Tuesday 29 November 2022

Bergson and Advaitic Superimposition (adhyasa)

 

Matthew Arnold reminded himself somewhere that he ought not to find himself everywhere.  That is a  perfectly sound stricture but here I am going to set it aside and indulge my synthesizing and syncretizing habit.  Neither Bergson nor Sankara came from Mars to astound the Earth with some utterly novel doctrine beyond anything which Earthlings could fathom.  That the lineaments of my assimilation be perfectly clear I will go briskly through what I think are interesting parallels.  In the samprajnata samadhi there is a resemblance to the pure perception of Bergson. Refer to my previous post. 

In those rare states of consciousness there is seeing but nobody sees, hearing but nobody hears etc.  or at least the identification with a jiva or person is exiguous.  This is practically next door to the pure asamprajnata or nirvikalpa samadhi in which there is just absorption into pure consciousness.  However as Sankara says the natural, ordinary, unreconstructed state is one in which there is full identification of the jiva and his states of mind.  What Bergson would say is that there is an element of pure perception in all our conscious states but that memory binds us to a personal history.  It is as though through memory a superimposition takes place.  The need to react to present demands brings the person down into a history.

"But inversely,, if recollection is regarded as a weakened perception, perception must be regarded as a stronger recollection. We are driven to argue as though it was given to us after the manner of a memory, as an internal state, a mere modification of our personality; and our eyes are closed to the primordial and fundamental act of perception, the act, constituting pure perception, whereby we place ourselves in the very heart of things. And thus the same error, which manifests itself in psychology by a radical incapacity to explain the mechanism of memory, will in metaphysics profoundly influence the idealistic and realistic conceptions of matter." (Matter and Memory pg.73)

You can discern here I think the suggestion that the condition of pure perception is primordial.  It is what the aggregate of images or the plenum of awareness that has as yet no personal centre implies.  The next step is the placing of all this or more correctly an edited version of this on a central ego This is the natural state.  This placing is what Sankara would call adhyasa.

  We never leave our total nature behind or otherwise enlightenment would be a mirage.

Monday 21 November 2022

Bergson and Pure Perception (Samprajnata Samadhi)

 “(64) if we start from representation itself, that is to say from the totality of perceived images. My perception, in its pure state, isolated from memory, does not go on from my body to other bodies; it is, to begin with, in the aggregate of bodies, then gradually limits itself and adopts my body as a centre. And it is led to do so precisely by experience of the double faculty, which this body possesses, of performing actions and feeling affections; in a word, by experience of the sensori-motor power of a certain image, privileged among other images.” (Matter and Memory)


This is extremely interesting and has its analogue in certain yogic states of awareness.  As he says the central image that is taken to be the centre of perception i.e. my body, has not yet been lit on.  There is just awareness without that awareness having a strong sense of location.  It is not fully established in the body but remains rapt in the aggregate of images that is to say that both sets of images, my body and that of the world have not as yet split.  This pure perception will of course have a centre and a radius but they are lightly held.


Wordsworth holds that primal condition of pure perception to be the basis of the poetic immersion in the moment, those ‘spots of time’


that blessed mood,

In which the burthen of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,—

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul:

(from ‘Tintern Abbey’)



Friday 18 November 2022

The Image in Bergson

 

What is the best way to read Bergson?  I would say, no more than 3 pages at a time.  Anymore will cause overheating .  It will take an hour probably.  It is said that a matchbox full of Aristotle weighs as much as the world.  Bergson is like that.  He reads smoothly of course but that is no indication of ease of comprehension.

My interim understanding of the source of his 'image' and 'the aggregate of images'.

The image is something like the image in a mirror.  It's there but it's also part of a totality which includes the person that is standing in front of it.  It's a  totality that can be broken into the various elements that can be considered on their own as though they were subsistent or free standing. So when Bergson writes about affection and perception this sort of division is reflected.  As I understand it the image represents the totality that we are immersed it.  The perception is of a really out there as it is thing and the affection is bodily.  But the bodily affection is also an image.  However the affection is subtilised and becomes cerebral excitations. 
And then he gravels you.
"Affection is, then, that part or aspect of the inside of  our body which we mix with the image of external  bodies; it is what we must first of all subtract from perception to get the image in its purity.'

Thursday 10 November 2022

Understanding Bergson

 “It is known to him to whom It is unknown; he does not know to whom It is known.  It is unknown to those who know well, and known to those who do not know.”  Kena Up. II.3


I was thinking of this when reading Bergson’s Matter and Memory again.  It’s a difficult book but the difficulty is of a different order to simple complexity and close reasoning.  You have to renounce your usual understanding of internal and external, idealism and realism by whatever name you call them.  Everything changes perceptually as I move my body around so to understand what is going on I have to begin with that central element.  Such is the common understanding, indeed the default position, when we turn our attention as thinkers to the problem.  When we are not thinkers and disciples of Descartes we find ourselves immersed in a non-dual world.  Bergson puts it thus:


Why insist in spite of appearances, that I should go from my conscious self to my body, then from my body to other bodies whereas in fact I place myself at once in the material world in general, and then gradually cut out within it the centre of action which I shall come to call my body and to distinguish from all others?