holism...
Holism is more
than an integrative perspective on the relationship between mind and matter.
By definition holism asserts that spirituality is the central defining context
within which the relationship between mind and material processes may be
properly understood. A truly unified perspective must therefore be
grounded firstly in a spiritual framework and secondarily in a theoretical one.
A Course in Miracles, a modern day restatement of the principles and practice of
Christian mysticism, serves as the spiritual context for the theoretical model
of metapsychology which concerns itself with ontology, epistemology, and ultimately the
mechanics of mind and matter.
metapsychology...
Metapsychology is an emerging twenty-first century psychology that
explores the nature of "metacognitive" structures and processes and
their integral relationship to physical reality and the human body.
Metapsychology is a natural outgrowth of the pioneering work of Sigmund
Freud, Carl Jung, Jean Piaget and Ken Wilber. Their combined works
form the foundation of 20th century western psychology which began to
map the basic structures of consciousness and the process through which
an aspect of consciousness, the ego, separates from and ultimately
reunites with the ground of psychological being. Like the predominant
transpersonal perspective of Ken Wilber, metapsychology views human
development as a process of involution and evolution mirroring the
evolutionary viewpoint of Vedic philosophy. Beyond transpersonal
psychology, metapsychology rejects the widely accepted "pre-trans"
context of human development which suggests that ego differentiation and
the related developmental mode of equilibration are an integral part of
that process. Metapsychology asserts that ego differentiation and
equilibration, despite their seeming universality, are aberrant
psychological processes with neither spiritual grounding nor
transcendent potential. Within the context of metapsychology,
equilibration is neither involutionary nor evolutionary, rather it is a
learned process of resistance to an unrecognized primary creative
process that conditions perception and results in broad scale
perceptual homogeneity and psychological conformity. Metapsychology asserts that involution and evolution are a
function of a primary metacognitive process
grounded in a cyclical, imaginal-intuitive mode that functions
completely apart from and in absolute contradistinction to the
stratified, hierarchical processes of the ego. During the
involutionary phase of metacognition the autosymbolic image-making
process of the mind impresses itself upon energy causing it to coalesce
into patterns that literally become physical reality . During the
evolutionary phase of the metacognitive cycle the autosymbolic process releases its
concentration upon energy causing the coalesced patterns of energy to
dissipate. Imagination is one aspect of metacognition,
intuition is the other.
Whereas imagination literally shapes reality, intuition directly apprehends the gestalt, or big
picture, of reality quite apart from sensory perception and the
interpretive processes of the rational mind. Meta
versus the more commonly used pre-trans designations is used to refer to
non-egoic psychological potentials to emphasize the fact that metacognition bears no relationship at all to egoic
cognitive phenomena and that there is no developmental continuity between the
two modes of consciousness.
Within
metapsychological context, equilibration
constitutes a form of psychological entropy. Psychological entropy
is defined by metapsychology as
the natural tendency in consciousness to move from a more complex state
of organization to a less
complex state of organization as a natural part of the evolutionary
phase
of metacognition.
Equilibration is not entropy proper but it mimics entropy in that it is a drive toward a state of
psychological uniformity that, like entropy proper, runs counter to the
natural complexity and
creative diversity of involution.
Thus metapsychology posits the existence of two diametrically opposed cognitive
tracks in human consciousness, metacognition which is innate and equilibration
which is learned. Whereas equilibration "fabricates" reality through an
arbitrary, faulty
process of interpretation, metacognition directly apprehends
reality as it is and participates in the creative expansion of
it. The fundamental difference between the two is that the structures and operations
of metacognition are wedded to the basic fabric of physical reality.
Thought is a subtle form of
electromagnetic energy and the process of metacognition literally shapes physical reality by catalyzing the
transmutation of energy into matter and organic physical form and back in forms that reflect the
underlying state of consciousness. The transmutation of
thought into energy, matter and organic physical form is a function of involution.
The release of matter back into formless consciousness is a function
of evolution. Thus metacognition is a bidirectional
process of energy conversion of a singular
force manifesting transitorily as thought, energy and matter. This
unified concept is the core of Vedic philosophy and contemporary metapsychology.
Equilibration, by contrast, is an ego specific dissociative
mode grounded in
a state of separation from the human spirit and the structure of physical reality that renders it powerless to
do anything but adapt to and interpret reality, or more accurately misinterpret
it, according to
arbitrary, socially determined conceptual schemes. It bears no relationship at all to metacognition and masks
the true creative potential within. As a way of "knowing" that
merely conditions perception, equilibration is an
epistemological option, so to speak, but constitutes a sadly diminished
parody of human psychological potential.
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Denise Marts is an artist and a theorist in the emerging discipline of metapsychology and related art form of metasymbolism.
"
Metapsychology, as defined here, has been some 25 years in
the making.
It was prompted initially by a spiritual and artistic
opening that occurred in my mid-thirties and by my direct experience of a
profound and unmistakable shift in cognitive mode that accompanied it.
In
the late 1980's, during a dark and difficult period of personal transformation,
I understood that I had the soul of an artist and I began the long journey
toward the realization of that dormant potential. In the fall of 1989,
during an initial artistic opening which contemplative practice enabled me to
observe, the infrastructure of metapsychology began to coalesce in my mind.
From that point forward art and psychological theory have been, for me,
inextricably related. Over many years of observing my own cognitive
processes as an artist I gradually came to appreciate the profound difference
between the primary metacognitive process which is fundamentally proactive,
innovative, and causal vs equilibration
which is fundamentally reactive, adaptive, and essentially acausal."
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metasymbolism...
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Metasymbolism is a term that
I use to describe a newly evolving art form associated with the developing
discipline of metapsychology. Symbolism is central to metapsychology
because metacognition arises from a supraordinate sphere of consciousness
and the language of the supraordinate domain of the psyche is symbolic.
Egoic separation involves a downward shift in consciousness from a state of pure
abstraction to the concrete through adopting increasingly specific forms of
symbolic thought starting with the primary autosymbolic process of dreams and
imagination, to the secondary symbolic system of language that underlies
"consensus" reality, to now developing tertiary symbolic systems
of "virtual" reality. The downward spiral through each successive phase of
increasingly specific symbolic thought represents a step further away from
reality and our natural state. Carl Jung, perhaps more than anyone else,
understood the deeper import of the autosymbolic process and its
role in potentially reversing this downward spiral and re-orienting consciousness
back toward its native abstract tongue.
The pinnacle of egoic
separation within the collective psyche reached a zenith during the 20th
century and was most powerfully exemplified in the Godless, soulless,
spiritually void philosophy of scientific materialism
characterized by a spirit of isolation and chaos.
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Yet within every extreme
lies the potential for its opposite. Art foreshadows the evolution of
consciousness and the birth of abstract art from this chaos was the antithesis of
scientific materialism and heralded the beginning of a shift in the collective
consciousness back toward the natural state of abstraction, a shift that will
occur over millennia and ultimately require us to retrace our steps back through tertiary, secondary and
primary symbolic thought processes, and ultimately beyond all symbols, to pure
abstraction and the memory of God.
As many of us know,
we are at a critical turning point in human history where the collective process
of separation has reached its ultimate expression. The bad news is that spiritually speaking we have hit rock bottom. The good
news is that there is nowhere to go but up. Accordingly, metapsychology is
a psychology of connection and metasymbolism is a nascent art form reflecting
the human spirit's innate drive toward union, meaning, and wholeness. My
work as an artist is a personal exploration into the emerging art form of metasymbolism and its
role in art and psychology
over the coming century.
It represents nothing more than the briefest glimpse into the barest beginning of a much
larger collective effort to heal.
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Denise Marts
Redmond, Washington
2009
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