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ProcessMind

A User's Guide to Connecting with the Mind of God

Theosophical Publishing House

Processmind as a Force Field in Everyday Life and Near Death

Just about everyone wonders now and then if there is some kind of intelligence organizing the apparently random and creative events in personal life and the universe. Are those events haphazard ... or is some kind of "mind" at work in the background? How might our awareness of such events influence them?

In my practice, I have often wondered about the mysterious power that seems to appear throughout life, especially in moments of crisis and near death. What is this power that not only produces the most amazing and helpful experiences but is also behind our ongoing difficulties and conflicts, our environmental problems ... and our ability to make peaceful changes? Science and spiritual traditions both contribute answers. Yet in the twenty-first century, we are far from a consensus about what or who we are, and what, if anything, arranges or "co-creates" our fate.

Modern leading scientists such as Albert Einstein as well as ancient world spiritual traditions have believed there is an intelligent cosmic force behind it all. Yet Einstein doubted that science had found it. In a 1926 letter to his colleague Max Born, he made a remark now well-known among theoretical physicists: "Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the Old One."

Today, about a century after the discoveries of quantum theory and relativity, cosmologists are still wondering about "the secret of the Old One." Stephen Hawking and Paul Davies refer to the intelligent force Einstein sought as the "mind of God." Some theoretical physicists hope to find this "mind" in unified field theories or related concepts. C. G. Jung, Roberto Assagioli, and other depth psychologists speak of a "collective unconscious," the "transpersonal Self," or some type of transcendent or "unitive" consciousness. Quoting sixteenth-century alchemists, Jung and his friend Wolfgang Pauli, a Nobel prize-winning quantum physicist, speculated about unified psychophysical region of experience—the "Unus Mundus." Religions have always spoken of the design, powers, and wisdom of the universe in terms of a Self, a God, or gods.

I call Einstein's "Old One" the processmind. By processmind I mean an organizing factor—perhaps the organizing factor—that operates both in our personal lives and in the universe. Studying and experiencing this processmind will connect the now separate disciplines of psychology, sociology, physics, and mysticism and provide new useful ways to relate to one another and the environment. The processmind is both inside of you and, at the same time, apparently connected to everything you notice. I will show that your processmind is in your brain yet is also "nonlocal," allowing you to be in several places at the same time.

When I first began writing, I was afraid that this nonlocal nature of the processmind, foreshadowed in quantum physics, might sound too strange. But then I realized that at least some people sense nonlocality every morning in those hypnagogic states just between sleeping and waking. In this "half sleep—half awake" state a kind of dreamlike intelligence frequently gives us "nonlocal" information about people and things in distant places. A physicist might call this experience the psychological counterpart of "quantum entanglement" (which I explain in a later chapter). Today I realize that the processmind is not just a specific altered state of consciousness; it defines the lifestyle and political view we need to resolve the deepest outer as well as inner conflicts.

In any case, the processmind can be experienced as a kind of force field. It is an active, intelligent "space" between the observer and observed. It is both you and me and the "us" we share. It is connected to the facts of everyday reality but also independent of them. After much exploring, both in myself and in people near death, I think it likely that the processmind has qualities that extend beyond our present concepts of life and death.

Quantum Mind and Processmind

The concept of the processmind expands upon all my earlier work, especially the book Quantum Mind, which I wrote about ten years ago. The quantum mind is that aspect of our psychology that corresponds to basic aspects of quantum physics. The quantum aspect of our awareness notices the tiniest, easily overlooked "nano" tendencies and self-reflects upon these subliminal experiences. However, the quantum mind is not just a supersensitive self-reflecting awareness; it also is a kind of "pilot wave" or guiding pattern. In Quantum Mind, I suggested that the math (Schrödinger's wave equation) and rules of quantum physics mirror our ability to self-reflect and to create everyday reality. Physicists speak of the wave function "collapsing" to create reality. I speak about how our self-reflection uses and then marginalizes, rather than "collapses," our dreaming nature. For example, after reflecting on a dream, you might think, "Ah ha! Now I will do this or that"; then you put the dreamworld aside temporarily while you take action in order to create a new reality.

Besides the ability we share with other parts of our universe to sense possibilities, self-reflect, and move from dreaming to everyday reality, we may have the ability to be in two places or two states at the same time, just as quantum physics suggests that material particles can behave. For example, in a dream you may be at once dead and alive—even though upon awakening, you come out of this unitive experience and soon begin reflecting, identifying with one or another of the dream images. Thus, we can characterize our quantum nature as nonlocal or "bilocal" as well as highly sensitive and self-reflective.

The processmind expands upon these characteristics of the quantum mind by adding one more crucial quality: Our deepest self, our processmind, is not just sensitive, self-reflective, and "bilocal"; it can also be found in mystical traditions. In particular, it can be sensed in terms of what Aboriginal peoples have identified as an individual's or group's "totem spirit." Our processminds are related, not just to general physical characteristics of the quantum universe, but to particular earth-based characteristics experienced as, or associated with, what shamans have called "power spots"—special places on earth that we love and trust. The processmind is a force field that has been identified with "totem spirits," that is, with subtle feelings we have about places on earth that tend to "move" us into feeling wise and/or in particular directions.

What are these totem spirits and earth feelings? This is like asking what is under a rock without moving the rock and actually looking beneath it. Presently, our main method of "looking" is our own process of awareness. At first, the natural scientist in me stopped here and said: "Hey! Wait a minute! Earth-based totem spirits or power spots manifesting our processminds? Don't believe it! Your mind is in your brain, and your brain is in your head!"

But then the therapist in me says, "Of course your mind is partly in your brain. But your brain is matter, and matter has nonlocal characteristics. It's just possible that some of these characteristics are—at the very least—projected upon the earth's power spots. Aboriginal people have always felt that special earth spots, such as burial grounds, are power areas and have identified with them. So, dear scientific skeptic, in the experiments that follow please remain skeptical yet open-minded enough to use the results to explore the mind's possible nonlocality on the basis of your own experience. In doing so, perhaps you will eventually sense and remember that part of your evolutionary psychology that once knew how to follow the earth and its associated powers. Most people normally identify themselves as a body at a particular location. But in deep sleep and near death, when your ordinary self is less prominent, your whole, nonlocalized mind—that is, your processmind—becomes more apparent. This powerful organizing factor appears as if it were a kind of "force field," like the wind that blows through the trees. Normally you can't see force fields, you can only feel and notice how they move things around——as the wind moves the leaves. Just as shamans of indigenous cultures refer to the figures personifying these invisible fields as "allies" or "guides," physicists refer to the structures of fields such as electromagnetism as field equations mediated by "virtual particles." Whether we call them allies, equations, or particles, all such dynamics can give us a sense of the power and structure of invisible fields.

Probably our most common experience of an invisible force field is with that of gravity. You can feel the force of gravity on your body just by jumping up into the air and inevitably being pulled back down to earth. (On the moon, you would take longer to come back down because the field of gravity is weaker there than on earth.)

But even though the force of gravity organizes all of our motions, because we are so used to existing in its field, we rarely think of it. In the same way, we rarely pay attention to the psychophysical force field of processmind unless we are in a sensitive or altered state of consciousness, dreaming, or near death. Nevertheless, the processmind, like gravity, organizes great portions of our lives.

Let me briefly summarize what I have said until now. What I call the processmind—as it appears in quantum physics and to which Einstein refers as the "Old One"—is the imagined intelligence behind the laws of the individual and the universe. Depending upon the context, I use the word processmind to mean:

• A theory; an organizing principle in psychology and physics

• A field concept and experience of being moved by a specific altered state of consciousness

• A practice; a meditation and mediation procedure found in the exercises of this book

• The deepest self; a somatic experience of wellness and least action

• A nondualistic quality that describes a particular quantum-like, human awareness system

• A belief in the spirits or gods found in religions or spiritual traditions

• A life or near-death experience that includes all of the foregoing

Sara's Last Verbal Communication

I was reminded of the processmind field recently when a friend and colleague of mine, Dr. Sara Halprin, a therapist and author, became ill and shortly thereafter died. From her earliest childhood, Sara had been interested in theater and writing, in portraying things to the public. In many ways, she is, or was, a grand woman. When she became ill, and with the help of her partner, Dr. Herb Long, I was fortunately able to speak with her several times over the phone, though we were in different cities. It turns out that the words I shall now relate, which occurred while Sara and I last spoke, were in her last shared verbal experience. (Thanks to my partner, Amy, for having recorded them.) I had no idea that this would be Sara's final conversation or that she would die within days. In retrospect, she may have been suffering in part from an extra large dose of chemotherapy, which her body was not tolerating very well.

As that last conversation began, Sara told me in a weak but clear voice that, above all, she wanted her life to be useful to others. She spoke of her recent attempts to find the best available doctors, hospitals, and medicine to help her with her kidney cancer and asked if I knew of anything that could be done above and beyond the types of medicine and chemotherapy she was already trying. I told her that she was getting the best medical help I knew of and that the most helpful thing to do was to follow her process. She agreed.

As we talked, she shared that she was very anxious. She complained of panic, of a rapid heart beat and dreadful fear. Breathing very quickly, she asked several times, "What is happening?" Perhaps she was afraid because she sensed how close she was to death. The following is an almost verbatim report of her experiences:

She said her heart was "racing," beating so violently she could feel it thump in her chest. When I suggested we start with that heart experience, she became quieter. After a moment, she said in a very low and quiet voice that she saw herself "falling into nothingness ... falling into nothingness." So I said, "Let's explore that nothingness." She said that she was afraid of falling into that nothingness: "It's so empty." I gently recommended that she trust and follow her experience. "Maybe it will turn out to be just nothing," she dismally responded.

Nevertheless, and though hesitant, Sara soon told me that she would try to explore the falling feeling. With Herb holding the phone to her ear, she reported that she saw herself spinning through the air in "emptiness." In an anxious but excited state, she said, "I'm falling, falling, falling." Frightened, she asked, "What next?" I said we should wait and her process would tell us what would be next, if anything. We waited quietly for a moment and then she said joyously, to her own (and my) surprise, that she was "landing near the river."

"I am landing, yes! I am landing on the river and am so happy to see a beautiful green mallard on the water!" She said that the bird's neck amazed her—it was "fluttering," moving rapidly back and forth. Perhaps it was about to take off. "Beautiful." After a moment of quietness, she said, "good-bye." That was her last spoken word.

Today, in retrospect, I wonder about Sara's last moments of life. I appreciate the way Herb cared for her, and I wonder about her vision. I want to wonder more with you, dear reader, and I want to thank Sara for having given me the impulse to publish her words. I remember her desire to be "useful" to others; perhaps the process she went through with me will be useful to others as well. After completing this book, I came across an autobiographical sketch in which she describes herself as a bird living by a river. How remarkable that during the last months of her life she moved to a new home on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland.

Her last verbally communicated process brings up all sorts of questions. What kind of intelligence guided her through that "emptiness" to the river and the bird? What is the nature of that intelligence within her that appeared at first in her fluttering heart and later in the mallard's? Was that terrifying heartbeat a body effect appearing because of the coming of death? Or was it her dreaming experience of the "fluttering bird"? What organizes body experiences to mirror our fantasies and dreams, or our dreams to mirror our body experiences? And what was the meaning of that "nothingness" that she feared and finally journeyed through before discovering the duck? Significantly, it was only when she finally submitted to that nothingness that her ordinary form disappeared and she focused on the bird.

Perhaps the nothingness Sara feared was death. But my guess is that what she experienced as nothingness was actually the power field of her processmind, whose organization she did not yet quite know. Once the processmind pulled her in and moved her from one form to another, her fear was replaced by amazement and quietude at her vision. Why did this field not speak to her about her death, or her burial, or the people around her? Why did it lead her instead to the bird at the riverside?

Each of us will have our own answers to these questions. Mine is that her processmind—that is, the deep intelligence moving her from one point to the next in her existence—is a timeless power field appearing in symbols, first as "emptiness" but then as a fluttering mallard on a river. It seems to me that while terms such as life and death may help us define reality, or rather "consensus reality," they are not the only, or the best, descriptions of our journey through time. The panic-stricken heart that frightened Sara the most as a symptom of impending death in the next moment became the wonderful and consoling image of a fluttering bird about to fly.

Sara's life is captured in part by a photograph of her and by images representing her final experiences in life (see figure 1.1). But she cannot be summed up in images. We are all more than the sum of our personal and imaginary pictures, in all of our realities and dreams. Sara's processmind, like ours, is a kind of emptiness, a potential, an invisible field like gravity or the wind. It is always there, pulling us, moving us, one way or another. In everyday life our ordinary minds deny the processmind in the background. We fear that emptiness—its power and its ability to move us freely and wisely in ways we see in our dreams.

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Excerpted from ProcessMind by ARNOLD MINDELL. Copyright © 2010 Arnold Mindell. Excerpted by permission of Theosophical Publishing House.
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