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What was I conscious of a moment ago?
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of
Ten Zen Questions |
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If I become conscious only when I ask whether I am, then what about just before I asked? I seem to remember what was happening a moment ago, but was I conscious of it at the time? Can I look back and find out what I was conscious of a moment before I asked? |
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This reminds me of a familiar enough experience. It goes like this. I am reading, or writing, or doing something else, when suddenly I notice that the clock is chiming. I have only just noticed it, yet it seems as though I have been hearing it all along because I can easily count backwards and know that it has sounded three times already. I go on counting. It strikes six. Was I conscious of the first strike? Apparently not; otherwise I wouldn’t have had that very odd sensation of suddenly becoming aware of the fourth strike and of recalling the previous three. But if I wasn’t conscious of it at the time, how come I can remember the sound so clearly in my mind’s ear? What is going on? I decide to investigate. I sit still, in my hut, and calm the mind. My plan is simple. I am going to wait until all is calm and then ask “What was I conscious of a moment ago?”. I ask. I am conscious of the wooden floor of my hut; I’ve been looking at it for a while. What else? I listen out. Of course – there is the sound of our cat purring by my side. I have been listening to her for a while now, or so it seems. I can remember that purring going back in time. I have been listening, haven’t I? Well, maybe. Yet when I suddenly thought of the purring it was as though it came into my consciousness right then, just as the clock’s chime had done. So – was I conscious of it a moment ago or not? Surely there must be an answer, mustn’t there?
I try again, still sitting here, my eyes resting on the floor; the damp garden spread out in front of me. I look back with an open mind, still here now but asking the question. What was I conscious of a moment ago? What about my own body? I can feel my seat on the wooden stool. I can feel my hands held together in my lap. And there’s that slight ache in my left knee. That ache has been going on for a long time. I know it has. I can look back into the continuous dull, slight pain and feel that it has. And there’s more. With exasperated shock I recognise there’s a siren sounding – out there in the road. It’s loud and obvious. Why didn’t I realise it instantly? That noise has been going on for about three or four loud swoops – nah nah, nah nah. I was conscious of it then wasn’t I? Was I? No. Or at least, I am not sure. It took me several tries at the question to hit upon that sound and when I did it was loud and obvious. But what if I hadn’t been searching? Would I have been conscious of the noise at the time and then forgotten it? Or would I never have become conscious of it at all? Would that vivid sound have disappeared without trace? It did seem vivid. It did feel as though I had been consciously listening to those three or four howls. Had I? Was I conscious of the sound a moment ago, or not?
Surely there must be an answer, mustn’t there? I’m reminded of Dan Dennett’s challenging contrast between Orwellian and Stalinesque revisions. According to Dennett, it’s natural to assume that there must be a true answer to the question “What was I conscious of at some particular time?”. So it must either be true that I was conscious of only the floor and my hands and the ache, or true that I was conscious of the siren as well. We cannot imagine that there might be no right answer. ….
This question is proving interesting, and difficult. I resolve to pursue it night and day. I have a go – asking myself from time to time, in the midst of ordinary life, “What was I conscious of a moment ago?”. As I get used to the exercise, the response settles down to a pattern. I usually find several things; several candidates for things I might have been conscious of a moment ago. Sounds are the easiest bet. They hang on. They take time. When I light upon them, they always seem to have been going on for some time, and it feels as though I have been conscious of them. There is the sound of the cars outside in the distance. There’s the ticking of the clock. There’s the beating of my own heart. And then – oh goodness me – how could I have ignored that. There’s my breath. Surely I have been watching my breath, haven’t I? I have never practised watching the breath as a formal meditation practice, but the breath is always there. When I sit, it goes slowly in and out, settling down and becoming deep and slow. I know that. I have been watching it haven’t I? Yes? No? Have I? How come I don’t know? Let’s get this clear. After many other threads of past awarenesses I lit upon the breath. More than any other experience, it seemed to have been going on and on. More than that, it seemed as though “I” had been watching this breath going in and out. So I must have been conscious of it. And yet I wasn’t. I mean, it took a deliberate act of casting around for things I might not have noticed, to find this one. I was concentrating on that patch of wall, wasn’t I? Was I watching the breath as well? They seem to have nothing to do with each other. It is as though I only brought them together by asking the question. I asked the question “What was I conscious of a moment ago?” and by way of answer these two disparate threads of experience came up. It seemed that I was conscious of both and yet the two seemed to have been completely separate – far apart. Stop. Think. This is very odd. Do it all again. And again. And again. I find the same thing, many times. There are always more threads to be found out there; threads of what I seem to have been conscious of but which seem to have had nothing to do with each other. This is the oddest thing, although it seems rather obvious now: Whenever I ask the question “What am I conscious of now?” there is only one answer – this. But when I ask the question “What was I conscious of a moment ago?” there are several answers. ……..
Perhaps it will help to take one and analyse it carefully.
I take that screech of the crow as it flew overhead. I heard it, yes, but what happened was this. I was sitting there, in my hut, watching the floor, feeling my breathing, aware of the row of plants beyond the door and of the damp stones between me and them, when suddenly I realised that I had just heard this almighty screech. A crow had swooped close overhead and cried out “EEEEEuchhhhhh”. It must have been half a second ago. I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t aware of it instantly. It took some time to penetrate. And then ““EEEEEuchhhhhh”. I knew I’d heard it, but it was already past. So ….. Here is the difficulty. The sound happened, and then half a second later I became aware that it had already happened. So I naturally want to ask whether I was, or was not, conscious of the crow at the time it shrieked. No. At the time I wasn’t. I know that because the first thing I knew was having heard it. The screech was already just past and I remembered having heard it. Ah. So this was a memory – not the real thing. I wasn’t conscious of it at the time it really happened; I only became conscious of it by remembering it afterwards. Is this right? If I am to pursue this line of inquiry I must be able to distinguish things I am really conscious of now from ones that I only remember being conscious of after they have passed. And I know this will not do. The harder I look, the less obviously I can tell the difference. The two seemed so obviously different at first, but now I’m no longer sure. I must check. I try out a few more examples. I can cast my mind around and hear that rumble of a lorry going up the hill. Was I conscious of it before I looked for it? Ah – there’s an insect crawling on my arm. I can feel that it’s been progressing upwards from my right elbow for some time now. But was I actually conscious of it before I looked around for another example? Or not? … I like to fantasise that someone could look inside my brain and tell me the answer; that they could point some clever machine at my head and tell me definitely when the sound, or touch, or feel, reached my consciousness, but is there such a place? Certainly scientists could put electrodes on my scalp and watch the waves of activity dancing over different areas, or put me in a scanner and watch the neural activity as it surges in through the thalamus, to the sensory cortex and on to other areas of the brain. They could probably tell me a lot about what I was hearing and seeing and even thinking about, but they would not be able to say “Yes, this sound or thought was conscious, and this one was not.” Why not? Because they don’t know what to look for. All brain cells work in much the same way, and no one has yet found a special place where consciousness happens, or a special process uniquely correlated with conscious, as opposed to unconscious, events. Will they ever? Many neuroscientists think so, and in hunting for the “neural correlates of consciousness” they are hoping to find it. That is, they are looking for a certain part of the brain, a particular process, or a special kind of brain cell whose activity reliably correlates with conscious as opposed to unconscious processes. This is something of a Holy Grail for consciousness studies. But if I don’t know which sights and sounds I was conscious of, and which I was not, then this whole line of scientific research must be entirely misguided.
I take stock. At any moment I can trace back various threads into the past. Each of them is something that I seem to have been conscious of for some time, and yet each of them seems only to have popped into my consciousness when I went searching for it by asking the question. I cannot say I was conscious of all of them because they seemed to come to light only when I looked for them. And each one seems, in looking back, to be quite disconnected from the others. I don’t want to say that different mes were conscious of them because I thought there was only one me. I don’t want to say that I was unconscious of them until I pulled them into my consciousness because then I have to distinguish conscious-now experiences from consciously remembered experiences, and that I cannot do. I am stuck. … Time to calm the mind again. Take a clear, calm, spacious mind, and look; settle in, calm down, become still and then pop the question “What was I conscious of a moment ago?” I settle down. The myriad things appear and disappear. I pay attention to everything and nothing. I choose nothing above anything else; the mind gently alights on this and that, and lets go again. Nothing lasts. Things flow. Events come and go. Now. What was I conscious of a moment ago? I stop. I haven’t a clue. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But if I don’t know who does? Something truly terrible is here. There is no past. I have absolutely no idea what went before this. … I’m too scared to look straight into the void. It is not a blackness, nor any perceptible absence of anything. It just isn’t. Surely I dare. Yes I do. I will look. I will look in spite of the fear. Yet the appearance of this void is fleeting. It came as an instant and was washed away by clinging onto some new present thing. I must look again. I get a sense of a layer or film or imperceptible boundary from which this present moment is continuously appearing, but I cannot grasp or see it clearly. Something out of nothing. How can all this come out of nothing?
Discuss this chapter at the Ten Zen Blog Back Home To Sue Blackmore's Web Site Back to Ten Zen Home Page created 28 January
2009 |
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