(Un)consciousness of breathing?

[SanteriSatama]

In the case of "Thinking" and "meaning", if we are to hold that "meaning" is inherent to W-F-T, or F-T, then I say we are reducing it to pretty much any activity a human being can engage in. Then there would be no such thing as a "meaning crisis". Eventually, there would be no such thing as "questions", "hope", "love", "curiosity", "future". We would wake up every morning knowing everything there is to know, possessing all meaning there is to possess, with respect to the Cosmos. We would never need lifetimes or reincarnations. I do not consider that hyperbole - in my view, it is the precise reason we have a "meaning crisis" in the modern age. People have stopped asking questions because they believe they have already reached the peak of Cosmic knowledge and Wisdom. There is nowhere left to go from that belief.

I agree that meaning crisis is very real. But I'm very skeptical towards the idea that expanding the semantic scope of the word "thinking" beyond recognition (pun intended) would the best remedy against meaning crisis/alienation. Bergson, for example, uses the word 'intuition' when he means intuition, not the word 'thinking'. For me the better meaning of "meaning" is that meaning is a whole body phenomenon, including our emotional and cosmic bodies. And my view of linguistic semantics is close to pragmatism and late Wittgenstein. Linguistic actions are actions, and as they say, people also talk without thinking all the time.

A very meaningful experience happened after a while I had moved into an ecovillage. The village people were sitting outside on a summer day, and suddenly I realized that we are here humans to each other (with warts and all), not bureaucratic roles. The realization felt terribly liberating, like a big weight dropping off from head and shoulders. In retrospect, perhaps that's when I started to learn, to become better aware, that a genuine community is really a shared emotional field, an organism where "if a member is not feeling well, the community/organism is not feeling well".

The sense of belonging vs. bureaucratic alienation feels very meaningful, and I dare to claim feels so to many people whether they can think how to put it into words or not. Cancel culture, dehumanizing, excommunication etc. disassociation are extreme forms though-structures that create empathy barriers that cut away from shared emotional field of most basic emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is related to but distinct from intellectual empathy. Emotional empathy is the empirical and ontological meaning of God, if God is Love. Theoretical thinking can very well doubt that God is Love, and that ability to doubt is as should be for the ways of thinking. In the Heart there is no doubt, Heart knows that God is Love. Minds and Hearts are having this debate all the time, inside and between us.

If and when Mind can doubt both ways and accept theoretically also the possiblity that God is Love and Love is emotional empathy on all levels of sentience and being, then to claim that only thinking can be meaningful would mean that empirically true God is without meaning.

Dearly loved Ashvin, do you wish to find and become God's Love in this life, so that there is no more doubt in your heart? You don't have to answer me, but if that is your true wish, what you are really seeking, then the old method of speaking such words in prayer might work wonders.

[AshvinP]

In the case of "Thinking" and "meaning", if we are to hold that "meaning" is inherent to W-F-T, or F-T, then I say we are reducing it to pretty much any activity a human being can engage in. Then there would be no such thing as a "meaning crisis". Eventually, there would be no such thing as "questions", "hope", "love", "curiosity", "future". We would wake up every morning knowing everything there is to know, possessing all meaning there is to possess, with respect to the Cosmos. We would never need lifetimes or reincarnations. I do not consider that hyperbole - in my view, it is the precise reason we have a "meaning crisis" in the modern age. People have stopped asking questions because they believe they have already reached the peak of Cosmic knowledge and Wisdom. There is nowhere left to go from that belief.

I agree that meaning crisis is very real. But I'm very skeptical towards the idea that expanding the semantic scope of the word "thinking" beyond recognition (pun intended) would the best remedy against meaning crisis/alienation. Bergson, for example, uses the word 'intuition' when he means intuition, not the word 'thinking'. For me the better meaning of "meaning" is that meaning is a whole body phenomenon, including our emotional and cosmic bodies. And my view of linguistic semantics is close to pragmatism and late Wittgenstein. Linguistic actions are actions, and as they say, people also talk without thinking all the time.

So let's dig deeper into this issue - is it only "intuition" which you say should be outside the semantic scope of "thinking"? I am assuming you have no problem putting abstract intellect and reason within that scope. What about "imagination" (image-consciousness) and "inspiration" (clairaudience)?

As for "intuition" - I disagree about Bergson. Below is a quote I posted on an earlier thread. Can we honestly say Bergson is not putting intuition into modes of "Thinking"? The only way we can do that is by separating "Thinking" from "knowing". But what is the justification for such a separation?

These conclusions on the subject of duration were, as it seemed to me, decisive. Step by step they led me to raise intuition to the level of a philosophical method. “Intuition,” however, is a word whose use caused me some degree of hesitation. Of all the terms which designate a mode of knowing, it is still the most appropriate; and yet it leads to a certain confusion. Because a Schelling, a Schopenhauer and others have already called upon intuition, because they have more or less set up intuition in opposition to intelligence, one might think that I was using the same method. But of course, their intuition was an immediate search for the eternal! Whereas, on the contrary, for me it was a question, above all, of finding true duration. Numerous are the philosophers who have felt how powerless conceptual thought is to reach the core of the mind. Numerous, consequently, are those who have spoken of a supra-intellectual faculty of intuition.

It would be very hypocritical for me to just leave the topic there. Because my essays have been all about how we must discover the living essence of these things for ourselves. Bergson's view of Intuition does not really matter, but I like to find the common threads woven between these various philosophers of mind (which I think are also support for an objectively shared ideal reality). I think he distinguishes his view from Schelling, for ex., because he is more interested in the living essence of intuition, whereas Schelling remained very abstract about it, even though their views are similar. That is why he makes clear they were using intuition to immediately leap frog to an understanding of the eternal, whereas he was trying to grasp how our thinking-knowing metamorphosed in our phenomenal experience to provide high resolution of noumenal relations all along the path to the eternal Whole. It does not matter what label we put "intuition" under as long as we understand how it is functioning in our spiritual life and that of humanity in general. Bergson, IMO, had a better understanding of that then the German idealists (except Steiner).

A very meaningful experience happened after a while I had moved into an ecovillage. The village people were sitting outside on a summer day, and suddenly I realized that we are here humans to each other (with warts and all), not bureaucratic roles. The realization felt terribly liberating, like a big weight dropping off from head and shoulders. In retrospect, perhaps that's when I started to learn, to become better aware, that a genuine community is really a shared emotional field, an organism where "if a member is not feeling well, the community/organism is not feeling well".

The sense of belonging vs. bureaucratic alienation feels very meaningful, and I dare to claim feels so to many people whether they can think how to put it into words or not. Cancel culture, dehumanizing, excommunication etc. disassociation are extreme forms though-structures that create empathy barriers that cut away from shared emotional field of most basic emotional empathy. Emotional empathy is related to but distinct from intellectual empathy. Emotional empathy is the empirical and ontological meaning of God, if God is Love. Theoretical thinking can very well doubt that God is Love, and that ability to doubt is as should be for the ways of thinking. In the Heart there is no doubt, Heart knows that God is Love. Minds and Hearts are having this debate all the time, inside and between us.

I hope we can resist the urge to take this away from the topic of "thinking", "intuition", Bergson, etc., which is a very productive topic to pursue. There is much more resolution we can gain on just those topics. The only comment I want to make here is that no one, not Bergson, Steiner, or myself, is claiming "intellectual" mode of knowing suffices for true meaning or empathy. In fact, the intellect is exactly what needs to be transfigured and overcome. And the feeling Soul is definitely that who makes possible the physical senses and abstract intellect to be born again of the Spirit. That is why the Soul is always symbolized as feminine. She is the heart in which the blood (will) and the breath (spirit) meet. Yet we can't forget that something is, in fact, reborn from the vessel of the heart, and that is the higher cognition which illuminates the ever-expanding meaning of the phenomenal world. I honestly think you are using a caricature of these great philosophers of Thinking, like Steiner, who has spoken and written thousands upon thousands of pages of thoughtful words on these dynamic essences of Soul and Spirit.

[SanteriSatama]

So let's dig deeper into this issue - is it only "intuition" which you say should be outside the semantic scope of "thinking"? I am assuming you have no problem putting abstract intellect and reason within that scope. What about "imagination" (image-consciousness) and "inspiration" (clairaudience)?

Imagination yes, inspiration is for me the etymological meaning, which empirically and typically is a whole body phenomenon..

As for "intuition" - I disagree about Bergson. Below is a quote I posted on an earlier thread. Can we honestly say Bergson is not putting intuition into modes of "Thinking"? The only way we can do that is by separating "Thinking" from "knowing". But what is the justification for such a separation?

Sadly, English has very poor and IMO confused vocabulary in this respect, "knowing" refers to very wide range of phenomena, with epistemic knowing as the dominant meaning. For example, when you ask "Do you know Alice?", meaning have you met Alice and spent time together, in Finnish we ask with similar meaning "Do you feel Alice?". And the answer can be "I don't feel Alice/I have not met her, but I know her - Bob's cousin - by name and relation.

Intuition translates into Finnish with 'vaisto' (instinct) and 'aavistus' (hunch, hint, clue, gut feeling, feel). Intuition does not mean epistemic knowing. "Separation" is too hard expression, as intuitive hunch has the feel of an intent that intends to become more clearly known, sayable.

What Bergson means by intuition can be described as holographic telepathy, part becoming informed by/via inclusive whole. Vaguely at first, seeking fuller comprehension e.g. in the form of linguistic expression. In that sense intuition and inspiration can be closely related. The expression "gut feeling" and the experience of intentionality give plenty of hints that intuition belongs primarily in the domain of will and action.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Sadly, English has very poor and IMO confused vocabulary in this respect, "knowing" refers to very wide range of phenomena, with epistemic knowing as the dominant meaning. For example, when you ask "Do you know Alice?", meaning have you met Alice and spent time together, in Finnish we ask with similar meaning "Do you feel Alice?". And the answer can be "I don't feel Alice/I have not met her, but I know her - Bob's cousin - by name and relation.

English of course makes the same distinction, albeit one would be unlikely to hear someone say "I know Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't feel Alice". Rather one might say, "I know of Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't know her personally, or intimately." Also, depending upon voice inflection, and/or body language, to speak of knowing someone can take on a variety of connotations, beyond just meaning that you know of them—a subtlety that is lost in this text-bound format. In a connotation that is now archaic, to 'know' someone, actually could mean you've had sex with them, as in carnal knowledge. This language is rife with many wonderings and wanderings.

[SanteriSatama]

English of course makes the same distinction, albeit one would be unlikely to hear someone say "I know Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't feel Alice". Rather one might say, "I know of Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't know her personally, or intimately." Also, depending upon voice inflection, and/or body language, to speak of knowing someone can take on a variety of connotations, beyond just meaning that you know of them—a subtlety that is lost in this text-bound format. In a connotation that is now archaic, to 'know' someone, actually could mean you've had sex with them, as in carnal knowledge. This language is rife with many wonderings and wanderings.

A quantum-mind theoretician could say: Alice and Bob can feel each other by getting entangled, but can knowingly signal each other only by sharing Shannon entropy information. Or some similar jargon in the general direction.

Abstract thinking, which philosophy mostly does, is spatial, and thus analyzes and breaks temporal Bergson-duration. Spatial is by definition local (cf. knowingly signal), whereas entanglement is non-local duration. Yet, in our experience we can't say that non-local gut-feels etc. intuitions are without meaning.

[AshvinP]

So let's dig deeper into this issue - is it only "intuition" which you say should be outside the semantic scope of "thinking"? I am assuming you have no problem putting abstract intellect and reason within that scope. What about "imagination" (image-consciousness) and "inspiration" (clairaudience)?

Imagination yes, inspiration is for me the etymological meaning, which empirically and typically is a whole body phenomenon..

I agree that Thinking is a "whole body phenomenon" (not just in head/brain) - that is even clear from physicalist interpretations of science, but spiritual science details exactly how Thinking occurs throughout the body. In fact, the various parts of our bodies are alive like animals are alive and connected to a "group soul". And in spiritual science, there is not only the physical body, but the etheric and astral bodies.

So, apart from the "whole body" objection to inspiration (clairvoyance and clairaudience) as "Thinking", do you see any other reason why it must be separated from reason and imagination?

As for "intuition" - I disagree about Bergson. Below is a quote I posted on an earlier thread. Can we honestly say Bergson is not putting intuition into modes of "Thinking"? The only way we can do that is by separating "Thinking" from "knowing". But what is the justification for such a separation?

Sadly, English has very poor and IMO confused vocabulary in this respect, "knowing" refers to very wide range of phenomena, with epistemic knowing as the dominant meaning. For example, when you ask "Do you know Alice?", meaning have you met Alice and spent time together, in Finnish we ask with similar meaning "Do you feel Alice?". And the answer can be "I don't feel Alice/I have not met her, but I know her - Bob's cousin - by name and relation.

Intuition translates into Finnish with 'vaisto' (instinct) and 'aavistus' (hunch, hint, clue, gut feeling, feel). Intuition does not mean epistemic knowing. "Separation" is too hard expression, as intuitive hunch has the feel of an intent that intends to become more clearly known, sayable.

What Bergson means by intuition can be described as holographic telepathy, part becoming informed by/via inclusive whole. Vaguely at first, seeking fuller comprehension e.g. in the form of linguistic expression. In that sense intuition and inspiration can be closely related. The expression "gut feeling" and the experience of intentionality give plenty of hints that intuition belongs primarily in the domain of will and action.

Thanks, there is a lot to unpack here. Sticking with the issue of Bergson's understanding for now, there was more to that quote I should have included (my emphasis):

But as they believed that the intelligence worked within time, they have concluded that to go beyond the intelligence consisted in getting outside of time. They did not see that intellectualized time is space, that the intelligence works upon the phantom of duration, not on duration itself, that the elimination of time is the habitual, normal, commonplace act of our understanding, that the relativity of our knowledge of the mind is a direct result of this fact, and that hence, to pass from intellection to vision, from the relative to the absolute, is not a question of getting outside of time (we are already there); on the contrary, one must get back into duration and recapture reality in the very mobility which is its essence. An intuition, which claims to project itself with one bound into the eternal, limits itself to the intellectual. For the concepts which the intelligence furnishes, the intuition simply substitutes one single concept which includes them all and which consequently is always the same, by whatever name it is called: Substance, Ego, Idea, Will.

Philosophy, thus understood, necessarily pantheistic, will have no difficulty in explaining everything deductively, since it will have been given beforehand, in a principle which is the concept of concepts, all the real and all the possible. But this explanation will be vague and hypothetical, this unity will be artificial, and this philosophy would apply equally well to a very different world from our own. How much more instructive would be a truly intuitive metaphysics, which would follow the undulations of the real! True, it would not embrace in a single sweep the totality of things; but for each thing it would give an explanation which would fit it exactly, and it alone. It would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one?

Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. Furthermore, it will be a rich, full unity, the unity of a continuity, the unity of our reality, and not that abstract and empty unity, which has come from one supreme generalization, and which could just as well be that of any possible world whatsoever. It is true that philosophy then will demand a new effort for each new problem. No solution will be geometrically deduced from another. No important truth will be achieved by the prolongation of an already acquired truth. We shall have to give up crowding universal science potentially into one principle.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

I realize that, at first glance, these remarks could seem more aligned with your position that intuition is like a "gut-feeling" which never arrives at any "absolute truth". There is a certain accuracy to such a position, but it is what I call "low resolution" truth and Bergson calls a truth that "limits itself to the intellectual... vague and hypothetical... artificial unity... abstract and empty unity". Please note that I am not claiming, and I don't think Bergson is either, that this sort of view does not have feeling or is never useful when interacting with people. That is not the point at all. Rather, we are asking about the living essence of intuition - must it always remain in the domain of "gut feeling" or "hunch" or "hint"? I say it is a big mistake to reduce intuition to instinct in that manner. Instinct is indeed like a primal mode of knowing totally immersed within our willing activity. That is more closely aligned with Schopenhauer's notion of "intuition" - it is a mode we all have immediate access to and simply accessing that mode will "project us with one bound into the eternal." So Schopenhauer says music gives direct access to the noumenal universal Will, and he is correct in a sense, but that is an "artificial unity" because he leaves out the most important part - the process of getting to that unity via experience and knowledge.

Bergson clearly wants to differentiate himself from Schopenhauer as we saw in the first quote. Intuition is of a much different sort of knowing for Bergson. It allows us to gradually uncover more and more of the noumenal relations, just like an exoteric scientist uses reason to uncover more and more of strictly phenomenal relations. Eventually the exoteric scientist gets to "scientific facts" and "laws of nature", while the spiritual scientist gets to principles and archetypes (which is all the activity of living beings). We can see this essence when Bergson writes of "new effort for each new problem". That is the scientific method, is it not? It seeks a step by step and super-precise uncovering of detailed relations. Instinct simply does not provide that sort of resolution. I think we both agree that Bergson is correct to say we should not presume any sort of eternal Unity (but Bergson also hints that he concludes we always truly reside in eternity), but then the question becomes whether there is any reason to think our capacities of knowing cannot systematically arrive at eternal Unity through higher perception-cognition, investigation rooted in "experience alone". My answer is no, there is no reason to discount that possibility, and it seems clear to me that Bergson agrees.

[Soul_of_Shu]

A quantum-mind theoretician could say: Alice and Bob can feel each other by getting entangled, but can knowingly signal each other only by sharing Shannon entropy information. Or some similar jargon in the general direction.

It's a complex dynamic. I surely know my spouse intimately, one could say now even telepathically sharing information, but even after 40 years of duration, I don't always know what she's feeling. Case in point, yesterday we went to a family gathering of 12 elders, first time in a long time, and I'm usually the first to feel like I've had my fill of it and wish to leave. I thought she was still enjoying it, when unexpectedly she sagged against my shoulder, and said almost plaintively, "Let's go home now." Or is it just I'm not good at reading those kind of signals? Impaired emotional IQ? Dissociative boundary too dense?

[AshvinP]

Sadly, English has very poor and IMO confused vocabulary in this respect, "knowing" refers to very wide range of phenomena, with epistemic knowing as the dominant meaning. For example, when you ask "Do you know Alice?", meaning have you met Alice and spent time together, in Finnish we ask with similar meaning "Do you feel Alice?". And the answer can be "I don't feel Alice/I have not met her, but I know her - Bob's cousin - by name and relation.

English of course makes the same distinction, albeit one would be unlikely to hear someone say "I know Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't feel Alice". Rather one might say, "I know of Alice, Bob's cousin, but I don't know her personally, or intimately." Also, depending upon voice inflection, and/or body language, to speak of knowing someone can take on a variety of connotations, beyond just meaning that you know of them—a subtlety that is lost in this text-bound format. In a connotation that is now archaic, to 'know' someone, actually could mean you've had sex with them, as in carnal knowledge. This language is rife with many wonderings and wanderings.

This is a very important point and deserves its own essay, probably with multiple parts. One of the biggest difficulties we have is translating "physical" concepts into their spiritual proxies. We usually have a deep desire to, at the very least, keep both. So if someone says, "carnal knowing is actually speaking to spiritual unification via knowledge and physical sex is just an outward appearance we will eventually outgrow", we say that person is insane and dangerous because they are trying to do away with sex

Emerson says, "The use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation." But no matter how much solid reasoning he or anyone else gives for that conclusion, we will resist it with all our might (myself included) because we are still chained to the physical creation. Of course, there is also a danger of taking it to mean we should be disinterested in the physical world and just contemplate spiritual matters 24/7. That is not at all the way of spiritual science - rather it is a rediscovering of the spiritual through a deep curiosity and involvement in the physical.

[SanteriSatama]

I agree that Thinking is a "whole body phenomenon" (not just in head/brain) - that is even clear from physicalist interpretations of science, but spiritual science details exactly how Thinking occurs throughout the body. In fact, the various parts of our bodies are alive like animals are alive and connected to a "group soul". And in spiritual science, there is not only the physical body, but the etheric and astral bodies.

So, apart from the "whole body" objection to inspiration (clairvoyance and clairaudience) as "Thinking", do you see any other reason why it must be separated from reason and imagination?

Not separated! That's bivalent logic speaking. If we call whole body sentience (better word) whole-body "thinking", the caveat is that instead of good balance and propotion of an organic whole, the spatial and controlling aspects of abstract thinking dominate and maintain imbalance, alienation and loss of meaning.

I realize that, at first glance, these remarks could seem more aligned with your position that intuition is like a "gut-feeling" which never arrives at any "absolute truth". There is a certain accuracy to such a position, but it is what I call "low resolution" truth and Bergson calls a truth that "limits itself to the intellectual... vague and hypothetical... artificial unity... abstract and empty unity". Please note that I am not claiming, and I don't think Bergson is either, that this sort of view does not have feeling or is never useful when interacting with people. That is not the point at all. Rather, we are asking about the living essence of intuition - must it always remain in the domain of "gut feeling" or "hunch" or "hint"?

Of course there are degrees, and intuition can grow in intensity and clarity. And be called then by other names, e.g. clairvoyance. Bergson did not use the term 'holography', as the tech metaphor was invented much later and elevated into spiritual concept mainly by Bohm, but the term describes quite well - in the limited abstract and spatial sense in which we think and discuss - Bergson's notions of intuition and duration. Of course the metaphor "universe in a speck of sand" goes way way back.

I say it is a big mistake to reduce intuition to instinct in that manner. Instinct is indeed like a primal mode of knowing totally immersed within our willing activity.

Reduce or elevate? Your language often sounds like instinct is of lesser value, but ultimately it's instinct which acts in accordance with duration, also in the spiritual realms. When people describe their OBE, vision quests etc., you hear very often expressions like "then I knew/acted instinctively", meaning without abstract spatial thinking.

So Schopenhauer says music gives direct access to the noumenal universal Will, and he is correct in a sense, but that is an "artificial unity" because he leaves out the most important part - the process of getting to that unity via experience and knowledge.

Sure, it's the journey that matters most, not the destiny. We agree with Cavafy's poem Ithaca.

Bergson writes of "new effort for each new problem". That is the scientific method, is it not?

I'm inclined to mostly agree, yes.

It seeks a step by step and super-precise uncovering of detailed relations. Instinct simply does not provide that sort of resolution.

If you can't trust your instincts, you can't set on a journey of discovery in the first place. Love for thinking does not make us, who try to think as well as we can, any better than fellow people who think less and live in the duration, caring. The real Purpose and Will is to serve, and to be able to do so we need to accept all the help we get to avoid the trap of superiority tripping.

but then the question becomes whether there is any reason to think our capacities of knowing cannot systematically arrive at eternal Unity through higher perception-cognition, investigation rooted in "experience alone". My answer is no, there is no reason to discount that possibility, and it seems clear to me that Bergson agrees.

Bergson is quite clear when he says that duration is neither unity nor multiplicity. "Eternal Unity" sounds like abstract spatial projection. I'm sorry, but I don't find much meaning in the expression, it sounds like a donkey and carrot scheme of eksoteric abusive religion. Or escape art of the Pure Land frozen existence. Strictly rationally speaking, experiences are changes, differences, we don't and can't experience absolute sameness. Hence there can be no experiencing in Eternal Unity.

We can't say that Earthly modes of experiencing are the only possibility - and these include and give taste of wide variety and beyond - or that there can be no relief from experiencing. But why speculate on such abstract ideas of finality, as long as we live these lives we have chosen to live, as long as there is work to do here, a world to make a better place, gods to heal, take care of each other and to live in Wonder? Why?

[SanteriSatama]

It's a complex dynamic. I surely know my spouse intimately, one could say now even telepathically sharing information, but even after 40 years of duration, I don't always know what she's feeling. Case in point, yesterday we went to a family gathering of 12 elders, first time in a long time, and I'm usually the first to feel like I've had my fill of it and wish to leave. I thought she was still enjoying it, when unexpectedly she sagged against my shoulder, and said almost plaintively, "Let's go home now." Or is it just I'm not good at reading those kind of signals? Impaired emotional IQ? Dissociative boundary too dense?

Maybe she felt your desire to leave, or acted out of memory, and made it easy for you? There's also sender-receiver dynamics involved, and it's not necessarily always 2-body problem, 3 and more body problems and general fuzziness make it all charmingly complex dynamics.

One of my funniest and/or embarrassing experiences was when I was a home daddy (long time a go). I was lying on the living room floor, and started to wonder and worry why it was so silent, as the kid was in the other room. Too lazy or tired to stand up and go check, I visualized a four legged toddler coming to where I was lying. The next moment not the toddler, but our cat comes from the other room, looking goofy and bewildered.