S5E3 Knowing the Real
Our sense of what is meaningful is tied directly to our sense of what is real. Humans need to feel that their hopes, beliefs, efforts, and relationships are grounded in something that transcends their own lives, something more substantial than their own personal concerns. This moreness is the sense of the real. Without that sense there is no meaning in life. In this episode we look at some of the work of cognitive psychologist and philosopher Dr. John Vervaeke of the University of Toronto, who has put forth several ways that we come to know the real, and hence to experience meaning. Along the way we’ll speak of Yoga as a system of embodied practice that addresses each of these ways with great facility.
Listen to the podcast episode, then add your comments and questions below. Matt will be glad to answer you!
Edited Transcript
Greetings everyone.
Welcome to episode three in our series on meaning and realness. In the last episode, we spent time talking about what is most meaningful to us and the fact that that which is most meaningful is that which we experience as the most real. We saw that realness has four dimensions, purpose, coherence, significance and mattering. All of these contribute to the experience of realness and a serious lack of any of them in one's life is predictive of bad, physical, financial, relational and psychological outcomes.
We looked at how the experience of the real is often coincident with the shattering of illusions, and we saw that though awakening from an illusion always lands us closer to what is true, it's not always a pleasant experience, but it is what is needed if we are to make our way toward deeper intimacy with the real and therefore toward more meaning in life. Then we talked about how the practice of yoga stewards the awakening process in such a way that our experience is always taken through these elements of purpose, coherence, significance and mattering.
There's something that's really, really important to repeat before we go into the content of this sequence. We made the point last time that we're not primarily thinking things, that at our core, we are the active remembrance and representation of our experience in the spirit of thankful praising or blessing. So rather than conceiving of ourselves as thinking things, we should understand that we're embodied and imaginative, feeling - or affective - actors, and that we move ritualistically or liturgically in reality in order to discover and know the meaningful and the real. The bottom line of this admittedly complex description is the understanding that we're ultimately driven by desire and love.
This discussion looks deeply into the specific ways that we come to know the real and this, again, comes from the work of Dr John Vervaeke, the cognitive scientist and philosopher from the University of Toronto. Dr Vervaeke has outlined what he calls the four “P”s, or the four ways that we come to know what is real. As such, these four ways of knowing are foundational in discovering and making meaning in life. Each of these begins with a P, so it's a nice coincidence. You can memorize them more easily that way.
The Four “P”s
We come to know what is real, and therefore what is meaningful, through a sophisticated and hierarchically organized series of interdependent cognitive functions, listed here in the order of their emergence in human development, and therefore, from the bedrock of the pyramid, so to speak up to the tip top of the pyramid:
Participatory knowing
Procedural knowing
Perspectival knowing
Propositional knowing
Each mode of knowing is distinct, but they're interdependent; all of them generate forms of true knowledge, and they all combine to engender our sense of what is real and meaningful. Each also has a form of memory that is specific to it.
The four “P”s were the inspiration for the title of the podcast: The Lost Ways of Knowing. Finding Dr Vivaeke’s work was like discovering this lost treasure, and this experience also further illuminated the profundity of Yoga practice for me: I realized that the power of yoga comes from the fact that it intuitively embodies all of these ways of knowing in a very systematic way, allowing many different kinds of individuals to embody them in ways that fit everyone’s unique constitution.
I came to understand that yoga is a sophisticated ecology of practices and principles, the participation in which guarantees that we cultivate and refine all of these ways of knowing, increasing the probability that wisdom arises as a result. So we're going to go into each one and say a little about how yoga incorporates each of them.
Participatory Knowing: Belonging
The first way is called participatory knowing, and when we know in a participatory way, we experience belonging: we know “belongingly”. Dr. Veraeke calls participatory knowing a profound mutual shaping that occurs between an organism and the environment. Organisms have to shape themselves in very specific ways in order to interface with an environment: they are literally transformed in this process. Also, there is reciprocality in this process: the environment is also transformed in subtle ways. Knowing in a participatory way is knowing in the deepest possible way, and that means knowing without knowing that you know.
Think about the way that we learn the most essential things in early childhood: at this stage we learn everything by immersing ourselves in the things that we want, things like walking and talking, for instance. We are immersed in the world, particularly a world of meaning and dynamic interaction. Long before we understand anything conceptually, we're in real contact with it. We don't learn to walk or talk by listening to propositional statements about those things. We learn them by mirroring what we observe and then trying to shape our bodies correctly to the forms best suited to those tasks. As affective, embodied actors we see and feel, desire, and act, receive feedback, adjust our shape, try again, remember and learn. In earlier discussions we have called this communion.
This way of coming to knowledge is a deep, primordial way of being rational. Specifically: when I am being rational in a participatory way, I'm involved in a dynamic process of contact and response, in which adaptation as mutual shaping is continuous, and I end up knowing, as I said earlier, in a belonging way, where I am afforded the right fit between me and the world like a lock and a key.
The specific kind of memory that belongs to participatory knowing is what we would call the self. This kind of knowing forms the fertile field in which my understanding, and my feeling of belonging to myself as myself develops. Participatory knowing is foundational to all the other: we cannot really know anything unless it increases and refines our sense of belonging.
Now, when I think of yoga and participatory knowing, the first thing that comes to mind, obviously, is yoga posture practice. If you think about participatory knowing as a mutual shaping, you could just take this panoply of postures that the yoga tradition has generated, and see each one of them as an environment, or a world in itself. Each posture is a specific shape, and one has to move into contact with that shape in order to experience the world that it is. And, not only do we simply ape the shape that we encounter, our task is to mold ourselves to its parameters, and continually readjust in response to changes. Our efforts modulate: sometimes we have to try a little harder in one area, and sometimes we have to soften in another in order for one’s own physical, emotional, psychological idiosyncrasies be fitted well to the posture, in a way that's like a key in a lock.
Asana is then a process of mutual adaptation, whereby effort and the shape of the body, and in particular the breath, is continuously adjusted in response to the feedback that is generated via a process of participation/mutual adaptation. The classical definition of the Asana is sthiram sukham asanam: asana is stable and comfortable, such that one is no longer disturbed by dvandva - “the dualities”, and gains access to ananta samapati - “cognitive blending with the infinite”, or “contemplation of the infinite”. This is obviously a description of transcendence that surpasses mere psychological adaptation, via deep and intimate participation: the physical, psychological, and emotional are configured in relation with the breath in a way that flows freely, deepening concentration and opening a dialogue with the real wherein insight may arise.
Procedural Knowing: Skill
The second way is called procedural knowing. And to make this simple, one can call it knowing as skill. This is our ability to do things well. The skills we develop in life grow directly and naturally from the former level: our skills grow out of our direct participation. Conceptual skill is relatively worthless in the real world. When this way of knowing is actualized, I know how to follow a conversation; I know how to catch a ball; I know how to tell jokes.
Now, skill acquisition in general is dependent on participation, but even more importantly, it's dependent on participating in a way where I'm paying very high quality attention to the things that I'm doing. So in order to improve in this procedural area, we need to learn to develop very refined attentional skills, very refined concentration skills. That means we need to pay attention, not only to the objects and events that are happening in our experience, but also that we really need to learn how to specifically pay attention to how we're paying attention, and this is called mindfulness, or inquiry.
The kind of memory that comes with procedural knowing is procedural memory: the ability to execute actions skillfully, without conscious deliberation. Our procedural memory is filled with things that we do very, very well without having to think about them. Take walking for instance: it's just something that we do, and it's very difficult to try and step outside of it and explain it conceptually, because as a form of skillful knowledge it is so deep; it’s just a part of who we are.
Skills are true in a certain way, but they're not true like propositions. Skills are true like rulers or true.
They're true like a scope on a rifle is true. That means that the truth of these things lies in the fact that they are very well aligned with the context that we're in now.
If we inquire into the way yoga relates to procedural knowing or skill acquisition, and we understand that all matters of skill develop primarily by paying attention to how we're paying attention, or by being mindful, then one can immediately see yoga as deeply involved with this level: yoga is perhaps most essentially about how to pay attention, not only objects of awareness, but also to one’s own attention itself. The discipline generates many changing scenarios in which simultaneous observation of objects and attention itself is cultivated. One learns how the nature of attention changes relative to mood, to interest or desire, to physical motion and sensation, to stillness, and especially in relation to breathing.
So yoga really is the business of learning to generate high quality attention and sustained concentration.
In this sense, yoga is the skill of subtle and stable attention, and the continued development and execution of this skill is directly related to knowledge of a certain kind: a knowledge that comes from access to subtle experiences that transcend the mundane sense of self.
Perspectival Knowing: How to fit into a specific scenario, or play a role
The third way is called perspectival knowing. This is knowing how to be something, or knowing how to play a particular role in a certain context. At its root, perspectival is knowing that I know how to be something. One might call it situational knowing, or knowing as particular states of consciousness.
As a way of being rational, it is characterized by knowledge of situational contingencies, and so to have being able to recognize the changing context in which one finds oneself: the people in particular are changing, and they are in possession of minds to which one does not have direct access. They have ideas and feelings of their own, preferences of their own. So when one has developed perspective, all these contingencies are part of my field of concern; consequently, one is able to fill the right role in the situation, and, importantly, employ the right skills that help accomplish this.
Generally we have problems in life because we often fail to take on new perspectives when we need to,
and what generally prevents us from doing this is self centeredness, or egocentrism. So training the rationality of perspectival knowing means overcoming egocentrism, which means taking broader and different perspectives from our own and internalizing those: we try on other headsets, for instance, and begin to act and perceive the world through their perspectives. In the yogic context, for instance, one begins to internalize and imitate the behavior of the sage or the wise teacher or guru.
Because we do this, we come to see the world in different ways. We see elements of the world that we weren't formerly paying attention to, and simultaneously, parts of ourselves that we weren’t formerly aware of. We experience things in us that resist these new perspectives because they clash with our egocentrism. And as a result, new patterns are discerned, and new insights emerge. In turn, these perspectives of the wise sage can be further and further internalized. And this is an ongoing process that leads to the flowering of wisdom, and ultimately, in yogic terminology: Moksha or liberation.
The kind of memory that goes with perspectival knowing is called episodic memory. And that means that as we try on these different perspectives, and gain the ability to assume different roles, in many different and changing contexts, a story is forming. There are very important moments or episodes in that story that stick in our memories, and they're significant because they're usually coincident with insight that arises from certain crucial mistakes, and also the overcoming of those, resulting in moments of triumph.
Perspectival knowing is deeply intertwined with our sense of identity or who we are. If we think about how yoga might understand and embody this process, we realize that yoga has always been deeply intertwined with Inquiry into the Nature of true identity and its relationship to awareness or consciousness. The practice continuously demands that we inquire into who we are by trying on many different perspectives, and by turning our intelligence onto that process as we do it. So it's not just a matter of trying on different perspectives in order to achieve different results. It's trying on different perspectives and examining ourselves doing that process with the most basic level of intelligence that we have. And so we're not just examining the products that result from the things that we do. We are examining the process by which those products are produced, and in that process, we discern more and more and more who we truly are and who we're not. Or you could say we learn to distinguish between what the tradition calls the self and the personality, which is more temporary, more ephemeral, and also - if left unexamined - remains the locus of all of our attachments and our ignorance.
Propositional Knowing: Knowing That
The last way, the tip top of the pyramid so to speak, is called propositional knowing. Propositional knowing is knowing that something is the case. This way of knowing generates what you might call belief. When I know something in a propositional way, I can make statements about what I know and the beliefs that have formed as a result that are factual and true. To cultivate and deploy this way of knowing, one needs to improve inferential ability: the ability to infer from experience and evidence to a particular generalized truth. To do this well, one has to overcome personal bias, which is based on our strong tendency to be egocentric in all things. Dr Vervaeke notes that a practice called active open mindedness helps us learn to find our biases and correct them. Active open mindedness means turning our attention and intelligence onto the processes by which we infer certain things, and learning to spot and modify the ways in which egocentricity warps our understanding in various directions..
Propositional knowing also has a specific kind of memory called semantic memory, and this is the memory of concepts, facts, or explicit knowledge: all the things that are true, regardless of the situation that I'm in. A good example is that Bucharest is always the capital of Romania, whether or not I am in Bucharest, or whether or not I have been made aware of this fact.
Now, yoga certainly is involved in this level of knowing, although, in my experience, it's much more concerned with participation, skillful development, and perspective. It's almost like Yogins assume that propositional knowing, or knowing that something is the case, will take care of itself if each of these areas is illuminated. But of course, this notion of being able to arrive at truth, of speaking truthfully, holding viable beliefs, and perceiving truthfully beyond bias is deeply intertwined in the tradition at many levels.
One particular example can be found in the set of observances called Yama, which Patanjali outlines in the yoga sutra, which defines what we call classical yoga. Truth in the Yamas is known as Satya. Being in the way of Satya, or the way of truth, is a conscious attempt at all times, in all circumstances, to be honest about what we know, and what we can and can't say with regard to it. This demands that all of our beliefs, all the on which they are founded, continually be submitted to the acid test of inquiry. Specifically, in order for this to happen, we have to quiet the mechanical activity (vritti) of the mind (citta) via stabilized concentration (samadhi) on its behaviors and tendencies, so that truth bearing insight (prajna) emerges and we see through the tangle of false identifications that biases our understanding away from who we truly are. The ethical constraints outlined as Yama function in service of this endeavor. Satya cultivates not only right view (darshana), it chastens our habitual speaking by teaching us to listen more in the spirit of gentleness (ahimsa) and this in turn modifies thinking in powerful ways.
My first teacher was very insistent that truth is an extremely difficult thing to come to, and especially for people who are as self reflective and cautious as yoga practitioners. He suggested that
we might benefit by thinking of Satya as honesty, because honesty is something that is actionable even when the truth of things remains uncertain. Being honest often means knowing that you don't know, and this can and should be the proposition that is spoken in crucial moments. It can also be the content of the belief that is true in relation to any particular circumstance, or the content in that circumstance.
Summary
If at our core, we are the active remembrance and representation of experience in the spirit of thankful praising or blessing, then we are not primarily thinking things. Rather, we are embodied, imaginative, affective actors, desiring to be in relationship with the meaningful and the real, and therefore we are moving ritualistically or liturgically in reality in order to come into contact with what is real and conform ourselves to it. So we are ultimately creatures that are driven by love. As loving embodied actors, we come to know that which is real and meaningful in four primary ways.
The first way is through direct participation and the mutual shaping that results from intimate contact with the real, and in this contact both we and the real mutually shape one another and become well fitted in communion when there is insight. This communion forms the ground or the field, for the formation of the self.
Second, that which is real and most meaningful is known procedurally: via participation, we naturally develop skills wherein we hone the ability to execute complex actions by modulating and refining our attention in very specific ways, in a dialogical process of receiving immediate feedback and correcting at the level of bodily participation.
Third, we come to know the real perspectivally, wherein we develop a kind of pre-reflective stance in relation to the process of our own experience: we cultivate the ability to know that we know. And this also means that we begin to sense the presence of others and their minds, to which we don't have direct access, but from which we're not totally cut off. In order to do this, we have to overcome our egocentric biases so that we can discern what is relevant to the changing situations that we're part of and pick the right skills and play the correct role In that scenario.
Last we know propositionally, or that things are truly the case. Through active open mindedness, we learn to overcome specific biases and develop and refine our inferential skills. When solid inferential skills generate reliable beliefs, we gain the ability to speak true statements that reflect these beliefs.
The four ways of knowing all function together, and form what should rightly be known as rationality. Yoga, in the broadest sense, is a spiritual ecology of practices and principles, which intuitively and systematically embodies and cultivates the four ways. So it's an incredible offering to the modern world and its love-driven creatures who need meaning so desperately.
So I want to thank you all for being here and engaging with these ideas. God bless you, and we'll see you next time.
