Gregory Michael Nixon

How one transcends the self depends on the self that experiences it. Is it instigated or sought, does it happen by accident, or by an act of Grace? Is it common or rare? Is it brought on by the ingestion of psychedelic agents or by meditation or by being overcome by fear or merely by caring more about the welfare of others than oneself? Is it transcendence to experience a shift of perspective or dissolution of the self? In the pages that follow, each of these paths is explored in nine ways, each unique unto itself. None of them deal with absolute self-transcendence, which should be no surprise, for, as I’ve indicated, there would no longer a self or person to record or communicate the event. Many of them deal the transcendence of self-consciousness, my own included, but only two describe the ingestion of mind-altering psychedelics to catalyze the event. One sees self-construction from the ground-up, as it were, as a form of transcending a previous self that has disintegrated. One looks to acts of kindness to sidestep the illusion of self-consciousness. Two, at least, look to creative experience in the arts as a way to connect with universal spontaneity, but in very different ways. The others refer to what might be called spiritual experiences that, though thirsted for or sought, arrive unexpectedly, almost like a gift.

When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.

It seems certain to me that I will die and stay dead. By “I”, I mean me, Greg Nixon, this person, this self-identity. I am so intertwined with the chiasmus of lives, bodies, ecosystems, symbolic intersubjectivity, and life on this particular planet that I cannot imagine this identity continuing alone without them. However, one may survive one’s life by believing in universal awareness, perfection, and the peace that passes all understanding. Perhaps, we bring this back with us to the Source from which we began, changing it, enriching it. Once we have lived – if we don’t choose the eternal silence of oblivion by life denial, vanity, indifference, or simple weariness – the Source learns and we awaken within it. Awareness, consciousness, is universal – it comes with the territory – so maybe you will be one of the few prepared to become unexpectedly enlightened after the loss of body and self. You may discover your own apotheosis – something you always were, but after a lifetime of primate experience, now much more. Since you are of the Source and since you have changed from life experience and yet retained the dream of ultimate awakening, plus you have brought those chaotic emotions and memories back to the Source with you (though no longer yours), your life & memories will have mattered. Those who awaken beyond the death of self will have changed Reality.

The purpose of this review article is to attempt to come to grips with the elusive vision of Gordon Globus, especially as revealed in this, his latest book. However, one can only grip that which is tangible and solid and Globus’s marriage of Heideggerian anti-concepts and “quantum neurophilosophy” seems purposefully to evade solidity or grasp. This slippery anti-metaphysics is sometimes a curse for the reader seeking imagistic or conceptual clarity, but, on the other hand, it is also the blessing that allows Globus to go far beyond (or deep within) the usual narrative explanations at the frontiers of physics, even that of the quantum variety.

Herein, I review the moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world. It was a sudden, momentous event that is difficult to explain since transcending the self ultimately requires transcending the language structures of which the self consists. Since awakening to the world took place beyond the enclosure of self-speech, it also took place outside our symbolic construction of time. It is strange to place this event and its aftermath as happening long ago in my lifetime, for it is forever present; it surrounds me all the time just as the world seems to do. This fact puts into question the reality of my daily journey from dawn to dusk with all the mundane tasks I must complete (like writing of that which cannot be captured in writing). My linear march to aging and death inexorably continues, yet it seems somehow unreal, the biggest joke of all. Still, I here review the events leading up to my time out of mind and then review the serious repercussions when I was drawn back into the ego-self only to find I did not have the conceptual tools or the maturity to understand what had happened.

Advances in artificial intelligence and neuroscience claim to have begun to undermine the assumptions of the arts and educational theory community by explaining consciousness through either a reduction to mathematical functionalism or an excrescence of brain biology. I suggest that the worldview behind such reductionism is opposed to the worldview assumed by many educational practitioners and theorists. I then go on to outline a few common positions taken in the burgeoning field of consciousness studies that suggest that—though many attributes of consciousness have been identified and explained—individual consciousness itself remains as much of an enigma to scientists as to the rest of us who experience it. However, I do suggest the necessity of intersubjectivity for conscious evolution.