Conceptual Birth - The Mark of Separation

I once saw a beautiful child on the bus. She was about 3 years old. She was singing "Old MacDonald had a farm Ee i ee i o" on repeat for most of the 30-minute journey, and when she wasn't singing it, she was humming it. It was very cute, indeed - for the first three minutes!

At one point, the parents looked at each other, smiled and the mother said lovingly to the father, “aww… we helped her learn that”… but little did they know that this marked the child's rapid descent into the world of form; a neurotic journey through the maddening tyranny of delusion, fear, and anxiety in which spawns the Alice-In-Wonderland pseudo-reality we call the human condition. A world governed by strange, paradoxical rules and collective agreements captures and imprisons the child’s mind. The child becomes fragmented from the world, journeying haphazardly through the sensory experience.

There's nothing wrong with this. It is a very simple observation of pure innocence. In every facet of childhood growth, the unbound appears to lose itself in its own creative abundance.

Dying into the conceptual world is probably the greatest, most exhilarating rollercoaster ride you've ever been on. Dying out of the conceptual world is truly another ride altogether — you just don’t know it yet!

Subject/Object & Perception (The Knower & The Known)

When we were children, we heard a great deal of words from our caregivers and society at large. Over time, those words became knowledge, concepts, and beliefs. Many of these words appended themselves to bodily sensations, and slowly became believable. The decades-long regularity of this self-practice eventually formed into the misperception that we were those perceptions by which sensations were built upon.

Therefore, a belief is a small segment of conceptual knowledge that has been hidden by its very own impetus, by its very own regularity, and stored in various bodily sensations. A belief feels real because it seems to be the feeling itself. Since sensations arise dependent upon outer conditions, it seems like there is a central perceiver that looks through this perceptual/sensation filter like how you might look through a kaleidoscope, and see a different world.

Within its own momentum, these self-beliefs create a pseudo-reality, an internal world built upon a framework of conditioned conceptions that is felt as an experiencer. Not only does this create a sense of an inner world, but also an outer world, (another inner concept) where we impart beliefs and sensations onto visual objects (including people) making them seem real and solid. In this way, we bring a felt world into conceptual form. Let’s look at how that happens…

Perception

The visual information coming through into the eyes is intercepted by our inner conceptual framework. This stimulates subtle sensations in the body that correspond to the knowing of the outside world and its various objects. It’s as if we have a middleman capturing that raw information, then scrambling it into a series of believable facts, as though something gives rationality or logic regarding how things are seen.

What’s interesting about this type of sensory consciousness is that the subject/object validation is made up of a subtle bodily/mental strain which pushes the object away. It creates the object over there, and thus a perceiver over here. A fundemental displacment takes place where there appears to emerge a perceiver and the thing they are perceiving.

Emerging out of this dualistic strain are three symbiotic componants integral to human consciousness, which operate on a continuum. This continuum of perception creates: (1) space emerges to fill the gaps inbetween the perceiver and the objects they perceive (2) the pattern recognition of relational objects — cause & effect (3) the passage of time is experienced as a result of persistently trying to reinforce this duality, which is tantamount to pissing in the wind, becouse, well, its stressful, isn’t it.

However, since thoughts are just thoughts, and sensations are just sensations, that that fundamental split between the perceiver and the object, when looked for, can not be found.

It should now be clear that at its most basic level of interpretation, the subject/object split is the universal feeling of “I” (the subject) looking out at a world of separate things and people (the objects). It's a fundamental belief that creates two distinct territories: inside and outside.

Quite simply, this is the reflective nature (the back-and-forth resonance between subject & object or the knower & the known) of the six-sense consciousnesses which create the deceptive pretence that we call the human condition. The key here is to find what qualities that split between the two is made up of — that is the fetter, or anchor, or restraint.

These are two fetters (6 and 7) working together as one: subject/object and perception. I can appreciate that these words can seem a little academic, so instead of subject/object, the words knower and the known might be more user-freindly. The knower knows of themselves only in reference to what is known. The subjective version of ‘you’ is a very tenuous symbol held by the mind, which is given composition and definition by your objective reality, and this is made up of millions of smaller symbols: car, house, phone, family, and so on.

The inquiry here is about looking for what binds the knower to the known — that’s the identification; that’s the psychological tether. But first it is helpful to understand — or experience — the knower doing the knowing, so that you can then locate the thing that binds them togther.

Perception simply means labeling, interpretation, or the storyteller. If you can see through the subject/object or the knower and the known, (fetter 6) and it’s fairly obvious to you, amazingly, a faint interpretation still exists that seems to create a very subtle world of objects, time, space, and cause & effect. The inquiry then turns to looking at individual objects, (fetter 7).

As I mentioned earlier, these two fetters are symbiotic in that the knower is an object of the mind, just like what is known are objects of the mind. Reality itself cannot be known in these dualistic cognitive terms. The known and the knower simply don’t operate to create the typical human awareness.

For me, I can point to an object and label it, but the words don’t land on the object. As such, the object does not come into form, and consciousness-of-the-object does not have any footing. Therefore, conciousnessnes, in the way I describe here, does not exist or exists as a misperception of reality — take your pick.

Prior to these fetters falling away, I spent some time playing with the Buddhist formless realms: the percetion of the infiitude of space, consciousness, nothingness, and neither percetion nor non-perception, yet after passing through these two fetters, it becoame clear that these states also had consciouness as their base-level structure. That is, they were dependant upon a perceiver, a knower, a subject. As a result, these states stopped showing up.

So, as you can probably anticipate (and perhaps appreciate) when these fetters fall, along with time, space, and form, it provides direct, experiential validation of some of the most challenging ways to contextualize and conceptualize experience itself. It makes trying to describe something very simple, very complex - such is the paradox.

Interestingly, once you have seen through fetter 6 & 7, there still remains something of an identity, (the subtle sense of self — fetter 8), which will eventually start to niggle away at you. It’s like going to bed at night, and hearing the faint sound of a mosquito in the room, but not being able to locate it. There’s a whole other page for this blighter, which I’m still writing about. But when that one goes , well, it’s a very intersting time for sure.

It had takan me some time for fetter 10 to drop, and I have never managed to find the words for that one - it was completely unexpected. I rember thinking I was done at fetter 8 - but I was very off the mark with that one. If you want to read more about fetter 10, and how it’s all pulled together, perhaps read this section here (it’s a long read).

Something really important to note as you’re perceptual function falls away: for me, I noticed a partuclar kind of luminosity where the deadening conceptual lables no longer supressed the vibrancy of objects. Light apeared to emit from objects and my own body. If you’re noticing that, it’s quite important that you understand what this is, becouse there was no framework for this in the fetter scheme. As such, I suspect this is a residual componant of the 7th fetter — becouse the mind is captivated by this luminosity, (subtle craving for form) So click here to read that section.

I would suggest re-reading the above at various times, but hold the conceptual framework very lightly. My words are very poor substitue for something that needs to be directly experienced.

So, if you’d like to have ago at looking into your experience with these two fetters (6 & 7), then read on.

Just a few notes: this is quite a subtle type of observation, so if you notice any straining, that may not be helpful. Relaxed is best, and let the seeing occur organically. In the exercise below, we are working with the visual sense organ. It’s possible to apply these same principles to the other sense organs. For example, the brain is considered a sense organ, as it detects mental objects in the same way the eyes detect visual objects. The ears and the nature of sound, and somatic awareness of the body are the other sense fields to explore. I will add more pointing methods for these sensae organs at a later time.

If you do notice straining, the very act of looking for something (the boundary) can subtly reinforce the subject/object split, because it creates an implied ‘seeker’ (the subject) who is searching for an answer to a problem or an insight (the object). The looker then becomes a subtle version of the subjective experience. Ah, I know — what a conundrum! If you’re noticing that the looker is another symbol for ‘you’ — that’s very astute and you can keep chasing down these ever more refined versions of the looker, until the seeing, the seer and the seen are all one happening. If you’re here, then your next inquiry would be fetter 8.

Finally, many people just cannot do this type of self-inquiry, and instead may choose devotional practices, meditation, or just simple secular non-dual dialogue. There’s nothing wrong with those things, although you might have an issue with the time frame, particualry with devotional practices, which often demand that the practionar commit in some way to a progressive and arduous systematic program. These group dynamics commonly make you susceptible to misinterpretation and falling into strange group idealogies, the irony being that you must undergo a rigorous and longstanding progressive journey of meditating in order to make progress, when in reality, you may not have to do that at all. While I have heard that some people can mediate their way here, it is the case for many people that they can be shown how to look into their experience, therfore bypassing the need for devotional practices and meditation. These days, I no longer meditate. I have no need to but I can see how meditation can help people, and do sometimes recommend it (I usuaully reccomend some form of Shikantaza). So mediation can be a welcome additon on the journey.

Try this exercise: 

Please find some quiet time, sit down for 20 or so minutes, and allow something of how you currently understand the visual field to just happen quite naturally. 

When looking around the room at the various items, does it seem like you try to identify with what is seen?

We identify in three ways: 1) the tendency to pull visual information inwards towards a centre. 2) the tendency to separate visual information from a centre. 3) a neutral position where there is neither, but something of visual information is known or objectified.

Additionally, you might notice individual items in the room that fall into one of these three. For example, perhaps there's your laptop, then someone else's book. The felt experience of both objects may be noticeably different.

The question here is what in your body informs you that one object is your laptop, and the other object is someone else's book? What does that feel like, and what happens mentally?

For most people, there is usually a bodily sensation that gives validity to these observations. This is the split that defines your inner world, and your outer world. In order to see this, please sit in a quiet space, and relax the visual field.

Without looking directly at any particular object, become aware of the periphery of your vision, so that you are aware of the objects in the outer part of your visual field. You should notice the objects in your periphery seem less define, almost soft and perhaps fuzzy.

Spends a few moments becoming familiar with this peripheral perspective.

Next, turn your gaze to your laptop, and notice how, in the first few seconds, your laptop changes from the softness of the peripheral vision, to something that now should seem more defined.

Try the same exercise again, but look at an item that you don’t own. How is it known that you don’t own this item? What does it feel like inside?

The question here is what in your body informs you that one object is your laptop, and the other object is someone else's book? What does that feel like, both mentally and bodily?