I suggest that expanded awareness became irrevocably linked to psychedelic ... roles, many youth fell into the nebulous counterculture movement through which they .... As to actual transcendence, no curricularists dared write anymore of preparing .... In fact, one of their motivations for striking out against the perceived.
Whatever Happened to ‘Heightened Consciousness’?
Published in the
Journal of Curriculum Studies Vol 31, no. 6 Winter, 1999 (pp. 625-633)
Greg Nixon, Professor, Teacher Education Department of Integrative Studies Prescott College Prescott, Arizona [in 1999]
Abstract I have been bold enough to present a paper which is not theoretically complex but is, instead, daringly simple and direct. I ask where the rhetoric went about heightened or expanded consciousness, which was so predominant in the early 70s. To that end I look at the historical sources of this movement and what has happened since the early ‘reconceptualist’ days. I suggest that expanded awareness became irrevocably linked to psychedelic self-indulgence and seen as selfish by the majority radical political wing of curriculum theorists. However, I indicate that it is instead rigid political stances that are selfish and egocentric. I suggest that context-expanding awareness cannot be a personal goal but a pleasant side effect of selfless service.
Whatever Happened to ‘Heightened Consciousness’? The uses of a great professor are only partly to give us knowledge; his real purpose is to take his students beyond knowledge into the transcendental domain of the unknown, the future and the dream—to expand the limits of the human consciousness. (Loren Eiseley 1987: 118) Whatever happened to consciousness heightening as a curriculum objective? Did it disappear because, as an expression for the naive optimism of the 60s counterculture, it became outdated or does it represent the losing ideology in a major confrontation in the annals of curriculum theory? The evidence, at least in the United States, seems to point to the latter case. In the 70s, U.S. and Canadian schools finally awoke to what had been going on in the 60s. It was in the 60s, as all the world knows, that a youth movement emerged which expressed disenchantment with the material rewards offered by the establishment as an incentive to repress more vital instincts and participate in the social game of wealth building. Instead of playing the game and accepting socially defined roles, many youth fell into the nebulous counterculture movement through which they hoped to transcend mundane, daily consciousness. Whether through the use of psychedelics, meditation, prolonged rock jams, or all of the above, youth (and many who no longer fit this category) actively threw off their obligations and sought higher states of awareness. To the horror and disgust of the American GI generation, Timothy Leary’s call to ‘turn on, tune in, and drop out’ spread rapidly, promoted by cult heroes from the rock ’n roll subculture and by the underground passing of many a joint or hashpipe. Note: The call was to ‘drop out,’ not to ‘man the barricades.’ To be sure, much of the mass of the movement was illusory since many of those who appeared to be degenerate freaks to the straights were in fact no more than weekend hippies out to get high, engage in some free love, or just feel good vibes. Yet, despite their lack of commitment to overthrowing the establishment, many of them picked up counterculture values to do with tolerance for the lifestyles of others, openness to new experience, and an almost spiritual ‘sense sublime / Of something far more deeply interfused’ (Wordsworth 1798/1983: lines 95-6) within the mundane reality of daily life. All of this was tied in with the meaning of ‘heightened consciousness’: It referred to awakening from the isolated and narcissistic ego trip of the war of all against all. This new mind expansion promised escape from the prison-house of self (and self versus other) to see the world as though for the first time. It was a powerful image, involving as much unlearning as learning. There were exemplars everywhere of those who seemed to have reached, at minimum, Maslowian self actualization or some sort of psychological peak experience. More intriguing yet were those who appeared to have broken on through to the other side, to the oceanic bliss of universal oneness: nirvana. And, of course, there were those who had shattered all contexts whatsoever and were ambiguously said to have blown their minds. For many, this was a consummation devoutly to be wished: If only the establishment would stop being so heavy!
At length, elements of the counterculture became dissatisfied with merely dropping out and sought instead to drop back in and revolutionize the political system they felt to be imprisoning them. Heightened levels of awareness seemed both too esoteric and too boring for many of those who had expected instant gratification. The political activists were getting all the media attention so most of the new disaffected wanted to go where the action was. With real social issues to deal with like war, racism, sexism, and poverty, those who had previously awaited private awakening became drawn back into the social game with its zesty marches and mass confrontation. By the 70s, the radical political arm of the counterculture had absorbed some of the quiescent transcendentalism. The non-establishment quest for expanded levels of awareness became absorbed in the anti-establishment quest for expanded power. The remaining seekers of heightened reality stole quietly away to their ashrams or mountain/desert communes, or they grimly accepted establishment jobs and families. Mind expansion had never been among the specific goals of educators, including the progressives from earlier in the century, though it could be argued that Plato called specifically for heightened consciousness for his philosopher-kings or that such was the goal of learning in the gnostic/alchemical tradition. Certainly many Eastern religions developed educational techniques to bring about the ‘awakening from illusion’. Even in the 1960s, there had been few attempts to suggest an educational institution which openly pursued expanded individual consciousness (despite retrospective perception). Experiments like A. S. Neill’s Summerhill in England and Rochdale College in Toronto seem in retrospect more like invitations to anarchy than attempts to heighten consciousness. Carl Rogers (e.g., 1969) and others suggested ‘humanistic’ education but such educational personal autonomy and authenticity were not widely attempted until the 70s when American teachers at last were transformed into ‘facilitators’. In any case, the humanistic connection with heightened consciousness remains unclear. The idea of expanded consciousness as an educational goal did enter the literary arena by the late 60s, as indicated by two American titles from that period which perfectly represent the conflict of interpretation which was arising. The radical political awakening perspective is exhibited by Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner’s Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969) while the transcendent personal awakening perspective is portrayed by George Leonard’s remarkable Education and Ecstasy (1968). Like the earlier conflict between John Dewey’s child centeredness and George Counts’ social reconstructionism amongst the progressive scholars, this conflict between the personal and political versions of consciousness expansion was to play a major role in the agendas of curriculum theory for decades to come. It was in the 60s that curriculum theory as we now know it in the United States was essentially born. Among its foundational figures in this period were Dwayne Huebner (e.g., 1967) James Macdonald (e.g., 1964), and Philip Phenix (e.g., 1964) each of whom became drawn into transcendental visions of curriculum in the next decade. It was also in the 70s that this model of personal transformation ran directly into the model of political transformation as Marxists and other radicals demanded that social revolution precede any revolutions of consciousness. They saw the call for awakened personal awareness as narrowly self-indulgent in its way as the me generation disco groovers which surrounded them. How could educationists use their
privileged positions to seek expanded awareness for themselves or for their students when so many of the socially oppressed had no such opportunity? they asked with some justification. Philosophers of education and theorists of curriculum found themselves being forced into one of two camps: Either they stood with those who dreamed of heightening personal awareness in an often metaphysical sense or they stood with those who took expanded consciousness to refer to waking up to the inequities and injustices rampant in the sociopolitical system. It seemed to be a choice between ‘heightened consciousness’ or ‘consciousness raising’. The so-called ‘reconceptualist’ movement (see Pinar 1975, Pinar et al. 1995) that appeared at this time in the U.S. attempted to draw these disparate voices into a unified protest against the status quo. With some bravado, William Pinar edited the results of the 1973 University of Rochester’s College of Education Conference into a book whose title betrayed the schizophrenic nature of curriculum theorizing from then on: Heightened Consciousness, Cultural Revolution and Curriculum Theory: The Proceedings of the Rochester Conference (1974a). Here in one fell swoop, curriculum theorizing attempted to promote both heightened consciousness and cultural (read: political) revolution. Pinar has since drawn a telling portrait of the divisions the conference revealed (Pinar et al. 1995: 218-226). Among those representing the political responsibility group, mostly Marxist, was Donald Bateman who directed a withering attack at humanist and, by implication, transcendentalist worldviews: Racism, sexism, classism—those deeply internalized social values—are at the root of our problems. They are deep in our psyches, and they cause our liberal reforms to fail because they treat the symptoms and not the causes. Even humanistic education ... tacitly accepts the class system with its racism, its gross commercialism, its male chauvinism, its institutionalized violence, its imperialistic wars—accepts them by failing to mention them, by pretending to be apolitical. (1974: 66) Such a strong statement was probably enough to make anyone feel ashamed for dreaming of a higher state of consciousness when there was so much injustice all around. This put the political wing on the moral high ground and indicated that the seekers of consciousness breakthroughs were irresponsibly indulgent. It was precisely against such declarations of moral (and intellectual) superiority that led another participant, William Pilder, to declare that all such social confrontations were externalizations—projections—of unresolved personal conflicts. Against the institutionalization of well-intentioned reforms, he could only recommend the inner journey in his presentation, ‘In the Stillness is the Dancing’: Here, then, is my despair as a professional: human survival cannot depend on social programs directed at present institutional structures. Personal consciousness development and subsequent cultural transformation cannot be programmed in a mechanistic fashion; a curriculum for consciousness development and cultural change is a blatant contradiction. (1974: 125-6) Though Pilder’s view of the necessity for the inner quest before political engagement is clear, he does not believe that such an inner journey to heightened consciousness could ever become a workable curriculum objective.
At this time, many American theorists stood with him on the inner journey aspect but still believed in the potential for the curriculum to become personally transformative. Paul Klohr, for one, listed nine ‘reconceptualist articles of faith,’ including the recognition of the resources of ‘preconscious realms of experience’ and ‘personal liberty and the attainment of higher levels of consciousness’ (in Pinar et al. 1995: 224). Pinar himself early on opposed premature political activism and, instead, suggested ‘the design and evaluation of experimental curricula which will attempt to explore the inner life, hence to underscore and possibly aid in an ontological shift from outer to inner’ (Pinar 1974b: 15). After this, the walls came crashing down. Pilder was proven prophetic in that politically oriented scholarship presented much more to get angry over or pontificate about and provided a much clearer program of action. It filled the bookshelves and journals while the call to consciousness did not. The call to work collectively for individual self-realization or higher states of consciousness became irrevocably associated with the 60s and drug abuse. As American culture veered away from such countercultural activities, so did all educational thinking. Speaking for the mainstream, respected curriculum historians Daniel and Laurel Tanner castigated the reconceptualization because, in their view, ‘it favors mystical illumination (“heightened consciousness”) over reason and is therefore not curriculum knowledge but a promiscuous enthusiasm for whatever advertises itself as counter to our culture’ (1979: 10). The whole consciousness approach was fast becoming tainted as subversive. To stay competitive and play the game of academic advancement—not to mention to retain the respect of their peers—scholars previously committed to individual expansion of consciousness soon found other things about which to write. There was so little to say about experiences which were so unpredictable and so rarely visible to others; heightened awareness may occur in a form as subtle as a quiet aesthetic moment. As to actual transcendence, no curricularists dared write anymore of preparing the way for mystical enlightenment of no-self. Referring to the theme of the Rochester Conference, ‘heightened consciousness and cultural revolution,’ Pinar wrote in 1988 that such terms ‘make one wince today’ (1988: 3) a statement he repeated in Understanding Curriculum in 1995 (Pinar et al: 219). In the latter book, the chapter titles clearly indicate what Pinar considers to be the present state of the field. These include chapters 5: Understanding Curriculum as Political text, 6: Understanding Curriculum as Racial text, 7: Understanding Curriculum as Gender text, 9: Understanding Curriculum as Poststructuralist, Deconstructed, Postmodern text, 10: Understanding Curriculum as Autobiographical/Biographical text, 12: Understanding Curriculum as Theological text, and 14: Understanding Curriculum as International text. Nowhere to be found, however, is any chapter specifically focusing on heightened consciousness. Clearly, curriculum theory has become ‘issue-oriented’ and the political agenda has largely taken the field. Even the autobiography and deconstructive ‘texts’ are somewhat justified in terms of political engagement. Part of the problem is terminology. The sheerly vertical imagery of ‘heightened consciousness’ points only up and leaves one with little grip on old Terra Firma. Theorists began to resist the celestially oriented, psychedelically suggestive notion of seeking ‘height.’ As the Tanners noted above, the entire idea seems to smack of 60s-
era altered states—and we are at present living through times of excessive paranoia with regard to ‘drugs.’ We have now reached the point where newspapers tell of one middle school girl being suspended for sharing Midol® tablets and another for offering a cough drop containing zinc and yet another for having ibuprofen in her locker. Now an attorney-general, Joycelyn Elders, has been fired for merely suggesting that the decriminalization of drugs might be investigated. The fear of experience is so deep that the selling of compressed nitrous oxide capsules can be declared illegal even in the decadent French Quarter of New Orleans (despite no suggestion of side effects or after effects in such small doses). The whole view of 60s mind expansion is also tainted in public memory by its unjustified association with the me generation of the 70s. Rather unexpectedly, the slick disco crowd emerged—a marketer’s dream—and took the values of free love and the quest for experience in new directions entirely. The 70s disco ducks reinterpreted the quest to seek higher levels of awareness as the hedonistic urge for unbridled physical pleasure. This change is symbolized by the change of the drug of choice from psychedelics to stimulants. Psychedelics—LSD, mescaline and such—tend toward visionary experience, allowing for soul-quakes or self-transcendence (to the bliss or horror of the experiencer). They are not known to have any physical after-effects. Stimulants on the other hand—speed, cocaine, etc.—simply crank up the nervous system into ‘emergency alert’ so reality is experienced as extravagantly intensified. The nervous system and organs of the body eventually pay the price for this artificial adrenaline. Experience was still being sought but not heightened consciousness. This heavy beat, laser light, mirror-ball phantasmagoria has come to be the image many have of altered states of consciousness. It’s interesting to note that my place of employment (until summer 1998), the State University of New York at Geneseo, declared the 97/98 college term as ‘The Year of the Sixties,’ corny as it sounds. Judging by the antics that went on it seems clear that the era is regarded from this perspective as one of noble political engagement or excessive self-indulgence. The youth of the time, it seems, were either carrying banners in protest marches or they were destroying their minds by wallowing in sex, drugs, and rock ’n roll. Nowhere was there mention of the more subtle and less public activity associated with ‘dropping out’ and ‘tuning in’ to context shattering, consciousness expanding levels of transcendent awareness. This whole sense of transcendence is much more than a carryover from the 60s, however. There has probably been a felt sense of worlds unrealized since the first shamans went on their spirit journeys and returned to tell their tales. Even this sense of ‘beyond’ has been dismissed by the public as an illusion deriving from the desire to escape from reality with all its problems. The Zen writer D. T. Suzuki, however, has made it clear that transcendence is not an escape: ‘To “transcend” suggests “going beyond,” “being away from,” that is, a separation, a dualism. I have, however, no desire to hint that the “something” stands away from the world in which we find ourselves’ (1954/64: 79). It is bitterly ironic that actual moves made toward transcendent awareness have come to be seen as politically or personally self-centered. The first obstacle encountered by anyone seeking an awakened mind is the image of one’s own self.
Whether using psychedelics or techniques of mediation, this self must be faced, accepted, and passed through. This is not an easy thing to do and those who felt the need to cling to their old ideas of selfhood often had horrifying LSD experiences when that self on which they depended seemed to lose its reality. Meditators who cannot get passed this barrier soon suffer unbearable agitation and must give up. The very experience of satori is sometimes described as one of ‘no-self’ (Suzuki 1954/64). Those who are one day politically naïve and the next come to see the fabricated moral structure of the greater part of society may suddenly feel the need to strike back against these perceived lies and injustices. In its sincerity, this is indeed ‘fighting the good fight.’ The problem here is that too often these white knights of radicalism have never encountered their own moral ambiguity and the prevarications by which they themselves live. In fact, one of their motivations for striking out against the perceived conspiracies of the power elite may be to protect their self-concept: By projecting their fear and anger onto externalized agents of oppression, they may postpone indefinitely critical self encounters which might make them feel diminished. This stance is as egocentric on the Left as on the Right. By breaking through the contexts of one’s socially constructed egocentric consciousness, political engagement may follow as a necessary consequence. ‘To awaken can be painful, for it opens us to a poignant awareness of the pervasive waste of life around us and in us’ (Leonard and Murphy 1995: 202). Thus seeking consciousness from within expanded contexts is never selfish, but is, instead, the way out of selfishness. How far can consciousness expand? What levels might it reach? The extreme edge of awakening seems to be full blown mystical experience, beyond explanation or language of any sort, beyond even socially created contexts of consciousness. This is the experience which has been described by various traditions as satori, nirvana, moksha, or oceanic bliss. ‘Surely,’ I can hear the protests now, ‘to seek such bliss for oneself and ignore the plight of those less privileged is the height of selfish irresponsibility!’ Without protesting in return that expanded awareness knows no privilege and without calling up distant Buddhist traditions of the bodhisattva, readers can find a spokesperson who is both a mystic and a respected philosopher. Franklin Merrell-Wolff who died not long ago was a contemporary American who underwent the profound awakening and wrote about it in clear, empirical terms. For him, transforming oneself was only possible by forgetting oneself and working to transform the world: [T]he seeking of this Attainment is not simply for the sake of one’s own individual Redemption but for the sake of the Redemption of humanity as a whole and, in addition, of all creatures whatsoever, however humble they may be. He who forgets his own Attainment and his own Redemption in seeking for the Attainment and Redemption of all creatures, is following the Path which is most certain to involve that very Attainment and Redemption for himself. The motive should always be the good of all creatures, not one’s own private good. (Merrell-Wolff 1994: x) It seems clear as light that expanded consciousness is a very good thing both for one’s own existence, for the society in which one lives, and likely for the world itself.
Such enlightened awareness need not attain to the contextless levels suggested by Suzuki and Merrell-Wolff above but might begin with something as simple as guided self-reflection—perhaps autobiographical writing and sharing—and the encouragement to undertake empathic feeling and relentless critical thinking. Aligning oneself immovably with a political stance—whether that stance be called Marxist, Christian conservative, or critical postmodern—only hardens the ego in an usagainst-them posture. The way of self-forgetting, on the other hand, is the way of service, mind expanding precisely because the other becomes a presence in consciousness. Notwithstanding, the purpose of this paper has not been to make anyone wince by suggesting a return to a curricular directive of heightened or even expanded consciousness. Since such decontextualized awareness is perennial and everpresent, it need not be promoted or sought as an objective in any form. Its eventual return need only be awaited. Curriculum theorists in the meantime, I would suggest, should avoid shutting out such hopeful potentials by denying the reality of awakened awareness.
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