/opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch16145/59858333.

doc

Transcendental Intentionality
– What it is and why you might want some.
George Clark 5 April 2007
Intentionality is about motivation and purpose. It can be at a mundane and constraining level
or at a transcendent and liberating level. When at the latter level the individual soul can fly
and the world can be a better place.

Intentionality
Intentionality is about why an organism or a person
behaves this way rather than that and there are two What shifts thee aimless spirit
ways of investigating it – (a) from the outside looking What panic drives thee so
in and (b) from the inside looking out. We will look In reaching ten perspectives
at these in turn. Why not accept the flow?

Being on the outside looking in is the role of science with men in white coats wielding
thermometers. They observe stimuli impinging on people and the responses that are made
There is an assumption of an internal, intentional mechanism - but it is unknowable from
other than a subjective point of view. The classic behaviourist school within psychology
studied those bits of the system that could be studied with certainty and steered away from
the contents of the black box.
Being on the inside looking out we are dealing with very personal points of view. It can be
argued that it in only with human beings that there is the possibility of being conscious of
consciousness. Only we can know our intentions, but only if we think seriously.

Plant intentions
When you think about it from a behaviourist point of view you could assume intentions in a
plant. If you put a seed in the ground the seed ‘knows’ to send its roots down and its stem and
leaves up – there is geotropism. So plants are not totally unreactive, not totally immune to
what is happening in their environment - but we wouldn’t say that they really ‘know’ what
they are doing.

Animal intentions
The various simple and more complex animals have more sophisticated ways of dealing with
the outside world. Take the case of nest building birds. Eggs are taken from the parents and
the chicks reared in a laboratory. That generation breeds without building nests and the eggs
are taken away and the chicks reared in the lab. They are then given nest building material
and they know exactly what to do. The knowledge is built into their genes. It is a hard wired
skill. It is what we call instinct.
It is now common to suppose that behaviour in fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and most of
the lower mammals is driven by ‘blind instinct’. They are hard wired to behave in particular
ways. But there is plasticity in the system so they can take inputs from the external
environment and do something about them. But they are not ‘conscious’ of what is happening.
They are robots.

Human intentions
The wonderful thing about being human is that we have the potential to be conscious of our
consciousness. We can be aware of the stimulus arriving and, before the response is made, we
have the option of choosing how to respond. But not always and not perhaps as often as we
might. We are often driven crazy by particular types of stimuli – the smell of fish and chips,
the sight of the busty female in the wrapping paper etc
In being conscious of our consciousness we are noticing what we are noticing and thinking
about what we are thinking and feeling. This may happen to a limited extent in most people at
the present stage of human evolution. But the potential for doing more of it is ever present
and that is where the desirability of transcendence comes in.
 /opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch16145/59858333.doc

Transcendence
Intentionality is evolving. As we saw above, there are two major ways of looking at it –
objectively as science does and subjectively as ordinary people, artists and meditators do. The
present evolution is driven by the east going west with meditation and renunciation and by
the west going east with its ‘civilised’ brand of rationality and consumerism.

All Quadrants, All Levels

Ken Wilber’s “All quadrants, all levels” (AQAL) model helps to systematically map the
options in considerable breadth and depth. He divides human ways of knowing into four
groups by forming a matrix where objective/ subjective is crossed with individual/ collective.
The ‘objective individual’ way of knowing is classic hard science where the view is from the
outside. The ‘objective collective’ way of knowing features the social sciences (psychology,
sociology, anthropology, economics and political science) which again involves ‘neutral’
observers looking from the outside.
The ‘subjective collective’ way of knowing is the social, cultural way and includes those
feelings and emotions that dictate the communal oughts and shoulds. The ‘subjective
individual’ way of knowing is what drives artists, meditators and most aspects of the mind set
of ordinary people. This is the ordinary you feeling what you feel (for whatever reason) from
the inside.
But each of these quadrants can be at all levels. Wilber labels these as soul, spirit, mind and
body but I find it useful to think of them in terms of the cosmic zoom (see box) with
expanding and contracting horizons.
The cosmos began with the big bang and is to all intents and purposes
Cosmic Zoom
infinite and eternal. But it is a totality of the great churn and flux that
Cosmos
makes evolution possible. Universes, solar systems and planets come
Universe
and go with wondrous regularity. Our solar system with our planet has
Solar system
been around for so many billions of years and will be gone again before
Planet
too long in the cosmic time scale.
Life
The planet began as an inanimate mass but self replicating molecules Humanity
came into being and evolved as cells and then multicellular organisms Culture
and then as humanity. We spend most of our evolutionary time as Tribe
hunter gatherer’s with no language. Then we learned to speak and Community
deceive, and civilisation with division of labour was soon to follow. Family
INDIVIDUAL
So cosmic evolution gave us the planet, biological evolution gave us life,
Organ
and cultural evolution gave us inequality and the internet.
Cell
Fundamental to cultures and civilisations are the tribes, communities Molecule
and families which between them programme individuals to survive Atom
long enough to contribute to the next generation. Subatomic thing
Quantum entity
We can look at the INDIVIDUAL as a turning point in the cosmic zoom.
Individuals are small parts of bigger structures and at the same time composites made of
smaller structures. Note that despite this being self evident there is still the amazing egotistic
feeling of being the centre of the universe!
Imagine a camera pointing to you as an individual then zooming out to show your family, then
your community and tribe; as it zooms out further we see the whole culture of humanity
which is obviously an integral part of the life which hugs the surface of the planet. And as the
camera zooms out to the far reaches of the cosmos the fact that we are not the centre of the
universe becomes abundantly clear. We inhabit the surface of the third rock from a very
minor sun on the edge of a very small galaxy. It is an immensely humbling experience so let us
zoom back in again … Zoooooooom.
Having zoomed to the bigness let us now zoom to the smallness. Inside the INDIVIDUAL are
organs and tissues made of cells. These can be seen as having their own intentionalities – the
intestines want food, the gonads want sex and so on. The eyes want to see but are limited to
‘visible’ light, the ears want to hear but are limited to ‘audible’ sounds. The ‘soul’ wants
company and status because we are social animals. These organs and tissues pick up various
 /opt/scribd/conversion/tmp/scratch16145/59858333.doc

external stimuli, codify them and send them down nerve cells to particular parts of the brain
where they are interpreted and made manifest as thoughts and feelings which create our
world view and govern our actions.
When we zoom beneath the level of cells we come to molecules and notably genes made of
deoxyribosenucliec acid (DNA). Arguably human beings are just cute ways for DNA molecules
to make copies of themselves.
The DNA is made of atoms which are made of sub atomic particles which, as quantum
entities, are simultaneously waves and particles. Quantum physicists reckon that the ‘stuff’ of
the universe is more like consciousness than like anything as tangible as particles. But this is
the post-Newtonian world where new rules apply and where language has difficulty coping so
we will leave it for the moment. Let us zoom back to the INDIVIDUAL level and to you and me
as commonly understood by ourselves.

Becoming unstuck
Are you happy to be stuck with a simple plant-like or bird-like instinctual way of having
intentions and behaving or are you going to transcend and, if so, are you going to do so in an
integrated way ie in all four quadrants and at all levels?
You have the options of transcending intellectually like a scientist with a white coat and a
thermometer (the academic route) and/or in a more spiritual way like a meditator with loose
clothing and a cushion (the route of mindfulness).
At the individual subjective level there is much excitement about where thought is going at the
beginning of the 21st century. A marriage is taking place. West goes east with materialist
science but without deep interiority and east goes west with its ancient psychology of
perception and holistic grasp of the nature of reality.
Taoist, Hindu and Buddhist meditation has been practised for 2,500 years. It involves being
still. Sitting quietly doing nothing. You pay attention to what goes on inside your head. You
can then be objective about your subjective experience. This enables a transcendence beyond
the petty world of egoic consciousness in the here and now. The mind become non egoic -
there is a reunion with the Oneness which is everything and a knowing beyond space and
time.
The human mind returns to the cosmic mind. You are no longer exclusively tied up in your
family and your culture at a particular place in this particular time in history. You are no
longer exclusively locked in small, parochial, constrained space/time. Using techniques that
come partly from western psychotherapeutic traditions and partly from eastern meditative
traditions, you can transcend your low level intentionalities. You change everything and
become an infinite being simultaneously at the centre and all peripheries of the cosmos.
And a curiously wonderful thing happens. When people get their heads into this space, into
this cosmic consciousness, then life is not nasty, brutish and short. Human nature is
experienced, and known to be, peaceful and compassionate.
So there is enormous potential for transcendental intentionality to broaden and deepen your
world view. Light can be thrown on whatever issues or topics face you, your society or the
planet.
We all have a brain which has been
You’ll find plenty question masters
programmed in a particular way. It can be
Making quagmires of their brain.
reprogrammed to be less parochial and selfish
The man said, “There is no answer”.
and more holistic and compassionate. The
They said, “you are insane.”
potentials are limitless.
Transcendent intentionality - why might you not want some?