TOWARDS A QUINTAESSENTIAL APPROACH TO CRISIS AND DISEASE: THE CROSSROADS-CROSSFIRE-TURNING POINT-CONFLICT THEORY (CCPC)

Now, of all diseases the fashion is the same but the seat varies. So, while diseases are thought to be entirely unlike the other, owing to differences in their seat, in reality all have one essence and cause”.

Hippocrates

INDEX

• An etiological-universal approach to disease and conflict.
• The first interparadigmatic-interface period: the descending path.
• At a crossroads: within the chaos of the Hamlet crisis. The Abraxas time and timelessness.
The C- point.
• The black-hole of the soul.
• Good and evil at a crossword puzzle: The “Abraxas” time/timelessness. Some literary exemplars. Towards a general theory of human destructiveness?
• The end of the dark stage.
• From the ascending path to the interlude of the second interparadigmatic-interface period.
From crisis to creativity and scientific insight: a positive side effect.
Time for questions for overcoming pathology.
• The end of a spiraling cycle and the outburst of the peak-turning point.
• A note.
• The CCPC Theory.
• A good perspective needs distance.
• Pre-destinies, fate, destiny, free choice, vocation and superior destiny. It is time to understand time?
• The death-life miracle and the “cosmic necessity” concept in evolution.
• Some conclusions about human life and the limits of consciousness: life in an experimental test-tube and under the microscope of a spiritual laboratory.
The wheel of the Myth of Eternal return has turned.
• The spiraling cycles are always open, so new questions and answers arise. Some questions die while new ones are always born. Time and eternity.
• A light at the end of the tunnel? The G point?

An etiological-universal approach to disease and conflict.

Both Abraham Maslow in the field of psychology, and Otto Warburg, the latter in cancer research, said one and the same thing: “We can only cure what we can understand”. In the same line, from Albert Einstein (1954) to John White (1988) have given the same kind of opinion: “A problem is never solved at the same level that it was created”. In the fields of psychology and biology the hierarchical organization of all biological processes in the light of universal and interconnected relationships of each and every factor affecting open systems as human life was considered by ourselves in the past. In an attempt to integrate the relative effects of environmental versus genetic tendencies in the mass-effect pathogenesis of “disease” both physical and psychological, a mathematical formulation was proposed relating time and location (Harguindey et al., 1981). This line of research tried to stimulate progressive thoughtful integration versus increasing reductionistic specialization, while the “general and holonomic” aspects of the etiopathogenesis of disease were stressed in the light of the holistic aspects of the “General Adaptation Syndrome” as initially proposed by Hans Selye (Selye, 1975). In spite that these efforts were focused towards the field of cancer research to start with, now it is apropos to try wider generalizations of this unitarian approach. It seems that what is missing nowadays is to realize that the main problem is not the lack of “scientific knowledge”, but a lack of ability, perspective and insight to integrate many areas of research into larger fields of understanding. Thus, a brand new perspective seems necessary in order to integrate many different levels and branches of knowledge into higher, deeper and more encompassing and comprehensive synthesis. The final aim would be to have access to a megasynthesis of all knowledge, a new “theory of everything”, if this becomes at all possible (Hawking, 1988, pp. 155-169). This line of thought will have to consider “analysis” as a reductionistic descent into matter and “synthesis” as a new ascent towards spirit (Aïvanhov, 1988).

In the same vein, the overwhelming materialism of the modern world has become extremely cunning in disguising novelty as true progress, this indicating a short-sighted attitude towards human life and man’s search for meaning as well as poor understanding of higher learning experiences offered by life’s wide spectrum. So far, the tendency to disintegrating the whole into smaller and smaller parts (analysis) has clearly won the battle to efforts directed towards reaching new integrations and generalizations in any field of science or medicine (synthesis). These unbalanced tendencies are one of the main characteristics of both modernity and postmodernity. Thus, any trend towards synthetic approaches appears to be in evolutionary conflict with increasing specializing trends. The “specialist” is bound to know each time more and more about less and less. Following this pattern of thought its reductionistic and progressively narrower views will allow him to finally know absolutely everything about absolutely nothing.

On the contrary, a more holistic, holonomic and transpersonal approach to the life sciences would need to dig into con-text before text, con-science before science, placing “spirit” over mind and mind over matter (Dossey, 1986). All these efforts represent an attempt to recover the soul of the soulless scientific community that prevails nowadays (Sheldrake 1989; Dossey, 1989; Tart, 1999). This contribution will focus upon and deal with “an integral approach to crisis and conflict”. It represents no more than a preliminary attempt to describe in an all-embracing manner some generalities of “the etiopathogenic and healing process”, both at once in its two variances, descent and ascent, as an all-encompassing effort towards the interpretation and understanding of either physical and psychological and/or spiritual disease.

From the point of view of treatment a radical, etiological approach to any psychological and/or physical disease (“the root approach”), should always be sought after. To this ending, and in order to reach the core of a neo-formed or neo-forming process (i. e.: neoplasia), it is mandatory to descend to the hearth of the matter, its most intimate of a specific disease process. Thee ideal situation arises when we can act at the deepest and quintessential level, leaving outside in a second plane the external, more superficial, manifestations of the tree of a disease process, its trunk (“the stalk approach”) or even its branches (“the branch approach”), the text of the disease. The latter view, however, because of its partiality and superficiality, will always make it impossible to embrace the whole problem all at once. In this case we will have to resign ourselves to achieve only a symptomatic relief of the symptoms.

However desirable is to interfere with the intermediate pathogenic mechanisms of any illness the ideal situation arises when we can approach any disease from the deepest possible perspective, its quintessential conditioning, its energetic con-text. Along the history of science this approach was called terrain by Pasteur, internal media by Cannon, propitiatory field by Popper, morphogenetic fields by Sheldrake, and quantum and energetic field by Einstein. Thus, an integral (root plus terrain, approach is always necessary if the most appropriate and specific treatment is to be found. This underground perspective can not be “seen” from the surface, this is, with the eye of the flesh and eye of the mind (the Cartesian-dualistic, rational method). Further beyond this point nothing can be properly focused upon but through a powerful burst of insight, the inside eye. This eye is the only one to see provide with the necessary vision in the dark able to penetrate a process to the very depths, to grasp at once its intimate essence and nature through an essential, amethodic-method, and finally unmask the core of the problem. Such an approach has been called “the intuitive intellect” by Aldous Huxley and “the third kind of knowledge ” or “transcendental knowledge” by Spinoza. This is the only knowledge can penetrate to the Divine base of all beings (Huxley, 1992, 9. 161), while it proceeds from an adequate idea of the absolute essence of certain attributes of God to the adequate knowledge of the essence of things (Spinoza, 1976, pp. 197-198).

However, the proposed “in-depth, non-dual research” places a high demand on the investigator. This is to prepare himself to go to “the very bottom of things” in a highly committed, non-dual (¿taoist?) way. The aim is to contemplate it all from the core and furnace of the process, even becoming one with the very same disease until the researcher and the subject can not be considered “two” anymore. This psycho-spiritual descent can lead the researcher so further down even to make it necessary for him to join Dante on its way down to Hades in order to “see everything with one’s own inner eyes”. The only hope now rests in the thought that “healing and salvation springs from the center of evil”, an “iniciatic” teaching that can be found in many sources, from the “I Ching” to Heraclitus, Holderlin, Aurobindo, Goethe, Dostoyevski, Herman Hesse, etc. This becoming non-dual with any serious and life-threatening disease process, from physical to psychological to spiritual, can only be coped with approaching it through a meta-motivated spirit led by a high degree of transpersonal empathy and generosity. The entire process of descent-ascent then becomes a deep-fishing expedition that probably not many would be willing to be embarked upon o their own accord and entire free choice. Now the concepts of destiny, fate or predeterminism appear to peak from the horizon. In order to understand the implications of this in-depth approach to disease, crisis and conflict, it is now convenient to go back to the very beginnings of modern medical thought. Hippocrates himself said that one can only cure the diseases that have gone through himself, a thesis that runs parallel with the shamanic dictum that “only the injured can heal”. Thus, a descending trip seem totally necessary in order to have the possibility of rescuing, reproducing and reconstructing through an intimate experiential process and step by step, the entire dynamics of the disease-healing process from the very bottom. This is both the challenge and necessity demanded by living nature itself in order to get a good grip on it and bring it back to the surface sometimes just before our getting choked and swallowed by its destructive dynamics (“the retro-progressive essay” of S. Paniker) (1982, 1987).

Once we have learned enough through experience about the hierarchical organization and multifactorial aspects of “any disease” (Harguindey et al., 1981), the next time that a descending and fragmenting dynamic trend is in the making, we will be better equipped to recognize its destructive potential in advance. The major difficulty still is to recognize the process well before the first external symptoms and signs of abnormality and manifested pathology, its “exteriors” arises to the surface. In the cancer context, for instance, this was called “the sleeping time” of a disease process by nobel prize Otto Warburg (1956). In this way we will also be prepared to face, and interfere, with the manifestations of disease before a terrible oncoming crisis explodes (the french “eclosion”). Once the outer manifestations of sickness arise it is usually too late to fully revert or fight the consequences of the dynamics of the previous subliminal process. The “in-depth underground approach”, however, teaches that no big crisis ever comes “out of the blue”, spontaneously, without a reason or cause. On the contrary, always a living and active, silent pathogenesis, dwells behind the curtains, sometimes for a long time, without being noticed. Thus, no matter that a sever disease or problem may appear to be “causeless” and “spontaneous” to the outside observer, this is never so to the “inside” observer. What it should be accepted is that the rational, too rational at times, empirical and positivistic mind, is rarely if ever able to recognize, the hidden patterns and destructive energetic forces operating behind the screen of “external” reality, nor even its existence. Either, he is not prepared for it or, even more, it does not want to. Denial is always easier and, most of it all, it makes life much more comfortable.
In the same vein, a disease process, physical or psychological, acute or chronic, usually end up as the external manifestation of some kind of crisis, showing out that a deep-seated conflict is in need of resolution. The ascending, healing branch of the evolution of an abnormal process will have has to follow a somehow opposed trend to the etiopathogenesis of the disease in order to aim to a restitution ad integrum. On the other hand, it is always impossible to analyze and embrace, no to say control, the multiplicity of factors at many different levels of organization involved in the production of a degenerative process, this placing the limit to the reductionistic-scientist approach). Thus, a more comprehensive and holistic attitude appears nowadays to be essential and necessary. Now, a “transcendence of levels” in order to encompass the whole, a jump towards a more synthetic and higher “whole”, can only be achieved by an expanding change of the level of consciousness. This also represents a leap into the unknown, a necessary one, since no problem is truly solved at the same level that originated it in the first instance (Einstein, 1954; White, 1988). This going over the top of the problem itself, a complete breach of planes, is the type of approach that was described at the beginning of the field of relativity physics (Dossey, 1986, p. 243; Wilber 1987).

Truly transformation events have been associated with the onset of different “new paradigms” in the epistemology of science (Khun, 1975, p.146). These big changes are usually preceded by a period of time in which the previous paradigm and model of thought has exhausted its possibilities and the new one is not born yet. This interlude can be of a most unstable and conflictive nature - the interparadigmatic period. A high degree of confusion may ensue when the expected new world has not been born yet and the old one is agonizing (Wilber, 1999). Unfortunately, this appears to be the present situation in nature, ecology, human development, medicine, socio-politics, world situation, spirituality, etc. It is a the time of crisis and conflict, where a so badly needed “ascent” of the whole of reality is not yet possible, perhaps because the new idea has not yet materialized in a mature form on the surface of “the given”, using the terminology of Hegel. This can be secondary either to the fact that the foundation stones of the new life are not yet planted deep enough into the (right kind of) ground, or because the seed is of the wrong kind. In any case, the new reality keeps hiding from us somehow and somewhere in the oncoming future. In any case, this interparadigmatic time of change may become more and more unstable and dangerous, as much as having the mind in the stars before firmly setting our feet on the ground.

The first interparadigmatic-interface period: the descending path.

At this point we are still waiting that the new vision and reality, either of a spiritual, scientific or sociopolitical nature materializes, safely landing in “the real world”. The final onset of the evolutionary changes to come is usually announced by the most sensitive and developed minds and consciousness of the times, the so called “cutting-edge in evolution” (Ferguson, 1985, p. 221-222; Khun, 1975, pp. 150-151, 153, 154; Capra, 1985, p. 309). At the present interparadigmatic moment, what appears to be lacking is “to come across” a deep foundation stone for the new building of the so-called New Paradigm to reach the necessary degree of synthesis. This construction is imperative before it can be actualized and become fully manifest in the “practical” world of external reality. Until then, a practical construction of a world-centric vision based upon a vision-logic approach to human life will be like building castles in the air. In the meantime, the urgently needed “metanoic” jump towards a new mega-synthesis of knowledge (S. Hawking new “theory of everything”?) (1993) becomes at all impossible.

Modernity seems to have provided mankind with most of its successes and failures, some enlightenment at first, later increasing darkness. Most people would agree that is time for a change, no in the sense of translation but of true transformation (Wilber, 1999). From a relativistic fourth stage and/or dimension in evolution, what humankind nowadays appear to be in need of is some kind of a quintessential approach to nature and to the essence and dynamics of kinds of crisis and conflict. Also, a much better understanding about the dynamics of the phenomena of sudden insight and “naked” creativity is needed.

Like Hippocrates´s dictum at the beginning of these lines, we also believe that the pathogenesis of any conflict leading to the outburst of the lowest point of any crisis follows most similar, or even the same, general pattern. This may apply to the most serious and damaging scientific, social and political problems, as well as personal ones, the latter in their different aspects of physical, psychological and/or spiritual disease. Thus, if its hidden descending and regressive dynamics (Figure 1, points K, B and M,) (Washburn, 1997, ch. 7; Washburn, 1998, p. 34) are not interfered with in a “preventive medicine” manner, sooner or later this blind unawareness will allow the explosion of the nuclear core. This is exteriorized as crisis in the form of pain, suffering, disgrace and many other destructive realities, even death.

The sudden manifestation of a fragmenting and destructive crisis - from a psychotic episode to a hearth attack and the onset of revolutionary political violence - can be compared to the beginning of an earthquake. This is, a devastating revelation that we are not able: A) to predict when and how is going to take place since it appears out of the blue, “seemingly” without any previous notice. Once again, the hidden and underground truth is that an specific or nonspecific multifactorial process (a general non-adaptation pre-syndrome?) (Selye, 1964) has been actively and lively going on underneath the surface for a while without our being able to detect it, from patient to therapist, and B) to interfere with using the most adequate means. What we need to learn in any case is to how we can become sensitive to the basic warping chains and essential predetermining contexts which will eventually lead to the final outburst of the crisis (Figure 1, point C, or time of chaos/maximal involution, contraction and/or Evil).




The underground-energetic approach can also help to understand that the external world, objective and empirical, is no more than the necessary and unavoidable consequence of specific pre-processes whose underlying dynamics have to be placed in other deeper subjective and inter-subjective contexts. These can be from propitiatory and energetic backgrounds to complex morphogenetic or neo-morphogenetic (from neo-plasia) fields (Harguindey et al., 1995; Harguindey, 2000). This attempt of understanding the whole demands, even in the filed of research of any area of medicine and, most of it all, of malignant diseases, an integrated and hermeneutical approach to malignant processes. These “seed and root-approach” strongly indicates the active presence of hidden and implicated contexts always preceding and rather rigidly predetermining the manifestation of one or another kind of external reality (Harguindey et al., 1995; Harguindey, 1998, p. 595). At the same time, these buried to the rational, reductionisitic and empiric eye allows to scratch deeply into the underground etiological roots and seeds of destruction dynamically fed by the underlying patterns of the morphogenetic or neo-morphogenetic fields. In the outcome of disease, the feeding ground finally plays the main role of the development of an unhealthy media. This will, sooner or later, reach up to an energetic level that will automatically activate a mass-effect that will transform quality (energy) into quantity (mass), so conditioning one or other manifestations of external reality, healthy or unhealthy. This general “underground approach”, radical or root approach, can thus be applied from the hermeneutical study of the role of myths and symbols to the disruption of homeostasis and the media in physiopathology. It also belongs to the same level of study and interpretation of the conformational patterns of quantum fields in theoretical physics, in the unconscious and the power of the archetypes in jungian and postjungian psychology, and finally in the “extra and intracellular homeostasis and ecology” field of cancer research (Harguindey et al., 1989; Harguindey, 2000).

From old oriental philosophies as portrayed in the “I Ching” or “Book of Mutations” - a kind of “I Change”-, to Heraclitus and the entire Greek culture, as well as outstanding modern thinkers, it is accepted that the spinning and spiraling wheel of life has its ascendant and descendent branches. These branches are bound to complete entire cycles (Eliade, 1994; Panikkar, 1993, 1998) (Figure 1). These cosmic cycles, if exclusively measured in lineal time, can last from instants to entire eons and eras. In first place, the stagnation and instability within the descending arm of an interparadigmatic-interface period (Figure 1, J to K zone), either in the social, political, scientific or spiritual aspects of growth, follows the pattern of a degenerating trend. This decaying time is, if left to its own, bound to lead into a situation of increasing decadence that will eventually lead to a situation of chaos (point C). Borrowing terminology from the filed of molecular physics, a “B zone” (Figure 1) stimulates the increasing formation of unstable “free radicals”, from the psychological to the political arena, moving almost randomly and changing all the time between different orbital and energy status (psychophysics).

At many levels of understanding and from a multidisciplinary perspective, the “B to C area” represents the margin, the limit, a continuos “being in transit”. While the descending dynamics approach the point of chaos (Figure 1, cyclic branch J to E to B to C) “apocalyptic or cataclysmic time” progressively ensues. Point C now becomes the “pit situation” (versus Maslow´s “peak experiences” lived at the D and H points) at the first and lowest turning point. Along the branch of the descending dynamic, the power of negative attachments and dependence on the “old ways” even prevent the final “necessary fall” to be activated by rebounding at the bottom of the crisis (point C). This paradoxical defense mechanism can only prolong the agony. Unavoidably, (Spinoza´s “cosmic necessity”?) the end of the descending cycle reaches the iciest and lowest core of the crisis. From a spiritual perspective, the soul (at least Dante’s) somehow to needs to rebound at the bottom of the sea of darkness, the Averno of its own pit and chaos, to swim across the descending-ascending through the ocean of the night. Otherwise, it will have not a chance to ascend towards the surface before drowning within the bottomless experience. Thus, before any “new order” has a true chance to acquire a reorganized form of stability (reconstruction) the end of a descending branch (deconstruction) and the bottom of the (ultimately healing?) cosmic cycle is bound to create a great deal of pain and suffering, disassociation, fragmentation and regression. This type of integral thinking can also be applied to any, expected or unexpected, outburst of a psychotic crisis to any attempts to overcome what M. Eliade has called “the terror of history”. Eventually, unchecked progression of the descending trend will eventually place both the inner and the external worlds in a situation that can only reflect a total blockade (“I Ching”, “The Stagnation”, p. 129) sometimes carrying both destructive (sado) and/or self-destructive (masochistic) components, from person to society.

The presence of an active and unchecked descending stage means that the necessary links to bring the fragmented chain together have not yet been found, making integration and growth impossible and leaving the transition between stages in a most unstable and radicalized situation. This allows the existence and full-fledged manifestation of the deep abyss underneath since now its borders are still too far apart to be “jumped across”. The excessive separation of the edges of the wound (from physical to psychological and spiritual) implies that the beginning of the healing and seaming process (the ascending branch) can not yet take place. This leaves a “before” and the “after” the crisis without a chance to be re-connected and reunited from the bottom and core of the crisis (point C). “Down there” total darkness and chaos will signal a state of maximal disintegration, inferior disassociation and involution between different “lives”, perspectives and attitudes (M. Washburn, 1990). The descending pre-critical situation (J and K zones) of the first interface period (D to C area) is also imbued with a connotation of a certain “predeterministic necessity” prior to any possibility of transformation, enlightenment and rebound towards higher realms of existence and reality, both subjective and objective (Grof & Grof, 1992). Perhaps, this represents some of the fundamental meanings of teleological evolution.

While still immersed within the descending path and crisis, the negative, destructive and involution forces (tanatos) show strength enough to easily overpower any vital and positive ones (eros). At the B-C “raskolnikovian” spell (Figure 1) even indiscriminate violence and destructive tendencies can take place, manifesting themselves as an incurable disease. Under such most distressing and painful circumstances, the role of self-contraction, violence, destructiveness and death can show themselves as superior to the value of growth, peace, creativity and life (Buber, 1952, p. 130-131). Indeed, the instability and negation of the situation may last even after the C-point of chaos has been fully overcome (second interparadigmatic-interface period), and linger on at the beginning of the ascending path, the future time of renovation, the regeneration-renewal time (metacosmesis) (branch F, Figure 1). To even lesser degrees, some of the most negative aspects of growth may persist, however with decreasingly damaging penetration, until full resolution of the problem ensues or at least until a clear opening - a “window of opportunity” in the terminology of E. Trias (Trias, 1994), is perceived at the end of the tunnel.

Before the opening is seen at the end of the tunnel, the managing of the crisis will successively need to deal and cope with: 1) the paralyzing intensity of the descending and conflictive interparadigmatic situation (branch B); and 2) with the final acute worsening of the growth crisis (point C). The latter can also manifest itself as a brainstorm, a spiritual (and/or physical) emergency (Grof & Grof, 1992) which may dwell in the same quicksand territory of an outburst of an, expected or unexpected, acute psychotic episode and/or panic attack. The evolutionary and growth meaning of such “living in dire straits” can only be fully recognized, either by the individual fighting the crisis or his or her supportive team only a posteriori. It can then be realized that everything had been finally propitiated by the progressive accumulation of a multifactorial-induced neo-morphogenetic tension that has finally given way to a critical mass effect to allow the sudden explosion of the crisis. The crisis itself initiates a chain reaction and vicious circle of that sometimes will be most difficult, or even impossible, to stop (the revolution of the wheel beyond the C-point). Again, this of general dynamic can be applied from the personal and psychological to the sociopolitical disciplines (Rothberg, 1999, p. 42). At this crossroads-crossfire turning point salvation can only be found through the acquisition of the necessary degree of detachment to accept the active presence of chaos as part of the living system.

The concept of a “mass-effect” is the final deterministic force for change deciding upon the posterior conformational aspect of reality. It may be thought of as the necessary “quantity” of energy accumulated to reach the minimal level required to induce an instantaneous “qualitative leap” finally leading to transformation. At the time that maximal involution, disassociation and hyperpolarization of the system (the maximal hyperdualistic state) is approaching, if the “patient” can not detach enough of the situation enters into the vortex and engulfing windstorm of his mind and spirit. This can lead into a black hole of infinite density and gravity turned into a deep abyss, even a bottomless pit, a dark night of the senses and the soul. The “blessed are the meek in spirit” now has suddenly turned into its opposite, a promotion-like struggle that appears as a “damned are the rich in spirit”. At this point, an emergency call to the disfigured and fragmented, breaking ego, asking for deep-felt awe and humility is urgently needed, since life it is at stake and life and death at a crossroads. In this pre-terminal and closed situation, that may appear as beyond any hope of recovery, all kinds of help are welcome. Now continuos panic attacks and an endless feeling of impending doom dominate the entire picture. If at the D-peak experiences the highest conceivable human intensity, and even greatness, may coalesce, the overcoming of a full-fledged “pit experience” may also allow to feel that humans, even under the worst circumstances, may be allowed to feel and touch their very divine nature (Frankl, 1979).

At a crossroads: within the chaos of the Hamlet crisis. The Abraxas time and timelessness. The C- point.

At the time of maximal psycho-spiritual entropy and involution (Figure 1, point C, or of “chaos-evil”) the storm has now turned into a tornado and awareness into a nightmare. Now the spirit dwells within the eye of a hurricane and the infinite gravity of its own black hole attracts it to a center from which nothing will escape anymore. Premonitory feelings previous to the onset of worst phase of the crisis are sometimes brought about by a number of announcing presages (Tolstoi, 1990). Until that point, however, those presages have been largely disregarded, more or less willingly, or consciousness has not been able to become aware of them since they had been moving subliminal and subconsciously. However, a horror movie has burst now into the picture of consciousness showing its full potential and true meaning, the end stage of the descending dynamics. The C-point now indicates the presence of maximal involution and disassociation by concentrating and intensifying a terrible pressure and contraction of lineal time (“pit experience”). The crisis is at its hottest crossfire wrapping up the climax of a period of increasing decadence (Figure 1, branch E-B to point C). This part of the spiral may unexpectedly show itself through a myriad of “irrational” symptoms and signs while inducing a high degree of acute confusion (p. e.: the Hamlet crisis). Here, lineal-rational time (chorines) ceases to exist and/or finds its limits at the crossing of the lowest area of the spiral (C zone, “tangential time”). This is a double edge-sword that, on one hand, creates a wall between the individual of the outside world but on the other will finally help to disinter that power of intuition and superior insight that up (or down) to that moment has been kept buried in the unconscious.

This “evil-good paradox” eventually allows that many questions that are decisive for our lives, and that otherwise would have always been kept as mysteries to rational intelligence, can from now on be explored from other perspectives and in other different ways (trans-rationality). In this cruciform and painful stage - the crossroads-crossfire-turning point - the Hamlet-like subject under the experience may even find it impossible to distinguish external reality from inner subjectivity and the real from the unreal and imagined. Under these circumstances he is not being able to stop his mind from all kinds of automatic processes that are far beyond its will and all possible voluntary control. Not being able to rest or find a minute of solace, he feels tortured as if all the powers of nature seem to have allied against him. He can think that he is damned by life, feel that he is “possessed”, regret to have been born.

Since communication with the outside world becomes severely impaired, or even fully abolished, the spiritual isolation and solitude of the mind and the constrictive pain of the soul can become unbearable and absolute. This psycho-spiritual emergency situation can be accompanied by a most variegated syndrome including severe physical and multi-organic symptoms that have been previously described elsewhere (Grof, 1985; Grof, 1995). Strangely enough, the deepest form of insight seems to be calling upon from some place resting at the bottom of the sea of the experience. From that mysterious darkness something, somehow, is pushing the entire self towards finding the necessary impelling force to rebound upwards towards the surface. Even at this stage, the deepest conflict and crisis hold promise of its healing potential for growth and overcoming, making it possible a new ascent towards reintegration that will eventually allow to recover an, also mysterious, pre-established harmony (Grof, & Grof, 1993). A “both-ways” street, descending-ascending, or retro-progressive (Paniker, 1987) seems to even within it the revolutionary potential to turn around (and upside-down, or vice versa) the wheel of destiny. Thus, conflict and crisis finally pave the way, and lead, towards a new unifying synthesis of life and nature. Most strikingly, the upward change of direction achieved after breaking through the lowest turning points of the spiral of the evolutionary process may lead to new and general theories on human motivation. In this vein, we can place in a better position to approach a fuller understanding of human nature, from destructiveness to creativity. This overcoming may lead to the birth, unfolding and actualization of new paradigms (points D and H). As a direct and indirect consequence of historical and repetitive C-situations, at a certain stage in evolution (point G) even a new integral and comprehensive understanding of the nature of time might allow to both differentiate and synthesize their two components, lineal and cyclical, transforming and raising human nature to a full-fledged transpersonal situation (and the whole of life to a brand new conception (metanoia, transpersonal Eden, enantodromia) (Figure 1)

The black-hole of the soul

At the C-point everything mixed and boiled up in the same pot of a witches kitchen: what is real and what is not real, what the mind think it is good can be the worst evil, time and timelessness, what the subject should do and what he should not do. Now, past, present and future can not be conceived as separate and be taken apart from each other as the three tenses melt into one single and fictitious entity. At this point the sense of lineal time can be totally lost, even an instant may seem to last forever. On the contrary, hours and days can fly almost unnoticed within the trance of this unchanging time, a hell-like pseudo-eternity opposite to the intersection of “the timeless moment” described for Maslow´s peak-experiences. However, the timelessness experience at the bottom can be associated with a degree of personal distress so great that defies all attempts to be encroached on some kind of (word and worldly) definition. Here, linguistic expression makes words, either spoken or written, useless to express the depth and intensity of the nucleus of this nuclear-splitting experience. The fragmenting and cracking impact of this experience is well beyond all possible control - the epicenter of an earthquake also called by others “the intersection of the timeless moment” (Waldrom, 1998, p. 103) (Washburn, 1999, p. 259). Dante tried to explain this with the following words: “How useless are the words to express the concept, and how pale the concept to express what I saw”. “To be” or “not to be” here is not the question anymore since it becomes impossible to differentiate the meaning of “being” or “not being” as different and separate ideas.

The under-earth psychic quake has taken the self by surprise as any sudden and unexpected change in the level of either an expanding or contracting consciousness does, now showing a big-bang-like involutionary phase. These episodes could be even considered or renamed as “bottomless-pit experiences”, whatever the religious connotations such terminology may carry along. The heaviness, gravity, density, contraction and confusion here reach the highest possible degree, and the soul finds it impossible to escape from that mental and spiritual black-hole within which the spirit has been suctioned and gobbled up. The ego, now shattered into a thousand splinters, become absent and defenseless, even detached of the last remnants of itself. The person going through the feels that he or she has reached a climax that announces its final destruction (Washburn, 1999, p. 249). The trip in the sea of the night and the dark night of the senses and the soul dominates the entire situation. Within this stage of total loss in darkness all kinds of hallucinations may show the false presence of an oasis occasionally appearing in front of the eyes of the spirit. Total stillness and paralysis may herald an autistic-catatonic stage only occasionally broken by the sudden onset of panic attacks that insist upon the inescapable feeling of being tortured and that any sign of hope is no longer existent. This remains of the words: “I die because I don’t die” of Teresa of Jesus, but, most likely, carrying the opposite intention and meaning that the ones intended by the Spanish mystic.


Good and evil at a crossword puzzle: The “Abraxas” time/timelessness. Some literary exemplars. Towards a general theory of human destructiveness?

“Good” and “evil” also appear as losing their separation and confrontation at the C point of maximal chaos. Even now some components of its opposite D “peak” points can “interfere”. So, pain and glory, a smile may accompany tragedy and utter darkness and a shy ray of light con melt together. The whole reality shows itself as a single primal flux of energy that alternates its outer aspects according to propitiatory contexts and predetermining energy status (taoistic adualism). This dynamism opens the possibility to the fact that both self-destructive and destructive tendencies can be hardly resisted when they assail the self at the core and lowest intersection of the crisis. The mind find then itself defenseless to resist all the burden that is presented it and evil thoughts can run rampant “over the top of the head” (Washburn, 199, pp. 236-239; John of the Cross, 1996, p. 135). It is the timeless time of the coincidentia oppositorum or mysterium tremendus. Here the night of the spirit overlaps with the night of the senses without any clear separation between them. However, if the intense pain and negative temptations are resisted through the climax of the pit of the crisis a strong religious and/or shamanic conversion may occur and a living iniciatic process be born anew. If they are resisted, if enough “outside” help is activated, of one kind or another, if the self can detach itself enough up to the point of “becoming its own outside witness”, the old man will finally die and the new man is born (Grof & Grof, 1995, p. 152).

Until the metanoic transformation (the crossing over the C-pit point) takes place, the rationality of the outside world appear as irrational to anyone moving at the end of the descending period (B zone). Also, the outside world may consider irrational any “playing around” these quicksand areas of the evolutionary spiraling process. Now the kingdom and realm experienced are those of death and the underworld, where intense suffering dominates the whole picture and the depths of the invisible world becomes visible. The situation is still one of maximal despair, disassociation, involution, a hyperpolar stage, an extreme dualism where all limits not only touch but even seem to melt into each other. Now the crossroads is full of crossfire in the middle of the lowest turning point. The inner and/or outer conflict dwells in a state of hyper-tension whose more negative effects are directed towards the outside and the inside as the situation appears as impossible to be dealt and coped with. The abyss is now too deep and its edges still too far apart to be jumped across. No salvation is yet possible. The soul is in danger of drowning in the “I Ching”-like great waters of the storm perceived as a psychic big-bang of the mind, a black hole where nothing seem to make sense at all.

Lineal time has disappeared into “atemporality”, symbolically uniting the divine and the demonic in the same psychic universe (“Abraxas time”) (Hesse, 1978, p. 78; Harguindey, 1998, p. 652). In that unfortunate eternal present of Divine Damnation all the powers of Heaven and Hell are not experienced as two quantitative or qualitative opposites but as two complementary forces, both belonging to an incommensurable and primordial "adualistic" context of living energy (God as coincidentia oppositorum in Jung?). Most interestingly, these timeless moments of total disassociation of a hell-like confusion can be specially recognized in many of the world classic literary characters. For instance, in Goethe´s Faust (“two souls dwell in my chest”), in the split thoughts and deeds Dostoyevki´s Dimitri Karamazov and Raskolnikov, and in Tolstoi´s Ana Karenina (“within me there is another one, and I am afraid of her”). Such paradoxical moments can also be detected in the doubts of Odysseus, in Herman Hesses´s Demian, in Hamlet, etc. From the unitarian CCPC-approach to crisis the extraordinary similarity among the crisis of all and each of these literary examples, and many others, can be perceived (Harguindey, 1998, chapters 7 and 14). This may lead in the direction of thinking that, at least up to a certain point, “all big conflicts are one”, at least in the steps trodden by the dynamics of the descending path, perhaps indicating a final common pathway and background for each and all psychospiritual diseases. From the point of view of psycho-spiritual research this could indicate, and eventually pave the way towards, the existence of “a general theory of human destructiveness”, at least on a preliminary basis.

From now on, within the bottom of the crisis and below its deepest turning point will stay forever buried the concept of the absolutism of lineal time as a valid mean to approach the understanding of the wholeness of “real world”, both objective and subjective. This happens since the moment that lineal time crosses the path of mythic-cyclic time at any of its different crossroads (Figure 1, points C, E, D, H and G points). In the same vein, from then on it will not be possible to think of “causality” and “rationality” as absolutes, this is, as the only valid concepts to analyze and try to understand everything that the whole spectrum of reality can embrace (Harguindey, 1998, pp. 605, 617). Neither the concept of “chance” seems to be able to stand the test. Finally, the in-depth study of the core of the crisis can open new possibilities to both discriminate and understand the relationships between predestination, fatalism, personal responsibility, destiny, free choice and self-transcendence. No matter that at the lowest point of the C-crisis they all appear to melt together in one single pot and the time/timelessness when they are encroached within the infinitesimal and infinite hole that “appears” at the (sometimes bottomless?) pit of the crisis of this most psycho-(il)logical situation.

The end of the dark stage

Since “healing springs from the center of evil” (Holderlin) and “the only way to go to Heaven is through hell” (Dante) overcoming the deepest darkness of the “crisis” soon begins to show its other numinous face and meaning. The disintegration-fragmentation experience eventually opens up to the opportunity of a new reintegration, when death will bring a metanoic rebirth to make a new life possible. Now the person begins to be able to feel the necessary inner strength to progressively detach from chaos and place increasing distance among the core and bottom of the pit and He can now “rationally” begin to conceive that he is not only what has happened/is happening to him. The amount of distance should be enough to allow him to realize that he is something more than all that personal “stuff”. This is the beginning of becoming a trans-person.

The new wave of an ascending time of regeneration and renewal (metacosmesis) begins to materialize also in the outside reality (Figure 1, ascending branch F). Beyond the limits of lineal rationality and twisted irrationality of the past, the end of those days gives birth to a new transrational universe, carrying a new man and a new order with it. Hermann Hesse summarized these considerations through the following words: “Chaos has to be recognized and lived through before it can be reintegrated into a new order”. In a previous publication we tried to express the entire meaning and consequences of the turning-over from the B to the F zones, the personal/transpersonal breakthrough across the C point, as follows:

“When the rational appears senseless and the absurd try to become logical, the essential conflict, born in well-nigh virgin reaches of human nature, is sparked off. Now the fundamental emotion explodes. If at that transcendental moment which verges on the trans-temporal, a violent flare of creative instinct, seemingly originating outside man, comes to halt the destruction and overcome death, the miracle happen. At this point conversion, psychological or religious, takes place. It is at that perilous juncture that the Marvelous – the Good, the True and the Beautiful - bursts forth, spontaneously and without warning. All of the sudden we find ourselves believing that we understand, even only during an infinitesimal time, the radiant Reason that sustains life and the intimate Beauty that throbs quietly behind the nature of the Universe. The birth of vision has arrived.

“Following that intense experience, nothing is the same as before and everything seems brand new. Myths and symbols now clarify, the postulates of different philosophies merge, and good and evil join together, transcending their fusion. Since guilt has now died original sin ceases to exist. The eternal comedies of humankind turn into tragedies and the apparent tragedy of life begins to take on hues of a divine comedy. And when reality thus changes, limits disappear. What previously separated human beings now bring them together and their value systems entirely change. Finally, the meaning of time acquires a different and new dimension, filling life with meaning to its smallest details. From this point on existence begins to make sense, and a natural form of human brotherhood arises” (Harguindey, 1987).

Even now, at the initial stages of the ascending branch of the F- zone, not all the negative aspects of the pit C-point can be left behind all at once. The power of the crisis and the quintessence of the storm may drag along with it remnants of “the disease” which will progressively dilute in an increasingly peaceful and calm sea. However, the “great waters” has been crossed over to the promised land and the choking, drowning abyss, have left Hades behind. A sense of meaning and purpose is concomitantly born, imbuing the soul with the light of a new hope. This purpose is of a quality superior and exterior to man (transpersonal and transtemporal), placing itself far beyond any of the facts themselves, a purpose that to the mystical person appears as “superior”, “purifying” and/or “intelligent” (Wilber, 1993, pp. 130).

From the ascending path to the interlude of the second interparadigmatic-interface period.

In the cases that the bottom of the crisis ends up with the overpowering-reigning ego the absolutism of the personal stage of evolution (stage III), is swallowed up within it. The activity of the ascending path inaugurates the new stage IV, or transpersonal (C to F zone) (Harguindey, chapters 7 and 14, p. 621). It is only well after the overcoming of the apocalyptic C-point when the true differences between the psychotic-regressive (fragmenting) and the mystic-unitive (creative) begins to appear more and more evident. Progressively, ascent towards healing follows a series of mathematical-like automatisms that the new nature is endowed with and that could be described as following an “amethodic method”. Decisions seem to “take by themselves” taking over the role of free choice and free will, at least until the self can take command of the whole personal-transpersonal process once again.

During this re-rationalizing or trans-rationalizing stage decisions are taken based on the new faith and insight more that on logic and reason, which is not of a blind nature anymore but that has become of an enlightened kind. The new faith got illuminated as a consequence of the fulgency of the past C-experience - as evil in the final service of goodness or the Devil in the final service of God, a Job and Faustian-like situation. The worst “pit” experience has become not only a fragment left behind, neither a premonitory sign of the passing-over of the narrowest straight and lowest point between a cosmic cycle and another, but an inside constituent belonging to the very same process of healing and redemption. Nothing in the spiraling process, lineal or cyclical, does ever surpass, either from above or below, the outside boundaries and limits of lineal time, which act as containers of the limits and dimensions of life (Figure 1, ascending and descending lines L and M). Finally, any area above or below lines L and M belong to “true timelessness”, the void and the unknown, perhaps implying other more encompassing and subtle dimensions.

The inner activity of the ascending path keeps moving up towards a time of regeneration and renewal (metacosmesis) (line F) that, after “locking up reality” at the cross-over point E, will eventually reach the highest climactic points D and H (“Goodness”, birth of new insights, infused science, etc.). It is be at these points when from “peak experiences” to the birth of new paradigms and even metanoic changes of an entire Eon and Era into a new one may materialize through a new synchronistic cross and circuit breaker of cyclic and lineal time. Each complete turn of the spiral of a cosmic cycle completes a phase of the wholeness of the evolutionary process, from personal cosmic. The entire world is appreciated anew and renovated from the interlude E crossing. It is time for peace and stability. A sense of being “born again” takes over the new self. The detachment obtained allows new basic interpretative approaches.

Synchronicities appear as normal happenings. Also, the new (trans)ego has acquired the necessary self-confidence to be able to synthesize and re-rationalize the irrational as well as the hidden worlds and depths experienced. The self has acquired the capacity to place enough distance from the lowest concentration of energy at the center of the crisis to be able to see himself as an outside “witness” of his own life which confers to him a high degree of freedom. This peaceful interlude is passively active in preparing the whole being to explore new and unknown frontiers waiting ahead.

From crisis to creativity and scientific insight: a positive side effect.

At this time stage (zone E to H) the first practical and beneficial effects can be observed. Scientific insights and discoveries can be passively “received” or integrated as if coming from a dream, even disguised as ecstatic and archetypal “forms”. Deep insight and intuition are stimulated by an extreme degree of hypersensitivity learned from the whole experiential process of breaking through the C zone. Some new truths appear to flash into the mind both from the inside and the outside of the self, with will and determination playing no role whatsoever. The not too well understood and always extraordinary phenomena of the birth of the creative genius also arises from these post-critical stages. Here, the spirit and/or the mind and/or the soul of the individual are still wide open by past injury stages and become receptive to any new experience. If these are of a very intense nature, the self is still in some danger of relapsing into strange moods and regressive areas of consciousness. Indeed, some flashing experiences of insight can induce severe psychosomatic symptoms in the intuitive researcher. He can even see himself as a psychological and/or spiritual guinea-pig on whom some strange forces are working upon, filling him up, even against his will, with all kinds of fragmented or crazy ideas. At first he may see himself as a passive witness of his own creative process, of whom not even himself understands its nature and purpose, a feature well known in the first physicists of the quantum-relativity fields (Dossey, 1986; Wilber, 1987).

However, the initial and brutal onslaught of the non-egoic realms has receded in its previous fury and the body-mind-soul has progressively acquired the necessary autonomy and discipline to provide an ordered expression to a multiplicity of images, voices and intuitions. These assailed the individual involved in the experiential process of personal-transpersonal growth at the interface-interlude levels of consciousness experienced at this stage (Washburn, 1999, p. 320). Strong feelings of awe, wonder and surprise of the discoveries that are “made for him” or “gifted to him” or “infused into to him” may take over the “iniciatic” researcher, who a the same time may feel that he is observing himself both from inside and outside himself. Near-death and out of the body experiences can remain at these ascending stages as marks left form the lashing of the abysmal C-point experience along the personal/transpersonal ascent of the evolutionary spiral.

The hypersensitivity acquired in personal-transpersonal evolution also allows that an entire world of myths and symbols jumps to the surface from the unconscious. This feature may represent a subconscious defense mechanism providing the means to achieve an integrated hermeneutic interpretation, providing a kind of understanding which is badly needed. Serendipity and peripheral vision are also stimulated, beyond any personal will or control, as aftermath of the crisis. Further automatisms of the true creative and learning process keep pushing and digging for a radical and outreaching degree of understanding, aiming at a “complete explanation of the conflict”. This stage is also active at encouraging perception of global interconnectedness of many scattered fragments of reality left behind by the previous descending “analytic” branch (areas J and B). At a later stage, the pieces of the puzzle of both branches, descent and ascent, will “hierarchically” glue together into an integrated and healing process of synthesis.

Time for questions for overcoming pathology.

The questions that the self asks itself after the crisis should not be the kind of superficial, personal and self-defeating ones that previously overcame him, like: “Why all this happens (to me)?” Instead, he is tested by a deeper and mostly trans-personal query, a universal and symbolic cosmic screaming that shouts “to him” from within: “What is the meaning of all this?” (Ortiz Oses, 1982; Ortiz Oses & Mayr, 1988). Not fully conscious and master of himself yet, this outcry is a desperate attempt to find sense and meaning to all the appearance of absurdity and senselessness experienced through the previous descending and abysmal periods left behind. Now, the self, naked and powerless in front of the gods, begs, craves and demands a complete answer from them. States of high contemplative ecstasies and revelation may begin to flash upon the individual spirit. This utter immersion into the non-dualistic intimacy of inner transcendental experience, even considering its “scientific” aspects, has been masterly depicted by John of the Cross in his poem: “I entered not knowing where” (1996, pp. 135-138), a perfect description of the entire cycle of the spiral of the time/timelessness experience in its lowest and highest aspects, both at once.

Sharp changes could still can be important during the ascending branch because the turmoil and vortex of the storm of the acute descent and spell in Hades had not yet been fully overcome and persisted well into the time of regeneration (F zone). Flashbacks of the bottom of the transpersonal crisis may still give rise to panic attacks and insulation from the outside world. Even now the self feels misunderstood by his surroundings, thinking of others as complete strangers to the world, his world. These “bilateral” feelings of alienation may create, besides an almost total lack of communication, a lot of hardship in what they were previously healthy relationships with family and friends. Well into the ascending branch diagnoses such as maniac-depressive psychosis, temporal lobe epilepsy and schizophrenia can persist in the minds of some professionals, although they had been diagnosed before, at the onset of the B-C spells. Other remaining conflictive aspects lingering through the ascending interparadigmatic period (F and E areas) originate from the difficulties in finding a sharp separation between the potentially positive aspects of the initial post-critical ascent (branch C to E) and its dissociating aspects, cataclysm of B-period and chaos of the C-point. This is secondary to the existence of a high degree of overlapping among different phases occurs, with sharp regressions and progressions in between them that they do not last, sometimes making it impossible to know in which stage the “patient” is a certain moment.

Sometimes, the intensity of the ascending branch of the spiral and the complex picture accompanying psycho-spiritual rebirth presents a dynamic too steep to climb and too fast and unexpected to be orderly integrated (superior dissociation). Other associated pathologies, both physical and psychosomatic, may climb to the surface revealing different aspects of the underlying process of intimate contact with the deepest source (Grof, 1985, ch. 2). Finally, an urgent “need to learn, to know and integrate” now felt can present as severe episodes of anxiety, which, if left to their own, can induce a dissociation induced by the “higher than tolerated” speed of growth.

In summary, the instability of this second interparadigmatic period (F zone) does not make of the ascending branch a “rose garden” for the self. It still has serious problems coping with a changing situation that tilts between the ultimate possibility of final transformation and ascent and the fear of falling backwards into the regression and fragmentation of a new C-situation. The final success will be after bringing back to the surface an still half-sunk spiritual Titanic and rebuild it into a solar Titan of the spirit. This “day after” situation has to pay all its dues for the overcoming of the previous brainstorming experience as depicted by trans-critical crisis of smaller intensity. In any case, the ascent increasingly opens new “windows of opportunity” (Trias, 1994) carrying high utopia feelings and intermittent attacks of euphoria. Any further description of the symptoms and signs of these pathologies have been described elsewhere and are outside the scope of this paper (Wilber, 1993; Grof, 1985; Grof & Grof, 1992, 1995; Washburn 1999).

On the contrary, while our experimental Dante-like guinea pig keeps climbing along the path, from Hell through Purgatory towards Paradise - the necessary trip - high feelings of altruism, delight, beatitude, as well as the first onsets of “peak experiences” may begin to appear, however yet in an intermittent and somewhat disorganized manner. Little by little, the possibility of a deep sense of meaning and increasing interconnectedness keeps dawning. Short spells of deep-felt peace and silence at the E-crossroads begin to appear and can be interpreted as a relief sent by some angelical and celestial blessings. It is in the middle of this “silence” that the unknown and the unknowable manifest (Krishnamurti, 1994).

After the new E-passing over any previous feelings of self-despise and despair, not to mention narcissism or egocentrism, are turning now into growing feelings of healthy self-esteem. A new kind of beyond personal, transcending love (agape) begins to emerge along with the new state of a progressively more and more integrated growth and ascent (F to D or E to H zone). All self-importance lost, the self begins to be able to recognize its ultimate union with the divine, an unavoidable vocational trend that, paradoxically, will eventually become his only and highest freedom of choice. In this context, a new form of universal and transrational reason, o re-rationalized trans-rationality, embraces all the previous partialities and blindness of rationalism and irrationality. This shows the way to a new form of thought (suprarational) carrying a new dimension of freedom that has already climbed to a higher step in the ladder of evolution towards the divine in man. This self-conscious and true free will only be limited by cosmic necessity, as portrayed by Spinoza´s “Three ways of knowing” (Spinoza, 1951; Spinoza, 1976, pp. 195-200). In summary, it is not a confusing and challenging “to be or not to be” what matters anymore, but that now the self IS through Not Being and IS NOT by trying to be himself, only himself (cosmic adualism). Hints of a higher transpersonal destiny appear to insinuate a deep sense of meaning and purpose to the whole spiraling process, both ascending and descending.

The end of a spiraling cycle and the outburst of the peak-turning point.

Further ascent along the E to H branch of the spiral progressively increases the feelings of well being and the positive aspects of the transforming process. Since we are not dealing with an “all or none” lineal process relapse into regressive areas of growth are always possible. However, these regressive tendencies are less and less frequent and likely to succeed as we approach the H zone. The transpersonal personality is stronger, more integrated and immune to psycho-spiritual. At this point in the chain the healing process has practically won the battle since now the abyss is so far behind that it is hardly recognized anymore. The time is favorable to do what the “I Ching” depicts as “to cross the great waters”, in other words, it is the moment to try to do great deeds and overcome big problems. It is also the time for Ulysses to be back home and peacefully rest on the sand of the beaches surrounding Ithaca. The much pains and wounds put up with by the long sea-travel and the many difficulties overcome in the unknown and deep waters of the sea of darkest night have healed. All and each one of the devilish tricks and “multiple-choice tests” presented in front of the eyes of the self by the undifferentiated spirits that are always ready to challenge our higher destinies have been passed and overcome. Now we can even recognize that even the worst and most irrational difficulties were no more than that: a test, an exam to pass or to flunk, where no chance-questions were never asked or cheating was at all possible.

Finally, in our experimental laboratory and university of human consciousness, evolution and transformation, the big family of self-actualizers and spiritual guinea pigs, from Faust to Ulysses to Dante are welcome and given honors. At the same time we ask from these our heroes, those who are characterized by daring “to jump to the next stage of consciousness” (Wilber), for their forgiveness and compassion.

Once again, lineal and cyclical time melt into each other and disappear once more into timelessness at the D and H contact-points, both melting into a living –now divine, previously hellish - feeling of an eternal present. It is time for the full-fledged manifestations of true peak experiences and for full integration. It is also the timeless time when the highest expressions of creativity of “the wise and holy” become easy to understand through empathy, so becoming plain and clear (I Ching, “The Creative”, p. 79). Perennial people of all times and ages, both oriental and occidental, have reached the conclusion that all this spiraling growth indicate that at the end of all endings and cycles a final G point comes alive. It is at this point when Ulysses recovers his motherland of the spirit. Now Dante reaches the highest circles of The Empyrean, where eternity “becomes that moment for which all times are the present”, so melting lineal and cyclical time in a final cross. At that time/timelessness Faust finds that “Woman Eternal” that “draws us on high” (Goethe, 1976, p. 308). Now, everything and all are no more than One, and The Good, the True and the Beautiful merge into One Single Essence. It is the end of all things and, at the same time, the beginning of all things. And all is light, harmony, peace, synchronicity, elective affinity, eternal present. But still now, since we, humans, can not express ourselves without “talking about time”, we can only dream of the placeless place and the timeless time where the minds and spirits of Plato, Christ, Buddha and Lao-Tzu belong. An this is more than enough for the time being.

A note

The overwhelming amount literature about peak, mystic and/or nucleo-transcendental experiences as well as the high-plateau experience (transpersonal maturity) and Maslow´s post-mortem life is beyond the scope of this paper (Clearly & Shapiro, 1995). After the D-peak turning point perhaps a new cycle is beginning, perhaps a new descending branch (line D to E) is already working around us, however any new spiral will always move at a higher and more developed level than the previous one. In any case, metanoia has occurred. Enantodromia lives. A New Life too. And the Omega point is always waiting-always present-always there-always here-always transpersonal-always timeless-always eternal.

The CCPC Theory.

This approach aims at being integral at trying to investigate and define the hidden and subtle whats, whys and how of any “underlying” process that, showing an indeterminate but evident degree of predetermination suggests a general theory of crisis, conflict and evolution. It travels through ascending and descending pathways in a spiraling dynamic. In previous publications we have tentatively forwarded a name for it: “The Crossroads-Crossfire-Turning Point Theory of Conflict” (CCPC) or “Crisis Irruption Theory” (Harguindey, 1998, chapter 14). The goal is to try to understand down to the maximal possible depth the entire living process, from the personal to the universal, paying attention to the cosmic cycles and the parallelisms existing between microcosm to macrocosm, since “like it is above it is below”. The bulk of our attention is directed to the two opposite and main turning points, lowest and the highest (C and D points). It is too early to predict if this all-encompassing attempts and considerations will help to better understand and prepare future strategies to heal human evil (Scott Peck, 1983; Harguindey 1998, chapter 7). Neither is possible at this time to advance if new preventive measures can be activated in order to avoid the most negative effects and destructive consequences of the sudden onset of deep psychospiritual crisis, personal and sociopolitical. Perhaps, it will be eventually feasible to recognize in advance the arrival of enormous levels and concentrations of positive or negative energy contexts that any impending D and C turning points carry within them. Also, one has to realize that lineal time limits, from both above and below, all-possible turns and potentials of the spiral from a peak-point to the next peak-point (H to H). Furthermore, a whole turn of the wheel can last from seconds to entire lifetimes and eras, possibly beyond that. The “A interval” (E to N zone) will separate consecutive transitional stages, indicating different eras, paradigms, or even personal “lives”.

The final goal of this philosophical approach based upon the farthest, up and down, limits of existence that can be conceived, is to arrive to an experiential non-dual approach to the dynamics of an entire cycle of life and its accompanying changes in levels of consciousness. An integral approach of this kind would have to be able to achieve an early identification of the dynamics leading to both the deepest crisis and the highest ecstasies. This is of paramount importance in order to be useful to help through the descending path, overcome the lowest points of the conflict and speed up the healing resolution. This therapeutic effect will have to be accomplished with the less possible damage to person and world. To this ending, it is highly important to reconstruct both the descending dynamics of acute experiential processes and the learning accumulated during the most negative (and positive) critical times (the “pit” and “peak” experiences). Similarly, we would need to map the dynamics of the whole helicoid context as well as the cohort of surrounding the limit turning points.

Hopefully, this in-depth cyclical approach may also provide an opportunity to outreach towards a better understanding of the implicated “presence” of the past, giving sense to senselessness and meaning to what was previously considered either as simple “chance”, undeserved happiness or, on the contrary, absurdity and tragedy. An embracing of the whole at once would lead in turn to new possibilities to further penetrate into the nature and deterministic meaning of synchronistic phenomena, which could now be reinterpreted looking back from a “day after” perspective. Also, another learning aftermath would be to open new ways to the understanding of the implicated potential of the destiny-inducing multifactorial contexts involved in the whole CCPC process (the presence of the future). This implies the integration of the whole path of disintegration-death-reintegration and its effects in predetermining the different futures opened by the highest and lowest turning points. This global attempt may lead consciousness higher and higher into new and unpredictable contexts and openings at the many different levels: personal, transpersonal, spiritual, evolutionary, world-centric, etc.

On the other hand, the study of the dynamics of the CCPC spiral demand a non-dual “deep fishing expedition”, a complete degree of involvement, an immersion within all its stages if an in-depth study of the innermost secrets of nature is to be expected. This pure learning should be deep enough to apply it not only to spiritual awakening and self-transcendence but to any other kind of critical periods of life. In this line, different pit and/or peak turning points separate different transitional stages in the life and growth of the individual. These range from the overcoming of the oedipal complex to the first adult crisis and from the ego-pathologies of adulthood, like the adult-narcissistic crisis. Finally, it is most desirable than the new learning can be applied to help in overcoming feelings of worthlessness and meaninglessness in old age as well as in the last existential crisis in consciously lived pre-terminal physical situations as the final transition stage in lineal time (Washburn, 1999).

From the point of view of treatment this preliminary understanding could help transpersonal-oriented therapists with their patients. Now, “the next time” strange winds announce that an oncoming psychospiritual tornado or earthquake is in the making we will be in a better position to recognize in advance the warning signs and patterns involved “behind the curtains”. In this way we will also be better prepared to “apprehend the future” in order to promptly deal with any descending dynamics through a preventive interference with the propitiatory fields and other dynamics of conflict. This “being ahead of time” is necessary in order to warn others against unexpected and back stabbing onset of any terrible and destructive crisis, from personal to spiritual to sociopolitical. Indeed, the individuals better prepared to help and show others along these lines will always be the ones who have obtained themselves a high degree of “psychological and spiritual immunity”. This can only be learned through previous experiential processes which have allowed a few “cutting-edge consciousness” to achieve an intimate and non-dual learning of the general dynamics of “big crisis and conflict”, and from there of the whole cycling process. This kind of growth that can only be learned in the universal university of the limits, lowest and highest, of human life and consciousness (psychospiritual preventive medicine). (Weil, 1997). Under this integral perspective, the in-depth reading and interpretation of Shakespeare tragedies and Dostoyevki´s late novels (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, The Karamazov Brothers) become first line examples of this kind of in-depth teaching. Their main characters are prime examples of acute psychic and/or spiritual crisis, C and D turning points, as well as expressions of all the descending and ascending components and stages.

A good perspective needs distance.

The most important aspects of any intimate learning come after personal consciousness is able to set itself at a certain distance and detachment of the entire, sometimes dantesque, expedition to the depths of any descending pre-dynamics leading to an “oncoming earthquake” (the personal-transpersonal interparadigmatic stage). However, there is not chance to succeed in such an attempt before: 1) breaking through the core of the crisis, and 2) overcoming the after-effects of climbing the ascending path until the completion of an entire spiral cycle through its highest point. Only after these two stages have been hierarchically integrated will it be possible to re-rationalize the whole experience. Some of these learned aftermaths are: a) the new sensitivity acquired may make it possible to predict some aspects of the future - to deeply eel “the presence and direction of the future”. If this could be proven to be so “scientifically”, human beings would find themselves in a vantage position to forecast and prevent some of the destructive consequences of the shaking created by the epicenter of an oncoming psychic quake. A process that until the last moment hides within the entrails of the earth or of the mind the potential of destroying the entire building of life, both in himself and in others.

At this point it is difficult to prove if such “prophetic foretelling” of oncoming crisis and conflict will eventually be able to be reproduced to obtain enough scientific credit, at least in certain cases and circles, even through a mathematical and/or scientific formulation (Harguindey, 1981). However, the main difficulty arises from the multiple factors and conditions intermingled in the pre-dynamics of severe crisis and conflicts, as well as the underground subtlety, subconscioussness and complexity of the living pre-contexts leading to the onset of a new crisis and/or dark nights of the soul. Right now, any attempt to foresee and integrate all the multifactorial conditioning that is about to reach a “critical mass effect” appears as a most difficult task, however it may be conceivable. The main point is how to intercept at once, or how to act therapeutically through an “implosion”, the sparkling fire that will prevent the sudden explosion of a psychic quake bound a high degree of uncontrollable disorder, such as it happens in a spiritual emergency. Examples of unexpected backgrounds leading to the irruption of crisis can be found in the effects induced by the sudden death of a beloved person, a strong emotional upheaval, the irruption of a psychotic episode, the diagnosis of a deadly disease, etc.

The fact that the onset of a high intensity earthquake-like crisis is unavoidable in some situations, teaches that we should be prepared for them, this is, each one should fight his own fears in advance. Nobody should allow him or herself that the limits of either lineal time (span of life) or cyclical time (the periods and transforming experiences) should ever overwhelm us. The best learning is trans-personal, the belief that life is more than that. In any case, and in order to be able to obtain the best possible help in all cases, close attention should be paid to the iniciatic/shamanic dictum that says that “only the injured can heal”. An integral approach to healing and positive transformation based upon the entire spiral of consciousness and spiritual development will also require broadening the concept of how much the concept of “empiricism” can embrace. If this can be extended from its present-day straitjacketing conditions, an outreaching high jump leap of global consciousness could radically transform the present state of human evolution. Nowadays, what it is already beyond doubt is that any attribute of absolutism and validity of the rationalistic-modern-scientific-reduccionistic-“popperian” approach (lines L and M) is well over. Furthermore, its accompanying concept of the unilaterally aspect of the arrow of lineal time, past to present to future (chronos), has been already buried by the end of the descending path of the spiral and, most of it all, by the bottom of the crisis. At both the C and H points, the absolutism of lineal time and rationalistic thinking - and modernism and its “rational madness” with it - has been swallowed up and disappeared as the only valid means of understanding. Furthermore, the ascending spiral (teleological?, a the DNA helicoid of the spirit?) overcomes the final closing up of a cyclic-mythic time whose other absolutism of “the power of the will” (versus the always open taoist wu-wei) is the main characteristic of any prepersonal to freudian-marxist to fascist-totalitarian philosophy. In either case, all-lineal or all-cyclical, such old and obsolete conceptions of life only leave fear, narcissism and a will to power as the ultimate possible “meaning” for human life and evolution, a very poor bet indeed.

Finally, it should be realized that myths and symbols are not good or bad in themselves, since on one hand they have essential in backing up the highest spiritual and scientific achievements of humankind but also the gas chambers of Auswitchz. We make them “good” if we take them as mediators for growth, meaning and learning experience (the hermeneutic approach). We make them “bad” if we give them an absolute deterministic value of what the external world should be and how should it be conformed. So, the “touch and go” D and H turning points, as well as the more objective E points, may reflect intersections (the Christian cross? Buddhist illumination?, the bottomless pit?) of both kinds of time, cyclical and lineal, at certain points. This suggests (and proves?) an ascending openness of the myth of the eternal return (ref: M. Eliade) (line I to G, or holonomic growth, line N) even suggesting the existence of a G “antigravity “point, or transpersonal Eden, versus the initial prepersonal Eden represented by point I. Another beneficial “side-effect” of this “both ways now” model could be the possibility of aiming at an integration of the ladder structural model of growth and evolution of Wilber and the spiral model proposed by Michael Washburn (Wilber, 1995; Washburn, 1999). At the same time the place and respective roles of the psychoanalytic method and transpersonal-integral psychology could be further elucidated (Wilber, 1993, 1995; Washburn, 1999). The aim here is to arrive to a fully integrated mystic-unitive psychology and psychospirituality that can serve as the basis for a necessary integral, personal and global, transformation.

Pre-destinies, fate, destiny, free choice, vocation and superior destiny. It is time to understand time?

A few questions arise. Will man ever be able to create his own synchronicity situations? Can he (or she) be a freer master of himself, as well as a better forger of his own highest possible destiny beyond the limits of personal karma? Can a superior kind of understanding and overcoming help both the individual and humankind to ascend through more healthy ways through the always-steep ladder of life and evolution? Would this myriad of considerations and all the transpersonal work will ever have any impact in improving acceptance and compassion at a global level? A new ascending and “quantum leap” appears necessary in order to clarify many conflicting areas of consciousness. Such a task may be most difficult, but is possible and necessary, requiring to place ourselves at once beyond both lineal and cyclic time (Spinoza´s sub specie aeternitatis?) (Spinoza, 1976, p. 157). This position represents a humble and timeless ivory watchtower that lives the future no less than the present and the past, the three tenses now melting in one and so becoming that relativistic illusion that Einstein applied to lineal time (Einstein, 1954). No wonder the religious fervor that the known physicist felt towards the pan-en-theistic (not pantheistic) and non-dual concepts of the advaitist/vedanta-like Spinoza (1956, Introduction). The same “quantum-integrated” concept of lineal-cyclic time is also transmitted by the words of Lao Tzu: “The past and the future follow each other”. This suggests a living presence of the past in the present and in the future, and vice versa. This kind of thinking is also transmitted by Goethe´s two sentences: “What I have as see it as from the distance and what is past to me becomes existence” (Goethe, 1976, Dedication of “Faust”) and “My love is with the ones who work for eternity” (Goethe, 1982). Such an involved, and always evolving, non-dual, both transcendental and at the same time immanent form of religiosity and spirituality, has also been explored in great depth by spanish philosopher Raimon Panikkar (Panikkar, 1993, 1998). In studying the conformation of the real world and in order to embrace the entire spectrum of reality many other important questions arise from focusing the main bulk of attention upon the “peak” and “pit” turning points. An approach, to be fully integral, should shelter all that is encountered between both “timeless” points C and D (the apparent limits of life in its farthest reaches). A true holistic and all-embracing perspective should also help to improve our learning among the relationships between good and evil and all its unfolding dynamics (Peck, 1982; Harguindey, 1998, ch. 7) This could lead to reach the necessary degree of understanding that would facilitate “to make a better world for you and me”. The CCPC (“pre-quintessential?”) conceptualization might thus allow to embrace and foretell how an entire wide range of possibilities the decaying dynamics of the descending path (branch J to B) will soon reduce in range and number (predestines). Pre-destinations that the pit of the crisis constricts to a maximum degree, narrowly framing the limits of fatality (fate). On the other hand, the dynamics of the ascending pathway will allow once again for the concept of a progressive and higher degree of freedom to emerge (free will). Finally, the highest peak experience, which will complete an entire cycle, will bring into the soul the sense of a transpersonal role (higher mission or transpersonal destiny).

This final elevated stage usually carries with it a strong “vocational” component. According to Carl Jung vocation is a “call” from which no one can escape, which at the same time indicated the way to achieve our highest degree of freedom and meaning. Thus, the destructive-creative cycle will finally open to the beatific and apparent paradox that man´s truest destiny can not free himself – does not have a choice - from the highest possible degree of freedom. I this is so, human essence is of a religious nature. The consequence is that a superior spiritual destiny becomes what Gandhi referred to as “the only freedom is that worth fighting for”, this meaning “not having a choice” to chose. This paradox, paradoxically, ends up with paradox itself, showing the final unfolding of psychospiritual evolution. Abraham Maslow himself considered that at the level of the highest metamotivations a kind of spinozist transcendence of the dichotomy between free will and fate ensues. At that “spiritual” crossroads one embraces, happily and freely, all his circumstances and limitations, his own destiny, not with a sense of renunciation, but with love and enthusiasm (eupsychia). Maslow also stressed that the deeper the degree of discernment the higher the syntony between free will and determinism (Maslow, 1982, p. 400). This can only be understood, in our opinion, at the vocational-spiritual level of self-actualization and achievement afforded by non-dual understanding.

Further applications of the crossroads-crossfire-turning point-conflict (CCPC) could be found by using both the C and H (or D) transition zones as the starting areas of consciousness to study the relationships between evolution and involution. There is when and where things really “turn around”, from the big crisis to the birth of new paradigms, at all levels of understanding, from the personal, to the historical and sociopolitical areas (Wilber, 1995; Harguindey, 1998, p. 648). Besides, this radical and etiological approach seems to be useful in the study of the relationships of Good and Evil, as well as in their full-blown manifestations (points C and D).

In all these cases it becomes necessary to start focusing all our attention to the sharp dividing line at the bottom of the crisis. Otherwise, it will be impossible to understand which are the ultimate factors and dynamics involved in “the crossing-over” from the lowest point in involution, chaos, fragmentation and destructiveness - the end of the descending path or C-zone – back into the ascending path (F zone). In other words, great efforts have to be made in order to dig into the complex contexts which may finally sink and choke the spirit in an unredeemable fate or determine the opening of a new way towards true realization, a higher creative destiny and, hopefully, final deliverance and salvation. Finally, if all conflicts and creativity follow similar building patterns of development, their dynamics could follow a common final pathway. In the same vein, a great deal of experiential evidence seem to indicate that all mystical experiences have enough in common that it can be said that all are one, regardless of their cultural background. Thus, a similar situation may arise that allows to say that all conflicts are one. If this would be so, the possibility arises to preliminarily conceive the developing a general theory of destructiveness and a general theory of human creativity.

There is evidence that indicates that the insight provided by a high contemplative status can have direct access to the necessary energy level for a metanoic qualitative change to become fully activated, this making metanoic transformation possible (John of the Cross, 1996; Wilber, 1986; Panikkar 1999, p.140). The lesson arising from these general considerations is that the only ascending and evolutionary alternative to a situation of stagnation and decadence will have to be finally materialized, or self-actualized, through a trans-human spiritual endeavor (the so called “natural miracle” in taoist literature).

An in-depth study of the life and circumstances of any growing human being it can be observed that his or her evolution and, in many occasions, final destiny, seem to be strongly conditioned, but not fully and/or rigidly predetermined (pre-destinies), by very few “specific events”. Many daily “small turning points” continuously ensue and “penetrate” within the temporal space and existence of the individual in apparently casual, chance-like, and subtle ways. Only occasionally these events manifest in the long term their strength as forgers of personal evolution. Neither at the time of their initial onset they are “fully conscious” and “freely” chosen. Most simple and innocent wishes, decisions or behaviors, which at first do not show even the weakest potential to play any role in the subsequent development of the individual destiny, many times hide within themselves an strong pre-deterministic potential for the future (Lao Tzu, 1994, pp. 156-157, 159). These subtle and unnoticed points in time can, even all of a sudden, become “points of no-return” and, in so doing, yield the seeds and roots that forge posterior junctions, bifurcations and new and unexpected conformations of the tree of life. Such apparently harmless at the beginning, “destiny-locking” features, when interpreted from within the CCPC “time/timelessness context”, sometimes carry an enormous psychological potential and strength, enough to strictly predetermine all future fate, personal or socio-historical, once their fire has been ignited.

Thus, any previous and underlying process that end up in the activation of a CCPC-Abraxas crossroads-crossfire situation can be from fully unconscious to subconscious to fully conscious (but denied). Many times a myriad of conditioning factors create integral propitiatory fields that conforms the range, mobility, level of consciousness, freedom of choice and final destiny of a particular human being. In this line, is apropos to recall Lao Tzu words when specifically addresses the obscure problem of the intricate relationships between fat, free will and destiny with the following words: “The beginnings of fortune are subtle, the origins of disgrace confusing. The factors determining fortune and disgrace are subtle to the point that can not be foretold. Wise man see their beginnings and their ends” (Lao Tzu, 1994). Perhaps the best source of information at hand to study these deterministic processes comes from the tragic destinies of many universal characters in world classical literature (Werther, Karamazov, Prince Mishkin, Ana Karenina, most of the main characters in Shakespeare’s tragedies, etc) (Harguindey, 1998, ch. 14)). This will be considered in this context in the following section. From a highly developed psychological and spiritual perspective, these characters teaches us something otherwise quite evident: that human fate is a direct or indirect consequence of human beings own, conscious or unconscious, thoughts, deeds and “frames of mind”.

As we do believe in the final existence of “causeless chance”, we are prepared to accept that the psychospiritual laws have to be the same ones for all human beings, be in one or in a thousand lifetimes. Then, we are bound to conclude that personal responsibility becomes the main and ultimate factor in human personal/transpersonal destiny. This philosophy can not be thought as “only rational”, of course. However, even the most enlightened being still falls short form finding a complete explanation of many facts, mainly childhood suffering along historical time (Frankl, 1979), from Auswitchz to infants dramatically rescued (or not rescued) after being buried alive for many days under the 1999 Turkish earthquake. The “terror of history” of Mircea Eliade is still waiting for an answer that can justify it and compensate it in the eyes of man. In any case, the predestination potential of those subtle destiny-locking decisions, however trivial they might seem at the time of their initial manifestations, and even before, could only be properly interpreted by not believing in the concept of “chance happenings” or in the absolute value of lineal time. Most likely, they should be interpreted as continuous multiple choice tests that a self-aware life itself has written in its own hidden seeds, implicit roots and folded codes. This may be indicating the existence of some kind of “mathematics of the spirit” working behind the sensitive and empirical world. However the great difficulties presented even to the beings with the deepest degrees of insight, the dynamics carried by these predestination points of intersection continually ask new questions and offer new answers to the searching mind. Their questions are always there, always around, always here, always hiding, always waiting for us, trying to test us to interpret and understand all exteriors from all interiors, stimulating us to jump ahead as in a Zen “koan”. Perhaps they are attempting to help us to transcend all outer appearances pushing us towards an integral hermeneutic approach, that second after second, is asking us not “What is this?” not even “How it happens?” but “What is the meaning of it all?”).

The death-life miracle and the “cosmic necessity” concept in evolution.

In order to study of the patterns of the descending dynamics and the onset of the deep crisis it was deemed worthwhile to pay close attention to those critical turning points that become of paramount importance in the destiny of some of the most universal, as well as unhealthy, tragic an/or conflictive characters of the world classical literature. An insightful and emphatic understanding of the “descending” dynamics of their fates allows to “foresee” at one synthetic glance many of the characteristics of subtle and subconscious (pre)determining processes. This makes it possible to penetrate in the always conditioning meaning of the past, no matter how absurd and senseless it may appear to the observer, or even to the sufferer of tragic fate, at the time of its initial outer manifestations. Also, through the insight provided by the CCPC approach we can be able to even (re) rationalize, and so get to understand, what initially appeared as absolutely sick and irrational. This in depth identification of the pre-dynamics of crisis and conflict open the door of a new level of integral consciousness of the entire range of reality and its possibilities, sometimes even to a process of enlightened hope.

Many times, however, a pre-deterministic situation that carries a high degree of unfolded and subliminal destructive energy can turn, almost instantaneously, in highly creative and constructive situation, perhaps mimicking episodes of maniac-depressive psychosis, like in “The Karamazov Brothers” or “Ana Karenina”. This apparent mixing of C and D points, pit and peak, as well as the sudden changes and transformations accompanying them may implicate the concept of “natural miracle” of taoism, compromising “lineal causality” as the only valid morphogenetic principle (Jung, 1976, ch. 14; “I Ching”, 1977, prologue; 1987; Peat, 1988). Such kind of “limit” situations can only be secondary to the fact that until the climactic moment burst upon reality all the hidden pre-deterministic potentials had not be pre-seen or foretold because they belonged to the unconscious realm. This, however, does not rule out a living process building behind until a mass effect takes place which suddenly ascends to consciousness and awareness, sometimes irrupting as an unexpected emergency in a split of a second (psychic earthquake or spiritual emergency). The manifested energy of the new transformed and transforming momentum (metanoia) may even indicate a complete breach of the continuity of lineal time in between a “before” and a “after” the crisis. This is an “Abraxas time/timelessness” and death-life situation where the final breakthrough should be considered a “normal and unavoidable consequence”, however supralogical and transpersonal, of a qualitative and non-lineal transition in between different levels of consciousness.

Such kind of changes, dimensions and states of consciousness perfectly agree with the emergency of a pre-constituted reality pre-shaped by morphogenetic or neo-morphogenetic fields. At least the presence of a predeterministic neo-morphogenetic and neo-energetic field can be systematically observed in the long term building of neoplasia, even for many years before the first symptoms and signs become manifest (Harguindey, et al., 1989; Harguindey et al., 1995). A process that, however undetectable, shows that exists and has a life of its own as “presence of the past” (Sheldrake, 1988b). This determination also implies a certain “presence of the future” within the context of the possibilities opened by the different predetermining emergent situations (Harguindey, 1998, p. 613). New light always illuminates and open new windows of opportunity towards evolutionary realms and potential realities that otherwise would have not been possible to detect or even conceive (at least “rationally). Thus, the final materialization of a new conformation of reality brings about the external materialization of a subliminal propitiatory pattern that, until a certain point in time, had been kept hidden in its own archetypal matrix. This is what orthodox medicine calls “idiopathic”, this is, unknown. Nothing else is necessary since definitions, classifications and mysterious words are enough to satisfy the vanity world of academics.

The “new and miraculous flourishing”, however, can now be reinterpreted and re-rationalized as secondary to the overcoming of the most destructive manifestations of the acute and deep crisis. The new situation (or paradigm) can even follow “quasi-mathematical” patterns that may appear as something really strange at the beginning. The reason is that everything looks completely new when seen from a higher and more integral perspective, the stage of re-rational and/or trans-rational understanding (vision-logic). This allows to think about the past that “it all had to be that way” because of the some inner necessity of the entire process (pre-destiny, fate, personal destiny, even ignorance). At the same time, approaching the conformation of the whole range of reality from the CCPC theory and the “Abraxas time/timelessness moments” allows to “stop” time to in order to conceive past, present and future melting into one single and timeless thing. This allows us to have access to the new relativistic and transpersonal sub specie aeternitatis perspective and place ourselves in an unbiased and synthetic position to predict the propitiatory probabilities of the three tenses. This is similar to the taoist approach to the relative and cycling aspects of time as summarized in Lao-Tzu´s words: “The past and the future follow each other”, a thought that appears to transmit a similar lesson than Einstein´s dictum: “For us, physic theorists, past, present and future are no more that an illusion, however an stubborn one”.

The entire CCPC approach may lead may lead to further penetrative insight into what we have tentatively called, as a para-taoist and para-karmic though: “the mathematics of the spirit”. This concept implies the “necessity” of sudden changes, for better or for worse, as they are widely and deeply considered in the “I Ching” or Book of Changes. This concept is similar, or perhaps even the same one, to the spinozist proposal that says that things take place out of their own inner and cosmic necessity (Spinoza, 1976, pp. 163, 168, 198).

Some conclusions about human life and the limits of consciousness: life in an experimental test-tube and under the microscope of a spiritual laboratory.

The wheel of the Myth of Eternal return has turned.

Further insight is obviously needed to know well in advance where, when and how a new physical, psychological, psychosomatic or spiritual earthquake is bound to take place creating despair, and leading into chaos (Grof & Grof, 1995). Some authors and philosophies think that historical features depend upon cosmic cycles in nature and that, in so doing, can become potentially intelligible and predictable (Eliade, 1994, p. 134; I Ching, 1977). The critical turning points, however, which may occur unexpectedly, however often came preceded by “deep foretelling presages” (Tolstoi, 1990), become outwardly manifest when the accumulation of multifactorial quantitative changes in protoenergy bring a brisk qualitative change in external (objective) and/or internal (subjective) realities. This could be compared to a change in nuclear structure, inducing ascending or descending energetic changes in psychospiritual “orbitals”. Such, even pre-structural, changes finally induce a “consciousness mass effect”, otherwise represented in the turning over from one hexagram of the “I Ching” to another one. Those always mysterious turning points can be observed, experienced and approached as phenomena of synchronicity, instantly (transtemporally?) modifying everything up to the point that, generally only a posteriori, we can be able to sharply pinpoint and identify a “before” and an “after” those singularities. The D and C points appear to the outside, not too sensitive, observer as two separated kinds of reality, each one of a very different nature which somehow, even miraculously, have melted into one.

The enormous changes induced by the dynamics of the D and C (peak and pit) points also allows a post-critical “day-after” analysis of them and the potentials, consequences and mutations as determined by their “earthquaking” activity. A holistic-integral interpretation of the whole helicoid process can provide with a deep sense and meaning, and even new hope, to what it was previously considered as senseless and irrational (the past), even in its most tragic aspects. An all-encompassing perspective may even foretell the new possibilities of the oncoming future and/or alternatives futures, and even alternative pasts, since neither one is written (A. Machado). It can help to forecast the potentials of a predetermined context by the “energetic momentum” of the stage where a certain dynamic situation is moving or becoming activated (the “presence” of the future). In this way, the CCPC approach may lead to deepening insight and knowledge of the meaning of lineal and cyclic time, as well as their dynamic relationships, beneficial and/or deleterious potentials, as well as to the “pre-scientific” knowledge of the deterministic capacities of their intersections (Figure II, points C. B, D, H and E).

In summary, a descending dynamic (lines J, K and B), noticed or unnoticed, will always precede the outburst of a crisis. If left to its own dynamic, the crisis will “touch bottom” (“pit” experience), where the only hope is that “worsening of the pain and evil precipitates final rescue and deliverance” (point C) (Eliade, 1994, p. 137). This ends up a sub-threshold and decadent situation, where the final deepening of the crisis is used to spring back from the bottom of the pit allowing the initiation of a new ascent (the initiation process, shaman capacities, etc). If darkness is finally overcome the lowest point in the cycle rebounds after crashing against the limits of lineal time. (line M). Only then “full awareness, realization and manifestation” of the meaning of conflict begins to be increasingly obvious. New learning and growth now becomes possible.

The overlapping and crossing of both kinds of time conform a cross sparkling a new light at a crossroads at either the D, E and C points. The intersection of lineal and cyclical time in the limit ignites a timeless condition that ranges from Christ consciousness to true enlightenment to Buddha nature, manifesting the Tao and emerging into a new reality and ascension (line F, metacosmesis, also called “paradoxical regeneration” by Mircea Eliade (1994). Causality and chance disappear as consciousness climbs form one qualitative status to another one. The areas surrounding the blindness of the C points (kali yuga) are marked by violence, destruction, historical suffering, cataclysms, etc. However, they do not represent a meaningless end but represent forerunner signs and announcing presages of deep transitions, intrapersonal to global, even from a cosmic “age or eon” to another one (Eliade, 1994; Panikkar, 1996, 1998). Points C contain the expression of maximal accumulation of folded and implied negative and destructive energy (evil, fragmentation, darkness) while points D and H show the points of maximal creativity (goodness, insight, unity, beatitude). The direct access to a D or H point reveals and actualize peak experiences, conveying the potential of giving birth to entire new worlds and to the emergence of new paradigms, from scientific to psychospiritual. Cyclic time is not of a self-contained closed nature but finally opens allowing interparadigmatic ascent (double line A) and integral growth (line N). The final energetic “jump” between two consecutive E points settles the openness of a cycle and allows ascending-holonomic evolution, as well as “meaning” (interparadigmatic ascent). The entire process restructures itself as a “DNA heliciod of the spirit” which contains within itself the potential of seeding off the chaff and reorder the wheat of their chains and connections.

It is even possible that this dynamic approach to wholeness and self-healing is the only mechanism that humanity has at its disposal to overcome the “terror of history”. This perspective also suggests the possibility that human life is somehow opened at both ends of the spectrum to a living void outside the L and N limits. Thus, this model allows to conceive the whole of life, even personal life, should be interpreted from a transhistorical and transpersonal (Eliade, 1994, ch. 3). This demands, however, to witness the whole process of life from a detached and sub specie aeternitatis outlook while it helps to better understand the Spinoza´s dictum that announces: “The more we know about things the better we will understand God” (Spinoza, 1976). Indeed, the different philosophies about the final openness or closeness of the Myth of the Eternal Return is what opposite connotations to our understanding of reality and the ultimate meaning of life, as well as the world. It is behind the different cosmovisions on life and politics and places in very different positions the role of man in cosmic ontology, evolution and history as well as defines in one or another direction the ultimate essence of human nature, free will and destiny. Philosophical approaches defending the closeness of the Myth only leave man with an archaic, senseless and meaningless repetition of the same situations once and over again. They condemn man to be the helpless subject of the incurable vicious circle of the terror of history, forever sunk in mythic-racial and malignant narcissism as well as a nietzchenian “will to power”. These would become its only walking sticks that could hardly help him in his sad and meaningless pilgrimage through life and history. This “closed” conception can only lead into the archetypal context and cosmogony behind any totalitarism, either the “all profane” or the diverse fundamentalisms of “the all sacred”, descenders or ascenders in Wilber´s terminology, marxism to fascism. However, a more holistic and better understanding and acceptance of the myth as a “self-transcending phenomena” contributes to the alleviation, if not to the elimination, of the terror of history. Finally, through the later conception of the Myth is possible to overcome the limitations of “personal-lineal” time, in other words, to have a chance to achieve final liberation, deliverance and salvation for all.

In summary, the present state of things in the world makes it likely that we are approaching a new megasynthesis in the form of an integral new theory of universal interrelationships and connections. Among other things, the CCPC approach is likely to hide the potential to help human beings to realize that all kinds of different conflicts may have one and only “final common pathway” and dynamism, one last etiopathogenic mechanism however expressed through a multiplicity of external manifestations (an “all is one”). This non-dual and para-taoist concept leads to consider very few but very broad, general and non-specific universal laws archetypically behind any morphogenetic or propitiatory field. These laws predetermine all possible outer manifestations in the different disciplines of science and knowledge (Tada, 1990, Wilber 1998). This line of thought could eventually lead, in first place, to the consideration that “all crisis and conflicts are one”. Secondly, it addresses the possibility of considering a scientific, psycho-spiritual approach to the study of the innermost nature and relationships between good and evil (Buber, 1952; Peck, 1982; Harguindey, 1998). In third place, it tries to stimulate further insight towards reaching a better understanding of the nature and relationships of lineal and cyclical time, as well as the relations, links and interlocking factors determining fate, destiny and free will. Finally, it may contribute to improve the level of understanding and interpretation of the degrees of dualistic and/or adualistic relationships between the immanent and transcendental aspects of human nature and life (Panikkar, 1993, 1998). Also it would contribute to further penetrate in the origins and nature of “naked”, this is, without any antecedents, outbursts of insight, true creativity, serendipity as well as the non-casual and non-causal phenomena of synchronicity.

The spiraling cycles are always open, so new questions and answers arise. Some questions die while new ones are always born. Time and eternity.

The first question arising from the CCPC theory would be: can this utterly synthetic approach pave the way towards a general and quintessential approach to crisis and conflict and, in this way, help us to improve our understanding of the ultimate nature and range of reality? The second query would be: can the CCPC-“both sides now” theory help to broaden our conception of “empiricism” and deeper epistemology? And thirdly, can this new concept of conflict interpretation help to focus change and crisis resolution in fields ranging from the personal to the scientific and to the social and political realms?

Another possibility that dwells within the CCPC context comes from a serendipity-mediated widening of Abraham Maslow idea of using as “psychological human guinea pigs” the highest achievers and self-actualizers in order to study the most highly creative beings of humankind (“the creators”) Maslow, 1968). Turning now this idea “upside down”, we wonder if it would of practical importance to try exactly the opposite way. This would demand to take as “guinea pigs” (or, simply, research pigs) the most depraved and sickest characters of both the real world and literary fiction, from Hitler and the nazis to Lady Macbeth and the Karamazov Brothers. These most evil minds known to humankind would so acquire a constructive, however involuntary mission, in an attempt to understand in a systematic manner the general characteristics, patterns of consciousness (de)formation and dynamics of “the destroyers”, the opposite end of the spectrum of the self-actualizers. The main goal of this enterprise would to cure human evil and malignant narcissism (Peck, 1983) and substitute them by empathy and compassion. Needless to say this is a difficult, perhaps impossible task, but one that demands on everybody a high degree of non-dual commitment in order to involve oneself enough to penetrate into the minds of the sickest behaviors. In order to reach an in-depth understanding of the potential for destructiveness, the dynamic patterns of myth and symbols as well as the structure of ill-fated natures and motivations demand that an integral and multidisciplinary hermeneutic field of study should be created.

A light at the end of the tunnel? The G point

Since cyclical time is not a system that closes up upon itself, but jumps to the next stage at the completion of its critical turning points, the entire pattern, with all his ups and downs, seems to move in an anti-entropy ascending pattern. This is likely to lead evolution from a prepersonal (point I), through a personal towards a transpersonal Eden (point G), where lineal and cyclical time finally “become one”, an instant/eternal present. This philosophy, mainly defended by Teilhard de Chardin (1965, 1989) and Mircea Eliade (1994), also alluded to in religious texts (Cor. XV, 28), eventually approaches humankind towards an Omega point, new world, eneantodromia, transhuman condition, etc. At the G-point, the historical and linear concept of time, and history itself, as we know it, may come to an end. This is materialized through no effort at all, but by the simple actualization of the truest spirit breathing behind human life, the direct taste of the full sense and meaning of timeless eternity and beatitude (Eliade, 1994, p 116). Death itself loses all significance at this point. Simply, it is not “necessary”anymore, it becomes meaningless. In a way, it becomes “non-existent”.

After having gone through all the deepest darkness in the midst of the hell-crisis, a brand new world finally appears in front of the spiritual eyes of the new and reborn human being. This never means that new problems and crisis can not be waiting ahead. However, the sensitivity acquired through the entire experiential process bring about a clarification of faith which is not dualistic or blind anymore but which carries with it feelings of prescience immersed in a timeless sense of certainty. On the contrary, the senseless stagnation of any interpardigmatic period is left well behind. Besides, the time spent in the darkness of the cave seem now unreal, even non-existent, a dream, a nightmare or, at the most, an already forgotten dreamless nightmare of the past. It is time for new ideas and whole paradigms to emerge to the surface from the deep waters of the sea of the unconscious, now also conscious. The non-dual researcher, however, will still have to face many problems of communication with the outside world, this still dwelling in the deep waters of the haughty ego of modernity, immersed in a modern submarine of pride and materialism. Such a world, each day less content with itself is adrift at its own stage of evolution and unconscious consciousness. So, a “breach of planes” will still persist for a while, until “cosmic necessity” wakes up, perhaps forever. Transitional stages will always be there too. However, now decisions can be taken according to the new learned faith, enlightenment and understanding. This new level of consciousness is alive and well in progressively activating the conceptual, spiritual and pacific revolution of a new age with the only weapon of its capacity to open a pioneering way of contemplating, perceiving and growing. The critical crossroads now has been walked by. The great waters of the sea of night swam across to a shore long searched for. The necessary turning points have been understood, identified and turned over, and now, while they show to us its full meaning they ask us for forgiveness and compassion. The crossword puzzle has been fully solved and the final breakthrough and qualitative interparadigmatic jump has taken place. And since The Great Crisis has been definitely overcome, a new and the crystal clear consciousness of a brand new life seem to have emerged from all and each one of the nights of the soul and senses. Now we fully realize - what eureka feeling! - why we were told, almost from the very beginning, from the birth of the oriental civilization that “crisis” also meant “opportunity to grow”. Now, any attempt to try to approach further understanding of the concept of trans-dimensional changes and even the idea of “miracle” will demand a high-level approach, as the recently called “sacred hermeneutics” (Panikkar, 1999b, p. 91-92).

Through a brand new and unexplored path the new pioneers will find the way to leave the wilderness behind once more, always once more, and the light on the high plateau hills will shine forever. Man will live again in lineal time, and also in cyclical time, and, forever and ever in the intersection of both. There, here, forming a timeless and transpersonal cross, time itself allows him to perceive from his very center, endlessly, that there is something within and beyond human condition that is timeless and eternal.

References

Aïvanhov, O. M. (1988). Vous êtes des dieux. Fréjus (France):Prosveta Editions.
Buber, M (1952). Good and Evil. New York: Charles Scribner´s Sons.
Capra. F. (1985). The Turning Point. Barcelona: Integral Ed.
Chardin, Teilhard de. The Human Phenomena. Madrid: Taurus, 1965.
Chardin, Teilhard de. (1989). The Divine Media. Madrid. Alianza Taurus.
Clearly, T. S. & Shapiro S. I. (1995). Th plateau experience and the post-mortem life: Abraham Maslow´s unfinished theory. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 27(1): 1- 23.
Einstein, A. (1954). Ideas and opinions. New York: Del Publishing Co., Inc.
Dossey, L (1986). Space, time and medicine. (spanish edition). Barcelona (Spain): Kairós
Dossey, L. (1989). Recovering the soul: a scientific and spiritual search. New York: Bantham.
Eliade, M. (1994). The myth of the eternal return. Barcelona: Altaya.
Ferguson, M. The Aquarian Conspiracy, personal and social transformations in the 1980s. Barcelona: Kairós.
Frankl, V. E. (1979). Man´s Search for Meaning. Barcelona: Herder.
Goethe, J. W (1976). Faust: A Tragedy. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Inc.
Goethe, J. W (1982). Political writings. Madrid: Editora Nacional.
Grof. S. & Grof, Ch. (1992).“El poder curativo de las crisis” (Original title: “Spiritual Emergency”), Barcelona: Kairós.
Grof. S. (1985). Beyond the Brain. Albany, NY: State Univesrity of New York Press.
Grof, Ch. & Grof. S. (1995). The Stormy Search for Self. Barcelona: Los Libros de La Liebre de Marzo.
Harguindey, S. & Gillis. M. (1981). Evolution and cancer: Possible realtionships to changes in environmental hydrogen ion concentration. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 86, 487-492.
Harguindey, S., Katin, M., Edgerton, F. & Takita, H. (1981). Hierachical organization, integrations in biology and cancer, balance loss, and a question on modernism. Medical Hypotheses, 7, 1123-1132.
Harguindey, S., Anton Aparicio., L. M. & Martin Algarra., S. (1989). Integrated Ethiopathogenesis of cancer of mucosal surfaces of the organism with emphasis on the digestive tract. Journal of Biological Response Modifiers, 8: 1-10.
Harguindey, S., Pedraz, J. L., Garcia Cañero, R., Perez de Diego, J. & Cragoe., E. J (1995). Hydrogen Ion-Dependent Oncogenesis and New Avenues to Cancer Prevention and Treatment Using a H+-Mediated Unyfing Approach: pH-Related and pH-Unrelated Mechanisms. Critical Reviews in Oncogenesis, 6(1):1-33.
Harguindey, S., Pedraz., J. L., Garcia Cañero, R. & Katin M. (2000). Edelfosine, apoptosis, MDR and Na+/H+ exchanger: Induction mecahnisms ans treatment implications. Apoptosis, 5: 83-85.
Harguindey, S. (1998). A New Vision of Life and Politics: walking towards Eden. Vitoria (Spain): Luz Pradera.
Hawking, S. (1988). A brief history of time:from the big bang to black holes. New York:Bantam.
Hawking, S. (1993). Black holes and baby universes and other essays. Barcelona: Plaza&Janés.
Hesse, H (1978). Demian. New York: Bantam Books.
Huxley, A. (1992). The Perennnial Philosophy. Barcelona: Edhasa
I Ching (1977). Traslation of Richard Wilhelm. Barcelona: Edhasa.
John of the Cross (1996). St. John of the Cross: alchemist of the soul. York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser, Inc.
Jung, C. G. (1977). Prologue to the “I Ching”. Richard Wilhelm, translation. Barcelona: Edhasa.
Jung, C. J. (1976). The Portable Jung. New York: Penguin Books.
Jung, C. J. (1987). On Synchronicity: an acausal connnecting principle. London: Ark Paperbacks
Khun, Th. (1975). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Mexico: FCE.
Lao-Tzu (1994). Wen Tzu. (Furhter teachings of Lao-Tzu). Madrid. Edaf
Krishnamurti (1994). On God. Barcelona: Kairós.
Maslow. A (1968). Towards a Psychology of being. (2nded.). New York: Van Nostrand.
Maslow. A (1982). The farther reaches of human nature. Barcelona: Kairós.
Ortiz Oses, A. (1982). The Basque Collective Unconscious: cultural mythology and psychosocial archetypes. Txertoa: San Sebastian.
Ortiz Oses, A. & Mayr, F. K. (1998). Basque matriarchalism. Bilbao:University of Deusto Publications.
Pániker, S. (1982). Approach to the origin. Barcelona: Kairós.
Pániker. S. (1987): Retroprogressive essays. Barcelona: Kairós.
Panikkar, R (1993): The Cosmotheandric Experience. Emerging religious consciousness. New York: Orbis.
Panikkar, R (1996). The silence of Buddha: an introduction to religious atheism. Barcelona: Siruela.
Panikkar, R (1998). Invitation to wisdom. Barcelona: Espasa-Hoy.
Panikkar, R (1998). The Trinity. A primordial human experience. Barcelona: Siruela.
Panikkar, R (1999). The spirit of politics. Barcelona: Siruela.
Pannikar, R (1999b). The Wordly Silence: An interpretation of the present. Barcelona: Martinez Roca.
Peat, F. D. (1988). Synchronicity.Barcelona: Kairós.
Peck, Scott M. (193). People of the lie. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Rothberg, D. (1999). Transpersonal issues at the millennium. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 1: 41-67.
Sheldrake, R (1990). A New Science of Life (spanish edition). Barcelona: Kairós.
Sheldrake, R (1990b). The Presence of the Past (spanish edition). ). Barcelona: Kairós.
Selye, H. (1975). From dream to discovery. New York: Arno Press.
Spinoza, B (1951). A Theological-Political Treatise and A Political Treatise. New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Spinoza, B (1976). The Ethics: the road to inner freedom. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press.
Tada, T. (1996). Faith and Science. Kyoto: The Rakuto Press.
Tart, Ch.(1999). The archives of Scientist´s Transcendental Experiences (The TASTE Journal) (http://psychology. ucdavies.edu/tart/taste/). In: “Cultivating Connections” ATP First Cyberconference, October, 1999.
Tolstoi, L (1990). Ana Karenina. Barcelona: Orbis.
Trias, E. (1994): The Age of The Spirit. Destino: Barcelona.
Waldron J. L. (1998). The life impact of trascendent expereinces with a pronounced quality of noesis. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 30(2): 103-134.
Warburg, O. (1956). On the origin of cancer cells. Science, 123: 309-314.
Washburn, M. (1990). Two Patterns of Transcendence. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 30(3): 84-112.
Washburn, M (1995). The Ego and the Dynamic ground: a Transpersonal Theory of Human Development. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Washburn, M. (1999). Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective. Barcelona: Los Libros de la Liebre de Marzo.
Weil, P. (1997). The limits of human beings: modified state of consciousness. Barcelona: Los Libros de la Liebre de Marzo.
White, J. (1988). Enlightenment and the judeo-christian tradition. In J. White (Ed), What is enlightenment? (pp. 190-204). Barcelona: Kairós.
Wilber, K (1986). Up from Eden: A transpersonal view of human evolution. Boston: Shambhala.
Wilber, K. (1987). Quantum questions. Barcelona: Kairós.
Wilber, K (1990). Two Patterns of Transcendence: a reply to Washburn.. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 30(3): 113-116.
Wilber, K. (1993). Psicología Integral (original title: Transformations of Consciousness). Barcelona: Kairós.
Wilber, K (1998). The marriage of sense and soul: integrating science and religion. New York: Random House.
Wilber (1999). One Taste. Boston: Shambhala.

Este artículo salió publicado en el Journal of Transpersonal Studies en el año 2000.