"Turning to religious and moral problems, and later to metaphysics, he [William James] produced a large number of writings which gave ample evidence of his amazing ability to cut through the cumbersome terminology of traditional statement and to lay bare the essential character of the matter in hand. In this sense, James was able to revivify philosophical issues long buried from any save the classical scholars. Such oversimplifications as exist, for example, in his own "pragmatism" and "radical empiricism" must be weighed against his great accomplishment in clearing such problems as that of the One and the Many from the dry rot of centuries, and in rendering such problems immediately relevant to practical and personal difficulties.
—Dictionary of Philosophy
Sciousness
edited by Jonathan Bricklin
Instead...of the stream of thought being one of con-sciousness, ‘thinking its own existence along with whatever else it thinks’...it might be better called a stream of Sciousness pure and simple, thinking objects of some of which it makes what it calls a ‘Me,’ and only aware of its ‘pure’ Self in an abstract, hypothetic or conceptual way. Each ‘section’ of the stream would then be a bit of sciousness or knowledge of this sort, including and contemplating its ‘me’ and its ‘not-me’ as objects which work out their drama together, but not yet including or contemplating its own subjective being. — William James
William James’s pure experience sciousness, consciousness without consciousness of self, was used by the renowned 20th-Century philosopher Kitaro Nishida to explain Zen tathata (suchness) to the Japanese themselves. As this collection of essays makes clear, Western practitioners of Zen need not be spiritual vagabonds; we need, rather, to claim our inheritance from the “father of American psychology.”
-- Featuring an expanded version of the groundbreaking essay "Sciousness and Con-sciousness: William James and the Prime Reality of Non-Dual Experience," first published in the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology
"This collection is delightful. It brings together important texts from the later life of Wiliiam James, some of which are not very known, even in academic circles. Jonathan Bricklin's discussion of James is insightful, erudite and illuminating." — Benny Shanon, Professor, Department of Psychology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holder of the Mandel Chair in Cognition, and author of The Antipodes of the Mind)
Table of Contents:
On Believing in Mind by Seng-ts’an (Sosan), Third Zen Patriarch
Sciousness and Con-sciousness: William James and the prime reality of non-dual experience by Jonathan Bricklin
The Notion of Consciousness by William James/Translated by Jonathan Bricklin
Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist? by William James
A World of Pure Experience by William James
Excerpts by William James
“Co-ordinate matters of immediate feeling”
“Transitive tracts”
“A Rustle of Wind...”
Radical Empiricism by Theodore Flournoy
Excerpts:
It’s not difficult to discover your Buddha Mind
But just don’t try to search for it.
Cease accepting and rejecting possible places
Where you think it can be found
And it will appear before you.
— Seng-ts’an (Sosan), Third Zen Patriarch
While the sense of self, the "palpitating inward life," that arises with anger palpitates between past and present, the sense of self that arises with fear palpitates between present and future. If, for example, while walking down a city street, I reach for my wallet and discover that it is not there, my initial response is not anger but fear. I stop dead in my tracks and gasp. My step, my very breath, is interrupted. Not the look back of "what happened?" but a look forward with "what will happen?" While anger is a striving against "what is" because it is a striving for a "what was," fear is a striving against "what is" because it is a striving for a "what will be." Thus cancer patients, racked with pain, full of the knowledge that they have only a few days to live, may face a gun (possibly their own) with less fear than those filled with thoughts of the future. In all instances of fear, the sense of self that is threatened is a self of the future; in all instances of anger the sense of self that is threatened is a self of the past. Both anger and fear are a lesson in what is actual as opposed to what is imagined; to the degree that we stay angry or fearful, the lesson hasn't been learned. — Jonathan Bricklin
... dualism thus falls to the ground. Physical and mental being, thought-stuff and thing-stuff, are not two different kinds of material, separately existent, or the one serving as a sort of vehicle, or as an inner lining, or as a centre of reference, for the other. There is no stuff but pure experience-stuff, and whether a given bit of this shall be treated as a physical reality or as conscious state depends entirely on the context in which it is taken. — William James
Even the so-called material things, this table, the molecules and atoms which constitute it — if they are more than our perceptions and representations, if they exist in themselves — can only be conceived as consciousnesses, that is to say as experiences also, confused and obscure if you will, but of the same nature as our own.
. . . these primordial facts, these pure experiences are entirely objective, simple phenomena of ‘sciousness’ and not of ‘consciousness.’ — Theodore Flournoy
About the Editor
Jonathan Bricklin began researching William James in 1990 in response to fundamental shifts in consciousness experienced on Vipassana retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massacusetts. The Non-Reality of Will, Self and Time: William James’s Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment will be published next year. Several excerpts from the book have been published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies and The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology. His essay “A Variety of Religious Experience: William James and the Non-Reality of Free Will” was anthologized in the book The Volitional Brain: Toward a Neuroscience of Free Will. Brian Lancaster, Principal Lecturer in Psychology at Liverpool John Moores University, hailed this essay as an “invaluable contribution.” Jonathan is a Program Director of the New York Open Center.
Reviews
“The last couple of years have seen a resurgence of interest in William James, one of modern psychology’s most widely respected pioneers. ...But nothing has quite highlighted the depth of his thought like Jonathan Bricklin’s Sciousness." —What is Enlightenment?
"This collection is delightful. It brings together important texts from the later life of William James, some of which are not very known, even in academic circles. Jonathan Bricklin's discussion of James is insightful, erudite and illuminating." — Benny Shanon, Professor, Department of Psychology of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, holder of the Mandel Chair in Cognition, and author of The Antipodes of the Mind).
"Eirini Press is a new publisher of nonduality books, filling the niche of the Western contribution....If Sciousness exemplifies, in both content and design, the quality of their forthcoming books, Eirini Press is positioned for serious success....
Jonathan Bricklin has constructed a definitive anthology that conveys completeness and unity in the presentation of William James's nondual expression. This work is driven by intellectual argument and...elevated by elements of charm and poetry which arise out of the anthology's design and the writings. Most importantly, this work is founded in Bricklin's understanding of what nonduality is....
In the 60s and 70s, many seekers of spiritual truth learned about mysticism and found affirmation of their nondual intuitions within William James's book, The Varieties of Religious Expression. Now we can discover that James was a nondualist afterall. Sciousness is a superb anthology, the best possible book imaginable for the discovery of the nondual William James. "— Jerry Katz, Nonduality.com
What is consciousness really? "Sciousness" is a collection of thoughts and ponderings on the concept of consciousness and how humanity as a whole perceives the world around them. Zen Patriarchs, Editor Jonathan Bricklin, William James, and Theodore Flournoy all discuss perception, experience, consciousness, and more in this book for thinkers. "Sciousness" is highly recommended reading for anyone who enjoys contemplating the nature of the world. — Midwest Book Review
"Many advocates of Eastern thought misrepresent the ideas of Western philosophers in order to support their own agendas. I was happy to see that this author was honest in his presentation of James' ideas and showed how James' concept of consciousness truly advocates a non-dualist approach....The book was very interesting and I am sure I will learn more reading it a second time." — an early reviewer on LibraryThing.com
"A great, interesting, thought-provoking read...." — an early reviewer on LibraryThing.com
"...this collection of articles was well-chosen and stimulating. This is an area of philosophy that does not always receive the most attention, and having an overview of the history and context of these concepts in Western philosophy was quite interesting....most rewarding was the combination of Western and Eastern philosophy. So often these two traditions are treated in isolation from each other, at least in many popularly-aimed treatments of philosophical issues. Being able to compare the way these questions have been treated across space and time lent a particularly interesting angle on the...nature of consciousness."
— an early reviewer on LibraryThing.com
"...a challenging book. Good companion books would be Lynne McTaggart's "The Field" and Fritjof Capra's "The Tao of Physics." If you pause a moment to consider the assertions made by these books, it really is quite astonishing: the world that we all know and inhabit is not divided into "this" and "that," but rather exists as a unified whole. We are all one mind, one spirit."
— an early reviewer on LibraryThing.com
I was pleased with the level of the material. It definitely presupposes familiarity with non-duality, with William James, and philosophy in general, but it is not written on the same level of "academese" as many other texts. Unlike the way many Eastern philosophy meets physics books (and I own several) distort the subject in an effort to show parallels with Eastern thought, this text does not misrepresent the views of James or take them vastly out of context just to match the author's bias. James is not represented in isolated quotes, but rather full passages, including Bricklin's fascinating translation from French of an address given at the 5th International Congress of Psychology.
The editor sets the mood with a brief Zen passage and then presents what amounts to a lengthy introduction to the non-duality inherent in the way James asserted pure experience, or sciousness, could be differentiated from consciousness. Bricklin notes that "James's conviction that sense or meaning is not generated by an "I" but conveyed by a passing thought, that the stream of consciousness creates the "I" (and not the other way around,) aligns him squarely with the central thesis of Eastern non-dual traditions from Advaita to Zen: Tat tvam asi, "That thou art."" Bricklin's use of the "old pond" haiku as a teaching aid was particularly helpful.
The ideas explored in the editor's essay tied nicely with other things I have read recently. The description of transitions between altered states--as with meditation, the boundaries of sleep, or in James's time experiments with ether--reminded me of Austin's Zen and the Brain. The feeling of the self originates in a turning toward or away from something, an embodiment notion reminiscent of Lakoff. Prior to the self, there is just an acceptance of what is without a felt opposition, and this pure awareness, or "sciousness" contrasts with an awareness WITH a self, a "con-sciousness."
The essays by James explore the nature of a unified pure experience, one which is "only virtually or potentially either object or subject as yet." He explores the nature of the Now, but also the nature of the unbounded flow from past to present to future. James puts forward the proposition that experiences relate to one another to form reality, including that reality experienced as the self. He does not believe in Descartes's material/cognitive split, but rather that "thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are." Later essays detail some of James's system of "radical empiricism," concerning the relationships between experiences, the nature of truth, and the transition between experiences as an experience in its own right.
The book ends with an essay from a friend of James and fellow psychologist, Theodore Flournoy. His essay provides another interesting perspective on this lesser-stressed aspect of James, who is known mainly for his general contribution to psychology and as a proponent of pragmatism.
Overall I found this book quite enjoyable.... I look forward to further publications by this new press. — an early reviewer on LibraryThing.com
Errata
p. 75 Add:
Floyd, Keith (1974) "Of Time and Mind: From Paradox to Paradigm," in White, John, Editor, Frontiers of Consciousness: The Meeting Ground Between Inner and Outer Reality (New York: Julian Press).
p. 76 Bibliographic entry should read:
James, William (1909b/1987), “A Pluralistic Universe,” in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America).
p. 83 Endnote should read:
"If anyone urge that I assign no reason ... meaning of the world.": Ibid., p. 379. In an essay published in the last year of his life, James "suggested" that the total sense or meaning of the world was not so much generated as uncovered. See James, 1910a.
p. 225 Citation should read:
— Theodore Flournoy (1917) The Philosophy of William James, translated by Edwin Bisell Holt, New York: H. Holt and Co.
More from James on Consciousness
"A few remarks about the field of consciousness may be needed to give more definiteness to my hypothesis. The field is composed at all times of a mass of present sensation, in a cloud of memories, emotions, concepts, etc. Yet these ingredients,which have to be named separately, are not separate, as the conscious field contains them. Its form is that of a much-at-once, in the unity of which the sensations, memories, concepts, impulses, etc., coalesce and are dissolved. The present field as a whole came continuously out of its predecessor and will melt into its successor as continously again, one sensation-mass passing into another sensation-mass and giving the character of a gradually changing present to the experience, while the memories and concepts carry time-coefficients which place whatever is present in a temporal perspective more or less vast.
"Common sense believes in realities behind the veil even too superstitiously; and idealistic philosophy declares the whole world of natural experience, as we get it, to be but a time-mask, shattering or refracting the one infinite Thought which is the sole reality into those millions of finite streams of consciousness know to us as our private selves." from Human Immortality (1898)
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