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Changes of Mind: A Holonomic Theory of the Evolution of Consciousness
An original theory of the development of consciousness that brings together research from neurology, new-paradigm studies, psychology, and mysticism.
"In this stunningly original book, Dr. Wade presents a theory of development that begins before birth and ends after death. She extends the boundaries of development in a way that leads us to rethink the nature of consciousness and the relation of consciousness to the brain. Dr. Wade draws on a wide range of sources from the fields of developmental psychology, brain research, new-paradigm studies, and mysticism. She brings these sources together in a synthesis that will make an important contribution to consciousness studies and to transpersonal psychology." --Washburn, author of The Ego and the Dynamic Ground and Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective
"The author brings together a large body of diverse research and draws on various disciplines--neurology, psychology, psychiatry--as well as the esoteric and spiritual traditions. She develops a unique synthesis in formulating her stages of development. Hers is one of the few truly life-span theories. Although dealing with complex material, she writes clearly and convincingly. This is a tour de force construction of an exciting theory that should be discussed and debated for years to come." -- L. Eugene Thomas, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Changes of Mind unites literature from the new physics, brain research, developmental psychology, and mysticism to produce the first comprehensive theory of individual human consciousness. Assuming a new paradigm reality, the author opens and extends the field of developmental psychology in ways that structure, destructure, and then restructure the subjective experience of time, space, subject, and object.
Wade's theory concerns the development of consciousness per se--not merely its derivatives, such as cognition, social development, and affect--and its neurological bases, something no other developmental theory has taken into account. Using data from a wide range of empirical studies and neurological research, Wade shows that awareness considerably predates birth--probably even conception--and lasts after death, supporting the idea that the self exists outside the boundaries of linear time and a physical body. This book represents a major leap forward in psychological theory and a groundbreaking approach to human perception and being in the world.
"In this stunningly original book, Dr. Wade presents a theory of development that begins before birth and ends after death. She extends the boundaries of development in a way that leads us to rethink the nature of consciousness and the relation of consciousness to the brain. Dr. Wade draws on a wide range of sources from the fields of developmental psychology, brain research, new-paradigm studies, and mysticism. She brings these sources together in a synthesis that will make an important contribution to consciousness studies and to transpersonal psychology." --Washburn, author of The Ego and the Dynamic Ground and Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective
"The author brings together a large body of diverse research and draws on various disciplines--neurology, psychology, psychiatry--as well as the esoteric and spiritual traditions. She develops a unique synthesis in formulating her stages of development. Hers is one of the few truly life-span theories. Although dealing with complex material, she writes clearly and convincingly. This is a tour de force construction of an exciting theory that should be discussed and debated for years to come." -- L. Eugene Thomas, University of Connecticut, Storrs
Changes of Mind unites literature from the new physics, brain research, developmental psychology, and mysticism to produce the first comprehensive theory of individual human consciousness. Assuming a new paradigm reality, the author opens and extends the field of developmental psychology in ways that structure, destructure, and then restructure the subjective experience of time, space, subject, and object.
Wade's theory concerns the development of consciousness per se--not merely its derivatives, such as cognition, social development, and affect--and its neurological bases, something no other developmental theory has taken into account. Using data from a wide range of empirical studies and neurological research, Wade shows that awareness considerably predates birth--probably even conception--and lasts after death, supporting the idea that the self exists outside the boundaries of linear time and a physical body. This book represents a major leap forward in psychological theory and a groundbreaking approach to human perception and being in the world.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1996
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About the author
Jenny Wade
3 booksLibrarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Jenny Wade, PhD is a developmental psychologist specializing in the structuring of consciousness and how variations in awareness can expand human potential.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Jenny Wade, PhD is a developmental psychologist specializing in the structuring of consciousness and how variations in awareness can expand human potential.
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April 2, 2015
Jenny Wade’s work attempts a holistic formulation of the noetic theory of human development, and addresses individual consciousness as the very ground of all other expressions of various phenomena such as motivation, ego development, moral reasoning, object relations and socialization; thereby bringing both a unifying structure and a higher-order integration in the field of developmental psychology.
The definition of consciousness is chosen from E. Roy John in the ‘The Oxford Companion to the Mind’, which has a Systems Biology flavour rather than a mystical one, as:
‘a process in which information about multiple individual modalities of sensation and perception is combined into a unified multi-dimensional representation of the state of the system and its environment, and integrated with information about memories and needs of the organism, generating emotional reactions and programs of behaviour to adjust the organism to its environment’
Evidence from various disciplines supports a dual form of consciousness from a causative standpoint, where a physically transcendent source of awareness and a brain-based source of awareness coexist; within which framework the latter changes over life as the dominating awareness moves through evolutionarily graded structures that represent increased neurological capacity and order. As the brain’s strength in generating its own energy field increases, subjective awareness of the former decreases; ostensibly due to the interference or ‘noise’ of brain wave patterns and especially due to the narrative dominance of the left hemisphere. Over the developmental lifetime, the experience of consciousness moves from the R-complex to the limbic system to the neo-cortex, and finally to cortical entrainment between the two hemispheres and increasingly slow, orderly, hyper-synchronic bioelectrical activity and harmonic energy patterns. At the final stages, the sense of the self, separate from the world, vanishes, and the person does not ‘go’ anywhere at death because he is already (t)here immortally and eternally, even though his body does not persist in the time-bound, material world.
Our ordinary perception of the manifest world, constantly reinforced in our thought and language, is so habitually established that we believe it to be our primary experience. Memory, whose content is recurrent, stable and separable, forms the background against which the transitory, unbroken flow of experience is compared. By focusing our attention on the manifest, memory sustains the illusion of a material, Newtonian reality derived from a set of recurrent and relatively stable elements that exist independently in 3D space. However, disciplined state training, advanced meditation, NDEs and psychedelic experiences etc. can open up the access to the transcendent source which permit experiences unbounded by Newtonian spatio-temporality.
This journey is recast in a post-Newtonian paradigm (David Bohm’s version, and Karl Pribram’s) in which the ultimate nature of physical reality is an undivided whole in perpetual flux. This undivided whole comprises parts that merge and unite in a constant state of flow and change called holomovement, a term signifying that reality is both dynamic and holographic in nature. With useful analogies of the Moebius strip and the ink drop in glycerine filled in the space between two concentric rotating glass cylinders, we are able to ‘see’ how the interface between the implicate order (unmanifest, but fundamental) and the explicate order (manifest, readily perceivable to ordinary senses, but derived or secondary) is both real and illusory.
This holonomic (from holos and nomos, the law of wholeness) paradigm redefines the concept of development as an enfolded heterarchy, a structure in which the implicate order for the individual coexists with, but may not appear to be actualized in, the explicate order. It also redefines the human being as a unit, wherein any given mind-body relationship is a lower order, relatively temporary manifestation in explicate reality, and at any developmental level all the previous and future states of an individual – foetus, infant, child, adolescent, adult and corpse, coexist with (or without) embodiment as we usually think of it. The holonomic model thus contends that the whole, perfectly realized person is in the partially evolved self. Probably because noetic structuring is fundamentally paradigmatic structuring: the world does not change as much as the way in which the world is understood, does.
Within this framework, the Newtonian representation of the neurological evolution of noetic stages is depicted as: (https://phulme.wordpress.com/2015/03/...)
Prigogine’s metaphor of consciousness as a dissipative structure is cited in envisioning the process of transitions in awareness. As the field of consciousness becomes more destabilized by higher excitation from conflicting outside inputs and excited internal inputs, it reaches some kind of bifurcation point, from which the only way out involves accessing additional neurological circuitry to find eventual resolution at the next higher stage. Below the Authentic level, change seems to be driven exclusively by external events causing sufficient suffering for movement including the possibility of pathological regression to an earlier stage. Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance theory applies here: people will change their beliefs to rationalize discrepancies in their behaviour. The quality of transition changes from the Authentic level, because egoic survival is not threatened any more. Festinger’s model is now reversed, because one now becomes open to critical input and, if faced with the fact that their behaviour does not accord with their beliefs, will tend to change their behaviour. Thus, from the Authentic level on, change is primarily driven by personal will, even if assisted by others (spiritual guide or grace).
The author contends that the left side is more hermetic, inner directed and centred in self-expression and development. The right side is more social, directed towards attachment, love and knowing the other. Ancient traditions recognize the left as the way of the sages and the right as the way of the saints. She adds, pertinently so: ‘Unity consciousness might arguably be thought to be neutral to in its Self-to-Ground orientation, which would mean it should occupy a central-axis position on the chart. I take the view that the Self is the Ground, and that Unity consciousness is the perfect expression of the Ground through the Self, which preserves the symmetry of the diagram.
The core assumptions made, and the Transition dilemma experienced by the subject is as per the table below:
Stage Core Assumption Transition Dilemma
1 Reactive: I am the world, so my needs are met as they arise. I am not the world
2 Naive: The leader and I are one, so I am safe. The leader and I are not one
3 Egocentric: If I can be selfish and tough enough, I will survive. Death is inevitable
4 Conformist: The universe is fair, so I can ensure security by ‘fitting in’. Life is not fair
5 Achievement: I can be the master of my fate through my own initiative. Some forces cannot be controlled
6 Affiliative: Enough love will conquer any difficulty. Love cannot redeem every situation
7 Authentic: I need to be all that I can be to fulfil my purpose. I can only realize my purpose by giving up myself
8 Transcendent: I seek to be one with the Ground of All Being Seeking/not seeking keeps me from it.
9 Unity: I am What is. None
Beyond the ‘manifest’ stages depicted above, the author describes pre- and perinatal consciousness and after-death consciousness, of which the former may fit in prior to the reactive, but the latter eventuates at whatever stage the person has reached prior to mortal death. She thus addresses the entire chronological range from a holonomic perspective, which subsumes the Newtonian world and does not make it wrong.
Holonomic theory thus contends that linear psychological theories are correct insofar as they outline certain aspects of existence and are recognized as coming from a perspective that defines a reality that is limited in certain dimensions. The cornerstone of the holonomic theory, is ‘All realities and their concomitant forms of consciousness are perfect, even the most ‘unevolved’.
My personal takeaway from this powerful book is the orientation to ride the razors edge between the impulse to make things better on the one hand, and to relax in the background knowledge of perfection within the most egregious forms of imperfection, on the other.
The definition of consciousness is chosen from E. Roy John in the ‘The Oxford Companion to the Mind’, which has a Systems Biology flavour rather than a mystical one, as:
‘a process in which information about multiple individual modalities of sensation and perception is combined into a unified multi-dimensional representation of the state of the system and its environment, and integrated with information about memories and needs of the organism, generating emotional reactions and programs of behaviour to adjust the organism to its environment’
Evidence from various disciplines supports a dual form of consciousness from a causative standpoint, where a physically transcendent source of awareness and a brain-based source of awareness coexist; within which framework the latter changes over life as the dominating awareness moves through evolutionarily graded structures that represent increased neurological capacity and order. As the brain’s strength in generating its own energy field increases, subjective awareness of the former decreases; ostensibly due to the interference or ‘noise’ of brain wave patterns and especially due to the narrative dominance of the left hemisphere. Over the developmental lifetime, the experience of consciousness moves from the R-complex to the limbic system to the neo-cortex, and finally to cortical entrainment between the two hemispheres and increasingly slow, orderly, hyper-synchronic bioelectrical activity and harmonic energy patterns. At the final stages, the sense of the self, separate from the world, vanishes, and the person does not ‘go’ anywhere at death because he is already (t)here immortally and eternally, even though his body does not persist in the time-bound, material world.
Our ordinary perception of the manifest world, constantly reinforced in our thought and language, is so habitually established that we believe it to be our primary experience. Memory, whose content is recurrent, stable and separable, forms the background against which the transitory, unbroken flow of experience is compared. By focusing our attention on the manifest, memory sustains the illusion of a material, Newtonian reality derived from a set of recurrent and relatively stable elements that exist independently in 3D space. However, disciplined state training, advanced meditation, NDEs and psychedelic experiences etc. can open up the access to the transcendent source which permit experiences unbounded by Newtonian spatio-temporality.
This journey is recast in a post-Newtonian paradigm (David Bohm’s version, and Karl Pribram’s) in which the ultimate nature of physical reality is an undivided whole in perpetual flux. This undivided whole comprises parts that merge and unite in a constant state of flow and change called holomovement, a term signifying that reality is both dynamic and holographic in nature. With useful analogies of the Moebius strip and the ink drop in glycerine filled in the space between two concentric rotating glass cylinders, we are able to ‘see’ how the interface between the implicate order (unmanifest, but fundamental) and the explicate order (manifest, readily perceivable to ordinary senses, but derived or secondary) is both real and illusory.
This holonomic (from holos and nomos, the law of wholeness) paradigm redefines the concept of development as an enfolded heterarchy, a structure in which the implicate order for the individual coexists with, but may not appear to be actualized in, the explicate order. It also redefines the human being as a unit, wherein any given mind-body relationship is a lower order, relatively temporary manifestation in explicate reality, and at any developmental level all the previous and future states of an individual – foetus, infant, child, adolescent, adult and corpse, coexist with (or without) embodiment as we usually think of it. The holonomic model thus contends that the whole, perfectly realized person is in the partially evolved self. Probably because noetic structuring is fundamentally paradigmatic structuring: the world does not change as much as the way in which the world is understood, does.
Within this framework, the Newtonian representation of the neurological evolution of noetic stages is depicted as: (https://phulme.wordpress.com/2015/03/...)
Prigogine’s metaphor of consciousness as a dissipative structure is cited in envisioning the process of transitions in awareness. As the field of consciousness becomes more destabilized by higher excitation from conflicting outside inputs and excited internal inputs, it reaches some kind of bifurcation point, from which the only way out involves accessing additional neurological circuitry to find eventual resolution at the next higher stage. Below the Authentic level, change seems to be driven exclusively by external events causing sufficient suffering for movement including the possibility of pathological regression to an earlier stage. Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance theory applies here: people will change their beliefs to rationalize discrepancies in their behaviour. The quality of transition changes from the Authentic level, because egoic survival is not threatened any more. Festinger’s model is now reversed, because one now becomes open to critical input and, if faced with the fact that their behaviour does not accord with their beliefs, will tend to change their behaviour. Thus, from the Authentic level on, change is primarily driven by personal will, even if assisted by others (spiritual guide or grace).
The author contends that the left side is more hermetic, inner directed and centred in self-expression and development. The right side is more social, directed towards attachment, love and knowing the other. Ancient traditions recognize the left as the way of the sages and the right as the way of the saints. She adds, pertinently so: ‘Unity consciousness might arguably be thought to be neutral to in its Self-to-Ground orientation, which would mean it should occupy a central-axis position on the chart. I take the view that the Self is the Ground, and that Unity consciousness is the perfect expression of the Ground through the Self, which preserves the symmetry of the diagram.
The core assumptions made, and the Transition dilemma experienced by the subject is as per the table below:
Stage Core Assumption Transition Dilemma
1 Reactive: I am the world, so my needs are met as they arise. I am not the world
2 Naive: The leader and I are one, so I am safe. The leader and I are not one
3 Egocentric: If I can be selfish and tough enough, I will survive. Death is inevitable
4 Conformist: The universe is fair, so I can ensure security by ‘fitting in’. Life is not fair
5 Achievement: I can be the master of my fate through my own initiative. Some forces cannot be controlled
6 Affiliative: Enough love will conquer any difficulty. Love cannot redeem every situation
7 Authentic: I need to be all that I can be to fulfil my purpose. I can only realize my purpose by giving up myself
8 Transcendent: I seek to be one with the Ground of All Being Seeking/not seeking keeps me from it.
9 Unity: I am What is. None
Beyond the ‘manifest’ stages depicted above, the author describes pre- and perinatal consciousness and after-death consciousness, of which the former may fit in prior to the reactive, but the latter eventuates at whatever stage the person has reached prior to mortal death. She thus addresses the entire chronological range from a holonomic perspective, which subsumes the Newtonian world and does not make it wrong.
Holonomic theory thus contends that linear psychological theories are correct insofar as they outline certain aspects of existence and are recognized as coming from a perspective that defines a reality that is limited in certain dimensions. The cornerstone of the holonomic theory, is ‘All realities and their concomitant forms of consciousness are perfect, even the most ‘unevolved’.
My personal takeaway from this powerful book is the orientation to ride the razors edge between the impulse to make things better on the one hand, and to relax in the background knowledge of perfection within the most egregious forms of imperfection, on the other.
January 6, 2021
If there were only one book that I would recommend on the subject of understanding consciousness and the development and levels of consciousness, then this would be it. If I were to take a million people and start a new civilization on a planet in a galaxy far, far away, and if I could only take one book with me, this would be it.
In reading the first chapter, I started to have my doubts about whether I should take the author seriously. The stories told stretched my credulity, to say the least. But this did not detract from what I got from that first chapter, or from the rest of the book. What came out of this is a treatment of the levels and development of consciousness that is so comprehensive and so thorough, and so extraordinary, that it is hard to imagine that anything could improve on it.
Wade describes 8 levels of consciousness, starting with a primordial, blissful womb-like consciousness, then the rude awakening of entering the world, then the steady climb (or at least conceptually steady) through higher and higher levels ending with an experience of Unity which includes even the previous seven states in what is a state which few if any have fully achieved, but which we all have an inkling of, otherwise we would not even be able to understand the last chapters. If you are into the Vedas, or Charles Tart, or Ken Wilbur, Peter Ouspensky, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, etc., etc., then you will find here a book that really puts it all together, such that one has a feeling that absolutely nothing is left out.
In reading the first chapter, I started to have my doubts about whether I should take the author seriously. The stories told stretched my credulity, to say the least. But this did not detract from what I got from that first chapter, or from the rest of the book. What came out of this is a treatment of the levels and development of consciousness that is so comprehensive and so thorough, and so extraordinary, that it is hard to imagine that anything could improve on it.
Wade describes 8 levels of consciousness, starting with a primordial, blissful womb-like consciousness, then the rude awakening of entering the world, then the steady climb (or at least conceptually steady) through higher and higher levels ending with an experience of Unity which includes even the previous seven states in what is a state which few if any have fully achieved, but which we all have an inkling of, otherwise we would not even be able to understand the last chapters. If you are into the Vedas, or Charles Tart, or Ken Wilbur, Peter Ouspensky, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, etc., etc., then you will find here a book that really puts it all together, such that one has a feeling that absolutely nothing is left out.
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