chapter 3

Consciousness as Context and Subjectivity

The etymology of the word “consciousness” (con-scire, “with-knowing”) implies a relational, or systems view, as discussed in the last chapter—pointing to the relation between subject and object. Conscious knowing is knowing with knowing-that-you-know. Are there forms of knowing that are not conscious in this sense? Certainly, there is unconscious knowing involved in our knowing how to grow hair, or skin cells over a wound, and other “autonomic” physiological functions of the body. Then there are the forms of knowing—such as how to tie shoelaces, or how to ride a bicycle—that initially required conscious practice, but have become automated habits, involving nonconscious knowing. The proportion of conscious functioning to unconsciousness is obviously difficult to assess—like the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Eric Kandel, a Nobel laureate neuroscientist, has estimated:

Eighty to ninety percent of what we do is unconscious. When we speak, we use presumably correct grammatical structures while paying little if any conscious attention to this grammar. And we act in lots of other ways without having the slightest clue what we are actually doing (Scientific American Mind, October–November 2008, p. 16).

The conclusions of modern brain science in this regard are more in accord with Eastern and esoteric teachings about the nature of consciousness than they support the conventional assumptions of the Western worldview. In Western culture, we tend to assume that, ordinarily, we are conscious, or we “have consciousness.” We do recognize that there are unconscious states, such as sleep or coma; and we also have come to recognize, since the writings of Sigmund Freud, that unconscious impulses, thoughts, and feelings can have a profound influence on our normal, waking-state consciousness. Eastern psychologies, on the other hand, including those of Vedanta and Buddhism, regard unconsciousness (called avidya, “not-knowing”) as the default condition of the human being from birth on, and consciousness as something that is generated—like an additional perception of a web of connections.

Consciousness, according to those teachings, only develops as a result of disciplined mental and psychological practices known as meditation and the different forms of yoga. Such is also the view in the teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff, who insisted that humans, when in the ordinary waking state, are actually asleep and functioning like automata. Only through mindfulness practice, or what he called “self-remembering,” could one hope to generate consciousness—that is, conscious thinking, perceiving, feeling, and acting.

Following this line of thought, we can distinguish ordinary unconscious psychic functioning from the same function exercised consciously, with added awareness and perception of context. I show these comparisons in the following table.

Ordinary habitual function	Conscious function, with context
perception	apperception
sympathy	empathy
knowledge or information	wisdom or understanding
reaction	response
orientation	attention
expectation, impulse, desire	intention or interest
sensing	clairsentience
habitual thinking	mindful thinking
dreaming	lucid dreaming
judgment	discernment

Perception and Apperception. Perception plus awareness of emotional and associational context is apperception. In the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), invented by Henry A. Murray (who was one of my professors at Harvard University), you are shown ambiguous drawings of figures in various relational postures toward each other, and you write a story about “what is happening” in the picture. The story you tell reveals the thoughts, images, and feelings that you are projecting into the imaginary scene. The concept of apperception is in many ways applicable to psychedelic forms of expanded consciousness. Anyone who has had an experience with one of the classic hallucinogens (such as LSD, psilocybin, or mescaline) knows that in such states you are not hallucinating in the sense of seeing something that isn’t there, but rather you are perceiving more of what is there—clouds or webs of multiple mental, imagistic, or emotional associations are being evoked, dependent of course on the perceiver’s intentional set and personality.

Sympathy and Empathy. In sympathy we resonate automatically and unconsciously with someone else’s emotional state. Empathy, or compassion, also has that affective resonance—but in addition, there is an understanding of the situational context and the causes of the feelings. Sympathy is like you walk down the street and see someone in a hole, and you climb into it with them. “Misery loves company” is an apt motto for this reaction. Empathy implies more: you recognize the one in the hole and reach down with a helping hand. With sympathy you just feel as the other person feels. This can be a totally unconscious reaction—like feeling depressed just by passing nearby to a depressed person in the street, even without recognizing the connection. With empathy there is, in addition, recognition that you are not that person, though you feel some of the same feelings as the other. The expression of empathy is a key factor in successful interpersonal conflict resolution and in psychotherapy. The substance MDMA has been called “empathogenic” for its ability to facilitate empathic connection in psychotherapy. The practice of compassion, its equivalent, plays a central role in Buddhist and other spiritual traditions.

Knowledge and Understanding. The distinction between knowledge about something, or information (typically book-knowledge), and wisdom or understanding, which includes awareness of background and context, has often been drawn. Some like to make the same distinction by referring to it as “head-knowledge” versus “heart-knowledge.” A person may know a lot about a certain subject matter and be able to identify and describe relevant words and concepts, and yet not have the practical uses and applications of that knowledge. The latter requires wisdom and understanding—having experienced the truth of that knowledge and being able to “stand on” what one knows in practical terms.

Reaction and Response. A reaction to a stimulus situation is immediate and instinctive, as in a child’s or an animal’s reaction—“I want it” or “I hate it.” A response, on the other hand, involves an ability to delay immediate gratification in the interests of adjusting to reality: it implies an element of forethought, planning, and choice—a “response-ability.” The ability to respond to situations appropriately, mediating between one’s wishes or impulses and the objective facts of the situation, is called “reality testing,” or also “time-binding,” and is one of the hallmarks of civilized, mature, ethical conduct. Studies of brain development have concluded that the ability to anticipate future consequences of one’s actions is related to the forebrain cortex, which does not completely link up with the other, older parts of the brain until the mid- to late twenties.

Orientation and Attention. Even relatively simple organisms have an orienting reflex, often a startle response, as when we, like any mammal, turn our heads toward a source of sudden loud sounds or toward vivid visual stimuli. The gesture of orienting sets the direction of attention—our attention is captured or captivated by intense or attractive stimuli. But we can also consciously and intentionally choose to direct our attention toward something. “My experience is what I choose to attend to,” as William James said. In an interpersonal conversation or dialogue situation, we attend by looking at and listening to our interlocutor. In mindfulness meditation, we choose to direct our attention inwardly, toward the breath or observing the never-ending stream of thoughts. The notion of attention implies something that is consciously chosen and extended: we “pay attention.” In German, one says wir schenken die Aufmerksamkeit (“we give attention”). Whether as a payment or a gift, the principle of attention as a conscious action is clear.

Expectation and Intention. Words like “expectation,” “impulse,” or “desire” refer to the directional vector of attention when it is unconscious. “We see what we want (or expect) to see” is a widely understood colloquial expression of this principle. Intent, interest, intentionality, or set refer to the internal factors, consciously chosen, that determine the direction or focus of our attention. In the Harvard psychedelic research projects we observed that “set and setting” were the crucial determinants of the contents of a psychedelic state. But the “set-and-setting” hypothesis, as it came to be known, really applies to any state of consciousness—hypnosis, meditation, dreams, or what we call the ordinary, waking state of consensus reality. Your experience of the reading of this book, and mine in the writing of it, is to a large degree a function of the set or intention you and I bring to this communicative exchange, as well as the context or setting of the experience. The formula below summarizes the relationships between intention, attention, and awareness.

intention

or

question

attention

awareness

Sensing, Seeing, and Hearing. These senses have their extended, more conscious forms—in clairsentience, clairvoyance, and clairaudience. Yogic texts speak of such forms of extended, “clear” perception as siddhis (“attainments”). In Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, it is said that such siddhis may occur as the result of birth (i.e., congenital), or through the use of certain herbs (i.e., psychoactive), or as a result of practices of mantra and disciplined concentration, or through the practice of deep meditative trance states (samadhi). With clairvoyant visual perception, whether occurring spontaneously or in a psychedelic or a meditative state, we see the object that we would ordinarily see, and in addition we see the subtler energetic frequencies—what some might call the aura of objects and living beings. “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite,” as William Blake wrote in a famous verse. With clairaudient hearing we’re hearing the subtle shadings of timbre and the harmonic overtones and undertones in music. With clairsentience, a skillful bodyworker can sense the emotional-physical tension patterns in the body she or he is touching, and be able to direct healing energy to resolve them.

Conditioned Thinking and Mindful Thinking. Conditioned or habitual thinking tends to follow along well-trodden paths in our minds, like the routines we follow in our habitual working attitude. On the other hand, thinking consciously and intentionally along new associative pathways, “out of the box” as we say, is one of the hallmarks of creativity. Witnessing one’s own habitual thought processes, and how they are distorted by conditioned emotional reactions of fear and craving, is a key insight that is gained through mindfulness meditation. The mental and psychological practices of yoga aim at liberating the mind from its exclusive focus on the satisfaction of wants, what some call the “desire-mind,” and learning to direct our thought processes according to conscious intention.

Dreaming and Lucid Dreaming. In ordinary dreams, there is a sequence of thoughts and images, often associated with feelings, sometimes body sensations, over which we have no conscious control. In lucid dreaming, which can be developed through yogic practices and meditation, the dreamer is conscious of the fact that he or she is in the dream state of consciousness. Becoming conscious, one can direct one’s observations and actions in the dream according to interest or intention. And because the dreamer is in another, or “subtle” body, distinctly different from the physical, movements such as flying are possible with lucid dreaming.

Automatic Judgment and Conscious Discernment. In the course of our daily experience, our thoughts, images, feelings, perceptions, and sensations are subject to immediate, mostly unconscious, reflexive evaluation. Sensations are judged pleasurable or painful; visual or auditory perceptions or images are beautiful or ugly; our feelings are good or bad; our motives and actions right or wrong; our thoughts true or false. The judgmental overlay over our experience is usually dichotomous, though in some situations a third possibility of indifference (“take it or leave it”) may occur.

According to Paul MacLean’s triune brain theory, basic feeling judgments of “approach versus avoid” are made in the limbic system, particularly the amygdala, and take precedence in time over higher brain functions. It makes sense from an evolutionary point of view that the capacity to judge potential threats should have priority access to our sensorimotor system. When I step off the curb to cross the street and see a moving object coming toward me, I jump back to avoid the danger—I don’t take time to identify the nature of the beast or vehicle coming toward me. Reflexive judgments can be life-saving.

Since the dichotomous judgment is superimposed on the perception, feeling, action, or thought prior to understanding, we can appropriately refer to it as “prejudgment” or prejudice. Our personal and cultural prejudices restrict and block differentiated perception and crudely simplify our aesthetic and affective responses. “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like,” conveys this attitude. In interpersonal relations, when blaming judgments and accusations occur, communication ends. In one ayahuasca experience I had, the little green elves that I often see with this plant teacher said to me (somehow), “You humans are really weird—you see everything in black and white, when there are really seven colors.”

This is not to say that the capacity for judgments, for making choices for or against something or someone, is to be eliminated, even if such a thing were possible. The prejudicial judgments we tend to impose on our experience restrict and limit our perception and understanding. When the judgments we make are accompanied by conscious observations, reflection, and consideration of context, we are practicing “discernment,” implying a heightened degree of differentiated awareness and situational consideration. The Buddhists call this quality “discriminative wisdom,” and it is one of the six paramitas, perfections or ideal qualities to be developed on the spiritual path.

Objective and Subjective Knowing

In the comparisons shown in the above table, the conscious function involves heightened perception and a constellation of associations. A systems view of humans and universe is implied here—a relational view of multilevel interconnectedness. In such a living systems worldview, the conscious communion of living subjects is acknowledged as equally real and valid as the conscious perception of identifiable objects. Things, objects, and persons are temporary nodes in the web of life, in ever-changing patterned relations with other nodes. All being is interbeing, in Thich Nhat Hanh’s felicitous phrase.

Consciousness is the experiential side, the subjective knowing, feeling, sensing, and imaging of relations—the “knowing-with,” knowing from the inside point of view. This may be distinguished from the outside point of view, where we make observations about phenomena and communicate with other observers to develop a consensual description. A subjective experience communicated to and recognized by at least one other person becomes an objective observation. Hence, subjective + 1 = objective. Further observations by additional subjects increase objectivity.

For example, scientists study a tree with objective measurements and analysis of its chemistry, botany, genetics, growth patterns, life cycle, and so forth. As individuals, we can read and learn the categorized information about the tree—gathering what we call consensual, objective knowledge. Alternatively, we may merge in subjective empathy with the tree, so that we feel ourselves at one with it—experiencing the slow vegetative growth of trunk and branches, and possibly (if our worldview permits it) communing with the spirit of the tree.

One time, on a walk through a wooded area on Mount Tamalpais, near where I live in Northern California, I was thinking to myself (with some frustration) that I didn’t “know” many of the trees among which I was walking—that is, I didn’t know their botanical names. In a sudden flash of nonverbal communion, I “knew” that the trees didn’t know or care about that human category information either—that it was actually irrelevant to their essential being, and it was irrelevant to the communion occurring between us.

Although some say that a unified consciousness involves an obliteration of differences between beings, I contend that empathy for the subjectivity of another being (whether tree or animal or human) includes the knowledge that we are distinctively different. Just as, in the state of being “in love,” we may experience a telepathic and empathic oneness of thoughts and feelings while yet knowing, appreciating, and cherishing the otherness of the beloved.

The interior mindspace of subjective consciousness is as infinitely vast as the outer space cosmos revealed by our astronomers. “No matter how far you travel in the realm of psyche, you will never come to the end of it,” wrote Heraclitus. As an analogy, we may think of the space-time continuum as a transparent hollow sphere, where consciousness is the subjective, inner, concaveness, and the objective, outer, convexity is matter and energy, in their ceaseless transformations.

We use the powerful methods science has developed for analyzing the objective complexities and details of our world. For a more complete and integrated understanding, we add to them the inner, sensuous, feeling-based, aesthetic appreciation of the essential, subjective interconnectedness of the ever-transforming web of life.