Tracking the discontinuity of perception

·期刊原文
Tracking the discontinuity of perception
By David Appelbaum and Ingrid Turner Lorch
Philosophy East and West
vol. 28, No. 4 (October 1978)
pp. 469-484
Copyright 1978 by University of Hawaii Press
Hawaii, USA

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What is the nature of perception? What does the study of perception disclose about the processes of consciousness? Can consciousness actively will its own perceptions or is it, on the contrary, merely the involuntary register of a perceptual flow? What does the stream of perceptions reveal about the relative continuity and discontinuity of conscious life? David Hume addresses these questions and concludes that perception is passive, consciousness involuntary, incapable of self-direction, and discontinuous. We suggest that these conclusions derive from two flaws in Hume's argument. Hume equates all perception with a particular type of perceptual process which is only one among alternatives; and he fails to see that some of his own assumptions concerning perception belie his conclusions. Accepting Hume's initial analysis, which accurately reveals the predominantly passive mode of everyday consciousness, one may nonetheless conclude that it is possible for consciousness, developing continuity, to become the actor behind rather than the passive recipient of its perceptions. In this article we suggest the theoretical principles which enable one, beginning with Hume's premises and his description of consciousness, to reject his pessimistic conclusions. The principles developed embody our understanding of the yoga science of concentration as first clearly stated in Pata~njali's Yogasuutras and later elaborated in Tantric Tibetan yoga, particularly in the Kargyupta school of Tibetan Buddhism. The theory of yoga begins by concurring with Hume's analysis of consciousness, but goes on to elaborate practical techniques for transforming consciousness in a manner unrecognized by Hume. Unlike Hume, it assumes that the nature of consciousness is a function of particular practices, and hence that alterations, in practice, generate the possibility of different forms of consciousness.

The first section of this essay analyzes Hume's inquiry into consciousness, suggesting that his inquiry presents a picture of consciousness not as it is necessarily but only as it is, ordinarily, in distracted inattentiveness. The following two sections present a theory of attention moving toward the unification of perception.

I. The Humean Dilemma
Hume formulates the results of his inquiry into consciousness with the claim that a substantial unified self does not exist, or that no thing is denoted by the concept of the self. He rejects the Cartesian view that a study of consciousness legitimates the belief in personal identity. [1] This rejection derives from Hume's discovery of the nature of perception. Contrary to Descartes, Hume claims that sense perceptions or impressions are the sole origin of all ideas and that an examination of sense perception lends no credence to any belief that a soul substance underlies and endures through perception.

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Perception is basically fluid; any perception necessarily arises and perishes. No impressions ("those perceptions which enter with most force and violence") abide in any of their qualities. The same can be said of ideas, "the faint images of these [impressions] in thinking and reasoning." [2] The temporal flow brings with it a continual succession of perceptions -- sensations, emotions, and thoughts. Moreover, since each perception perishes, it must be replaced by a totally new one. Significantly, each perception therefore arises independently. "Every distinct perception, which enters into the composition of the mind, is a distinct existence, and is different, and distinguishable, and separable from every other perception, either contemporary or successive." [3] Since the mind consists of its perceptions, where these cease neither consciousness nor self exist. "When my perceptions are removed for any time, as by sound sleep; so long am I insensible of myself, and may truly be said not to exist." [4]

Perception being discrete, atomic and linearly successive, consciousness is characterized by sequences of perceptions, each arising in some fashion after the other. We can examine the relations between single perceptions. But in doing this, we may neglect to recognize the basic implication of the independence of perceptions. The fact that they come and go means that consciousness is discontinuous. Independence in generation implies gaps. Each perception invariably ends, and with it ends the particular constellation it creates. However similar a new perception may be to the proceeding one, it brings with it an entirely new constellation. Thus, any one property, or set of properties, is never the same across different perceptions, even where these are neighboring ones. As long as perceptions change, no consciousness of properties is continuous. There is no exception to the discontinuity of perceptions which comprises consciousness for Hume. We hereafter call this form of consciousness 'ego-consciousness', to distinguish it from possibilities of consciousness not acknowledged by Hume.

Hume also sees that there is no incompatibility between discontinuity, on the one hand, and graduated change from one perception to the next, on the other. Change can be barely perceptible, as with movement of the minute hand of a clock. But it is change nonetheless. Any idea of real sameness or of identity, as Hume calls it, therefore has no foundation since this assumes a nonexistent stability in the flux. Ego-consciousness, however, entertains the belief in identity, both regarding external things and regarding itself. This belief is the effect of graduated change. Because the sequence of perceptions tends to be gradual, consciousness, failing to note the change from each single perception to the next, attributes the succession of actually discrete and independently existing perceptions to a single object which it then projects into an external world. Graduated transformation of perception similarly engenders the belief, entertained by consciousness, in personal identity. But it is a fiction

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that there is any substance which underlies and abides unchanged through a duration of perceptions. [5]

The ordinary individual continues through life undisturbed by the recognition of his own insubstantiality or discontinuity. But nonidentity is not perceived as such. And, accompanying the myth of an unbroken consciousness is the belief that permanence in a self implies a kind of control that the self exerts over experience. This belief has it that the self, inasmuch as it provides an enduring receptacle for perception, does not fall sway entirely to the vicissitudes of the flow of impressions. Yet unlike the ordinary individual, Hume recognizes the reality of discontinuity. He therefore finds himself in an existential dilemma, which he feels cannot be resolved by any effort of consciousness. Consciousness, and its capacity to control and direct the content of its own experience, are called into question. Hume reflects on this matter, admitting to near shipwreck, when he notes: "The wretched condition, weakness and disorder of the faculties I must employ in my enquiries, increase my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending or correcting these faculties reduces me almost to despair...." [6] The collapse implied by nonidentity becomes Hume's greatest impediment to carrying his investigation to the point of apprehending the 'separate existences' he postulated. The incapacity of consciousness to follow a single unbroken train of elements ultimately threatens "the use of every member and faculty." [7] The validity of Hume's investigations is in doubt, since belief in the results of his inquiry must be predicated on faith in his rational faculties, but the inquiry itself discredits these faculties.

To comprehend the contents of consciousness as they happen to manifest is the prime principle of Hume's method. To be unable to accept some particular discovery then is self-frustrating and potentially disastrous. When Hume discovers the discontinuity of ego-consciousness he interprets this as a crisis in his own method of inquiry, abandoning his own investigations. Yet the conclusions he draws are not legitimated by his discovery of discontinuity, for this discovery in itself implies a certain continuity of consciousness. To see this, let us reconsider the fact that it is intrinsic to perception to arise and perish. Recognition of the limited and distinct existence of each perception must then be contained in a consciousness which maintains itself throughout several perceptions. If consciousness were always confined to a single moment of the perceptual field, it could not obtain an awareness of the succession of atomistic perceptions. But since there is such a transcendent consciousness, even if only occasionally and sporadically, this implies the ability to witness the endless succession of impressions from their arising from the void to their merging with older, less vivid ones in thought and memory. Only from the view afforded by a transcendent consciousness does succession appear as succession. Hume's own researches admit the ability to witness succession, or

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to maintain a transcendent continuity of consciousness. Continuity of consciousness persists to the extent that consciousness remains a witness to its own discontinuity. Since this fact remains opaque to Hume, he turns away from his exploration of mental processes, signaling collapse. [8]

What is the cause of this collapse? The question is instructive in seeking to understand ways of both justifying Hume's method in its own right and moving beyond his conclusions. Here, the answer is plain. The utilitarian ethic motivates his refusal to come to grips with his research on discontinuity. For instance, the fiction of continuity and the entire substantial view of the self continues to be cherished "only because it costs us too much pain to think otherwise." [9] More generally, the demands of pleasure lead Hume away from painful philosophical investigations back into everyday life. Philosophy in turn finds a utilitarian justification as an occasional alleviation from the boredom of everyday concerns. Yet the rights of philosophical investigations are provisional only, and dependent on their pleasurable results. The decision not to explore the fact of discontinuity seriously is the result of the conflict between hedonistic demands and the requirement of viewing the contents of consciousness impersonally and without regard to results.

Confronting the discovery of perceptual discontinuity gives rise to a twofold problem. How can consciousness become more continuous, more capable of observing itself and noting its own discontinuity over time? Correlatively, how can it become aware of the discrete or individual and distinct nature and existence of each perception within the discontinuous flow of perception? The answers can be had by remedying the failure of ego-consciousness to recognize both discontinuity and discreteness. The failure arises as soon as ego-consciousness identifies itself with each individual perception. In identification, consciousness is completely caught up in the immediate impression given by the field of perception. It is nothing other than the impression. Again, total involvement in ever-changing fields explains why no ground exists for the sense of an enduring "I." It also explains why ego-consciousness, immersed in each perception, fails to note the constant change in perceptions, and therefore can maintain a fiction of an "I." Because of its constant movement, ego-consciousness both lacks self-consciousness and fails to see each perception for what it is. Self-consciousness requires presence to the succession of perceptions. Seeing each perception for what it is requires seeing it as a distinct perception within the context of a flow. Both are rendered impossible by the process of identification. Ego-consciousness therefore suffers from a failure in the capacity for attention.

For ego-consciousness, attention is usually invested in the object of perception alone and is, therefore, unavailable to capitalize on the recognition of distinctness of a given perception in the flow of perception. Attention is basically a capacity to discriminate more elements without losing a sense of the whole. Absence of the capacity for attention in turn explains Hume's

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malaise. The loss of sense of self Hume bemoans is, in fact, real. But its cause is a clouded recognition of the continual involvement with objects to which ego-consciousness is susceptible, along with a refusal to relinquish concern with those objects. A continuing fascination over and identification with the object of perception brings loss of a conscious sense of individual perceptions in the context of their flow.

Since the discontinuity of ego-consciousness implies its inability to attend to the distinct nature of perceptions as elements in a flow, recognizing such discontinuity is a question of developing the quality of attention that enables perception to experience the separate objects as they are. The quality of attention that brings recovery of the object depends entirely on the knowledge of nonidentification, that is, on learning how to stand apart from experience with sufficient clarity to allow its discrete units to reappear. Nonidentification in turn implies the acknowledgement and development of continuity of consciousness in two ways. First, consciousness comes to know discontinuity as such, in realizing that what presents itself is the succession of perceptions. This realization results from avoiding immersion in the objects of perception. Second, and correlatively, consciousness develops a stable center of reference removed this succession. More simply, consciousness becomes self-conscious.

With this outline, it is now possible to start expounding a theory of attention which draws on principles of concentration systematized in the Yogasuutras of Pata~njali and elaborated in Tantric Tibetan yoga. This theory claims that identification with the object is not a necessary feature of perception and that freeing ego-consciousness from identification makes consciousness more capable of attending both to its actual nature and to that of its perceptions. Such a theory is interesting in its own right, first, because it contests many of the basic assumptions of post-Cartesian empiricism while providing a theory of perception arising from an alternative epistemology. Second, it has direct application to our most immediate concern with Hume. The impasse into which the discovery of discontinuity threw Hume's thinking can be overcome by a superior understanding of consciousness and by practices which generate the liberation from ego-consciousness. Before developing the theory of attention, it is necessary to ask how relevant to this theory are the differences between Pata~njali's yoga and Tibetan Tantricism. Despite its inheritance of the yogic tradition systematized by Pata~njali, Tantric yoga is a variant of Buddhist thought and supposes a metaphysics markedly different from that of Pata~njali. Pata~njali's metaphysics, following the Sa^mkhya system, is dualistic, reality being composed of primordial matter (prak.rti), and spirit or self (puru.sa). Buddhist thought takes a different point of view and denies the ultimacy of any self or soul-spirit as an irreducible element of the real. This metaphysical difference, however, is not reflected in significant differences in the diagnosis of ego-consciousness. Both Pata~njali and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism agree that ego-consciousness, by identifying itself with the objects

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of consciousness, lives in a state of ignorance, failing to see the ultimate nature of experience and of the reality which underlies experience. Tibetan Buddhism, identifying the concept of self with ego-consciousness, claims there is no real self. Pata~njali, identifying ego-consciousness with a manifestation of prak.rti, claims that while ego-consciousness is not a self, there is a self (puru.sa) whose realization involves liberation from the misconception of ego-consciousness. In other words, both Pata~njali and Tibetan Buddhism teach the transcendence of ego-consciousness, though grounding themselves in different metaphysics. As we will show, both achieve this transcendence through practices, largely bodily in nature, which aim to develop the capacity for nonidentification, along with the insights which emerge from the practice of nonidentification. [10]

We begin with the claim that ego-consciousness, by existing in a state of identification, sees neither itself nor its object clearly. The state of ego-consciousness is ignorance or avidyaa. [11] Nonidentification is the practice by which consciousness, coming to know both itself and its objects freely, removes itself from avidyaa. The theory of nonidentification can be broken into two parts. First, identification, displaying itself in the inability to isolate and attend fully to the object of consciousness in its genuine individuality, results in that object being unclear and ambiguous. To reverse identification requires both explaining how ambiguity arises as well as initiating the process of disambiguation itself. Second, in identification, consciousness, by being lost in the object of perception and therefore unable to see it, is also lost to itself. This loss of self-consciousness expresses itself in a dissociation from the fundamental experience of the body. Clarifying perception is thus a question of developing bodily presence and of expanding the possibilities of sensation. The first pan of the theory of nonidentification we will discuss in terms of the disambiguation of perception, the second, in terms of the recovery of sensation.

II. The Disambiguation of Perception
It will be recalled that Hume justifies abandoning his investigation of ego-consciousness on the grounds of a utilitarian ethic. While recognizing that the unexamined desire for pleasure inhibits the pursuit of self-knowledge, he nonetheless finds in desire justification for inclining to seek distraction. The search for pleasurable distractions, however, is one of the modes in which consciousness, by identifying with particular states, turns away from its painful discoveries and avoids the pursuit of self-knowledge. Pata~njali, in contrast to Hume, notes that nonidentification requires that one begin by not discriminating between the objects of perception in terms of their pleasurable or painful qualities. [12] Correlatively, submitting to the impulses of attachment and aversion promotes constant psychomental mobility which, as one of the nine obstacles to concentration or attention, prevents seeing reality. [13] The legendary originator of Tibetan Buddhism, Padma Sambhava, elaborates on Pata~njali's claim, showing that attachment brought on by unexamined desire obscures

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the path to One Mind, which can be realized only through the unremitting examination of one's own consciousness. [14] Not categorizing hedonistically is the condition for an objective inquiry into consciousness since objectivity requires that inquiry not be jeopardized by its results. Rejecting hedonism allows for a fuller examination of consciousness.

The hedonistic ethic does not only limit the pursuit of inquiry into consciousness. Its operation is coextensive with the various modes in which consciousness identifies with and vanishes into its objects. When impelled by attraction and aversion, one refuses to allow the object of perception its place, since one demands that it fulfill subjective criteria of being the kind of thing it must be. This demand entails both a flight from and confusion of experience. One attempts to block painful or to hold on to pleasurable experience. In either case, desire frustrates clarity of the flow, and experience in turn frustrates the demands of desire. One's inquiry into knowing is stopped.

More generally, the hedonism expressed in identification displays itself in the tendency to equivocate over the object of perception. The tendency arises as follows. One attempts to force the object into predetermined acceptable categories of perception. Now any perception may set off trains of associations which please or displease us, bringing us to seek to project onto that object the most satisfying description of it possible, given the inclinations of the moment. This attempt to force an experience into a satisfying mold of interpretation, accepting some associations and rejecting others, necessarily violates the nature of that experience. Given the rapid movement of perceptual processes and the multiplicity of associations attached to each perception, any perception may be understood from a variety of different points of view, and each of these generates a different judgment about what the object of perception is. Since any one object of perception can be given a number of different and perhaps incommensurate meanings, meaning is itself multiple and finally indeterminate. Since hedonism involves the projection of determinate meanings on the object of perception, it must be rejected on the grounds that it makes for unreliable equivocal perception.

As soon as criteria of pleasingness or displeasingness come to be applied to perceptions, these begin to be monitored and categorized. Perceptions as a result begin to bear certain kinds of categorical descriptions. But then they no longer are simple, but abide conjoined to a conceptual elaboration of their identity. In other words, the attempt to interpret perceptions not only violates their multivalent nature, it also increases the conceptual baggage attached to and obscuring individual perceptions. The basic flux of perception becomes laden with interpretation concerning the extent to which each perception conforms to the criteria of what it is supposed to be, if pleasing. Perception itself becomes permeated by and overlaid with elements not intrinsic to it. Its integrity violated, it can no longer be regarded as presenting a reliable account of the reality it purports to announce.

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Furthermore, after judgments about the field of perception arise, it becomes necessary to look for support for these judgments, and the insecurity attending unsupported judgment grows distasteful. [15] Thought needs to support its point of view. But this need itself creates indecision, or what Pata~njali calls sa^m`saya, the blockage of attention created by the tendency constantly to debate sides of an issue. [16] Present perception now is occupied by the activity of supplying inductive evidence for or against judgment about past perceptions. Losing its native neutrality and separateness, present perception becomes a vehicle for shoring up the correctness of past perceptions and their interpretation, or else it simply appears in the role of a threat to the validity of past perceptions. Perception no longer stands for itself, and is reduced to confirming or disconfirming preestablished views.

What does rejecting hedonism involve? Only once consciousness no longer concerns itself with seeking out a determinate content of perception, can it afford to attend to the actual nature of its perceptions. The Kargyupta school of Tibetan Buddhism describes this attention in terms of a concentration on the actual process of perceiving, a self-referring attention. This concentration is to a large extent a matter of relinquishing interpretive anticipation of the object through projection. By loosening one's mental cramp -- by which one forecasts and preprograms perception -- what is happening ceases to be invisible or fuzzy, hidden by expectations. Paradoxically, relaxation increases acuity and discrimination. As perception discloses more of the flux of experience, it is increasingly able to explore the elements which constitute that flux. In the Kargyupta text, The Epitome of the Great Symbol, the fundamental claim is that

Whatever thoughts, or concepts or obscuring (or disturbing) passions arise are neither to be abandoned nor allowed to control one: they are to be allowed to arise without one's trying to direct (or shape) them. If one do not more than merely recognize them as soon as they arise, and persist in so doing, they will come to be realized (or to dawn) in their true (or void) form through not being abandoned. [17]

Like the Kargyupta school, Pata~njali describes concentration (dhaara.naa) as the practice of nonidentification which leads to knowledge. Yet while Pata~njali views the ultimate aim of concentration as control of thought processes, for Tibetan Buddhism the primary goal is to recognize the autonomy of the perceptual field in its flow. Concentration reveals the object of perception in two aspects, both of which are essential to its real nature. First, the object is recognized for what it is, without superimposition of judgment. Only thus can the object attain clarity of focus. Second, it is seen in its place within the movement of perception. Knowledge of the object of perception is knowledge both of its content and of its limits or boundaries: to see perception for what it is is to see that each individual perception arises and perishes with a flow. This is one meaning of the ultimate reality of the nothingness as posited by the Buddha.

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who rejected the Vedantic notion of a permanent and static soul principle and claimed instead that all Being is `suunyataa or flux and nullity. In line with Buddhist tradition, and specifically with Mahaayaana Buddhism, Padma Sambhava shows that the ultimate reality of One Mind is voidness, attained through looking into one's own mind. [18] Similarly, the Kargyupta text The Precious Rosary describes the aim of dharma as the recognition of the inherent voidness of mind. [19]

Paradoxically, perceptual clarity is not attained by attending directly to the perceptual flow. Pata~njali instructs the practitioner of yoga always to concentrate on a single object; similarly, The Epitome of the Great Symbol says that the flux of thought can be recognized only by attempting to concentrate intensely on a single object of thought. [20] To see the flow of thought, consciousness must remove itself from this flow. This can be done only by artificially creating a focus of interest, or attempting to repeat a single perception over time. For Kargyupta yoga, it is in recognizing the relative failure of this attempt that one comes to acknowledge the interminable flow of thought. [21] It is evident why the technique of concentration is liable to abuse and misinterpretation. Since in concentration one attempts to repeat a single thought wave or alternatively to stop thought, the disciple is apt to interpret this as the single and final goal, and will then seek to control and block the flow of perception. The Epitome of the Great Symbol describes this as "The going astray in the state of the 'Preventer' trying to prevent the arising of thought..." [22] A state of relative quiescence or nonflux can be attained, but this too is only temporary. For Tibetan yoga, more clearly than for Pata~njali, the goal of concentration is not the elimination of thought per se but the elimination of the psychological need to react to thoughts. [23]

Recognition of voidness or emptiness therefore is not identical with the elimination of thought processes. On the contrary, attaining emptiness is attaining a state where the mind perceives the arising and cessation of thoughts. Nor is it correct to equate the Buddhist view of the metaphysical reality of the void with Hume's doctrine of the nonexistence of the self. Like Hume, Buddhism rejects the notion of a soul substance, but to see the nonreality of such a substance, and the reality of the void, is not to see that there is no self, in Hume's sense. For both Hume and Buddhism perception is discrete and discontinuous. But for Hume this implies that consciousness, being caught in the flow of perception, is at best only momentarily capable of observing the discontinuity of its perceptions, and therefore of itself. By the same token, for Hume, the nonexistence of the self implies that consciousness is necessarily entirely involved with responding to, losing itself in, racing toward or fleeing from, and judging the immediate objects of perception. The nonexistence of the self for Hume amounts to the identification of self with its perceptions, and recognizing the self's nonexistence provides no avenue for consciousness to escape from this process of identification. For Buddhism, on the contrary,

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to acknowledge the nonreality of a self substance is to begin to free oneself from the processes of identification characterizing ego-consciousness, and to develop a space within which the discontinuity of perceptual life can be clearly perceived. To see voidness is, in acknowledging the autonomy of the perceptual flow, to maintain unceasing awareness of that flow. Nonidentification frees one from control by the flow of perception, through the development of a transcendent consciousness. This consciousness is not a thing, since it has no determinate content, but it has continuity by virtue of being able to oversee the flux of perception.

It is true, however, that the disambiguation of perception through non-identification creates conditions favorable to consciousness becoming an active participant in. rather than merely a passive spectator of perceptions. For concentration creates a point of reference to which consciousness directs itself and which therefore allows it to detach itself from the flow of perceptions. Being removed from its perceptions, consciousness is no longer dominated by them, and hence is more capable of directing itself. Moreover, consciousness creates a point of self-reference to which it can always return. Finally, training in disambiguation or nonidentification is training in the capacity to focus, or to attend to particular perceptions at will. This implies that the same process through which consciousness recognizes the autonomy of the perceptual flow and refuses to place demands on that flow also develops the capacity to enter into and follow from any given perception. Consciousness learns to appropriate perception as its own. It is to a discussion of this process that we now turn.

III. The Recovery of Sensation
Ego-consciousness, as we have described it, loses all relation to its actual perceptions because it is immersed in identifying itself with its objects through the process of categorizing them. Identification is not experienced, however, as a simple unity within perception, but as an involvement of conflict: the object is never entirely compatible with the description ascribed to it. Individual perceptions threaten constantly to evade the interpretations given to them. At the same time, the need for and nature of interpretations is dominated by the unwilled character of successive perceptions. Being unable to stop the flux, ego-consciousness resorts to labeling and storing perceptions by use of a conceptual frame-work, through which it then understands itself. The experience of conflict generated shows up as a fuzziness or ambiguity within actual perception, the discrepant match between object and description.

The conflict between object and description discloses itself in the belief that perception, being unwilled, is externally generated. Hume, seeing ego-consciousness as the totality of consciousness, describes perception as an intrusion on the mind from without, even though he wishes to say that consciousness consists of nothing but its perceptions. While refusing a final conclusion on the origin of impressions (whether they be derived from the object, the mind,

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or from God), [24] he nonetheless describe them in terms of their ability to "strike upon the mind with force and violence." [25] Impressions invade ego-consciousness, which compensates for the attack by an attempt to place categorical demands on the object of perception. The immediate product of this conflict is a sense of duality and opposition between the perceiver and the perceived. For where the two are not successfully superimposed, there remains the threat, more or less knowingly experienced, of a rupture between the perception and its interpretation, the threat of equivocation. Perception is necessarily ambivalent.

As elaborated, both Pata~njali's Yogasuutras and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism present doctrines of nonambivalent perception. The force of disambiguating perception, moreover, carries with it the possibility of transforming the unwilled and passive nature of perception, which Hume takes for granted. Passive and external perception presupposes a divergence between perceiver and perceived. For both Pata~njali and Tibetan Tantric Buddhism, transformation of ego-consciousness makes perception less equivocal by lessening the opposition between self and other. Since perceiver and perceived more toward a reintegration, it is incorrect to say that the Yogasuutras seek to eliminate sense-perception altogether when they refer to the state of samaadhi. [26] The adept rather avoids the world of sense-objects only insofar as this world remains external to him. Yoga teaches pratyaahaara, or the withdrawal of the senses from the objects of the outer world. [27] Pratyaahaara, however, is not the elimination of sensation but elimination of the grasping attitude toward sense-objects from which ignorance derives. In pratyaahaara, the internal rather than external generation of perception provides the only true knowledge of the object. Samaadhi, the final stage of concentration in which knower and known become one, simply represents the last appropriation of perception, where consciousness is able to be its perceptions. In a similar vein, the Kargyupta text The Yoga of the Six Doctrines describes elaborate visualization techniques in which the adept trains his body in the generation and development of particular sensations which are independent of sense-objects. [28] Once nonidentification is achieved, the reintegration of perception and its perceiver becomes possible in a non-ambivalent mode.

The reintegration of perception is, both for Pata~njali and for Tibetan Tantricism, fundamentally a process occurring in the bodily domain. This fact may be understood by reference to the doctrine, common to both, of the equivalence of mental and physiological processes. More generally, from the physical point of view, all perception passes through the vehicle of the body, so knowing about perception means knowing about its bodily origin. Knowing the bodily component of perception is having a direct contact with perception rather than one mediated through interpretation. In this connection, it is imperative to recognize that the body is the internal seat of sensation: proprioception always accompanies exteroception. [29] Where consciousness at-

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tributes its perceptions solely to external objects, it mistakes the meaning of the perception in ignoring its proprioceptive component. Only where, by contrast, a knowledge of its own bodily processes is available can the control of consciousness by external objects be broken.

Hume fails to recognize the possibility of a bodily appropriation of sensation, or an embodiment of consciousness reintegrating perceiver and perceived, because of a fundamental ambivalence in his treatment of sensation. Sensations, or more generally, impressions, are for him the origin of all perceptions. Yet while perception as mental event is the object of philosophical concern, Hume rejects the study of sensation on the grounds that this study is the province of anatomists and natural philosophers rather than moral philosophers or philosophers of mind. [30] This view maintains a mind-body dualism according to which all perceptions, including sensations, must necessarily be externally generated. By contrast, yoga, seeing the body as the seat of sensation, views the development of the proprioceptive sense as the avenue to breaking identification and replacing it by the integration of consciousness and its object, since it is in the body that the two are potentially one. Knowing the bodily component of perception is having direct and immediate contact with its flux. Exploring physical sensation, moreover, has the effect of freeing up perception, in that the latter is no longer the target of obscuring conceptual interpretation. Consciousness then becomes free of the belief that it is being invaded from without by sensations. Through proprioception, one obtains an embodied version of the object, the physiological apprehension of its bodiliness. [31] Hence, to deny the place of proprioception in perception is to deny the integrity of perception, an error Hume makes, at the cost of invalidating his method of investigation.

The proprioceptive sense is impoverished so long as consciousness projects its perceptions outward to engulf the object. So long as the projection takes place, consciousness lacks the ability to locate where its perceptions originate from. One of Pata~njali's principal methods for the development of body knowledge is the practice of aasanas, physical postures which facilitate suppleness of the body and which often involve poses not normally encountered in experience. [32] All increase the articulation of the body, one effect of which is to sensitize the kinesthetic and labyrinthine faculties which enable the clear location of sensation throughout the body. Sensation becomes distinct rather than dispersed and distracted. The method further enriches sensation by increasing its variability. Since the nature of perceptions depends on the inter-relation of bodily parts, variations in the harmonious arrangement of the limbs of the body correspond to the creation of new types of sensation and enlarge the capacity to discriminate among types of sensation. Through the practice of aasanas perception is made reliable -- the adept's concentration is trained on his body's response to the posture. To master a pose is to tap the

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proprioceptive information contained therein. Finally, when the aasana is coupled with dhyaana, or prolonged concentration, a dialectic is established between the object created by the proprioceptive perception, and the focus created by concentration. As new elements are discerned in the perceptual field, the focal power that disambiguates perception is strengthened, and an acceleration of nonidentification is introduced. [33]

IV. Concluding Remarks
It is plain, from our preceding argument, that both disambiguating perception and recovering sensation represent methods whereby the discontinuity which ego-consciousness faintly perceives within its experience is clarified, acknowledged, and reduced. Recognition of discontinuity sets the framework within which the development of continuity becomes possible. Yet disambiguation of perception and recovery of sensation differ in important respects, since they represent two stages in the development of perception. First, disambiguation is negative; it clears away the unresolved structures clouding clear perception. Recovery, however, is positive: it reinstates elements absent from an already clear field. Second, disambiguation operates on the dichotomy between word and object, recovery on that between mind and body. Third, disambiguation restructures perception to rid it of all substantives. Recovery restructures perception to give it wholeness and integrity. More generally, disambiguation lends only formal continuity to consciousness while recovery furthers the development of substantive continuity. Disambiguating perception, while sharpening focus to the point of discerning clear meaning, finds nothing in the perceptual flow to warrant hypostatizing a structure corresponding to the perceiver behind the experience, nor any structure at all. The perception is of pure occurrence. In this, there is nothing that the perception can happen to, and nothing to which one would normally ascribe authorship or performance.

Consciousness, then, is neither author nor recipient, but simply the space of occurrence. Continuity lies in the capacity to oversee occurrence, rather than be embedded in it. The recovery of sensation, however, by enriching the basal proprioceptive component of perception, embodies experience, thereby giving it substantive continuity. The bodily concretization of experience does not, of course, negate the processual aspect of reality. But while the body may have only temporal endurance, it nonetheless represents a structure to which perception can be ascribed and in terms of which perception can be understood. This structure comprises the totality of the flux, and by relating to itself as the source of perception learns to direct that perception. Had Hume followed through, rather than contradicting the implications of his own discoveries, he would have discovered the possibility of both formal continuity and actively directed substantive continuity in experience. For formal continuity is implied

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in the very perception of discontinuity, and substantive continuity, in the recognition of the fundamental importance of the body as the seat of all sensation and therefore of all perception. [34]

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Notes
1. Descartes feels that conscious perception is immediately aware of a self to whom its impressions are given. "'I think', 'I am', is necessarily true whenever I think or utter it." (Meditations, in Philosophy Writings, ed. E. Amscombe and P. T. Geach [London: Nelson, 1964] p. 67). Hume, on the contrary, argues that perception is impersonal and neutral, never legitimating the claim of personal identity. "[W]hen I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but perception" (David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge [London: Oxford University Press, 1964], p. 252).

2. Hume, Treatise, p. 1.

3. Ibid., p. 259.

4. Ibid., p. 252.

5. Ibid., p. 260.

6. Ibid., pp. 263-264 (italics ours).

7. Ibid., p. 269.

8. Compare this collapse with the skeptical attitudes he evinces toward the laws of associative thought he claims to have discovered.

9. Hume, Treatise, p. 270.

10. Evans-Wentz agrees with our claim that Hindu and Buddhist yoga differ primarily in the language of description of the acquisition of knowledge, and not in their views as to the essential nature of, or means for, attaining that knowledge. "Although, as we have said. Buddhism is fundamentally yogic, there is need to distinguish Buddhistic from Hindu and other systems of yoga. To the occultist, however, the differences are largely a matter of terms and technique and not of essentials" (Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines [New York: Oxford University Press, 1974], p. 38).

11. Avidyaa is, specifically, self-stymieing ignorance. This ignorance maintains itself, in Pata~njali's system and in Saa^mkhya philosophy, through the three-fold character of the basic epistemic process, of coming to know anything at all. An impulse to understand something [sattva] is activated by an interest or curiosity [rajas], which then generates an inherent tendency to inquire in the wrong direction [tamas]. See Saa^mkhya-Kaarikaa, XIII. From, A Sourcebook in Indian Philosophy, S. Radhakrishnan and C. Moore, eds. (Princeton. N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1957).

12. Pata~njali, Yoga-suutras II, 3, 7, 8. From The Yoga-System of Pata~njali, trans. James H. Woods, in Harvard Oriental Series, Vol. 17, ed. Charles Lanman Vol. 17 (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972). Text includes Comment or yoga-bhaa.sya, of Vedavyaasa, and Explanation, or Tattva-vai`saaradi, of Vaacaspati-Mi`sra.

13. Yogasuutras, I, 30.

14. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, ed. W. Y. Evans-Wentz (London: Oxford University Press, 1968), pp. 237-238. In the eighth century A.D. Padma Sambhava came from India to Tibet, to establish Buddhism there. His teachings, mingled with the native Bon religion, provide the original source of Tibetan Tantricism.

15. A logic of justification is posterior to a logic of discovery, in that unmonitored perception stands in no particular need to justify itself.

16. Yogasuutras, I, 30.

17. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, p. 138. The Kargyupta school, while deriving some of its doctrines from Tibetan Buddhism as established by Padma Sambhava, also claims independent origins. Marpa, who lived in the eleventh century A.D., and was the founder of the Kargyupta

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school, was a disciple of the Indian yogin Naropa. Naropa, in turn, was a disciple of Tilopa. The Kargyupta school claims that the Buddha transmitted the Mahaamudraa philosophy directly to Tilopa who in turn passed it on to Naropa, and through him to Marpa.

18. The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation, pp. 211-212, 215-218.

19. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, p. 88. The Precious Rosary is attributed to Guru Gampopa (A.D. 1052-1135), one of Milarepa's most famous disciples. Milarepa was in turn chief disciple of Marpa.

20. Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, pp. 121-122.

21. "By prolonging, during the meditation, the period of time in which the effort is made to prevent the arising of thoughts, one finally cometh to be aware of thoughts following close on the heels of one another so numerous that they seem interminable. This is the recognizing of thoughts, which equalleth the knowing of the enemy. It is called 'The First Resting Place', the first stage of mental quiescence attained; and the yogin then looketh on, mentally unperturbed, at the interminable flow of thoughts as though he were tranquilly resting on the shore of a river watching the water flow past" (The Epitome of the Great Symbol, in Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, pp. 128-129).

22. [There is no note # 22 in the original Notes]

23. "[T]he procedure is to be indifferent to the thought, allowing it to do as it liketh, neither falling under its influence, nor attempting to impede it. Let the mind act as its shepherd [or watchman]; and go on meditating" (The Epitome of the Great Symbol, in Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, p. 129. Confer also p. 134). In The Dawn of Tantra, Guenther and Trungpa describe the `suunyataa experience as central to Tibetan Tantricism. They then go on to explain that `suunyataa is often misleadingly translated as emptiness, since the experience of `suunyataa is not exactly the experience of nothingness. Rather, to experience `suunyataa is to see the field or context within which individual objects have their place (Herbert Guenther and Chogyam Trungpa, The Dawn of Tantra [Berkeley: Shambhala, 1975], pp. 26-27).

24. Op. cit., p. 84.

25. Ibid., p. 1.

26. Eliade renders samaadhi as 'enstasis'; see. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), p. 37. Compare Yogasuutras III, 3: "This same [contemplation], shining forth [in consciousness] as the intended object and nothing more, and, as it were, emptied of itself, is concentration." Pata~njali goes on to distinguish two grades of enstatic perception: sampraj~naata-samaadhi and asampraj~naata-samaadhi, enstasis with and without support of the object, respectively. See Yogasuutras I, 42-44; III, 55, for the passage from the former to the latter.

27. Yogasuutras II, 54.

28. Confer Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines, pp. 172-252.

29. Proprioception in turn consists of three kinds of internal perception: the kinesthetic (awareness of movement), the labyrinthine (awareness of position in space), and visceral (various vague sensations of the internal organs).

30. Op. cit., p. 8.

31. Proprioception is not merely bodily knowledge. It is knowledge of body. Proprioceptively, one is aware of the resistance of the object, its impenetrability, and its extendedness. Proprioceptive input is not preconceptual or pretheoretical, but represents a wholly different mode of cognition.

32. Yogasuutras II, 20. "Abstentions and observances and postures and regulations-of-the-breath and withdrawal-of-the-senses and fixed attention and contemplation and concentration are the eight aids." Pata~njali just mentions the aasanas. More elaborate descriptions occur in the classical texts of Hatha-yoga, the Ha.thayogapradipikaa and the Tantric Gheranda-Sa^mhitaa.

33. 'Yoga' (from the Sanskrit yuj) bears a bivalent meaning: 'yoking' or 'binding' and 'separating'. Through the aasanas, a reorientation of the senses occurs, from external to internal. The yogin thereby 'separates' himself from an exclusive reliance on externally generated sensation, and, 'joining' proprioceptively originating sensation to impoverished perception, regains the object.

34. The contrast between formal and substantive continuity parallels that between the Buddhist doctrine of anaatman (no-self) and the Saa^mkhya-Yoga doctrine of aatman [transpersonal self]. It also raises the problem of contrasting Hume's 'no-self' with the Tantric anaatman. How does Hume, in neglecting serious attention to discontinuity, arrive at a conclusion similar to tantra? The short

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answer is, Hume inverts his argument. In fact, it is his premise and not his conclusion that avers there is no self. Hence, the parallel is an optical illusion. The inversion occurs when he projects a categorical meaning onto the object unknowingly, and proceeds systematically to mistake one for the other. The resulting conflict disrupts any sense of identity, which in its fractured state, lacks the stability to acknowledge any discontinuous aspect in its way of perceiving. Hume is unable to avoid the initial expropriation of the object, avoidance of which, as Buddhism argues, is essential. Thus, as long as he experiences the lack of integrity, he continues to capture the object categorically, since the latter is the reflection of the attempt to repeat his experience. From this point of view, it follows that to relinquish the felt lack of self is to regain the object, whose very point is erased by inversion.