Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind (Suny Series in Transpersonal and Humanistic Psychology)

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Summary: Read it
Review: A must for anyone with interest in the matters of life and death. Bache unravels his grasp of 30 years of psychedelic work, and where it lead him, with rare humility, grace and poise. This isn't a book that tries to hopelessly (albeit heroically) sell the future to the academic community; it's a substantial, juicy, and sometimes even heavy speculation piece. Inform you it will really not, but get you searching it will. Feels like a swift kick in one's karmic rear, if you pardon the pun.

All in all, a rare gem. Read!

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Summary: A Cosmosopher Worth Checking Out!
Review: Christopher Bache may be the world's first Cosmosopher. In his refreshing and innovative book, Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps Towards an Ecology of Mind, he articulates transpersonal realms with a convincing intimacy, revealing a universe that is alive, intelligent and directly accessible within ourselves. The author has taken great care to share many of the entheogenic, meditative and philosophical experiences he has had which assist in fore-lightening the inevitable global/galactic revolution to come. The timing of his work could not be better. One only need look at current sociopolitical urgencies to appreciate Bache's efforts to move transpersonal psychology beyond its self referential orbit into more effacing, collective trajectories. Dark Night, Early Dawn offers a much needed alternative, encouraging us to explore a connection to a cosmos which may require the very ego death of the human species as a prerequisite for its realization.

In order to fully realize the transition, Bache suggests that we abandon what remains of the Newtonian, mechanistic worldview, i.e., the threadbare 3-D illusion that our consumer society depends upon for its own self- perpetuation. He suggests that we assist, through such things as rebirthing, holotropic breathing and meditation, in the realization/integration of multi-dimensional world where spiritually advanced beings exist. These beings can offer us compassion, wisdom and a kind of infinitely broad, celestial panorama which encourages us to adopt a more life affirming perspective on what appears to be a severely limited human future at present. Nemeses abound however at current time, dedicated to making sure that such a marvelous realization as described above will not take place. Paranormal debunkers such as Paul Edwards are devoted to discrediting the claims of those who believe in rebirth, for example. Edwards insists that the last two thousand years of philosophical development with its emphasis on linearity and so-called 'rationality' is the end all, be all of human intelligence. Bache makes sure to point out the weakness of Edwards's argument and does so quite convincingly. He observes: 'If reincarnation can be proven to be true, then the modern Western philosophical paradigm will crumble because rebirth contradicts the core assumptions of that world view.' Such a remark enables one to perceive the unconscious fears which motivate people like Edwards, not to mention Martin Gardner and the CSICOPS cadre as well, who may very well be threatened by how integrated multi-dimensional awareness is becoming. Just imagine the CSICOPPERS all doing holotropic breathing and what kind of resistances within themselves they would have to deal with!

Fortunately, Dark Night, Early Dawn does not dwell on the 'infallible' 3-D consensus delusion and the organizations that continue to promote it. The author shows a balanced approach to transpersonal work and offers the reader an effective way to traverse a living, intelligent cosmos and come back home not only intact but spiritually integrated in a deep and lasting way. Citing the works of Stanislav Grof, Ken Wilber and Robert Monroe, as well as visionary mystics such as Teresa of Avila, Bache offers us a useful as well as fascinating means to explore the worlds these people describe so vividly. The author also shares his own inner experiences in which he himself connected with these spiritually evolved worlds:
"The time of rebuilding was suffused with an inner luminosity that signaled a profound awakening in the human heart. It was not the overwhelming brilliance of diamond luminosity that shines forth from individual awakening, but a softer luminosity that reflected the same reality but more gently present and more evenly distributed throughout the entire species. The whole of humanity was going to go through the death/rebirth experience, and the substance of awakening for the group was the same as for the individual, though realized more slowly and in smaller increments."

With insights such as described above, it is apparent the Bache has prepared himself sufficiently enough not only to share this kind of profound information with us but to inspire us to safely explore these transpersonal worlds as well. I found his as well as his students' journal entries to be most revealing and informative.

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Summary: Bache Puts It All Together
Review: Christopher M. Bache's new book "Dark Night, Early Dawn" is a fascinating synthesis of transpersonal thought. Bache has tapped into something great through his many years of personal experience with non-ordinary states of consciousness. His revisions to the cosmological views of Stanislav Grof, Robert Monroe, and in the field of near-death research go a long way in making these paradigms more complete. Each of these fields can still go much further into the dynamics of the collective. This book should set them in the right direction. In Part Three of this work, Bache explores the Field Dynamics of Mind. Of particular interest to me were the chapters on transpersonal pedagogy, the great awakening, and the fate of individuality. The idea that we are all connected is one that we all need to explore more. The chapter on the Great Awakening posits the idea that the impending crisis of sustainability will shake humanity to a new depth of understanding and a new way of being. This book, more than any other I've read, brings together many of the facets of transpersonal thought. There is little theory in this book. The author has been to where he speaks of. I highly recommend it!

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Summary: Karma, Earth Changes and the Group Mind
Review: Dark Night Early Dawn

This is an interesting and even heroic work, well worth the money. In large part the author combs the relevant literature and supplements it with his own experience from deliberately induced psychedelic states in order to mine for the material he presents.

Among other things the book deals with collective mind and group karma. As a professional worker in the field of environment I can vouch for the fact that some of the shared mind phenomena reported by the author, particularly elements involving group pain are quite real. I have encountered this effect in the course of environmental work. My experience did not evolve from any clinical or therapeutic exercise but rather as the result of the intense conflict (non-physical) involved in trying to manage environmental activities. Until I opened this book, I had not the remotest idea that some of the experiences I went through were of a form recognized by Mr Bach.

It is true that group karma exists and apparently the tragedy of Cambodia is a case in point. However, it is important to note that the perceived effects of group suffering referred to in the book may not necessarily indicate the operation of "group mind" but rather may arise as the results of "aspects of mind shared by a group". There is a big difference. In the first instance it may be easy to depose the ego-self from its central throne and to substitute, as Mr Bach attempts to do, a group responsibility (group mind). In the case "aspects of mind shared by a group" this displacement is not so easily accomplished. I think a better term than "group mind" or even "collective mind" might be the term "shared aspects of mind".

Apart from "Earth experience" in general, that is humankind's experience with matter, evolutionary progression (our animal nature) and so forth, the particular character of situations that spark group karma is directly due to limited numbers of people. In the matter of human strife, there is always one person or, perhaps a few people, acting to precipitate trouble. In general this is also true of the causes of most large environmental problems. The author of Dark Night Early Dawn feels that the collective human actions currently despoiling the environment will lead to a broad physical catharsis (as a karmic act involving all of humankind). He proposes that the survivors of such a global tragedy, knowing the causes of the events, and with the collective ego of the despoilers eliminated, will thus be driven to experience a great awakening.

However, one is minded to ask, as I continually do, if perhaps the idea that there will be survivors to such a catastrophe is not merely wishful thinking. The result of inappropriate environmental response (by humanity considered in the collective) will, on the contrary, very likely be extinction. For it is a fact that most species having inhabited the Earth are actually extinct right now and many major branches of life have withered without issue. Humanity might "pull through", promoted by an enlightened cadre of survivors but equally likely it might not, and on present balance it will not.

In order to justify the overall analysis, the author goes to great lengths to argue that the personal ego-self can be, as it were, eliminated. He says, "as the self dies a deeper form of individuality is liberated", which in itself is fine. He goes on to say "as the isolation of the private mind is consumed the self or ego dies - this is nothing more than the awakening ego of our - ashes - a truer form of individuality etc".

However, to my mind the whole form of one's ego must yet remains as an accessible construct regardless of the way one may choose to become detached from it. With effort, the ego can obviously be suppressed, shelved or transcended but it cannot be destroyed, how could it be otherwise? It can of course be superceeded but it is true that the sense of spiritual-self remains where the ego is suppressed. Subsequently this superceeds and modifies the ego in its development (if one is still in an apparently specific incarnation). One should be careful about the true implications of "eliminating" the ego-self. One remains responsible for what one is and what one has done regardless of forays into higher planes of consciousness. This responsibility is assumed by the "higher-self" even if manipulating one or an infinite number of avatars (threads of self-consciousness).

I agree with Ramakrishna (as quoted in Dark Night Early Dawn) that "The genuinely human body & mind of the avatara is an opaque covering. Beneath this veil there is no individual soul, no eternal facet of the divine, instead there resides the complete divine reality, with infinite facets". Of course the infinite facets shine into the "avatars" and these are responsible for producing the ego as they forget their true origin. As to the purpose of this, I suppose the only answer can be that in this manner the divine reality thus recreates itself into a "higher" more advanced state. In this sense the individual ultimatly realises its identity with the divine state which is and was never anything but perfection in the first place and the truth dawns that the whole thing was just a self-test, successfuly executed.

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Summary: on the cutting edge of the spiritual paradigm
Review: I've read this book three times. Chris offers a realistic, and yet optimistic reaction to the coming ecological crisis. He doesn't back away from what lies ahead, yet he compares the end of the 'world as we know it' to a birthing process. The coming environmental meltdown will be the 'near death experience' for the species. Chris' conclusions rank amoung the best spiritual paradigms for the ecological future.

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Summary: Remarkable Account of Our Collective Transformation
Review: Millions of sane, intelligent people living today seem to live in a world that modern, scientific cosmology tells us just doesn't exist. Either they are deluded, or what they have to say about the world calls into question the dominant cosmological myth.

Judging by a deluge of media reports and a growing body of respectable scientific literature, a great many people are having experiences that don't fit into our civilization's dominant cosmological map. You may be one of them: someone who has experienced, for example, powerful, even predictive, dreams; remarkable synchronicities; undeniable psychic events; or convincing mystical experiences.

But, according our culture's cosmology, none of these experiences is supposed to be possible.

In this book, transpersonal psychologist Chris Bache opens up a different way of approaching this conundrum - by exploring the spectrum of our consciousness and what it implies for a much wider and comprehensive cosmology. The personal and social consequences of such an expanded worldview are profound.

Cosmology orients us in the universe. It tells us where we came from, where we are, and where we are going. Implicitly or explicitly, it defines what is possible for us as human beings, and thus it channels, or limits, our highest ambitions.

Modern Western culture lives entirely within the confines of what Bache identifies as "daytime" consciousness - that is, it takes into account only what we can perceive through our outer, physical, senses, and of those perceptions it takes seriously only those we can measure. These data are then organized according to the rules of logic and reason (mostly mathematical). "Nighttime" consciousness - what we can learn about the world through, for example, dreams, intuition, psychic or mystical experiences, and other nonordinary states - plays no part in designing modern cosmology.

As a result, we are moving into a kind of cultural dislocation, in which the official cosmology fails to map many of the experiences that matter most to us.

Combining philosophical reflections with deep self-exploration to delve into the ancient mystery of death and rebirth, Bache emphasizes collective rather than individual transformation. Drawing on 20 years of experience working with nonordinary states, he argues that when the deep psyche is hyper-stimulated using powerful psychedelic techniques, the healing that results sometimes extends beyond the individual to the collective unconscious of humanity itself.

Bache presents one of the most persuasive accounts - based on many years of personal spiritual exploration and incisive scholarly work - of why our culture needs to take seriously the spectrum of nonordinary states of consciousness experienced by so many people.

If you want a powerful, at times dramatic, account of the sheer majesty and mystery of our multidimensional cosmos and how the psyche fits in, this book is a must-read. If you want a transformative approach to learning and eduction about who we are and our place in the cosmos this book will inspire you.

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Summary: Elegant synthesis of world views
Review: This book has stirred me deeply, and I like what I feel. While the presentation is framed in dense academic language (complete with footnotes and literature citations), the trajectory is beyond the limitations of emperical science and intellect. What Bache does is to synthesize the worldview of our current scientific, emperical paradigm, with the various cosmologies observed in non-ordinary states of consciousness. Specifically, he looks at psychedelic experiences (induced chemically or through breath work), near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences. He identifies the common elements consistently reported in these experiences, unifies them, and overlays the world view which emerges onto our contemporary scientific paradigm. In doing so he articulates a cosmology which is actually simpler (to my mind) than the inconsistencies which result from considering the fragmentary viewpoints individually. After painting this picture of the world, the goes on to explain how the impending and inevitable ecological crisis which is being brought on by the narrow world view of our species on the planet presents either a hopeful scenario for a species wide change of consciousness or else extinction. His reasoning compels me toward the side of hope. Finally, he comes full circle and demonstrates that a species-wide embrace of transpersonal unity enhances rather than detracts from the potency of our individuality. He shows how each person's personal healing is the work of healing all beings and the planet. This book has changed the way I see my role in the world, and my personal work. I used the insights derived twice in planning meetings yesterday. It is at once a grandly sweeping revision of world view, and an imminently practical guide to making immediate choices in our daily lives.