INTRODUCTION Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 PART II Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 PART III Page 1 Page 2 PART IV Page 1 Page 2 APPENDIX A APPENDIX B NOTES Notes 1-15 Notes 16-35 Notes 36-44 Notes 45-56

Part II. ZONE #1: The Insides of the Interior (page 1)

Overview

      The basic theme of this presentation is that any occasion or event can be acknowledged and addressed from the inside and the outside of the interior and the exterior in singular and plural forms--a bit of a mouthful summarized in figure 2.

     Each of these 8 dimension-perspectives are, in essence, an "event horizon," a phenomenological worldspace, a horizon of events which itself is enacted by the subject perceiving/touching/knowing it. (More technically, a worldspace tetra-enacted by the holons prehending it, a probability space of finding certain events in certain locales of the AQAL ocean.)

     An event horizon means, for example, that if I assume a first-person mode of awareness (if I manifest my existence in the mode of a first-person perspective) and then, in that mode, explore the events or phenomena that arise or manifest themselves to that stance, what does that inquiry disclose or bring forth? Event horizons include, for example, the multifarious phenomena within an "I," within a "we," within an "it," as well as outside an "I," outside a "we," outside an "it," and so on.

     These 8 event horizons or worldspaces each have a different landscape. But these landscapes are by no means merely geographical, physical, sensorimotor, or exterior landscapes, which are event horizons that occur only when I manifest my being-in-the-world in a third-person mode and then describe the landscape thus enacted. In other words, when my existence appears in a third-person mode, then the world around me likewise appears in a third-person mode: the world is spread out "before me" as a series of interrelated patterns, systems, and events, all correlatively appearing in their third-person or "it" mode, their topographical mode, their geographical, systems, geo-logical mode--just like me, since together we are tetra-enacting a topographical world of the great web of interlocking surfaces.

     But when I manifest my being-in-the-world in a first-person mode and then describe the enacted landscape, a different event horizon is made available, a different worldspace appears--a world with different phenomena, different boundaries, different rules, different contours--contours that do not fall at the speed of an apple, take up any physical room, or move according to geological and topographical currents. I am neither perceiving this world nor creating this world, but both. All of these 8 event horizons are tetra-enacted by the occasions occurring together in any opening or clearing within that horizon. (For AQAL metatheory, these event horizons represent the probability of finding a particular occurrence in a particular region of the AQAL matrix disclosed and brought forth by the perspective enacting the occurrence.)

     The 8 indigenous perspectives thus enact different (but tetra-related) event horizons--phenomenological worlds or zones, or what I will sometimes call "hori-zones"--horizons of awareness within which various types of occasions arise (or can arise). These 8 indigenous perspectives mark "phenomenological hori-zones," zones of experiential enactment and disclosure, brought forth in part by the subjects perceiving them (tetra-enacted). There are I-spaces, we-spaces, it-spaces, its-spaces--and a hori-zone is the apprehension of those events from within or from without their own self-defined boundaries.

     A hori-zone is a space of possible experience for sentient beings in general. A hori-zone is a meeting place of first, second, and third persons, as they mutually enact each other. Prior to perception is perspective, and a hori-zone is a swatch of the AQAL matrix scoped and felt by a particular play of native perspectives. The various hori-zones are some of the ways the Kosmos feels itself, moment to moment, nakedly.

     There are many ways that these 8 indigenous perspectives can be simplified and grouped for discussion, the most common of which is simply the four quadrants themselves (fig. 1), which highlight the interiors and exteriors in singular and plural.

     But we can also group these native perspectives as the insides and outsides of the interiors and exteriors. This is also a very useful grouping--and one that we will often use--because it highlights the important difference between the nature of insides (which can be known only by touch, and are intimate) and the nature of outsides (which can be seen at a distance, and are distancing).

     With reference to figure 2, we will be discussing the insides of an I and a we, which together we will call zone #1 (the inside-interiors). The next excerpt looks at the outsides of an I and a we, or zone #2 (the outside-interiors). Later excerpts are devoted to the insides of an it and an its, or zone #3 (the inside-exteriors), and the outsides of an it and an its, or zone #4 (the outside-exteriors).

     We begin this walk through our native perspectives by entering zone #1.

THE INSIDE FEEL OF THE INTERIORS: Knowledge by Acquaintance

     The insides of the interiors means the view of an interior holon as seen from its own insides (i.e., as seen from within an I-boundary or a we-boundary). This can occur in the singular (the inside of an "I") and in the plural (the inside of a "we").¹² Here are some quick examples of each.

Singular: The Insides of an "I"

     I can attempt to feel the interior world from within, i.e., directly prehend it myself. This is a first-person experience of first-person experience, which most obviously happens when I feel or prehend my own interiors in the moment of their arising. This is an example of the "inside" of an interior occasion.

     Natural language embeds this hori-zone as both first-person singular subjective (or "I") and first-person singular objective (or "me"). We say things like, "I am aware of myself," "My understanding of my own motives is that I was not acting out of jealously," "I am hungry," "I know me," and so on. But many forms of first-person apprehension are not reflexive--they are not divided into subjective and objective--not "I know me" but "I feel I"--or simpler still, just a non reflexive I-feeling, a type of self is-ness. This is rudimentary prehension at its simplest.

Representative Methodology: Phenomenology

     The study of the occasions that arise in an I-space is called phenomenology. Phenomenology, as a specific philosophical school, was founded by Edmund Husserl; as a general movement it has, needless to say, numerous variations; and as a general disposition, phenomenology is really as old as the human interest in consciousness itself, whether we call it introspection, meditation, contemplation, or simply feeling.

     Charles Peirce, America's greatest philosopher and founder of pragmatism, was also a great proponent of phenomenology, which he called "phaneroscopy." The "phaneron" is a term he coined to refer to "the total content of any one consciousness, regardless of its cognitive value."¹³ Phaneroscopy, then, is simply a survey of the phaneron, the total contents of any consciousness.

     Peirce, known for his incredibly sophisticated logical and linguistic studies, would nevertheless conclude that "the whole content of consciousness is made of qualities of feeling. To be conscious is nothing else than to feel."¹⁴ (This is decades before Whitehead.) Of course, when I feel my interiors, I can feel ideas, feel concepts, feel feelings, feel images--I don't just feel feelings. The point is that interiors all share an immediacy of presentation. This simple immediacy of feeling, Peirce called a "pure Priman," a primary given in consciousness that is "indecomposable"--cannot be broken down into anything simpler. Consciousness also discloses Secundans, Tertians, etc.--but the pure Priman is the presence of pure presence in this moment.

     (Peirce may be forgiven his neologisms; he always delivered them with wit. William James borrowed so heavily from Peirce's pragmatism that Peirce changed the name of his system to pragmaticism, "a term so ugly as to discourage theft.")

     Phenomenologists of virtually all schools point out that objects in the sensory world never present themselves with any sort of certainty or completeness; at best you see only aspects of sensory objects (e.g., you can only see one side of a tree at a time). But mental objects (e.g., the image of my dog Chester) present themselves directly and immediately. When I say, "I am immediately aware of that tree over there, and I am certain of that," what I am really aware of is not the whole tree--I would have to walk all the way around the tree to see all of it--but rather the image of this side of the tree, and that is what I know directly and immediately: in other words, mental objects, not sensory objects, are immediate and undeniable. When a mental object presents itself, it simply presents itself, and there is no denying that presentation. Last night I dreamed I was eating dinner at restaurant in Paris, and while I was dreaming, those images presented themselves with immediacy and undeniability--those images, as images, were absolutely real to me.

     The question is then, does a mental image or object correspond to something "real" in the sensory world? Last night, was I really in Paris? Here phenomenologists make an important contribution, which is generally called "bracketing"--namely, in studying mental phenomena as mental phenomena, we must bracket whether or not they or their referents "exist" in the sensory world; they must be studied in themselves, as they appear, or as they immediately present themselves to consciousness, a presentation that in itself is direct and undeniable. These mental objects exist in a mental space, in a space of consciousness (e.g., they exist in the phaneron), whether they do or do not exist in a sensori-physical space.

     Phenomenology is above all the study of consciousness, whose presentations are direct and immediate; and secondarily, how these presentations relate to each other and to the sensorimotor world.

     Beyond those general points of agreement, phenomenologists strike out in different directions. For AQAL metatheory (which adjusts the pronouncements of any particular paradigm in light of the total web of other paradigms, trimming those pronouncements only under warrant of nonexclusion, enfoldment, and enactment), phenomenology in general is a paradigm that has adapted most centrally to the study and elucidation of the insides of interior holons, inside-interiors that more clearly announce themselves when competing claims for "existence" are bracketed (this is what Peirce meant in the above quote by "regardless of its cognitive value"--i.e., regardless of whether it is "true" according to sensoriphysical dimensions).

     Bracketing is simply the nonexclusion principle applied to interior domains, where it asserts (correctly, I believe) that sensorimotor paradigms have no right to infringe on the reality of the phenomena brought forth and illumined by other paradigms and practices, including interior paradigms and practices, which all sentient beings are engaged in anyway whenever they feel their own feelings.

     For AQAL metatheory, a phenomenological space is simply the sum total of phenomena that can be (tetra)enacted by a subject bringing forth that particular space. This a very general notion, applying, for example, to physical space, emotional space, mental space, spiritual space, as well as an I-space, a we-space, an it-space, and so forth. The whole point, of course, is that all spaces are tetra-spaces, or more accurately, all spaces are AQAL spaces: any given space, such as an emotional space, is actually a space whose dimensions include quadrants, waves, streams, states, and types (among other perspective-occasions).

     But the important point about any phenomenological space--a point that sets an AQAL use of this concept apart from that of the phenomenologists--is that a phenomenological space is an indigenous perspective that is embodied, embedded, enacted, and enfolded in other spaces, the sum total of which are represented as the AQAL matrix. Terms such as "perception," "awareness," "feeling," and "consciousness" fail to indicate that those items are always already perspectives. There simply is no such thing as "perception" anywhere in the Kosmos, for every perception of a sentient being is always already situated in relation to other sentient beings, and therefore every perception is actually housed in an indigenous perspective. Perception, awareness, consciousness, feeling--none of those items exist per se, and those who posit, for example, feelings as primary, are really positing low-order abstractions.

     Perceptions, as opposed to perspectives, particularly embed and hide the modernist prejudice of agentic selves free of communion intuiting universal abstractions, a game peculiar to young, modern, male humans. On the other hand, the privileging of perceptions is also a very old prejudice, found in everything from Buddhism to Whitehead to conventional eco-philosophies, as we will continue to see. Even postmodernism's "interpretation" secretly privileges perception, in that its cultural relativity is itself a relativity of perceptions, not perspectives (which are, in fact, taken for granted and unexamined).

     This means that the "universals" presented by phenomenologists, such as eidetic intuition and knowledge of essences, might indeed be universal, but nonetheless are never presented outside a perspective. The universal "whiteness," for example, may indeed be a universal, but it is still a third-person mental object perceived by the first person of the phenomenologist. I am not saying there isn't a universal of whiteness; I am saying, even if so, it never arises outside of a perspective. This is why, for AQAL metatheory, the Kosmos is built of perspectives, not perceptions, and why phenomenology has to take its true-but-partial seat at the integral roundtable.

Integral Math

     If we call this first event horizon a "first-person experience of first-person realities," we could represent it as ( 1p x 1p), where "1p" means "first person." You, as second person ( 2p), also have your own first-person experience, which, with reference to me, would be: 2p(1p x 1p)--which means, your second person has its first-person experience of its first-person realities. If my perception of your first person, which can be represented as 1p(1p) x 2p(1p), matches your perception of your first person, 2p(1p x 1p), then we have mutual understanding:

     1p(1p) x 2p(1p) = 2p(1p x 1p)

     That is the beginning of an integral mathematics based not on variables but on perspectives. For those interested, I will pursue this mathematical form of the integral calculus in Appendix B and a series of ongoing endnotes, suggesting how a Kosmos is constructed of perspectives, not things or events or perceptions or processes. Honest, you don't have to follow this; it is simply a notional system useful for reminding us to honor all primordial perspectives; if mathematical notation is not your cup of tea, the essentials of these perspectives are represented in figs. 2 and 3.

     "Integral calculus," as indicated earlier, does not specifically apply to its mathematical forms, but simply to any mental operation or "calculus" that conscientiously attempts to include as many perspectives as possible in any approach an occasion. Thus, "integral calculus" simply means an honoring of all indigenous perspectives, which is how we will mostly use it.

     But it can be applied specifically to mathematics, with rather intriguing results, as suggested in Appendix B. If the universe is composed of sentient beings or holons (all the way up, all the way down)--and not merely things nor events nor processes nor systems--then the "stuff" of the universe is perspectives, not mass nor energy nor force nor feelings nor perception nor consciousness (all of which are always already a perspective). Integral mathematics, therefore, does not abstract relations from objects, but from the perspectives of sentient beings, and its "operations" fall within the matrix of indigenous perspectives. The result is still an abstract system, but a system that is always embedded in the realities of sentient beings, and hence a system that stays much closer to the real world, even in its abstractions. Moreover, if its terms (which include 1p, 2p, and 3p) are all collapsed to merely third-person objects, typical "flatland" mathematics is generated. Well, as I said, these semi-abstractions will be pursued in Appendix B for those so inclined. The only point we need take with us right now is that the relational perspectives native to sentient beings (as summarized in fig. 2) give rise to the major methodologies of human inquiry (as summarized in fig. 3), and an integral mathematics can be constructed based on those primordial perspectives. As far as I can tell, this primordial mathematics appears to be the root mathematics from which all others are abstracted abstractions.

Tele-Prehension

     Hori-zone #1, then, simply refers to whatever is arising in consciousness, whether it has a referent in the sensory world or not. A representative methodology of zone #1 is phenomenology (or, as Peirce would say, phaneroscopy, a "survey of the phaneron," a seeing and feeling of the content of consciousness). The most common singular version is, whatever is arising in an I-space; the most common plural version is, whatever is arising in a we-space.

     We left off the discussion at the singular version--my own immediate awareness of my interior, a type of "I feel I," as well as more complex versions, such as, "I am aware of various interior objects, like the dream where I was at a restaurant in Paris."

     Can this interior feeling-awareness occur in any sense when it comes to others? That is, can I directly prehend the inside-interior of another subject? Can one "I" know the insides of another "I"? Can I feel your feelings in any direct way? Or know your thoughts in any direct way?

     In most cases the answer, of course, is "no." However, there are at least three senses in which we might be able to speak of something like an immediate inside-prehension of another holon's interior. Whether these exist or not, it is important to recognize that, if they did, they would fall into this general category (i.e., hori-zone #1, an interior reality seen from within its own boundaries). We already know that one type of zone #1 exists (i.e., my own prehension of my own inside-interior); we are now asking if an I can prehend the inside-interior of another holon? All three of the following instances are a little bit "far out"; if the following instances seem incredible, then the major example of zone #1 (i.e., my inside-prehension of my interior) is the only one we need in order to carry integral methodological pluralism forward in our metatheory.

     Psychic phenomena. The first case of one "I" knowing the insides of another "I" is some sort of psychic phenomena, such as telepathy, which is basically "prehension at a distance" ( tele: far, distant; pathy: feeling or perception). I believe the evidence for the existence of various types of psychic events is very compelling, and I will accept them as provisionally the case. Still, this is not my main focus, so we will move on to the two other possibilities.

     A transcendent Self. The second is a more purely spiritual sense, in which there is but one Self ultimately inhabiting the interiors of all holons, so that all holons share an immediate presence of Presence (i.e., the immediate nowness of all prehension or awareness, in all holons, is instantaneously felt by the same Spirit--as Erwin Schroedinger, the cofounder of quantum mechanics, put it, "Consciousness is a singular, the plural of which is unknown." In my opinion, that is the ultimate origin of intersubjectivity: namely, the same nondual and nonlocal Subject inhabits all subjects, such that an instantaneous intersubjectivity from within connects holons prior to any exchange of any sort between holons. Still, this is an enormously complex issue, which I will address in an endnote).¹⁵

     Harmonic empathy. The third version, which is perhaps the least objectionable to the orthodox (and therefore one I will often use), is something like the interior equivalent of exterior resonance or vibration. If you strike a note on one piano, the same string on a piano next to it begins to vibrate, an instance of exterior harmonic resonance. Harmonic empathy is the interior equivalent between two sentient beings: a type of felt resonance or mutual prehension--an immediate, nonreflexive, intersubjective presence or resonance with another holon at a similar level of depth. When in the presence of another holon of similar depth, I am, so to speak, in a dual field, whose exterior (or Right Hand) is mass-energy resonance or surface connections, but whose interior (or Left Hand) is feeling-resonance and interior co-presence. Of course, all sorts of other types of intersubjective factors contribute to this felt resonance (particularly various types of communicative exchange); but in its purest sense, it is a type of harmonic empathy with the insides of the interior of another holon at a similar level of depth, a resonance that occurs without exchanges, just direct co-presence.¹⁶

     For simplicity's sake, I will refer to all three of these "direct feelings of another's feelings" as " tele-prehension," whether that refers to psychic phenomena, spiritual nonduality, or harmonic empathy (although I will especially emphasize the latter two).