Cosmos and Communion by Christian de Quincey
Millions of sane, intelligent people today seem to live in a world that modern scientific cosmology tells us just doesn’t exist. Either they are deluded, or science is wrong. At the very least, what they have to say about the nature of reality calls into question the worldview of science—specifically its underlying cosmological myth of materialism.
Judging by a steady stream of media reports and a growing body of respectable scientific literature, a great many people are having experiences that don’t fit into our civilization’s dominant cosmological map or philosophical paradigm. You may be one of them: someone who has experienced, for example, precognitive dreams, remarkable synchronicities, undeniable psychic events, convincing mystical experiences, or shamanic altered states of consciousness.
But, according our culture’s cosmology, none of these experiences is supposed to be possible or meaningful. Cosmology orients us in the universe. It tells us where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. Implicitly or explicitly, it defines what is possible for us as human beings, and thus it channels, or limits, our highest ambitions.
Modern Western culture lives entirely within the confines of what philosopher (and former IONS’ director of education) Chris Bache identifies as “daytime�? consciousness—that is, it takes into account only what we can perceive through our outer, physical, senses, and of those perceptions it takes seriously only those we can measure. These data are then organized according to the rules of logic and reason (mostly mathematical). “Nighttime�? consciousness—what we can learn about the world through, for example, dreams, intuition, psychic or mystical experiences, and other nonordinary states—plays no part in designing modern cosmology. As a result, we are moving into a kind of cultural dislocation, in which the official cosmology fails to map many of the experiences that matter most to many of us.
For some years now, I have realized that to be the kind of philosopher I originally intended to be—a true “lover of wisdom�?—I needed to find ways or techniques that would help me bypass the ingrained habits of the rational mind. Simply reading the great philosophers and thinking about consciousness or pondering the experiences and insights of spiritual masters would never get me there. I needed to experience these other ways of knowing for myself. And so, I sought out and found teachers to guide me into these other realms. I have worked with experienced guides who have taken me on what are sometimes called “shamanic journeys�?—involving techniques for achieving altered or non-ordinary states of consciousness—experiences that often involve transpersonal, nonlinguistic communication not only with other people, but sometimes also with other animals, and even with plants.
As well as being a philosopher moving through the halls of academia, then, I also spend time walking, running, sitting, and lying in nature, communing with the Earth and its great variety of plants and animals, with the winds and the oceans, deserts and mountains—but lately especially with the oceans.
In the past few years, my greatest teachers have included non-human animals—such as the cats and dogs I live with, and the dolphins and whales I swim with in the wild ocean.
I have learned from these teachers and companions a great deal about the nature of consciousness, and the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. I have had many direct and profound experiences of what “communion�? means. And although much of this knowledge has been gained through an epistemology of feeling, and is therefore transverbal, these experiences have been invaluable in elucidating for me my philosophical explorations into the nature and meaning of shared consciousness.
‘Alien’ Consciousness
For example, not too long ago I spent a week swimming with dolphins off the Kona coast in Hawaii. From the very first day, my companions and I were blessed with the presence of a large pod of two hundred or more spinner dolphins. I am not a particularly experienced or skilled swimmer, but with snorkel and fins and the surprising buoyancy of the warm Pacific, I felt comfortable and confident enough to slip overboard from our boat into what seemed to be the infinite depths of the ocean near Kealakekua Bay.
Face down, eyes wide open, all I could see was translucent blue receding to a depth of almost twenty thousand feet. The Big Island’s Mauna Kea volcano is actually the world’s tallest mountain, even surpassing Mount Everest. Above the ocean, it rises to a height of nearly 14,000 feet, while below it reaches down to the submerged volcanic crust another 18,000 or so feet. Because the angle of descent is acute, the land falls away sharply and the offshore waters are very deep. You do not have to sail out far from land to find yourself in some of the deepest ocean on Earth. Floating there in that vivid azure world was the closest I will ever come, I suppose, to knowing what it feels like to be suspended in the dark infinities of space. It was my first opportunity to encounter an “alien�? civilization. And I was not disappointed.
At first I couldn’t see anything, except for a few tiny speckles of organic debris flowing past me like miniature stars (including occasional and mysteriously glinting burnt-orange flakes that I supposed were scales liberated from some exotic species of fish). All around me, the water sparkled and was remarkably clear. For a novice snorkeler, the view was exhilarating, and only a little disconcerting if I thought about the vast depths below. It is hard to gauge distances in water, so most of the time I could fool myself that I was swimming in a large pool in someone’s backyard.
The first signs of life appeared way down below me, a handful of small fish, so far beneath that I couldn’t judge their actual size. From my perspective they could have been goldfish, except for their off-white color. Gradually, they rose up closer, and I gasped, swallowing a mouthful of sea through my submerged snorkel. When I recovered, I realized these were no fish, but a pod of about a dozen dolphins, directly below me. I could now recognize their distinctive shapes, close enough to make out their blowholes and, when the angle was right, see their eyes. I was mesmerized by their beauty, their grace, the silky smoothness of their bodies, and the way they moved in formation, as though dancing to the orchestration of an invisible choreographer.
I was mostly struck by their silence. It was immense, broken only by the rhythmic sound of my own breathing. Then I heard a ripping noise next to my right ear, like Velcro tearing open. I reached up to adjust the strap holding my mask in place. But it was secure, just as I had fixed it before leaving the boat. The sound persisted, and only when I turned my head did I realize what it was: Three dolphins were right there beside me, within arms length—talking to me. The most distinctive experience (shared by my fellow divers) was the unmistakable intelligence of these impressive beings.
I looked to my left, and saw more dolphins just a few feet away. Up close, they were much bigger than I had thought—powerful, swift, and undoubtedly masters of their realm. I was surrounded by them. The pod below had by now begun to fade off into the distant aquamarine haze, but to my left and right two families of dolphins were escorting me through their world. We were eye to eye, and I had no doubt whatsoever they were checking me out, sizing me up, letting me know I was welcome.
It is hard to describe the encounters because so much of what I experienced during those days in the ocean rippled through my body as feelings that have no clear counterparts in words. Yet the experiences were rich with meaning. The best I can do is to say that, surrounded by a couple of hundred dolphins—some hanging out beside me, others going about their business far below, while yet others near and distant to my right and left, apparently ignoring my presence, were caught up in their own daily occupations—I felt I was witnessing, participating in, an alien “terrestrial�? civilization.
I had been invited to the “Wisdom of the Dolphin�? workshop by my friend Peter Russell (author of books such as The Global Brain, Waking Up In Time, and From Science to God) who was co-facilitating with long-time dolphin aficionado Joan Ocean (yes, that’s her real name). The purpose of the seminar was to see what, if anything, we might learn about ourselves, about human consciousness, and our relations with cetaceans through connecting with dolphin consciousness, from immersing ourselves in the their world. We swam with the dolphins in the mornings, and in the afternoons and evenings our group of about fifteen men and women would meet to hear a talk from either Pete or Joan and to dialogue about our experiences.
Interspecies Communication
On paper, the combination of Peter Russell and Joan Ocean at first seemed a little odd: a Cambridge-trained scientist (he studied with Stephen Hawking) and a quintessential “new-age�? therapist who matter-of-factly talks about her telepathic (or, to use her word, “telempathic�?) channeling of whales and dolphins, not to mention her communications with beings from distant galaxies and stars such as the Pleiades. How could a scientist, committed to exploring verifiable empirical knowledge, work with an unabashed new-age channeler without a clash of cultures or paradigms? How could I, a philosopher committed to critical thinking, participate without either, on the one hand, falling back into my “postconquest�? mode of incisive questioning—thereby closing down any possibility of “preconquest�? consciousness revealing itself to me—or, on the other, risk falling into mushy new-age credulity by suspending my critical faculties?
Actually, it worked out just fine. A simple little thing, not always found in science or philosophy, made the complementarity of worldviews possible and enjoyable: mutual respect. We openly listened to each other, as much or more to the feelings behind the words as to the words themselves. I listened intently for meaning, for sincerity of expression. I wanted more to feel the bond of shared experience and community as a fact of consciousness itself than to gain verifiable objective knowledge (knowing full well that such knowledge of consciousness is unattainable). Yet I also wanted to avoid the dangers of illusion born of excess enthusiasm, wishful thinking, or lack of critical discernment.
Pete cautioned us to pay attention to the common, if not habitual, tendency we all seem to have to project out own thinking onto other creatures (sometimes we even do it to our cars and computers). Such anthropomorphism can be the bane of interspecies research, and ethologists are trained to guard against such naïve, sentimental, and unprofessional distortions—so as not to miss the subject of their study by overlaying and obscuring the animals’ true nature with human projections. This is particularly the case if the intent is not merely to study animal behavior but to engage in true intersubjective, or mind-to-mind, interspecies communication. And that’s what I was there for—at least to explore its possibility.
But how would I know? How could I tell the difference between my projections and “tuning into�? the dolphins’ consciousness? There’s just no way to get third-person confirmation that there’s “anybody home�?—that mind is present in the “other,�? or, more subtly, to learn what its particular characteristics might be. It’s easy enough in our own personal case, of course: All we have to do is break the usual cultural trance of fixating on objects in the world around us, and instead pay attention to the subject that’s doing the observing—our own consciousness. That’s first-person access, and a “no-brainer�? (so to speak) for confirming “I think (or feel), therefore, I am.�? It is immediate and irrefutable evidence that our own minds exist.
But gaining access to another’s mind, well that’s a different story. Standard Western philosophy—still playing out the consequences of Descartes’ insight about the isolated, self-contained, individual ego—has yet to find a solution to the “problem of other minds.�? Consciousness is private and privileged, we are told, and there’s no way for one person to know about another’s mind unless that person speaks to us or gives us some other confirming signal. The plain fact (unfortunate for consciousness science) is that we have no “consciousness meter.�? No technology exists (or conceivably could exist) to give us direct access to anyone else’s consciousness—be it man, woman, dolphin, dog, cat, bird, or bacteria (not to mention rocks, molecules, atoms, quarks or quanta).
In my new book Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through Relationship, I make a case for a different way of accessing consciousness (called “second-person intersubjectivity�?) where one person can know the mind of another by “engaging his or her presence�? beyond any mediating signals.
So I believe it is possible to gain access to another’s consciousness, and not just see our own projections reflected back to us. (Of course, anyone who’s ever been in love and had it reciprocated knows this. We don’t need philosophy or science to validate our intimate relationships.) In my book, I describe why we can know the presence of “other minds,�? because we are partly created by the “other,�? and vice versa—and that’s how we know there’s “somebody home.�? This works for any sentient being—not just humans. Even when the “other�? is a member of another species, we can still know without a doubt that we are in the presence of another mind. (If you’ve ever taken time to be with a dog, cat, or horse—or looked into the doleful eyes of a gorilla, chimpanzee, or elephant at the zoo—you are aware of this.) It’s not just anthropomorphic projection.
Pod Consciousness
I knew this swimming with the dolphins, and I knew it afterwards when we returned to our hotel conference room to dialogue about the day’s events. I knew, too, however, that even though it is possible to engage the consciousness of a non-human animal, it was still possible—even likely—that we might “contaminate�? such knowledge with unnecessary, though automatic, projections of human qualities onto other species.
So back to my question: How could we sort out the �?chaff�? of our own projections from the “wheat�? of real dolphin consciousness? That’s what I came to find out. When others in our group reported, for example, that dolphins have “pod consciousness�?—that their primary locus of identity is the pod and only secondarily the individual dolphin—and, further, that members of our group had learned this from messages the dolphins themselves had communicated, how was I to take it? How was I to remain intellectually honest without falling prey to postconquest consciousness?
My dilemma was how to balance my philosopher’s mind with the process of opening up my heart, trusting in my feelings and intuition. How could I evaluate the reports from my fellow swimmers? How could I tell if they had some genuine knowledge about the sheer fact and distinctive form or qualities of dolphin consciousness?
I had learned by now not to always impose my desire for conceptual clarity and logical coherence on colleagues who were operating from within a different set of experiences and beliefs. Yes, certainly, I could have easily spent my time challenging everyone who seemed to me to be using loose or contradictory language while reporting their experiences—“Hey, just a minute! Can you please explain how you arrived at that conclusion?�?—but that would have been both impolite and unproductive. I chose instead to be as open-minded as I could, keeping skepticism to myself, and simply listened to what the others had to say about their experiences. Then I checked in to see how or if their accounts fitted my own experiences.
After all, this is the essence of the scientific method: Someone follows a certain procedure (called “experiment�?—in our case, getting into the ocean with dolphins), observes whatever shows up in their experience (called “data�?—in our case, whatever interactions or communications we had with the dolphins), and then compares the results of their experiment with those of colleagues or peers who have followed the same or similar procedure (called “confirmation�? or “disconfirmation�?—in our case, reporting to each other afterwards whatever we had experienced). This three-part approach to knowledge is as applicable to spiritual experiences as it is to the sensory experiences that provide the raw data for science. More than a century ago, philosopher William James called it “radical empiricism�?—accepting as valid “data�? any and all phenomena that show up in experience, and only those.
The difficulty—as Peter Russell and I were aware—was to be able to filter out the inevitable overlay of speculation, wishful thinking, and other interpretations or beliefs that distort the purity and clarity of the original experience. Did someone actually have a telempathic connection with a dolphin, or have a conversation with an ET on the Pleiades? For me, that was not the issue. Honestly, how could I tell one way or the other? Yes, if I operate fully within the dominant Western paradigm it would seem unlikely at best, and probably impossible, for someone on Earth in the early years of the twenty-first century to be in dialogue with a being many millions of light years away. For one thing, we have no “scientific�? evidence that any such beings exist. But do you or I know as a certainty there are no ETs? No, of course not.
In fact, even within our own dominant physicalist paradigm, given what we know about the size and density of the universe and the conditions for life and evolution, it is highly probable that life does exist beyond our solar system; and, given the age of the universe, it is possible that elsewhere intelligent beings have evolved far beyond human capacities.
Furthermore, operating from within a different paradigm, and given what we know about consciousness (not only is it nonlocated, unaffected by distances in space, but also that its deepest nature seems to be communion) then we can at least be open to the possibility that something like intergalactic communication could happen. I couldn’t rule that out, even if my silent skepticism urged me to probe the claim with forensic questioning. Rather than search for a way to establish the objective truth or falsity of dolphin or ET communications, I had decided to trust in the intersubjective process.
By paying close attention to the meaning and wisdom being communicated, and not getting distracted by wondering about the “true�? source of the communication, and then comparing what I was hearing with my own experiences, I did indeed learn much about my own consciousness, that of my colleagues, and about the dolphins that opened up their world to us during that remarkable week in Hawaii.
Independently, all of us experienced the undeniable and powerful presence of the dolphins—not just their visible proximity, but their intersubjective communion with us. Not only were we aware of them as they swam and danced around us, we also knew that they were aware of us. And each one of us reported (as best we could put it into words) the experience of being welcomed, not just by individual dolphins but by their community. Watching their remarkably synchronized acrobatics it was easy to understand the notion of “group mind,�? of telepathic “pod consciousness.�? But we didn’t just understand this phenomenon, we felt it. Each of us was part of it. That’s how we knew.
Communication for Group Wellbeing
Being immersed in this profoundly nonverbal intersubjective experience with the dolphins opened us up to experience “pod�? consciousness among our own group. The sense of empathic bonding was unmistakable. We quickly learned how to be with each other—both in the close and intimate quarters onboard the boat and back in the seminar room—without the usual need for verbal or visual clues to enhance our communication. Of course, we spoke and could see each other; but beyond that, we all sensed a high degree of harmony and mutual support that deepened as the days passed, and that seemed to emanate not so much from each of us as individuals but from our collective presence. Our group took on a distinctive identity of its own—just as we had experienced with the dolphins.
And this sense of shared harmony gave us insight into the nature of cetacean communication. As well as the dolphins, we were fortunate to be accompanied also by some humpback whales in the deep waters off the Big Island. Hearing their penetratingly mournful songs yielded an insight from the collective consciousness of our group. We agreed that the function of cetacean language differs radically from human communication. For the most part, humans speak to share information and details about ourselves and our environment—more often than not to enhance our ability to do something, to manipulate some part of our world. It is instrumental communication. By contrast, we learned that the cetaceans communicate primarily to restore, enhance, or create an experience of harmony and wellbeing both within the pod and between the pod and the ocean around them.
Some in our group went further. They said that the purpose of cetacean songs is to bring harmony to all life on our planet—and perhaps even beyond. I don’t know if this was merely speculation or whether it was based on their own intersubjective experience with the whales and dolphins. But I do know that when a group of humans sings together (or dances together), often the effect is to induce a sense of harmonious well being among the group. I can well imagine the same effect resulting from the songs of the humpbacks.
Singing is a form of intuitive communication. To do it well in a group, you have to let go of your own individual identity as the central unit of consciousness, and, instead, get into the “flow�? of the chorus. If you try to think self-consciously about your singing, it can throw you off rhythm or off key. Singers and musicians know you have to feel the music—it’s called “soul.�?
That week with the dolphins and whales reinforced a key insight for me about the difference between instrumental and intuitive modes of consciousness. As the word implies, “instrumental�? mind is about manipulation (not necessarily a bad thing, especially if you want to create technology). “Intuitive�? mind, however, is about flow (about merging with a greater wisdom or intelligence that transcends individual egos).
We can learn a lot from our marine cousins—provided we let them survive—not least to honor a radically different way of knowing. As a philosopher, I have learned from direct experience what it means to be engaged in intersubjective interspecies communication. I have learned (and continue to learn) beyond books and seminars the deep value of opening up to other ways of knowing that transcend the fine distinctions in language so typical of modern philosophy. I have learned that true philo-sophia—true love of wisdom—requires developing an ability to “feel our thinking,�? to honor what Stanford anthropologist E Richard Sorensen called “preconquest�? feeling-based consciousness; to honor what amateur anthropologist Jean Liefloff called our “innate evolved expectations�?; to honor what the great philosopher-psychologist William James called “radical empiricism�?; to honor intuition and feeling, and what the ancient Chinese called wu and sinologist R.G.H. Siu called “no-knowledge�?; to honor the immense body of knowledge and epistemologies that still survive in the few and rapidly diminishing indigenous and shamanic cultures; and to honor what are sometimes called “non-ordinary states of consciousness.�?
I agree with transpersonal theorist and practitioner Chris Bache that if we are ever to have a comprehensive cosmology, one that includes explorations of the inner cosmos of mind as well as the outer cosmos of galaxies and stars, we will need to become a society that encourages, enables, and teaches its citizens how to enter altered, or alternative, states of consciousness, and how to develop an epistemology and a new kind of science based on what we discover from such deep explorations.
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This article is excerpted from Christian de Quincey’s book Radical Knowing: Understanding Consciousness through Relationship (Park Street Press, 2005).
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Christian de Quincey, Ph.D., is Professor of Philosophy and Consciousness Studies at John F. Kennedy University, and founder of The Visionary Edge, a media network and production company committed to transforming global consciousness by transforming mass media. Dr. de Quincey is author of the award-winning book Radical Nature: Rediscovering the Soul of Matter, as well as Radical Knowing: Exploring Consciousness through Relationship (September, 2005) and the novel Deep Spirit: Lessons from the Noetic Code (spring, 2006). Samples of his writings on consciousness and cosmology are available at www.deepspirit.com.
