Staring...

Washing dishes, 

with no one to talk to,

my Buddha dog looks on.

Q & A

An appropriate answer to the question, "Are you happy?" is "When?" 

A Few Words on Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity is, in many areas of philosophy, cognitive science, the social sciences, and perhaps most prominently in phenomenology and the philosophy of mind a very important topic  So, let's add our contribution.

What is intersubjectivity? The answer is not a simple one. My immediate response is, "It all depends on how we are using the word." So, in our desire to be considerate to the readership, we'll attempt a working definition. Of course, all definitions are laden with the history of prior usages of the term and the agendas that infuse the term with meaning. We must attempt to be careful when defining any important term, and all terms may be considered important given our intentions. It is the plurality of usages and intentions (agendas) that provide terms with meanings. In our desire to open a clear path for our readers, we offer this usage: Intersubjectivity is the realization of both the implicit and explicit movement of otherness within our experience. The rest of this brief essay will attempt to unpack that definition.

More on the way...

Usefulness of "Consciousness"

Let us employ the language of consciousness* (awareness) in an attempt to surpass the limits of its ordinary or more common usages and provide the term with some helpful additional roles.

We begin with a claim: Consciousness is not exhausted or limited by thought.

This may sound odd to many who are used to employing consciousness in the rather limited sense of being aware of something. Again, our aim is to enrich the term with another possible usage that may prove valuable for generating an opening to a more full or complete path to experience. So, one might say that this may provide some valuable aids to one's understanding facilitating a more complete realization of the breadth of human experience. Now, let's begin our exercise.

What we are about to say has been said before. In fact, it is one of the major themes in many religious and philosophical traditions. However, the route we shall be taking is a bit different. Our use of the term is meant to open us to a different way of looking, a looking with insight. When one exercises the proper focus, what is revealed may help lead us to a life with less suffering and correlatively a more inclusive openness to experience. That is the intention of this exercise.

We begin with an exercise in perception. I'm sitting at a table with my wife having coffee. It is morning and the birds are chirping. Suddenly, I hear a most unusual bird song while my wife is speaking to me. For a moment, the bird song steals my attention from what my wife is saying. She appears to be very intent on explaining something to me while the bird is singing. Then, she finishes what she has to say and I ask: "Did you hear that unusual bird song?" She pauses and then says yes. I ask: "Were you conscious of it while you were speaking to me?" She says "no, but I did hear it." "How, I ask." She says: "I don't know." I respond: " So, you were not conscious of it, but you somehow heard it." She responds, "yes." Our question is, how is that possible?

Well, this is where it becomes interesting. We often reduce our experience to what we become conscious of. However, what we become conscious of--as in our brief example--is not all there is to experience. An ambient consciousness is at work here. This is a consciousness so subtle, at least for most of us, that we miss paying attention to it. Our habits of perception obscure it. Our culture has been hell bent on claiming that all there is to consciousness is consciousness of something, i.e., intentional consciousness. However, what we may surmise from our example is that another more expansive consciousness is at work. This consciousness is not only a cognitive experience but additionally, it is a felt consciousness. If we have read some of my prior posts in this blog, you may have come across what I am about to say now. All experience, by definition, must take place in the body, i.e., in felt experience. The source of all experience, perceptual and cognitive, takes place in feelings, the body. By feelings, I do not mean emotions. It is in the ambient consciousness, a fully embodied consciousness, that the bird song took place. One may characterize this view as one of corporeal panpsychism. It did not take place consciously, as we are prone to say, but it did take place in what some cognitive scientists refer to as a cognitive unconscious. However, in our exposition, we must add, with haste, that the experience is not limited to an unconscious cognition; it is a felt awareness. This is a most subtle form of knowing that permeates all experience. This permutation prods some writers to add an additional metaphysical element to their exposition. You see, some of us are still echoing the voices of a naive realism, one that states the "world" is independently objective, i.e., independent of our consciousness of it. The things of this world attract our attention and we simply become conscious of them. However, and this deserves repetition, this is not all there is. So, in this sense, they posit consciousness as the ultimate reality, a substrate reality, or a universal consciousness--one that pervades all things. In our experience based view, consciousness is a term that we may find useful in exploring and augmenting our experience with an intimate and often blissful, felt dimension.

Through the cultivation of a skillful attentiveness to the ambient consciousness, it may begin to yield a fuller and more subtle dimension of feelings. We may refer to this as the process of surrendering to what is occurring in our experience without judgment or, most importantly, without any self-natured investment expressed as craving. This craving short changes our experience to the point wherein experience is poverty stricken. There is, ultimately, no satisfaction to be gained by this type of exclusivity of consciousness. The reduction of experience to the consciousness of does not exhaust experience. Experience is far too rich for that. But, the exclusionary form of consciousness of conceals experience; it is laden with non-virtuous cognitive activity, i.e., stories that are suffering itself. Actually, when this exclusionary consciousness is seen from the perspective of the ambient, embodied consciousness, instead of stories we have fables. Usually, these fables carry a strong notion of I-am-ness. There is nothing inherently wrong with the thinking and feelings of selfhood. However, when saturated with cravings, these processes are also laden with suffering. The fables with strong feelings of self of the non-virtuous type are themselves suffering and their correlate is ill feelings.

Please allow a cautionary note here. The use of the word "consciousness" here is not to be understood as an element that constitutes experience. I prefer to speak of awareness so as not to hint that a metaphysical reality may be made of "consciousness." No one experiences consciousness! I know that may sound odd or downright ridiculous. However, when burning your hand on the stove is felt, where the heck is consciousness? Think about it and watch your experience. You may find our view to be helpful in your future observations. Your keen observations may even lead to a reduction of the suffering we all share as human beings. That is my hope.




We plan on carrying this theme throughout our subsequent blog entries. If you find anything here at all relevant or interesting, please add your comments or questions to the blog. You may contact me at epkelly@gmail.com.





*Probably a loan-translation of Greek syneidesis, literally "with-knowledge."

"Online Etymology Dictionary". 2017. Etymonline.Com. Accessed July 5, 2017. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=conscience&allowed_in_frame=0.

Brief Insight

On the lake,

two ducks swimming, 

they're using
the whole lake.

Awareness at the Intersection of Contact and Craving

When our senses, including the thought processes, come into contact with their respective (intended) objects, more often than not (sadly), the experience of the contact is smothered by a craving that reduces the experience of contact to a cognitive framework that turns the experience into a conceptual yearning. This yearning is expressed in the forms of felt attachments, aversions, or numbing indifference. The yearning is inherently, and by definition, dissatisfaction--on a scale from minor to major suffering.

To illustrate this, take the simple example of dropping a container of milk on the floor in a supermarket. The experience of witnessing the event includes a bodily component. The experience of perceiving (i.e., contact) the milk dropping and landing on the floor may be one of simple yet profound amazement at the movement and crashing of the container on the floor. This may elicit a felt, open bodily intimacy with the movement and crashing of the container. It may be quite a profound experience! This may elicit a "WOW!" moment. However, the movement may also be one of fear (for obvious reasons) and its associated contracted bodily experience coupled with the aversion that is fear itself. Fear is an unsatisfactory feeling that may be a warning or an instinct to move from an oncoming truck. In this instance, the fear aversion is not a satisfactory experience. In the case of milk dropping, we are not in danger. In the case of a truck, we are. Dissatisfaction may be, at times, a very helpful experience. However, often it is an unnecessary one. On the other hand, if one is in the middle of an argument with one's spouse, dropping the milk may be a deliberate act to elicit a reaction. Then the crashing milk container may yield an intended effect. There is a felt gratification (pleasure) on the part of the agent of the act and a painful response felt by the one toward whom the act is directed. Keep in mind, this is not solely a conceptual event. Intentionally it was designed to elicit both a painful and pleasurable feeling from the one toward whom the act is directed and the perpetrator of the act. The nature of the act, whether pleasurable, painful, or neutral (indifferent) hinges on intention. I hope this is clear.

Actions (karma) of body, speech, and mind that are intentional will result in reinforcing their conceptual and felt origins. These origins are held in intentions.
               

On Craving

Craving diminishes our capacity for experience.

When the fullness of experience is tinged with aversion, attachment, or indifference very often dissatisfaction results. These three are known in some traditions as the "three poisons." When they substitute for the role the fullness of experience plays to bring completeness to our lives, we find ourselves situated in dissatisfaction yearning for more or less via attachment and aversion. The fullness is reduced in relation to the intensity of the desire. The passions of attachment or aversion serve as movements of reduction.

Craving is intrinsically reductionist. When desire inhabits experience, the fullness of experience is reduced to the structural dimensions of the language of the desires. Just a tinge of craving will have that effect, except only moderately. However, all too often, cravings are intense and reciprocally reduce experience to their framework. Keep in mind that craving is also present in aversion. Aversion is wanting some or all aspects of experience to dissolve.

Another way of understanding the relationship of craving and experience is to view the relationship as one of "inverse proportion." To the extent that craving increases, the fullness of experience decreases. In reducing experience to a closed system or structure of desire, experience no longer satisfies. It is found wanting. Experience, in this movement, exhibits a lack.

When a sense organ such as the eye comes into contact with a sense object, experience is reduced to the configuration of a desire. The whole is concealed, sacrificed, to bring about an object(s) which appears in relationship with the desire that may have initiated the perception.

The fullness of experience is, in effect, reduced by craving and vice versa.    

Unedited and more to follow, I had to get this out. 

The Scarlet Flower: Notes on experience

I wrote this some years ago and noted that much of it contained the seeds of a growing vision and understanding of how life, as experience, works. I hope you will find it useful. 🔻🔺🔼🔽ꜛꜜ

The scarlet flower against the evergreens shouts at me from inside, manifesting itself from a sacred movement within my heart.

Our selective attention catches hold of substances, not from some natural element outside of us, “the world,” but from the movement of experience itself, a movement that is life itself modulating into experience. This life is none other than my (and your) own inmost depth, our own solitary, pulsing, be-ing. All things take shape, become, through this life, as this life.  

Our aversions and attachments cast this movement of sacred manifestation away to become the perception of things we like, things we don’t, and things we are indifferent toward.  

Our selective attention, our conceptual mind, selects from a sphere or world that seems "already" there, as if it preexists our seeing it and post-exists our departure from it. However, that "already there" is not the world "out there," but the fundamental movement of experience itself. The world out there is the world already there as us. In other words, selective attention selects from experience and not the world-at-large. We are always already the world; it has its roots in our own felt-existence. It lives and has its being in our human life—beginning in our heart center. The heart center, the source of all life, modulates our depths into experience, into a world. Our lives, the life of each one of us, is the process of the whole. This is the only universe there ever was, is, or shall be. Or, to be more accurate, the world of experience is the modulation of our heart. To feel this modulation is to touch life itself and "know" how it arises to become this all. Tat-tvam-asi!!! 

History and Difference: Liberating Pursuits

When states of affairs are seen, through the lenses of history, anthropology, or even what is called "past life regression," one may realize that things are not the way they are because of their mere existence, but because there were processes, vast processes (acts/karma) of history at work to make them that way. We may regard this as a liberating view in this sense: Things have not always been the way they are now and therefore things do not have to be the way they are. When looking at the plurality of cultural practices via an anthropological eye, we may realize that, interculturally, things are different now, and what we face as states of affairs do not have to be the way they are (currently). The study of history and cultural diversity, seen from this philosophical perspective, can be quite liberating.

Corporeal Panpsychism

At the risk of becoming dogmatic, I will refer to the philosophical position taken in this blog as one of "Cultural Panpsychism." However, a cautionary note is in order. What we advocate here, primarily, is a refocusing on experience as a way of learning about "the Universe." (The scare quotes are very important.) One of the major results of the type of refocusing we are calling for is the realization, direct and embodied, that the world--as we have come to believe it--does not exist in an independent and radically objective manner. Tibetans often refer to this naive view as "the world existing from its own side."

What we wish to bring about is the fullest realization that we (i.e., our past actions of body, speech, mind, and history) are responsible for the character of experience we have. This does not mean our experience can instantly change for the better. The force of history is not to be underestimated. Thousands our years of the repetition of unenlightened actions of body, speech, and mind stand in the way of our happiness. When our history is more powerful than our ideas: Our worlds then become the world. This independently existing world then becomes the experienced world, i.e, what was once a true theory becomes a placeholder for a plurality of experienced worlds. As mentioned in an earlier blog post, when the world is perceived to exist independently of us, we no longer understand the responsible role we human beings have in the nature of worlds. It seems as if the world, as experienced, no longer holds the title of our world, but "the" world. That's when the many varieties of suffering plague all sentient beings. Our karma (i.e., acts of body, speech, and mind) holds little place as a guarantor of happiness. History plays a small part in our experience because "the" world is the way someone (else) dictates, e.g., in politics. When history in its incarnate role is forgotten, or its role is ignored, we human beings are as good as lost.

Our position is called Corporeal Panpsychism with the intent to lure the reader into a felt, i.e., incarnate perspective wherein the underlying union of body, self, world, and universe is held as the source of all experienced realities. This is a dynamic processual (impermanent) experience that is the womb of all realities.

Is there a world out there?

When we perceive something, anything, it appears against a totalistic background, the entire sensorium. In spotting a duck in the water, we are not generally conscious of the water, the visible background, the colors in the leaves behind the duck in the trees and numerous other "things" that are called into play when we spot a duck. More often than not, we do not focus on the living context--be it visible, aural, tactile, etc.--that is a necessary condition for anything to be perceived. This evanescent, living context is what many refer to as the background or "world." It arises so quickly that we are seduced into a primordial belief that it exists as a static world outside of perceived experience. It seems as though the world is already there. It seems as though when coming upon the duck, we have "picked" it out of the world. This is how fast experience takes place, i.e., embodied and ambient awareness. Experience moves faster than cognition. Our bodies are faster than our minds.

There is a sense in which we can say the world is something like a garden of Eden and we feel we are placed in it. However, being outcasts, like Adam and Eve, we may become aware of our beatific gardens of Eden and, through no small effort with few exceptions, suddenly find ourselves in the garden; or, should we say we are in the garden without finding ourselves at all. We may then find a garden view having abandoned the myopia of selfhood with its attendant cravings.

Yes, the world--as we are wont to call it--then takes on the face of pure experience. The world is no longer out there, but the outside has become the "objective" inside, i.e., inside of experience.