DARK NIGHT, EARLY DAWN

With a foreword by Stanislav Grof and a glowing endorsement from Richard Tarnas ('the most important book that I have read in recent years'), this was a book that I opened with some sense of anticipation. And I was not disappointed. This is truly a landmark book in consciousness studies that is five star reading for all interested in the field – and that means most readers of this review! As Rick says in his comment on the book: 'he has brought forth a conception of the human psyche that intimately reconnects the personal ordeals of and awakenings of the individual to the larger collective suffering and spiritual transformation of the entire human species, at this most critical of historical thresholds'. Moreover, he has accomplished this 'with superb clarity, rigour and depth of insight'. I quite agree. The author was for many years Professor of Religious Studies at Youngstown State University and is now Director of Education at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. So why is this book so unusual? Its strength is to combine scholarship across the board in the further reaches of consciousness studies with the most profound experiential insights into the underlying nature of the universe that I have read anywhere – including the most penetrating NDEs. It also redefines the role of the individual within a larger collective understanding, as expressed in his core contention: 'in order to understand the transformative dynamics that sometimes surface in nonordinary states, we need to expand our frame of reference beyond the individual human being and look to the living system of which the individual is a part'. (p. 16) This thesis is worked through with respect to the atomism of most reincarnation perspectives and its implication for the notion of personal survival. Here I felt that his argument went too far over into the collective and he could have benefited from reading Philip Novak's book The Division of Consciousness which looks at the problem of the two models of the afterlife in terms of survival and reincarnation, arguing that both are in a sense possible if we expand our framework. The next section (The Deep Ecology of Nonordinary States) enlarges Stan Grof's work. It is here that some of the most astonishing passages on the nature of life and consciousness appear. They make the book worth buying just for these few pages, which I have quoted extensively in my lectures this year. He experiences 'how consciousness manifests itself in separate forms while remaining unified'. Here is the essence as explained by great sages like Ramana Maharshi. This is what can say I AM. He awakens to levels of reality that he had previously known but forgotten and 'the more I remembered, the larger I became'. He is swept into vistas of intelligent design and the ecstasy of LOVE of extraordinary proportions. Dualities dissolve into a single, encompassing flow, which searingly means that we do things to each other, both positively and negatively. At the deepest level, there is no other. Every duality is another facet of Myself, however far you go. Scientifically, this corresponds to the early phases of a science of wholeness and interconnectedness based on the insight that the universe 'is a unified organism of extraordinary design reflecting a massive Creative Intelligence'. Bache now turns his attention to negative NDEs and advances a new interpretation within an understanding of the death-rebirth dynamic: 'All forms of biological birth and death are ultimately subservient to the spiritual process of shedding our egoic, spacetime identity and awakening to the transcendental dimensions of existence'. (p. 90) He sees frightening NDEs (FNDEs) as part of a purgative transformational process or 'Heaven's Fire corresponding to the dark night of the soul – in this case the dark night of the ego. So hellish experiences of any kind are not in fact damnation but spiritual transformation. This view goes some way towards a credible theodicy when combined with his earlier cosmic perspectives. As one would expect from his argument, Bache seeks to go beyond the idea of the personal, isolated soul to what is described as 'the paradox of total unity and the continuity of the part'. Robert Monroe is quoted as saying 'I know the Whole…I am the Whole…even as a part I am the totality'. Here one does not so much dispense with partness but recontextualises it within the large whole. The problem cannot be resolved by collapsing one into the other as the rational mind might prefer for the sake of consistency. This also means that karma is as much collective as personal. We begin to see 'that our minds are part of an extended web or field of consciousness composed of all living beings who are simultaneously sharing this present moment'. (p. 159) A chapter in this section describes the remarkable way in which Bache applied these field ideas to interaction with his students. Finally we come to a key chapter entitled 'The Great Awakening', which relates our ecological situation to the dynamics of a transformation of consciousness. Just as ego death destroys the deep feeling of ontological separation, so the prospect of ecological meltdown, when combined with an emergent sense of oneness, may dissolve our artificial structures of separation and fear of the other. It is true that 'our entire society is built upon this premise of ontological separation'. But, as Bache indicates, the truth of separation and individuality operates within a larger framework of interpenetration. What would be the effect of a planetary NDE, as envisaged by Kenneth Ring in the 1980s? According to Bache it would reinforce the already emergent sense of species wholeness and catalyse the appearance of new ways of thinking and new values. The author comes back to the nature of individuality in the last chapter, returning to themes on the nature of consciousness raised earlier in the volume. One of the key insights here is ineffability or forgetfulness, with which readers of mystical and near-death experiences will be familiar, if not from their own experience. Bache sees forgetfulness as a sign of hitting one's experiential limits, which then have to be expanded if one is to know more. There comes a point where one's ability to experience coherence explodes into cognitive chaos. One wonders about the implications of this for forgetting NDEs in general. This means that the goal is integrated transcendence as one sees that 'even as the self dies, a deeper form of individuality is being liberated'. (p. 264) As he puts it: 'From my present perspective, I believe that it is not individuality itself that is the illusion but our sense of being isolated from the whole'. So the purpose becomes one of awakening more completely within Consciousness, realising that we have immense creative capacities and can use the resistance of space-time to accelerate the development of these capacities. Creator and Creation can meet in 'a strong centre of integrated awareness'.

Some books both reflect and quicken the transformative processes that are under way, and this is undoubtedly a key text in this respect. If we understand ourselves and our relationships in a new way that truly corresponds to the nature of reality then we give ourselves a creative opportunity to reflect this understanding into new social and political systems that may transcend current sources of tension and conflict. To love another is to love oneself, to kill another is to kill oneself – how long will it be before we collectively wake up to this realisation?