We haven’t had that spirit here since 1969 (well actually, 1973)

Over the weekend I had an intense, remarkable, and troubling dream. Here’s the background, and then the dream:

The dream occurred during an approximately 36 hour period where I was immersed in a fairly powerful LSD-like experience. I did not choose to enter into this experience, it was often anxiety-inducing, and it remains unexplained, or unconvincingly explained. There is the possibility that it was caused by eating a particular kind of blue cheese. I ate an ounce or 2 of the cheese before the experience came on, and another ounce or 2 during the experience, not realizing it might cause such a reaction.

Naturally, it is very hard to describe the experience since it was outside of what we call “normal consciousness.” Here’s an attempt.

Primarily, my thoughts were being elevated so that I was experiencing them like they were, somehow, independent threads of reality, threads that didn’t “bubble up” from my brain, but rather, my “brain” was tapping into these threads that were brief segments of a full reality independent of me. I would melt back and forth between these semi-parallel realities. If we use the metaphor of a bubble to describe a brief thought, we might describe it as 1) momentary, 2) brain-centered, and 3) stimulus generated, and like a bubble that emerges and then dissipates-bursts and is gone, so our normal thoughts seem to emerge and disappear (although, of course we know that they do have some kind of subconscious continuity and independence).

These thoughts seemed very different. They were not momentary but seemed to be enduring; not brain-centered but seemingly independently created beyond the brain; and not stimulus-generated, but rather, somehow, embedded in the stimulus, whatever that stimulus might be; which is to say, released/exposed as a part of the stimulus-experience. The stimuli could be a sensory impression, an emotion, a related thought, a biological need expressing itself (like hunger, etc). I would find myself emerging from these threads back to my physical-centered awareness (say, sitting in a room reading), and it would be unclear how long I had been diverted into these thoughts, though generally it was not long, measured by a clock.

There was a strange but distinctly “effervescent” quality to consciousness, something between bubbles bursting and bubbles dissolving, as I moved from one state of awareness to the next. Normally consciousness is smooth, textureless, fluid, and continuous. In this state, however, there were thin “membranes” that distinguished between passing states/thoughts/moments, and as I crossed through these membranes, it would be almost like waking up to a new reality, with the awareness of crossing a “border”.

That is at least an attempt at an accurate phenomenological description.

Now here’s the dream, or rather, the thin fragment, much stripped down and reduced to knowable images, that I remember:

I was down on the national mall. Much activity. People were playing sports. Professionals? I got some document and had to separate it into pieces along perforations. But as I began, the perforations began to disappear, causing the document to tear unevenly. And then it merged into a kind of plastic, layered, rectangular, thin box, maybe 1'x2'. Hard to describe and unlike any object I’m familiar with. But the realization was that it was multi-layered and that my document was now submerged into this object, and now the surface was becoming sealed and the layers inaccessible. I could still feel them. The surface was thin and malleable, and as I ran my fingers across the surface, I felt a lumpy interior. Then it became like the mall, or it was the mall all along, and all this activity was also submerging and disappearing. Then almost nothing was left but a smooth surface, as people disappeared; a smooth brown plastic surface.

As I woke, or perhaps while still in the dream, the plastic rectangle/mall became the symbol/image of my life, and then all human life, emerging and disappearing, leaving no trace in the end. And I saw that all my ambitions were in vain, and even meaningless or useless. Even the great names -- I thought of Milton, the poet, and biblical Abraham and Moses -- even they were but momentary bubbles, eruptions that re-shaped the surface momentarily, and then were gone with no trace. Even the whole human species was such: a momentary phenomenon. I was torn in agony at this.

Reflection:
Thus, on one level, this dream represented my thoughts that had become distinct and independent entities, one emerging from the next, and then submerging into each other and becoming indistinguishable and buried beneath a surface of continuity and “uniformity” when, for a moment, my consciousness would once again feel semi-normal; and then ultimately when the altered experience, finally, slowly dissipated over the course of about 4 hours.

multi-threaded nature of thought, 2

In the distant past, almost two months ago, I posted a little essay about the superimposing layers of thought going on in the mind at any given moment. I noted that I would post a draft of a scene in The Atternen Jewz Talen that explores this idea directly, that is phenomenologically. Finally, here it is...

Written 3/29/12, 6 Nisson 5772; week ov Tzav
Edited 5/25/12, 4 Sivan 5772, week ov Bamidbar

Like a maed az she step frum a steemee bath,
The beedz a sparkel on brest and cheek,
An she run a kome thru her glissen a hair,
Awl kleen an strate an silver a sheen,
So awl the thred an the braken strand
In my theenk untaengelz in a shivver a lite.

Nayomeez in thaer, her haer streem down
Like a milkee way, awl fiyerree faent;
An the Surah* street in a mobeyus not,
                 * Jewish sittee on the Ewfrateez till about 1000 CE
                    The Atternen Jew livd thaer mennee a yeer
Ov me an a thowzen alleez an dorz.
I wonder like a chiel lost in forlorn,
An in thoze streeten, the krush a shops,
An in them shop, mennee the fase,
An Nayomee an Ellijah a peerenz owt
Ov them straenjerren staers and fammilleyen iyz.

Them fasen like sitteez I wonder thru.
How much iz me-in-them that I see
An how much them that shine thru me?
Surah, Dammask, Allexxandreya...
Ah, Yerrushallaem, yur wawl an yur dung,
An the boyel a worz, the klatter an kry.
Menz awl werkt up, awl God insane.
An them pagen speerz stoken inflame,
Thaer fiyeree feengerz grippen my kor,
That Addom overheeten inside my braen.
An Addom, him kryen for Edenz re-bertht;
Eve in her berth thro; him plow the erth.

Thats the embroiderz a kuller it awl.
But the worpen thredz an weften kord
Az hoel it tugether in a moeshennel feel:
Deziyer - Nayomee in a silkee gown,
An sarroez - me sleepen in a foxxen den.
Despaerz a plunnee - my tatterz a faeth,
An sumhow, wunder twisten in -
The lite a-slant thru a braken dor
On a gerl-chiel tokken tu her raggee dol.
An plunnee a aengerz an thaer feerz an joyz.
Multappel korden a randem arraed,
Shapen eech theenk az it kum unmade.
Shapen me intu thaer atternen taelz
Beneeth my brokaden memmorree.

Well, thats a mor detalen skech a my theenks
Than I ment tu say ov my travvellenz eest.

multi-threaded nature of thought

My reading, reflecting my interests, spans a wide range of topics. However, the subject of thought – what it is and how we experience it - is almost entirely unexplored (with the exception of some lame and poorly written philosophical treatises on "mind"). It appears that, in large measure, most people think of "a thought" as a distinct, precise, and unalloyed unit, not unlike the idea of the "atom" as imagined in the late 19th century.

That late 19th century "atom", it turned out, is not the ultimate building block of matter, and indeed will probably end up being seen as a fictional unit altogether, discarded from scientific discourse. So too, it is becoming clear that our thoughts are not singular, fundamental units of consciousness, but are complex fabrics woven of many strands and fragments. Or to use another analogy, our thoughts are like symphonic compositions, with multiple instruments playing independent but related, or semi-related consonant and dissonant melodies, tones, and percussive beats.

This understanding of thought is derived from my direct experience, and emerges from the comprehensively documented observations of the highly superimposed nature of consciousness. To use a computing metaphor, human consciousness is a multi-tasking system, and each task is multi-threaded. At any given moment, consciousness is composed of multiple sensations, emotions, thoughts, and higher-order impressions and operations (these latter being beyond the threshold of common awareness), and each sensation, emotion, and thought is multi-threaded.

Most of the time most people are entirely unaware of this symphony of processing going on within them, that comprises human mentation. Indeed, we are wont to reduce this welter of processes to single thoughts, or single emotions, or single sensations, or at most, single (mostly) linear narratives. The arts, of course, challenge this kind of simplification. As noted, the symphony with its multiple instruments playing multiple melodies, phrases, and sounds replicates the multi-threaded nature of human consciousness. The novel, with its complex interacting characters and interwoven story lines replicates both the multi-tasking and multi-threading of consciousness. Yet, nowhere in literature, at least to my knowledge, has this exploration of complexity focused down into the multi-threaded functioning of consciousness itself. At most, we have stream-of-consciousness techniques exploring the uppermost level of awareness and its often non-linear narrative trajectory. 

Having introspectively explored my thinking processes for over 40 years, it seems appropriate (perhaps long overdue) that I now take my perspective down into the multiple threads of thought to try to unpack them. Perhaps the subject may seem more appropriate for a psychological essay or a phenomenological tract. But those forms lack both aesthetic richness and narrative ordering principles, and aesthetics and narrative are core components of consciousness. Therefore I am exploring these horizons of consciousness through a poetic lens, hoping, through a sort of stop-frame process, to expose a more accurate and nuanced representation of human mentation.

In my next post will you will be able to read (and critique) a first draft of just such an exploration.

Two psychological observations

These two pieces from my notebooks come nearly 35 years apart. One is from today, one from July, 1977.

1/26/12, 2 Shevat 5772, week of Bo
Four critical and fundamental errors in human analytical thinking:
1. The confusion of emotional attachment with ‘facticity’, truth; vis belief in God becomes dogma and supporting evidence (Bible) becomes incontrovertible; or, feelings of love can cause us to mis-see and misunderstand the person that is loved and the situation in which that love exists.
2. Confusion of emotional intensity for degree of certainty; vis the more comfort one derives from belief in God, the more certain one is of God’s existence; or, the more desperate our need for companionship, the more certain we may become that someone loves us.
3. The confusion that personal perspective is ‘true’ and co-equal with universal perspective; vis the certainty that whatever political beliefs one inclines towards, those beliefs are the correct (or better, CORRECT) way of understanding the situation.
4. The confusion that consciousness, observation, is an unmediated experience, and NOT an interpretive, filtered, and often profoundly limited or occulted experience; vis, the belief that what we see with our eyes is not merely real, but unimpeachable and unbiased ‘fact’.

Antidotes to ingest liberally:
1. facts all come with a point of view
2. observation and interpretation are co-equal
3. emotion is the carriage upon which all thought rides
4. there is no such thing as a single and pure emotion; all emotions resolve into other emotions

Trained philosophers and psychologists who reject or denigrate emotion and extol reason are equally subject to these four confusions. Emotion is a fact of consciousness, shaping and coloring it, whether it is obvious or not, whether it is intense or subtle, foregrounded or undertoned. It is there shaping, coloring, focusing, distorting, transforming, hiding the inputs of experience. Reason distinct from emotion is a conceptual illusion, a false ideal, a Newtonian distortion of the quantum mechanical nature of consciousness/reality. (I use ‘quantum mechanical’ here as a philosophical and psychological model of thought, and not merely as a way of studying matter and energy.)


7/3/77, Kayseri, Turkey
Symbolic thought:
Human consciousness is determined and constrained by density of thought. Density of thought means the number of conscious images and thoughts occurring in a given period. Even in highly exciting moments like the minutes before a race or curtain call, or the seconds before an auto-collision, there are only so many thoughts that consciously pass thru the mind. The actual number seems constrained by the normal activity of mental exertion The more one is able to concentrate, the more concentrated thoughts can be, ie, the denser the thoughts become. Like a thread or wire or beam that can hold so much tension [or transmit so much data - smb, 2012], so our consciousness can endure only so much stress. Beyond that limit it snaps, or blanks out; the system crashes. That limit can be extended by active practice of methods of concentration, however.

But this is the essential point: increased thought density does not work on a linear or algebraically continuous basis. At some point the many thoughts condense or merge into one or a few thoughts or images, like changing energy levels in an atom or molecule. One increases to a limit the number of thoughts per moment and then, remarkably, they condense into a symbol or archetype, and the working number of thoughts suddenly reduces [the ‘aha’ moment; epiphany] and the [potential] intensity of thought increases on an equivalent basis. This is a functional (phenomenological) description of the formation of symbols and symbolic thought.

Homeostasis, evolution, and paganism

What follows is a non-poetic restatement of the ideas in my poem “XIII” of “Pesez ov an Unrevelen Narrattiv”, which is a poem-series in my longer poem Mith ov the Aternen Jew.

While exploring the psychological roots of anti-Semitism, it has occurred to me that the contents of consciousness can be generated by interior workings of the body itself. Indeed, much of what we call myth (such as the various myths of the Jew, or the idea of Messiah, or ideas and stories about God or The Gods) may be seen as a narrativization of biological forces. This is not so strange as it might, at first, sound. The idea is derived by understanding that homeostasis and evolution are two conflicting forces in nature, and it is further substantiated by the circularity of consciousness. Let me explain.

Homeostasis is, to quote that intellectual cornerstone, Wikipedia,

...the property of a system, either open or closed, that regulates its internal environment and tends to maintain a stable, constant condition. Typically used to refer to a living organism, the concept came from that of milieu interieur that was created by Claude Bernard and published in 1865. Multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustment and regulation mechanisms make homeostasis possible.

Thus, all living creatures rely on homeostasis, the body-mind’s attempt to survive by maintaining balance and stability in an environment that is inherently, and ultimately, destabilizing and destructive.

One of those forces that is pitted against homeostasis is evolution. Evolutionary changes reconfigure both interior and exterior biological “landscapes”, causing organisms to constantly rebalance and reconfigure their systems to optimize survival. Exterior evolutionary and environmental changes threaten an organism’s ability to survive by changing the conditions of the niche in which the organism lives. Interior evolutionary changes, that is evolutionary changes in an organism itself, directly confront the homeostatic systems that manage an organism. The organism’s own systems now must compete for control of resources and management functions. From a homeostatic “point of view”, evolutionary changes are invasive and threatening systems.

I would suggest that these interior stresses, while largely subconscious, yet get converted to narratives, as the mind seeks explanations for its stresses. This narrativization of biological stressors is not surprising. One of the conundrums (or ironies) of human consciousness is that we are bound by the circularity of our senses. We use our senses to observe what our senses are. We are not able to step out of ourselves, to step out of our bodies, and perceive what our senses really are, or what our senses are truly perceiving. The notion that our senses are merely windows on reality, while alluring, is unfortunately just a simplistic attempt to step out of our inherent circularity. Acknowledging this circularity, we are forced to the notion that our minds, as our senses, are interpreters and mythmakers, not raw observers. Our identities are myths, as are our ideologies. Thus, our biology will serve our mythmaking, as part of our general experience.

By the way, I use the term “myth” here both in its lesser sense as “illusion”, and in its more elevated sense as a foundational layer of consciousness. Our myths are full of illusion, and yet they can also be our best attempts to understand the circular reality into which we are bound. Thus, for me, “science” is also myth.

We humans are a species in the midst of evolutionary stresses, both interior and exterior. Our particular interior competitions and stresses generated by evolution amplify the exterior stresses of survival, causing a persistent tendency to build a narrative of ethnic invasion. Thus we have biological as well as social stresses tending to create myths of the “other”. This would help account for the persistence of anti-Semitism and its many underlying narratives, including its most modern incarnation, anti-Zionism – hatred of the idea of a Jewish nation.

One final detail, critical to my semi-narrative poem Mith ov the Aternen Jew. While evolution is generally believed to proceed randomly, evolutionary forces are well known to pursue gradients, that is, to fill niches in nature. In my poem I claim that there are gradients in nature that are working to eliminate paganistic thinking. In this case I define “pagan” not in the traditional religious way - the worship of idols and “false” gods - but in psychological terms. Paganistic thinking claims that law and ethics are relative and human productions, and that therefore, there is no one correct system of law or ethics.

I would argue that history suggests the opposite. It appears that humans are moving towards a singular and unified definition of law and ethics. Tribal borders and ethnicities are rapidly breaking down (the foundational cause of Islamic terrorism, by the way). In this process, languages, too are rapidly disappearing.

It seems the biblical prophets understood this particular gradient working on human consciousness, unabashedly claiming that one law and one moral standard would dominate the world. There now seems to be much evidence to that effect, even as we struggle to know, and to shape, what that law and ethics is. What were once prophetic statements that appeared to be arrogantly ethnocentric and wildly implausible, now seem to be the first harbingers of the obvious and the necessary.

Thus I say, there ARE gradients directing evolution, and it seems some of them became a source of ideological belief, long before there was evidence to substantiate them.

Scientific Poetic Fragments

Arkettekcherrel Fragmenz Ammung the Ruwenz

1.
You are not what you appear to be.
Consciousness is not a clear glass;
The world is not a polished mirror.
As a drop of water is distinct
     From the vapor that expressed it,
A different state of itself;
As salt dissolved is distinct from its crystal form,
So are we,
From a finer matter condensed into living crystal,
And distorted by sense, and the coarseness of thought.

2.
Speken on the sixth day:
     “O mordel Addom
     “I will kreyate a werl with yu.
     “I will brake yu
     “An grate lite will por frum yur mienz.
     “I will replakkate yu,
     “Bilden bloks aplentee,
     “All simmaller an uneek.
     “I will press yu and twist yu
     “An stress yur hart
     “Tu make yu a lume
     “An weev a bodee a lite
     “Kompilen yur faent flashen.

Spiritual phenomenology, 3

And finally this phenomenology, one I would call transmigrational. It is a complement to Things You Will Hear, which I posted here on Oct. 12, 2008.

Energies I Followed. Places I Became.

...Then I became two seagulls
Spiralling their sex dance,
In helices,
Three gulls becoming
Fighting for a clam,
And then the flock itself,
A body of many bodies.

I became the moon,
Not more than a crescent,
My face turned down
With tears in my eyes
Like Hamlet's Ophelia
Despair as I follow the sun.
Ribbons fallen from my hair
Into a hundred reflections in a bay,
A red haze along the horizon.

Became a grain of sand
Jostled by the onrush,
A grain of quartz
Abandoned on a sandbar,
A grain of mica
Beneath the froth and hiss.

Become the ripples of a wave
     notes of a chord
In a larger wave
     in a turbulent fugue
In a willless undulation
     silently.

And rising from Ophelia
In an arc across Orion
I will become a great blue phoenix
Looking down on Ertha
As she whirls,
Hands thrown out!
Head thrown back!
In a dizzying spin of despair.
I will rise from her
And watch her drift into the waves.

Spiritual phenomenology, 2

This phenomenology describes a stepwise emotional transition, as it is experienced moving in opposite directions. I'm particularly fond of the symmetry.

Two Cuts of a Melody

The higher music creates order
But letting go to the lower music:

Lost in the Angers
And becoming angry.
Devoured by the Fears
And living in fear.
Absorbed into Noise
And reverbing noise.

Only following Orders!


The Higher Order creates music.
But only following music

And reverbing noise.
Absorbed by the Noise

And living in fear.
Lost in the Fears

And becoming angry.
Devoured by the Angers

And letting go to the lower orders.

Spiritual phenomenology

As I was editing my personal narratives this Yom Kippur, I thought of the various markers in my spiritual/religious journey. That path, looking back, seems rather like a direct line, a search that slowly, inevitably led to Judaism from a general or universal or nondescript spirituality. But, of course, it was not a direct line. Neither was it a product of any conscious pursuit, especially during the period of 1968 to 1989.

In 1968, as an 18 year old, I was a confirmed (devout?) atheist with a deep disdain for religion. However, I couldn’t avoid the incessant incursions of thoughts, impressions, and experiences that insisted there was a higher self or higher state of being “beyond.” Over time I acknowledged the reality of these experiences, not as aberrations or weaknesses or regressions in my “progress out of superstition,” but as insights at the horizon of my consciousness.

As I attempted to expand my consciousness, what was once on the horizon came nearer. Still, at the horizon a greater being/light continued to shine and draw me out. I have tried to name both the experience and the “thing” that I was experiencing. A Divine Imperative is one way of describing them both in a single term. The more personal term for the thing experienced is, of course, God.

I wanted to upload a particular one of those markers on my path, a poem entitled, “Hu Iz Like Yu?” What a crooked road we walk! As I was searching for it, I discovered in my archives three other poems.

Every poem is a marker, but unlike “Hu Is Like Yu?,” I do not think of these three as important turning points. Nonetheless, I was very glad to excavate them and bring them to bloglite. As you will see they are a very different kind of poem from the work I am now doing. I would call them spiritual phenomenologies. This first poem, below, and the next few that I intend to upload, date from the early 1980's.

Things You Will Hear

Above all, the ocean
Waves crashing and the low pitch,
Breakers,
                                        Waves crashing
Moving up the scale
To the high hiss,
Foam.

You will hear it again
As the light breaks,
                                        Crashing
                                        And the high vibrato,
Radiance,
On your Etheric Body.
Waves?
A distant memory.

                                        And yet again
Then the rhythmic scales
Will merge into a heartbeat.
Diastole. Systole.
Diastole. Systole.
                                        The rhythmic scales
                                        But you can't remember where,
The rumble and the hiss,
And all will be forgotten.

No, a vague recollection
Will come and go,
You cannot hold it,
                                        Twilight,
                                        Waves crashing
And you will continue
Changing bodies.

Consciousness and personal narratives

Phenomenological observations:

In the eleven hours of intense prayer/introspection of Yom Kippur, I found myself contemplating, and critiquing, the narrative (narratives) that I have constructed to give shape, identity, and meaning to my life. In other words, I was researching, editing and rewriting my past.

Everyone does this, altho it seems many or most people do it quite unconsciously. So let me amplify: Our personal (and public) narratives are not just a compendium of all our experiences. Our narratives are constructed with much effort, however unconsciously. We include and exclude events from the sum of our experiences. But the process is not merely a winnowing. We edit, revise, distort, deny, and create ex nihilo, our past as we manage our narratives.

This process is not just limited to people in therapy. It is a day to day part of every human life. Going on a diet, managing anger, engaging in a rant, building a relationship, unraveling a relationship, going to work, staying home from work. These all involve building and editing our personal and public narratives. Indeed, everything we do is grist for the mill of our narrative building. And to observe ourselves doing this is what we call phenomenology.

To say this differently, we not only think our thoughts and do what we do. We also watch ourselves thinking our thoughts and doing what we do. And, as we watch ourselves doing what we do, we edit what and how we remember it. Problem is, what we leave out is not simply gone. What we edit and distort does not simply replace what actually happened. What we create does not simply take its place in the narrative without trace.

Our minds are compendiums of all that we experience, of all that we perceive and all that we misperceive, and all that we distort. The more inaccurate, distorted, and imaginary our narratives, the more limited and burdened and blind we become. The more static and bounded our narrative, the more constrained and choked our lives become.

Thus the process of narrative-editing is an existential necessity, if we are to change, grow, and renew ourselves. We read about this in various holy texts. It is true. The blind can regain sight. The troubled and the burdened can become free (or, more accurately, freer).A moral imperative can emerge in a hedonistic or cynical or sociopathic life.

Need I mention that a significant rethinking of one’s narrative is rarely fast, easy, or pleasant?

Turning back to the phenomenological process itself, we come to realize that we have multiple threads of thought concurrently ongoing in our consciousness. These layers include the obvious intellectual, emotional, and sensory layers. But we also think on supra-rational and supra-sensual (extrasensory) layers, as well as instinctual and autonomic layers. And at the same time we have multiple layers of self-observation overseeing all these processes.

Jung and others have lumped much of this multi-tiered thinking into 2 categories, the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. I am trying here to be more precise than that. Being more precise, we can shed light on these “unconscious” realms, and we can more carefully, accurately, and responsibly edit our personal narratives. And thus we might increase our mental and moral development, our sensitivity to and respect for earth and the life it contains, and our awareness of a partnership with the Divine to create a world of kindness.