Private world? What about consensual reality?

I grew up as a science geek. Other kids might enjoy fiction and believe in fantasy worlds, but I found them numbingly boring. There was a whole universe of reality to be explored! Or at least one tiny neighborhood of reality. Actually, for most of my childhood it was pretty much a stagnant backwater of reality, with no telephone, no friends, and no media beyond the same dozen outdated National Geographics and the regular arrival of the Christian Herald. Yes, there was a public library, but the musty fiction was overwhelming, and what little science they had seemed prehistoric. There were trees to climb, and eventually a bike to ride, but I wasn't allowed to go beyond the end of the block, so I got very good at climbing the same trees and riding the same circles in the yard. I did both like yoga, meditatively, seeking trance states and exploring the inner workings of my experiences to fill the endless hours. My parents made it very clear that reports from my inner journeys had no place in their grownup reality. I dedicated myself to learning all the words grownups used, but it became obvious that nobody in my extended family or my town ever talked about experiences like mine. I wanted so much to connect my inner life with their consensual reality, but without words there was no hope.

A Separate Reality

Without words to fixate my inner memories of childhood, they faded to insignificance behind the onslaught of fascinating technology I discovered during my teen years. Soon after I entered the engineering curriculum at the University, I was reading Ayn Rand and looking to the conscious mind for answers to all of life's questions.

And then a co-worker at a summer job handed me a joint, and as a committed experimentalist, I took a hit. I remember thinking, "I always knew there would be something like this, but I never imagined it would be marijuana!" The wordless inner world of my early childhood came flooding back to me.

So during the years that my friends spent indulging in escapism and "getting wasted", I was intently and methodically trying to reclaim a world I might otherwise have lost forever. I had vaguely wondered what could motivate so many students to read the Castaneda books; now I devoured them. When I returned to school, it was in psychology instead of electronics.

Still, it was not until 1976 that I encountered some words for my re-discovered inner reality. A friend "ordered" me to check out the training being offered at the Berkeley Psychic Institute, and I ended up taking the "Healing and Reading Class" from Michael Symonds, one of the first BPI graduates.

It was refreshing to be able to connect with a few people who consciously lived in a separate reality, and recognized mine, but talking about "psychic space" with people from outside the BPI circle proved as hopeless as having no words at all.

A Word of My Own

In the twenty-five years since then, I've been distracted by all the subjects in the Table of Contents for this site, and more. I've found hints of connections, and analogies to some of my experiences, but never a ready-made way to tie my separate worlds together. And trying to talk about "psychic space" has made no progress at all.

So I'm starting fresh with a new word of my own creation, for a concept that I've evolved to link our inner and outer worlds. I'll approach it from many different angles, and hopefully you'll gradually absorb what it means and how it works. If you are a linear reader, you'll probably want to visit Concept first. To read about my current adventures as they happen, be sure to check out the PsyBlog. Or click any term in the Table of Contents to explore how it relates to the psychoros.

You'll probably find items in the Table of Contents that are not (yet) links. And even some of the working links have only a bare outline of what will eventually be there. It will probably take me years to convert my headfull of thoughts and experiences into presentable pages. Creating these placeholder and outline items helps me organize what I'm currently writing.

Before you apply any of my ideas to your own life, please read the Disclaimer page - in which those ideas are guaranteed to have no authority or support beyond whatever resonance they create in you.

If you feel I've improperly appropriated or interpreted content that you own, I'd appreciate a friendly eMail: loren (symbol) Psychoros (punctuation) com

Revised 11 May 2008