Knowing from the Inside - part 3

So last time I imagined a world in which there are hidden (to the senses) insides to everything. Every thing has an inner being or life. The Insiders, who are the inhabitants of this world, say that everything has a subjective existence and that this is what that thing really is. Knowing only the external aspects of something would tell you practically nothing of importance about it and, in fact, could be seriously misleading. So, if external appearances are not the way to really know something, like a tree, how do the Insiders get to know anything?

Well, in our scientific world we’re so used to knowing something by considering its outsides. In the case of the tree this means its appearance and the appearance and function of all the parts (cells etc.) of a tree if you were to take it apart. Science tries to know things by taking them apart and then looking at how they work – by function. We treat the tree as an object, which is nothing more than a collection of smaller objects (such as cells, molecules, and atoms.) But, in the Insiders world, this is not considered to be knowing the tree, because just as all of your cells don’t tell us about you as a subjective being, so the tree’s parts don’t tell us about the trees subjective being.

To know anything in the Insider’s world, you’d have to know it from the inside. You’d have to get to know its insides from your own insides – a kind of contact of insides would be needed – like a kind of empathy. In my imagination I see that this would be equivalent to treating a tree like a person. You would have to enter into a relationship with the tree. We all know that relationships are two way streets – the tree would have an impact on you, and you on it, and that impact would be felt on the inside – in feelings, thoughts, and intuitions.

For an Insider, when faced with a tree, they would have to assume that some of what is going on inside of them has to do with the tree. We could call this “subjective data” about the tree. Yes there would be sensory data revealing the outsides of the tree – they can see, hear and smell the tree - but there are also thoughts, ideas, feelings and intuitions arising. And just like getting to know a person is fraught with problems of projection – where you see something in them which is really a part of you – so it is with the tree. So the difficulty would lie in distinguishing real subjective data about the tree, from random thoughts and feelings going on in the Insider and relating more to say their difficult childhood than the tree. However, the Insiders have become very adept at this kind of distinction.

In fact, the more you think about this, the more you realize that it goes much further than this – it would have to. If we assume that inner contact is possible (or even unavoidable), it’s not clear that anything that arose inside the Insiders could be entirely unrelated to what’s around them. The Insiders are constantly in inner touch (in relationship) with their environment and who is around them (and everything is a who not a what). In fact, they see that all of their experience is arising in the context of a living inner relationship with others. Insides are constantly making contact and interacting with other insides. They experience that they’re not really separate from each another or any thing. In their inner world, nothing arises in a vacuum – in a separately exiting self. It is a world of connectivity and process.

The Insiders have a worldview in which the fundamental element is relationship - they see themselves as embedded in a web of inner connections and knowing. In the scientific worldview (of the Outsiders), the fundamental elements of the universe are static and separate objects, but to the Insiders this is just an appearance and not a reality. Since relationship is a dynamic quality - relationships are constantly changing and evolving - the Insiders universe is dynamic. It is a universe of process – constantly arising, constantly evolving, constantly becoming.

The inhabitants of this imaginary world still use science and its discoveries – it’s not like they deny that outsides exist and are useful, they just don’t treat science as a primary way of knowing. Without being tempered by the inner knowing, science is seen to be highly dangerous to the individual, others, and the environment in general.

Well, I suppose it’s time to wake up from this other-worldly dream. From the traditional scientific view, the Insiders world is ridiculous - a fantasy. In reality, I am an object in a world of objects, and I just had some spurious firings of neurons that somehow imagined or dreamed another kind of world. I suppose there is another other possibility: it could be that I’m really an Insider who is dreaming a world of objects most of the time, and I just had a few moments of clarity – I woke up for a few moments to imagine the world I really live in. Not sure if I can really tell which of these possibilities is correct. But I certainly know which “reality” I’d prefer, and perhaps it’s really my choice.

Knowing from the Inside - part 2

In the last entry I had decided to create an imaginary world whose population of strange and wonderful beings operated in a reality opposite to that of our rational scientific view. This would include their way of knowing themselves and the world. And in that blog I said that I thought science’s assumptions about objective knowing, and its categorization of the ”subjective” as illusory, were fundamental to the scientific worldview. With its focus on the quantifiable, science has an unavoidable focus on the material world. It focuses on what we can measure and denies what we can’t. Outsides are real, and insides illusory.
So that aspect of science is what I will use to create the imaginary world. I'll call the inhabitants of our rational scientific world Outsiders, and the inhabitants of the new imaginary world Insiders. Everything is inside out. In the world of the Insiders, the outsides of things are considered to be illusory. The only reality is to be found within the subjective - on the inside. What you can measure quantitatively is seen by Insiders to be dangerously misleading (in terms of seeing or knowing reality) especially if unconnected to any inner knowing. True objectivity is to be found in what arises on the inside. I’m not saying that everything that goes on in their heads would be considered objective truth (which would be freaky), but I am saying that objective truth could be found only within – on the inside.
So, not so shockingly, the Insiders think that people are really to be known via their insides, and not by outer appearances (or what you could see with any kind of scan.) Perhaps more surprising is that, since they think that the outside appearance of everything is illusory, then everything has a hidden insides. A tree is not just a tree. Its reality lies mostly on the inside and is not confined to its external appearance (or the external appearance of all it’s parts if you dissect it). It has an inner life.
It seems to me that this would make a very different kind of world. It would be a world where nothing would be what it initially appears to be. In fact, it would be not a world of things, but a world of beings – a world of who’s and not what’s. And there would be a kind of equality (since it's all who's), which would require a kind of sensitivity to deal with and be a part of. After all, you’d never immediately know who it was you’re really dealing with.
From my perspective the next question, for next time, is how would you know anything in the Insiders world?

Knowing from the Inside - part 1

There is a basic core belief that lies behind our modern scientific worldview, which is that through analytic and rational thought we can objectively know something. The success of science and technology points to the apparently self-evident truth of this statement. We live our lives by it. We live in a world of “facts” produced by science. This would not be such a terribly bad thing were it not for a generally unspoken further assumption that has seeped into our modern worldview: the scientific approach is the only one that can lead to objective truth. Other ways of knowing are labeled as “subjective,” which has become just another word for delusion.

Thus we find ourselves in an odd place. All of us live within our subjective experience – it’s really all we know. When we see a color, say red, there’s no way to know whether someone else’s experience of it is the same as ours. Our experience is internal – it’s the only kind of experience there is. And yet, this subjective world we live in is not really real according to science. Truth lies in the material, hard, objective reality it reveals. Brain scans, which measure the external reality of our minds in terms of the brain’s electrical impulses and blood flow, are the truth about our thinking, feeling and perceiving selves. There really aren’t any invisible insides to people and things, just outsides visible to our instruments and senses.

To me this feels a lot like crawling out on a tree branch and then turning around and sawing it off. The only kind of experience we can have is subjective, and yet we say that’s not real or true. So what’s left to trust? It makes me wonder whether this scientific worldview is really true. Well, what if it isn’t? What if it’s completely mistaken? I guess the first question that would arise for me would be, “what are the alternatives?”

One way to explore that would be to take all of the characteristics of the rational scientific way of knowing the world – it’s assumptions and characteristics – and simply choose their opposites. We could create an imaginary world that works completely differently (apparently) than the one we live in. What would that world be like? I’d like to take that journey down the rabbit hole in my next blog entry…..

An Introduction

First and foremost, this is a place of play. It's a way to air one's own thoughts and experiences and to exchange insights with others. But before writing anything here, an introduction to who I am seems in order.

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My special interest is in the powerful contributions of mystical wisdom to discovering a new epistemology of wholeness. I have studied this issue for more than 10 years both theoretically and experientially.

I'm most familiar with Sufism, Islamic science, and some of the writings of Traditionalists. Of course a mystical worldview is not exclusive to Sufism, but is found (with varied interpretations) in many other spiritual traditions. Having said that, I propose that Sufism might have some unique and very useful insights toward discovering a new, more holistic epistemology.

Relative to this topic, my range of interests include:

• perennial philosophy
• integral philosophy
• traditionalism
• trans-rational ways of knowing
• inner epistemology
• symbolism, including the role of the Divine Sophia
• Sufism and its practical implications
• Islamic science (especially the principle of tawhid and its potential value to Western research practice)
• new, more encompassing research methods for Western science. In particular, I'm interested in methods that finally correlate with the findings of quantum physics...that take one beyond the ordinary epistemological confines of self, time and space
• further investigations into the new research paradigm and method proposed in my dissertation...what I currently call "Receptive Inquiry"
• contributing to discussions about reuniting science and spirituality

In this blog I will submit articles, anecdotal stories, and other miscellaneous ruminations.

If you also feel a passion for any of the topics I've outlined here, you are cordially invited into the discussion!

Debra Mater, PhD