No experience is local.
Whatever I experience – what’s felt, seen, heard, smelled, tasted – is experienced by consciousness as a whole.
It’s local in that I, through thought, can identify where it is in a conventional sense. For instance, the sound of a bird comes from the tree above me. Or the pain of stubbing my toe is in my toe and foot.
And yet, it’s all experienced by consciousness as a whole. It’s all experienced by all of what I am.
And since, to me, the world happens within and as what I am, it’s as if the whole world is infused with the experience.
I cannot remember not experiencing it this way, and it’s difficult for me to imagine it being any other way. But from what I hear from others, this isn’t completely universal.
In a sense, it’s inevitable and universal. I assume that to themselves, everyone are fundamentally consciousness and to them the world happens within and as what they are, just as it is here. And noticing it may not be universal. If these consciousnesses viscerally take themselves to be something within their own experience, then experiences may seem more exclusively local.
Note: I was initially aware of this when I read about Taoist tantric sexual practices in my teens, and they talked about local vs all-body orgasms. To me, orgasms and anything else happens globally, through and in consciousness as a whole.
INITIAL NOTES
- No experience is local
- experienced by consciousness as a whole
- To me, as if experienced by the whole world
- Taste, smell, sensations etc
- Seems obvious to me since I can’t remember anything else, and is even difficult to imagine, but from what others say seems it’s not completely universal
- Is universal since seems inevitable, but maybe not always noticed?