Sensory Seeking Quotes

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.

From the sound of pattering raindrops I recaptured the scent of the lilacs at Combray; from the shifting of the sun's rays on the balcony the pigeons in the Champs-Elysées; from the muffling of sounds in the heat of the morning hours, the cool taste of cherries; the longing for Brittany or Venice from the noise of the wind and the return of Easter. Summer was at hand, the days were long, the weather was warm. It was the season when, early in the morning, pupils and teachers repair to the public gardens to prepare for the final examinations under the trees, seeking to extract the sole drop of coolness vouchsafed by a sky less ardent than in the midday heat but already as sterilely pure.

When it rains, the moisture in the humid air blankets our town with the smell of damp coffee grounds wafting in from the Nescafé factory at the town’s eastern edge. I don’t like coffee but I like that smell. It’s comforting; it unites the town in a common sensory experience; it’s good industry, like the roaring rug mill that fills our ears, brings work and signals our town’s vitality. There is a place here—you can hear it, smell it—where people make lives, suffer pain, enjoy small pleasures, play baseball, die, make love, have kids, drink themselves drunk on spring nights and do their best to hold off the demons that seek to destroy us, our homes, our families, our town.

You run the romantic gauntlet for decades without knowing who exactly it is you're giving and taking such a battering in order to reach. You run the gauntlet without knowing whether the person whose favour you seek will even be there once you somehow put that path strewn with sensory confetti and emotional gore behind you. And then, by some stroke of fortune, the gauntlet concludes, the person does exist after all, and you become that perpetually astonished lover from so many of the songs you used to find endlessly disingenuous. [Otto Shin]

Be gentle. Pay attention. Offer purposeful healing. Seek Equilibrium. Unfreeze, slowly. Stretch yourself out into the world. Let your eyes calibrate to this new light and notice how it caresses the lines and curves and soft and hard of you. Allow your mouth to twist and stumble around new shapes. Be so very sensory. Notice everything. From every angle. The way your bones feel. The way you orient to space and time. Invite your whole being into this new way of living, into the totality and wholeness of it. Let it be strange and uncomfortable and painful and stiff. Let it be magical and novel and unfamiliar and entirely wonderful. Follow the whispers where they lead.

It is a strange phenomenon, how absence is the only authentic vessel of the past, how otherwise it is forgotten, overlooked for its continuity and perdurability—every sensory detail of the past breathes through its emptiness the way the light of a match illuminates the darkness; otherwise all is darkness, all is presence, everything in its place and thus unnoticed, whereas the past is missing, the part cut out of the photograph, the part the present attempts to seal over with the future, seeking to close the hole, pandering to the illusion of movement and change when in reality all of life is in flux, particle for particle, atom for atom, void for void, thought for thought.

Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke—who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught—and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting. And then I dreamed....

in the Bhagavad Gita. One stanza reads: “Offering the inhaling breath into the exhaling breath and offering the exhaling breath into the inhaling breath, the yogi neutralizes both breaths; thus he releases prana from the heart and brings life force under his control.”2 The interpretation is: “The yogi arrests decay in the body by securing an additional supply of prana (life force) through quieting the action of the lungs and heart; he also arrests mutations of growth in the body by control of apana (eliminating current). Thus neutralizing decay and growth, the yogi learns life-force control.” Another Gita stanza states: “That meditation-expert (muni) becomes eternally free who, seeking the Supreme Goal, is able to withdraw from external phenomena by fixing his gaze within the mid-spot of the eyebrows and by neutralizing the even currents of prana and apana [that flow] within the nostrils and lungs; and to control his sensory mind and intellect; and to banish desire, fear, and anger.”3

It’s unsurprising that so many empaths these days seek solitude as a form of protection against feeling emotionally depleted. Our environments are so hectic and constantly busy that allowing our senses to be completely open often results in a sensory overload. How can you tell where you begin and others end when there is so much frantic energy surrounding you?

Our habitual metaphors and analogies might be chains that bind us, that restrict our thought processes. But if so, the theory itself suggests an interesting solution: consciously seeking different sensory-motor analogies in new ways may help us see the path, feel our way, or march to the beat of a different drummer, reaching new insights about even the largest problems that perplex us.

Modulation and processing of the range of sensory experiences allows for social engagement and attachment to others. A person who is easily overwhelmed by sounds, touch, movement, or visual stimulation may avoid interactions with persons or situations that are highly stimulating. In contrast, the person who does not process sensory input unless it is very intense may develop a pattern of thrill seeking, high stimulation, and risky behavior.

Communicatory inputs from the world can occur through any of the six primary sensory modalities at any time. The important thing is to first develop the capacity to feel the deeper meanings inside any of the sensory modalities, second to seek their meanings, and third to craft congruent responses.

The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent upon each other. Epistemology without contact with science becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology is—insofar as it is thinkable at all—primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving for epistemological systematic that far. He accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual analysis; but the external conditions, which are set for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him to let himself be too much restricted in the construction of his conceptual world by the adherence to an epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the systematic epistemologist as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as realist insofar as he seeks to describe a world independent of the acts of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from what is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research. (Einstein 1949, 683–684)

Scientists think rationalists are mad because the rationalists are dancing to the Music of the Spheres, to which scientists are stone deaf. Scientists are like the blind describing the visible world to the sighted. The vast majority of reality is hidden from the human senses, yet scientists have chosen to consider the observable as the only reality, and everything else as unreal. In fact, the unobservable is true reality, and the observable is a sensory phenomenal, empirical delusion that actively masks non-sensory, noumenal, rational reality.

   Æsthetic and moral education are closely related to this sensory education. Multiply the sensations, and develop the capacity of appreciating fine differences in stimuli and we refine the sensibility and multiply man’s pleasures.    Beauty lies in harmony, not in contrast; and harmony is refinement; therefore, there must be a fineness of the senses if we are to appreciate harmony. The æsthetic harmony of nature is lost upon him who has coarse senses. The world to him is narrow and barren. In life about us, there exist inexhaustible fonts of æsthetic enjoyment, before which men pass as insensible as the brutes seeking their enjoyment in those sensations which are crude and showy, since they are the only ones accessible to them.    Now, from the enjoyment of gross pleasures, vicious habits very often spring. Strong stimuli, indeed, do not render acute, but blunt the senses, so that they require stimuli more and more accentuated and more and more gross.

Our overview of lagging skills is now complete. Of course, that was just a sampling. Here’s a more complete, though hardly exhaustive, list, including those we just reviewed: > Difficulty handling transitions, shifting from one mind-set or task to another > Difficulty doing things in a logical sequence or prescribed order > Difficulty persisting on challenging or tedious tasks > Poor sense of time > Difficulty maintaining focus > Difficulty considering the likely outcomes or consequences of actions (impulsive) > Difficulty considering a range of solutions to a problem > Difficulty expressing concerns, needs, or thoughts in words > Difficulty understanding what is being said > Difficulty managing emotional response to frustration so as to think rationally > Chronic irritability and/or anxiety significantly impede capacity for problem-solving or heighten frustration > Difficulty seeing the “grays”/concrete, literal, black-and-white thinking > Difficulty deviating from rules, routine > Difficulty handling unpredictability, ambiguity, uncertainty, novelty > Difficulty shifting from original idea, plan, or solution > Difficulty taking into account situational factors that would suggest the need to adjust a plan of action > Inflexible, inaccurate interpretations/cognitive distortions or biases (e.g., “Everyone’s out to get me,” “Nobody likes me,” “You always blame me,” “It’s not fair,” “I’m stupid”) > Difficulty attending to or accurately interpreting social cues/poor perception of social nuances > Difficulty starting conversations, entering groups, connecting with people/lacking basic social skills > Difficulty seeking attention in appropriate ways > Difficulty appreciating how his/her behavior is affecting other people > Difficulty empathizing with others, appreciating another person’s perspective or point of view > Difficulty appreciating how s/he is coming across or being perceived by others > Sensory/motor difficulties

The false or at best imperfect salvations described in the Chandogya Upanishad are of three kinds. There is first the pseudo-salvation associated with the belief that matter is the ultimate Reality. Virochana, the demonic being who is the apotheosis of power-loving, extraverted somatotonia, finds it perfectly natural to identify himself with his body, and he goes back to the other Titans to seek a purely material salvation. Incarnated in the present century, Virochana would have been an ardent Communist, Fascist or nationalist. Indra sees through material salvationism and is then offered dreamsalvation, deliverance out of bodily existence into the intermediate world between matter and spirit—that fascinatingly odd and exciting psychic universe, out of which miracles and foreknowledge, “spirit communications” and extra-sensory perceptions make their startling irruptions into ordinary life. But this freer kind of individualized existence is still all too personal and ego-centric to satisfy a soul conscious of its own incompleteness and eager to be made whole. Indra accordingly goes further and is tempted to accept the undifferentiated consciousness of deep sleep, of false samadhi and quietistic trance, as the final deliverance. But he refuses, in Brahmananda’s words, to mistake tamas for sattvas, sloth and sub-consciousness for poise and super-consciousness. And so, by discrimination, he comes to the realization of the Self, which is the enlightenment of the darkness that is ignorance and the deliverance from the mortal consequences of that ignorance.

Do recall how you behaved as a child: Maybe your child is just like you once were. (The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!) Ask yourself what you would have liked to make your childhood easier and more pleasurable. More trips to the playground, free time, or cuddling? Fewer demands? Lower expectations? Try saying, “When I was a kid and life got rough, I liked to climb trees. How about you?” Do respect your child’s needs, even if they seem unusual: “You sure do like a tight tuck-in! There, now you’re as snug as a bug in a rug.” Or, “I’ll stand in front of you while we’re on the escalator. I won’t let you fall.” Do respect your child’s fears, even if they seem senseless: “I see that your ball bounced near those big kids. I’ll go with you. Let’s hold hands.” Your reassurances will help her trust others. Do say “I love you”: Assure your child that you accept and value who she is. You cannot say “I love you” too often! Do follow your instincts: Your instincts will tell you that everyone needs to touch and be touchable, to move and be movable. If your child’s responses seem atypical, ask questions, get information, and follow up with appropriate action. Do listen when others express concerns: When teachers or caregivers suggest that your child’s behavior is unusual, you may react with denial or anger. But remember that they see your child away from home, among many other children. Their perspective is worth considering. Do educate yourself about typical child development: Read. Take parent education classes. Learn about invariable stages of human development, as well as variable temperaments and learning styles. It’s comforting to know that a wide variety of behaviors falls within the normal range. Then, you’ll find it easier to differentiate between typical and atypical behavior. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and a six-year-old is just a six-year-old! Do seek professional help: SPD is a problem that a child can’t overcome alone. Parents and teachers can’t “cure” a child, just as a child can’t cure himself. Early intervention is crucial. Do keep your cool: When your child drives you crazy, collect your thoughts before responding, especially if you are angry, upset, or unpleasantly surprised. A child who is out of control needs the calm reassurance of someone who is in control. She needs a grown-up. Do take care of yourself: When you’re having a hard day, take a break! Hire a babysitter and go for a walk, read a book, take a bath, dine out, make love. Nobody can be expected to give another person undivided attention, and still cope.

Our senses give us the information we need to function in the world. Their first job is to help us survive. Their second job, after they assure us that we are safe, is to help us learn how to be active, social creatures. The senses receive information from stimuli both outside and inside our bodies. Every move we make, every bite we eat, every object we touch produces sensations. When we engage in any activity, we use several senses at the same time. The convergence of sensations—especially touch, body position, movement, sight, sound, and smell—is called intersensory integration. This process is key and tells us on the spot what is going on, where, why, and when it matters, and how we must use or respond to it. The more important the activity, the more senses we use. That is why we use all our senses simultaneously for two very important human activities: eating and procreating. Sometimes our senses inform us that something in our environment doesn’t feel right; we sense that we are in danger and so we respond defensively. For instance, should we feel a tarantula creeping down our neck, we would protect ourselves with a fight-or-flight response. Withdrawing from too much stimulation or from stimulation of the wrong kind is natural. Sometimes our senses inform us that all is well; we feel safe and satisfied and seek more of the same stimuli. For example, we are so pleased with the taste of one chocolate-covered raisin that we eat a handful. Sometimes, when we get bored, we go looking for more stimulation. For example, when we have mastered a skill, like ice skating in a straight line, we attempt a more complicated move, like a figure eight. To do their job well, so that we respond appropriately, the senses must work together. A well-balanced brain that is nourished with many sensations operates well, and when our brain operates smoothly, so do we. We have more senses than many people realize. Some sensations occur outside our bodies, and some inside.

SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL FUNCTIONING Another coexisting regulatory problem may be how the child feels about himself and relates to other people. • Poor adaptability: The child may resist meeting new people, trying new games or toys or tasting different foods. He may have difficulty making transitions from one situation to another. The child may seem stubborn and uncooperative when it is time to leave the house, come for dinner, get into or out of the bathtub, or change from a reading to a math activity. Minor changes in routine will readily upset this child who does not “go with the flow.” • Attachment problem: The child may have separation anxiety and be clingy and fearful when apart from one or two “significant olders.” Or, she may physically avoid her parents, teachers, and others in her circle. • Frustration: Struggling to accomplish tasks that peers do easily, the child may give up quickly. He may be a perfectionist and become upset when art projects, dramatic play, or homework assignments are not going as well as he expects. • Difficulty with friendships: The child may be hard to get along with and have problems making and keeping friends. Insisting on dictating all the rules and being the winner, the best, or the first, he may be a poor game-player. He may need to control his surrounding territory, be in the “driver’s seat,” and have trouble sharing toys. • Poor communication: The child may have difficulty verbally in the way she articulates her speech, “gets the words out,” and writes. She may have difficulty expressing her thoughts, feelings, and needs, not only through words but also nonverbally through gestures, body language, and facial expressions. • Other emotional problems: He may be inflexible, irrational, and overly sensitive to change, stress, and hurt feelings. Demanding and needy, he may seek attention in negative ways. He may be angry or panicky for no obvious reason. He may be unhappy, believing and saying that he is dumb, crazy, no good, a loser, and a failure. Low self-esteem is one of the most telling symptoms of Sensory Processing Disorder. • Academic problems: The child may have difficulty learning new skills and concepts. Although bright, the child may be perceived as an underachiever.

To summarize, the movements we make are a bit more complicated than they might seem at first glance; they involve complex conversions between sensory predictions and motor actions. And the conversions themselves are constantly being tweaked as we learn more about ourselves and our environment. This learning is triggered by sensory prediction errors, or mismatches between what we expected to feel after moving and what we actually feel. Here we have explored this process of learning and culminated with the idea that to improve our future movements, our brain likely seeks advice from teaching systems embedded within our brain and spinal cord—namely, our reflexes.

Science and philosophy have for centuries been sustained by unquestioning faith in perception. Perception opens a window on to things. This means that it is directed, quasi-teleologically, towards a *truth in itself* in which the reason underlying all appearances is to be found. The tacit thesis of perception is that at every instant experience can be co-ordinated with that of the previous instant and that of the following, and my perspective with that of other consciousnesses—that all contradictions can be removed, that monadic and intersubjective experience is one unbroken text—that what is now indeterminate for me could become determinate for a more complete knowledge, which is as it were realized in advance in the thing, or rather which is the thing itself. Science has first been merely the sequel or amplification of the process which constitutes perceived things. Just as the thing is the invariant of all sensory fields and of all individual perceptual fields, so the scientific concept is the means of fixing and objectifying phenomena. Science defined a theoretical state of bodies not subject to the action of any force, and *ipso facto* defined force, reconstituting with the aid of these ideal components the processes actually observed. It established statistically the chemical properties of pure bodies, deducing from these those of empirical bodies, and seeming thus to hold the plan of creation or in any case to have found a reason immanent in the world. The notion of geometrical space, indifferent to its contents, that of pure movement which does not by itself affect the properties of the object, provided phenomena with a setting of inert existence in which each event could be related to physical conditions responsible for the changes occurring, and therefore contributed to this freezing of being which appeared to be the task of physics. In thus developing the concept of the thing, scientific knowledge was not aware that it was working on a presupposition. Precisely because perception, in its vital implications and prior to any theoretical thought, is presented as perception of a being, it was not considered necessary for reflection to undertake a genealogy of being, and it was therefore confined to seeking the conditions which make being possible. Even if one took account of the transformations of determinant consciousness, even if it were conceded that the constitution of the object is never completed, there was nothing to add to what science said of it; the natural object remained an ideal unity for us and, in the famous words of Lachelier, a network of general properties. It was no use denying any ontological value to the principles of science and leaving them with only a methodical value, for this reservation made no essential change as far as philosophy was concerned, since the sole conceivable being remained defined by scientific method. The living body, under these circumstances, could not escape the determinations which alone made the object into an object and without which it would have had no place in the system of experience. The value predicates which the reflecting judgment confers upon it had to be sustained, in being, by a foundation of physico-chemical properties. In ordinary experience we find a fittingness and a meaningful relationship between the gesture, the smile and the tone of a speaker. But this reciprocal relationship of expression which presents the human body as the outward manifestation of a certain manner of being-in-the-world, had, for mechanistic physiology, to be resolved into a series of causal relations.” —from_Phenomenology of Perception_. Translated by Colin Smith, pp. 62-64 —Artwork by Cristian Boian

Our sense of scent has a limited vocabulary. Across known languages, anthropologists have found fewer words for our olfactory experience than any other sensation. So, we speak of our olfactory experience in similes and metaphors. We reach for language to describe smells in relation to our other senses. Bright, green, metallic, smoky, floral, fecal, loud, round, sharp, or citrus are words I might use, but these notes can be traced to objects, not the odors themselves. My favorite perfumes are slightly addictive, like the feeling of devouring a book. Perfume language is purple, its prose comfortable for me, it’s as if I revert to sensory language when I forget the performance of writing for a society (a country? a culture?) that loves a bare, spare sentence. I’ve been a devotee of purple anything since childhood: clothes, lipstick—a sentence. I admit that when I write in perfumed language, I feel truer as a writer, wilder and messier, anachronistic or mystic, I feel more embodied, when I write the physical materials I work with, encapsulating a story inside of a vessel. I perfume with materials distilled from the earth, but also aroma chemicals extracted from fossil fuels. This leaves me with more questions than answers, but perhaps that’s how we know there is a future, when we continue seeking answers to eternal questions: What is real, what is false? What is natural, what is artificial? What is necessary, what must be thrown away?

This sessile lifestyle means any given tree must find everything it needs, and must defend itself, while remaining fixed in place. It follows that a highly developed sensory repertoire is required to locate food and identify threats. And so, a tree smells and tastes—they sense and respond to chemicals in the air or on their bodies. A tree sees—they react differently to various wavelengths of light as well as to shadow. A tree touches—a vine or a root knows when it encounters a solid object. And trees hear; the sound of a caterpillar chomping a leaf primes the tree’s genetic machinery to produce defence chemicals. Tree roots seek out the water flowing through buried pipes, which suggests that plants somehow hear the sound of flowing water.

They claim that they perceive a mode of being superior to your existence on this earth. The mystics of spirit call it ‘another dimension, ’ which consists of denying dimensions. The mystics of muscle call it ‘the future,’ which consists of denying the present. To exist is to possess identity. What identity are they able to give to their superior realm? They keep telling you what it is not, but never tell you what it is. All their identifications consist of negating: God is that which no human mind can know, they say—and proceed to demand that you consider it knowledge—God is non-man, heaven is non-earth, soul is non-body, virtue is non-profit. A is non-A, perception is non-sensory, knowledge is non-reason. Their definitions are not acts of defining, but of wiping out. “It is only the metaphysics of a leech that would cling to the idea of a universe where a zero is a standard of identification. A leech would want to seek escape from the necessity to name its own nature—escape from the necessity to know that the substance on which it builds its private universe is blood. “What is the nature of that superior world to which they sacrifice the world that exists? The mystics of spirit curse matter, the mystics of muscle curse profit. The first wish men to profit by renouncing the earth, the second wish men to inherit the earth by renouncing all profit. Their non-material, non-profit worlds are realms where rivers run with milk and coffee, where wine spurts from rocks at their command, where pastry drops on them from clouds at the price of opening their mouth. On this material, profit-chasing earth, an enormous investment of virtue—of intelligence, integrity, energy, skill—is required to construct a railroad to carry them the distance of one mile; in their non-material, non-profit world, they travel from planet to planet at the cost of a wish. If an honest person asks them: ‘How?’—they answer with righteous scorn that a ‘how’ is the concept of vulgar realists; the concept of superior spirits is ‘Somehow.’ On this earth restricted by matter and profit, rewards are achieved by thought; in a world set free of such restrictions, rewards are achieved by wishing.

The nature of the senses (indriya) is that they only seek out sensorial (indriyagamya) pleasures and the nature of that which is beyond the senses (ati-indriya) will seek only the happiness that lies beyond the senses.

We exist in order that we may become something more than we are, not through favorable circumstance or auspicious occurrence, but through an inner search for increased awareness. To be, to become — these are the commandments of evolving life, which is going somewhere, aspires to some unsealed heights, and the awakened soul answers the call, seeks, grows, expands. To do less is to sink into the reactive prison of the ego, with all its pain, suffering, limitation, decay, and death. People who live through reaction to the world about them are the victims of every change in their environments, now happy, now sad, now victorious, now defeated, affected but never affecting. They may live many years in this manner, rapt with sensory perception and the ups and downs of their surface selves, but one day pain so outweighs pleasure that they suddenly perceive their ego as illusory, a product of outside circumstances only. Then they either sink into complete animal lethargy or, turning away from the senses, seek inner awareness and self-mastery. Then they are on the road to really living, truly becoming; then they begin to uncover their real potential; then they discover the miracle of their own consciousness, the magic in their mind. Mastery over life is not attained by dominion over material things, but by mental perception of their true cause and nature.

Infants (one month to twelve months)—Infants benefit from having opportunities throughout the day to be active and outdoors. Physical activity encourages organization of the sensory system and important motor development. Toddlers (twelve months to three years)—Toddlers could benefit from at least five to eight hours worth of active play a day, preferably outdoors. They will naturally be active throughout the day. As long as you provide plenty of time for free play, they will seek out the movement experiences they need in order to develop. Preschoolers (three years to five years)—Preschoolers could also use five to eight hours of activity and play outdoors every day. Preschoolers learn about life, practice being an adult, and gain important sensory and movement experiences through active play. It’s a good idea to provide them plenty of time for this. School age (five years to thirteen years)—Young children up to preadolescence could benefit from at least four to five hours of physical activity and outdoor play daily. Children in elementary school need movement throughout the day in order to stay engaged and to learn in traditional school environments. They should have frequent breaks to move their body before, during, and after school hours. Adolescents (thirteen years to nineteen years)—Adolescents could benefit from physical activity three to four hours a day. Children in the teens still need to move in order to promote healthy brain and body development, regulate new emotions, and experience important social opportunities with friends out in nature.

Drives are the functions of nomadic cybernetic systems, not instincts, but simulated instincts , artificial instincts. They arc plastic replacements for hard-wired instinctual responses, routing a sensory-motor pathway through the virtual machine of the unconscious . There are two basic diagrams for such processes : that of regulation by negative feedback which suppresses difference and seeks equilibrium, or that of guidance by positive feedback which reinforces difference and escapes equilibrium. Machinic processes are either cyberpositive-nomadic, with a deterritorializing outcome, or cybernegative-sedentary, with a reterritorializing outcome.

Books, and later music and movies, became the best and most reliable way for me to stay regulated. I didn’t understand back then but I spent my first three decades on this planet feeling overwhelmed and seeking approval for the calm alone time that so many Autistics seem to require. What my mom didn’t understand, and what others were judging, was my response to the instinct to protect my overwhelmed brain was to shut down and read. It was the only way I knew to regulate myself. There were no stim toys and fidgets. Nobody was encouraging me to get up and take a walk. And one can only escape to the bathroom so many times.

Let’s explore some key signs you should be watchful for: Unrelenting fatigue: Persistent exhaustion, even after adequate rest and sleep, is a key part of Autistic burnout. When grappling with burnout, your body may feel utterly exhausted, leaving you scrambling for energy to complete even the simplest tasks. Heightened sensory sensitivities: Sensitivity to sensory stimuli—be it noise, light, texture, or smell—intensifies during burnout, amplifying your susceptibility to sensory overload, meltdowns, and shutdowns. Sensory stimuli that used to feel manageable may now feel overwhelming. Skills and functioning decline: A conspicuous drop in skills like focusing, organizing, problem-solving, and speaking is another feature of burnout and makes social interactions more daunting. Emotional dysregulation: Burnout-induced dysregulation in your nervous and sensory systems hampers your ability to manage your emotions, resulting in intense emotions or emotional numbness. Increased anxiety, irritability, or feelings of being overwhelmed are common during burnout. Diminished tolerance for change: During burnout, your capacity to absorb and adapt to change wanes, and you may seek comfort in sameness and predictability. You might experience heightened distress in the face of the unexpected. Social isolation: Burnout can spark a retreat into solitude and diminish your ability to engage socially. You might withdraw from social interactions and lose motivation for once-enjoyed hobbies or activities. Masking: Burnout can throw a wrench in your masking abilities, and it can be confusing if you don’t understand what is happening! Interestingly, lots of adults don’t get their autism diagnosis until they are in burnout and have lost their ability to mask.

Most religions have a strong conviction that we cannot discover lasting happiness through our senses. So while temporary enjoyment can come through our senses, it is inevitably fleeting and not the source of enduring satisfaction. There is a Buddhist saying that trying to seek happiness through sensory gratification is like trying to quench your thirst by drinking saltwater.

Consciousness activists in history have discovered ways of freeing the default awareness from its normal bondage to sensory-intellectual life. There are methods for opening the mental space that allows transpersonal breakthroughs to occur more readily. Traditional methods like the many yogas, like prayer, fasting, meditation, drumming, music, and so on, all are methods of purifying, directing, and sometimes, vacating consciousness of specific content. The great lesson seems to be one of right orientation, so, for example, Augustine said, “If you seek the truth, go within.

The second ingredient on which our identity is based is the same as for the chariot. In the process of reflecting the world, we organize it into entities: we conceive of the world by grouping and segmenting it as best we can in a continuous process that is more or less uniform and stable, the better to interact with it. We group together into a single entity the rocks that we call Mont Blanc, and we think of it as a unified thing. We draw lines over the world, dividing it into sections; we establish boundaries, we approximate the world by breaking it down into pieces. It is the structure of our nervous system that works in this way. It receives sensory stimuli, elaborates information continuously, generating behavior. It does so through networks of neurons, which form flexible dynamic systems that continuously modify themselves, seeking to predict109—as far as possible—the flow of information intake. In order to do this, the networks of neurons evolve by associating more or less stable fixed points of their dynamic with recurring patterns that they find in the incoming information, or—indirectly—in the procedures of elaboration themselves. This is what seems to emerge from the very lively current research on the brain.110 If this is so, then “things,” like “concepts,” are fixed points in the neuronal dynamic, induced by recurring structures of the sensorial input and of the successive elaborations. They mirror a combination of aspects of the world that depends on recurrent structures of the world and on their relevance in their interactions with us. This is what a chariot consists of. Hume would have been pleased to know about these developments in our understanding of the brain.

The insula also gives rise to empathy. People who are more sensitive to emotional cues from others have greater insula activation and score higher on tests of empathy. And the insula lights up during meditation sessions, especially when the meditator is feeling kindness and compassion. As the meditator expands his definition of connection to include other people and eventually the entire universe, he feels one with everything. In the words of a comprehensive meditation review, “the habitual reified dualities between subject and object, self and other, in-group and out-group dissipate.” As he expands the borders of his tent to infinity, massive changes occur in his brain activity. Insula Activation Benefits Increases Decreases Elevated emotional states Anger Motor control Fear Kindness Anxiety Compassion Depression Empathy Addiction Longevity Chronic pain Immunity Happiness Love Sensory enjoyment Introspection Sense of fulfillment Feelings of connectedness Focus Self-awareness As well as mediating our empathy and compassion circuits, the insula has several other functions. It collects information from a far-flung network of receptors inside our body as well as from our skin. It then stimulates feelings such as hunger that then prompt actions such as seeking food. The dark side of this mechanism is that it can stimulate cravings for drugs, tobacco, and alcohol. Addicts show increased insula activation even before consuming their drug of choice. The insula also lights up when we feel pain or even anticipate feeling pain. Meditators are more “in the moment” when it comes to physical pain, releasing it more quickly. They may also experience overwhelming cravings, as we’ll see in Chapter 5. These are positive cravings directing them toward the ecstatic states found in Bliss Brain.

Human consciousness is characterized by a strong extravert tendency that reaches for objects via the senses. Hence the Yoga masters call for the control of both the mind and the senses, citta-nigraha and indriya-nigraha. Buddhist Yoga speaks of three types of “thirsting” (trishna), or grasping: (1) thirsting for things of the world, (2) thirsting for rebirth, and (3) thirsting for liberation. While thirsting for liberation is preferable over the other two, it still represents a limitation. Therefore it, too, must be overcome. Nirvāna (nonblowing) was originally defined as the nonblowing of the wind of desire—for anything, including the impulse toward liberation. Nirvāna is realized only when every form of grasping is transcended. According to an old Buddhist model, human life unfolds as a play of twelve factors of dependent origination (pratītya-samutpāda): Ignorance (avidyā), which gives rise to Volitional activity (samskāra), which can be bodily, vocal, or merely mental and which represents either meritorious or demeritorious karma; this leads to Consciousness (vijnāna), which causes “Name and form” (nāma-rūpa), which stands for what today is called the body-mind as a whole and which gives rise to The “six bases” (shad-āyatana) consisting of the five senses and that part of the mind which processes sensory input; this leads to Contact (sparsha) with sense objects, which gives rise to Feeling (samveda), comprising pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral sensations; this evokes Craving (trishna), or the desire to unite with pleasant or separate from unpleasant experiences, which leads to Grasping (upadāna), which consists in one’s holding onto specific experiences, views, behaviors, or the sense of self as such; this causes “Becoming” (bhava), or a particular state of existence that corresponds to a person’s inner constitution, which leads to Birth (jāti), or the actual incarnation as a specific individual, which brings Ageing and death (jarā-marana). This causal nexus seeks to explain cyclic existence (samsāra) in terms of an individual’s journey from birth to death to rebirth, ad infinitum. This model makes it clear that cyclic existence is not due to any outside agency but the human mind itself. In other words, we are creating our destiny in every moment. Yoga further tells us that samsāra is not inevitable but that we can stop the vicious cycle by modifying our volitional activity and behavior. This good news is fundamental to all forms of Yoga. Greed is a phenomenon of the unregenerate psyche, which is under the spell of the conditioned nexus and has not taken control of its own destiny. Freedom from greed comes with nongrasping (aparigraha), which is based on the recognition that we are inherently complete and need nothing for our perfection.

yama—moral discipline comprising nonharming (ahimsā), nonstealing (asteya), truthfulness (satya), chastity (brahmacarya), and nongrasping or greedlessness (aparigraha) 2. niyama—self-restraint comprising purity (shauca), contentment (samtosha), asceticism (tapas), self-study (svādhyāya), and devotion to the Lord (īshvara-pranidhāna) 3. āsana—posture (specifically for meditation) 4. prānāyāma—breath control 5. pratyāhāra—sensory inhibition 6. dhāranā—concentration 7. dhyāna—meditation, or sustained and deepening concentration 8. samādhi—ecstasy, or merging in consciousness with the object of meditation Together the eight limbs lead practitioners out of the maze of their own preconceptions and confusions to a sublime state of freedom. This is accomplished through the progressive control of the mind (citta). Beyond the highest ecstatic state lies the freedom of the transcendental Self, which is the pure Witness (sākshin) of all mental processes. For Patanjali, Self-realization is kaivalya, or the “isolation” or “aloneness” of that transcendental Witness. The many free Selves (purusha) all intersect in infinity and eternity. Enlightenment, or liberation, consists in simply waking up to our true nature, which is the transcendental Spirit, or Self. HATHA-YOGA The word hatha means “force” or “forceful.” Thus Hatha-Yoga is the “forceful Yoga” or “Yoga of Force,” meaning the Yoga of the inner kundalinī power. This branch of Yoga, which is particularly associated with Matsyendra Nātha and Goraksha Nātha, two perfected masters or siddhas, is a medieval development arising out of Tantra. It approaches Self-realization through the vehicle of the physical body and its energetic (pranic/etheric) template. In the first instance, Hatha-Yoga seeks to strengthen or “bake” the body so that practitioners have a chance to cultivate higher realizations. Secondly, it means to transubstantiate the body into a “divine body” (divyadeha) or “adamantine body” (vajra-deha), which is endowed with all kinds of paranormal capacities. Thus, the disciplines of Hatha-Yoga are designed to help manifest the ultimate Reality in the finite human body-mind. Sri Aurobindo put it this way: The chief processes of Hathayoga are āsana and prānāyāma. By its numerous Asanas or fixed postures it first cures the body of that restlessness which is a sign of its inability to contain without working them off in action and movement the vital forces poured into it from the universal Life-Ocean, gives to it an extraordinary health, force and suppleness and seeks to liberate it from the habits by which it is subjected to ordinary physical Nature and kept within the narrow bounds of her normal operations. . . . By various subsidiary but elaborate processes the Hathayogin next contrives to keep the body free from all impurities and the nervous system unclogged for those exercises of respiration which are his most important instruments.1

If you feel that you can strengthen your vibes on your own without any support, you’re kidding yourself. Empaths and intuitives especially need supportive people to help us remain true to ourselves. We can easily get lost in other people’s energy and become drained, overwhelmed, and confused. I encourage you to actively seek out your soul supporters (those other six-sensory people who are listening to their spirit) as part of your effort to strengthen your inner channel. Find people you can connect with, who will listen to you, respect your vibes, and keep them safe and protected from negative judgment, including your own—in other words, your team. These people do exist, and you need to connect with and invite them into your life as fast as possible. Intuitive people are most comfortable with kindred spirits—we don’t do as well alone. As I like to say, even Jesus Christ picked 12 helpers before he went to work.

It’s the same out-of-body, dissociative effect I’ve felt from picking at what are, I know, my own distorted perceptions of imagined imperfections in my skin. The initial physical pain is a distraction—a repetitive action with sensory-seeking intensity sufficient to override the emotional

As babies, when we get overwhelmed, we seek the comfort of repetitive movement (rocking) and sucking (nursing, a bottle, and so on). That is, we find relief from our big, scary feelings through sensory input.

Research with humans has shown that babies are drawn toward sounds and patterns at various stages of development in order to fuel the growth of new neural connections. According to neurobiologist Gene Wallenstein, this behavior is the result of a “pleasure instinct” that motivates the infant to seek out sensory input. This input helps fine-tune the connections between neurons, in a process called synaptic pruning. Think of our brain like a scale that needs to be calibrated before it can accurately measure weight. Because sensory stimulation inside the womb is limited, much of our perceptual capacity must be developed after birth.

Do build on the child’s strengths: “You are such a good cook! Help me remember what we need for our meat loaf recipe. Then, you can mix it.” Or, “You have energy to spare. Could you run over to Mrs. Johnson’s house and get a magazine she has for me?” Think “ability,” not “disability.” Do build on the child’s interests: “Your collection of rocks is growing fast. Let’s read some books about rocks. We can make a list of the different kinds you have found.” Your interest and support will encourage the child to learn more and do more. Do suggest small, manageable goals to strengthen your child’s abilities: “How about if you walk with me just as far as the mailbox? You can drop the letter in. Then I’ll carry you piggy-back, all the way home.” Or, “You can take just one dish at a time to clear the table. We aren’t in a hurry.” Do encourage self-help skills: To avoid “learned helplessness,” sponsor your child’s independence. “I know it’s hard to tie your shoes, but each time you do it, it will get easier.” Stress how capable she is, and how much faith you have in her, to build her self-esteem and autonomy. Show her you have expectations that she can help herself. Do let your child engage in appropriate self-therapy: If your child craves spinning, let him spin on the tire swing as long as he wants. If he likes to jump on the bed, get him a trampoline, or put a mattress on the floor. If he likes to hang upside down, install a chinning bar in his bedroom doorway. If he insists on wearing boots every day, let him wear boots. If he frequently puts inedible objects into his mouth, give him chewing gum. If he can’t sit still, give him opportunities to move and balance, such as sitting on a beach ball while he listens to music or a story. He will seek sensations that nourish his hungry brain, so help him find safe ways to do so. Do offer new sensory experiences: “This lavender soap is lovely. Want to smell it?” Or, “Turnips crunch like apples but taste different. Want a bite?” Do touch your child, in ways that the child can tolerate and enjoy: “I’ll rub your back with this sponge. Hard or gently?” Or, “Do you know what three hand squeezes mean, like this? I-Love-You!

What kind of person seeks to understand the origins of our universe – where no humans were present – using human sensory experiences? How irrational can you get? Your human senses and experiences can’t tell you a single thing about what caused the Big Bang. The skeptical empiricist David Hume went as far as to deny the existence of causation because he could not empirically perceive it. He would thus deny the Big Bang, and the cause of the Big Bang. When you take empiricism to its logical conclusion, you arrive at Hume’s philosophy: total nihilism and anti-knowledge, which reduces reality to whatever a human being is currently perceiving. Even what has just happened a moment before is no longer in the province of strict empiricism and can no longer constitute “knowledge.

Buddhist saying that trying to seek happiness through sensory gratification is like trying to quench your thirst by drinking saltwater.

... the function of giving enjoyment and pleasure leads any sensate art at is decadent stage to degrade one of its own socio-cultural values to a mere means of sensual enjoyment on the level of 'wine, women and song'. Second, in its endeavour to portay reality as it appears to our senses, it becomes the art of pregressively thinner and more illusory surfaces instead of reflecting the essence of sensory phenomena. Thus it is destined to become ever more superficial, puerile, empty and misleading. Third, in its quest for sensory and sensational 'hits', for stimulation and excitement as the necessary conditions for sensory enjoyment, it is increasingly and fatally deflected from positive to negative phenomena — from ordinary types and events to those which are pathological, from the fresh air of normal socio-cultural reality to the social sewers, until it becomes a museum of pathology and of negative aspects of sensory reality. Fourth, its charming diversity impels it to seek ever-greater variety, until all harmony, unity and balance are submerged in an ocean of incoherency and chaos. Fifth, this diversity, together with the effort to give pleasure, and to stimulate, leads to an increasing complication of technical means; and this, in turn, tends to make of these instrumentalities an end in themselves — one which is pursued to the detriment of the inner value and quality of fine arts. Sixth, sensate art, as we have seen, is the art of the professional artists creating for the public. Such specialization, while in itself a distintic advantage, results, in the later phases of sensate culture, in the separation of artists from the community — a factor from whichboth parties suffer, as well as the fine arts themselves.

one's faith liberates their mind and heart from the tyranny of circumstances, for where the Spirit is there is freedom. Therefore, instead of seeking restlessly and relentlessly for unmitigated and constant sensory fulfillment in sensorial phenomena, the center of pleasure is restored to God-centeredness.

What kind of Earth do we think we belong to? If the world is a dance of atoms, regulated by physical laws and no more, then one answer to the question of an ethic of belonging must be ethical nihilism. Our two trees, living in such different climates, suggest a similar path. If we’re a species made merely of atoms like all other species, no more and no less, evolution brought us here. Yet I seek something less fractured, an ethic that is fully biological yet does not walk us into a starry, cold universe, empty except for self constructed miasma. A hint at such an ethic might be found with the little girl who heard the “huge” sound in the ponderosa, she and her family were attending to Florissant with delight and unaffected east. The girl heard the tree. The boy examined fallen ponderosa cones, peering between their open scales, then poking at immature cones on the tree. The parents noticed and pointed out the wavelike motions of wind on meadow grasses. They stood and admired the giant stone, remarking on its variegated colors. They remained at the stump far longer than the minute or two allotted in the walks of most visitors. This family was present, a start of a sensory, intellectual, and bodily opening to the place. The people formerly indigenous here- the Ute Indians and their ancestors- were forcibly removed in the 19th century, an act of violence that broke humanity’s millennia long relationship within this part of life’s community. The girl and her family were taking the first small steps in relearning part of what has been forgotten. The family’s attention to the particularities of Florissant seems at first to have little to do with understanding the ethical import of mud slides in the Eocene and in the present day. The family’s behavior gives no direct answers to the questions about the ethics of climate change. Instead they may show how to move toward answers by engaging the community of life. From this engagement, or reengagement after cultural fracture and amnesia, comes a more mature ability to understand what is deeply beautiful in the world.

Listening has an exploratory capacity that does not seek to know about the world but approaches learning as a practice, as a physical and continuous effort to understand momentarily and always again how to live in the between-of-things. Its aim is not to know definitively, but to engage through doubt in a temporary and sensorial knowing.

Unless you’re in the casino business,” Scarpetta said. “Then you would want to seek the most efficient means to overstimulate, to prevent a state of sensory deprivation. You want people to be impulse-driven, to lose their way, so you bombard the visual and auditory environment, the total field, the Ganzfeld, and your clients become a confused quarry without the slightest inkling of what’s safe and what’s not. You blind and deafen them with bright lights and noise so you can take what they’ve got. So you can steal.

Here is another way of putting an aspect of that same parallel: just as The Critique of Pure Reason seeks to show us that the formal conditions of sensory consciousness of an object presuppose a form of synthesis that belongs to the understanding, so, too, the Tractatus seeks to show us that the formal conditions of sensory consciousness of the identity of a sign presupposes linguistic self-consciousness of the logical nexus of the symbol. Just as Kant seeks to show how, on the one hand, the understanding must bear on sensibility in order to have content (for it to represent anything), and how, on the other, the sensible manifold requires conferral of unity through the activity of the understanding to be more than merely blind (for it to amount to more than mere sensory noise); so, too, later Wittgenstein aims to show how, on the one hand, the symbol must find expression in the sign to be more than nothing (for it to say anything), and how, on the other, the form of the sign (in spoken language—its phonological form) presupposes the apprehension of its real possibilities for symbolizing (its logico-grammatical uses in acts of speech) in order for it to come into view as having the form that it does.

Yet problems with sensory modulation, from sensory defensiveness to sensory seeking, might underlie much of what appears to be psychological at root.1 Perhaps one day in some future edition, sensory affective disorder will be added to the list.