SSHM Chapter 4: Consciousness and Transcendence

 

Consciousness and Transcendence 

David Lagunas 

Professor Oliver

PHIL 1030 Section #13

December 8, 2023

                      

“Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery, but Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.”  - Master Oogway (Kung Fu Panda)

William James was on a quest. His life had begun to be filled with sorrow and tragedy. His father Henry James had passed. The flower of Herman, James’ young son, had been plucked prematurely, passing away from pneumonia. William questioned if life could truly be bearable. In order to figure this out, he wanted to know whether or not consciousness would allow him to “transcend” the boundaries of human finitude.  

Stream of Consciousness 

Upon embarking on this journey to study and understand consciousness, James very quickly learned just how incomprehensible it truly was. The objectivity of science could never effectively be used to examine something as subjective as the human mind. The human mind wasn’t just some frog. You couldn’t just put it on a table, cut it up, and then gain a full understanding of its inner workings. William James thought this method would sacrifice and overlook the most crucial part: The Stream of Consciousness. 

I’m going to be honest, I struggled to understand the concept of The Stream of Consciousness. Everyone’s thoughts are all uniquely personal? Seems almost obvious to me. But thoughts being seamless and always in a state of motion? That’s where I struggled to fully comprehend this idea. It wasn’t until I did some more research that the concept became more clear to me. I looked into the use of The Stream of Consciousness as a narrative tool to help convey the narrator’s thoughts. 

This short excerpt from James Royce’s Ulysses does a great job at showing the Stream of Consciousness. In this section, the narrator recounts being proposed to. If you take a minute to actually read it, you’ll quickly realize how much disarray this short paragraph is in. It is a jumbled mess. It is overloaded with thoughts and never even uses a period to separate them. The narrator struggles to fully articulate a single thought. It is as if the character was given a pencil and told to write whatever they thought of for a minute straight without stopping. But that is the point! Even if the excerpt can be difficult to understand at first, it tells us so much more than if the author simply wrote in a clear and straightforward manner. This shows just how excited and in love the narrator truly is. I’m sure we can all relate to feeling like our mind is going 100 miles per hour, struggling to hold onto one thought and fully dive into it. That is the Stream of Consciousness. A river that never stops flowing. A mind that never stops thinking. 

Take Notice 

William James believes we hold ourselves back by what we do and don’t notice. He claims we fail to be aware of “the different way in which the same things look and sound and smell at different distances and under different circumstances”. I can admit there have been times in my life where I felt I have gone into “auto-pilot mode.” I would simply live each day as “just another day.” I began to assume things would remain the same as they had the previous day. Although this can be a form of comfort for some, William James argues this is not the most productive mindset. In living under the expectation that things will remain stagnant, we close off the beauty of possibility. 

 

This single panel is one that I frequently think about ever since I first read it and felt that it strongly relates to what William James is saying. This page comes from Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond. This series is a fictional account of the famous Japanese swordsman and philosopher Musashi Miyamoto, following his journey to become stronger and learn what true strength even is. In this panel, Musashi’s friend and mentor, Takuan, utters this short yet powerful quote: “Preoccupied with a single leaf, you won’t see the tree. Preoccupied with a single tree, you’ll miss the entire forest.” Personally, this quote has had a strong impact on how I live. In life, it is very easy to become hyper focused on what is right in front of you. It is commonly a goal or belief of yours that is the center of your focus. Unfortunately, by making one thing the focal point of your, is that you end up closing off everything else around you. This is no true way to live your life. If you seclude yourself from the chance to experience all the possibilities and variety in the world, how will you ever begin to fully comprehend it? Try to open your eyes and truly take in what life has to offer. Open yourself up to change, different perspectives, and a growing understanding of the world will open up in return. We must break out of the restricted circle that William James himself claims we entrap ourselves in.

The Witness 

In life, there’s nothing quite as valuable as the present moments.  As John Kaag writes in Sick Souls, Healthy Minds, “They are precious because they pass away so quickly.” As a result, we sometimes have to say goodbye to things and people before we would have liked. It is a tragic feeling to have to continue on living without loved ones that had always been there. William James himself had to experience this multiple times with the death of his son and father. Ralph Emerson describes this feeling in his 1844 essay Experience, where he writes about the “evanescence and lubricity of all objects, which lets them slip through our fingers then when we clutch hardest.” 

It is after experiencing death after death when William James very briefly conceived the term, “The Witness.” By being a witness, you take on a unique role. You are not an active participant, nor are you a bystander. You remain in the middle, “detached yet involved, engaged in a purposeless purpose: to carefully testify to the unfolding of things as one sees them,” as John Kaag describes. During my research, I found that the concept of being a witness is prevalent in various religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism. In Ram Dass’ Polishing the Mirror: How to Live From Your Spiritual Heart, he claims that the witness is actually on another level of our consciousness. He believes that “The witness coexists alongside your normal consciousness as another layer of awareness, as the part of you that is awakening.” It is simply up to us to nurture this awareness. 

How do we actually go about becoming the witness? According to Dr. David R. Hawkins, it is a fairly simple process. We must simply let go of any narcissistic and self-indulgent thinking. He believes we must get rid of the thinking that there’s an “I” causing things. Hawkins claims there are no causes in the world, only consequences. Through developing a profound level you will be able to see that you’re not the cause of anything. Only once we’ve gone through these efforts will we be able to witness the “unfoldment of creation.”

Afterthoughts

Overall, if there’s one thing I took away from reading this about reading chapter four of Sick Souls, Healthy Minds, it was to notice. Take the time to truly appreciate the world around you. Next time you’re out and about, take five minutes of your time to sit down and take a good look at your surroundings. Next time you say goodbye to loved ones, make sure to let them know how much they mean to you. Don’t treat tomorrow as “just another day.” I came across this video on social media about "The art of noticing," that I feel perfectly encapsulates this. I think that if you really take the time, you’ll find there is so much freedom and possibility in the world, and that itself is where the beauty is.