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The ability to transcend what is illusory and get connected to what is more real is central to what wisdom means and is central to regarding one’s life as meaningful.
This blog was co-authored with Professor John Vervaeke, and the quote is from the 11th Episode of Awakening from the Meaning Crisis. For Part I of this blog series, see here.
I (Gregg Henriques) am fortunate to have experienced a transcendent moment in an altered state of consciousness that transformed my life. It was in the late summer or early fall of 1997. I had become fluent in a new way of seeing human consciousness and reason giving that had provided me an innovative way to understand the structure and function of language-based thought (see here and here). Then, one night in an altered state, I had a profound insight, such that a whole new view of the universe literally “popped” into my mind. This “vision logic experience” would transform my view of the world and myself in relationship to it. In 30 seconds, I drew out the following diagram with no hesitation. In addition, the diagram instantly had a deep sense of familiarity, as if I had known it all my life. It would ultimately flower into my life’s work and become the Tree of Knowledge theory of knowledge.
This experience has many of the hallmark features described by Dr. John Vervaeke in his analysis of higher or transcendental states of consciousness. As such, it provides a good anecdote to use in examining his continuity hypothesis for understanding higher states.
First, a brief review. As was noted in Part I, the 11th problem of consciousness refers to the “onto-normativity” problem of transcendent states of higher consciousness. We are calling it the 11th problem in reference both to this blog on the 10 problems of consciousness, and the coincidental fact that Dr. Vervaeke discusses the problem in his 11th installment from his YouTube lecture series, "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis." The problem refers to both the challenge of having a scientific framework that can describe these states and how to offer a prescriptive account for why these states are genuinely important and should be taken seriously by our culture.
At a core descriptive level, a fundamental feature of transcendent states of consciousness is a transformation in the experience between the self, the world, and the relationship between the two. Individuals will consistently report the experience of beauty and a sense of “oneness,” whereby the self both expands and dissolves, such that there is a deep and profound sense of integration with the world. One’s vision expands while simultaneously deepening such that they become aware of the finer details. It also involves a sense of inner harmony and peace and beauty. This notion is vividly captured in William Blake’s poem, "Auguries of Innocence," which begins as follows:
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
In addition, there are features that consistently set the stage for these experiences. For example, they are often proceeded by disruptive strategies, such as sleep deprivation, meditation, or use of psychoactive substances. Such disruptive strategies likely serve the function of “breaking the frame” of normal sense-making. That is, they allow us to step outside the normal schemas that organize but also constrain our perceptions and conceptions of the world. This frame-breaking relates to another feature of higher states, which is the frequently reported experience of the ego or self both dissolving and fusing with the world. This fusion is often experienced as mystical and beautiful and glorious, which is associated with perceiving the world with heightened clarity.
As scientists concerned with the meaning crisis and who see the need to realize meaning in our lives, we want a plausible naturalistic explanation for these features and a good justification for why people should follow them. Toward this end, Dr. Vervaeke has proposed the “continuity hypothesis” of such states. Situated in his integrative, holistic approach to Cognitive Science, it suggests that there is a continuity across different and increasingly intense participatory states of knowing.
First, there is fluency, which is the capacity to efficiently and effectively process information toward desired outcomes. This requires expertise in a domain. Then there is insight. Insight refers to when there is a spike in fluency that stems from awareness of new relevant information that increases once capacity for identifying and utilizing affordances. Next comes flow, which is a deep state of participatory engagement. Flow states sometimes evolve into mystical experiences. This is where the ground state of consciousness becomes altered, and there are breaks in the standard way of being in the world. Finally, there are transformative experiences that involve a qualitative shift of seeing the world and one’s relationship to it. The continuity hypothesis is the idea that we can characterize higher transcendental states of consciousness via this sequence.
This analysis raises the question of what exactly is the state of fluency, insight, and flow that sets the stage for the transformation. Specifically, it was mentioned that expertise is required, which gives rise to the question: What is the foundational kind of participatory knowledge that is being enacted in this emergent sequence? The continuity hypothesis posits that it is the foundational framing of the agent-arena relationship. That is, what is being built upon in this emergent transition is one’s fundamental sense of being in the world, the core of one’s participatory knowledge.
To see this more clearly, we can invoke the concept of how we attempt to get an “optimal grip” on the world. When we encounter something new, we move in relationship to it, and we attempt to balance our need for detail and specificity with our need for appreciating the gestalt or whole. An optimal grip is achieved when we become attuned to the whole and can hold that, while also attending to the specifics and placing them in a coherent context. We can apply this idea to transformational experiences in that they are fundamentally about obtaining an optimal participatory grip on the self-world relation.
We can return to my (Henriques) personal transformational experience and show how this lines up nicely in providing a frame for describing what was happening. First, I was achieving fluency in a new angle of understanding myself, the world, and my relationship to it. I was gaining several small-to-medium-sized insights that were accumulating. This set up the backdrop or the stage for a fundamental shift in my self-world schema. Then, I entered an altered state of consciousness, which I did with the explicit intent of breaking my more traditional consciousness frames. In that state, I started humming, and new creative associations were flowing. That is, I was in a flow state and was picking up on new self-world patterns. Then I had a macro-level insight, whereby a massive amount of implicit knowledge that was in the background of my conscious awareness became explicitly framed and became “super salient.” All of this happened in a flash of insight, and the diagram simply appeared as if I had known it all along. Seeing it and interacting with it fundamentally transformed my view of the self-world relation. Indeed, my life changed significantly afterward, as I have devoted my life to elucidating this new view of knowledge.
One feature that is somewhat unique about my transformative experience is that the vision I encountered was more logically specifiable than most. That is, many transformative experiences are ineffable in the sense that the frame shift is difficult to put into words. Moreover, the logical propositions that are sometimes generated in such transformative experiences are not trustworthy in a scientific sense. In contrast, for me, the Tree of Knowledge is fundamentally about developing a new and clearly specifiable map of reality and how science maps it. Despite this difference, the correspondence between my experience and the continuity hypothesis and the idea that transformational experiences are examples of deep and broad participatory knowing that results in a transcendent vision of the self-world relation are clear and obvious.
This account also offers a plausible frame for prescribing the value of mystical and transformative experiences. They provide a profound sense of participation, a sense of both being in and being with the world, as well as a sense of becoming part of something larger. All of this ultimately suggests that we would be wise to embrace the powerful psycho-technologies of the traditional wisdom traditions. That is, we would do well to engage in more efforts that foster self-transformation and the cultivation of wisdom and ultimately the deep enhancement of meaning in life by bringing about a developmental harmony within and a powerful connectedness with the world.
In short, in response to the modern meaning crisis, we need to recognize the relevance of the 11th problem of consciousness and work to cultivate theories and practices that allow for the realization of such transcendent states of being.
