ex-l: Define "psycho-emotional aspect".
You use the term later in your last post, indicating you get it, but it is worth exploring.
Jann’s post,
the article on the sixth sense goes to this in that it looks at unconscious signals that influence us. But it is very hard to formulate laboratory tests for such things. Not impossible, but I don't think it has ever been done satisfactorily to date.
Let me reply more along the the theme of the last few posts in this topic, although it links to Jann’s.
Psycho-emotional motives determining how we reason and rationalise decisions is well-recognised in Western psychology. The Stockholm Syndrome as you’ve mentioned is one of those manifestations.
The sixth sense is talked about in Western literature as something ”supernatural” partly because of our tradition of thinking in terms of of 5 senses linked to 5 external organs. But it was not always so.
Buddhism talks about people having Six Senses - it includes the mind as the ”common sense”, the one that links all together.
It was also thought of in this way by the classical culture of Greece and Rome, with Aristotle naming it - κοινη αεσθεσισ/koinē aísthēsis - and the Latin form
sensus communis. Buddhism and Greek/Aristotelian philosophy encountered each other when Alexander and his Hellenic successors (including the Romans) ruled over that whole region from the Mediterranean to the Indus, and when Ashoka sent ”missionaries” to the West.
Buddhism talks of
Vedana (feeling tones) arising from our contact with the world, in three ways.
Here ”feeling” is in the primary English meaning of ”how do you feel (emotionally)” rather than the ”tactile/touch” sense of a "feeling on the skin”. Most other languages have separate words for these. (Language is important for it shapes our ”logic” - logic being synonymous with "words" and "word sequences”, and how we articulate things to ourselves ).
We define things, including ourselves, by their boundaries. We end where our contact with the world begins.
All contact comes from a threefold relationship between the sense
organ, the sense
object and the
relationship (the sensation arising) between them.
The
feeling tone arising is either a)
pleasant, b)
unpleasant or c)
neither pleasant or unpleasant - the intensity hard to quantify but not necessary for this (and indeed, that which is pleasant at one time can be unpleasant another time, or become so).
E.G. the taste organ (tongue), the taste object (food) and the relationship (taste sensation) - which gives the feeling tone of a), b) or c).
In Pali, these are verbs, not nouns, for the actions of sensings - there is no noun "taste” but there is the verb ”tasting”. Just like we have the word ”run” as both verb and noun, but a "run” does not exist unless someone is running!).
So, with senses, just as sight does not exist unless there is an ”eye” (organ) that is ”seeing” (relationship to) that which is ”seen” (object) - a tri-fold relationship.
So, too with what we name ”Mind” as a noun, there is a sense organ (brain) - that which is sensed (the object) via the other 5 organs or arising from itself (memory, idea etc) and the minding (the sensation that gives a feeling tone. Mind is, in essence the feeling tone/response to all ”sensations arising from all sense organs, including from itself".
(And - importantly - just as external sensations stimulate a mental/mind response, so too the mental organ can stimulate/influence the external sensation. And, yes, Buddhism also uses the term sankara/samkara - in a more nuanced way than BKs do).
The Sixth Sense, Mind, takes from, and gives to, the other 5 organs and has a relationship to them, as well as from ideas and memories etc. Hence it is the sixth sense - the ”common” sense. It too responds with its own ”feeling tone” to what the external senses present - and, more to do with topic - even a "feeling tone” to the
idea of something.
Psycho-emotional responses and drivers are very much related to this IMO. What is pleasant is agreeable and attractive, desirable and we want more of. So too the converse, the unpleasant, is disagreeable and we want to avoid it.
Life is a Rorschach inkblot - a chaos that we give form to by what we define the formlessness with, the patterns & language we have to work with… the feeling responses and more ...
Infinitely complex and complicated and layered, Life is multi-multi-faceted. We identify and work to patterns of things we'll ”allow” or even ”make happen”, and of things we'll avoid or prevent happening.
It gets more complicated when things are desirable for one reason but undesirable for others. It is even more complex when we include the samkara - unravelling the templates/patterns used till then by which we ”make sense” of our world.
It is at this point we get into the complexities of fooling ourselves. A single idea or feeling may need thousands of words and many experiences to be conveyed.
A single word can give rise to thousands of ideas.
A single experience can give rise to ideas and words which are inadequate - reliant on the cultural , social, educational milieu of the person struggling to make sense of it.
The choice now is often determined by psychological, emotional factors - which include or responses to social, familial and other externals as much as anything. The child of a religious parenting is more likely to seek emotional fulfilment from religion or religious-like activity (and this ”religious=like” emotional experience is the basis of and precedes ”formalised” religion).
(Let’s not kid ourselves. Any of these words in the last paragraph are a book or a series of books, in themselves - and the theme of this post is still being worked out in centuries-long traditions. This is but a forum post!).
Tangentially - the whole 3 worlds versus other traditions’ super-mundane world you mentioned: to me, these are what I referred to in previous posts as creating patterns from various points, many of which (points) are to do with non-tangible experiences and ideas. Different names for essentially the same ”patterning” process.
To me they have more in common, generally, in how they attempt to shore up a certain pre-Enlightenment ”logic” as they attempt to rationalise human experiences than they have differences in their particulars. Mostly they tend to invent new ”reasonable” (according to the belief being supported) explanations for what they no answers for, trying to build a cohesive philosophy, usually with a faulty foundation.
Recently, a friend who is a very successful stock analyst decided to finally buy a house, stating that although it made better logic financially for him to rent and invest money elsewhere, as he was having a child with his wife there was an emotional reason to owning a home that overrode the financial logic.
A very successful estate agent friend told me that selling homes rather than commercial properties was his forte because homes are an emotional decision, whereas commercial properties are bought almost entirely on market-based decisions - yields, potential growth, percentages etc.
A belief system you choose to ”live in” is more like buying a home than it is renting premises for business or deciding which mechanic to use. And many belief systems have highly skilled and successful ”agents” able to work on any psycho-emotional aspects they spot.
Those who emotionally latch onto ”buying that house” don’t look in the basement or ignore the engineers’ reports, because of psycho-emotion reasons, rather than rational ones. The same way hostage victims identify with their captors - there’s a ”feel-good” feeling tone that overrides reason.
And there’s a very ”unpleasant” feeling tone that arises if one has to admit major errors or admit (to oneself or others) that one was indeed ‘fooled” or fooled oneself. This unpleasantness is naturally to be avoided.
How long do we avoid unpleasant decision? Except for the wisest, usually it is until 'continuing the avoidance' is more unpleasant (to the point of painful) than the unpleasantness of acknowledging or making the admission.
BK-ism is
not about freeing the individual through educating them in the understanding the nature of
patterns/samkara/minding/vedana/ belief works.
It merely says "
our patterning etc" is better, and "
if you impress yourself more and more with it, it's even better still" - a surefire way to be psycho-emotionally kidnapped by a particular form of belief.
It’s akin to either understanding contract law, or being asked to sign on the dotted line and accepting fully one contract ahead of another, without understanding what exactly it is you are doing but, gee, I want what it promises!!
(FYI - I have never signed a contract that I did not understand fully for myself, I never left it totally up to the lawyers!).
(Sorry for the ramble - hope I answered the question and talked to topic)