Hi,

I've been reading some articles about Self-Inquiry, a subject that seems interesting and confusing in the same degree

One of the things I read is that when doing the "Who am I?" inquiry, you get a new center from which to watch yourself and the world, located behind the eyeballs, and that it is called The Witness. I'm not sure if I can connect this with a recurring (yet intermittent) experience I have practicing some Taichichuan drills. It's an experience that at least five close fellow practitioners confessed to have experimented, with varying levels of expertise and years of practice, and I guess it's fairly common not only in Taichi but other martial arts which stress mental factors like Bagua and Xingyi.

The common experience is of finding other self center of referencing, that usually is along the central axis, the taoist dantiens: (below) navel, chest, eyebrow, and also top of the head, which of course correlates with chakras. This experience shows up in standing static meditation, performing a repetitive (circular) movement and doing the forms (following a martial choreography). Mostly with eyes closed but at least one reports with eyes opened. In my experience, this "new perspective" happens in its own, but there is a recurring factor: my eyes were staring either to the horizon or to the feet (bubbling wells). It's not an unitive experience, but of a bigger self, expanding or contracting in all directions, and the body feels really light, like waking over the waters.

Is this describing anything related to The Witness?

If it is, it would be interesting as a physical starting point of a Self-Inquiry practice, as a complement of Advaita Vedanta's mental practice.

If "you" are not behind your eyes now, where are "you" Pablo?

Sorry I can't add anything more interesting to your most interesting topic, but this point intrigues me greatly...

This except of a Chopra interview might be of interest. How dare a non-physicist talk about physics.... Get over it,!!! He's a smart guy. The Witness = the Observer (Father?). Mind = the process of observation (Son?). Physical reality = the observed (Holy Ghost?). (Holy Trinity?)

The Three-in-One State

Matter and energy aren’t enough to explain the universe. We propose that a third element must be added – Qualia – before anything approaching a unified description of reality will ever be possible. Efforts to devise the so-called Theory of Everything will come up woefully short if the third part of the trinity, consciousness, is left out. While the old quantum theory opened the door to consciousness, it is now time to make better sense of the unified whole, and consciousness does that.

Physicalists take consciousness as a given. They have no explanation for the emergence of mind; the transformation of atoms and molecules into mental events – feelings, sensations, wishes, dreams, scientific theories – goes unexplained. Mental events can be unified as Qualia, a term for all subjective perception. It is undeniable that we know the universe through subjective experience. Science itself is a subjective experience, despite the attempt to isolate and reduce objective facts and expel subjectivity.

It’s time to realize that subjectivity is the elephant in the room. It must be taken into account. Setting aside any other argument, the most basic reason for Qualia science is that, in the words of the late physicist John Wheeler, we live in a participatory universe. What does our participation consist of? Three things: observer, observed, and the process of observation. Quantum theory has wrestled with the latter two for a century, ever since it became invalid to treat waves and particles as fixed things “out there,” apart from the observer effect. The observer changes what he observes. That’s been undeniable in quantum mechanics for many decades. But the observer effect is often brushed aside as a minor glitch or as a factor that can be worked around.

We propose a three-in-one model that unites observer, observed, and process of observation. Their unity exists naturally, in our own experience. Hard as it is for physicalists to accept, there is no sunset, cloud, mountain, electron, or galaxy independent of a unified state that must include an observer and the process of observation. The total inadmissibility of this idea is a mark of how necessary it is. Science doesn’t describe reality (even Stephen Hawking has attested to this), it describes phenomena that fit various theories. It’s the map, not the territory.

The territory is reality, which is one and only, an undivided wholeness. What humans experience constitutes reality, since by definition whatever we can’t experience is inconceivable. We aren’t referring only to the five senses. As Peter Wilberg, one of the most astute and gifted qualia theorists, has explained, we don’t see because we have eyes. Eyes are physical organs that evolved to serve the mind’s desire to see. Mind comes first. It reaches out to experience reality through qualia, which embrace the five senses along with sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts in the mind.

As alien as it sounds to put mind first, one’s sense of strangeness reflects our habitual view of things. As long as materialism dominates, physicalists will always agree that the eye precedes sight, the brain the mind, and so on. It’s in the nature of new theories, when they are truly revolutionary, to overturn the existing paradigm. In his groundbreaking writing on perception, cognitive scientist Donald D. Hoffman has offered a model of perception that places the individual mind, which he calls a “conscious agent,” at the center of the reality. That is, he begins with experience as the measure of what exists. Wilberg takes perception even further, asserting that when we feel that something around us reflects a certain mood (the optimism of dawn, the cheerfulness of spring, the gloom of a dark, low-hanging clouds), it isn’t possible to claim that the mood belongs only to the observer or that it is separate from the thing being observed. The founders of quantum theory intuitively felt the same way, as attested by Schrödinger, Bohr, Heisenberg, and Pauli. Later on, Eugene Wigner and John von Neumann went even further - they claimed that consciousness was necessary to resolve the fundamental quantum measurement problem (i.e., the problem of how to account for the way that an observer effects what he observes.)

When qualia are fully understood, reality is three-in-one. The progression of quarks-quanta-qualia reflects the history of science. Discoveries unfolded in a line from the more inert and physical to the more subjective. But this should be reversed to qualia-quanta-quarks, which recognizes the undeniable fusion of observer-observed-process of observation. This reversal maps the natural way in which the universe becomes aware.

For anyone who can loosen their loyalties to the current scientific paradigm, the three-in-one model of nature isn’t opposed to current science; it’s more expanded and inclusive. Therefore, we consider it the natural next step. For example, in Nature it is self-evident that there is creation and destruction. The new cannot come about unless the old gives way. But creation and destruction are not isolated opposites randomly crashing into each other. They are connected. Through their connection, an emerging new thing takes into account information from the old thing. You can see this as you read a sentence. As one word passes out of sight and a new one appears, there is a stream of connection, known as meaning. The first word looks to the second word, and the second looks back at the first. “The-black-bear-is-climbing-a-tree. “ “The” tells you that a noun is coming. “Black tells you that the noun hasn’t arrived yet, but since “the” is still in mind, you await the noun, which arrives with “bear” and completes the phrase.
The point isn’t that one word has to follow another in a linear sentence. The point is that the appearance of new words, following on the disappearance of old words, builds a self-organized structure. From this simple example we see how the human brain is organized as an evolving organ. It operates as a feedback loop that integrates past, present, and future experiences. They form a dynamic process that keeps consuming itself and expanding into new life. This process occurs physically in the brain structures studied by neuroscientists. But without a mind to organize everything, the brain has no reason or ability to evolve. The passage of time is irrelevant; the same blue-green algae that emerged at the beginning of life have remained unchanged for billions of years.

Yet even one-celled organisms respond to the world by breathing, eating, dividing, heading for the light, and so on. Those responses were the first links in the feedback loop that eventually gave rise to the physical brain. Every experience is qualia, including the experience of blue-green algae. Thus we have a common link that can unify all phenomena that the mind can conceive of. Qualia medicine could one day explain spontaneous remission of cancer, for example. Cancer is marked by numerous changes at the genetic level, including complex changes in the “junk DNA” (formally known as “non-coding DNA”) that comprises over 96% of the human genome. Genes respond to the environment around them, which includes all the incoming information that passes from the bloodstream through the cell membrane. That information is controlled by the brain, and the brain is the processing center for all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images – qualia. The feedback loop closes in a dynamic, ever-changing circle that includes qualia at every level. Medical science has taken thirty years to accept the validity of the mind-body connection. Once it takes the next step into qualia, the difference between disease and wellness can be understood with the inclusion of personal experience. Present mind-body phenomena like the placebo effect, or the increased risk of illness caused by depression, will expand. Instead of being peripheral to “real” medicine (i.e., drugs and surgery), the mind-body connection will be central to prevention and wellness.
We’ve presented here only a sketch of the possibilities. A living universe must be considered as a strong possibility. It already is among far-seeing scientists. The library of books about a self-organizing cosmos is growing. Consciousness is no longer a taboo subject at scientific conferences. What’s lacking is a unifying model for the countless things that remain unexplained by physicalism. It may sound incredible that the entire universe is the product of mind, whether we are speaking metaphorically as Einstein did (“I want to know the mind of God’ everything else is just details”) or literally, as qualia theory does. But science proceeds by accepting the simplest hypothesis that fits what needs to be explained. As a three-in-one state, reality can be explained far more simply, we claim, than using random chance and bouncing particles to explain the emergence of the mind’s richness, creativity, and intelligence.

Self enquiry is such an elegant technique.

It brings you to the realization that there are three things, whereas we are used to only one or two things. We are used to looking out at physical reality as the one thing, and sometimes we can watch our thoughts (the second thing). But the third thing is to ask "ok, I can see the computer screen (one), and I can be aware of the mind's perceiving of the screen (two), but what is aware of the mind's perceiving? (three).

He! That's a good question, and I don't have a good answer to give. Were I being forced to give one, I'd say that "I" am in every physical and mental object sensed, and this "I" is an agglomeration of the senses. But that's kind of sketchy, isn't it?

And what is The Witness then? Just a slight variation of that agglomeration, a new agglomeration with it's own physical perspective? And that this Agglomeration B collides with Agglomeration A, competing for the interpretation of the sensed objects?

How do you trigger the Witness through a physical exercise?
(if and only if what I wrote in the OP is correct)

My hypothesis is that you put yourself in a situation where there are opposing directives, and when the mind freezes up unable to decide where to go, and fearing of falling (you are standing up), it clings to whatever is available, and that's the center of gravity, kind of a last resort, something deep in the brain and totally unconscious (if you don't pay attention to).

The Taichi exercises I have in mind involves feeling stretched in one dimension (up-down) or two dimensions (up-down and front-back). By doing the exercise slowly and mindfully, at one point the mind may face (or may not) this contradiction and freezes up. Relaxing the mind and the force of gravity do the trick, but if you go for it, it won't happen.

I haven't been doing it lately, I'll resume the practice with that in focus to see if I can give a more detail description.

Question: Doesn't it has some Any parallels with Zen's koan practices here?

Interesting, thanks CCC!

Some rumblings ramblings (I'm no expert, but please indulge me):

Over 200 years ago, Immanuel Kant settled down once and for all the +2000 years debate between atomists (empirism) and idealists (rationalism). He said that the clue is not any of those, but the connection between them [ Wikipedia , The Copernical Revolution in Philosophy ]. And that clearly connects with that Qualia stuff.

Instead, the problem with the "The observer changes what he observes" in physics experiments is more of an atomist posture as actually the problem is that in order to analyze the characteristic of particles, the physics method is to collide two of them to see what happens and thus infer things. A small particle clashing a big one is no problem, because the later is affected only little. But a problem shows up when two small particles collide, there's too much impact on both of them. That's kind of the Uncertainty Principle. I think that the physicists you mentioned might then be extrapolating it to consciousness.

So, this matches with Co-Dependent Arising, that seems like an "atomist" view (replacing atoms by field) once those objects already emerged. But where do they emerge from? The Wuji, Emptiness, etc, where everything potentially exists. Awareness is possible in the field, not in the Wuji, so awareness is a "created" object, and thus subject to Co-Dependent Arising and cause&effect like any other object.

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I think the point of self-inquiry is to find that there is nothing there. No body is home.Being nothing there, there is only one thing which is the hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, body sense and thinking.

This is just adding on to what has already been said on this thread, not contradicting it.

jack