Interpersonal Consciousness?

This post is a follow-on to A Map of Consciousness: Iteration 1.

[This post was modified on 06/18/2025.]

I use the term interpersonal consciousness to signify the direct sharing of conscious content between creatures (people or animals) or between creatures and non-material spiritual beings (gods, angels, elementals, spirits of the dead) without communication via the physical senses. This can be called psychic or spiritual connection or communication and includes telepathy and channeling. This is a subset of what may be referred to as transpersonal phenomena. The question is, does it ever really happen and, if so, in what forms?

If what I am calling consciousness/spirit is really the source and ground of being, then it must connect everything. That connection is obvious from the perspective of our exteriors. We all live in the same space-time continuum, and we can interact and communicate outwardly within that continuum. That is, we know and interact with one another and the world outwardly through our physical senses. Might it also be possible for impressions, thoughts, feelings, and other “energies” to be transmitted directly from the interior consciousness of one creature to the interior consciousness of another or between non-material spiritual beings and such creatures?

I fully embrace the idea that what I call universal primal consciousness pervades and unifies reality and that all beings therefore share in some way in the causal, non-dual, and witness perspectives of that level of consciousness. This does not, however, mean that the complexified levels of consciousness experienced inwardly by creatures like us can be sensed directly by the interiors of other creatures. It also does not mean that non-material spiritual beings, if they exist, can communicate directly, mind-to-mind, with creatures like us.

True, many people have what they believe to be psychic or mystical experiences—but are they really such? This depends on what we mean by mystical. Narrowly speaking, I understand mysticism to be direct experience and sense of identity (union) with God. More broadly, mysticism is all the practices, theology, and traditions that relate to such experience and sense of union.

By God I do not mean a personal, theistic being. Rather, I use the term God to signify the fundamental, impersonal reality that both underlies and comprises our material and experiential reality. I use the word impersonal with some hesitation because God is the source of and encompasses all that is personal and can be approached from a personal perspective, at least imaginally. However, God is not an anthropomorphic being of the sort depicted in traditional religion, which is what most Christians mean by a personal god.

Experiences that are referred to as mystical fall on a continuum. At one end is what I would call formless mysticism. These are experiences in which one gains access to a deeper, truer level of self in relation to the all (the self-transcending self) and in which the causal, nondual, and witness perspectives become directly meaningful. At the other end is what I would call the mysticism of forms (formful mysticism), which includes transpersonal and charismatic phenomena such as dreams, visions, auditions (hearing voices), telepathy, channeling (of the dead, spirit guides, other spiritual entities), speaking in tongues, trance and, and possibly other altered states of consciousness. Thus, formful mysticism connects to a wide range of what would otherwise be considered psychic phenomena. In some parts of the Christian tradition, what I am calling formless and formful mysticism have been denoted with the terms apophatic and kataphatic respectively.

At the extremes, formless mysticism is an experience of meaning in the absence of other content whereas in formful mysticism the meaning is conveyed through perceived content such as images, words, sounds, bodily sensations, and actions. In my experience, the sense of union and identity with God which I see to be the essence of true mysticism is encountered on the formless end of this continuum. This is God found beyond all sensory-based content in bright darkness and loud silence, in the nothing that is everything. However, the experience of pure formlessness, if even reachable, can be nothing more than a fleeting experience for a conscious mind contained in a physical body. My most profound mystical experiences, while quite definitely tending far toward the formless end of the mystical spectrum, have not been devoid of sensory association.

I suspect that where a mystical experience falls on the spectrum between formless and formful has to do with levels of activity in the various consciousness centers of the brain. Formless mystical experience happens when the witnessing center of consciousness is alert but the areas of the brain that normally fill that consciousness with content are quiescent. This allows the perspectives present in universal primal consciousness—usually overshadowed by our normal level of sensations, feelings, and thoughts—to be noticed.

Formful mystical experience happens when the witnessing center of consciousness is alert and the conscious cognitive regions of the brain (e.g., the neocortex) are quiescent but the subconscious mind is active serving up content to the conscious mind. Such content usually has significant meaning and can sometimes be quite profound. It can also seem to originate from outside the self.

There is much evidence in the psychological literature that the human subconscious is capable of presenting amazing and intense experiences to the conscious mind. Intense dreams are one example familiar to most people. Other examples are waking dreams, hallucinations, and hypnotic states. So, how much can formful mystical experience be trusted? Can it really bring us awareness and insight from beyond what we normally consider to be our self, or is it simply delusional?

Let’s start with the fact that the Christian mystical tradition both celebrates formful mystical experience and contains many warnings about it. The visions of Julian of Norwich, for example, are respected, but Theresa of Avilla and John of the Cross offer stern warnings against desiring such experiences. Meister Eckhart, on the other hand, largely ignores formful experiences. The tradition as a whole seems to suggest that such experiences should be received humbly and gratefully for the lessons they carry but that they should be held lightly and should not be sought out. Humility is a point of difficulty here. Such experiences can inflate the ego in insidious ways and block access to the deeper, formless mysticism that is encountered beyond the ego.

More important, perhaps, is the fact that there is no scientifically verified evidence for paranormal phenomena such as telepathy, necromancy, or spirit channeling. Plenty of incentive has been offered to bring forth such evidence. Wikipedia currently (Nov. 2024) lists 25 active monetary rewards for such evidence. The oldest has been offered since 1976. The highest amount offered is $500,000. Also listed are 14 inactive awards, including the James Randi Education Foundation Paranormal Challenge for $1,000,000 that was offered from 1964 to 2015. None of these rewards has ever been successfully claimed.[1] Psychic research, which once enjoyed a spate of funding, has fallen far out of favor because it has produced nothing significant. While many interesting anecdotes suggest that paranormal phenomena of the sort I equate with formful mysticism are real as understood by the participants, close scrutiny has never found clear evidence to support such belief.

I have never encountered clear evidence that the immediate content of formful mysticism comes from outside the being having the experience. That is, formful mysticism does not bring awareness of entirely new things. It can and often does bring new perspectives and understanding of things already in the mind, but I know of no evidence that it ever places into the mind truly novel things, verifiable or not. For example, Christians who have no awareness of Hinduism do not have visions of Hindu deities and visa versa. This suggests that the content of formful mystical experience is constructed by the subconscious from concepts already present in the mind.

I am even more confident in ruling out any kind of mystical interaction with discarnate (body-less, non-physical) spiritual entities, i.e., deceased people, angels, demons, or other spirits. There is no clear evidence that complex, personal, human-like consciousness can exist apart from physical, human-like brains, which calls into serious question the very existence of discarnate beings. Even if such consciousness can exist, interaction with living people would require that the entities be present and alive somewhere—in Heaven or some other plane of consciousness—and that they be able to interact with living people from that other place? Where is this other world and how are entities there able to interact with us? How do they live? What is the energy source that sustains and enlivens them and allows them to interact with our minds? Human thinking and emotion are intimately connected to our bodies and senses. How do beings without bodies sense anything? If such beings cannot hear or read—which are physical activities that require a body—how can they continue to function linguistically? The two-world mythologies that support belief in discarnate spirits may be very popular, but they don’t hold together very well if you think seriously about them.

There are theories and teachings about collectively shared, unseen levels of consciousness such as the Astral Plane, the Akashic Record, and some interpretations of the Collective Unconscious. These are regarded as places where aspects of human consciousness and experience are stored and can be accessed by other minds. Such ideas have a strong appeal to me, but, when I really look into them, I am quite unconvinced. I find the idea of the Collective Unconscious useful, but I see it as a psychological phenomenon of sharing across the subconscious minds of living humans via the interplay of culture and primal structures of human neurology. At least some esoteric schools say quite explicitly that the Astral Plane is illusory—a place of human imagination—and not to be trusted. As with telepathy, I see no reports of anyone who claims to access these psychic warehouses coming up with convincing proof that they are really doing so. Shouldn’t they, for example, be able to come up with the means to understand undeciphered ancient languages or to explain poorly understood ancient artifacts or to clarify historical mysteries? What, for example, were Stonehenge or Göbekli Tepe or Chaco Canyon really about? That sort of psychic memory does not seem to be forthcoming.

At this point I must ask William of Ockham if I can borrow his razor. Ockham’s Razor is the philosophical principle that, when choosing between competing explanations, the simpler explanation is to be preferred. I think that the capabilities of the human mind, including the imagination and especially the subconscious, provide a much simpler and less confusing explanation for formful mysticism and psychic experience than telepathy, unseen beings, and worlds that no one can seem to really pin down.

I am convinced that the human subconscious possesses intelligence forged by millions of years of evolution. The wisdom of this intelligence emerges in profound dreams and intuitions. On a collective level it emerges in our myths, which can also carry astounding meaning. I think, therefore, that the subconscious is capable entirely on its own of generating what we experience as formful mystical experience.

This does not necessarily invalidate such experiences. The idea that they originate outside the self does not hold up, but that does not mean that they have no value. If one can understand them to be products of the subconscious—like dreams or personal myths—then one can use them imaginally to seek insight or to access altered states of consciousness.

This is the cutting edge of my thinking on these matters at this time. I’m not absolutely sure about it, but it makes the most sense to me right now. I’m going to run with it until I hit something that makes me change my mind.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prizes_for_evidence_of_the_paranormal

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