glove (glove@indianvalley.com)
Sun, 9 Aug 1998 17:34:43 +0100
hi Maggie and squad
i have a problem with the notion of self-awarness and just how it may be
determined to exist in anyone or anything other than the self who is
experiencing it. i am self-aware (i think, therefore i am) and so i
assume every other human being is too, but i cannot prove it. but am i
really self-aware? perhaps i am merely aware and the mind has learned to
form what seems to be a continuous series of events out of a
discontinuous series of leaps and jumps in perception (the self),
leading me to believe i (as self) am in a flow of awareness through
time, when in fact 'reality' is really a series of leaps which my mind
irons out into a continuous series of events taking place.
within the learning process, which seems to extends to all life forms we
are aware of, exists a mechanism by which repeated patterns of
experience can form canals, or chreodes, which enable life forms to
follow successful patterns more easily the more the successful patterns
are repeated, the result sometimes being instinctual, or inborn traits,
appearing in successive generations. this feature of the learning
process leads some to believe that all our learning patterns follow this
canalized, or chreode type of advancement. and once a chreode is formed,
it takes a leap in order to advance to an outer layer, and advancement
is always in an outward fashion.
if our learning follows this pattern as it seems to do, it may be that
it is a underlying factor in the very way we perceive the world around
us...we simply have learned to ignore the discontinuous nature of
perception in favor of a continuous one. we have canalized our
perception within chreode layers (static latching of DQ) held in place
by repeatable behaviour not only of the self, but of all selves.
one interesting example of this type of perceptual trickery our mind
allows the self to do is indicated in an experiment done to determine
how we determine our body parts from other objects within the field of
our vision. the subject, seated, rests his/her left hand on a table,
while a small screen placed beside the hand blocks it from view. also on
the table, in full view, is a rubber hand. while the subject watches the
phony hand, the researcher strokes both the real hand and the rubber
hand with a brush and asks the subject to describe what is being felt.
almost all the subjects tested said the rubber hand felt like their own.
even more telling, when the researcher missed stroking the real hand and
only stroked the rubber hand, the subjects reported a numb feeling in
the hand. it seems that the mind is locked into a canalized pattern of
response and when the response is not what has been patterned, the mind
responds by attempting to remain within the canalized pattern even
though conflicting data is coming to it.
this phenomena seems responsible for the 'leaps' in science, technology
and other improvements in human history. it also helps to understand the
static latching occurring in all layers of the MoQ. the latching occurs
because of successful, repeatable patterns forming chreodes, thereby
insuring easier latching once a successful ratchet leap has been made.
at the same time this phenomena keeps successful patterns in place, it
also prevents new patterns from arising unless sufficient precessional
momentum allows a leap to the next level.
this is why the brujo was so instrumental in helping the zuni
civilization survive and thrive. the brujo used the synergetic effects
of static latching to make DQ leaps into higher ratchets of SQ. while at
first glance, this action might be seen as detrimental to the status quo
of society, but without it there would be no growth, and stagnation
would result. this is why Pirsig said that dynamic quality has a higher
morality than static quality. dynamic quality is the precessional
momentum which allows the leaps to be made from chreode to chreode in an
outward fashion, resulting in what we call evolution and self-awarness.
if this is true however, it means both evolution and self-awareness are
only continuous constructs in the mind, perhaps using an underlying
awareness in the universe to create the awareness we feel, not as a
goal, but because that is its nature, that is what awareness is. in
order to function as we do perceptually, our minds turn the leaps and
jumps of 'real' perception into a continuously flowing pattern of events
we call the passing of time.
now we get to the intellect within the awareness and what its functions
are. the reason Schumacher and many others place humans on a pedestal
above all other life is the fact we are able to use our intellectual
perceptions to create higher value situations in the universe for our
survival in a collective fashion. the intellect is so formidable that it
certainly deserves an entire layer to itself. but because humans
perceive the intellect doesnt automatically mean they also deserve an
entire layer to themselves in a metaphysics of reality.
lets take a radio as an analogy. if someone had never seen a radio
before and was unfamilar with its workings, they might believe that the
music coming from it was being created by the radio. but once they
became enlightened to the workings of the radio, they would realize the
music was not coming from the radio itself, but from radio waves being
transmitted by a broadcasting station being turned into sound waves by
the radio so the ear could use them.
the human mind could perhaps be said to be picking up 'quality waves'
within the universe and turning them into what we call the intellect in
the same way the radio is picking up radio waves and turning them into
something we can use. what really makes the intellect different is the
extraordinary range of relationships that are able to be formed by it.
this is not by human design, but rather by the underlying way in which
the universe seems to operate.
it seems to me that to distinguish between social and intellectual
patterns is amazingly complex and extremely difficult, so i will not
attempt to do so at this time. but it seems also that the more attention
i pay to the environment around me, the harder it is for me to say that
humans have an exclusive domain upon the intellect layer. we are perhaps
more able to 'tune' to it, but we are not its only occupants and to
state we are is to aggrandize the self.
if we are to really understand reality, or the MoQ for that matter, we
have to start with the realization that reality, all four layers of the
MoQ, is awareness, and not just human awareness or worse, human
consciousness. our awareness contains so much more than our
consciousness. it contains the entire universe.
and so Maggie, i still disagree with Schumachers division of reality
into a level containing humans only, no matter how it is rationalized.
it just doesnt work for me.
best wishes to all,
glove
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