We live and we are. What is our living and our being?
Personal experience is what our lives are. We see and we feel; we think and we act; we are acted upon and we experience that also. We love and we know. This is what is, what fills out our lives. In all this, we are; we are here, here experiencing all. What we see, we see. What we hear, we hear: touch, touch; taste, taste; smell, smell. What we think, we think and what we know, we know. Reality is directly experienced. That sounds so simple and so obvious that it may hardly seem worth saying, yet we shall find it to be our guide to fundamental understanding.
All experience is real: what reality is, experience, personal experience, experience perceived or felt in awareness. The world is real because it is part of our personal experience; the world is what we know it to be. The world of natural realism, wherein things are what they seem, is real, because that reality is part of our experience. And extension of that world into the physical world, the world of forces, fields and atoms, is also real, because we, through a combination of sensual experience and intellectual structure, also experience that world. Mythical and mystical worlds are also real experiences. Real, also, is the mental energy to discriminate among various strata of reality: the naive, physical, mystical and all other experienced worlds.
Experience has a core, a central essence. That essence is what is common among the many types of experience. We give that essence the name ‘awareness’. Awareness is the fundamental light of consciousness. That we are aware, that we are aware of experience, that we can be aware of anything at all, that is the central fact, and the central question, not only of consciousness, but also of being. That anything could be aware of anything, that awareness exists in our universe, that is the gem of reality. That we are each of us aware, that you are aware, that I am aware, is the most astonishing fact and fair essence of truth that is or can be imagined. That is the wonderful magic and true essential; the foundation of all that is true and valuable, the central knowledge.
By awareness we mean that most immediate sensation: of consciousness, of mind, of perception, of being, of self; that very core and essence, simple in name and deep in meaning, which lies at the center of all our thoughts and feelings, at the center of our lives. Although consciousness has many forms, such as dreaming, looking, listening, thinking, remembering, wishing, feeling, fearing, loving, loathing, questioning... all of the forms share an essence of awareness. Consciousness could not be without awareness and thus awareness is prior to consciousness. There is some close, if not arbitrary, discrimination used here between the meanings of the words 'consciousness' and 'awareness'. It may be plausible to make a distinction between the general flux of mind and perception, of thought and dream, of watching and emotion on the one hand, which we here denote by the term 'consciousness' and on the other hand the central fact of subjective experience, the direct experience, which we denote by 'awareness'.
The whole life world flows through awareness; it is only through awareness that it becomes the life world. There may be a misapprehension induced by our language. There is no specific ‘it’ which is and becomes life world by flowing through awareness. The existence of ‘it’ co-occurs with its awareness flowing as life world. Being becomes being while flowing through awareness. There may be another misapprehension induced by our language. When we write ‘flowing through awareness’ it may seem as if we were writing of awareness as some vessel independent of that which is flowing through it or perhaps it may seem as if there is some other than awareness which provides the content for awareness by flowing through awareness. Neither of these is the case. Awareness is that which is flowing through awareness. Awareness is not a vessel containing a fluid but both are one and the same with and as awareness.
We may, however, mark a distinction of convenience, between awareness and the content of awareness. For evidence, we note that the content of awareness varies in a changing flux, while the fact of awareness continues. If it is the case that awareness always occurs with some content, then it is also the case that there is an element of essential similarity among the experiences of awareness. If we see a blue sky and hear a sound of 400 cycles per second frequency then the contents of these two experiences differ, but they share in common the fact that they are experienced. That common aspect of all experience is what we call awareness. We may name the content of awareness, ‘being’. Although a distinction between awareness and its content may be useful for our thought and writing, in actual experience, awareness is unified with its content; there is no contentless awareness, no content free ether, existing in sublime isolation, called ‘awareness’. Awareness is what it is; it is the cloud, the sky, the mind examining itself.
Awareness is reality. Awareness is the stuff our universe is made of. Awareness is primary, before matter, before flesh and stone. Each of us is aware and for each of us our awareness is central essence. Awareness is living experience, the very heart of the matter. Awareness is what is, although awareness is, as we shall see, prior to ‘is’. Awareness is light itself and also thunder. Awareness is the rain and the rose and the scent of the rose and the sharp prick of the rose thorn. Can we imagine sight without awareness? We can not. But we can imagine awareness without light, as in the deep dark night, entirely black where no photon is distinguished, yet a cricket keeps the pulse of time.
We can use metaphors to exercise our imagination of awareness. Begin with a lens through which pass all the lights that are, a lens which can travel anywhere, a lens which is also an eye, an eye that can see anywhere it can think to look, that often looks even where it has not thought, that looking, leads thought, and that also sometimes just looks, but that which we called a lens is also an ear, a nose, a finger and whatever image, say a mirror, which we might conjecture for interior reflection of the mind knowing itself. Now strip that lens eye ear...mirror of its surreal materiality but leave all of its functions intact. That describes part of awareness, but awareness can be pared down thinner than any material and perhaps even thinner than words. Awareness is such a simple and basic primitive, the most simple and basic, that any written description of awareness seems likely to carry excess meaning.
The most important fact and behind that fact the most important question about awareness is that it exists at all. In fact, if existence is used to denote the substantiality of being then since existence can only be known, perceived or brought forth through awareness, awareness is thereby prior to existence and it is backwards to say that awareness exists.
We are completely surrounded by awareness, by our awareness, by our individual experience. All of our reality from birth to death is encompassed by the totality of the experience we undergo, or that we act, in any case, what we experience, what we are aware of. But awareness is not a prison or a wall separating us from reality on the other side. Awareness is reality. There is no other side, except in the seeming sense of self and other, and in this sense, awareness is the reconnection of self and other, rather than a barrier between them.
From a materialistic point of view one would say that the most important question about consciousness is that matter can be aware. Awareness is an even more fundamental aspect of our experience than matter; matter is an often useful hypothesis. Awareness is fundamental direct experience and thereby prior to matter. As a thought experiment, let us suppose that we had some sort of material or structural explanation of awareness, that some arrangement of matter and energy gave rise to the subjective experience. For example, we might find that the brain is able to focus an electromagnetic field pattern into a concentrated space near the surface of the neocortex and that the subjective experience was generated where these field patterns were limited, cut off, refracted or somehow affected by the boundary condition of the surface, and that as this region, this spot of field, moved along the convolutions of the surface the different thoughts were thereby brought into awareness, thoughts which perhaps resided implicitly or passively in some pattern or energy state of the neurons, to be activated into active conscious awareness when lit by the field. Suppose, moreover, that development had progressed even further and that technicians had replicated such awareness in a noncortical situation, perhaps some sort of liquid crystal brain in a computer which then reported, claimed and demonstrated its awareness and subjective being. If all this were so, would this then tell us what awareness is? Suppose it was a correct explanation, as Heidegger would call it, would it also be true? I, at least, would say that it is not true; even the power to artificially create or induce awareness would not resolve the central mystery nor detract from the essential fact that awareness is experienced.
As another thought experiment try to imagine a world exactly like ours in form and event but without awareness. I find this impossible because, at the very least, human actions are informed by conscious thought processes based upon awareness but let us suppose that it were possible. Then we would have a universe where thought proceeded from the same input to the same output as in our reality by entirely nonaware processes, much as the popular press of this time usually conceive of computers 'thinking'. Whether or not such a universe is imaginable the experiment of simply trying to conceive it emphasizes how deeply our real world differs from such an imagined world. We might carry the experiment further and try to imagine a universe without awareness, without requiring thought, just a universe as the physicists conceive of matter and energy; this makes it more radically clear how such a universe is impossible; an unperceived universe can not exist as there would be no context or meaning to existence; we use the word 'meaning' here in both an epistemological and ethical sense. Such a universe would not be seen nor heard nor felt nor imagined; there could be not evidence of its existence; scientifically, it would not exist. Except in some sort of wildly speculative metaphysics there would be no meaning to say that an unperceived universe existed.
From the above experiment, we can see that awareness is necessary for the existence of anything.
The content of awareness is full of all the forms of perception and thought, emotion and belief. We can mark out some particular currents. For example, there is the current of nature: rivers, plants, animals and the sky. Then there is the stream of nature reduced: energy, forces, species: science. Another current is society: the many ways we interact with other people. We also find the inner way of thoughts, dreams, memories and emotions. Even these are not comprehensive, merely large and easy to name. We might suggest something else, however; suppose we were to take heed of the body of awareness itself, and look directly for its regularities and appearances, its natural streams and currents, rather than just fitting the historic forms into place. We might then arrive at some new exposure of existing patterns, bringing forth into consciousness and knowledge that which had been hidden.
Awareness appears to be locally finite and awareness seems to continue. Awareness seems to be finite in that it is not clearly and immediately infinite, more conservatively we could at least call awareness locally finite. And awareness seems to continue in that it has not stopped. So far the slippage lost in going from awareness to the properties of finite continuance does not seem large. Awareness is a flexure. While it is always one in an ever continuing present, it is also different through the extension of time. Awareness is sticky with respect to past and future, particularly the immediate past and future. We notice that things in awareness differ; our eyes redirect their focus and the brain's attention; I look from the wooden cabinet to the page upon which I am writing, which page and writing do differ now from what they were momentarily ago.
Suppose our actions push beyond our individual awareness. Because of our actions something happens which is not part of our awareness, not part of our perception, or deduction or imagination, something of which we have no knowledge. Something completely outside of our experience, our awareness. What reality can this something be? Unless it returns as an aspect of awareness, it is never there, never here, always elsewhere. It is never known nor imagined nor even projected. It has neither form, which might be observed, nor substance emanating as form. It is not.
Awareness can look at itself. Otherwise this could not be written. But here, let us try to look at awareness as a thing, as if we could step back and stare at it, evaluate it. Which we at least partially can. Awareness is a flexure with an intrinsic consistency. Awareness, as observing my individual awareness, looks like a sort of gleaming curved surface, shifting always, moving, but not absolutely discontinuous. We say surface because we am aware that awareness is one thing of itself, but that one thing is also two sided, who is aware of what. But this picture is too limited; it is like taking a short movie sequence of awareness in local time; even personal awareness has greater bounds, further into time and different experiences, even those forgotten. This larger thing, which tends towards our own awareness in whole, has a deeper form, only very dimly discernable at present.
Frederick Joseph Staley