Qualia meditations

Coffee should be taken once a day, first thing in the morning. Yesterday, I fancied a cup around two pm. A small cup, one heaped tablespoon of ground coffee. Now, as is pointed out by anticoffee activist Michael Pollan, coffee has a half-life of six hours, which means a quarter life of 12 hours (ie it still retains a quarter of its potency 12 hours after ingestion). So, it's two am, and though I had no problems falling asleep three hours earlier, I couldn't return to sleep after waking for a wee.

No matter! Time to meditate!

But how?

A fresh insight came to me on my walk yesterday that the essence of qualia - a subjective experience, depends on having something objective, something material to have the qualia of! We might not agree as to the taste sensation of coriander or aniseed or chilli pepper, but we can all agree that such things physically exist, even though we all experience them differently.

Now, the essence of classic nonduality meditation is emptying the mind of objective thoughts (about what's on my to-do list, my worries etc), switching off the train of thought, and focusing down on the subjective innermost essence of me-ness - namely consciousness. Arriving at such a perfect state brings about a state of unity - your consciousness is on a par with every other conscious being in the Universe. And this, according to panpsychics, is every single subatomic particle.

So - here I am lying awake at half past two in the morning when I have another insight: Imagine brushing the tip of your nose with a feather. A wing feather or downy feather? You can indeed imagine both. Widthwise or lengthwise? Again, imagine both. This is the essence of qualia memory - capturing the experience for recall at a future time. 

Here's another experience of qualia to meditate upon; more usual this time. Imagine washing your hands. Run the tap, pick up the bar of soap, rub your hands together  under the flow of the warm water, feel your hands becoming slippery as the dirt starts to lift away; you rinse the soap off, dry your hands on a warm, fluffy towel, sensing the inner pleasure of knowing you have clean hands.

I take this further. I imagine washing my hands in the cloakroom of my primary school, Oaklands Road, Hanwell, London W7, the early 1960s. The specific smell of the small, cream-coloured institutional bars of soap. The slim metal chain connecting the rubber plug to the washbasin. The hairline crackles in the smooth ceramic. The gurgle of the water disappearing down the plughole. The clanging of a hand-bell, rung by Miss. Playtime is over! Back to the classrooms...

A short example of qualia meditation. I have conjured up a qualia memory, something objective, yet experienced subjectively by me, 55 years ago. 

Back to last night. I am on the point of falling asleep, when I remember a dream or dreams of a levitating hoop, and using it to travel between Ealing Broadway and Pitshanger Lane. Imagine a hoop, the sort you'd have in school PE classes, or a hula-hoop. Imagine it floating horizontally about a metre above the ground. You step into it, grasping opposing edges with your hands. You then lift your feet off the ground. The hoop wobbles, but it supports your weight - your feet stay off the ground. You lean back, then you hook one leg, then the other, over the hoop. You are fully supported by the hoop; backs of knees, hands, forearms and upper back all resting on it. It feels unstable, but you are hovering a metre off the pavement. Using your hand nearest the garden wall, you begin to propel yourself forward. You are gliding, but as you slow down, you once again need to give yourself some momentum by pulling yourself on a gate or roadsign or street light, and so, wobbling, unstable, but still a metre off the ground, you are moving along. Now this is a dream qualia memory. The memory of a dream, returned. I fall asleep.

All meditation requires one to set aside the ego. Neither a moment of triumph nor embarrassment; not a moment of despair or jubilation - just a moment of being supremely aware of all around, the consciousness pure, unsullied by your biology or predicament. The moment when the calm 'inner you' - not the 'outer you' visible to others or to you in reflections - is aware of being.

This time seven years ago:
Public and private land in Poland

This time eight year:
Two Warsaw sunsets over water

This time 11 years ago:
Farewell to the old footbridge over Puławska

This time 12 years ago:
Let's ban cars with engines over 2.0 litres

This time 14 years ago:
Ul. Kórnicka gets paved over