Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018
Cornerstones of Perception
Anatomy of the Energy Body
Another unique offering of the Toltec paradigm is that of presenting a distinct organization of perceptual abilities, which I call cornerstones of perception and don Juan called the eight points of the totality of being. They are reason, talking, feeling, imagination, seeing, will, and the three energy fields. While don Juan taught of the third field, he did not use it to describe the eight points. I include it in the cornerstones to highlight its importance in examining our range of possibilities. The cornerstones are scattered about the body, not in a straight line as are the chakras.25 Yet all perceptions of the chakras may be accounted for by the cornerstones and vice versa. It is easy to work with both, as each is energy-based. In this manner, they share a common origin. The value of knowing both languages is flexibility.
Figure 3.8. The Cornerstones of Perception
This diagram indicates the spheres of influence regarding the abilities of perception outlined by Toltecs. (This diagram is used with the kind permission of publisher and author, Norbert Classen, Das Wissen der Tolteken, Freiburg, Germany: Hans-Nietsch-Verlag, 2002.)
Each cornerstone has a specific location in the physical body. Reason and talking are in the brain, for instance, while imagination is found in the adrenal glands and seeing is relegated to the pancreas. There are instances where both Eastern and Western metaphysical systems place a perception at the same physical area, such as ascribing imagination (dreaming) to the adrenal glands and feeling to the heart.
To further elaborate:
Reason. Reason offers a way to make order out of the immensity of existence. It collapses infinity into a usable format. However, it is enmeshed in subject-object relationships and therefore provides indirect, or representational, awareness. Perceptions of something “out there” are measured in relation to oneself. The world then becomes objectified. While it is a marvelous tool, this cornerstone takes command of perception and inhibits awareness of direct and intimate connections with the world.
The brain, the location of this cornerstone, is but one part of the body. Our complete body connects us with infinity, while reason is responsible for only that portion of infinity that has thus far been rendered reasonable. It offers a delectable slice of the pie but it is only a slice. When we have a more full-bodied relationship to ourselves, we awaken our innate, and often latent, capacities of perception.
Talking. Talking, whether it is internal reflection or outward speech, maintains order. We tend to take the ordered sensibilities of reason and then constantly bounce that information around inside cohesion, like bouncing an image off a set of internal mirrors, and then in a more complex way we do the same with others. The reflection becomes what is viewed as being real, and it really doesn’t have to be reasonable; it just needs to sustain focus to have an effect on behavior. Talking may then restrain awareness by keeping us in a self-reflective world. For all its majesty, talking, like reason, becomes a force to harden cohesion; it removes awareness from infinity rather than offering steps to encounter it.
There is an order beyond thought and reason. It is the order of the natural cosmos, the order resting within potential. Interestingly, talking about potential makes infinity seem reasonable, and reflecting on the world from a variety of angles helps make it possible for us to drop talking and reason in order to awaken other cornerstones. The more we discover the relativity of worldviews, the less sway they hold.
Feeling. This is the affective part of us, both the seemingly passive perception of listening to the world in a different way and the vibrant emotive ability. Each influences the other and “feeling” and “emotion” are often used interchangeably. Feeling is a principal navigational tool in a world of energy. It connects the physical and nonphysical worlds as well as those aspects within human anatomy. Oschman holds that there is a biomagnetic field associated with the heart that extends indefinitely into space.26 This field connects us directly with the world and enables us to better sense, and make sense of, our environment. Recognizing the existence of this field of energy and then doing something about it adds weight to a view of consciousness that accounts for the value of harnessing this cornerstone.
The relationship between talking and feeling is intricate. The more perception is focused in reason, the less we are able to feel. Educating feeling provides wide-varying experiences that help expand worldviews. A casual review of history demonstrates that human-inspired order changes, along with entire frameworks of reality. Feeling is a way to accelerate an ever-expanding sense of order. Through feeling we can tap the essence of a situation. We can also stretch ourselves beyond normal conditions and enter new worlds.
Rather than remain in the reflective world of thought, feeling lets us connect with the world. One of the recent advances in understanding the human condition emanates from the literature concerning the complexities of feeling, emotion, and thought. Led by Daniel Goleman’s breakthrough book, Emotional Intelligence, there are now a number of books tackling various components of this complex realm, such as how emotions affect health, leadership, and the organization of reality.
Goleman points out interrelationships between thinking and feeling. He says that thinking plays a large role in determining our emotions and that our emotions are critical for effective thinking. He also offers evidence that people often make terrible decisions because their emotional education is inadequate. Furthermore, he connects both thinking and emotions to specific areas of the brain, and says that the brain holds two intelligences: rational and emotional. He presents emotional intelligence as a set of skills, including control of impulses, self-motivation, empathy, and self-awareness. When intellectual and emotional intelligence complement each other, both increase.27 It might be that the brain that deals with emotions directly relates to the heart. If so, we have further correspondence of scientific and Toltec models. This offers another hint of the types of investigations that could catapult awareness into new realms.
In her provocative work, Infinite Mind: Science of the Human Vibrations of Consciousness, scientist Valerie Hunt makes the case that emotions organize the “mind field,” the inherent capacity for deliberate consciousness. In The Feeling of What Happens, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio documents emotions as being a key aspect of reasoning. And in Molecules of Emotion, research professor Candace B. Pert offers a biological model of how emotions affect perception. She asserts that there is no objective reality. To handle the immensity of existence, we must have a filtering system to assess what is important; emotions “decide what is worth paying attention to.” Emotional intelligence is therefore the meta-program of rational intelligence.28
Imagination. Imagination enables us to directly explore our energy body. As used here, it does not mean flights of fancy, but rather refers to a sophisticated, disciplined mode of viewing self and world. It may be a simple, fleeting image, a rigorous problem-solving technique, or even a full-bodied experience. In this manner, imagination is akin to entering heightened awareness, a state characterized by increased intensity of experience, keenness of perception, and an accentuated feeling of being alive. In Toltec literature, imagination is often referred to as dreaming.29 Used in this way, dreaming is a sophisticated activity with many levels synonymous with the learned use of imagination.
For example, sufficient intensity makes it possible to have awareness of a body, some type of form, which travels within imagination itself. This faculty has been called astral projection, the dreaming body, and the out-of-body experience (OBE). In these experiences, perception doesn’t leave the physical body; rather shifts of cohesion, and the degree of the shift, produce different states of imagination.
Seeing. This native ability perceives energy. It results from consciously realizing the connection between oneself and emanations, or between internal and external energies. It also corresponds to awareness of or about something and provides immediate knowledge and understanding of what is being observed. One might say it is accessing a different bandwidth of energy.
When seeing, it is normal that the daylight world becomes darker or a night environment lightens up. Seeing auras often precedes seeing the full energy world. While the aura is a bona fide energy, it represents a deeper level. When we fully see energy, the world may seem comprised of packages of energy. Humans may be represented as oblong, well-contained blobs of concentrated light. No physical objects are present. Everything appears as variations of light.
While Eastern metaphysical systems tend to place seeing, or third eye, capabilities in the pineal gland, the Western Toltec system associates it with the pancreas. The common denominator is that both pancreas and pineal gland are in the endocrine glandular system. It may be that using this mode of perception activates that entire network, a full-body effect, which then permits us to see. Another common denominator is that the perceiver must recognize a sense of oneness with the world for seeing to activate. Yet another is that we must step out of thinking and reason in order to engage the world directly.
Will. The cornerstones of feeling, seeing, and imagination are all direct modes of perception centered at will, while reason and talking are indirect aspects centered in the brain. This separation of abilities is not a Toltec artifice; it has been expounded upon in classic Eastern and Western philosophies. In his book, The World as Will and Representation, for example, nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer makes a case for direct and indirect faculties of perception.30
Will is also the raw energy existing throughout the universe. Maybe it is the Star Wars “Force.” Through personal will this energy is at our disposal. The ability to change awareness and manage will results from the application of intent. Through intent we shift and then restabilize our cohesion. We can intend to walk, for example, or to imagine. The basics of it are that we can intend and that intending has effects.
Will is a dominant part of human energetic anatomy, the central energetic system. It commands the other cornerstones. In the Toltec model, the central nervous system (brain) is a minor epicenter and the will (gut) is a major epicenter of human perceptual anatomy. The “brain-gut axis,” as it is called, is scientifically well-documented.31 Of note is that there are chemical compounds, neurotransmitters, in the human intestines that help form a pathway of significant influence between the central nervous system and the enteric nervous system found in the gut. A reaction in the intestines (due to a milk allergy, for instance) could affect the brain and influence behavior. The Toltec model might be a more advanced rendering of how the gut affects overall perception.
Will is energy, not a concept. It is not dedication, commitment, or persistence. It’s a force. It’s the binding vortex of the cornerstones. As energy, it connects us with that fluid world. Managing our cohesion and our cornerstones—achieving various alignments of energy—is performed with will and intent.
Will is the substance of energy with emanations carrying the intents that affect us in many ways. In its various material forms, we can touch and smell it, taste and hear it. If it is dense enough, we can sit on it. Or we can mold it and fly through the air in it as we do with airplanes. In the more rarified forms of perceiving energy, we can feel it and see it. Emanations are the stuff of the cosmos, forming creatures upon creatures and worlds upon worlds. Personal will, then, places us at the doorstep of the universe. Opening the door is one thing, stepping through it is yet another.
The three energy fields. The three energy fields are the final cornerstones of perception. Their operation can be better understood by considering them in the light of the compelling psychological map detailed by psychiatrist Carl Jung.