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..:: Curiosity ::..
By
Alan Schneider
Human beings exhibit
an endless curiosity about their circumstances and the conditions
of their existence. This curiosity may be defined as the need or
tendency to continuously seek out and investigate new stimuli in the
environment. This essay presents an investigation into
this phenomenon, its possible psychological and spiritual coefficients,
and its long term implications for ourselves and the planet.
To begin with, where does
curiosity originate in consciousness? Why do some among us display
copious amounts of this characteristic, and others less so, in varying
degrees? How and why do we choose what to investigate from among the
plethora of options in the environment of collective human perception?
Addressing the first
question, I once heard a very accurate description of human behavior
from the instructor of a California junior college photography class,
“People scan the environment, and fixate on objects and conditions of
interest: we scan and fixate.” The utterly accurate
simplicity of this statement as a description of human behavior stayed
with me thereafter. It remains perhaps the best synopsis of what we are
(as defined by what we do) that I have experienced. The obvious
implication here is that these are natural, inborn consequences of human
nature, and are biologically and neurologically inevitable. This is the
basic mechanism of observation, and is universally practiced by all but
the completely psychotic and permanently comatose, the former displaying
no evident integration of purpose in their behavior, and the latter
displaying no behavior at all. In all other cases, scan and fixate
is what we will do as the basic expression of what we are.
What we will fixate on
as we scan the internal and external environments introduces additional
levels of complexity into the initial observation of my old California
instructor. The unmodified human consciousness would very probably
fixate, or pause and focus, at frequent intervals on just about
anything, as determined by biological drive states such as hunger,
thirst, exposure, libido (at any psychosocial stage of development),
anger, fear, or confusion, to name a few of the major factors known to
motivate our behavior and perception. But, even in the presence of the
gratification of these transitory deficits, it appears that we
nonetheless continue the root behavior: scan and fixate. There
must be a psychological driver that motivates this fundamental behavior
pattern apart from appetite gratification – our behavior must amount to
more than psychological hedonism, the tendency to seek pleasure and
avoid discomfort. Now, to be sure, there are obviously many among us
who do not display much more than the aforementioned hedonism as
factors in their behavior (and mores the pity) but many of us still
do demonstrate a heightened degree of standing native curiosity, the
presence of which has accounted for all human progress throughout
history. What and where is the driver that accounts for
curiosity and inquiry?
I wish to postulate a
subconscious trait for the consideration of the reader at this time – we
could call this trait the agitator. Of course, if the reader
does not respond positively to this term, I invite the use of another
that is more likable on the basis of personal valence, but this is at
least someplace to start. There appears to be an inherent
restlessness operating at the foundation of the central, and perhaps
even the autonomic, nervous system – we are never satisfied for long
with anything, causing the resumption of the scan-and-fixate
activity shortly after every gratification, at least in the case of the
higher-functioning among us. I personally suspect that there is an
inborn agitator trigger mechanism, probably neurochemical
in nature, and synoptically active, that accounts for the variance of
this characteristic in the human population, although the relative size
and complexity of the brain could very well also be a factor. Although
this trigger mechanism has not really been isolated and identified (at
least to my knowledge), there are various theoretical references to
something like it in psychological and spiritual literature. Freud
referred to the fundamental driver of behavior and consciousness as
libido, and specified it as fundamentally sexual in nature. Jung
referred it as archetypal, and postulated it as originating in
the Primal Self, the root archetype of consciousness. Yoga and Tantra
refer to it as Kundalini Energy, and further define it as being
essentially female in manifestation, and a reflection on the Physical
Plane of the ultimately female force lying at the root of all Creation
in the universe beyond even the highest Planes – the Brahman.
The Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle simply refers to a Prime
Mover beyond which no other causality exists, or a First Principal of
manifestation. The German philosopher Hegel refers to the Dialectic of
Creation – thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, but does not specify what,
or where, the First Thesis might be. And many of the proto-religions of
the ancient world postulated an agitation or turbulence occurring within
a Primal Void as a first condition of existence, of course with a number
of local variations on the theme.
The discerning reader will
note that we have rapidly moved from the at least tentatively scientific
to the purely conjectured in this progression of theories. Preferring
to err in direction of science, I will pursue that vein of
inquiry here. The term “trigger mechanism” implies the occurrence of
certain levels of presence operating with reference to a
phenomenon. Presumably, when a cycle of fixation has completed, and
particularly when a successful gratification episode has taken place,
our threshold of curiosity has dropped momentarily below the necessary
trigger level to actively resume scan-and-fixate behavior, this in the
presence of organismic satiation. The lag period may be relatively
short or long, depending on the biological and neurological
circumstances involved, but the SAF behavior will inevitably resume as
soon as the trigger level is again reached. What is the psychological
drive that accounts for this threshold manifestation? Why is our
consciousness so inherently restless?
It would appear that we are
driven as manifest creations to actively seek through our environment
for no other purpose than the discovery of novel information. Nor are
we the only creatures on Earth to demonstrate this behavior – most of
the higher functioning creatures demonstrate some degree of this
investigative capacity, including virtually all mammals, and some fish
and reptiles. Even insects will probe the environment in response to
biochemical cues of several kinds. In fact, even unicellular organisms
like the amoeba demonstrate the quality of irritability, the
tendency to move away from unhealthy circumstances. It would seem that
anything zoological possesses this trait of fundamental environmental
response to some extent. If nothing else, this means that curiosity
has evolutionary survival value for a species, presenting as no surprise
that we, as the dominant species on the planet have so much of
it.
Beyond this, what remains for
consideration is the underlying structure of reality that seems
to have ordained this characteristic with such overriding importance.
This would imply that there is a chaotic strange attractor for curiosity
and inquisitive behavior residing beyond the threshold of direct
observation that accounts for such theories as libido, archetypes, and
Kundalini. What might this attractor be?
Within the rubric of science,
the physical universe as we know it was created some fifteen billion
years ago by the emergence of a primordial explosion from an incredibly
compact micro-singularity – the “Big Bang” theory of cosmology. What
ever else it might have been, this event was an expression of the utmost
violence, and generated a standing wave of turbulence that has not yet
dissipated, and probably will not for many billions of years into the
future to come, if ever. So, we may say that turbulence and change are
the basis of all reality. Anything that deviated from these conditions
simply could not exist for long in this continuum of observation – the
“agitator” mechanism resultant from the “Big Bang” would simply
overwhelm and reabsorb it into the fundamental condition of background
turbulence. We see this mechanism manifest at our human level of
observation in the conscious phenomenon of curiosity – and even the
unconscious or peripherally conscious basal action of the sleeping
central nervous system resists stasis, as indicated by dreams,
rapid eye movement, changing resting position, and even occasional sleep
walking and other rare behavioral disturbances. In this sense, we
ourselves are physically mirroring the initial turbulent event of the
Creation of the material universe.
Turbulence may be the
ultimate strange attractor, as the driver of all chaos and chaotic
manifestation inferentially knowable. On our human level, it would
appear that we have no choice but to act, to perform deeds and thoughts
(mental phenomena are actions occurring on another scale of
manifestation, but actions nonetheless) in the environment. Now, an
interesting theory of Yoga is that all actions of any kind that are not
specifically devoted to God and Divinity will inevitably generate
Karma – the tendency for even more actions to occur – while
Divinely inspired or conceived actions constitute Dharma – the
opposing tendency for the consciousness of the observer to experience
peace and repose through Enlightenment. In this sense, the turbulence
of the universe and this existence, including my hypothetical “agitator”
principal, are the objects of conscious observation by an
unmoved and unmoving focus of observation. This clearly cannot be
the Freudian ego, motivated as it is by the quest for ever-transitory
gratification, and is more clearly analogous to the Hindu Atman or
Christian Soul, residing at a level beyond the physical forms of
the body, the environment, and the universe. The well-known Eastern
methods of practicing Yoga, meditation, and austerity as means of
quieting the little mind (i.e. the ego), and thereby accessing the Great
Mind (i.e. the Divine Self) grant both the perception and strengthening
of the bond between the inner observer and the Self of which it is an
extension.
Thus it would appear that
there is an end possible to even the most basic physical human tendency
to investigate through curiosity. If this investigation is carried into
the inner realm of consciousness, as it almost certainly will eventually
be by even the most profligate extrovert, the observation of the
observer by the observer will take place at some point in the
investigative process. This fundamental observation will initiate
contact with the realms of experience beyond the physical and personally
psychological, opening the doors of a spiritual manifestation and
understanding that exist beyond the prevue of science. I once
heard a wise one describe the knowable essence of existence as “God
pouring God into God” as a standing, absolute, changeless condition
beyond which nothing more could, or needs to be, known. If this is the
case, then there may also be a strange attractor for absolute peace
present beyond the threshold of chaos, indicating that chaos itself is
neither turbulent nor stable, but is the result of our choice of
how we observe it when we look into the mirror of the Self.
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)
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