On freedom of speech and modern Russian history

If you read today's news in Russia, you would find out that today, October 30, is officially the Day commemorating the victims of political repression. Sixty years ago, had I written about the things I write (and about to write) today, I would have probably been imprisoned and killed. Thirty years ago I would have probably "only" been talking to KGB and having trouble in my everyday life. Awareness of that fact sends chills of self-reflection down my spine. 

I remember how on my freshman year in university (2005) I protested against being taught the Lenin's theory of reflection as a foundational worldview in our general psychology class. At the time I was naively into constructivist epistemology and thought that naïve materialism was too ancient to be seriously taught as a basic foundation for general psychology. For me it was like, "Come on, I went through so much trouble and self-sacrifice to get the scholarship; and now what I get is studying Lenin? You gotta be kidding. No, it seems you're not. You're absolutely serious. Oh. My. God." (And that's when my total disillusionment with the Russian academia began. Given the fact that I had almost no illusions regarding the Russian academia, it wasn't coming down to earth, it felt more like coming down six feet under earth altogether.)

I found the imposed ideology to be quite outdated and was sincerely struck by the cruel reality that almost twenty years after the Soviet Union collapsed many of the faculty members still (successfully) tried to teach psychology the way it was taught in the communism-dominated past. That time I just had a "serious talk" with a teacher who strongly advised me against undermining the dominating paradigm as I would get into a big trouble at my exams. I didn't take that too seriously, but still decided not to stir up a hornets' nest and let it go. The point here is: in the early 1980s, I would have probably provoked something bad to happen to me in terms of academic career for such remarks.

Given the cruel history of the totalitarian regime in this country (which itself is grounded in the history of Czarist Russia), no wonder that, historically, Russians have so much trouble of directly and honestly assessing and addressing the problems of the way we currently live. For many decades, survival has depended on one's capacity to doublethink. Truthful self-reflection was a dangerous trait that may have triggered serious anxiety. Through generations this became an unselfconscious cultural norm; and some complex sociocultural defense mechanisms emerged over the centuries to perpetuate the cultural morphic field of this frequency.

Now it pervades the society as a hidden factor; and not many people are actually aware of how this cultural background works in themselves. Most attempts to take a different perspective on life trigger vicious self-defense as the center of developmental gravity in the population seemingly tends to self-defensive and conformist selves (in terms of Susann Cook-Greuter's ego development theory). Instant gratification under the condition of stressful chaotically-changing environment is the dominating mode of discourse in Russian business and politics; and there seems to be no space for complex systems solutions in the Russian mind. Collective reflexology at its best.

Losev's dialectical phenomenology

Here is why you have got to love Aleksei Losev. A section from a book on the history of Russian philosophy (it's a very nice section, even though the book itself totally transcends the meaning of the term outdated in that it says that Losev's fate remains "wholly unknown"):

"Husserl", [Losev] writes, "went only halfway; he has no relational eidetics. <…> I must admit that there are points at which my methods will never tally with those of pure phenomenology <…>; I consider the purely dialectical method my principal method. <…> "Meaning" must be explained in its own semantic relations, in the structural interconnection and self-generation of meaning."

These last words express the point of departure of Losev's theoretical constructions, and his basic intuition, very well. For him the "meanings" which are revealed in phenomenological analysis are connected in a kind of semantic unity; it seems likely that this basic intuition is a reflection of Solovyov's doctrine of "total-unity". Losev, like Frank and Karsavin, is guided in his reflections by an intuition of "total-unity", he is profoundly convinced that "dialectic is the sole method capable of grasping living reality as a whole." This primordial perception of reality as a "whole" is not itself derivable from the "phenomenological reduction". And it is prior to the dialectical method, i. e. it is not derived from dialectic but, on the contrary, this "interconnection and self-generation of meaning is presupposed in dialectic itself. <…> Losev, however, supplements phenomenology with dialectic because he is a metaphysician prior to any "strict" method. Such in essence is the meaning of Losev's assertion that "dialectic is a genuine realism, the only possible philosophic realism." <...> [B]ut, of course, Losev is speaking not of the purely empirical "realism" which is sanctified by the doctrine of Neo-Marxism. The following words are characteristic in this connection: "Immediacy alone [i.e. purely empirical material] is not enough." (Zenkovsky V. V., 2003 [The rest of the section can be read in Google Books.])

In the previous post I have written on the importance of the immediacy in communication; and what I meant was this kind of phenomenology supported with dialectical analysis. My own experience tells that immediacy alone is not enough, for in the phenomenological stream the importance of an opening towards authentic encounter tends to fade away when consciousness gets flooded with secondary material (such as psychodynamic transferential systems that distort communication to a great extent), especially when the structure of consciousness is not capable of simultracking both constant phenomenological and dialectical/structural flows of reality co-enactment.

Beautiful moment, do not pass away!

This magic moment
So different and so new
Was like any other
Until I met you
And then it happened
It took me by surprise
I knew that you felt it too
I could see it by the look in your eyes...
— "This magic moment" by Lou Reed 

This fleeting moment of the few seconds when you encounter a particular person for the first time is evasive. And yet such a moment seems to convey much more information on the potentials of your relationship with that person than we used to think. In fact, it seems likely that the first moment you encounter a person is the most telling (and precious) one, given the unconscious way we follow through most of our social life. I would argue that it might be a source for holographic representation (proconstruction and prognosis, to be more precise) of that person and his or her current & hidden potentials (and dangers), at least in terms of the multilevel space that you share with the individual. And, luckily enough, the potentials of the first encounter can be unleashed in enhanced states of consciousness through certain kinds of integrated awareness training, which makes this notion a very useful and powerful tool in communication.

Two months ago I stumbled upon a book that supported my longterm intuition that in many cases the power of the first impression, the moment of first seeing the face of the other, looking into her or his eyes, hearing the voice, touching the skin provided all the necessary information so as to predict the generalized trajectory of the relationship with that individual. The book I'm speaking about is Blink by Malcolm Gladwell; and it is quite a short account that explores different aspects of rapid cognition, "the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye." One might agree or disagree with certain interpretations that are given by the author, but for me the book was a treasure of anecdotal and experimental evidence for finally letting myself into a more conscious applying of this fleeting (holographic and dialectic) rapid cognition. In my opinion, this is a kind of intuition one is definitely advised to exercise and find practical application in everyday life.

And, of course, there are some dangers of misinterpreting culturally- and biologically-conditioned biases for genuine rapid cognition that provides accurate first impressions. The moment of authentic encounter, which seems to require being in stillness for accessing it, is very fleeting; and the conditioned reflexes are quick to jump in. Moreover, the way we ordinarily interact with each other tends to belong to a very limited band of the spectrum of consciousness that we have access to; instead of multidimensional communication we are usually confined to a very narrow kind of everyday awareness that reduces the quality of our intersubjective modes of being indefinitely. The less we are aware of the communication that we are open to, the more it is that we talk to mannequins instead of people; and the easier it is for (conscious and unconscious) tricksters to manipulate us into situations we would normally avoid being involved with.

In my own experience, I found that one of the common and widespread traps in everyday living that activates our unconscious reactivity (rather than responsibility) seems to be psychodynamic transferential & countertransferential communication loops. Freud fairly believed that unsolved transferences seem to be the phenomenon that permeates all human relationships; and sometimes a relationship among people can be limited to that ancient and dusty transferential/countertransferential struggle. It is important to train awareness of transferential relationships in one's own life so as to therapeutically resolve them and bring forth more mature and integrated modes of being.

By the way, in the very first paragraph of this post I used the term holographic as a metaphor in order to evoke a certain attitude of perceiving the world as vast integrated networks of interconnected and dynamically-unfolding occasions (and perspectives on those occasions as well). Another useful metaphor for the potential of the holographic immediacy is the notion of the Indra's net, which is described by Francis Harold Cook as following:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring. (Cook F. H., 1977)

 Image created by Charles Gunn of the Technische Universität Berlin. It is a still from the movie Not Knot!, published by A K Peters Ltd. (Source)

Interestingly enough, the perspective on the moment of encounter to be a source of multidimensional potentials that can be tapped into in enhanced modes of being and awareness seems to be that of a dialectic, if nondual, perspective on the nature of the Kosmos as it is, which is reflected in the kosmology of Ancient Greeks. Aleksei Losev, who becomes one of my favorite philosophers to quote, in his philosophical study (dated 1927) of the ancient views on the Kosmos and their relationship to the contemporary science describes the first basic foundation of a dialectic formulation in the antique kosmology:

First basic foundation. The Kosmos is indivisible, i. e. it has a becoming, or continually changing, intensity of itself as of a oneness of some kind. <...> The first basic foundation of the antique Kosmos maintains that, however much you divide the Kosmos, the smallest part you would get could be in turn divided into as many parts as one wishes. If the Kosmos, taken as a whole, consists of the infinite amount of parts, then any part of it also consists of the infinite amount of parts, and in this regard the entire Kosmos and any part of it are absolutely identical. <...> This means that the Kosmos is both divisible, for any parts of it are possible to exist, and indivisible, for in every part of it the Kosmos is manifested in its entirety, and, again, one could divide it as much as one wishes. (Losev A. F. Antichniy kosmos i sovremennaya nauka [Ancient Kosmos and the contemporary science], 1927)

I find that this paragraph functions as a very solid formulation to illustrate how the realities in question may be grounded in a dialectical perspective on the Kosmos. I would note that it might be important to stand on the shoulders of giants in order to at least partially ensure the validity and reliability of both theoretical and empirical accounts; and, also, the feeling of resonance with some of the greatest minds in the history of mankind (such as the greatest of Greeks) is inspiring.

The Kosmos experienced is the Kosmos experiencing

In the cartography of my experience there is one that I treasure much. What I speak about is an experience of the Kosmos—at least that is so in my interpretation. It should be noted right away that in contrast to cosmos, the term Kosmos describes not just the physical world, or the physiosphere, but rather the entire universe of phenomena, which includes physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere, and pneumasphere.

For Ancient Greeks, at least for some of those, who were savvy enough to leave a philosophical legacy, the fabric of the Kosmos was that of objects in all those realms: physical realities (of the physiosphere), biological realities (of the biosphere), mental realities (of the noosphere), and spiritual realities (of the pneumasphere). Greeks maintained that there was nothing outside the Kosmos; and the entire world of sensibilia, intelligibilia, and transcendelia in the broadest sense of those terms was something that is inherent to it. A. F. Losev, a brilliant Russian dialectical philosopher, has spent almost the entire 20th century on studying and interpreting the ancient kosmology; and in his own words:

So, there is nothing besides the Kosmos? Indeed. Then the Kosmos depends only on itself? Yes, it does. Then it is liberated? Sure, it is. No one has created it, no one has saved it, no one has been watching it. <...> If everything exists only in the Kosmos and there is nothing besides it, if it expresses itself, and if how it expresses itself is the Absolute, then it is not simply the Kosmos, but... a creation of art. In terms of the entire aesthetics of Antiquity, the Kosmos is the best, the most consummate creation of art. (Losev A. F. "Dvenadsat' tezisov ob antichnoy kulture [Twelve theses on antique culture]." Studencheskiy meridian, 1983, N9-10. [Note: This paragraph is translated by me; the academic translation is accessible here.])

It is hard for me to describe the Kosmic consciousness in terms of experiences and states. These words are somewhat deceitful in how they convey the phenomenon, as if you were the subject experiencing the object (the Kosmos), while this entire subject-experiencing-object schema exists in the space which is the face of the Kosmos itself. 

It is awareness of the oneness with the entire manifested universe that is aware of you at this moment; and not the opposite, for the moment it is the opposite, the opposite transfigures. You are the object of this awareness; and the moment you become aware of it you realize an ever-present condition of being what you truly are, infinite, joyful, and encompassing Kosmic consciousness. What follows is the experience of understanding that, if paraphrasing Meister Eckhart, the Kosmos is closer to me than I am to myself. I am nothing but a spark in the vortex of the living memory of that which is always already closer to me than my fleeting identity will ever be.

And here, in the very heart of the Kosmos, which is the very heart of yourself, everything vibrates with love, passion, and devotion.

Catching really big fish

If it were not for various states of heightened creativity and flow, there would be no underlying reason for starting this blog. In fact, this journal is rooted in altered states of consciousness. The very process of writing brings you into a different pattern of being and dialoguing with reality. If searching for heightened states in some ways can be likened to fishing, then this blog is devoted to catching really big fish. (For those interested in further exploration of this metaphor, I recommend a beautiful book Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity by David Lynch.)

The big fish of this blog is any states of profound appreciation and curiosity for whatever is arising moment to moment in the ocean of experience. The states in question correlate with radical deepening of one's own capacity to make sense of existence. Whether existence makes sense or not seems to depend upon qualitative features of the state of consciousness you are currently in. It is not just that an altered state helps you look at the same situation from a different angle, thus bringing, say, insight instead of despair; it is more likely that a change in functioning of consciousness helps to (partially) construct a different occasion as it literally enacts a new worldspace. A worldspace always has an array of features attached to it; and one of those features can be a degree of whether (and how much) I feel my existence makes sense or not.

This is not simply a shift in subjective (mental or emotional) processes of assessing the world, for (as it became clear in the 20th century) dynamics in consciousness corresponds with dynamics in the objective brain and behavior. Any shift in the pattern of subjective functioning correlates with some change in the objective brain state and other components of the overall organism system (such as endocrine regulation and so on). Furthermore, as shown by research, if plugging into an altered state is done repeatedly over a long course of time (e.g. in longterm meditation training), this may even lead to morphological change in the brain structure (in case of meditation there is evidence for increased cortical thickness [Lazar S. W. et al, 2005]).

Thus, there is something intrinsically and crucially real to the very fact that we can cultivate a habit of plugging into (and co-creating) certain domains of experience (by tapping into various states of consciousness). If we habitually tap into meaningful modes of being, we actually affect our biology. (And our subjective attitudes can do both good and harm; for instance, a recent study [O’Donovan A. et al., 2008] has shown that dispositional pessimism may contribute to telomere shortening, which increases risk for disease and early mortality in post-menopausal women.) This also influences the quality of our interaction with others, thus helping to engage in a more healthy kind of relationships with our sociocultural environment.

Epistemologically, in the course of perceptual microgenesis we, the subjects, do not just reflect a pregiven world, the objects; in broad terms, we actually co-construct the stream of objects while similtaneously being co-constructed ourselves (through, for instance, self-reflection, our relationships with others, and even food that we eat) as we're naturally immersed into the vast fields of our sociocultural environment. It is worth mentioning that Ken Wilber speaks of this construction process as of tetra-construction, because such a process always involves a matrix of subjective, objective, (intersubjective) cultural, and (interobjective) socioenvironmental dimensions—and not just the good 'ole pure subject and object dichotomy. (Of course, these constructed matrices seem to behave as resonating fields of various degrees of complexity, flexibility, and structure that may be more or less crystallized through conditioning and reinforcement.)

Ironically, by the 21st century we've become extremely adept at both individually and collectively deconstructing our flows of experience into the sense of dullness and despair. In some sense, these socially-reinforced habits of deconstruction, depersonalization, and derealization are our constructions, too; this understanding makes them objects of our awareness, which is important in order to use those as a means to fulfilling our dreams rather than enforcing nightmares. This might be a propitious time for bringing more mindfulness to the patterns of being that we construct in the dynamic multilevel system of our existence so as to enable a space of more creative ways to making sense of whatever it is that we are.

Pandorum as a real pathology

Spoiler alert: The reader is advised to watch Pandorum (2009) prior to reading this psychological interpretation of the movie.

Pandorum is a fictional psychopathological syndrome induced by prolonged space travel. Its symptoms include severe paranoia, vivid hallucinations, and homicidal tendencies. The onset of pandorum can be triggered by psychological trauma under stress conditions of space flight.

In the movie, one of the characters experiences acute pandorum when receiving the shocking news that the Earth has been destroyed. He kills other crew members and single-handedly takes charge of the giant spaceship that has been launched to colonize an Earth-like planet locating far from the Solar system. He decides to play God and wakes up thousands of colonists from their hyper-sleep and locks them away into the darkness of the spaceship. When the spaceship finally reaches the destination planet, he prevents colonization of the land by not initiating an ejection of the last hyper-sleep cameras with colonists aboard onto the planetary surface. He is stuck with himself; and he chooses to continue the pathological self-play, even if that means destruction of the last remnants of mankind. He has fostered creation of a dark pleromatic world inside the spaceship; and he makes the choice to reign in Hell, for this artificially-created hell provides comfortable boundaries to his personality. The boundaries that, as he hopes, are never to be breached.

Even though it is a work of fiction, it might be the case that cinematically-described pandorum accurately reflects the psychological reality of one commonly-shared developmental pathology. Psychological development runs as a series of disidentifications from old ways of being and subsequent identifications with new ones. When the old world is lost and the new world isn't found yet, the sense of disorientation arises. "I have lost everything; and in the world of nothingness I may do whatever I want," and that's when the self falls prey to the infinite loop of pandorum. I bound myself to playing a very limited game. I do my best to prevent the change of that condition, for the status quo lets me stay in the trap of the self-contracted ego. This is the trap I'm adapted to, while the perspective of an unknown world is uneasy. Here, in the self-created hell I feel powerful; "I am a spider and this is my web, the web that I weave."

And once the pathological condition is set—once the web is finally woven—the self is going to defend it at all costs. Salvation is so near; and yet I'm so afraid to let go that I use all my powers to enforce the current disposition, both consciously and unconsciously. Instead of using my potential to explore the land of the new, I focus my energies on sticking to the present condition. There's nothing more important than my current zone of comfort; nothing else matters. In order to defend itself, the pathological condition creates its own immune system. The fixation occurs. I'm getting lost in myself; and others bring danger. ("Wherever there is other, there is fear," as the Upanishads put it.) The pandorum's box is open, all evils are unleashed. Pathology's perpetuated, development's deceased.

Why is there something rather than nothing?

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" Schelling asked. Is there any other question worth asking?

The question itself is pointing to the mystery of what is, of what ever had been and ever will be. The question is the heartbeat of the ever-present wonder of being alive. The question is a pointing out instruction, it's the instruction that points to the dark side of the moon of everyday living. This dark side is that which remains unseen but which nevertheless exists and whispers mysterious syllables into your ears. That whisper is something that raises profound curiosity in your soul. The state of being curious catalyzes an opening to something far beyond the trance of ordinary life. This curiosity feels as something that life is about. It is about showing interest in life's secrets. To see a mystery in the ordinary, to recognize the depth beneath the surface of mirrors staring at each other means to accept responsibility for the unfolding of one's own life, moment by moment by moment. Digging up the grave of your being, coming out of the casket of your hiding is what brings you into this brand new world of darkness and luminosity.

Writing poems of appreciation and singing songs of love, interweaving different perspectives on existence with each other in an ultimate fluctuating synthesis is a way of showing our gratitude to that great dialogical nature of creation. And when you get this, you're approaching the turbulence that is destined to shake all your previous assumptions and attachments through death and rebirth of something that's ready for fun and spontaneous dance of forms. The whirlpool of change, the tornado of transmutation. Be willing to sacrifice your hut for a palace and your palace for the universe. Why not let go, indeed?