The Doctrine of the "Mysterious Female" in Taoism

What kind of transpersonal experience is typical for Taoism? To answer this question we can use the classification of Grof (1993). Grof mentions a specific kind of ecstasy he calls "oceanic' or "Apollonic" ecstasy.According to Grof (1993, p.336), oceanic ecstasy (recall the sea waves in which the unborn baby-sage of the Tao Te Ching swims) may be characterized by bliss, freedom from any stress, loss of any limitations of "ego," and the experience of absolute unity with nature, universal order, and God. This state is concerned with a deep, direct understanding of reality and cognitive acts of universal meaning. It must be noted that the ideal of Taoism is a spontaneous and absolutely natural following of one's own primordial nature (which is rooted in the empty Tao itself) and the nature of all other things, the nature of the universal whole (shun wu, "following things"). This "following the Way" suggests the absence of mentally constructed, reflective, purposive activity-a state devoid of any real ontological status ego-subject of activity (non-doing, wu we:). We must also note that Taoist texts demonstrate for us a profound and direct vision of reality. Phrases like "returning to the root, coming back to the source" are very typical of Taoist texts. These texts also proclaim the epistemological ideal of Taoism:

"One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know".

According to Grof; the conditions of oceanic ecstasy correspond to the experience of symbiotic unity of a baby and its mother during the period of foetal development and of breast feeding. He writes (cited in reverse translation from Russian): "As we could expect, in the state of oceanic ecstasy there is presented the element of water as the cradle of life . . . The experience of the foetal existence, the identification with different aquatic forms of life or the consciousness of the ocean, visions of the starry sky and the feeling of the cosmic mind are exclusively widespread in this context" (Grof; 1993, p.336).

All these characteristics correspond to the description of the Taoist experience. It is also interesting to note how late Chinese sects with a Taoist background use the theme of the unborn. Here, Female Tao takes the image of Wu sheng lao mu (Unborn Old Mother). Unfortunately, sinologists have not noticed the paradoxical nature of the worldview of the sectarians, looking upon themselves as the children of the unborn mother! The paradox of a mother who is herself unborn is as astonishing as a Zen Buddhist koan. Even the very word "unborn" is paradoxical, and we know about the cases of enlightenment of some Zen monks meditating upon the sense of this word. Indeed, the unborn mother of the unborn child is but Great Tao itself.

In Grof's Beyond the Brain (1993, p.380 of Russian edition), in fact, there is a picture presenting the image of archetypical Lao-tar-the baby-sage, an infant with grey hair. The picture was made by a participant in a psychedelic session and is concerned with the experience of BPM I. In the picture we can see a baby sitting with crossed legs on a lotus flower. The baby has long grey hair and has an umbilical cord conjoined with the unseen body of its mother. Grof says: "Identification with the foetus in the period of the peaceful prenatal development has, as a rule, divine qualities. The picture demonstrates obtaining, during a high dose LSD-session, an intuitive insight into the connection between the enibryonic bliss and the nature of the Buddha" (Grof, 1993, p.380; reverse translation

from Russian). Here we once again meet with the exceptionally important question of the correlation between perinatal and transpersonal or "mystical" experience. The question is: Is it possible to reduce the mystical experience of transcendence to prenatal or perinatal experience and to recollections about it? At the present time, we cannot resolve this question conclusively. Therefore, below I shall suggest some hypotheses which remain to be verified in the course of future transpersonal research.First of all, like Grof I do not equate transpersonal (mystical, psychopractical) experience with recollections of a perinatal character; I think it is quite incorrect to reduce experience of the first kind to experience of the second kind. Secondly, it is well known that perinatal recollections of the adult are principally different from the amorphous and rather simple experience of the foetus. The first kind of experience is much richer, broader, and varied. This type of experience is connected, as one can suppose, with much deeper levels of the unconscious representing the archetypical dimension of the mind. Probably these archetypical patterns and gestalts are something like a priori forms of the repetitive experience of the perinatal state~as in Kant's philosophy, time and space are a priori forms of sensual intuition which determine our form of vision of the transcendent to these forms-reality as it is. Briefly speaking, our profound archetypical levels of the unconscious may be the source of patterns forming the experience of the perinatal states by adults. And those archetypical patterns, in turn, are akin to some kinds of mystical vision.

Nevertheless, we can observe a kind of parallelism between the perinatal and mystical experience. In this parallelism, perinatal gestalt correlates with the corresponding transpersonal (mystical) state.

Moreover, in some cases, we can speak of the superimposition or interplay between perinatal and mystical experience. In such cases, perinatal experience may be a sort of key opening to the mind gates to mystical experience.

We can only explain this phenomenon hypothetically by a kind of likeness or analogy existing between some perinatal and mystical states. For example, there is some analogy between the feeling of peace and security of the foetal existence of BPM I and the transpersonal experience of the unjo mystica, or the experience of universal unity. Therefore, the attainment of the perinatal state serves to eliminate the barriers of the unconscious, opening its deepest levels which correspond to this unity, thereby enabling the mind (or self-consciousness) to penetrate there. In other words, a person who achieved the experience of symbiotic union with the mother of BPM I can more simply and easily attain a parallel but higher experience of the universal unity: the first kind of experience gives way to the openness of analogical but highest (or deepest) strata and levels. Probably, the personal or individualistic limitations dividing the psychical worlds of different individuals are already absent on such profound levels of subconscious existence. (I do not use the word "subconscious" here in the psychoanalytical sense; perhaps it would be better to call it "superconscious.")

Therefore, we may cautiously suppose the existence of some kind of isomorphism of basic states of consciousness of different levels, rooted in the holistic and polistructural ("holonomic" in Grof's terminology) nature of reality as such, including its psychical dimension. But the problems of the ontology of consciousness are too subtle to discuss briefly. For now, we can only note the distinctive interplay of perinatal and transpersonal levels of experience in the Taoist tradition.

Taoist tradition, undoubtedly, is a precious part of the spfritual heritage of humankind. Many of the basic ideas and images of Taoism have a profound humanistic sense, deeply rooted in the very structure of our psychical experience. Do we not see the image of the Mysterious Female-Mother of all under heaven in Sophia or Eunoia of the Gnostics, in Shekhina of the Kabbalah, or in Sophia, the soul of the world, the image of the coming all-unity of the Russian philosopher and mystic Vladimir Solovyev?

I have seen everything and everything was only one:

The only image of the female beauty.