(7)
If I turn off my judgmental responses to the world – those judgments
formed by the processes of reason and logic; judgments resulting from
theorization and argumentation; emotional judgments; and judgments
derived from some admixture of the above – what I'm left with are the
nonrational responses manifested by my physical being. Various
kinds of sensorial input – sights, sounds, smells, etc. – either
attract or repel me (or leave me indifferent, or rouse my curiosity,
etc.) depending upon my physiological response to the stimuli; these
responses then yield to behavioral "judgments" (reactions)
pertaining to my desire for safety and comfort or fear of harm.
Below this level of judgment, there exists only the energetic
responsiveness of the nervous system and the brain to the reception
of external stimuli. At this level there occurs no act of
judgment, per se; there exists only the experiential quality of what
"is." And below the level of the purely experiential,
there exists – at least insofar as I myself am able to tell – only a
sort of darkness, a blankness: the void.
It would seem that it's on the lowest level of responsiveness that
the "dream" quality of reality is most likely to be
perceived. I say this because it's at this level that the
perception of reality comes closest to the perception we have when
involved in sleeping dreams. Whatever import and/or causality
the psychology of an individual has upon sleeping dreams, whatever
import and/or causality the psychology of an individual has upon the waking
dream that is reality, both are fundamentally based upon an energetic
response to externally perceived stimuli – to the experiential
quality of what "is." Thus both the sleeping and the
waking dream are experienced at the most fundamental level as irrationalities
– though use of that term benefits us only in a relative sense, in
order to distinguish our perceptions from the perceived orderliness
of scientific and natural law (with regard to the waking dream), or
of a psychologically derived orderliness (with regard to the sleeping dream).
Rationality has been developed as a survival technique for our
species, but is this to say that rationality is the most evolved form
of developmental potential open to us? I would suggest that
experientialism (or at any rate, something which uses experientialism
as its basic mode of perception and understanding) represents a still
higher level of evolvement. By saying such I do not mean to
negate the value of rationality, which allows us to extend life and
provide for our well-being in such a way as to allow for the
development of the experiential capacity. Nor do I deny the
psychological import of sleeping dreams, although in doing away with
the psychological as the primary basis of sleeping dreams I do mean
to suggest that they represent a separate reality within which humans
exist. We enter this reality spontaneously every night (and
have the potential to enter at least one other reality as well – that
of the out-of-body state); why should it be thought strange, then, given
the ultimately mysterious nature of the totality of which we are a
part, that sleeping dreams be considered as a portal to another
aspect of this totality?
Psychology, I come to see, is useless to my endeavors – as is
rationality. Or, if not useless precisely, at least beside the
point. The fundamental mode of perception with regard to experientialism
is that of external stimuli impressing itself energetically upon a
receptor (the nervous system in the waking dream, some correlative
manifestation of receptivity in alternative realities). Only
this, and nothing more.
*
*
*
|
me
a dream
within a dream
not-me
a dream
within a dream
the dreamer
leaves himself
behind |
|