So I don’t know how much others are interested in looking at this a little, but I find it interesting that all awareness, all perceptual ‘experiencing’, takes the form of perpetual movement, an unbroken perceptual flow.
It’s like a fountain continuously renewing itself, constantly changing its content of water, constantly flowing.
And also all awareness has some kind of space. So, for instance, when one looks up at the night sky (on a clear night) one is aware of this enormous space between oneself and the moon, between oneself and the stars. There is the space in which one is sitting, the space inside the room; and the space outside the house.
And the space of awareness has no clear boundary - it is indefinitely open space.
Similar, yes, but not the same. Two people can react/respond to a certain smell, taste, or sight in dramatically different ways due to their conditioning.
K talked about the power of conditioning and the prevalence of thought, he also talked about the fundamental importance of awareness and attention .
Yes, but he spoke of choiceless awareness because the awareness of the conditioned brain is not choiceless.
You seem to deny this or dismiss this, justifying your close-mindedness with the mantra that we are all conditioned.
In the few moments of awareness you had of this conditioned response before acting on it, did it occur to you that you might have to apologize to me again for saying something you regret?
If I might point out, this thread is concerned with the topic of awareness.
And if I may point out, awareness is not always choiceless for the brain that is conditioned to react to awareness conditionally.
I’m unsure about that, given the existence of subconscious and pre-attentive processes. But, again, exploring that would be a diversion and the thread is managing to stay quite on track!
I can share, what may be, a bit of the awareness of the unbroken perceptual flow .
The unbroken perceptual flow is “intimacy with the what is”, so intimate that the ordinary is seen as beauty. Whatever my eyes look at, especially the near, there is beauty, which is so close, that seeing is deepening the intimacy and the beauty and …compassion is felt as unbearable. Compassion for nature, seeing that nature is ignored by me and humans, realizing that I never see the dead leaves, the dirt, the grass, the dead branches of a tree, the cuts on a tree, the traces of life which are gone forever, the uniqueness of everything …and the passing of everything.
This intimacy brings the loss of the awareness that I have a body, nature is the body.
You are bringing in the issue of conditioning again, I was not. If I point out a tree in the garden to another human brain he/she will see the same object ‘tree’ that I am looking at, because the sense of sight is similar in all undamaged human brains. I don’t know why we dispute such trivialities.
You are bringing in the issue of conditioning again, I was not. We have been discussing simple awareness, ‘bare attention’, which is the awareness one has of the blueness of the sky or smell of coffee before conceptual thinking takes over.
No it did not, because all I said was that you seem to be repeating this mantra of conditioning over and over again which ignores the present enquiry into the nature of awareness - which is true. By your reply you have proven it to be the case.
Are you asking whether or not a subsystem of the brain or body (such as the processing of the cortical image, the liver excreting bile, the digestive system, the circulatory system, etc) is capable of ‘experiencing’ something?
Yes - the perceptual flow of awareness is mirrored in the transitory flow of nature, of the world around us. In becoming aware of this intimacy, this transience, there is, as you say, a sensitivity to
which involves a sense of beauty and vulnerability (tenderness).
This is more suitable for the Panpsychism thread, but if we take seriously Bohm’s notion of signa-soma (or soma-signifcance) - which can also be thought of as ‘active information’ - then we can begin to think of every thing - even down to the subatomic level of electrons and quarks - as having what he called “a rudimentary mind-like quality”.
This is because Bohm considered all matter to be some modification of the quantum potential (which he took to be an ontologically real movement).
The quantum potential - according to Bohm - ‘informs’ the movement of particles (from within as it were): particles being “relatively constant, recurrent and stable aspects of the whole”; and the whole being the broadest conceivable undivided movement (what he called the ‘holomovement’) from which the quantum potential arises.
According to this view, everything from the micro to the macro can be considered different combinations of sub-units (or wholes) of ‘active information’.
Really? This is surprising to me. I’m kinda getting a relative measurement vibe from your description. How does this differ from a perception of time passing in relation to me? Or a “my place in the universe” type comparison of separate objets?
PS. I think I recognise the feeling of feeling the bigness of the night sky that you might be referring to - but I’m very much present in those moments - I have importance (in a tiny insignificant way)
The feeling of the flow - as in the unbroken train of moments - I don’t think I recognise - although maybe I can conjure something like that up, if I try - time being so familiar.
We can also ask - though this might be a bit of a tangent - what is the relationship between love or compassion and awareness?
Compassion may be an intrinsic aspect, an intrinsic quality of, non-ego-centred awareness. In some Buddhist traditions, for example, they say that awareness (in its very nature) has both the qualities of luminosity (or intelligence) on the one hand, and non-referential compassion on the other.
Don’t you sense that awareness (or attention) is somehow related to the sense of space? This is probably where the quality of meditation becomes more important.
When the mind is relaxed but alert, tranquil but attentive, don’t you feel an expanded sense of space?
Usually we are absorbed in our activities and so only obliquely aware of the space around us. But when we pause or slow down, physically and mentally, which happens naturally sometimes, don’t you begin to notice the space around you? The feeling you have when looking at the moon when everything is still, both within and without?
These may be subtle indications of a much wider, broader space not limited by a centre or periphery (you have heard K talk about this).
Yes. But there are moments when that self-importance is not so acute - which happens sometimes when looking at the stars, or when sitting quietly ‘doing nothing’ - and then the sense of space expands (don’t you feel?).
Okay thanks - where you describe space (in the moment of opening up from the tiny, intense focus of me) I think of as : relief - but space is a good description.
Haven’t you ever felt a sense of flow? Of course you have. Physically we feel this when we are really ‘in the zone’ - whether through sport or swimming or dancing; mentally we can feel this sometimes when listening to music. But it is also possible - when we are physically relaxed and still yet alert, to notice the subtly flowing movement of life in the moment (whether in the form of sensations in the body, sifting moods in the mind, or the flow of life in the objects and living things around us). Don’t you think?
I might ponder a while on what you are saying (re: noticing the flow) - the first question that I’m having is “how much is this due to me projecting?” (and does it really matter if its me projecting? - as I am just an eddy)
I’m not (though I could have been, being a fan of pan-experientialism!), I’m talking about mental processes like subliminal perception, implicit memory, blindsight.
