The world is a philosophical enterprise consisting of numerous subjects with the circumstance of piercing the deepest parts of existence. Many topics evoke quivers, but what seems to attach itself and marry with my thoughts is an innate craving for wholeness and transcendence. To be whole is to be self actualized, and for one to finally catch up to this higher divine thing. That seems to whisper to you in moments of bliss, intuition, and awareness. The experiences leading one to this feeling could be seen as Holotropic.

Holotropic – oriented toward wholeness (From the greek holos = whole and trepo, trepein = moving toward or in the direction of something) (Grof 318)

            I think this is what Heidegger meant by being or when Carl Jung tried to reach individuation through his active imagination.  This ecstatic awareness of one’s true self feels more like a distant memory than an untouchable feat. We come from a place of enlightenment, and in this earthly realm there are tools to tease out the trueness. There was this Gnostic teaching my friend Darren told me of the fallen Goddess Sophia regarding how she was sent out to the earth from the Pleroma. The Pleroma is the yolk of the galaxy, an energy hub where gods and goddesses are born and roam, a realm of infinite potential. Did we all come from the Pleroma? 

The state of wholeness is our first repressed memory. You were never sick, you are whole, wonderful, and present. This memory is given life support by the synchronistical keys placed to open up the knowing. We feel pressure to jump on the hedonic treadmill and surrender to the mundane idea of a normal life, while coexisting are realms of memories, daydreams, infinite potentials, inner trips, outer trips, and breakdowns. As Joseph Campbell says, put yourself in situations that will bring out the higher nature rather than the lower (Campbell 125). Through the platform of my childhood, dreams, visions, depression, and psychedelic trips there exists regression therapy to bring me closer to that feeling of being whole and that feeling that we are not everything more than anything.

CHILDREN ARE THE ENLIGHTENED ONES

There are different theories to the density of our soul when we are born. Locke’s Tabula Rasa theory – being blank slates, or French Philosopher Julia Kristeva’s idea of a “zero state” – a perfect equilibrium of desire and satisfaction (Kristeva 7). What if we were complete when born, and then with life’s circumstances, slightly devolve, and this euphoric state becomes repressed or clouded, and the drive of life is just to get back to that state again. The cyclically inspiring while contrastingly mischievous search to gain an effortless child like sense of being. As children, we have true aletheia, closer access to our soul. 

An infant is the impulse of life. I think we are the most vulnerable to feelings of wholeness in our state as children. I feel this through my own memories as a child, observing my 20 nieces and nephews, and from facts I gathered from a Child Development course. Through my Child Development textbook, there are numerous statements on the observations of children that seem to associate so effortlessly to what people imagine enlightenment being like. I couldn’t help correlate this context with the beliefs in Zen and Buddhism.  Here is some information I gathered.

Fact 1

Children believe inanimate objects are alive and have intentions, feelings, and consciousness (Berk 203)

If you’ve experienced the states brought on by psilocybin mushrooms before, something as simple as the bathroom’s wallpaper has a presence felt by the brain in this highly sensitive state. Again, we already knew and were onto something at an early age. In Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism they believe plant life, and even inanimate objects are considered conscious beings. They have a spirit, a soul, or consciousness. This could be what Carl Jung was experiencing as a boy when he asked “Am I the one who is sitting on the stone, or am I the stone on which he is sitting” (Stevens 6). As children we already understand interconnectedness. This is something we’ve forgotten and we relearn by reaching further inside to our pure consciousness, which is built by the foundation of early memories.

Fact 2

“When we think in words, we can deal with past, present, future at once and combine concepts in unique ways” (Berk 239).

I like to fantasize about what awareness and consciousness felt like before we realized there were words to put to things. Imagination existed before language. I wonder when infantile amnesia is prominent, the first 3 years of life, we are more present, we are in that desirable feeling of the “now” that Eckhart Tolle and every self help book speaks about. What if with the development of language we become more lost in the illusions of past and future.

Fact 3

“Before the age of 6 they often insist that they have always known information they just learned”. (Berk 303)

I love this. I like the idea that within us we have all the answers, we are limitless beings capable of infinite knowledge and potential. As children we are more in tune with the collective unconscious. We also may be closest to wholeness as children, because so close to us is the memory of our first hero’s journey, that of birth. As Joseph Campbell says, “Everyone is a hero at birth – where he undergoes a tremendous psychological as well as physical transformation from the condition of a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid into an air breathing mammal which ultimately will be standing. That’s an enormous transformation, and had it been consciously undertaken, it would have been, indeed, a heroic act” (Campbell 119). To disagree with Campbell, I think this was consciously undertaken. I believe an infant is a wise and aware spirit fully conscious of their conception, development, and the early years post birth. Ayahuasca is known to bring up these memories of the prenatal domain, and also the Holotropic breath work technique by Stanslof Grof. We have already taken the heroic journey to get here, like Sophia from Pleroma.

DREAMS

A dream I had when I was young. 

Carl Jung gave fundamental importance to fantasies, dreams, and visions and he spent his whole life in attempt to understand them. Jung preferred to study the inner world of dreams and fantasies rather than the outer world of events and people (Stevens 2). I believe dreams and visions are a direct entry point to the soul, and during these times of sleep and deep mediation, we are present and vulnerable to all that we’ve repressed, ancestors, past lives, and archetypes. I believe it is in these states we can connect to the collective unconscious – the collective psychic substratum (Jung 155). I had one of my most intense dreams while I was in Florence.

“Dreams are the guiding words of the soul” (Jung 233) – The Red Book

For over a year I have felt this intense presence of my father’s mother. I have never met her, but I feel we are made of the same ingredients. Like myself she was an Aries woman ridden with anxiety and depression in times of her life. I had a psychic tell me she needed to speak to me about a year prior, and she gave me a Wicken ritual to connect to her. This type of ritual and culture did not resonate with my rhythm. Instead I looked toward a mentor of mine who is much a part of the Ojibwa community. My Great Great Great Grandmother was Indigenous, so I feel more drawn to the rituals of her heritage.

This mentor told me to ask my Grandmother to come into my dreams. I did just that and this was the outcome.

My Dream - March 4th 2015 - Florence Italy

In this dream, I was showing gaudi like art installation in mom’s room. My classmates were there and my teachers. Next thing I know chaos breaks out and the hydro goes out, and all the technology devices are flashing and going crazy. Then this demon emerges and it has possessed me, and I can’t get away from it. This demon had numerous heads. Ravana. There was even Sanskrit written above all of the doors. I kept praying to Gaveshana. She was the good god. I prayed to her in hopes of getting rid of the demon. I was then in the kitchen and Melina was about to leave to go to a store. I asked her if I could come. I felt so scared, and possessed, I was hallucinating, and I felt like I was going crazy because of this demon. With a big sister attitude, she didn’t really want me to go, so I just crumbled and started balling my eyes out, explaining to her how I felt helpless, and that I was going insane, seeing things and hearing things. Then I woke up! The weird thing is that I don’t know anything about Hindu traditions. And I looked up the word Gaveshana when I woke up this morning. It is a real Sanskrit word, a noun representing feminine gender, and it represents the act or process of investigating in order to discover or revise factors or theories. It also is close to the word Galavasa “Now it is time to face the edge of the precipice and put together all that you have learned about moving forward with balance and skill.” I have no idea what it means, I just thought it was crazy that I had all of this unconscious knowledge, on something I know nothing about. I have been doing a lot of research on dreams and unconscious symbolism, and my art work this year has been all about this. Lately I am feeling very aware and in tune. It was also a full moon last night.

Dreams do not lack reality, they are real patterns of information – Rich Doyle

I wonder if this could be information gathered from the collective unconscious, like the universal symbol of the phallic sun seen by one of Carl Jung’s Schizophrenic patients. I had no knowledge of these foreign words but it made sense that my grandmother used this as her form of language. My grandmother and grandfather got married in India back in the 1920’s. The Asmat saw complete equilibrium between the spirit world and the mortal world. Dreams can be a bridge for these worlds to communicate. We have all inherited the suffering of humanity. It continues to be passed down and worked through until we reach a pure platform. Dreams allow for individuation.

The healing then comes from the collective unconscious and it is guided by an inner intelligence whose immense wisdom surpasses the knowledge of any individual therapist or therapeutic school. This is the essence of what Jung called the individuation process (Grof 1325).

I believe I inherited a lot of my grandmother’s trauma through epigenetic and metaphysical memory. This dream was her, telling me to go forward with balance, skill, and not be enveloped by her trauma, but fight it through into a more healed self. This concept has become my thesis.

VISIONS

I had a chance to go over to my friend Karly’s house and look at her copy of Carl Jung’s Red Book. The overall theme of the book is how Jung regains his soul. Each artwork and entry depicts Jung’s individuation process. Individuation can also be seen as wholeness. In the Red Book Jung seems to practice the foundation of a spiritual life as discussed by Simone Weil. Visions can inept a sense of wholeness. Individuation is to arrive at a higher manifestation of oneself.

I knew no technique of getting at the bottom of this activity, all I could do was just wait, keep on living (Jung 198) – The Red Book

The symbol of the snake seemed to come up a lot in Jung’s Red Book. This made me transport back to a time where I had this vision while meditating in Florence. It was my last night in Italy, and my friend Raissa invited me to partake in this Gong Bath, which entailed everyone to lay in darkness, while this magical woman played mystical instruments such as bowls, gongs, and strings that came out as the same frequency as DNA. I fell into a lucid dream state where I was in the middle of a desert and a giant snake came to me and swallowed me whole, and I remember the feeling of being in the snakes throat reminiscing with the feeling of being in the birth canal.

While reading The Power of Myth by Campbell, he gave insight as to what the symbol of the snake could mean.

In India the snake is a sacred animal.  The serpent king is the next thing to the Buddah. The serpent represents the power of life engaged in the field of time, and of death, yet eternally alive (Campbell 53)

The snake is the symbol of the throwing off the past and continuing to live. (Campbell 52)

This night had a tone of mysticism. I felt like I reached a state like Carl Jung’s active imagination. It was a direct hit of something larger within myself, and a lesson that meditation was a path to get there. And through analysis of visions one can get closer to transcendence.

PSYCHADELIC TRIPS

Thank you to my older sister to introducing me to psilocybin when I was 18, since then I have enjoyed studying the effects through experience and research, of this psychotropic drug. I believe LSD and psilocybin have heuristic, transformative, and healing potential. Once under the influence a feeling erupts that one is encountering a dimension which is sacred, holy, and radically different from everyday life, and which belongs to a superior order of reality. It turns you inside out and can remind you of your wholeness and being.

Some of the chemicals known as psychedelics provide opportunities for mystical insight in much the same way as well-prepared paints and brushes provide the opportunities for fine painting, or a beautifully constructed piano for great music. They make it easier, but they do not accomplish the work all by themselves. – Alan Watts

As anyone who has ever been on psychedelics can agree, it forces this intense connection to nature. It unleashes the values of indigeneity. One can’t help but be outside and connect to the land. I have had this intense vision the past three times doing psychedelics. First was with my friend, we had a house to outselves and each ingested 2.5 grams. Lots happened through our six-hour trip, but I saw something that continues to pop up every time now. I look down at my hands and feet and imbedded in them was a symbolic hidden language. It glows white and red and translucent, and it’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. The language looks like graphic marks, abstract shapes, and geometric signs. A few months later I did LSD for the first time and it appeared again, but this time in a 3D IMAX like show in the clouds with a kaleidoscope motion. This language looked a lot like some of the symbols in Carl Jung’s Red Book.

Aldous Huxley believed the brain functioned like a reducing valve that shields us from an infinitely larger cosmic input (Grof 2025)

The whole physical world around us has messages continuously, waiting for our senses to become sharper.

DECONSTRUCTION

In the book Psychology of the Unconscious, Carl Jung states, “Life is in a state of flux leading to construction and deconstruction” (Jung 452).

I have felt my most healing experiences that brought me closer to wholeness were my moments of break down, anxiety, and depression.

“We must lose ourselves to find ourselves” – Sonnie Long

“He that loseth his soul shall find it” – Alan Watts

Your wounds are not your curse but your points of entry. I have learned much from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh about the acceptance of suffering. I made art for a year talking ahout Samyojana – the lump of suffering within us that is translated as an “internal formation”. These came out as entangled figures of psychological trauma, as I felt painting worked as a psychological tool. Digging this constipated material out to the surface, so it could be moulded in a healing way. 

Anxiety 2014

In Buddhism they untie the knot. If not he will let it remain there in the depths of his consciousness (Nhat Hanh 35).

Submit himself to the facing of his naked soul, and to the pain, and the suffering which this often entails – here in no relation to life, an absolute truth and an absolute honesty. (Jung 95).

Like Enanodromia, if we are mindfulness, love, we can also be ignorance and suffering. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh teaches, and Buddhist mediation is based on, the principle of non-duality (Nhat Hanh 50). Once we stop rejecting the darkness and accepting it as a part of the journey into wholneness it has the potential to be a transformative tool.

CONCLUSION

In our every day state of consciousness we identify with only a small fraction of who we really are and on our way to becoming. We are multifaceted and multidimensional with only the illusion of divisions and boundaries. We can transcend the boundaries of this perception and encounter a rich spectrum of transpersonal experiences that help us to reclaim our full identity. We are swollen with transpersonal ability as children, and through dreams, visions, and deconstruction, one can also be teased by the taste of wholeness.

WORK CITED 

Berk, Laura E. Child Development. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2003. Print.

Campbell, Joseph, and Bill D. Moyers. The Power of Myth. New York: Doubleday, 1988. Print. 

Grof, Stanislav. Healing Our Deepest Wounds: The Holotropic Paradigm Shift. Newcastle, WA: Stream of Experience Productions, 2012. Print. 

Kristeva, Julia, and Leon S. Roudiez. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Print.