The Elusive Obvious by Moshe Feldenkrais

Author:Moshe Feldenkrais
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781623173357
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2019-03-25T16:00:00+00:00

Subjective and Objective Reality

“Reality,” like so many other wonderful words, was created to satisfy our constant curiosity. When we have no means to satisfy it “really,” then we bunch all our kinesthetic sensations together and bring them to our consciousness by expressing them in a word. Pronouncing, or even internally feeling, seeing, or hearing the word can excite the curiosity, and also quench it in the same way as can performing a satisfactory act.

Commonly, we speak of reality, of things that are, or things that exist; they are not imagined and, therefore, may not be non-existent. As is usual with words, we have a glimpse of understanding, seeing or hearing familiar phrases and expressions, but on second thought we have doubts as to whether or not we have been correct in our understanding. Does an imaginary thing exist? What does exist mean? Do only real things exist? And if so, what is real? Is real only what we explore with our senses? I find that little effort is necessary to make any statement into something vague, unclear, or a complete tautology. The Oxford Dictionary defines “real” as “actually existing as a thing” or “occurring as a fact.” Is imagination a fact, a reality? Or is imagination only supposedly an imagined fact of existence? This may seem just splitting hairs, and when I am engaged in an activity that is important to me I feel I am splitting hairs myself. However, it is a critical issue, as it concerns our knowing what we mean by knowing, what is reality, what is objective, and what is not. Above all, does it matter to me or to you, and if so in what way? The way I solve this problem to my satisfaction is to attend to what I am doing and consider the action involved. It is reduced to the essence, and what more can I find out about the movement that I call action? This kind of thing I can also feel or sense. Movement, sensing, feeling, and thinking together make me, and the thing I am dealing with, as concrete and as real as I can experience. A further concreteness that I can achieve is to find out how my ability to move, sense, feel, and think have developed with my growth to the present use I make of them. Beyond that, my thinking becomes a sensation too vague to share with anybody with whom I cannot establish a sensory contact or share my sensation.

I believe that a newborn baby has very little familiarity with the world outside himself. I say I believe, but I do not really know whether this is really so. I know, however, that I predicted, on theoretical grounds (to be scrupulous, I should say on theoretical speculation), that a newborn baby would react to sudden lowering by contracting all his flexors, halting his breath if he already has one, accelerated pulse, and getting damp if he is already dry. I said I was sure

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