same terms as we understand our sensations of physical phenomena. That is, because of the way we use language, we confuse our subjective sensations at the etheric, astral and mental levels. Thus we speak of "feeling" sad or angry as if we have touched these emotions with our hand. And we speak of "seeing" an idea-"oh, I see what you mean"-as if our eyes see the idea. We even speak of "the mind's eye" when literally, our minds are not eyes. Thus, we are so used to understanding emotional and mental phenomena in terms of our physical senses that we never are really able to appreciate the uniqueness of these phenomena in their own terms. We have no words with which to express our subjective sensations of emotional and mental realities in their own terms, and this factor has probably contributed greatly to our urge to understand mind and emotion in physical terms and the confusion that has resulted from such an endeavor.
There is a second complicating factor also and this is the particular relationship that exists between emotions and ideas in our culture. Emotions and ideas tend to be so interwoven in our everyday behavior that it is difficult for us to separate easily what is an idea from what is an emotion. At the extremes this is easy and we know that anger is an emotion when one's voice gets loud and threatening, or we know that "1+1=2" is a quite emotionless idea. Away from such extremes, we find ideas and emotions tightly wound round one another (which is much more common in our experience), and it becomes harder and harder to distinguish emotions from ideas.
The combination of an emotion with an idea, or set of ideas, we normally call an "attitude". And we can readily pinpoint attitudes. But it is difficult for most people to dissect an attitude into its component ideas and emotions, not because it is inherently difficult to do so, but simply because we are not used to doing it. For example, such ideas as "God" or "murder" or "Communism" cause us to well up not only the intellectual realizations represented by these words but also very particular emotional statesl. Usually, in cases such as these we don't even understand the intellectual component but only the emotional component. These examples illustrate that the words actually represent attitudes more so than pure ideas. And the fact that we use words to represent relatively complex attitudes shows how little we are consciously aware of the emotional overtones of ideas (as in the examples above) or the cognitive overtones of emotions.
An excellent example of the latter is the word "objectivity" . So many purported philosophical arguments about the nature of objectivity boil down to little more than a reflection of the ignorance of the arguer of the emotions that are unconsciously associated with this word. Objectivity, in the reality of our experience, is much more an emotional state than it is an idea, and the fact that we treat "objectivity" as an idea shows how really ignorant we are of the subtle interplay and interweavings of ideas and emotions.
Thus, this is probably the single most useful reason to be aware of the occult notions of the etheric, astral and mental planes; to refine our awareness of the emotional and mental realities and their interplay in our day to day life, and to be capable of separating these from the terms of our physical sensations. Aside from the scientific worth of these ideas, these are realizations useful to all of us no matter what our walk in life.
Therefore, once we see beyond these complicating factors of our language's inability to describe emotional and mental phenomena clearly, and the fact that what we usually call "ideas" are in reality "attitudes", which is at first no easy matter, we can then begin to appreciate that we indeed possess senses in addition to those that define physical sensation, whose functions are to reveal to us activity occurring on the astral and mental planes.
In terms of our physical perceptions, which are the essence of the etheric level, astral and mental phenomena are quite invisible processes. But once we become sensitive to the natures of the astral and mental planes and the senses we have for detecting these levels of our behavior, we begin to realize that what is physically invisible is not invisible in other terms. What I will discuss now are these senses we posses for detecting astral and mental events.
Broadly speaking, the situation is not so easy to describe
because no simple one-to-one analogy exists between our physical
senses and our astral and mental senses. That is to say, there
are no astral smells or mental tastes, at least in terms of our
usual conscious waking experience. An attempt to understand our
astral and mental senses actually alters our view of our physical
senses and leads us to focus on our physical senses in a more
unified manner. In this regard, consider the following quote by
Leadbeater:
"The vision of the mental plane is again totally
different, for in this case we can no longer speak of separate
senses such as sight and hearing, but rather have to postulate
one general sense which responds so fully to the vibrations
reaching it that, when any object comes within its cognition, it
at once comprehends it fully, and as it were sees it, hears it,
feels it, and knows all there is to know about it by the one
instantaneous operation. Yet even this wonderful faculty differs
in degree only and not in kind from those which are at our
command at the present time; on the mental plane, just as on the
physical, impressions are still conveyed by means of vibrations
travelling from the object to the seer"2
The analogy between our physical, astral and mental senses rests, as Leadbeater clearly states, on the understanding that our physical senses all react to various degrees and types of physical vibrations. Thus our eyes are detectors of light waves. Our ears are detectors of sound waves. Our senses of taste and smell are sensitive detectors of chemical shapes which are, according to quantum mechanics, standing waves (vibrational patterns) of electrical energy. And our sense of touch is a detector of mechanical vibrations passing through physical objects. All of our physical sensory apparatus serve to convert particular types of wave motion in our environment into the perceptions of our consciousness. And these physical perceptions make up the essence of our etheric experience. Generally speaking, our astral and mental senses operate in this same fashion by converting astral and mental vibrations into the contents of our consciousness.
However, we do not subjectively perceive light or sound as vibrations, instead focusing on other qualities such as color or pitch, texture or timbre. Likewise, our perceptions of astral and mental events do not subjectively appear to us as vibrational patterns. Instead, when we perceive astral vibrations we experience emotions, and when we perceive mental vibrations we have an idea or think a thought. That is to say, our astral sensory apparatus is exactly our emotions, and our mental sensory apparatus is exactly our mind. And our emotions and thoughts have no ready counterpart in terms of our physical senses. Thinking and emotions are quite unique aspects of our conscious awareness operating sidebyside, or interpenetrating with our physical perceptions. It is in this sense that we operate on these planes simultaneously.
The qualities of the higher planes (those beyond the mental plane) are much more abstract to describe and very rare occurrences in the awareness of most of us and that is why I am not discussing them here. Intuition, which is actually an aspect of very "fast" mental vibrations, can give us a slight idea of the nature of the planes beyond the mental. The mystical experience itself is a function of the buddhic plane. When one has the rare experience of direct mystical insight, this is in actuality the utilization of the buddhic body as a means of sensing the buddhic plane. Again, this is a very rare occurrence at the present stage of human evolution, and most of us operate our whole lives only on the physical, astral, and mental planes. The planes beyond the buddhic plane are inaccessible to the subjectivity of our physical (normal waking) personalities.
Before going into greater detail as to the nature of our emotional (astral) and mental senses, I would like to point out that, just as our physical senses convey to us particular levels of phenomena which can be understood or studied by means unique to that level of phenomena (such as light, heat, electricity, etc.), so too does the occult view as I have outlined it thus far point to new levels of phenomena which can be studied and understood on their own unique levels. In this case the phenomena do not seem so new, our mind and emotions are with us all the time. But looking at them in occult terms allows us to begin to conceptualize them much as we would phenomena such as light or sound, and thus develop a more objective approach to the study of emotions and ideas. Thus, we have seen one example of phenomena unique to the astral plane, this being the elementals described by Besant and Leadbeater in section 5.1. Likewise with the mental plane, a unique phenomena at this level is that of thought-forms and their behavior. We will talk in some detail about thought-forms in chapters 11 and 14.
As I have alluded so far, we indeed possess senses that allow us to perceive astral and mental phenomena and I have said that these senses are, respectively, our emotions and our minds. This is a very novel claim in terms of Western thinking. It is quite foreign in the context of modern psychology to think of our emotions and our minds as senses that allow us to detect (vibrational) activity on planes that are nonphysical, but indeed, this is the common teaching of occultism.
The primary reason that such notions are foreign to modern science is that, as we have seen, modern science as a whole is ignorant of the concept of the nonphysical planes. Jung's psychology is the only theoretical framework in modern science that comes very close to defining concepts equivalent to the occult notion of the planes. That is, in many respects, Jung's concept of the Collective Unconscious greatly resembles a kind of hybrid notion fusing the concepts of the astral and mental planes. Yet Jung couched his concepts in other terms, for whatever reasons, and his terms are simply not as conceptually straightforward as the occult concepts. Jung's ideas are very abstract and do not make clear the literal and material reality (nonphysical, but material nonetheless) of these planes and their associated phenomena. Furthermore, Jung's ideas, though having tremendous impact on the development of twentieth century psychology, have had little impact on other branches of science such as physics or biology.
The notions of the planes described by occultists as I am explaining here have immediate implications on other sciences and most especially on modern physics with its unified fields and hidden dimensional spaces. As I will discuss in a later chapter, there is every reason to believe that the occult planes are indeed the literal reality behind the "hidden" dimensions of the mathematical models physicists use today. That is, the astral and mental "spaces" as described by occultists are amenable to the same type of mathematical understanding as the physical 3-D space which produces our etheric consciousness. And, as we have already touched on in previous discussions and will discuss in later chapters, notions of occult anatomy have immediate relevance not only for modern physics, but for biology and physiology as well. Thus occult psychology is superior to traditional approaches in its relevance to other branches of modern science, most especially the "hard" sciences.
Returning to the point, another advantage of adopting these occult concepts is that they provide a simplifying mechanism in the study of human behavior. It is conceptually simpler if we can understand all the contents of our subjective awareness, our physical, emotional, and mental impressions, as sensory input from the respective planes. This provides us with a basis to understand emotional and mental phenomena that is analogous to the manner is which we understand physical sensory phenomena, minus the confusion that results from the nebulous situation of defining emotions and mind in the same terms as physical sensation. This is much simpler than trying to ad hoc define emotions and mind out of the blue, or in physical terms. Not only is the occult approach conceptually simpler, but it is not abstract. The occult approach is absolutely literal. The nonphysical planes are real and have direct impacts on every level of physical life from the objective world of physics to the subjective realms of emotion, mind and mystical insight.
What we shall see is that using these occult notions as a basis, we now have a unified framework to understand processes such as human psychology, processes of communication, and social interaction in a manner that is equivalent to the way physicists and chemists understand communication and interaction amongst atoms and molecules. The advantage here is that we shall begin to discover unified principles of organization between human behavior and natural processes. We will elucidate processes that operate on all levels of Nature from the subatomic to the human, illustrating the self-similarity of Nature principle of which I have already spoken. Philosophically, at least, this will illustrate to us that we humans are much more a part of Nature than our Western sciences and philosophies have led us to believe.
Notes: Chapter 9
1Watts, (1973).
2Leadbeater, (1986), pages 17-18.
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