Ontology of Consciousness: Percipient Action (Bradford Books)

Ontology of Consciousness

Ontology of Consciousness Percipient Action

edited by Helmut Wautischer

A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

© 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (Including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission In writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email [email protected] or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ontology of Consciousness. Percipient Action / edited by Helmut Wautischer p. cm. "A Bradford book." Includes bibliographical references and Index. ISBN 0-262-23259-6 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

List of Figures and Tables

xi

Foreword xv Robert A. F. Thurman Preface xix Helmut Wautischer Introduction xxi Stanley Krippner I

Expanding the Ontological Matrix

1

1

The Emptying of Ontology: The Tibetan Tantric View E Richard Sorenson

2

The Soul and Communication between Souls Edith L. B. Turner

3

Consciousness and Reality in Nahua Thought in the Era of the Conquest James Maffie

4

Pre-Columbian Artistic Expressions of Indigenous Concepts of Soul in CrossCultural Perspective 127 Armand J. Labbe´

5

Why One Is Not Another: The Brain-Mind Problem in Byzantine Culture Antoine Courban

6

Soul and Paideia: On the Philosophical Value of a Dialectical Relation Michael Polemis

5

79 97

163 193

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Contents

II

Localizing Subjective Action

205

7

Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind Hubert Markl

8

Consciousness Cannot Be Explained in Terms of Specific Neuronal Types and Circumscribed Neuronal Networks 231 Mircea Steriade

9

Consciousness as a Relation between Material Bodies Pavel B. Ivanov

10

The Priority of Local Observation and Local Interpretation in Evaluating the ‘‘Spirit Hypothesis’’ 273 David J. Hufford

11

Effects of Relativistic Motions in the Brain and Their Physiological Relevance 313 Mariela Szirko

12

A Palindrome: Conscious Living Creatures as Instruments of Nature; Nature as an Instrument of Conscious Living Creatures 359 Mario Crocco

III

Experience of Existence

13

The Evolution of Consciousness in Sri Aurobindo’s Cosmopsychology Matthijs Cornelissen

14

An Existentialist Understanding of Consciousness Julia Watkin

15

Toward an Ontology of Consciousness with Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Jonas 449 Karim Akerma

16

Thinking Like a Stone: Learning from the Zen Rock Garden Graham Parkes

17

The Concept of Person in African Thought: A Dialogue between African and Western Philosophies 507 Heinz Kimmerle

18

Of Indian God-Men and Miracle-Makers: The Case of Sathya Sai Baba Erlendur Haraldsson

209

241

395 399

429

475

525

Contents

ix

19

Sentient Intelligence: Consciousness and Knowing in the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri 549 Thomas B. Fowler

20

Ontology of Consciousness: Reflections on Human Nature Thomas Szasz

Epilogue 587 Christian de Quincey Contributors Index 605

593

575

Figures and Tables

Figure 1.1

Young Tibetan novices

6

Figure 1.2a

Novice memorizes his particular studies while subconsciously harmonizing

7

A senior monk harmonizes the evocative power of a Tantric ritual

7

Figure 1.3

Debating aggregation at Gaden Monastery

8

Figure 1.4

Reasoned challenges are athletically considered on rational merits, not rank

9

Figure 1.2b

Figure 1.5

Young novice awed by the sounds of a Tantric ritual

22

Figure 1.6

Heruka Tantric practice includes iconographic diagrams

26

Figure 1.7

Choreographic representation of the inescapability of death

27

Figure 1.8

Elder monk concentrates on the nonverbal aspects of consciousness

28

Table 1.1

Eighty obstructive states of consciousness

31

Figure 1.9a

Ancient statue of Mahakala

36

Figure 1.9b

Ancient statue of Avalokiteswara reveals calm joyousness

36

Figure 1.10a

Heruka unites with Vajrayogini

38

Figure 1.10b

Guhyasamaja registers fervor during consort practice

39

Figure 1.11

A rope hammock attracts excited conjoint exploration by novices

47

Figure 1.12

Conjoint sleeping by young novices

50

Figure 1.13

Novices raptly harmonize into a Tantric ritual

52

Figure 1.14

Participation in Tantric ritual by young Tibetan novices inspires others

53

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Figure 1.15a

Figures and Tables

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Abbot of Schechan Tantric Monastery

54

Figure 1.15b

Losang Thinley Khensur, Abbot of Gyumed Tantric University

54

Figure 1.15c

Losang Tenzin Khensur, Gyumed Tantric University

55

Figure 1.15d

Losang Nawang Khensur, Abbot of Gyumed Tantric University

55

Figure 1.15e

Geshe Lharmpa Tashi Gyaltsen

55

Figure 1.15f

Chosang Phunrab, Sanskrit and Tibetan scholar

55

Figure 3.1

Tlatilco funerary mask symbolizing duality

99

Figure 3.2

Mixtec funerary mask symbolizing duality

100

Figure 4.1

Shaman with conical hat: trance theme

134

Figure 4.2

Shaman with white cape: trance theme

135

Figure 4.3

Spirit bird: shaman-in-flight theme

136

Figure 4.4

Ithyphallic horned figure holding rattles: empoweredshaman theme

136

Figures 4.5a–b

Horned figure: empowered-shaman theme

137

Figures 4.6a–b

Horned figure with drum: empowered-shaman theme

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Figure 4.7

Severed head with horn: soul-capture theme

138

Figures 4.8a–b

Seated horned figure: empowered-shaman theme

138

Figure 4.9

Horned shaman strapped to bed

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Figure 4.10

Textile: empowered shaman with animal familiars

139

Figure 4.11

Mummy mask: shaman with lightning tingunas

140

Figure 4.12

Mummy mask: shaman with cat-headed tingunas

140

Figure 4.13

Mummy mask: shaman with tingunas

141

Figure 4.14

Mummy mask: empowered-shaman figure

141

Figure 4.15

Mummy mask: shaman with human-headed tingunas

141

Figure 4.16

Mummy mask: shaman with serrated tingunas

141

Figures 4.17a–b

Shaman in trance and empowerment themes

142

Figure 4.18

Drawing of the Gateway God at Tiwanaku

143

Figure 4.19

Stirrup-spout vessel: winged-shaman-in-combat theme

144

Figure 4.20

Pedestaled bowl: shaman in transformation and soul flight

146

Figure 4.21

Drawing of a winged shaman rendered in Olmec style

147

Figure 4.22

Drawing of transformed Olmec shaman

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Figures and Tables

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Figure 4.23

Drawing of Olmec shaman in jaguar transformation

149

Figure 4.24

Drawing of Olmec shaman in jaguar transformation

149

Figures 4.25a–b

Metate in the form of a jaguar

150

Figure 4.26

Bowl referencing the three divisions of the shamanic universe

151

Figure 4.27

Sculpture of fanged personage in menacing posture

152

Figure 4.28

Sculpture of shamanic figure with alter ego

152

Figure 4.29

Sculpture of fanged anthropomorphic personage

153

Figure 4.30

Sculpture of fanged figure with felinelike alter ego

153

Figures 4.31a–b

Figural jar: shaman in avian transformation

154

Figures 4.32a–b

Double-spouted jar: polymorphic shaman in soul flight

159

Figure 8.1a

Responses of intrinsically bursting neuron

236

Figure 8.1b

Area 7 neuron in cat

237

Figure 9.1

Hierarchy of activity

259

Figure 9.2

Consciousness as the boundary of subject

260

Figure 9.3

The scope of activity as an analog of meaning

261

Figure 9.4

Dimensions of activity

263

Figure 14.1

Kierkegaard at Gilleleie, 1835

434

Figure 15.1

The four ontological strata according to Hartmann

451

Figure 15.2

Matter and consciousness belonging to one reality

462

Figure 17.1

Community spirit in African life places the community above persons

512

Figure 17.2

Consciousness of the Abaluya people includes a balance between person and community

519

Figure 19.1

Three traditions of intellection that influenced Zubiri’s Noology

556

Sentient intelligence in Zubiri’s philosophy

561

FIgure 19.2

Foreword Robert A. F. Thurman

There is nothing more immediate to human beings than the experience of their own consciousness. Rene´ Descartes even thought his subjective existence, res cogitans, was the one thing in the universe he could be absolutely certain about. Indian philosophers over several millennia thought they had found pure consciousness in an allpervasive, ultimate nature of the universe, and normal individual consciousness is most often found to be delusive. More recently, scientific research has focused on what was thought to be a necessary conclusion, namely, that consciousness is but an epiphenomenon of the brain, a deceptively ‘‘subjective’’ experience aggregated by material processes of an organic mechanism. Various religious philosophies speak of a nonmaterial soul, mind, or consciousness as the essence of a living being. Knowledge of the evolution of Western vocabularies gives insight from the rational beginnings of Western culture itself: for example the term animal emerged from the idea of possessing anima (Latin for ‘‘soul’’). Modern scientists pride themselves on their impressive demonstrations of the actions of materials, but they tend to leave aside the internally experiential nature of consciousness in favor of mapping the neural activity their instruments are able to detect and measure. They witness that awareness, just like atoms, dissolves under analysis, and hold with certainty the absence of soul as the essence (or nonessence) of a being. Consciousness may be all these things and more. As this collection of essays by Helmut Wautischer reveals, current scholarship has, up to now, fallen short by devoting too much of its efforts toward reducing awareness to materialistic components and mechanisms. The range of materials assembled herein goes much further and presents an extraordinarily rich and fascinating symposium on consciousness prepared by a diverse group of scholars, researchers, as well as social and natural scientists. They come from neuroscientific, biological, and anthropological backgrounds, and even Marxist materialism. A wide variety of humanistic perspectives are revealed: secularist, spiritual, and scientific. Yogic Hinduism and Tantric Buddhism can be found. There are arguments for evolutionary explanations of consciousness and arguments for entertaining spiritual perspectives. Studies of ancient and modern societies and ideologies from different

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ethnographical and religious perspectives are included. By its breadth the volume rewards the diligent reader with exposure to an unusual agility and flexibility of mind and, in synthesis of the materials provided, new vistas to consider. Whether approached scientifically or philosophically, the study of consciousness to date has presented serious paradoxes: the materialistic approach is ultimately confronted with particles that surpass their own identifiable properties, while a normative approach, when rigorously pursued, eventually outstrips laws governing individuation. The role of consciousness is—as it always has been—crucial to comprehension of percipient action. There is a growing recognition that a fuller understanding of consciousness is needed if human life on earth is to remain viable. So far science is falling short of this need. At present it is unable even to demonstrate the existence of consciousness as an entity. Similarly philosophers find it difficult to identify consciousness with a clear ontological status. Some scholars see it as an archaic concept (like ‘‘magic,’’ ‘‘soul,’’ or ‘‘spirit’’). Thus it remains poorly understood, awaiting explanation via new modalities for experience and thought. How indeed shall we study something clearly obvious to all beings but which cannot be proved by the analytical methods currently at our disposal? Yet it cannot be rationally dismissed as an illegitimate object of study since its existence is so clearly evident to all who are conscious. Many proponents of consciousness studies try to oversimplify—for example holding too rigidly to materialistic dictums or to mind-body dualism. Others simply deny the existence of nonmaterial entities. And there are those who insist that physical processes cannot have nonphysical components. And so on. There has been a general failure to recognize the foundations of Western terminology; for example, very few researchers on consciousness understand the basic meanings of such Greek concepts as physis, psyche, and so on. Likewise, oversimplified interpretations of nonwestern ethical and social thought do not attain true intellectual status, thus depriving us of the fuller knowledge base we now need regarding the nature of consciousness—a result of ethnocentric tendencies by scholars who believe their own culturally and historically evolved ideas of objectivity and rationality are universal. Changes proceed slowly in such fundamental things. Note that it has taken Western civilization several centuries of hard intellectual struggle to use the term world religions (i.e., religion as a plural concept). Similarly many secular scientists find it difficult to use science in the plural, despite ample anthropological knowledge of cultural variations in cognition. This volume of essays presents a fascinating dialogue between philosophers, scientists, anthropologists, intellectual historians, and thinkers grounded in several spiritual traditions. The breadth of the collective dialogue challenges the reductionism of scientific materialism and pushes thinking toward incorporating seemingly nonphysical aspects in analyses of complex adaptive systems. By contextualizing core concepts from various disciplines and regions, this collection of essays is a unique resource for

Foreword

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those desiring to think past intellectual barriers posed by contemporary philosophy and science—barriers that have begun to threaten the future of our human species. The ancient Indian sage, Shantideva, remarked, ‘‘When your bare feet are injured by stepping on sharp things, you have two choices: pave the entire earth with leather, or make yourself a pair of sandals.’’ Consulting such wisdom traditions will help us develop a more sophisticated science and practice of mind by lessening our tendency to make the outer world conform to any particular culturally parochial mode of thinking and desire, and learning to direct the skills of localized percipient action. With great appreciation for this volume’s participation in a critical enterprise, I recommend it and congratulate the editor and contributors. Robert A. F. Thurman Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies, Department of Religion, Columbia University, New York Editor-in-Chief, Treasury of the Buddhist Sciences

Preface

The defining traits of human experience—consciousness, sentient action, and discourse—have traditionally developed along the trajectory pathways for knowledge provided by culture, religion, philosophy, and science. Such natural progression of knowledge presumably gives a kind of objectivity that anchors and validates itself. It is a well-grounded claim, but valid only up to a point, as a more careful assessment of percipient action will soon reveal that a desire for objectifiable causation can be substantiated only in defined spaces. One only needs to take a close look at any culture’s evolved cognitive patterns to see that its chains of causation are demonstrated by reference to its established cognitive entities. So whatever further ‘‘truths’’ get established thus have an element of parochialness. Such selection is not necessarily bad, since all viable systems will have valid experiential basis for their assertions. Likewise, percipient action proceeds tangentially to established belief. History shows us it can be a useful means to get out of disadvantageous cultural ruts. Nonetheless, at the level of physical causation, any interference with undefined causation might trigger localizable action, but cannot account for action assessment of the undefined ‘‘other.’’ Such action will manifest in micro- and macroscopic levels of reality, and in ‘‘people’’ of all sorts, including humans, plants, rocks, and even planets. Stipulating broad concepts of consciousness that extend their presumed properties to ‘‘everything that exists’’ is surely not helpful to touch directly on the down-to-earth particularities of a given percipient action. A productive approach is to consider field variables that may influence spontaneous action, and perhaps sentience itself. This requires attention to all percipient actions, including those spontaneous ones that at times generate paradigm shifts. At the level of humans, reflective action manifests in a variety of experience that spans from self-centered personhood to degrees of relationship with whatever one can sense as ‘‘other.’’ For the human enterprise, such experience is the story of mankind. In its most barren manifestation, the Darwinian model can serve as suitable metaphor, but in a domain of sentient evolution there is no solace in conquest, since at the core of subtle awareness is one’s realization of interconnectedness. This anthology presents in one volume a significant selection of such experience: archaeological epistemology

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derived from a collective record of human experience, together with a daring scientific map that unites theoretical rigor with the described practical skills. The ontological claim presented in this anthology will challenge the reader beyond his or her comfort zones, since when perceived in its liberating capacity, percipient action delivers objective knowledge to the generative potentiality of personal manifestation. Scientific methodologies, by definition, must allow for objectifying manipulation of the given research subject. It is no surprise that current theories of consciousness effectively assess what consciousness is not. Intentional alteration of a subject’s behavior or its corresponding neurophysiological activity does not reveal the originating source of conscious agency. Consciousness research will require a similar methodological shift that is noted in anthropological research when participatory ethnographers merge with the cultures of their studies by ‘‘going native.’’ Similarly, consciousness research will benefit from validating first-person experience as an authentic and legitimately valid account of mentality. Undoubtedly there is a boom in consciousness studies with the steadily increasing number of researchers who ‘‘do consciousness.’’ It has become a trendy subject with most perplexing actors. There is also no doubt that any lofty metaphysics that originates in belief or faith has no place in science. Once we have come to a full realization of what it means that each and every one of us could be, in principle, no different from any pile of dirt, only then have we matured to accept the courage, full responsibility for, and beauty of reclaiming the ontology of existence. Building from the ashes of reason a foundation of wisdom that shines its irresistible presence through the ever-present vibration of being is a noble pursuit in the exploration of human consciousness. This anthology has been in the making for nearly ten years. I wish to express my thanks and gratitude to all authors for their perseverance with this task. Three of the contributors, Julia Watkin, Armand Labbe´, and Mircea Steriade, have passed away during the preparation of the book. I am grateful for their foresight and motivation to press toward the final editing of their respective chapters. It was only months later that I understood some of their comments during the editorial dialogues. Thank you. Generous support was given by the Institute of Noetic Sciences who helped with a seed grant. Numerous readers and copyeditors have helped with fine-tuning the language of different writing styles into a coherent volume. Thanks to Anita Rosenfield, Maitreya Hawthorne, Lisa A. Smith, Elizabeth Judd, Stephanie Levin, and Evelyn McKenna for their valuable help. My gratitude to Thomas E. Stone, Senior Editor at MIT Press, for his perseverance to endorse the project, to all the support staff at MIT Press, and to Suzanne Haddon for her artistic design of the book cover. Some copyright clearance was needed for portions of chapters 8, 13, 16, and 17, and full credits are given in the Notes sections. Here is a toast to friends and colleagues who care to touch with truthful communication, in an unending desire for continuous delight in the creation of mindful spontaneous presence.

Introduction Stanley Krippner

William James (1958), the first U.S. psychologist of eminence, held that ‘‘normal waking consciousness’’ is only one special type of consciousness, and that ‘‘parted from it by the filmiest of screens’’ different forms exist that ‘‘forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality’’ (p. 298). After a half century of ignoring the issues raised by James regarding the topic of consciousness, psychologists began to pay attention to such fundamental questions as the definition of consciousness, the components of conscious experience, and the mechanisms of consciousness. One investigator, Thomas Natsoulas (1992), found six different dictionary definitions of consciousness (namely, the interpersonal meaning, the personal meaning, the awareness meaning, the reflective meaning, the unitive meaning, and the general state meaning). Another investigator, Imants Baruss, read the pertinent literature and identified six meanings of the term (i.e., the characteristic of an organism that entails processing information and acting on it, the explicit knowledge of one’s situation, subjective awareness, intentionality, one’s sense of personal existence, and one’s participation in a shared plan). In other words, there is no consensus on the definition of the word consciousness, but those who use the term speak of a pattern or mosaic of a living organism’s perceptual, cognitive, and emotional processes—some of which occur while the organism is fully aware and some of which take place while one is unaware of the environment (e.g., when one is asleep or in a coma) or in so-called altered states of consciousness (e.g., dreaming and meditation). These altered (or alternative) states have their own peculiar subsystems, including the presence or absence of such functions as memory, attention, awareness (of the internal and/or the external environment), sense of identity, input processing, unconscious processing, affect, sense of space and time, evaluation, decision making, motor output, moral judgment, and intuition. Since the resurgence of interest in the topic, and mostly due to improved empirical findings in brain research, psychoneuroimmunology, and the neurosciences, the subject matter of consciousness has sparked numerous theories about its nature and mechanisms. In many spiritual traditions, consciousness is tied to the ancient notion of the ‘‘soul,’’ some indigenous societies believing that each person had more than one.

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Neuroscience discarded the soul decades ago, hoping that they could design a ‘‘theory of everything,’’ perhaps with the cooperation of quantum physicists. Such a theory would generate models that explore the physical connections between neurons, holding that consciousness is rooted in these connections. Consciousness, therefore, becomes an emergent property of the brain, similar to the ‘‘wetness’’ of water and the ‘‘transparency’’ of glass. The philosopher David Chalmers is not so sure. For him the ‘‘hard problem’’ in consciousness studies is subjective experience, and this subjective nature of human consciousness prevents it from being explained in terms of simpler components. The ‘‘hard problem’’ addresses why brain processing is accompanied by an experienced inner life. Instead of something that can be broken down into individual atoms, consciousness seems to be an irreducible, fundamental aspect of the universe, similar to space, time, and mass. Divisive, emotionally charged, and of significant consequence for future generations, the debate resembles concepts reminiscent of the older philosophical debates on dualism versus monism. Some of the latest renditions of either paradigm call in question the judicial foundations of modern societies, challenging the concepts of self, personhood, volition, or agency—even to a point of dismissing human agency, intention, and ‘‘free will.’’ This model of consciousness stands in stark contrast to indigenous models. The Mexican Huichols, for example, lived in a cosmos filled with powerful spirits and intelligent energies, one that bears little resemblance to the one taken for granted by Westerners. Hindu and Buddhist texts are replete with discussions of consciousness and how to regulate it. One type of Buddhist meditation proposes five levels of consciousness that can be attained, and each of these levels contains three subjectively distinct levels, reflecting a construction of consciousness more subtle and complex than anything found in Western conceptualizations. Each of these perspectives can be thought of as a ‘‘story’’ about consciousness. These ‘‘stories’’ vie for serious consideration, attempting to gain the attention of the powerful institutions that bestow research grants, foundation awards, academic appointments, book contracts, and media appearances. As Michel Foucault famously proposed, knowledge is not power, as many people assume; rather, powerful institutions determine what can pass for knowledge. A number of writers (e.g., Ken Wilber) have attempted to make a synthesis of various perspectives about consciousness, acknowledging the seemingly contradictory qualities of existence, like singularity and wholeness. These attempts at synthesis recognize the value and necessity of reaching beyond the boundaries of existing disciplines (such as psychology, neurology, anthropology, and philosophy) to formulate an ontology of consciousness that reconciles the static and active dimensions of existence, the visible and the invisible manifestations of thought and feeling, and the common and the rare phenomenologies of experience.

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Many theories have a capacity to generate testable hypotheses and create explanatory models that appear exhaustive in their descriptive and normative functionality. However, such practice occurs at the expense of excluding equally viable but unincorporated events in nature. From this perspective, the current volume is a major contribution to an integrative discourse. Scholars from thirteen cultures have contributed from a spectrum of twelve research disciplines, ranging from neurophysiology to parapsychology, from medicine to philosophy, and from mathematics to anthropology, with each author making a valiant attempt to grasp the meaning of consciousness. The book is organized in three parts. Part I explores consciousness from anthropological data in support of philosophical interpretations related to Tibetology, the Dene Tha Indians of Northwestern Alberta, the Nahua of Central America, pre-Columbian artifacts from South America, the Byzantine Empire, and ancient Greece. In chapter 1, E Richard Sorenson discusses Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, more a philosophical science than a transcendental religion, in which consciousness occupies the place of supremacy. Over the centuries, curricula were developed in which students of Tantra could focus their attention en masse on symbolic representations of crucial states of awareness. Eventually, students would find it easier to enter levels of consciousness subtler than those dominated by the ordinary sense of their own bodies, by verbal modes of understanding, and finally by the conditions imposed by their own evolutionary and historical background. Edith L. B. Turner’s chapter—chapter 2—questions the limitations of current assumptions made by most scholars working in the anthropology of religion. Such limitations can be overcome by recognizing human situations that include the existence of soul and spirit, situations in which direct experiences are validated through their shared nature within a community. In chapter 3, James Maffie describes Meso-American Nahua ontology, which consists of a unique set of metaphysical claims. Nahua ontology is monistic, holding that only one reality, teotl, exists. Teotl is the self-generating and self-transmuting sacred force or energy that created—as well as that which continually recreates, generates, and permeates—the universe. Consciousness and matter are simply two aspects of teotl and hence ultimately identical with it. In chapter 4, Armand J. Labbe´ gives interpretive context and meaning to a heretofore little deciphered body of pre-Columbian art, by viewing this art against a large body of ethnographic data relevant to indigenous concepts of soul and neotropical shamanism. This artwork can be resynthesized into a cohesive, interpretive model that identifies and differentiates four core themes, namely, shamanic empowerment, shape-shifting, shamanic soul flight, and soul loss and capture. What emerges is an organized view of indigenous concepts of soul and their embeddedness in indigenous accounts of consciousness. Antoine Courban’s chapter—chapter 5—highlights some key changes in the anthropological dualistic paradigm of late antiquity, and their effect on medical practice in

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the Byzantine culture. Courban outlines the transition from dualism to monistic thought, highlights the emergence of some significant nondualistic thinkers, and elaborates on the developments of critical issues throughout the history of the Eastern Roman Empire. Its emerging combination of Latin legalism, Hellenic intellectualism, and Semitic realism still shapes contemporary concepts used in consciousness studies. In chapter 6, Michael Polemis demonstrates how the traditionally philosophical ideal that unified soul and education ( paideia) lost its appeal and scientific value, and assesses the ethical consequences of the demise of the soul in philosophy. He concludes by describing the options by which philosophers could rehabilitate the concept of soul. Part II of the anthology ventures into modern scientific attempts to translate early cultural concepts of consciousness into current theories of nature. Starting with a biological model to account for the occurrence of symbolic language (and with that, the advent of abstract sentience), and with neurophysiological contributions into the workings of neural nets, the project continues with a purely mathematical mapping of relational activities of material bodies. Such interactivity is then explored in the context of humanistic medicine, and all previous perspectives are now synthesized and included in a scientific model for a unified theory that is outlined in the two concluding chapters of this section. In chapter 7, Hubert Markl focuses on the ontology of mind, proposing that its diversity may have evolved by the process of genetic variation and natural selection as investigated in evolutionary theory. The linkage between such a well-prepared brain with a truly linguistic representational system must have produced more than communicative putty to hold together societal networks. In fact, step by step it probably enriched the private world of consciousness, that subjective interactive theater of world models in which an individual could preenact and reenact games in order to adapt better to the complex social reality where it actually had to perform in a public, shared conscious world. In chapter 8, Mircea Steriade asks if specific neuronal types generate consciousness. The mechanisms behind the emergence of subjectivity are hidden, and recordings of identified neuronal types cannot be systematically made in humans. Steriade asserts the impossibility of simultaneous access to various neuronal types belonging to all structures that organize conscious processes in a concerted way, casting doubt on overenthusiastic scenarios that are not realistic. They are of little use to experimental designs and may have undesirable implications for the epistemology of consciousness. The chapter by Pavel B. Ivanov—chapter 9—outlines an integrative study of consciousness, considering that the ‘‘material’’ and the ‘‘ideal’’ are two aspects of the same reality. He suggests that consciousness arises as a form of reflection superior to inanimate existence and life, and that the conscious subject is the most universal form of mediating relations between material bodies. Social and cultural factors shape the conscious behavior of individuals through their nonorganic bodies, and the specificity of

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organic and neural processes in humans is thus determined by their cultural environment. In chapter 10, David J. Hufford observes that the belief that disembodied spirits interact with humankind perseveres through all cultures and through history into the modern world. The occasions for their interaction vary from culture to culture, although there are recognizable patterns of belief that are practically universal. Spirit belief encompasses a broad range, from theological ideas about God and the fate of human souls to beliefs concerning angels, jinn, and demons. Even in the Buddhist traditions that are frequently said to be atheistic and do not conceptualize the existence of ‘‘souls,’’ the concepts of karma and reincarnation imply what is referred to in English as ‘‘soul’’ or ‘‘spirit.’’ These beliefs are supported by a variety of human experiences, ranging from mystical visions to the visits from deceased loved ones often reported by the bereaved. The modern worldview has suppressed the open discussion of spirit experiences, creating the false impression that healthy and sophisticated persons do not have such experiences. The result is a cultural construction in which some of the most powerful and common experiential reasons for spiritual belief are assumed to be absent in the modern, ‘‘disenchanted’’ world. In chapter 11, Mariela Szirko notes that cerebral biophysics is not an exception to established laws of physics applicable to all other occurrences of condensed matter: brains, too, include microphysical components in their tissue that move at close to light-speed. The critical question, one often ignored, is if and how such motions bring about physiological effects and how this relates to psychological realms. Szirko describes the work of neuroscientists in Argentina, dating back to the eighteenth century, and how it has focused on ‘‘electroneurobiology.’’ This approach, which appears to have been especially suitable for revealing any such effects, is based on assuming the uncoupling pathologies that disconnect persons from their circumstances, sharing with sleep and the variations of inattention the common mechanism of changes in a physiological time dilation. This is a relativistic effect of motion from the tissue’s microphysical components, and is physiologically operated through coupling with the electroneurobiological states of that tissue. Szirko argues that these findings are of value to neurobiologists, psychophysiologists, humanists working on brain-mind issues, as well as to scientists investigating biological dynamical systems, biophysics, mathematical biology, computer biology, and molecular biology. In chapter 12, Mario Crocco begins his chapter by observing that conventional wisdom holds that science cannot discover or describe any intrinsic, noninstrumental value. Research in a broader perspective, however, indicates that this may not be the case. Crocco casts a wide net to counter conventional wisdom, including ‘‘astrophysical-biospheric evolution.’’ This process has been functionalized and can be used as a means to afford responsibility to mind-possessing living creatures. In science’s grand picture of reality, therefore, natural science’s aspiration of ‘‘naturalizing the minds’ depiction’’ does not clash with the humanities’ recognition of intrinsic value in persons.

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Part III focuses on people’s experience of their existence, using examples from different traditions and disciplines (Indian psychology, existentialism, philosophical realism, Japanese Buddhism, African communalism, Hindu vibhuti phenomena, sentient intellection, and modern psychiatry). In chapter 13, Matthijs Cornelissen reminds his readers that Sri Aurobindo saw evolution primarily as an ongoing evolution of consciousness, holding that the human mind represents much too imperfect a type of consciousness to be the final resting point of nature. Aurobindo’s Vedantic perspective holds that consciousness is pervasive throughout reality and that it manifests as a range of ever-higher gradations of being. Within the Vedic tradition, ordinary human mentality is considered to be ego-bound and dependent on the physical senses. Above it there is the unitary Higher Mind of self-revealed wisdom, the Illumined Mind where truths are seen rather than thought, the plane of the Intuitive Mind where truth is inevitable and perfect, and finally the cosmic Overmind, comprehensive, allencompassing. But in all these planes, however far beyond our ordinary mentality, there is still a trace of division, the possibility of discord and disharmony. One has to rise above all of them to find a truly Gnostic consciousness, intrinsically harmonious, perfect, one with the divine consciousness that upholds the universe. Cornelissen goes on to compare Aurobindo’s evolutionary conceptualization to concepts more commonly encountered in contemporary consciousness studies, discussing various ontological and epistemological questions arising out of this comparison. In chapter 14, Julia Watkin examines the question of consciousness from the point of view of existential philosophy. Whereas many approach the topic through a clinical consideration of consciousness as an object, existentialism makes personal existence (or human subjectivity) its point of departure. Consciousness and the self are not seen as already present, waiting to be investigated. Instead, personal existence is shown to have a formative role in the development of consciousness and the self. The writings of Søren Kierkegaard are explored, since he was an important pioneer who stressed the importance of viewing the self from a subjective angle. Kierkegaard assumed the existence of an eternal power outside the universe, ruling its workings and destiny. Thus, for him, there was a distinction between the spheres of temporality and eternity. On the basis of this dual perspective, he built his own description of the individual as a spiritual being. It follows that people can become aware of possibility, choice, and action in relation to ideals and values. Kierkegaard’s concept of human objectivity can be contrasted with his understanding of objective truth. He made a careful distinction between what can be known and what must be believed. In chapter 15, Karim Akerma pays special attention to the philosophies of Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Jonas, and their focus on organismic existence. For them consciousness is not spatial; it differs from the spatiotemporal objects and processes that surround sentient beings in their physical, chemical, and biological reality. In spite

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of its lacking spatiality, consciousness is bound to a spatial organismic existence on which it exerts influence and by which it is affected. This view from the organism, with its stress on metabolism and motility—and ultimately, organismic transcendence— neither explains consciousness nor reduces it to the organismic level. Akerma warns his readers that they must be careful not to biologize consciousness. In chapter 16, Graham Parkes described the Japanese ‘‘dry landscape’’ (karesansui) garden, which consists primarily of rocks arranged in a context of gravel or moss, as an art form. Traditional Japanese thought regarded rocks not as inanimate lumps of matter, but rather as dense configurations of the cosmic energies (qi) that animate the entire world. According to ˆ kai and Do ˆ gen, landscapes when properly perceived turn out such philosophers as Ku to be the body of the cosmic Buddha proclaiming the Buddhist teachings through voice and inscription. These ideas have impacted Parkes’s ontology of human consciousness, one that understands it not as independent of inanimate matter, but rather as a field of energies on a continuum with the energies of rocks and stone. In chapter 17, Heinz Kimmerle describes common themes in African philosophy, in which the concept of person is not primarily related to mind-brain issues, but rather to everyday language, especially to proverbs and oral traditions. In this chapter two philosophical systems from East Africa and West Africa are presented, which although extremely different, do not differ from the common philosophical themes in African thought. Joseph M. Nyasani, describing one of these systems, refers to the idea of communalism as it was coined in the statements of some major political leaders during the struggle for independence from colonial rule. The higher value of the community above the individual person in this context was worked out philosophically by Maurice Tshiamalenga Ntumba. The confrontation of the African ‘‘Philosophy of We’’ with the Western ‘‘Philosophy of I,’’ as worked out by Ntumba and Nyasani, was criticized by Kwame Gyekye, who insisted that African thought is characterized by a striving for a balance of community and person. He is also critical of the practice of listening to the spirits of one’s ancestors. Instead, Ntumba proposed a moderate communitarianism as the best solution to the question as to whether the community or the individual person should be taken as the higher value. The following chapter by Erlendur Haraldsson—chapter 18—observes that charismatic religious personalities often gain a following in India, particularly if they obtain a reputation of possessing ‘‘divine’’ powers. Sathya Sai Baba is such a charismatic religious leader whose movement places strong emphasis on devotion to God and to Sai Baba himself, whom most devotees venerate as an avatar (a reincarnation of some aspect of God). His followers emphasize service to others, observing traditional religious values, and sponsoring educational opportunities for young people. Sai Baba’s reputation of performing wondrous feats, which date back to his youth when he claimed to be the incarnation of Sri Sai Baba of Shirdi, has been important for the immense growth of his movement. There are also

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numerous reports of phenomena occurring in faraway places, such as anomalous appearances of vibhuti ash and unexplained fragrances in shrine rooms of devotees, as well as Sai Baba’s appearance in distant places to devotees while they are awake or even while dreaming. Such phenomena are of great interest to the psychology and sociology of religion and provide significant data for any theory about human consciousness. Thomas B. Fowler’s chapter—chapter 19—discusses the philosophy of Xavier Zubiri, who saw the search for reality as a never-ending quest. Zubiri systematically reexamines the basis for human knowledge, shifting the role of consciousness from the ‘‘center of activity’’ to that of ‘‘actuality,’’ the sense of direct contact with reality that people experience in their perception of the world. Zubiri sees consciousness as one aspect of human intelligence, which puts them into contact with reality, at least in part. Reality is fundamentally ‘‘open,’’ and not fully amenable to any human conceptualization. In chapter 20, Thomas Szasz reckons that the term consciousness is problematic but can be equated with an organism’s awareness of and attention to its surroundings. From this vantage point, Szasz focuses on language and responsibility, making people moral agents rather than organisms shaped by deterministic forces. For him, human nature, of which moral agency is a critical aspect, resides partly in nature and partly in the social environment. Christian de Quincey’s provocative epilogue maintains that reason is not monolithic and that the scientific study of consciousness needs to employ a wide range of procedures, reports, and epistemologies. This collection of essays expands the current study of consciousness into perspectives that span both space and time. They remind the reader that consciousness is often described in ways that consist of both experience and reflections on that experience. This reflection amplifies an existing sense of being both agent and experiencer, permitting an individual to construct a picture of that individual’s own situation as well as the corresponding experiences of others’ realities. These perspectives are at variance with more popular models such as those arguing that human beings are functionally organized information-processing systems and that there is no need to infer any ‘‘nonphysical’’ aspects of the process. For these writers, there is no world of subjective experience; all that actually exists is a brain, engaged in processing information. And some of the most distinguished adherents to this notion claim that there is no basic difference between the conscious activity of human beings and what goes on in a computer. It is no wonder that Anthony Freeman sees consciousness studies as the ‘‘impossible’’ science because of its complexity and subjectivity. However, this compendium of provocative essays demonstrates that the study of consciousness is truly interdisciplinary. It also reminds us that, like other social constructs, ‘‘consciousness’’ is simply an attempt by members of a social group to describe, explain, or otherwise account for the world in which they live. This collection of essays will stimulate readers to ponder both the ‘‘hard’’ and ‘‘easy’’ questions of consciousness and, in so doing, to enrich their own self-awareness, their own life intentions, and their own enjoyment of the

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wonders brought to them by the ineffable phenomenon of consciousness and its various components. References James, William (1958). The Varieties of Religious Experience. New York: Mentor Books. Natsoulas, Thomas (1992). ‘‘The Concept of Consciousness, 3. The Awareness Meaning,’’ Journal for the Theory of Social Research Vol. 22, pp. 199–223.

I Expanding the Ontological Matrix

Part I brings together a variety of active percipient modalities that have evolved by cognitive systems along their own historical and cultural pathways. The perspectives are suggestive of monistic theories in which the operative features of conscious action, awareness, and agency shape sentience, emotive intelligence, and sensory knowledge alike. Since knowledge about consciousness requires appropriate means to communicate such knowledge, anthropological records provide valuable insight into culturally accepted modalities for such communication. The chapters are best viewed from a perspective of behavioral analysis and without imposing methodological frames. In fact, the artwork in chapter 1 can deliver an emotive and sensory account of its cognitive content. After quickly glancing at all of the pictures to create a disposition for judgment, look again. Notice how the sequence of the pictures tells a story by itself. Then, stay with each image until you see the phenomenon described in its caption. The surrounding text in the chapter will provide further cognitive clues. Chapters 2 through 4 also allow for emotive comprehension of their content, provided that the metaphorical use of core terminology does not trigger cognitive opposition but, instead, invokes appreciation of emotive wording to address ontological components of reality that today are typically placed in the cognitive domain of technology and science. Chapters 5 and 6 offer insightful accounts of how societal variables can affect such interpretation of terminology. It goes without saying that, above and beyond these heuristic functions for the anthology, each of the chapters stands on its own and presents a gem of scholarship and interpretation for its respective fieldwork.

1 The Emptying of Ontology: The Tibetan Tantric View E Richard Sorenson

Abstract More philosophy and science than religion, Tibetan Tantric Buddhism has no deity to which beings are held accountable.1 Consciousness is held to be supreme. Intelligence trumps doctrinal authority. Intellectual coercion is abhorred. Reasoned challenges to established views trigger interest rather than denunciation. Instead of being expected to answer to a god, human beings are considered to be rather like one. And so, after Buddha passed away, Buddhist philosophy evolved in an atmosphere sufficiently tolerant of change and difference to sustain interest in (and respect for) all well-stated thoughts. Divergent intellectual currents had latitude to form without duress within established schools and gain recognition as schools themselves merely by speaking well. And so, for a thousand years after Buddha’s death, words describing observations of existence kept expanding into new areas of understanding with ever more tightly honed methods of rational inquiry. The new insights posed new questions, which led to further insights and so on—not unlike the way Western science grew. Eventually increasingly rigorous analysis of verbalized phenomena disclosed realms of consciousness subtler than subject-object thinking— and therefore beyond logical purview (since logic requires established categories to analyze). Logic was then simply moved enough to the side to make room for an experiential type of validation beyond the realm of words. Early explorers of these unarticulable realms soon noticed they were touching onto much the same things. A stable common realness emerged that was recognizable by all those who peered beyond the level of verbality. Since the ‘‘actuality’’ they saw was by its nature verbally indescribable, techniques of allusion and evocation were devised that might position others to touch onto these realms beyond the speakable, and therefore beyond ontology. Though such entree requires rapport and candid openness between students and teachers, curricula were eventually devised that focus attention en masse on symbolic representations of these awareness states. This prepares students to more easily recognize the actual states when confronted with them. Such recognition is ephemeral at first. Practice, however, brings increasing clarity as domination of mentality by subject-object thinking and ego-oriented emotions becomes weaker. The prologue below provides a glimpse of the kind of life supported by such a philosophy. The epilogue shows more of that way of life and the impact of modernity on it. Sandwiched between these two views is the story of how the written philosophy came into being after the Buddha’s death.

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Figure 1.1 Young Tibetan novices clustered on an outdoor platform (Drepung Monastery, 1979).

Prologue I had no inkling of the philosophy when I first encountered Tibetan monasteries in the 1960s. Exotic sounds and sights, not philosophy, were what made me peer inside. Then the seeming paradox of novices peacefully introspective while outwardly alert and exploratory snared my curiosity. With a professional focus on child development, I had seen similar traits emerge from the socio-tactility of preconquest infant nurture. But what was it that made them gravitate to subtle physical contact with their confreres while tangentially poking individual attention on some divergent interest— which would without ado subtly infiltrate the group’s general sensibility (figure 1.1)? After many years of historical inquiry just such a trait could also be seen establishing the path on which the written Tibetan philosophy arose and then advanced.2 It also enabled monasteries to evolve with different ambiences, even while all dedicatedly relied on the same transcribed words of Buddha (sutra) and the same basic ethics (vinaya). In one monastery, novices propelled themselves into each new day with dazzling displays of kinetic zeal to greet whatever novelty might pass their way

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Figure 1.2a A novice memorizes his particular studies while subconsciously harmonizing his recitation sounds with those of all the others to produce ever-changing

collective

sonorities,

nuances, and rhythms Monastery, 1983).

cadences, (Gyudmed Figure 1.2b A senior monk takes advantage of this trait to augment the evocative power of a Tantric ritual (Gyudmed Monastery, 1983).

that day or be concocted on the spot. Even during formal study sessions, a hum of exploratory frolicking was always there. They focused on learning by conjoining individual grasps of whatever the world around had to offer them. A few kilometers up the hill another monastery was so starkly different it seemed another world. What stood out there was an atmosphere of evocative quiet gentleness, heart-catching harmonies and rhythms floating in the air as each novice’s individual memory recitation coalesced harmonically and rhythmically with all the others (even though they were reciting different texts). Never mind that the content was not the same. And never mind that each novice’s attention was riveted on the content he was memorizing, concentrationwise oblivious from the others (figure 1.2a). As his vocalization touched on those emerging from the various dispersed verandas, nooks, crannies, and open spaces, it would jockey about a bit, bounce off sounds already there, and then merge into, and somewhat alter, the larger harmonic whole. A conjoint everchanging symphony then spread out across the monastic precincts. When these same novices attended the most sophisticated rituals of their monastery, they similarly instinctively harmonized with its subtle and instructive tonal and rhythmic nuances (figure 1.2b). Perhaps it should not be surprising that this monastery’s rituals have

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Figure 1.3 This debating aggregation at Gaden Monastery has attracted students of different ages desiring to collectively focus their individual esprit and sensibility on the subject as it evolves (Gaden-Shartse Monastery, 1977).

long been honored for the insights to which their challenging and subtly sophisticated sonorities lead. Thirty miles to west the monastic setting was again quite different (figure 1.3). Roisterousness was the first impression. A clamorous din of insistent voices set to stylized leaps and prances overwhelmed the atmosphere as young monks sought truth en masse by a spirited din of animated reasoning accompanied by a stylized athletics. Though such differences startled me, senior monks were quite blase´. They considered all such expressions as valid introductions to the deeper unarticulable essences. Such leeway gave opportunities for contrastive local thinking and new philosophical insights to take shape from an already-established cultural tendency that fostered both individuation and collective effort. A contrapuntal e´lan of individuality and solidarity emerged that absorbed rather than dispelled differences. Reasoning was honored as the supreme

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Figure 1.4 An outstanding student from Gaden Monastic University engages the Abbot of famous Tashilumpo (a sister monastery) in a dialectic exercise that emerged spontaneously from a point of philosophical interest raised by the student. They behave as equals in a formal discourse in which reasoned challenges to any presented view are considered solely on their rational merits, where logic (not rank) is the arbiter (Tashihumpo Monastery, 1977).

authority, and verbal incompatibilities were resolved by philosophical debate (figure 1.4). Though this basic trait may have been already set before the coming of the Buddha, it is most clearly discernible during the period in which written Buddhist philosophy emerged after the Buddha’s death. Indeed it was so flexible that it made boundaries between the emerging Buddhist schools hard to fix. Philosophical identities only became clear at centers. Between them lay fuzzy regions in various degrees of flux. In

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this historical presentation, I will move from one clear center of definable identity to the next, leaving the tangled intellectual transformations in between for a more sociological type of analysis. The advantage of this approach becomes apparent quickly. When these centers are plotted along that fertile intellectual spectrum that lies between idealism and realism, a dramatic ontological odyssey comes into view, one in which language honed to ever-greater levels of precision ultimately exposes the limitations of verbal concept and formal logic and thereby empties ontology. The saga can be presented in various ways; I will do so here according to the three major schools most clearly identifiable by their basic intellectual foundations: Theravada (as scholastic inquiry), Mahayana (as rationally justified experiential inquiry), and Tantrayana (as an esoteric means to plumb nonverbal levels of consciousness). I begin with Theravada, the intellectual fount to which all the others can ultimately be traced.

Theravada Shortly after the Buddha’s death (c. 480 B.C.), some 500 of his senior followers (arhat) gathered at Rajgriha (Rajgir), India, to see what might be done to sustain his teachings. One of the questions taken up was whether to abolish the lesser precepts, which Buddha told his principal disciple, Ananda, could be done. But it was not clear which they were, since Ananda had not asked before Buddha passed away. This First Buddhist Council decided to retain them all. The monks then turned to developing textual guides (Skt: Abhidharma; Pali: Abhidhamma) to Buddhist thought and practice.3 These were, at first, mainly simple lists of things to do and keep in mind: ethical norms and daily practices. But they also included efforts to piece together a metaphysics by which the basic elements of reality (Skt: dharma; Pali: dhamma) could be identified and understood.

Sthaviravada (Implicit Realism) (c. fourth century B.C.) The question of precepts did not go away. Indeed it was the major issue at the Second Buddhist Council a hundred years later in Vaishali, India (c. 380 B.C.). By that time some monks had taken it on themselves to neglect what they considered minor precepts. Elder monks accused them of violating basic monastic ethics.4 After deliberation, the Council elders ruled that all the monastic precepts must be honored and erring monks should be censured. Differences were then tabled between views presented in the emerging Abhidharma treatises and the transcribed words of Buddha (Sutra). A majority took the view that the actual words of Buddha were the real authority, not the tightly reasoned views expressed in the Abhidharma. A minority remained loyal to their Abhidharma and called themselves the ‘‘School of Elders’’ (Sthaviravada), continuing their efforts to ascertain and rationalize the basic build-

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ing blocks of reality. They argued that it was clear that these analytic practices were beneficial in that they diminished a personal sense of selfhood—and therefore the emotional conflicts that obstructed approaches to enlightenment. Nonetheless, they retained the same implicit assumption that a verbally understandable external reality existed.

Mahasanghika (Dualistic Realism) (c. fourth century B.C.) The majority started writing their own Abhidharma to reflect their views and called themselves the ‘‘Great Community’’ (Mahasanghika).5 Their collectively written Mahavastu (‘‘Great Subjects’’) questioned the materialistic realism of the Sthaviravada by reminding that Buddha had spoken of two different kinds of reality: ‘‘pure things’’ and ‘‘pure thought’’—a dualistic kind of realism. It was the first articulated challenge to Sthaviravada realism. Several subschools soon emerged. Supramundane Realism (Lokottaravada) (c. fourth century B.C.) Initially a part of the Mahasanghika school (and the principal root of the an emerging Sarvastivada school), the Lokottaravada attained a distinction of their own by arguing that the mortal Buddha must have been an apparition formed from Buddha consciousness in order to bring truth to mortals. Their basic text (the early version of the collectively written ‘‘The Great Play of the Buddha’’ (Lalita-vistara)) speaks of the true Buddha as transcendent (lokottara), from which the name of their school was derived. In their view only Buddha consciousness has genuine reality; the worldly ‘‘objects’’ perceived by mortals do not. Reality to them was supramundane, though still conceived as external. Nominalism (Purvasaila) (c. fourth century B.C.) The Purvasaila, another Mahasanghika offshoot, focused on the lack of any clear evidence that the so-called ultimate building blocks of the universe (dharma) were any more real than ordinary worldly objects. Unlike the Lokottaravada, they maintained that nothing can be incontrovertibly said to exist other than names. Hence nominalism. Personhood (Vatsiputriya, Pudgalavada, Sammatiya) (c. third century B.C.) Less analytically disposed monks were attracted by the commonsense approach of their respected teacher, Vatsiputra, and his ‘‘doctrine of the soul’’ (Skt: vatslputra-kalpitaatma-pariksa; Tib: gnas-mahi-bus-bdag-brag-pa). Though they were initially called Vatsiputriya, they were later referred to as Pudgalavadin for their belief in an indestructible personhood ( pudgala). It was self-evident, they said, that sentient beings are more than just an aggregation of basic constituent qualities (skandha). Actual personhood must be there too. The idea, however, could not be clearly demonstrated, and, with its suggestion that there was some kind of individual ‘‘perfected

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permanence,’’ contradicted the core Buddhist views of morality and karma. Though the idea had grassroots appeal and persisted in dispersed locales for centuries, it had little direct impact on the further development of Buddhist philosophy. Analytic Realism (Vibhajyavada) (third century B.C.) Meanwhile, the most ardent Sthaviravada monks came to be called Vibhajyavadin (dissective analysts) for their sustained analytic approach to reality. To promulgate their views, they sponsored what they called the Third Buddhist Council (c. 247 B.C., in Pataliputra, India). Monks with conflicting views were not invited. The council president, Moggaliputta Tissa, presented a systematic refutation of non-Sthaviravadin views in the famous ‘‘Points of Controversy’’ (Kathavatthu). Not surprisingly, this convocation was not widely accepted as a genuine Buddhist Council. (A more representative gathering three centuries later in Kaniska is more generally accepted as the Third Buddhist Council.) Despite its seeming conservatism, the Vibhajyavadin effort to codify reality stood on systematic reasoning and sustained a firm and lasting following. Its analytic realism was magnificently presented in the fifth century A.D. by the famous Theravada scholar, Buddhaghosa, in his ‘‘The Route to Bliss’’ (Visuddhi-magga).

Sarvastivada (Existential Realism) (c. third to first century B.C.) The strongest of the new schools emerged from monks who took issue with the view that the dharmas were real only at the time they occurred—that is, only in the present. Where was the rationale, they asked, for crediting ‘‘objects’’ with realness when they became unreal the very moment they became real? In their view either everything exists (sarvamasti) or nothing does. Their nascent ‘‘existential’’ doctrine was systematically set forth by Katyayaniputra (second century B.C.) in his ‘‘Setting Forth Knowledge’’ (Abhidharma-jnana-prasthana-sastra), which still held that only the external objects perceived by the senses were real. Vasumitra went a step further. In his ‘‘Basis of Explanation’’ (Prakarana-pada), he noted that two of the three kinds of dharma— substantial form (rupa), consciousness (citta), and state of consciousness (caitasika)— were types of consciousness and not objects of the senses at all. He maintained that sense of time is caused by the activity of the dharma(s), which provided a needed rationale for the effect of past actions on the future (as required by karma) and for memory. Devasarman added to Visumitra’s list of objects independent of the senses in his ‘‘Compendium on Consciousness’’ (Vijnana-kaya). He showed six types of such consciousness: visual (caksu), auditory (srotra), olfactory ( ghrana), gustatory ( jihva), tactile (kaya), and general sensibility (mana). In this way a sense of existence began intruding on the original object-oriented reality. During the course of this intellectual ferment, both the Theravada and Sarvastivada continued to identify and classify the dharmas. The Theravada produced 174 and the

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Saravastivada 75. Though the Sarvastivada school was large, openly inquisitive, and intellectually divergent, it is most easily identified by its core philosophy that eternally existing dharmas are the source of all phenomena. The simplicity appealed to many. Subschools emerged within the basic Sarvastivada philosophical foundations. Indirect Realism (Sarvastivada-Vaibhasika) (third to second century B.C.) This subschool is most clearly identified with its famous and widely disseminated ‘‘Great Elucidation’’ (Abhidharma-maha-vibhasa), a collectively written systematic work presented at what is more generally recognized as the Third Buddhist Council (in Kaniska). Though it agreed with the basic Sarvastivada position that perceived objects must exist (on grounds that, if they did not, there would be nothing to be perceived and therefore no perception). This view challenged Sarvastivada realism by showing that objects could be known only through the mind. In the Vaibhasika view, reality was out there but knowledge of it was only indirect. Representationism (Sarvastivada-Sautrantika) (c. 50 B.C. to 100 A.D.) The Sarvastivada monks who stressed the authority of the Sutras while also stressing logic were dubbed Sautrantika. They noted that the idea of ‘‘eternal’’ dharmas was inconsistent with Buddha’s teachings on impermanence. By logical analysis they then showed that all perceptions are shaped by three basic conditions: (1) the nature and condition of the perceiving mind, (2) the sensory organs through which objects are perceived, and (3) ancillary conditions such as distance, intensity, form, and motion. Therefore, they claimed, perception of dharmas was nothing more than mental reconstruction, beyond which nothing can really be perceived. According to this reasoning there was no way to know whether any perceptions actually correspond to any dharmas. Thus, any reality that might exist was, in their view, entirely unknowable. All that could unequivocally be said to exist, according to their analysis, were mental images representing the dharma. They then reasoned that past dharmas do not exist simply because they are gone, that future dharmas do not exist because they have not yet come, and, as for present dharmas, they asked how they could reasonably be said to have true existence when the instant they appeared they disappeared. By presenting these views in the accepted logic of the day, this school dealt a devastating blow to the solidity of realism and set a philosophical stage for the profound transformation of Buddhist thought soon to come, one that had been bubbling quietly in the background of various realism-oriented schools—that is, Mahayana. But not before a sally into the idea that nothing is real. Illusionism (Sautrantika-Satyasiddhi) (third century A.D.) The Sautrantika-Satyasiddhi rejected the realism component of Sarvastivada, which put them on the cusp

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between Theravada and Mahayana; they departed from realism with a logical analysis that denied the ontological reality of objects. In his ‘‘Thesis on True Attainment’’ (Satyasiddhi-sastra), Harivarman demonstrated that there was no clear evidence that an external world of objects can even be inferred. In the absence of such a basis, he maintained that objects and names are no more than illusions. Humans, he said, only imagine objects to be real because they are by human nature predisposed to see themselves as individuals. That predisposition, he claimed, gives them the false impression of being surrounded by separate objects. The response to that precarious position was Mahayana.

Mahayana In the second century A.D., the idealism currents that had been cropping up for some time ignited an explosion of intellectual inquiry that would, by the seventh century, reconcile realism with idealism and existential experience with scholastic reasoning. During this period, increasingly well-honed techniques of rational inquiry were thrust with increasing rigor into personal experiences that were too compelling to be disregarded. As personal experience and insights became ontologically respectable, the result was a shift of intellectual attention from ‘‘reality’’ to ‘‘existence.’’ When this intellectual movement was later seen for what it had done, it was called Mahayana (‘‘Great Path’’) in recognition of the broad benefits to humanity produced by its marriage of ineffable experience with public reasoning.

Precursors (Prajnaparamita, Tib. Phar-byin-mdo) (second and first centuries B.C.)6 Though the radical ontological revision wrought by Mahayana had precursors in the Mahasanghika, Sarvastivada, and Sautrantika schools, its most direct antecedents were the early Prajnaparamita writings that had long been drawing quiet interest in various intellectually tolerant realism-oriented schools. These writings, composed largely by unknown authors at unknown dates, shifted attention from ‘‘elements of reality’’ to ‘‘existence,’’ thereby freeing philosophical thought from simple realism. The term prajnaparamita combines prajna (profound wisdom) with paramita (perfection of awareness). Because no central canon presents a central Prajnaparamita view, the movement is not usually called a school. School or not, its views profoundly influenced the development of Buddhist philosophy from the second century onward. The ‘‘Perfection of Awareness Sutras’’ (Prajnaparamita-sutra) attributed to Buddha Sakyamuni were the principal philosophical precursors of Mahayana in that they turned attention away from the nature of reality and onto the nature of consciousness. Tibetans speak of it as ‘‘wisdom switched to the other side’’ (i.e., from objects to the consciousness that perceives objects).

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Initial Philosophy (Madhyamika) (second to third century A.D.) Ontologically Madhyamika (literally ‘‘The Middle Way’’) stands between the Sarvastivada view that all is real and an emerging Yogacara view that all is consciousness. Nagarjuna produced its ontological foundations in a series of intricately reasoned texts in which the ultimate vacuity of concepts was impeccably demonstrated by exhaustive logic.7, 8 The name of the school emerged from his influential and widely praised ‘‘The Root of the Middle Way to Wisdom’’ (Mula-madhyamika-karika). This dramatic departure from realism spawned repeated attempts to refute. All were logically rebutted in Nagarjuna’s famous ‘‘Deflecting Objections’’ (Vigra-havya-vartani), in which he repeatedly demonstrated the absence of any logical basis for assuming the self-existence of subjects or objects. He advanced his sensational treatise by repeated reductio ad absurdum demonstrations, so impeccably presented, that no subject-object concepts withstood his conclusion that objective reality was ontological nonsense.9 This posed troublesome questions about the conceptual realities that had been so carefully set forth analytically in the Abhidharma literature. To fill the ontological wasteland Nagarjuna had created, his student Aryadeva showed that experiential aspects of consciousness could be cognized through concentrated introspective analysis. Then Asvaghosa, in his short but widely influential verse work, ‘‘The Accomplishments of Buddha Sakyamuni’’ (Buddha-carita), demonstrated compassional foundations underlying consciousness during prajnaparamita meditations.10 While Nagarjuna was throwing verbal concepts to the winds, the prajnaparamita side of Madhyamika was plumbing experienced states of consciousness not reducible to words. This set a stage on which pragmatic tests for truth could start taking shape. A flurry of philosophical progress took place on this stage from the second to sixth centuries A.D. as scholars grappled with such postrealism currents as nihilism, pragmatism, phenomenalism, and idealism. Compassion nibbled at the heels of all. Nihilism To many, Nagarjuna’s approach appeared nihilistic. He had shown by impeccable reductio ad absurdum logic that all conceptual views could be reduced to self-contradiction and absurdity.11 Not a single one survived—not even the Madhyamika core concept of emptiness (which, when considered as an object, could be reduced to absurdity just like any other object). Such basic concepts as motion and time were similarly reduced to nonsense—that is, motion cannot occur because, if there is nothing real to move, there can be no movement. Time does not exist because the past is always gone, the future is never here, and the present never exists because the very instant it arrives it vanishes. Even at the most elementary level of conceptualization, Nagarjuna showed all concepts to be meaningless—for example, simple abstract A and B must either be different or identical. If identical, there is no relationship because there is no difference. If different, there is no relationship,

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because they have nothing in common to relate. With no way to relate, neither can be shown to exist. He employed all the established modes of argument of the day: tetralemma structured logic, prasanga consequential logic, nyaya syllogism, and dialectics to show that all linguistic statements can be reduced to nonsense. Not a single metaphysical concept was left untouched, including such basic ones as existence-nonexistence, permanence-impermanence, reality-nonreality. When he finished, concepts, as a genre, had been shorn of demonstrable existence by the most rigorous logic then available. To those for whom verbal concepts lay at the core of meaning, it was nihilism pure and simple. But Nagarjuna did not consider what he had done to be nihilism. Though he had deobjectivized the universe by logical analysis, he had not actually denied existence. He believed that objects, despite their logical nonexistence, still possessed pragmatic usefulness by being used to reveal true existence. Pragmatism To counter the logical nihilistic dilemma, Nagarjuna introduced his ‘‘twofold truth’’—a linking of the particularism of conceptual truth (samvrtisatya) to transcendental truth ( paramarthasatya). While this sidestepped nihilism, it left logicians puzzled. To them it was not logically possible to consider concepts a type of truth after the validity of all concepts had been destroyed. In his ‘‘The Root of the Middle Way to Wisdom’’ (Mula-madhyamaka-karika), Nagarjuna showed that the significance of his twofold truth lay in its ability to provide a pragmatic nexus between conceptual and ultimate truths. Concepts, he argued, can be considered true if they are stepping-stones to truth. That is, truth inheres in them by virtue of their pragmatic ability to lead one to truth. They partake of truth just as the truth of Buddha’s words lay in their ability to lead beings to universal truth. Though Nagarjuna introduced the idea of pragmatic truth, it was left to later intellectual movements to provide greater clarity. Nonetheless, Nagarjuna’s twofold truth was the first clear statement linking concepts to ultimate truth through pragmatic action. Phenomenalism Consideration of phenomena proceeded through three phases of inquiry: perception, phenomena, and empirical experience. Perceptual Phenomenalism (Madhyamika-Sautrantika) (fourth to fifth century) After Vasubandhu wrote his monumental Sarvastivada work, Abhidharma-kosa, he abandoned the Sarvastivada notion of an external world that he had so masterfully expounded there. With his skills in logic, he gravitated to the Sautrantika school, within whose intellectual surroundings he produced his ‘‘Explanation of Maitreya’s Mahayana-sutra-lamkara-vyakya.’’ He explained there that objects have no

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independent natures of their own because they depend on chains of causes. Finally, in his classic tome, ‘‘Establishment of Cognitions Only’’ (Vijnnapti-matratasiddhi-sastra), he showed that it was illogical to claim external objects as anything more than phenomena produced by consciousness, since they depend entirely on three basic aspects of mind: (1) the nature and condition of the perceiving mind, (2) the sensory organs through which objects are perceived, and (3) impinging conditions, such as distance, brightness, form, and motion. Since a change in any of these alters perception, he argued that it is impossible to say that an object is anything more than a mental image. Dignaga (c. 480–540) tightened this train of thought in his ‘‘Precise Clarification of Refined Cognition’’ (Pramana-samuccaya). In this widely admired work he first showed that perception emerges solely through the five senses. Having thus established raw sensation as the basis of perception, he concluded that the creation of concepts from raw sensation must reside somewhere else in mind. In our sophisticated age this may seem quite obvious. At the time, however, it was revolutionary in that it clearly divorced external reality (as sensation) from logic (as reason) and bestowed on perception the ‘‘reality-constructing’’ role. This went beyond basic Madhyamika thinking by making logic a product of idealism. Conceptual Phenomenalism (Prasangika-sautrantika) (fifth century) This subschool maintained faith in the logical consequences ( prasanga) of reasoned argument. Since Nagarjuna had irrefutably shown by reductio ad absurdum that all concepts are reducible to nonsense, they deemed it useless to adopt any particular stated view. Yet their Sautrantika background committed them to the words of Buddha. In this somewhat contradictory situation, the renowned Prasangika scholar Buddhapalita (c. 480–540), in his ‘‘Commentary on [Nagarjuna’s] ‘Middle Way’ ’’ (Buddhapalita-mula-madhyamika-vrtti), pointed out that the concept of cyclical existence had been so well established by Buddha and subsequent philosophers that it could not be just a vacuous illusion. Some kind of reality must be there, even if logic could not show it. Then he offered his conclusion that logic cannot do so because it is only able to reveal an absence of truth, not its presence. The most famous scholar of this school, Candrakirti (c. 580–650), strengthened this line of reasoning in his ‘‘Clear Words on [Nagarjuna’s] Middle Way’’ (Mula-madhyamaka-vrtti-prasanga-pada). First, he stated that the problem bedeviling Nagarjuna’s twofold truth was not that he had not paid sufficient attention to logic (as some were claiming) but rather that logic was not qualified to deal with any truths except the kind that related concepts to each other. Logic required objective entities just to exist. Without them logic had no way to operate. That

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is why, he claimed, Nagarjuna could use logic to demonstrate the nonexistence of concepts but could not use it to deny or reveal other types of truths. The only kind of truth concepts could possibly possess would have to lie in mental states that lead to truth. He cited six such mental states: (1) generosity (dana), (2) moral conduct (sila), (3) patient forbearance (ksanti), (4) moral enthusiasm (virya), (5) concentrated mental introspection (either dhyana or samadhi), and (6) wisdom ( prajna). Within these states of consciousness, he argued, truth inheres because they lead to the ultimate truth expounded by Buddha. To these six states, Santideva, a seventh-century Prasangika logician and Tantric practitioner, added ‘‘compassion-generated action’’ in two of Mahayana’s most revered works, his ‘‘Outline of Instruction’’ (Shiksa-samuccaya-karika) and ‘‘Complete Teachings on the Bodhisattva Way’’ (Bodhicarya-vatara). They showed the crucial role played by compassion in Buddha’s teachings and maintained that compassion was the root truth on which all conceptual paths to truth depend. Experiential Phenomenalism (Svatantrika-Madhyamika) (sixth century) Bhavaviveka (c. 500–570), in his ‘‘Essence of Madhyamika’’ (Madhyamika-hrdaya-vrtti-tarkajvala), argues that logically demonstrating that objects and concepts do not exist tells us nothing about whether they do exist. All that it tells us, he said, is that objects and subjects have no inherent existence of their own. Its says nothing about whether phenomena exist. In his ‘‘Wisdom Lamp’’ (Prajna-pradipa-mula-madhyamika-vrtti), he asserted that only in the context of empirical inference does logic tell us anything about existence. That is, it can tell us that something has to be there simply because we do in fact perceive, and, more importantly, it can tell us that phenomena are experienced in mind without first having been rationally established or causally linked to other phenomena. So perceptions must have some selfexistence. And he pooh-poohed Prasangika logic by showing that its ‘‘proof’’ of the nonexistence of subjects and objects requires first recognizing the existence of subjects and objects, which he showed to be a self-destroying logical contradiction. Finally he criticized Candrakirti for paying insufficient attention to the experiential side of Madhyamika (to which Candrakirti replied that Bhavaviveka was not paying enough attention to logic)—an unfortunate exchange since their thinking pursued similar lines. It did however illustrate the difference in emphasis that separated the two subschools. The outstanding Svatantrika-Madhyamika contribution was its establishment of inference (svatantra) based on empirical experience as a valid approach to truth. The school then divided into two different kinds of logically inclined subschools—one concerned mainly with inferential reasoning, the other with reasoning applied to experiential inquiry.

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Inferential Reasoning (Svatantrika-Sautantrika) (seventh century) The logic grandmaster of post-Madhyamika thought, Dharmakirti (c. 580–660). His critique of nyala logic titled ‘‘A Drop of Great Reasoning’’ (Nyala-bindu), amplified Dignaga’s separation of conceptualization from sensation by citing three basic types of conceptual mentality that were beyond the level of mere sensation: (1) rumination, (2) self-awareness, and (3) the experiential insights that come from mental concentration on consciousness itself. In his ‘‘Discussion of Valid Cognition’’ (Pramana-varttika), Dharmakirti noted that the Madhyamika proof of the intrinsic existencelessness of subject and object rested on the argument that because neither could exist without the other, neither had an existence of its own. How is it, then, he asked, that we in fact have subjects and objects? Answering his own question, he claimed they exist because their inherent nonduality makes them immune to logical analysis. Logical truth and empirical truth, he said, only appear different because, when consciousness is perceiving phenomena, it is looking at characteristics, but when it is examining precise truth, it is focusing on deduction. Though this may seem to many a rather precious sort of reasoning, it nonetheless elevated the status of perceived phenomena to ‘‘reality’’ and strengthened the case for the validity of experience. Dharmakirti’s reasoning was ultimately adopted by the Gelugpa Order in Tibet as a principal means for teaching subtler forms of logic to students. Mastery of such logic is required before they study Tantra. Experiential Reasoning (Svatantrika-Yogacara) While the Svatantrika-Sautantrika were working out ways to demonstrate the validity of phenomena inferentially, the Svatantrika-Yogacara school was examining consciousness itself. Santiraksita (seventh century), in his ‘‘Essential Principles’’ (Tattva-samgraha) and ‘‘Verses on the Middle Way’’ (Madhyamika-lankara-karika), showed it was just as unreasonable to think of everything as consciousness as to believe in the existence of external objects. In his view, both were bogus issues. With his interests focused on experiential realms rather than logicality, Santiraksita simply ignored Candrakirti’s reasoning and spoke beyond it to aspects of mentality that transcend and transform ordinary consciousness. His student, Kamalashila, pointed out in his ‘‘Three Stages of Meditation’’ (Havana-krama) and ‘‘Elucidation of [Santaraksita’s] Essential Principles of Emptiness’’ (Tattvasamgraha-panjika) that some people proceed toward transcendental knowledge by being told about it, others by critically pondering the meaning of verbal constructs, and still others by concentrating on the bliss associated with fundamental consciousness. That different people could proceed to transcendental truth in different ways strengthened the idea that concepts had some pragmatic value.

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The Idealistic Revolution (Yogacara), fourth to seventh centuries A.D. The Yogacara philosophy can most simply be summed up as subjective idealism (Vijnanavada). Its basic ontological position was that only consciousness is real and that ideation is the source of all perceived phenomena. Though the origins of such thinking can be traced back to early comments of the Buddha at the Deer Park in Benares and then to Sarvastivada reasoning, it was not until the flurry of the prajnaparamita writings in the first and second centuries that its importance became clear. Its basic ideas were expressed in Maitreya’s ‘‘Explanation of the Profound Secrets’’ (Samdhi-nirmocanasutra), which suggested that objects of perception are products of mind. The idea was further developed, in the fourth century, in Buddha Sakyamuni’s ‘‘Lanka Sutra‘‘ (Lankavatara-sutra). Though the idea was not quite clearly rationalized in these works, they did produce Yogacara as a philosophical school in its own right. The new school took its name from Asanga’s treatise, ‘‘The Experiential Levels of Yogic Practice’’ (Yogacara-bhumi-sastra).12 Compassional aspects were unveiled in his ‘‘Explanation of the Bodhisattva Stage’’ (Bodhisattva-bhumi). However, the role of compassion was most fully explained by Asanga’s younger brother, the famous logician, Vasubandhu. In his ‘‘Establishment of Cognitions Only’’ (Vijnapti-satrata-sindhi-sastra), Vasubandhu unequivocally declared external objects to be nothing more than concepts and therefore nothing more than products of mind. He followed this up with a stunning critique of basic Madhyamika philosophy in his ‘‘Qualities of the Great Vehicle’’ (Mahayanasutra-lamkara-vyakhya). In it he showed that it was not enough to prove objects empty of self-existence and simply leave it at that. It is natural, he claimed, that when emptiness is logically examined, it resolves to a lack of self-existence. But since it is undeniable that we do in fact exist, logic in that case produces an absurdity, a conundrum in which emptiness oscillates endlessly between existing and not existing. Such an absurdity, he explained, can only be resolved by considering emptiness and consciousness a single nondual entity. With that the established Madhyamika view of emptiness was turned upside down. To Madhyamika, emptiness has no existence because all objects have no self-existence. Vasubandhu then reasoned that emptiness existed in the nonduality of subject and object at a level beyond mere concepts. In this way he made emptiness a function of mentality (rather than an object) and altered the idea of what was illusory. According to Madhyamika, the perception of any object (for example, a cup) is illusory and therefore untrue. According to Vasubandhu such perceptions are true by virtue of existing within consciousness. He went on to show, in his ‘‘Treatise on the Three Natures of Existence’’ (Trisvabhava-nirdesa), how the three forms of intrinsic existence identified in the early prajnaparamita writings are all aspects of consciousness.13 Though his reasoning was subtle, it became the intellectual bombshell that thrust Yogacara into position as the new Mahayana philosophy. Though his reasoning provided ontological legitimacy to experiential inquiry, lurking in the background were the still unex-

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plained inklings that some sort of transcendental reality was more fundamental than consciousness. Tantrayana would consider it.

Tantrayana As noted, different orientations separate the three main divisions of Buddhist philosophy. Theravada focused primarily on scholastic inquiry; Mahayana analyzed logic and produced new tools of reason to better understand the relationship between deductive reasoning and experiential inquiry. That effort then revealed the importance of pragmatism and compassion. It also provided a philosophical basis that gave impetus to the Yogacara view that truth resides only within consciousness. That view, in turn, provided a philosophical toehold and academic respectability for Tantrayana. The intellectual (as opposed to experiential) precursors of Tantrayana can most visibly be traced to Nagarjuna’s crushing logical demonstration that concepts have no inherent existence. Until then formal logic applied to language was the basic tool by which truth was determined. After Nagarjuna carried logic to its self-devastating extremes, subtler forms of rationality emerged, ones that allowed for examination of consciousness in relation to the phenomena of experience. While some considered these developments a way to refute Nagarjuna’s unassailable logical demolition of concepts, in fact Nagarjuna had not abandoned concepts. In his ‘‘twofold truth’’ he revealed that concepts could be used as pragmatic tools to lead one to recognition of a subtler existence. In his view, words, though essenceless in and of themselves, nevertheless can be used as guides to truth and in this sense partake of truth. Tantric practitioners then devoted themselves to aspects of consciousness beyond dualistic thought. Though their discoveries were experientially too subtle to be described by words, they nonetheless soon noticed that the same ineffable experiences were shared by other Tantrists. Since these were beyond the types of thought accessible by words, allusive types of speech (sometimes spoken of as ‘‘helpful winds’’) were contrived that pointed people toward these deeper truths. Though differences in these verbal devices emerged in different Tantric schools, to experienced Tantrists it did not matter. They simply understood them as differently shaped tools to accomplish the same end—which was reducing domination of human consciousness by conceptual thought, in order that the subtler understandings could be accessed. These Tantrists realized very early that they were exposing the same basic levels of consciousness that come into view during the process of death. During death they pass by so swiftly and traumatically that they are only very rarely noticed. The Tantric techniques they developed, however, enabled these basic levels of consciousness to be experienced without dying, and at a pace that enables recognition. Because Tantra flirts with raw emotional power, experienced Tantric tutors proceed cautiously. Their protective strategies include a rigorous ‘‘intellectual’’ understanding of the nature of

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Figure 1.5 In the most skillful Tantric monasteries, rituals trigger moments of awe even in the very young and inexperienced (Tarik Sakya Monastery, 1978).

consciousness, fostering a habitude of compassion, cultivating an empathetic relation with the student, and instilling a firm trust in the procedures. Even just by themselves, the experiences conveyed by Tantric ritual can be very evocative and at times trigger awe even among the very young (figure 1.5). Only superficially does Buddhist Tantra resemble non-Buddhist Tantra. Though both are transmitted by direct person-to-person tutelage, the objectives and results are far apart. Non-Buddhist Tantrists employ the esoteric knowledge they gain for personal power—to benefit themselves and their allies. Buddhist Tantra emerges from universal compassion and seeks well-being for all beings. That appears to be the reason for its rapid spread across Asia from India to Sri Lanka and then to Nepal, Kashmir, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet, Bhutan, China, Japan, Korea, and Mongolia, where it largely displaced non-Buddhist types of Tantra and sorcery. In the late twentieth century, all types of Tantra were suppressed across Asia, mainly by communist govern-

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ments, sometimes savagely, as during the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet. Monks and novices from many Tibetan monasteries then fled across the formidable Himalayan barrier (often with only the clothes they wore) to sympathetic neighboring nations, principally India, Nepal, and Bhutan, where they tacked together primitive structures as monasteries. These were soon improved by aid from wealthy nations, sometimes elaborately. From these new sites Tantric teachings spread with increasing vigor to Europe and America. There are alternative ways of classifying Tantric procedures. However, four basic types are generally recognized.14 Each type focuses mentality and behavior somewhat differently, the aim being to enable access by different types of people to these deeper levels of consciousness. Of these four basic types, three are dual and one is nondual.

Dual Tantra Dual Tantra operates in the realm of subject-object thought as the vehicle by which attention is progressively directed to states of mind and actions that will enable one to engage nondual Tantra. The most generally accepted classification of dual Tantra is as follows. Action Tantra (kriya-tantra; Tib: jha-gyud) Action Tantra emphasizes salutary activities rather than contemplation. It concerns itself principally with ethical behavior and study. It is likened poetically to visualizing a clothed, erotically attractive female and exchanging smiles with her. The mental happiness that arises guides one to Moral Tantra. Moral Tantra (carya-tantra; Tib: cho-gyud ) Moral Tantra combines the activities of Action Tantra with contemplation of its beneficial effect. This is likened to the feeling that comes when erotically attracted individuals exchange touches. Contemplation of this stronger level of mental happiness leads to Meditative Tantra. Meditative Tantra (yoga-tantra; Tib: naljor-gyud ) This type of dual Tantra is entirely mental. Physical actions are no longer helpful. One only concentrates on the happiness that emerges with a conceptual understanding of the relationship between action and compassion. This understanding intensifies mental happiness and enables one to nondually examine deeper levels of emotive force and consciousness.

Nondual Tantra (Anuttarayoga-tantra or Anuyoga-Tantra; Tib: neljor-lamegyud) There is only one type of nondual Tantra. Since there is no Tantra that goes more deeply into the ultimate nature of life, it is most accurately referred to in English as

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‘‘Ultimate (or Unsurpassed) Tantra,’’ though the slightly misleading term ‘‘Highest Yoga Tantra’’ is often used. This type of Yoga is called ‘‘nondual’’ because it deals with realms of consciousness beyond the duality of subject-object thought. Its practices entirely overcome subject-object modes of consciousness. While the objectives of all nondual Tantras are the same, procedural aspects can differ. The Guhyasamaja-tantra (Tib: Sangwa-duepa) emphasizes vajra-mantra recitation and the ‘‘Three Appearances’’ visualization (Tib: nang-gi-ngonpar-jang-chub-pa). Herukatantra (Tib: Dechog) emphasizes accessing bliss. The Heruka (Tib: Dorjee-neljorma) and Vajrayogini (Tib: Dorjee-neljorma) Tantras focus attention on the clear-light of nonduality that is ultimately exposed by an extremely subtle conceptual understanding of emptiness (Tib: wosel). Because the Guhyasamaja-tantra is the foundation from which all other nondual Tantras have emerged, the practices discussed below follow its format. All nondual Tantras deal with the same fundamental states of emotive energy and consciousness as the Guhyasamaja. The only differences are the allusive terminologies used and the emphases. There are two basic types of nondual Tantra: (1) Activity Tantra and (2) Consciousness Tantra. Both include all the essential practices of the other, since the aim of both is to fully reveal the nondual character of consciousness at its most fundamental level. Both accomplish an experiential realization of this most fundamental level of consciousness (spoken of in classical Tantra as ‘‘the clear-light of emptiness’’) and both create an extremely subtle consciousness/action body ( gyume-lus) and an understanding of the compassionate unity of all life (zung-jug). Activity Tantras (Upaya tantra; Tib: Pha-gyud ) Activity Tantra focuses on compassionate action. Also called ‘‘Father Tantra,’’ it stresses production of an extremely subtle level of awareness combined with the fundamental emotive force of life (sarvabodhicitta). Though the potential exists within all humans, it is normally unrealizable due to the clamorousness of the conceptual and emotional aspects of normal human mentality. This type of Tantra endeavors to break through the clamor to cognize and experience increasingly subtle emotive essences and finally to reach the most basic level of compassion (sarva-bodhicitta), which is also the deep source enabling erotic passion. In classical Buddhist Tantra the basic emotive energies propelling life are spoken of as ‘‘the winds-of-life.’’15 Breaking through to the fundamental ‘‘wind’’ (i.e., the bliss beyond eroticism) usually requires physical coitus with a properly prepared consort (Tib: lekyi-chag-gya). Those who have gained Tantric understanding are then able to access the bliss that is more fundamental than erotic passion. This can occur when the bliss state of coitus is intensely contemplated. This is normally extremely diffi-

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cult, since erotic action has a powerful grip on living species. Subtle guidance by an expert Tantric practitioner is usually essential. Some of the more widely employed Activity Tantras include Guhyasamaja (Tib: Sangwa-duepa), Hayagriva (Tib: Tamdrin), Yamantaka (Tib: Jigje), and Mahachakravajrapani (Tib: Chagtor-khorchen). The root text of Guhyasamaja Tantra (the original source of all the others) provides the most elaborate details. Yamantaka, though usually classified as an Activity Tantra, deals almost equally with action and consciousness with only slightly more emphasis on action. Consciousness Tantra (prajna-tantra, Tib: sherab-gyud ) ‘‘Consciousness Tantra’’ (also referred to as ‘‘Wisdom Tantra’’) emphasizes access to the most fundamental level of consciousness, which in classical Tibetan Tantra is called wosel (‘‘clear light’’). Colloquially called ‘‘Mother Tantra’’ (Tib: Ma-gyud), this type of Tantra focuses attention on that very subtle level of consciousness that realizes emptiness. It proceeds by mimicking the increasingly subtle levels of consciousness that are exposed during death. As subject-object mental activity resolves into the more fundamental states, subtler levels are successively exposed until its most elemental level appears (this occurs at the instant consciousness moves beyond the bodily senses). These deeper levels are extremely difficult to detect during life. In humans they are obscured by the five physically structured senses (sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch), by the conceptual mode of thinking, and by emotions associated with the sense of self (e.g., ego, desire, attachment, pride, boorishness, ignorance, suspicion, anger, fear, hate, contempt, disgust, and so on). Consciousness Tantras stress erotic heat (Skt: candali; Tib: tumo) to reduce the emotive forces of life to their fundamental substrates—in the language of classical Tantra, ‘‘to bring the winds-oflife into the central channel’’ where they no longer have any sense of subject-object duality. Heruka (Tib: dechog)—and its associated female Tantras, Vajrayogini (Tib: dorje-naljorma) and Vajravarahi (Tib: dorje-phagmo)—use the same root text, which is relatively explicit and highly regarded. (See the discussion of the Heruka and Vajrayogini Tantras below.) Other major Wisdom Tantras include Kalachakra (Tib: Dhuekhor) and Hevajra (Tib: Kye-dorjee). Their practice requires two stages of mental concentration.

The Generation Stage (Utpattikrama, Tib: Kyerim) In the Generation Stage the actual experiences of the subtler levels of consciousness sought in Tantra are not realized. To prepare for such realization, awareness is concentrated on personified symbols that represent the actual experiences. This approach is therefore also called ‘‘artificial’’ yoga. Its purpose is to present conditions that enable individuals to eventually accomplish a direct experience of the actual nonsymbolic

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Figure 1.6 Stages of realization reachable only through profound introspective analysis of the actual experience of the most fundamental erotic state are a crucial aspect of such Tantric practices which include tutelary iconographic diagrams like this one for the Heruka Tantric practice (Gyudmed Tantric Monastery, 1982).

levels of consciousness. These symbols are usually anthropomorphized and (inaccurately) called ‘‘deities’’ in English. At their most abstract level they are set forth in elaborately abstract artistic diagrams (figure 1.6), which enable one to more easily recognize the actual experiential states in the later stages of Tantric practice. They are guides to the visualizations that prepare students for Tantric practice.16 The size of these diagrams, and the number and attributes of their entities, differ from Tantra to Tantra. These abstractions can also be visualized positioned internally within one’s own body. Some monasteries present these abstract representations in choreographic presentations (cham) (figure 1.7). Regardless of which approach is used, the basic mental states to which they refer are the same. As soon as genuine experiences of the subtler states begin occurring, the Generation Stage, by definition, automatically ceases, and the Completion Stage begins, sometimes without practitioners actually noticing. The shift, however, is momentous in

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Figure 1.7 A young monk embodies the nature of inescapable death for his monastery’s annual choreographic presentation (cham) (Zongkar Choede Monastery, 2001).

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that practitioners now experience the subtler states of consciousness directly rather than conjuring symbolic representations of them.

Completion Stage (zogrim) Zogrim literally means ‘‘possess the levels.’’ It requires that one consciously possess all the levels of mentality down to the most fundamental. The procedure is classically divided into six levels of practice,17 each of which confers an increasingly refined conceptual understanding of consciousness until actual nondual emptiness, not a concept of it, is directly experienced (figure 1.8). In classical Tantra this is the ‘‘clear-light of emptiness.’’18 This occurs only by directly experiencing the fundamental mentality that underlies compassion—that is, the bliss essence of the fundamental creative

Figure 1.8 An elder monk concentrates attention on the nonverbal inner aspects of consciousness during the Monlam ritual conducted by the Dalai Lama (Drepung Monastery, 1979).

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energy of life beyond any sense of gender or sexuality. This is experienced when the subtlest wind-of-life merges as a single entity with the most subtle possible conceptualization of emptiness. A sense of the unity of life (zung-jug) then appears. There are six basic levels. Level 1. Emptying Consciousness of Its Prevailing Sense of Physical Body This is often spoken of in English as ‘‘isolation of body.’’ The process, however, is not so much one of isolation (in the sense of sequestering), as of overcoming the patterns of awareness imposed by the human physical and mental structure. This process has already been initiated in the Generation Stage as an imaginary exercise. When the actual states of consciousness begin to be experienced, they replace imagination. The process then automatically becomes a Completion Stage activity. In classical Tantric terminology this occurs when the ‘‘winds-of-life’’ move from the ‘‘peripheral channels’’ to the ‘‘central channel’’—that is, from the daily-life areas of expression to the one where the underlying essences hold sway. It requires a shift of mental focus. Some examples of exercises devised to facilitate such movement are: Vajra Mantra Recitation Vajra Mantra recitation initially concentrates on the actual auditory sounds of three Sanskrit syllables, om, ah, and hum. Increasingly intense concentration on them withdraws attention from emotions that obstruct notice of the subtler states of mind. White-Wind-Drop Visualization (Tib. jangsem) A concentrated imaginary visualization of a tiny Tantric diagram (with all its symbolic entities in detail) within the ‘‘whitewind-drop’’ (‘‘essence-of-semen’’) is conjured at the tip opening of one’s ‘‘secret site’’ (organ of basic erotic feeling). Intense concentration on the feeling then experientially reveals the subtler emotional states underlying it—in archaic Tantric language it arouses latent repositories of ‘‘white-wind’’ (‘‘inner heat,’’ Tib. tumo) in the head, navel, and genitalia by which perception of the vacuity of concept becomes possible while simultaneously experiencing great bliss.19 Three Appearances Visualization (nang-gi-ngonpar-jang-chub-pa) The Three Appearances are experiences of subtle states of consciousness that become apparent when one concentrates on three postulated colors (white, red, and black), in that order. Though the ‘‘appearances’’ are spoken of as colors, they are not to be confused with colors as seen by eye. Rather they are suggestive transcendental stand-ins that reflect three progressively weaker levels of the obstructive states of consciousness produced by normal human living. Originally indicated by the Guhyasamaja Tantra, these obstructive states of consciousness were clarified poetically by Nagarjuna around the second century A.D. and (a thousand years later) given greater verbal specificity in a taxonomic structure

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linked to the Three Appearances by Tsongkhapa (see table 1.1).20 The Three Appearances are: White Appearance (Tib. chak-drel ) No words adequately describe White Appearance. However, it has been spoken of metaphorically as ‘‘like the color of moonlight on a clear autumn night filling the emptiness of night,’’ or, in the words of Tsongkhapa, ‘‘like cloudless sky in dustless air blanketed by moonlight.’’ White Appearance is also referred to as ‘‘detachment from attachment’’ (Tib: chak-drel), since during the experience of White Appearance one is more aware of emptiness than of bliss. This occurs when the eighty gross levels of consciousness associated with ordinary human life fade into its preternatural sense of whiteness. When they have done so, Red Appearance starts arising. n Red Appearance Frequently described as ‘‘like sunlight filling a clear autumn sky,’’ Red Appearance is spoken of by Tsongkhapa as ‘‘like cloudless sky in dustless air blanketed by sunlight.’’ Because of its close relationship to compassion, it is sometimes referred to the ‘‘essence of Action Tantra.’’ It occurs when White Appearance fades into a rising preternatural sense of redness. It is also spoken of as ‘‘ardor’’ or ‘‘bliss’’ because of the feeling of great joy that it generates. Concentration on these feelings ultimately enables a deeper sense of emptiness to be perceived. Once this is perceived, Black Appearance begins rising. n Black Appearance (chakpa-barwa) Black Appearance is poetically described as ‘‘like the absence of light in a moonless autumn night-sky’’ or, in Tsongkhapa’s words, ‘‘a cloudless sky blanketed by onset of night.’’ It is called the ‘‘Burning Essence’’ (chakpa-barwa) in reference to the intense experience of conjoining of bliss and emptiness. It is also called ‘‘ignorance’’ because the highest level of bliss is still obscured by the sense of ‘‘blackness.’’ Intense concentration on the blackness reveals a motionless, visionless appearance (devoid of any sense of object). This is ‘‘similitude clear-light’’ ( pei-wosel), the subtlest possible conceptual understanding of the basic nonconceptual nature of pure consciousness. Black Appearance must be approached carefully, since it can confer mental damage on those who have not yet attained an unfailing, instinctive habitude of fundamental compassion (sarva-yogacitta; Tib: tamche-neljor-gyi-sem). n

When these experiences of the Three Appearances start to remain in memory after the meditative exercise, it becomes easier to perceive the fundamental levels of consciousness. Four Empties Visualization Associated with the Three Appearances are four increasingly vacuous levels of conceptual thinking referred to as the Four Empties: The Empty (Tib: tongpa) is awareness of the vacuity of the objects of thought associated with the eighty gross levels of consciousness (see note 20). It occurs when the internal sense of White Appearance is realized.

n

Table 1.1 The eighty obstructive states of consciousness originally indicated by the arcane allusive language of the Guhyasamaja Root Tantra as clarified by Nagarjuna and Tsongkhapa (see note 20). White Appearance emerges from cessation of the thirty-three strongly obstructive mental preoccupations

Red Appearance emerges from cessation of forty subtler modes of obstructive consciousness

Hatred (for any kind of object other than oneself) Disdain (for any kind of object other than oneself) Dislike (for any kind of object other than oneself) Strongly missing (a loved one or thing) Missing (a loved one or thing) Slightly missing (a loved one or thing) Neutral mind (neither happy nor sad) Distractedness (unable to maintain mental focus on anything) Panic Fear Anxiety Strong fondness (for someone or something) Moderate fondness (for someone or something) Mild fondness (for someone or something) Doting on any of one’s five basic constituents of existence (body, perception, sensation, instinct, and consciousness) Uncertainty (regarding the value of virtuous action) Eagerness to eat Eagerness to drink Tactile pleasure Tactile displeasure Tactile sensibility without pleasure or displeasure Subject-oriented mental disposition Object-oriented mental disposition Action-oriented mental disposition Preoccupation with ethical action Distress regarding unethical action Aversion to shameful activity Pity Protectiveness Eagerness to be with the things or people one likes Tendency to ignore (people or things one dislikes) Eagerness to accumulate things Jealousy

Desire to obtain something not possessed Desire to keep to something already possessed Strongly liking an object or being Ordinary liking for an object or being Mild liking for an object or being Delightedness (when accomplishing ends) Obsessive thinking (about liked objects) Sense of surprise Abstracted mind (mentally engaged but not paying particular attention) Sense of satisfaction Eagerness to embrace Eagerness to kiss Eagerness to suck Impulse to maintain mental status quo Zealousness in the pursuit of virtuous action Sense of self-importance (egotism) Obsession to complete an action Impulse to acquire something by force Impulse to destroy another’s power Fervor to form a habit of virtuous action Impulse for destructive action (strong) Impulse for destructive action (medium) Impulse for destructive action (weak) Arrogance Desire for playful affection Repugnance Vengefulness Obsession to elaborately explain Obsession to be candid Obsession to deceive others Obsession to keep promises Indifference to possessions Obsession to be generous Obsession to promote virtuous action by others Eagerness to defeat enemies Shamelessness (brazenness, lack of concern for feelings of others) Joy in deceiving others Impulse to persist in wrong views Superciliousness Intentional unjustness

Black Appearance emerges when seven very subtle obstructive mental habitudes cease Disinterestness (lacking interest for objects and ideas) Neglectful memory (repressing aspects of memory) Tendency to fantasize (attentiveness to illusions) Aversion to speech Angst (inclination to be unhappy) Disinclination to act beneficially Indecisiveness (eschewing decisive action)

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The Very Empty (Tib: shintu tongpa) is awareness of the emptiness of the subtle level of subject-object thinking associated with the nonverbal levels of intentionality (the emotive winds-of-life). The movement of these subtler levels of intentionality generate the sense of Red Appearance. n The Great Empty (Tib: chenpo tongpa) is awareness of the vacuity of the even subtler level of subject-object thinking that discloses the most basic emotive forces. As these levels of intentionality collapse, the sense of Black Appearance arises. n The Extremely Empty (Tib: thamched tongpa) is the cessation of the most subtle level of subject-object thinking and the very subtle emotive force that is its partner. n

Each of the Four Empties represents further progress on the way toward the direct nonconceptual experience of the emptiness in the absence of dualistic thought. White Appearance leads to appreciation of the first level, Red Appearance to the second, and Black Appearance to the third. A full realization of Black Appearance is referred to as ‘‘empty,’’ but not ‘‘emptiness.’’ The fourth, the Extremely Empty, with its almost total vacuity of conceptual thought, dawns only after concentration on Black Appearance subdues its blackness. In classic Tantric terminology this occurs when all the ‘‘winds-of-life’’ have been absorbed into the ‘‘central chamber of the heart chakra.’’ Four Joys The sense of liberation conveyed by the Four Empties generates Four Joys, each being a more ecstatic experience than the previous. These are spoken of as (1) Joy ( gawa), (2) Great Joy (chogtu-gawa), (3) Extreme Joy (khye-gawa), and (4) Exquisite Joy (lhenkye-kyi-gawa).21 The sense of emptiness associated with White Appearance suffuses one with Joy; that accompanying Red Appearance brings Great Joy; Black Appearance brings Extreme Joy; and clear-light suffuses one with Exquisite Joy. Level 2. Emptying Consciousness of Domination by Verbal Rumination (Tib: thamelpae-ngag) The second level of the Completion Stage is often translated as ‘‘isolation of speech.’’ However, rather than verbal activity being set apart and isolated, it is replaced by appreciation of its underlying emotive forces. The transformation is accomplished by internal (rather than verbal) Vajra Mantra recitation, a practice that concentrates on the internal mental vibrations associated with the subtler levels of life’s emotive forces. The shift of one’s attention from auditory sounds to inner ‘‘sounds’’ is facilitated by the affinity of these internal vibrations to the actual sounds of the Sanskrit syllables om, ah, and hum. Internal mantra is also called ‘‘subtle mantra.’’22 With repetition the verbal conceptualization that normally dominates human mentality gives way.23 This and similar meditational practices quiet the normal cruder levels of mental engagement and allow internal experiential exploration of subtler levels of consciousness.

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Level 3. Emptying Consciousness of Domination by Conceptual Thought (Tib: sem-ven) The aim of the third level of the Completion Stage is to become aware of the nondual foundations of consciousness.24 This requires experiencing rather than conceptualizing them.25 Though this is often referred to as ‘‘isolation of mind,’’ nothing is actually isolated in the sense of being set off by itself or quarantined. Rather, the tendency for human minds to conceptualize is reduced ultimately to the nondual level of consciousness that underlies conceptualization. In Tantric metaphorical terminology this is spoken of as ‘‘loosening the channel constrictions that obstruct movement of the winds-of-life into the central chamber of the heart chakra.’’ Consort Union (Tib: les-kyi-chak-gya) To do so one must first have a direct experience of the basic creative force of life (sarva-yogacitta) that underlies eroticism. There are two basic types of consort union: visualized ( yeshe-kyi chak-gya) and actual (les-kyi chakgya). According to Nagarjuna, in his ‘‘Thoroughly Illuminating Nagarjuna’s Instructions on the Five Levels of Ultimate Tantra’’ (Rimpa-nga), there are five steps in the Completion Stage of Guhyasamaja. The first three are visualized. The last two are experiential. According to Tsongkhapa, only these last two actually bring the ‘‘winds-oflife’’ into the ‘‘central channel’’ where they then generate the Four Joys. This, he explains, cannot occur without actual consort union (les-kyi-chak-gya). This is a Completion Stage practice in its entirety. Without actual coitus with a real consort the elemental emotive force underlying eroticism (and on which eroticism takes its shape) cannot be perceived. During the act of coitus, this underlying emotive force is perceived through intense contemplation of the erotic sensation (rather than the erotic activity). This then leads to the last of the four empties (the extremely-empty), which in turn enables the experience of bliss combining with emptiness to be directly perceived. Terminologically the five steps to this realization are: 1. Bliss Visualization The practitioner imagines uniting sexually with a consort while simultaneously focusing consciousness on an idea of bliss generated by the subtle conceptual understanding of emptiness. This is a Generation Stage practice and, as Tsongkhapa observed, it does not generate an actual experience. Rather, it prepares one eventually to achieve such experience. 2. Mandala Entities Visualized within a White-Wind-Drop While imagining sexual union with a consort, the practitioner visualizes the essence of all the entities of a Tantric mandala in a drop of semen essence. This white-wind-drop (semen-drop) is then visualized descending from the head through the region of the elemental emotional winds (spoken of in Tantra as the ‘‘central channel’’) to the site (chakra) of erotic motivation at the genitalia, from which the quintessence (not substance) of all the salutary mandala entities is released into the site of erotic motivation of the consort. This, too, is a Generation Stage practice since the basic emotive essence of life (in the white-wind-drop) is only imagined.

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3. White-Wind-Drop Exercise The white-wind-drop (i.e., the emotive force of eroticism) is circulated by force of mental concentration on the emotional knots concentrated at the head (‘‘crown chakra’’), to those concentrated at the heart (‘‘heart chakra’’), to those associated with the genitalia (‘‘secret chakra’’), and back. Each circulation reduces the grosser winds of ordinary mentality progressively toward their underlying essences. This is spoken of in Tantra as moving one’s mental focus into the ‘‘central channel.’’ The transformation is a Completion Stage practice. 4. White-Wind Retention Prior to its twelfth chapter, the Vajramala requires concentration on the act of holding the experiential essence of the white-wind (symbolized by the semen-drop) rather than focusing on the form of the drop. It states: ‘‘When the essence of the white-wind flows from the crown chakra through heart chakra to the male genitalia, it must be held there and not allowed to move beyond.’’ 5. White-Wind Emission Later the Vajramala speaks of a ‘‘melted’’ white-semen-drop (i.e., white-wind) emerging from the male genitalia and touching the interior of the consort’s genitalia. In this type of consort union, consciousness focuses on the extremely subtle form of the white-wind itself rather than on the act of retaining it. Not just any consort will do. There are three effective kinds: ngag-kye (a young practitioner of the Generation Stage), zhing-kye (one who has realized any of the first four levels of the Completion Stage), and lhen-kye (one who has realized Unity). A generic term for all the types of consorts is pho-nya (messenger of bliss). Effective consort union requires three conditions: (1) visualizing oneself and one’s consort as conveyors of the essences of truth (lue-la-lhayi-dushe), (2) visualizing the physical openings of the male and female genital organs plugged by the yellow Sanskrit syllable, phet (ngag-la-ngakkyi-dushe), and (3) being motivated solely by the possibility of experiencing true bliss ( yi-la-choe-kyi-dushe), not ordinary sexual bliss. If any of the conditions is not fulfilled, the effort turns into ordinary coitus. Each failure makes the next attempt more difficult. Two widely employed general procedures for actual consort union are introduced in Vajradhara’s ‘‘Indestructible Progression’’ (Vajramala). Further details can be seen in Losang Choegyen’s ‘‘Essence of the Five Levels of the Completion Stage’’ (Rim-nganying-po). Level 4. Generating a Basic Emotive Force Conjoined with Basic Consciousness (Skt: Mayadeha; Tib: Gyumae-lus) This level is devoted to acquiring an extremely subtle body sensibility (Gyumae-lus). As conceptually presented in Tantra, consciousness only perceives objects and analyzes perceptions; it has no physical power and cannot, therefore, undertake activity. The emotive force of life, on the other hand, is physical power but with with no analytic awareness. It can neither perceive objects nor analyze

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perceptions. Intelligent action becomes possible only when consciousness and emotive force act together. From introspective examination of one’s own basic states of consciousness and emotive forces, one can eventually discover an extremely subtle level of consciousness that links to an extremely subtle level of the emotive force of life. The linkage creates an extremely subtle awareness-body capable of intelligent action at the fundamental level of consciousness. The most detailed descriptions appear in the Guhyasamaja texts, Pradipa-dyotana (Tib: Dronsel) by Candrakirti and the Shed-gyud by Rinchen Sangpo. The most complete commentaries on these descriptions are in Tsongkhapa’s ‘‘Thoroughly Illuminating Nagarjuna’s Instructions on the Five Levels of Ultimate Tantra’’ (Rimpa-nga-seldon) and Aryadeva’s ‘‘Clear Light on the Completion Stage of the Guhysamaja Tantra’’ (Carya-samgraha-pradipa; Tib: Chod-du), with additional explanations in his ‘‘Clear Presentation of the Stages of Self Perfection’’ (Svadhisthana-krama-prabheda; Tib: Dhag-jin-lap). This very subtle body is often spoken of in English as ‘‘illusory body’’—because it is similar to a body in a dream. In Tibet it is considered magical in appearance, and is therefore sometimes translated as ‘‘magic body.’’ Sometimes it is called ‘‘imaginary body.’’ Such translations are indicative, but none is fully accurate. Since there is body, it is not an illusion. Magic does not produce it, so it is not a magic body. Though it can be imagined, it is real form, not merely imagination. In his Rimpa-nga, Nagarjuna described it as so subtle that it cannot be understood from anything written about it. There are, however, metaphors and similes. Tantrists commonly refer to it as ‘‘the product of the simultaneous conjoint activation of subtlest consciousness with the subtlest wind-of-life.’’26 They state: ‘‘Those who are able to abandon dualistic thinking at the time of death can achieve this type of body when their consciousness starts to enter the intermediate state (bardo).’’ Though the possibility of such a body can be adumbrated by metaphor, Tantric scholars are quick to explain that it is not possible to actually grasp just what this type of body is without first removing consciousness from subject-object thinking. Nagarjuna says (in his Rimpa-nga) that human thinking first has to change fundamentally. Tsongkhapa is more explicit in his Rim-nga-seldron (a commentary on Nagarjuna’s Rimpa-nga). He reveals that those able to practice the Four Empties during sleep will then be able to recognize the true nature of dreaming as a reflection of the basic emotive force of life. Aryadeva’s Carya-samgraha-pradipa (Tib: Chod-du) goes further and shows how cultivation of the dream state enables a subtle conceptual realization of ‘‘very subtle body.’’27 It also explains that such a body can be realized at the moment of death without consort practice. Vajradhara’s Vajramala and Tsongkhapa’s Rimpanga-seldron explain how.28 Generating such a body stabilizes one’s grasp of the deeper levels of consciousness and provides a means by which effective compassion can be exercised (figures

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Figure 1.9a

Figure 1.9b

This ancient statue of Mahakala (Tib: Gonpo)

This ancient statue of Avalokiteswara (Tib:

displays the angst mixed with joyousness that can come when practicing extreme com-

Chenrizig) reveals the calm joyousness that comes with reflection on the positive effects

passion (Lamayuru Monastery, 1979).

of compassion (Ladakh, 1979).

1.9a–b). When it is first actualized traces of gross mentality are still there, which prevent the body from being realized in its true, subtlest form. For full realization, the ultimate elemental meaning of emptiness must be directly experienced in its full nonconceptualizable nature (in Tantric terminology, ‘‘realizing actual clear-light’’)— this being the goal of level 5. Level 5. Relieving the Mentality of the Remaining Subtle Concepts Associated with the Three Appearances (Tib: nang-gi-ngonpar-jang-chub-pa) The fifth level of the Completion Stage introduces one to the most elemental level of consciousness—spoken of by Tibetan Tantrists as ‘‘actual clear-light’’ (wosel). It is the nondual state of the fundamental level of consciousness in which direct experience does not crystalize

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into subjects and objects. Tantrists speak of it as ‘‘the mind of great bliss cognizing the nonreality of subject-object conceptualization.’’ Though one can conceptualize such a mentality (and though such concepts can lead students to nonconceptual perception), the actual experience of nonduality can only occur after all conceptual thinking ceases. When conceptually considered, this subtlest level of consciousness can be either object or subject. When a person’s consciousness focuses on it, it is object. When it is one’s mind beholding the inherent emptiness of concepts, it is subject. At the nonconceptual level, however, it is neither. Rather it is the nondual experiential nature of the deepest level of consciousness, thus beyond the possibility of explanation by words and syntax (figures 1.10a–b). The fifth level of the Completion Stage takes one to this nondual state of consciousness spoken of by Tantrists as ‘‘pure clear-light.’’ One reaches it when the subtlest conceptual appreciation of nondual consciousness (i.e., the last remaining subtle conceptualization of clear-light) is replaced by the direct (rather than conceptual) experience of it. This then is the final condition of the Fourth Empty. Tibetan Tantrists speak of the external cause of such perception being actual coital experience with an appropriate consort, as required by this stage of Tantric practice. Its internal cause, according to them, is the transformation of mentality by meditative concentration on that unobscured true bliss that is more fundamental than erotic bliss.29 Level 6. Unity (Tib: Zung Jug) The sixth level confers a stable realization of the unity of the fundamental levels of emotive force (sarva-yogacitta) and consciousness (wosel). One enters this level as a learner in a state called ‘‘learners’ unity.’’ The learning process requires two processes. Mixing Subtle Body and Cessation One first must bring the completed extremelysubtle-awareness-action body ( gyumae-lus) into the cessation of ego-oriented emotive forces. This requires experiencing (not conceptualizing) nondual awareness in the presence of extraordinary bliss (the Fourth Joy). The combination enables practitioners to retain their completed subtle-awareness-action-bodies during active life. In Nagarjuna’s Rimpa-nga this is spoken of as a ‘‘unity-body’’ devoid of such negative emotions as anger, hatred, desire, and so on (collectively, nyon-drib) as well as the very subtle persisting residue (‘‘smell’’) of such delusions (shey-drib). Eradicating the Smell The smell is eradicated by repeating the dissolution and regeneration of the Three Appearances. When all traces of the smell are gone, there is nothing left to learn. One is then said to have realized the consummate nature of consciousness as primordial unity (milob-pai-zung-jug).

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Figure 1.10a Here Heruka (Tib: Dechog) unites (anthropomorphically) with Vajrayogini (Tib: Dorjee Neljorma) in order to merge the root essence of action and consciousness as the means to realize the unity-of-existence (Lamayuru Monastery, Ladakh 1978).

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Figure 1.10b The faces in this large statue of Guhyasamaja (Tib: Sangwa-duepa) register aspects of the fervor that can occur during consort practice. It is a new statue and somewhat reflects modern ideas about erotic consciousness (Gaden-Jangtse Monastery, 2001).

Brief Summaries of Some Ultimate Tantras Guhya-samaja (Tib: Sangwa-deupa) The Guhya-samaja (also called Tathagata-guhyaka in Sanskrit) is the Ur-Tantra from which all the other Buddhist ultimate Tantras emerged. In Tibet it is normally referred to as Sangwa-duepa (or Sangdu), but it can also be called Mikyod-dorje, Shedang-dorje, or Jampel-dorje. It was first taught by Buddha to Vajrapani and King Indrabodhi. It passed through Nagarjuna and Lok Kya Sherab Tzek to Tsongkhapa, who passed it to his disciples, Sherab Singe (who founded Gyudmed Tantric University) and Gyuchen

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Kunga Thondrub (who founded Gyutoe Tantric University). Since then it has been passed from abbot to abbot in both monasteries. Its first seventeen chapters (sangwadupae-tza-gyud) explain all four major types of Buddhist Tantra in detail and are believed to be a transcription of the actual words of Buddha. The eighteenth chapter summarizes these explanations. There are two main Guhyasamaja traditions: Mikyodpa-phaglug and Yeshe-zhablug. The Mikyodpa-phaglug line, established by Nagarjuna in the fifth century, is still widely practiced. It was introduced to Tibet by Marpa Lotsawa in the eleventh century but only became firmly established there in the fourteenth century through the efforts of Tsongkhapa. The Yeshe-zhablug line derived from the Gyanapada tradition of ancient India and is now practiced mainly in India. Candrakirti clarifies many of the difficult meanings of the Guhyasamaja in his ‘‘Brilliant Lamp Commentary on the Guhyasamaja-tantra’’ (Dronsel). Nagarjuna’s Pentabida-sadhana (Dor-jae) gives further details on the Generation Stage, and his Sri-guhyasamaja-mahayoga-tantra-upadatramadana-satama-sharwa-kanama (Tib: Do-sae) explains the stages of generating Guhyasamaja and combines its methods with the practice of Sutra. It also explains the proper order of the Guhyasamaja Root Text (which was deliberately mixed to protect it). Referred to in English as ‘‘The Complete Mysteries of Buddhahood,’’ ‘‘The Secret Congress,’’ and ‘‘Secret Conjoining,’’ the Guhyasamaja was first explained in detail by Nagarjuna in his ‘‘Lamp Illuminating the Five Steps of the Completion Stage’’ (Rimpanga). It emphasizes emptying body, speech, and mind of gross emotive forces and subject-object thinking as the essential preparation for realizing subtle body ( gyumaelus), nondual consciousness (wosel), and Unity (zung-jug). The complete diagram (mandala) of the Guhyasamaja Tantra displays the thirty-two personified symbolic entities of its Generation Stage, each representing an important salutary state of mind. Vajradhara (Tib: Mikyodpa), its central personification, represents the fundamental essence of consciousness. Though an essential practice of Guhyasamaja is consort coitus, this practice is not openly detailed in the texts because it is considered hazardous when not carefully guided by properly qualified, experienced Tantrists.

Heruka (Tib: Khorlo-demchog) As the personification of supreme bliss, Heruka is one of the most important symbolic representations of subtle states of consciousness in the Tantric pantheon. ‘‘He’’ is also called Cakrasamvara in Sanskrit and, in Tibetan, Trak-thung-pawo and Khorlo-dhompa (the blood-drinking victorious one who ‘‘drinks’’ the ‘‘red semen-blood’’—a symbolic articulation of perceiving that primordial bliss atop which eroticism takes shape in human beings. The Heruka Tantra is recorded in monastic archives as going from Buddha to Vajrapani, then to Saraha and onward to Nagarjuna, Tilopa, and Naropa. It was brought to Tibet in the tenth century by Lok Kya Sherab Tzek, where it was translated

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into Tibetan by Rinchen Sangpo and Padma Karvarma and eventually transmitted to Tsongkhapa and Sherab Singe, the founder of Gyudmed Tantric University. The essence of Heruka is beyond cognitive perception and defies the rules of grammar by merging a subject (bliss) with an object (emptiness) and thereby overcoming conceptual thought. The bliss is reflected in the name, Khorlo-dhompa, which translates as ‘‘completion through great bliss.’’ Thus Dechog is also Cakra-samvara, the ‘‘Wheel of Greatest Bliss,’’ which the Cakrasamvara mandala presents as an iconographic guide to perception of the most elemental forms of emptiness (greatest bliss). The name Dechog also refers to mind as subject, which is the source of the consciousness by which innate ultimate bliss can be achieved. This bliss, though obscured by overlays, is said to be an inherent part of all sentient beings from the beginning. The Tantra is meant to help those who pursue its path to realize this bliss, first by imagining within themselves the nature of Dechog during the Preparation Stage, and then by achieving the actual experience in the Completion Stage.

Vajrayogini (Tib: Dorje-neljorma) Also called Vajravarahi in Sanskrit and Dorje-phagmo in Tibetan, Vajrayogini is a Consciousness Tantra or Wisdom Tantra (‘‘mother Tantra’’). It is presented without consort in a mandala with thirty-two personified symbolic entities. Both Heruka and Vajrayogini use the same basic text. As female, Vajrayogini is the personification of the bliss aspect of consciousness. As Vajravarahi, she is Heruka’s consort, and celebrated as the origin of unexcelled bliss. Parts of the Heruka Tantra are therefore referred to as Vajravarahi. Vajrayogini is also known as Vajradakini (poetically translated as ‘‘she who roams over the void’’). Her Tantra employs concepts that merge ‘‘activity’’ (upaya) with ‘‘consciousness’’ ( prajna). During meditation the great Indian Tantrist, Naropa, is said to have encountered the essence of Vajrayogini as a solitary Tantra. He then passed this particular realization to Pham-thing-pa, a Nepalese scholar, who passed it to Lo-kya Sherab-tzek, a Tibetan Tantrist and translator. The solitary form is still widely practiced in Tibet.

Yamantaka (Tib: Dorjee jigje) Yamantaka, also known as Vajrabhairava, is the fierce form of Manjushri, the ‘‘consciousness of ultimate reality.’’ He is considered the most extreme form of intelligence in its most active form. Its Tantra can be undertaken with or without consort. In Tibet Yamantaka has two main aspects: Jigje-pawo-chikpa, literally ‘‘solitary hero,’’ and Jigjelha-chusum-ma (with thirteen personified entities representing various salutary states of mind).30 He is also Shinje-shae the defeater (shinje) of ego-oriented emotions (shae). Since these emotions are the cause of death, he is recognized as ‘‘the conqueror of death.’’ There are several Shinje-shae entities, including Dranak, Shemar-jigje, Dorje-jigje,

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and Shinje-donk-druk. Both Yamantaka and Shinje-shae are collective names for the various forms of Yamantaka, all of which represent the fierce aspect of Manjushri (the personification of wisdom). As Jigje (the short name for Dorje-jigje-shinje-shae), Yamantaka is the conqueror of fear.31 Monastic history cites Buddha as the origin of the Yamantaka Tantra. He taught it to Vajrapani and to some Dakini(s). It then disappeared in India. According to legend, the famous siddhi, Lalitta, on noticing the term Dorje-jigje-jipar-che in the Jampel-tsenjoe text, wondered whether there might be an associated Tantra. Deep meditation suggested that such a Tantra existed in the purer mental ambience where Dakini forms reside. With the help of a dakini personification (Rolangma) in this mental ambience, Lalitta uncovered the Yamantaka Tantras. Having but a short time in this meditation, he only memorized the third and seventh chapters, which he then passed on to Amoghavajra, another famous siddhi. The Tantra was finally brought to Tibet by the translator, Ralotsawa Dorje-Drak, where it was eventually transmitted to Tsongkhapa, who passed it to Jetzun Sherab Singhe.

Vajrasattva (Tib: Dorje Sempa) Vajrasattva personifies the fundamental bliss essence of pure consciousness. As such he presents the full range of Bodhisattva qualities leading to a realization of nondual consciousness by visualizing the various states of consciousness represented by the personified entities of the Tantra’s mandala. When essences of these states of consciousness are recognized and internalized, they become reducible to the fundamental essence of consciousness symbolized by Vajrasattva. This Tantra presents a ‘‘hundredsyllable mantra’’ that, if recited twenty-one times every day, is said to reduce the possibility of errors during the meditative generation of Vajrasattva. According to Vajradhara’s text, Vajrasattva-tantra (Tib: Gyud-dorje-nying-po-gyen), recitation of the mantra combined with visualization of the essences of its entities removes obstacles to achieving the subtlest state of mind. The ritual requires mentally reproducing the experience of the moment of death. Like the other ultimate Tantras, Vajrasattva proceeds through all the stages until nondual consciousness is finally reached: (1) Kriya-tantra, (2) Carya-tantra, (3) Yogatantra, and (4) Anuttarayoga-tantra.

Kalachakra (Tib: Dhuekor) Frequently referred to as the ‘‘wheel of time’’ in English, this Tantra presents the full array of symbolic essences that lead to states of subtle consciousness. Unlike other ultimate Tantras, instead of personified entities it stresses bodily form being emptied of substance. ‘‘Empty body form’’ (tong-zug-kyiku) is the metaphor here for the extremely subtle consciousness-action body, instead of ‘‘illusory body form’’ ( gyumae-lus). One of its most distinctive practices is withdrawal of the winds-of-life from the physical senses

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to their most fundamental state in total darkness. There it reduces them to ‘‘four night significances.’’ Unlike the Guhyasamaja Tantra, which actually draws the winds-of-life into the central channel in the first two levels of its Completion Stage, the Kalachakra draws them in during its Generation Stage.

Principal Tantric Orders of Tibet Each Tantric tradition is based on a corpus of Tantras that has been sustained by means of a line of transmission through direct person-to-person instruction over the centuries.32 Principal among these are the following.

Nyingma This, the oldest of the Tibetan Tantric orders, was founded in the eighth century by the Indian Tantric scholar Padmasambhava. It utilizes ‘‘hidden texts’’ (terma) that were hidden during the ninth-century persecution of Buddhists in Tibet. It also absorbed the largest number of pre-Buddhist Tibetan regional divinities. Among all the Buddhist Tantric orders of Tibet, the Nyingma has most extensively absorbed Central Asiatic shamanism into its system. Instead of the four types of Tantra of the other orders, the Nyingma present six Tantras: (1) kriya-yoga (ritualistic), (2) Upa-yoga (symbolic convergence of mundane and transcendental truth), (3) yoga (identifying oneself with the essence of the each of the mandala deities), (4) maha-yoga (visualization of the basic aggregates of human consciousness as deity forms), (5) anuyoga (secret initiation into the voidness of consort meditation), and (6) atiyoga-anuttara (deep meditation on the deep bliss underlying consort union that is the fundamental life force.) Their Dzogchen doctrine traditionally rejects scholasticism in favor of a direct path to enlightenment without formal doctrinal debate. Philosophically they adhere to the zhen-tong position that pure consciousness (ultimate existential reality) is inherent in all sentient beings, but is obscured by bodily form and verbal thought. Pure consciousness is seen as the ‘‘indestructible essence of Buddha’’ (Tatha-gata-garbha), which underlies all empirical phenomena. It is unperceivable to ordinary sentient beings due to the standard patterns of mortal sensibility and mentality. Reality to the Nyingma is entirely nonconceptual, and in that sense distinctionless.

Kagyud The Kagyud trace their Tantric lineage from the Indian Tantrists Naropa and Tilopa. The Tibetan scholar Marpa brought their lineage to Tibet, where it passed through Milarepa to Gampopa (1079–1153), who then founded the Kagyud order. His outstanding text, Dakpoi-thar-gyen (‘‘Dakpo’s Approaches to Liberation’’), was the first of a genre of graded teachings known as Lamrim. This order has an individualistic aspect

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that appears in the aversion by Milarepa (a widely admired folk hero of Tibet) to formal scholarship and arbitrary regulation, traits that may have had roots in the pre-Buddhist ethos. Its tolerance for individual expression has fostered diversification into several suborders. The Kagyud stress hatha-yoga as a principal means of mastering the ordinary habitudes of mind and body. This approach relies on regulation of breathing ( pranayama) and the adoption of meditative postures (asana). It also utilizes six techniques (narochoe-drug) developed by Naropa for achieving Mahamudra (the ‘‘great seal’’ of true understanding): (1) meditatively generated inner heat (tumo), (2) generation of the extremely subtle consciousness-action body ( gyumae-lus), (3) dream practice (nyid-ki-neljor), (4) experiencing pure clear-light (wosel), (5) mentally accessing the intermediate state (bardo), and (6) merging with transcendental unity (zung-jug).

Sakya The Sakya order traces its Tantric lineage from the teachings of the famous Tantric scholar, Drog-mi (992–1072), through such renowned practitioners as Khon Konchog Gyalpo, Sonam Tzemo, Drakpa Gyaltsen, Sakya Pandita, and Drogon Chogyal Phakpa. Drog-mi translated the Hevajra-tantra (presentation of the fierce form of Heruka) into Tibetan and introduced what has since been called ‘‘path-results’’ (lam-dre), a method of sexual union that reveals transcendental unity. In doing so, this order rejects the view that ultimate reality (Tathagatagarbha) is beyond rational interpretation on the grounds that such a view does not take into consideration the vital role rationality can play in realizing ultimate reality. Under the guidance of Sakya Pandita Kunga Gyaltsen (1182–1251), the order became famous for its accomplishments in art, poetry, logic, and epistemology. And, like the Gelug, the Sakya curriculum stresses the logic writings of Dignaga and Dharmakirti.

Kadam Based on the teachings of Atisha (an Indian Tantrist who came to Tibet in the eleventh century), this order was founded by his main disciple, Dromston (Bromston) (c. 1008– 1064). Focusing attention on the exquisitely compassionate Prajnaparamita, the school emphasized eradication of intellectual and ethical flaws in order to be able to attain a true vision of emptiness. Its major text, Jangchub-lamgyi-dron-ma (‘‘The Clear Path to Enlightenment’’) demonstrates the importance of compassion and shows how all levels of human ability (e.g., all levels of intelligence—kyebu-chenpo, kyebu-dring, and kyebu-chun-ngu) can be brought to enlightenment through pragmatic action. It employs silent (nonverbal) mantra recitation as a means to prepare the mind, and Tantric meditation to approach ultimate truth. Though it emphasizes philosophical studies and monastic discipline, it has also produced the popular poetic Kadam-che-tud (‘‘Com-

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pendium of the Kadam Instructions’’). It merged into the similar Gelugpa school in the fifteenth century.

Gelug After being formally educated in teaching centers of three major Tantric schools (Kagyud, Sakya, and Kadam), the outstanding fourteenth-century Tibetan Tantric scholar, Tsongkhapa, founded the Gelug school in order to introduce and stabilize logic, mental quiescence, and enhanced perception as standard monastic practices. His program is set forth in his Lamrim-chenmo (‘‘Great Graded Path’’), which stresses regular exercise in logic and debate and formal examinations in the basic Buddist literature before Tantric practices are undertaken. For Tantric studies the order relies mainly on Tsongkhapa’s famous Rim-nga-seldron. The basic curriculum of this order thus follows Tsongkhapa’s Sung-bum-choe-gye (‘‘The Eighteen Texts’’), an eighteen-volume corpus on Sutra and Tantra, each consisting of about 300 pages, the Gyaltsab-je-sung-bum-druk (‘‘Gyaltsab Je’s Six Texts’’) and the Khedrub-je-sung-bum-poe-chu-nyi (‘‘Khedrub Je’s Twelve Texts’’). The principal preparatory studies of the Gelug are the Pramana (studied from Dharmakirti’s point of view), Prajnaparamita texts, the Madhyamika, the Abhidharmakosa, and Vinaya. When these have been mastered, Tantric studies can begin.33 The great teaching monasteries of the Gelug Order are Gaden, Drepung, and Sera. Its most famous and important Tantric teaching centers are Gyudmed and Gyutoe.

Epilogue This evolution of the written Buddhist philosophy after Buddha passed away reflects the intellectuality of the Buddha and perhaps a preconquest ancestry of the peoples among whom it swiftly took root without coercion. This basic tolerance of, indeed interest in, the thought and feelings of others, whatever the mix of its ancestry, also enabled new intellectual currents to emerge openly within congeries of thought and to be developed. Thus new schools emerged from within old without duress. This unarticulated basic indulgence of human differences persisted in Buddhist monasteries over millennia and can still be seen in unmodernized Tibetan monasteries, where it shows up as an embedded consequence of Buddha’s message not to take concepts very seriously. Historically it allowed continued innovation of the Buddhist philosophical development after it passed into the hands of humankind, where it persisted as an embedded desire to share observations and experience. One only need observe how novice monks engage life and learning in the few remaining traditional monasteries to see the pattern of exploratory inquiry that spawned

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the philosophical movement outlined above. The trait sits most boldly on the surface of young children, simply because children tend to be kinetic, and kinetic activity, unlike mental activity, stands out to the eye. So we see youngsters unabashedly blanketing whatever new thing comes their way with a spirited exploration while they also eagerly gauge its impact on others (figure 1.11). Even in the more mature monastic settings, where there are fewer children to rush about, intellectual exploration proceeds in a similar though less conspicuous fashion. In the prologue, I described a monastery where more than half of the monks were sixteen years of age or younger. What stood out there, day after day, were young novices rushing eagerly to share whatever special tidbit might have come their way (whether material or ideational) with whatever comrades might be around them. Thus a chocolate bar would rapidly become twenty tiny bits, in order that its taste could be experienced with as many associates as possible. The joys of personal possession simply did not have as powerful an attraction as the delights of shared sensibility. In twenty-five years of observation of traditional Tibetan monasteries I do not recall ever seeing a novice eating something who did not want to share it with those around, including me. One day, while having lunch with a group of novices, a burst of mirth snared my attention. An adolescent novice had just selected, as if solely for himself, the largest apple off a plate. Bursts of laughter from the others, no verbal comment, just hilarity, as several then did much the same, usually with some special fillip or perspective of their own. There was no obligation to be either different or the same. Nor did there appear to be any desire to have a more dramatic slant. They were just nuzzling at a trait all had seen outside. That it snared their minds in different ways was the basis of their joy. Each was acting out the sense of how it had struck him. There was no particular order to the theatrics. Nor was the intent pejorative. They would simply jump into action with their versions when they felt they had a slant to contribute. When they noticed my perplexed curiosity, they said, ‘‘You can do it, too. You, too, can be like an Indian.’’ I realized then that what I was seeing was a collective effort to work out the modalities of traits they had observed outside. Each set forth whatever slant he had on it for all to see, thereby contributing to a growing collective understanding. Particularly fascinating to me was that the joy they derived came from the cumulative appreciations they gained—not from trying to show that their slant was cleverer or better. Though the kinetic aspect stands out in younger children, as they grow older, verbal exploration moves more clearly into such inquiry. This can most dramatically be seen in monasteries where traditional debating sessions are stressed. In such sessions dialectic exercises combine kinesthetic action with verbal inquiry in such a way that personal choice governs the direction and mode of the inquiry. The younger ones are most enthusiastically drawn to the athletic choreography, while the older novices

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Figure 1.11 A rope hammock from coastal India, introduced to the monastery moments earlier, attracted this excited conjoint exploration of how it might be strung. It shows how young novices integrate individual penchants with verve, tactility, and mirth as they spontaneously conjoin their divergent approaches to novelty. This mode of learning was seen in all the thirty traditional Tibetan monasteries observed in the 1960s and 1970s. Except in a very few recondite small monasteries, its vitality was largely gone by the early twenty-first century (Zongkar Choede Monastery, 1999).

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focus more intently on verbal dialectics. The two modes can be expressed in countless combinations, so this ‘‘debating’’ (if it can really be called that) is popular across a broad age range. In other monasteries the playing out of personality and preference can pan out differently. For example, in monasteries where subliminal harmonizing of the sounds and rhythms of individual study has evolved, the libidos of new novices get snared by sounds from older novices drifting through the atmosphere. Though they concentrate intently on their own particular studies, some recess of their mind impels them to fit the sounds and rhythms of their recitations into whatever might be in the air around them. The effect, though automatic (not deliberate), is pleasurable and the new novices soon harmonize their sounds of study with the fluctuating larger whole without suggestion that they should do so. Instead, some kind of internal pleasure filters wordlessly and subconsciously into their habitude and builds spontaneously into the harmonies of those already there. The harmonizing spreads from area to area across the monastic setting, spontaneously fostering increasingly complex changing moods and nuances, at the same time that novices verbally pursue their particular studies. It is similar to the subconscious manner that, in other monasteries, harmonizes exploratory activity, or sociable tactility, or inquiry into novelty. This seemingly fundamental urge to conjoin provides a subterranean vitality in all traditional monasteries that I observed. One monastery I had been visiting off and on for a quarter century recently experienced a large influx of youngsters from Tibet. More than half the monks were adolescent or younger. With so many children all about, it became a place to see how new novices in large numbers merge into the various, constantly differentiating, subliminal assemblages. Above that monastery eagles start circling overhead as lunchtime nears. These cruisers of the skies have learned that young monks will share their lunch. And so they move in overhead to snatch from midair offerings tossed up to them. It is the nature of these youngsters to gravitate by cautious steps toward closer contact with unfamiliar things that have snared their curiosity. So a group of these young monklets started going to rooftops to eat their lunch, to get a closer sense within the swirl of raptors. At first they were cautious about how closely they dared share tidbits with the eagles. Throw them far into the air was the first approach. And it was bits of bread they tossed up, though they were well aware that eagles much prefer meat. But they were uncertain at first about how aggressively the eagles would react to proffered meat. When they did, the eagles moved so quickly some got unnerved. Nonetheless by increments they inched to closer rapport. The eagles never actually landed. If they missed a morsel in the air, they would plummet down, thrusting wings out, but a second before they reached the ground in a grand swoop they put their claws precisely onto the tidbit as they soared by. One

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day, a ten-year-old spied a small plastic bag lying on the ground. He tied it to one end of a length of string, a meat chunk to the other. Within seconds an eagle swooped the meat away. The bag filled with air like a parachute. If the eagle was perturbed, it gave no indication, though the drag distinctly slowed its flight, and instead of soaring it had to keep on flapping wings. No matter. It just churned nonchalantly through the air while with its beak it pulled off shreds of meat to eat. When none were left, the bag floated gently down to earth. The wind, the string, the plastic bag in relation to the life force of the eagle entranced the monklets. What seemed most to snatch their hearts was the eagle’s undistracted dedication to what was important—that is, the meat. These youngsters have no difficulty understanding pragmatism, but were nonetheless agog to see the eagle managing with such savoir faire. They then took turns grasping the string’s end and dashing down the path to fill the bag with wind, while pretending to be eating with the other hand—to get a kinesthetic sense of the event themselves. Since such experimental inquiry is neither forbidden nor encouraged (nor even given notice), experiments such as these lead inevitably to others, not unlike the manner Tibetan philosophy itself developed. So I was not surprised, a few days later, to see meat tied to both ends of a length of a string. When an eagle quickly scooped up one, the other dragged through the air behind—until snatched up seconds later by another. The two then flew pragmatically in tandem devouring the chunks at leisure, after which they soared off in separate directions. This, too, riveted the monklets. Then by twos they grabbed each end of the string and ran parallel down the path, just to let the string fall cavalierly away as they dashed off in separate directions. In such ways they learned much about eagles, to whom their hearts now had some connection, and about themselves. Such exploration chains to other types. A favorite sport is dreaming up ways to catch comrades unaware, or being thus caught themselves. Either is enjoyed since it provides new understandings of their own being as well as that of others. One day, during the eagle infatuation period, a new novice, perhaps eight years old, tagged along to rooftop. After all were sitting down and starting on their lunch, an old-timer (twelve years old) surreptitiously put a chunk of meat a half meter from the lad just at the moment a great eagle was wheeling above. It plummeted straight down, stretching out its wings mere inches before the small boy’s eyes, its wingtip grazing his fresh-shaved head. He froze on the spot, became speechless and immobile. Instantly the others moved close around to revive him with that protective loving tactility at which they all are expert. When the child’s wits revived, with much laughter they pantomimed the event to show him what had happened, and to get a better sense of it themselves. Thus he suddenly became an intimate member of the group. These same monklets have a prodigious ability to fall asleep in positions beyond normal Western imagination

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Figure 1.12 Conjoint sleeping by novices sharpens their harmonization sensibilities (Zongkar Choede Monastery, 2001).

(figure 1.12). And they can be virtually unarousable—perhaps because they are accustomed to sleeping virtually anywhere, as in piles where individuals come and go and shift about. Perhaps they sleep soundly because their motors run so fast when they are awake. One evening in my room some half dozen monklets drifted in to sit on the floor to watch me talk in English with some older monks. One small tot sitting Buddhalike began swaying slightly. As his eyes slowly closed, his head would droop down and then jerk up, in the way they fall asleep when sitting up. Eventually his cheek grazed the leg of a nearby chair. Without awakening he moved his head against it. With it propped precariously there, he fell deeply into sleep. When the chair was needed by another monk, a comrade eased him to the floor still fast asleep. And the lad was not aroused when two others dozed off on him as pillow. Later, I asked a twelve-year-old to take him to his room. By that age these youngsters are very savvy about their comrades’

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inner workings, and among other things, they know effective ways to quickly wake each other up. When he saw the tot was very fast asleep, he simply lifted him into the chair, walked around behind and tipped it forward. The tot fell face first toward the floor. I was aghast. But before I could even start to move, the designated waker-up skipped around to catch the tot in midair. Though this required precise timing and attention, he did not fail to notice my dismay. As he caught the tot, he turned his head to me with that expression that says, ‘‘don’t worry, it’s a total snap.’’ Which, I suppose, it was. The tot’s eyes instantly exploded into full awakeness, horror flashing for a millisecond across his face, which as instantly gave way to smiling warmth when in his comrade’s arms. With arms about each other, they then trundled off to bed. Because they so eagerly share with one another whatever new things they experience, individual differences in approach and attitude rarely result in squabbles. Instead of standing pat on honor or an established sense of things (as is a norm in the West), these youngsters eagerly latch onto the varied slants of others. Therefore all their separate sensibilities constantly combine into a comprehensive whole that informs them all. Individuality thus transforms into unity without sacrificing itself. This enables them to grasp deeper subtleties of reality at their own speed, while aided by a richly informative ambience touching them at personal levels. It is these types of experiences that older monks ignore as if they were not happening (which is, in part, why I am making such a point of them here). This ignoring of such events is perhaps crucial in that it allows the subliminal foundations of youngsters’ lives to grow and become experientially sophisticated. With this particular type of freedom offering a broad interstitial area of potential exploration, youngsters keep their antennae tuned to the fluctuations of life around them, ready to quickly grasp the exploratory possibilities of whatever new thing comes along. Alert to the moods and feelings of those around them, they ferret out these possibilities without pressing those not interested. In this manner they cast themselves with verve into the potpourri of life—including such serious events as Tantric rituals—without clumsily disturbing them. At first I was amazed to see novices joking, catching friends’ attention, passing ideas, sharing snacks and tactility, and alerting others to momentary observations during serious rituals. Eventually I realized that this enhanced rather than diminished a ritual, simply by keeping their minds wide awake and thus connected to it. Westerners, by generally doting on formal rules and legalistic constraints, might think: ‘‘How awful.’’ But the alert antennae of these young monks help to keep their participatory ardency within the context of the ritual (just as they do in ordinary life) (figure 1.13). These practices also attract close attention to the ritual, simply because it is there and offers an avenue for their zestful spirits to become constructively involved at their level of appreciation. These not only enhance the power of the ritual vis-a`-vis the novices

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Figure 1.13 Novices raptly harmonize their participation into a Mahakala Tantric ritual (Tarik Sakya Monastery, 1979).

but also confer on it a sense of personal validity and enjoyment in their young eyes (figure 1.14). Similarly, the education of novices was in the hands of personal teachers who shaped their teaching to fit the individual proclivities of their students, just as Buddha did with his disciples. Open heartfelt linkage between teacher and student was the key and progress emerged in an ambience of this kind of joy. It conferred on formal learning an experience not unlike that in which their play spontaneously infiltrates the interstitial spaces of their lives while simultaneously interlinked to the hearts of comrades. None of this was apparent very quickly. Only by going back again and again over several years did what was happening become apparent. In the 1960s and 1970s the traditional ambience seemed sturdy as a rock. In the 1980s it showed vulnerablity to the managerial explicitness of the modern world. The Chinese military conquest of Tibet was not the only thing destroying Tibet’s independently evolved type of civilization. The monks and novices had by the thousands fled across the massive Himalayan barrier (often with nothing but the clothes they wore) into sympathetic neighboring nations to save their way of life. And all seemed rosy for them. For a while. As remnants of an intellectual tradition famed across the world, they attracted international aid. New monasteries were built for them in exile. But alien donors, though altruisti-

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Figure 1.14 In monasteries where rituals maintain a high level of evocative sophistication, young novices can become quite intent (and expert) in their participation, a mood which carries on to nearby comrades and adults (Tarik Sakya Monastery, 1978).

cally motivated, were eager to introduce what they themselves highly valued. One such value was the Western style of education. Tibetans had not previously experienced crowded classrooms, scheduled curricula, and an externally imposed, categorical rather than liminally integrated, type of educational management. By the 1980s these had become structural parts of monasteries, which, for two thousand years, had not had such things. And so, along with the well-meant humanitarian effort, a less than heartfelt type of teaching hitchhiked in—and then seized the ground. Rapport gave way to Westernstyle behavioral codes geared to scheduled lesson plans ‘‘efficiently’’ dispensed en masse in confined and crowded classrooms. No matter how hard a well-meaning teacher tried to sustain a traditional empathetic ambience, the new setting did not allow it. And course schedules reduced all but small fractions of the day for informal

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inquisitiveness and liminal exploration. Like a rare orchid transplanted into arctic climes, a subliminal foundation that has persisted in the deep foundations of monastic life since the time of Buddha began withering silently away in a new house that had no room for it. The process is similar to what occurs in remote parts of the world where preconquest modes of liminal and subliminal consciousness collapse under postconquest regulation. In both it occurs when abstract concepts of social order literally enforced replace that subtler social glue of liminal and subliminal intuitive harmoniousness.

Principal Tutors and Advisors Of critical importance was the initial influence of the renowned Nyingmapa Tantrist, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. This opened an eye to the erudition of the three abbots of Gyudmed who nurtured me along: Losang Thinley Khensur, Losang Tenzin Khensur, and Losang Nawang Khenpo. Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen, a graduate in advanced Buddhist Studies with high distinction (Lharampa) from Gaden-Jangtse University, and Chosang Phunrab, a Sanskrit scholar from the Central Institute for Higher Tibetan Studies were principal translators. (See photos in figures 1.15a–f). Their explications were at times

Figure 1.15a

Figure 1.15b

Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Principal Nyingma Tantrist, Abbot of Schechan Tantric Monas-

Losang Thinley Khensur, Abbot of Gyudmed Tantric University (at Gyudmed, March

tery, occasional advisor to the Dalai Lama,

1980).

Royal Advisor to the King of Bhutan (at Schechan Tantric Monastery, 1980).

Figure 1.15c Losang Tenzin Khensur, Gyudmed Tantric

Figure 1.15d

University (at Gyudmed, March 1982).

Abbot of Gyudmed Tantric University (at Gyudmed, Tantric Monastery March 1980).

Figure 1.15e Geshe Lharmpa Tashi Gyaltsen, Tantric

Figure 1.15f Chosang Phunrab, Sanskrit and Tibetan

scholar, administrator emeritus Gelug sect,

scholar from the Central Institute for Higher

previous member of the Tibetan Parliament

Tibetan Studies (at Zongkar Choede Monas-

in Exile (at Gaden-Jangtse Monastic Univer-

tery, January 2001).

sity, 2001).

Losang Nawang Khensur, Tantric master.

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augmented by commentary from two other Gyudmed abbots: Tashi Dorjee Khensur and Gosok Tulku Khensur. And I had the further good fortune to have at my disposal at key times the translation skills of such respected Buddhist scholars as Geshe Thubten Jinpa and Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen, both from Gaden Monastic University, as well as the sophisticated linguistic insights of Tenzin Yangthak of Zongkar Chode Monastery and Chosang Phunrab, a Sanskrit scholar from the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. Contrastive perspectives on translation were provided not just by these scholars, but also at odd times by Geshe Thupten Phegye, Geshe Gendun Gyatso, Cheme Lama, Dorjee Gyalpo, Nawang Chosdak, Tsering Wangyal, Tseten Phuntsok, Pema Nandak, and Thupten Phuntsok. The diversity of their approaches to translation provided insights that eventually enabled a more precise grasp of Tibetan meanings. Notes This chapter has been adapted from a book in preparation on liminal consciousness. Preliminary material was presented at the Third Biennial Conference of ‘‘Toward a Science of Consciousness,’’ Tucson, AZ, 2000, at the 74th Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Albuquerque, NM, 2000, and at the XXI World Congress of Philosophy, Istanbul, Turkey, 2003. For an example of liminal consciousness development in aboriginal societies, see my chapter ‘‘Preconquest Consciousness’’ in Helmut Wautischer, ed., Tribal Epistemologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology, 79–116 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998). Copyright for the chapter presented herewith and all related photographs is with E Richard Sorenson, 2006. 1. The analysis of Buddhist philosophical development presented here is not intended to explicate the thought of Buddha but rather to reveal the historical human effort to produce a written Buddhist philosophy after Buddha passed away. The project did not start as such and came together slowly after an unexpected meeting in the 1970s in Nepal with the renown Nyingmapa Tantric scholar Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, back when I was in early stages of surveying the world for possible research on diverse patterns of child behavior. That short session with him led to many others, both in Nepal and at his home base in Bhutan. At about the same time Gyatsho Tshering, Director of the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala, met me at the Smithsonian Institution shortly after I took up the task of directing the development of a new National Human Studies Film Center. He invited me to meet with him and the Dalai Lama on my upcoming visit to India. The Dalai Lama took interest in my research-film approach to documenting endangered traditional ways of life and opened Tibetan monasteries under his jurisdiction for my studies. These monasteries included Tibet’s most sophisticated central Tantric teaching institution, Gyudmed Monastery (now Gyudmed Tantric University). At the time many children had been swept along in the massive flow of Tibetan refugees fleeing the Chinese military conquest of Tibet. Due to that monastery’s fundamentally humanitarian character, Gyudmed relaxed its normal rule of only accepting novices after puberty. The youngest when I arrived had been accepted at the age of five, simply because he had no place to go except to an uncle who was a monk there.

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Because I lived within the residential areas of the monks and novices of Gyudmed, I had an unusual opportunity to observe aspects of child development otherwise unseeable. Gyudmed’s abbot took a friendly personal interest in my work and at times would comment on the relationship of Tantra philosophy to consciousness development. His seemingly offhand comments were always sensible and helpful. But they also kept leading to new issues. These ultimately led to an annual period of residence of one to three months in Gyudmed that continued for twenty years. During this same period I was also able to live in and make comparative observations in Gaden Monastic University and Zongkar Chode Monastery, while continuing to make observations in Kagyud and Sakya monasteries in Nepal and Ladakh. When my first Gyudmed abbot tutor passed away, two successive abbots volunteered to take up philosophical explanations where the last left off. Their efforts ultimately provided a uniquely intimate and more comprehensive view of Tibetan philosophy (as it is seen by the most erudite Tibetan lamas). Therefore my approach, rather than being shaped by non-Tibetan academic disciplines (e.g., Tibetology and comparative religious studies), focused entirely on the most educated indigenous Tibetan view. Though my involvement was influenced by intellectual baggage from my training as a professional anthropologist, that profession fortunately stresses direct observation and interview during cross-cultural immersion. The study led to numerous formal Tantric initiations conveyed by various abbots and then by the Dalai Lama. These included such seminal Tantras as the Guhyasamaja (Tib: Sangwa-deupa), Yamantaka (Tib: Jigje), and Heruka (Tib: Dechog). There was no thought at first of studying Tibetan philosophy. My initial interest was simply to get some understanding of the impact of the traditional Tibetan monastic ambience on children. However, it soon became evident that this required at least some understanding of the Tibetan philosophy. I soon learned that Tantric knowledge is restricted and carefully guarded. However, before he died, my first Gyudmed abbot tutor completed the necessary orientation and initiations. He then asked the Dalai Lama whether it might be useful to allow publication of some of what I had been learning. The Dalai Lama agreed on grounds that it might help dispel the seriously misinformed ideas of Tantra circulating in the West. It was at that time I began preparation of notes describing what I was learning. During the spring and summer of 1999 I composed the initial draft in Washington, D.C., in the home of the distinguished archaeologist, Marion Stirling. In January 2000 I presented it for review and critique at Gyudmed Tantric University. It was first checked by Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen, the representative of the Dalai Lama in the Tibetan Parliament in Exile, then more exhaustively by the then abbot of Gyudmed, Losang Nawang Khenpo. The review took two months of daily sessions of one to three hours each during which each English sentence was translated into Tibetan first by Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen and then by Chosang Phunrab, a Tibetan Sanskrit scholar from the Central Tibetan Institute of Higher Studies. Various subtleties of meaning were then discussed, sometimes exhaustively, to make sure we had the right word. Sometimes we would spend an entire session on the meaning of a single word. Tibetan-English dictionaries were soon abandoned as overly simple or misrepresentative. As part of my long-term Study of Child Behavior and Human Development in Cultural Isolates, this project received vital support at various stages from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Arts, National Institutes of Health, National Institute for Mental Health, Institute for Intercultural Studies, Rachelwood Foundation, Public Law 480 of the United States (for expenses in India), a line-item appropriation from the U.S. Congress, the

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Women’s Committee of the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, Gyudmed Tantric University, Gaden Monastic University, and the National Human Studies Film Center of the Smithsonian Institution. To these institutional sources, private contributions and assistance were provided at critical junctures by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Morgan, Drs. Lucy and Jerry Waletzky, Dr. and Mrs. William H. Crocker, Mrs. Constance Mellon, Mrs. Marion Stirling Pugh, Dr. Evelyn Nef, Ambassador Douglas and Consul General Ernestine Heck, Mrs. Lionel Epstein, and S. C. Rockefeller. 2. This trait is most fully described in my ‘‘Preconquest Consciousness’’ (see the introduction to this notes section). 3. The Abhidharmas are principally detailed analyses and systematizations of what is presented in the Sutras. They consist mostly of listings, taxonomies, things to do, and so on. Some schools considered them equal in validity to the Sutras. Others held the Sutras to be the ultimate authority. The main period for writing Abhidharma was approximately the third century B.C. to the end of the first century A.D.; several schools developed their own versions. 4. The practices neglected included carrying salt in a hollowed horn (a violation of the rule forbidding the storage of food), seeking permission for an action after the fact, and accepting gold and silver (a violation of the rule forbidding wealth accumulation). 5. The most famous treatise of the Mahasanghika, ‘‘Great Subjects’’ (Mahavastu), was written collectively. It speaks of reality as consisting of pure objects and pure thought, and (less explicitly) antedates a central Mahayana view. Their Lokattaravada subschool then produced a transcendental view of Buddha that also became an important part of the Mahayana system. Ideas and positions seen in the compilation of the early versions of the Lalita-vistara by the Mahasanghika and Sarvastivada schools reappear in such important Mahayana sutras as the Saddharma-pundarika, the Tathagata-guhyaka, the Samadhi-raja, and the Dasa-bhumika. Though the basic Sarvastivada position was a belief that everything exists, it was the famous Sarvastivada scholar, Vasubandhu, who (in his Vijnnapti-matra-siddhi-sastra) showed external objects to be nothing more than mental conceptions. He then became a Sautrantika monk—an illustration of the tolerance within schools and of how new schools came into being from within old ones. 6. Though Buddha briefly introduced the term prajnaparamita in his early teachings at Vulture’s Peak (Tib: Jagod Phungpo-ri), and though the idea had occasionally surfaced in realism-oriented schools, it was not until the first century A.D. that clear literary presentations of these views began emerging. 7. Nagarjuna’s literary accomplishments include not just basic philosophical treatises like the Mula-madhyamika-karika. He also wrote major logical dissertations, such as his famous ‘‘Deflecting Objections’’ (Vigra-havya-vartani), inspirational works like the ‘‘Precious Garland’’ (Ratna-vali), poetic works such as his ‘‘Seventy Stanza Treatise on Emptiness’’ (Sunyata-saptati), treatises on the fundamentals of Buddhism, like ‘‘Illumination of the Ten Levels’’ (Dasabhumi-vibhasa-sastra), discourses revealing the compassionate basis of Buddhism (Bodhicitta-vivarana), as well as detailed Tantric texts such as his Sri-guhysasamaja-mahayoga-tantra-upa-datrama-satama-sharwa-kanama (Tib: Do-sae) and Pentabida-sadhana (Tib: Dor-jae), of which the best known is his famous Tantric text, Rimpa-nga.

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8. A popular logic technique of the time was the tetralemma, which placed all linguistic possibilities within one of four possible conditions: (1) it exists, (2) it does not exist, (3) it both exists and does not exist, (4) it neither exists nor does not exist. Using this tightly defined arena of argument, Nagarjuna showed the fundamental fallaciousness of objective thinking. His arguments were irrefutable by the logic of the time, and severely challenged the Indic scholarly establishment. Unable to refute his arguments, the Nyaya school of Hindic logic simply refused to confront Nagarjuna’s logic on grounds that it was nihilism. 9. For example, in his ‘‘Deflecting Objections’’ (Vigra-havya-vartani; Tib: Tsod-dhog) Nagarjuna argued that since both subject and object of perception are interdependent, they are therefore mutually conditioned. Thus neither has genuine self-existence. He did not consider this an argument that knowledge itself does not exist (as some of his critics were claiming), only that knowledge as an object has no independent existence. 10. In his widely admired poetic treatises the Catuh-sataka-karika (‘‘Four Hundred Verses on the Teachings of Buddha’’) and the Yogacara-catuh-sataka-sastra (‘‘The Experientialist Four Hundred’’). 11. Reductio ad absurdum is a form of logic that refutes by showing contradictory or absurd consequences that emerge when rigorous logical analysis is applied. There are several types—for example, disproving an argument by showing that its conclusion is logically contradictory; indirect proof by which an argument is invalidated by reference to previously proved propositions; or demonstration of the validity of an argument by indirectly showing that the contradictory argument is absurd. In the collective sense, the term refers to anything that when pushed to logical extremes is reduced to self-contradictory nonsense. Such was the power of Nagarjuna’s comprehensive reductio ad absurdum of all stated positions that the Prasangika school eschewed any ontological position. 12. Although an earlier Yogacara-bhumi by Sangharaksa may have provided philosophical impetus, it was Asanga’s Yogacara-bhumi-sastra that directly influenced the development of the Yogacara school. In this text he describes five aspects of yogic realization: (1) Bodhisattva activity (Tib: sayi-ngoe-zhi-duwa), (2) the cause of Bodhisattva realization (Tib: zhi-duwa), (3) the number of Bodhisattva paths (Tib: namdrang-duwa), (4) the three kinds of meaning (Tib: tenla-wabpaduwa), and (5) the nature of mind and its kinds (Tib: nampar-shepe-go-duwa). 13. These three forms of mind are: (1) forms that mind imagines and gives names to ( parikalpitasvabhava); (2) the unimaginable, unnamable pure form of form perceived experientially by consciousness ( paratantra-svabhava); and (3) awareness of the transcendental emptiness from which all sense of form emerges ( parinispanna-svabhava). 14. The Nyingmapa order, for example, uses a sixfold system. A clever taxonomist might find other interesting ways to set them forth. For an explanation of the Nyingmapa approach see the Nyingmapa section. 15. The ‘‘winds-of-life’’ are the emotive forces that propel life. Tantrists generally subdivide them into five major types: (1) prana-vayu, the heart-centered energy (referred to as the ‘‘life-sustainingwind’’ in classical Tibetan Tantra), (2) apana, the genital-centered energy (or ‘‘downward-clearingwind’’), (3) samana, the navel-centered energy (or ‘‘fire-wind’’), (4) udana, the throat-centered

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energy (or ‘‘upward-flowing [or verbal] wind’’), and (5) vyana, physical energy (or the ‘‘pervasive wind of movement’’). The Kalachakra Tantra, however, speaks of five additional energies, making ten winds in all: (6) naga, the northwest-flowing energy, (7) kurma, the southeast-flowing energy, (8) krkala, the southwest-flowing, firelike energy, (9) devadatta, the northeast-flowing, waterlike energy, and (10) dhananjaya, the earthlike, central-flowing energy. 16. The personified symbolic entities representing positive mental states appear on a wheel-like diagram (mandala). Concentration on their appearance, attributes, and accouterments enables novices to more easily recognize the actual experiences when they occur within one. These symbols are not the real meaning of a mandala, which can only be attained by intensive concentration of the consciousness states represented by its symbolic structure. There are four different basic types of mandalas. Three are material: painted on cloth, limned in pulverized colored stone, or a sculpted three-dimensional representation. One is nonmaterial and consists of visualizing the actual mental states—not the symbols themselves—within one’s own body. 17. The stages are somewhat arbitrary. For example, Nagarjuna considered ‘‘isolation of body’’ a Generation Stage–level practice, leaving the Completion Stage with only five levels. 18. Clear-light (Tib: wosel) is a metaphorical term for the pure elemental state of consciousness. Though it is the nonconceptualized pure pristine form, ideas about its nature can be conceptualized. Tantrists, for example, speak of ‘‘objective clear-light’’ ( yul-kyi-wosel), which is emptiness conceptualized as an object. They also speak of ‘‘subjective clear-light’’ ( yulchen-kyi-wosel), which is the mentality that is conceptualizing emptiness. There are two types of subjective clear-light: (1) similitude clear-light ( pei-wosel), which is the understanding of emptiness in the subtlest possible conceptual way, and (2) actual clear-light (dhon-kyi-wosel), which is the nonconceptual experience of the nonduality of pure emptiness. Perfect clear-light is also called ‘‘perfect consciousness’’ (sherab-yeshi). In addition, there is death clear-light (chiwa-wosel), which is a similitude clear-light that appears briefly just before the final moment of death. 19. In Tantra, emptiness is perceived along with the experience of the bliss that occurs when consciousness enters the visualized ‘‘white-wind-drop’’ either at the tip of the ‘‘heart chakra’’ (as in ‘‘mantra-drop practice’’), at the forehead chakra (as in ‘‘light-drop practice’’), or at the genitalia (as in ‘‘white-wind-drop practice’’). 20. The source from which these eighty terms were derived is the arcane, somewhat poetic allusive language of the Guhyasamaja Root Tantra. Around the end of the second century, Nagarjuna clarified these terms consistent with his view that verbal concepts can be used as stepping-stones to understandings more profound than those possible with words. A millennium later Tsongkhapa reduced Nagarjuna’s poetic approach to the taxonomic specificity revealed in table 1.1. Even though each step toward verbal specificity further distances one from the original Tantric sensibilities, movement to these deeper levels can be sustained by suggestive words. Translation of Tsongkhapa’s effort, as set forth in table 1.1, was bedeviled by contradictions and took several weeks of deliberation by Tantric scholars from Gyudmed Tantric University, Gaden University, Zongkar Chode Monastery, the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies, and the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. Interestingly they were not much fazed that each new attempt produced different English renditions. One said: ‘‘Well, of course you can fish out different words

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depending on how your verbal mind is set.’’ They considered all intensively produced versions to be similarly (if not equally) accurate (in the sense that they possessed the ability to turn minds toward actual Tantric insights). Table 1.1 is an example of how nonverbalizable aspects of basic Tantra can be glossed with words that move across sweeps of time and differences in languages and culture, and still expose the underlying core levels of human consciousness. 21. In Tantric terminology the first joy occurs as the white-wind-drop moves from the crown chakra to the throat chakra; the second joy, from throat to heart chakra; the third joy, from heart to navel chakra; and the fourth joy, from navel to genital chakra. When the procedure is reversed step by step back to the crown chakra, the intensity of joy increases. This reverse practice, however, is difficult and risky if one is not properly prepared. It can too easily then become unmanageable and lead to derangement, some say even death. 22. While breathing in, one visualizes the experience of om coming into the heart, while breathing out the experience of hum is visualized going farther and farther out in all directions, and in the interval between the inward and outward breaths, ah is visualized positioned at the throat where it remains after the breath is out (considered very difficult). 23. During the Generation Stage phase of isolation of speech, Vajra Mantra repetition only shields mind from ordinary conceptual rumination by preoccupying it. The value of the shield, once it is in place, is that one can more easily notice the experiential essences that underlie and propel speech. When these essences are experienced, one is able to regard ordinary speech as ultimately vacuous in and of itself. 24. In Tantric metaphorical terminology, the process begins with the ‘‘life-bringing-practice’’ of the ‘‘three-drops’’—that is, the ‘‘mantra-drop’’ in the ‘‘central-chamber’’ of the ‘‘heart chakra,’’ the ‘‘light-drop’’ at the forehead channel tip, and the ‘‘white-wind-drop’’ at the genitalia. They all move the gross ‘‘winds-of-life’’ toward and into the two ‘‘side-channels’’ and finally into the ‘‘central-channel’’ (also referred to as the ‘‘life-channel’’). 25. The root text of Guhyasamaja Tantra describes the ultimate nature of mind as rootless, baseless, placeless, signless, colorless, shapeless, beyond the sense of sense organs, and unperceivable by the normal physiological senses. Nagarjuna, in his ‘‘Sixty Logical Verse Treatises’’ (Yuktisastika), speaks of it as rootless, objectless, placeless, the result of ignorance, without beginning or end, and undiscoverable by analyzing mind part by part. 26. Tantrists also speak of the ‘‘subtlest-wind-of-life’’ as the ‘‘life-holding-wind’’ or more simply as the ‘‘subtlest wind.’’ There are two types of subtlest wind: (1) the ‘‘ordinary life-holdingwind,’’ which consists of the five ordinary organ senses (sight, sound, tactility, taste, and smell), and (2) the extremely subtle ‘‘imperishable life-holding-wind.’’ The first is too gross to combine with the Three Appearances. The second can do so by virtue of being the most basic level of consciousness—that is, actual (not metaphorical) clear-light. It can therefore also combine with the most fundamental sense of form that can be perceived after the Three Appearances have been clearly experienced. In his commentary on (Nagarjuna’s) Rimpa-nga, Tsongkhapa (in his Rim-nga Seldron) speaks of the Gyumae-lus arising only when the Fourth Joy clearly perceives itself to be a single entity with emptiness—a condition occurring only with the complete realization

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(during the Fourth Empty) of the most subtle possible conceptual understanding of pure consciousness ( pei wosel). In addition he states that the seed and sole source of gyumae-lus is ‘‘subtlest wind merged with subtlest consciousness.’’ 27. According to Aryadeva’s Carya-samgraha-pradipa (Tib: Cho-du), subtlest body ( gyumae-lus) can be realized during sleep by individuals who have gained the ablity to reduce the eighty types of ‘‘gross-consciousness-and-wind’’ to the Three Appearances and Four Empties. Such liberation enables one to perceive more fundamental levels of consciousness. The Cho-du also informs us that when awareness of these levels is transferred into sleep, gyumae-lus will arise when the most basic conceptual level of consciousness briefly appears in the going-to-sleep process. The Cho-du also tells us that our own body, when seen in dream, is like the gyumae-lus body in that it too is made up of extremely subtle consciousness and subtlest wind. Such metaphors enable Tantrists to transform dream-body into gyumae-lus while dreaming. In a contrastive explanation Seng Dengpa (a disciple of Marpa), in his Rim-nga-don-nga-pa, describes four levels of sleep state (gross, less gross, subtle, and subtlest) through which sleep must proceed before a dreamlike perception of the most basic conceptual level of sleep consciousness (‘‘sleep-clear-light’’) can mix with the most basic emotive force of life (‘‘subtlest wind’’) to produce an incomplete (but nonetheless viable) gyumae-lus. To do so, he states, one must first reduce the ‘‘winds-of-life’’ to their most basic level by intensive practice of the Three Appearances and Four Empties. Some commonly understood simpler practices that facilitate realizing gyumae-lus during dream state are: avoidance of intense concentration on any single object during daytime, perceiving daytime appearances as if dreams, and strong determination to recognize the true nature of ‘‘dream-body’’ while sleeping. 28. Two widely employed general procedures for introducing consort union into sleep are discussed in Vajradhara’s extensive ‘‘Commentary on the Root Text of Guhyasamaja’’ (Vajra-mala). If during the awake state a strong intention is developed to recognize dream as dream (while dreaming), the ability will soon follow. It further states that those who are able to recognize clear-light in sleep will automatically know the true nature of dream-body. The Vajra-mala also presents procedures that facilitate introduction of the Four Empties into sleep and dream state, such as ‘‘Internal Vajra Mantra practice’’ (i.e., experientially, not verbally) to the Fourth Empty. This enables one to recognize the occurrence of the ‘‘Empties’’ during onset of sleep. A vivid occurrence of the Fourth Empty of sleep will occur if breathing momentarily stops when the emotive forces of the ‘‘life-wind’’ are reduced to a stable appreciation of their basic substrates (in Tantric vocabulary, when the winds move into the ‘‘central channel’’ and persist there). Such practices are called ‘‘mixing the Four Empties into sleep state.’’ If, during sleep, breathing only weakens (instead of momentarily ceasing), then the introduction of the crucial Fourth Empty into sleep is usually not noticed. When the ‘‘sleep Four Empties’’ are recognized as such, the ordinary emotive forces of life (‘‘gross-winds-of-life’’) will reduce into their subtler substrates. If reduction to the Fourth Empty causes interruption of breathing, those who have mastered the Three Appearances and Four Empties will be able to perceive ‘‘sleep-clear-light.’’ They will then retain memories of its appearance after waking, which then facilitate further practice. The Kalachakra (Dhuekor) Tantra provides an alternative practice: although the ‘‘white-semen-drops’’ residing at the heart and at the sexual organ normally lead to deep and dreamless sleep, if a small part of them are visualized at the throat, or at the base of the genitalia, revelatory dreaming will occur

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instead. Additionally the Kalachakra informs us that when part of the white-wind-drops at the crown move to the genitalia, bliss is produced, and that each repetition increases the level of bliss. The Guhyasamaja, Yamantaka, and Heruka Tantras present additional practices: if one visualizes the movement of the ‘‘white-wind-drops’’ normally residing at the crown to the throat, then from throat to heart, from heart to navel, and finally from navel to genitalia, the Four Joys are produced, in that order. 29. The two mental practices are ‘‘body compression’’ ( je-zhig) and ‘‘body evanescence’’ (rilbuzinpa), into the ‘‘central chamber of the heart chakra.’’ This becomes possible after an incomplete gyumae-lus body has been generated. In the first practice all the entities of a Tantric mandala are visualized dissolving into the practitioners’ bodies, where they are compressed until they vanish into the ‘‘central chamber’’ of one’s heart chakra (in the poetic phraseology of the Cho-du and Rimpa-nga, ‘‘like an ice cube melting into water’’). The second proceeds similarly (but without the mandala). Instead of dissolving into the heart chakra, the compressed body is visualized slowly evanescing like the ‘‘evaporation of a breath mist left on glass’’ into the heart chakra. At the beginning of either procedure, the practitioner’s mind is the subject, and emptiness is the object. As the visualized body vanishes into the ‘‘central chamber’’ of the heart chakra, subject and object merge and are no longer distinguishable entities. As they vanish, so does subject-object thinking. The previously uncompleted gyumae-lus is then completed as the last vestiges of conceptual thought and ego-oriented emotion fall away. This achieves the first level of unity ( pang-pazung-jug) and sets the stage for the sixth (and last) level of the Completion Stage. 30. The thirteen entities of the Yamantaka mandala are (1) Yamantaka (as the central principle entity conjoined with consort (Rolangma) as a single entity), (2) Timuk-shinje-shae (destroyer of ignorance), (3) Serna-shinje-shae (destroyer of miserliness), (4) Dochag-shinje-shae (destroyer of attachment), (5) Tradog-shinje-shae (destroyer of jealousy), (6) Tsatsika (a consort), (7) Phagmo (another consort), (8) Yangchenma (another consort), (9) Gori (another consort), (10) Thowa-shinjeshae (hammer wielder), (11) Yukpa-shinje-shae (stick wielder), (12) Pema-shinje-shae (lotus essence), and (13) Raldi-shinje-shae (sword wielder). See Khedrup Je’s commentary (Kagyama) on the Generation Stage of Yamantaka for more explicit details of the Yamantaka mandala entities. 31. For more elaborate details see Khedrup Je’s commentary ‘‘Great Generation Stage of Ngod Drub Gyatso’’ (Kye-rim Chenmo Ngod Drub Gyatso). 32. For further information on how Tantras have been classified historically, by whom, and why, see Chakpa Rolpai Dorjee’s seventeenth-century Druptha, a concise form of Tsongkhapa’s discourse on the subject. 33. A variety of ancient texts comprised the scholarly literature cited at appropriate times by the most highly educated Gelugpa Tantric masters at Gyudmed Tantric University and Gaden Monastic University. They reflect the ‘‘in-house’’ traditional Gelugpa view rather than the more comprehensive efforts of Western Tibetologists. Sometimes the titles they cite are literal translations of the original Sanskrit titles. At other times they were more creative. Taken as a whole they reveal the magnitude of their scholarship and nature of their orientation. Although not all the texts from the early period of Buddhist philosophical development were introduced to Tibet, knowledge of a considerable corpus has long been available to Tibetans through translation into

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Tibetan—that is, more than 3,000 translated commentaries and explanatory works and more than 1,000 comprehensive texts of ‘‘Buddha-word’’ organized by Bromston in the eleventh century (as the Tanjur and Kanjur). During my two decades of tutelage by three abbots of Tibet’s foremost Tantric teaching institutions, I made quick notes of texts as they were mentioned. These are presented below. My knowledge of them, and of their importance, came to me by word of mouth from my tutors. To make the Sanskrit foundations of Tibetan Buddhist philosophy accessible to Western readers, I worked with highly qualified Tibetan translators in concert with my tutors. Long discussions led to the Anglicized Sanskrit and Tibetan titles arranged below. Where the original Sanskrit texts were not available, we used the Tibetan translations as the basis for the transformations into English (as will be easily noticeable by any Sanskrit scholar). The Sanskrit versions underwent a Tibetanization process, which introduced alterations to make them more meaningful to Tibetans. This was necessary due to four main factors. First, the Tibetan and Sanskrit phonetic sensibilities are not always compatible. Tibetans pay attention to sounds that Indo-Europeans do not (and sometimes do not even hear and cannot pronounce). And vice versa. Their alphabets are therefore incongruent. This pronunciation problem is further complicated by dialect differences across Tibet itself, where the Tibetan spoken in one region is sometimes barely understandable in others. This becomes most pronounced in regions where physical isolation sped linguistic divergence (e.g., Tawang, Kham, and Ladakh). Even in such modernized areas as Lhasa today, dialect variations are heard in different districts, even from monastery to monastery. Second, cultural factors have fostered literary variation. In the Tibetan monasteries we found that the Tibetan scholar-monks have few qualms about explaining texts according to the circumstances of their interests or the need to make them more intelligible to their students (not unlike the manner in which preconquest peoples name things according to how they affect their particular interests and sense of well-being). There are long titles, for example, that summarize an aspect of a text’s contents according to local sensibility and short ones to identify them quickly among themselves. This leads to creativity when translating Sanskrit into Tibetan, and again when translating Tibetan into English. The tinkering fosters local rapport with texts ultimately meant to convey evanescent Tantric understandings. Finally, traditionally the monk in charge of the monastery’s library could arbitrarily identify, organize, sort, and shelve without being secondguessed. And when texts were reprinted, helpful revisions, annotations, and alterations were often embedded. The result of such tinkering was that the older great monasteries became repositories of irreplaceable troves of independent thinking and reworking of ideas as they evolved over time. The disadvantage appears when internationally consistent catalogs and bibliographies have to be made. Third, serious orthographic differences between English, Tibetan, and Sanskrit exist. In an effort to give a sense of order to Tibetan literature, Western scholars have produced an elaborately contrived standard that has the advantage of internal precision and a close relationship to Tibetan ecclesiastical script. Its disadvantage is that it relates poorly to actual Tibetan monastic parlance and bibliographical habit. Particularly problematic is its nonintuitiveness, which leaves that system so user-unfriendly that few Tibetans and Westerners master it—a drawback that also lends itself to transcription errors, which then get preserved in such important undertakings as library catalogs and learned bibliographies. So what to do? In this presentation we have departed

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from this Western approach, not because we do not respect it as an impressive and useful intellectual effort, but to be anthropological and more accurately reflect the real life of monastic education. Fourth, there is the problem of destruction. During the centuries of Tibetan independence, established monasteries meticulously preserved their priceless texts and closely guarded them. Virtually all these collections were deliberately destroyed by the Chinese military conquest of Tibet in the 1960s and 1970s. This extraordinarily narrow-minded deed removed from the world’s purview the greatest trove of original Tibetan philosophical thinking that existed, essentially leaving only the view presented by the Tanjur and Kanjur (both of which are the product of the viewpoint of a single person). These have been extensively republished and have largely replaced the older, more varied monastic collections in monasteries that have managed to reestablish themselves in exile. Lost is the literary material that represented the true richness of Tibetan philosophy and the inductive insights that produced it. Only in a few monasteries in peripheral areas of greater Tibet, beyond Chinese military reach (e.g., Ladakh, Bhutan, and Tawang) have minor nonstandardized collections been preserved. Due to the Tibetan penchant for altering titles, we have in this bibliography selected the Tibetan titling versions that seemed to have widest currency among the scholar monks. To these we applied the English alphabet phonetically as closely as possible to the Tibetan phonemic structure heard in Gyudmed and Gaden. As for the Sanskrit titles, we found variations in spelling and wording during library searches in the West. Therefore we have adopted spellings and wording that satisfied our Tibetan Sanskrit speakers or where a particular spelling was widely used. In these necessarily somewhat arbitrary efforts, adhered to the overall guidance of the current abbot of Gyudmed Tantric University, Losang Nawang Khenpo, a sophisticated and unusually widely read and highly educated scholar of Tibetan philosophical literature. I was also very fortunate to have several years of sustained intellectual effort by Geshe Tashi Gyaltsen, an English-speaking advanced scholar of Tibetan literature and logic from Gaden who spent several months a year for several years with me at Gyudmed and Gaden and in the Dalai Lama’s Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala. Also of considerable help in devising Anglicized presentations of the Tibetan titles, I had the advice of Thupten Yangdak, a highly regarded translator with twenty years continuous experience presenting Tibetan philosophical teachings to Western students in Europe; the dedicated efforts of Chosang Phunrab, a Tibetan graduate in Sanskrit Studies from the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies at Sarnath, who was particularly instrumental in sorting out inconsistencies in Sanskrit titles; and a review by Losang Norbu Shastri, the principal Sanskrit authority at that Institute. Initially I thought the task of compiling a listing of the literature on which the two decades of teachings was based would simply be a matter of jotting each title down. This proved to be a deeply misplaced optimism. Eventually I realized my idea of what constitutes literature was a product of habits of mind created by our commercial type of civilization. It initially made me assume that written works always have specific formal titles. Eventually I realized they do so in our culture because of copyright needs and stablized identities for academic usage. As for the nuts and bolts of the references presented here: the initial citation is an Anglicized phonetic presentation of whichever language (Tibetan or Sanskrit) the text was originally written in. Where Sanskrit works have been variously identified (or have close derivatives by a similar

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name), I have said ‘‘also’’ and then listed them. I have used ‘‘or’’ between Tibetan listings where I found marked variations in titling for the same text. I was happy to discover that a few simple basic orthographic rules were sufficient for general understanding. These are as follows: the short form for a vowel is represented simply by the vowel itself; the long form has an appended ‘‘e.’’ In a few cases where the vowel sound was intermediate between long and short, I have inserted ‘‘d’’ where my Tibetan mentors thought it improved clarity. Similarly, soft forms of consonants are followed by ‘‘h.’’ I had the much-appreciated help of English-speaking Tibetan scholars from different monasteries and regions in devising this simple phonetic approach. It has not yet been standardized, since that would require a fully representative synod of Tibetan Buddhist scholars from the major Tibetan teaching monasteries of all the sects and regions to smooth out dialect differences. But even with its partially unresolved spelling inconsistencies, it seems to work. We tried it out on many English-speaking Tibetan scholar-monks and found they could quickly identify the text we had in mind. By comparison, they were not usually able to do so from the elaborate Western academic transliteration system. It seems to trip up the way most humans read (though that is not the reason we have left it aside). We admire it for the kind of precision that can come from being script-based, but it is still not quite a Rosetta Stone. Tibetans have long been intellectually flexible. And just as with pronunciation, there are different renderings of script. Such factors made access to Tibetan literature (particularly the more arcane) more difficult than it needs to be. That was our principal reason for making the titles more readable for the average English speaker. Greater uniformity exists for the Sanskrit literature, which has been in the domain of international scholars much longer. But even there, differences in transliteration and spelling still crop up along with variations in titling (examples of which appear here and there below). While there may be more in their knowledge base, here are the texts that were mentioned in our sessions with the Tibetan Tantric lamas: Anangavajra, c. eighth century Prajnopaya-viniscaya-siddhi. ‘‘Clear Mental Appreciation of Ethical Action.’’ Aryadeva (Tib: Phag-pa Lha), 225–250 A.D. Abhibodhi-kramo-padesha (Tib: Nyon-par Jangchub-pae Rimpae Men-nyag), ‘‘A Way to Practice Bodhicitta.’’ Aksara-sastra (Tib: Yi-ge Gya-pa), ‘‘Hundred Syllables.’’ Carya-melapaka-pradipa [see also: Carya-samgraha-pradipa] (Tib: Chod-du [or] Chopa Du-pae Don-mae), ‘‘Clear-Light on the Completion Stage [of the Guhysamaja.Tantra].’’ Catuh-sataka-karika [see also: Yogacara-catuh-sataka-sastra-karika] (Tib: Tenchoe Gyapa [or] Tenchoe Zhi Gyapa Zhe Chawae Tsig Liu Chepa), ‘‘Four Hundred Verses on the Teachings of Buddha.’’ Citta-visuddhi-prakarana [see also: Citta-visuddhi-nama-prakarana] (Tib: Sem-kyi Drip-jong [or] Sem-kyi Dripa Nampar Jong-wa Zhe Ja-wa Rabtu Jed-pa), ‘‘Practices by which Mental Delusions can be Eliminated.’’ Jnana-sara-samuccaya (Tib: Yeshe Kuntud [or] Yeshe Nying-po Kuntud), ‘‘The All Encompassing Wisdom.’’ Sataka-sastra [see also: Sata-sastra] (Tib: Tenchoe Gya-pa), ‘‘Hundred Verse Treatise.’’

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Skhalita-prama-dana-yukti-hetu-siddhi (Tib: Tse-ma Trul-wa Pongwae Ngo-drup), ‘‘Preventing Errors by Logic.’’ Svadhisthana-krama-prabheda (Tib: Dhag Jin-lap [or] Dhag Jin-gyi Lap-pae Rimpa Nampar Yewa), ‘‘Clear Presentation of the Stages of Self Perfection’’ [regarding transformation of subtle wind into subtlemost body]. Yogacara-catuh-sataka-sastra (Tib: Uma Zhi Gya-pa), ‘‘Experientialist Four Hundred’’ [on emptiness]. Asanga, fifth century A.D. Abhidharma-samuccaya (Tib: Choe Nyon-pa Kun Tud), ‘‘Compendium of Abhidharma.’’ Arya-samdhi-nirmocana-bhasya (Tib: Do-de Gong-drel [or] Phagpa Gong-pa Sabmo Ngepar Drelpae Nampar Jed-pa), ‘‘Commentary on the Thought Underlying Sakyamuni’s Bodhisattva Sutra’’ [also referred to as the ‘‘Third Wheel Sutra’’]. Bodhisattva-bhumi [see also: Bodhi-bhumi], (Tib: Jang Sa [or] Jang Chub Sem-pae Sa), ‘‘Explanation of the Bodhisattva Stage’’ [the only surviving portion of the original Sanskrit version of Asanga’s Yogacara-bhumi-shastra]. Dharmakaya-sadharana-stotra (Tib: Choe-kui Yonten Thumong Mayin Pae Todpa), ‘‘The Extraordinary Qualities of the Truth Body of Buddha.’’ Dhyana-pradipa (Tib: Sam-ten Gyi Don-mae), ‘‘Clarifying Single-Pointed Meditation.’’ Madhyanta-vibhaga-sastram [see also: Madhyanta-vibhaga-tika] ‘‘Commentary on [Maitreya’s] Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra’’ [on centers and extremes]. Mahayana-samgraha [see also: Mahayana-sutra-samgraha-sastra] (Tib: Theg-due [or] Thegpa Chenpoe Due-pa), ‘‘A Compendium of Mahayana Teachings’’ [including a summary of the lesser known Mahayana doctrines]. Mahayana-sutra-lamkara [Verses on the fundamentals of Mahayana]. Mahayana-uttara-tantra-sastra-vyakhya [see also: Uttara-tantra-sastra (and) Mahayana-uttaratantra-sastra-vrtti] (Tib: Gyud La Mae Drel-wa [or] Theg-pa Chenpoi Gyud La Mae Drel-wa), ‘‘Commentary on [Maitreya’s] Mahayana-uttara-tantra’’ [regarding the ultimate nature of Buddha]. Maitreya-sadhana (Tib: Phakpa Jampae Drub-thap), ‘‘Maitreya Visualization Practice.’’ Prajnaparamita-sadhana (Tib: Sherab-kyi Pharol Tu Chenma Drub-thab), ‘‘Method for Practicing Prajnaparamita.’’ Ratnagotra-vibhaga [see also: Ratnagotra-vibhaga-mahayana-uttara-tantra-shastra] (Tib: Thegpa Chenpoi Gyud Lama Rabtu Ye-wae Tenchoe), ‘‘The Jewel of Supreme Tantra.’’ Tattva-viniscaya (Tib: De Nyid Nam Nge), ‘‘Clear Ascertainment of Emptiness’’ [explanations of the 100,000 stanzas of the Bhumi Sutra, the 25,000 stanzas of the Nyitri Sutra, and the 8,000 stanzas of the Gye Tong-pa Sutra]. Yogacara-bhumi-shastra [see also: Bhumi-vastu (and) Pancha-bhumi] (Tib: Sa De Nga), ‘‘The [five] Experiential Levels of Yogic Practice.’’ Asvaghosa (Tib: Ta-yang), first to second century A.D. Buddha-carita (Tib: Sangye Kyi Zhepa), ‘‘Accomplishments of Buddha Sakyamuni.’’ Mahayana-sraddhopada-sastra (Tib: Theckpa Chenpor Dedpa Pel-wae Tenchoe), ‘‘Awaking Faith in Mahayana.’’

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Atisa (Tib: Jowo-je), eleventh century Bodhi-patha-pradipa (Tib: Jangchub Lam Gyi Dolma), ‘‘The Way of the Bodhisattvas’’ [also referred to as ‘‘Lamp Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment’’]. Bhavaviveka, fifth to sixth century A.D. Madhyamika-hrdaya-karika [see also: Madhyamaka-hrdaya-vrtti-tarkajvala] (Tib: Uma Nying-po), ‘‘The Blazing Essence of the Middle Way.’’ Prajna-pradipa-mula-madhyamaka-vrtti [see also: Prajna-pradipa-sastra] (Tib: Sherab Dolma [or] Uma Tsawae Drel-wa Sherab Dolmae Gyacher Drelpa), ‘‘Wisdom Lamp’’ [an extensive commentary on Nagarjuna’s Mula-madhyamaka-karika].’’ Bromston, 1008–1064 (Translated much of the early Sanskrit Buddhist literature into Tibetan and assembled more than 4,000 texts as the Kanjur and Tanjur.) Buddha Maitreya Abhisamaya-lamkara [see also: Abhisamaya-lamkara-prajnaparamita-upadesa-sastra] (Tib: Sherabkyi Pharol Tu Chinpae Me-ngag Gi Tenchoe Nyon Tok Gyen Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘The Gem of Emergent Clear Realization with Instructions on Perfecting Wisdom’’ [elucidates the meaning of Prajnaparamita]. Dharma-dharmata-vibhaga-sutra [see also: Dharma-dharmata-vibhaga-karika] (Tib: Choe Dang Choe Nyid Nampar Jed-pa), ‘‘Distinguishing Emptiness Clearly from Subjects and Objects.’’ Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra (Tib: We Dang Tha Nampar Jed-pae Tsig Liu Jed-pa [or] Wae-tha Nam-je Dang Chos Dang Chos Ngi Nam-je Tsa Drel), ‘‘Distinguishing the Middle Way from Extreme Views.’’ Mahayana-sutra-lamkara (Tib: Theg-pa Chenpo Dode-yi Gyen Zhe Jawae Tsig Liu Jed-pa), ‘‘Qualities of the Great Vehicle’’ [often referred to in English as The Scripture Sutra]. Mahayana-uttara-tantra [see also: Uttara-tantra (and) Ratna-gotra-vibhaga-mahayana-uttaratantra-sastra-sutra] (Tib: Gyud Lamae [or] Theg-pa Chenpoi Gyud Lamae Rabtu Ye-wae Tenchoe), ‘‘Jewel Sutra of Tantra on Supreme Buddha Nature’’ [the root text of the Ratnagotra-vibhaga-tantra]. Samdhi-nirmocana-sutra (Tib: Do De Gong Drel), ‘‘Explanation of the Profound Secrets’’ [Also referred to in English as ‘‘The Intention Sutra’’]. Buddha Sakyamuni Acala (Tib: Miyo-wa), ‘‘Self-Generation of the Unmoveable Acala’’ [an explanation of consort practice]. Aksayamati-nirdesa-sutra (Tib: Lo-drel me Jig-pae Tenpae Dho), ‘‘Aksayamati’s Teachings.’’ Arya-dakini-vajra-panch-mahatantra-raja-kalpa-nama (Tib: Gyud Tak Nyi [or] Thak-pa Khadroma Dorjee-gur Zhe Ja-wae Gyud-kyi Gyalpo Chenpo Tak-pa), ‘‘Mother Tantra.’’ Arya-karma-varana-visuddhi-nama-mahayana-sutra (Tib: Lay-kyi Dripa Nampar Dhak-pa Dho [or] Phagpa Lay-kyi Dripa Nampar Dhak-pa Zhe Ja-wa Thegpa Chenpoe Dho), ‘‘The Great Sutra Path of the Aryas who Overcome Karma.’’ Aryadaya-sama-tebi-daya-kebi-kalpa-maharaja-nama (Tib: Phakpa Nyisu Med Pa Nyam-pa Nyid Nampar Gyalwa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Achieving the Nondual Equanimity of the Aryas.’’

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Avatamsaka-sutra [see also: Maha-vaipulya-buddha-vatamsaka-sutra] (Tib: Dong-po Koe-pae Dho), ‘‘Flower Garland Sutra’’ [or] ‘‘The World of Buddha Beyond the Human World.’’ Cakrasamvara-tantra [also: Heruka Tantra] (Tib: Dechog Gyud [or] Khorlo Dhompa Gyud), ‘‘Tantra of Supreme Wisdom.’’ Dakini-sagar (Tib: Khadro Gyatso), ‘‘Ocean of Dakini’’ [treatise on the features of the Dakini in the Heruka mandala]. Dasa-bhumika-sutra [see also: Dasa-bhumi] (Tib: Sa Chu), ‘‘Ten Stages Sutra’’ [part of the Garland Sutra]. Guhyasamaja-tantra [see also: Guhyasamaja-mula-tantra (and) Tathagata-guhyaka (and) Tathagata-guna-jnana] (Tib: Sangwa Du-pae Tsa-gyud [or] Pel Sangwa Dupa Zhe Ja-wae Gyud Kyi Gyalpo Chenpo), ‘‘The Great Guhyasamaja, Root King of Tantra’’ [Secret Guide to Combining the Subtlest Form of Body with the Subtlest State of Consciousness]. Heruka-tantra (see Cakrasamvara-tantra). Hevajra-Tantra (Tib: Gya-pa Dorjee Gyud), ‘‘The Tantra of Indestructible Bliss.’’ Kalacakra-uttara-tantra-raja (Tib: Duekhor Gyud-gyi Gyalpo), ‘‘The Royal Kalacakra Tantra.’’ Ksitigarbha-sutra [see also: Ksitigarbha-bodhisattva-sutra], ‘‘The Earth Encompassing Profound Compassion Sutra’’ [sometimes referred to as the ‘‘Earth Treasure Sutra’’]. Lankavatara-sutra [see also: Mahayana-sutra-lanka-vatara] (Tib: Lankar Sheg Pae Dho), ‘‘The Lanka Sutra.’’ Mahakala-tantra-raja (Tib: Gyud Gonpo Gyalpo Chenmo), ‘‘The Great Mahakala Tantra.’’ Panca-vimsatisa-hasrika-prajnaparamita-sutra (Tib: Nyitri Sutra). Prajna-paramita-hrdaya-sutra

[see

also:

Maha-prajna-paramita-hrdaya-sutra

(and)

Hrdaya-

prajnaparamita-sutra-vyakhya (and) Bhagavati-prajnalparamita-hrdaya-sutra] (Tib: She-rab Kyi Pha Rol Tu Chin-pae Nying-po), ‘‘The Heart of Wisdom Sutra’’ [or] ‘‘Heart of Wisdom beyond All Wisdom Sutra’’ [an explication of emptiness and the perfection of consciousness]. Prajna-paramita-sapta-satika-sutra (Tib: Bum [or] Sher Chen Bum-pae), ‘‘Transcendent Wisdom in Seven Hundred Stanzas.’’ Saddharma-pundarika-sutra (Tib: Dham-choe Padma Kar-po), ‘‘The White Lotus of True Justice.’’ Samadhi-raja-sutra (Tib: Ting-nge Zin Gyalpo), ‘‘King of Meditative Concentration Sutra.’’ Sarva-durgati-parishodana-tantra [see also: Sarva-durgati-parishodana-tejo-raja-sya-tathagata-syaarhat-samyaksam-shuddha-sya-kalpa-nama] (Tib: Ngen Song Jong Gyud [or] De Zhin Shegpa Dra Chompa Yang Dakpa Zok Pae Sang-gye Ngen Song Tham Ched Yongsu Jong-wa Zhi Jedkyi Gyalpo Takpa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Full Enlightenment Tantra with Power to Eliminate Inferior Rebirth.’’ Siddhi-bhiksa-rana-nama-tantra [see also: Bhikarana] (Tib: Gonpa Lungton-pa Zhe Ja-wae Gyud), ‘‘Tantra in Which Meditative Sites Are Discussed.’’ Sri-maha-samba-rodhya-tantra-raja-nama (Tib: Gyud Dom Jung [or] Pel Dechog Dompa Jungwa Zhe Ja-wae Gyud-kyi Gyalpo Chenpo), ‘‘Supreme Practice of the Heruka Tantric Vows.’’ Sri-parama-dinama-mahayana-kalpa-raja (Tib: Pel Chog Dag-po Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Treatise on Supreme Perfection.’’ Tripitaka-svabhava (Tib: Dhe Nod Sum-gyi Tsul), ‘‘Three Modes of Sutra’’ [also referred to as the ‘‘Three Baskets Sutra’’]. Vajrabhairava-tantra (Tib: Jigje Tsa-gyud), ‘‘Tantra That Overcomes Hatred and Death.’’

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Vajra-cchedika-sutra [see also: Vajra-cchedika-prajna-paramita-sutra] (Tib: Dorjee Choe-pa Doh), ‘‘Diamond Cutter Sutra.’’ Vajra-dakini (Tib: Dorjee Khadroma [or] Dorjee Khadro Dechog), ‘‘The Dakini Tantra of Heruka’’ [the Tantra of the feminine principle of Heruka]. Vajra-jnana-samucchaya-nama-tantra (Tib: Yeshe Dorjee Kun-tu [or] Yeshe Dorjee Kun Lae Tud-pa Zhe-jawae Gyud), ‘‘Vajrayana Tantra.’’ Vajramala [see also: Shri-vajramala-abhidharma-mahayoga-tantra-saba-tantra-hrdaya-raja-sarvavibagha-nama] (Tib: Dorjee Trengwa [or] Neljor Chenpo Gyud Pel Dorjee Trengwa Nyon Par Jod-pae Gyud Tham Chad-kyi Nying-po Selwa Nampar Chewa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Clearly Perceiving the Heart of Root Tantra through Vajra Repetition.’’ Vajrayogini-tantra [see also: Shri-dakini-maha-yogini-tantra-raja-nama] (Tib: Naljor Ma Yi Gyud [or] Pel Khandro Gyatso Naljor Mae Gyud-kyi Gyalpo Chenpo Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Ocean of Great Dakini Tantra.’’ Buddhaghosa, fifth century A.D. Visuddhi-magga (Tib: De-lam), ‘‘The Route to Bliss.’’ Buddhapalita (Tib: Sang-gye Kyang), fifth to sixth century A.D. Buddhapalita-mula-madhyamaka-vrtti (Tib: Sang-gye Kyang Drel-wa), ‘‘Buddhapalita’s Commentary on [Nagarjuna’s] Prajna-nama-mula-madhyamaka-karika’’ [a particularly clear commentary on Nagarjuna’s ultimate viewpoint]. Bu-ston, 1290–1364 Chos Byung, ‘‘History of Buddhism.’’ Candrakirti (Tib: Dawa Dakpa), c. 580–650 A.D. Catuh-sataka-vrtti [see also: Bodhisattva-yogacara-catuh-sataka-tika (and) Yogacara-catuh-satakakarika] (Tib: Zhi-gya-pa Zhe Ja-wae Drel-wa), ‘‘Commentary on [Aryadeva’s] Catuh-sataka [Four Hundred Treatise].’’ Madhyamaka-vatara-bhasya [see also: Madhyamaka-vatara-bhasya-nama] (Tib: Uma La Jupae Shed-pa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘[Candrakirti’s] Commentary on [his own] Madhyamaka-vatara-nama.’’ Mula-madhyamaka-vatara-vrtti-prasanna-pada [see also: Madhyamaka-vatara-nama] (Tib: Uma Jug-pa [or] Uma La Jugpa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Clear Words on [Nagarjuna’s] Mula-madhyamakakarika’’ [a supplement to Nagarjuna’s ideas on emptiness, the ten levels of achievement, and the five paths]. Panca-skandha-prakarana (Tib: Phung Po Nga-yi Rabtu Chewa), ‘‘Clear Taxonomy of the Five Aggregates.’’ Pradipa-dyotana [see also: Pradipa-dyotana-nama-tika] (Tib: Dronsel [or] Gyud Thamched Kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Tza-we Gyud Kyi Dronma Rabtu Selwar Je-pa Zhe Gyacher Shed-pa), ‘‘Brilliant Lamp Commentary Clarifying the Difficult Meanings in the Guhyasamaja Tantra.’’ Prasannapada-madhyamaka-vrtti [see also: Prasannapada-vrtti (and) Mula-madhyamka-vataravrtti-prasanna-pada (and) Prasana-mula-madhyamaka-vrtti] (Tib: Tsig-sel [or] Uma Tsawae Drel-wa Tsig Selwa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Clearly Worded Explanation of [Nagarjuna’s] Mulamadhyamaka-karika.’’ Sunyata-saptati-vrtti (Tib: Tong Nyid Dun-chu-pae Drel-wa), ‘‘Commentary on [Nagarjuna’s] Seventy Verses Explaining Emptiness.’’

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Vajrasattva-sadhana-nama (Tib: Dorjee Sempae Drub Thab Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Accomplishing the Nondual Realization of Emptiness and Perfected Consciousness of Vajrasattva.’’ Yukti-sastika-vrtti (Tib: Rigpa Druk-chu-pae Drel-wa), ‘‘Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Sixty-Verse Treatise on Reasoning.’’ Chakpa Rolpai Dorjee, seventeenth century Drupta [a concise historical classification of Tantras based on Tsongkhapa’s work]. Devasarman, fifth century B.C. Vijnana-kaya (Tib: Gyal-wae Ku), ‘‘Compendium on Consciousness.’’ Dhakpo Namkha Dak, sixteenth century Dhak-poe Kye-rim [or] Gyud Thamche Kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Kye-rim Gyi Namshae Dorjee Chang Wang La-mae Sung Gyun, ‘‘Detailed Explanation of the Sangwa Dupa Generation Stage.’’ Dharmakirti (Tib: Choe-drak), c. 580–660 A.D. Hetubindu [also: Hetubindu-nama-prakarana] (Tib: Ten-tsig Thig-pa [or] Ten-tsig Thig-pa Zhe-jawae Rabtu Chewa), ‘‘Vehicle of Logic.’’ Nyaya-bindu [see also: Nyaya-bindu-nama-prakarana] (Tib: Rig-thig [or] Rigpae Thig-pa Zhe Ja-wae Rabtu Chewa), ‘‘A Drop of Great Reasoning’’ [an explanation of Nyaya logic]. Pramana-varttika [see also: Pramana-varttkika-karika (and) Acarya-dharmakirti-pramana-varttika] (Tib: Tsema Namdrel [or] Tsema Namdrel Gyi Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Commentary on [Dignaga’s] Pramana-samuccaya’’ [a discussion of valid cognition]. Pramana-viniscaya (Tib: Tsema Nam-nye [or] Tsema Nampar Nyepa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Precisely Understanding Unobstructed Valid Consciousness.’’ Sambandha-pariksa [see also: Sambandha-pariksa-vrtti] (Tib: Drel-wa Tak-pa [or] Drel-wa Tak-pae Rabtu Je-pa), ‘‘Analysis of the Relationship of Various Logical Positions.’’ Samtanantara-siddhi [see also: Samtanantara-siddhi-nama-prakarana] (Tib: Gyud-zhen Drub-pa), ‘‘Logically Demonstrating Different Individual Consciousness Streams.’’ Vada-nyaya [see also: Vada-nyayana-nama-prakarana] (Tib: Tsod-pae Rigpa), ‘‘Logic within Debate.’’ Dignaga (Tib: Chok-lang), c. 480–540 A.D. Alambana-pariksha (Tib: Mikpa Takpa), ‘‘Critical Examination of Objects.’’ Hetuchakra (Tib: Rigpae Khorlo), ‘‘Wheel of Reason.’’ Nyaya-mukha (Tib: Rigpae Kha), ‘‘The Mouth of Logic.’’ Pramana-samuccaya (Tib: Tsema Kuntud [or] Tsema Kun-le Tupa Zhe Ja-wae Raptu Je-pa), ‘‘Precise Clarification of Refined Cognition.’’ Drogmi Lotsawa, c. 990–1070 Gya-pa Dorjee Gyud, [Drogmi’s Tibetanized version of the Hevajra Tantra]. Gampopa (Dakpo Lharja), 1079–1153 Dakpoi Thar-gyen, ‘‘Dakpo’s Attributes of Liberation.’’ Goe Lotzawa, 1059–1109 Tong-thun, ‘‘A Session on Emptiness’’ [essential meanings for all the Sangwa Dupa Tantric texts].

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Gyaltsab Je, 1364–1432 Gyaltsab-je Sung-bum Poe Druk, ‘‘The Six Texts of Gyaltsab Je.’’ Nying-poe Don Sel-war Jed-pa, ‘‘Clear Presentation of the Meaning of Ultimate Essence.’’ Haribhadra, c. ninth century Aloka [a detailed commentary on Maitreya’s Abhisamayalamkara, especially with regard to the nine progressive meditative states leading to awareness realization]. Harivarman, third to fourth century A.D. Satyasiddhi-sastra (Tib: Denpa Drup-pae Ten-chod), ‘‘Thesis on True Attainment.’’ Indrabhuti, c. 687–717 Jnana-siddhi, ‘‘Attainment of Knowledge.’’ Jam-yang Zhed-pa Drub-tha Chenmo, ‘‘Great Tenets.’’ Jnanagarbha, eighth century Arya-maitreya-kevala-parivarta-bhyasa, ‘‘Commentary on [Maitreya’s] Samdhi-nirmocana-sutra.’’ Satya-dvaya-vibhanga [see also: Satya-dvaya-vibhaga-sastra], ‘‘The Distinction between the Two Kinds of Truth.’’ Kadampa Lama(s) Kadam Che-tud, ‘‘Compendium of Kadampa Instruction.’’ Kamalasila, eighth century A.D. Bhavana-krama (Tib: Gom-rim [or] Lopon Kamalasila Zepae Gomrim Thog-tha Bar Sum Shugso), ‘‘The Three Stages of Meditation.’’ Madhyamaka-lamkara-panjika (Tib: Uma-gyen-gyi Tha-Chod), ‘‘Additional Clarification of the Middle Way.’’ Madhyamaka-vatara [see also: Madhyamaka-loka-nama] (Tib: Uma-Nang-wa), ‘‘Illumination of the Middle Way.’’ Tattva-samgraha-panjika (Tib: Dhe Khona Nyi Dud-pae Ka Drel), ‘‘Elucidation of [Santaraksita’s] Essential Principles on Emptiness.’’ Katyayaniputra, c. third century B.C. Jnana-prasthana (Tib: Choe Nyon-pa Yeshe Pharol-tu Chin Pae Tenchoe), ‘‘The Structure of Wisdom.’’ Khache Lamae (Kache Rinchen Dorjee) Lamae Drel-wa [Khache Lamae’s commentary on Nagarjuna’s Pentabida-sadhana, dividing the Sangwa Dupa Completion Stage into five levels]. Khedrup Je (Khedrup Gelek Pel Sangpo) fourteenth to fifteenth century Kagyama, ‘‘Commentary on the Generation Stage of Jigje.’’ Kye-rim Chenmo Ngod Drub Gyatso [or] Gyud Thamched-kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Kye-rim Ngo Drub Gyatso, ‘‘The Ocean of Attainments of the Generation Stage of the Sangwa Dupa Tantra’’ [essential preparation for entering the Sangwa Dupa Completion Stage]. Khedrup-je Sungbum Poe Chu-nui, ‘‘Khedrup’s Twelve Texts.’’

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Losang Choegyen (Losang Choekyi Gyaltsen), seventeenth century Rim-nga Nying-po, ‘‘Essence of the Five Tantric Levels of the Completion Stage.’’ Losang Gyaltsen Seng-gye Pel Dorjee Jigje Pa-wo Chik Pae Zogrim-gyi Nam-shed Jam Pel Gye Pae Chod Trin, ‘‘The Bliss of the Completion Stage of the Lone Hero Tantra’’ [a commentary on the Completion Stage of the Pa-chik solitary form of Jigje]. Luhipa (Dechog Luipa) Lui-pae Drub Thab, ‘‘The Luipa Method of Dechog Tantric Practice.’’ Mahasanghika school (collective work) Mahavastu, ‘‘Great Subjects.’’ Manjushri Dvika-tattva-bhava-nama-mukha-gam (Tib: Jampel Zhelung), ‘‘The Teachings of Bodhisattva Manjushri’’ [with explanation of the Four Drops of concentrated attention in the Guhyasamaja Completion Stage]. Marpa Lotsawa, 1012–1099 Rig-nga Don-nya-pa (Skt: Sri-cakrasamvara-panca-krama-vrtti), ‘‘Dissertation on the Five Lineages.’’ Rig-nga Khorlo Chen, ‘‘The Great Wheel of Five Lineages.’’ Wosel Tzen Thap Kyi Me Ngak, ‘‘Instruction on Inducing the Appearance of Clear-Light.’’ Maudgalyayana, c. third century B.C. Prajnapti-sastra, ‘‘On the Origin of Designations’’ [a Sarvastivada Abhidharma]. Moggaliputta Tissa, c. 250 B.C. Kathavatthu, ‘‘The Points of Controversy.’’ Nagabodhi (Tib: Lhu-yi Jangchub) Karma-entavi-banga-nama (Tib: Lai-tha Namge [or] Lay Kyi Tha Nampar Jed-pa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘The Limit of Karmic Action’’ [including an explanation of the Four Great Empties]. Shri-guhyasamaja-mandala-upayi-kabem-shatabidi-nama (Tib: Chechok Nyi-shupa [or] Pel Sangwa Dupae Kilkhor-gyi Chogha Nyishu-pa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Twenty Ritual Variations for the Guhyasamaja Mandala.’’ Nagarjuna, second century A.D. Arya-mula-sarvastavadi-sramanera-karika [see also: Mula-sarvastavadi-sramanera-karika] (Tib: Lopon Ludrup-kyi Zoy), ‘‘Behavioral Modes for Novice Monks).’’ Arya-sheli-tambaka-mahayana-sutra-tika (Tib: Salu Jang-pae Dodrel [or] Phagpa Salu Jang-pa Zhe Ja-wa Thegpa Chenpoe Doh Gyacher Shed-pa), ‘‘Commentary on the Fertile Seed Sutra’’ [an analytic explanation of cause and effect]. Bodhicitta-vivarana (Tib: Jangchub sem Drel), ‘‘Commentary on the Spirit of Bodhicitta.’’ Dasabhumi-vibhasa-sastra (Tib: Sa Chu-pae Do-drel), ‘‘Explanation of Sakyamuni’s Ten Stages’ Sutra.’’ Dharma-sangraha [see also: Acarya-nagarjuna-pranita-dharma sangraha] (Tib: Phag Chog-lu Drubkyi Zae-pae Cho-yon Dag-par Dupa), ‘‘Compendium of Dharmas.’’

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Dvadasa-nikaya-sastra [see also: Dvada-samukha-sastra] (Tib: Zamo Tong-pa Nyi Kyi Goh Chungni), ‘‘Treatise on the Twelve Gates to Voidness.’’ Maha-deha-tantra (Tib: Gyud Den-zhi), ‘‘Generating the Body of Subtlest Emotive Force [gyumaelus].’’ Maha-prajna-paramita-sastra [see also: Maha-prajnaparamita-upadesa-sastra] (Tib: Sherab-kyi Pharol-tu Chenpa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom’’ [a commentary on the Maha-prajnaparamita-sutra]. Mahayana-vimsika (Tib: Khorlo Chenpo), ‘‘Verses on the Great Vehicle.’’ Mula-madhyamaka-karika [see also: Madhyamaka-karika (and) Prajna-nama-mula-madhyamakakarika] (Tib: Tza-shed [or] Tzawae Sherab [or] Uma Tza Wae Tsig Liu Je-pa Sherab Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘The Root of the Middle Way to Wisdom’’ [a widely respected poetic presentation of the logic of emptiness]. Niti-sastra-jantu-posana-bindu (Tib: Kye Boi-so Thig), ‘‘Drop of Nourishment for People.’’ Pentabida-sadhana (Tib: Dor-jae [or] Pel Sangwa Dupae Drubthab Dor-jae), ‘‘Simplified Practice of the Guhyasamaja Root Tantra.’’ Prajna-danda (Tib: Sherab Dhong-po), ‘‘Tree of Wisdom’’ [shows wisdom as the basis of all action]. Prajnaparamita-stotra (Tib: Sherab-kyi Pharol-tu Chin-pae Toepa), ‘‘Perfection of Wisdom Praises.’’ Prajna-sataka (Tib: Sherab-kyi Pharol-tu Chin-pae Tsik Gya-pa), ‘‘Hundred Verses on the Perfection of Wisdom.’’ Pratitya-samutpada-hrdaya-karika (Tib: Phag Chog-lu Drub-kyi Zae-pae Tendrel Nying-po Tsadrel), ‘‘Explanatory Verses on Dependent Causation.’’ Rati-sastra [verses on the nature of the erotic]. Ratna-vali [see also: Raja-parikatha-ratna-vali [or] Yoga-ratna-mala] (Tib: Rinchen Trengwa [or] Gyalpo La Tam Ja-wa Rinpoche Yi Trengwa), ‘‘Precious Garland of Royal Advice.’’ Rimpa-nga, ‘‘Lamp Illuminating the Five Levels [of the Sangwa Dupa] Completion Stage.’’ Soma-raja-bhaisajya-sadhana (Tib: Man Choe Dawae Gyalpo), ‘‘Great Moonlight on Medical Treatment.’’ Sunyata-saptati [see also: Sunyata-saptati-karika] (Tib: Tong Nyid Dunchu-pa), ‘‘Seventy-Stanza Treatise on Emptiness’’ [explains the unreality of the elements of reality]. Sri-guhyasamaja-mahayoga-tantra-upadatrama-dana-satama-sharwa-kanama (Tib: Do-sae [or] Naljor Chen-po Gyud Pel Sangwa Dupae Kye Wae Rimpa Gom-pae Thap Dho Dang Se-pa Zhe Ja-wa), ‘‘Stages of Generating Guhyasamaja and Combining its Methods with the Practice of Sutra.’’ Tatite-samota-panda-hrdaya-bekanna (Tib: Ten Ching Drel-war Jung-wae Nying-poe Nampar Shed-pa), ‘‘The Twelve Elements of Dependent Arising’’ [a commentary on Sakyamuni Buddha’s ‘‘Tendrel Nying-po Doe’’]. Trikvam (Tib: Rimpa Sum-pa), ‘‘Explanation of the Third Level of the Completion Stage.’’ Upadesa-sam (Tib: Man Nying [or] Man Ngag Nying-poe Gyen), ‘‘Decorations on the Essential Instructions.’’ Vaidalya-prakarana [also: Vaidalya-sutra-nama] (Tib: Zhimo Nam-thag [or] Zhimo Nampar Thagpa Zhe Ja-wae Rabtu Jepa), ‘‘The Finely Woven Foundations of Sutra’’ [an analysis of variant views on emptiness, a refutation of Nyaya logic, and a logical proof of the validity of emptiness].

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Vigra-havya-vartani [also: Vigra-havya-vartani-karika] (Tib: Tsod-dhog), ‘‘Deflecting Objections’’ [refutations of objections to the Madhyamika theory of emptiness]. Vyavahara-siddhi (Tib: Toe-drub), ‘‘The Co-existence of Absoluteness and Relativity.’’ Yukti-sastika-karika (Tib: Rigpa Druk Chupae Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Sixty Verses Logically Demonstrating Wisdom.’’ Naropa, 1016–1100 Naro Choe-drug, ‘‘The Six Techniques of Naropa’’ [instructions on vows and empowerment, generating inner heat and bliss, attaining subtle body, and experiencing clear-light with an explanation of the intermediate stage (bardo), as well as dream yoga and instructions on consciousness transference]. Naro-pae Zed Pae Gyud Chimae Drel-wa, ‘‘Commentary on the Eighteenth Chapter [of the Marpa/ Lotsawa translation] of the Sangwa Dupa Root Text.’’ Rim-nga Dud-pa, ‘‘Condensed Explanation of the Five Levels of the Completion Stages [of Sangwa Dupa].’’ Nawang Palden Sang Chen Gyud De Zhi Yi Sa Lam-gyi Nam Zhag Zhung Sel Jae, ‘‘Presentation of the Grounds and Paths of the Four Great Secret Tantric Sets.’’ Patsab Lotzawa Tza-gyud Patsab-kyi Gyur-wae Liu Drug-pa, ‘‘Patsab’s Guide to the Sixth Level of the Sangwa Dupa Root Text.’’ Rinchen Sangpo, 958–1065 Shed-gyud, ‘‘Explanation of the Sangwa Dupa Root Text’’ [Rinchen Sangpo’s Tibetan explanation of Buddha Sakyamuni’s Guhyasamaja]. Santideva, seventh to eighth century A.D. Bodhicarya-vatara [see also: Bodisattva-carya-vatara] (Tib: Choe-jug [or] Jangchub Sempae Chodpa La Jug-pa), ‘‘Bodhisattva Deeds in Practice.’’ Madhyamaka-hrdaya-vrtti (Tib: Uma Drel-wa [or] Uma Nying-poe Drelwa), ‘‘Commentary on the Essence of the Middle Way.’’ Prajna-pradipa-tika, ‘‘Commentary on [Bhavaviveka’s] Lamp for Wisdom.’’ Shiksa-samuccaya-karika (Tib: Lab-pa Kun-tud [or] Lab-pa Kun Lae-tue Pae-tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Complete Teachings for the Bodhisattva Way of Life.’’ Tathagata-hrdaya-papadeshana-vidhisahita-sataka-raraksa (Tib: Ten-due), ‘‘The Essential Foundations of Reality.’’ Santiraksita, eighth century A.D. Madhyamika-lamkara-karika [see also: Madhyamaka-lamkara] (Tib: Uma Gyen [or] Uma Gyen Gyi Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Verses on the Middle Way’’ [a poetic presentation of emptiness according to the Sautrantika Madhyamika school]. Madhyamika-lamkara-vrtti (Tib: Umae Gyen Gyi Drel-wa), ‘‘[Santiraksita’s] Commentary on [his own] Madhyamika-lamkara-karika.’’ Tattva-samgraha [see also: Tattva-sangraha-karika] (Tib: Ten Due), ‘‘The Truth within the Accumulated Teachings of Buddha.’’

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Seng Dengpa (Singdingpa Zhonu), c. ninth to tenth century Gyuma Sum Gyud-kyi Man Nyak, ‘‘Three Tantric Illusion Techniques.’’ Khorlo-chen, ‘‘Wheel Holder.’’ Rim-nga Denzog, ‘‘The Five Levels of the Completion Stage’’ [practical explanations of the meditation practices]. Rim-nga Dhon Zhi-pa, ‘‘The Meaning of the Fourth Level of the Completion Stage.’’ Rim-nga Don Nga-pa, ‘‘The Meaning of the Fifth Level of the Completion Stage.’’ Rim-nga Sempa Sum Tzeg, ‘‘Three Meditations’’ [Yeshe Sempa, Damtsig Sempa, and Ting-ngezin Sempa]. Sarvastivada School (collective work), third century B.C. Lalita-vistara, ‘‘The Play of Buddha.’’ Shentipa Min-nyi [or] Min Gyak Nyi-ma, ‘‘Sunlight on Instructions’’ [Explanation of the winds-of-life activity in the body.] Sthaviravada School (collective works), third to fourth century B.C. Dhamma-sangani, ‘‘The Orderly Relationship of Objects.’’ Vibhanga, ‘‘A Taxonomy of the Elements of Reality [dharmas].’’ Sthiramati, sixth century A.D. Abhidharma-samuccaya-vyakhya (Tib: Choe Ngonpa Zoe Kun lay Tue pa), ‘‘Commentary on [Asanga’s] Abhidharma-samuccaya.’’ Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra-tika [see also: Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra-bhasya-tika] (Tib: U-mae Drelwa), ‘‘Commentary on [Vasubandhu’s] Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra-bhyasa’’ [a discourse on centers and extremes]. Trimsika-bhasya [see also: Trimsika-vritti] (Tib: Lab-pa Sum Gyi Drel-wa), ‘‘Commentary on [Vasubhandu’s] Trimsika.’’ Tilopa (Tillopada), 988–1069 Phag-gya Chenpoi Men-ngag [or] Phag-gya Chenpo Dorjee Tsig Kyang Nyi Gyapa, ‘‘[Tilopa’s] Twenty-Eight Verse Song of Mahamudra Instruction [to Naropa].’’ Tsongkhapa (Lozang Dragpa), 1357–1419 Badon Kunsel [or] Khorlo Dhompa Dechog Dhu-gyud Kyi Sacher Sheg-pa Badon Kunsel, ‘‘Commentary on the Root Text of [Buddha Sakyamuni’s] Dechog Tantra [Skt: Heruka].’’ Chedhor Gyud-kyi Sindri Dhag Dinyi-kyi Sindri, ‘‘Explanation of Buddha Sakyamuni’s Teachings on Hevajra.’’ Dechog Rim-nyi Shed-pa Bagdon Tsa-wae Mik Namper Jed-pa, ‘‘Clarifying the Buried Meanings within the Root Tantra of Dechog [Skt: Heruka].’’ Dorjee Dhe-pae Sindri, ‘‘Results of Vajra Mantra Repetition’’ [in relation to isolation of speech practice].’’ Dorjee Jigje-kyi Drupthap Dhulai Namgyal, ‘‘Instructions on Achieving Self-Generation of the Solitary Jigje [Skt: Yamantaka].’’ Dragwa-dag Nyipae Don Nampar Chewi Tenchod Leg-shed Nying-po, ‘‘Extensive Explanation of Differences in the Turning of the Three Great Wheels of Dharma by Buddha Sakymuni.’’

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Dronsel Gyi Kan-kyi Yangdril [or] Gyud Tham-ched Kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Tza-Gyud Gyacher Shed-pa Dronma Selwae Kan-kyi Tachod, ‘‘Illumination of the Difficult Points of the Sangwa Dupa Tantra Completion Stage’’ [commentary on Candrakirti’s Dronsel (Skt: Pradipa-dyotana)]. Dukhor Zogrim Jorwa Yenlak Druk-ge Khri Puni Ming-chen gye Je-yi Sungzheg Sindri Su Kodpa, ‘‘Extensive Analysis of the Six Levels of the Completion Stage of the Kalachakra Tantra.’’ Lamrim Chenmo [or] Jangchub Lam-gyi Rimpa Chenmo [or] Kham-sum Choe-kyi Gyalpo Tsongkhapa Chenpoe Zed-pae Jangchub Lam-gyi Rimpa Chenmo, ‘‘The Great Graded Path of Tsongkhapa’’ [Tsongkhapa’s systematic presentation of his distinguished Sutra Path to enlightenment]. Leg-shed Nying-po [or] Drawa-dag Nyi-pae Don Nampar Chewi Tenchod Leg-shed Nying-po), ‘‘Essence of Eloquence’’ [similarities, clear meanings, and examples of the essence of Buddha Sakyamuni’s ultimate and conventional meanings as propounded in his Three Great Wheels of Dharma]. Leg-shed Ser Thig-pa Shepa Man, ‘‘The Essence of a Drop of Gold as Medicine’’ [commentary on the Fourth to Eighth Chapter of [Maitreya’s] Abhisamaya-lamkara].’’ Leg-shed Ser-gyi Trengwa [or] Sherab-kyi Pharol-du Chen-pae Mangak-gye Tenchoe Nyong-tok Gyan Drelwa-dhag Ched-pa Gyacher Shed-pae Leg-shed Ser-gyi Trengwa Kap Dag-po Nyi Sum-pae Bar, ‘‘Commentary on the First Three Chapters of [Maitreya’s] Abisamaya-lamkara.’’ Ngag-rim Chenmo [or] Gyalwa Khyab-dak Dorjee Chang Chen-poe Lam-gyi Rimpa Sangwa Kungyi Nying-po Nampar Chewa, ‘‘The Secret Presentation of the Stages of the Dorjee Chang Path’’ [a comprehensive explanation of all types of Ultimate Tantra]. Rim-nga Seldron [or] Gyud-kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Me Ngag Rimpa Nga Rabtu Sel-wae Dromae, ‘‘Thoroughly Illuminating Nagarjuna’s Instructions on the Five Levels of Ultimate Tantra.’’ Sa-ched Dhudon [or] Dronsel Gyacher Shed-pae Sached Dhudon [or] Gyud Tham-ched Kyi Gyalpo Pel Sangwa Dupae Tza-gyud Dronma Rabtu Selwar Je-pa Gyacher Shed-pae Sached Dhudon), ‘‘Lamp Thoroughly Illuminating the Five Stages of Guhyasamaja, the King of Tantras.’’ Sung-bum Choe-gye [the entire eighteen volumes of Tsongkhapa’s collected works]. Thachod Nyugu [or] Thachod Rimpoche Nyugu [or] Gyud-kyi Gyalpo Pal Sangwa-dupa Gyacher Shed-pa Dronma Selwae Kawa Nyid Kyi Thachod Rimpoche Nyugu, ‘‘The Precious Sprout Establishing the Final Meanings of the Sangwa Dupa Tza-gyud.’’ Uma Juk-pae Namshed Gong-pa Rabsel, ‘‘Commentary on Candrakirti’s Madhyamika-vatara.’’ Uma Tza-wae Khrid Yek. ‘‘Explanation of the Consciousness That Cognizes Emptiness and Understands the Root of Emptiness.’’ Uma Tza-wae Tsik Lui Je-pae Namshed Rig-pae Gyaltso, ‘‘Extensive Commentary on Nagarjuna’s Uma Tza-wae Sherab [Mula-madhyamika-karika].’’ Yeshe Dorjee Kuntud Kyi Tika [or] Pel Sangwa Dupae Shed-gyud Yeshe Dorjee Kunlae Tupae Tika, ‘‘Commentary on Sakyamuni Buddha’s Vajra-jnanna-samucchaya-nama-tantra.’’ Zablam Naro Choedrug-gyi Khrid-rim Yeshe Sum-den [or] Zab-lam Naro Choe-drug Gyi Khrid-pae Rim-pa, ‘‘Instruction on the Profundities of Naropa’s Six Levels of Practice.’’ Vaibhasika/Sarvastivada School (collective work), second century A.D. Vibhasa [see also: Maha-vibhasa (and) Abhidharma-mahavibhasa-sastra], ‘‘Great Elucidation.’’

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Vajradhara, c. fifth century B.C. Amoggasiddhi (Tib: Don-yod Drupa), ‘‘Meaningful Actualization of the All Accomplished State.’’ Samandra-bhadra (Tib: Kuntu Sangpo), ‘‘Unperishing Excellence.’’ Vairochana-samboddhi (Tib: Nam-nang Ngon Jang), ‘‘Clear Visualization of True Essence.’’ Vajra-jnana-samucchaya-nama-tantra [see also: Samucchaya] (Tib: Dhontu [or] Yeshe Dorjee Kuntu), ‘‘An Accumulation of Meanings for the Guhyasamaja Root Text.’’ Vajra-mantra-lamkara-nama-maha-tantra-raja (Tib: Pel Dorjee Nying-po Gyen Zhe Ja-wae Gyudkyi Gyalpo Chenpo), ‘‘Beautifying Ultimate Vajra Tantra.’’ Vajramala (Tib: Dorjee Trengwa), ‘‘Indestructible Progression’’ [an extensive commentary on the Guhyasamaja Tantra]. Vajrasattva-tantra (Tib: Gyud Dorjee Nying-po Gyen [or] Gyud Dorjee Nying-po Sempa Gyen), ‘‘Beautification of Ultimate Essence Tantra.’’ Vasubandhu (Tib: Lhopon Yik-ngen), fourth to fifth century A.D. Abhidharma-kosa [see also: Abhidharma-kosa-bhasya] (Tib: Zoed-tza [or] Choe Nyon-pa Zod-kyi Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Treasure of Knowledge.’’ Dasa-bhumi-kavya-khyana, ‘‘The Ten Stages of Realization.’’ Dharma-dharmata-vibhaga-bhyasa (Tib: Choe Dang Choe Nyi Nampar Je-pae Drel-pa), ‘‘Discriminating Phenomena and Their Qualities’’ [a commentary on Maitreya’s Dharma-dharmatavibhaga-sutra]. Karma-siddhi-prakrana (Tib: Le Drub-pae Rab-je), ‘‘Treatise on the Genesis of Actions.’’ Mahayana-sutra-lamkara-vyakhya [see also: Mahayana-sutra-lamkara-bhyasa] (Tib: Theg-pa Chenpoe Dho Dae Gyen gyi Drelwa), ‘‘Explanation of [Maitreya’s] Mahayana-sutra-lamkara.’’ Mahayana-sangraha-bhyasa, ‘‘Commentary on [Asanga’s] Mahyana-sutra-sangraha.’’ Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra-bhyasa (Tib: Due Tha Nam Je [or] Due Dang Tha Nampar Je-pae Drelpa), ‘‘Commentary on [Maitreya’s] Madhyanta-vibhaga-sutra.’’ Panca-skandha-prakarana (Tib: Phung Po Ngae Rab-je), ‘‘Treatise on the Five Aggregates.’’ Trisvabhava-nirdesa (Tib: Sum gyi Rang-zhin Shed-pa), ‘‘Treatise on the Three Natures of Existence.’’ Trimsika [see also: Trimsika-vijnapti-karika] (Tib: Sum Chu Pae Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Thirty Verses Explaining Consciousness.’’ Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi-sastra [see also: Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi-sastra] (Tib: Gyalwae Ngak Gyi Ngod-drup), ‘‘The Establishment of Cognitions Only.’’ Vimsatika [see also: Vimsatika-karika-vrtti] (Tib: Nyishu-pae Tsig Liu Je-pa), ‘‘Twenty Verses of Explanation.’’ Vyakhya-yukti (Tib: Nam-shed Rigpa), ‘‘The Fundamentals of Elucidation.’’ Vasumitra Prakaranapada, ‘‘The Basis of Explanation’’ [a Sarvastivadin explanation of the elements of reality (dharmas) in relation to the basic constituents of being (skandhas)].

2

The Soul and Communication between Souls

Edith L. B. Turner

Abstract The material presented here questions the limitations of our present scientific assumptions in studies in the anthropology of religion. Ethnographic skills and sociological sensitivity related to the parameters of diverse cultures show that such limitations can be overcome by recognizing human situations that include the existence of souls and spirits. Such experiences do not demand theoretical statements or dogmas. Instead, these direct experiences are validated through their shared nature within a community. Curiously, a similar validation also occurs in ethnographic study of souls and spirits, leading to the effect of broadening what one takes seriously. In these matters, the narrow version of science has little to give, while a broadened science, in the sense of ‘‘natural history’’—finding out what the soul is and how it behaves—has a great future.

Introduction What happens when a person raised in a modern, technologically oriented sector of society sees a spirit? The reaction may be different from that of someone who lives in a culture with a clear understanding and acceptance of ‘‘soul’’ as a factual entity—for instance, someone who lives by the knowledge embedded in an ancient theology in India, or who is familiar with the deep skills of spirit curing in Africa, Native America, Aboriginal Australia, or Brazil. While most Americans are familiar with the idea of spirits, there seems to be a kind of knee-jerk shock when they occasionally see a spirit, a shock derived from their social representations. The reaction is, ‘‘This is the occult! It’s dangerous!’’ or ‘‘I must be crazy.’’ Many learned anthropologists and psychologists have a sneaking suspicion that unexplained phenomena pointing to a spirit realm actually happen, and that spirit beings do exist. These manifestations are in the process of widening the accepted scientific boundaries of what is real for us—of expanding our culture’s ontological matrix, to put it more precisely. Such scholars are faced with accepting the truth that a consistent body of empirical data falls outside the purview of currently established scientific methodology.

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A standard objection commonly heard is the belief that such strange events as spirit manifestations live only in the imagination of those who claim to experience them. This kind of positivist thinking, analogously, is as if the male half of the world were to say that the sensations that women feel while giving birth to a baby were all in their imagination, arguing that they, the men, never felt them. Such feelings, and pain generally, affect the senses just as the presence of spirits affects the senses, although both are experienced subjectively and the actual experience itself and what it means to the human being cannot be measured scientifically. Publications by McClelon (1994) in the sociology of religion, and Young and Goulet (1994) in anthropology, attest to some of the groanings and scrapings as the ontological matrix expands into a broader view. These works are among the serious literature that has developed around the documentation of spirit events (additional examples, among many others, include Desjarlais 1992; Friedson 1996; Jackson 1989; Mills 1998; Peters 1981; Sharp 1996; Stoller 1989; E. Turner 1996, 1998; E. Turner et al. 1992). Alongside such research go yet other types of study that attempt to provide systematic explanations of phenomena that our current scientific methods have not yet been able to substantiate. The argument brought forward by nearly all skeptics is that these events originate from an experiencer’s own brain—a sensitive organ that they argue has created in itself a capacity, for instance, to conjure up before one’s eyes an occult or religious apparition, an effect that seems to originate in neurophysiological activity. There are other similar explanations. Curiously, many Western theologians take this kind of view, with the result that they have to ‘‘superspiritualize’’ their religion, to detach it from the possibility of any real attested acts of power in the concrete world, ‘‘supermoralizing’’ it. For some this even means claiming that God’s intention in giving us the miracle-filled gospels was to show us metaphors of goodness and self-sacrifice, and that the events in the scriptures probably never really happened. For example, O’Murchu (1997, 165), a priest who writes about theology, calls the resurrection a ‘‘mythic tale.’’ He says that ‘‘the concepts of beginning and end, along with the theological notions of resurrection . . . , are invoked as dominant myths to help us humans make sense of our infinite destiny in an infinite universe’’ (p. 183), and that ‘‘resurrection and reincarnation are not facts, but mental/spiritual constructs that articulate both our paradoxical fear of, and yearning for, infinity’’ (p. 202; see also the theologians Dourley 1984, Kennedy 1988, and Wink 1992). These statements would give the lie to my own experience of seeing the spirit from a dead person and to the shamanic and other spirit experiences of the anthropologists cited above. Experiences of Direct Spirit Action Bridging cultures is the key operation of anthropologists. More and more researchers are achieving this task by dint of expanding their methodological framework. In this

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chapter I refer to some of their accounts. Let us look, for instance, at the case of one ethnographer who managed the bridging because he was ready to listen to what the field people were telling him. This case shows the merging of an ethnographer’s perceptions with those of the people, his developing those perceptions in himself, and his partaking of and adding to the supports of the culture. The scene is the religious world of the Dene Tha Indians of Northwestern Alberta, and the ethnographer was Jean-Guy Goulet (1994, 1998) of St. Paul’s University, Ottawa. The Dene Tha The Dene Tha, Athapascans of the Northwest Coast, live in a community that—when understood from within their own culture—commonly experiences a different consciousness from those of rationalists, the kind that is termed in a general sense altered state of consciousness (ASC). The consciousness is fed by ritual, and also, importantly, by the recounting to each other of stories of their own extraordinary experiences. Their world is inhabited by helping animals and is informed by dreams. Its inhabitants are gifted with experiences of the dead and of reincarnation. This sounds like a fairy-tale world, but such societies do indeed exist. When Goulet (1998, 178–180) lived among these people he himself began to have experiences that changed his worldview. On a culminating occasion he saw a dead person in a vision, an event that he recounts: A young girl Goulet knew well had been accidentally shot and killed by a hunter. Subsequent to this event it happened that Goulet had to go to a conference in Ottawa. There, a me´tis (mixed-blood) shaman was in the process of giving a conference talk when suddenly Goulet saw the deceased girl, smiling and radiant with light, in midair in the middle of the conference hall. Later, when Goulet returned to the field and visited the Dene Tha, he recounted this story to the dead girl’s mother, who was touched and excited about his encounter. Through conversations such as these I became aware of an emerging process of reciprocity. Dene Tha adults were offering accounts of visions and interpretations of them in response to my own sharing with them of the experience I had in Ottawa. They were no longer too reticent about their experiences. Each conversation drew me into deeper and deeper participation in the family dynamics associated with the expectation that [the girl] Nancy was to reincarnate. (Goulet 1998, 18)

The tribe, too, was strengthened by the story. After that, Goulet felt himself to be part of the mother’s life and that of her people. The understanding of spirits among the Dene Tha is not won by sermons or books, nor by believing things one is told one should believe, but is won by one’s own experience and that of others, the experience of what is, what happens, the experience of factual events. Thus the mother’s own consciousness of spirits was fed by Goulet’s account. This event was now part and parcel of her life, her special spirit-aware life, and she could recognize Goulet in it too. Goulet says: ‘‘Among Athapascans . . . religion is predominantly experiential . . . a person with religious experience is described not as a believer, but as someone who

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‘knows.’ . . . Discussion occurs between those who are ‘in the know.’ . . . Information most often takes the form of stories’’ (p. 114). This realization opened to Goulet a new appreciation of other researchers’ accounts about similar experiences (p. 119). Anthropologists, together with the people they study, may constitute the community of experiencers. Such participatory research can actually work due to awareness of the same phenomena by researcher and people, which may develop so that spirit powers are used by researcher and people together. Anthropologist and field people become a community supporting the communitas (fellow-feeling) that circulates and gives strength to the culture, a culture that knows for sure the experiences are real. Here the bridging did take place—it was only on the grounds of spirit awareness that it could take place. What one perceives from Goulet’s work is that the telling of a story by ‘‘one who knows’’ to another who ‘‘knows’’ has the effect of conveying the experience whole cloth to the other, and the recipient now in a sense has the experience. In Goulet’s story of the vision, readers feel they are there with him in the conference hall. This changes the reader too, who has lived for a time inside the fully-felt experience. This kind of ‘‘seeing eye to eye,’’ then, does seem to be the common feature that can join people, the secret path that can lead into the heart of another culture. Then what? Then one can enter and see a culture working along with its people in a spiritual state of consciousness. Ears to hear the Dene Tha stories do exist. The stories strike a response from the hearer somewhat in the fashion of an electrical power system—that is, in the Dene Tha meaning of power. This operates in a system of intercommunion in the religious sense. It is ironic that true intercommunion is by no means found in all Christian churches. Changing continents to Africa, I relate a moment of quite palpable intercommunion that was the signal for a spirit event and a notable cure. Each of the examples I am giving here is meaningful within its respective community, though quite inexplicable with reference to modern psychopathology. Here it presupposes a world inhabited by spirits that move independently of biological bodies. Ihamba in Zambia In Africa, spirits are well recognized and described by African practitioners. Numerous comments about spirits presented by practitioners can be found, for example, in Victor Turner’s book (1968) on the Ihamba ritual among the Ndembu, especially in appendix A, as well as in my own 1985 study. They refer to spirits’ effects on humans, making them shake; they mention their invisibility, except to those who have drunk herb potions; they refer also to African reincarnation; they mention the character of a spirit, like air, smoke, or mist, as well as its ambiguous nature, both material object and spirit with volition.

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In 1985, at one of the Ndembu rituals, I personally experienced the oneness of the ritual community and saw with my waking eyes an afflicting spirit. Thenceforth I realized that my ontological matrix had grown beyond phenomena that are generally accountable within science proper. There were indeed spirits. I had seen one. I have presented a detailed description of this event elsewhere (E. Turner et al. 1992, 131–158), and I will present a summary of it here together with my comments. The ritual was a collective effort to draw out an afflicting spirit in the form of a tooth from a sick woman, with drumming to aid not only healing but the discernment of the spirit. The support of the community with singing and clapping was essential to the success of the ritual. The medicine men attached cupping horns to the back of the woman to draw out the spirit, and continually addressed the entity, persuading it to come out. When the woman began to shake and utter her long pent-up grudges about her misfortunes, the spirit was reckoned to be on its way out. But it took a long time. Finally, when most of the crowd had given up hope a major climax occurred. The sky had grown dark and a wind came up. Just then the central figure swayed deeply: all leaned forward, this was indeed going to be it. I realized along with them that the barriers were breaking. Something that wanted to be born was now going to be born. Then a certain palpable social integument broke and something calved along with me. I felt the spiritual motion, a tangible feeling of breakthrough moving through the whole group. Then it was that the patient fell—the spirit event occurring first with the action following afterward. I was clapping and singing with the others like one possessed, while the drums bellowed and the tribal doctor pressed the patient’s back, guiding and leading out the tooth. The patient’s face wore a grin of tranced passion and her back was quivering rapidly. Suddenly she raised her arm, stretched it in liberation, and I saw with my own eyes a large thing emerging out of the flesh of her back. This thing was a big gray blob about six inches across, a dark gray opaque thing appearing as a sphere. I was amazed—delighted. I still laugh with glee at the realization of having seen it, the Ihamba spirit, and so big! We were all one in triumph. The gray thing was actually out there, visible, and I could see the hands of the tribal doctor working and scrabbling on the patient’s back—and then the thing was there no more. The tribal doctor had whatever it was in his pouch, pressing it in with his other hand as well. The receiving can was ready; he transferred whatever it was into the can and capped a castor oil leaf and bark lid over it. It was done. The patient was now relieved of her sickness. This was a ritual of many levels. The group of five doctors who gathered on that day knew the deepest of the levels well. They knew it was hard to see the spirit, yet they were operating the process of actually getting to see it. Its nature was polarized as a symbol is, as Victor Turner (1974, 51) found:

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I mean a certain polarization of meaning in which the subsidiary subject [the spirit here] is really a depth world of prophetic, half-glimpsed images, and the principal subject, the visible, fully known, at the opposite pole to it, acquires new and surprising contours and valences from its dark companion. On the other hand, because the poles are ‘‘active together’’ the unknown is brought into the light by the known.

The healing community collectively had come to the point. Their music, their support, the singing, the symbols, the people’s goodwill toward the patient, their giving of their own support to the process, also the work of the spirits—who were the spirits of their own relatives, of whose presence the people had become aware during the repeated calls to the spirits—all these effects finally drove the moment up to its climax. I felt this unison effect through the group, vividly. We had reached, not a chance high spot, but a condition in which the community was one. It is notable that the Ihamba ritual is still undertaken today, as letters from Zambia have been telling me. It can be seen that music has high importance here. Drumming is no ordinary aspect of human experience. Our bodies have boundaries—skins—that prevent us from merging all of our bodies with other bodies. But by so intimately sharing precise timing in the transformative power of rhythm, we can merge, we find that we are not separate. The multitudinous acts of discernment involved, the care in switching between levels and facets and modes of behavior, the release effect of the complex music, the presence of an aggrieved spirit that is the cause of the affliction, the excitement of the climax—together transcend the function of healing for the body and also of the community. They are most economically explained as the desire of the spirit to manifest itself, which was what the tribal doctor had diagnosed and what he successfully brought about. As for my function as ethnographer, in this case it began in a humble act of relaxing the detached-observer imperative, so that I was able to accept their invitation to join them, was briefly able to see as the Africans did, and thus found it possible to bridge the gap and enter the culture. Sakti and Soul Numerous ethnographers report experiences that expand their knowledge of the soul. Suchitra Samanta (1998) wrote an ethnography of the processes of the spiritual levels of life in Calcutta, also dealing with the human-plus-spirit actions involved. Here, as with the Dene Tha, Samanta realized that the stories she collected from spiritual disciples were immensely important to the experiencers, in fact, ‘‘central to their lives’’ (p. 31). Samanta tells of the people’s sense of the fluid power of the spirit called Sakti, and their sense of the soul. Sakti, soul power, is invisible, a communicable power that permeates both the material and nonmaterial worlds. It can pass from one person to another. It enables transformation in an individual, and is shown in the intense love of a guru for his disciple.

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Accounts by Bengali disciples about their gurus give their personal experiences of the extranormal powers of their preceptors, as manifested, for example, in psychic healing, or rebirth of the guru into the disciple’s family. These experiences, crucial to the gurudisciple relationship, may be understood in terms of the indigenous concepts of divine power (Sakti), ‘‘experiential knowing’’ or ‘‘miracle’’ (anubhuti), and a unique concept of the ‘‘mind’’ (man). The experiences are meaningful because they are powerfully transformative of the disciple’s ‘‘self’’ as culturally defined (p. 30). The worshipers tell of waking visions in which the faces of gurus merge with that of the nineteenth-century Kali saint Ramakrisna and/or of the goddess Sakti herself. Other experiences include the sighting of moving bright lights with no perceptible source, leading to the discovery of sacred objects; very detailed dream communications and instructions; the reincarnation of the guru into a follower’s family; or occasions when the guru psychically heals dangerously ill disciples at a distance. The guru also heals by absorbing the karma or future destiny of disciples, even transferring their destiny between persons in order to effect a cure (p. 30). What is actually seen, heard, smelled, or felt by an individual disciple in a real event is, in its extraordinary aspects, also a true event, contextualized within the overarching conception of Sakti as a fluid, mysterious, and moral power that permeates the physical world of objects, actions, and effects. The disciples’ experiences of divine Sakti are also true events because the events draw disciples toward the divine, at once enhancing and transforming their moral perception. Inspired to reflect further, and to consolidate this perception through prayer and spiritual discipline, the disciples learn not only what the guru can do, but how he achieves it. Such perception may result in the disciple himself or herself acquiring certain kinds of power, the ability to resolve marital conflict, to heal and protect, and to predict the outcome of projects. When the disciple finally dies, he or she may continue to intervene in the lives of loved ones, as a dead guru is able to do (p. 47). The attributes of spirit here as ‘‘fluid,’’ as ‘‘communicable,’’ and as ‘‘permeating the material and nonmaterial worlds’’ are compatible with accounts from other cultures, examples of which are given in this chapter. Spirit, Sakti, has a powerfully enlivening function. Spirits are connecting forces capable of rebirth. The accounts, told in good faith, substantiate the similar experiences of people of different cultures. Denial of these accounts undercuts conscious awareness of phenomena shared in participatory practice that is different from measurable phenomena derived from reductionist methodologies. The Milkmaids Once the mode of seeing spirits is, in principle, accepted as one possibility in human experience, we can begin to appreciate the accounts of spiritual events in the histories preserved in the different major religious traditions. What has been needed is a

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different level of comprehension. Let us look at an extremely well-known event in the history of Hinduism. It is about one dark-blue spirit seen in exactly the same shape at the same time in many places, one sighting for each of a company of milkmaids. It is the story of Krishna and the milkmaids. Krishna of the cows (Vanamali 1996), a mischievous beloved figure, playing his flute, his ankles twinkling across each other in the dance, swaying sideways at the waist, neck back, a sizzling, irresistible figure—this figure appeared dancing in the middle of the circle of women, his skin dark blue ‘‘like a rain cloud,’’ mysterious and strange. The women, gopis, who had been milking cows, heard his flute and found him there. When each of them danced, overcome with love and laughter, he did a trick—flashed himself into many Krishnas, one for each of them, dancing between each of them, dancing for each single one of them, and at the same time fluting in the middle. How could this be? What they learned was not to question and, above all, that no single one of them should think Krishna had come for her alone. This was not the same kind of love as in their marriages, settled down on a farm with dowry and in-laws. Radha, the most famous of them, knew that. ‘‘She who binds to herself a joy /Doth the winged life destroy /But she who catches the joy as it flies /lives in eternity’s sunrise,’’ to paraphrase William Blake (1970, 461). This was such a moment of spirit experience for Radha. Not the structures of society, not liturgies, not canon law, but the spirit as it flies—which is a constant characteristic of many spirit encounters.1 Some of the milkmaids were tempted and wanted to possess the beautiful boy for themselves—but then his image went ragged, and thinned to nothing. One of them reached out brokenhearted, but he was gone. So she danced on sadly, begging him to return. When Krishna returned she did not want to grab at him any more, but danced in gratitude. ‘‘Communitas is the link between the gopis, the blue god between each milkmaid,’’ explains Victor Turner (1969, 157) in an instructive passage on the antistructural nature of the encounter. The story conveys the mystery of the collective, the ‘‘all of us in one,’’ or as Vanamali (1996, 77) aptly describes it in her commentary on the gopis, ‘‘submerged in a state of unity in which all is One and there is no other.’’ That is what I felt, myself, in Ihamba. Such an experience of oneness was there even in the story of Goulet, as well as in the collective understanding of the Dene Tha tribe about their wondrous experiences. The stories find their mark with those who have experienced similar events. The full implications of the stories are then accepted because teller and listener exist in a commonality of knowledge. Recognition originates from the memory of similar situations rather than from analysis; it is provided by direct participation and not by distant observation. The Fire Spirit The next example—drawn from a Pentecostal tradition—is similar to the gopi tale.

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When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. (Acts 2, 1–5)2

It can be seen how each of the apostles in this biblical story was endowed with his own spirit, but they were all the same spirit, just as in the story of the milkmaids. One notes that in the great religions the appearance or presence of a spirit has received intense attention, so that the occasions become central, sanctified, much illustrated, the basis of sermons, with an aura of holiness. A continuum of spirit occasions exists, of course; some of them are well known, and some very obscure. But in my experience they are all mentioned with awe, even though touched with familiarity and sometimes laughter because of the unexpectedly and outrageously affirmative revelations given to the visionaries (see the touch of mischief about Krishna, the laughter of Don Genaro in Castaneda as he teleports on the edge of a gorge, the humor of the women who reported the walking Jesus doll of Tlaxcala, Mexico, the feeling of a spirit gamble at Lourdes, the jokes at Knock shrine in Ireland, or the outburst of hilarity in the middle of Ihamba). The pair of collective spirit events—gopis and Pentecost, given above—also show the workings of communitas. The events occurred among a group of comrades among whom their very oneness was sanctified. Both stories were known by their coreligionists as historic events, fortuitously occurring, neither of them deliberately induced by ritual, merely happening among good folks who were enabled to realize what was going on. The Ihamba event was not entirely a matter of the medicine man’s control— its climax came unexpectedly. I had a direct sense that my own exhaustion was shared by all the participants, as I have described in my account of the climax. There had been a distinct moment of despair. This direct sense itself is my fieldwork material here. In such a context, the experiencer knows, just as a woman knows of the tension and release of normal childbirth. It is not without significance that, in the African ritual, comparisons and links between Ihamba and childbirth are frequent (see E. Turner et al. 1992, 90–92). Such knowledge in both cases cannot exist ahead of time, in a calculated way, but comes spontaneously, unexpectedly. Communitas in Social Rituals Victor Turner identified the condition of communitas—that is, one’s generic sense of fellow feeling, a basic union with others. This sense is inseparably linked to the aim of ritual and to its major methods and tools. Without communitas, ritual fails. We have noted the great importance of social unity, important in the support given in cases of change of consciousness, and where the consciousness of the social group is

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changed as well as that of the individual, producing this social unity in its most intense form. Ritual support in the communitas mode can become a great effector for healing and human betterment, but it is often taken for granted in the literature. We can find statements such as ‘‘large crowds attended the pilgrimage devotions,’’ or ‘‘the community drummed and sang until the shaman went into a trance,’’ and the like. In an otherwise excellent article on Mexican Pentecostalism the anthropologist author says, ‘‘Those present will ask for a ‘baptism by the Holy Ghost,’ which is made evident by the gift of tongues. Due to the collective state of mind that has been created, it is not surprising that many people do produce glossolalia at that moment’’ (Navarro 1998, 355). But what was actually going on in the consciousness of these support groups? The author does not give any detail, so we presume he did not participate in the speaking in tongues. I propose we break the methodological, indeed semireligious, taboo against sharing consciousness; for instance, one might even speak in tongues, scary though it seems. Generally, it is surprising how easy it is to let go and allow the delight of experiencing spirituality. This is a truly simple fieldwork technique practiced by many anthropologists, and is exemplified in different ways in the cases below described by Ellingson and Turnbull. Unity for the Purpose of Cogenerating Gods from Gods—Tibet What set me off on the topic of support was Ter Ellingson’s (1998) description of the monks’ support of their leader in the contemporary annual Tibetan State Oracle ritual at Lhasa, in which the oracle-speaking monk goes into a trance, is possessed by a god, is then burdened with an immensely heavy crown, and bursts from the monastery shooting with a bow and arrow. At the climax the crowd presses forward, eager to receive a wound from the arrow. Ellingson describes the preliminary drumming, the attendance of the other monks and assistants, the chanting and prayers. The article includes an illustration that looks like a typical Buddhist holy picture. To put the monk in a trance and to bring down the gods, the drums produce an unforgettable slow, mounting, hastening, and thunderous sound that rises to a climax. The monk himself is saying a mantra in his heart, which is the god’s heart, so that the two are joined by a ray of light that fuses them together like water flowing into water, as the people describe it. Meanwhile the intense focus of the others on the actual sensing of the gods’ presence, and the abandonment of the trancer to the process that the worshipers are pressing on him, bring about the ecstasy, of which he remembers nothing. Outside the temple the large crowd hears the drumbeats and they too become shot through with the power. Out bursts the Oracle in his sacred garb, the crown on his head, a mirror on his chest, and a bow and arrow in his hands. The people swarm to-

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ward him, throwing white scarves over him, attempting to receive his arrow in their bodies. He utters words, not remembering anything. The assistants even have to try to limit the process to save everyone from being trampled. Thus the entire group receives the god, not just the individual monk. Ter Ellingson, the ethnographer, also felt the advent of the god—something, for example, that Navarro, the ethnographer of those who spoke in tongues, never indicated he had felt. Ellingson’s account of the Tibetan ritual demonstrates the support given to the Oracle by others, along with a reflexive feedback effect from the Oracle to others. This mutual process is the paramount element in the complex event. Humans do seem able to come together to effect the presence of a spirit or god, an entity who is usually invisible and who has intentions with regard to humankind. These intentions also become plain: that humanity should respect the ancestors, do good to the neighbors, heal, and act honestly. All religionists sense that the initiative is with the gods, and this major element of religion is one that scholars of philosophy, religion, anthropology, and consciousness need to address. The Lhasa event is not a psychological one. The spirits are real, deeply connected with humankind, and can change the state of a human being’s actual body in healing events. In the event at Lhasa the god was strongly there, having arrived in the body of the monk. Thus the kind of sociality I am considering carries the effects and links people. We may see it involved in the Tibetan ritual when the populace enters a state of truly collective nonordinary consciousness, in an ancient ritual that, through the ages, has been carefully tooled and produced with many human skills. Uniting to Heal, to ‘‘Make Good’’—The Pygmies Colin Turnbull came across this great communitas in the Ituri forest, in an experience that took him far beyond the boundaries of reality as he knew it at that time. It was an experience of the collective becoming unified in a change of consciousness. It happened during a repeatedly enacted and yet strongly effective ritual among the Mbuti (see Turnbull 1990). We see Turnbull in the forest with the pygmy singers, participating in their curing, or, as they call it, in their ‘‘making good’’ rituals. As Turnbull became more and more involved in the ritual process, he noticed a change in his behavior: No longer looking for any explanation, [I was] just intent on enjoying myself. . . . And by the same illogic I felt free to join in the singing. And in an instant it all came together: there was no longer any lack of congruence, and it seemed as though the song was being sung by a single singer. . . . Then I made the mistake of opening my eyes and saw that while all the others had their eyes open too, their gaze was vacant . . . there were so many bodies sitting around, singing away. . . . Something had been added to the importance of sound, another mode of perception

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that, while it in no way negated the aural or visual modes of observation, none the less went far beyond them. (p. 56)

By identifying himself with their communitas and by sharing their goals, Turnbull’s perception of the social process shifted in a qualitative way that opened an expanded ontological realm for direct access. His participatory observation of and active engagement with the ritual process opened for him a new horizon of conceptualization. Turnbull argues that social research will benefit from participatory methodologies: What is needed is a technique of participation that demands total involvement of our whole being. Indeed it is perhaps only when we truly and fully participate . . . that we find this essentially subjective approach to be in no way incompatible with the more conventional rational, objective, scientific approach. On the contrary, they complement each other and that complementarity is an absolute requirement if we are to come to any full understanding of the social process . . . it provides a wealth of data that could never be acquired by any other means. (p. 51)

The enchantment of achieving a perfect unison in music did the work of creating a group connection that was here not a matter of seeing spirits but a kind of power that would effect curing. This curing takes place in a collective environment. The group acts as a ‘‘single singer’’ and penetrates into a world ‘‘far beyond the aural and visual’’ (p. 51). Nigel Rapport has written (personal communication, January 1998) that such a thing is only an illusion, it cannot be effected; mere individual act is all that is happening, employing for social purposes a temporary artificially constructed uniformity of performance. He reiterates, ‘‘There is no revelation’’—there is not even anything truly social of itself. Rapport has fixed his sights on the theory that in the Durkheimian world of ‘‘social fact,’’ where God is actually society writ large, all behavior is merely constructed. But it is in anthropology that the illusion arises. Anthropology has been suffering for decades from the self-imposed limitation of dissective reasoning. Sadly, owing to their ironclad dogma of detached observation, the disciplines of social and cultural anthropology have been ignored by the general Western public because their teachings are at variance with the experience of ordinary people. If we want to apply the idea of a constructed world in the Mbuti pygmy case, we must recognize that they do know their constructed world; it is the world of their own mundane village, separated from the forest, separated from the place where the communitas songs are sung. The Mbuti people know that the village is the world without music or healing. Turnbull traces a dichotomy consisting of the mundane village and the liminal forest, where ‘‘the forest’’ is the other side, a world where the ritual songs really have power to heal. Turnbull found that he had struck a mode of perception that cannot be reduced to aural and visual modes of observation. In other words, he had experienced an extension of his socially conditioned ontological matrix. In a different context, this perceptual extension can be recognized in the medieval figure of the wizard, who is capable of

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penetrating the membrane surrounding the world, about to pierce through to the starry spheres (see the early sixteenth-century woodcut in the Bettmann Archive). In today’s world, many ethnographers have experienced these matters as well. ˜ upiat Uniting to Change the Weather—In ˜upiat people of northern A telling record of spirit power is an episode among the In Alaska at a time when the people had been dying from nuclear pollution inflicted by the U.S. government. They had subsequently fought for and won the cleansing of the environment, and had even received an apology from President Bill Clinton in 1996 (E. Turner 1997, 95–109). The village is located on a long gravel spit pointing west, with a north and south shore. I paid a visit in April 1996, when the warm current was coming up the Bering Straits, and found the whale men looking anxiously out of their windows to the south shore for ‘‘water cloud,’’ the sign of open water in the long-frozen ocean. They needed a north wind to open the water. But the weather was warm and muggy, 26 F, and the wind was from the south, blowing the ice against their harbored south shore. There would be no whales for their major food, for there was no water through which a whale could come. They were restless: the wind was wrong. After church on Sunday a call came through on the citizens band radio: ‘‘Any volunteers to bring a boat into the church?’’ Aha! I remembered how they brought a boat into the church the first year I was there, and how they blessed it and prayed for whales. I remembered all the whaling captains standing in the sanctuary. I wandered outside in the snow to watch the laborious task of moving a sixteen-foot boat across the village to the church. Then the whale men lifted the boat through the church entrance, sideways, with banging and side slipping, until they could finally get it through the door and the right way up again, then up the aisle. Sled and boat were set up as on the ice and at sea, but this time in church, where the altar boy was changing the colored altar cloth for a white one. Whales like white. The preacher wore white. The paddles in the boat were all scoured white and set upright—as when a whale is caught—to send a signal to other boats meaning ‘‘catch.’’ The church was filling rapidly. All twenty-two whaling captains, including the ˜upiat hunter with the greatest catch, Henry Nashookpuk (known for his peculiarly In gifts), stood in two rows on each side of the boat. The preacher took up his station at the prow and began. We all sang, about ‘‘the whales and all that moves in the waters,’’ ‘‘the sea is his and he made it,’’ and ‘‘when I in awesome wonder consider all the worlds,’’ songs that brought tears to the eyes of many of us. We all gathered at the boat and put our hands on it, with others touching us behind. Then we began to pray for the wind to change. The sound rose until my ears felt they would burst. I prayed as hard as I could. There were weird cryings from the crowd, with arms whirling on high. The intensity rose and rose and rose. I looked over at Henry, the chief

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whaling captain. He appeared calm and faintly happy. I relaxed. Soon the hullabaloo was over. We finished with one more hymn, with most of us experiencing chills— that is, in an inspired state. The congregation started to leave; the men took the boat down and out the door. We left the church and walked along until we had rounded the end of the building and come into the open. There it was. The wind had changed to the north. It blew icy and fresh from far up the village at 10 F, falling freely on our cheeks and on the south shore. It would blow the ice away and there would be water. No one said a word. The next day there was water, and the whalers went down on the ice to break a trail over the ice ridges for the snowmobiles. By Tuesday there were several crews down at the water, watching. Several whales were seen and eventually caught. This event was in keeping with the shamans’ intercommunication with the winds. ˜ upiat religion the weather, One of the shamans’ powers is altering the weather. In In ˜upiat shamans have often helped to modify sila (E. Turner sila, is itself a spirit. In 1996). On this occasion the people did not drum and dance, for the ritual was held in church. But they were using the same powers, the power of singing and the wellrecognized collective act, prayer to a helping spirit. Conclusion: A Broader Ontology of Consciousness Social unity of a nonordinary kind appears to be a vital catalyst in helping people discern the presence of conscious beings or powers that are beyond the confines of individual selves. Here I have presented scenes of unity of that type in action and in expanded consciousness, seen in the same way many times. Expanded consciousness is present when the oracle-speaking monk in Tibet is the focus of his assistants, with drumming and songs to bring the god. Having received the god—a spiritual entity who of his own will enters the monk—the monk is weighted down by the fifty-pound crown, and charges out. He is the god. He gives psychic power to the people and receives it from them. Similarly, the Ndembu singers and drummers in Africa gather around with a focused purpose, to cure the woman afflicted with a spirit. The sick Ndembu woman endures bloodletting, is encouraged to reveal her nastiest grudges, falls, then becomes the center of an extraordinary sense of social release, with the spirit manifesting itself in material form as it is extracted by the medicine man from her body. The Mbuti pygmies take Turnbull into the forest away from village, food, and business, and share their songs. They merge as they sing, and they have incorporated Turnbull into their shared reality. This social group has merged. Then we gain a sense of the private world of the Dene Tha, a people careful not to spill their precious talk with those who cannot receive it. Theirs is a world where life is like an electric current that needs two poles—one simply cannot talk unless the hearer is in that current too, unless he or she also knows one’s spiritual world. If all are in the current, the stories

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they tell one another are about the returning soul, messages from the dead, second sight. The tribe and its religion become a community of experiencers. The people’s support for each other is essential to the process of communication and enables the spiritual information to get through. Scientific methodology requires us to apply Occam’s razor, the rule of parsimony. Thus we should not go out of our way to invent complicated explanations so as to avoid accepting the possibility of the existence of spirit being and powers. When working on unexplained events it is more parsimonious, and more just, simply to listen to what those adept at these matters are saying and begin to take them seriously. Then, for us to understand what they say, we might start by using our own intuition. One might be able to perceive that reservoir of power somewhere—and classically the power is not ‘‘owned’’ by the giver, it comes through him or her and is well-nigh impossible to pin down, that is, to define. People know it very well when they experience it. Victor Turner called it communitas—his name for it. It seems to be where healing takes place, where the burden is lifted. It is God to Monsignor Chester Michael, who trains men and women in the skills of spiritual direction. For him, Jung’s collective unconscious is God. You receive it. It is somehow the Holy Spirit. It has the initiative, you do not. One feels that the question of how this is so will only be answered from some similar source, and differently for every individual. One might start with the soul of a person, and see that it has many ‘‘prepositional plugs,’’ as Victor Turner put it—with, to, in, for, by, from, of, against, through; all kinds of ‘‘extension cords’’ from one person to another. Around and part of and through all this ‘‘connective tissue’’ floods an impalpable element that carries—as the air carries our voices—the thoughts from person to person, the body language and state, the love, the shaman’s powers. It is the place in which the halo shines and where the angels dwell; people you meet can put their hand near your hand or above your head and feel it, and vice versa. It is an integument, it is what contains us, like the ˜upiat crew on the ice, as the In ˜upiat put it. There are ways to tent that shelters the In feed and develop and honor this ‘‘element.’’ A whole world of skills exists in the world’s societies. Drawing together the resistant and ragged threads between science and an acceptance of an expanded ontology is not easy. A reexamination of what living societies actually do and have experienced may be a path—at least from anthropology—to a meeting place of disparate disciplines. Science is not too proud to examine what is, and it is surely not yet complete, and has no absolute and unshakable tenets except truth. The examples in this chapter are but a few of those available to teach that people’s lives go deep, that what they experience at that depth is true material to be respected in its own right, and that to exclude it causes science itself to become a dogma and lack fruitfulness. In this chapter it is only the material itself that can truly speak, and the

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reader, like the Dene Tha tribespeople, will need to tune in on the same wavelength and begin to experience the events on a truly personal level. Notes Research on the Ndembu was funded by the Carter-Woodson Foundation for African and AfricanAmerican Research, and also by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Re˜ upiat was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Virginia. search on the In I am grateful to these organizations for their support. My warm thanks are also due to James and Mary McConnell for their sponsorship of my research in general. 1. V. Turner (1969, 132) mentions ‘‘the spontaneity and immediacy of communitas [spiritual moments of fellowship]—as opposed to the jural-political character of structure . . . [and he refers to events of] existential or spontaneous communitas—approximately what the hippies today would call ‘a happening.’ ’’ 2. I apologize for any bias in my use of examples in this chapter. I am a kind of Catholic, though I attempt to participate all the way with other religions I have encountered and to give them full credit in their own right. I maintain that none of the religions or spiritualities are superior to any other. References Blake, William (1970), The Poetry and Prose of William Blake, David Erdman ed., New York, NY: Doubleday. Desjarlais, Robert (1992), Body and Emotion: The Aesthetics of Illness and Healing in the Nepal Himalayas, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dourley, John P. (1984), The Illness That We Are: A Jungian Critique of Christianity, Toronto: Inner City Books. Ellingson, Ter (1998), ‘‘The Arrow and the Mirror: The Tibetan State Oracle,’’ Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 51–76. Friedson, Stephen (1996), Dancing Prophets: Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Goulet, Jean-Guy A. (1994), ‘‘Ways of Knowing: Towards a Narrative Ethnography of Experiences among the Dene Tha,’’ Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 113–139. ——— (1998), Ways of Knowing: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Dene Tha, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Jackson, Michael (1989), Paths toward a Clearing: Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Inquiry, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Jung, Carl G. (1928), Two Essays in Analytic Psychology, New York, NY: Dodd and Mead.

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Kennedy, Eugene (1988), Tomorrow’s Catholics, New York, NY: Harper Row. McClelon, James (1994), Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Mills, Antonia (1998), ‘‘Scientific and Participant Validation of Rebirth: Similarities, Differences, and Is There a Bridge?’’ Paper read in the panel ‘‘The Spirit Hypothesis,’’ American Anthropological Association Annual Meetings, Philadelphia, December. Navarro, Carlos Garma (1998), ‘‘The Socialization of the Gifts of Tongues and Healing in Mexican Pentecostalism,’’ Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 353–361. O’Murchu, Diarmuid (1997), Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics, New York, NY: Crossroad Publishers. Peters, Larry (1981), Ecstasy and Healing in Nepal: An Ethnopsychiatric Study of Tamang Shamanism, Malibu, CA: Undena. Samanta, Suchitra (1998), ‘‘The Powers of a Guru: Sakti, ‘Mind,’ and Miracles in Narratives of Bengali Religious Experience,’’ Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp. 30–50. Sharp, Henry Stephen (1996), ‘‘Experiencing Meaning,’’ Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 171–186. Stoller, Paul (1989), In Sorcery’s Shadow, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Trevarthen, Colwyn (1984), ‘‘Brain Science and the Human Spirit,’’ Zygon, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp. 161–200. Turnbull, Colin (1990), ‘‘Liminality: A Synthesis of Subjective and Objective Experience,’’ in Richard Schechner and Willa Appel, eds., By Means of Performance, pp. 50–81, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Edith (1987), The Spirit and the Drum, Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. ——— (1996), The Hands Feel It: Healing and Spirit Presence among a Northern Alaska People, DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press. ——— (1997), ‘‘There Are No Peripheries to Humanity: Northern Alaska Nuclear Dumping and ˜upiat’s Search for Redress,’’ Anthropology and Humanism, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 95–109. the In ——— (1998), ‘‘Religious Event and Religious Ritual: Performance among Inuit Whalers,’’ Paper read at the Anthropology of Religion Section Annual Meetings, Kansas, April. Turner, Edith, William Blodgett, Singleton Kahona, and Fideli Benwa (1992), Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Turner, Victor (1968), The Drums of Affliction: A Study of Religious Processes among the Ndembu of Zambia, Oxford: Clarendon. ——— (1969), The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure, Chicago, IL: Aldine.

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——— (1974), Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Vanamali, Devi (1996), The Play of God: Visions of the Life of Krishna, San Diego, CA: Blue Dove Press. Wink, Walter (1992), Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress. Young, David, and Jean-Guy A. Goulet, eds. (1994), Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, Peterborough, ON: Broadview.

3 Consciousness and Reality in Nahua Thought in the Era of the Conquest James Maffie

Abstract Nahua ontology is monistic. It claims that there is a single reality: teotl. Teotl is the unceasingly self-generating and self-transmuting sacred force or energy that originally created as well as continues to recreate the cosmos. Teotl is the unified totality of all things. All things consist of teotl. All things are ultimately identical with teotl. Nahua ontology is processive because teotl is essentially becoming, change, and motion. What’s more, teotl is essentially undifferentiated, unordered, and unstructured, and as a consequence, ineffable. Language, concepts, and categories cannot be employed literally in representing or knowing teotl. Humans know teotl via neither sense experience nor reason but through mystical experience. Teotl manifests itself cyclically in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the ceaseless opposition of mutually arising, interdependent, and complementary polarities. As instances of these dual polarities, consciousness and matter along with mind and body are merely two aspects or facets of teotl, one with teotl, and hence ultimately one with one another.

Introduction Wisdom was highly prized by Nahuatl-speaking peoples in Central Mexico in the era of the Conquest (1521). Nahuas believed wisdom provided humans with the practical knowledge needed for living their lives artfully and keeping their balance on ‘‘the slippery surface of the earth.’’1 Wisdom affords humans some measure of well-being in an otherwise evanescent life filled with sorrow and suffering, here on an impermanent, ultimately doomed earth. Living artfully and in balance requires that one correctly understand the nature of reality. Nahua tlamatinime (‘‘knowers of things,’’ sages, philosophers; tlamatini (singular)) accordingly pursued the ontological quest and set about ordering the cosmos in terms of such concepts as being, nonbeing, and becoming. They sought answers to such questions as ‘‘What is real?’’ and ‘‘What is the nature of consciousness?’’ Nahuas did not regard the ontological quest as an idle pastime divorced from the practical exigencies of daily life; rather, they regarded the

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answers to these questions as having intrinsic normative and universal import for how humans should conduct their lives. Sixteenth-century Nahua thought provides us with a fresh approach to the foregoing questions, one that has been largely if not wholly ignored by Anglo-American and continental philosophers, and, what’s more, one that deserves a voice in contemporary discussions alongside Western, East Asian, South Asian, and African approaches. The Nature of Reality Nahua ontology maintains that a single, dynamic, self-generating sacred force or energy originally created as well as continually recreates, regenerates, and permeates the cosmos. Nahuas call this force teotl. Teotl is essentially becoming, motion, and change. It manifests itself cyclically and regularly in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the endless opposition of mutually interrelated and mutually interdependent, complementary polarities that divide, alternately dominate, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary structure of the cosmos. The ceaseless becoming of the cosmos is defined and constituted by the endless oscillation of these complementary polarities. The overall result of this dialectical oscillation is an overarching balance. Consciousness and matter as well as mind and body are not two essentially different kinds of substance but rather two aspects or facets of one and the same single reality: teotl. Teotl At the heart of Nahua ontology stands the thesis that there exists a single, vivifying, eternally self-generating-and-self-conceiving as well as self-regenerating-and-selfreconceiving, sacred energy, power, or force: what Nahuas call teotl.2 The cosmos and its contents are generated by teotl, from teotl, as one aspect, facet, or moment of its own eternal and unceasing process of self-generation-and-self-conception and selfregeneration-and-self-reconception. Teotl continuously and simultaneously generates and conceives as well as permeates, encompasses, and shapes the cosmos and its contents as part of its own eternal process of self-generation-and-self-conception and selfregeneration-and-self-reconception. Teotl’s self-generation-and-self-conception and self-regeneration-and-self-reconception are identical with its generation-conception and regeneration-reconception of the cosmos. Both processes spring from teotl’s simultaneously possessing such qualities as active and passive, and male and female. Since process, becoming, and transmutation are essential qualities of teotl, teotl is properly understood as ever-flowing and ever-changing energy-in-motion rather than as a static entity or being. Since it better reflects the dynamic nature of teotl, I propose we gloss teotl as a verb denoting a process rather than as a noun denoting a static being. (In doing so I follow David Cooper’s (1997, 69–73) suggestion that we gloss God

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of the mystical teachings of the Jewish Kabbalah as a verb rather than as a noun.) So construed, teotl refers to the eternal, cosmic process of ‘‘teotlizing.’’ Finally, the cosmos and its contents—including what humans ordinarily regard as mind and body—are merely aspects of teotl and ultimately identical with teotl. As such, they, too, are everflowing and ever-changing, energy-in-motion. Dialectical Polar Monism Teotl presents itself cyclically in multiple aspects, preeminent among which is duality. This duality takes the form of the opposition of contrary yet mutually interdependent, mutually arising, and mutually complementary polarities that divide the cosmos, alternately dominate the cosmos, and explain the diversity, movement, and momentary structure of the cosmos. Among these polarities are being and not-being, order and disorder, active and passive, life and death, light and darkness, and male and female. Consider life and death, for example. Death contains the fertile, energizing seed of life; life contains the seed of death. Neither can exist without its opposite. They are simply two facets of a single energy: teotl. The artists of Tlatilco and Oaxaca expressed this idea artistically by fashioning a split-faced mask, one half alive and fleshed, the other half, dead, fleshless, and skeletal (see figures 3.1 and 3.2).3 The masks are intentionally ambiguous. Skulls simultaneously symbolize both life and death, since life arises from the

Figure 3.1 The mask portrays a human face, one half fleshed, the other half skeletal. In this manner native artists expressed the dialectical interdependence and ultimate oneness of life and death (and by extension, order and disorder, light and darkness, active and passive, male and female, etc.) (ceramic, Tlatilco, Las Bocas, Mexico, c. 230 B.C.–100 A.D., Museo Nacional de Anthropologia, Mexico City).

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Figure 3.2 This mask (like figure 3.1) is correctly perceived as a single, dynamic life-death unity of mutually arising, complementary opposites. After years of education and ritual preparation, one is able to perceive the face ‘‘unmasked,’’ and in so doing discern the interdependence, interrelatedness, and ultimate unity of the complementary properties presented. When perceived correctly, one sees the face as neither alive nor dead, yet simultaneously both alive and dead (ceramic, Mixtec culture, Solyaltepec, Oaxaca, Mexico, c. 600–900, Museo Nacional de Anthropologia, Mexico City).

bones of the dead. Flesh simultaneously symbolizes both death and life, since death arises from the flesh of the living. The Mixtec artists who painted-scribed the indigenous document known to us as the Codex Vaticanus B expressed the same idea via a pictoglyph depicting Mictlantecuhtli (the god of death) and Quetzalcoatl Ehecatl (the god of life) sharing a single spine. Like the masks in figures 3.1 and 3.2, this image artistically and symbolically presents that which Mesoamerican thinkers uniformly averred cannot be articulated discursively, namely, the mutual interdependence, interrelatedness, and arising of life and death, order and disorder, being and not-being, and so on. The cosmos consists of the unending, cyclical tug-of-war between or dialectical oscillation of these polarities—the totality of which is simply the manifold selfpresentation of teotl. The cosmos is consequently unstable, transitory, and devoid of any permanent order, being, or structure. This notwithstanding, teotl is nevertheless characterized by an enduring pattern or regularity. How can this be? Teotl is the dynamic, sacred force generating and constituting the endless oscillations of the cosmos. It is the balance immanent within the endless, dialectical swing of interdependent

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polarities. Because it is essentially and hence perpetually self-transmuting, teotl is properly understood in terms of becoming rather than being or not-being. Being and notbeing are, after all, two dialectically interrelated polarities of teotl and, as such, strictly speaking not applicable to teotl. For the same reasons teotl is properly understood in terms of unorder rather than order or disorder. Rhett Young’s and Roger Ames’s (1977) account of Lao Tzu’s characterization of the Tao offers insight into this aspect of teotl: Lao Tzu’s Tao . . . is unchanging in the sense that it does not increase or diminish, but it is constantly changing in the sense that it is in perpetual motion: ‘‘It revolves without pause’’ (Chapter XXV), and the myriad of things follow its interminable change. All things in the process of motion and change ultimately decline and perish, but the Tao alone is eternally free from decay. It alone ‘‘stands solitary and does not change’’ (Chapter XXV), having the capacity to transcend decay and decomposition.4

Teotl, like the Tao, is unique and absolute—as opposed to the myriad created things in the cosmos that are multifarious and relative. Both teotl and the Tao are eternal and remain unaffected by the changes of created phenomena. Both teotl and the Tao are the regularity and pattern manifested in the cosmos. They are the warp and woof of the fabric of the cosmos. They are what the cosmos is as well as how the cosmos is. In light of this, Nahua and Taoist philosophies contend it is a mistake to conceive order/disorder, life/death, light/darkness, male/female, and so on as mutually exclusive, mutually hostile, logically contradictory dualities. As a consequence, both consider it folly to seek one polar opposite (e.g., life) at the expense of the other (e.g., death). I call this aspect of Nahua metaphysics ‘‘dialectical polar monism’’: the single reality, teotl, presents itself as the ceaseless and regular dialectical oscillation of polar opposites. The cosmos consists of the ceaseless back-and-forth movement of these polarities and in so doing exhibits the enduring pattern of dialectical polarity. Teotl’s process of self-presentation provides the immanent balance and pattern that defines the cosmos’s endless oscillation between order and chaos, being and not-being, and so forth. Finally, dialectical polar monism (like Taoism) differs from eschatological varieties of dualism, which, for example, conceive order and disorder, light and darkness, and so on as mutually exclusive contradictories and that maintain in addition that order and light triumph over disorder and darkness at the end of history. Teotl moves cyclically, not linearly. As mutually arising and mutually interdependent complementarities, light and darkness, order and disorder, and so forth alternate eternally without resolution.5 Pantheism Nahua ontology also understands teotl in pantheistic terms. Nahua pantheism claims: (1) everything that exists constitutes an all-inclusive and interrelated unity; (2) this

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unity is sacred; (3) everything that exists is substantively constituted by the sacred; (4) everything that exists is substantively identical and hence one with the sacred; (5) the sacred is teotl; and (6) teotl is not an agent or minded being possessing the characteristics of a ‘‘person.’’ In short, there is only one thing, teotl, and all other apparent forms or aspects of existence (e.g., consciousness and matter) are constituted by and ultimately identical with teotl.6 Teotl is therefore more than the unified totality of things; it literally is everything and everything literally is it. It not only subsumes and substantively exhausts the cosmos, but the cosmos and its contents—sun, earth, water, fire, humans, and so on—are nothing more than self-presentations of teotl’s evermoving energy-in-motion. Teotl is the unifying metaphysical-cum-naturalistic principle of the cosmos; the all-encompassing, everlastingly creative energy-in-motion whose own ceaseless changing presents itself as the ceaseless becoming of the cosmos. Lastly, teotl is immanent in that it penetrates deeply into every detail of cosmos and exists wholly within the multitude of existing things, yet teotl is also transcendent in that it is not exhausted by the multitude of existing things. Teotl as Creative Self-Disguising Artist and Shaman Nahua metaphysics conceives teotl’s original generation and continuous regeneration of the cosmos as its artistic-creative self-presentation and self-transformation. Teotl is a quintessentially artistic-creative process that eternally regenerates and transmutes itself as the cosmos—not a divine legislator who imposes order upon chaos from outside, for example in the manner of Yahweh. Given teotl’s essential dynamic and artisticcreative nature, the cosmos and its contents are teotl’s ongoing work of performance art. Nahua metaphysics alternatively characterizes the cosmos as teotl’s nahual—that is, teotl’s disguise or mask. The word nahual derives from nahualli, signifying a formchanging shaman. This etymology suggests that this characterization of teotl is rooted in indigenous Mesoamerican shamanism.7 In sum, the cosmos and its contents are teotl’s self-generated, creative-artistic, self-disguising, and shamanic self-masking and, as such, dynamic presentations of teotl. Teotl artistically masks and disguises itself from humans in a variety of ways. First, it masks itself as the apparent thingness of existents—that is, the appearance of static entities or beings such as humans, trees, insects, rocks, and so on. This is illusory since reality is dynamic and processive. Contrary to appearances, one and all are dynamic aspects of teotl’s sacred energy-in-motion. Second, teotl disguises itself as the apparent multiplicity of existents—that is, the appearance of multiple, discretely and independently existing entities such as mountains, birds, plants, etc. This is illusory since there is only one thing: teotl. Finally, teotl masks itself as the apparent distinctness, independence, and irreconcilable oppositionality of life and death, male and female, and so forth. This is illusory since these are not only mutually arising and interdependent but also ultimately one with teotl.

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The Nature of Earthly Existence In light of the foregoing, Nahua tlamatinime standardly characterize earthly things as painted images and symbols on teotl’s sacred canvas. Aquiauhtzin, for example, characterizes the earth as ‘‘the house of paintings,’’8 while his contemporary, Xayacamach, writes, ‘‘your home is here, in the midst of the paintings.’’9 Like images on canvas painted by human artists, the images on teotl’s sacred, cosmic canvas are ephemeral, fragile, and evanescent. The fifteenth-century Tezcocan tlamatini Nezahualcoyotl writes: With flowers You paint, O Giver of Life! With songs You give color, with songs you give life on the earth. Later you will destroy eagles and tigers: we live only in Your painting here, on the earth. With black ink you will blot out all that was friendship, brotherhood, nobility. You give shading to those who will live on the earth. we live only in Your book of paintings, here on the earth.10

Since they regard everything earthly as teotl’s artistic self-disguise, as aspects of teotl’s self-generated shamanic mask, Nahua tlamatinime regard everything earthly as illusory and dreamlike. Expressing this point, the tlamatini Tochihuitzin Coyolchiuhqui writes: ‘‘We come only to dream, it is not true [ahnelli; literally ‘‘unrooted’’], it is not true [ahnelli] that we come on earth to live.’’11 Nahua philosophers conceive the illusoriness of earthly existence in epistemological rather than metaphysical terms. Illusion, in other words, is not an ontological category as it is, say, for Plato. In the Republic (Book VI), Plato employs the notion of illusion: to characterize an inferior or lower grade of reality; to distinguish this inferior grade of reality from a superior, higher one (the Forms); and to deny that earthly existence is fully real. This conception of illusion entails an ontological dualism that divides the cosmos into two fundamentally different kinds of things: illusion and reality. Nahua philosophers employ the concept of illusion as an epistemological category (as do Maya philosophers, Dogen, and Samkara).12 They use it to make the epistemological point that the natural condition of human beings is to misperceive and misapprehend teotl and hence be deceived and misled by teotl’s mask. They do not use the conception of illusion to make the metaphysical point that teotl’s mask and earthly existence constitute a distinct ontological category that is substandard or not fully real. The misleading, dreamlike character of earthly existence is a function of our human point of view—not a function of a metaphysical dualism inherent in the makeup of things. Illusion consists of our mistaking the myriad things that compose teotl’s mask as faithfully disclosing the nature of teotl. Such a conception of illusion is compatible with Nahua monism since human illusion, misperceiving, and unknowing are simply aspects of the one reality, teotl. Viewed from this perspective, it is our own misperceiving and misjudging that prevents us from seeing reality as it really is. As we have seen, humans commonly

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misperceive and mistake teotl’s multifold dual polarities (e.g., life/death, male/female) as mutually exclusive, logical contradictories. Humans commonly misperceive and misattribute discrete, independent, and static existence to the multiplicity of individual things (e.g., humans, plants, and stars). Consequently, when humans ordinarily gaze on the cosmos, they perceive teotl under an illusory description or set of categories. They perceive teotl as an individual human or dog, as maleness or death, and so on—not teotl itself. In short: they perceive teotl’s nahual. Consider figures 3.1 and 3.2. One ordinarily perceives each mask exclusively either as a living face or as a dead face. One flip-flops back and forth between the mask’s two sides but never perceives them as a mutually interdependent, dynamic dialectical unity. Perceiving the mask in this manner is mistaken. However, on acquiring greater understanding of teotl, one is able to perceive the mask correctly, namely, as a dynamic dialectical unity that is simultaneously both-living-and-dead-and-yet-neitherliving-nor-dead. The mask is both-living-and-dead (where life and death are conceived as mutually compatible polarities) yet simultaneously neither-living-nor-dead (where life and death are conceived as mutually exclusive, logical contradictories). Yet the both-yet-neither mask is not metaphysically hidden from us in the manner that Cartesian-style epistemology conceives the noumenal object as being hidden behind a veil of sensory phenomena. The both-yet-neither mask is present immediately and directly to our eyes. We are simply unable to perceive it. In short, the both-yet-neither mask is epistemologically but not metaphysically hidden from us. Analogously, Nahua philosophy claims that when humans perceive the world uncritically, what they perceive is teotl as an individual human, as male/female, and so on—rather than teotl unmasked—that is, teotl as teotl. Humans’ inability to perceive teotl unmasked is not due to teotl’s noumenal-like hiding behind a veil of perception but rather due to humans’ inability to perceive what is directly present before their eyes. Teotl is epistemologically, not metaphysically, hidden from us. What is it that humans realize when understanding teotl? In brief, they realize the processive nature of teotl, the unity, singularity, and identity of all things, dialectical polar monism, and pantheism. They understand that reality consists of a single, allencompassing energy-in-motion and that polar opposites such as life and death, order and disorder, and so on are constituted by this energy, self-presentations of this energy, and aspects or moments of this energy. They understand that consciousness and matter (mind and body) are analogous to the half-fleshed, half-skeletal masks above. Humans customarily view consciousness and matter in mutually exclusive, either/ or terms, when in fact teotl is simultaneously both-consciousness-and-matter-yetneither-consciousness-nor-matter; simultaneously both-mind-and-body-yet-neithermind-nor-body. On understanding teotl, humans also come to appreciate the profound inadequacy of literal language for expressing their understanding of teotl. Nahua tlamatinime consequently turn to song-poems, music, painting, and other

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modes of creative artistry to express their understanding of teotl. The truest, most authentic expression of one’s understanding of teotl involves the poetic use of language. (One does not employ language literally as in the present exercise. For example, in trying to characterize teotl literally I find myself constrained by the subject-predicate structure of English. This inescapably fosters the mistaken ideas that teotl is distinct from the cosmos and that teotl is an agent or minded being who chooses to create the cosmos and to disguise itself from humans.) Several seemingly paradoxical consequences follow from the present interpretation. First, illusion and nonillusion enjoy equal ontological status: they are equally real. Illusion is nothing more than teotl’s shamanic self-disguise, hence an aspect of teotl, and hence every bit as real as teotl. Second, the impermanent, mutable, and ephemeral enjoy equal ontological footing with the permanent, immutable, and stable. Everything earthly—its impermanence, mutability, and evanescence notwithstanding—is fully real because a manifestation of and ultimately identical with teotl. Unlike most Western metaphysics, Nahua metaphysics does not therefore equate reality with being, immutability, or permanence. Instead, like pre-Han East Asian philosophies (e.g., Taoism and Confucianism) and many native North and Meso-American philosophies (e.g., Mayan, Sioux, and Navajo), Nahua metaphysics equates reality with movement, change, and becoming. Third, human consciousness and experience (including human misperceiving, misunderstanding, and knowing) are simply further aspects of teotl’s artistic-cum-shamanic self-expression. Human misperceiving consists of teotl’s disguising itself from itself, whereas human knowing consist of teotl’s knowing itself. Lastly, insofar as humans come to know teotl, they come to know that which is unordered, unstructured, mutable, and impermanent. In this respect Nahua epistemology differs from most Western epistemologies that claim that humans can only know that which is ordered, structured, permanent, and immutable.13 Teotl as Source, Standard, and Object of Intrinsic Value Teotl serves as the foundation of Nahua axiology. Teotl is the ultimate source, standard, and object of intrinsic value and hence the ultimate standard and object of appropriate (right) behavior. In this manner teotl functions as does the Form of the Good in Plato’s Republic, hoz’ho’ in Navajo philosophy (Witherspoon 1977), and the Tao in Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (Young and Ames 1977). Like the latter philosophies, Nahua metaphysics also denies the fact-value distinction. Intrinsic value, along with the intrinsically normative implications of reality for human conduct, are rooted in teotl and as such are objective facts woven into the fabric of the universe. Nahua axiology maintains that balance-and-purity constitutes what is intrinsically valuable, good, or worth pursuing for human beings as well as the ideal condition for human beings. Nahua ethics conceives right conduct in terms of the promotion of balance-andpurity.14

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The Nature of Consciousness Human consciousness is one of many facets and self-presentations of teotl, and as such, ultimately identical to teotl. Consciousness is a process rather than a static entity or state (as suggested by contemporary Western psychology’s talk of ‘‘states of consciousness’’). Nahua thinkers conceive cognition, knowledge, understanding, ignorance, and delusion as ways of moving about in the world—not as static states or momentary events. Properly stated, a person cognizes knowingly, ignorantly, and so on. The human body serves as the temporary location for three animistic forces or energies, each residing in a different animistic center. Tonalli (from the root tona, ‘‘heat’’) is located in the head. It provides the body with character, vigor, and the energy needed for growth and development. Individuals acquire their tonalli from the sun. A person’s tonalli may leave her body, as in the case of dreams and shamanic journeys. Such journeys allow humans to perceive places far removed from their bodies. Tonalli is ritually introduced into an infant as one of her animistic entities. It is closely united to the person as her link to the universe and as the determining factor of her destiny. Everything belonging to a human by virtue of her relation to the cosmos receives the name tonalli. Teyolia (‘‘that which gives life to people’’) is located in the heart. It provides memory, vitality, inclination, emotion, knowledge, and wisdom. Unlike tonalli, a person’s teyolia is not separable from her while alive. It is that animistic force ‘‘that goes beyond after death’’ and enjoys a postmortem existence in the world of the dead. Nahuas liken teyolia to ‘‘divine fire.’’15 Finally, ihiyotl (‘‘breath, respiration’’) resides in the liver. It provides passion, cupidity, bravery, hatred, love, and happiness. Of the three, teyolia most closely resembles the European notion of spirit or soul.16 Every human is the living center and confluence of these three vital forces. The three direct the physiological and psychological processes of humans, giving each individual her own unique physiological and psychological character or temperament. All three must operate harmoniously with one another in order to produce a complete, mentally and physically balanced person. Disturbance of any one affects the others. Only during life on earth are all three forces fully integrated within humans. After death, each force goes its own way. Since each of the three forces resides in its respective bodily organ, its character is affected by the character of that organ. If the body and its organs suffer from damage, disease, or imbalance, the three forces are unable to function properly. At this time we can only speculate how Nahua sages might assess the effects on consciousness of such recent developments as commissurotomies and organ transplants. Yet it does seem clear that they would regard these activities as profoundly altering the nature and character of a person’s consciousness. The indigenous text from Puebla known as the Codex Laud contains (p. 44) an artistic rendering of these three animating energies separating from one another and from the human body upon death. According to Alfredo Lo´pez Austin (1988, 316), the im-

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age contains skull and bones falling backward. These represent the cadaver emptied of its animistic powers. A serpent emerging from the crown of the head represents tonalli, a second serpent springing from the heart represents teyolia, and a third serpent leaving the stomach and intestines represents ihiyotl. The fact that each force is symbolized by a serpent is significant since serpents signify rebirth and transformation in Mesoamerican thought. Their mutual differences notwithstanding, all three forces are instances of the unceasing motion and energy of teotl, suggesting that the three are ultimately neither fully discrete nor separate. Human consciousness and experience are the joint product of the three forces while united in the body, and as such, aspects of teotl. Consciousness and experience are constituent elements of organic life and enjoy an equal ontological footing with the physical processes of the human body. They are not, pace epiphenomenalism, mere byproducts of the physical. Head, heart, and liver serve merely as temporary human locations for these three forces. Humans do not exclusively possess these forces. Tonalli is present in other living things such as animals and plants. Teyolia is present in living things such as humans, animals, and plants as well as nonliving things such as towns, mountains, lakes, and sky. Both living and nonliving things possess teyolia by virtue of their ultimate oneness with teotl. According to Sandstrom (1991, 258f.), contemporary Nahuas in Veracruz believe every created thing possesses its own share of this universal, vivifying force. The heart is simply a fragment of this force. Epistemological Dimensions of Consciousness Nahua epistemology conceives tlamatiliztli (knowing, wisdom) in terms of neltiliztli. Scholars standardly gloss neltiliztli (and its cognates) as ‘‘truth’’ (and its cognates).17 Unlike most Western philosophers, however, Nahua philosophers do not conceive truth in terms of the correspondence between propositions (or sentences) and facts or in terms of the internal coherence among propositions (or sentences). According to Miguel Leo´n-Portilla (1963, 8), ‘‘ ‘Truth’ . . . was to be identified with well-grounded stability.’’ To say that a person cognizes truly is to say that she cognizes with wellgrounded stability, well-foundedness, or well-rootedness. The only thing providing such well-grounded stability and well-rootedness is teotl. Willard Gingerich (1987) defends Leo´n-Portilla’s gloss of neltiliztli yet contends well-rootedness does not exhaust its full content. The Nahuas’ conception also contains an ineliminable Heideggerian-style component: ‘‘non-referential alethia—[i.e.] ‘disclosure’ ’’ (p. 104), ‘‘unconcealedness’’ (p. 102), ‘‘unhiddenness’’ (p. 105), and ‘‘self-deconcealing’’ (p. 105). That which is neltiliztli is both well rooted and nonreferentially unconcealing or disclosing. Neltiliztli (truth) as well-rootedness-cum-alethia is a nonsemantic notion since it eschews correspondence, reference, representation, aboutness, fit and successful description.

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What’s more, Nahua sages characterize utterances as well as persons, things, and activities equally and without equivocation in terms of neltiliztli. This, too, distinguishes their notion of truth from Western-style correspondence and coherence notions. That which is well rooted in teotl is genuine, true, authentic, pure, and wellbalanced as well as nonreferentially disclosing and unconcealing of teotl (see Gingerich 1987, 1988). Created things exist along a continuum ranging from those that are well rooted (nelli) in teotl and thus faithfully present, disclose, and authentically embody teotl at one end, to those that are poorly rooted (ahnelli) in teotl and thus neither faithfully present, disclose, nor authentically embody teotl. The former, which includes fine jade and quetzal plumes, possess what Ninian Smart (1966) calls ‘‘special presence.’’18 Humans cognize knowingly if and only if they cognize with well-rootedness-cumalethia, and they cognize with well-rootedness-cum-alethia if and only if their cognizing is well rooted in teotl. Nahuas conceive well-rootedness-cum-alethia in terms of burgeoning (Brotherston 1979). Burgeoning and rootedness are vegetal notions deriving from the organic world of agricultural life. A plant’s flowers burgeon from its seed, roots, and soil, and in so doing, present and disclose the latter’s qualities. Cognizing knowingly is likewise a kind of organic flourishing. It is the flower of teotl’s burgeoning and blossoming within a person’s heart. Teotl wells up within a person’s heart and presents itself as knowing consciousness. As a result of such burgeoning teotl makes itself known to humans (and thus known to itself). Humans become knowledgeable. As the generative expression of teotl, human knowing constitutes one of the ways teotl faithfully and authentically discloses itself here on earth. Knowledgeable cognizing moves knowingly: it understands, presents, unconceals, embodies, and enacts teotl. Unknowing (delusional, illusory, dreamlike) cognizing moves unknowingly. It is poorly if not wholly unrooted (ahnelli) in teotl and hence inauthentic and undisclosing. Teotl does not burgeon and flower within such cognizing. Unknowing cognition constitutes a form of cognitive perversity or disease. It is one of the ways teotl unfaithfully and inauthentically presents—that is, disguises and masks—itself here on earth. Humans come to understand teotl by means of the higher levels of consciousness made possible by teyolia. Teyolia draws humans toward that which alone fills their emptiness and gives them stability and rootedness: teotl. Teyolia resides in the heart, and the human heart (as opposed to head) is uniquely qualified to serve as the organ that enables humans to attain higher levels of consciousness in two ways. First, the Nahuatl word for heart, yollotl, derives from the root ollin or ‘‘movement,’’ indicating that the heart is fundamentally akin to teotl. Both are essentially movement. Second, the heart is anatomically situated between head and liver, and therefore able to attain the proper balance between the head’s reason and the liver’s passion as well as proper balance between conception and generation, male and female, active and passive required for receiving and expressing sacred knowledge. Unlike tonalli (the vital force employed by shamans in their out-of-body journeys), teyolia is not separable from the

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body during one’s lifetime. Consequently, in order for one to come to understand teotl, teotl must reveal itself from within one’s heart. As we have seen, this is the case: teotl is metaphysically immanent within human hearts and humans need only uncover and unconceal that which is immanent within their hearts in order to experience teotl. They need not leave their bodies and search the cosmos outside of themselves. Understanding teotl involves teotl’s expressing itself both to and through the higher levels of consciousness provided by the teyolia of one’s heart. Understanding teotl requires that one possess a yolteotl or ‘‘teotlized heart’’—that is, a heart charged with teotl’s sacred energy. One possessing a teotlized heart is said to have ‘‘teotl in his heart’’ and to be ‘‘wise in the things of teotl.’’19 A teotlized heart reproduces teotl’s own cosmic balancing within itself by balancing male and female, reason and emotion, active and passive, and so on. Receiving and expressing sacred understanding requires that one possess teotl’s active, masculine (generative) aspect as well as its passive, feminine (conceiving) aspect.20 As we will see in greater depth below, one best attains this balance during the activity of creative artistry. When the movement of one’s heart—that is, one’s teyolia—resonates in harmony with the movement of teotl, one’s heart moves well-rootedly, authentically, understandingly, and knowingly. The rhythm of one’s heart synchronizes with the rhythm of teotl. A mystical-style union occurs as the movement of one’s teyolia melds with that of teotl. When this occurs, one’s heart moves knowingly. One has ‘‘teotl in his heart.’’ One’s heart enjoys ‘‘special presence.’’ Teotl not only speaks through one’s voice, one speaks with teotl’s voice. The two are now epistemologically one. Attaining higher levels of consciousness and deeper levels of understanding requires the satisfaction of a variety of preconditions. It requires that one be born with the correct day sign and hence proper amount of the vital force, tonalli. It requires years of ritual discipline, penitence, and mortification—for example, autosacrifice (i.e., selfinflicted pain and blood loss through body piercing), fasting, sexual abstinence, and sleep deprivation. Consuming entheogens (i.e., plants containing special presence) allows teotl to ‘‘take possession of’’ or to ‘‘come out in’’ one’s consciousness.21 Such ritual activities help balance and purify one’s heart and increase the quantity of one’s vital energies. They help elevate one’s consciousness so that one might see and understand teotl.22 Because teotl is essentially undifferentiated, unstructured, and unordered, Nahua philosophy maintains that teotl and the human experience of teotl are ineffable. Humans can only knowingly experience teotl directly—that is, in a manner unmediated, unstructured, and undefined by language, concepts, and categories (along with their attendant divisions, classifications, and distinctions). The latter are elements of teotl’s disguise or mask, and thus, strictly speaking, inapplicable to teotl and one’s experience of teotl. One’s experience of teotl involves an unstructured and undifferentiated feeling of ‘‘oceanic unity with the universe’’ (to borrow from Fischer 1971, 901),

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and the content of this feeling cannot be represented or described using literal language. Therefore, to the degree reason and rationality necessarily employ concepts, language, and categories, humans accordingly experience and understand teotl nonrationally, nondiscursively, intuitively, and mystically. Taoism helps illuminate this aspect of Nahua philosophy. Like Nahua metaphysics, Taoism is a form of monistic pantheism; and like Nahua epistemology, Taoist epistemology is mystical. David Hall’s (1989) discussion of Taoist epistemology is especially useful here. According to Hall, the Taoist notion of wu-chih or ‘‘no-knowledge’’ consists of an intuitive grasp and appreciation of the totality of things in their unified interrelatedness and ultimate seamless and undifferentiated oneness. Hall (1989, 108) suggests ‘‘no-knowledge’’ is properly understood as ‘‘unprincipled knowing’’—that is, ‘‘the sort of knowing that does not have recourse to principles as external determining sources of order’’ such as transcendent Platonic forms or laws of nature. R. G. H. Shiu puts it this way: ‘‘It is called no-knowledge in that it is a state which is not that of knowledge [in the discursive or rational sense]; it is not a piece carved out of the total realm. It is the sharedness of the uncarved totality.’’23 ‘‘No-knowledge’’ is intuitive and mystical. So conceived, ‘‘no-knowledge’’ differs profoundly from traditional Western conceptions of knowledge, which insist that reality must be grasped discursively and rationally. Discursive and rational modes of knowledge employ conceptual categories and linguistic classifications, which, because they ‘‘carve up’’ the totality, render genuine understanding and knowledge of the totality impossible. One must therefore abandon them and seek ultimate reality intuitively. In light of this, David Hall and Roger Ames (1987, 1998) also contend that pre-Han Taoism (and Confucianism) do not embrace correspondence and coherence notions of truth (just as Nahua philosophy does not). Similarly, since teotl is an uncarved totality, since it is the seamless and undifferentiated unity and oneness of all things, and since language, categories, and concepts only function to carve up things, the latter are inapplicable to teotl. Furthermore, knowledge of teotl is therefore also well characterized as ‘‘no-knowledge’’ since it, too, does not employ rational principles, categories, and distinctions. This result suggests that any attempt to explicate Nahua thought in rational-discursive terms (such as the present chapter) is doomed at the outset. It is precisely for this reason that Nahua sages— like Taoist thinkers according to Hall 1978—turned to ‘‘flower and song,’’ including song-poems, symbolism, music, dance, theatrical performance, and painting, in order to present their understanding of teotl. Why bother acquiring a teotlized heart? Doing so enables humans to contribute to the preservation and continuation of the cosmos as well as to balance and purify their lives and hence attain some measure of well-being. The earth’s surface is, after all, the only realm wherein humans enjoy the full potential for well-being. Humans possess very little knowledge regarding the afterlife, and moreover, possess little control over

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their destiny in the afterlife. Consequently, there is little concern with the afterlife. Nahua thought regards humans as ‘‘in and of the world,’’ and accordingly conceives the aim of wisdom to be this-worldly rather than other-worldly. A wise life consists of moderation—that is, of walking a middle path between the twin extremes of underand overindulgence.24 Nahua epistemology is characterized neither by a subject-object dualism nor by the epistemological problematic this dualism typically engenders, namely, the knowledge seeker’s having to span the metaphysical gulf separating her from the object of knowledge. Nahua monism and pantheism generate a very different epistemological problematic, one that requires that in order for the subject to come to know the object of knowledge, the subject must come to know an object of knowledge that resides masked or disguised within herself. The knowledge-seeker need neither leave nor search outside herself to know teotl, since teotl is metaphysically immanent within her. Indeed, humans qua subjects of knowledge and teotl qua object of knowledge are ultimately identical. Yet teotl’s metaphysical immanence does not entail teotl’s epistemological immanence. The fact that teotl is metaphysically immanent within humans does not mean that teotl is not masked or disguised from humans, that humans enjoy easy epistemological access to teotl, or that humans are guaranteed knowledge of teotl. What, then, is the nature of the epistemological relationship between humans, on the one hand, and teotl qua immanent object of ‘‘no-knowledge,’’ on the other? Whereas Cartesian-style, dualistic epistemology understands the relationship between knowledge seeker and object of knowledge in terms of a veil of perception needing to be penetrated, Nahua monistic epistemology understands the relationship between knowledge seeker and object of knowledge in terms of a shamanic mask. Nahua epistemology is an ‘‘epistemology of the mask’’ rather than an ‘‘epistemology of the veil.’’ And masks in Nahua philosophy possess different properties than veils in Cartesianstyle philosophy.25 In their study of Mesoamerican masks and shamanism, Peter Markman and Roberta Markman (1989, xx) argue that masks ‘‘simultaneously conceal and reveal the innermost spiritual force of life itself.’’ How are we to understand this claim, and what light does it shed on Nahua epistemology? Consider the life-death masks in figures 3.1 and 3.2. I suggest each mask simultaneously reveals and conceals the aspect of teotl I call dialectical polar monism. How so? Each mask conceals teotl by virtue of the fact that humans ordinarily misperceive the mask as either-living-or-dead (but not both). However, after acquiring greater understanding, humans are able to perceive the mask correctly as both-living-and-dead-yet-simultaneously-neither-living-nor-dead. In this way each mask thus reveals teotl. Yet there are not two, ontologically distinct masks: either-or mask and both-yet-neither mask. There is only the one mask: that which is first misperceived and subsequently correctly perceived. There is only the single mask that simultaneously conceals and reveals teotl. The either-or mask does not

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metaphysically conceal the both-yet-neither mask. Nor is human epistemological access to the both-yet-neither mask mediated by the either-or mask. In sum, the bothyet-neither mask is identical to the either-or mask. Teotl is both concealed and revealed by these half-fleshed/half-skeletal masks. More generally, teotl is both revealed and concealed in varying degrees by all its self-masking presentations, including earth, sky, mountains, trees, human experience, gender, and so on. Flower and Song Cultivating a proper understanding of teotl also requires that humans engage in creative-artistic activity. Indeed, only creative-artistic activity enables the human heart to move in rhythm with teotl and so come to understand teotl. Only creative-artistic activity carries human hearts to higher levels of consciousness because it alone excites and balances the heart’s motion in the way needed for understanding the sacred. Nahuas express this relationship between artistic creation and sacred understanding by saying that humans attain higher consciousness of teotl as a consequence of ‘‘in xochitl, in cuicatl’’ or ‘‘flower and song’’—that is, creative-artistic, symbolic, or metaphorical activity.26 In addition to this, humans are able to express their understanding of teotl only through in xochitl, in cuicatl. In short, ‘‘flower and song’’ constitutes the path both to and from understanding teotl. Nahua tlamatinime are thus perforce sagepoets, artist-knowers, or philosopher-artists since ‘‘flower and song,’’ not discursive argumentation, is the proper medium of philosophical expression. Why does ‘‘flower and song’’ possess this power? Nahua philosophy envisions teotl as a consummate creator-artist, conceives the cosmos as teotl’s magisterial piece of performance art, and argues that human beings must imitate teotl by engaging in creativeartistic activity in order to understand teotl. Creative activity involves aesthetic (i.e., sensitive, passive, receptive, female) and artistic (i.e., active, generative, male) aspects as well as emotional and intellectual (albeit nonrational) aspects.27 Successful creative artistry requires the proper balancing of these complementary polarities. This is true not only of teotl’s own self-regeneration-and-self-reconception as well as generationconception and regeneration-reconception of the cosmos but is also true of successful human creative artistry. Creative-artistic activity enables the human heart to attain well-rooted consciousness and sacred understanding by cultivating within the heart both the sensitivity required for receiving-conceiving sacred understanding (i.e., the aesthetic component) and the activity required for generating sacred understanding (i.e., the artistic component). Coming to understand teotl involves simultaneously receiving and generating the sacred within one’s heart.28 By engaging in creative activity, the human heart does more than simply imitate teotl, however. The rhythmic motion of one’s heart harmonizes and unifies with the motion of teotl and in so doing participates along with teotl in the process of cosmic self-regeneration-and-self-reconception. As one’s heart becomes ‘‘teotlized’’ one experi-

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ences feelings of intoxication. The following song-poems speak of the sacred origin and intoxicating quality of ‘‘flower and song’’: From whence come the flowers that enrapture man? The songs that intoxicate, the lovely songs? Only from His [teotl’s] home do they come, from the innermost part of heaven, Only from there comes the myriad of flowers . . . Where the nectar of the flowers is found . . . The fragrant beauty of the flower is refined . . . They interlace, they interweave; Among them sings, among them warbles the quetzal bird.29 In flowers is the word Of the One God [teotl] held secure.30 It is a true [nelli, rooted] thing, our song, It is a true [nelli, rooted] thing, our flowers; The well-measured song.31

The ‘‘cloud of unknowing’’ (as the anonymous, fifteenth-century English mystical text by the same name calls it) epistemologically (not metaphysically) separating knowledge seeker and object of knowledge lifts upon the dynamic union of human heart and teotl.32 One experiences teotl directly, gaining ‘‘knowledge by presence.’’33 One becomes directly acquainted with teotl in a manner unmediated and undifferentiated by concepts, categories, and linguistic classifications. One’s heart experiences the seamless, undifferentiated oneness of all things and ultimately oneness with teotl. One knows teotl through teotl. In line with the metaphor of burgeoning, Andrew Wiget (1980, 3) observes that Nahuas characterize the sage-artist’s singing of a new song-poem as a process by which the song-poem is ‘‘made to blossom.’’ Tochihuitzin Coyolchiuhqui writes: As an herb in spring time, So is our nature. Our hearts give birth, make sprout, The flowers of our flesh. Some open their corollas, Then become dry.34

Nahuas also liken the human heart’s creating-performing ‘‘flower and song’’ to a songbird’s singing. David Damrosch (1991, 102) points out that the word cuicatl in the expression ‘‘in xochitl, in cuicatl’’ actually means ‘‘birdsong.’’ The relationship between a teotlized human heart and its ‘‘flower and song’’ is thus closely analogous to that between a songbird and its song. In creating-performing ‘‘flower and song,’’ the teotlized heart participates in the cosmic creative artistry of teotl. Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin writes:

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Your beautiful song Is a golden woodthrush Most beautiful, you raise it up. You are in a field of flowers. Among the flowery bushes you sing. Are you perchance a precious bird of the Giver of Life [i.e., teotl]?35

In a similar spirit, Xayacamach writes: Who am I? As a bird I fly about, I sing flowers; I compose songs, Butterflies of songs. Let them burst forth from my heart! Let my heart be delighted with them!36

Although ‘‘flower and song’’ serves as the necessary path to sacred understanding, I submit sacred understanding is neither constituted nor mediated by ‘‘flower and song.’’ ‘‘Flower and song’’ is not a lens through which the heart understands the sacred, but rather, like meditation in Zen Buddhism, a ritual activity preparing the heart for sacred understanding. It is a vehicle that delivers the heart to its destiny, not the destiny itself. As Denise Carmody and John Carmody (1996, 13) put it: When mystics are expressing their experiences . . . they are usually not in the midst of the experience itself, which tends to take them outside of . . . their prayer, healing, dancing, whatever they are thinking and doing. Those activities were vehicles to carry them toward their goal. In the mystical experience they reached their goal, or their goal moved to meet them, overcoming the distance that separated them at the outset.

I suggest this characterization applies to Nahua tlamatinime. ‘‘Flower and song’’ accompanies but does not constitute their experience of teotl.37 Consider Taoism once again. David Hall’s characterization of Taoist epistemology as a form of what he calls ‘‘nature mysticism’’ fits Nahua epistemology equally well. According to Hall (1978, 80), nature mysticism focuses on the ‘‘experience of the togetherness of all things, which we may describe as ‘con-stasy’—that is to say, ‘standing with.’ It is a sense of the presence of all things standing together in a felt unity. It is not merely the sense of being one with Nature, though that is part of it. It is the experience of the inner fusion of each with each, the sense of compresence.’’ Nature mysticism differs from what Hall calls ‘‘theistic mysticism’’ (e.g., exemplified by Christian mystics such as Saint Teresa of Avila), which typically involves an ecstatic experience that consists of the soul’s experiencing the sacred from without itself. Theistic mysticism focuses on the soul’s leaving its proper domain to unite with the sacred. Nature mysticism also differs from what Hall calls ‘‘soul mysticism’’ (e.g., exemplified by

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some Hindu mystics), which typically involves an enstatic experience that consists of the soul’s experiencing the sacred from within itself. Soul mysticism focuses on ‘‘the soul itself, and the experience of unity involves an in-dwelling’’ (Hall 1978, 280). Constatic experience, however, and especially the constatic experience that occurs during creative-artistic activity, simultaneously incorporates both ‘‘the enstatic and ecstatic intuitions of the Totality’’ (Hall 1978, 281). Hall interestingly suggests that the most promising place to find the expression of Taoist mystical intuitions and insights is Chinese art. I suggest Nahua philosophy’s claims regarding the existence and nature of teotl (e.g., dialectical polar monism and pantheism) are rooted in such artistically induced constatic experiences, ones yielding mystical intuition into the interrelatedness of all things as aspects of teotl as well as the ultimate oneness of all things with teotl. The constatic or ‘‘standing-with’’ experience of teotl subsumes both the ecstatic experience of teotl as something outside of oneself and the enstatic experience of teotl as something dwelling within oneself. The sage with a teotlized heart comes to understand teotl by means of epistemologically self-validating intuition. This intuition blossoms within her consciousness as teotl burgeons within and discloses itself to her heart, at which time she sings like an intoxicated bird. The customary epistemological limitations of human experience and consciousness unfold and transmute—just as a bud unfolds and transmutes as it blossoms into a flower. And just as a blossoming flower opens itself to its environment, so a teotlized heart opens itself to the oneness and interrelatedness of all things. One experiences teotl both inside and outside oneself as one experiences teotl everywhere and experiences the identity of everything with teotl. The cloud of unknowing that ordinarily ‘‘enshrouds’’38 one’s heart is dispelled, making possible an unmediated understanding of the teotl. In this manner humans come to understand teotl—an understanding that cannot be attained either through sense experience or rational, conceptually based thought. Indeed, the impossibility of knowing teotl empirically is suggested by one of the many metaphorical names given to teotl’s supreme mythological manifestation, Ometeotl: yohualli-ehecatl (‘‘night and wind’’), meaning ‘‘invisible (like the night) and intangible (like the wind)’’ (Leo´n-Portilla 1963, 92, 179). As we have seen, ritual preparation for knowledge-yielding artistic activity and for the heart’s becoming teotlized includes such practices as autosacrifice and the ingestion of entheogens. Nahuas avail themselves of various psychotropic substances such as extracts from jimson weed, psilocybe mushroom, ololiuhqui (morning-glory seed), and peyotl (peyote cactus button). According to Gordon Brotherston (1979, 262f.), Nahua poets ritually ingest psychotropic substances in order to heighten their sensations and ‘‘expand’’ their consciousness. Fray Diego Dura´n (1971) reports that Nahua priests smear their bodies with an entheogenic (psychotropic) mixture of spiders, scorpions, vipers, and lizards. They call such substances teotlacualli or ‘‘food of teotl.’’39 In

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this manner Nahua sage-artists induce ‘‘theophanic manifestations’’ (Nicholson 1971, 441)—that is, visual and acoustic experiences of teotl that are well rooted in teotl. In the process they experience various combinations and sequences of colors and shapes as well as sounds, rhythms, and songs—all emanating from teotl. Teotl speaks to the knowledge seeker in the language of poetry, song, and rhythm, namely, in xochitl, in cuicatl or ‘‘flower and song.’’ A. Ca´ceres observes that psychotropic drugs often produce auditory effects that assume the form of music, and suggests that the second word of the metaphor for poetry, cuicatl (‘‘song’’), may indeed refer to the effects of these substances.40 Comparable claims regarding the aural and visual apprehension of the sacred are common in mystical and shamanic epistemologies. Witness, for example, the sacred visions and auditions of Arjuna, Julian of Norwich, Saint Teresa of Avila, the Wixarika of Mexico, and the Tukano of Colombia (to name only a few).41 The prevalence of such theophanic manifestations notwithstanding, I nevertheless contend that the highest, most profound understanding of teotl neither assumes the form of visions or auditions nor is mediated or constituted by such manifestations— that is, by ‘‘flower and song.’’ Although teotl presents itself to humans by means of such manifestations along the path to ultimate knowledge, the definitive, knowledgeyielding experience of teotl consists of a constatic feeling of oneness with teotl and everything around oneself as well as a sense of the inner fusion of each thing with every other thing in the cosmos. Contemporary Insights Roland Fisher’s (1971) psychological and pharmacological cartography of ecstatic and meditative states of mystical consciousness sheds contemporary scientific light on the Nahuas’ aesthetic-artistic mystical epistemology. Fisher distinguishes: 1. The perception-hallucination continuum consisting of ergotropic states of increasing hyperarousal. This scale ranges from normal consciousness to aroused states of artistic sensitivity and creativity, acute schizophrenic states, and finally ecstatic experiences of mystical rapture. These are characterized by high levels of cognitive and physiological activity. 2. The perception-meditation continuum consisting of trophotropic states of increasing hypoarousal. This scale ranges from normal consciousness to states of relaxation and tranquility to zazen and Yoga samadhi. These are characterized by low levels of cognitive and physiological activity. As one departs from normal consciousness along either continuum, one experiences a gradual loss of voluntary control over one’s experiences as well as gradual disappearance of time, space, and the separateness of subject and object (or subject-object dichotomy)—that is, a loss of those experiences that accompany one’s nonaroused

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daily routine in the physical dimension. These phenomenal changes reflect the increased integration of the brain’s cortical (interpretive) and subcortical (interpreted) structures and activities. At the highest levels of both hyperarousal and hypoarousal, one experiences a feeling of ‘‘oceanic unity with the universe’’ (Fisher 1971, 901) including a complete loss of subject-object dichotomy. This experience cannot be meaningfully expressed using the dualistic, ‘‘rational, Aristotelian . . . two-valued (either-or, true-false) logic [and language]’’ (Fisher 1971, 902; brackets mine) of daily practical life since these presuppose the validity of the subject-object dichotomy. One is therefore forced to invent a new symbolic, metaphorical, or artistic logic and language to express the meaning of the experience of oceanic unity—a logic and language, Fisher adds, that may subsequently become ritualized. Fisher claims both the rapture and ecstasy of intense ergotrophic arousal and the tranquillity of intense hypoarousal are mystical states. I suggest we interpret Nahua epistemology as holding that artistic activity helps humans reach the point at which they experience a ‘‘breakthrough’’ (as Fisher puts it) to ecstasy. The acoustic and visual hallucinations as well as feelings of ‘‘intoxication’’ that accompany ‘‘flower and song’’ fall squarely on Fisher’s ergotropic continuum. I also suggest that on reaching the heights of ergotropic arousal, Nahua tlamatinime experience an intoxicating ‘‘oceanic unity’’ that yields intuitive insight into and direct acquaintance with sacred reality: ‘‘no-knowledge’’ of teotl. This is precisely the constatic experience of oneness we examined above: the felt experience of the interfusion, interconnectedness, and seamless unity of all things as well as ultimate oneness of all things. As a result of this feeling-insight, Nahua tlamatinime invent a special, nondualistic language, namely, ‘‘flower and song’’ broadly construed—in order to present, express, and communicate their experience.42 Conclusion Nahua ontology suggests both a holism according to which all parts of the cosmos are mutually interrelated and a monism according to which the cosmos and all its parts ultimately consist of a single, sacred force or energy. This energy is immanent within all individual things yet also transcendent of all individual things. Consciousness and matter not only consist of this single energy; they are manifestations and twin aspects of this energy. As such, they are not two essentially different kinds of substances radically opposed to one another, mutually exclusive of one another, or only contingently related to one another. The either-or appearance of consciousness and matter is an illusion engendered by the fact that consciousness and matter are two ways by which this single energy commonly presents itself to human experience. Humans liberate themselves from this misperception and misunderstanding by shedding ordinary consciousness and discerning the nature of this single, universal energy as simultaneously

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both-consciousness-and-matter-yet-neither-consciousness-nor-matter. Wisdom involves liberation from this misperception and misconception—along with the other illusions of ‘‘enshrouded’’ consciousness discussed here—and in so doing provides humans with the practical ken needed for maintaining their balance on the twisting, jagged path of life. Wisdom enables humans to identify and avoid activities that promote imbalance-and-impurity as well as to identify and pursue those that promote balance-and-purity in humans and the cosmos. Notes This chapter has benefited from conversations with James Boyd, Gordon Brotherston, Julie Greene, the late David Hall, Jane Kneller, Grant Lee, Michael Losonsky, Urbano Francisco Martinez, Patrick McKee, Johanna Sanchez, Alan Sandstrom, Ben-Ami Scharfstein, John Sullivan, and Helmut Wautischer. Special thanks go to Willard Gingerich. 1. A Nahuatl proverb recorded in the sixteenth century states, ‘‘It is slippery, it is slick on the earth,’’ Tlaalahui, tlapetzcahui in tlalticpac (Sahagu´n 1953–1982, vol. VI, p. 228; trans. Burkhart 1989). Nahuas believed the earth to be a very dangerous place morally and physically speaking and believed wisdom that enabled humans to keep their balance on its slippery surface. The natives of the High Central Plateau of what is now Mexico spoke the Nahuatl language, an Uto-Aztecan tongue related to languages of the native inhabitants of western and southwestern United States. The Nahuatl-speaking peoples of pre-Hispanic Mexico included, among others, the Mexicas (Aztecs), Acolhuans, Texcocans, Tlacopans, Culhuans, Chalcans, Tepanecs, and Tlaxcaltecs. Due to their common inheritance and language, scholars typically refer to them as Nahuas, and to their culture, as Nahuatl culture. Nahuatl culture flourished for several centuries prior to 1521, the date standardly assigned to Cortez’s conquest of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan. Our sources for studying pre-Hispanic Nahua philosophy include precontact and early postcontact native pictorial manuscripts or ‘‘codices’’ (e.g., the Codex Borbonicus and Codex Mendoza); reports by conquerors (e.g., Diaz del Costillo); and ethnography-style chronicles composed by the first missionary friars entering Mexico after the Conquest. Friars Sahagu´n, Olmos, Motolinı´a, Dura´n, and Mendieta sought knowledge of Nahua culture and questioned survivors of the Conquest about their culture. Friar Sahagu´n assembled hundreds of folios containing enormous amounts of information, which serve as the basis for his Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva ˜ a. The Cantares mexicanos and Romances de los Sen ˜ ores de la Nueva Espan ˜ a consist of transcripEspan tions of native song-poems compiled by natives under Spanish supervision during the last part of the sixteenth century. Recent ethnographies of contemporary Nahuatl-speaking peoples in Mexico also prove useful (e.g., Sandstrom 1991; Knab 1995). For discussion of sources, see Leo´nPortilla 1963, 1966, 1969, 1992, and Ortiz de Montellano 1990. 2. For further discussion, see Klor de Alva 1979; Monaghan 2000; Nicholson 1971; Read 1998; Boone 1994. This discussion is indebted to Burkhart 1989; Carrasco 1990; J. L. M. Furst 1978; Leo´n-Portilla 1963, 1966, 1992; Lo´pez Austin 1988, 1997. 3. For discussions of duality in Mesoamerican art, see Miller and Taube 1993; Pasztory 1983.

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4. Young and Ames 1977, 5; chapter references are to the Tao Te Ching. 5. My understanding of Taoism is indebted to Ames 1989; Hall 1989; Hall and Ames 1987, 1988; Young and Ames 1977. For discussion of Nahua dualism, see Caso 1958; Burkhart 1989; Davies 1990; Lo´pez Austin 1988, 1997; Maffie 2002a; Markman and Markman 1989; Miller and Taube 1993; Ortiz de Montellano 1990; Pasztory 1983; B. Tedlock 1982; D. Tedlock 1983. Davies 1990 and Ortiz de Montellano 1990 also note parallels between what I call ‘‘dialectical polar monism’’ and Taoism’s notion of yin and yang. Young and Ames use the phrase ‘‘the principle of antithetical rotation’’ for the Taoist principle stating that being and nonbeing, life and death, male and female, and so on are mutually arising and interdependent. 6. I adopt the above definition of pantheism from Levine 1994. As I understand it, Nahua metaphysics neatly fits the definitions of pantheism advanced by scholarly studies such as Levine 1994 and Sprigge 1997. Interpreting Nahua metaphysics pantheistically is supported, too, by Sandstrom 1991, Hunt 1977, and Irene Nicholson 1959, and also by the fact that sixteenth-century Nahua thought remains close to its shamanic roots and that native Mesoamerican shamanism is pantheistic (e.g., see Florescano 1994; Markman and Markman 1989; Ortiz de Montellano 1990; Meyerhoff 1976a, 1976b). For an opposing view, see Leo´n-Portilla (1963, 95–99). 7. For helpful discussions of shamanism and the role of masks in Mesoamerican thought, see P. T. Furst 1976b; Markman and Markman 1989; Ortiz de Montellano 1990. 8. Cantares mexicanos fol. 10 r., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 282). Aquiauhtzin (c.1430–c.1500) hailed from the hamlet of Ayapanco in the region of Chalco-Amaquemecan. The expression ‘‘house of paintings’’ refers both to the building in which the Aztecs stored their painted codices and to earthly existence. 9. Cantares mexicanos fol. 11 v., translated by Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 228). Xayacamach (second half of the fifteenth century) hailed from and governed the town of Tizatlan, in Tlaxcala. ˜ ores de Nueva Espan ˜ a, fol. 35 r., translated by Leo´n-Portilla (1992, p. 83). 10. Romances de los sen Nezahualcoyotl (1402–1472) was not only a renowned poet-philosopher but also the ruler of the city-state of Tezcoco. In a similar spirit, Ayocuan Cuetzpaltzin writes, ‘‘Earth is the region of the fleeting moment’’ (Cantares mexicanos fol. 10 r., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 221)). See also Sahagu´n 1953–1982, bk. III, appendix, p. 41. 11. Brackets mine; Cantares mexicanos, fol. 14 v., translated by Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 153). Tochihuitzin Coyolchiuhqui (end of the fourteenth to the middle of the fifteenth century) hailed from Teotlatzinco. See Sahagu´n 1953–1982, bk. III, appendix, p. 41, for a similar view. 12. The Mayan text, Popol Vuh (D. Tedlock 1983, 166–167), propounds an epistemological conception of illusion strikingly similar to the Nahuas’ conception. It says humans ‘‘were blinded [by the gods] as the face of a mirror is breathed upon’’ (p. 167). For discussion of Samkara, see Deutsche 1969; for, Dogen, see Kasulis 1980. 13. According to Deutsche 1969, similar paradoxes arise within Samkara’s Advaita Vedanta. My interpretation of Nahua metaphysics contradicts the received view among scholars (e.g., Leo´nPortilla 1963; Bierhorst 1985; Clendinnen 1991; Burkhart 1989), which places Nahua metaphysics

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squarely within the orbit of Indo-European metaphysics and epistemology. For discussion of indigenous American metaphysics and epistemology, see Deloria, Foehner, and Scinta 1999; Meyerhoff 1976a, 1976b; Ortiz de Montellano 1990; Popol Vuh 1985; Witherspoon 1977. For discussion of pre-Han East Asian metaphysics and epistemology, see Hall 1989; Hall and Ames 1987, 1988. 14. For further discussion see Gingerich 1988, 521–525; Burkhart 1989, chaps. 4, 5; Leo´n-Portilla 1963. 15. Carrasco 1990, 69. 16. This discussion is indebted to Lo´pez Austin 1988; J. L. M. Furst 1995; Carrasco 1990; Knab 1995; Ortiz de Montellano 1990; Sandstrom 1991. 17. See Karttunen 1983; Gingerich 1987; Leo´n-Portilla 1963. 18. For further discussion, see Maffie 2002b. 19. Sahagu´n 1953–1982, III, 67; quoted in Leo´n-Portilla 1963, 143. See also Lo´pez Austin 1988, I, 258f., II, 245, 298, and appendix 5. 20. See Meyerhoff 1976a, 1976b, for related discussion concerning shamanism. 21. See Ortiz de Montellano 1990, 68–70, and P. T. Furst 1976a, 1976b. 22. Very few individuals ever satisfied these conditions. See Leo´n-Portilla 1992; Lo´pez Austin 1988; Ortiz de Montellano 1990. 23. Quoted in Hall 1978, 279 (brackets mine). 24. For further discussion, see Burkhart 1989; Gingerich 1988; Klor de Alva 1993; Leo´n-Portilla 1963. 25. Levine (1994, 96, 102) demonstrates that although pantheists are committed to the metaphysical immanence of the sacred, they are not therefore committed to epistemological immanence of the sacred in the sense that the sacred is knowable either easily or even in principle. He cites Spinoza as a pantheist who rejects the epistemological immanence of the sacred. Leo´nPortilla (1963) apparently believes metaphysical immanence logically entails epistemological immanence, and on that basis argues that Nahua metaphysics cannot be pantheistic since Nahuas regard the sacred as epistemologically transcendent. I thus differ from Leo´n-Portilla on this matter. 26. ‘‘Flower and song’’ functions in some contexts as a metaphor for song-poems specifically and in other contexts for artistic activity generally. See Leo´n-Portilla 1963, 1966, 1969, 1992; Brotherston 1979; Gingerich 1987; D. Tedlock 1983. 27. I use aesthetic in the original sense of the Greek word aisthetikos (‘‘perceive’’), to denote perception, reception, or sensitivity, and thus to distinguish the aesthetic from the artistic, which I construe as active. 28. See Miller and Taube 1993 and Ortiz de Montellano 1990 for discussion of knowledge as (re)creation.

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29. Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 34 r., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1963, 77) (brackets mine). 30. Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 11, trans. Gingerich (1987, 103) (brackets mine). 31. Romances, fol. 41, trans. Gingerich (1987, 103) (brackets mine). 32. The Cloud of Unknowing (1924). Illusion as a ‘‘cloud of unknowing’’ is yet another way of expressing an epistemological conception of illusion. 33. I borrow this phrase from Mehdi Ha’iri Yazdi’s (1992) exposition of Islamic epistemology and mysticism. Nahua epistemology fits the prevailing definition of mysticism adopted by scholars of mysticism. Weeks (1993, 6) defines mysticism as ‘‘knowledge of the divine from the divine . . . one knows god through god, and in so doing, the knowing being communes with, or indeed may be united with, the divine object of knowledge.’’ Mann (1995, 515) defines mysticism as ‘‘the doctrine or discipline maintaining that one can gain knowledge of reality that is not accessible to sense perception or to rational, conceptual thought.’’ In their exhaustive study of Western and Eastern mysticism, Carmody and Carmody (1996, 10) propose the following ‘‘working description of mysticism’’: the ‘‘direct experience of ultimate reality.’’ See also Gimello 1978; Meyerhoff 1976a, 1976b. 34. Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 14 v., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 153). 35. Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 11 v., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1992, 220) (brackets mine). 36. Cantares Mexicanos, fol. 11 v., trans. Leo´n-Portilla (1963, 181). 37. See also Nicholson 1971, 442. For an opposing view, see Gingerich 1987. 38. Trans. Leo´n-Portilla 1963, 175; see also Lo´pez Austin 1988, p. II, 246. The foolish, dull-witted person was said to possess an ‘‘enshrouded heart.’’ 39. For further discussion of the sacred use of entheogenic (psychotropic) substances in Nahua culture, see P. T. Furst 1976a; Nicholson 1971; Ortiz de Montellano 1990. 40. Ca´ceres 1984, 208, as reported in Ortiz de Montellano 1990, 70. 41. See Carmody and Carmody 1996; Forman 1990; P. T. Furst 1976a; Ortiz de Montellano 1990; Meyerhoff 1976a, 1976b; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1978; Schaefer 2002. 42. Did Nahua tlamatinime also experience trophotropic states of mystical knowledge acquisition? Fisher’s analysis hints at the possibility. Fisher claims his research demonstrates the existence of a phenomenon he calls the ‘‘trophotropic rebound.’’ That is, despite the mutual exclusivity of ergotropic and trophotropic systems, individuals experiencing intense ergotropic hyperarousal experience a ‘‘rebound’’ or reversal into intense trophotropic hypoarousal. Individuals experiencing a state of heightened ecstasy typically experience a rebound or reversal into a state of tranquil samadhi. Fisher’s finding thus suggests the possibility that after experiencing artistically induced states of heightened ergotropic excitation, Nahua artist-sages underwent a ‘‘trophotropic rebound’’ and experienced heightened states of hypoarousal such as zazen or samadhi. After the song-poems had been composed and performed, the conch and flute playing, drumming, and dancing had ceased, the costumes shed, and the copal fumes wafted into the night air, Nahua

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artist-sages ‘‘rebounded’’ into a state of trophotropic tranquility during which they apprehended sacred truth. Unfortunately, the primary sources contain no evidence supporting this hypothesis. References Ames, Roger T. (1989), ‘‘Putting the Te Back into Taoism,’’ in J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, pp. 113–144, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Bierhorst, John, trans. and commentary (1985), Cantares Mexicanos: Songs of the Aztecs, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Boone, Elizabeth (1994), The Aztec World, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books. Brotherston, Gordon (1979), Image of the New World: The American Continent Portrayed in Native Texts, London: Thames and Hudson. Burkhart, Louise M. (1989), The Slippery Earth: Nahua-Christian Dialogue in Sixteenth-Century Mexico, Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Ca´ceres, A. (1984), In Xochitl, in Cuicatl: Hallucinogens and Music in Mesoamerican Amerindian Thought, Ph.D. dissertation, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University. Carmody, Denise Lardner, and John Tuly Carmody (1996), Mysticism: Holiness East & West, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carrasco, David (1990), Religions of Mesoamerica: Cosmovision and Ceremonial Centers, San Francisco, CA: Harper and Row. ——— (1999), City of Sacrifice: The Aztec Empire and the Role of Violence in Civilization, Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Caso, Alfonso (1958), The Aztecs: People of the Sun, trans. Lowell Dunham, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Clendinnen, Inga (1991), Aztecs: An Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Codex Borbonicus (1976), commentary by Karl Anton Nowotny, Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Codex Laud (1990), facsimile edition, and commentary by C. A. Burland, Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. Codex Mendoza (1992), Francis F. Berdan and Patricia R. Anawalt, eds., Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Coleccion de Cantares Mexicanos (1904), in MS 1628 bis, Biblioteca National, Mexico. Cooper, David (1997), God Is a Verb: Kabbalah and the Practice of Mystical Judaism, New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.

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Damrosch, David (1991), ‘‘The Aesthetics of Conquest: Aztec Poetry Before and After Cortes,’’ Representations, Vol. 33, No. 1, pp. 101–120. Davies, Nigel (1990), ‘‘Dualism as a Universal Concept: Its Relevance to Mesoamerica,’’ in R. van Zantwijk, R. de Ridder, and E. Braahuis, eds., Mesoamerican Dualism/Dualismo Mesoamericano, pp. 8–14, Utrecht: RUU-ISOR. Deloria, Barbara, Kristen Foehner, and Sam Scinta, eds. (1999), Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria, Jr., Reader, foreword by Wilma P. Mankiller, Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. Deutsche, Eliot (1969), Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction, Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Diaz del Castillo, Bernal (1956), The Discovery of Mexico and Conquest of Mexico, 1517–1521, ed. Genaro Garcia, trans. with notes by A. P. Maudslay, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Dura´n, Fray Diego (1971), Book of the Gods and Rites and the Ancient Calendar, trans. and ed. Fernando Horcasitas and Doris Heyden, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Fisher, Roland (1971), ‘‘A Cartography of Ecstatic and Meditative States,’’ Science, Vol. 174, No. 4012, pp. 897–904. Florescano, Enrique (1994), Memory, Myth, and Time in Mexico: From the Aztecs to Independence, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Forman, Robert K. C. (1990), ‘‘Introduction: Mysticism, Constructivism, and Forgetting,’’ in Robert K. C. Forman, ed., The Problem of Pure Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy, pp. 3–52, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Furst, Jill Leslie McKeever (1978), Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus: A Commentary, Albany, NY: Institute for Mesoamerican Studies. ——— (1995), The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Furst, Peter T. (1976a), Hallucinogens and Culture, San Francisco: Chandler-Sharp. ——— (1976b), ‘‘Shamanistic Survivals in Mesoamerican Religion,’’ in Actas del XLI Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Vol. 3, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Anthropologia e Historia, pp. 149–157. Gimello, Robert (1978), ‘‘Mysticism and Meditation,’’ in Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, pp. 170–199, New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Gingerich, Willard (1987), ‘‘Heidegger and the Aztecs: The Poetics of Knowing in Pre-Hispanic Nahuatl Poetry,’’ in B. Swann and A. Krupat, eds., Recovering the Third World: Essays on Native American Literature, pp. 85–112, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1988), ‘‘Chipahuacanemiliztli, ‘The Purified Life,’ in The Discourses of Book VI, Florentine Codex,’’ in J. Kathryn Tosserand and Karen Dakin, eds., Smoke and Mist: Mesoamerican Studies in Memory of Thelma D. Sullivan, Part II, pp. 517–544, Oxford: BAR International Series.

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Hall, David (1978), ‘‘Process and Anarchy: A Taoist View of Creativity,’’ Philosophy East and West, Vol. XXVIII, No. 3, pp. 271–286. ——— (1989), ‘‘On Seeking a Change of Environment,’’ in J. Baird Callicott and Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought: Essays in Environmental Philosophy, pp. 99–306, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Hall, David L., and Roger T. Ames (1987), Thinking through Confucius, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ——— (1998), Thinking from the Han, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ˜ a (1969), Angel K. Garibay, ed., 4 vols., Mexico City: Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva Espan Editorial Porrua. Hunt, Eva (1977), The Transformation of the Hummingbird: Cultural Roots of a Zinacatecan Mythical Poem, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Karttunen, Francis (1983), An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, Austin: University of Texas Press. Kasulis, T. P. (1980), ‘‘Truth and Zen,’’ Philosophy East and West, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 439–450. Klor de Alva, Jorge (1979), ‘‘Christianity and the Aztecs,’’ San Jose Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 7–21. ——— (1993), ‘‘Aztec Spirituality and Nahuatized Christianity,’’ in Gary H. Gosen in collaboration with Miguel Leon-Portilla, eds., South and Meso-American Spirituality: From Cult of the Feathered Serpent to the Theology of Liberation, pp. 173–197, New York, NY: Crossroad. Knab, Timothy (1995), A War of Witches: A Journey into the Underworld of the Contemporary Aztecs, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Leo´n-Portilla, Miguel (1963), Aztec Thought and Culture: A Study of the Ancient Nahuatl Mind, trans. Jack Emory Davis, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ——— (1966), ‘‘Pre-Hispanic Thought,’’ in Mario de la Cueva et al., eds., Major Trends in Mexican Philosophy, pp. 3–56, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ——— (1969), Pre-Columbian Literatures of Mexico, trans. Grace Lobanov and Miguel Leon-Portilla, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. ——— (1992), Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Levine, Michael P. (1994), Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity, London: Routledge. Lo´pez Austin, Alfredo (1988), The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, trans. Thelma Ortiz de Montellano and Bernard Ortiz de Montellano, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. ——— (1997), Tamoanchan, Tlalocan: Places of Mist, trans. Bernard R. Ortiz de Montellano and Thelma Ortiz de Montellano, Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado. Maffie, James (2002a), ‘‘ ‘We Eat of the Earth and the Earth Eats Us’: The Concept of Nature in PreHispanic Nahua Thought,’’ Ludus Vitalis, Vol. X, No. 17, pp. 5–20.

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——— (2002b), ‘‘Why Care about Nezahualcoyotl? Veritism and Nahua Philosophy,’’ Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 71–91. Mann, William E. (1995), ‘‘Mysticism,’’ in Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, pp. 515–516, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markman, Peter T., and Roberta H. Markman (1989), Masks of the Spirit: Image and Metaphor in Mesoamerica, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. McCann, Abbott Justin, ed. (1924), The Cloud of Unknowing, London: Burns Oats. Miller, Mary, and Karl Taube (1993), An Illustrated Dictionary of the Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya, London: Thames and Hudson. Monaghan, John D. (2000), ‘‘Theology and History in the Study of Mesoamerican Religions,’’ in John D. Monaghan, ed., Supplement to the Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 6, pp. 24–49, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Meyerhoff, Barbara G. (1976a), ‘‘Balancing between Worlds: The Shaman’s Calling,’’ Parabola, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 6–13. ——— (1976b), ‘‘The Huichol and the Quest for Paradise,’’ Parabola, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 22–29. Nicholson, Henry B. (1971), ‘‘Religion in Pre-Hispanic Mexico,’’ in Gordon V. Ekholm and Ignacio Bernal, eds., Handbook of Middle American Indians, Vol. 10, pp. 395–446, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Nicholson, Irene (1959), Firefly in the Night: A Study of Ancient Mexican Poetry and Symbolism, London: Faber & Faber. Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. (1990), Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Pasztory, Esther (1983). Aztec Art, New York, NY: Harry Abrams, Inc. Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (1985), trans. and commentary by Dennis Tedlock, New York: Simon and Schuster. Read, Kay Almere (1998), Time and Sacrifice in the Aztec Cosmos, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1978), Beyond the Milky Way, Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center Publications. ˜ ores de la Nueva Espan ˜ a, Poesia Nahuatl I (1964), ed. Angel K. Garibay, Mexico Romances de los sen City: National University of Mexico. Sahagu´n, Fray Bernardino de (1953–1982), Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, ed. and trans. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles Dibble, 12 vols., Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research and University of Utah.

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Sandstrom, Alan R. (1991), Corn Is Our Blood: Culture and Ethnic Identity in a Contemporary Aztec Indian Village, Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. Schaefer, Stacy B. (2002), To Think with a Good Heart, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Smart, Ninian (1966), ‘‘Myth and Transcendence,’’ The Monist, Vol. 50, No. 2, pp. 475–487. Sprigge, T. L. S. (1997), ‘‘Pantheism,’’ The Monist, Vol. 80, No. 2, pp. 191–217. Tedlock, Barbara (1982), Time and the Highland Maya, Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press. Tedlock, Dennis (1983), The Spoken Word and the Work of Interpretation, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Weeks, Andrew (1993), German Mysticism from Hildegard of Bingen to Ludwig Wittgenstein, Albany: State University of New York Press. Wiget, Andrew O. (1980), ‘‘Aztec Lyrics: Poetry in a World of Continually Perishing Flowers,’’ Latin American Indian Literatures, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 1–11. Witherspoon, Gary (1977), Language and Art in the Navajo Universe, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Yazdi, Mehdi Ha’iri (1992), The Principles of Epistemology in Islamic Philosophy: Knowledge by Presence, foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Young, Rhett Y. W., and Roger T. Ames (1977), ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Ch’en Ku-ying, Lao Tzu: Text, Notes, & Comments, pp. 11–49, trans. and adapted by Rhett Y. W. Young and Roger T. Ames, San Francisco, CA: Chinese Materials Center.

4

Pre-Columbian Artistic Expressions of Indigenous Concepts of Soul

in Cross-Cultural Perspective Armand J. Labbe´

Abstract This chapter gives interpretive context and meaning to a heretofore little deciphered body of pre-Columbian art, by viewing this art against a large body of ethnographic data relevant to indigenous concepts of soul and neotropical shamanism. Juxtaposition of the ethnographic present against the pre-Columbian past demonstrates an ideological and thematic continuity between the two. In this study I use indigenous concepts of soul in comparison with artifacts to identify and interpret soul-related themes as they are reflected in pre-Columbian art. These ethnographic references to indigenous concepts of soul in turn are compared cross-culturally and, where appropriate, resynthesized into a more cohesive, interpretive model. Such a model identifies and differentiates four core themes pertaining to shamanism and indigenous concepts of soul: (1) shamanic empowerment, (2) shape-shifting or the transformation of soul, (3) shamanic soul flight, and (4) soul loss and capture. The representation of these themes in the pre-Columbian art of the Americas may thus be examined in the context of their relevant iconography. Many indigenous cultures worldwide differentiate two or more souls in the formation of a human being; however, the ethnographies are not always careful to distinguish between these souls. This chapter defines the characteristics of each soul; distinguishes which soul is involved with a particular shamanic endeavor; and identifies which soul is referenced in the art.

Introduction Artistic representations of shamanic themes found in the pre-Hispanic art of the Americas—such as trance, shape-shifting, and soul flight—contain valuable information about indigenous concepts of soul and subtle realities. This information is accessed by exploring the meaning of iconography used to decorate a large corpus of funerary art, produced in Peru, Colombia, Panama, and Mesoamerica. These artifacts demonstrate that the essential iconography of shamanic themes was shared crossculturally and persisted through time.

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Pre-Columbian art illustrates the ethnohistoric and ethnographic databases about ‘‘soul flight’’ and ‘‘shape-shifting of the soul,’’ thus expanding our understanding of both human consciousness and human physiology. Such shamanic themes occur elsewhere worldwide and evince similar correspondences with relevant ethnographic and cultural realities. A clear understanding of the nature of New World shamanism also offers us better insight into the nature of subtle states of consciousness and gives us a better vantage point from which to assess the relationship of New World shamanism to shamanic traditions found in other parts of the world. Indigenous Concepts of Soul Information on New World religions has been collected since the earliest period of European contact, yet only disjunctive fragments of this corpus of data pertain to indigenous concepts of soul. This fact is particularly underscored by the pioneering work of anthropologist A˚ke Hultkrantz (1953, 1997). His work clearly demonstrated the problems encountered in relying on informants whose personal knowledge of these traditions is questionable, or in relying on field researchers who were ill-prepared to understand the nature of the responses gathered from these informants. His study made it clear that the English word soul is inadequate for translating indigenous concepts of soul, which often referred to multiple animating entities. Most commonly, he found references to the presence of two souls in the individual human being: ‘‘In all of North America except the southwest the belief recurs in one form or another that man is equipped with two kinds of soul, one or more bodily souls that grant life, movement, and consciousness to the body, and one dream or free soul identical to man himself as he is manifested outside of his body in various psychic twilight zones’’ (Hultkrantz 1980, 131). The two-soul theory is of great antiquity and is found widely dispersed in cultures around the globe. It is noted in Egyptian writings, most notably the so-called books of the dead, such as the Egyptian Papyrus of Ani (1500–1350 B.C.) and the Vedic Upanisads of India (beginning from the eighth century B.C.). It is the most common ˙ model found among indigenous groups in the Americas from Mexico all the way to Peru. Notwithstanding the variety of cultural traditions in which the two-soul theory appears, careful analysis yields a remarkable cross-cultural ethnographic consistency with respect to descriptions of the structure, substance, function, and attributes of each of the souls or animating entities. Synopsis of the Two-Soul Theory: The Bipartite Nature of the Human Spirit The two-soul theory postulates the existence of two distinct animistic entities in the makeup of the individual human being. All of the traditions are in agreement that the first and lower of the two animistic entities comprises a form and a constituent

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energy that fuels the form. In Chinese this energy is called chi (generally translated as ‘‘vital force’’), in Sanskrit it is called prana (generally translated as ‘‘life breath’’ or ‘‘life principle’’), among the Yoruba of Nigeria it is called emi (generally translated as ‘‘animating energy’’), while in much of Polynesia it is referred to as mana (generally translated as ‘‘sacred power’’ or ‘‘sacred energy’’). Among the Aztecs this energy was called tonalli (generally untranslated, but signifying ‘‘vital force’’). The Chinese tradition of chi considers the meridians or channels through which the chi flows, its corresponding acupuncture points, as well as the storage and transformational centers for chi (Veith 1984). This notion of chi continues in Taoist traditions and in Chi Kung, and arguably represents the basic physiological understanding of the lower animistic entity or ‘‘vital force soul.’’ Generally, the Chinese, Tibetan, and Indian traditions provide the most in-depth and comprehensive knowledge of the subject. The Indian tradition, as exemplified in the Brhada¯ranyaka Upanisad, names the ˙ ˙ ˙ channels or meridians through which the vital force flows hita: ‘‘In him, verily, are those channels called hita, which are as fine as a hair divided a thousandfold and filled with white, blue, yellow, green (fluids).’’ According to Radhakrishnan (1996, 261–262), ‘‘The subtle body is said to be in these channels.’’ The concept of vital force flowing through an animate vehicle or entity is widespread. Surprisingly, the Igbo of Nigeria also use the word chi for the vital force. Chi is a central concept of Igbo thought and is defined as the essence that animates life (Cole and Amiakor 1984, 15). Although a distinction is made between the vital force and the animistic entity it animates and through which it flows, most ethnographic traditions in which this duality is found use the same term in reference to each component. For example, the term chi is also applied by the Igbo to what they conceive to be the animate self (Henderson 1972, 107). Shamanic traditions are in agreement that an entity exists that animates the physical body and serves as the body’s shield against many forms of invasive illness. It is commonly held that part of this entity can be projected or extended outside and beyond the body, but that a complete projection outside the physical body without tangible connection will result in the body’s demise. The lower animistic entity can be harmed and its energy can be drained. This is referenced in the literature as ‘‘soul loss’’ or ‘‘soul capture.’’ While in some traditions the lower animistic entity is said to be the repository of memory, generally it is thought to have little independent will. The willful and personal higher animistic entity is usually described as variable in size, and capable of expanding itself or reducing itself to very small proportions, even down to a point of light. We find such a description in the Svetasvatara Upanisad: ‘‘Of the size of a ˙ thumb, but brilliant, like the sun, the jiva possesses both volition and egoism. . . . Know the embodied soul to be a part of the hundred part of the point of a hair divided

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a hundred times; and yet it is infinite’’ (Nikhilananda 1963, 137–138). The higher animistic entity is said to dwell within the physical form in a tiny space within the space enveloped by the physical heart. During normal consciousness it is believed to anchor itself in the ‘‘head’’: more specifically, as the intellect in the ‘‘seat of consciousness.’’ There is widespread agreement in identifying the heart as the seat of the higher animistic entity. Lo´pez Austin (1988, 231), basing his studies on a careful reading of the Spanish chronicles and early colonial-period documents, such as the Florentine Codex, identifies the heart as the seat of the teyolia: the Mexica term for the higher animistic entity. Reichel-Dolmatoff (1971, 64) reports that among the Desana, a Tukanoanspeaking group of the Colombian Northwest Amazon, ‘‘The seat of the soul (simpora) is the heart.’’ Egyptologists, however, have demurred from making a connection between the heart and the Egyptian ba, one of the animistic entities constituting the human being. They view the heart as a separate entity. As Goelet (1998, 151) notes, ‘‘The heart was considered to be the seat of the emotions and the intellect. In short the heart was the Egyptian equivalent of the mind.’’ Wilkinson (1992, 77) agrees, positing that ‘‘in the view of the ancient Egyptians the heart was the seat of thought and emotion and even of life itself. As the heart was regarded as the center of life, it was said of the deceased that his heart had ‘departed,’ and the heart was often equated with a person’s very being.’’ It is curious that both Egyptologists refer to the heart as the seat of higher animistic functions, but then equate it with life and being. There is no evidence in the Egyptian texts that the physical heart itself was endowed with individuality and movement after death. When it is pictorially represented in the various New Kingdom texts, the heart is simply placed in the scales of judgment to be weighed in the balance against Ma’at, the Egyptian personification of truth and justice. It is noteworthy in this respect that in the passages referring to the ‘‘weighing of the heart,’’ the ba is present and carefully watches the heart being weighed in the scale. If, as it seems, the heart itself was only the seat of higher animistic functions, then what was the animistic entity that performed those functions? The ba is undoubtedly the most reasonable candidate. Wilkinson notes concerning the ba that it was ‘‘a spiritual aspect of the human being which survived . . . at death, and which was imbued with the fullness of a person’s individuality’’ (p. 99). These are the very characteristics also associated with the heart. I propose that the heart was but the seat of the ba and that, while the individual was still alive, the two were not distinguished by the Egyptian scribes. Once death had taken place, however, the ba was released from its seat and distinguished by its own hieroglyph. The Upanisadic traditions of India make even clearer and more definitive references ˙ to the heart as the seat of the higher self. The Katha Upanisad states that ‘‘the Self, ˙ ¨ ller smaller than small, greater than great, is hidden in the heart of that creature’’ (Mu 1962, p. 11). In the Brhada¯ranyaka Upanisad it is noted that ˙ ˙ ˙

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the point of his heart becomes lighted up, and by that light the self departs, either through the eye, or through the skull, or through other places of the body. And when he thus departs, life (the chief praˆna) departs after him, and when life thus departs, all the other vital spirits (praˆnas) depart after it. . . . That person, under the form of mind (manas), being light indeed, is within the ¨ ller 1962, 174–175 and 192) heart, small like a grain of rice or barley. (Mu

The association of the higher animistic entity with light is noteworthy, for it is an association found in some New World cultures as well. The Desana state that ‘‘the soul is a luminous element that not only ‘exists under the reflection of the Sun’ but possesses its own luminosity that the Sun gave it at the moment of birth’’ (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 64). The Upanisadic seers of India, the Aztec Codices, and other sources agree ˙ that the seat of the higher animistic entity lies within the heart. This and related postulates are not stated as arbitrary theorizing or simplistic religious beliefs; instead, they reflect careful observations made by practiced adepts. From the indigenous viewpoint, these concepts relate to shared realities, experienced by adepts of the respective communities, and represent concepts rooted in corresponding structures of reality. Pre-Columbian Art as a Viable Ethnographic Resource The term pre-Columbian is both chronological and cultural. It refers to the indigenous cultures of the Americas, before they were affected by contact with Europeans. In many cases such contact did not occur until long after 1492. Many pre-Columbian artworks portray shamans or shamanic themes. This is particularly notable in the Olmec culture of Mexico, in the Chavin and coastal cultures of Peru, and in Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador, where shamanic artwork testifies to the attributes and skills of shamanic practice. Systematic study of these artifacts, along with corresponding ethnographic literature, allows for a detailed assessment of shamanic practice that can be correlated with iconographic elements observed in the art. A precise mapping of culturally reinforced themes demonstrates their perpetuity through time. Certain core shamanic themes are relevant for an understanding of indigenous concepts of soul: (1) shamanic empowerment; (2) ‘‘soul flight,’’ or the perceived shamanic ability to leave one’s physical form and travel about in one’s ‘‘soul body’’; (3) ‘‘shapeshifting,’’ or the belief that shamans can alter the size, shape, and form of their souls or animistic entities; and (4) ‘‘soul capture,’’ the stated ability to harm, capture, or even absorb and incorporate the lower soul or animistic entity of another. Each of these themes is graphically and repeatedly represented in pre-Columbian art. Shamanic Empowerment: Imaging the Empowered Soul The indigenous views on shamanic powers are internally consistent and form part of an integrated worldview. Neotropical shamans do not walk about during normal

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consciousness ready to undertake shamanic tasks such as healing, altering the weather, ‘‘soul travel,’’ and other paranormal abilities ascribed to shamans. They must first activate these powers within themselves, and the ethnographic literature is clear in identifying the various souls as the vehicles of expression for shamanic powers and endeavors. This activation entails a preparatory phase that may include fasting, mental reflection and contemplation, the singing of power songs, the yogic posturing of the physical body, or the ingestion of various psychomimetic substances. A large number of mind-altering plants are used to activate shamanic powers. There are depictions of the mescaline-bearing San Pedro cactus in the Moche (100–700 A.D.) art of Peru, the peyote cactus in the art of the Shaft Tomb Cultures (200 B.C.–400 A.D.) of West Mexico, and representations of shamans smoking cigars in a number of preHispanic art traditions of Costa Rica as well as Mexico. Psychotropic plants—that is, ayahuasca (Banisteriopsis caapi), yopo (Anadenanthera peregrina), virola (Virola calopylla, as well as Virola calophylloida), and datura (Datura aurea, Datura candida, Datura dolichocarpa, Datura sanguinea, and Datura suaveolens)—are believed by indigenous practitioners to be especially effective in facilitating contact between the shaman and the spirit of the plant. Early Spanish observers were quick to attribute such communication to the work of the devil. Later Western ethnographers were just as quick to characterize the native experience as a product of drug-induced hallucination. Under the best of circumstances, researchers can only prove or disprove the native claim from their own standpoint, and that, only if they are able to replicate all of the cultural and contextual variables comprising the experience. The purpose here is not to demonstrate the proof or validity of the native interpretation of the experience, but faithfully to portray the indigenous perspective. A number of different postures and physical techniques evolved that were used as aids in achieving certain subtle states of consciousness, much in the same manner that yogic postures are believed to assist the practitioner in achieving subtle states of consciousness. Many yogic postures in India are likely rooted in an earlier, indigenous shamanism on the subcontinent. A posture used by Tukanoan shamans in the northwest Amazon of Colombia to induce trance consists of a seated position in which the knees are grasped and engulfed by the arms. A dynamic tension is created by attempting to extend the legs outward, while the arms hold the legs in bent position. The knees are pulled inward, but never to the point of touching the chest. The position is assumed while vision is focused on a point of external light, a torch for example. The rate of respiration is altered by this posture as pressure is brought to bear on the thorax (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1988, 44). A relatively large number of portrayals in gold in Muisca style from the Eastern Cordillera region of Colombia document the antiquity and continuity of this posture into the present.

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Tukanoan shamans do not induce trance for the sake of trance, but merely to free themselves for other endeavors of a conscious, willfully directed nature. The relevance of trance to achieving certain altered states of consciousness is directly related to the belief that shamans must disengage their higher soul from the sensory distractions generated by their lower soul, if they are to access subtle states of consciousness and enable shamanic powers such as soul flight or shape-shifting. Contrary to the suggestions that shamanic endeavors are byproducts of hallucination or worse, of a schizophrenic mind, neotropical shamans undergo specific, directed training. The ethnographic literature is clear in its assertion that practitioners, as well as other members of their society, accept the shamanic powers and endeavors as rooted in reality. This is not to deny that hallucinations were not at times also a part of the experience of taking psychomimetic substances. Hallucinatory visions are often deliberately induced and interpreted by neotropical shamans. This is particularly true with respect to the ingestion of yopo and virola, both widely used in the Colombian northwest Amazon (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975, 3–24). Although researchers distinguish voluntary trance states, such as those entered into by shamans, from involuntary trance states, such as are experienced by epileptics, there is a need to refine our understanding of trance further. Looked at from the perspective of the indigenous two-soul model, trance can entail displacing the higher animistic entity by an agent other than one’s self. This would be what occurs in purported cases of spirit possession. In the case of involuntary possession, the invasive spirit would be seen as willfully displacing the higher animistic entity. In the case of voluntary possession, the individual makes a conscious decision to vacate the seat of consciousness and make it available to an invited spirit. This is little different from a hypnotic state in which the willful conscious individual is supplanted by the hypnotist, who gives directives to what appears to be a somnambulistic, will-less, entity. From this perspective, hypnosis is a psychophysical state in which the higher animistic entity, or soul, has been displaced from its seat of consciousness in the brain by the hypnotist. The second form of trance involves consciously disengaging the higher animistic entity from the lower animistic entity, thereby breaking the fixation of the former on normal sensory stimulation, while maintaining conscious awareness. The anchoring of the lower animistic entity’s attention on a repetitive, fixed phenomenon, like a flame, is believed to facilitate this second kind of trance state. The process of maintaining willful consciousness, while inducing trance in the lower animistic entity, is purportedly accompanied by great tension in the physical body (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975, 44). This is part of the rationale behind the clenched-teeth motif in pre-Columbian art. Trance states brought about by mind-altering plants or shamanic techniques are also indicated by making the eyes of the figure concentric and glazed looking, or the eyes are portrayed in a way that imparts a sense of introspection to the figure. For example,

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Figure 4.1 The figure is seated cross-legged. The expression on the face, in combination with the eyes, imparts a sense of inner contemplation or trance. The status of the figure is indicated by the large earspools; the higher the rank, the larger the earspools. The designs on items of clothing were sometimes indicative of group identity or affiliation. The identification of the object placed between the individual’s legs is unclear (polychrome painted pottery, Moche culture, North Coast Peru, c. 100–700. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 88.4.14).

in figures 4.1 and 4.2, both of which are from the Moche culture (c. 100–700 A.D.) of the North Coast of Peru, the persons are portrayed seated with eyes fixed, staring vacuously. Iconographic Emblems of Shamanic Empowerment Pre-Columbian artists used many conventions to indicate that a shaman was empowered. In figure 4.3, for example, the winged shaman is portrayed in ecstatic flight, borne aloft by his spirit ally, imaged as a gigantic bird with human arms. Both the fact that he is winged, as well as the fact that he is accompanied by a spirit ally, inform us that he is empowered. More specific iconographic references to shamanic empower-

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Figure 4.2 The figure is in seated posture with hands placed on the knees. The eyes are fixed and stare vacuously. Figures such as this likely depict shamans in self-induced trance. Entering trance states was often a state preparatory to undertaking a shamanic endeavor such as prognostication, diagnosis of illness, or even soul flight. The white cape and headgear are likely references to the individual’s role and function within Moche society. Although both figures 4.1 and 4.2 are in seated posture, the legs are positioned differently. The positioning of the hands and feet, as well as the posture assumed by the individual, is significant in determining the state of consciousness or condition of mind the individual is endeavoring to access (polychrome painted pottery, Moche culture, North Coast Peru, c. 100–700. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.26.532).

ment are sometimes common to particular regions of pre-Columbian America. For instance, horns emanating from the forehead of human figures also served as emblems of shamanic empowerment in West Mexico and other parts of Mesoamerica (see Furst 1965, 29–80; Von Winning 1974, 32): ‘‘Horns are one of the most widespread—indeed universal—insignia of supernatural, priestly, and shamanic power, so much, from the Paleolithic to the ethnographic present, and in so many places, that one hardly needs to make a case that it had the same meaning in pre-Columbian art and symbolism’’ (Furst 1998, 180). Figures 4.4 to 4.9 are representative of this genre. Although Graham (1998, 191–203) has argued that the protrusions are not really horns, but seashells, or, more specifically, conch shells strapped to the figure’s head as an emblem of status, his arguments are not compelling and are easily refuted by examining the empirical evidence. Figures 4.4 and 4.6a–b to 4.9 illustrate the independent nature of the horn in the Mexican

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Figure 4.3 The composition comprises a winged shaman in soul or ecstatic flight borne aloft on the back of a large spirit bird. That this is no ordinary bird is indicated by the enormous size of the bird and the fact that, instead of legs, the bird has arms that, in the portrayal, are swept back as if to add stability to the shaman figure. The human figure, characterized by a pair of wings, clutches the neck of the bird spirit. Compositions showing a shaman borne aloft in flight by a spirit animal are seen in Amerindian cultural art from the Northwest Coast to Peru (blackware pottery, Chimu culture, North Coast Peru, c. 900–1500. Private Collection, Los Angeles).

portrayals. Explanations such as Graham’s ignore the fact that the protrusions are not depicted as spiral in form, as are conch shells, and ignore those figures in which the protrusion is present, but the straps are not. Moreover, in many cases where the straps Figure 4.4 The figure is in seated position and holds a rattle in each hand. It is clear from the manner in which the strap wraps around the horn that it plays no role in holding the horn to the head. It is merely encircling a horn that is emanating from the figure’s head. Erect or tumescent phalli are commonly depicted in association with shaman figures to denote empowerment or to call attention to the shaman’s role in mediating fertility. The rattles, horns, and ithyphallic condition of the figure identify the figure as a shaman engaged in ritual. There are essentially two forms of spouts portrayed in West Mexican art of this period—a ‘‘female’’ spout, in which the opening is wider than the base, and a ‘‘male’’ spout, in which the base is wider than the aperture. The spout on this figure is of the ‘‘male’’ variety (pottery, Comala style, West Mexican Shaft Tomb cultures, Colima, West Mexico, c. 100 B.C.–400 A.D. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 86.53.4).

Figures 4.5a–b The figure’s demeanor indicates an individual engaged in deep inner contemplation. The facial features are reduced and the lips tightened. The figure stares, as in trance. The horn at the top of the head identifies him as an empowered shaman (pottery, Comala style, West Mexican Shaft Tomb cultures, Colima, West Mexico, c. 100 B.C.–400 A.D. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection F78.78.2).

Figures 4.6a–b The figure is engaged in playing a large drum, with feet placed along the side of the instrument. Figural whistles such as this were common ritual objects used in a variety of social and cultural contexts. Note that the strap is wrapped around the horn, but not in a manner that would secure a false horn to the figure’s head. The horn is depicted as a real emanation. The figure’s hunched back is also iconographically significant. Hunchbacks were considered endowed with magical powers in Mesoamerica (pottery, West Mexican Shaft Tomb culture, Colima, West Mexico, c. 100 B.C.–400 A.D. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection F74.8.9).

Figure 4.7 There are numerous sculptures in the Comala-style art of West Mexico that depict trophy heads or disembodied heads. Headhunting was a widespread pattern. The size of horns on horned figures is believed to reflect the relative power of the individual. The sculpture may represent the head of an enemy shaman taken in battle (pottery, Comala Style, West Mexican Shaft Tomb cultures, Colima, West Mexico, c. 100 B.C.–400 A.D. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 86.56.11).

Figures 4.8a–b The shape of the body is unusual, but the horn identifies the figure as an empowered shaman. The long, angular, prominent nose and elongated face show some influence from the Jalisco area of West Mexico in this composition. The coffee-bean eyes, however, are typical of the Colima area (pottery, West Mexican Shaft Tomb cultures, Comala style, Colima, West Mexico, c. 100 B.C.– 400 A.D. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 2000.40.21).

Figure 4.9 The figure is strapped to a bed and is portrayed in a highly emotive state. A large horn emanates from the head. This composition likely represents a shaman undergoing a hallucinatory experience, strapped to the bed for his own protection. The sculpture is in fact a whistle that undoubtedly would have been used by a shaman-priest in ritual activities (pottery, Veracruz, Mexico, c. 550–1500. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 96.56.10).

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Figure 4.10 The two menacing figures that flank each side of the central figure are actually portrayed as emanating from the central figure’s head. They are tingunas or projections of the central shaman’s power. Projections emanating from the shaman’s body may take many different animal forms. Serpents, birds, felines, and fanged figures are common forms of tingunas in the pre-Hispanic art of Peru and elsewhere. On the other hand, crocodilians were commonly used in the Macaracasstyle art (c. 800–1000 A.D.) of Central Panama. Projections of this type are used to reference shamanic empowerment (textile, Coastal Peru, c. 1000–1600. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collections 91.449.1).

are present, as in figures 4.4 and 4.6a–b, the strap is clearly wrapped around the protrusion, supported by it, rather than holding it in place against the head. In the case of the West Mexican portrayals, the protruding horn is also associated with other iconography that assists us in identifying the figure as a shaman—for example, figural postures in which the figure is facing to the left, believed to be the direction from which inimical spirits will approach a shaman. A widespread convention in Central and South America was to depict emanations from the body of the central shamanic figure. These often take the form of serpents, crocodilians, birds, or other animals (figures 4.10 to 4.16). They are characteristically serpentine and undulating regardless of the head of the animal depicted. The term tinguna is used by Peruvian vegetalistas to refer to shamanic electromagnetic-like emanations, which may take the form of animals or people. The term seems to be an appropriate designation for the pre-Columbian portrayals. The Peruvian Lamistas from whose language the term is derived entertain an analogous concept (Luna 1991, 33). For them tingunas (figures 4.10 to 4.19) represent the shaman’s ability to radiate and project shamanic power. The power projected is that of the lower animistic entity, directed by the will of the higher animistic entity. The ethnographic description of

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Figure 4.11 A central anthropomorphic figure stands in a menacing pose. Numerous tingunas incorporating triangular elements emanate from the head and the sides of the body. Masks such as this were placed over the face of the deceased, probably to protect the deceased from potentially harmful spirits or forces. In such cases the shaman image serves as a guardian of the tomb and corpse. Although each mummy mask is uniquely decorated, stock conventions such as the use of tingunas as symbols of shamanic empowerment are routinely employed, as can be seen in the other examples referenced below (painted textile, Paracas culture, South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.4).

Figure 4.12 The central figure in this mummy-mask fragment is characterized by large concentric eyes and numerous tingunas, including tingunas in the form of feline heads. The composition represents an empowered shaman. The power of the shaman is accentuated by the zigzag form given some of the tingunas. The zigzag pattern is a symbol of lightning and hence dynamism and vitality (painted textile, Paracas culture, South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.9).

Figure 4.14 Figure 4.13 The standing central anthropomorphic figure

In this composition only the head of the sha-

is characterized by numerous projections and

dissolved to become a field of emanations, or

emanations—that is, tingunas. The empowered

tingunas (painted textile, Paracas culture,

shaman is a stock theme of the Paracas

South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.6).

mummy masks (painted textile, Paracas cul-

man is distinguished. The rest of the body has

ture, South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.20).

Figure 4.15 The principal emanations, or tingunas, in this composition are serpentine in nature and terminate in the form of trophy heads. This may be an allusion to the central figure’s source of Figure 4.16

shamanic power. Among neotropical ethno-

In this composition the tingunas emanating

graphic groups that practiced head-hunting in

from the central body are serpentine in nature.

the not-so-distant past, it was believed that

Some of the serpentine tingunas terminate in

one could gain personal power by controlling

the form of trophy heads. Note the trophy

the spirit of the beheaded enemy or, in some cases, by incorporating the enemy’s spirit in

heads hanging from the figure’s arms (painted textile, Paracas culture, South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.7).

one’s own being, thereby increasing one’s personal power (painted textile, Paracas culture, South Coast Peru, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 91.49.5).

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tingunas is the best explanation for the projections and emanations associated with shamanic figures in pre-Columbian art. Shamanic empowerment is the theme of a composition recorded on a blackware stirrup-spout pottery bottle from the Chimu Culture (900–1420) of the North Coast of Peru (figures 4.17a–b). The front of the vessel portrays a figure seated on a bench, a widespread symbol of authority in pre-Columbian art, but also closely associated with the shaman and shamanic contemplation. The figure holds a staff in each hand. On the reverse side the bench is absent and the figure is transfigured. In place of staffs,

Figure 4.17a The front side of the vessel depicts a shaman in

Figure 4.17b

meditation, seated on a bench, and about to

The back side of the vessel shows a shaman in

enter a trance state preparing himself for sha-

transfiguration. Note the tingunas in the form

manic empowerment (black pottery, Chimu

of serpents at the head and the two animal

culture, North Coast Peru, c. 1000–1500.

familiars or spirit assistants flanking the sha-

Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection

man. Although the bench is not indicated,

F81.49.1).

this figure on the back side likely represents the same shaman seen on the front of the vessel, who is now in a transformed state of being.

animal auxiliaries flank the figure on each side. The figure appears to be levitating and serpentine protrusions—that is, tingunas—emanate from the head or headdress. The famed seven-foot-tall Peruvian Raimondi Stela, a Chavin (1000–500 B.C.) monument depicting a fanged anthropomorphic figure grasping a staff in each hand, is a case in point. Numerous serpentine tingunas are seen emanating from the head and sides of the body. This composition has been variously identified as an agricultural de-

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Figure 4.18 Drawing of the Gateway God at Tiwanaku. The figure is characterized by a profusion of easily identifiable shamanic images such as the serpentine tingunas emanating from the head and sides of the body. Related iconography includes the trophy heads suspended from the arms, indicating head-hunting. The figure holds a bird-headed staff in each arm. The iconography is clearly shamanic in nature. If the figure portrayed represents a deity, it is one the artist wishes us to recognize as shamanically powerful. In many South American ethnographic cultures, the Sun Father is referred to as the First or Paramount Shaman. This may be the personage referenced in the so-called Gateway God and Staff God compositions of Peru and Bolivia (artist rendering by Eric Beltz, 2001).

ity or simply referred to as a staff god. Whether a deity is intended or not, the tingunas and fangs clearly identify the figure as one possessing great shamanic power. Similar portrayals are seen on pre-Hispanic Peruvian pottery, as well as textiles, and are distinctly related to the so-called Gateway God or Portal God of Tiwanaku in the Bolivian Highlands. In a line drawing of this monument (figure 4.18) the personage is seen clutching a serpentine staff in each hand. As in the Raimondi stela, numerous serpentine tingunas emanate from the head and sides of the body. The images in question are generally found represented on monuments and on funerary art. The funerary context is not surprising, given the role of the shaman in these societies as psychopomp, the individual entrusted with conducting the soul of the

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Figure 4.19 The composition consists of two winged warrior figures, one on each side of the vessel. Each is armed with spear and shield. Sparse vegetation, representative of the desert landscape of the North Coast of Peru, is seen in the background. The bird-beaked face and wings suggest that this composition represents a battle between two shamans occurring in out-of-body travel, or soul flight. Each culture had its own iconographic conventions to depict the shaman-in-combat theme. Winged warriors appear to have been a variant used by the Moche of Peru. Winged anthropomorphic figures are widespread in Central and South American pre-Columbian art (painted pottery, Moche culture, North Coast Peru, c. 100–700. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 88.4.11).

dead into the afterlife. The iconographic associations with fertility are also not surprising, because the shaman in these societies is considered the guardian of fertility. Both the horn symbol of Mesoamerica and the shamanic emanations (tingunas) found in the pre-Columbian art of lower Central America and South America represent projections of power beyond the confines of the normal physical body. In some respects, the halos in Christian art used to depict the radiant soul of saints and the spirit forms of angelic beings may be seen as comparable artistic conventions. Tingunas are almost invariably associated with figures that are undergoing or have undergone metamorphosis: a condition invariably associated with shamans in the ethnographic literature. These same figures also usually have binary geometric emblems

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or double-headed birds on their chests, a convention alluding to the shaman’s role as intermediary between the dualistic powers of nature (Labbe´ 1995, 89–99) and referencing the shaman’s role in maintaining fertility and balance in nature. ‘‘Soul Flight’’: Bird Men and the Flight of the Soul The so-called souls or animistic entities are perceived by shamans to be self-contained fields of energy. They are believed capable of separating from the physical body either accidentally or intentionally. Accidental separations are sometimes said to be due to posttraumatic stress, incurred from severe accidents or even medication. Only shamans who have undergone the necessary training, however, are believed capable of intentionally leaving the body. This can be effected by means of trance, learned techniques, or ingestion of psychomimetic substances such as yaje. The perceived ability of shamans to leave their physical body and fly about in one or another soul body is universal in the neotropical literature: ‘‘Taking tobacco juice via the nose, the shaman separates quickly his soul from his retching body and is transported by the tobacco Spirit on an ecstatic journey’’ (Wilbert 1987, 174). According to Reichel-Dolmatof (1971, 64), the Desana of the northwest Amazon held that ‘‘the soul can separate itself occasionally from the body during life as for example, during a hallucinatory state or in the case of a sudden accident.’’ Similarly, among the Aztecs of Mexico it was believed that shamans ‘‘could voluntarily send their tonalli on magical flights to other worlds outside their bodies, aided by hallucinogens’’ (Ortiz de Montellano 1990, 69). Contextualizing this phenomenon against the backdrop of the two-soul theory, I postulate that the principal entity that engages in ‘‘soul flight’’ is the higher animistic entity. The shaman engages in soul flight as a willful, conscious entity. Both willfulness and consciousness are attributes associated with the higher animistic entity. What is unclear is the nature of any involvement of the lower animistic entity in this endeavor. Since ‘‘soul flight’’ is a persistent theme in the South American ethnographic literature, one should expect to find it also represented in the pre-Columbian art of the region. In his influential work, Goldwork and Shamanism, Reichel-Dolmatoff proposed that a genre of pre-Columbian gold artworks was embodied by representations of shamanic flight. The essential element in these compositions is a blending of avian and anthropomorphic characteristics, ‘‘were-birds’’ so to speak, which are referenced as birdmen in the scholarly literature (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1988, 77–95). Analogous birdmen representations are found in the pre-Hispanic art of widely dispersed regions of the Americas. Reichel-Dolmatoff’s interpretation is supported by the fact that the cultures that produced these images were clearly shamanic cultures. The fact that similar imagery was used over wide regions of the Americas would preclude the likelihood that the imagery in question represents a local deity or an aspect of exclusive local myth.

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Figure 4.20 This composition blends several shamanic themes, including the following: shaman-in-trance, referenced by the concentric eyes in combination with an open, menacing mouth; shamanempowered, referenced by elements such as serpentine tingunas and stingray spines radiating from the sides of the figure’s body; shaman-in-transformation, referenced by the fact that the figure is represented as an anthropomorphic saurian; shaman-in-soul-flight, referenced by the arms that have been transformed into wings; and shaman-in-combat, referenced by the menacing posture and inherent dynamism of the composition (polychrome painted pottery, view of inner bowl, Macaracas culture, Central Panama, c. 800–1000. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 97.115.7).

Anthropomorphic birdmen are portrayed in many pre-Columbian cultures. For example, figure 4.19, a ceramic stirrup-spout vessel of the Moche culture of Peru, portrays a winged, bird-headed, anthropomorphic warrior brandishing a shield and weapons. Donnan (1978, 132) identified such figures as supernatural warriors. I agree that the figure is not a portrayal of an ordinary warrior and that it represents a shaman, in soul flight, about to engage in shamanic combat. Shamanic combat is a common theme of neotropical shamanism and is portrayed in pre-Columbian art from West Mexico down through Peru. In most other cultures in which the theme is portrayed there is additional contextual iconography, such as tingunas, that enable us confidently to identify the winged personage as a shaman. There are several specific, winged anthropomorphic personages in the Moche art of Peru. Among these are the so-called bird runners, which are winged anthropomorphic figures, depicted running in profile, and generally shown carrying an unidentified object: possibly something wrapped in a cloth. Donnan did not associate the ‘‘bird run-

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Figure 4.21 This sketch, patterned after actual Olmec artworks, depicts a winged anthropomorphic figure, likely a portrayal of a shaman in soul flight. In this case, however, the wings might be those of a bat, rather than those of a bird, as seems to be indicated by the shape of the wings and the scalloping of their sides (artist rendering by Eric Beltz, 2001).

ners’’ with shamanic flight. I suggest that the winged runners are also in soul flight, and that they represent shamanic auxiliaries, or subordinates, in service to a paramount shaman. Figure 4.20 is typical for the Macaracas style and depicts in its center an anthropomorphic frontal facing figure that represents a transformed shaman. A whole complex of shamanically related iconography comes together in this composition; notable are the concentric eyes and menacing teeth. His arms have transformed into wings suggesting soul flight, while distinctive projections—that is, tingunas—emanate from the head and body. The feet are equipped with long claws. The portrayal is a Central Panamanian example of the shaman as supernatural warrior and is thematically equivalent to the Moche supernatural winged warrior noted above. Figure 4.21 is an artist’s rendering, based on actual examples, of a winged anthropomorphic figure in Olmec style. The wings, however, are scalloped in outline and may represent those of a bat, rather than those of a bird. In any event it is likely that a winged shaman and the theme of soul flight is intended. The figure is wearing a belt, which may be a stylized Olmec version of the avian belts seen elsewhere (e.g., ReichelDolmatoff 1988).

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Shape-Shifting: Jaguars, Crocodilians, and the Transformation of Soul Shamans who have mastered soul flight may also learn to willfully alter the shape and appearance of their animistic entities, or souls. The ethnographic literature is rich in allusions to the soul’s ability to shape-shift and undergo transformation. A Sibundoy Indian from southern Colombia confided: ‘‘I saw it, you know, a firefly (the soul) came along and then turned into a dog. The dog turned white and it wouldn’t let me pass’’ (McDowell 1989, 131). It is noteworthy that the informant described the apparition as a firefly—that is, visually a point of light. The association of the soul with a point of light, as noted earlier, references the higher animistic entity. Furst (1995, 69–83) noted that the Huichol shamans of West Mexico somersault to transform themselves into animal alter egos. Referring to their shamanic ancestors, Tukanoan informants of the northwest Amazon stated that these ancients had viho (psychotropic snuff) to turn themselves into doubles (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1975, 110). The most common and widespread form assumed is that of the jaguar. Wilbert (1987, 193) noted: ‘‘A closer affinity between jaguar and shaman is hardly conceivable, and tobacco, like other mind-altering drugs, is an important agent of the jaguar transformation complex of South America.’’ Among some groups the shaman-turnedjaguar is imaged as a were-jaguar. The Catio, explains Wilbert, ‘‘picture them as personages with a human body and feline head and claws’’ (p. 196). Wilbert’s description of the Catio perspective resonates with many portrayals in pre-Columbian art, most notably the Olmec anthropomorphic jaguars with human body and feline head. Were-jaguar representations are common in the Olmec art of Mesoamerica. Some researchers have recognized that the Olmec were-jaguar forms are representations of shamanic transformation (Furst 1995, 69–81). Figures 4.22 to 4.24 are representative of typical portrayals of Olmec jaguar transformations. In most of the Olmec renditions, the jaguar characteristics are especially pronounced in the figure’s head, particularly in the region of the face below the eyes. The mouths are often depicted snarling. The bodies are generally more anthropomorphic in detail. A jaguar metate (figures 4.25a–b) from Costa Rica also places the jaguar characteristics in the head. The binary complementary geometric design atop the feline’s head serves to bring attention to the shaman’s power over fertility in the same manner that similar symbolism is placed on the chest of shamanic figures in other compositions. The legs of the metate are composed of a series of inverted bird heads. Inverted images in preColumbian art are often allusions to the underworld, another shamanic domain. In figure 4.26 each of the various shamanic dimensions—that is, Upper, Middle, and Lower Worlds—is seen to be an inverted, mirror image of the adjacent world. The zigzag lightning pattern effected as negative design forms a network used by the artist to illustrate the interconnectedness of the three realms of reality, as well as the interconnectedness of life itself.

Figure 4.22 Kneeling figure with jaguar facial features and anthropomorphic body. The hands are held on knees, a stock posture associated with Olmec anthropomorphic jaguar figures, portraying the jaguar transformation theme (artist rendering by Eric Beltz, 2001).

Figure 4.23 Figure is kneeling with one knee bent and the other raised. The body is anthropomorphic, the face catlike (artist rendering Eric Beltz, 2001).

Figure 4.24 Typical of all Olmec depictions of the jaguar transformation theme is the portrayal of the body in anthropomorphic form with the head rendered with strong feline characteristics. The pose and style of this sketch patterned after actual Olmec artworks is very close in style to the feline-headed artwork from Key Marco, Florida, referenced in the text (artist rendering Eric Beltz, 2001).

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Figures 4.25a–b Highly ornate and intricately carved metates such as this are found in the funerary context of elite burials. Metates, or grinding stones, are by nature associated with the concept of transformation. Only the head of the sculpture is in jaguar form. The legs incorporate a series of long-beaked bird heads positioned upside down. The composition is shamanic in nature. The jaguar head alludes to the theme of jaguar transformation associated with neotropical shamans. The shamanic nature of the jaguar head is reinforced by the interlocking, binary L-shaped elements used to decorate the head. This alludes to the shaman’s control over the dualistic male and female forces involved in fertility and the formation of life (volcanic rock, Guanacaste-Nicoya zone, Costa Rica, Late Period IV–Period V, c. 300–700. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 97.40.1).

Key Marco, a site excavated by Frank Cushing in the 1890s, yielded an extraordinary sculpture in wood depicting a kneeling form with human body and feline head. Although the piece is estimated to have been made sometime between 1000 and 1400, it is remarkably similar in style and composition to the much earlier Olmec jaguar transformation pieces, which mostly date from between 1000 and 400 B.C. (see figure 4.24, which the Key Marco sculpture closely resembles). The Olmec pieces were largely unknown at the time of the Cushing excavations. The shamanic nature of the Key Marco sculpture is underscored by the series of triangles encircling the eyes of the feline head. Geometric configurations, often in the form of stylized bird heads or stylized birds, commonly encircle the eyes of shamanic figures in pre-Columbian art. The sculpture likely represents a shamanic feline transformation and may be older than heretofore realized. A common practice in pre-Columbian art is the use of metonyms, the representation of a complex symbolism by abstracting a part of the complex to represent the whole. In the case of the were-jaguar, the feline’s fangs were abstracted and used in such a

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Figure 4.26 The design is divided into three decorative bands, each representing a division of the shamanic cosmos. The upper band represents the Upper World, the middle band the Middle World, and the bottom band the Underworld. Each band is a mirror image of the adjacent band. The artist, however, has deftly connected all three realms by means of geometric zigzag design elements, used to represent lightning, which itself represents dynamism and fertility (painted pottery, Chupicuaro culture, Guanajuato, Mexico, c. 300–100 B.C. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection F81.18.2).

manner. Fanged anthropomorphic figures, lacking other feline characteristics, are common in the art of Colombia (figures 4.27 to 4.30), Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. Many of these are likely representations of shamanic were-jaguars. In the art of Central Panama, although shamanic felines are depicted, werecrocodilians or were-saurians are more common. Typically, the were-crocodilians are rendered in profile. The torso, characteristically, is decorated with binary geometrics, symbolic of the shaman’s mastery of dualistic forces, particularly fertility. Both the hands and feet are clawed. The composition is a classic example of the transformed shaman as warrior, which is emblematic of the shaman-in-combat theme portrayed in figure 4.20, a frontal-facing version of a were-crocodilian. In figure 4.20, the shamanin-soul-flight theme is combined with that of the shaman-in-combat. In common

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Figure 4.27 The negative space around the figure’s eyes is in the form of stylized bird heads, more commonly painted around the eyes of shamanic figures in the pottery art of other regions. The fanged teeth are used metonymically to represent the jaguar. Metonymy is a common feature of preColumbian art. This figure, then, may represent an empowered shaman serving as a guardian figure. The shamanic context of San Agustı´n art is indisputable. Many comparable figures were found buried within the numerous elite cist graves found in the San Agustı´n region. They serve as guardians of the tomb (San Agustı´n Region, Colombia. Photograph by Armand J. Labbe´, 1984).

with other compositions in this genre from Central Panama, the figure’s eyes are encircled with bird-head motifs and tingunas in the form of stingray spines. Earlier interpretations identified such were-creatures as ‘‘Crocodile Gods’’ or ‘‘Bat Gods’’: names chosen by the researcher simply because the personage was no ordinary

Figure 4.28 The figure is in a dynamic posture with the arms, in tension, pulled back alongside the body. The alter ego is in the form of a bicephalic anthropomorphic saurian with a human head atop and a crocodilian head below. The composition is clearly shamanic in nature (San Agustı´n Region, Colombia. Photograph by Armand J. Labbe´, 1984).

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Figure 4.30 The figure is fanged and is surmounted by an alter-ego figure. He brandishes a club to indiFigure 4.29

cate that he is ready for combat. This composition is a San Agustı´n example of the shaman-

The fangs are likely used here metonymically

in-combat theme seen elsewhere (San Agustı´n

to reference a jaguar tranformation by an empowered shaman (San Agustı´n Region, Co-

Region, Colombia. Photograph by Armand J. Labbe´, 1984).

lombia. Photograph by Armand J. Labbe´, 1984).

animal since it had mixed zoomorphic and human characteristics. More recent ethnographic findings, however, suggest an alternative interpretation. The neotropical database is rich in references to the theme of shamanic transformation and the association of this theme with were-animals, but devoid of references to bat gods or crocodile gods. Even in cases where the figure may represent a deity, the iconography is referencing the shamanic power of the deity. Although certain forces of nature were personified as deities, animals were not. Animal imagery, but not anthropomorphized animal imagery, was most commonly used to reference attributes of deities. In Mexico, the turtle was used to image the earth in relationship to the movement of the sun along the horizon. The head of a toad was used to refer to a male aspect of the earth, Tlaltecuhtli. A feathered serpent represented Quetzalcoatl, a personification of the cosmic dual-natured life force that was engendered by the cosmic duality, Omete´otl, another name for Ometecuhtli-

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Figures 4.31a–b This composition is an example of the shaman-in-transformation theme. In this case the shaman is shape-shifting into a bird form. The human arms are, however, still visible and the head is portrayed as more human than birdlike. The body is painted with dynamic tingunas and the eyes are encircled with the image of a bird head. Both tingunas and the parrot-head eyes are iconographic indicators that the figure portrayed is a shamanic figure (polychrome pottery, Conte style, Central Panama, c. 600–800. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 97.115.5).

Omecihuatl. None of these animal representations, however, referred to the animal portrayed as an animal god. Among some groups in South America, the spiritual sun played a prominent role, as did certain forces of nature, but the cosmologies are surprisingly sophisticated. The sun, as avatar and harbinger of civilization, is given anthropomorphic form among some groups. A number of Panamanian pieces depict shamans in avian transformation. Figure 4.31a is a typical example of this genre. That we are not observing a ritual in which a practitioner is simply wearing an avian costume is indicated iconographically. The figure is coded with typical, easily identifiable shamanic imagery such as the profile birdhead markings around the eyes and the dynamic tingunas painted on the torso. The shaman’s metamorphosis into a bird is indicated by the lack of legs and feet, and is especially evident when the figure is seen in profile (figure 4.31b). Figures 4.11 to 4.16, a group of mummy cloths from the Paracas culture of Coastal Peru, illustrate the widespread distribution of the essential iconography noted above. Each cloth is decorated with a central shamanic figure. Each figure is seen frontally and

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each has numerous serpentine tingunas emanating from the body. All have open mouths with bared menacing teeth. The images on these cloths are Paracas versions of the empowered shaman and shaman-in-combat themes. The Paracas examples are conceptually and iconographically essentially identical to the Central Panamanian examples (compare the Paracas examples in figures 4.11 to 4.16 with figure 4.20). The significance of the Paracas examples lies in their age, between 300 and 100 B.C., which ranks them among the earliest artworks reflecting these themes and associated iconography. In figure 4.10, a later fragment of a large Coastal Peruvian textile, the central personage is flanked by anthropomorphic jaguars, which on closer inspection are also seen to be tingunas emanating from his head. Soul Capture and Soul Loss The concept of soul capture, like the other themes discussed above, is intimately connected to the indigenous concept of soul. The indigenous concept views the lower animistic entity to be phenomenally based. Since the lower animistic entity is purported to be a self-contained field of energy, driven and sustained by the vital force, it is susceptible to being affected by other phenomena or actions directed against it. As noted above, both the esoteric traditions of India and China postulate the existence of a system of channels through which the vital force is said to flow. Acupuncture was developed in China as a means of stimulating the flow of vital force through meridians or centers that had become congested or blocked. It is held that if the flow of chi is impeded, ill-health will follow. It is also held that in a healthy individual the lower animistic entity permeates the physical form, thereby bathing it in vital force. If the flow of vital force is impeded, a corresponding part of the body will be deprived of vital force and will therefore be susceptible to degeneration, attack by invasive agencies, and decay. There is a strong conceptual link between the vital force and health. This link is found cross-culturally and is widespread. (In this respect it is noteworthy that the Egyptian hieroglyph for the ka, or lower animistic entity, was a pair of arms and hands held upright, which meant to protect.) The portrayal, in art, of numerous tingunas—that is, vital emanations—may thus be seen as a means of emphasizing that the shaman has great stores of vital force. Figures 4.20 and 4.10 to 4.16 are illustrative. Indigenous ideology identifies the lower animistic entity with the vital force. By inference, the tingunas, therefore, are emanating from the shaman’s subtle body, the lower animistic entity. From the indigenous perspective, vital force can be increased or decreased. Its flow (through the meridians) can be enhanced or impeded. The concept of soul loss references this characteristic of the vital force. Soul loss, therefore, is a condition associated in the indigenous mind with the lower animistic entity. The concept of soul loss is not restricted to indigenous communities. Under the name of susto, it also forms part of

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the cultural reality of the mestizo and white populations of Latin America. The vulnerability of the vital force is not, however, a purely conceptual phenomenon. The concept of vital force, and such phrases as ‘‘soul loss’’ and ‘‘soul capture’’ that refer to vital force, are narrative representations of actual physical processes. To the casual observer, the individual afflicted with susto appears paranoid and physically wasting. As the condition progresses, the individual complains of acute cold and numbness in the extremities and voices concern about impending death. Western physicians who are confronted with it often diagnose the condition as posttraumatic stress. The indigenous healers and mestizo curanderos diagnose the illness as due to soul loss. The condition can be brought on in many ways, but a common cause is a situation in which the victim believes that he or she is being targeted by a malevolent sorcerer. If the victim shares the indigenous perspectives on sorcery, great fear is engendered. Western medicine is usually inefficient in bringing about a cure of susto, while the indigenous healers reputedly have a high success rate. The difference in interpretation between the Western doctor and the indigenous healer about the nature of susto, however, is significant to this success. The indigenous healer believes that the victim of susto is in a condition in which the lower animistic entity is partially or in great part projected from the body due to the engendered fear. From the indigenous perspective, this will deprive certain parts of the physical body of vital force, resulting in vulnerability to invasive agents and chill and cold in the hands and feet. If unchecked, this vulnerability progresses ever upward from these extremities. The healer of susto begins by establishing a rapport with the victim. The treatment often consists of a combination of chanting, aromatic herbs, and shaking a rattle. By implication, the treatment consists in coaxing the lower animistic entity to return fully to the body. The lower animistic entity’s attention is apparently solicited through the aromatic herbs and the sound of the rattle, because it is believed that the sense of hearing and sense of smell are the two most developed senses in the lower animistic entity. To an outside observer unfamiliar with the indigenous belief system, the whole procedure seems like so much superstitious nonsense. To the informed observer, the treatment is a logical response within the context of the indigenous concept of soul. The ethnographic literature for Mesoamerica and the neotropics documents the widespread belief that an individual’s lower animistic entity could be drained of its energy, captured, or even absorbed by an adversarial shaman. The following references are illustrative. Rulers, who had special need for tonalli, could also increase it through other means. Slaves were sacrificed to add vitality to the ruler and to extend his life (Sahagu´n 1956, vol. 1, 334–335).

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Since a man with an arutam soul cannot die as the result of physical violence, poisoning, or witchcraft, i.e., any interpersonal attack, a person who wishes to kill a specific enemy attempts to steal his arutam soul away from him as a prelude to assassinating him. (Harner 1984, 141) The soul of any individual is exposed to many dangers. A paye´ (shaman) may seize it and thus cause death or serious illness. (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1971, 65)

The Sahagu´n mention of tonalli refers to the vital force and hence the lower animistic entity, while the Harner reference pertains to the Jivaro of Eastern Ecuador. The arutam soul is believed to be the soul of an ancestor that is initially acquired by an individual prepared to receive one. Its acquisition is thought to confer power and protection against harm to its possessor. The soul referenced in Reichel-Dolmatoff’s comment on the Desana is the simpora. Among the Yanomamo, who, like other Native Americans, entertain the concept of multiple souls, the animistic entity that is vulnerable to harm or capture is known as the noreshi: ‘‘Sickness results when the noreshi has left the body. Unless it is brought back soon, the person will die. The noreshi is the vulnerable portion of the complete being, the part that is the target of witchcraft and harmful magic’’ (Chagnon 1968, 49). The identification of soul capture in pre-Columbian art is difficult to ascertain because of the variables involved. The ethnographic literature informs us that the soul capturer is the shaman or one of his or her spirit agents. Any composition portraying soul capture should have a figure identifiable as a shaman or a shaman’s agent. The composition must also include an element or icon identifiable as the captured soul. A clue to identifying the element that represents the captured soul may lie in the Jivaro ethnographic database. Among the Jivaro, one of the purposes of head taking and head shrinking is to capture the muisak or ‘‘avenging soul’’ of an enemy (Harner 1984, 145). The muisak is thus contained, and for a time at least, is imprisoned within the trophy head. Within the context of indigenous concepts of soul presented above, this would imply that the lower animistic entity had been prevented from leaving the body along with the higher animistic entity. Because a prime exit from the body is through the crown of the head, the implication would be that this passageway had been blocked in the course of the capture and before the decapitation had taken place, thereby preventing the lower animistic entity from leaving the head. The pre-Columbian art of Coastal Peru contains many compositions depicting powerful shamanic personages holding trophy heads. In the art of Sipan, a manifestation of Moche culture, such a personage is known as the decapitator. The decapitator characteristically has a fearsome open mouth with large felinelike fangs (a were-jaguar shaman?) and holds a head in one hand and a large tumi knife in the other. Another Moche theme that may reflect a concept analogous to that of Aztec rulers increasing their tonalli by absorbing the tonalli of sacrificed victims, is the Moche sacrifice ceremony epitomized by a line drawing on a Moche ceramic vessel (Donnan,

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1976, 160–161). The scene consists of a powerful central figure, with what appear to be serpentine tingunas emanating from his head, being offered cups of blood obtained from sacrificed prisoners. The cup bearer is an anthropomorphic winged personage. The iconography suggests that the central figure is either a powerful ruler or shaman (perhaps shaman-priest or even shaman-ruler) in the act of ingesting the vital force of the sacrificed victims by drinking their blood. The winged humans are likely shamanic auxiliaries—that is, subordinate shaman assistants. Flying anthropomorphs clutching trophy heads or spiritized figures are common in the pre-Columbian graphic art of South Coast Peru. Such forms are usually identified as mythic creatures in the literature. Like the Moche ‘‘decapitator,’’ they often have a knife in one hand and a head or spirit form in the other. The artists seem to equate the head and the spirit form, and to have the head is to have control over the spirit form. The two are artistically and contextually connected. The decapitators, moreover, are usually rendered in profile, with bodies and legs positioned horizontally to give the appearance of flying. Given the associations in the ethnographic literature between trophy heads, blood, and indigenous concepts of soul, I suggest that they represent shamans in flight in the act of soul capture. Figures 4.32a–b are an example of one of these profile figures. This example is from the Nazca culture of the South Coast of Peru. The figure’s head is human but the body is long and serpentine in nature and terminates in the form of a bird. A closer look at the serpentine body, however, reveals that the body is filled from one end to the other with schematized anthropomorphic spirit figures that apparently have been ingested or consumed by the central figure. The implication is that the power of the central figure is derived from the spirits he or she has ingested. Conclusion What is the relevance of indigenous concepts of soul to an understanding of native concepts of consciousness? To begin, the model of consciousness that emerges from a study of pre-Columbian art and the contemporary ethnographies is inferred from and implied in the data, rather than stated or defined. The study only allows for a preliminary reconstruction of the native perspectives pertaining to concepts of consciousness. Nonetheless, certain salient features can be discerned. The Native American paradigm identifies the higher animistic entity as the experiencer of consciousness. It rejects the view that consciousness is an epiphenomenon of purely material processes. Although the higher animistic entity normally functions through the physical body and subtle body, it ultimately has an existence independent of either. In this respect, the model also distinguishes the consciousness of an ordinary individual from that of a trained adept; that of the former is conditioned, that of the latter can be intentionally enhanced or modified.

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Figures 4.32a–b Whether the personage portrayed on this jar is a shaman in transformation or a personage taken from the shamanic mindscape of prehistoric Peru, is unclear. The iconography, however, suggests a shaman in transformation. The figure’s head and face are essentially human. The body is serpentine and terminates in a bird form. All of these elements can be seen incorporated in shamanic figures from other pre-Columbian regions. Moreover, a close examination of the body (see figure 4.32b) reveals that a series of spirit forms with heads have been ingested and run through the center and length of the central figure’s body. This would suggest that the central figure has captured and incorporated these spirits into his being and that they may be a source of his power (polychrome pottery, Nazca culture, South Coast Peru, c. 100–600. Bowers Museum of Cultural Art Collection 88.50.1).

Ordinary consciousness is affected by physical law, the physical and subtle forms, as well as culture. Relative to the conditioned individual, the adept is characterized by increased control, enhanced powers, and freedom of movement within the realms of the shamanic cosmos. The ordinary individual experiences a world of fixed consciousness localized in the physical space occupied by the body. The adept is not only capable of altering the operational mode of consciousness; his or her consciousness moves freely within the field of reality. The common person’s identity is derived from his or her identification with the physical form and from the functions and positions allotted to a person by culture and society. The adept’s identity is largely with life itself as process and destiny. Form

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has only relative significance, as a functional mask adopted as adaptation to environment. Lacking fixed intrinsic significance, it is viewed as a tool, a mere vehicle of phenomenal expression. In this scheme, there are no hierarchies of forms, merely formal functions in the integrated fabric of life. In conformity with the Buddhist view, the indigenous American model of consciousness acknowledges that the phenomenal aspects of consciousness result from the interplay of phenomenal forces—that is, they are the product of conditioned coproduction. In this view, sense consciousness—such as vision or hearing—is conditioned by and dependent on sensory stimuli and sensory receptors. Unlike Buddhism, however, the indigenous model does not deny the existence of an individual soul, only the view that this soul is independent of the rest of reality. Although none of the indigenous beliefs can be ontologically demonstrated at present, the fact that such beliefs persisted for thousands of years, as is demonstrated by the pre-Columbian art, and the fact that the claims made in the Americas are supported by similar claims made by indigenous practitioners in cultures worldwide, argue against the proposition that such claims are merely personal fantasies engendered by hallucination. The interpretations given above constitute working hypotheses that can be applied against the ethnographic and pre-Columbian data. The value of any hypothesis lies in its ability to order the data in meaningful ways and explain problems posed by the data. The study underscores the need for additional ethnographic work on extant indigenous cultures that focuses specifically on collecting data on indigenous concepts of soul and native esoterica. This requires the development of a well-designed research model and the identification of indigenous informants, willing and qualified to comment on the esoterica of their group. Note I would like to thank Peter Keller (President) and Vickie Byrd (CAO) of the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art for supporting this research; Alice Bryant (Collections Manager) and Jennifer Manuel (Assistant Collections Manager) for the preparation of artworks for study and photography; and Jennifer Miller for administrative assistance. My thanks to Eric Beltz (graphics), Thor J. Mednick (textual reading, commentary, and suggestions), and to Helmut Wautischer, for patience and forebearance. References Chagnon, Napoleon A. (1968), Yanomamo¨: The Fierce People, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

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Cole, Herbert M., and Chike C. Amiakor (1984), Igbo Arts: Community and Cosmos, Los Angeles, CA: University of California. Donnan, Christopher B. (1978), Moche Art of Peru, Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. ——— (1992), Ceramics of Ancient Peru, Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Donnan, Christopher B., and Walter Alva (1993), Royal Tombs of Sipan, Los Angeles, CA: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, UCLA. Furst, Peter T. (1965), ‘‘West Mexican Tomb Sculpture as Evidence for Shamanism in Prehispanic Mesoamerica,’’ Anthropologica, Vol. 15, pp. 29–80. ——— (1995), ‘‘Shamanism, Transformation, and Olmec Art,’’ in Jill Guthrie, ed., The Olmec World Ritual and Rulership, pp. 69–82, Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ——— (1998), ‘‘Shamanic Symbolism, Transformation, and Deities in West Mexican Funerary Art,’’ in Richard F. Townsend, ed., Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past, pp. 169–190, Chicago, IL: The Art Institute of Chicago. Goelet, Ogden (1998), ‘‘A Commentary on The Corpus of Literature and Tradition Which Constitutes The Book of Going Forth by Day,’’ in Eva Von Dossow, ed., The Book of Going Forth by Day, San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. Graham, Mark Miller (1998), ‘‘The Iconography of Rulership in Ancient West Mexico,’’ in Richard F. Townsend, ed., Ancient West Mexico: Art And Archaeology of the Unknown Past, pp. 191–203, Chicago, IL: The Art Institute of Chicago. Harner, Michael J. (1984), The Jı´varo: People of the Sacred Waterfalls, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Henderson, Richard (1972), The King in Every Man, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Hultkrantz, A˚ke (1953), Conceptions of the Soul among North American Indians, Monograph Series 1, The Ethnographical Museum of Sweden, Stockholm. ——— (1980), The Religions of the American Indians, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1997), Soul and Native Americans, Woodstock: Spring Publications. Labbe´, Armand J. (1982), Man and Cosmos in Prehispanic Mesoamerica, Santa Ana, CA: Bowers Museum Foundation Press. ——— (1986), Colombia Before Columbus: The People, Culture, and Ceramic Art of Prehispanic Colombia, New York, NY: Rizzoli International. ——— (1995), Guardians of the Life Stream: Shamans, Art and Power in Prehispanic Central Panama´, Santa Ana, CA: Cultural Arts Press.

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——— (1998), Shamans, Gods, and Mythic Beasts: Colombian Gold and Ceramics in Antiquity, New York and Seattle: The American Federation of Arts and the University of Washington Press. Lo´pez Austin, Alfredo (1988), The Human Body and Ideology: Concepts of the Ancient Nahuas, Vols. I and II, Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press. Luna, Luis Eduardo (1991), Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman, Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books. McDowell, John Holmes (1989), Sayings of the Ancestors: The Spiritual Life of the Sibundoy Indians, Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. Miller, Rebecca Stone (1996), Art of the Andes from Chavin to Inca, New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. ¨ ller, F. Max ed. and trans. (1962), The Upanishads, New York, NY: Dover Publications. Mu Nikhilananda, Swami, ed. and trans. (1963), The Upanishads, London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. O’Connor, Mallory McCane (1995), Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida. Ortiz de Montellano, Bernard R. (1990), Aztec Medicine, Health, and Nutrition, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Radhakrishnan, S., ed. and trans. (1996), The Principal Upanishads, New Delhi: Indus. Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerardo (1971), Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——— (1975), The Shaman and the Jaguar, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. ——— (1988), Goldwork and Shamanism: An Iconographic Study of the Gold Museum, Medellin: Banco de la Republica. ´ ngel ˜ a, 4 vols., A Sahagu´n, Fray Bernardino de (1956), Historia general de las cosas de la Nueva Espan Marı´a Garibay K., ed., Mexico Gity: Editorial Porru´a. Veith, Ilza (1984), The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Von Winning, Hasso (1974), ‘‘The Shaft Tomb Figures of West Mexico,’’ Southwest Museum Papers, No. 24, Los Angeles, CA: Southwest Museum. Wilbert, Johannes (1987), Tobacco and Shamanism in South America, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wilkinson, Richard H. (1992), Reading Egyptian Art: A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture, London: Thames and Hudson.

5

Why One Is Not Another: The Brain-Mind Problem in Byzantine

Culture Antoine Courban

Abstract Stimulated by my studies on the human body as an anatomist, and because of my deep concern about critical anthropological matters like ‘‘consciousness’’ and the relations inside the binomial entity ‘‘soma-psyche´’’ (brain-mind, body-soul, flesh-spirit), I have chosen my subject for this chapter as it is widely discussed in the history of ideas, an academic field sometimes called culturology. I have always been puzzled by the divorce between medicine and philosophy that, according to Celsius, occurred at the time of Hippocrates of Cos. Anthropological dualism is indeed the very heart and the major issue of such reflection. Philosophy and medicine separated, although incompletely, about the problem known as ‘‘the disease of the soul’’ (Gk: psyche´ (cuwh`), cool breath of life; menos (me´nov), pneuma, also with the meaning ‘‘passion’’). For multiple historical reasons, passions were excluded from consideration in ancient scientific medicine and captured by philosophy. Later on, due to the influence of Stoic thought on the new Christian religion, dualism passed into the patrimony of religious sensitivity, where it can still be traced in the traditions of Eastern Orthodoxy, more precisely those concerning monastic life and writings. My aim in this chapter is to narrate this story and to highlight some key changes in the anthropological dualistic paradigm of late antiquity, which have allowed the emergence of a less radical and more monistic one in the Byzantine culture. My approach is transdisciplinary. I will mainly, although not exclusively, focus on the intermediary era going from the death of Galen (c. 131–c. 201) until the time of Maximus of Chrysopolis (c. 580–662, also known as Maximus of Constantinople or Maximus the Confessor). This era is erroneously thought to be the realm of theology and religious history, when in fact it has also been an essential breaking point in the history of ideas, especially with regard to the self-image of human beings. Many scholars consider Maximus the most important and most specific ‘‘Byzantine’’ thinker: the one who shaped a Byzantine Weltanschauung that still shapes the ideas and imagination of a large number of people belonging to, or influenced by, the cultural ‘‘Dower of Byzantium.’’ I will first attempt to give a definition of what could be called so, and later explore ‘‘what, if anything, is Byzantine,’’ as Clifton Fox (1996) asks. By discussing the historical evolution of anthropological ideas between late antiquity and the early Byzantine era, I will highlight the emergence of some significant nondualistic concepts, from whose study one may recognize a nonmonistic quality of

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the supposed ‘‘monism’’ as it is embraced by current mainstream cognitive science and neuroscience. The Byzantine concepts involved may appear fairly familiar in the modern Anglo-American debate of brain-mind issues. This contemporary debate highlights some rather Platonic notions of mind-brain relationships that are conceived as being the actual operation of efficient causality—in other words, as if actions only came from the brain. Instead, I will try to present a modern account of that Byzantine-specific Weltanschauung, one that looks like Alice’s ‘‘other side of the mirror.’’ In this case, much remains unfamiliar and puzzling to those who are on ‘‘this’’ side. I wish to let the reader better understand the cultural background for the triumph of contemporary academic dualism, widely believed to be a monism. This triumph is a result of the split between medicine and philosophy, which led to the elimination of passions from the medical sciences and their capture by philosophy, principally the Stoa. It also resulted from the partition between diseases of the body and diseases of the soul, which led to a certain globalization of the monism-playing dualism. To this purpose, my discussion will elaborate in passing on the developments of some issues at stake throughout the history of the Eastern Roman Empire (313–1453), which we call, rather erroneously, the Byzantine Empire.

The Byzantine Empire By modern convention, we call the Byzantine Empire a political entity that once dominated the whole Mediterranean world after the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great had adopted Christianity and decided, in 313, to transfer his capital from Rome to the ancient city of Byzantium, on the Bosphorus. The new capital was officially inaugurated in 330 under the name of New Rome, the city of Constantine, or Constantinople. In 1204 it was captured and looted by the crusaders, who established a Latin empire until the ‘‘Byzantines’’ expelled them in 1261 and restored their previous empire. In 1453, this political entity ceased to exist after being conquered by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II. Nevertheless the city, today known as Istanbul, remained the capital of an immense empire ruled by the Ottomans until the end of World War I and the dismantling of the old European universal empires. Short History of a Misunderstanding The political role as well as the specific cultural influence of such a long historical period is not sufficiently understood by the modern educated public. Byzantium is regretfully a victim of historiography. Lasting for eleven centuries and rich in its cultural heritage, Byzantine civilization has been denigrated and pejoratively judged. The term itself was used and popularized by French scholars of the eighteenth century. Montesquieu (1689–1755), for example, worshiped immensely the ancient Greeks and Romans and refused to give such noble names to the empire in Constantinople. He preferred to call it ‘‘Byzantine’’ after the city’s ancient name, and inaugurated the traditional commonplace of speaking about this historical era with the moral preju-

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dice of corruption, cruelty, and decadence. The British scholar Edward Gibbon produced an account of the empire’s history where he covered the entire Byzantine era. The title of his work, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, conveys a significant misunderstanding. Urbs Romana and Romanitas The citizens of this empire never realized, from 330 until 1453, that they were Byzantine. They knew themselves as Romans (romaioı¨ in Greek; rum in Turkish; rumi in Arabic) and apparently took pride in their culture. They lived in different provinces of the Imperium Romanorum (Basileia Romaion); their homeland was their Patria, in the modern sense of the word. Their land was known to be the Domain of the Romans, or The Romania. Contemporary Arab chronicles called it Bilad al Rum (the Roman Lands) and sometimes merely Rum (Rome). In the Chinese chronicles of that time, Rum is known as Ta-Tsin: the concept conveyed by this term is that of the final stage and destination of what we call today the Silk Road. It should be noted that in the Roman East, or Pars Orientalis, a cultural or sociological hiatus with late antiquity never occurred. It instead happened in the Roman West, or Pars Occidentalis, due to the barbaric invasions and the ages that followed in Western Europe. In the Pars Orientalis, things went on as usual, after Emperor Caracalla, in 212, granted Roman citizenship to all his subjects, or more precisely to all free persons living in the empire. The Dower of Byzantium Regardless of its pejorative and erroneous usage, the term Byzantine nonetheless is helpful, for it identifies and categorizes specific realities that Franc¸ois Thual (2004) pertinently calls ‘‘The dower of Byzantium.’’ We may recognize three levels to this dower, and different boundaries and contents to each of them. Politics Historically, Byzantium flourished in the same era (330–1453) that found most of Western Europe ensnared with poverty and violence. It was the economic hub of the Mediterranean world, and stood at the political and cultural heart of Europe. It was Roman/Latin in its institutions and its management methods, Hellenistic/ Greek in its culture, and Semitic/Judeo-Christian in its religion; this epitomizes the specificity of Byzantium. In other words, we have here an interesting historical combination of Latin legalism, Hellenic intellectualism, and Semitic realism. Religion Byzantine civilization contributed strongly to the development of Christianity and its philosophy. Some of its heritage is shared, to a large extent, by all Christian denominations. This is true, as will be seen, concerning some issues related to the anthropological basis of this religious system. Since the separation that occurred in 1054 between Eastern and Western churches, the Byzantine religious patrimony is mainly

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the realm of Eastern Orthodox people in Central and Eastern Europe, in the Middle East, the Caucasus, and far beyond, where different orthodox Diasporas live. Although deeply related, Orthodoxy and Byzantium can neither be interpolated nor confused. The whole of Orthodoxy is not all of Byzantium and vice versa. Culture This topic is of the utmost importance for this chapter, and I will remain on this specific level for the entire discussion. As I have mentioned above, the heart of this realm includes the self-assessment of its people, in Eastern Europe including Russia, in the eastern Mediterranean, or generally belonging to Eastern Christianity of multiple jurisdictions, either Orthodox or Catholic, but certainly non-Latin and nonderived from the movements of Reformation. This cultural dower expands also into Western Europe. The development of Eastern and Western Europe diverged due to cultural misunderstanding, and mainly on issues that I will address later. Nevertheless, Byzantium contributed in shaping the Western imagination. It elaborated numerous figurative models of European art, and crucial concepts of Western civilization, like ‘‘the human person,’’ or the relations between reality and the modalities for its reproduction into paintings. Louis Brehier (1970, 479) observes that the whole Western erudition remains indebted to the immense achievements in philology accomplished by Byzantine scholars. In some way, Byzantium can be considered the missing or forgotten link of Western cultural identity. At the same time, right at its oriental flank, Byzantium transmitted its culture to the Arab-Islamic culture. In many of its features, this latter is, more or less, Byzantine. This correlation is noteworthy for the history of science and the history of ideas. For example, medical concepts and also practical or institutional models of Arabic medicine are Byzantine to a large extent, even though some of their own achievements surpassed these roots. Representative Byzantine and Arab physicians and scholars, like the desert father, Abba Macarius of Egypt (c. 301–c. 390), Ibn Bajja (Avempace: 1090–1139), or Gregory Palamas (1296–1359), share roughly a similar nondualistic anthropology. Yet some prominent Arab thinkers like Ibn-Sina (Avicenna: 980–1037) or Abu’l Walid Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd Al-Qurtubi (Averroes: 1126–1198)—who planted some of the seeds of the European Renaissance—remain closer to antiquity’s dualistic ideas than to the Western Scholastic culture of the Middle Ages. A Corporeal Mental Profile Throughout the Mediterranean, Eastern and Western minds remain very close to each other. They have the same roots, share a common patrimony, and use the same symbols. Yet they remain different, which does not mean that they are contradictory or mutually exclusive. They are rather complementary. The Scholastic era, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment gave the Western mind its specific features, while Byzantine culture did not go through the medieval academic turbulence of nominalism

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versus realism, known as the ‘‘quarrel about universals,’’ and it was also not influenced by Cartesian dualism. The Byzantine mind operates not in modo geometrico but rather through images.1 It is, mutatis mutandis, a craft of picture making. Its mental contents, its gnoseological objects, are preferably iconic—that is, meaningful images. In short, such a mind endeavors not to be polarized or torn between two different categories of the same reality, like form and substance. It does not systematically operate through dual oppositions: it prefers the bipolarity of both ‘‘A and B’’ to the radically polarized ‘‘A or B.’’ Therefore, it remains on a more global level. In every aspect of its cultural and political life, Byzantium tried to keep this intermediary way. Heated debates lasted for centuries all around the Byzantine dower to address critical issues about the constitutive unity of soma-psyche´ (brain-mind, body-soul, flesh-spirit) and its operative modalities, although the debate took place predominantly in a religious domain. Nevertheless, three main anthropological points were identified and vigorously discussed: person, face, and will. The apparent realism of this culture leads a modern Russian scholar, Oleg Klimkov (2001), to call it ‘‘Christian materialism.’’ This peculiar materialism is most likely the best hidden but forgotten secret of Byzantium. Antiquity’s Paradigm: Dualism Deeply influenced by the debates in modern dualism about substances, we seem unwilling to conceive of the human individual as a finite (and as such, not selfsustaining) spatiotemporal or psychophysical unity. A person is seen as an accidental juxtaposition of a passive material extended substance (res extensa) and a subtle cognitive immaterial one (res cogitans). The most difficult task seems to be to determine how and why the ghost (namely, the soul) gets into the machine (the body). It is the merit of the Anglo-American cognitive neurosciences to move away from such an uncomfortable position. Their apparent anthropological monism focuses attention on the material or physical pole of this binomial problem. Matter is understood today as an agglomerate of small parts or particles, or as network of their structures. Such small particles, either wave-particles or chords, are not understood as massive objects, and can hardly be considered as material, like for example, some hard stones. The cognitive and intellectual faculties are said to be dynamic processes and functional properties of such an agency. Such a position, however, differs from other academic traditions of modern neuroscience, and also from the monistic position elaborated in Byzantium as a solution to anthropological dualism. Body-Soul: The Unsolved Problem Celsius tells us that Hippocrates, in the fourth century B.C., separated medicine and philosophy. Until the Hippocratic book On Sacred Disease, medicine was holistic and reflected a rather monistic anthropology. Subsequently, ‘‘the partition between

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somatic and psychological diseases, the triumph of dualism and the emergence of the Stoic theory on passions as soul’s diseases are major events’’2 of our civilization deeply rooted in the Mediterranean world. Already at the time of Alcmeon of Crotona (c. 520– c. 450 B.C.), remarking on the importance of the brain in nervous and mental functions as well as the permanent and extreme mobility of the soul (named from aio´los, Eolos, personified wind; cf., e.g., ‘‘aeolian energy’’) was commonplace. Antiquity, too, reflected Plato’s dichotomy between the intelligible and the sensible worlds. Such ontological duality was both intellectually conceived and ethically perceived. Moral judgment is the heart of dualism: the split arises as matter is seen as less valuable than spirit. It is sometimes seen as bad and even demonized. According to such ideas, the body is the soul’s prison. Therefore, the soul exists prior to its corporeal envelope and is embodied or incorporated because of some dysfunction, error, or guilt. It was accepted that the soul ‘‘falls’’ into its miserable prison. The soul’s permanent mobility revealed its desire for liberation. Aristotle’s De Anima shaped scholarly opinions about body-soul relations, when the Greek master formulated a criterion that allowed one to discover whether or not the human soul is separable from the body. He states that ‘‘if the soul performs any activity totally independent of the body, then its substance too must be separable from any corporeal reality.’’3 This statement centers on Aristotle’s concept of substance; it has traveled throughout Western culture, and can be considered the oldest formulation of what is called today the brain-mind problem, or in its more general framework, the ‘‘ontology of consciousness.’’ Influenced by Semitic realism, Byzantine culture kept a suspicious distance from the notion of substance, which is a central idea in any dualistic anthropology. From Chaos to Human The cultural scene at the end of antiquity, when a new religion emerged in the Mediterranean world and a new capital of the Roman Empire was founded, was dominated by Hellenic views about reality that reflected the assumed dichotomy between sensible and intelligible worlds. Within the universe, all beings are said to exist either at random or by necessity. Regular behavior of nature ( physis) as well as the incomprehensible arbitrariness of chance (ty´che¯) are both immanent in reality. They are the pillars of natural causality that dominates and submits to its absolute and indisputable power all that exist: gods and humans, animals and things. The French scholar Adolphe Gesche (1993) interprets both physis and ty´che¯ as ruling and steering the emergence ( ge´nesis) of reality. They do not procreate reality from nothingness. Instead, they pull it from the unbegotten primitive chaos ( pro´ton cha´os) according to an inner need, an immanent mechanism of pure and ‘‘blind necessity’’ (ana´nche), ‘‘without any intervention of an intelligence, a god, or a craft (te´chne).’’4

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Technical causality remains accidental, conventional, and artificial. Commonly seen on an inferior level under natural causality (physis, ty´che¯, ana´nche), craft (te´chne) can only consist in an imitative and artificial repetition (mı´mesis) of less value than natural ana´nche. Whatever humans may do, we are always governed by such a necessity or fatum, in which we are totally immersed. Human nature and freedom are not symmetrical in meaning. Only in the ethical and political realms are humans able to attain some degree of culture-expressing freedom. We must snatch this freedom from the gods in a titanic and Promethean project where, in a constant eddy of guilt, we risk falling into hybris or immoderate excess. In this case, a terrible ne´mesis provokes the raging of natural forces against us. A Cosmic Soul On this basic theme, different theories were developed. For the Stoic philosophy of late antiquity, physis/nature was progressively assimilated to the soul of the universe (anima mundi), the pneuma of a macrocosm conceived as some huge organism. The fundamental unity of this cosmic entity is reflected in a permanent regularity, an immanent law, a lo´gos spermatiko´s that rules the entire reality and predetermines the whole course of its events. This is destiny (fatum). It contains all the seeds of individual fates, the lo´goi spermatikoı` that will precisely fulfill the function of Plato’s intelligible Ideas. This theory was later to please Augustine (354–430), who with the utmost respect translated lo´goi spermatikoı` as rationes seminales (seminal reasons). Created by God all at once, they are to appear in due season, each when its appropriate time (kairo´s) comes in the way that God had ordained. As a distant echo of these Augustinian ideas, Bonaventure (1221–1274) and Malebranche (1638–1715) later professed that, since creation was completed in its first instant, nothing new will ever appear independently of that creative act. Puzzling Unity of the Binomial Soma-Psyche´ Besides providing their reflections on cosmology, the Greeks developed important views concerning mental faculties. Chiefly in the Platonic line of thought, intellect was frequently understood as being passive and its development was perceived as the successive contemplative discovering of preexisting intellectual relationships. Although conflicting with the concept of free will, this nonactivity pervaded the most general academic view of intellect. In the twentieth century, Jean Piaget (1896–1980) in Europe and, on a more local level, Christfried Jakob (1866–1956) in South America broke with this scholarly tradition. Aristotle understood psyche´ (incorrectly translated as ‘‘the soul’’ in the Jewish-Christian meaning) as the form of a substance that preexists in Plato’s intelligible world, prior to its incorporation or descent into a somatic envelope, the physical body. During this embodiment process, the rational soul and its three

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faculties (imagination, reason, memory) are completed by the irrational soul (sensation, desire, temper). Two major conceptions primarily explained the origin of the individual soul. For the Stoics it was a spark of the anima mundi, while for the NeoPlatonists it was an emanation of an original consolidating unity, some godhead or divine principle (he´nad). The relation of the mind to ‘‘mental mass’’ is similar, differing mainly in the interpretation of the latter. Thus, a human being remains a microcosm, a reproduction on a lesser scale of the macrocosm. The anthropology of late antiquity was therefore rigorously dualistic, with mind conceived of as a spark or an emanation of what is not itself the body. These ideas were shared with variations by prominent scholars such as Posidonius of Apamea (c. 135–50 B.C.), Cicero (106–43 B.C.), the great physician and philosopher Galen of Pergamon (c. 131–c. 201), and Plotinus (c. 203– 270), and were later to permeate the Kaballah, a central body of scholarship incorporating the teachings of many contemporary followers of this tradition. The ‘‘unity’’ in this scenario created several notorious puzzles, primarily concerning memories and the possibility of their inscription on some material support. Ever since Plato, explanations of episodic memories have required some nonmental material support, now called engrams. As a matter of fact such support has never been found. The modern views concerning mental development have made it hardly plausible that the recovery from amnesia, for example, could depend on the possible restitution of such old, erased cerebral traces. During late antiquity, the unity and coherence of the binomial entity soma-psyche´ is addressed with many theories that consider the individual pneuma as some unifying principle. In fact, considering the body and all its components as a tool for the soul, Galen understood pneuma to be the soul’s first organ ( pro´ton o´rganon), a view that in itself is compatible with dualism as well as with the nonreductive, genuine monism found in some current developments of neurobiology (e.g., Jacob’s tradition discussed in chapters 11 and 12). In the West the dualist concepts dominated anthropology. In contrast, the Byzantine culture developed a striking divergence between monism and dualism. On the Other Side of the Mirror When Christian thought spread throughout the Roman Empire, this new religion soon confronted the cultural environment of Hellenism. A scholarly work by Jaroslav Pelikan (1993, 368) shows how the momentous encounter between Christian thought and Greek philosophy reached a high point in fourth-century Byzantium, where the principal actors were four Greek-speaking scholars, the so-called Cappadocian Fathers or simply the Cappadocians.5 Due to their immense achievements, Christianity was able to acquire some of the Hellenistic cultural heritage of antiquity in a selective manner. The impact of major new concepts, as they were introduced by Semitic culture, had such a deep cultural influence that Byzantine society denigrated the term Hellenes

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(i.e., Greeks) to qualify what it called the ‘‘ancient errors’’ and, as I mentioned earlier, used for itself exclusively the name ‘‘Romans.’’ It is unfortunate that the controversies of that time are rarely familiar to the educated public of today. The Central Issue: Human Freedom For centuries, scholars as well as political and religious authorities quarreled on religious grounds about the person of Jesus of Nazareth, understood as a dual humandivine composite. In the background of these debates stand anthropological issues of the utmost importance, such as the place of humans in the universe and in relation to nature, the status of corporeality, the brain-mind connection or soma-psyche´ link, and the steady constitutive coherence of each individual human being despite the duality and heterogeneity of his or her ontological structure. The most critical of these issues is indeed the ability of the human mind to judge and decide; this is the reality of human individual freedom and, ultimately, human normative responsibility. It is puzzling to notice how religious controversies about christology took place during centuries in Byzantium within an atmosphere of extreme violence, sometimes civil wars and bloodshed. But when the outcome of a controversy is the constitutive freedom of human beings, no one would be surprised to see the active role that any political power might play in the context of this quarrel. Such a feature may not be ignored in the context of neuroscience, especially for the assessment of its presumably neutral results. Michel Foucault (1975) has ably reminded us that coercive power is being exerted mainly over the corporeality of human beings, their bodies. In other words, anthropology is also a major political statement, regardless of whether the human image is philosophically conceived or scientifically built. Byzantium’s history and its so-called Byzantine quarrels paradoxically illustrate this situation. Semitic Realism and the Reversal of Anthropology Reflecting on the conceptual innovations introduced by Semitic culture, one would immediately think about the advent of monotheism. However, the idea of a single and unique god was not foreign to the Hellenic mind. The real cultural innovation concerned two topics: humankind and reality. Due to the Judeo-Christian influence on Greek culture, the idea of substance and the idea of necessity were progressively revisited and new meanings were given to them. The Semitic cultural contribution introduced a trichotomic or tripolar anthropological conception. There are three polarities in humans: body/flesh (baˆsaˆr), soul/psyche´ (nephesh), and spirit (ru´ah). For a Semitic mind, there can hardly be a distinction between these three topics, and the Bible’s anthropology may look rather ambiguous or lacking in rigorous differentiations. The Semitic concept of soul (nephesh) denotes all that has life and breathes. The word is applied to humans and animals alike, either collectively or with distinctions. It has become a central topic that allows one to distinguish between the living and the dead,

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though it was not developed in order to distinguish between two specific living entities, ‘‘one’’ and ‘‘another.’’ Yet nephesh is not seen, in an Aristotelian way, as a form of some substance, and its Semitic meaning was soon to split into the Greek psyche´. For the Semitic mind, nephesh/psyche´ also refers to ‘‘selfness’’ or ‘‘sameness,’’ always positively conceived, that is, whose nonalterity or nonotherness is taken for granted from the very fact of its existence. For example, in Arabic—a cousin of Hebrew—psyche´ ). This word is used to speak about the deepest and most subconnotes al nafs (Ar. jective aspects of one’s individuality. The modern Arabic expression ana nafsi (Ar. ) translates into ‘‘me myself,’’ but its precise transliteration is ‘‘me-my-soul,’’ where ‘‘soul’’ is the most accurate reference for a specific living individual. Unbreakable Wholeness of the Human Being The Hebrew tradition did not understand humans other than in terms of an unbreakable wholeness, a global and yet specific individuality. A holistic unity of body, soul, and spirit always refers to a person. This unity is ‘‘his’’ or ‘‘her’’ baˆsaˆr-nephesh-ru´ah, one single subject that is expressed alike in the terms of soul and spirit. ‘‘Yet, these terms are not exact synonyms. Neither, however, can one infer a dualism between some higher self and lower self from the use of the terms’’ (Anderson 1982, 208). In this view, the constitution of a person as soul and body is hardly understood without the foundation of ru´ah. But the influence of dualism was too strong and the tripolar Semitic conception led to a controversy between trichotomists and dichotomists, both influenced by the Hellenic dualistic tradition. Dichotomists view humans as consisting of two different substances enigmatically linked: a body and a soul-spirit. Trichotomists view also humans as involving a juxtaposition of different substances uneasily joined together: a soma-psyche´ and a spirit. Appolinaris of Laodicea,6 in the fourth century, understood the soul as being the intermediary between body and spirit, thus playing the role of the Stoic pneuma as a principle of unity and coherence. Problems emerged because the concepts (body, soul, spirit) became determinative of ontology, so that the ‘‘being’’ of the human person was expected to be derived from analytic reasoning. Sooner or later, and due to heated debates about the unity, in Jesus of Nazareth, of divine and human nature, a new concept emerged, the ‘‘hypostatic union.’’ We will encounter hypostasis further below, in the meaning that one cannot separate the divinity and the humanity of this person into different ‘‘compartments.’’ In any case, radical ‘‘trichotomism’’ had been rejected at a church meeting held in Constantinople in the middle of the sixth century. It took a long time to establish a clear distinction between ‘‘duality’’ of being, where a modality of differentiation is constituted as a fundamental unity, and ‘‘dualism’’ that essentially works against such unity. As Emil Brunner (1939, 373) says perceptively, ‘‘Ontologically, man is a unity. Phenomenologically, mind and nature, and specially mind and body are to be clearly distinguished.’’

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This observation is addressed below in the section ‘‘A New Vision of Human Beings: Person and Face.’’ Crossing through the Mirror Common to Judaism and Christianity, although more specific to the latter, a new concept, ‘‘incarnation,’’ entered Hellenistic culture. Incarnation referred to Jesus of Nazareth, understood as a human and divine composite. The relations between the visible and the invisible were no longer seen as ruled by the classical ‘‘incorporation’’ process (embodiment) but rather by the event of ‘‘incarnation.’’ Matter no longer incorporates/ embodies the subtle soul/spirit, nor is it the spirit/soul that grasps the material flesh to take over a specific physical body. In common people, the soul was presumably created in relationship with a constant continuing parcel of nature, which in its biographical sequence adopts a variety of biological organizations. Given the special circumstance of Jesus (namely, his divine attributes), his presumed ontic kernel assumes a mindbody unity that already possesses mind-body relationships. In the context of such mind-body relationships, that ‘‘soul hunting’’ is now transformed into ‘‘flesh grasping’’ refers to the biological occurrence of a specific individual than to any different one. Souls were no longer ‘‘falling’’ into bodies but the exact opposite situation occurs: flesh/matter is now ‘‘ascending’’ toward the spirit. The direction of movement between the visible and the invisible is totally inverted. By assuming such a reversal, the cultural imagination of that time achieved something similar to Alice in Wonderland. It crossed to the other side of the mirror and undertook a new description of the world. There, the human being was understood as a ‘‘living soul’’ and a ‘‘psychic body’’ (‘‘empsyched’’ in Aristotle’s terminology), and not perceived as a pure subtle evanescent form, or an intelligible idea caught in some material prison like a ‘‘caged animal.’’ The body has now become the home of a free soul, and is no longer viewed as its jail. Similarly, conceptions of reality, nature, and humankind were also deeply transformed. Progressively, Mediterranean scholars built a new Weltanschauung that affected their culture until the Scholastic intervention of the thirteenth century, which allowed Western Europe to move in a new direction and reshape its cultural identity. This new framework deeply affected medical assumptions concerning the brain-mind problem and assumptions about the place of humans in the world. The Brain-Mind Problem and Byzantine Medicine The period during which anthropology was reformulated (from approximately the fourth to the seventh centuries) is known as the ‘‘patristic era.’’ Some of the scholars who introduced the new conceptions were religious thinkers and are referred to as the ‘‘church fathers’’ of Christianity, or simply the ‘‘fathers.’’ In a culture where nobody

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could have envisaged a separation between religion and civil society, many of these church fathers held high ecclesiastical offices. I should mention that these were educated men who mastered the classical culture of antiquity, and also its science, especially with regard to medicine. Some of them were physicians, like Nemesius of Emesa (floruit late in the fourth century), or they studied medicine, like Gregory of Nyssa (c. 340–394). Most of these scholars, if not all, based their arguments on medical science or medical practice. The brain-mind issue was a familiar and commonly discussed topic in medical literature. A modern reader would be surprised to notice the constant presence of philosophical considerations in Byzantine medical literature. This fact prefigured what Xavier Zubiri proclaimed: ‘‘Metaphysics that is not physical enough would cease to be what it is and converts to logic and phenomenology.’’7 The emergence of Christianity did not put an end to medical developments in Byzantium or later in the Islamic word. In addition to specific Christian philanthropy, the sociomedical outcome of the new anthropology and its focus on the psychophysical wholeness and selfness of a human being led to the creation, in the fourth century, of a health-care institution, the nosokomeion or hospital,8 where monks and nuns attended to the care of patients and physicians practiced healing. This formula proved successful throughout the empire, and beyond. Additional caretaking institutions were also implemented,9 with a deep influence on Arab-Islamic civilization.10 Medicine and Dualism Although creative and successful in its social dimension, Byzantine medicine did not improve medical science and research. It remained faithful to Galen and Hippocrates. In a way, we might say that it did not ‘‘cross through the mirror’’ and remained under the influence of Hellenic dualism. Most likely, it could not integrate the Semitic understanding of soul, because of its estrangement from philosophy, especially on the grounds of the soul’s disease. For example, I have always been puzzled by the distinction made between melancholia and acedia. Both terms refer to a depressive state, more or less severe and obscurely related to the body. For Byzantine as well as for Arab medicine, melancholia is a general term used to speak about mental illness. Acedia (Gk: akedia (akhdi´a), literally meaning ‘‘without care’’: the don’t-care feeling, sloth) is rather a specific medical term indicating what we now call thoracic pain due to gastroesophageal reflux, which might be avoided by standing upright or seated after meals instead of ‘‘not-caring’’ and lying down. This is the point, and here brain-mind relationships— or rather the outlook of the patient—become relevant. Preferring to lay down, not caring about the medical problem of reflux, is precisely what brings the thoracic pain about. Thus, Byzantine culture used acedia in spirituality to speak about one of the seven deadly or capital sins, often defined as spiritual laziness, putting off what God asks you to do, or not doing it at all because of blindness to the present good. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), in his Summa Theologica (II–II, 35), summarized the doctrine as

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being as much Christian as Rabbinic and Muslim, by calling acedia sadness in the face of some spiritual good one has to achieve. Thus, while melancholy was seen as a disease, a disturbance in the harmony of the Hippocratic bodily humors, acedia was considered more specific to the soul. Stoic philosophy had already elaborated on this topic, building a medical theory that understands such diseases of the soul as passions. The theory is in perfect harmony with Aristotle’s assertion that disease is a state of mobility while health is a quiet state.11 Medical care of the soul (cura animarum) was now delegated to religious circles. Still today, and especially in the Dower of Byzantium,12 monastic life is understood as a specific therapy for the soul’s mobility and diseases. The Anthropological Turning Point The transfer of authority for care of the soul from medicine to religion did not lessen the interest of Byzantine physicians and scholars in the brain-mind issue. They extensively discussed the nature of the soul, its relation to the Stoic pneuma and to body, as well as the localization of psychic or mental functions in the nervous system. Some of the church fathers opposed the discussion of these matters. Some scholars, such as Origen of Alexandria (c. 182–c. 253), accepted the preexistence of souls. The prominent Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 335–390) writes about ‘‘us who are captives of the earth . . . and clothed with the denseness of this flesh.’’13 An eloquent writer—and one of the most influential scholars in this field—was Nemesius (late fourth century), physician and bishop of Emesa,14 with his treatise De natura hominis. The entire third chapter is devoted to the union of body and soul. He accepted Galen’s anatomical and physiological ideas and localized the three aforementioned faculties of the soul in the three alleged known cerebral ventricles.15 Another physician, Posidonius, undertook experimental studies on the nervous system around 390 in order to localize mental functions.16 Apparently he did not succeed. The most significant figure in the scientific turning point was John Philoponus (c. 490–575),17 an eminent but little-known representative of Alexandria’s school. He discussed important brain-mind issues in his Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima (Verbeke 1985, 451–470). Commenting on the aforementioned famous Aristotelian causal criterion, ‘‘if the soul performs any activity totally independent of the body, then its substance, too, must be separable from any corporeal reality,’’ Philoponus answered the Master: ‘‘If the soul is incorporeal, the pneuma is so to speak its first home, but if it is corporeal it is identical with the pneuma.’’18 This was probably the most explicit turning point. It echoed Ephraim the Syrian (c. 306–c. 373), ‘‘see by experience that the soul only exists completely in the body.’’19 We arrive here at an issue of the utmost importance: the ‘‘soul/psyche´/ mind/nephesh/spirit/self’’ is inseparable from a physical body; it is unable to exist without a special relationship to its bodily structures. In other words, this culture understood the unity of human individuals, their deepest ‘‘self,’’ the essence of their identity, as a specific psychophysical finitude. This is probably what the human ontology

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of consciousness looked like when seen from the other side of the mirror. Centuries later, commenting on the influence of Gabriel Marcel in The Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty would declare: ‘‘I am my body.’’20 Such a modern statement, though insufficiently detailed, would have sounded very familiar and unexceptional to Byzantine scholars. A New Vision of Reality At the very heart of this emerging new Weltanschauung are key concepts that I will now address, primarily the Byzantine perspective on nature and causality. As for an ontology of humans, the core concept relates to person in its internal mode of union. Metamorphosis of the View of Nature: Ta` Pa´nta The history of ideas in late antiquity is, therefore, full of novel articulations. Even passing most of them up, here it is a must to make out the developments that changed key concepts such as nature, substance, causality, and especially person. A renovated idea of nature appeared in early patristic times. In its elaboration, the traditional word physis, which designated the world in a holistic way, gradually became inadequate to account for the new outlook on nature. Which technical word did replace the old name, physis? Byzantine authors of the period preferred to speak of ta` pa´nta or ‘‘AllThings.’’ With that expression, the emphasis shifted away from the uniformity of the world toward the multiplicity of what is or exists. The term nature or physis thus no longer denoted the inherent character of the world as a whole; instead it referred to a particular ousı´a or ‘‘substance.’’ Rather than using physis to designate a shared mode of being, the authors of the period were stressing that reality is made of many physei (Pelikan 1993, 81). Each component of reality and, a fortiori, every living being was therefore understood as constituted by a particular nature/substance. Yet these significant semantic changes did not bring agreement in interpretation. Heated theological quarrels shook the Byzantine world, particularly around the concepts of physis, ousı´a, and proso´pon. These quarrels left an imprint on the Mediterranean Orient that persists today. Mode of Union With the aim of providing the brain-mind problem with a satisfactory solution, especially in the context of debates surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, several general councils were convened to try to reach a consensus on the definition of a person. The most important of the councils was one held in Chalcedon in 451. While recognizing that any other human has a single specific nature, the council proclaimed the hypostatic union of Jesus of Nazareth as ‘‘two natures in a single person.’’ Apolinaris of Laodicea misunderstood this interpretation by failing to recognize that hypostatic union must not be

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understood as a union of soul and body. Rather, its correct interpretation is as a union of the divine nature with another component of human nature. The latter component, in turn, consists of both a body and a unique psyche´, which, through such a body, interacts with nature. Orders of Reality The most noteworthy aspect of this line of development is the growing distance from the Aristotelian concept of substance. Reality, globally seen, in this way is necessarily viewed as comprising a multiplicity of natures distributed on more than one order of presences: 1. The order of such a reality that is eternal—that is, without beginning or end. This order of reality is ascribed to the eternal Lo´gos. 2. The order of temporal reality, that of ta` pa´nta or All-Things. Inside of it, a reality of personal type and an impersonal reality may be distinguished. Each thing in this order of reality features a characteristic lo´gos. A number of quandaries, of course, originated in this exclusive attribution of the reality of personal type to the order of temporal reality. Through these conceptual tools it is also possible to grasp what other key ideas denote, such as co´smos and aitı´a (cause). The articulation of those tools was to generate a true revolution of concepts such as causality and personal reality. In fact, while natural causality used to be understood as equivalent to the idea of necessity—so that in contrast, the imaginative and resourceful technical causality was seen as accidental—the new worldview was to overturn this conception. Here, technical causality was set before natural causality (te´chne before ana´nche). It was understood that the eternal order of reality is that of technical causality, now seemingly more akin to the Lo´gos. Technical causality, therefore, came to be understood as the cause and foundation of All-Things. It becomes easy to understand why Byzantine culture, either secular or religious, always referred to the Lo´gos as the sole ruler of everything, or Pantocrator. Within All-Things, and inside every being or thing, the two types of causality (ana´nche and te´chne) exist in different degrees. This bipolarity of temporal reality implies a dynamic tension that may be termed becoming. Within temporal reality, namely, the reality that becomes, persons are individualities that manifest closest to poles of technical causality, made up of imagination, inventiveness, creativity, and especially will. This explains how freedom is constitutive to persons—although freedom, of course, is not unbound by its surrounding circumstances. A New Vision of Human Beings: Person and Face Undoubtedly, the concept of person has a long history of development. Its actual meaning seems so obvious to us, yet it took many centuries to conceptualize an acceptable

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understanding of the obvious. Inherited from Greco-Latin antiquity, it was first accepted by Christian culture, and then remodeled through different periods of secularization that are constitutive of Western European culture. Etymologically, the word persona belongs to the Roman legal realm and its theatrical practice of philosophy. It first designated, in a theater, the actor’s mask before acquiring the specific legal meaning that Cicero gives to it in his De officis. Many scholars establish a strict symmetry between the Latin persona and the Greek proso´pon, which may also refer to a mask worn by an actor playing a character on the stage. Yet, as Florence Dupont (2003, 39) observes, even though these terms refer to similar objects, they do not have the same meaning. Speaking about the Roman actor, she understands him via the theatrical persona, as being a faceless or featureless orator (orateur sans visage). The proso´pon is understood by Dominique Lecourt to hide the actor’s own face in order to substitute the features of the specific character portrayed. The Latin persona does not achieve the same substitution regarding personality features. It tends to be conceived instead as a megaphone—as suggested by its etymology, per-sonare. Regardless of the specific nature of the theatrical practices, the Latin mind preferred to reveal a specific behavior by hiding the actor’s features, thus unveiling a certain way of being of the character portrayed. The Greek mind was more concerned with the specific identity of that character. This is a crucial cultural difference between the two parts of the Mediterranean world. The Knowing Points: Hic and Ibi A specific identity is the starting point of being someone. It is a featured reality situated ‘‘here’’ (hic). From this ‘‘point’’—this ‘‘here’’—a specific individuality exists, can be known, and can acquire knowledge. This situated ‘‘point’’ (Goethe spoke of Mittelpunkt), which is an existential ‘‘here,’’ is related to, but not the same as, its space-time circumstance. In Byzantine culture, this source owing to which one is oneself, or endowing the nephesh with ‘‘selfness’’ or ‘‘sameness,’’ is always positive. Since the concrete nephesh under consideration is already existent, its nonalterity is taken for granted.21 Therefore, this same individuality is acknowledged as its own existence and not merely an echo, to be found anywhere ‘‘there’’ (ibi). In this regard, concerning a character’s identity, the Hellenic mind is mainly interested in ‘‘what it is’’ and ‘‘what it looks like,’’ whereas the Latin mind would focus more on ‘‘what it does.’’ This shading in meanings seems significant for understanding some of the differences between Eastern and Western perceptions and their respective comprehension of a given reality. According to Dupont,22 one might say that Atreus’ persona (mask), iratus Atreus, is not the specific proso´pon (face) of a furious and angry man named Atreus, but rather the very features of a general behavior called anger (ira). Even though the proso´pon, or face, is not the whole of a personal reality, it nevertheless both discloses and hides

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that same reality, which is the essence of the human being. As Lecourt shows, the Roman jurists used the word persona in a general or universal way. The term did not refer to a specific individual but rather was useful to legally attribute to that person a social part in the civil codex they invented. This is apparently why until the modern era, a person and an individual were not, lexically speaking, the same thing. It is interesting to quote Boetius’ (sixth century) definition of a person as ‘‘individual substance of rational nature.’’ It can be found in his Liber de persona et duabus naturis, and had a striking influence on Western culture. Aristotle’s concept of substance is indeed the central issue of Boetius’ definition. Aquinas later focused on this ‘‘rational nature’’ of human substance. In his conceptualization, which on the realism-nominalism spectrum qualifies as moderately realist, human nature consisted in being a person. This task can rationally be achieved only by total submission to natural law that emanates directly from God. The concept of autonomy elaborated by the Enlightenment rejected this sort of submission to God’s will, although it upheld under natural law the concept of person and the subject of modernity, and recognized its physical and moral ground. The Ground of Reality According to Maximus Most scholars will agree that Maximus of Constantinople, also known as the Confessor, was the most prolific representative of the perspective that largely shaped the Byzantine mind. Undoubtedly, he was the most prominent thinker in Byzantine culture. Maximus achieved a brilliant synthesis of patristic thought, which although not unique in Byzantine culture, was probably the most complete and most accurate synthesis of views on ontology and anthropology as well as on mind and body. Valorization of Motion At the core of our topic is a famous sequence, dear to Origen, who utilized the following conceptual series to account for the passing into existence: stasis, kinesis, ge´nesis. Origen attempted to show that the ontological passing into existence is a movement, a perturbation of the original motionless state (stasis). In contrast, the new Weltanschauung, as reflected in the natural sciences, was soon to transform this sequence into ge´nesis, kı´nesis, stasis. Now, the passing into existence (contemporary physicists speak of microphysical particles enacted by a vacuum) is an act. This applies to human spirit, too. The positive source endowing the concrete nephesh with ‘‘selfness’’ or ‘‘sameness’’ is the enactment of this act. Passing into existence is no longer conceived as the perturbation of a motionless state. Existence (ge´nesis) is in itself a dynamic (kı´nesis) process of becoming, which tends toward a pole of permanent state of fulfillment (stasis).

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Indivisible Unity of Nature and Will This reversal was not achieved in Origen’s time but some four centuries later. The reversal was the life’s work of Maximus, whose tormented days were an unrelenting struggle against the Monothelite heresy. Monothelites wished to find a formula of compromise, by affirming that Jesus of Nazareth certainly had two natures, but one single will. Monotheletism dissociated the will from nature exactly as Aristotle distinguished form from substance. Maximus went to the extreme of giving his life in order to affirm the indivisible unity of flesh and will: the nature that constitutes the will and thereby freedom. For Maximus, inasmuch as Jesus of Nazareth was a hypostatic union of two natures, clearly Jesus was also a hypostatic union of two wills. This is what was at the stake in Maximus’ outlook, as expressed in two of his writings from early adulthood, probably composed sometime between 630 and 634: Ambigua ad Ioannem and Quaestiones ad Thalassium. Although Maximus’ vocabulary is extremely difficult, I will present a short summary, closely following the analyses made by Dalmais (1952), Ponsoye and Larchet (1992), and especially Larchet (1996a, 1996b). Lo´gos and Lo´goi Acording to Maximus, Lo´gos is eternal, the cause of All-Things, and the source and purpose of every entity. The bosom of the Lo´gos recapitulates everything that exists, namely, All-Things. Lo´gos is ‘‘the union of what is determined and what is not determined, of the measured and the immense, of the limited and the unbound . . . of repose and motion.’’23 Each existing reality has in its individual nature a lo´gos. The lo´gos of a being is its principle, its nature, what defines it, and what distinctively characterizes it. But lo´gos is also the finality of such a being: that in view of which such a being exists. In sum, it is the entity’s raison d’eˆtre in a double sense, of source and also of purpose for its being rather that not being. Maximus takes special care to make us see that these lo´goi radically differ from Platonic Ideas and, above all, should not be taken as the Aristotelian forms, different from the material substance that such forms are supposed to shape. Passing into Existence: Becoming Every entity is enacted by its own specific principle or topic lo´gos, which defines its nature, its ‘‘being’’ or essence, (from esse, being). But, the same entity is also defined by a dynamic lo´gos, which conditions its passing into existence.24 In other words, Maximus’ logoı¨ radically differ, not only from the lo´gos physiko´s or physical lo´gos, but also from Platonic Ideas and from the Stoics’ lo´goi spermatikoi. This allows one to better understand the Maximian sequence: Ge´nesis. Eclosion of the particular lo´gos framed in its temporal horizon—that is, in its kairo´s (opportunity). Here, this enactment of existence is the outgrowth either of technical causality or of the creative will of the eternal Lo´gos.

n

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Kı´nesis. Movement of existence, or becoming. The cause of this movement or of this becoming is a temporal sequence where the future acts on the present. This idea acceptable to Platonisms is being shared by some modern physicists who use concepts such as futur ante´rieur (Constantin de Charrie`re) or advanced action (Wheeler and Feynman 1949), claiming that back action is caused by advanced waves propagating backward in time from the future absorption of the radiation. John G. Cramer (1986) has developed a ‘‘transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics,’’ and the notion is also embraced by Huw Price (1996), Peter Holland (1995), Mariela Szirko (2005), and others. This anticipative cause is found, too, in the eternal Lo´gos. n Stasis. Repose by fulfillment of the project or by realization of the model. n

Enacting the Lo´goi The lo´goi of the particular entities are manifestations of the Lo´gos’ will and are not particles of divine essences. Rather than sparkles of the divine intellect, they are ‘‘volitions,’’ ‘‘voluntary acts,’’ or ‘‘grains of alterity.’’ This is why, as we will see below with Gregory Palamas, the essence of God is to be clearly distinguished from his uncreated energies. The preexistence of all lo´goi in the Lo´gos means the profound unity of all entities in their principle, and likewise, every entity that exists or is about to exist possesses a specific and particular lo´gos. As a result, both the diversity of All-Things and the particularity of every entity are grounded in the eternal Lo´gos. This interpretation by Maximus, where he valued every particular entity, thoroughly contrasts both with Plato’s model, where the particular appears as a derivative, degenerate form of the universal (Ideas or Essences), and with the model of Origen, who—under the influence of Neoplatonism—saw the multiplicity of rational entities as resulting from a dispersion or decomposition of a supposed original he´nad. Unity as the Ground of Diversity For Maximus unity and diversity coexist inside every same reality: the Lo´gos is present in the multiple lo´goi, the multiple lo´goi are grounded at their foundation in the Lo´gos.25 The coming to exist, in the physical instant, is an eclosion and every eclosion possesses a temporal horizon, a kairo´s, which is its own. For Maximus, repose could not be the primitive condition of temporal realities. A priori, only God is immutable; everything that exists is essentially mobile. Motion ensues the passing into existence. In contrast, Origenists see motion, in contrast to the primitive condition of repose, as an act of decomposition. For Maximus, movement and temporality are ontologically featured by nondivine entities. This allows for finitudes to have a beginning. Even when a human being reaches a condition of repose by ‘‘filling the space that separates the lo´gos of its beginnng from the lo´gos of its end,’’26 such a human does not decrease his or her condition of ‘‘repose in perpetual motion’’ (aiekine`tos stasis).27 Amazingly,

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this is what happens to Alice on the other side of the mirror: she feels she must keep running in order to remain in the same place. The Exploration of Will: Lo´gos and Tro´pos If the Lo´gos, for Maximus, does work as a sort of principle of nature, this does not render the world a gigantic automatic mechanism, with everything rigorously determined. This is prevented inasmuch as each personal lo´gos or principle does its work tied to the tro´pos or mode.28 Jean-Claude Larchet (1996b, 143) counted seventy occurrences of the dyad lo´gos-tro´pos in the two writings by Maximus mentioned above. While the lo´gos defines the nature of an entity, this entity’s tro´pos is the fact of its hypostasis: a fact that manifests its capacity of self-determination. This means the possibility for everyone of living in conformity with his or her lo´gos, namely as per his or her nature, or in opposition to his or her lo´gos and contra nature. This scenario frames and poses the problem of will. To account for free will, Maximus used several concepts, frequently difficult to tell apart. For a summary assessment, I would say that he showed that what we call ‘‘will’’ may be understood as having different connotations, including gnome`, the´lesis, and thele´ma. Gnome` is the disposition of nature toward self-determination. The´lesis, in contrast, is the actual capacity of the individual to work out voluntary choices. Maximus also utilized the term thele´ma to denote the individuation of the the´lesis or the gnome`. By this ability of individuation, Maximus seemed to open the way for existential temporality. In his view, being (einai) belongs to human by nature and is related to one’s lo´gos, whereas proper being (eu eı´nai)29 is related to, or rather predisposes toward,30 one’s free will.31 The latter is a tributary of one’s hypostasis and related to one’s tro´pos. The lo´gos of human nature is originally disposed to this being proper,32 but is not determined. The attainment of wellness is a work of the particular human being, enacted when he or she decides to live by the idea of good, namely, in harmony with one’s moral conscience. Stakes of Anthropological Monism: The Palamite Controversy The idea of the indissoluble unity of the human being had considerable impact on the ensuing developments in Byzantine culture. As an example, I will briefly address the ‘‘Palamite Controversy,’’33 deployed in the fourteenth century and decided in a council convened in Constantinople in 1341. The subject of this controversy was the body. It consisted in ascertaining whether the physical body participated in prayer, or if prayer is a meditative entreaty of the soul. Protagonists included on one side the hesychast monks, led by Gregory Palamas (1296–1359),34 and on the other side scholar Barlaam of Calabria (1290–1348). The hesychast monks had been affirming

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that, because of their way of living, they were able to achieve a state of permanent prayer (hesychia35) engulfing their whole being—body and soul together. In such a state, these men reported experiences that, to our modern eyes, might be categorized as out-of-body experiences. They claimed to see an intense light, which they interpreted as the uncreated energy of God present within every reality that is regarded as finite. This should be distinguished from the Western mystical ecstasy, which somehow typically withdrew from contemplation any sensible experience that a person can have in such state. For hesychasts, in contrast, the state of permanent prayer in no way was passive, and it did not block sensory-perceptual activity. In other words, it was understood that the sensible faculties of the body are not an obstacle for the consciousness that one might achieve about God in his energies. The hesychasts36 clearly distinguished between God’s essence, unknowable and not-participable, and the uncreated energies of God deemed present in everything that exists. This is why such energies were considered knowable and participable by way of sensible experience. Barlaam’s critiques against the hesychasts, together with the replies contributed by Gregory Palamas, represent an important moment in the history of ideas—a moment that helps to clarify what distinguishes the Mediterranean Orient from the Occident. At bottom, Barlaam spoke in the name of a dualist anthropology.37 The arguments he utilized can only be comprehended within the framework of the controversy that ensued at the same time in the nominalism/realism debate concerning the issue of universals. Gregory Palamas expressed himself in the name of a genuinely monist anthropology, and consequently could not have excluded the body from the state of prayer. In his view, the noetic and discursive faculties of humans express themselves while the body continues to function. Such simultaneity was rejected by Barlaam. The quarrel was of a religious nature, but the outline of the controversy interests us here because the council held in Constantinople condemned Barlaam in 1341 and officially adopted the standpoint of his adversary, Gregory Palamas. This decision shaped the Byzantine world, some decades before the end of the Eastern Roman Empire, and in some ways displaced dualism in favor of two positions that are central to this discussion: anthropological monism, and the proclamation of the presence of God’s uncreated energies in every thing and every entity of ta pa´nta. Such ‘‘uncreated energies,’’ in Palamas’s terms, are similar to Maximus’ lo´goi and, in the Byzantine view, are responsible for what makes ‘‘one not another’’—to allude to the title of this chapter. Synthesis: Understanding the Byzantine Ontology of Consciousness Without accounting for all the data in the Barlaam-Palamas argument, I have attempted to demonstrate the essential variables for the topic of this book, the ontology of consciousness. It is now time to employ a modern vocabulary to summarize the

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essential points of the preceding discussion. Mindful of technical language from early theological developments, a specific outlook on reality and human beings can be portrayed and rendered into present-day language: 1. There is a reality without a beginning and without an end. This includes the specific domain of pure consciousness. One may call it God if this concept seems convenient. This self-consciousness is not a mathematical formula, it is an enactment, and that is why all causality in this domain is technical, in the sense of creativeness, or an expression of free will. This can be restated by stating that the domain of consciousness is also personal. 2. There is another order of multiple realities, each of them having a starting point grounded in the previous one. This can be described as the domain of ‘‘progressive sentience’’ or ‘‘becoming consciousness.’’ These ontological agencies can undergo inner development, yet they are not arranged on a vertical or ladder-shaped axis. This order of reality is dynamic and causality in this domain is diversified. It goes from blind deterministic necessity to free will. Natural causality does not steer everything. Living and mindful creatures are less subordinate to it than solely mineral materials. If these multiple realities are to be understood ‘‘vertically,’’ they emerge from each other in a continuous transformative process (‘‘procession’’) steered by some law of necessity. Time is a general continuous frame for such a process. From this point of view, ‘‘one’’ and ‘‘another’’ are synonyms in a temporal sequence. When such realities are to be seen ‘‘horizontally,’’ each of them is rooted by its own ontological principle—its Maximian lo´gos—in the eternal Lo´gos. This would exclude any transformation, but would imply a vision where the very notion of evolution is an evolution of individual time and not of some morphological sequence. Time is discontinuous, and there is a gap, a hiatus between each sentient agency. This is why ‘‘one’’ is not ‘‘another,’’ in the case of fully sentient and fully self-conscious physical action. Sailing to Byzantium Byzantine culture sounds like an anachronism to modern ears. It is worth revisiting with modern eyes and vocabulary. Under the ashes of obsolete Neoplatonist vocabulary one can see reality with different eyes, and be surprised by the hidden modernity of Byzantine culture and its amazing realizations that are in perfect harmony with current perspectives on consciousness. Here, one can notice to which extent the senses are ontologically active and participate in shaping a moral world. This has been eloquently stated by William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) in his famous poem Sailing to Byzantium:38 THAT is no country for old men . . . An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

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Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, Nor is there singing school but studying Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come To the holy city of Byzantium.

Conclusion Influenced by Semitic realism, Byzantine culture kept a suspicious distance from the Aristotelian notion of substance, which is a central idea in any dualistic anthropology. In the Eastern Imperium Romanorum (Basileia Romaion, Bilad al Rum), an interesting historical merger of Latin legalism, Hellenic intellectualism, and Semitic realism took place. The first tradition defined individuals primarily by their social roles; the second emphasized their common features; and the third stressed a concrete, fleshed personal unity. In this regard, Semitic realism counterbalanced the other two. However, in the context of the theme of this discussion—‘‘Why one is not another’’—it holds the creation hypothesis of each entity sufficient enough to tell how and why the ghost (namely, the soul) gets into the machine (i.e., the body). This view could definitely not have been narrow enough to cast creation history as a mere record of interactive brain-mind exchanges. The process of disengaging from Platonist assumptions was slow—indeed millennarian—and chiefly achieved by two first-rate scholars, Maximus of Constantinople, or the Confessor, and Gregory Palamas, who without throwing out any essential element, articulated an indisputable anthropological monism. They may have left the process incomplete, though their thinking was no less advanced than some approaches to brain-mind issues in contemporary universities. Notes I would like to express my deep gratitude to the abbot and monks of the Benedictine Monastery of Chevetogne in Belgium, who welcomed me so that I could prepare this chapter. My thanks go especially to the librarian the Reverend Antoine Lambrechts who let me consult freely the priceless collections of his scriptorium, and to the Reverend Michel Van Parys, director of the review Ire´nikon, for his valuable counseling in patrological issues. I am also indebted to Assad Kattan from Balamand University in Lebanon for his help in understanding Maximus’s concept of human will. I also thank Amale Dibo from the American University of Beirut. She kindly agreed to read my original manuscript in both French and English versions. 1. See the section ‘‘Thinking in Images’’ in Carruthers 2003, 72–77. 2. Pigeaud (2004, 697–702), trans. Antoine Courban. 3. From Aristotle’s De Anima, I, 1, 403 a 3–10; quoted in Verbeke 1985, 454.

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4. Gesche (1993, 59), translated from the French by Antoine Courban. 5. After a region in what is now southeast Turkey called Cappadocia. Jaroslav Pelikan (1993, 160– 177) describes four Cappadocians, the two brothers Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, together with their sister and teacher Macrina, and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus. 6. Apollinaris of Laodicea was one of the most brilliant scholars of the fourth century. He certainly was the first to formulate correctly what is known as the ‘‘chrisotological problem’’—that is, the rational understanding of the relations between human and divine natures in the individual Jesus of Nazareth. His teachings were condemned at the Second Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 381. He was the first to formulate the central argument by stating that two perfect principles cannot become one, thus allowing a better understanding—to be achieved at the Council of Chalcedon—of the irreducible wholeness of what a person is. 7. This is in fact a statement made by Ignacio Ellacuria and reproduced by Xavier Zubiri. Quoted from Secretan et al. 2002, 67; translated from the French by Antoine Courban. 8. The creation of the hospital may be traced to Basil, bishop of Caesarea, who in 375 implemented the first known nosokomeion within the walls of a public inn or xenodocheion. He engaged monks and nuns in his jurisdiction to take care of sick people. This measure is considered to be the basis of the medical professions. 9. A network of such public institutions existed in Byzantium: ptochiia for the poorest, orphanotrophia for orphans, brephotrophia for abandoned children, gerontokomia for older people, and so on. See Lichtenhaeler 1973 and Miller 1997. 10. For further references see Issa 1981; Samiraı¨ 1990; Hunke 1960. 11. Aristote, Proble`mes, VII, 4 (ed. Louis, p. 124); quoted in Grmek 1996, 219. 12. In the fourth century, Evagrius Ponticus, a Byzantine monk of the dualist tradition, carefully classified such diseases of the soul and wrote about their healing. His nosology is still extremely popular in Eastern monastic circles. It lists the following diseases: Philautia (self-love), Gastrimargia (gluttony), lust, Philargyria-Pleonexia (cupidity-meanness), sadness, Akedia (sloth), anger, fear, Kenodoxia (vanity), and pride. See Larchet 2000, 845–848. 13. Quoted in Ellverson 1981, 27. 14. The modern city of Homs, on the Orontes river in today’s northern Syria. 15. See Outes et al. 1981–1984: This ancient connection contributes to the conceptual itinerary of Western neuropsychiatry. It is astonishing how the monk Chalcidius was able to access the neuropsychological knowledge acquired by Alcmeon eight centuries earlier. This knowledge differs, in some essential respects, from the views of Aristotle and other subsequent physician-naturalists. The conceptual path of Chalcidius situates him in a project most likely initiated by Ossius of Cordoba, who achieved an integral synthesis of human knowledge about nature. What is of relevance here is the theory of ventricular pneumatism: memory is localized in the posterior ventricle, imagination in the middle chamber, and sensation in the anterior one. Arabic medicine will abundantly elaborate on this theory, as the work of Razi and Ibn Baja demonstrates.

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16. Lewy and Landesberg 1847, 1848. Quoted in Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XXXVIII (1984, xii). See also Temkin 1931, 268–270. 17. It is not well established if he practiced medicine or ever studied it, although he was a professor of literature in Alexandria ( grammatikos). A Neoplatonist who adopted the Christian religion, he was condemned by his colleagues for criticizing Proclus and Aristotle on the eternity of the universe. Due to historiography and his conversion to Christianity, he was accused of being opportunistic shortly after the Emperor Justinian closed Athens’ philosophical school in 529. Richard Sorabji (1998) notes: ‘‘In dynamics, the idea of an impetus, which in its medieval context has been hailed as a scientific revolution, can be seen to have traveled by an Arabic route from the sixth-century commentator Philoponus. Galileo in his early works mentions Philoponus more often than he mentions Plato. And Brentano in the nineteenth century got from the commentary tradition, and not from Aristotle himself, his idea that all activity in the mind is directed towards intentional objects.’’ See also McKenna 1997, 157. 18. Cited in Todd’s communication, quoted from Symposium on Byzantine Medicine (1984, 108). 19. Ephraim the Syrian, Nisibean Hymn 11:4. Quoted in Papademetriou, n.d.; http://www.newostrog.org/palamas.html 20. English translation by Colin Smith (1981, 203). Merleau-Ponty adds that ‘‘the theory of the body schema is, implicitly, a theory of perception’’ (p. 206) in which ‘‘our own body is in the world as the heart is in the organism: it keeps the visible spectacle constantly alive, it breathes life into it and sustains it inwardly, and with it forms a system’’ (p. 203). ´ vila and Crocco 1996. It thus does not appear to differ from what makes it ‘‘not an21. See A other’’—that is, the enactment of this creation is different in each case, exemplified in chapter 12, where nonalterity is not automatically taken for granted (because nonexistent existentialities are also considered). Therefore, in each enactment, a special determination is focused. With such a focus, the spatiotemporal circumstance denotes a determination that points to or reveals the existential here, which is called oneself. 22. Lecourt 2004, 857–859. I follow Dominique Lecourt through the whole discussion of this issue about the person. 23. Ponsoye and Larchet 1992, 10–13, translated from French by Antoine Courban. 24. Qu. LX, PG 90, 625A, LS2 81. Some readers may want to know that all Patristic texts are cited, after Larchet 1996a and 1996b, from the Jacques-Paul Migne Collection. Qu. stands for Quaestiones ad Thalassium, followed by the number of the question in Roman numerals; PG stands for Patrologia Graeca, followed by the volume number, page number, letters of columns, and line numbers. 25. Quoted in Ponsoye and Larchet 1992, 12. 26. Ponsoye and Larchet 1992, 13. 27. Qu. LIX, PG 90, 608D, LS2 53, and Qu. LXV, PG 90, 760A, LS2 285. 28. On lo´gos-tro´pos according to Maximus, see Sherwood 1955, 164–168.

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29. Qu. XXXV, PG 90, 380AB, LS 241. 30. Qu. LV, PG 90, 545BC, LS1 495. 31. Qu. II, PG 90, 272B, LS1 51. 32. Qu. XL, PG 90, 396A, LS1 267. 33. See the following entries in the Oxford Dictionnary of Byzantium (Kazdan and Talbot 1991): ‘‘Barlaam of Calabria,’’ ‘‘Palamas Gregory,’’ ‘‘Palamism,’’ ‘‘Hesychasm,’’ and ‘‘Hesychia.’’ 34. Kazdan and Talbot 1991, 1560. 35. Kazdan and Talbot 1991, 924. 36. Kazdan and Talbot 1991, 923. 37. Kazdan and Talbot 1991, 257. 38. Quoted from The Literature Network; http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781/. This poem is considered one of the masterpieces of the Irish poet. It was first published in 1927 in Yeats’s collection October Blast, when he was in his sixties. References Anderson, Ray (1982), On Being Human: Essays in Theological Anthropology, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. Aristote (1991), Proble`mes, trans. and ed. Pierre Louis, Paris: Les Belles Lettres. ´ vila, Alicia, and Mario Crocco (1996), Sensing: A New Fundamental Action of Nature, Folia NeuroA biolo´gica Argentina, Vol. X, Buenos Aires: Institute for Advanced Study. Brehier, Louis (1970), La Civilisation Byzantine, Vol. 3 in Le Monde Byzantin, 3 vols., Paris: Albin Michel. Brunner, Emil (1939), Man in Revolt, England: Guilford. Carruthers, Mary (2003), The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric and the Making of Images 400– 1200, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Vol. 34, New York: Cambridge University Press. Cramer, John G. (1986), ‘‘The Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics,’’ Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 58, No. 3, July, pp. 647–687. Dalmais, Ire´ne´e-Henri (1952), ‘‘La The´orie des logoı¨ des cre´atures chez Saint Maxime le Confesseur’’ [The Theory of Creatures’ Logoı¨ according to Saint Maximus the Confessor], Revue des sciences philosophiques et the´ologiques, Vol. 36, pp. 244–249. Dupont, Florence (2003), ‘‘L’acteur romain, orateur sans visage’’ [The roman actor, a featureless speaker], quoted by Dominique Lecourt in Bioe´thique et Ethique Medicale, Res Publica, Nov. 2003, special issue, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF).

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Ellverson, Anna-Stina (1981), The Dual Nature of Man: A Study in the Theological Anthropology of Gregory of Nazianzus, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis—Studia Doctrinae Christianae Upsaliensis, 21, Uppsala: Uppsala University Press. Foucault, Michel (1975), Surveiller et Punir [Watching and Punishing], Paris: Editions Gallimard. Fox, Clifton R. (1996), ‘‘What If Anything Is Byzantine,’’ Celator, Vol. 10, No. 3, March, Krause Publications; quoted in http://www.romanity.org/htm/fox.01/. Gesche, Adolphe (1993), L’Homme [Man], Paris: Editions du Cerf. Grmek, Mirko D. et al. (1993), Storia del pensiero medico occidentale, Vol. I: Antichita` e medioevo [History of Western Medical Thought, Vol. I: Antiquity and Middle Ages], Rome and Bari: Laterza. ——— (1996), Histoire de la pense´e me´dicale en occident, Vol. I: Antiquite´ et moyen aˆge, Paris: Seuil. Haldon, John F. (1990, 1997), Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Holland, Peter (1995), The Quantum Theory of Motion: An Account of the DeBroglie-Bohm Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hunke, Sigrid (1960), Allahs Sonne u¨ber dem Abendland [Allah’s Sun Shines on the West], Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. Issa, Bey A. (1981), Tarikh al-bimaristanat fi al-Islam [History of Hospitals in Islam], Beirut: Dar alRaı¨d al-‘Arabi.

Kazdan, Alexander P., and A. M. Talbot et al. (1991), The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, 3 vols., New York: Oxford University Press. Klimkov, Oleg (2001), Opyt bezmolovija Chelovek v mirosozertanii vizantijskikh istikhastov [The Experience of Hesychasm: Man in the Vision of the World of Byzantine Hesychasts], St. Petersburg: Aletheia. Larchet, Jean-Claude (1996a): Saint Maxime le Confesseur et la divinisation de l’homme [Saint Maximus the Confessor and the Divinization of Man], Paris: Editions du Cerf. ——— (1996b), La divinisation de l’homme selon saint Maxime le Confesseur [Man’s Divinization according to Saint Maximus the Confessor], Paris: Editions du Cerf. ——— (2000), The´rapeutique des Maladies Spirituelles [Therapeutics of Spiritual Diseases], Paris: Editions du Cerf. Lecourt, Dominique, ed., (2004), Dictionnaire de la Pense´e Me´dicale, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. ¨ ber die Bedeutung des Antyllus, Philagrius, und PosidoLewy, A., and R. Landesberg (1847, 1848), U nius, Janus, Vol. 2, pp. 758–771, and Vol. 3, pp. 166–184. ¨ ln-Lo ¨ venich: Lichtenhaeler, Charles (1978), Geschichte der Medizin [History of Medicine], Ko ¨ rtze Verlag. Deutscher A

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McKenna, John Emory (1997), The Setting in Life for The Arbiter of John Philoponos, Sixth Century Alexandrian Scientist, Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1981), Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by Colin Smith, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Miller, Timothy S. (1997), The Birth of the Hospital in the Byzantine Empire, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Outes, D. L., J. C. Orlando, and M. Crocco (1981–1984), ‘‘Las fuentes de Calcidio (siglo IV dC): co´mo se recopilo´ la neuropsicologı´a de Alcmeo´n de Crotona ocho siglos despue´s de su muerte?’’ Investigacio´n # 6773, Facultad de Medicina de la Universidad de Buenos Aires; pre´cis in ‘‘Guı´a de Invest. en curso en la Universidad de Buenos Aires vol. II,’’ 1984: Instituto Bibliotecolo´gico of the ?

University of Buenos Aires. Papademetriou, George (n.d.), The Human Body According to St. Gregory Palamas; http://www.newostrog.org/palamas.html/. Pelikan, Jaroslav (1993), Christianity and the Classical Culture: The Metamorphosis of Natural Theology in the Encounter with Hellenism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Perrin, Michel (1981), L’Homme Antique et Chre´tien: L’Anthropologie de Lactance 250–325, Paris: Beauchesne and Universite´ de la Sorbonne. Pigeaud, Jackie (2004), Maladie [Disease], trans. Antoine Courban, in Dominique Lecourt, Dictionnaire de la Pense´e Me´dicale [Dictionary of Medical Thought], Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (PUF). Ponsoye, Emmanuel, and Jean-Claude Larchet (1992), Saint Maxime le Confesseur: Questions a` Thalassios [Saint Maximus the Confessor: Questions to Thalassios], Paris: Editions de l’Arbre de Jesse´. Price, Huw (1996), Time’s Arrow & Archimedes’ Point: New Directions for the Physics of Time, Cambridge, New York: Oxford Unversity Press. Samiraı¨ (al) Kamel (1990), Moukhtassar tarikh al-tibb al-‘arabi [Short History of Arabic Medicine], 2 vols., Beirut: Dar al-Nidal.

Secretan, Philibert et al. (2002), Introduction a` la pense´e de Xavier Zubiri [Introduction to the thought of Xavier Zubiri], Paris: L’Harmattan. Sherwood, Polycarp (1955), The Earlier Ambigua of St Maximus the Confessor and His Refutation of Origenism (Studia Anselmiana, Vol. 36), Rome: Pontifical Institute. Sorabji, Richard (1998), Aristotle Commentators; http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ip/rep/A021 .htm. Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, (1984), Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XXXVIII. Szirko, Mariela (2005), ‘‘Why Is Time Frame-Dependent in Relativity? Minkowski’s Spacetime as a Kantian ‘Condition of Possibility’ for Relativistic Calculations,’’ Electroneurobiologı´a, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 181–237; http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00002462/.

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Temkin, Owsei (1931), Das ‘‘Bru¨derpaar’’ Philagrios und Posidonios, SA, 24, pp. 268–270. Thual, Franc¸ois (2004), Le Douaire de Byzance [The Dower of Byzantium], Paris: Ellipses. Todd, Robert B. (1984), Philosophy and Medicine in John Philoponus’ Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima, cited in Symposium on Byzantine Medicine, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, XXXVIII, 1984, p. 108. Verbeke, Ge´rard (1985), ‘‘Levels of Human Thinking in Philoponus,’’ in C. Laga et al., After Chalcedon: Studies in Theology and Church History Offered to Professor Albert Van Roey for His Seventieth Birthday (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, Vol. 18), pp. 451–470, Leuven: Peeters. Wheeler, John Archibald, and Richard Phillips Feynman (1949), ‘‘Classical Electrodynamics in Terms of Direct Interparticle Action,’’ Review of Modern Physics, Vol. 21, No. 3, July, pp. 425–433. Yeats, William Butler (1927), Sailing to Byzantium; http://www.online-literature.com/yeats/781/.

6

Soul and Paideia: On the Philosophical Value of a Dialectical

Relation Michael Polemis

Abstract In classical Greek philosophy, especially for Plato and Aristotle, the notion of soul is a necessary and constituent part of human life that manifests itself in the actualization of a dialectical relation between philosophos bios (Gk: jilo´sojov bi´ov, philosophical life) and arete (Gk: aa2eth´, virtue). Reflecting on Platonic and Aristotelian descriptions of soul, and incorporating the later interpretation of this notion in Christianity, philosophers continue to discuss soul throughout modernity. Yet, this same notion of soul has been tempered by events of history—for example, in Hegelian idealism, with its attempt to undermine the traditional Kantian theory of knowledge that continued this trend toward apory about the place of soul within the flow of history. Consequently, the traditional notion of paideia (Gk: paideı´a, education) ceased to remain a meaningful category for education, by undermining the ability of individuals to construct an effective subjective identity and to comprehend history. In this chapter I demonstrate how the traditionally philosophical ideal that unified soul and paideia has lost its appeal and scientific value, and I assess the ethical consequences of this pragmatic shift for future attempts to educate humanity. An analysis of this philosophical process clearly indicates the conditions leading to the demise of soul in philosophy—nevertheless, there are genuine options for philosophers to rehabilitate the concept of soul.

Prologue Reminiscence resides within language and contains psyche´ (cuwh`, cool breath of life), which is imperturbable breath conjoint with menos (me´nov, a vigorous force of life). The term me´nov shares its etymological Indo-European root with the term man (male or human) and describes the same manic vitality that is attributed to the fury of humans. In the Greek language, this human quality is associated with our ability to turn things upside down. Accordingly, ‘‘anthropos’’ (any2opov, human) is derived from anatrepo (anat2e´po, overturn) and describes the human capacity to act in a headover-heels manner.

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This same reference to raging vitality is also contained in the other Indo-European root of the word psyche´, namely, soul. The soul can be associated with two vital elements, one originating in water (sea) while the other is associated with air in motion (wind). The origin of soul traces back to the fury and vitality of Aiolos, the King of Winds (Ai olov), whom the ancient Greeks associated with the celerity of air currents akin to three additional symbols: the velocity of a bird of prey in capturing knowledge (often a falcon, iÔ e2ax), the divine (iÔ e2o´n), and the other majestic bird of prey, the eagle (aeto´v). All three constitute a symbol of eternity and incorporate knowledge for eons of  i¨dhv) in eternity (aei´), while at the same time residing next to a ghastly god of death ( A his capacity of bearing eternal knowledge of the Great Divide. It is precisely this knowledge of death that constitutes an essential element in Greek philosophy concerning our comprehension of the concept of soul. Philosophy becomes the means of combating thanatos and one can assert cum grano salis that paideia (paideı´a, education) represents the contribution of Greek culture toward mastery over death. This prevalence is most visible in Platonic-Aristotelian philosophy and forms the intellectual basis for consecutive generations of philosophers to overcome death. In this context, the battle against death is primarily a battle toward eternity. The subtle difference between these two forms of combat is most vividly presented in Plato’s ‘‘magnum opus,’’ where the masterly philosopher demonstrates between the lines of his dialectical discourse the suggestive nuances of his philosophical language that enable a reader to hear whispers of eternity. Plato’s serene allusion to eternity is embedded in multiple coherent schemata of interpretation that reinforce each other in a constant flux of inspiration. The absence of a static concept of cosmos or soul adds to the charm of Plato’s perpetual dialogue, which strives to attain knowledge of eternity and his desire to engage the other, and himself, in an eternal dialogue. Genesis and Transcendence More than any other of the Platonic dialogues, Phaedo displays a unique demonstration of the two primary motifs in the philosopher’s battle against death: genesis from opposites and the transcendence of ideas. Both motifs are discussed extensively at different locations of the corpus Platonicum, but only in Phaedo do we find a systematic assessment of the two motifs in their relation to the concept of soul. Plato has in part inherited these motifs from earlier Indo-European traditions, and has in part inaugurated novel ideas toward comprehending eternity that continue to be meaningful concepts in a continuous historical unfolding of ideas. The first motif originates in Plato’s concept of dialectics as teaching through opposition. The gestation of a thing or object from its opposite is reflected, for example, in the contrasting and codependent evolution of small things that must come from large

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ones, which in return become smaller (Phaedo 70d–71e). This same cycle also applies to Plato’s presupposition that living comes from no other source than the dead, and death comes from the living in a process of eternal recurrence that is reflective of growth from decline and vice versa. Insofar as this motif can be presented as a general theme of discourse, one can derive from it an overall life principle, a world soul that is an immanent and constituent element of cosmos. Such an objective-idealistic concept of soul is typical of Plato’s philosophy and appears consistently through all his works, including his late dialogue, Laws. In the dialogue Laws, Plato describes the concept of an imminent perpetual motion holding together the entire cosmos as a spinning celestial disk, which is reflective of his assertion about a world soul embedded in the unity of opposition (Laws X, 897a– 898d). He expands on this idea in Phaedo when he modifies his objectively idealistic concept of the soul. It is also here that Plato introduces the second primary motif in relation to the unity of opposites: the transcendental nature of concepts that is inherent in his theory of forms. The preexistence of soul is part of Plato’s theory of remembrance that constitutes an aspect of his theory of forms (Phaedo 72b–e). All life comes into existence out of quietus, according to the principle of opposites; therefore Plato claims that the soul must continue to live, even after bodily death, in order to return to life. Plato has already introduced the concept of individual soul earlier in the text (71e–72a), but his references to a sort of creation of soul from its opposite, death, appear slightly inept. This blurred vision of the soul seems to occur primarily when Plato develops the concept of immortal individual souls in contrast to death. For example, he explains that although bodies and souls are not eternal, they are nonetheless indestructible: ‘‘for if either of them had been destroyed there would have been no generation of living beings’’ (Laws X, 904a5–904b1). This passage demonstrates Plato’s emphasis on body and soul as an ontological principle that is couched in the language of universals, as long as one maintains the soul’s difference from ideas that manifest as particulars instead of concrete universals; conversely, Aristotle objects in the Metaphysics (A 9, M 4–5) that such entelechial interpretation of a process-oriented dynamic ontogenesis of reality is not acceptable.1 It can be argued that this Aristotelian critique starts with false premises by incorrectly placing Plato’s ideas into a realm of atopon (atopon, incongruity) to allow for empiricist explanations of concrete universals, but this is a different matter not directly related to the scope of this chapter, since it relates to one of the more arcane hermeneutic passages in the interpretation of Aristotle’s work. While any attempt to grasp the Platonic concept of soul within the parameter of a singular individual soul is bound to fail, one can indeed find such caesural transformation in the Christian soul. Plato’s concept of the soul remains ambivalent with reference to the contrast between universal and particular soul—the same ambivalence is found in the Platonic concept of God (as the demiurge who acts communally and represents reason in primary and

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secondary motion of a perpetual flux, Laws XII, 966e). The Christian concept of soul evolves from this ambivalent interpretation in favor of a clearly defined individual soul. Any remaining traces of Platonism had been eliminated from Christian doctrine primarily through the help of Greek clergy in their attempt to purge Origenian interpretations of the soul once and for all from their teachings. The climax of this project was reached at the fifth ecumenical synod of Constantinople at the time of Emperor Justinian. Here, the Platonic concept of a preexisting soul, along with other doctrines that had to this point remained active due to Origen’s work, was now eliminated from theological dogma. This final coup removed all Platonic elements from the concept of soul, which was now unfathomably characterized in accord with the Christian belief in the creation of humankind. Henceforth, the concept of individual souls is deprived of any empyrean grounding—this we find confirmed later in modernism when Kierkegaard eloquently analyzes the concept of sin—and the grave presupposition for its existence is found in the abyss of nothingness (see chapter 14). All subsequent attempts by theologians to explain the origin of individual souls were in vain; creationism, traducianism, generationism, and similar attempts to overcome this transcendental dilemma did not succeed. Christian theologians declared that Origen’s doctrine of the soul’s preexistence was a heresy primarily on the basis of a surreal yet forceful argument, namely, that the lack of any memory of earlier stages of one’s soul supposedly demonstrates the fallibility of such belief. Consequently, Plato’s concept of paideia was also revised and subjected to interpretations more suitable to Christian doctrine. While paideia was still seen as a path toward acquiring virtue, its meaning, nonetheless, had been transformed. The theological transformation of paideia originated in a suppression of the philosophical nature of Plato’s ambivalent concept of eros (e2ov). I am referring to the ambivalence that attributes to eros a role as mediator (Symposium 201d–204c). This dual character of eros—as mediator who spans the chasm between ignorance and truthful philosophical knowledge—is known in the history of European philosophy as a veiled metaphor for the negative force contained in all sentient life. This arcane power of thought originates in a dialectical structuring of reality toward its self-sustaining presence. Plato describes this process in his Seventh Epistle (342 c–d) as ‘‘a blaze kindled by a leaping spark,’’ while Hegel solemnly declares it to be the impressive power of the negative that is the force of sentience, namely, a pure self (Phenomenology of Spirit, p. 21). This principle of negativity is the Truth of eros; it is the very center of Europe’s paideia tradition. For Plato, eros is the negative force that brings insight and mediates between the unknowable transcendentality of the dynamic power of concepts on which the ontological and cosmological reality of paideia (or of ‘‘idea’’) rest. Both the inseparable knowledge and one’s awareness of it become the enigma for all sentient life. They are

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also the very subject of philosophical discourse about truth and virtue that allow one to recognize the indivisible creative powers that reside in the dialectical process of sentience to unite eros with one’s own divine nature. Such an individual is akin to the Platonic God to which Plato refers only in analogies, with intentional vagueness, for the purpose of illustrating the divine nature of philosophical discourse. According to Plato, the dual nature of eros is mediated through the concept of individual soul. Eros represents a force that is external to human nature and that is mysteriously derived from the nature of cosmos, as well as a genuine property of individual souls. Plato argues that a person can comprehend truth only through this mediating force of eros, which is ultimately the privilege of philosophical reflection. Aristotle maintains the etymological classification of Plato’s ontology when he differentiates between intellectual virtues (dianoia, rational thought) and moral virtues (ethikos, character), and places the latter in the context of proper habituation that indirectly is found in the elitist character of the term paideia. For Plato, the ideal of achieving both bios philosophikos (bi´ov jilosoji0o´v, philosophical life) and bios theoretikos (bi´ov yeo2hti0o´v, life of contemplation) is reached by only a few sentient beings. Aristotle accepts Plato’s division of sophia (soji´a, wisdom) and sophrosune (soj2osu´nh, temperance) and reinforces the culturally binding ontology that is derived from habituation and skeptical assessment of the concept of individual soul (Nicomachean Ethics II, 1–2). The Transformation of Eros The theologians’ categorical rejection of Origen’s Neoplatonic teachings about the preexistence of individual souls so radically distorted the ancient concept of individual soul that it was rendered outside its original Hellenistic scope. It is paradoxical that the Christian distortion of Plato’s thought took place in the context of a theological doctrine that supported a metaphysical claim for the existence of individual souls on the basis of divine exhalation.2 In spite of this metaphysical support, or perhaps because of it, the concept of individual soul became a controversial and, at the same time, radical Christian denominator of a person’s unique existence, especially if this concept was used as the basis of self-reflection and self-awareness and was opposed to the Socratic dialectical-dialogical search for the roots and meaning of self-identity. Socrates is undoubtedly an icon in the history of philosophy, with his uncompromising search for introspection in full awareness that there is absolutely nothing in the world that can give us assurance about one’s claims for truth except one’s own affirmation of life and one’s joyous search for the good in spite of the constant presence of a merciless death. In contrast, Christianity dwells in the fear of sin; the concept of individual soul is associated with God’s mercy and one is frightened more of sin than of death, since sin is a rejection of mercy and the consequence of eternal damnation is

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more frightening than the prospect of finite death (‘‘So I tell you this: every sin and every slander can be forgiven, except slander spoken against the Spirit; that will not be forgiven’’; Mt 12:31). In this overall context, the value and meaning of eros became transformed. While Plato saw as the highest ideal one’s search for knowledge and truth, Christianity preaches love. While Socrates condemned injustice and located the power of justice in the laws of the Greek polis, Christianity engages in an ambivalent relationship between the gospel and the power of states as the supreme measure of moral authority, as indicated in the Pauline Epistles, while assuming a superior role beyond the state as mediator of human interaction. For example, the early Christian Letter to Diognet (5:5–10) describes Christ in his fundamental solitude as paroikos (pa´2oi0ov, sojourner) in the world who overcomes his isolation by means of transcendence that helps him to understand the relation between political powers and the divine, just as St. Paul recognized the dialectics between law-abiding citizenship and introspective liberation. Thus, the meaning of eros has fundamentally changed, and with it also the meaning of paideia. Christianity redefines eros in the context of agape, love for God, humans, and cosmos; consequently, paideia no longer is associated with knowledge, but with love. This means that eros is not seen as a means toward attaining knowledge; instead its function as Christian agape has become the goal of knowledge. St. Augustine’s motto amare amabam becomes the central force toward paideia for the Christian West. No longer is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake a desirable virtue, as had been proposed in ancient Greece (see Metaphysics A 2, 982b); instead knowledge has been subordinated to love, and love is now the supreme form of knowledge. This goal of Christianity presupposes that paideia is not merely a matter for philosophers, but is available to all human beings. In fact, one can argue that all but philosophers are closer to the Christian notion of love, since nonphilosophers will accept love as an unconditional principle without any intellectual reservation. This Christian interpretation of truth utilizes the Platonic ideal of actuality and agency; however, it transforms eros into agape. The transformation is reflected in the Christian concept of love for God as ecstatic joy and in the entirely new vernacular of the so-called Neoplatonic clergy—for example, with respect to the eroticism of the cosmos, which bears little resemblance to philosophical Neoplatonism. A similar tendency toward eroticism is found in medieval mystical traditions with the German mystics Mechthild (1207–1282) and Gertrud (1255–1302). Both stress the importance of conjugal love with Christ in heaven on the basis of beatific visions derived from sublime eroticism (see McDannell and Lang 1988, 100–107). Regardless of this historical transformation of eros, its transition from knowledge to agape presupposes a radically solitary individual soul that sees love as a result of God’s grace. It is no longer Plato’s concept of the good that will help an individual soul to

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find redemption after death or to find—according to Aristotle—eudaimonia as a way of life; instead, Christian redemption takes place through the grace of God as an act of opaque love.3 One important aspect must be addressed here: in spite of essential differences in the interpretation of paideia from a classical point of view compared with a Christian point of view, especially with reference to the preexistence of the soul, one must recognize many similarities. As an example, neither tradition views paideia as a utilitarian concept. In the Western tradition, paideia is the unremitting path toward forming and educating one’s soul. During the pre-Christian era the soul shaped itself by means of philosophical reflection on truth; later, the soul was seen as the highest good that brings meaning and justification to one’s life. Although its loss is equal to perdition, all of our personal efforts cannot guarantee a result, since the final judgment is delegated to God. Even the most virtuous person does not automatically have a ticket to paradise; paradoxically, we find in Lk 23:39–43 that the crucified robber who had asked Jesus for mercy will be among the first to obtain eternal redemption. (This passage contains a dramatic climax, since Jesus’s promise already is in effect for him that same day and thus guarantees the robber a seamless transition to eternity.) In this context it is also important to mention the difference between a dualistic concept of soul-body and the tripartition of body-soul-spirit that attributes to the soul a bodily component in the tradition of Origen. This tripartition differs from the concept of pneuma (pneuma, pure spirit); however, it is also beyond the scope of this chapter to address the various hermeneutic models of biblical interpretation and contrast them in an anthropological study with theology. Christianity reinforced the ancient Greek notion that the value of an individual bearer of an indivisible soul is not determined by one’s temporal social status, but rather, within the scheme of a larger ontological order. A person is to be seen against the background of eternity—either by virtue of his or her position in eternity, or simply as an objectively idealized eternal being who, in spite of the cessation of life, still remains immortal on the basis of his or her soul. This presupposition had been continuously cherished by philosophers throughout the reign of religious dominance. The Aristotelian concept of an objectively immortal soul has survived in spite of, and side by side with, the Stoic materialistic interpretation of the soul, and it has remained a valued concept throughout its opposition both in medieval times and throughout the Arab enlightenment, from Avicenna and Spinoza to Leibniz and Hegel. This tradition reinforced the importance of an eternal perspective: goodness is seen within the context of eternity and not within the context of immediate gratification. The value and dignity of humankind can only be determined sub specie aeternitatis. In this context, one can come to understand the importance and value of irony within Platonic philosophy. Socratic irony occurs if one assumes, for the sake of discovering

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the truth, a position of ignorance or the acceptance of uncritical assumptions about what is correct. During the discourse, then, the truthful and consequent application of one’s presuppositions will soon lead to disavowal or ridicule. Socrates cheerfully demonstrates the art of sophistry by the analogy of a fisherman in the dialogue the Sophist (219d–233b). The deeper meaning of his playful rhetoric is certainly found in Plato’s use of irony sub specie aeternitatis by utilizing the force of negativity to start a dialectical process with reference to a mathematical difference, derived from a contrast between truth and lack of truth, by subtracting untruth from truth and the awareness that comes from the remaining position. This, in turn, opens a small gap through which the reality of truth can shine. This dialectical principle was practiced centuries before Hegelian logic and preceded its philosophical thrust; however, such an assessment can only take place in the context of eternity. A similar irony can be found in evangelicalism when Christ was duped into making statements that should have been harmful to him. Some of these rhetorical questions were transformed through Christ’s replies into revealing statements about his accusers, and Christ answers according to his rhetorical powers (Lk 20:1–8). The irony comes into play through the classic double function of revealing untruth while at the same time giving strength to the person who happens to be in the just but weaker position. Thus we can also find within the tradition of philosophy of religion a manifestation of a divine tragedy on earth. God, as incarnated logos, uses irony to oppose the representatives of political power in their questions about his competency. One could argue that all four evangelical gospels are ironic fundamental scriptures reflective of humanity’s boundaries. We meet this irony in its power of negativity once again at the beginning of modernity in the great literary tradition of Dante, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, all of whom portray masterfully the human soul’s struggle when reflecting on its subjectivity that is typical of the modern period. Following the literary examples of antiquity, the soul’s primary purpose and motif continue to be its diabolical struggle for redemption and self-affirmation. Dante (Paradiso, XXXIII:137–145) gives a beautiful demonstration by fusing the Platonic concepts of paideia and eros that in their Christian interpretation now become transformed—in accord with the Pauline tradition—into agape, and describes with poetic metaphors a metaphysics of trinity as the only path for selfreflection that is thought to unite the means and its end. I wished to see how image joined to ring, And how the one found place within the other. Too feeble for such flights were my own wings; ... My power now failed that phantasy sublime: My will and my desire were both revolved,

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As in a wheel in even motion driven, By Love, which moves the sun and other stars [trans. L. G. White].4

For both, St. Paul and the church fathers, love is the highest asset derived from grace that guides a human soul to see itself and to attain a paradisiac vision of the divine, which makes love ultimately no longer dependent on ourselves. Dante represented the modern paideia interpretation in Christianity when he joined the agapetransformed ancient Platonism together with the emphasis on subjectivity that emerged from modernity, to form a new synthesis. During the early Renaissance, Dante envisioned this synthesis of paideia with an agape-transformed eros as the great new concept of modernity, but this unity was ultimately defeated in a historical process giving rise to the idea of productivity and freedom, henceforth unleashing the powers of material productivity. A new Manichaean turn signaled the radical decline of eroticism in the Christian-Platonic world as modernity did away with the Augustinian unification of the history of salvation and world history. Notwithstanding the attempts in philosophy to reinstate such unity, the primary concept of modernity became dualism. Philosophers attempted to overcome this dualism, as seen in their philosophies of mind—from Descartes throughout Kant—and Hegel did succeed with this task by overcoming epistemology itself, when he formed the concept of subject from the substance of history, which could only be seen as a place of evil. The concept of modernity unfolded with diabolical attributes and its character was recognized consistently from Descartes to Kant, from Rousseau to Hegel, and finally, from Nietzsche, as they all attempted to overcome the chasm of cosmic reality that had been created through reason. By attributing supreme qualities to reason, they attempted to forget the tragedy of the human condition, namely, its imperfection in the light of reason. This condition is reinforced by our beliefs in technology and money, and by the fetish of productivity as a means toward autonomous universal liberation. Such is the contemporary predicament for humankind, tethered like Prometheus not only by the whimsy of the gods but also by our own limitations. We must admit that, while we are at the dawn of a new century, we still face death, injustice, poverty, and war. Conclusion The literal meaning of humankind remains diabolical, for it is, by definition, a constituent part of diabolos to renounce both the primal unity of idea and resemblance, as well as any concept of humanity and humanity itself, consequently rejecting the necessity for a divine nature of all existence. Such limitations constitute the extreme boundaries in the tradition of identity philosophy, and have radically challenged in modernity any attempts at defining subjective agency, ultimately leading either to its

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current positivistic destruction by means of language analysis or to the postmodern dissolution of reality. Along with the notable philosophies of identity comes their inability to overcome the demarcation of transcendental difference in constituting the subject with its own systematic parameter that is suitable for the claims of reason, as well as the resuscitation of the Sophists’ eristic disputation that Plato had eloquently delineated in Meno (80e) and attempted to solve in his poignant maeutic (Meno 84c).5 The possibilities of human knowledge remain tied up in the limitations of rational categories within time and space. Antiquity did not succeed in reconciling subject and object to rekindle an acerbity and disquietude of reason that gazes on its own limitations once again during modernity. Any attempts to develop new philosophical themes by resorting to either scientific models or obscure religious beliefs must ultimately fail, since no simplistic model of ontology will ever ameliorate humankind’s perpetual contradiction and difference that is akin to mediation in metamorphosis. Notes An earlier German version of this chapter was presented at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, August 8–16, 1998. I would like to thank Helmut Wautischer for his translation and for his research to replace my German bibliography with English works. 1. Aristotle criticizes Plato’s concept of forms primarily on the grounds that Platonic forms result in an unnecessary metaphysical doubling of reality, while at the same time leading to a methodological circulus vitiosus in the context of an alleged regressus ad infinitum that has become the subject of numerous philosophical debates under the general aporia of the ‘‘third man.’’ This aporia explores the necessity of assuming—ad infinitum—an ideal person who is simultaneously form and appearance over and above any given form. Plato discusses this situation in Parmenides (133a), where he develops further the dialectics of opposition to demonstrate that the forms themselves cannot be thoughts, and thereby distances himself from the theory of forms. The controversy between Plato’s theory of forms and Aristotle’s concept of entelechy centers around the topos of identifying and explaining consciousness in the context of a relation between nature and reason. Any philosophical novice without proper methodological training for understanding ancient Greek philosophy might easily confuse the psychological dimension of consciousness with its philosophical grounding. Thus, contrary to Aristotle’s entelechy, Plato’s theory of forms is neither entelechial nor dynamic. 2. Although there are various interpretations to account for such exhalation, the concept of divine intervention for the occurrence of the individual soul remains a constituent part of theological doctrine. 3. A precise comparison of the differences between Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theology in their interpretations of God’s grace exceeds the scope of this chapter.

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4. The Italian text is from the 1975 edition of the Bollingen Series LXXX, Princeton University Press: veder voleva come si convenne l’imago al cerchio e come vi s’indova; ma non eran da cio` le proprie penne: [. . .] A l’alta fantasia qui manco` possa; ma gia` volgeva il mio disio e ’l velle, sı` come rota ch’igualmente e` mossa, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.

5. Socrates: ‘‘I know, Meno, what you mean; but just see what a tiresome dispute you are introducing. You argue that a man cannot enquire either about that which he knows, or about that which he does not know; for if he knows, he has no need to enquire; and if he not, he cannot; for he does not know the very subject about which he is to enquire.’’ . . . Socrates: ‘‘But do you suppose that he would ever have enquired into or learned what he fancied that he knew, though he was really ignorant of it, until he had fallen into perplexity under the idea that he did not know, and had desired to know?’’ (Meno 80e, 84c, trans. Benjamin Jowett). References Aristotle (1966), Metaphysics, trans. Hippocrates G. Apostle, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ——— (1985), Nichomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin, 2 vols., Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. Dante Alighieri (1948), The Divine Comedy: Paradiso, trans. Lawrence Grant White, New York, NY: Pantheon Books. Hegel, George W. F. (1977), Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Arnold V. Miller, Oxford: Clarendon Press. McDannell, Colleen, and Bernhard Lang (1988), Heaven: A History, New Haven: Yale University Press. Meecham, Henry G. (1949), The Epistle to Diognetus, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Plato (1925), ‘‘Epistle VII,’’ in Levi A. Post, ed. and trans., Thirteen Epistles of Plato, pp. 61–113, Oxford: Clarendon Press. ——— (1953), The Dialogues of Plato, ed. Benjamin Jowett, 4 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press. The Revised English Bible with the Apocryphia (1989), New Rochelle, NY: Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press.

II Localizing Subjective Action

Any ontology of consciousness requires solid scientific grounding that is inclusive of early culturally defined concepts of conscious action, while integrating these findings into current theories of nature. Since consciousness research is being constantly updated by all scientific fields, it becomes increasingly difficult to develop comprehensive theories that are inclusive of empirical data from diverse disciplines without excessive parsimony. As a given fact, if not by ontological necessity, conscious action manifests itself within boundary variables, regardless of how minute or transient such ‘‘eclosions’’ appear. The action of minds presents itself both locally and nonlocally, providing an electrifying tension that is described in this section. The first four chapters in part II provide theoretical frameworks to address nonlocal action and the relevance of relational dynamics for sequential mapping of events. Each chapter does so from within the methodological boundaries of its research. An admittedly bold, but at the same time beautiful, execution of empirical research in the neurosciences brings data for a grand synthesis presented in the two chapters that follow. A monistic theory that acommodates a dualistic interpretation appears to be an oxymoron, but succeds in transforming a palindrome from metaphor into fact. A brief note on these two concluding chapters is needed. Crocco and Szirko present their bold theory of universal mindful action in nature that is consistent with neuroelectric research from Argentina. Their chapters have gone through an extensive editing process with exemplary support from the authors. Nonetheless, readers are encouraged to explore these pieces with an open mind. Their terminology is never casual, and the grammatical challenge of their chapters is not a variable of translation, but is due to the necessity of breaking linguistic modalities of categorization to accommodate their findings about living systems.

This excerpt from Ontology of Consciousness Percipient Action Edited by Helmut Wautischer © 2008 The MIT Press. is provided in screen-viewable form for personal use only by members of MIT CogNet. Unauthorized use or dissemination of this information is expressly forbidden. If you have any questions about this material, please contact [email protected].

This excerpt from Ontology of Consciousness Percipient Action Edited by Helmut Wautischer © 2008 The MIT Press. is provided in screen-viewable form for personal use only by members of MIT CogNet. Unauthorized use or dissemination of this information is expressly forbidden. If you have any questions about this material, please contact [email protected].

7

Language and the Evolution of the Human Mind

Hubert Markl

Abstract This chapter hints at new answers to a set of functional questions. The ontology of the mind, whatever its ultimate substance may be, diversifies into mental contents in whose making the brain noticeably intervenes. This diversity can be safely assumed to have evolved by the process of genetic variation and natural selection investigated in evolutionary theory. Why has the human species developed this astounding capacity to maintain an internal theater full of images, thoughts, conclusions, beliefs, prejudices, emotions, hopes, and anxieties, which we can conjure up almost at will, yet can suppress only sporadically and with considerable effort? Why do we have this capacity? What might it be good for? Can we see this remarkable variety of mental contents as a special adaptation of our species? Is there a relationship between the evolution of our conscious mind and our no-less-significant capability of developing symbolic language and social systems characterized by common beliefs, knowledge, and the skills of a complex culture handed on by learned tradition? The question of why humans have developed a unique style of mental contents should be answered according to the usual paradigm of Darwinian evolutionary theory, which tries to elucidate how a complex trait under study could evolve by means of natural selection, and how this contributes to the reproductive fitness of its bearers. Social intelligence is detailed, and individualized knowledge of relationships, rank, and behavioral dispositions, along with knowledge of the abilities of other group members, and with the rating of one’s own abilities to reach desired goals in such a network of behavioral probabilities by acting immediately or with deliberate delay, become the most vital, most crucial resources. Social intelligence generates one’s ability to comprehend strategic action within a rule-conforming environment, such as the moves in a game of chess where the present distribution of a game, along with possible future second-, third-, fourth-, and nth-order moves and their consequences are assessed, for every decision that the other player may make. Consciousness would thus become a virtual space for trying out behavioral games, for checking outcomes in theory before trying them out in actuality. It may decide for an individual whether he or she ends up successfully protected and well accepted in the core of a social group or as a peripheral player—that is, an outcast in danger of being the first target for predators and with reduced chance for replication of one’s genetic endowment.

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The evolution of a conscious mind as tentatively described may have entered into one of those autocatalytic, self-reinforcing relationships that so often in evolution are the hallmark of truly novel achievements. It seems that the prelinguistic hominid brain1 developed a number of capacities that can be regarded as prerequisite building blocks of the primate mind from which a truly linguistic cognitive system could develop, maybe even rather late in the history of our own species. Thus, while in primates intensive and frequent tactile communication through mutual grooming is the most important mode of interpersonal communication for building cooperative alliances and thus fostering social cohesion, these functions could have been partly but advantageously taken up by refining language. The linkage between such a well-prepared brain with a truly linguistic representational system must have produced more than communicative putty to hold together societal networks. In fact, step by step it probably enriched the private world of consciousness, that subjective interactive theater of world models in which an individual could preenact and reenact games in order to adapt better to the complex social reality where it actually had to perform in a public, shared conscious world. This enactment can also occur in possible virtual fictitious worlds that can be represented as thought shared by language. The capacity for consciousness and language would thus become mutually interlinked in a self-reinforcing circle. Even though the idea of replacing grooming by talking in expanding social groups may at first glance seem a bit simplistic and certainly not adequate to explain what happened during that genetic and neurolinguistic jump from a protolinguistic brain to a brain fully competent for human language, there is certainly a tertium comparationis of deeper importance in this. Communities that use language as a common mental unity derive an unmistakable and immutable linguistic identity. This cohesion binds the users of a language together into a tightly knit special relationship for life, into which others who speak differently and strangely—that is, the ba´rbaroi of the Greeks—can only intrude with much effort and often not at all. Thus, language ‘‘opens’’ and ‘‘closes’’ the human mind: it opens the way to communication of an unlimited richness of content and it closes groups against each other by erecting linguistic boundaries of discommunication. The view of the world would change from the day on which separate views of linguistically joined individuals of a social group could be amalgamated, and from that time on, the world itself would never again be as before. To Donald R. Griffin, mentor and friend—who dared

Foreword This chapter has been written in the spirit of Erasmus, the eminent European humanist and illustrious scholar who, probably more than anyone else in his day, was able to bridge the manifold chasms that have been, since earliest times, both the strength and the predicament not only of the intellectual history of Europe, but also Between ancient thinking and Christian thinking Between Christian theology and a philosophy that no longer regarded itself as ancilla, as handmaiden of the former

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Between the chauvinism of rising nations and the common intellectual heritage of the Greco-Roman and Christian West

n

And above all, Erasmus represented the attempt to bridge the gap n

Between devout belief and critical rationality, between clerical and secular reasoning

Who could better stand for the ideal goals of overcoming the ominous split of not only C. P. Snow’s (1964) two cultures (i.e., natural sciences versus humanities), but of cultures in general, than Erasmus, who lived and worked and influenced others in his native Netherlands as well as throughout Europe, (especially England, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland)? Who among all those towering medieval and Renaissance scholars could more authentically stand also for the self-critical modern scientific mind than this priest and son of a priest, this herald of religious tolerance and human rights based on natural law who, nevertheless, wrote a whole book making fun of himself and of pretentious scholarship while praising foolishness in his Encomion Moriae (Praise of Folly) of 1511? And who, finally, could more aptly lend his name to a discussion of the relationship between human language and the evolution of consciousness than this man with deep knowledge of the linguistic foundations of European thinking? He paved the way for a rationalistic, natural theology that provided the fertile ground for that young bachelor of divinity, Charles Robert Darwin, who would later shake the very foundations of our thinking about ourselves. This finally brings me back to my topic. ‘‘Language and the evolution of the human mind’’ is a topic certainly large enough to be associated with an Erasmus. But how can an animal behaviorist like myself, who has devoted most of his working life as a researcher to the intricacies of the sensory capabilities and communicative organization of social insects, dare to address such uniquely human characteristics as language (writ large) and consciousness (writ even larger)? The reason is similar to the way of thinking that invites linguists and psychologists to pontificate about what animals are and do, or supposedly are not able to do, often without ever having studied the actual behavior of even one of the beasts about which they claim to know so much by pure introspection (actually not the worst way to learn a lot about animals, I must admit). Different from such humanists, the student of animal behavior, on the other hand, does at least have the advantage of firsthand experience of actually being a conscious human person and of using language to convey his or her thoughts and observations, and consequently might be qualified to ponder the evolution of the human mind. How urgently answers to these questions about the substance of our humanity and about its roots in the animal kingdom are sought may be read from the two most luxuriously flowering branches of the biosciences publishing business: the ‘‘Darwin

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industry’’ and the ‘‘mind-body industry,’’ as I take the liberty of calling these most impressive and laudable efforts, made by many of the best scholarly and scientific minds. Daniel Dennett, the author of both Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995), is the undisputed master of both arts of intellectual enterprise. Let me therefore also dabble in the murky waters filling the trenches between philosophical quagmires, linguistic sand dunes, evolutionary rainforests, and the ethological outback. Clearing the Path for a Functional Question In order not to be completely lost in this wilderness, I should specify from the outset the things I will definitely not discuss. First, I will not address the question of what man and woman really are in essence, as compared to all nonhuman animals (as if these were unified by anything other than by not pertaining to our species). As far as this fundamental question is concerned, I will be glad to leave it with the old Linnean definition of that erect and mostly hairless primate ‘‘erect body, naked, scant hair concentrated in the remotest parts’’ (corpus erectum, nudum, pilis raris remotissimis adspersum) as Linne´ put it in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae (1758, 21). However, he recognizes as important among other characteristics: ‘‘animal that weeps, laughs, sweetly sings, converses, can be trained, judges, admires . . . yet frail . . . of unreliable character, stubborn hopes, lamentable life, belated wisdom’’ (animal flens, ridens, melodum, loquens, docile, judicans, admirans, . . . sed fragile . . . precarii spiritus, pertinacis spei, querulae vitae, tardae sapientae), while at the same time he maintains the notion of a ‘‘miracle of nature’’ (miraculum naturae), ‘‘Prince of Animals because of which the whole nature was generated’’ (Animalium Princeps cuius causa cuncta genuit natura). For the purpose of my discussion, humans are nothing but the members of a biological species of primates, one of peculiar capabilities and often rather queer habits (including the less-than-proper sense of the word). Thus, I am not addressing the question of whether there are special spiritual qualities to our species. I am neither advocating nor denying such concepts; rather, I am not exploring them because I do not feel qualified to do so. Let me therefore only consider that part of the human being that can be safely assumed to have evolved by the process of genetic variation and natural selection as assumed in Darwinian evolutionary theory. Second, I will not try to join the hunt for the ivory unicorn (or the red herring) of trying to answer the question of what ‘‘consciousness’’ as a reified entity really is. It may well be that we only feel compelled to raise this question because by joining a word to the inescapable self-evidence of conscious experiences, thoughts, desires, and intentions (in addition to unconscious performances of our neural system), we cannot but assume that there must be something to ‘‘consciousness.’’ To say it with Mephistopheles in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust: ‘‘It’s just when sense is missing that

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a word appears’’ (. . . denn eben wo Begriffe fehlen, da stellt ein Wort zur rechten Zeit sich ein (Goethe 1994, part 1, line 1995, p. 85)). To the great disappointment of my estimation of Dennett’s (1995, 370) scholarship, where he finds it possible to write ‘‘This bon mot appeared in the Tuft’s Daily, attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but I dare say it is a meme of more recent birth.’’ Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. Frankly, I do not know what the reified entity ‘‘consciousness’’ really is (although I certainly feel conscious enough), nor do I see that anybody else knows. It seems sufficient for our purpose to take it as common wisdom that we are capable of special types of cognitive, emotional, and voluntary processes, which we call conscious—a capacity that, as we know, depends on the functioning of our brains. We also know that we can lose this capacity, for instance during boring lectures, BUT ONE LOUD SENTENCE CAN BRING IT BACK TO US! Thus, there are very real problems connected with conscious experiences, inviting thorough scientific inquiry: How and where do these experiences come about in our brains, and what neurobiological functions and mechanisms are they dependent on? What happens when we lose them during sleep or replace them with subconscious dreams? Above all, when did such a capacity for conscious experience first evolve in the natural history of our species or of other animal ancestors endowed with it? This situation raises the question of the evolutionary level on which we can assume animals have conscious experiences. All these questions are fully legitimate and bona fide scientific questions, open to critical scrutiny, and I will come back to some of them shortly. There are other questions that, in my experience, are at the forefront of most people’s curiosity, yet are clearly out of bounds for scientific investigation—for example, questions about the essence of consciousness, as if it were some pneumatic substance with a very special quality, or whether that substance, called psyche or soul, could exist separately from our bodies and even survive their demise. Although the dualism of self-experience is irreducible, for a dualism of substance there is no evidence of a scientifically relevant kind. Third, I will also not address any further those scientifically accessible questions just mentioned, such as the connection between brain functions and the conscious neural state, however interesting it would be to do so. These connections are among the most exciting in the field of neurosciences, advancing by leaps and bounds with the amazing progress of neurophysiological, neurogenetic, neurochemical, neurohistological, electroencephalographic, magnetoencephalographic, nuclear-magnetic-resonance, X-ray- and positron-emission-tomographic, and, nearly monthly, other new imaging techniques applied to the intact, living, and consciously active human brain. The wonderful detail in which all these and many other methods allow us to localize and correlate physiological, biochemical, and neurological mechanisms with specific mental performances in the healthy as well as in the pathological brain will, in due course, through investigations by thousands and thousands of our most gifted neurobiologists,

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neuropsychologists, neurolinguists, and droves of other neuromaniac scientists— probably in even less time than given by the ‘‘Decade of the Brain’’—unravel most of the secrets of what is going on in our brains when our minds consciously think, feel, desire, or intend. When that is finished, will it mean that we then ‘‘know’’ in the scientific, reductionist sense of the natural sciences, what consciousness ‘‘really’’ is? As said before, I doubt that a satisfactory answer to this question will be the final outcome. I would be prepared to accept as a satisfying answer to the question of the neurobiological basis of consciousness that, if all the neurophysiological processes accompanying conscious experiences are localized, described, and quantitatively analyzed to the last molecule of the last neuron involved, then exactly such a description is all there ever will be for a physical explanation of conscious experiences of the mind (although it is most likely never fully achievable). Whoever wants more than this, as for instance an explanation of how the neural representation of the perception of Chopin’s Minute Waltz relates to the qualitative subjective feelings evoked by this piece of music—the qualia problem, about which some people presently make public noises by calling it ‘‘the hard problem of consciousness’’ (see Chalmers 1996) and claim that eventually it can be brought to a scientific solution—will be disappointed. It may after all turn out to be only the ‘‘hard problem’’ of seeing the emperor’s new clothes, in a semantic discourse that Francis Bacon (1974, sec. IV.3) might have counted among ‘‘the first distemper of learning, when men study words and not matter.’’ But even if this is so, it will not be a minor achievement, but rather a tremendous success of the scientific investigation of the physical foundations of conscious experiences and actions, if all the physical and chemical mechanisms involved in bringing them about will have been finally elucidated, as without doubt they will be sooner or later. This result will be one of the most important achievements of the scientific endeavor to explain reality in its currently most highly evolved form, but it will not ‘‘explain away’’ anything of this reality, or conscious feelings, or one’s internal certainty of possessing free will with its capacity and obligation to make choices on moral grounds. Nor will it cast the slightest doubt on the self-evident experience of the reality of the private subjective mental world of the human individual. These aspects will neither be touched nor, as it were, conjured away by the knowledge of what happens, for instance, in a specific group of neurons in our limbic system while we feel a rising emotion. Even if we animal behaviorists knew all and everything about dogs, it would still take a dog to feel like a dog! And even if a man boasted that he knew everything that can ever be known about his fellow men, let alone about women—which is of course impossible—he would never know what it feels like to be the other, and of course vice versa, unless they share and discuss their experiences with one another.

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Even then, and regardless of the gender variable, to hear a description of feelings is evidently not equivalent to having such feelings. Humans’ Capacity to Keep an Inner Theater Bountiful The privacy of experience finally brings me to the question I want to explore further. I am not concerned with what consciousness is, or with how our neural system brings it about; instead I will frame Darwinian questions more thoroughly: Why has the human species developed this astounding capacity to maintain an internal theater full of images, thoughts, conclusions, beliefs, prejudices, emotions, hopes, and anxieties, which we can conjure up almost at will, yet we can clear the stage only sporadically and with considerable conscious effort? Why do we have this capacity? What might it be good for? Can we see it as a special adaptation of our species? Needless to say, answers to the questions will open up further questions, such as whether other species have similar capacities accessible to us in recognizable degrees. A further consideration is the nature of a relationship between the evolution of our conscious mind and our equally significant ability to use symbolic language, and its impact on social systems, which are characterized by common beliefs, knowledge, and the skills engendered by a complex culture, handed on by learned tradition from generation to generation, and modified and embellished along its historical path. Let me try at least to hint at some new answers to such a set of functional considerations, which would not be exhaustively addressed, even if we knew everything about the neural mechanisms of conscious cognition, because we would still keep asking why such activities occur at all. I will pursue these matters from the base of a well-defined presupposition, a working hypothesis, as it were, but one for which all the available empirical evidence speaks forcefully: namely, that our ancestors (through Miocene, Pliocene, and Pleistocene epochs) evolved from an animal stage to the current human status as a whole—body and mind, physically and psychologically—with brain and self-awareness, articulatory apparatus and language capacity, instead of from increasingly humanlike, bipedal apes who, one Sunday morning, woke up fully equipped overnight with a human soul that made them once and for all something categorically different from all animal forebears. In other words, the question of why we have developed the extraordinary capabilities of conscious thought and feeling and of abstract conceptual language should be answered according to the usual paradigm of Darwinian evolutionary theory, which attempts to elucidate how a complex trait under study could evolve by means of natural selection, the determining factor being the reproductive fitness of its bearers. When we follow the expansive evolution of the hominid brain from its apelike state in the bipedal Australopithecus afarensis (either 4–6 or 3 million years ago (mya))

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through that of Homo habilis and Homo erectus (1.7–2 mya) to the fully developed human brain of the earliest Homo sapiens several hundred thousand years ago, we can assume that the enlargement of the hominid brain, which occurred concurrently with the increasing fetal neuron growth rate, resulted in the increased complexity of the hominid mind. The gradual refinement of tools and weapons is an early indicator of such change. But what exactly is the purpose of such Darwinian fitness in relation to the increasingly brainy creatures? It is inescapable at this point to ask whether, and to what degree, we can assume that our ape ancestors (or their more primitive primate and insectivorous mammalian forebears) had already developed cognitive and emotional capacities, which would thus allow us to impute to them conscious thoughts and feelings. This area of study, newly dubbed ‘‘cognitive ethology,’’ receives considerable attention in the field of contemporary animal research, which includes more than fifty years of excellent work in comparative experimental psychology, mostly on rats, mice, pigeons, monkeys, chimpanzees, pigs, parrots, and even honeybees. These studies have convincingly proven that all these and many other animals have excellent associative and operational learning capacities, combined with short- and long-term memory equivalent to that of humans. They have demonstrated, at least in the warm-blooded vertebrates, the ability to develop mental representations, called cognitive maps, that allow them—by drawing on past experience—to solve novel problems related to orientation and manipulation, which in humans we would not hesitate to call the result of deliberate thought. They have shown that all these animals, when exposed to complex choice situations, can make decisions according to rules that tend to optimize some outcome of their behavior—for example, in the selection of food, nest sites, shelters, and social partners. They have, in exceptional cases— for instance in rats, elephants, monkeys, apes, as well as pigeons and parrots—shown that these animals are able to build abstract generalized concepts, such as numbers (although well below ten), shapes, or colors of objects, and that some of them can associate such concepts with self-produced gestural or acoustic signals in a way that, in principle, comes close at least to the use of words for conceptual notions in humans. Summing up, most students of the cognitive performances of highly evolved vertebrates, especially of mammals and above all, higher primates, seem convinced, even after the most critical scrutiny of the experimental evidence, that these creatures are able to learn and memorize and to think and solve complex novel problems in a way not fundamentally different from what we know from our own experience. But do they do this consciously, meaning, is there incontrovertible evidence for conscious thoughts, feelings and, above all, self-awareness in any of these mammalian relatives? It depends on whether one accepts similar evidence, for instance, when posing the same question with respect to such human individuals as deaf-mute children, or disabled stroke patients, or even simply some foreigner with whom one does not have a

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single word in common. Most of the signs that we take as a certain indication of consciousness in such fellow human beings would easily pass muster in the aforementioned birds and mammals. Of course this may not convince the skeptic who maintains that even the most humanlike ape is nothing but a highly sophisticated biological robot, some kind of active somnambulist, who performs learning, problemsolving, and tool-using procedures as any microchip-equipped mechanical robot would do. Such interpretations bring us dangerously close to the quicksand dilemma of whether information-processing machines could be developed to reach such a status of artificial intelligence as to become conscious beings—another question that I definitely will not try to answer. Let me return later to the open question of conscious experience in animals— although for me, the question is open only in the sense that the notorious skeptic can hardly be forced by compelling evidence to accept that it exists, while critical observation of higher animals and birds makes it impossible, at least for me, to not ascribe conscious experiences, thoughts, and feelings to them, mostly on the basis of the argument of evolutionary continuity between animals and humans. Instead, I will address the question of why, from the state of an already rather clever and skillful problemsolving monkey or tool-using ape, the rocketlike ascent of the genus Homo, with a tripling of brain volume in less than two million years, could have occurred, and how this ascent might have depended on the expansion of the physical nervous system as well as of the mental capacities for conscious thought. Furthermore, this begs the question of why our capacity to use and produce abstract symbolic language is definitely lacking as a natural behavioral ability in all those animals and birds I have just considered. Minds Neurally Loaded with Abstract Mental Contents as an Adaptive Trait What could have made an increasingly conscious mind adaptive for our ancestors on their way from picking fruit and cracking nuts to writing poems, playing sonatas, and building cars with internal combustion engines? Apparently whatever constituted the first stirrings of conscious thought in Australopithecus or early Homo, who were living in groups of some twenty-five males and females with their offspring,2 avoiding their enemies and eating seeds, berries, fruits, buds, and occasional insects, birds’ eggs, or, once in a while, a butchered monkey baby, engendered a different evolutionary process than that of the hairy chimp on the other bank of the river whose life consisted of the same activities. It remains an act of rhetorical bravery to discern any advantage for reproductive fitness that might have resulted in increased thoughtfulness and premeditation compared to the other animals around. Natural selection could hardly have worked on enlarging the brain beyond the allometric proportions of animal primates (i.e., more than proportional to the increase in overall body size) if such enlargement had

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not been connected with an enhancement of reproductive success. We should not forget that our brain is one of the most expensive organs to maintain; with hardly more than 2 percent of our body weight, it needs nearly 20 percent of our total daily energy consumption. Evolution probably would not have tripled the size of such a gluttonous organ without a proportionately added value—and this balance is confirmed by evolutionary evidence of increased replication activity of genes related to neural endowment. The question of whether the enlarged cranial capacity is directly linked to the enhanced conscious awareness of its bearer continues to remain unsolved. This correlation could hardly have come alone from better learning ability, improved memory, increased sensory information processing, or enhanced motor skills, because in all these and many other aspects of neural control of behavior one cannot infer that the capacities of humans would excel when being compared to their more lowly relatives—from pigeons to parrots, from bats to dogs or monkeys—and in most respects even when compared to ants and bees. Of course, it is well known that superproportional enlargement, especially of the hemispheres or terminal telencephalic centers of the brain, was characteristic throughout mammalian evolution and that, especially in simian primates, the increased flexibility of learned behavior and decreased control by genetically fixed patterns of behavioral routines allowed them to expand their realm to diurnal arboreal life. It was this flexible adaptation to unpredictable food sources and ways to escape enemies that gave them the chance to exploit the canopy region of tropical forests, where there were few other similarly large-sized competitors around. However, our ancestors came from the same prime living space that those primates have left. They lived where there was definitely no dearth of large herbivores or carnivores and where, at least in the fully developed genus Homo, the free-swinging life of the arboreal ancestors was exchanged for locomotion on solid, two-dimensional ground for which, as antelopes, zebras, or warthogs demonstrate, extra-large brains were certainly unnecessary. So brain size exploded from less than 500 cc to double that size in a few hundred thousand years, and to triple that size in little more than a million years of a way of life that basically was not too different from that of a horde of baboons, which still escapes well-founded explanations today. What seems to me the correct answer to this worrisome question is neither my own nor entirely new. It has existed in one version or another for quite some time, connected with names (especially of primatologists) from Allison Jolly (1999), Michael Chance (1988), John Crook (1980), Hans Kummer (1990), or David Premack (1986) to Nicholas Humphrey (1992), Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth (1990), Richard Byrne (1995), Andrew Whiten and Richard Byrne (1997), Robin Dunbar (1993, 1996), and Frans de Waal (1989), among others. Mostly, it goes by the name of social intelligence theory of the human mind’s evolution. Its real content, however, as far as I can see, has become clearer only since the application of game theory to the evolution of

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social behavior—that is, behavior whose outcome depends on the interaction between individuals. It is the seminal studies of John Maynard Smith (1982) and William Hamilton (1996) that have given us a deeper insight into very special aspects of optimizing selection processes in natural populations. Natural selection optimizes heritable traits of organisms under conditions of scarcity of vitally necessary resources, because among the genetic variants available in every natural population, these traits will increase in relative frequency from generation to generation. Thus, the mode of distribution of heritable traits will move along a trajectory of increasing adaptation to prevailing selective conditions, with the range of genetic variation within a population determining its adaptability—that is, the speed of this optimizing process and its ability to react to changing selective conditions by genetic adjustment. This does not mean that, at any given time, any natural population must ever be truly optimally adapted in an absolute sense; the dialectic properties of the evolutionary process itself, together with the unpredictability of at least some influential environmental conditions, will always ensure that tomorrow some better solution may become the enemy of today’s good solution. Now, as long as we are talking about traits that can be produced by an individual alone, as for example control of blood pressure, efficiency of digestion, running speed, or visual acuity, this short qualitative description of evolutionary optimization will temporarily suffice. However, such optimization is no longer applicable if the fitness success of one individual depends crucially on the actions of others with whom the individual has to interact in order to reach his or her goals. The typical examples of this are, of course, predator-prey or host-parasite relations, aggressive or cooperative interactions between conspecifics, and, among the latter, the interactions between sexual partners in reproduction and those between parents and offspring in broodcare. Again, natural selection will tend to optimize individual fitness and thus replicative success of those genes influencing specific behavioral traits in all these relationships. But this success depends not only on the characteristics of one bearer of a specific genetic constitution, but on behavioral responses and their control by genetic influences in behavioral partners. Whether reproductive fitness is better served when encountering a competitor for a desired resource—say, a nest site, a territory, or a sexual partner—by giving in without fighting, by threatening in order to discourage the rival, or by immediate aggressive action will evidently be of great consequence for one’s chances of obtaining the needed good. It will also very much depend on what the competitor might be able to do in response to one’s actions and, above all—and this is the important point in the present discussion—on the partners’ assessment of each other regarding the actions and their possible outcomes with respect to genetic fitness. The same would hold for a male having the choice of either to stay with a female in a continuing reproductive relationship or to leave her for different partners during a lifetime, or for a broodcaring

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female who might have to decide whether to invest in already-existing offspring or to wean them and produce another clutch instead. In all of these truly social interactions, which are adequately modeled by the mathematical methods of game theory, the way to optimal adaptation is not as clear as it usually is in the straightforward cost-benefit models of individual behavioral optimization. Often it may not even be possible to reach an optimal outcome for all the partners involved but only some compromise in the evolutionary race for fitness benefits of all the relevant parties. Thus, an Evolutionary Stable Strategy (ESS) in the sense of John Maynard Smith’s work, more often than not can be only a compromise. Without going into further details, there is one aspect of this common evolutionary situation that deserves special emphasis. If each of the interacting individuals has many different options for behavioral actions and reactions, with probabilistic distributions of possible outcomes for them, then the more flexible and open toward learning processes the behavior of a species is—for example, more so in mammals than in reptiles, and even more so in primates than in shrews—the better off these individuals are. Consequently, if each of these individuals in a stable social group has, in addition, the chance to learn from the consequences of previous amicable relations, playful interactions, or aggressive clashes with other group members for decisions to be made in future encounters between them, then we will not only get very complex individual histories, albeit without detailed knowledge from externally hardly predictable relationships, we will also have social conditions for pursuing individual fitness in which one capacity becomes paramount for the social and, consequently, reproductive success of the participants. This gift shapes one’s behavior according to the most sophisticated evaluation of all possible outcomes of all possible options of actions and reactions, sometimes of two or more social partners who will all try to do the same, possibly at the other’s expense. Social intelligence is a detailed and individualized knowledge of relationships, and rank and behavioral dispositions, along with the abilities of other group members, and with the rating of one’s own possibility to reach desired goals in such a network of behavioral probabilities by acting immediately or with deliberate delay. Under such conditions, it becomes the most vital, most crucial resource. Remembering not only who is whose son or daughter or brother or sister, but being able to evaluate what that means for Ego and its given set of relatives in the struggle for social advantages and against disadvantages, may decide for an individual whether he or she ends up successfully protected and well accepted in the core of a social group or as a peripheralized loser, an outcast in danger of being the first target for predators and without much chance for replication of one’s genetic endowment. Social advancement is endowed by learning and memory, self-control of one’s behavior, the ability to make and keep friends by mutual cooperation, and of course it helps to be the son or daughter of a high-ranking female or to have many close relatives with whom to join forces. But even more than all this, it certainly helps if one

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does not have to rely only on learned traits or astute evaluations of present conditions. Instead, when one has the capacity to enact present and past experiences in a mental model that allows him or her to represent the probable outcomes of different possible options of strategic action and counteraction under the given circumstances, then one has a better opportunity to stay within the protective embrace of the highest-ranking social group. By analogy, consider imaginary chess-game opponents and their strategies to attempt victory. This does not mean that I am hinting at an evolutionary explanation of why the human brain is not only able (but in so many of us outright eager) to play such a game as chess. Playfulness, the ability to engage in mock behavior, play aggression, pretense of escape, fictitious hiding, and all those ‘‘as-if behaviors’’ that are not the real thing but wonderfully useful to explore what could happen if they were real, provide fine examples of what games can do for social learning. More to the point, it seems to me that exactly this performance quality of individuals, which allows them to play a game like chess, has all the properties necessary for assuming that they are capable of conscious thought. But we need to add one more step, which will also answer the obvious objection that such reasoning might force one to treat every $100 chess-computing program as a conscious creature. The one additional step is that this whole neural cost-benefit machinery only becomes really productive in the sense of a higher-order mental device if it can not only represent experiences past and present and rules connecting them with possible moves and actions, but if it can also represent one’s intentions, expectations, desires, and anxieties connected with this situational evaluation and, in addition, similar mental states of the interacting partners. In other words, a brain with such performance qualities would not only allow thoughts on past and present facts and probabilities of events, but also harbor thoughts on thoughts, reflections on intentions, hopes, and fears in oneself and in others, as well as representations of experiences, but metarepresentations of thoughts about such experiences. That is what we could call a truly conscious brain and, if we had convincing evidence for such capabilities in an animal, we would, without doubt, not hesitate to call it a fully conscious fellow being. In fact, for a number of mammals, especially for the hominid apes, we do have at least highly suggestive anecdotal and some experimental evidence of such capacities to infer intentional considerations in social partners, especially when trying to enlist their cooperation in solving problems, but also in situations that we can only describe as involving a deliberate intent to deceive a partner in competition for desired goods. Thus, I would suggest that the capacity for full consciousness has evolved in higher primates from already well-developed capacities in other mammals to the ability to represent past and present experiences and the ability to link them with actions by adding the representation of intentions, goals, and positive and negative emotions of

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oneself and others as some kind of internal experiences. This allows the brain not only to model what happens and what can happen, but also what should happen from one’s own point of view and from that of interacting participants, as it already does in simpler animal systems. Consciousness would thus not be some internal cinema in which prerecorded events can be revisited before they actually occur in the external world, but rather some kind of internal interactive play with the author also assuming the role of an actor who could try out in advance how the other actors might react to this. Such adaptation of role-playing can be utilized to fulfill one’s own intentions and to bring about corresponding outcomes in one’s social world. Consciousness would then become a virtual space for trying out behavioral games, for checking outcomes in theory before trying them out in actuality. Theoria is the Greek word for watching a theater performance and, in that sense a human being is certainly a theoretical animal. Our never-ending interest in seeing plays on stage and screen is only the extension of our instinctive desire to live out the plot in our minds. If there is truth in this view of understanding what drove the evolution of the human brain to expand its computational and representational capacities beyond all previous limits in order to allow the representation not only of social partners and actions and outcomes of their activities, but also of one’s own thoughts, intentions, feelings, desires, and fears, then this still does not answer the question of why cognitive evolution occurred to such a degree in primates and not, for instance, in wolves or dolphins. I will not attempt to answer this question, which may be of the kind so common in the reconstruction of evolution, where we can post factum try to understand the causation involved, but never prospectively predict what should happen next in an evolving lineage, thus making it fruitless to ask why not all trees can live for thousands of years, or why we cannot digest cellulose. Letting Partners Interact: The Mind’s Richness Is Expanded by Social Communication It is now time to address the function of language for mental development. Could it be that the key to understanding better why the human brain, with its expansion, the human mind, have developed beyond the bounds known previously in animals is because of social communication, of which human language without doubt is the most highly developed form? The evolution of a conscious mind as tentatively described may have entered into one of those autocatalytic, self-reinforcing relationships that so often in evolution are the hallmark of truly novel, emergent achievements. I hope to convince the reader that this might have been the case. Even so, we certainly know even less in terms of factual evidence about the evolution of human language than we know about the evolution of the human mind (for which, at least, brain enlargement

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may be taken as some kind of physical indication of the dynamics of the process involved). Let us begin by looking at typical sender-receiver interaction in animal communication—for example, crickets or birds singing. The sending animal produces some kind of acoustic signal that depends on its state, and thus codes a message, allowing a receiver to draw conclusions about that state. When the receiving animal responds to that signal, it has to decode the importance of that message with respect to its own nature and behavioral state, thereby giving the message some meaning. A male bird singing the message ‘‘I am a valiant and sexually mature male of species XY and hold a nice nesting territory’’ may of course convey an entirely different meaning to a male or a female of the same species, or to a cat trying to catch its lunch. Message and meaning of a signal are intimately connected with the intentional or emotional states of both sender and receiver. In addition, once we realize that communication roles are not merely asymmetrical, as between a courting male and female, but rather symmetrical as between two rival males or contenders in a fight for a valuable resource, and once we further consider that the increasing learning capacity of the communicators affects their signals, messages, and meanings, which are all apt to be modified by experience and by the consequences of past interactions, then we come to describe conditions of representation of signals and responses in the cognitive apparatus of animals. This interactivity opens entirely new ways of expanding the role of communication from rather simple stimulus-response types of interactions to highly complex modes of information exchange, and of mutual behavioral adaptation between sender and receiver. An important factor in many of these exchanges is the continuously changing roles between sender and receiver—for example, with threat signals that require availability in the animals’ minds for the coding mechanisms transforming behavioral and intentional states into messages, as well as the capacity to decode their meanings. The studies of Peter Marler and his students on acoustic communication in songbirds support this interpretation (see Bradbury and Vehrencamp 1998; Hauser 1996). Their studies show that the females of a species can recognize and decode the song of their conspecific males and, if primed by a dose of male sex hormone, they show full competence to produce male songs. Without this priming, these abilities are absent. Similarly, we know not only from birds but also from mammals, including humans, that members of both sexes often have complete access to nearly all their respective sex-related behaviors, and thus are capable of communicating messages and related mental and emotional states of the other sex. At the human level, these skills can be applied at will, which suggests that in some respect, we are inherently actors. Social communication fulfills, in an ideal way, the prerequisites needed for empathetic representation of a partner’s representational model for behavioral options and

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intentions, and for applying this knowledge with regard to one’s intentions and emotions, since our mind, of course, has continuous firsthand access. Through role change in dyadic communication, individual A, after sending a signal, can assume the position of individual B in the very next instant, interpreting B’s response, just as B before had assumed the position of A to interpret A’s signal. Therefore, what at first seemed a rather far-fetched assumption, namely that the conscious mind should represent one’s own intentions and thoughts, as well as those of an interacting partner in order to facilitate for planning adaptive behavior in fictitious social encounters, turns out to be congruent with the reality of communication and mutual adaptation of behavior by signaling (Markl 1985). Metarepresentation of situations, as well as thoughts and intentions in the virtual space of consciousness, are derivatives of the cognitive parameters for such communication. But how about language? Many would claim that there is more to language than the simple exchange of signals that underlies animal communication systems. For example, Steven Pinker’s (1994) The Language Instinct explores the chasm separating even the most sophisticated achievements of animal communication—say, the honeybees’ communication dances, birdsong duets, or vervet monkeys’ referential calls—from the simplest forms of human language, such as the newly ‘‘invented’’ creole languages analyzed by Derek Bickerton (1990) and others. However, even if one is rightfully critical of exaggerated claims about sign language in apes, such comparative experimental animal studies in chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates have at least revealed features and abilities of the primate mind, which Bickerton registers as protolinguistic, and which he also finds in the rudimentary linguistic achievements of children under two years of age, in adults who have been deprived of access to language models in their early years, and in speakers of pidgin-type communication systems. Such studies suggest that the prelinguistic hominid brain developed a number of capacities that can be regarded as prerequisite building blocks of the primate mind from which a truly linguistic cognitive system developed, perhaps even later in the history of our own genus. The remarkable coincidence found in a number of ‘‘humanoid’’ mental and behavioral capacities—present to some degree separately in other species of animals, but in its condensed combination only in primates most closely related to humans—appears to have set the stage for the evolution of a brain with a more developed ‘‘language instinct.’’ These capacities include self-recognition in mirror images; demonstration of a concept of self along with a degree of self-consciousness; and advanced and variable tool use, especially tool selection and production, as well as the inventive and insightful use of tools for problem solving. These remarkable abilities yield causal inferences, as well as the capacity and propensity for the social teaching of manipulative skills especially to one’s offspring. Furthermore, the ability of apes to learn, use, and even teach referential signals—that is, ‘‘protowords,’’ represent names

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for present or absent physical objects, as well as actions, and even rather abstract concepts and intentional mental states such as desires or fears. It is rather clear by now that this ability to use ‘‘word signs’’ to whatever degree, even in associative strings, lacks the simplest characteristics of any language that involves syntax and grammar. Nonetheless, it seems remarkable that the demonstration of such abilities in primates, especially in combination with the other achievements mentioned, may teach us how the language-competent human mind evolved as the latest stage of ascent of an evolutionary rocket that was launched from early primate stock. If these protolinguistic achievements did not represent some more primitive form of human language, and if human language nonetheless is a truly biological, genetically founded characteristic of Homo sapiens, then we are back to the same question as before: What are the functional reasons that explain the evolution of a fully conscious human mind? What did the advent of modern Homo sapiens some 200,000 years ago contribute to achieving a real language capacity? This search takes place in biologically adaptive terms—again, in Darwinian reproductive fitness—and adds to what the protolinguistic, ancestral forms neither had nor needed. Robin Dunbar (1996) looks at this evolutionary development by assessing the relationship between brain development and group size. Specifically, he found that in primates there is a strong correlation between mean size of social groups and the relative degree of neocortex development. From this he drew the conclusion that neocortical size limits the degree of social complexity with which a primate can cope. This parameter indicates some of the evolutionary selective forces acting on the enlargement of neocortical size in human evolution. A lot of brain would be necessary to bring forth the conscious representational systems, which are needed to maintain the increasing network of influential relationships that are part of the social behavioral games that determine individual and inclusive reproductive success in increasingly larger social groups. In their investigation of primate ‘‘Machiavellian intelligence,’’ Richard Byrne and Andrew Whiten (1988) have added to Dunbar’s insight that the occurrence of deceptive social behavior also correlates positively with neocortical development. Their assertions still seem to be insufficient to understand the evolution of human language. Dunbar points out that intensive and frequent tactile communication through mutual grooming is the most important method of communication for building cooperative alliances and thus fostering social cohesion in primates. When groups extend beyond approximately fifty members, the time and effort necessary to guarantee such cohesion in grooming networks becomes excessive, and other means of organization become necessary, for which purpose, he suggests, language might have taken over. Although it seems evident that language, once developed, accomplishes this task of social coordination, it occurs to me that their interesting suggestion is still aiming

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much too low to explain what true language really adds to human mind and behavior, let me state once again: the evolution of a conscious mind depends strongly on the representation of past and present experiences, cause-effect associations, and the metarepresentation of one’s intentions and feelings as well as those of communication partners. The protolinguistic primate mind thus was able to correlate gestural, mimicked, and vocal signals, both referentially with features of the environment as well as with such mental concepts. Then the correlation between such a well-prepared brain with a truly linguistic representational system must have produced more than merely communicative putty to hold together societal networks. However, these attributes also gradually expand the private world of consciousness, allowing for a subjective interactive theater of world models in which an individual can preenact and reenact games in order to adapt better to the complex social reality where it actually had to make sense in a public, shared conscious world. This enactment can also occur in possible virtual fictitious worlds that can be represented as thought shared by language. The capacity for consciousness and language thus becomes mutually interlinked in a self-reinforcing circle where the expanded common consciousness as represented by the linguistic construction of realities (both true and imagined) would necessarily feed back onto the capacity of the individual mind to grasp, memorize, and work within these world models by means of that individual’s shared linguistic experience. Thus, even though the idea of replacing grooming with talking in expanding social groups may at first glance seem a bit simplistic and certainly not adequate to explain what happened during that genetic and neurolinguistic jump from a protolinguistic brain to a brain fully competent for human language, there is certainly a tertium comparationis of deeper importance in this. Language is more than merely a means to transport—and reason about—world models from private imagination into a public domain, an opening for innumerable ways to prepare for and especially to play social games, and an explanation and invention of events, as well as an instrument for cajoling and manipulating and threatening fellow human beings. It makes a significant contribution to the community that uses it to create a shared mental unity, an unmistakable and immutable linguistic identity. Language as a Provider of Cultural Identity Language expands private conscious thoughts and feelings into common conscious thoughts and feelings, but at the same time it binds the users of a language together into a tightly knit special relationship for life, into which others who speak differently and strangely—that is, the ba´rbaroi of the Greeks—can only interpose themselves with much effort, and often not at all. Thus, language opens and closes the human mind. It opens the way to communication of an unlimited richness of content and it closes groups against each other, by erecting linguistic boundaries of discommunication

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(Markl 1985), even in these days of life in a global village with ‘‘approximate English’’ as the creole of the Internet. It seems to me that we still have to wait for an answer explaining what happened when the human brain—already full of conscious protolinguistic mental abilities and expanded enough to handle the complexities of fitness-optimizing politics in advanced gatherer and hunter societies, some tens or a hundred thousand years ago—added the ‘‘language instinct’’ (in Steven Pinker’s terms) to the other genetic endowments of our species. There can be no doubt that the human mind, already having evolved over several million years as an amazingly competent organizer of social intelligence, took off with an expansion of consciousness uniting billions of people, deceased and alive, into a social superorganism with shared knowledge about the world, with the capacity to invent new utopian worlds, and with the potential to unite them beyond common belief into action. As much as we may be curious about what happened to bring about this linguistic jump of our neurogenetic system and what the real selective driving forces were behind it, one thing is clear enough: the view of the world can no longer be the same once separate views of linguistically coupled individuals of a social group are amalgamated. Language not only provides the means to represent the world as it is but at the same time makes it possible for group members to decide jointly how it should be—and to implement such changes. Notes An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the meeting of the Academia Europea in Barcelona 1996, and appeared in European Review, Vol. 5, pp. 1–21, 1997. The two notes were added by Mario Crocco. 1. The word hominid refers to members of the family of humans, Hominidae, which consists of all species on our side of the last common ancestor of humans and living apes. 2. In the years following the lecture that underlies this chapter, new ideas and fossil findings have considerably enriched its background without as yet requiring that its perspective be altered. Scholars maintain that the divergence of the Homo line from that of the great apes may have taken place as early as nine million years ago. Notwithstanding any knowledge about inbreeding constraints, it was surprising to learn that a single ‘‘generalized’’ form was supplanted by a ‘‘mosaic’’ of hominid forms five to six million years ago, not, as previously thought, a mere two to three million years ago. References Bacon, Francis (1974), The Advancement of Learning, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bickerton, Derek (1990), Language and Species, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Bradbury, Jack W., and Sandra L. Vehrencamp (1998), Principles of Animal Communication, Sunderland: Sinauer Associates. Byrne, Richard (1995), The Thinking Ape: Evolutionary Origins of Intelligence, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byrne, Richard, and Andrew Whiten, eds. (1988), Machiavellian Intelligence, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chalmers, David (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chance, M., and A. Richard, eds. (1988), Social Fabrics of the Mind, Hove and London: Lawrence Erlbaum. Cheney, Dorothy L., and R. M. Seyfarth (1990), How Monkeys See the World, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Crook, John H. (1980), The Evolution of Human Consciousness, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dennett, Daniel C. (1991), Consciousness Explained, London: Allen Lane/Penguin. ——— (1995), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, London: Allen Lane/ Penguin. de Waal, Frans B. M. (1989), Peacemaking among Primates, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Dunbar, Robin I. M. (1993), ‘‘Coevolution of Neocortical Size, Group Size and Language in Humans,’’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 16, pp. 681–735. ——— (1996), Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, London: Faber. Erasmus, Desiderius (1986), ‘‘Praise of Folly/Moriae encomium,’’ in Collected Works of Erasmus, Vol. 27, pp. 77–153, trans. Betty Radice. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1987), Faust, Part One, trans. David Luke, Oxford: Oxford Univer¨ ne, Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. sity Press. German text (1994), Ed.: Albrecht Scho Hamilton, William D. (1996), Narrow Roads of Gene Land, Vol. I, New York, NY: Freeman. Hauser, Marc D. (1996), The Evolution of Communication, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Humphrey, Nicholas (1992), A History of the Mind, London: Chatto & Windus. Jolly, Allison (1999), Lucy’s Legacy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kummer, Hans, V. Dasser, and P. Hoyningen-Huene (1990), ‘‘Exploring Primate Social Cognition: Some Critical Remarks,’’ Behaviour, Vol. 112, pp. 84–98. Linne´, Carl von (1758–1759), Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum charateribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis, 10th revised ed., Holmiae: Impensis L. Salvii.

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Markl, Hubert S. (1985), ‘‘Manipulation, Modulation, Information, Cognition: Some of the Riddles of Communication,’’ in B. Ho¨lldobler and M. Lindauer, eds., Experimental Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, pp. 163–194, Stuttgart: Fischer Verlag. Maynard Smith, John (1982), Evolution and the Theory of Games, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pinker, Steven (1994), The Language Instinct, London: Allen Lane/Penguin. Premack, David (1986), Gavagai!, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Snow, Charles P. (1964), The Two Cultures and a Second Look, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Whiten, Andrew, and Richard Byrne, eds. (1997), Machiavellian Intelligence II: Extensions and Evaluations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

8

Consciousness Cannot Be Explained in Terms of Specific Neuronal

Types and Circumscribed Neuronal Networks Mircea Steriade

Abstract Can specific neuronal types generate consciousness? Elementary forms of consciousness consist of perceptual experiences, and subjective states are a critical ingredient in the notion of consciousness. The mechanisms behind the emergence of subjectivity are hidden, and recordings of identified neuronal types cannot be systematically made in humans. On the other hand, animals can perform complex behavioral tasks but do not possess the virtue of expressing their subjective states. Subjective experiences constitute just a first step in the complexity of consciousness. The question then arises: How can consciousness be studied experimentally, at the neuronal level? The only studies toward investigating subjective states in humans, to answer the question of spatiotemporal neuronal configurations that elicit (or are correlated with) conscious awareness, used electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex, with parameters that could have also set into action a series of subcortical structures. The multitude of systems implicated in brain awakening, memory, and affectivity, to name just a few of the components of consciousness, are such that information about the coherent activity of all these neurons is hardly possible, to say the least. Because pointing to circumscribed neuronal loops implicated in consciousness, such as thalamocortical circuits, was not enough, some authors suggested that there is a peculiar set of neurons located in deep cortical layers, which fire high-frequency bursts of action potentials and are endowed with properties of awareness. It was also thought that it is only a question of time before specific molecular markers would be found in such neuronal elements. However, no speculation about the role of specific neuronal types, with distinct firing patterns, applies to consciousness because the intrinsic properties of bursting neurons are overwhelmed by synaptic activities, as happens upon natural awakening when consciousness arises. The issue is that the firing patterns of cortical neuronal types are not inflexible, but change with the level of membrane potential and during epochs rich in synaptic activity, as is the case during states of consciousness. The impossibility of having simultaneous access to various neuronal types belonging to all structures that organize conscious processes in a concerted way, identified in terms of input-output organization as well as chemical codes (excitatory or inhibitory), and the changing firing patterns of cortical neurons as a function of behavioral states of vigilance, cast doubt on overenthusiastic scenarios that are not realistic as to the possibility of giving rise to experimental designs and may have undesirable implications for the epistemology of consciousness.

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Introduction The title of this chapter already indicates my position in a field that has excited so many distinguished minds during the past decade. For theoreticians, the problems of consciousness and brain operations are treated with a passion worthy of issues related to life and death (see Searle 1997). However, only a few active neuroscientists (those who record electrical activities of neurons, look through microscopes, or use magnetic resonance machines) devote any attention to the global state of consciousness at the end of their papers, and then only to embellish crude facts, such as recordings of brain electrical activities. This does not mean that consciousness, as a whole, is generated outside the brain, nor does it imply that elementary components cannot be studied at the single neuron level. In other words, consciousness is best researched as a variable of brain activity. For example, different forms of memory have been investigated using neuronal recordings in the frontal lobe of macaques (Fuster 1996; Goldman-Rakic 1996); attentive behavior by eliminating irrelevant activity has been studied with cellular recordings in the cerebral cortex and thalamus of nonhuman primates (Desimone and Duncan 1995; Robinson and Cowie 1997); fear and emotional processes have been related to neuronal activities recorded from amygdala nuclei (Aggleton 1992; LeDoux 1996); the complex brainstem neuronal circuitry that gives rise to thalamocortical processes implicated in dreaming mentation has been identified during this sleep stage of cats (Steriade and McCarley 1990); and the sites of brainstem and thalamic lesions that produce loss of wakeful conscious states in humans have been described (Plum 1991; Steriade 1997). These relations between neuronal activities and behavioral states merely refer to some fragments that build up states of consciousness, but none of the above-mentioned studies were aimed at revealing the role of specific neuronal types or definite brain circuits in the generation of the global state of consciousness that includes, of necessity, subjective experiences. Let us then first try to see how consciousness can be operationally defined, the only way to investigate its neuronal basis. Difficulties in Defining Consciousness To assess whether consciousness can be studied at the neuronal level, one must clearly define the phenomenon. The difficulties in defining consciousness are such that Crick (1994) preferred to avoid a precise definition of consciousness and, because of the difficulty of analyzing consciousness as a global entity, he focused on what he considered easier to investigate: visual awareness. This tactic is close to the idea that looking at a part may contribute to an understanding of how the whole works (Churchland 1996). As to self-awareness, which is probably what defines the human conscious state, Crick left it out. Whether visual experiences are easier to study and to what extent the tactic

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of dissecting parts of the device may be applied to the study of the global entity of consciousness are discussed below. Many writers take for granted that everyone knows what consciousness is, but we know as long as we are not asked to define it. Some think that consciousness cannot arise without a background of arousability but, although it is conventionally thought that consciousness is what abandons us every evening and reappears the next morning when one wakes up, peculiar types of mentation with illogical thought and bizarre feelings occur not only during what is usually called dreaming sleep (with rapid eye movement, REMs), but also in deep stages of slow-wave sleep (Foulkes 1967; Hobson, Pace-Schott, and Stickgold 2000). For the sake of simplicity, I will confine the discussion to wakeful consciousness. Classically, the notion covers mental images, thoughts, desire, emotion, and the like ( James 1950): all contents of experience of which we are aware. Among the necessary and sufficient elements of primary and high-order consciousness, the primary consciousness consists of different types of sensations and a system for memory and learning, while high-order consciousness emerges from the former, develops with a concept of self, and culminates in a linguistic system (Edelman 1989). High-order consciousness, as it appears in humans, might be investigated using macroscopic electrophysiological recordings and/or neuroimaging techniques that grossly localize the events within the brain (Van Turrenout, Hagoort, and Brown 1998) without reaching the neuronal level. Other authors place the emphasis on emotions and feeling (Damasio 1999). The crucial issue is that even the basic elements of the first-order consciousness, namely perceptual experiences, imply subjective states that are a critical ingredient in the notion of consciousness, but everyone agrees that the mechanisms behind the emergence of subjectivity are hidden (Damasio and Damasio 1996). Knowing that recordings of identified neuronal types cannot be systematically made in humans while, on the other hand, animals can perform behavioral tasks but do not possess the virtue of expressing their subjective states, how can high-order consciousness be studied experimentally, at the neuronal level? That such conscious experience is intrinsically subjective (Nichols and Newsome 1999) is to my mind the major obstacle toward the understanding of, for example, how action potentials in the geniculocortical pathway (the cerebral projection conveying the visual information) would give rise to a subjective visual experience—which is just a first step in the complexity of consciousness. I would say not only ignoramus, but also ignorabimus. Attempts at Revealing the Neuronal Basis of Consciousness The skepticism expressed above is due to the fact that multiple neuronal loops are implicated in consciousness, and that their cellular components are difficult (better said, hardly possible) to investigate simultaneously during conscious processes. To my

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knowledge, only Libet (1966, 1998) attempted to investigate subjective states in humans by electrical stimulation of the cerebral cortex to answer the question of spatiotemporal neuronal configurations that effectively elicit (or are correlated with) conscious awareness. Libet cautioned that his studies addressed the simplest elements of conscious experience. Those investigations used the reaction time of a motor response of the subject, taken as an index of the degree of awareness. The threshold duration of electrical stimuli applied to the somatosensory cortex (those areas are ultimately targeted by axons that transfer information about touch, pressure, and deep articulations) to produce reports of introspective experience of purely somatic sensations was 0.5 second or more (Libet et al. 1964). Data suggested that the critical neuronal components for threshold sensation appear to lie in the more superficial layers of the postcentral gyrus, namely the areas of the cortical mantle behind the central sulcus. To explain the latency of 0.5 second, Libet referred to afterwaves in electrical responses, which oscillate for some hundreds of milliseconds, and suggested that these waves (oscillations of brain electrical activity) are modified with shifts in the state of vigilance and attention. In fact, the rhythmic alternation of afterimages in humans may be correlated with rhythmic activation and inhibition phases of visual cortical neurons in cats ( Jung 1961), and these fast oscillations are dependent on the state of vigilance in both animals and humans (Steriade 1968; Steriade, Amzica, and Contreras 1996; Herculano-Houzel et al. 1999). The 0.5 second required for the awareness of a sensory experience to emerge is different from the shorter reaction time needed for a motor response. This led to the speculation that when one makes quick motor reactions in everyday-life situations, these reactions are not mediated at conscious levels (Libet 1966). More recently, Libet (1998) confirmed the delay of 0.5 second for neuronal activities to achieve adequacy of contents to awareness, and he concluded that what is needed to ascertain are correlative relationships between neuronal processes and conscious experiences, accessed by the introspective reports of the subject. He suggested that, to test the hypothesis that local cortical areas contribute to, or generate, consciousness, isolated slabs from humans could be investigated but, because the spontaneous activity of such slabs is very poor, isolated slabs of cortex have to be awakened from the abnormal comatose state. How these heroic procedures would relate to consciousness is difficult to imagine. Moreover, as remarked by Mountcastle at the 1966 symposium when Libet presented his original data, the cortex has a very difficult job in weeding out the conscious perception from the abnormal train of events set in motion by the electrical stimulus. This is because a pulse train lasting 0.5 second would set into action so many neuronal processes, in the neocortex and related subcortical structures, that any inferences about the neuronal types and circuits involved would be highly improbable. Other neuroscientists and theoreticians proposed that thalamocortical systems generate consciousness (Crick 1994) or, more precisely, the connections between thalamic

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intralaminar nuclei and neocortical areas that project back to both thalamic reticular and cortically projecting nuclei (Llina´s and Pare´ 1991). The thalami are two (right and left) large ovoid masses, deeply located in the brain, rostral to the upper brainstem, each consisting of about forty cellular aggregates called nuclei. The neurons of thalamic intralaminar nuclei receive afferents from the brainstem reticular formation (which is an awakening structure) and send projections to widespread cortical areas. In the hypothesis of Llina´s et al. (1994), thalamic relay nuclei transfer the content of specific sensory signals that relate to the external world, while thalamic intralaminar (so-called nonspecific) nuclei would give rise to the context concerned with alertness. The role of human thalamic intralaminar nuclei in awakening and attentive processes was demonstrated by neuronal activation during complex tasks (Kinomura et al. 1996) and hypersomnolence following their lesions (Fac¸on, Steriade, and Wertheimer 1958). Besides thalamocortical systems, many other brain structures are decisively implicated in conscious processes, such as the brainstem reticular formation, posterior hypothalamus, and basal forebrain, which all underlie the arousing background required for attentive behavior and consciousness; perirhinal cortices and hippocampus that are implicated in memory; and amygdala nuclei, located deeply in the temporal lobe and coloring memory with affectivity—to name only some of the cardinal structures whose neurons cannot be recorded simultaneously to provide a reasonable picture of the cellular basis of consciousness. The Hypothesis of Specific Neuronal Types Implicated in Consciousness Because the hypothesis of thalamocortical connections was not precise enough, some authors wondered whether the visual representation is largely confined to certain neurons in the deep cortical layers (Crick and Koch 1998), named layers V and VI, which comprise the innermost neuronal layers of the cerebral cortex. These authors further suggested that there are special sets of awareness neurons somewhere in the cortex (e.g., layer V bursting cells) and stated that it is only a question of time before specific molecular markers are found in those neuronal elements of consciousness (Koch 1998). They did not specify why these markers would occur only in layers V–VI and not also III–IV, why only bursting and not also regular-spiking neurons are implicated in consciousness, and what role can be attributed to fast-spiking inhibitory interneurons (neurons turning others more refractory to fire action potentials) that are so important for discrimination processes in conscious states. The issue is that the firing patterns of cortical neuronal types are not inflexible, but change with the level of membrane potential and during epochs rich in synaptic activity (Steriade 2001a), as is the case of wakeful consciousness. One of the most striking examples is the transformation of bursting cortical neurons into regular-spiking neurons. This occurs during the transition from slow-wave sleep to brain-activated states,

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Figure 8.1a Responses of intrinsically bursting (IB) neuron in isolated cortical slab from suprasylvian gyrus in vivo (cat under ketamine-xylazine anesthesia) to the same intensity of depolarizing current pulse (0.5 nA) at the resting Vm (70 mV) and under slight depolarization (þ0.2 nA, 63 mV). A typical burst is expanded at right (arrow) (modified from Timofeev et al. 2000).

such as wakefulness or REM sleep (see Steriade, Timofeev, and Grenier 2001, figure 3); during stimulation of brainstem reticular formation; or just by slightly depolarizing the neuron (figures 8.1a–b), which is exactly what happens upon natural awakening—the behavioral state during which consciousness is mainly generated. This transformation also concerns other cortical types (see details in Steriade 2001a). No speculation about the role of specific neuronal types, with distinct firing patterns, applies to consciousness because the intrinsic neuronal properties are overwhelmed by synaptic activities with shifts from slow-wave sleep to brain-active states, accompanied by changes in the membrane polarization. In particular, neocortical bursting cells from layer V are found in a great proportion (up to @40 percent) in isolated cortical slabs (Timofeev et al. 2000), whereas intracellular recordings show that they are in a negligible proportion (<5 percent) during the natural waking state, when perceptual experiences and high-order consciousness are supposed to occur. This huge difference in proportion seems only natural because of the transformation of their peculiar discharges into those of regular-spiking neurons, as figures 8.1a and 8.1b show. Moreover, although intrinsically bursting cells were first described in deep layers of cortical slices maintained in vitro, especially layer V (Chagnac-Amitai, Luhmann, and Prince 1990; Connors and Amitai 1995), these neurons were also found in the supragranular layer ˜ez, and Amzica 1993b) and in vitro (Nishimura et al. III, both in vivo (Steriade, Nun 2001). Confronted with these difficulties in relating consciousness with specific neuronal types, located in distinct cortical layers or in circumscribed neuronal loops, thus leaving aside many other brain systems, and with the impossibility of having simultaneous

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Figure 8.1b Area 7 neuron in cat under urethane anesthesia, recorded in vivo. An IB cell (as identified by depolarizing current pulses) fired spike bursts during the slow sleep oscillation and transformed this burst firing into tonic, single action potentials following brain activation produced by stimulation (horizontal bar, 1.8 s, 30 Hz) of the pedunculopontine tegmental (PPT) nucleus. Arrow points to an expanded detail showing a spike burst followed by single spikes (modified from Steriade, ˜ ez, 1993a). Amzica, and Nun

access to electrophysiologically identified neurons belonging to all structures that organize conscious processes in a concerted way, those interested in subtle mental states and high-order consciousness may continue to read Flaubert, Dostoyevsky, Proust, and Joyce, among others, while devoting their research time to neuroscience topics that can be defined more precisely within the confines of scientific methodology. Note A detailed account of my views is in Steriade 2001a, and this chapter is largely taken from that monograph. References Aggleton, J. P., ed. (1992), The Amygdala: Neurobiological Aspects of Emotion, Memory, and Mental Dysfunction, New York, NY: Wiley-Liss. Chagnac-Amitai, Y., H. J. Luhmann, and D. A. Prince (1990), ‘‘Burst Generating and Regular Spiking Layer 5 Pyramidal Neurons of Rat Neocortex Have Different Morphological Features,’’ Journal of Comparative Neurology, Vol. 296, pp. 598–613.

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Churchland, P. S. (1996), ‘‘Toward a Neurobiology of Mind,’’ in R. Llina´s and P. S. Churchland, eds., The Mind-Brain Continuum, pp. 281–303, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Connors, B. W., and Y. Amitai (1995), ‘‘Functions of Local Circuits in Neocortex: Synchrony and Laminae,’’ in M. J. Gutnick and I. Mody, eds., The Cortical Neuron, pp. 123–140, New York: Oxford University Press. Crick, Francis (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis, New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Crick, Francis, and Christopher Koch (1998), ‘‘Consciousness and Neuroscience,’’ Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 8, pp. 97–107. Damasio, A. R. (1999), The Feelings of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & Co. Damasio, A. R., and H. Damasio (1996), ‘‘Making Images and Creating Subjectivity,’’ in R. Llina´s and P. S. Churchland, eds., The Mind-Brain Continuum, pp. 19–27, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Desimone, R., and J. Duncan (1995), ‘‘Neural Mechanisms of Selective Attention,’’ Annual Reviews of Neuroscience, Vol. 18, pp. 193–222. Edelman, G. M. (1989), The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness, New York, NY: Basic Books. Fac¸on, E., M. Steriade, and N. Wertheimer (1958), ‘‘Hypersomnie prolonge´e engendre´e par des le´sions bilate´rales du syste`me activateur me´dial: le syndrome thrombotique de la bifurcation du tronc basilaire,’’ Revue Neurologique (Paris), Vol. 98, pp. 117–133. Foulkes, D. (1967), ‘‘Nonrapid Eye Movement Mentation,’’ Experimental Neurology, Vol. 19, pp. 28–38. Fuster, J. M. (1996), ‘‘Network Memory,’’ Trends in Neurosciences, Vol. 20, pp. 451–459. Goldman-Rakic, P. S. (1996), ‘‘Regional and Cellular Fractionation of Working Memory,’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Vol. 93, pp. 13473–13480. Herculano-Houzel, S., M. H. J. Munk, S. Neuenschwander, and W. Singer (1999), ‘‘Precisely Synchronized Oscillatory Firing Patterns Require Electroencephalographic Activation,’’ Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 19, pp. 3992–4010. Hobson, J. A., E. Pace-Schott, and R. Stickgold (2000), ‘‘Dreaming and the Brain: Toward a Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious States,’’ Brain and Behavioral Sciences, Vol. 23, pp. 793–842. James, W. (1890, 1950), The Principles of Psychology, New York, NY: Dover. Jung, R. (1961), ‘‘Neuronal Integration in the Visual Cortex and Its Significance for Visual Information,’’ in W. A. Rosenblith, ed., Sensory Communication, pp. 627–674, New York, NY: Wiley. Kinomura, S., J. Larsson, B. Gulya´s, and P. Roland (1996), ‘‘Activation by Attention of the Human Reticular Formation and Thalamic Intralaminar Nuclei,’’ Science, Vol. 271, pp. 512–515.

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Koch, C. (1998), ‘‘The Neuroanatomy of Visual Consciousness,’’ in H. H. Jasper, L. Descarries, V. F. Castelucci, and S. Rossignol, eds., Consciousness: At the Frontiers of Neuroscience (Advances in Neurology, Vol. 77), pp. 229–241, Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott-Raven. LeDoux, J. E. (1996), The Emotional Brain, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Libet, Benjamin (1966), ‘‘Brain Stimulation and the Threshold of Conscious Experience,’’ in J. C. Eccles, ed., Brain and Conscious Experience, pp. 165–176, New York, NY: Springer. ——— (1998), ‘‘Do the Models Offer Testable Proposals of Brain Functions for Conscious Experience?’’, in H. H. Jasper, L. Descarries, V. F. Castelucci, and S. Rossignol, eds., Consciousness: At the Frontiers of Neuroscience (Advances in Neurology, Vol. 77), pp. 213–217, Philadelphia, PA: LippincottRaven. Libet, B., W. W. Alberts, E. W. Wright Jr., L. D. Delattre, G. Levin, and B. Feinstein (1964), ‘‘Production of Threshold Levels of Conscious Sensation by Electrical Stimulation of Human Somatosensory Cortex,’’ Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol. 27, pp. 546–578. Llina´s, R. R., and D. Pare´ (1991), ‘‘Of Dreaming and Wakefulness,’’ Neuroscience, Vol. 44, pp. 521–535. Llina´s, R., U. Ribary, M. Joliot, and X. J. Wang (1994), ‘‘Content and Context in Temporal Thalamocortical Binding,’’ in G. Buzsa´ki, R. Llina´s, W. Singer, A. Berthoz, and Y. Christen, eds., Temporal Coding in the Brain, pp. 251–272, Berlin: Springer. Nichols, M. J., and W. T. Newsome (1999), ‘‘The Neurobiology of Cognition,’’ Nature, Vol. 402 (Suppl.), pp. C35–C38. Nishimura, Y., M. Asahi, K. Saitoh, H. Kitagawa, Y. Kumazawa, K. Itoh, M. Lin, T. Akamine, H. Shibuyam, T. Asahara, and T. Yamamoto (2001), ‘‘Ionic Mechanisms Underlying Burst Firing of Layer III Sensorimotor Cortical Neurons of the Cat: An In Vitro Slice Study,’’ Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol. 86, pp. 771–781. Plum, F. (1991), ‘‘Coma and Related Global Disturbances of the Human Conscious State,’’ in A. Peters and E. G. Jones, eds., Cerebral Cortex (Vol. 9, Normal and Altered States of Function), pp. 359–425, New York, NY: Plenum. Robinson, D. L., and R. J. Cowie (1997), ‘‘The Primate Pulvinar: Structural, Functional, and Behavioral Components of Visual Salience,’’ in Mircea Steriade, E. G. Jones, and D. A. McCormick, eds., Thalamus (Vol. 2, Experimental and Clinical Aspects), pp. 53–92, Oxford: Elsevier. Searle, John R. (1997), The Mystery of Consciousness, New York, NY: A New York Review Book. Steriade, Mircea (1968), ‘‘The Flash-Evoked Afterdischarge,’’ Brain Research, Vol. 9, pp. 169–212. ——— (1997), ‘‘Thalamic Substrates of Disturbances in States of Vigilance and Consciousness in Humans,’’ in Mircea Steriade, E. G. Jones, and D. A. McCormick, eds., Thalamus (Vol. 2, Experimental and Clinical Aspects), pp. 721–742, Oxford: Elsevier. ——— (2001a), ‘‘Impact of Network Activities on Neuronal Properties in Corticothalamic Systems,’’ Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol. 86, pp. 1–39.

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——— (2001b), The Intact and Sliced Brain, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Steriade, Mircea, F. Amzica, and D. Contreras (1996), ‘‘Synchronization of Fast (30–40 Hz) Spontaneous Cortical Rhythms during Brain Activation,’’ Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 16, pp. 392–417. ˜ ez (1993a), ‘‘Cholinergic and Noradrenergic Modulation of Steriade, Mircea, F. Amzica, and A. Nun the Slow (@0.3 Hz) Oscillation in Neocortical Cells,’’ Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol. 70, pp. 1384– 1400. Steriade, Mircea, and R. W. McCarley (1990), Brainstem Control of Wakefulness and Sleep, New York, NY: Plenum. ˜ ez, and F. Amzica (1993b), ‘‘A Novel Slow (<1 Hz) Oscillation of NeocortSteriade, Mircea, A. Nun ical Neurons in vivo: Depolarizing and Hyperpolarizing Components,’’ Journal of Neuroscience, Vol. 13, pp. 3252–3265. Steriade, Mircea, I. Timofeev, and F. Grenier (2001), ‘‘Natural Waking and Sleep States: A View from Inside Neocortical Neurons,’’ Journal of Neurophysiology, Vol. 85, pp. 1969–1985. Timofeev, I., F. Grenier, M. Bazhenov, T. J. Sejnowski, and M. Steriade (2000), ‘‘Origin of Slow Oscillations in Deafferented Cortical Slabs,’’ Cerebral Cortex, Vol. 10, pp. 1185–1199. Van Turrenout, M., P. Hagoort, and C. M. Brown (1998), ‘‘Brain Activity during Speaking: From Syntax to Phonology in 40 Milliseconds,’’ Science, Vol. 280, pp. 572–574.

9

Consciousness as a Relation between Material Bodies

Pavel B. Ivanov

Abstract This chapter outlines an integrative study of consciousness considering the material and the ideal as two aspects of the same reality. I suggest that consciousness arises as a form of reflection superior to inanimate existence and life, and the conscious subject is the most universal form of mediating relations between material bodies. In this way, the ideal nature of consciousness becomes related to its material implementations. The development of the subject and consciousness are related to the process of reorganization of nature, transforming it into culture. Using tools and instruments in conscious activity results in the cultural expansion of the subject, so that consciousness becomes implemented not only in the human body, and the brain, but also in the variety of material things involved in human activity, which form the nonorganic body of each person. Social and cultural factors shape the conscious behavior of individuals through their nonorganic bodies, and the specificity of organic (and neural) processes in humans is thus determined by their cultural environment. The hierarchical organization of the subject reflects the hierarchy of culture and the history of cultural development. The fundamental principles of studying consciousness follow from its ontological roots. Subjectivity cannot be observed directly, but it can be imprinted in material things and thus made observable as an object.

Introduction Since there is no general agreement on what consciousness is, or even about its very existence, the majority of researchers prefer to be pragmatic and deal with specific models incorporating the aspects of consciousness covered by their particular science. However, fundamental questions concerning the nature of consciousness arise with more vigor whenever the development of a research technique approaches the limits of its applicability. A unified view of consciousness is in order, providing a common frame for special sciences, and thus avoiding terminological confusion and methodological incompatibility.

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The scientific study of consciousness is essentially analytic, since it separates ‘‘consciousness’’ from ‘‘not consciousness,’’ as opposing concepts. One needs philosophy to provide an integrative synthesis by demonstrating how different sciences refer to different aspects of the same phenomenon, and by indicating what is relevant in a given science and what lies outside its application. In this chapter, I will present an integrative philosophy of consciousness based, first, on the acceptance of the universal character of nonmaterial relations between material bodies, and second, on the notion of hierarchy. In my approach, consciousness refers to one of the aspects of the world’s self-reproduction in the form of human activity; this reflexive relation of the world to itself is considered to essentially differ from the forms of reflection present in animals and inanimate bodies, though all the three forms are of the same kind, and hence can be ordered as the levels of a hierarchy. Since the development of consciousness reflects the hierarchy of the world, human activity itself becomes hierarchical. This applies to both the hierarchy of the subject and the inner structures that can be discovered in it. The basic principles of studying these hierarchies are discussed. The chapter starts from the most general categories and proceeds toward applied issues. However, this is a philosophical study, and does not introduce any special scientific models; all references to such models are only illustrative. The chapter involves a formal derivation scheme that I call hierarchical logic (Ivanov 1984b; Hubey and Ivanov 2001). A summary of its basic principles is given in appendix 9.1. One cannot describe hierarchies without a special logical apparatus, since, as is well known, classical logic encounters serious difficulties treating motion and development (Ilyenkov 1984), and numerous alternative logics appear as an attempt to cope with inherent contradictions in modern mathematics (Hubey 1998). A reader less experienced in formal derivations can consider my schemes as a mere graphic expression of the standard notation. Ontological Roots of Subjectivity The first (negative) definition of consciousness is that ‘‘consciousness is what distinguishes a human being from the animal or inanimate body.’’ This definition, however tautological, conveys a clear idea of a specific feature in conscious beings that makes them essentially different from the rest of the world. Categories like ‘‘the spirit’’ or ‘‘an idea’’ are often used as the opposites of ‘‘matter’’ or ‘‘the body’’ to express this difference: consciousness is said to belong basically to the realm of the ideal, rather than that of the material. However, such a rigid distinction of the material and immaterial sides of the world lacks inner consistency and encounters conceptual problems. One historically known solution is provided by abstract monism, denying the existence of one of the opposites: either everything is called ‘‘matter,’’ in a kind of

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metaphysical (naive, intuitive, strict, mechanistic, or natural-scientific) materialism, or inversely, everything is claimed to originate from some side of consciousness, like in innumerable idealistic teachings. There are also dualistic philosophies, which do not relate consciousness to the nonconscious world, but rather admit their independent existence. Such an eclectic approach cannot overcome the inherent incompleteness of the two types of abstract monism, since the opposites are combined in an abstract way, rather than synthesized, and they merely coexist as different ideas within the same thought. To bridge the abyss between the conscious and the nonconscious, one might admit that consciousness is yet another manifestation of something existent in nonconscious things, processes, and so on, different in quality but not in kind. In other words, consciousness does not emerge from nothing—rather, it forms as a natural continuation of natural development, being yet another level of hierarchy. But is it possible to escape splitting the world into two nonintersecting realms, while asserting the qualitative difference of consciousness (or its counterparts in the nonconscious nature) from the other sides of the world? The answer is yes if any distinction is to refer to a specific level of hierarchy, or stage of development, becoming a unity on a higher level. Integrity of the World Any philosophy strives for integrity, unifying diverse special views. My hierarchical approach is explicitly based on the three-aspect principle of the integrity of the world: 1. Uniqueness: the world is all. There is only one world, and nothing can exist ‘‘outside’’ it. The very thought of another world puts it in the same world with the thinker. 2. Universality: the world is everything. The world is a universe for all its parts, and it comprises any possible distinction, thus consisting of innumerable partial ‘‘subworlds.’’ 3. Unity: the world is a whole. Any two things are somehow connected in the world, however different they may seem. Any thing is virtually equivalent to its environment, and the two complements comprize the whole world. In particular, the unity of the world means that phenomena akin to consciousness can be found in anything, and the presence of the analogs of conscious behavior in inanimate or biological systems makes their study useful for comprehending human consciousness as well. This also gives the key to comprehending the development of consciousness and subjectivity, since they become related to the rest of the world and must grow out of its syncretic uniformity. The World as Matter At any level, the world consists of many coexisting things that move and interact according to natural ‘‘laws’’ or regularities appropriate for that level. Any phenomenon

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is nothing but a number of things interacting with each other in a definite way, which constitutes its material side. Every thing is material, but this does not mean that there is nothing in it except matter. An idea like that is incompatible with the very existence of different things. Such an exaggerated ‘‘materialism’’ does not distinguish properties of things from the things themselves. To relate consciousness to matter, I adopt a more flexible approach: accepting that no spirit exists outside of material things and any explanation of consciousness must consider its material substrate, I admit that spirit cannot be reduced to matter, and one has to find out in which respect they differ. The World as Reflection The shapes and properties of material things, their motion and interaction, their development—all those manifestations of things are different from their matter, though they could not exist without it. Every thing is characterized by its place in the whole of the world, and this is the ideal aspect of the thing. The material and the ideal are opposites in the sense of dialectical logic. Since the world is unique, it cannot communicate with anything else, and any relation of material things is a special case of the world’s universal relation to itself, which I will refer to as reflection. The very existence of an individual thing implies its difference from the rest of the world, and hence some interrelation. This results in mutual reflection in a narrower sense, representedness in each other. The world as a whole, and any of its parts, is reflected in itself. This reflexivity is as ubiquitous as materiality, and as important for the integrity of the world. The roots of consciousness are in reflection as the ideal aspect of the world. This means that consciousness is not material, but can only exist as a relation between material bodies. The World as Substance Since matter and reflection are two sides of the same world, they cannot exist without each other. Their unity in every thing is called reality. The very distinction between the material and the ideal is a reference to a definite level of reality, a specific way of unfolding the hierarchy of the whole. Any thing is made of other things, which constitute its matter, never losing either their ideal side or substantiality. However, the lower-level things are ideal in a different respect than the thing made of them. There is hierarchy in both matter and reflection, and any reality is hierarchical. Involvement in high-level motion modifies both matter and reflection; they can represent each other, thus making their distinction relative. In other words, dominant relations of things get reflected in their material structures, and the relations of things become optimized for their material, thus reflecting it. From the

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higher-level viewpoint, everything that is inside the things of that level is their matter, and thus what is ideal on the lower level becomes material in respect to the higherlevel motion. On the contrary, the material of lower-level things does not matter on the higher level since the same thing can be made of different components, and hence any lower-level materials refer to the form of the composite thing, its ideal aspect. Thus matter becomes ideal. The material and the ideal are reflective categories (in Hegel’s sense), their distinction is only meaningful within a single level of hierarchy. This implies that, to grasp the reality of consciousness, one has to understand how its ideal nature is related to the material implementations. That is, certain properties of matter are indispensable for consciousness formation, and consciousness leaves material traces in the world. Levels of Reflection In the hierarchical approach, consciousness must be related to other kinds of reflection as other levels of the same hierarchy. I conjecture that the fundamental distinction between living creatures and inanimate things is similar to the distinction between conscious and nonconscious life, thus obtaining the following sequence of levels: 1. Existence is the most general form of ideality, which can be ascribed to anything in the world, including inanimate things. Something must first exist, to have any specific features. The fundamental levels of existence are being, motion, and development. As existence, any entity syncretically reflects the world, being a part of it; conversely, the thing is syncretically reflected in the world, being virtually identical to its environment—both are definable through each other. 2. Life is a special kind of existence characterized by distinction and opposition of an organism and its environment, including other organisms. The laws of nonorganic motion and development apply to living beings as well, but there are new regularities applicable only on this level. Here, an individual organism is essentially a part of the genus, and its relation to the world is mediated by living creatures of the same or a different kind. While similar indirect relations may be found in inanimate nature as random and optional, they constitute the basis of existence for a living organism, which cannot live without quite definite interactions with other organisms (metabolism). 3. Activity is the most universal kind of life, its social level. The conscious subject is an organism, but a very special kind of organism that can be included in the society of other similar beings, reproducing the ways of behavior developed in this society regardless of their immediate physiological significance. This implies a new kind of reflection, communication, which serves to transfer the modes of action from one member of the society to another. While a similar transfer of behavioral schemes appears in animals as a transitory feature, communication plays the dominant role in

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the subject, so that every act is socially oriented, and represented in every individual as such, which is called consciousness. As a kind of life, consciousness is also related to inanimate existence. There is no unbridgeable abyss between conscious and nonconscious existence, and one could find a continuum of intermediate levels between ‘‘physical’’ existence and life, as well as between conscious and nonconscious life. The material implementation of the conscious subject does not need to be unique, since a higher-level formation can be implemented in different combinations of lower-level elements. The form of implementation restricts the possible manifestations of consciousness. Inversely, being involved in conscious activity modifies lower-level motion, producing forms that could never be stable without social support. Subjectivity as Universal Mediation Being a level of reflection in general, consciousness is also a property of individual things, related to each other. I use the word thing or entity in a wide sense, referring to any kinds of singularity; similarly, relation (or link) will mean any association of one singularity with another. There can be no motion without something to move, no interaction without something to interact, and no reflection without something to reflect. In particular, any form of life is associated with a material body (albeit consisting of many organisms), and any kind of consciousness is represented by some social body, including one or more organic bodies and a number of inorganic things involved in conscious activity. Mediation as the Mechanism of Integration On the most general level, the world is the only entity (W ) reflected into itself, which can be expressed with the scheme

or, in the linear form, W ! W. On every lower level, there are many distinct things, and the world’s self-reflection appears as relatedness of one entity (X) to another entity (XO), as expressed by the scheme X ! XO. However, not all entities can be connected directly, and, to relate entity X to entity XO, one may need to first connect X to yet another entity M (mediator), which can then be linked to XO. The resulting indirect link X ! M ! XO can be mediated as well by MO other than M. Through the variety of all such links X is virtually related to XO, which is denoted as X ) XO. The transition

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from a collection of mediated links to a higher-level (virtual) link will be referred to as lift-up (Aufhebung) of mediation. Invertedly, any virtual link X ) XO can be unfolded into a mediated link. That is, there exists a mediator MðX; XOÞ, representing (or implementing) the relation X ) XO, which becomes X ! MðX; X 0 Þ ! XO. Such implementation does not need to be unique, and the same link can be unfolded differently. Mediated links between mutually connected things produce a mediated cycle, so that first X becomes related to XO via M, and then XO is linked back to X via a different mediator MO:

Equally, X and XO can be considered as mediating the connection of M to MO and back. In principle, neither choice is preferable. Still, in many cases there exist ‘‘dedicated’’ mediators, which at the top most level of hierarchy are more suited to serve as the representatives of interaction—that is, signals. Mediators M and MO are either of the same kind (like an electromagnetic field mediating the interaction of charged particles), or the direct and inverse processes are mediated differently (as in catalytic reactions in chemistry, or biological cycles). In the former case, all interactions belong to the same level of hierarchy. In the latter case, if mediators M and MO are qualitatively different, one could treat one of them (say, M) as belonging to the same level as X and XO, while the second mediator would be put ‘‘outside’’ the system X ! M ! XO, providing a kind of environment for it:

This separation naturally occurs due to the difference in the characteristic times of the processes inside the system and its interactions with the outer world. Hierarchy of Mediation Different types of mediation dominate on the levels of existence, life, and activity. The inanimate world only knows passive mediation: coexistence, intermediate states of motion, correlation, and so on. In mediated interaction, signal M is emitted by body X and absorbed by another body XO, which continue to exist as they were, with only their state of motion changed. In general, any inanimate thing can interact with any

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other thing, and hence mediate interactions of other things. Such mediated connections between inanimate things are random, in the sense that they are not necessary for the existence of the things themselves. The animate nature is characterized by active mediation, with mediator M consuming thing X and producing thing XO, so that X does not exist any more after it has been consumed, and XO did not exist before it was produced by M. The very existence of a living thing (an organism) depends on its ways of consumption and production, and terminated metabolism means death. This is the level of necessity in mediation. On this level, mediations become essentially asymmetrical: the processes within an organism are often clearly distinct from its interaction with the environment. It is only on the level of activity that mediation becomes universal, so that any two things can be linked through the mediator of a new type, the subject. This universality of mediation differs from random mediation on the inanimate level, since it is necessary for the subject, and any subject is bound to bring things together, to remain a subject. However, it also differs from organic mediation, since it is no longer limited by a specific class of links, extending to the whole universe. Such an all-embracing necessity is called freedom. While inanimate mediators only link things in their immediate environment, and living creatures can effectuate only those transformations that are compatible with their physiology, the subject can link anything to anything, with no physical or physiological limitations. For instance, there is no physical reason for the polestar to influence the movement of a ship, and no physiological reason for the human organism to react on the starry sky in any definite way; however, the course of the ship may be corrected through the observation of the stars by a conscious being. The subject can even link things in time: events separated by billions of years become related in consciousness. But the most important consequence of the universality of subjective mediation is the subject’s ability to link not only material things but also any aspects of their existence, abstracted from the things themselves. Relations between things are linked to things, or other relations, and there is no limit to the complexity of abstract mediations. The subject is the only way to establish such links, and it is for this universal mediation that consciousness appears in the world. Consciousness as Social Self-Mediation As universal mediation, the subject also mediates relations between subjects, including the subject’s relatedness to itself. This representedness of the subject’s activity in the subject is known as consciousness, and it is due to the formation of the society as a higher-level subject. Inanimate things can be joined by mutual interactions into composite bodies, but they do not qualitatively change, only changing their state of motion; they continue to exist when ejected from the whole.

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Living organisms also tend to cling together, forming higher-level organisms. However, their coexistence is more restrictive, since any organism requires a quite definite environment to live in. In every particular synergy of different organisms, the members of this communion have to adjust their structure and behavior, to serve the whole. Thus, the organs of the animal body, while remaining relatively independent organisms, are functionally dependent on each other, and evolve into the forms that cannot live outside the body. The ways of uniting conscious subjects in a higher-level subject exhibit much more diversity. Any group of individuals involved in the same activity form a collective subject existing while the underlying activity goes on. An individual removed from the group can still exist as a subject, like an electron emitted from the atom; however, like an organ extracted from the organism, the individual will be unable to function the same way, and the range of available activities will significantly change. A person may behave differently in different groups, up to combining several personalities in the same individual. Consequently, consciousness cannot be a property of the human body, or part of it, being rather determined by the social role. The subject, linking any thing to any other, also links any thing to itself: X ! S ! XO. In other words, once the thing has been assimilated by the subject, it will contain the subject as a necessary component of its motion, thus becoming an object O, an entity in its relation to the subject. For the subject, the world unfolds itself as a hierarchy of objects—that is, nature. This means that the subject mostly mediates the relations between objects, rather than mere things or their properties: O ! S ! OO. The subject is an object too, and hence a part of nature. However, this is a very special kind of object, namely, performing universal mediation. On such most general level of self-reproduction, the universal object is nature, the subject is called the spirit. Consciousness in the Hierarchy of Inner Activity On the inanimate level, one mediation does not assume another. A living creature can cause an environmental change as a side effect of its behavior, but such changes are not intended to be used by that organism in the future. The activity of the subject implies producing material changes that are intended to be used by the subject, not necessarily the producer. Such artificial objects, produced by the subject for the subject, are called ‘‘products,’’ a synthesis of the object and the subject. Any product can exist as such only in repeated activity; taken apart from a definite culture, no thing can be considered a product of conscious activity. Every object is a product, since its definition implies relatedness to the subject. In particular, the subject as a specific object is a product too. Both objects and subjects are repeatedly reproduced in the two complementary ways: in the object cycle, the subject

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transforms one object into another (   ! O ! S ! OO !   ); in the subject cycle, the subject changes through production and consumption of objects (   ! S ! O ! SO !   ). Nature develops due to conscious activity and thus makes the subject develop too. In the continuous train of activity, one could distinguish individual acts of reproduction, O ! S ! OO or S ! O ! SO. The former triad represents individual actions, while the latter describes communication acts, or transactions. Using hierarchical logic, one can unfold the scheme O ! S ! OO, observing that the influence of object O on subject S (its assimilation by the subject) is mediated by an instrument I, and subject S influences (produces) object OO using a tool IO : O ! I ! S ! IO ! OO. The instrument I converts the objective situation into the forms immediately usable by the subject: I ¼ ðo ! sÞ. Similarly, every tool transforms the subject’s modes of the tool’s usage into a change in the physical world: IO ¼ ðsO ! oOÞ. In the resulting scheme O ! ðo ! sÞ ! S ! ðsO ! oOÞ ! OO, one can regroup the terms and obtain the scheme describing how the complexity of both the subject and the object grows in productive activity: ðO ! oÞ ! ðs ! S ! sOÞ ! ðoO ! OOÞ. Objects manifest themselves in a very specific way, while involved in conscious activity, and tool/ instrument-mediated activity makes the subject expand, assimilating a part of the external world and developing a kind of nonorganic body (Marx and Engels 1955– 1981, vol. 23, 188). Hierarchical Structures in the Subject The subject S experiences influences of an object O and produces a product P : O ! S ! P. In this act, the same subject S manifests itself in two opposite ways, as a passive thing experiencing the influence of O and an active substance influencing P; the former reveals the subject’s irritability S, and the latter the ability of operation R. In the simplest case, S and R are the different aspects of the same structure; such syncretic reactivity is expressed by the scheme O ! ðSRÞ ! P, and it can also be found in inanimate bodies or primitive organisms. Later, the two sides of reactivity become effectuated by different material structures in S : O ! ðS ) RÞ ! P. Now, the projection S of O into S acts as a stimulus, while the prototype R of P in S is a reaction; this is the standard scheme of a reflex. In further development, the transformation of the stimulus into reaction becomes mediated by a special structure C in S : O ! ðS ! C ! RÞ ! P, thus making the subject a complete system, with input S, output R, and internal state C (Mesarovich and Takahara 1975). In the chain of actions performed by the same subject O ! S ! P 12 ! S ! P 23 ! S ! P, with intermediate products P 12 and P 23 , one can represent every external act as mediated by an inner process in the subject: O ! ðS1 ! C1 ! R1 Þ ! P 12 ! ðS2 ! C2 ! R2 Þ ! P 23 ! ðS3 ! C3 ! R3 Þ ! P

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This scheme can be folded differently. Thus, if S1; 2; 3 , C1; 2; 3 , and R1; 2; 3 are of the same kind, they can be considered to be the levels of hierarchy in stimulus S, subjective state C, and reaction R, respectively: 80 1 0 1 0 19 C3 R3 > > < S3 = B C B C B C O ! @ S2 A ! @ C2 A ! @ R2 A ! P > > : ; S1 C1 R1 In this process, the object becomes hierarchical too, O ¼ fO1 ; O2 ; O3 g, and its relations with the subject occur simultaneously on multiple levels. In an alternative representation, the object O and product P remain the same but their relation is indirect, mediated by a hierarchical inner activity: ðS3 ! C3 ! R3 Þ ! P " zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{ S2 ! C2 ! R2 " zfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl}|fflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflfflffl{ O ! S1 ! C1 ! R1 In this case, S2 will be qualitatively different from S1 , reflecting the very process O ! ðS1 ! C1 ! R1 Þ ! P 12 , rather then its result. The subjective side of the activity is thus preferentially developed, which is the mechanism of education in a given culture. These are the two components of any subjective development, structural growth due to development of the cultural environment and developing a more complex functionality through participation in existing activities (Ivanov 1994, 1995). Mental Processes In the cycle    ! S ! O ! SO !    , one can lift up objective mediation and consider ‘‘purely subjective’’ development:    ! S ! SO ! SOO !    Here, the subject seems to develop entirely through communication, or self-communication. This apparently objectless process is called inner activity, as complementary to outer, object-mediated activity. In inner activity, the subject plays the role of the product, becoming an object for itself. Inner activity exists on different levels of subjectivity, including psychological processes, relations of individuals in a group, interaction of social forces, and so on. As an interlevel process, it describes the development of individuals through the society (socialization). Lifting up objective mediation in the subject’s inner structure S ! C ! R results in seemingly immediate transformation of the reaction into sensory input, R ! S, which is related to the ability of imagination (Koren 1984). This leads to inner cycles of the type

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similar to the usual feedback schemes in systems theory, with the output of the system tied to its input. Since this feedback originates from outer activities, the link R ! S is intrinsically culture dependent. From the outside, only the structures S and R are observable, and the subject’s behavior looks like a higher-level reflex: S ) R. Such virtual mapping of S to R, abstracted from inner mediation C, can be identified with a mental act. Combining the links R ! S and S ) R, one arrives at S and R reproducing themselves through each other:    ! S ) R ! S ) R !    Such inner activity, developing the subjective image of the world S via explorative behavior R, is an obvious correlate of a cognitive process in classical psychology. Similarly, employing the cyclic nature of inner activity, one obtains two more mental acts: R ! S ! C is lifted up into R ) C (self-control), and C ! R ! S folds into C ) S (self-reflection). Mental processes    ! R ) C ! R ) C !    (volition) and    ! C ) S ! C ) S !    (feeling) give the other two members of the standard psychological triad (Vekker 1974–1981). The three types of mental acts (S ) R, R ) C, and C ) S) form the secondary cycle of inner activity:

The relations between the inner structures of the subject are reversed in the secondary cycle. This is how they are often presented to the subject itself. Consciousness cannot be associated with neither the primary nor the secondary cycle. The primary process S ! C ! R occurs before any outer action, while the secondary act S ) R represents a folded action, logically following it. In this respect, the primary processes are characterized as subconscious, while the secondary links could be called superconscious. Consciousness synthesizes both paths in the same mental act, as occurring simultaneously. Such a scheme is essentially two-dimensional:

Combining it with the two similar schemes,

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one obtains the tetrad of inner activity, a scheme representing the subject S as the unity of the subconscious, conscious, and superconscious levels:

This scheme is a compact expression of all the partial schemes considered in this subsection, as well as many other schemes not considered in this chapter. Epistemology of Consciousness In universal mediation, nothing can avoid being assimilated by the subject and then transformed into a product, a part of the world rebuilt by the subject. The subject’s consciousness is not an exception. Therefore the subject can and must comprehend itself. However, studying consciousness essentially influences its development. Changing the world, people change themselves. This essential reflexivity must necessarily be reflected in the methods of consciousness science. General Principles of Studying Consciousness The subject reflects the world in a specific activity, reproducing objective phenomena in subjective forms (knowledge). While the subject can only know its own products, the very process of subject-mediated world transformation is objective, and the universality of the subject ensures that there is nothing in the world that could not be involved in the subject’s activity. In particular, to comprehend consciousness, people must be able to imprint it on their products and thus make it observable as an external thing. Subjectivity cannot be observed directly, otherwise it would not possess the specifically subjective quality. The only possible mechanism of self-reflection is mediating subjective mediation with an outer activity, involving communication, and language in particular. However, language is not the only source of information about consciousness. Any product at all contains a subjective component. Therefore, revealing subjective mediation in cultural phenomena, including material culture, can bring knowledge about the mechanisms of consciousness and its forms. There are two principal directions of such a study: one

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may either seek for the subject’s influence on objective processes, or, inversely, treat the subject as a specific property of the artificial environment it creates. The first direction might be called ‘‘psychophysical’’ (in a wide sense), while the second approach is characteristic of ‘‘culturological’’ research (Vygotsky 1986; Davydov 1984). An adequate description of consciousness will combine both approaches, correlated with each other. Studying consciousness cannot be restricted to any single science. Since every part of reality is bound to be transformed and assimilated by the subject, one can, in principle, obtain any kind of knowledge about consciousness from any thing. The same object can be viewed from different angles, including both subject-related and nonsubject aspects. For instance, a human being can be studied as either a material body moving according to certain mechanical laws, or a link between the most distant formations of the universe. These partial studies provide the necessary environment and background for understanding consciousness. The general approach to studying consciousness is to extract subject-determined or subject-oriented features in specific phenomena that will definitely have other aspects, irrelevant to subjectivity. Since research in a certain object area is an activity, one can abstract its subjective component and derive the general properties of consciousness from the structure of other sciences and their development. The same reflexive approach could be applied to any activity other than scientific research (art, philosophy, or people’s everyday life). These are all the components of the integral knowledge about a rather specific object, the very essence of which is its mutability, and different paradigms should be combined for an adequate description of phenomena that are diverse by their nature. Organization of Experiments in Consciousness Studies The generic experimental method in consciousness studies is to initiate a hierarchical activity, with a ground-level effect recorded on a higher (reflexive) level. The methods of study depend on the kind of probing activity. In the syncretic case, the subject can analyze its own actions and form an empirical model of consciousness. Such introspection is inherent in any activity at all, and every piece of knowledge about consciousness can be made observable that way. The transition from observation to active experimenting involves model activities with the motives controlled by the experimenter. In any particular implementation of this scheme, there are at least two subjects, not necessarily represented by different persons. The organization of the experiment must separate the roles of the subjects involved, to keep the observer on a higher level of activity during the experiment. Physical or physiological processes traditionally serve as indicators of subjective events. Though no subjective event can occur without such ‘‘material’’ changes, they do not directly represent it. Physiological (e.g., neural) processes are not immediately related to mental processes, and no observable behavior can be unambiguously inter-

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preted as a manifestation of consciousness and subjectivity. The same behavioral patterns can be caused by quite different influences, and distinguishing a conscious from a nonconscious act implies a careful analysis of the social and cultural context. The results of experimentation can be linked to the inner organization of consciousness and the unconscious employing such a fundamental feature of hierarchies as their refoldability. Any kind of outer behavior corresponds to an inner mechanism formed in the process of interiorization, folding activity into actions and operations. Conversely, every internal act is nothing but a folded activity, which could be drawn to the topmost level of the hierarchy under carefully designed experimental conditions. For instance, the psychophysical experiment of determining the subjective pitch of a tone explicates the internal representation of a simple tone as a standard statistical distribution—if the same distribution is discovered in a different sensory modality, one can conjecture that this other activity must fold into operations and actions similar to those already known in pitch perception, and the same notions apply to different classes of higher-level phenomena (Ivanov 1995). Communication between the experimenter and the examinee modifies their behavior and influences their motivation structures. Consequently, the results are necessarily biased. Unlike in many other sciences, this interference cannot be made negligible, and the very relevance of the results to subjectivity depends on the examinee’s acting as a subject, and not a mere object. Thus, projective tests and psychoanalysis can provide valuable psychological information about the subject, but their application essentially depends on the personality of the analyst, and the more neutral the experimenter’s attitude toward the examinee, the more scarce and trivial the results are. Studying the hierarchical organization of the subject requires special experimental techniques. Hierarchies grow in the process of development; this means that the model activity has to be complex enough to allow personal development in the course of a single experiment—for example, organizing hierarchical activities to observe their mutually induced growth. The possible solutions would involve several interacting activities, and their interference organized in a controllable way. The analysis of the products of these activities allows reconstruction of a number of hierarchical structures, representing the hierarchy of the subject, in its specific manifestations (Koren 1984; Ivanov and Koren 1998). Since subjectivity is qualitatively different from inanimate existence and life, the interaction of a conscious being with the world will involve, along with the lower-level regularities, some specific influences, making the changes in the world ‘‘marked’’ by the signs of conscious intervention, as distinguished from the natural ‘‘background.’’ Such subtle effects are often attributed to direct influence of consciousness on the physical world, commonly known as extrasensory (or paranormal) experiences. In the hierarchical approach, the apparently direct influence of consciousness on the world is related to multiply-folded activity forming virtual links that look like material

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effects of a mental act. Such phenomena cannot be entirely explained with natural laws, but they still remain manifestations of some less evident aspects of quite common processes. One possible explanation for unusual correlations seemingly observed in experiments on extrasensory perception comes from the notion of a collective effect, well known in physics and other areas of natural science, but much less frequently employed in the biosciences and the humanities. Two persons can act in synchrony simply because they are involved in the same activity, and they do not need to physically communicate, to maintain this correlation for a long time, since the very structure of the activity (as determined by the culture) implies quite definite role behavior. Similar correlations could be observed in nonconscious systems involved in human activities, as long as they behave differently from what would be expected in a natural environment, without the subject’s interference. Theoretical Models in Consciousness Science Like any other science, the science of consciousness can use a variety of theoretical models, including descriptive, empirical and semiempirical, dynamical, statistical, and so on. However, since formal models necessarily abstract the object from its description, their applicability to studying the essentially reflexive phenomena related to consciousness is much more limited than in any other domain. The formally obtained results must always be complemented with a clear outline of the cultural situation requiring that very type of behavior. Interpretation of theoretical constructs becomes an important part of theorizing. On the other hand, the reflexivity of the subject’s self-comprehension implies that practically any theoretical construct can describe some aspects of conscious activity. If there is nothing in the culture that would correspond to a formally obtained result, the subject can design it, creating a new sphere of material production or social relations following theoretical prescriptions. There are no ‘‘good’’ or ‘‘bad’’ theories; they can only be appropriately or inappropriately applied. In particular, theories describing nonconscious existence or life can be formally transferred to consciousness studies. The usage of such lower-level models is possible because subjectivity as universal mediation encapsulates all the other kinds of mediation, and the laws of physical motion must be represented in it as well as the laws of life. The converse is not true, and the lower levels do not imply any higher-level interference: elementary particles and atoms can move without any relation to life or consciousness, and, in general, live organisms exist prior to consciousness and can do without it. One does not need consciousness to explain quantum phenomena, crystal growth, or DNA replication, though all these processes can be consciously controlled. Transfer of theoretical models from one domain to another means reinterpretation of the basic notions. Thus, the apparatus of Newtonian mechanics could be used as a

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scheme for the dynamics of motivation, which has nothing to do with the actual mechanical motion in physical space (Ivanov 1996). Similarly, using the elements of information theory or quantum mechanics in a theory of aesthetic perception does not reduce conscious behavior to mere information transfer or microscopic motion (Avdeev and Ivanov 1993; Ivanov 1998). One or another formalism is preferable depending on the modes of activity. Thus, if there is a spacelike parameter that can be measured continuously in time (or any other serial variable), classical mechanics is most likely to be applicable (Ivanov 1996), and a theory of the conscious control of body motion can be developed within analytical mechanics (Korenev 1977, 1981). On the contrary, for a ‘‘scattering-like’’ experiment, when a person becomes subjected to some standard external stimuli with the person’s reactions recorded and their dependencies on the parameters of the stimuli investigated, quantum mechanics would be more appropriate (Ivliyev 1988). Models of physical or other nonconscious systems can reveal the essential features of subjectivity due to the presence of fundamental regularities common to all the levels of reflection. There are physical and biological phenomena that could serve as prototypes of subjectivity, and any theory of conscious behavior will incorporate them. These are nonlinearity and collective effects. Nonlinearity can enter theory in different ways (Ivanov 2001). On the lowest level, weak nonlinearity is introduced by a constraint on the dynamics of a linear system (initial conditions, boundary conditions, sources and sinks, and so on). The next level is that of nonlinear dynamics, with the equations of motion either being explicitly nonlinear (strong nonlinearity), or containing variable parameters controlled by an external process (induced or parametric nonlinearity). Finally, one can consider nonlinearity as global correlation in local motion (self-consistency and self-organization). In a complex enough nonlinear system, there may be modes of motion, when most distant parts of the system move in synchrony, though their synchronization cannot be explained by direct interaction of the parts (collective motion). For instance, a standing wave between two rigid boundaries is characterized by correlated oscillation phases on the opposite boundaries, though the time of the propagation of perturbation from one boundary to another may be much greater than the period of oscillation. In richer systems, many partial waves can interfere in a complex manner, producing intricate patterns. Numerous examples could be drawn from physics, chemistry, and biology (Yeliseyev 1983). Very complex timbres of musical instruments provide an example from an area other than science. Social systems can, in certain respects, behave in a relatively simple way, to be describable by linear or weakly nonlinear models. However, the very existence of the society as an integral unit is based on reflection, with nonlinearity on all the levels. Interference of social processes can produce relatively stable formations of different scope. Such collective effects are typical in nonlinear systems and can be called

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individual subjects; by definition, the structure and behavior of such individuals depend on the social conditions they live in. The topmost element of the hierarchical structure (like the crest of the wave) defining the individual subject is most often, though not necessarily, centered on a representative of the biological species Homo sapiens. The projection of this hierarchy onto its elements is called consciousness. Consciousness in General Psychology The hierarchical organization of activity as cyclic reproduction of both the object and the subject in their mutual interaction and reflection has been extensively studied in psychology, with numerous practical applications in psychological rehabilitation, psychotherapy, education, applied psychology, diagnostics, and consulting (Rubinstein 1989; Leontiev 1978; Koren 1995; Ivanov and Koren 1998). In this section, I present an overview of the basic ideas of the psychological theory of activity that was mainly developed in the former USSR since the 1920s. My approach makes it possible to synthesize this theory with the ‘‘culturological’’ approach by Lev Vygotsky (1983, 1986) that was originally considered the opposite of activity-oriented psychology (Rubinstein 1989). In this chapter, I follow my earlier publications (Ivanov 1994, 1995, 1998), adding more illustrations and details. Consciousness and the Unconscious In the psychological theory of activity, three basic levels are distinguished in the hierarchy of human behavior, namely, operation, action, and activity. Some relations between these levels are schematically shown in figure 9.1. For integrity, human behavior must contain all three levels, with consciousness formed in their interaction. In this hierarchy, consciousness is associated with action; the operations and the embracing activity constitute the realms of the subconscious and superconscious, respectively, as the two opposite kinds of the unconscious. The level of the subconscious provides the behavioral foundation for consciousness, while the superconscious is yet another expression of the sociality of consciousness. For instance, neural processes controlling the motion of one’s hand are not conscious in themselves (subconscious), while aiming the hand at a definite goal is conscious. One can be unaware of the motives of that movement as long as one’s attention is focused on its goal rather than the embracing activity. Since any hierarchy can be folded and unfolded in different ways, activities can fold into actions, and actions into operations—conversely, operations and actions can unfold into actions and activities respectively (Leontiev 1978). An activity becomes an action when it becomes a part of another activity, thus losing its self-motion. On the other hand, an action may become self-contained enough to develop into an activity.

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Figure 9.1 The hierarchy of activity. Both behavioral and social determination are important for consciousness. A person is engaged in some social activity, implying certain conscious actions; the actions are constructed by the person using the currently available operations that are performed in an automated manner and do not require conscious control. The sense of an action is determined by its role in some activity, while the meaning of an action indicates how it can be operationally implemented.

Similarly, a frequently repeated action can achieve a level of automation sufficient to drift out of consciousness and become a subconsciously performed operation. Conversely, when a person’s attention turns to the way of performing an operation (as in the case of an obstacle encountered), the operation becomes an action, which may sometimes cause a change in activity. Hence, the subconscious is essentially a folded consciousness, and the superconscious represents the subjective environment of consciousness, the zone of imminent development (Vygotsky 1986). While consciousness is associated with the focus of awareness, the superconscious can be pictured as the rest of the area, not covered by the focal spot, the subconscious being the interior of the spot (figure 9.2). In such a picture, consciousness will be represented by the thin line delimiting the subconscious from the superconscious, the boundary between them. The refolding of the subject’s hierarchy (or the subject’s development) could then be modeled by possibly changing the ‘‘shape’’ of the subject—the boundary may get shrunk, expanded, or distorted, so that some areas of the subject’s ‘‘exterior’’ would become its ‘‘inside,’’ while some ‘‘inner’’ points would merge with the environment.

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Figure 9.2 Consciousness as the boundary of the subject. The subconscious can be considered part of some cultural space that has been immersed in the subject, interiorized. The immediate cultural environment of the subject forms the superconscious layer. Consciousness is the interface between the two, the mechanism of personal expansion in a given culture.

Meaning and Sense The meaning of an action is the hierarchy of operations that can become its means, while its sense is determined by the action’s position in the embracing activity (see figure 9.1). This understanding is consistent with our intuitive ideas: when one is asked about the meaning of something, this is usually a request for explication, unfolding the action implied into a specific operational structure; on the contrary, the questions about the sense of something imply a reference to the external circumstances reflected in the action, its ‘‘supreme’’ justification. The same action can have quite a different sense when it is considered in a different social environment, and the same action can be implemented by quite different means. The meaning of an action is rather a historically formed range of possible operations. With the development of a society, the meaning of people’s actions may drastically change. The analogous relation between an activity and its possible unfoldings into action sequences is reflected in the category of the activity’s scope (figure 9.3). The possible ‘‘behavioral trajectories’’ actualizing the activity always lie within its scope. Psychological Sets Since any hierarchical structure can be folded, activities can influence one’s operations in an apparently direct manner (figure 9.1), which is known in psychology as set formation (Uznadze 1961). Obviously, removing the action as a behavioral link between operations and activities will push consciousness into the background, and people are often unaware of their sets.

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Figure 9.3 The scope of activity. An activity assumes quite definite actions that may be compatible with it, the way an action is implemented in a sequence of operations.

Actions have a different sense when included in different activities—but the meaning of an action is also subject to the influence of the embracing activity, restricting the range of operations to implement its actions (Ivanov 1994). Hence, one could distinguish the abstract meaning of an action determined by its general cultural compatibility with certain operations and its specific meaning within a particular activity. Beside ‘‘clipping’’ the action’s meaning, activity can modify the formal properties of operations and relations between them. By the dominant inner structure, according to the scheme S ! C ! R, there are sensory, perceptive, and motor sets. In a sensory set, a person’s sensations are filtered to encode an external signal with the typical motor schemes, which may lead to illusions in perception. In a perceptive set, the interpretation of sensations depends on the current forms of inner activity, which may result in inadequate reactions. Finally, in the context of the current activity, the subject is predisposed toward specific reactions, which may interfere with the conscious goals of the person, producing all kinds of mistakes. On the higher levels of the subject, the same triad of sets manifests itself as preference, mood, or attitude. The refoldability of hierarchies can rearrange relations between their levels, so that indirect links responsible for set formation become observable behavior. This requires ‘‘materialization’’ of the person’s inner structures in an outer product, and thus communicating them to another person. Such techniques are widely used in psychotherapy to reveal sets and control them.

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Psychological Dimensions of Activity The relations between a number of categories describing the hierarchy of activity in general psychology are illustrated in figure 9.4. I distinguish the objective and subjective aspects in both reflection of the world (including self-reflection) and the subject’s productivity; this leads to a two-dimensional model of human behavior on each level of activity. Thus, on the topmost level, the objective prerequisites of an activity are referred to as circumstances, while the subjective side of the same external influence is called a motive. Motives are as external to the subject as circumstances, but, since they represent the subject’s relation to other subjects (including the society as a collective subject), they are reflected in the subject as if they were originating from the inside; this is a typical illusion of self-perception. Similarly, the objective outcome of activity is referred to as consequences, while the subjective component of the same outcome is called a purpose. An activity is a hierarchy of actions, and an action is a hierarchy of operations. An operation is the most elementary (folded) kind of act; subjectively, it is performed in no time, and corresponds to the abstraction of a point, hence representing the discrete side of human behavior. In contrast, activity represents behavioral continuity, being essentially a process with a definite direction but no marked beginning or end. An action occupies an intermediate position between these extremes, spreading in time from the beginning to the end. Any action has its specific reason and is directed to a definite goal; along with the idea of the Self, goals are the main components of the conscious representation of activity. Objectively, an action is situation dependent, and one can complete it to obtain a definite result. Any action actualizes some activity. The inverse process of associating an action with an activity is called motivation. The same action can be related to many concurrent activities, which may sometimes lead to a motivation conflict. The objective dimension of an operation describes the transition from the current conditions (the operational context) to the operation’s effect; in the subjective dimension, an operation satisfies some need and is intended to produce a definite change in the world. Depending on the situation, an action can implement itself in different sequences of operations. Conversely, one explains an operation relating it to some action, which is called rationalization. The subject’s purposes, goals, and intentions originate from some natural or cultural processes. It is the cyclic character of any activity that provokes the illusion of behavior entirely determined by the subject’s will. The objective development of culture produces the circumstances demanding certain activity; the activity itself is objective too, and it is bound to cause some objective changes in the world—in the subject, the objective determination of the activity is reflected as its motive, while the overall directedness of activity becomes a purpose, a class of acceptable outcomes (products of activity).

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Figure 9.4 The dimensions of activity. An activity is initiated by some motive, follows some purpose, and may occasionally bring about some consequences. An action assumes some reason and is aimed at something; one can complete an action and obtain a result. An operation satisfies some need and is intended to have a definite effect. An activity is actualized in specific action sequences. Any action can refer to many activities, one of them being brought to the top of the hierarchy in the process of motivation. Similarly, an action unfolds itself in a specific operational implementation. An operation is always a means for some action, and the process of rationalization selects one of the many actions implying the same operation.

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Schemes of Activity Human activities are culturally related to each other, forming a hierarchy of qualitatively different activity types. The same activity can appear on different levels, depending on the social circumstances and the presence of other activities. For instance, in the folded form, sensation is represented by an inner structure S, which is transformed into a perceptive structure C, which, in turn, initiates folded (latent) reactions R. In this case S, C, and R denote mere operations within some other activity. However, sensation, perception, and representation can also develop into conscious actions, or fullscale activities (Ivanov 1995). One can also consider sensation, perception, and representation as the three consecutive stages of a higher-level activity (orientation) (Koren 1984). On this level one finds an analog of the triad S ! C ! R in the triad of activities: orientation ! comprehension ! realization. However, within other activities, this triad too can represent either a sequence of operations within an action, or a sequence of actions in an activity. On the highest level, there is the most general version of the same scheme: consumption ! assimilation ! production. These are the three aspects of any activity at all. Sensation can be considered a special case of consumption, and representation is a special case of production, with the product being a subjective structure. This indicates that the above hierarchy of activities forms a complete triad (see appendix 9.1). The levels of this hierarchy correspond to the levels of the subject that can be denoted as the individual, the personality, and the socium (Koren 1984). Since the same psychological dimensions are present in any activity of any level, one can consider individual, personal, and social motives, needs, or goals, and so on. Due to universality, subjects of any kind have similar activities and develop through similar stages. The objective side of this universality ascends to the general laws of the world’s development, including development of the subject as a part of nature. Inner development of the subject results in the universal forms of spirituality. In the objectivized form, as a cultural product, this universality is reflected in the schemes of activity. Every culture has its own schemes of activity, and communication between different cultures is only possible through shared activity schemes. However, the very idea of subjectivity implies that there will always exist some points of contact, and every two forms of reason can understand each other. The collection of schemes built into the culture provide an important mechanism for maintaining the integrity of the subject on every level. Thus, the standard ways of dealing with objects get built into the standard forms of perception. This is different from the formation of the perceptive set in that the culturally supplied perception forms are shared by many people and they do not vanish after acquiring more behavioral patterns.

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Consciousness and Physiology Though the roots of subjectivity are in reflexive mediation on the physical and biological levels, not just any material system can serve as a substrate of reason. The material implementation of the subject combines both organic and inorganic elements, and this compound body is steadily expanding through using tools and instruments, asymptotically encompassing the whole universe (Marx and Engels 1955–1981, vol. 42, 92). Organic bodies participating in this process acquire specific properties and functions that mark them as ‘‘conscious’’ bodies. Mind and Body The very definition of subjectivity as universal mediation characterizes it as an objective property external to the object, so that no body, however complex, can ‘‘contain’’ subjectivity. Nevertheless, material motion must be complex enough to support life, and only the highest forms of life can support consciousness. The environment must be complex enough to allow flexible cooperation of different organisms. The level of cooperation required for consciousness differs from mere symbiosis and ecosystem formation common in the biosphere. Internal reflection makes the subject play the role of the environment for itself. This can only be achieved through directed rearrangement of the inanimate and living world, its transformation into a hierarchy of products, culture. Reproducing the world in cultural phenomena, the subject controls its own development, interiorizing the products of social activity (Vygotsky 1983). The system of material bodies that can support consciousness contains the organic bodies of the representatives of the genus Homo sapiens as part of a wider material system, the ‘‘nonorganic body’’ (Ilyenkov 1984; Davydov 1984), including both inanimate things and living organisms; such outer components play the role of the nonorganic body of the subject inasmuch as they are used as its outer organs (tools, instruments). In particular, humans can belong to the nonorganic bodies of other subjects, thus losing their specificity as the carriers of consciousness. Since the primitive historical forms of subjectivity have been left behind, the nonorganic body prevails over the biological body in shaping the subject’s behavior and thoughts. It is primarily from that nonorganic body that people’s motives originate, and it is those outer organs that are mostly used by people to interact with the world. The nonorganic bodies tend to expand with cultural development, and the disproportion between the organic and nonorganic component is bound to increase. The interactions of the nonorganic body are as important for a person as direct influences on the organic body, and they are felt by the person as keenly. That is why traditional psychotherapy mainly based on organic reactions and local influences always runs the risk of being completely neutralized, or even turned into its opposite, by the changes (or absence of changes) in the circumstances of the patient’s life (Koren 1995).

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However, the larger the body, the greater the period of reflection (Dyson 1979), and the difference in reflection rates may allow a short-term therapeutic influence on the organic body of a person to lead to certain psychological changes—however, these traces will not last for long without social support. Since development of the subject is mainly determined by its nonorganic body, physiological peculiarities are not very important, provided they are not accentuated by the society (and thus included in the nonorganic body). A certain level of complexity achieved by the human organism is enough to allow its usage as one of the organs (instruments, tools) of the subject, but possessing a perfect organism does not guarantee well-developed subjectivity. With proper education, children born blind, deaf, and dumb can become normal members of society (Mescheryakov 1974), while organically normal children who have grown up among animals fail to develop into conscious beings (Leontiev 1978). Consciousness and the Brain The mind, reason, consciousness, and so on arise at a certain stage of development, forming a specific level of hierarchy, namely, the social level. Organic formations can only be a premise of consciousness, the means of its implementation. That is, the study of human physiology and in particular of the structure and functions of the brain is not likely to provide clues for an understanding of consciousness, just as the design of an Intel processor says little about Windows or Linux. Consequently, one can hardly ‘‘derive’’ consciousness from neural processes—rather, the specificity of neural processes in humans must be deduced from cultural developments and sociality. Consciousness is present in the brain only as a way of coordinating mental processes imposed by the specific social environment in which an individual lives and acts (Luria 1973). The relative independence of consciousness from the brain is supported by numerous facts from everyday life as well as by scientific observations. Many people feel and behave differently in different situations, to the point of becoming unrecognizable to their acquaintances. Altered states of consciousness and mental diseases provide examples of multiple personalities supported by the same human body, and the same brain. Finally, there are well-known cases of intentional translocation from one personality to another: writers and actors may truly live by the imaginary experiences of the characters they invent. The important corollary is that subjectivity and consciousness do not require any specific organic forms for their implementation, and there may be forms of reason based on quite different physiology, and even different physical embodiment. Nevertheless, consciousness cannot exist without being implemented in complex enough biological systems, and it needs a particular kind of brain—or rather multiple brains joined by societal links.

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Participating in a collective motion creates a special environment for an individual, directing its development to support certain physiological formations and suppress the infinity of other possibilities. Thus culture becomes projected onto the brain, regulating the relationships between its various subsystems. Localization of Mental Processes Never belonging to a single organism, mental processes can be localized in the cultural space (figure 9.2). One can consider the subject’s dynamics in the cultural space, and describe social influences as external forces (Ivanov 1996; Ivliyev 1988). However, human bodies involved in conscious activity adapt to the cultural environment, and the organization of inner processes is dictated by the needs of external activity. The evolution of the human brain had to retain some traces of this correlation in the overall structure of the brain, though it could not produce a rigid structure since the very idea of subjectivity implies diversity and overcoming physiological constraints. In general, the structure of the brain reveals three major asymmetries: occipitalfrontal, left-right, and subcortical-cortical. These are the spacelike dimensions; also, there is a timelike dimension related to the development of the brain with the formation of the primary, secondary, and tertiary areas clearly distinct in all the spatial dimensions of the brain (Luria 1973). Such asymmetries already appear in biological development, but they ultimately become a universal principle in the human brain. Thus, the complete sensorimotor scheme O ! ðS ! C ! RÞ ! OO says that there is a special structure S for receiving external influences, and a special structure R for effectuating the outer behavior, with some inner structure C to transform stimuli into reactions. The same process has led to the separation of the two principal ‘‘logical’’ functions of the brain: folding the multimodal image of the world into an internal whole (S ! C), and the unfolding of a syncretic internal core into a discrete hierarchical structure (C ! R); this corresponds to the lateralization of neural activity with cyclic translation of the same pattern from the left to the right hemisphere, and back, within a single mental act (Koren 1984). The cerebral representation of the schemes of inner activity is different in different ‘‘time points’’—that is, in the structures of different historical age. Space and time are strongly coupled in the brain, and the geometry of the cerebral space-time is essentially non-Euclidean (Koren 1995). However, this is essentially a 3 þ 1 geometry locally similar to that of the physical space-time, though in a quite different space, namely, that of neural dynamics. The spatial and temporal characteristics of the cerebral mechanisms of mental processes are not necessarily related to the space- or timelike parameters of the mental processes themselves, since the latter unfold in a different space and cannot be localized in either a physical or a physiological sense. Thus, one cannot say that certain kinds of mentality are related to definite areas in the brain—rather, every type of

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behavior implies the participation of every part of the brain, and it is the mode of their interaction that matters. Conclusion: Ethics of Consciousness In this chapter, I have outlined an approach treating consciousness as the interaction between material bodies and introduced the idea of the subject as a universal way of linking one thing to another. This means that an individual can only be a partial representative of the subject, necessarily combining subjectivity with the features of an animate or inanimate body, and one has to consider the degree of subjectivity in every particular person or act. A conscious act, besides its organic or physical implementation, is characterized by its cultural function, and hence its relations to society in general, the collective subject. Reflected in the conscious individual, these relations take the form of awareness, intentionality, and responsibility. While awareness and intentionality are generally considered attributes of conscious behavior, the common meaning of the word conscious also has the connotation of ‘‘being responsible for one’s acts,’’ and the understanding of the subject in the context of productive activity makes this component indispensable. Responsibility is related to preserving the cultural heritage and extending the sphere of culture through recreation of nature. Any creativity opening wider horizons to other people will make their activities more universal and thus contribute to the development of subjectivity as such. Any destructive actions that hinder people’s creativity and restrict their self-expression will necessarily narrow their consciousness: less freedom means less consciousness. A conscious being will care for other conscious beings and object to any limitation placed on their freedom. Conscious responsibility is to support all traces of reason, reducing the animate and nonanimate components of people’s behavior. References Avdeev, Leonid V., and Pavel B. Ivanov (1993), ‘‘A Mathematical Model of Scale Perception,’’ Journal of Moscow Physical Society, Vol. 3, p. 331. Davydov, Vassily V. (1984), Problems of Developing Education, Moscow: Pedagogika (in Russian). Dyson, Freeman J. (1979), ‘‘Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe,’’ Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 51, pp. 447–460. Goldblatt, Robert (1979), Topoi: The Categorial Analysis of Logic, Amsterdam: North-Holland. Hubey, H. Mark (1998), The Diagonal Infinity: Problems of Multiple Scales, Singapore: World Scientific. Hubey, H. Mark, and Pavel B. Ivanov (2001), ‘‘Dynamical Computing, Communication, Development and Hierarchical Inference,’’ International Conference on Computing and Information Technologies ICCIT-2001, Montclair State University, Upper Montclair, NJ, pp. 455–461.

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Ilyenkov, Evald V. (1984), Dialectical Logic, Moscow: Politizdat (in Russian). Ivanov, Pavel B. (1984a), Dialectics of Hierarchies, Troitsk, Moscow region: Institute of Spectroscopy of RAS (In Russian). ——— (1984b), ‘‘Hierarchical Approach and Periodization of Cultures,’’ Acoustic Wednesdays (March 14), Moscow: Moscow State Conservatory (in Russian). ——— (1994), ‘‘A Hierarchical Theory of Aesthetic Perception: Musical Scales,’’ Leonardo, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 417–421. ——— (1995), ‘‘A Hierarchical Theory of Aesthetic Perception: Scales in the Visual Arts,’’ Leonardo Music Journal, Vol. 5, pp. 49–55. ——— (1996), ‘‘Physics and Psychology in the Hierarchical World: Towards Physical Psychology,’’ International Philosophy Preprint Exchange, http://www.geocities.com/unihl/texts/p96/p96.htm. ——— (1998), ‘‘Discreteness, Continuity and Hierarchical Scaling in the Arts,’’ Information Approach in Empirical Aesthetics (Proceedings of International Symposium), Taganrog, Russia, pp. 66–77. ——— (2001), ‘‘Nonlinear Art,’’ Information Approach in the Humanitarian Science, Taganrog, Russia, pp. 66–73. Ivanov, Pavel B., and Vladimir V. Koren (1998), ‘‘Hierarchical Analysis of the Structure of the Perception of Museum Expositions,’’ Interaction between Man and Culture: Information Standpoint, Proceedings of International Symposium (Taganrog, Russia, 1998), Vol. 2, pp. 331–344. Ivliyev, Yuri A. (1988), ‘‘New Mathematical Methods in Psychology, Their Development and Application (a Problem Study),’’ Psikhologicheskiy Zhurnal (Psychological Journal), Vol. 9, pp. 103–113 (in Russian). Koren, Vladimir V. (1984), Hierarchical Approach in the Psychology of Creativity, Graduation thesis at Moscow State University, Department of Psychology. ——— (1995), ‘‘Diagnostically Oriented Consulting,’’ in E. I. Konanykhina, N. N. Kolmakova, and N. G. Nrushina, eds., The Central Region of Russia: Experience of Social Service (Information bulletin), Tula: Experimental Center of Russian Federation for Youth Problems, pp. 19–86 (in Russian). Korenev, Georgy V. (1977), Introduction to the Mechanics of Man, Moscow: Nauka (In Russian). ——— (1981), ‘‘A Mathematical Model of a Psychomotoric Act,’’ Psikhologicheskiy Zhurnal (Psychological Journal), Vol. 2, pp. 24–139 (in Russian). Leontiev, Alexey N. (1978), Activity, Consciousness and Personality, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, Inc. Luria, Alexander R. (1973), Foundations of Neuropsychology, Moscow: Moscow State University (in Russian). Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels (1955–1981), (Sochineniya), Collected Works (2nd Russian edition), USSR.

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Mesarovic, Mihajlo D., and Yasuhiko Takahara (1975), General Systems Theory, New York, NY: Academic Press. Mescheryakov, Alexander I. (1974), Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Children, Moscow: Pedagogika (in Russian). Rubinstein, Sergey L. (1989), Foundations of General Psychology, Moscow: Pedagogika, Vol. 2 (in Russian). Uznadze Dmitry N. (1961), Experimental Foundations of the Psychology of the Set, Tbilisi (in Russian). Vekker, Lev M. (1974–1981), Psychological Processes, Leningrad: Leningrad University Press, Vols. 1–3 (in Russian). Vygotsky, Lev S. (1983), ‘‘History of Development of Higher Psychic Functions,’’ Selected Works, Vol. 3, pp. 5–328, Moscow: Pedagogika (in Russian). ——— (1986), Thought and Language (Alex Kozulin, ed.), Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Yeliseyev, Eugene N. (1983), The Structure of the Development of Complex Systems, Leningrad: Nauka (in Russian). Appendix 9.1 The Language of Hierarchical Logic This appendix is not a tutorial on the hierarchical approach and hierarchical logic. Its goal is to merely introduce the common terms and explain the use of typical schemes that can be found in the body of this chapter. General Description In the hierarchical approach, any object is treated at different levels, and the relations between these levels are different from the relations inside a level. Three types of organization are considered that form a hierarchy, too: 1. Structure is an expression of internal (static) complexity. Structure consists of a number of elements, with some relations between them. 2. System refers to external (dynamical) complexity. In general, a system is the way one structure (input) is transformed into another (output), the mechanism of this transformation being defined by the structure of the system’s inner state. 3. Hierarchy shows how the external complexity is transformed into internal complexity, and vice versa. It orders different structures or systems as the levels of hierarchy, and this order depends on the hierarchy’s environment, rather than on the properties of its components. Hierarchical structures and systems are the forms of manifestation of a hierarchy. Development is its native way of existence. Every hierarchy is characterized by the following features: 1. There are several levels, with an ordering that implies the dominance of higher levels over lower ones (hierarchical structure).

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2. A hierarchy has the property of infinite divisibility. Relations between any two adjacent levels of a hierarchy constitute a specific entity that may be considered a level of the hierarchy lying between them (unfolding). 3. The collection of intermediate levels between any two levels of a hierarchy may be considered their form of connection, so that these two levels can be considered adjacent in the hierarchy (folding). 4. Any hierarchy can be folded and unfolded differently, and hence it implies multiple hierarchical structures (refoldability). 5. Due to refoldability, the ‘‘topmost’’ position in the hierarchy is relative, and any element in a hierarchy may represent the hierarchy as a whole. 6. Within a hierarchy, any distinction between elements and their relations is relative, referring to a specific unfolding, thus being relative. 7. Any component of a hierarchy is a hierarchy too, and the distinction between the part and the whole is relative; a hierarchy is reflected in any of its elements. 8. A hierarchy is multidimensional, with an infinite number of dimensions; however, each unfolding implies a one-dimensional ordering of the levels. Fundamental Notions and Inference Rules The basic constructive elements of the hierarchical approach are nodes (points) and links. Nodes are usually denoted by letters, and links are denoted by arrows. Any combination of nodes and links forms a categorial scheme. Each scheme can be interpreted in a triple way, as summarized in the accompanying table.

Scheme

Structural interpretation

Systemic interpretation

A

an element of a structure

a structure

Hierarchical interpretation structure, system, or hierarchy

!

A!B A!B!C

relation between

transformation of one

transition from one level

elements, being

structure into another,

of hierarchy to another,

motion

development

element A is related to

structure A is transformed

B is the higher level, and

element B

into structure B

A is the lower level

element B is related to

there is a process that

B is the mechanism of

both A and C, in a

transforms structure A

development from A to C

chain

into structure B and then into structure C

)

connection between

implication

ordering in complexity

A implies B

B is a later stage of development than A

elements A)B

A is directly or indirectly connected to B

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The schemes of the hierarchical approach should not be identified with any conventional mathematical constructs (set-theoretic, algebraic, logical, and so on). Mathematical schemes are only a special case of categorial schemes. The main rules of formally constructing categorial schemes are referred to as the rules of hierarchical inference: 1. (Reflexivity) If there is a node O, there is a link ! from this node to itself: O ! O. 2. (Unfolding links) For any link ! there is a node O 0 mediating it, so that ! is equivalent to ! O 0 !. 3. (Folding links) The reverse of (2): any mediated link can be folded in a higher-level link. 4. (Abstraction) For any linked node O1 ! O2 , there is a node O representing the link. 5. (Unfolding nodes) Any node mediating a link ! O 0 ! is a contracted form of a triad of input, inner state, output: ! ðS 0 ! C 0 ! R 0 Þ !; this rule might be replaced with an equivalent: ! O 0 ! implies ! ðS 0 ! R 0 Þ !, and then ! ðS 0 ! C 0 ! R 0 Þ ! by rule (2). 6. (Refoldability) ! ðO1 ! O2 Þ ! is equivalent to ! O1 Þ ! ðO2 !, with a proper reinterpretation of links. Fundamental Schemes The fundamental schemes are the monad, the dyad, the triad, and the tetrad. A monad is a single node linked to itself. The only node of the monad is virtually identical to the only link. Any other scheme can be obtained as an unfolding of the monad. A dyad is constructed as two nodes linked to each other. The dyad represents the opposition of its nodes, their difference and mutual determination. There are two complementary unfoldings of the dyad ðABÞ: A ! B (‘‘primary,’’ ‘‘material’’) and A ) B (‘‘secondary,’’ ‘‘ideal’’). The mutual transition of the opposites in the dyad may be expressed as A $ B, or A , B, which can be interpreted as correspondence or equivalence. In the cyclic representation, the dyad is explicated as an infinite chain    A ! B ) A 0 ! B 0 )    , with A 0 and B 0 being the different forms of A and B respectively. The triad is a scheme constructed from three nodes with mutual links. In the primary unfolding of the triad (ABC), which is represented by the scheme A ! B ! C, node B is a negation of node A, and node C is a negation of node B, and hence it must reproduce certain aspects of A. Folding mediation in the primary unfolding gives the scheme A ) C, the secondary unfolding of the dyad ðCAÞ. The corresponding secondary unfolding of the triad is the mirror reflection of the primary unfolding: C ) B ) A. The primary and secondary cyclic representations of the triad are    A ! B ! C ! A 0 ! B 0 ! C 0 !    and    C ) B ) A ) C 0 ) B 0 ) A 0 )    respectively. The triad can also be unfolded into dyads like ðA $ BÞ ! C, ðA $ CÞ ! B, A ! ðB $ CÞ. The tetrad contains four nodes, and it allows unfolding in numerous dyads and triads. The most common unfolding is given by the scheme ðABCÞ ! D, which expresses the logical operation of lift-up (Aufhebung), removing the synthesis of A, B, and C in the triad (ABC) and representing the triad as a syncretic unity of its components.

10 The Priority of Local Observation and Local Interpretation in Evaluating the ‘‘Spirit Hypothesis’’ David J. Hufford

Abstract The belief that spirits exist and that these disembodied intelligences interact with humankind perseveres through all cultures and through history to the present. Details of the nature of spirits and the occasions for their interaction vary from culture to culture, although there are recognizable patterns of belief that are practically universal. Spirit belief encompasses a broad range from theological ideas about God and the fate of human souls, to beliefs concerning angels, jinn, and demons. Even in the Buddhist traditions that are frequently said to be atheistic, the concepts of karma and reincarnation imply something analogous to ‘‘soul’’ or ‘‘spirit.’’ These beliefs are present not only within religious institutions but also in folk traditions, which are often in tension with religious teachings. These beliefs are supported by a variety of human experiences, ranging from mystical visions to the visits from deceased loved ones often reported by the bereaved. The combined influences of the Reformation and the Enlightenment have characterized spirit beliefs as archaic, not rationally supportable, and spiritually immature. This classification has been powerfully reinforced by the stigmatization of compelling spiritual experiences as psychopathological in origin. As a result the open discussion of spirit experiences is suppressed, creating the false impression that healthy and sophisticated modern persons do not have such experiences. Only the most ambiguous kinds of spiritual experiences, the religious interpretation of ordinary experience, escape this stigmatization. The result is a cultural construction, a worldview, in which some of the most powerful and common experiential reasons for spiritual belief are assumed to be absent in the modern, ‘‘disenchanted’’ world (Weber 1963, originally 1922). This assumption is shared by the religious as well as the nonreligious and even by those who have had such experiences but imagine that theirs are peculiar and not to be discussed openly. Consequently, there is a tacit acceptance that although such spirit experiences do occur, they have no weight as evidence, and that spirit beliefs, therefore, are not rational. Rigorous research about spirit beliefs requires an approach that challenges this bias. Physicalist beliefs need to be regarded with the same skepticism as spirit beliefs; neither should be accepted or rejected without good reasons. The prevalence and incidence of spirit experiences must be documented and they must be phenomenologically described in great detail. This investigation must take the ‘‘spirit hypothesis’’ very seriously. This gradual management of intellectual bias

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will eventually support research that opens new vistas for our understanding of consciousness. The proper reconsideration of spirit experience and belief has the potential for bringing popular interest and systematic research into useful dialogue on what humans are and what the universe is ultimately like.

Prologue The belief that spirits exist (i.e., are ontologically real) is ubiquitous, common even in contemporary Western societies among well-educated persons, and it is of interest to scholars in many fields. But almost all academic fields adopt an ‘‘official’’ view that this belief cannot possibly be true—or that at the very least it cannot be rationally founded—although many scholars in those fields personally hold such a belief. This rejection is treated as obvious rather than being argued, so it has become an unexamined assumption. Local observations and explanations—often inappropriately called ‘‘non-Western’’—are discredited, as much by those who argue that they should be respected as by those who consider them foolish. This fundamental tension between modern intellectual views and one of the most pervasive and ancient ideas about the world is interesting in itself and gives rise to important theoretical, methodological, and ethical problems. This chapter sketches several of those issues and offers some elements of a remedy. The remedy requires taking seriously the possibility that spirits are ontologically real. We must ask whether those who believe that spirits exist ever have good reasons and whether those reasons can be expressed in a way that has force in argument. It is obvious that people often have weak or invalid reasons for holding common beliefs, even beliefs generally accepted as true. An evaluation of the best available reasons is necessary for assessing how well founded a belief may be. Unfortunately, scholars of spirit belief have generally concerned themselves only with weak reasons, even when they have had to hypothesize those reasons. Introductory Examples Investigating what is believed and by whom can be done in large part by quantitative methods. Well-designed surveys, some of which are cited below, can tell us much. However, quantitative methods have their limits. Knowing what respondents understand a particular survey question to mean is best done through open-ended interviews with a subset of respondents. And understanding why a particular belief is held requires ethnographic methods. The quantitative and qualitative methods are complementary, although those who employ one or the other often fail to recognize that. The examples given below are data just as surely as the numbers in a survey are data. They are drawn from a substantial collection of interviews and literature review that I have carried out over the past thirty years. Each one by itself has little weight. But when compared with

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other instances and put in the context of quantitative data on the same topic, such instances become essential to our understanding. A Bereaved Husband One morning in 1995 one of our hospital chaplains called my office at Penn State’s medical center, asking me to speak with a man who had just been visited by his deceased wife who had recently died in our hospital. In a few minutes the three of us sat in my department’s conference room, and the man, in his seventies, told us the following story. One afternoon shortly after the funeral he was in his living room when his wife walked in. He was stunned. She told him that she was all right and that he should not be so upset. They chatted briefly, then she said good-bye, telling him that she had to go. He was distressed. He recalled asking, ‘‘Who says you have to go?’’ and ‘‘Where will you spend the night tonight?’’ But she was gone. He said he was shocked, though he was glad to see her. He had never imagined such a thing possible, noting that he had never heard anything about it in church. He had questions. Why couldn’t she stay? Who makes these rules? Why hadn’t it occurred to him to reach out and touch her? Where would she spend the night? He had tried to speak about the experience with his daughter, a very religious woman, but it upset her. She said it was bad, to forget it. But he couldn’t. On the day we spoke with him he had been grocery shopping when he decided he had to find someone who could talk to him about this experience. He had left the groceries, gotten in his car, and driven an hour and a half to the medical center, where he asked for a chaplain. I told him that I have spoken with many others who have had such experiences, that these experiences are well known in the grief literature, and that they are normal. I said that those who have told me about their visits have considered them a beautiful and consoling gift, a sign of love. He was pleased and relieved, comforted by this common human experience, his anxiety dissipated by the discovery that his experience was not unique. A Palliative Care Unit In the summer 1999 issue of the Journal of Palliative Care (Barbato et al. 1999), a team of Australian palliative-care specialists reported their findings concerning the visits that next of kin received from loved ones who had died at their hospital. They undertook the study because of the growing literature documenting these experiences as healthy responses to loss. The first such solid empirical study was published by a British physician in 1971 (Rees), and by the mid-1970s these experiences had been normalized in the psychiatric literature. They are often called the ‘‘normal hallucinations of bereavement,’’ a term that paradoxically accepts and rejects at the same time. The Australian team found that almost a quarter of their sample admitted to such visits. Their article recommends that those close to palliative-care

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patients be counseled and reassured about such experiences because, occurring as they do in a cultural setting that has long pathologized visionary events, they create anxiety even as they offer consolation. These authors chose to call the visits ‘‘parapsychological phenomena near the time of death,’’ noting that ‘‘the term hallucination still carries with it the stigma of mental disease’’ (Barbato et al. 1999, 31). We might add that hallucination also carries the explicit meaning of a false perception. A Physician In May 1999 Jane, a former medical student of mine, now a practicing physician, spoke with me about a serious health problem she faced. As we talked I asked her what personal resources she had found helpful. She mentioned several things, including family, and then said, ‘‘My faith.’’ I asked what she meant, and she replied, ‘‘I don’t go to church a lot, but I know that there is more to life than what we see.’’ I asked ‘‘How do you know that?’’ She paused and said, ‘‘A patient I had taken care of came to me as a spirit, after he died, and told me so.’’ That visit had occurred several years earlier, well before her current illness—not during a time of particular stress. In subsequent discussion I learned that when Jane told her husband about her visit from the deceased patient, he told her of his mother’s communication with him immediately following her death. He also told his father and his minister, and received two different reactions. His father said that he, too, had spoken with her after her death. The minister made no response at the time or subsequently. The American Public Empirical data have consistently shown that belief in the existence of spirits is common in the United States, and the patterns of its distribution and prevalence contradict the common assumption that spirit belief is incompatible with life and knowledge in modern society. The Gallup Poll and the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), two highly respected survey organizations, have been providing data on the topic from scientifically designed national samples, for decades. For example, George Gallup Jr. published data in 1982 showing that belief in life after death, a basic element of spirit belief, is not only common nationally, but is more common among respondents with more education: 69 percent of those with college education, 67 percent with only high school education, and 62 percent of those with only grade school education. Many respondents also said that they believed that spirits can visit the living. Gallup reported belief in the possibility of communication with the dead as 28 percent of the college educated, 25 percent of high school graduates, and 9 percent of those with only a grade school education (Gallup and Proctor 1982, 195). That such spirit belief is not purely theoretical is shown by NORC data. In 1987 sociologist Andrew Greeley reported that when asked ‘‘[have you ever] felt as though you were really in touch with someone who had died,’’ 42 percent of a national sample said yes ðN ¼ 1;445Þ (Greeley 1987). Although substantial, this number is not surprising given the incidence of such experiences among widows and widowers. The first

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medical study of the topic surveyed all the competent widows and widowers in a county in Wales, and found a rate of 46.7 percent (Rees 1971, 38; 2001). A more recent survey of widows in Arizona found a rate of 53 percent (Greeley 1987, 258). Such survey questions are very sensitive to variations in wording, and this may account for the odd disparity between those who say they believe this is possible and those who say it has happened to them. Of course spirits of deceased humans are not the only spirits widely believed to exist. National surveys have repeatedly shown very large majorities of Americans believing in the existence of angels. Checking the Polling the Nations database recently, I found that since 1995 six surveys reported that they had asked respondents whether they believed in the existence of angels (with a combined sample size of 11,498). The average positive response in these surveys was 72 percent ‘‘yes’’ with a low of 57 percent and a high of 85 percent. Even larger majorities believe in the existence of God, around 94 percent in most surveys, and God is, in most belief systems, a spirit. There are many issues of interpretation raised by these studies. But it is nonetheless abundantly clear that belief in the existence of spirits, the ability of spirits—including the dead—to contact living humans, and the experience of seeming to have such contact with spirits are all very common in American society. Furthermore, such beliefs and experiences are distributed in a manner that contradicts most academic theories of the effect of modern knowledge on belief in spirits— contemporary, educated people in the mainstream of modern culture in the United States believe in spirits and many of them say they have encountered them! Finding that belief in the existence of nonmaterial spirits is common among modern, welleducated people does not prove such beliefs to be true. However, it clearly does counter the claim that such beliefs are obviously false for those with modern education. One cannot simply assume a belief held in this way to be false but must rather offer arguments and evidence. In the examples given above it is not difficult to grasp what is believed or what is said to have been perceived. Granted the ambiguity of language and the ultimate inaccessibility of the experiences of others, we can see that the bereaved husband, the palliative-care-unit next of kin, the physician, and the positive respondents to the surveys cited, each believed that spirits exist as real, nonimaginary ontological agents, and that those spirits can sometimes interact with living humans. This understanding of the referents of the statements made by these people says little about their meaning and even less about the validity of the beliefs involved. But as far as the statements go, they are clear. The statements of modern academics have generally also been clear: spirits do not exist, and if they did exist they could not interact with humans, so ideas about their existence would be irremediably metaphysical. But in the late twentieth century social scientists became more sensitive to charges of ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism, and more influenced by postmodern doubts concerning any claims about a reality independent of a given observer. As a result, the language of

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sophisticated discussion about spirits, especially among anthropologists whose fieldwork constantly faces them with spirit beliefs and accounts of spirit experiences, has become much more difficult to decode. The discussion of beliefs not shared by the scholar have become more filled with expressions of respect and devoid of clear negations. For many the idea of directly negating any belief has become as impossible as embracing one. The result is implicit negation and an even stronger insistence that the validity of spirit belief is not accessible to rational investigation. An Anthropologist One explicit example of the problems that arise when scholars attempt to simultaneously embrace and reject spirit beliefs is the work of Young and Goulet (1994). Although that was already mentioned in chapter 2, I find it helpful to add some details. Goulet and Young propose an experiential approach, and I endorse the idea of approaching spirit beliefs through experience. In fact, I have been arguing for an ‘‘experience-centered approach’’ for more than twenty years (see Hufford 1976, 1982a, 2005). However, I have serious objections to the way that Young and Goulet embrace ‘‘extraordinary experiences’’ while at the same time dismissing the local meanings of those experiences largely on the basis, apparently, that those meanings seem ‘‘non-Western.’’ A truly experience-centered approach offers the possibility of transcending such cultural boundaries, but only if one is prepared to treat ‘‘Western’’ assumptions with as much skepticism as is usually reserved for those beliefs that seem in conflict with those assumptions. This example is worth pursuing, because it represents a much more explicit and detailed effort to open-mindedly come to terms with spirit belief than has generally been found in anthropology or the other social science disciplines. Young and Goulet’s ‘‘experiential approach’’ involves the investigator immersing herself in the ‘‘lifeworld’’ of another culture with the result that she begins to have the kinds of experiences that locals have. Consequently, their book presents many striking examples in which anthropologists have what are locally believed to be spirit encounters, as has been well described by Edith Turner in chapter 2. And yet Young and Goulet (1994, 322) assert that anthropologists who have visionary experiences of spirits ‘‘similar’’ to those of their ‘‘native informants’’ must interpret these in ways that eliminate spirits, that this is required ‘‘because the anthropological journey leads back home where they must communicate anew with friends and colleagues in a shared language of understanding.’’ Even most sympathetic anthropologists such as Young and Goulet consider spirit experiences alien to modern, Western culture, asserting that the experiences are produced by immersion in cultures that believe and teach the reality of spirits. This follows from the dominant anthropological view that such experiences are caused by culture, what I have called the cultural source hypothesis (Hufford 1982a), an explanation that debunks perceptual claims by ignoring the independent observations that occur cross-culturally. And yet it is clear that many

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of the same experiences and the same interpretations are ‘‘native’’ to the anthropologists’ own societies. Not only do spirit experiences not require immersion in an accepting culture, they occur unbidden in cultures where they are unwelcome and where discussion of them is punished! This is the case in anthropology’s home culture, where for generations stigmatization as psychotic symptoms (a process in which the social sciences have readily participated) has stripped society of informed expectations or any sense of legitimacy about spirit encounters. Paradoxically, the reality of spirits is even ‘‘taken seriously’’ by several of the contributors to Young and Goulet’s own book,1 further undermining the claim that the reality of spirits cannot be accepted by rational modern thinkers. Methods and explanations that hinge on strong cultural endorsement of spirit belief (including immersion of the subject in a lifeworld where such beliefs are prevalent and related experiences often recounted) as the cause of spirit experiences and beliefs are contradicted by the ubiquitous distribution of those experiences and beliefs. Local production requiring strong cultural endorsement would suggest that spirit experiences are internally generated.2 Universal distribution of such experiences regardless of cultural acceptance, in contrast, is what one would expect of objective observation. In his ethnography of Dene Tha spirit belief Goulet (1998, 190) says that ‘‘the work of inferring the reality of spirits from experience is immense.’’ But given the ubiquity of spirit encounters and their acceptance as ontologically real by the majority of percipients in all cultures, what requires steady cultural reinforcement is the academic work of making this mass of observations in different cultures evidence of the same process by which societies construct fictive kinship ties or local gender configurations. Considering the common categories of spirit experience, the construction of a materialist reality in which reported perceptions of spirits are viewed as hallucinations is a much more complex and arduous task than constructing a reality that accepts spirits on the basis of experience. The process that Max Weber (1963, originally 1922) called die Entzauberung der Welt—the disenchantment of the world—was accomplished only through immense effort advanced by complex economic and political forces, and was not accomplished at all in the personal experience of most of humanity. A world inclusive of spirits is closer to human experience and a more intuitive response to common human perceptions. Such a world is empirically robust, not merely emotionally pleasing. The Rationality Issue All over the world and throughout history many people have had direct experiences with spirits. These experiences range from the unique to obviously related sets, such as bereavement apparitions and near-death experiences, spontaneous experiences as well as those occurring in ritual contexts. This continues today in all societies.

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Although cultural setting influences description, these experiences show consistent perceptual patterns independent of the subject’s prior belief or expectation. The effect of most secular scholarship and most Western religious teaching on the topic for the past several centuries has been to obscure this fact. The experiences have been stigmatized as heretical, psychopathological, or a characteristic of ‘‘primitive mentality.’’ More recently, responding to concerns about ethnocentrism and cultural imperialism, scholars in the cultural relativist tradition have created approaches that reject cross-cultural comparisons as necessarily reductive. In the field of comparative religion the drive to avoid superficial cross-cultural generalizations led to a view of spiritual traditions as unique, limiting comparisons to the elements within particular traditions. This approach rejects the idea that such beliefs are irrational, treating rationality as a local, Western issue, and spiritual beliefs as nonrational, not accessible to the kind of systematic rational inquiry to which hypotheses are subjected. The resulting view protects traditional spirit (and other) beliefs from reductive translation into the concepts of modern, Western society. But even when done to ‘‘protect’’ traditional views, this hermeneutic defense inevitably leaves most ordinary believers unprotected. People do not hold merely that they have a right to believe that they have souls or that God answers prayers or that the dead live on, but also that they have reasons that justify those beliefs. They hold that such propositions have a reality that transcends their immediate tradition. They may understand that they are ‘‘living a story,’’ but they do not accept that the story is merely fictional. Because the history of Western scholarship concerning religious and spiritual beliefs is so complex, both in its dismissive and its protective forms, the investigation of the ‘‘spirit hypothesis’’ is at least as much a matter of untangling the cultural products of scholarship as inquiring into the spirit beliefs and experiences of ordinary people. That process leads to a recognition of common features of spirit experiences that are relevant to understanding the spirit hypothesis. Asserting such common features is not an essentializing argument for the ‘‘psychic unity’’ of humankind. Rather, it is a call for consideration of comparable observational reports in the same way that comparisons of similar medicinal uses for similar plants in different cultures has suggested pharmacological efficacy. Similar observations from independent witnesses should always raise the possibility that the observations accurately reflect the real world, rather than being wholly products of psychosocial and/or neurophysiological context—that is, the possibility that such beliefs are, in some substantial portion, both empirical and rational. Most who have treated spirit beliefs as rational and empirical have done so in the process of rejecting them as mistaken. Edward B. Tylor (1871), sometimes described as the founder of social anthropology, considered ‘‘primitive man’’ to be rational and engaged in attempting to understand the world, but doing so based on inadequate knowledge. He located the origins of religion in animism—the ‘‘belief in spiritual beings’’—and interpreted this belief as reasoned

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efforts to explain ‘‘two groups of biological problems’’: (1) What is the difference between conscious and nonconscious bodies (sleeping, in trance, or dead), and what animates the conscious body? (2) What are the entities that appear in dreams and visions, and where do they come from? The ancient savage philosophers probably made their first step by the obvious inference that every man has two things belonging to him, namely a life and a phantom. . . . [These] are doctrines answering in the most forcible way to the plain evidence of men’s senses, as interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy. (Tylor, quoted in Lessa and Vogt 1972, 12–13)

Rational and empirical, but understandably—and to the nineteenth-century anthropologist’s mind, obviously—mistaken, according to Tylor, because of the primitive philosopher’s inadequate knowledge base. Through much of the twentieth century anthropologists sought to find more respectful ways of dealing with spirit belief, something beyond Tylor’s ‘‘best-effort’’ analysis. A very influential example of such effort is found in the work of Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard, especially in his Nuer Religion (1956), where he sought to refute the idea of a prelogical primitive mentality, as advanced by Lucien Le´vy-Bruhl, by showing that what appear to be inconsistencies from outside Nuer religion are actually consistent viewed from within. Yet even Evans-Pritchard clearly assumed that the spirit beliefs of those he studied were false and that their falsity was obvious to the modern mind. In his 1937 Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, a classic still featured in debates about rationality, Evans-Pritchard described his observation of a mysterious light one night, an experience he calls having ‘‘seen witchcraft on its path.’’ He goes into considerable detail to show that the light was apparently impossible—no lamp was available to cast such a bright light and it traveled and disappeared in a puzzling way. The next day villagers told him what he had seen must have been witchcraft, and soon after a messenger arrived telling of the death of a man judged to have been the target of the witchcraft. Evans-Pritchard (1976, 11) reckons that ‘‘this . . . fully explained the light I had seen. [But] I never discovered its real origin.’’ Yet EvansPritchard never explains how he knows that the villagers’ beliefs are false. At another point he says that ‘‘it is an inevitable conclusion from Zande descriptions of witchcraft that it is not an objective reality. . . . Witches, as Azande conceive them cannot exist’’ (1976, 63). In this juxtaposition of the hermeneutic, internal-consistency interpretation with the outright assertion that these beliefs are objectively false, there is something of the psychiatrist’s willing suspension of disbelief when speaking with a psychotic patient. Of course I know this is real to you. Ideas similar to those of Tylor, although in much more sophisticated form, are also found among some modern anthropologists. For example, Robin Horton (1982) postulates a ‘‘strong core of human cognitive rationality common to the cultures of all places on earth and all times since the dawn of properly human social life,’’ and uses this to explain a wide variety of

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religious and spiritual beliefs as understandable, consistent, highly functional, and mistaken (Horton 1970, 1982). The Belief That Spirits Exist Is Ubiquitous The belief that spirits exist is found in all human societies of which we know—not all members of any society, but many members of all societies. By spirits I mean (1) conscious beings—not necessarily humans—who do not require physical bodies,3 (2) ontologically real entities that exist independently of perceiving minds, and (3) conscious agents that are capable of interacting with the ordinary world in some ways. Exactly which spirits exist (God or gods, angels, jinn, souls, ghosts, etc.), and the nature and occasions of their interaction with the ordinary world (e.g., during rituals, creating the universe, reincarnating in human bodies, and so on), are left entirely open in this definition. This is an inductively derived definition intended to capture the commonalities in traditions all over the world that refer to what is most often translated as spirits in English. I grant that these traditions are very diverse—ranging, for example, from beliefs about spirits found in nontheistic Buddhism to the very different spirit beliefs of Presbyterians. Some belief traditions accept only one spirit, God, as real, while others include many different kinds of spirits including spirits in plants and rocks, while still others may exclude God. Of course, that such beliefs are ubiquitous says nothing about whether they are true. The Belief That Spirits Exist Is Contested The particularities of spirit beliefs are contested among believers. Wars have been fought and heretics put to death over these differences. But these differences pale in comparison to those that exist between all believers in spirits on the one hand and conventional modern academic theories about the belief that spirits exist (hereafter called ‘‘spirit belief’’) on the other. Traditional spirit beliefs, as defined above, are basically never accepted on their own terms in the theories of most scholars, and the possible validity of those beliefs in their own terms is almost never seriously considered.4 The crucial question is whether the idea of spirits makes any sense, whether any spirit could exist, and if so whether anyone could have rational grounds for saying so. And the academic answer up to the present is a clear resounding no. The Western academic tradition has a long history of alternately denying and ignoring the actual prevalence of the belief in spirits; of dismissing the belief as obviously false or, alternately, as qualitatively different from and incommensurable with modern knowledge; and of refusing to consider the claims inherent in such beliefs. This has been true of many who in some sense defend traditions of spiritual belief as well as those who consider such traditions to be hopelessly archaic and nonrational. Reductionists insist that these beliefs are obviously false or meaningless.5 Scholars sympathetic to spirit belief traditions, such as Goulet and Young, assert that truth issues are

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beside the point and irretrievably veiled by a protective shield of hermeneutic problems. Whether debunking or defending, most contemporary scholars of spirit belief avoid the most basic questions that they raise. This resistance to spirit belief has involved an odd coalition between scholars who reject all spiritual belief and religious authorities who reject only those spiritual beliefs that are contrary to their own theology. The Alliance of Skeptical Materialism and Western Religion against Traditional Spirit Belief The reasons that both Enlightenment skeptics and Western theologians happened to make common cause against traditional spirit beliefs are numerous and complex, and I will not attempt to delineate them all here. But one is especially relevant: it is the association of spirit belief with religion and magic in Western thought during the past three centuries. Following the Reformation the understanding of authentic religion became increasingly ‘‘noncognitive’’ (and, by implication, ‘‘nonrational’’). That is, it moved away from a view of religion that includes particular beliefs as accurate depictions of ‘‘spiritual facts,’’ especially when such cognitive beliefs claim an experiential foundation, as in healings believed to be miraculous or encounters with spirits believed to be authentic.6 Theologians, notably Calvin, acknowledged cognitive belief, as in the belief that God exists, but considered it unimportant, something even the devils believe. For Calvin, proper faith was emotional, trust—belief in God.7 As to other ‘‘factual’’ beliefs, Protestant reformers identified belief in ghosts as Catholic superstition to be condemned as impossible along with the Catholic idea of supernatural sacraments. The Protestant repudiation of Catholic ritual as mere magic was a part of this change. Stanley Tambiah (1994, 31) points out that ‘‘seventeenth century Protestant thought contributed to the demarcation of ‘magic’ from ‘religion,’ magic being . . . false manipulations of the supernatural and occult powers.’’ Keith Thomas (1971, ix), in his landmark Religion and the Decline of Magic, says that the belief in ghosts is today ‘‘rightly disdained by intelligent persons’’ but was ‘‘taken seriously by equally intelligent persons in the past.’’ He places the change in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, saying that in the sixteenth century the belief in ghosts ‘‘distinguished Protestant from Catholic almost as effectively as belief in the Mass or the Papal Supremacy’’ (p. 589). As Richard Bowyer (1981, 190–191) put it, in describing the post-Reformation period in West Country England, ‘‘The church also had ceased officially to believe in ghosts, and ascribed all such apparitions to the malevolent wiles of the Devil. This did not mean that ghosts ceased to appear, but merely that the church abdicated its authority over them.’’ Subsequent theologians took many different paths in this move away from the idea of observable natural-supernatural interaction, which turns out to be simultaneously a move away from the spiritual experiences and beliefs of ordinary people.

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In 1799 Friedrich Schleiermacher defended religion against reduction by ‘‘its cultured despisers,’’ the intellectuals of early German Romanticism, many of whom were his friends. His first book, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, was a direct result of the insistence of several of these friends on the occasion of his twenty-ninth birthday. This book marks the beginnings of liberal Protestant theology and has influenced many theologians up to the present day. In this book Schleiermacher (1958, 88) rejected religious ideas that were taken to conflict with ‘‘the universal validity of scientific and physical conclusions. . . . Religion . . . leaves your physics untouched, and please God, your psychology.’’ He went on to reject the idea of miracles as marvelous, physically impossible occurrences, saying instead that ‘‘miracle is simply the religious name for event’’ (p. 88). Schleiermacher then proceeded through revelation, inspiration, prophecy, and grace, defining each in a way that excluded the supernatural except for the meaning of each term to the religious observer. In Schleiermacher’s view the source of such an observer’s religiousness is religious feeling—not observable evidence of the supernatural occurring in the world. In his most important theological work, The Christian Faith (1821), Schleiermacher developed his idea of this source further, as a feeling of complete dependence and a self-conscious awareness of one’s finitude. Schleiermacher, in part influenced by Giambattista Vico’s insights into the historically situated nature of human knowledge, developed a hermeneutic theology in which authentic religion can only be understood by those who experience it, and whose claims are entirely separate from scientific claims about the observable world. This idea of the radical subjectivity of religion was expanded by many later scholars, yielding a variety of approaches to the understanding of the lifeworlds of others. Theological existentialism further developed the subjectivity of religion and led to additional rejections of specific, cognitive beliefs as fundamental to religion. Søren Kierkegaard, one of the founders of religious existentialism, held that rationality in religion undermines true faith by attempting to make ‘‘safe’’ that which should be accepted ‘‘by virtue of the absurd’’ (1941b, 47, 51), and in the Postscript (1941a) he goes even further, saying that the absurd is not the basis of belief but rather that which must be believed, because, as Kellenberger (1985, 8) sums it up, ‘‘Faith for Kierkegaard in the Postscript is against reason, it is not above reason.’’ From the latter nineteenth century forward, both the hermeneutic approach and existentialism, operating in a variety of fields, can be seen continuing to advance the splitting off of authentic spiritual belief from cognitive and observational claims and rational inference. In history the hermeneutic view can be seen in the ideas of Wilhelm Dilthey (1988, originally 1883) and Max Weber (1963, originally 1922) and more recently Hans-Georg Gadamer (1972), in arguments that understanding requires us to allow our own perspective to merge with the perspective we wish to understand. This is the kind of actively empathetic understanding that Dilthey called Verstehen. In anthropology cultural relativism, generally attributed to Franz Boas, sought to protect cultures

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from ethnocentric interpretation. As his student Melville Herskovits (1947, 76) put it, proper cultural anthropology should make it possible to see ‘‘the validity of every set of norms for the peoples whose lives are guided by them.’’ Cultural relativism has been extended to cover a variety of domains including perception (as for example with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) and even truth, so it regularly entails efforts to understand belief. Turning back to theology, Rudolf Otto (1953), seeking to broaden theology to include non-Christian tradition, located the source of religiosity in the unique religious feeling of what he called the numinous. Although Otto provides extensive phenomenological description of this feeling, he describes it as objective but nonrational and asserts that those who have not felt it cannot understand what religious people are speaking of. Rudolf Bultmann, an existentialist Protestant theologian, also endorsed the idea that authentic religion is to be found in feeling rather than knowing, belief in rather than belief that. Like Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Kierkegaard, Bultmann found religious beliefs based on observations of alleged divine action (or any supernatural cause) in the world to be primitive and an offense to the modern mind. Following the view of human knowledge as historically situated, Bultmann found ideas such as miracle to be understandable in the culture of the Apostolic era but foolish in the modern context, leading him to embark on the project of ‘‘demythologizing’’ Christian scripture. Bultmann (1953, 3–5) claimed that ‘‘the mythical view of the world is obsolete. . . . Now that the forces and the laws of nature have been discovered, we can no longer believe in spirits, whether good or evil.’’ This process of ‘‘demythologizing’’ continues, often under other names, as modern theologians struggle to maintain authentic religion without making any claims that might be either tested or subject to alternative explanation by skeptics. As Wayne Proudfoot (1985, 235–236) sums up the effort in his book aimed at demolishing the hermeneutic defense, all these approaches ‘‘describe religious experience in such a way as to preclude any natural explanation of that experience . . . [by limiting] all inquiry and reflection on . . . religious experience and belief, to internal elucidation and analysis.’’ In the contemporary theological discourse concerning the relationship of science and religion this view, now sometimes called physicalist, is very influential. Ian G. Barbour, winner of the 1999 Templeton Prize, advocates an integration of religion with science in which religion learns from current science what is possible and arranges its ideas accordingly. For example, in When Science Meets Religion, Barbour (2000, 137) rejects the idea of an immaterial soul because ‘‘evidence from neuroscience does not support a body/soul dualism.’’ Similarly Nancy Murphy, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary, says ‘‘I am a physicalist. I don’t believe there is a soul. The soul is a hypothetical concept that seemed necessary way back when. We don’t need it now for scientific purposes’’ (Giberson and Yerxa 2001, 33). This understanding is exactly that of such well-known scientific skeptics as Francis Crick (1994, 4), who has said that ‘‘the idea of a soul, distinct from the body . . . is a myth,’’ or E. O.

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Wilson, the founder of sociobiology. In Consilience, his bestselling tour de force of reductive scientific materialism, Wilson (1998, 289) asserts that neuroscience makes belief in the soul untenable, and goes on to the natural conclusion that the same move eliminates any grounds for belief in spirits: ‘‘The spirits our ancestors knew intimately fled the rocks and the trees, then the distant mountains. Now they are in the stars where their final extinction is possible.’’ Centuries after Calvin and Hume, we find skeptical materialists and a certain kind of Western theologian moving in lockstep on the issue of spirit belief. In this process of theological change, which Peter Berger (1990, 1–30) calls the ‘‘demise of the supernatural,’’ cognitive religious ideas have come to be seen as naive (Zalesky 1987, 184–205), ‘‘literalist’’ (Comfort 1979; Maslow 1976, 21), and ‘‘crude’’ (Davis 1989, 226–227). Historians of religion, along with a good many theologians, have constructed this change as one that makes empirical spirit belief seem as unmodern as anthropological writing makes it un-Western. It is inevitable, then, that the intellectual view of spirit beliefs is that they are ‘‘primitive’’ or childish, even when they are not assumed to be symptoms of psychopathology. As John J. Cerullo (1982, 3) puts it, in contrast to the medieval view of frequent supernatural-natural interactions, the God of Protestantism ‘‘would not grant such ‘popish’ boons to a mankind as utterly, frightfully fallen as Luther and Calvin believed. In the final analysis, only one undeniably supernatural event was allotted Protestant man: the devolution of God’s sovereign grace.’’ The reasoning changed considerably over time, but this characterization of early Protestant thought rings true through the middle of the twentieth century and persists among physicalist theologians today. In fact, some of the latter would no longer allow grace either. Although Calvin would not have accepted Bultmann’s demythologizing of miracles in the Apostolic era, he and Bultmann share the view that contemporary humanity has only one true source of spiritual knowledge: God speaking through Jesus, a view that excludes most human-spirit interaction. Ironically, this view matches that of Enlightenment skeptic David Hume, one of those against whom the German Romantics such as Schleiermacher were reacting. In his essay ‘‘Can We Ever Have Rational Grounds for Belief in Miracles?’’, Hume presents a series of arguments against a reasoned belief in miracles—by which he specifically means any supernatural-natural interaction. Many of these arguments are still in use today, ranging from peoples’ desire to believe ‘‘wondrous things’’ and the assertion that allegedly supernatural events are ‘‘observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations’’ (Hume 1963, 413), to the observation that humans are known to lie but natural law has never been known to be broken—therefore, defining miracles as the breaking of natural laws, alleged miracles are always more likely to be lies than truth. But Hume does not say that the religious cannot believe in miracles, only that they should not claim to do so on rational grounds. The religious, he says, have something better than reason, they have truth ‘‘brought home to everyone’s breast, by the immediate opera-

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tion of the Holy Spirit’’ (p. 408). Theological hermeneuticism and existentialism join skeptical materialism and now physicalist theology in making authentic spiritual belief radically nonrational. Compounding the noncognitive bias against attention to specifiable supernatural beliefs, inquiries into modern religious thought tend to follow modern theology in another way, by taking theism—ideas about God—as the beginning and end of spiritual religious experience and belief. It is probably no coincidence that this tendency follows Reformation theology, which sharply narrowed the acceptable forms of supernaturalnatural interaction. This has put the majority of spirit beliefs out of bounds in both skeptical and religious circles in Western thought, subjecting them to both materialistic and religious criticism and rejection. This greatly complicates efforts to understand and evaluate the spirit hypothesis within the context of Western intellectual traditions: many of the discussions, arguments, and methods of modern thought are applicable to the spirit-hypothesis topic, but that topic has rarely been explicitly raised within serious scholarship during the past two centuries. The exceptions are notable, including William James (1902), University of Virginia psychiatry professor Ian Stevenson (2001), sociologist Andrew Greeley (1975), and anthropologists Edith Turner (1994) and Antonia Mills (1994). And, of course, outside the academic world oral tradition and popular culture have always carried ideas and accounts regarding spirits. The continued presence of these discussions suggests that Berger’s ‘‘demise of the supernatural’’ has taken place only in conservative academic thought. The persistence of belief in spirits is evident in historical sources from the very beginning of the theological and philosophical moves away from them. Thomas (1971, 588) notes that although the Protestant teaching against belief in ghosts was ‘‘remarkably firm,’’ by the eighteenth century such notable intellectuals as Samuel Johnson were again speaking seriously of the possibility of ghosts. Institutional Protestantism and modern theology have struggled to disenchant the world. But constant revivals, from the Great Awakening to the Charismatic Movement in Christianity, from Hasidism to Jewish Renewal and the resurgence of Kabala in Judaism, the rise of so-called fundamentalisms around the world, and the pervasive influence of ‘‘New Age’’ thinking from Emerson to the Theosophists to Shirley MacLaine, insistently return the idea of a world imbued with an objectively real supernatural. Even as the word supernatural seems to have been so stigmatized by horror fiction and localized by anthropology (see Hallowell 1960; Saler 1977) that it can no longer be used intelligibly, the concept to which it referred remains vibrantly alive. When scholars imagine spirit belief to be passe´ they endow a narrow spectrum of academic ideas with the power to define ‘‘modern thought.’’ As Andrew Greeley (1972, 8) has pointed out, ‘‘It is not good social analysis to define as modern man the academic and his colleague in the media and to write off the rest of the population as irrelevant residues of the tribal past’’; to do so is ‘‘the sheerest kind of snobbery.’’ Greeley made that comment more than thirty years ago, arguing that

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spiritual belief was neither dead nor in real decline in the modern world. The current evidence from the ‘‘postmodern world’’ makes Greeley look downright prescient. And yet anthropologists and other social scientists continue to put forth great effort to commit the same mistake in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. Coming to Terms with the Ontology of Events Despite the mounting evidence that the basic belief in spirits is empirically grounded and rationally derived, for years I accepted the common assertion that issues of truth in such belief cannot and should not be addressed. I began to change my mind about that as a result of conversations that I had in 1985 when I was invited to a conference on comparative methods. What happened, I am sure, is typical of the experience of scholars and scientists who take the spirit hypothesis seriously in an academic arena. I was invited to the conference because my research on traditions of supernatural assault (e.g., sorcery, demons, and vampire), reported in The Terror That Comes in the Night (Hufford 1982a), involved both cross-cultural and historical comparisons as a fundamental method for studying spiritual beliefs. That research centered on the medical category of sleep paralysis, beginning with its cultural expression in Newfoundland, Canada. I showed for the first time that this event includes a complex subjective pattern involving the perception of an ‘‘evil presence’’ and numerous other negative ‘‘spirit attributes,’’ and that this pattern is consistently reported all over the world. That is, what sleep researchers call sleep paralysis comprises an understandable and challenging warrant for certain widespread spiritual beliefs. This does not prove the beliefs true, and in some cases conflicting widespread beliefs are supported by the same kinds of experience, as when sleep paralysis is interpreted as ‘‘alien abduction’’ (Hufford 1995a, 2005) by some and demonic attack by others. But the robust experiential basis does render such beliefs understandable as reasoned. In my presentation I extended the findings reported in the book, showing that this widely found pattern contradicts conventional explanations of alleged supernatural experience that depend on the cultural loading of experience—what I call the cultural source hypothesis. The cultural source hypothesis assumes that first-person claims of spirit experience are produced by prior belief and cultural values. The experiences are errors of interpretation, illusions, hallucinations, or simply the false appearance of experience produced by narrative processes. If this were true, then counting such claims as evidence for traditional beliefs would be viciously circular, since the beliefs are understood to cause the experiences. I insisted that it is bad scholarship simply to assume such explanations rather than documenting them systematically. By demonstrating that experiences with the same complex features as the Newfoundlanders’ ‘‘Old Hag’’—such as shuffling footsteps and a frightening presence—occur in different cultural settings all over the world, including among my medical students who have never heard of them and

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who did not believe in such things before having the experience, I was able to demonstrate that explanations requiring prior cultural knowledge cannot account for the experiential reports of traditions about such events found all over the world. I went on to suggest that the same is likely to be true of a variety of other traditional beliefs—for example, afterlife beliefs. I called for a new approach to the interpretation of spiritual folk belief. At that point a colleague asked me how I did explain these beliefs and accounts of experience if they do not depend on cultural sources. I replied that I did not know of any explanations that accommodate the data except, of course, for the explanations found in folk tradition—explanations involving real spirits. Although I did not go on to argue that those explanations are correct, the ensuing discussion—and later the unexplained absence of my paper from the published conference proceedings—made it clear that I had already upset some colleagues rather badly. This confirmed my understanding of the social processes that protect the archaic interpretations of spiritual belief shared by many scholars. Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) explanations of academic resistance to politically unacceptable observations and interpretations, from adverse reviews to attacks on the methods and competence of dissident scholars, are the modern norm where spiritual beliefs are involved. Since that time I have gradually moved toward plain speaking on this issue, questioning the common argument that we cannot be concerned with whether a belief being studied is true or well-founded. Some colleagues have argued that addressing issues of truth in belief studies is theology, not ethnology. Jacqueline Simpson (1988, 16), taking issue with my critique of poorly founded academic ‘‘traditions of disbelief’’ in the British journal Talking Folklore (Hufford 1987), said that when a folklorist ‘‘begins to wonder whether the phenomena under investigation could be based on fact,’’ one ceases to be a folklorist—an old assertion that always makes me wonder whether those who eat food are to be automatically excluded from studying it! Simpson said, for example, that the nineteenth-century scholar Andrew Lang ceased to be a folklorist and became, instead, a psychic researcher when he entertained the possibility that ghosts exist. And yet the same scholars who argue against directly addressing truth issues use and develop theories that implicitly debunk those beliefs (e.g., Berger, Goulet, Zalesky). Debunking, or dismissing as irremediably metaphysical and not subject to confirmation, does in fact directly address the truth issue. Even sympathetic scholars such as Young and Goulet (1994, 317) refer to spirit experiences as ‘‘dreams and visions,’’ making no effort to distinguish the two, contrasting these experiences with those that occur ‘‘while wide awake’’ (p. 317). They refuse explicitly to reject or accept the truth of spirit belief, saying that either alternative requires ‘‘an act of faith’’ (p. 325). Then, emphasizing the role of interpretation, they assert that accepting the native view of spirits as real is ‘‘tantamount to going native,’’ preferring the ‘‘hermeneutic challenge’’ (p. 325). This exploitation of an ambiguity partially produced by steadfast refusal to

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make a detailed and accurate account of the observational basis of many spirit beliefs debunks the basic claims of believers as much as do those of the reductionists whom these authors deplore. This kind of theorizing, the norm in folklore and anthropology since their beginnings, does address truth issues, but does so with a devastating, though unspoken, preemptive bias. What they call for is avoiding comments on truth issues that support belief rather than undermining it. My response used to be that a true bracketing of truth claims was what I sought. But my colleague’s question at the comparativemethod conference has returned to haunt me again and again. If we have several coherent explanations for spiritual beliefs based on experience, and the evidence leads us to exclude all but one—and that one hinges on the traditional belief that spirits exist and are occasionally perceived—then on what grounds do we insist that the events are ‘‘inexplicable’’? If we compare two explanations for belief in spirits—experiential claims versus cultural loading, for example—and we have shown that the spirit explanation is simpler and fits the data far more closely than the cultural-loading explanation, then haven’t we done all that we ever do when we say that we have shown that one explanation is more likely to be true? The only clear way to subvert that conclusion would be to show that the spirit explanation is somehow contradicted by other well-established knowledge—something that I have shown is often assumed but almost never demonstrated. I do not believe we should ever, as scholars, claim an irrevocable certainty about anything—although such disposition is certainly quite different from what is reasonable in our personal lives. But neither do we refuse to connect our interpretations with the world outside our imaginations. So, if we can systematically compare explanations in terms of their adequacy (empirical fit and consistency, that is, their epistemological warrants), then in doing so we are inquiring into their ‘‘truth.’’ This we certainly can do regarding experience-based claims about spirits. An Experiential Theory of Spirit Beliefs Belief in spirits is considered by many scholars to be a defining element of religion, but it does not by itself constitute religion. The conflation of religion and spirit belief in modern scholarship has caused the difficulties of rationally adjudicating conflicting theological claims to be projected onto the study of spirit beliefs. This is a serious conceptual error. Religion refers to social institutions, while spirituality refers to personal belief and practice. In some individuals these may be very similar, but the difference between them is important, since many hold spiritual beliefs and follow spiritual practices without affiliating with any religious institution (Roof 1993; Fuller 2001). The distinction has become a commonplace in modern American life. Certainly there are spirit beliefs in the highly ramified theological doctrines of diverse religious institutions, and these religious doctrines are notoriously metaphysical, lacking a stable em-

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pirical foundation. Although religious beliefs often include some empirical elements (such as personal experiences of answers to prayer and mystical experiences), they are heavily dependent on faith. While it is often granted that religious systems have an internally consistent logic, their lack of a robust and stable empirical base makes it impossible to relate that logic systematically to other belief systems in a direct manner. Most religious understandings of faith remove any need for observational evidence. The resulting incommensurability creates the special investigative problems of hermeneutics. But spirit beliefs are also found in all societies in much less abstract form as folk beliefs (Yoder 1974), which tend to be closely associated with experience and minimally theorized (Hufford 1995b, 2005). Because of unfamiliarity with events such as the bereavement experiences noted at the beginning of this chapter, near-death experiences, and the terrifying spiritual pattern of sleep paralysis noted above, and because of the cultural influences already discussed, some readers may immediately wonder whether such reports cannot simply be attributed to mental illness. As I have noted several times above, explanations that dismiss spiritual experience as valid evidence for belief frequently do attribute these experiences to psychopathology. The term hallucination refers to a false perception, an apparent perception for which there is no corresponding external object. It is natural, then, that in rejecting a perceptual claim as impossible the idea of hallucination arises, and hallucinations are associated with mental illness. This is problematic because of the central involvement of Western psychology in the post-Enlightenment project of removing spiritual ideas from the realm of rational discussion. Psychological theories have been used by anthropologists and anthropological ideas by psychologists in reaching a consensus on the nonrationality of spiritual belief and experience. For example, several studies (Larson et al. 1993; Post 1992; Lukoff, Lu, and Turner 1992) have shown a considerable negative bias toward religious belief and experience in the mental illness classifications and descriptions in DSM-III-R (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, superseded in 1994 by DSM-IV) through unfair stereotyping of religious persons, inclusion of mystical and near-death experiences as psychoreligious problems, disproportionate use of examples of psychopathology that involve religion, and a general insensitivity toward patients’ religious views (Bucklin 1999, 8). DSM-IV (1994) has made attempts to correct this bias. In the introduction it states: A clinician who is unfamiliar with the nuances of an individual’s cultural frame of reference may incorrectly judge as psychopathology those normal variations in behavior, belief, or experience that are particular to the individual’s culture. For example, certain religious practices or beliefs (e.g., hearing or seeing a deceased relative during bereavement) may be misdiagnosed as manifestations of a Psychotic Disorder. (p. xxxiv)8

The result is an exception from psychiatric labeling, but only for those whose culture endorses such experiences. This perpetuates the anthropological notion, illustrated by

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Goulet’s (1994) approach, that immersion in a visionary cultural setting produces visions in psychologically normal individuals, while those who report such experiences where visions are stigmatized, as in modern, Western society, are labeled with psychiatric diagnoses. This persists to the present despite abundant documentation in the literature of the widespread occurrence of visionary spirit experiences in the general population of the United States. That labeling simultaneously serves to suppress the discussion of such experiences among the psychiatrically normal, to delegitimate the claims of those who refuse to follow the rules, and to obscure crucial empirical evidence regarding spirit belief. I have discussed and documented this issue at length elsewhere (Hufford 1985). Suffice it to say here that the prevalence and distribution of these experiences, as documented in Western society during the past three decades, makes the psychopathological explanation as untenable as the cultural explanations. The fundamental question is not so much whether normal people hallucinate as it is on what grounds it has been decided that the most common of these experiences are hallucinations in the first place. None of this ‘‘proves’’ experience-based beliefs to be true, but direct perceptual experiences do provide a meaningful place to begin an inquiry into the empirical claims. Believers also support such claims indirectly, as when good or bad events, thoughts, or feelings are attributed to the hidden influence of spirits, but all such support is inherently ambiguous. Scholars have long focused on such ambiguous experiences interpreted as spiritual by believers and interpreted otherwise by those who do not believe. Theories based on such ambiguity have in turn described believer experiences in ways that maximize the opportunity and need for interpretation. Detailed phenomenological descriptions of ‘‘spirit experiences’’ derived from thorough interviews, the kind of account needed to recognize direct experiential support for spirit belief, have been extremely rare in the literature. I have proposed elsewhere (Hufford 1995b, 27–34) an experiential theory of spirit beliefs focused on direct empirical claims. It may be simply stated as follows: 1. Many widespread spirit beliefs are supported by experiences that refer intuitively to spirits (conscious agents who do not require physical bodies for their existence) without inference or retrospective interpretation, and occur independently of a subject’s prior beliefs, knowledge, or intention (psychological set). 2. These core spiritual experiences form distinct classes with stable perceptual patterns. 3. Such experiences provide a central empirical (that is, observational in the ordinary sense) foundation from which some spirit beliefs develop rationally (that is, utilizing ordinary rules of inference). Stating that these experiences refer ‘‘intuitively’’ is not a naive claim that they are unmediated, but rather that, like many ordinary perceptual experiences, they are not mediated by the concepts to which they give rise. An experience refers intuitively to

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spirits if it involves a perception that seems to force a choice between ‘‘I must be hallucinating’’ and ‘‘I am perceiving a ‘spirit.’ ’’ In this case there is no issue of subjectivity versus objectivity, or lay versus expert opinion. Neither are the determination of intuitive reference and the forced choice controversial. The experience of seeming to clearly perceive an object always presents a forced choice between a valid perception and a hallucination, although this choice is automatic except when the perception seems very unlikely. We do not even need to rule out illusion (that is, misperception as opposed to false perception) and show that valid perception and hallucination really comprise the only possibilities. All that is needed is that the experience seems to be a clear perception. Although we can never directly assess the clarity of an alleged perception, when many subjects independently claim a particular kind of clear perception we have strong evidence that the perception does indeed seem clear. Seeing and being spoken to by one known to be dead, while awake and lucid, presents this choice between perceiving a spirit and hallucinating. So do the frightening presences of sleep paralysis. Direct spirit experiences are unambiguous regarding this basic point. Unlike less direct ‘‘interpretive experiences,’’ the conclusion that direct experiences involve spirits does not require prior belief—rather it changes prior disbelief. The stable patterns of these classes of spirit experience account, at least in part, for similarities among such beliefs in different cultures and for their persistence in the modern world. These culturally independent patterns also constitute a class of evidence supporting spirit belief. ‘‘Subjective’’ Evidence The empirical basis and rational articulation of spirit beliefs, as well as their crosscultural prevalence, make them available for discussion in terms of their truth claims. Granted, this evidence is ‘‘subjective,’’ and that may make ‘‘scientific investigation’’ or ‘‘proof’’ impossible. This was the basis of Goulet’s assertion that such beliefs are ‘‘scientifically unverifiable.’’ But that does not prevent a rational and systematic assessment of truth claims. Anthropologist Paul Stoller (1998, 252), in an effort to reconcile spirit belief with rationality, criticizes conventional Western rationalities—a use of the plural that suggests a rejection of a single rational standard—and endorses what he calls an ‘‘embodied rationality’’ that ‘‘demands a fuller sensual awareness of the smells, tastes, sounds, and textures of the lifeworld.’’ He continues by stating that ‘‘an embodied rationality can be a flexible one in which the sensible and the intelligible, denotative and evocative are linked. . . . It is an agency imbued with . . . ‘lightness,’ the ability to make intellectual leaps to bridge gaps forged by illusions of disparateness’’ (p. 252). The rationality that Stoller most strongly rejects, what he calls ‘‘Universalist Rationality,’’ calls for logical consistency as a core concept. Stanley Tambiah (1994, 117), quoted by Stoller (1998, 244), criticizes this consistency demand by questioning its assumption

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that ‘‘the person who acts irrationally [has] the wherewithal to formulate maxims of his action and objectives which are in contradiction with each other.’’ Stoller then asserts: ‘‘Viewed in this manner, it is clear that a universalist rationality is an extension of the intellectual hegemony of the Enlightenment project in which universally applied Reason is used to constitute authoritative knowledge’’ (p. 244). It is this concern for the colonial aspects of rationality rooted in Western science that led Feyerabend (1988, 4) to make the following strong statement: ‘‘Progress of knowledge’’ in many places [has] meant the killing of minds. Today old traditions are being revived and people try again to adapt their lives to the ideas of their ancestors. . . . Science, properly understood, has no argument against such a procedure. . . . Such a science is one of the most wonderful inventions of the human mind. But I am against ideologies that use the name of science for cultural murder.

I agree wholeheartedly with the imperialist risk as stated by Feyerabend, but I disagree with both the current analysis and the solutions recommended by anthropologists to the extent that they reject a solid basis of rational procedures that is universally applicable. Being more open to our sensuous experience as Stoller advises seems wise counsel, and this has the advantage of an openness to subjective report. But that does not require the abandonment of conventional reason. The problem is not an ‘‘excess of rationality.’’ The problem is an excessive and inconsistently applied demand for ‘‘objective evidence’’: the insistence that observations that register on mechanical devices—as opposed to those that are sensed by the human observer—are the only useful objective and public observations. But that mechanical criterion of validity, powerful and problematic as it has been, does not lie at the heart of rational process. Reliance on objective evidence in this sense does lie at the heart of contemporary scientific process. But that does not require such evidence for all rational process, unless science is what rationality is. This view is sometimes expressed today by philosophers, for example Daniel Dennett (Dennett and Rorty 2000), and it is somewhat similar to the pragmatic view, found for example in John Dewey’s work (1938). These ideas constitute a very broad claim for science. In fact, this view has actually penetrated everyday discourse and is common even among many who dispute the validity of science but assume that this requires them to dispute the validity of rational argument also.9 If it is true not only that science is rational, but that rationality is what science is, then all ideas—alleged facts, methods, interpretations—that are not scientific are not rational. It would also follow that scientists would be the only appropriately trained judges of rationality and valid statements about the world. It might, then, further follow that only objective evidence in the mechanical sense would have weight in rational (that is, scientific) discourse. That methodological criterion has had many positive effects in science, but in medicine it has resulted in such serious problems as failure to deal adequately with pain, an undeniably real but irretrievably subjective ‘‘observa-

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tion.’’10 The use of subjective evidence is not assumed to be irrational in medicine. And also in law, despite such genuine scientific advances as DNA tests, independent eyewitness testimony is considered a rational basis for reaching conclusions. In most fields subjective evidence has weight, and it is not assumed that inferences made in the absence of strong mechanically derived data are irrational or all equal. I do not suggest that subjective accounts individually should have the evidential force that a photographic or seismic record has. But when independent subjective accounts confirm one another they do have evidential weight and are conventionally accepted—except when they conflict with privileged prior conclusions. And when that happens, when powerful paradigms are threatened, even replicable machine-registered data are generally ignored and those who report it stigmatized. This is the heart of the problem: the confusion of the ‘‘ ‘bridgehead’ of true and rational beliefs’’ (Hollis 1982, 73) or ‘‘irreversible knowledge’’ (Larner 1984, 153–165) that rationalists say is required for rational discourse, with the rational processes that have contributed to the construction of such knowledge. This is the aspect of the rhetoric of objectivity that Feyerabend called the effort to separate facts from the path that leads to them, giving them independent existence ‘‘out there’’ instead within an epistemological framework. Yet even if subjective report is not useful in science proper, it certainly must be within rational discourse generally. And when inferences based on experience unaided by machines conflict with privileged prior conclusions, that conflict alone cannot be taken to show that the inferences are irrational! Only in the strongest old-fashioned positivist view could it be assumed that if two statements disagree one must be irrational. If they are contradictory, then one must be wrong. It does not follow that one must be irrational. But when conventional science meets unconventional claims, especially decidedly unmodern claims about spirits, then even openminded and theoretically flexible scientists tend to become logical positivists. ‘‘Subjective evidence’’ is widely credited despite recognition of its shortcomings. (Objective evidence has its shortcomings also, with regard to human concerns.) Although epistemologists sometimes define knowledge as ‘‘true, justified belief’’ (see Audi 1988), most scholars today recognize that knowledge is often contested and in need of revision. Certainty is hard to come by, but that does not make all of us nihilists. Even when objective, quantitative data are present our reasoning involves odds ratios and confidence intervals. We do not speak or act as though we have no belief in anything that has not been scientifically verified, and if we did we would find life very difficult. Subjective evidence always provides room for argument, and contested propositions will be met with a great deal of such debate. But that does not mean that subjective evidence is without weight, despite the constant assertions to that end when spiritual belief is at issue. Some of the philosophical matters involved have been discussed at

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length by Carolyn Franks Davis (1989), and I do not intend to recapitulate them here. I will simply make a number of summary observations: 1. Given what believers in fact believe about spirits—that they are not material—one would not expect much in the way of physical evidence. 2. Our approach to evaluating the spirit hypothesis should not stand or fall on ‘‘scientific verification’’ but rather on a rational assessment of evidence—although scientific evidence is a kind of rational assessment it is not the only kind, as the medical and legal examples above suggest. 3. Instead we should be concerned with the methods available to us, and generally well known, for assessing allegedly independent subjective reports. 4. The ultimate agreement of all intelligent parties as a criterion for having made a strong case is a preposterous standard. This criterion has not yet been achieved for most interesting theories and observations in modern knowledge, but that does not mean that without unanimous agreement consensus is meaningless. 5. Direct spirit experiences are common and occur cross-culturally, and there are consistencies among many such experiences. This makes them a robust form of empirical support for spirit belief, and opens them to the evaluation of their truth claims. 6. Evaluation of spirit experiences is required on both epistemological and ethical grounds. 7. The cultural biases of the modern academic world concerning spirit beliefs have resulted in methods of study that have obscured the patterns and evidential force of direct spirit experience. 8. The intransigent refusal of scholars to address seriously the most direct experiential grounds of spirit belief has resulted in interpretations of such belief that are at best incomplete and at worst are contrary to all good quantitative data on the prevalence and distribution of spiritual belief, that are descriptively impoverished, that are theoretically incoherent, and that are inherently unjust as discussed above. Fair and Effective Study of Spiritual Belief Any fair and rational approach to the investigation of spirit beliefs will benefit by including the following three principles: methodological symmetry, local acceptance, and local priority. The Principle of Methodological Symmetry Most investigations of spirit belief (or of any set of beliefs that the investigator does not share) give a privileged status to some of the investigator’s opposing beliefs. These are permitted to stand as assumptions—that is, they are taken for granted and neither explained nor questioned. Axiomatic grounding is a necessary and reasonable require-

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ment for any investigation, but for the investigation of contested beliefs, especially unofficial and socially stigmatized beliefs, such grounding creates an insuperable obstacle when the assumptions implicitly conflict with the belief being examined. Such an investigation commits the fallacy of begging the question by reaching conclusions based on statements that are themselves at issue. To avoid the overwhelming bias resulting from the use of such assumptions I utilize the principle of methodological symmetry. Its central feature is an insistence on parity among beliefs and possible explanations for them. Support for the principle comes from the sociology of knowledge assertion that all beliefs are ‘‘problematic’’—that is, that all beliefs require explanation and raise the question of why they are held at all. This is as true for well-established beliefs (such as scientific knowledge) as for the flimsiest rumor, if we want to understand how knowledge is constructed. In such an inquiry unshared explanations cannot be privileged or discounted without reasons, and similar reasons are required for all kinds of explanations. For example, if I frame my discussion of an allegedly haunted house with the assumption that ghosts do not exist, methodological symmetry requires me to explain how I know that. If I omit this step I am not doing systematic analysis, instead I am merely giving unsupported personal opinions—or reciting the beliefs of my tribe, and under symmetry the beliefs of one’s tribe do not trump the beliefs of others without argument, whether my tribe is philosophers or physicists or spiritists. A statement such as ‘‘Anthropologists generally agree . . .’’ does not count as an argument. By itself it is an appeal to authority. By the same token one cannot assume that ghosts do exist when attempting to evaluate spirit belief. I do not insist that spirit beliefs must be found true or even rational or that competing disbeliefs must always prove flawed. I consider any assumptions about the basic issues under investigation to be fatal for systematic inquiry. This is symmetry. The symmetry I seek lies in the process of the investigation, not in its results. The Principle of Local Acceptance Knowledge and belief are usually distinguished, with knowledge being more certain than belief. In epistemology knowledge has often been attributed on the basis of very stringent criteria—for example, knowledge as ‘‘justified true belief’’ (see Audi 1988, 102–118). Even such stringent usages treat knowledge as a kind of belief. Because what counts as justification and grounds for being certain of the truth vary enormously from one subject to another and from one cultural frame to another, the knowledgebelief distinction is not useful for a culturally situated inquiry. In a cultural view, knowledge refers to locally certain belief, without regard to whether the inquirer shares the local certainty. This contextualizes knowledge claims, but it does not relativize them. Rational inquiry is, broadly speaking, the study of belief in the cognitive sense—that is, ideas held to be true. That is the case in science, where beliefs comprise hypotheses,

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the soundest of which are organized into formal theories. It is also the case when we inquire into traditional ideas ranging from use of a particular plant in folk medicine to beliefs about spirits. Apart from the formally stated hypotheses of scientists and the creeds of religions, most ‘‘beliefs’’ are not held in a highly articulated form, certainly not as a list of propositions. Even if one knows, accepts, and has reflected on an official religious creed, as may (or may not) be the case for a Christian who recites the Apostles’ Creed in church, that creed is unlikely to contain all of one’s spiritual beliefs. This is not, however, to say that most people do not know what they believe. Rather, peoples’ beliefs are embodied in their ‘‘stories’’ from which the beliefs may be inferred by the interested observer. Stories and their discussion, then, are the natural currency of belief traditions. And these stories that center on the description of events also embody the arguments and counterarguments by which people support their beliefs. Many questions can be asked about beliefs and the ways that they are expressed and organized. But if we are to take believing seriously we must include questions about the validity of the grounds on which these ideas are held to be true—that is, how accurately a belief reflects that particular aspect of the world to which it refers. The claim of such accuracy is, after all, the very heart of belief. To ask questions about the accuracy of scientific ideas or folk beliefs we must encounter them as propositions. Because such propositional descriptions of belief are inferred from believer utterances and refer to aspects of the cognitive worlds of believers, the validity of those descriptions requires an empirical check based in those worlds. I call this criterion the principle of local acceptance: a valid belief description must be acceptable to the one to whom it is attributed. Using the cognitive meaning of belief, it makes no sense to speak of ‘‘unconscious beliefs,’’ and the like. Therefore, the simplest check on the validity of a belief description is to offer it to the one thought to hold it, and ask if it is acceptable. The fact that a believer may lie about a belief poses an important problem in belief study (as in law, sociology, and so on), but it does not override this principle. Neither does this view exclude ‘‘covert beliefs.’’11 Working with both the ethnographic and the historical record requires one’s understanding of a belief without the benefit of contemporaneous interview. Although nothing can replace directly checking a belief statement with the putative believer, there are a variety ways to reduce the likelihood that a belief description would be rejected by a believer. Such methods are not well developed, because the local-acceptance requirement has not yet received much attention. It is paramount that any utterance of a propositional belief statement attributed to a person or group should be accompanied by evidence and an argument specific to whether the utterance would be acceptable to the one(s) to whom it is attributed. Belief descriptions need to be carefully scrutinized for ambiguous terms. Until all terms have been properly defined, in ways acceptable to the believer, a valid description

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has not been established. For example, even if an interviewee accepts as an accurate statement of her belief the proposition that ‘‘this house is haunted,’’ a common belief related to the belief that spirits exist, the possibility of serious error still exists until the meaning of ‘‘haunt,’’ to the believer, has been properly stated. The construction of belief statements inferred from accounts, conversations, and interviews is a central methodological issue in the study of belief, although rarely discussed in explicit terms. Failure to use statements that would be accepted by the believer, at this stage of analysis, is a methodological error that will invalidate any subsequent effort to understand why this person holds these beliefs. Martin Hollis (1982, 72) has correctly recognized the importance of what I call ‘‘local acceptance’’ when stating his criteria for understanding a belief system: ‘‘I take there to be understanding, when he [an inquirer] knows what his subjects believe (identification) and why they believe it (explanation). But let no one forget that the two go together, lest we propose a canon for explaining beliefs, which would make it impossible to identify them.’’ I suggest that we take Hollis’s claim even further. If a belief is misidentified in such a way that its original holder would either not recognize or not agree with it, then all subsequent explanations will be about a false belief that the interpreter holds about the believer. Beliefs in propositional form are to be understood as constructions of an investigator who attempts to refer to the allegedly truthful ideas of the believer in question. They have the same status as the values, symbols, and other abstract entities that scholars generally infer from the behavior and statements of people. Deriving valid belief descriptions concerning beliefs that claim some sort of experiential foundation—that is, beliefs that are not entirely metaphysical—requires both phenomenological description and careful redescription, the former to approximate the nature of the experiential basis and the latter to clarify and simplify colloquial descriptions that tend to be both ambiguous and highly ramified. Phenomenological Description and Ramification Spirit-belief evaluation relates to an assessment of observations by independent witnesses, and this requires close attention to the ways observations are collected, stated, and then aggregated. The issues are essentially the same as those involved in taking testimony in a legal case. What is required is interviewing, translation, and description that are as straightforwardly phenomenological as possible, in order to separate interpretation from ‘‘the data.’’ I grant that there is no such thing as atheoretical language—no pure ‘‘observation language’’—but I do insist that some language is more theory-laden than some other language. Any claim to base a conclusion on experience must actually deal with accounts of experience. We can never inspect ‘‘the experience itself’’ or anyone’s perception of the experience. Our inferences cannot be based on observations themselves, but they are based on statements made about the experience of making observations—that is,

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observation statements. My own observation immediately changes to a memory of my observation. There is no need to pursue this backward through an indefinite epistemic regression to appreciate its importance. Descriptive utterances are essential for inferential reasoning. And while ‘‘meanings’’ (under the various sophisticated academic interpretations of ‘‘meaning’’) may be incommensurable, perceptual references are not. It is one thing to know that an utterance refers to ‘‘a spirit,’’ and quite another to know the ‘‘meaning of spirits’’ to the subject and the subject’s culture. It is reference that is needed in evaluating the evidential force of experiential claims. Phenomenological description, properly derived, provides an exceptionally strong source for distinguishing the two. Carolyn Franks Davis (1989, 24) adapts from Ninian Smart a term that is enormously useful in characterizing descriptions, especially those relating to belief: ramification, the extent to which an account entails more than was actually observed. Davis gives the following sources and examples of ramification in description: ‘‘Highly ramified descriptions may involve highly theory-laden terms (e.g., ‘a glaciated landscape’) or very specific terms (e.g., beagle as opposed to ‘dog’ or ‘animal’), or employ specialized knowledge (e.g., ‘This is the pen which the prime minister used to sign the treaty’)’’ (p. 24). Highly ramified descriptions move from observation statements toward statements of interpretation. Bearing in mind that observation and interpretation cannot be rendered dichotomous, interpretations also vary in their degree of ramification, making it a central feature in the process by which language enculturates experience. Because argument and the citing of evidence are much less explicit in ordinary speech than in academic talk, ramification is a primary mechanism by which observation, theory, and argument are ‘‘bundled’’ within traditional discourse. More highly ramified descriptions are not necessarily less accurate, although they do contain more opportunities for error than less ramified descriptions. By definition, ramification moves descriptions away from the observations to which they refer. Phenomenological descriptions are minimally ramified descriptions. When we are seeking to know the specifics of a perception, we must reduce ramification as much as possible. Redescription of Spirit-Belief Experiences A highly ramified description can usually be redescribed in a less ramified manner, in order to get a more direct observation statement (see Davis 1989, 25). This is precisely the methodological requirement for phenomenological interviewing. However, no one other than the actual subject of an experience can make such a restatement in anything other than a hypothetical form. The principle of local acceptance applies to descriptions of experience that are themselves belief statements about perception. The use of repeated redescription to achieve a minimally ramified, phenomenological description, with the constant confirmation of the field consultant, is illustrated by the following exchange (Hufford 1982a, 195–

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196) in which two people were describing what they took to have been their own versions of the ‘‘same experience’’ of paralysis and a spirit presence, at first pleasurable, but subsequently terrifying: Example # 5. Hufford: You felt it coming over you, you said. Describe the sensation as exactly as you can. Joan: that.

Well, at first I just kind of sensed something there. I don’t know how to explain

Hufford: Joan:

In the room?

Right. Just a presence, or just a . . .

Carol:

You could feel it.

Joan: And then physically it’s like a tingling through your shoulders. And then a heaviness, maybe. Or a pressure. . . . It’s not like you’re really concentrating on, ‘‘Well, I’ve gotta get out of this thing,’’ you know . . . right away. Because it feels good. It’s not a bad feeling. Carol: Joan:

It’s a real pleasant sensation. It’s not a bad feeling at all. Until you start thinking . . . well . . .

Hufford: Joan:

Here I’m stuck.

A tingling. Well, I don’t know how to say . . . How do you describe ‘‘tingle’’?

Hufford:

Is there any sensation you’ve ever had that’s similar to this?

(someone else in the room): Carol: Joan:

No. It’s not like that at all. That’s more of an irritation type. Yeah. This is very pleasant like, rippling . . .

Carol:

Very sensual . . . (Laughs.)

Hufford: Joan:

Carol: Joan:

Rippling?

Yeah.

Hufford: Joan:

Like when your leg’s waking up from being asleep?

Through the surface of your body?

No, more inwardly. Inward. It’s like in . . . in your body.

Carol: It’s like your nerve ends are just all being stimulated by some real pleasant . . . vibration or something. And it’s a real sensation. Such joint redescriptions clearly are about both perception and language. All descriptions of unshared experience involve analogy to link the reported perceptions to perceptions that are assumed to be shared. Because analogies are imperfect correspondences, redescription is always necessary to distinguish the applicable and the inapplicable elements, and this can only be done confidently by the subject.

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In the analysis of a particular case, when confirmation by the field consultant is not available (as for many classic mystical accounts and accounts in the ethnographic literature), redescriptions must seek the lowest common denominators of ramification without introducing theory-laden terms. Obviously interpretation and even disputes about the accuracy of the original description may be called for. But when they are simply offered as differently ramified redescription they smuggle interpretations into the discussion while avoiding questions about their justification. For the analyst interested in the experiential and perceptual levels, much of the ethnographic record, despite the ‘‘thickness’’ of the description there, appears so highly ramified by the describer that a great deal of basic information, especially perceptual information, is no longer present. The development of phenomenological interview techniques and the use of verbatim accounts are essential to investigation of the perceptual basis of spirit belief. When the original account is in another language there is no doubt that translation introduces new ambiguities and opportunities for error. But if it is understood that at this point we are seeking straightforward descriptions of perception—not seeking a fulsome understanding of meaning—there is no need to be pessimistic about the possibility of useful translation. I may never fully appreciate an Inuit person’s description of snow, but that does not mean that they cannot convey to me, through a translator, such basics as ‘‘It is snowing now.’’ I can know what my informant is referring to, even if I cannot claim to grasp the local ‘‘meaning’’ of snow. The Principle of Local Priority Academic explanations of spirit beliefs are almost always, to use the words of Young and Goulet (1994, 322), given ‘‘in terms that are foreign to the culture in which they lived these experiences.’’ They use ‘‘in terms’’ to mean both the selection of language (after all, unless the original experiences and beliefs are given in English, the English speaker will want some kind of translation into English terms), and the kinds of interpretation given. The former often, but not always, leads to the latter. When the interpretation is foreign to the believer it is what Keith Dixon (1980, 127–128) calls ‘‘external-to-discourse,’’ an idea similar to ‘‘etic.’’12 Regarding spirit beliefs all explanations that exclude the nonimaginary reality of spirits are clearly external-to-discourse. The principle of methodological symmetry does not forbid the use of such conflicting interpretations, but it does require that they be shown superior to local interpretations in some way other than being offered by people with advanced degrees. This is specifically with regard to those external explanations that conflict with internal or local interpretations, as by dismissing the belief in spirits. External interpretations and commentaries do not necessarily conflict in this way, and if they do not conflict—that is, if they can simply be added to local understandings in a consistent way—superiority is not an issue. This does not privilege local understandings, but it refuses to subordinate

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them without good reason. One needs to begin with local interpretations and explanations, and then move beyond them only as necessary. Such a procedure is basic parsimony in action. I call this criterion the principle of local priority: (1) the search for explanations of a belief should properly start with those given by insiders; (2) any outsider interpretations that conflict with those of insiders must show (give evidence and arguments for) their superiority. Dixon (1980, 123) points out that the ‘‘theorist ought to exercise extreme caution in turning to reductive or external-to-discourse explanations for beliefs,’’ because ‘‘in explaining or understanding beliefs, judgments upon their epistemological basis cannot be evaded.’’ He goes on to note that ‘‘serious attention must be paid to participant accounts of the meaning of the beliefs and activities which define or are elements of a particular discourse’’ (p. 123). Consequently, serious belief scholarship requires one to explore meanings from an internal perspective, and to take seriously their truth claims. Taking spirit beliefs seriously and considering their plausibility from an internal perspective does not rule out the possibility that eventually an external, reductive explanation—such as a pure social-construction interpretation—will supersede local understandings and eventually be accepted for a particular belief and related meanings. However, prior to asserting external explanations that contradict local beliefs, the truth claims of those who originally hold them need to be considered. As Bucklin (1999, 11) puts it, Dixon (1980, 127–128) ‘‘notes that there are a number of possible outcomes for such a consideration. The claims may be (1) rationally based and not obviously held for ‘extra-cognitive’ reasons, in which case ‘this is a sufficient account for them being held’; (2) not rationally derived, in which case external, reductive sociological explanations may be called for; or (3) sociological explanations may be appropriate that do not claim to explain exhaustively why the beliefs are held, that is, external explanations that are not reductive.’’ Dixon maintains that, if a claim is intelligible, coherent, and supported by empirical evidence, this should be a sufficient explanation for belief. We might add that this is true whether or not the explanation fits with the scholar’s personal beliefs. The principle of local priority is necessary because in academic analysis, especially of spiritual beliefs, the explanations advanced by outsiders very often serve to debunk the believer’s truth claims by attributing to believers reasons for belief that are not rationally sound. For a classic example, the psychoanalytic concept of wish fulfillment as the reason for belief in spirits advances a bad reason for believing (‘‘Because I want it to be true’’ is not a sound reason for holding a belief) and suggests that this unconscious motivation produces illusory experiences that appear to support the desirable belief but that in fact should be given no evidential weight. Most latent functional explanations are of this type. But it is not assumed that all desirable beliefs are unfounded. For example, that smallpox vaccination would reduce the prevalence of the disease was very desirable to believe—it was also well founded and is now widely

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accepted as true. Wish fulfillment only satisfies the principle of local priority if the analyst can show why the believer’s own reasons are weak and that there are good reasons to disregard the believer’s claim. This is similar to Richard Swinburne’s (1979, 254) ‘‘principle of credulity’’: ‘‘that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one perceives is probably so.’’ Davis (1989, 77) also points out that this principle is needed for the veridicality of experience generally; she suggests that for avoiding the ‘‘skeptical bog’’ it is necessary to accept ‘‘all perceptual experiences as prima facie evidence for experiential claims,’’ that perceptual experiences are ‘‘innocent until proven guilty.’’ Yet in academic discourse, spirit experiences continue to be assumed guilty. The principle of local priority states that if the scholar’s interpretation is not superior to the believer’s interpretation in some way other than being more congenial to the scholar’s own beliefs and disbeliefs, then it has no serious claim to make. Above all we must seek to rise above the tacit claim that the opinions of scholars carry weight simply because they are the opinions of scholars. Conclusion Beliefs concerning the existence, nature, and behavior of spirits are among the most widespread and influential of human beliefs. They are basic to religion. These beliefs are truth claims about the world that involve empirical elements. Spirit beliefs in general are not merely metaphysical propositions, and their empirical claims can and should be systematically addressed. The fair and intellectually sound study of these beliefs must redress the overwhelming bias against spirit belief characteristic of modern Western society’s intellectual institutions. For this it is necessary to disentangle contemporary concepts about rationality from the ideological commitments of those who have controlled the application of the term. Because the social processes protecting academic orthodoxy are powerful, any research into the stigmatized topics of spirituality is a risky enterprise. This has been called ‘‘the anti-tenure factor’’ (Sherrill 1994), and it is one reason that rigorous and balanced research on this topic is so rare in the academic world. But in my experience, these risks can be reduced by systematic and solid methodological design of inquiry. And today there are reasons to think that the topic is becoming ‘‘safer,’’ more central to intellectual discussion. The publication of this book and a few others, such as Wiebe’s God and Other Spirits (2004), by highly regarded academic publishing houses is one indication of this change, and there are many others. At the same time the persistence and resurgence of spirituality in modern society is fraught with old problems disguised in new clothing. During recent years religion and spirituality have emerged as among the most important topics in American society. Politicians, educators, and researchers are rushing to

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take advantage of the growing interest. There is no doubt that this is a remarkable development, totally unforeseen just a few decades ago. But the political and economic forces, and the accompanying cultural dispositions, that marginalized spiritual belief as nonrational have not disappeared. In the new setting they function to limit and reshape traditional spiritual discourse into forms that continue to serve powerful interests that have neither respect for nor knowledge of spirit. When suppression has failed, co-option is the next strategy. In December 2000 Robert Russell, Professor of Theology and Science at the Graduate Theological Union, published ‘‘Why Science and Religion Must Be Bridged.’’ Eloquently describing the historical chasm between science and religion in the modern world, Russell states that ‘‘religion once again needs the rigors of science to rid it of superstition, for religion inevitably makes truth claims about this world that ‘God so loves.’ These claims must be weighed against the grueling tribunal of evidence’’ (p. 21). Russell concludes by calling for a ‘‘new and creative interaction’’ between ‘‘the most rigorous theories of mainstream natural science and the most central points of mainline theology’’ (p. 21). In principle there is nothing here to disagree with, and Russell has been a leader in the growing science-religion rapprochement. Yet it has been specifically these dominant scientific and theological positions that for 250 years marginalized traditional religious and spiritual ideas. And today, as I have noted in this chapter, those same positions are creating a theological discourse in which spirits, an ancient and ubiquitous foundational concept of religion, are never discussed except to dismiss the human soul as an outmoded notion no longer scientifically needed or supportable. Near-death experiences, visits from deceased loved ones, mystical visions, spiritual healing, and spirit encounters of all kinds have become common subjects of conversation, but they remain restricted to marginal and stigmatizing venues from tabloid papers to daytime TV shows. They are most definitely not a part of ‘‘mainline theology.’’ In commenting on the obsolescence of the idea of the soul in ‘‘mainline Christian thought’’ over the past century, Nancey Murphy noted that this disappearance of the soul ‘‘has not been widely shared with the folks in the pew’’ (Giberson and Yerxa 2001, 33). Mainline religious thinking is the territory of academic experts, not the ‘‘folks in the pew.’’ The great current salience of spirituality in American society means one thing to most theologians and philosophers and another to ordinary citizens. In the academic world, theory continues to trump experience, showing ‘‘common sense’’ to be uncommonly wrongheaded and the observations of the untrained to be worthless when they conflict with accepted theory. But it was at the insistence of ordinary people that spirituality has surged back to center stage. The decedents’ insistence on occasional visits to their loved ones and the otherworld glimpses of those near death have prevented modern academic theories from eradicating spiritual belief. It has not been discoveries in seminaries or breakthroughs in social science or the neurophysiological investigation of meditative states that created the current attention to spirituality. The

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National Institutes of Health did not begin to turn their attention to spirituality and health because of discoveries in medical research. Quite the reverse, since the ‘‘folks in the pew’’ have refused to relinquish spirit from their lives or their religion. Through political, economic, and cultural channels the ‘‘folks in the pew’’ have brought about another spiritual awakening. Scientists, theologians, philosophers, physicians, anthropologists, and others must begin to take seriously not only the money and votes of ordinary people, but also their experiences and their ideas. Doing so will improve our understanding of reason, curtail the academic appetite for intellectual fashion, and— just possibly—allow modern society to come to terms with spirits. If this were to happen the result would be a more humane science and theology, an end to the brutal use of psychopathology against spiritual experience, and a new openness to the role of spirituality—not just psychology in religious terms—in healing. To get such a result will require a radical humility among intellectuals, a new openness to the ‘‘folks in the pew’’ (and those who did get the message and have since left the pew!). Ordinary people, people like those I quoted at the beginning of this chapter, are not just to be learned about, they must also be learned from. To address seriously the idea of spirits, from human souls to angels to God, will require the unlearning of historical bias as much as the learning of new methods. In this Murphy’s ‘‘folks in the pew’’ and Goulet’s ‘‘native informants’’ are advantaged by having much less to unlearn. It is no longer feasible simply to dismiss spirit belief as delusion and spirit experiences as hallucination. I strongly recommend that we all take a closer look. The vast majority of humans throughout recorded history—including the present moment— have believed that spirits exist and have claimed to have evidence supporting that belief. This does not guarantee that the beliefs are true, but it should certainly raise the question and motivate serious research. Notes Earlier versions of this chapter have been presented at the XX World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, August 8–16, 1998, and at the 97th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Philadelphia, December 2–6, 1998. 1. Among those is one contributor to the present book, Edith Turner. 2. The most wide-ranging discussions of this position have taken place in writings related to the philosophy and psychology of mysticism. Strong contextualist positions denying the possibility of cross-contextual comparisons to justify mystical claims of perceptions of the ontologically real are well illustrated by Steven Katz (1978) and Wayne Proudfoot (1985). There are many criticisms of this view. Anthony Perovich (1985) provides an excellent critique based on the earlier treatment of ‘‘incommensurability’’ and the epistemological problems of strong contextualist positions in the philosophy of science.

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3. In some belief systems it is suggested that spirits may have some other kind of body, a ‘‘subtle body’’ or in Christianity a ‘‘resurrection body.’’ The idea of conscious beings in this definition does require identity, but whether identity requires some kind of body must be left open in order not to build into the definition a feature that favors some spirit-belief systems over others. It should also be understood that many forces interact with the physical world without possessing bodies, for example gravitational fields, and many deep questions remain about such forces and how the interaction operates. It should not be too difficult, therefore, to imagine a disembodied spirit having an effect on the physical world, either directly or through direct influence on the minds of the living. 4. The authors cited by Goulet and Young as ‘‘taking seriously’’ spirit beliefs are among a few rare exceptions. 5. See, for example, MacIntyre 1970; Wilson 1998; Murdock 1980; Thomas 1971. 6. This shift and its theological ramifications is well described and analyzed by Kellenberger (1985). 7. John Calvin 1535, chapter 2; quoted in Dillenberger 1971, 274. 8. For this illustration from the psychiatric literature I am indebted to Mary Ann Bucklin and her paper ‘‘Social Constructivism Employed against Traditional Belief’’ (American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, 1999). 9. For example, the American Heritage College Dictionary (3rd ed., p. 1221) gives as its second definition of science ‘‘2. Methodological activity, discipline, or study: I’ve got it down to a science.’’ 10. Interestingly, anthropology has even found room to question whether one major variety of pain, ‘‘chronic pain,’’ has objective reality (Kleinman et al. 1992). 11. I agree with the position on such inference that is taken by Robert Hahn (1973, 208). Cognitive beliefs ‘‘are a part or aspect of the individual’s awareness, but in behavioral terms. This allows for ‘covert categories’ (Berlin et al. 1968) as constituents of beliefs, so long as the natives approve of them.’’ 12. Dixon’s work has been used very little by folklorists and anthropologists studying belief, although his approach is very appropriate. I first learned of Dixon’s work from Mary Ann Bucklin’s paper ‘‘Social Constructivism Employed against Traditional Belief’’ (American Folklore Society Annual Meeting, 1999). References Audi, Robert (1988), Belief, Justification, and Knowledge, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Barbato, Michael, Cathy Blunden, Kerry Reid, Harvey Irwin, and Paul Rodriquez (1999), ‘‘Parapsychological Phemnomena Near the Time of Death,’’ Journal of Palliative Care, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer, pp. 30–37.

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Barbour, Ian G. (2000), When Science Meets Religion, San Francisco, CA: Harper. Berlin, Brent, Dennis E. Breedlove, Peter H. Raven (1968), ‘‘Covert Categories and Folk Taxonomies,’’ American Anthropologist, Vol. 70, pp. 290–299. Berger, Peter (1990), A Rumor of Angels, New York, NY: Doubleday. Bowyer, Richard (1981), ‘‘The Role of the Ghost Story in Mediaeval Christianity,’’ in Hilda R. Ellis Davidson and W. M. S. Russell, eds., The Folklore of Ghosts, pp. 177–192, Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer. Bucklin, Mary Ann (1999), ‘‘Social Constructivism Employed against Traditional Belief,’’ Unpublished paper, Memphis, TN: American Folklore Society Annual Meeting. Bultmann, Rudolf, et al. (1953), Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, trans. Reginal H. Fuller, London: S.P.C.K. Cerullo, John J. (1982), The Secularization of the Soul: Psychical Research in Modern Britain, Philadelphia, PA: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. Comfort, Alex (1979), I and That: Notes on the Biology of Religion, New York, NY: Crown Publishers. Crick, Francis (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, New York, NY: Touchstone (Simon and Schuster). Davis, Caroline Franks (1989), The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Dennett, Daniel, and Richard Rorty (2000), ‘‘Science,’’ in Christopher Leiden’s Summer Philosophy Series, The Connection, Boston, carried on National Public Radio, June. Dewey, John (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, New York, NY: H. Holt and Co. Dillenberger, John, ed. (1971), John Calvin: Selections from His Writings, Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1988, originally 1883), Introduction to the Human Sciences: An Attempt to Lay a Foundation for the Study of Society and History, trans. with an introductory essay by Ramon J. Betanzos, Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Dixon, Keith (1980), The Sociology of Belief: Fallacy & Foundation, New York, NY: Routledge. Evans-Pritchard, Edward (1956), Nuer Religion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. ——— (1976), Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Feyerabend, Paul (1988), Against Method, London: Verso. Fuller, Robert C. (2001), Spiritual but not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America. New York: Oxford University Press. Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1972), Truth and Historicity, The Hague: M. Nijhoff. Gallup, George Jr., and William Proctor (1982), Adventures in Immortality, New York, NY: McGrawHill.

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Giberson, Karl, and Donald Yerxa (2001), ‘‘ ‘Tiny Holes for God’: A Conversation with Nancey Murphy,’’ Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology, Vol. 1, No. 8, April, pp. 21, 33. Goulet, Jean-Guy A. (1994), ‘‘Dreams and Visions in Other Lifeworlds,’’ in David Young and JeanGuy Goulet, eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 16–38, Peterborough, ON: Broadview. ——— (1998), Ways of Knowing: Experience, Knowledge, and Power among the Dene Tha, Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Greeley, Andrew (1972), Unsecular Man: The Persistence of Religion, New York, NY: Dell. ——— (1975), Sociology of the Paranormal: A Reconnaissance, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. ——— (1987), ‘‘Hallucinations among the Widowed,’’ Sociology of Social Research, Vol. 71, No. 4, pp. 258–265. Hahn, Robert (1973), ‘‘Understanding Beliefs: An Essay on the Methodology of the Statement and Analysis of Belief Systems,’’ Current Anthropology, Vol. 14, No. 3, June, pp. 207–229. Hallowell, A. Irving (1960), ‘‘Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior and World View,’’ in Stanley Diamond, ed., Culture in History: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin, pp. 20–52, New York: Columbia University. Herskovits, Melville (1947), Man and His Works, New York, NY: Alfred Knopf. Hollis, Martin (1982), ‘‘The Social Destruction of Reality,’’ in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds., Rationality and Relativism, pp. 67–86, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Horton, Robin (1970), ‘‘African Thought and Western Science,’’ in Bryan R. Wilson, ed., Rationality, pp. 131–171, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. ——— (1982), ‘‘Tradition and Modernity Revisited,’’ in Martin Hollis and Steven Lukes, eds., Rationality and Relativism, pp. 201–260, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hufford, David J. (1976), ‘‘A New Approach to ‘The Old Hag’: The Nightmare Tradition Reexamined,’’ in Wayland D. Hand, ed., American Folk Medicine, pp. 73–85, Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1982a), The Terror That Comes in the Night: An Experience-Centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. ——— (1982b), ‘‘Traditions of Disbelief,’’ New York Folklore Quarterly, Vol. 8, Nos. 3/4, pp. 47–56. [Reprinted in Talking Folklore (London), Vol. 1, No. 3, Spring 1987, pp. 19–31.] ——— (1985), ‘‘Mystical Experience in the Modern World,’’ in The World Was Flooded with Light: A Mystical Experience Remembered, pp. 87–183, a memoir by Genevieve Foster, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. ——— (1988), ‘‘Inclusionism vs. Reductionism in the Study of the Culture Bound Syndromes,’’ Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, Vol. 12, pp. 503–512.

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——— (1995a), ‘‘Awakening Paralyzed in the Presence of a ‘Strange Visitor,’ ’’ in Andrea Pritchard et al., eds., Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 1992, pp. 348–353, Cambridge, MA: North Cambridge Press. ——— (1995b), ‘‘Beings without Bodies: An Experience-Centered Theory of the Belief in Spirits,’’ in Barbara Walker, ed., Out of the Ordinary: Folklore and the Supernatural, pp. 11–45, Logan, UT: University of Utah Press. ——— (1998), The Terror That Comes in the Night, Japanese Edition, Tokyo: Kawashima Shoten Publishing Co. ——— (2005), ‘‘Sleep Paralysis as Spiritual Experience,’’ Transcultural Psychiatry, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 11–45. Hume, David (1963), ‘‘An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding,’’ in William P. Alston, ed., Religious Belief and Philosophical Thought, pp. 408–419, New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace & World. James, William (1902), The Varieties of the Religious Experience, New York, NY: Longmans, Green & Co. Katz, Steven T. (1978), ‘‘Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism,’’ in Steven T. Katz, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, pp. 22–74, London: Sheldon Press. Kellenberger, James (1985), The Cognitivity of Religion: Three Perspectives, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1941a), Concluding Unscientific Postscript, trans. David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——— (1941b), Fear and Trembling and Sickness unto Death, trans. Walter Lowrie, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941. Kleinman, Arthur, Paul E. Brodwin, Byron J. Good, and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good (1992), ‘‘Pain as Human Experience: An Introduction,’’ in Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good, Paul E. Brodwin, Byron J. Good, and Arthur Kleinman, eds., Pain as Human Experience: An Anthropological View, pp. 1–28, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kuhn, Thomas (1962), The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed., 1970, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Larner, Christina (1984), Witchcraft and Religion: The Politics of Popular Belief, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Larson, David B., Samuel B. Thielman, Mary A. Greenwold, John S. Lyons, Stephen G. Post, Kimberly A. Sherrill, Glen G. Wood, and Susan S. Larson (1993), ‘‘Religious Content in the DSM-III-R Glossary of Technical Terms,’’ American Journal of Psychiatry, Vol. 150, No. 12, pp. 1884–1885. Lessa, William A., and Evon Z. Vogt, eds. (1972), Reader in Comparative Religion, New York, NY: Harper & Row.

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Lukoff, David, Francis Lu, and Robert Turner (1992), ‘‘Toward a More Culturally Sensitive DSM-IV: Psychoreligious and Psychospiritual Problems,’’ Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 63–82. MacIntyre, Alasdaire (1970), ‘‘Is Understanding Religion Compatible with Believing?’’, in Bryan R. Wilson, ed., Rationality, pp. 62–67, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd. Marton, Yves (1994), ‘‘The Experiential Approach to Anthropology & Castaneda’s Ambitious Legacy,’’ in David Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 273–297, Peterborough, ON: Broadview. Maslow, Abraham H. (1976), Religious, Values and Peak-Experiences. New York: Penguin Books. Mills, Antonia (1994), ‘‘Making a Scientific Investigation of Ethnographic Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation,’’ in David Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, eds., Being Changed: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, pp. 237–269, Peterborough, ON: Broadview. Murdock, George Peter (1980), Theories of Illness: A World Survey, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Otto, Rudolf (1953), The Idea of the Holy, trans. John. W. Harvey, London: Oxford University Press. Perovich, Anthony N., Jr. (1985), ‘‘Mysticism and the Philosophy of Science,’’ The Journal of Religion, Vol. 65, No. 1, pp. 63–82. Post, Stephen G. (1992), ‘‘DSM-III-R and Religion,’’ Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 81–90. Proudfoot, Wayne (1985), Religious Experience, Berkeley, CA: University California Press. Rees, W. Dewi (1971), ‘‘The Hallucinations of Widowhood,’’ British Medical Journal, Vol. 4, 2 October, pp. 37–41. ——— (2001), Death and Bereavement: The Psychological, Religious and Cultural Interfaces, London: Whurr Publishers. Roof, Wade C. (1993), A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation, New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers. Russell, Robert J. (2000), ‘‘Why Science and Religion Must Be Bridged,’’ Science and Theology News (December 1) p. 21. Saler, Benson (1977), ‘‘Supernatural as a Western Category,’’ Ethos Vol. 5, Spring, pp. 31–53. Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. E. (1821), The Christian Faith, trans. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark. ——— (1958), On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, trans. John Oman, foreword Jack Forstman, Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press.

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11 Effects of Relativistic Motions in the Brain and Their Physiological Relevance Mariela Szirko

Abstract On scales small enough, cerebral biophysics is not an exception to established laws of physics applicable to all other occurrences of condensed matter: brains, too, include microphysical components in their tissue that move close to light speed. The critical question, if and how such motions bring about physiological effects and how this relates to psychological realms, has come to noteworthy results: extended research in our neurobiological tradition suggests an affirmative answer and also describes the formation of psychological features. Neurobiology in Argentina got underway in the second half of the eighteenth century and focused on electroneurobiology. That tradition has proved especially useful for revealing any such effects and, along with older results, more than three decades ago it developed a scientific view about brain-mind issues involved in recovery from fainting, comas, vegetative states, hibernation, general anesthesia, or ordinary sleep. This view assumes that the uncoupling pathologies that disconnect persons from their circumstances share with sleep and the various forms of inattention a common mechanism, namely, changes in a physiological time dilation, which is a relativistic effect of motions from the tissue’s microphysical components, and is physiologically operated through coupling with the electroneurobiological states of that tissue. This explanatory model from neurobiology is also of special interest to physicists, since the coupling that operates such a mechanism instances a dynamical mass variation in some action carriers of a force field brought forth by way of overlapping variation in the intensity of another force field. Supported by clinical and neurobiological facts, research related to these findings has been made available in Argentina for many decades, but it has only recently come to the attention of the international scientific community. These research results are valuable for neurobiologists, psychophysiologists, and humanists working on brain-mind issues. Scientists investigating biological dynamical systems, biophysics, mathematical biology, computer biology, or molecular biology can also recognize these findings and their clinical applications as relevant data for comprehensive research in their area of specialization.

Preliminary Observations This chapter examines neurobiological and clinical observations that may be considered direct—rather than biologically mediated—consequences coming from the

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physical instant’s ability to compound changes that generate the flow of time. Placing such observations in this context offers original results. The basis for the entire schema is the validity of special-relativity transformations even for the smallest time scale: it allows, for moving observers, dilatability both of intervals of any duration, even so brief that forces could not yet make a change in it, and also of the actual instant itself. Its interest is scientific, humanistic, and clinical. Supported by evidence expounded hereby, the range of validity for relativistic transformations (from long intervals down to the most fleeting possible one) also disproves the belief that the physical instant is interval-unlike, namely infinitesimal in the specific sense of being not integrable into intervals. These intervals resulting from the dilation of the instant—although they are time-resolvable or divisible and measurable by a clock at rest outside the observer—for an observer (mind) whose operative interactions are localized at microphysical components moving within the brain tissue with speeds close to light velocity remain unresolvable, as undivisible moduli of her time acuity. This motion state, of the microphysical components at which the brain-mind interactions are localized, thus transforms a physical instant—which is a very minute period considered the ultimate modulus of transformational change, namely the minimal interval over which a causal transformation is at all possible or might be marked off by two different instants—into the minimal transformational resolution or time acuity of minds, which is observed to stay in the order of one-hundredth of a second. We do not live and remember physical instants; we live and remember moments, and the difference between an instant and a moment is a dilation that stretches physical instants an ascertainable number of times. The particular number of times affords precious information about the entire process, and also about the role of the relativistic transframing as biological tool, employed for varying the time graining (minimal resolution) of experiences and recall and, as a byproduct, for varying their attentional features as well. Generally not connected with psychology, this transframing is a motion effect naturally expected in the current state of our physical science, except where it is disqualified by the belief that the physical instant is interval-unlike—a belief that I will briefly address here. As is known in the history of ideas, even if not particularly discussed in this chapter, this empirically disproven belief that the physical instant is interval-unlike has arisen in disparate epochs and cultures—pre-Columbian American, Eastern, African, ancient and contemporary European contexts—that may be fairly unrelated but are similar in certain characteristics. One of these is a compelling interest in holding illusory the irreparable time elapsing. The assignation to the physical instant of the aforementioned infinitesimality, or inability to compose (or integrate) into the real time or non-interval-like character called the ‘‘Chrysippus-Newton-Sommerfeld notion of instant,’’ supplies the reasoning for a latent desire to find illusive the irrevocability of time. In other words, this antichronic or time-discounting belief in the interval-

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unlikeness of the physical instant requires us to assign a lowest limit for the validity of the Lorentz-FitzGerald transforms, which are the basis of special relativity. Let me briefly explain this point. For durations that can be measured, one can empirically verify that a certain number of physical instants—that is, a sequence of possible causal transformations—must appear dilated if the total duration is assessed from the sequence recorder (a clock) of moving observers. The antichronic outlook entails assuming some impediment that stops this dilational effect for smaller numbers of physical instants. In its view short intervals ought not to get dilated, a ban applied to the single instant in particular. The groundlessness in conjecturing this impediment becomes apparent when we consider that no force in the observable universe can cause a transformation in less than about 1025 second (imagine 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 1 of a second), a duration that may also be expressed as its equivalent, namely as @10 19 Planck instants. Every transformation in time is thus currently ticked on intervals always larger than this one. Such a brief interval is accidentally unmeasurable (because any recording change in a clock must be caused by some physical force, but no observed physical force could give rise to any effect so quickly). Nevertheless, nothing suggests that this @1025 second interval or a fraction of it is intrinsically noncompliant with the Lorentz-FitzGerald transforms. Put differently, nothing suggests that this @1025 second interval or a fraction of it be refractory to become dilated and expand in due proportion any eventual marking sequence that subdivides it, revealing even the duration of those of its fractions (physical instants) in which no subdividing mark could ever be set—these fractions, if dilated, are to appear as a still discrete, causally impenetrable blank when appraised by moving observers. Where and why might any such hindrance to dilation be expected to begin, barring the special-relativity transforms’ validity for fleeting intervals? The antichronic outlook demands this impediment in order to judge the physical instant unreal. In contrast, it is often thought that the Planck instant or Planck time ðhG=c 5 Þ 1=2 ¼ 5:3916 . . .  1044 second, a minute fraction of a second (actually requiring forty-three zeros after the decimal point before starting with the stated numbers), may name a limit for any possible physical force to be efficient in causing a causal transformation. That is, it is thought that the Planck instant denotes the interval-like thickness of actuality, whose causal transformations—always taking many such instants because of the cosmologically acquired weakness of efficient forces—make real time. But this prospect is disturbing for an outlook that struggles against time. It rather wishes for a ‘‘block’’ universe where all intervals are simultaneously real, the actually present instant in no way different from the past and future ones, and time elapsing just subjective or illusory. Historically, such yearning appears to be linked to the same societal stratification wherefrom the physicomathematical grounds of modern science emerged, fostering

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the nonintervalic notion of instant. Scientific observations contradict this notion. They occur in the study of very complex systems, namely in neurobiology and its supporting clinical research, whose study belongs to a separate branch of learning and forces a scientist to depart from relativity physics. For this reason the context and observations presented in this chapter are rarely made available for physicists and biophysicists, notwithstanding their primary interest in features of, and hypotheses about, the physical instant. This chapter is written to remedy this situation. Mind-brain research in Argentina stems from a 250-year neurobiological tradition that has focused on what today would be called the dynamic ‘‘sculpting’’ of intensities of the electric field inside brain tissue. This sculpting, not the connective function also served by the nervous ganglia integrated in the tissue, makes the dielectric states of electroneurobiological organs. The approach centered on these states differs from neuroscience research abroad, where the primary focus is on the circuitry embedded in the masses of brain tissue—a biochemically regulated circuitry whose activity carries out such dynamic ‘‘sculpting.’’ This electric field ‘‘sculpting,’’ in turn, molds the states of another physical field, on which minds also have a direct effect and react to it: the local states of this field, not those of the electric field, provide the cerebral localization of minds’ operation—a topic discussed below. Our recognition of this force field in addition to the established ones had been portrayed abroad and even by esteemed local electroneurobiologists—quite consistent with nineteenth-century science—as if this field were a vital principle (vitalism). Our disambiguation of these concepts made clear that this portrayal was inadequate; it survived nonetheless as an added impediment to communicating our results across the contrasting neurobiological approaches (our emphasis on neurodielectrics versus emphasis on neural nets abroad). This chapter also aims to dispel this misperception by providing a synoptic overview. Originally staged in private and university laboratories, our research programs moved to general hospitals in the 1880s, and by 1899 were mostly conducted in neuropsychiatric hospitals (see Triarhou and del Cerro 2006a, 2006b, 193–195). These beginnings bequeathed to the Argentinian mind-brain research a combination of natural-scientific and humanistic aspects, a blend inspired by the recognition of every mind’s intrinsic value. There is also a cultural dimension to our research and outlook regarding minds, whose conceptual articulation has been consistently dubbed abroad the ‘‘tango theory.’’ Eventually we found it perceptive and, like the first propounders of the ‘‘big bang theory,’’ we got used to the label. In our research ‘‘consciousness’’ is not seen as a freely exchangeable material, replaceable in whole or in part for another portion of a similar nature—the nature of a ‘‘fungible material,’’ such as a physical field or a body of water divisible in homogeneous portions. Thus every mind is defined not as mere intellectual performance but rather as synonymous with a psyche or finite existentiality, and to stress this all-important point, in what follows, mind or psyche will be referred to as ‘‘her,’’ not as ‘‘it.’’

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Every mind is found to be primarily an unconnected, and unmergeable, eclosion or ‘‘pop-out’’ of ‘‘existential finitude.’’ Although rare, the word eclosion will nevertheless appear often in this chapter. The phrase ‘‘existential finitude’’ denotes for natural scientists every reality able to sense and move a portion of nature while altering herself by sedimenting those causal involvements away from temporality—this refers to an ‘‘instant’’ and not a time sequence. The designation ‘‘away from temporality’’ thus means ‘‘not on a time course but inside the instant,’’ specifying where such reality occurs and simultaneizes the sedimented sequences (‘‘memories’’) of her reactions to her causal interactions. This is why any reality that knows itself ought to possess memory: since nature vacates itself outside actuality and consequently every thing in nature, including each mind, exists only within the physical instant, the preservation of memories is an effect due to the absence of time course rather than the presence of brain engrams. By way of the brain organ, memories are made to include a representation of the time course that affected the surrounding circumstances. A most remarkable feature, each eclosion of existential finitude is found at a fixed circumstance (i.e., some brain, body, family, epoch) and possibilities of interpersonal relationships, wherefrom every circumstanced existentiality sensoperceptually apprehends reality as differently centered. This makes a well-defined or precisely determined sorting that, nonetheless, cannot be determined, by the boundary conditions or historical path that led to compose such circumstance and formed the brain in it, rather than another sorting, in which this existential finitude has not eclosed at all or instead ‘‘popped out’’ at a different circumstance. More simply, no brain can determine who will be the person to sense its states or to exert active ownership of it. Consequently, the ontic makeup of minds or psyches is not to be confused with their mental contents. Mental contents are those distinctions, in the ontic makeup or constitution of minds or psyches, that only the incumbent individual mind can respectively know and distinguish, despite the fact that some of these mental contents can also be shaped by nonexclusive, fungible means. Such means are based on the action of physical force fields, used by every brain organ only to demarcate mental contents in any mind eclosed at it; no brain can specify which existential finitude is to interact with itself rather than with some other brain. This organic incapacity becomes undetectable when every mind is supposed to consist only of her mental contents— whose generative making is misjudged as the full entirety of brain-mind relationships. As a remedy to this oversight, the word existentiality also serves to designate a mind without special regard to the acquired contents this mind differentiates in her own reality or ontic consistency. This reality is ontic and also ontological—that is, also directly knowable to itself both with regard to its state and the causal generation of its inner contrasts and their demarcations, thus making those contents observable. These mental contents are the acquired availabilities found in everyone’s mental world, and are made up of structural (structure-possessing) and structureless elements. Mental

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contents’ structureless element comes as the mind’s reaction either to outer actions (intonation, phosphene-like phenomenology) or to the own acts (nonintonative or nonphenomenal reaction); mental contents’ structure also comes from either extramentality or the mind—that is, as outer patterning of the sensation-generating causal actions or as combinations of the mind’s sensation-generating own causal acts. Other availabilities are inherent or primary and thus are not called contents, but constituents of every existentiality. In sum, all minds take advantage of availabilities that can be divided into five kinds: two inherent abilities, namely sensing and moving (which compose a ‘‘cognoscible transformability,’’ whereby a mind knows her state and every causally efficient change occurring in it); and three kinds of acquired things or mental contents (‘‘differentiations’’) that are possible to know and handle in the mind. Differentiations broadly overlap with what many authors call ‘‘sensoperceptions,’’ ‘‘episodic memories,’’ and ‘‘praxias.’’ These three kinds of mental contents are known and handled only by the incumbent finite subjective existence, namely by the existentiality of whose ontic consistency they are disjunctive alterations. Only one of these three kinds is regularly affected by causal actions emanating from its surroundings. Sensoperceptions—comprised of sensations and perceptions—are the availabilities that the causal series coming from the surroundings may also directly affect. Inasmuch as such sensoperceptual mental contents are demarcated by fungible means, their study—viewed as the whole of psychology where minds are believed to consist only in the so demarcated mental contents—becomes a natural science, namely a subdivision of neurobiology. The other two kinds of mental contents, episodic memories and praxias, cannot be affected in this way. Further, both of them are nonsensorial insofar as they involve nonphenomenal actions of the mind in extramentality. These actions may in turn causally feed into the mind fresh sensoperceptions that are hence traceable by scientific methodologies canvassing the productions of fungible means. Minds, therefore, do not become innerly differentiated into mind’s acts and mind’s ‘‘objects’’ for contemplation, in the vein of languages that presuppose having to deal with what is signified by verbs and by nouns, or Platonisms that distribute reality into changing transiences and permanent realities. Objects are particular combinations of efficient causal actions. Also mental ‘‘objects,’’ or rather contents that can be made sensoperceptual, are mind’s acts or causal actions, combined into diverse structures (attentional motor patterns, which may or may not trigger neural motor patterns), plus their possible structureless intonation as mind’s reactions to one’s own acts or to outer actions; these outer actions may also pattern the reactive origination of intonations that they induce, thus bringing onto sensations a structural component coming from outside—yielding patterned sensations. Leaving these fresh sensations aside, all the remaining, older mental ‘‘objects’’ (episodic memories and learned praxias), being

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available combinations of mind’s acts, may be cognoscibly identified and referred to, no matter if barely unfolded, inchoatively, or if further unpacked into diverse degrees of completion. Furthermore, the mind, at her exercise of these particular combinations of her acts lending completion to her mental ‘‘objects,’’ may become intonated, whether in full sensation or in some measure of it (noergy, explained below); and the enacted combinations of mind’s acts or mental ‘‘objects’’ may either work only on one’s own mind, or also on the body, or even beyond it—in the surroundings. While episodic memories work on the brain that the mind reacts to, praxias work through this brain beyond it, into the surroundings that the mind monitors. Thus, episodic memories are nonsensorial but sensorially imaginable availabilities apt to be reconstructed in imagined sensoperceptions—that is, sensed as the mind’s reactions to brain states that she generates—as located in one’s biography and recognized as one’s own. Praxias, in turn, are practical sequences of one’s actions unpacking a distinct mental content, which in this way is reconstructable in behavior outside the brain. In this behavioral reconstruction of a distinct mental content, praxias join sensoperceptions and reimagined episodic memories to become subjects for study by the subdivision of neurobiology that studies the mental contents demarcated by fungible or replaceable means. From another point of view, episodic memories do not significantly differ from praxias as regards the unpacking itself, a topic explained below. The other two kinds of availabilities, namely the inherent abilities (sensing and moving), are not acquired mental contents, but constitutional or primary abilities of every mind. One is gnoseological apprehension or knowledgeability: the ability to experience or have knowledge of one’s own constitutive reality or ontic consistency, even if only of one’s causal changes, and thus of differentiating the demarcations acquired by one’s existentiality through causal efficiency whether of the outer circumstances or of the mind. The other is semovience, the inherent or primary ability of every mind found in nature (i.e., every circumstanced psyche or existential finitude compounding in a personal organism) to start new causal series and not merely continuing causal sequences that are transmitted from elsewhere. In this context, the states of the brain organ to which a finite existentiality finds herself circumstanced only affect the new formation of mental contents of the first kind of differentiations (i.e., sensoperceptions), including sensoperceptions of the new brain states that the mind laid down for voluntary recall. These availabilities are the only ones shaped by fungible, or in other words, replaceable, means. These brain states are thus central to describing what is restored on recovery from fainting, comas, vegetative states, hibernation, general anesthesia, or ordinary sleep. Brain states carry out this shaping in compliance with both causal-series-starting semovience of the finite existentiality that is circumstanced precisely to this brain organ (not of any other finite mind, or existentiality circumstanced anywhere else—

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for example, one cannot directly move another’s body, shape or watch another’s dreams, see phosphenes by electrostimulating the brain of someone else, or use not one’s own but another’s brain to recall one’s memories), as well as causal-seriescontinuing causation that is at work extramentally (that is, independently of being known by any circumstanced mind) and whose lawfulness, or nomicity, comes from this continuance. Even though this brain is the site, or to´pos, where the incumbent mind is circumstanced for causal exchanges with the surroundings, as already mentioned no brain could determine who will be the person to sense its states or to exert active ownership of them. So, what exactly becomes restored on recovering the brain support of mental functions? Brain functioning, by analogy, is vaguely reminiscent of regulating the proper speed in playing a soundtrack while simultaneously recording the music—the recording may or may not keep pace with its playing, ‘‘hitching up’’ or ‘‘unhitching’’ the music’s source. Likewise, every brain organ, in its constituents that are immediately knowable and affectable by the mind (or psyche) circumstanced to it, can only lose or recover its aptitude (which is electroneurobiologically mediated) to provide adequate time resolution for the recording (a surroundings-depicting activity that is another electroneurobiological function of the same brain) of such forthcoming events of which a notice, knowledge, or gnoseological grasp has acquired evolutionary relevance, inasmuch as assigning it is conducive to nourishment or reproduction. Thus, the first aptitude or function gates the proper time resolution of the physiological hand-overs (which are the second function’s products, and not immediately knowable themselves) that come from the sense organs and depict relevant events. Contrary to this second function (surroundings-depicting brain activity) and in order to adjust the time resolution of the second function’s products, the first function (gating) makes use of relativistic time-dilation effects that demand the coupling of a physical field’s action carriers by another field. Just as two parties are needed for the tango, gating sensoperceptions also requires two distinct fungible physical fields, both overlapping and interacting yet diverse and segregated. No single field alone suffices. Application of these relativistic time-dilation effects is the core of the interaction of top-down corticocortical influences with bottom-up sensory entries. The gating function, far from ‘‘losing consciousness,’’ instead enacts the modifications in selective disattention and at its peak values ‘‘switches off’’ and ‘‘on’’ the body, as explained below. Synopsis of the Major Themes Any comprehensive theory about the minds or psyches found in nature needs to account for basic issues, including those in the following twenty questions and answers. The answers draw on the concepts of our tradition and will be discussed in more detail

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later in the chapter. The present synoptic exposition is very compact and some specialized concepts are introduced fairly pithily, simply to introduce a previously unfamiliar neurobiological picture. What are minds? The realities transforming in time based on a selection of their antecedents rather than all of them. What precisely is it that minds do? A semovient refocusing of attention. When this refocusing is causally linked with the body, voluntary behavior occurs. Where are the actions of minds localized in nature? In the force carriers of a physical field, whence minds can start behavior and sensorily react to changes in these force carriers. In what kind of physical building blocks do minds find their most immediate localization? In the physical force carriers whose characteristics generate the observed relativistic dilations of interval units, or time ‘‘graining.’’ Can brain changes erase episodic and praxical memories, regardless of their time ‘‘graining’’ or patterning interval units? No, because things with memory (minds) and anything else in nature co-occur in time but for one single instant. Because within such instantaneous co-occurrence no causal transformation (time) elapses, and time changes macroscopic situations because of certain physical circumstances (connected with the acquisition of inertial mass) that are not known to take place in the minds, no thing with knowledge of its inner differentiations (memories) may lose their availability as a result of a causal transformation (time) obliterating or erasing them. By what means do sleep, fainting, comas, and similar states disconnect minds from their surroundings? By varying the mind’s time resolution of the brain’s neurodynamical sequences. The brain generates this disconnecting variation by altering the relativistic dilations created by the speed of the force carriers where minds find their most immediate extramental localization. For what reason are dreamt sensations perceived while simultaneous sensations coming from the sense organs are not perceived? Because the first ones are patterned with the resolution of extramental time sequences of a dreaming mind, while the second ones remain patterned with the resolution of extramental time employed to keep track of the outer processes of biological relevance. How do perceived features fade due to inattention? By altering the relativistic dilations created by the speed of those force carriers in the brain areas that are generating features of which the mind is to become inattentive. How are voluntary movements attentionally determined? By attentional refocusing that alters the density of force carriers—of the physical field where one’s existentiality finds

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its most immediate extramental localization; all force fields redistribute their potentials by way of altering the local density of its carriers—in the brain areas causally linked to one’s selected organs. Once they have been recalled and given attention to, where do memories again fade into? When no longer reimagined (i.e., no longer replicated in imagination) and also while their reimagining was neurophysiologically enacted, memories remain as operational combinations differentiated in the mind’s ontic consistency, and as such are constitutive segments of it. How does inattention cause amnesia? By texturing the mind’s ontic consistency with contents whose time ‘‘graining’’ is not resolvable in the time resolution of the mind’s available operational combinations that conserve the object. When is neuroactivity nonconscious? When the time sequence of its (electromagnetic) patterns is not also conserved in the dynamics of the (other, nonelectromagnetic) physical field in whose force carriers minds find their most immediate localization. How are memories semoviently recalled and recognized as one’s own? By semoviently combining equilibrable operations, until arriving to focus attention on the same possibility of combining equilibrable operations that one had during an originally lived episode. Inasmuch as this recalling operation is defined by one’s constitutive operatory possibilities that make its elements recognizable or understandable for oneself, it may be replicated in imagination any number of times. Why is sleeping right after learning better for retention than remaining awake? Because the organization of memories reflects the time resolution in which the original experiences were lived: every time resolution allows reimagining the experiences from different time resolutions, but just as unattended context. Thus, sleep prevents the ensuing waking life from intervening, and sleep mentation—physiologically supported on a different time resolution—does not itself interfere, thereby providing a protection of studied content that is unavailable for contents learned without sleep interlude. What is imparted when one pays attention to something? The operationalizing of its sensations. Thereby one applies to a sector of one’s sensory field the acquired system of equilibrable operations sedimented in one’s ontic-ontological consistency. Does the overlap of time resolutions automatically generate recall? No, the effect of time acuity on memory is not direct. It affects recall only inasmuch as the proper matching of the time acuities—those of the original acquisition and its current knowledge—allows applying the system of equilibrable operations included at recall time in the mind’s ontological consistency. Such application can be forestalled by other circumstances—for example, if the original acquisition occurred before the system of equilibrable operations is developed (infantile amnesia).

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What is voluntary recall? Voluntary recall, also called conative recall, is the semovient act of retrieving a particular memory originally acquired at a previous time. On gnoseologically recognizing its operational structure, the intended memory is reimagined by setting up, most likely with intervention of the frontal lobes, a dynamic electroneurobiological state whose tuning normally involves different brain structures than these lobes. This electroneurobiological state first is to match the time acuity with which the memory was originally experienced; then second generate, in the circumstanced mind and through coupling with the physical field where all circumstanced minds find their immediate localization, sensory reactions (intonations, phosphenelike phenomenology) structured to match the particular memory as it was previously identified in her ‘‘visio generalis’’ (when selecting it for recall); and third, is then semoviently used to modify the reimagination process upon operative equilibria that conserve the particular memory as object of these modifications, thus recognizable through them. What is gnoseological apprehension? Gnoseological apprehension in general—that is, any act of knowing or noetic act independently of who the performing mind is—is the feature of efficiently causal interactions whereby the enacted structureless reactions intonate the reacting entity on ranges whose manifestation exhausts these interactions’ causal efficiency. Assuming a plausible understanding of causation, how can privately accessible mental events cause or be caused by nonprivately accessible physical events? Because efficient causation for and across mental and physical events is the very same. The mind-brain causally efficient interaction is not more perplexing than the field generation of variations in local potentials. To set in motion a course of regular extramental effects usually called ‘‘voluntary behavior,’’ minds establish, as initial causal link, the local potentials of the nonelectromagnetic field whose carriers are utilized to start extramental actions. In so launching this causal series, every circunstanced mind does the same that all segregated fields do when, from an unlocalizable set of determinations, they make themselves either ‘‘pop out’’ more or less of their force carriers at every spot of volume, thereby changing the spatial distribution of their potential. In turn, on the same efficient causality, in setting up sensations this immediate field generates intonative reactions in the circumstanced mind. The actual problem does not consist in the interactions, but in why a mind ecloses to sense and move her brain rather than another. What is restored on recovery from ordinary sleep, hibernation, general anesthesia, ‘‘absence,’’ fainting, comas, or vegetative states? While the preservation of memories is an effect of the absence of time course, their modifiable reimagining is an effect that exploits the presence of brain structures (utilized to ‘‘flesh’’ memories with new sensory intonations). For clinical practice, this means that the issue of ‘‘impaired consciousness’’ amounts to controlling the tissue’s electroneurobiological activity that gates the proper

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acuity and thus restores the time-resolutive matching. This allows for ‘‘coupling’’ or ‘‘switching on’’ the body in order to ‘‘awaken’’ the finite mind who had eclosed there. Summary Exposition of These Major Themes Let me expand this score of points that condense the basic themes. What are Minds? Past and future situations only arise in the context of minds. They do not exist outside of psyches: extramentally—that is, outside of minds—only present situations occur, not past and future ones. Past and future situations are only imagined, in a simplified way and diversely for sure. In this way—namely, by their being imagined now—their reality or ontic consistency is in fact a part of the present situation; in this it exhausts itself. In other words, past and future situations lack any other relevance for extramental reality, since they are neither found, nor do they cause effects, except as assemblages of mental contents envisaged by minds. Thus, all nature is actual only at a given instant, and each present situation determines its own time transformation; nonexistent situations cannot causally determine any transformation whatsoever. In this context, a cornerstone of familiar-scale physics is that, because aside from quantum concerns any indeterminacy in it is found to apply to future events, when determining each next transformation the actual or last situation is tantamount to its entire preceding history. In contrast, minds change quite differently: minds, existentialities, or psyches are the realities that transform themselves only on a selection of their respective antecedents, not necessarily on all of them. This is the objective definition of minds in general, as it is accepted in the Argentine neurobiological tradition. In contrast, the things situated amid finite minds (or things that compound the hylozoic hiatus, namely all extramentalities such as winds, rocks, fungi, trees, and computers, for which a variation in quantity or distribution of motion cannot occur as an effect of internal forces) inevitably use all of their history, tantamount to the last situation, to transform themselves as time elapses. Thus while all their yesterdays pack into their now, all our tomorrows are ours to shape. In finding the brute fact of this selection, physics finds in nature the gnoseological apprehension and semovience enacting it. Both are found to come conjointly, in discrete circumstanced eclosions, whose efficient actions and reactions become set as the natural phenomena we as natural scientists are trying to describe and understand. Knowledge or gnoseological apprehension grasps certain phenomenal reactions, namely intonations of the self-knowing being, which cause to discontinue the outer causal series that had led to them. Such a series of efficient causal determinations comes to an end by producing intonative reactions—that is, phosphenelike manifestations that are both phenomenal (that is, in which a sensation is known) and inefficient

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to continue the series. Therefore, the emplacement of circumstanced existentialities in nature is found whenever a break affects some efficient causal chain. The last link of this chain phenomenizes as the reaction of a self-knowing being, a reaction that becomes gnoseologically apprehended but lacks causal efficiency to further its preceding causal series. One aptitude excludes the other, both being discrete capabilities featured by efficient causation. As empirically found, outer causal efficiency can work out intonative reactions in psychisms, but it cannot cause psychisms to be affected in such a way as to instrumentally transmit the outer efficiency. Minds do not behave as billiard balls. Any causal consequence from this outer efficiency is thus to be a new causal string semoviently originated by the causal efficiency of the same self-knowing being that did the gnoseological apprehension, and selected it as causal antecedent rather than deselecting it, or else adjusted it contextually to posit it as causal antecedent. Such events do not happen in the hylozoic hiatus, where all of the causal series continue (i.e., all causal efficiency is transeunt, matter-energy is conserved over effects) but, in trade, there is no gnoseological apprehension. In other words, by coming to gnoseological apprehension, the causal series that led toward the intonative reaction cannot continue any longer; a semovient enactment of the efficient causality of the same self-knowing reality is now needed to start another causal series, which may enact continuity with or departure from the route of the former causal series. What Precisely Is It that Minds Do? Classical—not quantum—physics, accordingly, finds minds to be those realities that affirm, for their own transformation in time, a selection of nonexistent (past and future) situations. The finding occurs in view of the fact that noticing these nonexistent situations, a noticing that is gnoseological apprehension, is a prerequisite for such a selection. The affirmation of a selection is ‘‘semovient,’’ a term so far barely outlined. It means that such affirmation starts a novo, or from scratch, new causal series that transform the ontic makeup or consistency of the selecting and affirming mind, thereby also transformatively affecting and changing its causally linked extramentalities—that is, brain, body (or a neuroprosthesis, discussed below), and some of its surroundings. Because of that semovience, minds active at a break in efficient causal chains have been evolutionarily selected as a means to achieve determinations in mechanically undecidable situations. Nevertheless, this singularity (namely, the inauguration of new causal series of events instead of merely continuing older series, as mindless things do) is not relevant for attempting to localize in brains the actions of finite minds. Where are the Actions of Minds Localized in Nature? Semovient action is causally as efficacious in nature as the nomic or regular actions of mindless entities, such as rocks and chemicals, that continue transformative series instead of inaugurating them. In the physical sciences’ description of the universe, a

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basic piece of information is that all efficaciously transforming causal agents in nature (Newton’s ‘‘forces’’) are localized at what behaves as some species of discrete force carriers, sometimes called ‘‘force vectors.’’ Force carriers appear as microscopic packets of force that propagate their causal efficacy with some inherent characteristics. Therefore, the organic localization of the actions of minds (not their ontic consistency but their local causal exchange with extramentality, or operative presence) can be pinpointed as the carrier particles that classical physics finds as the Newtonian force inflecting, or curving, the shortest path of biospheric evolution. Such a force does this—that is, affects the natural scenery on Earth, through the implementation of sensuality, including, for example, the lengthening of trophic chains through animal nutrition and reproduction under environmental demands undefinable for behavioral preprogramming, and the countless human endeavors whose effects on the biosphere are called ‘‘anthropogenic perturbations.’’ Among the latter’s instances, not seldom ugly, one might rather recall that flowers coevolve by meeting sensual preferences, of which of late the human ones became important. In conclusion: working as a force, the action of minds is localized in nature in a certain kind of force carrier. In What Kind of Physical Building Blocks Do Minds Find Their most Immediate Localization? Like all other force carriers, the mind-exchanges-localizing ‘‘particles’’ are to possess specific speed-determining features. A key one is bulkiness. Without a small inertial mass, each force carrier would be forced to move at exactly light speed, being completely unable to vary its rapidity. Bulkiness limits the force carriers’ speed and makes it different from c. Speed is crucial, because the magnitude taken by the speed of these ‘‘particles’’ expands relativistically (that is, spreads according to relativity physics) the ‘‘thickness’’ of the physical instant—the interval-like span ‘‘during’’ which all causation ought to stay nontransformative—into the time resolution or acuity of the individual gnoseological apprehension whose causal exchanges are localized in such quickly propagating ‘‘particles’’ or action packets. In other words, a minimal extramental interval unit (or ‘‘instant’’) is, in this way, dilated into a minimal experienced interval unit (or ‘‘moment’’). This relativistic dilation, technically expressed by the Lorentz-FitzGerald and the Valatin-Bogoljubov transforms, delivers across different motion frames the features of a unique causal efficiency. Such a dilation is observed to be @10 41 times, a magnitude specified by the velocity of these particles. (Of course, in case the modulus of transformational change is taken to be different from that of the Planck instant—for example, taking as ‘‘primitive’’ the transition time of some modality of interaction, all of which modalities in the currently observable universe take more than @10 19 Planck instants—this specification of absolute speeds for achieving the proper time dilations will proportionally vary: a dilation of about 10 20 times would suffice. The scenario, and the physical means at play

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subsist anyway, and so to avoid needless complications, this chapter will provisionally assume the Planck instant as modulus of transformational change.) This speed, slightly less than light’s, is determined by the very small inertial mass or invariant bulkiness of these particles, which makes them slower than light, and the dynamical massmodulating, coupling effect of the overlapping electromagnetic field, whose potentials are diversely modulated by the physiological state in the diverse brain regions and, correspondingly, modulate the speed of these particles where the observer’s interactions are localized. To be precise, the velocity that creates this dilation corresponds to subtracting from light speed an extremely tiny fraction, only about 1/10 82 of light speed; I will use from now on the standard notation, indicating that it subtracts from light speed a 1082 fraction. This speed may be further changed—by coupling with an even less efficiently coupled mode of electroneurobiological operation over considerable regions of the brain tissue—into a new velocity that only subtracts a 1096 fraction from light speed and so turns the observer’s acuity into a time resolution unable to resolve less than dozens of minutes. It is a much coarser time resolution or time acuity (sometimes called ‘‘time graining’’) than the one with which the formations offered by the brain organ keep track of the transformations of surrounding relevancies to ‘‘read’’ the environment in a biologically useful ‘‘tempo.’’ By analogy, such a condition resembles playing a musical recording at a speed many thousand times slower than the proper rate—stretching any musicality beyond recognition, forfeiting any ability to resolve (identify) single sounds or recognize the musical performance. However, the observer’s ‘‘local’’ acuity stays unaltered and, whenever such an observer is awakened from any sleep stage (whether dreaming or not), she breaks off some course of mentation that ‘‘at the precise time’’ was entertaining. Between the two subtracted values, respectively proper to deep sleep and to wakefulness, a full range of attention-disattention is established, and each degree set in it may affect all or instead some of the brain’s sensable productions. Can Brain Changes Erase Episodic and Praxical Memories, Regardless of Their Time ‘‘Graining’’ or Patterning Interval Units? No, because no brain engraving of them exists. Just as impetus is superfluous in keeping unperturbed bodies in rectilinear motion, engraving such memories in the brain is superfluous in keeping them in mind. Since nature is actual only one physical instant at a time, only the changed realities are actual in nature and the very antecedent making of all extramental changes is completely lost extramentally—that is, the past no longer exists. This follows from the discreteness of physically efficient changes (Planck’s observation) and from their setting time on macroscopic scales. Thus, from the above definition of mind, it follows that the changes inside minds (i.e., sensoperceptions as well as episodic and praxical memories) lack a further, causally efficient multi-instant course structure that could make its former states vanish; it cannot occur

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inside the single-instant actuality of the mind’s changes causal efficiently achieved. Thus they ‘‘remain’’ available and make the three sorts of acquired availabilities. Closer to an adage, our tradition states that memories cannot succumb to time: the simultaneous availability of the full autobiographical sequence is to be expected in the sheer availing self-knowledge of one’s ontic reality. Circumstanced existentialities are not limited to occupying processes in sequential time, such as operating machines are—although minds’ biological function is concerned with those processes, which are located solely beyond minds. In still other words, every thing that knows of itself (mind) cannot lose its sequences of changes as inner differentiations of its ontic consistency (which thus become ‘‘acquired availabilities’’), because minds do not exist in more than one instant and their causal efficiency does not establish (by way of action discreteness, exhausting efficient action in its doing causal change) another time inside them. Observers’ ontology can become differentiated into containing calendars, but not into containing causally real intervals. Minds exist only as present, in the same way as on time-transformation courses the whole nature exists a single physical instant at a time (singuli): thus extramentalities neither keep time-transformation courses in their present actuality, nor do minds keep time-transformation courses inside the single instant in which their ontology gnoseologically apprehends themselves. For this reason a mind’s diversifications— or ontic differentiations or mental contents, which introduce inner variety in her reality—as acquired availabilities can be variably paid heed by her own semovientgnoseological reality, but cannot be obliterated by action of extramental means. Another extramental time would be intramentally needed in order to achieve it, so that time could ‘‘perish in time and the now in other now,’’ to draw on the sixth-century wording of Damascius. In such circumstances, just as Newton’s formulation of the laws of motion in Euclidean geometry builds on his recognition that the ‘‘natural’’ motion or prosecution of unperturbed movements is rectilinear, so that a body left to its state of translative motion continues moving in a straight line rather than slowing down and coming to a halt or pursuing a curved or circular path, our tradition builds on a similar recognition. We take into account that the natural fate of the differentiations (memories), in those realities that know themselves while existing inside the instant, is the conservation of all of these differentiations—rather than these memories becoming ‘‘erased,’’ affected by a time elapsing (‘‘time’’) that occurs where they do not exist (since the observer’s differentiations exist outside the course of transformations, a course whose existence in the relevant scale depends on certain early cosmological events, namely the acquisition of inertial mass by certain species of ‘‘particles’’ but not all of them) or pursuing any oblivion process path. There is no time within time. It is the ‘‘inside instant’’ feature of such ontic-gnoseological realities, the observers’ minds, that turns superfluous

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all extramental engraving or scriptlike recording of memories, just as impetus is also superfluous in keeping unperturbed bodies in rectilinear motion. The ‘‘inside instant’’ existence of sentient agencies also thrusts itself into attention as the foremost characteristic of the subjective phenomenology of time. This characteristic is that time does not elapse for the experiencer—el alma nunca pierde su lozanı´a, i.e., the fact observable at any age that one’s existentiality never loses her freshness— whereas time does manifestly elapse, instead, for one’s novel experiences, whose presentation is inescapably sequential, as well as for the perceivable extramental things, such as one’s aging body. Remarkably, though, such a conspicuous phenomenological trait of existentialities remains neglected by phenomenologists and by all the researchers that take the mental contents for psyches. The neglect might nevertheless have been instigated by culture, for example by the bracketing of diachronies in the yearning for a ‘‘block’’ universe, or by making it difficult in old age to distinguish between the deterioration of some kinds of performance and the integrity of one’s unacquired or primary constituents; to stress the latter is as unusual as it would be trite to remark that outer behavior, imagination, and reimagination are affected by brain pathology. On the other hand, although memories cannot be erased because of not being retained in time transformability, they may, however, just fail to be understood in terms of some operative scheme of semovient operations—and thus fail to be reimagined by inchoatively reenacting such schemes, even while the brain organ works flawlessly. This makes for an important variety of oblivion, of psychogenic nature. Its basis is related to the very means whereby first disattention, then sleep, and then other ‘‘losses of consciousness’’ disconnect minds more and more from their surroundings. By What Means Do Sleep, Fainting, Comas, and Similar States Disconnect Minds from Their Surroundings? By now it should be clear that minds act in nature: all action in nature comes in packets, the packets of some species have a certain inertial mass that turns their speed slower than c, their coupling with the variable intensities of a surrounding field makes effective certain speed changes—tenuously similar to what a variably refractive medium does to the effective value of the speed of light—and, so, minds localizing on them their interactions obtain a peculiar time-condensed view of the events in which they causally participate. As a brain reduces its braking on those causal carriers where the action of the mind that senses and acts through such a brain inserts itself in extramentalities, the braking reduction speeds up the traveling localization (namely, such carriers) of the mind’s exchanges with extramentality. Pursuing the optical analogy, one might imagine a reduction in the medium’s refractive index. If of sufficient intensity, this reduction, shifting from one system of constraints to another the force carriers that provide a mind’s immediate circumstance, puts to sleep the mind

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circumstanced at this brain: in the new state of motion, she will no longer be able to resolve the brain’s surroundings-depicting activity. The brain itself, of course, does not stop its electroneurobiological depictional activity during sleep, but this physiological activity (all of it carried out in the electromagnetic modality of interaction—that is, by exchanging the species of force carriers called photons) is not directly knowable by the mind circumstanced therein. Or, in other words, this process ‘‘switches off’’ the awareness of the body, by putting the sequences of brain activities out of resolutive reach of the circumstanced psyche. Her actions, too, become mismatched with brain-mediated behavioral articulations, a matter discussed below. The ‘‘switching off’’ may come to the sequences of the activities of some brain portion, since sleep may not affect at once an entire brain but only half of it, or a sizable region, as occurs in many reptiles, almost all birds, and a number of mammals. This is why human snorers, who do sleep with the entire brain, cannot hear themselves snore—though a mother might reattune the time resolution of her sensory input, or ‘‘awaken,’’ at her baby’s slight uneasiness, because of neural reactions (probably involving limbic activation of the startle response) that stir a reincrease in the fieldmediated braking. The same means is at play whenever electroneurodynamic activities become impaired and fail to provide alert time acuity, failing (‘‘loss of consciousness,’’ fainting spell) to keep time acuity sufficiently fine-grained as to resolve their imitative outlining of the biologically relevant sequences of events. For What Reason Are Dreamt Sensations Perceived While Simultaneous Sensations Coming from the Sense Organs Are Not Perceived? The converse, namely mind’s causal action in extramentality, thus also occurs across different relativistic reference frames (‘‘is also transframed’’). As mentioned, the healthy brain is always ‘‘on’’ and sensory neuroactivity does not cease with sleep. This fact is routinely verified in laboratories and also in the very remarkable, revealing convenience of closing eyelids to sleep, even of tucking the head beneath a wing to nap— as birds do. It is a key fact. This convenience would not arise if neuroactivity would stop, or if, as certain accounts put it, some ‘‘curtain’’ firing of thalamic and cortical cells occluded the transmission of sensory information through the thalamus and cortex, sustaining sleep by innerly clogging up the inflow of sense data: that is, by already doing the job of a sort of ‘‘neurodynamic palpebra’’ or ‘‘intracerebral eyelids.’’ Nor, in those scenarios, would inattention be a step toward sleep—as it is. Routine verification of such key facts exposes an acute contradiction in the neuroscientific opinions purporting to localize mental occurrences at the physiology that takes place in the tissue’s reference frame. For example, a dream-originated melodic fa note is sensed, but the same dreamer would not sense a fa note from the external world enacted in that same brain.

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A deathblow to single motion-frame ‘‘neurophilosophies,’’ this crucial fact simply comes from the both-ways nature of relativistic transframing. Dreaming minds are usually asleep. These dreaming minds, which during deep sleep interact with extramentality from additionally accelerated force carriers (less slowed ones, whose motion may only subtract up to a scant 1096 fraction from light speed), put the brain in electroneurobiological states (to which the mind then reacts by intonating herself with oneiric sensations) through a slower, yet not very much slower, time resolution. From the mentioned range of dilations, which correspond to subtracted fractions between 1082 and 1096 of light speed, the time dilations during dreaming are those that barely suffice to leave unresolved the sensory sequences, delivered for awake acuity. Such small yet sufficient excursions away from awake acuity are implied by the dreaming control of neural tissue and also by the not inordinate time that every dream takes; whence one might predict that, when the duration of dreamt module performances such as a walking step could be accurately compared with extramental time, it would show only a moderate stretching. The moderateness of such excursions is also implied by the oneiric interpretation of environmental occurrences, such as alarm activation or thingamabobs found in the bed. The dreaming dilations thus constitute a deep inattention that does not result from the greater dilations, or larger deceleration loosenings, proper of ‘‘nondreaming’’ or ‘‘deep’’ sleep: in fact, when these dilations do not confine a dreamt episode to reasonable clock time, it is said that the sleeper ‘‘does not dream.’’ In turn, during dreaming the sense organs are putting the brain into electroneurobiological states that could be resolved if the mind had been circumstanced to carriers whose motion subtracted from light speed a far greater fraction, namely 1082 —but that the dreaming mind cannot time-resolve so as to react at those states intonatively. Instead the mind’s own causal action, transferred via those faster-moving sources, is transframed with the resolution proper to generate superposed brain states (states for the two fa notes are in the same brain region) to which the mind circumstanced to faster-moving force carriers reacts, as mentioned, intonating herself with the oneiric sensations. She operates, so to speak, her own domain of contiguous phosphenes with the extramental time resolution that she is currently availing herself of. Thus we do not sense the extramental occurrences while dreaming because the sensory input stays in a transiently unresolvable motion reference frame, which does not prevent minds from using the same brain regions in order to generate dreamt sensations. How Do Perceived Features Fade Due to Inattention? As the crucial observation of monohemispheric sleep (Mukhametov 1984) shows, the reduction, in the braking that the brain imparts to the causal carriers through which mind’s action inserts itself in extramentalities, is regional. Brakening loosens and these

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force carriers gain speed in some brain regions, not necessarily in all of them. In other words, although the process can be extended to the entirety of the brain’s gray matter, basically it is in certain brain regions that the force carriers providing a mind’s immediate circumstance move from one system of constraints to another. Things occur as if less dynamical electric states (i.e., simpler courses of the potential’s variations) of the brain tissue, associated in mammals—but not in reptiles—with sleep and distraction, took less dynamical mass from the force carriers traversing through them, which to traverse every millimeter (refringency assumed) take some 10 32 Planck instants. Because this short period amply accommodates the characteristic time of electromagnetic interactions, the carriers can be regionally ‘‘freed’’ from braking, namely gradually allowed to reduce the fraction of their dynamical mass claimed by the dynamic state of the coupling electric field that they go across in such regions. So, before exiting the brain and being replaced by others (just as the molecular components of metabolism do, if in a much more leisurely way and far more circuitously), these carriers speed up—gradually losing the circumstanced mind’s resolution as regards the sensory formations built in these particular brain regions. In this way, before the new speed becomes so fast that it completely blocks the resolution of sensory notices (as occurs during sleep), the regional sensory output fades ‘‘into inattention’’ around other features kept in one’s attentional focus, without loss of its availability for semoviently steerable attention. In other words this fading sensory ‘‘complement,’’ which surrounds what one is attending to, loses affective prominence or force of imposition (Zubiri’s noergy) because of the slight speeding up of the mentioned carriers in the brain areas that generate the voluntarily neglected sensory features. This mechanical ‘‘reddening’’ (more on this designation in a moment) is why inattention is a step toward sleep, another crucial observation. It is probably linked with ketamine’s mimicking schizophrenias as a step toward its acting as an anesthetic; anesthetics as well as oneirogens, substances that increase dreaming time such as those in the leaves of Salvia divinorum, must act by way of altering the field-coupled neurodynamics. This mechanical ‘‘reddening’’ also prevents recalling the experiences lived under it, another topic discussed soon. Focusing attention thus consists in selecting (‘‘esemplastically,’’ a term that denotes the action featured, e.g., in selecting one or rather another finger to move), in some regions of brain volume, a limited sector of brain states that continue inducing optimal braking to the causal-action carriers where one is circumstanced to. Thus the selected sector of brain productions is ‘‘put in the focus of attention,’’ namely these brain productions impose themselves in full noergy: they cause, in the mind’s ontology, intonative reactions that blossom in full affective prominence, operative interpretation, and sensory intensity. One might say that they take full root in the mind, or fully radicate in it. At the same time, conversely, their encasing sensory complement is perceived with weaker force of imposition or fainter affective promi-

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nence (less noergy, a process that at times is labeled ‘‘absentmindedness,’’ and considering its productive mechanism would be dubbed ‘‘reddening’’ if speaking of extramental actions rather than of intramental reactions). Such attenuated noergy or lesser radication prevents the progress of its detailed operative interpretation yet without loss of all its sensory intensity and availability. This occurs because the modulus of time acuity of the unattended complement differs from that of the far-previously memorized operations through which one can recognize its contents. In the limit, as a result of this process, consciousness is neither a part of every sensation nor is every sensation necessarily conscious, though it always is a mental differentiation and so is gnoseologically apprehended. Attenuated noergy differs from the habituative blurring of the experiences had in the very focus of attention, whereby for example, one cannot easily distinguish (because of reiteration rather than inattentiveness) between the memories of welcome greetings when habitually returning home late at night, a hundred days ago, and ninety-nine days ago. Yet these memories exist, because their blurring is remediable (and one might extricate the reimagining attempt from the predicament) if simply one also finds attended-to marks to tell between both events. Likewise if shown a photo a busy salesclerk may recall things otherwise unrememberable about the unique visit to the shop made days ago by a particular customer. In contrast, the unavailability of a lecture’s short section, finished a minute ago but ‘‘unheard’’ while enthralled by another pursuit, is irremediable. Let me outline this particular point. Noergy is not an action whose energy might be measured or transformed in a manner observable by the public (or minds other than the incumbent), released by the braking of noematic carriers. Noergy is, instead, a reaction whose effects retexture the ontic consistency of the circumstanced mind, wherein by lack of time course her past stays unerasable—that is, causally efficient for gnoseological grasp. But no dimensional mirroring of actions with reactions is conserved across the brain-mind interface. This is why one could only arrive at, eventually, assess noergy in other minds in terms of transframing’s departure from the focal attention value (zero departure makes 100 percent noergy), comparing force of imposition but losing its intonative dimensions. Where no minds are circunstanced, actions and reactions characterize each another with features from the same set. But in a nature that includes circumstanced minds, intonations are found that result from extramental actions that are depicted with a certain set of features, whereas those actions generate reactions depicted with another set of features. This symmetry breaking is a very fundamental datum of the natural science that strives to describe a nature where minds are encountered. Force in nature appears diversified or segregated fivefold: we observe four ‘‘basic forces’’ or modalities of causal interaction—by name the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and the gravitational force—in its actions outside us—and a further

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segregated modality of causal interaction or ‘‘basic force,’’ namely the one whose action carriers undergo the speed variations that tune the circumstanced mind’s time acuity, likewise from its actions outside of us (e.g., its effects in biological evolution), but moreover from our reactions to the variations of its states. These reactions are the mind’s subjective intonations, or sensational phenomena. The identification of this additional segregated physical force in our neurobiological tradition (whose earlier consideration of it had been misconstrued abroad as vitalism) as the modality of causal interaction in which the dimensional mirroring of actions with reactions is not conserved across the brain-mind interface, arose in the frame of comparative research completed here between 1964 and 1971 (Crocco 1963, 1971). However, this general force does not enact its mental effects in an experiential void. Each circumstanced mind is ontically textured by the sedimentation of her biographical experiences (‘‘rememberings’’) and undergoes a retexturing because of her noergic reactions to local variations of this extramental force (‘‘sensations’’). This retexturing can be properly rendered in terms of her previously sedimented semovient operations (‘‘perceptions’’) only if the time acuities of both match. In this process, the developmentally built set of semovient actions that a mind recognizes in herself (as available for applying onto certain sensed content that neuroactivity delivered to sentience, as nonstructural sensations and their structural patterns— for example, as a certain array of phosphenes) plays a role. This particular set of the mind’s possible actions is the subset that gathers those of her operations that ‘‘conserve’’ (i.e., keep identifiable) the phosphenes’ sensational patterns across operative reequilibrations, e.g., combining mental operations themselves plus their reverse executions. This makes it possible to ‘‘recognize’’ the sensations and their patterns in the operational terms that render them perceptions. They no longer just display meaningless phosphenes. What in all this does matter to noergy is that the full articulation of those sedimented operations cannot be applied onto poorly time-resolvable or timeunresolvable sensations. In this case, their texture inserts itself feebly into what the mind knows as semoviently doable. Noergy’s other names, ‘‘force of imposition’’ or ‘‘affective prominence,’’ refer to this imposition of each sensory or (reimagined) mnesic mental content onto the equilibrable structures of semovient operations in which the mind’s ontic-ontological consistency has become constituted with development—that is, since a long time ago. (‘‘Affective,’’ in ‘‘affective prominence,’’ does not point to sentimental affairs. It refers to the affecting of the equilibrable structures of semovient operations by each sensory or reimagined content, namely the degree of detail in which it admits the application of the mind’s constitutive structure of semovient operations.) Throughout the successive stages of the growth, the mental operations attain a particular structure, called intelligence, whose specialized or ‘‘factorial’’ articulations establish how one ‘‘sees’’ the surroundings and oneself in them.

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These acquired structures of operations, coming from way back in life, were of course originally acquired with the intrinsic time graining of the attentional focus. So their execution, even incipient, requires an additional operation—which would create a new esemplastic reclustering, regrouping elements into new accidental units—to be matched with the time acuity of the contents of the unattended, encasing sensory complement so as to interpret its contents in operational terms. If these unattended contents are not put into the focus of attention, by way of this esemplastic reclustering, in operational terms they remain interpreted in low detail, outside of the organizational scheme being considered; that is to say, ‘‘folded up’’ in the vein of the complicated combinations of logic-mathematical operations substituted in mental treatment by a simple indicator (or by a single sign in writing). This condition of abreviated scheme is called ‘‘unattended.’’ The name means that, operationally, the sensations are undetailedly sorted out: just sketchily categorized. This links up sensory time resolution with mnesic operational resolution. Attention grants full objecthood because, for categorizing its sensory content, the combinable operations sedimented in the sensing mind are not blurred either by fusion (as occurs when these operations’ time structure results are too tight to become resolved in the frame that presents the sensory content) or by scattering over time (as occurs when these operations’ time structure results are too lax to be encompassed as a group in the frame that presents the sensory content). This is also why the attentional reclustering, as it restructures into new figure-background termed the focal ‘‘field of attention,’’ often disrupts other operations that might being made. Yet before a voluntary refocusing of attention allows recognizing unattended occurrences, a mechanical arrangement or ‘‘machinamentum’’ sets up the scene, and then becomes intentionally implemented. Unheeded sequences—for example, a song to which little or no attention is given while reading—become impositively fainter (affectively less prominent) rather than slower because their pattern is embodied by modulations of cycle warpings, or hysteresis losses, in the brain’s electric field oscillations whose cycles become partly included in the mind’s modulus of acuity. Basically, shifting attention slows a number of the noematic carriers that form a mind’s immediate circumstance. Shifting attention slows the particular ‘‘volley’’ or cast of action carriers whose states thereby generate in such a mind intonative reactions with full noergy (‘‘in the focus of attention’’), by increasing their coupling to the brain electric field. In more familiar terms, every voluntary shift of attention generates a new local or regional dynamism of the brain electric field, which allows the next cast, of those action carriers that form a mind’s immediate circumstance, to ‘‘affix’’ or ‘‘absorb’’ more of their dynamical mass into the coupled, electromagnetic field (whose action they do not carry); involuntary, physiologically originated shifts of attention proceed in reverse, starting at the electromagnetic field’s state rather than at those

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other force carriers that form the mind’s immediate circumstance. This ‘‘absorptive redistribution’’ keeps those carriers’ inertial mass (and their absolute dynamical mass) unchanged, but decreases their speed. This occurs, for example, in regional hysteresis losses when a voluntarily shifted, regional change—which might compose the electroencephalographic pattern—increases or decreases the causal modifications (‘‘inflections’’) of this field’s dynamic, while proceeding conversely (respectively, decreasing or increasing them) for its occasional ‘‘neglected’’ background. What matters is the course of the coupled inflections, not the electroencephalographic synchronization or desynchronization itself: as commented, reptiles and mammals keep paying attention on opposite electroencephalographic regimes; moreover, electroencephalographic activity includes a great deal of potential variations concomitant but unrelated to the mind’s actions and reactions (see De Vera et al. 2005). Thus, whether stirred by the circumstanced mind (voluntary attentional shift) or by her brain’s physiology (involuntary attentional shift), the brain’s resulting regular action on its circumstanced mind enacts, in her, intonated reactions with variable noergy—that is, more or less interpretable in operational terms. By a single causal means, the mind’s semovient action on the brain tissue in turn enacts 1. Displacements of the focus of attention (described here as ‘‘esemplastic reclustering’’ or shiftings of the accidental unity attentionally conferred on some objects, whether over one’s mind extant ontology—for example, searching for a memory before recalling it, the mind being active in one respect and passive in another—or over the sensible presentations currently offered by the brain, as while reading these lines a good deal of the surrounding events becomes sidelined by weakening their phenomenicity’s impositive force) 2. Bodily motions, for instance, moving a finger rather than another (in which what is shifted is the electroneurobiological state modulating the neuronal activity that generates the finger’s displacement) or opposing resistance to sleep (in which what is shifted is the electroneurobiological state modulating the neuronal activity which generates the electroneurobiological state that slackens time acuity) 3. The mind-facing, feature-determining brain states generated by the mind herself, to which she reacts with dreamt sensations while escaping from sensationally reacting to the feature-determining brain states established by the sense organs How are Voluntary Movements Attentionally Determined? Likewise, the attentional selection of a particular portion of the mind’s corporal scheme for moving the related body part—say, a certain finger—puts in the background the mental images of other bodily parts. Namely, of those parts that are not to be voluntarily moved, or moved differently, as in juggling. This makes the mind’s

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causal action effective only for those segments of brain architecture—in fact, nonstatic ones and varying with practice—that, through acuity-matching electroneurodynamics and the causally related biochemical processes spatially arranged within it, trigger outward the willed movement. This intentional process generates a voluntary modulation of neocortical electric dynamics accomplished in everyday behavior, such as in waving a hand. Bypassing the hand, the resulting neurodynamic modulation, or its metabolic/hemodynamic concomitants, make it possible to communicate or activate external devices without muscle activity, using electric brain signals—nothing more ‘‘mind reading’’ or thought transducing than reading the results of any other willful communication or activity, such as properly ‘‘waving’’ the hand on a keyboard, or talking into a telephone or into the air in front of a face-to-face interlocutor. So, for example, the voluntary modulation of neocortical electrodynamics is also used to gain control over a motor imagery– based system in the coupling of electroencephalogram-based brain-computer interfaces with a neuroprosthesis. The neuroprosthesis is thus operated by voluntary generation of distinctive EEG patterns, which usually are power decreases in specific frequency bands, at imagined consecutive movements of a paralyzed limb, so that the patient is able to move a simple object from one real place to another, or navigate in a virtual environment (see Muller-Putz et al. 2005; Leeb et al. 2005; Kubler et al. 2005). Several types of brain signals have been explored for this use, among them slow cortical potentials, cortical neuronal activity, and beta and mu rhythms (see Santana et al. 2004; Yamawaki 2005), whether through systems fully implanted in the brain or still invasive microminiaturized ‘‘neuroports’’ (Patterson et al. 2004), or noninvasively (Wolpaw and McFarland 2004; Hinterberger et al. 2004; Yoo et al. 2004) such as in EEG biofeedback. The latter, also called neurofeedback, is a rather trivial training technique—frequently accompanied by commercial or superstitious claims, too— designed to teach people, by trial and error, how to increase specific frequency bands of their brain waves on receiving real-time feedback of their scalp-recorded electroencephalographic rhythms (Egner, Zech, and Gruzelier 2004; Weiskopf et al. 2004; Weiler et al. 2002; Congedo, Lubar, and Joffe 2004). All these examples indicate that shifting attention is a part of every voluntary modulation of neocortical electric dynamics, independently of the causal chains appended afterward, such as vocalization, writing, manipulation of external devices, or any other motor action. Specifically, it makes the mind’s causal action effective only for those brain segments that have developmentally turned up as such, themselves not thought about—because no brain segments are intended, but their action’s outer result—but operatively identified by the individual only in terms of this connection. We might note in passing that the voluntary reimagining of a certain memory does not greatly differ from the voluntary waving of a certain finger. Rather than using the anatomical connection to

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a particular body part, the segments of brain architecture enact the electroneurodynamic states that put the mind’s immediate extramentality in the state that makes her nomically react by such reimagining. More on this below. Once They have been Recalled and Given Attention To, Where Do Memories Again Fade Into? Mnesic localization, aimed to find an episodic memory already known as available (‘‘known as known,’’ although not yet remembered), is carried out in the current inattention domain. This inattention or inoperativeness domain is also where memories recede, or are ‘‘reforgotten,’’ when no longer imagined. This is an inattention in which they are ‘‘folded up’’ as abreviated operational schemes. This means that do not stir, in any degree of detail, the application of the equilibrable structure of semovient causal operations that constitutes them. In their inattention domain, the only operative articulations available are the attention-focusing operations that navigate the biographical sedimentation through its larger posts. These navigating attention-focusing operations are external to the operations that imaginatively unfold the remembering’s individual units; the former merely specify the latter in biographical context. From this inattention domain every memory arises, when it is reimagined after so having been ‘‘localized’’ (rather, operationally specified) in the operational availabilities of the observer’s biographical sedimentation. There, experienced reactions cannot elapse because the observer’s ontic reality lacks a causally efficient multi-instant course consistency, which could vanish its former states inside the mind’s single-instant actuality that, with causal efficiency, is achieving inner and outer changes. But her memory is far from being any laying down of archival data, or sedimentation of news that in future times is to be merely contemplated, ‘‘unoperatively.’’ Memory is the sedimentation of nonsensorial habits of motor schemes whose sensorily intonated reimagination, though it allows believing that certain features stay in it awaiting discovery by exploration of the completed mental image, in fact receives these features when one adds them to the reimagination with the mere act of thinking them, one after another. Thus this operational specification (‘‘localization’’) among other availabilities (‘‘visio generalis’’) is not intrinsically different from that of the proper fingers when, for example, having crossed the second under the fourth finger of a hand, one is summoned to move a certain one of both fingers. This kind of mentally led extrication, instead, becomes ineffective when a patient with small areas of brain damage, despite great efforts, could neither name nor describe the function of a glass of water that he, a little later, reaches for and from which he takes a drink—by using undamaged brain portions whose performance is not coupled with the attentional focus. One’s corporal scheme includes the sedimentation in one’s ontic consistency of one’s causal involvements, which are to find their respective neuroactivity to produce their reimagination

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just as, using the bodily scheme, one is to find the respective neuroactivity to produce the proper action. The conditions of this neuroactivity are, organically, quite specific (e.g., activity of the CA3 region of the hippocampus is key for recalling our memories from fragmentary representations) and it may easily become inadequate because of factors extraneous to the attentional selection, such as finger ‘‘braiding’’ or cerebral dysfunction. Thus, recalling one’s memories and moving one’s limbs employ an attentional reclustering of one’s sedimented operations in order to put such particular availabilities into conditions of reenactment—that involve reattending to them (i.e., their proper time resolution). How Does Inattention Cause Amnesia? The same specific mechanism also prevents remembering most sleep mentation after awakening; dissociates the handiness of awake rememberings from oneiric threads (and of oneiric episodes from awake decisions); puts distractions before forgetting in the beginning of dementedness processes; turns status epilepticus with more of a propensity to anterograde than to retrograde amnesia; and, in traumatic memory deficits, makes the recall of the pretraumatic (retrograde) portion of life, forgotten in a mnesic lacuna or memory ‘‘lagoon,’’ depend on the same lacuna’s posttraumatic (anterograde) portion or ‘‘amnesia of fixation’’ period. In all these cases, the biographical episodes lived from a certain time dilation (say, dreamt; or perceived through a sane brain tissue long before a dementia’s initial stages; or lived and memorized before the brain tissue became concussed and later recovered leaving a posttraumatic ‘‘amnesia of fixation,’’ to consider three examples) can no longer be operatively categorized when the relativistic speed state, of the biophysical components that form their experiencer’s immediate circumstance, changes into another relativistic speed state (respectively for those three examples: (1) in awake life; (2) sensed through a deteriorating brain tissue, in a dementia’s initial stages; and (3) recalled through a reimagining context that should have included the episodes forgotten by ‘‘amnesia of fixation’’). During the attempted recall, when the relativistic speed state of the mind’s immediate circumstance differs from either the speed state through which the episode was lived or from the speed state through which temporally neighboring episodes were lived that should have been included to reimagine the context by drawing closer— backward in memories’ sequence—to the sought episode, the difference hampers the arrangement, by voluntary recall, of the brain physiology so as to generate phenomena that might be recognized, in operational categories, as the aimed-at memory. On this attempt act the physiological abnormalities that head blows bring about. For a time after the encephalic concussion, the brain does not tune its electroneurobiology so as to furnish proper time dilation to sensory experiences. So these

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experiences lose impositive force, or noergy. It results in a condition similar to that involved in the fading, into ‘‘distraction,’’ of many memories of the habitual life lived in the months or years after bereavement. Thus at their occurrence one perceives the sensory experiences just as one perceives scarcely attended-to vehicle and foot traffic around the bus in which one travels. These scarcely attended-to vehicles and footers are well seen, heard, and identified in some incipient detail but soon, even perhaps before one goes out of the bus, one cannot put their perceptions in any order so as to recall their presentation. The same occurs to all the life episodes in some (often transient) postconcussive stages. Such a process is called ‘‘distraction’’ when it intrudes on one’s plans, as when, while reading, one plays a music disc with many songs and sometimes find that the themes that one most wanted to hear are finishing, have been ‘‘heard,’’ yet their memory— though recent—is irretrievable. To stir the affects and emotions one wished to draw from the audition (in this case more obviously called ‘‘affective prominence,’’ though always stirred after operational categorization) they should be played anew—and listened without reading. Preventing it is why, illustratively, theaters impose silence and darken the seating precisely when performances commence. As it should now be plain, this ‘‘distraction’’ is what in clinical contexts is called ‘‘fixation amnesia’’ or anterograde amnesia, namely difficulties in learning new informations. In the beginning of dementias it precedes the older memories’ unreimaginability (forgetting), and the same mechanism also conditions the possibilities of awake and dreaming states for reciprocal recall. In sleep mentation it also brings about the ‘‘attentional narrowing,’’ the thematic or experiential reduction that impoverishes one’s full experience, shrinkening the menu of other experiences that one keeps available to be collated with the actual contents of an oneiric thread in such a way that— above and beyond more specific cognitional effects—while dreaming we are habitually unaware that we are in fact in a dreamworld. On the same basis, it also sets the distribution, over the sleep period, of the dreams that include ‘‘diurnal rests.’’ Noergy disparities reflect not absolute but proportional disparities in resolution, as shown by the common observation that the experiences that closely precede powerful emotions, although acquired with unweakened noergy, are as likely to be forgotten as those of the enthralling emotional event’s experiential margin, which, instead, faded into ‘‘distraction’’ at acquisition time. They cause people awakened after having slept more than a very short while to typically be unable to recall the last few minutes before they fell asleep, and also make people prone to forgetting phone calls or exchanges they have had in the middle of the night, or the alarm’s ringing in the morning if one went right back to sleep after turning it off. Likewise, acquisition with decreased noergy accounts for why in memories ‘‘diluted’’ by anterograde amnesia, no recovery is observed, similar to the gradual reinstatement of pretrauma memories common with retrograde amnesia.

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When Is Neuroactivity Nonconscious? By way of establishing mental contents, segments of neurodynamics became linked— through, therefore, a mind or existentiality functionally positioned in a superior level of organic regulation, which addresses molarly its objects and lets in semovience and tunable motivation—with the novelties from the environment and other neuroactivities. At the same time, other segments of neuroactivity remain just substratally connected, processed through microphysical causality. In fact they evolved quite apart and upon parallel processes of natural selection, a topic not studied in this chapter. Brain-mind relationships display a fundamental form of locality, which sets a foregoing bearing on which neuroactivity might be experienced: while the electromagnetic field is continuous all over nature (spatially, every physical field replet orbem terrarum, or in modern terms it fills the whole universe), not all minds react to a brain’s electrodynamic patterns (even when these patterns become to structure the nonstructural, intonative reactions of some existentiality’s experience). Only does so the mind whose extramental immediacy is locally coupled to them, on a determination more substantial and basic than these physical exchanges. For every psychism, therefore, all foreign neuroactivity is forever nonconscious. Yet, even for this particular mind, not all of the ‘‘local’’ neuroactivity specifies new mental contents. Through reduction in the reactions’ force of imposition, a variable amount of local neuroactivities is for her as much unconscious as it is for all the minds circumstanced to different drifting localities (or parcels) of the same field. This nonconscious condition is also to affect neuroactivity by way of unsuitable transframings. Excessive ‘‘neglect,’’ preventing to demarcate mental contents, is to happen when, in loosening up the brakening electrodynamically forced onto the causal carriers which a mind reacts to and where the mind’s action inserts itself in extramentalities (by loosening the electromagnetic field absorption of their dynamical mass) the patterns that neuroactivity might form (in the mentioned hysteresis losses of the brain electroactivity coupled to the causal carriers) turn up transframed with a time dilation that so much weakens the force of imposition, of the intonative reactions to these patterns in the existentiality’s ontic consistency, that those intonative reactions merely compound in the sensational background noise of this existentiality. Neuroactivity nonconscious by noergy unproductiveness may include a variety of physiological processes. Some of these, coming chiefly from genetic determinations, participate in the determination of ‘‘instinctive behaviors’’ such as prey capture, nesting, flying, and involved courtships that in many species may go on without psychism. Others, in empsyched animals, come from the inner needs of ongoing courses of action (such as the loss into inattention underwent by the routine details of learned abilities, or by equilibration in ‘‘instinctive’’ flying) and from current stimuli (‘‘tacit’’ processing).

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Cerebral architectures may optimize the addition, onto some regional function, of its gnoseological apprehension with adaptive time acuity—or either, moving on a workable physical range, may leave such cerebral operation uncharted in mental differentiations, namely unsuspected by the mind that senses and control other activities of the same brain: unbeknownst to the circumstanced existentiality. The time dilation that when spread over the whole tissue knocks out noergy to all of the brain’s possible productions is that of deep sleep. It is a ligamentum sensus which nevertheless leaves for mentation all of the mind’s availabilities and her memories in the visio generalis—so one can explore them and, when in some brain areas the time dilation comes closer to that of the awake state, such exploration cannot help but reimagine them with aspects not very removed from the ones which the episodes presented in awake life. In the middle of this workable range, diverse levels of inattention are available to apply onto the mental products of such cerebral operation. In this way—that is, spatially diversified as regard the transframing-inflicted time resolution of its patterns—a great and variable deal of neuroactivity is often nonconscious: it remains ‘‘unconscious’’ and, so, foreign to any existentiality, not specifying new mental contents. Many electrodynamic leakages from the functioning of intracerebral ganglia stay unrelated to the generation of mental reactions. Other segments of neural processing induce low-noergy, unattended sensoperceptions. A case in point, the control of low-frequency cortical electrical activity by respiratory activity in a lizard, has been worked out by De Vera et al. (2005 and earlier research); the evidence is not at hand to enable determining whether or not reactions to this induced activity are present to the experience of the incumbent existentiality. Still other segments of neuroactivity induce, in the focus of attention, sensoperceptions whether semoviently fancied or, instead, continuing environmental causality (namely, sensorially acquired sensoperceptions). How Are Memories Semoviently Recalled and Recognized as One’s Own? Situating in autobiographical context one’s memory of an episode, whose reconstruction is being voluntarily ‘‘recalled,’’ means semoviently arriving to focuse attention on the same possibility, of combining equilibrable operations, which one had when the episode occurred. As Aristotle described it in Perı` Mne´emees kaı` Anamne´eseoos (‘‘On Memory and Reminiscence’’) 451b30, ‘‘When one wills calling to mind, what one should do is this: one will try to obtain an initiation of motion whose follow-up be the movement that he wishes to experience again.’’ One’s conception of the results of such actions is the entirety of our concept of the object, which even if unrepeatable as a unique biographical episode is to be replicated in imagination, any number of times, just as defined by one’s operatory possibilities that make its elements recognizable or understandable for oneself. Hitherto my discus-

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sion of what is known in nature considered intonations, which are mind reactions, and now I should put an important addition in. Also semovience is perspicuous: the will provides its own certainty. This is what allows to mnesically sediment the patterns of our semovient actions. The motor effort is grasped through an inner immediate apperception: one’s causal act unfolds itself on gnoseologically apprehended dimensions constitutive of its agent—that is, of oneself. In our tradition’s view, this postdecisional apperception is that of a reaction, which is unintonated or non-phenomenal (some also label it ‘‘nonsensory’’) as the enactment exhausts itself in the extramental act. When the causal efficiency of the semovient action causes a modification in the hylozoic hiatus, it directly enacts a real modification of the immediate circumstances but not of the mind. We do not feel it. What thus we grasp is our having closed a situation open-ended at its conditions. We react to our doing, not to its outside-exhausted causal efficiency. The subjective evidence that semovience is perspicuous includes, among the multifarious actions that one originates, the production of our inner voice. In addition to subjective evidence, we objectively observe that semovience is perspicuous in two situations. First, the knowledge that animals developmentally gain become adequate to deal with extramentalities (and thus the acquisition of this knowledge was evolutionarily selected) and to successfully handle extramental causation, though this latter eludes observers forever. Second, as Franc¸ois-P.-G. Maine de Biran first observed, within the knowledges that minds gain a quite exact line demarcates what there is of passive and of active: habitual repetition contrasts the notices about minds’ reactions and the notices about mind’s actions. This turns particular procedures into particular memories. Particular memories, therefore, are particular procedures to generate the mentioned meanings in the context of the biographical texturing of a mind’s ontological consistency. Although procedures always differ, their meanings can be shared. How to pinpoint at any later time, in order to reimagine some memory, which these possibilities were? These operatory possibilities are of course filtered through the difference in time resolution between the time acuity with which the episode was lived and the time acuity which one is installed on at recall time. This filtering compels to progress in imagination probing a range of such differences until one arrives to reimagine the set of operatory possibilities established by the sensoperceptual contents of such a past moment. This set provides the famous ‘‘associative links’’ that glue special groups of interarticulated memories. Sharing in relativistic dilation is thus an essential component of memories ‘‘association.’’ Nothing to wonder about, actually, because the sharing is required to spot, as a unique performance, the operations that constitute every calling to mind.

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These grouped memory elements to be ‘‘associatedly’’ recalled share in the time acuity under which their extramental occurrences had been resolved. This is why one can arrive to recall a particular object that compounds in a past situation, from the reconstruction of other elements in the situation’s group delineated with its same relativistic dilation or, instead, contemporary elements memorized from a different time acuity—but in the latter case an additional operation is to be carried out. The additional operation should transform the original situation, e.g., into paying attention to components primitively unattended in the memorized situation. One first reconstructs the biophysical time acuity in which one was when one lived the episode to be recalled—for example, awake or asleep; focusing on the episode’s accomplishment or only marginally attending it, detached perhaps by grief; stuporose, or chemically influenced. Like moving a finger, the semovient operation modifies the brain state. In the case of a ground-gaining retrieval, it puts the brain into the states outlined below, which the circumstanced mind reacts to intonatively by imagining the autobiographical episode. Then, within such a time acuity, one attentionally reclusters the elements, regrouping them into new accidental units until finding some component of the sought situation, thereby finding the operatory possibilities that define in it the searched for memory. These operatory possibilities again become available as the object that they conserve (the past situation) is reimagined. That is to say, the availing of this particular set of operatory possibilities defines the searched-for memory and such operatory definition squares with the ‘‘associated’’ context in the time-resolution reference frame. This squaring of one’s sedimented operationality with the reimagined elements (and not any special emotion serving to tag recognition) is what provides recognition to the reimagined memory as one’s own, namely that an episode is being imagined because it has already been happening to one earlier: as a recall, then, and not as a fancy. Definitely such a resource is fallible. With a little experimental ingenuity it may be cheated. Nevertheless, in evolutionarily typical situations it is reliable since it depends on the real system of Piagetian-equilibrable operations built by probing the reactions of similar situations to one’s semovience. Yet, to be voluntarily recalled, biographical experiences must have been sensed; but, had they been sensed with deficient force of imposition, they could not inchoate their understanding in praxical terms. Put differently, had they been originally sensed out of the focus of attention, their full categorization by the concerned individual was hampered. This, later, hinders forever their recall. Namely, for reimagining them, a large amount of operational categorization is to be added that did not enter the original experiences and, if at all appended, is rightly recognized as purely fanciful, or nonoriginal. This is why the head-concussion clinic shows, as mentioned, that in contrast with the gradual reinstatement of pretrauma memories unrememberable as they fell in

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the retrograde segment of amnesia, no recoveries are observed of the experiences unrenewable as they came under the anterograde segment of amnesia. Along these lines, noergy enters in the conditions of possibility for recall. With it, noergy brings in nonpersonal (or, mechanical) issues about time acuity. Before lack of fine-enough time acuity lays sensed events into unresolvability, subresolvability comes as noergy debilitation. The life experiences that one leaves go past with such enfeebled impositive force—as forgettable, undealt with minutiae out of the focus of attention— remain thus unrelated with the biographical thread attended to. In other words, they remain deprived of the workability hermeneusis, namely, of their nouˆs poieetiko´s construal in terms of what one is capable of doing with them through one’s own mental maturity and means at hand. This workability hermeneusis would have been needed to categorize each of such lived experiences in terms of one’s semovient operations, which by enacting causally efficient actions turn its schema cognoscible, so as to effortlessly localize it in the simultaneized sequence of one’s past doings and, therewith, reimagine it in voluntary recall. Why Is Sleeping Right After Learning Better for Retention Than Remaining Awake? In sum, the organization of memories reflects the reference frame in which the original experiences were lived. This reference frame determined the time resolution of the referred-to extramental occurrences. As shown by dissociative disorders and hypnotic suggestion as well as regular experience, one can alternate recall from groups—for example, one can pass from memories of awake life to memories of oneiric life. Yet this passing is an additional operation—one not called for by the recalled content itself. Although the pace of the observer’s ‘‘own time’’ never changes, oneiric experiences are lived on a time dilation (which stretches any observed outer intervals or dilutes the pace of the observed extramental courses, including those of brain processes) differing from that in awake state. So, regarding oneiric experiences, a previous learning achieved in awake life (before leaving its items aside the attentional focus, then going into more generalized inattention and sleep, and then dreaming) remains in a different reference frame. Each reference frame allows reimagining the experiences from the other frames with improper noergy or force of imposition, namely unattended. Thus sleep prevents the ensuing awake life from interfering—turning elusive the study materials learned just before the sleep interlude—so much as the ensuing awake life interferes on study materials learnt without sleep interlude. Whence people tend to remember things better if they sleep after learning them. This occurs as interference affects organized and well-recognized contents but not their brute me´moire or unrequested raw memory, a passive remembering in which events come to mind unbidden, or intrusively. Retention and recognition happen in such blocks, whose organizational schemes are operationally deployed and need

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the said additional operation in order to integrate contents lived in different frames. Or, memories are retained and recognized in blocks whose compounding operations are grasped as a unified performance, and every block includes the contents of experience had either in the focus of attention or, with less operational recognition, outside it. When the recall is being done from the same original time dilation, these unrequested contents may reappear as brute me´moire. Similarly, other contents fade away also in block. This makes the orientation reactions to surprise and the background interceptions detrimental, causing the unexpected failure to rediscover the thread of thoughts that a minute ago one was fluently developing, a feature so much familiar to schizoids as affrighting for anxious lecturers. Likewise, conversely, the better retention of materials studied before sleeping builds on the lack of interference from the same motion frame. Since recalling demands being made from a time dilation that matches the original acquisition, any crossing the contents’ borders to include materials from unattended sectors, or from oneiric experiences, demands from the remembering person a special operation to transport the reimagining process into the same reference frame in which the memories were originally made. What Is Imparted When One Pays Attention to Something? That which is contributed is the operationalizing of its sensations. In other words, one thereby applies, to a sector of one’s sensory field, the acquired system of equilibrable operations sedimented in one’s ontic-ontological consistency. This system allows to operationally categorize sensory contents with some particular detail. This, in the case of memories, is the mentioned workability hermeneusis, but applies also on sensations stirred by the ongoing activity of the sense organs. Such a system of equilibrable operations, which one avails of all at once by their sedimentation in one’s reality, integrates the current ontic-ontological consistency of the circumstanced existentiality and makes known to her what she could do with the entities referred to by those sensations. Instead, the sensations outside the attended-to focus remain less detailedly categorized (namely, less ‘‘operationalized’’), altough operationalizable, which means operationally categorizable. This, had it taken place, would mean that these sensations were put into the focus of attention and remain no longer in its fringe. Those sensations that stay in the less operationally categorized fringe nonetheless receive a preliminary, automatic categorical distinction as, without mental discrimination, it is provided by nonconscious activity of neural analyzers, but if the attentional focus never worked on them they stay as almost unretrievable memories (anterograde amnesia). They are forgotten and, inasmuch as uncategorized in operational terms, are almost unrememberable because cannot be defined and identified in operational terms (infantile amnesia). Away of the current focus of attention, this fringe is continuous with the availability of operationally categorized rememberings

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that are to be localized in the quasi-spatial distribution of acquired differentiations and, then, reimagined in voluntary recall. Does the Overlap of Time Resolutions Automatically Generate Recall? No, because the evolutionarily selected development is efficient and most minds do not stay for long untextured. In most cases, before long bodily interactions become functional and the mind starts to differentiate her initiatives as linked with her reactive intonations arising at her undergoing the surrounding’s feedback to such initiatives. So, with the successive developmental periods, her living reality becomes differentiated into the system of her possible, equilibrable semovient operations. The structure of this system of operations establishes how she sees the sensations being stirred by the surroundings and the sensations that she might herself stir to reimagine her memories. Had an existentiality’s ontic-ontological consistency remained untextured (tabula rasa, as the untextured condition is traditionally referred to in Aristotelianisms), no possible change in mental contents could arise from changing the magnitude of the time acuity with which, at any rate, she (such a tabula rasa) could not discern within herself anything in semovient-operational terms. In other words, coarsening or either refining her time acuity (by way of varying the speed of her moving operative localizations, as this speed is counted from some outer reference frame) would not vary any experience (which always is experience of changes in herself) referable to processes in the outer frame—because, this existentiality still being a tabula rasa, such outer processes are not yet reflected into her mental differentiations. But, with development, a mind’s ontic-ontological consistency becomes textured into some particular shape. She finds herself ‘‘differentiated.’’ This differentiation in operational terms, or mind’s live texture, is supplied by the sequential sedimentation of her past causal involvements (‘‘biography’’) whose experienced reactions cannot elapse. Thus the experienced reactions of her past causal involvements stay simultaneized (‘‘memory’’) while successively added with new biographical experiences ( Jakob’s frente matesomne´mico de registro; for didactics, Jakob’s followers sometimes compare it with a—time-thin—onion nonetheless developing its structure with leaves of diverse thickness). After such developmental texturing comes about, it becomes possible for its causal-process acuity to match or not to match the time acuity proper for referring a particular set of mental differentiations to processes of biological relevance occurring in the other reference frame. In the same way, the time acuity of the equilibrable operatory system might, or might not, allow the application of the available semovient operations to the differentiations that become revealed as the current time acuity varies. And the inchoate, ‘‘embryonic’’ or very preliminary application of those semovient operations—with their possible development in view—is what identifies, categorizes and recognizes all memories. Thus a matching with the current time acuity does not mechanically generate

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recall. It does this only inasmuch as the proper matching of the time acuities, those of the original acquisition and its current knowledge, allows applying the system of equilibrable operations in which at this time the mind’s ontological consistency consists. What Is Voluntary Recall? Voluntary or conative recall is the semovient act of retrieving a particular memory originally acquired at a time in the past. On recognizing its operational structure, such a memory is reimagined by setting up, the most likely with intervention of the frontal lobes, a dynamic electroneurobiological state whose tuning normally involves the hippocampi, the dorsomedial thalamic nuclei, and other brain structures. These, if damaged or lost, might occasionally be learnt to be replaced with other cerebral tracts, though less efficiently and after hard exercitation. The said electroneurobiological state is first to match the time acuity which the memory was originally experienced with, then to generate, in the circumstanced mind, intonative reactions structured to match the particular memory as it was previously identified in her visio generalis (when selecting it for recall), then to modify the reimagination process upon operative equilibria that conserve the particular memory as object of these modifications, recognizable through them. Assuming that some pharmaceuticals have potential effects and therapeutic use on learning and memory deficits is, thus, assuming that those drugs may improve the brain control of the regional speeds of noematic causal carriers, attenuating or protecting against the brain dysfunction—what only improperly lets labeling those drugs ‘‘cognitive enhancers.’’ Conative or voluntary recall does not differ in enactive mechanism from the semovient act of moving a finger, as we saw. Yet conative recall entails more complexity in the production of the physiological conditions to handle the segment of the ‘‘bodily schema’’ that, through sedimentation of the existentiality’s past causal involvements, includes the relations of the mentioned particular memory with the remaining differentiations (which comprise those of the finger) in the existentiality’s experiencetextured ontic-ontological consistency. Through as yet unknown mechanisms, injury to the hippocampi and dorsomedial thalamic nuclei is observed to put new experiences into the fringe of low noergy, which comprises the not-to-be-retained perceptions, such as the mentioned ones of passersby and vehicles when one is driving. This allows the contemporary handling of these experiences (thereby one steers clear of traffic accidents) while hindering their subsequent recall (anterograde amnesia). It yet does not hinder that other brain structures remain in conditions of generating, though multiple combinations, the dynamic electroneurobiological state proper to reimagine the memories that, in contrast, were originally acquired in the focus of attention—thus shunning retrograde amnesia.

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Retrograde amnesia, which always is a failure in remembering the so-called longterm memories, instead takes place when injury to less specific or architectonically more basic brain structures disrupts the fine control of the electroneurobiological state’s dynamics, preventing to set it up as to produce in the circumstanced mind the reactions recognizable as matching the visio generalis of the particular memory sought to be reimagined. Short-term memory does not require that the hippocampi, dorsomedial thalamic nuclei or any related structures build a dynamic electroneurobiological state in reaction to which the mind reimagines an old memory, this being why the loss of both hippocampi does not impair short-term memory. As full, reviviscent recall is reimagining, it involves both active and passive roles important to tell between. Sensing is always passive, whether the intonative reaction underwent by the mind was caused by extramentality or by the mind’s operations. And those intellectual operations generating the brain states that intonatively flesh such a mnesic reimagination are of course active, like those intellectual operations generating a finger waving that makes some signal. The fact that the gnoseological apprehension of these ‘‘of course active’’ operations is a noetic act might mislead one into mistaking it as wholly active, while in fact it passively undergoes being determined into cognoscitively apprehending some such combination of operations (that generate a recall) rather than any other. Just as one may passively notice the involuntary growth of one’s hair, one also may passively notice the effect on the brain of one’s voluntary acts. And, before this effect on the brain is produced, one may passively notice the yetto-be-enacted operatory combination as one’s gnoseological object. This apprehension is thus not the termination of the mind’s act of shaping her object, but another going through her being passively determined. Our mind mentally behaves as it was developmentally learnt through bodily behavior: as she operatively shapes the mental content which she originates, she becomes bound to understand it passively. In this act she ontically proportions itself toward undergoing the intellection of her own act; in regard to this intellection she is entirely passive, just as she also is in regard to any sensation whether mentally or extramentally caused: she cannot cognoscitively apprehend any other thing than what she really is to operate. This apprehension is that of the operative sequence learnt as the one capable of shaping the object, a shaping sequence that is apprehended as a whole and inasmuch as repeatable: that is to say, inasmuch as reimaginable (‘‘rememberable’’) at any time by repeating the whole sequence. It is thus noticed as able to put the brain in states that produce the mental intonative reactions fleshing sensorially the object (which may be a remembered episode, biographically unique) without any loss of the said repeatability or generalization. What Is Gnoseological Apprehension? The above outlined facts offer a stark contrast with the Peripatetic understanding of knowledge as a sector of metabolism, a view of knowledge that leaves aside both its

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cognizableness and this cognizableness’ unbarterability. By its referring to different realities through one broad term, this Aristotle-stemmed understanding is the source of the familiar conflation of ‘‘knowledge’’ and ‘‘information.’’ The Peripatetic tradition in gnoseology understands ‘‘knowledge’’ as such acceptance in the knower—of the ‘‘Form’’ supplying full inner-and-outer shaping or ‘‘conformation’’ to another thing—that does not thereby trans-form the knower into the known thing, an assimilation which instead occurs in other metabolic incorporations—for example, as food becomes the fed organism. In this way, by knowing one escapes transforming oneself into, say, apple in (just) becoming acquainted with an apple, despite receiving in oneself the apple-forming Form. This standing back, or ability to receive the Form yet escaping the pernicious transformation that it might otherwise bring about, is knowledge’s distinctive feature in the metabolic descriptions of the Peripatetic tradition. It includes a vigorous branch of Scholastics active since the thirteenth century and nonconfessional scholars such as Maturana, Varela, and followers who call knowledge ‘‘cognition’’ and conflate it with ‘‘life.’’ Clearly this classical, informatic conception of knowledge as a biological topic (‘‘Biologie de la Connaissance’’) neither intends nor approaches the issue of what the gnoseological apprehension is—that is, what the cognoscitive event or noetic act does itself consist in. As a result, the Peripatetic understanding of knowledge has been extremely valuable as a conceptual tool, precisely because it applies to nonempsyched organizations such as the sensitive soul of corals and worms, or the compliant mutual accommodation of the ‘‘castes’’ of eusocial insects, as well as to the mental contents differentiated by existentialities and, also, to the informatic content of data processing machines—whose conceptual developments have been of particular importance to our current life style. ‘‘Knows,’’ so, means that some passive entity, which may or may not be an existentiality, ‘‘acquires notices’’ or ‘‘gets informed.’’ Yet this Peripatetic-derived metabolic conception of knowledge, despite its soundness and worth for specific uses, leaves aside what precisely matters for understanding knowledge in both ontic and existential terms. This relinquishing squares with the conflation of nonempsyched organisms and circumstanced existentialities in the Peripatetic concept of sensitive soul. In fact, when nonempsyched realities ‘‘acquire notices’’ or ‘‘get informed’’ there is shaping, or conformational action, but not gnoseological apprehension. In contrast, the acts of knowledge elicited by circumstanced existentialities, or gnoseological apprehension found in nature, apply onto the reactive intonation and unintonated proportioning of these very circumstanced existentialities. Gnoseological apprehension can operate—that is, can intellectually get the change in mental contents, without using the operatory understanding—an avenue that yields the ‘‘nude’’ intonation. Yet there are others. The differentiations or mental contents of all the circumstanced existentialities are made up of structureless elements coming from this sensational intonation, plus structural elements coming from the gnoseological apprehension and intrinsic

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observability of one’s efficient actions in context or from the neurobiological distribution that brings the said sensational intonations about. Thereby semovient observers who distinguish, among a diversity of previously met structureless variations, such a structureless reactive intonation of themselves and its structure-generating boundaries, may developmentally learn to recognize and directly intend the extramentalities whose interaction causally efficiently enacts a particular set of those intonations. To barely hint a key point: this application of the knowing act can take place because time does course for structurally reacting causal exchanges but does not course for structurelessly reacting ones. The causal exchanges yielding structural reactions, say the collisions and relocation of sand grains under a blowing wind, transform things in extramental dispersivity; such causal exchanges do this by spatially translocating or reshaping things (i.e., reshaping situations or reshaping these things) as the previous state of affairs loses all actuality because the discrete carriers of causal action become such effect themselves. The resulting state of affairs, so, still keeps causal efficiency to nomically continue the causal series. Instead the causal exchanges yielding structureless reactions intonate existentialities. These causal exchanges modify the structureless intonations in existentialities who differentiate those intonations and whose sequences of modifications do not lose actuality, a state of affairs that does not keep any causal efficiency to continue a causal series. As empirically found, therefore, the sensible gnoseological apprehension—that is, the act of knowing what is sensed, or sensory noetic act—is thus the feature of efficiently causal interactions whereby the enacted structureless reactions intonate the reacting entity on ranges whose manifestation exhausts the causal efficiency. And the non-sensible or intellectual gnoseological apprehension is ontically the same with the sole difference that no specific intonation gets made to phenomenize. Assuming a Plausible Understanding of Causation, How Can Privately Accessible Mental Events Cause or be Caused by Nonprivately Accessible Physical Events? This question is the causal relationship’s one, the issue that bears on the interaction between mental and physical events. ‘‘Physical’’ in this corny dichotomy should only mean everything whose causal courses run on discreteness of efficient action, a feature not expressed by the term ‘‘mental.’’ Yet it is not difficult to see how mental events, despite their being unlocated and often unformable (shapeless) in the space of the laboratory as well as lacking in size and mass, could nonetheless cause or be caused by extramentally spatial physical events located and possessed with mass energy. How can they interact? A short answer is: not through their ontological condition, but through their ontic consistency—which phenomenisms are steadfastly purposed to snub. Let me spell it out here. Privately accessibility or lack of it are unrelated with the performance of this causal process. More to the point, observation shows extramental space’s derivativeness. It is

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observed in the formation of new space in preexisting extensions of older space, a process now thought to occur everywhere, as well between galaxies as inside our brain and body—themselves more than 99.999999999 percent empty space. The basic physical determinations that generate space appear as unlocalizable and, as a rule, the origin of actions results unlocalizable in space: as well for extramental changes coming from minds as for those coming from any physical field. No source of efficient causality is confinable to a spatial location. These determinations not even run on discreteness of efficient action, so that in the present state of the science one must say that the eclosion of every physical subparticle is not physical itself, at least if one wishes to keep in the sentence the same meaning for both uses of ‘‘physical’’; a related point is familiar in big-bang discussions. (Big bang, a key concept in cosmological theories that aspire to model the astrophysical evolution and detected expansion of the observable universe, is a swift outflow of all its material—unpacking it from a teensy, physically minimal dot of the heaviest, physically maximal density and largest energy—that while evolving generates space and so provides itself with the room to bloat.) What minds do, in establishing the local potentials of the field whose carriers minds utilize as the first causal link for triggering the sequence of nomic extramental effects, is the same that fields do when from an unlocalizable set of determinations they make themselves or another segregated field to eclose more, or either less, of its force carriers at every spot of volume, thereby changing the spatial distribution of their local potential. In this way all interactions occur. Therefore, mind-brain interaction is by no means more thorny or problematic than the field generation of variations in local potentials; the latter simply is still less well known in brain-mind studies. And the reverse process, not yet more familiar in physics studies, is also illustratively observed in the said brainmind research: as commented above, extramental causal efficiency is found to work out in psychisms just intonative reactions, not causing psychisms—whose sole operative presence is spatially localized—to be affected in such a way as to instrumentally transmit the extramental efficiency with mechanical effects. As an aftermath, the space localization of minds (not of their local causal exchange with extramentality—that is, the places of termination where the minds’ causal action inheres in extramentality, presence of her immediate operation, or operative presence; but, of their ontic consistency) as well as the space localization of the field determinations that cause every virtual or real elementary particle to materialize where it in fact ecloses, is inexistent. Both of them occur foregoing the conditions that make space eventuate. The really problematical issue is why a mind ecloses to sense and move her brain rather than another. What Is Restored on Recovery from Ordinary Sleep, Hibernation, General Anesthesia, ‘‘Absence,’’ Fainting, Comas, or Vegetative States? A pair of essential components of every mind cannot be supplied by the brain that becomes hers (rather than availing, instead, to another person). Namely, for every sub-

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jective existence, psyche, or personal existentiality found in nature, her ontic consistency and her cadacualtez (defined hereafter) cannot be provided by the brain itself or by its functioning. Her ontic consistency, that is every mind’s semovient-sensing makeup, is the extramental actuality availed by each personal existence. This extramental actuality is also availed by her intramentality which—finite minds being plural and their respective actions being kept mutually apart by extramentalities—never relinquishes its extramental condition and could never exhaust itself in sheer appearing or phenomenicity (as, in contrast, phenomenisms assert, true to their onticity-emptying belief that minds and mental contents are, by definition, only and no more than subjective). In turn, her cadacualtez manifests itself as the constitutive determination of each finite mind to both causally affect and be causally affected by no other parcel of nature—namely, such and such a brain and its bodily and outer circumstances—than the parcel that, because of this determination, acquired the status that is called ‘‘her.’’ It prevents pronouncing minds ‘‘productive creations’’ whether of the mere complexity (hodologies) or the mere simplicity (immateriality). The bodily dispositions that enable her body to stay empsyched by a mind (aliveness), or prevent it (death), cannot discriminate between existentialities. Yet the neurodynamical patterns arising from anatomofunctional complexity, supplied by differential recruitment of elementary (molecular) neurobiological mechanisms, when they get eventually transduced into potentials of the immediately reactionable-to field, do not indiscriminately enter experience. They do not do it except if they belong with the brain organ that the experience of the case is circumstanced to, whose actions in turn work on no other organ to start extramental causal chains. It it thus apparent that, even apart from (i.e., not counting, and refraining from considering) the nomic causal interactions involving body as well as mind, which consistently vary the elements composing their successive states, minds are in no way unrelated to their respective bodies. In fact, sustaining this relationship, rather than enacting some executable/forbearable operation involving psychosomatic concourse, is the primary act of every body that might be empsyched (see ´ vila and Crocco 1996). In other words, cadacualtez is one’s determination as notA another enabling one to sustain constitutive causal exchanges with a fixed parcel of nature, rather than one’s existentiality having, instead, eclosed to any other constitutive brain or circumstance. Its observation shows that everything is not made of the same set of truly elementary components, as a giant meccano. In the outlined context, all these particulars afford important insights for clinical practice. They are especially notable in regard to one of the central issues in the neurobiology of the (so-called) impaired consciousness. There, the outlined factual landscape is not consistent with the envisaged strategy of ‘‘activating engrams.’’ But engrams are an ideological fact, not a scientific fact. Such engrams are notional creatures, belonging in the Æschylus-Plato fantastic view of memories as extramental

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sources of mental retention. On account of engrams, the causal continuity of two facts of an individual’s experience, namely any original experience and its later remembering, is attributed to an intervention external to the experience so as to elude recognizing, to the individuals’ experience, efficient causal aptitude to operate by itself, specially in time. Engrams are thus ‘‘bodily impressions’’ envisioned as tagged extramental settings of mental data, stored out of the mind—a nonsemovient mind whose ontology, thanks to the engrams’s purifying role, remains unspoiled with sensual and contingent experiences. Engrams are variably imagined, as complete material traces to realistically reproduce the original experience, for example by Plato, or as fragmentary functional ones to reconstruct it, if somehow confusely. The latter is the case of, for instance, Descartes (1596–1650) and Malebranche (1638–1715), who viewed memories as patterned motions of animal spirits through brain pores, later reenacted though running the risk of mutual interference. Engrams, however, are always impersonal and intrinsically unrelated to one’s developmentally acquired systems of equilibrable semovient operations. These engrams sketched and resketched on the brain do not exist. It does not matter if their nonexistence flabbergasts some neuroscientists in cultures whose science, commonsense, and language expressions assumed their reality for at least three millennia. Engrams are a purely fictional concept. It is conclusively shown by the amnesiacs’ recuperations, which are incompatible with a ‘‘data-losing-and-recovering’’ naive construal of autobiographical memories as foreign to one’s particular set of choices for equilibrable semovient operations. Engrams not even could exist, since memories (rather than the nonmemorizable series of extramental events, whose causation is too tight to be usefully memorized) acquire their ‘‘coarse graining,’’ and on it their forms recognizable in terms of one’s possible operations, from the dilation of the (otherwise unresolvable) sequence of their causal making. This sequence is stretched by the very relativistic transframing that provides biologically adaptive acuity to the depiction of their episodes. Only in this way can episodic and praxical memories be availed in minds’ ontology, namely in the ontic consistency or extramental actuality of each personal existence. Rememberings cannot linger in the brain ‘‘stored’’ as ‘‘data,’’ namely in the condition in which their episodes occurred before their sequence was transframed, because their transframing is unrepeatable: it occurs as each segment of a biographical sequence comes about, and thus takes place just on one occasion for each remembered episode. Memories or rememberings thus differ from and contrast with their mnesic reimagination, an ability to reconstruct them as cerebrally provided present sensations and, so, profit by their modifiability and ensuing capability of generating new experiences, in turn memorizable. (Mnesic reimaginations also differ from every other new sensation in that their apperception preexists rather than follows their arrival on the scene.)

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This ability, like flying and deep diving, was probably selected on Earth a number of times—although it took a paleontologically recent part in the natural selection of the psychological governance of cerebral performance. Such a brain-depending ability—mente fingere per cerebrum—makes a significant contrast with memories. While the preservation of memories is an effect of the absence of time course, their modifiable reimagining exploits the presence of brain structures. Thus this issue of ‘‘impaired consciousness,’’ for clinical practice, amounts to controlling the tissue’s electroneurobiological activity that gates the proper acuity, so ‘‘coupling’’ or ‘‘switching on’’ the body in order to ‘‘awaken’’ the finite psyche who—on other grounds—remains incumbent rather than any other. Notes The author heartily thanks Mario Crocco, who contributed to our tradition the original discoveries in relativistic biophysics and neurobiology of memory, attention, and sleep referred to in this chapter, as well as to Antoine Courban for their revision of the piece and editing of my concepts; an earlier version was revised by Paul Bains of Murdoch University, Australia. I remain most grateful for their intelligent analyses and valuable remarks; any conceptual wrongdoing perpetrated with them is of course mine. Several sections of the text are borrowed with autorization from classroom materials by Crocco. An earlier version of this essay, including further topics, was prepared in December 1999 for a seminar, later appearing in Electroneurobiologı´a 11(2), 14–65 (2003). It was presented in March 2000 at the Hellenic-Argentinian Meeting of Psychiatry organized by the Hellenic Psychiatric Association jointly with the Asociacio´n Argentina de Psiquı´atras, and thereafter (April 20, 2000) communicated to the National Academy of Sciences of the Argentine Republic. References ´ vila, Alicia, and Mario Crocco (1996), Sensing: A New Fundamental Action of Nature (Folia NeuroA biolo´gica Argentina, Vol. X), Buenos Aires: Institute for Advanced Study. Congedo, Marco, J. F. Lubar, and D. Joffe (2004), ‘‘Low-Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography Neurofeedback,’’ IEEE Transactions on Neuronal Systems & Rehabilitation Engineering, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 387–397. Crocco, Mario (1963), ‘‘La cilia de las neuronas centrales, reliquia del tronco comu´n de motilidad y percepcio´n,’’ poster, Escuela Normal de Profesores Nro. 2 Mariano Acosta, Bs. Aires. ——— (1971), ‘‘Filoge´nesis de los mecanismos intraencefa´licos de posicionamiento objetal,’’ communication to the Asociacio´n Argentina para el Progreso de las Ciencias (pr. D. Goytı´a, August) and the National Council of Scientific & Technical lnvestigations, Presidency of the Nation, Argentine Republic (February 1972). De Vera, Luis, Ernesto Pereda, Alejandro Santana, and Julia´n Gonza´lez (2005), ‘‘Time-Related Interdependence between Low-Frequency Cortical Electrical Activity and Respiratory Activity in Lizard, Gallotia galloti,’’ Journal of Experimental Zoology, Vol. 303A, pp. 217–226.

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Egner, T., T. F. Zech, and J. H. Gruzelier (2004), ‘‘The Effects of Neurofeedback Training on the Spectral Topography of the Electroencephalogram,’’ Clinical Neurophysiology, Vol. 115, No. 11, pp. 2452–2460. ¨ rgen Mellinger, and Niels Birbaumer (2004), ‘‘Auditory FeedHinterberger, Thilo, Gerold Baier, Ju back of Human EEG for Direct Brain-Computer Communication,’’ Proceedings of ICAD 04-Tenth Meeting of the International Conference on Auditory Display, Sydney, Australia: http://www.icad.org/ websiteV2.0/Conferences/ICAD2004/papers/hinterberger_etal.pdf. Kubler, A., F. Nijboer, J. Mellinger, T. M. Vaughan, H. Pawelzik, G. Schalk, Dennis J. McFarland, Niels Birbaumer, and Jonathan R. Wolpaw (2005), ‘‘Patients with ALS [amyotrophic lateral sclerosis] Can Use Sensorimotor Rhythms to Operate a Brain-Computer Interface,’’ Neurology, Vol. 64, No. 10, pp. 1775–1777. Leeb, R., R. Scherer, C. Keinrath, C. Guger, and Gert Pfurtscheller (2005), ‘‘Exploring Virtual Environments with an EEG-Based BCI [brain-computer interface] Through Motor Imagery,’’ Biomed. Tech. (Berlin), Vol. 50, No. 4, pp. 86–91. Mukhametov, L. M. (1984), ‘‘Sleep in Marine Mammals,’’ in A. A. Borbely and J. L. Valatx, eds., Sleep Mechanisms (Experimental Brain Research Suppl. 8), pp. 227–236, Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Muller-Putz, G. R., R. Scherer, Gert Pfurtscheller, and R. Rupp (2005), ‘‘EEG-Based Neuroprosthesis Control: A Step towards Clinical Practice,’’ Neuroscience Letters, Vol. 382, Nos. 1–2, pp. 169–174. Patterson, W. R., Y. K. Song, C. W. Bull, I. Ozden, A. P. Deangellis, C. Lay, J. L. McKay, A. V. Nurmikko, J. D. Donoghue, and B. W. Connors (2004), ‘‘A Microelectrode/Microelectronic Hybrid Device for Brain Implantable Neuroprosthesis Applications,’’ IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 51, No. 10, pp. 1845–1853. Santana, Daniel, Ramı´rez Flores, Maura Jazmı´n Ostrosky, and Feggy Solı´s (2004), ‘‘Novedades en tecnologı´a de rehabilitacio´n: una revisio´n acerca de la interfaz cerebro-computadora,’’ Revista de Neurologı´a, Vol. 39, No. 5, pp. 447–450, http://www.revneurol.com/download.asp?document= 2004117. Triarhou, Lazarus C., and Manuel del Cerro (2006a), ‘‘Semicentennial Tribute to the Ingenious Neurobiologist Christfried Jakob (1866–1956)—1: Works from Germany and the First Argentina Period, 1891–1913,’’ European Neurology, Vol. 56, pp. 176–188. ——— (2006b), ‘‘Semicentennial Tribute to the Ingenious Neurobiologist Christfried Jakob (1866– 1956)—2: Publications from the Second Argentina Period, 1913–1949,’’ European Neurology, Vol. 56, pp. 189–198. Weiler, Elmar W. J., Klaus Brill, Ken H. Tachiki, and Dieter Schneider (2002), ‘‘Neurofeedback and Quantitative Electroencephalography,’’ International Tinnitus Journal, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 87–93. Also at: http://www.neurootology.org/show/?pid=czoyOiI0NyI7. Weiskopf, Nikolaus, Klaus Mathiak, Simon W. Bock, Frank Scharnowski, Ralf Veit, Wolfgang Grodd, Rainer Goebel, and Niels Birbaumer (2004), ‘‘Principles of a Brain-Computer Interface

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(BCI) Based on Real-Time Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI),’’ IEEE Transactions in Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 51, No. 6, pp. 966–970, http://njc.berkeley.edu/Papers/Weiskopf_BCI .pdf. Wolpaw, Jonathan R., and Dennis J. McFarland (2004), ‘‘Control of a Two-Dimensional Movement Signal by a Noninvasive Brain-Computer Interface in Humans,’’ Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences U. S. A., Vol. 101, No. 51, pp. 17849–17854. Yamawaki, Nobuyuki, C. Wilke, Z. M. Liu, and B. He (2005), ‘‘An Improvement of a TimeFrequency Approach for an EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interface,’’ Intl. Journal of Bioelectromagnetism, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 289–291. Yoo, S. S., T. Fairneny, N. K. Chen, S. E. Choo, L. P. Panych, H. Park, S. Y. Lee, and F. A. Jolesz (2004), ‘‘Brain-Computer Interface Using fMRI: Spatial Navigation by Thoughts,’’ Neuroreport, Vol. 15, No. 10, pp. 1591–1595.

12 A Palindrome: Conscious Living Creatures as Instruments of Nature; Nature as an Instrument of Conscious Living Creatures Mario Crocco

Abstract Conventional wisdom states that science cannot discover or describe any intrinsic, noninstrumental value. Research in a broader perspective indicates that this may be doubted. What goes on in the universe manifests itself to natural scientists as an axiological palindrome, readable from more than a single vantage point. If, through observation of reality, one comes to recognize that mind-possessing living creatures—whether human or of some other species—were used as a means, that is to say functionalized, by physical processes, namely by biospheric evolution and its larger context, then one must also recognize that the astrophysical-biospheric evolution was in turn functionalized or used as a means to afford responsibility to some mindpossessing living creatures. Natural science thus observes a mirror or reciprocal functionalization, in which each of both realities uses for its own ends the reality that uses it as a means. Current science, however, does not stop at this result. Also in natural science’s grandest picture of reality, the being of all entities cannot ultimately come from other entities’ being and should, thus, come from value: regardless of what it is that the being of entities originate from, it is to be regarded as taking action in view of value. Natural science describes originated realities of two kinds: observers, also called minds, which do not generate time inside them (but may emulate any outer course, an aptitude that may be called xenochronism), and the set of extramentalities, which does it (and interactively assists minds to emulate outer evolutions). While in minds memories persist because they do not exist within a coursing of time that could alter or erase them, extramentalities evolve because the transfers of causal efficiency make a microphysical time course that the inertial mass of some but not all elementary particles extends into sizable scales. As long as xenochronic minds and timeevolving extramentalities interact, they keep the mentioned palindromic relationship. Sooner or later, however, bodily circumstances break down, rendering their minds unobservable for natural science (death). So science can track minds only until they pass away. Yet observations previous to death, especially that of memories’ being unable to succumb to time processes, enable science to say that in this state of affairs—that is, beyond such a realm of causal-efficiency transfers observed by natural science—the mentioned palindromic relationship is also to break down, and the antecedent matter of value resurfaces. This cessation reveals which of both courses of the mentioned palindrome the originating value does in the end invest in.

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This occurs because in nature minds and extramentalities enact a unique efficient causality but, in making time courses, this causality’s ability to cause further changes becomes extinguished when it affects minds, intonating them into knowable differentiations. Or, minds are not only sources but also sinks of causal efficiency: sensory knowledge—that is, minds’ sensebased differentiations or knowable mental contents—consists of efficient causality that has lost its transferability and become no longer able to cause further changes. On the contrary, the minds’ purposively directed causal efficiency that minds put to work in the causation-transferring realm cannot be likewise extinguished or exhausted therein. This disparity, in the state of affairs beyond what in the universe goes on through causal transfers, breaks down the mentioned palindromic situation kept in nature. Science can say that at death the mind could not succumb but extramental nature ceases being of assistance. Science’s grand picture of reality thereby recognizes that the ontological makeup of the mind of every observer-endowed living organism is where the intrinsic value resides whereby both minds and extramentalities exist. The ontological makeup of the situations arranged by transferable causal efficiency—that is, the time course of extramentalities—just serves to enable genuine freedom in some minds, whose development would be obfuscated should they come directly to grips with the unoriginated portion of reality rather than discoverable regularities. In science’s grand picture of reality, therefore, natural scientists’ aspiration of ‘‘naturalizing the minds’ depiction’’ does not clash with the humanities’ recognition of intrinsic value in persons.

Putting Minds to Work in Nature, Or, Life’s Natural Sense Bodies Any flow of energy may arrange things. In certain cases it may give shape to biological bodies. For example, the hot interior of many planets creates a heat flow toward the surface. This outgoing flow might sustain organic arrangements reproducing underground—that is, microbial life—and the flow of solar radiation across thick clouds, such as those of Venus, might develop communities of floating microorganisms. Over the Earth’s surface, that is to say neither on high clouds nor very far underground, the energy flow that sustains biospheric differentiations—life—is primarily made by the sun’s radiation that reaches our planet and then gets reflected from the outermost level of the land or sea. The best-known living organisms flourish as a means to dull in the most efficient way the shine reflected by their land or aquatic environment. This shine-dulling means of making organisms operates constrained by chemical kinetics and uses of cell space (compartmentalization). These two nonthermodynamic constraints play a major part in shaping the evolutionary drive, though fortunately it is unnecessary to consider them in the present discussion. In more opaque technical words, we can start it by saying that biospheric differentiation optimizes the disordering of planetary albedo on the shortest path. The evolutionary diversification, of the balanced system of living beings and surroundings—or biosphere—into nested organizations, apportions the planet’s exiting energy (albedo, the glare that the planet sheds into

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space) as fast as it can into photons (the light waves, or ‘‘grains of light’’ forming that glare) in their greatest physically feasible numbers with the longest (dubbed ‘‘reddest’’) physically feasible wavelength. Life dims the planet’s glare. This is why the diversity of living beings has grown continuously through evolutionary times—bringing about the natural selection of brains and of their opportune production of different sensations and sentiments in the subjective existences, or finite psyches, that find themselves in those brains. The shine reflected from our planet when seen from afar, as a tiny point of light in the sky, is what we see on the planet itself as daylight. Biological evolution is a relaxation or balance-seeking elastic process that, in the Earth’s biosphere at least, mainly uses and affects daylight. It is similar to the self-shaping of a bow that relaxes as it shoots its arrow, exhausting as fast as it can its own capacity of doing further physical work. By modifying the effulgence, or shining, of the planet where this relaxation process takes place, biological evolution moves like a shooting bow, toward exhausting by the shortest path its own capacity to do further physical work. Just as the bow supports the arrow’s shot but by itself does not direct it, so also the evolutionary trajectory is set by the nonthermodynamic factors over whose discussion I am skipping, such as replicative kinetics and its space and time compartmentalization. In these terms, this glaredwindling disordering is the motor—not a directing but a supporting one—that drives biological evolution. It is instrumental not in directing but rather in supporting the evolution of certain replicating organizations of chemical reactions. The averaging-out of the work-doing highs and lows, or differences in photons’ energies, comes to pass along the trophic or alimentary chains of organisms catching living prey one after another. It happens in the series of food hunts whose paths commonly converge onto photosynthetic plants, which currently are the initial link and ultimate prey in most of the Earth’s biospheric system. All along these chains, the more energetic photons in a certain range become absorbed in chemical reactions that later engender new photons, most of them fainter. So, how is this optimal disordering of the photons’ capacity to perform work, or tarnishing the planet’s shine, achieved? By using predecessors of the exiting photons to produce heat and excrement as they pass through the alimentary chains. Minds This introduces variety into biospheric history: heat (for the most part, directly ending as unseen infrared radiation fed into and dimming the planetary glare, by its replacing some of the shine that otherwise should have been reflected immediately) and digestion’s excrement (a transient state of biomatter that eases its further decomposition) are the crucial upshot of this evolution, the arrow shot by this tensed arch— and the sense of all life in nature. Minds are means to attain more of it faster. To diminish (a little), in this way, the working aptitude of the planetary albedo or

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effulgence, this process functionalizes (or uses as a means) the regular appearings (eclosions, or ‘‘pop-outs’’) of finite existentialities (or subjective existences, or psyches) for overcoming the limitations of Turing machines, unable to convert accidents into opportunities. Minds, however, can do this—that is, progress toward biological goals through appropriate steps for which the instructions are nonetheless undefinable— and this is why during the course of evolution minds become selected as instruments for some organisms to thrive in complex environments and situations demanding this capability. Put in the service of this relaxing tension or elastic natural process, these instruments, finite existentialities also termed minds or psyches, are causal agencies: sinks and sources of causal action, as we will see. Thus, like any other source of change in nature, finite existentialities or minds act locally, and exist only ‘‘intransformatively’’ or within the actuality of the physical instant. This leaves outside of minds’ reality (or minds’ ontic consistency) the situations, unfolding in a stream of nows, whose tension-degrading evolution I have been recounting thus far. These situations transform themselves independently of their being known, that is, in extramentality, outside and apart of what finite minds are cognizant of; and thus such tension-degrading situational evolution is counted as elapsing time. All this concerns the carrying out of causal transformations and will be explained below. What counts here (and biologically, too) are two features that only minds make available for time processes. These minds, put in this way to work as instruments in the service of this natural process, know: minds avail themselves of a gnoseological or cognoscitive grasp, only of the variations in their own ontic consistency—where time does not elapse, so that those variations’s sequence does not fade and may be made to refer to otherwise gone extramental time courses (‘‘past’’). This means that their knowledge of their own ontic consistency is only partial. This incompleteness comes from their being limited or finite entities, so that they do not enact by themselves their own existence and consequently cannot know their own enactment to be rather than not to be, a prime ontological topic. Nonetheless, the knowledge of their variations suffices to build a model of the surroundings and of themselves within, provided such variations somehow come to reflect those realities. Furthermore, minds are endowed with semovience—or capacity to launch nonregular modifications in reality by taking unprompted initiatives—to efficiently cause changes only in the said variations in the texture of their own ontic consistency. Both this gnoseological apprehension or knowing grasp and this semovience, which very remarkably coincide in their limited sphere of action, are in turn causally chained into respectively sensing and semoviently controlling the transformations that only a certain portion of extramental nature undergoes in time. Such parcel or portion is denominated the immediate circumstance of a circumstanced mind: the immediate localization of this mind’s interactions or operative presence. This causally chained

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parcel or portion of nature is small, being a part (some brain components) of an organic body transiently conglomerated and persisting over a noticeable interval in a certain site and epoch—along a cradle-to-coffin itinerary or ‘‘world line.’’ The relationship, of this parcel of extramental nature with the grasp and semovience that are concurrent in, respectively, sensing and controlling only it, is called the ‘‘brain-mind connection.’’ Its central feature is that, although efficient causation is unique throughout brain and mind, neither the parcel of extramentality nor the mind can in each case determine their mutual allocation (‘‘circumstancing’’): such and such a brain for such and such a mind, and vice versa. Whence it is said that the mind ‘‘ecloses’’ (or ‘‘pops out’’) at the causally chained parcel or portion of nature; not that it ‘‘emerges in’’ or ‘‘is produced by’’ the parcel’s conglomeration. This bursting-out of eclosional realities, psyches or individual finite existentialities, is implemented or used to fulfill an operative function in the albedodimming, shortest-path relaxation process of extramental biospheric evolution. Which function is this one? It is the foremost among the so-called functions of relation with the environment, or functions of relation for short. All biological organizations must cope with basic issues such as how to nourish, defend, and reproduce, so as to live on and thus fulfill their astrophysical-biological role of boosting entropy. For nourishing, defending, and reproducing themselves most biological organizations function as Turing machines, which are the contrivances that cast step by step their outcomes’ string. For example, corals, oysters, and tropical plants—all of which are not mindregulated living creatures—function in this way. These biological organizations solve their problems upon species-specific preadaptations. All their functions of relation are preset. So, oysters solve these problems of how to nourish, defend, and reproduce by basing their particular solutions on species-specific preadaptations, instead of minding of the situations they should cope with. Refining, in contrast, the adaptation or adequacy of the provided solutions, in the biological organisms called ‘‘mind-regulated animals’’—which use a mind as its uppermost regulatory level—the individual finite existentiality that confronts a concrete problem does this, and grasps at most of the opportunities that a Turing machine would have lost. Thus the weirdest things in cosmology, these circumstanced existentialities, subjective existences, minds or psyches unbarterably allocated to constitute strange units with flowing parcels of extramentality—brains—and at whose emplacement the efficiency of some causal series exhausts itself (ending as sensory knowledges of the therein-interacting mind, not of any other one), are put in this evolutionary role because of the said two features that only minds make available for biological evolution. As sources of efficient causality, they can efficaciously inaugurate new causal series in their extramental surroundings, triggering diverse consequences. As sinks of efficient causality, they also know or gnoseologically grasp states of their own ontic consistency and their variations, produced by the exhaustion of efficient causal series into known

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reactions. These reactions’ intonative variants or possible variations that inescapably must be known, when causally affected by the action packets of other causal agencies, are known as sensations; the demarcations’ sequence of these reactions does not elapse (because of lack of causal-efficiency’s transferability that could set up a time course for the mind’s inner differentiations) and so the contents of experience remain rememberable. Bodies Selected so as to Allow Intellectual Development of the Minds That Will Command Them Minds are thus sinks of causally efficient actions. The evolutionary selection set up the diversity of the sensation-stirring organic processes congruously ¨ ller’s with the diversity of possible intonations; not reversely, as assumed in J. Mu ‘‘law of specific energies.’’ Thus, while conforming the selected organic processes to these possibilities of the minds’ ontic consistency, the evolutionary employment or functionalization of these circumstanced existentialities only required adjusting the organic presentation of sensations to prompt existentialities’ semovience into adaptive behavior—rather than into indulgent pursuances unavailing to the relaxation of their biosphere. For this adaptive function, step by step, the architectures of the cerebral gray became naturally selected as a necessary instrument, or requisite condition, for the developmental acquisition of suitable intellectual proficiency in the circumstanced existentialities. Besides reacting self-intonatively when causally affected by action packets coming through the sensed parcel of nature (which is the immediate or causally interacting portion of their bodily circumstance), these finite existentialities continually initiate semovient actions. Minds are therefore sources of causally efficient actions. Some of these actions initiate evident bodily behavior, such as changing a limb’s position. Others just change brain states. Others do not even stir such cerebral changes (as when making one’s mind for selecting a particular memory in order to reimagine it, putting it in the general view also called ‘‘tip of the tongue’’; or when giving up the attempts to reimagine it). But all these actions generate an attentional refocusing in the agent. Through those actions that are carried out bodily, finite existentialities probe their environment, by moving, cracking, or in any way changing the surrounding things. These initiatives allow their intellectual development, which could not be achieved through Platonic contemplation but needs to distinguish between their own causality and the resistances and performances of the surrounding things that thereby become typified and recognized as instancing a type (‘‘concept’’). The finite existentialities’ gnoseological grasp (or cognizance), of the reactions stirred in them by these probed portions of the environment through any consistent causal chain impinging from outside on these existentialities’ immediate circumstances, allows such circumstanced existentialities to build, in their own ontic consistency—which is known in

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its variations—a xenochronic or time-emulating model that tracks accurately enough some variations of the surrounding relevancies. In this way, all that every existentiality does by herself in nature, whether initiating or not evident bodily behavior, is reclustering her focus of attention. Aboutness, the attentionally optional reference to certain responsively varying entities rather than to others, is thus intrinsic to the functioning, development, and use of that relevanciesanchored model. Their cognizance of themselves, although incomplete, allows these existentialities to know this model and then, as they grow up, to refine it. So they distinguish a diversity of encompassing things in terms of which specific combination, of semovient actions, in similar circumstances maps again those outer things (or ‘‘conserves’’ them, as in Piagetian object permanence) in the mind’s unelapsing ontic consistency. This feature-ascertaining ‘‘classification’’ yields ‘‘classes’’ of encounters, relating each new individual encounter with the already objectified and categorized surrounding things. This turns new sensations into perceptions, turning sentient intelligences into percipient agencies. Let me give some illustrations. The largest thing in the solar system, Jupiter’s magnetosphere (ten times the width of the sun), was only recognized in quite recent times and by means of actions performed by instruments journeying to the thing, unseen when one simply gazes at Jupiter. It instances a class (or ‘‘concept’’) whose previously encountered samples were smaller. Nut kernels, instead, are more straightforwardly recognized, as what appears whenever cracking open an instance of the appropriate class of woody shells. Yet in both cases the notion is established by the appropriate courses of semovient causal actions (‘‘nut cracking’’ and ‘‘Jupiter probe-sending’’) and the sensual intonations that these actions generate in return; Platonic contemplation does not infuse knowledge. Along these lines, to achieve the mentioned transference of the problem-solving function from one agency to another (that is, from species-specific preadaptations, such as those of oysters, to individual finite existentialities circumstanced in individual organisms), these finite existentialities or minds are either sensually allured or sensually discouraged for keeping or varying their courses of semovient action on recognized things. In this way these existentialities are instigated to turn accidental encounters into opportunities for their general programmings set up in terms of seducing or deterring sensational states—for example, to optimally profit from occasions to nourish, reproduce, and protect themselves as well as kith and kin. Thus their semovience and their ontic intonability, the two gnoseologically apprehended, are used as an instrument to bring extra entropic gain to the biospheric process—an extra ‘‘reddening’’ to further dim the otherwise-silvery planetary shine. So evolution selects the formation of animal bodies that allow minds to attain adaptive intellectual development—that is, to become clever as the individual grows up;

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not unrestrictedly clever, but just as much as is required for proficiently leading such bodies, in their specific circumstances, into their functions of relation. That is to say, evolution selects the formation of such animal bodies that make these minds know and semoviently address those differentiations of their own reality that may be developmentally made to include references to those outer things biologically relevant in their specific situation. (In contrast, recognizing objects such as Jupiter’s magnetosphere was biologically unimportant for our ancestors, or for the ancestors of whales and dolphins, which acquired their own important increment in brain mass, in proportion to body weight, before our ancestors did: cetaceans acquired it some 35 million years ago.) This correspondence thus represents outer things by way of individual segments intonatively broken off from the main reality knowing itself—that is, mind’s ontology. Such diversely and distinctly intonated segments, which are phenomenal as in a successively transforming field of adjoining phosphenes and nonintonated or nonphenomenal as in the operations one may carry out on them, ‘‘uncompact’’ each mind’s knowledge of its own reality into differentiable contents. Through them, therefore, minds intend or image macroscopic or molar (extensive) realities. Contrastingly, extramental causation is enacted only through very minute, microphysical or subatomical packets of physical action (force carriers or quanta): an action that physics describes as belonging to physical fields and originating in them. Insertion of Minds’ Actions and Reactions into Time Courses For that reason, the insertion of the actions and reactions of circumstanced minds into extramental causal chains (principally, into the biosphere’s trophic chains) demands that these molaritiesintending minds be circumstanced to immediately control field actions. The immediate extramentality of minds is thus a physical field, not the field’s action-carrying microphysical packets. In other words, the specific locus for the causal efficacy of molar volition is thus the states of a certain physical field that makes eclose (as all fields do) microphysical carriers of its causal action. These carriers’ density builds up this field’s potential—coupled with the brain’s electromagnetic one. As the gateway element for mind-brain efficiently causal interactions, modifications in the states of the first field that generate its potential (flow densities of its eclosing field-action carriers) generate sensory reactions in the circumstanced mind and are also under this mind’s direct control. This preserves the molar mode of mind’s efficient causation in the face of the neurobiophysical nonmolar (microphysical) one, handled by such a field’s force carriers’ eclosions. It permits extramentalities to be causally mapped and acted on from minds, and vice versa, not withstanding the scale jump of their vastly different modes (one in large units, the other in microphysical ones) of applying efficient causality. Thus, by employing a dependable regularity in the eclosions of such minds as the resource to transfer concrete problem solving from species-specific preadaptations to

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individual organisms, this shortest-path relaxation process for maximizing entropy becomes, through evolution, capable of raising its own efficiency even more. By implanting at the tip of the trophic chains more replacements of force carriers (more hunters in the chain), readily posited to dissipate the energy-richest preceding organic assemblages (feeding on them, turning them to heat and excrement), this shortestpath relaxation strategically elongates the trophic chains that the force carriers will traverse. Such a life of minds is thus not a vain struggle, a treadmill of useless toil. Minds are put to work as instruments for increasing entropy faster. Ordering the disordering process (like the act of controlling with barriers the flow of people going out of a crowded stadium, or intelligently obstructing with traffic lights the vehicle circulation in big cities), the biospheric implant of those lives further orders and so speeds up the biosphere’s disordering net action. Its shortest path is thereby approached further. Natural selection of biological organisms operates as a lever to multiply energy dissipation under the mentioned nonthermodynamic constraints: technically said, elongating trophic chains shortens the space-time path of their dissipative work. The evolutionary development consists in adapting each mind’s intrinsic capacity of handling her intramental contents, so as to use the effects on her causally immediate circumstance for setting off a causal chain that inserts mind’s action into some extramental processes. This extramental insertion of the actions of minds—percipient agencies, such sinks and sources of causal efficiency—is made to work in two kinds of improgrammable-indetail crucial acts of becoming ‘‘one flesh,’’ in which acts minds intelligently pursue two sensoemotional rewards: 1. Eating up, appropriating, as bodily resources, the irregularly evasive bodies (preys that are hard to get hold of) and the results of former organized efforts (those prey’s energy investments in their own buildup) of other circumstanced existentialities. This additional level of predation was attained by stirring private sensations (e.g., hungers) that allure, into chasing after such a mind-regulated food, all the individuals recently deprived of nutrients (and thus ‘‘hungry’’ or ‘‘famished’’), so as to self-sustain the evolutionary efficiency booster by correcting their nutritional depletion. 2. Making most individuals seek the behavior in which complementary-sex congeners masturbate inside vaginas and, on estrus, enwrapping the ejaculator ducts, or—if their species have not evolved fully interpenetrating anatomies—simply rub cloacæ, interlocking on diverse degrees. All of these matching sensoemotional responses, behaviors, and far-from-uniform organs were gradually selected, over a few hundred million years, starting with the coordination of both sexes’ reflex expulsion of germ cells in great numbers, to become mixed and fecundated in water. By procuring upon its alluring sensations the execution, in the convenient bodily posture, of a sneezerelated, unconditioned expulsion reflex, this behavior leads to recombine halves of genetic material separately split in different individuals—a genome-reshuffling recombination attained, again, by way of stirring private sensations (incalescence) that in the

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two genders alike allure the individuals which of late have not participated at inseminations (thus erotized—that is, turned ‘‘incalescent’’ or ‘‘lustful’’), so as to self-sustain the evolutionary efficiency booster by amending their genome-recombinative (‘‘copulative’’) lack of participation. Origin and Evolution of Nervous Systems At this point, the evolutionary origin of the nervous systems should be briefly reviewed, with special focus on the physical means put at play at each stage. The evolution of living systems, outlined hitherto, is one of the most notable dynamical phenomena in nature. Numerous observations, often scarcely discussed outside of the neurobiological and psychophysiological concerns, consistently point out that speed variations in the action carriers of a force field, obtained by coupling with intensity variations of another, overlapping force field, found a neurobiophysical application. In it also intervened relativistic dilations of the instant or minimal interval-like course of causal transformation, despite such dilations being unexpected in the PythagoreanParmenidean mindsets where, in order to deny genuine reality to elapsing time, the physical instant is supposed infinitesimal—that is, ‘‘not integrable into actual time courses’’—and therefore unfit to undergo relativistic dilations. Brains combine the two physical phenomena (fields’ coupling, and instant’s dilations from the relativistic speed variations so attained) in connecting minds with their environment and varying their sensations’ force of imposition. This application, not specifically discussed in this subsection aimed instead at its antecedent stages (cf. chapter 11), was achieved through the electric field’s neurophysiological patterning, which, before and after the incorporation of those phenomena into biological functions, some living organisms employed for getting into resourceful relationship with outer events. Whence summarily depicting the long evolutionary roots of this special use clarifies such incorporation. To obtain nourishment, defense, and genome recombination, biological organisms enact their distinctive menus of relationships with the external world by performing what is called their ‘‘functions of relation.’’ Distinguishing any particular external thing or sector to be acted or reacted on (object) from the rest of the environment, while allowing for its relevant relations with this environment (mapping), is termed a ‘‘reference to object.’’ It was once thought that, for the functions of relation to make reference to objects and map them, a nervous system was requisite. Nervous systems, for that reason, were conceived as having started with cellular specialization—that is, with the evolutionary selection of surface cells specialized in detecting and cooperatively communicating the presence of relevant objects to other bodily cells specialized in fittingly dealing with them. Though functional, this criterion underscored the primacy of anatomical distinctions: the nervous systems

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were assumed to have started with the functional diversity that made neurosensory cells different from other cells—especially from motor cells. The rest of the evolution of the nervous systems was thought to have consisted in the natural selection, differentiation, and combination of the paths or circuits (hodologies, also called neural nets) composed of those specialized cells of the first class (neurosensory cells). The account tells that, early on, some of these communicating outer cells moved into the tissue (subepithelization) for covering. Then, for mustering into synergy more numerous and distant motor cells (muscles), they also became elongated into fibers (fibrillarization). Then the fibers became drawn together into suitable anatomical corners, forming local networks called nerve plexuses (plexusification). Concentration continued: because it enables shortening in strategic sites the fibers’ length and, so, faster coordinating the nerve communications that must be forwarded in some mutually referred-to sequence for bringing diverse muscles into common action, the natural selection of more complex instinctive behavior selected the genetic formation of nervous ganglia (ganglionarization). Their development came upon a treasure of new resources derived from variations in their inner connectivity. As ganglia became more complex, they formed an inner fiber mesh called neuropil (neuropilarization), which was organized into the brain cortex (corticalization) and—since the appearance of reptilomorphs—into neocortex (neocorticalization) so as to sustain, inside it, the natural selection of physical processes that minds can react to with subjective intonations. In other words, it was thought that the natural selection of paths for nerve activity supplied the physical processes to which minds can react by intonating themselves subjectively. But such story is incorrect. Already in the acellular microorganisms from which all animals derive, far before any cell differentiation, the functions of relation made reference to objects. These acellulars distinguished from the rest of a mapped environment the particular thing or sector to be acted or reacted on, a field that, with the occasion of the fortieth anniversary of its main concepts, the present author recently reviewed (Crocco 2004a). Almost two thousand million years ago, ‘‘swimming’’ was achieved by some Paleoproterozoic protozoans through the beating of cilia in their surface. It propelled the protozoan. Immediately below its surface spread oscillations in electrical (ionic) potential that reflected the viscous coordination of the cilia’s beating. But coordination is not control and control was needed to catch the prey—often to chase it. So the very outer objects, whether edible or to be avoided, were allowed to intervene in the control that steered the so attained ‘‘swimming,’’ specifying—by their also viscous contact with the beating ciliary system—an interference structure of potential (i.e., a sort of correlogram or outside-originated wave pattern encroaching on inner wave patterns so as to form briefly stationary transiences serving to refer to the interfering outer object). This

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interference generated inner objects of allusion (‘‘stationary waves’’ in Jakob’s terms: Jakob 1900, 1911a, 1911b, 1918; Jakob and Onelli 1913, especially 25–40, 75–102) that directed the swimming toward or away from the encountered object outside— with which the organism had thus established a relation. Ciliophora, in this way, for over more than a thousand million years have fed because the mechanism that controls cilia reorients them or their water currents toward prey, some fast swimming such as paramecia, and edible floating crumbs. As the means for attaining reference to objects, in the last phase of capture they utilized electric field patterns probably composed at the deformation of the distribution of submembrane potential fluctuations—resulting from the automatically coordinated ciliary beating— by the viscous contact of the ciliary rows with a floating piece or with the hydrostatic waves coming from also ciliated prey ‘‘swimming’’ fast in the neighborhoods. This electropotential system for ciliary control was retained in the descendents (some of whose body plans might for a time have been mounted on a hydroskeleton, as in today’s earthworms) that in their larval stages (‘‘dipleurula,’’ cf. Garstang 1894, 1928; Nielsen 1999, 2005) had the cilia around the ‘‘mouth’’ (the ciliary band and the apical organ). From the cells supporting those cilia, our whole nervous system originates. A refinement of their control is exposed in adult ctenophores, gelatinous marine invertebrates that are voracious predators in zooplankton food chains and the largest organisms to swim by means of cilia. The refinement, captured in such a primitive level of organization, consists in that some of their cilia are controlled through axons; beautiful photographs have been published in Tamm and Tamm 2002. But ctenophores are derived from a separate evolutionary branch, other than that of humans and all vertebrates. In our nervous system we still retain not only the cilia, but also gene sequences such as the one called ‘‘onecut’’ (Poustka et al. 2004; Nakajima et al. 2004), which anatomically initiate the nervous system ‘‘above’’ what is to become the buccal cavity in our early embryos. The electric field patterns (correlograms) that those acellulars utilized as the means for attaining reference to objects was lost in many animal lineages, which rather formed nervous ganglia to serve as their uppermost level of organic regulation. It was not the finest option but it evolved quickly, and precluding other possible alternatives it enabled many organisms to cope with certain life-sustaining exigencies; namely, with exigencies so undemanding that they would have been surmountable as well by a Turing machine, in spite of its limitations—that is, surmountable with a behavior generated by a set of instructions handicapped by two main drawbacks: their need of being definable by the antecedent situation, and their being able to evolve only over generations, not improving after individual maturity. This ganglionary uppermost level of organic regulation yielded the behavioral marvels we admire in—for example, bees, spiders, termites, and ants. The electric field means, lost in them, were instead

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preserved as the uppermost level of organic regulation during the process of path concentration that formed brains. As a result, the brain organs that now carry out the chordate’s uppermost level of organic regulation include neural ganglia that subserve a specific, connectivity-based function, which is not the uppermost regulatory function of the organism: the neural ganglia embedded in each chordate brain do hodologically enact unmindful behavior through refined sensomotor archs that lack any memory of particular objects. This is why so much of the brain’s neuroactivity, being unassociated with sensable processes, is not sensed at all: we are not aware of most of what our brain does. As another result of the same course of events brains also include the said electric field means. They perform another specific function. These electric means furnish the therein circumstanced mind with exchanges to intonatively react to, as well as with, a way of bringing about ecphoria—that is, causally chaining some extramental processes to mental operations. Further, these same electric field means, by way of making relativistic effects assume specific values at the locations of the mind-extramentality causal exchanges, enact variations in time resolution that modulate the mind’s intonative reactions, while the mind’s retentiveness (or, rather, lack of a causal transfer-implemented, inner time course) supplies a memory of particular objects in terms of their operative characterization. Therewith individual intellectual developments become allowed in the biosphere—whereupon the regular eclosions of never regular minds are placed into the causal organization of behaving organisms, as their uppermost regulatory level. In this way, and not through the hodologies or circuitry of the neural ganglia embedded in the brain, these organisms become able to surmount the Turing machine limits and so colonize such biological niches where transforming accidents into opportunities is requisite for survival. Reptile organization, by its affording neocorticalization, provided the most recent major step in this evolutionary journey. We enjoy its benefits: our minds’ intellectual development is based on the differentiation of mental contents attained in this way. Yet the architecture of these mental contents is by no means minds’ most remarkable feature. Minds’ Cadacualtic Features The most outstanding feature of these minds is rather one that culture often eclipsed, namely every mind’s cadacualtez. Cadacualtez—that is, the intrinsic singularity, unbarterability, unrepeatability, and incommunicability of every existential being (independent of its being finite or not)—has remained unperceived in many cultures, as if hidden from view. Social stratification and its reflection in the resources of the language often privileged the allusions in block, the ‘‘mass nouns’’ in some East Asian languages and the ‘‘De individuum scientia non datur’’ (about individuals no science is

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given) in the presuppositions of Western science. These structural constraints also have functional roots. In humans, as well as in every animal regulated by a circumstanced existentiality, typification or conceptual generalization is the foundation and necessary condition of utilitarian praxis—be it nutcracking or sending probes to the outer planets. Because of this, in every culture such a conceptual generalization grounded intelligibility on the references to those realities whose ‘‘individual instances’’ might be freely swapped, one in the place of another and any one by any one else, so that their total set would make a kind of fungible mass, from which it is equivalent to take a portion or rather any other portion in order to ‘‘instantiate’’ such a mass. With this ‘‘samples’’ way of making allusion, individuality became an intersection of fungible attributes and the references to cadacualtez become eclipsed. Conceptual elements of this variety are characteristic of the line of thought that finds its continuity along intellectual stances such as those of Pythagoras, Parmenides, Plato, and British Puritanism and Platonism. Some of these conceptual elements have prevailed in the scientific way of making reference to the realities found in nature, preventing an emphasis on, or at times a perception of, the mentioned intrinsic unbarterability of existentialities. In other cases the notional developments of monotheistic faiths obscured it and, as outlined below, made its conceptual elaboration superfluous, contributing to the same result. Minds’ intrinsic unbarterability is thus a feature whose conceptualization is culturally eclipsed, as may be seen even in the communicative metaphor chosen by the unknown writer of the Book of Job, whose author assumed natural in his readers’s mindset the substitutability of some persons for others fulfilling their same role. In ancient times, in fact, no word was available to denote cadacualtez—even the term that originated our word person appeared relatively late—and the recognition of cadacualtez was often reduced to a preconceptual understanding of ‘‘lo que se cifra en el nombre’’ (what is ciphered, or encoded, in the name). It was manifested as an inexpressible intuition indicated by every forename, helped by place-names or family names wherever forenames seemed insufficiently clear—for example, to distinguish absent Gilles of Rome from absent Gilles of Lessines. Yet the eclipsing also affected the conceptual fathoming of somatopsychical or body-mind relationships. Such a line of culturally dominant thinking abstracted and subtracted from the concept of every psyche the element of its unbarterable existentiality, representing every mind as consisting only of its mental contents: a hypothetical mind that happened to differentiate the same mental contents as another, would be deemed to be the latter. This confusion of the mind’s presence within reality and her mental contents’ structure, viewing the being or enaction of a cadacualtez—which makes an existentiality to exist—as exhausted in the arrangement of features later acquired by the already existing existentiality (rather than by another), made Locke’s view, of body-mind relationships as exclusively consisting of efficient causality, appear ‘‘logical’’ and natural. Just as a domestic appliance that might remain connected or disconnected with the

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mains, and if plugged in might remain so in a certain wall plug or, indifferently, in any other whatsoever, such a brain-mind or body-mind relationship was also considered to exist only as long as it was working (e.g., while originating mental contents or bodily motions) and the connection was assumed to be Platonically accidental—that is, an extrinsic harnessing together, as if empsycheable bodies and embody-able minds lacked any intrinsic bond referring them one to another individually: as if existentialities might be causally chained or ‘‘plugged in’’ to whatever parcel of nature, in the style of Mark Twain’s ‘‘The Prince and the Beggar.’’ So conceived, existentialities are no longer recognized as cadacualtic, brains are believed to be capable of producing them (because what is called ‘‘psyche’’ has been reduced to its acquired mental contents, some of which—namely, the new sensations—indeed are interactively generated by the brain organ) and minds, in good logic, are believed to be clonable. Such a description is certainly improper to describe what is found as existentialities, but it may be proper to philosophically describe their common ontic constitution. In the Peripatetic line of thought, for example, Scholastic analyses came to depict a hylomorphic constitution that abstracted the unbarterability of existentialities by using a notion that has been called a ‘‘standard cadacualtez’’—that is, a nomical or typical cadacualtez, which, of course, is uncadacualtic. This process attracted some confusion regarding the Aristotelian series of souls (only vegetative soul, vegetative-sensitive soul, and vegetative-sensitive-rational soul, collectively composing a segment of the Great Chain of Being that once did represent, crudely yet to the best of human knowledge, nervous systems’ evolution and the evolutionary sequence of the functions of relation) and the insertion of cadacualtic existentialities in such a series. Aristotle conceived knowing, gnoeı´n, as a variety of metabolic assimilation only for the purpose, and with the precise objective, of being able to compose a unique descriptive series with which to delineate the full variety of living beings—by comparing species among themselves and comparing the developmental sequences of individuals. With this conceptual tool, Aristotle was able to achieve his purpose, of attaining conceptual means suitable for unifiedly and uniformly describing the living beings found in nature in all their possible forms. His informational view of knowledge, presenting it as a variety of metabolic assimilation, is thus why Aristotle managed to institute biology as a unified science. In this way Peripatetism and the whole of European culture found a coherent exposition of a sector of reality, the living beings. Scholasticism then procured the goal of extending this exposition to the whole of reality, establishing a description of every type of reality in ontological terms. When Christian Peripatetism paid descriptive attention to psyches or individual existentialities, its purpose was to depict their ontical constitution, which it accordingly did not do in cadacualtic but in fungible terms, as Matter, Form, and their instances are. Its pre-Renaissance ideas permeated most scientific descriptions during Modernity, even those of its ideological opponents.

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Therefore, Christian Peripatetism, in order to account for the constitution of every individual, sensibly considered as its formal cause the matter signed by quantity. This name denotes the piece or particular portion of fungible prime matter that, while accidentally composing the individual of the case, after successive information by the Forms of the system’s components finally assumes the form proper of its species, or its type. For Aristotle, in view of his mentioned purpose, it was uninteresting to detect if within the series of organisms animated by a vegetative-sensitive soul the individuals of some species included an existentiality circumstanced to sense and to move its body. This is the case of a dog, for instance. Other organisms lack such an existentiality in charge of biological functions, for example a starfish—or its common ancestors with the dog, if Aristotle could have paid attention to them. These other organisms are constituted purely in the hylozoic hiatus and operate in a purely reactive way: they are unable to inaugurate innovative causal series semoviently, that is to say with decisions. In addition, they cannot bring to an end an outer causal series and know its last effect as a sensory intonation of existential being. As mentioned, the ontic consistency of gnoseological apprehension or knowledge requires a break in the efficient causal series, and these unempsyched animals are entirely constituted in the hylozoic hiatus where all efficient causality is unbrokenly transeunt. These animals lack any intrinsically unbarterable element and thus any knowledge about experience: in these animal species having an Aristotelian soul but not circumstancing an existentiality, their ‘‘knowledge’’ is mere information, gnoseologically uncharacterized—and only metaphorically called ‘‘knowledge’’ by external observers interested in keeping Aristotelian homogeneity for the biological series. The influential philosophy of Christian Peripatetism, with its affiliation to monotheistic hopes, found it pointless to refine the ontological principle of individuation in order to describe what is ciphered in the name, or cadacualtez. It was a feature eclipsed by culture’s generalizations but assured by the ‘‘Good News’’—that is, by the dogmatic perception of the ultimate ground of reality as Lover (see chapter 5). Christian anthropology is monist—in no way dualist, as it is often erroneously believed to be on the basis of Platonic notions imparted by its Cartesian misrepresentation—inasmuch as the reciprocal unbarterability of the two ‘‘elements’’ compounding the somatopsychical personal unity grounds the dogma of the Creator’s individual reference to every soul when creating it for a certain body and circumstance. It was superfluous for Christian Peripatetism to require from materia signata quantitate the impossibility of justifying nomically the anomical reason why one is not forming one’s psychophysical unity with another body—that is, why one is not circumstanced to interact with time processes from a different corporality—the body being the outer signal that, because of the unbarterability of circumstantiation, indicates a different cadacualtez. This found fact is not a nomical fact nor can it be concep-

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tualized as such, either in our current description of reality or in the doctrinary beliefs taken for granted by Christian Peripatetism. For sure some Scholastics might have confused the two elements of hylemorphic constitution, from whose concept is absent any intrinsic need requiring an unbarterable relationship with a single and particular instance of the other species, with body and existentiality, which are found to comprise it. Yet other authors found it futile and redundant to analyze and explain, in regular or nomical terms, what their faith manifested to them as a most singular loving act of the ultimate ground. All the more so because, on reason of their faith, they chose to focus on the communicable and mystagogic aspects of the existential finding, thereby contributing to the cultural eclipse of cadacualtez. This is why it was only rarely and recently noticed that the cerebral organ only determines some sensory contents of her or his experience, but does not determine—nor could it do this—who will appear circumstanced to use it; namely, the not nomical (i.e., not standard) but cadacualtic and unbarterable constitution of a certain psychophysical unity. This neglect was further bolstered by the time asymmetry of cadacualtic descriptions. Cadacualtez is postdictable but never predictable. If one’s survey goes back from the existence of a particular existentiality, say that of Jane Doe, to her previous nonexistence, the former is already established as a part of the query. In contrast, when the survey is conceptualized in the opposite sense, one comes from the nonexistence therein—say, in a not yet fecundated ovule—of circumstancing relationships with any cadacualtic existentiality (namely, not from the nonexistence of circumstancing relationships with Jane Doe but the nonexistence of circumstancing relationships with any existentiality by then future) to the existence of Jane Doe’s particular reality, not another. In this fashion, in one avenue of the survey (the latter, or causal sequence) this nonalterity differs from identity, but merges with it in the other, sequence-reversing avenue. The epistemological time asymmetry that in this way comes to affect the issue cloaks, habitually, the important distinction between one’s being one because of one’s history, namely the fact that the sequence of constitutive events makes one’s instanceable features, and one’s being not another because of a different source. In this regard cadacualtez is a converse of ipseity, the latter determining one to be oneself and the former making one’s being not another. Cadacualtez, the intrinsic unbarterability, unrepeatability, incommunicability, and singularity of every existential being, thus manifests as the ontic determination, in nature, of every event of a finite observer’s finding herself experiencing in a circumstance rather than, instead, in another. Natural science finds psychisms that neither self-posit to exist nor self-circumstance to eclose. As their circumstancing is a constitutive contingency for finite observers, its unbarterability makes such event one and the same, even if iterated observationally over the years—one never being shifted or teleported to other bodily circumstances. As a matter of observation, each real observer in nature cannot derive its own place from the physical regularities forming its other empirical

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findings; less, to account for why the availabilities compounding his or her mental world do not become available to another person. Certainly, this other in lieu of, say, the reader, could not detect any swapping, since as mentioned cadacualtez, although never predictable, is always postdictable; but before it happens (i.e., now), ‘‘other in one’s lieu’’ is fully understandable to everyone, and serves here to illustrate what the pronoun who signifies: namely, what is ciphered in the name. The variable indicated in ‘‘other in one’s lieu’’ is what the personal identity means, alluded to in the function word who; cadacualtez is the ontic determination of each instance of its being brought to bear. And before a particular existentiality ecloses to nonpredicative actuality, as a subset of finitude among a plurality of separated psychisms, the physical constitution does not suffice to determine ‘‘who’’ shall avail of the availabilities of a psychism. For example, at the time of the physical constitution of the reader’s body, the components in the maternal makeup and paternal spermatozoid that originally composed such a body did not suffice to determine (or even refer to) ‘‘who’’ was to avail of the reader’s apprehension, semovience, and historical-biophysical circumstances including the species-specific palette of structureless characterizations stirred by her brain’s states— rather than the states of, say, a reptile brain—and the remaining of the reader’s body providing its own time acuity for her existentiality to directly apprehend some bodily constituents. The particular set of all these availabilities, which an existential finitude—say, the present reader’s—does not posit but encounters, is not available to another finite semovient existentiality. Cadacualtez, a converse of ipseity manifested as the eclosional circumstancing of finite noeseis, which in each case makes their some respective noema causing each finite psychism’s circumstancing to not an other brain, is thus intrinsically asymmetrical over time.1 Although this asymmetry is conspicuous, its appreciation is not helped by the cultural occultation of cadacualtez. The conceptual situation is even worsened by the quite widespread misunderstanding of actuality as if it were predicative—presenting to be as it were a result of combining features, or predicates. As an example one might think of the ‘‘proof of the existence of God’’ by Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury from 1093 to 1109 (‘‘God exists because one of his attributes is being perfect and he could not be perfect if he would not exist’’), or the conception of mind as a software that by arranging nonexperienced contraptions generates experience (not seldom inconsistently conceived as a ‘‘nonpersonal personhood’’ consisting only of ‘‘unowned mental contents,’’ so as to apply Locke’s account of brain-mind relationships as a mind-generative efficiency harnessing together the organic source and its product); or the so-called bootstrapping cosmogonies. This confusion, commonplace today and probably also among the Sophists in classical Greece, is an old neglect of ‘‘being’’ as enaction of a presence in the reality. ‘‘Being’’ is not a result of such presence’s features, and such a confusion between presence and description becomes crucial in the portrayal of cadacualtic realities. In this regard, because the logic of concepts asserts that

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being one is identical to being not another, the cultural eclipse of cadacualtez was reinforced, and its recognition looks as if it depended on its being generalized—thus requiring the annihilation of the denotative aptitude of its concept in order to use it. Deconstructing this composite cloaking, or eclipsing series of circumstances, demands heeding both that to be is really different from a combination of predicates and also the mentioned time asymmetry. In macroscopic affairs time is just an accidental occurrence, which comes from the differential acquisition of inertial mass by elementary ‘‘particles.’’ It is convenient now to cast a glance on this topic. Macroscopic time process, as well as spatiality or dispersivity for forces, are secondary, derivative cosmological occurrences. Building Circumstances That Evolve: Barygenesis and Time’s Spatial Spread Extramental things, the components of the hylozoic hiatus, compose a single realm that homogeneously features transeunt causation. It lacks any sink or source of causal action except in the microphysical scale (i.e., in the ‘‘bubbling,’’ by all of the overlapping physical fields, of the particles that constitute these fields’ potentials). Minds, in contrast, are cadacualtic and plural, as well as not pointlike but innerly extensive and differentiable sinks and sources of causal action. Thus each intramentality modifies unidirectionally the frontiers with extramentality by means of nomical and nonnomical causation, while extramentality can reciprocate the transformative action only nomically. It breaks any purported identity of intramentality with extramentality: their difference is not one of aspects, but an ontical difference. The element of this difference that is central at this point is that every realm harbors contents or components that aggregate and evolve differently. In the hylozoic hiatus, space is generated; namely, a dispersivity for forces comes to be, whose features it is unnecessary to detail here—although one might think of how mechanical levers do work (i.e., what supports the arms’ remarkable relationships), to get a taste of the sense in which space is a dispersivity for forces. Extramental space is a secondary offshoot of more basic physical determinations. At this time, every ten minutes more than three million kilometers of new space opens up between us and the Pisces-Perseus supercluster of galaxies, while in the same number of minutes more than 800,000 kilometers of fresh dispersivity also opens up between us and the nearer Virgo metagalaxy, so that also inside the small volume of our bodies new space must continuously force elementary components ever more apart, though on so small a scale the effect is unnoticeable. Through this space, the force carriers do transport or propagate the action of force fields. Such spatial hauling or conveyance of packets of efficient physical action is a key feature. Photons (light) carry the action of the electromagnetic field and gluons carry the action of the strong nuclear-force field; since both such species of carrier particles are

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massless, they move and propagate the respective field’s action with causal celerity, c. This is a speed that, light being an efficient causal action, is also the velocity of light. Photons frequently interact with the matter interposed in their path and become absorbed into some change of this absorbing matter. In making this change, the causal action carrier (photon) sacrifices its own being, that is, it is thus annihilated: this is why observers have no impression of the outer causation but only of the produced changes. This scientific point deserves philosophical underscoring: nobody could reproach David Hume (1711–1776) for not having foreseen that, more than a century and a half later, Max Planck (1858–1947) was to discover that physical causation comes in packets, so that in producing effects action packets annihilate and one could only see the effects—never acquiring any impression from the (exhausted) causative action by observing the extramental changes it had already produced. Hume was expecting such an impression for action and, on its nonoccurrence, rather than declaring that causation yields impressions only when the observer is the very causal agent, Hume declared causation to be an ungrounded idea both for extramental and for intramental realms. Hume’s mistake is important in the modern history of ideas. Hume’s error induced Inmanuel Kant (1724–1804) into the slumbering in which his subjectivisttranscendentalist dream occurred (Kant himself, of course, viewed it inversely, stating that Hume awoke him from his ‘‘dogmatic slumbering’’) and, bolstered by political and ideological confrontations, persuaded many moderns to view minds as ineffectual (epiphenomenal) and being as predicative (analytic). But let me return to natural science. The change that the annihilated photon caused in matter may later somehow subside. In doing this the absorber emits another photon, or several of them, with some of the energeı´a or capability of generating change (i.e., the field’s action) contributed by the previously absorbed photon. Inside condensed or gaseous matter, those photon substitutions are especially frequent. There the space traveled by each photon is very short: the energy (field’s action) of a photon created by the Sun’s nuclear furnace delays about a hundred thousand years in exiting the Sun. By then its carried action has been absorbed a very great number of times, each time to be later emitted as a new photon that travels much less than a millimeter before restarting the absorptionemission cycle. The many repetitions of this cycle’s characteristic time, rather than the sum of travel times, is what adds up to the largest share in the mentioned hundred thousand years. In interstellar space travels are longer—once having exited the Sun, a good proportion of solar photons arrive at the Earth unscattered, after an eight-minute trip—and some photons from remote galaxies actually travel for several thousand million years. Long or short, nevertheless, the duration is always the same if measured by a clock placed in the photon itself: no time. Or, to be exact, just the timelike thickness of all nature, namely the ‘‘interval’’ in which no physical force could ever cause a change.

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Change Is Forbidden between Physical Cause and Effect—Or, Why It Is Impossible to Plant an Interruption between the Observer and Her Observed Diversity No matter the length of the photon’s journey, for massless carriers of causal action the action is not spatially conveyed if measured in the carrier’s own frame of reference: action always acts in the same spot, in its ‘‘local’’ immediacy. So time does not elapse between emission and absorption, even if outer observers should construe the causal carrier as taking millions of years ‘‘in flight.’’ This is a crucial link that articulates space, time, and causality. It thus plays a pivotal role in relativity theory, where it makes another scientific point that deserves philosophical underscoring. Because of the influence acquired by Hume’s error and the persistence of societal factors that originally induced it, Poincare´, Einstein, Lorentz, Hilbert, and the other founders of relativity physics saw in this special celerity, c, a feature of light—‘‘light’s speed invariance’’; light and visual features (videas, as Ideas was originally written with an initial letter digamma, lost from the Greek alphabet already in Plato’s time) have been always a special predilection of Platonisms—rather than a feature of every efficient physical cause. This narrow attribution was bolstered by the fact that by then only two varieties of physical causes were distinguished—gravity and electromagnetism, light being known to belong with the latter—and that among physicists preponderated the PythagoreanPlatonic views that, finding time’s irreversible elapsing deplorable and unbearable, voiced and justified the societal struggle against time, wishing and presenting real causation as illusory. Such antichronic views made it seem credible that all the segments of an interval exist simultaneously. This in turn suggested that the formalisms employing a concept of four-dimensional space-time, proposed by Hermann Minkowski (1864–1909), do indeed match physical processes because past and future are in some way actual, and is why studies in relativity physics used to be infested with time machines: the theory both allows for and demands time travel in order to preserve self-consistency of dynamic space-time solutions. However, both time and space just display features from enactive causation. The link joining efficient causation, space, and time is the fact that what is usually named time consists of situational change; namely, change of situations, or shifting arrangements of positions in dispersivity. For example, deer ramble and clouds shift, causing effects anywhere they pass. Like deer and clouds, the microphysical causal carriers also move. But causal carriers only cause effects at arrival, because they are discrete packets that generate only one effect. Every discrete or indivisible quanta of field action communicates its own being to the effect, which is a change that thus comes to exist. Causal carriers cannot carry and sustain another effect for, say, communicating their position and so use up this single effect while moving—for example, in support of exchanges that, by delivering an impression to the observer, would result in their observability in intermediate stations. If causal carriers did so, as matter does, they would lose their sole effect, and nature’s transformations would ‘‘hang,’’ an outcome

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that Hume did not imagine. In this context, genuine or translocational propagation always takes time, or, while any propagation is on its course, nature grows older: its situations metamorphose. But causal action cannot be delayed by its propagative travel. From their own reference frame, the quanta of field action have always been intrinsic to their effect and thus no change comes to exist. (Thus what every packet of the efficient cause communicates is not numerically distinct from its own entity, and exhausts it in a wholly local transformation.) How, then, one might wonder, is it that light only causes effects at its arrival? Meanwhile, is not its causation in abeyance? Such a basis of relativity physics instances in fact the more general case, that no cause—and circumstanced minds are also efficient causes—can ‘‘become,’’ or delay its efficacy. To be transformative, causation is exerted in intransformativity, within the interval-like ‘‘thin’’ actuality of nature. One might say that causation is abeyant or suspended for a while, but since any while of situational change comes from causation, where causation is abeyant there is no gaugeable while. Therefore, for calculations, one would do better to word it as relativity physics does, pointing out that time does not elapse for the light ray or for any other massless quantum of causal action, no matter how long its propagation takes or which line of march it is steered through. In turn, those force carriers that possess inertial mass keep a certain proportion, mathematically determinable, of this same effect. In sum, from the photon’s frame of reference, no time passes. As far as it is concerned, the point of propagation and absorption are touching. A combination merging all the ‘‘own’’ referential frames, if perceived, would present Nature as a nonspatial interplay of determinations self-conditioning its parceled causal influences. Transformatively efficient causes in nature, counting of course minds’ causal efficiency exerted in it, may remain ‘‘not-yet-done’’ or ‘‘in propagation’’ only if depicted from reference frames other than their own. Efficient causal action—not to be mistaken as its effects, such as for light’s specific modality of interaction is observed to take, after the photon no longer exists, the next 10 27 minimally possible physical instants (5  1017 second in total) or longer to occur, so many interruptions could be planted in this process; it makes a good part of the protracted time taken by photons to leave the Sun—is delivered within a single physical instant, if described from its own frame. This also maintains its effected action local—that is, ignores spatial extension; or, more accurately said, keeps the effected action within a minute spatial locality. This locality varies in size for each interaction modality, yet is always defined above the Planck-scale graininess, which in current nature makes no possible causal demarcation of a spatial locality smaller than 1:616  1033 cm. One might say that it is for causal carriers to act locally (also to set the locality’s graininess, but this is another topic) that time does not elapse at their propagation, and vice versa. These two bound realities, namely that massless causal carriers cause effects locally and that their propagation takes no local time, constitute the brute fact of nature that the entirety of rela-

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tivity physics rests on. And, because we are finite semoviences, our efficient causal action in nature should also comply with such a restraint (in a certain proportion to the inertial mass of the action carriers we directly use to influence the next-toimmediate outer circumstance—that is, to modify our brain electroneurobiological state), thereby giving rise to many psychophysiological effects that biospheric evolution profited from. A bit more technically said, the fact that time does not elapse at the causal carrier makes its action maximally local with Planck-scale graininess, or its special ratio of distance traveled to time taken yields the causal action minimally dispersive (‘‘the closest possible to zero’’) at the path length. This applies to every causal action, so the causal status of knowledge is why it is impossible to plant an interruption between the observer and her observed diversity. It wrecks all the doctrines positing inner intervening mediations, symbolic and others, and points to the homogeneity of the semovient and nomic causal efficiencies. Barygenesis, Or How Selective Acquisition of Mass Spread Situational Change (‘‘Time’’) and Set Up Astrophysical-biological Evolution Yet surely in us, in the deer, and in the clouds there are other action quanta that are not causal carriers of force. Those others are among the quanta propagating at any speed. Massless causal quanta cannot vary their speed, namely c or causal celerity; they can neither decelerate nor accelerate, neither slow down nor speed up. Instead, those other quanta, some of which cannot impose situational modifications while others are efficient to cause change, acquire inertial mass. This mass is lent and not intrinsic to them. This process, not yet clarified, is called barygenesis or origin of mass (not to be mistaken with baryogenesis, the origin of the excess in our universe of the particles called baryons). Those particles that cannot impose situational modifications are known as quanta of matter fields, probably as an echo of the hierogamy models—some physical features nicely dovetail those ancient cosmogonies.2 Those mass-endowed particles that can impose changes to situations are known as mass-possessed quanta of force fields; they are, namely, those of weak nuclear interaction and possibly those of the force field where minds find their immediate circumstance. These action quanta with inertial mass can vary their speed and could never move at strictly c. That is, c is what mathematicians call a limit by right and by left. But c is a limit related to the instant’s ‘‘thickness’’ and requiring all the energy of the universe for any quantum with inertial mass (whether of a matter field or of a force field) to cross it. The combinations of matter-field quanta possessed with inertial mass and force-field quanta whether mass-possessed or massless make up the situations (e.g., the deer under the cloud) whose modification by physical forces is that to which time elapses—for instance, how long the moving cloud takes in leaving the deer behind, or how long our brains remain in the same place. (Dragged by the sum of known astronomical motions at almost 400 kilometer per second, a speed also probably close to the velocity with

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respect to the local space, brains linger in contact—on the scale of an atomic nucleus— with a fixed volume or region of its own size, also covered or suffused by all physical fields, for only about 1021 second; in the Planck scale, instead, brains are stationary during 4  1041 second—that is, no more than 730 Planck instants. This maximum figure is relevant for the physical description of the finite mind’s circumstancing to a parcel, or portion, of the action-quanta-bubbling field whose manifesting and compliant-to-semovience surf the mind is restricted to ‘‘ride.’’) That time elapses only to situations is extremely important because we causally efficient circumstanced existentialities do not exist a` la Minkowski—that is, along intervals—but inside the situational intransformativity of the physical instant’s actuality, which is where all our memories, projects, and interval-minding actions are ontologically crammed. In this scenario, the causal quanta affect the motion state of noncausal quanta. This corresponds to Newton’s concept of force. In fact, this effect is the origin of the first’s being labeled ‘‘causal’’ or causative and why they are also named carriers of the action of force fields. The noncausal quanta, all movable at variable speeds, vary their velocity as an effect caused from those packets of field action or force-carrying particles: both those that cannot travel at less or at more than exactly c speed in the medium (i.e., photons, gluons, and probably gravitons) and those that acquired some inertial mass (weak nuclear force carriers, and probably those at which minds find situational immediacy) and thus move at a specific, different speed. Such is the hold of time grab. Situational change was originally restricted to microphysics, but in this scenario it stretched its range to greater dimensions: this is the origin of time’s power over macroscopic nature. As mentioned, the secondary nature of this space is observed in the formation of fresh space in the middle of preexisting extensions of such space, a process now thought to occur everywhere: time course in macroscopic scales as well as extramental space are thus a secondary offshoot of more basic physical determinations. In both of them, causation is exerted in intransformativity—that is, ‘‘locally’’ and within the interval-like ‘‘thin’’ actuality of nature. It is nothing out of the ordinary, then, that some basic determinations do not find their way into features of spatial extramentality and so appear as unlocalizable. Minds also do it, and this is why they exhibit mnesic retentiveness and cause effects. To be transformative of spatial situations, both minds and action fields impose determinations on the local availability of causal carriers. The causal carriers of the force field that forms the minds’ immediate circumstance is the most that natural science can expect to observe—and this, even, at least for the time being, could only be done through the coupled states of the brain electromagnetic field. Science cannot observe determinations, whether those of minds or those of fields. In the same way as existentialities, the mentioned action quanta also come into existence as at eclosions—and the space unlocalizability of the origin of actions not only characterizes the extramental determinations involving minds. The determinations

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involving all the physical fields are characterized in the same manner, so that all that is seen has not been made out of things that actually appear. It is a general feature of the origination of efficient causality. The determinations, whereby such fields make eclose every new carrier of their forces to a certain time and place, are not local and even are unlocalizable in the field’s volume, although each field suffuses the whole universe. It parallels the fact that we can localize mind’s actions—that is, their operational presence—but not minds themselves. The Unoriginated Portion of Reality: Features and Relationship with the Originated Portion How could such a nature work as an instrument for the minds eclosed in it, which in turn find their intellectual development working as an instrument for dimming the planet’s glare? To attempt an answer, imagine that you are God. Or, if you do not believe in any revelation, imagine that you are the unoriginated portion of reality, the groundwork and origin canceling the nonexistence of everything else. Imagine that you are what enacts once at a time the actuality of the situations of all present nows, complete with their force and space scales, successive shapes, and consecutive eclosions. Factual research is only certain of two things about this unoriginated portion of reality. First, that it is not an entity: it is but does not exist (in the proper sense of ‘‘ex-sist’’—that is, coming out from something else). This is so because, as Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) stressed, one could not explain things that are entities in terms of other entities. The notion is frequently named the ‘‘ancient-India lesson,’’ because piling up entities, such as mighty elephants, massive turtles, and oceans, or any more modern and powerful cosmological keystones such as big bang–injected humongous energies, is now clearly seen as starting never-ending series. Second, that it is a personal reality, in other words that the nonentitative, unoriginated portion of reality takes decisions conferring actuality to what it wishes in a way analogous to that which one uses for nodding the head or forming a thought. This is so because it cannot be nonpersonal, that is to say a network of distinctions or necessary Fate, since distinctions do not suffice to confer actuality on the being of realities, and because the sole originating enactments found situated in any break of causal chains stem from personal decisions. Persons are the realities extant at causal chains’ breaks, a definition that for empirical science entails semovience and gnoseological apprehension of at least a part of the personal ontic consistency, as the foregoing discussions illustrated. For this empirical science, the apodictic personal reality shows itself capable of bringing about two different outcomes. One is canceling nonexistence into the being of the entities that such science studies. Another is determining this being among a variety of forms for its causal behavior. The factual demarcation between reality existing rather than not

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existing, on the one hand, and reality to be as it is, having the exact nature it has, on the other, makes the following situation plausible for empirical science’s considerations of the totality (in unsought yet remarkable conformity on this point with the religious reflection in both Orthodox and Catholic traditions and derived philosophies). Namely, that the former aptitude generated the latter exactly as itself and, in doing this, also generated in the second aptitude an axiological appreciation or ‘‘love’’ toward the former, which, to be actual, must be also semoviently taken on by the latter—that is, proceed also through the latter. Because all of these various preternatural realities wedge causal work in causal breaks and neither their number nor their peculiarities are necessary, none of them could be envisioned as impersonal. This sets a plurality of nonfinite cadacualtic persons in the apodictic or nonproduced ground whereby essents or entities exist rather than apodictic nothing actualizes. So, pluripersoneity and interpersonal relationships may plausibly take place in the apodictic ground. This may occur, because each nonfinite person is the entirety of the ground’s consistency (ousı´a), with a distinctive, relationally set cadacualtez. Insofar as the ground’s same apodictic consistency and nature are communicated without diminution to other nonfinite persons, they are the absolute ground without bringing any composition into it. However, since to the natural science’s considerations of totality the actions performed by nonfinite cadacualtic persons outside of this ground appear unified, no natural science could ascertain how many these plausible, nonfinite cadacualtic persons in fact are. Natural-scientific reflections on totality should, rather, leave it to the extrascientific considerations, which, considering it impossible that a production of finite persons would leave them unaided, accept providential revelation. This restriction matters here, inasmuch as it limits our envisaging this pluripersonality. In your imagining that you are the unoriginated portion of reality, you should imagine that you are ontically constituted as a plurality of cadacualtic persons. It of course exceeds our modeling capacity. One can at least proceed as regards the actions performed by nonfinite cadacualtic persons outside of this ground, which appear unified. So, now imagine that you, the unoriginated portion of reality, decide to generate free entities. Of course you cannot decide it on a whim, because you are not indifferent to good and evil, which you cannot establish other than as correlated with your wisdom and love. So your vigilant immediate presence is on the side of good and justice, yet you decide to generate entities free of placing themselves on any side. How do you do it? You, the unoriginated or nonproduced portion of reality, cannot mandate freedom because mandating it would wipe it out. Neither can you simulate it, because freedom comprises the power of causing its results and the power of causes is not simulatable. What then do you do to produce genuine freedom in reality, if freedom does not admit either coercion or simulation?

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One of the ways is that you erect a nature whose galaxies, star-studded skies, complex substances formed in outer space, planets, and living beings follow general rules of transformation and evolve impersonally, so that you may rest interventionally silent. That is, you make an extramental nature with everything possessed with forces efficient to cause the proper effect, so that you may govern nature only through very general interventions of your determination. You make things appear like a display showing that you have absolutely no task to carry out and never had one, so making yourself forgettable as if you yourself might well not have occurred at all. This nature may even be nonuniform in its basic regularities: these need not be the same everywhere. Thus such extramental nature may contain infinite subuniverses that do not allow the development of empsychable organizations. Yet in some at least of its sites, defined by extremely precise conditions of hospitality to life, for brief periods substrates are formed that allow personal existentialities to interact and actively learn about extramentalities. In this way your vigilant immediacy makes an observable universe endowed with the precise features that the intelligent finite existentialities, which you may then circumstance to the highly improbable empsychable bodies evolved in it, would expect if, from the start, you had not been there—and there had been no designer, no purpose, no value such as absolute good or evil, nothing but blind and relentless indifference. For example, you may create a multipotent energy, or segregable efficient action, that acquires being in packets whose eclosions and applicative inclusions are not all co-occurrent and, moreover, could not be determined as such because of intrinsic indeterminacy. Their applicability thus sets up a dispersivity (a dynamic space, or overlap of the fields generating the action packets) that defines places for arranging shapes while vacating itself outside of its intervalic thinness. Dispersing itself nomically in the growing dispersivity that it so generates, this segregable action separates into varieties (‘‘forces,’’ or modes of causal efficiency, or interaction modalities) whose diverse mutual couplings barygenically stretch beyond their microphysical scale the organizing distinctions due to its packets’ eclosions. Thus this segregable causal efficiency sustains all nomical change by vacating itself outside of its interval-like thinness. In such at every instant not-yet-transformed actuality this segregable action causes all nomical transformations. So it becomes spatially dissimilated into macrophysical shapes, termed situations, that form and transform along causal courses whose past is substituted. Such segregable, nomical efficient action forms the hylozoic hiatus. Some of its situations and their antecedent becomings, nevertheless, turn out to be molarly referred to as ontic-ontological differentiations in the finite existentialities (persons, some of whom are to become responsibly free without your ostension) that you then cadacualtically make eclose also therein, and who make simultaneous their constitutive references to both antecedent and derived situations. All this is done so that you, the

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nonentitative apodictic ground or unoriginated portion of all reality, although immediately supporting everything in its ever-present origination, never appear in doing your job. Keeping you only investigatable by way of shadows and enigmas is the unknowingness-providing function of a nomically transforming hylozoic hiatus. The interventional silence of the unoriginated portion of reality shapes the mindsimplementing course of the palindrome. Because if you appeared—for example, exposing any intent that free beings should appreciate your love or support your project and thus value responsible freedom—you would coerce them to be free, annulling for them any genuine freedom. In natural science’s grandest picture of reality, this seems to be the most plausible account for why existentiality controlled animals continue to be born, and suffer— that is, why natural and artificial dissimilating substrates always attract existential eclosions—which can be trustably used for optimizing thermodynamic relaxation. In its broad outline, all the originated portions of reality came to exist because of the unoriginated portion and their usefulness is not other than supporting genuine freedom in a multiplicity of finite existentialities. Natural ‘‘laws’’ serve to ensure that genuine, actual freedom appears in nature. Freedom is factually found in it as well as freedom’s dependence on this empirical unostensiveness—at times excruciating, as if it was an abandonment. Such a freedom would be spoiled if the apodictic portion of reality, and nonentitative source whereby there is something rather than nothing, proclaimed what it values, why there is something rather than nothing, and how it expects that free existential finitudes will utilize the genuine feeedom protected by ignoring all that. To be sure alligators, ducks, kangaroos, or minds eclosed to most artificial substrates will not act on ethical motivations. Nonhumans and often also humans act on impulse, on passions. Controlling oneself is a matter of social breeding, a cultural issue, paleontologically recent and cosmologically ephemeral, that the body and brain of many animals do not allow; or allow it only rudimentarily, as among dolphins and chimpanzees. Yet, as a scientifically ascertained fact, had those animal’s bodies and brains not been evolutionarily developed, we would not have developed our brain as needed to permit our society and culture; had this evolution not been nomical, we would not have our freedom uncoerced. This we owe to the misery of less ratiocinating existences, besides the love and understanding that we frequently exchange with our domestic animals, horses and herds. Yet dignity toward others was always recognized step by step. While, still, foreigners from faraway cultures are often tendentiously presented and quickly identified—with a feeling of relief—as obviously less personal and worthy than the intragroup’s ‘‘full persons,’’ in turn women, slaves, American natives, African anthropoids, and any intelligent extraterrestrial organisms motivated learned discussions to ascertain if they indeed deserved complete respect. It is not therefore surprising that

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traditions affect the ways in which we scientists view, value, and speak about animals other than humans. Only recently did it became apparent to us that mind-possessing animals are nonhuman persons, existentialities equal to us whose circumstances dissimilate their ontic consistency into mental contents different from those which our brains, adapted to another history, in turn dissimilate. So that you, the unoriginated portion of reality, having risk-takingly voided your axiological priority into other genuine cocreators, cannot expect that we embrace your values if those other suffering existentialities were only instruments to allow our genuine freedom. Would you negate the intrinsically valuable condition of existentialities by just using and discarding most of them because they exhausted themselves in allowing others to be free? To enable this they gave all that they had; do we not owe to their martyrdom our arrival to be genuinely free, with the indecisiveness of ultimate issues that is precisely the guardian of our freedom? Their eclosions let you have your interventional silence. Their sufferings, in circumstances that they did not choose, ensured the natural selection of our quota of sensibility and intelligence—and, since actuality is not a predication and thus is acquired on establishing value, persons, whether nonhuman or human, are ontologically defined as beloved realities, cherished as their circumstances were especially provided for them in each case. Therefore, although in the old role of a natural scientı´st with limited subject fields I should not opine if there is a paradise or fulfillment of constitutive love, for investigating values I must consider the articulation of all the facts empirically found and, in this new role for natural scientists, I can certainly affirm that, if there is such a paradise, it surely is to be shared by nonhuman circumstanced existentialities. Then the lamb will lie down with the lion, their lives and deaths counting as martyrdom. Every mind, every circumstanced existentiality, is also ontically and ontologically constituted by value—even the mind unbarterably composing a personal unity with the last caecilian body (limbless burrowing wormlike amphibians) or regulating any other organism: or, in other words, minds’ ontic consistency is an amorous condition. Only the growing and then declining number of answerable finite existentialities in every subuniverse can reject this love, rebuffing the ultimate project, and chose to die. Yet who takes the risks? He who provides circumstances, the unoriginated portion of reality that in setting up everything else also sets its value—and keeps interventional silence about it, so that this value may in turn be embraced or rejected by some finite existentialities. Apart from these rationality-exercising existentialities, which are a tiniest share of them all, empsyched nonhumans join the large portion of humankind that dies before attaining any bloom of liable reasoning and the humans lacking all possibility of ripening their powers save to tackle bodily needs. Their eclosions allow you to be an ultimate ground so incredibly stupid as to have set nomic natural causes, set by love; for, it is because of love that you void yourself of your importance, as it is seen when

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scientists look at only one course of the cosmological palindrome. Your love prevents you from remaining the unique ground of reality; by such a love you obey, you void yourself of your ostensibility and preeminence, you take orders so that our technology, or animal reproductive behavior, arranges a proper substrate and you, obediently, circumstance a personal existentiality there: you obediently give being to an anomic existentiality for unbarterably constituting a person together with such a viable substrate, no matter if artificial. Circumstanced persons, whether nonhuman or human, are thus defined as beloved realities, cherished as their circumstances were especially provided for then in each case, but it does not entail that they are forced to reciprocate these feelings. Those axiological considerations are tied to the eschatological plausibilities set by the scientific description of the whole of natural reality. The concept of the mentioned paradise of course is that of the cancellation of your unostensiveness. You may cancel it as soon as the bodily conditions become reunited—that is, as soon as some animal species have evolved as to dissimilate enough mental contents and you added to the circumstanced existentialities, interventionally, an ontic texture supporting a full insight of reality without need of developmental experience. Yet such infused cognizance does not touch freedom. Since you are not limited to following Linnaeus’s or any other classification of biological species, you are in this way creating what may be properly named the full human species; it does not matter that the ancestors of their body, lacking in such ontic texture, had previously evolved the entirety of the bodily resources and even developed communicational, lithic, fire, sailing, and other technologies. However, the individual persons circumstanced to your new species, even if capable of adhering to your project, may also wish to refuse it. Your prevision of this refusal justified your former unostensiveness; your frustration at it justifies your ‘‘expelling them from paradise,’’ coming back to such unostensiveness. Death Is a Biological Fact, Personal Existence Is Not The ultimate gift of conscious life is a sense of the mystery that encompasses it, as Lewis Mumford once wrote. Insofar as the anomic determination of every cadacualtez impedes the natural sciences from describing the encountered reality as any single set of fundamental facts transformed on any single set of fundamental regularities, and from expecting that any such description could endure as the foundation of all natural science forevermore, natural science has recovered such a sense of the mystery that encompasses conscious life: for what it is existentially worth and also as a tool to modify the world—which natural science always proclaimed as its ultimate goal (see Bush 1945). Ultimate value makes every existentiality ultimately nondispensable. Sensing semoviences—percipient agencies, sentient intelligences—irrevocably stay as the beloved

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realities among the facts encountered in nature, while other facts appear as a means used to uncoercively attain differentiations in the ontic consistency of such sensing semoviences. I will still return below to this palindrome-dynamizing, irrevocable ontic and axiological disparity between existentialities and extramentality. First let me note that, accordingly, any gnoseological apprehension active by itself in the absence of organically renewable noema, whether metaphysically (after death) or circumstanced to carriers unresolving a current neurodynamics (as during a too short interval, or in deep sleep), to direct any actual putative actions may still depend on effects caused indelibly or constitutively on it by its unbarterable biographical differentiations. These actions, in off-body noematic circumstances, seem solely of the mentioned kinds: the affirming options, and both unintonated and phenomenizing reactions stirred through sedimented or through innovative semovient operations. This grounds the metaphysical alternative concerning finite noeseis bereft of unbarterable brain-provided noematic refreshments. The derived character, secondary in respect of efficient agencies, of both a particular dispersivity for forces (extramental space) and the barygenesis’ extension of time to macroscopic extramental courses, was noted above. What can a natural science, expanded by its recognizing in nature cadacualtic semovient observers whose existence is unassailable by the formation, transformation, and obliteration of the bodily circumstances that became theirs, tell us about it? Simply that postmortal finite existentialities in such a state are to exist within the instantaneous actuality—like us premortal ones and like every other efficient cause, acting only locally—but in nondispersivity, that is to say, differing from us premortals only as they lack the causal chain for exchanges with extramentality, provided by the respective bodies. So their noematic contents acquired in dispersivity (memories and their elaborations) are to be provided only by their ontic consistency, which as we have seen neither comes from, nor was furnished by, what was their anatomophysiological circumstance—that is, the body, no longer existing after death. Thus I see nothing from preventing postmortal finite existentialities in a bodyless condition from keeping themselves semoviently operating, with the objects differentiated in their respective onticity, in the same operational allowances of the sensory and spatial dimensions where they learned—while they were bodily circumstanced—to conserve operationally those objects. To those basic operational allowances should be added the other nonspatial operatory possibilities (such as mathematical operations, or family ‘‘space’’ references), which precisely show that such semovient operations occur as modifications in the ontic consistency of these existentialities—and not in the sensory and spatial dispersivity whose set of allowances and restraints was learned to be kept in them (that is, in those existentiality-transforming semovient operations) for biologically adaptive object conservation. Such a natural science also tells us that circumstanced existentialities were instrumented as a means, that is functionalized, by some physical process—in other words,

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the cosmological-biospheric evolution—which in turn was functionalized to afford responsibility to some finite semoviences. The fact of having been circumstanced to evolutionarily developed anatomophysiological means for realizing the situation, entails the mentioned responsibility. A constitutive but—because finding oneself living in such circumstances is itself a nonchosen surprise—a noncompulsive responsibility that, as well as the enrichment of their ontic consistency acquired with the utilization of their freedom, does not depend on their continuing availing, or on their being bereft, of brain-provided noematic updates. Sense (meaning) is what is at stake in a timeprocesses-including reality not originating from necessity but also setting, with being, axiological value. This is so because the nonentitative, unoriginated portion of reality is not forced to set this value under any necessity that would spoil its freedom. However, once having set this thereby-worthy entitative actuality, the nonentitative, apodictic portion of reality encounters the value-including ontic consistency of this actuality—just as each cogitating finite existentiality finds her own doubt-positing act withstanding the very doubting action, at her cogito. In the same way postmortal existentialities in an unembodied condition might cause in their onticity reactions to their own actions. Yet the severe limitations of all animal and human biographies make one think that these limitations would be canceled if the mentioned paradise is to be enacted,3 though of course natural science could not find further differentiations metaphysically appended so as to enable their postmortal existentialities for a full grasp of reality. All things considered, axiological responsibility comes with axiological value and affects all cocreators: as well the unoriginated portion of reality as the circumstanced semoviences who are accountable for their behavior both before society and in regard to the ultimate sense. This is the intrinsic moral lesson that the natural world has to teach us. If life is a great surprise, I do not see why death should not be an even greater one, as Vladimir Nabokov (1989, C549) once said. But, as regards the ontic disparity between minds and extramentality, the fact that being’s nonpredicational consistency makes absolute nonsense impossible, sets up another palindrome, and also a palindromic relationship between the two palindromes. The mutual functionalization of minds by extramentality and of extramentality by minds, which factual science discovers, cannot itself be absolute. This is so because the disparity of minds and extramentalities reflects a disparity of absolute or ultimate sense. Extramentalities cannot be loved by themselves nor reciprocate love as, on the contrary, existentialities can. This comes from the absolutely most basic of all differences, which is the difference between ontic enactment, or actual being, and nonbeing or absolute nothing. Because being is not a predicate, this basic difference cannot be distinctionally exhausted. Necessities cannot acquire enactive actuality by themselves. Astounding and incredible as it may seem the finding that rather than absolute nothing, being and lo´gos actualize,

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our direct grasp in ourselves of what being is, though ineffable, allows us to perceive that, while enactment—even preentitative—can enact distinctions and actualize a lo´gos, no lo´gos can distinctionally enact being. This is a fundamental disymmetry, based on the mentioned, most basic difference. It grounds the fact that extramentalities can neither be loved by themselves nor reciprocate, as instead existentialities can, because the being of all in the hylozoic hiatus is ultimately fungible. A unique lo´gos sets up their being. In contrast, as we saw, every person is nonlawful, or illogical, his or her cadacualtez being a unique affair of existence that does not belong within any realm of essences. The coming into actuality of every person is thus setting, so to say, a separate lo´gos. This is why the palindrome found by scientific observation is not ultimate and becomes instead dynamized into further palindromic dynamics, inasmuch as neither the whole hylozoic hiatus nor any of its components could ever be anything else than a means—and its functionalizing of minds just a recognition of the minds’ capability of also getting instrumental value—while the realities loved by themselves can also reciprocate, or may not wish to. The possible reciprocity of love between circumstanced and unoriginated persons inchoates the new palindromic relationship. It is what enacts into actuality the palindrome found by natural science and is also enacted by it—in still a new palindromic relationship of a further order or level. Yet it runs not only on being and not being but also on love and violence. What in sum does the apodictic portion of reality do that attracts the attention of natural scientists? In setting up this realm of nomical evolution, namely nature, the nonentitative, unoriginated portion of reality mutely plays, in the nonnecessity, gratuity, and superfluousness of installing such a realm of nomical evolution as well as the existentialities that differentiate there their onticity in reference to their circumstances—some of whom so may become uncoerced cocreators. It sets this reality as if we uncoerced cocreators were necessary to solve problems, and thereby it stakes itself, as we cocreators in the new reality inaugurate values that gauge even such a silent play and its responsibility. As often is the case, it all started as play and matured as love. A reciprocal love demands full acceptance of risks, empathy, and understanding, an understanding of course beyond the reach of most finite minds, nonhuman as well as human, and which, if at all coming into existence, is to be provided just like existence: gratuitously, because what is loved is free reciprocity. Mas la vida tiene abismos insondables (life, nonetheless, has unfathomable abysses), as stated in ´Intimas, a tango by A. Lacueca and R. L. Brignolo, and ‘‘The genre of the palindrome, playful and ludic as it is, nonetheless has a strong implication of violence’’ (Greber 1996, 142): this gratuitous reciprocity also may not be provided by the unoriginated portion of reality. This is what is tremendous about it. And also palindromic: if one is frightened at that, that also frightens it.

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Notes This chapter is based in part on unpublished material from a book that was completed some time ago and that is summarized in Crocco 2004b, and in Spanish-language teaching materials. ´ vila and Crocco 1996, 928. 1. This paragraph is taken from the Glossary in A 2. ‘‘Is there much difference between the old lady’s turtles and the fundamental laws of physics, if from these laws a physicist can claim that the totality of phenomena can in principle be understood?’’ (Stengers 1997, 60). 3. King David’s inspired hunch, or perhaps that of one of the voices placed under his patronage, chose it to illustrate ultimate justice in Ps. 36 (V. 35), 7: ‘‘Lord, you will make men and beasts safe.’’ References ´ vila, Alicia, and Mario Crocco (1996), Sensing: A New Fundamental Action of Nature (Folia NeuroA biolo´gica Argentina, Vol. X), Buenos Aires: Institute for Advanced Study. Bush, Vannevar (1945), ‘‘As We May Think,’’ The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 176, No. 1, July, p. 108. Crocco, Mario (2004a), ‘‘¡Alma ‘e reptil! Los contenidos mentales de los reptiles y su procedencia file´tica,’’ Electroneurobiologı´a , Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 1–72; also at http://electroneubio.secyt.gov.ar/ index2.htm. ——— (2004b), ‘‘On Minds’ Localization,’’ Electroneurobiologı´a, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 244–257. Garstang, Walter (1894), ‘‘Preliminary Note on a New Theory of the Phylogeny of the Chordata,’’ Zoologischer Anzeiger, Vol. 17, pp. 122–125. ——— (1928), ‘‘The Morphology of the Tunicata and Its Bearing on the Phylogeny of the Chordata,’’ Quarterly Journal of Microscopical Science, Vol. 72, pp. 51–187. Greber, Erika (1996), ‘‘Palindromon—revolutio,’’ in Z. Bencic and A. Flaker, eds., Ludizam. Zagrebacki Pojmovnik Kulture 20. Stoljeca, pp. 141–174, Zagreb. Trans. from Serbo-Croatian and summarized as ‘‘A Chronotope of Revolution: The Palindrome from the Perspective of Cultural Semiotics,’’ at http://www.realchange.org/pal/semiotic.htm and http://www.ags.uci.edu/ ~clcwegsa/revolutions/Greber.htm. ˜ o lectivo 1900, Hospicio de las Mercedes (now Jakob, Christfried (1900), Curso de neurobiologı´a—An Hospital ‘‘Dr. J. T. Borda,’’ Buenos Aires). The course was summarized in La Semana Me´dica, Vol. VII. Dates: June 28, 1900, pp. 325–327; July 12, 1900, pp. 354–358; July 19, 1900, pp. 363–366; Aug. 9, 1900, pp. 403–408; Aug. 30, 1900, pp. 439–444; Sept. 20, 1900, pp. 479–481; and Nov. 8, 1900, pp. 589–590. ——— (1911a), Das Menschenhirn: Eine Studie u¨ber den Aufbau und die Bedeutung seine grauen Kerne und Rinde [The Human Brain: A Study of Its Structure, Its Gray Matter, and the Cortex], Munich: J. F. Lehmann’s Verlag.

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——— (1911b), Vom Tierhirn zum Menschenhirn, I. Teil: Tafelwerk nebst Einfu¨hrung in die Geschichte der Hirnrinde [From Animal Brain to Human Brain, Part I, Tables and Introduction to the History of the Cortex], Munich: J. F. Lehmann’s Verlag. ——— (1918), ‘‘Del mecanismo al dinamismo del pensamiento,’’ Anales de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad de Buenos Aires, Vol. XVIII, pp. 195–238. Jakob, Christfried, and Clemente Onelli (1913), Atlas del cerebro de los mamı´feros de la Repu´blica Argentina: Estudios anato´micos, histolo´gicos y biolo´gicos comparados sobre la evolucio´n de los hemisferios y de la corteza cerebral, Buenos Aires: Guillermo Kraft. Nabokov, Vladimir (1989), Pale Fire: The Magic of Artistic Discovery, New York: Vintage. Nakajima, Yoko, Hiroyuki Kaneko, Greg Murray, and Robert D. Burke (2004), ‘‘Divergent Patterns of Neural Development in Larval Echinoids and Asteroids,’’ Evolution & Development, Vol. 6, No. 2, March, pp. 95–104. Nielsen, Claus (1999), ‘‘Origin of the Chordate Central Nervous System—and the Origin of Chordates,’’ Development Genes and Evolution, Vol. 209, No. 3, pp. 198–205. ——— (2005), ‘‘Trochophora Larvae: Cell-Lineages, Ciliary Bands and Body Regions. 2. Other Groups and General Discussion,’’ Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution, Vol. 304B, No. 5, September, pp. 401–447. ¨ hn, Vesna Radosavljevic, Ruth Wellenreuther, Hans Lehrach, and Poustka, Albert J., Alexander Ku Georgia Panopoulou (2004), ‘‘On the Origin of the Chordate Central Nervous System: Expression of Onecut in the Sea Urchin Embryo,’’ Evolution & Development, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 227–236. Stengers, Isabelle (1997), Power and Invention: Situating Science, trans. Paul Bains, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Tamm, Sidney L., and Signhild Tamm (2002), ‘‘Novel Bridge of Axon-Like Processes of Epithelial Cells in the Aboral Sense Organ of Ctenophores,’’ Journal of Morphology, Vol. 254, No. 2, November, pp. 99–120.

III Experience of Existence

This section takes as its starting point the assertion that knowledge about consciousness must eventually translate into the skills and abilities of conscious action—and into relational interaction with local and nonlocal environments. Historical records of cultural achievements show an astonishing bounty of human action in consciousness. Across cultures and on all continents, mastery of percipient action in a variety of ontological manifestations demonstrates that the exclusion of so-called unexplained phenomena is no more than an admission of theoretical incompleteness. Each of the following eight chapters describes a unique account of spontaneous action in humans, along with a theoretical narrative to place such private experiences in their corresponding ontological domain. When philosophical inquiry becomes a way of life, the typical boundary of theoretical versus practical application ceases to be a meaningful line of demarcation for intellectual practice. This becomes paradigmatic for the field of consciousness research, since subjective experience—like any other skill can be influenced by a range of variables, which shape its content for framing corresponding ontological realms of possible interactivity. As science slowly maps the neurophysiological underpinnings for an ontology of consciousness, percipient action continues to present itself at different levels of complexity. What follows should be assessed with an open mind and with the understanding that a truthfully recorded skill is indeed a fact.

13 The Evolution of Consciousness in Sri Aurobindo’s Cosmopsychology Matthijs Cornelissen

Abstract Sri Aurobindo sees evolution primarily as an ongoing evolution of consciousness. He holds that the human mind is much too imperfect a type of consciousness to be the final resting point of nature, and that just as life developed out of matter, and mind out of life, a still higher form of consciousness is bound to develop out of the mind. For his evolutionary ontology of consciousness, Aurobindo bases himself on the Veda¯ntic view of consciousness, which says that consciousness is pervasive throughout reality and that it manifests as a range of ever-higher gradations of consciousness and being. In matter, consciousness is fully engrossed in its own existence and shows itself only as matter’s habit of form and its tendency to obey fixed laws. In plant and animal life, consciousness begins to emancipate a little, there are the first signs of exchange, of giving and taking, of feelings, drives, and emotions. In the human mind we see a further emancipation of consciousness in the first appearance of an ability to ‘‘play with ideas in one’s mind’’ and to rise above the immediate situation. The mind is characteristically the plane of objective, generalized statements, ideas, thoughts, intelligence, and so on. But the mind is also an inveterate divider, making distinctions between subject and object, I and thou, things and other things. Within the Vedic tradition, the ordinary human mentality is considered to be only the most primitive form of mental consciousness, the most ego-bound, the most dependent on the physical senses. Above it there is the unitary Higher Mind of self-revealed wisdom, the Illumined Mind where truths are seen rather than thought, the plane of the Intuitive Mind where truth is inevitable and perfect, and finally the cosmic Overmind, the mind of the Gods, comprehensive, all-encompassing. But in all these mental planes, however far beyond our ordinary mentality, there is still a trace of division, the possibility of discord and disharmony. One has to rise beyond all of them to find a truly Gnostic consciousness, intrinsically harmonious, perfect, one with the divine consciousness that upholds the universe. Many spiritual traditions have claimed that it is possible to connect or even merge with an absolute consciousness beyond mind, but, according to Aurobindo, it is at this moment for the first time becoming possible to let a supramental consciousness enter into one’s being and transform it in every respect. The comprehensive, supramental transformation of all aspects of human nature is the central theme of Aurobindo’s work. While at present this can be done only

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to a limited extent, and at the cost of a tremendous individual effort, he predicts that eventually the supramental consciousness will become as much an intrinsic, ‘‘natural’’ part of earthly life as our ordinary mentality is now. In this chapter a comparison is drawn between Aurobindo’s evolutionary conceptualization of consciousness and the concepts of consciousness more commonly encountered in contemporary consciousness studies. A number of ontological and epistemological questions arising out of this comparison are discussed. A short indication is given of the ‘‘inner gestures’’ that can help to put an individual on the path toward the ultimate transformation of consciousness and being, which Aurobindo proposes.

Introduction A growing number of authors suggest that for an effective study of consciousness a new, nonreductionist understanding of the basic nature of reality might be essential (Varela, Thompson, and Rosch 1993; Baruss and Moore 1998; Griffin 1998; Velmans 2000). Some of these recently suggested approaches have their roots in traditional methodologies of scientific inquiry, while others have been envisioned in contemplative traditions and spiritual practice. This chapter addresses relevant aspects of consciousness research in Indian philosophy with special emphasis on the work of Aurobindo. The phrase ‘‘Indian philosophy’’ evokes images of the hoary past, Vedas compiled centuries before the birth of Homer, the lofty s´lokas of the Upanisads, and spiritual ˙ teachings given in the midst of the romantic battle scenes of the Bhagavad Gı¯ta¯. Those who are more familiar with the subject may have different associations; they may think of the six great schools of philosophy that flourished during the early centuries ˙ sa¯, Sa¯m ˙ khya, Yoga,1 Nya¯ya, and Vais´esika. Few of the Common Era, Veda¯nta, Mı¯ma¯m ˙ are aware that some of the most interesting work in Indian philosophy was done in much more recent times. At the end of the nineteenth century, Ramakrishna Paramhansa united in his own life the major realizations of all the spiritual traditions known in the India of his time. In the first half of the twentieth century, Aurobindo built a still wider synthesis, encompassing not only what he felt was the essence of the Indian tradition but also what he considered the best that the Western civilization was in the process of bringing forth. Aurobindo’s main philosophical work, The Life Divine, opens with a chapter titled ‘‘The Human Aspiration.’’ It addresses the urge for progress, the yearning for freedom, light, and perfection, which is so consistently contradicted by our immediate experience, but which still seems to be one of our most typical and most persistent human traits. Aurobindo sees this urge for progress as an expression in the individual of a much vaster movement in nature, a movement that shows itself most clearly in the, at first sight rather improbable, evolution of life and mind out of matter.

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While it is part of the current understanding of ‘‘evolution’’ that life evolved out of matter and that mind evolved out of life, Aurobindo’s interpretation of these phenomena is quite different from that of reductionist science. In keeping with the Vedic and Veda¯ntic traditions, Aurobindo takes matter, life, and mind as limited forms of consciousness.2 He then argues that because life is a less limited form of consciousness than matter, and mind is a less limited form of consciousness than life, the next step in evolution could be a still less limited form of consciousness. The general difficulty in appreciating this model might be that one equates consciousness (in line with the Western tradition) with our ordinary human mentality, while Aurobindo (in line with the Vedic tradition) envisions it primarily as an absolute, divine consciousness, of which matter, life, and mind are lower and limited manifestations. The oldest Indian texts, the Vedas, hold that a divine Truth Consciousness is the hidden essence of all that exists.3 In this view there are many different worlds. In each world the divine Truth Consciousness is manifested in a different manner. Together they form a vast hierarchy of different levels of consciousness, a hierarchy that ranges right from seemingly unconscious matter to the superconscious absolute spirit. The world of our ordinary human experience is a mixed world somewhere in the middle. Its basis is physical, but it is permeated and transformed by life and mind.4 It is moreover, as Aurobindo observed, not only a mixed world, but also an evolutionary world. There appears to have taken place a gradual unfolding of these higher (that is, less concealed) forms of consciousness. Within this vast hierarchical framework, the human individual is seen as one specific center of consciousness that typically experiences itself, at least when awake, as a mental being in a living body. But this is not its only possibility: its center of self-awareness can be located at different levels. I can not only have my center of awareness in my mind and say ‘‘I think,’’ but I can also be centered in the body and then say ‘‘I am tired,’’ or in the emotions—which are considered to be primarily5 part of the lifeworld—and say, ‘‘I am happy.’’ As we have seen, the ordinary human mind is regarded as not more than a middle term and authors throughout the history of Indian thought confirm that with sufficient training it is possible to free oneself from one’s experience of embeddedness in the physical body, its sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Freed from these limitations one can explore what appear as worlds of a higher consciousness than the ordinary mind. Aurobindo brought this ancient knowledge together with what we now know about biological evolution, and concluded that just as there has been a time when life and mind were not yet embodied on earth, the higher planes of consciousness may also be awaiting their time to become part of the ordinary, embodied reality. He felt that the ordinary human mind is far too imperfect a type of consciousness to be the ultimate achievement of evolution and saw the persistent human drive toward absolute freedom, power, knowledge, and immortality as the signs that this is what nature is striving for in us.

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These, then, are three of the main elements that characterize Aurobindo’s writings: the urge for progress toward ever-greater freedom and perfection, the idea that the forces at work in the individual are concentrated reflections of similar forces at work in the large and leisurely movements of Nature, and the notion of consciousness as the fundamental reality. These three ideas come together in Aurobindo’s concept of an ongoing evolution of consciousness,6 which runs as a central theme through all his work. It may be clear that Aurobindo’s idea of an ongoing evolution of consciousness can only be understood correctly in the context of his, essentially Vedic, conceptualization of consciousness. As we have seen, he takes consciousness not only as awareness, but also as supportive of individuation and as the dynamic determination of form and movement on different levels of emancipation. I will work these characteristics out further in the rest of this chapter and hope to show that they not only provide for a logically coherent ontology, but also return meaning and enchantment to the human enterprise. But before we take this up, it may be good to glance, from an Indian perspective, at the more common ways consciousness is presently understood in mainstream science, which is still dominated by positivist influences arising from European history. Consciousness in Contemporary Philosophy Consciousness is notoriously difficult to define7 and the predominantly materialistic outlook of modern times has not made it any easier. Thomas Nagel’s famous indicator of the presence of consciousness in an organism—that ‘‘there is something it is like to be that organism’’ (see Nagel 1979, 176)—is attractive, if only for its charming simplicity, but it does not really help to delineate what consciousness is and what it is not. Moreover, it strengthens the existing tendency, especially among psychologists, to equate consciousness with awareness, which is useful for many practical purposes but leads to serious problems when dealing with states other than our ordinary waking consciousness. To illustrate this point, one might consider that it is only natural to hold that we are conscious during daydreams or during those dreams that we remember on waking. But if during the day something happens that makes us suddenly remember a dream that we were not aware of on waking up, we cannot in retrospect assign consciousness to such a dream on the basis of something that happened long after the dream ended (and that could very well not have happened). So we have to presume that we are conscious in all dreams, independent of the question whether we remember them in our waking condition or not. From here it is only one further step to admit the possibility of the presence of consciousness even during deep sleep,8 in a coma, or in meditation.9 Once the simple identification of consciousness with our ordinary waking awareness of our surroundings is broken, the road opens to a wider concept of consciousness. The

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main objection against panpsychism,10 the notion that consciousness is pervasive throughout the manifestation, is that it is hard to imagine that plants and rocks have sensorial awareness because they lack the complicated architecture of our brain and sense organs. But once it is admitted that even we humans have at different times essentially different types of consciousness, of which only some are directly related to our senses, then the main argument against awarding animals, plants, or even rocks with consciousness breaks down. They may simply have their own type of consciousness, different from our ordinary mental, sense-based awareness. To paraphrase Nagel, it might even be something like, to be a rock. This is important because there is something deeply counterintuitive to the idea that something so specific and nonmaterial as our awareness of ourselves and the world would suddenly arise out of insensitive matter at a certain level of complexity. As David Ray Griffin (1998, 10) points out, the question of how experience could arise out of nonexperiencing things is, in principle, insoluble. Of course, not everyone accepts the pervasiveness of consciousness. Colin McGinn, for example, agrees that the genesis of nonspatial consciousness out of an unconscious physical brain is not understandable, but leaves the unsolved riddle right there. About our inability to grasp the nature of nonspatial consciousness, he says apologetically, ‘‘It must not be forgotten that knowledge is the product of a biological organ whose architecture is fashioned by evolution for brutely pragmatic purposes,’’ and in a footnote: ‘‘We too are Flatlanders of a sort: we tend to take the space of our experience as the only space there is or could be’’ (McGinn 1995, 230). In harmony with his pessimistic view of our human possibilities for understanding reality, McGinn does not accept panpsychism. In the article quoted he still agrees that some form of panpsychism is the only way out of the conundrum of David Chalmers’s ‘‘hard problem,’’ but in his later The Mysterious Flame, McGinn (1999, 95–104) denies that it could do even that. Chalmers is one of the most outspoken supporters of panpsychism and has argued extensively against materialism. His writings are an interesting example of how deeply the physicalist view of reality is engrained in contemporary Western philosophy: the materialist bias shows even in those authors who apparently oppose it. Chalmers (1995, 210) formulates his ‘‘hard problem’’ as the question of ‘‘how experience depends on physical features of the world.’’ His main argument in this oft-quoted article is that we can only find a solution to his question if we ‘‘take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge and space-time’’ (p. 210), but the very wording he has used to formulate the question shows that for Chalmers experience is still not as fundamental as matter: he simply takes it for granted that consciousness ‘‘depends’’ on the physical substrate. A little later in the same passage he even asserts as self-evident that ‘‘physical processes give rise to experience.’’ It is not fully clear what these phrases mean. They seem to indicate that it is not only the form or content of experience but the very existence of experience that depends on and

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arises from the physical features of the world. But this can hardly be what Chalmers intends to express, because this would contradict his statement about experience being a fundamental feature of the world. One can argue that a certain functioning of the brain or a specific interaction between the brain and an external stimulus is needed to give consciousness a certain perceptible form or intensity, but that does not entail that the brain can create (or ‘‘give rise to’’) consciousness where there was no consciousness before. As Aurobindo (1990, 86) points out, ‘‘Our physical organism no more causes or explains thought and consciousness than the construction of an engine causes or explains the motive-power of steam or electricity. The force is anterior, not the physical instrument.’’ It may be noted that the hard question could have been formulated quite easily in a neutral way as ‘‘how experience covaries with physical features of the world’’ and it is worth pondering why this was not done. The materialistic tilt in Chalmers’s version does not seem to have been a question of an incidental oversight or imprecise wording. In a later article Chalmers (2000, section 4) defines a neural correlate of consciousness as ‘‘a minimal neural system N such that there is a mapping from states of N to states of consciousness, where a given state of N is sufficient, under conditions C, for the corresponding state of consciousness.’’ Here again, the correlation is defined as an asymmetrical relationship, a one-way determination from matter to consciousness. It is quite remarkable that the opposite idea, that it might be consciousness that gives rise to material reality, is not even considered as a theoretical possibility though this is the predominant view in the philosophical systems of Hinduism and Buddhism. The most interesting point is, however, that Chalmers seems to be unaware of the materialist tilt in his writings: at the end of the article he incorrectly calls his approach ‘‘theoretically neutral.’’ Chalmers’s formulation of the hard problem and of the correlation between the brain and consciousness are typical examples of our unwarranted, and often unconscious, collective tendency to think that even if consciousness is irreducible, it is somehow still ‘‘less fundamental’’ than matter. The recent philosophical debate on the nature of consciousness is to a considerable degree dominated by such materialist presuppositions. Though there are actually not that many authors who defend a strong materialist standpoint,11 even other authors present their arguments generally, as if some form of materialist realism is the given view of reality from which they have to start by defining their own system. The dualist John Beloff,12 for example, takes the existence of the physical half of reality for granted, dismisses idealism in a footnote, and gives extensive argumentation for the inclusion of consciousness as if consciousness is some kind of afterthought.13 Those who advocate some form of panpsychism tend to formulate their heretical position with still more caution.14 This unquestioned assumption of the reality of the physical world is rather remarkable in that it is not as self-evident as contemporary Western philosophers may like to

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believe. For almost every statement that arises out of an exclusively materialist worldview, in the Indian philosophical tradition one can find a similar but opposite statement claiming the exclusive existence of consciousness. Two examples will illustrate how closely the two exclusive worldviews mirror each other. The Denial of Reality to the Other Side of the Coin Scientific materialism regards spirit and consciousness as insubstantial chimeras, or at best as epiphenomena of material processes. In a perfect mirror image of this denial of spirit and consciousness by the materialists, the influential ma¯ya¯va¯din schools of Indian philosophy regard matter and sense impressions as illusions imposed on the absolute silence of the spirit. The Persistence of ‘‘Hard Problems’’ A central focus in current philosophical debates is the dilemma of how first-person awareness could arise out of the multitude of objective, material processes in the brain. In India, there have been centuries of debate on the equally tough question of how the seeming multiplicity of material appearances could arise out of the silent immobility of pure Consciousness. There is thus a remarkable symmetry in these two extreme positions and their onetrack simplicity gives them a certain strength, which dualistic philosophies cannot easily achieve. Aurobindo (1990, 9) acknowledges that both exclusive forms of monism can be defended philosophically, but he does not accept either as the final solution, because both are, in opposite ways, incomplete, and thus lead to a social or psychological imbalance if embraced on large scale: In Europe and in India, respectively, the negation of the materialist and the refusal of the ascetic have sought to assert themselves as the sole truth and to dominate the conception of Life. In India, if the result has been a great heaping up of the treasures of the Spirit,—or of some of them,— it has also been a great bankruptcy of Life; in Europe, the fullness of riches and the triumphant mastery of this world’s powers and possessions have progressed towards an equal bankruptcy in the things of the Spirit.

Aurobindo did recognize the value of rational materialism, but he saw its importance more in its historical utility for cleaning up the excesses and encrustations of established religion, than in its independent ability to assess the truth. He acknowledged that rational materialism helps to train and purify the intellect and even conceded that ‘‘the wider we extend and the surer we make our knowledge of the physical world, the wider and surer becomes our foundation for the higher knowledge’’ (p. 11). But he also felt that materialism excluded too much of what really matters: ‘‘If pushed to its extreme, it would give to a stone or a plum-pudding a greater reality [than] to thought, love, courage, genius, greatness, the human soul and mind facing an obscure and dangerous world’’ (p. 647). He considered restricting reality to what is directly or indirectly

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accessible through the physical senses too arbitrary a constraint to form a sound basis for any serious philosophical system, and he predicted that as a ‘‘theory of everything’’ materialism would be too limited in scope to satisfy humanity for long. The opposite extreme, the ma¯ya¯va¯din idea that the world in which we live is an illusion out of which we should escape by the shortest possible route, seems to be losing ground and is perhaps no longer a major force in the world of thought. But in the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth century during which Aurobindo produced his major writings, it still had a considerable influence, especially in India, and he wrote extensively about its strengths and deficiencies. For our present exploration the details of these arguments may not be so relevant and I will refer to them only as far as they are essential to an understanding of Aurobindo’s own ontology. The main point is that Aurobindo sees a spiritual transformation of material existence on earth as the meaning of life and that he considers the world-negating spirituality espoused, for example, by Therava¯da Buddhism and ma¯ya¯va¯din Veda¯nta, as a deformation of the more integral vision of the earlier Indian texts. For his own worldview he bases himself on what he calls the ‘‘original Veda¯nta,’’ the psychological and philosophical system of the Vedas and older Upanisads, to which he gives a strong, world˙ affirming interpretation.15 The Indian Concept of Consciousness In the Vedic ontology, from which Aurobindo (1991, 234) derived his concept of consciousness, consciousness is not only seen as individualized awareness. It is the very essence of everything in existence and as such not only the source of individuation and the sense of self, but also a formative energy: ‘‘Consciousness is not only power of awareness of self and things, it is or has also a dynamic and creative energy. It can determine its own reactions or abstain from reactions; it can not only answer to forces, but create or put out from itself forces. Consciousness is Chit but also Chit Shakti, awareness but also conscious force.’’ Consciousness is moreover not considered a simple yes-no phenomenon that is either there or not, but as manifesting in a hierarchy ranging from the seeming obliviousness of matter below, to the seemingly superconscient Spirit above. All three aspects of consciousness—its cosmic nature, its energy aspect, and its ability to differentiate itself into varying forms and degrees—combine to produce the processes of involution and evolution of consciousness that have given to our world its particular character: Consciousness is a fundamental thing, the fundamental thing in existence—it is the energy, the motion, the movement of consciousness that creates the universe and all that is in it—not only the macrocosm but the microcosm is nothing but consciousness arranging itself. For instance, when consciousness . . . forgets itself in the action it becomes an apparently ‘‘unconscious’’ energy; when it forgets itself in the form it becomes the electron, the atom, the material object. In reality,

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it is still consciousness that works in the energy and determines the form and the evolution of form. When it wants to liberate itself, slowly, evolutionarily, out of Matter, but still in the form, it emerges as life, as animal, as man and it can go on evolving itself still farther out of its involution and become something more than mere man. (pp. 236–237)

This passage contains, in a very simple form, the essence of Aurobindo’s concept of consciousness and evolution. The main point of it is that consciousness is not seen as something produced by the brain, or limited to humans, but rather as a fundamental aspect of reality, if not the very essence of it. As one of the oldest Upanisads, the ˙ Brhada¯ranyaka, says about the Ultimate Reality, ‘‘This great being, infinite, without ˙ ˙ bounds, is just a mass of consciousness’’ (translated by Phillips 1997, 9 n.). In the Veda¯ntic system the fundamental reality is described as a unity (Saccida¯nanda) ¯ nanda). Because the inconsisting of existence (Sat), consciousness (Cit), and delight (A divisible unity of Saccida¯nanda is considered the essential nature of everything in existence, it follows that in this ontology nothing can exist that is not conscious or that misses delight in its own existence. Consciousness is not possible without delight in its own existence, nor can there be delight that is not conscious. This does not seem to tally with ordinary human experience. It looks to us as if life is not always joyful and that many things are unconscious, but this is attributed to a, typically human, egocentric assessment of reality. We consider everything that happens outside the narrow range of our ordinary waking (or dreaming) state as ‘‘unconscious,’’ and experience any input that is for us too little, too much, or of the wrong kind as ‘‘suffering,’’ but that does not mean that consciousness and delight are completely ab¯ nanda are postulated as the very essence of everything in sent in those events. Cit and A existence, and their presence or absence can thus not be dependent on the ability or inability of our biological instrumentation to detect them. We may make a comparison with the commonly used measurement of temperature in Fahrenheit or Celsius. These two scales have negative values below some in itself quite arbitrary threshold that happens to be convenient to us. But the scientific scale to measure temperature is Kelvin, which has an absolute zero and only positive values. It seems reasonable to suggest that when we try to develop a scientifically useful concept of consciousness and delight, we should also use scales that can, in the very nature of things, have no negative values, and this is exactly what the Indian system has done. Interestingly, this is not only a conceptual convenience, but matches with (and is in all likelihood derived from) an experiential reality. Through contemplative practices or otherwise one can experience consciousness in situations that formerly appeared sub- or superconscious, and experience delight even in situations that used to feel painful or indifferent. Of course, this does not mean that the Indian authors are blind to the limitations of individual centers of consciousness and delight that are part of ordinary life. In the ancient texts it is stressed again and again that normal human life is a state of ignorance

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and suffering. But ignorance and suffering are seen as characteristic of our limited view of the world, not of the world as it is in itself (that is, as it is seen by the original creative consciousness). They claim that we can learn how to participate in the perfection of consciousness and delight as long as we fulfill the psychological conditions. The intimate relation between existence and consciousness, which at the summit amounts to an absolute identity, explains a number of things that remain very problematic in philosophies that are dualistic or exclusively physicalist. In pure physicalist philosophies there is no intrinsic reason why we should be conscious at all, why ‘‘the light should ever be on,’’ as it has been phrased. In dualist philosophies there always remains the ‘‘hard,’’ if not insoluble, problem of how the subjective and the objective communicate. In a theory that presumes a deep identity between existence and consciousness the nature of the problem shifts and becomes easier to tackle. If we presume an absolute consciousness as the original reality, the difficult question then becomes how different centers of consciousness can arise and how in these centers ‘‘the light can be dimmed.’’ According to Aurobindo, individuality and agency can be understood as having come into existence by an ability of the universal consciousness to form different centers of itself, each having a limited ability of self-awareness and formative energy. Aurobindo describes this as a process of exclusive concentration, comparable to the manner in which a person can concentrate fully on a certain task and completely forget everything else. I will discuss this issue in greater detail in the section on involution and evolution. One Reality, Different Worlds As we have seen, consciousness in the Indian tradition is not equated with ordinary human mentality. The authors of the ancient Indian scriptures practiced and achieved phenomenological access to an exceptionally wide range of conscious experiences. They speak, for example, not only of what we now call lucid dreams, but also of a clear consciousness maintained in deep sleep and in a fourth state (turı¯ya) beyond waking, dreaming, and sleep. So it is hardly surprising that the Indian concept of consciousness is rarely, if ever, limited to the type of sensory awareness we have in the ordinary waking state. Aurobindo (1991, 234) uses an analogy in which he compares different states of consciousness with the different frequency ranges available in sensory experience: Consciousness is usually identified with mind, but mental consciousness is only the human range which no more exhausts all the possible ranges of consciousness than human sight exhausts all the gradations of colour or human hearing all the gradations of sound—for there is much above or below that is to man invisible and inaudible. So there are ranges of consciousness above and below the human range, with which the normal human [consciousness] has no contact and they seem to it unconscious.

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Technological advances enable us to detect and interact with such frequencies of light and sound that are not within the range of human sensory perception. Similarly, it is through psychospiritual technologies that one can gain access to higher and lower forms of consciousness. Earlier we have seen that in the Indian conceptualization, consciousness is not only an activity or a quality of individuals, but an essential aspect of all reality. In other words, consciousness exists not only within individuals, but also independently on a cosmic scale, and the individual consciousnesses can be seen as instances, portions, or representatives of these different types of cosmic consciousness. These two aspects taken together, the gradedness and the cosmicity, make it possible to conceive of reality as a complex scheme involving interpenetrating but ontologically distinct worlds, each consisting of a different type of consciousness and being.16 In the Vedas these different worlds, or births as they are sometimes called, are thus not considered to exist only subjectively in our mind, but are seen as also having an objective existence, in the same, limited sense in which it is generally presumed that the physical world exists independently of whether there are human beings around to observe it or not. These different worlds are, in fact, seen as different relations between conscious existence as the observer and the same conscious existence as the observed. The so-called physical reality has in this view no privileged position. The physical reality as seen by the ordinary human mind is just one world among many others. Some of these other worlds are easily accessible—in dreams, for example, many people visit the vital worlds—but there are other worlds that are more difficult to reach. Every relation between a grade of conscious existence as ‘‘observing self’’ and a grade of conscious existence as ‘‘observed becoming’’ makes another world. Thus strictly speaking, there exists neither a purely objective world ‘‘out there,’’ nor a purely subjective experience ‘‘in here.’’ Reality consists of the different relationships between the two: We mean [by planes of consciousness, planes of existence] a general settled poise or world of relations between Purusha and Prakriti, between the Soul and Nature. For anything that we can call world is and can be nothing else than the working out of a general relation which a universal existence has created or established between itself, or let us say its eternal fact or potentiality and the powers of its becoming. That existence in its relations with and its experience of the becoming is what we call soul or Purusha,17 individual soul in the individual, universal soul in the cosmos; the principle and the powers of the becoming are what we call Nature or Prakriti. (Aurobindo 1996a, 429)

Aurobindo does not perceive these different worlds as closed systems that are completely sufficient within their own parameters. But he does not consider it correct to speak of interactions between essentially different types of substances or forces either. He sees the different worlds as interwoven in a different manner, based on an underlying oneness. In terms of the observing self, Veda¯nta holds that there is actually only

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one observing Self (the parama¯tman). As I will discuss in more detail in the description of the process of involution, the many selves only appear separate and different from each other by a process of ‘‘exclusive concentration’’ that takes place in portions of the ˙ khya acknowledges, original Self that in essence remains one. Similarly, as the Sa¯m there is only one objective reality, which is ineffable, or, in the more descriptive Sanskrit phrase, anantaguna, ‘‘of infinite quality.’’ The only thing we can know about the ˙ reality is the interaction between the center of consciousness we identify with and this ineffable nature, but in essence there is all the time only one conscious existence that separates itself, for the joy of manifestation, into an infinite number of relations between itself as observing consciousness and itself as nature. One major difficulty in accepting the objective existence of nonphysical realities is the extent to which our perception is tied to our physical embodiment. Our ordinary waking consciousness is deeply embedded in the physical workings of our body. Of what surrounds us, we are primarily aware by means of our physical senses, and we experience our feelings as embodied in our physical constitution. We even understand our own thoughts only after they have been clad in words. The Indian tradition holds, however, that such limiting dispositions are no more than deeply engrained and culturally reinforced habits, and that it is possible, at least with sufficient psychological training, to open oneself beyond the restrictions of sensory perception. One can then move freely in those additional aspects of reality that are often called the ‘‘inner worlds.’’ In the ordinary waking states we are moreover not aware of such inner worlds as they are in themselves. We are aware only of their subordinate manifestations within the physical world. However, in other states of consciousness it is possible to enter into contact with the inner worlds themselves through what is known in Veda¯nta as our inner senses. With increasing experience and knowledge, one can learn to identify their typical aspects and regularities, and one can even act on other persons and events in these inner worlds in a manner that supports the claim for their shared objective existence. Access to inner worlds is mediated in a psychological and phenomenological sense through a movement of consciousness that is experienced in its first steps as a form of ‘‘going inside.’’ The inner worlds are, however, not supposed to be limited to one’s own being or one’s subjective consciousness; instead, Indian psychology considers them equally objectively real when compared with the physical world. An interesting aspect of the planes of consciousness is that they are seen as corresponding to centers of consciousness in the (subtle) body, called cakras in Sanskrit. That different locations in the body would be related to different types of consciousness is not an idea that has arisen only in the Indian tradition. It is very much part of the English language, for example, to say that we feel fear in the pit of our stomach (the center of our lower life energies), that we feel love in our heart (the center of the higher vital consciousness), and that we need to ‘‘use our head’’ to come to good men-

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tal conclusions. Even though science tells us that we both feel and think with our brain, many people actually experience it in the way our prescientific language suggests: if we really have to think hard, we frown and concentrate our energies somewhere behind the forehead, but if we feel strong compassion or love for someone, we ‘‘open our heart’’ and experience the center of our awareness in the (subtle physical) heart center, which is in the middle of the chest. With some training one can increase this ability to center one’s consciousness at will at different levels in one’s (subtle) body and experience the different types of consciousness that correspond to them. One can also train the ability to observe from which center different emotions and impulses arise. These two skills taken together can contribute considerably to one’s control over one’s psychological reactions and thus to one’s social competence. Involution and Evolution As we have already seen, Aurobindo takes consciousness as the ‘‘primary thing’’ and not as just one out of several fundamental elements of reality. In any philosophy that posits an absolute consciousness as the basic ‘‘stuff’’ out of which the universe is made, the crucial question is how out of this single, indeterminate absolute of being and consciousness, could arise the multiplicity, the variation of forms, and the limitations of power, joy, and consciousness that constitute our experience of the universe. The process by which the infinite, absolute consciousness, being, and joy turn into existence as we know it, Aurobindo generally calls ‘‘involution,’’ which he presumes to have preceded evolution—if not in time, at least in logical sequence. In one place he portrays this involution as a two-step process. He describes the first step as the manifestation of multiple instances of the one Self out of Itself—multiple, but still identical. He gives the second step as a gradually increasing self-differentiation through a process that he compares with our human form of exclusive concentration. On the level of the individual human being, exclusive concentration is a mental activity in which we forget ourselves and all but a small part of the reality on which we are focused. At the level on which the cosmic Infinite differentiates itself into the multitudinous universe, Aurobindo (1990, 267) sees exclusive concentration as ‘‘a self-limitation by idea proceeding from an infinite liberty within.’’ Elsewhere, Aurobindo gives a slightly different description. He says there that to understand the origin of inconscient matter and the individual centers of limited consciousness we take ourselves to be, we need to presume three powers of the Infinite consciousness: self-variation, self-limitation, and self-oblivion. The first of these is a free power of self-variation in which ‘‘a manifold status of consciousness’’ is created in which still ‘‘the One is aware of itself simultaneously in all of them’’ (p. 342). The second power, the power of self-limitation, is needed to initiate the possibility of an individualized but still fully spiritual consciousness. At this level there is variation and

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individuality, but not yet what in Sanskrit is called avidya¯ (ignorance).18 Avidya¯ is the knowledge that arises from a half-obscure consciousness, which is no longer aware of the One but only of the multiplicity. For avidya¯ to arise, Aurobindo suggests that one needs to consider a third power, the power of self-oblivion. As consciousness diminishes in this manner during the involution, the hierarchy of archetypal planes of consciousness and being comes into existence until in the end the supramental Truth Consciousness is hidden completely in the nescience of matter. Thus the descending ladder of the different planes of consciousness and being—which Aurobindo describes as the Overmind, Intuition, Illumined Mind, Higher Mind, ordinary mind, life, and finally the subtle, physical planes—comes into being as a series of intermediate worlds between the supramental Truth Consciousness above and the nescient below. According to Aurobindo all these planes of consciousness still exist as static, interwoven, and interacting but basically independent, archetypal worlds. When self-oblivion is complete, we get the elemental particles of physics moving about in the seemingly inconscient, but still lawful, organization of matter: ‘‘the force acting automatically and with an apparent blindness as in a trance, but still with the inevitability and power of truth of the Infinite’’ (p. 344). To describe how in matter consciousness is totally lost to itself except in the form and in what one could call the fixed habitual ways in which its forces act, Aurobindo uses the metaphor of a man who is totally concentrated on his work and who forgets himself and his surroundings. Scientific theory does not ascribe sentience or consciousness to the physical world, yet different models of dynamic interaction are recognized. Aurobindo agrees that matter lacks sentience in the human sense, yet he reasons that out of this apparently insentient material basis, gradually higher and higher forms of consciousness evolve through a process in which the material substrate is being transformed and continues to express the evolving consciousness. At each transition the new power not only evolves out of the old, but also transforms whatever preceded it in a creative interaction. In this way, first matter evolves under influence from the already-existing subtle physical world. In the next stage, when matter has become sufficiently complex and plastic, within matter life forms evolve. Still later, when material life has become sufficiently subtle and complex, within these physical life forms the mind begins to evolve, and this takes place again under the guidance from the already existing mind planes above it.19 Many contemporary philosophers object to such cosmology. For example, Daniel Dennett (1994, 73–80) discredits any cosmology that includes a higher sentience or conscious presence by introducing the analogy of construction cranes that stand solidly on the ground and erect themselves without any need for ‘‘skyhooks’’ to pull themselves up. However, Dennett’s premise is masked as an observation. If one looks only for physical things, then all one sees is that physically the crane and the building are built from the bottom up. Double-aspect theories like Aurobindo’s do not deny

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this. What they add is that neither the building nor the crane would have appeared on the site at all if someone did not have the idea of a high-rise building in the first place. The real second aspect is not a physical hook hanging from a physical sky but a mental force in a mental sky, and it need not surprise anyone that a committed materialist like Dennett does not detect it. The Next Step in the Evolution of Consciousness In the current stage of the evolution of consciousness, Nature is mainly busy perfecting the mind, guiding human mental development to become increasingly subtle and flexible, more detailed and analytic, as well as more comprehensive and synthetic. According to Aurobindo (1990, 3–4), the next major step is in the meantime preparing itself, and we are on the way to the manifestation of the next higher plane of consciousness, what Aurobindo calls the ‘‘supramental Truth Consciousness,’’ as part of ordinary biological life. To those who object that a minor improvement in our functioning might still be possible but that the chances are rather remote for the arrival of a divine Truth Consciousness within our physical tenement, Aurobindo answers that if anybody had looked at the universe in its first, inorganic, stages, the spontaneous appearance of plant life would not have looked very plausible either, and that nobody seeing the first plants covering the globe would ever have guessed that some day small bipeds would calculate the age of the universe, write poetry, or enjoy books about the Tao. So, if Nature were to surpass her apparent limits again, she would simply be continuing an old habit. The change Aurobindo envisions as the next step in evolution is not a minor one. It might begin with a limited number of individuals or small groups evolving through great personal effort to higher levels of awareness. But if this were all, it would leave unchanged the basic principle on which life in the world is based. What Aurobindo envisages is a whole new stage of evolution, in which a true Gnostic consciousness becomes an organic, incarnate aspect of physical life, in the same natural manner as, at present, life and mind are a normal part of the physical universe. The difference between the mental and the supramental life would in a way be bigger than the difference between plant life and mental life as we now know it. As we have seen in the description of the levels of mind, our ordinary mind is based on ignorance and tries from there to arrive at knowledge, and its knowledge is thus inherently approximate and fallible. The supramental knowledge, as Aurobindo describes it, is based on a fully conscious identity with the whole. It knows the universe as if from inside. Perhaps one could say that it knows the world in the way the Divine knows the world, and if there is limitation of knowledge or power it is a willed and conscious diminution for the sake of the harmony and development of the whole.

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If such a consciousness could indeed manifest on earth, it would mean a continuation, but also a radical reversal of the development that has taken place so far. Evolution until now has taken place primarily within matter. As we have seen, our human consciousness is strongly embedded in the workings of the physical brain and as such is limited by this physical apparatus. The supramental consciousness, on the other hand, is primarily based in the Spirit, and from there, in that freedom, it engages matter, expresses itself in it, and, while doing so, transforms it. Though the idea of a Golden Age (Satya Yuga) to some extent implies it, there does not seem to be any mention in Indian literature of the possibility that the original Truth Consciousness could become an integral, inherent part of biological life on earth. In fact the entire manifested reality is often held to be the result of a distorting, illusion-creating Ma¯ya¯. Aurobindo (1991, 250) claims that it is because the later Indian systems did not distinguish clearly enough between the overmental and supramental planes, that they presumed that the world was the creation of the Overmind Ma¯ya¯, and thus intrinsically a world of ignorance out of which it is best to escape into some nirva¯na beyond. He argues that if they had made a clear distinction between Overmind ˙ and Supermind, they would have realized that the Overmind Ma¯ya¯ cannot be the original creator of the world. Instead it must be a secondary force that introduces the first elements of Ignorance and division in a manifestation that has its real origin in the divine Truth Consciousness itself and that is thus intrinsically capable of evolving into a true manifestation of the divine perfection. To the limited inner vision of the later Indian traditions, the world has the appearance of an overmental creation rooted irretrievably in ignorance and suffering. To the physical senses on which science bases itself, life appears as gradually emerging out of unconscious matter through a purely mechanical process. In Aurobindo’s synthesis both theories appear as partial truths. The former describes the manifestation of the material universe out of consciousness but misses out on the dynamic link between the divine consciousness and the manifestation. The latter describes the outer mechanism of the evolution, but misses out on its inner meaning and the role of consciousness in the whole process. The two views cover a different aspect of the picture. As such they do not contradict but enrich and complement each other. Aurobindo adds to this synthesis of these two theories the suggestion that if we superimpose the understanding of the different planes of consciousness that Veda¯nta developed on the Western idea of evolution, there should be the possibility of the manifestation of the highest forms of supramental consciousness right here in matter, as part of the biological evolution. His explanation of creation as a form of ‘‘exclusive concentration’’ is as interesting for what it contains and implies, as for what it does not contain. Suffering, for example, is not, as in the Bible, the result of something done by humans against the will of God. Nor is the world, as often held in India, a bad dream or a lie imposed, as from

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outside, on an unconcerned Divine. It is also not a series of chance events, nor a mechanical process. None of these explanations is commensurate with the definition of God as the summum bonum, the absolute of consciousness, existence, and bliss. If there is a Divine, omniscient and omnipotent, then whatever happens in this world must be her will.20 It is She who involves her absolute consciousness into its very opposite, into the depth of inconscience, and it is she who evolves out of it as matter, life, mind, and Supermind. In this respect, Aurobindo subscribes to the ancient Indian metaphor in which the universe is described as a play, a lı¯la¯ of the Divine in all his three aspects, Transcendent, Cosmic, and Immanent. It is none other than the Divine herself who is the stage, the act and the actor with us for his roles (Aurobindo 1994, 61). This is, in short, the process by which Aurobindo visualizes first the involution of the divine consciousness into matter—matter that seems in every respect the exact opposite of its luminous origin—and subsequently the evolution, within the material world, of life, mind, and ultimately Supermind. The Individual Consciousness and Its Transformation The next question that arises is how this cosmic consciousness in its vast and magnificent splendor relates to our individual centers of consciousness, for they seem so different as to look almost unrelated. Within the individual consciousness Aurobindo makes a clear distinction between a person’s ego and his or her individual essence. The ego is, according to Aurobindo (1990, 367), no more than a temporary construction, made out of memories, habits, emotions, and vital and mental preferences. It is necessary to give form to individualization: But what is this strongly separative self-experience that we call ego? It is nothing fundamentally real in itself but only a practical constitution of our consciousness devised to centralise the activities of Nature in us. We perceive a formation of mental, physical, vital experience which distinguishes itself from the rest of being, and that is what we think of as ourselves in nature—this individualisation of being in becoming. We then proceed to conceive of ourselves as something which has thus individualised itself and only exists so long as it is individualised,—a temporary or at least a temporal becoming; or else we conceive of ourselves as someone who supports or causes the individualisation, an immortal being perhaps but limited by its individuality. This perception and this conception constitute our ego-sense. Normally, we go no farther in our knowledge of our individual existence.

This ego sense does not suffice, however, for understanding human individuality. The Vedic tradition holds that, besides the ego, there is also a greater Self that supports and determines the individual, but that exceeds the temporal personality. Within this ‘‘true’’ Self, Aurobindo distinguishes two aspects. The first is what in the Indian tradition is called the Jı¯va¯tman, who presides, as from above, over our individual existence. It is a containing consciousness, eternal and unchanging, which is forever one with all

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other Selves and one with the cosmic and transcendent Divine. The second aspect Aurobindo calls the psychic being, caitya purusa, which one could consider the delegate ˙ or representative of the Jı¯va¯tman within the temporal world in which we live. In experience we reach the Jı¯va¯tman through an upward movement of our consciousness: it is experienced as if above the head. The psychic being, on the other hand, is contacted by going deep inside; its presence is felt behind the heart. In its essence it is the divine spark, the soul spoken of in some form or another in almost all religious and spiritual traditions. Aurobindo holds that this divine spark exists from before the beginning of time and slowly grows into a ‘‘being’’ that evolves over time. The idea of an evolving psychic being takes a very central place in Aurobindo’s evolutionary ontology of consciousness. We have noted that he sees the evolution primarily as an evolution of consciousness that is slowly moving toward the manifestation of a supramental consciousness on earth. Psychologically, the interesting point here is that he sees this evolution not only as a process on a cosmic scale, but also as something that takes place in each individual, with the psychic being as the carrier of this evolutionary process. In its earliest stages there is only a psychic entity, an individualized center of consciousness that carries in itself, as in a seed, the entire potential of its individuality. Aurobindo sees this psychic entity as created even before time and as developing slowly, over time, into a true ‘‘psychic being.’’ He does not consider this a process that could possibly take place within one lifetime. The psychic element is supposed to move through a process of reincarnation from life to life, gathering varied experience and slowly bringing a larger and larger part of the inner and outer nature under its influence. It shows itself at first as not more than an occasional influence, which gives a certain psychic touch to human life: an appreciation of beauty, a gesture of unselfish love, a noble impulse. But gradually this influence becomes more permanent, until finally the whole nature becomes a faithful expression of the unique qualities of one’s soul. It is through the psychic being that we have direct contact with the Divine, and the psychic transformation is thus the beginning of the gradual divinization of our nature. When this process is completed and the whole nature is an expression of the psychic being, Aurobindo speaks of a psychic transformation. The different philosophical systems of India have quarreled extensively over the na˙ khyas say that while Nature of the Self as distinct from the ego. For example, the Sa¯m ture is one, the individual Selves are many. In contrast, Advaita Veda¯nta stresses that ¯ tman, is ultimately one with the there is only one Self because our individual Self, or A cosmic Self or Brahman. Most schools of Buddhism go one step further and claim that there is no Self at all. Although these different statements seem to contradict each other if one looks at them from within the framework of semantic rationality, Aurobindo holds that they do not contradict each other in what he calls the logic of the infinite. Within such logic, the dualities of active and passive, personal and impersonal, individual and cosmic, transcendent and individual, are no longer mutually exclusive.

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They are seen, rather, as different aspects of a single reality that enrich and complement each other. From an experiential viewpoint each of these three seemingly irreconcilable theories about the Self is rooted in a distinct spiritual experience, but it is possible for a single individual to have each of these experiences, consecutively or even, to some extent, simultaneously. One can have at the same time a sense of egolessness as well as a sense of one’s own eternal individuality and its oneness with a cosmic or even transcendent Divine. Ordinarily, humans tend to identify with their ego and more specifically with their bodies, needs, drives, and feelings, with certain habitual ideas, personal ways of thinking, psychological qualities, political boundaries, cultural norms, and so on. If any of these grounding norms are threatened, which all of them are at some time or another, one can easily feel threatened in one’s very existence. If one recognizes and annihilates the sense of a limited ego-based identity, there would in principle be no reason for sorrow of any kind. Of course it does not follow that bliss would take the place of sorrow, since it is conceivable that this liberation could result in nothing more than a dull indifference. In actual practice, however, it is a blissful presence that replaces regular emotions of joy and sorrow, as those who have had experiences of this type testify in a pretty unanimous fashion. In scientific literature there is no unanimity on whether such a state of egolessness can actually be achieved. Carl Jung, for example, denies this possibility on the ground that all consciousness inherently implies the existence of an ego that is aware (quoted in Dalal 2001, 19). It can be conceded that the ordinary waking consciousness is not conceivable without ego, and that all our conscious mental processes are in some manner or another related to the ego sense. It is even plausible that the ego sense is an unavoidable stage in the gradual emancipation of individualized consciousness out of the amorphous generality of biological nature. But this does not preclude the occurrence of other forms of consciousness that do transcend ego. The various schools of Yoga all claim to have specific techniques that can lead to the liberation from the ego. Aurobindo accepts that in the early stages of individual development it is necessary to develop a well-functioning ego, but he holds that this is not where personal development has to end. In harmony with the Vedic tradition, he contends that through Yoga or otherwise one can actually rise above the limitations that the individual ego entails. The inner process that leads to this begins with a progressive disidentification from every aspect of one’s ego identity: one detaches oneself from one’s body, one’s impulses, and one’s emotions; one detaches oneself from one’s thoughts and ideas; and eventually one detaches oneself even from the very sense of having, or rather being, a separate ego. In the process one attains an increasing equanimity and peace, and one arrives gradually at a sublime inner silence. Together with this, in a sense, negative movement of disidentification, there are basically two positive directions that one can pursue in Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga, separately, consecutively, or even simultaneously.

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The first is to nurture one’s psychic being, the individual center of divine beauty, truth, and love that one can find behind the heart. This brings an inner change that leads to an increasing ability to act directly from this inmost center of one’s being. The other is to identify oneself increasingly with one’s eternal, and immutable Self, watching one’s life as an unmoved, blissful witness from above. Either way one begins to see the personality and its adventures in time as comparatively minor events, that happen somewhere inside one’s own infinitude, which is felt more and more as stretching out over the entire manifestation and eternal time: ‘‘In the end this Purusha, this cause and self of our individuality, comes to embrace the whole world and all other beings in a sort of conscious extension of itself and to perceive itself as one with the world-being’’ (Aurobindo 1990, 368). I have already mentioned that for Aurobindo liberation from the limitations of the ego is not the final aim of life, because this ‘‘escape’’ leaves the world as it is and as such deprives the creation (and thus our sojourn in it) of its meaning and purpose. He takes liberation as not more than a first, and very necessary, step on a further road to transformation. With transformation he means nothing less than a complete change of every part of human nature under the influence of the next higher plane of consciousness, which he calls the Gnostic or supramental plane (1991, 98): By transformation I do not mean some change of the nature—I do not mean, for instance, sainthood or ethical perfection or yogic siddhis (like the Tantrik’s) or a transcendental (cinmaya) body. I use transformation in a special sense, a change of consciousness radical and complete and of a certain specific kind which is so conceived as to bring about a strong and assured step forward in the spiritual evolution of the being of a greater and higher kind and of a larger sweep and completeness than what took place when a mentalised being first appeared in a vital and material animal world. If anything short of that takes place or at least if a real beginning is not made on that basis, a fundamental progress towards this fulfillment, then my object is not accomplished. A partial realisation, something mixed and inconclusive, does not meet the demand I make on life and yoga.

Though he considers this ‘‘radical and complete change of consciousness’’ as the inevitable next step in the evolution of consciousness, he does see a major role for the individual in the process of transition because in humans the evolution of consciousness has reached a peculiar phase. In the earlier stages the evolution has taken place by an automatic and not overtly conscious operation of nature. But in the human being nature has become self-conscious. We are aware both of our present limitations and of our latent possibilities. One could well see in our persistent aspiration for change and progress a sign that nature is attempting to move forward in us and through us. While in previous phases the physical change, at least on the surface, always preceded the change of consciousness, in the present stage, through our conscious cooperation, Aurobindo expects that a change of consciousness will precede the physical change. Aurobindo visualizes this change of consciousness as a ‘‘triple transformation.’’ The first step of this is the psychic transformation mentioned earlier. Following the psychic

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transformation, or sometimes simultaneous with it, there is the possibility of a spiritual transformation. This spiritual transformation comes about by a series of ascents and descents, by a raising of our consciousness into the higher planes of the mind, and by a bringing down of the powers of these higher planes into our nature. It is a slow and highly complex process. Every time one tries to reach a higher plane of consciousness, the lower nature has to be sufficiently purified and prepared, while on the other hand, to prepare the lower nature fully is only possible under the influence of the higher plane. In spite of these difficulties it is considered quite possible to achieve a considerable spiritualization of selected parts of the mental and vital nature. Though this is striven after by almost all spiritual traditions, concrete results remain extremely rare. A complete spiritual transformation of the entire nature, including its physical body, is generally considered impossible. According to Aurobindo this is due to the limitations inherent in even the highest of the mental planes. He holds that a complete transformation, which includes even the physical body, is only possible under the influence of the supramental consciousness. This supramental transformation can really begin only after the psychic and spiritual transformations have prepared the ground. The process remains the same in principle, but different in emphasis. While in the earlier stages personal effort plays a major role, in the later stages this is less and less so. As the vanity of one’s personal ego sense becomes more and more clear and one’s sense of identity with the Divine increases, the sense of personal effort loses its meaning and the only tools left are sincerity and a ‘‘vast surrender’’ (Aurobindo 1994, 315). The result the transformation aims at is a taking up of the entire nature into the supramental consciousness, a rising out of the ignorance into the perfect, manifold truth, power, beauty, and joy of the divine existence. Aurobindo sees this as a process that in the first instance will take place on a small scale, but he predicts that gradually it will have a greater and greater effect on society as a whole. Some Epistemological Considerations In the Veda¯ntic worldview, truth is considered to be a quality of consciousness rather than a property of sentences, and Veda¯ntic knowledge is primarily concerned with experience or ‘‘truth events.’’21 Descriptions of the relations between things and processes are, at least in works dealing with consciousness and metaphysics, considered not more than means toward this end. The objective of the Veda¯ntic pursuit of knowledge consists of the very act of seeing, realizing, or even becoming ever-higher levels of consciousness. Aurobindo (1990, 685–686) describes Veda¯ntic knowledge as follows: The knowledge we have to arrive at is not truth of the intellect; it is not right belief, right opinions, right information about oneself and things, that is only the surface mind’s idea of

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knowledge. To arrive at some mental conception about God and ourselves and the world is an object good for the intellect but not large enough for the Spirit; it will not make us the conscious sons of Infinity. Ancient Indian thought meant by knowledge a consciousness which possesses the highest Truth in a direct perception and in self-experience; to become, to be the Highest that we know is the sign that we really have the knowledge. . . . For the individual to arrive at the divine universality and supreme infinity, live in it, possess it, to be, know, feel and express that one in all his being, consciousness, energy, delight of being is what the ancient seers of the Veda meant by the Knowledge.

Vedic knowledge is thus something quite different from scientific knowledge. The knowledge of ordinary science can be rendered exhaustively in explicit sentences or mathematical formulas, but the statements of Veda¯ntic knowledge are never more than hints or aids, meant to arrive at a direct perception of a deeper truth, which itself remains concealed behind the outer formula. As Robert Forman (1990, 41) describes it rather neatly with respect to ‘‘Pure Consciousness Events,’’ ‘‘linguistic systems are afloat, not pinned down to the terms in which the mystic undergoes the event.’’ In Vedic theory, thinking itself is not seen as a means to arrive at truth, but rather as a means to express as faithfully as possible a truth already seen or lived on a ‘‘higher’’ level of consciousness. The verbal expression is seen as a means or even as a force that, by the quality of the consciousness inherent in it, can help others to experience that truth directly for themselves. Though the scientific and the Vedic ways of knowing seem so different as to be incompatible, they may in practice be complementary and equally needed to arrive at a complete picture of ourselves and of the world in which we live. While scientific knowledge has been most effective in its dealings with physical nature, Vedic knowledge has focused mainly on our inner nature and the not primarily physical aspects of life. We saw toward the beginning of this chapter that even Chalmers, who is one of the most enthusiastic proponents of panpsychism in the present debate on the nature of consciousness, still takes matter as more basic than consciousness. I took this as a sign of a pervasive tilt in favor of a materialistic worldview, and argued that the necessity for such an acceptance of matter as the fundamental basis of reality is not self-evident, because there are sophisticated Indian systems of thought that hold that consciousness, not matter, forms the basis of all manifestation. There is a similar physicalist tilt regarding the relative value of objective and subjective knowledge. Objectivity presently has the connotation of being real, reliable, and fair. Subjectivity is equated with being arbitrary, imaginary, and influenced by personal feelings. According to the Indian tradition there is no intrinsic reason for objective knowledge to be more reliable than subjective knowledge, rather the contrary. Objective knowledge is, after all, indirect, because it requires mediation through our clearly imperfect physical sense organs, while subjective knowledge arises, according to this worldview, directly out of consciousness itself. That in practice, objective knowledge appears to be more reliable

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than subjective knowledge is, however, not difficult to understand. There can be no doubt that the ordinary mind is much more capable in its dealings with the physical world than in its dealings with the much more fluid and subtle inner realities. This is, however, not an irremediable difficulty. Just as science has put effort into fine-tuning and perfecting objective knowledge, so the spiritual traditions have developed the methodologies required for refining and honing subjective knowledge. It seems obvious to me that in order to develop a truly integral epistemology and methodology for the effective and comprehensive study of consciousness and all things psychological, we should make full use of the best that the Western and the Eastern thought systems have brought forth. This must include an extensive use of what the Indian tradition has to say about the purification of the inner instrument of knowledge, the antahkar˙ ana, through the methods of yoga. It must be understood, however, that the methods ˙ of yoga cannot be fruitfully applied in isolation; they must be supported by a deep understanding of their philosophical background and grounded in the richness of lived experience. Conclusion and Evaluation This is, then, in a rough and simplified form, Aurobindo’s evolutionary ontology of consciousness: The origin and essential nature of the world is an absolute consciousness and being that creates within itself a multitude of individual centers of consciousness, forming by this division space and time. By a process of exclusive concentration these centers of consciousness involve themselves subsequently into a hierarchy of archetypal planes of ever-diminishing levels of consciousness, until they reach the state of complete self-oblivion, which we know as matter. Subsequently the centers of material consciousness coalesce into increasingly complex units, in which consciousness gradually reemerges, manifesting itself in the form of plants, animals, and eventually humans. Our present, human state is a state of mental consciousness in which it is possible to ‘‘play with ideas in the mind.’’ Science is the most typical and well-established manifestation of this level of emancipation. But though the scientific mind is the highest type of consciousness in which humanity has a fair degree of mastery, a large percentage of humankind reports occasional experiences that within Aurobindo’s framework can best be described as contacts with higher levels of consciousness. These experiences are often regarded as the highlights of life. At the summit of this capacity, there are the mystics, numerically few but historically influential, who are, to different degrees, capable of separating the essential core of their consciousness from their individual physical and mental ego and merge it with the original Absolute consciousness. According to Aurobindo, however, neither the scientific nor the mystical mastery denotes the final stage in the evolution of consciousness. The logical next step is for a nondual, supramental consciousness to manifest right here in a

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physical body and to transform human life in the same way as mind has transformed animal life in the previous major step in the ongoing evolution of consciousness. A scheme like this obviously poses some difficult problems for traditional science. If it is true that there are different levels of consciousness, then the higher levels must, as Ken Wilber (2001) has stressed, transcend and include the lower ones. This implies that from any one level one can deal effectively with the levels below but not with the levels above oneself. In other words, science, which is typically a mental activity, can deal effectively with matter and life, but gets into serious methodological difficulties while dealing with its own plane (in psychology and philosophy) and flounders with the layers above the mental plane. The easiest way out of this conundrum is to limit mental science to matter and the mechanical part of life with which it is comfortable, manage as best as one can with the humanities, and leave the higher planes to religion and spirituality. With a few significant exceptions, this seems to have been the solution favored so far. But there are serious reasons, not philosophical but social and political reasons, that this is not a desirable compromise. The main one is that it leaves society in a state that can be described as akin to multiple personality disorder: in government, business, education, and mainstream media people follow the premises of materialist science, and in their private life, after six and on Sundays, they can if they like celebrate their religious and spiritual leanings. This split has left both sides diminished.22 It has deprived religion and spirituality of the best that the human intellect could have given it. It has deprived mainstream public life of meaning and direction. Both are equally serious threats to our collective existence. On the religious side, we see a welter of uncritically accepted beliefs. On the side of science, we see an everincreasing technical power without the wisdom to use it. The result is bound to be an increasing frequency of alienation and depression on the individual level and on the collective level an increasing disharmony between human life and the life of the rest of the planet. That this is not a theoretical problem is there for all to see. In the Vedic tradition it is held that individuals and groups of individuals can attune their consciousness to the harmony of a higher consciousness that exceeds in every respect our present evolutionary status. Entering this Consciousness allows one’s feelings, thoughts, will, and action to flow in an intuitive harmony, achieving at every step the best possible in terms of the individual as well as the whole of which he or she is a part. This is the reality Aurobindo (1990, 59) suggests in his ontology, a reality very much worth striving for: ‘‘This is the supreme birth which maternal Nature holds in herself; of this she strives to be delivered.’’ Notes This chapter is adapted from Matthijs Cornelissen (2004), ‘‘Sri Aurobindo’s Evolutionary Ontology of Consciousness,’’ in Kireet Joshi and Matthijs Cornelissen, eds., Consciousness, Indian Psychology, and Yoga (History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization, Vol. XI, Part 3). I

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would like to express my gratitude to D. P. Chattopadhyaya, chair of the CSC, for granting me permission to republish part of this material, and to A. S. Dalal, David DeVall, Don Salmon, Lynn Crawford, Neeltje Huppes, Peter Heehs, and Ulrich Mohrhoff for the valuable suggestions I received from them. I am especially indebted to Helmut Wautischer, who invited me to write this chapter. 1. The Sanskrit word yoga means union with the Divine or the conscious seeking of this union. It is also used as a generic name for any discipline by which one attempts to pass out of the limits of one’s ordinary mental consciousness into a greater spiritual consciousness. In this context, it is used for a specific school of philosophical thought that supports such disciplines. In English the word yoga is often used as an abbreviated form of hathayoga, which is the yogic discipline that uses ˙ the physical body as its starting point. 2. In Indic studies the English word consciousness is used as the equivalent of different words in Sanskrit. Aurobindo uses it primarily for the Sanskrit cit. Other authors (e.g., K. Ramakrishna Rao 1998) use consciousness for purusa, which Aurobindo translates as Self. Obviously, this leads in ˙ some respects to quite different views of the Veda¯ntic concept of consciousness. 3. This statement touches on a fundamental difference in outlook between language philosophy that perceives truth as a variable of sentences and the Vedic ontology, where Truth Consciousness (Rta-Cit) is taken as an aspect of absolute reality standing outside and comprehending the duality ˙ of true and false statements. Compared to it, the world of philosophical language is part of the ‘‘ignorance’’ (avidya¯), precisely because linguistic mentality is necessarily wrapped up in discriminatory categories such as the duality of true and false. Even within the relative world of ignorance, knowledge is not primarily seen as a collection of sentences but experientially as a collection of ‘‘truth-hitting episodes’’ or prama¯h (Matilal 1986, 22). 4. It may be noted in passing that in such a scheme there is no absolute distinction between realities that are subjective and objective; there is rather a fluid gradient between them. The ‘‘objective,’’ material world is also not considered intrinsically more ‘‘real’’ than ‘‘subjective’’ experience. 5. From Descartes to many postmodern and contemporary writers (e.g., Sheets-Johnstone 1999) the embodied nature of emotions has been stressed. In humans, emotions also have an unmistakable mental element. Still, to the extent that one accepts the existence of typal worlds, one can agree that their ‘‘center of gravity,’’ their typical characteristics, belong to the lifeworld. 6. Aurobindo’s use of the phrase ‘‘evolution of consciousness’’ should be distinguished from its usage in evolutionary biology, where it is increasingly being used to describe the appearance of consciousness in amoebas, mollusks, and prehuman primates. In contrast to this, Aurobindo was mainly interested in the stages that would evolve after the ordinary human level of development. Where it is needed to distinguish the two I will refer to Aurobindo’s conception as the ‘‘ongoing evolution of consciousness’’ even though Aurobindo never used this phrase as such. 7. The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy for example does not even try (Mautner 1997). 8. The need to posit the existence of consciousness in deep sleep becomes even more obvious once one realizes that it is difficult but not impossible to retain alertness not only during dreams (in so-called lucid dreams) but even during the states of pure consciousness in between.

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9. The case of meditation is especially interesting because there are types of meditation in which the level of consciousness achieved is experienced as inversely proportional to the complexity of the contents and the awareness of the surroundings. In this type of meditation one experiences oneself as most conscious when one is least aware of one’s surroundings. 10. There can be little doubt that panpsychism is the Western concept of consciousness that comes closest to Aurobindo’s view. But the two are not equivalent. The term panpsychism as commonly understood does not involve any transcendent consciousness, just as its sister term pantheism does not include the idea of a transcendent Divine. Veda¯nta, on the contrary, is emphatic that all manifestations of consciousness are subservient to an encompassing transcendent consciousness. In the Indian tradition, it is not matter but consciousness that is considered more fundamental. 11. Daniel Dennett, Valerie Hardcastle, and Patricia Churchland are among the most outspoken proponents. 12. See Beloff’s opening article in the first volume of the Journal of Consciousness Studies (1994, 32–37). 13. Descartes seems to have been an exception because he postulated the reality of his thinking before he admitted the reality of what his senses perceived. But the remarkable argument he gave for accepting his sense impressions—that God is good and thus could not have given humans false witnesses as sense organs—and the confidence with which he subsequently embarked on the study of the physical world, give the impression that he doubted the reliability of what his senses told him, but not the existential reality of the perceived world. To the extent that he did express doubt about the actual existence of physical reality, it comes across as a rhetorical device but seems to miss the experiential profundity of similar doubts expressed in the mystical traditions (see Descartes 1931, 101ff.). 14. For typical examples see David Ray Griffin’s (1997) presentation on panexperientialist physicalism and Chalmers’s introduction of panpsychism at the end of his original article on the hard question (see Chalmers 1995). 15. A concise description of Aurobindo’s interpretation of the Vedas can be found in ‘‘The Doctrine of the Mystics’’ (Aurobindo 1995). For his interpretation of the Upanisads one can read the ˙ last section of his commentary on the ¯Is´a Upanisad (Aurobindo 1996b). ˙ 16. The names and delineations of these worlds differ, but a typical series would include some nether regions, the physical world, the worlds of the life forces, the mental worlds, and, above these, the worlds of the spirit. ˙ khyas the original Consciousness, which is one with Existence, splits it17. According to the Sa¯m self in two: ‘‘the consciousness that sees and the consciousness that executes & formalizes what we see’’ (Aurobindo 1997, 194). The first is called Purusa, or Self, the second Prakrti, or Nature. ˙ ˙ ˙ khya philosophy, especially as a practical means of risAurobindo makes extensive use of the Sa¯m ˙ khyas, mental processes are ing above the ego sense. It is interesting that in the system of the Sa¯m considered part of Nature and illumined by the Self, but not part of the Self. This comes quite close to the modern division between objective thought processes and subjective experience. In

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this ‘‘standard’’ scientific view mental processes are seen as correlated with, or even identical to, objective processes in the brain, while consciousness is seen as a subjective phenomenon of a different character. One may note that this is very different from the traditional dualism of Descartes, who placed thinking without the slightest hesitation on the side of the self. Technology has thus naturalized the information aspect of knowledge and has left, as in ancient India, only pure consciousness on the side of the self. 18. Avidya¯, literally no-knowledge, is a technical term generally translated as ‘‘ignorance.’’ It denotes all knowledge that is not knowledge of the Absolute. It is specifically used for knowledge of the world—that is, for science. According to the ¯Is´a Upanisad, both vidya¯ (knowledge of the ˙ One) and avidya¯ (knowledge of the multiplicity) are needed for a complete understanding of ourselves and the world: ‘‘Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone. . . . He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys Immortality’’ (trans. Aurobindo 1996b, 21–22). 19. Life and mind that have evolved within matter do not have the full freedom and splendor of life and mind in their own planes, as anyone who has access to those planes in dream or meditation can attest. The manifestation in matter imposes a compromise with the limitations matter can handle. Of course, matter also adds its own virtues of stability and refinement of detail. 20. Aurobindo holds that the Divine is beyond the personal and impersonal and can appear to us as either. There is a long tradition in Indian civilization that describes the world as a manifestation of male-female dualities like Purusa-Prakrti, ¯Is´a-I¯svari, S´iva-S´akti, and so on. The male principle ˙ ˙ generally stands for the inner containing and supporting consciousness, and the female for the outer active, manifesting force. The ultimate Godhead is sometimes depicted with a body, half female, half male. There has been a tendency in Indian thought to hold that an impersonal, abstract description of the Divine is superior to a description of the Divine as a Person, but Aurobindo does not subscribe to this view. 21. Skt: prama¯h, see note 3. ˙ 22. It is commonly held that this split has been a major facilitating factor in the phenomenal growth of science and technology since the European Enlightenment. It is extremely difficult to assess what the exact factors have been, but it seems likely that it had less to do with a materialist stance (which came much later), than with the shift from a highly centralized, doctrine-based authority in the field of knowledge, to the typical decentralized competitive-cooperative social structure of the modern academic world. It is noteworthy that in terms of social structure and lines of authority, the spiritual tradition in India has much more in common with the modern university system than with the Roman Catholic Church. References Aurobindo, Sri (1940/1990), The Life Divine, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (1958/1991), Letters on Yoga, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram.

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——— (1951/1994), Savitri, A Legend and a Symbol, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (1920/1995), The Secret of the Veda, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (1920/1948/1996a), The Synthesis of Yoga, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (1996b), The Upanishads, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (1997), Essays Divine and Human, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. ——— (2001), Record of Yoga, 2 volumes, Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Baruss, Imants, and Robert J. Moore (1998), ‘‘Beliefs about Consciousness and Reality of Participants at ‘Tucson II,’ ’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5, No. 4, pp. 483–496. Beloff, John (1994), ‘‘Minds and Machines: A Radical Dualist Perspective,’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 32–37. Chalmers, David J. (1995), ‘‘Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness,’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 200–219. ——— (2000), ‘‘What Is a Neural Correlate of Consciousness?,’’ in Thomas Metzinger, ed., Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Questions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dalal, A. S. (2001), ‘‘Reversal of Consciousness, Thoughts on the Psychology of the New Birth,’’ in Matthijs Cornelissen, ed., Consciousness and its Transformation, Pondicherry, India: SAICE. Dennett, Daniel C. (1994), Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. Descartes, Rene´ (1931), The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Elizabeth S. Haldane and G. R. T. Ross, New York, NY: Dover Publications. Forman, Robert K. C., ed. (1990), The Problem of Pure Consciousness, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Griffin, David Ray (1998), Unsnarling the World-Knot, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Jung, Carl Gustav (1958), ‘‘Psychology and Religion: West and East,’’ in Collected Works, Vol. XI, Bollingen Series XX: Pantheon Books. Matilal, Bimal Krishna (1986), Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories of Knowledge, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mautner, Thomas ed. (1997), Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy, London: Penguin Books. McGinn, Colin (1995), ‘‘Consciousness and Space,’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 220–230. ——— (1999), The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World, New York, NY: Basic Books. Nagel, Thomas (1979), Mortal Questions, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Phillips, Stephen H. (1997), Classical Indian Metaphysics, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.

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Rao, K. Ramakrishna (1998), ‘‘Two Faces of Consciousness. A Look at Eastern and Western Perspectives,’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 309–327. Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine (1999), ‘‘Phenomenology and Agency: Methodological and Theoretical Issues in Strawson’s ‘The Self,’ ’’ Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 48–69. Varela, Francisco, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch (1993), The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Velmans, Max (2000), Understanding Consciousness, London: Routledge. Wilber, Ken (2001), A Short History of Everything, Boston, MA: Shambhala.

14 An Existentialist Understanding of Consciousness Julia Watkin

Abstract This chapter examines the question of consciousness from the point of view of the individual subject. Whereas many approach the topic through a clinical consideration of consciousness as object, existentialism makes its point of departure personal existence or human subjectivity. Consciousness and the self are not seen as something already present, waiting to be investigated. Instead, personal existence is shown to have a formative role in the development of consciousness and the self. The thought of Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) is explored on this issue, since he was an important pioneer with respect to consciousness and the self viewed from a subjective angle. A brief presentation of Kierkegaard’s view of the universe provides the essential background for understanding his existential view of the self. Kierkegaard assumes the existence of an eternal power outside the universe, ruling its workings and destiny. For Kierkegaard, there is thus a distinction to be made between the spheres of temporality and eternity, and on the basis of this dual perspective he builds his own presentation of consciousness and the self. In addressing the topic of the human self, Kierkegaard describes it as developing from its initial state to being able to actualize individual potentiality. The individual is seen as becoming conscious of possibility, choice, and action in relation to ideal values, or ideas. Kierkegaard asserts that the values or ideas chosen to guide one’s life are not irrelevant to human development. He explains why the life of the esthete or pleasure seeker is destructive to the self and conducive to a number of forms of despair; he also shows why ethics are essential to the individual as a spiritual being. He attempts to deal with ethical problems, especially the problem of the unfulfillability of ethics, through his concept of ‘‘second ethics.’’ Kierkegaard’s concept of human subjectivity is then contrasted with his understanding of objective truth, with Kierkegaard shown as making a careful distinction between what can be known and what must be believed. Finally, Kierkegaard’s critique of Carl Carus’s attempt to define human consciousness introduces the problems and limitations Kierkegaard sees with the scientific endeavor to make such a definition. In conclusion, Kierkegaard’s view of consciousness and the self can be seen to possess value for us today, especially his therapeutic interest in the human psyche in the context of the need for meaning-giving values.

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The Structure of Kierkegaard’s Universe To clarify Søren Kierkegaard’s existentialist thinking about consciousness and the nature of the self,1 it is necessary to explain his basic assumptions about the nature of the universe, even though he does not do so directly in his writings.2 A basic assumption in Kierkegaard’s thought is that the universe is governed by an eternal power outside it. He uses words such as God, Governance, eternal power, and eternity to indicate the conscious governor of all things. This eternal power interpenetrates the universe, but also transcends it. His view that there is a divine power behind the universe is not so very far removed, for example, from that of contemporary astronomer and mathematician Paul Davies, when the latter argues for the possibility of a divine designer behind things (Davies 1992, 220). However, unlike Davies (1996, 42–43), Kierkegaard does not rule out the possibility of direct divine intervention in human affairs, and also unlike Davies, he sees the assumption that there is such a divine power behind things in terms of religious belief rather than as something that can be shown to be scientifically probable or plausible. To those who might try to use the fact of the wonder or beauty of nature as indicative of the existence of a God, Kierkegaard’s response through Johannes Climacus (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 170) is that nature is ambiguous because of its dark and troubling elements. Kierkegaard thus assumes the existence of a divine power as believable, but not philosophically or scientifically demonstrable, given the counterarguments and evidence that can be put forward if one is seeking proof with the help of philosophy or science. He realizes that the existence of God is a question that has to do with metaphysical assumptions, and is thus not subject to proof and disproof. Kierkegaard views the universe in terms of two qualitatively different spheres or realms: that of eternity and that of time, or the daily world of temporality. He sees ordinary clock time as an infinite succession of passing, but discrete, moments. Yet since the self-conscious individual is situated within the web of spatiotemporality, the temporal moment in Kierkegaard’s view is ambiguous. Each moment can be viewed as an atom of time, existing apart from the individual, yet it is existentially connected to the individual for whom it can also become an atom of eternity. By this, Kierkegaard means that the individual can consciously use the temporal moments in striving to live purposefully in relation to some eternally valid code of ethical values that transcend local cultural contexts. The ethics may be based on religion, but it is the ethical element that validates the religious. For Kierkegaard, no religion can be authentic without genuine ethics.3 This notion of relating to the eternal becomes crucial in relation to his discussion of consciousness and self-development. Just as time can be viewed apart from the individual, yet also existentially connected to the individual, the same can thus be said of the eternal. On the one hand, eternity is the realm of the divinity, absolutely transcending temporality and thus existing inde-

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pendent of everything else, even if there were no humans in the universe. On the other, Kierkegaard uses ‘‘the eternal’’ to indicate the permanent validity of authentic ethical, and ethical-religious concepts. Kierkegaard therefore uses the term ‘‘the eternal’’ in many contexts in his writings, for authentic ethical values and for the realm of eternity, and even to indicate the divine power behind the universe. The position of the individual born into the world is such, therefore, that he or she can relate to eternal values but also to the realm of eternity if that person chooses to live a religiously committed life. Kierkegaard sees the world of temporality as possessing an inherent, natural, selforientation. Within the biosphere, its tendency is to extend itself egocentrically in time and space since animals and humans possess an instinct to protect themselves and what they regard as important to them. The transcendent realm of eternity is radically different in being one of perfect altruism and total selflessness, though, as Kierkegaard realizes, this is an assumption held by faith, not capable of proof or disproof. These assumptions provide the foundation for Kierkegaard’s existentialist understanding of consciousness. Kierkegaard’s Existential Understanding of Consciousness and the Self Kierkegaard’s existential understanding of consciousness and the self tends to be spread throughout his writing, though The Concept of Anxiety (1844) and The Sickness unto Death (1849) are devoted to the topic with regard to the phenomena of anxiety and despair. It is clear from Kierkegaard’s writings that he sees the self as structurally dynamic and relational. The human psyche has an initial, structured state, and it has a potentiality for development. This potentiality is governed by whatever ideal or objective the individual follows, given that the growing individual first must attain selfconsciousness in order to make a conscious choice of the objective. This attainment of self-consciousness is a process Kierkegaard regards as belonging to the initial condition of the self. Kierkegaard sees the initial condition of the self as a synthesis or combination of physical body and psyche. In his view, psyche´ (Dan: Sjœl) means the mental part of a person, acting in and through the body, and possessing potentiality for developing its spiritual nature. That a person develops the spiritual side of the psyche he sees as crucial for a person’s eternal destiny after death, when body and psyche part company. Although dualistic concerning a person’s final condition, Kierkegaard does not start dualistically. Indeed, he does not attempt to define this initial self in terms of some ontological core, but works with the mind-body distinction. In this way he marks the difference between the purely physical aspect of the self and its selfconscious mental life, but he does not try to locate the phenomenon of consciousness scientifically.

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The psyche includes thought (both the logical and imaginative aspects of thought), the emotions, and the will (the part of the self that can choose and decide on action). Although Kierkegaard in his day could not have talked about genetic individuality, he regards this initial self as unique. This initially given self he also views as a synthesis or combination of freedom and necessity. By this he means that there are certain given features in a person’s heredity and environment over which the individual has no control. Kierkegaard nevertheless thinks a person always has some freedom, and it is this element of having freedom or choice, of being able to exert the will or conation, that he sees as crucial to the individual’s ability to develop the unique, individual self. The individuality is potentially in the person born into the world, and it is that potentiality that needs to be developed to its full fruition. This is why Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Judge William (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 193, 194) emphasizes that it is a matter of ‘‘choosing oneself’’ and not ‘‘creating oneself.’’ If one created oneself, this would imply that there was nothing there to start with. In ‘‘choosing oneself’’ one decides in favor of actualizing what is already potentially there. The paradoxical situation of humans for Kierkegaard is thus that one is born into the world as an individual human self, but because it needs existential actualization, realization of its potentiality, the task is at the same time that of becoming a self. A person is therefore born into the world with the task of becoming a mature self, a self that has actualized its full individual potentiality, but before that person arrives at an adequate self-consciousness or self-awareness, there is the gradual process of becoming aware of one’s self in relation to the larger world. Kierkegaard describes this initial stage in his psychological work The Concept of Anxiety (1844). Biologically, we are all part of the animal kingdom since the initial synthesis or combination is between physical body and psyche. Yet because we possess the capacity of self-consciousness and awareness of freedom of choice, Kierkegaard observes that we will be conscious of psychological experiences that indicate tension in our lives. Initially there is a tension between our biology and our self-consciousness, and then there is a further tension between biological and spiritual life. (The latter tension he describes in his analysis of despair in The Sickness unto Death.) In The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard, using the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, describes the process of the individual as he or she emerges from unreflective egocentricity in childhood to self-conscious awareness of the surrounding world and of the possibility of action. This emergence from unreflective egocentricity can, of course, occur to people who are technically adults but totally lack mature self-reflection—to those people of whom we say that they have never grown up. According to Kierkegaard the possibility of freedom, with its accompanying sense of responsibility for action, creates anxiety in the individual. He describes the gradual state of awakening to full self-consciousness in terms of phases of development, in terms of the ‘‘dreaming’’ and then ‘‘awakened’’ spirit, in which the possibility of free-

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dom, choice, and action manifests itself ambiguously—both attracting and repelling the individual—as that person begins to experience possibility and freedom as a psychological state. The person gradually senses that there is an object of choice, and that there is choice; then that person becomes conscious of the object of choice and of the accompanying personal responsibility. Kierkegaard sees the transition to concrete (good or bad) action as occurring in a ‘‘leap.’’ By this he means that concrete choices are not an inevitable product or outcome of some previous state, occurring in a natural transition. However much environment or heredity may burden a person in a particular direction, he holds, as we have seen, that there is always an element of freedom to decide and act. Not that a person always follows through the initial phase. In Either/Or (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 167–170), Judge William gives the Emperor Nero as an example of a person who has become stuck at the stage of anxiety, even though he is not only technically an adult, but also lord of an empire. Nero is described as wrestling with the experience of anxiety, resisting it, and becoming destructive to others. He never faces up to his experience in relation to himself so as to get further. It is therefore the element of having freedom, or being able to choose, that Kierkegaard sees as linked to the individual’s constitutive potentiality for a full, and fulfilled, life. A further synthesis or combination is possible for a person, namely that between the temporal and the eternal, as the individual attempts to live an ethical life in relation to transcendent ideality or the divine power sustaining the universe. Hence the idea of the spiritual is intrinsically linked to the notions of ethical striving and of freedom, in that a person is able to strive to choose what is right, and can relate to the transcendent ideality/divine power, only through the ethical. The concept of spirituality is also strongly linked to a person’s individuality, for it is only through a person’s striving to do what is right (as opposed to thoughtlessly doing what everyone else does) that that person’s individual potentiality can come to maturity. Kierkegaard often uses the word idea for ideals or objectives followed by individuals, and he has in mind values, particularly those that can be held to be of eternal worth. So an ‘‘idea’’ or ideal is what a person can live by in daily existence. It therefore has to be a permanent realistic idea or value that can be actualized in one’s personal life, and it must truly assist the individual in his or her growth as a person. Kierkegaard is thus able to rule out short-term temporal goals that are either unrealistic or detrimental to the self. For example, a person can try to do what is right in every situation in life, but a person who cannot sing cannot make becoming an opera singer a goal in life, and destructive habits cannot be glorified into such a goal. A group of ideas that represent a total system of ideas Kierkegaard calls a ‘‘life view.’’ The idea or life view need not necessarily be religious, but it must have an ethical component. Kierkegaard thinks that without some leading idea or life view an individual cannot mature properly as a person (figure 14.1).

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Figure 14.1 ‘‘What is truth but to live for an idea?’’—Kierkegaard at Gilleleie 1835. When Kierkegaard was sent on holiday to Gilleleie, North Zealand, in 1835, he was very uncertain about which career he should pursue. He realized that he was interested in many disciplines, and that what one should do in life was not something to be undertaken lightly or decided for one by another. Kierkegaard saw the importance of choosing a path in life that would be bound up with what he describes as ‘‘the idea for which I will live and die,’’ an idea or view of life to which he could make a passionate commitment. The theme of living for an idea was to become an essential part of Kierkegaard’s view of the self (drawing by Julia Watkin, Tasmania, 1994).

An individual’s motivation should thus be toward a goal. This goal in one sense is outside the self (it might, for example, be a set of moral values), but in another sense it is within the self, in that the individual internalizes the values as motivators in his or her daily life (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 232). For this reason the individual has the values, by virtue of having adopted them, yet at the same time does not have them, because the individual is striving to actualize them, and is in a state of not having arrived at completion or perfection. The self or reality of human personal existence develops through the process of relationship to the core ideas or ideals chosen by the individual who strives to actualize them. So although one can stop and conduct a self-examination of the state of one’s psyche at any time, the self at the same time is always in process. This process obviously refers to the self-conscious human able to make conscious distinctions concerning values (as opposed to the state of a baby or unreflective infant). All this does not mean that there is one detailed path in life the individual is to follow, but it does mean that the choices need to relate to that person’s real potentiality.

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So for Kierkegaard, the process of becoming a full person or individual is always very closely connected with the idea of freedom, and with the ethical notion of right and wrong. Our unique individualities come into existence through our decision to live our lives on the basis of decisions between right and wrong action, endeavoring to do what is right. A person’s full and proper individuality cannot come into existence if that person consistently endeavors to do wrong. The idea of possibility is thus closely connected with that of freedom of choice, since, in Kierkegaard’s view, as a selfconscious being, each one of us has freedom as an initial possibility of our intrinsic nature. We are not predetermined. The Concept of the Esthetic and Its Relation to the Self It is here that we need to take a look at Kierkegaard’s concept of the esthetic and how it relates to the initial self we start with. In his writings, Kierkegaard makes a major distinction between the esthetic and the ethical. He believes that human selfhood cannot develop properly without ethics, and that it is not irrelevant which values or ethics are followed in life. He also aims to show that misuse of what he calls ‘‘the esthetic’’ is destructive of the human self. The individual who aims to live by esthetic values as guiding principles damages his or her existential nature. For Kierkegaard, the esthetic has to do with the life of the senses. It thus encompasses ordinary human instincts and desires, and also their expression through the arts, and through artistic creativity, including genius. We saw that the initial self in its combination of physical body and psyche included the emotions as well as thought and will. In Kierkegaard’s view, it is possible for a person to live a half-life based solely on the initially given synthesis or combination of body and psyche. That is, a person gradually comes to conscious self-awareness, but continues following only the promptings of instincts and emotions. Instead of exerting the will to guide personal existence, such a person continues to let himself or herself be led by instinct and desire, operating on the basis of only one side of the self, namely what one starts out with. For this reason, the esthetic in itself remains a purely temporal feature of life unless it is put in the service of ethical existence. There is nothing wrong with spontaneous instinct and emotion in themselves, but one cannot speak of there being anything right with them in ethical terms, since the esthetic in itself belongs to the sphere of amorality until it is subjected to moral reflection. The esthetic element in a person is thus the spontaneous or immediate character of a person as it is. In its initial raw state, it is ungoverned and undirected. Kierkegaard gives two major examples of the esthetic life in his Either/Or: there is Don Juan, the spontaneous esthete, who follows his passion for women instinctively and hence initially amorally; there is Johannes the Seducer who is highly reflective and has consciously chosen to try to live for the pleasure of pursuing women without reference to moral considerations (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 I, 1843, 95–112, 273–412).

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Because Johannes is intellectually aware of the category of ethics, of the possibility of making decisions between what is right and wrong, he can be described as ‘‘demonic’’ or evil; he has chosen to set moral considerations aside, even though he knows what right is. According to Kierkegaard, therefore, such esthetes live in terms of what they find pleasurable or the opposite, and not in terms of what is right or wrong. In Either/ Or Judge William argues that the esthetic life unrelated to something higher must go wrong because it is bound to get shipwrecked through the mere fact of temporality. Instincts and desires change with the passage of time, while the person who consciously attempts to center his or her life solely on something purely esthetic, such as, for example, the cultivation of personal beauty or muscular strength, or on external goals, such as the amassing of wealth, bases it on something that must pass away in time. The purely esthetic life is therefore shown as colorful and exciting, but also as basically unhappy, since it is a life against the authentic potentiality of the individual, who vainly tries to make the esthetic itself the steering feature of his or her existence. The esthete is doomed to fail because such a life is an attempt to eternalize what is temporal, while from the point of view of ethics it is one based unjustifiably on natural selfcenteredness. Kierkegaard’s esthetes are thus shown as governed by mood, and as destructively ironic about the world, even though they may experience temporary patches of pleasure and excitement (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 162–167, 178– 180). For Kierkegaard, then, humans move toward conscious awareness of themselves, of their world, and of freedom, but they need to discover their lives in terms of moral values in order to progress toward maturity and develop a complete, authentic, individuality. In Either/Or, Judge William is shown as an individual who has moved away from purely esthetic drives to a happy life in the service of family and community; it is a life based on ethics, but it does not exclude esthetic pursuits as long as these are not destructive or evil. The Judge has thus moved from a one-sided life of self-regard, based on self-centered desires, to conscious self-development in relation to ethical decisions. We can note that in Either/Or Kierkegaard explains what he means by ‘‘ethics’’ in terms of how one sets about being ethical. As the Judge, he describes the path from a pleasure-seeking, esthetic life to an ethical one. The unhappy esthete is encouraged to start on the ethical path by initially making a conscious choice to choose between right and wrong, between good and bad action. The Judge argues that the esthete is unhappy and in despair through the failure of his pleasure-seeking life. The esthete then receives the surprising advice to ‘‘choose despair.’’ By this, the Judge means that the esthete is to face up to, and accept the fact of his despair, instead of mistakenly looking for external factors as its cause. In thus facing up to himself, and seeing his condition as not good or right as it is, the esthete begins to

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make a distinction between good and bad, right and wrong. We can also note that this choice of despair is also described as the choice of the self as guilty, or as ‘‘repenting oneself.’’ The Judge even uses the phrase ‘‘absolute self-giving’’ to indicate that the esthete needs to abandon his self with respect to the validity of his previous way of life. At the same time, this choice is to choose oneself in one’s ‘‘eternal validity’’ (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 189–198; cf. 153–154, 202). The esthete, seeing the problem to be in his self and that he needs to make some change, moves from the attempt to eternalize temporal pleasures by trying to repeat them or keep them in perpetual remembrance (see Stages on Life’s Way, Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VI, 1845, 15–24). He moves to trying to live by values that make a distinction between good and bad and transcend the temporal situation. Judge William views the initial choice of the ethical life as a person’s first authentic choice, a choice that purifies, matures, and unifies the personality. In his view, it even brings the individual into contact with the divine power sustaining the universe because the person in question is honestly trying to do the right thing and thus go toward the truth (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 152; cf. 160). Such a person is no longer blown about by moods, first in one direction, then in another, but has a goal, an idea for which to live. Once on the ethical path, practical experience in trying to live a moral life will aid the individual’s development. Although not clearly stated, Judge William’s ethics are Christian ones, since Kierkegaard makes his Judge a Danish citizen, and thus a member of the national church. Yet Kierkegaard, as noted earlier, realizes that there are other codes of ethics, and thinks that a distinction needs to be made between the various types of codes. In his writings he therefore makes such a distinction (e.g., Kierkegaard 1901–1906 IV, 1844, 288–293; II, 1843, 235; III, 1843, 134–135; VII, 1846, 109–134, 365–374). For Kierkegaard, the lowest form of ethics is what he calls ‘‘morality,’’ where the ethics of the community are based on customs or rules to enable society to function adequately. Since he thinks they lack any eternal element, any element that transcends the community, he does not regard them as ethics proper. To warrant the title of ‘‘ethics,’’ they must contain some awareness of obligatory norms that have eternal validity. So for Kierkegaard there would be a difference between the prohibition against murder solely because murder would damage the practical running of the community, and forbidding murder because for some higher reason it is seen as intrinsically wrong to take a life. Kierkegaard identifies such eternal ethics in those the Greek philosopher Socrates lived by, for Socrates tried to arrive at his moral norms through reasoning his way to truth having eternal validity. Judaism would also fall into the same category, since the ethics of the Law are seen as received by the community from the eternal transcendent God. The Christian ethics followed by Judge William can be included in the same category for the same reason.

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The Relevance of ‘‘Second Ethics’’ to the Achievement of Ideality Kierkegaard, however, also has a category of ‘‘second ethics,’’ one having specific reference to what he sees as Christian ideality and the impossibility of fulfilling the ethical demand. First, this ethical category addresses the strong New Testament ideality that calls on the individual to die to the world and forsake everything in order to follow Christ. Such a demand clearly goes far beyond the Christian duties practiced by Judge William in his comfortable social setting. Second, even with such a milder ethical demand, there never is a point at which the individual can say it has been fulfilled. The ethical is prescriptive in its demand for right living, but if the individual thinks at any time that he or she has fulfilled what is called for, then that person in Kierkegaard’s view is merely self-righteous and not as advanced as the humble pagan, described in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, who mistakenly thinks God dwells in a stone idol (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 168). As is pointed out in Kierkegaard’s Stages on Life’s Way (1901–1906 VI, 1845, 443), the authentically ethical person is one who lives in the paradoxical situation of moving through the ethical, yet remaining within it. Such a committed person develops in the ethical life, his or her standards become higher, but the better the person, the more that person sees him or herself as inadequate in fulfillment of the demand. Such a person will continue striving, but will look to the concept of God or the divine power’s saving grace and forgiveness concerning the attempt to become a good person. It is in this way that Kierkegaard attempts to deal with a difficulty that would otherwise emerge with his psychology of the development of consciousness and self. If the development of one’s authentic, mature self is dependent on living life doing the right thing, and if the ethical demand is open, in being something that cannot be fulfilled in the way a sportsperson, for example, can achieve a specific goal, then it looks as if the human race is doomed to permanent inability to become properly fulfilled as individuals. It also looks as if people are being required to do the impossible. This is especially the case if the ethical demand turns out to have an ideal level far beyond the psychological capacity of most people. This is why Kierkegaard makes a careful distinction between ethics and religion in his writings, even though one cannot have religion without ethics, and he tends often to speak of the ‘‘ethical-religious.’’ While it is possible for people to have a religious commitment in society like Judge William, in the context of family and career, Kierkegaard sees (Fear and Trembling, 1843; Concluding Unscientific Postscript, 1846) the religious life in its ideality as calling for total renunciation of the good things of the world and being a hard path to follow in the various trials and tribulations it engenders. Such a monastic life in the world is not for everyone, but if the ideality is removed in relation to everyone, then, in Kierkegaard’s view, even the Judge William way of life may degenerate into a comfortable bourgeois existence that is more esthetic than ethical. This is why Kierkegaard stresses the fact and nature of ideality so much in his later writings, and it is why he devotes an entire

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book, The Sickness unto Death, to ways we may fail to develop a proper relationship to transcendent ideality and the divine power. The Consciousness and Forms of Despair In The Sickness unto Death, Kierkegaard, under his pseudonym Anti-Climacus, describes how an individual can go astray in despair. Like Judge William, Anti-Climacus regards despair as symptomatic of failure to develop authentic selfhood. Instead of facing up to the despair and seeing the situation for what it is, the individual attempts to evade the despair in some way. Anti-Climacus thus shows how the individual may experience various levels of despair (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 XI, 1849, 127–141), beginning with unconscious despair. In unconscious despair, a person in a life directed solely toward temporal goals (such as moneymaking or achieving political power) may, for a time, seem to be happy. Trouble starts, however, when the goals begin to fail and the person tries to deal with the situation as a problem that needs to be fixed externally in some way. Such a person is really in despair, yet it is not until that person becomes aware of being unhappy that the despair begins to show itself at a conscious level. At the other end of the scale of levels of despair is a totally conscious kind, the despair of defiance, in which the individual, out of sheer self-will, deliberately strives to make temporal objects the goal of life. Such a person, like Johannes the Seducer in Either/Or, is determined to gain control of life by forcing it to fit personal egocentric desires. There is a conscious refusal to accept anything else, and thus the despair is demonic or evil. Besides an analysis of different levels of despair, Anti-Climacus in The Sickness unto Death also provides us with a detailed description of various forms of despair. For example, there is the despair of ‘‘infinitude’’ (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 XI, 1849, 143– 146), in which a person loses contact with the real world. The imagination is essential in helping a person deal both emotionally and intellectually with the world, yet AntiClimacus shows it is possible for it to become fantastic, and for the individual in consequence to become distorted where his or her emotions are concerned. Such a person could be one who becomes sentimentally involved with the sufferings of others in the abstract. That person gushes with emotion concerning, for example, the plight of the starving in the world or of the victims of war, but is unable to relate concretely and appropriately to particular instances of such sufferings by, for example, sponsoring an African child or sending a donation to the war victims. Similarly, Anti-Climacus describes the despair situation when knowledge becomes fantastic. Here, a person increases his or her stock of information and objective knowledge about things in the world, yet there is not the slightest increase in personal selfknowledge. Such individuals are thus able to reel off facts by the yard at the slightest prompting, yet are unable to acquire any sense of how others experience them in personal relationships. Despair can also manifest itself when the will becomes fantastic. Here, a person becomes lost in great plans without any corresponding increase in

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ability to carry out even a fraction of one of them. Such an individual is therefore full of plans, but nothing ever comes of any of them. There is also the despair of ‘‘finitude’’ (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 XI, 1849, 146–148). Here, a person can appear thoroughly successful and well adjusted to the community but has lost sight of the authentic self through adjustment to purely temporal values. Through absorption in temporal matters, contact with the spiritual dimension of existence is entirely lost. The person in question may seem to have done all the ‘‘correct’’ things. The job that provided a solid pension was taken, the respectable partner the family approved of was married. Yet what that person did was what the world thought desirable, and through constantly adjusting to the purely material conceptions of others, authentic individuality was lost. The imagination and will are therefore important in the actualizing of the potential and unique individual self; that self is a balanced personality. Johannes Climacus in Concluding Unscientific Postscript (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 300) points out that will and emotions need to be properly coordinated with the analytic and imaginative parts of the psyche. Anti-Climacus in The Sickness unto Death and Practice in Christianity stresses the role of the imagination and will, which latter he regards as vital (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 XI, 1849, 144; XII, 1850, 173–181). The imagination helps a person conceptualize the idea for which to live; willpower brings about the attempt to actualize the idea. Yet self-knowledge is also vitally important, which is why, in the notoriously difficult description of the self at the beginning of The Sickness unto Death (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 XI, 1849, 127–128), Anti-Climacus speaks of the concept of ‘‘transparency.’’ Through internal inspection of behavior and motives, a person can become transparent or clear about himself or herself, and this can bring about growth in conscience as well as in consciousness. Although Anti-Climacus’s description of the self-relation in The Sickness unto Death uses compressed and difficult terminology, it contains the same dynamics of the self to be found in Either/Or and The Concept of Anxiety (cf. Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 232; IV, 1844, 315, 319). Yet whereas Judge William brings in the concept of a divine power through the act of the initial choice of ethics, Anti-Climacus emphasizes the continuing spiritual relation to the eternal power (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 152, cf. 160; XI, 1849, 128). An honest and truthful relationship to one’s self will also mean a true awareness of what is beyond the self. The absolutely despair-free person (an ideal but rare state of affairs) is the one who has a proper relation to the eternal or divine power, or, as Anti-Climacus puts it, ‘‘rests transparently’’ in the power that established the initial self-relation. An important difference between the ideality indicated by Anti-Climacus and that followed by Judge William is that the Judge develops his ethics and his spirituality within a social context, centering his life on the importance of marriage and service to society. For Kierkegaard (apart from the fact that the Judge encounters no real diffi-

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culties in his ethical life), there is an intrinsic weakness with the Judge’s position where ideality is concerned. We noted earlier that Kierkegaard sees the transcendent realm of eternity as one of perfect altruism and total selflessness. Since elements of Christianity support this view, the Judge’s way of life understood as one of Christian ethics is bound to encounter obstacles. If he is to take Christianity in an ideal sense, his duties to his family at some point will conflict with duties elsewhere. For example, the Judge is not free to give up everything, using all his income on the needs of the starving in Third-World countries, if this means his wife will starve and his son lack an education. He is thus not free to follow an ideality of radical self-renunciation and self-denial and have a committed and comfortable life as a married citizen. Linked to this consideration is how Kierkegaard views the state. In his journals, we find he describes the state as a ‘‘higher egoism’’ or as ‘‘human egoism in its great dimensions’’ (Kierkegaard 1968–1978 XI,2 A 108; XI,2 A 111, 1854). He describes it in this manner because the state’s practical function is to regulate individual, egoistic, human behavior and conflicting individual interests through its lawgiving. Here, he opposes Hegel’s view that the political state has a moral task or aspect. For Kierkegaard, it is important to understand that the state (if it is doing its job) politically cannot go beyond the social welfare and interests of its citizens. For example, America could scarcely pass legislation that improved life for Australians in Australia, if this meant that the citizens of America must suffer some serious problem or demerit. Like Judge William in relation to his family, the president is limited by his situation. So while individual self-centeredness is something that can be overcome in individual human development, there is, as we saw earlier, a natural egocentricity attached to human affairs. Kierkegaard therefore also in his writings explores conflict situations provoked by either the individual’s inability to carry out an ethical commitment made (the story of Quidam’s broken engagement in Stages on Life’s Way), or by commitment to a higher ideality (the discussion of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac in Fear and Trembling). For Kierkegaard, such areas of conflict are important, since the society in which everyone is thoughtlessly doing the same thing as everyone else is a society in despair, in which people are not following through the prime task of actualizing their individuality. Not only do such people reduce themselves to numerical copies of one another, failing to honor their intrinsic existential difference, they fail to implement the ethical values transcending society. From all this it can be seen that for Kierkegaard there is a close connection between consciousness and ethics, and between ethics and spiritual existence. Animals are seen by Kierkegaard as possessing only what in humans is the initial stage of the self. They have their physical nature and mental processes, but related to a life of instinct. Animals are therefore amoral in being spontaneous and unreflective in their behavior, lacking as they do the possibility of self-consciousness proper and thus the spiritual dimension of existence. It is for this reason that Kierkegaard describes animals as

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numerical copies of their species (e.g., Kierkegaard 1968–1978 XI,2 A 88, 1854) and is negative about a person’s attempt to be like other people. A person who strives unthinkingly to be like others, or who goes along with the crowd ignoring conscience, is one who is trying to be a copy like the animals, only that person makes himself or herself lower than the animals, because the latter are following their created nature. The fact of human self-consciousness opens the door to the possibility of becoming a moral being with conscience—with knowledge of motives and actions in the light of ethical standards of right and wrong. Just as the baby develops self-consciousness, so also is conscience capable of development, when a person finds that the ethical code of the society is inexhaustible in its demand, or even finds a code that he or she sees as possessing greater moral ideality. Kierkegaard and Human Subjectivity Kierkegaard is famous for the phrase ‘‘subjectivity is truth’’ with reference to personal self-development, and it is important here to understand how his views on human subjectivity relate to objective truth. Objective Truth We have seen that Kierkegaard emphasizes truth in terms of living for an idea. Yet he by no means despises objective truth, making a careful distinction between subjective and objective truth, especially in his Concluding Unscientific Postscript. For Kierkegaard, objective truth (historical or scientific) is objectively uncertain in being a matter of hypothesis and confirmation and not one of absolute proof or certainty. He therefore tends to be skeptical about what we can know for certain. While there is no reason for me to doubt immediate sensation and cognition—for example, that I am at this moment sitting in front of a computer, that I am wearing glasses, and that I have a cup of tea in front of me—I often mistakenly think I know something that I in fact only believe. In Philosophical Fragments (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 IV, 1844, 244–245) Kierkegaard gives the example of a star in the night sky. I can be sure I am receiving a direct impression of a twinkling point of light and I think I know what it is and how it originated. Yet in Kierkegaard’s view I am really taking on trust from the cosmologists and astronomers information that goes beyond the immediate sense experience. Hence, especially in metaphysical matters, it is absurd to speak of having proof or proving accuracy concerning objective truth. For instance, as we have seen, it makes little sense to speak of proving or disproving God’s existence, because one has gone beyond the limits of what the sciences can demonstrate and has moved into the area of metaphysical assumption. The response to the question is a matter of belief or faith, and where a way of life is connected to such a belief, the choice has to be made whether or not to follow the way of life despite the element of objective uncertainty, here, concerning

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whether God exists. Such faith commitment to a way of life Kierkegaard describes in terms of subjective truth. Subjective Truth and Its Relation to Objective Truth Subjective truth is the attempt made by an individual to follow truly a particular ethical or ethical-religious path. It is the process of attempting to actualize objective ideals and values in one’s life, of living for an idea. Where knowledge of objective truth is concerned, a person is in truth if the content of the objective knowledge or information is in fact true. Concerning subjective truth, it is the individual who actualizes the truth to the extent he or she truly follows the ideal or way of life (Kierkegaard 1901– 1906 VII, 1846, 166). A paradoxical element enters into the picture here, since Kierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus also speaks of subjectivity as both ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘untruth’’ (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 174). By this he indicates the psychological experience of the one striving to live a morally good life. Paradoxically, the better the person, the more that person discovers within the self personal defects and lack of ideality, simply because that person’s understanding of the ideality deepens in the practice of it. In Kierkegaard’s time, it was assumed by some that faith was inferior to knowledge. For this reason he devoted his attention to making a careful analysis of the topic. He sees faith as possessing the two important elements of personal existential commitment to the way of life or idea, and the objective content of the idea or path in question. Especially in Concluding Unscientific Postscript he demonstrates that belief or faith (Danish has one word for both: Troen) as an existential following of a life philosophy does not follow from a person’s intellectual acceptance of the objective propositions contained in the life philosophy, even if it ought to. Yet Kierkegaard makes clear that there has to be some possible actuality content to the objective truth claims made concerning a way of life. That something is objectively uncertain, in being beyond what can be proved or disproved, is not the same as objective claims made within temporality that are capable of proof or disproof. Hence he makes Judge William in Either/Or unimpressed with the young esthete’s emotional outburst concerning his ‘‘belief’’ that a nymph lives in the forest (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 II, 1843, 181). Johannes Climacus also points out that belief does not mean believing nonsense (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 495). This is important with reference to the truth of religious dogmas. In his journals (Kierkegaard 1968–1978 VIII, 1 A 649, 1848), Kierkegaard speaks of faith as ‘‘immediacy [or spontaneity] after reflection,’’ making a distinction between an unreflective acceptance of ideas, and a commitment in faith to an ethicalreligious path after the believer has fully understood the problems presented by particular doctrinal statements. Because so many of his contemporaries took their Christian status very much for granted, Kierkegaard does his best to underscore the difficulties of some Christian

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doctrines. To start with, he says, one does not know for sure whether God exists, while some of the claims made about the historical Jesus can be seen as highly problematic. Kierkegaard thus emphasizes Christianity as ‘‘paradox,’’ an apparent contradiction containing truth. A metaphysical claim is made in the doctrinal assertion that the eternal, unchangeable God entered the realm of the temporal and underwent change, as the historical figure of Jesus. It produces the paradox of ‘‘faith against the understanding’’ since it seems to contradict what is acceptable to reason. One cannot know the state of affairs behind the universe, but some things will inevitably seem more plausible than others. The person deciding to live as a Christian must therefore do so in the face of this intellectual ‘‘repulsion of the absurd’’ (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 532). Thus, unlike Judge William and those in other religions (‘‘religiousness A’’), the striving Christian, discussed in Concluding Unscientific Postscript, is far from being able to have a relaxed attitude to his religious beliefs (which, as Johannes Climacus points out, include the doctrine that the believer’s eternal destiny is said to rest on the life and work of Jesus). He has to face an intellectual and a psychological struggle, with Christian doctrine, and with Christianity’s ideal demand for self-denial and selfrenunciation (‘‘religiousness B’’) (Kierkegaard 1901–1906 VII, 1846, 485–487). It is possible here to draw a parallel between Kierkegaard’s ‘‘faith against the understanding’’ and the Zen koan. Like a Zen master, by burdening the disciple’s intellect with something impossible, Kierkegaard drives the believer away from a purely intellectual engagement with Christianity, and from seeing faith solely in terms of an acceptance of dogmatic propositions. To sum up here, for Kierkegaard, what we can know for certain is very limited. Much we accept on the strength of well-justified belief in the empirical experience of others, of scientists and scholars, yet there are also assumptions that none can verify, because they are beyond the scope of the verifiable. Many ideologies and religious creeds are rooted in such metaphysical assumptions, and if individuals find the ethical paths attached to them to be the way for them to follow, they may well find that they are compelled to do so in the face of uncertainty and intellectual problems with the assumptions underpinning the way of life in question. One obvious problem here, however, is where the line is to be drawn concerning what can never be verified, and whether there might even be things that one should not try to investigate. Kierkegaard certainly defined personal existentiality, but he never attempted an objective definition of mind or consciousness, because he saw this as well beyond the scope of what was possible. In his writings he is careful, therefore, to make a distinction between the quantitative, which can be subjected to scientific investigation, and the qualitative, which has to do with matters such as ethics and the human psyche. Kierkegaard felt that he was qualified to speak about the experienced phenomenon of consciousness and self from a psychological perspective because he was speaking on the basis of long observation of his inner self, and of other people.

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The Scientific Attempt to Define Consciousness In 1846, Kierkegaard purchased a book on the development of the human psyche from unconscious to conscious life by one of the biologists of the idealist morphology, physiologist Carl G. Carus (1846). He was greatly disappointed with the book because of the way the author attempted to define the nature of a human being. At the same time he observed that Carus in fact could not explain how human consciousness came into existence, or how this developed into self-consciousness, but had to resort to the religious term miracle in order to talk about the transition from unconscious to conscious life (Kierkegaard 1968–1978 VII,1 A 182, 119; cf. VII,1 A 186, 1846).4 As a young man, Kierkegaard had been enthusiastic about the natural sciences, and he never ceased to respect science and scholarship used in what he saw as their proper place, such as in botany and philology. By the mid-1840s, however, his journal comments express pessimism about the application of science to humans. He wishes the sciences to keep within what he sees as their proper bounds, particularly with reference to an investigation of humans and the nature of consciousness. The heart of Kierkegaard’s problem with science here is that of limits, and limits here is to be understood in two ways. There are limits in terms of moral boundaries, things that ought not to be investigated (e.g., how much torture a baby can stand before it dies); there are also limits with reference to the intrinsic limitations of scientific methodology. Kierkegaard seems to have regarded the human being as a somewhat forbidden object of investigation, especially where phenomena such as consciousness and the spiritual are concerned. His objection seems based both on a ‘‘cannot investigate’’ and on an ‘‘ought not to investigate.’’ While we may find some of his comments unreasonable—for example, his negativity about the need for biological knowledge of digestion and birth processes (Kierkegaard 1968–1978 VII,1 A 182, 1846)—he also expresses some valid concerns. It is also not so strange that he adds a prohibition concerning investigation in a situation that he says defies investigation. In his view, science, since it concerns itself with the measurable and repeatable, is not in a position to explain the entire human person since this includes an element of nonrepeatable individuality and a qualitative dimension. If one could, however, show that humans consisted only of a bundle of predetermined forces, the reality of moral responsibility would disappear because it makes no sense to ascribe moral responsibility if we cannot help what we do. Yet the scientist needs to possess some ethical motivation, since if that element is entirely removed, all that is left is natural curiosity, and curiosity cannot, on its own, supply the scientist with ethical guidance or control concerning what the limits of scientific investigation should be. The scientist thus needs some ethical guidance to help in the recognition of moral limits to scientific activity (Kierkegaard 1968–1978 VII,1 A 182; VII,1 A 186; VII,1 A 198; VII,1 A 200, 1846).

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There is therefore a link between Kierkegaard’s ‘‘cannot’’ and ‘‘ought not to’’ investigate where science is concerned. If it is true that there is something about human consciousness that cannot be explained in purely physical terms, it does not help to keep attempting to explain it reductively since all that comes out of the exercise is a reductionism that can weaken the reality of ethics in the eyes of those unable to see that it is a reductionism. While one can argue that one simply cannot fence off exploration of human beings in the manner Kierkegaard suggests, it is useful to note that he is right to the extent that even today there are those who see the existence of consciousness as a fact that cannot be fully explained by a purely physical account. Kierkegaard also helps us remember that however we approach the subject of consciousness, our view is going to be colored by things we believe; we do not come presuppositionless to our investigations. Further, and especially if Kierkegaard’s relational view of the self is correct, the question of individual consciousness must slip through the fingers of science insofar as science is faced with a unique instance of something that is not a complete object but is in process. Conclusion Kierkegaard’s writings contain a wealth of different material: great literature, analysis of the arts, psychology, and philosophy. He also wrote spiritual literature of abiding value. Most important, however, is his concern with the nature and development of the human self as it proceeds from consciousness to self-conscious awareness of life’s possibilities. What he has to say to us on this issue is important because it is a different approach to the question of consciousness. He does not get into the debate between the dualists, identity theorists, behaviorists, and functionalists. He does not try to locate or define some ontological essence of human consciousness or self, or point to its origins. He starts with facts and experience. Humans are in the world because they are born into it, and they experience themselves as self-conscious beings. When Kierkegaard speaks of the initial self as a ‘‘synthesis’’ or combination of body and psyche, he is not defining the self, but describing the way we experience ourselves in our physical and mental aspects. Building on this common experience, he then makes some daring claims, some of which rest, as he himself admits, on metaphysical assumptions that cannot be proved or disproved, but can only be existentially believed, with the individual trying out their truth for himself or herself. In this he draws our attention to a broader understanding of consciousness and self-conscious life, for he makes us aware that consciousness and self-consciousness encompass the individual’s entire life, and that this is what should be looked at when considering the phenomenon of consciousness. It is not enough to try to define a limited segment of a human life. Concerning his claim that ethics are essential to the proper development of the individual’s life, the unconvinced individual can test this by trying out a self-centered,

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pleasure-seeking life, to see whether it brings fulfillment, and thus disproves Kierkegaard’s critique of such a life. A person can also try to live by ethical or ethical-religious ideas or ideals; he or she can test the truth of Kierkegaard’s belief that the self develops its individual potentiality, its completeness as a fulfilled being, only through living by ethics that transcend personal and community functional needs. What cannot be demonstrated during the life of the individual is, of course, the truth of Kierkegaard’s belief that development of the spiritual side of the psyche is crucial for a person’s destiny after death. In this he clearly espouses a dualist view of the human self in which the nonphysical part can develop an eternal aspect. Kierkegaard, however, is not merely concerned with providing an existential account of how the human psyche moves from consciousness to self-consciousness and selfdevelopment. As C. Stephen Evans (1989, 31–32) points out, Kierkegaard is like Freud in being interested in the human psyche from a therapeutic point of view, and it is this element that makes his thought particularly relevant to our time, in which so many have experienced psychological problems through lack or loss of meaning-giving values.5 Kierkegaard wishes to assist the individual to recognize the existence of personal problems that are sometimes deep-seated, and to move on to living a full and fulfilled life. The objective debate about the precise nature of human consciousness will undoubtedly continue, but what Kierkegaard points out is that biological description, even if it could explain the phenomenon of consciousness in its entirety, cannot produce an answer to the question of how the individual should live. It cannot answer questions of personal existentiality and thus answer the question of how humans in community should live. By undogmatically and open-mindedly addressing this issue in his writings, Kierkegaard makes the topic of consciousness and the self what it ought to be for each of us, whatever our interests are in life—a personal, existential issue. Notes 1. A number of works deal with Kierkegaard’s life and cultural background. See, for example, Hannay 2001; Kirmmse 1990, 1996; Watkin 1997, 2001. 2. Translations of Kierkegaard’s writings in this chapter are my own. 3. I cannot discuss the huge question of ethics here, and the problems of cultural differences, but the point can be made, as C. S. Lewis did in 1943 in The Abolition of Man (1943/1978, 49), that one can find in different cultures a common assent or testimony to certain ethical norms, such as doing good to the neighbor and not committing murder. 4. C. Stephen Evans (1989, 31–48) discusses Kierkegaard on the topic of the unconscious with reference to the theories of Sigmund Freud, W. Ronald D. Fairbairn, and Harry Guntrip; he makes a parallel between Freud and Kierkegaard in pointing out (p. 32) that Kierkegaard’s view of the

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unconscious is what Freud calls ‘‘the dynamic unconscious,’’ the part of the self one does not wish to confront. 5. A classic work on this theme is Frankl 1946/1985. References Carus, Carl G. (1846), Psyche: Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Seele [Psyche: On the History of the Development of Consciousness], Pforzheim: Flammer und Hoffmann. Davies, Paul C. (1992), The Mind of God, London: Simon & Schuster. ——— (1996), The Big Questions, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Evans, C. Stephen (1989), ‘‘Kierkegaard’s View of the Unconscious,’’ in Kierkegaard Poet of Existence, Kierkegaard Conferences I Denmark, ed. Søren Kierkegaard Society, Copenhagen: C. A. Reitzel. Frankl, Viktor (1946/1985), Man’s Search for Meaning, New York: Washington Square Press. Hannay, Alastair (2001), Kierkegaard: A Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hawking, Stephen (1993), Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays, London: Bantam Press. Kierkegaard, Søren (1901–1906), Søren Kierkegaard, Samlede Vœrker, I–XIV, ed. A. B. Drachmann, J. L. Heiberg, and H. O. Lange, Copenhagen: Gyldendal. ——— (1968–1978), Søren Kierkegaards Papirer I–XIII, 2nd edition, ed. P. A. Heiberg, V. Kuhr, E. Torsting, and Niels Thulstrup (index XIV–XVI, Niels Jurgen Cappelørn), Copenhagen: Gyldendal. Kirmmse, Bruce H. (1990), Kierkegaard in Golden Age Denmark, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ——— (1996), Encounters with Kierkegaard, ed. Bruce H. Kirmmse, trans. Bruce H. Kirmmse and Virginia R. Laursen, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lewis, C. S. (1943/1978), The Abolition of Man, London & Glasgow: Collins Fount Paperbacks. Watkin, Julia (1997), Kierkegaard, London: Geoffrey Chapman/Cassell. ——— (2001), Historical Dictionary of Kierkegaard’s Philosophy, Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press.

15 Toward an Ontology of Consciousness with Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Jonas Karim Akerma

Abstract The place of consciousness in reality and its relation to organismic existence receive special attention in the philosophies of Nicolai Hartmann and Hans Jonas. Although consciousness belongs to reality, its mode of existence is rather peculiar: consciousness is not spatial. It is different from the spatiotemporal objects and processes that surround sentient beings in their physical, chemical, and biological reality. In spite of its lacking spatiality, consciousness is bound to spatial organismic existence, on which it exerts influence and by which it is affected. This intimate relationship between consciousness and organismic existence makes consciousness to a certain extent accessible to the natural sciences. The biological constitution of living beings includes a disposition for agency that links consciousness to the exigencies of metabolism, which is a decisive feature of organismic existence. The character of the earliest consciousness must have been self-concern. Organisms have to incorporate matter that is located outside themselves. Many organisms are conscious (sentient), while many others are not. To find appropriate matter, sentient organisms have an ability to encounter outer being. Without this ability the organism would be indifferent to having matter at its disposal. Such indifference must be attributed to plants since a need to find suitable matter cannot be ascribed to them. Plants do incorporate matter but they do not find it outside themselves; to them, matter is provided via their roots. Consequently, plants need not encounter outer being. I suggest that we distinguish between nonsentient organisms and sentient organisms by considering only the latter ones as living beings. This assertion rests on the idea of a coextension of consciousness with life. Since plants are not conscious (sentient) they are not alive; they are to be considered as organisms but not as living beings. Nonetheless there is a profound difference between organismic existence as spatiotemporal and consciousness as a nonspatial though temporal reality. A view from the organism (metabolism, motility, and organismic transcendence) neither explains consciousness nor reduces it to the organismic level. One must be careful not to biologize consciousness. For any ontology of consciousness time is far more fundamental than space because time is a category that applies to any process or entity while space applies to many though not all processes or entities. Time encompasses nonorganismic, organismic, and conscious entities and processes, and by virtue of this makes intelligible their belonging to one and the same reality.

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The claim of a coextension of life and consciousness has practical aspects. First, it makes possible a definition of when individual life begins: an organism’s life begins with its becoming conscious. Accordingly, there is a difference between (e.g., human) organisms and living (e.g., human) beings. Second, the idea of a coextension of life and consciousness sets free an argument against patenting those organisms to which we ascribe consciousness. If we define as patentable any machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, then living beings are not to be considered patentable. In contrast to organisms, living beings are not just matter in process. Instead, living beings are entities that own a nonmaterial stratum of consciousness.

Is There Any Space for an Ontology of Consciousness? Because ontology is concerned with the nature of existence, an ontology of consciousness explores the place of consciousness in the scheme of things and events, in the whole of being. There are only two modes of being: ideal being and real being. Ideal being is independent from consciousness and probably best known in mathematical or logical laws and relations. Thus, the mode of ideal being is neither spatial nor temporal. In contrast, real being manifests essentially within four different strata or layers, each of which has basic categorial features. Real being reveals a fourfold structure, namely the levels of the nonorganismic, the organismic, consciousness, and spirit.1 The strata of reality must not be confused with actual entities such as stone, rose, butterfly, or human, each of which participates in various strata (figure 15.1). The quest for an ontology of consciousness accepts the phenomenon of consciousness as something real. At the same time, however, there is no evidence that consciousness is also corporeal. This, in turn, precludes all spatial extension for consciousness. These assumptions explain, at least in part, the historical evasiveness of consciousness from the methodological scrutiny of the natural sciences. The reality of consciousness seems to open consciousness research to empirical methods, while at the same time its presumed nonextension makes it a difficult candidate for empirical methods. In spite of its reality, phenomenal consciousness2 in principle stands outside a theater of research that is accessible to the natural sciences. This constellation gives rise to ontology as a philosophical discipline that is more encompassing than what can be accounted for by methodologies of the natural sciences. Such are the ontologies of Nicolai Hartmann (1882–1950) and Hans Jonas (1903–1993). Hartmann’s work can easily be called the twentieth century’s most comprehensive ontology. His pioneering work acknowledges the reality as well as the nonspatiality of consciousness while never losing contact with the natural sciences. These remarkable features deserve more attention in the current debate about consciousness because they evade the wrong conclusion that the nonspatiality of consciousness is the same as the nonreality of consciousness.

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Figure 15.1 The four ontological strata according to Hartmann. Nicolai Hartmann recognizes that reality displays a fourfold ontological structure. The scheme demonstrates that reality must not be confused with and is not limited to materiality. Various entities exist in more than one stratum. A stone only comprises the stratum of nonorganismic matter, while a rose comprises the strata of nonorganismic and organismically organized matter; a butterfly is a conscious organism; only humans cover all four of reality’s strata. (Hartmann (e.g., 1950, 485; 1964, 476) acknowledges the possibility of intelligent life forms on other planets.)

Taken as a philosophical discipline engaged in consciousness, ontology is not restricted to any metrical natural science of consciousness that requires spatiotemporal coordinates. This methodological prerequisite is correctly given as a reason why the nonspatial aspects of consciousness (i.e., qualitative phenomenological contents) evade scientific scrutiny. Unless the mentality of consciousness is demonstrated in correlation with spatial parameters, it will rarely, if ever, be transformed into what we may call a ‘‘normal object’’ of scientific methodology, since a normal object has spatiotemporal extension, while consciousness is extended only temporally. Physics is considered the basic science if it is assumed that, by means of what John Searle (1994, 113) calls ‘‘ontological reduction,’’ any spatiotemporal entity that is in principle accessible to the natural sciences can be shown to consist in nothing but physical elements or processes. Obviously, such a reduction also applies to biochemical phenomena. As long as one does not accept, for example, a separate vitalistic life force, or morphogenetic fields (see Sheldrake 1981), this reduction may also be extended to organismic processes. Principally, all features of organismic systems can be accounted for in physical terms. Simply pointing to concomitant physical processes when a person enjoys a cup of coffee, to take but one example, does not reduce the taste ontologically; one must also

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consider the fact that methodological restrictions will not allow for alternative interpretations of ‘‘enjoyment,’’ say, in terms of one’s bodily alignment with physical fields, or in the context of balance, or suitability of sustenance. Ostensiveness does not reduce one’s well-being, which belongs, as Searle stresses, to first-person ontology. Searle’s contributions to an ontology of consciousness are of further interest here, because, notwithstanding his refusal of ontological reduction in the case of consciousness, he maintains that consciousness is a regular object of science. For him, consciousness is an irreducible subjective physical component of physical reality (Searle 1994, 116f., 123). By conceiving consciousness as a physical component, Searle also endorses the spatiality of consciousness: ‘‘It is easy to see that it is spatial, because it is located in the brain’’ (p. 105). However, localizing consciousness ‘‘inside’’ the brain does not prove its spatiality—an argument that has been made in great detail by many contemporary consciousness researchers (see McGinn 1995). Indeed, conscious processes, by virtue of their occurrence in spatial organismic systems, can be ascribed a somewhat unprecise place in space without consciousness being spatial or made up of smaller spatial processes (McGinn 1989, 357f.). Consciousness exerts its influence somewhere where certain spatial organismic activities take place, without owning spatiality itself. By attempting to make consciousness a genuine component of physical reality, scientists heedfully delegate the research subject into a domain that is suitable for the natural sciences. This practice is supported by a widely held conviction that, with physicality, the actual reality of any entity or phenomenon is at stake. In the advocacy of this kind of reality for consciousness, Searle apparently joins the ranks of other researchers who see the only means of warranting to it full citizenship within the realm of reality (real mode of being), by assimilating consciousness to physical reality. Obviously there are alternatives for conceptualizing consciousness without making consciousness a component of physical reality, especially in such concepts of reality that allow for the existence of being independent of its spatiotemporal manifestation. Real being, then, comprises a much wider range of entities than those that are accessible to the natural sciences. This is the case with Hartmann’s ontology of consciousness that recognizes its reality without being spatial, though undeniably localizable: Hartmann (1953, 24f.) stresses repeatedly that reality is not to be confused with materiality. Thus, he endorses a view of reality that is not limited to its spatial parameter, and enables one to make a difference between what is spatially extended on the one hand and conscious inwardness on the other hand, without declaring, as Descartes did, that these stand for two disparate substances. Even in a time of prevailing and successful neurosciences and related reductionist methods, there is a meaningful and significant space for an ontology of consciousness. In fact, the metrical natural sciences, just because of the nonspatiality of consciousness, invite an ontology of consciousness and even demand it.3 Consciousness shares one and the same reality with material things and organisms; this is so because it

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has the same temporality, the same coming into being and passing away, as material things and organisms. However, having a common ontological basis for physical and conscious reality does not reinforce a reductionist scheme. Reality encompasses two different kinds of processes: those that can be observed by many different persons from without and those that are observable only from within as inner experience. Consciousness as a nonspatial reality cannot be reduced to spatially extended entities. A reductionist scheme presupposes an analysis of mental phenomena in terms of phenomena that are already regarded as physical. Such a conception of consciousness is not available at present (see Nagel 1979, 175ff.). Organism and Consciousness A comprehensive ontology can neither define the nature of being, nor of matter, nor reality. The same is true for understanding consciousness; all we can do is to circumscribe it, or to contrast it with something different. With this understanding, the phenomenon of organismic existence can be appreciated for providing a semantic encasement of consciousness. A comprehensive modern discussion about the relation of consciousness and organismic existence is found in the works of Hartmann and Jonas. Both relate the ontology of consciousness to the natural sciences and identify it as a borderline problem of biology (see Hartmann 1958, 173; Jonas 1966, ix). Both claim to have overcome a dualism between matter and consciousness. That is, they do not oppose a classification ‘‘mind and matter,’’ because they assert an additional level of reality between mind and matter: the organismic stratum. This shared assertion will lead them to systematic research about the relationship between consciousness and organismic being. They do agree that even the lowest or faintest form of inwardness or sentience should count as consciousness. Consistent with their theory, the following terms can be used as placeholders for consciousness: awareness, perception, sensation, feeling, striving, want, desire, fear, pain, fulfillment, suffering, enjoyment. Enjoyment and suffering or pain are to be understood as life-affirming twin possibilities (see Jonas 1966, 105) of conscious animal life. Without want and fear there would be no activity either to find prey or to avoid becoming someone else’s prey. From Heidegger to Philosophical Biology: Hartmann, Plessner, Jonas While Jonas (p. 96) explicitly mentions Whitehead’s ‘‘basic ontology, whose intellectual force and philosophical importance are unequaled in our time,’’ Hartmann only once finds—incidental—mentioning in Jonas’s autobiographical recital ‘‘Wissenschaft als perso¨nliches Erlebnis’’ (Science as a Personal Experience). Here, Jonas discusses the special importance that academic teachers have for their students in the subject of philosophy. He says: ‘‘We did not just study ‘philosophy’ as a subject, but studied under Husserl, Heidegger, Hartmann, Jaspers.’’4 Jonas had chosen Heidegger as his teacher.

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Under him, Jonas regrets, ‘‘we heard about Being related to concerns—as far as mental dispositions are concerned, Dasein as Sorge, but we heard nothing about the basic physical reason for such concerns of Sorge: our corporeal existence being a living organism . . . man must eat. . . . But in Being and Time organismic existence was omitted and nature is delegated into an indifference of the on-hand (Vorhandene).’’5 Jonas’s reproach does not apply to Hartmann, who takes into account the natural setting where human life takes place. However, Hartmann died in 1950, just as Jonas began to publish a series of articles on philosophical biology that were later brought together in his book The Phenomenon of Life. Many of the topics Jonas addresses in his analysis of the phenomenon of life are to be found in Hartmann’s earlier works. One might be inclined to ascribe this to mere accident, or simply take it as a sign of synchronicity that is often found in the formation of new conceptualizations representative of a cultural era. Both have a precursor in Helmuth Plessner (1892–1985), whose book in philosophical biology Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch (The Levels of Organic Being and Man) was published shortly after Heidegger’s Being and Time and probably for this reason never received the attention it deserved. Biological Boundaries—Actively Maintained Plessner (1975) holds that consciousness is to be understood out of the biological constitution of living beings. A living being, he explains, is a metabolizing (stoffwechselnde, that is: stuff-exchanging) entity that sets its own boundary; it does not just have a boundary, but actively holds it upright. In his analysis, Plessner tries to anchor consciousness in the level of organismic being. He describes how the biological constitution of living beings entails a disposition for consciousness: the membranes of primitive organisms must be selective in order to leave certain materials outside and to allow entry only to specific ones. This selective interactivity between an organism and its surroundings is considered the basic level of perception.6 Plessner gives interesting insights into consciousness as a variable of biological complexity that matches a plan of life from the lowest rungs of animality onward. He conceives of organisms as entities that are capable of actively maintaining a constituting border (Grenze), as opposed to nonorganismic things, which simply have a confining frame (Rand). The organismic border not only secludes the organism; it also works as a presupposition for constituting the organism’s openness toward its surroundings. An organism’s outwardness with its corresponding consciousness (inwardness) is made possible by seclusion via an actively maintained border. The topic of actively maintained biological boundaries is of interest here as an organismic category that, it is true, does not explain consciousness, but contributes in explaining how it is situated in reality. Some of Plessner’s reflections do reappear in Hartmann’s and Jonas’s ontologies of consciousness. Hartmann (1949, 110) actually refers to Plessner’s study, while Jonas mentions neither of them. However elucidating and germinating Plessner’s elabora-

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tions may be, in his philosophical biology the ontology of consciousness remains somewhat imprecise. This is so because the ontological status of consciousness in its otherness toward the biological constitution is not mentioned.7 Metabolism as Freedom Metabolism exhibits what, from an ontological point of view, can be labeled ‘‘freedom of organismic existence with regard to nonorganismic matter.’’ To show that freedom here denotes an objectively discernible relational mode of being, Jonas (1966, 3) is right to demand that mental connotations must first be disregarded. He seeks to understand the presence of consciousness at the dawn of animal life by proceeding from metabolism as the basic organismic category. One must be careful to analyze the stratum of organismic existence without presupposing consciousness, since the latter belongs to an adjoining higher stratum of reality (see Hartmann 1950, 27f.). As a stratum of reality, organismic being has to be kept free from the aspect of inwardness or psyche (p. 518). Consciousness, even as an organism’s consciousness, marks another stratum of reality. The spatial organism and nonspatial consciousness do not gradually shade off into one another; there is no gradual transition from spatiotemporal to temporal reality. The basic freedom of the organism consists ‘‘in a certain independence of form with respect to its own matter’’ (p. 81). With respect to matter that constitutes the organism at a certain point in time, the organism is free insofar as it is constituted by different matter at a later point in time. The organism is preserved by an ongoing change in its constituting matter. Organismic existence is performed, so to speak, above matter. Metabolism displays a kind of ontological freedom that is not to be confused with freedom of the will, since there is neither volition nor agency at this level. Ontological freedom recurs in the stratified structure of the world from rung to rung. Variously graded, it is common to all strata of being and inheres not only in humans. Even ‘‘freedom of the will, ontologically considered, is only a special case of the general autonomy of higher forms in relation to the lower ones’’ (Hartmann 1953, 124). Ontological freedom refers to the autonomy that is enjoyed by a higher stratum toward the lower. We should conceive of freedom ontologically as an ascending series of autonomies without denying the dependence of higher strata in relation to lower ones (organismic existence toward matter, or consciousness toward organismic existence). The nonorganismic stratum (atoms, molecules, and their laws) is to be considered ‘‘matter’’ for the organismic stratum, which overforms it, without changing it (Hartmann 1964, 491). This overforming in the process of organismic existence denotes the organism’s autonomy in spite of its dependence. Organismic being is free relative to the determination that prevails in the nonorganismic stratum. In organisms causal determination is overformed, though not abolished, by organismic determination. Organismic determination, which Hartmann calls central determination, refers to a ‘‘plus of determination.’’ This plus of determination at the same time

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denotes organismic freedom vis-a`-vis the nonorganismic stratum with its prevailing causal determination. As compared with the organism to which it is bound, consciousness remarks a new height of ontological freedom. Organisms as Ontological Unities A primacy of process is a characteristic feature of all organisms. The self-preservation of the organism happens while its own matter changes. Physically, the process of life boils down to the exchange of stuff (Hartmann 1950, 532, 539). On pain of its own decay, the organism is obliged to oppose perpetual renewal to its own decay.8 One of an organism’s basic functions is assimilative activity. Organismic freedom becomes visible in the fact that the organism, via metabolism, separates its own identity from its matter. Eventually all particles that constitute an organism at a certain point in time will be replaced by similar, though not identical, particles at some later point. Inasmuch as an organism metabolizes and so is a stuff-changing entity, its identity does not consist in the matter by which it is constituted at a specific point in time. Organisms, as we may say, keep their identity via their capacity for metabolism. As opposed to aggregates of mere matter, they have an intrinsic unity. The unity of composites of matter that are not organisms is mere phenomenal: we describe bodies like ponds or mountains as unities. Organisms, on the other hand, perform their unity. An organism’s unity is there as an ongoing process, independent of our ascribing it to the organism. With organisms it is not our synthesizing perception that creates unity or identity, but an active performance. What takes place with organisms is a process of self-unification or active self-integration. As mentioned above, with respect to ‘‘self-integration’’ at the level of pure metabolism one must be careful not to put a connotation of consciousness into ‘‘self.’’ Self-integration or self-unification merely point to the fact that it is not the human observer who determines the boundary of an organismic being; rather it is the organismic entity itself. Self-unification of metabolizing entities must not be mingled with the idea of a conscious self because then there would be no metabolism without consciousness; there would even be a basic consciousness at the level of plants. Once used in the context of metabolism, the concept of ‘‘self’’ has a tendency to lure us away into presupposing concern and inwardness wherever organismic self-integration takes place. Jonas (1966, 79) is susceptible to this misunderstanding when he says that its duration and its identity in duration are the ontological individual’s (i.e., the organism’s) own concern: ‘‘In living things, nature springs an ontological surprise . . . an entirely new possibility of being: systems of matter that are unities of a manifold . . . for the sake of themselves.’’ This does not go together with the task of keeping metabolism free from all mental connotations. As will be shown below, there are organisms—that is, plants—that display ontological unity without concern or inwardness. Again, biological boundaries neither explain consciousness nor reduce it to the organismic level, but they contribute in making consciousness’ place in reality intelligible.

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Organismic Transcendence The level of organismic existence not only represents ontological freedom toward its matter; the organism also ‘‘stands in a dialectical relation of needful freedom to matter’’ (p. 80). In spite of being independent from its temporary stuff, it is indispensable for the organism to have some outward matter—that is, nutrition—at its disposal. In the context of metabolism, consciousness seems related to the neediness of organisms rather than to an alleged freedom. The preponderance of neediness becomes evident as we proceed to the concept of organismic transcendence, which had been explained by Plessner as the organism’s being beyond itself.9 Hartmann (1950, 528) adopts the content of this concept and expresses it as follows: ‘‘The organism is the spatially selftranscending being. With its self-transcendence it ultimately leaves behind the categorial character of dynamical structures.’’ Our solar system is an example for a dynamic structure: up to a certain extent, it balances dissolving influences from outside. Moreover, it is not a mere accumulation of parts; its boundary, movements, and persistence depend on the interplay of divergent forces and processes. It is specific for organismic existence ‘‘that the material boundary of the body does not coincide with the frontier of the living individual. The organism with its functions reaches far out into the encompassing physical world’’ (p. 525). The organism extends its aliveness beyond its physical boundary (p. 526).10 To perpetuate its metabolism, the organism must have matter at its disposal. This indigence explains the organism’s being turned outward. It has to incorporate matter that it finds outside itself. Consequently, it must have an ability to encounter organisms outside itself: ‘‘Thus ‘world’ is there from the earliest beginning, the basic setting for experience—a horizon of co-reality thrown open by the mere transcendence of want’’ ( Jonas 1966, 84). Hence the character of earliest consciousness must have been self-concern. The maintenance of metabolism implies perpetuated neediness, which corresponds to the organism’s self-transcendence, its existence beyond itself. Self-transcendence becomes manifest in two ways: as the organism’s motility and as its receptivity. Motility is guided by reception and urged by life-affirming neediness, it discloses a ‘‘there’’ into a ‘‘here,’’ a ‘‘not yet’’ into a ‘‘now.’’11 Motility is the outwardly active aspect of animal-like self-transcendence. This spatial self-transcendence opens to an environment. Life and Consciousness Are Coextensive Life is where an organism’s identity in duration becomes the organism’s own concern. Accordingly, life must be coextensive with consciousness. This is so because without consciousness there would be no concern but indifference (Plessner 1975, 79). The outward orientation, with motility as its decisive aspect, must have a corresponding passive aspect, an aspect of inwardness feeling, awareness, or sensitivity.

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Inwardness corresponds to transcendence. Jonas (1966, 84) insists that ‘‘it must be there for satisfaction or frustration to make a difference . . . in some (even if infinitesimal) degree of ‘awareness’ it harbors the supreme concern of organism with its own being and continuation in being.’’ Without consciousness, however faint, there would not be an intrinsic momentum of neediness inherent in the organism. Motility and sensibility presuppose each other. Life’s being conscious is internally linked with its being active. Hence an alleged consciousness of plants can be doubted. Food is ubiquitous to them. For the description of plant metabolism, neither neediness nor locomotion is an indispensable category for plant metabolism. Thus, the organismic existence of plants does not give any indication of consciousness. For the underpinning of his idea of a coextension of life and consciousness (p. 58), Jonas (1973, 83) refers to what he calls the ‘‘shattering of Cartesian ontology by evolutionism.’’ Evolutionism made it impossible to conceive of mental phenomena as an abrupt ingression of an ontological foreign principle with the appearance of humankind. The acceptance of Darwinism established continuity between humans and all other organisms.12 A person’s isolation fell, ‘‘and his own evidence became available again for the interpretation of that to which he belongs. For if it was no longer possible to regard his mind as discontinuous with prehuman biological history, then by the same token no excuse was left for denying mind, in proportionate degrees, to the closer or remoter ancestral forms, and hence to any level of animality’’ ( Jonas 1966, 57). Any level of animality that displays sense organs or motility owns consciousness, even if one very much unlike ours (see Hartmann 1949, 48; 1959, 179). Only those forms of animal life are possibly exempt that show neither motility nor sense organs, as for example sponges. Indeed, until the second half of the eighteenth century sponges were regarded as plants. A plant and its environment form a permanent context into which the plant is fully integrated. In the case of plants we are dealing with immediate environment relations. The metabolism of plants corresponds to blind organic function; in the case of plants there is no need for appetition as the basic form of self-concern. Since they cannot move, plants do not ‘‘find’’ or look out for nutrition; they are provided with nutrition from their ecological environment. Because of this relation, there is no consciousness (awareness, want) with plants as opposed to animals, which must be aware at least of those organisms they prey on. Furthermore, being immovable, plants cannot escape other organisms. This is another reason why there is no basic consciousness (fear) with them. Plants need not escape other organisms. Becoming another organism’s nutrition does not make a felt difference to them. As opposed to animals, the immovable plant’s organismic processes take place without any kind of basic consciousness being involved. All these reflections demonstrate a coextension of life and consciousness, in spite of a still lurking uneasiness that one must acknowledge when contemplating the consequences of such assertion. Plants, from an ontological point of view, must be

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considered organisms because of their physical organization, yet they can hardly be recognized as living entities.13 Of course, there might be faintly conscious single-celled autotroph motile organisms (e.g., euglena) that some would classify as plants.14 Between rooted plants and their environment there is no gap, the mediation of which would become felt by the plant-organism as need or desire. A principle of mediation in which consciousness and motility reside cannot be applied to the mode of plant existence. In rooted plants there is no distance between need and satisfaction that would allow for concern and satisfaction as manifestations of consciousness. Jonas (1966, ix) speaks of ‘‘the dimension of inwardness that belongs to life.’’ This assertion has an unexpected consequence that most likely evaded Jonas’s attention: if inwardness belongs to life, then organisms that lack inwardness (consciousness) cannot be considered living beings. Asserting that consciousness and life are coextensive implies that there is a difference between nonconscious organisms and conscious living beings. If life and consciousness are coextensive, then the conclusion is unavoidable that plants are organismic though not living entities. This conclusion is urged on us by the investigations of Plessner, Hartmann, and Jonas, though none of them formulates the unexpected conclusion as such. Instead, they tacitly regard plants as living beings. What distinguishes living organisms from nonliving organisms is consciousness. A nonconscious organism functions, though it is not alive. Not being alive, nonconscious organisms such as plants do not die, they fade. The phrase ‘‘living being’’ cannot be extended to regular organisms if they do not display some sort of inwardness. Living systems are alive because they are conscious. To be alive is not just to be a physical system of a certain general kind. Consciousness (not a vital spirit) is the extra property beyond mere physical features of organismic systems that renders certain organisms alive. Consciousness, in essence, is life.15 The Otherness of Consciousness Jonas developed a philosophical biology that aimed at dissolving the old juxtaposition of mind and matter. He had identified an ontological scheme of being where consciousness is not opposed to matter but is an aspect of organismic existence—that is, organismic organization of matter. At the same time, however, Jonas was urged by his own assumptions to draw the conclusion that some entities are organismic though not conscious. He was not able to ascribe consciousness to plant organisms. Consequently, the grip of a philosophy of organismic existence on consciousness must not be overestimated. Organismic existence does not necessarily go along with consciousness. A successful integration of consciousness into the interplay of some basic organismic categories (metabolism, motility, transcendence) does not abolish the profound otherness between organismic being and consciousness. The question persists how spatiotemporal organismic processes can produce nonspatial consciousness.

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The Subterfuge of a Metaphysics of Steady Transition Organisms are entities composed of particles containing only physical properties. By analyzing the modes in which physical properties are organized in organisms, philosophical biology will never find something that is not objective. It evinces that at least in some respect Jonas must have been aware of the fact that an analysis of organismic being, however penetrating, does not amount to bridging the heterogeneity between objective organismic existence and nonobjective consciousness ontologically; between spatial reality and nonspatial reality. Where he is aware of the persisting dualism, he ‘‘solves’’ this problem by means of an expansion of (germs of) consciousness into the depth of the nonorganismic stratum. Although Jonas (1966, 81) argues against a similar thesis held by Whitehead (who imagined the elemental to be endowed with inwardness), Jonas himself did not resist the temptation to attribute to matter ‘‘an inner horizon’’ so that ‘‘its extended being need not be its whole being’’ (p. 24). Jonas (1984, 73) also stresses that ‘‘ ‘Psyche’ and ‘selfhood’ are not identical, and the first may in a general form be an appurtenance of all matter.’’ By means of the principle of continuity, Jonas (1984, 73) finally resolves the dichotomy of mind and matter in panpsychism: ‘‘When hence we descend, from man down along the animal tree, the principle of continuity requires us to concede an endless shading, in which ‘representational’ subjectivity surely disappears somewhere . . . , but sensitivity and appetition as such probably nowhere’’, Jonas applies a principle of substantive continuity that allows for the expansion of consciousness way below humanity. The principle of steady transition means ‘‘that we must let ourselves be instructed by what is highest and richest concerning everything beneath it’’ ( Jonas 1984, 69). Since humans are highest and find anorganic and organic matter16 beneath them, this amounts to nothing less than an expansion of consciousness into the realm of matter. This strategy of a metaphysics of steady transition had already been advocated by Leibniz and Schelling. Unconscious mind, for them, is already hidden or asleep in the lowest ranks of nature and awakens to consciousness in humans. In their philosophies, there are no different strata in reality. Instead, they gradually shade off into each other. This graduality allows for a ‘‘deduction’’ of consciousness from the underlying stratum of matter. The solution of a substantive continuity is beguiling for those who are not ready to accept an irrational gap between the organismic and the conscious stratum of reality. An irrationality is given here, if matter is merely objective. There is no conception available to explain what a physical dimension of consciousness could be like. But there is a conception available to explain what a conscious dimension of physical entities is like. That conception is known as panpsychism. It is precisely the irrationality of the gap between spatial and nonspatial reality that Jonas is unwilling to accept. His rejection of a hiatus irrationalis in reality provides a reason for his panpsychistic solution of dualism. According to him, the acceptance of an irrational hiatus within reality leads ‘‘to the dead end of the absolute leap and of the impotence of mind’’ (1984, 69).

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It is his resistance to an irrational gap within reality that leads Jonas to contradict his earlier statement that the beginning of inwardness is to be placed first at the lowest rungs of animal life (1966, p. 57). He sticks to the principle of continuity as allowing for a mediation where I hold that the gap between spatial and nonspatial reality denotes reality’s decisive ontological incision. Jonas’s application of the principle of continuity proves that philosophers share the general human weakness (see Nagel 1979, 166) for precipitately explaining what is (as yet) unintelligible. The Ontological Gap To some extent we are able to situate consciousness in the interplay of basic organismic categories such as metabolism, transcendence, and motility. We can explain how primitive consciousness is fitted into the cycle of assimilation and dissimilation and develops in its service (see Hartmann 1953, 86). However, the entanglement of organismic existence and consciousness does not overcome the prevailing ontological gap between spatial and nonspatial, experiencing and nonexperiencing reality. There are good reasons for regarding a philosophy of life as too narrow a frame for the treatment of consciousness. Hartmann (1958, 183) recognizes this early when he issues a warning that coincides with Jonas’s aspiration of making consciousness intelligible exclusively within a philosophy of life—that is, in considerations inspired by organismic existence: ‘‘Consciousness as such is indeed accessible to various biological categories which seem to reconfigure it into an aspect of life.’’17 Here we can notice how Hartmann shares Jonas’s fascination with how consciousness is integrated into organismic existence, while at the same time he objects to the shortcomings of an interpretation of consciousness restricted to a frame of philosophical biology. Indeed, consciousness denotes a novelty in comparison to the organic processes; organismic existence and consciousness have to be acknowledged as two different strata of real being. Consciousness not only evades the grip of physics but also that of (philosophical) biology. Unity of the World Despite Its Stratification? From the point of view of a philosophical biology, there is no dualism between consciousness and matter because it is in the organism where consciousness and matter meet inseparably; consciousness is prefigured in the exigencies of metabolisms. These assertions, however, do not take into due consideration the heterogeneity between organismic existence and consciousness. A prefiguration does not abolish the ontological heterogeneity of corporeal life and consciousness as two strata of living beings. Thus, in order to overcome dualism it has to be shown how consciousness and body are ontologically interconnected in spite of their profound otherness. A genuine ontological solution to this problem has been envisaged by Hartmann, who conceives the unity of the world as made possible by a recurrence of two basic categories. His categories denote intrinsic determinants of objects or events of the strata of

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being. They are ‘‘basic determinants of being’’ (Grundbestimmungen des Seienden, Hartmann 1964, 2). Although consciousness is neither spatial nor corporeal, as matter or organisms are, it is nevertheless real. For an entity to be real is tantamount to having time as its fundamental category. Time and, therewith, process, recurring in all four strata of reality, provide the basic ontological unity of reality. The recurrence of time and process in all of reality’s strata shows how the unity of the world can be envisaged despite its stratification. There is no such recurrence of spatiality and matter. They do not recur beyond the stratum of organismic reality (figure 15.2). In Hartmann’s (1953, 25f.) words: Ontologically considered, time and space are not categories of equal worth: Time is far more fundamental than space. Only material things and living beings, including the processes through which their existence flows, are spatial. But spiritual and psychic processes, as well as material processes, are temporal. For everything real is in time and only a part of it in space—we might say, only one half of the real world, its lower forms.

Figure 15.2 Matter and consciousness belonging to one reality. This model demonstrates how Hartmann exceeds a simple dualistic model of (organismic) matter and consciousness and how they belong to one and the same reality. The mode of being (i.e., reality) of spatiotemporal things or processes is the same as that of consciousness. Time is the fundamental characteristic of reality, not space and matter. Everything that is real is temporal though not necessarily spatial. To symbolize their temporal feature, the arrow of time crosses both spatial and nonspatial reality.

Hartmann’s ontology enables us to accept a great dividing line in reality (the profound otherness between the extended and the nonextended) and, at the same time, to bridge this chasm by claiming that both sides of the gulf belong to the same reality, with time as its most fundamental category. Time (and process) serves as the unifying categorial bond.18 It is only by means of ontology—that is, by categorial analysis—that Hartmann bridges the gap between spatiotemporal and merely temporal reality. He is strictly opposed to the idea of a deduction of consciousness out of (organismic) matter. However complex spatiotemporal nerve processes and energies may be thought of, they will inevitably result in nothing but spatiotemporal processes and energies. By

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pointing to these, it does not become intelligible how inwardness, a representation of the real, or even the most simple sensation, could be generated.19 Furthermore, it is Hartmann’s contention that the gap between matter—however organized—and consciousness will not be bridged by achievements of the natural sciences. In contrast to him, today many philosophers and scientists seem to be of the opinion that detailed insight into the nervous system has already led to or will soon lead to a better understanding of consciousness. According to this view all that remains to be done is to gain a complete account of the brain. Once this task is fulfilled, consciousness would not only be intellectually transparent, but would find its place within the whole of being as just another part of (physical) nature. Raymond Tallis (1991) speaks of ‘‘neuromythology’’ to characterize the assumption that a full account of the brain would lead to the intellectual transparency of consciousness. The concept of reality as a stratified unity, as developed by Hartmann, is an early reminder that consciousness is not to be identified with processes that take place in the higher reaches of the central nervous system. Once we have acknowledged the ontological insight that organismic matter and consciousness are situated on different sides of the spatiotemporal hiatus, we can no longer think of consciousness as boiling down to nerve impulses. When many scientists implicitly, and philosophers explicitly, advocate identity theories, they bypass the problem of how a transition between the strata should take place, how energy from objects or events, via patterns of neural activity, might be transformed into consciousness. Once we accept that physiological observations of the nervous system or brain do not render consciousness intelligible to us, we may ask with Tallis (p. 103), ‘‘How has the myth become so powerful that many people . . . do believe that neurophysiology has advanced (or will advance) our understanding of the mind?’’ The answer to this question lies in the promise to biologize consciousness and, by doing so, to establish the ontological homogeneity of the world. Hartmann makes it clear that the attempt to biologize consciousness aims at ontological homogenization.20 But, from an ontological point of view, reality is not homogeneous. For Hartmann (1958, 182), this is a reason why neuroscience can contribute but little to the ontological problem of consciousness. Jonas (1966, 1) contends ‘‘that mind even in its highest reaches remains part of the organic [my emphasis].’’ This presupposes an explanation of what we simply do not (yet) know about consciousness in the context of whole-part relations. I suggest that a more suitable metaphor is to perceive consciousness as being bound to organismic existence. The conception of consciousness being bound to organismic existence merely expresses the commonsense observation that consciousness is always being accompanied by organismic existence—without qualifying the nature of the coexistence. Jonas conceives of emerging conscious life as an ontological revolution in the history of matter (p. 81); to him, our body ‘‘teaches us that matter in space, otherwise experienced only from without, may have an inner horizon too and that, therefore, its

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extended being need not be its whole being’’ (p. 24). This view requires an integration of consciousness into matter as residing in its primary nature. It renders consciousness an aspect of matter, which, in the conscious organism, gives full account of itself. It is metabolism, organismic existence, that can be regarded as the result of an ontological revolution in the history of matter. The same does not hold for consciousness in relation to matter or organismic existence. The relation of organismic being toward inanimate matter is one of overforming, while that of consciousness toward corporeal life ¨ berbauung). In organisms, matter is overformed without being is one of overbuilding (U altered in its basic character. The relation of consciousness toward corporeal life is fundamentally different from the relation of corporeal life toward matter (Hartmann 1949, 66). Consciousness does not consist of atoms nor does it have, for instance, weight as a constituent (p. 98). Consciousness is not a source of superinformation on corporeal life: ‘‘It does not integrate the organic processes and does not use them as integral parts’’ (Hartmann 1953, 78). There is no steady transition from organismic existence to consciousness. With Hartmann we must accept an irrational hiatus in real being that corresponds to a breaking off of categories prevalent in lower strata and a principle of novelty (novum). The principle of novelty implies that, compared with lower ones, each higher stratum of reality displays new features that are not determined by categories located further down. Spatiality and matter do not recur beyond the stratum of organismic reality. The novum remarked by consciousness toward organismic existence is only one example of noncontinuity in reality. Hartmann expresses this as an ontological law: The recurrence of categories ‘‘does not in every case include all higher strata. At a certain level there is also a cessation of recurrence’’ (p. 76). Due to a cessation of recurrence, consciousness cannot be dissolved into the categories of the organismic: ‘‘Consciousness rises above the organismic and rests on it in the same manner as the latter rests on matter; but neither has it organismic being in it as a categorial element, nor materiality and spatiality.’’21 Because of its profound otherness, owed to the categorial cessation of spatiality, consciousness designates the most remarkable novum in real being. Hartmann does not use the expression ‘‘emergent properties.’’ However, the way he conceptualizes ‘‘novum’’ demonstrates that he advocates a theory of emergence. Consciousness is emergent, because it cannot be considered a mere reshuffling of material units. It is by no means to be understood as a rearrangement of preexisting spatiotemporal elements. Of course, this does not necessarily imply that consciousness emerges from matter. Of the countless problems that remain to be treated, I will pursue only a few in more detail here. Provided that consciousness has no spatial extension, how can the dimension of time (process) be the sole carrier of interactions between consciousness on the one hand and spatiotemporal reality on the other? And how is the assertion of the nonspatiality of consciousness related to its obvious localizability, since it is a well-

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known fact that, if I have an idea, the occurrence of the idea happens not only at a certain time, but also in a certain place, say, in the cafe´ on the left bank?22 Localizability Does Not Warrant Spatiality Hartmann’s ontology explains the heterogeneity of consciousness and bodily existence by means of a cessation of the dimension of space beyond organismic existence. Since our conception of the nature of causation is conditioned by the phenomenon of causation in spatiotemporal (physical) reality, this heterogeneity makes it difficult for us to accept causal relations between spatiotemporal and merely temporal entities. It is a widely accepted scientific fact that causation requires spatial contact. Once we accept the nonspatiality of consciousness, causation between body and consciousness seems impossible. The fact that modern physics envisages nonlocal interaction has not yet altered a prevailing matrix of thought. It is true that we do not in the least understand how something new is brought forth in causal relations. All causal relations include metaphysical and, by the same token, unsolvable problems (see Hartmann 1950, 328–330). The question of how something immaterial, nonspatial, and presumably nonenergetic (consciousness) could be affected causally by, or act on, something spatiotemporal (organismic being) constitutes a special case because we have extraordinary difficulty finding a scheme that makes intelligible how time as the basic condition of the real world could also be responsible for interactions between spatiotemporal reality (corporeality) and consciousness as merely temporal reality. The category of time does not appear to be sufficient for explaining how consciousness reacts on its spatiotemporal base and changes its course of action. For this reason, and without attempting to render consciousness spatial, one is urged to explore the possibility of a spatial aspect of consciousness. If such an aspect could be ascribed to consciousness, time would be exonerated from carrying the burden of being the sole categorial explanation for psychophysical causation. Consciousness is not spatial but, by being connected to spatial existence, has a spatial aspect: ‘‘The living individuals, as organismic beings, are in space, consciousness remains bound to the individuals.’’23 This spatial dependence of consciousness on the body, or the existence of nonspatial consciousness in a spatial world, creates an unsolved puzzle whose problematic character is not diminished when Hartmann explains contrariwise that spatial boundedness (Ra¨umliche Gebundenheit) is something very elementary and nothing mysterious. The riddle persists because consciousness, as Hartmann unwittingly formulates, ‘‘remains non-spatial even in its boundedness to space.’’24 Except for the phenomena of extrasensory perception, consciousness is where a conscious being is; that is, where organismic being supports its existence. Its localizability by virtue of any accepted scientific methodology ceases to exist with the demise of an organism. Consciousness is not localizable where there is no organism.

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At present we have no fitting conception of what an explanation of nonspatial consciousness’ position in space would be. A mathematical point must not be compared with consciousness, though it offers an analogy. A point designates a position in an area or in space. In spite of designating this position, the point itself is not extended. In a kindred manner one can envisage a position of consciousness in space, without having to ascribe to it features of spatiality such as figure and volume. Hence localizability might be thought of as an attribute of consciousness, without making it spatial. The analogy of consciousness and nonextended mathematical points has been criticized by the mathematician and scientist Leonhard Euler (1707–1783), who claims (1983, 103ff.) that being located is a feature that can be ascribed to bodily things but not to consciousness (his use of spirits differs from Hartmann’s use of Spirit in figure 15.1). Instead of asking about the location of consciousness, Euler suggests, we should ask where consciousness acts on a body. Consciousness, he says, exerts its influence on a body at a certain location without being located itself. This point by Euler fits a suggestion made by McGinn (1995, 189f.), who observes that, according to current cosmological models, space had not come into existence before the big bang took place. Inasmuch as it is nonspatial, consciousness might thus be regarded as a nonspatial remnant or characteristic of the universe ‘‘before’’ the big bang. McGinn’s suggestion does not encounter the problem of time: consciousness has a dimension of time that, according to the same cosmological models he refers to, did not come into existence before the Big Bang. Since consciousness persists in time and has duration, it can hardly be considered as stemming from ‘‘before’’ the big bang. A major problem about consciousness pertains to space. Hartmann therefore asks whether there might not be a third sphere apart from the organismic/brain and consciousness: Is it so that the physiological and the psychological do touch each other in a linear border, he asks, or are they instead wide apart and have a third sphere between them? The unity of any psychophysical process would then be founded in an ontological deep layer to which we have (as yet) no intellectual access. This deep layer would in itself be neither physical nor psychic but would have the physical sphere and the psychic sphere as its upper layers.25 While Hartmann is skeptical as to our intellectual ability to make intelligible such a deep layer, some tentative conjectures can be offered. To understand consciousness we must understand how there can be a link between something spatial (organismic existence/the brain) and something nonspatial. This requires nothing less than a new conception of space. What we call space probably has properties different from those ordinarily attributed to it—different in the sense that it may contain or produce nonspatial consciousness (see McGinn 1995, 192f.). One may ask whether consciousness might not be extended into a nonintuitive dimension (see Dahlberg 1983, 42). Notwithstanding these formidable obstacles to making intelligible that which is as yet transintelligible, I agree with Hartmann’s (1921, 203) assertion that ‘‘the ultimate pur-

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pose of philosophical reflection is not the solving of riddles, but it is the exposing of miracles.’’26 Conclusion—Patent Law and Consciousness In the heart of scientific research there is still an uncontested belief that science proper is above and beyond all normative considerations. The pursuit of knowledge appears dissociated from any claim for wisdom. However, with advances in the study of consciousness it becomes apparent that the scientific dogma of value-free research is no longer feasible. One case in point is the debate about patenting organisms. Patents are exclusive rights granted for inventions: for a limited period others are excluded from producing or using an inventor’s patented invention. Thomas Jefferson, author of the Patent Act of 1793, wanted ingenuity to receive liberal encouragement. He thus defined as patentable ‘‘any new and useful art, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter’’ (Act of Feb. 21, 1793, §1, 1 Stat. 319). Accordingly, the inventor of any new and useful composition of matter, machine, or manufacture ‘‘may obtain a patent therefor.’’27 For most of our history, organisms have been considered products of God or nature. An organism was deemed an invention rather than a product of nature for the first time in 1980. That year a patent was granted for a genetically modified organism. The classification of an organism as an invention caused a controversy that is still alive. The controversy is about the question of whether life has special properties that are beyond scientific scrutiny, or whether living organisms should be viewed as very complex chemical systems. According to the latter view, the difference between living and nonliving entities—for example, chemical compounds—lies only in the degree of organization. Patents on living entities would then be nothing but an extension of current practice. How does the ontology of consciousness affect this controversy? Obviously, there is a difference between organisms and living beings. Because of a coextension of life and consciousness, nonconscious organisms can be regarded as mere (though very complex) compositions or processing units of matter. The same does not hold for living beings who, by virtue of being conscious, are more than just compositions of matter. Motility, irritability, and sense organs can be referred to as criteria to determine whether an organism is conscious or not. An organism qualifies as patentable subject matter if it can be regarded as a nonconscious composition of matter. From this point of view, certain immovable bacteria that do not display any kind of sensitivity or irritability can be regarded as patentable. In 1972, a microbiologist, Ananda Chakrabarty, filed a patent application assigned to the General Electric Corporation. Chakrabarty ‘‘invented’’ a genetically engineered bacterium (from the genus Pseudomonas) that by virtue of the modifications, possesses

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a property that does not occur in unaltered bacteria: it is capable of breaking down various components of crude oil and might play an important role in the treatment of oil spills. At first, the patent claim for the bacterium was rejected by a patent examiner, whose decision was then affirmed by the Patent Office Board of Appeals. A reason given for the rejection was that living things are not patentable subject matter under §101 (see note 27). Later, the Court of Customs and Patent Appeals reversed the rejection.28 It argued that a microorganism’s being alive has no legal significance for purposes of patent law. Instead, it held that genetically engineered bacteria are to be considered patentable subject matter under §101 because they constitute a ‘‘manufacture’’ or ‘‘composition of matter’’ within that statute. At this point in the discussion one has to determine whether a (genetically modified) organism constitutes (1) a ‘‘manufacture’’ or (2) a ‘‘composition of matter.’’ First, humans do not manufacture organisms in the proper sense of the word. Unless whole organisms are created in a laboratory, organisms are not made but simply modified. Organisms are entities capable of self-unification or active self-integration; they are products of nature. Even a genetically modified organism that displays humanmade features is still a product of nature. Its decisive organismic features (metabolism and self-reproductivity) are not ‘‘produced’’ in the strict sense of the word but are ‘‘arranged.’’ From here it follows that claims that aim at patenting the organism itself are not justified. As for organisms, only inventions referring to technical methods and processes by which certain modifications are accomplished should be considered patentable subject matter, not the modified organism itself, which in the inextricable complexity of the vast majority of its processes and traits remains a product of nature. The nonpatentability of organisms with regard to their being manufactured or not becomes clear in still another respect: organisms are self-reproducing. This is a decisive aspect because, unlike the case with all other technologies, humans do not have to intervene as manufacturers in order to gain further copies once a few modified organisms are accomplished. The organism reproduces itself, so its reproductivity is not due to human invention. If at all, only those organisms can be considered patentable to which human technology has been applied. As a consequence all those generations of organisms that come into existence by virtue of self-reproductivity must be exempt from patentability according to §101. Second, since the Chakrabarty case, organisms have been judged time and again to be patentable subject matter under §101 because they constitute a ‘‘composition of matter.’’ Under the proviso that organisms are processing material entities, self-integrating their parts, many organisms can indeed be considered compositions of matter. This definition is valid for many, though by no means all organisms. If one applies this strict definition to any organism, an ontological impoverishment of our world would result. Real being comprises more than just matter. A conscious organism is by no means exhausted ontologically by the assessment that it be a mere ‘‘composition of

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matter.’’ The practice of claiming and granting patents for living beings—that is, conscious organisms—undermines the complexity of reality by failing to take consciousness into account as one of reality’s strata. Certainly, living beings are also, though not exclusively, compositions of matter. But since patents are granted for whole organisms, we must ask whether an organism is ontologically exhausted by the criterion that stands for its patentability—that is, ‘‘composition of matter.’’ As shown in the present chapter, a conscious organism is not exhausted ontologically by this description. Accordingly, if one judges from the criterion ‘‘composition of matter,’’ mere organisms are patentable while living beings cannot be regarded, in principle, as patentable matter. The factual patenting of organisms shakes our core beliefs about the essence of life. If one is opposed to the patenting of ‘‘life,’’ then the point at issue is: What is a living being? If a living being is a conscious organism, as this chapter argues, then there is good reason to refrain from patenting living beings: consciousness is something poorly understood, while patenting presupposes that something is well understood. The alternative to patenting living beings and their genes, to say nothing of human genes, is to hold them as a collective trust and make the knowledge of genetic sequences a ‘‘common’’ property.29 Notes I am grateful for pertinent comments by Helmut Wautischer and for his translation of some quotations from H. Plessner and N. Hartmann from German into English. 1. Spirit is not coextensive with a single human consciousness; rather it transcends individual consciousness and links individuals in the phenomena of speech, knowledge, convictions, and prejudices or legal order (see Hartmann 1953, 45). Because of its expansiveness, spirit combines, where consciousness separates: ‘‘Consciousness exists only as the consciousness of the individual. . . . Consciousness divides; the spirit unites’’ (p. 80). 2. By phenomenal consciousness I do not mean the brain; the latter is a physical entity, while the former denotes a layer of reality that exists above physical reality (though not independently from physical reality). 3. Searle is right in concluding that nobody should exclude the possibility of a major intellectual revolution that might accomplish an as yet unimaginable concept of reduction, in the wake of which consciousness would be rendered ontologically reducible. 4. ‘‘Man studierte denn auch nicht einfach ‘Philosophie’ als Fach, sondern ging eben zu Husserl, zu Heidegger, Hartmann, Jaspers’’ ( Jonas 1987, 13f.). 5. ‘‘Ho¨rte man vom Dasein als Sorge—in geistiger Hinsicht, aber nichts vom ersten physischen ¨ ssens: unserer Leiblichkeit. . . . Der Mensch muß essen . . . . Aber in ‘Sein und Grund des Sorgenmu ¨ bergangen und Natur ins bloß Vorhandene abgeschoben’’ (p. 19f.). Zeit’ war der Leib u

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6. This view is confirmed, for instance, by Roth (1997, 82). 7. With respect to a deduction of man’s spirit (Geist) from organismic systems see the critical remarks of Dux (1994, 96f.). 8. See Hartmann 1982, 125. Because of a perpetual opposition between renewal and decay, Jonas (1966, 5) says similarly, ‘‘Life carries death in itself . . . [and] is at bottom continual crisis’’; it is ‘‘precariously balanced between being and not-being’’ (p. ix; see also Plessner 1975, 132ff.). 9. An organism, according to Plessner (1975, 132), has a ‘‘positional character.’’ That is: ‘‘Zum ¨ rt, daß das Ding u ¨ ber ihm hinaus, in ihm hinein ist. Um dieser Forpositionalen Charakter geho derung Rechnung zu tragen, muß das Ding sozusagen in die Lage versetzt sein, von ihm Abstand zu nehmen. In der Abhebung von ihm, in der Lockerung seines Seins gegen dieses Sein besteht die ¨ bergehen (als den Sinn der Grenze) real an ihm zu haben.’’ [‘‘The posi¨ glichkeit, das U einzige Mo tional character includes, that, whatever is above and beyond a thing, is at the same time also within it. In order to meet this kind of requirement, the thing must be in a position to distance itself from its positional character. In this act of severance, in this easing of its being from its positionality the only chance opens up to realize a crossing (in the meaning of its boundary).’’ Trans. H. W.] ¨ berhaupt nur aus seiner besonderen realen Umwelt heraus und in sie 10. ‘‘Der Organismus lebt u hinein’’ (p. 525). [‘‘The organism lives because of formation from its unique real surrounding as well as formation into its surrounding.’’ Trans. H. W.] ‘‘Das Individuum zieht seine Lebensspha¨re ¨ ber sich hinaus verlegt, sie gleichsam exteum sich her, indem es die Grenze seiner Lebendigkeit u riorisiert’’ (pp. 526, 554). [‘‘The individual circumscribes his life sphere by relocating his boundaries of vitality beyond himself, i.e., trajecting vitality.’’ Trans. H. W.] ‘‘Das Leben des Individuums geht in der sichtbaren Gestalt des Organismus nicht auf.’’ (p. 527). [‘‘The life of an individual does not dissolve in the visible form of an organism.’’ Trans. H. W.] 11. Plessner (1975, 127ff.) discussed the ‘‘Raumhaftigkeit des lebendigen Seins’’ (‘‘spatiality of living being’’), and the ‘‘Zeithaftigkeit des lebendigen Seins’’ (‘‘temporality of living being’’) (pp. 171ff.). 12. Hartmann (1958, 85f.) makes similar remarks. 13. There is no point in saying that ‘‘plant life can be dormant,’’ as Jonas (1966, 105) suggests. Since Jonas himself places the origin of consciousness in the motile animal kingdom and at the same time presupposes life and consciousness to be coextensive, one can infer from his reflections that plants must not be called living beings. Plessner (1975, 225) correctly indicates that labeling plants as ‘‘dormant life’’ is a romantic topic. The view that plants are alive had already been criticized by Christian August Crusius (1715–1775). Crusius (1963, §458, 948) says: Nun saget man zwar auch von den Ba¨umen und Pflanzen, dass sie leben. Allein es geschieht solches entweder durch einen Irrthum, dass man ihnen eine Seele zuschreibt, welches das Subjektum quo des Lebens sein soll. Wenn man die letztere gleichwohl nicht vor eine empfindende Seele halten will, sondern nur animam vegetativam nennet: so muss man ihr dennoch entweder Ideen zuschreiben, oder man hat einen so dunklen Begriff, dass man gar nicht weiß, was man saget. Ha¨lt man sie aber nicht vor beseelt, und schreibet ihnen dennoch ein

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¨ hnlichLeben zu: So ist es nichts als eine tropische Anwendung des Wortes Leben, welche ihren Grund in der A keit hat, welche man zwischen den Thieren und Pflanzen wahrnimmt, indem die letzteren eben sowohl, als wie die Thiere, von innen heraus wachsen, gena¨hret werden und sich fortpflanzen. [Even though people do say that trees and plants are alive, this is due to the mistake of ascribing a soul to them, which is considered as the subjectum quo of life. If one does not take the soul as a sentient soul, but simply as animam vegetativam, one still either has to furnish it with ideas or one uses the concept in an obscure manner, as if not knowing what one is talking about. However, if one does not assume a soul in plants and still ascribes life to them, then this is nothing but a tropic use of the word life, the origin of which is to be found in the similarities that can be observed between animals and plants: growth from within, nourishment, and procreation. Trans. K. A.]

If one characterizes plants as living beings, one either attributes a sentient soul (consciousness) to plants, which is a mistake according to Crusius, or one merely attributes a nonsentient animam vegetativam to plants. However, people who envisage a nonsentient soul do not know what they are talking about. Crusius discusses a further constellation in which someone does not ascribe a soul to plants and still attributes life to them. This, he says, is just a figure of speech, a use of the word life as a trope, which stems from similarities between plants and animals. Both grow, assimilate, and procreate. With these remarks, Crusius implicitly criticizes the views of Aristotle, who states in De Anima (411b 27–28) that ‘‘the vital principle in plants also is a sort of soul.’’ Aristotle uses the concept of ‘‘vital principle’’ with reference to an organism’s ability to absorb nutriment. ‘‘It is, then, in virtue of this principle that all living things live, whether animals or plants. But it is sensation primarily which constitutes the animal’’ (De Anima 413b 1–2). For Aristotle, there is no coextension of life and sentience (as a basic criterion for consciousness) but a coextension of life and the ability to absorb nutriment. 14. Euglena is unique because it displays either plant or animal features, depending on external conditions. Euglena differs from all other known one-celled organisms because it contains chlorophyll that enables it to exist like a plant when exposed to sunlight. In dark conditions, however, it lives like an animal by incorporating other microscopic organisms or their parts. 15. With these remarks I contradict David Papineau’s point of view in two respects. Under the heading ‘‘Life and Consciousness’’ Papineau (1993, 335f.) ‘‘denies that consciousness is . . . some further non-physical property which exists over and above any physicalistically specifiable property.’’ To explain his view, Papineau refers to the nineteenth-century debate on the essence of life. Inasmuch as there is no nonphysical ‘‘vital spirit’’ or ‘‘e´lan vital’’ as an essence of life, Papineau argues, there is no nonphysical essence of consciousness. In contrast to Papineau, I hold that consciousness is a nonphysical entity, and that there is an essence of life: consciousness. 16. Organic matter refers to chemical compounds that contain carbon atoms; it must not be confused with organismic beings. 17. Trans. K. A. ‘‘Das Bewußtsein ist als solches gerade auch einer Reihe von biologischen Kategorien zuga¨nglich, die es gerade in ein Moment des Lebens umzudeuten scheinen.’’ 18. This view is shared by Foster (1991, 8, 204), who explains that consciousness and the physical realm share the same time dimension. In spite of this dimensional overlap, Foster speaks of ontological dualism—a denotation that, under his own presupposition of an ontological overlap, is not strictly required.

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19. ‘‘Aus raumzeitlichen Prozessen, Kra¨ften und Energien, wie hochkompliziert man sie immer denken mag, resultieren immer nur wieder raumzeitliche Prozesse, Kra¨fte und Energien. Wie eine Innenwelt, eine Reflexion des Seins, eine Repra¨sentation des Realen im Erkenntnisgebilde entsteht, wird auf diesem Wege niemals versta¨ndlich. Dennoch postuliert der Materialismus dieses Entstehen. . . . Evolution soll Natur und Geist zu einer Welt zusammenschließen. . . . In Wirklichkeit versagt die Theorie schon beim ersten Schritt. Wie aus raumzeitlichen Nervenprozessen ein Bewußtseinsprozeß wird, wie auch nur der einfachste Empfindungsinhalt wirklich entsteht, kann sie nicht nur nicht nachweisen, sondern auch nicht prinzipiell versta¨ndlich machen. Zwischen dem einen und dem anderen liegt ein vollsta¨ndig irrationaler Hiatus, den kein verfolgbar durchge¨ berbru ¨ ckt’’ (Hartmann 1921, 99f.). [‘‘From spatiotemporal processes, forces, and hendes Band u energies independent of any highly complicated reflections, only spatiotemporal processes, forces, and energies will result. How such an interior world, such reflection of being, such representation of the real can form as a construct of epistemological contents cannot be explained from this perspective. And yet, materialism claims such an origin. . . . Evolution is called on to merge nature and spirit into one world. . . . In reality this theory fails from its first step. It cannot demonstrate how spatiotemporal neuroprocesses transform into conscious processes, nor can it explain the most simple sensory experience; it fails even in principle to make this transition understandable. Between the one and the other is a completely irrational hiatus that is not conjoined with a traceable cord.’’ Trans. H. W.] 20. ‘‘Der Vorgang der Objekterfassung wird zum homogenen Naturvorgang, wenn erwiesen ist, daß das Subjekt in nichts anderem als dem Komplex der Nervenvorga¨nge besteht’’ (Hartmann 1921, 100). [‘‘The process of obtaining objects becomes a homogeneous process of nature, once it is shown that the subject is derived from the complexity of the nervous system.’’ Trans. H. W.] ¨ ber dem Organischen, ruht auf ihm ebenso auf wie 21. Trans. K. A. ‘‘Das Bewußtsein erhebt sich u dieses selbst auf dem Materiellen, aber es hat weder die Seinsform des Organismus als kategoriales Element in sich, noch die Materialita¨t und Ra¨umlichkeit’’ (Hartmann 1949, 305). 22. See also Helmut Kuhn’s (1951, 311) remark: ‘‘Hartmann, whose honesty as a thinker never fails him, takes cognisance of facts of this type, but he is at a loss to make sense of them. His formulae of a ‘mediated spatiality’ and a ‘spatiality of the non-spatial’ . . . only betray his perplexity.’’ 23. Trans. K. A., Hartmann 1964, 492: ‘‘Die lebenden Individuen eben sind als organische Wesen im Raume, das Bewußtsein aber bleibt an die Individuen gebunden.’’ 24. Trans. K. A., Hartmann 1949, 95: ‘‘bleibt auch in der Raumgebundenheit unra¨umlich.’’ 25. According to Hartmann (1921, 322f.), it ‘‘ist sogar sehr fraglich, ob die beiden uns bekannten ¨ berhaupt aneinander schließen, ob sie sich Gebiete, das Physiologische und das Psychologische, u ¨ hren, oder ob sie nicht vielmehr wirklich in einer gemeinsamen, gleichsam linearen Grenze beru weit auseinanderklaffen und ein ganzes Gebiet zwischen sich haben, das dann eben ein drittes, irrationales zwischen ihnen wa¨re. . . . Das einheitliche Wesen des psychophysischen Prozesses liegt dann in dieser ontologischen Tiefenschicht; er ist ein ontisch realer, irrationaler Prozeß, der an sich weder physisch noch psychisch ist, sondern in beiden nur seine dem Bewusstsein zugekehrten Oberfla¨chenschichten hat.’’ [‘‘It is also very questionable whether the two realms that are known

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to us, the physiological and the psychological, actually connect, whether they really meet with a common and linear border, or whether they are far ajar with an entire additional realm between them, that would then be a third, an irrational in-between. . . . The unifying quality of psychophysical processes would then reside in this ontological depth layer; it is an ontic real, irrational process, that is neither physical nor psychic, but instead finds in both layers its surface components for consciousness.’’ Trans. H. W.] 26. Trans. H. W. ‘‘dass der letzte Sinn philosophischer Erkenntnis nicht so sehr ein Lo¨sen von Ra¨tseln, als ein Aufdecken von Wundern ist.’’ 27. Today the main body of law concerning patents is found in Title 35 of the U.S. Code: ‘‘Sec. 101: Inventions patentable: Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.’’ 28. Relevant material for the Chakrabarty case can be found at http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/ cases/447us303.htm. 29. For this suggestion, see Rifkin 1998. References Aristotle (1965), De Anima, trans. R. D. Hicks, Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert. Crusius, Christian August (1963), Entwurf der notwendigen Vernunftwahrheiten, wiefern sie den zufa¨lligen entgegengestellt werden, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Dahlberg, Wolfgang (1983), Sein und Zeit bei Nicolai Hartmann, Frankfurt a. Main: Verlag A. V. I. V. A. W. Dahlberg. ¨ berle¨ nter (1994), ‘‘Fu ¨ r eine Anthropologie in historisch-genetischer Absicht: Kritische U Dux, Gu ¨nter Dux and Ulrich Wengungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie Helmuth Plessners,’’ in: Gu zel, eds., Der Prozeß der Geistesgeschichte, pp. 92–115, Frankfurt a. Main: Suhrkamp. Euler, Leonhard (1983), Briefe an eine deutsche Prinzessin u¨ber verschiedene Gegensta¨nde aus der Physik und Philosophie, Leipzig: Verlag Philipp Reclam jun. Foster, John (1991), The Immaterial Self: A Defense of the Cartesian Dualist Conception of the Mind, London and New York: Routledge. Hartmann, Nicolai (1921), Grundzu¨ge einer Metaphysik der Erkennntnis, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ——— (1948), Zur Grundlegung der Ontologie, Meisenheim am Glan: Westkulturverlag Anton Hain. ——— (1949), Das Problem des geistigen Seins, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ——— (1950), Philosophie der Natur: Abriss der speziellen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ——— (1953), New Ways of Ontology, trans. Reinhard C. Kuhn, Chicago: Henry Regnery Company.

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——— (1958), ‘‘Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie,’’ in: Kleinere Schriften III, pp. 78–185, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ——— (1964), Der Aufbau der realen Welt: Grundriss der allgemeinen Kategorienlehre, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. ——— (1982), ‘‘Zeitlichkeit und Substantialita¨t,’’ in Der philosophische Gedanken und seine Geschichte, pp. 79–132, Stuttgart: Reclam. Jonas, Hans (1966), The Phenomenon of Life: Toward a Philosophical Biology, New York, NY: Harper & Row Publishers. ——— (1973), Organismus und Freiheit: Ansa¨tze zu einer philosophischen Biologie, Go¨ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ——— (1984), The Imperative of Responsability: In Search of an Ethics for the Technological Age, Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press. ¨ ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. ——— (1987), Wissenschaft als perso¨nliches Erlebnis, Go Kuhn, Helmut (1951), ‘‘Nicolai Hartmann’s Ontology,’’ in The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4, July, pp. 289–318. McGinn, Colin (1989), ‘‘Can We Solve the Mind-Body Problem?,’’ in Mind, Vol. xcviii, No. 391, July, pp. 349–366. ——— (1995), ‘‘Bewusstsein und Raum,’’ in Thomas Metzinger, ed., Bewusstsein: Beitra¨ge aus der ¨ ningh. Gegenwartsphilosophie, pp. 183–200, Paderborn: Scho Nagel, Thomas (1979), Mortal Questions, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Papineau, David (1993), ‘‘Physicalism, Consciousness and the Antipathetic Fallacy,’’ in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 71, No. 2, June, pp. 169–182. Plessner, Helmuth (1975), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch: Einleitung in die philosophische Anthropologie, Berlin and New York, NY: Walter de Gruyter. Rifkin, Jeremy (1998), The Biotech Century: The Coming Age of Genetic Commerce, New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam. Roth, Gerhard (1997), Das Gehirn und seine Wirklichkeit: Kognitive Neurobiologie und ihre philosophischen Konsequenzen, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Searle, John (1994), The Rediscovery of the Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sheldrake, Rupert (1981), A New Science of Life, London: Blond & Briggs Limited. Tallis, Raymond (1991), ‘‘A Critique of Neuromythology,’’ in Raymond Tallis and Howard Robinson, eds., The Pursuit of Mind, pp. 86–109, Manchester: Carcanet Press Limited. Whitehead, Alfred North (1979), Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected edition, David R. Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne, eds., New York, NY: The Free Press.

16 Thinking Like a Stone: Learning from the Zen Rock Garden Graham Parkes

Abstract The Japanese ‘‘dry landscape’’ (karesansui) garden, which consists primarily of rocks arranged in a context of gravel or moss, and is generally devoid of ponds, streams, and the kinds of vegetation that thrive in an abundance of water, is an art form that uniquely bodies forth the power of stone. Great power has always been ascribed to stone in the Chinese tradition, where rocks are regarded not as inanimate lumps of matter, but rather as dense configurations of the cosmic energies (qi) that animate the whole world. Large and unusually shaped rocks have thus been the focal points of Chinese gardens for over two millennia. The Japanese continue this tradition by following the way Chinese gardens emulate landscape painting by concentrating vast scenes into small areas, as well as by adopting numerous principles from feng shui. While developing a sophisticated language of rock connoisseurship, garden makers in Japan also promote a greater reverence for the naturalness of rock: in arranging a garden one should ‘‘follow the requesting mood’’ of the rocks one has brought there. Thinkers in the Western tradition have had relatively little to say about stone, though the ideas of the salient exceptions (Goethe, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Emerson, and Thoreau) come close to East Asian understandings of rock. The ˆ anji in Kyoto, consummate example of the dry landscape style, the famous rock garden at Ryo embodies a number of philosophical and aesthetic ideas from the Japanese Buddhist tradition, an understanding of which enhances our appreciation of this unique work of art. According to ˆ kai and Do ˆ gen, landscapes when properly perceived turn out to be the body of thinkers like Ku the cosmic Buddha proclaiming the Buddhist teachings through voice and inscription. These ideas suggest an ontology of consciousness that understands it not as independent of inanimate matter, but rather as a field of energies on a continuum with the energies of rocks and stone.

A Place of Power On the edge of a Buddhist temple nestled against the hills to the west of the city of Kyoto lies the oldest example of the Japanese ‘‘dry landscape’’ (karesansui) garden, regarded by many as one of the more powerful places on the planet. The dry landscape style of garden consists primarily of rocks arranged in an environment of gravel or

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moss, and is generally devoid of ponds, streams, and the kinds of vegetation that thrive in an abundance of water. Corresponding to the literal meaning of the Japanese word for landscape, sansui: ‘‘mountains-waters,’’ the rocks often resemble mountains while the gravel and moss take on the shape of streams, lakes, and seas. ˆ ji (recently better known as KokeMuch of the power of the upper garden of Saiho dera, the ‘‘Moss Temple’’) comes from its rocks, which have been arranged in the form of a ‘‘dry cascade’’ (karetaki). Enchanted by the experience they provoke, the novelist Kawabata Yasunari (1975, 86–91) describes a scene in Beauty and Sadness where ˆ ji the two female protagonists, both of whom are artists, visit the dry landscape at Saiho in the expectation of being able to ‘‘absorb a little of the strength [of this] oldest and most powerful of all rock gardens.’’1 The experience turns out to be unexpectedly overwhelming: ‘‘The priest Muso’s rock garden, weathered for centuries, had taken on such an antique patina that the rocks looked as if they had always been there. However, their stiff, angular forms left no doubt that it was a human composition, and Otoko had never felt its pressure as intensely as she did now. . . . ‘Shall we go home?’ she asked. ‘The rocks are beginning to frighten me.’ ’’2 To understand the enigmatic force of this place, and the style of Zen rock garden for which it paved the way, we need to appreciate the very different understanding of stone that prevails in East Asian tradiˆ ji. tions of thought. But first a fuller description of the garden at Saiho ˆ ji is a beautiful example of the traditional The lower of the two gardens at Saiho ‘‘paradisal’’ style of Japanese garden, in which a pond furnished with rocks represents the ‘‘Isles of the Immortals’’ lying in the eastern ocean, as described in Chinese Daoist mythology.3 After walking around the moss-rimmed pond of the lower garden, one climbs a path that leads uphill past a mysterious grove of bamboo. The place begins to assume the kind of numinous atmosphere that Shinto, the indigenous religion of Japan, ascribes to the presence of kami, or divinities, throughout the natural world, but especially in the more impressive exemplars of natural phenomena such as mountain peaks, waterfalls, and large or unusually shaped rocks. On turning the last bend in the path uphill, one comes upon the ‘‘dry cascade’’ of the upper garden. Fifty or so rocks descend the hillside in three tiers, evoking a waterfall deep in the mountains. Most of the rocks are covered with lichen, surrounded by ‘‘pools’’ of moss, and bordered by some moderate-sized trees that describe graceful arcs over the edges of the arrangement. The moss together with the lichen that clothes the rocks in varying thicknesses makes for a remarkable array of colors: browns, dark grays, mauves, oranges, and many shades of sometimes iridescent green. A few miniature ferns and a scattering of dead pine needles add contrasting touches. The warm colors of the moss pools stand out against the cooler hues of the bare stone, and when wetted by rain all the colors become impressively more saturated. If the sun is shining, its rays filter through the trees and highlight different elements of the composition differentially. When the branches sway in the wind, light and shade play slowly over the entire

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scene, the movements accentuating at first the stillness of the rocks. But further ˆ gen Zenji (1200–1253), whom the So ˆ to ˆ contemplation brings to mind Zen master Do School of Zen takes as its founder, and who talks of ‘‘learning from mountains flowing ˆ gen 1994, 87). Under any conditions the dry cascade and water not flowing’’ (Do invites the viewer to enjoy the play of stillness and movement by exploring it synesthetically—as if one were moving bodily through, around, and over it—so that even when no movement is visible within the garden, the movements of one’s eyes promote a dynamic and tactile exploration. In corresponding natural settings—what the Japanese call shoˆtoku no sansui, landscape ‘‘as in life’’—one can enjoy rock configurations of remarkable beauty by finding and adopting the appropriate perspective. Sometimes a particular natural grouping will simply catch the attention as one walks by; sometimes another will advertise itself as deserving of a closer look, or else invite one to walk around, crouch, or sit down until the optimal viewpoint is found. With both the garden and the natural setting, a necessary precondition of this kind of enjoyment is an open mind from which preoccupations and prejudices about what one is seeing have been emptied, and a consequent responsiveness to what is actually going on. A natural environment and a constructed environment like the Zen rock garden both conduce to such an open mode of awareness. The main difference is that in the garden the rocks have been arranged, and the range of viewpoints restricted, so that there is no need to search to find the appropriate perspective for the optimal experience. ˆ ji gives the impression of a being situated in a At first sight the dry cascade at Saiho sacred grove, and anyone acquainted with Shinto is going to feel the presence here of kami in high concentrations. Shinto has always treated impressive rocks (iwakura) with special reverence: it was then a natural step to supplement nature by erecting piles of rocks in order to attract kami to a particular place, and these became the prototypes of the arrangements that would grace Japanese gardens in later centuries. Since rocks were regarded as numinous long before the importation of feng shui and garden lore from China, their role in the Japanese garden became ever more important. ˆ ji manifests several antinomies. Although the scene looks The upper garden at Saiho natural at first sight, the composition instantiates a highly sophisticated design. Whereas the rocks themselves appear natural, albeit selected for their mainly horizontal shapes, they are in fact hewn (as components of a former burial mound), which is very unusual for rocks in a Japanese garden. The soaring arcs of the surrounding trees contrast with the angular density of the rock arrangement, and the stillness of the stone sets off the dynamism of the descending-tiers composition. As a dry cascade the composition presents, and makes strangely present, water that is literally absent. Several of the larger rocks have vertical streaks and striations, like the ‘‘waterfall rocks’’ (taki-ishi) often found in Japanese gardens, where the streaks create the illusion of a cascade. Some water does, of course, run down these rocks in heavy rain, but the mossy

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ground surrounding absorbs the runoff so that no actual streams develop to spoil the effect of a cascade that is dry in all seasons. Many commentators remark on what is perhaps the most powerful effect of this garden: if one can arrange to contemplate it alone, on a windless day the almost total silence is occasionally interrupted by the deafening roar of a waterfall that is not there. ˆ gen’s (1997, 87) ‘‘Voices of the River-Valley, Forms of the One is again reminded of Do Mountains’’ (Keisei-sanshiki): ‘‘When the voices of the river-valley are heard, waves break back upon themselves and surf crashes high into the sky.’’ It is perhaps the evocation of an absence through two sensory dimensions at once that accounts for the dry cascade’s strange power. The arrangement of the rocks induces the viewer to see a cataract that is not there, and the imaginative projection of downflowing water seems to animate the motionless rocks with an enigmatic dynamism. The effect is enhanced by the auditory hallucination of rushing waters—a disturbing experience for visitors unaccustomed to hearing things that are not there. But it is reassuring to know that hearing with the eyes is not regarded as abnormal by Zen masters: in discussing the ˆ gen quotes mystery of how nonsentient beings preach the Buddhist teachings, Do ˆ zan Ryo ˆ kai who says, ‘‘If we hear the sound through from a poem by the Zen master To ˆ gen 1997, 117). the eyes, we are able to know it’’ (Do ˆ ji are attributed to the Zen monk Muso ˆ Soseki (1275–1351), The gardens at Saiho ˆ gen. (The seki in his name is, appropriately, who lived some three generations after Do ˆ ’s ‘‘Ode to the Dry Landscape’’ (Kasenzui no a reading of the graph for ‘‘rock.’’) Muso in) begins with a tribute to the synesthetic quality of rock gardens (Merwin 1998, 212): A high mountain soars without a grain of dust A waterfall plunges without a drop of water.

ˆ ji, the author has transformed By skillfully arranging rocks in the upper garden of Saiho a hillside into the face of a mountain; with not a drop of water present, cataracts rush loudly down. ˆ inzan after the mountain hermitage The hill behind the dry cascade is named Ko of the Tang dynasty Chan master Liang Zuozhu (Chan being the Chinese precursor of Zen in Japan). Some commentators claim that the tiers of rocks evoke the steep path leading up to his temple, and represent more generally the difficult ascent to the summit of Zen teaching and practice. Others see it as merely the remains of an actual series of steps leading to another building in the temple: something crafted, but not really a work of art at all. The lower garden is known to represent the Pure Land ( joˆdo), the Western Paradise of Amida Buddha, and the upper garden the defilement of this world

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(edo), yet other scholars see the dry cascade as a way leading out of the world of defilement (see Hennig 1982, 111–112; Schaarschmidt-Richter 1979, 180). Whatever the significance of this earliest example of the karesansui garden, several of its features point back to China. And, given the enormous influence of Chinese ideas and practices on the development of garden making in Japan, a brief review of some of that history will be of help. The Awareness of Stone in China Few civilizations have revered stone and rocks as greatly as the Chinese (though the Japanese are foremost among those few). A cosmogonic myth from ancient China depicts the sky as a vast cave, and mountains as fragments that came loose from the vault of heaven and ended up on earth. These huge stone fragments in falling through the air became charged with vast amounts of cosmic energy, or qi (ch’i), before embedding themselves in the earth (Rambach and Rambach 1987, 39). As in other places, there is prehistoric evidence in China of religious practices in which stone plays a key role, and records of rocks being arranged in emperors’ parks go back over two thousand years.4 Adopted as their prerogative by the imperial family, enthusiasm for stone and the mineral kingdom then spread to the literati, and it endures in the culture to this day. By contrast with the worldview derived from the modern natural sciences, which make a sharp distinction between the animate and inanimate (with rocks falling on the lifeless side of the divide), the ancient Chinese understand all natural phenomena, including humans, as configurations of qi. This energy, with its polarities of yin and yang, ranges along a spectrum from rarefied to condensed, forming a continuum that precedes, or underlies, the traditional Western distinction between the physical and the psychic. An appreciation of this energetic monism of qi in Chinese thought will help us to understand the Chinese reverence for rock, and perhaps also to experience the power that the East Asian traditions have ascribed to stone. Mainstream Western ways of thinking with their dichotomies between spirit and matter, psychic and physical, animate and inanimate, tend to obstruct such modes of experience. But if, following this Chinese lead, we can learn to perceive stone as a denser and slower-moving form of the energies that also constitute organic configurations such as plants or animals, our perception of the world will be transformed. (This kind of experiential transformation also leads to a different and more salutary way of thinking about ecological issues.) The two great powers in Chinese cosmology are those of heaven and earth, the prime manifestations of yang and yin energies. In this sense rock, as earth, is yin, but insofar as stone thrusts up from the earth in the form of volcanoes and mountains it is considered yang. In relation to the basic element of water, which is yin, rock in its

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hardness again manifests yang energy. The poles of yang and yin also connote ‘‘activity’’ and ‘‘structure,’’ so that the patterns that emerge from the interaction between heaven and earth are understood as ‘‘expressions of organization operating on energy’’ (Hay 1985, 42, 50). An entry on stone from an eighteenth-century encyclopedia characterizes rocks as follows: ‘‘The essential energy of earth forms rock. . . . Rocks are kernels of energy; the generation of rock from energy is like the body’s arterial system producing nails and teeth. . . . The earth has the famous mountains as its support, . . . rocks are its bones.’’5 To describe rocks as the bones of the earth is by no means counterintuitive for readers raised in modern industrial societies, but the characterization of stone as a concentration of earth’s ‘‘essential energy’’ represents a distinctively Chinese way of thinking that may at first be difficult for some readers to appreciate or experience. Rather than positing a world of reality behind and separate from the world of sensory experience, Chinese thought has generally sought to understand the transformational processes of existence, some of which may not be immediately apparent. For example, Chinese medicine, acupuncture especially, is predicated on the idea of balancing yin and yang energies within the body, and harmonizing the flows of qi constituting the human frame with the patterns of energies around it. This type of medicine is related to a broader science that explores human relations to terrain and environment: namely, feng shui. This term has usually been translated as ‘‘geomancy’’ (earth divination), though the literal meaning is ‘‘wind-water,’’ and it refers to a very practical form of environmental science that would encourage discarding all the commercial clutter that obstructs our relationship with the natural environment.6 The aim of original feng shui practice is to ensure that the places in which one lives and works, from residences and gardens to offices and workshops, are set up in such a way that one’s activities are harmonized with the greater patterning of qi that constitute the environs. Corresponding to the ‘‘meridians’’ in the human body through which qi flows are the ‘‘lifelines’’ (shi) that feng shui detects in the configuration of terrain. Drawing on a classic text by Guo Pu from the fourth century, a contemporary scholar ( Jullien 1995, 91–92) writes: ‘‘Let us experience ‘physics’ as the single ‘breath at the origin of things, forever circulating,’ which flows through the whole of space, endlessly engendering all existing things, ‘deploying itself continuously in the great process of the coming-to-be and transformation of the world’ and ‘filling every individual species through and through.’ ’’ This vital breath is itself invisible, though discernible in the contours of landscape. Not all places are alike: they differ according to the patterns and concentrations of the energy flowing through them. Since qi also animates human beings, people who live in places where the circulations of vital breath are more intense will flourish more energetically: ‘‘By rooting one’s dwelling here rather than elsewhere, one locks into the very vitality of the world [and] taps the energy of things more directly’’ (p. 92).

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Since rocks of unusual size or shape are special conduits or reservoirs for qi, beneficial effects will flow from simply being in their presence. The rock garden thereby becomes a site not only for aesthetic contemplation but also for self-cultivation, since the qi of the rocks will be enhanced by the flows of energy among the other natural components there. In a work called ‘‘A Eulogy to the Lodestone,’’ Guo Pu wonders at the inscrutable operations and interactions of the phenomena that feng shui tries to fathom: ‘‘Lodestone draws in iron, Amber picks up mustard seeds. Energy invisibly passes, Cosmic numerology mysteriously matches. Things respond to each other, In ways beyond our knowing’’ (see Hay 1985, 53). Classical Chinese philosophy is especially fond of correlations between microcosm and macrocosm, so that the sense of correspondence between rocks and mountains runs deeper than mere symbolization (see Stein 1990). Mountains as the most majestic expressions of natural forces were regarded as especially numinous beings: Five Sacred Peaks stood for the center of the world and its four cardinal points. Rocks were thought to partake of the powers of the mountain less through their resembling its outward appearance than for their being true microcosms, animated by the same huge telluric energies that formed the heights and peaks. The introduction to the twelfth-century treatise by Du Wan, the ‘‘Cloud Forest Catalogue of Rocks’’ (Yunlin Shipu), begins: ‘‘The purest energy of the heaven-earth world coalesces into rock. It emerges, bearing the soil. Its formations are wonderful and fantastic. . . . Within the size of a fist can be assembled the beauty of a thousand cliffs’’ (Hay 1985, 38). This idea that the energies of the macrocosm are concentrated in the microcosm will also become a major principle in the art of the rock garden in Japan. With the development of sophisticated rock connoisseurship in China, several types of rock came to be highly prized. The most spectacular kind came from Lake Tai (Tai Hu, also known as ‘‘Grand Lake’’) near Suzhou and Shanghai, in the heart of literati culture in the southeast. The earliest description we have of a Taihu rock comes from a poem by the Tang dynasty poet Bai Juyi: Its controlling spirit overpowers the bamboo and trees, Its manifested energy dominates the pavilions and terrace. From its interior rise quiet whispers, Is it the womb of winds? Sharp swords show in its angular edges, Their ringing resonance clearer than jasper chimes. Its great shape seems to move, Its massive forces seem on the brink of collapse. (Hay 1985, 19–21)

The geology of the Lake Tai area is remarkable in that the rock there is formed from limestone deposits nearly 300 million years old (p. 36). These ancient formations were corroded into extravagant shapes when the area was covered by sea, and were then

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worked and sculpted by the action of hard pebbles in the lake during storms. Especially fine specimens of these Taihu rocks—which often look like frozen billows of ocean spume, or enormous stone fungi burgeoning into the air, or extravagant coral formations poised in an invisible ocean—would often stand alone as the centerpieces of famous gardens. After being touched up by human hands, they would sometimes be submerged in the lake again until they reacquired the appropriate patina. The seventeenth-century garden manual by Cheng Ji, the Yuanye (Craft of Gardens), offers definite encouragement to improve on nature’s work. Simply to move rocks to a garden is already to ‘‘denature’’ them in a sense, but the arrangements are meant to enhance their natural vitality: ‘‘Rocks are not like plants or trees: once gathered, they gain a new lease on life.’’ Stone always has to be cleaned after being excavated, but certain kinds of rocks ‘‘may have to be shaped and carved with adze and chisel to bring out their beauty’’ ( Ji 1988, 112–114). Such exhortations to apply the craftsman’s tools are rare in the corresponding Japanese literature. The Yuanye advises that the rocks used for the peaks of artificial mountains should be larger at the top than below, and fitted together so that ‘‘they will have the appearance of being about to soar into the air’’ (p. 110). Sometimes the effect in these artificial mountains is comparable to that of the Gothic cathedral, where the aim is to counteract the weight of the stone and lend it lightness. Rocks in Japanese gardens by contrast generally advertise rather than conceal their weight, though their placement is often designed to exhibit their vitality in the way they thrust up from beneath the ground. The Chinese tradition tends to revere nature as ‘‘the greatest of all artists,’’ in consonance with the Daoist ideal of wuwei: nondisruptive action in harmony with natural transformations. The great artist engages in dou zaohua, ‘‘plundering the natural processes of making and transforming,’’ and takes these creative processes ‘‘as his master and teacher’’ (Hay 1985, 173). But the Chinese art of the garden does not shrink from perfecting natural products when necessary: evidence in Du Wan’s Cloud Forest Catalogue (Yunlin Shipu) suggests that ‘‘twelfth-century connoisseurs seem not to have put a premium on ‘natural’ stones’’ (Schafer 1961, 30). For the Chinese, a major manifestation of the creative workings of nature through the medium of rock is found in the ‘‘stone screens’’ that have long been a common item of Chinese furniture. The veining of the marble used for these screens exhibits ‘‘traces of mineral combinations of pure limestone and sedimentary layers of clay mixed with organic material or iron oxides which the limestone has recrystallized,’’ which produce by way of ‘‘natural painting’’ patterns that look like landscapes (Rambach and Rambach 1987, 26–29). Also known as ‘‘dreamstones’’ or ‘‘journeying stones,’’ they have been avidly collected by scholars and officials for the decoration of their residences, and several different kinds are described in the Cloud Forest Catalogue. These stones manifest nature’s artistry in depicting a large part of itself (a landscape) in a smaller part of that part (a rock).

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As northern Song landscape painting began to flourish in the course of the tenth century, resemblance to depicted mountains became a feature that connoisseurs looked for in rocks. A traditional condition for successful landscape painting in China is qi yun sheng tong, which refers to the ability of artists to let their work be animated by the same qi that produces the natural phenomena they are painting. So rather than attempting to reproduce the visual appearance of the natural world, the artists let the brushstrokes flow from the common source that produces both natural phenomena and their own activity. This condition was easily adapted to the art of garden making, where the very elements of the artists’ craft are natural beings, which are then artfully selected and arranged in order to reproduce harmonies in the natural world outside the garden within a subtly organized setting (Keswick 1978, 94–96). When Song landscape painting reached Japan, it exerted a similarly inspiring influence on garden makers there, especially in their selection and arrangement of rocks. Given the traditional reverence in China for natural phenomena, it is not surprising that Buddhist thought should take a distinctively Chinese turn after being transplanted from India during the first century A.D. The legendary patriarch of the Chan School of Buddhism, the Indian monk Bodhidharma, by some accounts spent nine years after coming to China meditating in front of the rock face of a cliff. (Buddhist arhats are often depicted seated on pedestals of rock or in caves, and there is a famous ˆ .) A signifipainting of Bodhidharma in a cave of rock by the Japanese painter Sesshu cant development took place in the early Tang dynasty (618–907), in which the Chinese Mahayana extension of the promise of salvation to ‘‘all sentient beings,’’ based on the ‘‘dependent coarising’’ of all things, was taken to its logical conclusion. A philosopher by the name of Jizang wrote of the ‘‘Attainment of Buddhahood by Plants and Trees,’’ and a later thinker, Zhanran from the Tiantai School, argued that ‘‘even nonsentient beings have Buddha-nature.’’7 Therefore we may know that the single mind of a single particle of dust comprises the mindnature of all sentient beings and Buddhas. . . . Therefore, when we speak of all things, why should exception be made in the case of a tiny particle of dust? Why should the substance of ‘‘suchness’’ pertain exclusively to ‘‘us’’ and not to ‘‘others’’? . . . Who, then is ‘‘animate’’ and who ‘‘inanimate’’? Within the Assembly of the Lotus, all are present without division. In the case of grass, trees, and the soil, what difference is there between the four kinds of atoms? Whether they merely lift their feet or energetically traverse the long path, they will all reach [Nirvana].8

ˆ The Tiantai School was transmitted to Japan (as Tendai Buddhism) by the monk Saicho (767–823), who picked up the line of thinking developed by Zhanran and was the first in Japan to write of ‘‘the Buddha-nature of trees and rocks’’ (mokuseki busshoˆ). The seeds of these ideas would find especially fertile ground in the minds of some formidable Japanese thinkers during the following few centuries.

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Japanese Understandings of Rock Even though no dry landscape gardens from the Heian Period in Japan have survived, we can learn something about the philosophy behind them from the earliest surviving manual for garden design, the Sakuteiki (Notes on Garden Making), attributed to the eleventh-century nobleman Tachibana no Toshitsuna. A look at this classic treatise, about one-quarter of which is devoted to the topic of rocks, will help us to appreciate the understanding of rock that underlies the development of the art of garden making in Japan. The text’s opening words ‘‘Ishi o tate’’ literally mean ‘‘when placing rocks’’; but this locution eventually acquired the broader sense of ‘‘when making a garden,’’ which demonstrates the centrality of rock arranging to the development of that art. The primary principle to be observed is exemplified in the frequent occurrences of the locution ‘‘following the request [of the rock]’’ (kowan ni shitagau). It is used to encourage a responsiveness on the part of garden makers to what we might call the ‘‘soul’’ of the stone: the translator refers in this context to the Japanese term ishigokoro, meaning the ‘‘heart,’’ or ‘‘mind,’’ of the rock (Shimoyama 1976, ix). Rather than imposing a preconceived design onto the site and the elements to be arranged there, accomplished garden makers will be sensitive to what the particular rocks ‘‘want.’’ If the garden makers listen carefully, the rocks will tell them where they belong. Readers operating on the Cartesian dichotomy between mind and matter will tend to regard (and perhaps dismiss) much of the content of this text as naive anthropomorphism, but such readers would do well to reflect on just how recent and parochial the Cartesian worldview is—no matter how efficacious it may have been in the human manipulation of the world by means of technology. By endorsing Cartesian dualism, science gave itself permission to deflate the ‘‘world soul’’ of antiquity, as it were, draining the anima mundi and confining all soul to a locus within human beings alone. It is only after such operations that any apparent animation of nonhuman phenomena has to be seen as a result of anthropomorphic projection. This perspective is moreover quite parochial in view of the widespread reverence for rocks in most other parts of the world. (The Indian, South American, Australian aboriginal, Polynesian, and Native American traditions come immediately to mind, but respect for stone seems to come naturally for indigenous cultures.) For anyone who does not subscribe to Cartesian dualism, some such term as panpsychism might better denote worldviews that see humans on an unbroken continuum of ‘‘animateness’’ with natural phenomena. At any rate, to appreciate the role of rock in the Japanese tradition, one does well to try to suspend methodological prejudices and be open to the possibility that the relationship between the mineral and human realms may be closer than might at first appear. (It is not a matter of claiming that the natural science perspective is false, but rather of affirming the validity of other, ancient per-

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spectives that are nevertheless still experientially accessible to us in the twenty-first century.) In a section of the Sakuteiki titled ‘‘Oral Instructions Concerning the Placing of Rocks,’’ the reader (listener) is advised to position first the ‘‘master rock’’ with its distinct character, and then ‘‘proceed to set the other rocks in compliance with the ‘requesting mood’ of the Master Rock’’ (Shimoyama 1976, 23). The vocabulary of rock arranging was quite sophisticated by the time the Sakuteiki was written, as evidenced by the large number of terms of art applied to different kinds of stone in this short text. They range from the ordinary, such as side rock (waki-ishi) and lying rock (fuseishi); through specialized terms used in connection with ponds, streams, and waterfalls, such as wave-repelling rock (namikae-ishi), water-cutting rock (mizu-kiri-no-ishi), and stepping stone (tsutai-ishi); to the unusual, such as master rock (shu-ishi), Buddhist-triad rocks (sanzon-seki), demon rock (ishigami), and rock of vengeful spirits (ryoˆseki). This detailed vocabulary surely reflects enhanced powers of perception: where the average person might see just ‘‘a rock,’’ the medieval makers and appreciators of Japanese gardens see a particular kind of rock with particular qualities—qualities that are related to a vast matrix of other natural phenomena and interrelationships. As in the Chinese qi cosmology that is behind these Japanese conceptions, the underlying idea is that all phenomena are manifestations of the same cosmic energies, correlated in a multiplicity of different ways that can be understood through appropriate perception and reflection. A passage containing advice concerning the arrangement of rocks at the foot of hillsides assimilates them to the animal realm: they should be placed in such a way as to resemble ‘‘a pack of dogs crouching on the ground, or a running and scattering group of pigs, or else calves playing beside a recumbent mother cow.’’ The theriomorphism gives way to what we might call personification: ‘‘In general, for one or two ‘running away’ rocks one should place seven or eight ‘chasing rocks.’ The rocks may thus resemble, for example, children playing a game of tag.’’ The dyad of ‘‘running’’ and ‘‘chasing’’ is followed by several others: ‘‘For the leaning rock there is the supporting rock, for the trampling rock the trampled, for the looking-up rock there is the lookingdown one, and for the upright the recumbent’’ (pp. 24–25). Rather than dismissing this kind of talk as betraying a naive animism, we would do better to see it as employing tropes akin to personification in poetry, as figurative speech that in fact reflects a rather sophisticated understanding of the relationships between the denizens of what we distinguish as the human, animal, and mineral realms. One of the most interesting sections in the Sakuteiki is titled ‘‘Taboos on the Placing of Rocks,’’ and is full of warnings against violating taboos deriving from feng shui practices. But a primary prohibition appears to be grounded more generally in a reluctance (that was not so evident in the Chinese treatises) to infringe on naturalness. Placing sideways a rock that was originally vertical, or setting up vertically one that was

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originally lying, is taboo. If this taboo is violated, the rock will surely turn into a ‘‘rock of vengeful spirits’’ and will bring a curse. Do not place any rock as tall as four or five feet to the northeast of the estate. A rock so placed may become fraught with vengeful spirits, or else may afford a foothold for evil to enter, with the result that the owner will not dwell there for long. However, if the spirits of such a rock are opposed by Buddhist triad rocks set to the southeast corner of the site, evil karma will not gain entry (p. 26). There is a combination of considerations here drawn from feng shui (the northeast as the most inauspicious direction) and Buddhism. The author cites a Song Dynasty writer who says that in cases where rocks have ended up in a different orientation as a result of having fallen down the mountainside, these may be positioned in the latter way ‘‘because the change was effected not by human being but by nature.’’ But in some provinces of Japan, the author warns, certain rocks may become demonic simply by being moved. Some configurations are to be avoided simply because they resemble the forms of Chinese characters with inauspicious meanings—such as the graph for ‘‘curse’’—while others are to be encouraged for the opposite reason, as with a pattern of three rocks resembling the graph for ‘‘goods’’ (pp. 29–30). The misfortunes that will beset the master of the house if taboos are violated are various: he may lose the property, be plagued by illnesses (including skin diseases and epidemics), suffer harm from outsiders, and so forth. Even the women of the household will be adversely affected by transgressions in the layout, as when a valley between hills points toward the house. One has to admit that the early development of the practice of feng shui in China took advantage of people’s susceptibility to superstition, so that a good part of it became tainted with charlatanism and mystification. While some of the discourse on taboos in the Sakuteiki seems to stem from mere superstition, we might take such passages not literally but rather as emblematic of a basic and valid feng shui principle: namely that to ignore the relationship between the configurations of life energies that enable human activities and the energies that pattern the environment will diminish those activities and render them less likely to succeed. A later treatise on gardens, ‘‘Illustrations of Landscape Scenes and Ground-forms’’ (Sansui narabini yakeizu), dates from the fifteenth century and bears the name of a ˆ en, as its author. The Sakuteiki dealt with Heian-Period pleasure gardens Zen priest, Zo from the point of view of the aristocratic owner, while the Sansui manual is based on the experience of workmen ‘‘in the field,’’ and treats much smaller medieval gardens designed to be viewed from the building to which they are adjacent—the so-called contemplation gardens (Kuitert 1988, 137–139). About half of the text is devoted to the topic of rock arrangement. The Sansui manual introduces a Confucian-style discourse concerning ‘‘master’’ and ‘‘attendant’’ rocks that is not found in the Sakuteiki: ‘‘The Master Rock looks after its Attendants, and the Attendant Rocks look up to the Master.’’ The Attendant Rocks are ‘‘flat-topped rocks, resembling persons with their heads lowered, respectfully saying

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something to the Master Rock.’’ Of similar Confucian origin are the ‘‘Respect and Affection Rocks’’—‘‘two stones set slightly apart with their brows inclined toward one another’’—said later in the text to ‘‘create the impression of a man and a woman engaged in intimate conversation.’’ Aside from appellations deriving from the Confucian tradition, another section in the Sansui manual with the heading ‘‘Names of Rocks’’ lists dozens of names from the Daoist, Buddhist, and Shinto traditions (the ‘‘Rock of the Spirit Kings,’’ ‘‘Twofold World Rocks,’’ ‘‘Torii Rocks,’’ and so forth).9 The Sansui manual again issues warnings against breaking taboos, especially by reversing the ‘‘natural’’ or ‘‘original’’ position of a rock, which will ‘‘anger its spirit and bring bad luck’’ (sec. 12). When I used to go backpacking in the High Sierras during the 1970s, I was especially fascinated by the configurations of rocks and boulders I saw up there. So many of them, whether nestled in turf or partially submerged in small lakes and ponds, seemed to have congregated in small groups resembling the so-called nuclear family: two larger rocks as parents, and one, two, or three smaller ones as the children. If this was a case of anthropomorphic projection driven by a desire to have (or be a part of) such a family myself, it was a deeply unconscious one, not to be fulfilled until many years later. Those experiences seemed at the time both very ‘‘magical’’ and highly significant, and they contributed to my moving even farther away philosophically from naive realism. I would interpret them now as examples of a deeper layer of experience than the level on which Cartesianism and scientific realism operate: after a few days away from civilization, living alone in a more or less completely natural environment, experience of the world tended to become prereflective and thereby more direct. Depth psychologists would understand it in terms of archaism and the ‘‘participation’’ typical of the (imagined) experience of human beings at much earlier eras of development. At any rate, the point is not to claim that this kind of experience is more valid or true than experience of a world of objects that are totally different from oneself as subject, but rather that the perspective of modern science is only one among many—and not one that enhances our understanding or appreciation of rocks. Correspondingly, it seems that the perspectives on rock of the Australian aborigine, say, or the medieval Zen master, are still accessible, under the right conditions, to us twenty-first-century perceivers, and that we would do well to take account of such perspectives as we strive toward an overall understanding of the world. It may take a considerable perceptual and conceptual shift for us to sense the affinities among rocks, and it is such a shift ˆ gen may be aiming at in ‘‘Mountains and Waters [as a] Sutra’’ (Sansuigyo ˆ ). that Do By contrast with the Sakuteiki, the later manual is richly illustrated, with numerous drawings and sketches. The brushwork suggests influence from Song-style landscape painting, which was being much imitated in Japan at the time, and some of the techniques and ideas about composing ‘‘garden views’’ and keiseki groups (depicting scenery in condensed form) may well be based on Song landscape theories (Kuitert 1988,

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140–144). Landscape painting exerted a profound influence on garden making in Japan, especially through its aim of conjuring up immense distances through works of small dimensions. This effect is in accordance with the dictum of the Chinese poet Du Fu concerning landscape painting: ‘‘To be able, in the space of one square foot, to evoke a landscape of ten thousand leagues!’’ (cited in Hung 1969, 169). The influence ˆ of Song Dynasty painting is evident in the second masterpiece attributed to Muso ˆ Soseki, the garden at Tenryuji in the northwest of Kyoto. ˆ was an energetic and charismatic teacher who not only gained a large popular Muso following but also won considerable influence with those in political power. This naturally subjected him to social pressures, and some of his contemporaries branded his work with gardens as frivolous and his love of nature as indicating attachment to worldly pleasures. However, such criticism is irrelevant in view of the Zen Buddhist this-worldly emphasis on the soteric power of nature as something to be celebrated (as long as one does not become attached to it). For example, there is a passage in ˆ ’s best known work, the ‘‘Dream Dialogues’’ (Muchu ˆ mondo ˆ ), in which he Muso responds by distinguishing between various attitudes toward landscape and gardens and invoking the example of the poet Bai Juyi (part of whose poem in praise of Taihu rocks was cited above): Bai Juyi dug out a little pond, planted bamboo at its edge, and loved this above all else. The bamboo is my best friend, he would say, because its heart is empty, and because the water is pure it is my master. People who love a fine landscape from the bottom of their hearts possess a heart like his. . . . Those who experience mountains, rivers, the great earth, grasses, trees, and rocks as the self’s original part [ jiko no hombun], though they may seem by their love of nature to cling to worldly feelings, it is precisely through this that they show themselves to be mindful of the Way [doˆshin], and they take the phenomena that transform themselves into the four elements as topics of their practice. And when they do this aright, they exemplify perfectly how true followers of the Way love landscape.10

Those who surround themselves with a small landscape in the form of a garden gain nourishment from nature because its self-transforming elements are ‘‘the self’s original part,’’ out of which ‘‘all things arise.’’ Through advocating the benefits of communion ˆ conwith the natural world in this way, against criticism from narrower souls, Muso tributed to the increasing valorization of nature in Zen thinking and practice. ˆ ji there is a dry cascade. On the far side of the pond from the main building at Tenryu ˆ ji, its rocks are much Although consisting of fewer elements than its precursor at Saiho larger and of equally exquisite shape, and again weathered with bands of lichen that suggest downflowing water. In view of the more open nature of this site—the garden ˆ ji is a beautiful example of shakkei, or ‘‘borrowed landscape’’ (a style itself borat Tenryu rowed from Chinese gardens), where the composition is designed to include natural landscape beyond the garden—the luxuriant vegetation around the rocks accentuates their stark minerality. It is also a consummate example of shukkei, or ‘‘concentrated

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scenery,’’ in which a vast scene is compressed into a small space in the manner of a Song Dynasty landscape painting. Although their minerality is set into relief by the surrounding plant life, the rocks that make up the dry cascade look anything but lifeless. Nor is what animates them the minimal accommodation, on the part of these beings that have never known life or death, of the simplest life forms, lichen and moss. With prolonged contemplation, it becomes apparent that they are alive with a life all their own. In the course of the ˆ gave at Tenryu ˆ ji on becoming its founding abbot, he emphasized sermon that Muso that the Buddha Dharma (which means both ‘‘teachings’’ and ‘‘law’’) is to be found not only in sacred scriptures but also in the physical world around us: Everything the world contains—grasses and trees, bricks and tile, all creatures, all actions and activities—are nothing but the manifestations of [the Buddha] Dharma [hoˆ ]. Therefore it is said that all phenomena in the universe bear the mark of this Dharma. . . . Every single person here is precious in himself, and everything here—plaques, paintings, square eaves and round pillars— every single thing is preaching the Dharma.11

ˆ is speaking here from a venerable tradition of Japanese Buddhist thinking about Muso the natural world, which I discuss below. The idea that all things expound the Dharma (hosshin seppoˆ) is central to the Shingon school of esoteric Buddhism that was founded ˆ kai (744–835), and Zen master Do ˆ gen is by Japan’s most famous religious figure, Ku fond of insisting that ‘‘fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles’’ are ‘‘Buddha-nature’’ (busshoˆ) just as much as so-called sentient beings.12 ˆ ji is designed to be viewed as a scroll painting from the veranda The garden at Tenryu of the main building, a perspective that enhances the mirroring effect of the pond, which is the most spectacular feature of the site. Only on a very windy day does the water of the pond fail to reflect the waterless fall of rocks on the hill beyond. The substantial rocks, which seem to descend majestically down the hillside, harboring an invisible cascade, are mirrored by insubstantial inverted counterparts beneath them. But rather than suggesting a contrast between the real and the illusory, the juxtaposition of rocks and reflections somehow evokes an interplay on the same ontological level. The natural world and its image, the substantial and its opposite, are both there at the same time. They are both necessary, belonging together—just as, for the Buddhists, life is always backed at every moment by death, and things can manifest themselves only against a background of no‘‘thing’’ness. Appreciators of Stone in the West ‘‘If you raise for me an altar of stone, you may not make it of sculpted stone, for in taking the chisel to the rock you will profane it’’ (Exodus 20:25). This passage from the Bible, though one of several that express taboos against profaning stone’s naturalness

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and even emphasize its nourishing capacities (‘‘honey from the rock’’), is atypical with respect to the Western tradition in general (see Berthier 2000, 10, 44). Already at the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition some parallels with Chinese ideas emerge, but the mainstream soon diverges. Thales, ‘‘father of Western philosophy,’’ is said to have ascribed ‘‘a share of soul even to inanimate [literally, ‘‘soulless’’] things, using Magnesian stone and amber as indications.’’ Indeed he apparently even said, ‘‘the mind of the world is god, and the sum of things is besouled and full of daimons; right through the elemental moisture there penetrates a divine power that moves it’’ (Kirk and Raven 1963, 94–96). (Remember how Guo Pu, ‘‘father of Chinese geomancy,’’ was also fascinated by the properties of amber and the lodestone.) Aristotle (De Anima, 405b, 404a) remarks that none of his predecessors associated soul with the element of earth, perhaps because of the assumption that ‘‘movement is the distinctive characteristic of soul.’’ This assumption seems pervasive in the Western traditions, presumably because—except for those who live in regions subject to earthquakes or volcanic eruptions—the movements of earth are difficult to perceive in the short term. While Aristotle was reluctant to attribute soul to what we now call inanimate nature, he did claim that plants are ensouled, and that humans too are animated by the same ‘‘nutritive and generative’’ features that characterize the vegetative soul. Subsequent Western thinkers have been similarly reluctant to regard the mineral realm as animate, with the exception of a few hermetically or alchemically inclined philosophers during the Renaissance (such as Paracelsus and Giordano Bruno). However, certain strains in the Judaic tradition constitute another exception to the general lack of respect for rock. ‘‘Rock’’ is often used to refer to Yahweh, to suggest qualities of steadfastness and stability. Martin Buber cites an old Hassid master who said: ‘‘When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you.’’13 It may be thanks to the heretical Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) that some features of this tradition of thought related to the mineral realm find their way into the post-Romantic Era. Spinoza’s arguably ‘‘pantheistic’’ notion of nature’s divinity (deus sive natura) was a major influence on the thought of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)—a thinker who incorporates hermetic thought into an interesting heterodox line of thinking about rock in the Western tradition. Goethe had a great interest in geology and mineralogy, and in a gem of an essay titled ‘‘On Granite’’ he recalls once sitting on an exposed piece of granite on top of a mountain. He thinks about how the rock extends deep down into the bottommost stratum of the earth, and has remained the same throughout a long history of changes in the earth’s crust. Reflecting on the ‘‘ancient discovery’’ that granite is both ‘‘the highest and the deepest,’’ Goethe writes eloquently of ‘‘the solid ground of our earth, and of the serene tranquility afforded by that solitary, mute nearness of great, soft-

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voiced nature. In contrast to the fertile valleys, the granite peaks have never generated anything nor devoured anything living: they exist prior to and superior to all life.’’14 Goethe’s ideas influenced American transcendentalism, and they are no doubt a factor in the more open attitude toward the mineral world that one finds in Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) and Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). In a journal entry made while in his mid-thirties, Emerson (1914, Vol. 5, pp. 496–497) records a kind of death experience he underwent on walking out of the house into a night lit by the full moon: ‘‘In the instant you leave behind all human relations . . . and live only with the savages—water, air, light, carbon, lime, & granite. . . . I become a moist, cold element. ‘‘Nature grows over me.’’ . . . I have died out of the human world & come to feel a strange, cold, aqueous, terraqueous, aerial, ethereal sympathy and existence.’’ The early Emerson is constantly impressed by ‘‘the moral influence of nature upon every individual,’’ which he understands as ‘‘that amount of truth which it illustrates to him’’: ‘‘Who can estimate this?’’ he asks; ‘‘Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman?’’ Like Goethe, a great believer in the ancient principle (much discussed to by Theophrastus) that ‘‘like can only be known by like,’’ Emerson thinks that the sea-beaten rock can teach the fisherman firmness because it speaks to a rocklike solidity deep within the human soul. This would be the basis for ‘‘that spirit which suffices quiet hearts, which seems to come forth to such from every dry knoll of sere grass, from every pine-stump, and half-imbedded stone, on which the dull March sun shines’’ (Emerson 1983, 29, 461). Emerson was one of the first American thinkers to appreciate the changes that the science of geology was effecting in our understanding of how old the earth is. Having invoked in his essay ‘‘Nature’’ the ‘‘patient periods that must round themselves before the rock is formed, and the first lichen race has disintegrated the thinnest external plate into soil,’’ he wrote: ‘‘It is a long way from granite to the oyster; farther yet to Plato, and the preaching of the immortality of the soul’’ (pp. 546–547). Long though the way is, it does not leave the granite behind, which persists within, allowing the human soul to participate in the deathlessness as well as the mortality of the natural world. It is imprudent to let the Faustian drive to order the external world blind one to the world within. In a passage from the essay ‘‘Fate,’’ which was influential on Nietzsche’s enthusiasm for self-discipline and self-cultivation as well as remarkably consonant with the role of this kind of practice in the East Asian traditions, Emerson writes (p. 953): ‘‘On one side, elemental order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, peat-bog, forest, sea and shore; and, on the other part, thought, the spirit which composes and decomposes nature,—here they are, side by side, god and devil, mind and matter, king and conspirator, belt and spasm, riding peacefully together in the eye and brain of every man.’’ And just as the Zen Buddhist thinkers urge us to acknowledge our interdependence with natural phenomena, so Emerson offers near the end of his active life

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a similar exhortation, when he writes (p. 953): ‘‘See what a cometary train of auxiliaries man carries with him, of animals, plants, stones, gases, and imponderable elements. Let us infer his ends from this pomp of means.’’ As Emerson moved away from the Christian and Neoplatonic ideas that informed his earlier thinking about nature, his stance became steadily less anthropocentric and more consonant with the non-Western philosophies in which he became ever more interested. His younger friend Thoreau devoted a larger proportion of his energies to thinking about nature, and began from a less anthropocentric starting point than his mentor had done. Although Thoreau’s reading in Chinese thought appears to have focused on the Confucian classics, his profound reverence for nature reduces anthropocentrism close to the minimum that is characteristic of Daoist thought. A passage describing sailing down the Merrimack river echoes the emphasis on fluidity that one finds in the Daodejing (Classic of the Way and Power) attributed to Laozi: ‘‘All things seemed with us to flow. . . . The hardest material seemed to obey the same law with the most fluid, and so indeed in the long run it does. . . . There were rivers of rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers of ore in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and this portion of time was the current hour’’ (Thoreau 1985, 269–270). While Thoreau’s familiarity with Asian thought did not extend to Japan, he nevertheless shares the Japanese Buddhists’ appreciation of nature as a source of wisdom. Just as the Duke in Shakespeare’s As You Like It found ‘‘sermons in stones and books in the running brooks,’’ and Emerson maintained that ‘‘all things with which we deal, preach to us,’’ so Thoreau too emphasizes nature as a scripture that can be read: ‘‘The skies are constantly turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new truth there’’ (p. 292). It is well known that Thoreau was an avid reader of literature (he took his Homer with him to Walden Pond), but he warns us that if we concentrate too much on reading ‘‘particular written languages, which are themselves but dialects and provincial, we are in danger of forgetting the language which all things and events speak without metaphor, which alone is copious and standard’’ (p. 411). Following the tradition of East Asian thinkers that undermined the distinction between sentient and nonsentient beings, Thoreau extended the domain of the organic into the so-called inanimate world: ‘‘There is nothing inorganic. . . . The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history . . . but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic’’ (p. 568). Thoreau’s emphasis on the vitality of the mineral realm serves to mitigate the effects not only of anthropocentrism but also of biocentrism, in a way that anticipates contemporary ‘‘ecocentric’’ thinking. This line of thought leads on to the modern ecology movement, as exemplified in the work of its founding fathers like John Muir (1838–1914) and Aldo Leopold (1886– 1948), who expanded the notion of community to include the earth as a basis for for-

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mulating a ‘‘land ethic,’’ and also recommended learning to ‘‘think like a mountain’’ (Leopold 1968, 132). Goethe’s ideas fed into a parallel current of thinking in Germany, through his influence on Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Schopenhauer recommends careful consideration of the inorganic world, and suggests that we reflect on such phenomena as ‘‘the powerful, irresistible impulse with which masses of water rush downwards, the persistence and determination with which the magnet always turns back to the North Pole, the keen desire with which iron flies to the magnet, and the vehemence with which the poles of the electric current strive for reunion.’’ If we contemplate further ‘‘the rapid formation of the crystal with such regularity of configuration,’’ and feel how ‘‘a burden, which hampers a body by its gravitation toward the earth, incessantly presses and squeezes this body in pursuit of its one tendency,’’ we will understand that the inorganic realm is animated by the same ‘‘will’’ that energizes us, only at a lower degree of ‘‘objectification’’ than in the case of plants, animals, and humans. It is interesting that Schopenhauer should mention in this context the yin and yang philosophy found in the Chinese Yijing (Book of Changes).15 The philosopher who is most comfortable with the idea of close relations between the human and so-called inorganic worlds is Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), whose understanding of nature was also deeply influenced by Emerson.16 With reference to the inorganic as the supposedly ‘‘dead world,’’ Nietzsche writes (in the spirit of Goethe): ‘‘Let us beware of saying that life is opposed to death. The living is merely a species of the dead, and a very rare species at that.’’ He then expresses the hope that human beings will be able to naturalize themselves after having ‘‘dedivinized’’ nature. What such a naturalization might involve is suggested by a brief aphorism entitled, ‘‘How One is to Turn to Stone.’’ It reads: ‘‘Slowly, slowly to become hard like a precious stone—and finally to lie there still, and to the joy of eternity.’’17 A hint of how a human being might ‘‘turn to stone’’ is in turn derivable from several unpublished notes from the same period, which evidence Nietzsche’s fascination with the benefits of participation in the world of the inorganic. Some of his resolutions show a slight Buddhist tinge and exemplify an attitude that is most appropriate for viewing Zen gardens: ‘‘To procure the advantages of one who is dead . . . to think oneself away out of humanity, to unlearn desires of all kinds: and to employ the entire abundance of one’s powers in looking.’’ This unlearning of desires is by no means a rejection of life but rather a joyful affirmation of existence: ‘‘To be released from life and become dead nature again can be experienced as a festival—of the one who wants to die. To love nature! Again to revere what is dead!’’ One is able to ‘‘become dead nature again’’ since the human organism consists in part of minerals: ‘‘How distant and superior is our attitude toward what is dead, the anorganic, and all the while we are three-quarters water and have anorganic minerals in us that perhaps do more for our well- and ill-being than the whole of living society! . . . The inorganic conditions us

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through and through: water, air, earth, the shape of the ground, electricity, etc.’’18 This kind of thorough conditioning (which is precisely the topic of feng shui), along with the human being’s participation in the mineral realm, constitutes the basis of the feeling of kinship with rocks. Nietzsche has understood that learning transforms us the way nourishment does, but he also recognizes an unchanging aspect to existence: ‘‘But in our very ground, ‘deep down,’ there is admittedly something unteachable, a granite of spiritual fate’’ (Beyond Good and Evil, sec. 231). The Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani (1900–1990) connects this statement with Goethe’s essay on granite, and with the idea of something similarly unchanging deep within the human soul (Nishitani 1990, 91–92). Stone always held a special significance for Nietzsche: several significant childhood memories have to do with ‘‘digging up calcite’’ and other rocks on a ridge near his home. He later alludes to a language of stone when he asks, clearly referring to himself: ‘‘Is a human being not well described when we hear that . . . from childhood on he experiences and reveres unhewn rocks as witnesses of prehistory which are eager to acquire language?’’ And the thought of ‘‘the eternal recurrence of the same,’’ which he regarded as the pinnacle of his thinking and ‘‘the highest formula of affirmation that is attainable,’’ first struck him near a magnificent pyramidal rock on the shore of a lake in the Upper Engadin in Switzerland.19 The thought that enables the greatest affirmation of life strikes the thinker as he stands by a pyramid-shaped rock that is ‘‘prior to and superior to all life.’’ It is not generally known that Nietzsche’s friendship with Reinhard von Seydlitz, who was a great connoisseur of Japanese art, instilled in him a desire to emigrate to Japan. ‘‘If only I were in better health and had sufficient income,’’ he wrote to his sister in 1885, ‘‘I would, simply in order to attain greater serenity, emigrate to Japan. . . . I like being in Venice because things could be somewhat Japanese there—a few of the necessary conditions are in place.’’20 One of the things very much in place there is the subject celebrated in John Ruskin’s classic, The Stones of Venice (1851–1853), a book that Nietzsche may well have read (since he sometimes mentions Ruskin) and would certainly have appreciated. It is fascinating to speculate on how his life would have been if he had fulfilled his fantasy of emigrating to Japan: he would surely have found the Zen rock gardens there conducive to ‘‘greater serenity’’ indeed. It seems, then, that thinkers in the Western traditions generally regard the mineral realm as philosophically uninteresting. Among the rare appreciators of stone, however, one can discern the idea that, if we attend to the ‘‘great central life’’ of the earth, we may hear some teachings and see some scriptures couched and proclaimed in a language of nature’s own. This is a theme that one finds much amplified in Japanese Buddhist philosophy—and expressed in the associated arts through an enlightening eloquence of stone.

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The Consummate Zen Rock Garden ˆ anji in The highest consummation of the dry landscape style is the rock garden at Ryo Kyoto. The best way to approach this unique garden is slowly, avoiding what is nowadays helpfully signposted as the ‘‘Usual Route.’’ It is such a relief to leave behind the commotion of traffic and bustle of the city, and walk up the cobblestone pathway leading from the street, that one is inclined to head for the famous site directly. But to let the rock garden exert its full effect, one does well to experience its context (and Buddhist philosophy consistently emphasizes the importance of context) by contemplating beforehand the rich profusion of both natural and arranged beauty that surrounds it. In numerous subgardens handsome rocks stand among elegant trees and bushes, while others lie, apparently slumbering, in sun-illumined moss that glows green around them. Majestic stands of bamboo sway in the breeze, as if beckoning to shadowy backgrounds. Exotic palms thrust sharply skyward among trees that blossom delicately in the spring. Such profusion intensifies the eventual encounter with the distinct lack of profusion at the heart of these gardens, which has been called a ‘‘garden of emptiness’’ rather than a ‘‘rock garden.’’ After appreciating the abundance of beautiful rocks in the gardens surrounding it, one is struck by how few specimens the dry landscape garden actually contains. On the north side the viewing platform borders a rectangular, gray, gravel-covered area about the size of a tennis court, which contains only fifteen rocks, arranged in five groups (5, 2, 3, 2, 3) or three (7, 5, 3). From whatever viewpoint one adopts, it is impossible to see all fifteen at once: at least one rock is always hidden by another. As in the world outside, not everything is revealed at one time. The initial impression is one of sparse sterility—until one notices the moss that surrounds the bases of several of the rocks. Not much life for a garden, by Western standards, but just enough to point up the stark minerality of everything else within its borders. In summer the bright green of the moss echoes the lush colors of the trees beyond, while in winter its darker greens and mauves match the hues of both the evergreens and the bare branches of the deciduous trees beyond the wall that runs along the south and west sides of the garden. Being surrounded by a sea of gray gravel, the moss emphasizes the effect created by the elements of the garden being ‘‘cut off’’ from the nature outside. Without these touches of green and mauve the place would look quite different—just as the ‘‘seed’’ of white within the black half of the yin-yang figure (and vice versa) consummates the pattern. The notion of the ‘‘cut’’ (kire´ ) is an important one in Japanese aesthetics, especially ˆ hashi 1994), where a cut both in the figure of ‘‘cut-continuance’’ (kire´-tsuzuki) (see O separates and joins two things as the cinematic cut links two scenes in a film. At ˆ anji the wall cuts the rock garden off from the outside and yet is low enough to Ryo

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permit a view of the surroundings from the platform. This cut (which is itself doubled by the angled roof that runs along the top of the wall) is most evident in the contrast between movement and stillness. Above and beyond the wall there is nature in movement: branches wave and sway, clouds float by, and the occasional bird flies past— though seldom, it seems, over the garden itself. Unless rain or snow is falling, or a stray leaf is blown across, the only movement visible within the garden is shadowed or illusory. In seasons when the sun is low, shadows of branches move slowly across the sea of gravel, accentuating the stillness of the rocks to a point where, even when the moving shadows fade, the rocks themselves seem to be on the move, to be in some sense ‘‘underway.’’ The garden is cut off on the near side too, by a border of pebbles (larger, darker, and more rounded than the pieces of gravel) that runs along the east and north edges. There is a striking contrast between the severe rectangularity of the garden’s borders and the irregular natural forms of the rocks within them. The expanse of gravel is also cut through by the upthrust of the rocks from below: earth energies mounting and peaking in irruptions of stone. Each group of rocks is cut off from the others by the expanse of gravel, and the separation enhanced by the ‘‘ripple’’ patterns in the raking that surrounds each group (and some individual rocks). And yet the overall effect is to intensify the invisible lines of connection among the rocks, whose interrelations exemplify the fundamental Buddhist insight of ‘‘dependent coarising.’’ ˆ anji reflect a basic trope in Rinzai Zen (the The various ‘‘cuts’’ in the garden at Ryo best karesansui gardens are all in Rinzai temples), which is exemplified in the teachings of the great Zen Master Hakuin (1686–1769). For Hakuin the aim of ‘‘seeing into one’s own nature’’ can only be realized if one has ‘‘cut off the root of life’’: ‘‘You must be prepared to let go your hold when hanging from a sheer precipice, to die and return again to life’’ (Hakuin 1971, 133–135). The functions of the cut in the rock garden may also be better understood with reference to the distinctively Japanese art of flower arrangement called ikebana. The term means literally ‘‘making flowers live’’—a strange name, on first impression at least, for an art that begins by initiating their death. There is an exquisite essay by Nishitani Keiji on this marvelous art, in which organic life is cut off precisely in order to let the true nature of the flower come to the fore (Nishitani 1995, 23–27). There is something curiously deceptive, from the Buddhist viewpoint of the impermanence of all things, about plants, which by sinking roots into the earth and lacking locomotion, assume an appearance of being especially ‘‘at home’’ wherever they are. In severing the flowers from their roots, Nishitani suggests, and placing them in an alcove, one is letting them show themselves as they really are: as absolutely rootless as every other being in this world of radical impermanence. A corresponding process can be seen in the rock garden, insofar as its being cut off from the surrounding nature has the effect of drying up its organic life, which then no

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longer decays in the usual manner. Karesansui means, literally, ‘‘dried up’’ or ‘‘withˆ Soseki writes the word in the title of ered’’ ‘‘mountains and waters,’’ but when Muso his ‘‘Ode to the Dry Landscape’’ he uses a different graph for the kare with the meaning ‘‘provisional,’’ or ‘‘temporary.’’ Being dried up, the mountains and waters of the garden ˆ anji appear less temporary than their counterparts outside, to which manifest at Ryo the cyclical changes that organic life is heir. But just as plants look deceptively permanent thanks to their being rooted in the earth, so the rocks of the dry landscape garden give a misleading impression of permanence, especially when they are revisited over a period of years. As participants in the ‘‘great central life’’ of the earth, rocks have a life that unfolds in time sequences that are different from ours, yet which is also subject to the impermanence that characterizes all things. ˆ anji in terms of their Nishitani has explained the enigmatic power of the rocks at Ryo ability to enlighten and teach: ‘‘We are within the garden and are not just spectators, for we have ourselves become part of the actual manifestation of the garden architect’s expression of his own enlightenment experience. The garden is my Zen master now, ˆ gen (1994, 94) and it is your Zen master too.’’21 This echoes an idea put forward by Do that while we are seeking a teacher one may ‘‘spring out from the earth’’ and ‘‘make ˆ gen nonsentient beings speak the truth.’’ In keeping with Mahayana universalism, Do recommended abandoning the early Buddhist distinction between sentient and nonsentient beings as obstructive to enlightenment. His assertion that nonsentient beings expound the Buddha-Dharma (mujoˆ seppoˆ) is perfectly exemplified in the enlightening effect of the Zen rock garden. ˆ anji can be enhanced through The teachings of the dry landscape garden at Ryo experiencing its context after visiting it as well as before. Prolonged contemplation of the rocks in the central garden leaves an afterimage that lingers in the mind as one heads for the exit. Contemplating the luxuriant surroundings one passes through on the way out with the rather ‘‘bare bones’’ or ‘‘skeletal’’ afterimage of the rocks and gravel in mind conduces to a better appreciation of the dual life-and-death aspect of reality articulated in Zen philosophy. It is as if one sees in ‘‘double exposure,’’ as it were, the life- and deathless source from which all things arise and into which they perish at every moment.22 Little attention has been paid by previous commentaries to the capacity of arranged rocks somehow to ‘‘speak to us.’’ This phenomenon can best be understood with reference to the ontological status of stone in Japanese Buddhism, which is quite different from a scientific view of matter. To dispel the specter of ‘‘primitive animism’’ that tends to haunt any discussions of rock as more than lifeless, I will focus on the two ˆ kai most sophisticated thinkers in the tradition of Japanese Buddhist philosophy: Ku ˆ gen. Their philosophies rank with those of the greatest figures in the Western and Do tradition, from Plato and Augustine to Hegel and Heidegger, though only a brief sketch of the relevant, complex ideas can be given here.23

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Rocks as Sources of Understanding ˆ kai or Do ˆ gen knows that whatever their talk Anyone familiar with the profundity of Ku of the speech of natural phenomena may mean, it is worlds away from any kind of primitive animism. The Shingon esoteric school was the first form of Buddhism to influence the development of the Japanese garden, which it did by introducing mandala as well as other kinds of symbolism into the design of gardens. In several of his writˆ kai effects a bold innovation in Mahayana Buddhist thinking by revisioning ings Ku the Dharmakaya (hosshin), which had been previously understood as the formless and timeless Absolute, as the ‘‘reality embodiment’’ of the cosmic Buddha Mahavairochana (Dainichi Nyorai) and nothing other than the physical universe. This means that rocks and stone—indeed all of ‘‘the four great elements’’—are to be included among sentient beings and revered as constituting the highest body of the Tathaˆgata (nyorai in Japanese: ‘‘the one [who has] come like this’’).24 Moreover, with his assertion that the Dharmakaya actually expounds the Dharma ˆ kai claims that the physical world, as the cosmic Buddha’s reality (hosshin seppoˆ), Ku embodiment and in the person of Dainichi Nyorai, proclaims the essential teachings of Buddhism. At a more basic level than the one on which the Bodhisattvas and Patriarchs teach, the world of nature manifests the fundamental ideas of Buddhist philosophy. Furthermore, Dainichi expounds the Dharma purely ‘‘for his own enjoyment’’ and not for human benefit (there are other embodiments of the Buddha, for example the Nirmanakaya and Sambhogakaya, that address human beings directly). So even though the cosmos may in some indirect sense be ‘‘speaking’’ to us, it is not doing so ˆ kai one of the ‘‘three mysteries’’ or ‘‘intimain any human language. Speech is for Ku cies’’ (sanmitsu) of Dainichi, and so it takes considerable practice for human beings to develop the necessary sensibility for understanding the teachings of natural phenomena. To the relief of those readers who might have struggled in vain to comprehend his ˆ kai (1982, 145) explains at one point that ‘‘since the Esoformidable philosophy, Ku teric Buddhist teachings are so profound as to defy expression in writing, they are ˆ kai often maintained that ‘‘the medium revealed through the medium of painting.’’ Ku of painting’’ was especially effective, but in view of the prevalence of mandala visualization in Shingon practice, he would surely acknowledge the art of garden design as a medium of communicating ontological features of reality that are not susceptible of formulation in language. ˆ gen developed similar ideas in the context of the So ˆ to ˆ Almost five centuries later, Do ˆ kai identifies the Dharmakaya with the phenomenal world, so Zen tradition. Just as Ku ˆ gen promotes a similar understanding of natural landscape as the body of the BudDo dha. In his essay ‘‘Voices of the River-Valley, Forms of the Mountain’’ (Keisei-sanshiki) he urges his readers to hear and read natural landscapes as Buddhist sermons and scriptures and cites the following poem, which a Chan master in China had authenticated ˆ gen 1994, 86): as evidence of its author’s enlightenment (Do

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The voices of the river valley are the [Buddha’s] Wide and Long Tongue, The form of the mountains is nothing other than his Pure Body. Throughout the night, eighty-four thousand verses. On another day, how can I tell them to others?

ˆ gen asserts the nonduality of the world of impermanence Philosophically speaking, Do and the totality of Buddha-nature (shitsu-u busshoˆ: the idea that the totality of existence is ‘‘Buddha-nature’’—that is, capable of enlightenment). Arguing vehemently against the more ‘‘biocentric’’ standpoint of earlier Buddhism, he claims that Buddhanature is not restricted to sentient beings and that ‘‘fences, walls, tiles, and pebbles’’ ˆ anji) are also ‘‘mind’’ (Do ˆ gen 1997, 47). In the (which are much in evidence at Ryo same essay, ‘‘The Triple World is Mind Only’’ (Sangai-yuishin), he writes that ‘‘rocks and stones, large and small, are the Buddha’s own possessions’’ (p. 46). Corresponding ˆ kai’s idea that the Dharmakaya expounds the Buddhist teachings (hosshin seppoˆ), to Ku ˆ gen develops the idea that even insentient beings expound the teachings (mujoˆ Do seppoˆ), though in a different way from the sentient. To understand the ways insentient beings can expound the teachings, one must go beyond the usual understanding of the human being as ‘‘other’’ than it, in the sense of being sentient. The practice of zazen ˆ gen expands both sensory awareness and understanding: ‘‘In general, hearing for Do the Dharma is not confined to the spheres of the ear as a sense organ or of auditory consciousness; we hear the Dharma with our whole energy, with the whole mind, with the whole body, from before the time our parents were born and . . . into the limitˆ gen 1997, 119). less future’’ (Do Not only can one hear the cosmos as a sermon; one can also see, or read, the natural ˆ kai (1972, 31) writes in one of his poems: world as scripture. As Ku Being painted by brushes of mountains, by ink of oceans, Heaven and earth are the bindings of a sutra revealing the truth.

Again it takes effort and desire for learning to read this natural text, but the notion of nature as scripture certainly does justice to the sense one often has that there is something ‘‘inscribed’’ in natural phenomena, and in stone especially, that patterns in ˆ gen, the sutras are not restricted to stone have some kind of meaning. Similarly for Do writings contained in scrolls, since the natural world too can be read as sacred scripˆ ), ture. This is the message of his essay ‘‘Mountains and Waters as Sutras’’ (Sansuigyo where he writes that the words of the eternal Buddha ‘‘are engraved on trees and on ˆ gen 1994, 177). In another essay, ‘‘Samaˆdhi as rocks, . . . in fields and in villages’’ (Do ˆ zanmai), Do ˆ gen (1999, 32) writes that the sutras are Experience of the Self’’ ( Jisho ‘‘the whole Universe in ten directions, mountains, rivers, and the Earth, grass and trees, self and others.’’ ˆ kai’s and Do ˆ gen’s, together with those of Muso ˆ discussed earlier These ideas of Ku (‘‘every single thing is preaching the Dharma’’), provide a philosophical basis for ˆ anji: they can be heard understanding the powerful effect of the rocks and gravel at Ryo

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as expounding the teachings of Buddhism, and read as sacred scripture. Just as contemplation of dry landscape gardens can enhance one’s understanding of Japanese Buddhism, so a sense for the Japanese Buddhist conception of the expressive powers of so-called inanimate nature can help one better appreciate the role of rock in the garden ˆ anji proclaim the Buddhist teachings of impermainspired by Zen. The rocks at Ryo nence and dependent coarising with unparalleled clarity, and at the same time point to our human ‘‘original nature,’’ which may have more rocklike steadfastness to it, at the deepest layers of the self, than is commonly realized in scientific models for mentality. Conclusion Whereas the Chinese tradition reveres rocks for their age and beauty, and for their being vitally expressive of the fundamental energies of the earth on which we live, Japanese Buddhism adds pedagogic and soteric dimensions by inviting us to regard rocks and other natural phenomena as sources of wisdom and companions on the path to deeper understanding. Such ideas can serve as a salutary corrective to the anthropocentric philosophies that underwrite the ruthless exploitation of the earth for human ends in the name of technological progress. To this extent there may be practical and not just aesthetic lessons to be learned from our relations with rock, and compelling reasons to attend to ‘‘the mute nearness of great, soft-voiced nature’’ both inside and beyond the confines of the dry landscape garden. ˆ anji makes a brief but significant appearance in one of the classics The garden at Ryo ˆ ’s Late Spring (1949). The scene in question consists of of Japanese cinema, Ozu Yasujiro ˆ anji rocks, and which are separated and eight shots, seven of which show the Ryo joined by seven cuts. After two shots of rocks in the garden, the camera angle reverses and we see the main protagonist with his friend—they are both fathers of daughters— sitting on the wooden platform with the tops of two rocks occupying the lower part of the frame. Two rocks and two fathers. Cut to a close-up of the fathers from their left side, with no rocks in view. In their dark suits, and seated in the classic Ozu ‘‘overlapping triangles’’ configuration, leaning forward toward the garden with their arms around knees drawn up toward their chins, they look like the two rocks. They talk about how they raise children who then go off to live their own lives. As they invoke such manifestations of impermanence, they remain motionless except for the occasional nod or turn of the head. In their brief conversation by the edge of the garden, the two fathers do little more than exchange platitudes about family life—and yet the scene is a profoundly moving expression of the human condition. It gains this effect from the assimilation of the figures of the two men to rocks, which seems to affirm the persistence of cycles of impermanence. These images of assimilation capture one of the central ideas behind

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the dry landscape garden: that of the continuum between human consciousness and stone, which is also understandable as the kinship of awareness with its original home. Notes Parts of this chapter have been adopted and refined from my essay ‘‘The Role of Rock in the Japanese Dry Landscape Garden,’’ in Franc¸ois Berthier, Reading Zen in the Rocks: The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 85–155, and the permission of the University of Chicago Press to reproduce them here is gratefully acknowledged. 1. Kawabata 1975, 86–91. Japanese names will be given in the traditional order: family name followed by given name. ˆ ji, I 2. I have changed stones to rocks in the translation. On first visiting the dry cascade at Saiho was immediately struck by the similarity with Ce´zanne’s paintings of rocks, and so was intrigued later to find Keiko, in Kawabata’s novel, compare its power with that of ‘‘Ce´zanne’s painting of the rocky coasts at L’Estaque’’ (p. 87). Kawabata may not have been familiar with Ce´zanne’s magnificent canvases of rocks and trees at Fontainebleau, which look even more like the dry cascade at ˆ ji than do his renderings of rocks on the Mediterranean coast. Saiho 3. A central feature of ancient Daoist lore was the belief that a race of Immortals inhabited floating islands far away in the eastern seas. This occasioned repeated attempts during the Qin and Han dynasties (300 B.C.–300 A.D.) to discover these sites and find the elixir of immortality. As mentioned in the main text, rather than going out to search for their islands himself, the Han dynasty Emperor Wudi (140–89 A.D.) attempted to entice the Immortals by constructing rocky islands of his own in ponds of the palace garden. Since the floating Isles of the Immortals were mountains, they were inherently unstable, so the Lord of Heaven had instructed giant turtles to carry them on their backs to stabilize them. For this reason they are often represented in Chinese gardens as resting on turtle-shaped rocks rather than floating on the sea. The Immortals were imagined as spending much of their day (and, since they were immortal, their days were long indeed) flying around the mountain peaks on the backs of cranes. Thus Turtle Islands (kameshima) and Crane Islands (tsurushima) became very common features in the development of Japanese landscape gardens (see Berthier 2000). 4. See Kuck 1968, 39; Hay 1985, 18. Hay’s essay in this exhibition catalog is a magnificent treatment of the role of rock in Chinese culture more generally. 5. Cited from ‘‘The Classical Contents of the Mirror of Profound Depths’’ in Hay 1985, 52. The entry on stone is eighty-six pages long. 6. For a fuller treatment of this topic, see my essay, ‘‘Winds, Waters, and Earth Energies: Fengshui and Awareness of Place,’’ 2003. 7. See LaFleur 1989, on which the present paragraph is based. 8. Zhanran, Jingang Bi, as cited in Fung 1953, Vol. 2, 385–386.

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9. Sansui narabini yakeizu, secs. 4, 84, 14, 78, 31. I follow the translation of the complete work by David Slawson (1987, 142–175), who reads the work’s title as Senzui narabi ni yagyoˆ no zu, and translates it as Illustrations for Designing Mountain, Water, and Hillside Field Landscapes. ˆ Soseki, Muchuˆ mondoˆ, cited in Benl and Hammitzsch 1956, 158–159. Translation modi10. Muso fied in the light of the original and the discussion by Nishitani (1982, 108). ˆ Soseki, ‘‘Sermon at the Opening of Tenryu ˆ ji,’’ in Ryu ˆ saku Tsunoda, William Theodore 11. Muso de Bary, and Donald Keene 1964, Vol. 1, 254. ˆ kai (1972), ‘‘The Difference between Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism,’’ especially 151–152; 12. Ku ˆ gen (1997, 47), ‘‘The Triple World is Mind Only’’ (Sangai-yuishin). Do 13. Cited in Dillard 1974, 198. 14. Goethe 1988, ‘‘On Granite,’’ Vol. 12, 131–134. 15. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, Secs. 23, 27. 16. For more detailed discussion, see my essays (Parkes 1997a, 1998b). 17. Nietzsche, The Joyous Science, aphorism 109; Dawn of Morning, aphorism 541. The translations are my own, but the references to works available in English will be to the aphorism number, so that the passages can be found in any edition. For a full discussion of Nietzsche on ‘‘divinization’’ see my essay ‘‘Nature and the Human ‘Redivinized’: Mahayana Buddhist Themes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’’ 2000. 18. Nietzsche 1980, Vol. 9, notebook 11, secs. 35, 125, 207, 210 (1881). 19. Nietzsche 1980, Vol. 8, notebook 11, sec. 11, and notebook 28, sec. 6; Miscellaneous Opinions and Aphorisms (Human, All-too-human, vol. 2/1), aphorism 49; Ecce Homo, ‘‘Why I write such good books,’’ ‘‘Thus spoke Zarathustra,’’ sec. 1. ¨ rster, December 20, 1885. 20. Nietzsche, Letter to Elisabeth Fo 21. Keiji Nishitani, as recounted by Robert Carter (1992, 95). 22. Nishitani (1982, 50–53) speaks of the ‘‘double exposure’’ of the life and death perspectives in Religion and Nothingness. For more on this topic see my essay (1998a) and also compare chapter 3 for a similar concept in Nahua thought. 23. For a more detailed discussion, see my 1997b essay. ˆ kai (1972), ‘‘The Difference between Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism’’ (Benkenmitsu nikyo ˆ 24. Ku ˆ butsu gi). ron), and ‘‘Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence’’ (Sokushin jo References Benl, Oscar, and Horst Hammitzsch, eds. (1956), Japanische Geisteswelt: Vom Mythus zur Gegenwart, Baden-Baden: Holle Verlag.

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Berthier, Franc¸ois (2000), Reading Zen in the Rocks: The Japanese Dry Landscape Garden, trans. Graham Parkes, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Carter, Robert (1992), Becoming Bamboo: Western and Eastern Explorations of the Meaning of Life, Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. Dillard, Annie (1974), Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, New York, NY: Harper and Row. ˆ gen, Zenji (1994), Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, trans. Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, Vol. 1, Do Woking, Surrey: Windbell Publications. ——— (1997), Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, trans. Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, Vol. 3, Woking, Surrey: Windbell Publications. ——— (1999), Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo, trans. Gudo Nishijima and Chodo Cross, Vol. 4, Woking, Surrey: Windbell Publications. Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1914), The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin. ——— (1983), Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Lectures, New York, NY: Library of America. Fung, Yu-lan (1953), A History of Chinese Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Goethe, Johann W. (1988), Goethe: The Collected Works, ed. and trans. Douglas Miller, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hakuin, Ekaku (1971), The Zen Master Hakuin: Selected Writings, trans. Philip Yampolsky, New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hay, John (1985), Kernels of Energy, Bones of Earth: The Rock in Chinese Art, New York, NY: China Institute in America. Hennig, Karl (1982), Der Karesansui-Garten als Ausdruck der Kultur der Muromachi-Zeit, Hamburg: ¨ r Natur- und Vo¨lkerkunde Ostasiens. Gesellschaft fu Hung, William (1969), Tu Fu, China’s Greatest Poet, New York, NY: Russell and Russell. Ji, Cheng (1988), The Craft of Gardens, trans. Alison Hardie, New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Jullien, Franc¸ois (1995), The Propensity of Things: Toward a History of Efficacy in China, trans. Janet Lloyd, New York, NY: Zone Books. Kawabata, Yasunari (1975), Beauty and Sadness, trans. Howard Hibbett, New York, NY: Knopf. Keswick, Maggie (1978), The Chinese Garden: History, Art, and Architecture, New York, NY: Rizzoli. Kirk, Geoffrey S., and J. E. Raven (1963), The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuck, Loraine (1968), The World of the Japanese Garden: From Chinese Origins to Modern Landscape Art, New York, NY: Weatherhill.

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Kuitert, Wybe (1988), Themes, Scenes, and Taste in the History of Japanese Garden Art, Amsterdam: J. C. Gieben. ˆ kai (1972), Kuˆkai: Major Works, trans. Yoshito S. Hakeda, New York, NY: Columbia University Ku Press. ˆ and the Buddhist Value of Nature,’’ in J. Baird Callicott and LaFleur, William R. (1989), ‘‘Saigyo Roger T. Ames, eds., Nature in Asian Traditions of Thought, pp. 183–186, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Leopold, Aldo (1968), A Sand County Almanac, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Merwin, W. S. (1998), East Window: The Asian Translations, Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1980), Friedrich Nietzsche: Sa¨mtliche Werke, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Nishitani, Keiji (1982), Religion and Nothingness, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ——— (1990), The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. Graham Parkes with Setsuko Aihara, Albany, NY: SUNY Press. ——— (1995), ‘‘The Japanese Art of Arranged Flowers,’’ trans. Jeff Shore, in Robert C. Solomon and Kathleen M. Higgins, eds., World Philosophy: A Text with Readings, pp. 23–27, New York, NY: McGraw Hill. ˆ hashi Ryo ˆ suke (1994), Kire: Das Scho¨ne in Japan, trans. Rolf Elberfeld, Cologne: Dumont. O Parkes, Graham (1997a), ‘‘Floods of Life around Granite of Fate: Nietzsche and Emerson as Thinkers of Nature,’’ ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Vol. 43, pp. 207–240. ˆ kai, Do ˆ gen, and a Deeper Ecology,’’ in ——— (1997b), ‘‘Voices of Mountains, Trees, and Rivers: Ku ˆ ken Williams, eds., Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryu between Dharma and Deeds, pp. 111–128, Cambridge, MA: Center for the Study of World Religions. ——— (1998a), ‘‘Death and Detachment: Montaigne, Zen, Heidegger, and the Rest,’’ in Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon, eds., Death and Philosophy, pp. 164–180, London: Routledge. ——— (1998b), ‘‘Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker,’’ in John Lippitt, ed., Nietzsche’s Futures, pp. 167–188, Basingstoke: Macmillan. ——— (2000), ‘‘Nature and the Human ‘Redivinized’: Mahayana Buddhist Themes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra,’’ in John Lippitt and James Urpeth, eds., Nietzsche and the Divine, pp. 181–199, Manchester, U.K.: Clinamen Press. ——— (2003) ‘‘Winds, Waters, and Earth Energies: Fengshui and Awareness of Place,’’ in Helaine Selin, ed., Nature across Cultures: Non-Western Views of Nature and the Environment, pp. 185–210, Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer. Rambach, Pierre, and Susanne Rambach (1987), Gardens of Longevity in China and Japan: The Art of the Stone Raisers, trans. Andre´ Marling, New York, NY: Rizzoli.

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Ruskin, John (1851–1853), The Stones of Venice, London: Smith, Elder, and Co. Sallis, John (1994), Stone, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Schaarschmidt-Richter, Irmtraud (1979), Japanese Gardens, trans. Janet Seligman, New York, NY: William Morrow. Schafer, Edward H. (1961), Tu Wan’s Stone Catalogue of Cloudy Forest, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Shimoyama, Shigemaru (1976), The Book of [the] Garden, Tokyo: Town & City Planners. Slawson, David A. (1987), Secret Teachings in the Art of Japanese Gardens, Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International. Stein, Rolf A. (1990), The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought, trans. Phyllis Brooks, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Thoreau, Henry David (1985), Prose Works: Selections, New York: Library of America. ˆ saku, William Theodore de Bary, and Donald Keene, eds., (1964), Sources of Japanese Tsunoda, Ryu Tradition, New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

17 The Concept of Person in African Thought: A Dialogue between African and Western Philosophies Heinz Kimmerle

Abstract In African philosophy the concept of person is not mainly related to mind-brain issues, but in most cases to everyday language, especially to proverbs, and to oral traditions. In this chapter two philosophical positions—from East Africa and West Africa—are presented, which although extremely different, do not transcend the common substratum of African thought. Thus the full range of African conceptions of the person can be presented. This South-South dialogue is given here, in a critical perspective, from a position of Western philosophy, more specifically from its European continental tradition. A line is drawn from Descartes via Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Marx to Sartre and the communitarian positions of today’s philosophical discussion. A philosopher from Nairobi (Kenya), Joseph M. Nyasani, unfolds his approach by referring to the idea of communalism as represented in the theories of some major political leaders during the struggle of their countries for independence from colonial rule. The higher value of the community above the individual person in this context is worked out philosophically by Maurice Tshiamalenga Ntumba from the University of Kinshasa (formerly Zaire, now Democratic Republic of the Congo). Nyasani takes over from Ntumba the conception of a ‘‘philosophy of We’’ as typical of the African way of thought. The confrontation of the African ‘‘philosophy of We’’ with the Western ‘‘philosophy of I,’’ as worked out by Ntumba and Nyasani, is too schematic. There are lines of thought in the Western tradition that can be described as reflecting a ‘‘philosophy of I,’’ especially the line from Descartes to Hegel. However, in the socialist theory of Marx, a radical departure occurs. Economic structures and society are more basic concepts than the consciousness of the individual person. The later philosophy of Sartre derives from Marx’s position a theory of the group that comes close to a Western ‘‘Philosophy of We,’’ as sketched in Kimmerle (1983). In the context of African philosophical discussions, the ideas of communalism and the ‘‘philosophy of We’’ are criticized by Kwame Gyekye from the University of Ghana in Legon/ Accra. According to different publications on this subject and direct discussion with Nyasani, it is more adequate to describe African thought as striving after a balance of community and person. Gyekye is also critical of an aspect of the traditional attitude of his own people, the Akan of Ghana, which is, in his opinion, directed too much toward the past by listening to the spirits of

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the ancestors. He proposes a moderate communitarianism as the best solution to the problem of whether the community or the individual should take precedence. The development in African thought that becomes visible in the discussions of these positions is again compared to the tendency in Western philosophical traditions, which has already been mentioned. My conclusion is that there are converging and diverging tendencies in African and Western philosophies. Both of them try to take into account the community and the person, the We and the I. The first predominates in African combinations of We/I, and the second remains the stronger element in the line from Descartes to contemporary debates on communitarianism in Western conceptions of I/We.

Introduction Brain-mind issues are foreign to African philosophical thought for several reasons. In Africa, the problems of ontology of consciousness and the structure of the person are not discussed by referring to the natural sciences, but to traditional and everyday opinions as they can be found in oral traditions and in ordinary language, especially in proverbs. It might be seen as a communis opinio in African philosophy that the concept of the person is related directly and indissolubly to that of the community. The statement is often heard that the community comes first, that it takes precedence over the person. The African spirit of community becomes concrete in the extended family, the clan, or the community of the village or the city. The idea of brotherhood has its origin in the family, but is extended to the more comprehensive forms of community. On the other hand, there are also conceptions in African philosophy that reflect on individual personhood as a value in itself. In these conceptions, the particular person is not seen as independent from the community; what is attempted is to bring both of them, person and community, into a balance that is relevant for grasping reality (ontology) and values (axiology). I regard the different positions within African philosophy and the way they are discussed as an example of the so-called South-South dialogue, which is relatively independent from European-oriented worldviews. However, we on the fence do not just record this dialogue from a neutral outside perspective; simultaneously, we are involved in it and thus find our own Western philosophical position changed. In African philosophy, the concept of person is part of the ontology, although this is not meant as a theory of being in its unchangeable structures, but as a theory of forces, which are in a dynamic relation. African conceptions of the person are not examined from the position of extreme individualism, in which the individual person is an isolated entity without being essentially linked to the societal and natural environment. Nor are they examined from the positions of communitarianism, in which consciousness is regarded as an articulation of its organic and environmental surroundings, including society. The specific structure of consciousness is not taken into account suf-

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ficiently. A critical view from Western positions in philosophy seems to be more adequate, which looks from a certain line in this philosophy from Descartes to Hegel, in which the concerned philosophers have reflected on the I (as the starting point for a systematic derivation of the world as a whole). Useful criticism of this tendency has been provided by thinkers from Marx to Sartre, who have placed more emphasis than other Western theorists have on the We (as class or as a group). From this Western philosophy of I and its criticism, we look at the African ontology of I and We, and on how both of them are intertwined. Thus the South-South dialogue on these questions becomes a dialogue between certain positions in African and in Western philosophies. The Idea of Communalism and an African ‘‘Philosophy of We’’ In the conceptions of communalism and the ‘‘philosophy of We’’ in African thought, the community is given a higher value than the individual person. Discussions about Communalism Several leaders in the African struggle for independence from colonial rule—such as Leopold Sedhar Senghor in Senegal, Se´kou Toure´ in Guinea, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Jomo Kenyatta in Kenya, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, and Kenneth Kaunda in Zambia—have relied strongly, in their political theories, on the notion of communalism. They describe the traditional African community as one that offers a harmonious environment for everyone. In their arguments, they have taken over the Western theory of socialism in its Marxist version, but they have adapted it to African historical and societal conditions. In their variant of ‘‘African socialism,’’ they have denied the Marxist tenet that only by a class struggle (between the capitalist bourgeoisie and the proletarian workers) a socialist and communist society without classes could be achieved. Because no class antagonism could arise in traditional African societies, which were based on the communal principle, a direct path to a classless society without struggle seemed possible. Most descriptively in order to reveal the genuinely African traditional views, these political theorists have stated that African socialism and a democratic society could be built directly on this traditional character of African communities. They did not want to take over Western socialism as such, but instead to fashion their own African version of this theory, especially for establishing a classless—that is, fundamentally democratic—society. This is determined by their insights into the ontology of consciousness (i.e., their theory of the internal structure of the person and the role she plays in the community). Communalism as a conception of egalitarian relations in society, and the forms of decision making in which all members of the society are involved, had given them the conviction that African socialism and African democracy might be superior to the Western mode in certain key respects.

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Joseph M. Nyasani (1989, 13), a philosopher from the University of Nairobi, states that L. S. Senghor, the leader of the struggle for independence in Senegal, has ‘‘described the African way of life in an appropriate manner.’’ Senghor (1964, 93–94) claims: ‘‘Negro African society puts more emphasis on the group than on the individual, more on solidarity than on the activity and needs of the individual, more on the communion of persons than on their autonomy.’’ We can find similar observations in the writings of Julius Nyerere (1967, 105), former president of Tanzania. Referring to the African ‘‘in his own traditional society,’’ he says that ‘‘the structure of his society was, in fact, a direct extension of the family. First you had the small family unit; this merged into a larger ‘blood’ family which, in its turn, merged into the tribe.’’ In the same text Nyerere refers to a description of political life in Nyassaland (now called Malawi) that says about the decision-making process by the Elders of the community: ‘‘They talk till they agree’’ (p. 104). However, this idea of communalism in traditional African societies has also been criticized by African authors. Vincent G. Simiyu, historian at the same university as Nyasani, speaks of a ‘‘democratic myth in the traditional African societies.’’ He does not want to idealize traditional African communities and their political life, but rather show how they have functioned in reality. Making use of African Political Systems (1970), by the British anthropologists M. Fortes and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Simiyu (1988, 49–70) shows that on the African continent, traditionally a broad range of political systems have existed, from highly autocratic kingdoms to strictly egalitarian societies without the institution of official rulers. Nevertheless, the fact is not contested that in traditional African societies, the family and the clan—groups that are quite different from what can be found in most of Europe and the United States today—form a social net in which anyone who gets into serious trouble will be caught. This fact has to be acknowledged if an accurate picture is to be given of the realities in these societies. The less harmonious aspects of traditional societies in Africa should also be taken into account, such as cheating and interpersonal conflict. Notwithstanding these points, many statements by African philosophers show that the communal ideal, which extends from the nuclear family to the clan, the village, the country, the continent, and, finally, humanity as a whole, still lives in the minds of most African people (Gyekye 2000, 90–93; Uyanne 2000, 98–99). Ntumba’s Arguments for African Philosophy as a ‘‘Philosophy of We’’ Maurice Tshiamalenga Ntumba (1985, 1988), a philosopher from Kinshasa, has worked out this idea of the community, which is prior to the person. His theory is based on an analysis of Lingala, his native language. He suggests a synthesis, which he calls Bisoite´, a term that is ‘‘half Lingala and half French.’’ In this term the Lingala word biso, which generally means ‘‘us’’ or ‘‘we,’’ has been changed into a noun meaning ‘‘us-ness’’ or

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‘‘we-ness.’’ In Lingala a person uses the personal pronoun biso (‘‘we’’) not only when speaking of himself, but also when members of the family or the community are included. The answer to the question ‘‘How is your wife doing?’’ can, for instance, be the following: ‘‘We have died last week.’’ Or, where an English speaker would say ‘‘I will accompany you,’’ Lingala speakers would say ‘‘we will accompany you on your trip.’’ Speaking in a broader sense about African forms of communication, instead of saying ‘‘I am sick,’’ in the communalist tradition it would be formulated ‘‘we are suffering.’’ (See figure 17.1.) Ntumba contrasts the communal characteristic of his language, which he regards as basic to the African way of thought, with Moitie´ (‘‘I-ness’’)—its counterpart in European thought. Thus he characterizes the African philosophy of person as a ‘‘philosophy of We,’’ while describing Western philosophical thought, at least since Descartes, as a ‘‘philosophy of I.’’ It will be useful to summarize here, as a basis for what follows, certain portions of the Western ontology of mind and of persons that are relevant to Ntumba’s thesis. Descartes’s cogito, ergo sum is well known as the starting point for a systematic unfolding of reliable knowledge about humans and the world. For Immanuel Kant as well, reliable knowledge is guaranteed by the unity of subjective consciousness. It is I, the faculties of the knowing subject, who acts on the different stages of producing knowledge. Impressions in space and time, the general forms of sensual perception, and the categories of thinking can be brought together on this basis. This is summarized in the statement that ‘‘all my conceptions [Vorstellungen] must depend on the condition by which I can count them as my conceptions, as parts of my identical self . . . and sum them up under the general expression: I think’’ (Kant 1787, 1968, 112). Kant defends the thesis that we (human subjects) prescribe the laws of nature through our forms of knowledge. The most extreme form of such a ‘‘philosophy of I’’ is worked out by Johann Gottlieb Fichte. In his Wissenschaftslehre of 1794, he gives a systematic presentation of the Kantian forms of knowledge, which are at the same time laws of nature. All I know of myself and of the world outside of my consciousness, which is not I, is placed ( gesetzt) by the I. So he formulates the three basic statements of his Wissenschaftslehre as follows: ‘‘ ‘I’ places [setzt] itself,’’ ‘‘ ‘I’ places the ‘non-I,’ ’’ ‘‘ ‘I’ places within itself a divisible ‘I’ and a divisible ‘non-I’ ’’ (Fichte 1794, 1961, 11–43). Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel criticizes Fichte’s conception as one-sided. He builds his whole ‘‘System of Philosophy’’ on the notion of spirit. In his ‘‘Logic,’’ thinking of (the forms of) thinking is understood as self-investigation of the spirit. Nature is the spirit in its being different than itself, and in the world of humankind, society, and history, spirit comes to itself. However, this coming of the spirit to itself grasps itself and is perspicuous to itself in subjective consciousness. Up to this point, Ntumba’s description of Western philosophy as a ‘‘philosophy of I’’ is convincing.

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Figure 17.1 A wood carving representing a tower of human beings, called Makonde. The human beings are supporting and helping each other. But they are also recognizable as individual persons. This can illustrate the community spirit in African life and the greater importance of the community than of the individual (Makonde culture, Southeastern Tanzania, about 1980. Foundation of Intercultural Philosophy and Art, Zoetermeer, Netherlands).

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African and Western ‘‘Philosophies of We’’ After Hegel, a radical change occurred in the philosophy of the nineteenth century. This becomes especially clear in the foundation of socialist theory by Karl Marx. In this theory he reverses, in a way often regarded as sweeping, the trend of Western philosophy to concentrate on the I. In Marx’s dialectical materialism, economy and society are placed above the individual. Marx formulates his position by taking over the critique of religion by Ludwig Feuerbach. This author comes to a materialist position insofar as he locates all religious representations (Vorstellungen) in the essence of human beings. Theology reflects the wishful thinking of humankind. Therefore it must become anthropology. Discussing the views of Feuerbach, Marx broadens the concept of person by stating: ‘‘The human being is not something abstract within the single individual. In its reality it is the whole (ensemble) of relations of the society’’ (Marx 1844/1845, 1968, 191). Although we cannot characterize Marx’s theory as collectivism, he clearly starts from and builds on a priority of the economic structure over subjective consciousness. The economic structure (i.e., the relations of production and the forces of production) as the foundation determines (1) the stratification of society, which is expressed in the antagonism of the capital-owning bourgoisie and the workers without any property, and (2) even more the ‘‘ideological forms’’ (religion, education, science), which constitute the contents of subjective consciousness. The determination of both parts of the superstructure (1 and 2) by the foundation is not a mechanical one. Within a differentiated relation of determinations in both directions (from the foundation to the superstructure and from the superstructure to the foundation), it remains valid that the stratification of the society and the ideological forms are determined by the economic structure ‘‘in the last instance’’ (Marx 1859, 1958, 12–14). This concept, an account establishing not only the peculiar diversity of each mind’s objects or mental contents, but also the ontological structure of their consciousness, is persistently stressed in the history of Marxist philosophy. I do not address the details of this history here. It is divided into more dogmatic and more critical traditions. Jean-Paul Sartre, a philosopher who began as a phenomenologist in the line of Husserl and Heidegger, came later to a critical Marxist position in which he tries to do justice to the original intentions of Marx. He introduces Marx’s conception of the person who is determined by economy and society into his discourse conceived (and titled) as Critique de la raison dialectique I (Sartre 1960, 379– 755). He does this by providing the outline of a philosophy of the group. The group is the living togetherness of individuals with its own rules and its own dynamics. Alienation and fixation of the group and its members by the determining forces of economy and society can be avoided as long as the dialectical relation of totalization (making one, a whole, of all members) and detotalization (loosening the ties of the whole and stressing the roles and functions of the individual members) is kept in balance. To

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enact such a balance, it is crucial that the leading functions of the group should not become fixed, as tends to happen if they are claimed by or assigned to the same individuals through long periods of time, but must always be amenable to change. Thus Ntumba cannot claim the ‘‘philosophy of We’’ exclusively for African thought. His view of Western philosophy as a ‘‘philosophy of I’’ has to be differentiated. The lines of thought in the history of Marxism and the way Sartre incorporates these lines in his philosophical discourse make clear that We-ness is also discussed in these (and other) traditions of Western philosophy. If I am allowed a little personal memoir, Ntumba’s one-sided view on Western philosophy becomes instanced by the fact that the author of these lines (Kimmerle 1983) wrote a ‘‘Project for a Philosophy of We’’ (Entwurf einer Philosophie des Wir) based in the European traditions, before Ntumba’s articles appeared. Yet while the special structures of African societies, such as the clan and the extended family, are salient features in African philosophy, in the We-thought in Europe the ontology of We commonly is concretely envisaged by analyzing the dynamics of groups and masses with its chances and its dangers. Also in this ‘‘philosophy of We’’ in a Western context, the person is regarded not as the member of a single We—not of one We—but of different We-unities, whose techtonics or articulation reflects that of society. A more complete contrast must still be addressed. During the same epoch, authors from North America and Great Britain such as Michael J. Sandel (1982), Charles Taylor (1985), and others had worked out communitarianism as a moral and political theory, primarily concerned with the common good and the common welfare, which also has to guarantee the well-being of the individual members of the community. With regard to morality, in this communitarianism love and friendship are considered the highest virtues, even above justice, and in the field of politics responsibilities toward others love and friendship are put in the first place, if not with denial or disavowal of those personal engagements also considered virtues but rather addressed toward the self. ¨ rgen Habermas (1981, chap. VI, vol. The conceptions of the German philosopher Ju 2, 171–293) are akin to these communitarian ideas, although he also includes critical comments. He analyzes the structure of the objective world of the industrialized societies, where he finds systematic pressures of economy, society, and politics. The laws of each of these spheres prescribe to a large extent the possibilities of individual action. Therefore Habermas tries to make strong what he calls the lifeworld (Lebenswelt)—that is, the environment of family, friendship, and also groups of people who work together on a personal basis. Thus he uncovers the space that is left for free decisions and adequate forms of communication of individuals. If we return now to the portrayal of African views on the ontology of consciousness, our task is to distinguish between African and Western ‘‘philosophies of We.’’ What Nyasani has contributed is a key way to this task. In sum, he takes over the theory of Ntumba and adds to it the idea that the African community has to be described as a

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spiritual entity comprising the now-living people, the spirits of the ancestors, and also the spirits of those who will be born into the community in the future, a feature scarcely stressed in the Western-derived ontologies of consciousness. Values such as solidarity, togetherness, and strong family ties are extended from the living to the dead and the yet-to-be-born members of the community. Nyasani speaks of the African community as a ‘‘vital mystical union’’ and of its theoretical exposition as a ‘‘primarily dynamic philosophy.’’ In the pilot study on African philosophy, Placide Tempels’s work on Bantu Philosophy (1949) already pointed out that the basic category of African thought is not ‘‘being,’’ but ‘‘(vital) force.’’ Although Tempels traces the African mode of thought in only one Bantu language, his analysis has been proved to be valid in a very general sense for subSaharan Africa. Tempels shows that in traditional African life the whole world is experienced as a dynamic interplay of forces. The human being understands itself as part and parcel of these cosmic events. In these events the spirits of the ancestors play an important role. They are more powerful than the spirits of the now-living persons, whose well-being depends on a positive relation to the spirits of the ancestors. If this relation is not in order—for example, because a debt has not been repaid before a person passes away—this has to be redressed by other family members. Thus every individual person is involved in the dynamics of the spiritual universe. Nyasani explores the factors leading to the ‘‘African’s self-surrender to the ‘We.’ ’’ He sees in it the African version of a search for security, which is common to all people, but that in Africa mostly occurs in a nonurban context. And he personally leans toward a ‘‘psychological explanation,’’ although this is not given in terms of mind-brain issues. The African way of ascertaining security has to do with the specific situation of facing an unfriendly natural environment. Individuals only find security by gathering together against wild animals, disastrous droughts or floods, and wars among their own communities (see Nyasani 1989, 16, 20; 1994). In this communalism, one’s ontic reality is thus conceived so as to benefit from this concourse with others: alive, dead, and yet-to-be-born souls of one’s kin. At a later stage, Ntumba has elaborated his project in more detail. In 1993, he held the Karl Jaspers Chair at the University of Oldenburg in Germany.1 During this period he developed his ‘‘philosophy of We’’ not only in the field of the philosophy of language or social and political philosophy, but also in the fields of anthropology, ethics, epistemology, and even logic. Thus he has made concrete what he means by saying that African philosophy is a ‘‘philosophy of We.’’ After having learned about my position, which I presented in a ‘‘Project for a Philosophy of We,’’ he used to speak about the ‘‘African philosophy of We’’ as a different conception from its Western counterpart. Due to the difficult political situation in Zaire (or Democratic Republic of the Congo, as it is now called), these highly important lectures have not yet appeared in print. At any rate Ntumba has stated that in the African way of life, the community

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spirit is stronger and is given shape in a more concrete manner than in any Western endeavor to take into account that dimension of reality. I return in the last section of this chapter to certain convergences and divergences in the two ways of thought. Personhood in the Context of Akan Thought The widespread conception of communalism, and the priority of the We above the I in African thought, is criticized by Kwame Gyekye from the University of Ghana at Legon/Accra. In several publications on this subject, and also in direct discussion with Nyasani, he states that the role of personal reality in African thought—and he especially relies on the thought of the Akan, his own native people—must not be underestimated. But he does not want to invert the positions. In his notable discussion with Nyasani at Rotterdam in 1989, he stressed that he is looking for a balance. He makes the far-reaching statement that ‘‘in African social thought we have balances.’’ Nyasani confirms that theirs is a discussion, which is consistent with the ‘‘common opinions’’ of African philosophers (Gyekye 1989). Gyekye’s Critique of the Primacy of the Community and of the Idea of Communalism Gyekye’s critique is primarily directed at an influential article by the Nigerian philosopher Ifeany A. Menkiti (1979). Gyekye (1989, 1997) refutes three arguments offered by Menkiti (1979) to support the ‘‘supposed primacy of the reality of the community’’ over the ontic-ontological constitution of personal existence: 1. That ‘‘it is the community which defines the person as person, not some isolated static quality of rationality, will, or memory’’ 2. ‘‘That the notion of personhood is’’ not given by birth, but ‘‘is acquired’’ by developing (good) manners 3. That consequently ‘‘personhood is something at which individuals could fail’’ Menkiti derives his statement on the ‘‘acquisition of personhood,’’ which is expressed in arguments (2) and (3), from the linguistic observation that the pronoun it is used in African languages, but also in English and other languages, ‘‘to refer to children and newborns,’’ and only those who have developed their character are called he or she. Gyekye proves this observation, and the statement derived from it, not to be correct by analyzing the use of personal pronouns in the Akan language. And he underlines that the Akan proverb ‘‘All persons are children of the Supreme being; no one is a child of the earth’’ does not make any ‘‘distinction between younger and older persons; it speaks of all persons.’’ Thus he reaches the conclusion that in African thought, there is proper recognition of an ‘‘ontological completeness’’ of the person, notwithstanding her age or role in the community (Gyekye 1997, 33–51; see especially 47–51).

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Further, in his book on African Cultural Values (1996), to indicate that the ontological reality of private existence is not perceived as entirely constrained by the communal relations, Gyekye points out that in African, especially in Akan traditional thought, there are ‘‘individualistic values’’ side by side with ‘‘communal values.’’ He gives quite a number of proverbs that support this statement: ‘‘Life is as you yourself make it,’’ ‘‘The lizard does not eat pepper for the frog to sweat,’’ or ‘‘One does not fan [the hot food] that another may eat it.’’ Thus he comes again to the conclusion that there is a ‘‘balance between communal and individualistic values’’ (Gyekye 1996, 47–51). This disengagement of the ontology of consciousness from its communitarian ties is brimming with far-reaching practical consequences. The idea of communalism as a basis for African socialism as it has been articulated by Senghor, Nyerere, and others, is qualified by Gyekye as ‘‘the socialist interlude.’’ According to him, the structure of traditional African societies, especially the economic structure, has been described incorrectly by these authors. Gyekye shows that that ‘‘private enterprise’’ definitely existed ‘‘in the traditional African system,’’ which contradicts the assertions made by these authors. So there are also roots for some kind of capitalism in the traditional way of life and of thought: African political thinkers and leaders, in their strident and unrelenting advocacy of the socialist ideology as a basis for the development of their nations, cavalierly set aside . . . wittingly or unwittingly the individualist elements in African socioethical thought and practice, the acquisitive and materialistic elements in the African character, private ownership or enterprise of a kind in the management of the traditional economy, and the traditional African society’s appreciation of personal wealth. (Gyekye 1997, 144–170; see especially 162)

At least with regard to the way of thought of his own people, the Akan, Gyekye can show that Menkiti’s statements about the primacy of the community above the individual, which also reflect to a large extent the position of Nyasani and Ntumba, are one-sided. This leads him to a remarkable critique of certain famous theories of ‘‘African socialism’’ as the only or most adequate expression of African social and ethical conceptions. Thus it becomes clear that the relations between person and community in African thought cannot be brought back to one opinion, but have to be conceived of in a broad range. Gyekye’s Analysis of the Concept of the Personal Being in Akan Thought Gyekye (1987) presents a clear analysis of the concept of personal being and relates it to Western psychology and to the ‘‘mind-body problem.’’ The person is constructed of three aspects: okra, the undestroyable good center; sunsum, the inner dimension in which bad influences from outside can take place; and honam, the bodily existence in the outside world. Okra is the divine spark in the human being. It gives life and an

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individual character to it. The translation of okra as ‘‘soul’’ is not really helpful because, contrasted to Western thought in which the soul is regarded as ‘‘purely immaterial,’’ okra is ‘‘quasi-physical’’ or ‘‘seemingly physical,’’ or, more technically said, ‘‘pneumatistical’’ in the sense of an invisible, but highly effective reality, historically well known and informing even recent vitalisms. It constitutes the ‘‘individual’s life, the life force’’ by making the body breathe. Sunsum is not really different from okra; it might be regarded as a part of it. When a person dies, her okra leaves the body for good, to (re)join the world of spirits. However, when a person sleeps, her sumsum leaves the body temporarily and is active in dreams. As such, it is linked to the desires. It can travel through space and occupy a physical location. Sunsum, like okra, belongs to the sphere of ‘‘spiritual beings,’’ and as such it can make itself ‘‘felt in the physical world.’’ Sunsum ‘‘appears to be the source of dynamism of a person, the active part or force of the human psychological system.’’ Akan traditional thinkers speak of a ‘‘strong sunsum, forceful sunsum, weak sunsum, and so on.’’ The impetus that comes from sunsum is ‘‘not always conscious, and a person does not always know what the sunsum wants.’’ In a certain sense, sunsum is comparable to the ‘‘unconscious’’ in Sigmund Freud’s metapsychology or portrayal of the ‘‘psychical apparatus.’’ According to another Freudian topology of the consciousness, it can be said that the sunsum performs ‘‘aspects of the functions of both the [conscious] ego and the [unconscious or less conscious] superego,’’ which ‘‘represents the claims of morality’’ (Gyekye 1987, 85–103). (See figure 17.2.) Although there is no Westernlike gap between body and mind, as a matter of ontic imprecision or subtlety, okra and sunsum belong to the immaterial, spiritual world. They are in interaction with honam, the body, which is part of the material world. In a certain sense, there is a dualistic conception of the person. This does not mean, however, that the Akan make any strict division between spiritual capacities of the mind and material properties of the body, or that there is a chasm or heterogeneity between mind and body. Gyekye shows that ‘‘mentalistic expressions’’ in the English language often become ‘‘physicalistic’’ when they are translated into Twi, the language of the Akan. It is a common feature of this language that much of what affects the ‘‘I’’ affects the body or parts of the body. For instance, in Twi ‘‘I am happy’’ is ‘‘My eyes are brightened,’’ or ‘‘I am patient’’ is ‘‘My heart subsides’’ (Gyekye 1987, 163–169). This does not mean, however, that the Akan view of the person is dominated by bodily aspects. On the contrary, it can be described as primarily spiritual. The Conception of A ‘‘Moderate Communitarianism’’ For Gyekye it is clear that the community is built up by persons. However, the person is only what she is as the member of a community. Gyekye finds his opinion expressed in this Akan proverb: ‘‘When a person descends from heaven, she descends into a human society.’’ Yet he maintains the idea of a balance between person and community.

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Figure 17.2 A mask as the face of a man, in which two other heads are visible. This can show us that the consciousness of the Abaluya people is a personal one, in which other members of the community, especially the family or clan, are also present. It illustrates the balance between person and community (Abaluya culture, Northwestern Kenya, about 1970. Foundation of Intercultural Philosophy and Art, Zoetermeer, Netherlands).

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Thus the community cannot be regarded as ontologically derivative from the person. Community does not exist without individuals, but no individual exists without precisely his or her community: their mutual relationship is ontological, not accidental. The community ‘‘constitutes the context, the social or cultural space, in which the actualization of the potentials of the individual can take place, providing her the opportunity to express her individuality, to acquire and develop her personality, and to fully become the kind of person she wants to be’’ (Gyekye 1997, 43). By this statement, Gyekye wants to show the difference of African thought from the individualist thinkers that one often encounters in the West. Ontically and ontologically, the ‘‘communal structure’’ is of the same origin as ‘‘personhood.’’ It might just be a question of perspective as to what is given more emphasis. An Akan proverb says: ‘‘The clan is like a cluster of trees which, when seen from afar, appear huddled together, but which would be seen to stand individually when closely approached.’’ Therefore, ‘‘the espousal of communal values does not in any way involve the rejection of individualistic values.’’ The individual can take a critical position to certain communal values. Otherwise, new values would not evolve from the old. This capacity of the individual ‘‘presupposes, and in fact derives from the autonomous nature of the person.’’ As a result, Gyekye forwards a request for a ‘‘moderate communitarianism.’’ He wants to distinguish this type of communitarianism from radical and one-sided positions in Africa and also in the West, according to which the community does not leave space for the autonomy of the person. He finds this one-sidedness in the works of African authors such as Menkiti, discussed above, and also with ‘‘American communitarian thinkers’’ such as Michael Sandel and Alasdair MacIntyre, who state that the ‘‘individual member of the communal society, bound to the social meanings, understandings, and practices of the community and to his social roles, will be unable to detach himself from the communal ties in order to evaluate (or, criticize) and revise those practices’’ (Gyekye 1997, 35–61). In a last series of arguments, Gyekye discusses the ‘‘reasons for preferring moderate or restricted communitarianism over unrestricted, extreme, or radical communitarianism.’’ These arguments are about the rights and responsibilities of the individual and of the community. Gyekye finds it ‘‘possible to derive a theory of individual rights from conceptions of the intrinsic worth of a human being that are themselves based on theism,’’ as is done in the following Akan proverb: ‘‘All human beings are children of the Supreme being; no one is a child of the earth.’’ An analogous approach is found in the U.S. Declaration of Independence (1776): ‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.’’ These rights include the ‘‘right to education,’’ the ‘‘right to work,’’ and other rights that ‘‘are asserted against the state or against some persons.’’ Because the exercise of these individual rights ‘‘is meaningful only within the context of human society,’’ they ‘‘must be matched with social responsibilities.’’ Those ‘‘include

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the responsibility to help others in distress, the responsibility to show concern for the needs and welfare of others, the responsibility not to harm others, and so on.’’ These mutual rights and responsibilities can be extended to a communitarian moral theory so that there is no need of a theory of ‘‘ideal morality,’’ which would only be applicable to a few ‘‘idealistic’’ human beings (Gyekye 1997, 61–76). Convergences and Divergences in African and Western Concepts of the Person In the discussion following Gyekye’s lecture at Rotterdam in 1989, the argument was raised that, with his exposition of issues in African philosophy, he comes close— actually too close—to Western conceptions (see Gyekye 1987, 63). I do not think that Gyekye’s philosophical enterprise is correctly understood in this way. There is no doubt that he wants to develop African thought in a certain direction. He criticizes an appeal to the authority of the ancestors, which goes too far, because it includes a ‘‘wholesale, uncritical, nostalgic acceptance of the past.’’ He repeatedly quotes the Akan proverb that ‘‘times change’’ and pleads for an ‘‘innovative spirit,’’ which is ‘‘the most outstanding feature of modernity.’’ Certainly, this must not destroy the balance with traditional values, for innovation ‘‘does not by any means imply a rejection of the entire cultural heritage of a people.’’ African traditional thought can help to avoid ‘‘extreme individualism.’’ If it is well understood, it can show how communalism and individualism ‘‘can co-exist’’ (Gyekye 1997, 170–175). Looking back to Ntumba’s ‘‘philosophy of We,’’ I maintain the position that it is not the mark by which African philosophy can be distinguished from Western philosophy. Because there is not only a ‘‘philosophy of I’’ in the West, but also a ‘‘philosophy of We,’’ the focus should be on the distinctive features of the ‘‘African philosophy of We.’’ Nyasani has given that description in that he characterizes the ‘‘We’’ as part of a spiritual universe. At the same time, Nyasani is open to a more serious concern for the individual person, as worked out by Gyekye. This trend could be summed up by saying that in the ‘‘African philosophy of We,’’ more and more, the role of the individual person is being brought to the fore. On the other hand, the ‘‘Western philosophy of I’’—and with it the Western studies on the ontology of consciousness—seems embarked on a trend to clearly realize the fact that the ‘‘I’’ is always embedded in a social environment. This is already clear in Marx’s theory that the economic structure determines the ‘‘ideological forms,’’ especially the individual consciousness, in Sartre’s project of a philosophy of the group, in Habermas’s theory of communicative action, and in the discussions around the idea of communitarianism. But now the trend seems to stress still more the ontic-ontological character of the circumstances—the ‘‘I’’ maintaining its autonomy and at the same time discovering and appreciating its ontological roots in the particular epoch and society where it flourishes. Thus a ‘‘Western philosophy of We’’ becomes possible. Yet

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the result of these converging lines in African and in Western thought is not a disappearance of all differences. In the final analysis, an African ‘‘philosophy of We-I’’ has to be confronted with a Western ‘‘philosophy of I-We.’’ Conclusion In African thought the concept of person is linked indissolubly to that of community. There is, however, debate between African philosophers about whether the community is really prior to and has primacy above the person. While Nyasani and Ntumba from East and Central Africa answer in the affirmative, Gyekye from West Africa criticizes their position and also certain assumptions of his own native people, the Akan, on this issue. He works out an approach that maintains a balance between person and community. He is right in also directing his criticism toward radical forms of Western communitarianism. From the point of view of Western philosophical traditions the opposition between the African ‘‘philosophy of We’’ and the Western ‘‘philosophy of I,’’ which is stated by Ntumba, cannot be accepted. The trend in African philosophy from a primacy of the community above the person to a more balanced position can be confronted with developments in Western philosophy from the concentration on the I (subjective consciousness or person) to considering seriously the We (groups or communities). A conclusion finally might be that there is a point of convergence in the choice of a ‘‘moderate communitarianism,’’ as it is worked out by Gyekye, although different accents on the We (in African thought) and on the I (in Western thought) have to be maintained. Notes I am very grateful to professor Joseph M. Nyasani from the University of Nairobi, Kenya, for his kind permission to reproduce his brilliant synthesis, first published in Heinz Kimmerle, ed., I, We ¨ ner Verlag, 1989, 13–26). and Body (Amsterdam: B. R. Gru 1. Karl Jaspers was born in Oldenburg, and the university has created a chair in his honor, which is given to distinguished scholars alternately for one semester. References Fichte, Johann G. (1794), Grundlage der gesamten Wissenschaftslehre [Foundation of the Whole Theory of Science], F. Medicus, ed., Leipzig: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1961. Fortes, Meyer, and E. E. Evans Pritchard (1970), African Political Systems, London: Oxford University Press.

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Gyekye, Kwame (1987), An Essay on African Philosophical Thought: The Akan Conceptual Scheme, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. ——— (1989), ‘‘Person and Community in African Thought,’’ in Heinz Kimmerle ed., I, We and Body: First Joint Symposium of Philosophers from Africa and from the Netherlands at Rotterdam on March ¨ ner. 10, 1989, pp. 47–63, Amsterdam: Verlag B. R. Gru ——— (1996), African Cultural Values: An Introduction, Philadelphia, PA and Accra, Ghana: Sankofa Publishing Co. ——— (1997), Tradition and Modernity: Philosophical Reflections on the African Experience, Oxford/ New York: Oxford University Press. ——— (2000), ‘‘Sensus communis in African Political and Moral Thought: An Akan Perspective,’’ in Heinz Kimmerle and Henk Oosterling, eds., Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural Perspective, ¨ rzburg: Ko¨nigshausen & Neumann. pp. 85–95, Wu ¨ rgen (1981), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns [Theory of Communicative Habermas, Ju Action], Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Kant, Immanuel (1787), Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], 2nd ed., in Kants Werke, Vol. III, Akademie-Textausgabe, Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968. Kimmerle, Heinz (1983), Entwurf einer Philosophie des Wir: Schule des alternativen Denkens [Project of a Philosophy of We: School of Alternative Thought], Bochum: Germinal. Kimmerle, Heinz, and Henk Oosterling, eds. (2000), Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural Per¨ rzburg: Ko¨nigshausen & Neumann. spective, Wu Marx, Karl (1844–1845, 1968), Texte zu Methode und Praxis II [Texts on Method and Practice], G. Hillmann, ed., Reinbek: Rowohlt. ¨ konomie [Critique of Political Economy], Berlin: ——— (1859, 1958), Zur Kritik der politischen O Dietz. Menkiti, Ifeani A. (1979), ‘‘Person and Community in African Traditional Thought,’’ in R. A. Wright, ed., African Philosophy: An Introduction, pp. 157–168, Washington, DC: University Press of America. Ntumba, Maurice Tshiamalenga (1985), ‘‘Langage et Socialite´: Primat de la ‘Bisoite´’ sur l’Intersubjectivite´’’ [Language and Sociability: Primacy of We-ness above Intersubjectivity], in Recherches Philosophiques Africaines, Vol. II, Kinshasa: Faculte´ de The´ologie. ——— (1988), ‘‘Afrikanische Weisheit: Das dialektische Primat des Wir vor dem Ich-Du’’ [African ¨ ller, ed., Philosophie und WeisWisdom: The Dialectial Primacy of We above I-You], in: W. Oelmu ¨ ningh. heit [Philosophy and Wisdom], Paderborn et al.: Scho Nyasani, Joseph M. (1989), ‘‘The Ontological Significance of ‘I’ and ‘We’ in African Philosophy,’’ in Heinz Kimmerle, ed., I, We and Body: First Joint Symposium of Philosophers from Africa and from ¨ ner. the Netherlands at Rotterdam on March 10, 1989, pp. 13–26, Amsterdam: Verlag B. R. Gru

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——— (1994), Philosophical Focus on Culture and Traditional Thought Systems in Development, Nairobi: Evans Brothers. Nyerere, Julius K. (1967), Freedom and Unity: Uhuru na Umoja, London: Oxford University Press. Sandel, Michael J. (1982), Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge MA: Cambridge University Press. Sartre, Jean-Paul (1960), Critique de la raison dialectique I: The´orie des ensembles pratiques [Critique of Dialectic Reason I: Theory of Practical Wholes], Paris: Gallimard. Senghor, Leopold S. (1964), On African Socialism, trans. Mercer, New York: Cook. Simiyu, Vincent G. (1988), ‘‘The Democratic Myth in the African Traditional Societies,’’ in Atieno Odihambo, Walter O. Oyugi, Michael Chege, and Afrifa K. Gitonga, eds., The Democratic Theory and Practice in Africa, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Taylor, Charles (1985), Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. Tempels, Placide (1949), Bantu Philosophy, Paris: Pre´sence Africaine. Uyanne, Frank (2000), ‘‘Uche ora: An Igbo View on Sensus communis,’’ in Heinz Kimmerle and ¨ rzHenk Oosterling, eds., Sensus communis in Multi- and Intercultural Perspective, pp. 97–112, Wu ¨ nigshausen & Neumann. burg: Ko

18 Of Indian God-Men and Miracle Makers: The Case of Sathya Sai Baba Erlendur Haraldsson

Abstract Charismatic religious personalities often become recognized in India as so-called God-men, particularly if they acquire a reputation for possessing supernatural and ‘‘divine’’ powers. Sathya Sai Baba is such a charismatic religious leader and the best known among contemporary Godmen whose cults play a visible role in modern Hinduism. The Sai movement is characterized by a strong emphasis on devotion to god and to Sai Baba, who is by most devotees venerated as avatar (reincarnation of god). Much emphasis is given to service to fellow human beings, traditional religious values, and education. Prashanti Nilayam, the citylike center of the movement near Bangalore in South India, not only has huge prayer halls but also schools, institutions of higher learning, and a large high-tech hospital. Sai Baba’s reputation for performing miracles has been important for the immense growth of his movement, which is believed to number several millions in India alone and has spread to most countries of the world. A variety of miraculous phenomena have been abundantly reported by his devotees ever since the founding of his movement some sixty ago, when he claimed to be the saint Sai Baba of Shirdi reborn. The miraculous phenomena range from materializations of objects to New Testament–like multiplications of food and Lazarus-like resurrections of the dead. In most face-to-face meetings with small groups of devotees and visitors, he is observed to give away small objects, sweets, and so on that appear in his hands, as if produced out of nothing. There are also numerous reports of phenomena occurring in faraway places, such as appearances of vibhuti and unexplained fragrances in shrine rooms of devotees, as well as Sai Baba’s appearing in distant places to devotees in a waking state or in dreams. Sai Baba has not permitted an experimental investigation into the genuineness of his physical phenomena. Nevertheless, a wealth of eyewitness testimony has been collected by the author and others, and is available in the large popular literature on him. An analysis of available observations leave many questions unanswered and reveal some exaggerated claims regarding Sai Baba’s presumed powers. A controversy has raged for several years (mostly on the Internet) regarding his religious claims, his ostensible miraculous powers, and his personal behavior, while his movement has continued to grow. These so amply reported phenomena do take place in our times and are reminiscent of claims in religious writings, such as in the New Testament, and of accounts that relate to the lives of some Catholic saints. Such phenomena are of great interest to

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the psychology and sociology of religion and also provide significant data for any theory of human consciousness.

Introduction Scholars in the psychology and sociology of religion have generally paid little attention to the role of miraculous phenomena in the domain of religion, such as what part the concept of the miraculous may play in religious faith, and what effect alleged miracles may have on the founding and spread of religious movements. There can, however, be little doubt that claims and convictions of the occurrence of miracles, seen as divine interventions, have played considerable role in the history of religion, perhaps particularly in the founding of new religious movements (McClenon 1994). The numerous accounts of miracles in the New Testament bare witness to their importance in early Christianity. The role of the miraculous is also particularly evident in charismatic movements, Eastern as well as Western, past and present, Christian as well as nonChristian. For example, among the Hindus of India, miracles and religion are often seen as closely interwoven. Furthermore there, as in the earliest history of Christianity, seemingly paranormal phenomena are often considered a sign of a religious leader’s godliness and divine powers. In the Catholic Church there has been some recognition of the notion that miracles may occur within the Church from time to time. This was formalized when Prospero Lambertini (later Pope Benedict XIV) in the 1730s wrote his thesis De canonizatione, where he set up guidelines for assessing and investigating alleged miracles. Up to the present time this work has remained important in processes of beatification and canonization. Another work worth mentioning is Herbert Thurston’s (1952) highly interesting and thoughtful account of miraculous phenomena reported and observed in the lives of Catholic saints from the Middle Ages up to the twentieth century. Within the Catholic Church the Italian priest Padre Pio (1887–1968) was associated with miraculous phenomena of various kinds, probably to a greater extent than any other figure (Ruffin 1982) of the twentieth century. Turning to Hinduism, the cults of so-called God-men play a visible role in Indian society. This popular term is widely used and refers to charismatic cult leaders who are believed to possess divine powers, to be able to evoke religious experiences in others, and to possess supernatural, psychic powers, even as far-reaching as to be ‘‘omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.’’ This popular concept of the God-man is closely related to the ancient Hindu concept of the avatar (the idea that God reincarnates from time to time). An avatar is inevitably associated with supernatural and divine powers (Bassuk 1987; Sharma 1986). This makes it easier for charismatic religious personalities to be recognized as God-men, as does the lack of a central dominating founder figure in Hinduism (as compared to

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Christianity or Islam). Also, there is no central generally accepted scripture (like the Bible or the Koran) in Hinduism. Furthermore, Hinduism has a high degree of diversity and lacks the tightly organized hierarchical institutions of the kind we find in Christianity. These characteristics make Hinduism particularly open to new religious leaders, and members of religious cults are relatively quick to see attributes of divinity in charismatic leaders and worship them accordingly as God-men. A Brief Biography The most famous of contemporary God-men in India is undoubtedly Sathya Sai Baba. He was born on November 23, 1926, in Puttaparti, a remote village in the state of Andhra Pradesh in Southern India, and was given the name of Sathyanarayana. His father, a poor farmer, carried the family name of Ratnakara and belonged to the low Raju caste, whose duties in old India were to praise their raja with songs and poetry. Sathyanarayana attended primary school in Puttaparti and secondary school in Uravakonda. According to his official biographer (Kasturi 1971, 37), ‘‘On 8 March 1940, the entire town [of Uravakonda] was shocked to hear that ‘a big black scorpion’ had stung Sathya. It was dusk, about seven o’clock when Sathya gave a shriek and leaped up grasping his right toe as if he had been bitten. Although no scorpion or snake was discovered, he fell as though unconscious and became stiff.’’ He recovered the following morning. From that time onward he would often become unconscious or fall into some kind of trance although scorpion bites are not known to have any lasting effects. A doctor who examined him ‘‘judged that the illness was allied to fits, that it was a type of hysteria unconnected with the alleged scorpion sting’’ (p. 40). Attempts to bring Sathyanarayana back to his old normal ways were of no avail and he left school. Soon thereafter on May 23, 1940, at the age of thirteen, he called together members of his family and gave them sugar candy and flowers taken from ‘‘nowhere.’’ Then the neighbors rushed in and ‘‘he gave each a ball of rice cooked in milk, also flowers and sugar candy, all manifested by a wave of the hand’’ (p. 46). His sister Venkamma told the author that from that time on there was a steady stream of miracles coming from him. According to his hagiographic biographer, Sathyanarayana stated: ‘‘I am Sai Baba born again, come and worship me.’’ He was referring to a highly charismatic, rather bizarre Hindu saint who had lived until 1918 in a mosque in the little town of Shirdi some 120 miles northeast of Bombay, hence usually referred to as Sai Baba of Shirdi (Rigopoulos 1993). He appealed to Hindus and Muslims alike, kept a sacred fire burning in a mosque, always kept a stock of vibhuti (sacramental ash) at hand, exerted a powerful influence over his devotees, and taught them to ‘‘seek God through devotion to the guru’’ (Osborne 1958, 110). Sai is a Persian (Muslim) name for ‘‘saint,’’ and Baba is a Hindi term of endearment and respect meaning ‘‘father.’’

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Rather quickly devotees started to gather around the young Sai Baba, who said he was back to attend to the welfare of his devotees. His great youthful charm, his abundant display of miracles, and his deep interest in religion and music fascinated them. Kasturi (1961, vol. 1) and Murphet (1971) state that some old devotees of Sai Baba of Shirdi, like the former queen of Chinjoli, found their way to him. By relating to them events from their life as his devotees, he apparently convinced them that he was indeed Sai Baba of Shirdi reborn. Soon some well-to-do individuals from Bangalore and Madras joined his fold, and a small ashram was built at the outskirts of his village for religious gatherings and to house Sai Baba and those closest to him. From that time on, he was surrounded by devotees. In 1944 they built him a mandir for religious gatherings and where he could live and receive his devotees (Steel 1997). The present ashram, Prashanti Nilayam (abode of peace), was inaugurated in 1950. The varied kinds of alleged miracles reported by those who were with him in the early days, and his fascinating personality, made him a riddle to most. His confidence and self-esteem seemed without bounds and at the age of twenty-one he announced ‘‘No one can comprehend My Glory, whoever he is, whatever his method of inquiry, however sustained his attempt’’ (Kasturi 1980, 185). There followed claims of being an avatar (incarnation of God). His fame spread. His ashram grew exponentially. Today it also houses a number of educational institutions and a large high-tech hospital, donated by Isaac Tigret, the founder of the Hard Rock restaurant chain, and designed by a famous British architect, in a neomogul style and painted in the pastel colors that have become characteristic of the many imposing, palacelike buildings built by Sai Baba and his devotees. The ashram is characterized by a large, steady stream of visitors, foreign as well as Indian, and it can accommodate tens of thousands of visitors who come to see (have darshan of) Sai Baba, most of them with the hope of a personal encounter. Prasanthi Nilayam has become a major place of pilgrimage in India, if not the most frequented one. The residents of the ashram are relatively few compared to the large number of visitors. They are, apart from the many students of his various educational institutions, retired persons doing whatever is necessary to accommodate the visitors, and to organize the various activities of the ashram, which primarily center around the person of Sai Baba. Much of the time is spent waiting for his appearances and taking part in the religious meetings, which primarily consist of singing of devotional songs (bhajans), many of them in adoration of Sai Baba. Sai Baba’s followers are said to number in the millions in India, and groups of devotees can be found in most countries around the world. Sai Baba’s influence and extensive charity work have become widely recognized in India, which is perhaps best demonstrated by the fact that the president, the prime minister, and the finance minister of India have all given speeches at his birthday celebrations. Unlike most swamis

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or gurus who become known in Western countries, Sai Baba has never visited Europe or America. Several scholarly papers have been written about Sai Baba and his movement from a sociological and anthropological perspective (Babb 1983, 1986; Lee 1982; Sharma 1986; Swallow 1982; White 1972). In spite of the important role of the claims of miraculous phenomena in the growth of this movement, none of these authors has attempted to assess the question of the genuineness or fraudulent nature of the purported miracles. There is also a mushrooming popular literature on Sai Baba by his followers and the curious (see Hislop 1985; Mason and Laing 1982; Murphet 1971, 1980; Priddy 1998; Sandweiss 1975; Schulman 1971). An Italian Catholic priest has given an interesting account of how he was drawn into Sai Baba’s fold (Mazzoleni 1994). He was excommunicated for likening Sai Baba to Christ, one of his arguments being the frequent miracles. Most books about Sai Baba describe how their author was drawn into Sai Baba’s fold, became deeply committed, and observed miracles (mostly materializations); all in all they give a glorifying view of Him as the all-knowing avatar. There have also been writings that do exactly the opposite, depicting him as corrupt, abusive, and fraudulent, most of that material appearing on the Internet or in popular journals like the Indian Skeptic. One book criticizes his morality and sexual behavior, but does not doubt his paranormal powers (Brooke 1976). Some Personal Observations In the early 1970s several highly placed Indian academics told the author about personal observations of Sai Baba that they found perplexing or inexplicable. With an American colleague, Karlis Osis, we were soon able to arrange a few meetings with Sai Baba in his ashram. In almost every interview he waves his hand a few times with a circular movement and one or more small objects appear in his hand, which he gives away to those present. These alleged materializations usually occur in the course of a conversation, as the following incident may illustrate. Magicians, of course, commonly perform such feats for entertainment. We were interested in the genuineness of the apparent materializations. We wanted to know more about the miracles and therefore asked for permission to conduct formal tests and observations of his alleged miracles. His primary interest seemed to be in engaging us in discussions about religion and spirituality. He would refer to the materialization as ‘‘small items.’’ What was important was the spiritual life. In the course of this first conversation he remarked, ‘‘Daily life and the spiritual life should be interwoven like a double rudraksha.’’ Neither of us knew what a rudraksha was, and our interpreter could not make the meaning clear to us. I stubbornly insisted on knowing the

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meaning of rudraksha. When verbal communication failed, Sai Baba waved his hand and it was there, a double rudraksha (kernel of a tropical fruit), two beautiful rudrakshas grown together in the middle, a rarity in nature according to an expert Indian botanist whom I met much later. Rudraksha has a religious significance, because Lord Shiva is always depicted with a necklace of rudrakshas around his neck. During a second visit a year later we had argued for scientific examination of his phenomena and sat on the floor several feet away from him. Then he said to my colleague, ‘‘Look at your ring.’’ A few moments earlier I had seen on my colleague’s finger a beautiful golden ring with a picture of Sai Baba, which he had presented to Osis during our first visit. We both looked at the ring on my colleague’s finger, and saw that the stone with Sai Baba’s picture on it had disappeared from the ring, although the frame and the notches, which had held the stone firmly for a year, were unbent and fully intact. Sai Baba had not touched us in this interview, and the ring had been on Osis’s finger all the time. With a humorous twinkle in his eye Sai Baba remarked, ‘‘This was my experiment.’’ We never found a satisfactory answer for this disappearance of the stone from my colleague’s finger. Later we consulted a leading American magician, Doug Henning. He told us he could, with due preparation, replicate all the phenomena that we had observed with the exception of the disappearance of the stone from the ring. We suggested to Sai Baba a formal experimental study under controlled conditions. He first expressed his willingness, but later refused to cooperate, although he allowed us to observe him rather freely (Haraldsson and Osis 1977). During several visits that followed, the author interviewed at length dozens of devotees, admirers, personal attendants from the 1950s onward, as well as ex-devotees and critics of Sai Baba— almost anyone who seemed likely to be able to shed some natural light on the perplexing phenomena (Haraldsson 1987, 1997). Materializations of Objects The most visible and frequently reported phenomena about Sai Baba are the appearances and disappearances of objects, such as ornaments of various kinds, ranging from expensive jewelry to simple rings and lockets, edibles (sweets, fruits, and so on), and most frequently, vibhuti. The number of objects he produces in an average day— apparently out of thin air—and gives away may be somewhere between one and two dozen. How he is able to do this, day after day and year after year, for over a half century, in a variety of circumstances, indoors and outdoors, or when traveling, has remained a mystery to those around him. Amarendra Kumar—one of my interviewees—spent a number of years with Sai Baba as a personal attendant on a day-and-night basis in the early 1950s. He reported (Haraldsson 1997, 128): ‘‘He would produce, out of nothing, some beautiful, wonderful, de-

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licious eatables, such a jellaby, marzipan, ladu. Such beautiful sweets, as if fresh from the oven, and sometimes so damn hot—too hot in fact—as if you had just taken them out of the frying pan.’’ And he would frequently do this when they had been sitting for some hours on a riverbank singing religious songs and chatting. Often he would give his companions fruits: As far as he was concerned there was no such thing as a fruit being ‘‘out of season.’’ . . . Anytime, anywhere, he can produce anything. . . . Many times he would give us figs that he plucked from an ordinary tree. Often he would ask those around him: ‘‘What would you like to have?’’, and he gave it to them. Sometimes he produced things as large as 9 to 12 inches in height: idols. And good idols. The metal was good and the figures were extremely beautiful. (p. 128)

Krishna Kumar, Amarendra’s brother, who also spent some years with Baba, reported: ‘‘We used to coax him. Suppose somebody says: ‘Swamiji, this is not the season for grapes. We want grapes.’ He would therefore immediately say: ‘Pluck a leaf,’ and—after we had plucked a leaf—there would be a bunch of grapes in our hand, without him touching the hand’’ (p. 114). Two professional musicians and singers, Lakshmanan and Raman, who also stayed with Baba for some years, reported: He produced so many things, hundreds of them, so many that it is hard to remember individual cases. [One incident was particularly vivid:] Once we were having a meal with him in Madras. Then he took up a piece of rice from his plate, held it in his hand, and said: ‘‘Bring me a magnifying glass.’’ It was brought, and he invited us to look at the small grain of rice. As we looked through the glass, we saw that on that grain of rice was engraved a carved picture of a girl with Lord Krishna. (p. 157)

Most persons who have a personal encounter with Sai Baba see him produce something with a particular wave of his hand. The author has seen it numerous times. Perhaps as much as every third person who has an interview with him comes away with a personal gift, a ring, pendant, sweet, or some other small object. According to Indian belief such a prasad (holy gift) serves as a link with the guru and—as the American anthropologist Lawrence Babb (1983, 119) describes it—such objects are supposed to ‘‘transfer the efficacy of his power (as his grace or favor) to his devotees.’’ Worth mentioning because of the biblical connection are reports of cases of multiplication of food and the production of whole meals for a group of people. They were reported to me independently by several witnesses and were mostly, if not exclusively, from his early days in the 1950s and 1960s (Haraldsson 1987). One more oddity about Sai Baba is reports of strange photographs. An ex-devotee who spent a long time with him told me that he got blanks or overexposed photos if he tried to photograph Sai Baba without his permission (see Chari 1969, 1978). Others have shown me photographs that they have taken, which show Sai Baba with light shining from his chest, his lower body as a walking lion, and so on. Two old devotees independently claimed to have witnessed Sai Baba consoling an old widow by

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materializing and giving to her a photo of her deceased husband, of whom she had no photo. The list of phenomena seems endless. None of Sai Baba’s former attendants or anyone else I could interview who had lived with him or been able to observe him extensively, seemed to have a normal explanation of how Sai Baba accomplishes these feats. Any time, any place, they claimed, he may present to those around him vibhuti, ornaments, or edibles. He sometimes refers jokingly to this enigmatic source as ‘‘the Sai stores.’’ He tends to downplay the phenomena and refers to them as ‘‘small items.’’ I once asked him for his explanation of how he performs these feats. He replied with an analogy: ‘‘We are all like matches, but the difference between you and me is that there is fire on mine.’’ It is obviously relevant to mention that skillful magicians have long used sleight of hand to make objects appear and disappear to their audiences in apparently inexplicable ways. Indeed, most of the critics of Sai Baba come from the ranks of rationalists and magicians, who regretfully have either had no or very few direct observations of him. One skilled magican, Eruch Fanibunda (1980, 6) of Bombay, was ‘‘keen to find out whether Baba was actually materializing the various objects . . . or producing them by sleight of hand.’’ He approached Baba as a skeptic but became convinced of the paranormality of the phenomena. The Trances From the age of thirteen Sai Baba used to experience fits of unconsciousness. Gopal Krishna Yachendra of Venkatagiri reports (Haraldsson 1997, 83–84): In those days (around 1950) he often used to fall down suddenly and go into trance. Once the following happened on Sri Rama’s birthday in Venkatagiri on a very hot April day. I remember this very clearly; my brother, my cousin Madana and others were also present. As he was coming back to his senses, gushes of vibhuti came shooting from his mouth. Afterwards there came out of his mouth golden plates about half an inch wide, and on them was written in Telugu script ‘‘Sri Rama.’’ These fits came fairly often, but no more since 1960, when he was about 34 years old. In these trances he would remain unconscious for some minutes, but sometimes for hours. When he came to, he used to say that he had gone here or there to save some devotees. . . . We often tried to prevent him from falling, but the trance came so suddenly that we could not do it.

Gopal Krishna’s brother, the present Raja of Venkatagiri, gave a similar account (p. 90): Swami went into trance. This was another phenomenon that we do not see now. He used to leave his body, which would become stiff; this used to be very common in those days. Sometimes by the look of his eyes, we would be able to make out that he was about to fall. . . . But not one of us caught him while he was falling; he would fall abruptly, and with a bang, and sometimes he would even hurt himself. Sometimes he had convulsions in both arms and feet and his limbs would be very rigid and not flexible at all. It is very difficult to describe this and it was very painful to look at.

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There was no particular pattern to his trances. Sometimes there would be no movements at all while he was in trance; he would just fall down and be still. But sometimes he would be very violent. Then there might be jerks in his limbs that might be very strong and violent. . . . Sometimes he would pull out his hair with his hands. He would, as far as I can remember, never bite his tongue so that it would bleed.

The Raja of Venkatagiri also recalls some of the same incidents as his brother Gopal Krishna: ‘‘A few times in trances articles would come from his mouth. Once we saw small golden leaves shoot out from his mouth. As they came out they would scratch the edge of his lips. We also saw vibhuti come from his forehead and his feet many a time.’’ (p. 90). The way Sai Baba and his devotees explain these epileptic-like trances is interesting: In these trances he would take on some ailment from others and have it for some time after he returned from trance. Sometimes these ailments were serious, sometimes only light fever. The malady would pass from a devotee to his body. Once in Delhi, for example, he had paralysis for some time after he returned from trance. Most of the time when Swami came back from a trance, he would tell us where he had gone, but sometimes he would not. (p. 90)

M. Krishna of Hyderabad—an ex-devotee who spent a lot of time with Baba in the 1950s—adds this detail: In trance he would sometimes utter some words that we could not understand, like speaking in tongues. None of us could make out any meaning for these words. Swami fell often into trances but he never shared the symptom of being possessed, such as speaking as if he were some personality different from his normal self. He was the same person all the time. Nor did his trances appear epileptic. (p. 177)

The duration of the trances varied widely, lasting an hour or two, at other times considerably longer. One and a half days was the longest observed by Krishna Kumar. The trances ceased when Sai Baba was in his mid-thirties and have apparently not been observed since. Vibhuti Phenomena, Near and Distant Vibhuti is considered a sacred substance in Hinduism and widely used in religious ceremonies (comparable to bread and wine in Christianity). It is the fine ash left when cow dung is burned; it is now produced in factories. Sai Baba gives vibhuti to those around him more often than anything else. Those who observed him in his early days also report seeing vibhuti falling off his forehead in processions, and gushing out of his mouth and feet during trances he frequently fell into when he was in his teens and twenties. Frequently reported is the appearance of vibhuti on pictures of Sai Baba and other religious personalities found in homes and in shrine rooms where devotees have their

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meetings. This appearance of vibhuti is taken as one way in which Sai Baba communicates with his devotees. I have visited such rooms in Bangalore, Bombay, Calcutta, and Madras and found it in practically every town in India where I have looked for it. I have also seen it in Colombo, London, New York, and Beirut, and have heard about it occurring in other places outside India. The usual claim is that the photos have miraculously become spotted, or partially covered, with vibhuti, the powderlike kum-kum, or with drops or streams of the semifluid amrith. In some cases the pictures were framed and the ash could be seen both inside and outside the glass. I have met persons claiming that vibhuti has appeared mysteriously in small containers that they keep in their pockets or elsewhere. Some of them report that new vibhuti appears as they use or give some away. One highly placed Indian nuclear scientist told me that small specks of vibhuti started to appear on a photograph of Sai Baba soon after he had placed it into his wallet. He showed me scratches on the photo caused by the fine-grained vibhuti. Unfortunately, requests for a thorough testing of the genuineness of the distant vibhuti phenomena have been rejected with various reasons, or have not been possible for practical reasons—sometimes with the comment that photos on which vibhuti had appeared were placed in rooms that were in daily use, or because the phenomena were taking place in shrine rooms where services (bhajans) are regularly conducted. Hence the room could not be locked and sealed for the period of time necessary. Sometimes the inhabitants were not willing to cooperate because they would consider such an investigation a sacrilege, or they reported that they did not want to risk the disappearance of a phenomenon that they greatly valued as a sign of Baba’s presence. After almost every lecture I give on Sai Baba someone comes up to me and tells me of an extraordinary incident that he or she associates with Sai Baba. These incidents vary widely in content. A few years ago I was at a scholarly conference in Cambridge where I gave a talk on an unrelated topic. A man came up to me because he had heard about my book on Sai Baba. He told me about an incident that occurred to a lady he held in high esteem, and who was engaged in unconventional healing. Being an academic himself he was keen that I would make inquiries about the incident and gave me the lady’s name and phone number. A patient with cancer had come to this lady asking for a healing treatment. While she did her healing work the patient told her that she was much devoted to Sai Baba, and related some stories she had heard of his miracles. Sai Baba was practically unknown to the healer, but it occurred to her when she listened to the patient to think of Sai Baba and pray to him for healing as she was treating the patient, which she did. When the patient had left she walked into her kitchen and was surprised to find a cone of fine-grained dry gray substance in her previously spotlessly clean sink (basin). She took some between her fingers, and perplexed and not knowing what to do, flushed it down the drain. A day or two later she found another cone of this same

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strange substance on the floor in her kitchen. She then started to associate this with Sai Baba. That afternoon I had some free time in Cambridge and visited the lady, who described the incident in detail. The substance she described had the characteristics of vibhuti. The patient was not healed and died, but the incident remained unforgettable and inexplicable to her. It is an obvious weakness of this case that there was only one witness to it and no way to verify it further. Another unexpected incident came my way four years ago. I was engaged in research in Lebanon and had to travel from there to Sri Lanka. I did not have time to apply for a Sri Lanka visa before my departure for Lebanon and decided to do it in Beirut. I filled out an application and gave it and my passport to the embassy staff. A little later a clerk came to tell me that the Consul (Head of the Consular Services) wanted to meet me. I was received by an older gentleman. He had seen Indian visas in my passport and told me in a friendly way that my name seemed familiar to him. Had I not written a book on Sai Baba? Yes, I had. He had read it and in fact he had a copy with him. He then related to me a very personal experience. Some time back when I was stationed in London, a member of my family had become sick and it greatly worried me. In desperation I prayed to Sai Baba for help. Soon the family member’s sickness was cured miraculously. A doctor friend of mine sent me a large photograph of Sai Baba and I framed it and hung it in the house in London. On my return to Sri Lanka, I kept the photograph in my shrine room and kept on praying to Sai Baba. At the same time, I had attended bhajans and undertook charity work to reciprocate the loving kindness shown to me by Sai Baba in times of adversity. Then a striking thing happened. When I was about to leave for Lebanon from Sri Lanka I noticed that dust-like substance started to form on the photograph, inside the glass. When I came to Lebanon I noticed that the dust-like substance started to grow and was seen all over the picture.

His apartment was on another floor in the embassy and he was anxious to show me the photograph. Some long vertical streams of vibhuti inside the glass covered the photograph. The Consul lived alone in this apartment, the rest of his family being in Sri Lanka or elsewhere, and none of the staff had any particular interest in Sai Baba. Like the lady mentioned earlier, the Consul was perplexed by this phenomenon that appeared so unexpectedly. Dreams of Sai Baba A fair number of claims concern miraculous healings, appearances of Sai Baba in distant places, and intrusions of Sai Baba into dreams. Gopal Krishna Yachendra, son of the late Raja of Venkatagiri, reported one such case to me. His father had come to know Sai Baba, who had deeply impressed him. In 1950 Sai Baba accepted an invitation to his palace, which is some 230 miles from Puttaparti. The old Raja asked his

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son to accompany Sai Baba to the palace. He refused, and told his father he had no interest whatsoever in any gurus or swamis. The following night—Gopal Krishna told me—he had ‘‘a vivid dream of Sai Baba, who gave me two mango fruits to eat. I relish mangoes more than anything else, and the mangoes in the dream tasted delicious.’’ He woke up with an urge to go immediately to Puttaparti. When they arrived in Puttaparti Sai Baba said to him: ‘‘Bangaru (a word of endearment meaning very good gold), when you thought of not coming to Puttaparti, these two mangoes made you run.’’ According to Gopal Krishna he had not told the dream to anyone and this was the first question Baba asked him. Gopal Krishna has been a leader of the Congress Party in his district and a member of the Andhra Pradesh state parliament. Odor Sancti and Religious Symbols Some persons report vivid olfactory experiences of a ‘‘divine’’ fragrance, both far from and close to Sai Baba. This phenomenon resembles the ‘‘odor sancti’’ that has been reported in the lives of some catholic saints and mystics up to modern times (Thurston 1952), perhaps last in the life of the famous Capuchin priest Padre Pio (Ruffin 1982). Krishna Kumar reported from his early days with Sai Baba (Haraldsson 1997, 246): Suddenly it comes and stays for a few minutes and then disappears. It was mostly of sandalwood and musk. It was a common affair at the beginning of the bhajans. I used to help him with his bath. Sometimes after his bath in the morning he would smell of perfumes for a few minutes. At least at that time he never used any powders or perfumes but still he sometimes smelled of these beautiful perfumes.

The singers Raman and Lakhsmanan, who spent many years with Baba, reported similar experiences, but added that they have also perceived this fine smell at bhajans when Baba was not present: ‘‘The congregation will suddenly sense this smell for a few seconds and then it will disappear as suddenly. It is often a mild jasmine smell, but may be of different kinds.’’ I also recall an industrialist from Madras who was drawn into Baba’s fold relatively late. He related that once when he was on a business trip to Finland and staying in the guest room belonging to a Finnish firm, he suddenly smelled a perfume typical of the incense that Baba uses at some of his functions. Stigmata are well known in the Christian tradition where devout Christians have taken on themselves the wound marks of Christ. Similarly, marks, which are traditionally smeared on the bodies of Hindu religious figures, are reported to have appeared on Sai Baba in his early days when his devotees used to take him on processions. One witness reported (Haraldsson 1997, 244): ‘‘We will see appear on his forehead the three stripes of vibhuti that are characteristic of Shiva. . . . After a few minutes it will disappear, and then we will see on his forehead the sandalwood paste (chandam) and a round spot

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of kum-kum that is characteristic of Parvati.’’ In cases like this important religious symbols of Hinduism are externalized on Sai Baba’s body. This phenomenon bares some similarity to the appearance of stigmata in the Christian tradition. Visionary Experiences and Teleportation Persons who were with him in his early years have reported to me the apparent teleportation or disappearance/appearance of Sai Baba. For example, Mrs. V. R. Radhakrishna reported (p. 97): ‘‘As we were approaching the river and passing a hill on our right hand side, he would sometimes suddenly disappear. He would, for example, snap his fingers and ask those around him to do the same. And hardly had we snapped our fingers when he had vanished from amongst us and we could see him on the top of the hill waiting for us.’’ Another witness, M. L. Leelamma, now a professor of botany at a college in Madras, spent much time with Sai Baba in her twenties. She reported that sometimes they had played a game: those around him would try to touch him, but just as someone was about to do so, he would disappear and then appear somewhere else nearby. In some instances Sai Baba was reported to have appeared to people in faraway places. Light Phenomena Several devotees from his early days report a phenomenon that resembles the transfiguration of Christ reported in Matthew (17:1–2): ‘‘After six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them into a high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them, his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as light.’’ One devotee, Vijaya Hemchand, had kept in an old diary a contemporary account of a light phenomenon concerning Sai Baba and allowed me to copy this part: All devotees had gathered at the bottom of the hill and were watching him. Already it was sunset. Sai Baba could be seen by all (on the hill) from there. Behind his head bright red rays, which resemble the rays of sunset, were shining. After some time they disappeared and were replaced by a bright powerful light that was emanating crores (tens of millions) of blinding sunrays. . . . Looking at it and unable to tolerate the blindness, two people collapsed to the ground. All the people were staring with wide-open eyes, overwhelmed with joy. Suddenly, going from very bright light to darkness, our eyes were blinded, but we recovered our sights in a little while. Before we could open our eyes, Sai Baba stood amidst us.

Healings and Lazarus-like Resuscitations Claims of healing are not uncommon, but unlike in Christian sects with proximity to the miraculous, they seem to play a rather minor role and, on further inquiry, many

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have proved to be exaggerations or likely to be natural improvements. I will briefly describe one case that remains memorable and was reported to me by Cadambur T. K. Chari, professor of philosophy at the Christian College of Madras University. He had a daughter who was from birth a ‘‘blue baby’’ (patent ductus arteriosus), a condition that can only be healed by surgery at a later age. Chari’s sister was a devotee of Baba and once when he visited Madras she arranged for the child to be brought to him. The child had been diagnosed by several physicians in Madras, some of them professors at the university, and the diagnosis was beyond doubt and nothing could be done. When seeing the child Baba waved a hand and produced a pill that the child swallowed. After that the blueness disappeared. There are at least two instances of claims of Lazarus-like resuscitations of people who had died. In the case of Walter Cowan, a wealthy California devotee, two physicians had attended the patient, first in his hotel room and then in a hospital, and I was able to trace them. They denied that the patient had ever died (Haraldsson 1997, 249–256). The case of an old Indian devotee, Radhakrishna Chetty from Kuppam, was first reported to us by his widow. His daughter, Vijaya Hemchand, made a contemporary account of the event in her diary. After being given access to it, there are rather obvious reasons to assume that Radhakrishna had not died at this time (pp. 255–256), although his family still thinks otherwise. A Noteworthy Survey A great number of persons with direct observations are willing to attest to the genuineness of the phenomena. I administered a 104-item multiple-choice questionnaire to twenty-nine people with extensive observations of Sai Baba, twenty-one of them having known him over a period of twenty to forty years, and all but two of them having had at least fifty meetings with him. The majority of this group had spent over seven years in the ashram, and twenty of them had a college education. All of them had seen him produce vibhuti innumerable times. Particularly interesting is that fourteen of them reported having received from Sai Baba fruits out of season and unavailable locally. Seventeen reported having received from him objects on demand (important against the sleight-of-hand hypothesis). I have had reports from persons whom Baba asked what was their favorite deity, and then on the spot he would produce a small statue of that deity to give to that person. It is also interesting that twenty-two persons had seen substances appear on his forehead, like vibhuti or kum-kum, sometimes taking on well-known religious forms of Hinduism such as the three wide stripes on the forehead that are characteristic of Lord Shiva, or the round red spot of kum-kum characteristic of the goddess Parvati. These phenomena may bear a distant resemblance to the phenomena of stigmatizations corresponding to the wounds of Christ, which have been reported in the lives of

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some Catholic saints and laypeople since the days of Saint Francis of Assisi (1181– 1226). When genuine, these phenomena are an expression of deep involvement with religious imagery and an enactment of religious symbolism. Six people reported that they saw Baba miraculously produce a whole meal for many people. Two independent observers reported one case to me on two different occasions. They were Srinivasa Reddy and Bharat Reddy, former devotees of Baba. They had accompanied Baba just outside the city of Bangalore. In the early evening they stopped at an abandoned airstrip and started to sing bhajans, he in the middle and the group around him. Afterward some complained of being hungry. Sai Baba had only a meal in a small two-piece tiffin carrier with him. The group, consisting of some thirty–forty people who had joined him in five to seven cars, all sat around him after obtaining leaves as plates. He then served all of them from the small tiffin carrier that a devotee had given him for his trip to Puttaparti. He kept on serving them, also a second and third time. Some were keen on testing him: Could he produce more? They all ate as much as they could and everyone received as much as he or she wanted. Late in the evening they parted, the group going back to Bangalore and he to Puttaparti. This is the essence of the testimony of these two witnesses (for further details, see Haraldsson 1997). Srinivasa Reddy also reported another interesting observation. Once Sai Baba gave him in full daylight a rather flat stone of rather irregular size and asked him to throw it up in the air. He threw it high up in the air. Then Baba asked him to grasp it as it came down again. He thought the stone might hurt his hands. However, he did so. Then it had become an apple. He gave it to Baba, who took a knife and cut it in pieces the size normally given to people. From this one apple he gave pieces to some twentyfive people who were present. Perplexing are also instances when Sai Baba gives food, sweets, or vibhuti to a group of people. Then, when it is over, someone comes along and complains that he did not get any. I was present on one such occasion in a house in Bangalore. It occurred at the end of an interview that Osis and I had with him. When it was over he asked us to stay, and no less a person than the vice president of India walked in with an entourage of eight to ten people, a general, a chief minister or governor, some ladies, and bodyguards. After a brief animated conversation in the crowded, rather small room he produced vibhuti with his usual wave of the hand, and started to give it to the ladies, then to the men, and it was all finished. Baba had apparently not noticed one of the men, who complained that he did not get any. Then Baba waved his hand again, produced more, and gave it to him. The sheer daily number of the apparent materializations has long baffled his observers. In the survey thirteen persons believed that he would produce vibhuti more than twenty times on an average day, twelve estimated eleven to twenty times, and the rest felt is was so variable that they did not want to guess. As to objects, eleven

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thought he would produce objects eleven to twenty times per day, eight thought six to ten times, whereas five estimated two to five times per day. All these things he gives away to people. Two-thirds of our sample that gave a definite answer estimated that Sai Baba produces vibhuti or objects not less than twenty-seven times during an average day. This is not a small production by any account, and produced in a great variety of circumstances: in his interview room, outside in the open, on the stage, in cars or airplanes when traveling—in short, in a great variety of circumstances, some of these materializations apparently arising out of a spontaneous situation. I have mentioned the case of the double rudraksha. Some further instances are also worth mentioning. Once during darshan in Whitefield near Bangalore where he spends part of his time, he started to speak to someone in the crowd who was sitting on the ground. Then a child nearby in a row behind him started to cry loudly, which evidently made the conversation difficult. Then, without turning around, out of his palm he suddenly threw some object toward the child. The man with the child grasped it and gave it to the child, who then became silent. After the darshan I approached the man. Sai Baba had thrown a toffee wrapped in paper to the child. Previously I had not noticed him giving away toffees. The fact that some of his materializations arise out of responses to unexpected situations make the sleight-of-hand hypothesis less acceptable. Another incident comes to mind. In the 1970s when I was working on my book about him, I had been out of the area for some time interviewing witnesses; I went to Whitefield for a day. At darshan, the only time of the day you can be (almost) sure to see him, I went into the rows. When he came my way I told him quickly that I was leaving the country the following day. He passed me in the row without saying anything but turned around after two or three steps, waved his hand in the typical round fashion, and handed me a piece of rock candy, as if it had suddenly struck his mind to say good-bye in some nice way. The ex-devotee M. Krishna was for years in the early days very close to Sai Baba and spent many months with him at a time. He later became quite critical of Sai Baba for religious, moral, and personal reasons. Still, he reported to the author (Haraldsson 1997, 174): I was fond of kova, a certain kind of sweet. Sometimes, particularly in Puttaparti which is a village and where it would not be available—I would tell him that I would like to eat this sweet. He would then often say: ‘‘Are you a glutton?’’ But somehow he would always produce for me the sweet. This sweet is oily, white, and sticky, and made of milk. I don’t believe he could have hidden it in his clothes and always had it ready for me on those particular days when I would ask for it. Somehow he is able to produce these things. How he does it I do not know. But if somebody says that he is a god or a superman because he produces these things, then I do not agree.

Each individual case of this kind may be easy to explain away, but when faced with the vast number of them one begins to feel on shaky grounds.

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‘‘Omniscience’’ and Predictions Predictions are not prominent with Sai Baba, although the belief in his ‘‘omniscience’’ is common among his devotees. In my informal survey of twenty-nine close observers of Sai Baba, I asked about their belief in his ‘‘omniscience and omnipresence.’’ Twenty expressed such a belief, whereas six rejected it and three were undecided. Several old devotees have told the author how in his early days, when few devotees were around him, he used to speak about his future. ‘‘He was telling people that after some time they might not be able to come close to him because of crowds around him’’ (Krishna Kumar). ‘‘In those olden days he told us what was going to happen in the future: that we would have to see him through a binocular, we would have to sit far away from him, and the whole world would come to his feet’’ (Gopal Krishna). ‘‘We did not realize in the early days that the crowd around him would grow to such a magnitude. But he told us then that there would in the future come a huge crowd, that we would only be able to see him from a distance, and even that would be difficult in due time’’ (Lakshmanan and Raman). Here Sai Baba definitely made an accurate prediction, or was this poor young boy in a remote Indian village far away from anywhere just exceedingly successful in creating his future as he had envisioned it? Both are remarkable however we interpret this. Predictions and statements that Sai Baba makes about individuals do not fare this well. He had made a prediction about the future to half of the respondents in our survey. Nine of them considered it fully correct, but to four he proved either fully or partially wrong. To one lady hoping for a baby he had predicted that she would have one, but she never did. He advised a close devotee to let his brother go to Delhi for a job interview. Contrary to his predictions the brother did not get the job, only costly travel expenses. Examples like this are common. Sai Baba has, on at least two occasions, predicted that he will reach the age of ninetythree, namely die in the year 2019. More precisely, he stated on September 29, 1960: ‘‘I will be in this mortal form for 59 years more’’ (Kasturi 1974, 189). On October 21, 1961, he repeated his prediction: ‘‘I shall be in this body for 58 years more; I have assured you of this already’’ (Kasturi 1975, 100). That will be the final test of his predictions. An Ongoing Controversy The question remains, what is genuine, what is deception or misperception, what are exaggerations, and what may be a myth? The nature of the phenomena in question varies greatly, and they cannot be lumped together. The best way to establish or reject hypotheses about the nature of the appearance of objects in his presence would be through controlled experiments. Sai Baba rejected such requests, but was rather liberal

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in allowing us to observe him. Therefore the question of sleight of hand and deception could not be tested, which is regrettable. Only one accomplished magician, Eruch Fanibunda of Bombay, has had ample opportunity to observe Sai Baba over a period of several years, originally approaching him as a skeptic (Fanibunda 1980). He has reported to me that he is convinced of the paranormality of the phenomena. Another Indian magician and an acclaimed rationalist, Basava Premanand, who rejects the existence of psychic phenomena as well as any religious ideology, has been a vocal critic of Sai Baba, and has demonstrated how Sai Baba may produce some of the phenomena by sleight of hand (Beyerstein 1990). Unfortunately Premanand has had no firsthand observations of Sai Baba. I have detected fraud in three Indian swamis who claimed to produce physical paranormal phenomena (Haraldsson and Houtkooper 1994; Haraldsson and Wiseman 1995; Wiseman and Haraldsson 1995) but failed to do so with Sai Baba. For almost half a century Sai Baba has had close attendants who have taken care of his private rooms, have seen to it that his clothes were washed, kept a key to his bedroom, and even slept in the same room as him. Some of them stayed with him for several years. I traced several of these former attendants and interviewed them at length. Two of them had left the movement and were critical of Sai Baba as a person or of his claim of being an avatar. However, when it came to the question of how he has managed to produce an endless stream of objects out of his hand, neither of these two was able to offer a clue or any evidence of fraud. These attendants stated that when they left him they were as puzzled as those who have only seen him do it a few times. They also reported having seen him produce fruits out of season or not locally available, and objects on demand. The former vice-chancellor of Bangalore University, H. Narasimhajah, chaired an investigative committee against Sai Baba. Sai Baba refused to cooperate. In 1976 a national controversy occurred in India: Is Sai Baba genuine or not? Even the prestigious Times of India printed an editorial on that question on July 25, 1976. As a result, newspapers and weeklies and also Narasimhajah’s Miracle Committee received a large amount of mail, for and against Sai Baba. In these letters no clue appeared to shed light on Sai Baba’s ceaseless production of objects. On Sai Baba’s sixty-sixth birthday, November 23, 1992, the Indian newspaper Deccan Chronicle published a front-page story. It claimed that a video recording by Indian State Television on August 29, 1992, showed Sai Baba taking a gold chain from the hand of an assistant, swirling his hand, and producing the chain as if in his usual miraculous way. This event took place at a public function in Hyderabad and in the presence of the Indian prime minister and other dignitaries. This film shows Sai Baba standing at the podium in a hall. An assistant brings a large and fairly heavy object to him. The object, then held by Sai Baba and his assistant, is handed over as a gift to the architect

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who designed the building. As Sai Baba loosens his grip on the object, he moves his right hand, which is held below the base of the gift, toward his left hand, which is at or close to his assistant’s right hand. This movement possibly takes place to (1) receive in his hand something that might be hidden in the palm of the assistant, or (2) support the object as it is changing hands from Sai Baba and the assistant to the architect. Sai Baba then makes a circular sweeping movement with his right hand, in which suddenly appears a gold-colored necklace, which he presents to the architect. While the possibility of sleight of hand exists, the film does not show if this actually happened. The chain is not seen until it appears at the end of the swirling circular movement of Sai Baba’s right hand. Unfortunately, the quality and resolution of the tape leave much to be desired and limit any inferences that can be drawn from it. A hand movement of Sai Baba would have given him an opportunity to receive an object from the hand of the assistant. His hand movements remain suspicious, but may have a natural explanation (Haraldsson and Wiseman 1995). Up to the time of an organized intrusion into Sai Baba’s residence (mandir) on June 7, 1993, in which six people were killed, the filming of Sai Baba at public appearances was freely allowed. Apparently all that filming revealed no clear evidence of fraud, but some instances could be interpreted one way or another depending on personal bias. In recent years the number of reported observations have increased that indicate sleight of hand. Some students in Baba’s schools and colleges, some of whom he often has as company, have made such allegations. Unfortunately, most of these claims have only appeared on the Internet, where a war has raged about the genuineness of his phenomena and about his sexual morality. These reports are rather recent and generally not easy to assess, and the author has not interviewed any of these individuals personally. If these reports are reliable there are more and more reasons to believe that Sai Baba is increasingly using sleight of hand. It may confuse the issue that sometimes Sai Baba gives small gifts to people in a perfectly normal manner, and sometimes he apparently produces them paranormally. When asked about the phenomena, Sai Baba may give different answers. Already mentioned is his reply to the author and Osis: ‘‘We are all like matches. The difference between you and me is that there is fire on mine,’’ meaning that this fire makes them possible. Another reply about the materializations is: ‘‘I think and it is there,’’ or ‘‘They come from the Sai stores.’’ Very puzzling in this respect are the distant phenomena that apparently do occur hundreds or thousands of miles from Sai Baba’s physical presence. They cannot be fraudulently produced by Baba. Although the devotees tend to think otherwise, and take them as a sign of his presence or omnipresence, I suspect that he, in some or most instances, does not have an inkling of their occurrence. This is supported by information that some of the students around him have given me, namely that he often

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becomes curious when he is told about these strange events, and listens attentively, apparently not knowing anything about them. It is possible to come up with several speculative hypotheses regarding the causes of the phenomena. The first may be that they are all fraudulent, misperceptions, or misinterpretations of some kind. Some reports scattered throughout this chapter may go against this interpretation. The second hypothesis may be that he does possess some psychic powers that are at least partly under his control. A third hypothesis, accepted by some Indians, especially in Baba’s early life, assumes that a world of nonphysical beings exist, and that Sai Baba has some spirit helper(s) who cause the phenomena. A related, fourth hypothesis might be that Sai Baba is overshadowed by some powerful spiritual being that ‘‘works through him’’ and can also manifest phenomena in distant places and without his awareness. This last hypothesis might also explain the distant phenomena (if we may assume that they are truthfully reported) that apparently occur without his knowledge, and also the notion of some observers that Sai Baba is a ‘‘split personality.’’ This last hypothesis might explain why some persons, like the ex-devotee Varadu, told me, ‘‘At one moment he is a crude villager, and another moment he is a great soul that no one can fathom. It is a very tough proposition to analyze him’’ (Haraldsson 1997, 168). The controversy about Sai Baba not only concerns the genuineness or fraudulent nature of the phenomena. His claims of godliness and avatarhood are accepted by most of his devotees but seen as a sign of boastfulness, exaggeration, if not megalomania, by others. A third reason for controversy is the growing number of allegations of sexual misconduct toward men and young boys. Sai Baba’s unwillingness to undergo rigorous formal tests may never reveal the full facts about his feats that are so abundantly reported. Judgment about their real nature can hence only be based on informal observations and the testimony of witnesses. The controversy about their nature is hence bound to continue. Unfortunately, at present much of this controversy is rooted in ideology and a priori assumptions rather than in an objective assessment of the facts as far as they can be ascertained. Religious Teaching Sai Baba’s religious views are apparent in his interviews, in his writings, as well as in his speeches given at traditional Hindu religious festivals that are lavishly celebrated in his ashram, and at Christmas and on his birthday. Many of his speeches have been published, such as Sathya Sai Speaks, volumes I–XI. His approach is eclectic, emphasizing the unity of the essence of religious faith, basically stating that it does not matter to which faith you belong as long as you are a good member of your religion. Worship of god and service to fellow humans comprise the essential feature of his religion. Some of his short sentences and aphorisms may best reveal his religious teaching:

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The eternal religion is the mother of all religions. Truth in the spiritual sense transcends the categories of time and space and remains unchanged always. This transcendental truth has to be inscribed in the heart. God is love and love is god. Where there is love there god is certainly evident. Love is giving and forgiving. Love more and more people, love them more and more intensely, and transform the love into service, into worship; that is the highest spiritual discipline. Service is the ship by which one can cross the ocean of life. Serving hands are holier than praying lips. There is no prayer more fruitful than service to fellow-men. Start the day with love, fill the day with love, and end the day with love. That is the way to god. Pardon the other man’s fault but deal strictly with your own. Forget the harm anyone has done to you, and forget the good you have done to others. The inner nature of man is nearest to the nature of god. The good life is a journey from ‘‘I’’ to ‘‘we’’ and then to He. You will understand me only through my work. That is why sometimes in order to reveal who I am, I show you my ‘‘visiting card’’—sometimes you call that a miracle.

Sai Baba is not a speaker who excites his audiences, nor do his writings reveal a sophisticated thinker. What attracts people to him are perhaps primarily his reputation for miraculous powers, his charisma, and the close personal relationship he establishes with many who come his way and become his devotees. His religious teaching is rather traditional and conservative, but he has a way of getting people religiously active and involved so that it markedly changes their lifestyle and conduct, with reports of religious experiences being quite common. India has no free social services; people are dependent on themselves and their families. His emphasis on service to fellow citizens has fallen on fertile ground among many concerned middle- and upper-class Indians, who also tend to see Sai Baba as a restorative force in Hinduism. Of course, any claims about the certainty or genuineness of the phenomena will fail to produce scientifically acceptable evidence, though they might suffice to win a case in court. However, if one is prepared, for the sake of thought experiments, to venture into these dimensions by assuming that at least some of these incidences are in fact truthful (even if it were ‘‘only’’ one of them), what can we learn from it in regard to the capacities of conscious human experiences? The late Cambridge philosopher Charlie Broad (1969, 9) wrote about the concept of the basic limiting principles ‘‘that are commonly accepted either as self-evident or as established by overwhelming and uniformly favorable empirical evidence.’’ These are (1) the law of causation, that is, the cause always proceeds the effect; (2) limitations on the action of mind on matter, in other words, ‘‘it is impossible for an event in a person’s mind to produce directly any change in the material world except certain changes in his own brain’’; (3) dependence of mind on brain; and (4) limitations

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on ways of acquiring knowledge, that is, ‘‘it is impossible for a person to perceive a physical event or a material thing except by means of sensations which that event or thing produces in his mind’’ (p. 10). If some of the phenomena are in fact truthful or genuine, it means that the basic limiting principles that Broad so clearly formulated have flaws in them and are not as absolute as contemporary scientific thinking assumes. This implies that consciousness can, in principle, be an active causative agent and supersede perceptual limitations that are generally taken for granted, which may hence provide significant data for any theory about human consciousness. Note I would like to thank the many devotees, ex-devotees, and observers in India and elsewhere who allowed me to interview them regarding their experiences and encounters with Sai Baba. Thanks also go to my late colleague Karlis Osis and to David Treherne Thomas for encouragement while writing my book Miracles Are My Visiting Cards (U.S. edition, Modern Miracles), and to Robert Priddy and Helmut Wautischer for thoughtful comments in the preparation of this chapter. References Babb, Lawrence A. (1983), ‘‘Sathya Sai Baba’s Magic,’’ Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 3, pp. 116–124. ——— (1986), Redemptive Encounters: Three Modern Styles in the Hindu Tradition, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bassuk, Daniel E. (1987), ‘‘Six Modern Indian Avatars and the Ways They Understand Their Divinity,’’ Dialogue and Alliance, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 73–92. Beyerstein, Dale (1990), Sai Baba’s Miracles, Vancouver, B.C.: Mimeographed by the author. Broad, Charlie D. (1969), Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research, New York, NY: Humanities Press. Brooke, Robert T. (1976), The Lord of the Air, Berkhamsted, Herts: Lion Publishing. Chari, Cadambur T. K. (1969), ‘‘Some Disputable Phenomena Allied to Thoughtography,’’ Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 63, No. 3, pp. 273–286. ——— (1978), ‘‘On the Phenomena of Sai Baba,’’ Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 72, No. 1, pp. 66–69. Fanibunda, Eruch B. (1980), Vision of the Divine, Bombay: E. B. Fanibunda. Haraldsson, Erlendur (1987), ‘‘ ‘Miracles Are My Visiting Cards’: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sri Sathya Sai Baba,’’ London: Century-Hutchinson.

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——— (1997), Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sri Sathya Sai Baba, revised and updated edition, Mamaroneck, NY: Hastings House (U.S. edition of 1987 edition). Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Joop M. Houtkooper (1994), ‘‘Report on an Indian Swami Claiming to Materialize Objects: The Value and Limitations of Field Observations,’’ Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 381–397. Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Karlis Osis (1977), ‘‘The Appearance and Disappearance of Objects in the Presence of Sri Sathya Sai Baba,’’ Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 33–43. Haraldsson, Erlendur, and Richard Wiseman (1995), ‘‘Reactions to and Assessment of a Video-tape on Sathya Sai Baba,’’ Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 60, No. 839, pp. 203–213. Hislop, John S. (1985), My Baba and I, San Diego, CA: Birth Day Publishing. Kasturi, Narayan (1961–1980), Sathyam Shivam Sundaram: The Life of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, 4 vols., Prashanti Nilayam: Sri Sathya Sai Books and Publications. ——— (1971), The Life of Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba, Vol. 1, Prashanti Nilayam: Sri Sathya Sai Education Foundation. ——— (1974), Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 1, Whitefield: Shri Sathya Sai Education and Publication Foundation. ——— (1975), Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. 3, New Delhi: Shri Sathya Sai Sewa Samithi. Lee, Raymond L. M. (1982), ‘‘Sai Baba, Salvation and Syncretism: Religious Change in a Hindu Movement in Urban Malaysia,’’ Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 125–140. Mason, Peggy, and Ron Laing (1982), Sathya Sai Baba: The Embodiment of Love, London: Sawbridge Enterprises. Mazzoleni, Don M. (1994), A Catholic Priest Meets Sai Baba, trans. Christian Moevs, Faber, VA: Leela Press. McClenon, James (1994), Wondrous Events: Foundations of Religious Belief, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. Murphet, Howard (1971), Sai Baba: Man of Miracles, London: Muller. ——— (1980), Sai Baba Avatar, San Diego, CA: Birth Day Publishing. Osborne, Arthur (1958), The Incredible Sai Baba, London: Rider. Priddy, Robert (1998), Source of the Dream, York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser. Rigopoulos, Antonio (1993), The Life and Teachings of Sai Baba of Shirdi, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Ruffin, Bernard C. (1982), Padre Pio: The True Story, Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor.

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Sandweiss, Samuel H. (1975), The Holy Man and the Psychiatrist, San Diego, CA: Birth Day Publishing. Schulman, Arnold (1971), Baba, New York, NY: Viking Press. Sharma, Arvind (1986), ‘‘New Hindu Religious Movements in India,’’ in James A. Beckford, ed., New Religious Movements and Rapid Social Change, pp. 220–239, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications/UNESCO. Steel, Brian (1997), The Sathya Sai Baba Compendium, York Beach, ME: Samuel Weiser. Swallow, D. A. (1982), ‘‘Ashes and Powers: Myth, Rite, and Miracle in an Indian God-man’s Cult,’’ Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 123–158. Thurston, Herbert (1952), The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism, London: Burns Oates. White, Charles S. J. (1972), ‘‘The Sai Baba Movement: Approaches to the Study of Indian Saints,’’ Journal of Indian Studies, Vol. 31, No. 4, pp. 863–878. Wiseman, Richard, and Erlendur Haraldsson (1995), ‘‘Investigating Macro-PK in India: Swami Premananda,’’ Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 60, No. 839, pp. 193–202.

19 Sentient Intelligence: Consciousness and Knowing in the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri Thomas B. Fowler

Abstract The philosophy of Xavier Zubiri (1898–1983) is a bold and radically conceived effort to integrate the Western (and to a considerable extent, Eastern) philosophical traditions, the explosive growth of scientific knowledge, and the rich artistic, literary, and cultural traditions of European and world civilization. Zubiri systematically reexamines the basis for human knowledge as the principal step in his restructuring of philosophy. In the process, he finds himself compelled to analyze consciousness and shift its role from that of center of activity to that of actuality. The point of departure for his efforts is the immediacy and sense of direct contact with reality that we experience in our perception of the world. There is associated with perception an overwhelming impression of its veracity, a type of ‘‘guarantee’’ that accompanies it. Implied here are two separate aspects of perception: first, what the apprehension is of, say, a tree or a piece of green paper (content), and second, its self-guaranteeing characteristic of reality (formality), heretofore ignored. For Zubiri, reality is this formality, not a zone of things, whether ‘‘out there’’ beyond perception, or within the mind. Our brains—Zubiri refers to them as organs of formalization— are wired to perceive reality. Reality does not emerge as the result of some conscious reasoning process working on the content; it is delivered together with the content in primordial apprehension. Thus what we have is a fully integrated process with no distinction between sensing and apprehension, and with no need of a substantive consciousness to mediate or control it. The brains of lower animals, on the other hand, are wired for a different kind of formality, that of stimulation. The union of content and formality of reality gives rise to the process of knowing which unfolds logically if not chronologically in three modes or phases: (1) primordial apprehension of reality (or basic, direct installation in reality), giving us reality in its most pure and direct form, unalloyed with any conceptual apparatus (a notion that Kant would have rejected as impossible); (2) logos (explanation of what something is vis-a`-vis other things, or what the real of primordial apprehension is in reality); and (3) reason (or ratio, methodological explanation of what things are and why they are, for example in science). Because of this process, Zubiri refers to human intelligence as ‘‘sentient intelligence.’’ The impression of reality puts us in contact with reality, but not with all reality. Rather, it leaves us open to all reality. This is openness to the world. All things have a unity with respect to each other, which is what constitutes the world. Zubiri believes that reality is fundamentally open,

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and therefore not capturable in any human formula. For Zubiri, the fundamental or constitutive openness of reality means that the search for it is a never-ending quest; he believes that the development of quantum mechanics in the twentieth century has been an example of how our concept of reality has broadened. In particular, it has been broadened to include the concept of person as a fundamentally different kind of reality. Human knowing is actuality of the real in sentient intelligence, and consciousness is coactuality, a derivative notion, not the center or primary reality of the mental life. Indeed, consciousness is but an aspect of a larger, integrated, sentient process comprising human intelligence.

Introduction Western thought has produced several traditions regarding ‘‘mind’’ or the mental life, which, if taken to mean a ‘‘becoming aware of,’’ may be defined as ‘‘consciousness.’’ For Plato and those influenced by him, the mind has been the seat of a nonmaterial— some would say ‘‘spiritual’’—entity that is compelled to interact with the transitory, material world of sense experience; but ultimately soaring above it. For Aristotle and the Aristotelian tradition, including Scholasticism, man’s rational nature, his rational soul, is the key to his existence as his substantial form, which makes him to be what he is. Aristotle’s ‘‘rational’’ (Gk: tou˜ lo´gon ewontov ¼ having a rational principle, Nichomachean Ethics 1098a3) centers on man’s ability to understand and interact with his environment using the mind’s powers of reasoning applied to sense experience. Third, there is the materialist tradition dating to Lucretius in particular, but with Greek roots in the Presocratics, and extending historically to David Hume. This tradition does not deny the existence of mind, nor its central functions, but merely attributes them to material forces. Finally, Immanuel Kant partially breaks with all of these traditions by asserting that the mind synthesizes experience, rather than simply reacting to it. This synthesizing does not happen at the conscious level, but at a root level for the mind’s rational and observational powers. Though very different in their respective approaches to the question of mind—and by implication, at least, of consciousness— Zubiri (1980, 20–21) recognizes at least one similarity in all these traditions: intellection and sensing are distinct operations, at times identified with distinct faculties, and thus are different types or modes of conscious experience: Intellection and sensing are considered as distinct ways of becoming aware of things. So in modern philosophy, intellection and sensing are two modes of such becoming aware, i.e. two modes of consciousness. Leaving aside sensing for the moment, we are told that intellection is consciousness, so that intellection as act is an act of consciousness. This is the idea which has run through all of modern philosophy and which culminates in the phenomenology of Husserl. Husserl’s philosophy seeks to be an analysis of consciousness and of its acts. Nonetheless, this conception falls back upon the essence of intellection as act. When it rejects the idea of the act of a faculty, what philosophy has done is substantify the ‘‘becoming aware of,’’ thus making of intellection an act of consciousness. But this implies two ideas: (1) that consciousness is something

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which carries out acts; and (2) that what is formally constitutive of the act of intellection is the ‘‘becoming aware of.’’

Not surprisingly, therefore, consciousness and the process of knowing have always been intimately connected, and a philosopher’s position on one is inevitably reflected in the other. This is immediately evident, for example, in Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Hume, and Kant. Indeed, all of these concepts, truth, consciousness, knowing, and also being are interlocked. Their relationship often lurks beneath the surface, and not only obscures the key notions themselves, but constrains understanding of these concepts in undesirable ways. Moreover, there has been a marked tendency to conflate the notions of mind, brain, consciousness, sensation, thought, feelings, and soul as Zubiri (1980, 163) notes: ‘‘Modern philosophy has committed an even more serious error: it has identified intellection and consciousness. In such case, intellection would be a ‘taking-cognizance-of.’ And this is false since there is only ‘consciousness’ because there is common actuality, that actuality which is the formal constitutive character of sentient intellection.’’ This is a fundamental problem facing contemporary philosophy, as Zubiri perceives it: how to understand knowing as a process, at the deepest level. And the basic assumption made to date is that sensing and knowing are different modes of being or becoming aware; they are different modes of consciousness. Such has been the case in large measure, whether consciousness was viewed as a type of mental ‘‘substance,’’ as in the idealist tradition, or a kind of epiphenomenon, as in the materialist tradition, or indeed anything in between. This ‘‘functional’’ concept of consciousness has been clearly described by Reiniger (1932, 23), who observes: All conceptions of consciousness as a faculty, a function, a visual direction [Blickrichtung], or . . . as a faculty of thinking are linked to the functional concept of consciousness. . . . Consciousness, considered as the center of action or of activity, is in reality nothing more than a hypothesis of the infinitive, conscious-being, already substantiated; whereas ‘‘consciousness’’ refers, etymologically, to the passive character of ‘‘bewußt’’ [be þ the root meaning of seeing and knowing, as in the Sanskrit word Veda] as a property or characteristic of what appears. . . . In effect, consciousness [Bewußtsein], understood as a center of activity, is but a pale derivative of the concept of a substantial soul.

Thus consciousness, as center of activity, is something which senses, feels, and knows. In modern philosophy, especially, this notion of consciousness is intimately associated with a view of the ‘‘outside world,’’ a kind of window justified by some causal process (Descartes), or not justified at all (Hume, Kant). Underneath this view is the implicit assumption that reality is a zone of things outside conscious being. In some fashion the senses deliver impressions to the conscious mind, which interprets them and creates a model of the world. In every case, the mind works on the content of these impressions. Whether such content is adequate to the task of reconstructing the world in an accurate way is, of course, hotly debated.

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For Zubiri, this entire paradigm is hopelessly flawed, and it makes little difference whether one is an idealist, rationalist, or materialist. A complete overhaul is needed, including the essential task to replace the functional view of consciousness as center of activity with a different view, namely, consciousness as actuality. Zubiri rejects the substantiation of consciousness into a fully independent entity, but also rejects to dismiss its reality as essentially illusory. He notes that ‘‘things are not the content of consciousness but only the objects or boundaries of consciousness; consciousness is not the receptacle of things. . . . There are only conscious, unconscious, and subconscious acts’’ (Zubiri 1987, xiii). To forge a new understanding of consciousness that avoids these errors, Zubiri must examine with utmost care the actual process of knowing, and what occurs in apprehension. He confronts what is arguably the most fundamental assumption underlying virtually all of Western philosophy and makes it the focus of his efforts—that is, the separation of sense experience and knowing. This relationship of sensing and knowing with consciousness required him to tackle simultaneously the problems related to all three. Zubiri erects his philosophy on a basis designed to overcome the difficulties and paradoxes that, in his view, this separation has created. To do this he must penetrate to a much deeper level than any of these philosophies, and determine their unspoken and unrecognized assumptions. This leads him to a radically new understanding of consciousness, the process of knowing, truth, and reality when he first directs his attention to the process of knowing, and then lets the other notions flow from it. To clear the ground, Zubiri (1980, 3) believes it necessary to reject explicitly several modern notions, such as, for example, the suggested distinction between epistemology and metaphysics in post-Kantian thought assuming that the object of knowing and the process of knowing can be or indeed have to be rigorously separated. For Zubiri, the two are completely intertwined, and any comprehensive philosophy must address and encompass both together in its vision. At the outset, this requires not an epistemology, but rather an analysis of intelligence—something that must logically precede any type of rigorous epistemology or Kantian critique, though Hume and Kant were on the right track even if they failed to take the analysis sufficiently far. Once this foundation has been laid, a comprehensive epistemology can be completed and securely grounded. In Zubiri’s view, consciousness rests in actuality and not as center of activity. His rethinking of the philosophical enterprise as a whole rests on his new analysis of the process of human knowing and it will be valuable for us to outline the structure of his philosophy as anchored in its origins. Origins of Zubiri’s Thought The two poles of Zubiri’s thought are (1) that which is most radical in Aristotle, his conception of essence as ‘‘what it was to be the thing’’ (Gk: to` ti´ hn einai), but in prac-

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tice what makes a thing be what it is, and (2) the phenomenological concepts of reality and consciousness. His own radical innovation was to weave these two into a unified whole via the new concept of ‘‘sentient intellection.’’ It is here important to emphasize that Zubiri rethinks both Aristotle’s and the phenomenologists’ legacies; so his concepts of essence, reality, intelligence, and consciousness differ in many respects from their historical use. 1. Zubiri points out that Aristotle begins by conceiving of essence as that which makes a thing what it is. Later, however, Aristotle links his metaphysics with his epistemology by claiming that essence is the physical correlate of the definition (of a thing). Knowledge of essences is then via definition in terms of genus and species; the most famous example is of course ‘‘man is a rational animal.’’ Zubiri (1985, 89–90) comments: ‘‘When the essence is taken as the real correlate of the definition, the least that must be said is that it is a question of a very indirect way of arriving at things. For . . . instead of going directly to reality and asking what in it may be its essence, one takes the roundabout way of passing through the definition.’’ For Zubiri (p. 90), this is not merely a roundabout way, but something worse: ‘‘It is a roundabout way which rests on an enormously problematic presupposition, namely, that the essential element of every thing is necessarily definable; and this is more than problematical.’’ In fact, Zubiri believes, the essence in general cannot be defined in genus-species form, and may not be expressible in ordinary language at all. He believes that essences—in the radical sense of determining what a thing is, and thus how it will behave, what its characteristics are, and so forth—can be determined only with great difficulty; and much of science is dedicated to this task. Specifically, Zubiri believes that it is necessary to go back to Aristotle’s original idea of essence as the fundamental determinant of a thing’s nature, what makes it to be what it is, and expand on this concept in the light of modern science. Zubiri’s critique indicates that there is a deep realist strain to his thought, a belief that we can, in some ultimate sense, grasp reality. The problem arises in connection with our belief that what we perceive is also real—a belief on which we act in living out our lives. This compels Zubiri to make an important distinction with respect to reality: between reality in apprehension (which he terms reity), and reality of what things are beyond sensing (Sp: realidad verdadera, true reality). Zubiri believes that the failure of past philosophers to distinguish these, and consequently, their failure to recognize that they refer to different stages of intellection, is at the root of many grave errors and paradoxes. This leads directly to the second pole of Zubiri’s thought: phenomenology. 2. Zubiri takes three critical ideas from phenomenology (Husserl, Ortega y Gasset, and Heidegger) in order to accomplish his rethinking of just what philosophy is and can do, and consequently the understanding of key concepts such as reality. First, Zubiri borrows a certain way or ‘‘idea’’ of philosophy. In particular, he accepts that phenomenology has opened a new path and deepened our understanding of

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things by recognizing that it is necessary to position philosophy at a new and more radical level than that of modern idealism (primarily Hegel) or of classical realism (see Gracia 1986, 89). Second, he accepts that philosophy must start with its own territory, that of ‘‘mere immediate description of the act of thinking.’’ But for him, the radical philosophical problem is not that proclaimed by the phenomenologists: not Husserl’s ‘‘phenomenological consciousness,’’ not Heidegger’s ‘‘comprehension of being,’’ not Ortega’s ‘‘life,’’ but rather the ‘‘apprehension of reality.’’ He believes that philosophy must start from the fundamental fact of experience, that we are installed in reality, however modestly, and that our most basic experiences, what we perceive of the world (colors, sounds, people, and so on) are real. Without this basis—and despite the fact that knowledge built on it can at times be erroneous—there would be no other knowledge either, including science. However, at the most fundamental level, that of direct apprehension of reality, there is no possibility of error; only when knowledge is built upon this foundation, involving as it does reason (Gk: logos), will error occur. Zubiri (1980, 230ff.) points out that it makes sense to speak of error only because we can—and do—achieve truth. Since the world disclosed to us by science is quite different from our ordinary experience (electromagnetic waves and photons instead of colors, quarks instead of solid matter, and so forth), the problem of ‘‘internal’’ versus ‘‘external’’ reality prompts Zubiri to rethink the whole notion of reality: ‘‘Though following him, Zubiri goes beyond Husserl. ‘Pure consciousness’ gives way to ‘intellective sensing,’ in which things are present in a ‘physical’ and not merely ‘intentional’ way, actualizing their ‘reality’ and not their ‘meaning.’ Therefore we are not dealing with ‘intuition’ but with ‘apprehension’ ’’ (Gracia 1986, 106). In his early years, Zubiri studied with Husserl and reacts strongly to Husserl’s focus on the intentional aspect of consciousness: every conscious act is conscious of something (Gracia 1986, 67). In the words of philosopher Manfred Sommer (1990, 121–122): Consciousness [Bewußtsein] is always consciousness-of-something. Consciousness is consciousness of an object. And intentionality is the product [Leistung] of consciousness, thanks to which it is referred to its objects. . . . Intentionality synthesizes sensations into a group and objectifies it in such a way that we perceive the result as something fixed and complete, since we are unable to become aware of the rendering process itself.

Zubiri was greatly impressed by Husserl’s insight, but ultimately superseded it. Zubiri did believe, however, that Husserl had broken new ground and forged a new path for philosophy: Zubiri’s analysis of sensing follows . . . point for point Husserl’s of consciousness. Only one thing has changed, the endpoint of the description, but that is fundamental and therefore rich in consequences. In Husserlian consciousness things are manifested as ‘‘phenomena,’’ whereas in sens-

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ing they appear as ‘‘realities’’; the phenomenological essence is ‘‘ideal,’’ but the Zubirian is ‘‘real.’’ (Gracia 1986, 92)

Husserl, and also Zubiri’s teacher Ortega y Gasset, believe that creating a philosophy without presuppositions (and all of the baggage of former philosophies) requires that the new philosophy situate itself in the radical plane of perceptive consciousness. This is the only way, in their opinion, to do ‘‘pure’’ philosophy. The perceptive consciousness asks itself about what things are ‘‘in’’ that consciousness, not ‘‘beyond’’ it in some ‘‘real’’ world, nor ‘‘closer,’’ in some ‘‘ideal’’ world (p. 57). Zubiri (1987, xiii), however, felt compelled to make a subtle but fundamental change in this paradigm: ‘‘In turn, intellection is not consciousness, but the mere actualization of the real in the sentient intelligence.’’ The importance of this change can scarcely be underestimated, as Gracia (1986, 90) points out: Here we have the great intuition which Zubiri made explicit as early as 1935. The primary philosophical task consists in describing the immediately given data, not as data of ‘‘consciousness’’ but as data of my ‘‘sensing.’’ The difference may seem minuscule, but it is of enormous consequence. Traversing the path of Husserl’s ‘‘pure consciousness’’ one moves toward the pure knowing of ideal ‘‘essences’’; traversing the path of ‘‘human sensing,’’ on the contrary, one knows ‘‘things themselves,’’ their ‘‘reality.’’

For Zubiri (1980, 21–22), consciousness is not the foundation of intellection, because intellection is not primarily a ‘‘becoming aware of’’ something: it is untrue that what constitutes intellection is awareness, because that is always a becoming aware ‘‘of’’ something which is here-and-now present to consciousness. And this being here-andnow present is not determined by the being aware. A thing is not present because I am aware of it, but rather I am aware of it because it is already present. To be sure, this concerns a being here-andnow present in the intellection, where I am aware of what is present; but the being here-and-now present of the thing is not a moment formally identical to the being aware itself, nor is it grounded there. Hence, within the act of intellection, modern philosophy has gone astray over the question of being here-and-now present, and has attended only to the realizing. But this awareness is not in and through itself an act; it is only a moment of the act of intellection. This is the great aberration of modern philosophy with respect to the analysis of intellection.

The third idea—perhaps ‘‘inspiration’’ is a better term—that Zubiri draws from phenomenology has to do with his radically changed concept of reality. No longer a ‘‘zone’’ of things, reality is a formality, a characteristic of apprehension. Much of Zubiri’s philosophical effort is devoted to analyzing the process of intelligence, and explaining how its three stages (primordial apprehension, logos, and reason) unfold and yield knowledge, including scientific knowledge. As this is fundamental to understanding consciousness, it will be examined in the next section. For Zubiri, philosophical doctrines or theories of intellection have occurred as shown in figure 19.1. First there was the metaphysics of intelligence, rooted in ancient and

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Metaphysics of intelligence (Faculty of knowing: Ancient and medieval) a Theory of knowledge (Modern philosophy, Descartes through Kant and up to twentieth century) a Phenomenology (Consciousness and intentionality: Husserl and Heidegger) a Noology (Zubiri) Figure 19.1 The three traditions of intellection influencing Zubiri’s Noology from the ancient through the modern worlds

medieval philosophy. This metaphysics concentrated on the faculty of knowing, often assumed to be some type of entity in itself. The existence of knowledge was taken for granted and attention was directed preferentially to the things known. This yielded to the theory of knowledge in modern philosophy, beginning with Descartes and culminating in some ways with Hume and Kant. Emphasis shifted away from things to the knowing process itself, which tells us what (if anything) can be known, and the conditions for knowing it. This focus continued in the Anglo-Saxon philosophical tradition through the twentieth century. However in Continental thought, phenomenology emerges early in the twentieth century and reasserts the primacy of metaphysics while still recognizing the potency of epistemological arguments from the Cartesian and British traditions. This requires some rethinking of the notion of reality, which is begun by Husserl, with whom Zubiri studied. Zubiri recognizes the strengths as well as the inadequacies of the phenomenological approach, and sets about synthesizing the three major traditions that have come before in his Noology. As the principal step in his restructuring of philosophy, Zubiri seeks to reestablish in a radical way the basis for human knowledge. In the process he will also be compelled to develop a new understanding of consciousness. The two, indeed, go hand-in-hand because the traditional, functional view of consciousness entails assumptions about knowing and reality that are incompatible with Zubiri’s analysis. This task of reestablishing the basis for human knowledge goes far beyond any type of Kantian critique— something which Zubiri believes can only come after we have analyzed what human knowledge is, and how we apprehend. For Zubiri, perception of reality begins with

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the sensing process, but he rejects the paradigm of classical philosophy, which starts from opposition between sensing and intelligence. According to this paradigm, the senses deliver confused content to the intelligence, which then figures out or reconstructs reality. The Scholastic tradition said, nihil est in intellectu quod prius non fuerit in sensu. This is sensible intelligence, and according to Zubiri, the entire paradigm is radically false. Zubiri’s point of departure is the immediacy and sense of direct contact with reality that we experience in our perception of the world; the things we perceive: colors, sounds, sights, are real in some extremely fundamental sense that cannot be overridden by subsequent reasoning or analysis. That is, there is associated with perception an overwhelming impression of its veracity, a type of ‘‘guarantee’’ that