Evolutionary Metaphors

by David J Moore

  First there is the indescribable sensation in the spine, as of something mounting up, a sensation which is partly pleasure and partly awe, a physical sensation and yet one which, if it makes sense to say so, is beginning to be not physical. This was accompanied by an extraordinary feeling of bodily lightness, of well-being and effortlessness, as if one’s limbs had no weight and one’s flesh had been suddenly transmuted into some rarer substance. But it was also, somehow, a feeling of living more in the upper part of one’s body than the lower, a certain peculiar awareness of one’s head as… the most important and intelligent of one’s members. There was also a realization that one’s facial expression was changing; the eyes were wider open than usual; the lips were involuntarily smiling. Everything was becoming ‘more’, everything was going up on to another level…

  I found that I could think in a new way. Or rather, it would be more accurate to say that I could think-and-feel in a new way, for it was hard to distinguish between thought and feeling… This was like becoming possessed of a new faculty. (Quoted in Wilson; 1988: 736–737.)

  Everything ‘becoming more’ is also what Wilson called ‘relationality’ or ‘Faculty X’; that ability to connect meanings until an almost overwhelming sense of infinite meaningfulness rekindles and vivifies our perceptual—and intentional—fires. In this state each meaning, symbol and metaphor become intrinsically evolutionary. When the ‘flame of consciousness is low, a symbol has no power to evoke reality, and intellect is helpless.’ A feeling of the relationality—as opposed to a feeling of the unrelated and diffuse world of a pessimist, or someone who is tired—is precisely the opposite; instead, for them, reality is grasped by an active intentionality, yielding further to a fuller and richer comprehension, or, as Alfred North Whitehead called it, prehension (the ability to grasp meaning). Suddenly, says Wilson of Faculty X, one would become intensely aware of ‘other times and other places’. Indeed, this is what RH Ward also calls the sensation of ‘becoming possessed of a new faculty’.

  This faculty enables a new cosmological vision of our role in space and time, and moreover enables a direct perception of the underlying meanings inherent in the evolutionary process. For example, in his book The Paranormal, Stan Gooch paints a picture of a living cosmos in which ‘“spirit” takes a huge step forward’ by cloaking itself in the material world, for now it can ‘operate at an infinitely more meaningful level. It is now in a position (as ever, from outside “space”) to upgrade its broadcast transmissions—the transmission of itself into “space”. Far more complex and more purposeful messages now become possible’ (1978: 297). Phenomena such as UFOs and synchronicity, it could be argued, are this meaningful level of spirit partaking in the phenomenal world, upgrading, to use Gooch’s terms, the ‘broadcast transmissions’ by expanding the witness’ understanding of the universal laws in which he lives. Gooch argues that these evolutionary faculties—RH Ward’s vision, Faculty X and others—are preformed or latent potentialities for the evolution of man’s consciousness. And what is so curious is that these very ‘magical’ faculties seem to exist in the transcendental ego, that super-conscious element in our psyche which appears to hold the key to our conscious evolution. Indeed, this is what Wilson meant when he said that the ‘first man to learn the secret of the control of consciousness will be the first true man, wholly in possession of the new dimension of freedom’ (1972: 150). Not only that, he will become the superman; man in his entire potential.

  But the question remains: what leads us onwards and upwards? Goethe says it’s the ‘eternal feminine’; for Wilson and Husserl it is the transcendental ego; for Madame Blavatsky it is the interplay between noumena and phenomena; and in Watson’s Miracle Visitors it is the ‘inaccessibilities’ that tease out our greatest mental leaps. In a sense they’re all aspects of each other, bleeding over seamlessly into one another’s territory; eternally presenting a sort of meta-logical game that challenges our presumptions every time we become too complacent. Arthur

  M. Young captured this nature of the universal game in the title of his 1976 book, The Reflexive Universe. Similarly to Watson and Vallée he presents a theory of a ‘metalanguage’, which has been described elsewhere as a requirement: ‘… for any evolving system, a pattern that can help to illuminate man’s destiny in the universe and instruct the process of individual and social transformation. In deciphering the universal kōan of process… [representing] the beginnings of a metalanguage for the higher-order paradigm shift that is so urgently required at this stage of human evolution.’

  This sort of odd logic that we have explored is at the heart of esotericism and the occult—with such logic present in synchronicities described above. I’ve here chosen to refer to these experiences as exercises in providing mankind with a series of evolutionary metaphors.

  Evolutionary Metaphors

  Evolutionary metaphors—along with esoteric ‘correspondences’ and the logic of much anomalous phenomenon—baffle ordinary causal logic precisely by transcending its limits and by inferring beyond itself. Essentially they are symbols of a reality yet to become. Indeed, to understand the evolutionary metaphor’s ambiguous nature we must develop imaginative as well as supra-logical faculties which can process this level of reality from which these metaphors emerge, and in doing so, it would be immediately grasped that they can become more than mere symbols but actualities. In this sense one realises that the meaning for something becoming must first reside as an implicit possibility—and only upon its explication does it become manifestly real. One might think of this process in terms of the Big Bang, for indeed, the whole universe was implicitly possible within the first billionths of a second. Although, as we shall see, time itself provides another level of complexity regarding the emergence of what was previously implicit.

  We are, quite literally, within two minds regarding our cosmological picture. For it is in these elevated states of mind, as in moments of Faculty X, and other forms of ‘relational consciousness’, that we are capable of grappling with these ‘higher order’ incursions into our lives. Furthermore, this directly relates to our perception of meaning in our everyday lives, for we remain, to an extent, limited within the lower rungs of the hierarchical structure of consciousness. And at the lower levels, of course, meaning itself becomes more diffuse, less relational and resultantly two-dimensional and relative—that is, without any qualitatively ‘higher’ or ‘lower’ aspect.

  These various levels of consciousness, which Wilson called the ‘ladder of selves’, enable us to see a direct correlation between the diffuse and ‘meaningless’ states of consciousness in contrast to the integrated sense of related meanings. Indeed, with each ascent of the ‘ladder’, a degree of integration occurs in the psyche which enables a comprehension of the interrelated nature of reality, and, therefore, the underlying sense of purpose and meaning of existence. Understanding this, of course, provides an essential reason for increasing our consciousness, for it enables us to see lower states as more disconnected from the truth than the higher states and, furthermore, that the intentional nature of consciousness in itself implies to what degree objective meaning is grasped and integrated.

  Fundamentally it is this recognition that consciousness is, in relation to meaning, active rather than passive, which in itself opens up an interesting approach to the anomalous. The evolutionary metaphor, in this sense, guides consciousness towards an increasing development of its higher faculties, goading the mind up the ‘ladder of selves’ towards a more inclusive sense of reality. Mysteries, after all, are simply those realities we have not yet understood, and with each increase of our knowledge, mysteries become less mysterious, but not necessarily any less marvellous.

  A certain invigoration and mental healthiness comes with the recognition of large-scale meanings, for example, in a religious vision of a divinely purposeful life. Again this directly relates to Wilson’s idea of the ‘bird’s-eye view’ as opposed to the closeup, and diminished ‘worm’s-eye view’. Further
more, one infers, by its very premises, that there is something beyond ordinary everyday existence; in other words, the metaphor refers to something beyond itself. A metaphor, of course, can either be a symbol or merely a figure of speech, even a comparison or, in its more complex form, a poem or mimesis. Nevertheless, a metaphor can sometimes clarify something that is expressed too explicitly—and metaphor in fact ‘embodies’ the issue by example, likeness or correspondence, even providing an empathic bridge.

  If we take metaphor as a form of imitation, or indeed, a mimesis of one level of reality in symbolic form—inferring as it does something outside of itself, yet nevertheless relating to a reality as such—we may begin to see it as a form of what Iain McGilchrist calls an ‘imaginative inhabiting of the other’, which, he argues, is ‘always different because of its intersubjective betweenness.’ These ‘empathic bridges’ are drawn across by ‘intention, aspiration, attraction and empathy, drawing heavily on the right hemisphere [of the brain], whereas copying is the following of disembodied procedures and algorithms, and is left-hemisphere based’ (2009: 249). By contrast, of course, the left hemisphere merely copies, and the right, being more theatrical and symbolical, prefers the evolutionary metaphor which unifies the thing it is mimicking within a symbolic reality which incorporates more levels of relational meaning than a literal-minded representation. McGilchrist argues that the survival values of this sort of thinking are immense, for they would encourage social cohesion and increase the transfer of symbolic—therefore embodied—information between individuals. In fact, the symbol or metaphor is more universal than explicit, analytical language, for this is in fact a much later development both historically and, importantly, biologically.

  A ‘magical’ consciousness is not necessarily at odds with reality; in fact, due to its gestalt-like nature, it can absorb far more information than a careful, analytical approach. For example, Bronislaw Malinowski’s 1914 research into the Trobriand Islanders highlighted the fact that ritual, although being rather ‘irrational’ from a Westerner’s point of view, nevertheless proved the South Sea fishermen seemed to flourish due to a general sense of control, even if, fundamentally, this control was an ‘illusory’ ritual from the point of view of science. Embedded in the ritual was an accurate understanding of reality, and therefore the ritual provided the necessary symbol for the transmission of the fruitful and constructive activity. Howard Bloom in The Lucifer Principle (1998) concludes that ‘[this] belief in magic is one clue to our need for memes. Religious and scientific schemes—clusters of guesswork that sometimes seem like a madman’s dreams—offer the feeling of control, an indispensable fuel for the physiological powerhouses of life’ (114).

  To switch to more recent times, it is curious to note that during these times of upheaval and unrest, memes, defined as ‘virally-transmitted cultural symbol or social idea’, and now a (sometimes) amusing Internet phenomenon, should spread both to entertain, but also, to provide a semblance of symbolic understanding—or control—by condensing information into a compacted and easily digestible ‘punch line’. If something irritates or baffles someone, there is usually a corresponding meme which aims to represent the illogicality of a political, personal, or social phenomenon. Rather like the Trobriand Islanders, there is a sense that the ‘meme’ in the chaotic environment of the Internet is becoming a means to navigate the unpredictable world of information. In a strange sort of way the Internet—a now extremely rich bed of information—generates a type of mythological consciousness, although this is in its earliest and crudest stages.

  With the advent of the Internet, with its visual and information-rich as well interactive nature, we have once again stepped back into an unusual situation in which the ‘metaphorical’ consciousness may once again thrive. That is, now our culture has become complex in terms of its sheer speed of information transfer, we are reconfiguring the way we attend to the world and our psyche. Borders, in a sense, have been crossed, and distance itself is reduced; communication and cultural ideas can leap bounds, and instantly spread throughout the world in a matter of hours, even minutes. This is reflected in news reportage and so on, and even with freak events which are circulated at the speed of light through optic cable.

  In this new climate of what the late sociologist Zygmunt Bauman called ‘liquid modernity’ bonds are tied evermore delicately, allowing for an immediate, on-call flexibility to accommodate the ever-shifting sands of an information-saturated culture.

  In recent times we have had to reconfigure our cultural thermostat, integrating new and evermore flexible and experimental techniques to somehow ‘embed’ the information into a context that can provide a discernible and meaningful shape to our world. The symbol, the imagistic condensation into a meme, has become a sort of recombinational ‘search mechanism’ for meaning. Of course, such a cultural environment sets itself up rather well for the reintroduction of a form of magical consciousness, in which images and memes can be used to navigate and control a chaotic environment. Indeed, the language which we use is increasingly orientated towards information, relativism and therefore provides a backdrop in which, once again, the symbol or intent can cross over between language—words—and the image. Nevertheless, it is still too early to fully embrace all of the potential evolutionary implications of a culture so saturated with information fed through a form of media which incorporates all previous mediums.

  As a result of this new world of information, the emergence of chaos magic, as I mentioned briefly in the first chapter, takes its stake in the new ‘magical consciousness’, taking advantage as it does of the postmodern juxtaposition of unusual and experimental points-of-view and harnessing the symbol as a means of codifying magical intent—their will to power over a world composed of information.

  Now, what we might be seeing in the modern world is the re-emergence of a type of magical thinking that had previously gone underground, so to speak, or had remained dormant in the unconscious regions of our collective psyche. And yet, evolutionary metaphors such as the UFO, synchronicities and flashes of revelatory consciousness seem further away than ever. The cultural zeitgeist tends to diminish the metaphysical—and therefore metaphorical––impulses that constitute the balance and integration of a healthy and dynamical mind. As our culture is becoming increasingly politicized, it, as a result, tends towards a subjugation of the individual, replacing a type of group-think that can easily result out of an intensely socially-networked world. Inner revolutions seem rarer than outer, political ones. The self, as a result, becomes increasingly low-resolution, reduced to a sort of caricature or a simplistic image-based vignette composed of shallow surfaces. This, of course, has increased our left hemisphere’s predilection to what McGilchrist describes as the ‘following of disembodied procedures and algorithms.’13

  In terms of the UFO phenomenon, Jung pronounced that its message, at least in dream symbolism, is intended so that everybody should be aware of their existence by appearing in the sky, but, crucially, they ‘bid each of us remember his own soul and his own wholeness, because this is the answer the West should give to the danger of mass-mindedness’ [my italics] (2002: 81). Curiously, and significantly, the UFO for Jung reminds us of our individuality, and for many people who witness the phenomena, one can certainly say that it is a disturbing and unique experience as is evident in many of the witness accounts. Although there are cases in which there is an instilled ecological consciousness, and a sense of planetary responsibility, there is also the element of individual psychic and psychological development brought about by the experience itself.

  Here we may turn to the philosophy as outlined in Wilson’s Outsider Cycle, for again it leads us back to the problem he addresses in the first book of the series, The Outsider. The individual, stricken by an existential vision, who nevertheless consciously or unconsciously strives towards a form of psychological integration. Wilson’s outsider, of course, is in revolt against mass-mindedness, and instead requires for himself an independent an
d unique vision of something objective—in other words, something that resides outside of the limits of reductionism and the confining, ultimately pessimistic boundaries of postmodern culture. However, as Lachman emphasises, the outsider’s ‘problems are not his alone; they involve all of civilization.’ He continues: ‘Western civilization [has] reached a dead end… and it could only move on if the Outsiders, the men and women of vision and purpose, overcame their uncertainty, ceased to be Outsiders, and imposed their values on the world around them’ (2016: 66–67).

  At this point we might ask ourselves, ‘What values should the Outsider impose?’ and for this, we might consider the abductees or UFO witnesses, who, with their normal preconceptions about existence and its possibilities challenged—or even explicitly modified directly by the experience itself—naturally pose a new vision in which time, space and the meaning constituted out of these constants may be turned on its head. Now, whether one becomes an Outsider, in Wilson’s meaning of the word, by undergoing these experiences is difficult to argue, for many considerations of the cases individually would have to be examined in tandem to the Outsider Cycle.

  Wilson’s Outsiders, of course, essentially recognised in themselves greater forces than mere personality, and that they were in a sense channels for an archetypal and fundamentally impersonal life force. And if like Stan Gooch we take the UFO, science fiction and the field of the paranormal as a vast arrangement of preformed evolutionary potentialities, as it were, we can begin to see each glimpse into these alternative realities as vision into evolutionary multiplicities, its implicit ‘realities’ yet to become, and furthermore, into its underlying vitality.

  In many of the Outsiders as well as the abductees, there is a vision of a new modality of being that infers meaning that is fundamentally practical and personal, and, once actualised in the individual, becomes applicable to society-at-large. In recognising the essentially creative nature of the experience, whether in the visions of the Outsider or in the traumatic yet simultaneously revelatory quality in the works of Whitley Strieber, we may perceive the outline of a new way of understanding of time in order to reorientate our relationship to meaning. Again, here one is reminded of Wilson’s Faculty X, for Strieber came to realise that we need to ‘unlearn the assumption that the future is in front of us, the present is where we are, and the past is behind us.’ Strieber continues: