The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness

446 Pages·2007·4.28 MB·English

by  Jeff Warren

CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Introduction
Trip Notes: The Wheel of Consciousness
PART ONE: NIGHT
1: The Hypnagogic
Trip Notes: The Slow Wave
2: The Watch
Trip Notes: The REM Dream
3: The Lucid Dream
PART TWO: DAY
Trip Notes: The Hypnopompic
4: The Trance
Trip Notes: The Daydream
5: The SMR
Trip Notes: The Zone
6: The Pure Conscious Event
Conclusion: Emergence
Epilogue: A Phenomenological Map of Consciousness
Appendix: Variations of Consciousness Special Effects
Notes and Sources
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Image
Copyright
For Kelly
AUTHOR’S NOTE
To deny the truth of our own experience in the scientific study of
ourselves is not only unsatisfactory; it is to render the scientific study of
ourselves without a subject matter. But to suppose that science cannot
contribute to an understanding of our experience may be to abandon,
within the modern context, the task of self-understanding. Experience
and scientific understanding are like two legs without which we cannot
walk.
—Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied
Mind
The book you are holding is not a typical book on consciousness. It’s not about
qualia, or the language instinct, or what it feels like to be a bat.
Nor is it a typical brain book—describing how fear works, or the uses of the
cerebellum, or what happens when you electrocute your amygdala.
While all these subjects are fascinating, they are philosophical and
neurological discussions that are occurring elsewhere. And yet, both these kinds
of books have contributed to this one, for occasionally as I have leafed through
them, an author would remark (in a dry, offhand manner) on some aspect of
subjective consciousness—the feeling of time slowing down, perhaps, or the
strange body twitches that happen at sleep onset—and I would nod, and look up,
and think, “Yeah, that’s happened to me!”
Well, this book is in part an encyclopedia of “that’s happened to me”
moments, organized by adventures through various familiar and less familiar
states of consciousness. For this reason, this book is also about you, because you
have these moments, too. And I’ll say this outright: you won’t believe where
you’ve been, and where you’re capable of going.
Although this is the first book that I know of that has attempted to document
from the first-person how consciousness changes during wakefulness, sleep, and
dreaming, it is not the first book to examine the intersection between the brain
and personal experience. To the best of my knowledge, that honor belongs to
Steven Johnson, whose pioneering Mind Wide Open was one of the inspirations
for this book. The other author I’d like to acknowledge is John Horgan. Anyone
who has read his excellent Rational Mysticism will recognize how indebted I am
to that book, which is a mighty oceanic source of provocative ideas about the
mind. Horgan gave me the confidence to take on the inspired fringe.
I also want to thank my executive producers at CBC Radio—Pam Bertrand at
The Current and Bernie Lucht at Ideas—who allowed me to adapt material from
pieces I wrote for them. Of particular help was Alan Guettel, my fabulous
producer on two sleep documentaries I did for Ideas, “While You Were Out”
parts one and two. Another Ideas producer, Richard Handler, has also been a
patient sounding board during many long discussions.
A taxonomy of acknowledgments:
Personal: My family and friends who have listened to me rattle on about the
mind’s exotic razzle and occasionally let me try and hypnotize them. The ones
listed here all helped me in many different ways: Toby Warren, Janie Warren,
Micah Toub, Susan and Ted Warren, Matt Thompson, James Maskalyk, Elin
Raymond, Alexandra Shimo, Jess Davies, Ben Priest, Mickey Inzlicht, Aaron
Brindle, Pat Imlay, Simon Tuplin, Michael Banasiak, Chris Curran, Kate and
Helen Baldus, Robin Bates, Brian Levine, Steve Luengo, Shaughnessy Bishop-
Stall, Ian McRobie, Maria Lundin, Malcolm Jolley, James Prudhomme, and, of
course, my partner in adventure, the incomparable Kelly Kirkpatrick.
Editorial: My brilliant editors in Toronto and New York: Anne Collins,
Pamela Murray, and Stephanie Higgs, and freelance editors Catherine
Marjoribanks and Tanya Trafford. Random House of Canada designer Kelly
Hill, who designed most of the text-based figures and masterfully laid out what
at times felt more like an out-of-control arts and crafts project than a book. My
astute and supportive agents, Don Sedgwick and Shaun Bradley. And the
Ontario Arts Council, for slipping me that much-needed grant.
Ideational: I had many scientific and professional guides through the diverse
terrain of the mind, some via particularly helpful books—written by Andrea
Rock, Andreas Mavromatis, Francisco Varela, Susan Blackmore, Daniel
Goleman, Jim Robbins, Robert Ornstein, Brian Inglis, G. William Farthing, Rita
Carter, John Geiger—and the rest from interviews either conducted in person,
over the phone, or in the CBC Radio studios: Charles Tart, Bernard Baars, Jamie
MacFarlane, Zoe the hypnotherapist, my ADD Centre trainers Karin and Gord,
Barbara Jones, Allan Hobson, Anne Harrington, Ben Rusak, Dominick Attisani,
Bradley Hatfield, Vietta Wilson, William Dement, Adrian Burgess, John Taylor,
Alan Wallace, Philippe Stenstrom, Joe Kamiya, Deirdre Barrett, Roger Ekirch,
Carol Worthman, Mike Smolensky, Lynne Lamberg, Robert Stickgold, Jerome
Siegel, Michel Jouvet, Edward Shorter, Richard Davidson, Antoine Lutz, and
Antonio Zadra.
In addition, several of my primary interview subjects also read over portions
of the manuscript, and thus are in another category altogether. They are: Evan
Thompson, John Taylor, Smritiratna, Lynda Thompson, Maurice “Barry”
Sterman, Herbert Spiegel, David Spiegel, John Gruzelier, Stephen LaBerge,
Patricia Keelin, Thomas Wehr, and finally Tore Nielsen, the poor guy, who not
only read the largest section of the manuscript but, as the first scientist I
interviewed, has suffered more cajoling and entreaties and long, confusing e-
mails from me than anyone else. Thank you, Tore, for your Buddha-like
patience.

INTRODUCTION
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
—T. S. Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
Here’s a curious phenomenon; maybe you’ve experienced it.
For several years in my mid-twenties I spent my summers tree planting in
northern Ontario. It was a difficult job. Every morning at 5 a.m. some classic
rock anthem would blare out across the makeshift camp and we’d drag ourselves
from our warm tents and pile into the rusted yellow school buses idling on the
logging road. Out on “the block,” we were assigned huge chunks of napalmed
land, uneven mixes of charred duff, swamp, and scraggly brush. For eleven
hours we’d plant little eight-inch saplings—kick-shovel-draw-bend-insert-stomp,
kick-shovel-draw-bend-insert-stomp—little mechanical humans jerking along
the horizon. Every seven feet, several hundred an hour, several thousand a day. It
was fantastically tedious, made worse by bone-chilling drizzle, a fog of biting
blackflies, hidden wasps’ nests, thickets of sharp sticks, and patrolling bears
who’d ransack our lunches and terrorize the cooks.
Beginner planters spent their time in an agony of unhappiness and frustration.
But as the weeks wore on the privations lessened, in part because we became
habituated to the job, but also because of an odd recurring experience that some
of us discussed among ourselves.
I remember the day it first happened to me. It was still early, a little after 9
a.m. I had just loaded up my bags with trees and stood gazing out over the
denuded expanse of earth and rubble. I sighed, looked down at my shovel, and
began planting. When I raised my head I noticed the sun was on the other side of
the sky. Little green spruce dotted the landscape all around me, and on the road
empty tree containers sat in a disorderly pile. My watch said 2 p.m. Five hours
had passed and I remembered nothing. What happened?