About James

I am a lifelong meditator and I have a PhD in philosophy. My focus is on advanced traditional Buddhist meditation practices, theories of consciousness, the scientific efforts to understand them, and the paradigms and 'cognitive framing' within which they are developed, and of course, the philosophical problems that arise when they are put together, rather than looked at separately.

Now, that may read  like I am all over the place – philosophy, meditation, Buddhism, consciousness, and science — the truth is that I do not recognize the foundational delimitations that see them as different subjects. As well, it has been pointed out to me rather forcefully that I am a polymath, so that I can't expect anyone to be able to follow what I am saying, when it involves so many different fields. We are so specialized today that communication is ever more difficult.

The goal of my work is to promote an unconstrained science founded upon an inclusive cognitive frame that allows us to go beyond the inherent limitations of  our current mechanical materialism. That frame is the reason that we see ourselves as a collection of mechanisms, with some kind of dualistic constitution of matter and spirit, or mind and body. To advance my goal, I developed a novel paradigm for understanding ourselves and our world, which I call Responsive Naturing. The original genesis for this paradigm was my meditative and contemplative practice using a singular meditation technique called Great Responsiveness Meditation which involves a foundational 'turning around' of sound and hearing. 

Unlike so many others that are concerned by the limitations of mechanical materialism and work towards a more inclusive paradigm while leaving the fundamental questions of consciousness, time, and space generally unchanged, I have developed a productive principle that explains in detail how Responsive Naturing actually natures all life. I call this theory Cognizant Gravitation Only. It consists of a fully developed and necessary role for cognizance of what is done, rather than trying to find a place or origin for the abstract entity called ‘consciousness' which has no accepted explanation. In fact, most of the 350+ theories of consciousness try to find where consciousness is, and how it operates in a dualistic sense, and they are more properly recognized to be theories of clairvoyance – knowing at a distance – which raises the question as to why we need our senses, if we are clairvoyant.

I strongly believe that only by changing how we think about our problems, how we see ourselves, and how we relate to each other and our shared world, will we be able to overcome the extreme calamities that we face today. We can't fix our problems with our old ways of thinking and acting that caused these problems to begin with. So my efforts to develop the paradigm of "Responsive Naturing" and its foundation in the theory of "Cognizant Gravitation Only" is one way that I see us breaking out of our old ways of thinking and acting.

My doctoral dissertation, "There is a Way of Seeing the World Different," was on the subject of what I refer to as Biphasic Perception, and it focuses on how this structure, and the absence or failure of the second phase, that of decorating our 'direct experiences,' which I call imperiences, explains so many open questions about perception. We don't notice these two as phases today, but that they are actually occurring in all of our perceptions was known to Homer in his writing, in the earliest Indian texts in which the first phase was called 'nondual perception,' and, as I presented in part in my dissertation, even our early modern human ancestors knew of these phases as evidenced by their use of a particular painting technique in some of their art that communicates an actual experience of the motion of their subjects – 32,000 years ago. Scientists now know that this was the goal of the painting technique, which has been dubbed the "prehistory of cinema," but they have no explanation for how it works. I see it as evidence that our early modern human ancestors were hyperphantasic – they could visualize the movement in their minds as they looked at the superimposed images.

An open question that is actually explained by this same understanding of biphasic perception is why we experience fluid motion when we watch films and videos, and why that fluidity only arises when the speed of presentation of images is 20 frames-per-second or higher. You would think that scientists had worked this out already, given the overwhelming presence of video and film in our daily lives, but the only explanation they offer for this is that the images blur together and this gives us an illusion of motion. I showed that this is completely false. In fact, the frames do not blur together even at 77 frames-per-second, which is easy to see if each frame is completely random, so that our perception cannot replace the individual frames with actual fluid motion. Instead, we perceive each and every frame separately, and we recognize the contents of each frame – in detail – and with a very high degree of accuracy.

I also explain why we only see the fluid motion at 20 frames-per-second or greater: because the second phase, that of our thinking about what we are seeing, cannot keep up, if the frame rate is 20 frames-per-second or higher. Below 20 frames-per-second we see 'apparent motion' which is not fluid, but is 'choppy.' We see fluid motion because our mind is no longer multitasking between perception and thinking about our perception. Our perception is immediate, but our thinking is glacial.

Interestingly, that insight of using random images at high speeds results in a very powerful tool that accelerates and maintains the proper 'gaze' needed in certain advanced traditional meditation techniques, and it can bring the meditator to a direct experience of the 'nature of mind.' In effect, the brain becomes overloaded and shuts down thinking about the images – muting the thinking that disturbs one's meditation. This same process can help those who are afflicted by traumatic events, fears, and doubts, by similarly overloading the thinking brain, muting its stream of thoughts about the trauma, or that which is feared, or doubted.

Thinking is a great tool, but it's not the only tool we have.

If you would like to contact me directly, you can email me at: james@stilljustjames.com