Is
“Mind-Body-Environment” Closed or Open System?

Alexander Zelitchenko

Cyprus

Abstract

Philosophical axiom in foundation of academic
psychology is that the system “Mind-Body-Environment” (MBE) is the closed
system: all mental events is predetermined by the state of mind itself, the
state of body of the “bearer” of mind, and the state of the
person’s environment (in broad sense, including first of all social and
cultural environments). However, there are many phenomena, which are poorly
explained or are not explained at all unless we open our philosophical model of
the world and allow ourselves to see one more Force, which affects and often
directs mental life. This article systematizes some of the well known from both
literature and everybody’s personal experience such phenomena, which
question validity of the axiom of closeness of MBE.

Problem and
Approach

When
we speak about the forces, which affect the mind and determine its states, two
types of such forces may be seen immediately. These are (a) the inner mental
forces, i.e. the influences of one “parts” of mind on others, for
example, when the big goal are decomposed into a number of smaller ones, and
(b) the external forces, by which the “environment” acts on psyche.
However, important question what does this environment consist of, arises here.
Of course, part of the answer on this question is obvious. The environment
includes the person’s body, and, in particular, the person’s brain
and the person’s “genetic programs”. The environment includes
surrounding world and, in particular, social and cultural parts of the world,
which are interiorized and become opinions, attitudes, values etc. However, are
these whole environments? Or alternatively, are there other affecting mind
forces – non-mental, non-biological, non-social and non-cultural ones
– which we may consider as Supernatural ones (although this name is an
apt only in respect of traditional meaning of the term nature)?

This
question in different formulations had been disputed by European philosophers
during some centuries until it lost the part of actuality when the philosophers
came to rather common agreement between believers and atheists that given
question cannot be resolved by rational means. Of course, it was good solution,
however, it was good only for own time: What was good for 18th
century is becoming not so good in 21st one. Moreover, perhaps now
the time is coming when we must revise and deepen about what classical
philosophers came to agreement.

Meantime,
people of academic science have customized themselves to think that the
psyche’s environment is limited by known us world, in its biological,
physical, social and cultural “sides” and there are no any other
sources of influence on psyche. Body, mind, and environment form closed system:
everything happening inside this system is determined by this system itself.

The
present article is going to question this opinion showing the phenomena, which
cannot be explained by the hypothesis of closed system. There are other forces,
which influence mind and in significant degree determine its state. Thus, my
approach here is phenomenological one and my (more than ambitious) goal is to
provide – of course not proofs, but some phenomenological evidence in
favor of the openness of the system, which is custom to be considered as close
one.

In
force of reasons I am going to discuss, the psychology cannot provide the
“mathematical”, or “objective” proofs of existence of
God, which are valid for everybody. However, we may disclose the way, which can
lead everybody to getting the “personal proofs”. True, the person,
who possesses such personal proofs, will fail to convince his acquaintances in
validity of own discoveries, but for himself these proofs will be more than
sufficient.

The
first step in realizing this program is paying attention to some mass phenomena
and to some phenomena of “mystic experience.” However, before to
start phenomenological exposition, one topic of social epistemology must be
discussed.

What Proves May
Be Accepted by the Critics? Epistemological Note

Any
collection of facts may be explained differently, in frameworks of different
models. Moreover, these different explanations may be equally satisfactory from
logical point of view. Classical example of solipsism (e.g., Wood, 1962) shows how extravagant may be some
logically perfect explanatory schemes. Thus, the cultural fate of some
explanation –what will be widely accepted by society, and what will
remain a marginal theory – depends on not only its logical consistence,
but on many other factors. Of course, the factor of pragmatic usefulness plays
the important role among them. However, this is not the only important factor.
For example, such seeming ephemeral factors as correspondence to “spirit
of time” or aesthetic attractiveness of theory are able to play a rather
important role. Even more important is the factor of naturalness of
explanation, which is difficult to formalize – how natural or, on the
contrary, how fanciful explanation of the same phenomena are given by the one
or other theories.

However,
there is even more important factor responsible for introducing new explanatory
schemes. This is the social assimilation of the experience, which is the
subject of explanation (Zelitchenko, 2000/2001, pp. 8-11). It is easy to
explain by means of many concurrent theories the foreign experience, which are
known to theoretician only theoretically, i.e. only with few from infinite many
relationships between the phenomenon and the rest of world. However, the
situation is changed crucially, when we explain the phenomenon, which we know
well; know in all variety of its relationships with other things of world
– our own experience. Here our freedom of explanation become much
narrower and the only one theory may satisfy us – the theory, which
reflects the overall variety of relationships between the studied phenomenon
and the rest of world.

Another
factor, which determines the fate of theory, is connected closely with the
factor of assimilation of experience is the habit of scientific community to
existing (or similar) explanations. Sometimes, the new generation of scientists
must replace the old one to make unusual theory broadly accepted. We saw such
situation with many psychological theories, including such influential as
psychoanalysis. Too many scientists preferred to look for more than artificial
explanations of the phenomena, which were simply explained by Freud, in the
frameworks of old explanatory schemes (e.g. theory of association) just to
avoid reconsidering the theory they were customized with.

This
is why instead of attempt to provide ultimate, “mathematical” proof
of openness of MBE, I am restricting myself by “only” exposing the
collection of facts, which are indicative of such openness.

Phenomena
– 1: Common Ideas and Common Activities

Among
explanatory schemes of modern psychology, the concept unconscious psychical perhaps is one of the most powerful.
Everything what is unknown and unexplainable in the conscious mind may be
explained as something, which comes from the unconscious. However, even such
powerful explanations do not remove the problem of openness of MBE. Where are
the sources, which supply unconscious with content? Psychoanalysis showed that
one of these sources is the person’s own experience. However, is this
only source?

It
is rather clear that unconscious psyche is just a buffer between conscious mind
and something that may be either inside MBE, or out of this system. Thus, when
we put the source of some influence on mind in the unconscious we simply mask
the problem.

Nevertheless,
from the point of view of logics we may attribute to the unconscious the cause
of any individual phenomena. When the individual person conducts any behavioral
act we may say that the ultimate cause of this act belongs to the
person’s unconscious. However, the situation is changed crucially when we
move from individual phenomena to collective ones. Here we may see how the
members of big group, which often even do not know about existence of each
other, experience simultaneously the similar mental phenomena – common
feeling and, what is even more intriguing, common thoughts – the
phenomenon of simultaneous scientific discoveries and technical inventions (Simon,
2007).
Some theoreticians try to explain such common phenomena as similar individual
reactions on the same, common for all group experience (for example, on collective trauma, Bohleber, 2007; Erickson, 1994; Goren, 2007; Hirst &
Manier, 2008; Wessel & Moulds, 2008). However, it is quite clear that such explanations
have a rather limited scope of applicability.

The
other type of similarity between mental states is explained as a social contagion (from classical works Baldwin, 1894; Le Bon,
1895; Tarde, 1903/1963, to tens of
modern studies, see overview, e.g. in Marsden,
1998),
or as a mass hysteria (e.g., Bainbridge, 1987; Bartholomew & Goode; 2000, Sirois, 1974; Wessely, 1987).

One more group of similarity is explained
as a propagation of cultural
phenomena through the individual minds of the members of society, which
interiorize them (for example, Wallis &
Poulton, 2001) in
socialization-like or in fashion-like modes.

Among such explanations there is one idea, which
although is metaphorical also, possesses greater explanatory potential than its
competitors. This idea explains the occurrence of the same phenomena among
different individuals as capturing many individuals by the same idea. For
example, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Sociology (Marshall, 1994) defines social contagion as "ideas
moving rapidly through a group", while the Macmillan Dictionary of
Psychology (Sutherland, 1995) defines contagion as "the spread
of ideas… through a community”. On the face of it, this explanation
does not differ principally from the theory of same cultural phenomenon
influencing different individuals. However, indeed, it is much broader, since
the concept idea is much broader than
the concept thought. An idea is the
system of relationships between the things of the world, while a thought is
only the reflection of this system in a mind. This reflection may be either
complete (adequate) in the case of relatively simple ideas, or rather
fragmentary (approximate) when idea is more complex; the idea being more
complex the fragmentariness is bigger. Thus, the bigger (the more complex) idea
the more “idealistic”, more distinguished from traditional
explanatory schemes the model of “spread of ideas… through a
community”. In the cases of very complex spreading ideas, which are
bigger than one existing in the cultural environment, we must expand our model
of world introducing in it something, which exists “behind” the
culture, somewhere in trans-cultural and trans-social “spaces”.
Such extension would mean real shift from the materialistic views of today
philosophy of psychology to much more idealistic ones. However, to expose this
movement some more explorations are necessary.

All
attempts to explain the similarity between the individuals by the influence of
one individual (or one group) on another stop to work when we move from the
short-term phenomena (with duration of, maximum, months and years) to the long-term
ones with durations tens and even several hundred years, which involve many
successful generations. No one from these generations has more or less full
awareness of the common activity and hence cannot to teach it. Nevertheless,
replacing one another a number of generations do make common job and do create
very complex cultural pattern. Of course, and here there are attempts to
explain such historical-scale phenomena (although theoretical attention to them
is relatively weak) from the materialistic point of view. The idea of
self-organization (for example, Luhmann, 1995;
Scott Kelso, 1995; or Estep, 2006) – the big systems organize and are organized
themselves – must be named here first. However, this is already the last
line of defense of the materialism. In fact, although this is still rather
fashionable way of thinking in scientific community, the idea of
self-organizing is in spite of some its advantages may be easily criticized.
Although self-organizing is real phenomenon, there are obvious limits, in which
the system is able to organize itself. These limits are predetermined by the
nature of system. We may shake as long as possible the box with transistors but
they do not become radio receiver. Let us imagine that the 10,000 experienced
puzzle-builders are going to build the giant jigsaw puzzle of the size 200 m by
200 m from 100,000,000 small - 2 cm by 2 cm - pieces. Each builder is able to
build 10,000 pieces puzzle and has own set of 10,000 pieces and a picture,
which must be built by him. However, all together they will not be able to
accomplish overall task unless they have the overall final picture. Moreover,
they cannot draw this final picture themselves; somebody, who does not belong
to their team, must give the picture to them. This is exactly ours – the
creators’ of culture – situation: the pattern of creation (in more
or less details) is predetermined by the idea of creation, which is invisible
but most powerful actor in social and historical plays. This idea unfold itself
in culture, created by millions of individual actors, each of them hardly
recognizes its content. Hence, such idea cannot be created by an individual
mind or even by a group one. Instead, it may be only introduced in our world
from somewhere, which does not belong to our world. Thus, the fact itself of
existence of such ideas speaks against the axiom of positive mind “Our
world is a closed system”.

However,
although such arguments may sound quite logical, they convince opponents in
much less degree than arguments of different kind – appellations to
opponents’ own experience. It is not enough to show the necessity of big
ideas, which do organize the cultural work of many generation of nation. It
would be much more purposeful to open the way to feel, to experience such
ideas. After all, we are learning about sunlight not from the stories and even
in less degree from the logical proofs of its existence. We are learning from
our vision of light.

Phenomena
– 2: Signs of Destiny and Inner Voice

There
is another group of phenomena, which question the axiom of closeness of MBE.
These are phenomena of “strange, illogical” decisions, which person
makes without any external reasons and influences and which changes his overall
life. Examples of such decisions may be easily found in biographies of almost
each prominent historical actor. However, may be even more easy to find them in
own life. Instead of following well determined and easy to follow the paths of
carrier, the person without any seeable reasons takes extremely extravagant steps,
which often make his life much less comfortable. Of course, it is possible to
explain such “extravagant” decisions by the combination of the
factors of personal circumstances and ones of cultural influence also, but too
often such explanations seems to be rather artificial. Here the situation is
quite opposite to one with common ideas. If we explain the extravagant
decision, for example, by “the fashion on extravagancy”, it is
naturally to expect that such kind of extravagancy will be observed on a mass scale.
Nevertheless, we see all such case is unique in its own. Something drove
Gauguin in Tahiti (Paul Gauguin, n.d.), but he was the only
one from impressionists who was driven in Oceania.

Again,
own experience here is more convincing than any logical arguments. And what
about own experience, perhaps everybody may easily recollect episodes from his
own life, when something inside his mind advised (or even ordered) him to act
in non-standard and unpredictable way, which cannot be explained by the
influences from known sources (like, the parents’ opinions, or the school
teachers’ prescriptions, or newspapers’ recommendations and so on).
These orders-advices obviously came from the other source. However, what is
this source?

Phenomena
– 3: Higher Experience – Expanding Conscious, Expanding Ideas

William
James in his classical book (James, 1902/1997)
collected phenomena of religious conversion accompanied by mystical
enlightenment. However, the phenomena of this kind are also not too common.
Their uncommon character allowed James’s critics to attribute these
phenomena for example to mental illness (e.g., hysteria or schizophrenia).
However, the critics omitted the fact that although the phenomena of enlightenment
are uncommon indeed, the ability to
experience these phenomena are very common and may be developed by everybody.
Recurring to recognition of the historical
mega-ideas, it is possible to say that, fortunately, we all have the
ability although not recognize in all details the mega-ideas, but to experience
them. The way to this experiencing is through the expanding our conscious,
because the capacity of our everyday conscious is enough to include only small
pieces of mega-ideas, but not overall picture.

Thus,
the ability to experience mega-ideas has to be developed. People as they are
differ one from other by level of their development and, hence, differ in the
scale of ideas they are able to understand, to know instantly, to know basing on own experience. Such instant
knowledge is not “democratic” – what is known for
“elite” is not reachable by the “lay person”. We know
this situation very well in respect of knowledge of higher mathematics or
theoretical physics, but we poorly recognize it in respect of social science
and humanities, where, nevertheless, the difference between elite knowledge and
profane one is even bigger. Thus, instead of exposition of the phenomena of
higher experience, I am forced to discuss the ways of development of the ability
for such experience.

However,
the rather volume introduction is necessary to prepare the discussion of the
matters of broad consciousness and of higher experience, i.e. experiencing of
mega-ideas. First, the scale “lower-upper” mental states must be
introduced.

Upper and Lower
in the Psyche: the Scale of Brightness of Mental States

In
Chapter 3 of Light of Life (Zelitchenko, 2006, pp. 41-59, 683-692) I introduced the
unit of mental-spiritual brightness lyum
and the 100-lyum scale of brightness of mental and mental-spiritual states.
This scale lifts from the simplest forms of mental activity as sensations of
pain or of hungry through more and more complex states to such complex states
as inventing management strategies or solving mathematical problems and
continues to climb even higher. The difference between bright mental states and
dim ones is determined by the breadth of consciousness: the brighter state the
broader consciousness, the more part of world – the things of world and
the relationships between these things – it reflects. The six zones of
this scale I named black (0–10
lyums), blue (10–30), green (30–50), yellow (50–70), orange (70–90) and red (90–100). The first four of
them cover almost all our everyday states. For example, Table 1 shows the
lowest part of the scale, which is occupied by the “animal”,
black  states, where one sensation
or feeling dominate on and determine the overall mental state, and demonstrate
the slow rise (and beginning of enlightening from “purely black” to
“dark blue”) of such states.

Table 1

“Blake”
states

Brightness

(in lyums)

State

0

Insensibility as in a deep sleep without dreams

1

Moderate negative sensations: pain, hungry, cold

2

Strong sufferings, which is impossible to bear and which, hence, force
to act, e.g. climb up the wall from tooth-ache

3

Gregarious feelings, e.g. panics

4

Love of kid to mother, depression from loss of relative (up to reject
from food and even death), or from loss of freedom (when the animals stop to
breed, or the birds stop to sing)

5

Emotional of survival of species: libido, or love mother to kid
(“as cat love her kittens”)

6

“State of ox”: thoughtless do what you know how to do

7

“State of dog”: submission to simple orders like
“sit down – stand up” (ideal soldier – although only
on parade-ground, not in a battle – is in state-7); “animal
joy”: the dog meeting returned owner who he left it to wait in front of
the shop, or the foal on spring meadow, or hoping child, or teenagers roaring
with laughter under old woman falling down

8

“State of hare”: animal horror

9

“State of tiger”: animal frenzy of males fighting for
female, or fury of hunting beast

Note. From “Svet
Zhizni [Light of Life, History and Developmental Psychology of Nations]”
by A. Zelitchenko, 2006, Moscow: Otkrytyy
Mir, p.52. Copyright 2006 by A. Zelitchenko. Translated and adapted by
the author.

In
the middle of the scale, the yellow states are located. These states correspond
to the impressions from classic music, or to the states, in which the scientist
works on scientific article, or to the states, in which the executive makes
decisions on the development of his company etc. In yellow states our intuition
works well, we see ourselves objectively and see the big groups, in which we
involved – our countries, or our professional communities. In these
states, we may feel both light sorrow and sad irony… Right now, I am
writing the present text in the yellow state and I want to hope that you are
reading this in the yellow state also.

Between
the black states and the yellow ones, there are intermediate blue and green
states. Blue states are the states of fun during football match or on
rock-concert, or the states of conveyer worker, or ones of scullery maid. Green
states are the states of clerk, or the state of newspaper’s reader.

The
Table 2 consisted of 10 rows (groups of states with brightness 0–10,
11–20,… 91–100 lyums), demonstrates the rise of brightness of
mental-spiritual states in more systematic way in accordance with 10 lines
(columns). Each of these l0 lines may be considered as a descriptor (or a
component) of mental-spiritual state.

The
brightness of state is determined by the maximum value of its descriptors, for
example, the brightness of the state with 10 descriptors, each of them having
value 50, is 50, while the brightness of the state, which have only 1
descriptor with value 60 and 9 descriptors with value 10 is 60.

Ten
descriptors of states are divided in three groups: four descriptors of what
person does (“states of arm”) (first four columns); three
descriptors of how the person perceive the world (“states of eye”);
while the Table 3 includes three descriptors, which possess attributes of both
perception and activity simultaneously.

Table
2demonstrate how the brightness of more or less common states rises from
semi-animal primitiveness to our Summits. Since brighter common states
corresponds to belonging to higher social stratum, first seven groups of
states, from states-0 to states-6, may be named in accordance with the steps of
military, academic or some other carrier, for example: first grade student (0);
fifth grade student (1), tenth grade student (2); University student (3), MS
(4), PhD (5), Full Professor (6).

The general principle of organizing the tables’
columns may be illustrated by following example. One of the important tasks,
which almost everybody meets, is to force some powerful person
(“boss”) to do what this person initially is not going to do. How
do peoples in different states resolve this task?

●
Person in
state-0 simply demands, “Give me!”

●
Person in
state-1 obtains by weeping, forces to do “this” from pity.

●
Person in
state-2 repeats his request as long as necessary not paying attention on
rejects.

●
Person in
state-3 waits a good mood of the boss (“requests after dinner”).

●
Person in
state-4 explains the boss why he must do this.

●
Person in
state-5 convinces the boss, that he wants to do this himself.

●
Person in
state-6 creates the situation, when the boss has no other choice than to do
this.

The
yellow states are not the highest states of the scale of brightness of
mental-spiritual states. However, the upper – orange and red –
states are rarely experienced. High inspirations, enlightenment, revelations
and other forms of highest religious experience belong to these groups. These
are super-aesthetic states or religious ones, which are known only for most
developed people who were lucky enough to experience these states at least some
seconds. (The memory about these seconds lives with person all his life and
leads the person in his development.) In these states, the person loses the
feeling of his Self as something separated from the world. He experiences
All-knowing and full self-awareness as one integral super-feeling. Our language
has too few means to describe the highest states, but in the context of present
article, there is no need in their detailed descriptions. Last three rows of Table
2 was elaborated to designate the scope, which cannot be described
satisfactorily yet, providing more or less differentiated presentation of the
composition of orange and red states in the language originated in Abrahamic
religious traditions. (Although it worth to note here that by their nature
itself, the components of these states are so closely interrelated that any
attempt to decompose them in an analytical manner is seemed to be rather
doubtful.)

Table 2

Ten lines of the
rise of brightness of mental-spiritual states

I. Resolvable task (goal, WHAT)

II. Senses 1)

III. Complexity (HOW) 2)

IV. Motives 3)

V. Thoughts – opinions
4)

VI. Emotions 5)

VII. Self-awareness 6)

VIII. Pliability 7)

IX. Impressions 8)

X. “Astral vision” 9)

0

To take some
food

To release
bone ache

To wash a car

To plough

To get
everything necessary for himself for today

Hate mail

Heads or
tails

“I do
what they order me to do”

God lives in
the church

Good society
is one, which is good for me

The health is
the absence of pain

Sexual desire

Pain

The person
has no any notion about himself

Lack of
receptivity

Common things
and common peoples 10)

Nightmares,
“astral sensitivity” 11)

1

To earn from
time to time some hundred  dollars

To cure a
scratch

To adjust a
car chair

To replace a
bulb

To get
everything necessary for himself and for his family for nearest month

Stereotype
greeting card

Roulette

“I do
what I want”

“I do
what turns out itself”

“I do
what he does”

God is lord
of the world

Good society
is one, where is good for everybody

The healthy
person is one who is not sick

Jealous

Vexations

The person is
able to answer “I” on the question “Who did this?”

Uncritical
accepting or rejecting

“Disposable,
one time art” (sport, circus, cross-out films, porno, thrillers)

“Material”
dreams (e.g. to buy bicycle)

2

To get a
salary $1000 monthly

To cure of
cold

To replace a
wheel

To cook a
dinner

To get
everything necessary for himself for nearest year

Standard
business letter

Durak card
game

“I do
what is prescribed, what is customary”

God is
creator of the world

Good society
is one, where everybody is awarded in accordance with his merits

The man
inherit health  from his parents

Amorousness

Offence

The person is
able to think about himself

Distrustfulness

“One-day
art” (detectives, soap operas, actions, adventures)

Daydreaming

3

To save for a rainy day

To extract a tooth

To replace a radiator

To renovate a flat

To get everything necessary for himself and his
relatives forever

Reference letter

Sport betting

“I act originally, in my own way”

Only one god exists

Good society is communism

The health is determined by healthy mode of
lifestyle

Tenderness

Despair

The person is able to recognize the reason of own
behavior – to answer on question “Why I did this?”

Doubts and estimating authority of source of
information

“Short-term art, or proto-art”
(“preaching art”, which cannot be reread or re-seen after some years)

Waking –dreams 12)

4

To invest

To operate an ulcer

To assemble a car on conveyer

To make own home beautiful

To resolve all financial problems of the problem

To provide earnings for several peoples

Letter with
uncommon request

Poker

“Despite of obstacles, I do what I must
do"

God does not exist

Society cannot be good for everybody

The science do not know what is health

Empathy

Melancholy

Feeling of beauty of things (of clothes, or of
dishes)

The person is able to be aware of WHAT he did

Testing information – comparing new
information with already known one

“Medium-term art” (the level is upper
than average, although what was of parents’ interest is not interesting
for children)

Fantasies-tales 12)

5

To organize medium enterprise

To organize mass vaccination

To improve model of car engine

To make own home stylish

To provide earnings for many tens of people unknown
personally

Letter from epistolary novel

Political betting

“I do what I decided to do”

The existence of God cannot be proved

Good society is one with optimal governance

The health is determined by the power of immune
system

Devotion

Sadness

Feeling of beauty of  “loudly beautiful” (e.g.
of the mountain landscape, or of the sea sunset)

The person is able to see own disadvantages

Investigating problem on one’s own

“Classic art” (what is alive longer than
one generation)

Light fancies

6

To organize big enterprise

To invent AIDS vaccine

To build flying car

To make own home happy

To provide earnings for many thousands of people
unknown personally

Philosophical letters

Stock speculations

“I act in accordance with my Duty”

God is Absolute
Spirit

Good society is one, which assists everybody in his development

The health is the state of harmony of organism and
harmony between organism and the world

Care of and understanding

“Light sorrow”

Feeling of beauty of  “usual” things (e.g. of
the tree, or of the  field)

The person is able to recognize HOW he acts and to
see “the observer” inside himself, i.e. to transfer to
“reflexivity of second order”, reflexivity of the process of
reflexivity itself, and to become aware of the subject of self-awareness.

Determining “zone of truth” 13)

“Masterpieces” (“eternal”
art – from Aeschylus to Mozart)

Dream-flights

7

Annunciating

Service to God

Inspiration

Obedience
to the Most High

Understanding of Everything without words

Religious Feeling

Permanent self-awareness, which is continuously  deepening

Perception of any message as an event on the world
of information

Bach, El Greco, Quran, Gospel of Joan, Revelation,

“Astral travels” at will

8

Prophesying and leading people

Service to God

To be inspirited by Divinity

Merging the personal will with the Highest Will

Awareness of own involvement into the Super-Personal

Involvement into the “Movement of the
Spheres”

Complete self-awareness

Perception of any message in the context of the
history of its origin

From Divine Comedy to Giaconda

“Managing astral world”

9

Lighting and Sanctifying people

Service to God

Creating Miracles

Highest Will

Clear awareness of the Everything

Unity with God

The absence of Self

The message is transformed from the information
event into event of United World

Super-human in the art, which already stops to be an
art

Opening all subtle worlds, which are accessible for
a human being, up

Note. In the model of description of acts,
which I used in this cycle of my works, an act is described by the system of
five descriptors, which answer five questions: (a) WHAT does the person do? (b)
For whom (for what) does the person act? (c) HOW does the person acts? (d) What
is the person moved by? and (e) In what will the person’s acts result? First
four columns illustrate the answers on first four questions for the acts of
different brightness. Because the product of the person’s activity is
imprinted in other person, the answers on fifth question are shown in the
column “Thoughts”  and
in the column “Impression”. Both emotions and thoughts may be the
acts as well as the perceptions. Aesthetical feeling, joy and depression are
the examples of the passive emotion-perceptions, while the love and the hate
are examples of the active emotion-acts. A “thought-perception”
repeats something what were read or listened, while a “thought-act”
actively cognates the world and builds the plans. Last three columns describe
the world’s “imprints on psyche”. These
“imprints” are what often determine the brightness of the states.
This more visible on rock-concerts and football matches; however the analogical
imprints we receive each moment with each new impression. Even simple rattling
is imprinted in the interlocutors. Even simple walk around the city leaves such
imprints as well as the use of any thing and the company of any people leaves
them. From “Svet
Zhizni [Light of Life, History and Developmental Psychology of Nations]”
by A. Zelitchenko, 2006, Moscow: Otkrytyy
Mir, p.685-687. Copyright 2006 by A. Zelitchenko. Translated and adapted
by the author.

1) The hungry robber killing young girl to take her $10 and to buy some
food, the father of this girl trying to defend his daughter from the robber,
and the soldier who defends his country – all of them are shooting, but
all they are shooting differently. The sense is the big business, the person
recognizes himself as an actor of which, when he does his small business. In
other words, the sense is the context in which the person puts his act. The
sense is determined by how far and how broad is the person’s vision
– how big (how many participants in them and how long they are) those
processes the person recognizes himself involved in, i.e. how far the person
sees in a time and in a social world. When the person becomes brighter, he
transfers from the work for himself only, to the work for his family, for his
party, for his society and so on.

2) Each act consists of his “parts”, those – from their
“parts” and so on. The more complex act (i.e. the more collection
of the “parts”, of which the person builds his act, and the set of
relationships between these “parts”) the brighter act is. The most
complex activity demands quick, complex and non-standard responses on
unpredictable changes of environment (“acts of opponent”).

3) Lower motives are obedience to other’s will, copying and spontaneous
impulses. The brighter motive, the bigger degree, in which it is
“own” and in which the act motivated by this motive is purposeful
and strong-willed. Becoming brighter motives move from “it happens
itself” and “something does it by means of me” to “I am
doing”. However, in the states-6 this monotone rise of
“innerness” changes direction – the person acts as if
somebody (or, more precisely, Somebody – some Higher Power) lead him.

The power of motive makes the act brighter –
energetic act is brighter than the same slack one. However, this increase
cannot lift the brightness of act more than on 1 degree (10 lyums) –
energetic captain may be brighter than inert colonel is, but not than inert
marshal is.

4)  Below is the general scheme
of the rise of brightness of opinions (“theories”):

●
Theory-0
– occasionally listened somewhere opinion

●
Theory-1
– school rudiments like school arithmetic

●
Theory-2
– simple explanations from popular magazines

●
Theory-3
– vulgarization of scientific and philosophic theories (of such as
Freudism, Darwinism, Marxism) and rudiments of professional knowledge

●
Theory-4
– “common” professional knowledge, formal philosophical
systems (like atheism or positivism)

●
Theory-5
– knowledge of professional “secrets”, worldly wisdom, last
scientific achievements

●
Theory-6
– heights of European philosophy (e.g. Leibniz’s monadology)

4,5) (Common note) The brighter emotions and thoughts, the larger
“amount” of them and the more saturated and richer by nuances they
are – as if a bush spreads out and blossoms. In the Table B, where the
rise of brightness is illustrated by the example of two emotions – love
and grief – to designate such “spreading out” third emotion
is added beginning from the states-4 – feeling of beauty.

5) As in the case of motives, the power of emotion increases its
brightness but not too much.

6)  The self-awareness is also
both a perception and an act simultaneously – the “eye” of
self-awareness modify what it looks on, because the changing presentation of own
Self changes the Self.

7) People in different states are susceptible to the world’s impacts
differently. In lower states psyche reacts as water, which cannot keep any
imprints, or as a diamond, on which also nothing may be imprinted, or
alternatively as a soft wax, which saves any imprints. The brighter state
becomes the more complex way, in which the psyche reacts on external impacts:
it accepts one influences, resists to others and so on.

8) Surrounding peoples (from the lumpen in states-0 to the refine
intellectuals in states-6), surrounding things (from very common as hamburger
or jeans to rather recherché as Meissen porcelain or rather
constructively complex as a car) as well as very different works of art leave
their imprint on human psyche. This column (excepting states-0) traces the
evolution of artistic impressions.

9) “Astral vision” is the subset of an imagination. Of course,
any imagination is “perception-act”, since it “sees”
imagined things (e.g. in dreams) and creates them in the same time – in
daydreams a person sees what he imagined (created), while in dreams a person
affect on what he sees, that is he acts while perceiving and he perceives while
acting. Nevertheless, I included “astral vision” in Table C rather
than in Table B to emphasize such imaginations is the special kind of
perception – perception of astral entities - and to prepare in such a way
the discussion of some ontological matters, which is inevitable when we
consider transpersonal phenomena.

Is contrast to other characteristics
of mental states, the character of “astral vision” does not
correlate with the place in social hierarchy.

10) The states with brightness from 10 to 70 lyums (groups 1-6) may be
imprinted by both communication with peoples and works of art. The states with
brightness 0 - 9 lyums (group 0) may be imprinted only by people and common
things – there is no art-0.

11)  I use the term “astral
sensitivity” in respect of phenomenon, when the children until some age
feel astral reality as some unclear, but doubtless real part of environment.
This topic also demands discussion of ontological matters.

12) The difference between the waking-dreams and the fantasies-tales is that
the imagined (unreal) events of waking-dreams are happened in real world with
real heroes, while in fantasy-tales both world and actors may be fictitious.

13) Any message including those, which is seemed to be incorrect, contains
“the part of truth”. The person in state-6 is able to detect this
truth “part”, to separate it from “the false part”, and
in such a way to transform lie in truth – “Perhaps, you mean
that…” etc.

Lifting from
Yellow States to Orange and Red Ones – I: Super-aesthetic and Religious
Feelings

Of
course, the visits even of those of us who are most lucky into the spheres,
which are brighter than yellow ones, are seldom and short-term. Nevertheless,
collection of such experiences may disclose the way to the point, where
discovery of the openness of MBE become self-evident.

Different
religious traditions tell us about the several passes, which lead above yellow
sphere. Some other passes were disclosed by the modern psychology and in
particular by the transpersonal psychology. In the process of personal growth,
the person first reaches the yellow scope and after that is able to climb
higher continuing development of the strongest “part” of his
mentality, which is different for different people: for one this is emotional
sphere, for other – intellectual and so on. Thus, one follows Upward by
deepening his realizing of Reality (this path may be named “The Pass of
Philosopher”), other – by refining his emotions (“The Pass of
Artist”), third – by broadening the scope of his activity
(“The Pass of the Man of Action”) and so on (compare with Gurdjieff’s
four ways Ouspensky, 2001). From all these passes (their overall number is
difficult to estimate) I choose for demonstration of general principle only
three – the way of refining aesthetic feelings toward their
transformation into super-aesthetic, religious ones and the parallel way of
deepening understanding of the scriptures (in present section), and the way of
growing reflexivity (in the next one).

The
way of refining aesthetic feelings starts in early childhood, when the kid
first time is hearing the fairy tales, and continues all life until the
aesthetic development of the person stops. Sometimes this happens, when the
person dye, sometimes significantly earlier. Not everybody reaches the level of
yellow aesthetic feelings, however in front of those who do reach them the new
perspectives are opened – the perspectives, where the person receives the
more than reliable evidences of the openness of MBE.

In
other words, I want to say that there are the works of arts with potential of
awakening the super-aesthetic feelings – the persons with developed
enough aesthetic feelings are ready to “extract” from these works
the super-aesthetic feelings of different brightness – from
“yellow-orange” (70 lyums) to red (100 lyums). Table 3 enumerates
some of these works of arts together with estimation of brightness of the
feelings, which they are able to “induce”. However, the several
preliminary comments are necessary here.

Table 3

Brightness of Works of Arts

Height1)

Performance
Arts

Literature

Plastic
arts

Films

Music

Literary fiction

Scriptures

Architecture

Paintings
and Sculpture

36-40

Wyler’s Ben-Hur

Average level of best jazz singers
(e.g. Armstrong, Fitzgerald)

Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes

Acts, Proverbs

London Piccalilli, Paris Place

de l’Etolie

Average Dutch Still Life of 17th
century

41-45

Chaplin’s The Gold Rush

Acmes of “Beatles”

Boccaccio’s
“Decameron”, Hemingway’s Islands in

the Stream

Gospel of Luke

“El Castillo” in
Chichen Itza

Degas’s
“dancers”

46-50

Selznick’s Gone with the
wind

Strauss’s The Blue Danube,
Tales from the Vienna Woods

Twain’s Tom Sawyer,
Dickens’s David Copperfield

Gospel of Mark

Ensemble of Teotihuacan

Renoir’s portraits (e.g. Girl
with a Hoop)

51-55

Chaplin’s City Lights

Verdi’s Rigoletto

Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle

Ecclesiastes,

Job

Parks of Suzhou,

Alabaster Mosque in Cairo

Caravaggio’s  The
Sacrifice of Isaac, The
Cardsharps, The Fortune Teller

56-60

Chaplin’s Limelight

Bergman’s Wild Strawberry

Grieg’s Peer  Gynt

Hugo’s Les
Misérables,
Dostoyevsky’s Crime and punishment

Isaiah

St. Peter Cathedral in Vatican

Acmes of Titian (e.g. Danae, St. Sebastian)

61-65

Fellini’s La Strada

Beethoven’s Appassionata, Tchaikovsky's Symphony Pathétique

Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Tao Te Ching

Parthenon,

Taj Mahal

Acmes of Bosch (e.g. The Garden
of Earthly Delights)

66-70

Mozart’s Symphony

No. 40

Goethe’s

Faust

Gospel of Matthew

Chartres Cathedral

Acmes of Michelangelo’s (Pieta, David),

Rublev’s Icon Trinity

71-75

Acmes of Bach (e.g. Toccata and Fugue
in D minor)

Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat,

Al-Ghazali’s The Alchemy
of Happiness

Song of Songs, Psalms

St. Basil Cathedral in Moscow,
Hagia Sophia

Cellini's Crucifix at Escorial Monastery

76-80

Rumi’s

Divan

Gospel of John, Apocalypse Quran

Temple of Seti I in Abydos, Tomb
of Tutankhamun Complex in Dazu

Acmes of El Greco (e.g. The Savior, or The Veil of St Veronica), Jade
Buddha in Shanghai

81-85

Dante’s

Divine Comedy

Zohar,
Torah (Pentateuch)

Mortuary
Temple of Hatshepsut

Theophanes the Greek’s
fresco Pantocrator

86-90

Bhagavad Gita

Rigveda

Notre Dame de Paris

Sistine Madonna

91-95

Abu Simbel

La Gioconda

96-100

Pyramids of Giza

Great Sphinx in Giza

Note. From “Svet Zhizni [Light of Life, History and Developmental
Psychology of Nations]” by A. Zelitchenko,
2006, Moscow: Otkrytyy Mir, p.678-679. Copyright 2006 by A. Zelitchenko. Translated
and adapted by the author.

1) Range of the brightness of the highest mental-spiritual state (in
lyums), which may be induced by the work of art.

First.
The potential ability of work of art to lift the person in the state of some
brightness does not mean that perception of this work will lift every person is this state. Everything
depends on the spiritual level of the person – his spiritual height, level of preparation (Zelitchenko, 2006, pp. 46-47, 62-67) to perceive bright
works of art. What is a masterpiece for one is nothing for other. For billions
“Hamlet” (Shakespeare, 1885) is just “words, words,
words”, and only thousands are able to experience completely the whole
brightness of the Shakespeare’s tragedy. Thus, too many peoples do not
know the art brighter than the Beatles’ songs. They may lift upper in
course of their development, but at the present moment, all talks about not
only orange states but even about yellow ones are meaningless for them. This is
why the explication of the way to the highest states I started even not with
yellow works of art, but with green ones, which are assimilated but the
majority of mature population of developed countries. Moreover, the same
majority experienced also at least “yellow-green” feelings, and
hence, know the part of the way from the green states to the yellow ones and
are able to prolong (“extrapolate”) this part to the upper  – orange and red – states.

Second.
The different genres perhaps have their own upper limits of brightness. Thus, a
cinema (as well as any performing arts, excepting music) does not lift a mental
state upper than 65 lyums (although a personal contact with spiritual leader as
well as participating in some religious ceremonies are able to lift
participants significantly higher), music does not lift upper than 75 lyums, a
literature – upper than 90 lyums. However, the discussion of reasons of
this “law” would come far from the thematic frameworks of this
article.

Third.
I divide the column “Literature” into two parts –
“Scriptures” and “Fiction” – basing, first, on
existing cultural tradition and, second, on the fact that until they reach some
(rather high) level, the different sides of mind are developed in significant
degree independently when the person moves from the lower works of belle
letters and of scriptures, correspondingly, to the higher ones. If the
experience of aesthetic feelings is what is responsible for perceiving fiction,
the understanding of scriptures (as well as one of philosophy texts) is based,
first, on the richness of personal experience (this is extremely important
topic, discussion of which, however, is also out of the frameworks of present
article) and, second, on the intellectual level. However, these two lines
converge beginning from the level 65-70 lyums, when the boundary between
scriptures and fictions becomes more and more conditional, because when the
brightness of fiction rises upper 65-70 lyums, the fiction loses its
fictionness and is transformed from the story about fiction (i.e. of something
unreal) into the story about Higher Reality. Beginning from this level, the
person’s reaction on such “fictions” (or to say more
precisely – the person’s co-existence with the masterpiece, which
is both imaginative and real at the same time) is based on the complex and
almost completely unknown for academic psychology emotional-intellectual
“mechanisms”, which allow him to extract the meaning from the masterpieces
of spiritual literature. The same thing happens with the plastic arts where the
boundary between architecture and sculpture (as in case of Great Sphinx or
Buddhist sculpture complexes, e.g. Dazu) or even between architecture and
painting (as in Abu Simbel, or in Tomb of Tutankhamun, or in the late Byzantine
churches) becomes rather conditional in high-level works of art.

Lifting from
Yellow to Orange and Red States – II: from the Occasional Observer to the
Permanent “Observer Observing”

Development
of aesthetic feelings is a rather slow process, which lasts years and decades.
All mystic schools have tried to elaborate the methods to facilitate the
personal development and ability for higher experience. The core of all such
methods is the development of self-consciousness.

In
Psychology of Dukhovnost (Zelitchenko, 1996, pp. 83-84) I described the main
line of such development. The “usual person” only rather rare
observe own mind. Among his mutual Selves
(Assagioli, 1965, Ouspensky, 2001, Zelitchenko, 1996,
pp. 60-63), the Observer plays
not very important role and appears on stage rarely and for short time only.
The first step in the development of both self-consciousness and reflectivity
is to make these appearances longer and more often. In ideal, the Observer must
present on the stage of consciousness permanently. The next step is the
appearance of new personage of inner play – the Observer observing, which observes the process of reflexivity
itself, or conduct “second-order reflexivity” The Observer
observing initially also appears rarely and only for some seconds. However,
systematical exercises make him more permanent actor of inner stage. This is
the time to introduce a new personage – the Observer observing observation, which conducts the third-order
reflexivity – the observation of the process of observation of the
process self-observation. This kind of reflexivity never happens naturally and
may be elaborated only as result of special training, which expands the
self-consciousness crucially. Simultaneously with such expansion, the
consciousness gets access to the new experience, which eliminates any doubts
about openness of our mind not only to transpersonal, but also to trans-social
and trans-cultural realities.

Instead of
Conclusion: Unipolar and Bipolar Models of Reality - Figures

Chapter
7 of Psychology of Dukhovnost (Zelitchenko, 1996, pp. 118-119) describes the classical
model of academic psychology as it is shown in Figure 2. Known us external
world trough the body (in particular, receptors) acts on mind, which processes
this action and return the results of this processing through the body to
external world. This scheme underlies, for example, behaviorism.

Psychoanalysis
questioned this model, and as a result, its various modifications were created.
The Figure 3 (Psychosynthesis, n.d.) represents one of
such modifications.

However,
all such modifications avoid dealing with the main ontological problem, which
in this paper I formulated as a problem of openness or closeness of MBE. We
have too many evidences that our world is open and that there is Other Reality,
which acts on our minds. This is why no egg-like models can satisfy us more. We
are coming to the moment when we must break the eggshell of such models and see
the Real World as It is.

The
Figure 4 (Zelitchenko, 1996, p. 130,
English translation Zelitchenko, 1997/2009)
represents other, “non-egg” model of psyche. In this model the mind
bridges two worlds – the physical world, with which a psyche interacts by
means of the body, on the one side, and the “outer” subtle world,
with which a psyche interacts by means of the special organ, which is named
differently – Higher Self, Spiritual Body etc. This interaction
consist in conducting two types of currents – (a) the current embodying
the subtle ideas, which goes down from the subtle world, and (b) the current,
which goes upward extracting the meanings from the “incarnations”
of the embodied early ideas.

When
one sees something as an ellipse (or, more precisely, as a system of concentric
ellipses) while the other sees the same as a couple of triangles (in fact, the
Figure 4 shows two triangles, directed in opposite directions – the left
upward, the right downward), we may propose that they both look on the
cone-like three-dimensional body. The Figure 5 represents such
three-dimensional scheme of psyche. Two elliptic sections (1 and 2) limit the
scope of conscious mind from lower sub-conscious (6) and upper super-conscious
(5) parts of mind. Inside of the last one there are the Center of Psyche
– Higher Self (3) – which belongs to both psyche and subtle world
and connects them, and the collective unconscious (4) – those mega-ideas,
which an individual shares with his nation and his other big groups up to
humankind as a whole.

Figure 1. Unipolar model: 1 – Mind; 2 – Body; 3
– External (Physical, Social and Cultural) World.

From “Psikhologiya dukhovnosti
[Psychology of Dukhovnost]" by A. Zelitchenko,
1996, Moscow: Izdatelstvo Transpersonalnogo Instituta, p. 118. Copyright 1996
by A. Zelitchenko. Adapted by the author.

Figure 2. The "egg
diagram": 1- The Lower Unconscious; 2 - The Middle Unconscious; 3
- The Higher Unconscious; 4 - The Field of Consciousness; 5 - The Conscious
Self or "I"; 6 - The Higher Self; 7 - The Collective Unconscious.

From “Psychosynthesis”
in Wikipedia, retrieved February 28, 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosynthesis.
Used by GNU Free Documentation License.

Figure 3. Bipolar model: 1 – Subtle World; 2 – Mind; 3 –
Body.

From “Psikhologiya dukhovnosti
[Psychology of Dukhovnost]" by A. Zelitchenko,
1996, Moscow: Izdatelstvo Transpersonalnogo Instituta, p. 130. Copyright 1996
by A. Zelitchenko. Adapted by the author.

Figure 4. Three-dimensional Bipolar Model: 1 - “Lower” mind; 2
– “Upper mind”; 3 – High Self; 4 – Collective
unconscious; 5 – Super-conscious; 6 - Sub-conscious.

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