01. Awareness

 In the previous chapter, we considered the difference between appearance and existence.  We started with a story about how children grow up and learn to discriminate between the two.  First all kinds of things appear, as such, and then the child learns to see all that appears through the lense of existence.  The freshness of appearance fades, making place for a fixation on existence.  In due time, the child learns to turn the world upside-down: existence is seen as fundamental, while appearance is seen as something derived, subjective, not really real, an imperfect handle on the really existing world.

Within this rather fixed world of existence, the child also learns to find a place for itself.  A sense of self develops, an image of a self that is effectively the center of the universe.  And just as the world is hardened into `existence' the self image is hardened into a `core self' that becomes the anchor of all of our experience.  A solid world is presented to a solid self.

This solid self then judges, labels, interprets, and it also tries to control wherever it seems useful to do so.  In the process appearance is reinterpreted as experience, something that requires an experiencer, the self itself as the owner of all that appears to it.  In effect, the original world of appearance has now become divided up in a kind of cold war.  Objective ownership has been given to the world, and subjective ownership had been given to the self.  And there is a wall dividing the two realms of ownership, an iron curtain that allows only very limited traffic to pass between the experiencer and the experienced.

The self is constantly on guard.  Anything objective can threaten it, and therefore the subject needs to have its defenses up all the time. Our nervous system is being commandeered for this task: our sensory system is used to look out for danger, and our motor system is used to protect against perceived danger.  We feel a constant low-level sense of being nervous, and it is impossible to totally relax as long as this self-world polarization remains in force -- a kind of martial law that suspends the basic freedom of enjoyment of the freshness of what appears.

To make it easier to analyze what is going on, let us look at the following five terms that give us a vocabulary to analyze this martial law, and to find ways to deal with it appropriately and effectively. The first three deal with the varieties of appearance and existence: sheer appearance, existence, and mere appearance.  The next two describe how these three present themselves: through awareness and experience.

Of course, we could have chosen other words, besides sheer appearance, existence, mere appearance, awareness, and experience.  There is no particularly strong reason to use these words above others; we could have introduced completely new words as well.  However, it seems simpler to use existing words that at least have some resonance with what it is that we want to point out.

1.1. Sheer Appearance

We talked about the freshnes of what appears, as it appears, before we get lost in labeling and judging.  Let us call this fresh encounter `sheer appearance' to emphasize that we are dealing with appearance before adding anything to it.  Poets traditionally remind us of sheer appearance.  William Blake's famous lines provide a good example:

     To see a world in a grain of sand,
     And a heaven in a wild flower,
     Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
     And eternity in an hour.

Note that there is nothing wrong with labeling and judging as such. Blake doesn't suggest that we no longer recognize a flower as a flower.  The point is not to stop after seeing a flower as a flower, but rather to see much more than just a mere flower.

The word `sheer' suggests that we stay with what appears.  Instead of looking past what appears to its meaning or value or utility, we just stay with what appears.  We listen to it, we let it talk to us.  We let it express itself.  We open ourselves for new vistas, each moment. When engaging with sheer appearance, we invite time to present a new world of appearance, each moment.

1.2. Existence

Sheer appearance includes the options of labeling and interpreting, of recognizing regularities.  Discovery of structure, and of rhythms of change, are totally compatible with sheer appearance.  Playfully dealing with patterns and rhythms is what artists, poets and musicians are delighting in doing.  It is only when this kind of play gets regulated that we have a problem.

Change is threatening to a self.  In a world where anything can happen any time the key word is DANGER.  The self desperately wants to protect itself from the dangers of ongoing change.  And the main tool to do so is the invention of the notion of `existence.'  It is very comforting to view change as only superficial, with something more real underneath that is not changing, or changing in a slower and more controllable way.

This move to find comfort finds its expression in a belief in a world of existence.  This belief is a kind of barter trade.  We give up the freshness of delighting in sheer appearance, and in turn we receive a more dull but seemingly more reliable sense of ongoing existence of the world.  Each child is guided through this process.  And humanity as a whole has gone through various stages of a similar process on a larger scale.

Turning from a hunter-gatherer society to agriculture made the world more predictable, but also more labor intensive and dull.  Turning from an oral tradition of story telling to the written word traded in vividness for longer-lasting-ness.  Going from oil lamps to electric lights, we can find many examples of this kind of barter system.

In itself, these technological advances do not have to limit our appreciation of sheer appearance.  We always remain free to return to the freshness of what presents itself, from moment to moment. Strictly speaking, we have never left the paradise of sheer appearance. However, if we don't remind ourselves of this freedom, all of our barter moves can weave a dense spider's web around us in which we then feel totally trapped.

1.3. Mere Appearance

Once we have learned to buy into the notion of solid existence, we face a puzzle.  No matter how much we believe that the world exists, all that we have access to is appearance.  Even our belief in solidity is something that appears to us.  Let us take our time to really go into this essential fact.

Appearance appears, and it appears to us, and we in turn explain it as as side effect of existence.

This is so essential, to see that clearly.  This is what motivated Edmund Husserl, one of the greatest European philosophers, to completely overhaul philosophy, in a move that he called phenomenology.

Let us take an example.  We see a cup.  We may say: the cup appears to us. But when we look carefully, what appears to us are different things. There is the visual image of the cup.  And when we hit the cup with a spoon there is the sound telling us about the existence of the cup. We can touch the cup.  But we never have direct access to anything that we can call the existence of the cup.  The best we can do is notice the presence of our belief in the existence of the cup.

In addition we can notice how strong that belief is, and how difficult it is to recognize our sense of the existence of a cup as the appearance of a belief in the existence of a cup.

I touch a cup.  I believe in the existence of a cup, and therefore I believe that I am touching a really existing cup.  But I have the choice to open that tightly wrapped package deal.  I can open this complex of assumptions and look at what is actually going on, directly, on the level of what presents itself.  Let us go slowly.

I touch a cup.  I can feel the sense of touch, the roughness or smoothness of the cup, its coolness or hotness, perhaps a slight stickiness.  I can then notice how all these sensations together give rise to an almost irresistible belief in the real existence of the cup, as a single fact that somehow explains the way that all these sensations arise.

Watching carefully in this way, we can observe the deal being closed: the way we trading in numerous sensations for a single belief in existence.  And while existence itself remains foreever out of reach, like a distant god, our belief in existence takes center stage, and all that appears is demoted, downgraded to `mere appearance.'

This mere appearance is only a very weak and impotent replacement of the original sheer appearance.  It is a fake, it has lost its shine, and we pass it by, not paying much attention to it.  We consider ourselves to live in a world of existents, and the way these existents appear to us is almost irrelevant.  We treat this mere appearance as lowly servants, necessary for us to communicate with the gods of existence, but not worthy of any real attention otherwise.

Still, mere appearance is all we got . . . .

1.4. Awareness

Let us now return to sheer appearance, that what fills the world of young children, of artists, and that can still fill our own world if we ever take the time to look for it -- even a little time; already a few seconds will do.  Swimming in a sea of appearance, we are aware of appearance but we don't feel any need to own it or pin it down.  We also don't feel a need to preserve it: each moment new appearance appears, in all its primordial freshness.

Let us restate that paragraph, in a more careful way.  We tend to use the words "I" and "we" without thinking about its implications.  Was it correct to say "we are aware of appearance"?  Who is this "we"?  Is there any reason to add it to "what appears"?  Does the "I" or "we" play any role there?  Perhaps not.  Well, let's find out.

Let us use the term `awareness' for a kind of dealing with appearance in which there is no prominent sense of "I" involved.  We all can easily remember many such instances.  When we are really absorbed in an activity, reading a novel that grips us, or playing music, or dancing, there may be no trace of this mysterious "I", this self image that normally is so prominent.  In moments of deep joy, or deep sorrow for that matter, there may be only joy or only sorrow with no room or need to construct a self image.

This term `awareness' is appropriate for describing `sheer appearance' while we are using words.  Unfortunately, words and concepts tend to project sheer appearance down into mere appearance.  We almost cannot avoid saying "we can be aware of sheer appearance" even though in that case there really is no "we" or "I" involved.  It would be more accurate to say that "awareness is aware of sheer appearance appearing". However, it would be a bit awkward to force ourselves to speak and write that way all the time.  So let's make sure to remember that this is what we really mean when using phrases like "I am aware of ...".

1.5. Experience

When we make the switch from sheer appearance to mere appearance, by positing existence as a new unseen and unseeable element of reality, awareness dims.  Instead, awareness as such is replaced by experience. And experience never comes `as such'.  Experiencing is a rather complex business: it always needs three little helpers in order to function at all.

There is no experience without an experiencer and something that is experienced, as well as an action of experiencing.  This tripartite structure of experienc {-er, -ed, -ing} is forced upon us by a belief in existence.  And our sense of self is a consequence.

Once we firmly believe in existence, any act of experiencing can no longer stand on its own.  There always needs to be an aspect of existence involved.  We always need to experience something -- and in turn the something needs to be experienced by a somebody.

Here is a simple picture of the relationship between these three aspects of experience.  Let the -ing be a stick.  Any stick has two ends, let's call them the left and right end of the stick.  Let the left end be the -er and the right end be the -ed of experience.

I hear a sound.  The "I" is the experiencer, the subject of "seeing" which is the action of experiencing, while the "sound" is what is experienced, the object of the action.

You throw a ball.  The subject is "you", the object is "ball" and the action is "throwing".

And this tripartite structure feels inescapable.  If we try to remove the right hand side of a stick, by cutting it off, immediately a new right hand side appears.  And no matter how many left edges we cut off, new left edges show up.  Similarly, when we watch the three aspects of experience, immediately we create three new versions of experience.

I see a cup.  When I then call the cup an object, there is another observer-I, different from the seer-I, one that does the calling rather than the seeing.  The cup also splits in two, a seen cup and a called cup.  This is very similar to trying to cut off edges from a stick.

We may object and say that there is only one cup, one that happens to be seen and also happens to be called.  However, it is only through our belief in existence that we can blend those two cups together, fusing them into one.  On the level of what appears, these two cups are quite different: one is being seen, an object of the action seeing; the other one is being called or judged, an object of a different action.

1.6. Paradise Lost

The switch from Awareness to Experience can be described in many ways. Most cultures provide vivid mythological stories that convey the sadness of falling from awareness into experience.  The Judeo-Christian tradition talks about an original paradise which lacked the strive and opposition inherent in the triple structure of experience.  Paradise lost then meant a loss of awareness, a loss of sheer appearance.

Some of these stories are placed outside of time, while the paradise story is an example of a story placed in the distant past, soon after the creation.  Whatever the story may be, in either case we now find ourselves in time, hemmed in between a fixed past that we can't change and an uncertain future that we can't know.  In between these two we are confined to a momentary and ever changing present, in which we are exposed to all kind of problems and suffering.

It is the triple nature of experience that accentuates, and in some way constitutes, the inescapability of suffering.  As long as we identify with an isolated subject-pole of experience, opposed to the many object poles that together make up the world, there is conflict. We then have needs, worries, hope and fear, as constant companions.

How to regain paradise?  How to return from experience back to awareness.

The problem is: we can't.  We cannot return.  In principle we cannot.

As long as I identify myself with the subject pole of experience, "I" cannot enter into or gain awareness.  A transition between experience and awareness literally implies the disappearance of the subject pole, as well as the object pole, of experience.  Liberation from experience offers no room for an experiencer to keep its isolated identity.  We can dream sweet dreams of enlightenment, of seeing ourselves turned into enlightened versions of ourselves, but such dreams are logical contradictions.

Sinners can't turn into saints.  But experience can drop away.  Or more accurately, the appearance of experience can make room for the appearance of awareness.

That's all.  From the point of view of awareness, the whole tripartite structure of experience is only an illusion, yet another form of sheer appearance, namely the sheer appearance of experienc {-er, ing, -ed}. In contrast, from the point of view of experience, there simply is no such thing as awareness; experience stipulates that anything should happen to a self pole, and tries as it might, this self cannot imagine what it could possibly mean to have an "experience without a self".

1.7. Nothing Can Be Gained

So when paradise is lost, and a self image appears, there is no way for the self to regain paradise.  The only thing to do is to realize that nothing was ever lost, so there is nothing at all that can possibly be gained.  This is a very short summary, which needs to be unpacked in considerable detail, but just considering the previous two sentences may already cause a significant shift in our outlook on our world and on ourselves.

How about embarking on another exploration?  In the previous chapter we started to work with a specific working hypothesis: we assumed for the time being that appearance is more fundamental than existence. We then spent a couple minutes a day, spread out over 9-second chunks every fifteen minutes, to work with this hypothesis.  During each 9-second break in the middle of our daily activities, we dropped our concern with our ongoing busy-ness, and switched our focus from existence to appearance.  Could appearance be at least as fundamental as existence?  That was the question on our minds, time and again, a few times an hour, for a few seconds at a time.

In the current chapter, we have sharpened our way of talking about the tension between appearance and existence by introducing five concepts: sheer appearance, existence, mere appearance, awareness, and experience. This time, let us experiment with shifting between the latter two.

The first time we try to shift between experience and awareness, we may be quite confused, and it may also take a lot more than nine seconds. So we may want to do a few dry-runs, to get started.

Whatever situation you find yourself in, look at an experience you have at that moment.  It could be any experience, active or passive: you can do something or notice something, whatever.  Start by really noticing that particular experience in as much detail as you can, including its triple structure, with the presence of subject, object and interaction between subject and object.

I see a tree.  Really feel the seeing involved.  Really notice that sense of I involved.  Really notice the tree as playing the object role.

Then, after noticing this whole complex structure of experience, try to make a gentle shift to awareness.  Look again at the tree, and notice how it appears.  Look again at the I that is seeing the tree and notice how it, too, appears.  Notice the act of seeing, and notice how seeing appears.  Most likely, you will start with noticing all three aspects as a kind of `mere appearance', in which appearances appear with respect to a backdrop of a really existing world that is more real than all those appearances.

That's okay.  It's perfectly fine to start by viewing appearances like shadows produced by whatever is considered more real.  We don't have to force any unnatural chances in the way in which we have been viewing world and self for years and decades.  But at least make a start toward a shift from existence to appearance, whether mere or sheer.  Little by little, `mere' may lose some of its mere-ness . . .