The Tree and Consciousness

11/4/16 The Tree and Consciousness

What is the difference between the reality of a tree and a human being? (I use the term reality to describe the limited experience that is felt and perceived. The truth, the totality is not limited.)

When I compare these two types of reality I become aware of experiencing a specific type of physical and psychological field.  And this also allows me to imagine that all human beings experience within this same field and share this reality together.

A tree has a different reality, with different sensory awareness.  I’m not sure it would be accurate to call it an experience because as far as I can know there is no comparison or memory involved in order to isolate and recall later.  There may be some reaction by the organism to the environment as it senses relationship. (Plants are known to have chemical reactions to some insects for example.) A tree may have a programmed response system, just as the human system also seems physically programmed and habitual within thought.

However, the extended mapping system that humans have, and that requires memory to sustain is different.  The range of images that human beings generate and store is part of the psychological reality that accompanies the external reality, the external space that the body moves through and that enables understanding of the environmental circumstances.

And of course, it’s interesting to note that the memory based images of thought can override what we may consider to be actual reality – material based reality, the world that we perceive as our physical environment. Thought is part of the filter through which reality is known.

When a person walks through the space of the backyard or a city street they may sense (see, smell, hear, touch) the environment in the way that is accessible to them but possibly in a limited way. They sense the information that creates their view of the environmental space.  If a sense is missing, that part of the world (the potential for observation) is also missing, and therefore the person has an incomplete picture – an incomplete reality.  (At least in the way we expect that human beings have the potential to experience the world.)

And while it may be very obvious to us that trees do not see, we may be oblivious to what we are missing in our limited view.  The totality could be much richer than we can imagine or know. And yet, it is remarkable that this light-filled, colored-filled, sound-filled, texture-filled, object-filled world opens up within our mental and physical mind/body. 

We often think that the world, the environment that we live within, is outside of us and that we stand apart from it and we observe it, but without the physical/psychological apparatus that we have, we are, this world would not be “seen” in the way that we “see” it. It is a specific kind of reality that is created with the aid of human attributes (senses and the interpretation of thought) and because we all of have these attributes we share the same reality.

The world of trees is also a conscious experience of reality, but must be very different in awareness.  And we cannot know the depth of that awareness, the strength or subtlety in which a tree relates and knows its experience.

The important point is that as human beings we can only define our reality from our point of view, using the apparatus that we have (including tools that may extend our range). The definition will be incomplete when seen from the position of the totality. However, it is also important to note that the human species is seeing together this type of reality, even with the challenges that conditioning brings to the individual experience. The problem of division between humans seems to be caused by a memory-based psychological construct in which conditioning and personal desires are seen to dominate reality and create separate territories that must be defended. Our shared reality is then dismissed, our unity as a species is determined as insignificant compared to our personal desires or tribal interests.

(Image: Leaving Home)