Rod's Summary

During my weekly 45-minute Vipassana meditation, I realized that there were two varieties of thought, or rather, two ways of seeing thought. One variety, the typical variety, is something that I am doing. I am the thinker of these thoughts. They belong to me. They are important to me.

But the other variety of thought, the meditative variety, is merely something that is happening. I am watching these thoughts happen, not making them happen, not thinking them. And they are not important.

In subsequent days this insight led me to a deeper understanding of who "I" am, in relation to the world. Most importantly, the "I" who questions, who tries to take things apart & to separate me from the world, is only a virtual identity. It isn't really "me."

"I" is not "me." The Map is not the Territory.

My being, my me-ness, is utterly, holistically, immersed in the here & now & this. It is complete unto itself. It is not separate from the world. But my "I," my analytic self, looks instead for symbols that can reduce holistic complexity to a manageable array of simple parts. It looks for a set of words & concepts that will summarize consciousness.

As my consciousness extends further & further from my literal body, it makes use of the virtualizing capacity of words & tools. To deal with the distant world that is not available to my direct perception, "I" perceive a virtual version via words. And to deal with what is beyond my direct bodily reach, "I" operate on a virtual version via tools. By extending my consciousness further & further from my literal body, "I" create an extensible, remote, virtual world of concepts & abstractions and of action-at-a-distance.

Example: My virtual "I" is not immersed in the bloody death of an Iraqi child in the same all-consuming way that my body would experience it, holistically, if I were close enough to feel her wet gore spatter against my face. And the virtual "I" who uses tools of remote destruction to kill does not feel my bullets bursting the head of the unseen other.

And yet, for sanity, this virtual "I" MUST become as real as my literal me. For the sake of sanity, I & me must become one, must become whole, must become complete.

Response to Piet's Week 7 Commentary

Piet gave a brief analysis of what it means to explore the Working Hypothesis, and I'd like to comment further.

Holding the Working Hypothesis as hypothesis is indeed tricky. However, there are at least four realms of inquiry into consciousness that can give us some insight in how to go about it: [a] classic psychological introspection; [b] psychotherapy; [c] phenomenology; and [d] meditation. All four provide methods for working with consciousness in a systematic fashion, although only phenomenology and meditation seem to go directly to the core of the paradoxical aspect of consciousness.

[a] Introspection was the dominant form of psychological inquiry in the 19th Century, and resulted in masses of descriptions of introspective experience. Specific techniques were developed for avoiding personal assumptions about the nature of reality. Unfortunately the method fell by the wayside in the early 20th Century as Behavioral Psychology became the dominant method for psychological research.

[b] Psychotherapy in its myriad manifestations attempts to deal directly with the failure of consciousness to understand the hidden agendas that presumably lie below awareness. The greatest shortcoming of psychotherapy for exploring the WH is that it assumes human nature is inherently problematic rather than inherently complete. Specific techniques for self-analysis, however, are useful for our endeavor.

[c] Phenomenology proposes a method called "bracketing" in which one's assumptions about reality are temporarily set aside in order to allow a deeper reality to become evident. This method is potentially a very powerful tool for exploring consciousness, but, oddly, it has seldom been systematically applied. While there is a vast literature "about" phenomenology, there is very little that actually reports on the results of bracketing.

[d] Meditation, especially the Buddhist Vipassana school, proposes a method for exploring consciousness called "mindfulness." I think it has great possibility for exploring the WH in a systematic, direct fashion while being sensitive to the paradox of consciousness, so I'll describe it more detail. Vipassana means insight, clear-seeing, or seeing deeply, and although the method is simple it's also counter-intuitive. During meditation, when your mind launches into a trip of its own, you simply note it as a fact without comment or judgment. In short order, whatever your mind has latched onto will disappear and something else will arise in its place. You simply observe the arising and the disappearing of all sensations, thoughts & images, and emotions without comment or judgment. Of particular importance is to be aware of any affective judgments attached to those sensations, thoughts & images, and emotions. Do they feel good, bad, or indifferent? With practice you can dissociate your sensations, et cetera, from affective judgment and observe them free from the subjectivity of desire or aversion. You are now practicing mindfulness: Being aware of your awareness.

Intuitively, I've been using aspects of all these techniques to explore the WH. There are no doubt other useful techniques, but these seem to capture the "scientific" nature of our exploration while at the same time allowing me to delve deeply into the paradox of consciousness.

... from Rod