il Tao del Sé

René Magritte, Presence of Mind, 1960
Oil on canvas, Museum Ludwig, Cologne

The I of the Storm

What Do We Mean by "Self"?

At every moment of our lives there is something going on, some experience. We see, hear, smell, taste, touch, think. We can be pleased, angry, afraid, tired, perplexed, interested, agonizingly selfconscious, or absorbed in a pursuit. I can feel that I am being overwhelmed by my own emotions, that I have greater worth when praised by another, that I am destroyed by a loss. What is this self, this ego-center, that appears and disappears, that seems so constant yet so fragile, so familiar and yet so elusive?

We are caught in a contradiction. On the one hand, even a cursory attention to experience shows us that our experience is always changing and, furthermore, is always dependent on a particular situation. To be human, indeed to be living, is always to be in a situation, a context, a world. We have no experience of anything that is permanent and independent of these situations. Yet most of us are convinced of our identities: we have a personality, memories and recollections, and plans and anticipations, which seem to come together in a coherent point of view, a center from which we survey the world, the ground on which we stand. How could such a point of view be possible if it were not rooted in a single, independent, truly existing self or ego?

This question is the meeting ground of everything in this book: cognitive science, philosophy, and the meditative tradition of mindfulness/ awareness. We wish to make a sweeping claim: all of the reflective traditions in human history-philosophy, science, psychoanalysis, religion, meditation-have challenged the naive sense of self. No tradition has ever claimed to discover an independent, fixed, or unitary self within the world of experience. Let us give the voice for this to David Hume's famous passage: "For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception." Such an insight directly contradicts our ongoing sense of self.

It is this contradiction, the incommensurability of the outcome of reflection and experience, that has provoked us on the journey in this book. We believe that many non-Western (even contemplative) traditions, and all Western traditions, deal with this contradiction simply by turning away from it, refusing to confront it, a withdrawal that can take one of two forms. The usual way is simply to ignore it. Hume, for example, unable to find the self as he reflected in his study, chose to withdraw and immerse himself in a game of backgammon; he resigned himself to the separation of life and reflection. Jean-Paul Sartre expresses this by saying that we are "condemned" to a belief in the self. The second tactic is to postulate a transcendental self that can never be known to experience, such as the atman of the Upanishads or the transcendental ego of Kant. (Noncontemplative traditions, of course, can just not notice the contradiction-for example, self-concept theory in psychology.) The major-and perhaps only tradition that we know that directly confronts this contradiction and that has spoken to it for a long time arose from the practice of mindfulness/awareness meditation.

We have already described mindfulness/awareness practice as a gradual development of the ability to be present with one's mind and body not only in formal meditation but in the experiences of everyday life. Beginning meditators are usually amazed at the tumultuous activity of their mind as perceptions, thoughts, feelings, desires, fears, and every other kind of mental content pursue each other endlessly like a cat chasing its tail. As the meditators develop some stability of mindfulness/awareness so that they have periods when they are not constantly (to use traditional images) sucked into the whirlpool or thrown from a horse, they begin to have insight into what the mind, as it is experienced, is really like. Experiences, they notice, are impermanent. This is not just the leaves-fall, maidens-wither, and kings-are-forgotten type of impermance (traditionally called gross impermance) with which all people are hauntingly familiar but a personal penetrating impermanence of the activity of the mind itself. Moment by moment new experiences happen and are gone. It is a rapidly shifting stream of momentary mental occurrences. Furthermore, the shiftiness includes the perceiver as much as the perceptions. There is no experiencer, just as Hume noticed, who remains constant to receive experiences, no landing platform for experience. This actual experiential sense of no one home is called selflessness or egolessness. Moment by moment the meditator also sees the mind pulling away from its sense of impermance and lack of self, sees it grasping experiences as though they were permanent, commenting on experiences as though there were a constant perceiver to comment, seeking any mental entertainment that will disrupt mindfulness, and restlessly fleeing to the next preoccupation, all with a sense of constant struggle. This undercurrent of restlessness, grasping, anxiety, and unsatisfactoriness that pervades experience is called Dukkha, usually translated as suffering. Suffering arises quite naturally and then grows as the mind seeks to avoid its natural grounding in impermanence and lack of self.

The tension between the ongoing sense of self in ordinary experience and the failure to find that self in reflection is of central importance in Buddhism-the origin of human suffering is just this tendency to grasp onto and build a sense of self, an ego, where there is none. As meditators catch glimpses of impermanence, selflessness, and suffering (known as the three marks of existence) and some inkling that the pervasiveness of suffering (known as the First Noble Truth) may have its origin in their own self-grasping (known as the Second Noble Truth), they may develop some real motivation and urgency to persevere in their investigation of mind. They try to develop a strong and stable insight and inquisitiveness into the moment to moment arising of mind. They are encouraged to investigate: How does this moment arise? What are its conditions? What is the nature of "my" reactivity to it? Where does the experience of "I" occur?

The search for how the self arises is thus a way of asking, "What and where is mind?" in a direct and personal way. The initial spirit of inquisitiveness in these questions is actually not unlike Descartes's Meditations, though this statement might surprise some people since Descartes has received such bad press these days. Descartes's initial decision to rely not on the word of the Church fathers but rather on what his own mind could discern in reflection obviously partakes of the spirit of self-reliant investigation, as does phenomenology. Descartes, however, stopped short: His famous"l think, I am" simply leaves untouched the nature of the "I" that thinks. True, Descartes did infer that the "I" is fundamentally a thinking thing, but here he went too far: the only certainty that "I am" carries is that of being a thought. If Descartes had been fully rigorous, mindful, and attentive, he would not have jumped to the conclusion that I am a thinking thing (res cogitans); rather he would have kept his attention on the very process of mind itself.

In mindfulness/awareness practice, the awareness of thinking, emotions, and bodily sensations becomes quite pronounced in the basic restlessness that we normally experience. To penetrate that experience, to discern what it is and how it arises, some types of mindfulness meditation direct the meditator to attend to experience as precisely and dispassionately as possible. It is only through a pragmatic, open-ended reflection that we can examine systematically and directly this restlessness that we usually ignore. As the contents of experience arise-discursive thoughts, emotional tonalities, bodily sensations-the meditator is attentive not by becoming concerned with the contents of the thoughts or with the sense of I thinking but rather by simply noting "thinking" and directing his attention to the never-ceasing process of that experience.

Just as the mindfulness meditator is amazed to discover how mindless he is in daily life, so the first insights of the meditator who begins to question the self are normally not egolessness but the discovery of total egomania. Constantly one thinks, feels, and acts as though one had a self to protect and preserve. The slightest encroachment on the self's territory (a splinter in the finger, a noisy neighbor) arouses fear and anger. The slightest hope of self-enhancement (gain, praise, fame, pleasure) arouses greed and grasping. Any hint that a situation is irrelevant to the self (waiting for a bus, meditating) arouses boredom. Such impulses are instinctual, automatic, pervasive, and powerful. They are completely taken for granted in daily life. The impulses are certainly there, constantly occurring, yet in the light of the questioning meditator, do they make any sense? What kind of self does he think he has to warrant such attitudes?

The Tibetan teacher Tsultrim Gyatso puts the dilemma this way:

To have any meaning such a self has to be lasting, for if it perished every moment one would not be so concerned about what was going to happen to it the next moment; it would not be one's "self" anymore. Again it has to be single. If one had no separate identity why should one worry about what happened to one's "self" any more than one worried about anyone else's? It has to be independent or there would be no sense in saying "I did this" or "1 have that." If one had no independent existence there would be no-one to claim the actions and experiences as its own . . . We all act as if we had lasting, separate, and independent selves that it is our constant preoccupation to protect and foster. It is an unthinking habit that most of us would normally be most unlikely to question or explain. However, all our suffering is associated with this pre-occupation. All loss and gain, pleasure and pain arise because we identify so closely with this vague feeling of selfness that we have. We are so emotionally involved with and attached to this "self" that we take it for granted .... The meditator does not speculate about this "self." He does not have theories about whether it does or does not exist. Instead he just trains himself to watch . . . how his mind clings to the idea of self and "mine" and how all his sufferings arise from this attachment. At the same time he looks carefully for that self. He tries to isolate it from all his other experiences. Since it is the culprit as far as all his suffering is concerned, he wants to find it and identify it. The irony is that however much he tries, he does not find anything that corresponds to the self.

If there is no experienced self, then how is it that we think there is? What is the origin of our self-serving habits? What is it in experience that we take for a self?

conoscenza del Tao

Dopo le prime esperienze con allucinogeni e le prime spiegazioni sulle sue esperienze Don Juan inizia ad introdurre a Castaneda un modello di contesto del suo mondo: la ricerca della conoscenza ed i suoi nemici naturali.

Sabato, 7 aprile, 1962

Durante le nostre conversazioni don Juan usava o citava coerentemente l'espressione 'uomo di conoscenza', ma non spiegò mai che cosa intendesse con questa. Glielo domandai.

"Un uomo di conoscenza è un uomo che ha seguito fedelmente i sacrifici dell'imparare", rispose. "Un uomo che, senza affrettarsi e senza esitare, è arrivato fin dove ha potuto nello svelare i segreti del potere e della conoscenza".

"Chiunque potrebbe diventare un uomo di conoscenza?".

"No, non chiunque".

"Allora che cosa deve fare un uomo per diventare un uomo di conoscenza?".

"Deve sfidare e sconfiggere i suoi quattro nemici naturali".

"Dopo aver sconfitto questi quattro nemici sarà diventato un uomo di conoscenza?".

"Sì. Un uomo può dirsi uomo di conoscenza solo se è stato capace di sconfiggerli tutti e quattro".

"Allora, chiunque sconfigga questi nemici può essere un uomo di conoscenza?".

"Chiunque li sconfigge diventa un uomo di conoscenza".

"Ma ci sono dei particolari requisiti a cui un uomo deve soddisfare prima di combattere con questi nemici?".

"No. Chiunque può tentare di diventare un uomo di conoscenza; in realtà pochissimi riescono. I nemici che si incontrano sulla strada dell'imparare a diventare un uomo di conoscenza sono davvero formidabili; la maggior parte degli uomini vi soccombe".

"Che tipo di nemici sono, don Juan?".

Rifiutò di parlare dei nemici. Disse che doveva passare molto tempo prima che l'argomento avesse per me un qualche significato. Tentai di tener viva la questione e gli domandai se pensava che io potessi diventare un uomo di conoscenza. Disse che nessun uomo poteva forse dirlo con certezza. Ma io insistei per sapere se esisteva qualche indizio che egli potesse usare per determinare se avevo o no una possibilità di diventare un uomo di conoscenza. Rispose che sarebbe dipeso dalla mia battaglia contro i quattro nemici — se riuscissi a sconfiggerli o fossi sconfitto da essi — ma era impossibile predire il risultato di tale battaglia.

Gli chiesi se poteva usare la stregoneria o la profezia per vedere il risultato della battaglia. Affermò recisamente che i risultati della lotta non potevano essere previsti con nessun mezzo, perché diventare un uomo di conoscenza era una cosa temporanea. Quando gli chiesi di spiegare questo punto, rispose:

"Essere un uomo di conoscenza non ha carattere duraturo. Non si è mai un uomo di conoscenza, non realmente. Piuttosto si diventa uomo di conoscenza per un brevissimo istante, dopo aver sconfitto i quattro nemici naturali".

"Dovete dirmi, don Juan, che tipo di nemici sono".

Non rispose. Insistei ancora, ma lui lasciò cadere l'argomento e cominciò a parlare di qualcos'altro.

Domenica, 15 aprile, 1962

Mentre mi stavo preparando a partire decisi di interrogarlo ancora una volta in merito ai nemici di un uomo di conoscenza. Immaginavo di non poter ritornare prima di un certo tempo, e sarebbe stata una buona idea trascrivere quello che diceva e poi ripensarci mentre ero via.

Esitò un poco, ma poi cominciò a parlare.

"Quando un uomo comincia a imparare, non sa mai con chiarezza quali sono i suoi obiettivi. Il suo scopo è imperfetto; il suo intento è vago. Spera in una ricompensa che non si concreterà mai, perché non sa nulla delle difficoltà dell'imparare."

"Comincia lentamente a imparare, dapprima a poco a poco, poi a grandi passi. E presto i suoi pensieri entrano in conflitto. Quello che impara non è mai quello che ha sperato o immaginato, e così incomincia ad aver paura. Imparare non è mai quello che ci si aspetta. Ogni passo dell'imparare è un compito nuovo, e la paura che l'uomo prova comincia a salire implacabilmente, inflessibilmente. Il suo scopo diventa un campo di battaglia.

"E così si è imbattuto nel primo dei suoi nemici naturali: la Paura! Un nemico terribile, traditore, e difficile da superare. Si tiene nascosto a ogni svolta della strada, in agguato, aspettando. E se l'uomo, atterrito dalla sua presenza, fugge, il nemico avrà messo fine alla sua ricerca".

"Che cosa accadrà all'uomo che fugge per il terrore?".

"Non gli accadrà nulla, tranne che non imparerà mai. Non diventerà mai un uomo di conoscenza. Sarà forse un uomo borioso, o innocuo, o spaventato; in ogni caso, sarà un uomo sconfitto. Il suo primo nemico avrà messo fine ai suoi desideri". "E che cosa può fare per vincere la paura?". "La risposta è semplicissima. Non deve fuggire. Deve sfidare la sua paura, e a dispetto di essa deve compiere il passo successivo nell'imparare, e il successivo e ancora il successivo. La sua paura deve essere completa, e tuttavia non si deve fermare. Questa è la regola! E verrà il momento in cui il suo primo nemico volgerà in ritirata. L'uomo comincia a sentirsi sicuro di sé. Il suo intento diviene più forte. Imparare non è più un compito terrificante."

"Quando arriva questo lieto momento l'uomo può dire senza esitazione di aver sconfitto il suo primo nemico naturale".

"Ciò avviene tutto in una volta, don Juan, oppure a poco a poco?".

"Avviene a poco a poco, e tuttavia la paura è vinta improvvisamente e rapidamente".

"Ma l'uomo non avrà ancora paura se gli succederà qualcosa di nuovo?".

"No. Una volta che un uomo ha vinto la paura, ne è libero per tutto il resto della sua vita perché, invece della paura, ha acquistato la lucidità: una lucidità mentale che cancella la paura. A questo punto l'uomo conosce i suoi desideri; sa come soddisfare tali desideri. Può anticipare i nuovi passi dell'imparare, e una limpida lucidità circonda ogni cosa. L'uomo sente che nulla è nascosto.”

"E così ha incontrato il suo secondo nemico: la lucidità! Quella lucidità mentale, che è così difficile da ottenere, scaccia la paura, ma acceca anche.”

"Costringe l'uomo a non dubitare mai di se stesso. Gli dà la sicurezza di poter fare tutto quel che gli piace, perché vede chiaramente in tutto. Ed è coraggioso perché è lucido, e non si ferma davanti a nulla perché è lucido. Ma tutto questo è un errore; è come qualcosa di incompleto. Se l'uomo si arrende a questo falso potere, ha ceduto al suo secondo nemico e sarà maldestro nell'imparare. Si affretterà quando dovrà essere paziente, o sarà paziente quando dovrebbe affrettarsi. E sarà maldestro nell'imparare finché non cederà, incapace di imparare più nulla".

"Che ne è di un uomo sconfitto in tal modo, don Juan? Muore come risultato?".

"No, non muore. Il suo secondo nemico lo ha semplicemente bloccato impedendogli di diventare un uomo di conoscenza; l'uomo può, invece, trasformarsi in un allegro guerriero o in un pagliaccio. Tuttavia la lucidità pagata a così caro prezzo non si trasformerà mai più nella tenebra e nella paura. Avrà la lucidità finché vivrà, ma non imparerà, o bramerà, più nulla".

"Ma che cosa deve fare per evitare di essere sconfitto?".

"Deve fare quello che ha fatto con la paura: deve sfidare la sua lucidità e usarla solo per vedere, e aspettare con pazienza e misurare con cura prima di fare nuovi passi; deve pensare, dopo tutto, che la sua lucidità è quasi un errore. E verrà un momento in cui comprenderà che la sua lucidità era solo un punto davanti ai suoi occhi. E così avrà superato il suo secondo nemico, e sarà in una posizione in cui nulla potrà mai nuocergli. Questo non sarà un errore. Non sarà solamente un punto davanti ai suoi occhi. Sarà vero potere.”

"A questo punto saprà che il potere che ha inseguito così a lungo è finalmente suo. Può fare tutto quel che vuole. Il suo alleato è al suo comando. Il suo desiderio è la regola. Vede tutto quel che è intorno a lui. Ma si è anche imbattuto nel terzo dei suoi nemici: il Potere!”

"Il potere è il più forte di tutti i nemici. E naturalmente la cosa più facile è arrendersi; dopo tutto, un uomo a questo punto è veramente inviacibile. Comanda; comincia col correre rischi calcolati e finisce col creare regole, perché è un padrone.”

"A questo stadio difficilmente l'uomo si rende conto che il nemico lo sta circondando. E improvvisamente, senza saperlo, avrà certamente perduto la battaglia. Il suo nemico lo avrà trasformato in un uomo crudele e capriccioso".

"Perderà il suo potere?".

"No, non perderà mai la sua lucidità o il suo potere".

"Allora che cosa lo distinguerà da un uomo di conoscenza?".

"Un uomo che è sconfitto dal potere muore senza sapere veramente come tenerlo in pugno. Il potere è solo un fardello sul suo destino. Un tale uomo non ha il comando su se stesso, e non può sapere quando come usare il suo potere".

"La sconfitta da parte di uno qualsiasi di questi nemici è una sconfitta definitiva?".

"Certo che è definitiva. Una volta che uno di questi nemici ha avuto il sopravvento su di un uomo non c'è nulla che questi possa fare".

"È possibile, per esempio, che l'uomo sconfitto dal potere possa vedere il proprio errore e correggersi?".

"No. Quando un uomo cede è spacciato".

"Ma che cosa accadrebbe se fosse accecato temporaneamente dal potere e poi lo rifiutasse?".

"Significherebbe che la sua battaglia ancora continua. Significherebbe che sta ancora cercando di diventare un uomo di conoscenza. Un uomo è sconfitto solo quando non tenta più, e si lascia andare".

"Ma allora è possibile, don Juan, che un uomo possa abbandonarsi per anni alla paura, ma alla fine vincerla?".

"No. Questo non è vero. Se cede alla paura non la vincerà mai, perché avrà paura di imparare e non tenterà più. Ma se cerca per anni di imparare, pur in mezzo alla sua paura, alla fine la vincerà perché non si è mai veramente abbandonato a essa".

"Come può sconfiggere il suo terzo nemico, don Juan?".

"Deve sfidarlo, deliberatamente. Deve arrivare a rendersi conto che il potere da lui apparentemente conquistato in realtà non è mai suo. Deve stare sempre in guardia, tenendo in pugno con cura e con fede tutto ciò che ha imparato. Se riuscirà a vedere che la lucidità e il potere, quando manca il suo proprio controllo su di sé, sono peggio ancora di errori, raggiungerà un punto in cui tutto è tenuto sotto controllo. Saprà allora come e quando usare il suo potere. E in questo modo avrà sconfitto il suo terzo nemico.”

"L'uomo sarà, ormai, alla fine del suo viaggio di apprendimento, e si imbatterà, quasi senza esserne stato avvertito, nell'ultimo dei suoi nemici: la Vecchiaia! Questo nemico è il più crudele di tutti, il solo che non potrà essere sconfitto completamente, ma solo scacciato.”

"Questo è il momento in cui l'uomo non ha più paure, non più un'impaziente lucidità mentale; un momento in cui il suo potere è tutto sotto controllo, ma anche il momento in cui prova un irresistibile desiderio di riposare. Se si arrende totalmente al desiderio di lasciarsi andare e dimenticare, se si adagia nella stanchezza, avrà perduto l'ultimo combattimento, e il suo nemico lo ridurrà a una creatura debole e vecchia. Il suo desiderio di ritirarsi annullerà tutta la sua lucidità, il suo potere, e la sua conoscenza.”

"Ma se l'uomo si spoglia della sua stanchezza, e affronta il proprio destino, può allora essere detto uomo di conoscenza, pur se soltanto per il breve momento in cui riesce a sconfiggere il suo ultimo e invincibile nemico. Quel momento di lucidità di potere e di conoscenza, è sufficiente".

il Tao che non si può beffare - I

Non vi fate illusioni; non ci si può prendere gioco di Dio

Be not deceive; God cannot be mocked.
(Gal. 6:7) 

The Unmocked God

What has been said so far can be read as argument or evidence for the reality of very large mental systems, systems of ecological size and larger, within which the mentality of the single human being is a subsystem. These large mental systems are characterized by, among other things, constraints on the transmission of information between their parts. Indeed, we can argue from the circumstance that some information should not reach some locations in large, organized systems to assert the real nature of these systems – to assert the existence of that whole whose integrity would be threatened by inappropriate communication. By the word “real” in this context, I mean simply that it is necessary for explanation to think in terms of organizations of this size, attributing to these systems the characteristics of mental process.

But it is one thing to claim that this is necessary and not surprising and quite another to go on to say, however vaguely, what sort of mind such a vast organization might be. What characteristics would such minds expectably show? Are they, perhaps, the sort of thing that men have called gods?

The great theistic religions of the world have ascribed many sorts of mentality to the highest gods, but almost invariably their characteristics have been derived from human models. Gods have been variously imagined as loving, vengeful, capricious, long-suffering, patient, impatient, cunning, incorruptible, bribable, childish, elderly, masculine, feminine, sexy, sexless, and so on.

What mental characteristics are to be expected in any large mental system or mind, the basic premises of whose character shall coincide with what we claim to know of cybernetics and systems theory? Starting from these premises, we surely cannot arrive at a lineal, billiard-ball materialism. But what sort of religion we shall develop is not clear. Will the vast organized system have free will? Is the “God” capable of humor? Deceit? Error? Mental pathology? Can such a God perceive beauty? Or ugliness? What events or circumstances can impinge upon this God’s sense organs ? Are there indeed organs of sense in such a system? And limitations of threshold? And attention? Is such a God capable of failure? Frustration? And, finally, consciousness?

The great historical religions of the world have either answered such questions without pausing to note that these are questions that permit more than one answer, or they have obscured the matter under a mass of dogma and devotion. To ask such questions may indeed disturb faith, so that the questions themselves might seem to define a region where angels would appropriately fear to tread.

Two things, however, are clear about any religion that might derive from cybernetics and system theory, ecology and natural history. First, that in the asking of questions, there will be no limit to our hubris; and second, that there shall always be humility in our acceptance of answers. In these two characteristics we shall be in sharp contrast with most of the religions of the world. They show little humility in their espousal of answers but great fear about what questions the will ask.

If we can show that a recognition of a certain unity in the total fabric is a recurrent characteristic, it is possible that some of the most disparate epistemologies that human culture has generated may give clues as to how we should proceed.

Tao fashion in Rome

Cimitero di Rimini, Italia

Tao mentale, conservativo e radicale

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

Nel proseguire la descrizione della mente e della coscienza, Tart discute i fondamenti della questione definendo tre termini centrali - consapevolezza, coscienza e mente - e descrivendo due modelli radicalmente diversi per questi tre insiemi di strutture complesse. Nel primo, l'unico ammissibile dalle scienze classiche - come le neuroscienze - i tre termini sono prodotti emergenti delle funzioni cerebrali, influenzati da una realtà fisica esterna fissa ed oggettiva. Nel secondo, uno di questi - la consapevolezza - viene considerato come "esterno" alle funzioni cerebrali, e la realtà fisica esterna non viene più considerata come "fissa" ma come una relazione ricursiva circolare tra le funzioni cerebrali e "l'esterno".

In questi due modelli si incentrano le due visioni radicalmente opposte tra scienza occidentale e - ad esempio - le tradizioni orientali, ognuna con le proprie evidenze "sperimentali". Nella prima la mente e la coscienza sono attualmente considerate come fenomeni complessi emergenti della struttura cerebrale, del sistema nervoso e del corpo; nella seconda esiste una qualità che - in parte - è indipendente dal corpo, e quindi non spiegabile in termini fisico/chimico-neurologici; un vero e proprio "incarnamento della mente". I due modelli sono completamente incompatibili tra loro: per la scienza occidentale l'esistenza di una caratteristica mentale che provenga dall'"esterno" del cervello è un'assurdità, così come per la scienza tradizionale orientale - basata sull'esperienza individuale - il credere che la consapevolezza di fondo provenga dall'attività cerebrale.  

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?"

verrà il Tao e avrà i tuoi occhi

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi -

questa morte che ci accompagna

dal mattino alla sera, insonne,

sorda, come un vecchio rimorso

o un vizio assurdo. I tuoi occhi

saranno una vana parola,

un grido taciuto, un silenzio.

Così li vedi ogni mattina

quando su te sola ti pieghi

nello specchio. O cara speranza,

quel giorno sapremo anche noi

che sei la vita e sei il nulla

Per tutti la morte ha uno sguardo.

Verrà la morte e avrà i tuoi occhi.

Sarà come smettere un vizio,

come vedere nello specchio

riemergere un viso morto,

come ascoltare un labbro chiuso.

Scenderemo nel gorgo muti.

«Ho lavorato, ho dato poesia agli uomini, ho condiviso le pene di molti»
Santo Stefano Belbo (CN)

non sappia il tuo Tao sinistro cosa fa il Tao destro - 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?

non sappia il tuo Tao sinistro cosa fa il Tao destro - II