Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Trying to get my head (& writing) around something

Traditional thinking would have us believe that perception is something that takes place in our brain as the part of consciousness that processes sensorial data without actually engaging memory: the stream of sensorial data is transformed by the brain into imagery that the audio-visual center in our heads plays back to us live as consciousness. Supposedly, the brain takes sensorial raw material, processes it and provides us with an on-going sound and light show that is dubbed reality. This line of thinking creates the perennial divide between the unitary I that does the processing and the other that is processed. The me and the not-me, the me-subject and the it-object that exist as definite, static, stand-alone entities.

A different way of thinking has thought focusing on the infinite extensive reticulation of the shimmering succession of subjectivity and objectivity where progression moves in the any which way of relation and happens as quickly or as slowly as it needs to. In this conception, perception is the realization of the relation. It is not something that happens within us, but within the becoming relation bounded by a ceasing to become and a coming of becoming. Within this discontinuity, perception happens as the affirmation of participation in the unceasing creative process of relation. Any instance of affirmation of becoming is an image, and the succession of these images is consciousness. Reality becomes any instance whatever within the process of all possible creation, a subset of the infinite possibilities of relation. And what constitutes me or you or it is the self-consciousness of the endurance of subsets of relations where affect is the residual afterglow of relation. The me-whatever or the you-whatever: sugar in hot coffee!