(3)

Always there is a buzzing and a murmuring going on just below the conscious level of my mind.  Whether I am participating in the waking dream or the sleeping dream, always there is a buzzing and a murmuring going on just below the surface of whatever it is that I say or do or am aware of and focused on sensorially.  When I write, collecting, ordering, and transcribing my thoughts, I'm giving this subconscious buzzing and murmuring focus, thus lifting it into the realm of consciousness.  I do this by encasing the subconscious data in symbolic form, thereby "externalizing" it, in a relative sense, from the substrate of the mind; by this process "intelligence" is defined.  In sleeping dreams, the subconscious is embodied by symbolic forms that are primarily (though not exclusively) visual, this being due to the visual sense having primacy in my waking life.  When I'm in a waking state, the information that impresses itself upon my consciousness is transmitted via the process of sensory input.  While it's true that I cannot ascribe to this process any subconscious "buzzing and murmuring," I would suggest that my physical body, with its attendant senses, acts analogously to the subconscious mind:  my various physical senses, like so many antennae, exist in a state of constant alertness, ready to receive input from my physical environment; the input so received, most of which remains unfocused and unattended, is analogous to the "buzzing and murmuring" of the subconscious, and further, formulates the primary basis for subconscious thought.

The subconscious mind is biologically derived:  it arises from sensory input and the gratification (or lack thereof) that is received by the body via its senses; from the assessment of gratification as perceived by the body an emotional subtext is formulated, as are intellectual theories as to how to increase and/or regulate gratification.  The impulse behind this is the biological imperative for both individual and species well-being (these being interconnected, though not necessarily interdependent, drives).  From the biologically derived subtext – the subconscious – sleeping dreams are born.  Likewise the waking dream is born of a biological "subtext" – the bodily senses.  Sleeping dreams are primarily derived from sensory input, once removed; likewise (or so I theorize), waking reality is influenced – that is to say, altered in its very substance – by the subconscious, again once removed.  So it would seem that, to achieve a state of heightened awareness in sleeping dreams, one should strive to bring a greater sense of corporeal reality into the dreaming state.  To bring a state of heightened awareness into the waking state, one should strive to operate more directly from the subconscious.  And it would seem that, in both cases, the methodology most likely to achieve this is one of bringing a halt to the process of self-analysis; for self-analysis (by which I mean, delineating the operational processes of my mind in the hopes of discovering how those processes influence reality) consists of a self-referential cul-de-sac:  in fact, consciousness and reality work in tandem, each informing the other in equal measure.

I have, of course, proposed bringing this form of self-analysis to a halt (and have actually done so) several times before.  Two things have prevented me from maintaining the process in a sustained manner, and thus have caused me to come back time and again to redefine my meanings and methodologies.  Firstly, I have thought that in order to stop self-analysis, I must also stop the analysis of all that exists beyond this one narrow field of inquiry.  I had, in other words, confused the cessation of my own internal analysis with the cessation of all analysis, regardless of its subject matter.  Secondly, I feared that if I stopped the analysis of my mind's relationship with reality, I would be no more than the equivalent of a monkey trapped inside a cage; also that I would lose my best hope of freeing myself from that cage, as well as any means of measuring such freedom as I might be said to have attained.  But I have now come to the point at which I feel it necessary for me to ask:  Does not the process of self-analysis itself constitute the cage?

The human need for gratification, being biologically derived, is entirely natural and valid.  And the capacity for analysis may be beneficial to us, broadly speaking – as in the case for instance whereby we use it to alter environmental conditions, the better to make them suit our needs.  But the ego-driven analysis of self that holds self-gratification to be of supreme importance, thus giving rise to the desire to twist and bend the world to do its will, is, in my opinion, but a symptom of the biological imperative gone mad – or at least, become profoundly neurotic.

Though I believe it is true that many of the ills humans have wreaked upon nature and its inhabitants (as well as upon other humans) can be specifically traced to this neurotic condition, it may also of course be that I have simply come to recognize more fully the narcissism of my own introversion, and to realize the nature of the impasse this has brought me to.  Fortunately, I think I have also recognized its cure as well, though I am uncertain as yet whether what I propose (the halting of self-analysis for the purpose of ego gratification) will pave the way towards a more healthful and insightful self-integrity, or merely constitutes a form of stoicism in the face of the unknown.