This is an excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

James’s fundamental idea is that mind and matter are both aspects of, or structures formed from, a more fundamental stuff — pure experience — that (despite being called “experience”) is neither mental nor physical. Pure experience, James explains, is “the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories… a that which is not yet any definite what, tho’ ready to be all sorts of whats…” (ERE, 46). That “whats” pure experience may be are minds and bodies, people and material objects, but this depends not on a fundamental ontological difference among these “pure experiences,” but on the relations into which they enter. Certain sequences of pure experiences constitute physical objects, and others constitute persons; but one pure experience (say the perception of a chair) may be part both of the sequence constituting the chair and of the sequence constituting a person. Indeed, one pure experience might be part of two distinct minds, as James explains in a chapter entitled “How Two Minds Can Know One Thing.”

Looks like James was influenced strongly by Buddhist contemporaries. He was a major fan, and I wonder if this ‘pure experience’ can really be reduced to the philosophical category of “idealism,” as my professor had mentioned. Or, was he trying to convey as best he could, a state before our conceptualizing– before the idea of the “physical” and the “mental” even arise. Not that these two concepts do not equate with real things, but that there may be something deeper, primordial and before the formation our brains crystallize. This “before the concept” hinting sounds like what he was trying to convey with, “a that which is not yet any definite what.”

So is this “pure experience” the tool of radical empiricism, so much so that it is before our concepts, before our scientific instruments, before even the mental and the physical concepts– is it so radical that it is at the root of just ‘being’? It sounds to me like he was trying to say that bare attention is as direct as we can get.

This work happened very early on (James died in 1910), and perhaps early thinkers musings on our very nature, consciousness and the usefulness of a form of meditation (“Between this and that”, as Krishnamurti might say), did not go so far because scientific studies were going in another direction. Although psychology was never abandoned, science narrowed its scope to the physically observable. Even though the characteristics of “pure experience,” and exploring our awareness directly was feasible, observable, and arguably insightful, the changing attitudes at the time saw this area of studies as valueless. This remains a considerable problem, even today. Although, we are beginning to be more open about meditations and their insights, it is still strictly from a “top down” approach, meaning: observing the universe from the outside-in, as if we can be totally “objective” and peer down through microscopes into the universe, dissecting its bits and categorizing it. While not to belittle this method, the very other side of the spectrum: “bottom up” has been abandoned.

I think I’d like to explore this relationship: between “bottom up” and “top down,” and how feasible both sides of the spectrum really are. Can there be a middle ground? Is there one? Contemporaries will often bash the “bottom up” as pure nonsense, and see no value in it whatsoever unless it is grounded in “empirical” research. Unless it can be observed top-down, through the lense of modern science, it is not worth much beyond aesthetics and personal interests. I feel that this alone is a profound misunderstanding, and it has alot to do with what we value, and how our attitudes often mold our ability to perceive insights about the universe and ourselves.

Finally, a bit of inspiration! I’ll continue this soon!

Links of interest:

William James Wikipedia

Meditation Gives Brain a Charge

Psychology Today: The Science of Meditation