Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), Today I would like to share some excerpts from this very interesting, rich in content and thought provoking book work by Dr. Robert Ornstein, it was first published in 1971.
Also as we begin today ‘let us remember this about ‘Attention’. Our life experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are so indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly. Once the mechanism is brought to our attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil has been stripped off ordinary life, and we become freer in our action and choices.
It still remains in print and you can buy your book from the link below or from any bookstore near you (if they have the copy) or via an on-line portal accessible to you:
https://www.malorbooks.com/meditation-and-modern-psychology.html
By looking at meditation from both points of view (various religions & philosophies and modern psychologists) Dr. Robert Ornstein produces a view which enables the reader to appreciate and understand meditation as a tool which, under the right direction, leads to a different mode of perception.
Excerpts:
Chapter 2: The Esoteric and Modern Psychologies of Awareness:
The normal view outside of the philosophical tradition, psychology, and the esoteric disciplines is that we experience what exists, that the external world is completely and perfectly reflected in our subjective experience. This idea is quiet impossible to maintain even at the simplest level if we consider the many different forms of energy that impinge upon us at any moment. Sounds, electricity, light waves, magnetism, smells, chemical and electrical impulses within ourselves, thoughts, internal muscular sensations, all constantly bombard us. How then do we ever achieve a stable consciousness in the face of all this fantastic amount of stimulation?
There are two major ways in which we “make sense” out of the world. First, we use our sensory systems to discard and to simplify the incoming information, allowing only a few of the possible dimensions of sensation into our awareness. Second, we further sort the amount of information that does come in along a very limited number of dimensions, out of which we construct our awareness. These dimensions have been called in psychology “unconscious inferences,” “personal constructs,” “category systems,” “efferent readiness,” or “transactions,” depending on the writer’s style and his level of analysis.
Sensory systems by “design” reduce the amount of useless and irrelevant information. We can then say that the function of our receptors and sensory systems is not only to gather information but to select and discard it.
The higher mammals can be regarded as machines that are capable of “retuning” themselves in accordance with alterations in the external environment. This is demonstrated by the following scenario: At a party or at a place where several people are talking at the same time, we close our eyes and listen to just one person speaking, then tune him out and listen to another person. We shouldn’t really be surprised since we tune ourselves continuously to suit our needs and expectations, but we are not usually aware of it.
A major way in which we create our awareness is by tuning out the constancies in our environment. While we are learning a new skill, like skiing, all the complex adjustments and motor movements are somewhat painfully in our awareness. As we progress, as skill becomes “automatic,” the movements no longer enter consciousness. Compare the first time you tried to drive a car, especially one with a gear shift, with how it feels to drive a car now, after you’ve learned. When we drive to work the first time, everything appears quiet new and interesting – a red house, a big tree, the road itself – but gradually, as we drive the same route over and over , we “get used” to everything on the way. We stop “seeing” the trees, the bridges the corners, etc. we become automatic in our response to them.
Brief review of some of the general characteristics of our awareness:
Our senses receive information from the external world but, for most part, are built to discard much of the continuously changing stimulation that reaches them. We also possess the ability to restrict further and modify the information that reaches awareness, by “reprogramming.” The brain selects and modifies input. We build “models” or representations of the world based on our past experience.
Various traditions contend that the selective and restricted nature of awareness is an obstacle to be overcome and that the process of meditation, among other exercises, is a way of turning down the restriction that normally limits awareness. One specific aim in these traditions is the removal of the automaticity and selectivity of ordinary awareness.
In many ways the aims of the disciplines of meditation – total attention to the moment, “dishabituation,” “extended” awareness
Meditation and Modern Psychology – Dr. Robert Ornstein
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