Posts by Brian Hines

I've gotten back to reading Thomas Metzinger's new book, The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness. The title isn't entirely accurate, nor is it entirely inaccurate. I say this because one of Metzinger's chapters is called "It is Not an Experience." He writes: Here, what we are trying to approximate is that for some meditators, the phenomenal character of pure awareness also includes the self-evident fact that somehow, in a way that is very hard to express in words, what is occurring is not merely what philosophers call a "phenomenal experience" -- something that subjectively appears to…

One of the benefits of reading a book about pure awareness by a philosopher, instead of someone who identifies with a religion or spiritual practice, is that you get a more realistic perspective. A good example is that Thomas Metzinger, the author of The Elephant and the Blind, speaks in an early chapter about the difference between a feeling of knowing and actual knowing. This should be obvious to anyone, which really is everyone, who has confidently believed that something was true until they learned that it wasn't.  Metzinger calls this the E-fallacy. His glossary defines it this way: A…

Every morning I try to read one of the short chapters in Thomas Metzinger's fascinating book, The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness -- Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports. I particularly enjoy passages that intuitively appeal to me, yet rationally challenge my ability to comprehend exactly what Metzinger is saying. Below I'll share an example from the "Nonidentification" chapter.  First, though, this introductory mention in the chapter of the traditional movie theatre metaphor. One classic metaphor for this process [of de-identification], found in many places in the popular literature on meditation, is the image of being…

Proving my dedication to the study of consciousness (or maybe my addiction to books), a few days ago my $80 copy of Thomas Metzinger's 600 page book, The Elephant and the Blind, arrived.  I had to buy the paperback version because I can't read a nonfiction book without a pen and highlighter in hand. But the book can be read for free via a download from the publisher, the MIT press. Just click on the Open Access tab. Metzinger is a philosopher who wrote a book about the mind, The Ego Tunnel, that I enjoyed. Here's some of the blog…