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i would like to welcome everyone great to have you all here today uh my name is gabo karzai i'm the managing
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director of mind and life europe and it's a real privilege for me to introduce professor doctor claire petty mojang to you all tonight
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to the evening i'm starting with some technical announcements so that we have some housekeeping information in the beginning of the program um first of all i would like to ask you
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all to mute yourself and keep yourself muted during the lecture we will have time for questions um after maybe half an hour or 40 minutes presentation
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we will have another half an hour for as many questions as we can have today depending on the time and the length of the discussions if you have
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questions during the lecture or during the discussion phase please add your questions to the chat starting it with some symbol an asterisk
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or any other symbol that you find on your keyboard so that i can identify the questions and separate them from other their communication that you might have during the discussion
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and please also add if you want to pose your question to claire or if you would like me to read the question if you add your name to the question i will consider you
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as the one who would like to ask the question yourself and please understand that not all questions will be raised or answered during the discussion we may not have time for all the questions but
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we will do our best and also also if you read the questions live please know that you will be recorded uh and we may share this webinar with the general public later so the whole
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discussion the whole lecture will be recorded and if you ask your question yourself it will also be recorded and we ask you all to uh allow us to record this meeting
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tonight um i welcome all our friends from the emily friends community here as you know this is a special community supporting the work of family being interested in exploring the work
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of our members more deeply and our speaker today is professor dr claire petty moja who is a member of our association and professor emerita in philosophy at
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the institute min telecom and also member of the husserlakhais at ecuanorma superior in paris in paris and her research focuses on the usually
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unrecognized dynamics of lived experience and micro phenomenological methods and enabling us to become aware of it and highlight its essential structures
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so she studies the epistemological conditions of these methods as well as their educational therapeutic artistic and even contemplative applications
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she currently devotes herself to exploring the links between the ecological crisis and or blindness to our lived experience and today's topic will be really
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interesting in this context the title of today's webinar is meditative practice and micro phenomenology i will not share more about the topic because it will be part of the lecture
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but before starting that i may ask claire if you would be happy glad to lead us into a moment or a minute of silence before we start
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so that we can have a joint experience of silence a little contemplation before we start with your lecture and welcome claire
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thank you very much cabo so i'm very happy to start with a moment of silence thank you so clear you can study
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speech thank you so i'm very happy to participate in this mind and love europe france webinar
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and thank you very much for inviting me in this presentation i would like to give you a taste of micro phenomenology a new scientific discipline created at
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the instigation of francisco varela which enables us to study lived experience with rigor and precision and i would like to bring a few elements
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on possible complementarities between microphenology and buddhist meditative practices so i will start with the origin of microphenomenology
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about 20 years ago francisco varela introduced a completely new idea in cognitive neurosciences he said that in order to progress in the understanding of the mind
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science cannot rely only on the study of cerebral activity but has to create a rigorous method to study human experience
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it was a groundbreaking idea because until then science was built on the exclusion of lived experience not only natural sciences not only
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neuroscience but even psychology scientific psychology has made remarkable progress especially since the 80s thanks to brain
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exploration techniques but the more refined these techniques become the more it becomes obvious that it is illusory to eliminate any reference to
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subjective experience for example what allows the experimenter to describe a brain area as visual if not the observation of a correlation between
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the activation of this area and the description by the subject of a visual experience beyond neuroscience how can we claim to study inner processes such as emotion
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mind rendering or reading without giving us the means to investigate the the images the discourses and feelings that the subject lives inside
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above all how can we claim to study consciousness when eliminating the point of view of the conscious being as francisco varela said
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if we were to live out experience it would be like cutting out one eye i would even say both in fact however
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what is experience my lived experience being the most personal and intimate intimate thing about me i think that i am familiar to it
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and that it should not be very difficult to answer the question the answer to the question what is experience is rather simple my experience is made of the sensations
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feelings emotions thoughts and actions that i live instant after instant it might perhaps be difficult to find the world to find words to describe some
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of these components especially feelings and emotions but they are immediately accessible to me i cannot imagine for a moment that i could fail to perceive them or be misled
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about them however what do we really know about our lived experience if i asked you to describe precisely for example
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how you write a letter or a message it is very likely that in a first stage i would obtain quite poor descriptions all of us hopefully know how to
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write a message or a letter but we have only a very partial awareness of how we go about doing this the main reason for this lack of
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awareness is that our attention is almost completely absorbed into the content the what or object of our experience to the detriment of the experience itself the how
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for example while writing an article i am completely absorbed in the content of the ideas i'm trying to express but i am hardly aware of the contact of my
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fingers on the pen or computer keys of the tensions in my back of the rapid succession of inner images slight emotions and felt meanings
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rapid evil evaluations and comparisons that i that accompany my activity of writing or even constitute it even as fundamental and pervasive
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experiences as our bodily and sensory experiences largely escape escapes for example when i make a movement my interest in the object towards which
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the movement is directed the the pen the apple masks the movement of the limb as well as the internal sensations of
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movement in the muscles and joints that that initiate the movement of my limb to take another example when a sound occurs my attention instantaneously focuses on
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the physical object at the origin of the sound whose name and image immediately masks my experience in a fraction of a second i recognize the sound
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as the song of a blackbird on the plum tree leaving myself forgetting in a way my immediate experience of this song
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so the macro phenomenological interview uses specific techniques to help interview with reorient attention from the word the blackbird
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towards the how how do i listen to this song the first key of the interview is to help the interviewed person to choose a singular experience to explore
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because we never live an experience in general this there is no it doesn't exist an experience in general for example it is only by exploring a
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particular experience of writing that you could become aware of how you really go about writing the choice of a singular experience
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is this is the therefore an essential stage of the interview however most of the time it's not possible to describe the chosen experience
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while it is unfolding so the second key to the micro phenological interview is to help interview with to retrieve or evoke the experience that has been chosen
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to the point that the evoked experience is more present to them that the present situation is or becomes more present that the prison situation is the third principle of the interview is
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to help interviewees inside the evoked experience to lose them to loosen the focus of their attention on the world in order to let the how unfold
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performing these inner acts of evocation and conversion of attention is a skill which can be learnt and these acts may also be triggered and
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accompanied through relevant prompts and questions in the context of an interview such as the microphone logical interview to give you an idea
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of such an interview i am going to show you a short exam one minute can you see it okay yes
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so i am going to read it very quickly if you agree i would like you to come back to the moment where i ask to take your time here and now to imagine an elephant
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what happened then at that moment the thought i had in my head vanished how did it vanish was it instantaneous or gradual oh it was very quick but it nevertheless
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took a moment and what happened during this moment i loosen i loosen my attention on that thought and when you loosened your attention and
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on that thought what do you loosen in fact i loosen a light tension in my head where exactly is the slight tension in your head it is at the top to the right and
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at the front of the head and when you lose it when you loosen it how do you go about it what do you do and so on so as you can notice the questions
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of the interview are content-free that is to say they are limited to drawing the subject's attention to the various moments of the experience without suggesting the content of the
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answer for example what happened first what happened then another key questions consists
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in questioning the verbs of action used by the interviewee for example when she says i lose an attention the interviewer asks when you loosen this tension what do you do
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what do you loosen this question is is at the same time very precise very focused and non-inductive because completely empty of content
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it helps interview me stabilize her attention on a subtle inner micro gesture and provide a precise description without infiltrating any presuppositions
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the question now how do you know that your attention is now loosened draw the interview with attention towards very implicit criteria of
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accurate realization of this microgesture of loosening as you can see the skill of the interviewer consists in asking very simple economic questions
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amazingly it seems that the more simple questions are the more powerful to help interviewed person become aware of experience and describe it
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the slowing down of the verbal flow the presence of hesitations and silences the presence of co-verbal gestures the use of
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the present tense are then clues that the subject is not receiving ready-made knowledge but is discovering
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processes that were until now pre-reflective or unnoticed microphonological interviews have an iterative structure which consists in
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helping the subjects to evoke the experience to be described several times while guiding their attention towards a temporal mesh which is finer each time
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the reason the resulting descriptions are very fine grained to give you an idea the average land length of an interview is one hour for describing a few seconds
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of experience so the microphone analytical interview method is an adaptation of the entrecient explicitation created by the french psychologist pierre vermesch in
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the 90s the method was initially developed to help persons engaged in professional practices to become aware of the implicit part of their actions
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and transfer their ex their expertise on the instigation of francisco varela this interview method was then adapted to the domain of cognitive science to
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describe experiences associated with any type of lived experience it has been complemented on the one hand by a method for analyzing verbal reports
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and detect regularities in the form of generic structures on the other hand by methods of validation of these results
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and this adapted and complemented method became macro phenomenology so micro phenomenology can be compared to a psychological psychological microscope
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this microscope has been used to study lived experience in many domains for the from the experience of learning mathematics mathematics to the experience of listening to music
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from the experience of virtual on the environment to the experience of surprise from the anticipation of epileptic seizures to attention processes in top athletes
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from the experience of pain in fibromyalgia patients to the experience of selecting a fabric in clothing design
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so many domains now microphone energy is also used by meditation practitioners by meditation teachers and by researchers who study
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contemplative experience i would like to give you two examples of complementarity of microphonology and meditative practice first i will take the example of
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shamatha a very widespread meditative technique it consists in focusing your attention on your breathing and each time you you realize that your
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attention has drifted to come back to your breathing easy to describe isn't it but what does it mean to focus your attention on your breathing
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what do you do exactly to focus your attention when you focus your attention what do you focus does this focusing only involve a third dimension
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or also a visual one and possibly an auditory dimension another question once your attention is focused how do you know that it is focused
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do you do anything to sustain this focusing so after a while which may be very short in fact a very amazing phenomenon probably occurs
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a virtual scene emerges in your experience that becomes sometimes sometimes more vivid that the current situation is
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so vivid that you completely forget that you were supposed to focus your attention on your own your breathing for example you imagine that you're working on the beach
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and you forget you you forget your breathing you can do this right now take your time take no not not too much time but a few seconds to imagine that you are walking on the
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beach just make me assign to me when you have done it now silently answer a few questions did the scene you've just imagined
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appear instantaneously or progressively in the later case progressively which sensorial dimension appeared first the vision the tactile
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the auditory the olfactory while you were imagining this scene were you still aware of your visual
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auditory bodily sensation here or did you at least partly lose contact with some of them so you are walking on the beach and after a while that may be long
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you realize that your attention has drifted that your attention has left your breathing and that you are not there anymore what makes you realize that
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does this realization occur randomly or do subtle cues draw your attention towards the fact that your attention has drifted when you realize that
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how do you leave the beach does the scene disappear instantaneously or progressively do certain sensations persist more than
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others which sensations from the current situation come back first the visual theory the auditory the tactile
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finally what do you do to come back to your breathing how do you manage coming back so this type of questions may make it possible to investigate very
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precisely the two-fold process of loss of contact with the current situation and generating of
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virtual ones in mind-wandering episodes and the process of regaining and maintaining maintaining contact with the prison situation made possible by meditative
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practice the meditative practice of shamatha so so in the context of a project founded by the mind and life institute the
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fennel pilot project martin von beek michelle bigboll and i we used uh martin and michelle members of maiden love europe too
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we used microphenology to to help meditation practitioners from 5 to 45 years of experience describe in this way
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moments of meditative experience when um invited them to participate in micro phenomenological interview with us
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and all of them agreed that interviews help them to become aware of certain feelings and subtle micro-gestures that not noticed before even very
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experienced practitioners which in turn helps them to perform these gestures more accurately and provide them
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with more clarity in their practice as one of them said i have the feeling to be able to open the experience like a crumpled sheet that you can
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unfold through this inquiry usually meditation practitioners mistrust language words are said are said to be unable of
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describing contemplative experience but according to the testimonies we get we gathered after our interviews words also have the power
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to refine the awareness of the experience with one thing i find with the interview said elgar said
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it is is that it sharpens your awareness the clarity about what is actually going on and the sharpening lies in the work
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that goes into finding words lies in the work that goes into finding words even if words do not describe an experience completely satisfactorily
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they serve as handles we could say or pointers that enable the practitioner to discriminate subtle aspects which might be
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which which might have vanished without their help meditation is instructors also testified that micro phenomenological interviews
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were useful for them on the one hand a more refined awareness of their own practice helps them to refine their meditation instructions on the other hand
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micro phenomenological interviews help them to develop a richer palette of instructions that are more precisely adapted to each
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student each meditator now i would like to give a second example of complementarity of microphonology and meditative practice but first of all
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i would like to come back to the specificity of the micro phenomenological interview this method is especially well adapted to unfold experiences that seemed
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initially instantaneous it is because releasing the upshot the absorption of attention into the content of the phenomenon enable us to become aware of the
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usually invisible unfolding of this phenomenon that will we also call its microgenesis for example i could propose to you to imagine a landscape that you like
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it would be easy for you to describe this landscape then through specific questions i could draw your attention towards how this landscape emerged in your
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experience exploring the early stages of such microgenesis enabled us to discover a dimension of experience where the structures that we usually
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consider as the most essential to eat the most solid seem to vanish so we identified three types of vanishing structures
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the separation we think we live between body and thought between inner and outer space and the feeling of identity so first in this dimension of our
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experience where phenomena emerge the qualitative difference that we usually perceive between abstract thought and bodily sensations reduces
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experience is first felt and it is and sorry and in this first dimension the rigid separation between body and
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thought becomes more permeable think for example of the emergence of a new idea when it first emerges as a presentment
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a direction of thought for instance einstein described the emergence of his main idea as follows for all these years there was a feeling
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of direction of heading straight for something concrete it's of course very difficult to express this feeling in words but i add it in a sort of overview and
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in a certain way visually this the space of an idea even a very abstract idea such as the theory of relativity far from being an abstract
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geometrical space is like an inner landscape with a very specific texture density contrasts of rhythms and intensities
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in which the rigid separation that we usually establish between between body and mind vanishes this felt space is also characterized by a certain permeability of the border
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usually faced between inner and outer space it's easier to become aware of this aspect when the tension towards the object releases especially in the perceptive process
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for example as we already noticed when a sound occurs my immediate reaction is to focus on the object that is the source of the sound to identify it this focus creates a separation a
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distance between the object there there and myself here when a sound occur instead of going in search of the sound listening out towards it to characterize
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it i may let it come to me i i may let myself be touched permeated by it
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a little as if i was breathing a perfume or listening to a piece of music listening like this creates a kind of rhythmic achievement between the interior space and the
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exterior space an achievement which has the effect to soften to blur in a way the boundary between the two spaces in visual perception 2
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loosening the tension towards the object as the effect of weakening the bodily boundaries for example a woman i interviewed told me how she suddenly suddenly discovered
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what it is to see it was on a spring day and she was watching the yellow flowers in her garden suddenly she said i felt what it is actually to see
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to see is isn't cosy costing costing your gaze towards something projecting it but really it's letting the color the landscape come to you
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you're there and you receive it and you have the impression that the color the landscape imprints imprints itself inside you so the the sense of dissolution in our
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inquiries um of the emergence of of of um sensation of a thought for example uh the sense of dissolution of bodily
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boundaries is itself associated with the transformation of the feeling of individual identity which be utter and even disappears sometimes
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this weakening is very obvious in the emergence of a new idea all the description i collected of the the emergence of an intuition it was my
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the subject of my thesis pages phases all all of them mentioned a feeling of an absence of control it happens to me it's given to me
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it escapes from me in this instance the sense of urgency that is the sense that i am the one who is generating the idea is altered
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the interviewed person do not say i have an idea but an idea is coming to me even the sense of ownership that is the feeling that this idea is my idea fades
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the interviewed person don't even say an idea is coming to me to me but there is an aide there is an idea
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the experience is not felt as being immediately mine as being my experience it's not felt as personal to sum up micro phenomenology enables a cover
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at the source of phenomena a dimension of experience where the separation between body and mind in the inner and outer space subject and object
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is much more permeable that in our ordinary experience in this region of subtle ontology as francisco varela called it duality
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recedes investigating this region may also highlight certain micro acts micro gestures through which the separation between subject and
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object in an outer space emerges and solidifies rigidifies on the other hand the core of buddhist teachings is that
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the root of suffering lies in the unceasing process of mutual solidification of subject and object of the subjective and objective pause
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it is by releasing this process that we can liberate ourselves from suffering this is really the core of buddhist teaching
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as a microphenologist and uh as and meditation practitioner i i put i hypothesize that at least at certain stages of meditative practice
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microphenological interviews might be useful for meditation practitioners to refine their awareness of the subtle process of emergence of duality
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and a final awareness of the micro acts that solidify the world might help practitioners to release them thank you very much for your attention
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thank you very much claire for your very clear and very deep sharing of your work and findings
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i see there is a question in the chat from uh odile hitler may i ask you to to ask your question and you can also read this question claire in the chat stream if you open it
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and then we will move to the next one that has just been posted by marieke okay so thank you very much claire for a very interesting presentation and good evening everyone
00:42:28
my question was the following how long typically do these interviews last uh okay can you repeat please i'm sorry yes how long yes how long would such an interview
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with someone last um there is a minimum in fact very simply about one hour
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because it is we need time to evoke the experience and to really to to enter the states and to exp to begin to explore the experience
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but after a while after one hour um the interview we and the interviewer become tired because it the the interview is very um
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[Music] it requires much attention from both so yeah one hour okay so thank you very much for that
00:43:30
then my question was i'm planning to interview physicians and i'm planning to talk to them or to ask them what they think about a concept that is disruptive
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in some way to their practices and in that sense i'm planning to dig into identity work because they may say oh but someone like me
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wouldn't do that you know and and um and therefore i thought maybe micro phenomenology would be an interesting methodology to use you mentioned before identity could you say
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a little bit about this no i don't think so i don't think i i cannot say general things about this i am very concrete
00:44:22
and and um for your project i think the [Music] the the you could use microphone logical interviews
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to interview physicists on this issue if you can identify experiences moments of experience
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moments of experience where that are interesting to explore for this objective so it is it is uh sometimes it is the [Music] when you have an objective
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the the main difficulty is to identify an experience a concrete experience which [Music] can help you
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[Music] gather information for your objective okay thank you very much thank you thanks to jody thank you claire and i see marek has
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questions actually two questions in the in the chat and you can also see those questions uh yourself claire if you want to read them i i can read them yes so marek if you
00:45:38
want to share your first question yeah thank you for this um really interesting presentation um i was wondering when you uh analyze microphonological interviews on the aimus to identify generic structures
00:45:52
that occur in different interviews understand that correctly and i was wondering were they these generic structures are considered as types or essences so what i'm referring to if you think about them as types i would
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assume that you say okay these structures are typical let's say in this particular group of people let's say i don't know in a dutch context i would identify these structures but they could vary um let's say per culture so it's
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rather a type than in essence where you really think okay everybody will have this experience in the same way so i wonder let's say what the assumption is here in microphonological interviews whether it's rather types or essences and yeah
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my second question is just about how far um the experience can lie back in time what you have yeah what's your personal experience with these interviews because i assume it's really difficult to remember
00:46:43
something like a moment of discovery i don't know as a researcher so that happened 10 years ago but yeah i think there so the second one is easier to answer so i will i will start
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with the second one so [Music] sometimes it's a it is possible to [Music] to help a person evoke and remember very
00:47:09
precisely an experience that happened a very long time ago i remember in the context of my phd thesis it was a long time ago for me but
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i interviewed um a researcher in astrophysics physics as for not um on a
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discovery an idea he had 20 years before and uh really by helping him retrieving the context because it is the technique of the interview to help the person retrieve the sensory the
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sensory context of the of the situation and he was able to do to do that to retrieve the sensory context and then all the [Music] process of emergence of the idea came
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back to him so it doesn't work i i'm not sure it it doesn't work anytime sometimes it is too difficult and but
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really we very often we have surprise surprises we are surprised of the the yes the power of this type of memory
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that we call passive memory this type of memory which consists in memorizing passively something because when the the
00:48:40
this researcher had this id he he he didn't try to to memorize the emergence of the id voluntarily no he he memorized this passively without
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being aware of memorizing and this could come back 20 years after the event so about the genetic structures
00:49:06
in fact we never tried to uh compare different groups you know the structures in different groups of people for example different
00:49:23
groups of people according to their culture their their education their they so when we say generic structures it is always hypothetical generic structures
00:49:37
so this it so it is uh yes hypothesis that have be as have to be confirmed but just to give you an example of a genetic
00:49:50
structure when you imagine imagine the the beach for example when i i propose to you to imagine that you were on the beach um so in in
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you all i suppose that all of you you you were you adopted a specific perceptual position so for some of you you were working on in on the beach feeling
00:50:16
feeling the the air and and the sun and listening listening to to to to the sea you were really in your body in your own body walking on the beach and for some of you maybe you you were
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seeing yourself walking on the beach from somewhere in the air in this in the sky you were looking at yourself walking on the beach so these are two perceptual
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positions uh in an imaging imaginary scene and we hypothesis that that it is a generic structure that you cannot imagine a scene without having a
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perceptual certain perceptual position so it could be interesting to compare maybe some some people in some somewhere in on the earth
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they they don't they can imagine a scene without a perceptual position but for us for most of us it is difficult to to imagine
00:51:17
but so thank you claire um i see tommaso tosato also asking a question and he has just typed it here too so you can see it clear tomasso
00:51:36
please ask your question as well yes thank you claire for the talk and thank you all for organizing this event um so i was just
00:51:49
i was just wondering to which degree micro phenomenology is already happening inside me even if i didn't add this concept in my mind so
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then i was breaking down this question in two questions so first of all can micro phenomenology exist we found without an interviewer and that's actually something that would be extremely useful also i
00:52:15
think uh in order to benefit others to provide tools for people to actually um perform a self interview because it's i think it's is extremely rare to find
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persons that are there to interview you if your goal is to get the benefits of the interview like it's more like who is interviewing it's more like doing research maybe interested in in writing a paper but
00:52:43
it's not really a therapist at least to my knowledge and so it would be nice maybe to publish like a manual where i when where a person like me could learn how to apply
00:52:55
the technique to himself by himself um and then i was also wondering like because experience and awareness and attention
00:53:08
they exist i think before language so to to to which degree micro phenomenology needs language to happen
00:53:19
is it just a is it are is language just a way to convey instruction to choreograph your attention to investigate experience or
00:53:32
so in this in this case language is is just a mean to convey the instruction that then you apply without the need of language language or we thought language
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would not exist microphenology so that you can imagine that i have a lesion in my brain in the language areas like broca areas or vernica areas then would it be still possible for me to
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self-interview myself so [Music] to come back to your first question does a microphone energy exists without an interviewer yes
00:54:13
[Music] it is it is called exactly as you said self-interview in french it is auto explicitation so we could say self elicitation or no
00:54:25
we finally we decided to call it self interview and it it it is a it exists that it is used by micro phenomenologist the advantage of a self-interview is
00:54:40
that when you are with yourself we have uh all the time you wish to to think about to prepare the right questions the relevant questions that
00:54:53
helps you to refine your awareness of your the awareness of your experience because in an interview it is it is really a skill for the interviewer to be able to
00:55:04
find the right question uh in real time right right now um it is really a skill that has to be learned when you are
00:55:16
interviewing yourself you you have you you can [Music] yes uh write something and come back uh later um
00:55:29
and um so it's in a way it is it is easier but um [Music] i in fact trainings in the self-interview
00:55:43
are given to microphenologists uh who are really already skilled in interviewing so i i don't know if we could just provide uh training in the self
00:55:59
interview without um it's an idea why not thank you for suggesting this i am going to think about this and uh thomas
00:56:14
oh what is the role of language in microphone energy so um [Music] there are indeed two two roles that there is a the role of
00:56:30
the questions of the interviewer and the the whole of the answers so the questions i think the role of the question is really
00:56:42
only to draw the interview with attention towards um dimensions of ex elements of
00:56:55
or dimension of her experience she was not aware of so it is really to to to help it is um [Music]
00:57:07
it is only a role of sort of pointer or it it helps the person orient her attention towards some dimensions of her experience and stabilize
00:57:20
stabilize her attention on some very ill elusive dimensions and the whole of the answers um really to find a word
00:57:34
to to name a subtle dimension of what's for its experience is an help to stabilize this
00:57:45
this dimension this aspect of experience in order to maybe to be able to refined it even more later so
00:57:59
i don't think that words express anything in fact words they are in fact empty but their role is to point towards a felt dimension towards experience
00:58:12
and um [Music] stabilize the experience a little yeah i think part of tommaso's question was also
00:58:26
whether we can do micro phenomenology without language without asking those questions and expressing those answers with words whether we can do that let's
00:58:38
say without language or without asking those questions and responding with words is that a possibility or not responding what what's uh what did you say just responding with words so
00:58:52
without words can we just can we internalize micro phenomenology as a method without language do you ask a various uh
00:59:04
strange questions because really micro phenomenologism is based on a microphone analytical interview so it's it's difficult to imagine microphone energy without
00:59:16
language um really i think it would be something else it would be another method very interesting to explore really i i would like to imagine such a method but for now
00:59:30
really it chooses language thank you thank you but you wanted to make sure that that part of the question is awesome if i understood tommaso's point well um would you like to raise your question
00:59:49
yourself thank you very much hello claire thank you very much for your interesting uh uh talk uh it's very nice to see you again uh we met at the european summer
01:00:07
research institute uh in uh germany a few years ago um i think in a way uh the question that i'm asking may actually follow on from what thomas was asking which was whether
01:00:21
language is necessary or whether one can actually uh perform microphonology on oneself i have explored um a non-dual experience
01:00:34
which i had and earlier you touched on subject object relations inexperience but to be truly pre-reflective of experience one
01:00:47
would have to go to the earliest moment preceding the experience which is in fact non-duality um i i discovered in
01:00:58
exploring myself without words uh a non-dual experience i had that i had actually been missing the very very earliest uh moments of experience uh but
01:01:11
only um uh appreciating uh the duality as it returned and i came to see that the earliest
01:01:24
pre-reflective experience of non-duality has no reference points that can be described and obviously this makes sense because this allows the unlimited potential
01:01:37
for experience in the present moment um perhaps to try and give a uh an example of what that felt like
01:01:48
uh i hope most of you have not been caught in an explosion but i certainly have on occasions uh uh during the course of my work in belfast and uh
01:02:01
the very first moment of an explosion cannot actually be described it is a a moment at which there are no reference points and it is um
01:02:13
it is only as the experience the reforms uh basically as the non-duality as the duality returns and one experiences oneself in relation
01:02:27
to the environment that one is able to describe this so i i find that micro phenomenology for me was extremely beneficial in taking it in the way that perhaps thomas was asking
01:02:40
there and i wonder what your thoughts on exploring this area might be so thank you for this question um really i i don't uh think that
01:02:55
microphonology can explore a non-dual experience i it's not i i i think i didn't say that when i in in my presentation i think there is
01:03:08
a moment where uh words are not useful anymore and even and it's better to
01:03:21
to stay silent so i i are you therefore describing micro phenomenology as a descriptive of experience using language
01:03:33
and not not considering it to be truly pre-reflective no for me pre-reflective doesn't um uh only means
01:03:46
notice so there are many uh experiences that are unnoticed and that you can describe with language many many a huge amount of experience oh yeah
01:03:58
unnoticed and that you can describe verbally uh but in these experiences there is a
01:04:12
an area a domain which is not nondual but it is the emergence of duality i i mean the
01:04:25
micro acts that we we do that that um create duality i think this the
01:04:37
duality uh you know in in buddhist in buddhism teachings sometimes the word grasping is used very very much the grasp you grasp this is a micro act
01:04:51
that is done and and which cr creates or participates in creating duality and i think this uh it is
01:05:02
the such micro acts are the domain or a domain that can explore very precisely i i would agree with you i would agree with you there
01:05:15
i just have to say from my own experience i i took what i had learned from you and applied it to a situation where i took it back perhaps earlier than those micro acts and actually realized that
01:05:28
what i had been doing in the past was grasping the micro acts and that it was possible to actually appreciate uh but not describing words obviously the fact that there were no reference
01:05:41
points at the very earliest moment of non-duality before the experience arose so i have to thank you for teaching me that technique and it's just a thought that you know
01:05:54
there may be something more than the wonderful technique that you have developed that could be used um or could be explored by people who want to take it in that direction so thank you once again for your talk
01:06:07
thank you bruce this is i think an interesting area to develop further indeed and i see two more questions in the chess stream and we still have about nine more minutes probably for those two questions so i would like
01:06:20
to ask oda if i pronounce your name val ort cardona to ask your question first and then matthias stabber was the very interesting one that i was
01:06:31
also thinking about so thank you for asking gabor thank you you are pronouncing my uh name well uh hello claire and hi everyone it's nice to see some familiar faces
01:06:44
um so my question is much more um i think pragmatic hopefully maybe um so i am looking into i'm doing research and i'm going to include a mindfulness intervention
01:06:57
and so i was also thinking while i don't know yet enough on micro phenomenology to include a micro phenomenological interview and as i listened to you a question arose i
01:07:11
thought well could micro phenomenology could be a confounder um with my mindfulness intervention depending on you know where i put it because i would my
01:07:23
thought right now was to use it to understand the experience uh of of you know the subjects or for lack of a better word so i was curious if you had something to say about that
01:07:36
um i'm sorry i don't understand your question well i'm going to read it to read on the chat yeah do you find it clear in the chat yeah i have it i can read it yeah become a
01:07:50
confounder i don't know what what it means this word in english i'm sorry count because there are so many english people so they're common they're common things right the micro phenomenological interview is bringing
01:08:14
similar aspects of effects right of what mindfulness has so now if i'm let's say i'm doing a mindfulness intervention then i do a micro micro phenomenological
01:08:27
interview and then i do another mindfulness intervention then maybe the micro phenomenological interview will will have an effect that is mixed with the mindfulness and and so i wanted
01:08:40
to ask you how yeah is what how would you deal with that with those similarities um i understand now your question but i
01:08:52
think i i cannot answer uh i i i would need to really to to see the protocol much more to have a much more precise idea of your protocol because uh
01:09:07
yes really that there is a risk of count funding but so yes the place of the interview related
01:09:20
to the mindfulness intervention is probably important i cannot answer okay so then another time too precise
01:09:31
maybe it's a topic for investigation for research yeah so or you can probably do that and report back about what you find thank you very much thank you and uh very interesting
01:09:45
questions yes i think all questions are very interesting and try they all questions try to extend the the boundaries of the method that you were sharing claire and very interesting
01:09:57
fields of application so i may ask matthias now if you would like to um so my question was about your investigation of
01:10:11
or interviews of meditators who do mainly shamatha practice and in the tibetan tradition they they took on the indian categories of abhidharma right when they
01:10:25
explained to you how to focus on the breath they have specific words to point out certain functions of your mind and one is concentration which is basically just placing your mind it's
01:10:38
the thing in your mind that places your mind on the object then you have mindfulness or it's almost like remembrance which is basically remembering
01:10:51
to place your mind on the object and then you have vigilant introspection which is in the background and it's the function of the mind that recognizes when you are wandering off
01:11:04
and what you explained there when you know suddenly we were on the on the beach and then you recognize oh i'm on the beach i'm not with my breath
01:11:17
i should go back and that's described in these terms vigilant introspection recognizes you're not with your breath here with your knee pain or
01:11:29
whatever and then you go back to your object through with mindfulness and concentration and did you the question now is did you
01:11:42
um sort of reflect on these classical categories when you did the the interviews and did it show that these words make sense to use or
01:11:54
you know what i mean i i see [Music] in fact when we did these interviews and in general when we do interview
01:12:06
we we don't start with [Music] three categories or you [Music] um and
01:12:19
we really try to to free ourselves from from preconceptions preconceptions free theories
01:12:32
so we didn't rely on this classical classifications and we didn't come back to them but it would be very interesting it would be a very interesting work to
01:12:47
do after we we have collected this fine grain description to relate them to with um abidarma classifications
01:12:59
i think to this it would be great and probably um [Music] yeah yeah and at that at that point
01:13:11
maybe um [Music] this classification could even help us to to refine our analysis of the interviews
01:13:24
you know to identify some structures that we have not identified so i think this is
01:13:36
yeah it's a very good idea very interesting i think the presupposition behind oath's question was something similar that even in in mindfulness techniques you can
01:13:48
develop such observation that you start identifying various levels and layers of experiences so even even giuseppe's question here posted with regards to that can be
01:14:00
linked back to matthias point and your positive answer to that class so i think there is a there's a possibility for going further in these more classical buddhist practices
01:14:12
and uh see the terminology and the findings in buddhist meditation analysis and the links between them and your work
01:14:24
there is a possibility there i see um probably uh if you allow us to go for five more minutes uh if you are still uh able to maintain your attention i
01:14:37
would like to ask and if you also clari please let us know if you have five more minutes because there are two interesting questions in the end and i would like to give them uh the the space and time katrina
01:14:50
or patreon i'm not sure if i pronounce your name uh hi claire uh hi nice to see you again and thanks for a refreshing talk i i was um i had the
01:15:09
luck to participate in your course in 2019 so i've been actually practicing the microphone on allergic interview techniques both in an artistic research project and also
01:15:22
when teaching art students in the academy and this this is also the context of my questions because i've been reading uh your latest text anchoring in the
01:15:33
lived experience as an act of resistance and uh in the year of the pandemic i've been teaching art students digitally like soup over soon like this uh
01:15:46
but on the same and it's to some extent it's used useful for their own personal and subjective experience of being or maybe relating to each other via the screens but we have
01:16:00
also had large um demonstrations for instance in the black lives matter movement this summer and then this text was also brought up
01:16:11
to me again for an in in relationship but i i'm interested in finding out how we can use this model in in with the aim of changing the society
01:16:24
and i just wondered if you had any thoughts practically or or philosophically to that um [Music] yes it was the idea of this text i just
01:16:41
wrote and which is going to to appear uh tomorrow i think in the journal constructs constructivist foundations but the idea i try to
01:16:52
to develop that this blindness to our experience maybe when them at the root of the many problems of our society
01:17:08
and even ecological problems because it is this um this it's really related with the duality the fact that
01:17:21
we will transform everything into object and especially into object of concept conceptions consume consumation consumptions even
01:17:34
even in education we we education is is understood as
01:17:48
the the consumption of of knowledge everything becomes an object and
01:17:59
and but the the fact of [Music] accessing this felt dimension which which is not non-duality which is
01:18:13
an intermediary dimension but it already were already the the the borders between inner and outer between um fed even accessing this
01:18:27
and creating a language to name this dimension and whole which is played out in that dimension um
01:18:41
would would help us uh change our way of life so so i i don't know i don't know if i am i hope
01:18:54
it is clear what i am just saying but uh so i i'm not sure i have very concrete uh concrete ideas concrete thoughts how to do that
01:19:13
another big question to explore further definitely yeah um thank you for all the questions these were really interesting uh expansions and giuseppe your question in the in the end of the stream if you want
01:19:27
to pose it quickly i think we briefly touched it that it might be a possibility it's it's different it's taken from a different angle though so thanks claire first of all good to see
01:19:41
you again and uh the question is um is about this so we know that assessment of mindfulness via psychometric instrument is very
01:19:52
problematic and of course as all this question pointed out if you train or if you even if you don't train but if you have subjects do a
01:20:04
phenomenological interview in the midst of a mindfulness intervention and then you assess mindfulness you're gonna have some big differences with respect
01:20:18
to assessment of mindfulness with questionnaire on subjects that did not have a phenomenal no phenomenological interview so but i think we can turn
01:20:30
that issue on its head and maybe we should be thinking oh maybe this has been done so i ask you if to your knowledge has there
01:20:42
already been an attempt to construct a psychometric scale of mindfulness based on microphenol [Music] because i also think that one of the
01:20:56
great benefits of this type of interviewing is having the subject not become prey in their reporting to the usual
01:21:08
platitudes that they heard about mindfulness you know things that people repeat because they heard somebody saying it and and they framed their experience with those concepts
01:21:20
in an unexamined way so i think this is uh this is also where microphone could uh really bring some benefits
01:21:34
so to go back to the easiest question do you know if there is an attempt to to build a psychometric assessment of mindfulness based on phenomenological interview
01:21:47
um i don't know i just know that in the team of tania tanya um there was there was a micro
01:22:01
phenomenologist marisa and marisa did i think two hundreds of interviews with people who were trained in mindfulness in the context of this
01:22:13
tanya's project and she she did many many analyses and graphics and maybe there you can find something like this maybe something will come out of that
01:22:26
yeah but i i don't know more but thank you it's again an interesting idea thank you guys thank you all this is really interesting and we have got at least uh six uh seven
01:22:41
different questions that we could explore further and i encourage you all to to do that in your work and share the results or the outcomes or how you progress with these questions with claire and with us all
01:22:53
and hopefully we will also be able to continue this discussion creating a platform for further explorations that's what we are trying to do with this circle of mind and life europe friends that you are members of
01:23:06
and we really appreciate your continuous participation in our dialogues discussions and various events and i would just like to end the meeting today thanking claire for your
01:23:19
work time and efforts and and sharing the wisdom of your findings of course um and also to just share with you that we will have another emily friends webinar
01:23:33
on april 28th with professor donato schiller on the critical embodied thinking that's going to be very interesting too i can promise and it was originally scheduled
01:23:45
for february but due to half reasons we needed to postpone it for april so that's going to be your next uh webinar like this today and another one will be
01:23:56
with the stephen lawrence uh on may 25th with the title of the no-nonsense meditation book so we are going to have two more webinars in the coming
01:24:08
uh period that we are also going to look forward to welcoming you all and seeing you all again and thank you for joining us today and we wish you a great time and continuous explorations
01:24:22
with these questions in your work and in your professional circles thank you very much thank you claire and thank you
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