Recently I've read a paragraph by Bernardo in which he is giving a personal example of how profound our dissociated experiences can be and he shows this by saying that once the moment he became meta-conscious of the experience, he says something like, "Oh my goodness, I have already known this for years!"
I am traveling so I only have my kindle book. I think he has given this very example in at least two books or articles and a hunch is telling me it may have been in his Jung book.
If anybody knows the example I'm talking about, I'd appreciate hearing from you. And, trust me, the irony of my own dissociation in this case has not been lost on me
findingblanks wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 4:55 pm
Recently I've read a paragraph by Bernardo in which he is giving a personal example of how profound our dissociated experiences can be and he shows this by saying that once the moment he became meta-conscious of the experience, he says something like, "Oh my goodness, I have already known this for years!"
I am traveling so I only have my kindle book. I think he has given this very example in at least two books or articles and a hunch is telling me it may have been in his Jung book.
If anybody knows the example I'm talking about, I'd appreciate hearing from you. And, trust me, the irony of my own dissociation in this case has not been lost on me
I have heard him say that many times in many interviews, but I also can't remember if it is in any books. I am pretty sure it comes up in his discussion with John Vervaeke Round 2, available on YouTube (and I think the video has timestamps which may be helpful).
"Most people would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon than as an 'I'"
Yes, it does come up with Veraeke, for sure. I might have a chance to hunt it there but hopefully somebody has JUNG on hand. I appreciate it. Oh, I see what you said about timestamps; that could help! Thanks.
Czinczar wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:56 pm
I think it's the story of his girlfriend and the grandma who had an accident.
Yes, this jogs the memory, and as I recall he has related this anecdote in at least one of his more recent interviews, perhaps one with Mishlove. It's possibly told in DJM too, but if so I can't recall where exactly.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
No girlfriend/granma story is wonderful, but it is about a psychic experience as such. The one I'm talking about is when he's explaining how everyday experience is influenced by dissociated thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
findingblanks wrote: ↑Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:47 pm
No girlfriend/granma story is wonderful, but it is about a psychic experience as such. The one I'm talking about is when he's explaining how everyday experience is influenced by dissociated thoughts, feelings and perceptions.
I'm not sure there's much difference between the two. I can give many examples of how everyday mundane choices I make are apparently influenced by thoughts, feelings, perceptions—and not just personal ones, but those of others—that could only have been registered at a subliminal level, as if via some so-called 6th sense, whereby spatiotemporal considerations are bypassed, which only in retrospect do I realize that I was unwittingly receiving far more data than whatever I was metacognitively focused on.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
"I can give many examples of how everyday mundane choices I make are apparently influenced by thoughts, feelings, perceptions—and not just personal ones, but those of others—that could only have been registered at a subliminal level..."
Yes, but you've been telling me that not only do you, so far, doubt that Bernardo has ever claimed a thought can act a dissociative impingement on your meta-consciousness, you even more strongly indicated your own doubts of it. I took it for granted that the reason you have trouble believing I am accurately representing Bernardo's view (that it isn't mere simple perceptions that act as dissociated units upon the ego) is because you don't it yourself. I've already shared at least one direct quote from Bernardo that goes beyond simple perceptions like breath or warmth or background sounds, but you still maintain you need to see Bernardo himself suggest that a thought could act in such a way.
Now, here in this psychic context, you suddenly swing back to say how clear it is that your meta-consciousness can be 'influenced by thoughts..."
That's what I thought
I think you are at least one step closer to not only approving of my examples of dissociated impingements but agree that I haven't misrepresnted Bernardo's main point about the wide spectrum of qualia (colors, emotions, memories, thoughts...) that can impinge and shape what the ego is currently aware of. But if you finally do begin to see I'm merely stating what you just stated, I'm sure you'll hop back into the other thread.
By the way, I think Bernardo's girlfriend's 'grandma experience' does indeed instance the way complex and intricate cognitions can and do impinge upon our meta-awareness. The reason I think it isn't a great example of the more narrow point Bernardo makes about dissociated experiences is just that typically I don't think it is wise to refer to psychic experiences to validate the core claims BK makes regarding his basic model. Yes, in psychic experience we see instances of very basic aspects of his model, but I think he is wise to only share (and very rarely) such experiences in the context of specifically showing how his model handles such experiences much better than a physicalist approach. I've now heard him tell the psychic story three times and it is never in the context of justifying his claims regarding the interaction between everyday impingements and meta-consciousness. I hope that tread continues! And that we also get to hear more of his mysterious experiences
findingblanks wrote: ↑Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:06 pmYes, but you've been telling me that not only do you, so far, doubt that Bernardo has ever claimed a thought can act a dissociative impingement on your meta-consciousness, you even more strongly indicated your own doubts of it. I took it for granted that the reason you have trouble believing I am accurately representing Bernardo's view (that it isn't mere simple perceptions that act as dissociated units upon the ego) is because you don't it yourself. I've already shared at least one direct quote from Bernardo that goes beyond simple perceptions like breath or warmth or background sounds, but you still maintain you need to see Bernardo himself suggest that a thought could act in such a way.
Now, here in this psychic context, you suddenly swing back to say how clear it is that your meta-consciousness can be 'influenced by thoughts..."
That's what I thought
I think you are at least one step closer to not only approving of my examples of dissociated impingements but agree that I haven't misrepresnted Bernardo's main point about the wide spectrum of qualia (colors, emotions, memories, thoughts...) that can impinge and shape what the ego is currently aware of. But if you finally do begin to see I'm merely stating what you just stated, I'm sure you'll hop back into the other thread.
Not bothering to switch threads ... You asked if I was ok with all the examples of subliminal influence in the list you offered, and I responded by saying I was fine with some, but not all of those claims. I didn't deny subliminal influence of thoughts, which jibes with BK's explication, I merely stated that, IMO, once one has become curious about what someone is whispering in the background, then one's metaconscious focus of attention has already shifted to the whispering, at which point the whispering is no longer in the subliminal domain. Again, whether or not BK would agree with this specific point I've no way of knowing, unless he specifically addresses that point, so we're left with us speculating about it. Other than that, I feel we're pretty much in sync.
Here out of instinct or grace we seek
soulmates in these galleries of hieroglyph and glass,
where mutual longings and sufferings of love
are laid bare in transfigured exhibition of our hearts,
we who crave deep secrets and mysteries,
as elusive as the avatars of our dreams.
You said that the experience of being curious can't impinge upon my meta-consciousness. Yes, when and if I turned my attention (even if for one second) to their whispering, in that moment it was in my meta-consciousness. But my example was that it exists as a dissocaited experience that is impinging upon my current state of meta-consciousness. You denied this. Sounds like you may no longer deny that curiosity (like the argument Bernardo says can be dissociated yet influential) can impinge.
If the complex rebuke my wife made can influence how I'm writing an email to my boss, so can the experience of curiosity.
Now whether or not curiosity can be born as background experience is another question. My sense is that it can because I think the unconscious is active in the background at all times, but that's another question.
I simply claim that as I'm focused on writing the email, all of those dissociated experiences can be influencing me. You doubted Bernardo claimed such a thing. But you do agree with both of us that curiosity
You say:
"Once one has become curious about what someone is whispering in the background, then one's metaconscious focus of attention has shifted to the whispering."
Sure, but you certainly are not meta-conscious of the whispering or the curiosity (or the joy of anticipation for dinner tonight, or the nostalgia of the kid's voice, nor the blue light) when you are focused on typing the email. I never claimed you can't switch meta-consciousness to any other subject at any point in time. I can't even imagine what it would mean to claim we can't switch from focusing on the email to noticing the curiosity, whispering, memory, light, etc.
Anyway, back to where I began:
"The main point to me is that when I am not directly noticing my breathing or the sounds of voices in the background they are still 'in' my experience in some way. However, Bernardo talks about the way they are there as if they are there as themselves and we simply haven't directly the spotlight of meta-consciousness onto them...On one level I just think this is a clumsy way of describing the process of shifting from one kind of awareness to another. To this degree it may lead people astray and create a wrong impression but it still makes a general point that there is only consciousness."
That is what I said in my original comments on this topic.
Then I asked if you were comfortable with the notion that while my meta-consciousness is focused on thinking about a definition, I could 'be aware' of an number if dissociated exeperiences. I used 'being aware' because that is how Bernardo talks about this subject. He tells people that they are currently aware of "X", "Y" and "Z" at the same time as their meta-consciousness is focused on "T". He says that you are aware of the warmth in your nostril as you are reading the book, or that you are aware of the argument from this morning as you read, that these dissociated experiences can impinge upon your reading experience.
I take issue with how he is phrasing and conceptualizing this, but I agree with the general point that none of this is outside of our experiencing ever.
In a very cool way, I see your responses to me here an instance of why it could be a good thing to clear up what is really meant by saying that 'dissociated experiences impinge' on meta-consciousness.
I say that the impingement is much more like the 'dashboard metaphor' than Bernardo's claim that we are aware of the warmth in our left nose we just aren't focusing on it. I don't think the exact warmth sensation of air moving through my left nostril right now is a unified and bounded experience that stands against other unified bounded experiences. And I think this way of thinking obfuscates the main point being made regarding the fact that all of our personal experiences are always in our consciousness. That is such an important point that needs to be made when arguing for analytical idealism.
By the way, did you know that one second ago part of you was experiencing just the shifting of pressure of your sock against your left toe? And that there are literally billions of these separated dissociated experiences that parts of you are having right now?
Nah, I don't buy that at all. However, I think that what we can explicate as 'the pressure of your sock against your left toe' can be implicitly functioning in how your meta-consciousness is taking shape. But that implicit functioning is nothing like what it feels like to notice the pressure of your sock on your toe.
If we can relatively easily see how the tree we see when we look to the left is nothing like the idea which is expressed via that perception, I think we can relatively easily see how the real nature of unconscious experience is nothing like what it looks like when we notice it.
An interesting difference is that because our unconscious experiences are not on the other side of our dissociated boundary from M@L, we can more easily observe that point of contact our meta-consciousness has with our personal unconscious. Whereas, when we look out at the material world we are interacting with a much more powerful dissociative boundary.
As long as Bernardo continues to increase the scope of his conversations with interested people who aren't yet committed believers in idealism, I think he'll be pressed to explain why he thinks we have thousands of dissociated parts that are simultaneously experiencing tiny bounded unitized events while we focus on uniting a knot in our shoestring. It makes sense that he needs a way to talk about how his model argues that the unconscious is always 'in' our consciousness, but this seems like a dead end. Fortunately, we can speak of such experiences as an active field rather than as separated bits. A wonderful conversation earlier in the day actually can be implicitly functioning in the specific way I'm untiring the shoe. Just not as a separated unit. And that's really amazing!
'If the dull substance of my flesh were thought
injurious distance should not stop my way
for then, despite of space, I would be brought
from limits from remote where thou dost stay..."
-- Shakespeare sonnet 44
