One of my friends once remarked that I had better give up the big quest for enlightenment, right then, because, she said, she could see me being a bitter old man, at the end of my days. I’m here to report that I’m old enough now, and I’m happy; and I’m glad that I didn’t give up that quest. Imagine going to your death unprepared for meeting true nature, unprepared to meet reality intimately, no-face to no-face. Death is the big wake up.
It is tragic really, that we are in a trance about what’s going on, here, and we don’t encourage inquiry into ‘This.’ So that when our children ask the big questions, they get nonsense in reply; or, at least, nothing straight. Reports that I get from people, in private conversation, show that children are often left feeling that there must be something wrong with them, for not knowing how it really is – this seeing, thinking, smelling, tasting, touching, walking, running, laughing, spewing, crying, and turning somersaults. Exactly what is this? Few are the occasions when a child’s questions about what matters – the ultimate questions – are met with the respect that they deserve. It’s now acknowledged by some researchers, in the Integral Psychology and Integral Spirituality field at least, that children can have transcendent experiences, though they don’t have the conceptual development to integrate them. They slip into the shadows, to await a crisis in adulthood.
As a result of the consensus trance, we have a majority of people die confused. In the spiritual line of development, they don’t ever grow up. I’ll go as far as to say that, they haven’t discovered the only thing worth discovering. (”The only game on the block,” as I heard Peter Fenner say.) So, my childhood question – “Is there anything?” – is a question that has spurred my efforts to be clear in myself about what’s real and what’s not. I’m glad that this has been my life-long koan, because – when rightly handled – it has made my life really alive. It’s certainly not a “habit, like saccharine.”
My father told me (when I was about 26 years old) that when I was a child (younger than five), I would ask him “Who am I?” He said that I wouldn’t take any answer that they gave me. However, there he was sitting telling me this, and he added that he thought that I wasn’t right in the head. Their help, of course, amounted to identifying me with my body, and with the roles of son and brother; and telling that I had a name. So, who wasn’t right in the head? The one who had come upon the enigma of the immediacy of perception; or the ones who had learned, in their childhood, to identify with their narratives?
That was my father’s most repeated message to me throughout his life, that I wasn’t right in the head. No wonder that my entry into formlessness, Buddhist meditative state, was by seeing that I have no head. (Refer to the Heart Sutra for some help with this, and the work of Douglas Harding.) Not having a culture like Tibetan culture – where (before the Communist cultural destruction) if a child asked these questions she was recognised as having a gift – means that a lot of intelligent, sensitive children are not given the support they need.
Of course, I’m all up for an explanation of my childhood doubt which includes the possibility – nay, the certainty – that my ego-development suffered some blows, and that, as a result, I was confused about who I was. There’s something to learn from that perspective. However, it lacks a thoroughness of explanatory power, because it doesn’t include a depth of understanding of the fundamental luminous ground of awareness. How come, when the usual narratives are suspended, in child or adult, consciousness is non-local? Explanations in terms of neurosis don’t let the conventional society off the hook. They don’t get that the childhood questions around identity have a valid basis in existential realities, and that it’s a gormless world that Western children are born and trained into.
This all makes me reflect on the etymology of ‘education.’ It has a Latin origin: from educere. “To educe,” which in this context means to develop something from a latent state. So the meaning is to ‘draw out.’ You would think that a good idea would be to draw out the wisdom within the child, instead of instilling rigid patterns. Parents are, alas, far more often, agents of the culture, inducting their children into the consensus trance.
In case you are interesting in reading a stark description, in terms of trance induction, how our parents bring us into the consensus trance, then the rest of this article is about that, in the form of extensive quotes from Charles Tart, formerly a researcher at the University of Stanford. They’re chilling. I extracted them from his book, Waking Up: The Obstacles to Human Potential.
In the last paragraph of the chapter, he writes: “But,” you might well say, “I don’t feel like I’m in a trance!” Of course not. We think of trance as something unusual, and our ordinary state as usual. We only realize we are in a trance state by reasoning about it, as we have done in this chapter, and/or by experiencing what it is like to be out of trance, to be awake.
Think of it as like being in a dream. You can sometimes reason in your dream – that is, question your experience in the dream – and as a result, realise that you are dreaming. (That’s why the Tibetans encourage dream yoga – not to get mentally healthy, exactly, but to train for the states of consciousness between lives.)
In Waking Up: The Obstacles to Human Potential, Charles Tart, Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, outlined a cogent argument for thinking of ‘normal’ human consciousness as a consensus trance. These quotes are from p.91-95, and the emphases are in the original. This whole chapter (Ch.10) affected me deeply. I hope you find it as shocking to contemplate our treatment of children.
Tart summarized the constraints to be found in normal hypnotic trance induction, in experimental settings. He writes:
Although they may not be explicitly discussed, there are clear constraints on the hypnosis. For example:
- It is time-limited, usually an hour or two.
- The subject does not expect to be bullied, threatened, or harmed in any real way by the hypnotist.
- If the hypnosis does not work very well, the hypnotist will not blame the subject.
- The hypnosis may work well, producing a deep “trance,” but the subject expects that the effects will only be temporary, and he will not be basically changed by his experience.
(Waking Up, p.91)
He goes on to demonstrate that a child is highly susceptible to trance induction – a perfect hypnosis subject. The consensus trance comes about because our parents and other childhood authorities are the agents of the cultural induction. “Consensus trance induction starts in conditions that give far more power and influence to the cultural hypnotists than is ever given in ordinary hypnosis induction.” (p.91) I’ll quote him at length, because I think that the need to present his case is urgent, and this concept will illumine what I mean by the tragedy. We have, here, pp.91-96:
Involuntary Nature of Consensus Trance Induction
First, consensus trance induction does not begin as a voluntary and limited relationship between two consenting and knowledgeable adults. It begins with birth. A newborn comes into the world with an immature body and nervous system, totally dependent upon its parents for its very survival, as well as its happiness. There is a sort of natural consent to learn, yet the power relationship puts a strong forced quality on that consent.
While the child will slowly acquire consciousness and capabilities to fill his own needs, the power relationship will remain very unbalanced for many years. Indeed, the power balance is much more like one we imagined and developed in myths, the power balance between gods and mere mortals, than like that between adults. The parents and other agents of the culture, the hypnotists, are relatively omniscient and omnipotent compared to the subject. Thus the setting for consensus trance induction involves much more power on the hypnotists’ side than the usual hypnosis induction.
Unlimited Time for Consensus Trance Induction
Second, consensus trance induction is not limited to an hour’s session. It involves years of repeated inductions and reinforcement of the effects of previous inductions. Given the way children experience time, the cultural hypnotists have forever to work on their subjects. Further, consensus trance is intended to last for a lifetime: there are no cultural hypnotists waiting to give you a suggestion to wake up.
This book is a suggestion to wake up. I am very glad that the power of the culture is not so strong that this suggestion cannot be given.
Use of Physical Force
Third, ordinary hypnotists cannot use force to persuade their subjects to cooperate in the process of being hypnotized. Indeed, it would be counterproductive in the usual setting. Cultural hypnotists, on the contrary, can use physical threats as needed, and actualize them with slaps, spankings, beatings, revocation of privileges, or confiscation of toys, when necessary. The fear of punishment and pain on the subject’s part makes him very attentive to the desires of the cultural hypnotists and quick to act in the desired way. Since the easiest way to act in the culturally approved way is to feel that way inside, the fear of punishment helps structure internal mental and emotional processes in culturally approved ways.
Use of Emotional Force
Cultural hypnotists are not limited to physical threats and punishment. Since the parents are the major source of love and self-esteem for the subject, they may threaten to withhold love and approval from the subject, or actually withhold it until compliance is achieved. “I can’t love such a dirty little boy!” Manipulating the natural love children have for parents is another variation of this: “You wouldn’t do that if you loved Mommy!” Many psychologists have felt that this conditional use of love (I’ll love you if…), coupled with invalidation of the child’s own perceptions and feelings, has a far deeper impact than simple physical punishment. Since love and affection are so real and so vital, they are exceptionally powerful manipulators. The fact that there is so much real love in most parent-child relationships adds to the confusion that assists in consensus trance induction: when is behavior manipulative and when is it just love?
Love and Validation as Rewards for Conformity
Fourth, cultural hypnotists can offer love and personal validation as a reward for compliant behavior. “What a sweet thought you had. You’re a good girl. I love you!” “All A’s! You’re so smart!” The ordinary hypnotist can offer approval (“You’re doing fine”), but it seldom has the potency that love and approval from his parents had on a child.
The personal validation aspect of consensus trance induction is very important. We all have a “social instinct,” a desire to be accepted by others, to have friends, to have a place in our social world, to be respected, to be “normal.” At early ages this acceptance and validation are mediated almost exclusively by parents: they define what being normal means. As the child establishes social relationships with other adults and children (who also act as agents of the culture), he learns more about how he must act to be accepted. As these approved habits of acting become established and rewarded, they further structure the habitual patterns of mental functioning. Fear of rejection is a powerful motivator. All of us probably have some memories of childhood agonies about whether we were “normal.”
Guilt
Fifth, the subject, the child, is clearly at fault for failing to act in the culturally desired way. “Good girls do their homework!” By not doing your homework, you are a bad girl. Nobody likes being thought bad, so pleasing the cultural hypnotist is much more important than pleasing an ordinary hypnotist. We are invalidated in so many ways and told we are bad so often that a general sense of unworthiness and guilt can easily be built up. New condemnations or invalidations tap into this accumulated guilt, giving the new incident a power beyond that it inherently has. This in turn further adds to the underlying feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Origin myths of original sin make the matter worse.
Dissociation
Another factor that gives the consensus trance induction process great power is that the mental state of a young child is similar to the mental state of a deeply hypnotized subject in important ways. This increases the power of the “suggestions” made by the cultural hypnotists.
In a deep hypnotic state, for example, the consensus reality orientation (CRO) has faded into the background. When a particular experience is suggested, the suggestion and resulting experiences occur in relative isolation from other mental processes. When the hypnotist suggests your arm is heavy, a host of previous knowledge about normal arm processes and social situations does not immediately spring to mind and take energy away from the suggestion.
In our ordinary state there is an enormous amount of automatic association of previous knowledge to incoming stimuli. When something happens, this automatic association of all sorts of relevant knowledge helps you decide how to deal with the situation. A man begins talking to you as you walk down the street, for example. You notice the strangeness of his clothes, the odd way he pronounces words, a funny look in his eyes. Without seeming to think about it deliberately, you “instantly recognize” the man as a “crazy person.” Your accumulated, culturally approved knowledge tells you to not get involved with crazy people, so you take no notice of him and walk on. Without these immediate associations that enabled you to recognize the situation as threatening or unpleasant, you might have gotten “involved” with this “crazy man,” and who knows what might have happened then?
This kind of association is so automatic that we do not usually notice it, and it takes a look at dissociation to make us realize the pervasiveness and importance of association. The child’s mental state is similar to that of the deeply hypnotized subject whose CRO has faded into relative inactivity. He does not have very much other information to come automatically to mind, nor is the association process so automatized that it always brings a wider context to ongoing events, so the cultural hypnotist’s suggestions operate in a dissociated, non-associated state that increases their power.
Much of our early enculturation and conditioning occurs before we have acquired much language. I suspect that language vastly increases our ability to associate information, so this lack of language further contributes to the dissociated quality of the child’s mind. When we try, as adults, as predominantly verbal thinkers, to understand our enculturation and conditioning, it is difficult to recall because it is not stored in verbal form. This further increases the power of early enculturation.
Instinctive Trust in Parents
A subject in a deep hypnotic state, especially if it is deep along the archaic regression dimension, has developed considerable trust in the hypnotist. Indeed this trust has a magical quality to it, for some amazing things have happened just because the hypnotist said they would happen. Children have a similar deep trust in their parents. As we noted earlier, the parent often seems omniscient and omnipotent to the child, so this deep trust has magical qualities, and further opens the subject/child to further suggestions.
Expectations of Permanency
Finally, and most important, consensus trance is expected to be permanent rather than merely an interesting experience that is strictly time limited. The mental, emotional, and physical habits of a lifetime are laid down while we are especially vulnerable and suggestible as children. Many of these habits are not just learned but conditioned; that is, they have that compulsive quality that conditioning has. Because they are automatized habits, they do not need the support of a specially defined situation, such as formal hypnosis usually requires; they operate in almost all circumstances. You no longer have to work at maintaining consensus trance: it is automatic.
We can imagine an individual who could see that the things taught him as so important are merely the quaint notions of the particular tribe he was born into, not necessarily universal truths, but most of us cannot see that about the content of the consensus trance that was induced in us. In too many ways we are that trance.
We begin the induction of consensus trance, then, with far more power, knowledge, resources, and sophistication on the part of the cultural hypnotist than the ordinary hypnotist can ever hope to have. The cultural hypnotist also possesses the “power of innocence”: he is unconscious of the consensus trance he himself is in and simply sees himself as acting “naturally.” The child, the subject, knows little and is genuinely dependent on the cultural hypnotists for survival, love, happiness, and validation. It is no wonder that the process induces a lifelong trance. (Waking Up, p.96)
The rest of it is riveting reading, but I suggest you get a copy of the book.