Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 10 Number 1, April 2009
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by
Eastern Institute of Technology, New Zealand
Introduction
It is inevitable that at some time in the life of an individual he or she will come face to face with loss in one or all of its forms. It is suggested here that these profound encounters open an individual to a heightening of consciousness which allows access to parts of the psyche less influenced by rational thought and more closely allied to numinous and symbolic experience. For example, Stanislav and Christina Grof (1990) suggest that encounters with loss and death are pivotal to the process of self-actualisation and “an integral component of most spiritual emergencies” (57). Consequently, these experiences can allow access to what William James (1901-2, Lecture XVII) has called “available states of consciousness” that “add a supersensuous meaning to the ordinary outward data of consciousness”. In many traditions understanding of and access to these available states of consciousness continue to be a significant part of cultural and spiritual development.
To consider these critical links between loss, transformation and states of consciousness this article will explore the permeability of boundaries between consensus reality and the transpersonal dimensions of experience exposed by William Shakespeare in his play Hamlet (Dover Wilson, 1972). Central to this is the character of Hamlet, described by Harold Bloom (1998) as having ‘an ever-growing inner self, the dream of infinite consciousness’ (416). It is hypothesised that Hamlet’s soliloquies disclose the playwright’s “spiritual emergency”, a terrifying psychic journey and extraordinary transformational conclusion.
In order to manage and integrate his mourning over the death of his son Hamnet, William Shakespeare uses the making of Hamlet to re-conceive and externalize an inner representation of his dead son. On one level, this public portrayal of the lost object of his affection enables Shakespeare to accept the reality of his loss and repositions him to address a number of universal questions that arise from this change in relationship. However, at a deeper level it is proposed that the playwright’s personal loss caused him to experience a transformed or non-ordinary state of consciousness, termed by Grof and Grof (1989) as a “spiritual emergency”.
In summary, Shakespeare’s experience of loss precipitates engagement with other available states of consciousness which causes a crisis of inner transformation which leads to his personality rebirth and healing. Thus Shakespeare’s experience of psycho-spiritual transformation shapes the content of Hamlet and his deceased son, Hamnet, gives intentional substance to the play’s principle character.
Spiritual Emergency, DSM IV and Hamlet
A new diagnostic category “Religious or Spiritual Problem” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM IV) (American Psychiatric Association) recognised and established in 1994 drew its impetus from the research and anecdotal findings of clinicians working with “spiritual emergency”. This was a significant breakthrough in the acknowledgment of transpersonal experiences as non-pathological (Lukoff, Lu & Turner, 1998). However, in spite of its influence and significance and because of the difficulties relating to differential diagnosis spiritual emergency was not ultimately included in the DSM IV description. Nevertheless, Randal and Argyle (2005) argue that, based on criteria of “clinical utility”, as spiritual emergency is an explanatory model that normalises, destigmatises, and effectively supports the recovery journey of some people, it should be included in future revisions of the DSM (2).
In Hamlet Shakespeare presents his audience with a number of notable characteristics of spiritual emergency: “shamanistic initiatory crises,” a rite of passage for shamans-to-be in indigenous cultures, commonly involving physical illness and/or psychological crisis (Kalweit, 1998); processes of rebirth and renewal (Perry, 1986); sudden occurrences of paranormal experiences (Grof & Grof, 1989); peak experiences (Maslow, 1987); and communication with spirit guides (Grof & Grof, 1990).
Consciousness, Spiritual Emergency and Loss
Production and Transmissive Theories of Consciousness
The study of human consciousness requires both internal and external views. (Damasio, 2000, 82)
As early as 1898, William James suggested that the theory of consciousness be regarded and organised in one of two ways.
Mainstream science tends to view consciousness as a product of neural process which cannot exist independently of the brain. This “production theory” positions consciousness within the individual. Experiences of spiritual emergency challenge this theory suggesting the possibility that human consciousness is even more expansive than this model allows.
“Transmissive theory”, supported by the insightful spiritual experiences of pioneers like Jung, Huxley and Grof, suggests that consciousness is inherent in the cosmos, independent of physical senses and mediated by them on a daily basis. Thus, the brain and psyche are a lens through which consciousness is experienced (Crowley, 2005). Read (2006) has even hypothesised that the psyche is a sixth sense organ which binds and organises “consciousness around feeling states and meaning” (5).
Tarnas (1996) in his scathing critique of the former theory suggests, not unlike Hamlet in his description of Denmark, that it “expresses and ratifies a state of consciousness in which the experience of the unitive numinous depths of reality has been systematically extinguished” (431) and characterises it as a hermetically closed system, a prison, in which “human awareness is encompassed and confined as if existing in a solipsistic bubble” (432).
Loss and Spiritual Emergency
Stanislav and Christina Grof (1990) note that loss of a loved one and the subsequent changes to future expectations caused by such losses may be significant enough to create the right environment for spiritual emergency to present itself (Bray, 2008). As it makes the developmental adjustments caused by loss, the psyche temporarily and powerfully attracts and submerges the ego allowing an opening for the influx of non-ordinary material, or “holotropic” (moving towards wholeness) phenomena. This may be experienced as a gradual emergence of consciousness or as the distressing but ultimately positive expression of spiritual emergency. Significantly, according to the claims of Stanislav Grof’s holotropic theory, an individual’s cognitive abilities are not impaired and can often be sensitised by this experience (Grof & Grof, 1989).
Grof’s Cartography of the Human Psyche
But the most epistemologically significant development in the recent history of depth psychology, and indeed the most important advance in the field as a whole since Feud and Jung themselves, has been the work of Stanislav Grof, which over the past three decade has not only revolutionized psychodynamic theory but also brought forth major implications for many other fields, including philosophy.
(Tarnas, 1996, 425)
Spiritual emergency is the subject of Stanislav and Christina Grof’s Spiritual Emergency (1989), and The Stormy Search for Self (1990), but the “new paradigm” in which they find their context was crystallized in some detail by Stanislav Grof in his groundbreaking Beyond the Brain (1985). With a few exceptions, the basic principles of the paradigm and its cartography remain the same. In this archetypal map of the unconscious Grof adds to an existing psychodynamic “biographical” dimension two further dimensions which he describes as the “transpersonal” and the fundamental biological dimension, the “perinatal.”
Grof and Grof (1990) note the significance of death, death of the self in the self-actualizing process of transformation, and in the process of human birth. As Grof’s (1985) consciousness model is much richer and more complex than Jung’s, the perinatal dimension not only represents an interface between the individual “and elements of the collective unconscious” but also functions as an organizer of materials from “deep, intrinsic spiritual dimensions of the psyche” (100).
Transpersonal experiences do not differentiate between the worlds of spirituality, mythology and archetypal forms, and the world of consensus reality. They offer, without the negotiation of the senses, direct access to the non-ordinary information of the collective unconscious where “all limitations appear to be transcended” (Grof & Grof, 1990, 151).
Transpersonal experiences, or non-ordinary states of consciousness, are genuine manifestations of the psyche that reveal that dimensions of human consciousness reach far beyond what is currently accepted by psychology and psychiatry. At a recollective-analytical level these transpersonal experiences are clearly “biographical” in nature. At an existential-experiential level experiences of the perinatal dimension reflect strong connections with birth and death. Thus perinatal experiences represent an intersection between the personal and the transpersonal, which in turn reveal connections between the individual and the cosmos (Grof, 1985, 1996, 2000).
Grof's (1985) map of the psyche outlines the domains of prenatal existence and the processes of birth itself. In the perinatal dimension Grof asserts that the foetus is conscious during its nine months and that pre- and perinatal events play a critical role in an individual’s psychological history, and creates systems of condensed experience (COEX), or memory aggregates, that constellate around these events. COEX have different layers of biographical, perinatal or archetypal material made accessible in the holotropic state.
Consequently, Grof’s subjects were not just able to access the personal or biographical dimensions of the unconscious, but eventually came to relive the traumatic processes of their own births, to unfold outwards beyond individual biography and access symbolic, visionary, collective, archetypal, and transpersonal levels of experiencing.
Grof (1985) describes the distinction and the link between the personal and the transpersonal as being at the level of the Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM). He defines BPM as four dynamic constellations or experiential patterns of the deep unconscious each “characterized by specific emotions, physical feelings, and symbolic images,” the COEX, corresponding to the four consecutive periods of biological delivery in childbirth (499). The first matrix corresponds to undisturbed existence in the uterus. The second resonates with the trauma associated with the onset of uterine contractions against a closed cervix. The third describes the titanic struggle as the cervix is opening and delivery becomes possible. Finally, the fourth matrix represents delivery and the physical separation of the baby from the mother.
Thus, disturbances and experiences at any stage of the intrauterine and birth processes have been established by Grof as corresponding to certain generic existential conditions and psychopathological categories. For Grof, complex modes of human experience and behaviour, both “normal” and pathological can be understood, and therapeutically influenced, by relating them to these foundational structures. By approaching them via these critical access points to the complex dimensionality of the psyche, Grof is able to reinterpret the standard biographical dimension. The inclusion of the perinatal aspect of personal psychology provides the doorway to transpersonal experience revealing a level of universal consciousness beyond the individual’s ordinary reach. Indeed, the perinatal trauma of spiritual emergency, Grof suggests, might be as easily experienced by a group, or a culture, as it is by an individual.
Grof & Grof (1990) propose that spiritual transformation, as a process, can be experienced subtly over time, whereas spiritual emergency can be dramatic and sometimes more problematic. The latter inner experience can be felt as a suddenly spontaneous challenge to existing beliefs, and to existence itself, and may alter perception and bring discomfort with a once familiar world. Spiritual emergency is often experienced physically, as forceful energies and spontaneous tremors. At the perinatal level this is experienced through the archetypal “theme of war” and associated with male aggression, which is “an important standard and characteristic aspect of experiential sessions” (Grof, 1985, 406).
Often the individual feels bound to disclose his or her non-ordinary state. It represents an enormous challenge to the individual, as he or she comes to terms with changes associated with both inner resources and outer relationships with the world. This can engender tremendous fear of the unknown and of loss of control so that getting through the day and functioning in a familiar way becomes problematic. Normal activities become troublesome or overwhelming. Concentration is difficult to maintain (Bray, 2008). Experiencing frequent changes of mind may cause an individual to panic, and there will be feelings of powerlessness, guilt, and ineffectiveness. Commonly, individuals confront a sense of fear, vulnerability, and loneliness, which can range from “a vague perception of separateness from other people and the world to a deep and encompassing engulfment by existential alienation” (Grof & Grof, 1990, 52).
As boundaries that have been previously maintained between the consensus reality of the biographical dimension and the transpersonal and perinatal begin to dissolve, so the individual’s worldview is disintegrating, increasing emotional responses, physical stresses and pain. In an attempt to disassociate themselves from emerging memories, which are associated with or contain some fear, individuals become alienated from themselves. Confronting the notion of death is a “pivotal part of the transformation process and an integral component of most spiritual emergencies” (Grof & Grof, 1990, 57).
During spiritual emergency, as noted above, the logical mind can be bypassed, or temporarily dies, while intuition, inspiration, and imagination assert themselves. The intellect too is superseded by true insightfulness. This process of renewal sees that the old pattern of thinking that is blocking the transformative process is destroyed by it in order that new learning, experience, and insights may take its place. In dealing with the traumas of the birth of the new the death of the old self must necessarily be mourned. Typical of the inverse logic of spiritual language, Grof and Grof (1990) suggest that, “what feels like total destruction of the ego is a broader, more encompassing sense of self” (62). In the initial stages of SE they note that people may only briefly encounter heightened realms of experience, but the frequency can increase commensurate with the individuals’ awareness, acceptance and understanding of their transforming levels of consciousness. Ideally, in therapeutic settings, Grof and Grof argue that the individual must be allowed, without any form of medication that will block its natural progress, to work through the transformational process until peace and feelings of inner consistency that engage and link the positive experiences similar to those of BPM I and IV are achieved.
It is important to note the paucity and limitations of research into spiritual emergency, as a relatively new and potentially controversial area of study. At present it is unclear to what extent spiritual emergency may be playing a part in the experience of people with serious mental illness, or to what extent this concept might be helpful if introduced to people in recovery from psychosis (Bray, 2008: Randal & Argyle 2005). All that one might say is that men and women may be reluctant to disclose such deeply disturbing experiences through conventional channels of support.
Coping with Loss: Shakespeare, Hamnet and Hamlet
Shakespeare’s Loss
It is suggested that in creating Hamlet, Shakespeare must have drawn upon some profound personal experiences.
Whatever he determined at the time, Shakespeare must have still been brooding in late 1600 and early 1601, when he sat down to write a tragedy whose doomed hero bore the name of his dead son. His thoughts may have been intensified by news that his elderly father was seriously ill back in Stratford, for the thought of his father's death is deeply woven into the play. And the death of his son and the impending death of his father - a crisis of mourning and memory - could have caused a psychic disturbance that helps to explain the explosive power and inwardness of Hamlet. (Greenblatt, 2004, 8)
Shakespeare’s son Hamnet died in 1596, at the age of eleven, and his father John in 1601. Grof’s research indicates that such losses can trigger transformative experience and although there is no biographical evidence to indicate how Shakespeare might have responded to these deaths there is a body of critical opinion that suggests that these events must have influenced him and his work in some way (Bloom 1998). Greenblatt (2004) argues that at this significant time Shakespeare “had perfected the means to represent inwardness” (2) and discovered the character of Hamlet as “the prince of the inward insurrection” with which to do it (5).
Pehaps Quennell’s (1963) speculation that Hamnet’s death provoked some kind of moral crisis suggests the kind of inner scrutiny that precedes a crisis of consciousness. For example, Shakespeare’s King John, which is generally thought to date between 1594 and 1597 placing it at the time of Hamnet’s death, contains the opening version of a theme that runs through many of his later tragedies:
“Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
The human condition is both cruel and meaningless, and, because it lacks any discernible meaning, not only dark and tragic but wearisome and insignificant. (Quennell, 1963, 162)
In addition, Constance’s speech in King John, beginning with “Grief fills the room of my absent child” also draws upon Shakespeare’s grief at his great loss. Similarly, the lines “I am not mad: I would to heaven I were!” and “If I were mad, I should forget my son” (Act III, iv), are deeply reminiscent of the existential tensions within Hamlet.
It has been suggested that that from 1601 onward Shakespeare’s plays have been charged with a greater inner energy and consciousness (Greenblatt, 2004) and “a profound change in the weight and emphasis” (Welsh, 2000, 37). Certainly, loss of son and his father does seem to resonate with one of the major themes of Hamlet which explores the father and son dyad in four relationships. As Everett (1989) notes, these two losses “became one in Shakespeare’s mind, the seed from which his tragedy of a son began growing” (34). This point is confirmed by Logan (2004) who notes Berryman’s observation that Shakespeare wrote a “father dominated tragedy,” which made him a “tragic playwright by two devastating crises.” What is perhaps more telling is Berryman’s suggestion that Shakespeare is able through Hamlet to create “an imagined life for his dead little son Hamnet.”
Continuing Bonds: Externalising the Inner Representation of Hamnet as Hamlet
Rubin (1993) has suggested that as an extension of the father’s self, a son is expected to rectify his father’s errors, and care about and support him in his dotage, make a difference in the world and provide a second chance to replay and re-experience aspects of the father’s childhood. However, when a son dies it “leaves the parent with unfulfilled dreams for their offspring” and because “the chain in their generational lines has been broken – a loss of continuity in the life cycle occurs” (Leming & Dickinson, 2007, 508).
Loss need not be experienced as a severing of bonds, subject to prescribed stages or be gender specific. For example, Klass’ (2002) findings indicate that many fathers manage their losses through the solace found in the maintenance and integration of a new and ongoing relationship with their deceased children in their day-to-day lives. The father, as part of this self-actualized bond with the son, holds and engages with an “inner representation” of the child, with all his “characterizations and thematic memories… and the emotional states connected with the characterizations and memories” (78). Thus, it is speculated here, that Shakespeare has creatively externalized his inner representation of Hamnet as Hamlet, which both strengthens and immortalizes their bond and enables him to vividly depict his own journey of psychic discovery. Klass (2002) indicates that phenomena such as “a sense of presence, hallucinations in any of the senses, belief in the child’s continuing active influence on thoughts or events, or a conscious incorporation of the characteristics or virtues of the dead child into the self” could also have been experienced by Shakespeare, which would have added themes to both this inner representation and the outer representation of the play (79).
Shakespeare, Hamlet and Psychoanalysis
In the analysis of Shakespearean biography much is speculation and to assume that a dramatic character speaks to the full inner experience of its creator rather than simply answering the needs and devices of the drama and the audience is perilous. Greenblatt (2004) notes that the motivation of Shakespeare is extensively researched but thoroughly unknown. Nevertheless, he suggests, this “is no reason to suppose that Shakespeare was unaffected by his son’s death” (9). Equally, many agree with Welsh’s (2000) contention that in Hamlet Hamlet’s “ego belongs to Shakespeare himself” (36).
Freud’s (1900) suggestion that in Hamlet the audience is confronted with “the poet's own psychology” (7) observes that following the deaths of both his father and his son, Shakespeare was made more vulnerable to his own “childish” feelings towards his father and presumably to his needs as a father. Freud is very clear about the psychological effects on Shakespeare and suggests that these “neurotic symptoms” influence the creative construction of the play that argues a therapeutic process for the creator in its creation. Claire (1985) adds that Freud presumed that as a typical response to mourning Hamlet reflects “Shakespeare’s own suicidal longings, his own weariness with this sterile promontory, his own sexual fantasies and conflicts” (298).
Freud (1997), recognizing the significance of Shakespeare’s losses, also infers a connection between Hamnet and Hamlet “It is known, too, that Shakespeare's son, who died in childhood, bore the name of Hamnet (identical with Hamlet)” (160). Loss from bereavement, as Grof (2000) suggests, might well have exercised Shakespeare’s existential concerns and it is suggested here that this cathartic act of creation provides him with an opportunity to explore, vent and resolve his own very real psycho-spiritual crisis. In this case the process of spiritual emergency has a positive outcome. Greenblatt proposes that in Hamlet the playwright with greater awareness and new found power begins to allow the “inner logic” of his creation to direct his writing and explains that Shakespeare’s “excision of motive” for Hamlet:
…must have arisen from something more than technical experimentation; coming in the wake of Hamnet's death, it expressed Shakespeare's deepest perception of existence... The opacity was shaped by his experience of the world and of his own inner life.
(Greenblatt, 2004, 9)
Belief in transpersonal phenomena was widespread in Jacobean England. James I, Shakespeare’s most significant patron, wrote a tract on the nature and reality of witches. As he was aware that such beliefs were popular currency, it is not surprising that Shakespeare should wish to please his patron and his audience by incorporating the transpersonal in the advancement of plots and characters. The reality of transpersonal phenomena were roundly debated in Shakespeare’s time and belief in ghosts owes much to the demonological traditions and beliefs of the Renaissance (Nighan, 2004) and to the Elizabethan cosmological worldview (Tillyard, 1975). For example, in Henry IV, Part One (1597) there is a heated argument between Glendower, who claims that he can “call spirits from the vasty deep” and indulges in “deep experiments,” and Hotspur who regards such talk as “skimble-skamble stuff” (3.1.52, 48,150). In Hamlet (1601), the argument is repeated when Horatio initially and sceptically suspects the Ghost of Hamlet’s father as originating from Marcellus’ fantasy but is later explained in terms of the transpersonal phenomena that occurred before Julius Caesar's death. The Ghost is seen on three key occasions and its force hovers darkly over a dissolute Denmark. Although the Ghost strongly affects his son’s opinion and behaviour, it allows him a high level of pre-cognition without diminishing his ability to master his notions of “self-slaughter,” cognitive functioning and effective communication.
Transpersonal concerns are a recurring theme in many of Shakespeare’s plays. In Richard III (1592), it is a conscience-ridden hallucination, whereas in Hamlet and Macbeth (1605), the transpersonal is an integral and substantial part of the structure of the plot (Greenblatt, 2001). In Macbeth a floating dagger, unearthly witches, and prophetic apparitions supplement Banquo’s jeering and bloody phantom. Thus the transpersonal realm of experience provides a catalyst for action, an insight into character, and augments the impact of many key scenes. Significantly, Shakespeare's early comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595), perhaps written at the time of Hamnet’s illness, encompasses three worlds or dimensions. Two of Grof’s cartography of the psyche are featured here: the biographical workaday world of the rude mechanicals and the romantic world of the aristocratic lovers; and the transpersonal fairy world of Titania, Oberon and Puck, later reincarnated as Ariel in The Tempest (1610). In the former, the perinatal dimension is activated as all three worlds become intertwined during the course of the play. The transpersonal world dominates the others but as both the lovers and the mechanicals engage with the “children of Pan” they are literally and metaphorically transformed by their experience.
Shakespeare’s accumulated losses are, perhaps, evidence enough of the possibility of heightened spiritual awareness or spiritual emergency. At the very least, Shakespeare’s inclusion of transpersonal material does speak of an understanding of the transpersonal and may support evidence of direct personal experience of the kinds of phenomena found in spiritual emergency.
Hamlet’s Spiritual Emergency
Hamlet’s Loss and Transformation
Hamlet illustrates male grieving along a continuum (Martin & Doka, 2000). As an “intuitive griever” Hamlet does not always follow a macho script: he is reflective rather than action-oriented, and concerned to maintain strong links with his natural parents. However, as an “instrumental griever” he identifies with and measures himself against other males; seeking the confidence of other young men, he must mourn his losses privately. Measured against the general research and the myth of stereotype, Hamlet is typical in the way that he blends both genders’ grieving styles. However, his responses are unique and individual.
In Hamlet’s dialectic between reality and appearance it is Hamlet’s self-conscious belief that whatever is happening to him is stranger and deeper than is represented by his mourning. Indeed, Claudius’ description of Hamlet’s “transformation” (2. 2. 10) as a dual process involving exterior and interior change suggests that it is so great that Hamlet is no longer recognizable as the same young man, suggesting that transformation initiated by loss has become Hamlet’s central point of focus.
The Soliloquies
Hamlet’s seven soliloquies provide a window to both the character’s and his creator’s inner processes and simultaneously to their perinatal and transpersonal experiences. As noted above, complex modes of human experience can be therapeutically influenced by relating them to foundational structures called Basic Perinatal Matrices (BPM) which, when activated, “can result in complex and realistic reproduction of all the experiences … associated with various forms of war” (Grof, 1985, 412). The perinatal dimension also provides access to transpersonal experience which would normally be beyond the reach of the individual psyche. An analysis of Hamlet using these trans-dimensional access points enables a reframing of the standard postnatal biographical explanations of Hamlet’s behaviour. It is suggested here that Hamlet’s and, by inference, Shakespeare’s behaviour and experiences can be developmentally mapped and interpreted through his seven soliloquies.
Soliloquy One: “O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt…” (1.2.129-149)
The first of Grof’s matrices, “primal union with mother” (BPM I) describes the symbiotic relationship between mother and child. Thus, the first soliloquy indicates Hamlet’s harmonious family relationships prior to the onset of SE and the death of his father. In its expression of his idyllic past, painful awareness of his present loss, and imminent change in his future prospects, it vitally illustrates the shattering transition between Grof’s first and second BPM. Here Hamlet examines his past and his particular disappointment and suffering around the loss of his father and remarriage of his mother, reiterating the theme from King John that life is “weary, stale, flat and unprofitable.” Denmark has become “rank and gross in nature” and there are few recollections of good experiences and feelings. The new husband, Claudius, is experienced as a threatening and destabilizing influence and Gertrude, his mother, the literal source of Hamlet’s inner security, is revealed as inconstant. Grof and Grof (1990) have observed that in BPM II individuals view the world negatively, “the persons reliving episodes of intrauterine disturbances, or ‘bad womb’ experiences, have a sense of dark and ominous threat and often feel they are being poisoned” (147).
Soliloquy Two: “O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?...” (1.5.92-112.)
“Cosmic engulfment and no exit or hell” (BPM II), is the first clinical stage of birth, where there are uterine contractions but the cervix is closed. At this point in his SE Hamlet, firmly embedded in BPM II, as a helpless victim accesses COEX of a dark and menacing world, claustrophobic, torturous, nightmarish, the religious prototype for Hell and his descent into this underworld is a common experiential variant of the second matrix. Hamlet’s second soliloquy is a painful, emotional and physical response to his father’s ghost accompanied by a persistent sense of paranoia. It is his response to a negative COEX system, a powerful cluster of emotional events drawn from the biographical, perinatal and transpersonal dimensions. Grof has suggested that,
Reliving this stage of birth is one of the worst experiences we can have during self-exploration that involves holotropic states. We feel caught in a monstrous claustrophobic nightmare, exposed to agonizing emotional and physical pain, and have a sense of utter helplessness and hopelessness. (Grof, 2000, 41-3)
Soliloquy Three: “O, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!...” (2.2.555-612)
This soliloquy indicates a transition between BPM II and III and takes Hamlet into the “the death-rebirth struggle” (BPM III). In this second clinical stage of delivery, uterine contractions continue and the cervix is open, allowing for the gradual propulsion of the foetus down the birth canal. The foetus makes contact with a variety of biological materials, and experiences crushing sensations, suffocation, and struggles for survival, as the body is propelled down and out of the birth canal. Grof observes that in this matrix individuals experience a discharge of energy, sexual excitement, and an inter-play of self-destructive and destructive experiences. The distinction between this matrix and the last is Hamlet’s stronger association with the roles of the aggressor and an observer rather than the victimized and downtrodden. Hamlet, emerging painfully from his appalling encounter with the Ghost and the truth, is tremendously energized, but this power is initially unfocussed in his frenetic outpouring until he is able to establish a plan to ‘catch the conscience of the king’.
Soliloquy Four: “To be, or not to be, that is the question…” (3.1.56-89)
The fourth and fifth soliloquies are specifically resonant of BPM III. These soliloquies appear in Act III of the play. In the fourth soliloquy Hamlet swings into an almost detached contemplation of existence that could be reframed as a growing acceptance of his death-rebirth process and accommodation of holotropic experiences. Nevertheless, his sexual arousal so clearly focused on Ophelia, becomes destructive as he rushes to free himself from the maternal body.
Soliloquy Five:” ‘Tis now the very witching time of night…” (3.2.391- 402)
Although this soliloquy is consistent with the characteristics of BPM III it also regresses to recover elements of BPM II and dangerously reasserts the transpersonal dimension prior to the manic confrontation of his mother.
Soliloquy Six: “Now might I do it pat, now a’ is a-praying...” (3.3.72-96)
The sixth soliloquy firmly establishes Hamlet in BPM III and also recovers the detachment of the fourth soliloquy as he enjoys a moment of control toying with the possibility of killing Claudius. However, Hamlet’s transformative process is unguided and in this vortex of intense energy and trauma it is spontaneously directed toward action untempered by conscience with the murder of Polonius, “When the experience of BPM III comes closer to resolution, it becomes less violent and disturbing. The prevailing atmosphere is that of extreme passion and driving energy of intoxicating intensity” (Grof, 2000, 48).
Soliloquy Seven: “How all occasions do inform against me…” (4.4.33-66)
In Act IV, soliloquy seven illustrates a transition between BPM III and IV the “death and rebirth experience.” Consequently, Hamlet may be viewed in Act V as having many of the experiences consonant with BPM IV including the heightened awareness associated with completion of the birth process. In this third clinical stage of delivery propulsion through the birth canal is completed and followed by an overwhelming sense of relief and relaxation. The eventual severing of physical connection with the mother is both an actual separation and a final resolution. In the play an exiled Hamlet is literally and metaphorically disconnected from his mother and motherland, and in terms of development he is forced into a full separation from the parent figures. This repositions Hamlet and allows previous reference-points, formed and imprinted by the trauma of birth, to be destroyed. In this “ego-death,” which is a purely symbolic event, he is stripped of all resources and possessions save his physical self (Grof & Grof, 1980, 28). Grof (1998, 151), quoting Abraham a Sancta Clara, a seventeenth-century German Augustinian monk, sums up Hamlet’s new position as, “The man who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies.” This “dying before dying” has played an important role in all religious traditions and Hamlet is able to lose his fear of death and become more comfortable with its experiential territory - an indication that Shakespeare’s own fears are mitigated.
For some this death is experienced as fearfully as the real thing. However, ego-death is not the death of the ego since this is still required for functioning. It is simply the ultimate detachment from the old and familiar existence – the ego being destroyed in order to accommodate a more expanded self-definition. What is actually dying is Hamlet’s false self and he is able to return to Denmark as a young man in the final process of healing and transformation. This heightened consciousness of the playwright truly emerges on a cosmic scale in Hamlet’s seventh soliloquy when his painful personal experiences of loss are weighed against humanity’s capacity for self-destruction and deception, which suggests to him that his perception of consensus reality is flawed and his inaction perhaps justified rather than shameful and his final lines are delivered with sardonic humour.
Act V: The Transformation of Hamlet
The powerful transformational journey of Shakespeare so graphically described in Hamlet is articulated by Grof’s holotropic process. At a biographical level Hamnet’s loss influences the creation of Hamlet and Hamlet enabling Shakespeare to reinforce his inner representation of the deceased son and to nourish their ongoing relationship. At a transpersonal level Hamnet is resurrected as Hamlet so that as the Ghost father Shakespeare is able to feel affective, forgiven and unforgotten in this newly reframed relationship. And at the perinatal level Shakespeare is confirmed and reassured in his position as both father and mother of Hamnet as he is reconceived and birthed as Hamlet by his father/playwright in and from the body of Hamlet. Thus the matrices encompass the lambent pre-perinatal characteristics and increasingly painful spiritual opening of Shakespeare/Hamlet’s loss in Act I, through to Shakespeare/Hamlet’s birth as an individuated, reconciled, broader and intentionally aware consciousness in Act V.
Hamlet returns to Denmark to face his death with a deeper understanding of himself, which as Tillyard (1975) notes to the Elizabethan, is a paramount human task “To know your self was not egoism but the gateway to all virtue” (79). Shakespeare returns to himself. Hamlet scholars and critics alike have puzzled and argued over the play’s final Act. There is no doubt that Hamlet is finally and tragically redeemed and the source of his redemption lies in his journey of psychic renewal through a practical process of mourning not consciously self-directed but spiritually inspired – the exposed unconscious of a playwright arguably at the height of his powers.
Conclusion
Consistent with the transmissive theory of consciousness and presented alongside grief and loss theory, Grof’s holotropic cartography provides a useful heuristic device to illustrate and discuss how individuals might better understand, explain, and manage loss. Just like the loss that triggers it, spiritual emergency is a choiceless event and plunges individuals into changes in consciousness that they might be poorly prepared for, cannot manage and do not understand. Like Shakespeare, men and women are faced with accepting and integrating this new material over time as best they can or to seek ways to suppress its influence.
The experience of spiritual emergency challenges our core beliefs about consciousness and it has the capacity to deepen our understanding of the grieving process and what is required to manage it. Certainly grieving individuals like Shakespeare do derive enormous solace from creatively expressing and safely releasing these powerful experiences of inner change.
Although there is a growing awareness of the links between loss and crises consciousness transformation in the literature it is likely that such deeply personal experiences do go largely unrecognized and unreported. Perhaps, it is time to more widely investigate how individuals might have been transformed by their losses and closely examine the processes involved in their inner transformation and use the knowledge to raise levels of awareness and support in our communities.
Appendix
Hamlet – The soliloquies
Soliloquy One
(1.2.129-149)
O, that this too too sullied flesh would melt,
Thaw and resolve itself into a dew, (130)
Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter. O God, God,
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable
Seem to me all the uses of this world!
Fie on’t, ah fie, ‘tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed, things rank and gross in nature
Possess it merely. That it should come to this,
But two months dead, nay not so much, not two,
So excellent a king, that was to this
Hyperion to a satyr, so loving to my mother, (140)
That he might not beteem the winds of heaven
Visit her face too roughly-heaven and earth
As if increase of appetite had grown
By what it fed on, and yet within a month,
Let me not think on’t…frailty thy name is woman!
A little month or ere those shoes were old
With which she followed my poor father’s body
Like Niobe all tears, why she, even she-
O God, a beast that wants discourse of reason
Would have mourned longer-married with my (150)
uncle
My father’s brother, but no more like my father
Than I to Hercules, within a month,
Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
Had left the flushing in her galled eyes
She married. O most wicked speed…to post
With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
It is not, nor it cannot come to good,
But break my heart, for I must hold my tongue.
Soliloquy Two
(1.5.92-112.)
O all you host of heaven! O earth! What else?
And shall I couple hell? O fie! Hold, hold, my heart,
But bear me stiffly up…Remember thee?
Ay thou poor ghost whiles memory holds a seat
In this distracted globe. Remember thee?
Yea, from the table of my memory
I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records,
All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past (100)
That youth and observation copied there,
And thy commandment all alone shall live
Within the book and volume of my brain,
Unmixed with baser matter - yes by heaven!
O most pernicious woman!
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, meet it is I set it down
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain,
At least I am sure it may be so in Denmark…
So, uncle, there you are. Now, to my Word, (110)
It is ‘Adieu, adieu, remember me.’…
I have sworn’t.
Soliloquy Three
(2.2.555-612)
O, what a rogue
and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit; and all for nothing! (560)
For Hecuba!
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weep for her? what would he do,
Had he the motive and the cue for passion
That I have? he would drown the stage with tears
And cleave the general ear with horrid speech,
Make mad the guilty and appal the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed
The very faculties of eyes and ears; yet I,
A dull and muddy-mettled rascal, peak, (570)
Like John-a-dreams, unpregnant of my cause,
And can say nothing; no, not for a king,
Upon whose property and most dear life
A damned defeat was made: am I a coward?
Who calls me villain, breaks my pate across,
Plucks off my beard, and blows it in my face,
Tweaks me by the nose, gives me the lie i' th’ throat
As deep as to the lungs? who does me this?
Ha,
'swounds, I should take it: for it cannot be
But I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall (580)
To make oppression bitter, or ere this
I should have fatted all the region kites
With this slave's offal. Bloody, bawdy villain!
Remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless villain!
O, vengeance!
Why, what an ass am I. This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear father murdered,
Prompted to my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must like a whore unpack my heart with words,
And fall a-cursing like a very drab: (590)
A stallion ! fie upon't! foh!
About, my brain;
hum, I have heard
That guilty creatures sitting at a play
Have by the very cunning of the scene
Been struck so to the soul, that presently
They have proclaimed their malefactions:
For murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ. I'll have these players
Play something like the murder of my father
Before mine uncle: I'll observe his looks; (600)
I'll tent him to the quick: if a’ do blench
I know my course…. The spirit that I have seen
May be the devil, and the devil hath power
T’ assume a pleasing shape, yea, and perhaps
Out of my weakness and my melancholy,
As he is very potent with such spirits,
Abuses me to damn me; I'll have grounds
More relative than this - the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king.
Soliloquy Four
(3.1.56-89)
To be, or not to
be, that is the question,
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep - (60)
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to; 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished to die to sleep!
To sleep, perchance to dream, ay there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause - there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, (70)
Th’ oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of disprized love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th’unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin; who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will, (80)
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action…. Soft you now,
The fair Ophelia - Nymph, in thy orisons
Be all my sins remembered.
Soliloquy Five
(3.2.391- 402)
‘Tis now the
very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood,
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on: soft, now to my mother -
O heart, lose not thy nature, let not ever
The soul of Nero enter this firm bosom,
Let me be cruel not unnatural.
I will speak daggers to her, but use none,
My tongue and soul in this be hypocrites, (400)
How in my words somever she be shent,
To give them seals never, my soul, consent!
Soliloquy Six
(3.3.72-96)
Now might I do
it pat, now a’ is a-praying -
And now I'll do't, and so a’ goes to heaven,
And so am I revenged. That would be scanned:
A villain kills my father, and for that
I his sole son do this same villain send
To heaven….
Why, this is bait and salary, not revenge.
A’ took my father grossly, full of bread, (80)
With all his crimes broad blown, as flush as May,
And how his audit stands who knows save heaven?
But in our circumstance and course of thought,
'Tis heavy with him: and am I then revenged
To take him in the purging of his soul,
When he is fit and seasoned for his passage?
No!
Up, sword, and know thou a more horrid hent,
When he is drunk asleep, or in his rage,
Or in th’incestuous pleasure of his bed, (90)
At game, a-swearing, or about some act
That has no relish of salvation in't,
Then trip him that his heels may kick at heaven,
And that his soul may be as damned and black
As hell whereto it goes; my mother stays,
This physic but prolongs thy sickly days.
Soliloquy Seven
(4.4.33-66)
How all
occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more:
Sure he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple (40)
Of thinking too precisely on th’ event
A thought which quartered hath but one
part
wisdom,
And ever three parts coward - I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do,'
Sith I have cause, and will, and strength, and means,
To do't… Examples gross as earth exhort me.
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puffed
Makes mouths at the invisible event, (50)
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell…. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father killed, a mother stained,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men, (60)
That for a fantasy and trick of fame
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
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