The sensations of existence

From the ordinary to the ecstatic.

 

 

Ordinary or extraordinary sensations

 

Here first is a small definition of Quale and Qualia as it can be found online.

 

Qualia

 

Qualia are properties of sensory experience by which it feels like something to perceive this or that. They can therefore only be known by direct intuition. It is impossible to physically transmit them to someone else.

When one is in love, for example, the various sensations felt are individual. While we can explain them to others, no one can feel them in our place and as we feel them. Our daily life is filled with sensory experiences producing subjective effects. These felt sensations are intimately associated with mental states — passions, emotions.

 

Quale

 

Quale is one of these sensory states. They are states of joy, states of sorrow, for example. Ordinary life can be described as a succession of different qualia*. A succession of qualia of different "colours", forming a kind of personal whole: our character.

*qualia linked to suffering, pride, friendship, love, satisfaction, pride, remorse, melancholy, etc.

The assembly of the various qualia of our daily life forms a kind of general ambience ("today I was happy"). It is our ordinary mental landscape. Yesterday I was in love, and all the various qualia constituting that day were oriented in that direction.

Quale in itself (according to our viewpoint) is an invariable sensation — a continuous and permanent state. If we were permanently subject to the quale of hunger, our life would unfold under this single bodily sensation.

 

The 2 great sensations

Ordinary or ecstatic sensation

 

 

The feeling of existing

 

"Ordinary" consciousness would therefore be permanently traversed by personal qualia — different qualia, variable in quantity and quality. The entirety of qualia would then form our normal moments of existence, with the feeling of temporality.

Ecstatic consciousness, for its part, would bathe in a kind of quale in the singular — or more precisely, all the qualia would be immersed in a single quale, that of ecstasy. This uniqueness of feeling would produce that sensation of permanence one has in ecstasy — this timeless feeling of fullness, of love and absolute happiness.

The qualia of ordinary life, like the quale of ecstasy, belong to the individual. They can be apprehended only through direct and personal experience. In other words, a sage can describe the sensations of ecstasy and nirvana, but no one will be able to feel what they feel without experiencing it. Qualia and quale are felt directly by consciousness.

 

Ordinary quale and the quale of ecstasy

 

Almost everyone can imagine ordinary sensory experiences.
The human majority can (more or less well) gather around ordinary qualia — around the qualia of pleasure, sorrow, remorse, success, thirst, hunger.

With the aid of empathy, most people can put themselves in the place of someone who traps their finger in a door or falls head over heels in love. The experience of the ecstatic quale, by its rarity and its absolute character, obviously engenders a great deal of scepticism. One cannot easily imagine it — but it is not because it is difficult to conceive of the sensations of weightlessness, for example, that such sensations do not exist.

 

The particularity of the ecstatic quale

 

The ordinary quale (the sensation of heat and cold, for example) can differ between individuals (because it depends entirely on personality). The quale of ecstasy, on the contrary, is identical for everyone. By its quality of absolute, it is the only one capable of being perceived identically by each experimenter. Ecstasy extinguishes the ego and all other sensations to become a unique and organic sensation.

The quale of ecstasy would therefore be the unifying quale par excellence — with each experimenter knowing what all other ecstatics feel.

Year 2001