Consciousness & Neurophenomenology.
There is a sense that the contents of our minds are simply a churning and a rearranging of thoughts and feelings about things we have already perceived. A sense that if left entirely to ourselves, nothing genuinely new could come to us. This is a sense that there is no ‘life within’, but only that we can acquire more and different knowledge of the external world, and merely rearrange it as we like, as though information was the only substance and currency of the mind.
It is in this sense that science typically understands consciousness in terms of representation. What we experience (aka consciousness) is typically thought of as an ‘internal’ representation of objective things that exist ‘out there’ i.e. in the ‘real’ physical world. For example, in the laboratory, vision scientists manipulate visual displays and then investigate what happens in the brain of participants who are viewing the display.
However my introduction to meditative practice as a junior monastic has also led me to think of consciousness in different ways from this. Consciousness has timbre and qualities that are more than merely a representation of external objects and which can seem to lie partially outside our intellectual sense of agency and selfhood.
In this sense, it seems to me that there are inner constellations of experience, felt bodies of knowledge that exist autonomously to our intellect. They have their own nucleus and source of meaning outside of our knowledge and yet which our intellect can surrender into, and be nurtured by. In my experience of meditation, these ‘inner constellations’ feel to be vaster and deeper than intellectual thought processes. They can be approached by deepening experiential awareness, supported through a cultural form or practice, such as yogic meditation, or perhaps a religious rite, dance or a martial art.
My experience is that it is deeply healing to do this- for the active part of my mind- my intellect and ego, to come in contact with this quality of experience which is autonomous to my ego, and has less of a sense of ‘mechanism’ about it. It is a place of authenticity, and it is liberating. It is a liberation of the intellect, because I experience myself as something which my own intellect cannot contain or invent or even fully grasp. For example, it is deeply satisfying to me that the experience of sadhana* is not one that I am creating, or trying to imagine, or re-constituting from other experiences I may have already had. Rather, it is an experience that I can surrender into completely, and through this, become something new, and capable of newness.
This constellation of experience reveals itself to me and is deeper than my intellect and exists autonomously to my ego. It is within who I am, yet I find it by allowing myself to enter into and become part of the practices and techniques that were taught to me by others. Strangely, technique leads beyond itself, to fluid modes of awareness that feel to have a life of their own. In this, such a mode of awareness is capable of bringing new life to the psyche.
Explored in this way, Consciousness can seem to lie partially outside of our intellectual sense of agency and selfhood. Because of this, Consciousness can reveal itself to be immensely psychologically life giving for the psyche that has habitually felt itself defined by a sense of egoic identity and agency. As much as we want to control, existentially speaking, I think that we want to lose control. Because to control our self, is to define our self by the limitations of our intellect. We are vaster than that, and we long to know it.
Contemplative meditative practices have been a powerful way to investigate consciousness for thousands of years. However for the most part, Western culture still does not have a close understanding the intention of these practices or what they are capable of. The growing body of scientific research into consciousness excites me. Even more so, Neurophenomenology, the approach to such research that incorporates phenomenology and techniques such as those of the contemplative traditions. My hope and belief is such an approach will increasingly be able to develop a richer and more nuanced understanding of the possiblities packed into this strange and mercurial phenomenon that we are: consiousness.
*Sadhana: Spiritual Practice.
