Cosmos Café: Alternate Ways of Knowing [12/12]

It’s not clear to me what picture it represents: sometimes it feels abstract, at other times concrete; it may be a landscape or a cityscape, or maybe not. But it certainly has a feeling of relevance for me, that I am related or connected or maybe even co-determined in some way by that puzzle.

Most times I would like it to show me what it is supposed to be, and sometimes I feel it knows but just won’t; other times, it would be nice if things just got a bit quieter so I could work the puzzle.

1 Like

Which is precisely why I find them so useless. When I read something like Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, it becomes clear to me how irrelevant notions like “signifiers” and “signified” are. They never leave the realm of the head, but as you say, and I, and I believe, Frankl would, agree: part of it is “the indelible role of experience”, which I believe must always be understood as more than mere intellectual activity (which is also an “experience”, but a very restricted one.

What I think you and Frankl are pointing toward is better captured by a “heart” metaphor. The Eqyptians (per Schwaller de Lubicz, for example) speak explicitly of “the intelligence of the heart”, the goal of individual development being the synchronization, the merging, the melding, the integration of the intelligence of the head with the intelligence of the heart.

Now, throw in a little “intelligence of the hand” (a là Pestalozzi or Montesorri, for example) and we see the move from the 2D circle into 3D space, which, to me, at any rate, means we may be heading in the right direction (head experience + heart experience + hand experience => potentially integrating, if Gebser is onto something). Reducing this to 1D, which is what I see the postmodernists doing, is simply counterproductive.

But, maybe I’m just more curmudgeony when it comes to those guys. Just a thought.

3 Likes

Yes! That is why we have drawn our maps, which is the work of our hands and minds in motion. There is something that happens in the action between head and hand and hand and heart. They are inextricably linked to a field that is a wave of memory, dream and reflection all at once. The motion of the hands give the sensual flow a time and place. We can locate our concepts, bodily, and then the flow will not confuse us with it’s whirling abstractness.

We cannot have Process without a Structure, there is no Transformation without a Form. Post-structuralism privileges process over structure in a necessary move to re-correct the top heavy concepts of the Modern but fails to make coherent order in it’s mania for dynamism.

There is also stillness and rest, a brief caesura in each breath cycle when the shift from inside and outside occur. It is that still point that happens between formations that can’t be ignored. Our bodies know that,our minds need to be reminded. Concept driven knowledge is doomed without a body to bring that new world forward. The hand ( touch, writing, typing, texting, pointing, drawing ) is primary. Concepts and Percepts arise in all possible worlds.

How do we represent our interiors to our group is a riveting drama, and how these maps play out is I believe what is happening to our world(s) in a Gebserian manner. We each of us must find a place at the table and have a vision to share and each of us must be received-or we will tear the world apart.

That’s what the little bird told me…

Thanks, Ed, for the comment on the Hand motif. It is, you may notice, prominent in the drawing I shared. It is the left hand,and it gestures towards the edge of the map ( in the center) where the other worldly figure is located. I didnt know what the hand meant until you mentioned it. Now it appears obvious. We need a little help from our friends to make the obvious connections. We are not alone.

There are no arbitrary signifiers. Anyone who has written a poem or a piece of prose knows how words are not arbitrary. The meaning is not floating around in a dictionary.

4 Likes

A quote from Jeffrey Kripal’s new book, The Secret Body, that is ,I believe, relevant to our inquiry here . This is his description of phenomena that I refer to as Alternate Ways of Knowing.

" The mythical dimensions of Mind cannot speak directly to the ego: the ego is a left brain function. These other dimensions of mind cannot “speak” at all. These presences show us pictures and tell us stories in a dream or vision. They possess us. They claim to be gods, or God. They blast us with altered states of energy and pull us, like a magnet, outside our bodies into other worlds and dimensions. They trick with us. They mess with us. They seem at once familiar and alien. That’s because they are."

So, get out your crayons, class, and make a map that makes sense to you…and where is that?..does it have a size or shape?..and what kind of ‘I’ is that ‘I’ ?.. and what does it want to have happen?

2 Likes

Yes, I think so…though I think this term, ‘post-construction’ (or ‘post-constructivism’ or whatever) may not be very precise, or even very interesting. The idea, however, is simply that mental categories are not the be-all end-all of social reality. There is more under heaven and earth!

“Construct-aware” is probably the more precise term, with some currency in developmental psychology. It is a useful term, if we don’t regard constructs as merely mental structures, but also include bodies, feelings, percepts, processes, intuitions, social experiences, etc. Experience really is a great word for what’s at stake in these discussions.

That picture I drew, and colored in, though it is a far cry from ‘fine art’, brought me more clarity and joy than most conceptulizing ever does. Of course, the conceptual discussion provided a verbal framework for the exercise, which was important. There are actual ideas and intended meanings embedded in the image; but these are combined with unintended and spontaneous expressions that not only suprised but also delighted me.

Brain…heart…hands…

During this cross-country road trip (I am writing from somehwere in the soft, rolling hills of Pennsylvania, while my wife drives), I have been listening to Nick Bostrom’s Superintelligence audiobook, and it is striking how in thrall the field of AI research and development is to rational actor theory and cognitive neuroscience in general—powerful disciplines, to be sure; frighteningly so, if some of the scenarios for the intelligence explosion described by Bostrom are to be believed—but what’s missing from the picture is precisely the question of experience.

Bostrom so far has avoided discussing ‘consciousness’ deliberately…in his view (as I understand it) an intelligent entity need not be ‘conscious’ or be having any kind of experience at all. An AI theoretically could have cognitive, perceptual, and motivational systems…and yet not be conscious. It is a glorified algorithm with superpowers!

Rest stop…heart beat…breath…stillness…pause…

A singleton AI that obtains a decisive strategic advantage, could transform the entire galaxy into a grey goo of ‘computronium’ [atoms harnessed for computational purposes] in pursuit of an ill-conceived final goal, such as maximizing the production of paperclips. However, I am getting the feeling that Bostrom is not really describing the future, but the present.

What is the pursuit of maximum profit or infinite economic growth but a kind of ‘paperclip production’ decoupled from any practical (human) purpose? I say this, and yet I’m still fascinated by and generally a fan of AI. I would like to explore these questions further…but it is my turn to drive.

3 Likes

What I am most drawn to in your comment is the “clarity and joy.” I could certainly ask lots of clean questions about that but you can probably do that on your own.

Altered states are necessary to make any sense whatever in the mentally deficient dominant culture. But what is an altered state? Some are creative, some are deficient, the couch potato variety. Drawing maps is a liberating way for the soul dried up by concept land to give the roots some rain. It is an efficient practice and does more to alleviate the top heavy than anything else.

Often, I have entered into an organized group, who were construct aware, but not registering any clarity or joy states. There were brilliant observations, of course, but none of the ideas seemed to get grounded and take off. They usually were working from the neck up, critical and highly verbal, reporting from third person perspective about third person accounts. It was a wobbly performance at best, some of those who excelled at being at the front of the class, dominated.

We have been stuck in top heavy conceptualizations for centuries. I think it is much better use of time to get out the crayons and connect hand and head, hand and heart, and start making sense.

I agree that concepts and percepts can work together, hand in hand, like children moving towards a playground, looking for guidance, knowing that the caregivers are in the background paying attention, while we can get absorbed in the smell of dirt, the play of light and shadow, the call of the wild bird above our heads.

This is not about a competition or a race to the top or other such top heavy metaphors that have polluted our imaginal zones. We can’t pour old wine into new wine skins. The wine skins will burst.

We need a clean start.

Rather than try to fix our problems at the level of our problems we are always free to do something different. Although our experiment here may be a bit messy, I expect alternate ways of knowing if given a chance, may mature. We have only just begun a process that can go much much deeper, if we train our attention, to become exquisitely aware, of how we are sharing our attention. It is like watching a wild animal in the woods, we breathe slowly, tune into the animal, find its rhythm. Participatory mystique is still with us but instead we enter into the pseudo-attention that is brought to you by zombie AI initiatives.

So, instead of complaining about the Bostroms of the world, ( they are legion!) I prefer to invite the formation of a Clarity and Joy Commission, that can study the genius of our race, through the interplay of multi- dimensional sense making. If we stopped polarizing around concepts ( which no one understands) we could start to coordinate our maps and re-connect hand, heart, gut, so that head could make some sense of those things that go bump in the dark.

And how do I know that? A little bird told me…they are watching us, you know…they know we are not happy in our man made world…

By the way, as an aside, I sent the video to my brother and he and my mother ( an artist) had interesting comments. I quote my brother, "Interesting you say Marco looks like Jesus, mama thought he was handsome and looked like Albrecht Durer the painter. "

I think my mother is right. You do look like Albrecht Durer!
image

Another quote from my brother, who is an intuitive, too. " Campbell said he had never had “an experience” and always wished he had. Jung said he he’d had “an experience” and didn’t recommend it. Need I say more LOL. I think we both understand Jung. In retrospect, it was a great experience, but it was terrifying. I think we might aptly say, we have had the Jungian individuation (there are many other analogs, hero’s journey etc., death of the ego), or are definitely on that path."

And with all of these intriguing maps of our developement, what happens next?

4 Likes

Having grown up there, I can assure you, they’re not as soft as they appear. :roll_eyes:

Isn’t that a zombie? Are they now role models? Interesting thought. In my perhaps not-so-humble view, there are two primary reasons for avoiding the “consciousness issue”: you don’t get it (and it’s not an easy issue), or you don’t want to get it (you realize you’d have to deal with matters that might require you change your mind about more than just consciousness per sé). I’m with John on this: pseudo-intelligence is a much better description, even for that which Bostrom is waxing mindlessly about.

As far as I’m concerned, you nailed the key issue earlier:

D’accord.

2 Likes

I share the curmudgeon inclination! It is not so much that the intellect is insufficient but it presumes too much. It appropriates unsympathetic words because it tries to approximate a complexity (or multi-dimensional allusion) that experience alone comprehends holistically.

Heart intelligence does not need to dissect. It knows but cannot always describe what it knows.

2 Likes

Yes, I agree and yet it is very important that we try to describe what the heart knows so that Nature and Mind can co-evolve. We will still need maps with Utopia on them, even if you are a curmudgeon. Curmudgeons are usually people who have been told they cant have what they want. We can get bitter or we can reflect on that and keep our awareness on the small still voice that needs to be heard and felt along the heart. Without that felt sense we are doomed to extinction.

I also imagine that we can communicate what we know with a proper respect for the ambiguity of the maps we are making to make sense of our often idiosyncratic observations, and off the wall hunches. We need more than one description. The deficient Mental reads from one map and demands that others do the same. The Zombie Masters do not care.

Most of what is important arrives through serendipity ( as we explored in a previous cafe conversation)and I hope we can deal more effectively than we have with the trans-rational dimensions. The heart does know things that the deficient rational mind is baffled by and that must never be taken for granted in our desire to raise the GNP.

A rational intuition, which we have been modeling here, would have a way of harnessing perplexity without collapsing into incoherent knee jerk responses. The rational intuitive ( there are many of us here) would welcome paradoxes, not try to get rid of them.

2 Likes

Usually is certainly not always.

As the defacto resident curmudgeon, I can assure you that my own brand of curmudgeony does not come from not getting what I want, it comes from the realization that too many people do not want to listen to facts and reason, are blind to imaginative alternatives, and are not willing to entertain the possibility that anything could possibly be other than they imagine it to be, either from ignorance or arrogance (the end effect is the same). It’s a whole different kind of frustration. :smiling_imp:

3 Likes

I agree that curmudgeons come in many shapes and sizes and not all of them swing a cane and cry, humbug! Some are just too tired of being defeated and so end up, hiding behind bottles, in a dark cafe,and refuse to talk to anyone.

Our cafe is well lit and everyone is quite communicative for the most part. I trust that we can all have a chance to use the mic and pass it around without being ridiculed. Unfortunately, such spaces are rather rare as the Internet gobbles up the Web, as that tragedy appears to be happening.

We will need to prepare our minds, and allow alternative articulations of reality, expecting some serendipitous learnings. Tragically optimistic!

3 Likes

I am not sure that I implied getting rid of paradox? Precisely because paradox is ‘both and’ ( rather than ‘either-or’) it connects two concepts/alternatives/dimensions. Essential to intuition. Unavailable to intellect which oscillates- sometimes quite quickly, but ‘between’ a and b, rather than embracing ab.

2 Likes

" The Human as Two is finally about the dual structures and existential paradoxes of our mythical existence. We are split in two. We author ourselves. and we are authored. We make things up, and we are made up. We are at once insiders and outsiders to our own stories. So we believe and suffer them, and yet we can see right through them and do not believe them. We watch them from some esoteric space that we can never locate." - Jeffrey Kripal, The Secret Body

In a lucid dream, I report the following exchange, with a stranger.

I ask," What is our relationship to the Earth?"

He says," We are Para to the Earth."

After witnessing a wide range of energy sharing practices I am given a symbol.

The figure in the center of my map is the symbol I was given. The other images emerged out of that encounter.

To the left of the symbol, is a figure of Nagajuna’s tetrelema, which I practiced in the lucid episode.

I embodied each perspective and then embodied all of the perspectives at the same time.

You are broken.
You are whole.
You are broken and whole.
You are neither broken nor whole.

Below that figure is the left hand of darkness. As I sense into this metaphorical landscape I recognize my Double is leaving a trace in the world of Forms. Out of these traces I construct a map.

The figures on the right, are of the twist in the Mobius strip and the ocean of pixels which turn into ordinary waking worlds. All of these are representations of in-formation from my embodied knowings of alternate realities, which I enjoy while I wait. I watch with the Third Eye, I hear with the Third Ear.

I wait for my Double to come get me at the End of Time.

image

2 Likes

4 Likes

You stay away from the theatre for weeks and re-enter bringing the house down! A circumlocution journey to silence. Welcome JD.

Relief: I thought I was being invited to take it seriously, waded in and find I had forgotten how to swim! Grateful to wade out and build a sandcastle instead.

1 Like

Nice to hear from you again, Mr. Dockus. The video reminds me, impressionistically, of a couple of my comparative literature courses in college. It is, perhaps, para to this thread, dangled down from a point above space-and-time consciousness. I am reminded, as well, of a good friend who once told me, “I don’t believe in paradox”—which I regarded as a paradoxical claim, coming from a nondual mystic. Whereof one cannot speak…I believe because it is absurd.

If you go building with Peter Rose, you vocabulary sand castle might become awash with sea foam. Maybe stick with your monastery analogy (In your personal introduction). Reading your and @JDockus’s infinite archived conversations here have been a delight. Hope you come back home here for more than just a holiday visit.

1 Like

" Sometimes it becomes more than just a duty to speak one’s mind, it becomes a pleasure."-Oscar Wilde

In a previous cafe ( from which this episode emerges) I am at pains to describe a few of the serendipitous events that have occurred to me. It is out of collecting such events and those reported to me that I have undertaken to study this odd topic with our group. This has been mostly experiential, as I am working towards a qualitative research project, from which the drawings have come. It is an open frame.

Those previous episodes on the cafe may give you some background for this conversation, and what my references were. Most of my metaphor comes from theater experiences.

These are efforts to explore what the heart might know. I’m sure you have stories of your own to share but then again you might want to keep them private. I think it is always a risk what one self-discloses in a public forum such as this one.

I am hoping for more vigorous first person accounts of a basically unknowable territory. I have often found that Trickster figures appear during transitions, such as we try to represent in our maps here. There are few models of how our models are actually made. It is what is going on behind the scenes that is of interest to me so I stick with a method, which the group becomes familiar with.

How to model the subjective structure of anyone is notoriously messy, hence, the need for a special kind of questioning, which is not conversational. It is a method for discovering forms that then may start to transform. I dont think we are at that stage in the process yet but maybe with some careful protection to guard against the mudslinging of the Tricksters among us, something may endure.

In this video I do catch the genuine.There are some real toads in the imaginary garden.

" Spirit is a synonym for style."-Douglas Hofstader

1 Like

My water vessel on this longest night, the S.S. Post-Construction:

3 Likes

And with all of that…what happens next?

A new practice might emerge, as I review this crazy quilt of memories, dreams and reflections, from this cafe episode and the ones that follow. I can intuit a beginning, a middle, and an end, and can build up a dossier of our community creating itself. A Knowing with a capital K.

I hear different motifs, what is said, what is unsaid, want could have happened but didn’t. I currently know what happened next and can recall what happened after that and mark it out, using this technology to do so. This is a new kind of Self-Reflexive potential, just coming into form.

Perhaps we are more than just idiots signifying nothing. We can, perhaps, sense with the trans- physical senses, fine tune, lay down some new tracks…and then what happens?

Marco
What comes next…Timelessness…applying Gebser’s Model…

Ed
Being Time Free and taking it out into the world…too much harmony, too much resonance…I just dont believe it…this needs to be incorporated into a modeling process…modeling process points to principle…

John
Theories are easy…modeling is hard…it is important to hang out with old people, rocks, trees…the long now…

Any other possibilities emerging for you this Christmas day, as we tune into the last heart beat of the Ancient Child?

Cosmos Café: Fractal Time in Everyday Life - YouTube[quote=“madrush, post:31, topic:1596”]

2 Likes