Childhood Transpersonal Childhood Experiences of Higher States of Consciousness: Literature Review and Theoretical Integration
III. Developmental Perspectives on
Complex Sets
of Experiences
Several studies will be examined in this section. Most are unpublished at this time. The first three are largely quantitative with the first dealing with meditators versus students and the next two with psychics. The last is a qualitative study of two Cree women's transpersonal experiences in childhood.
A. Developmental Characteristics of Transpersonal Experiences in Meditators Versus College Students
In the first work of this series, Hunt (1991; and Hunt, Gervais, Shearing-Johns & Travis, 1991) reports on two studies examining the frequency of transpersonal experiences in two populations during different parts of their life spans. He also administered to some of the research subjects scales to measure cognitive skills/precocity and vulnerability of self in order to test if such experiences are more associated with precocity or dysfunction when they appear in childhood. The transpersonal experiences they asked about included five positive ones, mystical experience, out-of-body-experience, lucid dreams, archetypal dreams, and ESP, and two negative experiences of the night, nightmares and night terrors.
They found that for the student populations high levels of childhood transpersonal experiences were more likely to be associated with negative experiences of the night while for the meditating sample this was not the case. They conclude that the meditative tradition that they are following may offer them, "precisely the potential to develop further a broad range of earlier and positive spontaneous experiences (p. 12)."
As for the individual difference measures they found high visual spatial abilities and lower neuroticism associated with students who also reported high levels of childhood transpersonal experiences. However, there was also evidence in their study for a negative developmental factor:
high levels of mystical and out-of-body experience seem to entail the appearance or increase of night terror and nightmare states, and there is some evidence that high estimates of childhood sleep panic states may be associated with lower levels of imaginative and spatial abilities in adulthood. These subjects may lack the visual-spatial skills that seem to be the cognitive bedrock of transpersonal experience, so that their positive experiences are also part of an attempted containment and self healing of early traumatization and/or deficit (p. 13).
Hunt et al. illustrate these two developmental patters with these antidotes from each of their samples. From the meditating sample where the experiences seem to hail developmental precocity this dream was reported in a follow-up interview as having occurred repeatedly from preschool years:
I would be falling in white light and it would be like a swirling sensation. At the bottom of this white light was a yogi who was quite different in structure and had a white body. It was a very soft body. He had a very big head with no hair at all and just a little body. He was in lotus. Just as I was falling, he would reach out and grab me. It was just a feeling of coming home (p. 13).
In contrast, a woman from the student sample who experienced an extraordinary frequency of out-of-body and mystical experiences conceptualized these in "terms of an early sense of having been exiled into her body, with a resultant longing for a freedom or openness (p. 13)." This association is reminiscent of the I-Am-Me experiences discussed earlier. Hunt et al. conclude that "it is childhood and late adulthood that are the times of life most open to nonconflicted, spontaneous expressions of spirituality (p. 15)."
B. Childhood Development of the Psychic
A fairly comprehensive study of developmental antecedents of psychics is one by Goldenthal (1985). He first analyzed the biographies of nine well known psychics and identified these common characteristics of childhood; isolation, imaginary playmates and support for psychic experiences. Further he notes that "the home may have been unable to provide adequate nurturing, or adequate limits, but it was able to provide the child with a sense that there was someone who would look out for him/her (p. 59)." All nine had these experiences beginning at less than age 14 with three in adolescence and six less than 5 years of age.
He then administered a questionnaire to 29 psychics and 40 graduate students in a mental health field and followed this with interviews with 10 from each group. The psychics reported a similar pattern of experiences but for our purposes only the OBE was included in the psychic experience question. However, three additional questions seem to be getting at the concept of the witness. The first read, "I felt as though there was a part of me which observed what I was doing." Psychics were more likely to reply occasionally to often (83%) whereas only 47% of the controls so replied. In the interviews controls were significantly more likely to report "yes" to "Does the subject report experiencing this observer generally in times of stress, trauma or pressure?" more so than the psychics. Also from the interview in answer to "Does the subject report that there is a part of themselves which provides them with information, judgment or clear thinking but is distinct from their normal waking consciousness?", 80% of the psychics said yes compared to 40% of the controls.
Goldenthal found that these conditions were common in his sample:
1) difficulties in early nurturing relationships, especially with mother; 2) lack of severe abuse of interpersonal trauma; 3) a tendency to become engrossed in fantasy activity; 4) an attentional deficit; 5) an underlying sense of well being buttressed by reassurance from "inner voices"; and 6) some support for using inner resources, either in the form of family members who accept and support paranormal explanations of events or by reading works on parapsychology. (p. i-ii).
Although there was a problem with parental relations, it was not abusive and questions dealing with childhood misconduct (sent to the principles office) showed no group differences.
He then goes on to place psychics, who reported maternal nurturance problems but not severe abuse, along a continuum followed by highly hypnotizable persons, who encountered excess in punishment from parents, borderline personality, who experienced a history of object attachment due to dysfunctional parenting, and finally multiple personality, who is a victim of severe childhood abuse. In other words he found that psychics were a distinct type among personality types who dissociate however they tend "to describe themselves as well adjusted, extroverted, assertive, and direct in asking for what they want; and tended to have several very close friends" (p. 112). So although there have been childhood traumas they were not so severe and/or the:
psychic's paranormal experiences act as a nurturing retroflection, a self-feeding, whereas, in non-psychics, paranormal experiences are likely to be either a reaction to stress or threat to an important relationship. Access to this inner nurturing resource may have provided the psychic an internal object around which her personality could organize despite the limits of her actual environment (p. 117).
In other words, the psychics in his study found a coping strategy which works without "serious distortions in their overall personality functioning (p. 117)." Goldenthal did not look at when the experiences started (childhood or adulthood).
Several other items from his questionnaire are of interest to this discussion. In terms of very early childhood memories (<3 years), as discussed in the introduction, he found that although the same percent of each group reported a "few clear images (59% & 52 %) more of the psychics (21%) said these memories are very vivid while only 2% of the controls reported this and conversely 28% of controls said none at all were vivid compared to 14% of the psychics.
Similar to the data reviewed for other experiences, this group of psychics scored significantly higher on two items assessing absorption. Also related to our question is the significantly higher incidence of flying dreams reported by psychics which have also been reported in lucid dreaming (Green, 1968) and OBE's (Irwin, 1985).
Goldenthal's work supports the need versus flaw theory of the development of psychic experiences. He writes:
The psychics tended to report their initial psychic experience occurred either in relation to an acquaintance, a stranger, or not in relation to a person at all while the control group identified the preponderance of their psi experiences as occurring in relation to someone with whom they had an important emotional connection. This finding supports Ehrenwald's (1978) work on need-determined versus flaw-determined ESP. Ehrenwald suggested that ESP in normals was characterized as an effort to deal with a threat to a significant emotional attachment, while in psychics it represents a generalized inability to screen out the intrusion of psychic material from others (p. 110).
Relatedly, Hartmann (1984) has recently developed a scale measuring nonpathologically thin and thick psychological boundaries in nightmare suffers. Galvin (1993) administered this to lucid and nonlucid dreamers and found the former to have thin psychological boundaries.
C. Developmental Characteristics of Psychic Opening
In a reanalysis of Millar's (1990) data on personal and psychic experiences of self-identified psychics associated with their "psychic opening", Millar and Gackenbach (1992) focused on developmental aspects. Millar (1990) defined a psychic opening as "the process of becoming psychically aware, or to developing ESP abilities. It suggests the image of opening one's eyes, or a flower opening, and it may derive from the esoteric theory that the psychic centers, or chakras, become open as a person becomes psychic. The term 'psychic opening' also suggests a relatively sudden or concentrated period of opening to new psychic experiences (p. 3)" Two basic types of questions were asked his 114 informants, personal history experiences preceding, during or after the opening period and questions about psychic experiences. Information was available so that it was possible to look at both types of questions as a function of age. The psychic experiences were asked in terms of frequency, belief and age of first experience (child, teen, or adult) while age when psychic opening experience began allowed the personal experience questions to be sorted into child/adult categories.
C1. Psychic/Transpersonal Experiences
Although 70, 52 said their opening began from ages 20 to 37 while 18 said it began from ages 38 to 54 respondents indicated that their psychic opening period began in adulthood relative to only 44, 22 said their opening began at less than age 5 while another 22 said it began between ages 6 and 11; the 13 teenage (12 to 19) openings were dropped from all analyses who indicated a childhood start, the vast majority of the 23 psychic/transpersonal experiences asked about were reported more frequently as first being experienced in childhood than in adulthood (18 of the 23 or 78%). The exceptions were psychic attack, possession and lucid dreaming (synchronicity and deja vu were about the same percentage). Although of very low incidence the first two are negatively toned while the third, lucid dreaming, has been argued elsewhere to be a post formal operations marker in sleep (Gackenbach, 1991) thus we would expect it more frequently to begin in adulthood.
The overwhelming consistency across this wide variety of experiences confirms an internal logic for the self identification of the two psychic opening groups as either child (<12 years of age) or adult (> 19 years of age).
The marker experiences for the childhood group (over 50% of respondents in that group indicated a first experience in childhood) included clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, hearing inner voices, seeing a vision, deja vu, and mystical experiences while the marker experiences of the adult group (over 30% of respondents in that group indicated a first experience in adulthood) were clairvoyance, telepathy, seeing a vision, and deja vu.
When this was further broken down the child psychic opening group generally said each type of psychic experience began in childhood. While the adult psychic opening groups first experiences were largely placed as first starting in adulthood. The incidence of clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, seeing a vision, out-of-body experiences (marginal), poltergeists (marginal), and near-death experiences were reported as higher for the childhood opening group than for the adulthood opening group.
The interrelationship between experiences as a function of group membership was investigated using factor analyses. Two experiences are of special interest, lucid dreaming and mystical experiences. Further verification of the relative dominance of lucid dreaming in adulthood versus childhood came from these analyses. Lucid dreaming frequency loaded on the first factors in the adulthood group analysis while it did not load significantly until the third factor for the childhood group analysis. For each of the populations, lucid dreaming loaded with very different experiences. For the adulthood group it was associated with kundalini, healing and mediumship, which was labeled "Psychic Jobs", while for the childhood group lucid dreaming frequency was associated with deja vu, mystical experiences, and past lives which was labeled "Spiritual Memory". Thus not only does the lucid dreaming factor vary in priority for each group but they are also associated with very different clusters of experiences. The adult cluster seems to be present/psychic profession oriented while the child cluster seems to be past/spiritual oriented.
It should be noted that these clusterings are consistent with traditional esoteric explanations of such experiences in children - i.e., a person develops spiritually in a past life and that development is carried over into this life. This explanation has been used by transpersonal developmental theorists (Armstrong, 1984). Another way of framing such an understanding might be in terms of genetics or other biological determinants. Wallace (1987) has summarized the research showing that there are biological determinants of such states of being including a genetic model for the concept of reincarnation. If indeed lucid dreaming is precocious, this framing may be helpful in keeping our understanding of these experiences within a naturalistic orientation.
The mystical experiences item loaded for both groups on the third factor but was associated with different clusters of psychic experiences. As noted above for the childhood group it was associated with the past lives, lucid dreaming and deja vu experiences while for the adulthood group it was near-death experiences and precognition. For the childhood group this suggests some type of consciousness savant (Gackenbach, 1988) perhaps with a genetic "past life" predilection or at least environmental support. While the mystical experience frequency for the adult group was crisis associated. That is, either near death or having experiences of the future (precognition) which research has shown is more likely to occur with those with whom you have a strong emotional attachment during crisis. Finally belief in such experiences in general did not change as a function of age of experience onset.
C2. Personal Experiences Associated With Psychic Openings
The personal experience segment of the questionnaire consisted of 80 questions, some with more than one part, asking about different aspects of the experiences. These are clustered in the discussion below into psychic practice questions (i.e., "Have you ever practiced as a psychic or offered psychic services to other people?"), childhood questions (i.e., "Were there any significant people in your background who either experienced or believed in psychic events and talked about them with you?"), preexisting circumstances questions (i.e., "Did you purposely seek to have these experiences, or did they just happen spontaneously?"), emotional response questions (i.e., "Were some of your experiences so positive that you felt ecstatic?"), circumstances during the experiences questions (i.e., "Did you you ever feel more tired and lethargic, or more 'spaced out' than usual, during this period?"), nonemotional qualities of the experiences (i.e., "Did you develop or become aware of a 'witness' or an 'observer' in yourself, a part of you that could retain awareness and choice during any psychic experience?"), time of the experiences (i.e., "Are you going through a period of psychic opening at the present time?"), consequences of the experiences (i.e., "Have any of your psychic experiences ever saved you from a serious or tragic event such as illness, severe emotional crisis, accident, or death?"), and coping strategy during the experiences (i.e., "What resources were helpful to you in adjusting to these new psychic experiences?").
Although the majority of the items showed no significant differences between groups, the differences which did emerge offer some insight into some possible developmental causes of these states of mind and could not be accounted for by chance alone.
The preexisting/childhood conditions which differentiated these two groups of respondents, although the child group came from supportive environments evidenced by their own self reports of home attitudes and the higher incidence of alternative religions, which presumably might support such experiences more so than main line Judeo-Christian systems on the same hand they were less convinced of the reality of these experiences than the adult group. But perhaps for an adult to have these openings they need a firm belief system in place. Other than this general supportive environment there were not more specific activities and events, including an identity crises, which characterized the child group on the contrary there were less of these conditions thus the perception that they were overwhelmingly spontaneous or "just happened". On the other hand the adult group was characterized by an identity crisis, more events and activities, stronger belief in the experiences, less childhood general support and more traditional religious background a set of finding which are consistent with Goldenthal's (1985) work.
C3. Psychological and Situational Aspects of Psychic Opening
Millar and Gackenbach (1992) then looked at childhood psychic opening starts versus adulthood psychic opening starts groups on the psychological and situational aspects of the psychic opening experiences. These questions were clustered into emotional responses, circumstances during the psychic opening, nonemotional quality of the experiences, time of experiences, and coping strategies. Of the almost 70 items tested, only 17% showed a group difference. So the major finding here is that the situational and personal responses to these experiences whenever they start in the life span is largely alike. But again the differences are worth noting.
The child group saw it as less pleasant and were more likely to report having tried to deny or stop it than the adult group. The latter group was more likely to say they tried to negotiate with the experience. This supports the picture of a spontaneous, unexpected, and unprepared experience by the child group. The majority of both groups did not attribute physical symptoms to the psychic opening experience but when it did occur it was with adults. Similarly although the majority of both groups said they were not tired nor did they loss interest in activities when this was reported it was among the adult group. Not surprisingly the adult group reported changes in a specific relationship whereas the child group did not as a function of the psychic opening.
As far as the consequences of this experience, 26% of the items showed group differences. Two of these items dealt with religion while two dealt with helpful benefits of opening, one was a question about reliving the psychic opening experience and one dealt with consequences to a relationship. Regarding the religion items one asked, "If there has been a change in religion, do you attribute this change primarily to your having had psychic experiences, or was it mainly due to something else?" Those who claimed childhood openings said their religious change was due to the psychic opening (78%) compared to only 47% of the adult opening group. The majority of adult opening group (53%) said it was due to other things. Although the majority of both the childhood and adulthood groups said they believed their psychic experiences were of a religious or spiritual nature more of the childhood group said no to this item. So to with spontaneously reliving the the psychic experience, the majority said no, while of those who were likely to say yes they did, more were from the childhood group. Not surprisingly the childhood group said the opening experience resulted in no change in their primary relationship, which presumably occurred well after they were started with their experiences. Finally, the childhood group was more likely to say that any of their psychic experiences saved themselves (90% versus 66%) or someone else (98% versus 70%) from "a serious or tragic event such as illness, severe emotional crisis, accident or death".
C4. Psychic Opening Conclusions
Although psychic openings beginning in childhood are in many ways similar to those beginning in adulthood the differences are informative and meaningful. In terms of psychic experiences first experiences, frequency, and belief, the first two showed meaningful group differences. First experience times for child psychic opening group was more often in childhood while the reverse was true of the adulthood psychic opening group. Childhood groups also had more experience in seven categories including OBE's and NDE's. The clustering of the marker experiences of interest herein in the factor analyses were different in such a way that the childhood could be thought of as inherent whereas the adult as learned/situationally driven.
Consistent with Goldenthal a receptive home environment to psychic activities was more associated with child than with adult opening groups. Specific activities/events were more often triggers for adults whereas the spontaneous quality characterized child openings. This could be because as children we are less aware of situational/personal influences and less analytical than as adults.
But with a felt spontaneous interpretation is the child groups higher likelihood to try to deny or stop the experience. The child group also saw religious changes due to psychic opening more than the adult group even though both saw them as religious/spiritual in nature. Finally the helpfulness of this experience for self and others was significantly greater for the child group. Perhaps they have had more time to learn how to deal with and respond to such experiences.
D. Childhood Transpersonal Experiences in Two Cree Women
A recent qualitative study I did with two Cree women adds additional information to the possible adaptiveness of transpersonal experiences in childhood from people raised in a culture which still maintains some valuing of such experiences relative to the dominant culture in North America (Gackenbach, 1991).
Both informants are treaty status Cree from different bands. One is 30 years old (D) while the other is 51 years old (S). D has 4 sons while S has 3 sons. D is the oldest of six children with 5 brothers while S is the first born female of 10 children (5 girls and 5 boys). A single marriage for both (D by common law, S to a white man). Both finished high school and some college (S has just completed a general studies degree while D has about 2 years of college work). Childhood education was Catholic for both with S having had the first 1 1/2 years at a "convent" (boarding) school. Both lived off the band for some period during their life but were primarily raised in western Canada. Cree or an English/Cree mixture was their first language. D was raised in her family of origin with all her siblings but there was considerable contact with grandparents. D indicated that her grandparents and great grandparents were the most important to her along with her parents and brothers. S was raised partly at home and from 9 to 12 years she and her older brothers lived with her grandfather. S considers her paternal grandfather the most important figure in her childhood followed by her siblings, yet the negative impact of her excessively Catholic mother lingers. Both had other people living with them at various times throughout their childhood's and both had alcoholic parent(s) for some of their childhood's (D both) (S father).
D1. Day to Day Emotions/Feelings
The informants were asked to indicate on a questionnaire how they feel emotionally from day to day. These native women in general reported much more positive emotions than the normative samples to which their scores were compared. In contrast their negative emotion reports were slightly higher to about the same when compared to the norms.
The interviews allow us to gain a deeper appreciation of these findings. Both women are in the college transfer program at a native educational facility. Although they both had highly dysfunctional childhood's they have both actively worked on their own personal healing of these early childhood wounds. Thus today they are generally satisfied with their life and continue this self growth. An interesting aside which emerged from the interviews is the different ways in which the women have gone about their respective healings. S has pursued a vigorous program of college work in psychology along with training courses and workshops on various aspects of the healing process as well as individual psychotherapy. D, on the other hand, went through an intensive "self talk" program at about the time of the birth of her first children. This included a free expression of the rage and pain she felt due to the circumstances of her upbringing. She attributes her sense of strength and self confidence to this period of self healing.
D2. Dream/Waking Transpersonal Experiences
The healing spoken of in the last section did not occur only within the realm of what we would call traditional psychology. For both women their spiritual experiences (including and especially their dreams) were a pivotal aspect of their recovery. These two women are high dream recallers, supporting their claim of the centrality of these types of experiences to their life.
An indicate of childhood distress would be the frequency of nightmares and night terrors, a severe form of nightmare, during childhood and adolescence. These native women had the same frequency as college students while children but report experiencing fewer nightmares as adults than either population. They also report fewer night terrors across the developmental board. The interviews shed some light on these findings. Given the extreme distress of their respective childhood's the self reported frequencies could be underestimates due to the forgetting associated with trauma or as they both point out their dream life provided a sort of haven from the horror of daily life and thus they may have indeed not suffered as much as the non-native subjects. Only more data from more subjects can shed light on these two possibilities.
The research and clinical literature clearly characterizes lucid and archetypal. These are dreams that carry a sense of importance, awe and fascination. They may be reminiscent of mythology, fairy tales, or be felt to have a religious/spiritual significance dreams as emotionally powerful and uplifting (Gackenbach & LaBerge, 1988; Hunt, 1989). One of the native women reported more than the two norm groups while the other women reported less than the norm groups on these two types of dreams. From the interviews my sense is that both may not be accurately reporting their frequencies. I think D may be overestimating while S I suspect is underestimating. This is because of not only the formal interviews but the extensive dreamwork I have done with S which has shown me that she quite frequently experiences at least lucidity. D potentially represents an "outlier", that is someone whose frequencies are so high as to be totally outside the normal range. In this area of inquiry such high frequencies are not unheard of (Gackenbach, 1991). The interviews thus far do support that she has a pattern of higher states of consciousness experiences from very early childhood which would support her frequency estimates.
OBE, mystical and ESP waking experiences were asked about in this questionnaire. Both native women reported fewer OBE's than the normative samples. The ones S had were associated with her two near-death experiences which is a classical association. As with the lucid/archetypal dreams above D reported more than the norms while S reported less than the norms. The same reservations as for the positive types of dreams apply to these waking experiences. As I have gotten to know these women, especially S, it has become clear to me that some of her frequency estimates are based on the use of a different descriptive language for these states of being. I am unsure if this is the case with D. However, based on the interviews I found D very verbally intelligent, capable of sophisticated linear reasoning whereas S's learning and reasoning mode seems to be more dominated by visual components. Thus in terms of the language/thinking modes of these two women, I believe that D fully understands the language and type of "western" thinking I engage in as an interviewer while S and I have had to spend a considerable amount of time translating terminology. this may be in part due to their age difference with D. having more exposure to western ideas as a child then S. I should point out that although both have had exposure to Cree, and S speaks it somewhat, neither would characterized her primary language as Cree at this time.
D3. In-depth Interviews
As noted above I have collected and roughly transcribed (taken notes on) about 14 hours of in-depth interviews with these women (about 6 hours on D and 8 hours on S). The focus of my analysis has been the relationship between the emergence and felt significance of these psychospiritual experiences and life events of a impactful or traumatic nature. Almost without exception every spiritual experience was associated with a period of life which was impactful in either a positive or negative manner.
I will now briefly summarize each case through the childhood years before drawing conclusions.
D3a. S's Childhood Summary
S's earliest memory was being in a carriage in the sunshine at about 1 to 2 years of age. She felt different because she couldn't play and was very ill for the first two years of her life. The doctors said she was going to die so her parents took her home to take care of her. She was allowed short times in the carriage and loved the sun. Around this time she felt, "I shouldn't be here, this isn't the right time or the right place for me." She had a sense that she knew a lot but not what and she was not afraid of death.
When she was very young her dream life unfolded as she was ill. She comments that, "dreams were accepted, whereas, fantasy might not be accepted so much."
From as early as she can recall she has had a guardian who she calls her friend. He was "somebody that was there with me" and he's "always been the same". "He was always the only adult I could count on other than my grandfather." He was there to protect and warn her only when she needed him, like "My dad was going to come home and really [be] angry." He was like a shadow, no substance but she could see the outlines of him. She feels his presence at first then he appears to her right.
Earliest recollection she has of an incident associated with him was when she was three years old. S told her mom that he had appeared but her mom did not pay any attention. A few days later she was in a wagon with her parents and cousins. As they went down a dip in the road one of her cousins pushed her out of the wagon and she fell onto the ground. The wagon wheel went over her body. Fortunately there a small indent in the road into which she fell. So although she suffered some liver damage she was otherwise fine. If she had been on the flat part of the road she would have been crushed. She said that her father commented afterward that that she was "being watched over".
Also at age 3 she recalls when her brother lost money their mother had given him for milk. He came home and knew he was in trouble so he told S to find it in a dream. As he expected her to be able to do this it is likely she had been doing it before. She says she recalls that incident cause they were in trouble if it was not found. In her dream she asked a lady to find it. They retraced his steps and found it in the dream between the slates of a wooden sidewalk. Then she awoke and they went to get it.
For a lot of people dreams are teachings. My grandfather believed that if you listen to your dreams you could learn things my ancestors knew how to do," S recalls. When she was 3 or 4 years old she took on the responsibility of the younger children, which is a common practice among Native families. She relates how her teaching dreams of that period used to help her take care of the younger children. For instance, she would learn how to make a toy or how to fix something.
When she was about 3 or 4 years old she was with her grandfather getting herbs and he explained that trees were life, "like people". S recalls that she told a tree a secret reasoned now that her grandfather probably heard her. As she got older she felt she could tell her troubles to the trees and especially liked the "white poplar". "I feel connected to the earth, I'm not an alien being". She continues that "the earth is part of me and I'm part of the earth . . . The tree is part of me and I'm part of the tree . . . it's a belonging . . . used to dream of trees."
Her guardian came to her when she had a very serious cough and told her it would be fine. She felt comforted and did recover. She goes on to comment that before she was 5 years old it seemed that she was always sick with ear aches and sore throats. As an adult she wonders if that wasn't her way of getting attention because she had so much responsibility for the younger ones.
At about this time she received teaching dreams about fairness. For instance, if she was going to do something to her brother which wasn't too nice, she would have a dream where she would experience his emotions about it. There were a series of these dreams each with a slight variation on fairness. Thus she was and still is always sensitive to fairness and balance.
A specific learning dream she had about this period was once when her mom and dad had gone grocery shopping which usually took an overnight trip. She was left with her sibs and a baby-sitter. There was not much food in the house. S dreamt of someone "showing me how to pick some herbs and some onions." When she awoke S told her brother that she "dreamt where we can find something we can make a soup out of." They went and picked the things and the sitter helped them cook it. "It was good." She comments that she might have seen someone do this before and simply recalled it when the information was needed. But most of her childhood there was not much food in the house; so much so that now as an adult she gets very anxious if the house is not well stocked with food.
"At five years old I had my tonsils out and had my first out-of-body experience. I remember being above my body and looking down at the nurse and doctor working over me. I wasn't breathing or having difficulty breathing, I'm not sure which, I was scared at first but I was a bird and felt safe as one. There was a light up above me like a skylight and I headed for it but never got there. I heard my name being called and I started to come down it was warm and bright above and cold below when I came down. It was sad and cried because I had to come down from the safety above."
She also tells of being able to see things when she was awake. Once when she was somewhat less than six years old her younger brother and sister who were 2 and 3 years old rode a horse away from the house. The horse came back without the toddlers and her mother was frantic about their whereabouts. S could see them in her head and told her mother they were fine even though the horse had left them a ways from home. "I could see the area they were in," she relates. When she was trying to locate them something came into the picture in her head that she could recognize (how a road went and a tree). She told her brother who quickly went and got them. They had been playing and were not at all scared when their brother showed up.
By the time she was sent to convent (residential school) she was 6 1/2 years old. Her mother had had 11 children in 16 years so already there were several at home. Her older brothers also went. When there she says she "made the mistake of telling the nun about my dreams and I was told it was the devil. . . I learned then not to talk to other people about it ... [and to] pretend I wasn't different." As a consequence of this move she started to lose the ability to picture things in her head which her grandfather had told her was a gift that should not be misused. During her time in convent school she stayed in a dormitory with 20 or 30 other girls. Her dreams during this period were not the greatest as she felt lonely even though one of the girls was her cousin. As with many other Natives in this situation she went speaking a mixture of Cree and English and really wasn't sure which was which. When she spoke Cree she was punished.
After about 1 1/2 years in the convent school her parents quite unexpectedly came to get her. They went to the city to live for about six months. During some time in this period they had a baby-sitter who used to lock them in the closet when their parents went to work and would threaten them if they told. One day her godmother had a day off of work and came over to take them to a show and found them locked in the closet. The baby-sitter was fired.
After she left the convent school she would dream often of the devil although she never knew what he looked like. He was always trying to get her and she would wake up crying and screaming. Her fear of the devil was there because of her mothers strict Catholics but not anywhere as fearful as what she learned about him at school. In a typical dream of this period she would be in a one-room house with her brother and sister who were smaller than her. The devil was trying to get in first by the door which she blocked then by the windows which she also blocked. Then he came down the pipe of the pot bellied stove and tried to get off the lid and come in. S struggled with him to keep the lid on and screaming she would wake.
She also traces her first lucid dream to this period right after leaving the convent school because they were her control. The first time she recalls she was sick in bed for about 2 weeks and it was beautiful outside when she realized she can appreciate the outdoors in her dreams if not now when awake. "That was my safety," she explains.
She then went to the new school on the reserve. At about age 9 S went to live with her grandfather. This was not unusual as she would often go to stay with him for a few weeks or a few months. This time she and her closest brother stayed with him from Sept. to June as the rest of the family moved. The devil dreams intensified during this period she says because she was having lots of problems with her grandfathers wife (not her grandmother). "That was the time I was molested by her grandson," who was briefly also staying with them. He seemed huge to her and was probably a teenager at the time. She told her step-grandmother who did not believe S. Thus she did not feel safe in that house either unless her grandfather was there. However, he was the chief and had a lot of responsibilities away from home. "He protected me as much as he could." She never told her grandfather about the molestation as she felt there was really not much he could have done. At age 10 she was molested again by someone she knew.
The devil dream took a turn for the worse around this time. Now she was inside a house and the devil appeared on the inside of the door she needed to use to exit the house. He was shaped like a wolf but with no hair, a long nose, big ears, and horns. He was alive in the door and would move around in the door. She would wake up and go crawl in bed with her sisters as she could no longer stay in that setting.
During the time she was having the devil dreams she noticed that the learning/teaching, freedom and future dreams all just shut down.
At about age 10 one night S had a dream that she was going to fly. Flying for her in dreams is freedom especially because she has been sick so much. Normally she changes into a bird when she flies. But with this dream she did not change into a bird and that frightened her. "I was still in my bed" and the bed and S started flying and she knew "I was over using that [ability]". It didn't feel wrong I just didn't understand it. She woke up scared and told her mother and her mother said "it's imagination". She felt like she had lost control. What was happening had never happened before. She new when it happened that she needed to try to wake herself up, thus it was a lucid dream. Then she went back to sleep and it happened again. She began to fly, did not turn into a bird and she and the bed began to levitate. She woke again and her mother came in again and put a mat by her bed to sleep next to her to comfort her. Then S said while awake this time, "Mom it's happening again." The bed was far enough off the floor for her mother to see it and she was terrified. Her mothers terror increased Ss own fear. Her mother started praying and said "it's the devil controlling it." Then the bed dropped and she grabbed S and took her into her room to sleep.
S commented that it seemed that the only time the devil came into the picture was in her dealings with the Catholic church. If using a Native or a Protestant perspective she experienced no problem with the devil.
I asked her if she had ever had an IAM experience. She told me how all her life she has felt out of sink with the world except sometimes she walks into a stream of light and "as I'm in that stream of light I understand everything around me, I understand my surroundings, I understand the world, I understand myself." She says at those times she thinks, "none of this is complicated, why do we make it so complicated" She walks out of it and is back to who she is. At first she thought she was imaging it but has had it so many times that now she believes, "it's just a glimpse." She says, "when I'm in that space I could do almost anything, I'm strong. . . I feel the goodness around me but I feel that nothing in life we are being asked to do is difficult, we make it difficult ourselves."
S spoke of two experiences which she had twice as illustrations of the difference a lifetime makes. Each experience was early in her life (childhood and late teens) and reappeared a second time during or after menopause. She explains that the same experience takes on a different quality. "It's like when you go to a movie when you [are] a child. You see this movie and you think how fantastic and so on. Then you go again and see it as an adult but as an adult you pick up the real characters; you pick up the in-depth; you pick up what's really happening." These experiences she explains when they occur around menopausal have meaning, richness and depth. The message to her is "this is what I've been trying to tell you all your life."
As a child she would question did it really happen but as an older adult she was sure. The first illustration she gave me of this experience was seeing a big ball of light, pulsating energy with a voice which filled the room. Of the experience at 8 or 9 years of age she writes:
This was a spiritual dream of God appearing to me. In this dream I began by being afraid of something unknown to me and I wanted to hide, then I decided to pray, for in my dream I knew he would help me. Then this big ball of pulsating light appeared and I could hear the words this ball of energy was saying as an echo in the room. It said, "I am the goodness that you must follow and if you believe in me and trust me I will always be there to help you. If you wake up now you will see me." I woke up and saw this light beside my bed and I was no longer afraid. I ran to tell my parents and they said it was only a dream it had not really happened.
The most recent one occurred after she had been up awhile praying and using her pipe. It appeared in the midst of this ritual. It explained about God and that God could help her and her people. "When we pray to God we are looking to the goodness within ourselves." While with that energy she said, "I had no room to be anything else but me, the real me." She said "what I felt was a total trust . . . I felt humble." "If you can feel kindness and love coming from energy, that's what it was." When I asked her what was happening in her life as an adult about the time of the experience it turned out to be a period of considerable stress. At the school she was working for as a play therapist six of the children were suicidal, her son had just broken his back, and they had just unexpectedly adopted another son.
The other early and late life experience she shared with me was a dream from her late teens when she walked up to St. Peter who was an Elder and he showed her the book of knowledge. In the dream she said "but this all common sense." She had this again in the 1980's when she was working with the children. In that dream the Elder told her "this is the knowledge you need to have a good world."
D3b. D's Childhood Summary
D can trace her earliest memories to when she was about 7 or 8 months old (pre 7/8 months a memory of sleeping with her parents and closeness and contact comfort). She places the memories then because her parents told her she started to walk at 9 months, an event she recalls. These things happened before her walking. She says of these early memories, "I don't know why it's important to remember that part of my life . . . but it's so picture clear in my memory."
These first memories are when she was at her grandmothers while she was sharing a crib with her Auntie who was also an infant and close in age. Her family lived with her paternal grandparents for the first three years of her life. She recalls the crib because she hated sleeping there. She relates details of the room, it was "painted a yucky kind of green." She says she talked to her Auntie but not through words from the mouth. She says it was mind to mind with words. She muses, "if words, where did I learn those words?" Then goes on to explain, "I would be dominant of her [auntie]." Their ultimate goal was to be entertained or occupied. D never asked her Auntie if she recalls but says, "it happened, it happened," and that she never tried to understand it. They were "always looking for something to make us laugh. . . Everything around us was kind of comical."
About herself at that time she felt, "I shouldn't be here . . . I felt like I was older. . . I'm too old for this body." When asked what her feelings were most of the day, she replied, "happy . . . everything was so funny."
Then at nine months of age she recalls when she first walked. She was at a Sundance with her great-grandmother who was blind, but D did not know that at the time. The music came which "just made me want to dance." "I got up and started dancing." Her parents told her she walked up to the Sundance pole. D says, "what I remember is seeing a man . . . it wasn't a pole it was a big man . . . he was dancing." About him she says, "he wasn't dressed in anything, he was clear. . . like a cloud . . . he had two legs, two arms, head, a deep voice . . . he was singing and he was dancing . . . I saw him and I wanted to dance . . . he made it so happy . . . everyone around me was so serious . . . I held his hand and I danced with him."
She recalls playing in a dog hole under the porch when she was under two years of age. The dogs did what she wanted. She told them verbally and mentally to get out but she could not hear the dogs.
She also tells of an incident from this period when she planned to go to town with her parents after she'd been told no she could not. "I was a balloon freak," she explains. And the balloons were sold at a place on the way to town. No sense of streets just knew when they were getting closer. She snuck into the back seat of the car where her grandmother saw her but said nothing. So she got to go but it was boring, I "didn't enjoy the rest of the day," she concedes.
When she was three years old they moved into a house of their own. Around this time three little men used to come to play. They were "little guys, same height as us." The other children she played with could also see them but not the adults. They had long stringy shoulder length brown hair and wore regular clothes. When asked about the color of their faces she replied, "in my mind there is no color" because she explained that not until she was 6 years old did she realize that people have different color faces. Of these men D says, "they played with me all kinds of games eh, but they were the ones in control." They controlled the games so that her only control was the rejection of I won't play. They also sung songs. It was always three men, always the same three, and they had no names. She continues that they would "do things to us at night . . . we'd be in our bed. . . these little guys would be under the bed, they'd tip the bed up." We'd all laugh a lot. Her grandmother said it was ok but not her mom. As adults she and her aunties/uncles/cousins who she played with at the time recall them together. They would also be at her grandmothers house and slide down the banister but the adults never noticed it and the kids would crack up. They would push her on a swing or in a stroller. D explains, "It's real, I know it's real, I touched them, I felt them . . . I really think they are real." She would talk to them in words and her mom would ask her who are you talking to and she would say the little men. At about age 5 her mom told her they were not real. She was more concerned with her moms reaction and thus told the men "I can't play with you anymore." She explain that they seemed to fill the sense of loss and loneliness she had. They filled the gap until her brothers were old enough to play with.
At about age 4 or 5 D and a bunch of her children relatives saw her paternal grandmother floating in the air outside above the highway. They ran back to the house and she was there. But shortly after that her grandmother left the house with the four younger children (of 15) and moved to the city after a shooting incident with her alcoholic husband. He had come home drunk and angry and they all ran out into the corn field. He grabbed her auntie and threatened to kill her. He was yelling "I'm going to kill you" over and over. Her grandmother went to her grandfather to get her auntie. He let go of the auntie and cocked the gun at her. D's great-grandmother ran up and pushed him and the gun went off but it missed her grandmother who then left him.
When D would go to north to visit her maternal grandmother she would sleep with her blind great-grandmother. Once after the attempted murder she was visiting in February and the cows were calving too early. It was too cold for the calves so they brought one into the house to be near the pot bellied stove. D says "I was so terrified of that calf. . . [it] wasn't able to walk yet." Ordinarily she explained she was not scared of the cattle. "It seemed like its eyes were glowing ." As it tried to walk she was scared it was trying to get her. She kept hanging onto her grandmother who said it was ok but she felt little comfort. It only happened that one night.
Later that year in the summer they went again to visit. She was alone in the house with her 98 year old blind great-grandmother as D had been told to take care of her and D's little brother. Suddenly the "cows were charging the house." "They hit the house", the house shook. "I was just screaming." They did it only that one time when they were being moved from one field to the next.
Another shooting incident occurred before she started school at her grandparents up north. Her grandfathers brother and daughter, who had been drinking, had come to his house. They were told to leave. A gun was pulled out by the brother. D hid under the bed and was crying. She said she was afraid she was going to die. The brother started to shoot at the house. Someone ran to the store to call the police. They came to the bottom of the hill upon which was the house. They walked up to the house. Her grandmother was slapping D's auntie for drinking. They took the brother to the police car while handcuffed, he shot the policeman. It was an Indian policeman. Before this D sensed her uncle had a good heart but after this she was distant with him.
About this period she said "everything around me was good, eh" things seemed to come from outside which were bad.
She recalls a devil incident from when she was about 5 or 6. She was going to the bathroom at the outhouse with her auntie who was about her age. D saw a man walking about 50 yards away. He was all black and had horns, a tail and a fork. He did not wear a black outfit, he was just all black, a very deep black. She yelled at her auntie to come out to see this as she was scared. She also saw the man. He was walking across from one set of bushes to another. "While he was walking he was looking at me," D explains, with fear in her voice as she recalls the incident. They went in and told D's grandmother who said it is your imagination.
Another incident of this period was hearing scratching on the window in the middle of the winter. She was afraid to go to bed and looked out the door and saw nothing. Then on the window she saw three scratch marks on the inside window of a double glassed window.
D did not go to kindergarten and at 6 years D entered grade 1 where she found out she was an Indian. She had made friends with a white girl who played with her, held her hand, and was special. Then one day she came to school and told D "I can't play with you anymore . . . cause your an Indian." D asked, "What's that?" She learned quickly that Indians and whites were different in this integrated school of Catholics and natives.
"All these years [before 6] my mom and dad were always there for me, but now "I'd get home from school and there'd be nobody there. . . It was really frightening for me. . . They wouldn't come back all night. . . My parents started drinking when I was six, grade 1." They would leave her younger siblings at her grandparents but figured she was old enough to stay home alone. They drank from when she was 6 to about 14 years old. Her grandmother told her that they had to finish growing up but D protested, "I was growing up too."
When she went to school she discovered it was not ok to talk Cree yet she received mixed messages cause when she went to her grandmothers it was not ok to speak English! She recalls at age 7 being hit on the hand in school for speaking Cree and comments "I learned real young it wasn't ok to be Indian."
In general it seemed that the psychospiritual experiences ceased during her grade school years. The school years, she explained, were all education. Her parents split up when she was 9 or 10 years old but later reunited. She remarked that when her parents drank she felt "thrown away". She had to take on a lot of the household and childcare responsibilities because of their drinking. So she became increasingly angry. She recalls having nightmares during these years.
She does tell of one incident when she was about 10 years old. Her mother had been hospitalized with blood clots in her legs. The doctors wanted to cut the legs off. Her grandmother said no and took her mother home. She treated her at home for months. At one point D and her sibs were all around her mother's bedside and her grandmother was drawing blood from the legs. The grandmother told the children that it was spiders coming out. D insists that she saw spiders and so did her sibs. Her mother recovered full use of her legs.
One spiritual experience which she had 5 or 6 times a year seemed to mark her reentry into spiritual experiences. She would see big lights at the end of her bed just as she was going to sleep. She did not want to get sucked into it. She was frightened of this for many years. She was paralyzed when she would first see it and said she felt like she was not sleeping. She would open her eyes and see this huge light at the end of the bed. It was a full circle about 4 feet in diameter with a male voice telling her to come. She kept saying no. She would pinch herself on the finger to stop the paralysis and when it ended the light would still be there and she would kick it and it would then disappear.
Other spiritual experiences also reappeared during early adolescence. She speaks of a time of apparent poltergeist activity, and seeing eagles eyes in a wall. Also during these early adolescent years she did some very serious acting out regarding her parents drinking. She told them to stop drinking or she would run away and did that a number of times. She said she was filled with rage at this time about what they were doing. They did both stop drinking, first her mom and then her dad. Her mom went to AA but her dad did not.
Of her life she says, "I went through a lot of difficulty in my life, there was a lot of confusion, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering but at the same time I can't hang onto that, I've got to let that go eh . . . and I've let that go and life is beautiful . . . a lot of people don't know how to let it go . . . they let all that past garbage control them."
D4. Conclusions
Although these women were from different bands they are both central Alberta Cree and probably share a considerable cultural heritage. In addition to the questionnaire information about experiences in sleep and waking D and S had three experiences which were very alike. They both spoke of a comforting cloudy/shadowy man, D when she first walked and then later as an adult in a dream and S every time before she has a crisis. They both had experiences with large balls of light in their bedrooms and in both cases the experience stepped over the boundaries of sleep and waking but their responses to the light were different. D was afraid to go with it and S found comfort from it. Finally, both spoke of levitation experiences (interestingly within a day of speaking to each). S had her only levitation experience as a child and was quite frightened by it while D commented that her husband says he sometimes wakes and she is levitating but she sees nothing remarkable about that as her mother used to do it all the time.
D's early life was by her recollection unstressful for the most part at least within the family core. The emphasis in her memories is on these preschool years with remarkable detail and clarity. Although S also has very early memories they are not as clustered as D's and span the entire childhood. S's early memories of a psychospiritual nature seemed to have developed in response to being severely ill (she almost died twice before age 5) while D enjoyed good health. Both being first born girls they carried a lot of responsibilities for their siblings starting early in life. S used her abilities in response to this while D did not mention such a use.
Both women report being raped early in life. In the case of D this rape, along with several other negatively impactful life events early in her school years virtually brought to a standstill an almost constant state of "bliss" or what might be called "mystical" awareness.
S experienced her first rape (both were raped more than once) during early adolescence and shortly thereafter began to experience severe nightmares. Her dream life, which had protected her for years from a life of severe familial dysfunction and physical illness, had turned sour in her middle childhood due to molestation's and rape. In fact, her awareness of the connection between the nightmares of that period and her rape emerged while we were conducting an interview. She was then able to take this new knowledge into therapy and work through its implication for her current life situation. Although the direct connection between these events was not made until her 50's, she was able by late adolescence to reclaim the rich supportiveness of her dream life.
In summary both women showed early remarkable predilections for transpersonal/psychic experiences which were supported at least in part by some close family members and by their culture. However, by middle childhood years both discovered the negative side of life and suffered a change or cessation of their experiences as a result. In adulthood both have gone through considerable healing (individually and in therapy) and have been able to reclaim much of the experiences they started life with.
Go to: IV. Models of Transpersonal Development (Next Section)