Consciousness, transcendence, ... and laughing gas?

John Kaag’s Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James Can Save Your Life (Chapter 4)  

https://archive.org/details/principlesofpsyc01jame 

  

“How could life go on, how could it “flower and fructify”  

        Within only a few years, William James first lost his father, Henry James Sr., before losing his young son, Herman, to a fatal case of pneumonia. This tragedy compelled James to question if life could be “anything other than intolerable mysteriousness of this thing called existence”. He escaped in his psychological studies of consciousness, particularly in the realm of transcendence. James’s misery fueled his research as he aimed to discover if “consciousness might allow him to transcend to dramatically stretch the bounds of human finitude”, as John Kaag explains in Sick Souls, Healthy Minds: How William James can Save Your Life.  

      In his exploration of consciousness, James faced the infamous ‘mind-body problem’, or the ‘hard’ problem of consciousness. James believed consciousness was a deeply personal, unique, and subjective experience. It is impossible to capture the elusive nature of everyone's experience, as your thoughts are never entirely still. James believed that your consciousness cannot be grasped by empirical data, as it is impossible to understand someone’s thoughts directly. We may have the ability to communicate how we feel and think, but those messages are translated and transformed into new thoughts. Furthermore, you cannot stop fully aware of your thoughts, as they are a continuous, changing flow of sensations, feelings, and thoughts that connect new thoughts. James believed this movement resembled a flow of water, coining the term ‘stream of consciousness’.  

 

        Personally, I found great consolation in the concept of each of my thoughts being “perfectly unique and perfectly my own”. While it may not seem profound, I’ve never considered that your mind is like a fingerprint, with none quite just the same as yours. I found it even more shocking to think that each thought we experience can never be felt in the same way again. For example, when you first watch an incredible film, you may be left chasing the same feeling you got at first sight. However, the conditions that led to the initial emotional reaction can never be precisely replicated. I think we can all relate to chasing the thrill of the feeling the first time you listened to a song, the first time you rode that ride you love, or even the first read-through of a great book. I feel now, though, that maybe I’ve underappreciated the multitude of experiences I stand to gain each time I listen, read, or watch anything. Each run-through is perfectly unique, and if we spend less time chasing firsts, I think we will find much greater pleasure in all that we do.  

Kaag describes how we often rely on the assumption of identity and similarity, failing to recognize the immense difference in our environments every day. Each day, we anticipate the rise of dawn and fall of dusk, but no sunrise has ever been precisely the same since the beginning of time. As I’m watching the sky turn darker from my window, it feels bittersweet to imagine I will never see another quite the same. Like the unique arrangement of clouds and lavender in the sky, I think we tend to overlook the difference in our lives every day as we jumble them together in their similarity. I’m certainly guilty of complaining about the monotony of school and work, but I can’t think of any two days in my life that have been entirely the same. In focusing on the similarities of my day, I feel a bit regretful reflecting on the things I have missed.  

       

The beautiful sunset I enjoyed this weekend. :)

 

So maybe the secret to transcendence is to become more aware of our surroundings, to open our eyes, and see what we ignored before? 

 

    William James wasn’t willing to rule anything out, yet. His studies led him to stumble upon Benjamin Blood’s The Anesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy.detailing trials with nitrious oxide in pursuit of transcendence. Blood’s goal was to break free from his usual perception of reality, as he believed that transcendence was just outside of what we could experience in our day-to-day life. James was fascinated by the concept, and despite widespread ridicule by the science community, he wanted to experience a trip for himself. So, for the following years, James conducted his own personal experiments with nitrous oxide (or laughing gas). While he may not have landed on the transcendence he initially anticipated, James did conclude something equally valuable: that we should resist ‘overblown philosophizing’. Instead, James figured that the most valuable information about ‘being’ is not beyond our reality, but rather it is just within our grasp, unexplored. James considers Blood’s literature a stepping-stone in his explorations; he rejects the need to escape reality to understand the ‘secret of being’.All it takes is waking up to what has been here all along, the immediate, overbearing feeling of presence.  

    The key to transcending is not entering a new realm of reality but relishing the wealth of reality that surrounds us. Transcendence is a ‘coming to’ that cannot be pinpointed or particularly grasped. It is a sense of existence that we cannot ordinarily understand. It is the awareness of consciousness that can be achieved when we find an inner significance. Consciousness can only expand in the mysteriousness of existence, when we answer for ourselves the question of existence by the profound awareness of our own. I think these moments can be felt in grieving death, such as felt by Kaag, as we realize the finitude of our existence. Additionally, we discussed how self-reflection can lead to a greater sense of awareness that may contribute to that ‘coming to’ moment.  

    I find great joy in the idea that transcendence is not limited to a psychedelic trip or religious overturn, but that perhaps it is a part of human condition. That every person is perfectly capable of gaining higher consciousness, be it in emotional turmoil or deep internal reflection. These fleeting moments of awareness and wokeness call into question, again, the mysteriousness of our existence. It can be overwhelming to question our purpose while we mindlessly go through the motions of school and work. We are constantly reminded that if we do not perform adequately, we will be replaced by someone more equipped.  We move so quickly that we forget to stop and remind ourselves that each moment is precious and one-of a kind. Similarly, as James reminds us, each person is perfectly unique with a perfectly unique consciousness. There is no one quite like you and absolutely no person that can replace the impact that you have, because no one can replicate you entirely.  

(Please disregard the watermark, philosophy cartoons are unaffordable in this economy...)