Retreat on NATURAL COGNITION
Exploring the Formation of Beingness in Humans
An open invitation to explore experientially the cognitive conditions that made modern humans anthropocentric and the illiterate indigenous people biocentric.
Exploring the difference between
Ego level-knowing vs Being level knowing
Reason-based knowledge vs intuitive knowing
Unlike the ‘modern’ paradigm No hypothesis, No tests, No labs, No machines, No reasoning, No contrived conclusions
Just Be with the questions, awaken the senses, be in choiceless awareness
Live the questions now
Rainer Maria Rilke
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir,
to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along, some distant day, into the answer”.
LITERATES LEARN THE WORD; ILLITERATES LEARN THE WORLD
Retreat
Reclaiming NATURAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM
A 5-day retreat is being planned to ‘understand’ the NATURAL COGNITIVE SYSTEM that is about creating knowledge of the real world that we experience, autonomously.
Natural cognition, unlike the modern notion of cognition, is not merely a mental activity that happens in the brain but a wholistic activity where the body, mind, and the world are involved and are responsible for shaping our total being-ness- not just ‘knowledge’ but our sense of value, and aesthetic awareness.
Literate is TAUGHT the WORD; illiterates LEARN the WORLD, autonomously. This means the literates learn the CONTAINER- THE PACKAGE whereas the illiterates learn the CONTENT.
Literates are ‘fed’ the readymade description, organized and concluded whereas the illiterates are exploring the real world, imbibing the experience as it is and through self-organization creating ‘understanding.
The other side of learning is that the literates’ cognitive system is shaped by the WORD — ready-made, concluded information where whereas the cognitive system of illiterates is shaped by the WORLD- open, ever-changing.
Natural cognition is rooted in biological imperatives whereas the ‘modern’ cognitive system is a mental construct.
The whole paradigm of modern education, including alternative education- all shades, democratic, Montessori, Waldorf, homeschooling, decolonization, etc are all based on this delusionary system created by a distorted view of the world created by a distorted cognitive system.
The focus of this exploration is to EXPERIENTIALLY explore and understand how in childhood the foundation meant for autonomous learning/ creation of knowledge is formed and how through the act of teaching, helping, being instructed, engaging with literacy, books, and toys the foundation gets rewired for being an analyzer of information, dependency is formed.
Main focus areas of the exploration
- To understand how we create knowledge (natural learning process),
- How schooling and literacy/ Digital content damage this natural system,
- How to recover, and reclaim our natural cognitive system.
The process is non-argumentative, and contemplative, awakening the sense of process, developing aesthetic awareness, learning to hold doubts, learning to be open, and reclaiming the lifelong nature of true learning.
Habit breaking- experientially understanding how literacy rewires our natural cognitive system and instills cognitive habits, fragments the body and mind, makes us ‘masculine,
Destroys childhood and feminine qualities and turns us against life. Understanding the disconnect between the words and their meanings… How do we appropriate words for our whims?
Understanding how modern schooling and various modern institutions damage our natural cognitive system
TOPICS
NATURAL COGNITION — the illiterates’ cognition
Cognition as effortless and choiceless- the way one imbibes one’s mother tongue or how learning takes place in indigenous communities- traditional artisans, farmers, healers, musicians, etc.
UNNATURAL COGNITION — the literate cognition
‘Cognition’ with effort, as a result of being taught, read, and by using reason.
METACOGNITION among indigenous/illiterate cultures.
Integral nature of ‘why’ ‘what’ ‘how’- value, knowledge & beauty
IMPLICIT knowledge creation to EXPLICIT knowledge
FOR WHOM
This is for people who are deeply interested in exploring the fundamental reason for what is going wrong with the ‘modern’ world. The retreat is for exploring deeper into the way how we, the so-called educated have turned against life whereas the illiterates, indigenous people have been in alignment with the natural flow of life. We will explore how this ‘anti-life beingness’ got formed. Naturally, children will be the focus as it is in childhood that our beingness gets shaped and like the foundation of the building once made firmly difficult to undo the damages done to the foundation except for some repair job on the superstructure.
What will prevent us from exploring this is that we are trapped in modern mindset that cannot function outside the realm of language, reason, and mind. How do we pay attention to the body which is biologically connected to its context — non-linguistically and become aware of its understanding?
The Premise
1. All living beings are learning and creating knowledge.
2. We are biologically equipped to create knowledge.
3. The formation of the neural network depends on the experiences we have
4. Literates learn the Word and illiterates learn the World.
5. We are biologically equipped to create knowledge of the real world autonomously and not to analyze second-hand information.
6. Our cognitive development and neural network formation are based on what we experience. Hence, as children when we are subjected to being taught using written description, the brain development will be formed accordingly for analysis.
7. The modern educational paradigm is rooted in dealing with readymade information because we assume that children are incapable of learning. So, modern research on children is for teaching them better.
8. Modern education disregards the importance of the sense in cognition
9. Illiterates create IMPLICIT KNOWLEDGE of the real world which is outside the realm of language and this knowledge can be explicated by becoming attentive to what is implicitly known (METACOGNITION).
10. Metacognition doesn’t require language as the observation is happening while the activity is being done. The best example is the way implicit knowledge of grammar gets embedded by the age of 3.
Check out the site to learn more about the retreat https://jinankb5.wixsite.com/naturalcognition
Register http://tinyurl.com/2bxuvk4m
Contact me directly https://wa.me/917592013231
