2.17
Awakening, once an active metaphor, has calcified (§1.17).
‘Calcification’ emerges in Zwicky’s discussion of metaphor.[1] As we’ve seen, she argues that metaphor is based explicitly on an ‘is’ and implicitly on an ‘is not’ (§2.2): “Why, then, is metaphor, as a linguistic trope, dependent on an implicit ‘not’?—Metaphor results from an over-riding of calcified gestures of thought by being.”[2]
Calcification occurs when insight and dynamism are replaced by lifelessness; for example, a metaphor dies when it recedes into the background and the general circulation of things.[3] But as a dead metaphor can be re-enlivened, let’s try to re-enliven the calcified concept of awakening to relate it to the transformation.
Awakening carries a strange metaphysics. It speaks to the transformation from one state to another, from one level to a higher level of awareness, from illusion to reality. This is based on our dominant views on dreams and sleep: in sleep, we’re shut off from the world, with ideas or neurons bouncing around without traction, producing the meaningless display we call dreams. The dream state represents a continual possibility and thus a need to be vigilant (what if you’re dreaming right now?).
Dreams are illusory: they cover over sensory input that can be evidenced through intersubjective relations. Instead, they come from the individual in question. Similarly, our senses and reasoning aren’t perfect, and our finitude and subjectivity limit and obscure experience of the world. Thus, we need practices like science, an institutionalized and intersubjective practice of knowledge that works towards precision and accuracy, and that aims at knowing what’s out there.
— This is a picture, with a hierarchy from direct knowing (i.e., an infinite being, the absolute), to human senses, sensory deception, and hallucinations and dreams. – But what if we question this picture? What if we insist on the reality of dreams and hallucinations? For when we’re dreaming, that’s where we are: that is our reality. This is also the situation for the one hallucinating. Dreams and hallucinations are ways that aspects of the world reveal themselves. Let’s allow the phenomena to speak to us again: what really is a dream? Let’s heed what dreams show and how, for dreams are meaningful in showing how things relate to one another. And hallucinations are often connected to one’s surroundings: what and how do they show?
When we awaken, we awaken to a ‘different’ reality. We don’t ‘awaken’ to the real opposed to the illusory; we awaken from one mode of the real to another. This other mode provides a distinct clarity: more distinct shapes, outlines, and the extent of others, which provide clearer opportunities for responsive engagement (§2.14). Thus, awakening is a transition: a transformation (a gestalt shift, a rearranged fit).
[1] Zwicky, W&M, LH8, LH11.
[2] ibid, LH8.
[3] ibid, LH68.