"Breaking Out of One's Head (& Awakening to the World)"
In JCER 2(7): Focus Issue on Self-Transcendent Experiences: Narrative & Analysis
Herein, I review the moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world.... more Herein, I review the moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world. It was a sudden, momentous event that is difficult to explain since transcending the self ultimately requires transcending the language structures of which the self consists. Since awakening to the world took place beyond the enclosure of self-speech, it also took place outside our symbolic construction of time. It is strange to place this event and its aftermath as happening long ago in my lifetime, for it is forever present; it surrounds me all the time just as the world seems to do. This fact puts into question the reality of my daily journey from dawn to dusk with all the mundane tasks I must complete (like writing of that which cannot be captured in writing). My linear march to aging and death inexorably continues, yet it seems somehow unreal, the biggest joke of all. Still, I here review the events leading up to my time out of mind and then review the serious repercussions when I was drawn back into the ego-self only to find I did not have the conceptual tools or the maturity to understand what had happened.
51 views
Seen by: and 4 more"From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience: The Continuum of Experience"
@ *Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research* I (3), April 2010, 216-233.
When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens... more When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.
120 views
Seen by: and 5 more"The Continuum of Experience: Non-Conscious Experience"
Target Article 95 @ The Karl Jaspers Forum online, posted July 7, 2007. [editor/moderator reviewed]
When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens... more When so much is being written on conscious experience, it is past time to face the question whether experience happens that is not conscious of itself. The recognition that we and most other living things experience non-consciously has recently been firmly supported by experimental science, clinical studies, and theoretic investigations; the related if not identical philosophic notion of experience without a subject has a rich pedigree. Leaving aside the question of how experience could become conscious of itself, I aim here to demonstrate that the terms experience and consciousness are not interchangeable. Experience is a notoriously difficult concept to pin down, but I see non-conscious experience as based mainly in momentary sensations, relational between bodies or systems, and probably common throughout the natural world. If this continuum of experience — from non-conscious, to conscious, to self-transcending awareness — can be understood and accepted, radical constructivism (the “outside” world as a construct of experience) will gain a firmer foundation, panexperientialism (a living universe) may gain credibility, and psi will find its medium.
17 views
Seen by:"de Quincey's *Radical Nature*"
Book Review: *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 10(8), Sept 2003. 94-95.
Christian de Quincey, Managing Editor of the IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) Review and advocate for a unified... more Christian de Quincey, Managing Editor of the IONS (Institute of Noetic Sciences) Review and advocate for a unified view of consciousness, cosmology, and spirituality should be well-known to the readers of this journal. He has placed his endorsement of panexperientialism — the view that physical nature experiences — in opposition to the perspectives of Colin McGinn (1994), Nick Humphrey (2000a), and Ken Wilber (2000b) in three JCS articles (much of which is repeated here). Panexperientialism is a bracing notion, one in which human consciousness arises from the natural life of the universe without the explanatory gap of traditional materialism or the need for any sort of supernatural miracle.
22 views
Seen by:"Jay’s *Songs of Experience: Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme*"
Book Review: *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 14(11), Nov 2007. 125-7.
Martin Jay, renowned intellectual historian from UC Berkeley, here examines these questions in a grand survey of the... more Martin Jay, renowned intellectual historian from UC Berkeley, here examines these questions in a grand survey of the term’s use throughout the intellectual history of what was once called Western Civilization. Beginning with the ancient Greeks (of course), he reviews the surprising number of variations employed and assumed by philosophers, theologians critical theorists, and right up to the poststructuralists. Jay knows his territory and reading this survey of it — for anyone with any sort of background in the history of philosophy — is often as pleasant as hearing a familiar symphony well-played in a unique way.
26 views
Seen by:"Skrbina's *Mind that Abides: Panpsychism in the New Millennium*"
Book Review: *Journal of Consciousness Studies* 16(9), Sept 2009. 116-121.
Is the great god Pan reborn? For a while there, it seemed every intellectual movement began with the prefix ‘post’,... more Is the great god Pan reborn? For a while there, it seemed every intellectual movement began with the prefix ‘post’, implying non-totality, but now there are indications that ‘pan’ (all) is returning to provide another answer to one of the most basic of ontological questions: What is the relationship of mind to matter? In this important book with 17 different authors, panpsychism is given its due.
74 views
Seen by:"Whitehead & the Elusive Present: Process Philosophy’s Creative Core"
@ *Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research* 1(5), July/2010. 625-639.
Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until... more Time’s arrow is necessary for progress from a past that has already happened to a future that is only potential until creatively determined in the present. But time’s arrow is unnecessary in Einstein’s so-called block universe, so there is no creative unfolding in an actual present. How can there be an actual present when there is no universal moment of simultaneity? Events in various places will have different presents according to the position, velocity, and nature of the perceiver. Standing against this view is traditional common sense since we normally experience time’s arrow as reality and the present as our place in the stream of consciousness, but we err to imagine we are living in the actual present. The present of our daily experience is actually a specious present, according to E. Robert Kelly (later popularized by William James), or duration, according to Henri Bergson, an habitus, as elucidated by Kerby (1991), or, simply, the psychological present (Adams, 2010) — all terms indicating that our experienced present so consists of the past overlapping into the future that any potential for acting from the creative moment is crowded out. Yet, for philosophers of process from Herakleitos onward, it is the philosophies of change or process that treat time’s arrow and the creative fire of the actual present as realities. In this essay, I examine the most well known but possibly least understood process cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead to seek out this elusive but actual present. In so doing, I will also ask if process philosophy is itself an example of the creative imagination or if Whitehead's controlled unfolding process actually denies a truly creative present.
154 views
Seen by: and 5 more
