The Elephant and the Blind

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An engaging and insightful journey into human consciousness.

What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world’s leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world’s first comprehensive account of states of pure consciousness. Drawing on a large psychometric study of meditators in 57 countries, Metzinger focuses on “pure awareness” in meditation—the simplest form of experience there is—to illuminate the most fundamental aspects of how consciousness, the brain, and illusions of self all interact.

Starting with an exploration of existential ease and ending on Bewusstseinskultur, a culture of consciousness, Metzinger explores the increasingly non-egoic experiences of silence, wakefulness, and clarity, of bodiless body-experience, ego-dissolution, and nondual awareness. From there, he assembles a big picture—the elephant in the parable, from which the book’s title comes—of what it would take to arrive at a minimal model explanation for conscious experience and create a genuine culture of consciousness. Freeing pure awareness from new-age gurus and old religions, The Elephant and the Blind combines personal reports of pure consciousness with incisive analysis to address the whole consciousness community, from neuroscientists to artists, and its accessibility echoes the author’s career-long commitment to widening access to philosophy itself.Contents:
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: The Elephant and the Blind xiii

1 Relaxation 1
2 Peace 9
3 Silence 21
4 Wakefulness 33
5 Clarity 45
6 Density 55
7 Soundness 63
8 Nonidentification 71
9 Suchness 85
10 Presence 103
11 Connectedness 113
12 The Most Natural State 123
13 Coming Home 129
14 There Is Nothing Left to Do 137
15 Joy, Awe, Bliss, and Gratitude 145
16 Simplicity, Nothingness, and Absence 155
17 Emptiness and Fullness 167
18 Luminosity 191
19 Witnessing 203
20 Pure Awareness during Dreamless Deep Sleep 213

21 Pure Awareness and Lucid Dreaming 233
22 From Timelessness to Timeless Change 247
23 Space without Structure, Center, or Periphery 257
24 Bodiless Body- Experience 271
25 Ego Dissolution: Melting into the Phenomenal Field 297
26 Nondual Being: Unity 307
27 Nondual Awareness: Insight 329
28 Transparency, Translucency, and Virtuality 353
29 The True Self 379
30 Pure Awareness Knows Itself 393
31 It Is Not an Experience 407
32 Meditation and Nonmeditation 421
33 Timeless Continuity 445
34 The Elephant: What Is Pure Awareness? 455
Epilogue: Bewusstseinskultur 479

Glossary of Terms 497
Notes 515
References 547
Index 583Thomas Metzinger was Full Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. He is the author of The Ego Tunnel and Being No One (MIT Press), the coeditor of Open MIND, and the editor of Neural Correlates of Consciousness (both MIT Press).US

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