At first glance, Jung’s characterization of the interior-exterior integration that comprises the basis of individuation may suggest he is talking about a developmental stage synonymous with enlightenment. “Individuation means becoming a single, homogenous being, and, in so far as ‘indi-viduality’ embraces our innermost, last, and incomparable uniqueness, it also implies being one’s own self. We could thus translate individuation as ‘coming to selfhood’ or self-realization.”41
The integration of the “unconscious into consciousness,” with Jung’s notion of unconscious comparable to our notion of transcendent Self, seems particularly congruous with permanent grounding in transcen-dent being.42 Jung, however, despite a long-standing interest in Eastern
thought, appears hesitant to accept the extent of integration that is central to Eastern (and other) notions of higher stage development. The pros-pects for faculties of the conscious mind such as “exclusion, selection, and discrimination”—which Jung asserts “are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name ‘consciousness’ ”—to coexist with grounding in “universal consciousness”—which “so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness”—appears to be the point of contention.43 Instead of these faculties being heightened in this union, Jung erroneously seems to conclude that they would be undermined due to the fact that “the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness.”44 On the other hand, as Harold Coward has pointed out, Jung elsewhere suggests greater receptivity to the capacity for a stage of consciousness development in which these seemingly competing functions might coex-ist, further confusing what might be inferred of Jung’s stance regarding the individuation-enlightenment relationship.45
We can circumvent these debates. Instead of attempting to either equate individuation with, or distinguish it from, enlightenment, let us simply situate the idea within a broader developmental scheme that cul-minates in enlightenment. Thus, where Jung uses the term “to denote the process by which a person becomes a psychological individual, that is, a separate, indivisible unity or whole,” we will think of this as the emergence of a distinct, individual voice that is grounded in transcendent values within a given discipline or developmental line.46 Thus, Victor Mansfield’s statement that the “[t]he point of individuation is to become who we are meant to be, the expression of our authentic self, not some clone of another person or the expression of collective values” could apply not only to the discovery of one’s ideal career path, as he intends, but also the evolution of an individual voice within that path in accordance with the usage at hand.47 For this to happen, the self-transcending engagement in a field that characterizes all-levels experience as presented in the previous chapter is necessary. Awareness confined to the discipline-specific level is precisely that which is susceptible to “cloned” behavior. Even aware-ness that attains the cross-disciplinary level but has not yet gained tran-scendent grounding is still somewhat prone to collective conditioning.
When these overlying levels of engagement are grounded in transcendent experience, our individual voice in our field will be informed by these levels but free from their binding influence, allowing, as Mansfield puts it,
“[o]ther aspects of our wholeness (to) reveal talents and potentials that are essential to becoming who we authentically are.”48
The arts exemplify the emergence of an authentic, individual voice, and improvised musical art is particularly suited as a template for growth across artistic and extra-artistic lines. Recall Jung’s definition of artistic
creativity as the “activation of the archetypal image” and the fashioning of it “in the language of the present, whereby it leads us back to the deep-est springs of life.”49 The archetypally informed language of the present is the individuated voice, whose evolution the arts can help foster in a variety of fields.
Individuation in this context is promoted by consistent experi-ences of transcendence that are informed by strong discipline-specific (third-person), intra- and interdisciplinary (second-person), and trans-disciplinary (first-person) grounding. Epistemological diversity is central to this growth. Thus, for musicians, style-specific and stylistically open improvisation and composition processes that allow awareness to span the four tiers is essential. Interpretive performance, the primary activity for a very large constituency in musical academe and in the professional classical music field, may serve as a destination that a musician arrives at as a by-product of the individuation process, but which in itself is inad-equate—due to its limited process expanse—to serve as a pathway to this kind of growth. The goal may not necessarily be the path. Indeed, as we have seen, only improvising and composing allow the contact with basic musical elements in fluid configurations, which can then be molded into style structures upon interaction with the myriad relativistic influences of one’s time and place and transcendent influences from deep in the psyche, that are the basis for a distinctly artistic voice.50 Most musicians for whom interpretive performance remains an aspect of their musical identity will sustain their grounding in improvisation and composition that was important to their realization of this identity.
As this voice emerges, practitioners view their art as a direct reflection of the interior-exterior totality of their being. Their impetus for engaging in the activity shifts from relativistic incentives (e.g., remuneration, recogni-tion, social contacts) toward what Csikszentmihalyi refers to as an “auto-telic” impulse—an incentive that is rooted in interior rewards.51 An integral perspective enables us to probe these interior rewards at their innermost core, which is the primordial drive for consciousness to be whole, for the personal self to (re)unite with the transcendent Self that is its source. In chapter 8, we will explore how the totality of musical and interior-exterior extramusical influences of one’s life are, as it were, metabolized into musical materials that comprise the personal voice and thus remind awareness of its interior origins. For present purposes, we need only acknowledge that this transformation takes place, and that the resultant individuated voice thus serves as a vehicle for self-Self infusion within a given activity.
Although, as I suggest, the arts are a robust conduit for individuation, this can manifest in all areas. Engineers, corporate visionaries, classroom
teachers, athletes, office managers, conflict mediators, news correspon-dents all evolve individual styles and thus—upon engaging in diverse top-down/bottom-up epistemologies—begin to perceive these styles as gateways toward self-Self wholeness. And from this basic framework, they are able to supplement their process scope as needed and relevant to include areas that are organically related to not only growth in their fields but in their lives at large—as both domains are inextricably linked.
And if one’s primary occupation can be realized as a developmen-tal pathway toward individuation, an important fulcrum for Integral Life Practice is gained, as this can serve as the locus for parts-to-whole devel-opment via enlivened improvisatory and compositional creativity in the field. This may then be augmented by engagement in jazz and the broader realm of arts in one capacity or another. A corresponding program of systematic meditation will then provide the complementary whole-to-parts trajectory. In this way practitioners in wide-ranging areas may be able to navigate their way through the often overwhelming morass of practices that can easily confound spiritual aspirants in this day and age.
Even with the helpful organization of modalities into a few core mod-ules within the Integral Life Practice framework, this challenge in my view remains unresolved.52 I believe that the framework for individuation proposed here provides a viable alternative. Atop the core whole-to-parts/
parts-to-whole framework that is comprised of creative activity within the field and meditation practices, additional modalities may be integrated as part of a unified, self-developmental matrix that is rich in coherence and meaning. Instead of attempting to construct a piecemeal methodologi-cal template from an endless assortment of possibilities, the rendering of one’s primary career activity as a pathway for individuation provides a kind of organizing framework around which a diverse spectrum may be incorporated. And because all aspects resonate with the needs of the individual and with each other as a unified system, they are readily sus-tained. Some practices, such as meditation and career work, will be done on a regular basis. Others may be done periodically. When integrated as part of a synergistic, individuation-driven system, a routine will emerge that may be effortlessly and joyously sustained.
Enlightenment
To be sure, the move from line-specific individuation, where all-levels tran-scendence is invoked consistently within the context of a given activity, to the permanent grounding in transcendence that defines enlightenment—
described by Alexander as “the permanent, uninterrupted coexistence of transcendental consciousness along with waking, dreaming, and deep sleep”53—represents an enormous evolutionary stride. It appears that in any era this is achieved by but a few individuals—who may previously have not achieved individuation in a specific field. Is this kind of devel-opment really possible? While one can grasp the possibility of increasing capacities for transcendence in a given activity, what does it mean to sustain permanent grounding transcendence in all areas of life—described by Alexander as “the permanent, uninterrupted coexistence of transcen-dental consciousness along with waking, dreaming, and deep sleep”?54 A consideration of this kind of potential may yield an entirely new and expanded context for understanding the arts in conjunction with medita-tion in human development.
Among the most compelling support for the idea of enlightenment is research conducted by Daniel Brown, in which he found remarkable similarities across spiritual traditions separated by wide-ranging histori-cal, geographihistori-cal, and cultural boundaries for higher stages of develop-ment that include the basic parameters for enlightendevelop-ment.55 A number of theorists, including Alexander and Wilber, have mapped these stages along a developmental continuum that extends beyond Piaget’s preop-erational, concrete oppreop-erational, and formal operational stages, and gener-ally acknowledge three discrete stages of enlightenment. Integralists term these as subtle, causal, and nondual.56 It is not just that the general notion of permanent grounding in, rather than fleeting episodes of transcen-dence, is widely shared, but that a sequence of stages is reported to unfold across cultures within the general scheme, providing a more nuanced and compelling account of this evolutionary possibility. Wilber comments on these remarkable findings:
Taken together, these various approaches—conventional and contemplative—seem to point to a general, universal, and cross-cultural spectrum of human development, consisting of various developmental lines and stages that, however other-wise different their specific cultural or surface features might appear, nevertheless share certain recognizable similarities or deep features.57
As we briefly examine these stages, it is also noteworthy that we may be seeing the beginnings of a new wave of neurobiological research that supports the notion of enlightenment, even if the obstacles to this work—namely, access to large populations of enlightened individuals—
are formidable. While neuroscientific research into meditation is by now fairly abundant, this has largely involved the study of subjects during actual meditation practice.58 Much less research has been done on aspects of longtime meditators’ experiences outside of meditation, particularly regarding reports of transcendent experience invoked in activity, let alone those suggestive of enduring higher-stage cultivation. Needless to say, inherent in objective measurement of active transcendence that is invoked on an occasional, fleeting basis are significant research challenges. How-ever, when subjects report sustained periods of transcendent experience, even if these subjects are harder to find, the situation is highly conducive to scientific study. One such study, conducted by a team of researchers led by Fred Travis, is particularly promising in this regard.
Travis and his colleagues sought long-term practitioners who report sustained episodes of what is called “witnessing” in sleep or in daily activ-ity.59 Witnessing arises when the personal self liberates from attachments and, grounded in the transcendent Self, experiences engagement with objects of perception as though through the lens of a detached, perhaps more aptly analyzed as unattached, observer. “When pure consciousness is continuously maintained along with activity,” Alexander notes, “then it also functions as a silent ‘witness’ to that activity.”60 Travis and his team noted that subjects who reported this quality on a consistent basis scored higher along a variety of consciousness-development parameters—
moral reasoning, happiness, emotional stability, inner orientation, and lower anxiety—as well as measuring higher frontal EEG coherence, alpha gamma power ratio, and more efficient cortical responses than a control group.61
Though many scientifically minded people may consider enlightenment either imaginary, impractical, or simply outside the boundaries of scientific investigation, the implications of these data are that enlightenment may be operationalized.
Laboratory experimentation can help us make progress in this arena as seen by responses during unstructured interviews, supported by factor analysis of scores on psychological tests and brainwave patterns during tasks.62
Witnessing is one of the preliminary indicators of the first stage of enlight-enment, which I will refer to using the Vedantic terminology of turyatit chetana.63 Whereas the previously considered turya is a stage, a temporary episode of transcendence, turyatit is enduring. This is synonymous with sahaja samadhi, or what Wilber refers to as the “subtle” developmental
stage. Brown’s taxonomy, as noted earlier, locates parallels to this and other higher stages across wide-ranging traditions. Bhagavad chetena, the causal stage, follows turyatit. Here perception, permanently liberated from attachments to objects, opens up to the subtle strata of creation—some-times called the “finest relative”—from which objects originate.64 Whereas in the first stage of enlightenment, turyatit chetana, “the material world,”
as conveyed by Alexander, “may still be viewed as essentially lifeless and inert,” bhagavad chetana involves an entirely new “level of not only per-ception but feeling” that is characterized by “greater love and joy for the object, which in turn facilitates still deeper appreciation of the object.”66
Such perception may manifest in a variety of ways, from the per-ception of objects as “transparent structures of soft, satiny light (unlike harsher, normal day light), through which the very essence of life appears to flow,”66 to a deep sense of communion with the source of creation, to communion with transcendent intelligences or spiritual entities that is sometimes reported as characteristic of this level of perception. Psy-chologist Gary Schwartz is among the most recent scientific researchers to probe these latter phenomena in depth.67 The causal stage may also see extended capacities of consciousness, or psi phenomena (e.g., remote cognition) for which compelling empirical support is beginning to mani-fest. Evans-Wentz: “[T]elepathy, or the transmission of thought naturally, i.e. without the cumbrous mechanism[s] [acknowledged by] Western sci-ence, has been . . . a matter of common knowledge . . . for unknown ages for the yogin.”68 This is not to suggest that some of these capacities may not manifest far prior to the causal stage; extrasensory channels that are characteristic of this stage may, in a limited capacity, begin to open before one’s consciousness is fully established at that stage. This, of course, can be confusing and even distracting for the spiritual aspirant. As Evans-Wentz emphasizes, any such capabilities must be appreciated as by-products of higher stages of consciousness development, even if serving as a prelimi-nary temptation along the spiritual path. “[I]t happens again and again in the lives of the Siddhas that the initially desired magic power becomes worthless in the moment of its attainment; because in the meantime the much greater miracle of the inner ‘turning-about’ has been achieved.”69
The ramifications of the causal stage and associated perceptual phe-nomena for artistic creativity are significant in that this is the level of the creativity-consciousness continuum where archetypal impulses reside and enable artistic expressions to resonate with transcendent beauty and trans-formational capacities. The culminating stage in Vedanta, which again corresponds to the apogee acknowledged in most traditions, is brahma chetana. This is the stage of nondual, or unity consciousness. The Sanskrit
term advaita translates as “not two,” meaning that individual conscious-ness now experiences itself as the undivided totality of cosmic intelligence and creation. Now the personal self is so fully grounded in the eternal, universal Self that it is not only freed from object-referral attachments, it has taken the next evolutionary stride of permanently experiencing all of creation—“all levels of mind and objective reality,” notes Alexander—“in terms of the Self.”70 Maharishi Mahesh Yogi explains that at this stage “the experiencer and the object of experience have both been brought to the same level of infinite value, and this encompasses the entire phenomenon of perception and action. The gulf between the knower and the object of his knowing has been bridged.”71 An advanced follower of his who appears to have established this level of being reports the prevailing experience that “I am the entire universe. When I look at anything, I see conscious-ness . . . I see subjectivity which has taken a form, which has adopted an appearance of matter.”72
Durgananda reports a vivid, if fleeting, glimpse of this develop-mental stage upon an encounter with her teacher, Swami Muktananda, where “I could feel the earth, the sky, and even the galaxy inside me. In that moment, I understood, with a surety that was both terrifying and exhilarating, that there is only one thing in the universe: Awareness and that Awareness is me.”73
Prior to this stage, even if the liberation that defines the first stages of enlightenment has been achieved, a dualist condition of consciousness still prevails whereby one experiences inner and outer worlds as ontologi-cally distinct, even if intimately linked. What distinguishes ordinary dual-ity, then, from transcendent duality in bhagavad chetana is that relativistic objects bind perception in the former stage, whereas perception is liber-ated from those bonds in the latter (still dualistic, if partially liberliber-ated) condition. With the subsequent establishment of nondual awareness in brahma chetena, liberation from objects occurs within the awareness that the Self is the source of all creation.
We thus once again arrive at the primacy of subjectivity as the ground of all being and the capacity to experience this reality in increas-ingly direct ways as creativity and consciousness evolve. Nonduality is a kind of evolutionary end goal, progress toward which is driven by this reality, and grounding in which permits the most profound apprehension, at which point, all quadrants are revealed to be a facet of the Upper Left.
This is in absolutely no way to suggest that the exterior world is illusory or has no ontological significance, rather that consciousness is the primary ground from which creation emerges, at which point differentiated whole-ness prevails. The sequence of stages delineated herein may be seen as a