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..:: The Observer I
/ The Body ::..
By
Alan Schneider
The role of the observer in
observation is of paramount importance – far from being neutral in this
process, the observer literally creates the observation, no
matter what its apparent nature may be – physical, psychological, or
spiritual. This consideration is so important that it deserves special
attention in all of life, and will receive special attention here in
this series of essays.
Communication theory deals
with messages of all kinds occurring in all contexts – for the
communications scholar, everything is a message – but, have we
considered the case of messages sent from observers to
observers as observers – metamessages? Have we considered
the observer as the creator of the observed experience? When
viewed from the most distant perspective, what is the conscious dynamic
of the dance of observation? Let us press on and attempt to answer these
questions.
Regardless of to what extent,
and whether or not, we are directly participating in the observed
experience, we are first and foremost observers of phenomena.
This is the primary role of human consciousness in the universe – thus,
let us begin with the consideration of this deceptively simple fact. If
we make the customary assumption of the Mystery Theories that very
little in life is truly accidental, then the fact of our universal
nature as observers of phenomena carries some interesting implications
with it, among them that our occurrence in this respect is also not an
accident – we were and are what we were intended to be in this
regard. Evolution, if we choose to accept it as a reality in the
creation process, is no accident – our emergence as the intelligent,
observing, deliberating species we are is the purposeful and inevitable
end result of a highly directive and selective process governed by the
physical, chemical, and existential rules that have shaped our destiny.
Even if we ourselves did not appear at this juncture in history, another
similar species would have – the driving forces of nature insist
on it. Sooner or later a sentient, self aware observer species would
have appeared on our planet as the consequence of its location in the
biosphere – the life sustaining region of balanced ecological
factors located around the Sun. It is this phenomenon of dynamic
balance that has enabled life, and, in consequence, humanity, on
Earth.
A concept that has been
mentioned often in these essays is the field of consciousness
– the perceptual environment which we actually experience in realtime,
and seem to be centrally located within. This concept can conveniently
be translated into the observational field – the perceptual
environment which we again experience in realtime, and also seem to be
centrally located within, with the distinction that our observations are
seen as constructing our consciousness when viewed through the
lens of the observational field. In this essay, we will use the
observational field as the preferred concept of perception and
experience. If we are constructing our consciousness through the
operation of our observations, the next questions that naturally arise
are these – how is this construction taking place, and where
is it taking place?
From the perspective of
generally accepted psychological theory, personal observation occurs in
two more or less distinct “regions” of awareness – the waking
conscious awareness, and the unconscious awareness of the
subconscious mind. Interestingly, the conscious content of observation
is usually only a small part of our total observational perception – the
great bulk of personal activity present during any observation is
unconscious, that is, not directly registered in the individual
observer’s waking awareness. In Freudian terms, this includes not only
the instinctual material of the well known Id in the subconscious
region of the mind, but a vast array of conditioned responses that have
receded from conscious perception, frequently including many features of
the Superego (i.e. moral and social regulations that have become
habitual conditioned responses) as well. All of these
unconscious elements of perception figure into the complex of
information present in even a simple observation of internal or external
events.
As has been noted often in
these essays, the observational focus of the waking mind is the ego,
although it should be mentioned here that we may very well not be
conscious of this involvement when it is occurring, and may instead be
so engrossed in what we are observing that we have lost touch
with the where and how of our participation on that
level. The psychological dynamics of perception present during an
observation do not make self awareness an experiential requirement, only
an option! Nonetheless, many sufficiently motivated and aware
individuals do learn how to notice their ego acting in waking
observations – in fact, the first step along the long road of personal,
social, and spiritual Enlightenment. A concomitant development
is the recognition in our awareness that most of what we observe during
the wakeful hours of our lives can be summed up as impressions occurring
on what the Mystery Theories refer to as the Physical Plane of
Consciousness. This recognition establishes the possibility of the
existence of other, different Planes of Consciousness, occurring on
different levels of awareness, beyond the interpretations of the ego.
The content of these additional observational perceptions is largely
found in the unconscious regions of the mind already noted in the
preceding paragraph, and embraces many expressions.
We all exist in individual
form in this life – the body of flesh – and this form determines our
personal, individual perspective on experience. No two
individuals ever perceive either internal or external events in
exactly the same way, although there may be social similarities present,
depending on acculturation, and the general level of sophistication of a
given person’s awareness. Even the perceptions of instinct, universally
inborn as they are, cannot be assumed to be identical for all
observers. However, there is at least some theoretical justification
for the presumption that certain very basal emotional states linked to
the body’s physiology may be approximately universally
experienced by most observers. F. S. Perls, M.D., Ph.D, defined these
states as: grief, rage, joy, and orgasm, suggesting that they
were the four foundational organismic quasi-emotional response
modalities common to the human condition. Author Mary Ann Williamson has
suggested that the polar existential experiences of Love and
Fear are the common denominators of consciousness. The most
probably universal perceptual phenomena, in this author’s opinion,
are suffering and ecstasy – we all seem to experience the
extreme overloading of our condition, and the accompanying
loss of homeostasis, as either notably uncomfortable or
pleasurable.
The issue at hand regarding
observational perception concerns the gestalt interaction of all of the
additional unconscious perceptions inherent in the observations we make
with the conscious waking perception, itself no simple construct. When
the factors of ever changing unconscious and conscious observational
perceptions concerning the same event or events, caused by
learning and deliberation, is entered into this complex equation, the
truly daunting nature of our task here begins to become apparent. And
we must finally add the fact of the continuous flux of all of the
events of both the internal and external environments into this mix.
Not only does nothing remain the same at any level, but the resultant
observations also do not, nor does the observer making them! Under
these circumstances, we are left with only vague generalizations as
conclusions to be drawn about this life. Bearing this in mind, let us
attempt to characterize the observational gestalt further.
The evident common factor in
observational experience is the physical, organismic platform supporting
our observations – the body. No matter how far reaching they may be,
and no matter how free of interpretation of any kind, our observations
are clearly at least supported through the agency of the physical
organism. For this reason, and because it is one of the more scientific
theories that is also grounded in common sense, I will begin working
with the F. S. Perls classification system of grief, rage, joy, and
orgasm already noted in the previous paragraph. This system has the
advantage of granting the primacy of the organism in observational
perception, maintaining simplicity of form, and also allowing for the
expansion of the four states specified into a comprehensive
system of observational classification in realtime – the
here and now of human experience.
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)
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