Chapter 6: Suspension, The Body, and Proprioception
Sometimes we take an action and we are not realizing that we are doing it (e.g. violence). What is called in these cases is not to carry the action nor suppress it, but to suspend it.
Feelings and bodily reactions are not independent of our thoughts.
Suspension
In the process of suspension, you may notice two things:
1. Physical reactions are being produced by thought.
2. Thoughts are affecting the feelings and the feelings are affecting the thoughts without passing through “me”.
Thoughts and feelings move as processes on their own, however, there is self-reference (proprioception or “selfperception”) in this whole system.
“Thought lack proprioception, and we have got to learn, somehow, to observe thought… perhaps by awakening some other sense of what thought is, possibly through attention.”
“There is no formula for this. I am not suggesting a formula or a prescription, but a point of departure for an inquiry.”
For example, in a situation were someone hurt you by saying some words, try to find the words, which express what’s going on, and see what those words do. Don’t look for content; look for seeing what they do.
“Thinking about the hurt” (the hurt is “out there” – abstraction) vs. “Think the hurt” (go through the thought and let it produce whatever it’s going to do; suspend the activity in both directions, and just simply let it reveal itself, and see it.)
Incoherence
- Your intentions and your results do not agree.
- It’s the road to coherence.
Coherence
- Sensed as order, beauty, and harmony.
- It’s about discovering the incoherence and dropping it.
- Includes the entire process of the mind, which includes the tacit processes of thought.
“Changing the abstract thought is one step, but unless it also changes the way the body responds, it won’t be enough.” (Example of the tacit knowledge of riding a bicycle.)
Proprioception
“Thought should be able to perceive its own movement, be aware of its own movement. In the process of though there should be the awareness of that movement, of the intention to think, and of the result which that thinking produces.”
Failure of proprioception in thought: you are not aware the connection between your impulse to act and the act itself.
“The mind may have proprioception built in, the same way that the body has – in the tacit process there is self-awareness. That may be the very nature of mind.”
Thought is a movement, but it treats itself as truth (telling you how things are). Just as the lights of Las Vegas prevent you from seeing the universe, your though can prevent you from seeing the things as they are.
Thought has a system of reflexes that condition it. Thought is part of a material process; the brain, the nervous system, the whole body.
“Insight of perception will affect the whole thing. It not only affects the inferential understanding, but it also affects the chemical level, the tacit level – everything.”
“Our first reflex is: “Thought is far beyond matter, or separated from matter somehow. It has some spiritual truth or significance.” Does this implies a materialistic view form Bohm?
“If you get the insight that thought is not proprioceptive but requires proprioception, then that could begin to touch the synapses in the brain which hold those reflexes.”