If you grew up like me you were brought up in a culture based on a dualist metaphysics, one that asserts that there is an objective reality outside of ourselves (whatever “we” are) and that we know about it indirectly through our senses and conscious reasoning. This is the basis of the Western traditions of science, liberal arts and symbolic systems (such as mathematics and human language). Essentially anything that can be studied is part of this metaphysics. Observation and rationality may never lead to complete knowing, though everyone agrees we can continually refine our knowledge and thereby at least asymptotically approach enlightenment.
Descartes proved to us that each of us individually do indeed exist, and he tried to argue further that the universe as we perceive it — however imperfectly — does indeed exist too. But before you drink too deeply from the Cartesian well, keep in mind that his argument for an external reality depended on the existence of a benevolent God, one that would not deceive us with such an elaborate ruse as to make the world seem so real when it wasn’t. His whole argument aftercogito ergo sum is logically flawed.
There are other metaphysics that assert reality is entirely subjective, that there is no reality outside of ourselves. This of course begs the question of who “we” are such that reality can exist or not outside of us. But to even ask this question is to miss the point, say subjectivists. Knowledge is direct, we “experience” it; and if we have no expectation, no attachment, no judgement, then we can truly understand. Anytime we engage in the act of thinking, we break from our direct, immediate, complete knowledge of who we are and knowledge of everything there is to know. This of course is the metaphysics of Zen Buddhism, Taoism and other Eastern traditions.
I am in danger of losing anyone reading this if I don’t immediately disavow this second way of knowing in favor of the first. There are many who consider themselves intelligent — whose very self-image is based on intelligence — who will be saying to themselves right now that experience without thought is all well and good as a tool for getting to insight. But ultimately insight (and knowledge and knowing) requires thought. And in particular it requires thought that is self-consistent, which is to say rational and logical. The worst things in the world to such a person are logical inconsistency and paradox. There are fundamental laws at work, not just about the universe but also about knowing. These believers will invoke the trinity of Occam, Bayes and Popper, but they forsake the word of Gödel: you can choose consistency, or you can choose completeness, but you can’t have both.
For those of us who have already cast ourselves out of the garden of completeness, all I can say is that it is never too late to reconsider how seriously we take all this rational-ization. I mean after all, what’s the harm in exploration as long as we always have our very capable minds to help us navigate? We scientists have so strongly exercised our capacity for discounting certain possibilities that we forget how important it is to retain our innate capacity for generating new possibilities.
With this in mind, I have begun to reconsider some of my deeply-seated assumptions about existence. Whatever yours are, I invite you to challenge them as well. As a scientist it is only natural.
Because we all have different experiences in life, we each have a different internal “language” with which we receive truth and gain understanding. Those of us who come from the Western tradition — which is to say anyone who thinks of themselves as a "thinker" — we are in need of more practice in letting go of the map and experiencing the terrain directly.
Have you ever noticed that when someone speaks deep truth (no matter what “language” they are speaking) you get a sense of deep resonance that is beyond words and conscious thought? I certainly do. And another thing I notice about these experiences is that they only happen when I stop engaging my analytical mind to critique or compare what the person is saying to what I already “know”.
If we cling to faulty assumptions in the face of truth we feel discord of some form (anger, embarrassment, indignity, righteousness, etc). But I view this as really another form of recognition of the truth before us. It’s a sort of allergic reaction to the invading memes that would damage our internal edifices, the faulty assumptions that protect our egos and our ideas of who we are. To embrace the truth often means a level of change we are not yet willing to undertake, and which we may never be willing to undertake. In the face of such high stakes, we rationalize away the truth in order to preserve internal consistency and harmony.
As an experiment to illustrate this point, consider your immediate gut reactions to the following statements one at a time:
- “There are ways of knowing that are beyond science, beyond analytical thought, and they are crucial for you to engage in if you wish to get past your limited understanding of the universe.”
- “Think about that one thing you know with all your being to be true. Got it? Well, it’s not true. You believe in a falsehood, a convenient fiction that you use to deny the veracity of your deepest fears.”
If you are like me, you have no trouble at all with Statement 2, but feel at some level that Statement 1 is new-age horseshit, at best an opiate for the masses but at worst a very dangerous conceit. So let me take a deep breath and use this as an opportunity to explore what’s causing the negative emotion so that I can challenge those assumptions and thereby learn.
My reaction to Statement 1 is based on the denial of the value of my personal identity as a thoughtful, analytical, intelligent person, one that doesn’t do things that are irrational. If Statement 1 is true, then my life is less valuable than I had presumed, perhaps even valueless. Man that would suck. If I take Statement 1 to be true then I will be forced to change who I am in order to once again feel as valuable. I might even be forced to participate in a seance and other freaky and totally pointless activities. Not gonna happen, I don’t have that kind of time to waste. I could be making the world a better place or at least pursuing my own happiness.
Sounds a bit silly when I type it out. What could be the harm in turning off the analytical mind a bit more and experiencing without judging? At worst maybe I’ll be a bit happier -- the happiness literature strongly suggests this -- and at best maybe I will become more effective at making the world a better place. But is this direct experience actually valid from an ontological perspective?
Even within the Western analytic tradition there are themes of experiential knowing. Psychologists now speak (very analytically of course) about the state of Flow. In Flow, we are so thoroughly engaged in the task at hand and so perfectly in sync that our experience of time changes dramatically. We are able to achieve extraordinary performance, effortlessly and without thinking. Gladwell popularized this concept in Blink, claiming that the vast parallel processing power of the human brain and nervous system for useful cognition is largely untapped (or masked) when we focus on conscious reasoning. To tap into the full potential of the mind, we need to apply techniques to short-circuit our conscious thought processes.
Every professional athlete, musician and performance artist is familiar with Flow/Blink, and you’ve no doubt experienced it many times yourself. For me, it’s usually been when engaged in a sport where there is little time to think (like ping-pong, volleyball or snowboarding). In the mental realm, I have been able achieve leaps in performance and rely heavily on on my “blinking” ability — whether it be playing poker, brainstorming, writing, or just interacting in a positive way with those around me — by orchestrating a Flow state.
I’m still learning what best puts me into Flow, but it seems to be some combination of prolonged intense concentration, mild sleep deprivation and small amounts of psychoactive substances (though I must say that too much substance, or combining it, usually kills the flow for me). Recently I’ve found that adding in physical movement or music also help trigger Flow. On this last front, while most people would say “what took you so long,” it’s worth pointing out that every person is unique in terms of what works for them. For instance, what most people refer to as meditation (i.e. eyes closed, absolute stillness of body and mind) doesn’t do much for me. My mind somehow responds better to hyper stimulation than tranquility.
Early in life, learning is mostly the process of of creating new structure out of noise. As our adult minds form, this structure creation that was once crucial in our learning process becomes a beast of burden and we lose our mental plasticity. To counteract this imbalance we must consciously re-integrate those activities that we had no trouble jumping into as a child. The challenge is not to let our egos and silly notions of personal identity get in the way of our beginner mind. Ken Robinson makes this point as well as anyone I’ve encountered, and I invite you to sit back and enjoy for the next 20 minutes with your own beginner mind:
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