On states of consciousness in the light of Andean and pre-Columbian wisdom
THE ORDINARY STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS (CAYPACHA)
The Ordinary State of Consciousness results from several circumstances, some cultural and others inherent to the very evolutionary dynamics (phylogenetic and ontogenetic) of consciousness.
Existential anguish
From an evolutionary standpoint, the emergence, in the development of the state-of-being, of the capacity to recognize oneself, to build a self-image, as well as to imagine the future and project oneself into it, discovering oneself finite, limited and mortal, impermanent, immediately generates a latent syndrome of existential anguish, in which fear predominates: the fear of getting sick, of dying, of having to suffer needs and shortages. This existential anguish engenders two main reactions:
A double cognitive dissociation, from the body and from feelings
1. A distortion of the instincts: a profound distortion of the preservation impulses (individual and collective), bringing about a state of crisis on the stage of life, which clarifies many of the attitudes expressed by the slogan 'life is a struggle for survival'. The regulating element of instinctive behaviors, which in the animal kingdom is the immediate satisfaction of needs, is distorted in the human being, into an insatiable and incessant attempt to alleviate and compensate for the anguish of existing. The pursuit of immediate advantage, the habit of saving, storing, holding, analyzing benefits, stimulate the selection and hypertrophy of a certain type of consciousness, a collection of mental files of ideas, memes* (see note), patterns of behavior, etc.
* Note: Memetics is a theory proposed by Richard Dawkins in 1976, in the book The Selfish Gene, but it was only in 1997 revisited by Susan Blackmore, in an article published in The Skeptic (No 2, 43–49), titled "The Power of the Meme", followed by other articles and a book called "The Meme Machine", which features an introduction by Richard Dawkins himself. A "meme" is defined as a pattern of information recorded in memory and capable of being copied into the memory of another individual. "Memetics" is the empirical and theoretical science that studies the replication and evolution of memes. Memetics, regarding the evolution of ideas and belief systems, can be understood as the equivalent of genetics regarding the evolution of cells and organisms. At the biological level there is the "gene" and at the cultural level the "meme". Memes can be analyzed as if they were microorganisms in search of hosts: people's memory.
2. A cognitive dissociation: generates a retraction, a displacement, or even a fragmentation of consciousness, in which the mind, startled, dissociates from the existential plane and plunges into reminiscences, into the sphere of concepts and ideals, into the realm of projects, away from the immediate, physical and organic plane.
Acting as complementary, self-reinforcing processes, these two mechanisms generate a behavioral dysfunction: on the one hand, the state of dissociation prevents the emergence of satisfaction and satiety; on the other, the cognitive sphere, devoid of sensitive, real references, does not weigh its creations well, nor its intentions. This disintegrated way of identifying oneself corresponds to and correlates with the disharmonious existential conception of a 'soul' or 'spirit' immersed in a hostile and disobedient nature, to be subjugated and dominated. In fact, the subjective world was understood and valued in every possible way by philosophers, mainly through the various forms of idealism, such as: the absolute idealism of Hegel, which identifies reality with reason; the transcendental idealism of Kantianism, where phenomena are considered as representation, contrasting with the 'thing in itself'; one even reached Subjective Idealism, which reduces the state-of-being to the representations or ideas of the individual, as in the case of Berkeleyanism in which it is affirmed that only spirits exist, with 'matter' being no different from perception: 'to be' would merely be to perceive and to be perceived — a concept that belongs to solipsism, in which reality is understood as subjective, contained in consciousness.
The trance of consciousness
It is often repeated that the human being is, most of the time, only partially conscious, and that various techniques, such as meditation, would be necessary to 'wake up' and leave behind the often unsatisfactory state of consciousness regarded as 'normal'. The habitual state would be merely a 'trance state'; humanity would be sleeping or hypnotized by culture. From a cultural standpoint, we know that the socialization process results not only in the perception of objects and events as they actually are, but also in the perception of what they are not. It is clear that there would be no chance of surviving without possessing some degree of perceptual adequacy, but on the other hand it is obvious that culture, our immediate reference groups, racial, national, regional, family, social clubs, religious and political affiliations, considerably determine our values and belief systems as well as the type of cognition we will be able to filter and elaborate, and the validity of the perceived categories. Between each human being and the rest of the world there is an invisible fence, a filter made of thoughts and cultural introjections never challenged, modulating and distorting perception. We respond to a heterogeneous mixture made of sensations and directly perceived elements, added to symbols and images, impressions and feelings, preconceived, culturally conditioned ideas, in a creative production that we understand as being 'the truth' or 'reality'. Each event is immediately decoded, gauged according to the filter in use and classified as one more case to reinforce and illustrate one of the categories of experience already defined in the museum or repository of culturally authorized options.