Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness

"Humphrey has an approach of consciousness that fits very well with the science of present moment experience. The present moment is something extended in time but has a certain limit of duration. Being in the present moment for one year is impossible, and even one day is much too long: probably not even three minutes. It is more in the seconds range, and maybe even on a very short seconds range, perhaps two or three seconds long. That’s when what we immediately perceive as here and now is effortlessly integrated into all our sensory input. This is the here and now, extended for a few seconds, the ‘present-moment consciousness’. “Being in the present moment for a year is impossible; even one day is much too long” What Nicholas Humphrey does very nicely is give an explanation of how consciousness might have evolved out of something that used to be some sort of a motor-output. This motor-output might be as simple as: oh, there is some sugar, go to where the sugar is because that is important for energy. This motor-output feeds back to your inner core, until you have something of a recurrent feedback for sugar. And this perception is, you could say, the present-moment of nowness because you are feeling this sugary state. Instead of just seeing sugar, you act towards the sugar, and you feel sugariness because there is feedback to yourself. This sounds a little complicated, but the point is that present moment-ness is a feedback of your perception over and over again, which extends over time. That’s what Nicholas Humphrey’s idea is—that consciousness is simply like a thick perception of what is out there, what you feel, extended over time. A sensory experience, I would say, is very imminent and concrete. If you are stuck in an elevator, you would really know what time is—that’s not illusory. We feel time. You can debate, of course, about the philosophical implications, but on the psychological level there’s no argument that we experience ourselves in time, and that we are very emotional about time. I would even go further and say we are very emotional about consciousness. That’s actually what Nicholas Humphrey says, that things become valuable only because we experience and feel sadness, happiness, hunger and thirst. Consciousness is very important, and it has a survival value. If we were robots, programmed to fetch water and drink it if we had liquid in our system, it wouldn’t be the same. If you have been thirsty for many hours, you know what it means, and you constantly feel something similar related to time and to all other emotions. Consciousness gives significance to things. Yes. Just like emotions, where the bodily self is also the anchor or the basis. We ‘fall’ in love; if we are angry, the whole body is involved. Emotions and time are strongly related, and emotions make us human. If we had no emotions at all, I would speak to you like a robot and we would be totally programmed. Emotions are not only signals about the state of the other person, but our whole being, functionally speaking, has to do with emotions and time. You could even say the way we are bored and feel the time drag is because it is a signal saying: ‘We have to leave this situation.’ So time and emotions direct us into different ways of living. Magic mushrooms are a way to experience something completely different, where you can reach to the frontier areas of experience. And people who have had the experience, even in scientific trials, have said it was one of the most important experiences of their lives; even one year after, in follow-up questions, they say it still totally heightened their mood. Moreover, people who had terminal illnesses who took psilocybin in a clinical setting also said that they could cope much better with the psychological aspect of death-threatening illness. So it really changes your attitude to life: you get a different perspective where you are not that important anymore. Meditation is also important because you have a tool with which you can interrupt the flow of your emotions. You are not helplessly exposed to your emotions because you have much higher emotion-regulation capacity, which can of course be very helpful. If you took your stress out in everyday life, in your work or with your family, then everything just collapses over you. Meditation enables you to take a time-out and concentrate, even if it is just for a few minutes, and to emotionally self-regulate. That’s why meditation is so helpful. Yes, from second to second. You can get more aware of these intrinsic variations in your mood, in your state of consciousness between drowsiness and alertness, and in all the emotional tides and fluctuations. In that way you can become more aware of yourself and the changes in consciousness and perception of time flowing around you."