| | Thank you Sam, for puting into words a difficulty I've been having with Objectivism. I'm not well-versed in it by any means. I've read Ms. Rand's book The Virtue of Selfishness only until I lost patience with what I saw as a very narrow view of what was real and how it was experienced. As I see it, rationality is by no means the only method of encountering reality. Furthermore, as Mr. Stewart suggests, the fundamental moment of experience is not rational at all, rationality merely comments on it. Some of the more devoted Objectivists here have had trouble seeing the sense of Mr. Stewart's speech. I hope my eccentric perspective can shed some light on the subject.
I have an experience I'd like to relate to you all. I'm what you might call a psychic reader. I get information about people for which I have no rational explanation, but plenty of confirmation over the years. I'm not clear on the mechanism (I have some excellent theories!), but I am sure that it works. In addition to being psychic I have dedicated much of my life to rational investigation.
One example from my experience seems particularly apt in it's simplicity and straightforwardness. A young woman came into the shop where I was doing readings. I'd certainly never seen her before. She was a bit solemn in her demeanor, but nothing too remarkable on the face of things and so we sat down to do the reading. I don't ask my subjects for any information up front, and she didn't give me any. I use tarot cards as a jumping off point, I find their symbols tend to clear my mind of prejudices and agendas, opening me to what I call "the information." As I lay down the second card, I saw the abortion she had had recently. There was nothing rational in the perception, yet there it was.
Now, in these situations I have many, many thoughts and images that cross my mind. I've come to speak of the psychic information as coming into my awareness "at a certain angle" which I can usually perceive. I think, "Now, that wasn't my thought, was it?"
When I told this woman that I saw her abortion she immediately began to cry. I could see the relief in her face just from hearing me speak of it. The rest of the reading concerned the need to forgive herself and other matters which I don't recall (another characteristic of "the information" is that it tends to fade from my memory very soon after a reading). The rational observer in me latched onto the details of the abortion and the woman's tears as some kind of evidence that I wasn't crazy. No matter how many years I've been at this, my mind's first reaction to this kind of confirmation is the same, "Have I lost my mind?"
In a Zen sense, I think the answer would be a resounding, "Yes!" I think one way of thinking about Mr. Stewart's concept is that in bare awareness there is no "I." The thought, "I am aware" is at one remove from the awareness itself. There's a joke that comes to mind, "If you think you've experienced ego death, you haven't." Anyway, I could go on, but it would be pointless if I've lost you all already. Any thoughts?
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