"The field is said to denote the body, the locus of the self, who is called the field knower ('ksetrajnana'). The field of battle in the Gita is thus the whole field of human experience, the realm of material nature in which the struggle for self-knowledge occurs (Barbara Miller, p. 165)."
Hence the 'Field' in the sense stated by Professor Miller above is perhaps the finest word we possess for expressing the totality of Being or 'All there is' or 'the One' or the universe. Both in its known aspect and in its 'being' aspect if I may use such clumsy expressions.
Joseph Campbell speaks of the "inner reaches of outer space" we may also speak of the "outer reaches of inner space"! This reminds me of Paul McCartney's "Man on the Custard Pie": "He's so far out the only way is in..." Which echoes John Lennon's "your outside is in and your inside is out, so come on...(Me and My Monkey)."
All of these paradoxical phrases point to a place where inside is out and outside is in, or rather that the innerness and the outerness are interchangeable or rather indistinguishable. It is the field which denotes that there is no real wall between outer and inner, or at least we may discover that what we have always taken to be outside---i.e. objecthood, as opposed to inside---i.e. 'subjectivity'. There are no clear lines of demarcation!
When I studied sciences and in particular physics as an undergraduate in the early to mid-80s at the University of Wshington there was a sense at least in my amateur mind that objectivity was a kind of prevailing dogma but that writers like Gary Zukav (The Dancing Wu Li Masters), Doug Hofstadter's Goedel, Escher, Bach and so on were "fuzzy". Psychology at that time was still attempting to hitch up itself by its bootstraps under the promise that it would render the subjective---objective by discovering a 'scientific' character in psychology, but it struck me as odd that it went about using statistics and the 'null hypothesis' as its methodology. It was to be honest a disappointment to me, because I hoped that maybe psychology could shed light on consciousness. I was aware of Daniel Dennett's theories about consciousness, and I also knew that Carnegie-Mellon was pioneering work in artificial intelligence, which believe me, did not seem as plausible then as it does now. But is the plausibility owing to the fact that indeed actual reality is captured in "artificial intelligence", or rather that science in an odd way posits a mysteryious expression, and culture shifts around it until it becomes manifest.
Perhaps it is simply a matter of the word 'artificial' modifying the noun 'intelligence'. Perhaps this is a misnomer... What after all, distinguishes intelligence as intelligence in the first place? Somehow there must be a "leap" from material non-intelligence to intelligence---where, when and how did this occur? Or was conscious thought somehow 'embedded' in primitive matter as Teilhard observes?
'Artificial Intelligence' may be likened to an "artificial" bionic limb (arm). In other words, by itself it is simply an inert apparatus. But having become accustomed to being used, the limb, though artificial, completes the sense of the arm and in some sense mimics its function.
AI, is a kind of bionic apparatus like eye glasses for humanity! Like the mechanical arm, it completes a human function that has been impaired. The internet and all of its accoutrements enhance human mental performance. In the same way, left to its own, the internet and digital nervous system, without human interface is so many hard drives and silicon chips. But the interface enlarges the overall human grasp to an exponential degree.
But what after all is 'grasp'? Isn't this another way of saying: what is the act of thinking that composes intelligence? And how is knowledge acquired? Whether the threshold be biological neurointelligence, or the leap between digital infrastructure materials and the mysterious integer we call 'intelligence', the distance in either case appears to be insurmountable. Is this a conundrum somehow lodged in Western Intellectual history?
If we turn to the field knower (kshetrajnana) we accept that 'the field' is the totality of what can be known and the totality of the knower. The knower must conquer both worlds (inside-outside) in order to know. The knower is not set off and apart from the 'knowing'.
A dyadic consciousness, such as found in lovers, refers to a knowing that is enhanced organically because of the bipolarity or yin-yang of the couple. Psychic phenomena are more likely to occur, it becomes difficult to know exactly where the boundaries are. "I am he as you are me and we are all together..." sang John Lennon.
Monday, January 21, 2008
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