We
all have various experiences in life. Love, hate, being pleased/displeased,
being rewarded/punished, seeing a tiger, smelling the fragrance of a perfume,
touching a table, happiness, sorrow, being afraid of, or threatened by
somebody, reading, writing, being a child in school, being a father or mother,
trying to understand a concept, theory or problem and succeeding or
not succeeding in that attempt, being in the waking state, dreaming, half
asleep, soundly asleep, in agony, anxious, comfortable or in difficulty,
conducting/observing religious rituals, social customs, playing different
games, and so on. Each of these may have different kinds of sub-categories of
experience: for example, loving my parents is different from loving my friends,
both are different from loving myself. Just as experiences are innumerable,
understandings of experience can be innumerable as well. To complicate matters
further, we are bombarded by claims of approaches to experience that are
supposed to help us live our daily lives, from the marketing associated with
various lifestyle and consumer choices (exercise, dietary protocols,
“mindfulness”) to the poorly defined yet allegedly virtuous concepts of
academic fashion (“embodied” being the current one!)
Initially,
religions and philosophy sought to develop understanding of experience, later
followed by the sciences. However, history has also shown that new
understanding of human experience cannot have any impact unless our individual
minds are radically affected to the point where habitual responses such as anger,
greed, grasping and aversion are radically transformed. Understanding is one
thing but we would need to feel so inspired by this new understanding that we
are compelled to act on it. Only when this becomes internalised can people
benefit. Gautama Buddha and Jesus of Nazereth both came up with radical new
understandings of human experience and there are Buddhists and Christians who
are of benefit to others through this and some who are not. This shows that
understanding without wisdom is futile.
Experience
is central to human existence in so far as we all engage with experience at every
moment of our lives. Experience is related to and influenced, shaped and
determined by a vast range of factors within and beyond our control. This
considerable complexity of experience would suggest that every effort should be
made by representatives of academic disciplines to work together so as to
establish holistic approaches and yield holistic insights, rather than
exclusively delving even deeper into the increasingly isolated areas of
interest characteristic of those disciplines. Strategic efforts by some funding
bodies have realised this need by actively supporting such collaboration.
I am grateful to Professor Les Lancaster and Dr Jessica Bockler for having discussed these issues with me and having contributed to a (sadly unsuccessful) funding bid in 2014. They now work through the Alef Trust which they founded in 2015. The text below in italics reflects their contribution.
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| Les Lancaster |
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| Jessica Bockler |
The
quest to explore human experience lies at the core of all theatre, most other
artistic endeavours, and all study of the mind. For most of the 20th
century, conventional methods of enquiry across the natural and social sciences
focused on the objective and uninvolved description, definition and prediction
of the objects of their research. Quantitative methods were favoured over
qualitative approaches which were “recommended only as interim strategies that
might provide suggestions or hints for later quantitative and/or experimental
determinations” (Braud and Anderson, 1998, 5). It was the general assumption
that valid knowledge of the world could be obtained only through neutral observation
of external phenomena. In this drive for objectivity humanity’s unique capacity
for inner experience, for self-awareness, introspection and intuition was
almost entirely ignored. The fundamental binary opposite between the outer
objective and the inner subjective led to the assumption that the domains of
objective science and of subjective arts and humanities are mutually exclusive.
There
have been recent attempts to achieve multi-disciplinarity and integration of
disciplines. Such attempts tend to emphasise process over state and performance
over text, participation, interconnection, appreciation and transformation over
detached description, prediction and control (Braud and Anderson, 1998). These
recent attempts do not exist in isolation, nor are they new. In fact, the results
of such attempts approach long-held ideals such as direct experience of Plato’s
idea, and Schiller’s principle of universality (1789). Those ideals are
eclectic, interweaving, interactive, transcultural, transpersonal, and
holistic, and the approaches seek to be rigorous, as well as respectful, in a
methodological sense. The changing view of experience opened up by these recent
developments places emphasis on the subjective, first person dimension (Varela and Shear, 1999) in areas including
the perception of time, the nature of emotions, embodied cognition, and access
to tacit and intuitive means of gaining knowledge. These foci emerge as four
distinct areas of experience (AoE)
central to the project: time, emotions, embodied cognition, and intuition.
Over
the past three decades, researchers in the human sciences have become
increasingly aware of the limitations of so-called objective research practices
and have begun to develop approaches which acknowledge subjective experience as
a valid source of knowledge (Polkinghorne, 1983). Braud and Anderson assert
that a complementary, transpersonal research paradigm has begun to emerge which
“can more adequately apprehend the complexity, breadth, and depth of our world
and of humanity” (1998, 6) by offering a less constrained, less fragmented and
more meaningful picture of human nature and potential. The new paradigm
repositions human experience, allowing for a multiplicity of voices and
relating the individual to the larger whole within which all experience is
co-created. It moves away from purely instrumental and utilitarian values that
emphasise the need to manipulate and control, and it champions participation
and appreciation, placing greater value on complexity, ambiguity and
complementarity. The benefits that this new paradigm generates can affect all
domains of human society, reshaping social, cultural and economic norms and
perspectives. In the field of health, for example, we are witnessing the
emergence of a new, participatory recovery model which expands medical
treatment options by enhancing partnership work and self-directed care, leading
to greater choice, control and empowerment for people experiencing illness (McNiff,
1998; Care Services Improvement Partnership, 2007; mental Health Foundation,
2014).
A
number of new research methods have evolved which emphasise the value of
alternative, participatory modes of knowing, e.g., Intuitive Inquiry (Anderson
1998), Organic Research (Clements, 2004) and Heuristic Inquiry (Moustakas 1990).
Within these approaches “[R]eality is contacted through physical sense data,
but also [...] through a deep intuitive inner knowing. Awareness includes
(objective) sensation as well as (subjective) intuitive, aesthetic, spiritual,
[and] noetic […] aspects. Understanding comes [...] from identifying with the
observed, becoming one with it” and the “entire spectra of states of consciousness
are of interest […]” (Moustakas, 1990, 10-11)—a notion echoed by Tart (1972)—who
advocated the development of state-specific
sciences, suggesting that non-ordinary states of consciousness are likely to
yield new insights which are not accessible by conventional methods.
Alongside
alternative modes of knowing these new research methods embrace an extended
range of tools for data collection and analysis, allowing the researcher to
engage with the topic in a holistic, deeply embodied and immersive way. The researcher’s
immersion in the research topic may include active engagement with the
practices of research participants (e.g., through workshops and seminars),
contemplative and meditative practice, body work, dream analysis, and work with
symbols and metaphors, highlighting the creative dimensions of the
complementary research approaches.
The
trend just discussed is growing, but as it grows it also meets with increased objection,
which developed from ridicule of not taking the trend seriously to harsher
criticism as it is being perceived as a threat to the status quo. It would be
well worth exploring the extent to which the UK’s Research Excellence Framework
is in fact a suitable tool for bricking in the status quo. Many disciplines
still do not “talk to each other”, or at least not fully, openly, directly,
intentionally, freely and effectively. The same applies to sub-areas within
disciplines, old and new, because each area considers its position and other
positions in the discipline as mutually exclusive rather than as positions
that, while different, add to the overall understanding because they are
approaching the same phenomenon from different angles.
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Vilayanur Ramachandran |
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| C.P.Snow |
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| Friedrich Schiller |
What we need is, to invoke Schiller, “philosophical
minds” to identify synergies and links between areas that may come across as
not related, rather than sticking to the status quo of fragments that provide a
safe haven to “bread scholars” (1789) who have learnt a whole lot about the fragments,
but who see any development that might challenge their knowledge about
fragments as a threat to their own very essence, and who will thus fight genuine
progress with all possible means.
Anderson,
R. (1998). Intuitive inquiry: A transpersonal approach. In W. Braud & R.
Anderson, Transpersonal research methods for the social sciences: Honoring
human experience (pp. 69 ‐
94). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Braud,
W. & Anderson, R. (1998). Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social
Sciences. London: Sage, p. 5.
Care
Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP), Royal College of Psychiatrists
(RCPsych) and Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), 2007. URL: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/positionpapers/pp08.pdf,
accessed on 13th September 2014. 2.)
Clements,
J. (2004). Organic inquiry: toward research in partnership with spirit. Journal
ofTranspersonal Psychology, 36 (1),
pp. 26 ‐
49.
McNiff,
S. (1998). Art-based Research. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, pp.
15-18
Mental
Health Foundation, 2014. URL: http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/help-information/mental-health-a-z/R/recovery/,
accessed on 13th September 2014.
Moustakas,
C. (1990). Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology and Applications.
London: Sage.
Polkinghorne,
D. (1983). Methodology for the human sciences: Systems of inquiry.
Albany: SUNY Press; Tesch, R. (1990). Qualitative research: Analysis types
and software tools. Bristol, PA: Falmer.
Schiller,
F. 1789/1972. The Nature and Value of
Universal History: An Inaugural Lecture. History and Theory 11 (3): 321-334.
Tart,
Charles T. (1972). States of consciousness and state‐specific sciences. Science,
176, pp. 1203 ‐1210.
Varela,
F. J., & Shear, J. (1999). First-person methodologies: What, why, how. Journal
of Consciousness studies, 6(2-3), 1-14.
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