Clearing to Holosentience and Level II Enlightenment
Jeffrey Eisen, Ph.D.
Abstract
In these transitional times, we often hear Einstein’s quote that no problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it, and then admonished to change or evolve our consciousness. But what exactly is being asked of us, and how does it work? From my long-standing perspective on the central role of perception in creating form in duality, it becomes clear that it is not consciousness but how we see reality, perception itself that must evolve. In this paper, I introduce two vital aspects of the required shift in perception: 1) the advent of the intentional clearing of duality where intentionality in the nondual realm is used to relax and dissolve egoic contractions, and 2) the resultant emergence of a holosentient perception, the ability to perceive ‘in the round’, a kind of holographic awareness of whole systems. Together, these aspects describe a process of increasing awareness that goes beyond the consciousness that created the present global situation, even beyond much of what we read about enlightenment. My holosentient perception is that using intentional clearing toward the capacity to perceive holosentiently, we are learning to integrate nonduality and duality. We are developing the full potential of our embodiment as human Beings.
The Experience of Holosentience
Most people, most of the time, experience the world as a succession of unrelated things… parts of a vast machine that when completely known and put together, will, in some indeterminate future, finally explain how reality works. This is the old paradigm, but it is also the paradigm most of the world is still stuck in, and probably will be for the foreseeable future.
But there is a new paradigm of perception that is developing, a holographic paradigm of perception that accompanies some forms of enlightenment. In this paradigm things are not seen as separate and separated parts of a vast machine, but instead are seen holographically, as samples of the big picture or pattern. Perhaps the perception lacks detail in many areas, like a blurry photograph or a line drawing that suggests more than it specifies, but still it is a complete rendition of the whole.
The roots of this holographic perception go back thousands of years to the ancient sages of the religious traditions and the shamans of the tribal cultures of the world. But it is only relatively recently, that the holographic metaphor for this paradigm of perception, and the level of enlightenment upon which it rests, has emerged. It took new systems of global communications to disseminate ancient ways of seeing, and science to actually create the ‘hologram’.[i] It took the development of clearing techniques and the understanding of intention itself to transform ordinary enlightenment into level II enlightenment.
Another name for holographic perception is Holosentience. Holosentience is holographic awareness. Possessed of it, we are aware of every no-thing, not as isolated words or images, but as systems – systems within systems making bigger and bigger systems. The whole system is, of course, well beyond human understanding. It is an asymptote, more and more closely approached, but never quite reached.
Just as a hologram is an interference pattern between two beams of laser light, holosentience is an interference pattern between the reference laser consciousness of the enlightened individual, his perception, and the implicit consciousness of that which is being perceived. (Laser consciousness is my term for the condition of coherence that arises when all internal conflicts are resolved, and the “photons” of the mind, like the electrons in a magnet, come into polar alignment.)
From Oneness Perceived to Oneness Perceiving
During the 1990s I spent much time answering the question, “What is duality?” The answer and a book’s worth of exploration around the answer was, “Duality is Oneness perceived.” The act of perceiving divides the continuous fabric of consciousness into parts, into ‘ducca.’ or twoness. And our many ways of measuring three dimensional reality can all be seen as relative to a point of perception, one that divides the world into hotter and colder, greater and lesser, faster and slower, etc.
But even as I was understanding nonduality from this perspective, I was being offered a set of experiences that were to take me into a new way of seeing, a holosentient perception. In dealing with my incessant allergies, I first was treated and then became a practitioner of the Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Technique, (NAET). As I came to manage my allergies, it became clear that I was evolving the technique into a powerful modality in my own field of psychotherapy, a letting go of egoic contractions through the power of intention (part of the body of work I now call PsychoNoetics).
Clearing through intention is an evolved capacity. It is a process of clearing duality from Oneness. It is also a practice of living simultaneously in nonduality and duality, and in integrating these two aspects into One. From this place, perception is no longer either dual or nondual, but both, that is – holosentient. Holosentience then is Oneness perceiving duality, but not getting caught in it.
Because it is approached through facilitated letting go (as well as other meditative practices) and because it results in not only ordinary or Level I Enlightenment, but it in addition confers relative freedom from egoic contractions, a more or less permanent resting in Oneness, and the state of holosentience, I call it Level II Enlightenment.
The experience of Level II Enlightenment
What is the experience of Level II Enlightenment, and how does this experience differ from the experience of ordinary enlightenment? I am going to give you an answer that shifted my paradigm of perception and thinking. When I was younger, I was very involved in the martial arts, particularly the internal martial arts of Aikido and Tai Chi Chuan. I remember my Aikido instructor telling me that the three components of Ki are weight underside (a sense of relaxation and heaviness to your body), the unbendable elbow (i.e., gotten by projecting your mind through your arm, into the distance), and sinking your mind into the one point (located at the midpoint between the crest of your hips, about 2 inches behind your naval). However, and this is really the one point, when we have one of them, we have them all, whereas if we lack one of them, we lack them all!
At the time I didn’t understand this. I was still caught in the old paradigm way of perceiving things as separate. But many years later, this has come to make perfect sense. I see these three separate things are not separate at all; they are different aspects of the same no-thing, the same state, the underlying reality that the act of perception divides into things.
This same principle applies to the many facets of enlightenment, particularly Level II enlightenment. They appear or are variously called understanding, awakening, openness, nonduality, empty or Still Mind, the Ground of Being, Oneness, unity consciousness, God, Christ consciousness, love, the list goes on and on. The point, however, is that enlightenment itself is a state, a no-thing, a unity, to which all of these facets and terms are just pointers. What is more, just like Ki, if we have one, we have them all; whereas if we lack one, we lack them all. Level II Enlightenment entails a holographic experience; it entails abiding in the state of holosentience.
That said, however, just as there are three aspects of Ki deemed to be essential, there are three aspects of enlightenment that I deem to be essential. They are: 1) escaping the illusion of separate identity, 2) attaining still Mind, and 3) making the figure-ground reversal. And just as in Ki, when we have one of them, we have all of them, and when we lack one of them, we lack all of them. The three separate things are not separate at all; they are different aspects of the same no-thing, that underlying reality that the act of perception divides into things.
But I would like to make an addition to these three pointers, one actually closely related to Aikido, Tai Chi Chuan, Qigong or any of the other inner energy practices. And that is the positive or negative direction of our internal energy, whether we call it Ki, Chi, life force or any other name. I call it flowing versus grasping.
These are the many facets of level II enlightenment, some of which it shares with ordinary enlightenment, and others which are unique.
Part II. The many facets of level II enlightenment
Separate identity
The illusion of being a separate entity is perhaps the most imprisoning of all illusions. It builds upon associations of the underlying illusions that we are our bodies, our appearance, our gender, our emotions, our thoughts, our beliefs, our socioeconomic class, or even our personal history. All of the available evidence supports the experience of separation, the belief that we are, in fact, completely separated from one another. However, as many of us know, this belief is mistaken. In nondual reality we are separate centers of the One, i.e., separated in body, but connected in consciousness.
Because the experience of separate identity is supported by all the evidence of sensory experience, we will never, as long as we are embodied, fully feel connected. We will always have a lingering experience of ourselves as separate beings. This is unavoidable however, and this is the point – we do not have to let perception go into conception. We can feel that we are separate without believing it. We can have all the sensory perceptions and the accompanying emotions without adopting the belief and, of course without letting the belief rule our actions. We have to transcend the belief while still abiding in the illusion. In fact, leaving the illusion intact is not only unavoidable, it is necessary, because our experience of separation is essential to our surviving in ordinary reality.
Transcending the in-self and the out-self distinction
Following the thread of separate identity, leads us to a subset to the illusion of separation, and that is the in-self / out-self distinction. Self/other or in-group/out-group separations are as old as life itself. Primates have them, birds have them, lizards have them, bacterial colonies have them, perhaps even plants can be said to have them. And of course, you and I have them.
The in-group is treated one way, with acceptance, consideration and love. The out-group is treated another way; it is defended against, battled, even preyed upon and eaten. It is said that the only way that humanity is ever going to be fully unified is if it is attacked by aliens from outer space. Barring that unlikely circumstance, all of these distinctions between the in-group and the out-group will persist, although changing from one moment to the next as the circumstances change. Thus, families constitute an in-group, but siblings fight, one constituting an out-group to the other. Sport teams constitute an in-group, one competing against the other; but during practice all sorts of individual rivalries arise. Nations are all out-groups to one another, except when alliances of nations become in-groups. However, within nations and alliances, competition is always present, political, religious, moral, economic, individual and so on.
What does this have to do with transcending the illusion of the individual separated self? All of these changing distinctions within distinctions are just extensions of the illusion of the separate self; thus, the in-group/out-group distinction is better termed the in-self /out-self distinction. Within the illusion of the separate self, the boundaries of the “self” are flexible, always contracting and expanding as circumstances change.
When we transcend the illusion of the separated self, we morph into the extended Self and then into the One Self. The in-self /out-self distinction is erased, and instead there is the one, expanded Self that encompasses all of creation. Of course, there always remains a vestigial in-self and out-self, but it is shallow, uncompelling and easily transcended and dispensed with. This also is an aspect of both ordinary enlightenment and Level II Enlightenment.
From Still Mind – to Still Mind
This brings us to Still Mind. Unless we are in Still Mind, all of these distinctions of self-and other continue to be present for us. It is as simple as this. Every facet of enlightenment – unity, truth, awakening, God consciousness, nonduality, cosmic consciousness, etc., everything that we have ever experienced as enlightened or even heard about – arises with our entrance into Still Mind and subsides again when we leave it. Still Mind is the main portal to universal consciousness. We become our small, individual selves through mental activity, whether conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional, it doesn’t matter. When we start thinking, intending, believing, denying, attaching, remembering, perceiving, etc., we do it as an ego. As such we start contracting, and what we contract into is a separated self. Whereas when we re-enter Still Mind, we return to unity, the unity of universal consciousness. As I said, it’s as simple as this.
Still Mind has to become the ground of our being.
It is relatively easy to get into Still Mind. In fact, many forms of meditation will do it; it is another story entirely to stay there. The ego, with its karmic load of reactions, temptations, distractions, emotional upsets and other contractions usually jars us out of Still Mind as soon as we return to ordinary life. Clearing to Still Mind is particular to Level II Enlightenment
The Figure – Ground shift
Clearly, we must become aware of the state in which we rest and out of which we operate. Where do you rest? Do you rest in your ego, that contracted continually agitated place? Or do you rest in the Ground of Being itself, Oneness, universal consciousness, Self or whatever you want to call it? Resting in Oneness and coming from it, is one of the hallmarks of ordinary enlightenment as well as level II enlightenment. However, for most people, even those who consider themselves enlightened, the ground of their being is still their ego. Oneness, like God, is a figure on that ground, just an idea, to be grasped at, or at the best experienced rarely and always as a thing outside of themselves, perhaps to be remembered and cherished, but never realized as their essential identity. So we can ask ourselves, is Oneness an idea, a figure on the ground of my ego, or is Oneness the ground of my being, with all of the varied contents of the ego, figures upon it?
How do we achieve this figure-ground shift? There are many routes to Still Mind. We can get there through meditation. We can get there by transcending the illusion of separate identity. Or we can get there by gradually letting go of the contents of our egos until we begin to shift – and then stabilize in that shift, which is another essential aspect of Level II Enlightenment. We can get there through these ways and many more.
Like the essential aspects of Ki, the essential aspects of Level II Enlightenment form a holographic experience; when we have one of them we have them all, when we lack any one of them, we lack them all.
Flowing –grasping
Lest my choice of essential features leads you to see Level II Enlightenment as merely a mental state, I want to point out an energetic or feeling aspect as well, an enduring quality of positive energy. Have you ever observed that some people, no matter what the circumstances, seem to be always radiating their energy outwards, as if flowing from some inexhaustible inner source, while others seem to be always needy, sucking your energy and channeling it into an unfillable hole? Still others are simply collapsed, dead inside, their energy neither flowing nor grasping – just stagnant.
Also, have you ever noticed how in the flowing mode people are radiant, with shining eyes, and we are relaxed and at ease in their presence? By contrast, people in the grasping mode seem overbright; they are always on, overeager, even voracious, as if they are wanting something from you, or sucking the love out of you – which, of course, they are. And people who are collapsed, their energy static, they look – well – lifeless, grey!
Of course, most of us continually switch from one mode to the other, as our outer circumstances and/or our inner state changes. In fact, some of us who are sensitive to energy can see the “light” change as people undergo these switches. At the same time, most people are habitually in one mode or the other as well.
Just as there is a polarity or direction of energy, from positive to negative, from flowing out to reversing and going inwards, there is also an aspect of strength or velocity in either direction, while the zero point between the flowing-grasping switch is the stagnant energy of people who have collapsed, who have just given up!
Why is this important? Because the ego is immensely flexible in its capacity for self-deception. Human beings can take all and any pointers to enlightenment, and convince themselves that they are pretty much there. However, the proof is in the pudding. Unless, our energy is ‘flowing’, we are either sick or hiding aspects of our ego from ourselves under the guise of mental conclusions. There is more to say about substituting excessing positive emotion for ‘flow’, but hopefully I will have already pointed you toward the precision of being that is Level II Enlightenment.
Part III. Approaching Level II Enlightenment through Intentional Clearing
Taking all these observations as pointers to a holosentient pattern, we see clearly that the major obstacle to enlightenment path is not the ego per se, but that which ego contains, the specific contents of the ego. However there is an application of Still Mind that can selectively release that which ego is holding and thus greatly not only accelerate, but also enhance the process of Level II Enlightenment. This is the practice of intentional clearing, the essential process of PsychoNoetics, and the path of letting go that I have been developing for the last 20 years or so. Working from Still Mind, even from the witnessing which approximates Still Mind, it is possible to let go of the contents of the ego, i.e. the egoic contractions, and thus gradually let go all all of our tendencies toward separateness. Intentional clearing then is a defining aspect of Level II Enlightenment.
(The term ‘egoic contractions’ refers to all of those memories, beliefs, attachments, and intentions that focus our consciousness into the small mind or little self. It is a fundamental tenet of PsychoNoetics that, just as we created our egoic contractions, we can clear them.)
How do we clear egoic contractions?
We clear or release egoic contractions through the power of our intention, working from Still Mind. In this way we eventually become whole, not whole again, but whole for the first time in our present lives.
Recognizing egoic contractions and clearing them is a skill set that has to be acquired. There are two, related ways to see the contractions that take us out of the “right place” of Level II Enlightenment. One is the witness meditation; the other is monitoring. In the witness meditation we go to Still Mind, and from there witness our memories, emotions, reactions, and what have you. When we have mastered the witness so that it becomes second nature, we can start monitoring. In monitoring, witnessing has become automatic, a way of life. We just sense when we’re not in the right place.
We may also use some signposts that indicate when we are in an egoic contraction. Things don’t go well! Our positive flow of energy becomes negative, we feel disturbed and arguments can sometimes erupt. Being alert to these and similar conditions can begin to move us toward witnessing them in meditation or monitoring them in ordinary states; in both instances we are building our ability to step outside of the contraction and see it.
Once we have become aware of that we are in contraction, the next step is to identify the causes of the contraction-precisely. In this you can use autokinesiology (muscle testing yourself), which is the technique I use, scanning your energy field, or any other technique that works for you.
Precision is a necessary preamble to precise clearing. A lot of healers clear energy, but an egoic contraction is specific, not general. In this respect, there are different etiologies for different contractions; not only present and past life memories, attachments, emotions, beliefs, false identities, being stuck in time, and many more, but the specifics of each.
After you have precisely identified your contractions, not only that they exist, but also what they are, you can clear them through just intending. You only have to form the intention, and perhaps articulate it, either out loud or sub vocally, for the clearing to take place.
But, as I have said, we can only clear if we are in Still Mind. Still Mind is the portal to Oneness, and only from Still Mind can we effectively let go of what we’re holding. If we are lost in our “thoughts”, we cannot do anything. We simply don’t have a place to stand, and without that we have no leverage.
Archimedes said, “Give me a long enough lever and a place to stand, and I will move the earth!”
Still Mind is the place to stand!
So the first step in the process of intentional letting go is to stop our minds. As I have said, we can accomplish this in a number of ways, ranging from yoga, to concentrating on a point, to the witness meditation. The important thing in stopping our minds is that we do it.
If we don’t stop our minds, we get lost in them.
The second step in the process is to actually clear the contraction. We clear from Still Mind, and we clear to it. There is a bit of a balancing act to the process. If we cannot still our minds, we can’t clear. On the other hand, if we just got directly to into Still Mind without clearing our contractions, they reappear when we fall out of it. On the face of it, this is an insoluble double-bind. However, in reality it’s not so much of a problem as it seems. One gradually progresses towards a simultaneity, presence in Still Mind and holding the contractions in view.
In a way clearing is like anything else we do, walking or picking up a pencil, you just intend it, and it happens. The difficult and essential part is not clearing; it is resting in the place of Still Mind, that universal consciousness from which our intention is potentiated. Though all of the various “spiritual” paths are more or less effective in attaining and holding Still Mind, the addition of intentional clearing to any and all of them will accelerate our spiritual evolution to warp speed. This is the essence itself of Level II Enlightenment.
The important thing is not how you clear, but that you clear.
Part IV. Holosentience… a new way of thinking for a new culture
There is something that happens when we have cleared ‘enough’ and spend more and more of our daily lives in Oneness, responding appropriately to what comes up, focusing where focusing is needed, doing when doing is needed, and then, when everything that needs to be done is done, returning to Oneness. There is no longer any need to be constantly in a meditative state. There is no longer any need to maintain the conditions that sustain you in peace and harmony. You return to the state spontaneously, just as when the wind stops, the water calms. This is living in nonduality and duality simultaneously, and living there creates the holosentient place in which we become aware not of things but of patterns of things, patterns fractally arranged to make up an infinite and ultimately unknowable cosmic system.
There is one more aspect of Level II Enlightenment and the holosentience that comes with it, one that I would like to emphasize. It is perhaps the most important aspect of all. Holosentience greatly enhances our ability to recognize truth. I don’t mean factual truth; I mean real truth, the truth of what people are, the truth in statements and theories of reality including, and of course the truth in enlightenment itself. In other words, recognizing the truth that underlies all illusion. When you are holosentient the world becomes transparent, and you understand whatever you look at more or less effortlessly. I would like to give you an example of holosentience from my writing.
Recently I started to look not only at the process of enlightenment itself, but at the socioeconomic system that imprisons us in a particular kind of illusion. That, in turn, led to the problem of how to refocus corporate consciousness in a way that would shift global consciousness. After a few days of considering the problem, I arrived at the following insight:
Redefining profit (as whole system profit)
The problem is not that corporations operate for a profit; it is that the present economic system, not reality, defines this profit. Another way of saying this is that the corporation makes the profit, not humanity and the global ecology… At this time in history, a corporation can destroy an ecosystem, pollute a river and impoverish an indigenous culture, but if it makes a monetary profit, if it costs less to destroy part of the world than the earnings such destruction engenders, the corporation is deemed profitable — and the investors realize a comfortable return on their investments.… That is not a profitable corporation but a subsidized one, one that, in whole systems terms, operates at a substantial loss. By who is it subsidized? By the countries that house it, by the ecosystem of the globe, by you and I, and by every person that walks or will walk the earth.
It is clear that we have to build accountability and responsibility into the corporate mind. But the question is how to do this? I believe the most realistic answer starts with redefining profitability itself, in other words making it profitable for the corporation to contribute to the humansphere and unprofitable for it to consume without at least recycling and restoring. The only way to do this is to make corporations accountable for the real costs of their doing business,
Excerpted from the Omnius Manifesto: drjeisen@drjeisen.com
Universitas… the journey towards Oneness
Holosentience is the hallmark of quantum physics, ecology, permaculture, holistic medicine and all of the other visions of pattern, interconnection and unity that characterize the cutting edge of the new culture. Furthermore, it serves as a marker for the cognitive and intuitive processes that characterize individuals and groups that are capable of finding new solutions to old problems, solutions that benefit the whole system and unify that which was previously thought to be separate. My example of addressing economic problems with a redefinition of profit is only one demonstration of this.
One final, holosentient thought… What we most need now is for the new shoots of holistic awareness that are appearing everywhere to coalesce into an educational system conceived in the spirit of Universitas, (i.e., going towards the One), rather than the conventional universities which separate fields of knowledge into smaller and smaller specialties. We don’t only need it at the university level; in fact, by the time students begin their university education it is too late. We need it in our high schools, our elementary schools and perhaps, even our preschools. In order to shift toward a holosentient society, we need to create holosentient youths, and for that we need holosentient parents, teachers and schools.. To move our young people forward toward holosentience and the Level II Enlightenment on which it rests, is the next step toward transforming the global culture.
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[1] In a sense holosentience is the result of ‘seeing through’ the functions of the brain which currently convert frequency patterns into a 3-dimensional world, and returning to a fundamental awareness of the real nature of the universe as frequency patterns. See Pribram and Bohm. Thus, holosentience can be viewed as the underlying inner process of clairvoyants, now made available for every- day life. Both special uses of this perceptual mode, and a sustainable use of it in these transitional times require the brain to interpret and translate into ordinary perceptual frameworks. See Talbot, 1991.
Biography
Dr. Jeff Eisen is an enlightenment therapist, teacher and author. Trained as a psychotherapist, he has gone far beyond that to create PsychoNoetics, his spiritual practice, his profession and his teaching.
All of his work, his early work on nonduality, writing Oneness Perceived and Playing 20 Questions with God, and his current foray into the socioeconomic forces that condition our consciousness… All have come from holosentience.
Dr. Eisen practices and teaches PsychoNoetics locally in his South Florida office, and globally through the Internet. Find out more by going to drjeffeisen.com
Jeff Eisen, Ph.D. 