J. Shear:
The interesting thing, as I see it, is that the simple level of "pure awareness" that *I'd* call the self (usually) first becomes clear only when all the other contents of awareness ... recede from one's awareness ... This can happen easily in meditation ... Then, it seems to me, the level of self insisted on by common sense ...,For, as I see it, the reason common sense (in culture after culture, around the world and throughout history) has insisted on this seemingly unlocatable level of self is that we all tend to be subliminally, but only subliminally, aware of it--untill it becomes clarified by becoming experienced as it is in and by itself...
I disagree that a level of self identified with "pure awareness" or states of higher consciousness is insisted on by "common sense". Perhaps I'm misinterpreting J. Shear, but my take on folk psychology and consensus awareness is that it's pretty much business as usual. By this I mean people identify with their social identities and the exigencies of making a living and coping with the world. A taste for the infinite isn't part of their makeup.
I agree that mystical experiences have occurred across cultures and throughout history, but, except perhaps for hunter-gatherer groups, these experiences have been sought after and/or attained by a minority of people. I like to think that as people get older they become more appreciative of their finiteness and the vastness of the cosmos. But this appreciativeness is not an insistence on an unlocatable level of self. I think most people would hold that their discursive self with its mixed bag of associated emotions, images, etc. *is* their S(s)elf (whatever).
This may be going off on a tangent but I've been wondering for awhile now about the discussion on this list about pure consc., etc., and Sutherland's insistence on keeping the G word out of it. It seems like there's a strategy of discourse in which the pure consc. experience is to be separated from its traditions, its more sensational cousins (samadhi, etc.) and the G word. Keith's remark awhile back that the PC experience is just akin to an active movie projector without celluloid is an example. Are you trying to demystify mysticism? Is this a technique to make mysticism more palatable to the "hard" sciences of consciousness? I'm just curious.
A lagniappe for the gumbo:
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet Of the women about you?
- W. Stevens
Rick Prescott
rprescot@email.upsp.gov
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