Deep Spirit: Fact or Fiction?
A Personal Revelation
In my new novel Deep Spirit, a wise and highly informed dolphin, called Darwin, communicates with scientists, helping them to “crack the noetic code” — a new way of knowing that could pull humanity back from the brink of chaos. It’s a story about the evolution of consciousness — and how to realize our visions for a viable future.
One of the first people to finish reading Deep Spirit, a woman named Melissa, asked whether I have any evidence for dolphins communicating with humans. “What,” she wondered, “makes you feel it is either plausible or real?”
What an interesting — and challenging — question! I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. But her question was heartfelt, so I wanted to try.
First, I don’t expect readers to accept that communication between species, in human language, is either plausible or real. I simply leave that possibility open. However, I do hope the dialogue makes sense within the story.
That said, the question of “evidence” is complicated, subtle, and complex. One of the key themes in Deep Spirit is the value of cultivating alternative states of consciousness — beyond our everyday rational minds. I don’t expect much, if any, successful interspecies communication, or evolution of human consciousness, can occur without it.
By far the most compelling source of evidence I have for feeling confident that the narrative device of a telepathic dolphin is more than a mere “narrative” or a “device” arises from personal experience. (Here comes the revelation . . .)
An Unexpected Encounter
A few years ago, after I had completed the first draft of Deep Spirit (in a two-week creative burst, more than 400 pages poured out), I participated in a shamanic journey with a bona fide South American shaman. Without going into details, I can report that during a session lasting between 8 to 12 hours, with profound shifts in consciousness, I experienced communicating with a dolphin. (For obvious reasons, as someone who values my role as a philosopher and academic, this is not an experience I have readily shared. But the question posed by Melissa has prompted me to tackle this issue head on. It’s time to take a stand for authenticity and non-ordinary ways of knowing.)
What I discovered during that session has changed my life. “Darwin,” the dolphin character I thought I had created, seems in some inexplicable way very real indeed and exists independently of my invention. In our dialogue, he revealed he was using me — because of my openness, caring, and compassion for the plight of cetaceans (and other animals) — as a “mouthpiece” for the cause of dolphins and whales. I came away from that session with a strong conviction that rather than being a character I invented, Darwin was working through me to communicate something he and his species wanted humans to know.
"Intelligence seeks expression."
Because it was an alternative state, much of the detail of that session is accessible now only as fragments in my “normal” state of consciousness. However, one point remains crystal clear: Darwin expressed deep grief for the plight of dolphins and whales, a sorrow shared by all of them. It’s not just that humans are hunting and killing these highly intelligent species, or even that we are poisoning their oceans. No, what concerns them most of all is that humans, with very few exceptions, are no longer open or interested in communicating with them.
They need us to connect with them to evolve to the fullest of our collective intelligence. (I’m sure this applies to other species as well — the great apes, elephants, parrots, octopus, and, dare I say it, coral — but that’s another story). In a phrase: Humans are preventing dolphins and whales from being fully who they are, or could be. We are keeping them stuck. We are a drag on evolution. Of course, this deeply impacts our own development, too. We carry the collective grief of alienation deep in our psyches and in the tissues of our bodies.
Now, in my “normal” state of consciousness, I am very aware how “off the chart” this can sound — especially to my colleagues in philosophy and science. I should add that during that session I didn’t actually see Darwin, or even hear him. I felt his presence, and all the meaning of our communication flowed from that. It was palpable, exceptionally clear, vivid, and real far beyond anything I have ever experienced before or since. In that state, this mode of consciousness had the quality of a shallow dream. By comparison, that experience was veridical, deep, and authentic.
Before publishing Deep Spirit, I considered describing my encounter with Darwin in a Foreword, but decided against it. I wanted the story to stand by itself. However, I now see that I need to stand behind the story and its unusual origin because, as Melissa implied, it raises important questions about the nature of knowledge, and the difference between reality and illusion.
Click to see full-size illusion
How Do We Know What is Real?
My shamanic experience does make me think twice about the nature of evidence. Of course, neither what I experienced, nor my report of it, can count as objective evidence that Darwin really exists. However, we cannot simply dismiss it as subjective fantasy, either.
Without exception, every piece of so-called objective evidence must be experienced, first of all, in someone’s subjective mind. All evidence must be experienced by someone. What, then, makes some experiences “real” and others not? Shouldn’t all experiences count as evidence?
What about hallucinations? How are these different from visions? I do think it is useful to be able to tell the difference between a visionary experience of reality and a mere hallucination. Conventionally, hallucinations occur in the privacy of someone’s mind — and only there. We may believe something exists beyond our own experience, when in actual fact it does not — at least, not according to what other people report. Hallucinations are private experiences misinterpreted. By definition, their content has no other existence. But how can we test that? How do we decide which interpretations are likely to match reality?
Well, quite simply, we communicate. We share our stories. We discover what, collectively, we hold in common. We test our stories against shared experience. This is precisely how science works.
However, beyond sharing our stories through the medium of language, we can also share experiences directly — through shared feelings, through engaging each others’ presence in intersubjective communion. In short, telepathically. This, typically, involves alternative states of consciousness. And this is precisely how shamanism works.
Was my conversation with Darwin “real” or a kind of hallucination? Well, at that time, it came with remarkable clarity and conviction. But, right now, I cannot be so sure. One of the most disconcerting, yet liberating, realizations we can have is that the feeling of certainty does not mean something is true. Private conviction is not the same as truth, and does not count as evidence.
On the other hand, just because no-one else witnessed or shared my encounter with Darwin doesn’t mean he isn’t real. Remember this important scientific slogan: “Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence.”
Ultimately, all we ever have to go on are our own experiences — and it is wise to share and compare them with others’. The best we can do is pay attention as openly, as honestly, and as authentically as we can. And then examine our experiences using the “Four Gifts of Knowing” (senses, reason, feeling, and intuition) to see how they coalesce. Guided by experiences with the greatest clarity and coherence, we arrive at what seems to be the most “likely story” — our best shot at expressing what is real.
If I have learned anything in life it is this: Uncertainty pulses in the heart of every certainty. Beyond the light of knowledge shines the dark luminance of inexhaustible, always beckoning, mystery.
I invite you to read Deep Spirit and discover for yourself the mysterious interplay between reality and dreams — one man’s (or one dolphin’s) “best shot” at the power of story to transform the world and create a brighter future.
Intelligence seeks expression.
Expressing it is wisdom.
The Ultimate Message
Praise for Deep Spirit
“Fact or fiction? Deep Spirit is an ingenious and imaginative story about the evolution of consciousness, alien intelligence, and the transformative power of dreams. It explores ultimate questions about life and death, and takes you on a roller-coaster ride through the mysteries of science and spirituality—guided by a truly believable shamanic dolphin. Whether you’re a scientist or mystic, a lover of quiet wisdom or action and suspense, Christian de Quincey’s visionary tale will take you into realms beyond imagination. Fast-paced and easy to read, this is a book to take to the beach, to read on the train or plane, to curl up with in bed. Pick it up, and you won’t put it down. Rich with images and characters that leap off the page, I can easily see Deep Spirit transformed into Spiritual Cinema. But don’t wait for the movie—read the book first.”
—Stephen Simon,
Producer Somewhere in Time,
What Dreams May Come, and Indigo
Co-founder www.spiritualcinemacircle.com
“Deep Spirit breaks new ground in the genre of “visionary faction.” It’s the first book to cross sophisticated mainstream adventure story with new age wisdom. Few other books, fiction or nonfiction, have so successfully popularized a thoughtful blending of modern science, shamanic wisdom, mind-body philosophy, and mystical experience. One thing is certain: The conventional scientific view of consciousness is pitifully limited. Deep Spirit is a fabulous way of using the power of story to reveal new ideas about the origins, destiny, and reach of the mind.”
—Larry Dossey, MD, author of The Extraordinary Healing Power of Ordinary Things
“Deep Spirit is far more than fiction. It is a call for a higher consciousness, and ends with one of the most lucid descriptions of unity consciousness I have read for a long time. Deep Spirit is the thinking person’s Celestine Prophecy. Christian de Quincey writes with an easy style; and his insights are both grounded in science and reflect the perennial philosophy of mystics from time immemorial.”
—Peter Russell, author of From Science to God, and The Global Brain
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February 13, 2009 at 6:40 AM
Howdy christian,
You are not alone! The message is consistent across cultural and social borders… we are being coaxed into a new understanding of ourselves, by any species(plant and/or animal) that can get through to one of us.
Cracking the Noetic Code. I like that. I’ll have to read your stuff. LifeOS: exploring the system that executes DNA, is the title i’m working on. My next one is about my neo-shamanic journey.
I agree, we all have to tell it like it happened.
cheers,
jim
February 15, 2009 at 2:06 AM
Thanks Jim. Yes, it’s good to know we are not alone — that we share this still-beautiful planet with countless other sentient species.
I look forward to your comments on Deep Spirit, in due time.
Good luck with your “LifeOS” project.
Christian
http://www.TheWisdomAcademy.org
http://www.deepspirit.com
The Wisdom Store
February 17, 2009 at 9:19 AM
Thank you for posting your “Personal Revelation.” If we are to understand the nature of consciousness, in ourselves and in the universe, sharing our conscious experiences (even, in fact especially, when they stretch the limits of the collective view of “reality”) is critical.
In the early 90s when I worked with a group of profoundly intellectually gifted kids and watched them interact telepathically (though they were unaware at first that they had done so), I was forced to stretch the limits of my beliefs about the way the human mind works. They then began to share other extraordinary experiences they had had. I wrote a novel, Welcome to the Ark (first of a trilogy), based on what I learned of alternate states and uses of consciousness from those actual children. The novel was, not surprisingly, labeled science fiction or fantasy.
But, as a consultant about the needs of extremely brilliant kids and young adults, I began to speak at conferences about what I had learned about these other aspects of consciousness from these, and other, children and their families—with some dread about the reaction I would receive. As I did so, more and more families began telling me stories they had never before shared for fear of ridicule from their highly intelligent, rational-materialist friends and colleagues. Thanks to their stories the boundaries of my own definition of reality kept expanding.
How will human beings learn that such alternative consciousness is both real and common (normal!), if we keep our experiences to ourselves?
You wrote:
“First, I don’t expect readers to accept that communication between species, in human language, is either plausible or real. I simply leave that possibility open. However, I do hope the dialogue makes sense within the story.”
Having had the experience of communication with another species in the taming of a wild dog (the underlying true story of my 2006 Christopher Award winning novel, Listen!), my evolving experience with him shows that such communication is possible even in language. I am a word person—the dog is not.
But consciousness itself is capable of what one might call “translation” between images, feelings, states of being and those same aspects of conscious experience coded in words. What the dog “sends” may not be in words; what I “receive” often is. But all of it is shared consciousness. Opening up to new aspects of consciousness and new possibilities of connection and communication allows them into our experience.
Then, if we are to expand our collective definition of what is real, we need to take the risk of sharing our “personal revelations.” As we share, the stigma (and so the fear) of “hallucination” retreats and we can begin to use the tools that are part of our natural heritage.
February 18, 2009 at 4:41 AM
Hi Christian and Stef, who alerted me to this blog,
with greetings from today’s sunny Mallorca mointains.
Stef and I have long talked of this kind of communion among species and I took as my guru J. Allen Boone, author of Kinship with All Life, the only book of his readily available though the others are terrific, too. Known as the St.Francis of Hollywood he learned deep detailed communion from Hollywood’s first movie star dog, Strongheart, and went on to practice it with individuals of diverse wild species, as Stef learned to do, too.
I was also an early fan of Bentov and am in virtually complete agreement with all you say, Christian, about consciousness. As for evolution, I find myself wanting to add only that Kropotkin’s work on cooperation in nature (Mutual Aid) is a fine balance to Darwin’s competition, and the two together provide a maturation cycle in nature that is a more holistic evolution theory I write about myself, as in my book EarthDance. Young species are feisty and creative and often hostile to competitors; mature species ‘discover’ that feeding your enemies is far less costly than killing them; in short, creative competition gives way to creative collaboration in sustainable species. The oncoming hot age and the financial system collapse are perfect drivers for humanity’s evolution into mature cooperation leading to a better life on a hotter planet. Great to hear Obama calling for that maturation!
All this within your consciousness framework!!!!
February 19, 2009 at 6:21 AM
Howdy Folks,
J. Allen Boone came to our Sunday school when I was about ten. He really got thru to me. I was already used to communicating with something “other” than my conscious self, so I doubted not a word he said.
In later years, I spent a lot of time living at the end of the road, surrounded by wild critters. I found that there is a sense of shared community between plants and animals in a local neighborhood. Birds, rabbits, cows, deer, and the plants they feed on, cooperate to warn each other of approaching danger, for example.
Once I had a mama cottontail show me her brand-new babies. She stood by, preening and looking just like a mama cat, so proud of her kids. Seemed to me at the time that she was proposing some kind of a deal. She certainly wasn’t afraid of me. Seems to me that mutual aid is what holds it all together.
Nice to meet you! Thanks Christian for connecting us.
cheers,
jim
February 24, 2009 at 12:27 PM
Hey there, Insomniac Jim,
I was unable to find an email address for you following links. Would you send me a note, please, at elisabet@sahtouris.com ? Thanks.
February 24, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Thanks Stephanie, Elisabet, and Jim for your supportive and clarifying comments. Much appreciated.
I’d like to respond to each of you.
First, Jim: Based on my own experience and scientific/philosophical understanding of nature, I agree when you say “there is a sense of shared community between plants and animals in a local neighborhood.”
This idea is presented and defended with scholarship and insight in the work of Elisabet Sahtouris. I highly recommend her book, co-authored with James Lovelock, EarthDance.
And Stephanie, I was particularly struck when you wrote:
This “translation” is precisely what the “noetic code” delivers. In Deep Spirit, it enables communication between Darwin and the scientists—and later worked for me in my shamanic encounter with Darwin. I didn’t actually “hear” words, I felt their meaning. All meaning is felt. And this includes words, too. We grasp their meaning when we feel their significance. So, it is not really surprising to discover that meaning can also be communicated wordlessly. In fact, I would say most meaning either precedes or transcends language.
and you went on to say:
Thank you for this. I took the “risk” because, not doing so, I would have missed an opportunity to take a stand for the veracity, validity, and value of alternative states of consciousness—and what they can reveal about reality, otherwise unavailable in “ordinary” states of consciousness. Professionally and personally, I am deeply aware of the limitations of the dominant paradigm of sensory empiricism and materialism.
Nevertheless, I am also keenly aware of the ever-present dangers of self-deception, and the need to cultivate mindfulness of our own distorting biases, limited perspectives, and beliefs. Of course, this caution applies equally to those who have unquestionably accepted, and have been hypnotized by, the dogmas of the dominant paradigm.
Pushing the boundaries of epistemology is always fraught with challenges, and requires exceptional attention to the many subtleties involved as consciousness interacts with physical reality.
This relationship between mind and matter has been the focus of my career in philosophy and consciousness studies. Going public with my “Darwin experience” adds just one more layer of subtlety to this always-expanding epistemological quest.
Elisabeth: First of all . . . “Hello!” It’s nice to reconnect after a too-long interval. Will you be at the “Science & Consciousness Conference” in Santa Fe this year (March 27 — April 1)? I will give a talk based on my new book Consciousness from Zombies to Angels. I hope you will also be there. It would be great to catch up.
Thank you for drawing my attention to J. Allen Boone’s Kinship with All Life. Somehow I had missed this. I have ordered a copy . . . I want to find out what he has to say about “communion among species.”
On the topic of evolution, you wrote:
Yes, indeed. Your work over the years on the role of “creative collaboration” in evolution has been, and continues to be, inspirational. I heard you on NPR recently providing a very grounded and well-informed counterpoint to the seemingly never-ending debate between neo-Darwinian evolutionists (e.g., Daniel Dennett and Richard Dawkins) and creationist-intelligent design proponents.
We are both offering a third alternative. I call it “intelligent evolution.” The “creative collaboration” you speak of is an expression of this deep intelligence in nature. Bottom line: Consciousness is at work in evolution. It is not a “product” of evolution. I like to say that what we call evolution is “the grand adventure of matter exploring its own innate potentials.”
I am happy to play my part in this great adventure . . .
March 3, 2009 at 7:17 AM
Hi Christian! It’s a beautiful. cold, clear morning here at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains in Taos, New Mexico.
I received my copy of Deep Spirit and have begun reading. But what I am on about today is to comment on your “Darwin experience”. I found the post on the Amazon website and felt instant delight that you posted under the name “Oblio.” The Point made a big impression on me early on.
I’ve followed your work for some time now, beginning with Radical Nature. In fact I used a quote from that book in the final chapter of the manuscript I wrote about my major near death experience in 1984. Your work has been a great help in my constructing an intellectual framework with which to put that experience, along with the subtler aspects, into everyday language. David Abram’s The Spell of the Sensuous played a key role as well.
I’ve always had a strong affinity with nature, but the NDE brought a much deeper level to that affinity. Your “Darwin experience” does not surprise me, actually. I had an intense experience with dolphins years ago, but most of my perceived communications with animals are with ravens and coyotes. I find that communications with these creatures are not difficult, while speaking or writing about it can be a chore — a delightful chore, but still hard work.
There’s no doubt that human behavior and attitudes can easily be seen as inimical to nature in many ways. Our alienation from nature is a powerful deterrent to our understanding of nature. That is why I so appreciate that your work does not lean on anthropocentric vision.
I look forward to seeing you at the Santa Fe conference!
~ Ken
March 7, 2009 at 11:40 AM
I love a good detective mystery and Christian de Quincey’s story is just that with a very important message intertwined with all the twists and unexpected turns of one man’s experience. I have been impatient to see the complete story in print having visited his website regularly and read excerpts from the novel as well as his current philosophy and science work which has given me some background of his thinking to reach this point.
The gist of this story brings to mind two different “creation” stories of the world and human culture. The Native American is an inclusive communal creation by animals, plants and humans together versus the stern hierarchical God of the Judeo-Christian version with Adam and Eve having been given dominion over all the plants, animals and fish of the sea, but then being thrown out of the Garden of Eden because they broke God’s law. So I see de Quincey’s story as possibly a third version of the “creation” story.
I highly recommend the book as both good entertainment along with an important message to help us through the unprecedented challenges of changing our whole attitude about both humans and the natural world, intertwined and coming from the same source.