Pure awareness experience

Abstract

I am aware of the red and orange autumn leaves. Am I aware of my awareness of the leaves? Not so according to many philosophers. By contrast, many meditative traditions report an experience of awareness itself. I argue that such a pure awareness experience must have a non-sensory phenomenal character. I use Douglas Harding's first-person experiments for assisting in recognising pure awareness. In particular, I investigate the gap where one cannot see one's head. This is not a mere gap because I seem to be looking from here. Critically, I claim, the experience of looking from here has a nonsensory phenomenal character. I argue that this sense of being aware cannot be reduced to egocentric visual-spatial relations nor the viewpoint because it continues when I close my eyes. Neither is a multisensory origin sufficient to explain why I seem to be at this central point rather than elsewhere. Traditionally, claims of a pure awareness experience have been restricted to highly trained individuals in very restricted circumstances. The innovation of Harding's approach is that it reliably isolates a candidate for pure awareness using methods which can be replicated at any time.

The Phenomenology of “Pure” Consciousness as Reported by an Experienced Meditator of the Tibetan Buddhist Karma Kagyu Tradition. Analysis of Interview Content Concerning Different Meditative States

“…There are irreconcilable differences of opinion about whether "pure" consciousness is logically and nomologically possible or whether consciousness per se can be experienced. For philosophers (e.g., [45][46][47][48]) who defend the notion of "pure" consciousness, a phenomenological constraint must be satisfied for it to emerge; that is, at least one feature must be instantiated at the phenomenal level, and at least one quale must be instantiated. The difference between "pure" consciousness sensu minimal emptiness and "pure" consciousness sensu absolute emptiness consists exactly in the fact whether or not this phenomenological constraint is satisfied.…”

Body, Self and Others: Harding, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on Intersubjectivity

“…The feeler has to be empty to take on the thing felt. Similarly, I see the sky not my eyes, I hear the sounds of birds not my ears, I smell the laksa cooking not my nose and taste the chocolate not my tongue 17 . As Giles points out, in general my first-person body is my perception of the world:…”

“…Harding's phenomenology was primarily inspired by nondual religious traditions such as Buddhism [16][17][18] and in particular the mysticism of the Perennial Philosophy [19]. However, rather than taking them on faith he always sought to test the truth or falsity of religious claims (and common-sense claims) by reasoning, consistency with science and direct experience.…”

“…For examples of the pointing experiment see Ramm [16] (p. 153), [17] (p. 10), [18] (p. 8). 6 For versions of the holding your ears experiment see Harding [19] (pp.…”

Embodied observations from an intrinsic perspective can entail quantum dynamics

“…While the former assumes that (access) consciousness is the outcome of a process of increasing complexity [1], the latter assumes that (phenomenal) consciousness is fundamentally devoid of cognitive complexity [28,42]. Indeed, here "pure awareness" is just the mere potential to become aware of something and the ability to apprehend whatever appears [28,42,58,[60][61][62]. This could be considered a more precise definition of what we are referring to as the intrinsic perspective.…”