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15. Nonlocality and Bergson’s Universe of Images
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degrees of spontaneity and freedom, depending upon its level of evolution. (A more evolved organism will react less reflexively or habitually and thus will have a greater range of choices.) This living organism, in F. C. T. Moore’s words, is “selectively sensitive” to its environment and responds only to those properties or qualities of the environment that are important to it, ignoring the rest.7 By doing so, the embodied organism limits and diminishes the universal flux of information. However, this limitation, this choosing to pay attention to only a small segment of what exists, is what actualizes the consciousness that was previously latent in the cosmic dynamism. As Bergson points out, “consciousness—in regard to external perception—lies in just this choice. But there is, in this necessary poverty of our conscious perceptions, something that is positive, that foretells spirit: it is . . . discernment” (MM 38). In Matter and Memory, therefore, Bergson postulates that perception (i.e., our personal, subjective set of images) occurs when we select out and actualize only a tiny percentage of the infinitely complex, interpenetrating, multilayered, vibratory field of virtual consciousness that surrounds us. The material universe, according to Bergson, is a kind of “neutralized” or “latent consciousness” in which the potential gleams of full-fledged consciousness “annul each other precisely at the moment when they might appear” in the flux of matter (MM 248). Our individual perceptions take place when we remove the obstacle to the emergence of consciousness, when we extract “from the whole that is real a part that is virtual,” when we choose and finally disengage from the whole that part of the material world which interests us (MM 248).8 Rumination: Opening Ourselves to the Whole As someone who has spent much time immersed in various meditative or contemplative traditions, I will admit that it was rather disconcerting when I first read Bergson’s discussion of the relationship between perception and matter. Many meditative and contemplative techniques are explicitly intended to help us to open up our awareness, to remove the blocks that separate us from the wider cosmos, to dismantle the subconscious filters that so effortlessly create a world of discrete objects within our perceptions and that so effectively convince us that we are a small, relatively insignificant speck of dust in an uncaring universe. From the point of view of these meditative and contemplative traditions, in order to move toward a more expanded awareness and to cultivate a greater connection with the universe at large, it is crucial to learn how to quiet the mind and to dissolve our egoic sense of separation and limitation in order to perceive directly and as fully as possible our oneness with all of existence. From the perspective of many, if not most mystical traditions, this movement toward what 126 LIVING CONSCIOUSNESS might be called a type of spiritual “super-consciousness” is, or at least should be, the telos of every human being. At least in Matter and Memory, Bergson seems to disagree. For Bergson, moving toward an increased openness to the totality of the universe is actually a movement toward materiality and unconsciousness, not a movement toward increased spiritual awareness. He claims that, understood from a certain point of view, an “unconscious material point” has (paradoxically) a type of awareness that is “infinitely greater and more complete than ours, since this point gathers and transmits the influences of all the points of the material universe” (MM 38). Nonetheless, according to Bergson, possessing this type of cosmic awareness is not exactly something to be highly prized, since as he puts it, “to perceive all the influences from all the points of all bodies would be to descend to the condition of a material object” (MM 49). According to Bergson, rather than attempting to open ourselves to the vastness of our innate, but typically unperceived, connection to the universal material flux, we should instead cherish the limitations and exclusions that come hand in hand with the creation of our personal consciousness. While ironically our conscious awareness is much more restricted and partial than that of an “unconscious material point,” nonetheless, that limitation is itself a hidden gift: the gift that unlocks and actualizes the virtual consciousness that is always present within the heart of materiality itself. Therefore, in Matter and Memory consciousness only becomes actualized when, because of increased limitations (i.e., increased options, increased choices, increased hesitation, increased freedom), a small part of the flux of the whole is reflected back to...