Dr Clare Z

Spontaneously, in light trance states that appear to be natural to children, they may remember prebirth and birth, or past lives, and perceive otherwise invisible entities, including fairies and extraterrestrials. Young children reportedly may see auras, may be gifted with psychic abilities, and may participate in the healing process. I consider these to be natural our species.

Thomas Armstrong, in The Radiant Child, includes the following: “visions, intuitions, ecstasies, encounters with the supernatural, confrontations with the infinite, interactions with other levels of existence . . . .” 

The research concerning children’s nonordinary states of consciousness has, for the most part, been ignored by mainstream Western psychologists, the medical community, educators, philosophers, and theologians. However, psychologists and researchers who have carefully listened to children have discovered deep aspects of their nature and have expressed amazement at their wisdom and spiritual dimensions.

Rupert Sheldrake’s hypothesis of formative causation and theory of morphic resonance help explain how species draw upon and contribute to “a collective or pooled memory." Sheldrake states, “In the human realm, this kind of collective memory is closely related to C. G. Jung’s ‘collective consciousness.’”  

I contend that morphic resonance, parapsychology, Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious, and the quantum concept of entanglement are inter-related and basically describing aspects of the same field phenomena.

In his description of consciousness, Christian De Quincey asserts that there is no interaction of mind and matter because “mind is the action or process by which matter moves itself." He explains that there is “purposeful process” involved and “no mysterious boundary or interface." De Quincey adds that mind is “neither outside nor inside matter, but is constituent of the very essence of matter— interior to its being.” The “becoming” of matter as mind is related to entelechy, “an interior, self-force of a body.”  The characteristics of mind, or consciousness, impel matter to move. In addition, mind is sentient and subjective and, therefore, feels as if it has a “first-person point of view.”

De Quincey makes a distinction between philosophical consciousness and psychological consciousness. Generally, references made to the subconscious, to the psychological unconscious, and to consciousness as awareness, refer to psychological consciousness. Philosophical consciousness, “includes both conscious and unconscious awareness.” Philosophical consciousness has to do with the “mode of being” or “state or quality of being” that allows for the “context of consciousness” and a “capacity for sentience and subjectivity.” De Quincey adds:

Although different qualities or states of (psychological) consciousness may evolve or emerge as nervous systems and brains evolve, (philosophical) consciousness, as such, is not an emergent phenomenon. It is ontologically prior to the material and biological complexity of nervous systems and brains. He asserts that “matter is intrinsically sentient” and both subjective and objective. De Quincey’s perspective is referred to as radical naturalism:

"We exist as embodied subjects, as subjective objects or feeling matter. We know consciousness only as embodied beings, yet we know it not as body or matter. It is simultaneously our most intimate reality and our deepest mystery," states De Quincey.

De Quincey explains that matter-energy is the form reality takes “in response to the in-forming activity of psyche or consciousness. . . . Matter and psyche always go together—all the way down.” He makes a clear distinction between matter that occupies space (physical and objective) and consciousness that does not (subjective). There is the feeling of what we might call “energy,” the feeling is subjective. The energy or vibrations, or whatever, is felt subjectively, is objective, spatial, and, therefore, physical. According to de Quincey, consciousness may be expressed in this way:

"Consciousness is the ability that matter-energy has to feel, to know, and to direct itself. The universe could be (and probably is) full of energy flows, vortices, and vibrations, but without consciousness all this activity would be completely unfelt and unknown. Only because there is consciousness can the flow of energy be felt, known, and purposefully directed."

Philosophical consciousness, the perspective that everything has consciousness “all the way down,” appears to be the perception of indigenous peoples who, as with babies, allow for the subjectivity and objectivity of everything else and, therefore, experience fully participatory relationships.