The Radical Nature of the Working Hypothesis #1

January 2008 (Piet & Steven)

Piet begins:

In talking about the working hypothesis, wh for short, the most difficult thing to convey is its totally radical nature. We discussed that today in our WoK Forums meeting in the virtual world of Qwaq. Let me summarize the main points that I made there:

1. There is a black-and-white distinction between seeing and knowing

We can know a lot about reality, like an expert who knows a lot about different genres of movies and many historical details of movies that have been made. But seeing is different: using the movie metaphor, it is like switching your attention from the movie to the projector. What does it take to look back at the projector? This question leads to:

2. There is a multi-dimensional continuum in the way people are able to see and know.

I think that everyone has had some glimpses of what it is like to see, beyond mere knowing. However, in our culture seeing is no longer one of the recognized abilities or activities. Lacking a framework in which to store memories of our glimpses, we tend to forget them or misremember them. They become pleasant memories or perhaps poetic images. Everyone is different in the way they deal with those glimpses and possibly deeper and longer lasting insights. Those who are particularly apt have traditionally been labeled as holy, saintly, enlightened, etc., depending on their surrounding culture, but such labels are rather misleading. Anyone has the innate possibility to see, but not everyone is aware of that, which leads to:

3. There is a clear distinction between having sensed/felt that ultimately all is well and having not had that sense.

When we do remember these glimpses, and have found ways to refer to them, perhaps relive them in new ways but in any case have learned enough from them, we get a distinct hint that `all is well', or `all is complete' in such a thorough way that we cannot possibly describe it in the usual terms of language. This may become a clear realization, or it may stay for a long time as a hint. While the intensity and clarity of the hint is variable, it seems to me that there is a pretty clear distinction, at any given moment, between those who have gotten such a hint, and thereby have an idea of what it is we are trying to talk about, and those who have not.

I hope that in our WoK community we can learn together to help each other to feel/sense the difference in the third point above. We can do this partly through exploring exercises and techniques, and partly through in-depth discussions of all three points. In this way we can explore the possibilities of doing real research with the wh, in a way that is similar to how research is done in science, by using experiment and theory to complement each other.

Steven's reply:

I understand what you mean in your first point above. I'd be happy to claim that "seeing" and "knowing" can be synonyms in this "completeness" context. Seeing true completeness is the same as knowing it. That is stated explicitly in the traditions that emphasize this "completeness" notion. The Sanskrit, Tibetan etc. terms involved are primarily about "knowing". And the highest or truest form of completeness is not actually seen or known by anybody, or via an act of seeing or cognizing which takes it as an object. Speaking crudely, and somewhat problematically, completeness is rather self-knowing/seeing. Anyway, the point you're making concerns contrasting ordinary knowledge "about" something, with actually seeing it directly ... you and I have both used the example of living for a while in a certain city vs merely reading or hearing about it.

This same sort of distinction applies to higher knowing/seeing, which is certainly not much like ordinary seeing, and even less like ordinary knowing (information-gathering). So your sketch is indeed central to our WoK project. I too hope we will at least be able to make some sincere attempts at trying various likely approaches to "seeing" completeness, then evaluating them in a careful manner, and moving on to other, better approaches.

If this experiment plays out like more traditional contemplative ones have over the centuries, "what gets in the way" of ordinary and advanced levels of seeing completeness may apply to everyone. It would be nice if the same proves true on the positive side, the ways in which we gain hints and intuitions about completeness in ordinary life--that would help us all zero in quickly on new types of exercises that engender relevant intuitions. But even if this positive side proves more idiosyncratic, regular interactions, frank discussions and some precision about what is being experienced can probably lead to common ground and accelerating clarity on both the negative and positive fronts. The one thing I'm sure of is that it will take real work on a daily basis, noticing and questioning what is usually taken for granted.

Applying your comments to our WoK explorations themselves, we can't rest content with using WoK as a way to just gain knowledge (to merely hear about things), we have to take a big extra step. "Seeing" then is possible, and means not just seeing something new or novel, but also seeing directly and explicitly what we usually know or think, and thereby leaving some room for something new to come forward without being blocked. This is a point you have made in the past with regard to comparisons with Husserlian phenomenology (which recommends a deliberate epoché, suspension). I'm not sure whether what's needed here will be the same as in the phenomenology case, or only vaguely related.

Piet's reply:

Thank you for your further clarification of the first point that I mentioned, the distinction between nonconceptual seeing/knowing and conceptual knowing. The problem with describing that distinction is that such a description itself necessarily takes place on the knowing level. A description can only be a pointer to what goes beyond concepts. It is like the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. At first, one cannot help but look at the finger, and the question is how to use the finger as a guide to find out how to look at the moon.

Some people, me in the past included, are likely to take such a finger-moon description and run with it in a type of romantic intuition that reality must be something like that. Others have a more skeptical attitude, are perhaps interested enough to be willing to test such a description but remain rather critical and unconvinced. For people in either group, the traditional next step was to spend a few years full-time to engage in contemplative practicies, in order to check for oneself what the truth of the first point above really is.

In our case, we are promoting a possible short-cut, the use of the working hypothesis (wh). We should talk more about what the wh is, and how we can work with it, but before getting into all that, I would like to start with a reflection on the so very radical nature of the wh.

It seems to me that taking a shortcut demands more insight and intuition of where one is going than the traditional alternative of simply following a standard contemplative path. Without having a living sense of what is so radical about the wh, there may be little point in trying to work with it.

The challenge we are facing is that on the one hand we want to make clear that there is a gap between real seeing and conceptual knowledge, and yet we do not want to imply that there are just two kinds of people, those who see and those who don't. That is my second point, that there is a continuum in abilities and realizations. But even so, we do want to imply that some people have had at least a conscious glimpse while others have not, or at least don't consciously remember having had such a glimpse.

Hence my three points: a dichotomy between two forms of knowing; a continuum in individual intimacy with the nonconceptual form; and yet another dichotomy in whether or not that latter form has been consciously encountered and remembered.

I wonder whether you are of the same opinion, and if so, what implications you think this has for our attempts to make the wh accessible.

Steven's reply:

Speaking in the most general way, a description is always interpreted, and the level of resultant understanding or knowing follows from that. Contemplative texts read by a master have a very different meaning than they would to a beginner … they don’t have to remain restricted to the ordinary knowing level. The statements written on the page remain ordinary words and “pointers” of course, since there is always a difference between word and reality. Anyway, I take your real concern here to be with the WoK working hypothesis (“WH”) and how to use the pointers contained in its formulation to go beyond ordinary knowledge, to “seeing.”

Your last wiki piece made your interest in the three-part framework you described much more clear to me. Thanks. And you are surely right in saying that turning to a radical shortcut compared to the old step-by-step traditional practice must involve tradeoffs: for one, the wh explorers must have some special qualifying capacities to make this direct approach work.

As for the part of your framework that locates these special qualifications in the domain of a participant’s prior or present intuitions etc., I cannot say. It would be good to hear more about what this would really mean, and practically-speaking how you would tell in a given case, and how you would then address and work with these intuitions in our VR forums.

The main prerequisite that I’m sure people need is to have the Completeness nature to which the wh refers. (In Buddhism this is simply called the Buddha nature.) Fortunately, everyone does. And they also need capacity, aptitude, readiness. (And sustained hard work etc.) Whether they also need explicit or unconscious or once-experienced but forgotten experiences of a special sort, is more controversial.

Of course, the self-selecting nature of human activity probably means that people who satisfy the last mentioned requirement will probably be more likely to seek and undertake WH. It's important when learning something new to have a proper background of related knowledge and experience, to facilitate taking on an otherwise-elusive next step. But it's hard to know how far this principle must be insisted upon. If taken too far, it may imply infinite regress.

I think rather what people need is an endowed nature and appropriate interactions with the right kind of environment, leading to new knowledge and then further steps, etc.. There are traditional contemplative and yogic training regimens based on this view, but unfortunately they do take a fair amount of time. If instead we are looking for a shortcut, we may also be (inadvertently?) requiring special qualifications of the participants --- i.e., those who satisfy your requirements of already having an insight or an intuition regarding that which the working hypothesis is pointing out.

This latter is an ancient idea --- Plato floated it in his claims that we must already have knowledge and just need to remember it. But his account never worked very well, since it stretches the notion of "already having" and "memory" to the point of either being unworkable or not very meaningful. It's basically an esoteric comment, using ordinary terms. So I need further help to see a way to use this three-part framework you mention to aid actual use of WH, or to improve on an apparently more vague notion of "capacity" as the real prerequisite.

Of course we will always want to draw on knowledge the participants already have, and bring that out more as a bridge to the WH-level. But with most people this quickly becomes more like a traditional step-by-step approach to new levels of knowledge, retrenching until we get clear traction on some basic level that's concrete to the participant, and then going forward. I am always very keen to use this approach in my own teaching, with regard to more accessible levels of insight... the challenge is to jump right in with it on the level of WH and go on from there.

If you do want to just rely on appeal to existing WH-level intuitions, that might work very well for a few special people, somewhat well for somewhat special people, a tiny bit for a very large group, etc.. That just leaves the implementation details regarding identifying the people and also their particular relevant knowledge, and then proceeding somehow. (See my earlier questions about meaning and practical use.)

Regarding WH, I had in mind an alternate approach based on explicitly landing on, seeing, and Stopping our ordinary lived views, thus exposing the WH-alternative. (Discussing what I mean by my pet term Stopping would take a book rather than a short wiki piece, so I'll leave that for the moment.) This is why I mentioned your experience with the epoché-suspension in my previous wiki piece.

This latter approach appeals to a different framework, not requiring that people have ever necessarily “had” experiences or insights associated with the WH level. It only requires capacity for seeing what they're up to now. Like your approach, this too is a strong requirement: most people find it very difficult. Anyway, this is my own version of what you're calling a special form of seeing.

Whichever approach we follow, I think we have to give everyone the benefit of the doubt and just go ahead. And this could very well mean inviting "recollection" of previous relevant insights, as long as we don't push too hard on this or take it too literally along the lines of what Plato described. But an even more important cornerstone is simply aiding more direct encounters with whatever is actually present and operative in people's minds, "now", even if --- or especially if --- it contradicts WH! (This is apparently a contrast to the intuition-based approach you describe.)

This kind of WH-denying experience is very easy to come by, in almost everyone, all the time. So I prefer to work with that. But as you and I both emphasize, the main issue is still to see.

(And as I said at the outset, I would love to hear more about how you would actually use the positive-intuition emphasis and three-part framework you've been describing.)

Piet's reply:

You have brought up many important points, and I am glad to see us getting closer in defining what it is we want to address here. I am happy to take each of your points as a topic to delve into more, but before doing so, let me make sure that we see eye to eye with respect to the main question I have been struggling: how to describe the totally radical nature of the wh. What is so radical about the wh?

Here is the problem. We can summarize our interest in the wh as a clear story that has appeal to a wide group of intellectuals, scientists and humanists with various backgrounds, but the danger is that the real point, the radical nature of the wh, will be missed. Or we can act more like zen teachers, saying rather little while we keep hammering on the `totally other' nature of the wh in contrast to all other discourse.

I see this as a central problem for us. My preference would be to make at least some kind of contact on the `zen' level first, trying to make sure what it is we are dealing with, but then to have dialogues more on the `intellectual' level to give everyone a chance to come on board, so to speak, and to compare notes.

So at the same time I want to stress the otherness of the wh, separated through a huge gap from the usual conceptual thinking, and I also want to stress the possibility of continuity in discourse, starting with a more intellectual approach and gradually shifting gears to begin talking more about what lies at the other side of the divide.

In short: talking too much about the gap gives an impression of a two-island picture, which is misleading (ordinary world vs. something esoteric), while talking too much about continuity may let people overlook the radical core of the wh completely.

Do you also see this question, of how to present the radical nature of the wh, as a conundrum? And if so, how do you prefer us to approach it? Talking about `waking up,' perhaps, or your `Stopping,' or …?

Steven's reply:

I agree that the issue of balance between the two extremes you describe is central. As for preserving the radical nature of WH, the process I mentioned of targeting all experiences and assumptions that deny WH would be consistent with your own priorities, if it were done by emphasizing these actual contrary views’ immediacy, the way they are held in the moment by the mind, with an undue heedless commitment. Otherwise, the approach would be something other than what I meant: it would be “less radical”.