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21st century spirituality
October 2009 
Enactivism, Integral Theory, and 21st Century Spirituality
Balder
Prologue
I sit in the coffee shop, the bass pulse of the radio beating like a second heart in my chest, the notes of the song skittering through the architecture of my limbs - warm pulses, limpid blooms of light behind my eyes as they close softly and I lift up word clusters in the resonant field of my attention. Enactivism. Integral Theory. 21st century spirituality. Each notion is a field in itself, and just sounding these words aloud calls up fleeting, complexly layered associations and images that flash momentarily like the jeweled sides of fish breaking the surface of a river, and then drop again into the invitingly deep and indeterminate bed of my body.
As I repeat the words of the title of this symposium to myself, trying to coax the jeweled sides of each to flash a moment in this morning's sun, wondering how the light from each will play with the others, I find myself engaged in an act that can only be called magical - an invocation of unruly presences, an unpredictable enactment. I am aware that whatever I write today will not be the "truth," in the sense of simple correspondence; it is not simply an uncovering of "what is there," but an evocation of "what can be." And the others in this symposium will be doing something similar throughout this week: a mapping that is not simple disclosure, but creative enactment, a movement which invites of us to ride, whole-bodied, on the burgeoning crest of the future infinitive.
Background (Structural Coupling)
I first learned about the enactive paradigm in July of 1995. I know this because a sticker on my copy of The Embodied Mind has the date of purchase printed on it. At the time, I had recently returned to the US after living in Asia for four years, and I recall the book calling out to me from its prominent display on a shelf at an Austin bookseller. It promised an integration between Western and Eastern knowledge that I had come to see as essential, after having spent a number of years studying and practicing at monasteries and meditation centers in Southeast Asia, India, and Nepal:
The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience. The authors argue that only by having a sense of common ground between mind in science and mind in experience can our understanding of cognition be more complete. Toward that end, they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate it in relation to other traditions such as phenomenology and psychoanalysis.
This was music to my ears. Particularly inspired by the dialogues between Krishnamurti and Western thinkers such as David Bohm, Dr. David Shainberg, and others, I had become very interested in the potential for Western disciplines to be enriched by Eastern contemplative perspectives and practices. I also recalled having watched a dialogue between Krishnamurti and a young Francisco Varela, in which the latter seemed to run circles around K, so I was very interested to learn more about his views.
When I first read the book, I did not yet fully appreciate its import, particularly in relation to postmodern epistemology, but it started me on a path of research that led eventually to Integral Theory and the works of Ken Wilber. This in turn led to an exploration of a number of the sources that informed his Integral vision - an exploration which, for me, is ongoing.
In this essay, I would like to look at some of the essential features of the enactive paradigm, including the Integral reformulation of enactive principles, and consider their implications for an embodied, transformative modern spirituality. Each of the topics in the title is rich and multi-faceted, as I mentioned above, so in these reflections, I will only be evoking a small portion of their potential for interaction and mutual enaction; I will rely on others to explore other potentials, with the aim not only to voice a plurality of perspectives, but to invite creative integration and embodiment of shared spiritual vision.
In particular, I plan to talk briefly about the enactive paradigm, and then to explore the themes of imagination, transformation, groundlessness, and integrative pluralism in relation to enactivism, Integral Theory, and 21st century spirituality.
Enactivism
What exactly is the enactive paradigm? In its original, narrower sense, it is a model of embodied cognition that was first articulated by Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. In the context of cognitive science, the notion of embodied cognition has been proposed as a "middle way" between what we might call the Myth of the Given (representationism) and the Myth of the Framework (solipsism or constructivism). According to the enactive paradigm, the representationist perspective is naïve and no longer can be sustained. Using the example of color perception research, for instance, Varela, Lakoff, and other cognitive scientists point out that color is not a quality that exists "out there" in the world; it is not an observer-independent, objective quality of things-in-themselves. Rather, it is a particular experiential domain that emerges through the interaction of our color cones, our neural circuitry, our embodied history of structural coupling (our particular evolutionary trajectory in time and co-determinative relationship with our environment), the reflective properties of objects, and electromagnetic radiation. Our words do not point to observer-independent, self-existing objects, unrelated to our activity in the world; our categories do not simply reflect what is already there. On the other hand, however, the enactive paradigm also rejects the extreme of constructivism or the Myth of the Framework - the idea that reality is entirely observer-generated, that it is wholly the product of our subjectivity. The experience of color cannot be accounted for simply on the basis of culture; while cultural elements may influence the experience of color, biological and environmental factors also come into play and cannot be meaningfully bracketed out of the picture.
According to the enactive paradigm, the world for any organism is best understood, not as a pre-given reality which the observer passively and more or less accurately reflects, but as an historically emergent domain of distinctions enacted by sensorimotor involvement with its wider environment.
To unpack this a little further, I will briefly describe four key points which Varela uses to summarize the major claims of the enactive paradigm.
- Cognition is enactively embodied: co-determination of inner/outer
- Cognition is enactively emergent: co-determination of neural elements (local) and cognitive subject (global)
- Cognition is generatively enactive: co-determination of Me-Other
- Consciousness is ontologically complex: co-determination of first- and third-person descriptions
In simple terms, Varela is pointing out that the mind is not simply in the head, but rather that cognition and cognitive worlds unfold through our sensorimotor involvement with our environments - that inside and outside, subjective and objective are co-determining and co-arising. Second, the mind, while inseparable from our neural architecture and our embodied action, is an emergent global process which not only depends on these local elements but which may, in turn, act on or affect these processes. Varela draws two corollaries from this point which will be relevant later, so I will quote him here:
If you put together key point one and key point two, embodiment and emergence, [the first corollary is that] the mind is fundamentally a matter of imagination and fantasy. In other words, it's the internal activity of these rich emergent properties, plus the fact that you have an ongoing coupling that forms the core of what the mind is. The mind is not about representing some kind of state of affairs. The mind is about constantly secreting this coherent reality that constitutes a world, the coherence of the organizing through the local-global transitions. Stated in other words, perception is as imaginary as imagination is perception-based.
The third point is essentially the point of intersubjectivity: cognition is not only embodied or emergent, it is intersubjectively generated. Drawing on the work of Daniel Stern and other researchers, Varela argues that this mind is that mind - that subject and object distinctions arise out of a pre-reflective, empathic-affective ground. An important consequence of this point is the recognition of the importance of loving care in the enactment of healthy neural architecture and subjective organization in young infants.
The last point, as Varela summarizes it, is that consciousness is a public affair. By this he means that consciousness is open, not only to external, third-person exploration via the methodologies of neuroscience and cognitive science, but also to careful, systematic first-person exploration via various contemplative disciplines. His proposal here is an approach he calls neurophenomenology: the integration of first- and third-person approaches to the study of consciousness.
The territory of concern covered by the above points is already suggestive of the Integral / AQAL framework, so I will turn to that model briefly before discussing the relevance of the enactive paradigm to modern spirituality.
Integral Theory
In Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, Wilber expresses his admiration for the enactive paradigm, recognizing it as a valid attempt to integrate left- and right-hand (subjective and objective) domains in a coherent scientific model. He agrees with the refutation of representationism or objectivism that it represents, and points out that he is therefore careful, when discussing the territory of the Integral map, to describe phenomena as being called forth or enacted by particular perspectives rather than simply disclosed.
However, he regards Varela's enactivism as a partial enactivism - functioning, for instance, with still somewhat of a biologistic bias, and failing to take full account of the dialogical understanding afforded by Lower Left, postmodern paradigms. While agreeing that the recognition of the sensorimotor enactment of cognition is indeed an important advancement in knowledge, he believes that Varela's model remains "mired in the sensorimotor."
Wilber's amendment to the enactive paradigm is to extend it into the four quadrants, suggesting that subjective, objective, intersubjective, and interobjective domains tetra-enact - that they are co-determining and co-arising. In the points above, Varela comes close to this picture, but in his writings, he still tends to describe the "interiors" of subjects in third-person, scientific language, not yet "embodying" in his work the full range of perspectives that are available (and which he acknowledges in theory).
In my view, the recognition of the tetra-enactivity of the four quadrants in Integral Theory transforms the theory from its Cartesian function as a rational, representational map (pun intended) to an enactive symbol-system, a psychoactive agent, an embodied operator which awakens me to the co-presence and co-determination of these fields in my lived body. Just reflecting on this subject this morning had me inhabiting my body differently. There is a feeling of opening which does not erase boundaries or render them meaningless, but which nevertheless leaves them translucent and calls attention to the creative enactment of experience which echoes and embodies a particular lineage of appearance while also opening into the novel, the new. The horizons that this view opens may not be entirely clear yet, so I will return to this notion below when I discuss the promise of an integrative pluralism.
Imagination and Transformation
Drawing both on neuro-imaging studies and the implications of his enactive paradigm, Varela argues for the central role of imagination and metaphor in human cognition and perception. This perspective is echoed by Lakoff and Johnson, in their seminal work, Philosophy in the Flesh. According to the latter, cognition is not only embodied but rooted in metaphors of embodiment, in image schemas which derive from our sensorimotor engagement with an environment. One consequence of this view is that reason can no longer be envisioned as abstract, ethereal, or disembodied; it is, in fact, a subtle-level, higher order dance of the body in lived space. But the consequence that concerns me here is one explored in some depth by Francisco Varela and Natalie Depraz in the essay, Imagining: Embodiment, Phenomenology, and Transformation. The argument that they develop is too involved for this essay, exploring the neurological and phenomenological dimensions of imagination in some depth, but the essential point is easy to state: imagination, as a shaper of perception and motor actions and the means by which we on-goingly (locally, evolutionarily) secrete worlds, exists at an important cross-roads and can serve as a powerful mediator of self-transformation.
As mentioned above, Varela argues that cognition, as a global, enactively emergent phenomenon, is capable of downward causative action and influence: "the large-scale integrative state that underlies a moment of nowness is capable of accessing any local neural processes." It is in this context that Varela and Depraz explore various meditative disciplines, particularly Vajrayana or Tantric practices which employ sophisticated imagery and imaginal processes in the service of self-transformation. Imagination, they argue, is a sort of mixed object which traverses material and experiential domains without boundary or gap; and in this context, Buddhist practices such as the ngondro, Tantric visualization, or tonglen, are both intelligible and powerful examples of mind-body know-how.
This is a rich topic, and I invite interested readers to explore it with me in the comments section below. For now, I will quote a relevant passage from TSK literature which I think speaks effectively to these concerns:
One way to make the transition from conceptual knowledge to knowledge active in our being is to draw on the power of imagination. Imagination engages us at the level of our experience. It allows us to conceive a different reality.To imagine a world in which reality depends on constructs does not mean retreating into fantasy. Instead, it means entering that world, with its prevailing logic and its presupposed order, as fully as we can. Can we allow the governing vision of our present way of being to unfold within us? Can we savor its subtle blend of flavors? Can we explore from that perspective the ways in which we conduct our lives?
...From the moment we imagine our way into the heart of our own being, the limits on our knowledge begin to lose their hold. It is not a matter of discovering secret knowledge or arriving at revolutionary insights. We simply find it available to us to imagine that what has been constructed could be constructed differently. With that simple move, the past and its structures, the self and its identities, no longer bind us so tightly. The gateways of the possible open to a new way of knowing.
To imagine fully that we conduct our own reality into being is to imagine the power of imagination, and thus to multiply that power. Imagination discloses that we are free to shape appearance and to choose how we respond to what appears. Once we accept that we are already at home in this new world, and that we are actually exercising our creative freedom in each moment, we can take responsibility for a knowledge that has been available always (Visions of Knowledge, Tarthang Tulku).
Groundlessness
A recurrent theme in Varela's work is the discovery of groundlessness. Similarly, one of the implications of Integral post-metaphysics is that the Kosmos is, in an important way, groundless: that the given ground, at any given point, is still a perspective, and therefore not really given at all. At any stage in our development and understanding, we may work to "ground" ourselves in the knowledge available, mastering and masterfully employing the models at our disposal and the tools they provide, and this is indeed a wise use of our energy, but we should also recognize the inherent vulnerability and instability of the ground they establish. Other perspectives will always arise to challenge our own; the evolution of knowledge in time will eventually undermine or overturn our founding stories. If we mistake our beliefs and models and convictions for solid, inviolable ground, we will find ourselves called again and again to defend the territory we have claimed, and upon which our felt sense of identity rests.
As an alternative to this conventional definition of being grounded, I propose that a grounded approach is one which is intimate with the living knowledgeability of Being, the open-ended knowingness which is the creative ground for all particularized acts of knowledge and all individual knowledge claims, and which in its spaciousness accommodates the multiplicity of perspectives which enact our self-world horizons. In practical terms, this means having reached the point, through sustained inquiry, that one recognizes this knowingness, this open clarity, not as an ideal, not as a position to be adopted, but as the actuality of being. Because this knowing is foundational, being grounded means being open to what is, in and as its presencing, in uncontrived intimacy.
Perhaps surprisingly, when one first enters deeply into this, the realization of this groundlessness is simultaneously a deepening in embodied presence - greater intimacy with its living field.
In terms of state training, this involves realizing and stabilizing in the spontaneous clarity of non-positioned knowing. In terms of philosophical perspectives, it may mean recognition of the postmodern truths of constructivism and contextualism, or a profound (AQAL) grasp of co-dependent origination. In terms of moral grounding, it may involve recognizing the wisdom of insecurity or growing comfortable with uncertainty (to borrow from two popular book titles which address the question of groundlessness).
Integrative Pluralism
The last point I wanted to make in relation to this topic - admittedly only sparsely explored in this essay - is the implications of the enactive paradigm for our understanding of religious traditions and the horizons of transformation and realization that they trace out. Because the day is almost done and I have yet to post my essay or properly kick off this symposium, I will only touch on this briefly here.
In his book, Revisioning Transpersonal Theory, Jorge Ferrer draws upon enactive and postmodern theory to articulate a participatory vision of spirituality. In many respects, his proposal is quite similar to Wilber's model, particularly as he has expressed it in his most recent writings. In Ferrer's view, the perennialist worldview is caught in the Myth of the Given, and the contextualist view is caught in the Myth of the Framework. It is appropriate neither to posit a pre-given, underlying spiritual reality waiting simply to be disclosed by independent observers, nor to argue that that spiritual realities are wholly culturally or linguistically determined, without any objective basis.
I find this view to be generally consonant with Integral Post-metaphysics (though the details of his argument vary from it, stopping short of what Wilber believes is essential). But the point in common is this: to an important extent, the spiritual horizons traced by different traditions, the liberative potentials and the spiritual, transrational phenomena, are best understood as creative enactments, not simply as pre-existing spiritual domains or conditions "uncovered" by contemplation or other means.
As we explore the promise of the enactive paradigm for 21st century spirituality, I believe this insight will have lasting value, allowing us to explore spiritual traditions and practices in terms of their enactive potential, rather than in terms of their propositional truth value or the validity of their metaphysical claims. No commitment to otherwordly realities is required; but neither should we cling blindly to, or simply accept as pre-given, our models of this world.
We are invited, instead, to step full bodied, open-eyed, into the burgeoning stream of our evolutionary unfolding, with all our faculties - body, senses, reason, imagination, and awareness - open and intact.
Access: Public
(Deep Bow to Bruce)
Bruce you have schooled me tremendously on Varela's (and others') work with this essay, especially in terms of putting it into a wider context.
I resonated deeply with this: “… explore spiritual traditions and practices in terms of their enactive potential, rather than in terms of their propositional truth value or the validity of their metaphysical claims. No commitment to otherwordly realities is required; but neither should we cling blindly to, or simply accept as pre-given, our models of this world. ”
Beautiful.
I hit a brick wall with this:
“…As an alternative to this conventional definition of being grounded, I propose that a grounded approach is one which is intimate with the living knowledgeability of Being, the open-ended knowingness which is the creative ground for all particularized acts of knowledge and all individual knowledge claims, and which in its spaciousness accommodates the multiplicity of perspectives which enact our self-world horizons. In practical terms, this means having reached the point, through sustained inquiry, that one recognizes this knowingness, this open clarity, not as an ideal, not as a position to be adopted, but as the actuality of being. Because this knowing is foundational, being grounded means being open to what is, in and as its presencing, in uncontrived intimacy.”
Can you say this in a different way?
Thank You!
(Now how do I follow that?)
Hi, James, thank you. I'm glad you got something out of it; I had been struggling with it because the muse is apparently on vacation. (Maybe she's hanging out with one of you??)
Rereading the paragraph where you got stuck, I think I can understand why. I will come back and try it again a little later this evening.
Best wishes,
Balder
Had to come back and say what a great insight / image this is:
“…reason can no longer be envisioned as abstract, ethereal, or disembodied; it is, in fact, a subtle-level, higher order dance of the body in lived space. ”
Great stuff.
Cool!
A point I wanted to stress, but I don't know if I stressed it enough (or clearly enough) is that this move towards immanence, towards embodiment, is also a move towards a form of release or freedom.
That may need some unpacking too…
B.
Bruce…awesome…
as i read quickly through it the first time…i was just trying to get a general outline of
what you were proposing in my head, and to make a few mental landmarks that i knew i wanted to come back to and address with serious attention…
while playing the song that you listened to, i could actually get a sense of what you were feeling in your opening paragraph…which was beautifully articulated i might add…the words you chose resonated, and were quiet poetically instrumented…
an invocation of unruly presences, an unpredictable enactment. I am aware that whatever i write today will not be the “truth,” in the sense of simple correspondence; it is not simply an uncovering of “what is there,” but an evocation of “what can be.”
i found this to be an awesome expression of the very potential of our true nature…which i too have found not to be something that is necessarily a 'concrete' truth…but one that is open, not to fantasy or 'magical' thinking…but to use a phrase coined by Julian…it is an ongoing experience of the 'magic of the real'…or to use your term,
“creative enactment” a movement which invites of us to ride, whole-bodied, on the burgeoning crest of the future infinitive.
YES…
your section on enactivism was a teaser, for me…this is an area that i would like to understand in more depth…scientifically…and would love for you to give an example of it experientially…would like for you to go into more detail on this…please…specifically in regards to how cognition and cognitive worlds unfold through sensorimoter involvement with our environments…i think the readers, including myself, would relate more efficiently if you were to include with your scientific examples more personified examples…
the global and public affairs were totally lost on me…but i plan to google some terms, and see if i can better understand what you are talking about…i think i know…but not jelling with the terminology…(i know, i know…that's on me…lol)
There is a feeling of opening which does not erase boundaries or render them meaningless, but which nevertheless leaves them translucent and calls attention to the creative enactment of experience which echoes and embodies a particular lineage of appearance while also opening into the novel, the new.
this resonates deeply with me…and i have a sneaking suspicion, that although i am not
understanding all the technical and scientific terms…i do understand when you speak of it in experiential terms…it is immediately understood…again, that 'magic of the real' thing…
in regards to what you wrote concerning transformation…in my experience, this was mind play…and not at all necessary because there is nothing to transform in actuality….if you can practice maintaining that deep presence of awareness, and stabilizing that state, then illusion self-liberates…
i do agree that the knowledge has always been available…but it is not a concrete knowledge…and it is only relevant as it relates to this moment, of timeless simultaneous being…
At any stage in our development and understanding, we may work to “ground” ourselves in the knowledge available, mastering and masterfully employing the models at our disposal and the tools they provide, and this is indeed a wise use of our energy, but we should also recognize the inherent vulnerability and instability of the ground they establish. Other perspectives will always arise to challenge our own; the evolution of knowledge in time will eventually undermine or overturn our founding stories. If we mistake our beliefs and models and convictions for solid, inviolable ground, we will find ourselves called again and again to defend the territory we have claimed, and upon which our felt sense of identity rests.
i agree wholeheartedly with this…nuff said…lol
that one recognizes this knowingness, this open clarity, not as an ideal, not as a position to be adopted, but as the actuality of being. Because this knowing is foundational, being grounded means being open to what is, in and as its presencing, in uncontrived intimacy.
this too was beautifully stated…
it may involve recognizing the wisdom of insecurity or growing comfortable with uncertainty
this has been my experiencing…once free from the cage, you recognize the first as it becomes the second…
We are invited, instead, to step full bodied, open-eyed, into the burgeoning stream of our evolutionary unfolding, with all our faculties - body, senses, reason, imagination, and awareness - open and intact.
this is also brilliantly put…however…i am not in total agreement with the word evolutionary here…unless you mean it in a global sense?…
very excellent my friend…i enjoyed reading it, and responding to it…thumbs up!
always…star…
Thanks for this, Bruce.
Where did you find that video of Varela and Krishnamurti you mentioned? I'd really like to see that!
I didn't come across The Embodied Mind until 2006 while taking a course in mental representation back at UCF. It was not part of the required reading, but the professor teaching the class recommended it to me as an example of an up and coming paradigm outside the representational school of thought. He (Mason Cash) had heard of it from another professor at my school, Shawn Gallagher, who worked with Varela just prior to his death in 2001. I had read a lot of Wilber's work prior to this, and didn't initially remember his brief mentions of Varela in the body of SES, nor the extended note concerning enactivism in the back of the book. When I realized the connection, I began reading a lot more of Varela's, and subsequently Maturana's work. I am aware of Wilber's qualifications of enactivism, but I'm going to take a slightly different path than you did in respect to who needs to be recontextualized by who in my essay next week.
The groundlessness of our enacted worlds is key, and is really where I think rationalism (the ideology, as distinct from the faculty of rationality) comes up short. The dualism between perception and reality seems commonsensical enough, but upon further scrutiny, it just doesn't hold water. It works well as an abstraction, as a way of teasing out certain distinctions. But when we try to make it into a foundation for the way we gather knowledge about reality, we end up ignoring much ambiguity and asserting too many certainties. Varela borrows Richard Bernstein's phrase “Cartesian anxiety” to refer to the state of mind that is so uncomfortable with the idea of a reality without a fixed essence. As Alan Watts put it, there is indeed a certain wisdom to being at home despite insecurity…
Thanks again, Bruce. We're off to a great start!
-Matt
yea i want to see varela dancing circles around KM, especially after the video you posted of him continuously interrupting trungpa with his wonderfully superior manner… :O)
i had a little time to read your piece earlier - but just got back from working and will have moire of a chance to respond after dinner or in the morning….
thanks for getting it up - it looks great!
can i just say that is f*ckin awesome that you linked the song you were hearing - way to evoke and embodied experience of your piece and transmit a layered communique…
may i recommend that all readers at least try reading the piece at least once with the song playing…
it creates a powerful emotional connection for me to the sense of you in that surround working on your contribution…. super cool!
Signing back on, I'm glad to see your piece! Going to begin reading now…
first of all if this:
“I sit in the coffee shop, the bass pulse of the radio beating like a second heart in my chest, the notes of the song skittering through the architecture of my limbs - warm pulses, limpid blooms of light behind my eyes as they close softly and I lift up word clusters in the resonant field of my attention. Enactivism. Integral Theory. 21st century spirituality. Each notion is a field in itself, and just sounding these words aloud calls up fleeting, complexly layered associations and images that flash momentarily like the jeweled sides of fish breaking the surface of a river, and then drop again into the invitingly deep and indeterminate bed of my body.”
is how you write with an absent muse - i think i could use a little lack of inspiration myself…. ;o)
bravo!
even at 1/2 strength this is by far my most favorite piece of writing from you bruce….
maybe its the evocative style, maybe its the fact that you are unpacking something you have very much wanted me to hear for like two years - how satisfying, on both counts!
maybe its your fluid command of the multiple ideas you are cross-referencing here…
toward the end i really hear the kindred nature of our passions/visions - i especially resonate with your last two paragraphs.
i know this is a missing piece you have pointed out to me on many occasions and now understand more deeply where you were coming from and what you were trying to challenge in my (perhaps unexamined) philosophical underpinnings…. right on!
very instructive.
i will save any of my reservations about the ideas themselves until i have had a chance to think more, read more and benefit from james' and adam's responses to you, and from dining on what i am sure will be a very exciting and substantive set of reflections from the boy-wonder…
:-) Thanks, J.
To briefly answer your and Matt's question about the K & Varela video, I don't think it's available online, but Varela appears in a 3-part video series called Brain Seminar: Conversations with J.Krishnamurti. I watched it while working at the K school in India. I expect copies would be available from the Krishnamurti Foundation of America.
Hi, Starlight, thank you for your comments.
You asked: your section on enactivism was a teaser, for me…this is an area that i would like to understand in more depth…scientifically…and would love for you to give an example of it experientially…would like for you to go into more detail on this…please…specifically in regards to how cognition and cognitive worlds unfold through sensorimoter involvement with our environments…i think the readers, including myself, would relate more efficiently if you were to include with your scientific examples more personified examples…
Varela gives an example of an experiment done with two kittens, in which both were placed in baskets and moved regularly around a room soon after they were born. One kitten was kept with its legs tucked up into the basket, but the other was allowed to have its legs stick out so it could “walk” as the basket was moved around. For the kitten with the free legs, which allowed for sensorimotor activity to be coupled with its perception, it developed normally. For the one kept tucked in the basket, it developed as though it were blind – failing to identify objects, bumping into things, falling off of ledges.
Varela argues that the conclusion we can draw from this experiment is that the sense of space arises out of movement – not just passive movement, but sensorimotor (embodied) engagement with the environment. Now, obviously, the fact that the kitten bumps into things and falls off of ledges suggests that there really are things there; the “immobility” of the kitten in its upbringing, and the impact this has on its perception of the world, doesn't result in the kitten living in a world in which there is nothing to bump into or fall off of. As I stated in the essay, the perspective being offered here is not mere subjectivism or constructivism. Rather, the point here is that mind is embodied, and that outside and inside are co-implicated and co-determined; the “world” for us grows out of our ongoing, embodied activity, a creatively emergent product of our acts and negotiations.
Jeremy Hayward comments:
The middle path sees the organism channeling out a world, much as snow melting in the springtime channels out a pathway down the mountain. The path that the organism forges is broadly determined by constraints that are mutually arrived at by the organism's past interactions with the environment. The origin of knowledge resembles, in Varela's terms, “a tinkering, a dynamic sculpturing.” Varela concludes, “The key to this process is that the consequences of any interactions are to be found, not in the nature of the perturbation that triggered them, but in the way the structure compensates for such interactions according to its dynamic landscape; the overall result is change of structure in a continuous maintenance of the integrity in its medium.”
Thus, some refer to this paradigm as the participatory paradigm; Panikkar describes it in terms of radical relativity. An important point here is that the path of world-building is broadly but not absolutely determined…
There's more to say, but it's a bit late, so this organism is dropping all world-building for now and taking a little dip in the causal.
Best wishes,
B.
good stuff - yea the kitten experiment and the color stuff are fascinating and i have questions about some of the conclusions..
more later..
Leaving my dumb, ignorant, and dense comment, haha !!! (not “wise and insightful.”)
Bruce, I echo what Julian and others said about the writing itself; it flowed like music, dance, poetry, like the touch of silk. It FELT good !!!!!!!!!!
And thank you for speaking in simple enough terms that I was able to (entertain the possibility that I) understand most of what you were saying. I recognized a lot of my own experiences and thoughts and perspectives being talked about.
I too would like to comment on:
…a grounded approach is one which is intimate with the living knowledgeability of Being, the open-ended knowingness which is the creative ground for all particularized acts of knowledge and all individual knowledge claims, and which in its spaciousness accommodates the multiplicity of perspectives which enact our self-world horizons. In practical terms, this means having reached the point, through sustained inquiry, that one recognizes this knowingness, this open clarity, not as an ideal, not as a position to be adopted, but as the actuality of being. Because this knowing is foundational, being grounded means being open to what is, in and as its presencing, in uncontrived intimacy. (emphases added)
And I would add “in the dynamic nano-second kaleidoscope of fluidly shifting 'lights and chunks' of whatever is arising.”
If anyone reads my blog on Knowing vs The Living Truth, they can correct me if I am wrong in surmising that what I was trying to describe is at least similar to what you are trying to describe in that excerpt, though I think neither of us captures the dynamism and complexity completely.
And some of what you said reminded me of an insight/experience/Beingness of last February's breakthroughs, here and here, expressed in words as “I am Infinite Freedom of Beingness.” Unpacking in language to, “As Infinite Being, I can choose to be anything. I am not limited to what I was, or think I am, or think I must be. In-fin-ite Freedom of Beingness. Every moment. Any choice. Unconstrained.” I didn't feel or experience this Freedom, I WAS/AM it. As my favorite ET spiritual teachers used to say, “All realities are possible. All realities are optional.”
Even among all the expansive thoughts you present, it feels to me as if there is a blindfold on, to something I regard as part of MY Living Truth about the matters you are discussing. Namely, that the laws of the natural world, the way bodies work, all the tetra-enactments, represent choices and decisions about how things will work in one particular reality/experience co-created (ongoingly) by nonphysical conscious Being – more technically by the higher octaves of vibration of Beingness of our embodiments – namely the reality/experience we call our “universe.” In other words, it is all inter-subjective, from that angle, and in fact various of us at various times can, as multi-dimensional Beings, OPT OUT of this intersubjective realm created by agreement. Those are generally called miracles, or paranormal powers.
I don't have the jargon to translate this into your terms, but I believe it could be added to the mix, without changing anything else. Just something else going on in addition to whatever else is being discerned/perceived/conceived/experienced by you and the various thinkers described.
Or maybe that take on things makes me way down on the scale. Doesn't feel that way, though.
I most resonate with the inclusiveness of the whole vision you present. Not technical “inclusivism,” just the widest view, the greatest scope of awareness, the most “holistic” all-inclusiveness of approach. That is what rings true for me. That is why the poetry, the music, the imagination, the sensori-motor, the conceptual, all fit together. All ARE.
Off to a fantastic start, thanks again !!!
Blessings, OM Bastet
thank you bruce for your response…it brought that aspect together…star…
Hi Bruce, what a wonderful start of a very promising symposium. I really loved reading your take on this subject, especially this part:
“the open-ended knowingness which is the creative ground for all particularized acts of knowledge and all individual knowledge claims, and which in its spaciousness accommodates the multiplicity of perspectives which enact our self-world horizons”
I also like the reactions of others following afterwards. All those different highlights make it very much alive. Especially when you, as a result, bring up the following:
“A point I wanted to stress, but I don't know if I stressed it enough (or clearly enough) is that this move towards immanence, towards embodiment, is also a move towards a form of release or freedom.”
I can't wait to hear your thoughts on that. Somehow I think that is essensial, (the importance, but later on frustrating limitation, of a form) but personally I fail the words to describe it.
So I hope it becomes more concrete during the following days as this, no doubt, amazing symposium will progress.
bruce
i salute you.
i knew something good was going to happen. i feel like we're finally surfing the same wave, or part of the same wave. it means there are more viewpoints to point out where the rocks are, and more energy to surf right on over them : )
so much of what has come up recently, in your fine essay, julian's courageous posts, and recent comments from you and matt especially, echoes - often word for word - my recent thinking, notes and conversations. and it's only the first entry!
i am confident that foundations will be built here firm enough to support more formal and concrete manifestations of what is promising to become a truly fitting philosophy for living the good life.
i am so excited, inspired and honoured being right here right now. wherever and whenever that is…
we'll get round to all the points you raise organically through the coming weeks, for now the feeling of concensus is uppermost for me.
your son knew it didn't matter… the truth will out anyway : )
cordially
adam
Matt,
Thanks for your comments. I am really looking forward to your contribution to this symposium, given your knowledge of this material.
Regarding Wilber's qualifications of enactivism, I notice that the four points I mention above (cognition is enactively embodied, enactively emergent, etc), appeared in an essay several years after Wilber published his critique of The Embodied Mind. I don't know if Varela ever saw Wilber's work, but whether or not he made any adjustments in his presentation of these ideas because of the critique, I think they do go a bit beyond – and trace a more nuanced territory than – the one Wilber critiques in the back of SES.
As I recall, another one of Wilber's critiques of The Embodied Mind had to do with Varela's reliance on on the Abhidharma literature for making his argument about selflessness and groundlessness. If so, I agree with wilber that the Abhidharma approach in itself is insufficient and that the Mahayana/Madhyamika approach goes farther, and is more useful (in the service of UL transformation) – which Varela himself acknowledges in his concluding remarks.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Julian,
Big thanks to you, bro, for inspiring this event – yet again, you've gotten the creative juices flowing and the ideas flying here on Gaia. A great talent of yours.
I'm glad you enjoyed the more poetic (and musical!) flourishes in this piece. I wanted to bring the living body into this, rather than just talking about it from a distance.
I think I can anticipate some of your reservations – some of which I might share or resonate with – so I look forward to getting into deeper discussion of some of the key ideas, many of which I just touched on. I am looking forward to the contributions of others (starting with James today!) to help take this further. Though, of course, I will also welcome critiques and questions here on my opening piece as well.
Best wishes,
B.
Bruce,
As always, a very impressive piece of writing. Clearly, you put a ton of thought into what you write, and I for one always appreciate your perspective. This whole notion of a “21st Century Spirituality” has captured my imagination as well. And while I agree that it has everything to do with embodying the mind, my enthusiasm for Integral Theory (and other philosophical stuff like Varela's work) is on the wane. I think your prologue captured more–much more–of the essence of embodied “21st Century Spirituality” than can be found in most philosophical discourse, even if that discourse is ABOUT embodiment and integral and all that. Of course, I know it's a tough task to completely exemplify the heart and soul of this stuff in a piece like this, having myself presented for the Z1 Symposium. Especially leading off the discussion, how could you not explain what enactivism and Integral Theory are, in philosophical terms? I don't know. And your essay is awesome, which is why I'm commenting on your blog. It's just that, well, I wonder what might have materialized if you had stayed in “prologue mode” for the whole essay. Pehaps it wouldn't have been as clear, but I have a feeling it would've kicked even more ass than your already great essay. Of course, maybe you did stay in prologue-mode the whole time. Much of what I'm struggling to express here are just my own feelings about the essence of embodied transformation. Walking the walk is the key. Maybe I'm just too dumb to understand some of the philosophical wrinkles, or I don't appreciate the asthetic of philosophy and theory as much as I do raw personal expression. I just know that after reading your prologue I was sizzling with a sense of “Right on, this is it, this is what it's all about”, and that the rest, although very clearly and thoughtfully expressed, seemed to dull that sense a bit.
Again Bruce, this is not really a criticism of your piece. It's just that your piece led me to “my thing,” or my edge, which has something to do with letting the Transpersonal Genie out of the theoretical bottle. Thanks for stimulating my thinking on this.
–Bob
Bruce,
Any idea when this essay by Wilber was written? It says copyright 2008 at the bottom, but that doesn't seem right. I'm curious because Wilber seems to suggest Varela et al. leave out the upper left quadrant entirely, which I don't think is true at all. Maybe he was only talking about autopoiesis and not the wider enactive paradigm of cognitive science?
I'm trying to weave some of what Wilber says here into my piece, so thanks for any help!
-Matt
Hi, Matt,
I think those excerpts from the Kosmos trilogy were first posted in 2005. Just reading through that footnote, it does seem he is missing the full picture of what Varela is up to. Varela specifically includes intersubjectivity, for instance, in his summary of his overall model…though he focuses on it more in terms of a shared affective resonance than “higher level” manifestations of 2p.
Best wishes,
B.
Well, to be fair, Wilber doesn't say they leave the upper left out entirely, but he does say this:
The point right now is simply that the autopoietic or “first-person” approaches aren't really first-person. They are not described in “I” terms, they do not require a knowledge by acquaintance, they are not grounded in solidarity, they do not give a phenomenology of interior prehension but exterior cognition–in short, they do not actually or fully address the UL, nor, for the same reasons, do they include a full-fledged intersubjectivity (LL).
If it is only autopoiesis on the cellular or multicellular level we are talking about, then sure, autopoiesis concerns the insides of the upper and lower right quadrants. But enactivism includes a phenomenological account (upper left), and Niklas Luhmann has (I think successfully) applied autopoiesis to communication (lower left). Wilber places Luhmann's work in the insides of the lower right quadrant, which I may disagree with, but I'll have to dig into some of his work to revisit what kind of language he uses…
anyways, I'll save it for my essay! Just exploring some ideas out loud : )
Yes, I was going to include Luhmann's work, too, since Wilber does highlight that as an extension of enactivism into the LL. Looking forward to your analysis!
Hi, OM,
I'm happy you could join in here; I've missed you over on the IPS pod!
I also am happy to accept your amendment, which points to the shifting, kaleidoscopic character of rigpa's ornamental play.
About the blindfold that you believe may be obscuring a fuller view in my essay, yes, I would agree that the focus – given Varela's and Lakoff's perspectives and emphases, among others' – is on physical embodiment and sensorimotor activity. I'm not quite sure what you mean by “opting out” of the intersubjective realm, so I'd like to hear more about that before responding to it in detail. But in general, I would say that, in the AQAL/Integral version of enactivism (tetra-enactivism), this creative co-arising is active at subtle as well as gross levels of manifestation.
You wrote: In other words, it is all inter-subjective, from that angle, and in fact various of us at various times can, as multi-dimensional Beings, OPT OUT of this intersubjective realm created by agreement.
“Agreement” presupposes intersubjectivity, does it not?
You wrote: I most resonate with the inclusiveness of the whole vision you present. Not technical “inclusivism,” just the widest view, the greatest scope of awareness, the most “holistic” all-inclusiveness of approach. That is what rings true for me. That is why the poetry, the music, the imagination, the sensori-motor, the conceptual, all fit together. All ARE.
Yes! Thank you. And I appreciated how you expressed coming personally to this fulsome welcoming in your own blogs.
And I think it's important to note: this welcoming does not preclude making meaningful distinctions or critical assessments; it is the context in which those discriminations can most clearly be made.
Best wishes,
Balder
I somehow missed this blog yesterday. Anyways, I'm just starting to read it right now. This blog and this whole symposium will be quite educational for me. I've done several days of intensive research about enactivism and related concepts, but I've never read Varela's book and I don't presently have access to one. So, I'm trying to figure this out as I go. I'm going to have to take the time this weekend to really dig into all of this. But thanks for this, Bruce. It gives me a broader understanding. I'll comment some more soon.
Annemieke,
I'm delighted you're here with us, reading along. I hope further entries will continue to inspire you to share your thoughts, since I value your perspective and want to hear more from you!
Concerning what I wrote about the emphasis on embodiment opening into a kind of freedom – I think the way I would most adequately express that is that a fuller understanding of groundlessness actually leads, in my experience, to a fuller sense of embodiment and embodying. Emphasizing the embodiment component, in itself, can also be freeing, particularly if it grounds us and helps us recognize where certain trains of idealization were leading us into dissociation; we enter into a freer, fuller awareness and responsiveness. But it can be limiting too, particularly if we fixate on embodiment or use it to, in a reverse move, disown or dismiss intellect and the life of the mind.
There's an aspect of this that is still hanging at the edge of thought, only half-articulated. I'll come back to it, either here or in the comments on one of the following essays.
Best wishes,
Balder
Bruce
This is a helpful point to mention:
“Emphasizing the embodiment component….. can be limiting too, particularly if we fixate on embodiment or use it to, in a reverse move, disown or dismiss intellect and the life of the mind.”
Thanks
yea i am sure we will have an interesting discussion bruce - i really want to take time to formulate my perceptions here - i had been reading the exact sections of varela that you reference here this week - and i love the writing and the intentions, even the nuanced depth and novelty of the examples…. there is something a little off for me though in the way the larger argument is pulled together from the prodigious threads of evolution, cognition, meditation etc… and of course then there is the predictable issue i have with how these insights and slightly shaky philosophical conclusions get applied and interpreted….
all in all though i am thrilled to be reading him and to be in a discussion with all of you about such a fascinating perspective…
“….slightly shaky…..”
That lets me know that some fun discussion is still ahead of us!
;-)
LOL…
Seriously, Julian, when it comes to your turn, if you get into what you see as the questionable application(s) of the enactive paradigm (or Integral tetra-enactment), I hope you will analyze actual applications of these paradigms, and not similar sounding perspectives that may show up elsewhere (New Age or Secret-esque phrases like “You create your own reality,” for instance; or Pavlina's numerological musings). Because the problems you often highlight in popular spiritual culture typically do not flow from the actual apprehension and application of these particular paradigms.
This discussion will be best served, I think, by focusing on misuse of the paradigms in question, and not perspectives which may bear a surface similarity.
Best wishes,
B.
Bruce,
In simple terms, Varela is pointing out that the mind is not simply in the head, but rather that cognition and cognitive worlds unfold through our sensorimotor involvement with our environments - that inside and outside, subjective and objective are co-determining and co-arising. Second, the mind, while inseparable from our neural architecture and our embodied action, is an emergent global process which not only depends on these local elements but which may, in turn, act on or affect these processes.
I don't fully understand Varela's nor Wilber's view on enactivism., but I can see the value of putting enactivism in the larger context of the quadrants model. Varela is increasing the domain of consciousness, but still basically limits it to the physical (even though consciousness can influence the physical in return). Basically, his theory is a scientific theory and so only seems to take into count scientific evidence (which Wilber, for instance, doesn't limit himself to). His version of enactivism is useful for understanding scientific research, but not all of our experience is easily categroized as simply “emobdied”.
Going by what I've read so far, Varela doesn't seem to take into account alternative states of minds (transpersonal experiences, dreams, etc.) that have no direct or simple correlation with embodiedness. However, as Varela has studied and practiced Buddhism, I'd be surprised if never has had experiences that go beyond normal embodied consciousness.
Am I missing somthing?
Am I misunderstanding Varela's notion of “embodied”?
please let me know if you have any other guidelines or pre-emptions for my piece bruce - i have my pencil and notepad at the ready! :OP
“seriously” though: i actually agree with this wholeheartedly ” the problems you often highlight in popular spiritual culture typically do not flow from the actual apprehension and application of these particular paradigms. ” (emphasis mine)
so we should be fine on that count.
however a discussion of enactivism, integral theory and 21st century spirituality would be incomplete IMO without at least acknowledging the misapplications and misinterpretations as well as both the value and grace of varela's arguments and some of their possible over-reaching. these things all co-enact or bring forth one-another, no? the attempt to find a middle ground between the extremes of objectivism and idealism will to some extent evoke both spectres…
fear not, though old buddy, all previous ignorance aside - i will not merely devolve into railing against varela as a mere puppet of the new age! :O)
i know he is no such thing (my concerns are more quadrant based) and i have been purposely emphasizing both a) my stance in this symposium as a student of something new and b) the desire to think through what i have to say quite carefully!
perhaps my tone thus far has not been clear?
perhaps my compliments and humility are falling on deaf ears?
easy with the meditation stick, sensei…
I'm trying to understand what intersubjectivity means to Varela. If consciousness is intersubjectively enacted, then where is consciousness located? I get that its not limited to the body in the normal sense, but at the same time my sense is that Varela is saying that consciousness is entirely limited by the body. Its a shared event, but this sharing is more of a metaphor than an actuality?
Marmalade, I'll be right there with ya this weekend :) It's all great fun, isn't it?
Oh yeah, fun indeed, Crouching Tiger! I think my brain is going to have stretch marks by the end of this symposium.
Balder - I really appreciated what you quoted about TSK and imagination. That touches upon my own view. I sense there is a way that imagination can help us to engage reality rather than disconnect us from it.
j…maybe bruce is just gunshy…LOL…i did not read what you wrote the way he did either…
just had a chance to read through all the comments here - what a fantastic conversation….
so exciting and hanging on the lip of a day two deepening.
wanted to hear more of an exchange between bruce and 1 vector3 viz a few details not yet clarified….
1) are we suggesting that enactivism implies that we can “opt out” of 'consensus reality” at any time to enact “paranormal” worldspaces?
2) is there an overlap between varela and certain “ET teachers” (i think perhaps this stands for extraterrestrial..) - specifically regarding the statement “All realities are possible. All realities are optional.”
3) in fact this whole section is perhaps worthy of unpacking and examining viz its relationship (or not) to enactivism:
“something I regard as part of MY Living Truth about the matters you are discussing. Namely, that the laws of the natural world, the way bodies work, all the tetra-enactments, represent choices and decisions about how things will work in one particular reality/experience co-created (ongoingly) by nonphysical conscious Being – more technically by the higher octaves of vibration of Beingness of our embodiments – namely the reality/experience we call our “universe.” In other words, it is all inter-subjective, from that angle, and in fact various of us at various times can, as multi-dimensional Beings, OPT OUT of this intersubjective realm created by agreement. Those are generally called miracles, or paranormal powers.”
ah the philosophical rats nest! i trust the distinctions are here though to be discovered, no?
perhaps we can get some of this cleared up early on…
bear in mind i still stand by this…
Marmalade,
If consciousness is intersubjectively enacted, then where is consciousness located? I get that its not limited to the body in the normal sense, but at the same time my sense is that Varela is saying that consciousness is entirely limited by the body. Its a shared event, but this sharing is more of a metaphor than an actuality?
I'll try and touch on this, but I'm sure Bruce will give you his take as well. Consciousness, for enactivism, isn't located anywhere. In other words, it is non-local (not in the quantum entanglement sense, at least not that we know of). To really get at your question, we'd have to define what exactly you mean by consciousness. Do you mean human identity and communicative action? Or do you mean something more fundamental, like awareness or intentionality, which all organisms, from bacteria to whales, possess? In the case of human identity, Varela would point towards the Buddhist teaching of no-self. Our identity is a social construction, something we share with others as we bring forth the worlds we inhabit and the stories we live. In the case of consciousness as basic awareness, it is not something inside the body driving it around like a car. It is, rather, what emerges from the ongoing coupling between organism and environment (including other organisms). This is not meant as a metaphor, but an actuality.
Hope that helps. Maybe Bruce can do better?
Hey OM! I'd love to hear more of what you're saying. I liked Balder's response. I think what is in order is a fuller consideration of interstubjectivity and the subtle. I don't exactly know how this all fits into enactivism at the moment, but I see the potentials for connecting various ideas and perspectives.
Sorry, Julian! I'm responding to you ahead of several others on my response list because I want to undo the impression my last post gave you. I have felt great rapport with you throughout this discussion and have vicariously enjoyed your enthusiasm for this new topic. I fully expect you to bring your critical faculties to this discussion intact and do not expect you to hold back on anything you disagree with. I guess I was projecting a bit, anticipating Varela getting linked to the Secret or some such, and wanted to head that off at the pass – unless there really are mis-applications out there that fit that pattern. But I definitely welcome and look forward to getting in to any serious disagreements you have with this material.
perhaps my tone thus far has not been clear?
perhaps my compliments and humility are falling on deaf ears?
No, not at all! I can tell you're holding back a little bit, focusing more on the positive for the moment while you take time to reflect on the negative, but your “tone” and “approach” are much appreciated. Like Adam, I feel we are at a place where we may be contacting points of affinity, even admidst our differences, that will be helpful and productive for all around, and so I'm really excited about what we've set in motion here.
Warm wishes, and no hard feelings, bro,
B.
julian…it's going to be difficult to pinpoint 'miracle'…from vanishing into a rainbow body all the way down to praying for a parking space….and everything inbetween…
Bruce!
Sitting up here in the amphitheater, watching and listening from a distance, the first evocative enactment has been masterfully delivered. The attendees are stimulated, inspired. Raves and bravos are raining down…
Beautiful work Brother! Looking forward to the coming presentations as I sit pondering this one.
Bruce…what i love about this piece is that you did not go beyond your own awareness and discuss theoretical circumstances that were not included in your own understanding and life path experiencing…and the ones you did express…came across as genuine…
Buddhacious,
I'll try and touch on this, but I'm sure Bruce will give you his take as well. Consciousness, for enactivism, isn't located anywhere. In other words, it is non-local (not in the quantum entanglement sense, at least not that we know of). To really get at your question, we'd have to define what exactly you mean by consciousness. Do you mean human identity and communicative action? Or do you mean something more fundamental, like awareness or intentionality, which all organisms, from bacteria to whales, possess? In the case of human identity, Varela would point towards the Buddhist teaching of no-self. Our identity is a social construction, something we share with others as we bring forth the worlds we inhabit and the stories we live. In the case of consciousness as basic awareness, it is not something inside the body driving it around like a car. It is, rather, what emerges from the ongoing coupling between organism and environment (including other organisms). This is not meant as a metaphor, but an actuality.
I'm still unclear on this non-local idea as it relates to enactivism. I was meaning consciousness in its most general use… awareness and all that it includes. I understand and agree with the Buddhist no-self, and that alone is an interesting subject. Non-locality at a more fundamental level of consciousness is even more interesting.
Hopefully, this will start to become more clear for me.
I'm a dozen comments up, still, but trying to hold onto my thoughts is getting too much.
Might I suggest revising the schedule of the symposium to every OTHER day, to enable some of us to live our lives and do the grocery shopping ???!!!
Yes, of course intersubjective implies agreement. I was I think expanding the domain of intersubjective agreements to the creation of entire realities, experienced by some as “the physical universe.”
And Marmalade's comment about altered states or transpersonal states or however he said it, seems to be pointing at the same thing I was trying to point at. There is something very rationalistic? gross-level-of-consciousness? about all the views of others being described so far. The upper dimensions seem to be missing, are not being addressed, let alone incorporated. Yet how can one have a “spirituality” without recognizing the multidimensional or multi-level nature of consciousness?
And may I plead, paragraphs like the following will lose those of us not in the academic scene. This is the kind of stuff that makes the IPS pod too tough to wade through, for me, to find a few sentences here and there I can understand. Comparisons of authors and esoteric traditions leave a lot of us out. We have, as someone mentioned, the experiences, so talking about experiences, with some philosophy and biology and psychology in there, is fine, but this super-academic stuff might as well be Greek to us, and for me, handicaps my involvement.
As I recall, another one of Wilber's critiques of The Embodied Mind had to do with Varela's reliance on on the Abhidharma literature for making his argument about selflessness and groundlessness. If so, I agree with wilber that the Abhidharma approach in itself is insufficient and that the Mahayana/Madhyamika approach goes farther, and is more useful (in the service of UL transformation) - which Varela himself acknowledges in his concluding remarks.
About how embodiment/immance is conducive to freedom, or vice versa, I absolutely can sense my way into that. It matches my experience. The closest expression I have found is I THINK somewhere in Wilber's One Taste, where he talks about how being in the higher states does not dissociate one from embodied experience, but allows in fact greater involvement, greater passion, greater intensity. The key being THERE IS NOTHING AT STAKE for the identity, the expanded identity. Nothing it resists, nothing it shrinks from, nothing to avoid awareness of. This is a paradoxical freedom/immanence. Because one is ultimately free from any particulars, one need have, in fact, inevitably doesn't have, any “separation” or avoidance or need to maintain distance or uninvolvement for the particulars. A smaller-scope identity, OTOH, has lots at stake on various issues, and must deny/affirm, avoid/engage, dissociate/over-identify, to maintain its “positions.” Someone mentioned “positionless” or “position” wrt this paradox we are all trying to articulate, and I think it is a very useful relevant concept in thinking about it.
Hey, thanks for taking the time to read my blogs !!
I guess the best I am gonna do at the moment on the matter of the levels of creation I meant, is that we both agree on the following, but I think I am saying more than that.
in the AQAL/Integral version of enactivism (tetra-enactivism), this creative co-arising is active at subtle as well as gross levels of manifestation.
By “opting out” I mean people whose consciousness has expanded to the point at which they have the siddhis, most of which are simply opt-outs on consensual reality and the “laws” of (at least Newtonian) physics: bilocation, telekinesis, breatharianism, teleportation, instant healing, levitation, etc. etc. etc. I view these as simply natural and inevitable by-products of reaching the level of awareness at which the primary Identity is beyond the gross level, and beyond the psychic level, into – I hate the jargon here, so my own terms – the level of creatorship as an individuated but not “separate” Being. Living, in simpler terms, in Unity or Nondual Consciousness.
Plus of coure in my cosmology, each embodiment is only the densest layer of identity of a nested set of holons/Beings/identities which go all the way up (and probably all the way down, too.) to – jargon, Original Face, aka God, aka Infinite Beingness as Such aka Source Creator. Thus, opting out is available when primary identity simply moves to a higher harmonic of my own embodiment.
That's probably more than anyone wanted to know about this matter, and I apologize if it is off-track. My ultimate aim is to see whether we can expand the discussion to be more inclusive than “mind” matters or “embodiment” matters, addressing and integrating ALL the levels or harmonics of our individual existences.
Thank you for missing me over at IPS. I can't remember the other person besides Valli you invited to speak about things less academically, but was going to try to find that reference again, and do a Search this Group to find those posts. I really would LIKE to participate more there, but there is too much Greek to wade through, I don't have the time…. Regretfully.
Now to go back to the next dozen comments. Jeesh !!!!!
Nope, a long-delayed P.S. about the whole Wilber approach is arising. Will try to make it short. Wilber is IMHO far more constricted and constrained and confined by Buddhist thinking than most will admit. But many others are also neglectful of an aspect of the subtle and high-subtle realms that I think is important to deal with: the existence of Beings whose entire substance and functioning is NOT to be found in the gross or nondual-awareness realms. IMO it's quite anthropocentric to believe there is no other life-form or consciousness-forms/Beings/identities between the level of humans and the level of the All. But those realms of creation, of existence, are in the experience of many of us, vastly populated. AND communicable with, and those beings exist constantly in nondual awareness. Thus, their “perspectives” are quite useful to us. They represent, to me, intermediate steps between human gross and psychic levels, and the Infinite One Being.
It is THOSE kinds of Beings/identities or levels of our own human selves whose inter-subjective agreements result in the realities we are all trying to understand. But without that CONTEXT for what we are focusing our attention on, the discussion has gotta be pretty blind, pretty blindered. That's what I have been trying to say….
Yeah, I'm on the fringe of a fringe of the fringe, I know……
Delighted blessings, OM Bastet
OM, I'm glad your bringing up the fringe perspective even if only as a contrast.
What I see as important is that bringing up the fringe isn't about declaring that we can objectively know that these fringe things are absolutely true, but it points out the boundaries and pushes them further out. Enactivism shows how difficult objective knowledge is by questioning some of the fundamental assumptions that much of science is based upon. Its not a matter of proving any particular possibility, but first and foremost its a matter of becoming more open to possibilities.
To interact with the world from an imaginal perspective creates an openness in awareness. Julian is correct that many New Agers take their beliefs too literally. However, most people in our society (including scientists) probably take their beliefs too literally. The contrast of imaginal vs literal is something I wish to focus on. We shouldn't take our isolated sense of self as a literal reality (ie no-self), and neither should we take our isolated body as a literal reality (ie enactivism).
Ok,more reading, and I think a clarification I saw needed even before I saw Julian's questions about my post.
I said
Yes, of course intersubjective implies agreement. I was I think expanding the domain of intersubjective agreements to the creation of entire realities, experienced by some as “the physical universe.”
No, it is not our human selves which makes these intersubjective agreements that create entire realities, ONE OF which is experienced as our local universe. It is, more precisely, not our human identities which have this kind of creative power (contrary to new age and the secret et al.) It is higher/vaster/larger-scope identities. (For me, an identity can be deemed a Being, which means this embodiment typing here is a Being within a nested set of ever-vaster/higher-vibration/greater-consciousness Beings, not too hard to imagine given that a body is the same, with its organs, cells, nuceli, etc. etc. That metaphor is NOT precise wrt substance, but gives a general idea.)
The human self experiences these opt-outs/siddhis ONLY when it no longer has its identity confined to its human self and in fact is several levels up from that.
In my view.
Does that address some of the questions, Julian and others? And thank you for taking my ideas seriously enough to even mention them, let alone engage with them !!!!
I have a real problem with the notion of consciousness as an “emergent” phenomenon, as it is to me PRIOR to ALL “phenomenological experience.” I am sure more subtle and sophisticated minds than I have written tons about this issue. But some of the writers being talked about here, or perhaps the whole of “enactivism” seems to have this view, which for me would highly limit its scope of applicability and my degree of interest. Thus I am in a very different perspective from what Buddhacious' last paragraph says,
Our identity is a social construction, something we share with others as we bring forth the worlds we inhabit and the stories we live. In the case of consciousness as basic awareness, it is not something inside the body driving it around like a car. It is, rather, what emerges from the ongoing coupling between organism and environment (including other organisms). This is not meant as a metaphor, but an actuality.
This is all true out of context, but not for me within the larger context I see for human life and our world. And – to complicate the stew – I believe each of us is a collection of identities, and that collection is a nested set of holons, with multiple identities actually on each level or in each holon, and the factors that give rise to these various identities are many and various, and are located in different space-time areas and in different areas out of space-time. So there is no “our identity” which can be usefully discussed. Perhaps, anyway…..
Again I see Marmalade (smartest cat I ever met, dang! and I never really thought much of the orange-and-whiteys) and I leaning in similar directions….
OK, will intersperse some comments here:
1) are we suggesting that enactivism implies that we can “opt out” of 'consensus reality” at any time to enact “paranormal” worldspaces?
I know nothing about enactivism. But i doubt it comes even close to implying this. And what you mean “we”, white man? haha. (Sorry, the silliness bug seems to have invaded this symposium. Bruce is a carrier, haha, even if he doesn't have an active visible infection at the moment.) Have addressed this identity issue above.
2) is there an overlap between varela and certain “ET teachers” (i think perhaps this stands for extraterrestrial..) YES - specifically regarding the statement “All realities are possible. All realities are optional.”
You tell me, because I never heard of Varela til this symposium. But again, I doubt it, because it is my impression they were affirming this only for those who abide in “nondual awareness,” to use OUR jargon.
3) in fact this whole section is perhaps worthy of unpacking and examining viz its relationship (or not) to enactivism:
“something I regard as part of MY Living Truth about the matters you are discussing. Namely, that the laws of the natural world, the way bodies work, all the tetra-enactments, represent choices and decisions about how things will work in one particular reality/experience co-created (ongoingly) by nonphysical conscious Being - more technically by the higher octaves of vibration of Beingness of our embodiments - namely the reality/experience we call our “universe.” In other words, it is all inter-subjective, from that angle, and in fact various of us at various times can, as multi-dimensional Beings, OPT OUT of this intersubjective realm created by agreement. Those are generally called miracles, or paranormal powers.”
ah the philosophical rats nest! i trust the distinctions are here though to be discovered, no?
perhaps we can get some of this cleared up early on…
Have I done anything resembling clarifications?? Handicapped by not being versed in the perspectives you guys are talking about….
Again, thanks for engaging.
Blessings, OM Bastet
Begging LL forgiveness for the dreaded third post in a row, haha:
Bruce, no one? has yet mentioned the awesome photo you chose to head this blog. It is kinda like the Rorschach inkblots and a lot of this material, subject to many possible interpretations, and fun to find as many “stories” in as possible. Of course, that it's in some of my most favorite-est colors doesn't hurt, either. Thanks for the thought or inspiration that went into your choice !!!!! It's PERFECT!!!
Namaste, OM Bastet
Hey, OM, I loved reading your last post. Sorry to follow it with a boring question : )
Bruce, great essay, really great. I haven't read any Varela so this whole thing is going to be hugely informative for me.
With regard to the ”living knowledgeability of Being”, would you say it's an open-ended knowingness in the sense that this knowingness is ever-evolving and so ever-increasing, or in the sense that it's a knowingness that already-always contains the potentiality of every possible ”particularized [act] of knowledge”? Or maybe neither of these?
And is the sustained enquiry that leads to recognising this knowingness as ”the actuality of being” the province of TSK only, or do you know of other practices that offer the same understanding?
All best,
Lol
thanks bruce. you nailed it! yes i feel the same way as you and adam re: the conversation..
now re: varela and the secret….. did you see my above questions as to clarifying the exchange between yourself and 1vector3….. it seemed to be going down that road a little and to illustrate what perhaps have been concerns of mine in the past that you were anticipating.
would love to see you nuance that neck of wood-nettles a little!
personally i'd like to spend as little time as possible in this territory, but here it is and i don't think we can responsibly and honestly just dance away from it.
perhaps a nice clarifying taxonomy would help….
Julian, OM,
This section stuck out to me as well:
“something I regard as part of MY Living Truth about the matters you are discussing. Namely, that the laws of the natural world, the way bodies work, all the tetra-enactments, represent choices and decisions about how things will work in one particular reality/experience co-created (ongoingly) by nonphysical conscious Being – more technically by the higher octaves of vibration of Beingness of our embodiments – namely the reality/experience we call our “universe.” In other words, it is all inter-subjective, from that angle, and in fact various of us at various times can, as multi-dimensional Beings, OPT OUT of this intersubjective realm created by agreement. Those are generally called miracles, or paranormal powers.”
I've studied a bit of occultism, and I'm aware that there are and have been throughout history, various masters who claim to have access to higher planes of consciousness/reality. I have experienced my fair share of altered states, but none of them involved leaving behind the world we typically call physical reality: the one with birds and trees, planets, suns, galaxies, etc. Quite the contrary, these states awakened me to the full potential of my embodiment through the realization of the many deep relationships I share with the bodies around me. In fact, I felt that it was those relationships that constituted my individuality.
I am not at all comfortable with the idea that the way the natural world works is a matter of choices and decisions made by a non-physical conscious Being, but maybe I don't know what you are aiming to say, OM. Might you clarify? Is this Being something we all share, or do each of us have our own special Being?
I also don't know if I buy the idea that we can opt out of experiencing the natural world, which is not just something we all consensually create by way of our agreements. Nature comes first, and out of it arises our human abilities to bring forth our consensual worldspaces. I'm aware of the degree to which our concepts of “nature” are partly constructed, and always will be; but nonetheless, there is some sort of a something there prior to us human beings having arrived on the scene to interpret and magically manipulate it as we so choose, co-emergence of organism and environment aside. Then again, maybe I just haven't meditated in a cave long enough to levitate or use the force. I'm doubtful, though.
1vec3 - thanks for saying more!
i am still unclear as to the relationships between ET teachers (do you mean extraterrestrial?), a priori non-dual consciousness, enactivism and “opting out” into paranormal powers - can you say more please?
it seems like you are interpreting enactivism to mean (or to support the idea/belief) that our different “realities” are “choices” and that once we transcend our limited self-identifications we can go beyond the laws of the natural world, which are after all mere agreements we have enacted or called forth from a limitless set of possibilities resonant in the higher dimnensional realms of Being…
am i getting it?
perhaps bruce can help here.
beautifully expressed and nuanced matt.
james how close are we?!
can't wait….. and i have to start working in 30 minutes.
will be back to check it out around 6 pm!
please post links here and on my announcement blog alerting everyone that your post is up…
all participants: the above should be standard practice as we continue!
Bob,
Thanks a lot. Your comments have inspired me to try writing more often in prologue-mode – to see if I can find other ways to express these things. My sense is that connecting that poetic expression to the philosophical material – even just to the words in the title – helped to clarify what I was trying to evoke through these other means, so I do not think there is or or should be a hard and fast distinction between these domains. But there are other avenues of communication available, and you've inspired me to play with that a bit more.
I'm glad to have you here in this symposium. I loved your contribution to the first symposium, and look forward to whatever comments you have to offer throughout this week.
Warm wishes,
Bruce
oooh vector i am reading your reply more closely and see that you actually did address some of my questions in more detail than i had realized…
sounds like you are saying that:
a) you personally (if you'll excuse the misnomer!:O) abide in nondual consciousness (”OUR language”, yea?) and that
b) you have had extraterrestrial teachers, and that
c) to some extent (though you are not familiar with varela and don't think he would perhaps go so far b/c he is not abiding in non-duality) you found the above essay about enactivism and integral theory to be congruent with your experience/beliefs about how subjective/objective - reality/consciousness unfold or are related viz a vis choosing to
d) opt-out of consensus reality (one choice among infinite possibilities of Being) and therefore perhaps create your own and that this is perhaps
e) and explanation for paranormal powers and
f) a kind of definition of one aspect of enlightenment
sound accurate?
bruce - thoughts…
Matt, i too have heard those stories; when i was studying buddhism, i almost went back to
christianity because of all the buddhist hells…lol…just kidding…i claim neither today…
my experience has been that i have to stay grounded in the reality of my true condition.
i have a body, mind, and voice/energy…no matter how anyone trys to explain it, or tells me
it is illusional metaphysically, or that if i just meditate enough, or get rid of my 'i'
that i will fly away in the great beyond, or be able to walk on water, through walls, heal the world, raise the dead add infinitum…i have to deal in the real.
today…i cannot fly away; walk on water; or through walls; heal the world; or raise the
dead; and i don't look to any of that as a future possibility…i have to live in this
moment…right now…and this moment is real and wonder-filled…just the way it is…
if there are so many with 'higher' consciousness out there…then why the hell is the
world in the shape it's in? i suggest they all 'get to healing' and i have some ruptured
discs they can start with…
where ever it is that i go in my mind (and believe you me i've been there)…if it is not real and awake to this moment…it is mind play…when i am living life in my head…i am not living life…
i have three little rules i look too…that are the basis for the dzogchen teachings from garab dorje…from there, awareness is my teacher…
recognize my true nature…which is nothing magical…nor is it fantasy…it is real…
remain there with no doubt…
carry my true nature into every aspect of my living experience…
this has been my paradigm…and i'm the most joy-filled person i know…lol
this does not mean that i am enlightened…nor does it mean that i have a higher level of awareness…it just means that i did lots of inner work resolving my own conditioned awareness and that i still do on a momentarily basis…it also doesn't mean that i don't love being involved in conversations and dialogs that encourage me to continue to think for myself…i absolutely love it…and i refuse to be controlled by anyone, or anyones belief system…i am a human being…and all i have is right here, right now…
i'm a recovery drunk and drug addict too, and have to keep it simple stupid!
ah - and this seems to confirm the above:
1vector3 on the mic:
”By “opting out” I mean people whose consciousness has expanded to the point at which they have the siddhis, most of which are simply opt-outs on consensual reality and the “laws” of (at least Newtonian) physics: bilocation, telekinesis, breatharianism, teleportation, instant healing, levitation, etc. etc. etc. I view these as simply natural and inevitable by-products of reaching the level of awareness at which the primary Identity is beyond the gross level, and beyond the psychic level, into – I hate the jargon here, so my own terms – the level of creatorship as an individuated but not “separate” Being. Living, in simpler terms, in Unity or Nondual Consciousness….
…Wilber is IMHO far more constricted and constrained and confined by Buddhist thinking than most will admit. But many others are also neglectful of an aspect of the subtle and high-subtle realms that I think is important to deal with: the existence of Beings whose entire substance and functioning is NOT to be found in the gross or nondual-awareness realms. IMO it's quite anthropocentric to believe there is no other life-form or consciousness-forms/Beings/identities between the level of humans and the level of the All. But those realms of creation, of existence, are in the experience of many of us, vastly populated. AND communicable with, and those beings exist constantly in nondual awareness. Thus, their “perspectives” are quite useful to us. They represent, to me, intermediate steps between human gross and psychic levels, and the Infinite One Being.
It is THOSE kinds of Beings/identities or levels of our own human selves whose inter-subjective agreements result in the realities we are all trying to understand. But without that CONTEXT for what we are focusing our attention on, the discussion has gotta be pretty blind, pretty blindered. That's what I have been trying to say….”
now bruce and matt - seeing as you understand and are more knowledgable than i about enactivism and its relationship to integral theory - do you have any responses, distinctions, philosophical observations etc to make in the context of our symposium viz the above comments and the alphabetically numbered interpretations above?
how do (or don't) the ideas that 1vector3 is expressing line up with a synergistic 21st century reading of wilber and varela?
do you think this is what they are getting at? i have met many integral people who would find this all very congruent - what do you two think?
I'd like to say that at the moment I'm in learning mode. I won't say I entirely agree or disagree with anyone at the moment. I will only speak of my limited understanding so far.
What I understand enactivism to be about is that reality (biological evolution, perception, awareness, self-identity, society, etc) and knowledge of reality is context-bound. Varela is focusing on specific contexts, but enactivism can be applied to any context.
Also, it seems that enactivism might be saying that there is no overarching context, and hence no objective knowledge. We enact a context whenever we interact with the world or another person. Its contexts within contexts, contexts overlapping contexts, contexts all the way down.
At best, we can become partially aware of the contexts we are contained/immersed within, but we can never fully know what is being enacted because our very sense of self is an enactment beyond us… whatever we may be. We learn about the world by interacting with the world that isn't separate from us.
Does that make sense?
what do you think j? LOL…don't wanna be the bad cop no more?
nicely said marmalade.
any thoughts on ET's, paranormal powers, opting out of consensus reality etc viz what you do understand about enactivism, integral theory, or life in general?
starlight , you're funny! but no, no, i want to hear from others here. i am reading and learning and trying to understand what enactivism is and isnt and how it relates to integral theory and 21st century (including new age) spirituality….
i will have some tentative opinions to offer on tuesday.. right now, as i am sure is the case for many readers the ideas are all kinda swimming together - and i am hoping perhaps bruce, matt, james or even adam can help clarify for me - maybe marmalade or yourself might want to have a go?!
i do like what you said above BTW… :O)
Julian, I'm trying to limit myself from any wild speculations at the moment. I'm glad OM has brought up the whole fringe element, and I do have some thoughts about it. Its just my thoughts aren't very clear. I think you and I are in the same boat with learning about enactivism… except you have Varela's book and I don't. I'm trying to get some basic grasp of all of this so that I can contribute intelligently. :)
When I spoke about contexts, I was speaking very generally. The stumbling block is the actual application of that view within my personal experience and understanding. What are those various contexts?
I know integral theory points out all kinds of contexts, but I'm interested in other contexts as well. In particular, I'm interested in archetypes and especially the Trickster archetype. The trickster does have some relationship to the paranormal, but more importantly the trickster is part and parcel with the whole idea of liminality. So, I'm not only interested in contexts for I'm also interested in where the edges of those various contexts blur into eachother. Plus, liminality has much to do with developmental phases which brings us to Wilber and Grof.
Concensus reality is an interesting idea, but its hard to speak about. In the context of enactivism, what is intersubjectivity? What specifically is meant by the Buddhist view of codependent arising? And once again where does this leave the locality of consciousness? Or if no specific locality, then what does non-locality mean within our actual experience? Bruce spoke of the groundless and I need to thnk more about this.
My thoughts will become more clear over this weekend when I have more time to real get into the details. I have enough info, but I need to bring it all together.
here is the jest of it as i see it…and a little comic relief…
OM…does not know the jargon, nor wishes to involve herself in the jargon, nor does she know what enactivism is…her words…
you…did not want to deal with this but seeing as how it 'evolved'…you said that we should not dance away from it…your words…
matt already spoke his mind, as did i…
bruce is on my blog reading poetry…LOL
and marmalade is not prepared to commit one way or the other…
adam…who the hell knows where he is…rotf…(maybe back to jerusalem to find jesus?)
erin is having pc probs…and i just put out an apb on james…lmao…this is fun!
ok…seriously…
enactivism, as i understand it, has no specific place for consciousness to be…it is not known, nor is it provable…as it relates to buddhist theory, they are pretty much joined at the hip…esp. tibetan buddhism…
it is only provable by our awareness of it…in the sense of our own being…
the other factors, to my understanding is that it is only applicable or best understood, when it is acting, or interconnecting with it's universe, in the various ways that that is possible…but i am not quiet clear, as i pointed out to bruce and he has not addressed yet (see my earlier post for clarification), on his scientific explanations…he clarified the one with an example, but the other is still unclear…he lost me with the public and global affairs, but it 'sounds' like, just what buddhists believe…all is awareness not one not two kinda thing…
in terms of groundlessness…i got that; what you want to know?
btw, groundlessness, as it relates to integral theory…imho, pulls the rug out from under wilber…ooppppss…
or perhaps groundelssness merely removes the tablecloth quickly - leaving the dishes and silverware exactly where they were…
methinks the new age version is more like this..
OMG!!!!!!! ROTFLMAO…i'm about to pee my pants…i can't stop laughing…
Julian, I see Ben and Star have offered a few responses. I only have a few minutes to spend online right now, since I have class this evening, so I will have to read those responses later. For now, I'll offer a general response, and when I get back I'll get into a little more detail.
First of all, I want to note that enactivism deals on a basic level with the process of “world-making,” rather than prescribing or necessarily leading to the adoption of any particular worldview. In this sense, it is no different than representationism, in that any number of worldviews and perspectives have presupposed a general representationist epistemology and objectivist ontology. There is no one-to-one correspondence here.
On the level of simple organisms, while enactivism argues that the “worlds” of these creatures are not pre-given but rather are enacted by a history of interactions (in which outer and inner co-evolve in complex ways), we can still assume that the subjective experiences of members of a species are relatively uniform (without a great deal of variation) because of the simplicity of their cognitive systems. But when we get to the level of human beings, the increasing depth and complexity in all four quadrants allows, I believe, for a significantly greater range of subjective variation – a greater capacity to enact different worldspaces, which in our case includes and involves cultural, social, and linguistic dimensions.
Varela (and Wilber after him) points out that “enacting a worldspace” essentially means “enacting a domain of distinctions.” In earlier conversations, I've mentioned ancient beliefs regarding elements – and how these distinctions were not mere abstractions, but actual ways of experiencing the world. They are not purely arbitrary – every enactment is an AQAL affair – but they do represent a different way we can “call forth” a domain of distinctions that is neither wholly subjective nor purely objective.
I'm sort of writing this in a hurry, as I said, because I have to run to class soon. So, for now, dinner and class – then I'll join you again and answer your questions more directly.
Best wishes,
B.
P.S. Star, groundlessness is a key feature of Wilber's Integral Postmetaphysics.
that clarified it a little further bruce…thnx…
concerning the p.s. since i don't have a clue as to what that entails, i cannot respond to that…however; given the aspects of groundlessness, i do not see how certain 'concrete' truths that are part of 'his' integral theory are possibly grounded by any thing other than…his perspective…that does not mean that principles that are applicable should be discarded…just because he was instrumental in bringing them to light…
maybe julian is close to the truth…just remove the table cloth…lol
OM,
Your response to what I had to say to Marmalade about the social construction of our personal consciousness:
This is all true out of context, but not for me within the larger context I see for human life and our world. And – to complicate the stew – I believe each of us is a collection of identities, and that collection is a nested set of holons, with multiple identities actually on each level or in each holon, and the factors that give rise to these various identities are many and various, and are located in different space-time areas and in different areas out of space-time. So there is no “our identity” which can be usefully discussed. Perhaps, anyway…..
I think I agree. Our bodies are composite individuals made up of a community of cells, each with its own enacted worldspace. The body functions as a coherent whole due to the emergent order which has evolved over hundreds of millions of years. I'll get into this in my essay on Monday, but basically, it is our immune system and our nervous system that coordinates the trillions of distinct cells composing our biological identity. The identity I was referring to as socially constructed was the narrative/egoic self, the person I think I am, the person I tell others I am when they ask where I come from, what I do for a living, what my likes and dislikes are, etc. Obviously, all these identities can get very confusing, so we need to be careful when we describe how they all cohere (or discohere, depending on our physiological/psychologica/spiritual health).
But when you say that some of our identities are “…located… in different areas out of space-time,” I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean. Isn't space required before we can refer to an area within it? Supposing this logical problem were just an inherent limitation of the ability of language to describe what you're pointing to, do we really need to posit Beings outside space and time? That non-dual awareness is non-located and non-temporal, I would agree. But I conceptualize this as becoming united with spacetime itself, rather than moving outside it. Because, strictly speaking, there is no “outside” it. To be anything at all, don't we need to be somewhere, at some time?
Hey, it could be ANY spiritual teachers I was quoting. I just threw in the fact that they are ET's to see how far folks here were willing to stretch. Anyone could have said it, so yes, I mean extra-terrestrials, and I am quite willing to drop that aspect of the discussion.
No, I did not say or mean to imply that I myself abide in nondual awareness, nor that I can walk on water or raise the dead, as I think starlight was kinda razzing me about. My personal status is not part of what I am proposing we consider. Don't think it is relevant.
The experience you described, Buddhacious, sounds a lot like Nature Mysticism stage as KW describes it. Does that seem so? If so, then yes, I would say there are other experiences of Oneness that you could, in theory, have, that would include more than this world. I don't like KW's notion of what is a more advanced or expanded level than others, I just think they are different possible experiences, so I won't venture to place what you descirbed as one spot on a scale or spectrum. Just, I am aware of other expanded identities that encompass more than this world. Though of course, what you described is totally awesome and marvelous, would that some multi-national corp. CEOs abided there, eh? !!!!!
And starlight, to me jargon has its place, it is highly conceptually useful in making fine and non-ordinary distinctions, and I use it among those who understand it. And I don't blame anyone who uses jargon I don't understand, unless they blame me for not understanding it, haha !!!!
I have the feeling that I have introduced some stuff Julian is wishing hadn't been introduced, is that what you were referring to, Julian, the nettle-world? And be that as it may, I also wonder if I am even talking about the same things here; I thought they were ontopic, but perhaps not. I don't wish to derail the focus of this thread. I will try to answer all the questions directed to me, but I have to leave for the evening soon, and probably won't get to them all today.
BTW Marmalade got it right, I am not arguing truth of any ontological or objective sort, I am trying to cross-map as I think that's the purpose here, and see what would fit onto the cross-map you folks are attempting. I'm very used to being off of any map, [falling off the dge of the world, argh!] so if I don't fit, that's par for the course.
a) you personally (if you'll excuse the misnomer!:O) abide in nondual consciousness (”OUR language”, yea?) and that
I addressed this earlier
b) you have had extraterrestrial teachers, and that
Maybe they were from Biloxi. It matters not.
c) to some extent (though you are not familiar with varela and don't think he would perhaps go so far b/c he is not abiding in non-duality)
Where did that b/c come from? I most emphatically have no idea what the b/c is
you found the above essay about enactivism and integral theory to be congruent with your experience/beliefs about how subjective/objective - reality/consciousness unfold or are related viz a vis choosing to
d) opt-out of consensus reality (one choice among infinite possibilities of Being) and therefore perhaps create your own
ACtually these days I find inter-subjective realities more fun than creating my own, LOL!
and that this is perhaps
e) an explanation for paranormal powers and
f) a kind of definition of one aspect of enlightenment
Those would be some relatively minor implications of all I am saying, yes.My aim in saying all I have said was not to explain paranormal powers, nor define enlghtenment. My aim was to engage in the cross-mapping endeavor I perceive underway here, offering some alternative ways of looking at some things that have been described, and perhaps adding a few stretches to see if they fit on any of the maps being worked with here. Perhaps outright disagreeing, as I do about emergent consciousness. (Actually, I abide by the distinction made. Our experienced awareness emerges interactively, but consciousness as such, not localized in a human embodiment (or other embodiment) is non-local because it is the substance of everything, or perhaps the information content of the vibrating energies that are the substance.
sound accurate?
Somewhat accurate. I am curious whether you think I have some secret New Age agenda here, or whether you think I am promulgating some new version of the same-o NA ideas you have heard from others. I can assure you I am a quintessential heretic WRT New Age thought, and I tend to talk about my own experiences, not theories I have read .Ayn Rand called them “floating abstractions.” Which are rampant among NA folks. So I'd like to set your mind at rest, if possible.
Perhaps I can think of a way to summarize what I have been trying to contribute to the discussion, as I go through my evening. But by then, we'll be on to another presentation. Argh.
Thanks, all !!!
Namaste, OM Bastet
Julian,
Concerning the possibility of opting out of reality and gaining all sorts of magical powers, enactivism has absolutely nothing to say. But being that it remains a scientific perspective, it requires evidence before pronouncing upon the reality of this or that paranormal possibility. Personally, when I see a yogi capable of lifting physical objects and moving them about with nothing but the power of their mind, I'll believe it. But until then, why would I?
Concerning beings who have evolved beyond the gross, and even subtle realms, I again don't know that enactivism has much to say, positive or negative, except that any form of awareness must always be correlated with some kind of body. So, for instance, we might (as Rupert Sheldrake has) posit that the Sun has a form of high subtle consciousness which is tightly coupled to the complex electromagnetic dynamics going on beneath and around its surface. But that beings exist “outside spacetime,” as OM seemed to suggest, I am skeptical.
i am very hopeful that this leg of the conversation will continue - and want to point out that JAMES' PIECE IS UP!
please read an make preliminary comments now…
well put matt - and thank you.
too often i think this aspect of the dialog devolves into a confusion as to the burden of proof. i think you correctly placed it wehre it belongs and delineated enativism in a way that may perhaps allow us to move forward…
did you listen to part three of the sheldrake wilber IN dialog?it's really good - wilber quite diplomatically educates him on the difference between heaps and wholes and on collectives that have dominant monads and ones that do not. via this understanding neither an ecosysystem or the sun nor the cosmos itself can be said to have consciousness in the way we mean viz organisms…
i would love to hear any comments regarding what you just said after listening to the last half of that sheldrake interview!
very beautifully said bruce.
after all this time, though i still find you unwilling to make a definitive statement viz the kinds of explicit questions i am asking quite clearly above and viz clearly differentiating enactivism from its new age cousin solipsistic magical thinking…
give it a shot - it will help us move forward.
i still have found this to also be the case with the plethora of examples both james and i gave a while back viz what aspects of reality are indeed pregiven in a sense and will impress themselves onto all beings regardless of their worldspace. - and differentiating what is on that side of the line (eg: the Hummer SUV colliding with the flesh of lizard, monkey, tribesman, mystic or scientist) vs. what is on the enacted side.
i am confused as to this hesitancy - any thoughts?
i am appreciating matt's willingness to delineate the space that enactivism is itself enacting….i think hearing some of this from you would really help clarify what you think about all this…
please check in at james blog everyone!
I'm giving up keeping up, in the interest also of you all being able to “move forward.”
Just want to clarify a lot of misinterpretations in this:
I am not at all comfortable with the idea that the way the natural world works is a matter of choices and decisions made by a non-physical conscious Being,
That's not what I said at all. I said co-created by Beings plural, and thus intersubjectively “real.”
but maybe I don't know what you are aiming to say, OM. Might you clarify? Is this Being something we all share, or do each of us have our own special Being?
Sorry this question doesn't compute, see answer to first question. We all share Beingness, and we each are embodiments of Beingness, and we each have levels of identity, some more inclusive, some more narrow, and each level I am calling a Being. Identity of a particular human being is about the most narrow and least inclusive level or what I called “octave”.
also don't know if I buy the idea that we can opt out of experiencing the natural world, which is not just something we all consensually create by way of our agreements.
I don't buy the idea either, as you state it. I have been very careful to say that WE do not consensually co-create by way of OUR agreements, when that WE is the human identity. This is the New Age error and I do not make it. It is not WE the human identity that can opt out, either.
Nature comes first, and out of it arises our human abilities to bring forth our consensual worldspaces.
That idea would have to be unpacked before I could know what to say about it.
I'm aware of the degree to which our concepts of “nature” are partly constructed, and always will be; but nonetheless, there is some sort of a something there prior to us human beings having arrived on the scene to interpret and magically manipulate it as we so choose, co-emergence of organism and environment aside.
This seems to me to be the topic being discussed, and so to the extent I believe I glimpse what you are saying, it seems to me you are taking one viewpoint which I think is shared by some here, and not by others. The level or lens of this perspective makes sense to me within very narrow confines of viewpoint, ignoring what I see as relevant context.
Then again, maybe I just haven't meditated in a cave long enough to levitate or use the force. I'm doubtful, though.
That's not what it takes, thank goodness !!!! And in fact, I have to depart from something I think Julian said in ancient times many posts back, about practices that “get us there,” or something to that effect. I do not believe nondual awareness is the result of any kind of effort or activity of mind or body. As KW says, in One Taste, and I paraphrase, it is too close to be grasped, too immediate to be attained, too present to be found.
But that's another whole subject I would be happy to discuss elsewhere with anyone who wants to.
I will ponder whether any other points or comments I wrote notes on during the evening are worth making here. I'm off to read more of what James has said.
Namastzzzzzzte, OM Bastet
Julian, it is late for me, so I'll respond to your 3 questions first thing tomorrow morning. I'll also respond to James' great new piece in the early a.m.
G'night for now.
B.
great bruce - sweet dreams..
I can't pretend to understand most of the terminology or references as I'm totally ignorant of all things Integral & Wilber. . I'm not able to ask wise questions or for clarifications so mindful am I of what I don't know in this particular realm. But I read to get some minor sense of it without diving in wholly. So, what may be minor points are what were able to resonate with my understandings
>>> an evocation of “what can be.”
>>> imagine that what has been constructed could be constructed differently. With that simple move, the past and its structures, the self and its identities, no longer bind us so tightly. The gateways of the possible open to a new way of knowing.
>>> We are invited, instead, to step full bodied, open-eyed, into the burgeoning stream of our evolutionary unfolding, with all our faculties
I agree as well from personal experience with something Starlight pointed to ”Other perspectives will always arise to challenge our own; the evolution of knowledge in time will eventually undermine or overturn our founding stories.”
I did also find myself agreeing with and resonating with Bob, “walking the walk”. Yes, I did enjoy the beginning, I could understand it easily and it is the intellectual philosophy is what loses me, for I've no background in it really. But here I am wading through it just like I've waded through other hard to comprehend works before - because it's good for my brain.
Deborah
Oh, you can thank Erin/Crouching Tiger and Marmalade for luring me in here …
Hi, Julian,
Since James has raised a number of possibly related issues about the implications of enactivism for the nature of reality, perhaps we can take this discussion further over there – I am planning to reread and respond to his post as soon as I write this – but I wanted to respond to your questions first.
(And OM, since I'm responding to some of the things you said, I welcome your response as well – here or over on James' blog.)
1) are we suggesting that enactivism implies that we can “opt out” of 'consensus reality” at any time to enact “paranormal” worldspaces?
No. From an enactive point of view, the notion of an arbitrary, optional, consciousness-generated “consensus reality” seems biased towards the subject. It appears to be an idealist perspective, which holds that disembodied conscious beings underlie and generate different worlds through conscious decision. But, the groundlessness of enactivism challenges the “foundations” of both the Cartesian self or disembodied soul and the pre-given objectivist cosmos. Enactivism assumes neither that there are independent, disembodied subjects capable of generating or opting out of worlds, nor that any given “world” (scientific, materialist, spiritual, animist, whatever) exists in itself, independent of all perspectives.
The “world,” from an enactive or tetra-enactive point of view, is not merely generated by intersubjective agreement. Enactivism does not deny the existence or the influence of intersubjective consensus on our experience of our world, our enactment of worldspaces or domains of distinction, but it contextualizes these influences with those from other quadrants as well.
Enactivism doesn't really have anything to say about “paranormal worldspaces” or psi powers. Personally, I do think there is evidence for the emergence of various paranormal (beyond-the-ordinary, not supernatural) capacities as we develop spiritually. But the model of enactivism should in no way be taken as “proof” of such things; that would be a misapplication of it. (I don't think OM is trying to use enactivism to support or prove her worldview, by the way.)
2) is there an overlap between varela and certain “ET teachers” (i think perhaps this stands for extraterrestrial..) - specifically regarding the statement “All realities are possible. All realities are optional.”
No, I don't think enactivism goes nearly so far. There is agreement to the extent that there are many different worldspaces, many different domains of distinction, that may be enacted by sentient beings. But these domains of distinction are not arbitrary; they are objectively constrained.
Your third question is actually just a repeat of the above two, so I don't really have anything else to say in response to it. But I'll be happy to provide any further clarifications here – or to just taking this conversation further on James' blog. Which is where I'm headed next!
Best wishes,
Balder
1vecter3 said:
as I think starlight was kinda razzing me about
i was not 'razzing' 'you'…hopefully your 'thinking' gets razzed…b/c many of the things you suggest in your post are purely speculative…
my experiencing has been that we have to get honest with ourselves and our beliefs, for they affect our very core of being, and our ability to express that being freely…
we have to also get honest and accept our 'human' condition…the true one…
we have to be responsible adults and 'think' for ourselves…not have someone else think for us and tell us how it is…this is something i have discovered along my journey, and am still discovering…
today when someone challenges my 'thinking' or my 'beliefs', i am grateful for that and refrain from taking it personally…if someone brings their 'feelings' and emotional attachments to their belief systems into the discussion, then they are fair game…(me included…lol) and if one should get offended if those systems are dismantled…then one should own those feelings and offense, b/c in the end, each one of us is responsible for our own beliefs…
this is not a discussion concerning what we 'feel' or 'think' to be true…this is a discussion on what is really real and true…to the extent of our own awareness as it presents itself in this timeless moment of now…and as it relates to our integrated being, and the world around us…
my hope is that you will dance this dance with us…may we all be filled with our own inner joy…always, star…
debyemm! how wonderful of you to join us…*
ah so relieving and clarifiying bruce - thanks a million!
Bruce, you said that within enactivism:
“there are many different worldspaces, many different domains of distinction, that may be enacted by sentient beings. But these domains of distinction are not arbitrary; they are objectively constrained.”
By what would you say are they objectively constrained?
James, good question.
I cannot specify “it” definitively, or take any steps to “find out,” without engaging in a contextualized enactment.
If pressed, I might retreat to a more philosophical perspective (influenced by my study of Bon Dzogchen), simply referring to reality as unbounded, indeterminate wholeness which accommodates the co-emergence of subject-object configurations (which, perhaps, have a trajectory in time, an evolutionary history, which constrains the patterns of their emergence).
does anyone have any idea what to do so that james' listing on the home page doesnt look like crazy html code?
Sorry to press you even further Bruce but I struggle with the more abstract definitions….
Is there any way you can relate your reply in terms of examples or scenarios of what “reality as unbounded, indeterminate wholeness which accommodates the co-emergence of subject-object configurations (which, perhaps, have a trajectory in time, an evolutionary history, which constrains the patterns of their emergence)” might feel like or what it might include, or what human observations or thoughts might go along with such a view of reality? I just really want to get a grip on what your saying but your last comments just flew past me - sorry!
James,
Bruce said:
“there are many different worldspaces, many different domains of distinction, that may be enacted by sentient beings. But these domains of distinction are not arbitrary; they are objectively constrained.”
You asked:
By what would you say are they objectively constrained?
I can take a shot at this… I'd say the worldspaces are constrained by the realities of biological systems and the historical influences of evolution. The domains are not arbitrary because they are based on the way our bodies and their nervous systems have evolved. We cannot just consensually agree to enact a world where human beings can run 30 mph, because the current mechanics of our physiology just don't allow for it. Maybe in the future some technological prosthesis will change all this, but do you catch my drift? There are very real biological realities that shape the kinds of worlds we can live in.
bruce, you said:
”Enactivism assumes neither that there are independent, disembodied subjects capable of generating or opting out of worlds, nor that any given “world” (scientific, materialist, spiritual, animist, whatever) exists in itself, independent of all perspectives. ” (emphasis mine)
so the first half (seeing as we are between scylla and charybidis): ”Enactivism assumes neither that there are independent, disembodied subjects capable of generating or opting out of worlds…”
that would be both what my reading suggests and what i perceive as accurate. no subjects without bodies, no bodies without worlds, or subjects/bodies capable of magically manipulating worlds in am extreme, omnipotent, solipsistic way…… great.
the second half: ” nor that any given “world” (scientific, materialist, spiritual, animist, whatever) exists in itself, independent of all perspectives. ”
as you might guess this part is more problematic for me - and i don't know if it is a good complement to the first half.
a) i don't think that my reading of varela actually agrees with this, nor b) do i think it is accurate to my perceptions.
fist: ”any given world” - now perhaps this is different than ”any given “world”
if by “world” we mean the world around us and by “”world”” we mean enacted perspective on the “world” around us….
are we talking about (as james mentions) the rock beneath our feet, the oxygen, nitrogen and co2 we are breathing, the crows, trees, ocean, etc….or are we talking about our perception/representation of /perspectives on same?
surely we agree that what we call the ocean, the mountain etc were there before i (as matt said) turned my head to look at them - and surely we agree that the sun was there objectively even though the first baby troglodyte born at night didn't see it until morning?
perhaps your sentence really means to say: ” nor that any given “worldspace” (scientific, materialist, spiritual, animist, whatever) exists in itself, independent of all perspectives. ”
because i think here perhaps we are getting into the problem of the impossibility of “knowing” any “world” independent of our perspective/experience, right?also the impossibility of directly perceiving a world we are not actively co-enacting, correct?
we can't get outside of our experience to know for sure, but this still sounds too idealistic/solipsistic in your sentence, because it seems to imply that there isn't any world independent of subjects - and this statement is clearly not correct in the most obvious sense, right? we can imagine a nuclear holocaust that killed every subject and there would still remain a post-apocalyptic landscape with no-one to perceive it…
as sophisticated as we can get with epistemological, integral and enactivist ideas - somehow we have to pragmatically acknowledge the dependence of consciousness on bodies (but not bodies on consciousness) and of bodies on environments (but not environments on either consciousness or bodies) - where by “dependence” i mean you can't have this without that - but that can exist without this..no?
there were supernovas (or what we call supernovas - or whatever it is we experience with our limited range of visual perception etc ) before there were subjects to observe them, just as there were bacteria eating away at the gums of scurvy ridden sailors before we had microscopes capable of detecting them…. there is to a very significant extent a pre-given world out there we are developing clearer and more complex representations/understandings of…..and i don't actually think that varela would disagree with this, but i think in terms of the specific subjects of cognition and of evolution there is something very important he is pointing out viz the relationship between environment and organism, subject and object.
the tricky thing is to not go all the way into either objectivism or subjectivism, but also to not arrive at some fallacious and fanciful middle way in which subject and object are seen to sort of literally co-manifest out of nothing in an act of mutual creation. this is where we start to see the kinds of cobbling together of bad readings of quantum physics, enactivism, postmodernism, buddhism, non-dual vedanta etc to arrive at the new age confused position that elevates itself to being “proven” by contemporary science and ancient philosophy..
co-enactment must mean something other than this to be plausible, right?
here i am again asking that we draw reasonable lines around fascinating ideas and their applications.
what do you think?
Yes! Great! Thanks Matt, that's exactly what I had in mind with my question but I wasn't sure if it was those kinds of constraints that Bruce was referring to.
We're definitely in agreement on this point.
very nicely put matt - thanks!
There's no reply to post within the blog comments system, so I need to copy pretty much the whole post I am replying to here, from starlight
i was not 'razzing' 'you'…hopefully your 'thinking' gets razzed…b/c many of the things you suggest in your post are purely speculative…
I am sure they are speculative to some. For me, they are within the reality of my worldspace. That's just a difference.
my experiencing has been that we have to get honest with ourselves and our beliefs, for they affect our very core of being, and our ability to express that being freely…
I couldn't be more in alignment with this approach. Such honesty is one of my prime values.
we have to also get honest and accept our 'human' condition…the true one…
That sounds as if you believe there is only one true reality which is the same for every single person and we either know it (via correspondence mapping) or we don't. That is not my perspective. Also I think you and I probably differ about what the “human condition” consists of.
we have to be responsible adults and 'think' for ourselves…not have someone else think for us and tell us how it is…this is something i have discovered along my journey, and am still discovering…
That has been my journey also. I thought I was being clear that I was not trying to tell anyone “how it is” or think for anyone. I was wondering if anyone resonated with what I was saying, and had to say it to find out. I thought I was clear I was presenting only one possible perspective. If not clear, I apologize.
today when someone challenges my 'thinking' or my 'beliefs', i am grateful for that and refrain from taking it personally…
Me, too, despite what one might assume from my words. First, I did not think you were challenging my thinking or beliefs, neither challenge nor my thinking or beliefs, for it was not my thinking or beliefs that I was putting forth.
if someone brings their 'feelings' and emotional attachments to their belief systems into the discussion, then they are fair game…(me included…lol)
I'm not sure what that means. Fair game, what does that mean? And I'm not clear how you drew the assumption my feelings and emotional attachments were being put forth, or my “belief system.”
and if one should get offended if those systems are dismantled…then one should own those feelings and offense, b/c in the end, each one of us is responsible for our own beliefs…
I totally agree, except that I don't think anyone outside the self can “dismantle a belief system” held by the self. And did you think you were by your earlier remarks dismantling a belief system I held? I'm not clear on this.
this is not a discussion concerning what we 'feel' or 'think' to be true…
Very much agreed. I might use that language (I think” or “I feel”) because it's handy, but generally I use other more accurate verbiage, such as my experience, opinion, or perspective. Nor am I talking about “truth.” I have experiences and realities, and I attempt to describe those to others in case it proves useful for them. Not to convince anyone I have the truth, or to dismantle their truth.
this is a discussion on what is really real and true…to the extent of our own awareness as it presents itself in this timeless moment of now…and as it relates to our integrated being, and the world around us…
I'm not sure “really real and true” isn't up for discussion here as a tenable viewpoint in and of itself. It appears to me that the whole idea is being considered from various angles. At least the idea of an intersubjective “really real and true.”
my hope is that you will dance this dance with us…may we all be filled with our own inner joy…always, star…
Amen.
I bet this exchange could be used for fodder for the discussion. Surely some relevant examples to the topic here !! Meta-comments, anyone?
Namaste, OM Bastet P.S. I am feeling freer to respond in detail to some of the ideas in this thread now that the main discussion has moved on. Not taking up too much psychological space in each person's limited day hours.
This morning I have been pondering the relationship of whatever I understand about Enactivism to whatever I understand about KW's idea of “worldspaces.” It appeared to me that Enactivism is not compatible with that idea at all. I was going to ask if others thought so, too.
But, since Bruce has affirmed his view, and it is being discussed here, I will add a few ponderings. I don't have a conclusion, even an opinion, but I do have some musings.
The whole idea of “worldspace” (or as earlier thinkers have called it, “experiential world”) seems to me to be in entertained or presented in the context of the idea of evolution of consciousness within humans (if not all sentient Beings) toward “greater depth,” more inclusiveness, greater scope of awareness, more expansion of awareness, however one wants to word that idea. This gives a teleology to the context of the concept of “A worldspace.”
I haven't heard anything (= I don't REMEMBER reading anything here) that implies that Enactivism entertains the possibility of evolution or development of human awareness, let alone how that development would be characterized as to where it is going. Is there any sniff of levels or – the correct term escapes me – functional or structural hierarchies, within Enactivism?
So that's a cross-mapping question or two about two of our topics, Enactivism and Integral Theory (a term that makes me shudder it is so misleading and inaccurate, as Integral is one of those worldviews or worldspaces or experiential worlds or experiential realities, not a philosophical theory, not a cogntive or mind thing, not a thinking or a belief. But I use the term here because it's here.)
KW has said that within each worldspace there are different PHENOMENA which arise and present themselves to any awareness which is occupying that worldspace. This is intersubjective agreement at the least, and makes “objective constraints” on the enacted-shared “reality” a very problematic concept, as far as I can see – at least the constraints vary with the worldspace. Is this not so?
For example, there are worldspaces (as I interpret some of KW's descriptions of them, leaving aside my personal take on it) in which the occupants could indeed decide that everyone could run at 30 mph. That is a constraint of biology only in certain biologies enacted within certain worldspaces; worldspace changes biology as well as the laws of physics, chemistry, etc. This I affirm as not a belief of mine, but my experience, and that shared by others. How much it changes depends on which two worldspaces are being compared. (And in a little-attended throw-away line, KW also says that moving to any different worldspace is attended by biochemical changes in the body.)
I'm assuming later the third topic will appear: spirituality?
Everyone keeps talking about Varela and Enactivism, but I am not clear whether he would be considered a “deconstructionist?” Obviously not an extremist one. Where is Greg Desilet when we need him?
Thanks to all, OM Bastet (still sitting on some other responses to other stuff above asked of me or said about my words. But this is my most on-topic thinking.)
B: ” Enactivism doesn't really have anything to say about “paranormal worldspaces” or psi powers. Personally, I do think there is evidence for the emergence of various paranormal (beyond-the-ordinary, not supernatural) capacities as we develop spiritually. But the model of enactivism should in no way be taken as “proof” of such things; that would be a misapplication of it. (I don't think OM is trying to use enactivism to support or prove her worldview, by the way.)”
ummm i dont think so either, but i do think it “sounds” similar to her and many others… so we do well to differentiate, no?
very well said though! nice differentiation between paranormal and supernatural.
on a side-note i don't think i agree that there is proof of the paranormal as part of spiritual development - though i know it is a popular idea - and research papers to cite regarding this? always open to evidence.
also, please give a specific example so in (and other readers) know you are not talking about levitation or bi-location (two examples ivector3 did actually give)…
so:
1) agreed: enactivism doesn't imply anything about “opting out ” of co-enacted realities and subverting the laws of physics a la new age fantasy - and to say it does would be a distortion or mis-application, yes?
2) in this way, co-enaction (as well as integral's tetra-enaction, and even say, quantum physics collapsing of the wave form) is quite different from the widely touted new age spiritual notion of “co-creation” or “manifestation, ” right?
Julian, you said
“Enactivism assumes neither that there are independent, disembodied subjects capable of generating or opting out of worlds, nor that any given “world” (scientific, materialist, spiritual, animist, whatever) exists in itself, independent of all perspectives. ” (emphasis mine)
so the first half (seeing as we are between scylla and charybidis): “Enactivism assumes neither that there are independent, disembodied subjects capable of generating or opting out of worlds…”
that would be both what my reading suggests and what i perceive as accurate. no subjects without bodies, no bodies without worlds, or subjects/bodies capable of magically manipulating worlds in am extreme, omnipotent, solipsistic way…… great.
And this is so far from what I was meaning to say that I am at a loss. “Magic” in one reality is physics in another, first of all. Second, these Beings are not solipsist nor even independent in the way i think you meant that ,in that they have worlds, contraints, cultures, bodies but not physical ones, and they are not omnipotent. Those are all your inferences, but I don't think they were my implications. But here we run into what James talked about, the difficulty of interpreting posts without context.
The notion of “non-physically-embodied Beings” seems highly problematical to some folks here, so I am going to drop that from my discussion.
Matt, I have been thinking that “co-emergence” was something MORE than mutual interaction and mutual influence or effect. Is this not so?
And now I get it that some of you are working toward what we could with laughing jargon-generativity now label a “trans-enactivism” perspective, i.e. you are comparing notes about Varela and that perspective, and attempting to reach agreement among yourselves as to what makes sense to you all or some of you, and what doesn't. Is that a correct characterization of some of the purpose of this symposium?
Blessings, OM Bastet
I am sure they are speculative to some. For me, they are within the reality of my
worldspace. That's just a difference.
if they cannot be proven as factual then they are speculative…if this is the reality
of 'your' worldspace…then your worldspace is not reality, but pure speculation.
I couldn't be more in alignment with this approach. Such honesty is one of my prime values.
the distinction i make is 'self-honesty', not just 'honesty', b/c it has been my experience
that we lie to ourselves all the time…again, my experience.
That sounds as if you believe there is only one true reality which is the same for every
single person and we either know it (via correspondence mapping) or we don't. That is not
my perspective. Also I think you and I probably differ about what the “human condition”
consists of.
the reality i speak of is a very simple one…we all have a body, mind, and voice/energy.
we live on this earth…that's reality…our true condition.
That has been my journey also. I thought I was being clear that I was not trying to tell
anyone “how it is” or think for anyone. I was wondering if anyone resonated with what I
was saying, and had to say it to find out. I thought I was clear I was presenting only one
possible perspective. If not clear, I apologize.
no need to apologize; i never said you were trying to tell others how to think…i don't
know if you are or not…but you might want to consider that you are allowing others to
tell you what and how to think…
Me, too, despite what one might assume from my words. First, I did not think you were
challenging my thinking or beliefs, neither challenge nor my thinking or beliefs, for it
was not my thinking or beliefs that I was putting forth.
well, i was challenging you to examine your beliefs for factual errors.
I'm not sure what that means. Fair game, what does that mean? And I'm not clear how you
drew the assumption my feelings and emotional attachments were being put forth, or my
“belief system.”
fair game means that what ever you bring to the table is on the table…
in your first reference to me you concluded that i was 'razzing' 'you'…and that is not what
i was doing…
I totally agree, except that I don't think anyone outside the self can “dismantle a belief
system” held by the self. And did you think you were by your earlier remarks dismantling a belief system I held? I'm not clear on this.
i never said that anyone outside of the self can…did you read that into it?
Very much agreed. I might use that language (I think” or “I feel”) because it's handy, but
generally I use other more accurate verbiage, such as my experience, opinion, or
perspective. Nor am I talking about “truth.” I have experiences and realities, and I
attempt to describe those to others in case it proves useful for them. Not to convince
anyone I have the truth, or to dismantle their truth.
using clear language so that you can communicate clearly exactly what you mean is more
advantageous in this kind of conversation…handy doesn't work well…
i am looking for truth, and challenge others to do so…after all…the truth sets you free…lol
I'm not sure “really real and true” isn't up for discussion here as a tenable viewpoint
in and of itself. It appears to me that the whole idea is being considered from various
angles. At least the idea of an intersubjective “really real and true.”
what's really real and true is not speculations or opinions, or necessarily what we
think, feel or believe…
thank your for this challenge…always, star…
lastly, B:” But these domains of distinction are not arbitrary; they are objectively constrained.”
AH! herein lies the rub……
like frank visser i am dancing around the room with the computer on my head…
just kidding!
now if you would elaborate just a little - like maybe a paragraph - as to:
a) what those objective constraints are and how these are different than a pregiven world, and
b) on what you meant by the word “arbitrary” in regards to the incorrect notion that enactivism might suggest that the statement from 1vector3's “ET” teachers that “All realities are possible. All realities are optional.” were true…
also - as much as we may want to dance away from it - a discussion of integral and enactvism and 21st cent spirituality seems to necessitate that we deal with both the narcissistic/solipsistic misinterpretations of these noble and sophisticated ideas through the lens of the widespread popular new age zeitgeist as well as the relativist soup they often incorrectly seem to legitimize.
i think part of the wave of co-operation adam has been referring to might lie in creating a consensus on what these ideas do and don't mean viz some basic constraints, delineations etc…
i find this exciting.
predictably, for me it would be step toward clarifying things like PTF , wilber-combs, quadrant absolutism and application of an effective three strands of science model to various modes of knowing/methodologies. truth and falsity, health and pathology would also be better distinguished.
the integral community desperately needs this foundation!
1vector3 i am enjoying your kaleidoscopic mind and interesting questions - hopefully bruce or matt can respond as i am not sure what to say…
i would encourage you though nto to drop any of your assertions: magic, physics, disembodied beings, “worlds, contraints, cultures, bodies but not physical ones,” all of it - don't drop something if you feel we can't handle it…. bring it on!
btw when i said (to bruce) : ” .. no subjects without bodies, no bodies without worlds, or subjects/bodies capable of magically manipulating worlds in am extreme, omnipotent, solipsistic way”
i wan't referring to anything you had said. perhaps this is why you were at a loss to connect it to something you had said?
sounds like you are saying though that:
a) what seems like magic to us now will be physics as we continue to develop - and perhaps this includes paranomral or supernatural occurences, yes?
b) that there are “Beings” who are disembodied yet have non-physical worlds, culture etc and that are therefore congruent with the ideas of enactivism and integral theory, yes?
OM,
You referred to your feeling that:
“these Beings …have… bodies but not physical ones…”
For fear of misinterpetting you, might you explain how one could have a body that is not physical? To my mind, physical means anything that goes on energetically or materially within spacetime. To be more specific, if we fully appropriate Einstein's revision of Newtonian physics, matter is a gravitational fold in 4D spacetime. So it isn't like material bodies are “in” spacetime; in fact, they are spacetime. What quantum physics add to this I am really in no position to say, but basically, it seems that energy is available for manifestation freely throughout space and time through some kind of entangled quantum field. So when we think we are looking at an empty vacuum, it is really filled to the brim with quantum potentialities. Anyways, I've gotten off on a tangent about what exactly “physical” entails, but if you could further explain how bodies could be non-physical… ? You don't have to drop the notion, I'm quite interested, actually! I just have not yet understood what you mean.
You said:
I have been thinking that “co-emergence” was something MORE than mutual interaction and mutual influence or effect. Is this not so?
Yes, it is more than “interaction,” as the prefix “inter” implies between separate entities. Organism and environment are really part of an ongoing dynamic of transaction, where each is quite literally constituting the very being of the other. We should not break this up into “organism creates environment” and “environment creates organism,” because when we try to balance it that way, it just ends up being contradictory. We have to come to realize that our language is inherently dualistic and linear and so will never be able to capture exactly how this circular co-emergence works. It requires a dialectical frame of mind to hold both possibilities at once.
You said:
And now I get it that some of you are working toward what we could with laughing jargon-generativity now label a “trans-enactivism” perspective, i.e. you are comparing notes about Varela and that perspective, and attempting to reach agreement among yourselves as to what makes sense to you all or some of you, and what doesn't. Is that a correct characterization of some of the purpose of this symposium?
I think that is a fair enough characterization. But I'd say we are more trying to establish exactly what plain old enactivism without the trans implies before we go trying to transcend it.
Hi Matt. Well, given you asked and are interested I shall attempt. Thanks for your openness!! However, it is not a ”feeling” that “they” have what I am calling non-physical bodies. But since these are non-physical, they cannot be perceived with our physical senses. And I won't get into how one develops non-physical perceptual or sensory abilities, that is beyond the scope here.
I am also responding to what you said previously,
But when you say that some of our identities are “…located… in different areas out of space-time,” I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean. Isn't space required before we can refer to an area within it? Supposing this logical problem were just an inherent limitation of the ability of language to describe what you're pointing to, do we really need to posit Beings outside space and time? That non-dual awareness is non-located and non-temporal, I would agree. But I conceptualize this as becoming united with spacetime itself, rather than moving outside it. Because, strictly speaking, there is no “outside” it. To be anything at all, don't we need to be somewhere, at some time?
I appreciate that you put much of that in the form of questions.
It is more difficult to talk about alternatives to “time” as we know or experience it, so I will mostly just talk about “non-physical bodies.”
While I have “seen” these bodies I don't know whether the metaphor of vibrational frequency or that of density is actually more accurate, so forgive me if I just use both metaphors.
So, if you were an ice cube, you would have some difficulty regarding a cloud as a real individual thing, I suppose. I would, if I were an ice cube. Ice-cube bodies are so much denser. The atoms/molecules are closer-packed. If you were a cloud, or a star perhaps, you would know your boundaries were a bit vaguer, because you are less dense than an ice cube or a planet, but you might still regard yourself as a Being – if you were conscious.
I guess just get a poetic sense of that, because like all metaphors the mapping breaks down quickly upon detailed analysis.
More relevant perhaps. We know about vibrational frequencies, that some are slower and some are faster. It might not be too difficult to imagine sections of the spectrum of frequencies. Now, if Beings composed of one slow section were to attempt to perceive the Beings composed of faster sections, they would be “invisible.” To make a long story short, since existents are composed of many frequencies, it might not be too difficult to imagine there are existents at frequencies so different from ours that we cannot detect them with our physical-senses, which are designed for sensing physicality (or evolved that way, whatever.) Think infra-red and ultra-violet, and then imagine Beings/conscious identities whose bodies exist at those frequencies.
Some folks might be thinking, “Yeah, like Tinkerbelle. Give me a break from this fantasy.” There is nothing I can say to that.
Let me approach it from another angle. The physical body has been characterized by some scientists as not an information-gathering device but an information-screening or filtering device. Its senses are not set up to register all the information even in its own environment, let alone other possible frequencies. What we call “matter” is simply what our sense organs register as “solid.” They do this because they are designed/created to deal with a very limited spectrum of frequencies.That's why science can come along and say “Your senses are fooling you, the table is really (really?) empty space with a few particles here and there.”
Of course, we deal with “non-solid” “things” all the time: thoughts, feelings, abstractions like truth and justice. Our senses don't register those. Our senses were not designed to.
Yeah, yeah, those are only inferences, constructs. not conscious Beings/identities.
So I am only pointing.
About space: space as experienced by humans is probably very different from space as it would be experienced by atoms or electrons. I don't assume our experience of space, our images of what creates or defines it, are the only ones possible.
About time, I will just say that while I am sensing my way into non-clock time and non-space-time time, I don't grok it well enough yet to say much. I do sense there can be duration and sequence without being limited in ability to experience what we consider past, present and future, all at once. It would be a different kind of space-time.
Just speculating, of course. Entertaining anyway.
Years ago when I heard the story about the Flatlanders (2-d folks denying the possibility of 3-d) I became skeptical of my own “reality” thenceforth, as it struck me as valid. I have never assumed there isn't more than I am aware of, perhaps even more than I could be aware of. Not valid to assume there is more, but also not valid to assume there is NOT more. Agnostic and open.
So, of course, each of us deals with the reality we live in, and that's just the way it is. One does not become “convinced” of another one. It just shows up as real sometimes, as I mentioned KW said at least in one place. in his writings.
So, did that pointing do anything for you? I do not claim any truth-to-others value to my words, just offering possibilities.
It took some courage for me to say all this here, I think you can appreciate, but I did it in case someone finds some usefulness.
A discussion can only deal with what people can talk about, and they can only talk about what is real for them, and this probably isn't in that category, so forgive the disruption, those who feel disrupted. This kind of stuff really makes no difference wrt the kinds of topics being discussed here, unless someone sees relevance. But you asked, Matt, so you got. Maybe there is relevance I can't see. And I am sure there are others who could talk about what I was pointing to more elegantly than I did….
Blessings to all,
OM Bastet
Thanks for writing so much about your view, OM! You are referring to some extremely important aspects.
I have never assumed there isn't more than I am aware of, perhaps even more than I could be aware of. Not valid to assume there is more, but also not valid to assume there is NOT more. Agnostic and open.
Exactly! In discussions like this, I see so many assumptions being used without much question. It would be difficult to communicate if we had to mention every assumption we're using, and yet its hard to communicate because we don't all share the same assumptions. Language itself enacts a worldview that is hard to see outside of.
I've noticed a lot of reference to what is commonsense and practical, and that is fine as far as it goes. However, even if the majority accepts certain assumptions (and hence defines them as commonsense), it doesn't follow that they're more real. What is more practical depends on what your goal is and there are many goals. Much of science isn't directly practical, and some scientists dedicate their whole lives to speculation.
This kind of stuff really makes no difference wrt the kinds of topics being discussed here, unless someone sees relevance.
Well, I'd say its relevant if that is any consolation.
To understand the kind of thing I'm speaking about in terms of assumptions, please visit Matt's post.
Thanks for your in depth response, OM! I see where you are coming from now much better, but I still don't understand one detail. If these Beings are at a higher level of vibration, there must be something that is vibrating, right? Maybe it is vibrating so fast that our retinas do not detect it. We know scientifically that this happens all the time. But if there is something vibrating, some energetic movement of some kind, then certainly these bodies are still physical, aren't they?
James, I don't mind your pushing further – except for the fact that it's keeping me here, instead of over on your blog, where I want to be commenting!
First, I want to say that I agree with Matt's answer to your question. What I am saying does not contradict what he is saying, but it is on a different level of generalization and abstraction.
So, to try to clarify…
On the one hand, I fully agree that the worldspaces or domains of distinction we enact are constrained by biological and evolutionary factors. The “world” I perceive is a product of my biology and the long history of my species' development in interaction with this local planetary environment…ultimately, even on the conditions that existed nano-seconds after the big bang, the balance of which have impacted how the entire universe has unfolded over billions of years. Had the expansion of the universe been even a tiny bit faster or slower, for instance, we would not be having this conversation or enacting this shared worldspace.
On the other hand, I think we need to be careful not to take any of these things, any language we may use and any particular domain of distinctions we may enact, as pre-given, observer independent portraits of reality-in-itself. In a sense, it's the simple recognition that biology, evolutionary science, and so on, are particular languages – that the distinctions they draw are not inherent in things themselves, but rather are particular complex perspectival enactments involving multiple (AQAL) factors. They are modes of ab-straction – modes of carving up wholeness, and activities or “enactments” in which we as the speakers or investigators are inextricably involved.
I used the phrase indeterminate, unbounded wholeness to refer to reality, rather than the language of any particular paradigm (scientific or otherwise), in an attempt to acknowledge that “something is there” while also acknowledging that that something is, in an important way, indeterminate and multiple. It was an attempt to acknowledge, from the perspective that we are exploring here, that we live in and among the overlapping, complexly interrelated, AQALly arising worldspaces of sentient beings – worldspaces which, as enactivism points out, aren't simply passive reflections of self-existing, pre-given objects or environments, but participatory enactments.
Now, what is being challenged here is not the idea that there is something outside of given organisms. But even to start with the presupposition of “organism” and then attempt to consider whether any world exists outside of it in reality or not is to start out already caught up in the network of presuppositions we are attempting to challenge. As I believe I mentioned earlier, enactivism challenges both the foundations we have habitually sought in either subjectivism or objectivism.
James, you mentioned in your blog entry that we need to pay attention to how things are separate in addition to celebrating, through perspectives such as enactivism, the ways that they are connected. I think this is a good point. One thing that I want to suggest in response to this is that, given the constructed, enacted nature of our worldspaces, there will always be a degree of separation, of incommensurability among worlds and perceptions. We can find consonances and homeomorphic resonances - we can trace out a sufficient degree of objective grounding that we can still communicate across languages and cultures and disciplines - but our multiply enacted worldspaces will also always be incommensurable, to a degree. Taking a cue from the Bon Dzogchen view that I referenced earlier, I don't see this as evidence of ultimate fragmentation; rather, the play of multiplicity, of differance, speaks also to unbounded wholeness.
There are several reasons this “wholeness” is described as indeterminate and unbounded in the Bon tradition. (Forgive me for going a bit astray from Varela's enactivism; I do think it relates.) One of them is that it can never, in itself, be taken as an object in itself; we cannot stand outside the whole and make any uninvolved pronouncements about it. Really, the notions of both an independent subject capable of “standing outside” and the world as a pre-given, self-existent, monolithic totality are both called into question.
There's a bit more I wanted to say, but I'm posting this much later than I wanted. I wrote most of it at work, but just haven't had time to wrap it up or post it. I'll put this up for now and of course will leave the door open for further discussion and/or clarification.
Best wishes,
Bruce
i too am enjoying the way that your laying out your perspectives and experiences here om.for what it's worth i wouldn't say that what your suggesting is sheer nonsense and impossibility, and from what i can see we can't with our 5 senses even say that much about the unconsciousness of deep sleep at this point on our time-line on this planet. so it may be that carl sagan's 2d flatlanders would be almost totally unaware of 3rd dimensional beings. here's where it gets sticky with me tho: when i claim to be a 30,000 year old atlantean selling and making enormous amounts of money peddling junk science and crappy metaphysics i kind of have to draw the line. this actually makes me sick because i too have experienced many strange and sometimes wonderful things that i would never dream of peddling for profit! now i know we live in a commercial society and perhaps people like neale d. walsh, fritjof capra, and j. redfield ,etc. are actually sincere, but it is possible that they are also sincerely mistaken,too. and i think there also comes a point where it's not unreasonable for reasonable people to ask for a little proof and evidence from those who are making what seems to be very exaggerated claims about the nature of life. that these folks consistently are not able to provide any verifiable evidence coupled with their own projections of their own specialness and superiority does seem like inflation to me. and people of relatively sound mind ought to be skeptical of these claims imo……..
well you folks in general are little bit country, rnr, blues, funk, jazz, ambient , techno, classical,hiphop,folk, house……………….
when i claim to be a 30,000 year old atlantean selling and making enormous amounts of money peddling junk science and crappy metaphysics i kind of have to draw the line.
hey andrew…to my thinking, there is no difference in someone that does this, or someone else that preaches the word of god and makes tons of money off that…or claims to have hidden teachings and proceeds to dangle them and sell them at a price…
neither are based in reality…they both peddle things that require their followers to accept a belief system that is not logical…
so where do we draw the line?
even all the buddhist schools of thought are peddling all kinds of beings and bardos and reincarnation, renunciation, transformation…these are teachings that are designed to trap you into a belief system…all the while claiming compassion and equanimity…
shall we all shave our heads and move into tibetan caves?
i am willing to give enactivism and integral my attention, until it tries to convert me into some kind of movement…led by some supposedly 'higher' consciousness…that is where i draw the line…
i am willing to listen to realistic ideas that actually move us forward as a human race…and promise to logically address the global problems we face, as well as the ones we face as individuals…but i have to admit, i am tired of the same old spiritual rhetoric…whether it comes in the form of buddhism or christianity…both have had centuries, literally, to change things…and neither has…science is the only thing that has made any logical progress in actually curing or easing the ails of human beings…
at least science is evolving, changing, with the evolving planet, universe, and inhabitants…i just cannot abide in spiritual fantasy any more no matter how good it may sound…that is my line…and i am drawing it…
btw…this does not mean that i am not open…i am…it just means that i am not open to believing in santa, just because someone tells me there is one…
hi star, completely agree, i've been critical for some time of people like h.lindsay, g. jeffries, a. jones, who has been peddling the apocalypse and making a ton of money; and yes, as kw points out buddhism has not been immune to the same excesses although the content is different…i call it the never ending karmic gore fest that the same hindu mindset has been selling to the world for ages….and the karma is just getting worse and worse it seems.
i do think that an openness and new methodologies that are not as polemical and intolerant and dismissive of perceived mysteries may help in easing the tension of the human dilemma at this point in time, although i think it just as likely that were doomed by the never ending geopolitical/economic conflicts and religious ideologies. it's in this sense i do hope for some kind of divine intervention……but alas……………
isn't hoping for divine intervention like hoping santa's gonna come down the chimney? LOL
good call, star. i'm with you. there is a real live planet that is begging for us to wake up and pay attention to its suffering.
well yes, pretty much………..but i can't say that i am all that thrilled about nonintervention……..
perhaps i am just in a gloomy mood tonight and everything is just perfect and the way it's supposed to be here…………………….
Absolutely, Matt, if you are willing to call all energy “physicality” then no prob. Most people wouldn't though. Most people don't even regard electromagnetism, gravity, nuclear forces, etc. as physical. Physical means present to the senses, in ordinary thinking, doesn't it? Sense-able with the 5 senses, anyway. X-rays, radio and microwaves, etc. are “nonphysical” – that's my impression of how people use the term.
In my cosmology, everything which exists is most essentially or basically energy which is vibrating, and which also contains information/intelligence/organization which we refer to as consciousness – although I don't understand all the ontological relationships of all those factors – and all the multiplicity of manifest reality (sic) comes from the differences in vibration: frequency, amplitude, etc. Call 'em strings, if you wanna. That's as ridiculous as my view. In my house, we tie things with strings. (just kidding. I haven't been able to grok “strings” though I have tried, so I can't reject them.)
Andrew, thanks for your openness. I'm with your disgusts. Is there anything which cannot be twisted, distorted, subverted, co-opted, abused, warped, perverted? Nothing I know of. But we don't need to toss babies out with bathwaters. For example, there is a lot of sick and warped and harmful and neuotic sexuality around, but no one is saying therefore there isn't any such thing as healthy uplifting sex. Eh?
I don't think, though, that the answer is to ask for proof and evidence. That is possibly making a domain error. The answer is simply discernment. Separating the information from the conveyer of it, first of all, and second of all, evaluating the conveyer as a human being.
It makes me sick too when good stuff gets perverted, and thus people do toss out babies. A huge part of my ministry is dedicated to saving various babies from common New Age “errors in thinking,” though of course that is my assessment. Let's just say I am big on internal consistency and integrity.
And yes, ideas do matter in the world we experience, and that's a bottom line, and we need to ground and tie ideas to their logical consequences – what they lead people to do in the world – in evaluating them.
And some days what we see is pretty discouraging. Other days, though, it is darned ENcouraging.
Guess that covers it for the recent posts.
thanks to all,
OM Bastet
OM,
Physical typically does mean “matter and energy,” as since Einstein we know that E = MC2 (energy is equal to mass multiplied by the speed of light multiplied by itself). It doesn't necessarily have to be visible to the 5 senses, but it does have to be detectable in principle by some current or future technology.
I'm open to the possibility of beings composed of energetic bodies beyond my retina's ability to see. I haven't been given any reason to believe they exist yet, though. I'll keep a look out!
how do they exist if we don't even exist…or that red ball of mr. t's? LOL
actually, i have a wonderful book that breaks everything down real simple…The Supreme Source…it says that only Awareness exist…and everything is Awareness…
the only prob i am having with that now…is does Awareness really, really, exist? LOL
Yes, I am very grateful to Albert for letting people know that matter is just slow energy !! My point was the man on the street doesn't register that yet, doesn't think that way.
But wrt to bodies, that's my whole point. Our bodies are energy that's really slow, and some bodies are energy that's much faster. Those I call “non-physical bodies.” Period. Maybe we could just call them non-matter or non-material, to be more precise.
There is no “reason to believe” they exist. It is not a matter of reason or belief, but of perceptions occuring when and to whom they occur. I am quite comfortable with there being no “reason to believe” they exist.
And I see the rub. 5 senses or technology. For me, those are not the only alternatives, especially not for perceiving higher-faster energies. As in (my) fact we have bodies composed of harmonics of our vibrational speed that are above our physical bodies, we also have “senses” in those which sense the higher vibrations. After a certain degree of expansion of consciousness (in human development) those senses are available (integrated with the slower “matter” body) as a natural function of the expanded identity into the higher-harmonic energy body.
IMO.
Hmmm. Matt and matt-er. There must be a joke in there somewhere.
OM Bastet
hi star,
forgive me if i say so but it seems to me you're expressing a rather jaundiced view of buddhadharma here in your comment:
”even all the buddhist schools of thought are peddling all kinds of beings and bardos and reincarnation, renunciation, transformation…these are teachings that are designed to trap you into a belief system…all the while claiming compassion and equanimity…”
by ”peddling” i hope you're meaning / using one of the colloquial definitions of the word, namely “to publicize and try to win acceptance for (ideas, theories, etc)”, rather than selling for profit…
(and whilst on the subject, can i ask who you have in mind here? “…or claims to have hidden teachings and proceeds to dangle them and sell them at a price…”)
but it is
”…these are teachings that are designed to trap you into a belief system…all the while claiming compassion and equanimity…”
that seems jaundiced to me… if these teachings have a design, then you have to look at the intention with which they're given… which with regard to mahayana buddhist teachings, for example, is with the motivation to benefit all sentient beings… having compassion is an aspect of this.
and I have to ask why you think they are designed to trap one into a belief system any more than, say, varela's ideas on enactivism… or, maybe for you more pertinently, garab dorje's “three statements”?
many tashi delegs ; - )
lol
hi marigpa!
no need to apologize for asking honest questions, or any other reason as far as i am concerned…lol…i will try to answer them honestly…
definition of jaundice - showing or experiencing a state of disordered feeling or distorted judgment as through bitterness or melancholy; “all.
i am not bitter or melancholy…i am filled with joy…however; i do not buy into conceptual thinking that does not encourage others to 'think' for themselves… call it buddhadharma or christianity or enactivism or anything else…they are all teachings…if you get attached to the teaching, or teacher, you miss the message…KILL THE BUDDHA! (decision not quiet in on enactivim but you might want to check out my reponse to Matt).
by “peddling” i hope you're meaning / using one of the colloquial definitions of the word, namely “to publicize and try to win acceptance for (ideas, theories, etc)”, rather than selling for profit…
both definitions can be applied…
(and whilst on the subject, can i ask who you have in mind here? “…or claims to have hidden teachings and proceeds to dangle them and sell them at a price…”)
anyone that is guilty of it…
that seems jaundiced to me… if these teachings have a design, then you have to look at the intention with which they're given… which with regard to mahayana buddhist teachings, for example, is with the motivation to benefit all sentient beings… having compassion is an aspect of this.
you are certainly welcome to your opinion…and in looking at the 'intention', who was it that said “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” (they still don't know whether to give credit to Johnson or some editer for that one…lol)…besides, it is like saying that Bush's intentions were compassionate when he decided to invade Iraq…buddhist teachings scare the bejesus out of people into shaving their heads, not having sex, and alot of other things that are questionable…imho that is 'telling' them not only what to believe but how to think and live their lives…ridiculousness if you ask me…and since you did, i told you…lol
and I have to ask why you think they are designed to trap one into a belief system any more than, say, varela's ideas on enactivism… or, maybe for you more pertinently, garab dorje's “three statements”?
my response to matt should answer your questions concerning Varela and enactivism
concerning the other…i have had direct living experience of garab dorje's precepts, and found them to actually produce amazing results giving me a wonderful quality of life for myself and those around me…if something works, i don't try and fix it…lol…btw…those 3 little directions by their very design free one from conceptual thinking…
hope i answered all your qualms…joy*
hi starlight (if we're being formal : ) ),
”hope i answered all your qualms…”
from my perspective you're qualifying statements are something of an improvement ; - p
all best,
lol
Marigpa, i think it important to remember what james points out in his essay…
here…and…here (hope that worked! if not, read his entire essay, it is awesome!).
james you rock!
you can call me star…lol
it did not work…anyone know how to link to a specific part of an essay?
Marigpa, here is the text in it's entirity that i was referring to…but i would still suggest reading his entire entry…
This next section is also written with apologies to those non-regular visitors at Julian's, Bruce's, Matt's blog, because this next bit is just a little bit “cliquey”, sorry - hopefully one outcome will be to open up the discussions even further.
[deep breath] In recent discussions, I sense that Bruce, Matt (and maybe others? Let's call them The Enacters for now) seem just a little too ready to classify Julian (and me and others? Let's call ourselves The Real Worlders) as something akin to dyed-in-the-wool materialists who are trying to “deny” the value of the mythic and other levels. We are too easily compared to the orange rationalists of the enlightenment, as opposed to people who are tending towards integral but with a robust approach to applying the healthy rational where appropriate, (at least that's how I like to see myself!). I've seen this in other online discussions on similar subject matter too.
Unlike Matt and Bruce, who go gently on us, Cook-Greuter does not pull her punches: “By most modern Western expectations, fully functional adults see and treat reality as something preexistent and external to themselves made up of permanent, well-defined objects that can be analyzed, investigated, and controlled for our benefit. This view is based on a maximal separation between subject and object, thinker and thought. It epitomizes the traditional scientific frame of mind that is concerned with control, measurement, and prediction. It also represents the goal of much of Western socialization. Most adults have little or no insight into the basic arbitrariness of defining the objects and are completely unaware that according to Koplowitz “the process of naming or measuring pulls that which is named out of reality, which itself is not nameable or measurable.”3 They operate under the assumption that subject and object are distinct, and that by analyzing the parts one can figure out the whole. From the conventional Western perspective, the acquisition of this scientific, rational mindframe (or formal operations in Piaget's model) is seen as the goal of socialization and defines what it means to be a fully grown adult.”
Despite the truths in here, to me it's something of a caricature, and if applied too rigidly, it's an unhelpful one. Such a stereotype can contribute to the unfortunate situation where someone focussing on the rational in a discussion is almost pigeonholed as being an example of Cook-Greuter's description. Actually there is a
wider point I'm trying to make, and Hokai made this point better than I can when he said: “At the same time, rational as an available structure and potential should be distinguished from rationalism in any of its calcified expressions and formulations, conditioned during the initial breaking-away from the mythic order by means of desacralization”.
One of the causes of past misunderstandings I have observed on Julian's and other blogs, is simply the desire and expectation of the Enacters among us to hear strong rational arguments always put in the context of the whole spectrum. (Examples of this kind of dialogue are Hokai http://hokai.info/2008/07/transformative-power-of-development.html just asking for qualification re Santa Claus, or (and I paraphrase Bruce here) Balder saying to Julian “just put it in context and you'll get less beef from us”).
However, as we all know, it's a big demand to make that on each entry all writers need to always refer to almost the entire breadth of their knowledge and range of perspectives lest they be too readily labelled as lacking in the perspective they have perhaps knowingly chosen not to include. This is especially true when, if we are regular contributors or readers, we know from other entries that the writer does indeed have a deeper understanding.
On the other hand, for some less familiar readers, that particular entry is all they have to go on. I have seen similar critiques on the i-i pod about a David Deida audio clip. I was initially baffled as to several comments all pointing out Deida's lack of understanding of vertical development (in Wilberian terms). I later realised the reason for my confusion was that because I am such a regular reader / listener to his material, and have therefore heard him make so many references to this vertical aspect, that I always take it as a given that he has an in depth understanding of the vertical. So I thought those critics were being pedantic or even deliberately choosing to miss the point! However, I soon realised the validity of their criticism because within the short time allowed on the audio clip in question, he did indeed give no mention of the vertical and so gave the impression that his depth of understanding stopped at simply an intense level of horizontal experience/awareness.
So my request is to readers / commentators not to assume a lack of understanding on the basis of, say, one blog. And for writers, if we are going to put out a piece of writing into the public domain, we make the effort to present it in as wide a context as possible, with as many qualifications as possible… then after that you can make your point and no one will get hung up on what you aren't referring to!! I see most of us trying to do this, but methinks a little bit more of the same from all sides would help us all surf more waves together.
1vector3, hi!
i am fascinated by your assertions about these non-physical beings who are simply made up of faster moving energy.
sounds like they perhaps “enact” the world we are living in somehow…
are you saying you have experienced them directly yourself?
where can i find out more on this world-changing, paradigm-busting, amazing breakthrough regarding everything we thought we knew about reality?!
this really does change everything for me, but i need to be sure - can you help?
if what you are saying is verifiable surely you will go down as the next great prophet, scientific theorist or both!
this is momentous - and to think it happened in a symposium i was part of….
wow.
Star, I've been intending to respond to that part of James' letter. I don't agree with his representation of my understanding or my intent in my interactions with Julian. So, it looks like it's time I go and do that!
B.
Julian, a ways up, you posted several questions to me that I haven't gotten to yet. Have you seen this response to James I wrote yesterday? Does that help at all with some of your questions (which I'll also go and find in just a moment!)?
j…is experiencing all three modes adam's thinking scale at once…lol
bruce, i think it wise, as i am certain you will agree, to NOT miss the message, regardless of our reactions to certain words or phrases that are used as a delivery process…
what has also been helpful in my experiencing, is to look at why certain phrases or words have the power to make us feel one way or another…when i do this instead of reacting, it is an awakening process allowing me to release more condtioned perception…but what do i know? i am just a dumb blonde poetress…LOL
bruce, i would love to see you go into more detail on this blog concerning some of the points i raised regarding my lack of clarity…
you have such a way of expressing your own experience of awareness, and if you can use that, to speak to the more confusing aspects, it would give more clarity to everyone…imho…
i'm not trying to tell you what to do, just making a suggestion, and asking really that you show us more of YOU…lol
Sure, Star, I'll be happy to. The conversation here has been pretty active and there are several posts to me that I still haven't answered, from you and several others, but I've also been wanting to get more involved in the two new posts from James and Matt (not to mention Adam's appetizers) …. only if there were more hours in the day!
About reacting or ignoring messages, no, I am not in reaction mode, and I am not planning just to reject what James is saying. I hear him, and I want to respond to him.
And Julian, I saw that you cross-posted one of your posts to me over on James' blog. I'm going to answer that one there….
Best wishes,
B.
Balder, I liked the comment you posted earlier (here). My understanding of what you said is that there are many contexts to our understanding reality. These contexts are maps of reality but not reality itself. Furthermore, these multiple contexts fit together very loosely as there is no objective meta-context. These contexts are fundamentally subjective and the closest we come to objectivity is intersubjectiivty. Its through this intersubjectivity and its relationship to the embodied mind that we interact with the world and enactivate a worldview.
hi star,
i did read james' essay when it first came up, and really appreciated it… thank you james, kudos to you!
it's a big long quote you've given, but it seems to me (correct me if i'm wrong) that the key point you wish me to take with reference to your comments on the buddhist teachings is contained here:
”However, as we all know, it's a big demand to make that on each entry all writers need to always refer to almost the entire breadth of their knowledge and range of perspectives lest they be too readily labelled as lacking in the perspective they have perhaps knowingly chosen not to include.”
it's not that i couldn't or can't entertain the possibility that you might have other perspectives on the buddhist teachings than you were expressing in the piece i commented on…
i was more concerned with what impression other readers (and i'm not thinking of the people who are contributing here… hopefully hundreds of others will be tuning into this symposium) might form on the basis of your comments…
on reflection, i could and maybe should have been more direct and said something like “star, i'm concerned that some readers may form a negative impression of “..all the buddhist schools of thought ..” based on the comments you've just passed.”
so in that respect, i think what james writes in his concluding paragraph applies to both of us.
”And for writers, if we are going to put out a piece of writing into the public domain, we make the effort to present it in as wide a context as possible, with as many qualifications as possible… then after that you can make your point and no one will get hung up on what you aren't referring to!!”
and you can call me lol : )
all best wishes,
lol
hey marigpa, in context, i believe james was referring to an entire presentation…and not just to a comment here or there…what i am pointing to, is not just what james states, but also what adam deals with in much of his writings…let me see if i can put it into words here off the top of my head…lol
when we read something, our minds automatically judge it and assume this or that depending on our own perspective and how it has been conditioned…
so the point is for all of us, me included…yes…that we start being aware of our assumptions in a generalized way, and that we think critically more in a specific way…whether we are reading something posted or commenting or posting an entire presentation…
we have to retrain our brains to think in a critical way instead of an emotional way…by not reading into something that which is not there actually, and by being more direct in our questions and what we reply…make sense?
sometimes crazy off-the-wall things need to be said to wake us up out of our nonthinking comas…lol
OM said:
This is all true out of context, but not for me within the larger context I see for human life and our world. And - to complicate the stew - I believe each of us is a collection of identities, and that collection is a nested set of holons, with multiple identities actually on each level or in each holon, and the factors that give rise to these various identities are many and various, and are located in different space-time areas and in different areas out of space-time. So there is no “our identity” which can be usefully discussed. Perhaps, anyway…..
Matt responded:
I think I agree. Our bodies are composite individuals made up of a community of cells, each with its own enacted worldspace. The body functions as a coherent whole due to the emergent order which has evolved over hundreds of millions of years. I'll get into this in my essay on Monday, but basically, it is our immune system and our nervous system that coordinates the trillions of distinct cells composing our biological identity. The identity I was referring to as socially constructed was the narrative/egoic self, the person I think I am, the person I tell others I am when they ask where I come from, what I do for a living, what my likes and dislikes are, etc. Obviously, all these identities can get very confusing, so we need to be careful when we describe how they all cohere (or discohere, depending on our physiological/psychologica/spiritual health).
We have our biologic identity which is a multiplicity that is organized into a single sense of embodied self. We have our socially constructed identity which Buddhists say isn't identical with our fundamental awareness and hence no-self. Furthermore, we have the enactivist view of intersubjectivity that says our individual self can only be understood in a larger context of interacting selves. To introduce a further idea (which may relate to OM's original statement), Hillman speaks of a multiplicity of selves within each apparent self and he wasn't speaking of a biologic self.
All of these views somehow relate to the whole idea of groundlessness. We are multiplicities that are loosely held together by acts of imagination. Imagination and perception, body and mind, individuality and relationship are all co-dependent. We enact a worldview, but our worldview (umwelt, lifeworld, mazeway) is a direct extension of our sense of self.
hi starlight,
”we have to retrain our brains to think in a critical way instead of an emotional way…by not reading into something that which is not there actually, and by being more direct in our questions and what we reply…make sense?”
makes very good sense… and very well put. i certainly need to train in critical thinking… this is all part of it : )
cool bruce thanks!
yea this is certianly the wildest and ost active comments-fest we've had in z-land so far…. awesome! but hard to keep up on…
hey bruce (he said with his tongue planted firmly in his cheek)
i'll make you a deal, ok?
you sometimes acknowledge that which is not dependent on contexts and i'll sometimes contexturalize what is….
loving the mirror dance we do!
LOL. Is this in response to one of my recent letters to James?
If you haven't seen it yet, I also just posted one to you.
Best wishes,
B.
And p.s. – yes, we do do a pretty nifty mirror thang here…
Hey OM,
But wrt to bodies, that's my whole point. Our bodies are energy that's really slow, and some bodies are energy that's much faster. Those I call “non-physical bodies.” Period. Maybe we could just call them non-matter or non-material, to be more precise.
Why not just call them “high energy bodies”? I'm sure there are people who don't know what the word physical entails. But I think it is pretty well understood among most that physics is the study of matter and energy (as well as spacetime). Saying they are non-material bodies may work, as material clearly means an entity with mass. Photons, for instance, clearly exist, but they are non-material because they have no mass. They do possess momentum, though. Maybe “light bodies” might be an even better term?
There is no “reason to believe” they exist. It is not a matter of reason or belief, but of perceptions occuring when and to whom they occur. I am quite comfortable with there being no “reason to believe” they exist.
I follow your distinction here. It's an important one. I certainly have experienced moments when something unseen conveyed an intention or sign to me, but I never got the idea to conceptualize this as an encounter with an autonomous Being. I just refer to these experiences as synchronicities.The term Being brings to mind some kind of humanoid figure, and it just seems inappropriate based on what I experienced. But then maybe my experiences are unlike your own in this respect.
Hmmm. Matt and matt-er. There must be a joke in there somewhere.
I don't have a joke, but this made me think about something interesting, that being the nature of consciousness. Matt is my name, and let's just assume for the time being that Matt refers to the consciousness associated with this body. We can say quite definitively that Matt is not matter. Consciousness is non-physical, in that it is clearly not identical with my body or brain. If it were, a neurosurgeon would be able to lick the active part of my brain as I enjoyed a glass of OJ and actually taste it. I haven't worked out exactly how enactivism “solves” the hard problem, but I have more than a feeling that this is because it can't be worked out. That is, the hard problem (how mind and brain relate) is not a theoretical or philosophical problem, but an experiential problem; it therefore cannot be solved with more words, but only by a transformation of how we experience ourselves, how we relate to our bodies and to other bodies, etc. It could be that a full realization of groundlessness is necessary before the mind/brain problem is made clear. I do think that consciousness cannot exist without some kind of body, whatever vibrational speed that body happens to be at. This seems necessary to me because otherwise there is no way to stake out a perspective, because there is no body in spacetime to do so…. consciousness, unless we're talking about some kind of Brahamic consciousness, MUST be limited in order to be conscious at all. In fact, maybe Brahman itself is not conscious until it gets involved in spacetime by fracturing itself into many perspectives… ?
Just some spur of the moment ramblings ; )
Thanks OM,
Matt
Julian said
i am fascinated by your assertions about these non-physical beings who are simply made up of faster moving energy.
That's one metaphorical way of categorizing the difference, yes. Assertions? That might be an exaggeration of my position. Offering of possible viewpoints. For those shopping for expanded viewpoints.
sounds like they perhaps “enact” the world we are living in somehow…
My impression is SOME of them co-tetraenact it with others, including the higher-harmonic identities of our human selves. I don't yet fully remember/perceive doing that.
are you saying you have experienced them directly yourself?
No I deliberately haven't been saying that. Do you want to ask whether I have?
where can i find out more on this world-changing, paradigm-busting, amazing breakthrough regarding everything we thought we knew about reality?!
I'm puzzled. Busting whose paradigm? Much of the population of the earth back to cave days have perceived and interacted with such Beings as it was a natural part of their world.
So who is”we?” As I said, it's hardly a breakthrough for millions upon millions.
this really does change everything for me, but i need to be sure - can you help?
Probably not. There are at this time several million people better than I at communicating/perceiving such Beings, and many of them would be better teachers than I.
if what you are saying is verifiable surely you will go down as the next great prophet, scientific theorist or both!
That wouldn't suit my life purpose or my life plans. I assume you are kidding me here. I am not saying anything hundreds of others haven't said.
As to verifiable, KW covers that pretty well when he talks about injunctions, don't you think so?
this is momentous - and to think it happened in a symposium i was part of….
wow.
What's momentous?? I must have missed it.
I'll tell you what would be momentous and worth writing home about: if I establish a Vulcan mind-meld with one of those nanonanostringydealies, I will be sure to come back here and add a comment, and then you can say you heard it here first. Then I expect to go on Oprah and make millions off my reports of what they say, those stringydealies.
Not to mention the creative power I would have. Just imagine. I'd be in charge of everything. Then I could make it perfect, just the way I want it to be. Clean earth, kind, respectful, honest peple, inter-galactic cooperation, wow.
I'll keep you posted.
:D
OM Bastet
Since Matt's post is right above, it behooves me to respond before it gets to be 30 above, haha.
Why not just call them “high energy bodies”? I'm sure there are people who don't know what the word physical entails. But I think it is pretty well understood among most that physics is the study of matter and energy (as well as spacetime). Saying they are non-material bodies may work, as material clearly means an entity with mass. Photons, for instance, clearly exist, but they are non-material because they have no mass. They do possess momentum, though. Maybe “light bodies” might be an even better term?
Delighted to adopt your alternatives, much more precise. Non-material, or “light-bodies,” though not all higher vibrating energy could be perceived by anyone as “light.” Hmmm. Maybe that's not true. Anyway, possibly more communicative than the terms I was using.
I certainly have experienced moments when something unseen conveyed an intention or sign to me, but I never got the idea to conceptualize this as an encounter with an autonomous Being. I just refer to these experiences as synchronicities.The term Being brings to mind some kind of humanoid figure, and it just seems inappropriate based on what I experienced. But then maybe my experiences are unlike your own in this respect.
There is a huge variety of possible characterizations/percetual interpretations of energy-bodies (ah, that's the term. Ours and theirs, just different kinds of energy-bodies.) Some of them probably are (to themselves) humanoid in appearance, but many more simply shift their energy patterns to appear humanoid to us, for our comfort and ability to relate.
And certainly there are “synchronicities” that don't involve “Beings” at all… Delighted to hear that bit about your experiences !!!!
I don't have a joke, but this made me think about something interesting, that being the nature of consciousness. Matt is my name, and let's just assume for the time being that Matt refers to the consciousness associated with this body. We can say quite definitively that Matt is not matter. Consciousness is non-physical, in that it is clearly not identical with my body or brain. If it were, a neurosurgeon would be able to lick the active part of my brain as I enjoyed a glass of OJ and actually taste it. I haven't worked out exactly how enactivism “solves” the hard problem, but I have more than a feeling that this is because it can't be worked out. That is, the hard problem (how mind and brain relate) is not a theoretical or philosophical problem, but an experiential problem; it therefore cannot be solved with more words, but only by a transformation of how we experience ourselves, how we relate to our bodies and to other bodies, etc.
Amen. That is what I think I was trying to say last night, about the whole mind-body question actually begging its own question, being based on certain very optional assumptions. And yes, I interpret some of the other descrptions in this symposium to mean that the mindd-body “problem” is based in conceptuality and language, and doesn't appear in our experience if we can wean our experience sufficiently away from being so determined/influenced by our concepts and language.
BTW I always on this issue recommend everyone read psychologist R. D. Laing's The Politics of Experience. While he doesn't have the label of deconstructionist, because I think writing much earlier, if you want your mind blown down to the roots about how LL and LR “co-enact” UL, it's a chilling report that leaves one shaken. Forever. At least it did me. I think it's highly relevant to the symposium topic.
It could be that a full realization of groundlessness is necessary before the mind/brain problem is made clear.
I'm not fluent in Buddhist jargon, so don't have a good idea of what “groundlessness” means.
I do think that consciousness cannot exist without some kind of body, whatever vibrational speed that body happens to be at. This seems necessary to me because otherwise there is no way to stake out a perspective, because there is no body in spacetime to do so…. consciousness, unless we're talking about some kind of Brahamic consciousness, MUST be limited in order to be conscious at all. In fact, maybe Brahman itself is not conscious until it gets involved in spacetime by fracturing itself into many perspectives… ?
Points very worth pondering !! Since everything that exists exists as a particular (whether in our space-time or another version of it) there is no problem with the assumption that consciousness must be attached to a body. In my model, every stringydealie, assuming they are the basic of “form” , or every energy vibration, is also inherently conscious. So consciousness is not “attached” to a body, it is inherent and coexistent WITH the body. To say “attached” is to operate within the separation/dual ontology of awareness-matter.
consciousness, unless we're talking about some kind of Brahamic consciousness, MUST be limited in order to be conscious at all. In fact, maybe Brahman itself is not conscious until it gets involved in spacetime by fracturing itself into many perspectives… ?
Here you're on the cutting edge, so delightful. Here's my take on it. There's for me a great deal of plausibility in what you say. Before “getting involved in spacetime by fracturing itself into many [embodied-physical] perspectives” – a way of characterizing the coming into existence of All That Is which I find quite compatible – [and here language definitely is only pointing] there might NOT have been or be “consciousness.” i.e. The Plenum, the Implicate Order, the Void, the Emptiness, might not be conscious in any way at all vaguely similar to its manifested aspects. It might just be Deepak Chopra's term, the one I favor, “the field of infinite possibilities.”
What enables or prompts the crossing of the line, from unmanifest to manifest, and back again? Now THERE's a topic worth pondering, which I love doing.
Thanks for your delightful and enriching “ramblings.”
All the usual disclaimers here, and other perspectives solicited, as per usual.
(No, it's not an escort service here, (see elsewhere in this whole discussion) but “solicitin”g is going on, ROTFL)
Blessings, OM Bastet
Hi Bruce,
I put a couple of questions to you here (“about 21 hours later”) which you may have missed. I'm wondering if you're able to define the parameters of this “.. living knowledgeability of Being ..” more precisely than (it being) an ”open-ended knowingness” – for example, would you place a limit on ”the multiplicity of perspectives which enact [anyones] self-world horizons ” at this point in our evolutionary development?
In your (superb!) essay you wrote:
“… Varela and Depraz explore various meditative disciplines, particularly Vajrayana or Tantric practices which employ sophisticated imagery and imaginal processes in the service of self-transformation. Imagination, they argue, is a sort of mixed object which traverses material and experiential domains without boundary or gap; and in this context, Buddhist practices such as the ngondro, Tantric visualization, or tonglen, are both intelligible and powerful examples of mind-body know-how.
This is a rich topic, and I invite interested readers to explore it with me in the comments section below.”
One thing comes to mind with regard to this. First, the practice of transformation of the dreamscape / dream content that by all accounts (I'm afraid I can't speak from personal experience!) one can train in within lucid dreaming, and which doesn't require a “permission to practice” or transmission… and the practice(s) within Vajrayana “deity yoga” that do. Somewhere within this there might need to be a discussion about the need for, even the validity of, “transmission”.
And I'm right behind you with what you're expressing here in your concluding paragraphs.
”As we explore the promise of the enactive paradigm for 21st century spirituality, I believe this insight will have lasting value, allowing us to explore spiritual traditions and practices in terms of their enactive potential, rather than in terms of their propositional truth value or the validity of their metaphysical claims. No commitment to otherwordly realities is required; but neither should we cling blindly to, or simply accept as pre-given, our models of this world.
We are invited, instead, to step full bodied, open-eyed, into the burgeoning stream of our evolutionary unfolding, with all our faculties - body, senses, reason, imagination, and awareness - open and intact.”
With love and appreciation,
Lol
Hey OM
Amen. That is what I think I was trying to say last night, about the whole mind-body question actually begging its own question, being based on certain very optional assumptions. And yes, I interpret some of the other descrptions in this symposium to mean that the mindd-body “problem” is based in conceptuality and language, and doesn't appear in our experience if we can wean our experience sufficiently away from being so determined/influenced by our concepts and language.
That makes sense to me. It seems to me that a lot of problems that get discussed are inherent to the medium in which the discussion is occurring, and so can't be solved in such a discussion. Language is one of the most influential aspects of enactivating a worldview.
Hi, Lol,
I'm really sorry! I did see your post, and had intended to respond (in part, with a “No, TSK is the Only Way!” wisecrack), but it got lost in the shuffle. I didn't expect so many comments to be generated by this discussion … but I'm loving it!
You asked: With regard to the “living knowledgeability of Being”, would you say it's an open-ended knowingness in the sense that this knowingness is ever-evolving and so ever-increasing, or in the sense that it's a knowingness that already-always contains the potentiality of every possible ”particularized [act] of knowledge”? Or maybe neither of these?
I would say that knowingness is open-ended in that it is not inherently bounded and contains the potential for evolution always already within it.
You asked: And is the sustained enquiry that leads to recognising this knowingness as “the actuality of being” the province of TSK only, or do you know of other practices that offer the same understanding?
I'm using TSK-influenced language in that section of my essay (which, I admit, is largely lifted from my previous symposium entry – I was out of time!), but I definitely do not regard this “knowingness” as the province of TSK alone. I don't think it's limited to any specific approach, since it isn't a “product” of some sort. But in terms of teachings which discuss and point to knowingness in this way, Dzogchen and Mahamudra are obvious (and particularly clear) examples.
In relation to Varela's endorsement of the effectiveness of Tantric practices, you wrote: One thing comes to mind with regard to this. First, the practice of transformation of the dreamscape / dream content that by all accounts (I'm afraid I can't speak from personal experience!) one can train in within lucid dreaming, and which doesn't require a “permission to practice” or transmission… and the practice(s) within Vajrayana “deity yoga” that do. Somewhere within this there might need to be a discussion about the need for, even the validity of, “transmission”.
I admit that I'm rather ambiguous in my feelings about the literal necessity of “transmission.” In the context of Tantric practice, I respect and comply with tradition and do not attempt to practice methods which require transmission if I haven't received that particular transmission. And in writing what I did in my essay, I'm definitely not encouraging people to go pilfer practices from Tantric traditions without regard for the cultural and spiritual rules around their use. But with that said, I am doubtful whether transmission is actually necessary to effect the sorts of psychospiritual transformations these practices can engender. I can see how transmission serves an important LL function which supports and helps encourage respect for (and therefore empowers) this practice tradition, and I respect that, but I am not convinced there is any “mystical” efficacy to it. In intersubjective terms, I think it makes sense that someone with a particular realization can certainly influence or evoke subjective resonance (and recognition) in others, especially in appropriately cultivated teaching contexts, but in my experience with actual transmission events, it appears to be more of a LL/LR ritual formality, where a text is read aloud and permission is thus granted.
What do you think?
Best wishes,
Bruce
great discussion lol and bruce…
OM,
I think we're on the same page now, great! I agree with your comment about not using the word “attached” to refer to the way mind and body relate. Point well taken!
-Matt
Hi Bruce,
”I would say that knowingness is open-ended in that it is not inherently bounded and contains the potential for evolution always already within it.”
I like the smooth, rounded contours of this statement… it's a bit like the kind of small polished stone that you just have to keep turning round and round in your hand… : )
I found myself wanting to ask in what manner this “.. potential for evolution ..” is contained.
Reading the word “potential”, at first I only thought of 'possibility', but then could extend further to think of 'potency', which took me to 'power' then to 'energy'.
Interestingly enough, the Tibetan term used in the Dzogchen teaching to convey the idea of 'potentiality' in the same kind of context is thug.je (as I'm sure you're aware), and what it more precisely means is “the energy of potentiality”, conveying the idea of unceasing movement, and with the implicit understanding that this energy doesn't have physical/material properties. And in its ordinary usage it means compassion : )
[In relation to Varela's endorsement of the effectiveness of Tantric practices] I wrote:
One thing comes to mind with regard to this. First, the practice of transformation of the dreamscape / dream content that by all accounts (I'm afraid I can't speak from personal experience!) one can train in within lucid dreaming, and which doesn't require a “permission to practice” or transmission… and the practice(s) within Vajrayana “deity yoga” that do. Somewhere within this there might need to be a discussion about the need for, even the validity of, “transmission”.”
I realise I wasn't clear enough here. I wasn't equating “permission to practice” with “transmission” … even though a “permission to practice” is one kind of transmission.
I'm not sure how much distance there'll be in the comment stream between your post and this one, so for the sake of clarity and coherency…
You responded: ”I admit that I'm rather ambiguous in my feelings about the literal necessity of “transmission.” In the context of Tantric practice, I respect and comply with tradition and do not attempt to practice methods which require transmission if I haven't received that particular transmission. And in writing what I did in my essay, I'm definitely not encouraging people to go pilfer practices from Tantric traditions without regard for the cultural and spiritual rules around their use. But with that said, I am doubtful whether transmission is actually necessary to effect the sorts of psychospiritual transformations these practices can engender. I can see how transmission serves an important LL function which supports and helps encourage respect for (and therefore empowers) this practice tradition, and I respect that, but I am not convinced there is any “mystical” efficacy to it. In intersubjective terms, I think it makes sense that someone with a particular realization can certainly influence or evoke subjective resonance (and recognition) in others, especially in appropriately cultivated teaching contexts, but in my experience with actual transmission events, it appears to be more of a LL/LR ritual formality, where a text is read aloud and permission is thus granted.
What do you think?”
Like you, I wouldn't “.. attempt to practice methods which require transmission if I haven't received that particular transmission.” Which means that neither of us would seem to be prepared to put it to the test to see if these practices work as well without transmission as they do, or at least might seem to, with transmission : )
I wonder if researchers following in Varela's footsteps would be interested in carrying out some kind of controlled experiment to test this out, assuming they could find willing volunteer practitioners… and assuming they could work out what variables would need to be taken into account… they'd probably need to enlist the help of someone like the Dalai Lama… it's not going to happen, is it : - (
That's the thing with the Vajrayana or Dzogchen 'paradigm' … it just won't readily translate / compute, whatever the right word is.
Anyway, you asked what I think.
”I am doubtful whether transmission is actually necessary to effect the sorts of psychospiritual transformations these practices can engender.”
You are doubtful… but what are your doubts based on? The supposed experts in the field, the 'community of the adequate', wouldn't agree with you… but this could be some kind of unconscious, or even conscious, control mechanism. It depends on whether one places trust in them or not, and what that trust might be based on or determined by. Speaking for myself, I don't perceive any reason to have doubts about the need for transmission.
”I can see how transmission serves an important LL function which supports and helps encourage respect for (and therefore empowers) this practice tradition ..”
I can go along with this… but as you know, how you're using the word “empower” here is very different to the depth of meaning conveyed by the word “empowerment” in the context of a Tantric empowerement or innitiation.
””.. and I respect that, but I am not convinced there is any “mystical” efficacy to it.””
I think I know what you mean by “mystical” here… but it's not a word I would use. As regards conviction, I personally don't feel conviction here is necessary. Again, I'm not in a position to determine one way or the other whether an innitiation is necessary or not (at least to date ; ) ). I guess for me here it's a case of accepting “received wisdom” (pun tongue-in-cheekily intended)… as opposed to following orders. In truth, my position is maybe as much agnostic, accompanied by a “let's wait and see” attitude, as anything else.
”In intersubjective terms, I think it makes sense that someone with a particular realization can certainly influence or evoke subjective resonance (and recognition) in others, especially in appropriately cultivated teaching contexts ..”
I think it makes sense too… but how can we determine one way or the other that this is all that's happening?
”.. but in my experience with actual transmission events, it appears to be more of a LL/LR ritual formality, where a text is read aloud and permission is thus granted.”
In terms of a simple “permission to practice” it may appear to be a mere formality… but it clearly isn't to the person giving this kind of transmission… or at least I imagine if you asked them whether it was a mere formality or not, I'm sure they'd give a lot of context why for them, and the practice lineage, it's not. But again, how can we determine what really is the case?
With regard to the transmission of mantra, I guess I like to think of it as a transmission of a certain potentiality of energy.
So that's Vajrayana!! … what do you think of the notion of “transmission” in Dzogchen, as regards the pointing-out instructions, or the direct introduction to ones nature of mind? Do you think “transmission” is needed here?
And how about you, Star?
All best,
Lol
ok, you asked…it all depends on your level of capacity…and what that means, is how conditioned your awareness is…
if you take into consideration, all the various ways that transmission is claimed to be
transmitted…my experience has been one of eventually deducing that it is all mindplay…
ALL OF IT…
Norbu tells of a really funny story about an experience with his master Changchub Dorje,
who was never educated…otoh, Norbu was educated over the hill and back again, and had already received many initiations, and began pleading with this old teacher to give him this certain initiation…
i am lol now just thinking about the humor involved in all of this, and the way that Norbu relates this story, anyways, finally, Changchub Dorje gives in, and agrees; by the time it is over with, Norbu is in a state of shock…LOL…needless to say, this uneducated teacher knew absolutely nothing about these formal transmissions, although, through his own practice he had manifested wisdom and clarity…
after all the blah, blah, blah…this very wise teacher just sat down and shared with
Norbu…Norbu realized that even though he had received countless initiations, he had
never understood, nor entered into the message of them…that day, his mental constructs
began to collapse…
i do not believe a master is necessary…however; someone who is actually aware of their
own true nature, can be very helpful…in the end, your own awareness is your teacher…
your own life and conditioning, is the very thing that is there to awaken you…
there is no need to summon up ancient buddhist spirits, nor is there anything to transform.
awakening is a living experience…that means that you are awake and experiencing life…
as a body, mind, and energy…not bound by anything or anyone…
your very own conditioning will arise along your path…sometimes, you might get snagged…but when your true nature begins to stabilize…everything is play…a dance in emptiness…and all illusion self-liberates…
two of my favorite quotes:
“Realization is not knowledge about the universe, but the living experience of the nature
of the universe.”
“Knowledge of Dzogchen is like being on the highest mountain peak; no level of mountain remains mysterious or hidden, and whoever finds themselves on this highest peak, cannot be conditioned by anyone or anything.”
recognizing your own true nature…is nothing magical…but it does take a lot of inner
work…subtract it all…then what you have left is it…and there you find yourself…
at the bottom of awareness…learning how to fly free…outside of your cage…and up the mountain…into the sky…where there are no limits…
may you be filled with your inner joy…always, star…
Am at someone else's computer only to write this, haven't caught up reading yet.
Apparently no one but me has caught this internally inconsistent statement I made but I hasten to correct it:
And certainly there are “synchronicities” that don't involve “Beings” at all…
I am not entitled to say this, within my paradigm, plus it is highly anthropocentric.
To be completely accurate I would need to say it this way:
“There are times when I experience what I would call synchronicities in which I am not consciously aware of the involvement of any Being whose consciousness level/kind is near mine. Could be that someone more tuned in could detect Someone.
And of course every bit of matter or any physical existent [involved in the synchronous event] has SOME inherent consciousness. I am just not set up to be consciously aware of all kinds. But I shouldn't discount that they are there.”
In the interest of practicing what I preach…..
Blessings to all, OM Bastet
Hi, Lol,
You wrote: Interestingly enough, the Tibetan term used in the Dzogchen teaching to convey the idea of 'potentiality' in the same kind of context is thug.je (as I'm sure you're aware), and what it more precisely means is “the energy of potentiality”, conveying the idea of unceasing movement, and with the implicit understanding that this energy doesn't have physical/material properties. And in its ordinary usage it means compassion : )
Yes, I was thinking along these lines exactly – though running it through a TSK filter! The TSK use of “time” echoes thug.je in Dzogchen quite closely.
You wrote: I wonder if researchers following in Varela's footsteps would be interested in carrying out some kind of controlled experiment to test this out, assuming they could find willing volunteer practitioners… and assuming they could work out what variables would need to be taken into account… they'd probably need to enlist the help of someone like the Dalai Lama… it's not going to happen, is it : - (
The Dalai Lama is certainly willing to have monks and long-time meditators cooperate with scientists, but setting up a controlled experiment where Tantric teachings are taught to a control group outside of the context of transmission does seem unlikely.
I said: I am doubtful whether transmission is actually necessary to effect the sorts of psychospiritual transformations these practices can engender.
You replied: You are doubtful… but what are your doubts based on? The supposed experts in the field, the 'community of the adequate', wouldn't agree with you… but this could be some kind of unconscious, or even conscious, control mechanism. It depends on whether one places trust in them or not, and what that trust might be based on or determined by. Speaking for myself, I don't perceive any reason to have doubts about the need for transmission.
Yes, I know. Partly, my feelings are based on informal interactions with some of my teachers, where they also seemed to question whether transmission is absolutely necessary. For instance, in response to questions about these things (not mine, but other students'), one of my Tibetan teachers seemed to equivocate a little bit and he turned to “tradition” to support the practice, rather than “causal efficacy.” Partly, my feelings are based on the creation of vehicles like TSK and the Shambhala path, which seem to employ essential Tantric principles in a secular, non-transmission-centered context, and to aim at very similar forms of psychospiritual transformation: if these practices can also serve effectively as transformative vehicles outside of the context of transmission, then that would appear to call into question the soteriological necessity of transmission (though not necessarily other roles).
In relation to TSK, Tarthang Tulku once remarked that the lack of strong reaction to it that he expected both from the Buddhist community and from the Western philosophical one, suggests to him that the challenge it presents may not have been grasped. I do not know what aspects of it he expected to be most challenging to the Buddhist community, but one aspect may be this question of transmission. (I'm going to ask around and see what some long-term students say.)
But anyway, I know I'm speculating here, and I know that most Tibetan teachers would disagree with me. Regarding those I've interacted with, I certainly have not gotten the impression of any malicious or power-hungry intent to control others, so I have no reason to distrust them in that regard. Maybe I was too long in the Catholic Church, but I tend to see these things the way I see the sacraments – full of enactive potential, but not a literal necessity, in spite of the church's teaching otherwise.
Best wishes,
Balder
P.S. I'm sure you've seen these points before, but here are a few principles from TSK that I believe are consonant with an enactive “21st Century Spirituality,” some of which seem to challenge traditional Tibetan orientations.
* TSK does not teach faith in any outside force, nor does it counsel devotion toward a higher being, such as God or the Buddha. It suggests that the knowledge we require is implicit in the self's embodiment in space and time. The highest values are immediately available to us.
* TSK does not rely on worship. In place of communion it offers self-understanding; in place of initiations, it looks to the natural flow of knowledge within appearance. The natural healing that comes through knowledge is sufficient to cure all suffering.
* TSK does not pursue knowledge through beliefs founded on reasons. Instead, it proceeds through active inquiry, which is seen as embodying knowledge directly.
* TSK does not assign guilt or define rules that are not to be broken. Even actions that have harmful consequences can become the source of knowledge. Whatever has happened in the past, we can be grateful for the present opportunity to recognize and accommodate knowledge in all its manifestations.
* TSK does not separate the real from the fictional in any ultimate sense. From a TSK perspective, whatever we do can be understood as the play of time in space. However, the play does not reject what is serious, nor does it mistake being playful for seeking out amusements. To play without concern is to respond appropriately to all concerns, and being playful does not mean ignoring or rejecting the meaning of what arises. This is play as exhibition: action as the appearance of beauty.
lol…you might be wanting to ask me, or thinking…if all is mindplay, what is the purpose?
as i understand it, V is claiming through enactivism colored by his buddhist tendencies, that compassion is what we are…if this is true, then maybe that very compassion is trying to recognize itself and its infinite potential, through the various ways it continuously manifests through our own conditioned awareness of it…
you also might be wanting to ask me what all this nonsense about being at the base of yet another mountain, having to climb it, and what is awaiting us at the top, and what is all this about flying free into the sky with no limits? (you will have to excuse my poetic tendancies to speak metophorically…lol).
this mountain, is our very conditioned physical human existence…which includes mind, and its awareness, and also energy…the energy aspect is the most difficult to understand, and one i find most fascinating…but it is in the discovery or awareness of our own energies, and their lack of limit, where i tend to think, that the separation is most apparent…and also not apparent…lol…meaning that my perception, and my experiencing of my own existence is not all inclusive of yours, and yet it is not all excluded either…my experience of my own true nature or rigpa or gnosis or whatever you wish to call it, is not yours…and vice versa…
the sky's the limit? no…i don't think it is…lol…when awareness opens up, and begins to free itself from conditioning of energies that are trapped within the psyche and physical, this is where that infinite potential comes into play…and for each individual, it is experienced as such…but then even the buddha could not put it into words…this is why i tend to believe that speculation concerning these things is just that…
there is a lot of discussion on these kind of things, and it seems to me to be quiet exaggerated in the sense that we make it out to be real and magical in our minds…but the truth of that is, we can make anything out to be real and magical within our minds…
this is why the realistic approach appeals to me…we are here…or at least i am…lol…at the bottom of my own awareness mountain…learning how to live in this world, free of conceptualization…and trying to integrate myself within the whole of humanity and within the world and universe that we share…
lol, hope that explains my view a little better…i want to thank you for challenging me to express my understanding…it has made it clearer by my having to verbalize it in this way…always, star…
hi star,
lovely to read you… warm hug : )
traditionally the first of the “three statements” of Garab Dorje (if such a person ever existed) is given as “introduce directly” or “direct introduction”… i can't find any reference to the statement in it's original language (the language of Oddiyana, if such a place ever existed), but rendered into Tibetan it is ngo rang thog tu sprad, which has been translated into English by Eric Pema Kunsang as “to be introduced to one's nature, be brought face to face with oneself.” … which does convey the idea of one's nature being introduced by someone.
i appreciate that Eric Pema Kunsang also translates ngo rang thog tu sprad as ”recognize your nature”
whether Namkhai Norbu was introduced to his own nature (nature of mind) by Changchub Dorje or whether Changchub Dorje was merely one of a number of secondary causes, or even a series of synchronicities, that allowed Namkhai Norbu to recognize his own nature is possibly a moot point… by his own account Namkhai Norbu was led to his teacher through dreams, and “woke up” as a result of what Changchub Dorje introduced him to.
in a way all this is kind of academic… we could haggle, split hairs, but there is essentially no difference to how we each practice the essence of the Dzogchen teaching… i totally resonate with how you describe your way of applying yourself to the path, as for example you do here:
”i have three little rules i look too…that are the basis for the dzogchen teachings from garab dorje…from there, awareness is my teacher…
recognize my true nature…which is nothing magical…nor is it fantasy…it is real…
remain there with no doubt…
carry my true nature into every aspect of my living experience…”i would only add “… and integrate my living experience into it…”
all best,
lol
ps / edit : have just noticed you've written again while i've been writing this… so i'll go and read that now : )
LOL…with lol…hugs back…
Oddiyana IS the place of awakened mind…lol
mr. t has already done an excellent job of verbalizing the metaphysical facts of the matter
as it constitutes what really is and what really is not…scientifically speaking…lol
therefore, in metaphysical reality, and in the dzogchen tradition…all is Awareness…so,
that includes buddha, garab dorje, oddiyanna, you , me, and mr. t and his redball…lol
so what does that do to the 'idea' of a 'real live' transmission? mind play…and i am
not saying there is anything wrong with mind play…especially when you are aware of it…lol
there is no 'one' that awakens 'another' 'one'…that is mind play…if it were possible,
buddha and garab dorje and dare i say jesus, would have awakened everyone…and been done with it!
it should be noted here, that there is no 'one' to really awaken, nor any 'enlightenment' to be had…
what Norbu experienced, is what we all experience…our own awareness mirrored back…this is where i think enactivism and integral, specifically critical thinking can help expand that experience however, and put it into a whole nuther context…lol…and that is why i am so interested…
i have also reached the conclusion that awareness is conditioned…there are no levels of consciousness…only levels of conditioned awareness…i know that others disagree with me on this…and that is ok…i am speaking from my own experiencing…i remain open to theirs…this is why i am here…
again, the ability of awareness to understand, depends on its conditioning…or lack thereof.
if you experience the message, you transcend the teachings…
this is so fun lol…thnx again for engaging me…
one more thing, although it might seem trivial (it did when it was first pointed out to me…lol), i assure you it is not…there is a BIG difference in carrying this 'state' into our life
experiencing and taking your life experiences and trying to place them into a 'state of
mind'…your true nature is infinite, spontaneous, wisdom awareness arising in the clarity
of each newly created moment, with infinite potential…always self-liberating, if we pay
attention and do not get distracted…iow…i have learned through practice, to integrate my true nature, into my life experiencing…
if you have not read the Kunjed Gyalpo…(Supreme Source)…it is an Awesome read, and i would suggest it to anyone that is interested in dzogchen atiyoga…
i am having computer problems…must be catching…lol…anyways, gonna go try and read adams presentation…*
hi star…
it was time for me to get my sleeping head on when your second post arrived… i'd also just finished reading adam's presentation so all i was capable of doing (then) was echo marmalade's “holy cow!” ~: -0
like you i'm enjoying our conversation : )
you wrote: ”lol…you might be wanting to ask me, or thinking…if all is mindplay, what is the purpose?”
and later… ”so what does that do to the 'idea' of a 'real live' transmission? mind play…and i am not saying there is anything wrong with mind play…especially when you are aware of it ..”
i hadn't been thinking you meant mindplay as in smoke and mirrors or anything like that : ) what came for me was more like nature-of-mind-play… and not lila either… : )
”as i understand it, V is claiming through enactivism colored by his buddhist tendencies, that compassion is what we are…”
yes, as matt quoted varela saying: ”The more the fragile self-subject deploys itself, the more compassion deploys itself because that's what it is. The more there is the opening into space to accommodate or to take care of the other, there is kind of an intrinsic decenteredness, and therefore the other appears closer. Solidarity, compassion, care, love –all of the different modes of being together– appear when the self is decentered.”
you continued: “…if this is true, then maybe that very compassion is trying to recognize itself and its infinite potential, through the various ways it continuously manifests through our own conditioned awareness of it…”
i like this… to me it alludes to the naturally and spontaneously arising manifestations of thug.je, without losing sight of the very human compassionate mind.
“you also might be wanting to ask me what all this nonsense about being at the base of yet another mountain … … you will have to excuse my poetic tendancies to speak metophorically…lol ”
i like your poetry… and the way you can take poetic license ; p
”.. my perception, and my experiencing of my own existence is not all inclusive of yours, and yet it is not all excluded either…my experience of my own true nature or rigpa or gnosis or whatever you wish to call it, is not yours…and vice versa…”
agreed… and… there is the image/metaphor of different pails of water equally holding the moon's reflection…
”the sky's the limit? no…i don't think it is…lol…when awareness opens up, and begins to free itself from conditioning of energies that are trapped within the psyche and physical, this is where that infinite potential comes into play…and for each individual, it is experienced as such…but then even the buddha could not put it into words…this is why i tend to believe that speculation concerning these things is just that…”
love it… and agreed, speculation is just speculation… and, yes “… we can make anything out to be real and magical within our minds…”
and from your last post…
”there is no 'one' that awakens 'another' 'one'…that is mind play…”
i don't see this being claimed / represented in the Dzogchen teaching or 'tradition'… Norbu says that he “woke up”, not that he was 'awakened' (and, although i know you're not saying this, it should be said has never claimed to be 'enlightened' )…
“… what Norbu experienced, is what we all experience…our own awareness mirrored back…”
clearly we don't know what Norbu experienced… well, you know what I mean : )… that qualifier aside, i totally go with the metaphor of our awareness (if by that you mean our true nature) being mirrored back in a “direct introduction”… and i can speculate that Changchub Dorje's mirror was particularly clean-clear…
”i have also reached the conclusion that awareness is conditioned…there are no levels of consciousness…only levels of conditioned awareness…i know that others disagree with me on this…and that is ok…i am speaking from my own experiencing…”
i don't necessarily disagree… it depends on how you qualify awareness… rig.pa means both ordinary mind / ordinary awareness as well as, as it does in Dzogchen, “pristine awareness”… however, if you're not making that distinction, as in the distinction between 'ordinary' mind and 'nature of mind', or 'ordinary presence' and what Norbu refers to as 'instant presence', and are implying that all awareness is conditioned, then i'd have to respectfully disagree…
”one more thing, although it might seem trivial (it did when it was first pointed out to me…lol), i assure you it is not…there is a BIG difference in carrying this 'state' into our life
experiencing and taking your life experiences and trying to place them into a 'state of
mind'…”
i'm glad you raised this… “… taking your life experiences and trying to place them into a 'state of mind'…” is not at all what i meant when i talked of integrating “.. my living experience into it [true nature]”…
we both know that our true nature and our life experiences are inseparable, are of the same nature…
“carrying ones true nature into every aspect of ones living experience…” and “integrating ones living experience into ones true nature” are something like two sides of the same coin… and both are metaphors…
as you know, ones true nature isn't an object that can either be carried anywhere or have anything integrated into it… but i think the above, as metaphors, work very well. in terms of my own practice, it was (and continues to be) a case of re-discovering what i'd discovered, using a variety of practices… and, to borrow your metaphor, practising carrying that with me into (post-session) life. in the early days my capacity to sustain a deepening into 'instant presence' was very limited, and my capacity to bring 'it' with me and maintain it within the distractions of, say, interacting with others was even more limited, virtually non-existent… and i'm not saying it's got much better… but what has developed and become more stable is … again to use metaphor … the sense / experience of being in something, as if something contains both 'me' and my experiences, my enacted worldspace if you like… and this 'something' isn't an object that i can turn my mind to or perceive… but i can more and more easily be present in it. and there's no question about it being the same 'it' as i might be able to relax into in a formal sitting practice… more background or residual, if you like, but over the years slowly developing. so it's not literally a case of me integrating life experiences into 'it' … but that's how it can feel, how i can easily relate to it…
as for “The Supreme Source”, i haven't read it… but relish the prospect of doing so… (ok, bad joke).
all best,
lol
Hi Bruce,
I've been enjoying writing in lower case, but somehow am having to write to you as I normally do : )
Thanks for your reply. It's really good to hear you talk about what you do and don't accept, believe in etc.
And thanks for posting the material on TSK. I'm not even sure I was aware you'd posted what you've linked to (which I will go to and read), it's been a long time since I've visited your TSK pod. My bad. I know I've talked before (blah blah) about wanting to explore TSK, but I just haven't had either the self-discipline or the sense of adventure necessary… and in any case, I'm too used to my own way of practising, prioritising what “free time” I have to do the practices that already call me. But I like to think that if I hadn't fallen into what I've fallen into, I would have come aross and got into TSK.
And reading this…
”TSK does not assign guilt or define rules that are not to be broken. Even actions that have harmful consequences can become the source of knowledge. Whatever has happened in the past, we can be grateful for the present opportunity to recognize and accommodate knowledge in all its manifestations.”
… makes me feel strangely wistful : )
All best,
Lol
what Norbu experienced, in his own words, were: “that day my mental constructions, completely collapsed. Up until then i was completely boxed in with all the ideas i had received in college.”
i have had this experience, and so it is very difficult for me to engage mentally in many types of conceptual thinking…especially where it concerns doctrines and dogmatic ideas including the many schools and takes on dzogchen…it actually 'hurts' my mind…lol…my mind wont accept it…but through enactivism, i am learning to engage even when it is uncomfortable…lol…b/c…those are challenges to go beyond my own limits…
maybe i should stick to poetry…lol…
i am not certain i know what you mean by mindplay…but what i mean, is anything the mind plays with interpreting it as real…such as many of the secondary teachings, and many of the things Norbu himself discusses…then dismisses in Supreme Source…
what i love about Norbu, is that he states emphatically that there is nothing to believe…except that we have a body, mind, and voice…our true condition…and that if we understand our own nature, we can understand the nature of the universe…
what i don't like, is that he has entrenched thousands into the mires and baggage of tibetan buddhism…after claiming in his books a much clearer view…but i do not attempt to explain or justify or condemn the actions of others…i am only responsible for my own…
but then, if we believe, which i do…that there is only awareness…and that it is pure, always was, always will be…then that alone lived, would be the ultimate i suppose…
where i speak of conditioned awareness…this is awareness that has been limited by time…humanity…this universe…human form…and all our misperceptions…but that doesn't mean that ultimately it exists…when this body is dead, the conditioned awareness i claim as mine…i tend to think will be released and dissolved into the Supreme Source of Awareness…but i have no proof of that…and i am more concerned today with this real life we are living, and am really trying to engage my mind in critically thinking about solutions that we as a whole can develop that will actually change things for the betterment of humankind and this earth and universe we inhabit…my experience has taught me that to escape into these ancient ideas of transformation and enlightenment…is to miss out on this very life…now…so, i don't spend much time anymore within these dzogchen teachings…lol…maybe i have transcended them…ROTFLMAO…
thank you for helping me to understand what it is i believe and don't believe…and challenging me to articulate it…always, star…
I'm up and ready to play!
star,
lovely to read you again… more warm hugs!
i admire, respect and applaud your passion & fire, and your determination to bring your wakefulness and presence of awareness as fully as you can into engaging with what a writer on bruce's IPS pod refers to as “the whole catastrophe” (referencing zorba). i think you might appreciate his ”on a spiritual vision“… you can find it here. (you'll even find a bit of me in that thread, too : ) )
i was just catching up with james' comments stream, and reading your comments there, musing over them, thinking that apart from seeing a few clients i've spent most of the last few days stuck in front of this laptop either reading furiously (and trying to digest) or writing laboriously… what way is that to engage with the world, “the whole catastrophe”? : )
except i do agree with adam here, when he says ”this [symposium] is a turbo-charged personal development platform, and an invitation in every sentence to deepen and expand your own (and our!) perspective and awareness.”
and of course there are many other valid ways of engaging with the world, the real world of everyday reality…
you write: ”what i don't like [about Norbu], is that he has entrenched thousands into the mires and baggage of tibetan buddhism…”
that is one perspective. i see it differently… i have witnessed him over three decades tirelessly teaching, and stressing the importance of practising, the essence of the buddhist teaching, empowering people to, like you are, bring their presence of awareness as fully as they can into daily life, with all its messiness and fuck-ups.
and i see him giving all sorts of what he calls secondary practices, essentially as optional extras, because these secondary practises each have their own function, whether it be strengthening and harmonising ones energy, or developing ones capacity etc. etc. … functions that can be validated through experience… it is my own experience… so that people can function as human beings at an optimal level in the real world… another kind of ”turbo-charged personal development platform”.
i can't say to what degree Norbu's thousands of students are, like you are,
“… really trying to engage [their] mind in critically thinking about solutions that we as a whole can develop that will actually change things for the betterment of humankind and this earth and universe we inhabit “…
but they are essentially human individuals from all sorts of walks of life, who are enacting their worldspaces, on different places on the spiral, with their various lines of development at different levels, living in families, communities, engaged with society just like the rest of us… and, i would say, getting on with making a difference.
Norbu doesn't advocate that his students look for a cave up the mountainside, live in a hermitage, do three year retreats, or disengage in any other way from the world… he speaks out strongly against this idea or approach…
his essential teaching, repeated again and again, is: develop and deepen your presence of awareness of your primordial state, bringing it into the moment, so that each and every life experience can integrate itself more and more into it… work with circumstances (which essentially covers “the whole catastrophe”)… and do your best. simple.
big love,
lol
dear lol…you speak with wisdom…and i did not mean to suggest otherwise of Norbu…i believe that all his intentions, while they might be honorable, are confusing in light of the entire spectrum he is teaching…but then, as you pointed out, we are doing our best…i suppose…LOL
i tend to get very frustrated when it 'appears' that we are not doing our best…i mean if so many people really care…then why are things seemingly worse? if so many are really reaching this higher state of consciousness…then where are the changes?
the changes have to be at some point agreed to be, only in our minds…and that does not solve a damn thing except how 'i' feel…but, i accept that for now, and it's ok…lol
as far as these secondary teachings and all this aqal and tsk…it is all conceptual, and prevents others from recognizing their own true nature instead of encouraging them to…this has been my experience, but what i see is what i see…now i can take the perspective that 'all is perfect just like it is', but that is nonsense to me…and i also get irritated when i see others trying to make a profit off others…selling their teachings as if these teachings are going to do anything other then lead people down a dead end path…
(i am not speaking of Norbu…necessarily here…i know you have a fondness for him, and i do too…but i am not blind to what he is doing, and i understand that you disagree with me…and that is ok…it does not undo the good that he has done)
when, we cannot live the teachings…experience the teachings through our expression…what are they then but a noose around our necks? this attachment to the teachings really gets on my last nerve…whether it be buddhism, christianity, aqal, wilber or whatever…and awareness ignites within me to speak out against it…
i am not saying these things to be mean or cruel…but it is like seeing sheep heading for the slaughter…i realize that my perspective has been tainted by my own experiences…but i have to acknowledge what is revealed to my own awareness…it is for a reason…just like the sheep…and the slaughter…but i cannot just leave it there…nor can i be resigned to the blindness that surrounds me, or the blind that have fallen in the ditch…i must stay aware in this moment…where wisdom spontaneously arises…and where things can and do change…in the twinkling of an eye…LOL
hope this post is clear…and i thank you for your responses…it has been good to converse with you…much joy…*****
Glad to meet you, Bruce, thanks to Gaia and Matt Segall! I have just posted my own reflections on the topic in my blog. I hope I have not misconstrued anything you said. At the top of my entry, I admit my ignorance of Varela's thought (although I met him once, years ago, in Italy). If interested, check it out, and post your own comment. Thanks
Thomas
http://ashramdiary.gaia.com/blog
Thank you for stopping by, Thomas, and for blogging such a thoughtful and interesting response! I will post a fuller response on your blog soon.
Best wishes,
Bruce
Bruce, it's rather long, but If you (or anyone else!) are interested, I just discovered this 8 Part video of William Irwin Thompson reading from his book “The American Replacement of Nature.”
He goes through many topics, including electronic culture, the Disneyfication of history, post-industrial capitlism, Rudolph Steiner, the fear of silence, ecological collapse, and paranoid narratives. Good stuff!
morning, star : )
it's been good conversing and sharing perspectives with you too…
”.. the changes have to be at some point agreed to be, only in our minds…and that does not solve a damn thing except how 'i' feel…”
from the perspective of enactivism / interbeing, changes in 'oneself' are at the same time changes in ones enacted worldspace, which includes 'other'… wouldn't you agree?
”as far as these secondary teachings and all this aqal and tsk…it is all conceptual, and prevents others from recognizing their own true nature instead of encouraging them to…”
i think the “secondary teachings” (and for that matter, aqal and tsk) are far from ”all [merely] conceptual” … they are offered so they can be put into practice, in relation to ones circumstances, and here all sorts of contexts and sub-contexts can be taken into account.
and of course “.. carrying ones true nature into every aspect of ones living experience…” also applies to any kind of practice we are doing, no?
“…but i cannot just leave it there…nor can i be resigned to the blindness that surrounds me, or the blind that have fallen in the ditch…”
sometimes it can feel like empty words, saying something like “i resonate with you here”… but anyway…
and ”.. the blind that have fallen in the ditch ..” reminds me of another image, contained in a verse coming from a “Chöd ” practice, a (secondary) practice which on one level works to cut through attachment… which of course would include attachment to the teachings…
the state of rigpa, self-originated and uncorrected
we being unaware that it is the real place of refuge
have sunk in the ocean of suffering …
and the verse that follows it is not just about generating an altruistic intention, but about commitment to (en)action…
the mind which gets attached to appearences, as if they were concrete..
subduing by virtue of the practice..
to understand the real condition
i commit myself beyond hope and fear.
all best,
lol
good morning lol…i am just drinking my first cup of 1/2 caf…minus my hazelnut cream…poor me! lol…
do you realize that we are participating on one of the 7th best blogs…according to someone… i would like to take this opportunity to congratulate bruce, because although i might disagree with him on certain things, he did an excellent job throughout his presentation…there were times when reading what he wrote resonated completely…but there were other times when he lost me…inbetween the lines of technical explanations…i am not saying here that technical terminology is not needed, but that a real life example supplied along side it, not only would hit the ball…but knock it out of the park…home run!!!!!!! LOL
i asked him to give living experience examples of what he was proposing…and now i will ask you the same thing…show me, through a personal example, of how this is true and i might be able to relate…until you are able to experience, and live the teachings, they are conceptual…we may just have to agree to disagree on what you wrote here…
i think the “secondary teachings” (and for that matter, aqal and tsk) are far from “all [merely] conceptual” … they are offered so they can be put into practice, in relation to ones circumstances, and here all sorts of contexts and sub-contexts can be taken into account.
but i would love to hear you or bruce, or anyone, give me an example of how you are putting these 'ideas' into practical living and getting results…until that time, i remain skeptical, but open…
i am familiar with Chod…
i understand what you quoted, but don't understand the point you were trying to convey…again, a 'real' life experience would clear that up…
always, good to converse with you…star…
Thank you, Matt, for the video link! I look forward to checking it out, and to getting one of Thompson's books!
hi star,
i wrote: “i think the “secondary teachings” (and for that matter, aqal and tsk) are far from “all [merely] conceptual” … they are offered so they can be put into practice, in relation to ones circumstances, and here all sorts of contexts and sub-contexts can be taken into account.”
you replied: “…show me, through a personal example, of how this is true and i might be able to relate…until you are able to experience, and live the teachings, they are conceptual… give me an example of how you are putting these 'ideas' into practical living and getting results…”
ah, how to steer a course between the rock of breaking samaya and the whirlpool of laying oneself open to charges of magical thinking…
first of all, the first two words of that quote of mine were “i think”… particularly relevant in relation to aqal and tsk… i don't “practise” either… although i do have something that resembles an “integral life practice”.
you say you're familiar with Chöd. i'd like to keep to the essence of this practice of “cutting through”… so, primarily, “cutting through” dualistic mind, in other words helping develop ones capacity for integrating life and circumstances into presence of awareness, and secondarily, “cutting through” or diminishing attachment.
if implicit in your question quoted above is a requirement for me to explain how a practice such as this works, i'm afraid i'm not going to oblige.
however, with regard to giving you ”.. an example of how [i am] putting these 'ideas' into practical living and getting results…”
how does one measure results? it's not like training for the 200 metres (.. usain bolt… how incredible was that!!) and measuring split times… the 'results', in terms of experiencing benefits of the practice,are cumulative and generally best considered over a period of time, by comparing a 'before' and a 'nowadays'.
but specific “stand-out” events? pretty low-key or ordinary, i'm afraid… but there have been different times when i've been struggling with the affect of over-attachment… when my heart area has been constricted from wanting someone too much while simultaneously trying to protect myself… when my rlung has been charged up (and i do know from other experience about rlung imbalance exactly what it feels like) and my mind obsessing, racing, unable to settle…
and it's not that i wanted to avoid or i wasn't prepared to “.. feel to heal ..”, i do work that also… but i do believe in working with circumstances, trusting my intuition, following my clarity… and on these rather extreme occasions mentioned above i've done the practice of Chöd and afterwards felt a palpable amelioration of my charged up state, my presence of awareness has been stronger, my mind calm and my thinking clearer and more stable … to the extent i was more easily able to both think around and enquire / feel into the source of my pain.
placebo effect? i don't think so. usefulness / practicality? apart from the benefits already mentioned, both cumulative and specific, for me such a kind of secondary practice can help me function better in the world as a human being.
hope that helps.
all best,
lol
cool…i have found no need of secondary practices (after initially playing around with them to a certain extent)…my very life experiences give me all i need to practice…everything else is distraction…your very life…body, mind, and voice…is your very vehicle of contemplation…
there is a quote by jigmed lingpa, says something to the tune of, if you are present in your life, your very life becomes your hut…something like that…
i have found that i need no other teaching…i am free already…that does not mean that i cannot learn from others…however; what is presented has to be presented in such away that its application is understood…if not, then it is just noise in your head…
much joy to you lol…results are unlimited…so there we agree…always, star…