Projection is thus the amazing mental mechanism by which we create ‘the other’ out of ourselves, like Eve from Adam’s rib. It enables the magical rise of a second person from the first person, the ‘you’ from the ‘I.’ Through it, the ‘outside’ world becomes a mirror for the most hidden and unacknowledged aspects of our psyches, so we can, in essence, interact with ourselves by proxy. We get a chance to dance, unwittingly, with that which is repressed within us. It is easy to see how conducive this can be to personal growth, provided that, at the end, in one of those Oh-My-God moments, one recognizes one’s own projections. No amount of books or conceptual understanding can rival the direct insight into one’s own nature that is experienced in that precious moment: ‘I am that! That is me!’ It is disarming, merciless, visceral. It cracks one’s mind open and broadens one’s intuition of self and reality like nothing else could.
For those who suddenly become cognizant of the projections they’ve been placing, the power of the phenomenon is disconcerting. They ask themselves: ‘What other elements of the world ‘out there’ may actually be projections of my own right now? Is there anything about reality that I can be absolutely sure to not be my own material?’ Indeed, it is difficult to delineate a sure boundary for our ability to project. How far does it go? Does it stop at people or does it perhaps permeate the inanimate aspects of reality as well?
The question isn’t absurd. The mainstream cultural narrative today is that the world is made of matter, which allegedly exists outside consciousness. We, conscious beings, supposedly arise as elusive, ephemeral material arrangements. Yet, if you step back for a moment and contemplate this situation thoughtfully, it’s easy to see that matter is a concept whose existence arises and resides in our consciousness. All the qualities we attribute to matter – solidity, concreteness, permanence, etc. – are experiences before we ever engender the thought that such experiences are caused by something outside consciousness. Whatever matter may be beyond experience isn’t, has never been and will never be part of anybody’s life. Therefore, we project our own experiences onto the concept of inanimate matter.
Moreover, consciousness is the sine qua non of our identity. Before myriad conceptual constructs arise in our minds regarding who or what we are, we are conscious. Being conscious is the very essence of what it means to be whatever it is we are. But what does our culture say about this? It says that consciousness arises out of particular arrangements of matter. The projection here is so in-your-face that it may be hard to see: we are projecting ourselves onto matter! We are projecting the essence of what it means to be us onto concepts created and existing within consciousness. Lost and afraid in a crowd of our own alienated facets turned other, we create a cultural narrative of pure projection to try to impose some order onto the chaos.
As suggested above, projections are useful for self-discovery and understanding. They mirror back to us aspects of ourselves that would otherwise remain hidden, repressed, obfuscated. Unable to be acknowledged directly, those repressed aspects get a chance to confront us under the guise of ‘the other.’ Subterfuge this may be, but it’s useful and even essential if you contemplate the alternative. However, the accruing value of the charade is only cashed in when the spell breaks and we finally become cognizant of our projections. If we never do, the entire affair remains useless: we never attain the final, earthshattering insight that confers meaning to all the years, centuries, eons of delusion. At some point, we must withdraw our projections and realize that our understanding of the world is actually an insight into ourselves.
Today, we think of ourselves as whimsical, insignificant and ephemeral creatures. In the cosmic scheme of things, we are like mayflies – or so the cultural narrative goes. We also think of matter/energy as eternal, unfolding according to magnificent, reliable patterns and regularities, and constituting the ground of all existence. What will we learn, in jaw-dropping astonishment, when we finally withdraw our projections from matter?
5.7. Direct experience, philosophy and depth-psychology: why we need them all
In a thoughtful review of my earlier book Why Materialism Is Baloney, Tom Bunzel made a statement that caught my attention: ‘The ‘problem’ with this marvelous book is that those among us who most need to confront its wisdom won’t have the openness to do so. And those with the openness to do so may not really require these explanations.’152 Bunzel’s suggestion is that those who can apprehend truth in a direct, experiential fashion do not require intellectual articulations of that truth. In other words, those who experience truth do not need an explanation for it. I see his point but also believe he misses something else. Allow me to elaborate.
There are two types of knowing: intellectual and experiential. The first is an indirect form of knowing that entails conceptual models. The second is a form of direct, intuitive knowing by experiencing the truth of what is known. Only experiential knowing has transformative impact. In spirituality circles, people refer to this form of knowing as ‘knowing with the body’ or ‘kinesthetic knowing.’ Philosophy, on the other hand, is about intellectual knowing. It’s based on conceptual models that point to truths, not on a direct experience of these truths. Philosophy can help you convince yourself intellectually that, for instance, there is only one mind and the subject isn’t separate from the object. Yet, every time you look at a tree you may still see a tree out there, separate from you. Every time you look at another person you may still see a person out there, separate from you. As works of philosophy, my books are about intellectual – not experiential – knowing. So why do they count?
They count because we live in a largely rationalist society where the intellect has gained overwhelming power over our other psychic functions (see essay 4.1). When we make choices in our lives, even trivial ones, people around ask us, ‘Why did you do it?’ When we hold an opinion about something, people around ask us, ‘Why do you think so?’ These questions demand intellectual justifications for our choices and opinions. They implicitly assume that no choice or opinion is valid without an intellectual underpinning. Society’s pressure in this regard is so ubiquitous that we often require such justifications from ourselves. Even if our intuition or experience screams that a certain choice or point-of-view is the correct one, we do not find peace until we can attach a reasonable intellectual story to it. Many of us do not give ourselves permission to embrace a point of view that resonates with our hearts unless and until that point of view can be couched in a logical articulation.
The intuition and inner experiences of many people today are rescuing them from the madness of materialism. Neo-Advaita, Buddhism, non-duality, mysticism in its many variations, religion lived in its symbolic form, meditation, psychedelics and many other paths to the direct experience of truth are helping to wake people up from the trance of a cultural narrative of projections (see essay 5.6). Yet, many of these people live bipolar lives: a chasm forms between their direct spiritual experience and what their intellects can accommodate and justify. On the one hand, they experience a reality of pure consciousness and no separation. On the other hand, they ‘know’ that a well-placed knock to the head ends consciousness quite effectively. How come? How can reality behave as though materialism were true, while our spiritual experiences inform us otherwise? (The answer to this question can be found in essay 2.2.) We become split.
I believe that a person in such a split condition does not give herself the freedom to truly embrace a direct experience of truth. Deep inside we hold ourselves back, because the intellect stays conflicted and in doubt. Unless and until we can find a place in the intellect for the truth that is directly experienced, we do not let ourselves go. Unless and until we can make intellectual sense of the fact that, for instance, the brain does seem to generate consciousness, we do not allow ourselves to truly embrace, unreservedly, a non-materialist worldview. Moreover, without a logical narrative to underpin it, no direct experiential insight can truly influence the culture at a broader level, since it cannot be commu
nicated. Philosophy gives language to experience and allows it to be passed on – rather precariously as the case may be – to those still unable to attain the experience themselves.
This is the role I believe philosophy can – and must – play in relation to direct experience. It can aid experiential knowing by couching it in reasonable, logical, empirically substantiated intellectual models. In and by itself, philosophy won’t ever be as transformative as the direct experience of truth. But it can help one open up to such an experience without the reservations that could otherwise block one’s progress. The brain, after all, is the bouncer of the heart. Philosophy gives people intellectual permission to truly embrace what their intuitions and experiences are already telling them to be true. It also allows those experiences to penetrate society far and wide, through the use of language, thereby positively impacting the culture.
But that’s not all. Bunzel’s comment points indirectly to the crucial complementarity not only between philosophy and direct experience, but also depth-psychology. The direct experience of transcendent truth can – and often is – misappropriated and misinterpreted by the ego, that small but dominating segment of our psyche. For instance, it is common to find people in non-duality circles who, after having had the experience that their personal identities are illusions of consciousness, conclude that life is meaningless. ‘The world is an illusion and I don’t exist anyway; so why care about anything?’ This – as discussed in Chapter 8 of my book Why Materialism Is Baloney, as well as Chapter 8 of my book Rationalist Spirituality – is a conclusion that simply does not follow. Moreover, without the insights of depthpsychology, it can become very tricky to separate personal confabulation and fantasy from the authentic experience of transcendent truth. Hence, direct transcendent experience is liable to egoic hijacking and misinterpretation unless the individual has attained sufficient self-awareness and psychic integration. For this, the crucial role of depth-psychology cannot be overestimated. Without the oversight, guidance and mirror provided by therapy, many individuals engaged in the path of direct experience are liable to major pitfalls. Depth-psychology, in turn, relies on direct experience if the individual is to gain transformative insight into the deeper layers of his or her psyche. Without this experience, the most obfuscated and transpersonal parts of the psyche remain merely conceptual and abstract. The individual cannot truly achieve the ultimate psychological goal of a fully integrated psyche – which Jung called individuation – without it.
A similar codependence exists between philosophy and depth-psychology, completing the synergistic triad. Without a suitable metaphysics to ground it, depth-psychology is unable to address the real, the road to psychic wholeness becoming thereby impassable. How to treat depression without addressing the actual meaning of life? How to treat death anxiety without addressing what death actually is? If depth-psychology avoids these crucial metaphysical questions, its efforts turn into mere academic exercises. Reciprocally, without depth-psychology philosophy becomes liable to psychic biases and vulnerable to pathologies. After all, an unbalanced psyche cannot produce balanced philosophy. Nietzsche’s philosophy, for instance, while pungent and marvelously insightful, is the biased output of a tortured psyche.
In conclusion, the path to individual and cultural sanity requires philosophy, depth-psychology and the direct experience of transcendence. It goes without saying that the supportive, background role of science remains indispensible: it informs and grounds philosophy, psychology and direct experience in the discernible patterns and regularities of empirical reality. But it is the latter triad that is most crucial for our culture to take the next step forward in the road towards truth.
5.8. Unfathomable change is on the horizon
In 2012, the Internet was ablaze with speculations about consciousness shift, the Mayan calendar, the end of the world and what not. Ultimately, nothing out of the ordinary seems to have happened that year. But the hoopla illustrated one thing beyond any doubt: the visceral human need for – and expectation of – major change in the current state of the world. Change, in this context, means much more than the ordinary oscillations of the historical timeline: it means fundamental transitions of a nature and magnitude not witnessed for generations; a revolution in our very way of relating to reality.
The most obvious harbingers of change come from straight-forward extrapolations of current social, economical and environmental trends: the monumental increases in consumption, waste and resource extraction; climatic and ecological impact; population growth; increasing signs of vulnerability in our economic system; etc. It is unthinkable that our current way of life and associated values can be maintained for another 50 years. But other signs of change are of a more intuitive nature, difficult to pin down, yet obvious to the sensitive, observant person. They have to do with a subtle but palpable shift in the way people seem to look upon the world. It is these that interest me most in this essay.
At any given historical juncture, the way we humans relate to reality is based on a coherent set of subjective values, beliefs and assumptions about what can be real and what cannot. In science, this is called a ‘scientific paradigm.’153 Here, we can use the word ‘paradigm’ more generically. One can speak, for instance, of the various religious paradigms that have emerged throughout history. A pagan paradigm, for instance, entails that nature is a conscious entity. It is to be respected as a living organism, not a depot to be plundered. A Christian paradigm, on the other hand, entails that nature is the Creation of a Higher Being, to Whom we owe respect and allegiance, and on Whose judgment we ultimately depend for salvation. This defines the Christian way of relating to the world. Moving on to philosophy, the materialist paradigm gives us license to eliminate guilt and look upon nature as a mere resource. Since it equates our consciousness and personal identity to limited and temporary arrangements of matter – that is, the body-brain system – materialism entails that our time is limited.
Truly fundamental change happens when the most pervasive paradigm of a civilization or historical nexus is suddenly transformed. This is much more powerful than a change in external circumstances, like economic crises or minor climate fluctuations. Indeed, a change of paradigm transforms the entire way we see and relate to reality. Therefore, in an important sense it changes everything. Today, with globalization, for the first time in history there is a large degree of paradigm uniformity across geographical boundaries. Human civilization is currently driven, even in the continuing presence of religion, by a tight alignment between the materialist paradigm and our economic system. A sudden collapse of that ruling paradigm would be as dramatic as to qualify for the expected 2012 event.
As the essays in Chapter 2 of this book make clear, I believe there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of materialism. It survives partly because of inertia, but mainly because of its symbiotic relationship with our economic system. By linking consciousness and personal identity to limited and temporary arrangements of matter, materialism inculcates the following subjective values in our culture: life is short and you’ve only got one to live; the only source of meaning lies in matter – after all, nothing else exists – so the game is to accumulate as many material things as possible; we should consume as fast as possible, even at the expense of others or the planet, for we have nothing to lose since we’re going to die soon anyway. It’s easy to see how these values encourage runaway consumerism – err, ‘economic growth’ – and reinforce current power structures. Indeed, in a significant way, our economy depends on this value system. It isn’t at all surprising, thus, to find our airwaves swamped with messages aimed at reinforcing materialism. Even governments stimulate it.
If you give this some thought, it will become clear to you where the true power of the materialist paradigm really lies. Its main strength is not necessarily how well it explains the available data; after all, there are more than enough anomalies in science today to question materialism.154 Neither are the philosophical foundations of materialism strong, a
s Chapter 2 of this book illustrates. The true strength of materialism is its symbiotic relationship with the economic system and power structures upon which we have all come to depend. This creates a self-reinforcing loop from which it’s very hard to escape. The combination of materialist metaphysics and the economy forms a point of stable equilibrium from which society can only dislodge itself by temporarily making things worse. In technical terms, to escape it one needs to kick the system out of a local minimum. How to pull this trick off is the most urgent question to face our civilization, since all trends indicate that the current state of affairs is unsustainable.
Now, if the underlying paradigm of our civilization does shift, that would be the most profound and extraordinary change in generations. What on Earth could cause this? What reasons do we have to believe that we won’t keep on playing the same mad game of optimizing for short-term material goals until catastrophe and oblivion strike? Well, I suspect that there are forces building up in the obfuscated collective psyche that may just pull off this trick.
Never before have we been so wealthy and dominant as a species, but have our lives ever been as meaningless as today? Materialism crushed most of the myths that lent significance to the lives of our ancestors. We’ve become orphans of meaning. We go on chasing one material goal after the other, as if there were a little bag of magic goodies at the end that would retroactively bestow meaning on the entire enterprise. This is akin to chasing ghosts. What do we live for? Life has turned into a mad scramble for the accumulation of things and the status they confer, for the sole sake of leaving it all behind at death.
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