Mar 22, 2020
Meditation: What is the relationship between Descartes and our contemporary practices?
(Cogito#ergo sum)
“If I did not meditate for two hours every day, I could never have written books like Homo Sapiens.”
Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
How many of the readers understandably blown away by Sapiens — “a global success,” “a bible of mankind” and bedside book to some of the great minds of our times including Steve Jobs and Obama — started reading 21 Lessons for the 21st Century? And how many made it to the final chapter and 21st lesson entitled “Meditation”?
“(…) Since (…) 2000 (…), shared Harari, a general culture superman with unearthly knowledge in anthropology, philosophy and politics, and a master of synthesis in categories across the board, I began meditating two hours every day. (…) Without the focus and clarity of this practice, I could not have written Homo Sapiens or Homo Deus” (YNH) (1)
An occupation for idling hippies and the prosaic upper crust?
I feel it is important to really consider this statement, which Yuval Noah Harari himself qualifies as a confession, though well aware of the potential damage for his image on both autobiographical and scientific levels in affiliating himself with the intensive daily practice of an activity that evokes (perhaps especially to our western imaginations) either the glitter-clad vagrancy of some cheap nirvana sold by gurus amongst the biggest losers in the world’s economic developments, or the dusty reveries of semi-religious, semi-hallucinating aging blue blood philosophers cuddled up near their wood stoves. A being somewhere between an unhinged meditating hippie and a pain-in-the-neck philosopher. Harari’s courage is substantial.
The common denominator of all forms of meditation
From East to West and all around the planet, meditation refers to the mental practice that consists of focusing on a given object either in your thoughts, your emotions or your body. The aim is to think intensely, to be intensely conscious, and to create a void around the object of meditation. The objects and techniques, of which there are undoubtedly hundreds, have this core in common.
When the father of rationalism practices meditation
René Descartes was a meditator in no small way. You must admit it’s intriguing that the mathematician who invented the coordinate system (x and y) bearing his name, the father of analytical geometry and a rational thinker by definition also published a hugely famous works under the title Metaphysical Meditations whose adjective adds an extra layer of improbable mysticism.
Like the greatest symphonic pieces, Metaphysical Meditations opens with a sequence of unmistakable measures, measures we could listen to again and again with equal enjoyment. Descartes had a way with words. Precision, rigour, density and imagery. His aims were nothing less than unveiling the truth, the nature of God and of the human soul, or in words more congruent with our 21st century times, the relationship between the human spirit and what “is,” and what gives meaning to the things that are. Descartes was, of course, a deist, a believer or whichever term you may prefer, unless his repeated sermons ensuring the existence of God the Creator as recounted in the canons was merely a ruse so he could think without the clergy’s interference. After all, with roughly the same timing as Galileo, he too came to the conclusion that geocentrism was invalid. Enlightened by the fate met by the illustrious physician, however, he elected not to publish his conclusions as his own, taking refuge behind the phrase signing his entire works: “Larvatus prodeo,” I go forward masked. The God in his writings may be a different God than that of theologists, perhaps an entity encompassing the universe and all that exists, and the nature of Being, in its metaphysical meaning. Something beyond the grasp of today’s thinkers. Harari has spoken along the same lines:
“The academic world provided me with powerful tools to deconstruct all the myths humans ever created, but it didn’t offer satisfying answers to the big questions of life.” (YNH) (3)
Descartes, in a period of serious reassessment at the time, was convinced of the need to deconstruct the myths undermining the knowledge of his day, without waiting for Derrida:
“Several years have now passed since I first realized how numerous were the false opinions that in my youth I had taken to be true.” (Meditation one)
Understanding who we are through methodic doubt
Descartes set the powerful machine of methodic doubt into motion, meaning “doubt as a work method.” Descartes was anything but a skeptic. How many times, in response to a peremptory “Descartes doubts everything” have I written into the margins of my student’s papers “Descartes does not doubt. He examines the modes in which the human mind knows by temporarily disqualifying any that are not absolutely and necessarily certain.”
Though René has lost popularity since Antonio Damasio filled his pockets demonstrating his mistake, let’s read what he had to say:
- 1st circle of certainty: everything I have learned, I have learned from or through the senses. But I know the senses can be deceptive. (We are all familiar with optical illusions). The senses cannot guarantee the solid foundation of knowledge. And thus ,in my method, I shall proceed as though my senses did not exist.
- 2nd circle of certainty: the fact that I am “myself,” here where I am at present, “sitting by the fire, wearing a winter dressing-gown…” (It was cold in thatched cottages and heating sources were not in-floor or remote-controlled). A solid certainty, indeed: “How could it be denied that these hands or this whole body are mine?”. And yet… I’ve already felt the same certainty, in a dream, of being something I am not. Just like some who have lost their senses think they’re someone or something else even when they’re awake. Who can assert that I am any different? Given the doubt, I must exclude the feeling of being here as a certainty — is more of less how Descartes put it.
- 3rd circle of certainty: what about the objects that are in our minds, acting, if not as a perceptual framework already disqualified by our thought progression (physics, astronomy, medicine), rather as a framework for understanding such as the notion of magnitude, quantity and number in a mathematical sense: “(…) whether I am awake or asleep, two and three added together are five.” Descartes could have stuck to that strong conviction, had he not been so deeply methodical: among the ideas instilled in his mind was one that made him believe in an omnipotent transcendence, and seeing no evidence that it could not cause us to be mistaken every time we are certain of something, he reasoned that certainty was never complete. But, even methodologically-speaking, Descartes could not fathom a deceitful God. His mind conceived instead an evil demon who deceives us when we are filled with certainty, even in terms of mathematics.
“I will suppose, then, not that Deity, who is sovereignly good and the fountain of truth, but some malignant demon (…). I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all external things, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity. I will consider myself without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believing that I am possessed of these. I will continue resolutely fixed in this belief, and if indeed by this means it be not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of truth, I shall at least do what is in my power [to suspend my judgement].” (Meditation one)
Meditation as a window of observation into the mind
What remains beyond this downward vortex of growing doubt into which our certainties disappear, the certainties with which we’ve woven our inner self, our world and our understanding of its workings? Descartes, a true man of letters as we have seen, spoke of a “painful and laborious design.” Before we take a courageous plunge and attempt to decipher the cogito # ergo sum, let us take note of the similarity with what is at work in the experiences of Harari and most meditators of our times: a movement that consists of considering what makes our minds function, gaining consciousness of the objects within it, and observing, as if from the outside, the mind’s movements and the effervescence of rebellious thoughts that assail it without its consent:
“If you try to objectively observe your sensations, the first thing you’ll notice is how wild and impatient the mind is.” (YNH) (5)
Cogito ergo sum
The snag where methodic doubt comes to a halt, the ocean floor where brave philosophers commence the ascent from their deep-sea exploration, is the awareness that something incontestably occurs when we doubt: we are CONSCIOUS of doubting, I KNOW that I AM CONSCIOUS and I know that I AM, that my existence is real at least when I am conscious of doubting, conscious of feeling, conscious of wanting, affirming or denying. And no one, not even the malignant demon, can rob me of that certainty.
Try this in your bedroom. One by one, shut down the certainties you are made of: the process is unstoppable… and very similar to the undeniable reality that makes us feel that we are whatever-it-is-we-are in the uninterrupted movements of our breathing, and everything else, including the feeling of being here and now, is structured around that.
“Don’t do anything (…) Don’t try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be.” (Meditation Master to Harari)(6)
The links between body and mind: theme of the 21st century
It wouldn’t be forcing the comparison to push things further. An error commonly placed on Descartes is that he distinguished body and mind as two markedly different entities without bothering to explain how they work together, though he did sense he had been succinct on the question and foresaw that a huge amount of work remained to be done on the body/mind front:
“Nature also teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am very closely united to it, and so to speak so intermingled with it that I seem to compose with it one whole.”
(Meditation six)
We know today that body and mind work together without, however, having fully integrated the idea and its consequences into our lives. Sometimes a twinge of the heart or tug in the pit of the stomach lets us know a sad thought or worry is about to arise in our mind and we suddenly remember our insides are lined with neurons.
“The technique of Vipassana is based on the insight that the flow of mind is closely interlinked with body sensations. Between me and the world, there are always body sensations. I never react to events in the outside world. I always react to the sensations in my own body. When the sensation is unpleasant, I react with aversion. When the sensation is pleasant, I react with cravings for more.” (YNH) (7)
Even to Descartes, thoughts, feelings and sensations were constituents of what I am in the world:
“But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is a thing which thinks? It is a thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines, feels.” (Meditation three)
Descartes, busy decluttering a jungle of superstitions and false knowledge, initiated a salutary clean slate during the Renaissance that was largely embraced by the thinkers of the 17th century, and later the Encyclopedists. Another era or another latitude would surely have brought about different questions, that in turn would have impelled Descartes to conduct a different investigation into his budding intuition of a link between body and mind. But given the comprehension scheme he was in, which despite being ahead of its time did not urge him in that direction, given his passing at a young age and his labouring on most all fronts of science and thought in the first half of the 17th century, he did not.
Had René Descartes been given the conditions and years required to understand why the mind is not “in the body like a sailor in a ship” or in other words, like a commander pulling the mechanical puppet strings of our material casing, our present would have been different.
So I do not doubt that meditation, metaphysical or other, has entered into our daily practices, our scientific research and the teachings we convey to students as the one place our mind can focus on itself. Meditation, still today, is the sole practice in which we can observe our mind and its manifestations, independently of research on the brain. (8)
1.“(…) Since (…) 2000, I began meditating two hours every day (…) Without the focus and clarity of this practice, I could not have written Homo Sapiens or Homo Deus”
2.“Having criticized so many stories, religions and ideologies, it is only fair that I put myself in the firing line too…” (YNH: 21 Lessons)
3.“The academic world provided me with powerful tools to deconstruct all the myths humans ever create, but it didn’t offer satisfying answer to the big questions of life.” (YNH: 21 Lessons)
4. Antonio Damasio: “L’erreur de Descartes”
5. “If you try to objectively observe your sensations, the first thing you’ll notice is how wild and impatient the mind is.”
6.“Don’t do anything (…) Don’t try to control the breath or to breathe in any particular way. Just observe the reality of the present moment, whatever it may be. (YNH: 21 Lessons)
7. “The technique of Vipassana is based on the insight that the flow of mind is closely interlinked with body sensations. Between me and the world, there are always body sensations. I never react to events in the outside world. I always react to the sensations in my own body. When the sensation is unpleasant, I react with aversion. When the sensation is pleasant, I react with cravings for more”. (YNH: 21 Lessons)
8.Meditation is any method for direct observation of one’s own mind”. YNH
“Meditation is a tool for observing the mind directly.” YNH
