1105 inner space
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Inner Space
from Richard Ostrofsky
of Second Thoughts Bookstore (now closed)www.secthoughts.com
May, 2011
Emotion and fantasy are suspect. We are supposed to be hard-headed
realists, always facing 'facts.'Yet everything we've learned about brainsand minds in the last 40 years or so (and we have learned a tremendous
amount) suggests that the leap from sensation to perception is precisely a
matter of imagination, and that without emotion (which directs and colors
attention) there can be no reasoned thought. Sensation is news aboutwhat's happening to your body. Perception is news about what's happening
in the outside world. Without guess-work based on memory and
imagination as loaded (e.g.) by desire and fear, our eyes could only tell thebrain about the light waves hitting them. The world of familiar objects and
people that we think wesee is more correctly understood as imagined: a
brain/mind's attempt to make cognitive sense of what its eyes are takingin. Similarly with all the other senses, separately and together. What they
report is basically a fantasy to which reality is attributed justifiably
attributed most of the time. But we have dreams, and sometimes
hallucinations and optical illusions, sometimes in full awareness that what
we are seeing is not real at all.In this month's column, you are invited to follow the path of
psychotherapists and 'mystics,' to consider the possibility that the innerworld of dream, fantasy and meditation is, in one sense, more real not
less so than the world of daily life. The world we actually live in is a
cognitive construction, spun from the feelings and intentions of ourselvesand others. The dream-world shows us something of how this supposed
'reality' is wrought.
In his Song of Meditation, Hakuin Zenji makes this claim in so manywords: "As regards [meditation]," he says, "we have no words to praise it
fully . . . [Those practicing it] reflecting within themselves, testify to the
truth . . . that Self-nature is no-nature; they have really gone beyond theken of sophistry.
"The truth that Self-nature is no nature" an artifact of one's own
making, as I would put it in modern language might be called the key
idea of Buddhism. From it follow as corollary the so-called 'Four NobleTruths' and 'Eight-fold Path' which all boil down to the simple point that
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each of us is his own worst enemy, and the cause of his own sufferings.
Freud, for one, would surely have agreed.
I do myself, but as a modern man with a temperament and world-viewless bleak than the Buddha's, I would like to stand his great insight on its
head: It is true that in formal meditation or in my La-Z-Boy, what I find in
the dream-world is an absence ofessentialSelf, but rather a self-construed(small-'s') self, but I would see this self not as delusion but as a lifetime's
work of something approaching art. I go to that La-Z-Boy to write, or
think or indulge in fantasy, not usually to "free myself from suffering," butbecause I enjoy such mental activities, and the reclining armchair itself.
The astronaut blasting off into outer space reclines on an acceleration
couch. In my recliner, I 'blast off' for inner space or so I like to imagine.
I gain the occasional insight in that armchair; sometimes I just relax andfall asleep. Or I read, and try to follow the ideas someone else. What I
mostly do is cruise and sightsee, watching the thoughts as they stream by.'Meditation'is the fancy word for this non-activity, but there is nothing at
all fancy about it. There's hardly anything simpler.Does the pastime have any value? The only products of my time in
that La-Z-Boy are my writings in these columns and on the Web, and youmust judge by them. I am happy if anyone gets something from these
pieces, but have to say frankly that production and social good works are
not the name of my game. There are lots of people improving the world in
their various ways, and a right hash they are making. I'm not a WASP, buta Taoist in this respect. I think the shit that is going to happen willhappen,
whether I work harder or not.
The time spent in that chair has value for me, whether or not it has anyfor others though I want to say that in an increasingly crazy world of
busy realists, just sitting still with one's own thoughts is probably not a
waste of time. Rather than acting out one's fantasies, there may be somevalue just in getting to know them intimately where they come from, and
what they are.
Stuart Kauffman, a theoretical biologist, has famously described theemergence of order out of chaos (self-organization) as "a dance on the
edge of the possible." Fantasy is just that dance in the mind. But new
possibilities don't need to be imagined in advance. They exist and often
get realized before anyone notices them. Fantasy, sometimes, is just arecognition of possibilities not previously noticed.
As a book dealer I was, in large part, a purveyor of fantasies. At least
half the books I sold were fantasies of one sort or another; and I wasamused when people used to apologize for their 'junk' reading, because at
least half of my own reading came from the fantasy sections as well.
People who read do so not just for information and ideas but also forrelaxation and sheer pleasure and why shouldn't we?
What did and does bother me sometimes is when people confuse their
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private, pleasurable fantasies religious, political, sociological or sexual
with universal facts. The wish to stamp out or overwhelm other people's
imaginary worlds does a great deal of harm; and the cure for this must beto admit frankly and show by example to our children that private fantasy
and play are perfectly respectable adultactivities, although reality is
sometimes important too.Anyway, my column this month has a clear recommendation for once:
When you feel like it, just find a comfortable place and sit there. Let your
mind wander. And never apologize to anyone for doing so.