Growing Up Versus Waking Up

The map is not the territory, and the name is not the thing named.

~ Gregory Bateson1

A map is not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.

~ Alfred Korzybski2

sitting_down_and_studying_a_map_overlooking_a_frozen_landscape-scopio-2afa2391-c336-41c0-8d4c-7a2d2cdea3bd

Photo by Kirill Gudkov on Scopio

Territories of Experience

Conventional science divides the world in two:3

  • the map is the inside world of cognition, consciousness, intuition; and
  • the territory is the outside empirical world, including our own behavior.

However, what if the territory of study is the inside world of phenomenology, the structure of consciousness and experience, as in a comparison of awareness practices and states? Then it is more practical and useful to divide experience into not two but four territories (modes or qualities):4

  1. the outside world (e.g., empirical data);
  2. one’s own sensed behavior and feeling;
  3. the realm of thought; and
  4. the realm of intentional, transcognitive attention5

This is a nature-body-mind-attention continuum.6 In this context “attention” means direct, nonconceptual awareness of physical, mental, and emotional experience in the present moment.7

This division of the phenomenological continuum enables a contrast between growing up and waking up:

We can distinguish these by noting that the “waking up” experience is available at any level of “growing up.”9 Elaborating on the relationships between these territories can help elaborate the nature of awareness practices and states, as distinguished from growth in effectiveness, understanding, and wisdom.

Awareness versus Thought

Practices

The realm of thought has content. And attention can have an object, like a flashlight illuminating various (external and internal) objects.10 Thus these territories can relate to the others;11 in particular, awareness practices can attend to different territories.12

  Thoughts about… Awareness of…13
…the outside world Thoughts about the outside world Awareness of the outside world
e.g., object meditation, present moment awareness
…one’s own sensed behavior and feeling Thoughts about one’s own sensed behavior and feeling Awareness of one’s own sensed behavior and feeling
e.g., body scan, mindfulness of breathing
…thought Thoughts about thought
e.g., a blog post about Grown-Up Thinking		 Awareness of the realm of thought
e.g., settling the mind in its natural state, taming thought by letting be
…awareness Thoughts about awareness
e.g., a blog post about Waking Up		 Awareness of awareness
e.g., shamatha without an object, sign, or support

Of particular interest are practices involving awareness of awareness:

In the practice of shamatha without a sign, the attention is not directed to anything. It rests in its own nature, simply being aware of its own presence. Nominally, you could say that awareness takes itself as its object. But experientially, this practice is more a matter of taking no object.14

States

An outgrowth of awareness practices is unitive experiences, or ways of experiencing, in the realm of intentional, transcognitive attention with various qualities of awareness described by Robert K.C. Forman:15

  1. Pure Consciousness Event: In the Pure Consciousness Event, awareness is aware only of itself.16
  2. Dualistic Mystical State: The Dualistic Mystical State becomes more spacious, retaining this awareness of awareness while also spanning the territories of the outside world and one’s own sensed behavior and feeling.17
  3. Unitive Mystical State (UMS): In the Unitive Mystical State, the interior awareness merges with the external awareness.18

David R. Loy calls these “nondual experiences” or a “nondual way of experiencing,” referring to the “nonduality of (more narrowly) seer and seen, (more broadly) subject and object.”19 While Loy quotes primarily from nondualistic traditions (Advaita Vedānta, Taoism, and Mahāyāna Buddhism–including 禅 / Chán, Tibetan, and Zen), within mystical theism Meister Eckhart sounds similar:

The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.20

For though she sink all sinking in the oneness of divinity, she never touches bottom. For it is of the very essence of the soul that she is powerless to plumb the depths of her creator. And here one cannot speak of the soul any more, for she has lost her nature yonder in the oneness of divine essence. There she is no more called soul, but is called immeasurable being.21

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge.22

Nondual Awareness versus Thought

But the realm of representational thought uses symbolic communication about experience, and as Herb Koplowitz says,

reality is undifferentiated. The process of naming or measuring pulls that which is named out of reality, which itself is not nameable or measurable.23

That is, the process of naming creates a boundary between three objects:24

  • that which is named as foreground;
  • the negation, polar opposite, or shadow of that which is named; and
  • the background.

Koplowitz defined reality as an undivided unity, or undifferentiated phenomenological continuum, without boundaries and time-space distinctions. It is this same cohesive reality that A. Korzybski (1948) referred to as the overall “territory” existing prior to human mapping.25

There is consequently a difference between the immediate, underlying unity and the language-mediated human descriptions of it.26 Or:

Having-no-name is the source of heaven and earth

Having-names is the mother of the ten thousand things27

This means waking up to nondual experiences and growing up in wisdom are different but related topics of discussion.28

Notes

  1. Bateson, G.; Montuori, A. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity; Hampton Press: Cresskill, N.J, 2002; ISBN 978-1-57273-434-0. ↩

  2. Korzybski, A. (1958) Science and Sanity: An Introduction to Non-Aristotelian Systems and General Semantics; Institute of GS; ISBN 978-0-937298-01-5. ↩

  3. Torbert, W.R. (1991) The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry. ↩

  4. Torbert, W.R. (1978) Educating toward Shared Purpose, Self-Direction and Quality Work. The Journal of Higher Education 49, 109–135, doi: 10.1080/00221546.1978.11776608. ↩

  5. Torbert, W.R. (1994) Cultivating postformal adult development: Higher stages and contrasting interventions. In Transcendence and Mature Thought in Adulthood; Miller, M.E., Cook-Greuter, S.R., Eds.; Rowman & Littlefield Publishers: Lanham, Md, 1994 ISBN 978-0-8476-7918-8. ↩

  6. Torbert, W.R.; Taylor, S.S. (2007) Action Inquiry: Interweaving Multiple Qualities of Attention for Timely Action. In The SAGE handbook of action research: participative inquiry and practice; Reason, P., Bradbury, H., Eds.; SAGE: London, ISBN 978-1-4462-7114-8. ↩

  7. Joiner, W.B.; Josephs, S.A. (2006) Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change; 1st edition.; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco; ISBN 978-0-7879-7913-3. ↩

  8. Torbert, B.; Fisher, D.; Rooke, D. (2004) Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership; Illustrated edition.; Berrett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco, CA; ISBN 978-1-57675-264-7. ↩

  9. Koplowitz, H. (1990) Unitary Consciousness and the Highest Development of Mind: The Relation Between Spiritual Development and Cognitive Development. In Adult Development: Volume 2: Models and Methods in the Study of Adolescent and Adult Thought; Commons, M.L., Armon, C., Kohlberg, L., Richards, F.A., Grotzer, T.A., Sinnott, J.D., Eds.; Praeger: New York; ISBN 978-0-275-92755-4. ↩

  10. “Think of it as the beam of attention, which shifts around and homes in on various external and internal objects.” Warren, J. (2007) The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness; First Edition.; Random House: New York; ISBN 978-1-4000-6484-7. ↩

  11. “Attention is known to be a control system par excellence. Its basic mode of action is to single out inputs which are to be processed to a higher level in a given modality.” Taylor, J.G. (2007) On the Neurodynamics of the Creation of Consciousness. Cogn Neurodyn 1, 97–118, doi: 10.1007/s11571-006-9011-8. This may have neural correlates: “[T]he nature of attention [is] properly regarded as an action of certain parts of the brain on other parts…. ‘a distinction is drawn between the brain areas which are crucially involved in the top-down modulation of attention (the “sources” of attention) and those sensory-associated areas whose activity is modulated by attention (the “site” of attention)’.” Taylor, J.G. (2003) Paying Attention to Consciousness. Progress in Neurobiology 71, 305–335, doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2003.10.002. ↩

  12. For object meditation (as “outer one-pointed awareness”), mindfulness of breathing (as “inner one-pointed awareness”), and taming thought by letting be, see Simpkins, C.A.; Simpkins, A.M. (2001) Simple Tibetan Buddhism: A Guide to Tantric Living; 1st edition.; Tuttle Publishing: Boston; ISBN 978-0-8048-3199-4. For mindfulness of breathing, settling the mind in its natural state, and shamatha without a sign, see Wallace, B.A. (2006) The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind; Wisdom Publications; ISBN 978-0-86171-276-2. ↩

  13. “Accordingly, I propose to use the terms as follows: (i) ‘awareness’ and ‘consciousness’ for that facet of consciousness which is aware within itself and which may persist even without intentional content; (ii) ‘awareness of’ and ‘consciousness of’ to refer to that feature of experience which is cognizant when we are intentionally aware of something; and (iii) ‘pure awareness’ and ‘pure consciousness’ to refer to awareness without intentional content.” Forman, R.K.C. (1998) What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us about Consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 5, 185–201. ↩

  14. Wallace, B.A. (2006) The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind; Wisdom Publications; ISBN 978-0-86171-276-2. ↩

  15. Forman, R.K.C. (1998) What Does Mysticism Have to Teach Us about Consciousness? Journal of Consciousness Studies 5, 185–201. ↩

  16. “The mystical state of PCE [pure consciousness experience] was then explained as being achieved, through meditation learning, by inhibition of sensory input so that attention is only attending to itself.” Taylor, J.G. (2003) Paying Attention to Consciousness. Progress in Neurobiology 71, 305–335, doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2003.10.002. ↩

  17. For the spaciousness of attention, Joiner points to Torbert’s vision of attention that spans and integrates the four territories: Joiner, W.B.; Josephs, S.A. (2006) Leadership Agility: Five Levels of Mastery for Anticipating and Initiating Change; 1st edition.; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco; ISBN 978-0-7879-7913-3. Torbert, W.R. (1991) The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry; SAGE Publications, Inc: Newbury Park, Calif; ISBN 978-0-8039-4068-0. ↩

  18. Warren, J. (2007) The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness; First Edition.; Random House: New York; ISBN 978-1-4000-6484-7. ↩

  19. See for example Loy, D. (1986) The Mahāyāna Deconstruction of Time. Philosophy East and West 36, 13–23, doi: 10.2307/1398505. Material from this article is included in Loy, D. (1997) Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy; Reprint edition.; Humanity Books: Amherst, NY; ISBN 978-1-57392-359-0. ↩

  20. Eckhart, J.; Field, C. (2001) Meister Eckhart’s Sermons / First Time Translated into English by Claud Field; Christian Classics Ethereal Library: Grand Rapids, MI. ↩

  21. Quoted in Huxley, A. (2012) The Perennial Philosophy; Harper Perennial Modern Classics: New York; London; ISBN 978-0-06-189331-5. ↩

  22. Quoted in Harris, S. (2015) Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion; Reprint edition.; Simon & Schuster: New York; ISBN 978-1-4516-3602-4. ↩

  23. Koplowitz, H. (1984) A Projection Beyond Piaget’s Formal-Operations Stage: A General System Stage And A Unitary Stage. In Armon, C.; Commons, M.L.; Richards, F. Beyond Formal Operations: Late Adolescent and Adult Cognitive Development; Praeger: New York; ISBN 978-0-275-91139-3. ↩

  24. Cook-Greuter, S.R. (1995) Comprehensive Language Awareness: A Definition Of The Phenomenon And A Review Of Its Treatment In The Postformal Adult Development Literature. Cited with permission (personal communication, 2021). ↩

  25. Cook-Greuter, S.R. (2013) Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making. Prepublication version, 97. ↩

  26. Cook-Greuter, S. (2013) Assumptions versus Assertions: Separating Hypotheses from Truth in the Integral Community. Journal of Integral Theory and Practice 8, 227–236. ↩

  27. This translation of the third and fourth lines of chapter 1 of the 道德经 / Dàodé Jīng is from Loy, D. (1997) Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy; Reprint edition.; Humanity Books: Amherst, NY; ISBN 978-1-57392-359-0. ↩

  28. Of course, this blog post distinguishes map from territory, inside from outside, growing up from waking up, awareness from thought, nondual from ordinary, foreground from background, immediate from unmediated, etc. This facilitates symbolic communication about nondual experience, but nondual experience is not a likely outgrowth of writing or reading these differences. ↩

Written on October 3, 2021

Comments powered by Talkyard.