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..:: Observations ::..
By
Alan Schneider
The role of the observer in our observations has only very
recently come to the attention and scrutiny of science. Amazingly, for
the bulk of its existence, science has had an externalized
perception of experimentation that has assumed that the human
consciousness conducting scientific observation was of little
consequence as long as the scientific method of inquiry was strictly
adhered to as the means of investigation, a trend that reached its
mechanistic peak with the philosophy of behaviorism propounded by B. F.
Skinner in the mid-twentieth century. Behaviorism flatly denied the
existence of internal personal consciousness, treated the organism as a
superficial physical entity, and focused on behavior modification
conditioning techniques as the method of treatment of all mental
disorders. Fortunately, this robotic approach to human behavior and
perception was offset, and later eclipsed by, humanistic and
transpersonal psychology in the latter half of the same century. With
the exception of such ill-conceived aberrations, the advent of
scientific psychological investigation, beginning in the late nineteenth
century, stressed the importance of the observer’s total mindset,
intellectual capacity, and belief system, marking the birth of a new
level of understanding of the experimental method that is, however,
still very much under development at this writing. Enough progress in
this area has been made by now to suggest some type of framework
regarding the current level of perception in scientific experimentation.
In today’s conception of experimentation, at least three
factors are seen by sufficiently sophisticated individuals as
contributing to the experimental process – the experimenters themselves,
the experiment proper, and the macro environment in which the experiment
takes place. All three are interactive in determining the outcome of any
experimental procedure, but particularly of social and psychological
scientific experiments, strongly affected as they are by the society and
culture in which they take place. The experimental mindset is the
product of both acculturation and personal psychology, as they reinforce
each other along what are often subconscious, unperceived
behavioral vectors.
Why do certain societies and individuals seem to be oriented
toward the mass production of utility objects (cars, houses, technology,
equipment), while others are oriented towards esthetic production
(artwork, music, literature, cuisine), others seem to have only basal
economic production (subsistence agriculture, fishing, and handcraft
manufacturing), and still others exhibit no, or only primitive,
production orientations to speak of at all? How do social background
conditions effect perception and experimentation with new options? How
and why do we select what is worthy of study or experimental
investigation in the first place? Why? Because cultural conditioning
determines personal and collective attitudes and choices.
The observer inherits and internalizes personal belief from
the culture of origin through the acculturation process. Now, it may be
true that inherited behavioral traits influence some of the acculturated
choices made, but the heavy influence of the social environment on those
choices cannot be ignored. Unless other, outside factors are introduced
into the psychological equation, the individual tends to follow the lead
of first the family of origin, then the extended family of relatives and
clan, then the local community, and finally the macro-communities of
state and nation. Under these circumstances, the selection of
experimental environments deemed to be worthy of investigation is
probably more the outcome of what is not rejected through the
filter of acculturation than what is classified as socially appropriate
by that filter.
The onslaught of science in the twentieth, and now twenty
first, centuries was driven by the ego’s natural fixations with
convenience, comfort, control, and power over the external
physical environment, augmented by the expanding human intellectual
capacity for rational thought that took place in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. As we emerged from the Dark Ages, our
understanding of the physical world literally exploded through the
application of science, and continues to do so now. But, when the light
of scientific inquiry is turned back upon us, many
problems and paradoxes are seen to emerge. The impact of conditioning
becomes apparent for the decisive influence that it brings to bear on
awareness, perception, and choice. This can be illustrated by the simple
example of the well-known ambiguous-figure experiments now so common in
many psychology courses.
For example, one famous ambiguous figure is capable of being
perceived as either an unattractive old woman, or a beautiful young
woman, depending on the instructional cues given by a moderator. If the
observer is cued to see the old woman, the frontal aspects of this
individual’s face are indicated. If the observer is cued to see the
young woman, the same set of cues is administered, but in a different
order of presentation, and using different descriptive terminology –
that of a young girl looking over her shoulder. The visual content
itself does not change, but the first observer will invariably identify
the old woman’s weathered face, while the second will identify the young
girl! This is essentially the acculturation process, as seen in the
microcosm of one discreet example. Now, it is noteworthy here that the
physical organism does seem to have some inherent tendencies to
respond favorably to certain physical situations and contexts. A
rectangle of certain proportions – known as the Golden Ratio – is
generally perceived as the most pleasing to the eye, and this came to be
the dimension used in almost all television screens! When a strobe light
is flashed at some frequencies, the result is perceived as stimulating,
others are dangerously aggravating, while still others will induce
hypnosis. Situations that imply the threat of harm to a subject will
tend to elicit heightened states of organismic arousal in experimental
observers. But, the generally decisive role of conditioning in
perception and choice cannot be denied. We select what we are taught to
select, and perceive what we are taught to perceive. This is the essence
of the observer’s role in the experimental situation – selection through
conditioning.
The tendency to ignore the observer was maximized in
Newtonian physics, the pinnacle of science for many decades. When
Einstein introduced Relativity physics in the twentieth century, his
theories hinged on the critical feature of the observer’s motion
affecting the observations made. As is well known, only one constant
emerged in the Relativistic paradigm – the speed of light in a vacuum –
all else was shown by Einstein to be completely relative to the
observer’s location and motion – even the perception of time.
Quantum theory took this one step further, demonstrating that it is not
possible to simultaneously know a particle’s location and
momentum – only approximations of either or both are possible in what
came to known as Quantum uncertainty. In fact, Irwin Von
Schrödinger, the father of quantum mechanics, demonstrated that the
observer literally creates the outcome of an observation in the
process of making it! Prior to this point, the experiment and the
outcome exist in what he called a “Black Box”, or chaotically
nondeterministic, condition about which nothing can be known. Such
theories stood Newtonian physics on its head, revealing what an
inexact science it really was.
If we essentially create what we observe by observing
it, this must also apply to our choices of experimental investigation.
We must create what we choose to observe in the first place. If culture
determines choice, where does culture itself come from? From history?
From human experience? And where does our capacity to create through
observation come from? How and why did the human “mutation from zero to
everything” – the advent of our sentient self-perception and
observational capability – come to be?
At least in part, it would seem to be supported by science
that we evolved into our present state of manifestation from
lower, non-sentient, or only partially sentient, life forms. At some
point in the evolutionary process, the size and complexity of the brain
must have passed a critical threshold that enabled sentience. What this
suggests is that sentience implies the capacity for self-observation. We
simply emerged at some point in evolutionary history into a condition
where we realized the capacity for self-creation through
self-observation! Prior to that point, everything is a quantum Black Box
about which nothing historical can be known. And in the sense of
observational reality, any observation occurring under
prehistoric conditions was an implicit self-observation, because human
beings then did not have the capacity to clearly distinguish between
themselves and their environments, or between themselves and each other.
It is a matter of the greatest irony that we have achieved the
realization, after millennia of externally focused observations, that we
are creating our reality when we observe what we had thought was the
separated external world, and this “thinking” was a cumulative cultural
and historical error of perception!
When we elect to voluntarily suspend the observational
process through meditation, a very interesting manifestation occurs –
the phenomenal world – the world as experienced through the senses, and
interpreted by the ego – disappears, and is replaced by a non-analytic,
non-interpretive stream of consciousness that is experienced as
originating from beyond any personal organismic boundaries. It would
seem that when we abandon the ego as the cultural focus of observation,
we immediately begin to return to the primordial state of primitive
humanity – collective perception occurring in an individual context.
This is the original group-mind that is always functioning beneath our
conscious perception, and can be experienced as having a common point of
origin at the center of the psyche and psychic manifestation. This
location was known to Jung as the Self. For Jung, and Freud as well,
consciousness was created from inside out – the only difference between
the two was in terms of how far “in” the center of the process was
located, and whether “in” eventually became “out” – i.e. outside the
physical boundary of the organism. For Freud, the psyche was limited to
the ego, the superego, and the id. For Jung, these regions – all of
which are bounded by the physical body – were only the beginning of the
psyche, which extended well into the non-determinate regions of
collective perception and racial memory.
If the Self is the origin of experience, and is indeed
located beyond the body, the implication must be acknowledged that all
of the ego’s observations are invalid, that culture is statistical
fiction enforced by trauma, collective perception is the ultimate
reality, and that reality itself originates from one point
in consciousness – the point of original observation that
establishes original creation. This is the only logical
conclusion to the current direction of scientific thought in physics –
if we create through observing, then there must be a first observer
somewhere achieving a first creation.
In fact, we have arrived at
the place in history where science is suggesting at every turn that the
traditional logic of object presupposing subject is dead wrong, and it
is the subject which presupposes the object. As incredible as it seems,
the universe once thought to be a vast machine now appears more and more
to be an infinite intelligence that exists beyond our limited sensory
perception of physical manifestation. If this is the case, as it
increasingly appears now to be, then the Saints and Sages throughout
history have been right all along in their insistence that there is a
concerned Intelligence directing human affairs from an ultimately
benevolent motivational frame of reference, however distant and
intangible that Intelligence may be. If this is the case, then it is our
moral, intellectual, and psychological responsibility to become and
remain as open on every level to the possibility of this
Presence, and attempt to understand what that Presence may be attempting
to communicate to us here and now in our apparently transitory state of
incarnate physical manifestation. This is our greatest perceptual
challenge today – to understand and accept the inconceivable
reality that science has assured us nonetheless exists – we are the
living recipients of the original Spark of Creation, and manifest that
Spark in every choice we make. Let us then choose with love, wisdom, and
compassion!
- With Love, Alan -
(CR2008, Alan Schneider)
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