Silence - Silence

November 30th, 2006 Fred McVittie

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A Course in Enlightenment: Feelings aren’t Facts.

December 8th, 2006 Fred McVittie

The techniques which lead to enlightenment may produce certain feelings, emotions, or bodily responses. This is inevitable; all thoughts are connected to shifts in the responses of the body, and the thoughts associated with enlightenment are no different to any other thoughts.
These feelings may include, awe, love, empathy, a sense of clarity, compassion; we may feel tearful, joyful, or as if we are about to burst with the power of our feelings. But these feelings are not enlightenment, they are just feelings. They tell us no more about enlightenment than the pain which accompanies falling tells us about gravity. The truth of enlightenment is itself, not the responses our body makes to that truth.
So does this mean we should ignore these feelings? Of course not, for just as the pain of falling gives us information about the fall and about our relationship to it, motivating us to produce actions and behaviour appropriate to our needs, so the emotions we feel when using the techniques of enlightenment give us similar information. We should observe these emotions, maybe even enjoy them, but we should not confuse them with the enlightenment itself.

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Think Feel Act

December 19th, 2006 Fred McVittie

Feelings (and intuitions) exist in order to motivate action, or to shape an action that will inevitably take place in some form. We feel pain in order to motivate us to make an action that will remove the source of that pain. Feelings are the result of cognitive processes, some of which are conscious, some of which are non-conscious. Pain is the result of non-conscious processing; we feel the pain but we are not consciously aware of the ‘thoughts’ which led up to this feeling. Other feelings can be induced by consciously thinking certain thoughts, or looking at certain images, or carrying out certain actions which produce thoughts. These thoughts may produce feelings; we think sad thoughts and the result is that we feel sad. So we might entertain a thought that will produce a feeling that will in turn motivate or shape an action. Simple feelings motivate simple actions, and are produced by simple thoughts. Complex feelings motivate complex actions and are produced by complex thoughts.

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Medium Sized Objects moving at Medium Speed

May 10th, 2007 Fred McVittie

We are, as Richard Dawkins memorably put it, ‘Medium sized objects moving at medium speed’. The scales at which all of creation operates stretches in size from the Planck length to the horizon of visible space, a scale of some 40 or so powers of magnitude, and as Joel Primack and Nancy Abrams relate in ‘The View from the Centre of the Universe’ , we occupy a tiny proportion of this scale somewhere in the middle. From an evolutionary perspective we have been medium sized objects for a very long time, since before we had an opposable thumb, since before we had language, since before we had consciousness, since before we had the complex unconscious we have today. We were medium sized objects moving at medium speed when our entire psychophysical repertoire was limited to flight or fight, breeding and eating. It is as medium sized objects that our being asserted itself such that our physiology, and indeed our psychology has designed itself to operate within that particular range and scale of operation, to solve problems and exploit opportunities offered within that range and scale. To our distant ancestors these problems would be ones of basic survival, of hunting, gathering, avoiding predators and identifying prey. Driven by the attractions of pleasure (nature’s reward for survival-enhancing behaviour) and the distress of pain (the stick that nature holds in her other hand), those of our ancestors who were best able to respond to these coaxings would be those who survived the longest, and therefore were most likely to leave their imprint in the genetic record.

The processes of evolution are contingent and conservative, and there is no place within its mechanism for wild experimentation and flights of fancy. Should nature occasionally have the urge to assert herself as revolutionary artist, the beautiful mutants that result from such bohemianism, less well equipped to solve the problems of medium sized objects moving at medium speed, never make it into the museum of natural history we carry in our genome. For this reason we have never evolved eyes capable of seeing into the heart of the atom, or into the reaches of outer space; in survival terms we have nothing to fear and nothing to gain from such extended sight. We can hear the roar of a lion and the wimpering of a potential next meal, but not the background hum of the universe. We can hold apples in our hands, and we can hold the hand of a lover, but have never had need to grasp a quark.

Posted in Dawkins, Richard, Evolution, Pain, Pleasure, Primack, J. & Adams, N. | No Comments »