Peter Bugar

RNDr. Peter Bugar (1960)

Graduated in biophysics from the Comenius University in Bratislava, he worked in neuroscientific research at the Slovak Academy of Sciences in late ‘80s and in alternative medicines in Navarra (Spain) in early ‘90s. Since then he earns his living as a translator-interpreter in Czechia. He was lucky enough to meet excellent teachers in his youth in Bratislava - Otakar Urban (swimming), Juraj Cíger and Egon Gál (philosophy), Zdeněk Vácha (English) or later in his life - Loly Sanz Robles (Spanish, Zaragoza), Zev ben Shimon Halevi (kabbalah, London), John Hawken (tantra, shamanism, bioenergetics, Czechia). He tries to understand what is going on in the consciousness research and in different schools of perennial philosophy, with Stanislav Grof’s transpersonal psychology being the one close to his heart.

Creation of Creativity: Heuristic Potential of Holotropic States

In the lecture we attempt to bridge a conceptual gap within the consciousness research between the scientific-materialist approach from the “outside” or from the “third-person” position on the one hand and the transpersonal exploration relying on experiences on the „inside“ or in the „first person“ position on the other, by developing a unifying conception of creativity as implied by modern Platonism in the spirit of A.N. Whitehead.

We take a close look at D.C. Dennett’s explication of evolutionary bottom-up emergence of consciousness in which the author employs his idea of cognitive stances resulting, thanks to his Platonic inspiration, in a non-reducible model based on the Allegory of the Cave.

We investigate the dynamics of the Platonic Cave by using Joseph Campbell’s concept of mythological hero’s journey. By employing the Jungian interpretation of creatio continua, i.e. creativity, according to M.- L. von Franz, we are able to explain the structure of Plato’s Allegories of the Sun and of the Cave in line with Campbell’s conception of cosmogenesis and with Whitehead’s ontology of universalia and qualia. As outlined in our lecture, the concept of creativity is a general consequence of a few basic top-down principles of consciousness research. Disclosing a smooth connection between Dennett’s choice of cognitive stances and Stanislav Grof’s holotropic-hylotropic changes of consciousness we are able to transcend the scientific-materialist emergence of consciousness, naturally opening scientific research of consciousness to spiritual traditions exploring non-ordinary states.