There’s an old story of a magician (grimoire reading, not rabbit-from-hat pulling) giving a lecture about magick, and in particular the power of magick words and symbol manipulation to effect change in physical reality. After a skeptic expressed skepticism the magician asked a person near the refreshment table to bring him a glass of water while he thought about the best response. After taking a sip he pointed out that his words had caused a glass of water to be physically moved across the room. But that wasn’t what I meant, the skeptic protested, to which the magician yelled in reply, NOW YOU JUST SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP YOU WORTHLESS BRAINDEAD BASTARD. The skeptic turned red and angry, he tightened his fists and puffed his chest and yelled back at the magician. Calmly, although I doubt to the skeptic’s amusement, the magician replied that his words had caused that reaction, too.
My model of how the brain works — the part powering the conscious and subconscious mind, at least — is as follows. Raw perception is combined and translated into symbols, those symbols are combined and translated into more complex symbols, those symbols are translated into even more complex ones, on and on. Touch becomes warmth becomes comfort becomes love. Actuation works in reverse: symbols are broken down until component parts create action. Love becomes desire becomes imagined touch becomes movement to make it so.
In this model, the only things we can be aware of are 1) perceptions and 2) symbols.
The first step from perception to symbol is usually so fast and automatic as to be nearly instantaneous and unseen. The skeptic went from aural perception to the realm of symbols immediately: you’re a bully, stop accosting me, no one talks to me like that, he’s a threat to me, I’m not a braindead bastard, am I a braindead bastard, why I oughta. I can read the magician’s yelling of the sentence above and feel within myself a similar reaction, just from a little bit of play of light in my eyes.
Mindfulness meditation, at least in part, is to bring awareness to both perception and the translation of perception into symbol. If you want another method of seeing how the brain turns perception into symbol, I recommend LSD. While on it I couldn’t see the photons reflected off of the bark, but I could unsee the tree outside my window. I can’t usually do that. Stubbornly, it usually remains a tree. At best when deep in thought I can unsee everything, but that’s not the same.
The symbol is the fundamental unit of thought.
Mindfulness meditation is also about witnessing the process of symbols turning into other symbols. I’m worthless becomes I have a thought that I’m worthless because when I was a child I felt sick to my stomach when neglected and right now I feel sick to my stomach. Rather than the symbol out of context, we see the path of perception to symbol, to symbol, to symbol. This is cognitive behavioral therapy, interrupting the mechanism of maladaptive symbol-creation. It’s talk therapy, too, with its endless interrogation of symbols by asking what does it mean when.
Symbols are not only representatively real, they’re also present in objective reality. They have some existence in the arrangement of, and neurotransmitters in between, our neurons.
As we are only aware of perceptions and symbols, and not often of perceptions, symbols effectively are reality. I think the enlightenment experience may be about understanding all of this very clearly.
A belief is a symbol cluster in which one of its constituent parts is a symbol for experienced reality. They represent what’s real. You can see the parts clearly when you ponder a hypothetical, which is a symbol in which one of its constituent parts is a symbol for another reality. Whichever reality you associate with a symbol, the processes and mechanisms are the same. You can associate or dissociate anything with experienced reality, believing in anything literally or hypothetically. Of course if you don’t agree with this description of beliefs, you can choose another one.
Communication is the turning of symbols into perception back into symbols. The painter’s idea of an apple becomes a painting of an apple, the light off of which becomes the viewer’s idea of an apple. It must break down into raw perception, and to do so composite symbols must first be broken down into their constituent parts. A painting of an apple in the hands of a woman in a garden with a snake does not make one think primarily of an apple.
The artist’s trick — the poet’s, the magician’s, the advertiser’s — is to express the constituent symbols of the intended composite symbols without drawing attention to the process. Fiction feels more real than reality because the composition is already done: the mind skips more rapidly from perception to cluster. You’re snorting crystallized symbols instead of metabolizing your own from raw materials. But when you see how it’s done, the effect is lessened. You may still have the cluster come through at times, but you also see the parts.
Meaning is an even more complex symbol cluster, associating a symbol not just with a symbol for experienced reality but also more symbols for importance or purpose or belonging or transcendence or duty. For lasting effect, you probably metabolized it yourself. But as a symbol, as a thought, it’s just as malleable as belief. Have a relationship end? Feel your meaning slip away. Join the army? You can find meaning all over the place.
But when you see how it’s done, the effect is lessened.