I’m still a bit hesitant to accept Wilber’s model of the development of consciousness, because if (mis)interpreted too simplistically, it may in fact implicitly endorse the denigration of “lower” forms of life, and even of other, non-civilized forms of humanity. My impression is that he is against this misinterpretation, but the charge is all too common in primitivist circles — because the tendency to be anthropocentric is all too common in civilization. And Wilber’s model, like all developmental models, is, after all, very directional. It presumes that we came from somewhere (a “prepersonal” state of consciousness) and we are going somewhere (a “transpersonal” state of consciousness). It implies the superiority of the transpersonal over the prepersonal, and has the potential for abuse. So if I am to accept this model, I’d like to understand the value and experience of the prepersonal.

Wilber describes his view of primitive man:

Dawn Man … began his career immersed in the subconscious realms of nature and body, of vegetable and animal, and initially “experienced” himself as indistinguishable from the world that had already evolved to that point. Man’s world — nature, matter, vegetable life and animal body — and man’s self — the newly evolving center of his experience — were basically undifferentiated, embedded, fused and confused. His self was his naturic world; his naturic world was his self; neither was clearly demarcated, and this, basically, in unconscious homage to his past.

With self and other confused, with inner experience and external natural world undifferentiated, with no real capacity for true mental reflection or verbal representation, this whole period must have been an experience of a time before time, a story before history — with no anxieties, no real comprehension of death and thus no existential fears.

In looking at other descriptions of “primitive” consciousness, I find much agreement. For instance, in Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality, Morris Berman talks about the archeological evidence of the past thirty-five thousand years “suggesting the emergence of self-conscious awareness” and the development of a type of consciousness intermediate between “prepersonal” and “personal.” He calls this “paradox”:

This is a diffuse or peripheral awareness, which can be characterized as being “horizontal” in nature, in the same way that hunter-gatherer politics is. It is not characterized by a search for “meaning,” an insistence or hope that the world be this way or that. It simply accepts the world as it presents itself, and in that sense, it would seem to require a very high level of trust. One does not “deal with” alienation (the split between Self and World) as much as live with it, accept the discomfort as just part of what is …

I call this consciousness “paradoxical” because it is simultaneously focused and nonfocused. it is hovering, or peripheral, rather than intense or ecstatic; and paradox also exists in the fact that a moment such as this feels completely individual and unique and, at the same time, universal. As a result, that which is most personal is also felt to be the most general, the most connected to other human beings. In addition, that which is fleeting is experienced as that which is most enduring.

An anthropologist named E. Richard Sorenson lived for a time with hunter-gatherers who displayed precisely this type of consciousness, which he terms “liminal” rather than “paradoxical.” In his article, “Preconquest Consciousness,” he wrote,

Most of us know about subliminal awareness — the type of awareness lurking below actual consciousness that powerfully influences behavior. Freud brought it into the mainstream of Western thought through exhaustively detailed revelations of its effects on behavior. But few, including Freud, have spoken of liminal consciousness, which is therefore rarely recognized in modern scholarship as a separate type of awareness. Nonetheless, liminal awareness was the principal focus of mentality in the preconquest cultures contacted, whereas a supraliminal type that focuses logic on symbolic entities is the dominant form in postconquest societies.

Liminally focused consciousness is very different from the supraliminal type that has almost entirely replaced it. Within the preconquest cultures observed basic sensibilities (such as of identity, number, space, and truth) shape up in unexpected ways. So does human integration. Preconquest groups are simultaneously individualistic and collective — traits immiscible and incompatible in modern thought and languages. This fusion of individuality and solidarity is another of the profound cognitive disparities that separate the preconquest and postconquest eras. It in part explains why even fundamental preconquest cultural traits are sometimes difficult to perceive, much less to appreciate, by postconquest peoples.

From the Latin language underlying our Western heritage we can understand that liminal awareness, by definition, occurs on the threshold of consciousness. This concept, though abstract, provides a useful term. In the real life of these preconquest people, feeling and awareness are focused on at-the-moment, point-blank sensory experience — as if the nub of life lay within that complex flux of collective sentient immediacy. Into that flux individuals thrust their inner thoughts and aspirations for all to see, appreciate, and relate to. This unabashed open honesty is the foundation on which their highly honed integrative empathy and rapport become possible. When that openness gives way, empathy and rapport shrivel. Where deceit becomes a common practice, they disintegrate.

Where consciousness is focused within a flux of ongoing sentient awareness, experience cannot be clearly subdivided into separable components. With no clear elements to which logic can be applied, experience remains immune to syntax and formal logic within a kaleidoscopic sanctuary of non-discreteness. Nonetheless, preconquest life was reckoned sensibly — though seemingly intuitively.

With preconquest consciousness largely unencumbered by abstract concepts, it remained unconstrained by formal categories of value and cognition (i.e., rules and stable cognitive entities). Only when awareness shifted from liminal to supraliminal did the notion of ‘correctness’ become a matter of concern - e.g., behaving `properly,’ having `right’ answers, wearing `appropriate’ clothes, etc. `Improper’ aspirations, inclinations, and desires were then masked as people tried to measure up to the `proper’ rule and standard. They used rhetoric and logic argumentatively with reference to norms, precedents, and agreements to gain and maintain dignity, status, and position. It was an altogether different world from that of the preconquest era where people freely spread their interests, feelings, and delights out for all to see and grasp as they lurched toward whatever delightful patterns of response they found attractive.

I find this description in particular quite compatible with Wilber’s views of the prepersonal. Both the “liminal awareness” Sorenson describes and Berman’s “paradoxical consciousness” are not quite as absolutely unconscious or subconscious as Wilber’s prepersonal state; but I think they might be considered as points along a spectrum, or intermediate states between prepersonal and personal.

What I like about Sorenson’s description is that it’s very humanizing, for he takes care to say,

For several years after I began contacting preconquest peoples like those described above, I considered their type of consciousness an oddity, a kind of naive primitive emotionality, one perhaps suitable only for small, isolated groups, but certainly for no one else. It took a long time for me to realize that they had evolved their own sophisticated type of cognition that was simply different from what I (or anyone I knew) was used to. And I came to realize that such mentality could not be considered primitively ignorant if only because it was so sensitively intelligent and beneficially responsive. It moved more facilely, more harmoniously, and more constructively than do the mentalities associated with today’s postconquest world. Furthermore, it provided for an astonishingly rewarding and zestful life.

Further descriptions of this way of being can also be found in another primitivist favorite, The Continuum Concept by Jean Liedloff. She also describes this way of being as a very harmonious and fulfilling life.

For yet another perspective on precivilized, preconquest, or prepersonal consciousness, I find it useful to draw on Seth, that channelled entity who was my first teacher on my path of spiritual growth. Seth actually has a lot to say on the origins of humankind — from his unique, otherworldly perspective, of course. In Dreams, "Evolution," and Value Fulfillment, Seth asserts that all of earthly life originated in something akin to the dream state, and that manifestation into the material realm was, in the beginning, as fleeting as dreaming is to us today. We were all, in the beginning, like sleepwalkers, and our consciousness was quite fluid.

For some time, in your terms, the sleepwalkers remained more or less at that level of activity [i.e. centered largely in the dream state], and for many centuries they used the surface of the earth as a kind of background for other activities. Their real life was what you would now call the dreaming one …

For what would seem to you to be eons, according to your time scale, men were in the dreaming state far more than they were in the waking one. They slept long hours, as did the animals — awakening, so to speak, to exercise their bodies, obtain sustenance, and, later, to mate. It was indeed a dreamlike world, but a highly charming and vital one, in which dreaming imaginations played rambunctiously with all the probabilities entailed in this new venture …

The species — from your viewpoint — lived at a much slower pace in those terms … [Man] was aware of himself in a different way, so that, for example, his identification with the self did not stop where his skin stopped: He could follow it outward into the space about his form, and feel it merge with the atmosphere with a primal sense-experience that you have forgotten.

During this period, incidentally, mental activity of the highest, most original variety was the strongest dream characteristic, and the knowledge [man] gained was imprinted upon the physical brain …

While men had their dream bodies alone they enjoyed a remarkable freedom … They did not yet identify themselves to any great degree as being themselves separate from either the environment or other creatures. They knew themselves to be themselves, but their identities were not as closely allied with their forms as is now the case …

The dream world was bound to waken, however, for that was the course it had set itself upon.

Much of this, too, is consonant with what Wilber writes, without carrying the implication of inferiority — the fluidity of consciousness, the mutability of identity. And much of this also agrees with Sorenson’s anthropological descriptions.

So, we lived in a state of Edenic harmony, for a long, long time. It was truly utopia, the way a dream is. And it did in fact have tremendous meaning, and creativity, and expression. Seth in particular is keen to point out that there was a great deal of “thinking” and mental creativity and expression done in those primordial days — just not at the manifest, physical level of existence. It was simply a different way of being.

I can accept that as being neither inferior nor superior, but simply a different focus of consciousness. And now for the past several thousand years, we’ve focused our minds and changed the world, made it more concrete, more solid. And that too is simply a transformation, neither superior nor inferior, but with consequences.

Some of those consequences are precisely those that the primitivists assail. We changed ourselves and changed the world, and are we happier? We left that primordial state of harmony, that dreamlike state, and found ourselves manifest in cold hard form, forced to “till the soil” through hard work to get our food.

How did we leave heaven?