mental Tao, conservative and radical

Bruce Torrence, Courtyard at Pena Palace 2, Panoramic Photograph, 2011

Continuing the description of the mind and consciousness, Tart discusses the basics of the issue by defining three central terms - awareness, consciousness and mind - and describes two radically different models for these three sets of complex structures. In the first, the only permissible by the classical sciences - such as neuroscience - the three terms are emerging products of brain functions, influenced by a fixed external objective physical reality. In the second, one of them - awareness - is considered "external" to brain functions, and the external physical reality is no longer regarded as "fixed" but as a recursive circular relationship between brain functions and the "outside."

In these two models focus the two radically different visions between Western science and - for example - Eastern traditions, each with its own "experimental" evidences. In the first, mind and consciousness are currently regarded as complex emerging structures of the brain, nervous system and body; in the second there is one quality that - in part - is independent of the body, and therefore can not be explained in physical/chemical-neurological terms, a real "embodiment of mind". The two models are completely incompatible with each other: for Western science the existence of a mental trait that comes from '"outside" of the brain is an absurdity, as well as to the traditional oriental science - based on individual experience - the belief that basic awareness comes from brain activity.

  

Conservative and Radical Views of the Mind

An almost universal theory in Western scientific circles, sunk to the level of an implicit belief and thus controlling us effectively, is that awareness is a product of brain functioning. No brain functioning — no awareness, no consciousness. This is the conservative view of the mind. It is dangerous as an implicit belief for two reasons. First, many experiences in various altered states of consciousness are inconsistent with this theory, but implicit faith in the conservative view makes us liable to distort our perception of these phenomena. Second, parapsychological data suggest that awareness is at least partially outside brain functioning, a condition that leads to very different views of human nature. The radical view of the mind sees awareness as this something extra and postulates that physical reality can sometimes be directly affected by our belief systems. We must be open minded about the radical view to guard against maintaining too narrow and too culturally conditioned a view of the mind.

Although in general speech we tend to use the terms awareness and consciousness to mean basically the same thing, I use them here with somewhat different meanings. Awareness refers to the basic knowledge that something is happening, to perceiving or feeling or cognizing in its simplest form. Consciousness generally refers to awareness in a much more complex way; consciousness is awareness as modulated by the structure of the mind. Mind refers to the totality of both inferable and potentially experiencable phenomena of which awareness and consciousness are components. These are not precise definitions because the three key words — awareness, consciousness, and mind — are not simple things. But they are realities, and we must deal with them whether or not we can give them precise logical definitions. Since logic is only one product of the total functioning of the mind, it is no wonder that we cannot arrive at a logical definition of the mind or consciousness or awareness. The part cannot define the whole.

Awareness and consciousness, then, can be seen as parts of a continuum. I would use the word awareness to describe, for instance, my simple perception of the sound of a bird outside my window as I write. I would use the word consciousness to indicate the complex of operations that recognizes the sound as a bird call, that identifies the species of bird, and that takes account of the fact that the sound is coming in through my open window. So consciousness refers to a rather complex system that includes awareness as one of its basic ingredients, but is more complex than simple awareness itself. Few psychologists today would argue with the statement that consciousness is awareness resulting from the brain's functioning. But if you ask what is the basic nature of awareness, the simple basic behind the more complex entity consciousness, you meet the common assumption in Western culture generally and scientific culture in particular that awareness is a "product" of the brain. When psychology was fond of chemical analogies, awareness was thought of as a sort of "secretion" by the brain.

I believe that seeing consciousness as a function of the brain is sound, but I think that explicitly or implicitly assuming that awareness is only a function of the brain, as accepted as that theory is, can be a hindrance, for two reasons.

First, as psychology deals more and more with the phenomena of altered states of consciousness, it will more and more have to deal with phenomena that do not fit well in a conceptual scheme that says awareness is only a product of the brain. Experiences of apparently paranormal abilities like telepathy, of feeling that one's mind leaves one's body, of mystical union with aspects of the universe outside oneself, of supernormal knowledge directly given in altered states, fit more comfortably into schemes that do not assume that awareness is only a function of the brain. I have nothing against competent attempts to fit such phenomena into our dominant Western scientific framework, but the attempts I have seen so far have been most inadequate and seem to work mainly by ignoring major aspects of these altered states phenomena. Thus the assumption that awareness is only a function of the brain, especially as it becomes implicit, tends to distort our view of real phenomena that happen in altered states. We dismiss their possible reality a priori. We cannot build a science when we start with such a selected view of the data.

The second reason for questioning this assumption is the existence of first-class scientific data to suggest that awareness may be something other than a product of the brain. I refer to excellent evidence of parapsychological phenomena like telepathy, evidence that shows that the mind can sometimes function in ways that are "impossible" in terms of our current, physical view of the world. "Impossible" means only that these phenomena are paraconceptual, that our conceptual schemes are inadequate because they exclude this part of reality. These same conceptual schemes underlie the belief that awareness is only a product of the brain, and if we question these conceptual schemes we question that assumption

This view that awareness is only a function of the brain — the conservative or physicalistic view of the mind — is diagrammed in Figure:

The brain (and nervous system and body) are depicted as a structure that has hardware qualities on the one hand and software qualities on the other. The hardware qualities are those inherent in the physical makeup of the brain itself, as dictated by the physical laws that govern reality. This dictation of limitation is shown as a one-way arrow from the physical world to the brain. The software qualities are the programmable aspects of the brain, the capacities for recording data and building up perception, evaluation, and action patterns in accordance with programming instructions given by the culture. The arrows of influence are two-way here, for even though the programming is largely done by the culture to the individual, occasionally the individual modifies some aspects of the culture. Awareness is shown as an emergent quality of the brain, and so awareness is ultimately limited by the hardware and by particular software programs of the brain. Consciousness is the individual's experience of awareness diffused through a tiny fraction of the structure of the brain and nervous system.

The radical view of the mind is diagrammed in Figure:

Two changes have been made to incorporate the radical view. First, awareness is shown as something that comes from outside the structure of the physical brain, as well as something influenced by the structure of the brain (thus giving consciousness) and the cultural programming. In religious terms, this is the idea of a soul or life/mind principle that uses (and is used by) the body. This is a most unpopular idea in scientific circles, but, as I have argued elsewhere, there is enough scientific evidence that consciousness is capable of temporarily existing in a way that seems independent of the physical body to warrant giving the idea serious consideration and doing some research on it.

The second change incorporated in the radical view is shown by the two-way arrow from the physical world to the hardware structure of the brain. The idea, held in many spiritual systems of thought that have dealt with altered states of consciousness, is that physical reality is not a completely fixed entity, but something that may actually be shaped in some fundamental manner by the individual's beliefs about it. I am not speaking here simply of perceptions of reality, but of the actual structure of reality. Pearce, for example, describes an experience as a youth where he accidentally entered an altered state of consciousness in which he knew he was impervious to pain or injury. In front of witnesses he ground out the tips of glowing cigarettes on his cheeks, palms, and eyelids. He felt no pain, and there was no sign of physical injury. The conventional view can easily account for the lack of pain: by control of the structures involved in sensing pain (nerve tracts and certain brain areas), pain would not be perceived. But a glowing cigarette tip has a temperature of about 1400F, and his skin should have been severely burned, despite his state of consciousness. From the radical point of view, his beliefs about reality in the altered state actually altered the nature of physical reality.

To argue for or against the radical view of the mind would take a book in itself, and this is not the one. I want to emphasize that the radical view of the mind, in various forms, is often reported as an experience from altered state of consciousness. If we are going to study states of consciousness adequately, we hall have to confront the radical view, not automatically dismiss it as an illusion or a product of inferior brain functioning, but take it as data. I would personally prefer not to: I do not like the radical view that our belief systems may actually alter the nature of reality even though I can comfortably accept parapsychological data that show that reality is more complex than our current physical world-view believes. But we should stay open to that view and make a decision for or against its probability on scientific grounds, not simply because we have been trained to believe that there is an ultimate, immutable physical reality. Don Juan put it pithily: "To believe that the world is only as you think it is stupid"

I sympathize with reader who finds himself rejecting the radical view of the mind. I suggest, however, that he honestly ask himself, "Have I rejected this view as a result of careful and extensive study of the evidence for and against it, or because I have been trained to do so and rewarded by social approval for doing so?"

Let not thy left Tao know what thy right Tao doeth - III

René Magritte, La lunette d'approche (The Telescope), 1963
Oil on canvas - The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas

I have now lined up a series of pieces of data – hints about how the world is – and all the pieces share the notion of not communicating something under some circumstances. It is important that the Ancient Mariner not tell himself that he is blessing the snakes, and especially that he not define a “purpose” of the act of blessing. He must bless them “unaware.” ... The Indians at Iowa City shall not be photographed. The camera shall not point at their ritual actions to make them see themselves and tell the world about these mysteries. I am irritated by Joe‘s interrupting my psychedelic trip while he sets up a tape recorder, and still more irritated when he asks me to repeat what I had begun to say, which obviously could only be done with extra consciousness. And so on.

I cannot even say clearly how many examples of the same phenomenon – this avoidance of communication – are contained in the stories I have set side by side...

We find over and over again in different parts of the world and different epochs of religious thought a recurrent emphasis on the notion that discovery, invention, and knowledge in general must be regarded as dangerous. Many examples are familiar: Prometheus was chained to the rock for inventing the domestication of fire, which he stole from Phoebus Apollo; Adam was punished for eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge; and so on.

Greek mythology proposes the danger of knowledge again and again, especially cross-sex knowledge, which is always fatal. The guilty man is torn to pieces, and the Greeks even had a word for this fate, which we might Anglicize to say that he is sparagamated. Examples include Actaeon, who accidentally spied on Artemis bathing and was torn apart by her dogs, and Orpheus, who was torn to pieces by nymphs after his return from Hades, where he went to bring back Eurydice. He looked over his shoulder at her as he was leading her back and therefore lost her forever. There is also Pentheus, the disciplinarian king who was led by Bacchus to spy on the Bacchae in Euripides‘ play of that name. The god had the king dress up as a woman and climb a tree to watch the women‘s festivities. They detected him, uprooted the tree, and tore him to pieces. His mother was among the women, and in the final scene of the play she comes back from the mountains carrying her son‘s head, screaming about the “lion” that they had killed. Her father, Cadmus, then performs an act of psychotherapy. “Who did you marry?” The queen answers. “What son was born?” Again she answers. Finally, Cadmus points to the head of Pentheus; ”Who is that?” Then the queen suddenly recognizes her son‘s head. The mythical outcome of male voyeurism is death by being torn apart. We laughingly say to children, “Curiosity killed the pussy cat,” but to the Greeks it was no laughing matter.

I believe that this is a very important and significant matter, and that noncommunication of certain sorts is needed if we are to maintain the “sacred.” Communication is undesirable, not because of fear, but because communication would somehow alter the nature of the ideas.

 There are, of course, monastic orders whose members are under constraint to avoid all verbal communication. (Why especially the verbal?) These are the so-called silent orders. But if we want to know the precise contexts of that noncommunication which is the mark of the sacred, they will not give many clues. By avoiding all speech they tell us very little.

For the moment, let us simply say that there are many matters and many circumstances in which consciousness is undesirable and silence is golden, so that secrecy can be used as a marker to tell us that we are approaching holy ground. Then if we had enough instances of the unuttered, we could begin to reach for a definition of the “Sacred.” At a later stage, it will be possible to juxtapose with the stories given here examples of necessary noncommunication from the field of biology, which I believe to be formally comparable. What is it that men and women hold sacred? Are there perhaps processes in the working of all living systems such that, if news or information of these processes reaches other parts of the system, the working together of the whole will be paralyzed or disrupted? What does it mean to hold something sacred? And why does it matter?

Let not thy left Tao know what thy right Tao doeth - II

esperience of cognitivist Tao

© Igor Morski

The academic success of the cognitivist hypothesis to the mind and consciousness and its application to a number of fields has overshadowed a radical fact: its complete discrepancy between cognition and experience:

Cognitivism and Human Experience

What implications does this cognitivist research program have for an understanding of our experience? We wish to emphasize two related points: (1) cognitivism postulates mental or cognitive processes of which we are not only unaware but of which we cannot be aware, and (2) cognitivism is thereby led to embrace the idea that the self or cognizing subject is fundamentally fragmented or nonunified. These two points will become considerably intertwined as we proceed.

As the reader might recall, our first point has already appeared when we presented the tension between science and experience to which cognitive science gives rise. There we quoted Daniel Dennett's claim that all cognitivist theories are theories of what Dennett calls the "sub-personal level." By this phrase, Dennett means that cognitivism postulates mental (not just physical and biological) mechanisms and processes that are not accessible to the "personal level" of consciousness, especially self-consciousness. In other words, one cannot discern in conscious awareness or self-conscious introspection any of the cognitive structures and processes that are postulated to account for cognitive behavior. Indeed, if cognition is fundamentally symbolic computation, this discrepancy between personal and subpersonal immediately follows, since presumably none of us has any awareness of computing in an internal, symbolic medium when we think.

It is possible to overlook the depth of this challenge to our self-understanding, largely because of our post-Freudian belief in the unconscious. There is a difference, however, between what we usually mean by "unconscious" and the sense in which mental processes are said to be unconscious in cognitivism: we usually suppose that what is unconscious can be brought to consciousness-if not through selfconscious reflection, then through a disciplined procedure such as psychoanalysis. Cognitivism, on the other hand, postulates processes that are mental but that cannot be brought to consciousness at all. Thus we are not simply unaware of the rules that govern the generation of mental images or of the rules that govern visual processing; we could not be aware of these rules. Indeed, it is typically noted that if such cognitive processes could be made conscious, then they could not be fast and automatic and so could not function properly. In one formulation these cognitive processes are even considered to be "modular" {to comprise distinct subsystems that cannot be penetrated by conscious mental activity). Thus cognitivism challenges our conviction that consciousness and the mind either amount to the same thing or there is an essential or necessary connection between them. Of course, Freud too challenged the idea that the mind and consciousness are the same. Furthermore, he certainly realized that to distinguish between the mind and consciousness entails the disunity of the self or cognizing subject, a point to which we shall tum shortly. It is not clear, however, whether Freud took the further step of calling into question the idea that there is an essential or necessary connection between the mind and consciousness. As Dennett notes, Freud, in his argument for unconscious beliefs, desires, and motivations, left open the possibility that these unconscious processes belonged to a fragment of ourselves hidden in the depths of the psyche. Although it is not clear the extent to which Freud meant such a fragmentation literally, it is clear that cognitive science does take a literal, if not homuncular, view. As Dennett puts it, "Although the new [cognitivist] theories abound with deliberately fanciful homunculus metaphors-subsystems like little people in the brain sending messages back and forth, asking for help, obeying and volunteering-the actual subsystems are deemed to be unproblematic nonconscious bits of organic machinery, as utterly lacking in point of view or inner life as a kidney or kneecap. In other words, the characterization of these "sub-personal" systems in "fanciful homunculus metaphors" is only provisional, for eventually all such metaphors are "discharged"-they are traded in for the storm of activity among such selfless processes as neural networks or AI data structures.

Our pretheoretical, everyday conviction, however, is that cognition and consciousness-especially self-consciousness-belong together in the same domain. Cognitivism runs directly counter to this conviction: in determining the domain of cognition, it explicitly cuts across the conscious/unconscious distinction. The domain of cognition consists of those systems that must be seen as having a distinct representational level, not necessarily of those systems that are conscious. Some representational systems are, of course, conscious, but they need not be to have representations or intentional states. Thus for cognitivists, cognition and intentionality (representation) are the inseparable pair, not cognition and consciousness.

This theoretical division of the domain of cognition is considered by cognitivists to be “an empirical discovery of no small importance” and indicates, again, the remarkable mutation wrought by cognitivism. But now a problem arises: we seem to be losing our grip on something that is undeniably close and familiar-our sense of self. If consciousness-to say nothing of self-consciousness-is not essential for cognition, and if, in the case of cognitive systems that are conscious, such as ourselves, consciousness amounts to only one kind of mental process, then just what is the cognizing subject? Is it the collection of all mental processes, both conscious and unconscious? Or is it simply one kind of mental process, such as consciousness, among all the others? In either case, our sense of self is challenged, for we typically suppose that to be a self is to have a coherent and unified "point of view," a stable and constant vantage point from which to think, perceive, and act. Indeed, this sense that we have (are?) a self seems so incontrovertible that its calling into question or denial-even by science-strikes us as absurd. And yet, if someone were to turn the tables and ask us to look for the self, we would be hard pressed to find it. Dennett, as usual, makes this point with flair: “You enter the brain through the eye, march up the optic nerve, round and round the cortex, looking behind every neuron, and then before you know it, you emerge into daylight on the spike of a motor nerve impulse, scratching your head and wondering where the self is”.

Our problem, however, goes even deeper. It is one thing to be unable to find a coherent and unified self amid the furious storm of subpersonal activity. This inability would certainly challenge our sense of self, but the challenge would be limited. We could still suppose that there really is a self but that we simply cannot find it in this fashion. Perhaps, as Jean-Paul Sartre held, the self is too close, and so we cannot uncover it by turning back upon ourselves. The cognitivist challenge, however, is much more serious. According to cognitivism, cognition can proceed without consciousness, for there is no essential or necessary connection between them. Now whatever else we suppose the self to be, we typically suppose that consciousness is its central feature. It follows, then, that cognitivism challenges our conviction that the most central feature of the self is needed for cognition. In other words, the cognitivist challenge does not consist simply in asserting that we cannot find the self; it consists, rather, in the further implication that the self is not even needed for cognition.

At this point, the tension between science and experience should be obvious and tangible. If cognition can proceed without the self, then why do we nonetheless have the experience of self? We cannot simply dismiss this experience without explanation.

sitting at the feet of the Tao

Isa Upanishad, Wellcome Library, London

The emphasis of the Upanishads (lit.: sitting at the feet of the Master) is on Wholeness. Remember, it is not on perfection but on wholeness. The moment one becomes interested in being perfect, the ego enters in. The ego is a perfectionist – the desire of the ego is to be perfect – and perfection drives humanity towards insanity.
Wholeness is totally different; its flavor is different. Perfection is in the future: it is a desire. Wholeness is herenow: it is a revelation. Perfection has to be achieved, and of course every achievement takes time; it has to be gradual. You have to sacrifice the present for the future, thetoday for the tomorrow. And the tomorrow never comes; what comes is always today.

All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession.

Doing verily works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.

Sunless are those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom where to all they in their passing hence resort who are slayers of their souls.

One unmoving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.

That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught.

He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness? 

It is He that has gone abroad — That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil. The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone. 

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Knowledge, other that which comes by the Ignorance; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys Immortality.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Non-Birth, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone.

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Birth, other that which comes by the Non-Birth; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

He who knows That as both in one, the Birth and the dissolution of Birth, by the dissolution crosses beyond death and by the Birth enjoys Immortality.

The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.

O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I.

The Breath of things1 is an immortal Life, but of this body ashes are the end. OM! O Will, remember, that which was done remember! O Will, remember, that which was done remember.

O god Agni, knowing all things that are manifested, lead us by the good path to the felicity; remove from us the devious attraction of sin. To thee completest speech of submission we would dispose.

English translation: Sri Aurobindo

Let not thy left Tao know what thy right Tao doeth - II

René Magritte, The Red Model II - Le modele rouge II, 1937
Oil on canvas, Edward James Foundation, Chichester, Sussex

I am an anthropologist. And the task of an anthropologist causes him to land himself in strange places. That is, places that are strange to him but, of course, not strange to the people who belong in those places. So, here I am at the governor‘s breakfast in what is for me a strange place but what is for many of you a place where you belong and have your natural being. I am here to relate this strange place to other strange places in the world where men gather together perhaps in prayer, perhaps in celebration, perhaps simply to affirm that there is something bigger in the world than money and pocketknives and automobiles. One of the things children have to learn about prayer is that you do not pray for pocketknives. Some learn it and some don‘t. If we‘re going to talk about such matters as prayer and religion, we need an example, a specimen, about which to talk. The trouble, you see, is that words like “religion” and “prayer” get used in many different senses in different times and in different parts of the world.

***

What I am suggesting is that nature of matters such as prayer, religion, and the like is most evident at moments of change – at moments of what the Buddhists call Enlightenment. And while Enlightenment may involve many sorts of experience, I think it important here to notice how often Enlightenment is a sudden realization of the biological nature of the world in which we live. It is a sudden discovery or realization of life. ... Another example, even more vivid but perhaps less familiar, alas, is the case of Job. Job, you will remember, is like Little Jack Horner. He sticks his finger in the pie and gives to the poor, and says, “What a good boy am I.” He has a God who is exactly like himself and who therefore boasts to Satan about Job‘s virtue. Satan is perhaps the most real part of Job‘s person, deeply hidden and repressed within him. He sets to work to demonstrate that Job‘s pietism is really no good. Finally, after infinite sufferings, a God who is much less pious and pedantic speaks out of the whirlwind and give Job three chapters of the most extraordinary sermon ever written, which consists in telling him that he does not know any natural history.

Knowest thou the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? Or canst thou mark when the hinds do calve? Canst thou number the months that they fulfil? Or knowest thou the time when they bring forth? They bow themselves, they bring forth their young ones, they cast out their sorrows. Their young ones are in good liking … – Job 39:1-4

***

There is a story, rather well known, of a man who got into a bus with a big cage covered with brown paper. He was quite drunk and quite a nuisance, insisting that the cage be set next to him on the seat. They asked him, “What is in the cage?” and he told them, “A mongoose.” They asked him what he wanted a mongoose for and he explained that a drinking man needs a mongoose for the snakes of delirium tremens. They said, “But those are not real snakes.” He answered triumphantly in a whisper, “Ah … but you see, it‘s not a real mongoose.” Is that the paradigm for all religion and all psychotherapy. Is it all bosh? And what do we mean when we say, “There is no Santa Claus!?”

***

If it‘s all bosh, then the sensible man will simply go home and forget it. He might spend the evening fixing the plumbing in his house or filling out his income-tax returns. But such sensible men have never been numerous enough to tidy up the civilization, getting rid of all mythological “junk.” Indeed almost every culture of the world has its mythical figures and forces the children to look directly at these figures to learn that they do not have the same reality as pots and pans or even persons. In every initiating culture, the novices must first experience the mystery of the masked figures and then each novice must wear and dance in the mask. He must himself swing the bull-roarer and will do so with glee. (But why so gleeful?) And what of the Bread and Wine? The communicant “partakes” of these – eats and drinks them – and there could hardly be a more definitive demonstration that the Bread is indeed just bread and the Wine of no distinguished vintage. And Yet … I once tried to help a patient who combined alcoholism with psychosis. He came from a religious family of fundamentalist Christians. In that family, they were not allowed to mention Santa Claus, because the first believing and the then being disillusioned might make the children into atheists. From “There is no Santa Claus”, they might conclude, “There is no Jehovah.” For the present discussion, let me suggest that the sentence “There is no Jehovah” might mean “There is no matrix of mind, no continuity, no pattern in the stuff of which we are made.”

Let not thy left Tao know what thy right Tao doeth - I

Tao states: structures interaction

© Robert Fathauer, Twice Iterated Knot No. 1

The last interaction considered by Tart between the components of the states of consciousness is between structures:

Interaction of Structures and Structures

Although the interaction of one psychological structure with another structure depends on activation of both structures by attention/awareness energy, this interaction is modified by an important limitation: that individual structures have various kinds of properties that limit and control their potential range of interaction with one another. Structures are not equipotent with respect to interacting with one another, but have important individual characteristics. You cannot see with your ears. Information is fed into any structure in one or more way and comes out of the structure in one or more ways We can say in general that for two structures to interact

(1) they must have either a direct connection between them or some connections mediated by other structures,

(2) their input and output information must be in the same code so information output from one makes sense to the input for the other,

(3) the output signals of one structure must not be so weak that they are below the threshold for reception by the other structure,
(4) the output signals of one structure must not be so strong that they overload the input of the other structure.

Now let us consider ways in which psychological structures may not interact.
First two structures may not interact because there is no direct or mediated connection between them. I have, for example, structures involved in moving the little finger of my left hand and sensing its motion, and I have structures involved in sensing my body temperature and telling me whether I have a fever or a chill. Although I am moving my little finger vigorously now, I can get no sense of having either a fever or a chill from that action. Those two structures seem to be totally unconnected.
Second, two structures may not interact if the codes of output and input information are incompatible. My body, for example, has learned to ride a bicycle. While I can sense that knowledge in my body, in the structure that mediates my experience of riding a bicycle when I actually am doing so, I cannot verbalize it in any adequate way. The nature of knowledge encoded in that particular structure does not code into the kind of knowledge that constitutes my verbal structures.
Third, two structures may not interact if the output signal from one is too weak, below the threshold for affecting another. When I am angry with someone and arguing with him, there may, during the argument, be a still small voice in me telling me that I am acting foolishly, but I have little awareness of that still small voice, and it cannot affect the action of the structures involved in feeling angry and arguing.
Fourth, two structures may not interact properly if the output signal from one overloads the other. I may be in severe pain during a medical procedure, for instance, and I know (another structure tells me) that if I could relax the pain would be lessened considerably; but the structures involved in relaxing are so overloaded by the intense pain that they cannot carry out their normal function.
Fifth, two structures may be unable to interact properly if the action of a third structure interferes with them. An example is a neurotic defense mechanism. Suppose, for instance, your employer constantly humiliates you. Suppose also that part of your personality structure has a strong respect for authority and a belief in yourself as a very calm person who is not easily angered. Now your boss is humiliating you, but instead of feeling angry (the natural consequence of the situation), you are polite and conciliatory, and do not feel the anger. A structure of your personality has suppressed certain possible interactions between other structures (but there may well be a hidden price paid for this suppression, like ulcers). Now consider the case of smoother interaction between structures. Two structures may interact readily and smoothly with one another to form a composite structure, a system whose properties are additive properties of the individual structures, as well as gestalt properties unique to the combination. Or, two or more structures may interact with one another in such a way that the total system alters some of the properties of the individual structures to various degrees, producing a system with gestalt properties that are not simple additive properties of the individual structures. Unstable interactions may also occur between two or more structures that compete for energy, producing an unstable, shifting relationship in the composite system. All these considerations about the interactional structures apply to both hardware (biologically given) and software (culturally programmed) structures. For example, two systems may not interact for a lack of connection in the sense that their basic neural paths, built into the hardware of the human being, do not allow such interaction. Or, two software structures may not interact for lack of connection because in the enculturation, the programming of the person, the appropriate connections were simply not created. All the classical psychological defense mechanisms can be viewed in these system terms as ways of controlling interaction patterns among perceptions and psychological structures. Remember that in the real human being many structures usually interact simultaneously, with all the above-mentioned factors facilitating or inhibiting interaction to various degrees at various points in the total system formed. Thus while the interaction of structures is affected by the way attention/awareness energy is deployed, it is also affected by the properties of individual structures. In computer terms, we are not totally general-purpose computers, capable of being programmed in just any arbitrary fashion. We are specialized: that is our strength, weakness, and humanness.

Let not thy left Tao know what thy right Tao doeth - I

René Magritte, La Corde Sensible, (1960)

Let Not Thy Left Hand Know

Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth. – Matt 6:3

In the processes we call perceiving, knowing, and acting, a certain decorum must be followed, and when these quite obscure rules are not observed, the validity of our mental processes is jeopardized. Above all, these rules concern the preservation of the fine lines dividing the sacred from the secular, the aesthetic from the appetitive, the deliberate from the unconscious, and thought from feeling. I do not know whether abstract philosophy will support the necessity of these dividing lines, but I am sure that these divisions are a usual feature of human epistemologies and that they are component in the natural history of human knowledge and action. Similar dividing lines are surely to be found in all human cultures, though surely each culture will have its unique ways of handling the resulting paradoxes. I introduce the fact of these divisions, then, as evidence that the domain of Epistemology – of mental explanation – is ordered, real, and must be examined. In the present chapter I shall illustrate, with a series of narratives, what happens when these lines are breached or threatened.

Back in 1960, I was acting as a guinea pig for a psychologist, Joe Adams, who was studying psychedelic phenomena. He gave me a hundred grams of LSD, and as the drug began to take effect, I started to tell him what I wanted to get from the experience – that I wanted insight into the aesthetic organization of behavior. Joe said, “Wait a minute! Wait while I get the tape recorder going.” When he finally got the machine going, he asked me to repeat what I had been saying. Anybody who has had LSD will know that the flow of ideas is such that to “repeat” any piece is almost impossible. I did the best I could but this clumsiness on Joe‘s part established a certain struggle between us.

Interestingly enough, our roles in that struggle were reversed, so that later on he was scolding me for thinking too much instead of being spontaneous when it was my spontaneity that he had attacked with his machine. In reply, I defended the intellectual position. At a certain point, he said, “Gregory, you think too much.” “Thinking is my job in life,” I said. Later he went off and brought back a rosebud from the garden. A beautiful and fresh bud, which he gave me, saying, “Stop thinking. Take a look at that.” I held the bud and looked at it, and it was complex and beautiful. So, equating the process of evolution with the process of thought, I said “Gee, Joe, think of all the thought that went into that!” Evidently there is a problem, not simply to avoid thought and the use of the intellect because it is sometimes bad for spontaneity of feeling, but to map out what sorts of thought are bad for spontaneity, and what sorts of thought are the very stuff of which spontaneity is made. Later in the same LSD session I remarked to Joe, “This stuff is all very well. It‘s very pretty but it‘s trivial.” Joe said, “What do you mean, trivial?” I had been watching endless shapes and colors collapsing and breaking and reforming, and I said, “Yes, it‘s trivial. It‘s like the patterns of breaking waves or glass. What I see is only the planes of fracture, not the stuff itself.” I mean that Prospero was wrong when he said, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” What he should have said is, “Dreams are bits and pieces of the stuff of which we are made, and what that stuff is, Joe, is quite another question.” Even though we can discuss the ideas which we “have” and what we perceive through our senses, and so on, the enveloping question, the question of the nature of the envelope in which all that “experience” is contained, is a very different and much more profound question, which approaches matters that are part of religion. I come with two sorts of questions posed by these stories: What is the nature of the continuum or matrix of which or in which “ideas” are made? And what sorts of ideas create distraction or confusion in the operation of that matrix so that creativity is destroyed?