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For more information, contact: Gary Schouborg, PhD (925) 932-1982 |
Schouborg, Gary (1998).
"The Hard Problem as Koan". The Hard Problem As Koan (fn 1) Gary Schouborg ---------- (fn 1) This article owes a great deal to online discussions of these topics with Frank Briganti, Anthony Sebastian, Chris Nunn, Ruediger Vaas, Jonathan Reams, Chris Hooley, Michael Barclay, Mait Edey, Steven Bindeman, and Jed Harris. ---------- Abstract: There is almost universal
agreement that Chalmers’ hard problem of explaining why consciousness emerges
from physical processes is insoluble. This consensus is obscured by the
almost chronic failure of the extensive literature ostensibly about the hard
problem to distinguish three distinct issues: (1) the sufficient physical
conditions for consciousness — the hard problem; (2) the necessary physical
conditions for consciousness; and (3) the influence of consciousness on physical
processes. All three address the hard problem factually (on its merits) and
are taken up in Part I, which stands on its own. However, readers may also be
interested in the hard problem valuationally (in the impact that their
conclusions about it have on their sense of themselves). For them, Part II
will explain the difference between addressing the hard problem factually and
valuationally, Part III will examine five koans (the hard problem is the
fifth) to show how they induce content-free experiencing (CFE), Part IV will
discuss the nature of CFE and how it enhances ordinary living, and Part V
will serve as epilogue. I.
The Hard Problem There
is almost universal agreement that Chalmers’ hard problem of explaining why
consciousness emerges from physical processes is insoluble. This consensus is
obscured by the almost chronic failure of the extensive literature ostensibly
about the hard problem to distinguish three distinct issues: (1) the
sufficient physical conditions for consciousness — the hard problem; (2) the
necessary physical conditions for consciousness; and (3) the influence of
consciousness on physical processes. Chalmers himself equivocates,
formulating the hard problem this way: For any
physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should
this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is
conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of
experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell
us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be
derived from physical theory. (1995 p. 208) In a
subsequent article, he repeats his position more succinctly: "The hard
problem, as I understand it, is that of explaining how and why consciousness
arises from physical processes in the brain" (1997, p. 23). In other
words, he assumes that the material world is related to consciousness as
cause to effect. The problem is that no appeal to physical causes is
sufficient to explain how or why consciousness exists, for the simple reason
that the premises of physical theories contain no reference to consciousness
and are therefore logically prohibited from generating a conclusion that
does. Rather than give up immediately, Chalmers suggests we seek out an
alternative type of explanation that will not present this difficulty,
proposing a theory in which consciousness is a fundamental category, one for
which we seek no further explanation. But this is precisely to give up on the
hard problem as he formulates it. Without acknowledging it, Chalmers shifts
in effect to identifying the necessary conditions of consciousness, pointing
to panexperientialism as an intriguing possibility. (fn 2) ----------- (fn 2) Panexperientialism is a limiting case for a theory of necessary conditions. In effect, it holds that the necessary condition of consciousness is any physical process whatever. ----------- Some
empiricists are more aggressively shifty, denying that there is a hard
problem at all rather than admitting to its insoluble existence (Churchland
1996). Others clearly demarcate it as something that does not fall within the
purview of science (Hardcastle 1996). On the other hand, some empiricists
claim that consciousness just is some set of neural processes or cognitive
functions (Clark 1995, Hardcastle 1996). This so-called identity theory seems
to deny the existence of consciousness altogether. We can distinguish,
however, between two senses of the claim: (1) it is about the meaning of
‘consciousness’; (2) it operationally defines ‘consciousness’ for scientific
purposes. The traditional objection to the first sense is that when we say we
are conscious we are certainly not referring to neural activity; our
conversation could continue unaffected even if we knew nothing about the
brain. Therefore, to say that consciousness just is neural activity is
certainly not to explicate the ordinary meaning of the term. The only valid
sense of the claim is therefore operational, which recommends a non-ordinary
usage for scientific purposes, to identify physical processes which are
correlated with consciousness. However, this only shifts the formulation of
the hard problem to: How does consciousness in the ordinary sense arise from
consciousness in this operational sense? How does consciousness emerge from
the neural activity which is correlated with it? Perhaps
the current ordinary usage will eventually drop out in favor of the new one.
There seems to be some precedent for this. For example, at one time ordinary
language talked of life in terms of soul rather than biological function; now
usage seems to be trending toward biological function, so that the ordinary
meaning of ‘life’ refers decreasingly to some spiritual entity that keeps us
alive and increasingly to biological functions of metabolism, growth,
reaction to stimuli, and reproduction. We might therefore suppose that our
current ordinary talk about consciousness as distinct from matter is a folk-
or proto-science that will dwindle as scientific usage becomes dominant. The
analogy, however, does not hold. The soul is an explanans, appealed to in
order to explain why designated living things behave the way they do.
Consciousness, on the other hand, is not in the first instance an explanans —
something to explain how we function — but an explanandum, an experience to
be explained. We can abandon an explanans like the soul for a better one like
current biological theory, but we cannot abandon or explain away an
explanandum. (fn 3) ---------- (fn 3) We experience the difference between consciousness and physical processes, just like we experience the difference between red and green. In each case, the difference is there to be explained, not explained away. ---------- Some
quantum theorists may be the only ones who take the solubility of the hard
problem seriously, arguing that a solution lies beyond space-time, where a
nonlocal reality parallels the nonlocality of consciousness in a way that
indicates an identity between quantum reality and consciousness (Clarke 1995).
However, by itself such a parallel tells us nothing, unless we commit the
fallacy of the undistributed middle, thus: quantum reality is nonlocal;
consciousness is nonlocal; therefore quantum reality is consciousness. By
itself, showing that quantum reality and consciousness have certain
characteristics in common fails to explain how consciousness is either
identical to, or emerges from, quantum reality. Appealing to nonlocality does
not by itself enable quantum theory any more than classical physics to reference
consciousness in its premises and therefore leaves quantum theory just as
subject as classical physics to the hard problem. This, of course, is not to
deny that quantum theory may shed considerable light on the necessary
empirical conditions of consciousness. (fn 4) ---------- (fn 4) See for example Nunn (1996), especially p. 481, where he quotes Penrose (1994, p. 408) as saying that large scale quantum coherence "could be part of what is needed for consciousness" (my emphasis). ---------- Purported
empirical theories of consciousness are only theories of mental activities
which happen to be conscious. They tell us nothing directly about
consciousness as such, "only" about the empirical conditions that
are necessary for us to be conscious (Baars 1988). (fn 5) This point is
missed by Churchland (1996), who finds ---------- (fn 5) Inquiries about parallels between structures of consciousness and physical processes (Clark 1992, Hardin 1992) or about neural correlates (Newman 1997a,b) seek more than mere correlation. If possible, they want to establish in what ways consciousness depends on the parallel or correlated processes — that is, to identify what parallel or correlated processes are necessary conditions for consciousness. But they cannot explain why there is that dependency. ---------- empirical
explanations of consciousness satisfactory in principle and the hard problem
merely an argument from ignorance. Stronger theories of consciousness — those
that are about consciousness as such and not just about mental activities
that happen to be conscious — must show either of two things. They must solve
the materialist hard problem of how physical processes are sufficient causes
of consciousness, or they must solve the idealist converse of the hard
problem: how consciousness as such — and not some mental activity which
happens to be conscious — is sufficient cause of some physical process. To
see how the materialist and idealist versions of the hard problem compete, we
must understand the difference between first-level and second-level theory. A
first-level theory operates within the framework of a second-level theory or
heuristic strategy. The currently dominant second-level theory is
materialism, which is a heuristic strategy that says, in effect: we will try
to explain anything we experience in terms of physical processes or
mechanisms. Within this framework, any first-level theory of consciousness as
explanans competes futilely with first-level physical theories. Thus, if we
hear that, "Consciousness comes into play only when novel, biologically
relevant, and/or goal-incongruent information is detected by the nervous
system" (Newman 1997a, p. 51; his emphasis), we might conclude that
consciousness therefore causally contributes to decision making under those
conditions. Within a materialist heuristic, however, there is no way to say
that we will never come up with an adequate physical explanation. An appeal
to consciousness can only be an argument from ignorance: the physical
mechanisms of decision making that we know of do not completely explain how
we make decisions, therefore consciousness must be a contributing cause.
However, in the face of ignorance our materialist strategy is to work that
much harder to find the physical causes that remain hidden from us. Note
that appeals to consciousness are futile only within the framework of
materialism. The opposite is the case within the framework of idealism, where
we are committed to finding non-physical explanations of events. Within this perspective,
an appeal to physical explanations can only be an argument from ignorance: we
have been unable to explain how consciousness contributes to our decisions,
therefore an adequate explanation must lie with physical processes. Idealism
and materialism therefore compete only as second-level theories. Once we have
committed to one of them, we have left its corresponding first-level
explanations in a monopolistic position. How
then are we to decide on our strategy? Until someone comes up with a third-level
theory that enables us to decide which of the two is true, our only recourse
seems to be pragmatism. Which of the two heuristics has stimulated the more
productive research and the more useful applications in the past, and which
promises to do so in the future? For present purposes, fortunately, we do not
have to answer this question, only note that the hard problem remains
untouched by the controversy. For under either heuristic the hard problem is
insoluble. Within materialism, physical processes cannot sufficiently explain
consciousness, since the premises of physical theories contain no reference
to consciousness. Within idealism, consciousness cannot sufficiently explain
physical processes, since consciousness as such contains no reference to physical
processes. II.
Addressing the Hard Problem Valuationally The
preceding factual discussion of the hard problem has found it to be
insoluble, or at least not yet solved and with no feasible solution in sight.
We now turn to a valuational discussion of this conclusion. How do we feel
and how do we behave? What are the implications for who we are? Our
factual interest in the hard problem is the age-old quest for unity amid
diversity. Given the difference between consciousness and physical processes,
we are curious indeed to understand their relationship, to have a single
framework that ties them together. We therefore understand Chalmers’
reluctance to give up prematurely on the hard problem. As at least a
temporary tactic, we look to those scientists who can at least identify the
empirical conditions that are necessary for us to be conscious at all. We are
intrigued by the suggestive similarities between the mysteries of quantum
reality and those of consciousness (e.g., Freeman 1994, Hameroff 1994, Nunn
1994, Squires 1994, Stapp 1996). We are grateful to all these approaches,
which provide some picture of the material house within which consciousness
dwells. Yet our drive for unity continues to insist on more, on solving the
hard problem by understanding how and why physical processes produce
consciousness or, conversely, how and why consciousness influences physical
processes. Why do
some of us easily abandon the hard problem as insoluble and move on to other
inquiries, while others cannot let it go? This depends partly on our
confidence that it really is insoluble, compared to our suspicion that we
just haven’t figured out the solution. It also depends partly on our
confidence that our desire for a unified understanding must eventually be
satisfied, compared to our suspicion that our intellectual reach exceeds our
grasp. There is no easy answer here. If intellectual history is replete with
examples of discoveries made in the face of general opinion that a problem
was insoluble, it also includes as many instances where inquirers, by giving
up on an issue — for example, trying to determine how many angels can dance
on the head of a pin — were able to move on to more productive questions. We may
feel intensely frustrated at not finding a satisfactory factual answer to the
hard problem, but if our interest is valuational we may even feel a sense of
urgency. As a classic Buddhist teaching tell us, if we are struck by an arrow
we do not have the luxury of exploring how it happened — we must extricate the
arrow. Fortunately, we need not languish helplessly in the face of our
insoluble, or at least very difficult, problem of consciousness. Fortunately,
the lack of an answer provides us with an opportunity to shift our attention
in a way that addresses the more personal problem of who we are. There
are two fundamentally different responses to an inquiry about our identity.
The first, dominant in the West, is to search for our defining physical,
psychological, or social attributes. A different option, from the East, is to
assume that our identity is more than any set of attributes, and as a
consequence to search for it in a quite different way. In Part III, we will
show how koans are tools of this option. In Part IV, we will discuss in what
respect they yield an answer. III.
Five Koans A tool
of self-inquiry, the koan presents itself as an intellectual riddle, but is
really a means of shifting our attention from content (an intellectual answer
to the riddle) to the questioning itself, then to the ‘I’ that is
questioning, and finally to the consciousness or experiencing itself in which
the questioning takes place. This shift induces pure consciousness — that is,
content-free experiencing (CFE), in contrast to content-laden experiencing
(CLE). The rest of this article will refer to CFE rather than pure
consciousness, since for many readers the latter almost inevitably has
ontological implications of a non-material reality. CFE has the advantage of
being ontologically neutral, leaving us free to determine its precise
phenomenological nature before exploring its ontological status in relation
to the material world. A koan
is usually said to be intellectually insoluble, but that is neither necessary
nor sufficient for it to induce CFE. Strict insolubility is not sufficient,
since CFE is not a logical conclusion based on insolubility, but a shift of
attention involving, as we shall see in Part IV, an as yet unidentified
concatenation of cognitive and neural processes. For the same reason, strict
insolubility is not necessary. Anything is sufficient that induces us to
shift our attention from CLE to CFE, from an intellectual answer to attention
to the consciousness or experiencing in which the seeking is embedded. We will
discuss five koans, the last being the hard problem. Each employs different
mechanisms for inducing CFE. 1.
The Sound of One Hand Clapping Perhaps
the best known koan of all is the question, What is the sound of one hand clapping?
It works based on the usual context of ‘clapping’, which involves the palm of
one hand striking the palm of another. If my right hand strikes something
other than my left, it is slapping not clapping. Of course, we can, and do,
extend this usual meaning based on the fact that clapping often expresses
delight and appreciation. Thus, you and I can clap by slapping each other’s
hand. Violinists can clap for a soloist’s performance by striking their
violins with their bows. A
spiritual teacher would be depressed indeed if her student responded to this
koan with the preceding analysis. For the koan’s function as a spiritual tool
is not to provide fodder for intellectual analysis, but to induce a shift of
attention away from the CLE of analysis to CFE. Therefore, the lesson here is
that the less susceptible to analysis a koan proves to be, the more likely it
is to be inductive (of CFE) rather than seductive (of CLE analysis). 2.
Neither Wind Nor Flag, But Mind Moves A koan
that more directly induces a shift of attention is the question: When a flag
moves in the breeze, does the wind or the flag move? Answer: Your mind moves.
Compared to One Hand Clapping, this koan points more directly to
experiencing, since it references one’s mind. However, it is still
susceptible to CLE analysis. Thus, the philosopher or psychologist can
understand the koan to express the fact that cognitive processes contribute
to our perceptions of external reality. Such theorizing, however correct and
useful for some purposes, only shifts attention from external to internal
content, not from CLE to CFE. Nevertheless, under favorable conditions the
puzzlement stimulated by the koan may induce in the seeker a shift of
attention to CFE rather than a CLE analysis. 3.
Who Am I? Perhaps
the purest form of koan is Ramana Maharshi’s method of self-inquiry (Godman
1985, Poonja 1992, Klein 1990). Here, in response to a seeker’s question, the
teacher asks, Who is asking the question? Variations of this question are
made in response to a seeker’s question, assertion, or action. The key is to
induce the seeker to focus on the consciousness in which the question,
assertion, or action is embedded. Even here, however, there is a way out;
enlightenment is never inevitable. The seeker may miss the point that the
question intends to induce CFE and may respond instead with CLE answers such
as her name, attributes, or social roles. Under favorable conditions,
however, the question may induce the seeker to shift attention from content
to experiencing itself (CFE). 4.
Why Is There Anything Rather Than Nothing At All? Why
Anything, the central question for the medieval philosopher, shifts our
attention in yet a different way. The ordinary way to explain the existence
of anything is to search for some prior event or cause C that can explain a
subsequent event or effect E. Once that prior event C has been identified, we
can in principle ask for its cause C’, a still prior event, then its cause
C’’, and so on indefinitely. In contrast, the question Why Anything avoids
this endless series of causes by asking for the cause of the whole set of
things that have ever existed, do exist, or will exist. Medievalists
answered the question by appealing to a necessary being, one whose existence
did not itself require explanation, thereby breaking the endless chain of
explanations. The assumption was that an endless series of explanations is no
explanation at all, so that we are logically compelled to assume a necessary
cause if we are to continue to believe that the universe is intelligible.
Contemporary intellectuals, on the other hand, are quite comfortable with
either or both of the conclusions that medievalists thought absurd, that the
universe is not completely intelligible or that an endless series of explanations
is acceptable, either in principle or as the best we can do. The
above two paragraphs consider Why Anything factually. However, the question
implicates identity more directly than One Hand Clapping, Mind Moves, or even
Who Am I. For by seeking to understand the cause of everything, Why Anything
necessarily has us reflecting upon ourselves as part of everything that
exists. By highlighting the contingency of the world of our experience, the
question naturally leads (but does not compel) us to consider our own radical
vulnerability. Since any content of our experiencing is contingent, Why
Anything urges us to seek anything within our consciousness that is
content-free and thereby reduce (fn 6) our vulnerability. ---------- (fn 6) See Part IV.1 for why this is not obscurantist, Part IV.2 for why it is not escapist. Although I do not believe that even the most enlightened of us are liberated from all insecurity, this issue is not critical to any argument of this article. ---------- In
short, by requiring that we reflect on our own vulnerability and its relation
to CLE, Why Anything is a particularly effective koan in encouraging us to
shift our attention to CFE. (fn 7) ---------- (fn 7) I say this based only on my own personal experience and anecdotes from world literature, noting that my claim is subject to empirical testing. Though such testing is important, we must keep in mind that it is only factual; the interest in Why Anything as a koan is valuational or how it impacts our sense of ourselves. ---------- 5.
The Hard Problem Although
the hard problem has been treated factually in the literature, it even more
than Why Anything draws us to reflect upon ourselves and our vulnerability.
Whereas Why Anything focuses our attention on our contingency, the hard
problem, by highlighting the contrast between consciousness and the material
world, suggests to us the following possibility: locate the root of our
contingency in the material world and explore whether consciousness can
provide some escape from our resulting personal, embodied vulnerability.
Since CLE is closely associated with the material world, (fn 8) the hard
problem almost forces us to look for CFE as the only possible source ---------- (fn 8) Although some content is about "eternal ideas", our thoughts about even such content are nevertheless fleeting and therefore plausibly hypothesized to be somehow dependent on the material world. I am unaware of any attempt of idealists to explain the fleeting quality of our thoughts. In fact, I am unaware of anything explained by idealists, who seem committed to their strategy for either or both of two reasons: (1) as a promissory note to escape the acknowledged difficulties of materialism; (2) as a conceptually confused way of pointing to what we are exploring here, that CFE provides an experience preferable to any CLE. ---------- of
security. In this sense, the hard problem is the mother of all koans. To
treat it as such far from denigrates any science of consciousness.
Interacting with the hard problem, legitimate science sharpens our
understanding of the limits of our knowledge, making the insolubility of the
hard problem increasingly clear and thereby enhancing the chances that our
drive to understand consciousness will induce CFE. IV.
Content-Free Experiencing (CFE) (fn 9) ---------- (fn 9) The characterizations of CFE in Part IV are extrapolated from my own personal experience. I say extrapolated because I do not claim to be enlightened, only to have CFEs which make small transformations in my life and which, from my own non-specialist reading in the mystical literature, seem to be the same CFEs acknowledged spiritual masters have had, differing from theirs only in degree of transformation. Since traditional descriptions of CFEs have been largely metaphorical, my aim here is to reduce some of the resulting ambiguity by employing methods derived from the phenomenological and analytical traditions in philosophy. My claims are philosophical or conceptual, and in principle empirically testable, though considerable work remains to make such testing feasible. ---------- We have
seen that CFE has traditionally been called pure consciousness. It has also
been called enlightenment in virtue of our realizing that it is what we have
been seeking all along, a more than merely factual answer to the question of
personal identity, worth, or meaning. It has also been called liberation in
virtue of our finding it preferable to any CLE, whether ordinary or
exotically altered. In
every spiritual tradition we can find two opposing schools concerning the
relationship of CFE to the world of ordinary activity: a withdrawal from the
world versus a way of being in the world. If CFE is a shift of attention from
the content of consciousness to consciousness itself, it cannot be maintained
during ordinary activity, which requires concentration on content. To be
truly happy, must we therefore withdraw like monks from ordinary living?
Fortunately for those not so inclined, there is an alternative: CFE
indirectly benefits CLE, such that we need to retreat only periodically to
gain CFE’s benefits, which we then apply on returning to ordinary life. There
exists a dialectic similar to that of sleep and waking, in which the ideal is
to have enough sleep so that we are rested and alert when awake. However, the
dialectic between CFE and CLE is different in that need for withdrawal
decreases as the dialectic progresses. The rest of this article explores the
mechanisms involved. 1.
Attention Forman
(1994) accounts for CFE as a jettisoning of language. He allows that language
shapes the road to CFE, but argues that at the point of CFE itself language
is completely jettisoned. CFE arises when the seeker abandons the language
game itself, realizing that what she has really been seeking cannot be found
there. Forman does not address the issue of how CFE could then be active in
the ordinary world, which is permeated with language. Another
account of CFE, which we saw in relation to the koan Who Am I (Part III.3),
is in terms of identification. The unenlightened mistakenly identify with
both their bodily experience and their socially-defined egos. Instead, their
identity is to be found in CFE. But if CFE is really free of content, how can
we find our true identity (or anything else) there? The answer lies in
distinguishing between phenomenology and ontology. Phenomenologically, in CFE
there is only consciousness — even we are not there experiencing it. Only
upon recalling the experience afterwards do we describe and explain it as
something we experienced. Those employing an empirical heuristic strategy
might argue that CFE is embodied: it depends on neural mechanisms that
support consciousness and it simultaneously suppresses those that support
consciousness of content; furthermore, the experience is somehow registered
in memory, so that we can recall it afterwards and say that it was ours.
Those employing an idealist heuristic strategy might argue that they have
somehow escaped their material prison; or they might also have a theory of
embodiment, but one where the body depends on consciousness rather than the
other way around. By itself the phenomenological account does not presuppose
either strategy. In any case, if our true self is found in CFE, how does it
interact with the ordinary world of content? The
notion of attention seems to take us a few steps forward, since it allows of
degrees. Perhaps CFE does not completely shut out our ordinary experience,
just as my focusing on writing this sentence does not completely shut out my
awareness of my environment. Rather, we only shift our attention from content
to consciousness itself. Therefore, the account of CFE in terms of attention
rather than language or identification has the advantage of not necessarily
excluding ordinary experience. Nevertheless, it still seems to be
incompatible with acting in the world, which requires concentration on
content. Furthermore, some descriptions of CFE seem to describe a state where
there is no peripheral content of any kind, only consciousness itself. (fn
10) ---------- (fn 10) Forman (1994, p. 41) reports what may be an instance of CFE completely free of CLE. Since the subject he interviewed had reportedly not "blacked out or lost awareness", "was certain he had not slept", and yet had "no recollection of anything" from that experience, I can only assume he means no recollection of any content. Perhaps we might want to distinguish strong and weak senses of CFE, where strong CFE is literally free of any content whatever and weak CFE is free of ordinary contents but not free of certain subtle ones. This is an issue beyond the limits of this article, which does not depend on its resolution. ---------- Whether
explained in terms of language, identification, or attention, CFE seems to be
incompatible with ordinary living. To resolve this difficulty, we must
understand how inner fullness results from CFE and then mediates between CFE
and valuation. 2.
Inner Fullness Inner
fullness results from CFE and provides the ultimate basis for our valuations.
This can be seen by contrasting inner fullness with its common prelude, the
dark night of the soul, a despairing sense that the world of ordinary
experience can never satisfy our deepest desire for happiness. This cousin to
depression (fn 11) is often the first ---------- (fn 11) I want to distinguish the symptoms of the dark night of the soul and clinical depression by saying that the former is despair of never satisfying our deepest, unformulatable desire, whereas the latter is despair of never satisfying particular, formulatable desires (e.g., I’ll never be loved, rich, etc.). I suspect, however, that the universal and the particular may be mixed together so tightly that this distinction may not hold up under close scrutiny. In any case, "treatment" of the two clearly differs. We move out of depression by relearning that we can achieve particular desires (self-confidence) and that we are worthwhile (self-esteem). We move out of the dark night of the soul by shifting our search for happiness from our ordinary world to a resting in awareness itself. One wonders how many people diagnosed (perhaps rightly) as clinically depressed have been encouraged only to develop self-confidence and self-esteem without either the client or the therapist realizing that an even greater prize was within reach if they had known about it. ---------- phase
of the path to CFE. It is the realization that our deepest desire can never
be satisfied by any content of our experiencing. The second phase arrives
when our attention shifts from content to experiencing itself, in which our
emptiness dissolves into an inner fullness, a sense of presence that we
recognize as what we have been looking for all along. CFE thus results in an
inner fullness which we experience (fn 12) as ---------- (fn 12) To say that we experience CLE as secondary to inner fullness is to assert that there is a fundamental preference for the latter over the former and that from this preference our valuations arise. To say that we evaluate CLE as secondary to inner fullness is to assert that any preference for the latter over the former arises from valuation. Valuations and preferences are often dialectically related — sometimes the former generating the latter and sometimes the reverse. The assumption here, however, is that the ultimate starting point of that dialectic is with preference. ---------- preferable
to any CLE, (fn 13) an inner fullness which is by virtue of this preference
the touchstone of all our valuations. ---------- (fn 13) I am aware of no systematic studies testing this claim, but I am also unaware of anyone in history who has experienced this inner fullness and preferred CLE. In any case, this issue is amenable to empirical test. ---------- If CFE
is truly content-free, how can it involve a sense of inner fullness? Since an
identifiable quality has content, CFE cannot itself have the quality of inner
fullness. Rather, the latter is a result, the fruit of CFE. The sense of
emptiness and loneliness that often precedes CFE is our psychosomatic sense
of being alienated from ourselves. Overly focused on content, we are pulled
away from ourselves. Our body registers a lack of integration or balance that
is its birthright. Inner
fullness is therefore our experience of re-integration, of restoring
integrity or balance to our psychosomatic processes. This explains why
mystics have conceptualized enlightenment as awakening or remembering our
true selves, rather than as a developmental achievement. We are born integrated,
but in overly focusing on content in order to meet the demands of our
environment, we put ourselves on chronic emergency. CFE, by relieving our
focus on content, takes us off emergency and restores us to ourselves.
However, we will see in Part IV.3 that enlightenment is also developmental. Our
inner fullness is thus the pearl of great price, not merely because it is
greater than any other satisfaction, but because it is the root of all the
others — its lack drains any satisfaction we might otherwise derive from CLE.
Such satisfaction is undermined by clinging (see IV.4), which disrupts and
therefore alienates us from our inner process, so that we lose our
psychosomatic integrity, the font of our ability to experience pleasure and
satisfaction. 3.
Valuation Within
a materialistic heuristic (fn 14), a cognitive theory of valuation adds to
CFE and ---------- (fn 14) I have not yet come across anything within an idealistic heuristic that does any more than lapse into metaphor — e.g., the material world emanates from world consciousness. There are of course many legitimate uses of metaphor, but it is the task of science to move beyond them. Or, if you believe all of science is rooted in metaphor, then my problem with an idealistic heuristic is that the above example of emanation shuts off, rather than encourages, further inquiry. In other words, it provides a comfortable sense of resolution but is not heuristically fruitful (does not generate further discoveries). ---------- inner
fullness the necessary step that enables us to bridge CFE and ordinary
experience. Only CFE, inner fullness, and valuation together explain how the
enlightened individual acts in the world. We have just seen how inner
fullness provides the ultimate basis for valuation. We now consider how the
latter nourishes and maintains the former. How can
we maintain CFE, attend to our resulting inner fullness, compare its
superiority to our current experience, and still act effectively in ordinary
life? Clearly we cannot juggle all these things on a conscious level within
the time demands of a normal life, but we can manage if some of them operate
unconsciously. By developing valuation structures or habits we can deal with
ordinary reality exactly as we do now, where our habits relieve us of many
conscious tasks. (Fn 15) The more developed the habit, ---------- (fn 15) Guy Claxton (1996) suggests that some functions involved are those that create, maintain, and change our psychosocial identity and sense of worth. ---------- the more
quickly and intuitively we can assess our present circumstances. The
valuation must be conscious only when the unconscious valuative habit is
inadequate to the situation. However, the distinction between conscious and
unconscious will not work for CFE, since it is conscious by definition. But
by virtue of its resulting inner fullness, we can identify the mechanism by
which CFE is indirectly operative in ordinary life: a mutually reinforcing
cycle of inner fullness and valuation. The enlightened individual experiences
CFE, as a result experiences inner fullness, prefers that inner fullness to
any CLE, consequently begins developing the habit of valuing CLE as
secondary, which developing understanding motivates the individual
increasingly to seek CFE. (fn 16) the ---------- (fn 16) In Part IV.3, we will see that inner fullness flees those who seek it directly. ---------- intensity
of the resulting inner fullness is then increased by the previously developed
valuation and understanding, which in turn grows in depth and understanding
from the increased intensity of the inner fullness. (fn 17) ---------- (fn 17) The development of cognitive structure is what distinguishes true enlightenment from using CFE as merely a relaxation technique, which has restorative but not transformative effects. ---------- The
development of valuational habit is the crucial difference between its
dialectic with CFE and inner fullness on the one hand, and the cycle of sleep
and waking on the other. The cycle of sleep and waking is only restorative,
not transformative or developmental. Consequently, we do not require less and
less sleep. In contrast, the dialectic of CFE, inner fullness, and valuation
is transformative or developmental. We develop habits of skillfulness in shifting
our attention and in valuing CLE in relation to this dialectic. As a result,
our inner fullness becomes more solid and reliable, which in turn feeds the
other habits. Whereas in the beginning, we needed a great deal of time to
withdraw from ordinary activity in order to fumble around getting this
dialectic started, as we advance we need less time. Our enlightenment becomes
increasingly habitual and correspondingly resonates more deeply and
extensively throughout our psychosomatic system. 4.
Liberation Through
inner fullness we are liberated from CLE, since by virtue of being
experienced as secondary CLE ceases to be an all-important obsession or idol.
Since inner fullness is itself one kind of content (fn 18) and therefore
included within CLE, the ---------- (fn 18) However slippery it may be to describe, inner fullness is something we can roughly understand. In contrast to the dark night of the soul, existential despair, a neurotic sense of emptiness / hollowness, or even depression, inner fullness is a rooted sense of ourselves, a being in touch with ourselves, a contentment or inner peace. However vague, there is something there; we are not saying that inner fullness is simply not any of those negative things. On the other hand, that is exactly all we can say of CFE, that it is not CLE, which is why we must resort to koans and such rather than even the rough descriptions that we apply to inner fullness. ---------- notion
that it liberates us from CLE seems contradictory. How can it liberate us from
itself? The answer lies in its paradoxical quality, universally reported to
exist at the core of life: inner fullness dissolves as soon as we cling to
it; we must lose our life to find it. To resolve the paradox, we must
understand the nature of clinging, which is identifying with any content and
thereby making it more important than it really is. To
identify with content is to believe it affects who we are. We therefore cling
to it, because losing it means annihilating our sense of ourselves. We will naturally
resist losing anything desirable, but our resistance turns into clinging only
if we identify with that desirable and think we will be annihilated by losing
it. We cling to anything if we believe that without it we will have nothing
left. Inner fullness liberates us from CLE by providing meaning and
satisfaction even if we have lost everything else. Once we realize the
supreme value of inner fullness, our first impulse is naturally the
self-defeating one of clinging to it, turning even it into an idol. But that
is precisely the problem: inner fullness eludes our grasp as soon as we cling
to it. We must delight in it, but allow it to come and go as it may. It is
the supreme gift, to which we must show an unselfish gratitude. 5.
Security By liberating
us from CLE, CFE provides us with the only real security we have. The sense
of security we get from CLE — health, self-reliance, material resources,
social support — is at best unstable and usually based on considerable denial
of how vulnerable we really are. Clinging is our futile attempt to shore up
any sense of security derived from these inherently ephemeral sources. Of
course many people live quite satisfying lives this way, but they are not the
same people who are intensely curious about the hard problem and its
implications for who they are. They are probably not the readers who have
persevered this far into this article. In
contrast to any sense of security we derive from CLE, which is greatly
dependent on the vicissitudes of our environment, what we receive from CFE is
under our control. At least this seems to be the testimony of the spiritual
masters. Unfortunately, those of us on much lower rungs of the developmental
ladder seem to experience the opposite: we are better skilled at manipulating
our environment to gain security than we are at shifting our attention to
CFE. Furthermore, we have just seen (Part IV.4) that inner fullness is a gift
and therefore apparently beyond our control. Indeed,
there are probably sufficient individual differences in the ability to
achieve CFE that this path to security is not for everyone. Nevertheless, for
those with the sufficient requisite skill, this path is one which minimizes
the seeker’s dependence on the environment and maximizes her own control. And
although inner fullness is a gift, and one that comes and goes the lower we
are on the developmental ladder, the higher we climb —the more skilled at
achieving and maintaining CFE — the more the gift of inner fullness is likely
to result. He who seeks will find. (fn 19) ---------- (fn 19) Note that the sense of security referred to is phenomenological, a feeling. There is no necessary ontological implication that we have found a state impervious to our embodied vulnerability, a liberation from eventual death. That issue must be addressed on its merits (see Part IV.9). ---------- 6.
Identity Any
feeling of insecurity is amplified to the extent that we identify with CLE.
For to that extent, the very core of our existence, of our identity, appears
vulnerable. By identifying with CFE instead, we associate ourselves with the
source of the greatest security we have. We identify with our true self,
which is beyond the psychosocial self, the sum of everything that can be
attributed to us. This identification in no way denigrates our psychosocial
self, which helps us usefully orient ourselves to our environment. It does
insist, though, that our true identity is more than that. In Part
IV.1 we glimpsed the paradox that although we talk about finding our true
self in CFE, we really find nothing. Phenomenologically, we are not even
there to find anything; and a true self is not there either. The question of
who we are turns out to be an illusion, a trap, insofar as it raises the
false expectation that we will find a CLE-related answer. Rather, the
question of who we are is yet another koan that leads us beyond CLE. Once
again, however, we must be clear that by itself our phenomenological identity
has no ontological implications. Perhaps we are more than our bodies. On the
other hand, to say phenomenologically that we are more than the sum of all
our attributes may very well be consistent with ontologically identifying
ourselves with our bodies while noting that the set of possible attributions
that we can make about our embodied selves can grow indefinitely. The lesson
then is that we should never identify with any set of attributes, since we
can always grow beyond them. To identify with "no self" may be more
an expression of possibilities than of an escape from our body. In any case,
it is certainly not the self-contradictory claim that we find an identifiable
self within CFE. 7.
Discernment Accounting
for CFE in terms of valuation is key to solving an age-old problem in
spiritual development, discernment. Linguistically expressed moral rules are
emotionally safe compared with going beyond them to live from our innermost
impulses. Yes, rules threaten us with punishment, either from inner guilt
feelings or outer authorities; but they contribute even more to our security
by defining our world and our role in it. Breaking rules therefore threatens
us with punishment, but leaves our sense of ourselves intact as long as we
continue to believe in them. In contrast, grounding our behavior on our inner
impulses rather than rules is radically threatening, since we open ourselves
to destructive as well as constructive forces within us, forces that not only
punish us but that threaten our very sense of who we are. Thus, in living out
his teaching that charity (inner impulse) had superseded law (moral rules),
St. Paul once got involved with a first-century BC movement called enthusiasm
(from the Greek, en theo, meaning god within), but scurried back to the
relative safety of more clearly defined moral rules when he could not solve
the puzzle of discerning constructive from destructive inner impulses. Every
mystical tradition is replete with stories of seekers who began on the path
to CFE and lost their way, to the destruction of themselves and their
followers. The political landscape of our own century is littered with
millions dead because a Hitler, Stalin, or Pol Pot thought he was above moral
rules. Going with the flow is not a strategy to be adopted glibly, but in
fear and trembling. Inner
fullness — our experience of psychosomatic integrity and the touchstone for
our valuations — is as distinct from emotional or sensory intensity as CFE is
distinct from CLE. Every spiritual error can be traced to missing this
distinction, a failure that confuses psychosomatic integrity with the
relatively secondary experiences of unity that arise from conceptual and
imaginative syntheses (CLE), a confusion that causes us to inflate the
importance of anything that inspires in us strong feelings or sensations,
thereby inflexibly wedding us to our ideas or our concerns, however noble
they may be otherwise, because "God is on our side". Such
destructive attachment is especially seductive in regard to special or
altered states. Spiritual masters of every tradition instruct us not to
become attached to any spiritual talents we may have or any extraordinary
experiences we may enjoy. Inner fullness is uniquely safe in that it alone
will not allow us to cling to it. The
sciences and the humanities are slowly but surely developing heuristic structures
that reduce the chances and consequences of conflating inner fullness with
other CLEs, by creating a systematic context that increasingly highlights the
distinction between what we do and our enlightened relationship to it. 8.
Escapism CFE is not
disengagement from the world of our ordinary experience. We still act to
shape and improve the world, because we have an impulse to do so. Liberation
only frees us from our attachment to our doing; as CFE it relieves our
attention from an over-focus on content, it does not exclude or denigrate
content. CFE therefore enables us to live in the present without denigrating
or excluding the past or future. However, by not being overly focused on
content, CFE keeps us from being obsessively pulled by the past or future and
thereby alienated from our present. CFE is thus the reference point by which
enlightenment guides our attention and by which liberation establishes our
priorities. Far
from being escapist and impractical, CFE promotes involvement and usefulness.
In fact, because liberation frees us from attachment to content, it fosters
practicality by making us flexible, freeing us to work on things according to
their own requirements rather than having them drag us around by the nose of
our own clinging. Furthermore, the innermost fruit of CFE is a fullness that
does not require that the intellect supply us with a grand plan to make our
endeavors meaningful. Consequently, the postmodernist conclusion that there
is no grand plan need not lead to despair in a meaningless existence of
practical busyness. Rather, from the perspective of CFE we can see the lack
of a grand plan as yet another koan that invites us to shift our attention
from any grand plan to realizing that what we most seek is found in CFE itself.
Only then can we experience that inner fullness which provides meaning or
satisfaction to whatever we do. In fact, a "reconstructive
postmodernism" is already moving in this direction (Haney 1998). 9.
Obscurantism CFE is
not obscurantist, because it does not exclude normal cognitive functioning,
only shifts our attention from the content of our experiencing to the
experiencing itself. CFE therefore does not substitute for intellectual
inquiry, but allows intellect its proper role. It does not presume to answer
any of our conundrums, which must be dealt with on their own merits. It can
both accept with equanimity the limitations of our intellect and exult in
legitimate inquiries. As a
result, CFE is not pseudo-spiritual. It does not confuse phenomenology with
ontology, perception with reality, and therefore does not prematurely assume
that unusual, altered-state experiences are windows into non-material
realities. That conclusion is an ontological one, to be made by intellect.
(fn 20) Therefore, CFE is merely an ---------- (fn 20) Transpersonal theories (such as Wilber 1997, p. 85 and Deikman 1982, 1996) conflate phenomenology and ontology, unjustifiably concluding that there is a special ‘knowledge’ to be found in mystical states. I am not saying their conclusion is false, only that transpersonalists have not yet done the work necessary to show how their ontological conclusion can be drawn from their phenomenological experiences. ---------- experience
whose link to neuroscience and psychophysiology the intellect must strive to
understand. CFE may or may not wholly depend on some special combination of
cognitive, neural, and psychophysiological processes. I think that likely,
but the crucial point here is that CFE by itself cannot provide an answer, only
intellect dealing with the issue on its own merits can do that. V.
The One and the Many Distinguishing
between phenomenology and ontology, as we have done throughout this article,
both leaves us with a duality and allows us to resolve it. Because CLE is
multifaceted, it is a source of instability and vulnerability. The problem of
the one and the many, the oldest human conundrum of them all, is how to
introduce some unity to this multiplicity, some unity that will provide
intellectual coherence and emotional stability. Western philosophers have
emphasized the intellectual problem, Eastern philosophers the emotional or
experiential one. The
intellectual problem is ontological, to understand our multifaceted CLE in
terms of a single principle. By seeking an intellectual formulation that will
conceptually link consciousness with the material world, the hard problem is
simply one variation on this ancient approach. By definition, however, we can
never have a nondualistic conceptual understanding, since concepts are
inherently dualistic by their very role of dividing the world into
categories. The problem of the one and the many is therefore as
intellectually insoluble as the hard problem, one of its variants. Fortunately,
duality is resolvable experientially, in CFE itself, a fact better known to
Eastern philosophers and some Western pre-Socratics such as Heraclitus, than
to the Western tradition. The one and the many turns out to be yet another
koan which invites the seeker to shift her attention from the conceptual to
the consciousness itself in which the inquiry is embedded. To
pursue identity experientially is to desire integration, to seek the pearl of
great price, a touchstone that enables us to know deep within ourselves what
is truly important and what is secondary. Since we know from centuries of
reports from spiritual adepts that CFE is usually achieved with great
difficulty, why should any of us make the effort? The short answer is that
that depends on how much each of us wants integration. Perhaps some of us do
not seek it because we are afraid to confront unpleasant truths that such a
search might involve, or for many other reasons. Perhaps others seek it
because of the example of an inspirational figure, or for many other reasons.
Perhaps there are simply individual differences in our need for integration.
All of these possibilities are amenable to empirical study. In the final
analysis, it is entirely up to the individual reader whether her interest in
the hard problem and similar puzzles is exclusively intellectual or sought as
a clue to her personal identity, worth, or meaning. If the latter is true, it
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