The Architecture of the Soul : A Unitive Model of the Human Person

The Architecture of the Soul is an attempt to formulate a model of the human person that rises out of the transpersonal and integral schools of psychology. It also serves as part two of my first book, Greenspirit: Twelve Steps in Ecological Spirituality, (which is to be republished in 2006 by North Atlantic Books, as Cultural Addiction: The Greenspirit Guide to Recovery). Underneath the entire model is my belief gained from clinical experience, at this point fifteen years long, that until we have a model which enables us to see the total reality of a human person we really cannot treat that person effectively. What I mean by this is that a view of the human person as a kind of epiphenomenon of brain chemistry is reductionistic to the point of near absurdity. The attempt to create a functional person by pharmacological changes in the brain entirely misses the point of what a human person is. So, The Architecture of The Soul is an attempt to produce a new model, that if understood by clinicians, can be used as a new and more comprehensive clinical lens.

So then, arises the question, what is a human person? To answer this we must view all the immediate and depth-functions of a human person. So what then are these functions? First and most obvious, humans think. Therefore there is a cognitive function. But like all mammals, humans also feel. Therefore there is an affective function. Even deeper, like all animals, mammalian or earlier, humans have instincts. Instincts speak to us as an intuitive signal. Therefore we could say that another function of the human person is intuition. These three functions coincide with the basic triune structure of the human brain. So we could say that the cognitive function is a product of the neocortex. The affective functions are a product of the limbic system, or paleomammalian cortex. The intuitive function then could be thought of as a function of the reptilian core of the brain, the brain stem. Indeed, the Hindus refer to the spinal cord which plugs into the bottom of the brain as the Kundalini, or snake.

Humans also have a memory, some of which is available to consciousness, some of which is below or even prior to consciousness. In The Architecture Of The Soul I have called the above three functions in the cognitive, affective and instinctual functions, a zone called Primary Awareness . What I mean by this is not that thought or feeling came first in the evolution of life. Indeed, thought as we experience it is a relatively new phenomenon. By Primary Awareness , I mean the experience of immediate perception whether the perception is the thought feeling or instinctual signaling. The memory zones gather together in what I call, Secondary Awareness . What I mean by this is that the contents of Secondary Awareness can be made present to Primary Awareness through remembering. The uppermost layer of this secondary zone I am calling the Personal Subpsyche. This zone can be thought of as similar to C.G. Jung's notion of the personal unconscious. It contains the historical sequence of experience that this one individual has had since memory has been functioning.

But there are deeper zones that make up the assumption-level experience of a human person. Beneath the individual memory is the family memory which I am calling the Familial Subpsyche. Formatted in this zone are the traits and assumptions of one's family lineage. It is easy to understand why the familial memory of say Martin Luther King's children, will be based upon different assumptions than the children of Ku Klux Clan leader, David Duke. This Familial Subpsyche is formatted not only with the assumption-level thoughts of one's immediate family, but also with the assumptions that have been passed along through many generations. So then logically, we arrive at a third level of formatting in the individual psyche, which I am calling the Cultural Subpsyche . The great cultural memory of Judaism is a fine example of what I mean by Cultural Subpsyche . Not only does the 3800-year cultural memory of Judaism format the assumption-level structures in the psyche of each and every Jew, but also of each and every Christian. The same could be said of Hinduism whose memory reaches into prehistory.

The above two zones and their combined six layers are representative of the depth to which psychology presently reaches. We talk about cognitive and affective disorders, the 12-step programs, and the therapies around them that deal with the instinctual disorders related to food, sex, drink, money, and drugs. There are deeper, far deeper realities functioning, or dysfunctioning, in each of us. I have articulated six additional layers to the human psyche which make up the depth or "rudder" of the human personality. The six layers make up what I call Tertiary Awareness. It is my thesis in this book that this zone must be drawn into our primary awareness if we are to survive as a species and a planet. There are deep bio and eco-wisdom's contained in the tertiary zone that if left out of our psyches, may well doom us to collective insanities and ecological suicide. Even barring these extreme catastrophes, the lost depth of our psyches condemns us to shallowness, flatness, and boredom. This shallowness, flatness and boredom continue to make addicts of our young people who seek the zest for living in the dead end street of addictions.

So then, these six layers that comprise this third depth-psyche begin with the Primate Subpsyche . Whether or not we like the idea, science has convinced most thinking people that we indeed are one, among many, families of primates. While the complexity of our cognitive brain causes us to function in very different ways than the other primates, (especially in the creation of cultures) there must be deep meanings to be grasped in understanding our psychology as primates. The memory of our primate nature is presented to us in the disciplines of yoga and the martial arts. In these disciplines the human primate mimics the bodies and movements of other mammals, reptiles, birds, and even insects. These disciplines allow us to remember, in our primate forms, the deep eco and bio-wisdom's that we choose to forget while we spend our lives in front of monitors. A culture of obesity makes it clear that we have forgotten something that we desperately need to remember. We've forgotten that we are primates! We must integrate the Primate Subpsyche if we are to remember who we are. It can only be done by doing it!

As we recall our primate nature, we also recall that the primates are only one of the nineteen families of mammals.

In remembering our mammalian nature, made evident in the paleomammalian cortex or limbic system, and its relationship to other mammals such as horses, dogs, and cats, we likewise integrate and remember the mammalian subpsyche. What then do we remember? We remember that like all mammals we each spend a gestation period in the body of another. This gestation period is marked by the constant throbbing rhythm of the heartbeat of another and of her breathing. I think this is why hearing the breath of another in our ear is so arousing sexually, as is the hearing of the increased heart rate of another during romance. All mammals experience the paradise of the womb in which every need is satisfied. All mammals (except those humans denied the milk of their mothers) experience, following birth, the renewed relationship of food which is given in humans at the place of the heart beat and of the breath. The born child leaves the birth canal only to be returned to the paradise of the mother's body. While feeding there, her warmth, her heartbeat, and her breath represent paradise regained. What then does it mean to be in a culture that aborts at least three million young every year?

In remembering our mammalian nature we begin to be confronted with the larger truths presented to us in the whole community of life, both flora and fauna. The awakening to the trees and the insects and the snails that we see in our young children as they experience the mystery of the biosphere, is a memory we must integrate if we are to integrate our species-level functioning into the larger community of life. This layer of memory and experience I am calling the Ecological Subpsyche . It is the memory of life on earth from unicellular to multicellular to green plants and even insects, etc, in which we experience our existence and functioning. We do not live unless the whole community lives. Therapists who treat the cognitive, affective, and maybe the instinctual disorders of their clients while ignoring or even participating in the destruction of the life-community are basically standing by, observing the disassembling of their client's or patient's unconscious while attempting to heal them consciously.

In remembering our larger community of the biosphere, we begin to awaken to the mystery of life itself as it emerges from the admixture of water, soil, and sunlight. In other words we begin to have the experience of life as a product of this blue planet in its relationship to the sun. In doing so we remember that we too are a product of that marriage between father sun and mother earth.

This memory integrated in our psyches represents the integration of the Geological Subpsyche .

From this experience of being the product of the marriage of earth and sun, we awaken to the larger memory of ourselves as citizens of the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe itself. Since humans first stood on their hind legs they have all been stunned by the beauty of life itself present to them in the night sky and the daytime brilliance of the sun. A human devoid of a functional relationship to the cosmos is a human without mystery or depth. The experienced memory of ourselves as intrinsic to an expanding universe is the integration of the Temporal Subpsyche . Every religion understood in its true depth leads us to this experience of the cosmos in time. Thus, humans also have a Temporal Cosmological Subpsyche . As we awaken to the cosmos, and to our own being as co-extensive with this expanding cosmos, we are confronted by the presence of a mystery that is our Source. The Pretemporal Subpsyche is the confrontation with this mystery which is our being. While science is not yet able to cross the event-horizon into this mystery, mystics of every tradition report the ability to do so. Mysticism, as the word implies, is the entry into mystery. That mystery precedes both space and time, and yet includes space, time, and the universe in its existence, its functioning, and its self-expression. In a nutshell, we can know God in our own being because our being is a subset of the presence of God. To ignore the six layers of the human psyche, is to treat a shallow abstraction, the mere remains of what it really means to be human.