#allan combs

[katartchive]

"Networks of resonance, or sympathies, formed interconnections throughout this system so that no event occurred in isolation. In this cosmos, meaningful coincidences were natural. For instance, someone dreams of a distant disaster before actually receiving news of it. Or three friends living in separate parts of a large city find themselves drawn to the same restaurant at the same time. A flock of blackbirds lands on a house where someone is dying; howling dogs are heard in the distance. Such coincidences contain common resonances that run through nature and the human soul, drawing both outer and inner reality into shared patterns of meaning." Synchronicity: Science, Myth, and the Trickster (1994) Allan Combs and Mark Holland

[isyeye]

This nondual ‘state’ is not itself another experience. It is simply the opening or clearing in which all experiences arise and fall. It is the bright autumn sky through which the clouds come and go—it is not itself another cloud, another experience, another object, another manifestation. This realization is actually of the utter fruitlessness of experience, the utter futility of trying to experience release or liberation. All experiences lose their taste entirely—these passing clouds. …But you are not apart from the reflections, standing bac and watching. You are everything that is arising moment to moment. You can swallow the whole cosmos in one gulp, it is so small, and you can taste the entire sky without moving an inch.

Ken Wilber; Consciousness by Allan Combs

[isyeye]

The idea that the cosmos has a vertical structure as well as a lateral one is historically very old. Aside from vision s of higher realms such as the dwelling place of the gods or departed souls, in certain instances such vertical structures interact directly with the physical world of the living. We have already seen, for example, Plato’s higher realm of perfect forms, operating in a fashion somewhat similar to Sheldrake’s morphic fields, to give form to the less-than-perfect objects of this world. Moreover, it defines the essence of a thing. A horse, for instance, can easily be recognized as a horse and not, say, a huge dog or humpless camel, not because all horses are alike, but because all horses take their basic form from the perfect horse of the higher realm.

Allan Combs & Mark Holland, Synchronicity

[isyeye]

Expanding on these ideas we might suspect that a general principle is to be found here. It is that each newly emerging structure of consciousness becomes the governing form of experience while older structures can either become respected servants of the new structure, as is the case in the healthy personality, or the new structure can attempt to suppress the older structures and rule in isolation. In the latter case the older structures become unconscious or shadow presences that continue to act outside of awareness like unruly children.

Allan Combs, Consciousness

[isyeye]

Both emphasize the importance of a strong and mature ego for keeping one’s feet planted firmly on the solid ground. But both also stress the role of the archetypal or mythic unconscious as a source of life and vitality in the psyche, and as the wellspring of a palpable sense of life’s destiny. We see in all this the importance of living into our magic and mythic experiences, but cultivating them as servants to the mental structure and ultimately to the higher structures of consciousness that unfold, as Sri Aurobindo would have said, in the further evolution of consciousness. Or in Wilber’s terms, with the developmental and evolutionary unfolding of higher structures of cognitive and spiritual growth.

Allan Combs, Consciousness

[isyeye]

So one cannot doubt that, if carried far enough, psychological growth begins to facilitate or even produce the characteristics of higher states of consciousness. For instance, the sense of self becomes permeable and the individual begins to let go of rigid personal boundaries previously maintained by the ego. At the same time there is an expanding sense of affiliation with others and even nonhuman life—a growing compassion for all life.

Allan Combs, Consciousness

[isyeye]

Suddenly, with a roar like that of a waterfall, I felt a stream of liquid light entering my brian through the spinal cord. Entirely unprepared for such a development, I was completely taken by surprise…The illumination grew brighter and brighter, the roaring louder, I experienced a rocking sensation and then felt myself slipping out of my body, entirely enveloped in a halo of light… I felt the point of consciousness that was myself growing wider surrounded by waves of light. …I was now all consciousness without any outline, without any idea of corporeal appendage, without any feeling or sensation coming from the senses, immersed in a sea of light simultaneously conscious and aware at every point, spread out, as it were, in all directions without any barrier or material obstruction.

Gopi Krishna, Kundalini: The Evolutionary Energy in Man, pulled from Allan Combs’ Consciousness

[isyeye]

The universe evolves in consciousness of itself and causes itself to be. We are just this blessed consciousness, nothing more and nothing less. We are the light inside light that fuses into the atoms of our bodies; we are the fire that whirls across the stellar deeps and dances all things into being.

David Zindell, pulled from Allan Combs’ Consciousness